224 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 224-227, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.224.227 comparison of time management perception of students studying at department of physical education and sports teaching and program in primary school education osman gumusgul1 1faculty of sport sciences, suleyman demirel university, isparta, turkey abstract the aim of this study was to compare time management perception of students studying at department of physical education and sports teaching and program in primary school education. totally, 170 students took part in this research. data was gathered through time management scale that had been developed by britton and tesser (1991) and was translated to turkish language by alay and koçak (2002). in evaluation part, frequency analysis and parametric tests were used. it was statistically determined that there were significant differences between students studying at department of physical education and sports teaching with program in primary school education. it is considered that the students of physical education and sports teaching department have high perception in all three sub-dimensions because of their habit of using the time well in the competition or the habits of time planning such as nutrition and sleeping out of sporting time. keywords: physical education and sports teaching, primary school education, time management citation | osman gumusgul (2018). comparison of time management perception of students studying at department of physical education and sports teaching and program in primary school education. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 224-227. history: received: 7 june 2018 revised: 27 june 2018 accepted: 29 june 2018 published: 2 july 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 225 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 225 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 226 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 226 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 227 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.224.227&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3034-9265 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3034-9265 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 224-227 225 1. introduction educators gain many behaviors towards their students as well as acquire skills in terms of managing time. the most important aspect of time management or using time effectively in the field of education is to provide planning skill. it is very important to be aware that it is not possible to compensate for the time left. to be planned means to make the right decisions for students and being tidy. today, the teacher has come out of being a passive individual who only teaches, distributes information and evaluates. in addition to being a teacher who teaches modern education understanding, who is the person who can hear, think, research, synthesize and analyze in order to be successful in future generations, it must be effective and efficient (çağlayan, 2005). for this reason, teachers should be a good guide for the class in terms of time management. an activity that takes ten minutes in a class can go on longer or shorter than another class. for this reason, the teacher must know the circumstances in which the time-consuming user is going to act and create stimulus situations and environments accordingly (özçelik, 2006; gozel, 2009). time is a limited resource and like many other limited resources, time can be more or less effectively managed (ustun et al., 2017). the concept of time, which is effective at every stage of life, is beginning to affect education profoundly. this is rather difficult for teachers who have just begun to attend. determining the number of hours required for the course will prevent the course from being dispersed and away from the objective. for this reason, the teacher should give the necessary attention to the plan in order to help it özçelik (2006). as a problem nowadays, it is the widespread tendency of young people to direct a large part of their lives to activities that provide little or no personal development. the main purpose of this type of youth is to amuse themselves; (usually in the school or business environment) without being dependent on ignorance (stebbins, 2016). in the century we live in, we can observe that with the rapid increase in scientific and technological innovations, daily conveniences have increased and personal working hours have decreased, which, in turn, has resulted in people having more spare time. in daily life, the boredom and repetitive features of our work and other activities have made leisure activities a critical tool of renewal in our lives (demirel et al., 2017). the recreation activities which people do in their spare times have become essential components of community life (demirel et al., 2017). in communities, there is a need for a collective sense of time that individuals acquire in order to be able to conduct their affairs effectively; because people organize their daily lives depending on time (safran and şimşek, 2009; üstün et al., 2016; dallı and pekel, 2017). many studies in different disciplines indicate that individuals should participate regularly in physical activity in their leisure time for a quality life (demirel and harmandar, 2009). very different definitions can be made for the management of the concept of relative perceived time for humans. everyone tends to interpret the values that the context expresses for itself. it is not the attempt to explain the concept of time, but the planning of what can be done in the present time (erdem and kaya, 1998; gümüşgül, 2013). time management means planning time, purposes, responsibilities, pleasures and social activities together (özgen, 2002). for teachers, what they want to do in an academic year is important. in education, the importance of time management emerges here. for this reason, teachers, students, are always in a great effort. therefore, the more effective the teachers use their time, the more successful the plans will be and the more successful their students will be in addition to their own success. to summarize, in terms of determining the works in the plans, determining the time period in which these works will be done, what kind of tools and tools will be used in the works, determining the works to be performed according to the order of operations, and checking whether all these processes do not reach the level management has a very important place in all educational institutions (özçelik, 2006). in this case, the aim of this study was to compare time management perception on different variables of students studying at department of physical education and sports teaching with program in primary school education. 2. method 170 students 88 studying at department of physical education and sports teaching; 82 studying at program in primary school education took part in this research. in britton and glynn's time management experience and theoretical modeling, it is important to note that the steps of effective time management are to choose the main and sub-objectives, to identify the priorities and positions of these goals, to identify the priorities for the achievement of the main and subto take out the list of works and prepare time rulings for them and to do these works after all (gumusgul, 2018). based on this model, time management scale, prepared by britton and tesser (1991) was aimed to measure the time management skills of university students. time management scale adapted and translated to turkish language by alay and koçak (2002). time management scale is a measure prepared using likert method. the answers consist of "always", "frequently", "sometimes", "infrequently" and "never". the students who participated to the study were informed about the aim and content of the scale by the researcher before the lessons by taking the permission from the instructors and they were asked to leave a single marking and not to leave the questions as blank as possible. the data obtained from the participants were evaluated in spss 20.0 statistical package program. the kolmogorov smirnov normality test was used to determine which statistical analysis available for the questionnaires returned from the participants and it was seen that the variables had normal distribution. for this reason, it was decided to apply parametric test such as independent sample t-test and one way anova tests in analysis of the variables. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 224-227 226 3. findings table-1. time management scores according to gender subscales gender n mean std. deviation t p time planning male 100 46,910 11,874 0,500 0,617 female 70 46,086 9,549 time attitudes male 100 18,840 3,311 0,318 0,751 female 70 18,671 3,467 time wasters male 100 11,470 2,897 3,717 0,000 female 70 9,900 2,572 according to table 1, statistically significant difference was determined in time wasters subscale according to gender variable (p<0,05); on the contrary, there was no significant difference between time planning and time attitudes subscale and gender (p>0,05). table-2. time management scores according to department subscales department n mean std. d. t p time planning physical ed. and sports teaching 88 49.523 11.154 3.797 0.000 primary school education 82 43.402 9.853 time attitudes physical ed. and sports teaching 88 19.432 3.265 2.699 0.008 primary school education 82 18.061 3.349 time wasters physical ed. and sports teaching 88 11.000 2.936 0.832 0.406 primary school education 82 10.634 2.796 according to the results in table 2, there was significant difference between time management perception levels of students studying department of physical education and sports teaching and program in primary school education (p <0,05). table-3. time management scores according to academic score subscales academic score (on 4,00) n mean s f p tukey time planning 2,00 and less 16 46,6875 11,88118 4.099 0.008 2-3* 2-4* 2,01 2,50 46 51,1739 9,79638 2,51 3,00 67 44,6716 11,91941 3,01-4,00 41 44,4634 8,75528 0.357 0.784 total 170 46,5706 10,95382 time attitudes 2,00 and less 16 18,375 3,42296 2,01 2,50 46 18,5435 3,13905 2,51 3,00 67 18,7612 3,52519 3,01-4,00 41 19,1951 3,40749 1.682 0.173 total 170 18,7706 3,36713 time wasters 2,00 and less 16 11,1875 2,31571 2,01 2,50 46 11,5435 2,95677 2,51 3,00 67 10,5373 2,94561 3,01-4,00 41 10,3415 2,74417 total 170 10,8235 2,86656 according to anova results in table 3 which were applied to determine whether there were significant differences between time management skills and academic score. it was determined that there were significant differences between time planning subscale and academic score (p <0,05). according to the tukey test to determine which variable cause significant difference, significance was found to be in the range of 2.01-2.50 grades (mean= 51,17). 4. conclusion physical education and sports teaching students, in other words, physical education and sports teacher candidates have been observed as having more time management skills than primary school education students. it can be thought that this is due to physical education and sports teaching students’ habits of using time well in the competitions or the habits of time planning such as nutrition and sleeping out of sporting time. it is also thought that physical education and sports teaching students should train based on daily, weekly and yearly training programs they continue to work within. moreover, while demirtas and özer (2007) found statistically significant difference between time management skills and department; andıç (2009) did not find any significant difference according to department variable. independent sample t-test was used to determine whether there was meaningful difference between time management understandings of students participating in the study and their genders. the results of the analysis show that there has been statistically significant difference between the students' time management understanding and gender. it is considered that the reason for the significant difference in time wasters subscale may be that male participants have more time-consuming activity diversity than women because of the turkish society structure. throughout the day, male participants can spend more time on their private affairs and getting different habits that can provide benefits makes them more time-consuming. therefore, it can be thought that this situation has been caused by the fact that the male students can leave important works for the last minute comparing to female students. it has been also thought that one of the reasons of this difference is that male and female students perceive time differently and perceive it with different attitudes and plans. supporting this research, alay (2000); asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 224-227 227 demirtas and özer (2007); eldeleklioğlu (2008) found that there was statistically significant difference between gender and students' opinions about subscale of time wasters. one way anova was applied to determine whether there was a meaningful difference between participants' time management understanding and general academic grade averages. according to the analysis, it was determined that there is a meaningful difference between time planning subscale and general academic grade averages. it is thought that the result that the candidates with a general academic grade average between 2.01 and 2.50 better managing time, because sample group of the study had better planning in short and long term comparing to the students with the other grades. in consideration of all these results, to make certain time management for students as both student and teacher candidate should be thought as essential issue. with the ‘more effective the teachers use their time, the more successful the plans will be and the more successful their students will be in addition to their own success’ principle, physical activity and sports should be seen an important variable for time management and not only physical education and sports teaching but also other field teacher candidates should be inclined to physical education and sports lectures on their schedule. however, in line with the principle of equality, local and central authorities should create more free time activities for women and should increase their education in public education centers as well as in schools. references alay, s., 2000. relationship between time management and academic achivement of selected university students. master thesis. middle east technical university, ankara. alay, s. and s. koçak, 2002. validity and reliability of time management questionnaire. hacettepe university journal of education, 22(22): 913. view at google scholar andıç, h., 2009. the relation between academic successes and time management of university students (afyonkarahisar case). master thesis, afyonkocatepe university, afyonkarahisar. britton, b.k. and a. tesser, 1991. effects of time-management practices on college grades. journal of educational psychology, 83(3): 405410. view at google scholar | view at publisher çağlayan, a., 2005. education in primary education, quality in 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content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=validity%20and%20reliability%20of%20time%20management%20questionnaire https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=effects%20of%20time-management%20practices%20on%20college%20grades http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.83.3.405 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=examination%20of%20future%20time%20perception%20levels%20and%20time%20management%20behaviours%20of%20the%20students%20in%20the%20faculties%20of%20sports%20sciences%20by%20certain%20variables http://dx.doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v14i2.4447 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=university%20students’%20opinions%20of%20the%20meaning%20of%20leisure%20and%20their%20perceived%20freedom%20in%20leisure http://dx.doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v14i1.4341 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=constraints%20and%20perceived%20freedom%20levels%20in%20the%20leisure%20of%20university%20students http://dx.doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v14i1.4340 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=determination%20of%20the%20constraints%20on%20recreational%20participation%20of%20university%20students https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=investigation%20of%20adolescents’%20time%20management%20skills%20in%20terms%20of%20anxiety,%20age%20and%20gender%20variables 35 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 1, 35-40, 2017 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.35.40 modeling and mapping personal learning environment of thai international higher education students mohamed ali sharafuddin1  buncha panacharoen sawad2 sarun wongwai3 ( corresponding author) 1lecturer-faculty of business administration, st. theresa international college, thailand 2associate professor, faculty of education, st. theresa international college, thailand 3assistant professor, faculty of education, st. theresa international college, thailand abstract this research article is part of a periodic study conducted to understand, model, map and to develop an integrated approach for effective and interactive self-learning phases of thai international hospitality and tourism higher education students. questionnaire containing both qualitative and quantitative questions was distributed at the beginning of the semester to understand the students‟ personal learning environment during their self-learning phases. after obtaining mutual agreement with the students, the researcher diffused the course related contents and assignments through observed personal learning environment and the changes that took place in it. thereafter, the students‟ learning experience was measured again by the end of the semester with another quantitative questionnaire. paired sample t-test and regression analysis were conducted to analyze the outcomes. the results revealed that there was statistically significant difference between the past and the present self-learning phases of personal learning environment on using micro blogging, academic material search engines, group chats, collaborative office suites (social networking tools), microsoft office suite and other traditional methods such as using teaching learning resources and infrastructure provided by institution (books, handouts, lecture notes and university library). the multiple linear regression results revealed that, the above mentioned self-learning phases of ple attributes has significant and positive impact on overall learning experience. keywords: tourism and hospitality education, higher education, self-learning phases, personal learning environment, social networking tools. citation | mohamed ali sharafuddin; buncha panacharoen sawad; sarun wongwai (2018). modeling and mapping personal learning environment of thai international higher education students. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 35-40. history: received: 16 january 2018 revised: 1 february 2018 accepted: 5 february 2018 published: 6 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 36 2. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 36 3. analysis and discussion .................................................................................................................................................................. 39 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 39 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 40 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.35.40&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5247-2964 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=buncha panacharoen sawad https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sarun wongwai https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5247-2964 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=buncha panacharoen sawad https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sarun wongwai https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5247-2964 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=buncha panacharoen sawad https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sarun wongwai https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5247-2964 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=buncha panacharoen sawad https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sarun wongwai asian journal of education and training, 2017, 4(1): 35-40 36 1. introduction research on understanding the personal learning environment, its related use of technology and adopting various related approaches for offering better learning experience during self learning phases of higher education, is gaining more focus in recent years. different concepts regarding personal learning environment have evolved over time. van harmelen (2006) defined personal learning environment (ple) as “a single user‟s e-learning system that provides access to a variety of learning resources, and that may provide access to learners and teachers who use other ples and/or vles”. he also stated that control of ples may vest with the individual users. whereas attwell (2007) also mentioned that “personal learning environments are not an application but rather new approach to the use of new technologies for learning. ples provide learners with their own spaces under their own control to develop and share their ideas. moreover, ples can provide a more holistic learning environment, bringing together sources and contexts for learning hitherto separate. students learn how to take responsibility for their own learning". further, researches with specific focus on role of social networking in higher education are also gaining focus among distance learning and online course administrators. wang (2010) explains the approach and its process saying that, “by obtaining information, producing insight, undertaking analysis and collaboration in the course of knowledge building and by way of an instructed learning process, these networks create all manners of interpersonal associations and learning opportunities.” santos et al. (2010) in their social network research analyzed the interactions established between the network actors during their workshop to understand the network development, learner‟s group formation, relationship patterns and communication flow between them. they stated that using technological tools in higher education has got its major advantage of easy access to resources among stakeholders of the learning environment and research on understanding the communication channels provides an opportunity to manage the higher education process. in general, ple is seen more as a learner centric – technology enabled socially networked – approach beyond the boundaries of traditional learning management system like which is usually institution centric and has more control over the students‟ learning styles and approaches. also all researchers agree that, even though learners use common social networking tools and other traditional resources, personal learning environment might be unique. this research article focuses on two main objectives. first, this study endeavors to develop a model for understanding the personal learning environment perspectives of thai international tourism and hospitality students and their use of technology during their self-learning phases, and map them accordingly. secondly, to diffuse the course related contents and assignments through observed personal learning environment and measure the students learning experience. 2. methodology since personal learning environment (ple) is unique and this research focus on finding out the technology used by thai international tourism and hospitality students to learn during their self-learning phases and to diffuse the course related contents and assignments through observed personal learning environment (o-ple) and measure the students learning experience, the researcher adopted the grounded theory approach. the pilot study began with the collection of qualitative data from students by asking them how they overcome language and learning barriers to complete their assignments during their self-learning phases. our previous study also revealed that, searching relevant information in various formats from internet and teaching each other through smart phone and social networks by giving feedbacks within themselves on their assignments during student‟s self-learning phases are the highly agreed activities (tanyong and sharafuddin, 2016). all of the students answered that they depend on multiple resources (both online and offline) to complete their assignments during their self-learning phases. the qualitative results of self-learning phases of the students‟ ple were mapped based on students‟ answers and presented in figure 1: personal learning environment of self-learning phases. the map shows that the students were using search engines such as (google, yahoo, bing and ask) and academic material search engines (base, citeulike, google scholar and slideshare) to search relevant information, watch videos (youtube, facebook, yahoo, vimeo, metacafe and instagram), search photos (wikimedia commons, pin interest and search engines), listen to audios (imusic, pandora and soundcloud), use both online (google forms, google docs and google calendar) and offline productivity suites ( ms office), micro blog (facebook, soup, tumblr, google+ and identi.ca) to ask help from friends other than their classmates, group chat ( google+, facebook, line, whatsapp, wechat and skype) along with their traditional resources ( books, lecture notes, handouts, running notes, and college library resources). with the above mentioned sources as variables, a quantitative questionnaire with 5-point likert scale that includes frequency of use as descriptors (1­never, 2­rarely, 3­sometimes, 4­very often, and 5­always) was developed and distributed at the beginning of the semester to understand the students‟ personal learning environment during their past self-learning phases. after obtaining mutual agreement with the students, the researcher diffused the course related contents and assignments through observed personal learning environment and the changes in personal learning environment and students learning experience was measured again by the end of the semester with another quantitative questionnaire (needs paraphrasing coz this has been used in the abstract). paired sample t-test and regression analysis was conducted to analyze the outcomes. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 4(1): 35-40 37 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 4(1): 35-40 38 table-1. paired sample t-test of past and present ple variables past present n mean difference t df p-value mean s.d. s.e. mean s.d. s.e. micro blogging 2.492 0.72 0.07 2.686 0.67 0.06 111 -0.194 -3.38 110 <.001 search engine 2.687 0.68 0.06 2.511 0.62 0.06 111 0.176 2.287 110 0.998 academic material search 2.258 0.93 0.09 2.934 0.78 0.07 111 -0.675 -6.23 110 <.001 group chats 3.212 0.66 0.06 3.572 0.5 0.05 111 -0.36 -5.29 110 <.001 learn through online videos 2.751 0.57 0.05 2.807 0.58 0.06 111 -0.056 -1.12 110 0.132 image search 2.682 0.75 0.07 2.671 0.73 0.07 111 0.011 0.185 110 0.573 audio search 2.359 1.03 0.1 2.144 1.12 0.11 111 0.209 2.124 110 0.982 collaborative tools 2.565 1.04 0.1 3.414 0.76 0.07 111 -0.849 -8.15 110 <.001 office suite 3.225 0.89 0.08 3.291 0.84 0.08 111 -0.066 -1.91 110 0.029 traditional methods 3.559 0.79 0.08 3.769 0.61 0.06 111 -0.21 -2.67 110 0.004 source: calculated from primary data asian journal of education and training, 2017, 4(1): 35-40 39 3. analysis and discussion 3.1. paired sample t-test paired sample t-test was performed to test the mean difference between the self-learning phases of the ple of hospitality and tourism students in the past and the present scenario. the paired sample t-test in table 1 revealed the mean differences between the past and present self-learning phases in ple. the results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference in the mean scores and positive growth in the use of micro-blogging [past (m=2.42, s.d.=0.719) and present (m=2.686, s.d.=0.063) with a t(110)=-3.384, p<0.05.], academic material search [past (m=2.258, s.d.=0.929) and present (m=2.934, s.d.=0.776) with a t(110)=-6.226, p<0.05.], group chats [past (m=3.212, s.d.=0.663) and present (m=3.572, s.d.=0.495) with a t(110)=-5.293, p<0.05.], collaborative tools [(m=2.565, s.d.=1.039) and present (m=3.414, s.d.=0.761) with a t(110)=-8.154, p<0.05.], office suite [past (m=3.225, s.d.=0.888) and present (m=3.291, s.d.=0.837) with a t(110)=-1.908, p<0.05.] and traditional methods [past (m=3.559, s.d.=0.794) and present (m=3.769, s.d.=0.605) with a t(110)=-2.665, p<0.05.]. whereas, there is no significant difference in „learning through watching online videos‟, „image search‟ and „audio search‟. the result also indicates that the use of search engine has been decreased in the present scenario. overall, after dissemination of the course related contents and assignments through observed personal learning environment (o-ple) the personal learning environment of student‟s self-learning phases (slp-ple) became more interactive than their past ple (p-ple). hence it is concluded that diffusing course related contents through observed personal learning environment (o-ple) can make the personal learning environment of student‟s self-learning phases (slp-ple) more interactive and increase students participation. further linear regression was conducted to evaluate the impact of present attributes of self-learning phases of (slp-ple) on overall learning experience. 3.2. linear regression this study hypothesized that there is a significant impact of present attributes of self-learning phases of ple on overall learning experience of the students. table-2. linear regression analysis model variables b standard error β t-value p-value 1 intercept 0.467 0.265 1.762 0.081 present micro blogging 0.137 0.045 0.219 3.062 0.003 present academic material search engine 0.143 0.032 0.267 4.465 < .001 present search engine -0.04 0.054 -0.06 -0.7 0.487 present group chats 0.051 0.051 0.061 1 0.32 present collaborative tools 0.086 0.032 0.158 2.685 0.008 present office suite 0.082 0.031 0.164 2.6 0.011 present traditional methods 0.101 0.042 0.147 2.422 0.017 present videos 0.09 0.058 0.124 1.549 0.125 present photos 0.1 0.045 0.175 2.212 0.029 present audio 0.088 0.028 0.237 3.115 0.002 ar2= 0.675, p≤0.05*, p≥0.05**, n=110 the multiple linear regression results revealed the significant impact of students present self-learning phases of ple on overall satisfaction. the results shows the regression equation f (10, 100) = 20.74, p<0.01. the multiple correlation coefficient r was at 0.821 with an r square value of 0.675, which indicates that the attributes of self-learning phases of ple accounted for 67.5% variation on the dependent variable (dv) overall learning experience. the result indicates that micro blogging (b=0.219, p<0.05), academic material search engine (b=0.267, p<0.05), collaborative tools (b=0.158, p<0.05), office suite (b=0.164, p<0.05), traditional methods (b=0.147, p<0.05), photos (b=0.175, p<0.05), audio (b=0.237, p<0.05) have significant and positive impact on overall learning experience; whereas the variables group chats (b=0.061, p>0.05), videos (b=0.124, p>0.05) is non-significant and the variable search engine (b=-0.056, p>0.05, non-significant) has negative impact on overall learning experience. however, the major important attributes of self-learning phases of ple has significant and positive impact on overall learning experience. the regression equation could be written as predictive of overall learning experience = 0.467 – 0.038 (search engine) + 0.137 (micro blogging) + 0.143 (academic material search engine) + 0.051 (group chats) + 0.086 (collaborative tools) + 0.082 (office suite) + 0.101 (traditional methods) + 0.090 (videos) +0.100 (photos) + 0.088 (audio). the results of the study confirmed that: 1. diffusing course related contents through observed personal learning environment (o-ple) can make the personal learning environment of student‟s self-learning phases (slp-ple) more interactive and increase students‟ participation. 2. the overall learning experience can be improved by diffusing the course related self-learning contents through various interactive tools. 4. conclusion the study proves that the students self-learning phases of personal learning environment (slp-ple) has been improved in the present scenario compared to their past. there is a significant impact of studies attributed to slp-ple on students‟ overall learning experience. hence, lecturers must focus on diffusing course related contents through observed personal learning environment (o-ple) to make the personal learning environment of student‟s self-learning phases (slp-ple) more interactive which eventually result in increased students course participation and have a positive impact on overall students learning experience. focusing only on international tourism and asian journal of education and training, 2017, 4(1): 35-40 40 hospitality higher education students is the major limitation of this study. further studies covering students of other major courses would reveal more results on effectiveness of observed personal learning environment (o-ple) on students learning experience. references attwell, g., 2007. personal learning environments-the future of elearning? e-learning papers, 2(1): 1-8. view at google scholar santos, f.l., q.d.a. de cima, j. paz and p. fidalgo, 2010. building proactive teachers: a workshop to provide for self-regulated learning experiences in teacher education. in self-regulated learning in technology enhanced learning environments: problems and promises, proceedings of the stellar -taconet conference, pp. 31-39. retrieved from: http://www.itd.cnr.it/download/0barcelona%20proceedings%20fourth%20taconet%20conference.pdf#page=45. tanyong, s. and m.a. sharafuddin, 2016. understanding personal learning environment perspectives of thai international tourism and hospitality higher education students. journal of education and practice, 7(10): 128-139. view at google scholar van harmelen, m., 2006. personal learning environments. advanced learning technologies, 2006. sixth international conference on. ieee. pp: 815-816. wang, l., 2010. how social network position relates to knowledge building in online learning communities. frontiers of education in china, 5(1): 4-25. view at google scholar | view at publisher asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=personal%20learning%20environments-the%20future%20of%20elearning? https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=understanding%20personal%20learning%20environment%20perspectives%20of%20thai%20international%20tourism%20and%20hospitality%20higher%20education%20students https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=how%20social%20network%20position%20relates%20to%20knowledge%20building%20in%20online%20learning%20communities http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11516-010-0003-4 asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 1, 7-10, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 7 elementary school male aggression: framing aggression reduction programs for effectiveness jamel a. gibson1 1 administrator carver elementary school newport news, va abstract this study explores the use of framing techniques to help educators, administrators, and leaders to determine the effectiveness of programs designed to reduce elementary school male aggression. keywords: male aggression, elementary school male aggression, framing, aggression reduction programs. contents 1. introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................... 8 2. male aggression ..................................................................................................................................................................... 8 3. framing .................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 4. conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 9 references .................................................................................................................................................................................. 9 citation | jamel a. gibson (2016). elementary school male aggression: framing aggression reduction programs for effectiveness. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 7-10. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.7.10 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.7.10 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jamel a. gibson http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.7.10 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.7.10 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jamel a. gibson http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.7.10 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.7.10 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jamel a. gibson http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.7.10 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 7-10 8 1. introduction empirical evidence suggests that aggression and violence at the elementary school level is associated with school failure, school dropout rates, job failure, crime, and incarceration (van lier et al., 2007; larson, 2008; trussell, 2008; risser, 2013; gibson, 2015). violent and aggressive behavior undermines the integrity of the learning environment, interferes with student academic and social outcomes, contributes to staff and student stress, and threatens school safety (holmes et al., 2014). to address this concern, prevention programs are necessary to assist elementary school males control and self-monitor violent behavior. many programs have been established to prevent further development of aggressive behavior. these programs may benefit from additional information on how to address aggressive behavior effectively at the elementary school level. framing programs by identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and challenges may help to address this concern (bolman and deal, 2008). 2. male aggression aggressive student behavior is a national problem (gibson, 2015). as problematic as this is, there appears to be a higher percentage among males of acts of aggression and physical fights in comparison to female students (national center for education statistics, 2011). dunn and baker (2002) reported that male students comprise 70% of school suspensions, are three times more likely to become drug and alcohol abusers, receive greater behavioral penalties than do girls, and suffer from mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders. gurian and stevens (2004) stated that boys make up 90% of all school discipline problems. gibson (2015) noted that boys comprise the majority of discipline referrals in elementary school. these manifestations of the continuing problem of male aggression contribute to the school-toprison pipeline, and schools remain challenged by disaffected male students, and personality disorders. male aggressive behaviors are most likely to be manifested through the actions of defiance, classroom disruption, inappropriate language and gestures, physical altercations and confrontations, disrespect, insubordination, and mass assault (gibson, 2015). because of aggressive and violent behavior, homicide rates among youth are higher in the united states when compared to other countries with similar economies. in 2006, homicide was the fourth leading cause of death among 5-9 year olds, and the third cause of death among 10-14 year olds. hostile school behavior produces more student threats, attacks, injuries, violent and non-violent crime, discipline concerns, gang activity, bullying, and many other negative actions (enescu, 2012). aggressive behavior has the potential to become violent in the classroom setting and may stimulate unfriendly outbursts among male students. moore and pepler (2006) observed that in 2005, 11% of students between the ages of 8 and 17 started confrontations and fights with hate word statements, and verbal abuse was more likely than other kinds of abuse to affect children. these words included insults relating to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual preference, and disabilities. urban students reported being called hate words, specifically in the black and hispanic populations, at a considerably higher rate than other races (basch, 2011). verbal aggression is a strong catalyst for violence in elementary school; and if not addressed early, may lead to increasingly vicious acts of violence (moore and pepler, 2006). student aggressive behavior is problematic in the k-12 school setting, and male student aggression is particularly challenging (gibson, 2015). for example, ozkol et al. (2011) proposed that aggression among young males is a critical public health issue impacting individuals, schools, communities, families, and the world. disruptive behavior problems in young males is commonplace and if left unaddressed can lead to antisocial behaviors, multiple mental health issues, and personality problems in later life (broyden et al., 2007). 3. framing there is a need for male aggression prevention programs in the elementary school setting because many school districts are disproportionate in the suspension of elementary school males (gibson, 2015). although programs exist to help reduce male aggression, a large number of school-based aggression and violence prevention programs remain unevaluated. as a result of this ongoing concern, programming designed to address elementary school male aggression may benefit from utilizing framing techniques to assist in the assessment, development, and redevelopment of programs (bolman and deal, 2008). frames are a mental model and a set of ideas and assumptions to help understand what is occurring within programs (bolman and deal, 2008; scherff and singer, 2008). frames also consider patterns and interpretations used to organize meaning and can help define problems, diagnose causes, make judgments, and suggest solutions for the issue (achinstein and barrett, 2004). framing techniques help leaders and administrators to realize what they are facing and how they can address problems (bolman and deal, 2008). many elementary school male aggression prevention programs are not focused on understanding the mechanisms that help to monitor effectiveness (dymnicki et al., 2011). therefore, framing may be a powerful technique used to determine the effectiveness of elementary school male aggression reduction programs. in most effective aggression and violence prevention programs, there is still uncertainty of exactly which components of the program are effective. in fact, research of school-based programs created to prevent aggressive behaviors in students, have documented inconsistent effects (wilson et al., 2003). framing helps administrators and leaders to better gain a full understanding of what works and what needs to be eliminated within organizations and programs (bolman and deal, 2008). applying the research on framing and reframing techniques can help administrators understand relationships among teachers, climate, and the organization of schools (scherff and singer, 2008). according to bolman and deal (2008) there are four distinct frames regarding reframing programs and organizations comprised of structural, human resource, political, and symbolic frames. understanding the idea of framing can offer significant clues in capturing a comprehensive picture of the effectiveness of aggression and violence prevention programs. table 1 below highlights the main function of each frame. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 7-10 9 table-1. framing techniques frame function structural frame the structural frame highlights goals of the program, identifies specialized roles to enhance performance, and discusses formal relationships regarding coordination through authority, policies, and rules. human resource frame the human resource frame addresses the needs of the program political frame the political frame helps to determine how leadership will choose the agenda objectives for the program to follow symbolic frame in the symbolic frame, inspiration is the most important part of a leaders job source: bolman and deal (2008) assessing aggressive and violence prevention programs for elementary school males through structural framing may provide deeper insight into the core of the program. the structural frame highlights goals of the organization, identifies specialized roles to enhance performance, and discusses formal relationships regarding coordination through authority, policies, and rules (achinstein and barrett, 2004). the structures should be designed to fit the programs cirumstances. there is an increasing recognition in violence prevention research, for the need to determine under what conditions programs are effective (dymnicki et al., 2011). if the structural assumptions are properly designed, they can address both collective goals and individual differences within organizations (bolman and deal, 2008). lack of a strong structure frame can cause an entire program to waste needed resources and energy (bolman and deal, 2008). an effective structural frame requires strong communication, realigning and in some instances renegotiation of policies and patterns. the human resource frame addresses the needs of the aggression prevention program for elemntary males (achinstein and barrett, 2004). programs are created to serve human needs and there is a need for programs to target social-cognitive processes that support aggressive responses in children (dymnicki et al., 2011). it is crucial for the leadership of these programs to pay attention to human resource issues because the quality of service offered depends on the caliber of employees (hwang and kogan, 2003). effective program leaders possess the ability to improve the overall educational environment through means of proper designation of job roles (dymnicki et al., 2011). when the human resource frame is not effective, both the workers and the organization itself will be exploited (bolman and deal, 2008). a strong human resource system, including recruiting, hiring, and retention can enhance the aggression reduction program’s worth (hwang and kogan, 2003). the political frame operates under the assumption that leaders must acknowlegde that politics exist within programs. moreover, understanding how to manage politics within aggression reduction programs for elementary school males is imperative for the program (bolman and deal, 2008). operating from a political frame perspective requires strategy and helps to determine how leadership will choose agenda objectives for the program to follow (bentley et al., 2004). agendas within aggression prevention programs are essential to the training of educators and leaders to obtain success (girard et al., 2011). political frames assist in promoting effective employee work flow for a shared agenda to defeat common enemies. the symbolic frame may also prove to be helpful in monitoring the effectiveness of aggression prevention programs. in the symbolic frame, inspiration is the most important part of a leader’s job (bolman and deal, 2008). obtaining a common symbolic goal, such as reducing elementary school male aggression, can help promote unity to share effective tools and professional development ideas (girard et al., 2011). bolman and deal (2008) also stress that common symbols penetrate through every fiber of society. the symbolic frame widens the possibilities for leadership because it’s not restricted by formal authority and power, but is able to permeate the culture of the organization (hill, 2011). effective aggression reduction programming for elementary school males will require a united front on all levels. the symbolic frame is a helpful technique because it unites everyone towards a common goal (hill, 2011). this erases distinctions between leaders and followers while raising possibilities for creativity and diminishing feelings of inferiority (hill, 2011). 4. conclusion it would be beneficial for the leaders of aggression reduction programs for males on the elementary school level to identify strengths, weakness, opportunities, threats and challenges as a cohesive unit (fernandez and rainey, 2006). programs are often reflective of its stakeholders, and are created and function based on public value and validity. fernandez and rainey (2006) noted the one-size-fits-all approach does not work when managing change, since each change and each affected group is different. there are many areas and pathway possibilities that program leaders can utilize to determine program effectiveness and worth. leaders that utilize framing as a technique to maintain, refine, and shape the future of aggression reduction programs for elementary males may find value in further research (fernandez and rainey, 2006). references achinstein, b. and a. barrett, 2004. (re) framing classroom contexts: how new teachers and mentors view diverse learners and challenges of practice. teachers college record, 106(4): 716-746. basch, c.e., 2011. aggression and violence and the achievement gap among urban minority youth. journal of school health, 81(10): 619-625. bentley, t., f. zhao, e.h. reames and c. reed, 2004. frames we live by: metaphors for the cohort. professional educator, 26(2): 39-44. bolman, l.g. and t.e. deal, 2008. reframing organizations artistry, choice, and leadership. hoboken, new jersey: jossy-bass. broyden, n., j. hill, p. fonagy and g. lancaster, 2007. aggression and intentionality in narrative responses to conflict and distress story stems: an investigation of boys with disruptive behaviour problems. attachment & human development, 9(3): 223-237. dunn, n.a. and s.b. baker, 2002. readiness to serve students with disabilities: a survey of elementary school counselors. professional school counselors, 5(4): 277-284. dymnicki, a.b., r.p. weissberg and d.b. henry, 2011. understanding how programs work to prevent overt aggressive behaviors: a meta analysis of mediators of elementary school-based programs. journal of school violence, 10(4): 315-337. enescu, r.a., 2012. school violence: prevention, causes and consequences. revista de asistenta sociala, 4: 79-96. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 7-10 10 fernandez, s. and h.g. rainey, 2006. managing successful organizational change in the public sector. public administration review, 66(2): 168-176. gibson, j.a., 2015. elementary school male aggression: teacher behavioral intervention strategies. doctoral dissertation, hampton university. girard, l., l. girolametto, e. weitzman and j. greenberg, 2011. training early childhood educators to promote peer interactions: effects on children's aggressive and prosocial behaviors. early education and development, 22(2): 305-323. gurian, m. and k. stevens, 2004. with boys and girls in mind. educational leadership, 62(3): 21-26. hill, r., 2011. complexity leadership: new conceptions for dealing with soldiers suicides. military review, 91(1): 36-46. holmes, b., j. gibson and d. morrison-danner, 2014. reducing aggressive male behavior in elementary school: promising practices. contemporary issues in education research (online), 7(4): 253-258. hwang, n.c.r. and k. kogan, 2003. dynamic approach to human resource planning for major professional companies with a peak-wise demand. international journal of production research, 41(6): 1255-1271. larson, j., 2008. angry and aggressive students: knowing how to prevent and respond to student anger and aggression is important to maintaining order in school. principal leadership, 8: 12-15. moore, t.e. and d.j. pepler, 2006. wounding words: maternal verbal aggression and children's adjustment. journal of family violence, 2(1): 89-93. national center for education statistics, 2011. the condition of education. available from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011033.pdf. ozkol, h., m. zucker and j. spinazzola, 2011. pathways to aggression in urban elementary school youth. journal of community psychology, 39(6): 733-748. risser, s.d., 2013. relational aggression and academic performance in elementary school. psychology in the schools, 50(1): 13-26. scherff, l. and n.r. singer, 2008. framing and re-framing through computer-mediated communication: providing pre-service teachers with alternate support structures. learning inquiry, 2(3): 151-167. trussell, p., 2008. classroom universals to prevent problem behaviors. intervention in school & clinic, sage publications, 43(3): 179-185. van lier, p., f. vitaro and m. eisner, 2007. preventing aggressive and violent behavior: using prevention programs to study the role of peer dynamics in maladjustment problems. european journal on criminal policy and research, 13(3-4): 277-296. wilson, s., m.w. lipsey and j. derzon, 2003. the effects of school-based intervention programs on aggressive behavior: a meta-analysis. journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 71(1): 136-149. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of education and training shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011033.pdf 9 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 1, 9-12, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.9.12 examination of athletes’ anxiety, motivation, imagination value in competitions with different severity level mustafa sallayici1 i̇pek eroğlu kolayi̇ş2 i̇nci kesi̇lmi̇ş3  mehmet melih kesi̇lmi̇ş4 ( corresponding author) 1,3,4mersin university, school of physical education and sports, mersin, turkey 2sakarya university, school of physical education and sports, sakarya, turkey abstract the objective of this study was to examine athletes‟ anxiety, motivation and imagination value in competitions with different severity level. the research was conducted on swimming athlete in elite level 18 female and 19 male totally 37. to measure the level of imagination, imagine inventory in sports and to measure trait anxiety levels stai were used. for statistical analyses of parametric data, to see the difference between the groups independent groups t-test and for the non-parametric data mann whitney-u analyses were used. the level of significance accepted as p<0.05. national team athletes and athletes that participate in 13th european short course swimming championships and turkey national team selection, before the day of the event selection and on the morning of the competition the difference between the cognitive anxiety levels, somatic anxiety levels and confidence levels was not statistically significant (p>0.05). athletes that participate in 13th european short course swimming championships and turkish national team athletes before the day of the event selection and on the morning of the competition while cognitive anxiety and self-confidence levels were statistically different (p<0.05), the difference between somatic anxiety levels was not statistically significant (p>0.05). the athletes that selected and non-selected for national team before the day of the event selection and on the morning of the competition the difference between the cognitive anxiety levels, somatic anxiety levels, confidence levels, motivation and imagination levels was not statistically different (p>0.05). keywords: anxiety, swimming, motivation, imagination. citation | mustafa sallayici; i̇pek eroğlu kolayi̇ş; i̇nci kesi̇lmi̇ş; mehmet melih kesi̇lmi̇ş (2018). examination of athletes‟ anxiety, motivation, imagination value in competitions with different severity level. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 9-12. history: received: 14 december 2017 revised: 5 january 2018 accepted: 10 january 2018 published: 15 january 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 2. methods ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 2.1. participants .................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 4. discussions ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 11 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.9.12&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1452-099 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-9043 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2382-2205 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7157-0444 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1452-099 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-9043 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2382-2205 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7157-0444 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1452-099 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-9043 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2382-2205 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7157-0444 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1452-099 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-9043 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2382-2205 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7157-0444 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1452-099 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-9043 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2382-2205 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7157-0444 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 9-12 10 1. introduction individuals in sporting activities are faced with both physical and psychological overloads. in order to minimize the impact of these overloads, training is being done against the factors that cause it to be. however, training programs often focuses on technical and tactical training with the conditioning work, and the psychological conditions of achieving success on the sport are often neglected (i̇kizler and karagözoglu, 1997). recent researches show that sporting success is not only depends on biomechanical factors, but also on psychological factors such as anxiety, stress, and motivation (konter, 1996). tallis (2003) reported that; lack of control over the repetitive thoughts and the tendency to think that things will get worse are shown among the characteristics of the anxiety (tallis, 2003). there are two different types of anxiety. but, there is an anxiety process on the basis of both types of anxiety. the anxiety process includes a series of complex cognition, emotion, physiological, and behavioral activity series. the state and continuity elements can explain more clearly the multifaceted anxiety (aşçı and gökmen, 1995). independent of the environmental conditions of the individual as restlessness, pessimism, extreme sensitivity and intense reactions under stress can be defined as constant anxiety (kuru, 2000). state anxiety arises when a dangerous, unwanted situation is encountered (spielberger et al., 1983). it shows physiological parameters that develop directly, without autonomic stimulation and have an effect on anxiety. somatic anxiety can manifest itself in reactive reactions such as rapid heart rate, short and intermittent breathing, moist hands, abdominal pain and tense muscles (konter, 1996). unlike somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety refers to negative thoughts and anticipations, impaired attention, no concentration, negative thoughts about one's own self (weinberg and gould, 1995). motivation is to act for intentional behavior toward a specific target with internal pushing forces. motivation is all the factors that lead people to certain behaviors in certain situations (güney, 2000). imagination is to live it, to consume energy while it revives an event in your mind (tiryaki, 2000). getting in the first place is the most attractive motivation for the athletes. the game is a source of motivation for beginners. turkey, balkan, europe, world, olympic competitions are a great source of motivation for young swimmers. from today's technology, all the clubs are now able to benefit from the same extent in the swimming sector. it is thought that psychological factors affect the grades of swimmers who have the same materials as well as factors such as training, nutrition, athlete's age and so on. therefore, in this study, differences in psychological factors such as anxiety, imagination, motivation, and performance effects were investigated according to the degree of importance of competition. 2. methods 2.1. participants the universe of this research was composed of elite level sportsmen who were dealing with the swimming branch in i̇stanbul, kocaeli, ankara, kastamonu, bursa. this research was conducted on 18 female and 19 male athletes in the 13th european short course championships selection tournament and 13th european short course championship. 2.2. data collection materials in this study, sports imagination inventory was used to measure imagination levels of swimmers and state trait anxiety inventory was used to measure levels of trait anxiety. 2.2.1. s.t.a.i (state trait anxiety inventory) state trait anxiety inventory is the spielberger state and trait inventory that translated to turkish by öner and compte (1985) and reliability studies were carried out by öner (1977). inventory was developed by spielberger et al. (1970) and has two subdivisions. these sections measure two different state of anxiety as state and trait. state trait anxiety inventory consists of 20 questions. in the trait anxiety section, materials often require individuals to describe themselves according to how they feel. in the state anxiety section, there are questions about how they feel at that moment. the emotions and behaviors expressed in the anxiety items are evaluated as (1) almost never (2) sometimes (3) very time (4) almost always according to the frequency of individuals living. the emotions and behaviors expressed in the items of the state anxiety scale are answered by marking one of them as (1) no (2) a little (3) very (4) according to the degree of violence of these kinds of experiences. test-repeat-test reliability, criterion and structure validity of the inventory are high. the reliability coefficients obtained by the test-repeat-test technique ranged from 0.73 to 0.86 for trait anxiety scale and from 0.16 to 0.54 for state anxiety scale. the fact that the reliability coefficients of the state anxiety scale are low suggests that such anxiety is transient and depending on the situation, state anxiety is completely consistent. however, it has been found that the alpha correlation coefficients, reflecting the reliability, stability and internal consistency of this scale more appropriately, are between 0.83 and 0.92 and have a high internal consistency (sivrikaya, 1998). 2.2.2. imagination inventory in sports hall et al. (1998) have developed the sport imagery questionnaire (sie) in order to determine which type of imagine athletes use. a total of 337 athletes, 188 males and 149 females, aged between 15 and 36 ages in 7 sports branches (athletics, basketball, fencing, football, tennis, volleyball, swimming) participated in the adaptation of the spore imaging inventory for turkish athletes. the original inventory consists of 5 sub-dimensions (cognitive general intelligence, cognitive specialization, motivational-general awareness, motivational-general mastery, motivational specialization) and 30 items. factor analysis was used to test construct validity of the inventory. four factors explained approximately 51% of the variance. turkish athletes did not encounter the dimension of cognitive specialization. other dimensions are 'cognitive imaging', 'motivational specialization', 'motivationalgeneral alert' and „motivational-general mastery'. the internal consistency values calculated with cronbach alpha were found to be .81 for the "cognitive imaging" sub-dimension, .80 for the "motivational special" subdimension, .71 for the "motivational general alertness" sub-dimension and .59 for the "motivational general alertness". for the test-repeat-test reliability, the reliability of the inventory for 36 athletes with 3-week intervals asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 9-12 11 is .74 for "cognitive imagination", .91 for "motivational special implication", .91 for "motivational general alertness .88", and .90 for “motivational general mastership”. 2.3. statistical analyses the data obtained from the study were evaluated with the graph pad prism 5 demo. in the statistical analysis of the data, the mean and standard deviation values were examined. the independent samples t-test was used to look for the difference between the groups that met the parametric assumptions and the mann whitney-u test was used for the non-parametric tests. the significance level was taken as p<0.05. 3. findings the research was conducted on 37 athletes participating in the 13th european short course swimming championship turkish national team selection and the 13th european short course swimming championship in 2009. 18 of them are female and 19 of them are male. the average age of the national team athletes dealing with swimming was x = 19,28 ± 2,653. the ages of selected athletes for national team were found to be x = 11,39 ± 3,320. the average age of the athletes who were not selected as national athletes was found as x = 18,37 ± 2,650. the age of the sportsmen who can not enter the national team is x = 10.32 ± 2.689. table-1. statistically significant difference was found between the athletes participating in the 13th european short course swimming championship and the cognitive anxiety levels of the morning of competition and 1 day before the competition. n x s t p the day before the competition 18 28,17 5,783 3,465 0,003* competition morning 18 26,44 5,690 source: mustafa sallayıcı table-2. statistically significant difference was found between the athletes of the turkish national team participating in the 13th european short course swimming championship 1 day before the competition and their confidence levels in the competition morning n x s t p the day before the competition 18 18,50 4,190 2,474 0,024* competition morning 18 19,78 4,413 source: mustafa sallayıcı the difference between the levels of cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, self-confidence, motivation and imagination was not statistically significant (p> 0.05) the day before the competition to selected and not selected athletes. 4. discussions there was no significant difference according to the age variable in terms of state and trait anxiety scores of the athletes. in the literature review, studies supporting our research findings were also found. özbekçi (1989) did not find a relationship between basketball, volleyball and athletes in terms of state anxiety scores and age and competition stress levels. in another study, arseven and güven (1992) analyzed the data related to the level of anxiety of the athletes in various fields (basketball, handball, volleyball and athletics) divided into two groups according to their ages (over 20 years old and under 20 years old) and they have not found a relationship although these results support the study, it should be considered that considering the presence of some counter-measures should increase the number of such studies. a statistically significant difference was found between the athletic athletes participating in the 13th european short course swimming championship and the cognitive anxiety levels of the morning of competition and the morning of the competition. another finding that supports this finding is seen in studies conducted by çoksevim et al. (2008). in this study, the state and continuity anxiety scores before and after the turkey kickboxing championship were examined and it was seen that pre-competition anxiety scores were significantly higher. this may be the result of cognitive considerations such as the excitement and pride of being an elite athlete, a strong concentration, having a significant degree and championship, which is a major stressor for pre-competition sportsmen. a statistically significant difference was found according to the importance of the sports branch and the competition in terms of the state of the athletes and the state of continuous anxiety. according to the findings, there is no significant difference in the pre-competition state anxiety level scores between individual sports and team sports. however, the average of team sports groups was significantly lower than that of individual sports groups. this result is supported by özbekçi (1989)'s study that athletes reached to the result that their competition environment stressed more according to team sports. however, the results of the study contradict the findings of aktop and erman (2002) which compare the level of trait anxiety of team and individual athletes. when these results are examined; the high level of state anxiety scores of the athletes in individual sports may be due to the fact that the athletes' responsibility for the competition alone may vary and depend on the importance of the competition. in addition, the anxiety that the trainings will be wasted in case of failure may have increased the state anxiety. the fact that athletes have a small number of competitions at the national team level can raise state anxiety for later successes. however, it should also be considered that the high level of state anxiety in individual athletes may be an advantage in coping with persistent anxiety through good control and analysis. references aktop, a. and k.a. erman, 2002. comparison of achievement motivation, self-esteem and trait anxiety levels of team and individual athletes. 7th international sport sciences congress, antalya. arseven, a. and ö. güven, 1992. anxiety levels of the athletes in the competition environment. 2nd national sport sciences congress, ankara: hacettepe university. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 9-12 12 aşçı, f.h. and h. gökmen, 1995. the relationship among competition anxiety success, sport experience and athletic competence in female handball players. hacettepe sport sciences journal, 6(2): 38-47. çoksevim, b., n. sarıtaş, m. kaya and o. pepe, 2008. continuity, short symptom inventory findings before and after the match status in kick boxers. türkiye kick boks federasyonu spor bilimleri dergisi, 1(1): 22-27. güney, s., 2000. behavioral sciences. ankara: nobel. hall, c.r., d.e. mack, a. paivio and h.a. hausenblas, 1998. imagery use by athletes: development of the sport imagery questionnaire. international journal of sport psychology, 29(1): 73-89. view at google scholar i̇kizler, c. and c. karagözoglu, 1997. sporda başarının psikolojisi. i̇stanbul: alfa basım yayım dagıtım. konter, e., 1996. sports psychology and football. izmir: saray medical publications. kuru, e., 2000. psychology in sports. ankara: gazi university iletisim faculty printery. öner, n., 1977. state trait anxiety inventory validity in turkish society. unpublished associate professor thesis. ankara: hacettepe university, department of psychology. öner, n. and a.l. compte, 1985. handbook of state trait anxiety inventory. istanbul: bogaziçi university publications. özbekçi, f., 1989. investigation of competition stress levels experienced in different sports branches. unpublished master thesis. marmara university, social sciences institute, i̇stanbul. sivrikaya, k., 1998. analysis of physical characteristics, anxiety level and match performance of male and female handball players at different age categories. gazi university, institute of health sciences. doctoral thesis, ankara. spielberger, c.d., r.l. gorsuch and r.r.e. cushene, 1970. manual for the state-trait anxiety inventory. palo alto, ca: consulting psychologists press. spielberger, c.d., r.l. gorsuch, r. lushene, p.r. vagg and g.a. jacobs, 1983. manual for the state-trait anxiety inventory. palo alto, ca: consulting psychologists press. tallis, e., 2003. overcoming concerns. i̇stanbul: sistem publications. tiryaki, s., 2000. sport psychology concepts theories and practice. eylül kitap. weinberg, r.s. and d. gould, 1995. arousal, stress, and anxiety. in r. s. weinberg & d. gould (eds.), foundations of sport and exercise psychology. champaign, il: human kinetics. pp. 91 – 113. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=imagery%20use%20by%20athletes:%20development%20of%20the%20sport%20imagery%20questionnaire 216 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 216-219, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.216.219 the relationship among somatotype structures, body compositions and estimated oxygen capacities of elite male handball players i̇rfan marangoz1  sevde mavi var2 (corresponding author) 1,2ahi evran university, school of physical education and sports, kırşehir, turkey abstract this study aims to analyze the relationship among somatotype structures, body compositions and estimated oxygen capacities of elite male handball players in ahi evran university handball team in 2017-2018 turkish men’s handball first division. it was conducted on elite male handball players (n=15) aged between 18 and 30 who voluntarily participated in the study. their arithmetic means and standard deviations are 22.06±3.80 years of age, 186.00±7.62 cm height, 88.66±10.69 kg weight, and bmi 25.65±3.08 kg/m2, aerobic power (vo2 max.) 41.39±3.86 (ml/kg/min), and 13.10%±1.70% body fat. they had endomorph and mesomorph (4.43 – 3.96 – 2.14) in terms of somatotype properties. a highly negative significant correlation was found between vo2 max and body fat % (r= -.702, p<0.01), between vo2 max and endomorph value (r= -.702, p<0.01), and between vo2 max and mesomorph value (r= -.703, p<0.01), while a highly positive significant correlation was found between vo2 max and ectomorph value (r= .609, p<0.05). in conclusion, it can be stated that differences in body fat data may result from players’ somatotypes categories, intensity of training, duration of training, measurements by different researchers, measurements in different periods of the season, and use of different formulas in the calculation of measurement values. keywords: elite male handball players, somatotypes, body composition, vo2max. citation | i̇rfan marangoz; sevde mavi var (2018). the relationship among somatotype structures, body compositions and estimated oxygen capacities of elite male handball players. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 216-219. history: received: 8 may 2018 revised: 4 june 2018 accepted: 6 june 2018 published: 8 june 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 217 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 217 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 218 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 218 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 219 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.216.219&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7090-529x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0767-0985 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7090-529x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0767-0985 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7090-529x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0767-0985 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 216-219 217 1. introduction the studies on anthropometric properties around the globe aim to identify suitable body profiles for different sports types (çakıroğlu et al., 2002; barış et al., 2003). physical and physiological suitability are of vital importance in order to display a successful performance in sports. unless the physical and physiological properties of an athlete is suitable, it is not possible for him/her to reach a satisfactory level of performance. however, physical suitability is not the only criterion for a high performance. height, weight, body composition, aerobic and anaerobic power, strength, speed and flexibility are among factors that influence performance in sports activities (kalyon, 1990). in addition to aerobic and anaerobic endurance, strength, cardiorespiratory, flexibility, balance, muscle and coordination, a handball player also needs to have determination, high speed and agility skills (aktuğ et al., 2018). similar to other sports, recent scientific and technological developments have also remarkably increased the performance of handball players (yildirim and özdemir, 2010) and the popularity of handball as a competitive sport as well (eler and bereket, 2001). 2. materials and methods this study was conducted on elite male handball players (n=15) aged between 18 and 30 in ahi evran university handball team in 2017-2018 turkish men’s handball first division. their arithmetic means and standard deviations are 22.06±3.80 years of age, 186.00±7.62 cm height, 88.66±10.69 kg weight, and bmi 25.65±3.08 kg/m2, aerobic power (vo2 max.) 41.39±3.86 (ml/kg/min), and 13.10%±1.70% body fat. they had endomorph and mesomorph (4.43 – 3.96 – 2.14) in terms of somatotype properties. 2.1. data collection tools the somatotypes, body compositions and aerobic properties the participants were measured. 2.2. determination of somatotypes body weight, height, biceps and calf circumference during flexion, humerus and femur breadth, triceps, subscapular, suprailiac and calf skinfold are used to calculate somatotypes. somatotype values are calculated using the following formulas (ross and marfell-jones, 1991; carter, 2002). they were calculated in somatoturk calculation program (marangoz and özbalcı, 2017). 2.2.1. calculation of endomorph a = triceps + subscapular + suprailiac b= (170.18 / height) (adjustment coefficient for height) adjusted sum x = a.b endomorph= 0.7182 + 0.1451 (x) 0.00068 (x2) + 0.0000014 (x3) 2.2.2. calculation of mesomorph mesomorph = (0.858 hb + 0.601 fb +0.188 cag + 0.161 ccg) (0.131 h) + 4.5 hb: humerus breadth (cm) fb: femur breadth (cm) cag: arm circumference during flexion – triceps skinfold /10 ccg: maximal calf circumference – calf skinfold /10 h: height (cm) 2.2.3. calculation of ectomorph height and weight are calculated in cm and kg, respectively. height is divided by cube root of weight to calculate hwr (hwr=height/cube root of weight). ectomorph is calculated based on hwr value using one of the formulas below: if hwr ≥ 40.75, ectomorph = 0.732× hwr– 28.58 if 38.25 < hwr < 40.75, ectomorph = 0.463× hwr– 17.63 if hwr ≤ 38.25, ectomorph = 0.1 2.3. body composition tanita bc-601 segmental, japan, a bioelectric impedance analyzer, was used to calculate body composition values (body fat%, weight and body mass index, bmi) of the handball players who participated in the study. 2.4. determination of aerobic strength (vo2 max) a 12-minute running test was developed by cooper in order to calculate an individual’s aerobic capacity. it consists of a 12-minute field test developed by balke in previous years. cooper test is one of the most widely used field tests, and athletes are required to run as long distance as possible in 12 minutes (banıbrata, 2013). thus, this test was used to measure aerobic strength. max vo2 values of the handball players were calculated using the formula (1) below: estimated vo2max = distance covered – 504.9 / 44.73 (1) 2.5. statistical analysis after the data were analyzed using spss 22 software program, the descriptive statistical analysis was used to analyze running distances and the relationship among somatotype structures of elite male handball players, their body compositions and estimated oxygen capacities. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 216-219 218 3. findings table-1. average and standard deviations of the elite male handball players’ demographic variables n x±sd age (years) 15 22,06±3,80 weight (kg) 15 88,66±10,69 height (cm) 15 186,00±7,62 bmi (kg/m2) 15 25,65±3,08 vo2 max. (ml/kg/min) 15 41,39±3,86 body fat % 15 13,10±1,70 endomorph value 15 4,43±1,24 mesomorph value 15 3,96±1,15 ectomorph value 15 2,14±,995 (±) (mean and standard deviation) table-2. the relationship among somatotype structures of elite male handball players, their body compositions and estimated oxygen capacities years of age weight height bmi vo2 max body fat % endomorph mesomorph weight r .133 height r .438 .504 bmi r -.109 .770** -.017 vo2 max r .157 -.537* .020 -.584* body fat % r -.304 .518* -.222 .783** -.702** endomorph r -.346 .417 -.324 .737** -.702** .986*** mesomorph r -.514* .464 -.255 .680** -.703** .749** .742** ectomorph r .281 -.590* .259 -.942*** .609* -.805*** -.805*** -.750** ***p<0.001, **p<0.01, *p<0.05 the relationship between somatotype structures of elite male handball players and their body compositions and estimated oxygen capacities is given in table 2 (correlation-pearson). the analysis indicates: a moderate negative significant correlation (r=-.514, p<0.05) between years of age and mesomorph value, a highly positive significant correlation (r=.770, p<0.01) between weight and bmi, a moderate negative significant correlation (r=-.537, p<0.05) between weight and vo2 max, a moderate positive significant correlation (r=.518, p<0.05) between weight and body fat%, a moderate negative significant correlation (r=-.590, p<0.05) between weight and ectomorph value, a moderate negative significant correlation (r=-.584, p<0.05) between bmi and vo2 max, a highly positive significant correlation (r=.783, p<0.01) between bmi and body fat%, a highly positive significant correlation (r=.737, p<0.01) between bmi and endomorph value, a highly positive significant correlation (r=.680, p<0.01) between bmi and mesomorph value, a highly negative significant correlation (r=-.942, p<0.001) between bmi and ectomorph value, a highly negative significant correlation (r=-.702, p<0.01) between vo2 max and body fat%, a highly negative significant correlation (r=-.702, p<0.01) between vo2 max and endomorph value, a highly negative significant correlation (r=-.703, p<0.01) between vo2 max and mesomorph value, a highly positive significant correlation (r=.609, p<0.05) between vo2 max and ectomorph value, a very highly positive significant correlation (r=.986, p<0.001) between body fat% and endomorph value, a very highly positive significant correlation (r=.749, p<0.001) between body fat% and mesomorph value, a very highly negative significant correlation (r=-.805, p<0.001) between body fat% and ectomorph value, a very highly positive significant correlation (r=.742, p<0.01) between endomorph and mesomorph values, a very highly negative significant correlation (r=-.805, p<0.001) between endomorph and ectomorph values, a very highly negative significant correlation (r=-.750, p<0.001) between mesomorph and ectomorph values, 4. discussion anthropometric properties are closely related to the physical activities of an organism and decisive factors that influence an athlete’s success. an individual’s oxygen consumption in unit time is directly proportional to his/her aerobic capacity. aerobic strength is the most important factor that affects performance in endurance sports. there is a strong dependence between maximal aerobic capacity and the ability to making an intense effort (sinirkavak et al., 2004). regular and gradually increasing controlled training can remarkably increase an individual’s maximum energy consumption (akgün, 1994). sinirkavak et al. (2004) state that vo2max values of male handball players are 32.41±1.87 (ml/kg/min) and found a negative correlation (r= -0.52) between body fat percentage and maximal oxygen consumption per kilogram, which overlaps the finding (r=-.702) in this study. the amount of calories burned and oxygen consumption in a given activity will be insufficient if the amount of body fat is excessive, thus leading to a lower cardiovascular endurance and a decreasing performance (muratlı, 2003). a high amount of fatty tissues and a low amount of fat-free muscle in a body negatively influence performance in all sports containing anaerobic and aerobic training (falk et al., 1996). mobilization and hydrolysis of fat provide energy during a highly intense exercise (wolfe, 1998; smith et al., 2000). when the body structures of handball players are observed, it can be noted that they are tall, have long arms and legs, and their body weight help them optimally use their relative strength. in addition, they also have an above-average body weight, while their body fat percentage is below average (yildirim, 1997). handball requires physical strength because it is a dynamic sport. even though technical and tactical details play an important role in handball, physical properties of players are more important. fast breaks which often occur during a handball match require a certain agility to dribble and sprint. shooting strength and physical properties bear utmost importance in asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 216-219 219 vertical and stride jump shots, shots while falling, shot in bending sideways and body feints (taşkıran, 1997; taşucu, 2002). in the literature review, average body fat percentages of elite male handball players are given as 11.37% by zorba et al. (1999) as 12.4% by taşkıran and varol (1995) as 12.84% by vurgun et al. (2001) as 14.15% by eler and bereket (2001) as 15.71% by gökdemir (1997) as 16.77% by yildirim and özdemir (2010) and as 18.74% by sevim (1990). tillaar and ettema (2004) and loftin et al. 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=predictors%20of%20physical%20fitness%20in%20a%20collage%20sample https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=predictors%20of%20physical%20fitness%20in%20a%20collage%20sample http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms.2000.91.3.1009 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=effect%20of%20body%20size%20and%20gender%20in%20overarm%20throwing%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00421-003-1019-8 asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 2, 34-38, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 34 the use of sculptures to augment naming of buildings in honor of heroes and heroines in ho polytechnic, ho, ghana adja-koadade mokpokpo1 1 industrial art department, ho polytechnic abstract it is important to celebrate our heroes and heroines, who in diverse ways, bring development to nations, peoples and places. these important personalities should be identified and acknowledged by the beneficiaries of their labor, and be given the due recognition. it is in light of this that ho polytechnic, now ho technical university, decided to label the names of her heroes and heroines on the various structures in honor of their contributions towards the success of the institution . the main aim of this study is to create the awareness that three dimensional or relief sculpture, could be the appropriate ways of keeping visual records of renowned personalities, or important historical figures of an institution, instead of only graphical representations of their names on buildings. the main tools used in this research were interviews and the internet to identify and ascertain the facts about the ho polytechnic's heroes and heroines. the study stressed the use of busts and relief sculptures to portray images of the heroes and heroines of the ho polytechnic which is backed by their concise histories. keywords: graphical representations, heroes, ho polytechnic, reliefs and in-the-round sculptures. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 35 2. methodology......................................................................................................................................................................... 36 3. results and discussions ....................................................................................................................................................... 36 4. challenges ............................................................................................................................................................................ 38 5. conclusion and recommendation ....................................................................................................................................... 38 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 38 bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................ 38 citation | adja-koadade mokpokpo (2016). the use of sculptures to augment naming of buildings in honor of heroes and heroines in ho polytechnic, ho, ghana. asian journal of education and training, 2(2): 34-38. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.34.38 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 16 august 2016/ revised: 19 september 2016/ accepted: 16 june 2016/ published: 10 october 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.34.38 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adja-koadade%20mokpokpo http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.34.38 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.34.38 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adja-koadade%20mokpokpo http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.34.38 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.34.38 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adja-koadade%20mokpokpo http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.34.38 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 34-38 35 1. introduction the memories of the past and the present, as experienced by a researcher, depend on great minds, and many important events and places of great commemoration. it is in light of this that ho polytechnic in the volta region, ghana, decided to name her important halls of the institution to remember and appreciate the immeasurable contributions many have offered to uplift the image of the institution. it is normally said "a country which does not honor her heroes is not worth dying for." in light of this the names of these heroes and heroines are graphically, printed in perishable inks on walls that fade away within a period of time. the question normally asked about these labeled walls is whether only the graphical representations of these important persons' names on walls can play their effective roles in society. there are many ways by which memories of the past could be recorded. books are vital tools for information which assist in keeping records of peoples, places, events, etc. for development. records also are kept by means of stories in the news papers, photographs in places such as museums, archives, offices and private homes. these sources of keeping records, though reliable, could easily be destroyed by fire, bad weather condition, termites, and other adverse conditions. recently, the internet has become the most reliable source of keeping information, which cannot do with three dimensional visuals, but can only keep records of two dimensional images. moreover, these records favor only the computer literate society, pushing others to the background. other ways of keeping records are by the use of signboards, billboards, building surfaces and places of interest on which records could be graphically developed in three ways. these include text only(words without pictures or photographs), visual only (picture or photograph) and text and visual (words with pictures or photographs). all the three ways could be understood by the learned society since they could read and write. however, visual only could be of benefit for the uneducated society. therefore, if memorable pictures are to be made to beneficial to the two levels to the societies, text and visual pictorial symbols should be made. jenks (1995) points it out that "…we daily experience and perpetuate the conflation of the `seen' with the `known' in conversation through the commonplace linguistic appendage of `do you see?' or `see what i mean?' to utterances that seem to require confirmation, or, when seeking opinion, by inquiring after people's `views'. this narrative of the increasing importance of the visual to contemporary western societies is part of a wider analysis of the shift from pre-modernity to modernity, and from modernity to post modernity". for example, mirzoeff (1999) said "it is often suggested, or assumed -that in pre-modern societies, visual images were not especially important, partly because there were so few of them in circulation. this began to change with the onset of modernity. in particular, it is suggested that modern forms of knowledge depend on a scope regime that equates seeing with knowledge". jenks (1995) for example, makes this case in an essay entitled `the centrality of the eye in western culture', arguing that `looking, seeing and knowing have become perilously intertwined' so that `the modern world is very much a ``seen'' phenomenon'. (www.sagepub.com, 20th may 2015). stafford (1991) a historian of images used in the sciences, has argued that, in a process beginning in the eighteenth century, the construction of scientific knowledge about the world has become more and more based on images rather than on written texts. jenks (1995) suggests that it is the valorization of science in western cultures which has allowed everyday understandings to make the same connection between seeing and knowing. however, that connection was also made in other fields of modern practice. mirzoeff (1998) proclaimed that `the postmodern is a visual culture'. however, in post modernity, it is often argued, the modern relation between seeing and true knowing has been broken. he further suggests that post modernity is ocular centric not simply because visual images are more and more common, or because knowledge about the world are increasingly articulated visually, but because we interact more and more with totally constructed visual experiences. thus the modern connection between seeing and knowledge is stretched to breaking point in post-modernity; seeing is a great deal more than believing these days. mirzoeff (1998) expresses that perhaps visual images of various kinds have always been important, and to all sorts of societies. (www.sagepub.com,accessed 20th may. 2015). is it possible for someone perfectly know a personality or identify a place through reading or narration? it is obvious that history of human beings and places could be presented through stories to be read in books, magazines and other graphical sources, nevertheless on wall surfaces nor on other surfaces. this research suggests some ways of representing important figures and places of interest in order to be better remembered in the society. 1.1. meaning and importance of bust a bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. the piece is normally supported by a plinth. these forms recreate the likeness of an individual. these may be of any medium used for sculpture, such as marble, bronze, terracotta or wood. a similar term, bust, is a representation of the upper part of an animal or mythical creature. sculptural portrait heads from classical antiquity are sometimes displayed as busts. however, these are often fragments from full-body statues, or were originally created to be inserted into a pre-existing body. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bust_%28sculpture). bust provides proper documentation of historical heroes or heroines, whereby their true representations could be viewed in three dimensions or in reliefs with their brief histories engraved on plaque beneath them. 1.2. representing images of prominent persons in three dimensional (3-d) over the years history portrays the images of many prominent personalities in varied dimensions. some through photographs, paintings, relief portraits on walls. the most prominent ones are the sculptures detached from any background to stand on their own. this allows the observer to turn around them for identification, since the sculptor portrays almost the exact resemblance of the image of the personality involved. in this vein, those who know the personality could admit the actual resemblance of his/her three dimensional image. however, those who do not know could figure out the hero concerned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sculpture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/human_figure_%28aesthetics%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/human_head http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/neck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/chest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoulder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/plinth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/medium_%28art%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/marble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bronze http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/terracotta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/classical_antiquity asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 34-38 36 plate-1. viktor nessler (alfred marzolff (bronze, 1890s) plate-2. jeanne granier (francis de saint-vidal late 19th century) plate-3. bust of maximiliano i of mexico and carlota of mexico at the museo soumaya plate-4. napoleon ii of france at six months, (alexandrebrachard and jeanjacques oger, after henrijoseph ruxthiel biscuit porcelain, 1811) fig-1.busts of some world's heroes historically, fig.1; (plate 1-4) above show the busts of some important world heroes which are clearly presented sculpturally and exhibited at vantage points in the world. sculptors may depict the true resemblances of heroes in the form of busts, and viewed by others who may be familiarized with the personalities involved. most of these busts have their names and concise histories, graphically engraved on their pedestals, which help the observer to read about the personalities sculpted. in contrast, names graphically written on walls could do little in familiarizing with just the names of the heroes. there are many of such examples in various institutions in ghana, which sculpted their heroes in three dimensions. the notable among them include kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, university of ghana, university college of education, winneba, second cycle schools, and others. fig. 2, plates 1-4 below are some examples of sculpted busts in ghana. plate-1. k. l. purser (4th(headmaster of kpando sec. school) plate-2. d. hooton (1st principal of kpando tech. inst.) plate-3. very rev. prof. n. k. dzobo (fmr. moderator, e. p. church) plate-4. mr. l. a. banini (a fmr. headmaster mawuli school) fig-2. busts of some educationists in ghana 2. methodology some distinguished fellows, teaching and non-teaching staff were used as the population for the study. random sampling was employed to select some of the staff who have knowledge in the history of ho polytechnic. they comprised thirty five (35) workers consisting 23 male and 12 female with between five (5) and twenty (20) years' working experiences. this constituted 20 teaching and 15 non-teaching staff, whose views were solicited through interviews with structured questionnaires to find out the historical facts about the heroes and heroines, who are graphically presented on the structures of the polytechnic, in honor of their contributions to the institution. halls on which names of some heroes are captured graphically, are presented with their photographs including some yet to be honored. descriptive method was employed to describe the heroes and heroines and their contributions to teaching and learning globally. the internet was also used as secondary source for acquiring some historical facts about the heroes/heroines captured in the research. this paper has suggested other ways by which memorable names could be presented in naming the halls of the polytechnic. 3. results and discussions some heroes of ho polytechnic and their brief histories asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 34-38 37 plate-1. mr. james y. vodzi plate-2. dr. george afeti plate-3. professor frank obedkwami fig-3. plates 1-3, description of some heroes and heroines of ho polytechnic selected for the study mr. james y. vodzi, (fig.3: plate 1), was the principal of kpando, anloga and ho technical institutions respectively. he worked assiduously, leading the transformation and raising the standard of the institute. finally, in 1986, under his able leadership, the ho technical institute was converted to the great tertiary institution, ho polytechnic. his ultimate vision for the ho polytechnic was to establish an educational complex comprising a preschool, basic, junior and senior high schools as well as the polytechnic. at the time of leaving the polytechnic, the pre-school, basic and junior high schools had been established. his name is labeled on the wall of the boys dormitory, (fig. 4: plate 1) below, in honor of the immense contributions he made towards the good standing of ho polytechnic. dr. george afeti, (fig. 3: plate 2), the executive secretary of the national inspectorate board and chief inspector of schools in ghana and chairman of the technical committee that is developing a roadmap for converting some of the polytechnics in ghana to technical universities. dr. afeti has taught at universities and polytechnics in france, nigeria and ghana and served on many education committees and agencies, including the national council for tertiary education and the national accreditation board of ghana, and the council of the ghana institution of engineers. he is a vocational and technical education consultant to the african union, the world bank, the african development bank, the association for the development of education in africa (adea) and unesco. he drafted the african union technical and vocational education and training (tvet) strategy for youth employment in africa. dr. afeti has written and published widely on technical and vocational skills development and differentiation and articulation within the higher education systems of africa. a trained mechanical engineer, afeti was educated at the university of paris in france and the kwame nkrumah university of science and technology in ghana. he is a former secretary general of the commonwealth association of polytechnics in africa and a former rector of a polytechnic institute. http://www.aaionline.org/bios/professor dzesi/. he succeeded the late mr. vodzi. during his tenure as the principal, and later upgraded to the position of the rector, the polytechnic saw a tremendous change in infrastructure developments. it was through his efforts that the polytechnic auditorium and f. o. kwami block were built. in his honor, the greatest hall of the institution is named after him. fig. 4: plate 2 below. professor frank obed kwami, (fig.3: plate 3), was a scholar, engineer, inventor, educator, author and administrator. professor kwami joined the staff of the kwame nkrumah university of science and technology in kumasi in 1969, and by 1992, he had become head of mechanical engineering department (1972 – 1982); dean of faculty of engineering (1974 – 1982); pro vice chancellor (1982); acting vice chancellor (1982-1984); substantive vice chancellor (1984 – 1992). the specific and significant contributions he made to knowledge were in the areas of mechanical engineering design in the field of fatigue strength and load capacity of machine elements and components. http://www.knust.edu.gh/about/knust/past-vcs/fokwami0. he was appointed as the first chairman of ho polytechnic governing council. he greatly assisted professor george afeti in the development of the institution. due to his hard work and dedication, he was re-appointed for three-four year terms; the only person, in the history of the polytechnic, who was appointed three times, between 1993-2005, as chairman of ho polytechnic governing council. considering his dynamism in his fields of endeavors, there is no doubt that the polytechnic council decided to name the new administration block after him. fig. 4: plate 3 below. 3.1. heroes captured whose photographs could not be traced acolatse was a gifted and devoted languages lecturer, who devoted most of her precious times teaching english language in the institution. many students who studied under her, received awards for being the best english students. she died in 2009. the girls' dormitory of the polytechnic is named after her in honour of her contribution to the success of academic excellence in the institution. fig. 4: plate 4 below. esther nukulenu was one of the first and long term serving council members of ho polytechnic. she served during the time when dr. george afeti was the rector, and professor f. o. kwami, the council chairman respectively. she also contributed immensely to the development of ho polytechnic. in recognition of her contribution to the development of the institution, the demonstration restaurant of the polytechnic is named after her. fig. 4: plate 5. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 34-38 38 plate-1.vodzi block plate-2. g. m. afeti auditorium plate-3. plate 3: f. o. kwami block plate-4.acolatse hall plate-5. esther nukulenu demonstration restaurant fig-4. plates 1-5, halls named in honor of some heroes selected, using graphical representation on walls 4. challenges some are of the view that sculpture is expensive and would not be easy for an institution, which needs a lot of resources for the upgrading of teaching and learning, to mobilize funds for such a project. however, this paper is not in line with such challenges, simply because, there are many important factors that contribute to the advancement of an institution such as ho polytechnic. among them include, infrastructure, beautification of the institution's environment through mounting of important arts such as sculptures and keeping such records in the institution's archives. these market the institution globally as a reputable establishment. 5. conclusion and recommendation the polytechnic should be recommended for honoring her heroes and heroines. however, the method used, seems not to be appropriate. the true identification of someone does not lie in graphical representation of any personality as it is viewed on the walls of the institution. the findings of this research, finally suggest the sculpture of either in-the-round, or relief, should be made to supplement names of personalities graphically exhibited on halls of the institution . these should be mounted at the front of each hall which could be the best way of honoring heroes/heroines of the institution. the sculptures of the renown personalities installed at the front of the appropriate halls of the institution, would serve as morale booster to those who are due for them. it would be cheerful when the beneficiaries are invited to witness to their sculpted images established at the front of the halls, most importantly, on the days of inauguration and in the presence of many important guests. this would also show the sense of patriotism, demonstrated by those involved; a good example that many would emulate for the building up of the good name of ho polytechnic. the researcher recommends that the heroes of the institution, should be honored by mounting their busts, with concise histories, at vantage points in the polytechnic. also, their miniature busts, with their concise histories should be kept in the polytechnic library or archive, for the accessibility to researchers who would like to know the history of ho polytechnic. the researcher also recommends that embossing names of such personalities in walls, could also be an alternative and better way of recording the names of the heroes/heroines of the institution. references jenks, c., 1995. the centrality of the eye in western culture. in c. jenks (ed.), visual culture. london: routledge. mirzoeff, 1998. the visual culture reader. london: routledge. pp: 27-49. mirzoeff, n., 1999. an introduction to visual culture. london: routledge. pp: 1-12. stafford, b.m., 1991. visual analogy: consciousness as the art of connecting. cambridge: porto (1981-1991) and the house in alcanena 19871992. bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bust. [accessed 29-12-14]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bust_%28sculpture%29. [accessed 29-12-14]. http://www.aaionline.org/bios/george-afeti/. [accessed 19/05/2015]. http://www.knust.edu.gh/about/knust/past-vcs/fokwami0info@hopoly.edu.gh. [accessed 05/06/2015]. http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/66904_researching_with_visual_materials.pdf. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bust_%28sculpture%29 http://www.aaionline.org/bios/george-afeti/ http://www.knust.edu.gh/about/knust/past-vcs/fokwami0info@hopoly.edu.gh http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/66904_researching_with_visual_materials.pdf asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 2, 39-43, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 39 home-learning practices in kenya: views of parents and education officers benard omenge nyatuka1 1 department of educational foundations, masinde muliro university of science & technology, kakamega, kenya abstract in order for children to acquire meaningful education, families are advised to participate in learning activities at home. such activities range from monitoring homework, problem-solving to reading with children during leisure time. but home-learning was claimed to receive little attention from key stakeholders among primary schools in kenya’s kakamega county. this study therefore, was meant to explore the home-learning practices in the sampled schools. a review of the literature relevant to homelearning as well as interviews were conducted. the interview participants, who were purposively selected, included twelve parents, thirteen parent teacher association (pta) chairpersons and ten district quality assurance and standards officers (dqasos). guided by interview schedules, semistructured individual interviews were conducted. the findings were presented in a narrative format backed by verbatim quotations. the findings revealed gaps with respect to the home-learning practices in the county. on this basis, efforts could be combined towards strengthening home-learning so as to improve both children’s academic achievement as well as behaviour. keywords: home-learning, interviews, kakamega county, kenya, practices. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 40 2. research methodology ........................................................................................................................................................ 41 3. findings and discussions ..................................................................................................................................................... 41 4. conclusions .......................................................................................................................................................................... 42 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 42 citation | benard omenge nyatuka (2016). home-learning practices in kenya: views of parents and education officers. asian journal of education and training, 2(2): 39-43. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.39.43 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 30 august 2016/ revised: 10 september 2016/ accepted: 26 september 2016/ published: 10 october 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.39.43 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=benard omenge nyatuka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.39.43 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.39.43 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=benard omenge nyatuka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.39.43 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.39.43 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=benard omenge nyatuka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.39.43 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 39-43 40 1. introduction various studies suggest that the development of strong bonds between the family and school ensure that children acquire the knowledge, attitudes and skills they require for life (unicef, 2003; republic of kenya (rok), 2010; florez, 2011). among others, high levels of parental involvement correlate with improved academic performance, higher grades, more positive attitudes toward school, higher homework-completion rates, fewer placements in special education, academic persistence, lower dropout rates and fewer disciplinary actions (xu and filler, 2008). sanders and sheldon (2009) assert that the schools that have improved their partnership programme with the parents and the community have fewer learners sent to the principal, given detentions or suspensions. this claim is reiterated by richardson (2009) who notes that better behaviour among learners is a major advantage of parental involvement. as per the net industries (the net industries (tni), 2013) although parental involvement may be reflected in current educational policies and practices, what this means is not always clear. accordingly, parental involvement includes a wide range of actions but generally refers to both the parents’ and family members’ use of and investment in resources in their children’s schooling. such investment can occur in or outside of the school with the intention of improving children’s learning. parental involvement at home includes discussions about schoolwork, helping with homework and reading with children. on the other hand, parental involvement at school can be in the form of the parents volunteering in the classroom, attending workshops, and cultural and sporting events (tni, 2013). according to the centre for the education and study of diverse populations (cesdp) (2012) parent participation should not be restricted to indicate only the parents, fathers and mothers. instead, it should be interpreted broadly to include all the adults who play an important role in the child’s family life, since other adults, including the grandparents, aunts, uncles, step-parents, siblings and guardians may be responsible for the child’s education, development and well-being. epstein et al. (2002) assert that the home school partnership makes the school subjects more meaningful for the learners. this includes reading, writing, mathematics, science, planning for college, as well as for work. in particular, it is important that families help children to learn while at home. indeed, home-learning activities can be helpful to all families. hence, there is need to build sound social networks and relationships between schools and diverse families chrispeels and gonzalez (2006). home-learning involves families with their children in learning activities at home, including homework and other curriculum-related activities and decisions. thus, teachers should be encouraged to design homework that enables the learners to share and discuss interesting assignments (epstein and salinas, 2004). jeynes (2007) asserts that parents who monitor their children’s homework and school attendance into junior and senior high school continue to influence their achievement later in life. florez (2011); epstein (2009) and the national association of school psychologists (2005) identify the possible channels for family participation as monitoring the completion of homework; regular communication with the school on the learners’ academic progress and conduct; sharing resources and seeking partnerships with the educators; engagement in school decision-making and governance; volunteering as committee members of parent bodies, and engaging in recreational reading with their children. madison (2000) observes that family-involvement programmes are effective ways of facilitating partnerships between the home and the school. most important, in a homeschool partnership, the parents create school-like families which recognize that each child is also a learner. in such a case, the families reinforce the importance of school, homework and activities that build the learner’s skills and feelings of success. on their part, communities, which include groups of parents working together, create school-like opportunities, events and programmes that reinforce, recognize and reward the learners for good progress, creativity, contributions and excellence. it is worth noting that children’s own perceptions of their parents’ involvement and expectations are also effective and influential in their education. at home, the parents can demonstrate their involvement by reading to their child, assisting with homework, having regular discussions about the school or schoolwork with their child, and conveying their expectations for their child’s future (obeidat and al-hassan, 2009). on their part, the teachers need to contact the homes to notify the parents of a job done well or their child’s progress, not only when they are lacking in their performance, or when their behaviour is causing problems. parents can have positive effects on their children’s reading skills and boost their reading comprehension by reading to them and making sure there are always books available in the home (erlendsdottir, 2010). studies indicate an overwhelming connection between literary resources in the homes and the children’s reading skills (glasgow and whitney, 2009; sanders and sheldon, 2009). accordingly, although the teachers and the schools have a significant influence on the children’s learning to read in the first grades, the parents still remain very influential later. the parents can also assist their children with the transition from one school level to another, or from one school to another. kenya’s ministry of education (moe) (2011) stipulates that the parents should form school committees to support the teachers in running the schools, to monitor their children’s progress and to support the teachers in their work. parents are also expected to assist the children with their homework; facilitate every child’s access to school without discrimination, ensure that the school environment is free from crime, drugs and alcohol, ensure the proper use of the school funds and other resources, and ensure that the school environment is clean, and that the pupils have a sufficient supply of water and adequate sanitary facilities. in spite of the numerous benefits that accrue from strong partnerships between families and schools, including homelearning to boost the quality of the education of children, it was claimed that these were hardly being developed in primary schools in kakamega county, kenya (moe, 2010). on this basis, the key research question was posed as: how effective are home-learning practices in primary schools in kakamega county, kenya? to achieve the aim of this study, the following questions were derived from the main one: a) what are the practices regarding home-learning in primary schools in kakamega county, kenya in the sampled primary schools as explored through interviews with parents, parent teacher assocation (pta) chairpersons and district quality assurance and standards officers (dqasos)? asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 39-43 41 b) in the light of the findings of the literature study and the empirical inquiry, what recommendations can be proposed to enhance home-learning in primary schools in kakamega county, kenya? 2. research methodology a combination of a literature study and an empirical investigation using interviews was employed in this study. qualitative data were gathered by means of interviews. the interview participants, who were believed to be principal sources of the envisaged data, were purposively identified and included 12 parents, 13 pta chairpersons in primary schools and 10 dqasos. as per mugenda and mugenda (2003) as well as kathuri and pals (1993) it is the researcher’s prerogative to select those respondents who stand to make realization of the aims of the study possible. individual semi-structured interviews for the parents and the pta chairpersons as well as dqasos were done. to enhance the validity of the instruments, a pilot study was conducted in two primary schools in the neighbouring vihiga county. it is worth noting that these schools had similar characteristics to those of the ones involved in the actual study. in particular, the information obtained during piloting was used to revise the interview guides before they were used in the main study, as well as attending to any other anomalies. this also helped to avoid pre-emptying the results. hence, two parents, two pta chairpersons and two dqasos were interviewed using pilot interview schedules. all the data-gathering instruments were also scrutinized by relevant experts before their administration. the data were analyzed qualitatively and presented in a narrative form, substantiated by verbatim quotations. the recorded interviews were first transcribed before being analyzed through content analysis. according to neuman (2000) this is a technique that can be used to examine information or content, in written or symbolic material (neuman, 2000). the emerging themes were linked to the literature reviewed. this was followed by presentation of the findings, drawing of conclusions and recommendations. 3. findings and discussions florez (2011) and nasp (2005) identified some of the potential avenues for family participation in learning at home such as the following, namely monitoring homework and education in general, leisure-time reading with the children, and participation in problem-solving teams. according to this study, both the pta chairpersons and the parents reported that they regularly received reports of their children’s progress in respect of their learning and conduct. as one parent remarked, “reports regarding a child’s progress in learning and behavior is guaranteed, at least twice a term.” accordingly, this was done through such means as report cards, particularly at the end of the school term of three months, smss, phone calls, and academic days involving specific classes. most of the participants noted that they occasionally had a discussion with the teachers concerning the learning progress and conduct of their children. the parents noted that they understood the assessment system as given on the report cards. however, report cards excluded illiterate parents. “i can’t read nor write. so i don’t comprehend the system of assessment used on pupils’ report forms,” testified an illiterate parent. epstein (2009) advises that school-home and home-school communications need to be done in a language and reading level that all the family members can understand. chrispeels and gonzalez (2006) assert that home-learning activities can be helpful to all the families, hence building social networks and relationships between the schools and the diverse families are important. the findings confirmed that most of the parent participants and all the pta participants, except one, discussed the homework assignments with their children. the parents assisted and/or checked their children’s homework by way of confirming whether the right homework was done, the difficulties encountered and the attention given to the teachers’ comments and/or expectations, where appropriate. “it is routine. i’ve to check my daughter’s homework. i do assist her where necessary,” observed a mother of a class three girl. as one pta chairperson remarked, “in the recent past, i’ve helped my son to write good compositions in both english and kiswahili languages. he now writes creatively.” another parent noted, “i’ve to do everything possible to be at home early enough to assist my daughter complete homework, especially in mathematics.” in the case of a parent who could neither read nor write, other family members were called in to assist with the homework. she said, “older siblings of my child check her homework, they know how to go about this, and correct her accordingly.” however, according to another illiterate parent, “it is the responsibility of the individual child to do his/her homework. why should the child be assisted to do it?” he queried. clearly, there was a need to provide information to such parents concerning why as well as how to help their children do their homework. the parents also identified many other favourite activities that they shared with their children at home or while the children were out of school, such as chatting during mealtimes, reading and/or telling stories, reading religious books and texts, taking walks, visiting farms, kicking a soccer ball and discussing local, national and even international affairs. “beginning friday evening, preparations to attend church the next day, that is, saturday commence [and this involves the children.] this includes reading the bible and singing appropriate hymns,” noted a pta chairperson, a member of the seventh day adventist denomination. another parent noted the value of shared excursions with the children. she said, “visiting the tea farm, about four kilometres away from home refreshed children enough while not at school. the same applies to me. we all enjoy it.” asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 39-43 42 with the exception of one parent, all the participants considered themselves and the teachers as a focused team who worked together to provide the best as far as the children’s education is concerned. a pta chairperson commented, “both parents and teachers have to work as a unit if meaningful learning among children is to be achieved.” the participants agreed that they were tasked with a huge role to play in formally educating their children. three parents mentioned their responsibility towards children, namely ensuring equity and equality, good health and nutrition, and safety and protection (rok, 2010). a pta chairperson who had been inducted in the child friendly school programme said, “issues concerning children like health, safety and equality are best addressed when efforts are combined among teachers and parents.” the parent who was an exception in this regard raised a common objection to parental involvement, that is, the perceived distinction between the professional education provided by the teacher and the informal education provided by the parent as primary educator. she said, “teachers are the professionals in so far as the teaching of the pupils is concerned. why should i interfere with their work?” other than regular assessment reports in the form of report cards, the dqasos reported to parents and the community about their children’s learning through officers at the zonal level, at annual general meetings (agms), on education days, and at seminars and workshops involving the various stakeholders in the field of education. a gap in practice regarding learning at home which was identified by the dqaso participants was the absence of a homework policy at the district level, although each individual school was expected to have a homework policy. this allowed the schools to develop homework policies in tandem with their unique circumstances, including the availability of such infrastructure as electricity. however, the schools would benefit by the guidance provided by a district policy. furthermore, it emerged that most schools did not involve the parents and the community in the designing of homework policies. similarly, the findings indicated that home programmes to involve the parents in their children’s reading, mathematics and other subjects were seldom organized by the schools. as epstein et al. (2002) indicated, home-school-community partnerships make the school subjects more meaningful for the learners, including reading, writing, mathematics and science. and, as this study indicated, during their visits to the individual schools, particular education forums, seminars and workshops, the dqasos rarely shared their ideas with the schools, the parents and the community on how to handle their children during the holidays or long-weekends. 4. conclusions there was general agreement that the parents needed to work as a team with the teachers to promote their children’s education, including equity, equality, health as well as safety issues. commendably, most of the parents discussed homework issues with their children. it also emerged that none of the districts in the county had a homework policy, and they rarely organized activities involving the parents in the children’s reading and mathematics. accordingly, every school was supposed to have a homework policy. however, the schools often never engaged the parents to develop a homework policy. the parents were informed of the children’s progress in learning and conduct, particularly through report cards, smss, phone calls and during academic days. overall, the parents understood the system of assessment as given on the report cards, and discussed the comments given by the teachers with the children. when the children were not at school, the parents communicated with them by reading to them and telling them stories, including religious ones, went for walks with them, visited farms, played soccer and discussed current affairs, among other worthwhile activities. the parents interviewed revealed that they seldom received information on the crucial learning standards based on the pupils’ ages, grades as well as conduct. as a remedy therefore, the parents should be better informed about the curriculum that the children were following, encouraged to participate in developing homework policies at the school, and guidelines for their children’s television viewing and their use of the internet. generally, capacitybuilding, and proper sensitization among the key partners could go a long way in strengthening the family-schoolcommunity partnerships, including home-learning in the county. references centre for the education and study of diverse populations (cesdp), 2012. working together: school, family and community partnerships. a toolkit for new mexico school communities. retrieved from http://www.cesdp.nmhu.edu/toolkit/index.asp [accessed january 3, 2013]. chrispeels, j. and m. gonzalez, 2006. no parent left behind: the role of parent education programs in assisting families to actively engage in their children’s education. university of california. epstein, j.l., 2009. school, family and community partnerships: your handbook for action. 3rd edn., baltimore: corwin press. epstein, j.l. and k.c. salinas, 2004. partnering with families and communities. schools as learning communities, 61(8): 12-18. epstein, j.l., m.g. sanders, p.s. simon, k.c. salinas, n.r. jansom and v.f.l. van, 2002. school, family and community partnership: your handbook for action. 2nd edn., thousand oaks, ca: corwin. erlendsdottir, g., 2010. effects of parental involvement in education. a case study in namibia. unpublished m.ed. dissertation. iceland, university of iceland. florez, a., 2011. active schools: our convictions for improving the quality of education. washington d.c: fhi 360. glasgow, n.a. and p.j. whitney, 2009. what successful schools do to involve families: 55 partnership strategies. new york: corwin press. jeynes, w., 2007. the relationship between parental involvement urban school secondary school student academic achievement. urban education, 42(1): 82-104. kathuri, j.n. and d.a. pals, 1993. introduction to education research. educational media centre. njoro: egerton university. madison, l., 2000. home-school-community partnerships. new jersey: houghton mifflin company. ministry of education (moe), 2011. education service delivery in kenya: roles and responsibilities of duty bearers and stakeholders. nairobi: ministry of education. moe, 2010. western province sensitization workshop on re-engineering education for quality performance. kakamega: western province education office. mugenda, o.m. and a.g. mugenda, 2003. research methods: quantitative and qualitative approaches. nairobi: acts press. http://www.cesdp.nmhu.edu/toolkit/index.asp asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 39-43 43 national association of school psychologists, 2005. position statement on home-school collaboration. establishing partnership to enhance educational outcomes. retrieved from http://www.nasponline.org/ [accessed july 1, 2013]. neuman, w.l., 2000. social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches. 4th edn., boston: allyn & bacon. obeidat, o.m. and s.m. al-hassan, 2009. school-parent-community partnerships: the experience of teachers who received the queen rania award for excellence ineducation in the hashemite kingdom of jordan. school community journal, 19(1): 119-136. republic of kenya (rok), 2010. child friendly school manual. nairobi: ministry of education. richardson, s.a., 2009. principals’ perceptions of parental involvement in the “big 8” urban districts of ohio. research in the schools, 16(1): 1-12. sanders, m.g. and s.b. sheldon, 2009. principals matter: a guide to school, family and community partnerships. thousand oaks: corwin. the net industries (tni), 2013. parental involvement in education: research on parental involvement, effects on parental involvement, obstacles to parental involvement, controversies, current issues. retrieved from http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2309/parental-involvement-in-education.html [accessed march 17, 2014]. unicef, 2003. the state of the world’s children 2004: girls, education and development. new york: unicef. xu, y. and j. filler, 2008. facilitating family involvement and support for inclusive education. school community journal, 18(2): 59-60. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.nasponline.org/ http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2309/parental-involvement-in-education.html asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 105-109, 2017 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.105.109 105 preparedness of interns for hospital practice before and after an orientation programme zayapragassarazan z1 1department of medical education, jawaharlal institute of postgraduate medical education and research (jipmer) puducherry, india abstract appropriately designed educational programmes would help medical students gain confidence and mitigate fears of internship. the aim of this pilot study is to compare the preparedness of interns for hospital practice before and after attending a two-day “interns orientation programme”. a small batch of interns in a tertiary care teaching hospital were administered with “interns preparedness for hospital practice” questionnaire before and after a two-day orientation programme and the results were compared. the difference in the mean scores of the preparedness for hospital practice in the chosen areas of orientation programme among all the interns were found to be higher and hence the overall preparedness of the interns after the orientation programme was found to be higher which was statistically significant (p<0.001). assessing the preparedness of interns will help the medical schools to develop necessary training strategies to prepare the interns mentally and professionally ready for hospital practice during their internship. appropriate selection of content areas for preparing the interns and mode of training them is also essential before they take up their internship. keywords: internship, orientation programme, interns preparedness, self-reporting. citation | zayapragassarazan z (2017). preparedness of interns for hospital practice before and after an orientation programme. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 105-109. history: received: 18 october 2017 revised: 10 november 2017 accepted: 13 november 2017 published: 16 november 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: the author would like to express his sincere thanks to jipmer administration and dr. gitanjali b, head of the department of medical education, jipmer for their support. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 106 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 106 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 107 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 108 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 108 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 108 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=zayapragassarazan z https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=zayapragassarazan z asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 105-109 106 1. introduction internship is a phase of training wherein a graduate is expected to conduct actual practice of medical and health care and acquire skills under supervision so that he/she may become capable of functioning independently. in india, the duration of the mbbs course extends over a period of four and a half academic years which are divided into four professional years. after completion of the academic study, a candidate has to complete 12 months of compulsory rotating internship so as to be eligible for the award of the degree of bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery (mbbs) and for registering in the state medical council. the intern shall be entrusted with clinical responsibilities under direct supervision of senior medical officer. they shall not be working independently (medical council of india regulations on graduate medical education, 1997). graduating from medical school is a special time of life and the internship programme is the very beginning of the process of transition from medical student to junior doctor (guidelines on remediation of doctors in the intern year, 2012). students entering into medical course with certain mindset and attitude, but the knowledge acquired in preclinical, para-clinical and clinical experiences may influence their exit behaviour (grdiy, 2012; scicluna et al., 2014; gouda et al., 2016). the intern year is an important formative year, which may present some unique challenges to doctors. these challenges may include having to adapt quickly to a busy working environment in a relatively short period of time, working as part of a multi-disciplinary clinical team, often under pressure, and dealing in a professional and empathetic way with patients who may have complex clinical and personal issues (cave et al., 2009; mcneil et al., 2012). various factors affect the performance of interns in their workplace during their internship. these includes, poor organization, lack of knowledge, attitude and skills in clinical judgements, lack of insight, personal and interpersonal factors, adjustment problems, etc. (gome et al., 2008; grdiy, 2012). hence, their preparedness to take up internship should not be taken for granted and preparing them to take up internship with confidence is very important which directly or indirectly will affect the patient care. this will also enable a smooth transition from their routine college life to professional life. some of these challenges can be addressed through a comprehensive orientation programme before they start their internship. close supervisory arrangements and encouragement to raise concerns with their trainers at the earliest opportunity will also play a key role in ensuring a smooth transition throughout intern training (brennan et al., 2010). there are only few studies that assessed the transition from medical student to intern and there is limited understanding of what measures are required to assist intern development (berridge et al., 2007; gome et al., 2008; brennan et al., 2010). this pilot study was undertaken in a tertiary care teaching hospital to assess the effectiveness of an interns orientation programme with reference to the preparedness of the interns for internship before and after attending the orientation programme. 2. method 2.1. study design: cross-sectional descriptive study population: interns of a tertiary care teaching hospital in puducherry, south india. sample: candidates who have completed their four and a half years of their academic study and eligible to undergo internship during july 2014 in the selected tertiary care teaching hospital formed the sample for the study. sampling: convenient sampling was used for the study and all the interns of the academic period of this study were invited to take part in this study. the total number of interns for the july 2014 batch was 19. all the 19 interns who attended the orientation programme were taken as sample for the study with their consent. 2.2. programme a two-day orientation program was held in july 2014 for this small batch of interns in the tertiary care teaching hospital identified for this study. the programme started with the orientation on basic information about the institution and its functioning. the programme was structured in a way that it addressed the common areas that demands interns attention for delivering quality care to the patients. the sessions on duties and responsibilities of interns, oral communication, written communication, maintaining patients’ records, interns diary, patient safety, rational diagnostics & therapy, ethics, professionalism, medico-legal aspects, drug promotion, biomedical waste management were scheduled for the orientation programme and were handled by resource persons of various disciplines. the program used a combination of interactive lectures, small group sessions and individual and group activities to introduce students to the internship program and their work environments. 2.3. tool a self-assessment tool to assess the preparedness for internship was developed by the researchers. the face validity and content validity of the tool was evaluated by an expert panel during and after development to ensure that the respondents had a complete comprehension of the tool used in the study. the tool was constructed to evaluate the preparedness of interns using a quantitative 5-point scale (0=definitely not prepared, 1=not prepared, 2= don’t know, 3=prepared and 4= definitely prepared). the total number of items in the tool were 12. 2.4. administration of the tool the questionnaire was administered to the interns before the beginning of the programme and immediately after the end of the programme after obtaining their consent. 2.5. scoring of the tool one can score a minimum of zero and a maximum of four for each item. the overall raw score of an individual can range from 0 to 48. the raw scores calculated for all the items were converted to percentage. at the discretion of the investigators, the scores equal to and less than 49% were considered as low, the scores between 50% to 70% were considered as average and the scores equal to and above 71% were considered as high with respect to asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 105-109 107 preparedness for internship. the quantitative data obtained from the respondents was entered to microsoft office excel 2007 and the descriptive statistics was calculated for the overall sample. answers to open-ended questions were collated to list the additional topics for the orientation programme and other comments stated by the respondents. 2.6. research limitation this study used only a small number of interns belonging to a small batch and it may not represent all interns in india. the cross sectional design of this study only provided information about the preparedness of interns for internship at the given point of time. 3. results 15 (79%) of interns were male and 4 (21%) were female. analysis of the raw scores revealed that before commencement of the orientation programme on an average 6 (32%) interns were not prepared about professionalism, medical-legal aspects and drug promotion, 3 (16%) were not prepared about ethics, rational diagnostics and therapy and patient safety and 3 (16%) were not prepared about their duties and responsibilities. an average of 5% of interns were not prepared about oral communication, written communication, maintaining patient’s records and intern’s diary. an average of 4 (21%) interns were not in a positon to assess their preparedness before the commencement of the orientation programme. again, after attending the orientation programme, 2 (11%) interns were not in a position to assess their preparedness for internship (table 1). table-1. showing the number and percentage of interns response to the items in the internship preparedness questionnaire. sl. no. session definitely prepared prepared don’t’ know not prepared definitely not prepared before after before after before after before after before after 1. duties and responsibilities of interns 7 (37%) 12 (63%) 8 (42%) 6 (32%) 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 3 (16%) 2. oral communication 6 (32%) 9 (47%) 8 (42%) 9 (47%) 3 (16%) 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 3. written communication 7 (37%) 12 (63%) 9 (47%) 6 (32%) 3 (16%) 2 (11%) 4. maintaining patients’ records 3 (16%) 11 (58%) 9 (47%) 7 (37%) 4 (21%) 2 (11%) 2 (11%) 1 (5%) 5. interns diary 8 (42%) 14 (74%) 7 (37%) 5 (26%) 2 (11%) 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 6. patient safety 3 (16%) 8 (42%) 9 (47%) 9 (47%) 5 (26%) 2 (11%) 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 7. rational diagnostics & therapy 3 (16%) 8 (42%) 7 (37%) 8 (42%) 5 (26%) 2 (11%) 2 (11%) 1 (5%) 2 (11%) 8. ethics 4 (21%) 8 (42%) 7 (37%) 6 (32%) 5 (26%) 4 2 (11%) 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 9. professionalism 2 (11%) 7 (37%) 5 (26%) 10 (53%) 6 (32%) 1 4 (21%) 1 (5%) 2 (11%) 10. medico-legal aspects 2 (11%) 6 (32%) 4 (21%) 10 (53%) 7 (37%) 2 (11%) 2 (11%) 1 (5%) 4 (21%) 11. drug promotion 1 (5%) 6 (32%) 5 (26%) 9 (47%) 6 (32%) 4 3 (16%) 4 (21%) 12. biomedical waste management 4 (21%) 10 (53%) 6 (32%) 9 (47%) 5 (26%) 2 (11%) 2 (11%) table-2. showing the individual raw score and the level of preparedness of the interns before and after the orientation programme. candidate before orientation programme after orientation programme total raw score % level of preparedness total raw score % level of preparedness 1 26 54 moderate 39 81 high 2 36 75 high 48 100 high 3 35 73 high 44 92 high 4 21 44 low 37 77 high 5 28 58 moderate 44 92 high 6 37 77 high 42 88 high 7 36 75 high 36 75 high 8 30 63 moderate 48 100 high 9 42 88 high 48 100 high 10 32 67 moderate 36 75 high 11 33 69 moderate 36 75 high 12 37 77 high 46 96 high 13 29 60 moderate 30 63 moderate 14 28 58 moderate 48 100 high 15 29 60 moderate 48 100 high 16 29 60 moderate 36 75 high 17 29 60 moderate 48 100 high 18 25 52 moderate 48 100 high 19 21 43 low 46 96 high asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 105-109 108 the group mean raw score of preparedness toward internship before the interns orientation programme was 30.68. after the orientation programme the group mean raw score of preparedness towards internship increased significantly to 42.53 which was statistically significant (p<0.001). with respect to the level of preparedness before internship 2 (11%) had low, 11 (58%) had moderate and 6 (32%) had high level of preparedness. the level of preparedness after the orientation programme was found to be moderate with 1 (5%) intern and high with 18 (95%) interns (table 2). 3.1. suggestions from the interns on new topics for the orientation programme the interns expressed their desire to learn new topics like giving and receiving effective feedback, interpersonal skills, stress management, time management, dealing with disruptive patients, problem solving skills, clinical skills, guidance to prepare for postgraduate entrance exams and available job avenues. 3.2. other suggestions/comments from the interns other suggestions and comments expressed by the interns were; periodic refresher course at least once in a month to review progress in knowledge and skills and they want to know how the internship programme will be evaluated at the end of internship for certification. 4. discussion high profile studies have recorded concerns about the transition from student to doctor as abrupt and stressful, and it affects their learning of different skills and develop confidence to practice medicine (committee of deans of australian medical schools: dest medical education study, 2006; berridge et al., 2007; kilminster et al., 2011). the findings of the present study revealed an overall improvement in the preparedness of interns towards internship after attending the orientation programme. these findings are in agreement with the study conducted to evaluate a new 'preparation for internship’ course, which was developed to facilitate the transition of university of new south wales medical graduates from medical school to internship (scicluna et al., 2014). the improved raw scores after attending the orientation programme indicates increased confidence following the programme, and the programme's contents directly mitigated some fears. this study is a self-reporting by interns and self-reporting of preparedness will help the medical educators to predict professional behaviours of interns and therefore it is a valid approach (aretz, 2003; bingham and crampton, 2011; muthaura et al., 2015). the interns’ interest in this study to learn new topics as part of orientation programme and their other suggestions and comments indicates their positive attitude towards internship and this orientation programme has oriented them to identify these relevant areas. overall, this orientation programme was well received and experienced by the interns in its present condition which places explicit emphasis on generic capabilities needed for professional practice of medicine during internship. this also indicates that the tertiary teaching hospital where this study was conducted is adequately preparing their interns for their role as interns. such programmes will help medical institutions to adequately prepare their students for their role as interns. similar programmes can also be made mandatory to scaffold medical graduates’ transition to internship (cave et al., 2009). studies like this will also help to uncover deficiencies in educational opportunities for interns and draw the attention of medical educators for needful policy measures and relevant educational interventions (berridge et al., 2007). 5. conclusion the preparation of graduates for the transition to internship is the primary responsibility of medical schools. this programme to support the transition from medical student to practicing doctor was useful and effective, but could be improved by including emerging areas of internship training and by increasing the number of training days. this pilot study may also be conducted at a large scale among more number of interns and continuously over a period of years. 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damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=perceptions%20of%20the%20preparedness%20of%20medical%20graduates%20for%20internship%20responsibilities%20in%20district%20hospitals%20in%20kenya:%20a%20qualitative%20study http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-015-0463-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-015-0463-6 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=improving%20the%20transition%20from%20medical%20school%20to%20internship%20–%20evaluation%20of%20a%20preparation%20for%20internship%20course http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6920-14-23 asian journal of education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 3, no. 1, 1-5, 2017 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 1 homeroom teachers or specialist teachers?: considerations for the workforce for teaching english as a subject at elementary schools in japan shinji okumura1 1 lecturer, department of education, mukogawa women's university, japan abstract in japan, english will be officially taught as an academic subject for elementary fifth and sixth graders from 2020. this is a strong initiative of language-in-education policy, aiming at efficient articulation between elementary and junior high schools and targeting the development of english proficiency from early ages simultaneously. however, teacher supply and professional development have been a critical issue for offering english as a subject. reviewing the recent movement of english education at elementary schools, the paper overviews the current teacher system in public elementary schools in japan and clarifies that homeroom teachers in japanese elementary schools tend to work overload not only teaching but also with administrative duties. the paper then describes benefits and drawbacks of homeroom and specialist teachers in english teaching as a subject at elementary schools and argues qualifications of english teachers. the author finally introduces new specialist teacher systems, which will give a useful insight for developing the workforce for the future english education at japanese public elementary schools. keywords: english language education reform, elementary school education, homeroom teachers, specialist teachers, teacher supply, japan contents 1. introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. expansion of english education in public elementary schools .......................................................................................... 2 3. elementary school teachers in the japan education system ............................................................................................. 2 4. who teaches english in japanese elementary schools? ..................................................................................................... 3 5. new attempts for specialist teacher systems in upper elementary grades ..................................................................... 4 6. conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 5 references .................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 citation | shinji okumura (2017). homeroom teachers or specialist teachers?: considerations for the workforce for teaching english as a subject at elementary schools in japan. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 1-5. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.1.5 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the authors confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 13 december 2016/ revised: 29 december 2016/ accepted: 4 january 2017/ published: 13 january 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.1.5 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=shinji%20okumura http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.1.5 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.1.5 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=shinji%20okumura http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.1.5 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.1.5 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=shinji%20okumura http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.1.5 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 1-5 2 1. introduction almost three decades ago i was a homeroom teacher at a public elementary school in tokyo for six years. at that time english was not allocated in the curriculum in public schools, but i tried to offer english lessons during “special activity” classes in the curriculum with the permission of the principal as i thought that english would be important for japanese to live in the future internationalized society. because i possessed teaching certificates for a secondary english specialist, in addition to that for an elementary generalist, i had some knowledge on teaching english. i firstly enjoyed having english lessons but after a couple of months i began to struggle with planning and conducting lessons because of a lack of resources. as a result, the students were not able to enjoy my lessons. i gradually lacked confidence to teach english even once a week and at the end of the year, i unfortunately felt that i did not want to teach english anymore. from the second year, i invited an english native speaker and mostly depended upon her. i was much relieved and the students enjoyed learning english from her lessons. this is my old story of a former homeroom teacher at a public elementary school in japan. it is only my experience and cannot be generalized about any homeroom teacher in the recent years. with the recent acceleration of globalization, the english language has been recognized as an international language throughout the world, and english education has often been required or strongly encouraged in elementary education because an early start is a recent trend in many countries where english is utilized as a second language or learned as a foreign language. like other countries, in japan, enriching english education has been one of the recent critical concerns both socially and educationally. although english education in elementary schools has gradually expanded since the early 2000s, the supply and quality of english teacher have been identified as a significant issue simultaneously. additionally, a number of elementary school homeroom teachers have been anxious about english education, which will be offered as a subject from 2020. similarly, there are arguments about who are qualified english teacher in elementary schools. thus, this paper will argue about workforce for teaching english as a subject at elementary schools with a comprehensive perspective on the japanese elementary education． 2. expansion of english education in public elementary schools from 2002, foreign language education in public elementary schools officially started as a part of education for international understanding. in the class, it is possible for each school to deal with various languages; nonetheless, from the program‟s beginning the majority of public elementary schools selected english as the target language because of the strong demand of english in the society. in 2011, “foreign language activity” classes have become a compulsory domain for the fifth and sixth graders, which are executed for one hour a week (for 35 unit hours a year). for this class, the ministry of education, culture, science and technology (mext) of japan designated that english should be selected in principal. namely, foreign language education is english education in japan. in 2014 mext released “english education reform plan corresponding to globalization” as a language-ineducation policy and started to promote expansion of english education in elementary schools. in this plan, the ministry announced the provision of english language activity classes for third and fourth graders and that of english language subject classes for fifth and six graders (ministry of education culture science and technology (mext), 2014). this policy initiative will be officially introduced from the implementation of the new course of study in 2020. 3. elementary school teachers in the japan education system elementary school in japan is six-year system. approximately 20,600 schools, including national, public and private sectors exist throughout the country and public schools account for almost 99% (mext, 2016). the number of elementary school teachers is about 420,000 in all sectors (mext, 2016). in elementary schools, one class is supervised by one homeroom generalist teacher who is basically responsible for all subjects such as japanese language, social studies, arithmetic, science and so forth. conversely, for upper grades, several subjects such as music and home economics are often taught by specialist teachers though the provision of the teachers in school varies in each municipality. homeroom teachers are basically in charge of a different grade each year, and therefore, have to develop teaching knowledge and skills for the subjects of all six grades. on the other hand, it is often usual for the teachers to take charge of the same class for two years in a row. in addition to teaching, homeroom teachers have to supervise the students‟ activities during recesses and lunchtime, and they also have responsibilities for doing some school administrative work, and interviewing parents if necessary. specialist teachers basically teach their subjects for given classes and they also have to have some school administrative duties together with homeroom teachers. in fact, japanese teachers need to spend a lot of time managing administrative work such as participating in various staff meetings and providing a number of administrative documents. moreover, teachers have several duties outside the school in order to cooperate with other schools and teachers in their municipalities. mext (2015) reported that teachers have recently felt overloaded because time for administrative duties has increased and teachers‟ overtime enlarged simultaneously. comparing teachers‟ work environment of other countries, time spent by teachers in japan for their administrative duties, averagely totaling 5.5 hours per week, is longer than that of 2.9 hours in the oecd countries. in the recent educational environment around japanese teachers, contents of teaching subjects have been diversified and advanced. for instance, the use of information communication technology (ict) is currently promoted in education, and thus, homeroom teachers need to equip ict knowledge and skills in association with teaching various subjects. similarly, teaching english as a subject obviously involves advanced elements such as enhancing students‟ english skills and assessing their attainment. in addition, mext (2014) encourages public elementary school teachers to maximize the connection between ict and english in order to enhance students‟ motivation, engagement and english skills. thus, elementary school teachers need to equip knowledge and skills in both ict and english synchronously. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 1-5 3 4. who teaches english in japanese elementary schools? 4.1. current situation the “foreign language activity” classes are basically conducted by homeroom teachers in the current education system. however, many of japanese homeroom teachers‟ qualification for teaching english is not adequate enough. according to mext (2015) only 4.9 percent of elementary school teachers possess a teacher‟s certificate of english and only 2.7 % have grade pre-1 in the eiken test in practical english proficiency (tofel ibt80 or toeic730 equivalent). moreover, many elementary school teachers, especially those who are middle-aged, did not learn how to teach english in pre-service teacher education since college classes concerning teaching english in elementary school were not required to obtain teaching licenses a few decades ago. assistant language teachers (alts) from overseas often help homeroom teachers in english classes. mext (2015) revealed that the use of alts have increased and 60% of public elementary schools use them in 2014. conversely, supply and use of alts vary in each municipal district or individual school (mext, 2014). furthermore, japanese language teachers (jtes) as specialist teachers or assistants are appointed in some public schools but overall they are not many yet (eiken foundation of japan, 2013). in the current situation related to the workforce for teaching english in public elementary schools, many inservice homeroom teachers have been anxious about teaching english due to a lack of english ability, adequate english teaching skills (okumura, 2010; yoshida, 2015). in fact, a recent survey (efj, 2013) acknowledged that english teaching skills and methods are significant concerns for in-service elementary school teachers. considering this fact, mext (2014) clarifies that a high-level of english proficiency and teaching skills should be acquired by elementary school teachers for the future expansion of english education in elementary schools. moreover, in the recent teacher employment process, a number of municipal boards of education offer written examinations or practical skill tests in order to supply homeroom teachers who can teach english in elementary schools (mext, 2016). 4.2. benefits and drawbacks of homeroom and specialist teachers it is currently controversial who should teach english as a subject in elementary schools. mext (2006a) designates benefits and drawbacks of homeroom and specialist teachers in terms of teaching english at elementary schools (see table 1). nevertheless, some of the benefits and drawbacks are debatable for teaching english as a subject in the near future. firstly, it is arguable that homeroom teachers are appropriate to connect teaching english with other subjects but specialist teachers are not. in reality, it is obvious that homeroom teachers possess knowledge of different subjects, and recently several teachers who take charge of “foreign language activity” classes actively incorporate content-based approaches such as content and language integrated learning (clil). clil, which explores the integration of teaching curricula content and second or foreign languages, has been the recent trend in foreign or second language education throughout the world. however, content-based approaches are not easy to be incorporated into foreign language curricula because they basically aim at developing foreign or second language skills and acquiring knowledge of academic contents in a balanced way. more specifically, although clil has recently highlighted in any level of english education in japan including the elementary level, there is a danger that any type of content-based lessons is referred to clil superficially. clil has one important pedagogic concept, which is known as the 4cs framework (coyle, 2006). the 4 cs framework is a holistic approach and includes content (subject matter), communication (language learning and using), cognition (learning and thinking processes), and culture (developing intercultural understanding and global citizen-ship), in order to construct the collaborations of integrating learning in other curriculum areas (content and cognition) and language learning (communication and cultures). as mentioned above, considering that many japanese teachers work overloaded not only in teaching but also with administrative work, it is doubtful that homeroom teachers who take charge of english instructions can provide effective content-based english lessons since they require various resources which integrate english into academic contents. moreover, it is necessary for homeroom teachers to be provided in-service training for content-based approaches so as to understand them precisely, receiving the training for general english teaching methods and english language skills in parallel. though mext shows that specialist teachers have difficulty in using contentbased approaches, possibly because they are not generalist teachers. nonetheless, it is not doubtful that specialist teachers have a certain degree of knowledge in academic subjects at the elementary level. even specialist teachers will be able to apply their prior knowledge to english lessons. more importantly, as mext proposed, specialist teachers can focus on teaching english, and hence, they can actively participate in professional development opportunities for content-based approaches in order to develop the knowledge and skill. in order to develop homeroom teachers‟ english teaching skills, governments and non-governmental teachers‟ associations have promoted professional development for teaching english in elementary schools. although professional learning opportunities increase, it is unrealistic that all homeroom teachers would be able to acquire high levels of english proficiency and adequate english teaching skill because of their aptitude for english language. correspondingly, homeroom teachers‟ attitudes towards english education are different individually since each homeroom teacher‟s specialization or strength varies. therefore, in-service teacher training for homeroom teachers are not always effective and omnipotent. a teacher‟s passion cannot simply be enhanced by in-service teacher training. some teachers could have confidence but others might have a sense of inferiority after the training because of a lack of english knowledge and proficiency. second, it is clear that homeroom teachers have a close psychological distance to their students, and it is also easy for the teachers to control their classrooms. conversely, in the current japanese education system, music, art or home economics is taught by specialist teachers in a great number of public elementary schools throughout the country and significant problems have not been identified. the critical question here is why english should be special? even if specialist teachers have a psychological distance to the students, the essential point is the importance asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 1-5 4 of sharing information of students with homeroom teachers to solve students‟ issues, cooperating with each other. similarly, whole school involvement is noteworthy, so that specialist teachers are not peripheral or isolated in school. table-1. benefits and drawbacks of homeroom and specialist teachers homeroom teachers specialist teachers benefits  as homeroom teachers teach different subjects such as japanese and social studies, it is appropriate to connect english teaching with other subjects.  homeroom teachers can utilize prior experiences of “foreign language activity” classes.  homeroom teachers understand characteristics of students more than specialist teachers as they have a close psychological distance to the students.  specialist teachers are in general expected to have higher english proficiency and teaching skills than homeroom teachers.  specialist teachers possess expertise in terms of planning lessons and selecting materials and they can enrich teaching contents.  specialist teachers can focus on teaching english. they can actively participate in training opportunities and develop teaching skills effectively. drawbacks  a large number of teachers need to receive inservice teacher training, especially in developing english proficiency and teaching skills.  it is difficult to connect english teaching with other subjects such as japanese and social studies. *the original of this table is written in japanese (mext, 2006a) and the author extracted the corresponded part and translated japanese into english. 4.3. who is a qualified teacher of teaching english as a subject? who should teach english as a subject in public elementary schools has been debated by a number of researchers, english language advocates and in-service teachers. their opinions are divided into two, namely homeroom and specialist teachers. in discussing conditions of qualified teachers for english as a subject in elementary school, it is important to recognize that english as a subject is different from “foreign language activity” classes mainly because the main aim of the subject is to develop students‟ english competency. yoshida (2015) assert that it is necessary to supply specialists who can teach english more systematically for a subject. in fact, teachers who teach english at elementary schools have to teach pronunciation, vocabulary, listening and speaking, and moreover, reading and writing a new alphabet, and easy words have to be taught for the subject. these teaching elements have to be taught correctly since they will become the base of english learning in junior high schools. moreover, teachers need to assess students‟ achievement comprehensively and validly. thus, teachers who teach english as a subject have to possess a wide range of knowledge on applied linguistics including foreign language teaching and learning. additionally, it is necessary for the teachers to help students feel secure in english lessons. scott and ytreberg (1990) state that security is vital to maximize the outcome of students‟ language learning. consequently, skills which enable students to feel secure in the lessons are essential for qualified english language teachers. similarly, it is critical not only for students but also for teachers to have confidence to use english for students (butler, 2015). unless teachers can teach english confidently, they cannot allow students to feel secure in their english instruction. similarly, motivation and enthusiasm for teaching foreign language is necessary for english language teachers. unless teachers have passion for teaching english, they will not able to provide attractive lessons. understanding of the japanese elementary school system and the associated educational culture is also essential. in this way, qualified teachers for english as a subject in elementary schools should possess varied knowledge, skills and enthusiasm. the question to be considered here is whether homeroom teachers are absolutely suitable to teach english as a subject, always having passion for it. considering homeroom teachers‟ work environment in the current japanese education system noted above, it is reasonable that teaching english as a subject will be a burden on a number of homeroom teachers who are not qualified as english teachers. in my opinion, specialist teachers systems should be enhanced for teaching english as a subject. 5. new attempts for specialist teacher systems in upper elementary grades importance of the articulation between elementary and junior high schools has been newly highlighted mainly because of new perspectives on children‟s cognitive and physical development. for instance, abiko (2007) claims that many upper elementary school children are reaching adolescence earlier than before, and the current 6-3-3 education system cause problems due to critical gaps between elementary and junior high school education. under such a situation, mext proposed the necessity of argument about a specialist teacher system for upper graders in elementary schools (mext, 2006b). considering issues of the transition between elementary and junior high schools, several municipal boards of education have attempted new specialist teacher systems for upper graders in elementary school. for example, hyogo prefecture has conducted a sustainable case study on a specialist teacher system for elementary schools since 2009 (hyogo prefectural board of education, 2011). although selection of specialist subjects are based upon each case study school‟s decision, many of them incorporated the system for arithmetic, science, music, art, home economic. some schools use the system for “foreign language activity” classes. similarly, in iwate prefecture one public elementary school attempted a specialist teacher system from 2011 to 2013. iwate prefectural board of education (2014) reported that the school selected arithmetic, science, music, and handwriting because of requirement of specific knowledge and skills, necessity of a large amount of preparation time and possibility of adopting various learning styles including team-teaching. the significant positive aspects which were common in the two attempts included that teachers were able to develop lessons teach them effectively, and that many students thought that lessons which are understandable increased. psychological distance to the students was not an issue in the two trials, but understanding students was facilitated based upon teachers‟ interaction and collaboration. on the other hand, time constraints due to school events such as sports day and school excursions were identified as an asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 1-5 5 administrative issue. it will be useful to consider the specialist teacher system for upper graders in public elementary school for teaching english as a subject, in order to provide well-organized english instructions. 6. conclusion for english education as a compulsory subject from 2020, it is significant to consider who will take charge of the lessons. the main argument of this paper is: who is a qualified teacher for english instruction as a subject in elementary classrooms, considering the current work environment in japanese public elementary schools? whereas i recognize that homeroom teachers play important roles in elementary education, in my opinion, it is difficult for them to have huge responsibilities for teaching english as a subject mainly because of their business for various administrative duties in addition to teaching. overlooking the current elementary education in japan must be necessary to consider the workforce of elementary english education for development of foreign language-ineducation. correspondingly, it is important for english language advocates to not only focus on english education but also to understand homeroom teachers comprehensively. it is essential to acknowledge that homeroom teachers are generalists but they are not always almighty. moreover, as more teaching contents become advanced and complicated in the future elementary education, the more teachers have to specialize in specific subjects, especially in upper elementary grades. as introduced in this paper, specialist teacher system for upper graders should be appreciated if schools have a plan to enable students to acquire basic knowledge of academic contents. specifically, in elementary english education as a subject, it should be highlighted that english language must be taught comprehensively and correctly, so 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[what and how should be taught in english education at elementary school ]. kyoiku-to igaku. education and medicine, 63(12): 4-11. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://berd.benesse.jp/berd/center/open/berd/2007/01/pdf/07berd_02.pdf http://www.eiken.or.jp/center_for_research/pdf/market/elementary_press_2712.pdf http://www.hyogo-c.ed.jp/~gimu-bo/rennkei/h22hyogogata.pdf http://www.hyogo-c.ed.jp/~gimu-bo/rennkei/h22hyogogata.pdf http://www.mext.go.jp/b-menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo3/siryo/015/06020613/006.htm http://www.mext.go.jp/b-menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo3/siryo/015/06020613/006.htm http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo3/siryo/07061432/003.htm http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo3/052/siryo/_icsfiles/afieldfile/2015/02/18/1355024_4.pdf http://www.mext.go.jp/en/publication/statistics/title02/detail02/1379369.htm http://www.mext.go.jp/en/news/topics/detail/1372656.htm 228 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 228-232, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.228.232 investigation of the health significance of 4th grade students in physical education and sport department aykut dündar1 mustafa koç2  ( corresponding author) 1,2adıyaman university, school of physical education and sports, adıyaman, turkey abstract the knowledge, vision, understanding and practices of a community about health and disease issues show the socio-economic structure, educational and cultural level of that society. human health is under the influence of the hazards which are the product of various demographic, economic, social, cultural, psychological, physical, chemical and biological factors. for many years health was defined as the absence of the disease. but in recent years it has been recognized as a concept in which health is included in a physical, emotional and mental well-being. the relationship between health and wellness is obvious. well being can be defined as reaching the level of physical and psychological health which is provided consciously and willingly. for this reason, health is a progress made towards improved health. we call the health condition in which cure and rehabilitation are needed as negative health; the health condition in which there is no illness and which is balanced as neutral health; health condition which is about health conducts improving life quality as positive health. the main purpose of this study is to expose perceptions of students of department of physical education and sports 4th grade about “health” concept by the means of metaphors. the participants for this study included 43 students from high school of physical education and sports both located in adıyaman. to collect the study data, each participant was asked to complete the prompt “health is like … because …” the content analysis technique was used to analyse study data. according to the results, all of the students (100 %) have developed positive metaphors. keywords: metaphor, health, student. citation | aykut dündar; mustafa koç (2018). investigation of the health significance of 4th grade students in physical education and sport department. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 228-232. history: received: 25 may 2018 revised: 21 june 2018 accepted: 2 july 2018 published: 12 july 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 229 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 229 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 230 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 231 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 232 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.228.232&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1012-1274 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3863-8021 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1012-1274 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3863-8021 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1012-1274 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3863-8021 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1012-1274 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3863-8021 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 228-232 229 1. introduction world health organisation (who) defines health as “the state of not only having a disease or disability but also the state of bodily, psychological and social wellbeing”. according to who, there are three basic criteria of health: 1bodily wellbeing: the state of not having such things as deficiency and malfunction in the texture and organs constituting the body, or not carrying germ. 2psychological wellbeing: the state of being able to think consistently with one‟s age, being able to state what one thinks clearly, being able to understand others, being able to know when to be happy or sad, being able to struggle with hardship, being able to act according to conditions, being happy with achievement and accepting failure, and being at peace with oneself. 3social wellbeing: the state of being able to know where to act and how to act, being aware of one‟s responsibilities, being affectionate to people of older and younger age and having good relations with them, and being friendly to the environment (world health organization, 2016). perceptions of health indicate the extent to which one is psychologically open to display protective behaviours (baltaş, 2000). the way individuals define health and what behaviours they associate with being healthy are influential in whether or not they lead a healthy life. therefore, knowing the health behaviours and health beliefs of a community is important and essential in delivering healthcare services and in directing health education and health policies. individuals‟ perceptions of health can be investigated within the framework of the concept of “social representation” (moscovici, 1988). metaphor is the transfer of meaning from one thing into another thing. the word metaphor was derived from greek word metapherein (which meant „to transfer‟); and it was formed by combining the words meta (=between), pherein (=to transfer) (nikitina and furuoka, 2008). mish defines a metaphor as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase expressing an object or an idea literally replaces a word or phrase having similarity or analogy with it” (cited in groth and bergner (2005)). although metaphors are traditionally seen as figures ornamenting a speaker‟s use of language, psychologists and linguists describe them in a different way. kramsch, for instance, considers a metaphor as “the mutual transfers between two sources which are often inconsistent” while orthony and fainsilber see it as “an important instrument of cognition and communication” (cited in nikitina and furuoka (2008)). those definitions make metaphors one of the most powerful mental instruments configuring, orienting and controlling our thoughts about the formation and functioning of events (saban, 2004) another important property of metaphors is that they help humans‟ cognitive process (nikitina and furuoka, 2008). therefore, metaphors are remarkable as a strong mechanism for mental mapping and modelling for individuals to understand and configure their own world (arslan and ve bayrakçı, 2006). according to goldstein, metaphors can be used to re-describe the reality and to re-conceptualise problematic situations since metaphors influence situations and the way we perceive events (cited in cerit (2008)). boostrom states that using a metaphor for teaching does not necessarily mean actualising teaching in the way the metaphor predicts it, but it means thinking teaching as a discussion (cited in saban (2004)). in this context, describing the concept of health through metaphors can help to understand the concept better. 1.1. purpose this study mainly aims to reveal the perceptions of fourth year students of physical education and sport department in relation to the concept of “health” through metaphors. it seeks answers to the following questions in accordance with this purpose: 1. through what metaphors do the fourth year students of physical education and sport department describe their perceptions of the concept of “health”? 2. what categories can the students‟ metaphors about the concept of “health” be divided into? 2. method this study uses qualitative research method and the data collected were put to content analysis. according to krippendorf, “content analysis is a scientific research method used to be able to make meaningful and valid inferences about texts and contexts in which they are used” (cited in gürel and alem (2010)). 2.1. study group the study group was composed of 43 individuals who were the fourth year university students in the school of physical education and sport in adıyaman university located in the central district of adıyaman in 2017-2018 academic year. the distribution of the participants in the study group according to gender was as in the following: table-1. distribution of the participants in the study group according to gender gender (f) (%) male 22 51.16 female 21 48.84 total 43 100 source: results from frequency and percentage distribution 2.2. data collection 43 participants who were the fourth year students of the school of physical education and sport in adıyaman university in 2017-2018 academic year were asked to complete the sentence “health is like …. because….” . in this way metaphors about the concept of “health”, and then the metaphors were divided into categories and students‟ perceptions of “health” were determined. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 228-232 230 2.3. data analysis the article “mental images primary education first stage teachers and students have in relation to the concept of knowledge” by saban (2004) was used in analysing and interpreting the data collected in the research. accordingly, the metaphors developed by the students of the school of physical education and sport (spes) were analysed and interpreted at four stages: 1. naming, 2. elimination and purification, 3. compiling and categorising, and 4. validity and reliability analyses. the metaphors developed were put into a temporary list and ordered alphabetically, and it was checked whether or not students used a metaphor clearly at the stage of naming. the metaphors created by the students were re-examined at the stage of elimination and purification and 12 forms having no sources of metaphor and having no explanations were eliminated; thus valid metaphors obtained. at the stage of compiling and categorising, the metaphors developed were divided into two categories as positive and negative, and then they were divided into 6 categories according to the properties they had in common about the concept of “health”. students‟ explanations were also given with the metaphors developed. at the stage of validity and reliability analyses, expert opinion was consulted so as to determine whether or not the metaphors listed in 6 categories were representative of the categories. two experts were given the following two lists for this: 1. the alphabetical list of 43 metaphors developed by the fourth year students of spes; 2. the list of 6 categories distinguished by the researcher and the properties of the categories 3. findings the metaphors created by fourth year students of spes in relation to the concept of “health” are tabulated and the tables are analysed and interpreted under sub-headings. metaphors recommended by the fourth year students of spes in relation to the concept of “health” under this heading, the metaphors developed by the students are listed alphabetically and the number of students and percentages for each metaphor are given. the perceptions of 4th year students of the school of physical education and sport in relation to the concept of “health” table-2. metaphors developed for the concept of health, and the number of students and percentages for the metaphors codes metaphors (f) (%) codes metaphors (f) (%) 1 friend 2 4.65 13 happiness 4 9.30 2 love 1 2.33 14 banana peel 1 2.33 3 lesson 1 2.33 15 breath 2 4.65 4 apple 1 2.325 16 strong body 1 2.33 5 life 7 16.28 17 fortune 1 2.33 6 determiner of life 2 4.65 18 a new car 1 2.33 7 heart of life 1 2.33 19 sport 1 2.33 8 peace 2 4.65 20 water 1 2.33 9 light 1 2.33 21 tailor 1 2.33 10 building 1 2.33 22 law 1 2.33 11 reading a book 1 2.33 23 living 6 13.95 12 fruit 2 4.65 24 road 1 2.33 total 43 100 source: results from frequency and percentage distribution as is clear from table 2, the fourth year students developed 24 metaphors about the concept of health. it was seen that the meaning universe of the metaphors was very close, and thus it may be inferred from this that students have similar worlds of images. all (100%) of the metaphors developed were positive and the students‟ attitudes towards the concept of health were also positive. accordingly, it was found that the participants had used the metaphors of life, happiness and living most frequently. it was also remarkable that those metaphors were abstract concepts. it may be concluded based on these metaphors that students‟ world of meanings was configured by abstract metaphors. in addition to that, students also developed concrete metaphors such as fruit and friend about the concept of health. 3.1. categories of metaphors students use about the concept of health metaphors developed by the students were divided into categories, and the number of students and percentages for each metaphor were given under this heading. on examining the metaphors developed about the concept of health, it was found that more than half (65.1%) of the students considered health as a pre-requisite, and that it was a must for human prosperity. thus, the metaphors such as the determiner of life, living, fortune, peace, heat of life, etc. also referred to the parallel concepts of a peaceful life. besides, such metaphors as light, lesson, reading a book, love, breath and happiness referred to the integrated relations between health, achievement and soul. 9.3% of the students stated that health was an instrument for the maintenance of knowledge through such metaphors as tailor, friend, living and building; 9.3% referred to the associations between health and time by using metaphors such as apple, fruit and new car; 4.6% referred to the mental side of health with metaphors of sport and law; 6.9% referred to the regularity aspect of health with metaphors such as friend, road and living and 4.6% referred to the physiological side of health with such metaphors as strong body and water. as is clear from table 3, metaphors such as living and happiness are included in differing categories. this situation is associated with the framework of meanings assigned to the metaphors. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 228-232 231 table-3. positive metaphors developed by students about the concept of health, and the number of students and percentages for those metaphors c a te g o ri e s codes metaphors sample student explanations students representing the metaphors (f) (%) codes total (f) (%) p re -r e q u is it e 6 determiner of life “ıf you are healthy, you can do anything you like in life. it is a pre-requisite.” 2 4.65 28 65.1 23 living “without health life has no meaning.” 4 9.30 14 banana peel “ıf you can keep pace with it, you live long. if you step on the banana peel, your life will slip.” 1 2.33 17 fortune “ıf there is no health, there is nothing in life.” 1 2.33 8 peace “a healthy life enables us to lead a peaceful life.” 2 4.65 9 light “health is the light in our life.” 1 2.33 5 life “health is necessary to cling to life.” 7 16.28 3 lesson “ıf it is good, it is good; if it is bad, there is no peace. 1 2.33 11 reading a book “healthy individuals can enjoy life more and can look at events positively.” 1 2.33 7 heart of life “there is no meaning in life lived without health.” 1 2.33 2 love “we cannot enjoy any moments of life unless there is health.” 1 2.33 15 breath “we cannot live without breath.” 2 4.65 13 happiness “happy individuals always feel good.” 4 9.30 k n o w le d g e 21 tailor “someone who knows the rules of health can improve his health just as a tailor can sew the rips in a piece of cloth”. 1 2.33 4 9.3 1 friend “ıt treats you just as you treat it. you will take care with your health.” 1 2.33 23 living “ıt gets into a shape according to the criteria humans set in their life.” 1 2.33 10 building “you construct a strong building if you work with a good constructor.” 1 2.33 t im e 4 apple “just as an apple goes rotten through time, our health also disappears through time.” 1 2.33 4 9.3 12 fruit “ıt becomes mouldy fruit when it is time.” 2 4.65 18 a new car “a car breaks down through time.” 1 2.33 a tt e n ti o n 19 sport “ it returns you if you care for it and if you consider it important.” 1 2.33 2 4.6 22 law “we should care our health just as we should care laws.” 1 2.33 r e g u la ri ty 1 friend “ıt provides someone with self-confidence and organises his life.” 1 2.33 3 6.9 24 road “ the more regular a road is, the easier the distance is to go”. 1 2.33 23 living “it assures that one can take on a role in society.” 1 2.33 p h y si o l o g ic a l 16 strong body “healthy life increases the resistance of body through sport.” 1 2.33 2 4.6 20 water “water is of vital importance. the majority of human body is composed of water.” 1 2.33 source: results from frequency and percentage distribution this study considered the references made in students‟ statements while classifying thematically the metaphors they had developed for the concept of health. in this context, themes such as time, physiology, attention and regularity were distinguished by taking the integrity of physical health and psychological health into consideration. the fact that the metaphors developed in relation to health were generally positive and made references to the future made us think that the ages of the students in the study group were influential in this. besides, considering the fact that the study group was young in general, this could be associated with the fact that the metaphors were not uniform and not very striking. 4. discussion and conclusion it is apparent from literature review that metaphoric investigations have been done in turkey in the field of social sciences. aydin and ve ünaldı (2010); ibret and aydınözü (2011); akkaya (2011); güven (2015) and gün (2015) are a few of the one performed in recent years. the studies mentioned are generally concerned with a wide range of phenomena or concepts such as language, culture, education and foreigners‟ perceptions of speaking in turkish. on examining similar studies in the literature, it was found that açıksöz et al. (2013) in their study entitled “analysing the correlations between nursing students‟ perceptions of health and their behaviours of health asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 228-232 232 development”, investigated the correlations between nursing students‟ perceptions of health and their behaviours of health development and concluded that students perceived their health very well. with their study entitled “correlations between university students‟ perceptions of health and their behaviours of healthy lifestyle”, tuğut and bekar (2008) on the other hand, conducted a sectional study to determine the correlations between cumhuriyet university students‟ perceptions of health and their behaviours of healthy lifestyle, and the researchers concluded that the students had positive perceptions of health. considering the categories for the concept of health, it was found in this study that the participants used the category of “pre-requisite” most and that they developed the metaphor of “health is necessary to cling to life” most frequently. therefore, it may be stated that health plays an important role for students to maintain their life. sevinç et al. (2014) in their study entitled “the effects of 8-week step-aerobics exercise (situational and continuous) on women‟s levels of anxiety and on their life quality”, investigated the life quality levels of women who had done step-aerobics exercise regularly for 8 weeks and the life quality levels of women who did not do any sports, and thus they found that sport had positive effects on women‟s life quality. this study found that the fourth year students of physical education and sport department had rather positive perceptions about the concept of “health” and that they mostly demonstrated this through abstract metaphors. it is thought on the basis of metaphoric expressions that had been divided into themes such as time, perception, regularity and mental processes – that the areas of association are generally positive. thus, one of the most important conditions to be healthy is to do sport. therefore, sports activities can be diversified and made widespread so as to raise the life quality of the students of physical education and sport department at university. considering the metaphoric perceptions of students with whom the research was conducted, it was found that the concepts of sport, life, peace, physiological health and psychological health were assessed in a holistic manner. thus, it may be said that students‟ fields of association about the concept of health are versatile. this study scanned students‟ schemata of associations about health metaphorically. in consequence, it was found that the majority of metaphors about health were positive. students‟ metaphoric perceptions about health had integrity on the axis of mental processes and physiological and psychological health. accordingly, another finding was that students did not consider health as unidimensional. references açıksöz, s., ş. uzun and f. arslan, 2013. relationship between perceptions of health status and health promotion behaviors in nursing students. gülhane medical journal, 3(55): 181-187. view at 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relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=relationship%20between%20perceptions%20of%20health%20status%20and%20health%20promotion%20behaviors%20in%20nursing%20students http://dx.doi.org/10.5455/gulhane.15228 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20analysis%20of%20geography%20teacher%20candidates’%20perceptions%20towards%20 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=students,%20teachers%20and%20administrators’%20views%20on%20metaphors%20with%20respect%20to%20the%20concept%20of%20teacher https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=pre-service%20elementary%20school%20teachers’%20metaphors%20for%20the%20concept%20of%20statistical%20sample http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ies.v9n4p27 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=a%20content%20analysis%20of%20a%20post%20modern%20animated%20sitcom:%20the%20simpsons https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=from%20thought%20to%20language:%20metaphors%20in%20oruc%20aruoba https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=from%20thought%20to%20language:%20metaphors%20in%20oruc%20aruoba https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20metaphors%20developed%20by%20elementary%20school-second%20stage%20students%20on%20the%20concept%20of%20world https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=notes%20towards%20a%20description%20of%20social%20representations https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=notes%20towards%20a%20description%20of%20social%20representations http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420180303 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=a%20language%20teacher%20is%20like...%22:%20examining%20malaysian%20students'%20perceptions%20of%20language%20teachers%20through%20metaphor%20analysis https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=cumhuriyet%20university%20student’s%20healthy%20perception%20state%20and%20the%20correlation%20of%20health%20promotion%20life%20style http://www.who.int/about/en/ 396 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 396-402, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.396.402 happiness level of teachers and analyzing its relation with some variables münevver mertoğlu1 1istanbul culture university, the faculty of law, cehamer, the head of violence research and prevention section, turkey abstract happy and successful societies are possible through training of healthy, happy and successful individuals. responsibility of raising healthy happy and successful individuals belongs to parents as well as teachers. the purpose of this research is to determine the factors that differentiate happiness of teachers who work at primary, secondary and high school levels and to present the necessary suggestions for raising happier individuals. in addition, due to lack of research focused on happiness of teachers, the aim is also to contribute to the literature. sample space consists of 448 teachers, who are teaching in elementary, middle school and high school levels, working in 36 different schools. the happiness scores of the teachers were generally higher than average and it is concluded that the teachers' happiness scores did not differ significantly according to age, marital status, number of children, seniority and income levels. however, there is a significant difference in happiness scores of teachers who are willing to go to school and teachers who are unwilling to go to school. keywords: happiness, teacher, school, happy, primary school, secondary school, high school. citation | münevver mertoğlu (2018). happiness level of teachers and analyzing its relation with some variables. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 374-380. history: received: 27 july 2018 revised: 10 september 2018 accepted: 15 october 2018 published: 6 november 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 397 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 397 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 398 4. discussions, results and suggestions ....................................................................................................................................... 401 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 401 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.396.402&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1533 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5900-7106 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1533 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5900-7106 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1533 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5900-7106 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 396-402 397 1. introduction happy and successful societies are possible through training of healthy, happy and successful individuals. when the education programs of schools are examined, especially those of the first years, educating healthy, happy and successful individuals is determined as the most ultimate goal among other purposes. (basic law of national education no. 1739). responsibility of raising healthy happy and successful individuals belongs to parents and as well as teachers. especially children between 0-6 years old take their parents as role models. therefore, happy parents and happy teachers play crucial role in raising happy individuals. education system aims to train healthy, happy and successful individuals regardless of their profession (basic law of national education no. 1739). however, happy and peaceful teachers are an important factor in raising happy individuals. in almost every society and culture, the concept of happiness, which is considered as the aim of life, includes concepts such as “life satisfaction”, “being healthy”, “flow”, “subjective well-being” , “optimism” and “positive emotions”, and sometimes they are used interchangeblely (harju and bolen, 1998; diener et al., 2003; eryilmaz, 2012). “life satisfaction” can be expressed as how satisfied the individual is veenhoven (1996). the concept of “life satisfaction” expresses what one is doing and being pleased with his/her life, and it describes subjective well-being. “subjective well-being” is a general term describing both life satisfaction and happiness. “flow”, which is a related term with happiness, expresses that the individual has a pleasant time to understand how time is spent during an activity he / she especially wants. furthermore, one should be active for the “flow”. “optimism”, which is a term that is part of being happy, focuses on being positive about tomorrow and having hopes towards future to summarize, individuals who are satisfied with their lives, feeling good, being optimistic and having positive expectations about future are considered as happy people. therefore, teachers should have these attributes so that they can be role model to their students. on the other hand, happiness of students do not always depend on teacher. there are other factors affecting students’ happiness. parental attitudes and behaviors, environment, whether basic needs are met, physical and mental health are important factors. for example, there are studies showing that 39% of personality traits are decisive in happiness (myers and diener, 1995; steel et al., 2008). recent research on the causes of happiness related to neurological and hormonal tendency may suggest that teachers have a limited role in educating happy individuals (knutson et al., 2005). however, studies showing how such factors like family, teachers and relationship with environment affect children’s happiness put more responsibility on parents, child caregivers and teachers (uusitalo-malvimaara and lehto, 2012). if being optimistic and hopeful, in other words, being happy, is something that can be learned, teachers should make the necessary efforts in this regard (rolls et al., 2003; kubzansky et al., 2004). research showing that considering being healthy as blessing and that constantly remembering and listing the things that will bring happiness increase the level of happiness is important in terms of demonstrating the cognitive dimension of happiness and proving that it can be learned (emmons and shelton, 2002). today, positive psychology-based intervention programs are particularly effective in the happiness of adolescent children (shoshani and steinmetz, 2013). all these studies show that teachers have an important role in raising happy individuals in the education system. research showing that there are significant relationships between students' happiness and academic achievement suggest that being happy plays an important role in academic achievement (huebner, 1991; huebner and alderman, 1993; cheng and furnham, 2002). therefore, teachers should give their children an optimistic and hopeful point of view so they can be happy with small things. to sum up, in order to raise happy and successful children, happy, peaceful and calm teachers who can be a role model for their students are needed, especially from the first years of their education. in addition, as happiness is something that can be learned, teachers have more responsibility in this respect. the purpose of this research is to determine the factors that differentiate the happiness of teachers who work at primary, secondary and high school levels and to present the necessary suggestions for raising the happier individuals. in addition, due to lack of research focused on the happiness of teachers, the aim is also to contribute to the literature. 2. method 2.1. sample sample space consists of 448 teachers, who are teaching in elementary, middle school and high school levels, working in 36 different schools in foça and dikili district of i̇zmir, turkey. “oxford happiness scale” is used to collect data (hills and argyle, 2002). “oxford happiness scale” has 29 items and participants answered each item based on a scale 1 to 6 (1strongly disagree; 6-strongly agree). for statistical analysis of data, mann-whitney u test, one-way anova, levene statistics, independent samples t-test and group variations homogeneity test are used. 2.1.1. the following questions are asked in our research 1. general happiness level of teachers. what are the issues that make teachers happy and unhappy according to the items in the happiness scale? 2. what are the factors affecting teachers’ happiness? does happiness of teachers change according to the variables below? * gender *marital status asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 396-402 398 *number of children * service time * occupation of their spouse *total income level *willingness to come to work *willingness to do their job 3. findings 3.1. general happiness level of teachers. what are the issues that make teachers happy and unhappy according to the items in the happiness scale? on “oxford happiness scale”, 18 of 29 items are designed as positive and 11 of them are designated as negative items. according to this, the high score received from the positive items indicates the high level of happiness and high score received from the negative items indicates high level of unhappiness. table 1 and table 2 show scores that are received from positive items and negative items respectively. in both tables, scores are ranked from highest to the lowest point. as it can be seen from table 1, teachers received 3.5 or above scores from positive items. table-1. averages that teachers receive from positive items on oxford happiness scale positive items average std. dev 20. feeling able to take any responsibility in any matter 4,69 1,167 9. life is beautiful 4,67 1,141 16. i notice beauty around me 4,67 1,130 8. being interested in what they do and devoting them selves. 4,65 1,145 2. being very interested in other people 4,37 1,869 26.usually, i have a positive effect on events 4,35 1,015 22. i am usually cheerful and happy 4,21 1,099 17. i always leave a cheerful effect on other people 4,07 1,123 25. i feel quite energetic 4,06 1,216 21.mentally i feel completely fit 4,05 1,283 11.i am very smiling. 4,04 1,171 15. i am vey happy 3,96 1,177 4. i have very warm feelings against almost everyone. 3,87 1,253 12. i am quite happy with everything in my life. 3,79 1,235 7. i find many things fun. 3,76 1,231 18. i can save time for everything i want to do. 3,57 1,250 3. i think life is quite rewarding. 3,56 1,391 5. i wake up as fully rest in every morning. 3,52 1,441 these scores indicate general happiness level of teachers is above avarage. the top five subjects that make teachers happy are “feeling able to take any responsibility in any matter”, “ finding life beautiful”, “noticing beauty around them”, “being interested in what they do and devoting themselves”, “being very interested in other people” as can be seen from table 2, teachers received low average points with the highest score 3.02. these scores indicate that unhappiness level of teachers are below average. the top 5 subjects that make teachers unhappy are as follows; “there is a big difference between what they do and what they want to do”, “difficulties in deciding on any subject”, “they are not optimistic about their future”, “feeling like they're not in control of their lives”, “thinking that the world is a good place” table-2. averages that teachers received from the negative items on oxford happiness scale negative items average std. dev 14. there is a big difference between what i see and what i want to do. 3,02 1,395 23. i have trouble deciding on any subject. 2,88 1,406 6. i'm not very optimistic about my future. 2,85 1,616 19. i feel like i can't control my life. 2,82 1,413 10. i don't think the world is a good place. 2,64 1,553 13. i don't think i'm attractive. 2,33 1,262 28. i don’t feel very healthy. 2,31 1,261 29. i don't have many happy memories about my past. 2,20 1,348 27. i don't enjoy being with other people 1,96 1,184 1. i'm not happy with myself. 1,79 1,311 24. my life does not have a certain purpose and meaning. 1,74 1,148 3.2. what are the factors affecting teacher’s happiness? difference tests are applied to determine whether happiness scores of teachers are changing according to different factors such as gender, age, marital status, number of children, seniority, occupation of spouse, income, willingness to come to school, willingness to do the job of teaching. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 396-402 399 difference tests are applied by taking the average of 29 items on oxford happiness scale. when average is calculated, the answers given to the 11 negative item on the scale are reversed (item numbers: 1, 6, 10, 13, 14, 19, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29) 3.2.a. does happiness of teachers change based on gender? happiness level of teachers based on gender are compared by independent t-test. according to results, there is no statistical difference between happiness scores of male and female teachers (t = -1,469; p > 0,05; see also. table 3) table-3. difference in happiness based on gender cinsiyet n average ss t sd p happiness female 299 4,32 0,60 -1,469 443 ,143 male 146 4,22 0,74 3.2.b. does happiness of teachers change based on age? ages are categorized in 4 groups (20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50 and above). as there are at least 30 teachers in each group, average happiness scores of age groups are compared by one-way anova. before one-way anova is applied, variations homogeneity test is applied to the age groups. as variations are determined as homogeneous, (levene statistics = 1,016; sd1 = 3; sd2 = 437; p > 0,05, see also. table 4 ) f test is applied. according to the results, there is no statistical difference between average happiness scores of teachers with different age group. (f = 1,044; p > 0,05; see also. table 5). table-4. variations homogeneity tests for different age groups levene statistic sd1 sd2 p happiness 1,016 3 437 ,385 table-5. difference in happiness based on age groups age n average ss f p happiness 20-29 years old 54 4,36 ,593 1,044 ,373 30-39 years old 162 4,31 ,656 40-49 years old 147 4,21 ,642 50 and above 78 4,32 ,701 3.2.c. does happiness of teachers change based on marital status? marital status of teachers is categorized in 3 groups (single, married and divorced). the happiness scores of marital status groups were compared with kruskal-wallis test which is the non-parametric alternative of one-way anova because of the unbalanced distribution of the number of participants in the groups. according to the results, there is no statistical difference between average order scores (ki square = 2,043; p > 0,05; bkz. table 6). table-6. differences in happiness based on marital status marital status n average order scores ki square sd p happiness single 48 219,55 2,043 2 ,360 married 371 225,23 divorced 25 187,60 3.2.d. does happiness of teachers change based on number of children? the number of children of teachers are categorized in 4 groups (0-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9 and above). because of the unbalanced distribution of the number of participants in the groups, the happiness values of the two groups with children between 0-2 and 3-5 were compared with the mann-whitney u test, which is the non-parametric alternative of t-test. the results show that there is no statistically significant difference between happiness average scores based on number of children that teachers have. table-7. happiness difference based on number of children. number of children n average order scores mann-whitney u p happiness 0-2 child 311 166,97 3410,500 ,981 3-5 child 22 167,48 3.2.e. does happiness of teachers change based on seniority? seniority of teachers are categorized in 6 groups (0-5, 5-10, 10-15, 15-20, 20-25, 25 and above). since there are at least 30 teachers in each group, average happiness scores of each group are compared by one-way anova. before one-way anova is applied, variations homogeneity test is applied to each seniority category. as variations are determined as homogeneous, f test is applied. (levene statistic = 0,653; sd1 = 5; sd2 = 440; p > 0,05, bkz. table 8) according to results, there is no significant difference between happiness scores of teachers in different seniority group. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 396-402 400 table-8. variations homogeneity test for different seniority groups levene statistics sd1 sd2 p happiness 0,653 5 440 ,659 table-9. difference in happiness based on seniority seniority n average ss f p happiness 0-5 years 59 4,27 ,653 0,672 ,645 5-10 years 68 4,27 ,624 10-15 years 79 4,38 ,604 15-20 years 86 4,22 ,665 20-25 years 74 4,23 ,685 25 and above 80 4,32 ,664 3.2.f. does happiness of teachers change based on occupation of their spouse? occupation of teachers’ spouse is categorized in 6 groups. because of the unbalanced distribution of the number of participants in the groups, the happiness scores of the two groups were compared with the independent t-test. according to the results, there is a statistically significant difference in happiness scores of teachers based on their spouses profession (t = -2,054; p < 0,05; see also. table 10). teachers whose spouse has a different profession than teaching have higher happiness score with 4.34 whereas teachers whose spouse is also teacher have lower happiness scores (4.20). table-10. difference in happiness based on spouse’s profession spouse’s proffesion n average ss t sd p happiness teacher 146 4,20 0,69 -2,054 330 ,041 other 235 4,34 0,62 3.2.g. does happiness of teachers change based on their income? income of teachers is categorized in 3 groups. because of the unbalanced distribution of the number of participants in the groups, the happiness scores of the two groups were compared with the independent t-test. according to results, there is no statistically significant difference in average happiness scores based on income level (t = -0,406; p > 0,05; bkz. table 11). table-11. difference in happiness based on income income n average ss t sd p happiness 3000-5000 tl 176 4,27 0,66 -0,406 438 ,685 5000 tl and above 264 4,30 0,64 3.2.h. does happiness of teachers change based on their willingness to coming to school? 353 teachers stated that they are willing to coming to school whereas 24 of those are not willing to come to school and 71 of those did not answer the question. since the number of teachers who mentioned they are not willing to go to school is less than 30, the happiness values of the two groups were compared with the mann-whitney u test, which is the non-parametric alternative of the independent samples t-test. results illustrate that there is statistically significant difference in happiness scores of teachers who are willing to go to school and not willing to go to school (mann-whitney u = 3128,500; p < 0,05; bkz. table 12). as it is shown in table 12, average order score of teachers who are going to school is higher (192.14). therefore, they are happier than the teachers who are not willing to go to school. table-12. difference in happiness based on willingness to going to school willingness n average order scores mann-whitney u p happiness willingly 353 192,14 3128,500 ,032 unwillingly 24 142,85 3.2.j. does happiness of teachers change based on their willingness to do their job? 409 teachers mentioned they are willing to do their job whereas 31 of them mentioned they are not eager to do their job, and 8 of those did not answer to that question. although, the number of teachers who are not eager to do their job is almost 30, as there is unbalanced distribution between teachers who are eager and who are not eager to do their job, happiness scores of two groups are compared by independent t-test which is the non-parametric alternative of mann whitney u test. results show that there is statistically significant difference in average happiness order scores of groups (mann-whitney u = 2910,500; p < 0,001; see also. table 13). as it can be seen on table 13, average order value of teachers who are willing to do their job is higher (228.88). therefore, they are happier compared to teachers who are not willing to do their job. table-13. difference in happiness based on willingness to do their job willingness n average ss t p happiness willingly 409 4,34 0,62 5,910 ,000 unwillingly 31 3,65 0,68 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 396-402 401 4. discussions, results and suggestions the happiness scores of the teachers were generally higher than average. in other words, teachers are generally happy. but factors affecting teachers’ happiness are significant in terms of preventing teachers from being happy. for example, “having trouble deciding on any subject”, “not being very optimistic about future”, “feeling they cannot control their life” and “not thinking the world is a good place”. the generalization of these results is possible by expanding the research group and performing it in different cultures. the results could not be compared because there was no other study examining the happiness of teachers. it was concluded that the teachers' happiness scores did not differ significantly according to age, marital status, number of children, seniority and income levels. these results coincide with the results of many researches about the happiness of people other than teachers. for example, analyses conducted on 146 researches showed that gender differences accounted for only 1% of happiness scores, and men were slightly happier than women (haring et al., 1985; webb, 2009; wang and vander, 2011). while the age variable is not seen as a determining factor in the happiness of teachers, there are studies conducted on different groups with different professions showing that happiness increases as age progresses in other studies conducted about the happiness of people in different groups (michalos et al., 2005; agrawal et al., 2011). also, there are studies showing age does not have an effect on happiness (diener and ryan, 2009). income level of teachers is considered together with their spouse’s income. it can be seen income levels are correlated with happiness scores. however, studies on how changes in the income level affects happiness show that income is a decisive factor in the condition of poverty. it is not a determining factor if basic needs are met (myers and diener, 1995). the evaluation of the result of the lower happiness scores of the teachers’ whose spouses are teacher can be made in separate research related to this subject. one of the important results of this research is that there is a significant difference in happiness scores of teachers who are willing to go to school and teachers who are unwilling to go to school. there is no doubt that unhappy teacher who is coming to school unwillingly will affect the students’ happiness. therefore, improving the school environment and creating a positive institutional climate by enabling teachers to come to the schools where they work willingly can make a significant contribution to the happiness of teachers and students. if there are other, reasons that prevent teachers from coming to school willingly, those can be examined and necessary measures can be taken by the managers. another important finding is that teachers who are willing to do their job are much happier compared to teachers who are not willing to do their job. it is possible to consider the implementation of tests to measure the interest of the teachers during their admission to the profession. the fact that happiness is something that can be learned increases the need for happy teachers in raising happy and successful students. hence, when the relationship between teachers’ happiness and the variables mentioned above are investigated, it can be seen that there is no relationship between teachers’ happiness and the demographic characteristics. however, willingness to go to the school and do the job is a factor increasing the happiness score. this research is important for the happiness of the 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118-123, 2017 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.118.123 118 the relationship between fathers’ parenting attitudes and their child’s emotional competence for taiwan example ching-sheue fu1  jia-yi gao2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of early childhood caring and education, chung hwa university of medical technology, taiwan abstract children's emotional competence development is mainly influenced by their caretakers. the old days when mothers were the main caretakers of their children have passed. there have been more and more fathers taking care of their children personally. this study aims to explore the relationship between fathers’ parenting attitudes and their child’s emotional competence. a survey was conducted with the “fathers’ parenting attitudes scale” and the “children’s emotional competence scale”, with the subjects being the children from the preschools in taiwan and their father selected using the snowball sampling method. the result shows that the relationships between fathers’ parenting attitudes and various aspects of children’s emotional competence are all not significant. it seems that the traditional chinese concept of “fathers being stern and mothers being benevolent” still remains nowadays. keywords: fathers’ parenting attitudes, child’s emotional competence, pre-school. citation | ching-sheue fu; jia-yi gao (2017). the relationship between fathers’ parenting attitudes and their child’s emotional competence for taiwan example. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 118-123. history: received: 15 august 2017 revised: 29 november 2017 accepted: 4 december 2017 published: 6 december 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this research was supported from ministry of science and technology, r.o.c. (no. 104-2815-c-273-001-h) competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 119 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 119 3. methods ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 120 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 121 5. conclusions and discussions ....................................................................................................................................................... 122 6. suggestion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 122 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 122 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ching-sheue fu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jia-yi gao https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ching-sheue fu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jia-yi gao https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ching-sheue fu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jia-yi gao asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 118-123 119 1. introduction since a child is born, he begins to contact the surrounding physical, psychological, and social environments. in the course of interactions, he would develop his unique personality traits. a family is essential in a child’s growing years. it is his source of emotional support, as well as his first place to learn to be aware of his own emotions (moll et al., 1992; bronfenbrenner, 2005). thus, parents’ parenting attitudes are important to not only enlightening their child in self-learning of emotion management but also reducing their sense of unhappiness so that they can grow up happily (hung, 2007). in 2015, there were 14,258 fathers applying for parental leave without pay of taiwan. the number is doubled compared to the previous year (ministry of labor, 2016). in taiwan, the percentage of fathers willing to stay home taking care of their child is higher than other nearby countries such as japan and korea. the traditional concept of “husbands taking charge of external matters and wives domestic matters” is now being overturned in taiwan. the traditional concept of “the father being to blame for his child's faults” shows the importance of the role a father plays in his child’s growing years. according to the old concept, a father is responsible for his child’s deviant behaviors. in preschools, interactions between teachers and parents are mostly interactions between teachers and mothers. with the change of time, has fathers’ parenting changed in taiwan? chien (1996) suggested that parents’ parenting methods have been changing gradually in taiwan. in the past, mothers played the role of the benevolent parent while fathers played the role of the stern parent. now, mothers discipline their child sternly and play the role of the main executioner for parenting, while fathers play the role of the coordinator, a buffering role of care. under the influences of changing social trends and values, fathers in taiwan indeed choose a different way of parenting nowadays. goleman (1995) believed that parents’ emotional reactions would influence their parenting, resulting in emotional social behaviors. children get to know this world through observation. every day they learn experiences in relation to emotions from their parents’ behaviors. children’s behaviors lead to their parents’ reactions, and parents parenting behaviors also lead to children’s various emotions. from these interactions, children learn knowledge and experiences regarding expressions of emotions, how to react to others’ positive/negative emotions, and which emotions may arise in which situations. thus, in taiwan, fathers begin to participate in parenting their child. the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between their parenting attitudes and their child’s emotional competence, in hopes of providing suggestions to adjust family parenting and to improve children’s emotional competence. 2. literature review 2.1. fathers’ parenting attitudes parents’ “parenting attitudes” cover their knowing (knowledge or faith), feelings (emotions), and behavioral intentions (tendencies) while instructing or teaching their child (yang, 1986) as well as how they educate and nurture their child regarding their child’s attitudes, feelings, hopes, thoughts, knowledge, hobbies, values, behaviors, and personal qualities (yang, 2006). yang (2007) suggested that parents’ “parenting attitudes” are their views and methods regarding daily events in education and parenting, in other words, the attitudes they hold while parenting their child. chang (2009) explained with the internal and external aspects. the internal aspect is the “attitude” aspect, while the external aspect is the “action” aspect. parents’ internal attitudes and values may influence their behaviors of nurturing their child. based on the scholars’ opinions above, this study considers fathers’ parenting attitudes as including fathers’ knowledge, faith, feelings, values, and behaviors while teaching and rearing their child. there are different ways to interpret parenting attitudes based on different research views, including the single-dimension, two-dimension, and multi-dimension views (baumrind, 1991). 2.1.1. the single-dimension view the single-dimension view divides parenting attitudes distinctly into various types based on their presentation. these types are independent without overlapping. baumrind (1970) believed that parents’ parenting attitudes are influenced by just one dimension, their tendency toward authority. based on the degree of control, parents’ parenting attitudes can be classified into “tolerant type”, “authoritative and autocratic type”, and “authoritative and open-minded type”. 2.1.2. the two-dimension view the two-dimension view classifies parenting attitudes in a two-dimension way using two features used to describe parenting behaviors. sometimes, combinations of two different features are used. sometimes, each feature is divided into high and low dimensions. the advantage of this classification method is that it is more practical than the multi-dimension classification method (lin, 2008). maccoby and martin (1983) classified parents’ parenting attitudes based on two dimensions, “demands” and “responses”. they believed further dividing each of these two dimensions into high and low dimensions to create four categories can better interpret how parents nurture their child. “demands” are related to the standards and requirements parents determined for their child. demands imply orders or threats and punishments which rules are not followed. “responses” are parents’ responses to their child, including offering consistent care and love. 2.1.3. the multi-dimension view the multi-dimension view further includes parents’ own emotional states to create a three-dimensional space for classification of parenting methods. it is the most complete classification method. however, due to its complexity, it is rarely used by scholars. to classify parenting attitudes, the single-dimension view is too simple and the multi-dimension view is rather complex, so this study adopts the two-dimension view with two dimensions, “demands” and “responses”, to interpret fathers’ parenting attitudes. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 118-123 120 2.2. children’s emotional competence the basis of emotional competence is emotional intelligence. this competence is obtained through learning. it helps to achieve outstanding work performances. also, it expands the fundamental competence structure of emotional intelligence to cover managing one’s own “individual competence” and dealing with others’ “social competence”. individual competence includes competence of three aspects, self awareness, self regulation and discipline, and facilitating goal achievement. social competence includes competence of two aspects, empathy and social skills (goleman, 1995). since birth, a baby can show reflex facial expressions, such as happiness, sadness, anger, and surprise. when he is about 3 weeks old, he develops social smiles. when he is about four months old, he can show facial expressions of surprise and anger. when he is about one year old, he can show fear and shy through facial expressions as well. when he is nine to fourteen months old, he gets angry more frequently. after he is one year old, emotions such as hostility and envy begin to appear. when he is two to four years old, he can express pride, shame, embarrassment, disdainfulness, and guilt through facial expressions (izard and malatesta, 1987; camras, 1988; malatesta, 1988). thus, emotional competence is developed through a certain process. hyson (2004) proposed three main features of children’s emotions: 1) children’s degrees of emotional responses may decrease as they grow up. 2) children can gradually transform their emotional responses so that these responses can be approved by the society. 3) through trainings and social pressure, some obvious emotional responses can be gradually improved. hyson suggested that children of different ages have different emotion developments, which can be discussed from five aspects, emotion expression, emotion regulation, emotion comprehension, response to others’ emotion, and emotional attachment. the plan for preschool education courses in taiwan includes “emotions” in the learning fields. the idea of course design is to, through an organized and consistent course design, develop children’s four major emotional competence, including “awareness and identification”, “comprehension”, “expression”, and “regulation” in the “emotional areas”. children’s emotional competence is developed in an early stage. a child is capable of perceive and identify his own emotions when he is about eighteen months old. when he is about four years old, he can identify others’ emotions (carroll and steward, 1984; lewis, 1990). at the age of two, he can describe the cause of an event using complex sentences (carroll and steward, 1984; brown and dunn, 1996). at the age of three, he can interpret others’ behaviors based on his own beliefs (carroll and steward, 1984; brown and dunn, 1996). as he is four to six years old, he can detect effective emotion regulation strategies (brown et al., 1991; brenner and salovey, 1997). the first competence children develop is the competence of awareness and identification, followed by the competence of emotion expression and emotion comprehension, and lastly emotion regulation. thus, as children grow up, external stimulations have gradually become catalysts to develop their emotional competence. when their father’s parenting methods become an external stimulation factor, their emotional competence may be developed in different aspects. 3. methods 3.1. participants the research participants were selected using the snowball sampling method. a child was qualified only when his father and preschool teacher both agreed to participate. a total of 326 questionnaires were issued, and 282 were retrieved. the response rate is 86%. 9 of the retrieved questionnaires are invalid. thus the number of valid questionnaires is 273. the idea of the snowball sampling method is to find other research subjects based on a small group of people. first, a small group of people are selected from the population. then, these people are requested to introduce other people they know from the population (wang and wang, 2010). 3.2. research tools the research tools used by this study include the “fathers’ parenting attitudes scale” and “children’s emotional competence scale”. the data collected using the “fathers’ parenting attitudes scale” (li, 2008) were analyzed using the factor analysis method. two factors were obtained, “responses” and “demands”. these two factors can explain 28.62% and 16.80% of the total variation, respectively. the accumulated total variation explained is 45.42%. the cronbach’s α value of the overall questionnaire is .92. the cronbach’s αvalue of the “responses subscale” is .91 and that of the “demands subscale” is .81. the accumulated total variation explained by the subscales is 57.70%. the validity and reliability of the questionnaire are both very good. this scale is applicable to evaluations of preschool children’s father’s parenting attitudes. the likert-type 6-point scale was adopted for measurement. the scoring method is as follows: 6 points for “strongly agree”, 5 points for “agree”, 4 points for “slightly agree”, 3 points for “slightly disagree”, 2 points for “disagree”, and 1 point for “strongly disagree”. the “children’s emotional competence scale” used in this study is the “3 to 6 year-old children’s emotional competence development scale” designed by chien and kuo (2006) based on the “6-year old children’s emotional competence development scale” (hsing and chien, 2004) and domestic and foreign literature regarding children’s emotional competence, with the processes of questionnaire item pre-tests and analyses. the scale used by this study is for children aged 3 to 6 years. the cronbach’s α value of the overall questionnaire is .97, and those of the subscales are between .76 and .97. the definition of “emotional competence for the “children’s emotional competence scale” is the competence children need when facing an emotional situation, including four competence: competence of emotional awareness and identification, competence of emotion comprehension, competence of emotion expression, and competence of emotion regulation. the “children’s emotional competence scale” questionnaires were issued to preschool teachers who had spent at least 3 hours with the participating children and already observed the children’s emotional behaviors for at least three successive months. the answering the questionnaire, they were asked to check the options based on the frequencies of the children’s behaviors in the 3 recent months. the scoring method is as below: 1 point for “the child has never done this before”, 2 points for “the child does it when being reminded”, 3 points for “the child asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 118-123 121 sometimes does it, sometimes does it when being reminded”, 4 points for “the child does it on his own”, and also 1 point for “this behavior has never been observed”, as the child may have already developed the competence but his teacher hasn’t observed it yet. a higher score means better emotional competence, while a lower one means worse emotional competence. 4. results 4.1. the current status of fathers’ parenting attitudes a total of 273 fathers participated in this study. their average score for the “fathers’ parenting attitudes scale” is 3.52 points, which is between “slightly agree” and “slightly disagree” on the 6-point scale, with the standard deviation being .016. as for the two aspects of parenting attitudes, the average score for “demands” is 3.84, points, slightly higher than the average score for “responses”, 3.19 points. this means that more focus is placed on the demands aspect in fathers’ parenting attitudes, as shown in table 1. table-1. the descriptive statistics of the factors of fathers’ parenting attitudes item n mean, m standard deviation, sd responses 273 3.19 .017 demands 273 3.84 .014 total 273 3.52 .016 0= strongly disagree 6=very agree based on the study by baumrind (1991) this study used two dimensions, “demands” and “responses”, for parenting attitudes. the result of this study shows that the fathers’ parenting attitudes focus more on the “demands” aspect. that is, the fathers would establish some rules for their child to follow. their parenting methods are rather harsh and strict. the score of “responses” is lower than that of “demands”. in other words, there are fewer loving fathers than stern father. and the score of “demands” is almost 4 points. it is clear that there are more fathers whose parenting attitudes are rather harsh. generally speaking, the responses and demands factors of the subjects’ fathers’ patenting attitudes are not very different. both scores are slightly higher than the means on the 6-point scale. apparently, the fathers’ patenting attitudes are with a lot of responses and high demands. baumrind (1991) believed this is the best type of parenting attitudes. the result shows that the fathers’ patenting attitudes are consistent with social expectations. they can judge a matter as it stands when it comes to teaching their child, and respond with love and support. 4.2. the current status of children’s emotional competence a total of 273 children participated in this study. the result shows that the children’s average score of the “children’s emotional competence scale” is 3.27, with the standard deviation being .038. regarding the four emotion aspects, the performance of “emotion awareness and identification, eai” (m=3.44, sd= .032) is the best, followed by “emotion expression, ee” (m=3.28, sd= .036), “emotion comprehension, ec” (m=3.21, sd=.043), and lastly “emotion regulation, er” (m=3.16, sd=.040). generally speaking, the children’s emotional competence score is over 3 points, close to 4 on the 4-point scale, meaning that the children’s emotional competence is quite good, as shown in table 2. table-2. the statistics for the factors of children’s emotional competence item n mean, m standard deviation, sd eai 273 3.44 .032 ee 273 3.28 .036 ec 273 3.21 .043 er 273 3.16 .040 total 273 3.27 .038 0= strongly disagree 6=very agree the data obtained from the children’s preschool teachers show that the children’s emotional competence is moderate or good. the score of the “emotional awareness and identification, eai” competence is close to 4 points, the perfect score. this shows that the “emotional awareness and identification, eai” competence of the children participating in this study is very good. furthermore, among the 4 factors, the score of the “emotion regulation, er” competence is the lowest. yet, the score is still higher than 3 points. this means the children’s “emotion regulation, er” competence is still quite good. 4.3. the analyses regarding fathers’ patenting attitudes and children’s emotional competence according to the correlation matrices of the 2 factors of fathers’ patenting attitudes, “responses” and “demands”. the 4 factors of children’s emotion competence, “emotional awareness and identification, eai”, “emotion comprehension, ec”, “emotion expression, ee”, and “emotion regulation, er”, the relationship between “fathers’ patenting attitudes” and “children’s emotion competence” is not significant. this implies that fathers’ patenting attitudes have nothing to do with their child’s emotion competence, as shown in table 3 below. table-3. the correlation coefficients of the factors of fathers’ patenting attitudes and children’s emotion competence variable demands responses eai ec ee er demands 1 responses .183** 1 eai -0.007 0.025 1 ec 0.037 0.019 .740** 1 ee 0.039 -0.003 .632** .806** 1 er 0.058 0.005 .507** .670** .656** 1 **p<.001 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 118-123 122 according to previous studies, when their parents adopt the “authoritative and open-minded” patenting method, children’s “emotional awareness and identification, eai”, “emotion expression, ee”, and “emotion regulation, er” competence can be positively influenced. if their parents adopt the “ignoring and indifferent” parenting method, their emotional competence it would be rather disadvantageous for the development of their emotional competence (hsiao, 2002). lin (2010) found that, for retarded children, all the aspects of their emotional competence are significantly related to their parents’ “democratic and imposing” parenting attitude. liu (2009) found that the “responses” aspect of parenting attitudes is significantly and positively related to the “emotional awareness and identification, eai” and “emotion expression, ee” aspects of children’s emotional competence, while the “demands” aspect of parenting attitudes is significantly and negatively related to the “emotion regulation” aspects of children’s emotional competence. however, this study focus on fathers’ parenting attitudes and the result shows that fathers’ parenting attitudes have nothing to do with their child’s emotional competence. although nowadays fathers often play the important role of caretaker, their parenting attitudes are not related to their child’s emotions. they may not be as good as mothers when playing the role of caretaker. 5. conclusions and discussions 5.1. the focus of fathers’ parenting attitudes is mostly on the “demands” aspect the result of this study shows that the focus of fathers’ parenting attitudes is mostly on the “demands” aspect. in other words, fathers usually provide their child some standard rules for behaviors. if their child disobeys their rules, punishment will be imposed or the child’s behaviors will be strictly regulated. this phenomenon is related to the traditional chinese concept that “a father shall be held responsible for nurturing his child.” fathers often treat their child strictly when it comes to nurturing. their purpose is to make sure their child being on the right track following conventional practices. 5.2. children’s “emotion regulation” competence can be further developed the result of this study shows that among four aspects of children’s emotional competence, namely “emotional awareness and identification, eai”, “emotion comprehension, ec”, “emotion expression, ee”, and “emotion regulation, er”, the score of emotional awareness and identification is the highest. and there is still room for development of emotion regulation competence. thus, during the preschool years, although children can understand what causes their emotions, there are not good at emotion regulation. as a result, they just get angry or laugh whenever they want. this finding is consistent with wang (2009). wang suggested that emotions are presented through not only facial expressions and apparent feelings, but also some internal ways. it is very common in a preschool to see a sleepy child brought to the school by his parents and gets angry or emotional or cries very easily as he still wants to sleep. it is very likely that this child’s needs are not satisfied. and since he is not yet socialized, he doesn’t think that he should hide this emotion (wang, 2009). bad emotion regulation competence may influence a child’s social development. 5.3. there are still questions regarding the finding that fathers’ parenting attitudes are not related to their child’s emotional competence it’s more and more common to see fathers taking care of their child and picking up and dropping off their child at preschool. however, the result of this study shows that even though fathers, who are responsible for the income of their family, have gradually become a caretaker as well, their parenting attitudes still have no influence on the development of their child’s emotional competence. the traditional concept that “a father should be stern while a mother should be benevolent” doesn’t seem to be different nowadays. does this mean fathers only involve in parenting in the aspect of daily care, not in the aspect of nurturing? further research is required to clarify fathers’ role during their child’s growth process. 6. suggestion the research subjects of this study are children’s father and preschool teacher. the questionnaires were filled by them. and this study did not find any evidence proving the relationship between fathers’ parenting attitudes and their child’s emotional competence. if the questionnaire about children’s emotional competence could be filled by their father, the research finding might have been different. after all, a child’s father and his preschool teacher may interpret his emotional competence differently. it is suggested that in the future this questionnaire can be filled by fathers in order to more clearly explore the aspects of their child’s emotional competence development. references baumrind, d., 1970. socialization and instrumental competence in young children. young children, 26(2): 104-119. view at google scholar baumrind, d., 1991. the influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. journal of early adolescence, 11(1): 5695. view at google scholar | view at publisher brenner, e.m. and p. salovey, 1997. 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solving ability. master’s dissertation, department of education, university of taipei, taipei city. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://statdb.mol.gov.tw/html/mon/24060.htm 440 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 440-446, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.440.446 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between motivation and flow states in sports faculty students pelin akyol1 osman i̇mamoğlu2 ( corresponding author) 1department of physical education, ondokuz mayıs university, samsun, turkey. 2yaşar doğu faculty of sports sciences, ondokuz mayıs university, samsun, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between motivation and flow states in sports faculty students. a total of 289 athletes who were studying at ondokuz mayıs university yaģar doğu faculty of sports sciences participated in the study. sport motivation scale and the flow state scale-2 and dispositional flow scale-2 were used. t-test was used for comparisons. while there was no significant difference between the subscale scores of motivational orientation by gender (p> 0.05), a significant difference was found between the amotivation subscale (p <0.05). there was no significant difference in motivational orientation subscales between athletes doing team sports and athletes doing individual sports (p> 0.05). no significant difference was found between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation states of student athletes according to gender differences (p> 0.05). no significant difference was found between all sub-dimensions of flow state according to gender, team and individual sports (p> 0.05). t conclusion: it can be said that motivation levels of sports educated students have an effect on flow states or flow states have an influence on motivation states. the studies that increase the flow states of the sports educated students can increase the motivation levels of the students, as well as studies that increase the motivation levels of the students can increase the flow states. studies should be conducted in different age groups and different groups to find out in which sub-dimensions flow states and motivation states differ or are similar. keywords: sports, flow state, motivation, self-consciousness, students, team sport, individual sport. citation | pelin akyol; osman ġmamoğlu (2019). the relationship between motivation and flow states in sports faculty students. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 440-446. history: received: 12 june 2019 revised: 16 july 2019 accepted: 21 august 2019 published: 1 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 441 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 441 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 442 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 444 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 445 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.440.446&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1033 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6849-2852 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1033 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6849-2852 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1033 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6849-2852 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1033 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6849-2852 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 440-446 441 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the relationship between motivation and flow states in sports faculty students. 1. introduction today, understanding the psychological factors that accompany successful performance in physical activity environments has a high priority. to understand the psychological processes that may contribute to the quality of performance, investigating the psychological structures associated with optimal performance has been the focus of researchers. flow is defined as the optimal psychological state that occurs when there is a balance between perceived difficulties and skills in an activity (csikszentmihalyi, 1990). while roberts et al. (2007) explained the motivational process through psychological structures such as directing, regulating and empowering the behaviour of success; hagger and chatzisarantis (2007) defined motivation as dominant, guiding and empowering behaviour process. according to moneta (2004a) flow state is the person's deep sense of task and cognitive competence, integration with the activity, and the inner pleasure felt in the activity involved. in another study about the definition of flow state, it was found that athletes defined flow state with concepts such as “autotelic experience, endless source of energy, wonderful feeling of the body, not feeling pain and feeling strong” (swann et al., 2012). there are several reasons why people continue their activities, and motivation is one of them. motive is defined as the force driving behaviour (aydın, 2010). motivation refers to aiming for obtaining or reaching any event, phenomenon or object. motivation and sport performance are concepts that can be used in many ways; in a way, they are equivalent concepts (balcıoğlu, 2003). motives, which form the basis of human behaviour, play a major role in sports as well as in all environments. while roberts et al. (2007) explained the motivational process through psychological structures such as directing, regulating and empowering the behaviour of success; hagger and chatzisarantis (2007) defined motivation as dominant, guiding and empowering behaviour process. there are two types of motivation in sport, intrinsic and extrinsic. intrinsic motivation derives from the athlete himself. athletes with a high level of intrinsic motivation are hungry for learning more knowledge and skills, being more successful, and getting more satisfaction. extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, comes from factors outside the athlete. these factors can be coaches, spectators, other people and external rewards (doğan, 2005). in contrast, extrinsically motivated individuals participate in an activity to achieve discernible results (lonsdale et al., 2008). in a study, the personality traits of the people doing sports were found to be better than those who did not do sports (koca et al., 2018). in another study, it was stated that the students who do sports have leadership qualities that can be accepted well (çetinkaya and ġmamoğlu, 2018). it has been found that sport has a positive effect on personality traits in various studies (yamak et al., 2016.; ġmamoğlu, 2017; ġmamoğlu and demirtaģ, 2017; sener, 2018). the fact that there are few studies investigating the concepts of optimal performance, mood and motivation together, which is thought to have a significant effect on sports performance, has led to conducting the present study. studies on flow state are of great importance since they are associated with concepts such as positive mood, skill development, exercise behaviour, performance enhancement, and life satisfaction (csikszentmihalyi, 1990; asakawa, 2004). for example, even the effect of colours has a positive effect on motivation (yamaner and ġmamoğlu, 2018). it is thought that analysing these concepts will contribute to the field of sport and exercise psychology in terms of enabling the organization of the program which athletes and coaches are subjected to in the assessment of the experience and performance they gain during competitions. in this regard, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between motivation and flow state in sports faculty students. 2. method 2.1. study group a total of 289 athletes, 151 males and 138 females with a mean age of 22.27-22.39 years, who were studying at ondokuz mayıs university yaģar doğu faculty of sport sciences participated in the study. individual and team athletes studying at the faculty of sport sciences of ondokuz mayıs university participated in the study voluntarily. 2.2. data collection tools 2.2.1. sport motivation scale sport motivation scale-sms is based on cognitive assessment theory and was developed by pelletier et al. (1992). the validity and reliability study of the scale for turkish athletes was conducted by kazak (2004). the scale consists of 28 items in which the judgments are made according to seven evaluation steps and includes seven subscales. the subscales of the scale are; 1) intrinsic motivation to know, 2) intrinsic motivation to accomplish, 3) intrinsic motivation to stimulation, 4) external regulation, 5) introjected regulation, 6) identified regulation and 7) amotivation. to know, to accomplish and stimulation subscales are about intrinsic motivation, while external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation are about extrinsic motivation (sanlı, 2015). the assessment is made by dividing the total score obtained from the relevant subscale by the number of items in the sub-scale. again, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation scores are obtained by dividing the total score obtained from the items in the sub-scales that constitute that dimension by the number of items (kazak, 2004). in the present study, cronbach alpha values were found as .88 in intrinsic motivation to know-to accomplish, .73 intrinsic motivation stimulation, .59 in introjected regulation, .78 in identified regulation, .84 in external regulation and .78 in amotivation. 2.2.2. the flow state scale-2 and dispositional flow scale-2 (jfss-2 and jdfs-2) optimal performance is a measure of the general state of mood on the individual participating in activity and it aims to evaluate the frequency of flow state experience in physical activity and participation in sports. the scale asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 440-446 442 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group was adapted to turkish by aģçı et al. (2007). the scale consists of 36 items and 9 subscales. these subscales are challenge/skill balance (items (1,10,19 and 28), action-awareness merging (items 2,11,20 and 29), clear goals (items 3,12,21and 30), unambiguous feedback (items 4,13,22 and 31), concentration on task (items 5,14,23 and 32), sense of control (items 6,15,24 and 33), loss of self-consciousness (items 7,16,25 and 34), time transformation (items 8,17,26 and 35) and autotelic experience (items 9,18,27 and 36). each item in the scale is answered on a 5-point likert scale ranging from “never (1)” to “always (5)”. 2.3. data analysis in the analysis of the data, 22.00 spss package program was used. the data obtained from the scale were calculated according to the scoring instructions. while evaluating the data, kolmogorov smirnov test was used to investigate compliance with the normal distribution and all the data were found to be normally distributed. independent t-test was used to evaluate the data. 3. findings table-1. age, height and body weights by gender. variable gender n average st. deviation t-test age (years) male 151 22,27 3,19 -0,21 female 138 22,39 1,42 height (cm) male 151 175,72 6,98 7,36** female 138 165,52 5,69 weight (kg) male 151 72,00 9,88 8,02** female 138 57,65 5,62 **p<0,001. while there was no significant difference between the ages of the male and female participants (p> 0.05), there was a significant difference between height and body weight variables (p <0.001). table-2. comparison of students’ subscale scores of motivational orientation by gender. motivational orientation in sport gender n average st. deviation ttest intrinsic motivation to know and to accomplish male 151 5,58 1,13 -0,91 female 138 5,80 1,00 intrinsic motivation stimulation male 151 5,78 1,09 -0,92 female 138 5,99 1,02 external regulation extrinsic motivation male 151 4,50 1,36 -1,39 female 138 4,91 1,37 introjected extrinsic motivation male 151 4,83 1,27 -0,63 female 138 4,91 1,07 identified extrinsic motivation male 151 5,61 1,13 -0,31 female 138 5,76 1,14 amotivation male 151 2,83 1,45 2,92* female 138 2,04 0,99 *p<0,05. while no significant difference was found in the comparison of female and male students’ subscale scores of motivational orientation (p> 0.05), significant difference was found between males and females in the amotivation subscale (p<0,05). table-3. comparison of subscale scores of motivational orientation by branch. motivational orientation in sport branch n average st. deviation ttest intrinsic motivation to know and to accomplish team sport 139 5,52 1,11 -1,23 individual sport 150 5,80 1,04 intrinsic motivation stimulation team sport 139 5,88 1,03 0,08 individual sport 150 5,86 1,09 external regulation extrinsic motivation team sport 139 4,67 1,35 -0,04 individual sport 150 4,68 1,40 introjected extrinsic motivation team sport 139 5,04 1,20 -0,52 individual sport 150 4,74 1,16 identified extrinsic motivation team sport 139 5,60 1,12 1,21 individual sport 150 5,73 1,15 amotivation team sport 139 2,62 1,32 0,80 individual sport 150 2,40 1,33 no significant difference was found between the athletes engaged in team and individual sports in the comparison of subscale scores of motivational orientation by branch (p>0.05). table-4. intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of student athletes according to gender differences. motivational orientation gender average st. deviation t-test intrinsic motivation sub-dimension male 5,65 1,04 -0,97 female 5,86 0,96 extrinsic motivation sub-dimension male 4,98 1,00 -0,98 female 5,20 1,04 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 440-446 443 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group no significant difference was found between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of student athletes according to gender differences (p>0. 05). table-5. comparison of flow state subscales according to gender. subscale gender n average st. deviation t-test challenge/skill balance male 151 16,29 2,29 -0,42 female 138 16,50 2,23 action-awareness merging male 151 14,90 2,84 -1,58 female 138 15,89 3,04 clear goals male 151 16,67 2,42 -1,56 female 138 17,47 2,39 unambiguous feedback male 151 16,63 2,64 -0,42 female 138 16,87 2,69 concentration on task male 151 16,73 2,51 -0,63 female 138 17,05 2,27 sense of control male 151 16,49 2,66 -1,48 female 138 17,26 2,11 loss of self-consciousness male 151 14,20 4,20 1,19 female 138 13,11 4,31 time transformation male 151 17,08 2,47 -1,00 female 138 17,63 2,68 autotelic experience male 151 17,49 2,41 0,03 female 138 17,47 1,81 no significant difference was found between male and female participants in all subscales in the comparison of flow state subscales according to gender (p>0.05). table-6. comparison of flow state scale sub-dimensions according to team and individual sports. scale sub-dimensions groups n average st. deviation t-test challenge/skill balance team sport 139 16,18 2,02 -0,74 individual sport 150 16,54 2,43 action-awareness merging team sport 139 15,26 2,51 -0,19 individual sport 150 15,38 3,28 clear goals team sport 139 16,90 2,35 -0,38 individual sport 150 17,10 2,51 unambiguous feedback team sport 139 16,90 2,30 0,52 individual sport 150 16,60 2,91 concentration on task team sport 139 16,92 2,26 0,20 individual sport 150 16,82 2,53 sense of control team sport 139 16,85 2,24 0,08 individual sport 150 16,80 2,63 loss of self-consciousness team sport 139 14,00 3,88 0,52 individual sport 150 13,52 4,55 time transformation team sport 139 16,95 2,50 -1,19 individual sport 150 17,60 2,60 autotelic experience team sport 139 17,69 2,10 0,80 individual sport 150 17,32 2,22 in the comparison of flow state scale sub-dimensions according to team and individual sports, no significant difference was found between all sub-dimensions among participants (p>0.05). table-7. correlation states of flow state and motivation subscales. variable intrinsic motivation to know and to accomplish intrinsic motivation stimulation external regulation extrinsic motivation introjected extrinsic motivation identified extrinsic motivation amotivation challenge/skill balance ,425** ,423** ,278** ,299** ,420** -,160 action-awareness merging ,384** ,428** ,323** ,303** ,238* -,218* clear goals ,454** ,437** ,393** ,372** ,278** -,214* unambiguous feedback ,473** ,466** ,383** ,421** ,302** -,167 concentration on task ,446** ,420** ,387** ,537** ,247* -,193 sense of control ,431** ,400** ,274** ,448** ,227* -,286** loss of selfconsciousness -,044 -,060 ,059 -,101 ,084 ,318** time transformation ,462** ,462** ,280** ,398** ,237* -,199 autotelic experience ,388** ,379** ,241* ,243* ,372** -,123 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 440-446 444 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between flow state and motivation subscales was statistically significant in some parameters (p<0.05 and p<0,001). the positive relationship between flow state self-awareness subscale and amotivation subscale is notable (p<0.001). 4. discussion and conclusion while ersöz et al. (2012) found no significant difference in motivational orientations of athletes by gender, they found statistically significant differences in terms of the variable of sport type. uzun et al. (2018) found a significant difference in intrinsic motivation to know and accomplish, introjected extrinsic motivation, identified extrinsic motivation, and amotivation sub-dimensions according to gender. unlike these studies, amorose and horn (2001) found that men's intrinsic motivation levels were higher than those of women. in the present study, while no significant difference was found in the comparison of the subscale scores of the motivational orientations of male and female students, significant difference was found between male and female students in amotivation subscale (p<0,05). a great number of researches have shown that athletes participate in sports with both intrinsic and extrinsic motives (baker, 1993). the findings of the studies showed that intrinsic motives such as entertainment and competition have a strong effect on the commitment and continuity to sports. on the other hand, extrinsic motives, such as body-related motives and rewards, have not been very effective in the commitment and continuity to sports. extrinsic factors have often been the starting factors for athletes' participation in sports (lonsdale et al., 2008). stavrou et al. (2007) did not find a statistically significant difference in terms of gender in flow states of athletes in their study conducted with athletes in individual sports branches. sanlı (2015) found the motivation subscale scores of 314 male students engaged in individual and team sports as between 13.02 and 35.95 in different subscales. the results of our study were 2.40-5.86 and they were slightly higher than the results of kelecek et al. (2010), erdem (2008). almagro et al. (2010) compared the motivational tendencies of footballers and basketball players and showed that basketball players behave more self-determined in sports environments than football players, and they have higher averages in intrinsic regulation to know and accomplish sub-dimension. factors such as being enthusiastic about the sport, personal competency perception, curiosity, research, knowing more, exploring new training techniques, learning new training techniques not tried before and exploring new methods while improving performance can cause to experience more motivation (kazak, 2004). this is thought to be the reason why our results are higher than the results of other studies. in addition, no significant difference was found between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation states of student athletes according to gender differences in our study. in their study they conducted on 251 university students between the ages of 19 and 35, ersöz and eklund (2016) examined behavioural regulation and flow state in exercise and found that flow state did not differ in terms of gender. similarly, in another study (erkmen et al., 2010) evaluated individuals who had exercised over six months according to body perception and gender. as a result of the study, it was shown that flow state did not differ according to gender. similar studies support these results (russell, 2001; koehn, 2007; murcia et al., 2008; altıntaģ et al., 2010). these results support our research findings. as a reason for the absence of a gender difference in the findings obtained from our study, it can be said that male and female students who exercise are similar in their perception of achieving the exercise, both groups get inner pleasure, they do the movements without thinking and they are involved in the exercise at a similar level. kaya et al. (2015) did not find a significant difference according to gender in the remaining eight sub-dimensions except the experience of achieving the goal. while ersöz (2011) 's study on undergraduate and graduate participants aged 17-30 years did not show a significant difference in the sub-dimensions of loss of self-consciousness and time transformation in terms of the variable of gender, a statistically significant difference was found in all other sub-dimensions. the averages of the male participants in these subscales were higher than the female participants. similar results were not found in the sub-dimension averages in our study. ġlhan (2017) examined the flow state of university students according to the type of exercise and did not find statistically significant difference in flow state levels according to exercise type. in a study by russell (2001) with the participation of 42 athletes, it was concluded that flow state did not show a significant difference according to sport type. russell (2001) found that the scores of the action-awareness merging sub-dimension of athletes who did only team sports were higher than those of the athletes who did individual sports. in another study, it was concluded that team athletes with high competitive level experienced more flow state than team athletes with low competitive level (ede, 2010). in their study on volunteering participants in different exercise programs, altıntaģ et al. (2010) found a significant difference in loss of self-consciousness sub-dimension of flow state according to exercise type. they found that the scores of the participants who participated in the individual exercise program were higher than those of the participants who participated in group exercises. no differences were found in other sub-dimensions of flow state according to the type of exercise. while the results of the flow state scale in this study contradicted our findings, the other sub-dimensions of the scale support our research findings. when the reasons for different results were considered, it was thought that the research findings might be due to sample differences. it can be said that the reason for the lack of difference in flow states of the students doing exercise is that the students doing both individual and group exercises are involved in the activities in which they see themselves successful and which they do according to their own wishes. in addition, the fact that choice of exercise type in the two groups was their own preferences may be the reason for lack of difference in flow states because it increases intrinsic motivation in individuals. in their study they conducted to analyse the association between elite athletes’ flow state levels and their state motivation levels, altıntaģ et al. (2013) stated that with increasing levels of intrinsic motivation and identification of athletes, flow states increased as well. in other words, the positive relationship of flow state with intrinsic motivation has been demonstrated in many studies (kowal and fortier, 2000; fournier et al., 2007; murcia et al., 2008). in many studies, it has been found that intrinsic motivation is the determinant of flow state (kowal and fortier, 2000; moneta, 2004b; murcia et al., 2008). on the other hand, a statistically significant negative correlation was found between flow state and extrinsic motivation and amotivation. to put it more clearly, it has been shown that the increase in the extrinsic motivation and amotivation levels of athletes decreases the flow state. parallel to asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 440-446 445 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group this result, kowal and fortier (2000) found a negative relationship between extrinsic motivation and flow state. neither intrinsic nor extrinsic motivation of individuals is negatively correlated with flow state as well as sports performance. individuals who participate in sports against their will may not enjoy the activity they perform and also they may not provide cognitive competence and control over the task. for this reason, it is possible to state that the flow states of athletes who cannot be motivated or who have extrinsic motivation may be low. while similar results were obtained in our study, a statistically significant negative correlation was found in amotivation and subscales of flow state. the relationship between flow state and motivation subscales was statistically significant in some parameters. the positive relationship between flow state loss of self-consciousness subscale and amotivation subscale is notable (p<0,001). 4.1. suggestions in conclusion, we can say that motivation levels of sports educated students have an effect on flow states or flow 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o. ġmamoğlu and m. cebi, 2016. the effects of the physical fitness levels of adolescents on body image, self-concept and stress levels. the journal of academic social science, 4(34): 191-201. yamaner, f. and g. ġmamoğlu, 2018. sport performance colors power and effect. turkish studies, 13(15): 509-520. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 210 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 210-215, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.210.215 examination of body composition, flexibility, balance, and concentration related to dance exercise gulsum bastug1 1mugla sitki kocman university, faculty of sports sciences, turkey abstract in this study was to examine the body composition, flexibility, balance and concentration characteristics of dance exercise. total of 268 university students whose average age was 20.59 ±1.59 years were included. height measurements, body weight measurements, flexibility measurements, balance test, concentration test of the students who had dance courses (the experimental group) and those who did not have dance courses (the control group) were provided twice, at the beginning of and at the end of the study as pre-test and post-test. frequency analyses, descriptive statistics, and paired t-test were used. there were significant differences between pre-test and post-test scores of body weight, bmi, flexibility, balance, concentration among the students doing dance exercises (the experimental group). there were no significant differences between pre-test and post-test scores of body weight, bmi, concentration among the students not doing dance exercises (the control group) but there were significant differences in flexibility and balance scores. keywords: dance, body composition, flexibility, balance, concentration. citation | gulsum bastug (2018). examination of body composition, flexibility, balance, and concentration related to dance exercise. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 210215. history: received: 8 may 2018 revised: 31 may 2018 accepted: 4 june 2018 published: 8 june 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 211 2. methods ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 211 3. measurements ................................................................................................................................................................................. 211 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 212 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 213 6. recommendations for future research ..................................................................................................................................... 214 7. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 214 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 214 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.210.215&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-2042 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-2042 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 210-215 211 1. introduction dance, being a special expression of human beings’ motor behaviors (hugel et al., 1999) is the art of reflecting inner world to outside, self-explanation and self-expression through movements (cantekin, 2011). dance, containing sports, science, and art in itselfis the expression of a feeling presented with a moving body through a physiological process (esen, 2012). thanks to dance, individuals have the opportunity to do more exercise (lin, 2005). to support individuals emotionally, mentally, socially and physically and to understand the correlation between body and mind; the psycho-therapeutic dimension of movements should be used (strassel et al., 2011). in addition to the use of dance as a tool that will help individuals explain themselves; benefits of dance in the human body as a sportive tool have been investigated by many studies (adame et al., 1991; hui et al., 2009). dance, a multidimensional experience, involving emotional, physical, spiritual and social elements (murciaa et al., 2010) can raise perceived levels of physical and mental well-being and social contact (kierr, 2011) including among those diagnosed with depression and anxiety (payne and stott, 2010). dance has such physical restrictions as muscle mass, joint structure, size, weight, flexibility and place (stevens et al., 2000). being the most aesthetic and rhythmic way of movement, dance is a technical and complex activity that contains exercises that strengthen the skeletonmuscle system as well as improves coordination by enabling the body to move freely in space/time. thanks to images used, dance brings a new dimension to body awareness and improves imagination (temel and temel, 2016). in sport psychology, concentration or the ability to focus mental effort on the task at hand while ignoring distractions (schmid and peper, 1998) is defined as one’s willing mental effort for the most important thing at that moment (moran, 2004). concentration in sports and exercise is composed of four parts: concentration on environmental clues (selective attention), attaining concentration focus during that moment, being aware of the situation and performance errors and changing concentration focus when necessary. concentration is the ability to focus on relevant environmental clues. when the environment changes quickly, concentration focus should be quickly changed, too. reflecting on the past or the future creates irrelevant clues; which leads to performance errors (weinberg and gould, 2015). in concentration, the person continues focusing until movement progress ends (jackson et al., 2001). flexibility is one of the basic motoric features and means performing movements in the widest scale and in the freest way (dündar, 2012; zorba and saygin, 2013). balance is a reflex realized by central nervous system and means fulfilling the tasks by the organism’s movement system in static and dynamic harmony. the system that provides balance determines the place, position and direction of the body in space and decides whether or not body should be moving or standing firm (horak and macpherson, 2011). balance is the ability to keep and to maintain the center of gravity within balance points (deliagina et al., 2007). thanks to dance; people can have a fit and aesthetic posture and attain balance, personal discipline, concentration, flexibility, endurance, speed and strength (gökce, 2006). the essential physical qualifications for the dance are strength, flexibility, special endurance, balance, and body coordination (hugel et al., 1999). dancing could be seen as a medium for increasing leisure-time physical and social activity. a great body of literature reveals the importance of engaging in regular physical exercise for the prevention of several chronic diseases as well as for improving psychological wellbeing and overall quality of life (warburton et al., 2006; haskell et al., 2007). adılogulları (2014) found that dance training reduces social physique anxiety. because dancing provides individuals opportunity to share emotions, express themselves without any word, socialize, people may find the chance to move away from anxiety and stress of everyday life while dancing. dance is considered as a sport due to its movement-related skills and motor skills and as art due to visual and aesthetic aspects, is a practical activity that combines different disciplines. today, positive physiological and psychological effects of dancing upon the human body and its contributions to motor growth have been investigated through scientific methods. dance is thought to be important because unlike sportive activities, freedom of movement is offered by dancing to those who move away from physical activities and perform passive activities due to the effects of advanced technology and because their physical and psychological well-being is protected. in light of that background, the current study aimed at assessing body composition, flexibility, balance and concentration values among dancing individuals. 2. methods participants and procedures a total of 268 university students whose average age is 20.59±1.59 years were recruited for the study (175 male students vs. 93 female students). in the study, university students received 3hour latin dance courses (salsa, bachata) once a week for 12 weeks. the university students in the control group did not receive any dance courses. height measurements, body weight measurements, flexibility measurements, balance test, concentration test of the students who had dance courses (the experimental group) and those who did not have dance courses (the control group) were provided twice at the beginning of and at the end of the study as pre-test and post-test. in order to determine concentration characteristics of the subjects, “letter cancellation task” developed by kumar and telles (2009) was employed. dances based on our research are salsa, zumba, modern dance. the most common dance of latin american dances is salsa. salsa, a freestyle dance, is a type of dance that is improvised without adhering to routine movements (craine and mackrell, 2000). zumba is a dance which combines aerobic with music, figures of oriental and latin (merengue, salsa, bachata, reggaeton) dances (micallef, 2014). modern dance does not have specific special terms because it is shaped according to the personal creativity, the characteristics of the dancer and the creator's desire. in general, knowing dance terms is sufficient for modern dance (cantekin, 2011). the experimental group was applied 30-70 min dance exercises (salsa, zumba, modern dance) for one day in a week throughout 14 weeks. 3. measurements body weight and height: the weight was measured by an electronic balance with 0.1kg sensitivity while the height was measured via digital height meter device with 0.01cm sensitivity. body composition: to determine body composition, body mass index (bmi) was calculated via weight/height2 (kg/m2) formula (who, 2012). balance (flamingo balance test-fdt): in order to explore the static balance of the participants, flamingo asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 210-215 212 balance test was used. the reliability coefficient of static balance was 0.87 (johnson et al., 1987). according to the test, the study group stood on a stabilometry platform of 50 cm in length, 4 cm. in height and 3 cm. in width with the dominant/preferred foot and tried to achieve their balance. other free leg was bent backward from knee, pulled up to hips and gripped with the hand on the same side and time started when the participants achieved his/her balance on one foot and tried to keep his/her balance for one minute. when the balance was lost (giving up gripping the foot, falling off the platform, touching any part of the body, etc.), time was stopped. when the participant achieved his/her balance on the platform again, time was resumed. the test continued for one minute. when time was up, the number of the balance lost was counted, and the number was written down as participants’ balance score at the end of the test. flexibility: sit-reach test measures first knee hamstrings and second flexibility of lower back, hip, and calves. specifically, it measures biceps, femur, semi tendons, semi membranes, erector spinae, gluteus maximus, medius and gastrocnemius muscles, tendons. sit-reach test flexibility box was of 35 cm length, 45 cm width, 32 cm height and upper part of the box was 55 cm length, 45 cm widths. the upper part protruded 15 cm outward and was marked between 0 and 50 cm on the top. the participant placed the bottom of the foot against the side of the box without bending knees, stretched hands as far as possible, flexed his/body without bending knees and pushed the 30 cm ruler on the box as far as possible and stopped for a few seconds at the furthest point on the box. the test was twice repeated, and the best result was recorded as the flexibility result of the test (zorba and saygin, 2013). concentration: letter cancellation task as used by kumar and telles (2009) was used to measure the level of concentration in participants. the task consisted of a block of randomly placed letters in 14 columns and 22 rows with six assigned letters listed at the top of the page which participants were required to cancel within the block in 90 seconds. scores of concentration on the letter cancellation task were calculated by counting the number of correctly canceled letters within the grid. this score represented the speed and accuracy of the participants’ completion, and therefore their concentration level (kumar and telles, 2009). data process and analysis collected data were processed with spss 22.0 program. for the analyses of the data; frequency analyses, descriptive statistics, and the paired t-test was used. 4. results average age, height, body weight, bmi, flexibility, balance and concentration values of the students who took dance courses (the experimental group) and those who did not (the control group) were shown in table 1. it was found that the participants’ average age was 20.59 ± 1.59 years, average height was 1.70 ± 0.08 cm., average body weight was 67.2 ± 11.3 in the pre-test and 67.5 ± 11.2 kg in the post-test, average bmi was 23.1 ± 2.9 in the pretest and 23.2 ± 2.9 in the post-test, average flexibility was 22.09 ± 11.5 cm. in the pre-test and 24.4 ± 10.4 cm. in post-test, average balance score was 4.1 ± 3.8 in the pre-test, and 2.6 ± 2.8 in the post-test and average concentration score was 43.3 ± 11.1 in the pre-test and 48.6 ± 12.3 in the post-test. table-1. the participant students of the experimental and the control groups in terms of pre-test and post-test results variables experimental control group min. max. m sd median age (years) 17 31 20.59 1.94 20 height (cm) 1.50 1.97 1.70 0.08 1.70 body weight (kg) pre-test 42 99 67.2 11.3 68 post-test 42 99 67.5 11.2 68 bmi (kg / cm2) pre-test 16.8 31.1 23.1 2.9 22.8 post-test 17.2 31.2 23.2 2.9 22.8 flexibility (cm) pre-test 4 58 22.09 11.5 19 post-test 3 57 24.04 10.4 23 balance (number of fault) pre-test 0 26 4.1 3.8 3 post-test 0 18 2.6 2.8 2 concentration pre-test 10 70 43.3 11.1 44 post-test 14 75 48.6 12.3 49 m: mean; sd: standard deviation; min.: minimum; max.: maximum table-2. comparison of pre-test and post-test results related to body weight, bmi, flexibility, balance, and concentration among the students who did dance exercises (the experimental group) and those who did not (the control group) variables groups n m sd t p body weight experimental group pre-test 129 68.46 11.41 -2.68 0.01** post-test 129 68.82 11.21 control group pre-test 139 66.11 11.11 -1.26 0.21 post-test 139 66.32 11.15 bmi (kg/cm2 experimental group pre-test 129 23.3 2.75 -2.90 0.004** post-test 129 23.5 2.76 control group pre-test 139 22.8 3.03 -1.26 0.21 post-test 139 22.9 3.06 flexibility (cm) experimental group pre-test 129 25.07 12.23 -2.25 0.03* post-test 129 27.10 10.96 control group pre-test 139 19.32 10.19 -2.69 0.01** post-test 139 21.21 9.07 balance (number of fault) experimental group pre-test 129 4.21 3.49 9.94 0.000*** post-test 129 1.67 0.16 control group pre-test 139 4.12 4.13 2.27 0.03* post-test 139 3.47 3.36 concentration experimental group pre-test 129 42.16 11.46 11.63 0.000*** post-test 129 52.89 11.63 control group pre-test 139 44.41 10.76 -0.46 0.65 post-test 139 44.74 11.72 *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 210-215 213 as seen in table 2, it was identified that there was a significant difference among the students who did dance exercises (the experimental group) regarding pre-test and post-test values concerning body weight, bmi, flexibility, balance, and concentration (p<0.05). average body weight was 68.46 ± 11.41 kg in the pre-test and 68.82 ± 11.21 kg in the post-test, average bmi was 23.3 ± 2.75 in the pre-test and 23.5 ± 2.76 in the post-test, average flexibility was 25.07 ± 12.23 cm in the pre-test and 27.10 ± 10.96 cm in the post-test, average balance score was 4.21 ± 3.49 in the pre-test, and 1.67 ± 1.82 in the post-test and average concentration score was 42.16 ± 11.46 in the pre-test and 52.89 ± 11.63 in the post-test. it was found that body weight and bmi pre-test and posttest values of the students who did dance exercises were similar while their flexibility, balance and concentration pre-test and post-test values improved. as for the students who did not do dance exercises (the control group); no significant difference was seen regarding pre-test and post-test body concerning weight, bmi and concentration values (p>0.05); however, their flexibility and balance scores differed considerably (p<0.05). it was identified that average body weight was 66.11 ± 11.11 in the pre-test and 66.32 ± 11.15 in the post-test, average bmi was 22.8 ± 3.03 in the pre-test and 22.9±3.06 in the post-test, average concentration score was 44.41 ± 10.76 in the pre-test and 44.74±11.72 in the post-test. when the significant difference in flexibility and balance values of the students who did not do dance exercises was examined; it was seen that the average flexibility and average balance scores decreased with an average flexibility score being 19.32 ± 10.19 in the pre-test and 9.07 ± 0.76 in the post-test and average balance score being 4.12 ± 4.13 in the pre-test and 3.47 ± 3.36 in the post-test (table 2). 5. discussion in the study of body composition, flexibility, balance, and concentration related to dance exercise; average age, height, body weight, bmi, flexibility, balance and concentration values of the participant students of the experimental and control groups were presented. it was noted that the participants’ average age was (20.59 ± 1.59) years, average height was (1.70 ± 0.08 cm.), average body weight was (67.2 ± 11.3) in the pre-test and (67.5 ± 11.2) in the post-test, average bmi was (23.1 ± 2.9) in the pre-test and (23.2 ± 2.9). in the post-test, average flexibility was (22.09 ± 11.5) cm. in the pre-test and (24.4 ± 10.4) cm. in post-test, average balance score was (4.1 ± 3.8) in the pre-test and (2.6 ± 2.8) in the post-test and average concentration score was (43.3 ± 11.1) in the pretest and (48.6 ± 12.3) in the post-test (table 1). dance development can be multidimensional among individuals and brings about positive improvements when individuals dance as a sportive activity or physical activity. numerous studies emphasize physiological and psychological benefits of dancing (hackney and earhart, 2010; hanna, 2010; huddy and stevens, 2011; zitomer and reid, 2011). it was found that hopelessness levels of the university students who danced decreased (bastug and demir, 2010). minton (2003) reported that students who received dancing classes had more abstract and creative thinking skills compared to those who did not receive dancing courses. fonseca et al. (2014) observed that ballroom dancing brought perceptual benefits for those who practiced it. krampe (2013) found that dance-based therapy was mildly or moderately effective in several components of balance and mobility. it was identified that motivation, self-confidence, body language, dancing related self-sufficiency and dance performances improved positively (tokinan and bilen, 2011). in a study on concentration, it was observed that concentration levels and feeling-states improved significantly over sessions of both yoga and aerobic exercise sessions equally. aerobic exercise and yoga both produce positive changes in concentration, stress, energy, and well-being while only yoga produces improvements in mood and self-satisfaction (dolde, 2011). dancing, playing games, painting, and singing by the children support growth as well as play a key role in brain’s learning skills and improve all of the senses (bradley et al., 2013). it was identified that university students who participated in dancing activities had positive perceptions about social, physical anxiety levels and higher satisfaction with body image (cepikkurt and coşkun, 2010). akandere et al. (2010) found that the problemsolving skills of the subjects participated in research differed at the beginning and the end of dance exercise. it was detected that there was a significant difference between pre-test and post-test values of the students who did dancing exercises (the experimental group) and those who did not regarding body weight, bmi, flexibility, balance and concentration scores. the average values were as follows: pre-test body weight (68.46 ± 11.41 kg) and post-test body weight (68.82 ± 11.21 kg), pre-test bmi (23.3 ± 2.75) and post-test bmi (23.5 ± 2.76) , pre-test flexibility (25.07±12.23) and post-test flexibility (27.10 ± 10.96), pre-test balance (4.21 ± 3.49) and post-test balance (1.67 ± 1.82), pre-test concentration (42.16 ± 11.46) and post-test concentration (52.89 ± 11.63). among the students who did dancing exercises, body weight and bmi pre-test and post-test values were similar to each other, but their flexibility, balance and concentration pre-test and post-test values improved. as for the students who did not do dancing exercises (the control group); there was not a significant difference between pretest and post-test values in terms of body weight, bmi, and concentration. however, their flexibility and balance values were different. the average values were as follows: pre-test body weight (66.11 ± 11.11) and post-test body weight (66.32 ± 11.15), pre-test bmi (22.8 ± 3.03) and post-test bmi (22.9 ± 3.06), pre-test concentration (44.41 ± 10.76) and post-test concentration (44.74 ± 11.72). when the significance in flexibility and balance values of the students who did not do dancing exercises was examined, it was observed that there were decreases from (19.32±10.19) (pre-test) to (9.07±0.76) (post-test) in flexibility and from (4.12 ± 4.13) (pre-test) to (3.47 ± 3.36) (post-test) in balance (table 2). in the study of gardner et al. (2009) it was pointed out that dance encourages physical activity and contributes to wish to live healthily to a great extent. results obtained with the sit-reach test in the stretching exercise showed an increase in flexibility values (nelson et al., 2005). the results of present investigation demonstrated that international level dance sport dancers of different styles have relatively high aerobic capacity values compared to the other dance styles (ballet, modern dance, flamenco and folk dance) and the aerobic capacity values of the three dance styles are rather similar. no significant relationship was found in the current study between the international ranking and aerobic capacity values (liiv et al., 2014). in a study of dance and imagery, it has been determined that imagination develops the technical skill (muir and munroe-chandler, 2017). in dance courses, participants did turning, crawling, rolling, swinging, tumbling, stretching and jumping as exercises. in the study, it was seen that students who joined dance exercises demonstrated a higher level of concentration (spielmann, 2013). it was remarked that dance, based on movements, increased individuals’ quality asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 210-215 214 of life and physical activities produced positive effects upon learning skills (demirel and temel, 2016). bastug et al. (2016) found that an apparent difference was found between body weight and bmi pre-test and post-test values of women who were applied mixed exercise program (cross fit, pilates, zumba). a decrease was observed in both body weight and average means of bmi of women. a significant difference was not found between body weight, bmi and body areas satisfaction pre-test and post-test values of women in control group. it was concluded that cross fit, pilates, zumba exercises affected body weight, bmi, and content with body areas positively. dancing has potentially positive benefits on well-being in several aspects. in particular, beneficial effects were found related to the emotional dimension, as well as physical, social and spiritual dimensions. also, the positive benefits were also linked to self-esteem and coping strategies (murciaa et al., 2010). babayigit et al. (2014) indicate that weight loss program with a step dance and aerobic dance are as useful tools as the other sports which enable to decrease body fat percentage, in improving weight for university students. the zumba fitness program was designed to improve the cardiovascular risk factors of the zumba fitness program for overweight non-exercise women in the study of health benefits (domene et al., 2016). 6. recommendations for future research it is expected that the results of these studies will contribute to the work done in the field of dance. dance instructors and students are recommended to perform flexibility, balance, concentration studies. it is also suggested to examine the attention and mental endurance characteristics of dance exercises. 7. conclusions in conclusion, the body composition, flexibility, balance and concentration characteristics of dance exercise were examined. an apparent difference was found between pre-test and post-test values among students who did dancing exercises (the experimental group) in terms of body weight, bmi, flexibility, balance, and concentration. body weight and bmi pre-test-post-test average values were similar to each other among the students who did dancing exercises, and their flexibility, balance, and concentration pre-test-post-test average values improved positively. as for the students who did not dancing exercises (the control group), no significant difference was found between pre-test and post-test values regarding body weight, bmi and concentration values but their flexibility and balance values differed significantly. when the apparent difference of flexibility and balance values among students who did not do dancing exercises was investigated, it was remarkable that there was a decrease between pre-test and post-test average values. balance and flexibility values of the students who did not do dancing exercises reduced; which indicated that balance and flexibility negatively changed. as proved by the 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of the article. physical%20activity%20and%20public%20health:%20updated%20recommendation%20for%20adults%20from%20the%20american%20college%20of%20sports%20medicine%20and%20the%20american%20heart%20associationhttps:/scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q= http://dx.doi.org/10.1249/mss.0b013e3180616aa2 http://www.comprehensivephysiology.com/wileycda/compphysarticle/refid-cp120107.html https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20teaching%20artist:%20a%20model%20for%20university%20dance%20teacher%20training http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2011.579596 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=postural%20control%20of%20ballet%20dancers:%20a%20specific%20use%20of%20visual%20input%20for%20artistic%20purposes http://dx.doi.org/10.1055/s-1999-970270 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=effects%20of%20dance%20on%20physical%20and%20psychological%20well-being%20in%20older%20persons http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.archger.2008.08.006 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=relationships%20between%20flow,%20self-concept,%20psychological%20skills,%20and%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/104132001753149865 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=exploring%20the%20effects%20of%20dance-based%20therapy%20on%20balance%20and%20mobility%20in%20older%20adults http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0193945911423266 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=meditative%20states%20based%20on%20yoga%20texts%20and%20their%20effects%20on%20performance%20of%20a%20letter-cancellation%20task http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms.109.3.679-689 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=physiological%20characteristics%20of%20elite%20dancers%20of%20different%20dance%20styles http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2012.711861 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20effectiveness%20of%20an%208-week%20zumba%20programme%20for%20weight%20reduction%20in%20a%20group%20of%20maltese%20overweight%20and%20obese%20women 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=health%20benefits%20of%20physical%20activity:%20the%20evidence http://dx.doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.051351 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=to%20be%20or%20not%20to%20be-able%20to%20dance:%20integrated%20dance%20and%20children’s%20perceptions%20of%20dance%20ability%20and%20disability http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2011.575224 asian journal of education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 2, no. 2, 84-87, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 84 improvement of vocational education curriculum implementation through instructional materials production and utilization in upper basic education in nigeria titus m. owoh1 1 department of technology and vocational education, enugu state university of science and technology, enugu (esut) abstract this article describes the development of curriculum as it relates to vocational education in nigeria upper basic education curriculum. the definition of curriculum development was highlighted to reflect contemporary concepts of curriculum integration. curriculum development was stressed to include the rudiments necessary in its stages of development. instructional materials production and utilization in broad terms of audio-visual aids were also treated. the work however drew up the role and relevant position of evaluation in curriculum development. the paper concluded with the need to have the development, production and utilization of instructional materials as a communication channel in the teaching-learning processes of vocational education. keywords: improvement, curriculum, instructional materials, upper basic education, vocational education, utilization, implementation, developing, production, evaluation. contents 1. introduction ........................................................................................................................................................... 85 2. developing curriculum materials ....................................................................................................................... 85 3. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 87 references .................................................................................................................................................................. 87 citation | titus m. owoh (2016). improvement of vocational education curriculum implementation through instructional materials production and utilization in upper basic education in nigeria. asian journal of education and training, 2(2): 84-87. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.84.87 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 28 september 2016/ revised: 28 november 2016/ accepted: 3 december 2016/ published: 7 december 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.84.87 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=titus m. owoh http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.84.87 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.84.87 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=titus m. owoh http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.84.87 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.84.87 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=titus m. owoh http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.84.87 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 84-87 85 1. introduction education is an organized system of learning. the purpose of learning is to change human behaviours through the impartation of new ideas, knowledge, and values. this does not only change the behaviour of learners but also helps to develop the culture of the people. formal education is the form of education that is organized under the direction of the school. this implies that organized modes of learning experiences are made available. it runs from primary to university level. however, the learning experiences are harnessed to cope with the need of the immediate society, whatever your cadre-university teacher, student, supervisor, parent or someone else concerned about better schooling, you should have interest in what school teaches and the methods used, curriculum is a vital dynamic complex interaction of people and things in a freewheeling setting. it includes: questions to debate, forces to rationalize, goals to illuminate, programmes to activate and outcomes to evaluate (aguka and ezeh, 2009). most recently, curriculum integration, as stated by onyia (2000) involves the formation of linkages between subject or knowledge areas and means of which single subjects are brought together under a common category. in line with the above (eneh, 2010) stated that integrated curriculum subjects such as basic technology, business studies, home economics and practical agriculture are broad studies. the curriculum for upper basic education is designed to achieve both technology and economic advancement in nigeria. there are four programme areas of pre-vocational education and each of them treated as an integrated basis at the upper basic education curriculum which was mentioned to include basic technology, business studies, home economics and agriculture. opportunity is given to senior secondary school students to concentrate on three of the programme areas earlier mentioned in the first year and then narrowed down to two in the last two years. this is intended to allow students to have a more in-depth study and preparation for the world of work or further study at the higher institution of learning. vocational and pre-vocational education courses at the upper basic education curriculum and senior secondary school curriculum have been structured in the aspects of technical knowledge to include; pr-vocational subjects as basic technology, elements of metalwork, woodwork, electrical/electronics, auto mechanic, local craft and computer education (frn, 2013) etc. at the senior secondary school, a comprehensive core-curriculum is designed to broaden students’ knowledge and outlook. they are expected to specialize in one or two of vocational courses in addition to core or pure academic subject. vocational education curriculum consists of four components for each trade. these include: (i) general education (ii) theory related course (iii) workshop practice (iv) industrial training/production. 2. developing curriculum materials vocational education is a huge investment venture. series of past governments tended to recognize it but could not make sure that square pegs were placed in square holes. there are two ways about vocational education other than having a wellequipped workshop, classrooms and demonstration laboratories filled with instructional materials for teaching and learning vocational education. the era of emphasis on teaching rather than learning is over. the new vocational education is geared toward the use of modern pedagogy in the teaching-learning process to achieve its objectives. although vocational and technical education represents the largest simple national expenditure, many economists and policy-makers seem to believe that it cannot be funded. it is doubtful if society can any longer afford the high cost and low productivity associated with vocational and technical education instruction. in order to prepare itself for the new role, vocational and technical education requires a new conceptual framework against which decisions involving change and innovation can be made. according to nebo (2009) this decade has witnessed profound changes and there has been an increasing concern within and emphasis upon the achievement of vocational education objectives. teaching methods are now being more effectively exploited, so as to improve the overall quality of the learning experiences. the moment curriculum content had been established through the various approaches such as introspection and datum function; critical plans must be put in place to secure relevant materials that will enhance the achievement of the formulated instructional objectives. the development of curriculum must witness some inherent factors, which improve the quality of a developed curriculum. some of those inherent factors are time availability, financial resources available, decisions regarding materials development and audience for which the materials were developed. the curriculum material development must follow a systematic and logical process even where it involves an individual or team approach. aneke and chime (2014) recommended the following stages involved in curriculum development: preparation of a preliminary developed plan determine curriculum content to be investigated determine terminal or enabling objectives identify special curriculum materials needed review literature to determine what materials are available identify materials lack in the content area establish priorities for needed materials finalize the development plan obtain relevant references and sources conduct an intensive literature review prepare a first draft of the materials edit the first draft asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 84-87 86 prepare a second draft pilot test the second draft prepare a third draft field test the second draft prepare the final draft duplicate the materials. implementation the stages spelt out above are carefully harnessed to achieve a well-developed curriculum. the achievement of a well-developed curriculum is a far-reaching means of accomplishing a programme, which is aimed at having a well designed vocational and technical education where all its graduands are gainfully employed. the development of curriculum must recognize the audience to whom the curriculum will serve. firstly, we must consider the vocational educators (which involve teachers and students of vocational education), secondly, those individuals who are in vocational and technical education industry but stand to gain meaningfully from the developed curriculum. the development of curriculum materials must take cognizance of a conscious effort to update the materials as appropriate. its content decision involves the actual condition for determining a curriculum, which is used for bridging the gap between identification of potential content and development of objectives. it also helps in understanding a task. 2.1. instructional materials production and utilization curriculum materials are tangible resources aimed at and used by the teachers and/or students in a teaching/learning process in bringing about a desirable change in behaviour of the individual. according to agu and onoh (2011). instructional materials refer to the various information carriers employed in instruction. television, radio, teaching machines, textbooks, computer, models and picture are some of them. the instructional media presupposes that other means of instruction can exist beside the teacher and that the students can learn without the teacher if he has access to media capable of presenting viable information. emphasis is on the use of instructional materials, which help the teacher to explore his environment and prepare to a great extent, facilities that improve the learner's’ ability to understand a particular concept in his/her environment. the choice of instructional material has been the sole responsibility of the teacher in a classroom communication and must therefore be aware of impediments to learning. the teacher may through improper selection of materials create more problems than he may be trying to solve. such barrier may include physical discomfort, daydreaming, referent confusion, imperceptions, disinterest and verbalism. it is imperative therefore, that since classroom setting in most educational institutions, is teaching-centered, the primary responsibility for selecting an appropriate instructional materials rests on the teacher. however, the production of instructional materials could be done by the teacher using his/her own materials, which he may produce alone or as a group. the teacher, who should be familiar with materials and facilities needed to produce an effective instructional gadget, must have some elements of production idea and selection criterion outside the practical techniques. apart from the specific practical techniques for the production of various instructional materials, the following general guidelines can be followed: selection of specific instructional objectives identify the characteristics of the learners select the content select the media/instructional materials determine the cost design and develop the materials produce the materials test the materials for effectiveness. the above guidelines when properly harnessed aimed at producing adequate instructional materials for effective teaching-learning process. the use of instructional materials otherwise referred to as “audio-visuals, is becoming important in vocational education classrooms and workshops. audio-visuals, such as radio, record player, tape recorder, projectors, picture, diagrams and graphic representation are standard aids to learning. they are often simple to use and above all clear and impressive in their presentations. ugwu (2014) stated the fact that, there exists a special mode of learning through imitation, observation and interaction of the learner and instructional materials placed in the learning environment especially to acquire technical skills in vocational education. the concrete recognition of the use of audio-visual as instructional materials gave birth to work visits otherwise referred to as student industrial work experience scheme (siwes). this programme was carefully designed to accomplish instructional materials utilization through concrete and physical interaction of students and equipment where the later serve as instructional materials. students normally spend six months in industries in order to achieve this aim. 2.2. curriculum evaluation process in vocational education evaluation serves as a means of assessing the outcome or output quality of any developed curriculum. aneke and chime (2014) stated that evaluation as the determination of the worth of a curriculum (or portion of that curriculum) includes gathering information for use in judging the worth of the curriculum, programme and curriculum materials. there are two aspects of planning for evaluation and its objectives; these are curriculum materials evaluation and effective use of evaluation results for effective curriculum improvement. in framing the work of evaluation curriculum, the underpinning principles are hardly realized. therefore, for curriculum evaluation to be appropriate, it must be subjected to adequate systematic evaluation. a systematic evaluation is that form of evaluation that asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 84-87 87 considers the achievement of aims or goals and objective from time to time. systematic evaluation has four major elements, these are: context, input, process and product evaluation. context evaluation is associated with decision about whether or not the curriculum should be offered and what goals and objectives should be used. input evaluation deals with the resources and strategic decision making. process evaluation focuses on how the curriculum actually helps the students. this appears most appropriate when the immediate effect of instructions is being examined, product evaluation examines the detail effectiveness of curriculum implementation on those students who have benefited from the curriculum. the end product of any curriculum is the graduates, and this product as well as those in schools, his or her counterpart who do not graduate needs to be examined. this helps to achieve realistic statement on the worth of the curriculum. 3. conclusion the detail achievement of the goals of a well-designed curriculum is the attainment of its objective. onuh (1975) tells us of an old philosophical question posed by the mystics of many religions, such as the zen buddhists, the sufis of islam and the rabbis of the talmud which asks: “is there a sound in the forest if a tree crashes down and no one is there to hear it?” according to him, the mystics of old always answered; “no” because they knew that there is no sound unless someone perceives it. sound, therefore, is communication. nebo (2009) ascertained that it is the receiver who communicates. the person who emits the communication does not communicate. he or she utters. unless there is someone who hears, there is no communication. in line with the foregoing, adequate production and utilization of instructional materials to impart the required knowledge to the learners helps to improve and accomplish the developed and development of curriculum in vocational education respectively. references agu, i. and i. onoh, 2011. fundamentals of educational technology. awka: okosis i press ltd. aguka and ezeh, 2009. vocational school curriculum improvement: meeting the challenges of times enugu. alaco press, 3(3): 85. aneke, c.r. and j.r. chime, 2014. curriculum development in vocational and technical education, planning, content, and implementation. onitsha-uyoma press, 8(3): 75. eneh, m.a., 2010. work visit in the south-west nigeria junior secondary school: a neglected challenge? journal of vocational educaton and training, 51(4): 573-583. frn, 2013. federal republic of nigeria. national policy on education lagos: federal ministry of information, 6(3): 14. nebo, t.u., 2009. instructional system and methods in vocational technical education. new jessy: p.b.i petrocelli book inc. onuh, f.m., 1975. problems associated with the production and uses of instructional materials in the teaching of agriculture in secondary school. a journal of cudimac. nsukka: faculty of education, university of nigeria, 1(1): 296. onyia, l.e., 2000. tpward a suste, approach to he integration of nigeria junior secondary school business studies curriculum. journals of technical education, 6(3): 41. ugwu, g.o., 2014. the perceived objectives of roadside mechanic apprenticeship programs in mid-western nigeria. australian journal of adult learning, 44(1): 84-94. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 186 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 186-196, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.186.196 investigation of aggression levels of university students (kocaeli university case) özlem keskin1  hakan akdeniz2 ( corresponding author) 1,2faculty of sports sciences, department of recreation, kocaeli, turkey abstract the aim of this study was to investigate the aggression levels of university students in different departments in terms of sport and other variables. the population of the study consists of university students studying at kocaeli university; the sample group consists of a total of 700 students, 378 male and 322 female, studying in the faculty of sports sciences, faculty of communication and faculty of education of kocaeli university. a screening model was used in this survey. a personal information form developed by the investigator and a turkish-adapted buss-perry aggression scale was utilized to determine the aggressive attitudes of the individuals. the frequency distribution specified the demographic features and analyzed the data; the t-test examined the relationship between the two independent variables; anova variance was used to review the connections between more than one variable. finally, the significance level is accepted as p<0.05. according to the findings of the research, there are statistically significant differences (p<0.05) in terms of gender, family structure, school department, family attitude, mother still living, sporting situation, kind of sport performed, reason for involvement in sport, cigarettealcohol abuse and income level. we can state that sport positively affects the aggression levels of university students. sport also varies by the gender variable, and males are more aggressive than females. it can also be pointed out that aggression varies by the school department, family attitude, cigarette-alcohol abuse, mother still living, reason for playing sport and income level. keywords: sport, aggression, university students. citation | özlem keskin; hakan akdeniz (2018). investigation of aggression levels of university students (kocaeli university case). asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 186-196. history: received: 28 march 2018 revised: 7 may 2018 accepted: 10 may 2018 published: 15 may 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 187 2. material and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 187 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 188 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 194 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 195 bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 196 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.186.196&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0223-5914 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8171-1821 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0223-5914 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8171-1821 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0223-5914 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8171-1821 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 187 1. introduction when we think that the existential history of humanity has consisted of various events such as wars, deaths, pillage, and conquest, the place of aggression in the life of a human being can be easily understood. nowadays, an incremental increase in aggressive behaviors tending towards violence is known around the world (korkut, 2002; özdevecioğlu, 2003). aggression is a behavior type arising in people in different ways. it is quite difficult to distinguish the reasons that induce this behavior from some of the behavior types because aggression includes destroying, hurting, anger and hate, as well as several verbal reactions. on the other hand, aggression is a concept that is used to express the situations or the attitudes involving different reactions (cox, 1985; gergen and gergen, 1986; köksal, 1991; tiryaki, 2000). verbal and symbolic behaviors that arise from moods like irritability and tension avoid improvement. aggression can be exhibited peacefully, can be self-protective and also be harmful behaviors. aggression is aimed at the people around one, at institutions and at the physical environment as well. one of the reasons put forward for aggression is that the things desired have not gone well or have hit an obstacle. an aggressive attitude can be described as the action-reaction for a feeling of frustration. some of the aggressive behaviors displayed to eliminate these situations create a feeling of frustration, while some other aggressive actions are affected by maltreatment, being exposed to domestic violence, unkind and punishing child-rearing methods, divorced parents, economic insufficiencies, and social relationship deficiencies (budak, 2000; kocacık, 2001; tok, 2001; star, 2004; cüceloğlu, 2005; leary et al., 2006). sports have also been affected by the increase in violence and aggressive events happening in society. an increasing interest in sports, especially football and basketball, and the simultaneous massive increase in sponsorship and advertisement revenue has led to hard competition in these sports branches. as the conditions of the game become harder, the sport arena witnesses vicious conflicts, unethical attitudes, fights and immoralities (russell, 2003; özerkan, 2004; güner, 2006; kurtic, 2006; asma, 2008). sport is not only a struggle to be the most powerful and most successful but also a game, competition, and entertainment that has specific principles and rules. some athletes or followers who ignore, distort, misemploy or pass off these principles make sport an environment where violence and aggressive behaviors are exhibited (yetim, 2005). aggression in sport can be defined as the athlete, trainer or one or more followers trying to verbally or physically destroy another person by using psychological, social or biological factors and ignoring the universal rules and principles of the sport. there is a need to know the roots of this aggression; trainers, athletes and club managers should take responsibility; media organizations should inhibit such programs that trigger aggression; followers, watchers and society need to be educated within the framework of fair-play to attempt to prevent the violence and aggression (tiryaki, 2000; acet, 2005; dervent, 2007; erşan et al., 2009; tutkun et al., 2010) aggression has lived in humanity’s pocket and also attracted notice as a behavior arising as a result of being affected by events. in this sense, our study was conducted to analyze the aggression levels of the students studying in different departments of universities in terms of sports, sports branches and different demographic variables. 2. material and methods 2.1. research method this paper was created by using the screening model from quantitative research methods. the screening model describes the global tendencies, attitudes or opinions as quantitative or numerical data via studies on a sample selected from the population. this method is advantageous regarding economy, collecting data quickly and determining the features belonging to a large population by using fewer people (creswell, 2012). 2.2. population and sample a total of 700 students, 378 male and 322 female, who study in the faculty of sports sciences and faculty of education in kocaeli university participated in this survey. 2.3. data collection tools sociodemographic information form: all the students received the socio-demographic information form including the information about gender, age, family structure, personal monthly income levels, mother still living, father still living, smoking habits, alcohol habits, family attitudes, playing sports, kind of sports played, weekly sports hours and reason for playing sport. buss-perry aggression scale: the buss-perry aggression scale was developed by buss and perry (1992) and adapted to turkish by madran (2012). it is a five-point likert scale that analyzes the aggressive attitudes of university students. this scale consists of 29 items. nine of these items (13, 8, 2, 11, 25, 16, 29, 22, 5) constitute physical aggression sub-titles, eight of them (20, 24, 3, 26, 10, 15, 7, 17) constitute hostility sub-titles; seven of them (19, 28, 1, 18, 9, 23, 12) constitute anger sub-titles; five of them (27, 6, 21, 14, 4) constitute verbal aggression sub-titles. high scores taken from the sub-dimensions of the scale refer to the person’s characteristics being high on the relevant dimension. the items of this five-point likert scale are coded as (1) absolutely disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neutral, (4) agree, (5) absolutely agree. the ninth and sixteenth items of the scale are inversely coded (madran, 2012). 2.4. analysis of data frequency distribution was used to analyze the data; a t-test reviewed the relationship between the two independent variables; an anova variance analysis test was applied to examine the connections between more than two variables. all these tests were analyzed in spss 21, the significance level was accepted as p<0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 188 3. findings table-1. frequency table by socio-demographic features n % gender male 372 53,1 female 328 46,9 age under 20 ages 190 27,1 20-25 342 48,9 over 25 ages 168 24,0 family structure elementary family 489 69,9 extended family 211 30,1 school department faculty of sport sciences 208 29,7 faculty of education 285 40,7 faculty of communication 207 29,6 family attitude careless 114 16,3 democratic 189 27,0 authoritative 188 26,9 nurturing 209 29,9 aliveness of mother yes 569 81,3 no 131 18,7 aliveness of father yes 569 81,3 no 131 18,7 personally monthly income level between 0-1000 174 24,9 between 1000-3000 342 48,9 3000 and over 184 26,3 smoking habit yes 337 48,1 no 363 51,9 alcohol habit yes 248 35,4 no 452 64,6 sport situation yes 392 54,6 no 308 45,4 kind of sport personal 239 34,1 team 153 21,9 none 308 44,0 weekly sports hour 0-1 47 6,7 2-4 196 28,0 4-7 153 21,9 none 304 43,4 reason to sport physical 119 17,0 health 114 16,3 physical health 149 21,3 none 318 45,4 n=700 as is seen in table 1, 328 of the attendees were females, 372 of them were males. the frequency distributions of the attendees by the departments are found as 208 for the faculty of sports sciences; 285 for the faculty of education; 207 for the faculty of communication. table-2. significance table of aggression levels sub-scales by the gender variable gender n ̅ ± ss t p physical aggression male 372 30,91 6,41 2,405 ,016* female 328 29,72 6,52 hostility male 372 27,92 5,93 2,201 ,028* female 328 26,95 5,64 anger male 372 24,50 4,84 3,513 ,000* female 328 23,22 4,72 aggression male 372 17,14 3,48 394 ,693 female 328 17,03 3,60 total aggression male 372 97,14 17,63 2,970 ,003* female 328 93,08 17,57 *p<0,05 in table 2, a significant difference is seen between male and female when looking at the sub-scales of aggression levels by the gender variable. a significant difference is also observed between the male and female in hostility sub-scale. one other significant difference (p<0,05) can be seen between male and female in anger subscale. total aggression scale has a significant difference (p<0,05) as well. there is no significant difference between the genders in verbal aggression sub-scale asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 189 table-3. significance table of aggression levels sub-scales by the department variable. your department gender n x sd t p faculty of sports sciences physical aggression male 109 28,96 7,85 ,815 ,416 female 99 28,06 8,00 hostility male 109 26,53 6,62 ,012 ,990 female 99 26,52 6,34 anger male 109 23,42 5,39 ,762 ,447 female 99 22,87 4,82 verbal aggression male 109 16,67 3,60 ,145 ,885 female 99 16,60 4,04 total aggression male 109 92,34 20,60 ,626 ,532 female 99 90,51 20,59 faculty of education physical aggression male 109 31,78 5,04 1,18 ,237 female 99 31,07 4,98 hostility male 109 28,17 5,01 1,42 ,156 female 99 27,32 4,97 anger male 109 25,16 4,13 2,90 ,004* female 99 23,71 4,21 verbal aggression male 109 17,40 3,35 ,009 ,993 female 99 17,40 3,07 total aggression male 109 99,19 14,26 2,10 ,036* female 99 95,57 14,17 communication physical aggression male 109 31,66 6,17 2,31 ,022* female 99 29,62 6,32 hostility male 109 28,94 6,23 2,45 ,015* female 99 26,88 5,76 anger male 109 24,65 5,04 2,39 ,017* female 99 22,91 5,23 verbal aggression male 109 17,22 3,54 ,479 ,633 female 99 16,97 3,76 total aggression male 109 99,01 18,03 2,56 ,011* female 99 92,35 18,11 *p<0,05 as is seen in table 3, when looking at the sub-scales of aggression levels by the gender and department, there is a significant difference between male and females in anger and total aggression sub-scales in the faculty of education. a significant difference (p<0,05) is observed in physical aggression, hostility, anger and total aggression sub-scales in the faculty of communication. no significant difference is found in other research groups. table-4. table of aggression levels sub-scales by family structure family structure n x sd t p physical aggression elementary family 489 30,00 6,33 -2,190 ,029* extended family 211 31,18 6,78 hostility elementary family 489 27,20 5,66 -1,850 ,065 extended family 211 28,10 6,13 anger elementary family 489 23,60 4,73 -2,546 ,011* extended family 211 24,61 4,97 verbal aggression elementary family 489 16,93 3,45 -1,799 ,072 extended family 211 17,45 3,70 total aggression elementary family 489 94,19 17,18 -2,389 ,017* extended family 211 97,75 18,68 *p<0,05 when looking at aggression level sub-scale of the family structure, since the physical aggression is p=0,029<0,049 and anger are p=0,011<0,049, there is a significant difference between the family structures. since p>0,049, there is no significant difference between hostility and verbal aggression. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 190 table-5. significance table of aggression levels sub-scales by department variable. school department n x sd t p significance physical aggression faculty of sport sciences 208 28,53 7,92 12,91 ,000* faculty of sport sciences faculty of education faculty of sport sciences – faculty of communication faculty of education 285 31,46 5,01 communication 207 30,69 6,30 total 700 30,36 6,48 hostility faculty of sport sciences 208 26,53 6,47 3,81 ,023* faculty of sport sciencesfaculty of communication faculty of education 285 27,79 5,00 communication 207 27,96 6,08 total 700 27,47 5,81 anger faculty of sport sciences 208 23,16 5,12 4,70 ,009* faculty of sport sciencesfaculty of education faculty of education 285 24,50 4,23 communication 207 23,82 5,19 total 700 23,90 4,82 verbal aggression faculty of sport sciences 208 16,64 3,80 2,79 ,062 faculty of sport sciencesfaculty of education faculty of education 285 17,40 3,22 communication 207 17,10 3,64 total 700 17,09 3,53 total aggression faculty of sport sciences 208 91,47 20,57 7,11 ,001* faculty of sport sciences faculty of education faculty of sport sciences – communication faculty faculty of education 285 97,56 14,31 communication 207 95,89 18,33 total 700 95,26 17,70 *p<0,05 in table 5, when looking at the aggression levels sub-scales by departments, a significant difference (p<0,05) is seen between faculty of sports sciences and faculty of communication and also between faculty of sports sciences and faculty of education in physical aggression sub-scale. one more significant difference (p<0,05) can be observed between faculty of sports sciences and faculty of communication in hostility sub-scale. there is a significant difference (p<0,05) between the faculty of sports sciences and faculty of education in anger sub-scale. a significant difference (p<0,05) is observed between faculty of sport sciences and faculty of communication and also between faculty of sports sciences and faculty of education in total aggression scores. table-6. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by family attitude variable family attitude n x sd t p significance physical aggression careless 114 30,3243 6,77047 5,156 ,002* democratic – nurturing, authoritative nurturing democratic 189 30,8075 6,32501 authoritative 188 31,4565 4,54946 nurturing 209 29,0000 7,65729 total 700 30,3619 6,48937 hostility careless 114 27,4071 5,90193 2,054 ,105 democratic 189 27,3422 6,38887 authoritative 188 28,3135 4,69726 nurturing 209 26,8719 6,09361 total 700 27,4753 5,81890 anger careless 114 23,6460 5,01412 1,712 ,163 democratic 189 23,7923 4,93034 authoritative 188 24,5691 3,97862 nurturing 209 23,5481 5,28672 total 700 23,9061 4,82770 verbal aggression careless 114 17,1593 3,93602 1,064 ,364 democratic 189 17,1337 3,54363 authoritative 188 17,3797 2,98026 nurturing 209 16,7548 3,76129 total 700 17,0906 3,53885 total aggression careless 114 94,2407 19,27706 3,251 ,021* nurturing authoritative democratic 189 95,5587 18,27077 authoritative 188 98,3278 12,98552 nurturing 209 92,8109 19,59219 total 700 95,2650 17,70845 *p<0,05 as is seen in table 6, when looking at aggression levels sub-scales by the family attitude variable, there is seen a significant difference between democratic — nurturing and also between authoritative and nurturing in physical aggression sub-scale. a significant difference (p<0,05) is observed between nurturing and authoritative when looking at total aggression score. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 191 table-7. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by aliveness of mother variable is your mother alive? n x sd t p physical aggression yes 569 30,0071 6,45252 -3,017 ,003* no 131 31,9141 6,44666 hostility yes 569 27,1577 5,77062 -2,983 ,003* no 131 28,8385 5,85060 anger yes 569 23,6014 4,77193 -3,479 ,001* no 131 25,2231 4,86447 verbal aggression yes 569 16,8619 3,36103 -3,582 ,000* no 131 18,0846 4,09393 total aggression yes 569 94,2099 17,32903 -3,232 ,001* no 131 99,8480 18,65954 *p<0,05 there is seen a significant difference between yes and no in physical aggression sub-scale when looking at aggression levels sub-scales by their ‘aliveness of mother’ status. a significant difference is seen between yes and no in hostility sub-scale. there is the significant difference between yes and no in anger sub-scale. verbal aggression sub-scale has the significant difference between yes and no. there is seen significant difference (p<0,05) between yes and no in total aggression scores. table-8. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by aliveness of father variable is your father alive? n x sd t p physical aggression yes 569 30,2890 6,52878 -,628 ,530 no 131 30,6935 6,32221 hostility yes 569 27,3476 5,75996 -1,210 ,227 no 131 28,0394 6,06369 anger yes 569 23,7815 4,84054 -1,419 ,156 no 131 24,4496 4,75158 verbal aggression yes 569 17,0071 3,49365 -1,298 ,195 no 131 17,4538 3,72111 total aggression yes 569 94,9418 17,61013 -1,018 ,309 no 131 96,7712 18,15998 p>0,05 there is no significant difference (p>0,05) between physical aggression, hostility, anger, verbal aggression subscales and total aggression scores when looking at aggression levels sub-scales by aliveness of mothers variable. table-9. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by playing sports variable do you play sports? n x sd t p physical aggression yes 382 29,02 6,72 -6,008 ,000* no 318 31,93 5,82 hostility yes 382 26,49 5,98 -4,970 ,000* no 318 28,66 5,38 anger yes 382 23,03 4,87 -5,313 ,000* no 318 24,96 4,55 verbal aggression yes 382 16,37 3,59 -5,963 ,000* no 318 17,94 3,27 total aggression yes 382 91,54 18,22 -6,159 ,000* no 318 99,80 15,95 *p<0,05 in table 9, there is seen a significant difference (p<0,05) between yes and no in physical aggression sub-scale when looking at aggression levels sub-scales by playing sports status. a significant difference (p<0,05) is also observed between yes and no in hostility sub-scale. there is a significant difference (p<0,05) between yes and no in anger sub-scale. a significant difference (p<0,05) is also seen between yes and no in verbal aggression sub-scale. we can see the significant difference (p<0,05) between yes and no in total aggression sub-scale. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 192 table-10. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by type of sports played variable *p<0,05 as is seen table 10, when looking at aggression levels sub-scales by the ‘type of sport performed’ variable, there is a significant difference (p<0,05) between individual and none and also between the team and none in physical aggression sub-scale. a significant difference (p<0,05) is seen between individual and none and also between the team and none in hostility sub-scale. a significant difference (p<0,05) is seen between individual and none and also between the team and none in anger sub-scale. there is a significant difference (p<0,05) between individual and none and also between the team and none in verbal aggression sub-scale. when looking at total aggression scores, there is seen a significant difference (p<0,05) between individual and none and also between team and none. table-11. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by reason to sport variable reason to sport n x sd t p significance physical aggression physical 119 29,15 6,63 22,785 ,000* physical – none health – none physical health – none health 114 27,36 8,84 physical health 149 29,28 5,08 none 318 32,37 5,30 total 700 30,36 6,48 hostility physical 119 26,86 5,85 15,535 ,000* physical – none health – none physical health – none health 114 25,34 7,67 physical health 149 26,31 4,73 none 318 29,01 5,07 total 700 27,47 5,81 anger physical 119 23,50 4,84 15,100 ,000* physical – none health – none physical health – none health 114 22,20 6,32 physical health 149 22,85 3,69 none 318 25,15 4,35 total 700 23,90 4,827 verbal aggression physical 119 16,37 3,81 15,054 ,000* physical – none health – none physical health – none health 114 16,09 4,34 physical health 149 16,38 2,66 none 318 18,04 3,24 total 700 17,09 3,53 total aggression physical 119 92,30 18,31 20,784 ,000* physical – none health – none physical health – none health 114 88,08 24,12 physical health 149 91,41 13,03 none 318 100,79 14,92 total 700 95,26 17,70 *p<0,05 do you play sports? n x sd t p significance physical aggression individual 239 28,62 7,00 28,483 ,000* individual – none team– none team 153 28,97 6,64 none 308 32,37 5,36 total 700 30,36 6,48 hostility individual 239 26,05 6,15 18,561 ,000* individual – none team– none team 153 26,77 6,00 none 308 28,94 5,08 total 700 27,47 5,81 anger individual 239 22,70 4,97 17,776 ,000* individual – none, team– none team 153 23,45 4,89 none 308 25,07 4,40 total 700 23,90 4,82 verbal aggression individual 239 16,41 3,53 20,727 ,000* individual – none team– none team 153 16,24 3,68 none 308 18,03 3,24 total 700 17,09 3,53 total aggression individual 239 90,24 18,59 26,155 ,000* individual – none team– none team 153 92,50 18,28 none 308 100,60 15,08 total 700 95,26 17,70 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 193 as is seen table 11, when looking at aggression levels sub-scales by ‘reason to sport’ variable, a significant difference (p<0,05) is seen between health and none and also between physical health and none in physical aggression sub-scale. there is seen a significant difference (p<0,05) between physical and none, between health and none and also between physical health and none in hostility sub-scale. a significant difference (p<0,05) is observed between physical and none, between health and none and also between physical health and none in anger sub-scale. a significant difference (p<0,05) can be seen between physical and none, between health and none and also between physical health and none in verbal aggression sub-scale. there is seen a significant difference (p<0,05) between physical and none, between health and none and also between physical health and none in total aggression subscale. table-12. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by smoking variable (t-test) do you smoke? n x sd t p physical aggression yes 337 29,88 5,98 -1,875 ,061 no 363 30,80 6,90 hostility yes 337 27,20 5,41 -1,165 ,244 no 363 27,72 6,16 anger yes 337 23,50 4,52 -2,095 ,037* no 363 24,27 5,07 verbal aggression yes 337 16,83 3,47 -1,813 ,070 no 363 17,32 3,58 total aggression yes 337 93,71 16,60 -2,195 ,029* no 363 96,71 18,59 *p<0,05 as is seen in table 12, since p=0,037<0,049, there is seen a significant difference (p<0,05) in anger sub-scale when looking at aggression levels sub-scales by the smoking variable. a significant difference (p<0,05) is found between aggression scores of aggression levels by the smoking variable. since p>0,049 between physical aggression, hostility and verbal aggression, there is no significant difference (p>0,05). table-13. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by alcohol use variable. do you use alcohol? n x sd t p physical aggression yes 248 29,69 6,90 -2,005 ,045* no 452 30,72 6,23 hostility yes 248 26,84 6,16 -2,109 ,035* no 452 27,82 5,59 anger yes 248 23,13 5,12 -3,132 ,002* no 452 24,32 4,60 verbal aggression yes 248 16,83 3,76 -1,420 ,156 no 452 17,23 3,40 total aggression yes 248 92,52 18,99 -2,957 ,003* no 452 96,74 16,80 *p<0,05 table-14. significance table of aggression levels sub scales by income level variable income level n x sd f p significance physical aggression between 0-1000 174 27,98 7,81 20,827 ,000* between 0-1000 100030000-1000 more than 3000 1000-3000 over 3000 1000-3000 342 30,52 5,60 3000 and over 184 32,30 5,94 total 700 30,36 30,36 hostility between 0-1000 174 25,57 6,64 20,585 ,000* between 0-1000 1000-3000 between 01000 over 3000 10003000 -over 3000 1000-3000 342 27,37 4,97 3000 and over 184 29,43 5,82 total 700 27,47 5,81 anger between 0-1000 174 22,17 5,59 24,352 ,000* 0-1000-1000-3000 0-1000-over 3000 10003000over 3000 1000-3000 342 23,84 4,15 3000 and over 184 25,63 4,64 total 700 23,90 4,82 verbal aggression between 0-1000 174 16,38 3,92 8,342 ,000* between 0-1000 over 3000-1000 -3000 over 3000 1000-3000 342 17,01 3,16 3000 and over 184 17,89 3,66 total 700 17,09 3,53 total aggression between 0-1000 174 88,58 21,12 24,908 ,000* between 0-1000 10003000 between 0-1000 3000 and over 1000-3000 -over 3000 1000-3000 342 95,15 14,66 3000 and over 184 101,61 17,09 total 700 95,26 17,70 *p<0,05 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 194 as is seen in table 13, when looking at aggression levels sub-scales by ‘alcohol use’ variable, since physical aggression is p=0,045<0,049, hostility is p=0,035<0,049 and anger are p=0,002<0,049, there is found a significant difference (p<0,05) between these variables and alcohol use. since p>0,049, there is no significant difference (p>0,05) between verbal aggression and alcohol use. as is seen in table 14, there is found the difference between physical aggression, hostility, verbal aggression and income levels as between 0-1000, between 1000-3000, 3000 and over. 4. discussion and conclusion it is seen in our study that the aggression levels of male students are higher than the aggression levels of female students. kırımoğlu et al. (2008) and efilti (2008) found that the aggression levels of students in secondary education institutions are higher than those of female students. scharf (2000) conducted a survey to determine the differences in aggression by gender. according to the findings, verbal aggression does not vary by gender; physical aggression is used more by males. camadan and yazıcı (2017) conducted a study called ‘analyzing the aggression tendencies of students regarding some of the variables.' at the end of the study, they found differences between aggression scores of female and male students. on the other hand, yönet et al. (2016) conducted a research called ‘reviewing aggression-violence tendencies of high school students with attendance to recreative activities.' in their findings, there is no significant difference between the aggression levels of students by the gender variable. giles and heyman (2005) analyzed the relationship between gender and aggression in teenagers. they found that the aggression levels of males are higher than those of females. as is mentioned by fromm (1993) testosterone increases aggression levels; while estrogen decreases aggression levels. our study shows parallels with the literature. although there is no significant difference between the students studying in the faculty of sports sciences by gender, it is seen that the aggression levels of male students studying in the faculty of education and faculty of communication are higher in comparison with the aggression levels of female students. this result confirms the findings in table 3. it is seen when the departments are compared that the aggression levels of the faculty of communication and faculty of education are higher than those of the students studying in the faculty of sport sciences. sargın (2010) actualized a survey called ‘reviewing teacher candidates’ awareness levels relating to conflict and violence by several variables’. sargın analyzed the teacher candidates’ awareness levels relating to conflict and violence by the department they study in. with reference to the findings, the conflict and violence awareness levels of teacher candidates in private areas are higher than the teacher candidates in numeric fields. erşan et al. (2009) conducted a study called ‘to evaluate the aggression levels of students in school of physical education and sports in terms of socio-demographic aspect’. according to the results of their study, there is no statistically significant difference in terms of department and branch. erden (2007) examined the differences between the departments that the teacher candidates study in and the types of aggression. there is no significant difference between the departments. yurttaş (2016) found that the point averages of students studying in the faculty of sport sciences are higher than the students studying in other faculties. as is understood above, there are different results in the literature. moreover, it is thought within the scope of our research that the statuses, such as socio-demographic structure, personal differences, and region lived in, affected the aggression levels of the students studying in different departments. we can say based upon our study that the children of authoritative parents have the highest aggression levels when looking at the physical aggression sub-scales by the family attitudes and total aggression scores. under these circumstances, we are of the opinion that the children of domineering parents are more aggressive. camadan and yazıcı (2017) conducted a study named ‘reviewing the aggression tendencies observed in university students in terms of several variables’. according to the results of their study, the highest aggression levels belong to children who perceive the child-rearing method of their parents as authoritarian; the lowest aggression levels belong to children who perceive the child-rearing method of their parents as democratic. the aggression levels of university students statistically vary by the perception about the child rearing method of their parents. yönet et al. (2016) conducted a survey named ‘to examine the aggression-violence tendencies of high school students with their attendance to recreative activities’. with reference to their findings, there is a significant difference between the aggression levels of students by the family attitude variable. it is seen that the aggression levels of students whose mothers are alive are higher than the aggression levels of students whose mothers are dead. however, there is no difference between the aggression scores of students whose fathers are alive and students whose fathers are dead. moreover, we can point out that the students who lost their mothers are more aggressive than the students who lost their fathers. erdogdu (2010) conducted a study called ‘to analyze the aggression tendencies of students regarding different variables.' they found that the aggression tendencies significantly vary by the reaction status of their mother and father. the aggressive tendencies of students whose mother and father are dead are higher than those of students whose parents live together. per the results of our findings, the aggression levels of the students who do not play sports are higher in comparison with the students who play sports. yıldız (2009) mentioned in his study that the people who play sports are more aggressive than the people who do not play sports on the disruptive aggression sub-scale; there is no statistically significant difference in the aggression sub-scale. cobanoglu (1993) compared students who are athletes and students who are not athletes. he found that the aggressive tendencies of athletes are significantly higher than others. kırımoğlu et al. (2008) and dervent (2007) mentioned that males who play sports are more aggressive than males who do not play sports. however, there is no significant difference between them in other aggression features. erdogdu (2010) and sili (2012) conducted a survey ‘to examine the aggression tendency of students regarding various variables.' they found that the aggression tendency of the students is associated with their regularly playing sports status. the aggressive tendencies of students who regularly play sport are significantly lower than those of students who do not play sports. much as we monitor different results, the sporting activities increase the determination to win and aggression by force of the training and competitions. it asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 186-196 195 can be thought that decreasing the aggression levels of people who play sports can be accepted as normal and foregone conclusions. the aggression levels of students who do not smoke are higher than the students who smoke. the aggression levels of students who do not use alcohol are higher than the students who use alcohol. we can highlight in our study that people who have extended family are more aggressive, namely, as the number of people in the family increases, the aggression level increases at the same time. factors such as being limited to meeting demands, discrepancies, dissidences and similar situations in extended families may increase the aggression. according to the data of frustration-aggression hypothesis, when the relationship between socio-economic income level and aggression is analyzed, it is expected that the students who have a low-income status are more aggressive as a natural result of experiencing frustration because of economic insufficiencies (kılınç, 2012). but, it is seen in our survey that as the income level increases, the level of aggression increases at the same time. camadan and yazıcı (2017); sili (2012); yilmaz (2008); masalcı (2001) and ağlamaz (2006) mention that as the income level decreases, the level of aggression increases. on the other hand, kaynak (2013) expressed that increasing the income level affects the aggression level. according to the results of the study of ece (2014) the general aggression scores of participants who have medium family income are lower than the attendees who have high family income. the conclusions of both the surveys confirm our study. in conclusion, we can state that males are more aggressive than females; playing sport affects aggression levels; and people who do not play sports are more aggressive than people who play sports. it can be noted that this circumstance may stem from the characteristics of sports, such as renewing and discharging people. much as there are different results in the literature, it is thought that aggression increases with the increase in income level. moreover, the children of authoritative parents are more aggressive by the family attitude. it is also seen that 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liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q= http://dx.doi.org/ 371 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 371-379, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.371.379 analyzing the relationship between the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment neslin i̇htiyaroğlu1  öznur tulunay ateş2 ( corresponding author) 1kırıkkale univesity, faculty of education, yahşihan, kırıkkale, turkey 2mehmet akif ersoy university, faculty of education, burdur, turkey abstract stress is an integral part of daily life for students like all adults. for this reason, one of the important functions of education is to enable students to learn healthy ways of stress coping. besides, school attachment, which affects students’ behavioral, psychological and social development, is also influenced by many variables such as stress level. however, in the related literature, the relationship between students’ stress-coping styles and students’ school attachment has not been fully elucidated. in this context, this study examines the predictive role of students’ stress-coping styles on school attachment. the relational research model was used in the study. five hundred and eighty-seven high school students selected by simple random sampling in ankara province were administered coping styles inventory and scale for school engagement. using social support differs by sex and school attachment differs by class level. there is a positive relationship between seeking of social support, self-confident approach, optimistic approach and school attachment; a negative relationship between helpless approach and submissive approach and school attachment. self-confident approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support are were significant predictors of school attachment. recommendations as regards increasing the level of student attachment presented in the end of the study. keywords: student, stress, stress-coping styles, school attachment. citation | neslin i̇htiyaroğlu; öznur tulunay ateş (2018). analyzing the relationship between the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 371-379. history: received: 14 june 2018 revised: 21 august 2018 accepted: 25 september 2018 published: 19 october 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 372 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 373 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 374 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 376 5. conclusion and suggestions ........................................................................................................................................................ 377 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 378 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.371.379&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1511 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3872-0922 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1784-7227 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1511 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3872-0922 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1784-7227 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1511 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3872-0922 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1784-7227 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1511 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3872-0922 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1784-7227 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 371-379 372 1. introduction high-level stress is one of the significant factors that adversely affect the effectiveness and efficiency of individuals, induce physiological, psychological and behavioral problems and make individuals unhappy. occurring as a result of the individuals’ interaction with the environment, said factor has become an integral part of both the daily life, and today’s business life. even though stress is a factor that may exist anytime throughout life, it is difficult to provide a simple definition due to the various factors that stress affects or is being affected. therefore, the definition of stress varies. stress can be defined as physical and psychological instabilities occurring inside the internal world of the individual originated from environmental, organizational, or personal factors (can et al., 2015) efforts shown by the individual above one’s capacity due to the incompatibility of physiological and sociological conditions (cüceloglu, 2009) phenomenon that occurs, when the individual fails to cope with the factors that emerge as a result of interaction with the environment (lazarus and folkman, 1984) and the state of psychological stimulation that emerges, when the external demands exceed the individual’s ability to adapt (lazarus, 1966). stress is an integral part of the daily life of the students as it is that of all the adults (smith, 1993). stress affecting the students may arise from academic, financial, time, and relation factors or it may be originated in the individual oneself (dusselier et al., 2005). moreover, the personal and emotional traits of the students, the physical structure of the school, environmental reasons, the behaviors of school administrator and teacher, and familial reasons are among the sources of stress in the students (ardic, 2009). relevant studies suggested the level of stress as experienced by the students, the sources of stress, and its outcomes. akande et al. (2014) found that the stress levels of the secondary school students were medium and associated with academic, environmental, or personal sources. furthermore, the level of stress varied by sex, and stress level of girl students was found to be higher than boys’. leonard et al. (2015) determined that the high school students were exposed to high level stress since they had to be academically successful to be accepted to top tier universities. misra and mckean (2000) stated that the university students experienced high-level stress due to academic pressure and the fact that they could not find sufficient time to work together, get rest, and make use of their spare time, which caused anxiety, inquietude, tenseness, and sometimes depression. the results of a study by the american psychology association (apa) on 1200 young individuals aging between 8 and 17 years revealed that forty-two percentages of the young individuals failed to do their best to manage stress or were not sure if they did so. thirty-seven percentages of girls and twenty-three percentages of boys felt unhappy and depressive due to stress, thirty-five percentage experienced insomnia on the nights they had to go to school the other day, thirty stress-coping process can also be taken as problem-focused coping and emotion focused coping (lazarus, 1966). in the problem-focused coping process, the individual is focused on solving the problems and changing the sources of stress; whereas in emotion focused coping the individual is focused on mitigating and managing the emotional distress as a result of stress (carver et al., 1989). the individual resorts to the problem focused coping strategies, when one considers that a resolving process as regards the source of stress can be developed, and uses the emotionfocused coping strategies when one considers that the source of stress has to be tolerated (folkman and lazarus, 1980). in other words, the problem-focused coping means that the individual actively demonstrates behaviors related to the solution of the problems three percentage overate or resorted to unhealthy nutrition, and sixty-seven percentages skipped a meal due to lack of appetite as a result of stress (american psychological association, 2009). three reactions or outcomes may occur in the individuals due to stress: an individual may act neutral against the sources of stress, when he or she encountered with such sources; may effectively manage stress in order to protect one’s physiological and psychological health; fail to manage stress and may experience physiological and psychological disorders and even fatal outcomes (antonovsky, 1987). raising the students as healthy individuals in physiological and psychological terms is only possible by ensuring that they effectively manage the stress. therefore, one of the important functions of education is to ensure that the students learn healthy ways of coping with stress (rohrkemper and corno, 1988). stress can be healthily managed upon effective use of coping strategies (kreitner and kinicki, 1989). coping strategies are the psychological and physiological efforts shown by the individual against a situation that leads to stress with an aim to control the situation, tolerate the situation, and mitigate or minimize the effects of the situation (watson et al., 2008). an individual that faces to a situation that creates stress tends to use active or passive coping strategies alternately. the active coping strategies stand for the individual’s active management of such processes as thinking, accepting, planning, and positively arranging in order to eliminate the stress factor, where the passive coping strategies refer to avoidance of coming across a situation that creates stress through such processes as denial, behavioral dissociation, substance or alcohol use, or mockery (carver, 1997). through a process of decision-making and active action where emotion-focused coping means that the individual thinks that the problem cannot be solved (folkman, 1984). sahin and durak (1995) investigated the stress coping process based on the problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies under five different approaches of self-confident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support. the self-confident approach denotes active and conscious endeavor of the individual towards the solution of the situation that creates stress; the optimistic approach denotes assessment of the situation that creates stress in the framework of positive perspective, tolerance, and logic; the helpless approach denotes the individual’s loss of confidence towards the solution of the situation that creates stress and fail; the submissive approach denotes the fact that the individual seeks the solution at supernatural powers by a fatalist attitude since he or she feels week; and seeking of social support denotes seeking help from the individuals from the social environment towards the solution of the situation that creates stress. studies on the stress-coping styles of the students have determined the stress-coping strategies used by the students and the factors affect and being affected by such strategies. relevant studies suggested that compared to the male students, the female students more frequently used emotional coping (brougham et al., 2009) and imagination strategies (demircioglu, 2014). esia-donkoh et al. (2011) found that the students more frequently used the emotion-focused coping strategies compared to the problem-focused coping strategies. kumar and bhukar (2013) demonstrated that the students stress-coping styles varied by sex, and that males resorted to the stressasian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 371-379 373 coping strategies more frequently than the females in occupational issues. deniz (2006) concluded that there was a positive relationship between students’ life satisfaction and problem-focused coping styles and between stress coping styles, decision making ways, and self-respect. according to durmus and tezer (2001) students with higher sense of humor used the optimistic and self-confident coping styles more frequently. ekinci et al. (2013) suggested that the assertiveness levels of the students increased as the stresscoping levels increased. on the other hand, leonard et al. (2015) found that combined with the high expectations of the families, the intensive academic curriculum may pave the way for students using substance to cope with stress. a review of the above-mentioned studies suggests that the stress-coping strategies are closely associated with many variables that affect students. school attachment is one of the variables with high impact on the academic, behavioral, and psychological status of the students. the school attachment level is considered important due to the fact that higher levels provide students with academic, behavioral, and psychological contribution and that lower levels cause adverse experiences in students in academic, behavioral, and psychological terms. the school attachment can be defined differently due to the fact that it is affected by different variables. moody and bearman (1998) defined the school attachment as the degree to which students are close to the other individuals at school, enjoying being at school, and feeling themselves a part of the school. goodenow (1993) considered the school attachment as school membership based on wehlage’s social membership theory and investigated the teacher-student relations and the levels the students attach importance to the thoughts of other individuals at school, and the levels they meet their expectations. the school attachment can be defined as the bond the students establish through their relations with the teachers, administrators, peers, social activities, and the sense of belonging that they develop thanks to said bond. jimerson et al. (2003) “the situation in which students adopt the objectives of the school and feel themselves a part of the school” (finn, 1993) as cited in, arastaman (2009). the school attachment is studied under three dimensions of behavioral, cognitive, and affective. the behavioral attachment denotes the students’ observable behaviors such as complying with the rules, remaining committed to classroom norms, attendance, attention, asking questions, participating in classroom discussions, and participating in social and sportive. cognitive attachment is associated with the level of flexibility of the students in problem solving, level of preferring challenging tasks, and effectively overcoming the failure situation. students with higher level of cognitive attachment are focused on fulfilling their responsibilities, achieving top-tier tasks, and investing in the learning process. the affective attachment denotes the emotional reactions of the students towards the school and individuals at school. the attitude of students towards their teachers, administrators, and peers, and their level of happiness at school are covered in the scope of affective attachment (fredricks et al., 2004). in the scope of the present study, the school attachment in discussion is the affective attachment. it is thought the most important one because of the power of emotions acting individuals and directing behaviors (goleman, 2009). relevant studies revealed many variables that affect the school attachment level and are affected by the school attachment level. cemalcilar (2010) found that the satisfaction from the student –friend, teacher and administrator relations had a positive effect on student’s school attachment. mouton et al. (1996) showed in their study that the students with lower school attachment levels felt lonely and isolated at school. those students had a prevalent perception that they were alienated and did not receive support and encouragement from their peers and school employees. furthermore positive associations have been found between the school attachment level and academic success (goodenow and grady, 1993; bond et al., 2007) self-efficacy and being target-oriented (caraway et al., 2003) social support behaviors of teachers (brewster and bowen, 2004) teacher-parent communication (murray, 2009) whereas negative associations have been found between the school attachment level and drop out level (archambault et al., 2009) fear of failure (caraway et al., 2003) and attitudes towards violence (balkis et al., 2005). all the aforementioned studies showed that the high levels of school attachment provided students with positive contribution in academic, social, and psychological terms. having been quite important for the students, this variable may be affected by the ways the students cope with stress, which is an integral part of their daily lives. determining the predictive role of the students’ stress-coping styles on the school attachment may help with the process by which the school attachment levels of students is improved. students having high level of school attachment may be academically, socially and psychologically more effective. also, studies on predictive role of students’ stress-coping styles on the school attachment are very limited both in the international and national literature and there is a gap on this topic. this study is thought important because of both finding out the predictive factors on school attachment and filling the gap in the literature. in that context, the present research aims to find the relation between the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment. answers to below questions were sought to achieve the said purpose: i. what are the students’ stress-coping styles? ii. what are the students’ school attachment levels? iii. is there a significant difference in students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment by sex and class level? iv. is there a significant relation between the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment? v. does the students’ stress-coping styles (self-confident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, submissive approach and seeking of social support) predict their school attachment? 2. method 2.1. research model the relational survey model, which aims to determine the existence or degree of covariance between two or more variables (karasar, 2006) was used in the present research that aimed to find the predictive level of students’ stress-coping styles on school attachment. 2.2. population and sample the population of the present research is composed of 127,206 students attending to secondary education institutions in 5 districts (altındağ, çankaya, etimesgut, sincan, and yenimahalle) of ankara in turkey province asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 371-379 374 according to the 2016-2017 educational year data. the sample is composed of 587 students, who were reached from the secondary schools in such districts by convenience sampling method. the demographic properties of the students involved in the sample are provided in table 1: table-1. the demographic properties of the students involved in the sample (n = 587) variables n % sex female 329 56 male 258 44 class 9th class 161 28 10th class 137 23 11th class 149 25 12th class 140 24 source: author's field work 2.3. data collection tools two measurement tools were used for the purpose of collecting data required for the research: coping styles scale developed by sahin and durak (1995) and the school attachment scale developed by iyaroglu (2014) based on the affective dimension items of the school engagement scale developed by arastaman (2009). coping styles scale: the coping styles scale is composed of five dimensions: self-confident approach (7 items), optimistic approach (5 items), helpless approach (8 items), submissive approach (6 items), and seeking of social support (4 items). the scale is total of 30 items. item 9 was reverse coded on the grounds that it contained a negative meaning this four-point likert type scale, which is rated between 0 (%0) 3 (%100). the internal consistency coefficients of the coping styles scale, which has been used widespread by many studies (temel et al., 2007; kelleci et al., 2012; capulcuoglu and gunduz, 2013) vary between .45 and .80 (sahin and durak, 1995). according to the results of confirmatory factor analysis which was conducted in order to determine the construct validity of the scale, rmsea = .008, cfi = .92, and gfi = .94. these findings suggest the scale can be well explained under five subdomains. moreover, the internal consistency coefficients as calculated for the domains of the scale were as follows: self-confident approach, .76; optimistic approach, .71; helpless approach, .67; submissive approach, .69; and seeking of social support, .69. school attachment scale: the one-dimension school attachment scale is a five-point likert type scale rated between 1 (i don’t agree at all) and 5 (i completely agree). the scale is total of 27 items.the analyses in this study showed that the cronbach’s alpha value was .89 and that the adjusted item-total correlation coefficients varied between .32 and .62. according to the exploratory factor analysis, the factor loading values of its items varied between .34 and .72 and that the explained total variance was approximately 42%. according to the results of confirmatory factor analysis which was conducted in order to determine the construct validity of the scale, rmsea = .006, cfi = .90, and gfi = .90. these findings suggest the scale can be well explained under one subdomain. 2.4. data collection data in this study was collected based on volunteerism. the scale was administered after the permission was taken from course teachers. the students were given information about the purpose of the study before the scale administrated. it took approximately 15 minutes to collect the data in a class. 2.5. analysis of data the data collected by the scales were tested by the t-test, a parametric test, one-way analysis of variance (anova), correlation and multiple regression analyses using the spss 20 software package. the association between the stress-coping styles and school attachment by sex was determined by the t-test and the association between the stress-coping styles and school attachment by class level was determined by one-way analysis of variance. the correlation analysis revealed the degree and direction of the relation between the students’ stresscoping styles and school attachment, where the multiple regression analysis, made with enter method in which independent variables are entered and evaluated in one step, suggested the predictive role of the students’ stresscoping styles on school attachment. 3. findings the findings of the study are presented in this section under the subtitles parallel to the research questions. the first part includes the mean and standard deviation values for the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment followed by the findings as regards the relation between the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment with sex and class level. the second part provides the findings as regards the relations between the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment and the findings as regards the predictive role of the students’ stress-coping styles on school attachment. 3.1. mean and standard deviation values of the variables and findings as regards the relation of the variables with the sex and class level factors table 2 provides the mean and standard deviation values of the variables. a review of table 2 suggests that the variable with the highest mean value is the school attachment. seeking of social support (χ = 2.47) and self-confident approach (χ= 2.22) has the highest mean values within the stresscoping styles. variables with the least mean values are submissive approach ( χ= .68) and helpless approach (χ= .89). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 371-379 375 table-2. the mean and standard deviation values of the variables variables n χ s self-confident approach 587 2.22 1.22 optimistic approach 587 2.07 1.54 helpless approach 587 0.89 2.24 submissive approach 587 0.68 1.32 seeking of soc. support 587 2.47 2.32 school attachment 587 3.45 0.97 source: calculated from primary data table 3 provides the mean and standard deviation values for the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment by sex and the t-test results indicating the relation of those variables with sex: table-3. the mean and standard deviation values by sex and the t-test results variables sex n χ s t p self-confident approach female 329 2.20 1.23 1.54 .47 male 258 2.26 1.23 optimistic approach female 329 2.14 1.38 2.31 .36 male 258 1.99 1.37 helpless approach female 329 0.63 1.89 -0.97 .63 male 258 0.69 1.89 submissive approach female 329 0.65 1.35 -1.11 .16 male 258 0.71 1.32 seeking of social support female 329 2.65 1.47 2.17 .00* male 258 2.27 1.45 school attachment female 329 3.31 0.87 1.76 .54 male 258 3.59 0.84 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p < .01 a review of table 3 provides as regards the sex factor that optimistic approach (χ = 2.14), submissive approach (χ = 0.71), and seeking of social support (χ = 2.65) mean values of the girl students were higher than that of the boy students and that the self-confident approach (χ = 2.26), helpless approach ( χ = 0.69), and school attachment (χ= 3.59) mean values of the boy students were higher than that of the girl students. the selfconfident approach, optimistic approach, submissive approach, and school attachment levels of the students did not have a significant difference by sex (p > .05). on the contrary, the seeking of social support levels of the students had a significant difference by sex (p < .05). the seeking of social support level (χ = 2.65) of females was higher than the seeking of social support level (χ= 2.27) of males [t(2343,78)=2.17, p. <.001]. table 4 provides the anova results indicating the relation of the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment with the class level: table-4. the anova results indicating the relations of variables with class level (n = 587) variables 9th class (161) 10thclass(137) 11th class(149) 12thclass(140) f p scheffe test χ s χ s χ s χ s self-confident approach 1.98 .22 2.17 1.23 2.36 .21 2.28 1.23 .56 .27 optimistic approach 2.02 .56 1.97 1.52 2.17 1.54 2.07 1.54 .96 .12 helpless approach 0.79 .21 0.99 2.21 1.01 2.22 0.74 2.20 .87 .65 submissive approach 0.74 .32 0.61 1.29 0.66 1.36 0.69 1.29 .68 .86 seeking of social support 2.45 .26 2.49 2.29 2.51 2.29 2.47 2.31 .98 .48 school attachment 3.25 .01 3.47 0.89 3.51 0.91 3.59 1.02 .21 .01* 1-3,1-4 1: 9th class; 2: 10th class; 3: 11th class; 4: 12th class source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p < .05 a review of table 4 provides that the mean values of seeking of social support and self-confident approach, as the most frequently used stress-coping styles of the students, increased as the class level increased, yet there was a decline in the mean values of both variables at 12th class. it was seen that the students’ stress-coping styles, i.e. selfconfident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support subdomains did not differ by class level (p > .05). on the other hand, the school attachment of the students differed by class level ( p< .05). according to the results of the scheffe test, the said difference regarding the school attachment occurred in 9th class compared to the 11th class and 12th class. the school attachment levels of the 11th class students (χ = 3.51) and 12th class students (χ = 3.59) were higher than the school attachment levels of the 9th class students (χ = 3.25). 3.2. findings as regards the predictive role of the students’ stress-coping styles on school attachment the findings as a result of the correlation analysis aimed to determine the relations between the students’ stress-coping styles and school attachment are presented in table 5: asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 371-379 376 table-5. relations between variables variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. self-confident approach 1 2. optimistic approach .39** 1 3. helpless approach -.27** -18* 1 4. submissive approach -.13* -.19* .38** 1 5. seeking of soc. support .46** .39** -41** -.33** 1 6. school attachment .41** .23** -.37** -.31** .48** 1 7. stress-coping total .42** 1 ** p < .01; * p < .05 table 5 suggests that the highest relation with the school attachment was seen in seeking of social support (r = .48, p < .01) and self-confident approach (r=.41, p < .01) variables. furthermore, there was a positive significant relation between the school attachment and optimistic approach (r = .23, p < .01) and a negative significant relation between the school attachment and the helpless approach (r = -.37, p < .01) and submissive approach (r = -.31, p < .05). on the other hand, there was a positive relation between the seeking of social support and self-confident approach (r = .41, p < .01) and optimistic approach (r =.39, p < .01); and there was a negative relation between the seeking of social support and helpless approach (r = -.41, p < .01) and submissive approach (r = -.33, p < .01). besides, it was found positive relation between stress-coping total and school attachment (r = .42, p < .01). the multiple regression results as regards the predictive role of self-confident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support on school attachment are provided in table 6 in line with the research sub-question of “are does the students’ each stress-coping style predict school attachment?” table-6. results of multiple regression analysis variables b se β t p constant 54.24 9.43 6.36 .00 self-confident approach 1.27 1.56 .48 1.67 .00 optimistic approach 1.12 1.51 .37 4.32 .48 helpless approach -.89 .12 -.41 -3.76 .89 submissive approach -.72 .17 -.23 -3.87 .00 seeking of social support 2.13 481 .5 5.34 .00 r = .53 r2 = .48 f = 47.86 p<.01 a review of table 6 provides that the self-confident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support variables altogether render a high-level and significant relation with the school attachment (r =.53, r2 = .48, p < .01). the foregoing five variables altogether explained 48% of the total variance of school attachment. according to the standardized regression coefficient values (β), the order of importance of the predictive variables on the school attachment was as follows: seeking of social support, selfconfident approach, helpless approach, optimistic approach, and submissive approach. a review of the t-test results regarding the significance of the regression coefficient values provides that the self-confident approach (β = .48, t(167) = 1.67, p < .01) and seeking of social support (β =.57, t(167)= 5.34, p < .01) predicted school attachment in a positive way and submissive approach (β= -.23, t(167) = -3.87, p < .01) predicted school attachment in a negative way. the optimistic approach (β= .37, t(167)= 4.32, p > .05) and helpless approach (β= -.41, t(167)= -3.76, p > .05) did not have a predictive role on the students’ school attachment. 4. discussion the present study, which aimed to determine the predictive role of the students’ stress-coping styles on school attachment, found that the school attachment level was the variable with the highest mean value among variables of the study and that the students most frequently used seeking of social support and self-confident approach in coping with a stressful situation. the fact that seeking of social support was the variable with the highest mean value may be associated with the fact that the students were in their adolescence period. the peer groups are rather important for the psychological and social development of the individuals during the adolescence period. the adolescents can more easily overcome the situations of crisis and chaos thanks to the individuals, who have the shared living place, same kind of problems, or responsibilities (meric, 1999). furthermore, based on the fact that the students cope with many physical, psychological, and social changes during the adolescence period (akçan parlaz et al., 2012) they may adopt a more belligerent perspective. thanks to this perspective, they may use the self-confident approach that requires active and willing efforts towards eliminating the situation that creates the stress by means of that power of struggle. çapık et al. (2017) found in their study that the students most frequently preferred seeking of social support and self-confident approach in coping with stress. on the other hand, it was seen that the students more frequently used healthy coping styles such as self-confident approach, optimistic approach, and seeking of social support compared to the unhealthy coping styles of the helpless and submissive approaches. the students’ level of resorting to helpless approach and submissive approach in cases of a situation that creates stress was low. these results are coherent with the results of other relevant studies (ekinci et al., 2013; çapık et al., 2017). the high level of school attachment may be associated with a strong bond that the students established with the school due to the positive relations with teachers, administrators, and peers and participation in social activities, and feeling as a part of the school through the foregoing bond. the present study found that the self-confident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, submissive approach of the stress-coping styles, and school attachment did not differ significantly by sex, whereas seeking of social support dimension significantly differed by sex. namely, compared to males, females more frequently sought the assistance of their environment when they overcome a stressful situation. ptacek et al. (1994) suggested in their asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 371-379 377 study that females used emotion-focused coping styles more frequently and needed more social support compared to males. moreover, other relevant studies (amirkhan, 1990; sahin and durak, 1995; aşçı et al., 2015) confirmed that only seeking of social support approach of the stress-coping styles differed by sex and females used seeking social support more frequently than males. furthermore, the result that the students’ school attachment did not differ by sex was consistent with the results of the previous studies (ihtiyaroglu and demir, 2016). this may be because both males and females are in the same school environment and encounter the same situations. another result of this study is that the students use seeking of social support and self-confident approach more frequently when their class levels increase; yet there was a decline in the levels of use of seeking support and selfconfident approach at 12th class. besides, seeking social support and self-confident approach were lowest at 9th class among the class levels. it may be associated with the fact that the 9th class is the first year of the secondary education and that the students do not know each other well and have not socialized yet. furthermore, a substantial part of the students at 9th class belong to the first adolescence period involving 12-14 years old group. the changes in the said period are visible since they are quite fast (cüceloglu, 2009). many changes experienced in physical, cognitive, emotional, and social terms may adversely affect the students’ level of interaction with their environment and their self-confidence. the levels of seeking social support and self-confident approach increased by the 10th and 11th classes upon realization of the meeting and socializing process by being at the end of the first adolescence period. nevertheless, the fact that there was a decline in the level of use of seeking social support and self-confidence approach in 12th class may be explained by anxiety created by the higher education examination. students in 12th class may tend to move away social environment to prepare the examination and high level of anxiety may damage their self-confidence. because of these reasons, the students’ socialization and self-confidence levels may be adversely affected. however, the self-confident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support did not differ significantly by the class level. this result suggests that the students’ stress-coping styles are not associated with their class levels. similarly, hancıoğlu (2017) found that the students’ stress-coping styles did not differ by the class level. the results of both studies are consistent. on the other hand, the students’ school attachment levels significantly differ by the class level. the result indicating that the 11th and 12th class students had higher school attachment levels than 9th class students may be explained by stronger bond with the school thanks to the longer time periods they spent at school. more time may help 11th and 12th students develop sincerer relations with the teachers, administrators, and peers and participate in more social activities. the present study concluded that there was a positive relation between the stress coping styles of seeking of social support, self-confident approach, and optimistic approach and school attachment, where there was a negative relation between the helpless approach, submissive approach and the school attachment. accordingly, as the levels of using seeking of social support, self-confident approach, and optimistic approach increased students’ school attachment level; on the contrary, their school attachment levels decreased when they more frequently resorted to helpless approach and submissive approach. furthermore, the relations among the self-confident approach, optimistic approach, and seeking of social support variables were positively significant. besides, the helpless approach and submissive approach were positively significant, too. but the relations between the self-confident approach, optimistic approach and seeking of social support variables and the helpless approach and submissive approach were negatively significant. among the stress-coping styles, self-confident approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support of the students’ were each a significant precursor of the students’ school attachment. on the contrary, the optimistic approach and helpless approach did not have a predictive role on the students’ school attachment. in the light of the foregoing result, it can be argued that the affective school attachment would increase, when the students apply to self-confident approach and seeking of social support in case of a stressful situation, where their school attachment levels would decrease when they use submissive approach. active and conscious endeavor of the individual or seeking help from the individuals from the social environment towards the solution of the situation that creates stress may help the effects of stress decrease and affective school attachment increase. on the other hand, the fact that the individual seeks the solution at supernatural powers by a fatalist attitude may cause students to leave control of their lives and not to cope with stress on their own. this process may damage their confidence toward people around and affect affective school attachment in a negative way. according to i̇htiyaroğlu (2018) selfconfident approach, helpless approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support are predictors of organizational commitment. using self-confident approach and seeking of social support increase teachers’ organizational commitment level whereas using helpless approach and submissive approach decrease their organizational commitment level when they face stressful situations. results of these studies confirmed that selfconfident approach and seeking of social support affect the commitment positively and submissive approach affect the commitment negatively. the fact that helpless approach is not a predictor of school attachment may be explained by sampling of the study. helpless approach, defined as individual’s loss of confidence towards the solution of the situation that creates stress, may not suit bellicose point of view in adolescence. furthermore, other relevant studies found significant relations between the students’ stress coping styles and variables having affective features such as self-respect (deniz and yilmaz, 2006) the flexibility and confident attachment levels (li, 2008) anger management (arslan, 2010) attitudes as regards seeking psychological help (türküm, 2001) and emotional intelligence (deniz and yilmaz, 2006). the results all the above studies and the present study confirm that there are significant relations between the students’ stress coping styles and variables that affect students’ affective features. 5. conclusion and suggestions the present study, which aimed to determine the relation between the students’ stress coping styles and levels of school attachment, found that the school attachment level was the variable with the highest mean value. the students most frequently use seeking of social support and self-confident approach when they encounter a situation that creates stress. on the other hand, the level the students use helpless approach and submissive approach, i.e. the asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 371-379 378 unhealthy stress-coping styles, against a situation that creates stress is low. while the self-confident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, and submissive approach of the stress-coping styles and the school attachment do not significantly differ with by sex, the seeking of social support dimension significantly differs by sex. furthermore, although the self-confident approach, optimistic approach, helpless approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support dimensions do not significantly differ by class level, the students’ school attachment levels shows a significant difference by class level. there are positive significant relations between the seeking of social support, self-confident approach, and optimistic approach of the students’ stress-coping styles and the students’ school attachment, where there are negative significant relations between the helpless approach and submissive approach and the students’ school attachment. the self-confident approach, submissive approach, and seeking of social support of the students’ stress-coping styles are each a significant precursor of the students’ school attachment. on the contrary, the optimistic approach and helpless approach have no predictive power on the school attachment. the students most frequently used seeking of social support and self-confident approach when they encounter stressful situations; there are positive significant relations between the foregoing variables and the students’ school attachment and there are negative significant relations between helpless approach and the students’ school attachment, such variables are predictors of the school attachment. in the light of these results, school and classroom environments, where the students show active and willful efforts and receive support towards solution from the individuals in the environment may contribute in the students’ school attachment level. primarily the school principal is responsible for the formation of the school climate and the teachers are responsible for the formation of the classroom climate. a school environment in which administrators and teachers are easily accessible, the school and classroom rules and expectations are clearly expressed, there exists a positive communication among the peers, all the stakeholders actively take part in decision making 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corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 3, no. 1, 69-73, 2017 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 69 enhancing completion rates in public day secondary schools in kenya; the role of government bursary subsidy githaka mwangi1 selpher k. cheloti2 ( corresponding author) 1,2 school of education, south eastern kenya university, kenya abstract the purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of government bursaries on completion rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county, kenya. the journal is based on findings of a study conducted in 2017. the objectives of the study were; to investigate the influence of government bursaries on retention rates in day secondary schools in kitui county; to assess the influence of government bursaries on dropout rates in day secondary schools in kitui county; to assess the role government bursaries on retention rates in day secondary schools in asal areas of kitui county; to assess the relationship between government bursaries and completion rates in day secondary schools in kitui county. the study adopted descriptive survey research design. the study sample was 119 principals of public day secondary schools in kitui county, 16 treasurers of constituency bursary fund and one county director of education. data was collected using a questionnaire, interview schedules and document review guide. validity of the research instruments was ascertained through piloting and expert judgement. a test-re-test technique was used to assess reliability of the research instruments. the scores were correlated to get the co-efficient of stability using spearman’s coefficient of correlation and an instrument reliability value of 0.823 was obtained. descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyse data using statistical package for social science (spss). chi-square (χ²) was used to analyse hypothesis. the study found that government bursaries given to day secondary schools were not adequate to finance education expenses of the learner; the study further found that government bursaries increase retention rates in day public secondary schools; the study also found that government bursaries ensures learners in public day secondary schools in asals benefit from education. the study recommended that government should allocate more funds for bursaries in public day secondary schools. the study concluded that there is no consistency in disbursement of government bursaries in public day secondary schools. keywords: government educational subsidies, arid and semi-arid lands, public day secondary schools, retention rates. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 70 2. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................ 71 3. research methodology ........................................................................................................................................................ 71 4. theoretical framework ....................................................................................................................................................... 71 5. findings and discussions ..................................................................................................................................................... 71 6. conclusions and recommendations .................................................................................................................................... 72 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 72 citation | githaka mwangi; selpher k. cheloti (2017). enhancing completion rates in public day secondary schools in kenya; the role of government bursary subsidy. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 69-73. doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 21 march 2017/ revised: 10 april 2017/ accepted: 17 april 2017/ published: 21 april 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=githaka mwangi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=selpher k. cheloti http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=githaka mwangi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=selpher k. cheloti http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=githaka mwangi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=selpher k. cheloti http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=githaka mwangi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=selpher k. cheloti http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.69.73 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 69-73 70 1. introduction educational subsidy is an assistance given by the government as a policy to students in educational institutions in support of their studies and is regarded as being in the public interest (kippra, 2008). the primary goal of public day secondary school educational subsidies is to promote school enrolment and reduce dropout rates by reducing tuition costs (republic of kenya, 2008). cameron (1997) explained that in many developed nations such as united states of america, canada, australia, france, britain and sweden among others, secondary education is available for all in public schools and is run and funded by the government. cameron further commented that in some developing countries like ghana, nicaragua and guetemala secondary education is compulsory. this has led to high completion rates (cameron, 1997). the united kingdom abolished fees for state secondary schools through the butler act of 1944 and the compulsory school leaving ages was increased from 14 to 15. lewin (2007) studies on improving access, equity and transitions in education in bangladesh, found that completion rates improved substantially in bangladesh after the introduction of educational subsidies. study done by lewin (2008) on financing education in mauritius, explained that educational subsidies make secondary education more accessible. muhindi (2012) noted that despite financial crisis and deficits, some governments in sub-saharan africa (ssa) have recently extended free education from primary to include secondary schools. rwanda and uganda abolished lower secondary education fees in 2006 and 2007 respectively (muhindi, 2012). the government of rwanda has a nine year basic education of which primary to lower secondary is free (unesco, 2007). this policy was implemented to ensure high completion rates (unesco, 2007). the government of kenya subsidization of education is motivated by the desire to increase transition and retention rates leading to low dropout rates hence high completion rates (masimbwa, 2010). educational subsidies include; free day secondary school education (fdse), constituency development fund (cdf) bursary, scholarships, teaching and learning materials and grants (rok, 2008). subsidized secondary school education policy was introduced by the government of kenya in january 2008. the main objective was to make secondary school education accessible and affordable to all qualified students regardless their socio-economic background; in the long run improve the completion rates. a sum of kshs 10 265 was allocated to every student in public secondary school annually. the fdse funds were to be later revised through government circular no. moe.dsec/5/17 of 2015 to ksh. 12 870 per student. the 1990 jomtein world conference on education for all (efa) encouraged governments all over the world to provide universal education to its citizens. in response to these resolutions, the government of kenya launched free day secondary education (fdse) in 2008 as a strategy to make education accessible and affordable to many households in the country (orodho, 2014). the launch of free day secondary education (fdse) in 2008 was meant to address illiteracy, low quality education and low completion rates at the secondary level (rok, 2005). in 1993/1994 financial year secondary schools bursary scheme was introduced in kenya to enhance access, ensure retention and increase completion rates (rok, 2006). in line with government policy on decentralization, devolution and empowerment of communities, from the year 2003 the bursary scheme funds were channelled through constituency development funds (cdf) (ministry of education, 2008). the bursary scheme was targeted to students from poor families, those in slum areas, those from pockets of poverty in high potential areas, districts in arid and semi-arid lands (asals), orphans and the girl child (onuko, 2012). majority of beneficiaries of secondary schools bursary scheme were funded by cdf at 78 per cent. one major challenge facing provision of bursary was that students were not assured of continuous funding and that the disbursements were not in line with the school calendar year (onuko, 2012) the ministry of education, science and technology (moes&t) operates a bursary scheme at secondary school level as part of, and within the auspices of the social dimensions of development programme, targeting the poor and vulnerable households. the major objective of the scheme is to enhance access to, and ensure high quality secondary school education for all kenyans. the philosophy behind the scheme was to translate into reality the idea that no child who qualifies for secondary education should be denied access due to inability to pay school fees (rok, 2006). the moes&t bursary allocation by province and by student during the 1999/2000 fiscal year show that allocations per student varied across the provinces. four provinces got the largest amount above the national mean of kshs. 318 per student. these were: coast (kshs. 569.40), north eastern (kshs. 508), eastern (kshs. 406.8), and rift valley (kshs. 365). it is noted that these provinces are located in the economically marginal asal regions where most communities are poor and vulnerable. in contrast, the remaining provinces got lower allocations per student, and below the national mean: nairobi (kshs. 285.30), nyanza (kshs. 224.70), central (kshs. 219.70), and western (kshs. 205.50). these provinces represent the better-endowed areas, with high to medium agricultural and economic potential. as such, majority of households in these areas are assumed to have higher socio-economic status than their counterparts in asal regions. in awarding the bursary allocations, therefore, the moes&t incorporates mechanisms that take into consideration the asal limitations, among other vulnerable factors. abuse of the bursary facility has been reported, with underserving cases awarded bursaries way above the amounts given to genuinely deserving students (rok, 2006). 1.1. objectives of the study the study was guided by the following objectives i. to investigate the influence of government bursaries on retention rates in day secondary schools in kitui county kenya. ii. to assess the influence of government bursaries on access to education in asals in day secondary schools in kitui county, kenya. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 69-73 71 2. literature review 2.1. influence of government bursaries on students’ completion rates a bursary is a monetary award made by an institution to individuals or groups of people who have bursary capability from the school to help them pay education fees. lewin (2008) found that completion rates improved substantially in bangladesh after the introduction bursary scheme to secondary school students. keith (2008) study in uk on effect of government bursary on transition and completion rates found that it led to high transition and completion rates. muthoki (2015) study in mtito-andei division kibwezi sub-county makueni county found that government bursaries helped poor students’ access secondary education leading to high retention rates, consequently leading to high students completion rates. the study used descriptive survey design. the target population was 2228 and the sample size was 228 respondents. it is on this basis this study sought to determine the extent to which government bursary influence completion rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county. a study done by onuko (2012) on impact of bursary schemes on retention of students in public secondary schools in gem district, kenya found that there were high retention rates in day secondary schools, this led to high completion rates. the study design was descriptive survey, the target population was 1947 and the sample size was 358 respondents. the study concentrated on the impact of all bursary schemes on retention of students in public secondary schools. it is on this basis this study sought to determine the extent to which government bursary influence completion rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county. bursary funds for secondary schools are channelled through the constituency bursary fund. this fund is meant to supplement the effort of fdse to meet the financing gap of needy students. the fund was initially operated through the ministry of education and operationalized by the school board of management (bom) at school level as secondary education bursary fund (sebf) (moe, 2008). provision of bursary is one of several strategies used by government to ensure that disadvantaged children have equal opportunity in accessing education at all levels. this have led to high completion rates among the disadvantaged children (rok, 2008). there is also county bursary fund provided by the county government through county ministry of education and youth affairs. these bursaries are meant to those students from low socio-economic background to improve on their completion rates. a study done by njau (2013) on effect of secondary education bursary fund on access and retention of students in public secondary schools in juja constituency, kiambu county kenya found that secondary education bursary has led high retention rates in day secondary schools, this led to high completion rates. following the changes in the allocation mechanisms since 2003, claims of misallocation of bursary funds, double awards to one student in two schools, awards to students not enrolled in any school, as well as excessive patronage by members of parliament. these have negatively affected effectiveness of the funds (muhindi, 2012). 3. research methodology the study adopted descriptive survey research design. the target population consisted of 235 respondents. the sample consisted of 119 principals of public day secondary schools in kitui county, 16 treasurers of constituency bursary fund and one county director of education. data was collected using a questionnaire, interview schedules and document review guide. descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyse data using statistical package for social science (spss). chi-square (χ²) was test used to analyse hypothesis. 4. theoretical framework this study was anchored on the classical liberal theory of equal opportunity by jean-jacques rousseau (17121778). the theory states that all human beings are created equal and hence all the social institutions within a societal set up should promote this equality. in this context provision of equal opportunity to education is one way of promoting social equality in the society. the classical liberal theory was found to be relevant for this study because socio-economic background discriminates poor families who cannot afford to keep their children in school hence withdrawing them prematurely. the government of kenya introduced subsidized secondary education to give an equal opportunity in secondary education to all eligible secondary school students regardless of their socio-economic background (rok, 2008). 5. findings and discussions this study sought to investigate the role of government bursaries in enhancing completion rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county. principals were requested to indicate the influence of government bursaries on completion rate in public day secondary schools. based on the principal’s responses on the statement that government bursaries have increased student retention rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county, the study found that provision of bursaries had increased completion rates in day secondary schools with (71.4%) of the school principals agreeing with the statement. the study further found that government bursaries have ensured students in asal areas of kitui county benefited in education and completed their secondary schools. the study also found that government bursaries have reduced student dropout rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county with (72.4%) of principals confirming the same. these results are shown in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 69-73 72 table-1. findings of principals on influence of government bursaries on completion rates in public day secondary schools strongly disagree disagree undecided agree strongly agree mean score statement f % f % f % f % f % government bursaries have increased student retention rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county. 7 6.7 0 0.0 23 21.9 34 32.4 41 39.0 3.97 government bursaries have ensured students in asal areas benefit in education in kitui county. 2 1.9 0 0.0 8 7.6 47 44.8 48 45.7 4.32 government bursaries have reduced student dropout rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county. 6 5.7 1 1.0 5 4.8 48 45.7 45 42.9 4.19 government bursaries have increased transition rate from public day secondary schools to tertially institutions in kitui county. 6 5.7 15 14.3 8 7.6 43 41.0 33 31.4 3.78 there is no relationship between government bursaries and completion rates. 59 56.2 3 2.9 12 11.4 26 24.8 5 4.8 2.19 source: field data (2016) interviews with the constituency bursary fund committee treasurers revealed that there are no records to track the beneficiaries of cdf bursaries. regarding consistency in allocating the bursaries they indicated that they disburse the funds once per year in the month of december. they however indicated that funds are available to only guardians who are registered as voters in that particular constituency. constituency bursary fund committee treasurers indicated that they are no application forms the beneficiary must present him or herself in person. they further indicated that all form ones admitted in national schools automatically qualify for ksh 10 000 from the kitty regardless social or economic background. they however said that they are not able to track the beneficiaries of the fund because cdf treasurers do not keep records of the students who benefit from the funding. they also indicated that the office lack continuity because new officers are appointed every time there is an election and hence it is not possible to know the influence of cdf bursaries on completion rates. the cdf treasurers further indicated that disbursement of the funds is not consistent. every year parents are to present themselves for funds allocation or fill an application form. the study found that cdf bursary fund does not focus on needy students. it is disbursed to any parent with a student in secondary school who present him/herself to the committee and has affiliation to the constituency. this compromises its effectiveness. the chi-square test (χ²) of independence was used to test the hypothesis (ho1) there is no statistically significant relationship between provisions of government bursaries and completion rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county, kenya. the acceptable level of significance for the chi-square test (χ²) test was 0.05 at 1 degree of freedom. levels of significance found to be greater than 0.05 implied that the null hypothesis is rejected, on the contrary, if the level of significance was less than 0.05 then the null hypothesis was accepted. the results are as shown in table 2. table-2. chi-square test for the influence of government bursaries on completion rates independent variable hypothesis chitest chi-sq. p value sig. value result decision provisions of government bursaries h02 27.64 0.118 0.05 0.118>0.05 h02: rejected source: field data (2016) table 2 shows that at 0.05 confidence level, the null (h01) hypothesis yielded pearson’s p-value of 0.118 which is greater than 0.05, hence, the null hypothesis was rejected. consequently, its alternate hypothesis that there is statistically significant relationship between government bursaries and completion rates in public day secondary schools in kitui county, kenya, was accepted. 6. conclusions and recommendations the study concluded that government bursaries have not been effective in ensuring retention of students in pubic day secondary schools. regarding consistency the study concludes that there is no consistency in disbursement of government bursaries. the study also concludes that it was not possible to track the beneficiaries of the fund because cdf treasurers do not keep records of the students who benefit from the funding. therefore the study recommended that government should increase funds allocated for bursaries in public day secondary schools. cdf committees should improve on record keeping and tracking to ensure that needy students get bursaries. references cameron, d.m., 1997. the framework for managing and financing postsecondary education in canada. the forum papers, national forum on post-secondary education in canada. halifax, 1988: institute for research on public policy. keith, m.l., 2008. four decades of educational planning: retrospect and prospect. paris: international institute for educational planning. kippra, 2008. public expenditure tracking of secondary education bursary fund in nairobi province, kenya. retrieved from http://www.ipar.or.ke. lewin, k.m., 2007. improving access, equity and transitions in education: creating research agenda. create pathways to access research monograph, no. 1. brighton: university of sussex. lewin, k.m., 2008. financing education in mauritius: an analysis of cost and internal efficiency. port louis, mauritius: ministry of education. http://www.ipar.or.ke/ asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 69-73 73 masimbwa, h.c., 2010. costsaving measures in enhancing efficiency in secondary schools in kericho district, kenya. unpublished thesis, kenyatta university, nairobi. ministry of education, 2008. guidelines for implementation of free secondary education. nairobi: government printer. muhindi, d., 2012. challenges facing the implementation of free day secondary education: a case study of nyeri south district, nyeri county in kenya. unpublished master’s thesis, kenyatta university, nairobi. muthoki, m.m., 2015. home based factors contributing to dropout of girls in mixed day secondary schools in mtito-andei division kibwezi sub-county makueni county. unpublished med project, south eastern kenya university kitui. njau, r.w., 2013. effects of secondary education bursary fund on access and rention of students in public secondary schools in juja constituency, kiambu county, kenya. unpublished med thesis, kenyatta university, nairobi. onuko, a.j., 2012. impact of bursary schemes on retention of student sin public secondary schools in gem district, kenya. unpublished med thesis, university of nairobi, nairobi. orodho, a.j., 2014. financing basic education: what are the equity and quality implication of free primary education and free day secondary education policies in kenya? international journal of development research, 4(3): 477-487. view at google scholar rok, 2005. kenya education sector support programme (2005-2010). delivering quality education and training to all kenyans. nairobi: ministry of education, science and technology. republic of kenya, 2008. free secondary education programme. nairobi: government printer. rok, 2006. ministry of education strategic plan 20062011. nairobi: government press. rok, 2008. free secondary education programme. nairobi: government printer. unesco, 2007. 2008 efa global monitoring report. education for all by 2015will we make it? paris: unesco. world bank. (2006). expanding opportunities and building competencies for young people: a new agenda for secondary education. washington dc: the world bank. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=financing%20basic%20education:%20what%20are%20the%20equity%20and%20quality%20implication%20of%20free%20primary%20education%20and%20free%20day%20secondary%20education%20policies%20in%20kenya? 131 asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 131-134, 2017 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.131.134 university education for physical education students at pedagogical faculties in the czech republic new findings about first aid for spinal injury ladislav pysny1  jana pysna2 dominika petru3 karol gőrner4 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3faculty of education, jan evangelista purkyně university, czech republic 4faculty of arts, matej bel university, slovakia abstract teaching physical education and sports at pedagogical faculties in the czech republic is often associated with certain risks which could lead to acute sports injuries. the most serious of these is traumatic spinal injury that could, in the case of poorly executed first aid, lead to serious damage to the health of individuals, including further unsolvable permanent consequences. therefore every teacher or trainer as well as every student of physical education and sports must gain the necessary expertise in this field. this paper summarizes new findings about premedical first aid executed when a traumatic spinal injury occurs. it focuses especially on the appropriate assessment of disabilities according to frankel and the implementation of specific procedures which can solve the trauma in various situations, including the use of a system for extricating an injured victim with a spinal fixation. keywords: spine injuries, first aid, education. citation | ladislav pysny; jana pysna; dominika petru; karol gőrner (2017). university education for physical education students at pedagogical faculties in the czech republic new findings about first aid for spinal injury. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 131-134. history: received: 24 november 2017 revised: 12 december 2017 accepted: 19 december 2017 published: 27 december 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 132 2. evaluation of spinal and spinal cord injuries ......................................................................................................................... 132 3. principles of first aid ................................................................................................................................................................... 132 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 133 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 134 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.131.134&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ladislav pysny https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jana pysna https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=dominika petru https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=karol gőrner https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ladislav pysny https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jana pysna https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=dominika petru https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=karol gőrner https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ladislav pysny https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jana pysna https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=dominika petru https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=karol gőrner https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ladislav pysny https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jana pysna https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=dominika petru https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=karol gőrner https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ladislav pysny https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jana pysna https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=dominika petru https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=karol gőrner asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 131-134 132 1. introduction teaching physical education and sports in the czech republic very often includes some physical activities that may be associated with the development of acute injuries to the musculoskeletal system. one of the most serious injuries is spinal trauma, which can occur during almost any sporting activity. even more risky are special courses such as artistic gymnastics, biking, climbing or hiking. when teaching, the result of poorly performed physical activities may be an injury, which if not treated properly, may lead to serious permanent consequences (for example patel et al. (2013)). despite the tremendous mobility of the spine, which is provided by each and every single vertebra, it may lead to damage depending on the formation mechanism and the intensity of the stimulus. the result of structural change may be only ligament damage /stretch, tear or rupture/ or minor tearing of the intervertebral discs. unfortunately, too often, we may encounter severe subluxation, luxation or fracture of one or more vertebrae (donatelli et al., 2012). in the area of the cervical spine, the typical type of injury associated with extension is whiplash (yoganandan et al., 2013). in the area of the thoracic spine, typical damage results from a direct impact (strike, hitting an obstacle with the back) and for the lumbar spine, it is usually an impact on the buttocks or legs during a fall. if the spinal injuries are associated with structural changes of the vertebra, a fragment, especially from the rear part, very often pushes into the spinal canal and may also simultaneously lead to a spinal cord injury /concussion of spinal cord, compression or extension with consequent cracking and bleeding/. 2. evaluation of spinal and spinal cord injuries while evaluating the severity of these injuries, we observe local signs of damage such as abrasions, swelling and a hematoma. we simultaneously evaluate percussion and palpation pain above the vertebrae thorns and their distance and position in an upright posture (o´dowd, 2007). when a spinal cord injury occurs we may find same changes related to the extent and type of the spinal injury. the changes found when injuries occur may be functional, reversible /concussion only causes spinal concussion/, incompletely reversible /swelling or bleeding leads to spinal cord contusion/, or irreversible disruption of the spinal cord (vaverka and hrabálek, 2002). the most commonly recommended approach is to use the indicative ratings of symptoms below the level of disability given by the american spinal injury association impairment scale /modified from the frankel classification/ (american spinal injury association, 2000; marino et al., 2008; harvey and graves, 2011). category a /complete spinal cord injury/ no sensory or motor function is preserved in sacral segments s4-s5. category b /incomplete/ sensory, but not motor, function is preserved below the neurologic level and extends through sacral segments s4-s5. category c /incomplete/ motor function is preserved below the neurologic level, and most key muscles below the neurologic level have a muscle grade of less than 3. category d /incomplete/ motor function is preserved below the neurologic level, and most key muscles below the neurologic level have a muscle grade that is greater than or equal to 3. category e /normal/ sensory and motor functions are normal. when the spinal cord is transacted, we can also find other symptoms such as: drop in blood pressure, bradycardia, impaired thermoregulation, areflexia, anaesthesia, muscle atonia, plegia, paralytic ileus, or atonic bladder with urinary incontinence. the most serious respiratory dysfunction is when there is a direct relationship between the level of the cord injury and the degree of respiratory dysfunction. with high lesions /c1 or c2/, vital capacity is only 5-10% of normal, and cough is absent, with lesions at c3 through c6, vital capacity is 20% of normal, and cough is weak and ineffective, with high thoracic cord injuries /t2 through t4/ vital capacity is 3050% of normal, and cough is weak, with lower cord injuries, respiratory function and improves with injuries at t11 with minimal respiratory dysfunction. it is also important to note that determining the severity of injuries is relatively easy with preserved consciousness of injured individuals and difficult for unconscious individuals. in any case, we always treat these individuals the same way even if the damage to the spine and spinal cord is an estimate (urdaneta and layon, 2003; ryken et al., 2013). 3. principles of first aid this type of injury requires properly implemented first aid. the crucial principle is an accurate treatment process at the site of the injury and the nature of any subsequent transport to a medical facility. we must not forget that the injury itself might not violate the function of the spinal cord, but subsequent maladministration of first aid during extrication, carrying and manipulating the injured individual can lead to permanent damage. among the principles of professional aid we should mention adequate fixation and handling, solution of respiratory insufficiencies and failure, and any subsequent transport of the injured individual to a medical facility. in addressing immobilization, handling and transport, we must realize that, if possible, it is always best to keep an injured individual in the position in which he or she was found (not to perform any manipulation). it is essential to keep the injured individual /if not in a coma still and try to obtain all the relevant information about his or her injury, the formation mechanism, whether the injured individual was immediately moving after the accident and whether he or she was feeling any problems including possible respiratory insufficiency. all this information, together with a description of the disability, implemented procedures and first aid must be gathered for the specialists, usually paramedics, who provide better care for the injured. only rarely do we have to proceed differently, for example, in a situation where you cannot assume rapid professional assistance, such as when the accident occurs in poorly accessible terrain. instructions for first aid in these cases of extreme or inaccessible conditions are clear (battlefield advanced trauma life support batls, 2004; zhang et al., 2013; shekhar and khan, 2016). we must rescue the injured individual with the help of as many rescuers as possible and put him or her into a neutral position lying on their back, preferably on a hard surface (manoach and paladino, 2007). for manipulating an individual with a suspected cervical spine injury in these cases, we use these fixation techniques: asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 131-134 133  basic fixation – the rescuer firmly presses the trapezium muscle next to the head. the forearm can thereby form a solid surface, which the rescuer presses the head against with his other hand in the correct axial position. if we are unable to proceed this way, we could use different techniques in some cases, but we must always maintain the fixation of the head in the neutral position.  pulling the hair – the other hand or hands of other rescuers fixate the victim’s head from the side to avoid any possible movements as much as possible, for example during the rapid extrication of individuals from a burning vehicle. in a critical situation, which may lead to respiratory failure, we might need to remove a helmet. one rescuer maintains the fixation of the head and neck in the neutral position by constantly pressing his hand against the mandible. the other rescuer removes the helmet by pulling the lower edge with hands. it is essential to avoid any bending forward or backward or rotation of the head during this procedure, so there is no spinal injury. remember, with integral helmets we need to lift the visor as well as release the catch on the side of the helmet, allowing us to lift the chin spoiler up or to the side or to open it fully.  “rail touch technique” – the rescuer firmly presses the trapezium muscles of the victim with both hands, with thumbs pointing at the chest front, and with his forearms he fixates the head. this technique is typically used for fixation of the cervical spine during the transfer of the victim. fixation with a neck collar is essential.  during the necessary transfer of the victim we could stabilize the head using lateral fixation – we could use for example a rolled-up jacket or blanket that we put around the victim’s head in a horseshoe shape and we fix it to the stretcher using scarves, belts or bands, etc. we could prevent any movements of the head to the side by putting “blocks” on both sides of the head. we try to fix these blocks to the stretcher as well as the body using scarves, belts or bands. if we fix only the head, it could lead to further damage when we try to manipulate the victim.  “improvised collar” – which should be used only in extreme cases, e.g. inaccessible places with long transport of the victim. in this situation, we could use for example a magazine which we fold several times and wrap in a piece of cloth. than we form the magazine into a letter “u” for which we could use our thigh and we attach it in front and tighten the loosened ends of the fabric (mcnab, 2006). in the majority of “normal cases” it is recommended not to do so, because relatively large manipulation of the victim may lead to further damage of the head and cervical spine. when providing first aid to injuries occurring in water /jumps, falls into unknown water/ we always extricate the victim in the supine position. at the same time, we try to keep the position of the cervical spine in a neutral position without leaning sideways. when the victim is experiencing respiratory arrest we must always begin resuscitation immediately in the water. clearing the respiratory tract is performed by advancing the mandible and opening his/her mouth without bending the head backward. if we have appropriate equipment /usually only some members of the integrated rescue system are equipped/, we arrange transport of the victim to the nearest medical facility. we use a spinal frame, which is manufactured in two basic types, a one-piece spinal board or a divisible scoop frame. we provide the fixation of the head with a cervical collar to prevent movement in any direction and to help keep the airway free. these cervical collars are made of a variety of hard materials and it is important to attach them properly, so we use appropriate supportive body lines, i.e. mandible, sternum – the neck area. two rescuers always work together. one of them fixates the head and cervical spine using a proper fixation technique, while the other attaches the cervical collar in such a way that the cervical spine is stabilized and on its axis (schubl et al., 2016). for the purposes of head fixation, we could also use a “head immobilizer” which is made of expandable homogenous material with straps to help immobilize the victim’s forehead and chin and to attach it to the spinal board or scoop frame. the most effective technique for rescuing an injured individual with spinal trauma is the “system for recovery of the injured with a spinal fixation” (muralidhar et al., 2014; byung-guk et al., 2015). it is a technical aid which gently yet sufficiently fixates the spine and enables subsequent manipulation of the victim while rescuing and transporting him/her. roughly described, it is a kind of cloak with spine stiffening plates sewn into it. there are straps with clamps on the cloak /usually in a different colour/ to help with the whole body fixation – two for the head, three for the chest and abdomen and two for the hips. the entire system is attached quite simply. two rescuers work together, the first one holding the head using a proper fixation technique attaches the cervical collar or other type of head immobilizer, while the other attaches the system so that the spine of the victim is also the central axis of the fixation system. there should be no gap between the neck and the fixation. finally, all the straps need to be fastened. when providing first aid, we must not forget other serious consequences of this type of injury. if the spinal cord is damaged above the c3 segment, the victim is not capable of spontaneous breathing and we must immediately start resuscitation. we clear the respiratory tract with the head held straight, preferably by advancing the mandible (e.g. (pysny et al., 2011; monsieurs et al., 2015)). very often the victim loses thermoregulatory ability. in a hot environment we try every possible method to keep the victim cool and on the other hand, in a cold environment we try to heat the victim’s body with aluminium foil or at least a blanket. 4. conclusion traumatic spinal injury is one of the most dangerous accidents that can occur during some classes taught at faculties of education focused on physical education and sports. improperly provided first aid may ultimately endanger the life of an individual or leave permanent consequences that can limit the victim forever. therefore, there is a strong emphasis on teaching appropriate first aid procedures for this type of injury in the czech republic. in this case, the aim is to obtain relevant expertise in this matter. thus, every graduate of this field of study, i.e. not only a teacher or a coach but also every student should acquire the knowledge which will allow them to evaluate the situation 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0952-8180(03)00105-3 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=patient%20mechanisms%20of%20injury%20in%20whiplash-associated%20disorders http://dx.doi.org/10.1053/j.semss.2012.07.008 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=spine%20and%20spinal%20cord%20trauma:%20diagnosis%20and%20management 250 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 250-256, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.250.256 readability of texts in secondary school mathematics course books gökhan çetġnkaya1  arzu aydoğan yenmez2 tuğba çelġk3 ġlknur özpinar4 ( corresponding author) 1pamukkale university, faculty of education, department of turkish language education, turkey 2,4niğde ömer halisdemir university, faculty of education, department of mathematics and science education, turkey 3niğde ömer halisdemir university, faculty of education, department of turkish language education, turkey abstract this study aimed to investigate the readability of the fifth-, sixth, seventh and eighth-grade mathematics course books prepared in deference to the 2017 curriculum and distributed to schools by meb. this study utilized the descriptive document analysis which is a qualitative research method. readability of the mathematics course books were subjected to a quantitative analysis by çetinkaya-uzun readability formula. addressing the readability levels of the texts in secondary mathematics course books, this study performed analyses of average word and average sentence lengths of the texts in secondary school course books. these analyses showed that there is no linear correlation between grade level and word and sentence length averages. readability scores and levels of the text in the analyzed secondary school mathematics course books are not in parallel with the grade level. accordingly, readability scores of information and solution texts in the fifth-grade course book were lower than the scores in other grades' course books whereas readability scores of question texts were lower than the scores in all grades' course books but the eighth-grade course book. readability levels of the text in the analyzed secondary school mathematics course book were found to be on frustration level and educational level. course books should also include independent texts with readability scores and levels. keywords: readability, comprehensibility, mathematics course books. citation | gökhan çetġnkaya; arzu aydoğan yenmez; tuğba çelġk; ġlknur özpinar (2018). readability of texts in secondary school mathematics course books. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 250-256. history: received: 26 june 2018 revised: 17 july 2018 accepted: 24 july 2018 published: 31 july 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study was supported within the scope of bap project titled “readability and intelligibility levels of text in secondary school mathematics course books” with number niğde ömer halidemir university ebt 2018/01-hidep competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 251 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 251 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 254 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 254 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 256 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.250.256&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7676-6852 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8595-3262 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2211-9243 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7676-6852 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8595-3262 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2211-9243 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7676-6852 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8595-3262 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2211-9243 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7676-6852 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8595-3262 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2211-9243 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7676-6852 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8595-3262 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2211-9243 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7676-6852 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8595-3262 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2211-9243 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 250-256 251 1. introduction as one of the biggest helpers of teachers, course book is a material which significantly determines what (subject, concept, properties,...) and how (activity, method,...) to be thought in the classroom. course books need to be prepared in parallel with the curricula accepted by the ministry of national education (meb). in other words, course books, as mirrors reflecting the curriculum, should be able to reflect the curriculum in the exact sense so that they can achieve the desired goals (arslan and ozpınar, 2009). the matter in question has brought the assessment of course books into the agenda. therefore, course books have been featured as a special matter in the educational studies in recent years. accordingly, there have been assessments and scales created in several domains such as mathematics, physics and chemistry in our country (cepni et al., 1999; cepni et al., 2001; keles, 2001; dane et al., 2004; gökdere and keles, 2004; semperci and semerci, 2004). for instance, certain research studies have been conducted to examine the current and desired status of course books used in the mathematics education (dane et al., 2004; semperci and semerci, 2004; dede and yaman, 2005). studies on the relationship between reading and turkish, science, social, and mathematical achievement are observed in the literature (e.g. (bloom, 1998; sertsöz, 2003; akay, 2004; sallabaş, 2008; obalı, 2009; paige, 2011; yılmaz, 2011; yilmaz, 2012)). a prominent factor that strengthens the positive relationship between academic achievement and reading is the role of printed/written words in the learning environment. reading tools (story books, course books, notebooks, summarized notes, etc.) play an important role in learning current information on world (pretorius, 2000). much of the information on world is available in written, printed or increasingly electronic format. reading is the most effective power used in accessing this information available in today's world. moreover, it has a key role in acquiring preliminary knowledge, improving and transforming the acquired information. a successful learning requires being competent in integrating new information with knowledge, transforming and transferring it to other domains. reading comprehension is the act of making sense of the information given in text by integrating it with the information structures in mind. academic achievement requires learning, and learning requires reading. students can satiate their linguistic skills, vocabularies and general knowledge levels by reading. this contributes to students' academic achievement and how they achieve academic information positively. even though there are studies in turkey on the readability of science, turkish and geography course books (cepni et al., 2001; geçit, 2010; ozcan, 2011) no study was observed on the readability of course books which are of importance in mathematics learning environment. significant part of how reader can maintain word processing and interpretation competently is linguistic properties that form the text (cetinkaya, 2010). acceptability of all linguistic properties more or less by the reader is defined as readability (klare, 1963). readability levels of texts are important factors in how reader interprets a text. hence, text's readability level should be in parallel with reader's level. there are readability formulas developed specifically to every language to determine readability level of texts. the fact that no study has been performed on readability levels of mathematics course books prepared in consideration of the curricula and distributed to schools by meb is an important deficiency. however, two of the most important factors that will determine success of current curricula are teachers and course books. thus, even if curricula are well-prepared, their implementation will be negatively affected and their effectiveness will be hindered if course books are not compatible with curriculum's general approach or neglect the criteria that should be possessed by a course book. accordingly, this study aimed to investigate the readability of the fifth-, sixth, seventh and eighth-grade mathematics course books prepared in deference to the 2017 curriculum and distributed to schools by meb. answers were sought to the following research questions to that end: 1. how do the numbers of information, question and solution texts appear in secondary school mathematics course books? 2. how do average word lengths and average sentence lengths of texts appear in secondary school mathematics course books? 3. how do the readability levels of texts appear in secondary school mathematics course books? 2. method 2.1. study design this study utilized the descriptive document analysis. readability of the mathematics course books were subjected to a quantitative analysis by running the formula developed by cetinkaya and uzun (2011). 2.2. sample meb-approved fifth-, sixth-, seventhand eighth-grade course books used in the academic year of 2017-2018 were included in the study. 2.3. collection and analysis of the data first, texts of information, question and solution were identified in the mathematics course books. next, average word, average sentence and readability scores of the text were calculated through the directive in cetinkaya (2010). 1. count the words numbers, graphemes (letters), symbols and groups of grapheme separated with space are accepted as words. words separated with hyphen and acronyms are accepted as words. for example;  gel-git (tide)  asl 2. count the sentences. each unit deemed to be independent from other sentence or object grammatically are accepted as a sentence. a unit ended with full stop (.), colon (:) and two brackets ( ) is accepted as a sentence. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 250-256 252 3. count the syllables. count the syllables as you pronounce them. for example; “gel” (come) has 1 syllable “gelsin” (let him/her come) has 2 syllables (gel-sin) “gidelim” (let us go) has 3 syllables (gi-de-lim) symbols and shapes are counted as they are pronounced. for example; cm has 4 syllables (san-ti-met-re) 1918 has 7 syllables (bin-do-kuz-yüz-on-se-kiz) 4. find the average sentence length. divide total number of words by number of sentences to find the average sentence length. asl= total number of words total number of sentences 5. find the average word length. divide total number of syllables by total number of word to find the average word length. awl= total number of syllables total number of words 6. run the formula. place the average sentence length and average word length values calculated by the abovementioned operational steps in the readability formula below. here is the formula that gives the readability level of texts: rs= 118.823 – 25.987 x awl – 0.971x asl rs= readability score asl= average sentence length awl= average word length the following is an exemplary analysis of an information text available in the eighth-grade mathematics course book. the analyses were performed using the “turkish text frequency analyzer”1. exemplary text: çiftçi mehmet bey yetiştirdiği altmış kilogram cevizi torbalara eşit miktarlarda koyarak satmak istiyor. torbaların kaçar kilogram olabileceğini bulalım. doğal sayısının çarpanlarını belirleyerek torbaların kaçar kg olabileceğini buluruz. çarpan ağacını kullanalım: altmış doğal sayısının çarpanları bir, iki, üç, dört, beş, altı, on, on iki, on beş, yirmi, otuz, altmıştır. siz de altmış doğal sayısının asal çarpanlarını bulunuz. bir doğal sayıyı kalansız olarak bölebilen sayılara o doğal sayının çarpanları denir. bir ve kendisinden başka böleni olmayan sayılara asal sayılar denir “mr. mehmet the farmer wants to sell sixty kilograms of his walnuts he grew putting them in bags in equal amounts. let us find how many kilograms each bag can be. we find how many kilograms the bags can be by determining factors of the natural number. let us use the factor tree: factors of the natural number sixty are one, two, three, four, five, six, ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty, thirty, and sixty. now you too find the prime factors of the natural number sixty. numbers that can divide a natural number without remainder are called factors of that natural number. numbers that do not have any other divisors than one and itself are called prime factors” (p.12). table-1. sentence frequency of the exemplary text by number of words order number of words frequency % sentence (frequency) distribution 1 8 1 12.50 siz de altmış doğal sayısının asal çarpanlarını bulunuz (1) “now you too find the prime factors of the natural number sixty” 2 12 1 12.50 bir doğal sayıyı kalansız olarak bölebilen sayılara o doğal sayının çarpanları denir(1) “numbers that can divide a natural number without remainder are called factors of that natural number” 3 10 1 12.50 bir ve kendisinden başka böleni olmayan sayılara asal sayılar denir(1) “numbers that do not have any other divisors than one and itself are called prime factors” 4 18 1 12.50 altmış doğal sayısının çarpanları bir iki üç dört beş altı on on iki on beş yirmi otuz altmıştır(1) “factors of the natural number sixty are one, two, three, four, five, six, ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty, thirty, and sixty” 5 3 1 12.50 çarpan ağacını kullanalım(1) “let us use the factor tree” 6 5 1 12.50 torbaların kaçar kilogram olabileceğini bulalım(1) “let us find how many kilograms each bag can be” 7 9 1 12.50 doğal sayısının çarpanlarını belirleyerek torbaların kaçar kg olabileceğini buluruz(1) “we find how many kilograms the bags can be by determining factors of the natural number” 8 13 1 12.50 çiftçi mehmet bey yetiştirdiği altmış kilogram cevizi torbalara eşit miktarlarda koyarak satmak istiyor(1) “mr. mehmet the farmer wants to sell sixty kilograms of his walnuts he grew putting them in bags in equal amounts” total 8 100 1 http://ihaleka.com/metinanaliz/ http://ihaleka.com/metinanaliz/ asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 250-256 253 according to the analysis above, there are 78 words and 8 sentence in the exemplary text in total. in the light of these data, we can do the operation in the fourth step of the directive. asl= 78 asl=9.75 8 the average sentence length was calculated to be 9.75 by dividing the total number of words by the total number of sentences. table 2 below presents the analysis performed to find the average word length of the exemplary text. table-2. word frequency of the exemplary text by number of syllables order number of syllables frequency % frequency distribution 1 2 26 33.33 doğal (natural)(5) altmış (sixty)(3) kaçar (each)(2) denir (called)(2) iki (two)(2) asal (prime)(2) satmak (sell)(1) yirmi (twenty)(1) çarpan (factor)(1) otuz (thirty)(1) çiftçi (farmer)(1) mehmet(1) eşit (equal)(1) altı (six)(1) kg(1) başka (other)(1) 2 3 16 20.51 kilogram(2) olarak (as)(1) koyarak (putting)(1) olmayan (do not have)(1) sayılar (numbers)(1) sayıyı (number)(1) sayının (of number) (1) kalansız (without remainder)(1) bulunuz (find)(1) bulalım (let us find)(1) buluruz (we find)(1) böleni (divisior)(1) istiyor (wants)(1) cevizi (walnut)(1) altmıştır (sixty)(1) 3 1 15 19.23 on (ten)(3) bir (one)(3) beş (five)(2) siz (you)(1) üç (three)(1) ve (and)(1) dört(four) (1) de (too)(1) bey (mr.)(1) o (that)(1) 4 4 15 19.23 sayısının (number)(3) sayılara (numbers)(2) torbaların (bags)(2) çarpanları (factors) (2) torbalara (bags)(1) miktarlarda (amounts)(1) bölebilen (that can divide)(1) kendisinden (than itself)(1) kullanalım (let us use)(1) ağacını (tree)(1) 5 5 4 5.13 çarpanlarını (factors)(2) yetiştirdiği (he grew)(1) belirleyerek (by determining)(1) 6 7 2 2.56 olabileceğini (can be)(2) total 78 100 the table above gives the number of syllables and the number of words which have the specific syllable. awl= 209 awl=2.68 78 the average word length was calculated to be 2.68 by dividing the total number of syllables by the total number of words. readability score can be calculated by placing the average sentence length and average word length values found as a result of the abovementioned operational steps. awl= 2.72 asl= 13.08 rs= 118.823 – 25.987 x 2.68 – 0.971 x 9.75 25.987 x 2.68= 69.65 0.971 x 9.75 = 9.47 118.823 – 69.65= 49.17 49.17 – 9.47= 39.7 rs= 39.7 readability score of each text was calculated with the operations above, and then average readability scores of the text in course books of every grade level were calculated. there are readability formulas developed specifically to every language to determine readability level of texts. the only readability formula which meets the requirements of a scientific approach in determining the readability levels of turkish tasks is çetinkaya-uzun readability formula. it seems that the formula is based on informative texts. in this sense, the fact that mathematical question, information and solution texts are of the same characteristics increases the validity of the analyses. texts with a readability score of 51 and above are defined as independent; texts with a readability score of 35-50 are defined as educational; texts with a readability score of 0-34 are defined as frustration. while readers can process texts by themselves easily, they can interpret educational texts in the guidance of teacher. these levels refer to the structural difficulty level of a text. if the student has a high linguistic, contextual and formal background, they can even interpret frustration level text independently. that is, structural difficulty of texts may differ by individual's background. values achieved with the readability formula provides us with information on text's structure and allows us to grade it by its structural difficulty. we can know what level text we need to provide them with once we determine our students backgrounds. the variables taken as basis in the formula to determine the readability level are average sentence length and average word length. it is observed that several formulas developed for foreign languages (mclaughlin, 1969; duffy, 1985; chall and dale, 1995) take these variables as basis. average sentence length corresponds to the syntactic complex level of the structure. study results show that word problems with long sentences, that is, a complex syntactic structure cannot be interpreted by students with lower achievement levels (shaftel et al., 2006). test-developer experts often utilize syntax and resort to abbreviate the syntactic structure to facilitate interpretation and relieve the mental load (oakland and lane, 2004). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 250-256 254 texts in the course books were categorized as information text (it), question text (qt) and solution text (st) to examine their readability levels separately. texts with extra textual reference were not included in the analysis. 3. findings 3.1. numbers of texts in secondary school mathematics course books table-3. numbers of texts in secondary school mathematics course books grade level information text question text solution text fifth grade 106 319 100 sixth grade 165 330 119 seventh grade 105 452 115 eighth grade 131 419 94 according to table 3, there were 106 information texts in the fifth grade, 165 in the sixth grade, 105 in the seventh grade and 131 in the eighth grade. it was found that there were 319 question texts in the fifth grade, 330 in the sixth grade, 452 in the seventh grade and 419 in the eighth grade. number of the solution texts were found to be 100 in the fifth grade, 119 in the sixth grade, 115 in the seventh grade and 94 in the eighth grade. average word and average sentence lengths of the texts in secondary school course books table-4. average word and sentence lengths of the texts grade level information text question text solution text awl asl awl asl awl asl fifth grade 2.82 11.84 2.86 11.40 2.84 10.25 sixth grade 2.75 12.01 2.71 11.47 2.56 9.41 seventh grade 2.67 12.26 2.77 11.02 2.66 10.31 eighth grade 2.73 12.41 2.88 10.81 2.64 9.85 according to table 4 which presents the average word and average sentence lengths of the texts in secondary school course books, average word lengths of information texts were 2.82 in the fifth grade, 2.75 in the sixth grade, 2.67 in the seventh grade and 2.73 in the eighth grade while the average sentence lengths were 11.84 in the fifth grade, 12.01 in the sixth grade, 12.26 in the seventh grade and 12.41 in the eighth grade. average word lengths of the question texts were found to be 2.86 in the fifth grade, 2.71 in the sixth grade, 2.77 in the seventh grade and 2.88 in the eighth grade whereas average sentence lengths were 11.40 in the fifth grade, 11.47 in the sixth grade, 11.02 in the seventh grade and 10.81 in the eighth grade. average word lengths of the solution texts were found to be 2.84 in the fifth grade, 2.56 in the sixth grade, 2.66 in the seventh grade and 2.64in the eighth grade whereas average sentence lengths were 10.25 in the fifth grade, 9.41 in the sixth grade, 10.31 in the seventh grade and 9.85 in the eighth grade. readability levels of texts in secondary school mathematics course books table-5. readability levels of texts grade level information text question text solution text readability score readability level readability score readability level readability score readability level 5 34.20 frustration 33.41 frustration 34.94 frustration 6 35.23 educational 36.71 educational 42.19 educational 7 37.03 educational 35.49 educational 39.25 educational 8 35.40 educational 32.94 frustration 40.09 educational table 5 presents the average readability levels of the text in secondary school course books. readability levels of the information texts were 34.20 in the fifth grade, 35.23 in the sixth grade, 37.03 in the seventh grade and 35.40 in the eighth grade. it can be understood that the information texts are on educational level in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades while they are on frustration level in the fifth grade. readability levels of the question texts were 33.41 in the fifth grade, 36.71 in the sixth grade, 35.49 in the seventh grade and 32.94 in the eighth grade. it seems that the question texts are on educational level in the sixth and seventh grades whereas they are on frustration level in the fifth and eighth grades. readability levels of the solution texts were 34.94 in the fifth grade, 42.19 in the sixth grade, 39.25 in the seventh grade and 40.09 in the eighth grade. it can be understood that the solution texts are on educational level in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades while they are on frustration level in the fifth grade. 4. discussion and conclusion the first step of the problem-solving process in mathematics course is reading and comprehension. when reading and comprehension is not achieved on the sufficient level, either problem-solving process never starts or other steps of the process are hindered. an unproductive problem-solving process is a significant obstacle before the conceptualization of mathematics. therefore, designing the texts (description, question, etc.) in course books so that students can comprehend them will provide important steps in their cognitive processes. readingcomprehension is of great importance in transitions of students' convergent learning. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 250-256 255 readability and intelligibility level of any kind of texts to be presented to students have direct impact on their interpretation of textual content. qualities such as word length and sentence length are also the main variables in determining the readability and intelligibility levels of texts. aiming to determine the average word lengths, average sentence lengths and readability levels of the texts in secondary mathematics course books, this study investigated the information, question and solution texts in the fifth-, sixth-, seventhand eighth-grade course books. the analysis found the numbers of information texts to be 106 in the fifth grade, 165 in the sixth grade, 105 in the seventh grade and 131 in the eighth grade. this indicates that information texts do not increase gradually as the grade level increases. the lowest-level information texts were in the seventh-grade course book while the sixth-grade course book had the highest-level information texts. yet, it is anticipated that progressivity in every aspect is in question among grade levels when content of course books is designed. number of question texts in secondary school mathematics course books were found to be 319 in the fifth grade, 330 in the sixth grade, 452 in the seventh grade and 419 the eighth grade. there were 33 less questions in the eighth-grade course book than in the seventh-grade course book. there is an imbalance in the eighth grade in terms of progressivity. while there was an increase from the fifth to seventh grade in question texts, a decrease was observed in the eighth grade. number of solution texts in secondary school mathematics course books were found to be 100 in the fifth grade, 119 in the sixth grade, 115 in the seventh grade and 94 the eighth grade. accordingly, number of solution texts increased progressively in the fifth and sixth grades, there was no such increase in the seventh and eighth grades; number of solution texts in the eighth-grade course book even remained below the number in the fifthgrade course book. the highest number of information texts was found to be in the sixth-grade course book, the highest number of question texts was found to be in the seventh-grade course book, and the highest number of solution texts was found to be in the sixth-grade course book. it is understood that principles of progressivity such as from easy to difficult, simple to complex, literal to inferential comprehension, etc. suggested by deciding and pioneering scientists in the educational domain such as bloom and barrett were not considered in the distribution of information, question and solution texts in secondary school mathematics course books. addressing the readability levels of the texts in secondary mathematics course books, this study performed analyses of average word and average sentence lengths of the texts in secondary school course books. these analyses showed that there is no linear correlation between grade level and word and sentence length averages. however, schemas of students expand as grade level increases, therefore it becomes easier for them to make sense of more complex sentences. hence, it is anticipated that texts in course books becomes harder as the grade level increases. text should be not under but above the grade level to a degree so that students can improve their reading comprehension and problem-solving skills. yet, it was found in the study that average word lengths of information texts in the fifth-grade course book were more than the lengths in other grades' course books, average word lengths of question texts were more than the lengths in the sixthand seventh-grade course books; average sentence lengths of question texts were more than the lengths in the seventh-grade course book, average word lengths of solution texts were more than the lengths in other grades' course books, and average sentence lengths were more than the lengths in all grades' course books but the seventh-grade course book. as can be understood from these findings, word and sentence lengths were not organized according to grade levels. readability scores and levels of the text in the analyzed secondary school mathematics course books are not in parallel with the grade level. accordingly, readability scores of information and solution texts in the fifth-grade course book were lower than the scores in other grades' course books whereas readability scores of question texts were lower than the scores in all grades' course books but the eighth-grade course book. information text given before the text and solution text that comes after the question need to be constructed competently and sufficiently in the linguistic sense. these texts which need to be organized in an intensity that can be understood by students will help question understood and solved more easily. furthermore, lower readability scores, that is, frustration level of question texts in the fifth-grade course book should be considered a problem. lower readability scores of question texts indicated that students may find it hard to comprehend these texts. lower readability scores of information, question and solution texts prepared for the fifth-grade students should remind that such scores may reduce the intelligibility level of these texts for students. the eighth-grade question texts scored lower in readability and marked as frustration level texts in terms of readability. accordingly, while information and solution texts in the eighth-grade course books were constructed as educational texts, these texts which measure students' level of comprehending the subject or information were not described with sufficient words and sentences. in this sense, it can be argued that question texts in secondary school eighth-grade mathematics course book were prepared in a way that they may affect students' comprehension level negatively. texts are classified as independent, educational and frustration in terms of readability level. the fact that none of the texts in the analyzed course books were on the independent level should be discussed. one should give some thought about the question "should a course book be used only in the guidance of teacher or should it be regarded as an instrument that can be used by student alone?" besides the educational texts which requires teacher guidance for comprehension, course books also need to include independent texts which students can deal with only by their own knowledge and experience inside and outside the classroom. by this means, it can be ensured that students in the learning phase have stronger confidence. readability refers to texts' level of structural difficulty and complexity. the higher readability level gets, the easier students find it to process and comprehend the text. students of higher grade levels with more knowledge and experience process and interpret more complex and difficult texts than students of lower grade levels. when considered from this point of view, it can be argued that texts in the course books were created regardless of grade level. the following recommendations can be made in the light of the study results: • texts in the course books should be prepared in consideration of grade levels and the levels of intelligibility and readability. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 250-256 256 • teachers need to be trained to determine the readability levels of mathematical texts (question, description, solution, etc.) that will write or select to use for courses. otherwise, teachers may unavoidably come to a wrong or incomplete conclusion whether a text is easy or difficult for students. • intelligibility is directly related to readability. if readability levels of mathematical texts are low, their intelligibility levels are reduced. in this context, it would be useful to ask students for opinion on whether they comprehend a mathematical text because this is an important variable for the achievement in a course. • readability levels of the text in the analyzed secondary school mathematics course book were found to be on frustration level and educational level. course books should also include independent texts with readability scores and levels. references akay, a.a., 2004. the effect of 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(editors), a gift to prof. k. gülbün baydur. ankara: özyurt matbaacılık. pp: 210-218. yılmaz, m., 2011. mathematics, social studies and achievements in science and technology courses [turkish, mathematics, socia l studies, mathematics, science and technology] and science and technology]. dumlupinar university journal of institute of social sciences, 2011(29): 9-13. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=smog%20grading-a%20new%20readability%20formula https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=language,%20reading,%20and%20readability%20formulas:%20implications%20for%20developing%20and%20adapting%20tests http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327574ijt0403_3 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=engaging%20struggling%20adolescent%20readers%20through%20situational%20interest:%20a%20model%20proposing%20the%20relationships%20among%20extrinsic%20motivation,%20oral%20reading%20proficiency,%20comprehension,%20and%20academic%20achievement http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2010.495633 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=what%20they%20can’t%20read%20will%20hurt%20them:%20reading%20and%20academic%20achievement https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=what%20they%20can’t%20read%20will%20hurt%20them:%20reading%20and%20academic%20achievement https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20impact%20of%20language%20characteristics%20in%20mathematics%20test%20items%20on%20the%20performance%20of%20english%20language%20learners%20and%20students%20with%20disabilities https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20impact%20of%20language%20characteristics%20in%20mathematics%20test%20items%20on%20the%20performance%20of%20english%20language%20learners%20and%20students%20with%20disabilities http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15326977ea1102_2 91 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 91-101, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.91.101 stem education through the perspectives of secondary schools teachers and school administrators in turkey mustafa çevi̇k1  esma özgünay2 ( corresponding author) 1department of primary education, karamanoğlu mehmetbey university, karaman, turkey 2ministry of national education, karaman/turkey, turkey abstract the aim of this study is to explore the views of science, mathematics and information technologies teachers working in secondary schools and administrators of the schools, in which these teachers are working, regarding stem. this research is based on a survey model in which quantitative data tools were used to directly obtain the opinions of teachers about stem education; in parallel qualitative data tools were used to deeply understand the views of administrators about stem education. the sample of the study consisted of 136 stem field educators working in 21state and private public secondary schools and 45 administrators working in these schools. while views of teachers indicated that the impact of stem on students was higher than its effect on courses and teachers with each subscale of the quantitative data collection tool conducted with teachers, no significant relation was observed between these findings, gender and branch variables. similarly, administrators stated that stem is more effective on the students, teachers are not well equipped to teach stem, they need to train themselves to implement stem in courses and curriculums should be prepared on a stem basis. keywords: stem perspective, stem secondary school education, views of administrators about stem, views of teachers about stem. jel classification: stem education, stem perspective, secondary school, teachers, administrators. citation | mustafa çevi̇k; esma özgünay (2018). stem education through the perspectives of secondary schools teachers and school administrators in turkey. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 91-101. history: received: 1 february 2018 revised: 24 february 2018 accepted: 28 february 2018 published: 5 march 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 92 2. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 94 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 96 4. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 99 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 100 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.91.101&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5064-6983 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2457-1938 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5064-6983 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2457-1938 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5064-6983 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2457-1938 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 92 1. introduction countries aim to adapt to rapidly evolving and chancing information and technology as well as advance their competition with each other through intellectual power rather than physical force in this digital age. the only way to achieve all this harmony and success is through education. in this regard, it is inevitable that the achievements gained through individual disciplines to educate individuals who think innovatively and produce creative solutions for the new problems, which is the main aim of the education, are insufficient. the new educational trend of the new world is the introduction of new outcomes through multidisciplinary studies. stem (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education is at the forefront of interdisciplinary approaches in education. stem stands for science, technology, engineering, mathematics and it is a new educational approach focusing on teaching of design-centered knowledge and skills of these areas. the stem education is vital in terms of its purposes such as taking big steps in the industrialization of the countries, having the promise of the global market, providing economic advantage as well as educating qualified individuals who are component in the current and future generations of business. for this reason, given the necessary importance to stem education, the education of stem literate students from kindergarten to university, the employment of these pupils according to their individual qualifications in industry and industrial areas should be among the important targets in terms of industrial and economic development of countries. it is indisputable that individuals with qualified manpower are required to have scientific competences in mathematics and science in the age where information and technology change rapidly every second. however as long as these scientific competences do not integrate with the applicability of technology and engineering, they will not be able to respond people’s future expectations and problems. the aim of stem education, which consists of science and mathematics, the source of scientific data, as well as technology and engineering disciplines that are their application areas, is to integrate these four disciplines in order to improve students’ problem solving abilities with a holistic and positive perspective, enable them to explore their creativity to obtain products. ensuring the students to acquire aforementioned stem gains is only possible through trained educators equipped with the necessary skills. teacher competencies proposed by turkey ministry of national education include knowledge, skills and attitudes that ought to be gained by teachers who accomplish the curriculums developed for effective teaching and learning and prepare students for the 21st century (mne, 2017). according to these competencies, teachers of 21st century are expected to have high-level of thinking skills, become digital literate, ensure students to develop their creativity by providing opportunities for material preparation and development as well as apply scientific research methods and techniques. in short, it can be said that the turkish national education system desires teachers with stem competencies. however, the studies about stem education into teachers, which is already carried out in turkey, are still in the beginning stage comparing the studies in developed countries. in addition, the necessity for the people who developed themselves in stem professions in recent years around the world revealed the need for stem education (öner and capraro, 2016). it is obvious that stem awareness is insufficient especially for students, teacher candidates, teachers and administrators in turkey (çevik et al., 2017). therefore, it is observed that teachers who graduated from the universities and teacher candidates in turkey do not graduate with sufficient training and their in-service training is not complementary for the deficiencies of the teachers regarding stem education. it was reported that especially secondary school science teachers both in turkey and some other countries feel incompetent regarding stem education and university-industry collaboration is required to achieve these qualifications (el-deghaidy et al., 2017). similarly, it was stated that school administrators should be more involved within stem education in the implementation of stem programs in schools and they should be able to improve themselves in this regard (al salami et al., 2017). in order to integrate the holistic interdisciplinary approach provided by the stem education into the education system in turkey, it is necessary to ensure awereness of teacher candidates when they enrolled in the education faculty, improve their consciousness and sentience and increase awareness of existing teachers through support training programs and in-service training. in this context, educating future stem teachers can be facilitated by focusing on the development of teacher training undergraduate programs (erdoğan and çiftçi, 2017). furthermore, teachers’ realization of stem education in the classroom help them gain self-confidence regarding stem (çetin and balta, 2017). positive attitudes & views towards stem are very important in order for such initiatives to contribute into the professional developments of the teachers and teacher candidates (laboy-rush, 2011). to enhance students’ perceptions and interests in stem, teachers need to develop positive attitudes toward teaching beyond their disciplines, positive attitudes toward collaboration with other teachers, and willingness to change current instructional strategies (al salami et al., 2017). guskey (2002) visualized the change emerged in teachers' beliefs and attitudes after their professional development and teaching experiences as follows: figure-1. a model of teacher change source: guskey (2002) significant changes in teachers 'attitudes and beliefs begin to emerge after they first observe evidence of improvement in students' learning. these improvements usually result from changes in teachers' classroom practices from a new teaching approach, the use of new materials, the use of curricula, or a change in class format (guskey, 2002). from this point of view, it can be said that the attitudes and beliefs that affect teachers' views asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 93 towards stem depend on teaching methods and techniques implemented in their classes. the methods, techniques or strategies to be used are directly related to the professional development of the teachers. in this context, it is important to identify the awareness of teachers who are the practitioners of stem education and school administrators about stem education in order to illuminate numerous points. the presence of teachers and school administrators with high professional development in the stem field in secondary schools, which is one of the most important of the educational stages, means that students actively engage and improve themselves in stem activities. 1.1. literature review and purpose of study spanneut (2010) argued that teachers would want to take risks in various learning opportunities when they are less stressed as a matter of course and they believe they can trust their managers. in reality, teachers give support more each other by sharing information among each other and willing to cooperate by helping each other when they feel confident towards their colleagues. this situation is more preliminary for stem field teachers and very important in terms of functionality. oparaocha (2017) carried out a case study in his doctoral dissertation with the managers and teachers of stem schools that indicated high and low performance in the city center. at the end of the study, he lined up items that affected the stem performance of the school. within these, he pointed out the idea that an effective stem education can be realized in the school in which an efficient manager with high stem awareness cooperate with his colleagues. pinnell et al. (2013) aimed to improve the knowledge and skills of teachers and teacher candidates about stem education and prepared 6-week program designed to increase teachers’ engineering and design knowledge, in which 10 teachers and 5 teacher candidates participated. participants were involved in workshops and activities related to curriculum development, inquiry-based learning and conceptual framework of stem education. they then worked with an engineer candidate studying at the engineering faculty, a lecturer from the engineering faculty and an engineer working in the industry. researchers evaluating program outputs indicated that participating teachers developed their stem skills and continued to develop their skills by leading the implementation of stem education in their schools. in the study of alumbaugh (2015) in which the data collected through qualitative means, three leaders from a professional stem company, four primary school principals, and six primary school teachers participated in missouri. it was identified that each of the leaders of the stem professional companies has positive attitudes towards stem for stem education and each leader strongly stands for stem education at the primary education stage. the perceptions of school principals and teachers are similar. both the principal and the teachers stated that stem education has the potential to improve participation of the students and increase their achievements. tamara et al. (2016) identified that teachers were primary factors affecting students' stem career plans at the primary education stage. the views of teachers for stem are crucial as they have an important position that affects the future of the students. kristin et al. (2016) conducted a study with science, mathematics and education faculty coordinators, secondary school administrators, teachers and students in order to introduce and describe a professional development model. the study is a practice with the design difficulties in stem theme during summer term. teachers, students, administrators and other participants collaborated together within this practice. at the end of the study, the teachers gave opinions on 2 important topics related to stem designs. the first of these is practices and motivations of students in science, mathematics and engineering fields and the second is participation in the activity and the form of embracing the activity. these opinions, which also indicate the basic principles of stem education, are an important aspect in making the students active in stem activities. at the same time this study also identified resistances to traditional structures of the curriculum and schools. based on these findings, a course of action was identified for more effective stem education. çınar et al. (2016) pointed out in their stem-focused studies conducted with science teacher candidates that participants only associate natural sciences with mathematics before participating stem training and they consider involving technology and engineering as well in teaching natural sciences after stem training. çetin and balta (2017) strongly recommended that teachers should be trained for stem practices, and this should be carried out with the inservice training. in this way, teacher will be able to realize their class activities more easily by gaining experiences in the stem education. 1.2. rationale of the study when examining the literature, it is revealed that teacher candidates and teachers should be equipped in this regard as well as their professional developments are important in order to achieve the certain objectives of the stem education. furthermore, secondary school teachers are expected to have high levels of stem awareness, interests and attitudes. teachers who will train individuals who are expected to reveal multidisciplinary solutions to the multidisciplinary problems of the future should be able to plan stem education process and the program properly and prepare the necessary materials and educational environments. researches indicate that the interest in stem subjects begins at the primary school and therefore the preparation of primary school teachers with stem teaching competences is vital (debiase, 2016). teachers should not be left alone in this process. school administrators should support the process in terms of teacher trainings, physical infrastructure, material design, setting of class hours, time management, informing families about the process and become the indirect enforcer of stem education. according to debiase (2016) strong and positive relationships between managers, participants and teachers provide strong contributions to the success of the acquisition and integration of stem content, curriculum and pedagogy. studies are limited examining stem awareness of secondary school teachers and administrators in stem fields in the national literature. in this regard, it is considered that the contribution of the study to the literature would be great. this study focuses on the views of teachers and school administrators about stem education playing a key role in the spread of stem education. for this purpose, it is aimed to evaluate the views of stem field teachers and administrators in secondary schools related to stem education, which has emerged as a new teaching approach in education in turkey in recent years. the following questions were sought in this direction. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 94 1. what are the general views of stem field teachers (science, mathematics, information technologies and technology design) working in secondary schools about the effect of stem education on the students as well as the courses and the teachers? 2. is there a significant correlation between genders of secondary school stem field teachers and their views about stem? 3. is there a significant correlation between the branch variable and views of secondary school stem field teachers about stem? 4. what are the views of secondary school administrators about the effect of stem education on the students, the courses and the teachers? 2. methodology this section describes the way in which the research was conducted, research methods that were used as well as the ways and techniques followed in identifying the views of school administrators and teachers participating in the study. 2.1. research design the first part of the study was structured in a survey model based on quantitative research design. survey models are research approaches that aim to describe the past or the present, as it exists. the case, the individual or the object that is the subject of the investigation is tried to be described as in their own circumstances and as are (karasar, 2007). taking the views of school administrators constituting the second part of the research was carried out with the case study from qualitative research designs. a case study is a thorough investigation of a current phenomenon in a holistic approach under real circumstances (baxter and jack, 2008; yin, 2009). qualitative research aims to identify phenomena and cases in the authentic framework and tries to realize the truth about the situation rather than the generalization of research findings (ekiz, 2004; yıldırım and şimşek, 2005). research models used in the study support each other and tried to be used as efficiently as possible. study group. while the participant group of this study was being constituted, the convenient sampling method was adopted from non-random sampling methods. this method ensures that certain conditions are present (büyüköztürk et al., 2012). the participant group of the study consisted of administrators and stem field teachers working at 21 secondary schools in karaman. a total of 45 school administrators who are principals or deputy principals and 136 stem teachers including science, mathematics and information technologies working in these schools participated on a volunteer basis. the demographic characteristics of the teachers and administrators involved in the research are detailed below. table 1 indicates the demographic information of the teachers participated in the research. table-1. demographic characteristics of participant independent variable groups f (frequency) % (percentage) gender female male 59 77 43.4 56.6 branch science 55 40.4 mathematics 53 39 information technologies 28 20.6 total 136 100 source: from data collected as seen in table 1, of the teachers participated in the research, 59 (43.4%) were female, 77 (56.6%) were male. in addition, 55 (40.4%) were science teachers, 53 (39%) were mathematics teachers and 28 (20.6%) were information technologies teachers. the demographic features of school administrators participating in the study are shown in table 2. table-2. demographic characteristics of administrators participating in the study independent variable groups f % gender female 8 17.8 male 37 82.2 title manager 20 44.4 deputy manager 25 55.6 term of office 1-5 24 53.3 6-10 9 20 11-15 8 17.7 15-20 2 4.5 21 and over 2 4.5 graduation education 32 71.1 science/literature 6 13.3 theology 4 8.9 vocational education 3 6.7 total 45 100 source: from data collected of the school administrators participated in the study, 8 (17.8%) were female, 37 (82.2%) were male. in addition, 20 (44.4%) were principals, 25 (55.6%) were deputy principals. of the school administrators participated in the research, 24 (53.3%) had 1-5 years, 9 (20%) had 6-10 years, 8 (17.7%) had 11-15 years, 2 (4.5%) had 15-20 years and 2 (4.5%) had 21 years and over of professional experience. the school administrators involved in the asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 95 study were all in secondary schools. of the school administrators participating in the study, 32 (71.1%) graduated from the education faculty, 6 (13.3%) graduated from the faculty of science and literature, 4 (8.9%) graduated from the faculty of theology and 3 (6.7%) graduated from the faculty of vocational education. 2.2. design and implementation of data collection instruments survey preparation and implementation procedure. views about the same topic from two different sample groups were collected by two different methods in the research. the 5-point likert-type questionnaire named “views of secondary school teachers about stem”, one of the quantitative data collection tools, that aims to collect data from stem field teachers, which is the first study group, consists of 2 sections. the first part of the questionnaire is “views about the effects of stem on students” and the second part is “views about the effects of stem on courses and teachers”. survey questions were developed by the researchers and interviews had been held with 20 teachers within different platforms in order to explore readiness level of teachers for stem before the items were prepared and the answers were recorded, evaluated and eventually items were prepared in this direction. validity reliability studies of the 24-item questionnaire were performed. validity and reliability studies of the questionnaire. the questionnaire was finalized by the examination of a specialist in measurement field, a specialist in mathematics education, two academicians specializing in science education and a science and classroom teacher. an item was removed as it was not adequate for the study and three items were amended and finalized, as they were not clear in line with the opinions of experts. the questionnaire in which the content validity was provided in the direction of expert opinions was employed to 136 teachers. the explanatory factor analysis was performed for the construct validity of the questionnaire. the kmo value is .84 and the factor analysis was performed since this value was higher than the minimum value of .60 required to perform the factor analysis indicated in the literature (pallant, 2007). the value of barlett’s test of sphericity was significant at (x2 (105) =878.605; p<.01 level. in other words, the study group to which the questionnaire was applied can represent the population. when the factor analysis is carried out, the items that have a factor load value of .45 and above are strictly considered to be included in the scale (kline, 2000; büyüköztürk, 2009). therefore items 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18, 20 and 22 were not included in the survey. 25-degree “varimax” axis rotation was performed during factor analysis. according to analysis results, the items for which construction validity was carried out were included in the final scale. the scale consists of two sub-dimensions and 15 items. while the first sub-dimension of the scale, item 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7, measures the effect of stem on students, item 12,13,14,16,19,21,23 and 24 measure the effect of stem on courses and teachers. the factor loading values of items assessing views about the effect of stem on students range from .58 to .78. the sub-dimension consisted of 7 items. the factor loading values of items assessing views about the effect of stem on courses and teachers range from .49 to .79. this sub-dimension consisted of 8 items. these two factors appeared to explain 52% of the total variance. it is stated in the literature that it is sufficient to have a range of 40% to 60% of the variance explained in multiple-factor measurement instruments (tavşancıl, 2005). in this regard, the variance of the two sub-dimensions is sufficient for the survey as is in the original survey. internal consistency coefficient was examined with cronbach alpha for the reliability of the questionnaire. this coefficient was calculated as .87 for the survey. for the sub-dimensions, it was calculated as .87 for the subscale of student-directed effect and it was calculated as .82 for the subscale of courses and teachers-directed effect. it is well known in the literature that the value of .70 or over is sufficient for the reliability (field, 2005). interview form preparation and implementation procedure. the semi-structured interview form, one of the qualitative data collection tools, was used to obtain in-depth data from school administrators, which is the second study group of the study. in this form prepared by the researchers principles such as easy to understand, preparing focused questions, avoiding asking multi-dimensional questions, asking open-ended questions, avoiding steering, preparing alternative questions and probes, writing different sorts of questions and organizing questions in a logical way were considered (yıldırım and şimşek, 2005). it was noted that the questions in the form were parallel to the questions posed to teachers who were in the first study group. in this regard, the form consisted of two parts and questions emerged in the light of four themes. the first part of the form is the “demographic part” and the second part is the “views about stem part”. the second part consisted of four main themes: “stem perception”, “opinions about the contribution of stem to students”, “opinions about the implementation of stem in the course/school” “opinions about conducting stem by teachers” and questions were prepared for four subthemes. themes in the interview form and questions for sub-themes are shown in table 3. table-3. themes and questions for sub-themes in the interview form theme and sub-themes questions 1.theme stem perception 1 1.1. sub-theme how the perception obtained 1.2 2. theme the contribution of stem to students 2 3. theme the feasibility of stem education 3 3.1. sub-theme things to be done for stem education 3.1 3.2. sub-theme the reason for not fulfilling stem education in the course 3.2 4. theme readiness of teachers for stem education 4 4.1. sub-theme what teachers need to do for stem education 4.1 source: from data collected asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 96 validity and reliability studies of the interview form. the semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers was evaluated by a specialist academician in the field of measurement, an academician in mathematics, science and classroom instruction and an expert in turkish, science and classroom teachers in order to identify the content validity. the “stem executive interview form check mark” developed by the researchers was used to evaluate the questions. the experts indicated that questions are appropriate for their purposes in this form in which the questions were evaluated. it this direction, it can be said that the form has the validity feature. after piloting with school administrators participating in the research, the answers given by the administrators for the open-ended questions were examined by both the researchers and a lecturer other than the researchers. the issues in which “consensus” and “disagreement” emerged were discussed in the scope of themes and sub-themes and amendments were provided in the interview form consisting of 8 questions. the reliability formula proposed by miles and huberman (1994) was used to calculate the reliability of the study. according to the method of reliability= consensus / (consensus + disagreement), the reliability among the researchers was found as .87 = (7/7+1). the similarity of the experts in coding is well. this indicates that the coding is reliable. according to yıldırım and şimşek (2005) it is assumed that the percentage of reliability was achieved when the agreement percentage is 70% in the reliability calculation. the interview form, in which validity and reliability was provided, was conducted with 45 school administrators face-to-face in the manager’s office alone. voice recording was offered but the participants did not opt for it. participants were informed in written and verbally with the benefits and risks of participating in the study and they were explained that they could withdraw anytime they want and they would not be harmed in such a case. 2.3. data analysis qualitative data analysis. prior to the analysis of the data, normality test was carried out to find out whether the data were normally distributed and it was found that the values of skewness and kurtosis are p<+1.5 and p>1.5 normal distribution. both the skewness (-.43) and kurtosis (-.22) values of “views about the effect on student” subscale and the skewness (-.02) and kurtois (-.27) values of the “views about the effect on courses and teacher” subscale are between +1,5 and -1,5. it is assumed that distribution is normal when the skewness and kurtosis values of the two subscales are between +1,5 and -1,5 (tabachnick and fidell, 2015). therefore, the current study included independent t-test and one-way variance (anova) analyzes that can be performed with normal distribution. qualitative data analysis. the “content analysis” technique considered in qualitative research paradigm was carried out to identify the opinions of school administrators about stem, which is the second study group of the research. the content analysis is described as a systematic, repeatable technique in which some words on a text are summarized with smaller content categories with certain rules-based coding (büyüköztürk et al., 2012). the content analysis requires an in-depth analysis of the data obtained and allows emerging previously unfamiliar themes and codes. the aim of such analysis is to present the findings to the reader in an organized and interpreted manner (yıldırım and şimşek, 2005). prior the analysis, the themes and sub-themes were determined by the researchers taking into consideration the purpose of the study. four main themes and answers given in the interview form consisting of four sub-themes were examined in detail. similar data were grouped together with certain themes, interrelationships between data were structured, coded and frequency (f) and percentages (%) were calculated and tabulated. since the findings of the research should be presented within confidentiality boundaries (mack et al., 2005; dicicco-bloom and crabtree, 2006) participants were given numbers and their identities were kept confidential and the answers given the questions were only be used to provide the data for the investigation and quotations from raw data obtained from open-ended questions were presented (patton, 2014). 3. findings in this section, findings and interpretations of the study were included within the objectives of the research. 3.1. findings related to opinions of teachers about stem education the mean scores of teachers participating in the study about stem in general, effect on students, effect on courses and teachers are given in table 4. table-4. descriptive data on the opinions of teachers about stem education scale and its subscales subscales n ̅ ss general views on stem 136 4.02 .56 the effect of stem on the students subscale 136 4.15 .68 the effect of stem on the courses and teachers subscale 136 3.90 .63 source: from data collected as shown in table 4 the mean score of the views of teachers participating in the study about stem education is ̅1= 4.02. in other words, views of teachers about stem is favourable in the positive direction. similarly, the views of teachers about the effect of stem on the students is ̅2= 4.15. the mean score of the views about the effect of stem on the courses and teachers is ̅3= 3.90. it can be said that opinions about both subscales of the questionnaire are positive. however, it can also be said that teachers believe that the effects of stem on the students are further ( ̅2> ̅3). 3.2. findings about views of teachers on stem in terms of gender variable findings regarding the relationship between subscales of views about the effects of stem on students,courses and teachers interms of the gender variable of teachers are shown table 5. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 97 table-5. ttest for sub-dimensions of the scale by gender variable gender n ̅ ss t sd p the effect of stem on students female 136 4.25 .70 1.44 134 .15 male 136 4.08 .66 the effect of stem on courses and teachers female 136 3.95 .67 .76 134 .44 male 136 3.86 .61 source: from data collected as seen in table 5, there is no significant correlation between gender variable and the mean scores of the subscale of views about the effect of stem on students. similarly, there is no significant correlation between gender variable and the mean scores of the subscale of views about the effect of stem on courses and teachers. from this point of view, it can be said that there is no relationship between gender of teachers and views that stem has an impact on the students, courses and teachers. there is no difference according to gender. 3.3. findings regarding views of teachers about stem by branch variable table-6. one-way anova regarding the subscales of the questionnaire by branch variable variance source sum of square sd mean square f p effect of stem on students between groups .75 2 .37 .79 .45 within groups 62.61 133 .47 total 63.36 135 effect of stem on courses and teachers between groups .60 2 .30 .74 .47 within groups 54.46 133 .41 total 55.07 135 source: from data collected as seen in table 6, there is no significant difference between the mean scores of views about the effect of stem on the students by branch variable (f(2,133)=.79; p>.05). in addition, it was observed that there is no significant difference between scores of views about the effect of stem on courses and teachers, which is other subscale of the survey, by branch variable of the participants (f(2,133)=.74; p>.05). that is to say, there is no significant correlation between braches of teachers and views that stem education has an impact on both students as well as courses and teachers. there is no significant difference according to braches of the teachers. 3.4. findings regarding views of school administrators about the effect of stem on the students, courses and teachers views of the school administrators participating the research about the effect of stem education on the students, courses and teachers were presented by the content analysis method. the codes, percentages and frequencies of these views are given in table 7. table-7. views of school administrators about stem themes codes f % 1. stem perception available 21 46.7 partially 17 37.8 not available 7 15.5 total 45 100 1.1. how the perception acquired social environment 8 38.1 congress/conference/competition 6 28.6 internet 3 14.2 own 2 9.5 tv 1 4.8 official letter 1 4.8 total 21 100 2. the effect of stem on the students embodiment of information 17 37.8 productivity 8 17.8 contribution to cognitive, emotional and psychomotor skills 4 8.9 curiosity/ motivation 5 11.1 expanding horizon 2 4.4 no contribution 2 4.4 no comment 7 15.6 total 45 100 3. implementation of stem education possible 25 62.2 impossible 15 26.7 no comment 5 11.1 total 45 100 3.1.things to be done for stem education teacher education 11 44 practical courses 8 32 curriculum should be developed 5 20 physical infrastructure should be improved 1 4 total 25 100 3.2.the reason of not fulfilling stem education equipment inadequacy of teacher 4 26.7 infrastructure inadequacy 5 33.3 inappropriate for curriculum 6 40 total 15 100 4.readiness of teachers for stem available 2 4.4 not available 43 95.6 total 45 100 4.1.what teachers need to do for stem education in-service training 27 60 self-training 13 28.9 stem focused course planning 1 2.2 no comment 4 8.9 total 45 100 source: from data collected asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 98 stem education perception. of the school administrators participating in the study, 21 (46.7%) stated that they were informed of stem education, 17 (37.8%) were partially informed and 7 (15.6%) did not have any information about the program. how the stem education perception were acquired. of the 45 administrators participating in the research, 8 (38.1%) stated that they perceived the stem education from the social environment, 6 (28.5%) perceived from activities such as congresses / conferences / comptetitions, 3 (14.3%) perceived from the internet, 2 (9.5%) perceived by own investigating, 1(4.7%) perceived via tv and 1 (4.7%) perceived through official letter. m8,dm24: “i perceived it from my social environment, from my friends” (8) m5: “i perceived it from the conference / congress / competition i attended” (6) m9, dm6 : “i perceived it from the internet ” (3) it is seen above that the school administrators who participated in the study perceived the stem education from different streams. from the answers given, we can reach the conclusion that the stem education in turkey is becoming widespread on different platforms but the stem education awareness is not fully realized. contribution of stem education to students. of the school administrators participating in the research, 17 (37.8%) stated that stem education would embody the information, 8 (17.8%) stated that stem education would make students productive, 5 (11.1%) stated that it would provide curiosity and motivation, 4 (8.9%) stated that it would contribute to the cognitive, emotional and psychomotor skills of the students, 2 (4.4%) stated that it would expand the horizon of the students, 2 (4.4%) stated that it would not provide any contribution and 7 (15.6%) stated that they had no idea. in this regard, some excerpts from the school administrators participating in the study as follows: m5: “it allows students to apply abstract theoretical information gained in schools to practice in real life.” (2) m15: “allows students to realize their interests and talents.” (2) 2 (4.4%) participants believe that stem education does not have any contributions for the students. participants expressed their views as follows: m10: “there would be no contribution as long as it becomes permanent and a national system.” m14: “it cannot be effective if teachers would provide sufficient commitment.” among participants, 7 (15.6%) stated that they had no idea about what sort of benefits stem education provides for students. it is seen above that secondary school administrators participating in the research have different opinions about the contribution of stem education to students. from the answer given, 80% of principals have positive expectations about stem education and 20% had some concerns arising from the fact that teachers are not self-sacrificing and the system is not permanent and national. implementation of stem education. while 25 (62.2%) school administrators indicated that the implementation of stem in the class is possible, 15 (26.7%) indicated that this was not possible and 5 (11.1%) stated that they did not have any ideas. things to be done to implement stem education. among school administrators participating in the research, 11 (44%) stated that teacher training is required, 8 (32%) said that it is necessary to shift to practical training, 5 (20%) suggested that changes in the curriculum are required and 1 (4%) stated that arrangements in the physical infrastructure of the school are required in order to implement stem education. some of the participants expressed their views on this topic as follows: dm23: “teachers should be given a serious in-service training ,informed what to do and how to do it, equipped with a new generation of information technologies.” (2) dm8: “elective courses should be organized with stem and hours of practice and workshops should be created.” (1) m2: ”more time should be allocated for practice by reducing hours of theoretical lessons. practice should be embraced chasing pattern information transfer ….” (1) various answers were received from the administrators participating in the research about things to be done to implement stem education. it is seen that teachers are required to be equipped with in-service training for stem education. in addition to teacher awareness, the administrators noted that arrangements need to be made in the curriculums, practical education should be included and the physical infrastructure of the school should be improved in order to implement stem in courses. failure to implement stem education in courses. among the administrators participating in the research, 6 (40%) stated that curriculums are inadequate, 5 (33.3%) reported that the infrastructure is insufficient and 4 (26.7%) stated that the teachers have lack of equipment regarding stem education due not to fulfill stem education in classes. some of the participants expressed their views on this issue as follows: m7: “we do not have teachers equipped with stem education to carry out activities.”(1) dm6: “there is a curriculum to catch up with and preparation for exams is not possible at all.”(2) from the answers above given by the administrators participating in the study, it is revealed that they are aware that stem education is important for turkey and for the education system, but lack of equipment of teachers, insufficient infrastructure, our examination system, intensity of the curriculum do not allow to apply stem education in the courses. readiness of teachers for stem education. of the school administrators participating in the study, 43 (95.6%) stated that teachers are not ready to teach stem and 2 (4.4%) stated that teachers are ready to teach stem. what teachers need to do for stem education. of the school administrators participating in the study, 27 (60%) indicated that teachers needed in-service training, 13 (28.9%) stated that teachers needed to train themselves, 4 (8.9%) indicated that they had no ideas and 1 (2.2%) noted that the preparation of stem-focused curriculum is required. as regards the topic, some of the participants expressed their views as follows: m8: “i believe that educators should be given training about the interaction of stem education.”(3) my14: “ teachers should acquire knowledge about not only their own fields but also about other fields, should plan their course plans according to stem activities.” (1) asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 99 my 8: “teachers should educate themselves firstly and participate effectively into in-service training, congress and conferences.” (2) 4. conclusion and discussion in this study, the opinions of secondary school teachers about stem education were examined and evaluation of these opinions were carried out according to various variables. in addition, interviews were conducted with administrators in the secondary schools about stem education and their opinions were examined in depth. when the literature examined, it seems that there are no qualitative and quantitative studies together about the opinions of both teachers and administrators regarding stem education. the originality of the study is due to comparison and evaluation of the results obtained by interviewing the principals in parallel with the questions directed to the teachers. thus, it made possible to evaluate and assess the views of the teachers and administrators, two important components of education, on stem education as complementary data. as a result of the study, the mean score of the views of teachers about stem obtained by the examination of the data collected quantitatively was observed as ̅1= 4.02. it can be said with this finding that opinions of teachers about stem education are positive. this result is in accordance with many studies in the literature (siew et al., 2015; eroğlu and bektaş, 2016; kızılay, 2016). in addition, this is a positive development for a country in which stem studies have just begun. however, it is insufficient. the teachers participated in the study stated that the effect of the stem education on the students is quite drastic. it was identified that its impact to the course and the teacher, which were other dimensions of the questionnaire, was less. the finding that participants considered that the stem education has a low effect on the teacher and the course may be due to the fact that the education programs, the pre-service trainings and the trainings provided in the service are not stem-based. the teachers may consider that it would not be possible to form a contribution to the colleagues and therefore positive perception or attitude especially without integrating stem into the curriculum. yaşar et al. (2006) emphasized the importance of assessing perceptions and preferences of the pre-service or in-service teachers related to engineering design before developing a curriculum for stem. it was observed that the stem awareness of the school administrators is quite high. .it is identified that of the administrators, students would embody information, become productive, as well as it would provide curiosity and motivation, contribute to cognitive, emotional and psychomotor skills of students and expand horizon of students. a small proportion of them stated that they have no idea and there would be no contribution. this finding is in accordance with the answers given by the teachers and reinforces the view that stem education would contribute further to the students. numerous studies supporting this finding are available in the literature (capraro et al., 2013; chang et al., 2015). the majority of the administrators stated that the implementation of stem is feasible and its effect on courses is available and some administrators stated that it is not. when asked reasons failure to implement stem activities in the class, the administrators stated that curriculums are not relevant for stem education and infrastructure is insufficient and teachers are not equipped well for stem education. the views of administrators, that is “ programs appropriate to stem should be developed to teach stem and teachers should be motivated for this stem integrated education program” are consistent with the finding of custer and daugherty (2009) indicating it is necessary for program developers to have a comprehensive and flexible structure that meets the school and student needs that will contribute to the professional development of teachers in order for the more effective integration of stem education into programs. in particular, it must be comprehensive covering all of the science teachers (bayer, 2009). in the study of penuel et al. (2007) conducted with the 454 science teachers, it was identified that those provided with equipment and technology support contributed significantly in the integration of the program and changes in science teaching practices. in the literature, the importance of school administrators is emphasized especially in the realization of stem programs in schools, principals should be more concerned with stem education and opportunities should be given them in this regard (brown et al., 2011; al salami et al., 2017). in addition, the statement of “teachers should have a serious in-service training, should be informed what to do and how to do it, should be equipped with new generation information and technology” is an opinion that teachers have a lack of equipment and this would be one of the reasons underlying the low mean score of the effect of stem education on teachers. similarly, the majority of the administrators stated that teachers were not equipped well to teach stem and a small proportion of them stated that there would not be an impact of stem on teachers. the administrators supported their opinions with expressions such as teachers should take in-service training, train themselves in the field of stem in their schools, teachers do not have enough knowledge about stem and teachers are insufficient in preparing stem training-focused course plans. teachers are important factors in determining quality as well as achievement of stem integration program. therefore, it is important for them to acquire knowledge and skills especially the stem-specific methods of teaching such as project-based learning (khairani, 2017). these opinions support the outcomes of the study of kurt and pehlivan (2013) which indicate that teachers and teacher candidates are insufficient in pedagogical content knowledge and there is a lack of practice. el-deghaidy et al. (2017) stated in their study, in which views of secondary school science teachers about stem education and its interdisciplinary structure were examined, that teachers are not prepared for the stem practices and it is necessary to form a professional development model established by the university-industry cooperation based on the school. it is especially important that teachers of stem field should master pedagogical knowledge, branches, technological, pedagogical field (national research council [nrc], 2012). it is also possible to encounter studies emphasizing the need to increase positive views of teachers about stem-based course activities in the international literature (bracey and brooks, 2013; pinnell et al., 2013; akgündüz et al., 2015; akaygün and aslan-tutak, 2016; çınar et al., 2016; aslan-tutak et al., 2017; shernof et al., 2017). in the study, opinions of teachers about stem education were examined and no significant relation was identified in terms of gender variable. this result is also in accordance with some studies (karakaya and avgın, 2016; yenilmez and balbağ, 2016). furthermore, no significance was observed between the views of teachers with science, mathematics and information technologies and their branches. this finding is consistent with the result of çevik et al. (2017) indicating stem interests of stem field teachers did not differ by their branches. statement of some of deputy managers as “programs should be developed in accordance with this integrated educational trend to teach stem education asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 91-101 100 and new generation teachers should be adapt to this stem education” and statement of some of managers as “it is imperative that the ministry of national education immediately integrates the stem education into the education system, in which the curriculums were already rearranged. this is because turkey has to do this to reach the level of contingent civilizations” is an issue that was emphasized by the majority of administrators and this was supported by the studies carried out in the literature. for instance, countries with high success in international exams are known to have stem curriculums that developed with a strong disciplinary knowledge focusing on 21st century skills such as inquiry processes, problem solving, critical thinking and innovation. (marginson et al., 2013; english and gainsburg, 2016). today, the need to develop general skills, in-depth conceptual understanding and interdisciplinary links is most important (english, 2016). the integrated stem that was emphasized by the administrators participating in the research is unfortunately insufficient in turkey. “integration of stem fields ”where many studies abroad are being undertaken and government policies are being developed in order to raise the labor force is not yet common in turkey. in this regard, education policies and programs need to be improved in the scope of entrepreneurship (stem + e), art/design (stem-art, steam) and computing (stemcomputing, stem + c) considering the needs of the country (akgündüz and ertepınar, 2015). in the primary and secondary school curriculums modernized in 2017, stem education under the title of “applied science” was included only in the science course which is among science, mathematics and information technologies curriculums with stem fields (m.n.e., 2017). this is an indication that turkey would be insufficient to gain momentum in stem awareness, interest, attitudes and skills. considering teachers, who are the practitioners of the program, have an important role in educating adequate individuals by the needs of the time, educators should be qualified in stem education in educational reform movements (erdoğan and çiftçi, 2017). for this reason, it is necessary to plan in accordance with stem education and teachers and teacher candidates with necessary field knowledge and pedagogical equipment should be supported and essential resource and materials should be provided (çorlu et al., 2014; altan et al., 2016). however, there are limited studies indicating in detail the curriculum or program carried out including the quality of the current integration with stem education (honey et al., 2014). nevertheless, educators, politicians, trade and industry organizations underline the urgency of developing stem skills to overcome current and future social and economic challenges (marginson et al., 2013; caprile et al., 2015; prinsley and baranyai, 2015). the necessity of becoming almost universally engaged with the stem education in shaping of innovation and progressing is confronted in many reports. besides taking the views of secondary school teachers and administrators about stem education, taking the views of students and parents would be more effective in achieving a holistic opinion. in order to identify the stem view of turkey, longitudinal studies can be carried out with more sampling groups. the opinions of a sample group using mixed methods would also contribute to the literature. the gathering of views on stem education would be more important as practices related to stem education, developed stem-based curriculums and schools increase in turkey. especially it would be beneficial to take their views after long-term stem applications in measuring their attitudes, interest and awareness. apart from the formal education, spreading informally, conducting interviews about stem would contribute greatly in the field with the increase of stem citizenship or stem literacy level. references akaygün, s. and f. aslan-tutak, 2016. stem images revealing stem conceptions of pre-service chemistry and mathematics teachers. international journal of education in mathematics, science and technology, 4(1): 56-71. view at google scholar | view at publisher akgündüz, d. and h. ertepınar, 2015. a report on stem education in turkey: a provisional agenda or a necessity? 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experience. in this study, 116 female and 128 male, totally 244 handball players with the mean age 22.39±1.98 year participated voluntarily. maslach burnout inventory that originally developed by maslach and jackson (1981) and adapted to turkish population by ergin (1992) was used for measuring the burnout levels of handball players. the data of this research analyzed with spss package program and to test the internal consistency of the scale, cronbach alpha coefficient was calculated. according to the binary group comparisons, it was determined that the data were not normally distributed and therefore mann whitney u test was used. and also, the kruskall wallis h test was used for the multiple group comparisons. according to mann whitney u test results, there were no significant differences in emotional burnout (p=.088, p>.05), depersonalization (p =.411, p>.05) and personal accomplishment (p=.503, p>.05) between male and female handball players. according to kruskall wallis h test results, there were no significant differences in emotional burnout (p=.152; p>.05), depersonalization (p=.310; p>.05) and personal accomplishment (p=.301, p>.05) sub dimensions according to age and no significant difference was found in the subscale of personal accomplishment (p=.641; p> .05) according to the experience variable. but, there were statistically significant difference in emotional burnout (p=.003; p<.05) and depersonalization (p=.008; p<.05) sub dimensions according to experience variable. as a result, burnout level and depersonalization are thought to be important in terms of the experience of handball players. keywords: burnout, emotional burnout, depersonalization, personal accomplishment. citation | turhan toros (2018). burnout levels of handball players with respect to age, gender and experience. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 29-34. history: received: 4 december 2017 revised: 28 december 2017 accepted: 9 january 2018 published: 25 january 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 30 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 31 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 32 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 33 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.29.34&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8328-2925 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8328-2925 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 29-34 30 1. introduction fundamentally, human instincts are the emotions that connect human beings to life and enable them to sustain their generation in the face of the repression of nature. the concept of stress at the top of these feelings is a form of motivation, which is a solution to many basic problems such as escape from the hunter, protection of the child, fighting hunger, protecting the hierarchy in the social environment. the higher ranks of working life that emerged with the liberal economic transition of society and the expectation from the working life holds the individual under a certain stress, and thus stress, which is a source of motivation in the beginning, can be depressed if it is not controlled over time, and therefore burnout syndrome appears psychologically and clinically. stress has a long history in the field of psychiatry and has been a subject of research for many years due to its distinctive and significant effects on individual behavior and performance. in fact, stress can make it hard to perform general body functions that one can easily do under normal conditions (john and mason, 1975). today, stress has been an integral part of human life and found great importance in order to determine personal health or disorder (sherman, 1996). if the stress in the sport environment is long lasting, it can turn into burnout. burnout has been defined to occur as a consequence of chronic stress that causes a young athlete to cease participation in a previously enjoyable activity (difiori et al., 2014). burnout is considered as a situation that should be avoided because of bringing heavy and serious consequences for the individual (sermon, 1994). the concept of burnout has begun to be considered by researchers as a research topic since the 1970s (budak and sürvegil, 2005). burnout is a syndrome that leads to physical, emotional and mental fatigue, often experienced by individuals working in occupations serving people (byrne, 1999). freudenberger (1975) refers only to the dimension of emotional exhaustion and defines burnout as "a state of exhaustion resulting from failure, wear, energy and loss of power, or demands that cannot be met on human internal resources". burnout syndrome also refers to physical and mental exhaustion due to lack of motivation (sürgevil, 2005). many researchers were united in the idea that burnout includes exhaustion, expectations, attitudes, and perceptions, which are the inner psychological experiences that emerge at a personal level (raedeke, 1997; pines and aranson, 1998; raedeke and smith, 2009). according to this new concept of "burnout", whatever work is done, it shows that there are an ups and downs between what people do and what they have to do; and in addition represents worthiness, dignity, respectability, the erosion of individuals' soul. in other words, it is stated that the compulsive effects of activity on the person lead to energy loss and exhaustion over time. from a psychological point of view, specific intentional orientations, such as participating in training or performing mandatory activities or examinations, can be defined as "work" and equally meaning "work" (lemyre et al., 2007). in sport, the concept of burnout is a long-term abandonment of the individual's activities, and during this period the athlete does not feel excited to practice and match and also evaluates himself as unsuccessful and inadequate. in time, moving away from sports also removes it from social life. according to pines and aranson (1998) the main reason for individual’s exhaustion is the training environment, which keeps the athlete under constant emotional pressure. in this context, the type of oppression, the content and the scope are a major influence. burnout according to maslach; is defined as a three-dimensional syndrome that manifests itself in emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal sense of accomplishment in people (maslach, 2003). the emotional exhaustion experienced by the athlete here, especially with the intense workout tempo, causes the athlete to under intense stress (shelley et al., 2014). subsequently, maslach and jackson (1981) concluded that burnout; physical and mental dimension syndrome involving physical fatigue, long fatigue, helplessness and hopelessness in the human body, as well as negative attitudes towards the work, the life and other people that the individual has made. according to maslach, the most important dimension of burnout is emotional exhaustion. many researchers have pointed out that the dimension of emotional exhaustion, which can be observed most clearly by burnout, needs to be examined more than the other two dimensions (maslach and jackson, 1981). the depersonalization dimension, which forms the second dimension of the burnout syndrome, is a cold behavior and apathy. people are behaving like they are objects to people they meet (maslach, 2003). on the other hand personal success means that one evaluates him as inadequate and unsuccessful at work (wright and bonett, 1997). at this dimension, the person feels that he cannot be successful personally, he begins to believe that nobody likes him and develops feelings of inadequacy in communicating with his colleagues (maslach, 2003). learning the causes of burnout can be effective in regulating the results. the causes of burnout can be handled in two groups as personal and organizational (budak and sürvegil, 2005). factors such as age, marital status, over-commitment to work, personal expectations, performance, stress in personal life, job satisfaction, support from individuals and informed relatives are examined under the heading of personal reasons. the nature of work, type of workplace, duration of work, characteristics of workplace, workload, job tension, role uncertainty, educational status, disagreement, intra organizational relations, economic and social factors can be considered as the organizational causes of burnout. with the business conditions in recent years; personality traits, the manner in which one looks at stressful situations, and the ways of coping with them suggest that individual levels of extinction show even when similar stresses are encountered (masum et al., 2016). when the athletes are unable to cope with these demands, negative adjustments are to be expected, such as loss of motivation and burnout, which may lead to decreased performance and sport dropout (gautheur et al., 2016). some previous research findings have emphasized that the social environments importance of the in the development of athlete burnout (gould et al., 1996; raedeke and smith, 2001; gustafsson et al., 2011; quested and duda, 2011) and some researches suggested that motivational disposition of athletes influences by the quality of the coach athlete relationship (adie and jowett, 2010; riley and smith, 2011). in addition the associations between basic needs satisfaction and burnout or the relationships between behavioral regulations and burnout has been research topics. (cresswell and eklund, 2005; lemyre et al., 2006; perreault et al., 2007; hodge et al., 2008). coaches and sport psychologists’ understanding the antecedents of athletes' burnout so effective interventions are momentous. examining the differences of athlete burnout is therefore an important task for researchers aiming to better understand burnout and its occurrence. as with all other sports, it is clear that the psychological well being of the athletes will have a positive impact on performance in handball. in the light of this information the burnout have become important to handball players. at the same time, the question of what might be the cause of sportsmen's burnout has emerged. accordingly, the aim of this study was to examine the burnout levels of handball asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 29-34 31 players with respect to gender, age and experience. 2. method 2.1. participants in this study; 116 female and 128 male totally 244 (mean age, x= 22.39±1.98 year) handball player participated voluntarily. the participants gave their informed constant for the experimental procedure as required by the helsinki declaration. as this research was a questionnaire-based study with handball players there was no requirement in turkey to seek ethics committee approval. 2.2. measures maslach burnout inventory that originally developed by maslach and jackson (1981) and adapted to turkish population by ergin (1992) was used for the data collection. this scale consists of three subdivisions. the maslach burnout inventory has 22 items on a five-point rating scale and three subscales: emotional burnout (9 items), depersonalization (5 items) and personal accomplishment (8 items). each item in the scale is a 7-point likert-type measure that allows marking from 0 to 6. emotional burnout subdivision describes feelings of being exhausted by the job (score range 0–36). depersonalization subdivision deals with self-esteem and behavior towards recipients of care, which lacks emotion for the individual (score range 0–20). personal accomplishment subdivision addresses feelings about ability to cope with the problems of working directly with people in the work environment (score range 0–32). when emotional burnout and depersonalization scores are high and personal accomplishment score is low; that means considered indicating burnout (maslach and jackson, 1981). the reliability of the scale was examined by two methods by ergin (1992). firstly internal consistency is calculated and an internal consistency coefficient of the data is as follows: emotional burnout .83, depersonalization .65 and personal accomplishment .72. reliability was also examined by test-retest method as 24 weeks after the first application researchers were reached 99 participants. test-retest reliability coefficients for the subdivisions of the scale were: emotional burnout .83, depersonalization .72 and personal accomplishment .67. as a result of the reliability analysis conducted for this research, emotional burnout α = 0.75, depersonalization α = 0.54, personal accomplishment α = 0.72 and total burnout α = 0.81. the construct validity of the maslach burnout inventory was examined by examining the factor structure. factor analysis first revealed 5 natural factors and it was seen that they were aggregated in 3 factors. it has been reevaluated with varimax rotation, as recommended by maslach and jackson (1981) and also as practiced by other researchers. as a result, three basic factors as emotional burnout, depersonalization and personal accomplishment have emerged (ergin, 1992). as a result of the analysis of the internal consistency coefficient reconstructed in our research, the alpha coefficients are as follows: emotional burnout .82, depersonalization .75, personal accomplishment .83. 2.3. data collection the research was made with volunteer handball players who agreed to participate in the survey and before the training the researchers applied the scale. necessary information has been given to the participants on the purpose of the study and the protection of confidentiality. 2.4. data analysis when the data were analyzed with the help of the spss package program, the cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated to test the internal consistency of the scale. firstly, test of normality was performed in data analysis. since the number of sample is greater than 50, the kolmogorov-smirnov normality test is considered. the kolmogorov-smirnov normality test didn’t show normal distribution because the resultant significance value was smaller than 0.05. thus, mann whitney u test was used for the binary group comparisons, as it was determined that the data did not exhibit a normal distribution. the kruskall wallis h test was used for the multiple group comparisons. 3. results examination of the burnout levels of the handball players in terms of gender variation is shown in table 1. table-1. analysis of different burnout levels of handball players according to gender variance (mann whitney u test) gender n rank average u z p emotional burn-out male 128 124.44 7356.5 -1.758 .088 female 116 117.40 total 244 depersonalization male 128 113.36 8003.5 -.634 .411 female 116 127.87 total 244 personal accomplishment male 128 118.22 8151.5 -.441 .503 female 116 129.16 total 244 according to the results of mann whitney u test, no significant difference was found between male and female handball players in the variables of emotional burnout (p= .088, p>.05), depersonalization (p=.411, p>.05) and personal accomplishment (p=.503, p> .05) (table 1). examination of burnout levels of handball players in terms of age variable is shown in table 2. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 29-34 32 table-2. analysis of different burnout levels of handball players according to age variance (kruskall wallis h test) age n rank average x2 p emotional burn-out 20-22 age 140 124.52 3.777 .152 23-25 age 83 112.26 26+ age 21 111.83 total 244 depersonalization 20-22 age 140 126.02 2.239 .310 23-25 age 83 131.39 26+ age 21 155.71 total 244 personal accomplishment 20-22 age 140 134.01 2.418 .301 23-25 age 83 127.55 26+ age 21 154.53 total 244 when the research findings were examined in table 2, according to the kruskall wallis h test no significant difference was found in terms of age variable for the emotional burnout (p=.152, p>.05), depersonalization (p=.310, p>.05) and personal accomplishment (p=.301, p>.05) subdivisions results (table 2). examination of the burnout level of handball players in terms of experience change is shown in table 3. table-3. analysis of different burnout levels of handball players according to experience variable (kruskall wallis h test) experience n rank average 2x p emotional burn-out 1-4 year 140 129.11 11.544 .003* 5-8 year 76 81.67 9+ year 28 113.83 total 244 depersonalization 1-5 year 140 123.19 5.841 .008* 6-10 year 76 87.79 11+ year 28 130.71 total 244 personal accomplishment 1-5 year 140 125.52 .581 .641 6-10 year 76 110.79 11+ year 28 120.19 total 244 when the research findings were examined in table 3, according to the kruskall wallis h test results, no significant difference was found in terms of experience variable for personal accomplishment (p =.641, p>.05) subdivision. but, significant differences were found in the subdivisions of emotional burnout (p =.003, p<.05) and depersonalization (p =.008, p<.05) according to the experience variable. 4. discussion the aim of this study was to investigate burnout levels of handball players in terms of age, gender and experience. psychological symptoms are less pronounced than other symptoms that can be seen in people who experience burnout. these indications are; feelings of frustration and nervousness, feelings of extreme emotional distress and uneasiness, impatience, self-reliance, enmity towards the environment, weakness, energy loss, desperation about the work, criticizing other people, indifference, increase in family problems, dissatisfaction, negative attitudes towards others, decline in positive emotions such as courtesy, respect and friendship, uncertainty and complexity in thinking, unsubstantiated doubts, depression, feeling of guilt and helplessness. other signs of burnout are thinking about quitting job and reluctant to work (ardıç and polatci, 2008). when the research findings were examined, according to mann whitney u test results, there was no significant difference between male and female handball players according to gender variables in emotional burnout, depersonalization and personal accomplishment subdivisions and also no significant difference was found in kruskall wallis h test results according to age variable in these three subdivisions. similar to our study, sermon (1994) examined the relationship between age, gender and duration of work and burnout levels of secondary school teachers. there was no relationship between demographic variables such as age, gender, and years of work and burnout in the results of the study. when the approach model is examined, it can be said that the reason for not making a meaningful difference according to the gender variable may be derived from the basic dynamics, and it is theoretically possible to explain that the sampled area is caused by the variability. in agreement with these results, it is in line with goodger et al. (2007) and gould et al. (1996) which states that males experience more burnout. conversely, gustafsson et al. (2007) showed consistency with the finding that male students had more depersonalization than female students despite the fact that female students had more burnout than male students. consistent with our study some studies reported no difference between the burnout scores of employees according to gender variable (cresswell and eklund, 2005; cresswell and eklund, 2006). very few studies applied to student groups make it difficult to make assessments and show that both genders may encounter burnout problems as in working groups. this study is compatible with the literature. according to ünal et al. (2001) burnout is seen at a higher rate in early ages and this is due to the inexperience and inadequacy of the individual. as the age of the individual progresses and the experience increases, the prevalence of burnout decreases. in terms of sports psychology, when the topic is evaluated, it is necessary to continue today, individual effort and premium etc. the fact that there is no salary and assignment according to the procedure suggests that age-related burnout syndrome is not affected in sports. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 29-34 33 surveys conducted by university students in other countries show that the level of burnout is negatively related to school loyalty. furthermore academic stress, relationships with teachers and friends, academic selfefficacy and academic achievement is predicted burnout (schaufeli et al., 2002; zhang et al., 2005). breso et al. (2007) conducted intercultural survey and found that there was no significant difference in the level of burnout by gender but found that girls had a higher level of burnout and loss of belief. burnout generally increases with age. kutsal and bilge (2012) stated that the level of loss of emotional burnout and belief in 12th grade students is higher than that of 9th, 10th and 11th grade students. stoeber et al. (2011) examined the relationship between passionate and willing work and academic achievement and burnout in university students. according to research findings, passionate and willing work constitute significant differences in burnout levels and academic achievement depending on the individual differences among the students. in our study according to the kruskall wallis h test results, no significant difference was found in terms of experience variable for personal accomplishment subdivision. but, significant differences were found in the subdivisions of emotional burnout and depersonalization according to the experience variable. exhaustionists are psychologically withdrawn. psychological withdrawal is seen in the form of entering into superficial relationships, spending time deliberately misplaced in persons, distracting, or moving away from the recipient. the consequences of withdrawal are:1) low performance, 2) escape from duty, 3) hiding behind rules (maslach and jackson, 1981). according to the findings of our study, the relationship between the concepts of burnout and experience of handball players is consistent with the general literature. the relationship between the concepts of burnout and experience of handball players is consistent with the general literature. this means that the athlete who has gained experience over time does not feel pressure and stress from the training and competition over time. when studies of burnout in handball players are examined, it can be seen that different measurement methods are used. yavari et al. (2013) conducted a study to find out the relation between burnout and motivation in professional handball players, which were handball prime league male players of twelve teams. they used athletic burnout questionnaire and sport motivation scale. the findings of the study was showed that there was a positive and significant relation between total burnout with motivation, extrinsic motives and motiveless. but there wasn't a significant relation between burnout and intrinsic motives. also there was a significant relation between burnout subscales (reduced sense of accomplishment, emotional. physical exhaustion, devaluation) with motivation and motiveless (yavari et al., 2013). furthermore; guillet and gautheur (2008) examined the links between goal orientation and burnout in handball players. the results showed that the egoand task-oriented adolescents are more self-determined, are less anxious, are more self-confident, and perceive a more important achievement in comparison to other groups of athletes (guillet and gautheur, 2008). in this study, the differentiation between burnout and experience concepts is consistent with the general literature. according to tümkaya (1999) generally burnout is a basic concept that emerged in the first and last years of a job. in terms of sports, the reason of this can be interpreted that the phases starting with excitement in the first years of sports and resulting in excessive training reach the degree of weariness and anxiety over time in the individual. as a result, the experience of handball players is important in terms of burnout level. investigations to be conducted in the following years may include a survey covering all branches. in addition to burnout syndrome, it is recommended to investigate other negativities experienced by the athletes. references adie, j.w. and s. jowett, 2010. meta-perceptions of the coach-athlete relationship, achievement goals, and intrinsic motivation among sport participants. journal of 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=relationships%20between%20burnout,%20job%20satisfaction%20and%20life%20satisfaction%20in%20physicians https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20contribution%20of%20burnout%20to%20work%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(sici)1099-1379(199709)18:5%3c491::aid-job804%3e3.0.co;2-i https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=relation%20between%20burnout%20and%20motivation%20among%20elite%20handball%20players https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20reliability%20and%20validity%20of%20mbi-ss%20and%20academic%20characteristics%20affecting%20burnout 324 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 324-328, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.324.328 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group analysis of academic self-efficacy levels of university students doing sport regularly and those not doing sport regularly egemen ermiş yasar dogu sports sciences faculty, ondokuz mayıs university, samsun, turkey. abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze academic self-efficacy levels of university students studying in different departments according to their states of doing regular sports and some variables. 299 students, 153 females and 146 males, studying in different departments of samsun ondokuz mayıs university participated in the study voluntarily. “academic self-efficacy scale” which was developed by owen and froman (1988) and adapted to turkish by ekici (2012) and which included 33 questions and 3 sub-dimensions (social status, cognitive practices, technical skills) was used in the study to find out academic self-efficacy levels of students in terms of different variables. spss 22.0 program was used for statistical analysis. when the results were analyzed, statistically significant difference was found only in social status sub-dimension in terms of the variables of gender and grade (p<0.05). no significant difference was found in other subdimensions for both variables (p>0.05). when academic self-efficacy levels were analyzed in terms of students’ states of doing regular sports, statistical significance was not found in any of the subdimensions (p>0.05). as a conclusion, it was found that the state of doing sports regularly did not have an influence on academic self-efficacy level. this result is thought to occur due to the fact that the experimental group in the present study does not consist of only students from the faculty of sport sciences, but also from students studying in different departments of the university. keywords: academic self-efficacy, sport, university students. citation | egemen ermiş (2019). analysis of academic selfefficacy levels of university students doing sport regularly and those not doing sport regularly. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 324-328. history: received: 28 january 2019 revised: 7 march 2019 accepted: 16 april 2019 published: 31 may 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 325 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 325 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 325 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 326 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 327 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.324.328&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/422 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3976-6981 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/422 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3976-6981 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/422 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3976-6981 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 324-328 325 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction sport is among the most basic physical activities of our day. ten thousands of people doing sport in various parts of the world every day are interested in sportive activities, even if in different branches. even though we are not aware of it, sport activities have always been intertwined with vital activities and social life in almost every period of human history. thus, it is not very possible to take sport out of social life (dever, 2010; cavusoglu et al., 2017; tekeli, 2017; dogan et al., 2018; kabadayı et al., 2018). performance that people will show in both normal life conditions and also in sport is directly associated with self-efficacy. however, self-efficacy does not mean an individual’s showing the performance expected from him/her (çuhadar et al., 2013). self-efficacy is the basic concept of social learning process and it can be defined as an individual’s being aware of his/her own capacity. this awareness does not cause an individual to realize what he/she has, but to realize what he/she can do with his/her existing abilities (luszczynska et al., 2005). self-efficacy has been defined as an individual’s organizing the necessary activities to show a specific performance and self-perception, judgement and belief about his/her capacity to successfully perform these. in other words, self-efficacy is the competence an individual views with himself/herself about to what extent he/she can overcome the problems encountered. it is the positive attitudes an individual develops against difficulties he/she might encounter [4]. since the beginning of 1990s, self-efficacy concept has been the research subject of many scientists (kurt, 2012; alemdağ et al., 2014; oral and aktop, 2014; kılıç et al., 2015; sevilmiş and şirin, 2016; şirin and duman, 2018). researchers have shown that individuals or groups with a high belief of self-efficacy have high level of performance (turan et al., 2016). individuals with high self-efficacy notion set higher goals for themselves and thus their motivation levels increase and they show a better performance (shea and guzzo, 1987; guzzo et al., 1993; bandura, 1997; gibson, 1999; gibson et al., 2000; bray, 2004; myers et al., 2004). academic achievement is claimed to be associated with many factors directly. in addition to cognitive characteristics, affective characteristics can also be discussed as one of these factors. when considered from this point of view, it can be thought that affective factors such as attitude, self-efficacy, motivation and anxiety can influence many factors, especially students’ eagerness and interest for the lesson and in return this can influence students’ performance and thus their academic achievement (sevilmiş and şirin, 2016). academic self-efficacy is an individual’s subjective belief that he/she can successfully fulfil the assigned academic missions in predetermined levels (bong, 2004). during the years university students are educated, their academic duties and responsibilities increase and as a result, it is very important for them to use time efficiently and effectively. within this context, a student with high academic self-efficacy has very strong attitudes and behaviours about the academic duty he/she is assigned (biricik, 2015). based on all this information, the purpose of the present study is to analyze the academic self-efficacy levels of students who are doing sport regularly and those who are not doing sport regularly in terms of different variables. 2. material and method 2.1. study design a total of 299 students, 153 females and 146 males, studying in different departments of samsun ondokuzmayıs university were included in the study. in the study, “academic self-efficacy scale” which had 33 questions and 3 sub-dimensions and which was developed by owen and froman (1988) and was adapted to turkish by ekici (2012) was used to find out the academic self-efficacy of students according to different variables. the subjects in the study filled in voluntary participation form and it was emphasized that it was important for them to read the questions and fill in the questionnaire form carefully for the reliability and validity of the study. the subjects’ states of doing regular sport and some of their demographic information were found with the personal information form prepared by the author. 2.2. academic self-efficacy scale in the present study, academic self-efficacy scale” which had 33 questions and 3 sub-dimensions (social status, cognitive practices, technical skills) and which was developed by ekici (2012) was used to find out the academic self-efficacy of students according to different variables. the scale was a 5-likert type scale and it was scored as quite a lot (5 points), a lot (4 points), partially (3 points), a few (2 points) and quite a few (1 point). according to the analysis results conducted to test the reliability level of the scale used in the study, cronbach alpha coefficients were found as 0.77 (social status), 0.79 (cognitive practices) and 0.75 (technical skills). in addition, total internal coefficient of the scale was found as 0.77. these results show that the results of the scale are acceptable. 2.3. data analysis statistical analyses were conducted with spss version 22.0 software. shapiro-wilk test was used to analyze normality assumption. in case of normally distributed variables, groups of two were analyzed with independent t test, while groups of more than two were analyzed with anova test. in case of variables which were not normally distributed, groups of two were analyzed with mann whitney u test, while groups of more than two were analyzed with kruskall wallis test. a p value of less than 0.05 was assessed as statistically significant. 3. results table 1 shows the demographic information of the subjects. according to the table, 146 (48.8) of the subjects who participated in the study were male, while 153 (51.2%) were female. 48 (16.1%) first year students, 31 (10.4%) second year students, 27 (9.1%) third year students and 192 (64.4%) fourth year students participated in the study. in terms of doing regular sport, 128 (42.8%) students were found to do regular sport, while it was found that 171 (57.2%) students did not do regular sport. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 324-328 326 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. participants’ demographic informations. variables n % gender male 146 %48.8 female 153 %51.2 year of study 1st year 48 %16.1 2nd year 31 %10.4 3rd year 27 %9.1 4th year 192 %64.4 regular sport status yes 128 %42.8 no 171 %57.2 total 299 %100 table-2.comparison of participants’ academic self-efficacy according to gender variable. sub-dimensions gender n ave.rank stand.test stat. p social status male 146 160.66 -2.086 0.037* female 153 139.82 cognitive practices male 146 141.70 1.622 0.105 female 153 157.92 technical skills male 146 156.08 -1.194 0.233 female 153 144.20 *p<0.05. in table 2, when the subjects’ academic self-efficacies were compared in terms of the gender variable, statistically significant association was found between academic self-efficacies of female and male students in terms of social status (p<0.05). however, no statistical significance was found in cognitive practices and technical skills sub-dimensions (p>0.05). table-3. comparison of participants’ academic self-efficacy according to their year of study. sub-dimensions year n total square mean square f p cognitive practices 1st year 48 2.589 0.863 2.402 0.068 2nd year 31 105.606 0.359 3rd year 27 108.194 4th year 192 n average ave. rank chi square p social status 1st year 48 3.0601 143.70 8.414 0.038* 2nd year 31 109.35 3rd year 27 158.76 4th year 192 156.13 technical skills 1st year 48 2.9186 157.51 2.074 0.557 2nd year 31 136.98 3rd year 27 134.11 4th year 192 151.68 *p<0.05. when the academic self-efficacy levels of the participants were compared in terms of their year of study, while statistical significance was found in social status sub-dimension (p<0.05), no significant difference was found in other sub-dimensions (p>0.05) table 3. table-4. comparison of participants’ academic self-efficacy according to their status of doing sport regularly. sub-dimensions regular sport n ave. rank stand.test stat. p social status yes 127 158.10 -1.487 0.137 no 171 143.11 cognitive practices yes 127 143.95 0.959 0.338 no 171 153.62 technical skills yes 127 151.65 -0.374 0.709 no 171 147.90 p>0.05. table 4 compares the participants’ academic self-efficacy according to their states of doing sport regularly. when the results are analyzed statistically, no significant difference was found in all of the sub-dimensions between the academic self-efficacy of the students who did sports regularly and those who did not (p>0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion when the results of our study were analyzed in general, statistical significance was found in social status subdimension in favour of male students in terms of the gender variable (p<0.05). in addition, when analyzed in terms of year of study, statistical significance was found in social status sub-dimension (p<0.05). no significance was found between the participants’ academic self-efficacy in terms of their state of doing sport regularly (p>0.05). there are a great number of studies in literature which have measured academic self-efficacy of different groups. however, no studies have been found which have examined the academic self-efficacy levels of university students in terms of their states of doing sport regularly. when studies on academic self-efficacy were examined, some of these studies were found to report significance between genders in terms academic of self-efficacy (çakır et al., 2006; özsüer et al., 2011; oğuz, 2012; tabancalı and çelik, 2013; kılıç et al., 2015). these studies have proven asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 324-328 327 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group that different gender groups can show different results. however, all results have shown clearly that academic selfefficacy of only a single gender is not high. that is, in some studies male participants were found to have high averages, while female participants were found to have high averages in some others. for example, while er and gürgan (2011) reported that female participants had higher academic self-efficacy belief levels, akbay (2009) and durdukoca (2010) reported that male participants had higher academic self-efficacy levels. the fact that academic self-efficacy levels differed according to gender variable has brought up the necessity of avoiding generalizing psychological components that can change depending on factors such as different occupations or socio-economic structure. sandıkçı and öncü (2013) also supported this view. studies examining the academic self-efficacy of occupations related with sport showed the following results. in a study conducted on students studying in physical education and sport department, biricik (2015) found differences between groups and unlike the present study, found that female students had high rates. in a study conducted by varol (2007) to find out self-efficacy of students of physical education and sport teaching department, no difference was found between female students and male students. bozkurt (2013)also did not find any difference between female students and male students in a study conducted on prospective teachers of physical education. in terms of self-efficacy levels of university students who were not doing sport, satıcı (2013) concluded that male students had higher academic self-efficacy when compared with female students. in some of the studies conducted on occupations related with sport, female participants were found to have high self-efficacy scores, while male participants were found to have high self-efficacy scores in others (vurucu, 2010; ciftçi, 2013). in the present study, no statistically significant difference was found between the academic self-efficacy levels of students in terms of the state of doing sport regularly (p>0.05). however, when studies in literature were examined in general, biricik (2015) found that individuals who did sport regularly had higher scores when compared with those who did not and similarly, results of a great number of other studies showed that regular sports had positive effects on academic self-efficacy (ünlü, 2008; balyan, 2009; baştuğ and kuru, 2009; kafkas et al., 2010; bozkurt, 2013). based on all these results, it is thought that the reason why there is no significant difference between self-efficacy scores of students doing sport regularly and those not doing sport regularly results from the fact that the experimental group consists of not only students studying in the faculty of sport sciences, but also of students studying in different departments of the university. in all of the studies found in literature which showed significance between genders, the participants consisted of students studying in departments of sport sciences faculties or schools of physical education and sport. sport phenomenon is a very important structure that exists in almost every period of life and it affects the human life with all its aspects. everyone who does sports gains a status more or less in the social structure. the power of sport is measured with its being a means of socialization and its role of keeping people together. based on 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for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 135 asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 135-146, 2017 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.135.146 measuring self-identity change related to english language learning and bilingual education among chinese-speaking college students: an exploratory study fuhui tong1  yue min2 yi-chun liu3 haitao guo4 ( corresponding author) 1department of educational psychology associate director, center for research and development in dual language and literacy acquisition texas a&m university college station, tx, usa 2department of educational psychology texas a&m university college station, tx, usa 3department of applied foreign languages chia nan university of pharmacy and science taiwan 4college of mass communication, the center for media and social changes shenzhen university shenzhen, china abstract the purpose of this study is two-fold. first, we explored the psychometric properties of a selfidentity change instrument that was previously developed for english learning college students in china. second, using this instrument, we examined participants‘ self-identity change related to gender, major, and years of english learning. a total of 273 undergraduate students from two adjacent geographic locations (taiwan and mainland china) participated in a paper-based survey. exploratory factor analysis (efa) revealed five sub-scales that were mainly consistent with the original version. however, the efa also suggested exclusion of one item, multi-dimensionality, and room for improvement of this instrument regarding item reliability. inferential statistics revealed that (a) students in taiwan exhibited a higher self-confidence change as compared to their mainland peers; (b) english and bilingual science majors underwent higher change in additive and subtractive bilingualism, followed by art and humanity majors; (c) for bilingual majors, those who started learning english prior to grade 3 were better able to switch between two identities than those who started in middle school and beyond; and (d) gender is not a significant predictor of identity change. discussion was contextualized within educational policy and practice regarding english learning and bilingual education in these two locations. keywords: self-identity, college students, chinese-speaking english learners, exploratory factor analysis. citation | fuhui tong; yue min; yi-chun liu; haitao guo (2017). measuring self-identity change related to english language learning and bilingual education among chinese-speaking college students: an exploratory study. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 135-146. history: received: 13 july 2017 revised: 19 september 2017 accepted: 12 december 2017 published: 5 january 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 136 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 138 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 139 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 142 5. conclusion, limitation, and recommendation for future research .................................................................................. 144 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 144 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.135.146&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yue min https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yi-chun liu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=haitao guo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yue min https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yi-chun liu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=haitao guo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yue min https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yi-chun liu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=haitao guo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yue min https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yi-chun liu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=haitao guo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yue min https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yi-chun liu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=haitao guo asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 136 1. introduction learning a language is inseparable from the exposure to the culture that is encoded in that language (risager, 2006; tong, 2008) and therefore, the learning is not just a process of cognitive activity, but also involves becoming a member of a new cultural and linguistic community and developing multiple identities (baker, 2011). in the field of second language learning, particularly when the second language is english, research on identity has emerged as a prominent area of interest (norton, 2006) more evidently in a context where english is not the language of the society (e.g., (gao et al., 2005;2007; xu and gao, 2014)). counter-arguments have been raised regarding the relevance of studying the change in l2 identity in these contexts as learners have limited opportunities in exposure to the target community (qu, 2005; block, 2007). however, the rapidly changing economic, sociocultural, and political development of these regions (such as mainland china and taiwan, where this current study took place) is associated with the increased international communication where english is regarded as an international language or lingua franca rather than a foreign language (crystal, 2003; baker and wright, 2017). during this process of globalization, in addition to the learning that typically occurs in a closed classroom setting, individuals in developing countries are provided with abundant access to members and internet media to connect to the englishspeaking world and its cultures that can be integrated into their self-concept of the new cultural identities (jensen et al., 2011). further, according to baker (2011) there is a growing interest of bilingual education in higher education pertaining to multilingual learners‘ identity, whereas studies in l2 identity are very limited in nonenglish speaking locations (gao et al., 2015; mokhtarnia and ghafar-samar, 2016). given the uprising popularity of bilingual education in these countries that fall into kachru (1985) categorization of outer circle such as china (tong and shi, 2012; tong and tang, 2017) japan (tsuneyoshi, 2005) south korea (park, 2007) and turkey (sert, 2008) the topic of self-identity deserves continued attention and exploration because a better and deeper understanding derived from this collection of research can inform policy and practice in english language teaching and bilingual education in a broadened worldwide perspective. 1.1. theoretical framework: a socio-psychological perspective on l2 self-identity the theoretical framework guiding this research draws from a social psychological view of identity as a static and enduring construct (lambert, 1974; gardner, 1985; dörnyei, 2005). within the social psychological paradigm, focus has been devoted to individual learner characteristics including linguistic (e.g., bilingual proficiency) and affective outcomes (e.g., attitudes, motivation, identity, and cultural values) that have stable patterns of development (lasagabaster, 2013; gao et al., 2015). this group of classical studies related to bilingual education can be represented by 4 bilingual-friendly models: subtractive and additive bilingualism (lambert, 1974) socio educational model on l2 acquisition (gardner, 1985) a contemporary view on l2 motivational self system (dörnyei, 2005) and the cognitive-developmental model of social identity integration (cdmsii, amiot et al. (2007)). according to lambert (1974) there are three contributing precursors (i.e., attitudes, aptitude, and motivation) to bilingual proficiency that determine individual learner‘s self-esteem and self-concept in l2, which is related to two consequences of bilingualism: additive (the maintenance of l1 and native culture with the addition of acquiring target language and culture identity), and subtractive (the replacement of l1 and native culture with the acquisition of target language and culture identity). in gardner (1985) 4-stage l2 acquisition model, attitudes, motivation, and cultural values are regarded as non-linguistic outcomes, alongside with bilingual proficiency as the linguistic outcome resulted from l2 learning. the proposed two orientations of an individual learner‘s attitude toward the target culture which is a predictor of the target language proficiency included: instrumental (more popularly identified in outer circles) and integrative motivation. this over-simplistic dichotomy of gardner‘s model was reframed by dörnyei (2005) in his l2 self-motivation system, which stipulated the learning motivation as represented by the desire to find a harmony between who they are (actual self) and what they want to become in the future (ideal self). such multiple perspectives of self, according to dörnyei, are appropriate for adolescents or older learners as younger learners might not be able to realize or consider multiple selves. similarly, erikson (1968) contended that children formed their primary self-identity at adolescence stage, and a final self-identity was constructed when they grow into adulthood, when self-identity will remain as a relatively stable form onward which leads to established patterns in language learning as a social behavior. finally, in a similar notion of age that is associated with cognition, the model of social identity integration (cdmsii, (amiot et al., 2007; amiot et al., 2015) explains how cultural and social identities change and become integrated in the self. the cognitive development connects an individual‘s original identity with the new identity as a result of l2 learning, and allows for a simultaneously integration of both cultural identities into a coherence in the self-concept. although some other scholars view identity rather as a fluid and complex trait that fluctuates over time as a result of interaction between the learner and the social surroundings (bosma and kunnen, 2001; gao et al., 2015) in this current study, we focus on its role of ‗product‘ rather than ‗process‘ or ‗trigger‘ of learning for the fact that the adult participants in this study have had at least eight years of experiences in english learning, and consequently, have formed a fairly stable and coherent core of self at the time. 1.2. operational definition of self-identity related to social identity and bilingual/l2 learning self-identity is one of the 50 types of self-concept, according to american psychological association database (psychinfo database), along with self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-awareness, self-respect, etc. however, unlike most self-concept subjects as ―i‖, or ―me‖, which is highly connected with personal emotion, self-identity responds to external environment, which is strongly connected to the ―social role‖ that is originated from social-identity theory (ellemers et al., 2002; dörnyei and ushioda, 2009). as a result, our definition of self-identity starts from an examination of its intimate relationship with social identity (tajfel, 1974). more specifically, personal characteristics decide self-identity and group-related self-identity shifts along to social-identity (terry et al., 1999). further, it is agreed that an individual‘s social psychological health and social behavior are closely integrated (oliver, 2013) and people‘s self-identity is one of the components that belong to the category of social psychology associated with social behavior (jiang et al., 2016). a person maintains his or her self-identity from continuously asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 137 contacting the external world, suggesting that self-identity is constructed from individual biographies (giddens, 1991). in short, the feeling of self-identity is developed from social contact and experiences. applying such definition into l2 learning and bilingual education, we assert that second or foreign language learning is linked to social behavior and the development of these languages depends on social interaction across the span from infanthood to adulthood (johnson and newport, 1989). people feel relaxed and comfortable when they speak a language that is the same with other people in their social circle, and when they can be understood easily, resulting a sense of belongings. therefore, the ultimate goal of learning a foreign language is merging into the community of target language (matsumoto and obana, 2001) which further supports our claim that l2 selfidentity change derives from the social behavioral experiences of being exposed to the target language and culture, hence, is worth examination, especially given the multilayered self-identities by gender, ethnicity, age, social class, etc. (baker, 2011). 1.3. types of self-identity among bilingual and efl learners there are many reasons an individual learns a second or third (or even more) language (gallagher-brett, 2005) and the most important three include: cultural awareness, cognitive development, and social and emotional development and self-confidence (baker, 2011). self-confidence is one reflection of self-identity, defined as an individual‘s belief in his or her own particular skill (steele, 1997). in terms of second or foreign language learning, highly confident students hold fewer doubt towards their english abilities, which lowers anxiety towards foreign language speaking (noels et al., 1996) therefore, self-confidence is the most important determinant on second language learning acquisition (clément et al., 1994). self-confidence is also related to an individual‘s past experiences in l2 learning (gao et al., 2005). empirical evidence was reported that chinese efl learners‘ own judgement (self-concept) of their english language abilities was influenced by their performance in english pronunciation (wang, 2004). self-identity can also be represented by lambert (1974) distinction of additive and subtractive bilingualism, which are closely connected with social adaptation as two diverge aspects of language learning self-identity (sussman, 2000). as the additive identity is enhanced, there is an integration of the target culture and linguistic identity with the maintenance of the identity of origin; when the subtractive identity elevates, and when people are more involved in the target culture, they feel less connected with their home culture, and therefore, their identity of origin decreases (noels et al., 1996; de la sablonnière et al., 2016). it was found that the subtractive pattern of identification takes place when new identity has a higher and legitimate status compared with the original one, highlighting the possible different patterns of identity integration (de la sablonnière et al., 2016). split change is also one type of self-identity; a psychologically depressed mood which is the cognitive reaction to social role (brewer, 1993). people gain split identity when facing strange culture, language, or lifestyles which are different from their original habits. the split change can be quite intense when there is a violent conflict between the perceived native language and culture and the target language and culture (mokhtarnia and ghafarsamar, 2016). commonly, learners who firmly maintain the identity of a target culture tend to suffer more frustration in language learning process compared to learners without such strong identity. 1.4. empirical evidence related to l2 self-identity in efl context although the topic of self-identity was not introduced into asia-based context until about a decade ago, findings from earlier studies highlighted that english learning impacted chinese-speaking students‘ cultural orientation (e.g., (garrott, 1995; tong, 2008)). more specifically, students in these studies have been reported to accept the norm of target culture and behave accordingly. these findings point to the change in cultural identity, which can be integrated into self-identity. further, researchers have identified factors that account for the formation and change of self-identity including: gender (hay and ashman, 2003; papacharissi, 2010; irby et al., 2011) major (boyd et al., 2003; boonchum, 2009) and years of formal english learning (huang et al., 2015; kai and shin, 2015). for example, in karakitapoglu-aygün (2004) empirical study with 205 turkish undergraduate students (average age of 20 years old) on their self-identity, results showed that women are testified more independent and less emotional than men. hwang (2010) chose gender as moderating variable for predicting self-identity on technology mediated learning. he investigated self-identity level among 211 male undergraduate students and 200 female students from china and discovered that compared to female students, male students achieved higher average score on their self-identity measure. empirical results suggest that major should also be included when analyzing learners‘ self-identity. gao and associates conducted a series of studies (gao et al., 2005;2007;2015; xu and gao, 2014) among chinese college students‘ self-reported identity change as a result of english learning. these studies converged that english majors experienced more self-identity change (both additive and subtractive) than non-english majors. such difference was intuitively expected, as english majors‘ competence in english proficiency is indicative of their achievement or success, which intensified their sensitivity toward english (gao et al., 2015). using gao et al. (2005) self-identity instrument, mokhtarnia and ghafar-samar (2016) examined iranian college students‘ identity change and their attitudes toward english native speakers. interestingly, major was not found to be a significant predictor on any type of identity-change. in a similar study, english majors demonstrated more change in split and subtractive identity among thai college students (boonchum, 2009). in addition, the length of language learning is also an important predictor that affects students‘ self-identity. boonchum (2009) investigated 113 thailand undergraduate students who started learning english from different ages, and discovered that language learning self-identity change was dependent of learner‘s age as well as the age of initial language. more specifically, students with more years of english learning encountered lower change in subtractive identity. finally, self-identity, or self-concept in l2 was found to be examined hand in hand with l2 learning motivation (dörnyei, 2005; xu and gao, 2014). for example, xu and gao (2014) in their longitudinal study with chinese efl learners discovered that cultural (e.g., going abroad) motivation is significantly correlated with subtractive identity asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 138 change, and instrumental (e.g., self-development) motivation is highly associated with self-confidence. according to the authors, there is also a dynamic and reciprocal relationship between motivation and identity, which implicates the importance of self-identity among bilingual and english learners. 1.5. summary the review of literature reveals a few limitations that lead to the purpose of this study. first, there is a limited number of research on language and identity that is conducted outside an english-speaking environment (mokhtarnia and ghafar-samar, 2016) therefore, the guiding premises that have been proved to be appropriate for western anglo-speaking community might not fully represent the nature of identity or identity in l2 scholarship in a context where english is not an everyday language (norton and toohey, 2011). second, in a related vein, instruments that were originally designed for l2 learners in an english-dominant environment (e.g., de la sablonnière et al. (2016)) would not capture the nature of identity formation and integration that characterizes nonenglish contexts. consequently, there is a lack of psychometrically sound instruments available that can facilitate researchers to further explore the field of self-identity as related to l2 and bilingual education. third, although differences have been reported between student groups such as gender and major, the source of such difference is often times overlooked. scrutiny of the educational policy and practice that is embodied in social context is essential, which in turn, can inform or refine policy and practice in english language teaching and bilingual education so as to promote students‘ confidence and identity integration for an additive change. after all, identity change is a product of social interaction. therefore, the purpose of this current study is two-fold. first, through factor analysis, we test the psychometric properties of a self-identity change instrument that was previously developed for english-learning college students in china. second, we apply this instrument to examine participants‘ self-identity change related to gender, major, and starting point of formal english learning in two adjacent geographic locations (i.e., mainland china and taiwan). more specifically, we seek to answer three research questions: 1. what is the underlying factor structure of the identity change instrument utilized in this study? 2. what is the self-identity change (as reflected by self-confidence, additive bilingualism, and subtractive bilingualism) in chinese-speaking college students as a result of english language learning or bilingual education? 3. does the change in self-identity differ by student gender, major, geographic location, and starting point of english learning? 2. method 2.1. sampling and participants a convenience sampling strategy was adopted to recruit a total of the 273 undergraduate students, with 193 from a four-year college in taiwan, and 80 from a tier-i university in mainland china. among the participants from taiwan, 98 majored in arts and humanities, 95 majored in english; all 80 undergraduate students from mainland china majored in bio-science, and were taking a bilingual content area course at the time of data collection (see author 2012 for more information on this bilingual course). these students were in the same year when the data were collected, and there was no statistically significant difference in the age across gender and major, with an average of 21 years old. their demographic information is described in table 1. there is a higher percentage of female students in the taiwan group, which is commensurate with the type of majors (i.e., arts and humanities) that these students chose. length of english learning is divided into 3 groups based on the educational policy in mainland china and taiwan that public schools are encouraged to offer mandatory english class from grade 3 and onward (ministry of education of the people‘s republic of china, 2001; ministry of education of taiwan, 2008). therefore, in our study, students who started learning english before mid-primary school (i.e., grade 3, hence, 12 years and above) were considered early-exposure, students who started learning english between mid-primary (i.e., grade 3) and beginning of middle school (i.e., grade 6, hence 9-11 years of learning) were considered averageexposure, and learners who started after grade 6 were grouped as late-exposure, with 8 years or less of english learning period. there are about 30% of early-exposure students in both locations. table-1. breakdown of participants by location, gender, major, and years of english learning location gender major starting grade (years) of formal english learning male female arts english science before grade 3 (≥ 12 years) between grades 3 and 6 (9-11 years) after grade 6 (≤ 8 years) taiwan (n=193) 58 135 98 95 0 57 74 60 mainland (n=80) 48 31 0 0 80 24 44 10 2.2. research context the university in mainland china is a research-intensive institution located in the east coast with 120 years of history. it holds a total enrolment of 42,881 undergraduate and graduate students from 31 schools including science, engineering, medical, humanities and social science, and other disciplines. students admitted to this university scored at a much higher percentile in the nationwide college entrance exam compared to their peers. in 1998, a local policy was issued to promote bilingual education by offering content area courses with both english and mandarin chinese as medium of instruction. in 2001, a nationwide policy on bilingual courses accelerated the number of bilingual courses in this university. high-quality bilingual classes among areas of chemistry, biology, informatics or technology such as mechanical electronic information, electrical engineering, computer engineering were popular in teaching science undergraduate majors. the university provides incentives to the instructors who have the qualification (i.e., subject knowledge in the field, and english fluency) to teach the bilingual content courses. the local policy also encourages colleges and departments to adopt original textbooks published in english-speaking countries where more cutting-edge researches are being conducted particularly in the field of asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 139 science and technology. the time allocation of english as language of instruction increases as students move along the semester and final exams are available in both languages. the institutional policy also sets a graduation threshold for students to pass college english test (cet) level 4, the national english exam in china. the university in taiwan is known for pharmaceutical research, with approximately 16,000 undergraduate students from 23 departments including pharmacy, cosmetic science, biotechnology, health care administration, environmental engineering, social work, information management, applied foreign languages, and other cross-field disciplines. the university initiated a series of policies to enhance students‘ english proficiency level, through providing incentives for bilingual instructors and featuring strong training in english language. for example, the department of applied foreign languages recruits native english speakers to teach english majors, and hosts english story festival or english week to offer more chances to practice speaking english. also, the foreign language center also invites english-speaking teachers to chat with students during weekly lunch break to encourage students to practice oral english. all students are required to take freshman english class and pass english language proficiency test (toeic 550). if students are from pharmacy and applied foreign languages, they have to reach toeic 700 (perfect score is 990). in addition, assignments and examinations must be completed in english. some other departments also provide english for specific purposes (esp) courses, such as from pharmacy, hotel & restaurant management, tourism & management, recreation and healthcare management departments. these departments adopt english textbooks published in english-speaking countries from the united kingdom and the united states. each summer, the university provides 2 study-abroad programs to us and australia for 18 to 20 days with opportunities to be immersed in english-speaking countries. 2.3. instrument according to seliger and shohamy (1989) ―questionnaires are used mostly to collect data on phenomena that are not easily observed, such as attitudes, motivation, and self-concepts‖ (p. 172). along the same line, in this current study, we used an instrument that was developed by gao et al. (2005) to measure self-identity change among chinese college students who learned english as a foreign language (efl). the gao et al. (2005) questionnaire of l2 self-identity change was classified into six sub-scales, including self-confidence, additive bilingualism, subtractive bilingualism, productive change, split change and zero change. in our study, we excluded the subscale of productive bilingualism because the items were not applicable to our research participants. for example, ―as my ability of appreciating english literature and art increases, i have become more interested in chinese literature and art‖ would not be appropriate as the non-english majors were not required to take any english literature or culture courses, and therefore, might not provide a valid answer to this type of questions. the rest of the 20 items were measured on a 5-points scale: 1 ‗strongly disagree‘, 2 ‗disagree‘, 3 ‗neutral‘, 4 ‗agree‘, and 5 ‗strongly agree‘. in addition, participants were asked to provide their standardized english proficiency test (such as cet and toefl) scores at the time of data collection. 2.4. procedure and data analysis participants were recruited on a voluntary basis to complete a paper-based questionnaire, which was in a bilingual version of english and chinese (simplified chinese for mainland group and traditional chinese for taiwan group). participants were informed of the general research purpose. in addition, they were notified that their responses were not related to their final grades, and they could withdraw at any time. all responses were kept confidential. to answer question 1, factor analysis was conducted to examine the dimensionality and the item reliability statistics in reference to the original version of gao et al. (2005). to address question 2, descriptive statistics were explored to identify overall change in self-identity. to answer question 3, univariate analysis of variance (anova) was applied to test the differences among independent variables on the dependent variables of the five subscales in self-identity change. 3. results 3.1. exploratory factor analysis (question 1) as was mentioned in our critiques to the literature, psychometric properties are not often reported with instruments that measure self-identity. gao et al. (2005) only presented an overall item reliability of the 25 items, but failed to conduct factor analysis to determine either the underlying unidimensionality of this instrument, or the legitimacy for treating each of the subscales independently. to address such limitation, we performed an exploratory factor analysis on the 20 items in our sample. first, results from kmo and bartlett‘s tests showed that our data are reasonable for factor analysis (kmo adequacy=. 70). second, the principal component analysis revealed six components that had an eigenvalue greater than 1 (table 2), accounting for a total of 58.83% of the variance, which is a fairly significant amount. third, factor loadings on each of the six components in table 2 indicated a clear pattern, ranging from .46 to .83. further inspection of the items within each component identifies close alignment with gao et al.‘s original categorization. for example, the same 4 items load on subtractive change (factor 1); the same 4 items load on additive change (factor 4). however, item 3 itself from the original subscale of self-confidence presents a separate factor 6 with a strong factor loading (and with very small loadings on all other five factors, factor loadings < .21), which needs to be reverse coded (―when i have difficulties in english learning, i begin to doubt my own ability‖). a more recent study (xu and gao, 2014) indeed revised the original instrument and proposed a separate subscale of negative self-confidence where this item belongs. because there is only one item in factor 6, we decided to remove this factor and the single item and retain the five factors for analysis. in addition, although the factor loadings were somewhat low on item 17 (―no matter which language is used for expression, i remain to be myself‖) and item 8 (―i have an english name in addition to my chinese name. they are used in different situations‖), these coefficients are very close to a common minimum threshold of .3 (sass and schmitt, 2010) and were retained within their original subscale. after the modification based on exploratory factor analysis, internal consistency was examined with an overall cronbach alpha of .56 based on the 19 items and 5 subscales, and item consistency for each subscale is listed in table 2. psychometric assessment exerts stringent underlying assumptions on unidimentionality particularly for asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 140 personality and attitudinal scale items, and requires the presence of a dominant eigenvalue (hambleton et al., 1991) which should account for at least 20% of the total variance (reckase, 1979). however, an examination of table 2 suggests that none of the five factors meets such criteria. table-2. eigenvalues and factor loadings item 1 2 factor 3 4 5 6 cronbach alpha % of variance 15.44 13.99 9.56 8.42 5.86 5.54 .60 eigenvalue 3.09 2.8 1.92 1.69 1.17 1.11 q9 0.67 q10 0.73 0.735 q11 0.77 q12 0.67 q1 0.81 q2 0.70 q4 0.68 0.735 q17 0.27 q18 0.65 q19 0.83 0.612 q20 0.79 q13 0.62 q14 0.64 q15 0.60 0.586 q16 0.63 q5 0.46 q6 0.46 0.460 q7 0.74 q8 0.29 q3 0.76 in addition, a correlation matrix in table 3 shows a small magnitude of correlation among these factors. although the possibility of multi-dimensionality or a second-order factor of this instrument needs further investigation and is beyond the scope of this study, we decided to analyze each of these five subscales independently. table-3. correlation matrix among five extracted factors in self-identity change n=273 self-confidence additive subtractive split zero self-confidence 1 additive 0.165** 1 subtractive -0.058 .308* 1 split -0.008 0.014 .265* 1 zero -0.195** -0.037 -0.168* 0.050 1 *corrrlation is signification at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **corrrlation is signification at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). 3.2. general pattern of self-identity change (question 2) general patterns of identity changes through the questionnaire data suggest that self-confidence change was the most prominent among all (m=4.00, sd=.78), followed by zero change (m=3.41, sd=.83) and additive change (m=3.20, sd=.73). the means of these three subscales were greater than the threshold value of 3 between ‗changed‘ and ‗unchanged‘ (corresponding to the choice of neutral) (gao et al., 2005) suggesting that there is a change in these subscales among the participants. comparatively speaking, the means for subtractive change (m=2.12, sd=.80) and split change (m=2.72, sd=.79) are low, and below the critical value of 3. 3.3. comparison on self-identity change subscale (question 3) 3.3.1. self-confidence change a two-way anova with major (i.e., arts, english, and science) and gender (i.e., male and female) as betweensubject variables was performed. results indicated significant main effects of (a) gender, (f[1, 271]=3.89 p =. 049, partial eta squared = .014) and (b) major (f[1, 271]=8.14 p <. 001, partial eta squared = .058). such difference was further reflected by a significant interaction effect between gender and major (f[1, 271] = 3.41 p =. 035), suggesting that taiwan female english majors (m=4.31, s.e. =. 09) demonstrated a higher self-confidence change than mainland female (m=3.57, s.e. =.13) and male science majors (m=3.74, s.e.=.11) (see figure 1). finally, starting point of english learning and self-confidence are not related (f[2, 268]=.045, p =.95). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 141 figure-1. self-confidence change—gender by major. 3.4. additive change a two-way anova with major (i.e., arts, english, and science) and gender (i.e., male and female) as betweensubject variables was performed. results indicated a strong and significant main effect of major, (f[5, 271]=25.15 p < . 001, partial eta squared = .159). no other main or interaction effects were detected. post hoc analysis suggested that english majors (m=3.611 s.e.=. 08) demonstrated a statistically higher additive change, followed by bilingual science majors (m=3.225 s.e.=. 08) who in turn, scored higher than art majors (m=2.867 s.e.=. 072). in addition, although no significance was detected in the two-way anova with major and years of english learning as two between-subject variables on additive change, an examination of figure 2 implied a within-group difference for the bilingual science majors, which was confirmed by further anova (f[2, 77] =3.428 p =. 038, partial eta squared = .09), and tukey‘s test: those who started learning english before grade 3 (m=3.417 s.e.=.134) scored significantly higher than late-exposure who started english learning after grade 6 (m=2.775 s.e.=. 208). figure-2. additive change by major and starting point of english learning. 3.5. subtractive change a two-way anova with major (i.e., arts, english, and science) and gender (i.e., male and female) as betweensubject variables was performed. results indicated a strong and significant main effect of major, (f[5, 271]=6.94 p =. 001, partial eta squared = .05). no other main or interaction effects were detected. post hoc analysis suggested that both english majors (m=2.249 s.e.=. 089) and bilingual science majors (m=2.201 s.e.=. 089) demonstrated a statistically higher subtractive change than art majors (m=1.837 s.e.=. 083, figure 3). no statistically significant difference was found on subtractive change among years of english learning (f[2, 268]=.394, p=.675). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 142 figure-3. subtractive change by major. 3.6. split change there is no significant main or interaction effect of gender or major on split change (fs< 2.778 ps > .069), and no statistically significant difference was found among different starting point of english learning (f[2, 268]=2.104, p=.124). 3.7. zero change there is no significant main or interaction effect of gender or major on zero change (fs< 1.121 ps > .327), and no statistically significant difference was found on subtractive change among starting point of english learning (f[2, 268]=.018, p=.982). 4. discussion to iterate, the purpose of this study is to (a) test the psychometric properties of a self-identity change instrument that was previously developed for english-learning college students in china; and (b) applying this instrument, examine participants‘ self-identity change related to gender, major, and starting point of formal english learning in two adjacent geographic locations (i.e., mainland china and taiwan). while the exploratory factor analysis suggested an overall adequate alignment with the original instrument developed by gao et al. (2005) it, however, also supported the deletion of one item that is not psychometrically appropriate, as well as room for improvement on some items with low factor loadings (such as item 8 on additive change, and item 17 on zero change), and low reliability in the subscale of additive change. although modifications have been made in a recent publication by the original developers (gao et al., 2005) of the self-identity instrument after the data collection of this current paper, no reliability study has been conducted among its targeted population. therefore, because of the popularity and scientific grounding of factor analytic procedures on the development and refinement of selfreported psychosocial constructs such as personality and attitudes (briggs and cheek, 1986)we recommend that future psychometric research on the underlying construct be conducted with exploratory and confirmatory analysis on instruments that measure self-identity change. using the revised instrument with acceptable psychometric indices, we found that overall, college students in our study experienced a change in their self-identity as a result of english learning and bilingual education. more specifically, there is a higher change in the non-cultural change (i.e., self-confidence), and cultural change (i.e., additive and zero) as compared to other changes. interestingly, such general developments are similar to what was revealed among other groups of asian college students in mainland china (gao et al., 2005) iran (mokhtarnia and ghafar-samar, 2016) south korea (vasilopoulos, 2015) and thailand (boonchum, 2009). we further discuss our findings on group difference of gender, major, and starting point of english learning on each subscale of identity change. 4.1. self-confidence change: mainland china vs. taiwan passing national and international english proficiency tests increases a candidate‘s competitiveness and employability in job market, particularly preferred by foreign enterprises that require english proficiency (pang et al., 2002; zheng and cheng, 2008). according to the social identity theory, self-identity is constructed through social contact and experiences (tajfel, 1974; dörnyei and ushioda, 2009). under the influence of such social surroundings that uphold the value of english proficiency, ―it is not a surprise that one‘s self-confidence is influenced by (perceived) competence in english‖ (gao et al., 2015). we observed an interesting gender difference with female students demonstrating a higher self-confidence change. as gao et al. (2005) hypothesized, female students might be more sensitive to the learning of english while male students are more ‗stubborn‘ and thus underwent lower level of self-confidence change. in addition, given the fact that a higher confidence change was found (a) among english and art majors (from taiwan) as compared to bilingual science majors (from mainland china) and (b) among female english majors in taiwan as compared to male and female bilingual science majors in mainland china, it is worth drawing attention on the subtlety between the two geographic locations that share similar cultural traditions, and yet distinct socio-educational policies and practices concerning college admission and graduation. as one can‘t ignore the critical nature and influence of testing that prevails the educational arena in asia, in mainland china students‘ primary goal to study at primary asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 143 and secondary schools is to succeed in the national college entrance exam (gaokao), inclusive of english exam, administered only once each year, as the sole key to be admitted to a prestigious institution that promises a brighter future (davey et al., 2007). however, in taiwan, there is a multi-channel entrance system that allows applicants multiple attempts if they fail the first set of exams (moe taiwan, 2008). it is thus, apparent, that the social experiences of learning english and taking english test before entering college have presented a challenge particularly for students in mainland china, and such pressure doesn‘t disappear in tertiary education. in fact, although the national policy was eased out in 2005, the practice still prevails as in the majority of college and universities in mainland china, students will not be issued a diploma at graduation if they fail a nationwide standardized english exam (han et al., 2004). although in taiwan there is an equivalent policy the stake is much lower because students can opt from a government-approved list (he and li, 2009) and the threshold of passing is lower than what is required for graduation in mainland china (cheng et al., 2014). given these educational policies and practices in the two geographic locations, we may explain a lower selfconfidence change in english observed among mainland college students, as compared to their peers in taiwan where a less grueling college admission and graduation system is implemented, as past experiences in success or failure impacted their confidence in the learning of english. such finding might be interpreted within socialidentity framework (spears et al., 2009) that students‘ self-confidence as one reflection of self-identity was likely to be established throughout their social experiences in tawareness of english learning, the consequence of failing the exam, and the accompanied test anxiety. 4.2. additive change: english vs. bilingual vs. non-english major and starting point of formal english learning unlike the culture-independent self-confidence change which is associated with the educational policy and practice in the two geographic locations, the culture-dependent additive change is reflected by participants‘ respective discipline. more specifically, english majors demonstrated the highest additive change, followed by bilingual science majors, who in turn, scored higher than art majors. similar finding can be found in study with chinese participants (e.g., gao et al. (2005)) but stands in contrast with results obtained from other asian population in thailand (boonchum, 2009) and iran (mokhtarnia and ghafar-samar, 2016). again, to contextualize the finding, it is important to review english teaching practice in a social-educational community that influences identity formation and integration. as was introduced earlier, english majors in our study were required to take english culture-related courses such as cross-cultural communication and american/british literature, which are also core courses for english majors in other higher institutions in taiwan (cheng, 2012). another prevalent practice, as was evident in the local university in taiwan, is the recruitment of native english speakers (wu and ke, 2009; wang and lin, 2013) or graduates from english-speaking countries ―who have received or understood american culture and viewpoints in language education‖ (liu, 2005) to teach these english majors, which brings them into a new community with target language and culture. from learners‘ perspective, these english majors chose english as their main area of study, most likely due to their strong english learning motivation, which impacted their identity-change (xu and gao, 2014) especially as they continue to familiarize themselves with the target language and culture, and develop into a new disposition and attitudes while maintaining identity of origin. although the mainland participants might not have as much exposure and the opportunity to interact with the target group, they were enrolled in a bilingual science course, in which the language of instrument was in both chinese and english, with a gradual increase in the latter; the instructional materials including the text books were adopted from the original english source (tong and shi, 2012). these students expressed a strong and positive attitude toward this bilingual course in promoting their content area knowledge as well as english language proficiency. these students who elected to take this course might be more self-motivated as they held a higher english proficiency (all of them have met the graduation threshold), which could enhance their learning behavior to improve their english deemed critical for content area achievement. intuitively, art majors in our study underwent the lowest additive change, suggesting a less amount of integration with a dominant identity of origin. another interesting finding within the bilingual group revolves around the topic of age of l2 acquisition that has been extensively examined among learners in english-speaking countries (see (krashen et al., 1979; cummins, 1981; hakuta et al., 2000; irby et al., 2010)). this critical period (aka early sensitivity) hypothesis proposes that given the same amount of exposure and other situational contexts, early starters eventually achieve higher l2 proficiency and bilingualism than adult learners. such interplay among age, rate of acquisition, and exposure to l2 in efl settings has been supported by research among efl learners (fitzgerald et al., 2015). similarly, the early start advantage was also reflected in our finding among students who started learning english prior to grade 3 (equivalent to age 8, with 12 or more years of english learning at the time of study) and tended to switch easily between the original and target identities that are integrated. to the opposite, those who started english learning after grade 6 remained unchanged in additive identity, suggesting the dominance of the original identity even though they participated in the bilingual course. this finding bears policy implications as when to offer english curriculum so as to promote additive bilingualism in the long run. 4.3. subtractive change: english and bilingual science major vs. non-english major in another culture-dependent subtractive identity, the change is lower than what was observed in selfconfidence and additive-change. according to amiot et al. (2007) model of cognitive-development in identity integration, subtractive identity change occurs when increased integration with a new cultural identity result in a decrease in identification with one’s original cultural group. however, the experience of cultural conflicts is not necessarily negative as subtractive change is a developmental phase of the integration process due to a limited depth of linguistic and cultural learning, which can develop into additive self-identity (gao et al., 2005). another reason for little change observed in subtractive identity might be related to the educational practice in the two geographic locations in our study. although language loss has been reported among immigrants in the united states (hakuta and d'andrea, 1992; valdés, 2004) with a societal and familial pressure to acquire english at a young age, and to replace the minority language, such a subtractive bilingual environment might not be asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 135-146 144 applicable in the chinese landscape where the learning of english is highly desired, but not at a loss of chinese, which is the majority language. nevertheless, there is still significant dissonance among different majors in this study. it is evident that students with more exposure to english (i.e., english major and science major taking bilingual course) underwent more change in subtractive bilingualism. they might be more ―westernized‖ and reject certain aspects of the native culture; in other words, they were developing l2 identity at the expense of reducing the original identity. the finding is in line with what has been reported among thai college students (boonchum, 2009). this difference among the different majors can be explained by the positive relationship between instrumental/cultural motivation (such as going abroad) and subtractive identity change (xu and gao, 2014). english majors have been reported to exhibit a strong interest in studying or traveling in english-speaking countries (kitjaroonchai and kitjaroonchai, 2012) and the learning of english language and the accompanied culture increases the students‘ curiosity and preference of the new culture by visiting these countries (gu, 2012) and are also encouraged to do so (li, 2004). 4.4. split change overall, split change was not evident among the participants in our study. similar to subtractive identity change, the split change is also a process where an individual is introduced to a new cultural and identity, but the new identity is not integrated into the original identity, and thus the individual may still feel fragmented (amiot et al., 2007; de la sablonnière et al., 2016) however given more exposure to the target language and culture, such a process may evolve and eventually a more integrated additive identity will emerge. 5. conclusion, limitation, and recommendation for future research the learning of a second language may impact the way we think, and how people perceive us, which in turn will change our behavior so as to ‗confirm others‘ expectation. second language learners‘ identity goes beyond the language and can be in multiple dimensions such as gender, social class, ethnicity, and network (baker, 2011). gardner (1985) socio-educational model suggested that formal and informal language learning can improve foreign language efficiency towards bilingualism. alongside this learning process, an individual achieves both linguistic and non-linguistic outcomes. for example, the culture of the target language may lead to changes in learners‘ identity. although this study is among the few that addresses english learners‘ self-identity change in expanding circles and explores group differences with policy and practice support, there are several limitations. first, given the sampling strategy, external validity of this study is limited as participants from two universities might not fully represent the population of tertiary students in the two geographic locations, and therefore, we offer possible explanations and presuppositions, rather than making affirmative statements, especially when interpreting differences between the two locations. second, due to limited access to participants, qualitative data were not obtained through focus group or interview, which could have enriched the findings from learners‘ perspective. along the same line, we were not able to include participants‘ other information such as family social economic status, informal learning, and social networking which constitute multiple layers of bilingualism (baker, 2011). despite the above limitations, this study has the following contributions and recommendations to the field of l2 identity. first, there is a shortage of empirical scholarship on identity change among learners in the expanding circle countries, where the boundary between esl and efl is becoming loose, and therefore, research is much desired to avoid ―harmful generalizations‖ (kumaravadivelu, 2005). such journey of inquiry should begin with the search for a collection of reliable and valid measures that captures this underlying construct. second, as block (2007) argued, even within the efl contexts there are extreme variations in terms of policy and practices on english language teaching. his observation was echoed by one of our main findings that calls for more studies that take into consideration of comparing geographic locations that share similar or dissimilar socio-cultural or educational characteristics which may impact the identity construction and shift. in addition, major and years of english exposure for bilingual majors both significantly impacted identity integration. the examination of the internal domain of self and identity has important implications for language teachers on how to engage the motivation, interests and identities of language learners (ushioda, 2011) for them to achieve a harmony between actual self and ideal self, as proposed by dörnyei (2005) and an additive bilingualism as the ultimate goal of a strong form of bilingual education and bilingualism (baker and wright, 2017). finally, as the development model of social identity integration proposes, identity change is triggered when an individual is introduced into a new community (amiot et al., 2015) consequently, we recommend future research to target the change in self-identity before and after students are enrolled in a bilingual content area course or their participation in cross-cultural activities and communications. references amiot, c.e., r. de la sablonnière, d.j. terry and j.r. smith, 2007. integration of social identities in the self: toward a cognitivedevelopmental model. personality and social psychology review, 11(4): 364–388. view at google scholar | view at publisher amiot, c.e., r. sablonniere, l.g. smith and j.r. smith, 2015. capturing changes in social identities over time and how they become part of the self concept. social and personality psychology compass, 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yozgat, turkey abstract the aim of this research is to determine the physical activity levels of physical education and sports school students and to examine the physical activity levels according to some demographic characteristics. the objective of the research is composed of 480 students who are studying different programs in bozok university physical education and sports school in 2017-2018 academic year. the sample of the research is composed of 300 students’ determined random sampling method among the students studying in bozok university physical education and sports school in 2017-2018 academic year. demographic information about the students in the survey was obtained with the personal information form and information about the level of participation in physical activity by the international physical activity scale (short form). frequency, percentage, cross tables, chi-square and anova tests were used in the analysis of the data. as a result of the analyzes; statistically significant differences were found between physical activity levels according to gender, body mass index, education department, sports branch and cigarette use variables (p<.05). keywords: physical activity, university, student. citation | mehmet yildirim (2018). investigation of physical activity levels of physical education and sports school students. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 336-344. history: received: 6 june 2018 revised: 17 july 2018 accepted: 20 august 2018 published: 24 september 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 348 2. material and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 349 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 350 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 353 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 354 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.347.355&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1480 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9707-6540 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1480 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9707-6540 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1480 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9707-6540 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 347-355 348 1. introduction physical activity involves the activities, which are performed by using the muscles and joints in an energyconsuming way, increasing the heart and breath rates, and ending up with fatigue at various severities (gür and küçükoğlu, 1992). alongside the sports activities, involving a part or whole of the motions of walking, running, jumping, swimming, cycling, crouching-rising, arm and leg movements, exercises, games, as well as the various activities being performed throughout our daily-lives are also acknowledged among the physical activities (bek, 2008). the physical activity of an individual or a group is classified according to the environment in which the same activity is performed. the common categories consist of the activities at work, home, and in the vicinity of the house, as well as the self-care, free-time, sports, or transportation (burton and turrell, 2000). free-time physical activity involves all the activities, other than those being performed at work, and is divided into three: sports, game, fitness exercises, walking, cycling, climbing up the ladders, chores, recreational activities, garden works, car-washing, etc (howley, 2001). it is acknowledged by the authorities that, since the sedentary life-styles have reached to an ever-expanding tempo, the adverse bodily and psychological problems it causes have reached to worrisome levels. the people’s worries regarding productivity loss and health increment the social cost. at this point, physical activity possesses both preventive, and healing effects on numerous diseases (hendelman et al., 2000). obesity is a disease involving the over-accumulation of triglycerides, which cause such health problems as diabetes, arteriosclerotic heart disease, hypertension, etc. (yaprak, 2004). decrease in the physical activity level, and the accompanying decrease in the energy consumption altogether bring about obesity (davies et al., 1997). researches conducted on its use in the treatment of obesity have shown that, regular physical activity is more effective in the slightly obese and overweight individuals than in the severely obese individuals. numerous studies show that, regularly performed physical activity is an effective type of behavior in keeping the body weight at a normal level (bouchard and després, 1995). hypertension is a critical problem in terms of public health. increased diastolic and systolic blood pressures pose risk for the development of such diseases as heart failure, coronary heart diseases, heart attack, and renal failure. according to the respectively conducted studies, regular stamina trainings with intensity of 40-60%, that require maximum oxygen consumption, are effective in lowering the blood pressure. besides, the habit of performing regular physical activity is recommended as a preventive method for avoiding the age-related increase in the blood pressure (bouchard and després, 1995). musculoskeletal health is described with four components. these are namely the muscle (mass, power, strength, and stability thereof), bone (mineral density and content of the bone), joints (quantity or flexibility of movements), and motor skills (coordination, balance, movement speed, and agility). musculoskeletal components display a great deal of decrease as the one gets older. however the decrease in the mass, power, strength, and stability of the muscle is not solely age-related. decrease in the habit of performing regular physical activity also gives rise to the same. physical activity affects a number of the structural components of the musculoskeletal system positively. physical activity plays a significant role in putting off and avoiding such musculoskeletal disorders as the mechanical waist ache, shoulder and neck aches, osteoporosis, and related fractures (vuori, 1995). regularly performed physical activity causes not only increase in the high density level of lipoprotein cholesterol (hdl-c), but also decrease in the total cholesterol and low density level of lipoprotein cholesterol (ldl-c). it is suggested that, low plasma triglyceride, total cholesterol, ldl-c level, and increased hdl-c level generally lower the risk of the coronary heart diseases (bouchard and després, 1995). while performing regular physical activity prevents catching numerous diseases, it also causes an increase in the physical capacity of the individuals. furthermore, physical activity leads to an increase in the one’s performance in his/her professional life, in his/her activities at home, and in his/her capacity to spend his/her free times. it has been ascertained that, in comparison to their sedentary peers, the ones performing regular physical activities have higher physical labor capacity values, and give faster muscular system reactions (alpkaya and mengütay, 2004). in order to lay the foundations of a healthy society, alongside their educations, the children should be caused to adopt the habit of performing regular physical activity as early as possible. scientific researchers pay great interest to assisting in the development of a healthy life style throughout the transition from childhood to adulthood, and to conducting studies regarding the determination of the habit of performing physical activity among the youth. for the children and the youth, the level of the motions being performed is as critical as the motion stimulations themselves regarding the benefit in their application to the children and the youth. exercising in medium intensity has been found to be bringing in positive effect in the growth of the children (iverson et al., 1985). increase in his/her physical capacity level shall not only increase the self-confidence of the individual, but also bring along positive contribution to his/her daily performance and productivity. it shall further increase the same individual’s material and moral gains from the life. it may also be said that, regularly performed physical activities increase the life quality of their performers. the purpose of this research is to determine the level of participation in the physical activities of the physical education and sports faculty students, and to examine their physical activity levels according to certain demographical features at hand. it sought answers to the following questions: among the physical education and sports faculty students:  how are their physical activity levels?  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the gender variable?  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the age variable?  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the body mass index variable? asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 347-355 349  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the monthly expenditure amount variable?  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the accommodation type variable?  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the attended faculty department variable?  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the sports branch variable?  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the smoking habit variable?  is there any statistically meaningful difference found in their physical activity levels as per the alcohol drinking variable? 2. material and methods at this part of the research, the information regarding the population and sample groups, and the data collection tools, as well as the statistical processes used in the analysis of the data are included. 2.1. the population and sample of the study the population of the research consists of 480 students studying at the different programs of the physical education and sports faculty of bozok university in the academic year of 2017-2018. the sample of the research consists of 300 students studying at the different programs of the physical education and sports faculty of bozok university in the academic year of 2017-2018, who were respectively nominated by the convenience sampling method. 2.2. data collection tools in the research, while the demographical information regarding the students was attained by means of the personal information (gender, age, body mass index, monthly expenditure amount, accommodation type, attended faculty department, sports branch, smoking habit, and alcohol drinking) form, their levels of participation in the physical activities were attained by means of the international physical activity questionnaire (ipaq short form). calculation and value of the body mass index body mass index (bmi) is applicable to all age groups. in the calculation of the body mass index, the measured body height is converted from meter to centimeter, the attained figure is divided into the body weight in kilograms, and the attained result is compared with the standard values (pekcan, 2008). bmi = body weight (kg) / body height (m2) body mass index values (kg / m2) (who, 1995)  18.5 kg/m2 and lower thin  between 18.5-24.9 kg/m2 normal weighted  between 25-29.9 kg/m2 over-weighted  between 30-39.9 kg/m2 fat (obese)  above 40 kg/m2 excessively fat (morbid obese) for instance; while calculating the body mass index of a 20 years old person with body height of 170 cm and body weight of 65 kg; body height in meter is 1.7 m. its square is 1.7 x 1.7 = 2.89 bmi = 65 / 2.89 = 22.49. consequently, the person in question has a normal bmi. international physical activity scale international physical activity questionnaire (ipaq) has been developed in order to determine the physical activity levels of the 15-69 years old persons (craig et al., 2003). international physical activity questionnaire (ipaq) has been developed in short and long forms. in 1998 in geneva, the studies to develop the ipaq were commenced, and they were furthered by the reliability and validity studies respectively conducted at 14 research centers in 12 countries. as a result of the foregoing studies, it was declared that, ipaq was a reliable and valid method to determine the physical activity (atenz, 2001). the study on the reliability and validity of ipaq in turkey was conducted by oztürk (2005) over the students studying at universities (oztürk, 2005). the questionnaire consists of 4 different sections and a total of 7 questions. it is recommended to apply this questionnaire to adult persons within the age range of 15-69. the questionnaire involves questions regarding the physical activities having been performed for a duration of no shorter than 10 minutes in the last 7 days. it is determined by this questionnaire in how many days of the last week a) highly intense physical activities, b) fairly intense physical activities, and c) walking activities were performed, and for how long did such activities take per each day. in the last question, the time spent a day without moving (by sitting, lying, etc.) is determined. met method was used in order to determine the physical activity level. standard met values were created for such activities. the met values created are described as follows (bozkuş et al., 2013)  intense physical activity = 8.0 met  medium physical activity = 4.0 met  walking = 3.3 met  sitting = 1.5 met daily and weekly physical activity levels are determined by means of these values. for instance; the metm/week score for a person who walks for 30 minutes in 5 days of a week is calculated as 3.3 × 5 × 30 = 495 metm/week. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 347-355 350 ipaq scoring directives and the physical activity classification criteria are indicated below (ozüdoğru, 2013). physical activity scoring directive:  intense pa score = 8 x (the number of days on which intense activity is performed) x (number of minutes per intense activity)  medium pa score = 8 x (the number of days on which medium activity is performed) x (duration per medium activity in minutes)  walking pa score = 3.3 x (number of days on which walking is performed) x (duration per walking activity in minutes)  total pa score = intense pa score + medium pa score + walking pa score  physical activity classification criteria:  fa category at inactive level: total pa score < 600 met-min./week  fa category at lower level: 3000 met-min./week > total pa score ≥ 600 met min./week  fa category at adequate level: total pa score ≥ 3000 met-min./week 2.3. data analysis for the resolution of the data attained as a result of the research, frequency and percentage analyses was applied in order to describe the demographical features of the participants, while cross tabulation, chi square test, and single direction variance analysis (anova) were applied in order to assess the differences between the variances at hand. 3. findings this section includes the descriptive statistics and the findings regarding the discrimination tests. table 1 includes the findings regarding the students having answered the scale form. according to table 1, among the students having participated in the research, 129 (43%) of them are females, and 171 (57%) of them are males. while 52 (17.3%) of these students are 18 years old, 90 (30%) of them are 19 years old, 73 (24.3%) of them are 20 years old, 44 (14.7%) of them are 21 years old, 19 (6.3%) of them are 22 years old, 12 (4.0%) of them are 23 years old, 3 (1.0%) of them are 24 years old, 5 (1.7%) of them are 25 years old, 1 (.3%) of them is 27 years old, and 1 (.3%) of them is 30 years old. in view of the body mass indexes of the students, 21 (7.0%) of them are classified as thin, 232 (77.3%) of them are classified as normal weighted, 39 (13.0%) of them are classified as over-weighted, and 8 (2.7%) of them are classified as obese. in view of the amounts of the students' monthly expenditures, 125 (41.7%) of them spend tl 500 or less, 69 (23.0%) of them spend between tl 501 and tl 750, 48 (16.0%) of them spend between tl 751 and tl 1000, 38 (23.0%) of them spend between tl 1001 and tl 1250, and 20 (6.7%) of them spend tl 1251 and above a month. while 9 (3.0%) of them live alone in a house, 18 (6.0%) of them live in a house with their families, 109 (36.3%) of them live in a house with their friends, and 164 (54.7%) of them live in a dormitory or apartment. table-1. demographic features appertaining to the students n % gender female 129 43.0 male 171 57.0 age 18.00 52 17.3 19.00 90 30.0 20.00 73 24.3 21.00 44 14.7 22.00 19 6.3 23.00 12 4.0 24.00 3 1.0 25.00 5 1.7 27.00 1 3 30.00 1 3 body mass index 18.5 kg/m2 and lower thin 21 7.0 between 18.5-24.9 kg/m2 normal weighted 232 77.3 between 25-29.9 kg/m2 over-weighted 39 13.0 between 30-39.9 kg/m2 fat (obese) 8 2.7 monthly expenditure amount tl 500 and less 125 41.7 tl 501 tl 750 69 23.0 tl 751 tl 1000 48 16.0 tl 1001 tl 1250 38 12.7 tl 1251 and more 20 6.7 accommodation type alone in a house 9 3.0 in a house together with his/her family 18 6.0 in a house together with his/her friends 109 36.3 in a dormitory or apartment 164 54.7 attended faculty department physical education and sports teaching 119 39.7 coaching education 128 42.7 sports management 53 17.7 sports branch individual sports 135 45.0 team sports 135 45.0 n/a 30 10.0 smoking habit yes 104 34.7 no 196 65.3 alcohol drinking yes 47 15.7 no 253 84.3 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 347-355 351 in view of the the faculty departments attended by the students, 119 (39.7%) of them study at the physical education and sports teaching department, 128 (42.7%) of them study at coaching education department, and 53 (17.7%) of them study at sports management department. while 135 (45.0%) of the students declared that they were occupied with individual sports, 135 (45.0%) of them declared to be occupied with team sports, and 30 (10.0%) of them declared to be occupied with no branch of sports. 104 (34.7%) of the students declared to be smoking, 196 (65.3%) of them declared to be non-smoking. in response to the question regarding alcohol drinking, 47 (15.7%) of them answered yes, 253 (84.3%) of them answered no. findings on the students' levels of participation to physical activities are given in table 2. table-2. findings on the students' levels of participation to physical activities n % physical activity level inactive 88 29.3 lowly active 119 39.7 adequately active 93 31.0 total 300 100.0 according to the table 2, while 119 (39.7%) of the students are at lowly active level, 93 (31.0%) thereof are found to display participation to the physical activities at adequately active level. in the table 3, the findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per gender are shown. table-3. the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per gender gender total female male physical activity level inactive 43 45 88 lowly active 56 63 119 adequately active 30 63 93 total 129 171 300 x2=6.41; df=2; p=.041 according to the table 3, a statistically meaningful difference (p<.05) has been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the gender variance. while 30 of the female students show participation to physical activities at adequately active level, the same level of participation to physical activities is shown by 63 of the male students. male students have been found to be active at a level higher than that of the female students. in the table 4, the findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per age are shown. table-4. anova findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per age df f p between groups 9 .908 .519 within group 290 total 299 *p<.05; **p<.001 according to the table 4, a statistically meaningful difference (p>.05) has not been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the age variance. in the table 5, the findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per body mass index are shown. table-5. the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per body mass index body mass index total 18.5 kg/m2 and lower thin thin between18.524.9kg/m2 normal weighted between 2529.9 kg/m2 overweighted between30-39.9 kg/m2 obese(fat) physical activity level inactive 7 59 15 7 88 lowly active 12 91 15 1 119 adequately active 2 82 9 0 93 total 21 232 39 8 300 x2=22.59; df=6; p=.001 according to the table 5, a statistically meaningful difference (p<.05) has been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the body mass index variance. a great majority of the students have been determined as normal weighted (n=232). a great majority of the normal weighted students have further been found as being lowly active (n=91) or adequately active (n=82). the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per monthly expenditure amount have been shown in table 6. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 347-355 352 table-6. the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per monthly expenditure amount monthly expenditure amount total tl 500 and less tl 501tl 750 tl 751 tl 1000 tl 1001 tl 1250 tl 1251 and more physical activity level inactive 31 25 9 14 9 88 lowly active 58 21 20 16 4 119 adequately active 36 23 19 8 7 93 total 125 69 48 38 20 300 x2=13.97; df=8; p=.082 according to the table 6, a statistically meaningful difference (p>.05) has not been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the monthly expenditure amount variance. in the table 7, the findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per accommodation type are shown. table-7. the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per accommodation type accommodation type total alone in a house in a house together with his/her family in a house together with his/her friends in a dormitory or apartment physical activity level inactive 3 4 29 52 88 lowly active 1 9 45 64 119 adequately active 5 5 35 48 93 total 9 18 109 164 300 x2=5.38; df=6; p=.495 according to the table 7, a statistically meaningful difference (p>.05) has not been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the accommodation type variance. in the table 8, the findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per attended department of faculty are shown. table-8. the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per attended faculty of department attended faculty department total physical education and sports teaching coaching education sports management physical activity level inactive 33 41 14 88 lowly active 43 45 31 119 adequately active 43 42 8 93 total 119 128 53 300 x2=11.81; df=4; p=.019 according to the table 8, a statistically meaningful difference (p<.05) has been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the attended faculty department variance. the students from the physical education and sports teaching (n = 43) and the coaching education (n = 42) departments have been found to have displayed adequate levels of participation to the physical activities in comparison to those of the students from the sports management department. in the table 9, the findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per sports branch are shown. table-9. the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per sports branch sports branch total individual team n/a physical activity level inactive 45 33 10 88 lowly active 54 49 16 119 adequately active 36 53 4 93 total 135 135 30 300 x2=10.61; df=4; p=.031 according to the table 9, a statistically meaningful difference (p<.05) has been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the sports branch variance. it has been ascertained that, a great majority (n = 53) of the ones having displayed adequate level of participation to the physical activities are occupied with team sports. in the table 10, the findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per smoking habit are shown. table-10. the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per smoking habit smoking habit total yes no physical activity level inactive 29 59 88 lowly active 52 67 119 adequately active 23 70 93 total 104 196 300 x2=8.45; df=2; p=.015 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 347-355 353 according to the table 10, a statistically meaningful difference (p<.05) has been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the smoking habit variance. it has been ascertained that, a great majority (n = 70) of the non-smoking have displayed adequate level of participation to the physical activities. in the table 11, the findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per alcohol drinking are shown. table-11. the chi-square findings regarding the comparison of physical activity level as per alcohol drinking alcohol drinking total yes no physical activity level inactive 14 74 88 lowly active 19 100 119 adequately active 14 79 93 total 47 253 300 x2=.38; df=2; p=.981 according to the table 11, a statistically meaningful difference (p>.05) has not been found as a result of the physical activity comparison as per the alcohol drinking variance. 4. discussion in this research intended to determine whether there is any difference in the physical activity levels of the students studying at different departments of the physical education and sports faculties according to certain demographical features (gender, age, body mass index, monthly expenditure amount, accommodation type, attended faculty department, sports branch, smoking habit, and alcohol drinking) at hand, the following results have been attained: in view of the physical activity levels of the students studying at different departments of the physical education and sports faculties, while 119 of them have been found as displaying lower levels of participation to the physical activities, and 93 of them as displaying adequate levels, 88 of them have been found to be physically inactive. according to this conclusion reached in the research, it may be said that, despite a great majority of the students have lower levels of physical activity, a significant majority of the same display adequate level of participation to the physical activities. although there are applied courses in the curriculums of the physical education and sports faculty students, alongside lack of the establishment facilities and opportunities within the developing campuses, it is suggested that, the increase in the technological environments within the houses, dormitories, apartments, and other locations have restricted the students’ adequate participation to the physical activities. similar conclusions have been reached in the researches conducted by olçücü et al. (2015) and savcı et al. (2006). a statistically meaningful difference (x2=6.41; p<.05) has been attained between the gender variable and physical activity level. male students display higher levels of participation to the physical activities than the female students. it is suggested that, while the male students intensely take part in the individual and team sports, where they are more dominant over the physiological and biological impacts of the physical activity, the female students are found to participate in the physical activities so as to remain healthy, fit, and strong. there are also a number of studies available in the literature, revealing the fact that, the physical activity levels of the males are higher than those of the females. the researchers conducted by stephens et al. (1985); king et al. (1992); adams et al. (1992); riddoch and boreham (1995); myers et al. (1996); leslie et al. (1999); crocker and faulkner (1999); trost et al. (2002); yıldırım and bayrak (2017); olçücü et al. (2015); polat and simşek yıldırım (2015); baş et al. (2007); kızar et al. (2016); kara (2006) have also yielded conclusions similarly indicating that the male students’ levels of participation to the physical activities are meaningfully higher than those of the female students. the results attained from this research show similarity with the findings attained from the foregoing researches. a statistically meaningful difference (x2=22.59; p<.05) has been attained between the body mass variable and physical activity level. as a result of the body mass calculations, the ones with normal weights have higher levels of participation to the physical activities than those of the light weighted and obese ones. in terms of health and performance, it is suggested that, while the students having performed the intensive activities among the sports activities could have kept their physical structures, the light weighted ones liked the appearances of their bodies, and felt no need for further physical activities. similar suggestions were raised in the researches conducted by nordqvist (2003); memiş and yıldıran (2007). in the study conducted by yancey et al. (2004) no statistically meaningful relation could have been ascertained between being sedentary and body mass index. a statistically meaningful difference (x2=11.81; p<.019) has been attained between the department variable and physical activity level. it has been ascertained that, the students from the physical education and sports teaching and the trainer education departments tend to display higher levels of participation to the physical activities than those of the sports management department students. such a result is suggested to arise from the facts that, while the students of physical education and sports teaching and the trainer education departments are admitted to their departments by way of special talent test, the sports management department students are admitted to their department upon their respective choices for the student placement examination, and that the students of the physical education and sports teaching and the trainer education departments tend to take part in the sports activities more in their past years. besides, the curriculums of the physical education and sports teaching and the trainer education departments differ from that of the sports management department. the sports management department students are taught more intensely with theoretical courses than the applied ones. this may also be considered as a situation that affects the participation of the sports management department students to the physical activities. no statistically meaningful difference could have been found in the study conducted by aydın and solmaz (2016) among the students studying at the different departments of the faculty of sports sciences. there is an apparent difference with this study. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 347-355 354 in the research, a statistically meaningful difference (x2=10.61; p=.031) has been found as a result of the comparison of the physical activity level as per the sports branch variable. the ones who are occupied in individual and team sports tend to have higher levels of participation to the physical activities than those of the ones without any branch. it is suggested that, the ones who are occupied in individual and team sports are to be the students of the physical education and sports teaching and the trainer education departments, and those without any branch are to be the sports management department students. the activity levels of the students who are taking applied courses, and occupied with individual and team sports within sports clubs have naturally been found to be higher. in the research, a statistically meaningful difference (x2=8.45; p=.015) has been found as a result of the comparison of the physical activity level as per the smoking habit variable. it has been determined that, the ones who do not smoke have higher levels of participation to the physical activities than those of the ones who do smoke. smoking, even 1 cigarette per day, may have an immediate impact on the one’s exercising capacity. stamina capacity of the ones who smoke is lower than that of the ones who do not smoke. in terms of health, the smokers tend to participate less in the physical activities. the youth smokers experience the same negative effects being experienced by the adult smokers. physical endurance and performance of the smokers is lower than that of their peers who do not smoke. besides, the feeling of breathlessness, increase in the sports injuries, and deterioration of general health are the problems that are encountered frequently (sağlam et al., 2008). it is suggested that, among both youth and adult smokers, the conditions of the ones who give up smoking may be restored to normal. in the study that was conducted by arabacı and cankaya (2007) with the intent of “investigating the physical activity levels of the physical education teachers” on the basis of the consideration that the ones who smoke have lower physical activity levels than those of the ones who do not smoke, it is concluded that, the ones who do not smoke tend to have higher physical activity levels than those of the smokers. it was shown in the studies conducted by burton and turrell (2000); topsaç and bişgin (2014) that, the smokers are inactive persons. the results attained from these studies are similar to those attained from this study. in the study conducted by aydın and solmaz (2016) among the students of the faculty of sports sciences, however, no statistically meaningful difference could have been found between the smoking and non-smoking students in terms of their levels of participation to the physical activities. this contradicts with the respective results of this study. regularly performed physical activities shall not only lead the person to think positively, but also have positive physical, psychological, and social impacts on the same person. furthermore, the ones who regularly perform activities shall experience increase in their life quality, and shall also become self-confident, determined, and successful individuals, who are capable of applying auto-control on themselves thanks to their more balanced personalities. it is also suggested that, performing medium level of physical activity is the best way to get away from the negative impacts of a stressful life. the following recommendations are put forth in parallel with the findings attained from this study.  elimination of the factors that impede participation to physical activity requires focusing on studies intended for increasing the levels of participation to physical activity of the students coming from varying socio-economical and cultural backgrounds.  in this research, it has been ascertained that, the male students have higher levels of participation to the physical activities than those of the female students. in order to increase the activity levels of the female students, their sports preferences should be identified, and they should be encouraged to show participation in the respective directions.  performing physical activity regularly shall be helpful in keeping the one’s ideal body weight. for this purpose, the persons who are inactive and active at lower levels should be informed with respect to body mass index.  it has been found in this research that, the students of the physical education and sports teaching and the trainer education departments have levels of participation to physical activities higher than those of the sports management department students. revision of the curriculums of the sports management department, and increasing the number of hours of the applied courses therein shall cause the students of this department also participate in the activities intensively.  the students who perform their branches at top level should be offered with physical, material, and moral opportunities in order to maintain their persistence in their university lives. furthermore, the works for sports facilities and organizations within the campus 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journal of academic social science, 5(54): 310-330. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 266-271 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 266-271, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.266.271 the relationship between school administrators’ in-house communication and conflict management strategies according to physical education teachers’ perceptions utku isik1 hakan sunay2 recep cengiz3 ( corresponding author) 1school of physical education and sport, recep tayyip erdogan university, rize, turkey 2faculty of sport science, ankara university, ankara, turkey 3faculty of sport science, manisa celal bayar university, manisa, turkey abstract this study aimed to investigate the relationship between school administrators’ in-house communication and conflict management strategies based on physical education teachers’ perceptions. the study sample consisted of 130 physical education teachers employed at state schools in bartin provincial center who volunteered to take part in the study in a 2014-2015 academic year. "interpersonal communication skills scale" and "conflict management strategies scale" were implemented by teachers. kolmogorov-smirnov test was used in the study to analyze whether the data displayed a normal distribution. since the data did were not distributed normally according to teachers' ages and seniorities (p=.000<α = 0,05), non-parametric tests were used in the analysis. descriptive statistics, mann-whitney u test and spearman-rho were used in data analysis. the margin of error was taken as 0.05. the study shows that physical education teachers prefer avoidance strategy (χ=2,44±,494), controlled strategy (χ=2,42±,623) and solution-oriented strategy (χ=2,35±,473) respectively. as a result, the high-level relationship was identified between school administrators' interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies based on physical education teachers' perceptions while no statistically significant difference was determined in interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies subscale scores based on teachers' seniority and age. keywords: physical education teachers, in-house communication, conflict, conflict management, interpersonal communication skills. citation | utku isik; hakan sunay; recep cengiz (2018). the relationship between school administrators’ in-house communication and conflict management strategies according to physical education teachers’ perceptions. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 266-271. history: received: 4 july 2018 revised: 27 july 2018 accepted: 3 august 2018 published: 9 august 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction 267 2. findings 268 3. discussion and result 269 references 270 1. introduction today, one of the important practices in the sector of education to increase the level of services is the development of in-house communication skills as is the case in every sector. high levels of communication skills are necessary for individuals who work in professions that require frequent contact with people. in-house communication skills is defined as “exchanging information”, “accurate perception of messages in interpersonal exchange of thought and feelings”, “communize meanings", "mutual transmission and comprehension of emotions, information, and meanings" and "production and transmission of knowledge" (arican, 2005; cuceloglu, 2005; bambacas and patrickson, 2008; dokmen, 2008). these definitions show that in-house communication is a concept in educational settings as well. individuals solve their problems by sharing information, emotions, thoughts, and problems, better understand and control their environment and can contribute to the development of education and training. individuals who succeed in communication are generally self-confident, considerate, willing to collaborate and share, open to the problems of their own and of others and problem solvers. individuals who are insecure and fearful, who defend their ideas stubbornly, and who do not believe anyone's opinion but their own generally cannot communicate successfully. unity of purpose is crucial to achieving success in communication (bilen, 2004). when there is unity of purpose among individuals, the messages that are sent will be transmitted more easily. as this fact shows, increasing the quality of education and student satisfaction will only be possible through the development of communication especially between teachers and school administrators. according to sisman (2001), the quality of education is directly proportional to teacher quality. in this sense, school administrators' ability to establish effective communication with teachers is thought to be positively reflected in the quality of education. there are studies in the literature that investigated school administrators' knowledge, skills and experience in conflict management and their use of effective communication skills in conflict management process (gibson et al., 2000; pehlivan, 2007; sirin and yetim, 2010) in addition to inefficacy in communication skills, inadequacy in conflict management skills is regarded as one of the main reasons in problems experienced at school. in general, conflict expresses negative emotions and behaviors such as notion of having different ideas, inadequate communication, disagreement, distress, stress, hostility and anxiety, it also reflects the source of creative and constructive actions, innovation, development, tolerance and a fundamental condition of existence (sirin and yetim, 2010; disbudak, 2011). the lack of harmony among individuals in terms of value judgments that hinder meeting both physiological and socio-psychological needs, attitudes, goals and ways that are believed to be successful in obtaining these goals, differences in ideas about perceiving problems and their solutions and discrepancy between feelings and behaviors may cause conflicts (tekkanat, 2009) conflict, considered to be an inevitable phenomenon in an environment where individuals interact, consists of simple differences, dissension, antagonism, contradiction, miscommunication, legal debates and violence/quarrels stages (karip, 2003; kandemir, 2006). conflicts arise from impulses and demands that contradict one another. in this process, the purpose of parties may present a non-violent feature such as the ensuring the acceptance of their own preferences or reaching the prioritized position in using power. in this case, conflicts arise from differences in sharing scarce resources, status, goals, values, and perceptions (simsek, 1999). how the conflict environment is created and how this process is managed are important issues in conflict management as well as the in-depth perception of the concept by physical education teachers who undertake significant roles in sports and social activities. research has shown that conflicts, which can take be encountered in every organization, are caused by management styles, differences in goals, feelings of competitiveness and jealousy, insensitivity/indifference towards work or the topic of disagreement and behaviors that underlie individual problems (sahin, 2007). one noteworthy point in these studies demonstrates that since methods used for conflict and methods used to cope with conflict are different in nature, conflict management will contribute to organizational success but it may negatively affect achievement. how the conflict environment is created and how this process is managed are important issues in conflict management as well as the in-depth perception of the concept by physical education teachers who undertake significant roles in sports and social activities. since conflicts are also processes of communication, the fact that communication is both a source of conflict and an effective means to manage conflicts increases its significance during conflict management process (sahin, 2007). in this sense, this study aimed to explore the relationships between interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies of school administrators based on physical education teachers’ perceptions. 1.1. research model this study was undertaken as a descriptive study by using a survey model. 1.2. study group the study sample consisted of 130 physical education teachers employed at state schools in bartın provincial center who volunteered to take part in the study in a 2014-2015 academic year. incomplete or incorrect surveys were excluded from the study and 105 surveys were assessed. 1.3. data collection tools 1.3.1. in-house communication skills scale first, in-house communication skills scale developed by isik (2005) was used in the study to assess in-house communication skills. the 52-item scale is ranked by providing the following responses “never”, “rarely”, “sometimes”, “mostly” and “always” that are scored as 0,1,2,3,4 respectively. the lowest and highest scores that can be obtained from the scale are 0 (neutral) and 208. high scores point to high tendency of the individuals to establish interpersonal communication. cronbach alpha coefficient of in-house communication skills scale was found to be 0.77 in this study and the scale is reliable. 1.4. conflict management strategies scale “conflict management strategies scale” developed by robt. e. quinn was used in this study. validity and reliability studies of the scale were undertaken by turkan (2009). the questionnaire measures participants’ conflict management strategies in three categories. the questionnaire with a total of 30 items addresses conflict management in three dimensions. table-1. conflict management strategies scale (cms) sub dimensions number of questions question numbers solution oriented strategy 11 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11 avoidance strategy 12 12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19.20.21.22.23. controlled strategy 7 24.25.26.27.28.29.30. source: turkan (2009). cronbach alpha coefficient of conflict management strategies scale was found to be 0.81 in this study and the scale is reliable. cronbach alpha coefficients of the sub-dimensions for this scale change between 0.67 and 0.70. 1.5. data analysis kolmogorov-smirnov test was used in the study to analyze whether the data displayed a normal distribution. since the data did were not distributed normally according to teachers' ages and seniorities (p=.000<α = 0,05), non-parametric tests were used in the analysis. descriptive statistics, mann-whitney u test, and spearmanrho were used in data analysis. the margin of error was taken as 0.05. data were analyzed via spss 16.0 program. 2. findings this section includes findings and interpretations of data in relation to problem statement. table-2. demographic information for participating teachers variables sub categories f % age groups 22-29 years 32 20,5 over 30 73 69,5 total 105 100 gender female 18 17,1 male 87 82,9 total 105 100 seniority 1-5 years 13 12,4 6-9 years 34 44,8 10 years or more 58 55,2 total 105 100 table 2 shows that 69,5% of the participants were 30 or over. gender distribution shows that 82,9% of the participants were males and 17,1% were females. seniority information shows that 55,2% of the participants worked for 10 years or more and 12,4% had 1-5-year experience. table-3. physical education teachers’ conflict management strategies scale score distribution conflict management strategies min max χ sd solution oriented strategy 1,36 3,64 2,35 ,473 avoidance strategy 1,58 3,75 2,44 ,494 controlled strategy 1,14 4,43 2,42 ,623 table 3 shows that physical education teachers prefer avoidance strategy (χ=2,44±,494), controlled strategy (χ=2,42±,623) and solution-oriented strategy (χ=2,35±,473) respectively. table-4. comparison of in-house communication skills scale scores based on age age mean rank rank sum u p in-house communication 22-29 year 49,44 1582,00 1054,00 ,427 30 + years 54,56 3983,00 n1=32 n2=73 t=105 p< 0.05 according to table 4, there is no statistically significant difference between in-house communication skills scale based on age (p>0.05). table-5. comparison of conflict management strategies scale scores based on physical education teachers’ seniority conflict management strategies seniority mean rank rank sum u p solution oriented strategy 1-6 years 49,63 2332,50 1204,500 ,306 7 years or more 55,73 3232,50 avoidance strategy 1-6 years 50,38 2368,00 1240,000 ,427 7 years or more 55,12 3197,00 controlled strategy 1-6 years 58,01 2726,50 1127,500 ,128 7 years or more 48,94 2838,50 n1=47 n2=58 t=105 p< 0.05 no statistically significant differences were found among solution oriented strategy, avoidance strategy and controlled strategy mean scores (p>0.05). table-6. the relationship between the in-house communication skills scale and solution oriented strategy sub dimension solution oriented strategy avoidance strategy controlled strategy -house communication skills scale avoidance strategy 1,000 ,361** ,410** ,642** solution oriented strategy 1,000 ,359** ,431** controlled strategy 1,000 ,394** in-house communication skills scale 1,000 * correlation is meaningful at the level of 0.05 ** correlation is meaningful at the level of 0.01. 3. discussion and result table 2 demonstrates that 69,5% of the participating teachers were 30 years old or over. gender distribution shows that 82,9% of the participating teachers were males and 17,1% were females. seniority distribution shows that 55,2% of the participating teachers had 10 years or more experience while 12,4% had 1-5 year experience. table 3 shows that physical education teachers reported that school administrators adopted avoidance strategy. in other words, school administrators avoid disagreements with teachers and when they perceive a tense atmosphere, they tend to leave the environment, ignore the situation or "let them do what they want". these behaviors are significant determinants of avoidance strategy (atis, 2010). avoiding conflicts mean doing nothing at all in terms of conflict management strategies. the reason why school administrators adopt avoidance strategy may be related to the fact that they do not want to lose positive relationships in their interpersonal relationships. polat and arslan (2004) study which determined that in general, university administrators tended to utilize avoidance strategy confirms our findings. karip (2003) associates the use of this strategy with the fact that conflicts harm both parties. avoidance is the conflict management strategy in which both of the conflicting parties or one of these parties tend to display little interest in the conflict or tend not to take their own interests or interests of both parties into account. in this strategy, conflict is avoided and ignored. this strategy can be effectively used when the tension between the parties are so high that successful communication cannot be achieved. conflict can be delayed up to a period when the parties can think more soundly and mutually discuss issues. according to sirin and yetim (2010), since avoidance hinders mutual interaction and exchange of ideas, it is not suitable for educational organizations. therefore, this finding can be interpreted to mean that school administrators were not involved insufficient communication and interaction to enable them to assess conflict management strategies. hence, the fact that school administrators prioritize avoidance strategy is not regarded as a suitable strategy in this study. previous studies found that parties that prefer using this method had prior conflicts and had to face negative outcomes since conflicts were not managed appropriately (sahin et al., 2006; yazıcı and sunay, 2006; sirin, 2008; turkan, 2009) the study found no significant differences in teacher views on school administrators’ conflict management strategies and in-house communication skills based on teachers’ age and seniority (table 4-5). this finding pointing to the fact that age and seniority are not effective is an expected outcome since professional roles should not completely change according to age and seniority. in addition, it was also found that age and seniority were not significant determinants in reducing or increasing conflicts as well. literature shows two separate and distinct result in terms of age and seniority: the studies that support our findings (ascioglu, 2007; aydin, 2007; kilic, 2007; sahin, 2007; oztay, 2008; firat, 2010) reported no significant relationships between conflict management and age/seniority. however, some other studies (acar, 2006; gunes, 2008; topluer, 2008; turkan, 2009; basak, 2010; ozyigit, 2010; lal, 2012) demonstrated meaningful relationships between conflict management and age/seniority. based on this data, it can be argued that lengthier professional seniority increases administrative experiences and therefore avoidance strategies are left behind and the importance of diagnosis, the basis of conflict management, is better comprehended. the study found a high-level relationship between school administrators’ interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies based on teacher perceptions (table 6). accordingly, conflict management strategies also increase when communication skills increase. this fact shows the significance of communications skills in managing conflicts. according to physical education teachers’ views, the fact that all the relationships between school administrators’ interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies were linear and positive shows that primary school administrators tended to use situational approaches in conflict management process (sahin, 2007). according to these approaches, there is not one single strategy to be used in conflicts. on the contrary, multiple strategies should be used based on the scope and progress of the conflict and the attitudes of the parties. shapiro (2004) also emphasized that conflicts, after all, our interaction and dialogue process and reported that they cannot be made constructive and functional without positive interaction, which is a type of communication itself. some research data that support this view discussed that communication is related to many levels of conflicts and addressed competency issues theoretically such as discussions, convincing, data mining and development of relationships and emphasized that communication skills are among the crucial skills school administrators have (ellis and maoz, 2003; ozerbas et al., 2007; cetinkaya and alparslan, 2011) in this sense, improving interpersonal communication skills will allow effective use of conflict management strategies. communication is an unavoidable and significant aspect of human beings as social entities. whether they are aware of it or not, people who live in a specific social environment communicate with one another. solving interpersonal and social problems requires communication in addition to education. in communities in which sound communication skills are not developed, communication that aims to solve problems can turn into conflicts (euwema et al., 2003; sahin, 2007). it is believed that some of the interpersonal or personal problems encountered at schools are caused by the inability of administrators in comprehending teachers’ feelings or in transmitting their interests and desires. according to karip (2003) conflicts will continue as long as there are differences in the references, demands, values, beliefs, and interests of the parties involved in communication and interaction. persuasive encouragement in the context of effective communication will result in efforts to succeed and ensures progress in feelings of personal competence and in development methods by increasing activities and strengthening motivation. differences of perception in communication and communication barriers will cause increased anger and conflicts (kilic, 2007). accurately transmitting feelings, thoughts, desires, and experiences, making accurate and correct sense of received messages and creating a common sense is crucial for a sound school management (argon, 2011). as a result, a high-level relationship was identified between school administrators' interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies based on physical education teachers' perceptions while no statistically significant difference was determined in interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies subscale scores based on teachers' seniority and age. references acar, h., 2006. conflict management styles of secondary school principals and their conflict management styles the effects of teacher stress levels. master's thesis. gazi university educational sciences institute, ankara. argon, t., 2011. critical thinking tendencies and conflict management of teacher candidates stilleri. journal of educational and instructional studies in the world, 1(1): 93-100. arican, k., 2005. teacher behavior in classroom communication in elementary schools. m.sc. thesis, i̇zzet baysal university, institute of social sciences, bolu. ascioglu, v., 2007. conflict management in business and an application in health sector. master of science. dokuz eylül university, izmir. atis, h., 2010. school administrators 'strategies for managing conflict with teachers. kagithane district for teachers' perceptions, 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physical education and sports management. doctorate thesis, gazi university, institute of educational sciences, ankara. sirin, e.f. and a.a. yetim, 2010. examination of the level of using conflict management strategies by school administrators of physical education and sports college according to the perceptions of administrators and academician. celal bayar university besyo, original research journal, 4(4): 86-98. sisman, m., 2001. introduction to teacher education. ankara: pegema publications. tekkanat, d., 2009. teacher perceptions related to communication style used by elementary school administrators in conflict management (edirne illi example). master thesis, sakarya university institute of social sciences, sakarya. topluer, a., 2008. the relationship between communication adequacy of administrators of primary school and organizational conflict level the case of malatya province. science expertise thesis, i̇nönü university, institute of social sciences, malatya. turkan, h., 2009. conflict resolution skills of teaching members in the faculty of medicine. graduate thesis, gazi university, institute of educational sciences, ankara. yazıcı, c. and h. sunay, 2006. methods of managing conflicts with the staff of the administrators who work in the amateur sports federations attached to the general directorate of youth and sports. sports medicine physical education sports science magazine, 4(1): 31-37. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 266 271 image1.png image2.png image3.png image4.png image5.png image6.png image7.png image8.png 18 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 1, 18-28, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.18.28 test of achievement in quantitative economics for secondary schools: construction and validation using item response theory lydia i. eleje1  nkechi p.m. esomonu2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of educational foundations, faculty of education, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, nigeria abstract a test to measure achievement in quantitative economics among secondary school students was developed and validated in this study. the test is made up 20 multiple choice test items constructed based on quantitative economics sub-skills. six research questions guided the study. preliminary validation was done by two experienced teachers in secondary school economics and one expert in test construction. the pilot testing was conducted to ensure compatibility of the test items while test try-out on 515 students yielded the data for item analysis. analysis were attained through spss and bilog mg using item response theory (irt) three-parameter logistic model (3pl) to establish item difficulty, item discrimination, and the guessing value. the empirical reliability of the test was 0.86. the test was found to be of good quality, valid and highly reliable. the test is ready and can now be used to assess students’ achievement in quantitative economics in nigeria and other countries. keywords: achievement test, quantitative economics, irt (item response theory), uni-dimensionality, reliability. citation | lydia i. eleje; nkechi p.m. esomonu (2018). test of achievement in quantitative economics for secondary schools: construction and validation using item response theory. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 18-28. history: received: 4 december 2017 revised: 11 january 2018 accepted: 28 january 2018 published: 25 january 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 19 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 21 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 23 5. discussion of findings .................................................................................................................................................................... 24 6. conclusions ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 7. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 24 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 24 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.18.28&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8587-289x https/orcid.org/0000-0002-8682-382x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8587-289x https/orcid.org/0000-0002-8682-382x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8587-289x https/orcid.org/0000-0002-8682-382x asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 19 1. introduction the teaching and learning of economics as a subject in nigeria and other west african countries is part of the senior secondaryss1, ss2 and ss3 curriculum (federal government of nigeria, 2004). economics according to kallie (2015) is a social science for analyzing the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. economics education is the education provided for economics teachers or would be teachers on different economic issues and problems. it focuses on the improvement of economic curriculum materials and pedagogy. this according to babalola (2003) is the education provided to assist a rational man in organizing his different thoughts whenever he is faced with day-to-day economic issues and problems. thus, economics education is aimed at bringing about desirable behavioral changes in students (dike, 2002). these behavioral changes are quantified and qualified using achievement tests. achievement tests are tests given to assess how far a student has learnt what was taught. they are primarily used in making classroom level decisions and are designed with particular reference to the course objectives/learning goals of a specific course, study program or class (mahajan, 2015). such tests evaluate students’ understanding of a particular instructional domain in order to make decisions regarding the advancement or knowledge and skill acquired by the students. achievement test can be influenced by certain factors. this is supported in a research by adhanja et al. (2016) and hanzen (2000) which shows that students’ achievement is affected by different factors such as learning abilities, race, gender, sex and socio-economic factors. on the other hand, chansarkar and michaeloudis (2001) explained that students’ achievement is not affected by such factors as age, sex and place of residence but is associated with performance in quantitative skills/subject. they also found out that those who live near school perform better than other students. in support of chansarkar and mishaeloudis view, educational testing service (1995) also identified quantitative ability/skill as a factor which could influence students’ achievement in a school subject. dolado and morales (2008) specifically pointed out ability in calculations/mathematics as a factor affecting performance in economics. quantitative ability is seen as a measure of a student’s ability/skill to apply knowledge of mathematical concepts and principles, to demonstrate flexibility in thinking, to identify critical features on new situations, to make correct generalizations, and to compare mathematical expressions (ets, 1995; dolado and morales, 2008). quantitative skills involve the ability to solve numerical problems easily. to some people, quantitative ability also means that they are able to separate a whole into its constituent parts more readily than others. it includes arriving at mathematical/calculative solutions to problems, as well as basic adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing (adu et al., 2009). since the introduction of a new economics syllabus which incorporated some elements of quantitative/calculations into the subject, students’ achievement in economics has not been as good as it has been before. this new syllabus has been a challenge for the economics students in the senior secondary classes partly as a result of the carry over effects of the negative attitudes which they have towards quantitative/calculations (adu et al., 2009). consequently, the comments made by west africa examination council (waec) chief examiners tend to portray the impact of quantitative ability on students’ achievement in economics. in west african examination council (waec) (2010) and waec (2012) the chief examiners’ in their reports specifically categorized students’ weaknesses as: i. calculationsmajority of the students/candidates were unable to carry out simple calculations. a question in price elasticity of demand was attempted poorly by very few candidates. ii. poor graph/curve analysiscandidates attempted unsatisfactorily to draw and analyze graphs/curves. the chief examiners’ also suggested that students should be encouraged to develop their quantitative skills/ability in economics before the examinations. the need for students to develop their quantitative skills in economics was also emphasized by osadebe (2014). osadebe pointed out that a good knowledge in quantitative economics at senior secondary will later help students in tertiary schools to study economics, banking, finance, accounting and other related courses involving calculations. hence, there is need for a quality tests of achievement in quantitative economics to enable senior secondary economics teachers’ asses their students’ level of performance/achievement in quantitative economics prior to external examinations. to ensure the quality of the test of achievement in quantitative economics being developed, item analysis of students’ responses to the test items were carried out using item response theory (irt). although eleje et al. (2016) developed and validated diagnostic economics test on three content areas and esomonu and eleje (2017) also developed and validated diagnostic quantitative economics skill test using irt, these tests were diagnostic tests not achievement test. so, there is lack of test of achievement in quantitative economics for secondary schools to the best of our knowledge. in essence, the construction and validation of test of achievement in quantitative economics has not been researched on, thereby constituting an educational need. the researchers hence deem it necessary to construct and validate test of achievement in quantitative economics for secondary schools using item response theory (irt). the objective of this study therefore, is to construct and validate test of achievement in quantitative economics (taqe) for secondary schools using irt. based on the objective stated above, the study sought answers to the following research questions: 1. is the test unidimensional? 2. which of the irt model represents a better fit for the test data? 3. what are the test item threshold levels? 4. what are the test item slope values? 5. what are the test item guessing values? 6. how reliable is the entire test according to irt model? 2. literature review the literature was reviewed based on the following sub-headings: item response theory (irt) the a parameter asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 20 the b parameter the c parameter quantitative economics skill validity of the test reliability of the test 2.1. item response theory (irt) thorpe and favia (2012) describe item response theory (irt) as a collection of measurement models that try to explain the connection between observed item responses on a scale and an underlying construct. irt models are mathematical equations that specifically describe the association between subjects’ levels on a latent variable and the probability of a particular response to an item, using a non-linear monotonic function (hays et al., 2009). as a measurement theory irt aids to develop an educational measurement scale that has ratio scale, sample independent attributes and students’ ability reported on both item and total instrument levels (ani, 2014). irt makes it possible to estimate and interpret item statistics referred to as parameters. in irt, parameters of the persons are invariant across items, and parameters of the items are invariant in different populations of persons. thus it brings greater flexibility and provides more sophisticated information which allows for the improvement of the reliability of an assessment (ani, 2014). item parameters in irt are estimated directly using three logistic models instead of proportions (difficulty or threshold) and item-scale correlations (discrimination) (adedoyin and mokobi, 2013). in one-parameter logistic (1pl) model, items are only described by a single parameter in terms of location or difficulty (b) while the slopes (discrimination) are held constant. the two-parameter logistic (2pl) model not only checks for the item difficulty but also assess each item’s level of discrimination between high and low ability students while the three-parameter logistic (3pl) model adds a third item parameter which is called pseudo-guessing parameter that reflects the probability that an examinee with a very low trait level will correctly answer an item solely by guessing. this according to ani (2014) implies that students can through guessing answer an item correctly in an achievement test. 2.2. the a parameter the a parameter is a measure that can be graphically expressed by the steepness of the item characteristic curve (icc). the a parameter also known as item discrimination (slope) shows how well an item can differentiates among respondents with abilities to the left of the item location from those with abilities to the right of the item location (thorpe and favia, 2012). if a parameter value is positive, it implies that students’ of higher ability have a high probability of answering an item correctly and students’ of lower ability have a low probability to answer an item correctly. when a parameter value is negative, it indicates that students’ with high ability have a low probability of answering an item correctly while students’ with low ability have a higher probability of answering an item correctly. a high discrimination value indicates that the item discriminates well among low and high skilled students. the discrimination values (parameter a-values) of good items according to adedoyin and mokobi (2013) ranges from 0.5 to 2. if the values of the item discrimination a is above 1, this is normally desirable value for a good test item. baker (2001) describes the range and interpretation of values for item discrimination as follows: very low; .01 .34, low; .35 .64, moderate; .65 1.34 high; 1.35 1.69 and very high; 1.70 and above. 2.3. the b parameter the b parameter also known as item difficulty (threshold), is a location index along the x-axis that tells us how easy or how difficult an item is. the index of an item’s location is the point on the x-axis at which the curve crosses the 0.5 probability value on the yaxis. negative difficulty estimates indicate that the items are easy while positive difficulty estimates indicate that the items are hard. an easy item functions among the low-ability examinees; a difficult item functions among the high-ability examinees (baker, 2001; thorpe and favia, 2012). the values of b greater than 1 indicate a very difficult item and items with low b values below -1 indicate easy items. when the values of b are between -0.5 and 0.5, then the test items with such difficulty indexes have medium difficulty level. baker (2001) pointed out that theoretically, difficulty values can range from 00 to + 00, in practice, difficulty values usually are in the range of 3 to + 3. ceniza and cereno (2012) gave the interpretation for values of item threshold/difficulty (b-values) as follows: very easy = less than -2, easy = -0.50 to -2.00, average = -0.49 to 0.49, difficult = 0.50 to 2.00 and very difficult = greater than 2.00. 2.4. the c parameter the c parameter also known as a pseudo-guessing parameter (thorpe and favia, 2012) is the likelihood that an examinee with very low ability can guess the correct response to an item and therefore has a greater-than-zero probability of answering correctly. an examinee who randomly selects responses to items of four options can answer these items correctly about 1 out of 4 times, meaning that the probability of guessing correctly is about 0.25. harris (1989) concluded that the items with 0.30 or greater c-values are considered not very good, rather cvalues of 0.20 or lower are desirable. in like manner, akindele (2003) also noted that items do not have perfect cvalues because examinees do not guess randomly when they do not know the answer. 2.5. quantitative economics skills quantitative skills involves the ability to solve numerical problems easily. it entails being able to separate a whole into its constituent parts more readily than others. it includes arriving at mathematical/calculative solutions to problems, as well as basic adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing (adu et al., 2009; riley, 2015). the quantitative skills in secondary economics as listed by riley (2015) are as follows: a) calculate, use and understand ratios and fractions b) calculate, use and understand percentages and percentage changes asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 21 c) understand and use the terms mean, median and relevant quartiles d) construct and interpret a range of standard graphical forms e) calculate and interpret index numbers f) calculate cost, revenue and profit (marginal, average, totals) g) make calculations to convert from money to real terms h) make calculations of elasticity and interpret the result i) interpret, apply and analyze information in written, graphical and numerical forms, riley (2015). 2.6. validity of the test the validity of the test developed using irt is dependent on the extent to which the students’ responses (data) fit the model or if the model is appropriate for the data. goodness of fit statistics can be used to test for the model fit to the data. but, -2log likelihood value is commonly used in bilog mg to check the goodness of model fit, where higher values indicate a poorer fit of the data to the model. comparing the values from different models can indicate which model represents a better fit (thorpe and favia, 2012; rijn et al., 2016). the analysis of model fit is a check on internal validity (obinne, 2013). according to korashy (1995) if the model fit is acceptable, then the item is valid. however, the smallest -2log likelihood value is the best (thorpe and favia, 2012). three parameter logistic model was used in this study because it has the lowest -2log likelihood value. 2.7. reliability of the test reliability refers to the consistency of a measuring instrument. a test is considered reliable if the same result is approximately gotten repeatedly (cherry, 2009). unlike classical test theory that requires another test for reliability, irt has a local reliability. that is, an amount of information at each point of underlying continuum (ceniza and cereno, 2012). with irt model, each item of the test contained information. for each parameter logistic model, bilog mg computed an empirical reliability index. a reliability index within the range of 0.81to 1.0 indicates high reliability; 0.61 to 0.80 shows a moderate reliability; 0.41 to 0.60 means fair reliability; 0.10 to 0.40 means slight reliability and less than 0.10 means virtually no reliability. 3. method the study is an instrumentation research. it is an instrumentation research since the objective of the study is to construct, validate and produce a valid and reliable test assessing students’ achievement in quantitative economics. the researchers constructed and validated test of achievement in quantitative economics for secondary schools by following these test development stages which are discussed thereafter: • planning the test • constructing the test • initial validation of the test • pilot testing • the test try-out • item analysis • selection of good items 3.1. planning the test planning the test involves identification of the study population, sample and sampling technique, and the test content. a total of 515 students were randomly selected from all the senior secondary three (ss3) economics students in anambra state in south-east nigeria as the test try-out sample. the test content area is based on the quantitative sub-skills in secondary economics as given by riley (2015). table 2 shows various units of the quantitative economics sub-skills listed along the rows while different educational objectives to be tested were listed along the columns. table-1. economics achievement test table of specification content know com appli interpr total calculate, use and understand ratios and fractions 1 2 3 calculate, use and understand % and % changes 1 3 4 understand and use mean, median and relevant quartiles 2 1 3 construct & interpret a range of standard graphical forms 1 2 2 5 calculate and interpret index numbers 1 1 2 calculate cost, revenue & profit (marginal, average & totals) 1 1 2 make calculations to convert money to real terms 2 1 3 make calculations of elastitcity & interpret the result 2 2 1 1 6 interpret, apply and analyze numerical forms 1 1 2 total 9 6 11 5 30 abbreviations: know=knowledge; com=comprehension; appli=application; interpr=interpretation. 3.2. constructing the test the researchers constructed 30 multiple choice format objective test items that is in line with the table of specifications using economics text books recommended by the ministry of education (anyaele, 2003; anyanwuocha, 2006). the items of test of achievement in quantitative economics (taqe) constructed were based on the secondary economics quantitative sub-skills as stipulated by riley (2015) (see table 1) and guidelines given by alderson (2005) and winarni (2002). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 22 3.3. initial validation of the test in its initial stage, the 30 items constructed were face and content validated by one expert in educational measurement, evaluation and research, and two experienced secondary economics teachers. their expert observations, comments and suggestions were used in the modifications of the test. 3.4. pilot testing in its preliminary stage, the 30 items constructed were pilot tested on few ss3 economics students to check grammatical error and compatibility of test of achievement in quantitative economics skill items. 3.5. the test try-out the test was tried out on 515 ss3 economics students. the test try-out yielded the data for item analysis. 3.6. item analysis the students’ responses to the 30 items of the test of achievement in quantitative economics (taqe) were subjected to item analysis using item response theory (irt) to ensure the quality of the items. the items of the test were first checked to determine the dominance of the first factor (uni-dimensionality), secondly assessed for model fit, before irt psychometric analysis were done to estimate the test items parameters (a, b, c-values) using data from students’ responses. test for uni-dimensionality in this study was exploratory factor analysis. it is to find out if there exist a dominant trait underlining achievement in quantitative economics assessed by the taqe. test for model fit was also assessed by comparing the values of -2log likelihood from different models to indicate which model represents a better fit for the data. the thirty (30) items of test of achievement in quantitative economics were subjected to irt psychometric analysis using bilog mg software to estimate item threshold, slope and asymptote (difficulty, discrimination and guessing) values. 3.7. selection of good items items retained in the final output of the test were based on the verbal interpretation of each item as illustrated by ceniza and cereno (2012) in table 2 below. the 20 items that was included in the final output of the taqe were arranged in-line with the quantitative sub-skills in secondary economics. table-2. decision table of difficulty and discrimination indices difficulty level discrimination level decision easy low moderate high revise retain retain average low moderate high revise retain retain difficult low moderate high revise retain retain source: ceniza and cereno (2012) table-3. total variance explained by the result of factor analysis initial eigenvalues component total % of variance cumulative % 1 7.407 24.691 24.691 2 2.359 7.863 32.554 3 1.648 5.494 38.048 4 1.372 4.573 42.620 5 1.240 4.132 46.752 6 1.130 3.767 50.519 7 1.077 3.589 54.108 8 .997 3.323 57.430 9 .933 3.109 60.540 10 .864 2.881 63.420 11 .814 2.713 66.133 12 .768 2.560 68.693 13 .756 2.520 71.213 14 .731 2.437 73.650 15 .701 2.337 75.987 16 .628 2.093 78.080 17 .607 2.024 80.103 18 .583 1.942 82.045 19 .558 1.861 83.906 20 .530 1.765 85.671 21 .517 1.724 87.395 22 .498 1.659 89.054 23 .487 1.622 90.677 24 .473 1.576 92.253 25 .458 1.526 93.779 26 .412 1.372 95.151 27 .387 1.289 96.440 28 .379 1.263 97.704 29 .368 1.227 98.931 30 .321 1.069 100.000 extraction method: principal component analysis. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 23 4. results 4.1. research question 1 is the test uni-dimensional? table 3 is the result of exploratory factor analysis done on test of achievement in quantitative economics (taqe) for uni-dimensionality assessment. the result shows that taqe had six eigen values greater than one and the remaining twenty four values less than one. the first eigen value is 7.407, followed by 2.359, 1.648, 1.372, 1.240, etc. 4.2. research question 2 which of the irt model represents a better fit for the taqe data? table-4. model fit information -2log likelihood1-pl = 17773.820 -2log likelihood2-pl = 17370.596 -2log likelihood3-pl = 17140.261 source: results from bilog mg analysis three (3) parameter logistic model in table 4 had the lowest -2log likelihood. 4.3. research questions 3, 4 and 5 what are the item threshold, slope and guessing values/levels of dqest items based on three parameter logistic (3pl) model? table-5. item threshold (difficulty estimates), slope (discrimination), and asymptote (guessing) values of dqest items. item threshold (difficulty) difficulty level slope (discrimination) discrimination level asymptote (guessing) remark 1 0.16 average 0.21 low 0.08 revise 2 0.13 average 0.16 low 0.06 reject 3 0.12 average 0.20 low 0.06 revise 4 0.10 average 0.20 low 0.05 revise 5 0.11 average 0.20 low 0.05 revise 6 0.12 average 2.47 very high 0.02 reject 7 0.06 average 2.29 very high 0.02 reject 8 0.47 average 0.08 low 0.08 reject 9 0.38 average 0.07 low 0.07 reject 10 0.61 difficult 0.05 low 0.09 reject 11 0.51 difficult 0.09 low 0.07 reject 12 0.08 average 1.15 moderate 0.03 retain 13 0.08 average 1.53 high 0.04 retain 14 0.08 average 0.24 low 0.05 revise 15 0.12 average 2.21 very high 0.01 reject 16 0.06 average 1.20 moderate 0.02 retain 17 0.07 average 0.35 moderate 0.04 retain 18 0.06 average 1.08 moderate 0.02 retain 19 0.06 average 2.17 very high 0.02 revise 20 0.10 average 0.24 low 0.05 revise 21 0.09 average 0.31 low 0.04 revise 22 0.09 average 0.25 low 0.04 revise 23 0.08 average 2.73 very high 0.02 reject 24 0.10 average 2.55 very high 0.02 reject 25 0.07 average 0.45 moderate 0.03 retain 26 0.11 average 0.46 moderate 0.04 retain 27 0.07 average 1.14 moderate 0.03 retain 28 0.09 average 0.37 moderate 0.03 retain 29 0.09 average 0.91 moderate 0.03 retain 30 0.06 average 1.57 high 0.02 retain source: results from dqest item analysis based on 3pl model as table 5 shows, the item threshold (difficulty) and item slope (discrimination) values indicated that eleven (11) items be retained while nine (9) items (1, 3, 4, 5, 14, 19, 20, 21 and 22) be revised. the range of the guessing value were within 0.00 to 0.09. 4.4. research question 6 how reliable is the entire test according to irt model? table-6. summary statistics from item analysis results n 515 mean -0.009 standard deviation 1.012 variance 0.1407 empirical reliability 0.8629 source: results from bilog mg analysis asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 24 the empirical reliability index as given by bilog mg in the three parameter logistic model is 0.86. 5. discussion of findings the discussion of findings from this study was based on the results gotten from assessment of dimensionality, model fit, item threshold (difficulty), slope (discrimination), guessing, and reliability values of test of achievement in quantitative economics (taqe). table 3 result is the exploratory factor analysis done to assess the test’s dimensionality. the findings from the table 3 shows that the first seven (7.407, 2.359, 1.648, 1.372, 1.240, 1.130 and 1.077) eigen values were greater than one and the first eigen value which was 7.407 explained 24.691% of the variance in the data set. the rest of the variance was explained by the other 29 eigen values. this is an indication that a dominant component or factor referred to as the ability measured by the test exist among the items (hambleton et al., 1991). thus, test of achievement in quantitative economics developed had quantitative economics as a dominant factor. this is supported by rijn et al. (2016). they pointed out that violation of dimensionality assumption would result in inadequacy of the model in describing the data and hence unreliable estimation of the examinee’s ability and the correct specification of the number of the latent dimensions is directly tied to the construct validity of the test. as seen in table 4, -2log likelihood value for irt one parameter (1pl), two parameter (2pl) and three parameter (3pl) logistic models were 17773.820, 17370.596 and 17140.261 respectively. 3pl with the lowest 2log likelihood value represents the model with a better fit for the test items. the essence of using the best model fit for the items according to thorpe and favia (2012) is to ensure the validity of the test items. hence, three parameter logistic (3pl) model was used in this study to estimate the item parameters. also, the values of taqe irt analysis of item parameters as seen in table 5 revealed that eleven (11) items be retained, nine (9) items be revised and ten (10) items be rejected. the selection of 11 items retained based on the bvalue range of -2 to +2 and a-value range of 0.01 .34 as low, 0.35 1.34 as moderate, 1.35 2.00 as high, 2.01 and above as very high was in agreement with the criteria description of baker (2001). the 9 items numbering 1, 3, 4, 5, 14, 19, 20, 21, 22, were modified or revised and then added to the final output of the test. the twenty (20) items that made up the final output of taqe had a desirable guessing value, that is, the probability of getting the answer correctly by mere guessing was low. the findings of this study are in line with that of ani (2014) and adedoyin and mokobi (2013). the empirical reliability index of taqe as seen table 6 is 0.8629 (approximately 0.86). this indicates 86% certainty of the consistency of the test items in yielding approximately same result repeatedly and that the reliability of test of achievement in quantitative economics (taqe) developed was high. thus, the output of this study will provide a valuable instrument in the field of economics education in nigeria and other countries. 6. conclusions the growing interest in the use of irt is an evidence of the growth in psychometrics, and computer adaptive testing in particular (embretson and reise, 2000). according to hays et al. (2000) irt has a number of potential advantages over ctt in assessing learning, in developing better measures and in assessing change over time. its models yield invariant item and latent trait estimates. irt psychometric methodologies have been used to solve assessment challenges as identified by aiken (2003) and cook et al. (2003). since educational tests are the main source of information about student achievement in schools and in the context of large-scale testing the analysis of test data is essential in determining the quality of the test and the information the test generates. the worth of any educational assessment endeavor depends on the instruments i.e. the tools and techniques used, if these instruments are poorly designed, the assessment can be a waste of time and money (adedoyin and mokobi, 2013). based on the findings of this study, in terms of results from dimensionality assessment, model fit assessment, values from irt analysis of item threshold, slope, guessing, and reliability, the researchers therefore conclude that the test of achievement in quantitative economics developed is uni-dimensional, valid, highly reliable and fair. thus, taqe is of good quality and can now be used for assessment of student’s achievement in quantitative economics. hence, it is a test instrument that can measure achievement in quantitative economics among secondary schools in nigeria, and other countries. 7. recommendations based on the findings and conclusions of this study, the researchers’ recommend that the developed test of achievement in quantitative economics (taqe) be used by the examinees, teachers, school authorities, etc., to assess students’ achievement in secondary school quantitative economics. references adedoyin, o.o. and t. mokobi, 2013. using irt psychometric analysis in examining the quality of junior certificate mathematics multiple choice examination test items. international journal of asian social science, 3(4): 992-1011. view at google scholar adhanja, r.a., p.o. nyakan and j.m.o. yambo, 2016. family based socio-economic factors that affect students’ academic performance in public secondry schools in rongo subcounty, migori county, kenya. international journal of research and development organization, 2(3): 99-12. view at google scholar adu, e.o., s.a. ojelabi and a. hammed, 2009. quantitative ability as correlates of students’ academic achievement in secondary school economics. an international multi-disciplinary journal ethiopia, 3(2): 322-333. view at google scholar | view at publisher aiken, l.r., 2003. psychological testing and assessment. 11th edn., boston: allen & bacon. akindele, b.p., 2003. the development of an item bank for selection tests into nigerian universities: an exploratory study. 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(a) 12 (b) 4 (c) 10 (d) 6 age distribution table of a state age 0–16 17-35 36-65 66 and above population 15000 10000 20000 5000 2. the ratio above indicates ____ dependency ratio. (a) low (b) high (c) equal (d) constant use the following demand schedule to answer question 3. price in naira quantity demanded old new old new 25 35 100 80 3. determine the percentage change in quantity demanded (a) 40% (b) 30% (c) 20% (d) 10% the population of 380 ss2 students in four schools is represented in percentages by the pie chart below. http://www.doscst.edu.ph/index.ph%5b/academics/graduateschool/publication/category/5-volum-1-issue-1-2012? https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=student%20profiles%20and%20factors%20affecting%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207390150207095 http://psychology.about.com/od/researchmethods/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=delicate%20balance%20between%20theory%20and%20practice:%20health%20status%20assessment%20and%20item%20response%20theory http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/01.mlr.0000064780.30399.a4 http://www.africaeconomicanalysis/ http://www.eco.uc3m.es/temp/dolado/dolado_morales_ie_fv.pdf https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=development%20and%20validation%20of%20diagnostic%20economics%20test%20for%20secondary%20schools http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/wje.v6n3p90 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=comparison%20of%201‐,%202‐,%20and%203‐parameter%20irt%20models https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=comparison%20of%201‐,%202‐,%20and%203‐parameter%20irt%20models http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1989.tb00313.x https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=development%20of%20physical%20and%20mental%20health%20summary%20scores%20from%20the%20patient-reported%20outcomes%20measurement%20information%20system%20(promis)%20global%20items https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=development%20of%20physical%20and%20mental%20health%20summary%20scores%20from%20the%20patient-reported%20outcomes%20measurement%20information%20system%20(promis)%20global%20items http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11136-009-9496-9 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=item%20response%20theory%20and%20health%20outcomes%20measurement%20in%20the%2021st%20century http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00005650-200009002-00007 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=applying%20the%20rash%20model%20to%20the%20selection%20of%20items%20for%20mental%20ability%20test http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013164495055005006 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=construction%20and%20validation%20of%20achievement%20test%20in%20economics https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=test%20item%20validity:%20item%20response%20theory%20(irt)%20perspective%20for%20nigeria https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=construction%20of%20economics%20achievement%20test%20for%20assessment%20of%20students https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=construction%20of%20economics%20achievement%20test%20for%20assessment%20of%20students http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/wje.v4n2p58 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=assessment%20of%20fit%20of%20item%20response%20theory%20models%20used%20in%20large-scale%20educational%20survey%20assessments http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40536-016-0025-3 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 26 4 generate the population of school d (a) 100 (b) 95 (c) 115 (d) 105 the population of five towns in anambra state is shown below. town population 1 50 2 35 3 65 4 20 5 80 5 the percentage population of town 3 above is _______ (a) 20% (b) 26% (c) 36% (d) 30% find the mean and median quantity of litres of fuel sold, using the frequency table below. number of litres sold frequency 1 5 2 4 3 10 4 8 5 6 6 3 6 the mean quantity of the frequency table is ______ (a) 2.4 (b) 3.4 (c) 3.1 (d) 2.9 7 calculate the lower quatile of the distribution above (a) 3 (b) 1 (c) 2 (d) 4 individual demand schedule for coke bought by mrs ebo is shown below. 8 the curve of mrs ebo’s demand schedule has _____ slope. (a) lower (b) higher (c) nagative (d) positive use the diagram below to answer questions 12 and 13 price per bottle n total quantity bought per week 100 6 90 10 80 15 70 20 60 25 50 30 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 27 9 at 0p2, fg illustrates _______ (a)excess demand (b)quantity supplied (c)equilibrium quantity (d) excess supply 10 d1d1 in the diagram above implies (a) increase in demand (b) decrease in demand (c) increase in quantity demanded (d) decrease in quantity demanded 11 if the price of a litre of fuel was n50 in 2016 but rose to n80 in 2017, the index number will be (a) 150 (b) 140 (c) 160 (d) 175 12 the answer above justifies that the value of money (a)fell by 62.5% (b) fell by 61.5% (c)rise by 62.5% (d) rise by 61.5% use the table below to answer questions 14 and 15. output of rice (kg) total revenue n marginal revenue n total cost n marginal cost n 10 150 250 20 200 5 300 5 30 350 15 430 13 40 450 f 500 7 50 550 10 550 m 60 600 5 580 3 70 630 x 700 12 13 find the values of x and m (a)5 and 5 (b) 7 and 3 (c) 10 and 5 (d) 3 and 5 14 what will be the profit maximising output of this firm? (a) 10 (b) 30 (c) 50 (d) 70 a country produced 12 tons of goods at 2005 market price and in 2010 the country’s output remains 12tons, assuming the price rose by 50% in 2010. using 2005 as the base year, 15 calculate the price index for 2010 (a) 150 (b)100(c) 120(d) 200 16 calculate the norminal value of the output in 2005 and 2010 (a) n1200 and n1500 (b) n1200 and n1200 (c) n1000 and n1200 (d) n1000 and n1500 17 derive the real value of the output in 2010 (a)n1800 (b) n1200 (c) n1000 (d) n1500 if the weekly income of a consumer increased from n15 to n20, and quantity of goods bought per week increased from 10 to 15. 18 the income elasticity of demand for this consumer is ________ demand. (a) inelastic (b) elastic (c) unitary elastic (d) zero elastic if the price of commodity y increased from 30k to 35k per unit and the quantity of another commodity x bought increased from 120 to 150. 19 the demand for commodity x is ___________demand. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 18-28 28 (a) elastic (b) inelastic (c) unitary elastic (d) fairly inelastic use the table below to answer question 29 and 30 item n million final consumption expenditure 500 gross private investment 150 government purchases 300 depreciation 25 net factor income -10 20 the net capital formation is (a) n115m (b) n125m (c) n915m (d) n925m appendix b test of achievement in quantitative economic (taqe) answer (key) for twenty (20) multiple choice test items item key item key new old new old 1 1 d 11 19 c 2 3 a 12 20 a 3 4 a 13 21 d 4 5 d 14 22 c 5 12 b 15 25 a 6 13 b 16 26 a 7 14 c 17 27 b 8 16 c 18 28 b 9 17 d 19 29 a 10 18 a 20 30 c asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 62 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 62-69, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.62.69 analysis of use of virtual reality technologies in history education: a case study gürkan yildirim1  mehmet elban2 serkan yildirim3 ( corresponding author) 1,2bayburt university, bayburt, turkey 3atatürk university, erzurum, turkey abstract today, many innovations have been experienced in technology. these innovations progressively take their places in education environments. virtual reality environments are among activity areas that have been frequently discussed and used in education environments in the recent years. in this context, this study aimed to determine general opinions of undergraduate students who were included to study scope about virtual reality technologies, and privately, to determine the students‟ opinions about use of virtual reality glasses in history education and to determine their suggestions in this subject. case study method was preferred in this study. sampling was created as selecting 25 undergraduate students according to the study purpose. data was collected with interview technic and analyzed with content analysis method. according to study results, it was concluded that virtual reality implementations were liked by participants. additionally, participants stated that use of the current technology in course activities would be beneficial. it was thought that especially the feelings of reality and being present in the location, which were caused by virtual reality implementations, were among the factors that affected participants and increased their interest in the course. moreover, virtual reality implementations were thought to be technologies that could enable the individuals, especially those with disabilities or had different inadequacies (i.e. financial, time etc.), to actively involve in learning processes. similarly, virtual reality technology was thought to contribute, at least partially, equal opportunities concept in education. keywords: virtual reality, history education, virtual reality simulation, training. citation | gürkan yildirim; mehmet elban; serkan yildirim (2018). analysis of use of virtual reality technologies in history education: a case study. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 62-69. history: received: 23 january 2018 revised: 6 february 2018 accepted: 12 february 2018 published: 15 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 63 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 64 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 65 4. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 68 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 68 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.62.69&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1314-0275 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2764-3968 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8277-5963 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1314-0275 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2764-3968 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8277-5963 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1314-0275 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2764-3968 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8277-5963 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1314-0275 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2764-3968 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8277-5963 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1314-0275 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2764-3968 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8277-5963 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 62-69 63 1. introduction education is generally defined as the formation of permanent behavioral change in an individual‟s behaviors through his own experiences (ertürk, 1972). learning is a cognitive process as requires individual‟s active participation (fer, 2011). according to another approach, learning is a process in which each individual constructs himself (fer, 2011). from this point of view for education and teaching, it is seen that the changes for which the individual actively involves in learning processes are targeted in individuals‟ behaviors, knowledge and approaches. technological changes bring many implementations that are convenient to this definition and will create opportunities for individuals to learn efficiently and permanently. in the analysis of the current technologies developed today, it is seen that virtual reality (vr) implementation versions for education based use have been one of the frequently discussed technologies in the recent years. therefore, vr implementations have been, indeed, discussed for many years and are among the technologies that are developed for various purposes. in a time-based analysis, vr studies were brought forward after 1950s (başaran, 2010). ever since, many studies have been conducted in vr area and the current technology has constantly been developed. the concepts of vr and augmented reality are frequently confused with each other. although augmented reality implementations are considered as a part of vr, it includes some differences. augmented reality happens by placing virtual objects in real environments (azuma, 1997). however vr can be defined as implementations by which individuals find themselves in a virtually created environment using various tools and interact with the environment (çavaş et al., 2004; carrozzino and bergamasco, 2010). as also rheingold (1991) stated, vr could be defined as experiences which individuals could walk around in three dimensional environments, developed with computer technologies, and the environment could be observed from all angles. generally, according to vr implementation definitions, the feelings that individuals directly interact with the environment and feel themselves in the related environment are emphasized. today, vr implementations have continued their presence in many areas from tourism to education. vr implementations could be possibly encountered in a touristic destination advertising, historical elements presentation or in entertainment sector. besides this wide range of use areas, developing and spreading of the current technology enable the increase use of vr implementations in education environments. çavaş et al. (2004) classified use of vr in education environments and başaran (2010) classified use of vr implementations in all areas. a combination of these two classifications was summarized in graph-1. graph-1. use areas of vr technology it could be said that there are many positive aspects of vr implementations, which have wide range of use area, mentioned in literature. use of vr in education has increased with a parallel development of computer-aided education. use of vr in education can be traced back to 1989 (pantelidis, 2010). vr implementations enable individuals to regard themselves as a part of the environment while increasing their interest in the related course (nooriafshar et al., 2004; başaran, 2010). moreover, use of vr technologies facilitates especially showing events which are difficult to observe, organizing dangerous activities and making expensive applications in classrooms (nooriafshar et al., 2004). additionally, vr technology using teaching materials are expected to facilitate learning. many learning outcomes can be obtained with teaching materials, which are prepared based on vr technology, including students visualize abstract concepts, observe atomic or astronomic events, interact with events, make excursions and experience unsecure environments in a secure manner. the number of these examples can be easily increased. eventually, it is widely accepted that vr technology can support education (youngblut, 1998). in the view of the stated positive aspects of vr applications, use of this technology is thought to be effective in history education, either. generally, it is seen that many new implementations have been used in history education with parallel to technological developments. textbooks had been considered as the primary teaching material in history education in both europe and our country until 2000s (stradling, 2003). however, today, the importance of v ir tu al r ea li ty entertainment tourism manufacturing e-commerce configuration medicine education special education architecture history and geography science and mathematics medical education military and airline industry asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 62-69 64 information and communication technologies in education has increased (adesote and fatoki, 2013). in this direction, different methods and technics are started to be used in history education. in a general view, as a scientific discipline, history has suitable conditions enabling it to benefit from technology in education process. in this context, use of vr in history education should not be regarded as a new approach. for example, studies which are made with vr and stereoscopic projections have existed (neamtu et al., 2012). therefore, vr glasses are among the materials that can be utilized in history education. hence, without depending on history textbooks, historical locations can be visually visited to observe their structure, characteristics and versions in the past and students can behave freely in those locations (schweizer, 2014). from this point of view, vr technologies present a real world perception for historical past. in this context, history educators are suggested to have interest in these technologies and increase their knowledge about vr technologies (allison, 2008). hence, more effective study environments can be created in history education. rapid technological developments and use of these technologies in education environments require constant research of different technologies and analysis of educational aspects. especially, vr glasses locate users in a visual world with low cost and enable interaction with environment using its own technologies or with additional technologies. in this context, analysis of effects of vr glasses that have had a large market share in the recent years on education is important. in the scope of this study, it was intended to determine undergraduate students‟ opinions toward virtual reality technologies and privately to determine their opinions toward use of virtual reality glasses in history education and their suggestions about this subject. according to study purpose, the answers of the below stated research questions were researched: 1. what are the opinions of participants toward use of vr glasses? 2. what are the opinions of participants toward the differences of use of multiple environment contents provided with vr glasses and use of the materials, i.e. video and images, provided in traditional learning processes? 3. what are the opinions of participants toward the content provided in vr environment for the course history of civilizations? 4. what are the opinions of participants toward use of vr glasses in history education? 2. method in the scope of this study in which use of vr technologies have been analyzed, case study method was used as one of the qualitative research methods. determining general opinions of participants and need to analyze the reasons behind these opinions in detail shaped the method selection. it is stated in literature that people from a group with whom information can be obtained can be included to research instead of including all participants in order to collect detailed information in the researchers conducted with case study (büyüköztürk et al., 2010). 2.1. study group in the scope of this study, 12 male and 13 female, totally 25 participants, who were freshmen in primary school teaching department and attended the course “history of civilizations” in bayburt university, were included into this research. although all of them were aware of vr technologies, very few of them stated that they had previously used the current technology. 2.2. implementation process a pilot study was organized in implementation process and, in order to enable participants to adapt the learning environment, a vr glass use activity was organized with a nearly 5-minute learning content that was not previously seen by participants and would not be used in study scope. in order to create vr glass using experience and ability to interact with the content, flexible studying opportunities were given to participants and time limitations were not set, moreover necessary technology use training was provided for them to interact with the environment in this process. additionally, 360o rotating chairs were used to increase participants‟ experiences of preferring axis and them to be able to move every sides easily in a limited physical location and them to be able to use movement abilities of the virtual reality glasses completely. besides, use of vr glasses that participants could change directions depending on their head moves and had internal movement buttons on itself to facilitate the control was preferred. therefore, it was ensured them to adapt the environment, learn the how to use the glasses and adapt the new technology that they never used before. after all of the participants experienced content usage with vr glasses and felt ready, research processes started. in research process, an additional content that included audio and visual elements to introduce kaaba related to islam history education was presented. in this content, participants were able to obtain audio information as interacting with information points as they could walk around kaaba. in this content that was designed in a form without any time limitations, participants were able to make learning interactions as much as they wished. any time limitations were not applied to participants during study process as they were able to establish learning process by themselves. interviews were organized with the participants who completed learning activity and data collection process started. 2.3. data collection interview technic was used in this research as a data collection technic. in this purpose, semi-structured interview form was prepared by researchers. semi-structured interview form was consisted of 6 open-ended questions. in order to ensure validity of the interview form, opinions of 3 experts were obtained and the final version of the interview form was created with turkish language experts‟ controls. at the end of the implementation, researchers conducted interview process. interviews were organized depending on voluntary basis and interviews were recorded with an audio recording device. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 62-69 65 2.4. data analysis in data analysis process, content analysis method was used. the answers in audio recording device in which participants‟ answers to research questions were stored were deciphered. the deciphered text contents were analytically described as creating themes and analysis units in framework of research problems. in order to sustain coding security during these processes, researchers worked on the same interview records. coding security ensures that different coders code the same text or message accordingly or reach the same results in different times (bilgin, 1999). at the end of the analysis process code, category and theme structures were created and relational structures were obtained. 3. findings in the scope of this research which aimed to determine undergraduate students‟ opinions toward vr technologies and, privately, to determine their opinions toward use of vr glasses in history education and their use suggestions, below stated findings were obtained as a result of the organized interviews. in the study scope, interviews were made with 25 participants and 76% of them stated that they never used vr glasses before this case study and 24% of them stated that they used this technology at least once. however those, who never used vr glasses before, stated that they were aware of this technology. 3.1. what are the opinions of participants toward use of vr glasses? in the analysis of general opinions of participants toward vr glasses and the contents that were provided with these glasses, all of the participants (100%) that included to the study stated that they liked this technology very much. however, two of the participants who shared positive opinions emphasized that contents might have been prepared more interesting and immersive, while one participant emphasized that the technology was good however it was worrying for new starters. participants‟ opinions about their likings were presented in table-1. table-1. general opinions toward use of vr glasses general opinions f realist environment 13 feeling of being present in the environment 13 access to destination that is difficult to visit 11 providing concrete learning environment 7 interesting environment 1 source: from data collected according to findings, participants emphasized that they found the contents that were provided with vr glasses as realistic. besides, participants stated that they felt a part of the environment that was provided to them and had a feeling of being present in the exact location. additionally, participants stated that the destinations, where they could not go or could not find an opportunity to be in, could be easily visited with this technology. these findings especially emphasizes that vr technologies can be very useful for people, especially those with walking disabilities, elder people or people with financial difficulties. additionally, some of the participants stated that the contents that were provided with vr glasses presented concrete learning environment. in this direction, example participants‟ opinions toward use of vr glasses could be listed as follows; p_1: you live in the location, it is very useful for someone who cannot go there by himself. i directly remembered my mother by watching, she has fear of flying and i think to have her watched something like this one, i mean, i felt as if i was there for a moment… p_6: i found it very useful. it is a big advantage for students who have visual intelligence because you live as if being present within that moment so that very memorable and quite practical. p_8: … bringing a child in a village to çanakkale or providing him to visit those places is very difficult and ministry of national education might cause some problems with this for example maybe an accident in the road can happen, we can have children visited those places as preparing a çanakkale video and they can have the same excitement. they can have similar excitement if not the same p_9: positive aspects are if a person who likes to visit a lot of destinations goes to the places by himself, it can be more expensive but in this way he can see the locations with videos. p_13: it is better than never although it does not provide a whole presence feeling, it contributed a lot, it is very good for disabled and elder people because it makes you feel like walking and being present in there for example if we present this to an elder person who could not go to mecca, i think, it can be very good… p_15: very extensively realistic… it is like i am walking normally in the section of kaaba, it is like people are real. p_21: it was very good. as learning by experience principle in education, i think, this can be very good in education. i felt like i went there while using this glass. … indeed, it created very different emotions in me. for example i was scared very much in some sections i found it that much realistic. in addition to positive opinions of participants toward vr environments, that were also some drawbacks. one of the participants stated that vr environments could be more useful if they were more realistic. besides, another participant stated that contents and the current technology did not draw the participant‟s interest. in this content, example participants‟ opinions could be listed as follows; p_14: it was, indeed, good but the contents could be developed more. p_15: it can harm us in some cases. … the only thing that i can say as a negative comment … effects etc. had better be more realistic. p_23: it was, indeed, good. but generally this kind of technologies do not draw my interest. p_25: it was good. i do not know, maybe, it is because i used it the first time but i found it scary. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 62-69 66 3.2. what are the opinions of participants toward the differences of use of multiple environment contents provided with vr glasses and use of the materials, i.e. video and images, provided in traditional learning processes? during the interviews conducted with participants, they were asked to compare the multiple environment contents that were normally used in lectures such as images and video with the contents that were provided with vr glasses. all of the participants (n=25) that were included to the research stated that vr contents were more effective compared to multiple environment contents that were presented in classrooms. only one participant stated that vr technologies were more effective however they could create various inconveniences in long terms uses. in this context, participants‟ opinions toward comparison between vr based learning contents and traditional multiple environment components were presented in table-2. table-2. comparison of multiple environment components and vr technology based learning contents that are used in learning environments superior aspects of vr environments f providing for permanent learning environments 13 facilitating the learning 8 providing for enjoyable learning environments 7 interesting contents 5 supporting the individual learning 3 providing for active learning 1 difficulty of long term use 1 source: from data collected in the view of findings, it was determined that the contents provided with vr glasses increased the permanent learning. besides, this technology facilitated the learning and provided for enjoyable learning environments were among the emphasized points. additionally, participants also stated that the contents were more interesting than multiple environment contents and supported individual learning and active learning. example participants‟ opinions toward the content comparison could be listed as follows; p_2: its difference from other environments is that it is more convincing. for example is seeing a photo or living more permanent? therefore i believe that it will facilitate learning more. p_5: so different compared to picture and video. … our attention can be lost quickly but here, there is not such possibility because you are in it, you totally live, therefore, they (image and video) last short time and can stay in our short term memory. p_10: their (image and video etc.) positive aspects are not extended as much as this, they are monotone … but this is more realistic and three dimensional. additionally, you live in a moment, if this feeling can be brought in lectures as interesting, for example, if the whole education program is revised with this, it can be more interesting. p_13: people can forget what they write, can also forget what they listen but do not easily forget what they live. this is indeed a kind of living. we listen a lecture after a certain time, our brain could not handle everything, it will be forgotten if we write it will kind of live longer, picture; it will become visual intelligence. but if it is in a way of virtual reality, it can address all kinds of intelligence types, because it is audio, picture and revival, it can become permanent. p_14: …with this glass, like you are there, like you live. i mean, it gives the feeling of totally being present in there. but in others, such as a normal video, i cannot have that feeling. for example while looking at a photograph, you merely look, it is consisted of a single unit but you cannot be in the location. at the same time it increases permanency in learning. p_18: for example, if we compare the slideshows that we use in our lectures, with this technology, for example, there can be videos in that slide and we watch them together but it will happen individually with this technology and i think it is better being individually for us, it can be easier to totally focus on a subject. i think learning with this technology will be more enjoyable. p_22: for example, when our teacher shows us a video or something in slideshows during lectures, that time we can think of something else but when we use this technology, even though, we think of something else, it will ensure that we focus on this subject. or it will be interesting for someone who is not interested in the course because one enjoys so much while using this technology. p_25: this technology can be used during lectures but, as i said, it should not be used for long term. it affected me negatively, i do not know, maybe that is why i used it for the first time. for sure if we have lectures with these virtual reality glasses, it can be more effective than multiple environment components. 3.3. what are the opinions of participants toward the content provided in vr environment for the course history of civilizations? in the study scope, participants were asked to state their opinions toward showing of one of the subjects mentioned in history of civilizations with vr implementation. in this context, participants‟ general opinions were presented in table-3. table-3. participant opinions toward the effect of vr based content opinions toward the content f feeling of being present in the environment 19 desire to go (exciting) 9 realistic environment 9 source: from data collected asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 62-69 67 in the view of findings, participants stated that they felt as if they were present in the environment thanks to the provided content and vr technology. it was emphasized that the audio content that was provided with the content was very effective in this condition (f:6). besides, it was stated that the content created excitement in participants therefore the desire was created for going to the created environment in real life. additionally, the provided content was described as very realistic by some of the participants. in this context, example participants‟ opinions could be listed as follows; p_6: … frankly, i liked it so much. it gave me a feeling like i was really there. azan reciting in the background supported this feeling well. i felt as if i was in the location and i was really there. p_12: i felt like i was there for a moment. i wanted to go there in real. i told myself i wished i had been there. that desire occurred to me. p_14: i found it so real, i was walking, looking around. actually i was sitting down that time, i knew it, but still it gave me excitement. it influenced me so much. p_16: in that section, my heartbeats fastened. it made me excited, because, i could not go there. i mean, seeing the location with virtual reality glasses was so special for me if i will not be able to go in real life. p_24: i wanted to go there so much. i felt like i went there, walked around and turned around, it was so real. in the study scope, participants mentioned that some improvements could be applied to the provided content. in this context, they stated that the visual elements provided in the structures in the content that was provided with vr glass should be designed better (n:2). additionally, it was also suggested that use of real visuals could be more effective rather than using animation visuals (n:2). example participants‟ opinions toward improvement of the content could be listed as follows; p_1: … but structures were a bit bad. p_11: the only flaw that i thought was that it was animation it could have made me engage more. p_13: reality of architectural structure might have been better. for me, architectural structure might have been more realistic and precise. 3.4. what are the opinions of participants toward use of vr glasses in history education? in the study scope, participants were asked to state their opinions toward use of vr technologies in history education. in this context, all of the participants (n=25) stated that they would like to use vr technologies in history courses and use of these technologies would be helpful. it was stated that lecturing method like this would make courses more enjoyable. additionally, participants were asked to state in which conditions they would prefer vr technologies in especially history course. in this context, their opinions toward these conditions were presented in table-4. table-1. participants‟ opinions toward use of vr technologies in history education suggestions for use of vr technologies in history education f visualizing historical events 17 showing museums, temples etc. 8 source: from data collected in the view of findings, participants emphasized effectiveness of vr technologies to show important historical events (i.e. wars, treaties etc.). in this context, it was thought that participants made such recommendations due to their willingness to live that moment in particularly. additionally, they also emphasized their desire to benefit from superior aspects of vr technologies in showing historical locations (i.e. museums and temples etc.) that they could not find opportunities to go and visit. additionally, it was also stated that history courses might be more enjoyable as vr technologies removed their negative biases toward history courses. p_1: for example, while learning a war or a treaty, if you also sit down, be present in that table or be in the war, those dialogues, for example, if you listen the words of atatürk in a war, i think it can be more effective. p_4: let‟s think about war of çanakkale, for example, let‟s think about a student watching war scene at the background, i think it can be more memorable, while even seeing the locations, where wars were made on, i think, this can be more effective. p_8: for example, egyptian pyramids are in one of the seven wonders of the world but how much opportunity do we have to go and see those, not much … but if ancient pyramids are shown with vr technologies, i can visit those places. ok, the same feeling cannot be given but still i can learn many things. at least i can learn information in the show. p_13: let‟s say we learn i̇stanbul, ottoman empire‟s capital city, we learn a subject related to palaces, if the lecture is designed as in a museum atmosphere in those palaces and an audio is placed in the background, it can be as if we both listen the lecture and visit those places and it can be more memorable. for example, if you are like watching an archeological excavation and being present next to that, it can be memorable. because it addresses to verbal intelligence more, it is more difficult to understand but in this way, it can be more memorable. p_24: … it can be better in terms of permanency … we can watch people of the first ages with this technology, it can be more interesting and provide a better learning environment. one of the positive aspects of use of this technology in history education is, i think, history course is generally known as a boring course by many people but, thanks to this technology many people‟s interest to history course can increase. in a summary of participants‟ opinions toward use of vr technologies in history education, the current technology was emphasized as follows;  it could remove the boring aspects of the course as eliminating monotone lecturing methods,  it could increase permanency,  i could increase interest and motivation toward the course, and  it could provide opportunity for learning as doing-living. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 62-69 68 4. conclusion and discussion data obtained from participants in this research which aimed to determine undergraduate students‟ opinions toward vr technologies and, privately, to determine their opinions toward use of vr glasses in history education and their suggestions in this subject, below stated findings were obtained as a result of the organized interviews was analyzed and results were presented as in the order of research questions. it could be said that liking levels of participants toward vr environments whose use was relatively new in learning environments were high. participants regarded the provided contents as realistic and gave participants the feeling of being present in the related environment and these conditions helped formation of this liking level. this condition could be interpreted as participants would like to feel themselves as a part of the provided content and felt more comfortable in the created environment. similarly, hussein and nätterdal (2015) stated that vr based environments created an exciting and immersive experience for users and they regarded themselves as a part of the environments. after watching the provided contents, participants stated that vr environments could be very useful for individuals, especially those with disabilities and had some kinds of difficulties (i.e. age, financial difficulties etc.) to have an excursion experience. similarly mclellan (1996) showed that virtual reality implementations could be a significant tool for individuals with different disabilities. this condition could also create equal opportunities in learning environments. in this manner, the feeling of being present in the related environment caused by vr environments could be claimed as very effective. participants emphasized that vr environments could meet the need of excursion and this could be attributed to the fact that they had a similar feelings with vr environments. they also emphasized that the provided contents could support individuals‟ concrete learning experiences. similarly, youngblut (1998) stated that virtual reality implementations facilitated learning and supported education. this result is attributed to the fact that participants engaged in the process and regarded themselves as a part of the environments. however, during preparation of vr environments, the possibility of use of these technologies in the long run and more effectivity of the contents which are more close to reality are among the study results. in this manner, hussein and nätterdal (2015) stated that vr environments could draw individuals away from the real world. participants were requested to make a comparison between the content provided in classrooms, i.e. image and video, and the contents provided in vr environments. in this context, it was emphasized that vr environments could create more memorable learning environments compared to other mentioned environments. in the creation of this result, it is important that participants found themselves a role in the provided content. additionally, it was frequently stated that the provided contents could facilitate learning depending on vr environments increased permanency. furthermore, it was though that participants found these environments more enjoyable and interesting since they saw the contents in vr environments at the first time. additionally, some of the vr environments were regarded as motivation increasing factor because they provided opportunity for individual learning. başaran (2010) emphasized that one of the main advantages of virtual reality implementations was individual oriented control program. with this perspective, the result is determined as virtual reality implementations affect individual learning in positive manners. as a result, participants liked the content that was provided in the scope of this study. in the creation of liking level, the feeling of being present in the environment caused by the provided content was important. additionally, it was thought that the content provided in vr environments was exciting and this condition increased participants‟ desire to go and be present in the real location. besides, realistic contents were considered as another condition that affected their liking levels. similarly, hussein and nätterdal (2015) stated that vr technologies based environments were more effective in conditions that included interactive environmental environments, compared to traditional environments. it was observed that use of vr environments in history courses and especially use of these technologies in showing historically important events (i.e. wars, treaties, negotiations, and discussions etc.) was regarded as useful. for the creation of this condition, it was thought that participants‟ desire to observe important events better and to experience the feeling of being present in that location were effective. additionally, another result is that historical excursions can be organized with vr technologies. it was though that participants made a choice like this due to obtain more information and learn more about the historical places that they could only reach with 2 dimensional ways and could not find an opportunity to go. hence, it was though that they could learn about the places more permanently since they felt as if they were present in the related environment by themselves. similarly, sürücü (2017) stated that virtual reality environments provided quicker learning opportunities. additionally, virtual reality environments gave students opportunities to make their own experiences so that students learnt more permanently (sürücü, 2017). in general, it was observed that vr based learning implementations reached a high level of liking. similarly, it was determined that participants considered use of this technology in course activities as useful. especially, the reality feelings and the feeling of being present in the related environment caused by virtual reality implementations were considered the factors that influenced participants and increased their motivations toward the course. additionally, virtual reality implementations were considered as they had a big potential in creation an environment that individuals with disabilities or had some kinds of inadequacies (i.e. financial and time etc.) could use in learning processes. 4.1. suggestions 1. the current study was conducted with undergraduate students. it can be applied to students in different levels as necessary conditions are met. 2. ready contents were benefited in the scope of this study. in other studies to be conducted, environments can be designed in accordance with the current conditions. references adesote, s.a. and o.r. fatoki, 2013. the role of ict in the teaching and learning of history in the 21st century. educational research and reviews, 8(21): 2155-2159. view at google scholar | view at publisher https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20role%20of%20ict%20in%20the%20teaching%20and%20learning%20of%20history%20in%20the%2021st%20century http://dx.doi.org/10.5897/err2013.1617 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 62-69 69 allison, j., 2008. history educators and the challenge of immersive pasts: a critical review of virtual reality „tools‟ and history pedagogy. learning, media and technology, 33(4): 343-352. view at google scholar | view at publisher azuma, r., 1997. a survey of augmented 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 97-105, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.97.105 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group kyrgyzstan universities' profile in terms of preparing students for the future: student opinions yavuz ercan gul1 1kyrgyz turk manas university, educational sciences, kyrgyzstan abstract higher education in kyrgyzstan has undergone a great deal of change in terms of quantity and quality since kyrgyzstan's independence. today, while there are many higher education institutions in the country, there are discussions about the quality of these institutions. the main purpose of this research is to determine the role of kyrgyz universities in preparing students for the future. the research is designed as a mixed research design applying qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques together. for the qualitative data of the study, the research group consisted of 10 students and the quantitative data were collected from 312 students studying in three different universities. as a result of the research, it is understood that university students regard their universities as inadequate in terms of library, technological equipment, foreign language teaching, current craft knowledge, and social fields. the findings were discussed with other studies in the literature and some suggestions were made for the improvement of kyrgyzstan universities. keywords: kyrgyzstan, university, student, opinion, problem, higher education. jel classification: i00, i23. citation | yavuz ercan gul (2019). kyrgyzstan universities' profile in terms of preparing students for the future: student opinions. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 97-105. history: received: 24 october 2018 revised: 28 november 2018 accepted: 3 january 2019 published: 23 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 98 2. university problems in kyrgyzstan ............................................................................................................................................. 98 3. purpose of research ........................................................................................................................................................................ 99 4. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 99 5. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 100 6. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 102 7. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 104 8. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 104 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 104 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.97.105&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/389 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8191-2647 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/389 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8191-2647 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/389 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8191-2647 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 97-105 98 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction with the separation from the soviet union, kyrgyzstan has re-organized all its official institutions under the national program. as in all other formal education institutions, universities were also taken under the control of the kyrgyz ministry of education and science (gül, 2015). therefore, a centralized and monopolized higher education administration was formed. although kyrgyzstan became a member of the bologna process in higher education in 2011, universities did not succeed to be integrated into this system except for a few universities. in most universities, the education system is implemented in the form of the soviet union. in other words, the higher education system has a teaching model of a bachelor’s degree with 5-year education including a master's degree (madaminov, 2016). the students graduate with a master's degree from universities. there has always been an effort to improve the kyrgyz higher education system with continuous reforms. in recent years, these reform movements are also continuing with an effort to change the centralized and monopolized education structure. works on the empowerment of local governments are continuing (kanimetov, 2015). in addition to trying to adapt to the bologna process and conditions, kyrgyzstan is a country where administrators are willing to integrate the higher education system into the european education system (adamkulova, 2017). according to 2011 data, there are 51 universities in kyrgyzstan (16 foundations and 35 states) (www.stat.kg). 9,331 students from countries such as kazakhstan, india, russia, turkey, pakistan and tajikistan study in these universities. university students coming from abroad play an important role in foreign cash flow. this is one of the means of living. in 2013 alone, 83.5 million dollars flowed into the country through foreign students. in other words, kyrgyzstan is a collecting factory for students coming from abroad. however, the quality of education also decreases continuously. the knowledge of academics and students on instructional technologies is very weak (mambetalieva, 2015). according to uni̇cef's 2013-2014 data, the number of students in kyrgyzstan according to the language in higher education is calculated as kyrgyz 55,773, while the number of students studying in russian is 162,293. and again according to the data of unicef (2014) while 184.091 of the students studying in higher education consisted of kyrgyz, the number of russian students studying in higher education was calculated only as 15.581. this means that more than 70% of kyrgyz students receive higher education in russian (savichev, 2014). today, there are 6 russian universities in kyrgyzstan. a total of 3185 students are educated in these universities. kyrgyzstan ranks second among the turkish republics in terms of the number of russian universities and students studying after kazakhstan (vladimirovich, 2010). in addition, the kyrgyzstan american university of central asia, which established by the usa, and the kyrgyz-turkish manas university set up together by turkey and kyrgyzstan are located in kyrgyzstan. russian education is offered at the university and university branches of russia, and english is offered at the american university. kyrgyz-turkish manas university provides education in kyrgyz and turkish. 2. university problems in kyrgyzstan although there are dozens of universities in kyrgyzstan, they couldn't succeed in education. majority of the universities are gathered in the capital bishkek. foundation universities offer students high and dollar-based fees. state universities are also paid as foundation universities. however, the students who achieve outstanding success in the university entrance exam called ort are not charged for studying at the state universities. students who are not charged for university education constitute 10% of the total number of students (zakirov and ozakbegi, 2017). this brings along the problem of commercialization of universities. what students are required to have learnt upon graduation from university is determined by the state standard (gos). but recently, the gap between the state standard and the knowledge of the university graduate students has increased (orunbaev, 2011). but, the problems in the higher education system of kyrgyzstan are not limited to this. according to maslova (2016) the current education system is behind not only the world but also the needs of the kyrgyz people. proper education cannot be provided especially in the technical field and in accordance with the economic employment infrastructure (zakirov and ozakbegi, 2017). despite the rapidly increasing number of universities and university students, the number of qualified staff is decreasing (chontoev, 2016; maslova, 2016). this shows that universities are insufficient in terms of training qualified staff. while the unemployment rate in the country is increasing rapidly, the number of higher education graduates among these unemployed people is also increasing swiftly. one of the major reasons behind this is the insufficient education quality in universities. the professional qualifications of the teaching staff is also quite inadequate (maslova, 2016). nisharapova (2017) stated that kyrgyz universities had no place in the international university rankings and that even the information regarding this could not be reached. in the report presented by the committee on education, culture, civilization and information politics of the supreme council of the republic of it is stated that there are many universities in the country, but these universities do not affect the quality of higher education and the number of unemployed people who are university graduates in the country is increasing with each passing day. education in universities is given in the same way as in the soviet union period. university buildings are the buildings of the ussr whose paints became chipped off, the classes are very narrow and gloomy, the corridors are narrow and old. there is very little or no elective courses at universities. the higher education problems in kyrgyzstan can be listed as following (mambetalieva, 2015):  inadequate financial condition in the higher education system  bribery  qualitatively and qualitatively poor teaching staff  education inconsistency between secondary and higher education  lack of modern libraries in universities  failure of university degrees and education to comply with the market economy  unable to find a job for university graduates. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 97-105 99 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group one of the problems in the universities of kyrgyzstan is that the language of education is generally russian. one of the reasons for this is that most of the textbooks are in russian. in addition, many of the well-educated academicians have been educated in russia and therefore have gained their professional knowledge in the russian language. kyrgyz students who come to the capital bishkek especially from the rural areas have to learn the language before receiving a good education. a large part of the 5-years university education period is spent on language learning. for this reason, the students who are graduated from universities are also weak in their fields. (khasanov, 2017). because of the high cost of living and the low salaries high-quality academicians who are trained in kyrgyzstan choose to work abroad (mambetalieva, 2015) as well as the rich and intelligent students (ibraeva and ismailova, 2016). thus, the brain drain continues in kyrgyzstan rapidly. it can be seen from the above information that there is a problem of higher education in kyrgyzstan. in this context, the opinions of the students studying in the universities of kyrgyzstan are of importance because university students are the direct addressees of these universities and problems. if we can determine what the university students are dissatisfied with, we can also arrange the measures to be taken in the improvement of higher education in order of importance. 3. purpose of research in this research, it is aimed to show the profile of kyrgyzstan universities in preparing students for the future from the students' perspective. for this reason, data were collected through interviews and questionnaires. 4. method this research is designed as research which uses the phenomenology pattern (aydın, 2015) as one of the qualitative research techniques that makes an in-depth analysis of the facts that we encounter in our lives, but do not have detailed knowledge of or do not reflect on. in addition, since the questionnaire technique, which is a quantitative data collection technique, is used in data collection process, this research has attained a mixed pattern in which qualitative and quantitative research methods are used together. firstly, the focus group interview technique was used as one of the data collection tools under the qualitative paradigm (silverman, 2013) which investigates how individuals understand the social world through their perceptions, attitudes and experiences. the focus group interview is carried out by the group members who can unite around a common problem through mutual interaction to seek answers to the questions posed by the interviewer (karasar, 2016). in this way, it is aimed to understand what people really think about the research subject (büyüköztürk, 2016). questionnaire technique was used to quantitatively test the accuracy of the information obtained through focus group interview and to contribute to the research results. the questionnaire technique is a research strategy where quantitative information is collected systematically from a relatively large sample taken from a population (leeuw, 2008). 4.1. study group the study group of the focus group interview consisted of 10 students, 3 girls and 7 boys studying at different universities in kyrgyzstan. the study group of the research conducted with the questionnaire form prepared with the questions used in the focus group interview consisted of a total number of 312 students studying at 3 universities located in kyrgyzstan's capital city bishkek, namely kyrgyz national university, bishkek university of social sciences and kyrgyz state university. in determining the study group of both applications, the simple random sampling technique was used in which everyone in the universe has an equal chance of being selected (cochran, 1977). 4.2. data collection 4.2.1. focus group interview data firstly, a group of 5 students was interviewed about their expectations from a university in order to have a good future. in the light of the data obtained from the students as a result of the interview, 9 question sentences were created to be directed to the students during the interview. in order to test the functionality of the questions determined as a draft, a pilot interview was conducted with a group of 7 students and only a voice recording was made. at the end of the interview, it was seen that 2 questions produced similar data and it was decided to exclude one of the questions. in order to provide the scope validity of the questions to be used in the interview, the questions were presented to 3 lecturers in the field of psychological counseling and guidance to examined in terms of comprehensibility and fitness for purpose. based on the opinions of academicians, it was decided to use 8 questions in the research. 37 students from various universities and departments in kyrgyzstan were interviewed and informed about the subject. among them, 10 students considered eligible for the research were selected. then, the room where the interview would be held as well as the things inside were determined. the camera and equipment for voice recording were prepared and placed. assistance was received from a person as the moderator. 4.2.2. questionnaire data since the statements to be used in the questionnaire were previously presented to academicians in order to ensure the scope validity, this process was not deemed necessary to be repeated. the questionnaire form, which includes the 8 question statements prepared, was applied to 312 students from 3 universities in bishkek, the capital of kyrgyzstan. the data was written without being manipulated. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 97-105 100 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.3. data analysis focus group interview and questionnaire techniques were used in this research. critical interpretive technique was used in the analysis of the data obtained. these technical data used in qualitative researches are subjected to critical analysis (hatch, 2002; woods, 2006). 5. findings 5.1. findings of the data obtained as a result of the focus group interview table-1. questions asked to the students during the interview and answers item n y e s u n d e cid e d n o χ % do you think you can get a good job related to your field after university? 10 6 1 3 2.30 60 is there enough technological equipment at the university? 10 2 1 7 1.50 20 do you think that your university gives an adequate level of professional knowledge? 10 3 1 6 1.70 30 are the library facilities at your university sufficient? 10 4 2 4 2.00 40 are the social areas of your university sufficient? 10 1 2 7 1.40 10 do you think that your teachers have sufficient knowledge and qualifications? 10 5 5 2.00 50 do you think that the teachings of the university are modern knowledge? 10 1 1 8 1.30 10 is foreign language teaching adequate at your university? 10 1 2 7 1.40 10 as it is understood from the table above, the question to which the students answered with "yes" the most and the average of which is the highest ( χ=2.30) is the question about finding a good job in the future. moreover, the question to which the students answered with "no" the most and the average of which is the lowest ( χ =1.30) is the question about the currentness of the knowledge provided at the university. 5.1.1. findings of the "do you think you can get a good job related to your field after university?" question according to the opinions about finding a good job after university, it is seen that 6 people (s1, s2, s4, s5, s7, s8) believe that they can find a good job, 1 person (s6) is undecided and 3 people (s3, s9, s10) do not believe. this statement has been the one with the highest average (χ= 2.30. in general, students have high beliefs that they can find a job related to their field in the future. some of the students stated that this was very difficult. one of the students (s2) said, "i believe, but i know that it will not be easy". one of the students who answered "yes" to this question (s4) said "i believe but this has nothing to do with the university. because this depends on the person. i believe that i will strive” in order to explain that this situation was not highly related to the universities. one of the students (s10) explained the current situation of kyrgyz students through a joke. the joke is as following: "one day, they asked a student who had just started a university about what he would become in the future. he said he would be the president. in the second grade, they asked again and he said that he would be the prime minister, they again asked in the third grade and he said that he would be the deputy of the nation, they asked once again in the fourth grade and he said he would be the headman, and finally they asked one last time when he finished the university, and he said that he does not know where to go" it was seen that the students who answered "yes" to this question were 1st and 2nd graders and those who answered "no" were 3rd and 4th graders. it is seen that there is a parallelism with the joke above told by the student. as the grades and ages of the university students progressed, these hopes were found to be reducing. 5.1.2. findings of the "are there enough technological equipment in the university?" question it was seen that 2 students (s1, s5) said yes, 1 student (s7) was undecided and 7 students (s2, s3, s4, s6, s8, s9, s10) said no. the majority of the students stated that technological facilities were insufficient in their universities. students often complain about the lack of teaching technologies such as computers, projectors, smart boards, etc. in their universities. one of the students (s3) expressed the deficiencies in their schools saying "we don't even have a computer that students can use at our university". one of the students (s6) commented on the situation by complaining, "there are many deficiencies at our university. we constantly have theoretical lessons. either we write a lot or the lecturer tells the subject. we never see the computers. we don't even know if there are any". as can be seen from this comment, there are also shortcomings in the use of instructional technologies by the teachers. one of the students (s8) stated that they had technological equipment in their universities but could not find time to use these devices. he described this situation as follows: as our courses are too much and long, we cannot find time to learn and use technological devices just as we cannot find any time for social activities. our lessons last for 80 minutes, and there is a very short time break between the lessons". as can be seen from the above comments, the lessons are very long and we either listen to the lecturer or take notes. lesson breaks are not long enough to meet the needs of the students. 5.1.3. findings of "do you think your university gives an adequate level of professional knowledge?" question 3 of the students (s1, s6, s9) said "yes" to this question, 1 person (s10) remained undecided and 6 people (s2, s3, s4, s5, s7, s8) said "no". one of the students stated that although the number of lecturers was too high, the lecturer themselves lacked professional knowledge. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 97-105 101 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group one of the students (s5) explained the answer to this question as follows: "the books of most branches are not translated into kyrgyz. therefore, neither can we learn enough, nor can the university provide. that's why research cannot be conducted" this student had chosen kyrgyz as the language of education at the university. however, he complained about the lack of kyrgyz resources or lack of up-to-dateness of the books. another student (s3) also confirmed this situation and said: "we only know kyrgyz. we cannot conduct researches as we do not know another language. we do not know whether the information given by the university is accurate or not." one of the students (s7) saying that they did not have adequate lecturers at the university stated that some lecturers attended several courses even if they were not their field of subject. he expressed it as follows: "we do not have adequate lecturers at our university. for example, one lecturer attends three classes. and, they do not have sufficient knowledge”. another student stated that the course books were missing and therefore they could not learn on their own either. 5.1.4. findings of the "are the library facilities of your university sufficient?" question 4 of the students (s4, s5, s7, s8) answered "yes", 2 people (s2, s9) answered "i have no idea" and 4 people (s1, s3, s6, s10) answered "no". the students complained that the books in the library were old and russian. one of the students (s3) said "it does not help even if we go to the library because the books are from the period of the soviet union. the most part of the books are written in russian”. one of the students (s2) complained by saying: “i don't know where the library is. i've never been there. because there's no time. we can't read books because our courses are so long". when asked about the duration of the lessons, they said that they were 80 minutes with 10-minute breaks in between. it is understood from such comments that students cannot find the time for the library because of the long duration of the lessons in addition to the inadequacy of the libraries. 5.1.5. the findings of the "are the social areas of your university sufficient?" question one person (s2) said "yes", 2 people (s4, s7) said "i have no idea" and 7 people (s1, s3, s5, s6, s8, s9, s10) said "no". this question was one of the lowest statements in terms of score average among the university qualifications. the students were asked what they understood from social areas. students usually gave examples such as sports facilities, dining hall, cafeteria etc. in general, it was observed that the students complained about the lack of social areas in their universities and found their universities to be insufficient in this regard. one of the students (s3) expressed it by saying: "there are no opportunities for social activities. there are no areas where students can spend time besides the course periods". one of the students (s4), giving a similar answer to the question about the library, said "because of the long duration of the lessons, we do not have time to spend there even if there was a social area". and it was seen that some of the students had no idea about social areas. they defined their understanding of university life as attending the lessons and going back home when they finished. 5.1.6. findings of the "do you think your teachers have sufficient knowledge and skills?" question 5 of the students (s3, s5, s7, s9, s10) answered "yes", and 5 people answered "no". in general, it was understood that the professional knowledge and skills of the teachers were average. one of the students (s3) said in order to explain the inadequacies of their teachers: "there are many teachers in our university, but the knowledge of these teachers is as old as our books. they were all brought up with the knowledge of the ussr period and they do not know the world out there". from this statement, it is understood that the lecturers are knowledgeable; however, their knowledge is old and they could not follow the developments in the world. another student (s5) said “our teachers lack responsibility rather than knowledge. they do not think about educating the students. and i also don't think that they are knowledgeable enough" the student demands more care and help for their development from their teachers. therefore, it was seen that the "knowledge and skills" of the teachers were also understood as their communication and care with the students. one of the students (s7) said that their teachers were too old, that they had obsolete knowledge and lacked adequate information regarding the developments in the world. he also added "even if our university transitions to a modern system, this new system cannot be implemented without these teachers being replaced". in addition, one more student (s9) stated that their teachers were old. 5.1.7. findings of the "do you think that the teachings at the university are modern knowledge?" question while 2 students (s5, s8) said "yes" to this question, 1 student (s7) did not declare his opinion and 7 students (s1, s2, s3, s4, s6, s9, s10) said "no". a large part of the students, saying "no" to this question, stated that the information taught at their universities were old. one of the students (s2) expressed his dissatisfaction by saying "definitely not up-to-date, no new resources arrive related to our field." another student (s3) confirmed the previous one saying that "the information given is the information contained in the books that are left from the ussr period". a student studying in the tourism department (s9) stated that their universities were far away from the developments in the world and that foreign language lessons were not taught in the tourism department. he also explained the lack of applied courses at their university saying that they were far behind the developments in the world in terms of tourism. 5.1.8. findings of the "is foreign language teaching adequate in your university?" question 1 student (s6) said "yes" to this question and 2 students (s3, s8) stated that they were undecided and 7 students (s1, s2, s4, s5, s7, s9, s10) said "no" arguing that they were not given an adequate level of foreign language education in their universities. they claimed that students generally did not receive sufficient foreign language education in their universities. especially, the student studying at the tourism department (s9) asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 97-105 102 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group complained about this subject and said "although our department is tourism, they do not teach foreign languages and our own teachers do not know any either." one student who said "yes" to this question stated that he had been studying in the philology department and that his teachers had been educated in the country of the languages they taught, and therefore they had a good knowledge of the languages as well as teaching well. 5.2. findings from the data obtained as a result of the questionnaire technique table-2. students' opinions regarding the contribution of their universities in preparing themselves for the future range value min. max. n χ ss very bad (1) 1.00-1.80 1.13 4.38 312 2.76 0.68 bad (2) 1.81-2.60 average (3) 2.61-3.40 good (4) 3.41-4.20 very good (5) 4.21-5.00 as can be seen from the table above, the average of the students' responses to the questionnaire was calculated as 2.93. this shows that the students' opinion as to the contribution of their universities in preparing themselves for the future was "average". in general, students are of the opinion that their universities are insufficient to prepare themselves for the future. table-3. students' opinions on each statement contained in the questionnaire statements min. max. n χ ss the possibility of finding a good job related to your field after university 1 5 312 2.92 1.00 adequate technological equipment at the university 1 5 312 2.60 1.00 provision of an adequate level of professional knowledge at your university 1 5 312 3.30 0.94 library facilities of your university 1 5 312 2.40 1.23 social areas of your university 1 5 312 2.39 1.20 sufficiency of your teachers' knowledge and skills 1 5 312 3.54 0.87 the up-to-dateness of the information taught at the university 1 5 312 2.61 1.09 foreign language education at your university 1 5 312 2.32 1.12 the table above shows the arithmetic averages of the answers given by the students to the questionnaire statements. according to this, the area they considered their universities the most inadequate (2.32) was the subject of foreign language education. based on the rating system of the questionnaire, it means "bad". students are in general dissatisfied with the lack of foreign language education at their universities. the statement with the highest arithmetic average of the answers given by the students among the questionnaire statements (3.54) was the "proficiency of the knowledge and skills of the teachers" option. students are generally satisfied with the knowledge and professional skills of their teachers. according to the rating system of the questionnaire, this means "good". 6. discussion in this section, because of the limited number of studies in the literature, the data obtained in this questionnaire were presented rather with an internal discussion. 6.1. the possibility of finding a good job related to your field after the university it was observed that students had a positive opinion about finding a job after they finished their universities. according to interview data, it was concluded that university students' beliefs with regard to finding a job in the future were higher than the questionnaire data. however, orunbaev (2011) stated that there were problems in finding jobs and qualified employees in the market. in addition, orunbaev (2011) and maslova (2016) mentioning that universities were unable to provide qualified staff so students were in the belief of finding a job with their own efforts and studies. sydykbaev (2015) pointed out this situation and said that the number of unemployed university graduates in the country was increasing continuously and that the universities should renew themselves in order to solve this situation. for this reason, it is thought that the beliefs of the students about finding a job stems from their own efforts rather than the contributions of the universities. in addition, it is seen that the 1st and 2nd graders of the university had high beliefs that they could get a job compared to the senior classes, causing the result to be high. 6.2. adequate technological equipment at the university this was found among the items with the lowest arithmetic average among the items in the research. the students think that the technological facilities in their universities are insufficient. the data from the questionnaire and the interview overlap. in addition, the report of the committee on education, culture, civilization and information politics of the supreme council of the kyrgyz republic (2008) on higher education supports the opinions of university students by mentioning the computer inadequacy in higher education. this situation can be explained by the inability to provide adequate technological facilities to educators in universities. according to baran and kahraman (2008) the ever-developing technology reveals new scientific devices that must be obtained in order to maintain the status of the universities. new books and journals must be purchased and subscribed to online databases. this means the increase in expenditures for kyrgyz universities. when the financial condition of the universities is taken into consideration, they need to seek new fund sources. this is the only way the universities of kyrgyzstan can keep in step with the modern world leaving the concept of the soviet union. it was asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 97-105 103 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group observed that the students were thinking along the same lines with it. they said that they did not have a computer or did not know their location. in this respect, it is observed that university students in state universities in kyrgyzstan experience shortcomings. 6.3. provision of an adequate level of professional knowledge at your university university students think that the professional knowledge given in their universities is average. it was seen that the data obtained as a result of the interview and the questionnaire data overlapped. according to the students' opinions, professional knowledge provided by the universities of kyrgyzstan is neither sufficient nor insufficient. they also correspond with the information contained in the literature. in the study of echo of osh (2017) some of the universities of kyrgyzstan were defined as a "diploma factory". 6.4. library facilities of your university university students think that libraries of their universities are insufficient. this item dropped below the range of average points. it was observed that the data obtained from the interview and the scale data overlapped. this issue was also mentioned in the report of the committee on education, culture, civilization and information politics of the supreme council of the kyrgyz republic (2008) on higher education, and not only the university libraries but also the large archives and libraries in the country were mentioned as inadequate and old. this situation also coincides with the research data. libraries are required for students to study and develop themselves out of school time. in particular, universities should be very wary about this situation. mambetalieva (2015) pointed out this situation and stated that there are no modern libraries in the universities in the country, where there is open access to books, electronic search engines, and electronic access to international publications. the lack of libraries or their being inadequate or old gives insight into what are universities like and what is taught there. in other words, it cannot be expected that the universities of which libraries old and inadequate track the developments in the world and educates their students accordingly. the students also hold the same opinion. 6.5. social areas of your university this was another statement the university students were dissatisfied with. in general, the data of the two pieces of research overlapped and the social areas of the universities in kyrgyzstan were determined as insufficient. when asked about social areas, it was seen that the students understood sports areas, cafeterias, etc. and that they felt the need for such areas. social areas are important places for students to socialize and discharge their negative energy. according to erçevik and önal, social spaces in universities are effective on students' individual and social development. students take responsibility for participating in social activities during their university life and as part of social grouping. however, they learn to participate in communal living and to establish right relationships with the environment. they are raised as individuals ready for social relations. from this point of view, it is concluded that social spaces are important for students. because the university is not only a place for students to learn but also where students' social personalities are developed, a sense of responsibility stems and they prepare for the future as part of a society in which they live. according to kyrgyz students, universities in kyrgyzstan do not fulfill these duties. 6.6. adequate professional knowledge and skills of teachers this was the statement that the students gave the highest scores among the questionnaire statements. students were found to be generally satisfied with the knowledge and skills of their teachers. in addition, this item also had the second highest score among the interview data. considering the literature, it was observed that there were studies on this subject. sydykbaev (2015) one of those who conducted these studies, said that university teachers considered themselves very sufficient, but this did not reflect the truth. he expressed the necessity for conducting a serious examination on higher education staff. this information in the literature does not match the opinions of the students. students are generally satisfied with their teachers. however, some of the students said that they were too old in the focus group interview and they were teaching with the ussr knowledge. it can also be thought that students evaluate their teachers’ behaviors rather than their professional knowledge. mambetalieva (2015) said that the teachers who are well-equipped and improved themselves among the academic staff in kyrgyzstan choose to work abroad with a higher salary instead of their own countries with a low salary. it can be said that academician salaries, which are very low in kyrgyzstan, affect the quality of the teaching staff. 6.7. the up-to-dateness of the information taught at the university when the qualitative data obtained from the interview were assessed, it was found that this item had the lowest score. when the survey data were evaluated, it was again found to be among the items with the lowest scores. it was seen that they got very close scores with the technological equipment in universities item, which is the second statement of the data collection tool. there is a close relationship between these two substances. the result also supports this. universities are required to keep up to date the knowledge, materials, and knowledge of teaching staff. in this way, they will be able to ensure that the students graduating are a part of the society they live in as well as the modern world. in the opinion of the students, outdated information is taught in kyrgyz universities and the curriculum falls behind with developments in technology in the world. 6.8. foreign language education at your university when the university students' answers to both pieces of research were evaluated, it was found that this item was one of the lowest scored items. in general, university students think that the universities they study do not teach foreign languages at an adequate level. in addition, the universities offer bilingual education in kyrgyz and russian languages. students from rural areas have to learn russian. this requires students to devote a certain part of their study time to learn the russian language instead of professional development. thus, they have no time to learn a third language. this is one of the reasons why students say they cannot learn foreign languages. therefore, kyrgyz students with better economic conditions prefer to study abroad in order to learn a foreign language. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 97-105 104 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students who do not have the opportunity to study abroad are studying at international private universities in kyrgyzstan (madaminov, 2016). 7. conclusion it was seen that the universities of kyrgyzstan failed to prepare students for the future according to the students' opinions. according to the interview data, students stated that there was a lack of technological infrastructure in their universities. they said computers were not adequate and they had no smart boards. another statement that could support this situation among the interview statements was the up-to-dateness of the information taught at the university. the students gave an "insufficient" and "old" answer to this statement as well. they said that the information and books used at the university remained from the soviet union period and that universities did not follow the developments in the world. it was observed that these two statements were below the average by getting almost the same score among the questionnaire scores. therefore, the data of the two studies revealed the students' dissatisfaction in this regard. other statements that stayed below the average by taking close points both among the interview data and the questionnaire data were the insufficiency of the libraries and insufficiency of professional knowledge. students expressed their dissatisfaction in these two issues. it was seen that there were students who did not know the location of the library. one of the reasons for this was determined as the lesson duration being too long and the lesson breaks being too short. in addition, the students said that the books taught at the universities were very old and therefore they did not respond to today's needs even if they received sufficient information about their profession. in addition to the library, university students stated that the social areas of the universities were also insufficient. in addition to their dissatisfaction with the intensity of their lessons, the students also stated that they were dissatisfied with the lack of places where they could spend time with their friends in their free time. foreign language education was the statement that the university students gave the lowest score in both the interview data and the questionnaire data and expressed their dissatisfaction for. it was understood that almost all of the students considered their universities deficient in this regard. as a reason for staying behind the professional knowledge in the world, the students argued that the foreign language, especially english, education was inadequate and at the same time, their teachers did not know them either. students stated that they wanted their teachers to pay closer attention to them and provide guidance. in terms of the sufficiency of their teachers' professional knowledge, students expressed their opinion as average. however, university students said that their teachers did not follow the developments in the world about their fields. all these results revealed the urgent need to improve the higher education in kyrgyzstan and maintain integration with the world. 8. recommendations this study examines the problems of the higher education system in kyrgyzstan from the point of view of students. it is understood that the students who are the direct objects of the education in kyrgyzstan and who are at the center of the education system are not satisfied with the university education. they expressed that they are uncomfortable with almost all the statements of questionnaires and interviews. accordingly, some suggestions have been made in order to improve and improve higher education in kyrgyzstan. the number of universities can be reduced and the quality of the universities can be considered more important rather than the number of universities. the properties expected from a qualified staff can be determined by negotiating with the business market. thus, qualified personnel can be trained according to the needs of the business market. the integration process of the education system with the bologna conditions can be accelerated, and academicians and universities can be harmonized with the world. the budget allocated to the education system can be increased and thus financial support can be provided to successful academicians in order to increase the competition among them. in order to let academicians know the world, various protocols can be signed with european countries and universities and academicians can be sent abroad for experience. references adamkulova, c.w., 2017. development of strategic management methods for the financial subsystem of universities in the conditions for the modernization of higher education and the transition to self-financing (on the example of the kyrgyz national university. j. balasagyn). bulletin of tomsk state university. economy, 39: 138-145. available at: 10.17223 / 19988648/39/11. aydın, s., 2015. case science research (2. bs.), m. metin (yay. haz.). within scientific research methods in education. ankara : pegem academy. pp: 287-311. baran, t. and s. kahraman, 2008. it the spirit of the age tekn in universities: contribution of information technologies to education. i. civil engineering education symposium, antalya. büyüköztürk, ş., 2016. scientific research methods. 22th edn., ankara: pegem academy. chontoev, d., 2016. higher education institutions of kyrgyzstan need to improve the quality of education, 14: 115-116. available from http://www.ktrk.kg/post/1939/ru [accessed 12/21/2018]. cochran, w.g., 1977. sampling techniques. 3rd edn., toronto: u. s. edition. echo of osh, 2017. education in kyrgyzstan: problems and ways of their solutions. echo osh newspaper, 41: 11-12. available from http://www.ehoosha.com/?module=opinion&action=view&id=1032 [accessed 12/21/2018]. gül, y.e., 2015. comparison of teacher training systems: the case of germany and kyrgyzstan. international journal of turkish educational sciences, 3(4): 68-83. hatch, j.a., 2002. doing qualitativere search in education settings. new york: state university of new york press. ibraeva, a. and r. ismailova, 2016. citizens of the kyrgyz republic's interest in study abroad. manas journal of social research, 5(1): 238256. kanimetov, e., 2015. processes of democratization in the partnership system "university school" of the kyrgyz republic. bulletin of modern science, 1(2): 19-22. karasar, n., 2016. scientific research method. ankara: nobel publications. khasanov, n.b., 2017. formation of professional competence of students of technical specialties oral communication in the practical course of the russian language. bulletin of the kgusta, 2(56): 143-148. http://www.ktrk.kg/post/1939/ru http://www.ehoosha.com/?module=opinion&action=view&id=1032 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 97-105 105 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group leeuw, e.d., 2008. international handbook of survey methodology. 1st edn., new york: european association for methodology series. routledge press. madaminov, g., 2016. preparation of schoolchildren for education at 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counts as qualitative research? some cautionary comments. quaternary science reviews journal, 9(2): 48-55. sydykbaev, c.t., 2015. easy to reduce, eliminate, and development of the compound. journal of kut-bilim, 1(3): 26-27. unicef, 2014. education and science in the kyrgyz republic. bishkek: a statistical compilation. vladimirovich, s.m., 2010. education in russian in central asian states cis members: problems and solutions. scientific journal “problems of national strategy, 3(7): 52-65. woods, m.d., 2006. conducting a critical i̇nterpretive synthesis of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups. bmc medical research methodology, 6(35): 1-13. available at: 10.1186/1471-2288-6-35. zakirov, a. and m. ozakbegi, 2017. modern processes in the sphere of higher education of kyrgyzstan. alatoo academic studies, 2(4): 210214. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 336 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 336-346, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.336.346 an analysis of the multi-cultural characteristics of the pre-service teachers in terms of the values they have suat polat1 1ağrı i̇brahim çeçen university, education faculty, department of social sciences education, ağrı-turkey abstract in this study, it was aimed to analyze the multi-cultural characteristics of the pre-service teachers and the values they have in terms of various variables, and it was aimed to determine the relationship between these values. descriptive survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the study. the population of the study consisted of the pre-service teachers studying in different departments in the faculty of education, i̇brahim çeçen university of ağrı in 2017-2018 academic years. the sample of the study consisted of 341 pre-service teachers selected with random sampling method. “multicultural personality questionnaire” developed by oudenhoven and zee (2002) and adapted into turkish by polat (2009) and “values scale” developed by dilmac et al. (2014) were used as data collection tool in the study. according to the results obtained from the study, it was determined that the value preferences of the pre-service teachers and their multicultural personality characteristics showed a significant difference in terms of gender, undergraduate program, educational background of the mother, having social media account and daily internet use variables; however, there was not a significant difference in terms of family structure, the place s/he grew up, educational background of the father and monthly income variables. as the data collection tools are formed of several sub-dimensions, the abstract does not include information about which groups are favored for the difference in the variables and in which sub-dimensions, but detailed information is given in the following sections of the study. keywords: multiculturalism, value, teacher candidates, culture. citation | suat polat (2018). an analysis of the multi-cultural characteristics of the pre-service teachers in terms of the values they have. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 325-335. history: received: 3 july 2018 revised: 14 august 2018 accepted: 10 september 2018 published: 24 september 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 337 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 338 3. findings and interpretation......................................................................................................................................................... 339 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 343 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 345 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.336.346&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1479 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9286-8840 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1479 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9286-8840 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1479 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9286-8840 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 337 1. introduction culture, which determines the identity of a society and makes it different from other societies, is a concept that is studied a lot and with different approaches. this concept has found its place in every process from the day when human beings exist to today (özhan, 2006). culture, in general, consists of abstract ideas, values and world-oriented perceptions that inform us about the behavior of people and take part in these behaviors. all these elements are shared by the members of the society and creates behavior patterns that can only be understood by the members of that society (binat, 1971; turhan, 1972; güngör, 1978; güvenç, 2010) as cited in ünlü and örten (2013). these behavior patterns have social characteristics and they are adopted by the members that forms the society. all these behavior patterns in the societies have caused different societies to know to knit up with each other and the cultures to influence each other as a result of the developing and changing world conditions. this process has occurred rather because people immigrate to other societies, and because of communities that are formed with economic, social, etc. relations (cırık, 2008). this cultural interaction created a new perception along with itself during the socialization. this perception has gained importance as “multiculturalism”, that is, societies know each other without losing their essence (fergeson, 2008) as cited in ünlü and örten (2013). the multiculturalism term first appeared in usa in the world. it is known that the united states, along with geographical discoveries, has hosted many people of different nations within it. with the intensive migration to the usa, the gathering of people of different cultures has made multiculturalism inevitable. in the 1960s, the concept of multiculturalism in the united states in the 1970s started to make itself felt fully due to the rise of different cultures, the spread of ideas such as human rights and democracy, the desire of women, ethnic groups for equal rights and freedom and the discrimination of racism and sexism (başbay and bektaş, 2009). in the concept of multiculturalism, each culture is valuable, and the comparison between cultures is not right, besides, every culture should evaluate its truths within its own framework. it is the basic philosophical source of multiculturalism that the values that cultures have should not necessarily be compared with the values and norms of other cultures, and that they are accepted as a value on their own (özensel, 2012). the values of the people can affect their multicultural personality characteristics. values are important cultural items that all human beings need to have for as they give meaning to mankind, provide to be respectful to other people, to respect differences, to keep societies alive and to ensure societies live long. there is no single definition of the concept of value, and a wide variety of descriptions have been made in this regard. value is “the abstract measure that determines the importance of something, the response that something costs, is the whole of the material and spiritual items that encompass the social, cultural, economic and scientific values of a nation” (www.tdk.gov.tr). education plays an important role in bringing the values system about the frame of mind of a certain society into individuals. schools, on the other hand, are very important institutions for socializing and bringing values to individuals. among the important tasks of the schools is to teach everything that constitutes culture and value to the students according to the curriculum specified. it is among the other duties of the school to discipline pupils in accordance with certain rules, to contribute to their moral development and to improve their character positively (ercan, 2001). multicultural education, on the other hand, is an approach that requires multicultural politics to take place in education. the goal of multicultural education, in general, has been to reduce inequality to a minimum level, to provide equality of opportunities and chances in education. another goal of multicultural education is to reconstruct the schools and the education system and to teach the students how to treat the people in different societies (yazıcı et al., 2009). teachers undertake the greatest role in bringing important events such as multiculturalism and values to students in our education system. teachers are at the forefront as the most important factor in achieving the desired goal and ensuring the desired productivity in multicultural education. especially in societies where multicultural education finds itself in a new debate, teachers have a position to play a critical role. at this point, as a result of the education received by the pre-service teachers, students are required to produce behavioral patterns appropriate for the profession in the cognitive, emotional and psychomotor fields and to develop their students. another target for teachers to achieve success is to respect the cultural differences of their students and create a democratic learning environment (ünlü and örten, 2013). it is possible to list the aims of multicultural education as follows;  to bring a secure, embracing and successful learning environment for students,  to reinforce the different things about global issues,  to strengthen cultural consciousness,  to reinforce the knowledge of culturally differentiation,  to make students realize that there are multiple historical perspectives,  to make critical thinking and thinking effective. when the literature is reviewed, it is possible to find various studies related to multiculturalism (cırık, 2008; başbay and bektaş, 2009; polat, 2009; yazıcı et al., 2009; polat and kılıç, 2013; ünlü and örten, 2013; bulut and başbay, 2014; sarıçam, 2014; akhan and yalçın, 2016) and values (bacanlı, 1999; ercan, 2001; yapıcı and zengin, 2003; sarı, 2005; aktay and ekşi, 2009; deveci and selanik, 2009; yilmaz, 2009; balcı and yelken, 2010; yiğittir and öcal, 2011; akkaya, 2013; balcı and yelken, 2013; cengelci et al., 2013; mutlu and öztürk, 2017). studies in the literature generally consist of studies that take one-sided examination of multiculturalism and values preferences. this study is important from the point of view of an important deficiency in the field by examining the pre-service teachers' multicultural characteristics according to the values they have. 1.1. purpose the purpose of this study is to examine the values of the multi-cultural personality traits of pre-service teachers. http://www.tdk.gov.tr/ asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 338 1.2. research problem examination of pre-service teachers' multicultural personality traits and value preferences in terms of various variables and determination of the relationship between them. 1.3. sub-problems  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to gender?  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to undergraduate program?  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to the place they have grown up?  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to family structure?  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to the education status of mother?  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to the education status of father?  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to the monthly income of the family?  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to daily internet use?  does the multicultural personality traits and value preferences of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to whether they have a social media account or not? 2. method this study is designed based on the quantitative research approach. quantitative research is the kind of research which advocates that reality exists on its own in nature, apart from the researcher, and that this reality can be observed, measured and analyzed in an objective way. such research is based on the hypothesis that reality and feelings must be separated from each other. in quantitative research, variables can be clearly separated from each other and the relationships between them can be measured. at the same time, generalizations can be made with the results obtained. according to this research method, reality is concrete objects that we realize with five sense organs (yıldırım and şimşek, 2008; büyüköztürk et al., 2014; sonmez and alacapınar, 2014). descriptive survey model, among quantitative research methods, was used in the study. in descriptive survey research, data related to more than one fact can be collected and relations between these facts can be analyzed (can, 2014). the relationship revealed in such studies indicates that a part of the change in one of the variables may be caused by another variable, but it also indicates that this change cannot be interpreted in terms of the cause-effect relationship between the variables (as cited in, can (2014)). this research model aims to determine the presence or degree of change existing between two or more variables (as cited in köse (2015)). 2.1. population and sample the population of the study consists of pre-service teachers studying in the faculty of education, i̇brahim çeçen university of ağrı in 2017-2018 academic years. the sample of the study consists of 341 pre-service teachers from different undergraduate programs. in the selection of the pre-service teachers to be included in the sample, random sampling method, one of the probability sampling methods, was used. in this method of sampling, each individual in the population has the same chance and probabilities to be selected for sample. individuals who are thought to have certain characteristics are selected randomly for the sample (yıldırım and şimşek, 2008). in this sampling method, the unit selection process is usually performed by the method of drawing lots from the population. after the population list is created, each group is given a sequence number and they are included in the sampling by drawing random numbers. numbers in lot are included in drawing lot again to equalize the selection possibilities of each unit in the population (can, 2014). 2.2. data collection tools the "multicultural personality questionnaire" developed by oudenhoven and zee (2002) and adapted to turkish by polat (2009) and "value scale" developed by dilmac et al. (2014) were used to collect data in the study. multicultural personality questionnaire is a 5-likert-tyoe scale and consists of 33 items, and consists of dimensions, 11 of which measures cultural empathy, 6 of which measures social enterprise, 7 of which measures emotional stability, 5 of which measures openness and 4 of which measures flexibility. the reliability coefficient of the whole of the “multicultural personality questionnaire” was found to be .82 by polat (2009) the reliability coefficients of the sub-dimensions were calculated as .87 for social empathy, .73 for social enterprise, .65 for emotional stability, .66 for openness and .67 for flexibility. cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients of value scale developed by dilmac et al. (2014) were also calculated on a factor basis. as a result of the analysis, the cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient is .90 for "social values", .80 for "career values", .78 for "intellectual values", 78 for "spirituality", 78 for "materialist values" 61 for "human dignity", .66 for "romantic values", .65 for "liberty" and .63 for "generosity". 2.3. data collection the data of the study were collected in the spring term of 2017-2018 academic years. “multicultural personality questionnaire” developed by oudenhoven and zee (2002) and adopted into turkish by polat (2009) and “values scale” developed by dilmac et al. (2014) were applied on a volunteer basis to the pre-service teachers asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 339 included in the study who were selected randomly. a 30-minute time was given to the pre-service teachers to fill the data collection tools. during this time, appropriate feedback was given to the questions asked by the pre-service teachers to maintain a healthy data collection process. 2.4. data analysis independent samples t-test, manova and pearson correlation were used for the parametric tests because normality assumption was satisfied in the analysis of the data. the significance of the data was tested at p <.01 and p <.05 level. 3. findings and interpretation this section includes the findings and interpretations related to the analyses on the variables of gender, department, family structure, the place they have grown up, educational status of mother and father, monthly income, having a social media account and daily internet use in terms of multicultural personality traits and the values of the pre-service teachers. the results of the analysis of the value preferences and multicultural personality traits of teacher candidates in terms of gender variable are indicated in table 1. table-1. independent sample t test results related to the gender variable gender n x s.s t p social value female 190 8.212 .825 1.268 .206 male 151 8.102 .772 career value female 190 7.577 1.049 .888 .375 male 151 7.474 1.098 intellectual value female 190 7.921 .888 .920 .358 male 151 7.828 .956 spirituality female 190 7.801 1.419 4.968 .000 male 151 6.880 1.997 materialistic value female 190 6.147 1.891 .650 .516 male 151 6.004 2.164 human dignity female 190 8.414 .912 -1.183 .238 male 151 8.529 .877 romantic value female 190 5.705 2.255 -3.949 .000 male 151 6.624 1.974 liberty female 190 8.022 .795 -.747 .455 male 151 8.094 .986 generosity female 190 7.586 1.297 -2.024 .044 male 151 7.867 1.239 cultural empathy female 190 4.149 .589 .926 .355 male 151 4.091 .549 social enterprise female 190 3.441 .694 -1.137 .256 male 151 3.523 .605 emotional stability female 190 3.153 .569 -.753 .452 male 151 3.200 .581 openness female 190 3.661 .673 -2.002 .046 male 151 3.800 .587 flexibility female 190 3.551 .808 2.758 .006 male 151 3.314 .760 source: author’s field work. when table 1 is analyzed, it is seen that as a result of the t test done to determine whether there is significant difference in terms of gender variable in the values and multicultural personality traits of the teachers, there is significant difference between the averages of the sub-dimensions of spirituality, romantic value, generosity, openness and flexibility. it was determined that the females have higher averages in terms of the values in the spirituality sub-dimension in the values of the pre-service teachers, and the males have higher averages in terms of the values in the romantic value sub-dimension. it was also determined that the males have higher averages in the openness sub-dimension, and females have higher averages in the flexibility sub-dimension when the multicultural personality traits of the per-service teachers were analyzed. the results of the analysis of the value preferences and multicultural personality traits of teacher candidates in terms of undergraduate program variable are indicated in table 2. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 340 table-2. one-way manova results related to the undergraduate program variable dependent variable average total sd average square f p nsquare undergraduate program social value 2,140 5-341 ,428 ,660 ,654 .010 career value 18,813 5-341 3,763 3,396 ,006 .048 intellectual value 2,448 5-341 ,490 ,576 ,718 .009 spirituality 26,460 5-341 5,292 1,731 ,127 .025 materialistic value 28,982 5-341 5,796 1,437 ,211 .021 human dignity 5,541 5-341 1,108 1,382 ,230 .020 romantic value 16,038 5-341 3,208 ,671 ,646 .010 liberty 4,117 5-341 ,823 1,053 ,387 .015 generosity 10,026 5-341 2,005 1,232 ,294 .018 cultural empathy 3,291 5-341 ,658 2,043 ,072 .030 social enterprise 6,135 5-341 1,227 2,922 ,013 .042 emotional stability 3,239 5-341 ,648 1,994 ,079 .029 openness 2,454 5-341 ,491 1,204 ,307 .018 flexibility 14,596 5-341 2,919 4,884 ,000 .068 source: author has calculated by using primary data. when table 2 is examined, one-way multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the effect of the undergraduate program variable on multicultural personality traits and value preferences of the pre-service teachers, when the counts of the manova analysis were checked, it was found that the homogeneity count of the diffusion matrix is provided according to box's m statistic. (f (525, 785.18) = 1.327, p = .061). a significant difference was found only in the career value sub-dimension in terms of the value preferences of the pre-service teachers in terms of undergraduate program. as a result of the tukey test to find the source of the difference, it was determined that the pre-service teacher studying in music-art undergraduate program (8.069) attach more importance to career value compared to those in the social sciences (7.433), preschool (7.334) and psychological counseling and guidance (7.349) undergraduate programs. it was determined that there is significant difference in the social enterprise and flexibility sub-dimensions from the multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers in terms of undergraduate program (wilks lambda =.0413, f(5-337)=2.922, p<.05, nsquare=.042; wilks lambda =.0468, f(5-337)=4.884, p<.05, nsquare=.068). multiple comparison tests were conducted to determine the source of this difference in the social enterprise and flexibility sub-dimensions in terms of the undergraduate program variable. according to the findings of the tukey test, it was determined that the pre-service teachers studying in preschool undergraduate program (3.703) have higher social enterprise than those in classroom teaching program (3.307), and the flexibility of the pre-service teachers in preschool undergraduate program (3.75) is higher than those in social sciences (3.265), turkish language (3.25) and music-art (3.293) undergraduate programs. the results of the analysis related to the family structure variable in terms of value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers are indicated in table 3. table-3. one-way manova results related to family structure variable dependent variable average total sd average square f p nsquare family structure social value ,010 2-341 ,005 ,007 ,993 ,000 career value 1,609 2-341 ,805 ,700 ,497 ,004 intellectual value 2,438 2-341 1,219 1,448 ,236 ,008 spirituality 8,595 2-341 4,298 1,394 ,249 ,008 materialistic value 9,598 2-341 4,799 1,183 ,308 ,007 human dignity 2,509 2-341 1,254 1,561 ,211 ,009 romantic value 6,415 2-341 3,208 ,673 ,511 ,004 liberty 1,590 2-341 ,795 1,016 ,363 ,006 generosity 7,513 2-341 3,756 2,318 ,100 ,014 cultural empathy ,165 2-341 ,083 ,251 ,778 ,001 social enterprise 2,247 2-341 1,123 2,626 ,074 ,015 emotional stability 1,774 2-341 ,887 2,719 ,067 ,016 openness 1,479 2-341 ,740 1,817 ,164 ,011 flexibility ,905 2-341 ,453 ,715 ,490 ,004 source: author has calculated by using primary data. when table 3 is examined, one-way multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the effect of the family structure variable on multicultural personality traits and value preferences of the pre-service teachers, it was found that the homogeneity count of the diffusion matrix is provided according to box's m statistic when the counts of the manova analysis were examined (f (210,397.481)=1.400, p=.059). when the manova results are examined, it is seen that there is no significant difference in terms of family structure variable in value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers. therefore, it can be said that family structure variable is not a factor that affects the value preferences and personality traits of the pre-service teachers. the results of the analysis related to the place they grew up variable in terms of value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers are indicated in table 4. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 341 table-4. one-way manova results related to the place they grew up variable dependent variable average total sd average square f p nsquare the place they grew up social value ,939 3-341 ,313 ,483 ,694 ,004 career value 1,999 3-341 ,666 ,579 ,629 ,005 intellectual value ,207 3-341 ,069 ,081 ,970 ,001 spirituality 4,980 3-341 1,660 ,535 ,659 ,005 materialistic value 24,406 3-341 8,135 2,021 ,111 ,018 human dignity ,317 3-341 ,106 ,130 ,942 ,001 romantic value 2,581 3-341 ,860 ,180 ,910 ,002 liberty ,399 3-341 ,133 ,169 ,918 ,001 generosity 1,468 3-341 ,489 ,298 ,827 ,003 cultural empathy 1,363 3-341 ,454 1,393 ,245 ,012 social enterprise 1,662 3-341 ,554 1,286 ,279 ,011 emotional stability ,236 3-341 ,079 ,237 ,870 ,002 openness 1,884 3-341 ,628 1,543 ,203 ,014 flexibility 2,608 3-341 ,869 1,380 ,249 ,012 source: author has calculated by using primary data. when table 4 is examined, one-way multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the effect of the place they grew up variable on multicultural personality traits and value preferences of the pre-service teachers, it was found that the homogeneity count of the diffusion matrix is provided according to box's m statistic when the counts of the manova analysis were checked (f(315,440.930)=1.239, p=.131). when the manova results are examined, it is seen that there is no significant difference in terms of the place they grew up variable in value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers. therefore, it can be said that the place they grew-up variable is not a factor that affects the value preferences and personality traits of the pre-service teachers. the results of the analysis related to the educational background of the father variable in terms of value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers are indicated in table 5. table-5. one-way manova results related to educational background of the father variable dependent variable average total sd average square f p nsquare educational background of the father social value 1,756 5-341 ,351 ,541 ,745 ,008 career value 2,740 5-341 ,548 ,474 ,796 ,007 intellectual value 1,259 5-341 ,252 ,295 ,915 ,004 spirituality 8,984 5-341 1,797 ,578 ,717 ,009 materialistic value 20,513 5-341 4,103 1,010 ,411 ,015 human dignity 1,311 5-341 ,262 ,322 ,900 ,005 romantic value 39,051 5-341 7,810 1,658 ,144 ,024 liberty 2,049 5-341 ,410 ,520 ,761 ,008 generosity 2,578 5-341 ,516 ,313 ,905 ,005 cultural empathy 1,124 5-341 ,225 ,684 ,636 ,010 social enterprise 4,263 5-341 ,853 2,004 ,078 ,029 emotional stability 1,204 5-341 ,241 ,727 ,603 ,011 openness 2,626 5-341 ,525 1,289 ,268 ,019 flexibility 4,454 5-341 ,891 1,418 ,217 ,021 source: author has calculated by using primary data. when table 5 is examined, one-way multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the effect of the educational background of the father variable on multicultural personality traits and value preferences of the preservice teachers, it was found that the homogeneity count of the diffusion matrix is provided according to box's m statistic when the counts of the manova analysis were checked (f(525,696.139)=1.163, p=.061). when the manova results are examined, it is seen that there is no significant difference in terms of the educational background of the father variable in value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the preservice teachers. therefore, it can be said that the educational background of the father variable is not a factor that affects the value preferences and personality traits of the pre-service teachers. the results of the analysis related to the educational background of the mother variable in terms of value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers are indicated in table 6. table-6. one-way manova results related to educational background of the mother variable dependent variable average total sd average square f p nsquare educational background of the mother social value 1,715 5-341 ,429 ,662 ,619 ,008 career value 2,725 5-341 ,681 ,591 ,669 ,007 intellectual value 2,492 5-341 ,623 ,736 ,568 ,009 spirituality 36,101 5-341 9,025 2,989 ,019 ,034 materialistic value 22,094 5-341 5,523 1,366 ,245 ,016 human dignity ,681 5-341 ,170 ,209 ,933 ,002 romantic value 19,072 5-341 4,768 1,002 ,406 ,012 liberty 1,951 5-341 ,488 ,621 ,648 ,007 generosity 8,640 5-341 2,160 1,328 ,259 ,016 cultural empathy 1,479 5-341 ,370 1,132 ,341 ,013 social enterprise 1,346 5-341 ,337 ,777 ,541 ,009 emotional stability 1,303 5-341 ,326 ,989 ,414 ,012 openness ,561 5-341 ,140 ,340 ,851 ,004 flexibility ,923 5-341 ,231 ,363 ,835 ,004 source: author has calculated by using primary data. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 342 when table 6 is examined, one-way multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the effect of the educational background of the mother variable on multicultural personality traits and value preferences of the preservice teachers, it was found that the homogeneity count of the diffusion matrix is provided according to box's m statistic when the counts of the manova analysis were checked (f(420,603.356)=1.200, p=.055). when the manova results are examined, it can be seen that there is significant difference in spirituality subdimensions of the value preferences in terms of the educational background of the mother variable (wilks lambda =.0397, f(5-341)=2.922, p<05, nsquare=.034). tukey test, among multiple comparison tests, was conducted to determine the source of the differentiation in the spirituality sub-dimension in terms of the educational background of the mother. as a result of tukey test, it can be said that the spirituality values of the pre-service teachers whose mothers are illiterate (7.47) and primary school graduate (7.65) are higher than those whose mothers got high school or higher education (6.36). the results of the analysis related to the monthly income variable in terms of value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers are indicated in table 7. table-7. one-way manova results related to monthly income variable dependent variable average total sd average square f p nsquare monthly income social value 1,068 2-341 ,534 ,827 ,438 ,005 career value 1,094 2-341 ,547 ,476 ,622 ,003 intellectual value 3,194 2-341 1,597 1,902 ,151 ,011 spirituality 6,823 2-341 3,412 1,105 ,332 ,006 materialistic value 3,429 2-341 1,714 ,421 ,657 ,002 human dignity ,959 2-341 ,479 ,593 ,553 ,003 romantic value 7,383 2-341 3,691 ,775 ,462 ,005 liberty 3,308 2-341 1,654 2,127 ,121 ,012 generosity 7,349 2-341 3,675 2,267 ,105 ,013 cultural empathy ,933 2-341 ,466 1,430 ,241 ,008 social enterprise ,596 2-341 ,298 ,689 ,503 ,004 emotional stability ,631 2-341 ,315 ,957 ,385 ,006 openness ,525 2-341 ,263 ,641 ,528 ,004 flexibility ,709 2-341 ,355 ,560 ,572 ,003 source: author has calculated by using primary data. when table 7 is examined, one-way multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the effect of the monthly income variable on multicultural personality traits and value preferences of the pre-service teachers, it was found that the homogeneity count of the diffusion matrix is provided according to box's m statistic when the counts of the manova analysis were checked (f(210,511.879)=1.170, p=.073). when the manova results are examined, it is seen that there is no significant difference in terms of the monthly income variable in value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers. therefore, it can be said that the monthly income variable is not a factor that affects the value preferences and personality traits of the pre-service teachers. the results of the analysis related to the having a social media account variable in terms of value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers are indicated in table 8. table-8. one-way manova results related to having a social media account variable dependent variable average total sd average square f p nsquare having a social media account social value ,155 1-341 ,155 ,240 ,625 ,001 career value ,188 1-341 ,188 ,164 ,686 ,000 intellectual value ,275 1-341 ,275 ,325 ,569 ,001 spirituality 4,462 1-341 4,462 1,446 ,230 ,004 materialistic value ,826 1-341 ,826 ,203 ,653 ,001 human dignity ,317 1-341 ,317 ,392 ,532 ,001 romantic value 5,682 1-341 5,682 1,195 ,275 ,004 liberty 1,512 1-341 1,512 1,937 ,165 ,006 generosity 3,952 1-341 3,952 2,430 ,120 ,007 cultural empathy ,204 1-341 ,204 ,624 ,430 ,002 social enterprise ,028 1-341 ,028 ,065 ,798 ,000 emotional stability ,090 1-341 ,090 ,271 ,603 ,001 openness ,058 1-341 ,058 ,141 ,708 ,000 flexibility 3,227 1-341 3,227 5,169 ,024 ,015 source: author has calculated by using primary data. when table 8 is examined, one-way multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the effect of the having a social media account variable on multicultural personality traits and value preferences of the pre-service teachers, it was found that the homogeneity count of the diffusion matrix is provided according to box's m statistic when the counts of the manova analysis were checked (f(105,160.029)=1.376, p=.07). when the manova results are examined, it is seen that there is significant difference in terms of the having a social media account variable in flexibility sub-dimension of multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers (wilks lambda =.0170, f(1-341)=5.169, p<.05, nsquare=.015). as a result, it can be said that the preservice teachers who have a social media account (3.488) are more flexible compared to those who don’t (3.222) in terms of flexibility-sub-dimension. the results of the analysis related to the daily internet use variable in terms of value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers are indicated in table 9. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 343 table-9. one-way manova results related to daily internet use variable dependent variable average total sd average square f p nsquare daily internet use social value 3,311 3-341 1,104 1,722 ,162 ,015 career value 3,151 3-341 1,050 ,915 ,434 ,008 intellectual value 5,306 3-341 1,769 2,116 ,098 ,018 spirituality 23,602 3-341 7,867 2,582 ,053 ,022 materialistic value 41,936 3-341 13,979 3,519 ,015 ,030 human dignity ,731 3-341 ,244 ,300 ,825 ,003 romantic value 19,026 3-341 6,342 1,337 ,262 ,012 liberty 1,351 3-341 ,450 ,573 ,633 ,005 generosity 6,047 3-341 2,016 1,237 ,296 ,011 cultural empathy ,513 3-341 ,171 ,521 ,668 ,005 social enterprise 1,407 3-341 ,469 1,087 ,355 ,010 emotional stability 3,046 3-341 1,015 3,139 ,026 ,027 openness 2,726 3-341 ,909 2,246 ,083 ,020 flexibility 4,116 3-341 1,372 2,194 ,089 ,019 source: author has calculated by using primary data. when table 9 is examined, one-way multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the effect of the daily internet use variable on multicultural personality traits and value preferences of the pre-service teachers, it was found that the homogeneity count of the diffusion matrix is provided according to box's m statistic when the counts of the manova analysis were checked (f(315,414.062)=1.202, p=.08). when the manova results are examined, it can be seen that there is significant difference in materialistic value sub-dimension of value preferences and emotional stability sub-dimension of multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers in terms of daily internet use variable (wilks lambda =.05, f(3-341)=3.519, p<.05, nsquare=.030; wilks lambda =.05, f(3-341)=3.139, p<.05, nsquare=.027). tukey test was applied to determine the source of the difference in the materialistic value and emotional stability sub-dimensions in terms of daily internet use variable. as a result of the test, it was determined that the pre-service teachers who use internet for 6 hours or more (6.55) have higher materialistic values than those who use 0-2 hours (5.67), and the average points of the pre-service teacher who use the internet for 0-2 hours (3.283) are higher than those who use the internet for 4-6 hours (3.005) in terms of emotional stability. the results related to the relationship between the value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers are indicated in table 10. table-10. analysis of the relationship between value preferences and multicultural personality traits social career intellectual spirituality materialistic human dignity romantic liberty generosity cultural empathy pearson ,342** ,114* ,176** ,092 -,006 ,089 ,087 ,213** ,204** sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,036 ,001 ,088 ,909 ,101 ,108 ,000 ,000 n 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 social enterprise pearson ,039 ,064 ,094 -,071 ,094 -,053 ,240** ,139* ,093 sig. (2-tailed) ,476 ,238 ,082 ,193 ,084 ,329 ,000 ,010 ,085 n 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 emotional stability pearson ,058 -,019 -,014 ,012 -,150** -,002 ,008 ,027 ,079 sig. (2-tailed) ,283 ,724 ,795 ,824 ,005 ,973 ,876 ,617 ,146 n 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 openness pearson ,097 ,116* ,128* -,032 ,175** -,037 ,145** ,212** ,188** sig. (2-tailed) ,075 ,032 ,018 ,560 ,001 ,498 ,007 ,000 ,000 n 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 flexibility pearson ,026 -,093 -,117* -,017 -,013 -,013 ,073 ,019 -,024 sig. (2-tailed) ,626 ,087 ,030 ,755 ,814 ,805 ,178 ,724 ,655 n 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 341 **p<.01 when table 10 is analyzed, it is seen that according to pearson’s correlation analysis results, there is a positive and medium-level relationship between cultural empathy and social value, there is a positive and weak-level relationship between intellectual value and generosity, there is a positive and weak-level relationship between social enterprise, liberty and romantic value, a negative and weak level relationship between emotional stability and materialistic value, a positive and weak-level relationship between openness and materialistic value, romantic value, liberty and generosity. according to this result, it can be said that people with cultural empathy personality trait can give higher importance to social, intellectual, liberty and generosity values. it can be said that people with social enterprise personality trait can give more importance to the romantic values. it can be expressed that people with emotional stability personality trait can give less importance to the materialistic values. however, people with openness personality trait can give more importance to the materialistic values. people with openness personality trait give more importance to the romantic, liberty and generosity values. 4. results and discussion in this study which aims to analyze the multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers in terms of value preference, the data obtained through multicultural personality questionnaire and values scale were analyzed in terms of various variables and the obtained results are presented in this section of the study. the value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers were analyzed in terms of gender variable, and it was determined that there is a significant difference between the average scores in the spirituality, romantic value, generosity, openness and flexibility sub-dimensions. in the value preferences of the asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 344 pre-service teachers, females have higher average scores in terms of the values in the spirituality sub-dimension, and males have higher average scores in terms of the values in the romantic value sub-dimension. moreover, when the multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers were examined, it was determined that males have higher average scores in the openness sub-dimension and females have higher average scores in the flexibility subdimension. in a study conducted by demircioğlu and özdemir (2014) it was determined that the attitudes of the preservice teachers towards the multicultural education differ significantly according to the gender, and this difference was found to be in favor of the female participants. although the significance values were not examined in the study conducted by damgacı and aydın (2013) it was determined that academicians' attitude scores related to multicultural education were higher in favor of female academicians. demir (2012) found that the importance that female academicians give to multicultural education in equalitarian pedagogy sub-dimension was significantly more positive compared to male academicians. contrary to these studies, it was determined in the studies by tortop (2014); özdemir and dil (2013) that the attitudes of pre-service teachers and teachers towards multicultural education did not differ in terms of gender. in the study conducted by polat (2012) it was determined that the attitudes of school principals towards multiculturalism did not differ according to gender. in another study conducted by polat (2009) no significant relation was found between the gender of pre-service teachers and their multicultural personality traits. in the study conducted by yapıcı and zengin (2003) it was emphasized that there was no significant difference in the value preferences of the pre-service teachers in the faculty of theology in terms of gender variable. in another study conducted by sarı (2005) the levels of the male students in terms of adopting values were significantly higher in all values (public moral, political, religious, economic, aesthetic, social values) except for scientific value compared to those of the female students. in the study conducted by başçiftçi et al. (2011) it is seen that male students in the values of hedonism, ability and effort of value judgments had significantly higher average scores, and female students have significantly higher average scores in universality, helpfulness and accord subdimensions. in another study conducted by bacanlı (1999) it has been found that female students paid more attention to universal, liberty and peace values, whereas male students attach more importance to devotion to traditions and religious values. in the study conducted by akkaya (2013) it was determined that the female preservice teachers had significantly higher scores in the values of everything is measured and accord and conscious peace, and the male pre-service teachers had significantly higher average scores in terms of earning the heaven, knowing the facts and fighting for liberty values. aktay and ekşi (2009) stated in their study that female teachers were more likely to prefer self-control value, male teacher were more likely to prefer universality value, and that there was no difference in other values. in the study conducted by yilmaz (2009) it was concluded that the average score of female teachers in terms of universality, helpfulness, accord and security sub-dimensions was significantly higher than male teachers. the value preferences of the pre-service teachers were examined in terms of the undergraduate program and significant difference was found only in the career value sub-dimension. according to this difference, the preservice teacher studying in music-art undergraduate program (8.069) attach more importance to career value compared to those in the social sciences (7.433), preschool (7.334) and psychological counseling and guidance (7.349) undergraduate programs. a significant difference was also found in the social enterprise and flexibility sub-dimensions of the pre-service teachers in terms of the undergraduate program variable. it can be said that the pre-service teachers studying in preschool undergraduate program (3.703) have higherlevel of social enterprise than those in classroom teaching program (3.307), and the flexibility level of the preservice teachers in preschool undergraduate program (3.75) is higher than those in social sciences (3.265), turkish language (3.25) and music-art (3.293) undergraduate programs. according to this result, it can be said that the education and practices that the preschool pre-service teachers get during their undergraduate education positively affect their social enterprise and flexibility traits. in the study by demircioğlu and özdemir (2014) it was found that there is a significant difference between multicultural education and student attitudes. but the fact that this difference is in favor of non-math fields contradicts the results of this study. in the study carried out by polat (2009) a significant difference was found in the cultural empathy sub-dimension of the multicultural personality traits of the teacher candidates and the undergraduate program. in the study by akkaya (2013) it was determined that there is a significant difference in favor of mathematics teaching department in terms of the values of everything is measured and accord and comfortable life, in favor of classroom teaching department in terms of earning the heaven value, in favor of turkish language teaching department in terms of a world without lies value, and in favor of religious culture teaching department in terms of conscious peace, ensuring equality, helping people values. contrary to these studies, it has been determined in the study conducted by tortop (2014) that the attitudes of pre-service teachers towards multicultural education did not differ in terms of the undergraduate program variable. the value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers were examined in terms of family structure, the place they grew up, educational background of father and monthly income variables, and no significant difference was found between them. therefore, it can be said that family structure, the place they grew up, educational background of father and monthly income variables are not factors that affect the value preferences and multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers. tortop (2014) reached the conclusion in his study that there is no significant difference between the income status and multicultural education. in the study by demircioğlu and özdemir (2014) the attitudes of the pedagogical formation training students towards multicultural education did not show any significant difference according to the place they grew up. in the study conducted by polat (2009) no significant relation was found between the place where the pre-service teachers lived and their multicultural personality traits. in the study by akkaya (2013) it was determined that there is an inversely proportional relation between educational background of father variable and redemption value, however there is a directly proportional relation between educational background of father variable and living a comfortable life value. in the same study by akkaya asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 336-346 345 (2013) it was determined that in terms of the place they grew up variable, those who live in big cities have significantly higher average scores in comfortable life and fight for liberty values compared to those who live in small cities. the value preferences of the pre-service teachers were examined according to the education background of the mother and a significant difference was found in the spirituality subdimension. according to the difference in educational background of mother in the spirituality sub-dimension, it can be said that the spirituality values of the pre-service teachers whose mothers are illiterate (7.47) and primary school graduate (7.65) are higher than those whose mothers got high school or higher education (6.36). according to this result, it can be interpreted that the increase of the education level of the mothers negatively affects the spirituality value preferences of the children. it can be said that mothers with lower education level give more importance to spiritual values. in the study by akkaya (2013) it was found that the children of mothers with low or no education levels had a significantly higher average score for the values in the earning the heaven sub-dimension, which is parallel to the findings of this study. it was determined that there is significant difference in terms of the having a social media account variable in flexibility sub-dimension of multicultural personality traits of the pre-service teachers. it can be said that the preservice teachers who have a social media account (3.488) are more flexible compared to those who don’t (3.222) in terms of flexibility-sub-dimension. therefore, it can be said that the use of social media has a positive effect on the flexibility personality trait. it was determined that there is a significant difference in the materialistic value of the value preferences of the pre-service teachers, and there is a significant difference in the emotional stability of multicultural personality traits in terms of daily internet use variable. according to the difference in materialistic value and emotional stability sub-dimensions, it is seen that the preservice teachers who use internet for 6 hours or more (6.55) have higher materialistic values than those who use 02 hours (5.67), and the average points of the pre-service teacher who use the internet for 0-2 hours (3.283) are higher than those who use the internet for 4-6 hours (3.005) in terms of emotional stability. according to this result, it can be said that more internet use leads to an increase in materialistic value preferences of the pre-service teachers while it causes decrease in emotional stability. moreover, it can be said that the pre-service teachers with high emotional stability have lower materialistic value priorities. the relationship between the sub-dimensions of multicultural personality questionnaire and values scale was examined and the results are as follows: there is a positive and medium-level relationship between cultural empathy and social value, there is a positive and weak-level relationship between intellectual value and generosity, there is a positive and weak-level relationship between social enterprise, liberty and romantic value, a negative and weak level relationship between emotional stability and materialistic value, a positive and weak-level relationship between openness and materialistic value, romantic value, liberty and generosity. according to this result, it can be said that the importance that the individuals with cultural empathy personality trait give to social, intellectual, liberty and generosity values may be higher. it can also be said that the importance that the individuals with social enterprise personality trait give to romantic values may increase. it can be stated that the individuals with higher emotional stability personality traits give less importance to the materialistic values. however, the individuals with openness personality characteristics give higher importance to the materialistic values. the individuals with openness personality trait give more importance to the romantic, liberty and generosity values. according to büyüköztürk (2004) the correlation coefficient can be interpreted as an absolute value and between 0.70 and 1.00 as a high level of relationship, between 0.70-0.30 as an intermediate relationship, and between 0.30-0.00 as a low-level relationship. value education should be given importance in order to bring individuals in multicultural personality traits. values education to be given to the individuals from the pre-school period will enable to educate both characterwise individuals and help to acquire positive personality traits. it has been emphasized in various studies that education is important in improving the multicultural personality traits of people in the globalizing world (bryan and sprague, 1997; sheets and chew, 2000; polat, 2009; demir, 2012). therefore, it is thought that giving this education emphasis especially in the undergraduate programs will contribute positively to the development of multicultural personality. references akhan, o. and a. yalçın, 2016. the place of multicultural education in social studies curricula. trakya university journal of social sciences, 18(2): 23-46. akkaya, n., 2013. the value preferences of the education faculty students (de buca faculty of education). turkish journal of social research / social researchers found turkey journal, 17(2): 69-82. aktay, a. and h. ekşi, 2009. investigation of the relationship between the value preferences of managers and teachers and organizational citizenship behaviors. journal of business ethics, 2(3): 19-65. bacanlı, h., 1999. value preferences of university students. journal of 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content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 182 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 182-185, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.182.185 effects of 8-week core exercises on free style swimming performance of female swimmers aged 9-12 yıldırım gökhan gencer1 1yuzuncu yil university, school of physical education and sports, van/turkey abstract with this study, it is aimed to review the effects of 8-week core exercises, which are scheduled before the routine exercises, on changes over certain physical and motoric attributes and freestyle swimming performance of female athletes of the youngest age group, which is 9-12. for the study, a group of 12 female licensed swimmers who had a swimming background of 3 years in city of van is chosen to be core exercise group (ceg) and set as experimental group. and 12 female swimmers are chosen to be in control group. the athletes are scheduled to perform regular swimming exercises for competition, five days a week and for approximately 90 minutes per day. in addition to control group, ceg is scheduled to perform 20 minutes of low intensity, fixed duration and repetitive core exercises before every routine exercise for 8 weeks. chosen measurements are obtained from the athletes both at the beginning and after 8 weeks and the change between pretest and posttest values is evaluated. for the statistical data analysis, nonparametric tests of wilcoxon and mann whitney u tests are used. as a results of the study, the group of swimmers aged 9-12 who underwent 8 weeks of low intensity core exercises showed differences compared to pretest and posttest values of control group, even though not statistically significant (p>0,05). as a result, compared to the control group, a 1-2 seconds of decrease – especially when it is a very important amount for this sport – in 25 m and 50 m free style swimming ranks is attributed to the effect of core exercises, and it is reckoned that low intensity core exercises may positively affect the free style swimming performance of female swimmers aged 9-12. keywords: freestyle, swimming, core training. citation | yıldırım gökhan gencer (2018). effects of 8-week core exercises on free style swimming performance of female swimmers aged 9-12. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 182-185. history: received: 3 april 2018 revised: 23 april 2018 accepted: 25 april 2018 published: 26 april 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 183 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 183 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 184 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 185 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 185 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.182.185&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yıldırım%20gökhan%20gencer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 182-185 183 1. introduction swimming, which has ever-increasing popularity, is a sports branch of high demand in olympic games and international championships. swimming enables symmetrical and balanced development of human muscles and it ensures that 80% of the muscle mass is being used when in water. for this reason, it could be said that an athlete swimming a certain distance burns the energy of 4 times more than that of the athlete who runs it. when it is performed as a sport, swimming contributes to the improvement of attributes such as skill, coordination, power, stamina, speed, velocity and mobility. additionally, it is among the sport activities which provide a sense of discipline and confidence (bozdogan, 1986; odabaş, 2003). there are four branches of swimming: crawl stroke, butterfly stroke, back stroke and breast stroke. crawl, in other words free style swimming, is the fastest form of swimming among other competition styles (hannula and thornton, 2001; yapıcı et al., 2016). certain anthropometric attributes may affect performance of swimmers. successful swimmers are generally tall and have long extremities and wide shoulders. and also mid and upper parts of their body hold a large muscle mass. when the factors effecting the performance are reviewed, it is seen that the power of muscles is a major contributing factor (troup, 1999). in swimming, there are certain studies in which the athlete uses certain materials in water (such as pedals, pallets, pull-buoys and stamina rubber) to help increase the velocity and also to keep it. power exercises in swimming are divided into two groups: the ones performed in the water and the ones performed on the ground. power studies performed on the ground include weight exercises, medicine ball exercises, leaping exercises, exercises for the core area, exercises of body weight, vasa trainer or isokinetic swim bench studies in which isokinetic movements are done, thera band and rubber exercises, trx exercises, foam-roll usage and many others which are used during any period (yapıcı et al., 2016). core exercises have gained a great deal of popularity recently and have an important place in exercise plans (riewald, 2003). the physiological effects of exercises on athletes have been subject matter for many studies (sarikaya et al., 2016). day by day, when the compatibility of physical attributes of athletes for the performed branch of sports is evaluated among the small or young athlete category who has taken up the sports rather recently, anthropometric and bio-motoric attributes of athletes of that age and their effect on the athlete’s performance have captured the attention of researchers. with this study, it is aimed to review the effects of 8-week core exercises, which are scheduled before the routine exercises, on changes over certain physical and motoric attributes and freestyle swimming performance of female athletes of the youngest age group, which is 9-12. 2. method for the study, a group of 12 female licensed swimmers who had a swimming background of 3 years in city of van is chosen to be core exercise group (ceg) and set as experimental group. and 12 female swimmers are chosen to be in control group. the athletes are scheduled to perform regular swimming exercises for competition, five days a week and for approximately 90 minutes per day. in addition to control group, ceg is scheduled to perform 20 minutes of low intensity, fixed duration and repetitive core exercises before every routine exercise for 8 weeks. after core exercises, the athletes are given 10 minutes of breaks and then moved on to swimming exercises. with both groups, repetition method is used for rapid swimming of short distances in water exercises and in order to avoid accumulated lactic acid, break periods between work outs are paid attention to. chosen measurements are obtained from the athletes both at the beginning and after 8 weeks and the change between pretest and posttest values is evaluated. core exercise program: the below stated actions are applied in low intensity and one set for every motion with 1 minute of intervals in between every different motion. bridge: 5 minutes of static standing in bridge position and then lowering is performed for 10 times. body extension: athlete sits on the ground with bent knees and lifts the arms towards the front and moves them towards the back with 45-degree angle. after 10 seconds of waiting at this position, athlete changes the position to the beginning. this is repeated for 10 times. sit-ups: after raising the head and shoulders up for 10 times, 5 seconds of static standing is followed by the position change to the beginning. sit-ups on roman chair: athlete performs a static standing for 5 seconds on roman chair with bent knees and with hands cross positioned on the chest in sit up position and then changes position to the beginning, with 10 repetitions. abdominal contraction: athlete is requested to contract and loosen abdominal muscles for 5 seconds with knees bent and hands cross positioned on the chest while breathing in and out. this is repeated for 10 times. lower extremity ground rotation: in lying back position, arms are spread to the sides and body stabilization is ensured with bending the knees at 90 degrees. then, the athlete is requested to do a rotation to right and left. this rotation is repeated for 10 times, to be 5 seconds on the left and 5 seconds on the right. leg scissors movement: in lying back position, legs are stretched and the heels are raised by 10 cm off of the ground and then lowered. the athlete is asked to repeat this movement for 10 times for each leg (kahle and tevald, 2014; yuksel et al., 2016). height measurements of participants are taken with measurement machine of brand detecto, with 0,1 cm sensitivity. weight measurements are taken with measurement machine of brand detecto with 100 grams of sensitivity. height and weight measurements are used to calculate body mass indices. right and left grip force measurements are taken by using takei brand hand dynamometer. for vertical jumps, takei brand vertical jump meter, for horizontal jumps standard meters with 0,1 cm sensitivity, for 30 m running test sinar photocell telemetric stop watch are used. durations of 10 push-ups that are performed in fastest possible way and also in a regular way are recorded in seconds. additionally, the best of 2 trials of 25 m and 50 m free style swimming ranks are recorded by using colorado time systems-ssf device in seconds and split seconds with scoreboard. for the statistical data analysis, non-parametric tests of wilcoxon and mann whitney u tests are used. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 182-185 184 3. findings mean age for experimental group is 10,58±1,31, and for control group it is 10,75±1,29. table-1. control and ceg group pretest and posttest comparison variables n tests control group cag x±ss z p x±ss z p weight (kg) 12 pre-test 38,58±5,17 -1,604a ,109 36,37±7,65 -2,278a ,023* post-test 38,86±5,29 37,31±8,01 height (cm) 12 pre-test 145,08±12,17 -2,588a ,010** 140,92±13,76 -3,081a ,002** post-test 146,08±12,24 143,67±12,94 bmi 12 pre-test 18,34±1,35 -1,362b ,173 18,19±1,83 -,941b ,347 post-test 18,21±1,25 17,93±1,88 horizontal jump (cm) 12 pre-test 130,83±14,87 -3,069a ,002** 140,50±24,63 -3,065a ,002** post-test 134,92±14,74 146,92±23,24 30m (sec) 12 pre-test 6,08±,47 -1,142a ,253 5,97±,40 -2,199b ,028* post-test 6,10±,47 5,80±,47 push-up (sec) 12 pre-test 10,25±1,54 -,944a ,345 10,44±1,58 -2,040b ,041* post-test 10,24±1,57 9,59±1,40 vertical jump (cm) 12 pre-test 41±5,80 -2,831a ,005** 41±4,55 -2,958a ,003** post-test 42,91±5,76 43,25±4,82 anaerobic power (kg/sec) 12 pre-test 547,62±97,47 -2,934a ,003** 516,88±119,69 -2,981a ,003** post-test 564,32±99,07 544,71±127,68 hand grip force right 12 pre-test 18,88±3,47 -3,061a ,002** 19,05±4,66 -3,061a ,002** post-test 20,23±3,85 21,40±4,95 hand grip force left 12 pre-test 16,75±3,31 -3,064a ,002** 18,92±6,63 -3,062a ,002** post-test 17,45±3,12 20,91±7,46 25m free style (sec) 12 pre-test 20,13±2,21 -554b ,580 20,21±2,40 -3,059b ,002** post-test 20,03±2,10 18,85±1,90 50m free style (sec) 12 pre-test 42,19±4,42 -2,353b ,019* 42,33±4,28 -3,059 b ,002** post-test 41,77±4,16 40,25±3,93 (a negative direction, b positive direction *p<0,05, **p<0,01) as can be seen in table 1, in the pretest and posttest comparisons, in all parameters, significant differences are seen (*p<0,05, **p<0,01) except for height, vertical and horizontal jumps, hand grip right and left, anaerobic power and 50 m free style swimming parameters for control group and except for body mass index (bmi) for ceg. table-2. comparison of control and ceg groups pretest and posttest results variables n tests ceg x±ss control group x±ss z p age (year) 12 pre-test 10,75±1,29 10,58±1,31 -,363 ,717 weight (kg) 12 pre-test 36,37±7,65 38,58±5,17 -,808 ,419 post-test 37,31±8,01 38,86±5,29 -,462 ,644 height (cm) 12 pre-test 140,92±13,76 145,08±12,17 -,752 ,452 post-test 143,67±12,94 146,08±12,24 -,347 ,728 bmi 12 pre-test 18,19±1,83 18,34±1,35 -,231 ,817 post-test 17,93±1,88 18,21±1,25 -,346 ,729 horizontal jump (cm) 12 pre-test 140,50±24,63 130,83±14,87 -,983 ,326 post-test 146,92±23,24 134,92±14,74 -1,416 ,157 30m (sec) 12 pre-test 5,97±,40 6,08±,47 -,635 ,525 post-test 5,80±,47 6,10±,47 -1,704 ,088 push-up (sec) 12 pre-test 10,44±1,58 10,25±1,54 -,202 ,840 post-test 9,59±1,40 10,24±1,57 -1,155 ,248 vertical jump (cm) 12 pre-test 41±4,55 41±5,80 -,174 ,862 post-test 43,25±4,82 42,91±5,76 -,289 ,772 anaerobic power (kg/sec) 12 pre-test 516,88±119,69 547,62±97,47 -,866 ,386 post-test 544,71±127,68 564,32±99,07 -,404 ,686 hand grip force right 12 pre-test 19,05±4,66 18,88±3,47 -,058 ,954 post-test 21,40±4,95 20,23±3,85 -,433 ,665 hand grip force left 12 pre-test 18,92±6,63 16,75±3,31 -,809 ,419 post-test 20,91±7,46 17,45±3,12 -1,328 ,184 25m free style (sec) 12 pre-test 20,21±2,40 20,13±2,21 ,00 1,000 post-test 18,85±1,90 20,03±2,10 -1,501 ,133 50m free style (sec) 12 pre-test 42,33±4,28 42,19±4,42 -,115 ,908 post-test 40,25±3,93 41,77±4,16 -,866 ,386 (p>0,05) as can be seen in table 2, no statistically significant difference is seen in the comparison of pretest and posttest of ceg and control group. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 182-185 185 4. conclusion as a results of the study, the group of swimmers aged 9-12 who underwent 8 weeks of low intensity core exercises showed differences compared to pretest and posttest values of control group, even though not statistically significant. due to the fact that in the control group there are no statistically significant differences between the pretest and posttest values of parameters such as weight, 10 sec push up, 30 m running and 25m free style swimming, it is reckoned that control group developed less than the ceg in terms of 10 sec push up, 30 m running and 25m free style swimming. when literature is reviewed, core exercises especially play an important role in the development of motor skills (samson, 2005; samson et al., 2007; ping et al., 2011; saeterbakken et al., 2011; atıcı, 2013; afyon, 2014; afyon and boyacı, 2016; rostami and ghaedi, 2017). however, contradictory results are also seen on their effect on the performance (cissik, 2011; patil et al., 2014). in alignment with the performed study, gönener et al. (2017) found out that core exercises have effects on 100 m swimming performance of male swimmers aged 13-15, with back stroke style and they emphasize that core exercises should be used in groundwork exercises. patil et al. (2014) state that, as a result of the study they carried out with 60 young swimmers with a mean age of 14,2±1,49, 6 weeks of core exercises have effect on 50 m free style swimming (p<0,05). in the literature, effects of core exercises on performance are a topic which has been scarcely studied on (hibbs et al., 2008; martens et al., 2011; patil et al., 2014). however, for other branches there are various studies carried out. yuksel et al. (2016) put forward their effect on hit rates of basketball players and state that this is due to the effect of core exercises on the balance parameter. michael et al. (2005) checked the effects of core exercises on rowers and in alignment with this study, report that there is significant change in vertical jump parameter. bilici and selçuk (2018), as a result of their study performed with female volleyball players aged 14-16, state that 10 weeks of core exercises strengthen jumps and also the central area. aslan (2014) puts forward that there is significant change in non-dominant leg force however core exercises do not affect dominant leg force. even though in ceg’s pretest and posttest comparison, the fact that there was no significant change makes one think that additional core exercises do not statistically affect the development of athletes, it is seen that in-group development of ceg is higher than that of control group both in terms of value and in terms of parameter. as a result, compared to the control group, a 1-2 seconds of decrease – especially when it is a very important amount for this sport – in 25 m and 50 m free style swimming ranks 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=effect%20of%20core%20training%20on%2016%20year-old%20soccer%20players https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20effects%20of%208-week%20core%20training%20on%20the%20development%20of%20some%20motoric%20features%20among%2018%20year-old%20footballers http://dx.doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v13i3.3924 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=evaluation%20of%20the%20effect%20of%20core%20training%20on%20the%20leap%20power%20and%20motor%20characteristics%20of%20the%2014-16%20years%20old%20female%20volleyball%20players http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/jets.v6i4.3031 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20role%20of%20core%20training%20in%20athletic%20performance,%20injury%20prevention,%20and%20injury%20treatment http://dx.doi.org/10.1519/ssc.0b013e3182076ac3 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20effect%20of%208-week%20thera-band%20exercises%20on%20male%20swimmers%20100%20m%20freestyle%20swimming%20performance 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0278-5919(05)70143-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v13i3.4158 309 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 309-318, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.309.318 comparison of the university students in turkey and central asia with regards to their characteristics of thinking, decision making and cognitive closure hasan yilmaz1 1kyrgyz-turkish manas university, faculty of literature, department of educational sciences, kyrgyzstan abstract the aim of this study is to compare the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz university students with regards to their thinking and decision making styles and as well as their cognitive closure. 141 turkish, 69 uzbek and 89 kyrgyz students at the kyrgyz-turkish manas university participated in the study. as the data collection tool, the 15-point version of the thinking styles scale, decision making styles scale and the need for cognitive closure scale were used. the data were examined with the one-way variance analysis and the t2 test of scheffe and tamhane was applied to find the source of the difference in groups where a difference was determined. as a result of the study, significant differences were found between the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz students in 11 of the 13 thinking styles and in 3 of the 5 decision making styles. the highest difference in 3 sample groups was found for the need for cognitive closure. the importance of knowing the thinking and decision making styles of different cultures as a prerequisite for intercultural communication and cooperation was highlighted and some recommendations were made on this matter. keywords: thinking styles, decision making styles, need for cognitive closure. citation | hasan yılmaz (2018). comparison of the university students in turkey and central asia with regards to their characteristics of thinking, decision making and cognitive closure. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 309-318. history: received: 4 july 2018 revised: 11 august 2018 accepted: 30 august 2018 published: 14 september 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 310 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 311 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 312 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 316 5. limitations and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................ 317 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 317 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 317 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.309.318&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1469 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9069-1524 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1469 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9069-1524 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1469 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9069-1524 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 309-318 310 1. introduction two basic distinct features and obligation of being a human are thinking and decision making. either aware or unaware, we think and make decision in every moments of our lives. these decisions may be related to the clothes to put on, the person to marry, the profession or the person to rule a country. shortly, everything we have and the position we are in right now is the result of the decisions we make. the feature of decision making is directly related to the thinking competence. in other words, we are able to make decisions as we are able to think. in this respect, these two features are both interrelated and interdependent. not all thinking ways are healthy, functional and purposeful. the same is valid for the decision making styles. there are many variables affecting thinking and decision making. for a general classification, we can group theses variables to the factors that are related or not related to an individual. individual variables mainly involve our cognitive structure and personal qualities while the most important environmental variables are the social structure and culture that we live and are raised in. our thinking and decision making styles are shaped by the interaction of these two general structures. therefore, we can talk about individual differences as well as cultural differences regarding the thinking and decision making styles. the cultural differences regarding the thinking and decision making styles are a factor that determines the quality and outcomes of the communication and interaction of people living in different cultures. the importance of communication, interaction, agreement, reconciliation and cooperation between countries is ever increasing today and living together in different cultures makes it necessary for the people to know their thinking and decision making styles of each other. this requirement will play an important role for the reduction and solution of the disputes and conflicts between societies in addition to providing benefits in every fields from business to politics and from education to law. 1.1. thinking styles thinking is defined to be the disciplined way of conceptualization, application, analysis and evaluation of the knowledge obtained through observation, experience, intuition, reasoning and other channels. the thinking style is the preferred way of thinking and it is related to our way of using the skills we have (sternberg, 2001). although there are many theories on thinking skills, this study is based on the “theory of mental self-government” by sternberg. recent studies were conducted on the basis of the principles and descriptions of this theory as it is both comprehensive and multidimensional. the theory is based on the principle that every individual has a unique thinking style which can vary by time and according to the life demands. the theory of mental self-government defines 13 thinking styles under 5 dimensions including functions, forms, levels, scopes and leanings. these styles were described with the concepts of legislative, executive, judicial, hierarchic, oligarchic, monarchic, anarchic, global, local, internal, external, liberal and conservative (zhang and huang, 2001). as the thinking styles are effective in every domains of life, the studies on this subject vary too. some of the variables which may involve a relation between thinking and decision making styles include coping with stress (yuan et al., 2017) obesity (nikčević et al., 2017) living quality (kim, 2011) career selection (kim, 2011); (cheng et al., 2011) communication and learning styles (liliweri, 2017). there are several studies on the question whether the thinking styles vary by sex. despite lacking a common result from these studies, it has been observed that the thinking styles are significantly different among men and women in traditional societies while this difference does no longer exist in western societies (aljojo, 2017); (sternberg and cilliers, 2001). there are many previous studies on the relations between the thinking styles and performance. these studies show that different performances are affected by different thinking styles and there isn’t any single thinking style that determines all performance types (yaakobi, 2017). there are also studies which prove that the thinking styles can change by education (jun, 2016). a study by fan et al. (2018) determined that the personality traits explain only a minor part of the thinking styles which are affected significantly by factors other than the personality traits. several researchers that adopt this view conducted studies including intercultural comparisons on thinking styles. however, most of these studies cover the samples in usa, china and japan. the differences in these studies on thinking and decision making styles were evaluated within the context of collectivist and individualist culture. it is argued that the american based western thinking style focuses on individuals and objects and represents the analytical thinking style while the china based eastern thinking style is holistic and focuses on culture and system (torrance and sato, 1979); (qi, 2017); (cherian, 2014). there are also authors with critical approach to the studies on thinking styles. the common idea of these authors is that the subject of thinking styles is mainly addressed by the western researchers and the measurement tools are developed in western cultures which affect the research results. in recent publications, there is a discussion on that the theoretical information on thinking styles is a product of the western culture which limits the ability to discover the universal aspect of the human thinking (lee, 2017); (varnum et al., 2010). 1.2. decision making styles decision making is defined to be a mental process where an idea or action is selected among other options (byrnes, 2002). within this process, our needs, desires, goals, values and life styles are effective and decisive as well as the recognition and definition of the options. ever decision making first involves an uncertainty and every decision involves more or less a risk (lee, 2017). the concept of “decision making styles” was created to explain the differences and variety in decision making process. the decision making styles are used to explain the basics and method in decision making. in other words, decision making style is defined to be the condition where a person has an approach, reaction and action in a decision making condition (spicer and sadler-smith, 2005). there are various theories explaining the decision making styles. this study adopts the “general decision making style” approach by scott and bruce (scott and bruce, 1995). for scott and bruce, the decision making style is a pattern of habit used by individual in decision making (scott and bruce, 1995). these two scientists defined five decision making styles including rational, intuitive, dependant, avoidant and spontaneous and developed the “decision making styles scale” based on these concepts. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 309-318 311 in a study on the students from usa and taiwan (mau, 2000) it was found that the style and self-efficacy for decision making on career are affected by culture. the study found that the decision making styles affected the decision making competency of individuals based on their cultural past. a study conducted in europe 14 years after this one found similar results. in a study within the samples of croatia, slovenia, bosnia herzegovina and hungary to determine the effect of national culture on decision making styles (dabić et al., 2015) it was observed that collectivist approach in decision making was reduced while a tendency towards individualism increased. on the other hand, it was also found that cultural differences had a decisive role on decision making styles. in a study on a sample consisting of german, american, indian, philippine and brazilian individuals (güss and dörner, 2011) the decision making styles of the subjects were observed in a simulation. the study found cultural differences in the decision making strategies of the sample group consisting of the germans, americans and other countries. this was interpreted such that the cognitive processes of people are in integrity with the cultural structure. significant differences were found in the decision making styles in a study which compared the decision making styles of the swedish and german employees within a project group (müller et al., 2008) and the researchers linked these differences to the personality traits and job attitudes of the individuals. 1.3. need for cognitive closure the need for cognitive closure, a concept introduced by kruglanski to the literature, is the need to reach a definitive information instead of chaos and uncertainty on a subject and the desire to make a decision as soon as possible. in other words, it is defined to be the need for orienting towards an answer when an individual has a confusion or uncertainty after facing a situation of decision making or a choice. the motive of individuals to simplify complex information and to avoid uncertainty underlies the need for cognitive closure (kruglanski and webster, 1996). according to kruglanski, some individuals prefer avoiding uncertainty in a condition, closing mental uncertainty (cognitive closure) and having definite, stable and predictable circumstances. these choices increase the need for cognitive closure of an individual (kruglanski and webster, 1996). from this point of view, the need for cognitive closure is a structure that affect people’s way of perceiving the social world. at the same time, the need for cognitive closure reflects an option for certainty and stability, openness and definite rules, definite answers to questions, uncertainty and lack of control. individuals who need the closure dimension of personality tend to adopt stereotype judgments and are less inclined to accept variety. this structure is also related to accept rules, to reduce former beliefs and to accept routine (todor, 2014). individuals who have high need for cognitive closure want to reach fast decision making as soon as possible which also reflect needs for stability. in addition, they find conditions lacking closure to be repulsive and they become disturbed by the uncertainty. finally, they are conservative since they are unwilling for their knowledge to be affected by alternative ideas or inconsistent evidences (roets and hiel, 2011). in a study conducted on the samples of europe, usa and eastern asia in order to test the intercultural invariance of the need for cognitive closure, it was determined that the concept of need for cognitive closure contains the same basic meaning and structure in different cultures and that the need for cognitive closure scale can be used for comparison between countries. the same study also observed that the need for cognitive closure is significantly higher in the samples of usa and korea compared to the samples in netherlands and poland in particular (kossowska et al., 2002). 150 million people with a common history live in a geography extending from anatolia to china. a very intensive relation and cooperation started between turkey and the societies on this geography in every fields particularly after 1991. this cooperation and solidarity are not at a desired level today. the most important reason behind that is the fact that the societies of turkey and central asia do not sufficiently know each other. several social psychology studies are needed in this matter. these studies will contribute greatly to the knowing of the people in these societies who lack sufficient relation and cooperation for centuries and thus to the development of public diplomacy. it is hoped that this study will draw attention to this need and requirement. on the other hand, it is believed that this study will meet this need even slightly. this study intends to determine the differences among the university students of 3 countries with regards to the thinking styles, decision making styles and need for cognitive closure. it has been attempted to find questions to the following questions in line with this general objective. the university students from turkey, uzbekistan and kyrgyzstan; i. in which thinking styles do they have different characteristics? ii. in which decision making styles do they have different characteristics? iii. do they have any difference with regards to the need for cognitive closure? 2. method the study uses descriptive and relational screening method. the thinking styles, decision making styles and cognitive closure characteristics of the university students from kyrgyzstan, uzbekistan and turkey were determined and compared. 2.1. population and sample the general population of the study consists of the university students from azerbaijan, afghanistan, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, mongolia, uzbekistan, tajikistan, turkmenistan and turkey. the study population consists of the students of the kyrgyz-turkish manas university in the academic year of 2017 to 2018. table 1 includes the information regarding the sample selected from the study population. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 309-318 312 table-1. sample of the study country female male total n % n % n % kyrgyzstan 38 31.4 51 28.7 89 29.8 uzbekistan 26 21.5 43 24.1 69 23.1 turkey 57 47.1 84 47.2 141 47.1 total 121 40.5 178 59.5 299 100 2.2. data collection tools three scales were used in the research. first one is the thinking style inventory developed by sternberg and wagner (sternberg and wagner, 1992) on the basis of mental self-government theory. this tool consists of 13 sub scales called as legislative, executive, judicial, hierarchic, oligarchic, monarchic, anarchic, global, local, internal, external, liberal and conservative. each subscale shows the dominant thinking style of an individual and is independent from the other dimensions (fer, 2005). various researchers adapted this scale in turkey. the present study uses the 65-item form adapted by buluş (2006). the alpha values for the 13 subscales of this form were calculated to be .81 while the average values varied between .66 (anarchic) and .93 (monarchic). the alpha values calculated for this research are .76 for legislative, .78 for executive, .76 for judicial, .80 for hierarchic, .83 for oligarchic, .90 for monarchic, .71 for anarchic, .77 for global, .76 for local, .79 for internal, .79 for external, .83 for liberal and .90 for conservative. the second tool used in the study is the decision making styles developed by scott and bruce. the scale measures the individual differences in decision making styles used in approaching the problems in the decision making process. the 25-item original form of the decision making style scale has a structure consisting of five sub dimensions including rational, intuitive, dependant, avoidant and spontaneous decision making styles. the internal consistency coefficients were found to be between .79 and .94 for each sub scale (scott and bruce, 1995). the scale was adapted to turkish by taşdelen (2002). in this adaptation work, the cronbach alpha values of the five sub dimensions of kvsö were found to be .76 for rational decision making, .78 for intuitive decision making, .76 for dependant decision making, .79 for avoidant decision making and .79 for spontaneous decision making. this value was .74 for the all scale with 24 items (taşdelen, 2002). the values calculated for the present study were .78, .80, .75, .82, .82 respectively and .78 for the whole scale. the results show that both scales can provide data with high consistency. the last tool used in the study is the scale for the need for cognitive closure. the scale was developed by kruglanski and webster (1996) and revised by roets and hiel (2011). roets and hiel (2011) proved that the 15item version of the need for cognitive closure scale is identical with the 42-item form. the turkish adaptation of this scale was used in the present study. the goodness of fit values indicate that the five-factor structure of the scale was confirmed for the sample of turkey. in addition, it was observed that the standardized factor load values varied between 0,49 and 0,83. the factor load values of the need for cognitive closure scale are at a desired level. the internal consistency reliability of the scale was calculated to be .85. 2.3. data analysis the data were examined with the one-way variance analysis and the t2 test of scheffe and tamhane was applied to find the source of the difference. the significance level was accepted to be .05. 3. findings 3.1. findings on the thinking styles table 2 includes the results on the scores of the students of three countries with respect to the legislative, executive and judicial thinking styles under the functions dimension. table-2. comparison of the students of three countries with respect to the legislative, executive and judicial thinking styles under the functions dimension variable country n m ss f scheffe test result (source of difference) legislative turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 21.07 17.35 20.04 2.84 3.88 3.45 29.73** turkey-uzbekistan kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan executive turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 19.77 17.16 18.55 3.53 3.45 3.22 13.86** turkey -uzbekistan turkey-kyrgyzstan kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan judicial turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 19.04 16.22 17.84 3.71 3.30 3.51 14.76** turkey-uzbekistan turkey-kyrgyzstan kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan note: ** p < .001 in the legislative thinking style, the average of the sample of turkey is (m = 21.07, ss = 2.84), uzbekistan (m = 17.35, ss = 3.88) and kyrgyzstan (m = 20.04, ss = 3.45). according to the result of the variance analysis, significant difference was found between the three sample groups in the legislative style (f = 29.73; p <.001). according to the scheffe test, it was found that this difference was caused by the sample of “turkey-uzbekistan” and “kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan” (m1-m2 = 3.72). these findings show that the university students of turkey and kyrgyzstan have more legislative thinking style than the uzbek students. turkey has the highest average in the executive dimension (m = 19.77, ss = 2.84) while uzbekistan sample has the lowest average (m = 17.16, ss = 3.45). there is a significant difference between the three groups with respect to the executive thinking style (f = 13.86; p <.000). when we look at the source of the difference, the followings were found: “turkey-uzbekistan (m1-m2 = 2.61)”, “turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1-m3 = 1.22)” and asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 309-318 313 “kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan (m2-m3 = 1.39)”. the university students of turkey have a significant executive thinking style compared to the other two groups. similar results were found in the judicial thinking style (m1 = 19.04; m2 = 16.22 and m3 = 18.03). this scores obtained with regards to this style are significantly different (f = 14.76; p<.000). this difference was based on: turkey-uzbekistan (m1 –m2 = 2.83)”, “turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1-m3 = 1.20)” and “kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan (m1-m3 = 1.62)”. as a result, the sample of turkey is more dominant than the other two groups in the legislative, executive and judicial thinking styles under the functions dimension. table 3 includes the results on the scores of the students from three countries with respect to the hierarchic, oligarchic, monarchic and anarchic thinking styles under the forms dimension. table-3. comparison of the students from three countries with respect to the hierarchic, oligarchic, monarchic and anarchic thinking styles under the forms dimension variable country n m ss f scheffe test result (source of difference) monarchic turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 16.84 16.89 18.85 3.16 2.77 3.42 3.083* turkey-kyrgyzstan hierarchic turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 19.49 16.14 18.80 3.88 3.47 3.45 19.722** turkey-uzbekistan kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan oligarchic turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 15.83 17.00 17.24 3.65 3.28 3.71 4.989* turkey-kyrgyzstan anarchic turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 17.39 16.46 17.08 3.51 3.11 3.73 1.650 * p < .005; ** p < .001 table 3 includes the results of the scores of the students of the three countries with respect to the with respect to the hierarchic, oligarchic, monarchic and anarchic thinking styles under the forms dimension. the averages of the samples of the countries in the monarchic thinking style are as follows: turkey (m1= 16.84, ss = 3.10), uzbekistan (m2 = 17.35, ss = 2.77) and kyrgyzstan (m3 = 18.85, ss = 3.42). according to the result of the variance analysis, significant difference was found between the three sample group (f = 3.083; p <.047). according to the result of the scheffe test, this difference was caused by the samples of “turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1-m3 = -2.01)”. these findings show that the university students of kyrgyzstan have more monarchic thinking style than the sample of turkey. in the hierarchic thinking style dimension, the highest average was found in the sample of turkey (m1 = 19.49, ss = 3.88) and the lowest average was found in the sample of uzbekistan (m3 = 16.14, ss = 3.47). the difference between the three groups with respect to the hierarchic thinking style is significant (f = 19.722; p <.000). when we look at the source of the difference, the followings are found: “turkey-uzbekistan” (m1-m2 = 3.35) and “kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan” (m2-m3 = 2.66). the university students of turkey and kyrgyzstan have more hierarchic thinking style than the students from uzbekistan. in the oligarchic thinking style, the averages are as follows: turkey (m1 = 15.83, ss = 3.65), uzbekistan (m2 = 17.00, ss = 3.28) and kyrgyzstan (m3 = 17.24, ss = 3.71). the scores obtained in this style significantly different (f = 4.989; p <.007). this difference was found to be based on the result that “turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1-m3 = -1.41)”. in the anarchic thinking style, the averages of the students of the three countries were close to each other (m1 = 17.39, ss = 3.51; m2 = 16.46, ss = 3.11; and m3 = 17.08; ss = 3.73). no significant difference was found in the analysis made in this dimension (f = 1.650, p >.05). as a result, it was found that the students from kyrgyzstan had higher average than the other groups in the monarchic thinking style, turkey in the hierarchic thinking style, kyrgyzstan in the oligarchic thinking style and turkey in the anarchic thinking style. the differences were found to be significant in the first three of these dimensions while there was no significant difference among the students of both countries in the anarchic thinking style. table 4 includes results on the scores of the students of the three countries with respect to the global and local thinking styles under the dimensions of levels. table-4. comparison of the students of the three countries with respect to the global and local thinking styles under the dimensions of levels variable country n m ss f scheffe test result (source of difference) global turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 14.66 15.84 16.51 4.64 2.87 3.79 6.05* turkey-kyrgyzstan local turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 16.38 16.59 17.69 4.11 3.11 3.57 3.52* turkey-kyrgyzstan * p < .005; ** p < .001 in the global thinking style under the levels dimension, the averages are as follows: turkey (m1 = 14.66, ss = 4.64), uzbekistan m2 = 15.84, ss = 2.87) and kyrgyzstan (m3 = 16.51, ss = 3.79). the scores obtained with respect to this style have significant differences (f = 6.05; p <.003). this difference was found to be caused by “turkeykyrgyzstan (m1-m3=-1.85)”. among the countries of three countries, the kyrgyz students have the highest average in the local thinking style (m1 = 16.38, ss = 4.11; m2 = 16.59, ss = 3.11 and m3= 17.69, ss = 3.57). the analysis in this dimension showed that the difference was significant asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 309-318 314 (f = 3.52, p <.05). the tamhane test that was applied indicated that the cause of this difference was based on the sample of turkey – kyrgyzstan (m1-m3 = 1.31). as a result, kyrgyzstan had significantly higher scores than turkey in the global and local thinking styles. table 5 includes the results of the students of the three countries with respect to the internal and external thinking styles under the scopes dimension. table-5. comparison of the students of the three countries with respect to the internal and external thinking styles under the scopes dimension variable country n m ss f scheffe test result (source of difference) internal turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 17.80 16.64 18.35 4.00 3.22 3.53 4.27* turkey-uzbekistan uzbekistan-kyrgyzstan external turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 17.03 17.26 18.11 4.08 3.64 3.44 2.30 * p < .005; ** p < .001 in the internal thinking styles in the dimension of scopes, the averages are as follows: turkey (m1 = 17.80, ss = 4.00), uzbekistan (m2 = 16.64, ss = 3.22) and kyrgyzstan (m3 = 18.35, ss = 3.53). the scores obtained with regards to this style have significant difference (f = 4.27; p <.015). this difference was found to be caused by “turkeyuzbekistan” (m1-m2 = 1.16) and “uzbekistan-kyrgyzstan (m2-m3= -1.71)”. in the external thinking style, the averages of the students of the three countries were as follows: (m1 = 17.03; m2 = 17.26 and m3 = 18.11). the analysis in this dimension showed the difference was not significant (f = 2.30, p >.05). as a result, turkish and kyrgyz students had significantly higher scores in the internal thinking style under the scopes dimension. in the external thinking style, there is no significant difference among the three groups of university students. table-6. comparison of the students of three countries with regards to the liberal and conservative thinking styles under the leanings dimension variable country n m ss f scheffe test result (source of difference) liberal turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 18.82 17.49 18.30 4.29 3.23 3.19 2.98* turkey-uzbekistan conservative turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 13.70 16.13 16.91 4.64 3.45 4.20 17.41** turkey-uzbekistan turkey-kyrgyzstan * p < .005; ** p < .001 table 6 includes the results on the scores of the students of three countries with regards to the liberal and conservative thinking styles under the leanings dimension. in the liberal thinking style, the averages of the samples are as follows: turkey (m1= 18.82, ss = 4.29), uzbekistan (m2 = 17.49, ss = 3.23) and kyrgyzstan (m3 = 18.30, ss = 3.19). according to the result of the variance analysis, a significant difference was found among the three sample groups in the liberal thinking style (f = 2.98; p <.048). according to the result of the scheffe test, this difference was caused by the sample of turkey-uzbekistan (m1-m2 = 1.32). these findings show that the university students of turkey have more liberal thinking style than the students from uzbekistan. in the conservative thinking style, the highest averages were found in the students from kyrgyzstan (m3 = 16.91, ss = 4.20) and uzbekistan (m2 = 16.13, ss = 3.45). turkish university students have the lowest average in the conservative thinking style (m1 = 13.70, ss = 4.64). there is a significant difference among the three groups with respect to the conservative thinking style (f = 17.40; p <.000). the source of the difference was found to be caused by “turkey-uzbekistan”(m1-m2 = -2.42) and “turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1-m3 = -3.20). the kyrgyz and uzbek university students have a significantly conservative thinking style. as a result, the sample of turkey has the least conservative thinking style among the three groups of students in the liberal and conservative thinking styles under the dimension of leanings. 3.2. findings on the decision making styles table 7 includes the findings on the comparison of the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz university students with respect to their decision making styles. in reviewing table 7, there are significant differences among the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz students in the rational, avoidant and spontaneous decision making styles among the 5 decision making styles. in the intuitive and dependant decision making styles, no significant difference was found between the three sample groups. in the rational decision making style, turkish students have the highest average (m1 = 20.82, ss = 3.06) followed by the kyrgyz students (m3 = 19.80, ss = 3.54). it was found that the uzbek students have the lowest average among the three groups (m2 = 17.64, ss = 4.16). a significant difference was found among the three groups with respect to the rational decision making style (f = 19.229, p < .000). it is understood that this difference arises from the sample of turkey and uzbekistan (m1-m2 = 3.18) and the sample of uzbekistan and kyrgyzstan (m2-m3 = -2.16). in the avoidant decision making style, the kyrgyz students have the highest average (m3 = 16.29, ss = 4.11). in this style, the averages of the kyrgyz students and the uzbek students are very close to each other (m2 = 15.97, ss = 4.20). turkish students have the lowest average (m1 = 12.47, ss = 5.24). there is a significant difference among the three groups (f = 22.907, p <.000). this significance is caused by the sample of turkey – uzbekistan (m1-m2 = -3.49) and the sample of turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1-m3 = -3.82). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 309-318 315 table-7. comparison of the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz university students with respect to their decision making styles variable country n m ss f scheffe test result (source of difference) rational decision making turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 20.82 17.64 19.80 3.06 4.16 3.54 19.229** turkey-uzbekistan uzbekistan-kyrgyzstan intuitive decision making turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 18.95 17.84 18.34 4.38 3.63 3.64 1.928 dependant decision making turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 13.81 13.71 14.12 3.32 3.43 3.35 .416 avoidant decision making turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 12.47 15.97 16.29 5.24 4.20 4.11 22.907** turkey-uzbekistan turkey-kyrgyzstan spontaneous decision making turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 13.71 15.64 15.46 4.49 4.53 4.06 5.114* turkey-uzbekistan turkey-kyrgyzstan * p < .005; ** p < .001 totally similar case was found in the spontaneous decision making style. the turkish sample has the lowest score in this style (m1 = 13.71, ss = 4.49). kyrgyz students (m3 = 15.46, ss = 4.06) and uzbek students (m2 = 15.64, ss = 4.53) have very close averages. significant differences were found among the three groups with respect to spontaneous decision making (f = 5.114, p < .000). this difference is caused by the by the sample of turkey – uzbekistan (m1 m2 = -1.93) and the sample of turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1 – m3 = -1.74). as a result, it was observed that the rational, avoidant and spontaneous decision making styles of the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz students were different. the turkish university students have more rational decision making style and less spontaneous decision making style than the other two groups. it was observed that the students from kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan have similar qualities with respect to the avoidant and spontaneous decision making styles. 3.3. findings on the need for cognitive closure table 8 includes the findings on the comparison of the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz university students with respect to cognitive closure. in the simplest explanation, cognitive closure is defined to be the need to reach a definitive information instead of chaos and uncertainty in a certain subject, and the motive to simplify knowledge and to avoid uncertainty in a decision making condition. cognitive closure is the variable with the most difference among the three groups in the study. the sample of turkey has the lowest average in the sub dimension of preference for order and structure (m1 = 11.93, ss = 3.05) while kyrgyzstan has the highest average (m3 = 13.12, ss = 3.16). in this dimension, it was found that the scores of the turkish, kyrgyz and uzbek students are significantly different (f = 5.76, p <.05). this difference is caused by the samples of turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1 – m3 ,= -1.19) and the sample of turkey-uzbekistan (m1 – m2 = -1.16). the university students from kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan didn’t have any difference in the preference for order and structure dimension of cognitive closure. table-8. comparison of the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz university students with respect to cognitive closure variable country n m ss f scheffe test result (source of difference) preference for order and structure turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 11.93 13.09 13.12 3.05 2.65 3.16 5.760* turkey – uzbekistan turkey – kyrgyzstan desire for predictability turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 9.77 11.97 12.64 2.40 3.04 2.86 35.302** turkey – uzbekistan turkey – kyrgyzstan decisiveness turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 11.95 13.30 14.08 2.41 2.77 2.45 20.745** turkey – uzbekistan turkey – kyrgyzstan discomfort with ambiguity turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 12.18 10.72 14.06 2.63 1.77 3.15 32.215** turkey – uzbekistan turkey – kyrgyzstan kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan close-mindedness turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 9.05 13.04 12.04 2.95 2.92 3.49 46.787** turkey – uzbekistan turkey – kyrgyzstan cognitive closure total turkey uzbekistan kyrgyzstan 141 69 89 54.89 62.13 65.98 10.54 10.52 12.20 29.247** turkey – uzbekistan turkey – kyrgyzstan * p < .005; ** p < .001 similar results were obtained in the dimension of the desire for predictability. in this dimension, turkish students have the lowest average (m1 = 9.77, ss = 2.40) and the kyrgyz students have the highest average (m3 = 12.64, ss = 2.86). in the dimension for the desire for predictability, the average of the uzbek students is (m2 = 11.97, ss = 3.04). the scores in this dimension varied significantly (f = 35.301, p <.05). the source of the difference is the sample of turkey-uzbekistan (m1m2 = -2.20) and the sample of turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1 – m3 = -2.88). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 309-318 316 in the dimension of decisiveness, kyrgyz students have the highest average (m3 = 14.08, ss = 2.45) and the turkish students have the lowest average (m1 = 11.95, ss = 2.41). the average of the uzbek students is between the two other groups (m2 = 13.30, ss = 2.77). the difference was found to be significant (f = 20.745, p <.05) and caused by the samples of turkey-uzbekistan (m1 – m2 = 1.35) and turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1 – m3 = 2.13). no significant difference was found between the dimension of decisiveness among the students of kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan. ** in the dimension of discomfort with ambiguity, the kyrgyz students have the highest average (m3 = 14.06, ss = 3.15). the average of the turkish students in this dimension is (m1 = 12.18, ss = 2.63). uzbek students have the lowest average (m2 = 10.72, ss = 1.77). there is a significant difference in the dimension of discomfort with ambiguity among the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz students (f = 32.215, p < .05). the cause of the difference is the sample of turkey-uzbekistan (m1 – m2 = 1.46), the sample of turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1 – m3 = -1.88) and the sample of kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan (m3 – m2 = 3.35) in the dimension of close-mindedness, uzbek students have the highest average (m2 = 13.04, ss = 2.92) and the turkish students have the lowest average (m1 = 9.05, ss = 2.95). the average of the kyrgyz students is (m3 = 12.04, ss = 3.49). in the dimension of close-mindedness, there is a significant difference between the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz students (f = 46.787, p < .05). the cause of the difference is the sample turkey and uzbekistan (m1 – m2 = -3.99) and the turkey-kyrgyzstan (m1 – m3 = -2.99). the evaluation on the total scores in the need for cognitive closure supports the explanations above. kyrgyz students have the highest need for cognitive closure (m3 = 65.98, ss = 12.20). turkish students have the lowest need for cognitive closure (m1 = 54.89). the average of the uzbek students from the total of the scale is (m2 = 62.13, ss = 10.52). this difference was found statistically significant (f = 29.247, p < .000). the source of the difference was found the be the sample of turkey-uzbekistan (m1 – m2 = -7.24) and the sample of turkeykyrgyzstan (m1 – m3 = 11.07). no significant difference was found in the sample of kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan. as a result, kyrgyz students have higher averages of cognitive closure in the dimensions of preference for order and structure, desire for predictability, decisiveness and discomfort with ambiguity. uzbek students have higher averages in the dimension of close-mindedness. the university students from turkey are observed to be the group with the lowest need for cognitive closure. 4. discussion thinking, decision making and cognitive closure are the features that have a multidimensional effect on every aspects of our lives. these three concepts are effective for both problem solution and problem creating in individual and social lives. knowing the characteristics of the individuals and social groups with respect to thinking, decision making and cognitive closure will support every kinds of communication and cooperation as well as leading to healthier evaluation of people and societies for each other resulting in less conflict and more cooperation. this study compares the thinking and decision making styles and cognitive closure qualities of the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz university students and found significant differences among the students of these three societies that are accepted to be geographically and culturally close to each other. in eleven of the thirteen thinking styles, there are difference between the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz students. no difference was found among them only in the anarchic and external thinking styles. differences were found in three of the five decision making styles where there was no differences in the intuitive and dependent decision making styles. the biggest difference among the turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz university students was observed in the field of cognitive closure. no difference was found between the uzbek and kyrgyz students in the all of the dimensions of cognitive closure i.e. preference for order and structure, desire for predictability, decisiveness and close mindedness as well as in the total score of the scale. the only difference between these two groups was in the dimension of discomfort with ambiguity. on the other hand, there are significant differences between the turkish and uzbek students and between the turkish and kyrgyz students. the need for cognitive closure is the highest among the kyrgyz students and the lowest in the turkish students. this study on the thinking styles was based on the theory of self-government. based on the explanations of the thinking styles of the theory (garcia and hughes, 2000; zhang and huang, 2001; bernardo et al., 2002; balkis and isiker, 2005; fer, 2005). turkish, uzbek and kyrgyz students were revealed to have the following characteristics. turkish university students have characteristics of creating, formulating, planning, respecting rules, following instructions, evaluating different views and opinions, analysing, dealing with multiple objectives, being systematic, trying new methods and being innovative. it can be said that the kyrgyz university students prefer to have their minds deal with one single matter and to focus on it. the basic thinking qualities of the kyrgyz students are found to be dealing with general and abstract thoughts rather than details, doing the works alone, using the usual methods and disfavouring changes. uzbek university students were not found to have a style where they have higher scores than the other two groups in any of the 13 thinking styles. when we compare the thinking styles among the uzbek students, they have higher scores in liberal thinking and lowest scores in global thinking. the section of the study for decision making styles was based on the approach of scott and bruce (1995). in reviewing within this theoretical framework, turkish university students prefer choosing the optimum alternative after making searches and examination on the circumstance to be decided. kyrgyz university students have the tendency to get away from the decision and to avoid the decision making responsibility. uzbek students have the tendency to make spontaneous decisions based on the current conditions. the dimension of cognitive closure is the section with most difference. the students from three cultures were found to be differenced in all sub dimensions of the need for cognitive closure. this difference was found to be the most between the turkish university students and the other students, either from kyrgyzstan or uzbekistan. the need for cognitive closure determines whether the individual facing a choice has a quality based or alternative based information seeking style (kruglanski and webster, 1996). individuals with need for cognitive closure of different levels use different strategies for information search. some individuals choose searching for more options, while others choose to decide immediately even if they have less knowledge (hiel and mervielde, 2005). the need asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 309-318 317 for cognitive closure is defined to be choice by a person facing a decision for any option instead of ongoing uncertainty. when we look at the results of the study based on this theoretical foundation, turkish university students have the lowest need for cognitive closure. no difference was observed between the kyrgyz and uzbek students with respect to cognitive closure. turkish university students have significantly lower scores from the uzbek and kyrgyz students in all sub dimensions of the need for cognitive closure. on the other hand, uzbek and kyrgyz students are different from each other only in the dimension of discomfort with ambiguity. there are several studies on the need for cognitive closure including intercultural comparisons. these studies mainly cover the samples of korea, china, japan and america where researchers argue that cognitive closure cannot be associated with eastern culture or western culture (yeonyeob, 2011); (mannetti et al., 2002) while some researchers argue that the difference in cognitive closure is based on the impact of the eastern and western cultures on the individual (guess, 2004); (zhang, 2002). several researchers in the literature argued that the cultural expectations and values are represented in the mind of an individual and guiding in thinking and selecting the decision making strategies (emamipour and esfandabad, 2013; oliveira and nisbett, 2017). many previous studies attempted to reveal the differences between cultures. most studies were on the samples of america, japan and china. majority of these studies found that the thinking and decisions processes of individuals were affected by the individual and collectivist values. again, in many of these studies, it was reported that the asian thinking styles are not realistic but superficial and dependant while the western societies have deep, critical and independent thinking styles (zhang, 2002; emamipour and esfandabad, 2013). there have been criticisms recent years on the studies that look for a difference between cultures on thinking and decision making. while the reliability of the studies conducted by the measurement tools drafted in the western culture is questioned (tipandjan, 2010) it was emphasized that the analytical thinking style observed in the western cultures cannot be referred to be a superiority and that the dialectical or holistic thinking styles which are more common in the asian societies have also many superior sides (oliveira and nisbett, 2017). it was argued that analytical thinking may be useful for science and daily life but dialectical thinking may also lead to more correct results or more useful decisions than analytical thinking (oliveira and nisbett, 2017). our study also adopts the view that each thinking style may have strong sides and useful functions for problem solving. what matters is that the individuals have knowledge about the thinking and decision making styles of each other during an intercultural contact. this will support communication and cooperation while reducing conflicts. therefore, it is believed that the thinking and decision making styles of different cultures should be taught to students in schools. on the other hand, there are studies in increasing numbers that emphasize that the thinking and decision making styles and the cultural effects on these styles are dynamic, not static and change in time (emamipour and esfandabad, 2013). it was found that the legislative, judicial, monarchic, hierarchic, external and liberal thinking styles were significantly reduced among the students between 2000 and 2011. 5. limitations and recommendations the study has three important limitations. first, the study is limited with 3 countries. the asian countries other than these three countries are out of the scope of the study. secondly, the age group where the thinking styles, decision making styles and need for cognitive closure were examined is 18-25. individuals out of this age group is excluded. thirdly, all of the sample group consists of the university students. those who are not university students are out of the scope of the study. it is recommended that the further studies on the subject should have a scope which eliminates these limitations. individuals who will migrate to other countries to study or work should have an orientation training even for a short period regarding the thinking styles and decision making styles of the society they will visit. the number of young people who visit other cultures for education purposes increases rapidly. there should be courses in the preparatory class or the first year of the multicultural education institutions which include learning a new culture and cultural differences. an education program to be drafted by unesco aiming to increase intercultural knowledge, tolerance, rapprochement and empathy should be included in the curriculum of countries. having experimental model rather than descriptive model in the studies to be conducted on intercultural thinking and decision making will contribute to obtaining results with high consistency in such studies. in this scope, there should be more studies which involve direct observation of the thinking styles and decision making styles by introducing people from different cultures into certain problem conditions. 6. conclusion a certain thinking style or decision making style is not better or worse than the other. there are even circumstances and positions where individuals with high need for cognitive closure are advantageous. what matters is that people from different cultures who need to live together or have relation with each other should have knowledge about their thinking styles and decision making styles of each other. this knowledge will increase the cooperation and efficiency 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10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.137.145 the effect of the training program to promote the knowledge and awareness of prospective preschool teachers on emotional neglect and abuse mehmet kanak1  neslihan avcı2 ( corresponding author) 1cumhuriyet university, education faculty, turkey 2gazi university, gazi education faculty, turkey abstract the aim of the study was to investigate the effect of the “ training program to promote the knowledge and awareness of prospective preschool teachers” developed to promote the knowledge and awareness of prospective preschool teachers concerning emotional neglect and abuse. the study group comprised a total of 120 prospective teachers (60 prospective teachers in the experimental group and 60 prospective teachers in the control group) attending cumhuriyet university, faculty of education, department of preschool education in 2014-2015 school year. the pre-test post-test-follow up-test experimental model was used in the study. the “emotional neglect/abuse knowledge and awareness scale” was used to assess the knowledge and awareness of prospective teachers on emotional neglect and abuse, “the training program to promote the knowledge and awareness of prospective preschool teachers” was administered to the experimental group whereas the control group received no administration. in data analysis, ttest for related samples was used in pre-test and post-test, and post-test and follow up test comparisons, while a single factor anova with repeated measures was performed for pre-test, post-test and follow up test multiple comparison. research results revealed a significant difference in favor of the experimental group between the post-test scores of the participants in the experimental and control groups with regard to rejection and ignoring, insulting and exposing the child to violence, isolation and threatening, comparison and discrimination subscales of the “emotional neglect/abuse knowledge and awareness scale” (p<.05). furthermore, the results of the follow up test administered four weeks after the post-test showed that the effect of the training was still retained (p>.05). in accordance with these results, it was concluded that the research affected prospective teachers’ knowledge and awareness levels of emotional neglect and abuse. keywords: emotional neglect, emotional abuse, awareness, prevention, child. citation | mehmet kanak; neslihan avcı (2018). the effect of the training program to promote the knowledge and awareness of prospective preschool teachers on emotional neglect and abuse. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 137-145. history: received: 24 august 2016 revised: 1 september 2016 accepted: 26 september 2016 published: 4 april 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 138 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 138 3. data analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................. 140 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 140 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 144 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 144 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.137.145&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3583-5545 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=neslihan avcı https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3583-5545 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=neslihan avcı https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3583-5545 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=neslihan avcı asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 137-145 138 1. introduction emotional abuse in educational settings is a repetitive harmful interaction between teacher and student. teachers' emotionally abusive behaviors include shouting to make students cry, offending or hurting them, and calling them idiot or stupid (okoza et al., 2011). emotional neglect and abuse can lead to several pathologies in children depending on their age and period of development (yavuzer, 1992). the effect of emotional violence on students’ learning is indisputable (okoza et al., 2011). thus, teachers should be informed about child abuse through in-service training during and after their university education and trained to recognize abused children (şahin and beyazova, 2001). walsh et al. (2005) investigated australian teachers’ education in child neglect, abuse, and protection and reported that 7% of 254 teachers did not receive training in the subject. in a study conducted in turkey, tugay (2008) found that 93.8% of 400 teachers received no training in the subject. can-yaşar et al. (2014) reported that 85.73% of preservice teachers were not informed of the child protection law and 39.01% were not confident of defining the manifestations of physical abuse. they also reported that among the preservice teachers involved in the study group, those studying preschool teacher education took the class “child neglect and abuse” as an elective course; however, those studying other fields (classroom, social studies, and turkish language teaching) did not receive any training in the subject. pala (2011) noted that 91.2% of preservice teachers lacked education about child neglect and abuse. erol (2007) analyzed the level of awareness of physical abuse in teachers working in preschool institutions and argued that teachers were insufficient to detect child abuse symptoms. accordingly, she recommended informing and training preschool teachers through central and local in-service training activities organized by the ministry of national education and provincial directorates of national education. in a similar vein, sahin and taşar (2012) noted the necessity to initiate preventive actions through formal educational programs. they also argued that a new program suitable for turkey had to be designed using foreign examples proven to be effective. it is the primary prevention activities that should first be undertaken to prevent child abuse. primary prevention activities are organized for students, parents, and school staff children interact with in school settings (bolen, 2003). teachers can recognize any difference better because they see children together with their peers. for example, an experienced teacher informed of child abuse takes care of any scar or bruise on a student’s face or body and investigates what happened to him or her. such a teacher can also observe changes in a student’s behavior including withdrawal, unhappiness, malaise, lack of attention, aggression, bad temper, and poor school performance. a teacher observing any problem can create a suitable environment to allow a student to open up. thus, this teacher can contribute to finding useful solutions for such students (şahin and beyazova, 2001). teachers occupy crucial roles in educating parents of their students and other individuals to raise the society’s awareness of child abuse (şahin and beyazova, 2001). tugay (2008) noted that 98.3% of teachers lacked training in the subject and thus, had to be informed of child neglect and abuse through in-service training. such training for teachers will help raise not only teachers’ awareness but also students’ and parents’ awareness. a teacher finding a chance for self-evaluation will take care not to hold an abusive position, unwittingly though. thus, “child-friendly teachers” informed of the protection and non-violation of children's rights will act responsibly to safeguard their rights. preservice teachers can be helped to become child-friendly teachers through preservice awareness-raising educational activities. pala (2011) emphasizes that children spend most of their time with teachers after their family; therefore, teachers should be assisted in the issue of child neglect and abuse through preservice and in-service training as from their early education. can-yaşar et al. (2014) recommend fostering teachers’ awareness of child neglect and abuse through preservice training activities. pre-school teachers play major roles in preventing child neglect and abuse and promoting children’s social and emotional development through daylong activities and training programs. there are informationand awareness-raising activities aiming to prevent child abuse and neglect; however, there is a lack of supportive educational programs specifically designed for emotional abuse. 1.1. research purpose this study aims to analyze the effectiveness of the “training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse” developed to foster preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse and to help them become child-friendly teachers. in line with this main purpose, this study seeks an answer to the following sub-research problems. 1.2. sub-problems 1. does the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse have an effect on preservice teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse? 2. does the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse have a permanent effect on preservice teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse? 2. methodology this study analyzes the effect of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse. to this end, it employs a pre-test post-test control group design that requires measurement in control group and experimental groups before and after the training. the dependent variable of the study is “preservice preschool teachers’ level of knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect/abuse” and the independent variable is “the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse”. as noted by karasar (2006); pala (2011) the research design can be represented as follows: asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 137-145 139 eg: experimental group undergoing the training program to promote pre service preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect/abuse. cg: control group r: random sampling of subjects o1 and o3: pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group (receiving the training) o2 and o4: pre-test and post-test scores of the control group (not receiving the training) o5: retention test scores of the experimental group (receiving the training) x1: the independent variable applied to the experimental group (the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse) the presence of pre-tests in a pre-test post-test control group design helps determine the level of pre-test similarity between groups and accordingly correct post-test results. in this model, pre-test and post-test results are combined to determine the extent to which “x” is effective (karasar, 2006). 2.1. the study group for the training program to promote pre service preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse this study uses the concepts training group and non-training group to refer to the study group instead of experimental and control groups due to ethical rules that should be considered in studies with people. among 153 pre service teachers in the study group, 120 pre service teachers willing to participate in the study were involved in the second phase of the study. 120 participants were equally divided into two groups (each involving 60 participants) to reflect a similar distribution of scores. table-1. demographical data of the participants in the study group for the training program to promote pre service preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse variables subcategories training group * non-training group* f % f % sex female 51 85 49 81,6 male 9 15 11 18,4 age 21 and under 44 78,3 50 83,3 22 16 26,7 8 13,4 23 2 3,3 as seen in table, 85% participants in the training group are female and 15% are male. 81.6% participants in the non-training group are female and 18.3% are male. considering the age distribution of participants in the training group, 1.7% are 20 years old, 76.7% are 21, and 26.7% are 22. considering the age distribution of participants in the non-training group, 3.3% are 20 years old, 80% are 21, 13.3% are 22, and 3.4% are 23. 2.2. data collection tools the data was using the “knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect/abuse scale (kaens)”. as a result of the exploratory factor analysis (efa), the kaens reached a structure consisting of 4 sub-scales and 38 items. this measurement tool was designed as vignettes (short scenarios). as a result of the varimax rotation, the cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated 0.82 for the total scale and 4 sub-scales the training program employed in this study is designed to foster preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse they often encounter in daily life and in educational settings. before the development of the program, a need analysis was conducted and preliminary data was collected to design activities based on preservice teachers’ views. the research participants hold the view that current debate techniques they previously did not have the opportunity to implement would keep program involvement alive. the program primarily involves the most demanded active learning methods and techniques such as four corners, mock court, socratic method, letter invitation, and speech circle. the training program aiming to promote preservice teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse involves 37 objectives and 169 acquisitions in total. after the program was presented to three child development and education specialists and one program • preliminary • literature search • creating content titles • creating objectives and acquisitions • designing activities • expert opinion • review and edit pre-test post-test retention test eg r o1 x1 o3 o5 cg r o2 o4 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 137-145 140 development specialist to deliver their opinions, it was given the final shape. the program was applied to three different groups through focus-group interviews for nine weeks. each week’s session involves three activities and the average time allocated for each activity is 50 minutes. the program was applied to the participants in the training group (focus groups) for a period of two months. 3. data analysis spss 20 software was used to analyze the data collected through the “knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect/abuse scale (kaens)”. to determine the statistical method to be used for testing the effectiveness of the “training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse”, the normality distributions were first examined. for this purpose, histograms with skewness-kurtosis values and normal distribution curve were drawn (büyüköztürk, 2009). considering the pre-test and post-test scores of the non-training group and the pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the training group on the “knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect/abuse scale (kaens)”, the skewness value ranges from -1.105 to -932 and the kurtosis value ranges from .862 to .360 for the non-training group; the skewness value ranges from -1.114 to -1.358 and the kurtosis value ranges from .378 to 1489 for the training group; and the skewness value is -873 and the kurtosis value is .107 for the retention test. the fact that these values are within the accepted range of -2 – +2 shows the normal distribution of the data (büyüköztürk, 2009). parametric statistical methods were used assuming that the distribution is normal based on the skewnesskurtosis values. the independent samples t-test was performed to determine whether there is a difference in pretest scores of the training and non-training groups on the “knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect/abuse scale (kaens)”. in order to determine the difference in the pre-test and post-test scores of both the training and non-training groups, the “difference score” was calculated by subtracting the pre-test scores from the post-test scores to check the effect of the pre-test scores on the final test. the difference scores were compared using t-test. the paired sample t-test was performed to analyze the pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the participants in the training group. one-way anova for repeated measures was used to statistically support the results in multiple comparisons. this technique tests whether there is a statically significant difference in the mean scores of two or multiple related measurement sets (büyüköztürk, 2002). prior to the analysis, the assumption of homogeneity of variances was tested. as the assumption was not met, the degree of freedom was adjusted by the epsilon value and anova f values were used. the e psilon values were less than 0.75 [ɛ< 0.75]. based on this conclusion, the results of the bonferroni multiple comparipost-test and greenhouse-geisser correction are included in the anova table (can, 2014). 4. results and discussion the following results were found in the study investigating the effect of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse:  tables show the t-test and anovaresults of the mean pre-test, post-test and retention test scores obtained by the training and non-training groups on the “knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect/abuse scale (kaens)”. 4.1. the results of the pre-test scores of the participants in training and non-training groups on the kaens this study seeks answer to the question “is there a significant difference in the pre-test scores of the training and non-training groups on the “knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect/abuse scale (kaens)” before the implementation of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse. the independent samples t-test was performed to compare the mean pre-test scores of training and nontraining groups. table-2. participant’s kaens pre-test scores sub-scale group n ̅ ss sd t p rejection and ignorance training non-training 60 60 6,42 6,25 ,512 ,856 118 1,351 ,179 humiliation and witnessing the child training non-training 60 60 6,33 6,08 ,508 ,856 118 1,916 ,058 isolation and threatening training non-training 60 60 5,85 5,89 ,508 ,841 118 -,263 ,793 comparison and discrimination training non-training 60 60 6,03 5,87 ,574 ,829 118 1,254 ,212 kaens total training non-training 60 60 6,15 6,01 ,344 ,638 118 1,447 ,151 p>,05 as seen table 2, there is no statistically significant difference in the mean pre-test scores obtained by the training and non-training groups on the kaens’ sub-scale ri [t(118)=1.351, p>.05], the sub-scale hwc [t(118)=1.916, p>.05], the sub-scale it [t(118)=-.263, p>.05], the sub-scale cd [t(118)=1.254, p>.05], and the total kaens [t(118)=1.447, p>.05]. considering the pre-test scores of the training and non-training groups on the total kaens and the subscales, the mean scores of the participants in both groups are close. this result indicates that the participants in the training and non-training groups have similar traits before the implementation of the training program. in a pretest post-test control group research designs, pre-test scores of experimental and control groups should be close asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 137-145 141 (kaptan, 1998). the closeness of the pre-test scores of the experimental (training) and control (non-training) groups is important for the effectiveness of the training program. the pre-test study identifies preservice teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse. as this study has no intention to give a comment on preservice teachers’ current level of knowledge and awareness, it involves no indication that their level is low or high. 4.2. the results of the effect of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse this study seeks an answer to the question “is there a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test scores of the training group on the kaens after the implementation of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse. the comments on the effectiveness of the training program will be presented as a whole after the tables and figures. the paired sample t-test was used to analyze whether there is a significant difference in the pre-test and posttest scores of the training group. table-3. comparison of the mean pre-test and post-test scores of the training group on the kaens sub-scale group n ̅ ss sd t p rejection and ignorance pre-test post-test 60 60 6,42 6,88 ,512 ,174 59 -7,165 ,000 humiliation and witnessing the child pre-test post-test 60 60 6,33 6,84 ,508 ,188 59 -7,123 ,000 isolation and threatening pre-test post-test 60 60 5,85 6,81 ,508 ,178 59 -14,710 ,000 comparison and discrimination pre-test post-test 60 60 6,03 6,74 ,574 ,292 59 -8,423 ,000 kaens total pre-test post-test 60 60 6,15 6,82 ,344 ,173 59 -13,727 ,000 p<,001 as seen in table 3, there is a statistically significant difference in the mean scores obtained by the training group on the kaens’ sub-scale ri [t(59)= -7.165 p<.001], the sub-scale hwc [t(59)=-7.123, p<.001], the subscale it alt [t(59)=-14.710, p<.001], the sub-scale cd [t(59)=-8.423, p<.001], and the total kaens [t(59)=13.727, p<.001]. the difference in the mean pre-test and post-test scores of the training group on the total kaens and sub-scales was found significant for the post-test. table-4. comparison of the mean pre-test and post-test scores of the non-training group on the kaens sub-scale group n ̅ ss sd t p rejection and ignorance pre-test post-test 60 60 6,25 6,41 ,856 ,474 59 -1,703 ,094 humiliation and witnessing the child pre-test post-test 60 60 6,08 6,05 ,890 ,787 59 ,258 ,798 isolation and threatening pre-test post-test 60 60 5,89 5,91 ,841 ,897 59 -,146 ,884 comparison and discrimination pre-test post-test 60 60 5,87 5,86 ,829 ,863 59 ,133 ,895 kaens total pre-test post-test 60 60 6,01 6,05 ,638 ,528 59 -,398 ,692 p>,05 as seen in table 4, there is no statistically significant difference in the mean scores obtained by the nontraining group on the kaens’ sub-scale ri [t(59)=-1.703, p>.05], the sub-scale hwc [t(59)=.258, p>.05], the sub-scale it [t(59)=-.146, p>.05], the sub-scale cd [t(59)=.133, p>.05], and the total kaens [t(59)=-.398, p>.05]. table-5. comparison of the participants’ post-test scores on the kaens sub-scale group n mean dif. ss sd t p rejection and ignorance training 60 0,46 ,498 101,346 2,479 ,015** nontraining 60 0,16 ,766 humiliation and witnessing the child training 60 0,51 ,504 118 3,680 ,000* nontraining 60 -0,33 1,002 isolation and threatening training 60 ,958 ,504 84,479 6,195 ,000* nontraining 60 ,020 1,059 comparison and discrimination training 60 ,710 ,652 118 5,525 ,000* nontraining 60 -0,13 ,776 kaens total training 60 ,669 ,377 94,110 6,492 ,000* nontraining 60 ,033 ,657 *p<,001 **p<,05 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 137-145 142 as seen in table 5, there are statistically significant differences in the mean post-test scores obtained by the training and non-training groups on the kaens’ sub-scale ri [t(101.346)=2.479, p<.05], the sub-scale hwc [t(118)=3.680, p<.001], the sub-scale it [t(84.479)=-6.195, p<.001], the sub-scale cd [t(118)=5.525, p<.001], and the total kaens [t(94.110)=6.492, p<.001]. these differences are in favor of the training group. as seen in the table, it is expected that the mean scores of the training group on the total kaens and subscales are higher than those of the non-training group and this difference is significant in the total scale and subscales. according to the research findings, the participants in the training group obtained higher scores than those in the non-training group. thus, it seems that the “training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse” fosters the participants’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse. the literature search indicates several studies reporting similar results. hebert et al. (2001) administered a child sexual abuse prevention program to 133 children of first to third grades and found that children involved in the prevention program showed greater preventive knowledge and skills compared to children not participating. according to ko and merith (2001) high school students attending the school-based abuse prevention program showed a visible increase in the level of knowledge about abuse concepts. peterson et al. (2003) reported that participants, after the child maltreatment prevention program reduced their use of spanking and violence towards children and lessened their unrealistic and dangerous beliefs about children by increasing their use of temperate discipline and skills. these results show that such preventive interventions have both cognitive (beliefs) and behavioral (spanking and violence) effects. campbell and wigglesworth (2005) argue that teachers can properly perform their role in detecting abuse only when they are equipped with the relevant skills. they highlight the importance of in-service training in child protection for teachers noting that teachers’ knowledge of the indicators of child abuse was reasonably good after the training. walsh et al. (2005) reported that 93% of teachers received training in child abuse and after this training they assumed responsibility to report suspicions of child abuse although they did not feel confident of defining neglect and abuse. in a critical study on the impact of prevention programs, macmillan et al. (2005) hold the view that prevention programs have positive outcomes but are not very effective in domestic physical abuse, neglect and crime. their view disagrees with the results of this study. sarı (2010) reported a significant decrease in the potential abuse scores of the experimental group after the training. this result was associated with the effectiveness of the implemented training program. the likelihood of child abuse and violence has declined significantly and these training activities are tremendously useful to children. çeçen-eroğul and kaf-hasırcı (2013) administered a sexual abuse prevention psychoeducation program to elementary school fourth-grade students and proved the effectiveness of the program through the higher scores of children attending program compared to those not attending. uçar (2014) noted that the training program designed based on a cognitive process approach was effective in helping participants acquire the skill to prevent sexual abuse. these research results comply with the present study that finds a positive change in the total kaens and subscale scores after the training and indicates the effectiveness of the training program. preservice teachers’ high level of participation in activities using the mock court and socratic seminar techniques and their oral feedbacks have a considerable role in the effectiveness of the program. among the main features of the training program, the balanced distribution of the activities seems to positively contribute to the active participation of preservice teachers in the program and to the effectiveness of the program. it is also an expected result that there is no visible difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of participants in the non-training group. this result was influenced by the fact that participants in the non-training group receive no training in or information on child abuse within the scope of their undergraduate education simultaneously with this experimental research. 4.3. the results of the permanence of the effectiveness of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse table-6. comparison of the post-test and retention tests scores of the training group on the kaens sub-scale group n ̅ ss sd t p rejection and ignorance post-test retention 60 60 6,88 6,87 ,174 ,171 59 1,125 ,265 humiliation and witnessing the child post-test retention 60 60 6,84 6,83 ,188 ,216 59 ,905 ,369 isolation and threatening post-test retention 60 60 6,81 6,81 ,178 ,188 59 ,173 ,864 comparison and discrimination post-test retention 60 60 6,74 6,73 ,292 ,278 59 ,565 ,574 kaens total post-test retention 60 60 6,82 6,80 ,173 ,160 59 1,145 ,257 p>,05 as seen in table 6, there is no statistically significant difference in the mean scores obtained by the training group on the kaens’ sub-scale ri [t(59)=1.125, p>.05], the sub-scale hwc [t(59)=.905, p>.05], the sub-scale it [t(59)=.173, p>.05], the sub-scale cd [t(59)=.565, p>.05] the total kaens [t(59)=1.145, p>.05]. the results show that the effect of the program is retained. according to the results of the retention test performed four weeks after the post-test, the “training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse” administered to the training group has a permanent effect. the literature includes a limited volume of research on the retention of informative training in abuse. leventhal (2001) investigated the effectiveness of preventive interventions and argued that parental programs asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 137-145 143 including home visits were useful for families due to their effects lasting for many years. çeçen-eroğul and kafhasırcı (2013) noted that the arising change was retained according to the follow-up study conducted eight weeks after the experimental program. these research results support the result of the present study indicating the permanent effect of the training program. the use of everyday life examples in the program seems to be influential the permanence of participants’ increased level of knowledge and awareness. 4.4. the anova results of the effectiveness and retention of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse tables 7 and 8 show the results of one-way anova for repeated measures as a more powerful statistical method used to statistically support t-test results for the multiple comparisons of the mean pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the participants in the training group. table-7. distribution of the pre-test, post-test, retention scores of the training group sub-scale group n ̅ ss rejection and ignorance pre-test 60 6,42 ,512 post-test 60 6,88 ,174 retention 60 6,87 ,171 humiliation and pre-test 60 6,33 ,508 witnessing the child post-test 60 6,84 ,188 retention 60 6,83 ,216 isolation and threatening pre-test 60 5,85 ,508 post-test 60 6,81 ,178 retention 60 6,81 ,188 comparison and pre-test 60 6,03 ,574 discrimination post-test 60 6,74 ,292 retention 60 6,73 ,278 kaens total pre-test 60 6,15 ,344 post-test 60 6,82 ,173 retention 60 6,80 ,167 p>,05 table-8. anova results of the pre-test, post-test, retention scores of the training group 1 pre-test, 2 post-test, 3 retention as seen table 8, there is a significant difference in the mean pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the training group on the kaens’ sub-scale ri (f=46.726; p<0.05). according to the results of bonferroni multiple comparipost-test to determine from which test scores this difference stems, there is a significant difference between the mean pre-test and post-test scores and between the mean pre-test and retention test scores of the training group. however, there is no statistically significant difference between the mean post-test and retention scores. there is also a significant difference between the mean pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the training group on the kaens’ sub-scale hwc (f=49.434; p<0.05). the results of bonferroni multiple comparipost-test indicate a significant difference between the mean pre-test and post-test scores and between the mean pre-test and retention test scores of the training group. however, there is no statistically significant difference between the mean post-test and retention scores. there is also a significant difference between the mean pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the training group on the kaens’ sub-scale it (f=194.158; p<0.05). according to the results of bonferroni multiple comparipost-test, there is a significant difference between the mean pre-test and post-test scores and between the mean pre-test and retention test scores of the training group. however, there is no statistically significant difference between the mean post-test and retention scores. there is also a significant difference between the mean pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the training group on the kaens’ sub-scale cd (f=67.441; p<0.05). the results of bonferroni multiple comparipostsub-scale source sum of square sd mean square f p mean dif.* conditions 8,548 59 ,145 rejection and subjects 8,286 1,036 7,998 46,726 ,000 2-1, 3-1 ignorance error 10,463 61,127 ,171 total 27,297 121,163 conditions 8,014 59 ,136 humiliation and subjects 10,171 1,071 9,496 49,434 ,000 2-1,3-1 witnessing the error 12,140 63,193 ,192 child total 30,325 123,264 conditions 8,121 59 ,138 isolation and subjects 36,609 1,119 32,722 194,158 ,000 2-1,3-1 threatening error 11,125 66,008 ,169 total 55,855 126,127 conditions 11,901 59 ,202 comparison and subjects 19,657 1,235 15,922 67,441 ,000 2-1,3-1 discrimination error 17,197 72,839 ,236 total 48,755 133,074 conditions 4,744 59 0,080 total subjects 17,583 1,080 16,283 187,040 ,000 2-1,3-1 error 5,546 63,711 0,047 total 27,873 123,791 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 137-145 144 test indicate a significant difference between the mean pre-test and post-test scores and between the mean pre-test and retention test scores of the training group. however, there is no statistically significant difference between the mean post-test and retention scores. there is also a significant difference between the mean pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the training group on the total kaens (f=187.040; p<0.05). according to the results of bonferroni multiple comparipost-test, there is a significant difference between the mean pre-test and post-test scores and between the mean pre-test and retention test scores of the training group. however, there is no statistically significant difference between the mean post-test and retention scores. as a result of the one-way anova for repeated measures, a significant difference is expected in the mean pretest, post-test and retention test scores of the training group. it is an expected result that this difference occurs between the mean pre-test and post-test scores and between the mean pre-test and retention test scores since it indicates that the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse is effective and its effect is permanent. accordingly, the aforediscussed results of the total scale and sub-scales confirm that the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse is effective and permanent. 5. conclusion this study conducted to analyze the effect of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse has found the following: there is a significant difference in the mean pre-test scores of the training group and non-training group. there is also a significant difference in the mean pre-test and post-test scores of the training group. there is no significant difference in the mean pre-test and post-test scores of the non-training group. there is a significant difference in the mean post-test scores of the training group and non-training group. there is no significant difference in the mean post-test and retention test scores of the training group. according to the results of one-way anova for the multiple comparisons of the pre-test, post-test and retention test scores, there is no significant difference in the scores. there is a significant difference in the pre-test, post-test and retention test scores of the training group on the total scale. according to the results of bonferroni multiple comparipost-test, there is a significant difference between the mean pre-test and post-test scores and between the mean pre-test and retention test scores of the training group. however, there is no statistically significant difference between the mean post-test and retention scores. 5.1. suggestions all in all, the study analyzing the effect of the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse has found a post-training increase in the training group’s level of knowledge and awareness compared to the non-training group. this results evidence the effectiveness of the training program administered to the training group. according to the results of the retention test conducted on the training group four weeks after the post-test, the training program seems to have a permanent effect. the present study has revealed that preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse can be fostered through the training program. when preservice preschool teachers are aware of emotional neglect and abuse, it is a major step in preventing abuse at an early age. accordingly, this study offers the following suggestions:  the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse can be provided to in-service teachers working in schools affiliated to the ministry of national education.  the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse can be introduced in faculties of education in universities. the training program can be generalized to preservice teachers of other branches besides preservice preschool teachers and administered within the scope of a course.  this study uses a pre-test, post-test and retention test control group design and further research can employ a single group design.  the training program to promote preservice preschool teachers’ knowledge and awareness of emotional neglect and abuse can be adapted for parents and further research can investigate the effect of the training program on parents. references bolen, r.m., 2003. child sexual abuse: prevention or promotion? social work, 48(2): 174-185. view at google scholar büyüköztürk, ş., 2002. manual of data analysis for social sciences. 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20effectiveness%20of%20home%20visitation%20by%20public%20health%20in%20prevention%20of%20the%20reccurnence%20of%20child%20physical%20abuse%20and%20neglecet:%20a%20randomised%20controlled%20trial https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=sex%20and%20class%20of%20secondary%20school%20students%20in%20experiencing%20emotional%20abuse%20by%20teachers%20in%20edo%20state,%20nigeria,%20pertanika https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=multilevel%20selected%20primary%20prevention%20of%20child%20maltreatment http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.71.3.601 246 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 246-249, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.246.249 the analysis of teacher candidates’ self-sufficiency about their teaching abilities at different departments levent var1 1university of kirsehir ahi evran, school of physical education and sports, kirsehir, turkey abstract self-sufficiency is an individual’s perception of his/her ability and skills to overcome various possible situations. this study aims to analyze self-sufficiency about their teaching abilities of teacher candidates studying at different departments at university of kırşehir ahi evran. the research groups consists of 244 teacher candidates who study classroom teaching, mathematics teaching and turkish language teaching at faculty of education and physical education and sports teaching, coaching education and sports management at school of physical education and sports and attend a teaching formation program. mean age of the students participating in the study is x =22.52. spss 22.0 package program for windows was used for descriptive and one-way anova analysis, and the level of significance was taken as 0.05. when self-sufficiency points of different departments are analyzed, it can be observed that students of physical education had the highest point as 93.09±24.07, while students of classroom teaching had the lowest point as 58.64±14.03. keywords: teacher candidate, teaching, self-sufficiency. citation | levent var (2018). the analysis of teacher candidates’ self-sufficiency about their teaching abilities at different departments. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 246-249. history: received: 22 june 2018 revised: 4 july 2018 accepted: 6 july 2018 published: 12 july 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 247 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 247 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 247 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 248 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 249 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.246.249&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8089-0610 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8089-0610 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 246-249 247 1. introduction the notion of self-sufficiency belief is related to an individual’s thoughts and perceptions of him/herself (bandura, 1982). in other words, it can be expressed as an individual’s belief in their ability to control themselves against difficult tasks and their own practices (luszczynska et al., 2005). an individual’s confidence in his/her future and belief in his/her own self-sufficient is an important factor in terms of attaining professional success. in addition, such belief and confidence will play an important role in an individual’s own capacity to face and solve problems in various areas of their professional education and business lives (yilmaz et al., 2010). lewitt (2001) argues that a teacher’s beliefs and perceptions about teaching, learning and students will enable him/her to maintain a certain attitude and affect his/her behaviors. thus, self-sufficiency belief comes to the forefront as one of the most important aspects in teacher training (pajares, 1996). individuals with a higher level of self-sufficiency belief are assumed to offer solutions to their problems more easily (blumenfeld et al., 1991). teacher self-sufficiency belief is defined as a teacher’s perception of his/her capacity and skills in terms of reaching intended results for student commitment and learning (tschannen-moran and woolfolkhoy, 2001). it is acknowledged that a teacher’s self-sufficiency belief in teaching heavily influences his/her teaching performance (brownell and pajares, 1999). a teacher’s competence is directly related to his/her teaching practices and a high self-sufficiency belief (rimn-kaufman et al., 2004). a teacher candidate’s perception of his/her confidence in his/her teaching competence increases the expectations about their future competence. on the other hand, a perception of low performance increases their confidence in their competence, and thus results in an expectation of unsuccessful performance in the future (atici, 2001). in addition, teacher self-sufficiency directly influences education quality (chan, 2008). 2. material and method 2.1. research group the research groups consists of 244 teacher candidates who study classroom teaching, mathematics teaching and turkish language teaching at faculty of education and physical education and sports teaching, coaching education and sports management at school of physical education and sports and attend a teaching formation program at university of kırşehir ahi evran. mean age of the students participating in the study is x =22.52. 2.2. data collection tools the data of this study were collected from students study in spring semester in 2017-2018. a data collection tool consisting of personal information form (pif) and teacher competence expectation inventory (tcei) were voluntarily filled by students during class breaks. prior to these sessions, the researchers informed the students about the scales in these forms. 2.2.1. personal information form (pif) a personal information form was prepared in order to obtain personal information from teacher candidates studying at different departments at university of kırşehir ahi evran. this form aimed at collecting data about various properties that were considered important about students’ self-sufficiency levels in teaching. 2.2.2. teacher competence expectation inventory (tcei) in this study, “teacher competence expectation inventory (tcei)” consisting of 38 articles and developed for yok/world bank national education development project in 1998 was used in order to determine selfsufficiency levels of teacher candidates studying at classroom teaching, mathematics teaching and turkish language teaching at faculty of education and physical education and sports teaching, coaching education and sports management at school of physical education and sports about their teaching abilities (tekkursun, 2015). 2.3. statistical analyses spss 22.0 package program for windows was used for descriptive and one-way anova analysis, and the level of significance was taken as 0.05. 3. findings table-1. descriptive statistics of the study variables n % mean age x±sd classroom teaching 50 20.5 22.70±1.12 mathematics teaching 51 20.9 21.60±0.96 turkish language teaching 50 20.5 22.71±1.96 physical education teaching 31 12.7 22.96±2.00 coaching education 30 12.3 22.86±1.40 sports management 32 13.1 22.68±1.85 total 244 100 22.52±1.61 the percentage of each department participating in the study is 20.5% for classroom teaching (n=50), 20.9% for mathematics teaching (n= 51), 20.5% for turkish language teaching (n=50), 12.7% for physical education teaching (n=31), 12.3% for coaching education (n=30) and 13.1% for sports management (n=32). mean age of the students participating in the study is x =22.52±1.61. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 246-249 248 table-2. self-sufficiency points of all departments faculty/school departments n x±sd faculty of education mathematics 51 76.45±15.63 turkish language 50 73.30±18.01 classroom teaching 50 58.64±14.03 school of physical education and sports total physical education teaching 31 93.09±24.07 coaching education 30 83.76±18.23 sports management 32 65.25±24.16 244 73.70±21.43 when the self-sufficiency points of all departments participating in the study are analyzed, it can be noted that students at physical education teaching had the highest level with 93.09±24.07, while students at classroom teaching had the lowest level with 58.64±14.03. table-3. comparison of self-sufficiency points of students studying at school of physical education and sports and faculty of education department department mean difference p physical education teaching classroom 34.45677* .000*** mathematics 16.64579* .002** turkish language 19.79677* .000*** coaching education classroom 25.12667* .000*** mathematics 7.31569 .531 turkish 10.46667 .151 sports management classroom 6.61000 .623 mathematics -11.20098 .087 turkish -8.05000 .402 **p<0.01 ***p<0.001 when self-sufficiency points of students studying at school of physical education and sports and faculty of education are compared, a significance level of .000 (p<0.001) was found between students at physical education teaching and classroom teaching and turkish language teaching, and between students at coaching education and classroom teaching. table-4. self-sufficiency points based on different departments at school of physical education and sports department department mean difference p physical education teaching coaching education 9.33011 .271 sports management 27.84677* .000*** coaching education physical education teaching -9.33011 .271 sports management 18.51667* .007** sports management physical education teaching -27.84677* .000*** coaching education -18.51667* .007** **p<0.01 ***p<0.001 when self-sufficiency points of students studying at different departments of school of physical education and sports are compared, a significance level of .000 (p<0.001) was found between students at physical education teaching and sports management. 4. discussion this study was conducted to determine self-sufficiency of teacher candidates studying at different departments, and it was found out that students of physical education had the highest perception of self-sufficiency as 93.09±24.07, while students of classroom teaching had the lowest perception of self-sufficiency as 58.64±14.03. although this may be associated with different factors, it is reasonable to assume that students of physical education teaching are more sociable and, thanks to sport, have a higher confidence in their self-sufficiency compared to other departments. similar to the findings in the present study, tekkursun (2015) reported a high level of self-sufficiency among students of physical education teaching participating in his study, and concluded that teacher candidates viewed themselves as competent enough to fulfill their own profession. seker et al. (2005) demonstrated in their findings that teacher candidates did not consider themselves, their lecturers and classmates as self-sufficient about their teaching abilities. it was also reported that female teacher candidates regarded themselves as more self-sufficient compared to their male classmates. no significant difference was found between perceptions of self-sufficiency in teacher candidates studying at social sciences and science/mathematics teaching departments. twenge and campbell (2008) too, focuses on self-sufficiency in their study. unlike this study, however, it was indicated in this study that high school students in 2006 had a much lower self-perception point compared to high school students in 1975. in addition, the findings suggested that self-sufficiency levels did not increase from one generation to the other, whereas there was an increase in self-expectations. yenilmez and kakmaci (2008) in a similar vein, attempted to determine levels of self-sufficiency belief in teacher candidates studying at primary school mathematics teaching departments, and reported that their level of asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 246-249 249 self-sufficiency belief was high when it comes to issues that students could fulfill with their own efforts, while this level was lower for issues for which they needed other individuals’ help. kaldi (2009) carried out a study to determine teacher candidates’ perception of self-sufficiency and their feelings and stress during classes, and observed that teacher candidates felt themselves competent enough to start teaching and that their levels of general teaching techniques were above average. this study also concluded that teacher candidates needed to improve their positive teaching experiences and efficient teaching capacities. jennings and greenberg (2009) developed a model that underlines the importance of teachers’ social and emotional competence (sec) in class environment. this model improves the interaction between teacher and students, and provides an efficient class management and a successful social and emotional learning environment. in addition, it contributes to students’ positive learning and development in class environment. because selfsufficiency occupies an important position in teaching as a profession, similar programs must be definitely used by teachers. kafkas et al. (2010) analyzed self-sufficiency levels of teacher candidates study at physical education teaching and suggested that students of physical education teaching be compared with students at other departments of faculty of education. in this respect, the present study was conducted among teacher candidates studying at school of physical education and sports and faculty of education. the findings of the present study and similar above-mentioned articles demonstrate that a high level of selfsufficiency belief bears importance in a teacher candidate’s self-confidence, efficiency and success in his/her profession. therefore, further studies are needed to shed light on self-confidence and social activity levels of teacher candidates in various departments as well as their self-sufficiency levels. references atici, m., 2001. teacher competence. educational administration: theory and practice, 26: 195209. bandura, a., 1982. self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. american psychologist, 37(2): 122-147. view at google scholar | view at publisher blumenfeld, p., e. soloway and r.a. marx, 1991. motivating project based learning: sustaining the doing, supporting the learner. educational psychologist, 26(3-4): 369-398. view at google scholar | view at publisher brownell, m.t. and f. pajares, 1999. teacher efficacy and perceived success in mainstreaming students with learning and behav ior problems. teacher education and special education, 22(3): 154-164. view at google scholar | view at publisher chan, d.w., 2008. general, collective, and domain specific teacher self-efficacy among chinese prospective and in-service teachers in hong kong. teaching and teacher education, 24(1): 1057-1069. view at google scholar | view at publisher jennings, p.a. and m.t. greenberg, 2009. the prosocial classroom: teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. review of educational research, 79(1): 491-525. view at google scholar | view at publisher kafkas, m.e., m. acak, b. coban and t. karademir, 2010. investigation of the relationship between preservice physical teachers’ sense of self efficacy and professional concerns. inonu university journal of the faculty of education, 11(2): 93-111. view at google scholar kaldi, s., 2009. student teachers' perceptions of self-competence in and emotions/stress about teaching in initial teacher education. journal educational studies, 35(3): 349-360. view at google scholar | view at publisher lewitt, k.e., 2001. an analysis of elementary teachers’ belief regarding the teaching and learning of science. science educat ion, 86(1): 1-22. view at google scholar | view at publisher luszczynska, a., b. gutiérrez-doña and r. schwarzer, 2005. general self-efficacy in various domains of human functioning: evidence from five countries. international journal of psychology, 40(2): 80-89. view at google scholar | view at publisher pajares, f., 1996. self-efficacy beliefs in academic settings. review of educational research, 66(4): 543-578. view at google scholar | view at publisher rimn-kaufman, s., e. sara and b. sawyer, 2004. primary grade teachers selfefficacy belief, attitudes towards teaching, and discipline and teaching practice priorities in relation to the responsive classroom approach. elementary school journal, 104(4): 321-341. view at google scholar | view at publisher seker, h., s. deniz and i. gorgen, 2005. prospective teachers’ assessment of teacher competencies. educational administration : theory and practice, 42(11): 237-253. view at google scholar tekkursun, g., 2015. analyses of self-efficacy of physical education teacher candidates (gazi university and kafkas university sample). master thesis. gazi university, institute of educational sciences. tschannen-moran, m. and a. woolfolkhoy, 2001. teacher efficacy: capturing an elusive construct. teaching and teacher education, 17(7): 783-805. view at google scholar | view at publisher twenge, j.m. and w.k. campbell, 2008. birth-cohort changes in anticipated performance, self-satisfaction, self-liking, and self-competence, assosiation of social science. psyological social science, 19(11): 1082-1086. view at google scholar yenilmez, k. and o. kakmaci, 2008. the level of self-effıcacy beliefs at students at elementary mathematics education department. eskisehir osmangazi university social sciences journal, 9(2): 1-21. yilmaz, g., b. yilmaz and n. turk, 2010. over-graduate thesis physical education and sports teacher's self efficacy of their jobs (nevsehir city model). selcuk university journal of physical education and sport science, 12(2): 85–90. view at google scholar asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=over-graduate%20thesis%20physical%20education%20and%20sports%20teacher's%20self%20efficacy%20of%20their%20jobs%20(nevsehir%20city%20model) 380 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 380-390, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.380.390 examination of the aggression levels of physical education and sport school students mehmet yildirim1  oktay çoban2 ( corresponding author) 1,2university of yozgat bozok, school of physical education and sports, yozgat, turkey abstract the purpose of this research is to determine the level of aggression of students in different departments of physical education and sports school and to compare the aggression levels according to some demographic characteristics. the universe of your research is to constitute students who study in different departments of bozok university physical education and sports school in 2017-2018 academic years. the sample of the research consists of a total of 300 students who are identified by random sampling technique among the students studying in different departments at bozok university physical education and sports school in 2017-2018 academic year. survey method was used in the research. information on the demographic characteristics of the students was obtained through the "personal information form". information on how to determine the level of aggression of the students was obtained with the "buss perry aggression scale". the obtained data were transferred to the spss 18 software program for statistical analysis. frequency analysis, percentage analysis, arithmetic mean, t test, anova analysis and post hoc tests were used in analyzing the data. as a result of the analyzes; statistically significant differences were found between aggression levels of students according to age, education department and monthly expenditure variables (p <0.05). there were no statistically significant differences according to gender, shelter status, maternal employment status, mother education level, father education level and sibling number (p> 0.05). keywords: aggression, sport, student. citation | mehmet yildirim; oktay çoban (2018). examination of the aggression levels of physical education and sport school students. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 380-390. history: received: 2 july 2018 revised: 6 august 2018 accepted: 10 september 2018 published: 29 october 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 381 2. material and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 381 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 382 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 387 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 389 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.380.390&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9707-6540 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2863-8754 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9707-6540 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2863-8754 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9707-6540 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2863-8754 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9707-6540 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2863-8754 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 380-390 381 1. introduction aggression can be generally defined as an individual’s or group’s behaviors that aims to harm others (doğan and moralı, 1999). according to baron and byrne (1994) aggression involve deliberate behaviors that result in physically and psychologically harmful effects. aggression was also interpreted as an external sign of anger which tries to destroy an object or an individual (cliford, 1986). it is possible to mention aggression or aggressive behaviors when an individual displays behaviors that aim to directly or indirectly damage a living organism (peter and beyer, 1997) which may also be related to instrumental and emotional reasons (krishnaveni and shahin, 2014). according to bryant and mcelroy (1997) causes of aggressive behaviors can be categorized into three groups. the first group is instinctual (biological cause) aggression, which suggests that all people have aggressive traits and their oppressed energy can be relieved via different activities. the second group consists of disappointment and aggression (psychological cause), which argues that an individual may display aggressive behaviors because of disappointment and frustration. finally, the last group is learned behavior (sociological cause), which maintains that a person is not innately aggressive and aggression emerges as a result of socialization (bandura et al., 1963). buss (1961) divided aggression into three dimensions as a) physical or verbal aggression b) active or passive aggression and c) direct or indirect aggression. while pushing and pulling, oppressing, hitting, biting are given as examples of physical aggression, hurting someone’s feelings and psychological state through verbal communication is considered as verbal aggression. active aggression is a goal-oriented behavior, and the aggressor aims to hurt victim’s feelings or cause suffering. on the other hand, passive aggression, which is the opposite of active aggression, aims to prevent somebody from achieving their goals rather than giving them active damage. direct aggression is observed when an individual tries to directly send harmful stimuli that would provoke or irritate others, while indirect aggression results from sending harmful stimuli through hints (walker and richardson, 1998). buss and perry concluded that physical, verbal and indirect aggression involved behaviors that “hurt or damage an individual” and stated that these aggression types represented the behavioral component of aggression. anger involved “physiological stimulation and preparation for aggression” and represented emotional component of aggression. finally, hostile aggression involved “mercilessness and unfairness” and represented cognitive component of aggression (felsten and hill, 1999). a systematic approach at a psychological and social level may be adopted to minimize aggression, irrespective of its degree (krishnaveni and shahin, 2014). aggressive emotions and behaviors can be reduced thanks to anger management and role model applications. aggressive and angry behaviors have become an important social problem, which definitely require early intervention for an effective solution. in this respect, it is of vital importance to develop programs addressing children, adolescents and young adults. programs aiming the prevention of aggression may contribute to students’ healthy development and help them easily cope with various problems, particularly prior to or during early adolescence. such programs will also provide them with a more successful character, which will pave the way for a highly qualified and peaceful society. the present study aims to determine levels of aggression among students at different departments at school of physical education and sports and compare their levels of aggression based on some demographic features to offer solutions. within this framework, the following research questions will be answered: what are the levels of aggression among students at different departments at school of physical education and sports?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of gender?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of age?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of residence type?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of academic department?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of mother’s employment status?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of mother’s education level?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of father’s education level?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of monthly expenses?  is there a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of number of siblings? 2. material and methods the population, sample, data collection tools and data analysis of the present study are given in this section. 2.1. the population and sample of the study the population of the present study is comprised of students at different departments at school of physical education and sports at university of yozgat bozok during 2017-2018 academic year. the sample is comprised of 300 students who were selected using convenience sampling method among students at different departments at school of physical education and sports at university of yozgat bozok during 2017-2018 academic year. 2.2. data collection tools questionnaire, which is a primary source research, was used as a data collection tool to conduct the present study due to its cost-effectiveness, feasibility and suitability for collecting information from dispersed and large asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 380-390 382 masses within a short time. a personal information form was used to identify students’ demographic features. finally, “buss-perry aggression scale” was used to determine students’ views on aggressive behaviors. 2.2.1. buss perry aggression scale buss perry aggression scale (buss and perry, 1992) is a five-point likert type scale (1absolutely inappropriate, 2slightly inappropriate, 3slightly appropriate, 4appropriate 5absolutely appropriate) consisting of four sub-dimensions (physical aggression, anger, hostility and verbal aggression) and 29 items. the scale was adapted to turkish context and tested for its reliability and validity by madran (2012). it measures four different sub-dimensions of aggression listed as physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility. in this questionnaire, 9 questions (13, 8, 2, 11, 25, 16, 29, 22, 5) are asked in the sub-dimension of physical aggression to measure the tendency to give physical damage to others, 5 questions are asked (27, 6, 21, 14, 4) in the sub-dimension of verbal aggression to measure the tendency to hurt others verbally, 7 questions (19, 28, 1, 18, 9, 23, 12) are asked in the sub-dimension of anger to measure emotional aspect of aggression, and, finally, 8 questions (20, 24, 3, 7, 26, 10, 15, 17) are asked in the sub-dimension of hostility to measure cognitive aspect of aggression. 9th and 16th items in this scale are reverse coded. in turkish version of buss perry aggression scale, cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was calculated as 0.85 for the whole scale, while it was calculated as 0.78, 0.48, 0.76 and 0.71 for physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility sub-dimensions, respectively (madran, 2012). on the other hand, in the present study, cronbach alpha value was calculated as 0.90 for the whole scale. in addition, it was calculated as 0.79, 0.60, 0.76 and 0.75 for physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility sub-dimensions, respectively. a reliability coefficient ranging between .70 and .90 indicates a high level of reliability (bagozzi and yi, 1988; nunnally and bernstein, 1994). therefore, it is evident that the scale is acceptable in terms of internal reliability coefficients. 2.3. data analysis the data obtained from the present study was analyzed using spss 18 statistics program. first, a normality test was performed to test the suitability of the dataset. frequency, percentage and arithmetic means analysis were used to identify students’ demographic features in order to analyze data. in addition, cronbach alpha was used to test scale reliability, t test and anova analysis were used to determine differences between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of demographic variables, and, finally, post hoc (tukey, tamhane 2) tests were used depending on the variance homogeneity. table-1. buss perry aggression scale reliability coefficient buss perry aggression scale cronbach alpha physical aggression 0.79 verbal aggression 0.60 anger 0.76 hostility 0.75 total reliability 0.90 2.3.1. normality test prior to statistical analysis of the data obtained from study group, they must be prepared for analysis. to this aim, researchers must pay attention to kurtosis and skewness coefficients (simşek, 2007). skewness coefficient is 0 in the normal distribution. a negative skewness coefficient indicates a right-skewed distribution while a positive skewness coefficient indicates a left-skewed distribution. similarly, kurtosis coefficient is 0 in the normal distribution. a positive kurtosis coefficient indicates a leptokurtic distribution, while a negative kurtosis coefficient indicates a platykurtic distribution (http 1). because kurtosis and skewness coefficients vary between (+-2 and +-7), it can be stated that the data display a normal distribution (west et al., 1995; sencan, 2005; simşek, 2007). it was found out in the present study that skewness and kurtosis coefficient values related to the data of the present study vary between -0.011/1.103 and 0.121 / -1.355, respectively. these results demonstrate that the data display a normal distribution, and parametric tests were used in the statistical analysis. 3. findings demographic features of students participating in the study are given in table 2. table 2 demonstrates that 169 male (56.3%) and 131 female (43.7%) students participated in the study. while 265 students (88.3%) are aged between 18 and 22, 28 of them (9.3%) are between 23 and 27, and 7 of them (2.3%) are 28 and over. in terms of residence types, 37 students (13.3%) live with their families, 14 students (4.7%) lives with their relatives, 179 students (59.7%) live at dormitory, 22 students (7.3%) live with a flat mate, and 48 students (16.0%) live alone. while 100 students (33.3%) study physical education and sports teaching, 150 (50.0%) students study coaching education and 50 students (16.7%) study sports management. when employment status of students’ mothers is analyzed, it can be observed that 31 mothers (10.3%) are employed, whereas 269 mothers (89.7%) are non-employed. as for mother’s education level, 37 students’ mothers (12.3%) were illiterate, 141 students’ mothers (47.0%) graduated from primary school, 69 students’ mothers (23.0%) graduated from secondary school, 43 students’ mothers (14.3%) graduated from high school, and 10 students’ mothers (3.3%) graduated from university. as for father’s education level, 13 students’ fathers (4.3%) were illiterate, 96 students’ fathers (32.0%) graduated from primary school, 81 students’ fathers (27.0%) graduated from secondary school, 84 students’ fathers (28.0%) graduated from high school, and 26 students’ fathers (8.7%) graduated from university. in terms of monthly expenses, 22 students (7.3%) spend 250 and less, 85 students (28.3%) spend between 251 and 500 tl, 77 students (25.7%) spend between 501 and 750 tl, 49 students (16.3%) spend between 751 and 1000 tl, and 67 students (22.3%) students spend over 1000 tl. while 221 students (73.7%) have 1 to 3 sibling(s), 58 students (19.3%) have 4 to 6 siblings, and 11 students (3.7%) have 7 to 10 siblings. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 380-390 383 table-2. demographic features of students n % gender male 169 56.3 female 131 43.7 age 18-22 265 88.3 23-27 28 9.3 28 and over 7 2.3 type of residence with family 37 12.3 with relatives 14 4.7 at dormitory 179 59.7 with (a) flat mate(s) 22 7.3 alone 48 16.0 academic department physical education and sports teaching 100 33.3 coaching education 150 50.0 sports management 50 16.7 mother’s employment status employed 31 10.3 non-employed 269 89.7 mother’s education level illiterate 37 12.3 primary school 141 47.0 secondary school 69 23.0 high school 43 14.3 university 10 3.3 father’s education level illiterate 13 4.3 primary school 96 32.0 secondary school 81 27.0 high school 84 28.0 university 26 8.7 monthly expenses 250 tl and less 22 7.3 251 tl – 500 tl 85 28.3 501 tl – 750 tl 77 25.7 751 tl – 1000 tl 49 16.3 1001 tl and more 67 22.3 number of siblings no siblings 10 3.3 1-3 sibling(s) 221 73.7 4-6 siblings 58 19.3 7-10 siblings 11 3.7 mean total aggression scale scores based on the answers given in the questionnaire are given in table 3. table-3. mean total aggression scale scores aggression scale n minimum maximum mean standard deviation 300 33.00 131.00 78.22 20.03 when table 3 is analyzed, it can be noted that the minimum and maximum aggression scale scores were 33 and 131, respectively, and mean score was 78.22. mean aggression scale scores based on different sub-dimensions of the scale are given in table 4. table-4. mean total aggression scale scores based on different sub-dimensions sub-dimensions of buss perry aggression scale n mean score standart deviation physical aggression 300 2.56 .832 verbal aggression 300 2.78 .752 anger 300 2.74 .845 hostility 300 2.75 .822 it can be observed in table 4 indicates the highest aggression sub t test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of gender are given in table 5. table-5. t test findings related to mean total aggression and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of gender gender n mean score sd t p physical aggression male 169 2.63 .790 1.650 .100 female 131 2.47 .880 verbal aggression male 169 2.82 .754 1.280 .202 female 131 2.71 .749 anger male 169 2.67 .832 -1.698 .091 female 131 2.83 .855 hostility male 169 2.71 .835 -.855 .393 female 131 2.79 .805 mean total aggression scores male 169 78.30 19.79 .077 .939 female 131 78.12 20.42 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 380-390 384 it can be understood from table 5 that no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of gender (p>.05). anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of age are given in table 6. table-6. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of age df f p physical aggression between groups 2 3.168 .044* within groups 297 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 2 1.760 .174 within groups 297 total 299 anger between groups 2 6.493 .002** within groups 297 total 299 hostility between groups 2 3.446 .033* within groups 297 total 299 mean total aggression scores between groups 2 4.791 .009** within groups 297 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 it can be understood from table 6 that significant differences were observed among mean total aggression scores and in the sub-dimensions of physical aggression, anger and hostility in terms of age (p<.05). multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of age are given in table 7. table-7. multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of age age mean difference standard error p physical aggression 28 and over 18-22 23-27 -.78 -.82 .31 .34 .036 .048 anger 28 and over 18-22 23-27 -1.09 -.89 .31 .35 .002 .035 hostility 28 and over 18-22 -.74 .31 .048 meantotal aggression scores 28 and over 18-22 23-27 -23.25 -21.07 7.57 8.36 .007 .033 according to table 7, a statistically significant difference was found between students aged 28 and over and those aged between 18-22 and 23-27 when it comes to the sub-dimensions of physical aggression and anger as well as mean total aggression scores (p<.05). this difference is in favor of those aged between 18-22 and 23-27. in the sub-dimension of hostility, statistically significant differences were found between students aged between 28 and over and those aged between 18 and 22 (p<.05). this difference is in favor of those aged between 18 and 22. aggression level of students aged 28 and over is lower. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of residence type are given in table 8. table-8. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of residence type df f p physical aggression between groups 4 .755 .555 within groups 295 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 4 .794 .530 within groups 295 total 299 anger between groups 4 1.453 .217 within groups 295 total 299 hostility between groups 4 .752 .558 within groups 295 total 299 mean total aggression scores between groups 4 1.055 .379 within groups 295 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 it can be understood from table 8 that no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of residence type (p>.05). anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of academic department are given in table 9. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 380-390 385 table-9. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of academic department df f p physical aggression between groups 2 3.698 .026* within groups 297 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 2 .226 .798 within groups 297 total 299 anger between groups 2 4.451 .012* within groups 297 total 299 hostility between groups 2 2.171 .116 within groups 297 total 299 mean total aggression scores between groups 2 3.240 .041* within groups 297 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 table 9 demonstrates that significant differences were observed among mean total aggression scores and in the sub-dimensions of physical aggression and anger in terms of academic department (p<.05). multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of academic department are given in table 10. table-10. multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of academic department academic department mean difference standard error p physical aggression coaching education sports management .31 .13 .050 anger coaching education sports management .40 .13 .013 mean total aggression score coaching education sports management 8.21 3.24 .032 according to table 10, statistically significant differences were found between students studying coaching education and sports management when it comes to the sub-dimensions of physical aggression and anger as well as mean total aggression scores (p<.05). this difference is in favor of students studying coaching education, whose level of aggression is higher. t test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s employment status are given in table 11. table-11. t test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s employment status employment status n mean score sd t p physical aggression employed 31 2.72 .770 1.080 .281 non-employed 269 2.54 .839 verbal aggression employed 31 2.76 .779 -.101 .920 non-employed 269 2.78 .751 anger employed 31 3.02 .853 1.944 .053 non-employed 269 2.71 .840 hostility employed 31 2.79 .773 .315 .753 non-employed 269 2.74 .828 meantotal aggression scores employed 31 81.83 19.9 93 1.061 .290 non-employed 269 77.80 20.038 it can be understood from table 11 that no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s employment status (p>.05). anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s education level are given in table 12. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 380-390 386 table-12. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s education level df f p physical aggression between groups 4 1.751 .139 within groups 295 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 4 .827 .509 within groups 295 total 299 anger between groups 4 1.160 .329 within groups 295 total 299 hostility between groups 4 .734 .570 within groups 295 total 299 mean total aggression scores between groups 4 1.183 .318 within groups 295 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 it can be understood from table 12 that no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s education level (p>.05). anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of father’s education level are given in table 13. table-13. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of father’s education level df f p physical aggression between groups 4 1.798 .129 within groups 295 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 4 .945 .438 within groups 295 total 299 anger between groups 4 1.043 .385 within groups 295 total 299 hostility between groups 4 .235 .918 within groups 295 total 299 mean total aggression scores between groups 4 1.049 .382 within groups 295 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 it can be understood from table 13 that no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of father’s education level (p>.05). anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of monthly expenses are given in table 14. table-14. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of monthly expenses df f p physical aggression between groups 4 2.839 .025* within groups 295 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 4 3.337 .011* within groups 295 total 299 anger between groups 4 1.062 .376 within groups 295 total 299 hostility between groups 4 1.561 .185 within groups 295 total 299 mean total aggression scores between groups 4 2.008 .093 within groups 295 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 it can be understood from table 14 that statistically significant differences were observed in the sub-dimensions of physical and verbal aggression in terms of monthly expenses (p>.05). multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of monthly expenses are given in table 15. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 380-390 387 table-15. multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of monthly expenses monthly expenses mean differences standard error p physical aggression 1001 tl and more 250 tl and more .57 .20 .037 verbal aggression 1001 tl and more 250tl–500 tl .40 .12 .008 according to table 15, a statistically significant difference was found between students spending 1001 tl and more and those spending 250 and less when it comes to the sub-dimension of physical aggression (p<.05). this difference is in favor of those spending 1001 tl and more. in the sub-dimension of verbal aggression, a statistically significant difference was found between those spending 1001 tl and more and those spending 250 tl and less (p<.05). this difference is in favor of those spending 1001 tl and more. both physical and verbal aggression of those spending 1001 tl and more are higher. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of number of siblings are given in table 16. table-16. anova test findings related to mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of number of siblings sd f p physical aggression between groups 3 .389 .761 within groups 296 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 3 .570 .635 within groups 296 total 299 anger between groups 3 .812 .488 within groups 296 total 299 hostility between groups 3 2.712 .051 within groups 296 total 299 mean total aggression scores between groups 3 1.246 .293 within groups 296 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 it can be understood from table 16 that no significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of number of siblings (p>.05). 4. discussion the present study aims to determine levels of aggression among students at different departments at school of physical education and sports and compare their levels of aggression based on some demographic features to offer solutions. the sample of the study is comprised of 300 students studying at different departments at school of physical education and sports at university of yozgat bozok. the study demonstrated that the minimum and maximum aggression scale scores were 33 and 131, respectively, and the mean score was 78.22. these findings suggest that students do not display highly aggressive behaviors. in terms of sub-dimension be argued that individuals who are actively involved in sports can manage their self-control and, as a result, they are able to avoid aggressive behaviors. in a study on students at a school of physical education and sports, sam (2014) observed no significant differences between active involvement in sports and aggression. alp et al. (2014) too, found a similar result in a study on university students. in addition, dervent et al. (2010) and kırımoğlu et al. (2008) obtained similar findings in their respective studies. therefore, the findings in the present study overlap previous studies in the literature. in the present study, no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of gender (p>.05). it is often considered that boys are observed to particularly display more aggressive behaviors compared to girls in traditionally patriarchal families in turkish society and that boys are likely to reinforce their aggressive behaviors while girls mostly tend to oppress similar behaviors. in a study on the aggression level of students at school of physical education and sports from a sociodemographic perspective, erşan et al. (2009) found no significant differences between male and female students in terms of aggressive behaviors. studies by allen et al. (1996); werner and crick (1999); björkqvist et al. (1992); yalçın (2007); ağlamaz (2006) and karataş (2005) did not find any significant correlation between gender and aggression, which comply with the findings of the present study. numerous studies focusing on different sociocultural structures and conducted in turkey and abroad obtain varying levels of aggression and report that males tend to display more aggressive behaviors compared to females. similarly, amedahe and owusu-banahene (2007); berkowitz (1993); conner et al. (2003); goldstein and tisak (2004); scharf (2000); aral et al. (2004); eroğlu (2009); günaydın (2008); oztürk (2008); uğur (2013); cansever (2017); bostancı et al. (2017) and celik (2006) observed that males had a higher level of aggression compared to females. therefore, the findings of the present study do not overlap these studies. the present study indicated statistically significant differences between mean total aggression scores and the sub-dimensions of physical aggression, anger and hostility in terms of age (p<.05). it was observed that students aged 28 and over had a lower level of aggression compared to those aged between 18 and 22 as well as 23 and 27. in this respect, it can be argued that maturity improves an individual’s communication skills, and increases their empathy and life experience, which positively influences aggressive behaviors. tazegül et al. (2011) and aksoy asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 380-390 388 (2017) also reported that ageing influenced level of aggression. bahadır and erdoğan (2016) however, demonstrated that aggressive behaviors increased in direct proportion to ageing. thus, the findings of the present study overlap. erşan et al. (2009) divided participants into two age groups as over 21 and under 21 and observed no significant differences between these groups. kafalı et al. (2017) obtained a similar result in their study on athletes performing individual and team sports. erdogdu and oto (2004) on the other hand, stated that ageing was directly proportional to aggressive behaviors. therefore, the findings of the present study differ from these studies. the present study found no statistically significant differences between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of residence type (p>.05). no significant differences were observed between students who live with their families and who left their families to live with a flat mate or alone in terms of level of aggression. variables such as economic status, residence type, residence location and socio-economic status of the family are indicators of life quality. additionally, poor residence and study facilities as well as inadequate family conditions and environment heavily influence a student’s success. social circle, too, occupies an important position in the characterization of an individual’s life during adolescence and youth. in this respect, it is evident that residence problems may cause students to display aggressive behaviors. however, no related results have been so far obtained in the literature. the present study observed statistically significant differences between mean total aggression scores and the sub-dimensions of physical aggression and anger in terms of academic department (p<.05). it was found out that students studying coaching education had a higher level of aggression compared to those studying sports management. despite various acceptance methods, students who wish to study sports management usually take a university exam to enroll in this department. on the other hand, students who wish to study coaching education need to take sportive talent exams for enrollment. therefore, it is safe to argue that these students tend to display more physically and verbally aggressive behaviors due to their continuous active involvement in sports throughout the years and competitive nature of their department as well as their constant ambition to win. given that the main reasons underlying aggressive behaviors in sports activities are anger and hostility, such a finding is not surprising. kula (2008) found a statistically significant difference among students’ level of aggression in terms of their academic departments, which overlaps the present study. on the other hand, erden (2007) found no significant differences among students’ level of aggression in terms of their academic departments, which differ from the present study. in the present study, no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s employment status (p>.05). therefore, it can be suggested that whether a mother has a job or not does not influence a student’s level of aggression. similarly, a study on the analysis of emphatic tendencies and levels of aggression among different high school students (a case study in kartal, turkey) by filiz (2009) a study on the relationship between levels of desperation and aggression among students at industrial vocational high schools by kula (2008) a study on students’ levels of aggression in terms of their self-esteem and other variables during late childhood by yavuz (2007) and a study on the multidimensional analysis of levels of aggression among students at industrial vocational high schools by (yılmaz, 2008) did not find any significant differences between levels of aggression and mother’s employment status. in the present study, no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s and father’s education level (p>.05). parents’ education level is an important factor that affects their communication and relationship with children and shapes the way in which they raise their children. yıldırım (2017) reported that parents’ attitudes towards their children influence their level of aggression. it is quite likely that children who are exposed to domestic violence and physical assault in their family environment will display more aggressive behaviors in the future. parents’ child rearing techniques, attitudes towards their children, and problem-solving skills bear utmost importance. the reason why the present study found no significant differences between students’ level of aggression and mother’s and father’s education level stem from the fact that these parents adopted traditional child rearing methods. this is because parents’ love, attention and affection towards their children will be more effective compared to their education level, and children consider their parents’ as role models. while various studies reported no significant correlation between parents’ education level and their children’s level of aggression (gürsoy, 2002; ayan, 2007; oz, 2007; omay, 2008; cengiz, 2010) some researchers found out a correlation between parents’ education level and level of aggression (güner, 1995; dizman, 2003; aral et al., 2004). the findings of the present study indicated statistically significant differences in the sub-dimensions of physical and verbal aggression in terms of monthly expenses (p<.05). it was observed that students spending 1001 tl and more had a higher level of aggression. this can be related to the fact that students with a higher economic status can easily fulfill their wishes and display physical and verbal aggression when they are not able to get what they wish to have. güner (1995) and gündoğdu (2010) too, report findings similar to those the present study. in the present study, no statistically significant differences were observed between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of number of siblings (p>.05). in a similar vein, yıldız (2009); kılıçaslan (2009) and bostancı et al. (2017) did not find any significant correlation between number of siblings and level of aggression. the findings of the present study also overlap those in the literature. however, when mean total aggression scores are analyzed, a directly proportional correlation can be found between number of siblings and level of aggression. a high number of siblings mean that children will need to share their objects, money and facilities with others. in addition, elderly siblings usually take more responsibilities within the family, which may lead to some aggressive behaviors in these individuals. as a result, aggressive and violent behaviors result from some socio-psychological conditions. based on the findings of the present study, the following recommendations can be made:  reasons underlying aggressive behaviors should be analyzed in detail and necessary precautions should be taken in order to prevent them.  every child and adolescent should receive education based on sportive virtue and 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i̇stanbul. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 363 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 363-370, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.363.370 the comparison of high school students’ level of aggression based on demographic features oktay çoban1  mehmet yildirim2 ( corresponding author) 1,2university of yozgat bozok, school of physical education and sports, yozgat, turkey abstract this study aims to determine high school students’ level of aggression and compare their level of aggression based on some demographic features. the population of the study comprises of high school students attending public and private schools in yozgat province of turkey during 20172018 school year. the sample of the study comprises of 300 students selected using random sampling method in public and private schools in yozgat province of turkey during 2017-2018 school year. the study benefits from survey as a method. students’ demographic features were obtained using “personal information form”. “buss perry aggresion scale” was used to measure students’ level of aggression. the obtained data were processed using spss 18 software program. finally, frequency analysis, percentage analysis, arithmetic means, t test, anova and post-hoc tests were used for data analysis. the findings of the study indicated statistically significant differences were found among students’ level of aggression in terms of different variables such as their gender, age, school type, mother’s employment status, mother’s education level, monthly expenses and number of siblings (p<0.05). keywords: aggression, high school, student. citation | oktay çoban; mehmet yildirim (2018). the comparison of high school students’ level of aggression based on demographic features. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 363-370. history: received: 31 may 2018 revised: 16 july 2018 accepted: 4 september 2018 published: 9 october 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 364 2. material and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 364 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 365 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 369 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 369 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.363.370&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1495 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2863-8754 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1495 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2863-8754 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1495 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2863-8754 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 363-370 364 1. introduction aggression involves deliberate attitudes and behaviors that aim to physically or emotionally damage another living being (ballard et al., 2004) and is defined as deliberately injuring or damaging another person (hetherington and parke, 1993). from a theoretical perspective, whether aggression results from an individual’s character or environmental factors and whether it can be controlled is a controversial issue. emotional definitions of aggression associate it with a feeling of anger, while motivational definitions argue that only a person’s intents determine whether a behavior is aggressive or not. behaviors that directly aim to harm can be considered as aggressive. according to behavioral definitions, the intent underlying a behavior is not important and thus any behavior that physically or emotionally damages another person is aggression (erkuş, 1994). aggression is theoretically divided into four categories as physical aggression, anger, hostility and indirect aggression (buss and warren, 2000). another theory classifies aggression or violent behaviors as physical violence, verbal aggression, anger and inconsiderate or sudden aggressive behaviors (novaco, 1994). buss and perry (1992) argues that physical, verbal and indirect aggression involved behaviors that aim to “hurt or harm” others, which represent the behavioral component of aggression. freedman, sears and carlsmith categorizes aggression into three groups as altruistic (pro-social), hostile (anti-social) and allowed aggression. they also list causes of aggression as instinct, disturbance, frustration, emotive stimulation and elements controlling aggressive behaviors as learning, reinforcement and imitation (freedman et al., 1998). schools have a very complex structure due to both its educational agents that comprise its body and students on whose behaviors these agents study. any system that aims at educating people is called school and given different names such as university, faculty, institute, high school, primary school, nursery school etc (başaran, 1996). it is one of the primary goals of schools to offer students an environment that prevents them from being immersed in useless behaviors and harmful habits or models (başaran, 1996). therefore, in order to fulfill this function, schools should aim at building a safe atmosphere which will exclude dangerous behaviors in the vicinity and thus set good examples and role models for students, providing students with a positive set of behaviors. however, students still witness examples of violence in schools such as beating, theft and aggression (oğülmüş, 1995). family is one of the most important elements that influence an individual’s level of aggression. for instance, patterson (1974) states that children who grow up in a family with aggressive relationships tend to display more aggressive behaviors in the future. similarly, bandura (1983) believes that an individual encounters aggressive models in daily life in their family, sub-culture and mass communication tools. children whose parents resort to physical punishment are more likely to display aggressive behaviors in their relationships with other people. it was demonstrated that parents who were exposed to domestic violence and abuse during their childhood treated their children in a very similar way. yavuzer (1991) reports that children who are exposed to oppression and authoritarian, inconsistent attitudes by their parents display more aggressive behaviors later in their lives. this study aims to determine high school students’ level of aggression and compare their level of aggression based on some demographic features. 2. material and methods this section describes the population, sample, data collection tools and data analysis of the present study. 2.1. the population and sample of the study the population of the study comprises of high school students attending public and private schools in yozgat province of turkey during 2017-2018 school year. the sample of the study comprises of 300 students selected using random sampling method in public and private schools in yozgat province of turkey during 2017-2018 school year. 2.2. data collection tools in the present study, students’ demographic features were obtained using “personal information form”. “buss parry aggresion scale” was used to determine students’ views on aggressive behaviors. further information about data collection tool can be found in the following section. 2.2.1. buss perry aggression scale this study benefits from buss perry aggression scale (buss and perry, 1992) which is a five-point likert type scale (1absolutely inappropriate, 2slightly inappropriate, 3slightly appropriate, 4appropriate 5absolutely appropriate) consisting of four sub-dimensions (physical aggression, anger, hostility and verbal aggression) and 29 items. madran (2012) adapted the scale to turkish context, and tested its reliability and validity. it focuses on four different sub-dimensions of aggression, namely as physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility. in this questionnaire, 9 questions (13, 8, 2, 11, 25, 16, 29, 22, 5) address the sub-dimension of physical aggression related to giving physical damage to others, 5 questions (27, 6, 21, 14, 4) address the sub-dimension of verbal aggression related to the tendency to hurt others verbally, 7 questions (19, 28, 1, 18, 9, 23, 12) address the subdimension of anger to measure emotional aspect of aggression, and, finally, 8 questions (20, 24, 3, 7, 26, 10, 15, 17) address the sub-dimension of hostility to measure cognitive aspect of aggression. 9th and 16th items in the aggression scale are reverse coded. in turkish version of buss perry aggression scale, cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was calculated as 0.85 for the whole scale, while physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility sub-dimension coefficients were obtained as 0.78, 0.48, 0.76 and 0.71 for, respectively (madran, 2012). the present study calculated cronbach alpha value as 0.88 for the whole scale. additionally, it was calculated as 0.81, 0.52, 0.73 and 0.70 for physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility sub-dimensions, respectively. a reliability coefficient varying between .70 and .90 means a high level of reliability (bagozzi and yi, 1988; nunnally and bernstein, 1994). therefore, it can be safely argued that that the scale is acceptable in terms of internal reliability coefficients. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 363-370 365 2.2.2. data analysis the data obtained from the present study were transferred to spss 18 statistics program. in the data analysis, frequency, percentage and arithmetic means analyses were used to describe students’ demographic features. in addition, cronbach alpha was used to test scale reliability, t test and anova were used to determine differences between mean total aggression scores and mean sub-dimension scores in terms of demographic variables, and, finally, post hoc (tukey, tamhane 2) tests were used depending on the variance homogeneity. 3. findings findings related to students’ demographic features are given in table 1. table-1. findings related to students’ demographic features n % gender male 150 50.0 female 150 50.0 age 14 13 4.3 15 70 23.3 16 85 28.3 17 84 28.0 18 40 13.3 19 8 2.7 residence type with family 209 69.7 with relatives 2 .7 at dormitory 85 28.3 with (a) flat mate(s) 4 1.3 school type public school 150 50.0 private school 150 50.0 mother’s employment status employed 71 23.7 non-employed 229 76.3 mother’s education level illiterate 9 3.0 primary school 100 33.3 secondary school 71 23.7 high school 75 25.0 university 37 12.3 post-graduate 8 2.7 father’s education level primary school 47 15.7 secondary school 61 20.3 high school 108 36.0 university 74 24.7 post-graduate 10 3.3 monthly expenses 250 tl and less 64 21.3 251 tl – 500 tl 76 25.3 501 tl – 750 tl 68 22.7 751 tl – 1000 tl 43 14.3 1001 tl and more 49 16.3 number of siblings no siblings 18 6.0 1 sibling 105 35.0 2 siblings 85 28.3 3 siblings 50 16.7 4 siblings 26 8.7 5 siblings and more 16 5.3 table-2. aggression scale mean total scores aggression scale n minimum maximum mean standard deviation 300 34.00 124.00 80.54 18.51 when table 2 is analyzed, it can be noted that the minimum and maximum aggression scale scores were 34 and 124, respectively, and mean score was 80.54. therefore, it can be argued that students in the study group do not display highly aggressive behaviors. table-3. aggression scale mean sub-dimension scores buss perry aggression scale sub-dimensions n mean standard deviation physical aggression 300 2.58 .82 verbal aggression 300 2.78 .71 anger 300 2.84 .83 hostility 300 2.93 .78 it can be observed in table 3 that the highest aggression level among sub-dimension is hostility (x =2.93). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 363-370 366 table-4. t test findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of gender gender n mean score sd t p physical aggression male 150 2.74 .767 3.41 .001 female 150 2.42 .853 verbal aggression male 150 2.77 .700 -.193 .847 female 150 2.79 .734 anger male 150 2.79 .743 -1.071 .285 female 150 2.89 .911 hostility male 150 2.80 .702 -2.831 .005 female 150 3.05 .840 table 4 indicates that a statistically significant difference was found among mean sub-dimension scores for physical aggression and hostility in terms of gender (p<.05). while male students had a higher level of aggression compared to female students in the sub-dimension of physical aggression, female students had a higher level of aggression compared to male students in the sub-dimension of hostility. table-5. anova findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of age sd f p physical aggression between groups 5 1.63 .150 within groups 294 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 5 3.03 .011* within groups 294 total 299 anger between groups 5 2.47 .033* within groups 294 total 299 hostility between groups 5 3.10 .009** within groups 294 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 table 5 indicates that statistically significant differences were found among mean sub-dimension scores for physical aggression, anger and hostility in terms of age (p<.05). table-6. multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of age age mean difference standard error p verbal aggression 14 years 16 years 18 years -.68 -.64 .20 .22 .016 .048 anger 14 years 16 years 18 years -.54 -.70 .24 .26 .026 .007 hostility 14 years 16 years 17 years 18 years 19 years -.61 -.56 -.55 -.76 .22 .22 .24 .34 .007 .015 .024 .029 it can be understood from table 6 that a statistically significant difference was found between students aged 14 years and those aged 16 and 18 years old for verbal aggression and anger (p<.05). this difference is in favor of those aged 16 and 18 years old. in the sub-dimension of hostility, similarly, a significant difference was found between students aged 14 years old and those aged 16, 17, 18 and 19 years old. this difference is in favor of those aged 16, 17, 18 and 19 years old. therefore, it can be suggested that increasing age is directly proportional to aggressive behaviors. table-7. anova findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of residence type sd f p physical aggression between groups 3 1.772 .152 within groups 296 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 3 .536 .658 within groups 296 total 299 anger between groups 3 2.360 .072 within groups 296 total 299 hostility between groups 3 1.297 .276 within groups 296 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 table 7 indicates no statistically significant differences among mean sub-dimension scores in terms of residence type (p>.05). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 363-370 367 table-8. t test findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of school type school type n mean sd t p physical aggression public school 150 2.43 .738 -3.120 .002 private school 150 2.72 .883 verbal aggression public school 150 2.66 .720 -2.771 .006 private school 150 2.89 .696 anger public school 150 2.73 .798 -2.296 .022 private school 150 2.95 .852 hostility public school 150 2.83 .722 -2.055 .041 private school 150 3.02 .833 it can be understood from table 8 that a statistically significant difference was found among mean subdimension scores for physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility in terms of school type (p<.05). while students attending a public school had a higher level of aggression in the sub-dimension of physical aggression compared to those attending a private school, students attending a private school had a higher level of aggression compared to those attending a public school in other sub-dimensions. table-9. t test findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s employment status employment status n mean ss t p physical aggression employed 71 2.58 .835 .064 .949 non-employed 229 2.58 .825 verbal aggression employed 71 2.90 .657 1.603 .110 non-employed 229 2.74 .731 anger employed 71 2.82 .818 -298 .766 non-employed 229 2.85 .837 hostility employed 71 3.09 .798 1.999 .047 non-employed 229 2.88 .774 table 9 indicates that a statistically significant difference was found among mean sub-dimension scores for hostility in terms of mother’s employment status (p<.05). it was found out that students whose mothers were employed had a higher level of aggression in the sub-dimension of hostility. table-10. anova findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s education level sd f p physical aggression between groups 5 .400 .849 within groups 294 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 5 2.594 .026* within groups 294 total 299 anger between groups 5 4.069 .001** within groups 294 total 299 hostility between groups 5 2.699 .021* within groups 294 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 table 10 indicates that a statistically significant difference was found among mean sub-dimension scores for verbal aggression, anger and hostility in terms of mother’s education level (p<.05). table-11. multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of mother’s education level mother’s education level mean differences standard error p verbal aggression secondary school primary school high school university high school -.36 -.29 -.27 .11 .14 .10 .002 .039 .013 anger illiterate primary school secondary school university post-graduate .86 .89 .63 1.14 28 .28 .30 .39 .002 .002 .035 .002 hostility secondary school high school high school university primary school -.33 -.34 .27 .12 .15 .11 .010 .028 .021 it can be seen in table 11 that a statistically significant difference was found between students whose mothers graduated from secondary school and those whose mothers graduated from high school and university, and between students whose mothers graduated from primary school and high school in the sub-dimension of verbal aggression (p<.05). these differences are in favor of those who graduated from high school and university. in other words, students whose mothers graduated from high school and university display more verbal aggression. when it comes to the sub-dimension of anger, a statistically significant difference was found between students whose mothers were illiterate and those whose mothers graduated from primary, secondary and high school, university and post-graduate (p<.05). this difference is in favor of those whose mothers were illiterate. it is thus evident that asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 363-370 368 students whose mothers were illiterate had a higher level of aggression in the sub-dimension of anger. in the subdimension of hostility, a statistically significant difference was found between students whose mothers graduated from secondary school and those whose mothers graduated from high school, and between students whose mother graduated from high school and those whose mothers graduated from primary and secondary school (p<.05). these differences are in favor of those whose mothers graduated from high school and university. to put it another way, students whose mothers graduated from high school and university had a higher level of aggression in the subdimension of hostility. table-12. anova findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of father’s education level sd f p physical aggression between groups 4 .450 .773 within groups 295 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 4 1.129 .343 within groups 295 total 299 anger between groups 4 .686 .602 within groups 295 total 299 hostility between groups 4 1.256 .287 within groups 295 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 table 12 indicates no statistically significant differences among mean sub-dimension scores in terms of father’s education level (p>.05). table-13. anova findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of monthly expenses sd f p physical aggression between groups 4 2.387 .051 within groups 295 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 4 2.221 .067 within groups 295 total 299 anger between groups 4 1.799 .129 within groups 295 total 299 hostility between groups 4 2.078 .084 within groups 295 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 table 13 indicates no statistically significant differences among mean sub-dimension scores in terms of monthly expenses (p>.05). table-14. anova findings related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of number of siblings sd f p physical aggression between groups 5 .326 .897 within groups 294 total 299 verbal aggression between groups 5 2.658 .023* within groups 294 total 299 anger between groups 5 .314 .904 within groups 294 total 299 hostility between groups 5 1.090 .366 within groups 294 total 299 *p<.05, **p<.01 multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of number of siblings are given in table 15. table-15. multiple comparison test results for the significant difference related to mean sub-dimension scores in terms of number of siblings number of siblings mean differences standard error p anger 3 siblings no siblings -.59 .19 .002 1 sibling -.29 .12 .016 2 siblings -.29 .12 .019 it can be understood from table 15 that statistically significant differences were found between students who have 3 siblings and those who have no siblings, 1 sibling and 2 siblings in the sub-dimension of anger (p<.05). this asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 363-370 369 difference is in favor of those who have no siblings, 1 sibling and siblings. thus, it can be suggested that the number of siblings is directly proportional to the level of aggression. 4. discussion the findings of the present study indicate a statistically significant difference among high school students’ mean sub-dimension scores in the sub-dimensions of physical aggression and hostility. while male students’ level of aggression were higher compared to females when it comes to physical aggression, female students’ level of aggression were higher compared to males in the sub-dimension of hostility. statistically significant differences were observed in the sub-dimensions of verbal aggression, anger and hostility in terms of age. a statistically significant difference was found between students aged 14 years and those aged 16 and 18 years old in the sub-dimensions of verbal aggression and anger. this difference is observed to be in favor of those aged 16 and 18 years old. in the sub-dimension of hostility, similarly, a significant difference was found between students aged 14 years old and those aged 16, 17, 18 and 19 years old. this difference is in favor of those aged 16, 17, 18 and 19 years old. therefore, it is quite likely that age is directly proportional to increasing aggressive behaviors. a statistically significant difference was found in the sub-dimensions of physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility in terms of school type. whereas students attending a public school had a higher level of aggression in the sub-dimension of physical aggression compared to those attending a private school, students attending a private school had a higher level of aggression compared to those attending a public school in other sub-dimensions. a statistically significant difference was observed in the sub-dimension of hostility in terms of mother’s employment status. it was evident that students whose mothers were employed had a higher level of aggression in the sub-dimension of hostility. a statistically significant difference was found in the sub-dimensions of verbal aggression, anger and hostility in terms of mother’s education level. in the sub-dimension of verbal aggression, a statistically significant difference was found between students whose mothers graduated from secondary school and those whose mothers graduated from high school and university, and between students whose mothers graduated from primary school and high school. these differences are in favor of high school and university. in other words, students whose mothers graduated from high school and university display more verbal aggression. as for the sub-dimension of anger, a statistically significant difference was found between students whose mothers were illiterate and those whose mothers graduated from primary, secondary and high school, university and post-graduate. this difference is in favor of those whose mothers were illiterate. it can be stated that students whose mothers were illiterate had a higher level of aggression in the sub-dimension of anger. in the sub-dimension of hostility, a statistically significant difference was found between students whose mothers graduated from secondary school and those whose mothers graduated from high school, and between students whose mother graduated from high school and those whose mothers graduated from primary and secondary school. this difference is in favor of those whose mothers graduated from high school and university. in other words, students whose mothers graduated from high school and university had a higher level of aggression in the sub-dimension of hostility. no statistically significant differences were observed among mean sub-dimensions scores in terms of father’s education level, monthly expenses and residence type. when students’ level of aggression is analyzed in terms of number of siblings, statistically significant differences were found between students who have 3 siblings and those who have no siblings, 1 sibling and 2 siblings in the sub-dimension of anger. this difference is in favor of those who have no siblings, 1 sibling and siblings. it is evident that the number of siblings is directly proportional to the level of aggression.  the present study was conducted in yozgat province of turkey. further and extensive studies to be carried out in other regions and provinces will yield more holistic results.  a different study focusing on a clear socio-economic level may be carried out in order to determine level of aggression among people with a high and low socio-economic status.  the role of parents in child rearing is undeniable. in this respect, the relationship between parents’ attitudes towards their children and aggression may be analyzed using different scales.  new courses may be added to the school curricula in order to teach students how to solve and overcome their problems. students may be encouraged to explore their skills and thus participate in activities such as sports, art and music to keep them away from violence and aggression. in addition, new counselling systems may be designed to help talented students become specialized in these fields. references bagozzi, r.p. and y. yi, 1988. on the evaluation of structural equation models. journal of the academy of marketing science, 16(1): 74-94. ballard, m.e., k.t. rattley, w.c. fleming and p. kidder-ashley, 2004. school aggression and dispositional aggression among middle school boys. rmle online, 27(1): 1-11. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/19404476.2004.11658163. bandura, a., 1983. psychological mechanisms of aggression. (ed.: r. g. geen ve e. 1. donnerstein). aggression: theoretical and empirical reviews. new york: academic press, 1: 1-35. başaran, i.e., 1996. educational administration. ankara: yargıcı publisher. buss, a. and m. perry, 1992. the aggression questionnaire. journal of personality and social psychology, 63(3): 452-459. buss, a.h. and l.w. warren, 2000. aggression questionnaire: manuel. los angeles ca: western psychological services. erkuş, a., 1994. glossary of psychology terms. ankara: doruk publications. freedman, j.l., d.o. sears and j.m. carlsmith, 1998. social psychology. ankara: i̇mge publisher. hetherington, e.m. and r.d. parke, 1993. child psychology. new york: mcgraw-hill. madran, h.a.d., 2012. bussreliability and validity of buss perry aggression scale in turkish context. turkish journal of psychology, 24(2): 1-6. novaco, r.w., 1994. anger as a risk factor for violence among the mentally disordered, (ed), john monahan& henry j. steadman, violence and mental disorder: developments in risk assessment. chicago: university of chicago press. nunnally, j.c. and i.h. bernstein, 1994. psychometric theory. new york: mcgraw hill. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 363-370 370 oğülmüş, s., 1995. violence and aggression in schools (high schools). unpublished research report. patterson, c.h., 1974. relationship counseling and psychotherapy. new york: harper & row publishers. yavuzer, h., 1991. parents and the child. istanbul: remzi publisher. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 302 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 302-308, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.302.308 examination of the effect of the instructional styles of pre-service physical education and sports teachers on the ability of self-regulation mehmet behzat turan1  kenan koç2 ( corresponding author) 1erciyes university physical education and sport department, kayseri/turkey 2erciyes university physical education and sport department, kayseri/turkey abstract the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of pre-service physical education teachers' instructional styles on self-regulation skills. for this purpose, the sample of the research consists of 608 students who were randomly selected among the ones who 4th-grade students continue their education at physical education and sports college in erciyes, omer halisdemir, aksaray, dumlupinar, gaziantep, firat, selcuk, ahi evran, inonu, erzincan and haci bektas veli universities. in the study, 2 scales were used as data collection tool. the first of these, instructional style preference scale (isps), was developed by renzulli et al. (2002). the selfregulation skill scale (srss) was developed by arslan (2008) in order to determine the selfregulation skill levels of pre-service teachers. in addition, personal information forms developed by the researcher were used in the study. statistical analyzes of the data obtained from the personal information form were made with the spss 22.0 package program. the personal information and inventory total scores and factor scores for the candidates were given by determining the frequency (f) and percentage (%) values. pearson moments multiplication correlation analysis (r) was used to show the relationship between scores obtained from the scales. multiple regression analysis (β) was applied to determine whether the scores obtained were predictive of each other. a significant relationship was found between the discussion, which is among the instructional styles, cognitive regulation sub-dimension and the programmed instruction. it has been found that there is a high level of correlation between the effort regulation sub dimension and the straight narration between the instructional styles. in addition, there was a significant positive correlation between the subscale of the organization of the study and the literal expression between the instructional styles. when the results of the study were examined, it was thought that, generally, those who are aware of and make use of the learning styles have higher self-regulation skills than those who do not pay attention to the use of instructional style and are more successful in terms of academic achievements. keywords: instructional styles, self-regulation, physical education, sport. citation | mehmet behzat turan; kenan koç (2018). examination of the effect of the instructional styles of pre-service physical education and sports teachers on the ability of selfregulation. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 302-308. history: received: 29 march 2018 revised: 20 june 2018 accepted: 8 august 2018 published: 28 august 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 303 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 303 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 304 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 306 5. suggestions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 307 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 307 bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 308 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.302.308&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1451 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5332-803x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1459-2655 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1451 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5332-803x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1459-2655 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1451 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5332-803x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1459-2655 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1451 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5332-803x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1459-2655 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 302-308 303 1. introduction in our era, it is important that the applied teaching methods are determined as taking and shaping the information with the participation of the learners, together with the learning and teaching of self-regulating skills. therefore, learning environments in which one's learning process has the responsibility, decision-making and selfregulation opportunities, forced the use of mental abilities and active participation are being developed (açıkgöz, 2003). the effect of the learners on the learning process has brought the concept of self-regulation into the agenda (üredi and üredi, 2007). it is thought that the concept of self-regulation is one of the most important components of success and academic performance. for this reason, this concept has been modeled and defined by a number of theoretical perspectives. self-regulation according to üredi and üredi (2007) is "an effective and constructive process in which learners set their own learning goals, try to adjust their cognition, motivations, and behaviors, and are directed and limited by their purpose and contextual features in their environment". kauffman (2004) defines the concept of selfregulation as "an effort by learners to control and manage complex learning activities." pajares (2008) describes this concept as "the supra-cognitive process that allows learners to understand and evaluate behaviors they exhibit, as well as to plan the alternative ways of success at the same time". self-regulation draws attention to the role of individual control in human behavior and is primarily defined as the individual's control of his own behavior (boeree, 2006). based on the performed studies, it is thought that self-regulation is influenced by various variables. when examining the relationship between self-regulation and the school and the educational environment, it is possible to think that the teaching styles are also one of these variables. boakerts (1999) suggested that the learning style that an individual possesses plays an important role in the formation of self-regulation skills. accordingly, one of the three basic elements of self-regulation based learning is the findings from the studies on learning styles. individuals learn in different ways. at the end of the learning-teaching process, the fact that positive development cannot be achieved in all students has started the process of concentrating on learning styles (lukow, 2002). rani (2012) defines the learning style as "the state of choosing a learning state or condition from other situations and circumstances". rani explains that learning styles are included in the teaching, "if the learning is good in a class with a large number of learners, then the students are learning individually, in other words, they have discovered the learning style." tulbure (2012) stated that a learning style-oriented teaching enhances the academic success of the students and that this type of teaching has positive effects on learning outcomes, attitudes towards the lesson, and learning motivations. li and he (2016) argue that giving learners the opportunity to learn with their preferred learning style will make it easier for students to learn. they also add that learning styles increase academic achievement, increase motivation, make learning more effective and beneficial, that the teacher has more knowledge about the level of learning, and that it greatly reduces learning difficulties. the purpose of our study is to determine the extent to which pre-service physical education teachers in physical education and sports college are 'studying the effects of instructional styles on self-regulation skills' and, if so, how. when it comes to the literature, it is seen that studies on the subject are very few, especially in the field of physical education and sports. from this point of view, our work is thought to be contributing to the literature. 2. material and method 2.1. study group in the study, relational scanning method was used. the relational scanning style is a research model aimed at determining the presence and/or the degree of exchange between two or more variables (karasar, 2009). accordingly, in the research, it was examined whether there is a meaningful relationship between instructional style preferences and self-regulation skills and which style preferences predict self-regulation skills. 2.2. data collection tool in the study, during the implementation of the questionnaires, the explanations were made by the researchers, each of the pre-service teachers, within a wide range of time and without haste, and an attempt was made to create an evaluation process sufficient for the participants. in addition, favorable conditions have been provided for candidates to fill out forms in a comfortable environment. data collection instruments used in the research were instructional style preference scale, self-regulation skill scale, and also the personal information forms developed by the researcher. 2.3. instructional style preference scale the instructional style preference scale (isps) was developed by renzulli et al. (2002) and adapted to turkish by öğretme (2001). the main purpose of the scale is to determine which teaching style students prefer to learn. the scale consists of 65 items and nine dimensions as the project, independent study, practice and memorization, discussion, direct teaching (straight narration), programmed teaching, simulated teaching, peer learning and teaching games. 2.4. self-regulation scale it was developed by arslan (2008) in order to determine the self-regulation skill levels of pre-service teachers. the scale consists of one dimension and 20 items. the items in the measure are arranged as a 5-point scale as "i strongly agree", "i agree", "undecided", "i do not agree", "i strongly disagree". 12 of the items in the scale are positive, and eight are negative. the highest total score of the scale is 100 and the lowest score is 20. in the study, negative questions were taken into consideration by inverse scoring. the cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient of the original scale was calculated as .87. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 302-308 304 2.5. creation of voluntary groups the research will be conducted through the study group. the study group is composed of 4th-grade students who are studying in the department of physical education and sports college in erciyes, omer halisdemir, aksaray, dumlupinar, gaziantep, firat, selcuk, ahi evran, inonu, erzincan and haci bektas veli universities. a total of 645 students, who were selected randomly and studied in the department of physical education teaching, participated in the study. at least 5 people, and at most 10 people at each university were not included in the study group because they encoded the form and the inventory incompletely. as a result, the sample of the research consisted of 608 individuals in total. table-1. socio-demographic information of participants variables n % gender male 274 45.1 female 334 54.9 age 18-20 12 2.00 21-23 385 63.3 24-26 124 20.4 over 27 87 14.3 universities erciyes 61 10,0 omer halis demir 59 9,7 aksaray 56 9,2 dumlupinar 54 8,9 gaziantep 51 8,4 firat 52 8,6 selcuk 60 9,9 ahi evran 52 8,6 haci bektas veli 53 8,7 inonu 57 9,4 erzincan 53 8,7 weekly class work duration 1-10 380 62.5 11-20 147 24.2 21-30 52 8.6 31+ 29 4.8 general academic avarege 1.50-2.25 57 9.4 2.26-3.00 269 44.2 3.01-3.50 236 38.8 3.51-4.00 46 7.6 2.6. socio-demographic information form while creating the socio-demographic information form of the study, "self-regulation and learning styles" and "socio-demographic information forms" in the literature were examined and a pool composed of the characteristics to be examined in the students was created. later, with the help of statistics experts, a sociodemographic information form was created. this socio-demographic information form is composed of 5 questions in order to obtain participants' age, gender, weekly course duration, graduation status and general academic grade average information. 2.7. analysis of data the data obtained from the "instructional styles and self-organizing scale" with the personal information form and the scores reached were entered into the spss 22.0 program pack and analyzed through this program. the personal information and inventory total scores and factor scores for the candidates were given by determining the frequency (f) and percentage (%) values. multiple regression analysis was applied to determine whether pearson moments multiplication correlation analysis (r) and the scores obtained were predictive of each other and to reveal the relationship between the scores obtained from the scales (β). 3. findings table-2. descriptive statistics of students' responses to the questionnaire n minimum maximum x±sd self-regulations cognitive regulation regulation of effort regulation of time and work 608 608 608 1,00 1,00 1,00 5,00 5,00 5,00 3.65±0.69 3.39±0.79 2.98±0.82 instructional styles project independent study practice and memorizing discussion direct teaching programmed teaching simulation peer teaching instructional games 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 1.67 1.50 1.75 1.38 1.71 1.57 1.17 1.17 1.00 4.89 4.88 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.83 5.00 5.00 3.57±0.60 3.60±0.58 3.52±058 3.75±0.60 3.85±0.64 3.62±0.56 3.41±0.62 3.54±0.63 3.25±0.73 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 302-308 305 when table 2 is examined, it was determined that the average of the cognitive regulation sub-dimension is 3.65, the average of the effort regulation dimension is 3.39, and the average of the time and work regulation dimension is 2.98. on the other hand, the average of the project sub-dimension was 3.57, the average of the independent study was 3.60, the average of the practice and memorizing dimension was 3.52, the average of the discussion feature was 3.75, the average of the straight narration style was 3.85, the average of the programmed teaching method was 3.62, the average of the simulation style was 3.41, the average of the peer teaching was 3.54, and the average of the instructional games style was 3.25. table-3. correlation coefficients between students' self-regulation skills and instructional styles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 cognitive thinking1 r 1 p n 608 regulation of efforts2 r .284** 1 p .000 n 608 608 regulation of time and work3 r .117** .412** 1 p .004 .000 n 608 608 608 project4 r .216** .227** .122 ** 1 p .000 .000 .003 n 608 608 608 608 independent study5 r .223** .235** .143 ** .587** 1 p .000 .000 .000 .000 n 608 608 608 608 608 practice memorizing 6 r .245** .174** .125 ** .668** .599** 1 p .000 .000 .002 .000 .000 n 608 608 608 608 608 608 discussion7 r .376** .206** .141 ** .623** .590** .647 ** 1 p .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 direct teaching8 r .351** .324** .196 ** .547** .581** .575 ** .704 ** 1 p .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 programmed teaching9 r .327** .224** .113 ** .598** .561** .575 ** .604 ** .623 ** 1 p .000 .000 .005 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 simulation10 r .172** .096 .040 .506** .391** .531 ** .437 ** .377 ** .583** 1 p .000 .018 .319 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 peer teaching11 r .296** .165** .057 .501** .370** .400 ** .497 ** .535 ** .497** .457** 1 p .009 .000 .159 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 instructional games12 r .201** .097* -033 .557 ** .427** .494** .391 ** .343 ** .451 ** .540 ** .495** 1 p .000 .017 .421 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 608 *p<o.o5,**p<0.001 table-4. regression table for predicting the instructional styles of students' self-regulation skills selfregulation instructional styles β t p r r² f p c o g n it iv e r e g u la ti o n .431 .186 15.148 .000 project -.129 .2.217 .027 independent study -.053 -2.217 .310 practice and memorizing -.003 -.044 .965 discussion .263 4.384 .000 direct teaching .113 1.908 .057 programmed teaching .169 2.969 .003 simulation -.085 -1.672 .095 peer teaching .110 2.233 .026 instructional games .070 4.384 .161 regulation of effort .347 .121 9.120 .000 project .127 2.106 .036 independent study .080 1.469 .142 practice and memorizing -.058 -.949 .343 discussion -.090 -1.438 .151 direct teaching .312 5.072 .000 programmed teaching .047 .794 .428 simulation -.048 -.908 .364 peer teaching -.008 -.148 .883 instructional games -.043 -.823 .411 r e g u la ti o n o f ti m e a n d w o rk .243 .059 4.172 .000 project .079 1.260 .208 independent study .062 1.097 .273 practice and memorizing .035 .559 .576 discussion -.014 -.210 .833 direct teaching .180 2.825 .005 programmed teaching -.007 -.107 .915 simulation -.002 -.042 .967 peer teaching -.025 -.470 .639 instructional games -.160 -2.985 .003 f (9.598) asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 302-308 306 when table 3 is examined, it is observed that the cognitive regulation feature's relation with the project method (r =.216 p =.000) was significant in the positive direction, with the independent study (r =.223 p =.000) was significant in the positive direction, with practice and memorizing (r =.245 p =.000) was significant in the positive direction, with the discussion method (r =.376 p =.000) was significant in the positive direction, with direct teaching (r =.351 p =.000) was significant in the positive direction, with programmed teaching (r =.327 p =.000) was significant in the positive direction, with simulation (r =.172 p =.000) was significant in the positive direction, with peer teaching (r =.296 p =.000) was significant in the positive direction, and with instructional games (r =.201 p =.000), was significant in the positive direction. regulation of efforts' relation with the project method (r =.227 p =.000), with the independent study (r =.235 p =.000), with practice and memorizing (r =.174 p =.000), with the discussion method (r =.206 p =.000), with direct teaching (r =.324 p =.000), with programmed teaching (r =.224 p =.000) and peer teaching (r =.165 p =.000) was found to be significant in the positive direction. however, a low level of correlation was found between the regulation of efforts and instructional games (r =.097 p =.017) and simulation (r =.096 p =.018). the ability to regulate time and work's relation with the project method (r =.122 p =.003), the independent study (r =.143 p =.000), practice and memorizing (r =.125 p =.002), discussion method (r =.141 p =.000), direct teaching (r =.196 p =.000), and programmed teaching (r =.113 p =.005) was found to be significant in the positive direction. however, there were no significant correlations with peer teaching (r =.057 p =.159), instructional games (r = -.033 p =.421) and simulation (r =.040 p=.319). when table 4 is examined, it can be observed that the model formed between cognitive regulation and instructional styles provides a significant relationship (r = .431 r2 = .186; p <.001). when the results of the t-test for the significance of the regression coefficient were examined, it was seen that discussion (t = 4.384 p = .000), programmed teaching (t = 2.969 p = .003) and cognitive regulation characteristics predicted the instructional styles characteristic and explained 18.6% of the total variance f (9.598) = 15.148 (p<.005). the model formed between regulation of efforts and instructional styles also provides a significant relationship (r = .347 r2 = .121; p <.001). when the results of the t-test on the significance of the regression coefficient were examined, it was seen that direct teaching (t = 5.072 p = .000) and regulation of efforts properties predicted the instructional styles characteristic and explained 12.1% of the total variance. f (9.598) = 9.120 (p<.005). the model formed between instructional styles and the regulation of time and work also provides a significant relationship (r = .243 r2 = .059; p <.001). when the t-test results for the significance of the regression coefficient were examined, it was seen that instructional games (t = -2.985 p = .003) and regulation of time and work characteristics predicted the instructional styles characteristic and explained 5.9% of the total variance f (9.598) = 4.172 p<.005). 4. discussion and conclusion in this study, a high level of positive correlation was found between cognitive regulation sub-dimension and instructional styles, discussion and programmed teaching. the use of instructional style predicted the variance of cognitive regulation sub-dimension as 18.6%. sarıgöz (2013) defines the discussion method as providing students with the development of cognitive and affective areas by improving their ability to listen, think, inquire, criticize, synthesize and evaluate. according to çubukçu et al. (2011) this method can be used to achieve goals in both affective and cognitive domains. according to kaya and kılıç (2008) "discussion is defined as a series of speeches made to explain the contradiction between two conflicting situations or an event made to reach reasonable, rational decisions". in the study conducted by yazıcı (2003) it was found that after using the discussion method in primary education, there was an improvement in the subjects such as equality, openness, respect for the opinions, participation, resorting to the vote of the class, being scientific and willingness to discuss. in another study, can (2005) found that the six thinking hats technique, which is another discussion method, positively affected student achievement in primary school social studies class. in kısa (2007) he determined that the use of the brainstorming technique, another discussion method, was more effective than the method of narration in the teaching of concepts in the sixth-grade social studies course. on the other hand, in the teaching technology course, anyasi et al. (2008) found that the programmed teaching method affected the academic achievement of the students. uz (2009) found that programmed teaching method and cooperative learning method affect students' attitudes towards their academic achievements in the teaching of "mixtures" in science and technology class. as noted in the literature, both discussion and programmed teaching methods are thought to be predictive of the cognitive regulation subdimension since they are methods that address the cognitive domain and are characterized by the regulation and systematization of learning. regulation of efforts sub-dimension and direct teaching, which is one of the instructional styles, has been found to be highly positively related. the use of instructional style predicts the variance of the regulation of efforts subdimension by 12.1%. it is helpful to use the method of narration when the time is limited, in describing the most important part of the subject, in explaining how to do the activities and in summarizing the information at the end of teaching and when it is necessary to tell the subject to a large group. in addition, this method also contributes to the students' being a good listener (ünalan, 2001). in the method of narration that ausubel suggested, the teaching is based on the approach, in which the information is presented to the students. teaching through presentation is the process of giving information in a carefully arranged, sequenced and ready-to-receive form. in this way, it is taught that the general principles and concepts are given first and that detailed information is gained. when we look at the nature of the regulation of efforts sub-dimension, chen (2002) pointed out that "the student intends to concentrate his attention on the job when he/she fulfills a task in the academic environment and wants to control the effort without being influenced by external stimuli." from this point on, the regular presentation of systematic information is considered to be a method for a student having a high level of regulation of efforts characteristic. there is a significant positive relationship between the regulation of time and work sub-dimension and direct teaching, which is one of the instructional styles. the use of instructional style predicts the variance of the regulation of time and work sub-dimension by 5.9%. time management strategy is the process of planning and adapting to the plan to use time effectively. zimmerman et al. (1992) found in their studies that the academic asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 302-308 307 achievement levels of those who use this strategy are higher. on the other hand, the arrangement of the working environment is the way the student prepares the learning environment in a comfortable way before starting work. according to açikgöz (1998) in the direct teaching method, the speaker's organizing the information and planning in advance should not go out of the subject. he/she should be clear and understandable and have a tone in a way that attracts the attention of the listener. during the lecture, he/she should motivate the student using audiovisual tools, clues, questions and jokes. the presentation should be planned in the form of introduction, body and conclusion. based on this information, it is thought that it would be normal for a person, who wants to use time and working environment, to prefer to use a planned presentation and work style by choosing the method of presentation. when the results of the study are examined in general terms, it is considered that those who are aware of and use the learning styles have high self-regulation skills and are more successful in their academic achievements than those who do not pay attention to the instructional styles, so that teachers should know the instructional styles and use them according to the group and guide the students accordingly regarding the subject, and this will increase the quality of education. 5. suggestions  style-focused course designs can be created in order to help learners better understand and improve their self-regulation by identifying their instructional style.  teachers' guidance to the students can be provided by giving them teachers' training on instructional style and self-regulation.  teaching environments can be improved in terms of technology and infrastructure for style selection and self-definition can be increased.  introductory work can be done and parents can be involved in raising support and awareness within the family.  not only in school but also in lifelong learning, awareness raising activities can be carried out in various non-formal education courses. references açikgöz, k., 1998. effective learning and teaching. 2nd edn., i̇zmir: kanyılmaz press. açıkgöz, k.ü., 2003. active learning. izmir: world publications. pp: 23-25. anyasi, f.i., p.a. otubu and f.e. iserameiya, 2008. the merging of telecommunication and information processing: the technological undertiming. journal of mobile communication, 2(3): 89-92. view at google scholar arslan, a., 2008. effect of collaborative learning on accessibility, retention, self-efficacy belief and self-regulation skills. unpublished doctoral thesis, hacettepe university institute of social sciences, ankara. boakerts, m., 1999. self-regulated learning: where we are today. international journal of educational research, 31(6): 445-457. view at google scholar | view at publisher boeree, g.c., 2006. personality theories. retrieved from http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html [accessed 26.03.2016]. can, a.h., 2005. the impact of using the six hat thinking technique on students' achievements in sixth grade social studies class. unpublished master's thesis, fırat university social sciences institute, elazığ. chen, c.s., 2002. self-regulated learning strategies and achievement in an introduction to information systems course. information tecnology, learning and performance journal, 20(1): 11-25. view at google scholar çubukçu, z., m. taşdemir, m. güven, c. babadoğan, a. oğuz and b. aybek, 2011. teaching principles and methods. 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köğce1  buket aslandağ2 ( corresponding author) 1niğde ömer halisdemir university, faculty of education, department of elementary mathematics education, turkey 2niğde ömer halisdemir university, faculty of education, department of curriculum & instruction, turkey abstract this study was conducted in order to determine the opinions of the class teachers regarding the project tasks. for this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 47 classroom teachers. the obtained data were subjected to content analysis using the maxqda 11 and "coding of the data" technique was used in the data analysis techniques. consequently, it was concluded that the main purpose of classroom teachers in providing students with project skills is to develop research skills of students, to demonstrate creativity skills of the pupils, to make them use the knowledge and skills they have and enable them to produce an output. criteria that project tasks consider when evaluating are direct factors such as student activity and written exam success, and indirect factors such as adherence to the project schedule, and cleanliness, rigor and discipline of the project. keywords: project tasks, classroom teachers, evaluation. citation | davut köğce; buket aslandağ (2018). the views of classroom teachers on project tasks. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 233-245. history: received: 8 june 2018 revised: 4 july 2018 accepted: 9 july 2018 published: 12 july 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 234 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 235 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 236 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 242 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 244 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.233.245&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3475-2740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2935-2320 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3475-2740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2935-2320 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3475-2740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2935-2320 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3475-2740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2935-2320 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 234 1. introduction from 2005-2006 education year, primary education (1st-5th class) curricula have been revised, and revised again in 2009 and 2015 and applied to all primary schools attached to the ministry of national education. ministry of education demonstrates the necessity of renewing the curricula; as the fact that our education system is not in harmony with the countries that are scientifically and economically developed, and that the success rate is in very low in the field of mathematics on the domestic (sbs, lgs) and international (timss, pisa) tests (olkun and aydogdu, 2003; meb-erdd, 2005; esen and güneģ, 2012; pınar and dinç, 2013). although it is not explicitly stated in primary education mathematics curricula, it is understood that the constructivist approach is adopted (akbayır et al., 2006). as a result of this approach, the teacher-centered traditional teaching approach has been abandoned and a student-centered teaching method has been adopted (gelbal and kelecioğlu, 2007). this change in the curricula has generated radical changes in the methods, techniques and understanding of the assessment and evaluation methods of the courses as well as the contents of the courses, teaching methods and the teaching materials and instruments used (korkmaz and captain, 2005; gelbal and kelecioğlu, 2007; coklar et al., 2009). criticisms have been introduced in multiple-choice exams in the united states since 1990 (palm, 2008) because of the limitations of traditional assessment and evaluation methods in assessing students' learning during the teaching process (sambell et al., 1997). along with the renewed curricula, alternative assessment and evaluation approaches have gained importance for overcoming these limitations and critics (gelbal and kelecioğlu, 2007; duban and küçükyılmaz, 2008; gömleksiz and kan, 2010). while traditional assessment and evaluation methods are based on product-based evaluation methods (acar and anil, 2009) alternative assessment and evaluation methods are based on process-based evaluation methods and techniques (duban and küçükyılmaz, 2008). in other words, when traditional assessment and evaluation approach tries to determine whether the students know or do not know a knowledge or whether they have a skill or not; in the alternative assessment and evaluation mentality, it is tried to determine the learning process of the students and to monitor the developments in the process (acar and anil, 2009; ġenel et al., 2009; gömleksiz and kan, 2010). alternative assessment and evaluation approaches are theoretically based on constructivism (anderson, 1998; janisch et al., 2007). thus, assessment and evaluation in constructivist learning take place at every stage of the learning-teaching process (gelbal and kelecioğlu, 2007; karamustafaoğlu et al., 2012). therefore, this approach which gives an opportunity to measure both product and process (kuran and kanatli, 2009) has increased the need for various measurement and evaluation tools (baki and birgin, 2002; gelbal and kelecioğlu, 2007; karamustafaoğlu et al., 2012). alternative assessment and evaluation include methods other than traditional paper and pencil tests and objective tests (özenç, 2013). for example; in the 1998 primary school mathematics program, the use of traditional measuring instruments such as paper-pencil tests (written tests, oral tests, tests with correct answers and incorrect answers, short answers and matching questions, and multiple choice tests) was proposed (meb, 1998). however, in addition to the assessment and evaluation tools used in the 1998 program in the new curriculum, the use of performance-based assessment tools (project, performance, product file, etc.) are also required (meb, 2009a). it is stated in the general objectives of the primary school mathematics teaching program that students are aimed to develop their skills in researching, producing and using information as well as problem-solving and reasoning skills (meb, 2015). it is stated in many studies of literature that project tasks (assignments) play an important role in the development of these skills expected of the students themselves (cakan, 2004; gelbal and kelecioğlu, 2007; güvey, 2009). meb (2009b) defines project tasks in the no. 2009/37 circular as "projects are activities that help students identify and discover themselves, gain and develop scientific process skills, are selected from the lessons that are of interest to the students, and are selected from the courses they desire". it is stated in the primary mathematics teaching (1-5th grade) curriculum that the students will do project work under the guidance of the course teacher (meb, 2009a). if the teachers guide the students appropriately and make them carry out a project work; students’ creativity, self-confidence at the start of a job, ability to distribute tasks in group work, leadership features and collaborative work, responsibility, open-mindedness and willingness to produce work can be obtained. this will be a crucial step in their preparation for their life as they will be able to examine real-life problems, find solutions, and actively participate in the learning process (barak and dori, 2005). it is also stated in the literature that project tasks or activities in the field are effective in increasing the success of students (schneider, 2002; ayaz and söylemez, 2015). in project competitions and project duties, teachers are required to advise and guide their students in project preparation. this is because the teacher is the best person to get help in any question that students will encounter during project work. however, it is frequently stated in the literature that teachers have problems about project making and making students create a project (baki and tümer, 2009; arı, 2010; aydın and çepni, 2011; aydın et al., 2013; özel and akyol, 2014). when the literature is examined, it is seen that studies related to project assignments are made within the scope of assessment and evaluation. in summary, it was revealed in these studies that projects were one of the top three most used by teachers in measuring student achievement (gök and sahin, 2009) that project assignments were used by most of the classroom teachers and that they controlled the students’ project works (özenç and cakir, 2015) that 80.6% of the classroom teachers controlled the students’ project works (güneģ, 2007) that classroom teachers gave notes in the grades of 1, 2, and 3 according to criterions based on vague and teacher-based observations such as in-class performance and project grades (arda, 2009) that classroom teachers gave project works because of official obligations (güven and eskitürk, 2007; güneģ, 2008) that the mathematics courses came first in the distribution of the project assignment numbers and that fourth and fifth grade students had the most difficulty in project works among their homework (demirbaģ, 2011). in addition, yılmaz (2006) reported that classroom teachers had difficulties with their projects because the project assignments in the new primary school mathematics curriculum did not fit the students' level. however, esen and güneģ (2012) conducted a study on the opinions of elementary mathematics teachers on project and performance tasks, although not with class teachers. it is seen that esen and güneģ (2012) have carried out their work with a viewpoint as if project tasks and performance tasks are the same things. in other words, this study gives the reader the perception that the aim of asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 235 the project task is the same as the purpose of the performance task. looking at the purposes and outcomes of these studies, it is clear that none of them have investigated the thoughts of classroom teachers about project tasks and why they gave such tasks. if we want teachers to use project tasks in their lessons as an alternative teaching and evaluation tool, then what they understand from their project tasks and what kind of troubles they have experienced in their previous applications may provide important contributions to the program developers and researchers. although the project tasks have many positive effects on the cognitive, emotional and psychomotor development of the students, it is understood from the results of the above mentioned studies that there are many troubles in the implementation and evaluation of the project studies (cakan, 2004; gelbal and kelecioğlu, 2007; güvey, 2009). one of the possible causes of these difficulties may be the fact that classroom teachers have some incompleteness about the purpose of the project tasks, what they should pay attention to when project tasks are given, how project tasks should be assessed, and what to do in the process of making project tasks. it is important to identify the opinions of teachers who are in the guiding and router position in this process in order to overcome the difficulties experienced during the realization of project tasks used for alternative measurement and evaluation purposes. therefore, this study was conducted in order to determine the opinions of the class teachers about the project tasks. sub-problems that are sought in response to the main aim of the study are:  what are the aims of classroom teachers to give project tasks in mathematics lessons?  what are the points that classroom teachers pay attention to when determining project tasks in mathematics class?  how do classroom teachers evaluate project tasks in mathematics class?  what are the problems that classroom teachers encounter in the course of making students do project assignment in mathematics? 2. method 2.1. research design this study is a descriptive research carried out with the aim to find out the opinions of classroom teachers regarding project tasks. the study was performed using phenomenology among the qualitative research designs. phenomenology design is used for the investigation of phenomena (events, experiences, concepts, perceptions, tendencies and situations) which one recognizes, but has no thorough understanding about. interview is the basic data collection tool used in such type of researches (yıldırım and simģek, 2013). 2.2. study group within the framework of the purpose of research, the sample group was formed by 47 classrooms teachers working at the public schools in niğde city center in spring term of the 2014-2015 academic year, who participated in the research voluntarily. 2.3. data collection tool research data were obtained through the semi-structured interview form according to the purpose of research. the main purpose of interview is to reveal out the emotions, opinions, and beliefs of the interviewed about the research subject through an interactive process (cepni, 2009). in other words, the interview process helps the researcher to gain a deep understanding of the phenomenon investigated by the researcher (büyüköztürk et al., 2012). in this study, an interview form containing six semi-structured open-ended questions were used in order to reveal out the goals of class teachers and the issues they considered when assigning project tasks, evaluation of the projects tasks and the challenges they faced when having the students perform the projects tasks. pre-specified questions are asked to the participant in a semi-structured interview. in addition, new questions may be asked where necessary or the interviewer may decide not to ask some of the questions (yıldırım and simģek, 2013). as open-ended questions enable the interviewed to explain his/her answers with their reasons, open-ended questions were used as the data collection tool (gronlund and linn, 1990). the first question aims to reveal out the goals of teachers when assigning projects tasks; the second question aims to reveal out the factors considered by the teachers when assigning project tasks; the third and fourth questions aim to reveal out the evaluation process for projects tasks and the sixth and seventh questions aim to reveal out the challenges faced by the teachers when having the students perform the project tasks. this interview form was presented to two field education specialists in order to achieve content validity. the form was finalized by modifying the questions according to the opinions and recommendations of the specialists. the questions used in the interview form are as follows:  what is your purpose in assigning project tasks in math class? why do you assign project tasks to students in math class?  what are the issues that you consider when assigning project tasks in math class? which factors do you taking into account when assigning project tasks in math class?  how do you evaluate the project tasks you have assigned in math class? which criteria do you use in evaluation?  do the results of written exams or classroom performance have influence on you?  do you face challenges when having the students perform the projects tasks? if yes, what kind of challenges do you face?  what are the challenges you face in terms of the students, parents, curriculum etc. when having the students perform the project tasks you have assigned? asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 236 2.4. data collection and analysis before starting the interview, each participating teacher was explained the purpose of the research and each interview question was asked one by one after the creation of a sincere communication environment. during the interview, some sub-questions were asked in addition to the basic questions in order to obtain more detailed information to make the participants clarify the issue some more. the interviews were recorded using digital voice recorder. the interview with each teacher took an approximately 45-50 minutes. each digitally recorded interview was turned into written document afterwards. when preparing the written documents, best efforts were given to import the interview records exactly. however, the lexical mistakes or deficiencies of the teachers interviewed were corrected, without affecting the sentence structure. data obtained were analyzed using the qualitative data analysis program called maxqda 11 and "content coding", among the data analysis methods, was used, as well (yıldırım and simģek, 2013). in order to perform a reliable analysis of the data obtained, participants' responses to interview questions were analyzed by the researcher and an education specialist in an independent manner by making a classification based on the similarities and differences of these responses (merriam, 1988; yin, 1994). the level of coherence between the coding performed by the researcher and the field education specialist was calculated by the following formula: “reliability=(number of coherent categories)/(total number of coherent and incoherent categories)” (miles and huberman, 1994). as a result of the calculation, the reliability degree of the coherence of the independent analyses carried out by the researcher and the field education specialist regarding the data on the purpose of assigning project tasks was found as α= .86; regarding the data on the issues they took into account when assigning projects tasks, it was found as α= .85; regarding the data on the evaluation of the project tasks, it was found as α= .88; regarding the data on the challenges they faced when having the students perform the tasks, it was found as α= .. miles and huberman (1994) conclude that; with regard to the coherence between two different encoders, a coherence score of 0.70 and above is sufficient for reliability. accordingly, it was decided that the coherence between the encoders was reliable. the codes and the sub-codes separately formed by the researcher and the field specialist were examined together. the similar ones were clarified and the non-similar ones were discussed (merriam, 1988; yin, 1994) and the consensus was reached on common codes and themes. these themes, sub-themes and codes created were used to produce figures with the maxmaps feature of the maxqda qualitative data analysis program. these figures are presented in the findings section together with the frequency and percentage values of the codes and sub-codes (see figure 1-6). when explaining the findings about the obtained data, a sample teacher response for each code is presented by making direct quotations. each teacher is given a number (t number) in the quotations. both the researcher and the field specialist conducting the data analysis have experience in qualitative research methodology. both the researcher and field specialist have taken courses related to qualitative analysis, used qualitative data analysis method in doctoral dissertations and research articles. in this respect, it can easily be said that the encoders have experience in qualitative data analysis method. 2.5. validity and reliability measures in this study, the validity and reliability measures required for the qualitative research method are taken into account (yıldırım and simģek, 2013). for this purpose, in order to ensure internal validity, information was gathered during the implementation of the data collection tools by ensuring that participant teachers responded each question sincerely, thinking about their own practices regarding project tasks. in order to ensure external validity, the findings were tried to be presented in a manner consistent with the research questions. in order to ensure external reliability, the data-analyst researcher's position in the research process, the conceptual framework used in data analysis, the codes and themes were defined; data collection and analysis methods were thoroughly clarified. in order to ensure internal reliability, the researcher and a field specialist took part in the analysis steps and the obtained data were presented through a descriptive approach. 3. findings the findings achieved in the analysis of the data which were obtained in accordance with the research purpose were interpreted with tables and descriptions given according to the research questions. percentages may exceed 100% as the answers given by the participant teachers to each research question were placed under multiple codes. 3.1. findings on purposes of project tasking the first research question was “what are classroom teachers’ purposes of project tasking in the mathematics course?” the data obtained regarding this question are presented in figure 1 and figure 2. according to figure 1, the classroom teachers’ opinions on purposes of project tasking were grouped in three different themes of ensuring student development, alternative evaluation, and obligation by curriculum. opinions on the theme of ensuring student development were grouped in four codes. majority of the teachers stated that they task students with project to ensure students’ cognitive, affective and psycho-motor development and improve their problem-solving skills. as for the sub-codes in the cognitive code distinguished by percentage, 10.64% of the classroom teachers stated that they assign project tasks to improve students’ thinking skills in the mathematics course. despite being little in percentage, one each of the teachers stated that they task their students with projects to reinforce what students learned and improve their presentation skills while 2 of them reported that they do so to improve their knowledge on the subjects they learn about. also emphasizing some sub-codes (improving the research skill, exploring the creative skills, and improving independent working skills) of the problem-solving skills which is under the same theme, t20 reported that the purpose of project tasking is to improve students’ mathematical thinking skills cognitively and provided the following statement: asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 237 [t20]: yes, i give project homework in the mathematics courses. i give project homework to improve students’ skills of creativity, working independently, thinking and their mental skills. these are the most basic reasons. that is, the point is to enable students to do an original research. but most of the project homework does not achieve these goals... similarly to these statements, t13 provided the following statement to emphasize some of the sub-codes of both affective code (ensuring student’s self-expression) and problem-solving skills (enabling students to learn by doing and experiencing and enabling them to their knowledge and skills): [t13]: i give the project tasks to improve child’s thinking, enable them to learn better by using their knowledge and skills, help them learn by doing and experiencing and express themselves among their friends, but their parents are doing all the projects. that is why we cannot achieve the desired objective... as for the prominent sub-codes under the affective code in terms of percentage, 21.28% of the classroom teachers stated that they task students with projects to enable them to express themselves. on the other hand, 2 of the teachers stated that they give project tasks to improve students’ cooperation with their peers and 3 of them reported that they do so to increase students’ interest in and motivation of learning. also emphasizing some sub-codes (improving the research skill and enabling them to their knowledge and skills) of the problem-solving skills which is under the same theme, t9 reported that the purpose of project tasking is to students them to express themselves affectively and provided the following statement: figure-1. distribution of answers about purposes of project tasking figure-2. data chart for purposes of project tasking [t9]: purposes of project studies include guiding children to research and improving their research skills, enabling them to establish good relations with people in their surroundings to utilize these relations, improving their esthetic feelings to enable them to express themselves and helping them use information they learned so that they can learn the subject in a better way. another sub-code under the affective code and emphasized by 10.64% of the participants is bringing the sense of responsibility to students. t5’s statements on this sub-code and the codes of problem-solving skills (improving students’ research skills) and alternative evaluation (ensuring source diversity in evaluation) are as follows. t5: the point with project homework is to give responsibility to students and orientate them towards research. indeed, one of the project purposes is that students gain the sense of responsibility. we give them homework to assign them with certain responsibilities. certainly, there are those who do and do not gain. and evaluating the child in the classroom. we eventually give grades for school reports. project homework is important for evaluating in an alternative way. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 238 only 2 of the participants stated that they give project tasks in the mathematics course to help students develop psycho-motor skills. to provide an example, the following is the statements of t33 and 35 regarding this sub-code as well as both cognitive and problem-solving skill codes: [t33]: the purpose of these tasks is to improve children’s manual skills, open their horizon of thought and help them provide something from themselves, a new product. [t35]: the point with the project homework is to help children put forth a concrete product by using their manual skills and what they have learned in the classroom as well as their social developments. regarding the sub-codes under the code of problem-solving skills, 63.83% of the participants stated that they task students with projects to improve their research skills. furthermore, a significant part of the participants stated that they give project tasks to enable students to use their knowledge and skills (25.53%), explore their creative skills (23.40%), help them put forth a new product (23.40%), improve their independent working skills (10.64%) and enable them to learn by doing and experiencing (10.64%). on the other hand, only one participant reported that he/she gives project tasks to improve students’ mathematical questioning strength. the statements of t9, t13, t20 and t33 above can be seen regarding these sub-codes classified under the code of problem-solving skills. moreover, emphasizing some of the sub-codes of problem-solving skills and the theme of obligation by regulation, t1 provided the following statements about the purpose of project tasking. [t1]: the reason why i assign project homework is that we must do it by the regulation. apart from that, it may enable students to do research and produce new products and improve their questioning and thinking. i aim these when i give project tasks. but we cannot achieve the objective because homework is done superficially. 17.02% of the participant teachers reported that the reason why they task students with projects is that they must do so because it is obligatory by regulation. considering the above statement of t1 about these theme, it is seen that he/she is aware of the contribution to be made by project tasks to the students and must do it because it is obligatory by regulation. the following is the statement of t41 who reported that project tasks do not contribute to students at all and he/she give them because it is obligatory by regulation: [t41]: this is an obligation; it is not a choice for teachers because it is required to evaluate student achievement by performances and projects in the elementary school regulation. i mean, it is mandatory. therefore, we must give them. i would not do it. because it is but an inconvenience for students. students do not do it by themselves, anyway. they have their mothers or someone else do it. it is understood from certain participant statements that project tasks are assigned to provide an alternative evaluation. prominent statements under the alternative evaluation theme by percentage are finding out whether students have learned (12.77%) and identifying students’ abilities (4.51%). t17’s statement regarding these codes are as follows: [t17]: the purpose of project homework is to see whether students learned and acquired the information. it is an evaluation to see the result of measuring certain manual skill or any other skill not for a week or two but in an extended period. i give projects so that students can do research and make examinations. i can see and evaluate whether students could learn and identify their abilities during the project process. the point is to evaluate the process and the product. furthermore, only t5 reported that he/she assign project tasks to ensure source diversity in evaluation. regarding this code, you can see t5’s statement above. 3.2. findings on points considered when designating project tasks the second research question was “what are the points considered by classroom teachers’ when designating the project tasking in the mathematics course?” the data obtained regarding this question are presented in figure 3 and figure 4. figure-3. findings on points considered when designating project tasks asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 239 figure-4. data chart for points considered when designating project tasks according to figure 4, the classroom teachers’ opinions on the points considered when designating project task gather in three themes of conformity with curriculum, student-orientedness and applicability. as for the codes under the theme of conformity with curriculum, the participants reported that they assign project tasks by considering whether they are about the subjects of the course (31.91%), whether they conform with meb (curriculum) recommendations (14.89%), and whether they are associated with daily life (10.64%). t32’s statement regarding these codes are as follows: [t32]: since we assign children with project tasks to prepare them for life, i choose them from subjects which they can associate the daily life with. if they choose projects according to their own wishes and desires, they enjoy doing it and do research for it, which brings forth their researcher side... therefore, i consider children’s interests and wishes for sure. it also depends on course subjects. even if they say they are particularly interested in a given subject, we cannot give a project on that subject if we are not instructing that subject during the year... i consider children’s interests and wishes to the extent of the curriculum. another theme in regard to the points considered by the classroom teachers when designating project tasks is that they are student-oriented. it is observed that this theme includes five different codes. while 29.79% of the participant teacher consider students’ interests and needs, 2 of the participants consider that projects challenge the imagination and one each of the participants considers students’ levels and subjects which students have difficulty in learning, respectively, when designating the project tasks. t32’s statement above and t43’s statement below can be seen regarding the most emphasized code under this theme. furthermore, t12 and t29 provided the following statements about these codes: [t12]: it is generally up to students’ wishes and interests. but we can sometimes designate it. and we sometimes assign projects according to student levels as each student is on a different level. since projects directly affect the grade, we task students who are poor in mathematics with projects so that they can have good grades... [t29]: we have a curriculum to follow. therefore, i pay attention to the fact that the subjects are intriguing also by considering the recommendations of the curriculum. i also consider that it is appropriate for children’s levels. because they do not tend to study all the time. it is expected from them at these ages. you cannot expect students to study constantly. that is why i am trying to find subjects that excite children’s attention and intrigue them as much as i can. i am careful about tasking them about a subject in which they have the biggest trouble. another theme in regard to the points considered by the classroom teachers when designating project tasks is that they are applicable. opinions on the theme of applicability were grouped in five codes. almost all of the teachers (97.87%) reported they pay attention to the fact that the task is appropriate for students’ levels, 21.28% of them consider instruments and economic opportunities, and 14.26% consider that project subject can be investigated by students when designating the project tasks. on the other hand, only two of the participants choose project subjects which will serve a certain purpose and other two of them designate project task in consideration of the environment in which students are living. regarding the codes classified under this theme, t43 provided the following statement: [t43]: children’s levels and ages are important when tasking them with projects. it matters if project homework can be investigated and done by them. i try to choose projects from which students can gain something, that is, which will contribute to them... and it is also important whether there is an environment in which children can do the project and do the research. the environment in which they are living is important... if they do not own computer and cannot afford instruments required for the project due to their economic opportunities, i give them a subject in consideration of that. i would not want my projects to impose economic burden on children. 3.3. findings on factors used for evaluating project tasks the third research question was “how do classroom teachers evaluate the project tasks they give in the mathematics course?” the data obtained regarding this question are presented in figure 5 and figure 6. according to figure 5, the data on the classroom teachers’ opinions on how they evaluate the project tasks which they assigned students with in the mathematics course were grouped in two themes of indirect and direct factors. opinions on the theme of direct factors were grouped in 11 different codes. 89.4% of the participants reported that they use criterion (rubric) when evaluating the project tasks which they assign students with. furthermore, asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 240 significant part of the participant teachers stated that they evaluate the project tasks according to whether they comply with the project schedule (34%), project task’s cleanness, particularity and order (21.3%), diversity of sources used when preparing the project task (14.9%), and effort made during the process of preparing the (17%). 10.6% of the participants reported that they evaluate projects according to how students present the projects and how they explain the information they acquired and 8.51% evaluate the projects by considering whether they put forth creative ideas. the following statements were provided by t26 and t39 about these codes: [t26]: first of all, i use the criteria i designated when evaluating a project task prepared by students. ...did students prepare the project in a reasonable time or do it sloppily and hastily? …did they add anything of themselves, use pictures or figures, and pay attention to it? could they use their creativity or copy-paste it from the internet? …if they get a very high grade in the exam and actively participate in the class, i grant them a grade matching the exam. child’s state of mind at that moment is very important to me... figure-5. findings on factors used for evaluating project tasks figure-6. data chart for factors used for evaluating project tasks [t39]: we have evaluation forms that we prepared for these. we evaluate taking all the criteria in the evaluation form into account. whether they made a good presentation, prepared the product nicely; the product is original, nice, clean, in an orderly fashion, attracted their friends’ interest and attention... we take all these in consideration when evaluating... apart from these, if they could not express themselves much in the project but they are good in the classroom and perform better, we grade the project as a supplement. because we do not observe their studying just at that moment but within the year. we accordingly give grades. on the other hand, despite being few in percentage, 3 each of the teachers evaluate projects considering whether students took teacher’s guidance during the project and whether they did the project on their own respectively, 2 of them evaluate considering whether projects were prepared in accordance with the purpose, and 1 each of them evaluate considering whether they acted according to the plan and the originality of the information, respectively. statements of t1 and t24 regarding these codes are as follows: [t1]: …we use standard criteria. but what matters to me time, planning... but if the research and tasks are not delivered within the planned time, doing it in a tight period of time does not serve to purpose... they should plan the time during which they do the project and collect the sources properly. moreover, the studies during the process should be under guidance of teacher and teacher should show the student the path. and the student should inform the teacher of the preparation weekly... students’ participation in the classroom and their grades in written and oral exams certainly make us evaluate their projects positively... their social status, family’s status, and even the place we reserved for them in our emotional world necessarily intertwine. eventually, you are a human; mischiefs of a successful child come to your attention less compared to other children. ...there are times when we make a high evaluation if a successful student has a trouble, thinking “he/she would have done it, but something must have gone wrong.” [t24]: i consider criteria like “did students review the sources? did they do the project by themselves? was the project done according to the given purpose?” asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 241 opinions on the theme of indirect factors were grouped in two different codes of those who do and do not use indirect factors. 44.7% of the participant teachers stated that they do not consider any factor which is not related to the project task when evaluating students’ projects. statements of t6 and t23 regarding this code are as follows: [t6]: there are various criteria for evaluating the projects. ...we evaluate what children prepare according to those criteria... nothing is effective for me but those criteria. even if one of them is the most hardworking student of the classroom, i would not give him/her high grade if he/she did not meet the criteria. i would consider whether he/she meet the criteria in that task. [t23]: we have about 20 project evaluation criteria. we have evaluation criteria such as language, narration, bibliography, what students benefited from, what the original parts of the project are. we grade students by evaluating according to these criteria. i do not mix students’ in-course achievement with the project grade. opinions of the teachers who stated that they use indirect factors when evaluating the project tasks were grouped under four codes. the participants stated that they consider students’ activity in the course (46.8%), achievement in written exams (21.3%) and achievement in oral exams (8.51%) when evaluating the project tasks. only one of the participant teachers reported that social status of students’ families is effective when evaluating the project tasks. the above statements of t1, t26 and t39 can be seen in regard to these subthemes. 3.4. findings on problems faced in project tasking the fourth research question was “what problems do classroom teachers face in project tasking in the mathematics course?” the data obtained regarding this question are presented in figure 7 and figure 8. according to figure 7, 3 subthemes that are curriculum, student-related and parental problems were achieved regarding the problems faced by the classroom teachers in project tasking in the mathematics course. only one of the participant teachers reported to be having time trouble as the curriculum is intensive. the following is t8’s statement: [t8]: for example, a child whose manual skills is not improved or who have no conscious of the homework has his/her parents or others do the project. evaluation must be done healthily, but we always look at the result. a completed project comes along, and we consider that the student has done it. it is obviously not the case. even when a parent comes to me and asks, “what grade did my child take for this project”, it is the evidence that the child did not do it... children with a good financial status have the project done by others in a nice way, others take low grades because they cannot do it. it must be monitored, but we do not have the time. the curriculum already takes too much time. i cannot find time to speak personally even when a project requires. another problem faced by 21% of the participant teachers in project tasking is student-related. one of the participants reported that students cannot designate a project subject, 3 each of the participants reported that students cannot comprehend the purpose of project, students resort to copy paste the project from diverse sources, and they elude responsibility during the project, respectively. figure-7. problems faced in project tasking figure-8. data chart for problems faced in project tasking asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 242 t37’s statement regarding these codes are as follows: [t37]: children do not want to put much effort forth and go online and print out whatever they find there. they should investigate, examine, exemplify and should not print out anything as it is. they never question whether what they find on internet serves the purpose of the project. next thing you know, the kid has not understood the purpose even on the last day of deadline. they have their parents or others do it in a hurry... we assign these tasks so that children can take their own responsibility. …some of the parents do the homework instead of the student as if we gave it to them. children also say “my mother, father did it” ... 76.2% of the participant teachers reported that they have parental problems during the project tasking. parental problems were grouped in four different codes. one of the participants mentioned about parents’ indifference by stating that they do not contribute materially or spiritually to students whatsoever. reporting that parents think that the project tasks for students are given to them, two of the participant teachers stated that parents are not aware of the reason why teachers assign the project tasks. other two of the teachers stated that they encounter problems because parents with poor financial status cannot give financial support to their children for procuring the project materials. according to 57% of the participant teachers, the biggest problem they face in project tasking is parents who assumed the role of student and do their projects. the following is the statement of t1 who reported that he/she has parental problems in project tasking: [t1]: we see many problems; first of all, we cannot explain our purpose to the parent completely. some of the parents acts like we assign them with the project. some of them do not even care. therefore, we cannot achieve the results we hope. another problem is that i want students to find their project subjects according to their interests; i have to designate the subjects because they are indifferent or do not know what to do. they sometimes choose a subject which they are interested in regardless of their parents, but it becomes a problem because the parents cannot provide financial support. some of the parents do not mind at all, others do the project instead of students as if we assigned them with the projects. a competition starts among parents to get their own children higher marks. there are lots of flaws here, but i think the thing to do is to inform parents of the projects properly. if a project is not done by students but their parents, it is not fair for students whose parents care less or have poor financial level. and we have trouble when evaluating the projects and evaluating for the grade... 4. discussion in the study, the views of classroom teachers on project tasks in mathematics classes were examined. looking at the findings of classroom teachers purpose of assigning project work in mathematics class, there are three main purposes. one of the primary purposes of classroom teachers to assign project tasks is to provide mathematical student development. classroom teachers give project assignments in mathematics classes to help students improve their cognitive, emotional and psychomotor development and to improve their problem-solving skills. while class teachers give project tasks to improve students' thinking ability in terms of cognitive domain, it has been found out that cognitive aspects of students are to improve their knowledge, to reinforce what they learn, to give presentation tasks and to improve presentation skills. slater (1993) emphasized that it is important for teachers to conduct performance-based studies in terms of education and training process, thus ensuring that the project tasks given to the students can consolidate the course content. from the point of view of the effective field, they give project tasks in order to make students express themselves and to gain responsibility awareness. in addition, a small proportion of the teachers seem to have given project tasks in order to increase their interest and motivation to learn and to cooperate with peers of the effective students. although the psychomotor is low in terms of area, class teachers also give the project task to improve the hand skills of students in mathematics class. given the findings on improving problem-solving skills, it has emerged that two thirds of classroom teachers assign project tasks in order to improve students' research skills, close to a fourth of them use their knowledge and skills, to reveal creativity skills and create a new product. in addition, one-tenth of class teachers give project assignments in order to improve students' ability to work independently in mathematics lessons and to make them learn by doing. the results of the primary school teachers' task assignment purposes are generally matches by the objectives of the project tasks (meb, 2014) specified in the objectives of the primary school mathematics class (1, 2, 3 and 4 classes) curriculum (meb, 2015) and preschool education and primary education institutions regulation. classes) curriculum (meb, 2015) and preschool education and primary education institutions regulation. the objectives of the project tasks in the ministry of education's regulation on preschool education and primary education institutions (meb, 2014) defined as: "project: activities to be carried out in the guidance of the course teacher in order to examine, research and comment on a field or subject that the students want in groups or individually, to develop their opinions, to reach new information, to produce original ideas and inferences" erdal (2007) stated that project tasks have directed students to explore and develop their self-esteem. similarly, esen and güneģ (2012) have shown in their work they made with elementary school mathematics teachers, half of the teachers participated assigning project tasks to improve students' research skills. bozkurt et al. (2014) in their study on project and performance tasks with classroom teachers, it has been shown that every activity that students do themselves contributes to their development. in this regard, as a whole, the findings of the project tasks are summarized as follows: the primary objectives of the classroom teachers in project assignment to the students are, in order of significance: to develop students' research skills, to use their knowledge and skills, to introduce new products and to demonstrate creativity skills. based on this result, it can be said that the class teachers are aware of the fact that their project tasks will contribute to the cognitive, emotional and psychomotor developments for the students and they give project tasks for this purpose. one of the main objectives of classroom teachers to give project assignments in mathematics classes is to make alternative assessments. approximately one in ten of the classroom teachers have emerged to give students project tasks to determine whether they have learned the topic and identify their talents. one of the main reasons why primary school teachers give project assignments in mathematics lessons is that one of five teachers thinks that assignment of project tasks is mandatory due to regulations. as the fact that the teachers who have this view are not in a small ratio and the ratio of teachers who stated that the purpose of project asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 243 task is to make alternative evaluation is also very low, it can be interpreted that classroom teachers do not fully understand the objectives of project tasks and do not consider project tasks as an alternative assessment tool. this result is in agreement with the results of the study conducted by erdal (2007). erdal (2007) showed that project tasks are one of the most used techniques that classroom teachers use for alternative assessment and evaluation, the reason for this is classroom teachers have enough knowledge about this technique. similarly, kuran and kanatli (2009) found that one of the most used tools of classroom teachers as alternative assessment and evaluation techniques is project tasks. the reason for this is that the technique is well known by the teachers and that the program has indicated that it is compulsory. however, when we look at the findings of our study, it is clear that one of five teachers and one of five have indicated that they have given project tasks because it is compulsory due to regulations, it can be interpreted that a significant majority of the teachers, such as the four of five of them are not aware that project tasks can be used as an alternative evaluation tool. in addition, the fact that only one teacher has indicated that they give project tasks to students in order to provide a variety of resources in the measurement reminds that almost all of the teachers are aware that they do not have enough knowledge to make alternative evaluations. esen and güneģ (2012) have supported the idea that only three teachers in the study they conducted gave project assignments in order to provide variety in measurement. therefore, classroom teachers should be informed about the alternative measurement and evaluation methods and techniques through in-service training that will be organized both theoretically and practically. when we look at the findings of the factors that class teachers take into consideration when designing project tasks in the mathematics classroom, it is seen that they take into account three different basic factors. one of these factors is that the tasks topics fit the curriculum. approximately three-quarters of classroom teachers are concerned about the relevance of project topics and about one in ten pay attention to the proposals of mathematics teaching curricula and their relevance to everyday life. the low proportion of teachers who say that they pay attention to the relevance of project issues to everyday life means that a great majority of class teachers fail to provide project assignments that enable their students to relate mathematics to everyday life. the fact that teachers cannot give project topics in a way that will enable them to establish mathematics in relation to everyday life, that can cause students to look mathematics as mass of information that is to be memorized in and which is composed of formulas and symbols that are not related to daily life as a lesson. this will be one of the first obstacles to learning in a meaningful way for students to learn mathematics. this will be one of the first obstacles for students to learn by understanding mathematics in a meaningful way (taģdemir, 2003). therefore, classroom teachers should pay attention to the fact that they are related to daily life while determining the project tasks. the second factor that class teachers take into account when setting project tasks is that project tasks are directed at students. approximately one-third of the class teachers identify the project topics by taking the interests and needs of the students into account. however, very few teachers pay attention to the fact that the subjects are interesting and intriguing for students and that their imagination is compelling when they assign project tasks in mathematics. this result can be interpreted as almost whole of the classroom teachers, does not assign interesting and imaginative project tasks to students. bozkurt et al. (2014) also determined that very low number of classroom teachers expressed the need for project and performance tasks to be given should be cognitively and imaginative for students. based on this result, students will be able to do their homework more willingly and efficiently when the classroom teachers assign project tasks that will be able to draw on students' interests and make them wonder and use their imagination more effectively. the third factor that class teachers take into account when determining project tasks is the ability to make project tasks. almost all of the class teachers are concerned that the project tasks they are assigning to students are appropriate to the level of the students. this result can be interpreted as that the class teachers gave project tasks in accordance with the individual needs and levels of the students. in the study conducted by esen and güneģ (2012) two thirds of the teachers showed that they gave project tasks by considering the levels of the students. arranging the project tasks to be appropriate to the level of the students will increase the students' attitude towards the goal, and they will prepare and deliver the assignments willingly (bozkurt et al., 2014). also, two of five of the class teachers consider that the project tasks can be done in terms of equipment and economic facilities, and more than one in ten teachers consider the project to be explorable. conversely, this shows that most of the teachers, almost three of five, have given project tasks without taking the students' equipment and economic opportunities and the discoverability of project fact into consideration. in addition, a small proportion of the teachers stated that while choosing project tasks, they selected the project to serve the purpose and that the environment of the student lives in also took into account. that is to say, although the class teachers indicate that they consider student levels while assigning project tasks, it is seen that the students equipment and economic opportunities and the environment they live in ignored. according to meb (2009a) it is stated that the projects will improve the mental skills of the students such as creativity, research, communication, problem solving, and connection, if the project subjects given are appropriate to the level of the students and can be done according to local possibilities. therefore, class teachers should choose the tools and materials that will be used in project construction that students can provide them with the local facilities, as well as taking into account the student's level when designing project tasks. when we look at the findings of how class teachers evaluate project tasks in mathematics lessons, it is seen that they take two different basic factors, direct and indirect into account. while half of the classroom teachers do not take into account any factors other than the criteria in the project evaluation form that they have already identified when evaluating project tasks, the other half also use factors other than these criteria. as a ratio, half of the teachers take classroom activities of the students into account, two in five of them take written test results of the students into consideration during project task evaluation. this result is similar to the results of the work done by esen and güneģ (2012). esen and güneģ (2012) found that approximately four-thirds of elementary school mathematics teachers have shown that they consider students written examination successes in assessing their project tasks. they have stated that they have made an assessment taking into consideration factors such as student's classroom activity, written and oral examination successes which are not directly related to the process of preparation of the project and the product means that they cannot make a valid and reliable assessment. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 233-245 244 therefore, when the activities of a student are measured and evaluated within the teaching process, the student's grades or scores from each tool must be assessed independently and objectively and the student's achievement status should be determined. based on the findings from the opinions about direct factors, it is seen that they made an evaluation considering some factors for the project task itself or for the construction process. nearly nine-tenths of class teachers use criteria (rubrics) when evaluating student projects. approximately one-third of the teachers using rubrik seem to be more concerned about the fact that the student does not prepare and prepare the project in accordance with the project calendar, while it is seen that one of five of them consider the factors such as diligence, orderliness, cleanliness in the preparing of the homework and the diversity of the resources used in the homework preparing. in addition to these factors, they also use factors such as students ability to put forth creative ideas, take the guidance of the teacher in the project preparation process, ability to make project themselves, obey the purpose of the project, to make presentations and present the information they learn and behave in accordance with the plans they prepare. in the study conducted by esen and güneģ (2012) a similar result was obtained when the mathematics teachers evaluated the student projects in terms of time, order and visuality, content, reasonableness, and presentation. although an important proportion of teachers use criteria for project evaluation, the fact that teachers have significant differences in the usage rates of each criterion means that they cannot effectively use the criteria (rubrics) to evaluate projects. so, this result shows that class teachers cannot effectively assess the performance and achievement of students in the process from initial to finalization of the project. it is important that the classroom teachers are informed about the evaluation of the project (rubric) during the project evaluation since the project tasks should be assessed and evaluated effectively (ersoy et al., 2010). when we look at the findings related to the difficulties encountered by the class teachers in the process of making the project tasks given in the mathematics lessons to the students, it is seen that they meet three basic problems: students, parents, and curriculum. when considering student-related problems, very few prospective teachers face the following problems such as the students' failure to take responsibility, the direct copying of the project from different sources, the failure to understand the project purpose, determination of the project and the reluctance in project making process. in addition, there is only one teacher stating that there is a time constraint due to the curriculum intensity in project construction process. conversely, the fact that fewer classroom teachers are faced with student and curriculum-related problems means that classroom teachers are not experiencing a lot of student-related problems during the project making process. similarly; as a very small proportion of teachers have stated that they are facing parent-oriented problems such as economic support, the lack of interest of the parents, and the lack of awareness of the project purpose, can be interpreted in general that parents are interested in project assignments of their children and provide economic support. in contrast, according to more than half of the teachers, the most important problem they have experienced with parents is that they take a role of a student in the project making process and make the project instead of a student. bozkurt et al. (2014) found that the most common problem for classroom teachers regarding project and performance assignments was the work done by the parents. this situation is an important problem that must be emphasized in terms of education e purpose of the project tasks given to the pupils, idea that their children cannot make a good homework, and wish for a high grade. parents should be informed by the teachers at the beginning of the school year about how the parents can help their children in the homework making process, as homework made by parents may be a rescuer for the moment's success for students (coģkun et al., 2009) but it can affect future achievements negatively. in terms of education, children supported by their parents have higher school achievement (celenk, 2003). furthermore, ersoy et al. 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[accessed 29.03.2016]. taģdemir, m., 2003. planning and evaluation in education, (program, teaching, management and evaluation). 2nd edn., ankara: january publications. yıldırım, a. and h. simģek, 2013. qualitative research methods in the social sciences. 9th edn., ankara: seçkin publishing house. yılmaz, t., 2006. teacher opinions about the renewed 5th mathematics program (sakarya ili örneği). unpublished master thesis, sakarya university social sciences institute, sakarya. yin, r.k., 1994. case study research design and methods. 2nd edn., thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=assessment%20of%20teacher%20and%20student%20opinions%20on%20performance%20assignments%20in%20turkish%20lessons https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=opinions%20of%20elementary%20mathematics%20teachers%20on%20project%20and%20performance%20tasks https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=teachers'%20perceptions%20of%20competence%20about%20the%20measurement%20and%20evaluation%20methods%20and%20the%20problems%20they%20faced https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=teachers'%20perceptions%20of%20competence%20about%20the%20measurement%20and%20evaluation%20methods%20and%20the%20problems%20they%20faced https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=implementing%20alternative%20assessment:opportunities%20and%20obstacles http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131720709335007 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=determination%20of%20alternative%20assessment%20and%20assessment%20levels%20of%20classroom%20teachers https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=performance%20assessment%20and%20authentic%20assessment:%20a%20conceptual%20analysis%20of%20theliterature https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=study%20of%20student%20perceptions%20of%20the%20consequential%20validity%20of%20assessment https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20problems%20faced%20by%20science%20and%20technology%20teachers%20in%20using%20alternative%20assessment%20and%20evaluation%20techniques:%20trabzon%20example 603 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 603-608, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.603.608 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group playing digital game motivations of university students murat turgut1 onur mutlu yasar2 ( corresponding author) 1,2kastamonu university, school of physical education and sports, kastamonu, turkey. abstract digital gaming involves all kinds of activities, both individually and as a team, in an online or offline environment through an electronic device. it is stated that the age of playing digital games has decreased to 5-6 years. the aim of this study is to investigate the motivation of students in different faculties of kastamonu university to play digital games according to gender, age, faculty, class, income and frequency of playing. the research is a descriptive research conducted with quantitative research method. a total of 400 students participated from kastamonu university in turkey. in the research, digital game playing motivation scale developed by munusturlar and munusturlar (2018) was used as a measurement tool. in the study, the normal distribution of the data was determined by kurtosis and skewness values, and parametric analysis methods one-way anova and independent t test were used. the motivation of the participants to play digital games was determined at medium and high levels. according to the results, differences were found according to the variables of gender, department, age, class and income status. according to a study of men playing digital games motivation levels are higher than women. in addition, participants with better financial status are more motivated to play digital games. in addition, older participants have higher motivation to play digital games. keywords: digital games, motivations, students, university. citation | murat turgut; onur mutlu yasar (2019). playing digital game motivations of university students. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 603-608. history: received: 19 september 2019 revised: 22 october 2019 accepted: 27 november 2019 published: 23 december 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 604 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 604 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 605 4. discussion and result ................................................................................................................................................................... 607 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 608 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.603.608&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1184 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4050-6482 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7598-3927 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1184 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4050-6482 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7598-3927 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1184 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4050-6482 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7598-3927 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1184 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4050-6482 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7598-3927 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 603-608 604 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the literature in terms of digital gaming habits of university students as digital gaming has spread around the world and many tournaments are organized and even many leading football teams have e-sport teams. thus, a need for revealing attitude of university students towards digital gaming is important. 1. introduction the concept of play is considered as a phenomenon that exists with human history. in the literature, the concept of game is evaluated in two parts as traditional and digital games. while the games evaluated within the traditional game concept have more physical activity and movement, it is seen that the games within the concept of digital game contain less physical activity and more mental activity (hazar and hazar, 2017) traditional games have more physical activity and movement, and digital games have less physical activity and more mental activity. digital gaming involves all kinds of activities, both individually and as a team, in an online or offline environment through an electronic device (esposito, 2005). in other words, the concept of digital game is expressed as games that provide animated graphics and sound effects, as well as immersive simulation (liu and chen, 2013). it is seen that the history of digital game research has emerged since the 1980s (bryce and rutter, 2006). it is stated that 1 billion people in the world play digital games. in addition, it is stated that the age of playing digital games has decreased to 5-6 years. it can be stated that this situation develops as a result of increasing use and frequency of smart phones, tablets and computers entering human life (yücel, 2019). action games, adventure games, simulation games, sports games, strategic games, puzzle games and role playing games are some of the digital games (gros, 2007). a lot of research has been done recently on digital games (cota and ishitani, 2015; de schutter et al., 2015; denisova and cairns, 2015; bopp et al., 2016; de grove et al., 2016; mattar and goi, 2019). in the usa, it is stated that 97% of children and young people devote time to digital games for at least one hour per day (granic et al., 2014). our country is among countries where digital games are played the most, turkey is the third country in the world where digital gaming is played so widely. a total of 30 million people in turkey play digital games and it is stated that this sector counts for 600 million dollars15. in this context, the concept of digital game that has an important place in turkey's interest for this concept is expected to be further developed. the popularity of digital games today allows young people to spend their time playing online or offline digital games rather than outdoor activities (eskasasnanda, 2017). in this context, it is generally accepted that there are positive and negative aspects of digital games. the lack of physical activity and the reduction of face-to-face social relationships among digital games can be given as an example of the negative aspects of playing digital games (mustafaoğlu et al., 2018). in addition, online games of digital games create a different social environment. it is stated that digital games, which can also be used within educational administrations, have positive effects on individuals' mental behaviours such as decision making, focusing and quick thinking. the aim of this study is to investigate the motivation of students who study in different faculties in kastamonu university according to gender, age, faculty, class, income status. 2. material and method the research was conducted using quantitative research methods. the study group consists of 400 students, (162 women and 238 men) studying at kastamonu university in turkey. in the research, digital game playing motivation scale developed by munusturlar and munusturlar (2018) which was composed of 17 questions and 5 sub-dimensions, was used as a measurement tool munusturlar and munusturlar (2018). written and oral consent forms were obtained from each participant in the research and the research was conducted according to the declaration of helsinki. the kurtosis and skewness values of the data obtained within the scope of the study were examined and it was found that the data showed normal distribution (can, 2016). in this context, one way anova was used for groups with more than two variables, and t test analyses were used for groups with more than two variables. also data coronach alpha value was determined of 90. level. table 1 shows demographic information of participants. table-1. demographic information of participants. n % gender/sex man 162 40.5 woman 238 59.5 age 18-21 157 39.3 22-25 229 57.3 25 and above 14 3.4 faculty/school faculty of architecture and engineering 100 25 faculty of economics and administrative sciences 100 25 faculty of sports 100 25 faculty of arts and science 100 25 grade/class 1 62 15.5 2 70 17.5 3 127 31.7 4 141 35.3 income (monthly) 0-500 tl 115 28.7 501-1500 tl 173 43.3 1500 tl and above 112 28 total 400 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 603-608 605 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group information related to age, educational status, grade, income of the participants can be found in table 1. 162 men and 238 women participated in this study which counts for 40,5% for men and 59,5 for women. the most of the participants were from the age group of 22-25. distribution of the students in terms of their faculties were equal. income status of the students did not significantly change and most students had an income level of 501-1500 tl. 3. findings the data on the digital game motivation scale sub-dimensions and the averages and kurtosis and skewness values of the participants are given in table 2. table-2. digital game motivation scale of the participants skewness and kurtosis values and averages of total scores and subdimensions. sub-dimensions x skewness kurtosis concentration 2.75 .380 .363 entertainment 3.40 -.496 -.589 escape 2.85 -.073 -.899 learning 2.80 .007 -.938 socializing 3.10 -.311 -.780 total 2.97 -.298 -.394 accordingly data analyses, the sub-dimension with the highest average was found to be the entertainment subdimension and the sub-dimension with the lowest average was the concentration sub-dimension. in addition, the total score obtained from the digital game motivation scale was 2.97. table-3. t-test results of participants according to gender variable. sub-dimensions gender/sex n x ss p difference concentration man (1) 162 2.52 1.11 .001 1>2 woman (2) 238 2.91 1.12 entertainment man (1) 162 3.04 1.14 .000 woman (2) 238 3.65 1.09 escape man (1) 162 2.47 1.09 .000 1>2 woman (2) 238 3.11 1.08 learning man (1) 162 2.36 1.03 .000 1>2 woman (2) 238 3.10 1.07 socializing man (1) 162 2.68 1.18 .000 1>2 woman (2) 238 3.38 1.08 total man (1) 162 2.61 0.87 .000 1>2 woman (2) 238 3.22 0.83 *p<0.05. table 3 shows t-test results according to gender variables of participants. according to the gender variable, the mean scores of male participants were found to be higher than the female participants in the total score and concentration, escape, learning, and socialization sub-dimensions. in other words, male participants' motivation to play digital games was higher than female participants. table-4. results of anova by age variable. sub-dimensions age n x ss p difference concentration 18-21 (1) 157 2.62 1.07 .078 22-24 (2) 229 2.82 1.15 25 and above (3) 14 3.19 1.31 entertainment 18-21 (1) 157 3.32 1.17 .113 22-24 (2) 229 3.43 1.14 25 and above (3) 14 3.98 1.03 escape 18-21 (1) 157 2.69 1.13 .030 3>1,2 2>1 22-24 (2) 229 2.93 1.11 25 and above (3) 14 3.35 1.19 learning 18-21 (1) 157 2.66 1.12 .091 22-24 (2) 229 2.89 1.10 25 and above (3) 14 3.07 1.14 socializing 18-21 (1) 157 2.97 1.19 .198 22-24 (2) 229 3.18 1.14 25 and above (3) 14 3.21 1.22 total 18-21 (1) 157 2.85 0.86 .027 3,2>1 22-24 (2) 229 3.04 0.90 25 and above (3) 14 3.38 1.02 *p<0.05. table 4 shows anova results according to age variables of participants. according to the age variable, the mean scores of the group above 25 years of age in the escape subscale and total score were higher than the other groups. in addition, the mean scores of the 21-24 age group in the escape subscale were found to be higher than the mean scores of the 18-21 group. in the total score, the mean scores of the group above 25 years of age were higher than the other groups. according to these results, it is seen that the motivation to play digital games increases with increasing age. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 603-608 606 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. anova results of the participants according to faculty variables. sub-dimensions faculty/school n x ss p difference concentration faculty of architecture and engineering (1) 102 2.75 1.04 .013 2>4 faculty of economics and administrative sciences (2) 99 3.01 1.04 faculty of sports (3) 99 2.76 1.24 faculty of arts and science (4) 100 2.49 1.14 entertainment faculty of architecture and engineering (1) 102 3.35 1.06 .421 faculty of economics and administrative sciences (2) 99 3.51 1.07 faculty of sports (3) 99 3.48 1.36 faculty of arts and science (4) 100 3.27 1.10 escape faculty of architecture and engineering (1) 102 3.01 1.07 .003 1,2,3>4 faculty of economics and administrative sciences (2) 99 2.96 1.08 faculty of sports (3) 99 2.92 1.24 faculty of arts and science (4) 100 2.49 1.05 learning faculty of architecture and engineering (1) 102 3.21 1.00 .000 1>2,3,4 2,3>4 faculty of economics and administrative sciences (2) 99 2.90 1.05 faculty of sports (3) 99 2.77 1.18 faculty of arts and science (4) 100 2.34 1.05 socializing faculty of architecture and engineering (1) 102 3.22 1.10 .579 faculty of economics and administrative sciences (2) 99 3.11 1.09 faculty of sports (3) 99 3.08 1.28 faculty of arts and science (4) 100 2.99 1.20 total faculty of architecture and engineering (1) 102 3.10 0.84 .003 1.2.3>4 faculty of economics and administrative sciences (2) 99 3.11 0.83 faculty of sports (3) 99 3.00 1.06 faculty of arts and science (4) 100 2.69 0.77 *p<0.05. table 5 shows anova results according to faculty variables of participants. according to the faculty/school variable, the participants who have the highest motivation to play digital games are the students of the faculty of economics and administrative sciences, faculty of architecture and engineering, faculty of sports and faculty of arts and science respectively. table-6. anova results according to class variables. sub-dimensions grade/class n x ss p difference concentration 1 62 2.64 1.01 .634 2 127 2.72 0.89 3 70 2.72 1.11 4 141 2.84 1.29 entertainment 1 62 3.37 1.24 .792 2 127 3.33 0.99 3 70 3.38 1.15 4 141 3.48 1.19 escape 1 62 2.78 1.13 .275 2 127 2.66 1.05 3 70 2.85 1.14 4 141 2.97 1.15 learning 1 62 2.81 1.07 .031 3,4>2 2 127 2.45 0.99 3 70 2.92 1.11 4 141 2.87 1.17 socializing 1 62 3.04 1.25 .226 2 127 2.86 1.16 3 70 3.14 1.08 4 141 3.20 1.20 total 1 62 2.92 0.77 .249 2 127 2.81 0.77 3 70 2.99 0.91 4 141 3.06 0.97 *p<0.05. table 6 shows anova results according to class variables of participants. there was a statistically significant difference only in learning sub-dimension according to class variable. according to the results, the average of the 3rd and 4th grade points were found to be higher than the 2nd grade group average scores. in other words, it is seen that with the increase in the class levels of the participant students, the status of seeing digital games as a learning activity increases. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 603-608 607 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. anova results according to income variables. sub-dimensions income (monthly) n x ss p difference concentration 0-500 tl (1) 115 2.76 1.27 .718 501-1500 tl (2) 173 2.70 1.02 1500 tl and above (3) 112 2.82 1.14 entertainment 0-500 tl (1) 115 3.37 1.16 .008 3,1>2 3>1 501-1500 tl (2) 173 3.25 1.14 1500 tl and above (3) 112 3.68 1.12 escape 0-500 tl (1) 115 2.73 1.10 .001 3>1,2 501-1500 tl (2) 173 2.70 1.10 1500 tl and above (3) 112 3.20 1.13 learning 0-500 tl (1) 115 2.59 1.09 .001 3>1,2 501-1500 tl (2) 173 2.74 1.09 1500 tl and above (3) 112 3.12 1.11 socializing 0-500 tl (1) 115 3.00 1.23 .074 501-1500 tl (2) 173 3.02 1.10 1500 tl and above (3) 112 3.31 1.19 total 0-500 tl (1) 115 2.89 0.86 .003 3>1,2 501-1500 tl (2) 173 2.88 0.87 1500 tl and above (3) 112 3.22 0.92 *p<0.05. table 7 shows anova results according to income variables of participants. according to the results of the analysis made according to monthly income variable entertainment, escape and learning sub-dimensions and total score averages. according to the results of the analysis, it is seen that the motivation of playing digital games increases with the increase of monthly income of the participating students. 4. discussion and result according to the results of the study conducted by demirel et al. (2019) to determine the motivation of high school students to play digital games, it was stated that the motivation of female participants to play digital games was lower than that of male participants demirel et al. (2019). in this context, it is seen that there is a similarity between this research and the study conducted by demirel et al. (2019) according to gender variable. sin et al. (2014) stated that the male students' motivation to play digital games was investigated according to the results of the study, it was stated that the emotions that provide the motivation to play digital games of the male students have the challenge and control emotions (sin et al., 2014). in this context, the results of this study and the research conducted by sin et al. in addition, according to the results of the research conducted by sin et al. (2014) it was stated that the most intense emotion felt by digital game players while playing digital games was entertainment. in this context, there are similarities between the two studies. as a result of general research, it is stated in many studies that men have higher motivation to play digital games than women. this can be attributed to the fact that men have more leisure time and less sense of responsibility than women. birk and mandryk (2016) stated that digital game athletes' preferences and player experiences were examined according to the age variable (birk and mandryk, 2016) according to the results of the study, it was stated that the motivation to play increased with the increasing age of participants. it is seen that there is a similarity between this research and the results of the research conducted by (birk and mandryk, 2016). according to the results of the research conducted by hazar (2019) on the motivation of playing digital games in children, their interest in digital games increased with increasing age (hazar, 2019). in this context, it is stated that there is a similarity between the results of the research conducted by hazar and the results of this study according to the age variable. an increase in an individual's ability to play can increase motivation to play. in addition, the increase in the number and variety of games that the individual can play with age can be shown as the reason of the result obtained. nap et al. (2009) according to the results of qualitative research conducted on the motivation, preferences and needs of digital game athletes, it was stated that the participants answered the question of why they are playing digital games in terms of escape and entertainment (nap et al., 2009). in this context, it is seen that there is a similarity between the results of this research and the results of the research conducted by nap. in today's world, increasing stress levels of people and because of this people need to escape from stress and have fun. in this sense, individuals are expected to see digital games as an escape and entertainment activity. in this sense, it is normal for individuals to consider digital games as an escape and entertainment activity. according to the results of the research conducted by cavuş et al. (2016) on computer games and addictions of university students, it was determined that the level of addiction increased as the income level increased cavuş et al. (2016). in this sense, the results of this research and the research conducted by cavuş et al. (2016) are similar in terms of income levels. it can be explained by people's ability to buy games and game consoles as addiction and motivation to play digital games increases as the income level increases. according to cakır et al. (2011) research on internet and game addictions of university students, it was determined that there was no significant difference in terms of game addiction to the classes in which the participating students cakır et al. (2011). there are differences between the results of the research conducted by cakır et al. (2011) and this research. cultural differences between the two research participants can be cited as the reason for this result. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 603-608 608 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the results of the research, it can be stated that the difference in the learning sub-dimension is related to the increase in the level of awareness and effort increase of learning activities. according to the results of the analyses, it is thought that the students who have received sports education generally have low average scores and their participation in physical activities is higher than other faculty students. as a result of the research results, it was found that the participants 'motivation to play digital games was moderate and high, as well as gender, age, class, income and faculty variables showed differences according to the participants' motivation to play digital games. references birk, m.v. and 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http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 43 truancy and its influence on students’ learning in dormaa senior high school gyimah henry1 daniel yelkpieri2 ( corresponding author) 1 dormaa senior high school dormaa-ahenkro, ghana 2 centre for educational policy studies ieris uew, ghana abstract the study instigated the incidence of truancy among students and its influence on learning in the dormaa senior high school. a descriptive survey design was adopted in carrying out the study. the study population consisted of teachers, students, parents and opinion leaders in the study area. the simple random and purposive samplings were used in selecting respondents. a sample of 135, made up of 20 teachers and 100 students, 10 parents and 5 opinion leaders were selected to participate in the study. a set of questionnaires was designed and administered to the teachers and students. documentary evidence from the class attendance register and students‟ report cards were used. in the case of the parents and opinion leaders, semi-structured interview schedules were developed and used to obtain their views. descriptive statistics were used in presenting the quantitative data. the qualitative data were also presented thematically to support the quantitative data. the study revealed that the causes of truancy can be categorized into student related, family related and school related. both teachers and students agreed that peer pressure is one of the causes of truancy. the study also showed that truancy brings about school drop-outs and affects students academic output. it was realized that most of the students who attended classes regularly performed better than their counterparts who absented themselves from classes on a regular basis. it was recommended among other things that all stakeholders should see to it that there are qualified counselors in all second cycle schools to assist students. keywords: truancy, peer group pressure, bullying, corporal punishment, school fees, school counselors. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 44 2. results and discussions ....................................................................................................................................................... 46 3. conclusions and implications .............................................................................................................................................. 51 4. recommendations ................................................................................................................................................................ 51 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 52 citation | gyimah henry; daniel yelkpieri (2017). truancy and its influence on students‟ learning in dormaa senior high school. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 43-52. doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 2 february 2017/ revised: 20 february 2017/ accepted: 8 march 2017/ published: 24 march 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=gyimah henry https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=daniel yelkpieri http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=gyimah henry https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=daniel yelkpieri http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=gyimah henry https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=daniel yelkpieri http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=gyimah henry https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=daniel yelkpieri http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.43.52 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 44 1. introduction ghana as a country expects all her children to attend school and attain the highest level of education to boost the human resource base. mcwilliams and kwamena-poh (1975) note that, the main purpose of education whether formal or informal has been to produce a person who will be a useful member of the society. harbinson and mayers (1964) also claim that the higher the level of educational development of a country, the greater the range of economic development. all these point to the importance of education to the development of a nation hence the need to check truancy which is a set-back to education. truancy is described as the frequent unexcused absences from classes or compulsory schooling. a child is said to be truant if he is a wandering maniac and if he avoids school (kochhar, 2000). according to the ojjdp (2001) truancy or unexcused absence from school has been linked to serious delinquent activity in youth and to significant negative behaviour and characteristics in adults. as a risk factor for delinquent behaviour in youth, truancy has been found to be related to substance abuse, gang activity, and involvement in criminal activities such as burglary, auto theft and vandalism. everyday hundreds of thousands of youth are absent from school. many large cities report staggering rates of truancy and chronic absenteeism. one of the variables that affect students‟ academic performance is attendance. there is a positive relationship between school attendance and school achievement, the more a student is present in class the more he or she is likely to perform in school activities (pennola, 2004; fareo, 2013). it implies that for academic excellence to be achieved there is the need for regular attendance at school. globally truancy has been found to be detrimental and it is prominent in developed countries such as the united states of america and the united kingdom. these situations are worrisome because truancy is often one of the first and best indicators of academic failure, suspension, expulsion, delinquency, and later adult crime (trujillo, 2006). in ghana, there is no available data nationwide on the state of truancy, some districts however have recorded high incidence of truancy and have taken steps to address it. at atwima mponua for instance, the assembly launched a campaign to end truancy within schools in 2010 by the district chief executive (dce). this situation has resulted because of waterfalls discovered in the district which has attracted high patronage from students (acheampong, 2010). in another development, mr. j. h.mensah the headmaster of the bisease senior high school on addressing members of the school‟s parent-teacher-association (pta), said absenteeism and truancy would not be tolerated and should be seen as a thing of the past and that registered students who would stay away from classes would not be allowed to write their final year examination (mensah, 2012). absence from school affects pupils, students and teachers. high rate of truancy and school absenteeism for a class can disrupt teacher‟s ability to plan and present class work in a sequential and organized manner. this affects the progress of the entire students in the class. many a time, it takes about two weeks for some students in dormaa shs to return from mid-term break. worse of all, when school re-opens, it takes about a month for some students to report. another worrying phenomenon is the rate at which students absent themselves after registration for the west african senior secondary certificate examination (wassce). as a result of this behaviour three classes were asked to bring their parents to sign an undertaken on the 19 th of november, 2012 because majority of students in those classes refused to attend classes after the registration of the 2013 wassce. the classes were 4 visual arts, 3 visual arts and 4 arts 3. complaints from some community elders, parents and teachers indicate that the rate of truancy in dormaa senior high school is high and worrying. it is very common to see students roaming about during contact hours. these students make their parents aware that they are going to school but will never get there. 1.1. purpose of the study the purpose of the study is to investigate the influence of truancy on students‟ learning and to recommend measures that should be put in place to minimize truancy to the barest minimum. 1.2. research questions based on the stated research objectives, the study seeks to obtain answers to the following research questions: 1. what are the causes of truancy in dormaa s.h.s? 2. how does truancy of students influence learning? 3. how does truancy affect youth skills development in the dormaa-ahenkro municipality? 4. which measures should be put in place to curb truancy in second cycle schools in dormaa-ahenkro municipality? 1.3. significance of the study it is hoped that through this research the causes of truancy and its influence on learning of students would be brought to the notice of policy makers, educational authorities such as the ghana education service (ges), ministry of education (moe). the findings will also help parents and teachers to identify how they contribute to the truancy and absenteeism of their children. the information obtained in this work will add to the existing literature which will go a long way to help student researchers on similar work. finally, guidance and counseling coordinators in schools will find the study very useful as it will serve as a source of material for effective counseling. 1.4. research design the design used for the study was descriptive survey. this method describes and interprets what exists in its present form or condition, practice and process, trend and effect and attitude or belief. it deals with the normal or typical condition of a phenomenon under examination (alhassan, 2012). the design is more appropriate because it enabled the researcher to explore the study area as much as possible to collect the needed data from relevant people. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 45 1.5. population, sample, and sampling procedures the target population for the research included all the teachers and students in dormaa senior high school, the parents and opinion leaders in the dormaa-ahenkro municipality. the students were selected from form 2 and form 3. this group of students has been in the school for at least 2 years and is better informed about the issue under study. the number of students in form 2 was 588 whilst that of form 3 was 568 bringing the total number of students in shs 2 and shs 3 to 1156. the breakdown of the sample has been presented in table 1. table-1. sample of teachers, students, parents and opinion leaders name of respondents number selected teachers 20 students (shs 2) 52 students (shs 3) 48 parents 10 opinion leaders 5 total 135 source: field work (2013) the sampling method that was used in the selection of the sample for the study was simple random sampling and purposive sampling. the type of simple random sampling method that was used to select the students was the lottery method. the students were selected at random from the identified groups in order to give each member an equal chance of participating in the study. out of the 1156 students in form 2 and 3, 100 were selected using proportion to get the number that was representative of each year group, thus 52 in form 2 and 48 in form 3. form 2 had 13 classes out of which at least 4 students were selected from each class. on the other hand, form 3 had 12 classes out of which at least four students were selected from each class. the number of students selected in each case was based on proportion as indicated earlier. in selecting participants, the researchers wrote „yes‟ and „no‟ on pieces of paper and they were used in place of the names of the students in each class. the „yes‟and „no‟were put in a bowl and thoroughly mixed. one was picked at a time by a student after which the content was thoroughly mixed again before the next one was picked. this continued until the last piece of paper was picked and that was done for all the classes in form 2 and 3 until the required 100 respondents were obtained. those who picked „yes‟ were selected as respondents whilst those who picked „no‟ were left out. purposive sampling method was used to select 20 teachers, 10 parents and 5 opinion leaders. these groups were deliberately selected because the researchers feel that they were well informed about the subject matter under study. the teachers were selected from the school whilst the parents and opinion leaders were selected from the locality because they have a fair idea about the establishment of the school and the behaviour of students in the school. 1.6. research instrument the instrument used for the study was semi-structured questionnaire and semi-structured interview schedule. the questionnaire was given to teachers and students because it is easier to administer questionnaire than an interview. the items in the questionnaire included a personal data from the respondent with close-ended and open-ended sections. the research question 1 was on the causes of truancy in dormaa senior high school, question 2 was on the influence of truancy on learning, question 3 was on the effects of truancy on youth skills development in the dormaa-ahenkro municipality and question 4 was on measures for curbing truancy in second cycle schools in dormaa municipality. the teachers and students were given close-ended items and were asked to use a 5-point likert scale from 1 to 5 where 1 stood for strongly disagree and 5 stood for strongly agree to rate the statements in answering each question. the open-ended questions provided an opportunity to respondents to express their views on other issues that were not included in the close-ended questions. in the case of the parents and opinion leaders, semi-structured interview questions were used to obtain their views by recording the answers they gave. the semi-structured schedule was chosen because it enabled the respondents to probe further whenever the need arose. in the presentation of the verbatim quotations respondents were given identifiers such as pr which represents parent respondent and ol for opinion leaders. this enables the reader to know the level of participation of respondents. 1.7. content validity the questionnaire and the interview guide were designed by the researcher and given to colleagues to assess the face validity of the content. after the corrections were made, they were pilot tested using 10 students, 5 teachers, 2 parents and 1 opinion leader. the results helped the researchers to improve the items. the questionnaires were pretested in christ apostolic church shs was chosen because it is in the same geographical location as the study area and therefore had similar characteristics. the reliability of the questionnaire was established by the use of the test-retest reliability. tuckman (1994) is of the view that „one way to measure reliability is to give the same people the same test on more than one occasion and then compare each person‟s performance on the different testings‟. the results of the tests were subjected to cronbach‟s coefficient alpha to determine the internal consistency of the items which yielded high reliability coefficients of .78 in each case. tuckman (1994) argues that „reasonably high coefficients are‟ indications of high quality. in the case of the interview schedule the researchers interviewed parents and opinion leaders and their responses obtained were similar which implied that the questions were good for the data collection. the questionnaire was then administered to the teachers and students whilst the parents and opinion leaders were interviewed by the researchers. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 46 2. results and discussions the questionnaire were collected, verified, collated and analyzed with the use of statistical products and service solutions (spss). means and standard deviations were the descriptive statistics used in the analysis of the questionnaire of teachers and students. the recorded interview of the parents and opinion leaders were transcribed and analyzed manually based on the themes of the study. in the first section, the researchers present the background information of respondents and proceed to present the results of the study based on the research questions and relate the findings to the literature. the various data are presented by using descriptive statistics such as percentages, means and standard deviations. the presentation of the findings was done in the order in which the research questions were presented. the questionnaire data of teachers were presented first, followed by that of the students and finally the interviews of parents and opinion leaders were triangulated with the questionnaire data. the 100 student respondents were selected from form 2 and form 3. the researcher considered the number of years of students in school and their experience. form 2 and 3 are better experienced and informed about the subject matter of the study than form 1 students. because the number of students in form 2 outnumbers form 3, proportionally their percentages are 52.9% and 47.1% respectively. parental occupation has the potential to influence students‟ school attendance and completion. table 2 represents the distribution of students according to the occupation of their parents. table-2. distribution of students according to parental occupation parental occupation percentage (%) public servant 25.7 civil servant 15.7 farming 42.9 self employed 15.7 source: field work (2013) in table 2 the percentage of parents engaged in farming is 42.9%, public servants 25.7%, and self employed 15.7%. this suggests that majority of the parents of the students are farmers. since most parents are engaged in subsistence farming, their income levels are low hence they are unable to pay the fees of their wards in time. this might be the reason why majority of students report late when school re-opens and also, some sacked for nonpayment of school fees. the researchers observed that the type of family a student belongs to can contribute to whether the student will be truant or not. students from single parent families are likely to be truant than those who stay with both parents. the data collected show that 82.9% of the students stay with both parents while 17.1% live with either the father or mother alone. from this, it could be deduced that, many students have their fathers and mothers still married. research question one: what are the causes of truancy in dormaa senior high school? the problem of truancy affects the students, school and the community. this question sought to examine the contributory factors leading to truancy in dormaa shs. views solicited from teachers and students are presented in table 3. table-3. views of teachers and students on the causes of truancy in dormaa senior high school teachers students wm std i wm std i a student‟s low intelligent quotient is a contributory factor of becoming a truant. 3.45 1.19 n 3.91 1.33 n parents‟ inability to pay school fees. may result in the student being truant. 4.00 1.1 a 4.01 1.28 a a poor teaching method is a contributory factor to student‟s truancy. 2.50 1.10 d 3.13 1.40 n lack of learning materials by the student may lead to truancy. 3.05 1.05 n 3.83 1.29 n peer group pressure is a cause of student‟s truancy. 4.55 0.76 a 4.30 1.17 a single parenthood is a cause of truancy. 3.20 1.10 n 3.36 1.44 n bullying and corporal punishment are contributory factors to truancy. 3.45 1.05 n 3.89 1.29 n an authoritarian method in the school is a contributory factor to truancy. 2.30 1.21 d 3.37 1.36 n mean of means 3.05 1.07 n 3.39 1.19 n source: field work (2013) the data presented in table 3 revealed a weighted mean of 4.55 and a standard deviation of 0.76 which means that, teachers agreed with the view that, peer group pressure is a cause of student‟s truancy. a close examination from the perspectives of students show that they agreed with teachers that, peer group pressure is a cause of student‟s truancy. a parent indicated that, “the students themselves contribute to truancy when they form bad company”. (pr6) (adewole, 1988) observes that truancy is caused by student over-population, shortage of teachers, incessant strike and work-rule, undue application of corporal punishment asd well as peer influence at school. the researchers are of the view that, students in shs are adolescents who at this stage, take friends in the school and spend more time with them than their parents and so if a student gets involve in a bad friendship, s/he is likely to copy the behaviour of the friend. this is in agreement with the view that, truant peer-groups tend to influence other students to absent themselves from school to play truancy (sekyere, 2012). the weighted mean of 2.30 and a standard deviation of 1.21 meant that teachers disagreed with the view that, an authoritarian leadership style in the school is a contributory factor to truancy. the students on the other hand had neutral view which is contrary to that of the teachers. the respondents‟ views are in disagreement with the view expressed by farrant that authoritarian methods in the school bring about truancy (farrant, 2004). trujillo holds contrary view and has the assertion that, students have the best attendance in authoritative schools; -those that make high demands and provide high level of support (trujillo, 2006). this is in line with the view of the teachers and it is asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 47 supported by the researchers because, authoritarian methods in school bring about high level of discipline on the part of students and improve attendance as well as academic work. the data presented in table 3 revealed a weighted mean of 4.01and a standard deviation of 1.28 which means that, students agreed with the view that, parents‟ inability to pay school fees may result in the student being truant. the teachers shared in this view. among the 10 parents interviewed, they all shared similar views. on the causes of truancy in dormaa senior high school, a parent was of the view that, “failure on the part of parents to provide the basic needs of the students‟ leads to students‟ truancy”. (pr1) most especially the refusal to pay the school fees results in the sacking of students and since most of them are teenagers and feel shy, they refuse to attend school in the subsequent days until the school fees is settled. according to sekyere, students whose parents are too poor to provide them with their basic necessities such as food, clothing and school materials tend to absent themselves from school to engage in economic activities to fend for themselves (sekyere, 2012). in the researcher‟s zeal to gather more information, they gave teacher and student respondents the opportunity to provide more information through the open-ended questionnaire. a teacher indicated that one of the reasons for truancy is “failure to provide the necessary support to students”. another teacher said that “lack of disciplinary measures contributes to truancy” and that “truancy is also caused by broken homes and lack of parental care or control”. this finding is agreement with ma‟aruf (2005) who argues that poor relationship between parents and children, and lack of parental interest in child‟s welfare are contributory factors to students‟ truancy. another parent notes that “most parents do not visit the students in school to find out their wellbeing as well as attendance and academic performance”. (pr4) the researchers agree with the respondents to a large extent because if students are not given the needed support from home they cannot go to school and if they even go to school there is very little they can do because they may not have writing materials such as pens, pencils, exercise book among others. an opinion leader observed that “most of the parents do not know the importance of education and so spend money on other things instead of spending the money on their children‟s schooling”. among these are ,“the purchase of different types of cloth for funeral activities to the detriment of students‟ school fees of their wards”.(ol1) in the same vein, children from broken homes do not get the required support from both parents and therefore are not motivated to go to school. apart from these, students from such homes lack discipline and control. however, when these factors are checked, truancy will be reduced to the barest minimum. parents need to show interest in students‟ education and provide the necessary support to ensure that they attend school regularly. when this is done students would have no excuse to stay home when school is in session. failure on the part of students to attend school would be met with displeasure from parents and the school. the students said that teachers force them to buy their books and also patronize their extra-classes and that contributes to truancy. in a situation where students are forced by teachers to buy their books and attend extra classes give rise to tension and unnecessary anxieties for students who come from low income homes who cannot afford to pay. other causes outlined are “teachers who do not attend class regularly bring about truancy” and “overloaded curriculum is a contributory factor to truancy”. in line with this an opinion leader pointed out that “some teachers have lackadaisical attitude and so neglect their duties of ensuring regular attendance of students”. (ol 5) these are factual and hence school authorities should take steps to address them. to a large extent these factors contribute to students‟ truancy because when a teacher forces students to buy his or her books and the students do not have money they will not come to school. on the other hand, if the teacher himself is not regular to school it gives the students the leeway to stay home with the excuse that the teacher will not come to school. generally, a mean of means of 3.05 and a standard deviation of 1.07 signify that the teachers have neutral stance with the views expressed in table 2 on causes of truancy. the students had similar view to that of the teachers as they also had neutral stance generally, on the views expressed on the causes of truancy. the researchers are of the opinion that, all the views expressed in the questionnaires are contributory factors to truancy except, “the authoritarian method in the school”. this is because in authoritarian school, there is strict enforcement of rules and regulations. according to kochhar, the mentally dull child finding school work beyond his power of assimilation, cuts classes and runs away from school (kochhar, 2000). the researchers agree with kochhar because a student who does not perform well in class will not have the motivation to attend classes regularly and this can bring about truancy. research question two: how does truancy of students affect their learning? students who play truancy have the lowest academic achievement rate, and are likely to drop out of school. this question sought to examine the effects of truancy on learning of students. views solicited from teachers and students are presented in table 4. table-4. views of teachers and students‟ on the influence of truancy on students‟ learning teachers students wm std i wm std i truancy results in poor academic performance of students 4.75 0.44 a 4.66 .85 a truancy is a major cause of examination malpractices among students 4.15 0.93 a 4.59 .81 a students who miss classes always havearrears of learning tasks. 4.00 1.02 a 4.14 1.15 a truancy brings about delay of teachers inthe completion of their syllabi 3.30 1.26 a 3.40 1.54 n truant students do not get full complement of assignments for continuous assessment. 4.35 0.75 a 4.33 1.18 a mean of means 4.11 0.88 a 4.22 1.11 source: field work (2013) the data presented in table 4 revealed a weighted mean of 4.75 and a standard deviation of 0.44 which means, teachers agreed with the view that truancy results in poor academic performance of students. the students shared in the same view with teachers. this is in line with the view that truant students achieve less academically because asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 48 students do not spend much time on their books learning when they are absent from class (ma‟aruf, 2005; eastman et al., 2007). learning is a continuous process; hence frequent absences from class results in poor academic performance unless s/he is a gifted student. the data presented in table 4 revealed a weighted mean of 4.14 and a standard deviation of 1.15 which means students agreed with the view that students who miss classes always have arrears of learning tasks. the teachers shared in the same view with student. a student who absents him or herself from class will have to copy notes and may not understand what was taught in his or her absence. school attendance has a positive effect on education (nwadiani, 1994; oghuvu, 2006; sekyere, 2012). the data in table 4 further revealed a weighted mean of 4.59 and a standard deviation of 0.81 which means students agreed to the view that, truancy is a major cause of examination malpractices among students. the teachers held the same view. an opinion observed that “truancy brings about examination malpractices because truant students who will be ill-prepared towards examination and wish to pass at all cost employ all manner of tactics during the wassce”. (ol3) this is obvious since examination requires adequate preparation of a student before he or she sits for it. in instances where students are not well prepared, they tend to indulge in malpractices during the examination. generally, a mean of means of 4.22 and a standard deviation of 1.11 signify that, the students agreed with the views expressed on the influence of truancy on learning. in the researchers‟ opinion all the views expressed by the students and teachers on the influence of truancy on students‟ learning, hence the need for stakeholders to address them. in the quest to get additional views from teachers, they were asked to give their opinion on the effects of truancy on students‟ learning in an open-ended questionnaire. it could be realized the teachers indicated that, “truancy on the part of students discourages teachers from teaching”, and others said that “the possibility of becoming drop-out is high” while some teachers said “truancy leads to rote learning” this present finding agrees with peck (2002) who said among other things that truancy have undermined effective teaching-learning processes which has made some teachers helpless. all these effects can affect student‟s learning hence parents and teachers should collaborate to curb them. research question three: how does truancy affect youth skills development in the dormaa-ahenkro municipality? this question sought to examine the effects of truancy on youth skills development in the dormaa-ahenkro municipality. one important reason for educating the youth is to develop their skills of literacy, numeracy and communication which will help them in the near future to become responsible citizens and not a burden on the society. views solicited from teachers are presented in table 5. table-5. views of teachers and students‟ on the effects of truancy on youth skills development in the dormaa-ahenkro municipality teachers students wm std i wm std i truant students will not be able to develop fully the skills of literacy, numeracy and communication 3.85 1.27 n 3.97 1.14 n truancy affects the development of vocational and technical skills of students in dormaa municipality. 3.85 0.81 n 3.94 1.17 n truant students have less chance of going for further studies. 4.10 0.97 a 4.04 1.25 a truant students are far more likely not to graduate from shs hence theybecome a burden in the municipality. 4.00 1.07 a 4.13 1.13 a truant students may end up in teenage pregnancy, prostitution, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases (stds) and arm robbery which hinders the progress of the municipality. 4.30 0.80 a 4.33 1.07 a mean of means 4.02 0.98 4.08 1.15 source: field work (2013) the data presented in table 5 revealed a weighted mean of 4.30 and a standard deviation of 0.80 which means that teachers agreed with the view that truant students may end up in teenage pregnancy, prostitution, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases (stds) and arm robbery which is not good for national development. the students held similar view to that of the teachers. a woman who shared her son‟s experience observed that “peer group influence brings about drunkenness, drug and substance abuse and students who are addicted to such acts refuse to attend classes and go to hide-out places”. (pr 8) the views expressed are obvious because a truant student who loiters around is prone to vices such as drug abuse, arm robbery and the like. share a similar view that truant adolescents have been reported to engage in risky sexual practice, illicit drug use, alcohol and cigarette smoking. this is in agreement with the view that truant youth are likely to experience higher rates of unintended pregnancies, more criminal behaviour, greater instability in career paths, higher rates of unemployment, and lower lifetime earnings (eastman et al., 2007). this is in agreement with the view that, truancy has been clearly identified as one of the early warning signs that youth are headed for potential delinquent activity, social isolation, or educational failure (dekalb, 2000). on the other hand, the weighted mean of 3.85 and a standard deviation of 0.81 in table 5 meant that, teachers assumed a neutral stance on the view expressed which states that truancy affects the development of vocational and technical skills of students in dormaa municipality. the students also held similar opinion to that of the teachers. the researcher disagrees with them because a truant student will not be able to develop fully vocational and technical skills. table 5 revealed a weighted mean of 4.04 and a standard deviation of 1.25 which means that students agreed with the view that truant students have less chance of going for further studies. the teachers also shared in this view. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 49 a truant student has the least probability to excel in wassce which serves as the major certificate for entry into any tertiary institution. according to the methodist bishop of sunyani diocese right reverend kofi asare bediako in addressing shs students in sunyani on february 7, 2013, expressed his unhappiness particularly, with the final year students in shs who register for the wassce and indulge in truancy (gna, 2013). the above findings are shared by fareo (2013) when she said “truancy hinders students‟ learning which could lead to poor academic performance”. generally, a mean of means of 4.02 and 4.08 and standard deviations of 0.98 and 1.15 respectfully for teachers and students signify that they agreed with the views expressed pertaining to the effects of truancy on youth skills development in the dormaa-ahenkro municipality. a parent stressed that, “an uneducated youth will lead to the retardation of the development of the municipality”. (pr6) this position is in line with fareo (2013) who argues that constant absence from school has serious negative consequences on both truant youth themselves and the communities, which suffer both short term and long-term threats to public safety. however, if truancy is checked, it will go a long way to help in youth skills development. in order to get additional information on the effects of truancy on youth skills development in the dormaaahenkro municipality, teachers were given open-ended questionnaire to give their opinion. the responses from the open-ended questions found that teachers indicated that “truancy delay the productive growth of the youth” and that “truant students can become social misfit”. while others also were of the view that “truancy leads to smoking and drunkenness in the youth which may bring about health problems”. the effects of truancy on youth skills development are devastating and so every well meaning society should do well to address them. an opinion leader suggested that, “the municipality should establish scholarship schemes to support the students with financial difficulties.(ol5) research question four: which measures should be put in place to curb truancy in second cycle schools in dormaa municipality? research question four explored teacher and student respondents‟ views on the measures that should be put in place to curb truancy in second cycle schools in dormaa municipality. the views of teacher and student respondents are presented in tables 6. table-6. views of teachers and students on the measures to curb truancy in second cycle schools in dormaa municipality teachers students wm std i wm std i improving parent-teacher communication on student‟s progress in school will reduce truancy in second cycle schools in the municipality. 4.75 0.44 a 4.29 .92 a bye-laws should be made by the municipal assembly to compel students to attend school regularly. 3.50 1.24 a 4.30 .97 a parents and guardians should provide students with their basic needs to enable them attend school regularly. 4.65 0.49 a 4.63 .64 a form masters should visit classrooms regularly and ensure that attendance register is marked and to find out students who have been absenting themselves. 4.70 0.47 a 4.57 .91 a house masters should do routine checks to find out boarders who do not stay on campus and those who sleep in dormitories during classes. 4.55 0.95 a 4.63 .77 a improving counseling services in second cycle schools will reduce the incidence of truancy. 4.55 0.69 a 4.36 .92 a mean of means 4.45 0.71 4.46 .85 source: field work (2013) the data presented in table 6 revealed a weighted mean of 4.75 and a standard deviation of 0.44 which means that teachers agreed with the view that improving parent-teacher communication on student‟s progress in school will reduce truancy in second cycle schools in the municipality. the students shared in the view of the teachers. when parents communicate with teachers about the well being of their wards and also visit them occasionally, it will go a long way to reduce the incidence of truancy. the data in table 6 further revealed a weighted mean of 4.70 and a standard deviation of 0.47 which means that teachers agreed with the view that form masters should visit classrooms regularly and ensure that attendance registers are marked and to find out students who have been absenting themselves without any tangible reason. an opinion leader observed that“the school authorities have relaxed in their disciplinary actions and this has paved way for most students to be truant”. in terms of disciplinary measures, “the mission schools are second to none and hardly will you find students in such schools playing truancy and such act should be emulated by public schools”. (ol5) from the researcher‟s point of view, if form masters are able to do routine checks on students, it will bring truancy to the barest minimum. finally the weighted mean of 3.50 and a standard deviation of 1.24 meant that teachers had neutral stance on the view that bye-laws should be made by the municipal assembly to compel students to attend school regularly. students agreed to this view, which is contrary to the view of the teachers. teachers and parents can team up to prevent students from playing truancy without necessarily putting in place bye-laws by the municipal assembly. the data in table 6 also revealed a weighted mean of 4.63 and a standard deviation of 0.64 which means that students agreed with the view that parents and guardians should provide students with their basic needs to enable them attend class regularly. the teachers held similar views as that of the students. a sub-chief of the dormaa traditional area said that, “there is a scholarship scheme known as dormaa municipal education fund (domef) which has been established to support needy students in the municipality”.(ol1) students should be provided with their basic needs to enable them attend classes regularly (sekyere, 2012; yelkpieri, 2016). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 50 generally, a mean of means of 4.46 and a standard deviation of 0.85 signify that, the students agreed with the views expressed on the measures that should be put in place to curb truancy in second cycle schools in dormaa municipality. one of the opinion leaders said, “parents should be sensitized on the need to educate their children”, “school authorities should liaise with parents to monitor the movement of their children in and out of school”.(ol2) it should be noted that the teachers shared in all the views of the students except, the view which talks about institution of bye-laws to compel students to attend classes. in order to obtain further solutions to the issue of truancy, the teachers were asked to answer an open-ended questionnaire. teachers said that “students should be motivated and encouraged by teachers on the importance of education”. aside that others were of opinion that “teachers should vary their methods of teaching by encouraging students participation in their teaching and learning which will help reduce truancy”. it could be noticed from the students‟ views expressed through the open-ended questionnaire that, “parents should pay regular visit to their children when they are in school”, others said that, “truant students must be dealt with seriously in the school and also be reported to their parents”. another view was that “there should be public education on the importance of schooling to the individual and the society”. the battle against truancy should be fought from the family, the school and the society. concerning the influence on truancy they were of the view that, “it leads to poor academic performance since the students will not attend school regularly”. this finding finds support in oghuvu (2006) and nwadiani (1994) that truancy could lead to poor academic outcomes. to buttress the effects of truancy on academic performance of students in dormaa shs, some students were selected from some classes at random using their registers and report cards. these were form 2 and 3 presented in table 7. in form 2, five classes offering the four programmes namely general arts, visual arts, science and business were selected. the table indicates the number of days in attendance and position in class for the first term. the names of the students have been replaced with numbers starting from 1 to 15. table-7. five classes showing attendance and position of some students in form two student number class attendance out of 63 days position in class number on roll 1 2 arts 1 57 11 77 2 2 arts 1 53 38 77 3 2 arts 1 22 76 77 4 2 visual art 56 3 30 5 2 visual art 43 15 30 6 2 visual art 37 25 30 7 2 science 1 61 12 71 8 2 science 1 52 32 71 9 2 science 1 51 56 71 10 2 home economics 58 04 62 11 2 home economics 54 28 62 12 2 home economics 48 57 62 13 2 business 1 63 03 30 14 2 business 1 57 19 30 15 2 business 1 26 29 30 source: class attendance register and students‟ report cards (2013) from table 21, it could be realized that most of the students who attended class regularly performed better as compared to those who were absent for ten or more days. in each class, the first on the list of the three students selected, attended classes in more days than the preceding ones. the classes were 2 arts 1, 2 visual arts, 2 science 1, 2 home economics, and 2 business 1. for instance comparing the three students in 2 arts 1, student number 1 attended class for 57 out of 63 days and was 11 th in that class out of 77 students. student number 2 attended class for 53 out of 63 days and came 38 th out of 77 students. student number 3 attended class for 22 out of 63 days and was 76 th out of 77 students. this applies to the other classes. from this it could be deduced that, truancy has a significant effect on academic performance. this finding is supported by fareo (2013) who found “significant relationship between truancy and academic performance of students”. nonetheless other factors such as intelligence, dullness, and the method of teaching can influence academic performance. the same was done for the form three classes as presented in table 22 indicating five classes from the four programmes offered in the school namely general arts, science, visual arts and business. in table 22, it could be realized that among the three students in each class, the first person attended class more than the second student. the same applies to their respective positions in class. the first person on the list in each class performed better than the second, and the second than the third. there may however be an exceptional student who may absent himself for a number of days yet perform better in class or a student who may attend classes throughout the term yet perform below average. it should however be noted that these were few classes chosen out of the lot. comparing the three students in 3 science 1, student number 4 attended class for 60 out of 63 days and was 1 st out of 70 students, student number 5 attended class for 55 out of 63 days and was 22 nd out of 70 students, student number 6 attended class for 38 out of 63 days and was 66 th out of 70 students. the data highlight the serious effects of truancy on students‟ academic performance in school. it could be deduced that truancy has significant influence on students‟ academic performance. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 51 table-8. five classes showing attendance and position of some students in form three student number class attendance out of 63 days position number on roll 1 3 arts 2 60 01 81 2 3 arts 2 55 37 81 3 3 arts 2 40 77 81 4 3 science 1 60 01 70 5 3 science 1 55 22 70 6 3 science 1 38 66 70 7 3 visual art 58 04 25 8 3 visual art 50 12 25 9 3 visual art 45 20 25 10 3 business 1 57 02 46 11 3 business 1 50 26 46 12 3 business 1 28 37 46 13 3 home economics 47 19 55 14 3 home economics 43 42 55 15 3 home economics 34 51 55 source: class attendance register and students‟ report cards (2013) when an opinion leader was asked about the influence of truancy on youth skills development, he said “such students will not be able to develop fully the skills of literacy, numeracy and communication”. (ol4) also “the probability of such students going for further studies is less; hence they become a burden to family and society at large”. (ol2) this finding agrees with fareo (2013) when she indicated that “constant absence from school has serious negative consequences both for truant youth themselves and for communities, which suffer both short-term and long-term threats to public safety”. when a question was on remedy to the issue of truancy was brought up a parent said, “parents should provide the basic needs of students and pay regular visits to their wards and also entrust them to the care of teachers to monitor them in school”. (pr3) 3. conclusions and implications based on the findings the researchers have drawn the following conclusions: the causes of truancy are principally peer group pressure, failure of parents to provide the basic needs of their wards and poor monitoring on the part of teachers and parents. this means that truancy is a multi-dimensional issue that must be tackled from all fronts to ensure that it is curbed or minimized in schools. unless serious steps are taken, it has the potential to derail the youths‟ future. the influence of truancy on students‟ learning is that, it leads to poor performance of students in academic work as well as internal and external examination. it was also found that, truancy leads to examination malpractices when students do not prepare adequately before they go in for examination. therefore, truancy poses a serious threat to educational development and no effort should be spared to curb it. the effect of truancy on the society is that, truant students who are not able to complete their course become a burden to their families and the society because they might not be able to develop fully the skills of literacy, numeracy and communication and so most of them will be unemployed. education should therefore be made affordable for many students to remain in school. government and other stakeholders of education should assist schools with their basic needs such as text books, computers and other ict facilities, and support needy students by providing them with scholarships. it was realized that, truancy could be brought to the barest minimum if parents provide the needs of their wards and advice them on the need to concentrate on their schooling in order to have meaningful life in future. 4. recommendations from the results of the study, the following recommendations are made: 1. the study found that there was no collaboration between and the school and parents in terms of monitoring students‟ movements. the study recommends that, parents and guardians should collaborate with school authorities and teachers to monitor students in and out of school compound to reduce the incidence of truancy. 2. the study found out that many students are driven home for non-payment of school fees. the study recommends that, parents who have difficulty in the payment of fees should arrange with the school authorities to pay by installments in order to avoid the student being sent home. 3. non-provision of students‟ basic needs such as textbooks, writing materials among others is the main cause of truancy. it is incumbent on parents to provide all other needs of their wards most especially the girls who are vulnerable, to enable them stay in school and learn. 4. it was found that teachers force students to buy books and pay for extra classes. the study recommends that teachers should not force students to buy books or patronize any extra classes since this creates an unnecessary tension for students. 5. non-enforcement of disciplinary measures encourage students to engage in truant behaviours. the school authorities should put in place negative sanctions or punishments such as internal suspension with hard labour to truant students to serve as a deterrent to others. 6. guidance and counseling coordinators in second cycle schools should do well to meet truant students from time to time and counsel them on the need to be punctual in class and to participate in teaching and learning. 7. ignorance on the part of some parents of the importance of education is said to be another factor the municipal assembly should liaise with the ghana education service in the municipality to sensitize all stakeholders of education on the need to prioritize education of the children in the municipality. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 43-52 52 8. the study found that some teachers‟ absence paved way for truant students to be absent. the study recommends that heads of schools should ensure that teachers are punctual in class. 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should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.graphic.com.gh/ http://www.kidsource.com/education/student.truancy.htm/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=truancy%20and%20academic%20performance%20of%20secondary%20school%20students%20in%20south%20western%20nigeria:%20implication%20for%20counseling http://dx.doi.org/10.20533/ijcdse.2042.6364.2013.0198 http://graphic.com.gh/education/truancy-and-absenteeism-are-themain-causes-of-examination https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=data%20inquiry%20and%20analysis%20for%20effective%20administration.%20a%20comparative%20study%20of%20private%20and%20public%20secondary%20schools http://paschoolperformance.org/doc/7 http://www.truancyprevention.org/ asian journal of education and training vol. 1, no. 2, 14-20, 2015 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu * corresponding author 14 evolving policy initiatives for effective vocational technical education in north central zone, nigeria danjuma a. ombugus 1* --francis adams angbre 2 1 technical education department, college of education, akwanga, nasarawa state, ngeria 2 department of agricultural education, college of education, akwanga, nasarawa state, nigeria ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- abstract the study focused on evolving policy initiatives for effective vocational technical education (vte) on sustainable development. the study adopted a descriptive survey research design and was carried out in north central geopolitical zone of nigeria. the population for the study was 450 respondents (vte teachers/lecturers, government officials, industrialists, and community members). twenty one policy initiative items questionnaire were developed, validated and utilized to collect data for the study. cronbach alpha method was used in determining the internal consistency of the questionnaire items. the reliability of the items revealed coefficient of 0.82. the study found out that 21 items were regarded as major purposes / objectives of vocational technical education and were rated as initiatives for policy formulation. it was found out that there were no significant differences in the mean rating of the respondents at 0.05 level of significant. it was recommended that the findings in the study be utilized by government for vocational technical education policy formulation in the north central zone of nigeria. keywords: policy initiative, effective, vocational technical education, north central zone. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license asian online journal publishing group contents 1. introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 15 2. methodology .............................................................................................................................................................................. 16 3. discussion of the findings ........................................................................................................................................................ 19 4. conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................. 19 5. recommendations ..................................................................................................................................................................... 19 references ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(2): 14-20 15 1. introduction vocational technical education is a type of education recognized internationally to provide skills for youths, adults and disengaged workers for the purpose of empowering them for employment to enable them earn some worthwhile material benefits to meet their needs (ugwoke et al., 2013). in the same vein, vocational technical education is defined in f.g.n (2013) as that aspect of education which leads to the acquisition of practical skills as well as basic scientific knowledge. it is a type of education meant for able citizens of a nation to empower them with relevant skills they could use to make vital contributions to the economy of their society. contributing to the meaning of vocational technical education earlier, unesco (2012) stated that it is an integral part of general education, a means of preparing people for occupational fields and for effective participation in the world of work, an aspect of life-long learning and a preparation for responsible citizenship, an instrument for promoting sound sustainable development and method of facilitating poverty alleviation. in this study vocational technical education is regarded as a type of education that could help individual to give more to his/her nation economically than he/she is receiving from it. in oujer (2009) the author explained that vocational technical education, though assumed to be vital to economic development but has been regarded as an inferior or second class type of education. the perception has accorded this important field a very low image, according to the author. in north central states of nigeria, tilak (2012) reported that there are little or no research evidences on objectives /organization of vocational technical education to influence government policy in the area. there are many secondary school graduates in the north central zone of this country that cannot obtain admission into higher institutions for further studies neither could they afford employment in the labor market because of lack of job skills. these graduates are trapped at the buffer zone between the boarder of secondary schools and higher education and can be regarded as academic refugees or drop outs that depend solely on hand outs from their parents and government for survival. similarly, olaitan (2011) stated that the population of the academic refugee camp continues to increase annually thereby creating undue pressure on the economy of the nation, that is the economy is given out more than it is receiving from the youths which is unhealthy for national economic growth and development. vocational and technical education is expected to salvage this situation but with the present image of vte, it will be an uphill task to make it come to the rescue. therefore, it must change in organization to accommodate unemployed secondary school graduates who are ready to learn but must be within the school system. a change in any type of education according to ugbalu (2012) is more rewarding through policy formulated based on research findings. policy according to okonze and onuoha (2014) is a plan of action undertaking by government persons or groups to enable them accomplish an objective. in jean (2011) policy is a government program of action. to the author, it stands for what government intends to do or achieve (goal) and how it intends to do it (implementation). in this study, policy initiative means important research findings to be considered by government for making policy in vte. initiatives are important new plans or processes identified in order to achieve a particular aim or solve a particular problem. in miller (2013) vocational technical education as operated today, served the interest of junior secondary graduates which is far below the academic status of the secondary school graduates. if this study is carried out to obtain information on objectives and organization of vocational technical education to accommodate the secondary school graduates easily, then the image of vte will be improved and the unemployed secondary school graduates will have accommodation in technical college program for skill empowerment. for government, communities and industries to understand the objectives and respond positively towards re-organizing vte, there is need for policy initiatives with research evidences supporting the economic worth of vocational technical education. 1.1. statement of the problem in nigeria, vocational technical education has been suffering from neglect because of the following: the evidence supporting the economic worth of vte has never been collected, analyzed and made open to policy makers to attract their substantial support to vocational technical education in education system below mono/polytechnics. the few studies conducted on vocational technical education in higher institutions are by research trainees whose results were never made available to any government functionary, policy makers or consumers of vocational technical education. they end up in libraries and at times as publications in journals that serve the interest of the author rather than showing concern about the needs of government for developing policies that can promote vocational education towards empowering citizens for work. there is no means of linking vocational technical education in this country with productive skills that resulted into the goods and services imported from foreign countries for people to consume. that is, there is no research evidence made available to policy makers and nigerian society that vocational technical education skills were involved to produce most of the imported goods and services by host countries. there is no concerted research effort to evaluate the present vocational technical education program, however low is the image to provide evidence to government that vocational technical education can help to sustain the economy to the status enjoyed by other developed countries that appreciate the importance of their vte. the little information obtained on the importance of vte to salvage the economy of our nation are those from international organizations such as unesco, f.a.o. and unicef under the umbrella of united nations. the information available, according to hawley (2013) only serve as guides to what a nation can do to boost her own vte through learning from the efforts and success of others. this study therefore provided analytical data on objectives and organization of vocational technical education as evidences that government could use to formulate policies for vocational technical education effectiveness. asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(2): 14-20 16 1.2. purpose of the study specifically, the study determined: 1. the major purposes that could help make vocational technical education more responsive to the need of present youths (male and female), stagnated adult workers, the unemployed school leavers and able retirees in north central zone of nigeria. 2. the objectives of vocational technical education at basic, secondary and tertiary levels of education in north central zone of nigeria. 1.3. research questions the following are questions answered by the study: 1. what are the major purposes that could help make vocational technical education more responsive to the needs of present youths (male and female), stagnated adult workers, the unemployed school leavers and able retirees in north central zone of nigeria? 2. what should be the objectives of vocational technical education at secondary and tertiary levels of education in north central zone of nigeria? 1.4. hypotheses two hypotheses were tested by the study. 1. there is no significant difference in the mean ratings of the responses of vte teachers /lecturers, state and federal government education officials/parastatals and industrialists/community leaders on what should be the initiatives of vte in north central zone of nigeria. 2. there is no significance difference in the mean ratings of the responses of vte teachers/lectures, state and federal government education officials/parastatals and industrialists/community leaders on the objectives of vocational technical education at secondary and tertiary levels in north central zone of nigeria. 2. methodology design of the study: descriptive survey was involved in gathering data for the study. a descriptive survey design is a type that studies a sample of a population bearing in mind their characteristics and using questionnaire to obtain data. area of the study: the study was carried out in the north-central geopolitical zone of nigeria, comprising nasarawa, benue, kwara, kogi, plateau and niger states. population of the study: the population for the study was 1500 made up of government officials, industrialists, business men, community leaders, vte teachers in secondary and tertiary institutions, members of selected commissions (nerdc, nbte and ncce). the respondents were selected on the basis that they are both stakeholders and consumers of vocational technical education product/skill. sample and sampling technique: the sample for the study was 450 which is 30% of the population, made up of 117 officials of ministry of education / parastatals, 117 technical teachers (secondary schools and tertiary institutions), 99 business men / industrialists and 117 community leaders. instrument for data collection: the instrument for data collection was questionnaire guided by two theories of vocational technical education: i) vocational technical education is meant for able bodied individual who wants it, needs it and can profit from it. ii). the equipment, tools and machines for training should be a replica of the equipment and machines in the work environment where the trainees will work on graduation: the questionnaire titled: policy initiative questionnaire on objective and organization of vocational technical education in north central zone of nigeria. each item in the questionnaire has a 4 point response scale in the direction of the responses being solicited. validation of instrument: the instrument was validated by 5 experts. 2 from higher vte institutions, 2 from government / commissions and 1 from industries / business enterprises, i.e. employers of labor. reliability of the instrument: the split half technique was used in administering the questionnaire. kudderrichardson (kr 21) formula was utilized in determining the reliability of the questionnaire. a reliability coefficient of 0.87 was obtained. method of data collection: the data was collected through the involvement of 6 trained research assistants at 1 per state. a total of 436 copies (92.00%) of the questionnaire were retrieved and analyzed. method of data analysis: weighted mean, standard deviation and ranks were utilized in analyzing the data collected. the analysis of variance (anova) was used to test the hypothesis at p < 0.05 level of significant. the arithmetic mean of the response scale (4, 3, 2, 1) was computed and it yielded 2.50. an interval scale of 0.05 was to determine the upper and lower limit of the arithmetic mean. the upper limit therefore was 2.55. any item with mean value of 2.55 and above is regarded as an initiative. any item with a standard deviation (sd) of less than 1.96 reveals that the respondents are not too far from the mean and from the responses of one another. this is used to determine the validity of the responses of the respondents and the level of credibility accorded to such initiative item. for the hypotheses tested, any item whose p-value is greater than 0.05 is regarded as not significant and the hypothesis of no significant difference is upheld for such initiative. for any item whose p-value is less than 0.05 is regarded as significant and the hypothesis of no significant difference is rejected for such initiative item. 2.1. empirical evidences from the data analyzed and hypotheses tested initiative-1.what are the major purposes that could help make vte more responsive to the need of youths, stagnated adult workers, the unemployed school leavers and able retirees in north central zone of nigeria? asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(2): 14-20 17 table-1. mean ratings ( x ), standard deviation (sd) and prioritization of the responses of the respondents on what should be the major purposes of vocational technical education (vte) in north central zone of nigeria. n=436 s/n purposes of vte in north central zone x sd prioritization (ranking) 1 to advance production through the improvement of vocational and technical education program. 3.45 0.66 2 2 to provide occupational skills in vte to interested school leavers. 3.37 0.72 4 3 to provide learners with adequate skills to make a living and progressively advance in technology. 3.56 0.69 1 4 to prepare learners adequately for efficiency in business enterprises through vocational and technical education (vte). 3.38 0.72 3 5 to prepare learners intellectually for advancement in technological innovations. 3.36 0.76 5 6 to encourage lifelong learning of occupational skills. 3.32 0.81 6 from table 1 it is observed that the mean values of items 1 – 6 on what should be the major purposes of vte range from 3.32 – 3.56 and are above 2.55. this implies that all the six items are regarded as major purposes that could help make vocational technical education more responsive to the need of youths, stagnated adult workers, unemployed school leavers and able retirees in north central states of nigeria. the standard deviation values of the six items range from 0.66 0.81.this shows that the respondents are close to one another and that they are not very far from the mean in their responses. initiative-2.what should be the objectives of vocational and technical education (vte) at secondary school, and tertiary levels in north central zone of nigeria? table-2. mean ratings ( x ), standard deviation (sd) and prioritization of the responses of the respondents on objectives of vocational technical education (vte) at secondary school level. n= 436 s/n objectives of vte at sec school level x sd prioritization (ranking) 1 create awareness about different program in vte for which students can enroll and develop skills for employment after graduation 3.56 0.65 1 2 develop scientific knowledge in students about technologies relevant to their environment. 3.36 0.68 4 3 develop entry level competencies in specific vocational technical education program that is of interest to the learner for job after graduation. 3.33 0.72 5 4 expose students to various career opportunities in vocational technical education out of which a student can make a choice for future career development. 3.51 0.68 2 5 develop students attitudes towards respect for dignity of labor 3.37 0.77 3 from table 2 it is observed that the mean values of items 1 – 5 on what should be the objectives of vocational technical education at secondary school level range from 3.33 3.56 and are above 2.55. this implies that all the five items are regarded as objectives of vocational technical education at secondary school level. the standard deviation values of the five items range from 0.65 -0.77. this shows that the respondents are close to one another and that they are not very far from the mean in their responses. table-3. mean ratings ( x ), standard deviation (sd) and prioritization of the responses of the respondents on objectives of vocational technical education (vte) at tertiary institutions (university and mono/polytechnics) level. n=436 s/n objectives of vte at sec school level x sd prioritization (ranking) 1 train students in job skills in specific program for employment in the labor market. 3.53 0.66 1 2 develop student thinking habits and creativity for technology adaptation relevant for work in his/her environment. 3.47 0.64 2 3 develop scientific knowledge in learners for inventions and innovations in technology relevant to his/her environment. 3.41 0.69 3 4 develop students' attitudes towards respect for dignity of labor. 3.30 0.77 5 5 create opportunities for technology-adaptation in learners for his/her environment. 3.35 0.74 4 from table 3 it is observed that the mean values of items 1 5 on what should be the objectives of vocational technical education at tertiary institutions (mono/polytechnics and university) level range from 3.30 3.53 and are above 2.55. this implies that all the five items are regarded as objectives of vocational technical education at tertiary institutions (mono/polytechnics and university) levels. the standard deviation values of the five items range from 0.64 0.77. this shows that the respondents are close to one another and that they are not very far from the mean in their responses. asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(2): 14-20 18 initiative 1 ho1: table-4. analysis of variance (anova) of the mean ratings of the responses of the respondents on the major purposes of vocational technical education in north central zone of nigeria. s/n purposes of vte sum of square residual f-ratio p-value e 2 rmks 1 to advance production through the improvement of vocational and technical education program between groups 2.14 within groups 158.29 total 160.43 1.50 2.50 0.08 0.99 ns 2 to provide occupational skills in vte to interested school leavers. between groups 1.34 within groups 192.80 total 194.14 1.19 1.30 0.28 0.99 ns 3 to provide learners with adequate skills to make a living and progressively advance in technology. between groups 4.33 within groups 173.89 total 177.89 2.63 4.61 0.01 0.98 s 4 to prepare learners adequately for efficiency in business enterprises through vocational and technical education (vte). between groups 0.63 within groups 193.55 total 194.18 0.83 0.60 0.55 0.99 ns 5 to prepare learners intellectually for advancement in technological innovations. between groups 1.65 within groups 214.49 total 216.14 1.41 1.42 0.24 0.99 9 6 to encourage lifelong learning of occupational skills. between groups 2.95 within groups 239.14 total 242.10 2.12 2.29 0.10 0.99 ns significant at p <0.05 it is evident from table 4 that there is no significant difference in the mean ratings of the responses of the three groups of respondents (vte teachers / lecturers, state and federal government, education officials and industrialists / community leaders) on five out of the six items whose p-val (sig.) are greater than 0.05; but there is a significant difference in the mean rating of the three group of respondents on item 3 whose p-value is less than 0.05. initiative 2 ho2: table-5. analysis of variance (anova) of the mean ratings of the responses of the respondents on what should be the objectives of vocational technical education at secondary school level. s/n objectives of vte at sec. school level sum of square residual f-ratio p-value e 2 rks 1 create awareness about different program in vte for which students can enroll and develop skills for employment after graduation between groups 0.79 within groups 157.22 total 158.01 1.82 2.93 0.39 0.99 ns 2 develop scientific knowledge in students about technologies relevant to their environment. between groups 2.65 within groups 170.30 total 172.94 1.78 2.87 0.06 0.99 ns 3 develop entry level competencies in specific vocational technical education program that is of interest to the learner for job after graduation. between groups 3.58 within groups 187.19 total 190.7.8 2.30 2.54 0.08 0.98 ns 4 expose students to various career opportunities in vocational technical education out of which a student can make a choice for future career development. between groups 9.15 within groups 162.08 total 171.23 5.00 10.45 0.00 0.97 10 s 5 develop students' attitudes towards respect for dignity of labor. between groups 3.12 within groups 216.08 total 219.20 2.05 2.68 0.70 0.99 ns significant at p <0.05 table 5 shows that the p-values of four out of five items are greater than 0.05. this indicate that there is no significant difference in the mean ratings of the responses of the three groups of respondents on the four items as what should be the objectives of vocational and technical education at secondary school level. therefore, the hypothesis of no significant difference is upheld for the four items. the p-value of item 4 is 0.00 which is less than 0.05 indicating a significant difference in the mean ratings of the responses of the three groups of respondents, therefore, a hypothesis of no significant difference is rejected for item 4. asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(2): 14-20 19 3. discussion of the findings the findings that 21 items with mean values greater than the cut-off point of 2.55 and standard deviation values ranging from 0.66 – 0.81 were regarded as major purposes/ objectives of vocational technical education and rated as initiatives for policy formulation. this finding is supported by the conclusions of jung (2011) and ugbalu (2012). in their various studies, the authors concluded that questionnaire items with mean values above 2.55 and standard deviation values higher than 0.66 could be submitted for policy making/ formulation. the study also found out that there were no significant differences in the mean rating of the respondents on the objectives of vocational technical education at each bench mark of learning (secondary school and tertiary institutions -mono/polytechnics levels) in north central zone of nigeria. this finding of the study is in agreement with the findings of olaitan (2011) in a similar study on policy initiatives for effectiveness of vocational and technical education on rapid and sustainable national development. the study found out that there were no significant differences in the mean ratings of vte teachers, industrialists and community leaders. this finding is in conformity with onjevvu (2013) in a study assessing technical and vocational education in nigeria: a situation analysis of kaduna polytechnic, where the null hypothesis of no significant difference was accepted. the findings in this study are in consonance with the findings of auta (2015) in a study policy measures for improving the administration of technical teacher training program (tttp) in nigeria where the author found out that 16 policy initiatives for planning, 7 for coordination, 13 for implementing and 8 for evaluating technical teacher training program. this finding is also in conformity with the findings of olaitan and alaribe (2011) in a study policy measures for improving teacher effective teaching and sustainability of agric science in schools, 8 policy measures could be put in place to help school administrators and students enhance teacher effective teaching of agricultural science in the schools. the findings of the study are in agreement with the findings of unesco (2012) who did a study on recommendations on technical vocational training for the 21 st century that unemployment among the youths in africa will drastically reduce if vocational technical education is made effective through research evidences. findings from this study clearly revealed that the respondents, who cut-across the spectrum of all the north central states of nigeria; that is government official / parastatals, industrialists, community members and teachers of vocational technical education made choices in order of priority on what should be the purposes and objectives of vte in north central zone of nigeria based on their concerns in the area of employment, economic growth, sustainability of employment, food security, less dependence on other countries for meeting local needs such as food and so on. these are regarded as factors influencing their choices or decisions on what should be the purposes / objectives and organization of a new or an emerging vocational technical education in the north central zone of nigeria. the findings of this study further opened path way for the government on how to reorganize its vocational technical education in order to meet the concerns and needs for survival by every youth, the unemployed, the disengaged and the retired. the findings have also provided information on what the education policy makers could do to improve vte in the north central zone to rapidly improve the economy and sustain it without any negative 'effects on the existing structure of the nigerian education system. findings from this study encouraged that graduates for senior secondary school who could not secure admission into any tertiary institution, that is, university, mono/polytechnic or colleges of education and are unemployed but become trapped in the buffer zone between senior secondary school and higher institutions should now benefit compulsorily from 2 years advance vocational technical education. this is with the understanding that these graduates have scientific and cultural knowledge required by advanced vte program. the findings of the above authors gave credence to the findings of this study. 4. conclusion if the findings from this study are implemented for policy formulation, the following benefits are likely to be realized: i. the image of vocational technical education will be improved in the zone because it will become more attractive to every youth or adult in their local environment or elsewhere in the zone for skill empowerment. ii. unemployment among school graduates will drastically reduce as they will be transformed by vocational technical education into contributory members to the national economy through employment. iii. it will drastically reduce rural-urban migration of youth since there will be attractive vocational technical education at the local government level that can engage these youth in meaningful and sustainable production activities for living. 5. recommendations 1. it is recommended that the evidence or findings from this study be utilized by the various north central states’ government for making policy for effective vocational technical education in the zone. 2. each local government area in the zone should have a technical college with advanced program to accommodate compulsorily unemployed secondary school graduates in their environment. 3. for rapid and sustainable preparation of qualified technical teachers for all the local government areas in the zone, the study further recommended the establishment of technology education university. references auta, j.a., 2015. policy measures for improving the administration of technical teachers training programme in nigeria. a paper presented at the 23rd annual international conference of nigeria vocational association held, between 5th and 8th august, in yaba college of technology, yaba lagos. f.g.n, 2013. the national policy on education. yaba nigeria: nerdc press. hawley, j., 2013. public private partnerships in vocational education and training: international examples and modils. washington dc: world bank. asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(2): 14-20 20 jean, n., 2011. cameroon at the time of vocational and technical and technical training reforms. a paper presented at the sub-regional seminar on unesco’s recommendation on technical education and vocational training. kaduna – nigeria. 8n – 11/. jung, t.h., 2011. the promotion of linkage between technical and vocational educational and the world of work in indonesia. in promotion of linkage between technical and vocational education and the world of work. paris: unesco. miller, a.r., 2013. linkage between technical and vocational education and the world of work in indonesia. paris: unesco. okonze, j.a. and j.c. onuoha, 2014. evolving policy measures for promoting agricultural education in tertiary institution in north eastern nigeria to reduce youths restiveness. journal of home economics research, 18(1): 231243. olaitan, s.o., 2011. policy initiatives for effectiveness of vocational technical education on rapid and sustainable national development. a research report submitted to nerdc, abuja. olaitan, s.o. and m.o. alaribe, 2011. policy initiative for improving teacher effective teaching (tet) of agricultural science in secondary schools in south west nigeria. journal curriculum organisation of nigeria, 18(1): 23-36. onjevvu, m.a., 2013. assessing technical and vocational education in nigeria: a situation analysis of kaduna polytechnic. a paper presented at the 31st annual conference of the international association for educational assessment. abuja, nigeria. oujer, n.m.a., 2009. an assessment of nigeria goals of technical education: the journey so far and the way forward. a paper presented at the 33rd annual conference of the international association for educational assessment. baku, azerteijan. tilak, j.b.g., 2012. vocational and training in asia. the handbook on educational research in the asia pacific region. japan: rimer publishers. ugbalu, e.s., 2012. vocational technical education and economic development. the singapore experience. soapier: institute of technical education. ugwoke, e.o., f.m. onu and m.u. agboeze, 2013. strengthening vocational technical education padagogy for knowlegde economy. journal of home econoimc research, 18(2): 220-230. unesco, 2012. recommendations on technical and vocational training for the twenty first century. paris: unesco. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of education and training shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of education and training vol. 1, no. 1, 8-13, 2015 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 8 quality assurance of university education: whose responsibility? ibijola, elizabeth yinka 1 1 department of educational foundations and management, ekiti state university, ado-ekiti, nigeria abstract this study sought the opinion of stakeholders in university education, to know who should be responsible for quality assurance of university education in nigeria. descriptive research of survey design was employed in the study. the population consisted of all public university staff members, students and the employers of nigerian university graduates in south-west nigeria, while the sample comprised of 50 staff members and 200 students each from 3 federal and 3 state universities, and 50 employers of nigerian university graduates each from the 6 states in southwest, nigeria. the findings revealed that quality assurance of university education is a joint responsibility among all stakeholders, with greater responsibility falling on the government. keywords: nigerian university education, quality assurance, whose responsibility? this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license asian online journal publishing group contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................. 9 2. statement of the problem ......................................................................................................................................................... 10 3. purpose of the study ................................................................................................................................................................. 10 4. methodology .............................................................................................................................................................................. 10 5. results and discussion .............................................................................................................................................................. 10 6. testing of hypothesis ................................................................................................................................................................ 11 7. discussion ................................................................................................................................................................................... 12 8. conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................. 12 9. recommendation ....................................................................................................................................................................... 12 references ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 8-13 9 1. introduction knowledge through education seems to have become an important factor for any political, social and economic development of any nation, and on this premise every society is becoming increasingly dependent on knowledge and how it can be used to improve human lives. corroborating this assertion, oladipo et al. (2010) submitted that education in general and university education in particular is fundamental to the construction of knowledge economy and society in all nations. consequently, every nation invests on its education sector to ensure that its university education is of good standing and rated high globally. bello-osagie and olugbamila (2012) reported that government investment in university education is to ensure it can play its roles in producing high capacity graduates who can help transform the country. however, it is perceived that stakeholders and more importantly employers are now complaining about the quality decline in university education in nigeria (oyewole, 2009; okojo-iweala, 2012). oto (2006) submitted that major employers of nigerian graduates have widely agreed on quality decline in higher education in the country. organizations succeed or fail to the extent to which they are able to satisfy their customers (tajomariwo, 2009). it is perceived that in spite of the external and the internal quality assurance processes put in place in the country, there are still series of complaints in the print and electronic media about quality decline in nigerian university education (ibijola, 2014). different arguments have been advanced for this, as every stakeholder seems to be shifting blame as to who has been responsible for the perceived decline in quality. most arguments are based on the fact that, the government has been responsible for this decline in quality, due to inadequate funding of the system. aboluwade (2012) reported that the major problem of education in nigeria is inadequate funding which according to him is the mother of all other problems such as decayed facilities and lack of instructional materials. ekpo (2002) asserted that there has never been a time that adequate money is sent to match the wage bills in the nigerian university system. corroborating this assertion, inoyo (2012) posited that the federal government was not sincere with the educational sector by committing only 8.5percent of its annual budget to education, while aina (2007) argued that funding of universities by the federal government below the unesco recommendation of 26% of the nation annual national budget has corresponding calamitous effect on teaching and research. to support teaching and research activities according to thompson and wood (2005) anticipated revenue sources must be aligned with planned expenditures for without good budgets, there are no schools. based on this arguments, many of the stakeholders believed that inadequate funding of nigerian public universities have been the immediate and the root cause of other problems that have undermined the issue of quality assurance of university education in the country. on the contrary, materu (2007) reported that, in a case study of quality assurance agencies in some african countries including nigeria, it was revealed that there was no evidence of any link between quality assurance results and funding allocations to institutions or units. the quality of university educational delivery has been strongly linked to stability, because a stable university environment will avail the students of the required number of lecture hours for every course they take (uvah, 2005). however, the frequent shifts in government policies have led to instability in the university system. for instance, the frequent change of government in nigeria especially during the 1990s, led to nonimplementation of agreements between government and university labour unions on several occasions. this gave rise to incessant strikes and long closures of the nigerian university system during the period. some stakeholders argued that quality assurance of university education should be the responsibility of the regulatory agencies such as, the national universities commission (nuc) that has been statutorily charged with the functional goal of producing qualitative, self-reliant and globally competitive graduates through its interaction with the nigerian university system. how effective and efficient these regulatory agencies have significant impact on the quality of its education (ibijola, 2015). there have been reports that the commission has not been performing optimally (okojie, 2013; ibijola, 2014). the greatest challenges before the nuc in nigeria is its inability to ensure that a nigerian university is listed among the first 100 or 200 universities in the world (okebukola, 2006; mafuyai, 2012). subsequently, some stakeholders are calling for the scrapping or an overhaul of the commission, due to its poor performance (adeajayi, 2003; akinyanju, 2012; atoyebi and oyeleke, 2013; okwuofu and aminu, 2013). the role of the university leadership is also perceived as very crucial in quality assurance as it has significant role to play in attracting funds and ensuring proper allocation of funds to projects. it also has the responsibility of attracting and retaining the right caliber of staff and students, and the management of stakeholders such as; the university governing council, senate, academic boards, local authorities, government departments, citizens, students, parents, alumni, industry, among others. however, while universities’ leadership complain of underfunding, government accuses them of inefficiency, lack of probity and transparency in the use and disbursement of funds. aminu (1986) accused nigerian universities of poor strategic planning in its developmental programmes and argued that large part of the capital fund in some nigerian universities is tied to useless uncompleted projects. on the contrary, okebukola (2012) posited that if fund allocated to universities annually are transparently and judiciously applied or spent, or if 95% of such fund is applied to education without any leakage, the system will jump several percentage points in quality. it is in this connection that stevenson (2004) identified accountability as an obligation of any institution that is heavily subsidized by government. the procedure of internal quality assurance generally rely on sincere self-critique and self-analysis. these internal processes are vital to ensuring the continued maintenance of standards of teaching, research and public service. woodhouse and carmichael (2005) asserted that internal mechanisms or approach to quality assurance allows institutions to set their own goals which must be consistent with fitness for purpose. according to gonzalez (2005) a study conducted on a university in chile, revealed that through self-evaluation the need for curricula change and incorporation of new methodologies to courses was observed. on this premise, akinkugbe (2001) concluded that any institution that is incapable of designing its own curricula and syllabuses and been constantly innovative about them does not deserve the title of a university. on this premise, boards of various faculties should ensure that curricula are reviewed as time and technology changes, and every faculty for purpose of quality must strive to exceed the provisions of the minimum academic standard (mas). consequently, this study was carried out to asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 8-13 10 ascertain the level of involvement of each of these stakeholders in quality assurance of university education in nigeria, and to investigate who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education. 2. statement of the problem there are so many literatures on issue of quality assurance in higher education, and more importantly on university education in nigeria. in spite of this, the challenges facing quality assurance seems to remain with the nigerian university system. some authors and researchers have posited that the issue of quality decline can be attributed to the inability of government to meet the unesco 26% annual budgetary allocation to education, while some blame the government regulatory agencies for their inefficiency and ineffectiveness. the university leadership and the faculty are also seen by some authors and researchers have been responsible for the quality decline. the problem of this study therefore is to investigate the level of involvement of each of these stakeholders in quality assurance of university education in nigeria, and to investigate who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education. 3. purpose of the study the purpose of the study is to investigate who should be responsible for quality assurance of university education in nigeria. the study examined the roles of government, the regulatory agency, university leadership, and the faculty in quality assurance. the opinion of stakeholders in university education was sought on ‘who should be responsible for quality assurance of university education in nigeria with the purpose of proffering solution(s) to the problem of quality decline in nigerian university education. in addressing the problem of the study, one general question was raised and one hypothesis generated. 3.1. research question is there any significant difference among the university staff, students, and employers’ opinion on, who should be responsible for ensuring quality of university education? 3.2. research hypothesis i. there is no significant difference among the university staff, students, and employers’ opinion on, who should be responsible for ensuring quality of nigerian university education. 4. methodology a descriptive research of the survey type was adopted in the study. the population consisted of staff members and students from public nigerian universities, and the employers of nigerian university graduates in south-west nigeria. proportionate, stratified, and simple random sampling techniques was used to select 1,800 respondents in all, which comprised 300 staff members and1,200 students from the six universities sampled, and 300 employers of nigerian university graduates. the sample comprised of 50 staff member (teaching and non-teaching) and 200 students from each of the sampled universities, and 50 employers each from the six states covered by the study. selfdesigned instrument tagged, quality assurance of university education in nigeria: whose responsibility (qaue), was used to collect data. the instrument was validated by experts. qaue had reliability co-efficient of 0.89. the instrument (qaue) was divided into sections a and b. section a was for bio data of the respondents, while section b consisted of one item that sought respondents’ opinion on ‘who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education’. the respondents indicated their responses for sections b, using government, nuc, university leadership, faculty, and all of the above. scoring was done based on simple percentage. data obtained from the instrument were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. the descriptive statistics i.e. simple percentages and bar charts were used to answer the general question, while chi-square analysis was used to test the hypothesis for significance difference at 0.05 alpha level. 5. results and discussion question 1: what is the university staff, students, and employers’ opinion on ‘who should be responsible for ensuring quality of nigerian university education’? in order to answer this question, respondents’ scores on section b of the instrument on, who should be responsible for ensuring quality of nigerian university education (qaue) were analyzed using frequency counts and simple percentage. the findings are presented in table 1 and graphically represented in figure 1. table-1. university staff, students, and employers’ opinion on, who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education variable n university staff n student’s n employers f % f % f % government 300 120 40.0 1200 309 25.8 300 120 40.0 nuc 300 30 10.0 1200 49 4.1 300 11 3.7 university leadership 300 14 4.7 1200 77 6.4 300 14 4.7 faculty 300 2 0.7 1200 35 2.9 300 all of the above 300 140 46.7 1200 730 60.8 300 149 49.7 asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 8-13 11 figure-1. graphical representation of staff, students and employers' opinion on who should be responsible for ensuring quality of nigerian university education table 1. shows that the nigerian government, nuc, university leadership and the faculty are all responsible for ensuring quality of nigerian university education. responses on ‘all of the above’ had the highest frequency (%) of the university staff (46.7), students (60.8) and employers of nigerian university graduates (49.7). table-2. summary of respondents’ opinion on, who should be responsible for quality assurance of university education government n f % nuc 1,800 549 30.5 university leadership 1,800 90 5.0 faculity 1,800 105 5.8 all of above 1,800 37 2.1 1019 56.6 1,800 100 figure-2i. bar chart showing respondents' opinion on who should be responsible for ensuring quality of nigerian university education table 2. shows that majority of the respondents agreed on ‘all of the above’, i.e. the government, nuc, university leadership and the faculty are all responsible for quality assurance of university education. ‘all of the above’ had the highest frequency of 1,019 (56.6%) out of a total responses of 1,800. next to that is the ‘government’ with 30.5% responses, university leadership with 5.8%, regulatory agency (nuc) with 5.0% and ‘faculty’ with 2.1%. this implies that, the government, nuc, university leadership and the faculty are jointly responsible for quality assurance. by implication, the failure of any of the stakeholders will have adverse effect on quality of university education. 6. testing of hypothesis i. there is no significant difference among the university staff, students, and employers’ opinion on ‘who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education’. asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 8-13 12 in order to test the hypothesis, the scores on university staff, students, and employers’ responses on ‘who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education’ qaue were obtained and compared for statistical significance at 0.05 alfa level using chi-square analysis. table-3. chi-square analysis showing the opinion of the university staff, students and employers of nigerian university graduates on ‘who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education’. status d f ᵡc 2 ᵡc 2 employers students staff total n % n % n % 8 7 9 .9 2 5 1 5 .5 0 7 all of the above 149 49.7 730 60.8 140 46.7 1019 56.6 faculty 35 2.9 2 0.7 37 2.1 university leadership 14 4.7 77 6.4 8 2.7 99 5.5 nuc 11 3.7 49 4.1 30 10.0 90 5.0 government 126 42.0 309 25.8 120 40.0 555 30.8 total 300 100.0 120.0 100.0 300 100.0 1800 100.0 *p<0.05 (significant result) table 3 shows that there is significant difference among the university staff, students and employers’ opinion on who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education’(ᵡ 2 =79.925, p<0.05). the null hypothesis was rejected. this implies that there is a significant difference among the opinions of the university staff, students and employer on ‘who should be responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education’. in order to locate the sources of pairwise significant difference at 0.05 level, scheffe posthoc test was used as depicted in table 4. table-4. scheffe posthoc analysis of students, staff and employers of nigerian university graduates perception on the quality of nigerian university education source students staff employer of labour mean n students * * 103.10 1200 staff * 37.44 300 employer of labour 28-34 300 * mean difference is significant at 0.05 level. table 4 shows that there was significant difference between the perception of students and staff on the quality of nigerian university education at 0.05 level of significance. also, the mean difference between university staff and employers of labour, university students and employers of labour was statistically significant at 0.05 level on the perception of the quality of nigerian university education in each case. 7. discussion the study showed that majority of the respondents in each of the groups i.e. university staff, students and the employers agreed that the government, nuc, university leadership and the faculty are jointly responsible for quality assurance of nigerian university education. it therefore implies that if every stakeholder in university education could play the expected role in quality assurance issues, the nigerian universities would rank higher among african and world universities. although the finding revealed that quality assurance of university education is a joint responsibility, however, it was revealed that of all the stakeholders, the government carries the greatest responsibility. this finding is in agreement with the submission of aina (2007) who argued that funding of universities by the federal government below the unesco recommendation of 26% of the nation annual national budget has corresponding calamitous effect on teaching and research. the finding also corroborates the argument made by thompson and wood (2005) when they noted that teaching and research activities must be supported by good budget, and that without good budget, there are no schools. the finding agrees with the assertion made by aboluwade (2012) who reported that the major problem of education in nigeria is inadequate funding which according to him is the mother of all other problems such as decay facilities and lack of instructional materials. however, the finding negates materu (2007) who submitted that there was no evidence of any link between quality assurance results and funding allocations to institutions or units in a case study of quality assurance agencies in some african countries including nigeria. 8. conclusion the finding of the study revealed that every stakeholder is important in quality assurance of university education, and that any deficiency on the part of government, the regulatory agency (nuc), the university leadership or the faculty would have adverse effect on quality assurance. however, the finding also revealed that funding of the system by government is the main issue in quality assurance of university education in nigeria. 9. recommendation in view of the established findings of the study, the following recommendations were made; (i) the nigerian government should improve on its budgetary allocation to university education; (ii) the national universities commission, as the regulatory agency in-charge of nigerian university education, must ensure optimal level of performance to improve on the quality of university education in nigeria; asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 8-13 13 (iii) the nigerian university leadership must play its part in attracting funds and ensuring proper allocation of funds to projects, attracting and retaining the right caliber of staff and students, and the management of other stakeholders in university education. it should ensure that funds allocated to universities annually are transparently and judiciously spent without any leakage; and (iv) faculties should ensure that curricula are reviewed as time and technology changes. every faculty for purpose of quality must strive to exceed the provisions of the minimum academic standard (mas). the faculty should be sincere in its self-critique and self-analysis of its internal quality assurance for continued maintenance of standards of teaching, research and public service. references aboluwade, a., 2012. no robust funding for education, no development. the punch: 62. 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[accessed 2013, september 23]. oladipo, a., o. adeosun and a. oni, 2010. quality assurance and sustainable university education in nigeria. available from www.aadcice.hiroshima.u/research/paper-109/pdf [accessed 15/03/2011]. oto, j.o., 2006. a critique of students vices and the effect on quality of graduates of nigerian tertiary institutions. available from www.krepublishers.com [accessed 17/09/09]. oyewole, b.k., 2009. instructional supervisory techniques and quality assurance in nigerian universities; knowledge reviewed. a multidisciplinary journal, 19(5): 14-20. stevenson, m., 2004. university governance and autonomy problems in managing access, quality and accountability: keynote address to adb conference on university governance, denpaar, indonesia, april 26. tajomariwo, g.a., 2009. characteristic of effective organization. a paper delivered at a workshop on enhancing organizational change and effectiveness; centre for management development, shangisha, lagos. thompson, d.c. and r.c. wood, 2005. money and schools. larchmont, ny: eye on education. uvah, i.i., 2005. curriculum development in the nigerian university system; national universities commission, abuja. being lead paper presented at the 2005 conference of the nigeria association for educational administration and planning, universities of calabar. woodhouse, d. and r. carmichael, 2005. diversity through quality assurance audit. a paper presented at the international network for quality assurance agencies in higher education biennial conference, new zealand. march 29-april 1. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of education and training shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. http://www.aadcice.hiroshima.u/research/paper-109/pdf http://www.krepublishers.com/ 50 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 50-55, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.50.55 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between exercise addiction, physical activity level and body mass index of the students who are studying at physical education and sports college adem gun1 ozturk agirbas2 ( corresponding author) 1physical education and sport teacher erzincan sport high school, erzincan/turkey 2bayburt university school of physical education and sport department of trainer education, bayburt/turkey abstract context: the aim of the study was to identify the relationship between exercise addiction (ea) and physical activity levels (pal) and body mass index (bmi) of students of physical education and sports college (pesc). methods: the study consists of 204 male and 101 female from erzincan university pesc. personal information form, exercise dependence scale-21 and physical activity survey were used. the data were analyzed in spss22.0 for windows. kruskalwallis-h, mann-whitney-u and spearman correlation tests were used. results: it was detected that % 13,2 of male students of pesc, % 15.8 of female students and % 14.1 of students in general were exercise addicted, while there was no significant difference between bmi according to the ea status of male students of pesc, the pal of exercise addicted and candidate of addiction was statistically significantly higher in comparison with non-addict, according to the ea status of female students of pesc there was no significant difference between neither mbi nor pal, the bmi of male students of pesc is significantly higher, the pal values of candidates of ea is significantly higher, there was no significant differences between bmi and pal values of the students according to the family economic level, there was no significant relationship neither male nor female students between bmi and pal according to the ea levels. conclusion: it was extrapolated that, few of the students are ea; the students who are high in ea are also high in pal values, the family economic, level on the students‟ ea level is not an effective factor, and also there was no significant relationship between bmi and pal according to the ea status. keywords: addiction, body mass index, exercise, exercise addiction, physical activity, physical education. jel classification: z29. citation | adem gun; ozturk agirbas (2019). the relationship between exercise addiction, physical activity level and body mass index of the students who are studying at physical education and sports college. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 5055. history: received: 2 october 2018 revised: 7 november 2018 accepted: 5 december 2018 published: 31 december 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 51 2. material and method....................................................................................................................................................................... 51 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 52 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 53 5. conclusion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................... 54 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 54 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.50.55&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8611-185x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-024x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8611-185x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-024x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8611-185x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-024x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8611-185x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-024x asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 50-55 51 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction physical activity is defined as body movements which arise from the contraction of skeletal muscles and increase the energy consumption above the basal level (baranowski et al., 1992; pate et al., 1995). though they are close to each other, exercise and physical activity have different meanings. physical activity includes our daily muscle movements such as sitting, standing up, walking and having a shower; but exercise consists of specific, continuous and planned muscle movements which can be seen under a sport activity (ersoy, 1995). addiction can be defined as situation of temporary feeling good as a result of people‟s intake of a substance or service for a long time (seferoglu and yildiz, 2013). addiction is usually categorized as substance addiction and behavioral addiction. exercise addiction is also one of the behavioral addictions. in the exercise addiction, one loses his/her control over the exercise, s/he consistently increases the duration, frequency and heaviness of the exercise, s/he cannot spare time to his/her family and friends just because the exercise, s/he spends all his/her time on doing exercises, s/he prefers doing exercise instead of attending other social activities and s/he programs his/her entire life according to the exercises (zmijewski and howard, 2000; adams and kirkby, 2002). for hausenblas and downs (2002) the exercise addiction is a severe desire that causes the physical and psychological symptoms, results in one‟s losing his/her control and doing exercises too much. it is commonly stressed that as a result of doing exercise too much, it becomes addiction and has negative effects on one‟s health (adams, 2001; blaydon et al., 2002; heather et al., 2002; hausenblas and giacobbi, 2003). its psychological and physical symptoms are as such; anxiety, unable to remain motionless, feeling of guilt which stems from not doing exercise, aggressiveness, laziness, lack of appetite, sleeplessness and headache. criteria of exercise addiction are tolerance, effects of interrupting exercise, intend effect, loss of control, time, reduction of other activities and continuity (hausenblas and downs, 2002; heather et al., 2002; aidman and woollard, 2003; bamber et al., 2003). the aim of this study was to see whether pesc students suffer from the exercise addiction, which negatively affects the human life just like other types of addictions. if they suffer, another aim of this study is to determine its level. 2. material and method this study was carried out with 26.10.2017 dated and 08-05 protocol numbered ethics committee approval and with voluntarily attendance of pesc students. 2.1. research group population of the study consists of students of physical education and sports college of erzincan binali yildirim university in 2017-2018 academic year. also, the sample group includes 204 male (their age 21.92± 4.07 year, their body mass indices 22.74±3.07 kg/m2 and their level of physical activity 3801.213±3063.78 met) and 101 female (their age 20.25±2.21 year, their body mass indices 20.60±2.26 kg/m2 and their physical activity level 3265.10±3855.01 met); total 305 students. 2.2. data collection tools exercise addiction scale-21 was developed by heather, hausenblas and downs in 2002. the scale can be applied to those who are 18 and older as individually or in a group. the responds were designed as never (1) and all the time (6) according to six point likert scale. the exercise addiction scale-21 which consists of 21 questions was designed based upon substance addiction criteria of dsm –iv and it gives the following information: in the exercise addiction scale 7 dependence criteria were used as base. these are; tolerance, interrupting exercise, intend effect, loss of control, time, reduction of other activities and continuity. individuals who show at least 3 of these criteria are categorized as exercise addicted. addiction space is determined according to 5 or 6 points of items which constitute the criteria. individuals who give 3-4 points to these items are categorized as symptomatic and theoretically these individuals can be regarded as carrying the risk of exercise addiction. lastly, individuals who give 1-2 points to the items are categorized as non-addict asymptomatic. in scale test-retest study p<0.001 was found significant and cronbach was calculated as a=0.95 which means that alpha value was perfect. turkish validity and reliability study of the exercise addiction scale was carried out by yeltepe (2005). in pearson correlation analyses, which were done during the test-retest applications, significant relation was found on the level of .001 for each of the items. when the reliability analysis result was examined cronbach alpha coefficient was calculated as 0.96 in the first application and it was calculated as 0.97 in the second application (heather et al., 2002; yeltepe, 2005). physical activity questionnaire: in this study, international physical activity questionnaire (ipaq) was employed to evaluate students‟ level of physical activity. physical activity questionnaire is a community-based questionnaire which provides the calculation of physical activities appropriate to international forms and the recording of the duration of the recent week physical activities. data obtained during the evaluation level are calculated by turning them into their metabolic values (met) (savcı et al., 2006; hurtig-wennlöf et al., 2010). calculation of body mass index: body mass index (bmi) is defined as the division of an individual‟s body mass into the square of his/her height. in other words, it is the proportion of the square of height to body weight (heyward and stolarczyk, 1996). 2.3. statistical analysis after pesc students‟ frequency and percentage calculation was made in order to examine their demographic characteristics, situation of each of students as exercise addicted, candidate for being addicted or non-addict were determined and they were divided into groups. all data were analyzed using spss 22.0 for windows. according to obtained results, it was found that the data did not spread normally. therefore; kruskal wallis h and mann whitney u tests were used. spearman correlation test was also applied to determine the relation between pesc students‟ body mass indices according to their exercise addiction situation and their level of physical activity. the level of significance for all tests was accepted as .05. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 50-55 52 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. results table-1. average values of age, height, weight, bmi and pal according to pesc students‟ gender gender variable n minimum maximum x ss male age (year) 204 16 48 21.92 4.07 height (cm) 120 198 177.96 8.58 body weight (kg) 52 105 71.83 9.23 bmi (kg/m2) 17.27 41.67 22.74 3.07 pal (met) 483 15726 3801.21 3063.78 female age (year) 101 16 28 20.25 2.21 height (cm) 153 197 167.70 7.23 body weight (kg) 45 80 57.95 7.32 bmi (kg/m2) 16.04 27.06 20.60 2.26 pal (met) 483 20808 3265.10 3855.01 source: authors„ field work table 1 shows that male pesc students who attended the research had average age 21.92±4.07 year, average height 177.96±8.58 cm, average body weight 71.83±9.23 kg, average body mass index 22.74±3.07 kg/m2 and physical activity level 3801.213±3063.78 met, also female pesc students who attended the research had average age 20.25±2.21 year, average height 167.70±7.23 cm, average body weight 57.95±7.32 kg, average body mass index 20.60±2.26 kg/m2 and physical activity level 3265.10±3855.01 met. table-2. according to their gender, frequency and percentage dispersion of exercise addiction situations of pesc students gender exercise addiction situation f % male addicted 27 13.2 candidate for being addicted 126 61.8 non-addicted 51 25.0 total 204 100 female addicted 16 15.8 candidate for being addicted 53 52.5 non-addicted 32 31.7 total 101 100 general addicted 43 14,1 candidate for being addicted 179 58,7 non-addicted 83 27,2 total 305 100 source: authors„ field work in table 2 it is found that 13.2% of pesc male students and 15.8% of female students and 14.1% of in general were exercise addicted. table-3. according to their addiction situation, comparison of bmi and pal of male and female pesc students gender situation of addiction n body mass index (kg/m2) physical activity level (met) different groups mean rank med x2 p mean rank med x2 p male addicted 27 103.26 22.71 .659 .719 123.59 4323 9.267 .010* 1-3* 2-3* candidate for being addicted 126 104.67 22.6 105.77 3310.5 non-addicted 51 96.75 22.13 83.25 2112 female addicted 16 47.72 19.83 4.582 .101 58.94 2965.5 1.505 .471 candidate for being addicted 53 46.47 20.37 50.30 2004 non-addicted 32 60.14 20.83 48.19 1911 *p<.05; source: authors„ field work in table 3, it is seen that there was no significant difference among pesc students‟ bmi according to their exercise addiction situation. however, table 3 also shows that the pal level of exercise addicted students and candidate for being addicted students were significantly higher than non-addicted students. also, the table demonstrates that, according to their exercise addiction situation, there was no significant difference among the female pesc students both in terms of bmi and pal. table-4. according to gender variable, the comparison of the level of bmi and pal of exercise addicted, candidate for being addicted and non-addicted pesc students exercise addiction situation gender n body mass index (kg/m2) physical activity level (met) mean rank med z p mean rank med z p addicted male 27 26.04 22.71 -2.739 .006* 22.98 4323 -.666 .505 female 16 15.19 19.83 20.34 2965.5 candidate for being addicted male 126 103.83 22.6 -5.507 .000* 96.25 3310.5 -2.493 .013* female 53 57.11 20.37 75.13 2004 non-addicted male 51 46.42 22.13 -2.110 .035* 43.61 2112 -.768 .442 female 32 34.95 20.83 39.44 1911 *p<.05; source: authors„ field work asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 50-55 53 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4 shows that when bmi was compared according to the gender variable of pesc students, it was found that male students‟ values were significantly higher in all groups; also, when pal was compared it was found that only male candidate for being addicted students‟ values were significantly high. table-5. the comparison of bmi and pal according to the variable of exercise addiction situation of pesc students who do sports regularly and who do not do sports regularly situation of doing sports regularly addiction situation n body mass index (kg/m2) physical activity level (met) mean rank med x2 p mean rank med x2 p those who do sports addicted 40 103.30 21.91 .517 .772 111.83 4462.5 4.685 .096 candidate for being addicted 121 100.69 22.21 101.12 3627 non-addicted 38 94.33 21.26 83.97 3304.5 those who do not do sports addicted 3 30.00 20.66 1.958 .376 38.00 1086 1.564 .457 candidate for being addicted 58 53.14 22.12 56.30 1956 non-addicted 45 55.53 22.34 50.92 1416 source: authors„ field work in table 5 no significant difference was seen when the values of bmi and pal were compared according to exercise addiction situation of pesc students who do sports regularly and who do not do sports regularly. table-6. according to the variable of doing sports regularly, the comparison of bmi and pal level of pesc students who are exercise addicted, candidate for being addicted and non-addicted exercise addiction situation situation of doing sports regularly n body mass index (kg/m2) physical activity level (met) mean rank med z p mean rank med z p addicted do sports 40 22.41 21.91 -.787 .431 23.05 4462.5 -2.003 .045* don‟t do sports 3 16.50 20.66 8.00 1086 candidate for being addicted do sports 121 86.78 22.21 -1.201 .230 100.28 3627 -3.839 .000* don‟t do sports 58 96.72 22.12 68.55 1956 non-addicted do sports 38 36.25 21.26 -1.997 .046* 48.76 3304.5 -2.352 .019* don‟t do sports 45 46.86 22.34 36.29 1416 *p<.05 ; source: authors„ field work it is shown in table 6 that when pesc students were compared according to the variable of doing sports regularly it was found that bmi values of non-addicted students, who do sports regularly, were significantly low. also, in all groups pal values of those who do sports regularly were significantly high. table-7. the relation between body mass indices and physical activity level of pesc students who are exercise addicted, candidate for being addicted and non-addicted exercise addiction situation physical activity level (r) male addicted body mass index .320 candidate for being addicted -.110 non-addicted -.182 female addicted body mass index -.071 candidate for being addicted -.122 non-addicted -.004 source: authors„ field work table 7 shows that, in any of the addiction level, there was no significant relation between male and female pesc students‟ body mass indices and physical activity levels. 4. discussion although regular physical activities are very important for health, doing these activities in addiction level which negatively affect people‟s lifestyle are regarded as a health problem. exercise addiction (ea), just like other addiction types, causes a set of health and vital difficulties for people. as addiction usually starts at early ages, it is crucial to determine the young people‟s exercise addiction situations. therefore, the main aim of this paper is to study the relation between pesc students‟ exercise addiction and physical activity and body mass index. in this study it was found that; male pesc students‟ body mass indices were 22.74±3.07 kg/m2 and female pesc students‟ body mass indices were 20.60±2.26 kg/m2 (table 1). in a research which was done on pesc students the following results were found; students‟ body mass indices values were 20,31±3,51 kg/m2 in physical education and sports teaching department, 20,71± 2,43 kg/m2 in coaching department and 20,52±2,59 kg/m2 in department of sport management. besides, there was no difference among the groups (borazan, 2015). in a study done by koc (2017) it was concluded that 17% of classroom teacher candidates were inactive, 69% of them were minimal active and only 14% of them were physically active enough. it was also found that in the sections of koç‟s study where physical activity was done much, bmi values were close to the results of our study. it was detected in this study that 13.2% of male students, 15.8% of female students and in general 14.1% of the students were exercise addicted. also, 65.8% of male students, 52.5% of female students and in general 58.7% of the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 50-55 54 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students were candidate for being addicted (table 2). even though the addiction level of both female and male students‟ was low, it was seen in the study that the possibility of becoming candidate for being addicted is quite high for the students. in the literature a study which was done to compare the exercise addiction and gender variable, it was found that 60 of 313 female participants of 61 of 464 participants carried the exercise addiction risk. though the number of female participants was fewer than the male ones, the number of female carrying the exercise addiction risk was close to number of male participants. in the studies, the exercise addiction varied according to the gender variable. in some of these studies it was stated that male carried the exercise addiction risk and in some other it was underlined that female did (diekhoff, 1984; davis, 1990). yeltepe (2005) found in his study that there was no significant difference in the exercise addiction level in terms of the gender. similarly, in his studies, vardar (2012) did not detect a significant difference between the genders. the results of these studies show similarity with ours. when students‟ addiction situation was examined with their body mass indices and physical activity levels, it was detected that there was no significant difference among male students‟ body mass indices according to their exercise addiction situation but exercise addicted and candidate for being addicted students‟ physical activity levels were statistically and significantly higher than non-addicted students‟. further, there was no significant difference among both their body mass indices and physical activity levels according to their exercise addiction situation. in all addiction levels male students‟ body mass indices were significantly higher than female students‟ and male candidates for being addicted students‟ physical activity levels were significantly higher than female students‟ (table 3-4). in the studies which were carried out about the university students‟ physical activity situation, it was reported that male university students‟ physical activity levels were significantly higher than female students (baş, 2003; savcı et al., 2006; tekkanat, 2008; fişne, 2009; vardar, 2012; özüdoğru, 2013). ergün (2013) in his study found that, in terms of average physical activity points, male students‟ average points were higher than female students‟ average points (ergün, 2013). these results in the literature supported our research results. there are some reasons why men are more active than women in daily life. some of these reasons are such; man‟s sports and sports facilities for men are much more than women‟s, also men‟s environment is more suitable compared to women‟s (crocker et al., 1995). in the result of the study it was found that; according to students who do sports regularly and who do not, there was no significant difference between their body mass indices and physical activity levels in all addiction levels. bmi values of those who are non-addicted and do sports regularly are significantly lower than those who do not do sports regularly. further, in all groups, physical activity values of those who do sports regularly are significantly higher than those who do not do sports regularly (table 5-6). in studies which were done for physical activity levels it was detected that in a study, which was carried out in tobb economy and technology university, the weight, height, age, strength of left and right paws, reaction times, leg strength, back strength, flexibility, power of aerobic respiration and academic success of students in 1st and 2nd grade were measured and it was concluded that in terms of variables that show physical activities, there was significant difference between university students who do sports regularly and who do not, in favour of those who do sports regularly (er, 2010). also, in another study which was carried out on the students of physical education and sports teaching, coaching and sports management it was reported that the situation of physical fitness of teaching and coaching students was in high level, but in sports management students it was in medium level (borazan, 2015). as a result of the study, it was detected that, both separately and totally, there was no statistically significant difference in all addiction groups between male and female students‟ body mass indices and physical activity levels (table 7). in literature no studies were found directly regarding the determination of exercise addicted people and the relation between physical activity level and body mass indices. however; apart from exercise addiction, there were some researches which examined physical activity and body mass indices together. in one of these studies it was reported that 20.4% of teachers whose body mass index was less than 25 kg/cm2 were physically inactive but this percentage is 15.2% for those whose body mass indices were 25 kg/cm2 or higher (şanlı and atalay, 2009). in another study university students were categorized according to their body mass indices and it was found that there was no significant difference between students whose body mass indices were lower than 25 kg/cm2 and higher than 25 kg/cm2 according to the time of sitting, total physical activity, medium severe activity, severe activity and walking activity of them (savcı et al., 2006). 5. conclusion and recommendations the following results were found in this study; only very few of the students of physical education and sports college were exercise addicted, the pal values of male students, whose addiction levels were high, were also high, the economic level of families was not an important factor on students‟ exercise addiction, also there was no significant difference between students‟ body mass indices and physical activity level according to their exercise addiction situation. because of the fact that exercise addiction should be taken as serious as other types of addiction, it is recommended that, this subject should also be studied for other students in different departments and for other individuals of different age groups. references adams, j. and r.j. kirkby, 2002. excessive exercise as an addiction: a review. addiction research and theory, 10(5): 415-437. adams, j.m.m., 2001. examining exercise dependence: the development, validation and administration of the exercise behavior survey with runners, walkers, swimmers and cyclists. master 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damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 319 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 319-325, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.319.325 an analysis of the effect of educational game training on some physical parameters and social skills of the children with autism spectrum disorders nurgül tezcan kardaş1  reşat sadik2 ( corresponding author) 1,2düzce university/faculty of sports sciences, turkey abstract purpose of this research is to measure the effect of educational game training on some physical parameters and social skills of the children with autism spectrum disorder. five individuals (participants) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder participated in the research. during the research, the participants were made to play 8 different educational games for 8 weeks, and 3 days a week for 1 hour; and the sessions during the research were recorded with a video camera. research data were obtained before and after the 8-week educational game program by using flamingo test, vertical jump test, plate tapping test, sit and reach test, and by performance determination form for individuals with pervasive developmental disability. spss 25 package program was used in the analysis of the data. the wilcoxon test, a nonparametric test, was used to evaluate preand post-test results. as a result of the study, it was found that the educational games have positive effects on some physical parameters (balance, flexibility, strength, hand-eye coordination) and social skills (matching skills, imitation skills, following instructions skills, visual support use, receptive language skills, communicative language skills, game and music skills, selfcare skills, daily life skills, motor skills, socialization skills, and mathematics). keywords: autism, educational game, social skills, training. citation | nurgül tezcan kardaş; reşat sadik (2018). an analysis of the effect of educational game training on some physical parameters and social skills of the children with autism spectrum disorders. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 319-325. history: received: 30 may 2018 revised: 2 august 2018 accepted: 6 september 2018 published: 24 september 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 320 2. material method ............................................................................................................................................................................ 320 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 321 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 324 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 324 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.319.325&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1477 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9483-2013 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2312-8213 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1477 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9483-2013 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2312-8213 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1477 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9483-2013 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2312-8213 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1477 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9483-2013 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2312-8213 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 319-325 320 1. introduction as it is known, autism, widespread and on the rise today, is one of the diseases that are caused by the failure of the different parts of the brain in working together. the word autism is made up of the greek word "autos" (itself) and the latin "ismus" (a suffix indicating belief in, practice of, condition of, or process). for the first time in 1908, eugen bleuler saw "autism" as a serious symptom of schizophrenic patients and described it as "an unhealthy selflove and withdrawal” (gillberg and coleman, 2000). in general, autism is defined as a pervasive developmental disorder, in which verbal and nonverbal communication, social interaction, imagination and problem solving abilities are impaired. in the literature, autism is referred to as autism spectrum disorder (asd) (worden and moore, 2004). asd is a heterogeneous neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by the impairment, at different levels, in social functions, problems in the areas of communication and behavior, and delays in cognitive development (american psychiatric associatıon, 2013). children with asd experience difficulties in social relations, and these children do not seek attachment. children with asd are content with being alone; they do not speak for attracting attention, do not care for their families, rarely establish eye contact, do not gesture or try to draw the attention of others. these children have problems in communication skills, and most of them do not only not speak but do not use non-verbal methods of communication either (nicholas et al., 2008). cognitive, emotional and psychomotor development of children with asd is very important. studies in the field show that physical education, sports and educational games are extremely effective for the development of autistic children. physical education and sports help individuals to overcome their problems and get a chance to have meaningful lives by minimizing their feelings of loneliness. physical education and sports activities to be utilized in the education of autistic children help to improve not only their motor skills but also their physical and motor fitness, game skills, positive self-perception, social competence, free time skills, ease tension and help to improve their creative expressions (calışkan, 2011). development of basic motor skills in autistic children is important not only for influencing their development in different aspects but also for ensuring their happiness. development of movement skills in autistic children is also important for their learning more complex behaviors. development of these skills helps prepare a ground for other bodily movements and achieve complex movements, and provides emotional and social benefits by means of movement training (sarol et al., 2011). as they bring about provably and observably positive changes in autistic children, sports activities have become more preferred in relieving autism and its associated effects (karaküçük, 2012). yılmaz (2004) found that children diagnosed with autism generally have poor motor skills; and therefore, yılmaz argued that the sports training programs designed for children with asd must focus on developmental activities containing individual games and sports that will improve basic motor skills and enhance physical activity (yılmaz, 2004). shaped by the information drawn from literature on the field, this research aims to measure the effect of educational game training on some physical parameters and social skills of children with autism spectrum disorders. 2. material method 2.1. research method this study is designed in accordance with relational screening model, as it looks into the physical and social effects of the educational games on children with autism spectrum disorder. 2.2. study group study group of the research consists of 5 male students within the age range of 5 to 8, officially diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (asd) and with degrees of disability close to each other. participants receive training at “özel i̇zle otizm spor kulübü” in düzce province (a special sports club for the autistic), affiliated with the ministry of national education. 2.3. data collection tools and data collection process data within the scope of the research have been collected by means of the measurement tools, the protocols of which are given. a) to determine the level of the performance of social skills, "performance evaluation form for individuals with pervasive developmental disorder" was used. developed within the scope of the “support training program for prevalent developmental disorders” and by the ministry of national education, general directorate of special education and rehabilitation services, the said form is a standard measure used as a performance measurement instrument in all rehabilitation centers throughout the country.“support training program for prevalent developmental disorders,” which uses the said form as a standard measurement tool, has been prepared with a view to enable the individuals with prevalent developmental disorders, attending the special education and rehabilitation centers within the scope of special education services, to benefit from the training settings efficiently and effectively. additional clause 3 of the law numbered 3797 concerning the organization and functions of the ministry of national education, and article 25 of the law, dated 24/07/2008 and numbered 5793, concerning amendments in some laws and decree laws provide the basis for preparing this program (ministry of national education, 2018). “performance evaluation form for individuals with prevalent developmental disorders” is used for assessing the performance of the individuals in need of special education in terms of their preparation for cognitive skills, self-care skills, daily life skills, social life skills, language and alternative communication skills, pyscho-motor skills, social life skills, turkish language and mathematical skills and preparing an education plan accordingly. b) in determining the physical parameters, various motor tests (flamingo test, sit and reach test, vertical jump test, plate tapping test) were used. 2.3.1. physical test protocols flamingo balance test: in order to determine the static balance of the subjects in the research group, flamingo balance test was used. according to this test, a subjects of the research group step on a wooden balance asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 319-325 321 beam, 50 centimeters long, 4 centimeters high, and 3 centimeters wide, and stand in balance. bending their other legs and pulling them to their buttocks, they hold them with their hands on the same side. while the research group subjects are thus standing in balance on single foot, the timer is started and they try to stay in balance in this position for 1 minute. when the balance is lost (either by falling off the beam, or by letting go of the foot being held, or by touching the ground with any part of the body, and the like), then the timer is stopped. when the time is up, each attempt at re-gaining balance (after the fall) is counted, and this number is noted as the score of the research group after one minute period is completed (hazar and taşmektepligil, 2008). sit and reach test: sit and reach test is used for determining the flexibility of the subjects in the research group. the top of a coffee table, 32 centimeters high and 35 centimeters long, is marked in centimeters. subjects in the research group sit on the floor, extend their legs and place their feet (shoes off) with the soles flat against the coffee table. then, without bending knees, and from the trunk (waist and hips), they extend their arms forward on the coffee table as far as possible. the farthest point reached by fingers are recorded in centimeters. the research group repeats this three times and the best score is taken (hazar and taşmektepligil, 2008). vertical jump test: in vertical jumps test, the subjects try jump with both feet as high as possible in front of a platform hung on wall. before the test, normal arm length of the subject is measured before the test platform. after the test, the difference between the jump height and the arm length is recorded in centimeters. subjects repeat the test twice and the best score is taken (ayan and mülazimoğlu, 2009). plate tapping test: plate tapping test is a reliable and effective test to evaluate the coordination and the speed of the limb movement (adam et al., 1988). purpose is to quickly touch the two discs one after another with the preferred hand. two rubber discs (20 cms. in diameter) are fastened on a table of adjustable height. the distance between the two discs from the center must be 80 cms. (borders 60 cms.). rectangular plate (10x20 in size) is placed in equal distance from the two discs. the subject stands in front of the table with legs comfortably apart. non-preferred hand (non-dominant hand) is placed on the plate. the preferred hand (dominant hand) is placed, by moving over the other hand crosswise, on the disc opposite to the preferred hand. the preferred hand placed on the disc is moved back and forth over the other hand to touch the discs as quickly as possible. the test is repeated two times with a 5 minute break in between, and the best time measured with a timer is recorded as the test result. the best result taken in both attempts is recorded as the test score. score is the time used for touching each disc 25 times and is recorded as the decimal of a second (telles et al., 2013). during the data collection process, the participants were administered 8 different games for 8 weeks, 3 days a week, and 1 hour a day. in establishing the educational game program, 3 experts were consulted for their opinions; and the purpose was the improvement in some physical characteristics after the completion of the program. the form used for assessing the performance in social skills was evaluated for each participant and separately by parents, physical education teacher, and special education teacher. the data were obtained at the beginning of the educational game program and the end of the 8 week process and by using the measuring tools, the protocols of which are provided. 2.4. analysis of the data in the study, spss 25.0 version was used for statistical analyses and the level of significance was set at p<0.05. in analyzing the data obtained, non-parametric wilcoxon test was used. 3. findings this section of the study presents the findings obtained by the statistical analyses. table-1. analysis of some physical parameters test n x sd p vertical jump post 5 13,00 3,47 ,039* pre 5 5,00 2,34 sit and reach post 5 24,40 4,03 ,039* pre 5 16,40 4,39 plate tapping post 5 9,69 3,08 ,043* pre 5 17,67 7,91 flamingo post 5 10,80 1,30 ,042* pre 5 15,00 0,00 *p< .05 according to table 1, in the analysis of the physical parameters, significant differences are seen in favor of the post-tests in the results of vertical jump (13,00±3,47), sit and reach (24,40±4,03), plate tapping (9,69±3,08), and flamingo tests (10,80±1,30). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 319-325 322 table-2. analysis of performance evaluation test for individuals with prevalent developmental disorder, in accordance with the general averages of opininons by three experts test n x sd p matching post 5 1,70 0,23 ,001* pre 5 1,03 0,12 imitation post 5 1,75 0,27 ,001* pre 5 1,07 0,16 following instructions post 5 1,74 0,31 ,001* pre 5 1,02 0,11 visual support post 5 1,52 0,46 ,027* pre 5 1,21 0,41 receptive language skills post 5 1,67 0,16 ,001* pre 5 1,07 0,15 communicative language post 5 1,87 0,19 ,001* pre 5 1,47 0,43 game and music post 5 1,71 0,28 ,001* pre 5 1,26 0,29 self-care post 5 1,56 0,29 ,001* pre 5 1,06 0,12 daily life post 5 1,86 0,16 ,001* pre 5 1,55 0,21 motor skills post 5 1,74 0,11 ,001* pre 5 1,07 0,07 social skills post 5 1,89 0,08 ,001* pre 5 1,44 0,26 mathematics post 5 1,93 0,11 ,001* pre 5 1,22 0,15 *p<.05 when the table 2, “performance evaluation test for individuals with prevalent developmental disorder, in accordance with the general averages of opininons by three experts”, is analyzed and the p values (p<0,05) of the sub-dimensions are considered, significant differences are found in favor of the post tests in the results of matching skills (1,70± 0,23), imitation skills (1,75 ± 0,27), instruction following skills (1,74 ±0,31), using visual support (1,52 ±0,46), receptive language skills (1,67±0,16), communicative language skills (1,87±0,19), game and music skills (1,71 ± 0,28), self-care skills (1,56 ± 0,29), daily life skills (1,86 ±0,16), motor skills (1,74 ± 0,11), social skills (1,89 ± 0,08) and mathematics (1,93 ± 0,11). table-3. analysis of performance evaluation test for individuals with prevalent developmental disorder, according to the family test n x sd p matching post 5 1,74 0,28 ,042* pre 5 1,00 0,00 imitation post 5 1,76 0,35 ,043* pre 5 1,05 0,55 instructions post 5 1,75 0,35 ,039* pre 5 1,00 0,00 visual support post 5 1,43 0,51 ,194 pre 5 1,03 0,08 receptive language post 5 1,66 0,17 ,041* pre 5 1,01 0,03 communicative language post 5 1,86 0,23 ,042* pre 5 1,45 0,43 game and music post 5 1,71 0,30 ,043* pre 5 1,24 0,28 self-care post 5 1,59 0,30 ,042* pre 5 1,03 0,05 daily life post 5 1,90 0,17 ,039* pre 5 1,51 0,22 motor post 5 1,76 0,12 ,042* pre 5 1,09 0,09 social skills post 5 1,92 0,07 ,042* pre 5 1,45 0,26 mathematics post 5 1,97 0,05 ,043* pre 5 1,25 0,15 *p< .05 when the table 3, “performance evaluation test for individuals with prevalent developmental disorder, according to the family” is analyzed and the p values (p<0,05) of the sub-dimensions are considered, significant differences are found in favor of the post tests in the results of matching skills (1,74± 0,28), imitation skills (1,76 ± 0,35), instruction following skills (1,75 ±0,35), receptive language skills (1,66±0,17), communicative language skills (1,86±0,23), game and music skills (1,71 ± 0,30), self-care skills (1,59 ± 0,30), daily life skills (1,90 ±0,17), motor skills (1,76 ± 0,12), social skills (1,92 ± 0,07) and mathematics (1,97 ± 0,05). no significant difference is found in the sub-dimension of using visual support (p=0,194). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 319-325 323 table-4. analysis of performance evaluation test for individuals with prevalent developmental disorder, according to pe and sports teacher test n x sd p matching post 5 1,60 0,25 ,042* pre 5 1,00 0,00 imitation post 5 1,69 0,33 ,042* pre 5 1,01 0,02 instructions post 5 1,75 0,32 ,042* pre 5 1,00 0,00 visual support post 5 1,60 0,47 ,109 pre 5 1,20 0,44 receptive language post 5 1,68 0,17 ,042* pre 5 1,06 0,09 communicative language post 5 1,86 0,23 ,042* pre 5 1,46 0,45 game and music post 5 1,72 0,30 ,043* pre 5 1,27 0,32 self-care post 5 1,54 0,26 043* pre 5 1,03 0,05 daily life post 5 1,88 0,16 ,042* pre 5 1,55 0,23 motor post 5 1,75 0,11 ,041* pre 5 1,07 0,07 social skills post 5 1,87 0,09 ,042* pre 5 1,40 0,28 mathematics son 5 1,91 0,13 ,042* ön 5 1,17 0,16 *p< .05 when the table 4, “performance evaluation test for individuals with prevalent developmental disorder, according to pe and sports teacher” is analyzed and the p values (p<0,05) of the sub-dimensions are considered, significant differences are found in favor of the post tests in the results of matching skills (1,69 ± 0,33), imitation skills (1,69 ± 0,33), instruction following skills (1,75 ±0,32), receptive language skills (1,68±0,17), communicative language skills (1,86±0,23), game and music skills (1,72 ± 0,30), self-care skills (1,54 ± 0,26), daily life skills (1,88 ±0,16), motor skills (1,75 ± 0,11), social skills (1,87 ± 0,09) and mathematics (1,87 ± 0,09). no significant difference is found in the sub-dimension of using visual support (p=0,109). when the table 5, “performance evaluation test for individuals with prevalent developmental disorder, according to special education teacher” is analyzed and the p values (p<0,05) of the sub-dimensions are considered, significant differences are found in favor of the post tests in the results of matching skills (1,76± 0,18), imitation skills (1,80 ± 0,15), instruction following skills (1,71 ±0,32), receptive language skills (1,66±0,19), game and music skills (1,71 ± 0,20 ), self-care skills (1,54 ± 0,37), motor skills (1,70 ± 0,11), social skills (1,88 ± 0,08), and mathematics (1,91 ± 0,13). no significant difference was found in the sub-dimensions of using visual support (p=0,655), communicative language skills (p=068), daily life skills (p=0,138). table-5. analysis of performance evaluation test for individuals with prevalent developmental disorder, according to special education teacher test n x sd p matching post 5 1,76 0,18 ,042* pre 5 1,10 0,22 imitation post 5 1,80 0,15 ,039* pre 5 1,14 0,29 instructions post 5 1,71 0,32 ,042* pre 5 1,08 0,19 visual support post 5 1,54 0,50 ,665 pre 5 1,40 0,54 receptive language post 5 1,66 0,19 ,042* pre 5 1,15 0,25 communicative language post 5 1,90 0,21 ,068 pre 5 1,53 0,49 game and music post 5 1,71 0,20 ,043* pre 5 1,28 0,32 self-care post 5 1,54 0,37 ,043* pre 5 1,11 0,19 daily life post 5 1,80 0,18 ,138 pre 5 1,60 0,22 motor post 5 1,70 0,11 ,043* pre 5 1,06 0,07 social skills post 5 1,88 0,08 ,043* pre 5 1,48 0,29 mathematics post 5 1,91 0,13 ,043* pre 5 1,26 0,16 *p< .05 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 319-325 324 4. discussion and conclusion aiming to measure the effects of educational game training on some physical parameters and social skills of the children with autism spectrum disorder, this study determined not only some physical parameters obtained from the children participating in the study (flexibility, balance, strength, and coordination), but also tested, through tests mentioned, their mapping skills, imitation skills, instruction following skills, visual support use skills, receptive and communicative language skills, game and music skills, self-care skills, daily life skills, motor skills, social skills and mathematical knowledge. in the study conducted, it was concluded that 8-week educational game program brought about a multi-dimensional improvement in the autistic children participating in the study as well as a decrease in their problematic behaviours. in the literature, there is much research on the effects of physical education and sports on the general development of the mentally challenged children, and these studies point out that exercise activities used in the rehabilitation of the autistic children contribute to the rehabilitation and multi-dimensional development (mental, emotional, social, psychological, characteristic and motor skills) of these children (atalay and karadağ, 2011). in a study conducted at georgia state university, mays (2013) stated that as a result of the aerobic exercises administered to two autistic children, there was a decrease in their short term stereotypical behaviors (mays, 2013). in a study conducted by orhan (2014) a 10-year-old boy with autism, who had not had movement training, performed a 30-minute work consisting of 12 exercises, double-leg multiple forward bounces, multiple forward bounces on single leg (left and right legs), and multiple forward bounces in zigzags. as a result of the movement training, it was found that there was a decrease in the problematic behaviors of the child, as well as an increase in his participation duration in the activity and his self-confidence (orhan, 2014). on the other hand, yanardağ (2007) applied bruininks-oseretsky test of motor proficiency on 8 autistic boys aged between 5 and 7 for 12 weeks, 3 days a week, and 40 minutes a day, both in and out of the swimming pool. in this study, it was found that the land group moved from a pre-test score of 0.75 to 1.75 in balance test (yanardağ, 2007). furthermore, it is seen that the social skills of the autistic children participating in the study have also improved. as it is known, sports help the disabled in terms of their psychological and social development, and facilitate their socialization (eichsteadt and lavay, 1992). for this reason, sports should be considered as a means to implement the socialization of the disabled and accelerate this process (dunn and fait, 1997). when the literature in the field is examined, one can find studies about the positive effects of the exercise programs of various forms on the levels of the social adaptation of the disabled. study conducted by temel et al. (2017) corroborates this view. in the said study, it was found that the level of aggressiveness in the autistic children who are engaged in sports is lower than that of the autistic children who are not engaged in sports, and that the level of social adaptation of the former is also higher than that of the latter (temel et al., 2017). another study looked into the effects of the intensive exercises on the problematic behaviors, in an exercise program of 6 weeks, 4 days a week, and 2 hours a day. this study was done with an 8-year-old autistic individual. as a result of the exercises designed in the game format, a decrease was observed in the problematic behaviors (beyazoğlu, 2014). in a study on the effects of the basketball training on the behavioral development of the mentally challenged children, gençöz (1997) has found positive changes in the behavior of these children both in the family and school environments (gençöz, 1997). another study finds positive changes in the level of socialization of an autistic individual after movement training, especially positive results at the levels of establishing eye contact (orhan, 2014). the changes, found by this study, at the levels of socialization of the autistic children also corroborate the findings in the literature. in a study, mcmahon has argued for the importance of recreational activities in establishing the socialization of the disabled individuals, their adaptation to the environment, their making friends and social acceptance (mcmahon, 1998). findings from the related studies in the literature are in parallel with this study. considering the results of this study, it can be said that the educational game program applied to the children with prevalent spectrum disorder have positive impacts on some of the physical and social skills. using some sports exercises and educational games in the training of the individuals with asd will support the adaptation of these individuals to social life, and thus, is thought to be contributing to their socialization. accordingly, structured educational game programs can be integrated into the existing educational programs of the rehabilitation centers and a new program to support the rehabilitation of the individuals with asd can be formed. references adam, c., v. klissouras, m. ravazzolo, r. renson and w. tuxworth, 1988. eurofit: european test of physical fitness. rome, italy: council of europe, committee for the development of sport. american psychiatric associatıon, 2013. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 5th edn., washington, dc: american psychiatric associatıon. pp: 50-59. atalay, a. and a. karadağ, 2011. importance of sports therapies in the rehabilitation process of the autistic patients; selçuk university. journal of physical education and sports, 13(extra issue): 227. ayan, v. and o. mülazimoğlu, 2009. an analysis of the physical characteristics and some performance profiles of 8-10 age group male children in sporda talent selection and sports orientation (ankara example). fü right. know. medical journal, 23(3): 113-118. beyazoğlu, g., 2014. examination of the effects of play and water therapy on behavioral disorder reduction in a child with autism diagnosis. karadeniz technical university educational sciences institute, graduate thesis, trabzon. [analysis of the effects of game and water therapies in alleviating the behavioral disorders in a child diagnosed with autism, master’s thesis]. calışkan, e., 2011. sports education for children with disabilities and approaches to their families. 1. book of physical education and sports congress in internationally disabled persons. selcuk university school of physical education and sports. konya. dunn, j.m. and h. fait, 1997. special physical education: adapted, individualized. developmental 7th edn., benchmark: lowa dubuqua brown, 22. eichsteadt, c.b. and b.w. lavay, 1992. physical activity for individuals with mental retardation: infancy through adulthood. champaign, il: human kinetics. pp: 389-390. gençöz, f., 1997. the effects of basketball training on the maladaptive behaviors of trainable mentally retarded children. research in developmental disabilities, 18(1): 1-10.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0891-4222(96)00029-7. gillberg, c. and m. coleman, 2000. the biology of the autistic syndromes. london, new york: mac keith press, distributed by cambridge university press. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 319-325 325 hazar, f. and y. taşmektepligil, 2008. investigation of the effects of balance and flexibility on agility in the pre-puberty period. spormetre: physical education and sports sciences journal, 6(1): 9-12. karaküçük, s., 2012. therapeutic recreation. 1st edn., ankara: gazi bookstore. mays, m.n.m., 2013. using antecedent aerobic exercise to decrease stereotypic behavior in children with autism. dissertation, georgia state university. mcmahon, d., j., 1998. social acceptance of children with developmental handicaps i̇nintegrated daycamps. canada: university of toronto. ministry of national education, 2018. available from https://orgm.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2013_09/04010347_yaygngeliimselbozukluklardestekeitimprogram.pdf [accessed 02.07.2018]. nicholas, j.s., j.m. charles, l.a. carpenter, l.b. king, w. jenner and e.g. spratt, 2008. prevalence and characteristics of children with autism-spectrum disorders. annals of epidemiology, 18(2): 130-136. orhan, b.e., 2014. impact of movement education on social skills in autism. graduate thesis, gazi university institute of educational sciences, ankara. [effects of movement training on social skills in autism, master’s thesis]. sarol, h., e. ekinci and s. karaküçük, 2011. opinions of the students of the physical education and sports high school partic ipating voluntarily in the autistic children's sport training project. selçuk university physical education and soprts sciences journal, 13(extra issue): 67-73. telles, s., n. singh, a.k. bhardwaj, a. kumar and a. balkrishna, 2013. effect of yoga or physical exercise on physical, cogni tive and emotional measures i̇n children: a randomized controlled trial. child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 7(1): 37.available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-2000-7-37. temel, g., t. yıldız, m. turan and b. karaoğlu, 2017. analysis of the effect of sports on the levels of aggressiveness and social adaptation of the autistic children. istanbul university sports sciences journal, 7(3): 25-33. worden, e.c. and k.a. moore, 2004. sensory gardens. university of florida cooperative extension service, institute of food and agricultural sciences. pp: 1-4. yanardağ, m., 2007. effects of different exercise practices on motor performance and stereotypic behavior in autistic children. hacettepe university institute of health sciences, phd thesis, ankara. yılmaz, a., 2004. family education, bursa province directorate of national education. independent autistic children education center, family education symposium. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 326 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 326-335, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.326.335 the effect of performing reading activities with critical reading questions on critical thinking and reading skills sefa yildirim1 yusuf söylemez2 ( corresponding author) 1agri ibrahim cecen university faculty of science and letters, department of history, ağrı-turkey 2agri ibrahim cecen university faculty of science and letters, department of turkish language and literature, ağrı-turkey abstract the 21st century individual should be able to access information and critically evaluate and interpret it. what creates this obligation is the information bombing and political and commercial perception management brought about by virtual networks, the media and globalization. therefore, critical thinking and its sub-component, critical reading, are becoming more and more important because they are the assistants of the individual who has to distinguish right from wrong and the truth from propaganda in life and texts. the aim of this study is to reveal the effect of performing reading activities with critical reading questions developed by the researchers on critical thinking and reading skills, and to pave the way for further research in this area. study sample consisted of 232 students of ağrı ibrahim çeçen university in the academic year of 20162017. participants were recruited using random sampling technique. this was a mixed design study. the qualitative dimension of the study was based on a screening model. data were collected using document review and interview methods, and were analyzed using content analysis. the quantitative dimension of the study was based on a quasi-experimental model. data were collected using a critical thinking self-evaluation form and a critical reading scale (pretest-post-test) before and after a 7-week application. data were analyzed using a statistical software package. t-test and anova were used for analysis. results show that reading activities with critical reading questions have a statistically significant effect on students’ critical thinking and reading skills. qualitative data also support these results. keywords: critical thinking, critical reading, critical reading questions, critical reading activity. citation | sefa yildirim; yusuf söylemez (2018). the effect of performing reading activities with critical reading questions on critical thinking and reading skills. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 326-335. history: received: 20 june 2018 revised: 8 august 2018 accepted: 30 august 2018 published: 24 september 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 327 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 330 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 330 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 333 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 334 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.326.335&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1478 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7351-6145 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1331-3834 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1478 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7351-6145 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1331-3834 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1478 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7351-6145 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1331-3834 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1478 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7351-6145 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1331-3834 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 326-335 327 1. introduction a soul that thinks well and right is a stronger discoverer than a sophist. sophocles (cited by, kranz (1994)) information is accumulating rapidly and access to it is becoming easier and easier in this constantly changing and developing world. this results in a shift in the direction of education from information carrier to a structure in which information is selected tested and interpreted. therefore, thinking skills, language and communication skills and reading and comprehension skills are becoming more and more important. 1.1. thinking and its forms referring to “noesis” in greek, “cogitare” (cōgitātiō [cogito]) in latin, “penser” in french and “tefekkür” in arabic, the concept of "thinking" is defined as the conscious manifestation of mental activities such as comparing, analyzing, synthesizing, suspecting, demanding, feeling, imagining, remembering, free association, connection and form comprehension within the process of learning in philosophical and content (lewis, 1918; kabaağaç and alova, 1995; peters, 2004; dogan, 2005; nişanyan, 2009; çolak and demircioğlu, 2010; çelgin, 2011; arı, 2013; cevizci, 2013; cankaya, 2014; demirel, 2015; söylemez, 2015; budak, 2017; sarikaya, 2018). ruggiero also creates a threedimensional thinking classification "reflective, creative, and critical" (ruggiero, 2017). based on the conceptual definitions above, styles of thinking can be classified into several main categories (akınoğlu and diriöz, 2007; güneş, 2012; doğanay, 2015; doganay and tok, 2015; söylemez, 2015; sarikaya, 2017; demirel, 2018): a) induction thinking, b) deductive thinking, c) analytical thinking, d) analogous thinking, e) systematic thinking, f) creative thinking, g) clinical thinking, h) high-level thinking, i) six thinking hats j) reflective thinking, k) metacognitive thinking, l) divergent thinking, m) convergent thinking, n) lateral thinking, o)transformational thinking, p) integrative thinking, q) hypothetical thinking, r) global thinking s) reflexive thinking, t) omnipotent thinking, u) iconic thinking v) critical thinking another important point is the mental structure and activities of human being. considering gardner’s statement that mental structures that will build the future are “disciplined, synthesist, creative, respectful and ethical minds” shows that critical thinking is crucial (gardner, 2006; sirin, 2012; judkins, 2017). 1.2. critical thinking and reading “critical thinking is the art of thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better. critical thinking has three interwoven phases: analyzing thinking, evaluating thinking and improving thinking.” (paul and elder, 2016). in this context, it can be argued that critical thinking, which is a high-level thinking process, is the art of learning to think in the best way. derived from the combination of the words “kriticos” (κριτικόϛ) and “kriterion” (κριτεριον) in ancient greek and “criticus” in latin, the word “critical” etymologically implies the development of [discerning judgment based on standards] according to paul and elder (lewis, 1918; kabaağaç and alova, 1995; çelgin, 2011; galetto, 2014; nosich, 2016; paul and elder, 2016). some of the features of critical thinking are that it has certain standards, it is reflective, and logical and realistic (marshall, 2005; kurnaz, 2007; kurnaz, 2013; platon, 2015; nosich, 2016; paul and elder, 2016; baillargeon, 2017; budak, 2017; ruggiero, 2017). according to paul and elder (2016) critical thinking consists of three main perspectives: analytical, evaluative and creative. therefore, critical thinking can be defined as evaluating, thinking objectively, creating standards to determine the true value of something, and using those standards. critical reading, which plays a key role in the development of basic language skills, can be defined as making an inference by reasoning, questioning, evaluating, and eventualizing a text and reaching a conclusion (adalı, 2010; adalı, 2011; söylemez, 2015; prosperity, 2016; scott, 2017). another key point of critical reading is that it can make significant contributions to the formation of a democratic society. 1.3. language and thinking many scientists from ancient times to the present have expressed that there is a strong connection between "thought" and "language." to name but a few, platon and aristoteles address two important concepts; internal and external speech. platon defines internal speech, that is, thinking, as “the dialogue of the soul with itself.” (cited by altinors (2016)). on the other hand, augustine asserts that thinking is faster than speaking, and therefore, the task of language is to draw attention to the truth. descartes also expresses similar views and argues that the inattentive and careless use of language is the greatest obstacle to sound reasoning (altinors, 2016). chomsky’s remarks on this issue is “…human language should directly reflect the characteristics of human intellectual capacities, that language should be a direct mirror of mind in ways in which other systems of knowledge and belief cannot" (chomsky, 2018). many philosophers and experts view language and speech as the acting out of perceptions and feelings many philologists, educators, philosophers and experts are known to put forward many conceptual, functional, linguistic, philological and philosophical judgments, opinions, theories and hypotheses about the functions of language. in this context, it can be stated that language is used as a means of conveying information, raising emotional awareness, putting forward and shaping ideas, ordering, manipulating, directing and explaining objects, asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 326-335 328 events and phenomena (corballis, 2003; ozdemir, 2013; dessalles et al., 2014; söylemez, 2015; sarikaya, 2016; baillargeon, 2017). it can therefore be stated that there is a one-to-one connection between "language" and "thinking", and that the functions that develop depending on these two phenomena are unique to human beings. it is also important to improve critical listening, reading and visual reading skills in the development of critical thinking. people should develop critical comprehension skills to critically perceive facts, events and expressions while exchanging information, to make accurate, reliable and valid judgments, and to make reliable assessments of the process of acquiring knowledge and information. 1.4. concept of mythology and "a short history of myth" “we need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. we need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. we need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. we need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a 'resource.' this is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet” (armstrong, 2005). mythology [μσθολογία, αϛ, ή] is a verbal and written form of art. it derives from the combination of the words “mythos” (μύθος, οσ, ό) meaning narration, story, fairy tale, legend, word, news, rumor, or story in greek and “logos” (λόγοϛ, οσ, ό) meaning word, maxim, reason, intelligence, speech, explanation, rumor, proverb, fable or judgment. in addition, some experts have used this word with the meaning of fable [fabul/a-ae], story, fantasy, novel, literature and fiction (lewis, 1918; longman-metro great english turkish-turkish dictionary, 1993; kabaağaç and alova, 1995; nişanyan, 2009; öztürk, 2009; seyidoglu, 2010; çelgin, 2011; baillargeon, 2017). when myths first came out, people perceived these literary products as real stories or facts. however, in the last two centuries, modern societies have begun to regard mythological works as falsely believed works of imagination and deformation of reality due to technological advancements and resulting new scientific perspectives. today, social science experts such as clergy, historians, literati, sociologists, psychologists and ethnologists generally consider mythological works as primitive beliefs, rituals and sacred traditions. in essence, myths or written works can be regarded as literary works of art or knowledge not because they carry scientific facts but because they have direct or indirect influence on human nature, mood, and even on the future prospects of societies. perhaps partly serving as a guiding role in seeking for an answer to the mystery of existence and the mystery of life and its truth, mythology can be said to consist of works and rituals bringing back the joy of living and giving solace to those facing death and eternal loss, and feeling frustrated regarding future (armstrong, 2005; rosenberg, 2006; mccants, 2012). in today's scientific culture, god and mythological elements are often not considered much. but it should not be forgotten that the mythological artifacts are the products of people's enormous imagination. many of the elements that people developed in their imagined world thousands of years ago, such as traveling to the moon or to mars, or traveling in space to communicate with god or gods, or using various plants and materials to combat evil spirits or to heal sicknesses were the foundation of the technology that we have today. in this context, it can be argued that the important benefits of myths are that they carry meaningful knowledge, trigger imagination and provide an opportunity to deeply analyze and synthesize some psychological and sociological problems that an individual or society may encounter (armstrong, 2005; rosenberg, 2006; seyidoglu, 2010; mccants, 2012). in conclusion, mythology can develop and strengthen the perspectives of people, just like science and social sciences. given these characteristics of mythology, it was decided that the book titled “a short history of myth” by armstrong (2005) would be evaluated and included in the application process because it has a suitable topic and knowledge in terms of critical reading. the work consists of 7 chapters and 106 pages. the chapters are: 1. what is a myth? 2. the paleolithic period: the mythology of the hunters (c. 20000 to 8000 bce) 3. the neolithic period: the myth of the farmers (c. 8000 to 4000 bce) 4. the early civilizations (c. 4000 to 800 bce) 5. the axial age (800 to 200 bce) 6. the post-axial age (c. 200 bce to c. 1500 ce) 7. the great western transformation (c. 1500-2000 ad) 1.5. application process a literature review was conducted and the characteristic of critical reading and the scales developed in this area were examined in order to generate critical reading activities. a critical reading activity questionnaire consisting of 52 items was prepared. twelve experts were consulted to determine the content validity of the items. the data were analyzed using lawshe's content validity ratio (cvr) method and those with low cvr scores were removed from the questionnaire (lawshe, 1975). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 326-335 329 table-1. content validity ratio scores of critical reading activities item appropriate revise remove cvr 1. 8 1 3 0.33 2. 11 1 0.83 3. 11 1 0.83 4. 12 1.00 5. 11 1 0.83 6. 9 2 0.50 7. 12 1.00 8. 11 1 0.83 9. 9 1 2 0.50 10. 12 1.00 11. 12 1.00 12. 9 1 2 0.50 13. 12 1.00 14. 7 1 4 0.17 15. 12 1.00 16. 12 1.00 17. 12 1.00 18. 11 1 0.83 19. 11 1 0.83 20. 7 3 2 0.17 21. 12 1.00 22. 11 1 0.83 23. 9 1 2 0.50 24. 12 1.00 25. 11 1 0.83 26. 8 4 0.33 27. 12 1.00 28. 12 1.00 29. 9 2 1 0.50 30. 12 1.00 31. 10 2 0.67 32. 7 5 0.17 33. 12 1.00 34. 12 1.00 35. 12 1.00 36. 9 1 2 0.50 37. 12 1.00 38. 12 1.00 39. 12 1.00 40. 7 2 3 0.17 41. 12 1.00 42. 10 2 0.67 43. 12 1.00 44. 12 1.00 45. 7 5 0.17 46. 12 1.00 47. 10 2 0.67 48. 12 1.00 49. 7 1 4 0.17 50. 11 1 0.83 51. 12 1.00 52. 12 1.00 source: author’ field work. in lawshe's content validity ratio (cvr) method, the lower limit for 12 experts is .56 (lawshe, 1975). table 1 shows that the content validity scores of items,1, 6, 9, 12, 14, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32, 36, 40, 45 and 49 were lower than < .56, and therefore, they were removed from the questionnaire. participants (experimental group) were told about the critical reading process consisting of 38 items and were given the questions in written form. the application was performed in a classroom environment and lasted for 5 weeks. 7 experts (3 from the field of turkish language and literature, 2 from the field of turkish education and 2 from the field of history education) were consulted to construct 3 texts to be used in the application. at the end of the application, participants were asked to read “a short history of myth” by armstrong (2005) critically in 2 weeks. an achievement test (n 232) was conducted to find out if students read the book, and those with a score below 60 (out of 100) were not included in the study. the statistical data of the achievement test were not included in the study as they were not considered directly relevant to the research topic. the researchers were not involved in the lecture but they observed and analyzed the answers that students gave to the questions in the course environment (5 weeks) and in the application held at home (2 weeks). however, students’ answers were neither interfered with nor scored. throughout the process, the instructor who was teaching the course only answered the questions regarding what the items of the questionnaire meant posed by students. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 326-335 330 a pre-test was carried out before the application started. at the end of the 7th week, a post-test was conducted and the data collection was completed. data were analyzed and the study was finalized in week 10. the results of the study were shared with the teaching staff and students on request, but no personal data was shared with the third parties. the central question of the study is as follows: what is the effect of reading activities with critical reading questions on critical thinking and reading skills? the sub-questions of the study are as follows: 1. what are students' critical thinking pre-test and post-test results? 2. what are students' critical reading pre-test and post-test results? 3. do students' critical thinking post-test results differ by gender? 4. do students' critical reading post-test results differ by gender? 5. do students' critical thinking post-test results differ by learning style? 6. do students' critical reading post-test results differ by learning style? 7. do students' critical thinking post-test results differ by department? 8. do students' critical reading post-test results differ by department? 9. do students' critical thinking post-test results differ by high school type? 10. do students' critical reading post-test results differ by high school type? 11. do students' critical thinking post-test results differ by age? 12. do students' critical reading post-test results differ by age? 13. what are students’ views of the lecture given using reading activities with critical reading questions? 2. method the research was based on explanatory mixed design, which is a mixed research method. mixed design research has two dimensions, quantitative and qualitative. depending on the objective and structure of research, one of these dimensions may be concentrated on more or repeated more than once. this study concentrated more on quantitative dimension, and qualitative data were collected to support quantitative findings and to accurately describe the process. semi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test was used in the quantitative dimension of the study, qualitative data were collected using document review and interview techniques in order to explain quantitative data. 2.1. population and sample the study population consisted of students of the departments of history and of turkish language and literature of the faculty of science and literature of ağrı i̇brahim çeçen university in the academic year of 20162017. the study sample consisted of 232 students (equal number of students from the two departments) recruited using random sampling technique. there were no courses on critical thinking and critical reading offered by the university, therefore, no control group was included in the study. only pre-test-post-test was applied to the experimental group. it was determined that 169 data on critical thinking and 197 data on critical reading were suitable for evaluation. 2.2. data collection document review and interview techniques were used to collect data in the quantitative dimension of the study. document review involves the analysis of materials that contain information about facts or phenomena aimed to be investigated (yıldırım and şimşek, 2000). a semi-structured interview form developed by researchers was used to find out students' views of the critical reading application. in this technique, the researcher prepares the interview questions in advance, however, he/she provides participants with partial flexibility during the interview and allows questions to be rearranged and discussed (ekiz, 2013). the quantitative data of the study were grouped under the headings of critical thinking and critical reading. data on critical thinking were collected using the critical thinking self-assessment form developed by kurnaz (2007) while data on critical reading was collected using the critical reading scale developed by söylemez (2015). the scale developed by söylemez (2015) was tested at a graduate level and with a sample (n 137) not included in the original study. cronbach alpha, spearman-brown and guttmann were found to be 0.89, 0.843 and 0.897, respectively. these values were close to those of the original scale (cronbach alpha 0,854, spearman-brown 0,837, guttmann 0,847). since all internal consistency coefficients were greater than 0.80, we can state that the reliability of the critical reading scale was high (ozer and dönmez, 2013; sevim, 2014). 2.3. data analysis quantitative data were analyzed using a statistical software package according to descriptive statistical methods while qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. the qualitative data were used to describe quantitative data. 3. findings two types of qualitative data were found. the first one was concerned with critical reading, which was obtained using document review method, and formed the basis of the experimental part of the research. based on this information, activity questions about critical reading were generated. 52 activity questions were submitted to the experts. the questions were analyzed using lawshe's content validity ratio method, and those with low content validity scores were removed from the questionnaire (lawshe, 1975). the final version of the questionnaire consisted of 38 questions: 1. what is the significance of the text i read? 2. can i read this text critically and how ready do i feel about it? asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 326-335 331 3. what should i research about the book/what parts of it do i have information about? 4. what information in the book does not agree with my information? 5. what information provided by the book do i need to verify by referring to information sources? 6. what are field-specific concepts in the book? which of them were explained enough? 7. what is the problem or phenomenon in the text? to what extent did the author explain it? 8. what is the main theme of the text? 9. what are the secondary themes of the text? 10. how has the connection between the main theme and secondary themes been established? 11. what are the cause-and-effect relationships that i have found in the text and have the relationships been established correctly? 12. what are the relationships between the text and other texts and have the relationships been established correctly? 13. can a relationship be established between the images and the topic of the text? 14. did i detect anything related to association in the text? if so, what are they? 15. does the text contain overt/covert commercial/propaganda? if so, what are they? 16. what kind of pattern do i obtain if i classify the information given in the text according to the degree of importance? 17. do i find the ideas and their bases in the text convincing? which ones do i not find convincing and how can i be sure about it? 18. is the text based on truth or fiction? 19. does the text include solution recommendations? which ones did i test to be valid and what kind of result did i obtain? 20. what is the main argument of the author of the text? is it valid? 21. what is the purpose of the author? 22. how has the formal logic on which the text is based been formed? 23. did i detect an inconsistency in the text? 24. if the text contains a logical fallacy, how did it affect the general structure? what kind of conclusion did it reveal? 25. what are my predictions regarding the text? what are my new predictions besides the ones i found an answer to? 26. how well was i with my predictions and where did i do wrong? 27. what kind of result did i come up with based on the information provided by the text? 28. what are the clear, consistent, logical or unethical information that i have found in the text and and why did the author provide them? 29. is the information in the text reliable, current and valid? 30. what did i find out in the text about the author's beliefs and prejudices? 31. to what extent is the author's inferences related to the information he/she presents in the text? 32. what information that i obtained from the text do i try to apply in my life? 33. how and where do i share what i have learned from the text? 34. who would be interested in what i have learned from the text and how can i construct a text that is relevant to them? 35. which of the assessments that i have made regarding the text am i not sure of? 36. did my prejudices and prior knowledge have a negative effect on my assessments regarding the text? 37. did i evaluate the text objectively? 38. what mistakes did i make when making an assessment and how did they affect my inferences? the second type of qualitative data was collected using a semi-structured form. it was divided into sub-themes. 1. have you ever participated in this kind of activity before? 95% of participants stated that they had never had a similar lecture before while 5% think that they had a similar lecture before. p (participant) 21 stated “i have read looking for answers to pre-determined questions before” while p 123 stated “i have had lectures involving activities before.” p 85 “once our teacher showed us a movie and asked us to criticize the negative parts of it.” although participants had similar lectures, they did not have a lecture systematically concentrated on thinking skills and searching for answers to questions and aimed at understanding and analyzing any kind of text. 2. have you ever had a lesson in high school or college involving critical thinking or critical reading? although 1% and 7% of participants stated that they had a lecture involving critical thinking or critical reading in high school and college, respectively, they did not give any explanatory information. 3. what were the challenges of the activities? almost all participants stated that they had a hard time during the process, which was personally observed by the researchers and the lecturers as well. the thematic classification of the challenges for participants was questions and answers, evaluation, text analysis, author and time. participants had difficulty understanding the questions (32%) in the questions and answers section mainly because they had not had been asked similar questions before (81%). finding the right answer (77%) and being sure of the answer (24%) were the other two challenges for participants. some participants read the text a few times to overcome this problem (65%) while some others gave up thinking that they would not be able to accomplish the task (3%). in the evaluation section, participants stated that they had difficulty establishing evaluation criteria (57%), identifying their own evaluation mistakes (14%) and making sure of their evaluations (38%). this shows that the students did not make frequent evaluations and that even if they did, they did not use some certain criteria and did not control the process. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 326-335 332 in the text analysis section, participants stated that they had difficulty revealing the general meaning of the text (22%) and detecting the problems in the text (43%). most participants (61%) stated that they especially had difficulty in terms of intertextuality. in the author section, participants stated that they had difficulty understanding the purpose of the author (32%) and confirming the evidence he/she provided (19%). in the time section, participants stated that they had difficulty in time management (71%). it may be due to the fact that they were not accustomed to the process and had to read the text over and over again. 4. what do you think are the effects of the lecture on your thinking system? participants stated that the lecture helped them raise their awareness on approaching a subject systematically (41%), seeing through the deep structure of a text (67%), recognizing a problem and producing a solution (49%), questioning information (87%) and breaking down prejudices (39%). quantitative data were analyzed using a statistical software package. table-2. comparison of critical thinking pre-test and post-test scores mean n t p critical thinking pre-test 73.66 169 3.190 .002 critical thinking post-test 78.21 169 source: calculated from the primary data. t-test shows a statistically significant difference between pre-test and post-test mean scores of participants (t = 3.190; p = .002 <.05) in favor of the post-test, indicating that there was a significant increase in participants’ postapplication critical thinking scores. table-3. comparison of critical reading pre-test and post-test scores mean n t p critical reading pre-test 86.08 197 2.272 .024 critical reading post-test 89.91 197 source: calculated from the primary data. t-test shows a statistically significant difference between pre-test and post-test mean scores of participants (t = 2.272; p = .024 <.05) in favor of the post-test, indicating that there was a significant increase in participants’ postapplication critical reading scores. participants’ statement that the lecture helped them raise their awareness on approaching a subject systematically (41%), seeing through the deep structure of a text (67%), recognizing a problem and producing a solution (49%), questioning information (87%) and breaking down prejudices (39%) also confirms the increase in critical thinking and critical reading post-test scores. p 68 stated “apparently i used to believe everything i saw on social media without questioning it. from now on, i will evaluate every information according to what i have learned in this lecture.” p 128 stated “i understand that judging people and ideas by criteria rather than by prejudices will yield a more accurate result. let us not let our prejudices blind us!” p 17 stated “every text has a visible and invisible meaning that i have to figure out, and i realized that many truths come out of it when i figure it out.” participants’ statements show that they have recognized the importance of critical reading and therefore critical thinking skills and that they have developed them to some extent. given the fact that an important feature of critical thinking is to put it into practice and to turn it into a habit, participants’ statements become more meaningful. table-4. comparison of critical thinking and critical reading scores by gender gender n mean t p critical thinking male 82 77.41 .671 .503 female 87 79.01 critical reading male 105 89.66 .219 .847 female 92 90.16 source: calculated from the primary data. there is a statistically significant difference in neither critical thinking (t = .671; p = .503> .05) nor critical reading (t = .219; p = .847> .05) mean scores between male and female participants, indicating that critical thinking and critical reading skills do not differ by gender. p 70 stated “i want to be a mother in the future and i think it is my job to teach my kids to question and understand life and to ask questions.” p 8 stated “i think that girls as well as boys should develop this skill because only then can we build a good society.” p 161 stated “i believe that parents should teach their children not to believe everything they hear. that is what i will do, but of course first i have to improve myself.” participants’ statements show that they do not take a sexist view on this matter. the lack of a statistically significant difference in post-test scores between male and female participants indicates that not only students in coeducation system but also individuals can develop critical thinking and reading skills. table-5. comparison of critical thinking and reading scores by learning style learning style n mean t p critical thinking formal 93 80.31 1.939 .054 evening 76 76.11 critical reading formal 99 91.32 1.402 .163 evening 98 88.50 source: calculated from the primary data. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 326-335 333 there is a statistically significant difference in the mean scores of neither critical thinking (t = 1,939; p = .054> .05) nor critical reading (t = 1.402; p = .163> .05) between participants receiving formal education and those receiving evening education, indicating that critical thinking and critical reading skills do not differ by learning style even though there is a difference in university admission scores between students receiving formal education and those receiving evening education. table-6. comparison of critical thinking and reading scores by department department n mean t p critical thinking department of turkish language and literature 89 79.22 .002 .963 department of history 80 77.20 total 169 78.21 critical reading department of turkish language and literature 98 91.41 1.378 .242 department of history 99 88.41 total 197 89.91 source: calculated from the primary data. although the mean critical thinking and critical reading scores of turkish language and literature students are higher than those of history students, there is a statistically significant difference in the mean scores of neither critical thinking (t=.002; p=.963 >.05) nor critical reading (t=1,378; p=.242 >.05) between them. p 33 stated “a literary teacher should be able to teach how to read between the lines of a text.” p 98 stated “i now believe that i should learn to judge historical events accurately and without prejudgment to become a good history teacher. if i can ask the right questions, my students can find the right answers.” p 2 stated “this is the first time i have tried to determine the purpose of an author and look for consistency and reliability in his texts. from now on, i will do this all the time and i will teach this to my students as well.” these statements show that literary and history students have a positive attitude towards this matter. the lack of statistically significant difference in post-test scores between literary and history students indicates that they all can develop critical thinking and reading skills. however, both departments are in the field of social sciences, therefore, we cannot generalize this finding to other fields and departments. anova test results show no statistically significant difference in the mean scores of critical thinking (f=1,400; p=.245 >.05) and critical reading (f=1,017; p=.387 >.05) between participants who graduated from anatolian, vocational, regular and religious vocational high schools, which may be due to the fact that even though those schools have different curricula, the education they offer is based on similar principles. table-7. comparison of critical thinking and critical reading scores by high school high school n mean f p critical thinking anatolian high school 56 80.32 1.400 .245 vocational high school 30 78.20 regular high school 62 79.11 religious vocational high school 21 75.21 total 169 78.21 critical reading anatolian high school 66 93.71 1.017 .387 vocational high school 34 87.47 regular high school 72 90.76 religious vocational high school 25 87.70 total 197 89.67 source: calculated from the primary data. 95% of participants stated that they had never had a similar lecture before while 99% stated that they had not had a lesson on critical thinking or critical reading in high school, which may account for why there was no statistically significant difference in post-test scores between participants in terms of high schools from which they graduated. table-8. comparison of critical thinking and critical reading scores by age age n mean f p critical thinking 17-25 164 65.13 3.374 .025 26-34 3 73.43 35-43 2 96.07 total 169 78.21 critical reading 17-25 187 94.63 1.348 .263 26-34 6 99.32 35-43 4 75.78 total 197 89.91 source: calculated from the primary data. anova test results show that the mean critical thinking scores of participants differ by age (f = 3.374; p = .025 < .05). according to post hoc analysis, there is a statistically significant difference in the mean critical thinking scores between 17-25 and 35-43 age groups, and 26-34 and 35-43 age groups. this indicates that critical thinking skills improve with age. however, the mean critical reading scores of participants do not differ by age (f= 1.348; p=.263 >.05), suggesting that the sample is homogeneous in terms of learning critical reading skills. 4. conclusion and discussion while the modern world has removed the burden of carrying knowledge from the shoulders of people to machines and virtual networks, it has brought with it the necessity of advancing our comprehension and thinking asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 326-335 334 skills to the highest level. critical reading, which is one of the sub-dimensions of critical thinking, is also an important high-level thinking skill. for this reason, this experimental study was carried out since it was not appropriate to provide students with all critical reading steps at once, they were translated into questions for students to look for answers. these questions, 3 texts and 1 book were determined based on expert opinion. critical thinking self-evaluation form and critical reading scale were applied as pre-test before application (7 weeks) and post-test after 7 weeks. at the end of the application, a semi-structured interview form was used to elicit information on participants’ views. the result of the analysis of the findings showed that there was a statistically significant difference in critical thinking and reading scores in favor of the post-test, indicating that reading activities with critical reading questions yielded results similar to those reported by previous studies and that those activities had a positive effect on critical thinking and reading skills (özensoy, 2011; topçuoğlu and sever, 2013). participants are of the opinion that lessons involving reading activities with critical reading questions have a positive effect especially on their awareness on approaching a subject systematically, seeing through the deep structure of a text, recognizing a problem and producing a solution, questioning information and breaking down prejudices. participants experienced some difficulties during the lessons, which was not only observed by the researchers but also stated by the participants themselves. the subjects that they had difficulties were: understanding the questions and finding the correct answers, evaluation, text analysis, determining the purpose of the author, confirming the evidence he/she provides, and time management. similar to the results of previous studies, the mean critical thinking and reading scores of participants did not differ by gender, type of high school and department (akar, 2007; gulveren, 2007; hamic, 2007; zayif, 2008; şen, 2009; topçuoğlu and sever, 2013; özdemir, 2017). there are, however, some studies reporting that female students’ critical thinking is better than that of male students (yildirim, 2005; gulveren, 2007; zayif, 2008). the mean critical thinking scores of participants differed only by age. however, no qualitative data was available to explain this. akar (2007); kurim (2002) and gulveren (2007) reported that age was a factor, however, younger participants were found to have higher critical thinking scores than older participants in this study. in conclusion, the reading activities were found to be effective in developing critical thinking and reading skills. the lack of a statistically significant difference in post-test scores in terms of gender, department and high school is consistent with the results of many studies. the lack of a statistically significant difference in post-test critical reading scores between age groups is also consistent with the results of other studies while the statistically significant difference in post-test critical thinking scores between age groups in favor of older age groups is inconsistent with the results of other studies. references adalı, o., 2010. interactive and critical reading techniques. istanbul-turkey: toroslu library. pp: 9. adalı, o., 2011. understand and tell. 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(review 2). ankara: distinguished. yildirim, a.ç., 2005. an investigation of critical thinking skills of turkish and turkish language and literature teachers. unpublished master's thesis. zonguldak karaelmas university institute of social sciences, zonguldak. zayif, k., 2008. critical thinking tendencies of teacher candidates. unpublished master's thesis. abant izzet baysal university social sciences institute, bolu. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 3, no. 1, 6-17, 2017 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 6 development and validation of economics achievement test for secondary schools lydia ijeoma eleje1  chidiebere christopher abanobi2 emma obasi3 ( corresponding author) 1 department of educational foundations, faculty of education, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, awka, nigeria 2 department of educational psychology, federal college of education (t), asaba, nigeria 3 department of social science education, faculty of education, imo state university, owerri nigeria abstract economics achievement test (eat) for assessing senior secondary two (ss2) achievement in economics was developed and validated in the study. five research questions guided the study. twenty and 100 mid-senior secondary (ss2) economics students was used for the pilot testing and reliability check respectively. a sample of 250 students randomly drawn was used to subject initial 80 objective test items for the test try-out that yielded the data for item analysis. 50 items with difficulty indices ranged from 0.25 to 0.79 and discrimination indices of 0.20 to 0.58 where retained. face and content validation of eat was ensured by constructing items in line with the test blue print, the use of subject experts in ss2 economics and two experts in test construction. the test reliability established through kuderrichardson formula 20 gave a coefficient of 0.81. the test was found to be of good quality, valid and highly reliable. the eat is therefore recommended for use in assessing ss2 students’ achievement in economics and to determine/predict students that will do well in economics in their final class (ss3) as well as those that will have good performance in economics external examinations (waec and neco). keywords: development, economics, achievement test, validation, reliability, item analysis, senior secondary two. contents 1. introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................... 7 2. results .................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 3. discussion ............................................................................................................................................................................. 13 4. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 13 5. recommendations ................................................................................................................................................................ 13 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 14 appendix-1. .............................................................................................................................................................................. 14 appendix-2. .............................................................................................................................................................................. 17 citation | lydia ijeoma eleje; chidiebere christopher abanobi; emma obasi (2017). development and validation of economics achievement test for secondary schools. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 6-17. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 2 november 2016/ revised: 28 december 2016/ accepted: 10 january 2017/ published: 23 january 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=lydia ijeoma eleje https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=chidiebere christopher abanobi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emma obasi http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=lydia ijeoma eleje https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=chidiebere christopher abanobi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emma obasi http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=lydia ijeoma eleje https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=chidiebere christopher abanobi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emma obasi http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=lydia ijeoma eleje https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=chidiebere christopher abanobi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emma obasi http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=lydia ijeoma eleje https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=chidiebere christopher abanobi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emma obasi http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.6.17 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 7 1. introduction economics as a subject is part of the senior secondary curriculum which is expected of students to study for three years starting from senior secondary one till senior secondary three (ss1, ss2 and ss3). economics in secondary school is aimed at bringing about desirable behavioral changes which may be overt or covert (dike, 2002). such behavioral changes which are the products of the objectives of the teaching/learning situations need to be quantified and qualified using achievement test. achievement testa test given to assess how far a student has learnt what was taught onunkwo (2002) plays an important role in the school program. achievement tests measure knowledge of facts, concepts and principles. they are primarily used in making classroom-level decisions and are designed with particular reference to the course objectives/learning goals of a specific course, study program or class (mahajan, 2015). it indicate present, not future, proficiency. such tests evaluates students’ understanding of a particular instructional domain in order to make decisions regarding the advancement or capability of the students. decisions made on students by using achievement tests can be biased if the achievement test used is not valid and reliable. thus, it is expected that the schools should have enough valid and reliable economics achievement tests for assessing how far their students at each level have learnt what was taught as well as to prepare them for external examinations such as west african school certificate examination (wasce) and national examination council (neco). inadequate valid achievement test according to allen (2005) is a reason many teachers continue to assign invalid grades to students. if the grades are not accurate measures of the student’s performance, then they do not communicate the truth about the level of the student’s academic achievement. since important decisions are often based on a student’s grade, invalid achievement tests, hence grades may result in dire consequences for the student. if students receive grades lower than ones that accurately depicts their true level of economics academic achievement, it may lead students to believe they lack the ability to succeed academically in economics and lower their sense of self-efficacy as well as their motivation to do well in waec and neco economics examinations (osadebe, 2012). also, with high grades in (waec and neco) economics examinations, students get admitted to colleges and universities of their choice, study courses of their choice like economics, banking, finance, accounting and other related courses and receive scholarships and tuition assistance, since grades are a major selection criterion in tertiary schools admission process in west african countries like nigeria, ghana and liberia (pintrich and schunk, 2002). the reverse is also true. it is very difficult for students to get admitted to some schools if their grades are not sufficiently high. invalid grades that understate the student’s knowledge as a result of invalid assessment tool may prevent a student with ability to pursue certain educational or career opportunities (pintrich and schunk, 2002). esomonu and agbonkpolo (2010) and osadebe (2012) observed that most teachers are not good in constructing valid and reliable test in their various subject areas. teachers find it easy to construct test items in the lower cognitive levels (knowledge and comprehension) than the higher cognitive levels (application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation). this constitutes an educational problem. so, a valid and reliable items for evaluating students’ achievement in economics secondary school are rare and the possibility of constructing such items by the classroom teacher is limited because it is an art that only experts in test construction does. it involves a couple of steps scrupulous analysis, and substantial time (esomonu and agbonkpolo, 2010). therefore, there is a dire need for experts to construct enough valid and reliable achievement tests for use in senior secondary levels. however, previous effort have been made by researchers to construct achievement test in economics. mahajan (2015) constructed and standardized achievement test in economics for standard xi but only on few selected topics without covering all the topics. also osadebe (2014) constructed a multiple choice objective economics achievement test which should be administered only to senior secondary three (ss3) students when they have covered the waec or neco economics syllabus. the two researchers did not explore on the development of achievement test for ss2 (mid-senior secondary level) economics. therefore, there is an educational need for the development and validation of an achievement test in economics for mid-senior secondary level students covering all the topics in their curriculum. consequently, the researcher focused on the development and validation of economics achievement test for senior secondary two (ss2) students using various types of objective tests. the items constructed in this study covers only the topics in ss2 curriculum, to make achievement test for ss2 available to teachers. this test will enable teachers evaluate ss2 students’ proficiency/competency in economics before entering ss3, thereby identify students that can perform well in waec and neco economics examination. the constructed test will serve as a major contribution to the need of valid and reliable economics achievement test in senior secondary two. to the best of our knowledge, no achievement test has been done on the subject of economics for the mid-senior secondary levels. the objective of this study therefore, is the development and validation of an economic achievement test for mid-senior secondary level. 1.1. research questions the study sought answers to the following research questions. 1. what are the difficulty indices of the eat items? 2. what are the discrimination indices of the eat items? 3. what are the distracter indices of the eat items? 4. how valid is the eat? 5. to what extent is the eat reliable? asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 8 table-1. economics achievement test table of specification objective k n o w l e d g e 4 1 % c o m p r e h e n s io n 9 % a p p l ic a t io n 7 % a n a l y s is 1 9 % s y n t h e s is 9 % e v a l u a t io n t o t a l topics demand and supply 17% 9 0 0 4 0 0 13 meaning 1 1 demand and supply curves 4 4 law of demand and supply 2 2 factors affecting demand and supply 1 1 equilibrium price and quantity 1 2 3 types of demand and supply 1 1 2 production (ppc) 7% 2 1 1 0 1 1 6 meaning 1 1 2 basic concept (tp, ap and mp) 1 1 1 3 laws of variable proportion 1 1 revenue/cost 10% 3 1 2 0 1 1 8 basic concepts (cost) 1 2 3 shot and long run cost 1 1 eco and acc. view of cost 1 1 2 revenue concept 1 1 2 economic system 9% 4 0 0 1 1 1 7 capitalism 3 1 4 socialism 1 1 mixed economy 1 1 2 un-employment 12% 2 1 2 2 1 2 10 meaning 1 2 3 types 1 1 2 causes 2 1 3 effect 1 1 solution 1 1 utility theory 10% 2 1 1 1 1 2 8 meaning 2 2 basic concepts 1 1 law of diminishing marginal utility 1 1 utility maximization 1 1 1 3 derivation of demand curve 1 1 public finance 12% 5 1 0 2 0 2 10 objective 1 1 direct and indirect taxation 4 1 1 6 budgets 1 1 1 3 financial institution 7% 2 0 0 3 0 1 6 types 2 2 functions 2 1 1 4 inflation 8% 2 1 0 1 1 1 6 meaning 1 1 2 cause 1 1 effects 1 1 control 1 1 2 industrialization 8% 2 1 0 1 1 1 6 types 2 1 3 localization 1 1 1 3 total 33 7 6 15 7 12 80 source: lydia ijeoma eleje 1.2. the test development process the stages of achievement tests development used in this study as listed by ohuche and akeju (1988); mahajan (2015) and osadebe (2014) comprises of planning the test, constructing the test items, pilot testing, trial testing, item analysis, and assembling of final test. the following describes each of the stages. planning the test: in this section, the sample and sample technique, content and table of specifications are described. the sample for the test try-out consisted of 250 randomly selected senior secondary two (ss2) economics students from 6 secondary schools and the sample for establishing the reliability consisted of 100 ss2 economics students from 3 secondary schools. all in anambra state of nigeria, for the 2015/2016 academic session. the content area of the study is based on the ss2 economics curriculum. the test table of specifications consisted of 80 items in the content area of ss2 economics curriculum. various units of the test content were listed along the rows while different educational objectives to be tested were listed along the columns (see table 1). constructing the test: various formats of the objective test was used in the construction of the eat because of its being objectively scored and versatility in content coverage (winarni, 2002). following the guidelines stipulated by olubodum (2009) and suen and mcclellan (2003) eighty (80) items that are in line with the table of asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 9 specifications were constructed using economics text books recommended by the ministry of education (anyaele, 2003; anyanwuocha, 2006). the constructed items in its initial draft were given to two experts in educational measurement and evaluation, and two experienced ss2 teachers of economics for face and content validation. their expert observations, comments and suggestions were incorporated in the modifications of the test. pilot testing: pilot testing was done on 20 ss2 economics students of a secondary school in anambra state to check grammatical error and compatibility of the eat test items (winarni, 2002). the test try-out: the test try-out was administered to 250 ss2 economics students during third term of 2015/2016 academic session when subject teachers and ss2 students had completed the teaching and learning of the test content. the test try-out was for the purpose of item analysis. item analysis: it is done to ensure the quality of the items. it involved seven (6) main steps. step 1identify the higher and lower achievers. step 2process test responses. step 3calculate item difficulty index. step 4calculate item discrimination index. step 5calculate the distracter indices. step 6selection of good items. an item was considered good for inclusion in the final output of the test if it had difficulty index of 0.30 to 0.70, discrimination index greater than 0.20 and a positive distracter index. however, items with appropriate difficulty indices but with discrimination indices of less than 0.20 were not accepted as good. also items with appropriate discrimination index but have difficulty index of less than 0.20 or more than 0.80 were rejected (see table 2). this according to esomonu and agbonkpolo (2010) is to ensure the content validity of the test. fifty (50) items that mate the criteria were selected as the final draft of the eat. assembly of final test: the final version of the eat (50 items) were arranged in-line with the content area. 1.3. validity of the test the 80 items of the test was face and content validated by two experts in educational measurement and evaluation, and two experienced senior secondary two teachers of economics. these experts were requested to scrutinize the items (stems, options, keys and distracters) of the det in terms of clarity, relevance, adequacy and comprehensiveness of the items. to guide the experts in the validation exercise, the topic of this study and table of specifications together with the draft test were given to the experts. after examining the test, they made some corrections on some of the items. their expert observations, comments and suggestions were used in the modifications of the test. 1.4. reliability of the test to estimate the reliability of the economics achievement test eat kuder-richardson formula 20(k-r20) were employed. final version of the eat wear given to 100 randomly selected ss2 students. the computation of k-r20 is to ensure the internal consistency. 2. results the results of the study were presented and analyzed below. research question one and two what are the difficulty and discrimination indices of the eat items? table-2. the difficulty and discrimination indices obtained after eat item analysis summary table of difficulty and discrimination indices item key (k) no of correct responses among higher achievers (h) n=83 no of correct responses among lower achievers (l) n=83 difficulty index h + l 2n discrimination index h l n remark 1. correct 35 14 0.30 0.25 retain 2. false 40 18 0.35 0.27 retain 3. d 66 38 0.63 0.34 retain 4. correct 17 8 0.15 0.11 reject 5. a 66 31 0.58 0.42 retain 6. correct 74 41 0.69 0.40 retain 7. c 25 11 0.22 0.17 reject 8. true 79 69 0.90 0.12 reject 9. b 43 24 0.40 0.23 retain 10. d 65 53 0.71 0.14 reject 11. b 60 35 0.57 0.30 retain 12. d 66 42 0.65 0.29 retain 13. true 61 71 0.80 -0.12 reject 14. b 57 27 0.51 0.36 retain 15. correct 62 14 0.46 0.58 retain 16. correct 75 50 0.75 0.30 retain 17. d 62 15 0.46 0.57 retain 18. b 68 33 0.61 0.42 retain 19. continue asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 10 20. d 75 50 0.75 0.30 retain 21. a 66 31 0.58 0.42 retain 22. c 58 22 0.48 0.42 retain 23. correct 32 10 0.25 0.27 retain 24. false 16 13 0.17 0.04 reject 25. d 77 43 0.72 0.41 retain 26. c 58 30 0.55 0.34 retain 27. c 41 34 0.45 0.08 reject 28. c 25 28 0.32 -0.04 reject 29. c 20 10 0.18 0.12 reject 30. b 36 35 0.43 0.01 reject 31. correct 73 54 0.77 0.23 retain 32. correct 70 53 0.74 0.20 retain 33. correct 60 22 0.49 0.46 retain 34. correct 71 50 0.73 0.25 retain 35. a 50 13 0.38 0.45 retain 36. d 59 23 0.49 0.43 retain 37. b 42 20 0.37 0.27 retain 38. c 56 35 0.55 0.25 retain 39. c 50 35 0.51 0.18 reject 40. a 51 36 0.52 0.18 reject 41. a 78 42 0.72 0.43 retain 42. correct 79 66 0.87 0.16 reject 43. b 59 34 0.56 0.30 retain 44. c 32 38 0.42 -0.07 reject 45. correct 69 15 0.51 0.65 retain 46. b 32 10 0.25 0.27 retain 47. c 42 37 0.48 0.06 reject 48. a 45 13 0.35 0.39 retain 49. c 42 23 0.39 0.23 retain 50. d 47 30 0.46 0.20 retain 51. b 13 23 0.22 -0.12 reject 52. a 40 25 0.39 0.18 reject 53. d 54 37 0.55 0.20 retain 54. correct 82 80 0.98 0.02 reject 54. correct 83 81 0.99 0.02 reject 55. b 52 41 0.56 0.13 reject 56. d 70 44 0.69 0.31 retain 57. d 53 32 0.51 0.25 retain 58. a 65 26 0.55 0.47 retain 59. d 68 57 0.75 0.13 reject 60. a 67 19 0.52 0.58 retain 61. a 65 30 0.57 0.42 retain 62. c 39 28 0.40 0.11 reject 63. true 82 70 0.92 0.14 reject 64. d 73 34 0.64 0.47 retain 65. a 61 31 0.55 0.36 retain 66. c 32 21 0.32 0.13 reject 67. b 54 37 0.55 0.20 retain 68. a 76 49 0.75 0.33 retain 69. a 4 8 0.07 -0.05 reject 70. c 35 21 0.34 0.17 reject 71. b 29 23 0.31 0.07 reject 72. a 37 25 0.37 0.14 reject 73 true 79 52 0.79 0.33 retain 74. a 68 39 0.64 0.35 retain 75. c 8 16 0.14 -0.10 reject 76. d 66 48 0.69 0.22 retain 77. a 47 41 0.53 0.07 reject 78. c 59 24 0.50 0.42 retain 79. a 76 43 0.72 0.40 retain 80 b 51 16 0.37 0.49 retain source: lydia ijeoma eleje research question three what are the distracter indices of the eat? asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 11 table-3. the distracter indices obtained after eat item analysis item no of respondents who choose option true, correct no of respondents who choose option b, false, incorrect no of respondents who choose option c no of respondents who choose option d omit total distractibility l – h u index n = 83 remarks no l h l h l h l h a b c d 1 14 35 64 49 4 166 0.18 a good item 2 62 35 18 40 11 “ 0.33 k a good item 3 3 4 12 1 27 12 38 66 3 “ -0.01 0.13 0.18 k option a replaced 5 31 66 14 4 18 9 10 18 “ k 0.30 0.22 -0.01 option d replaced 6 41 74 27 9 15 “ k 0.22 a good item 9 44 25 24 43 4 10 5 11 “ 0.23 k -0.07 0.06 option c replaced 11 16 10 8 1 13 6 42 66 4 “ 0.07 0.08 0.08 k distracters are ok 12 5 3 35 60 12 2 13 14 22 “ 0.02 k 0.12 -0.01 option d replaced 14 28 10 27 57 7 15 8 21 “ 0.22 k 0.08 0.08 distracters are ok 15 14 62 35 41 14 “ k -0.07 item amended 16 50 75 20 7 14 “ k 0.16 a good item 17 8 10 15 1 24 4 15 62 27 “ 0.02 0.16 024 k distracters are ok 18 10 1 33 68 13 4 9 3 25 “ 0.11 k 0.13 0.07 distracters are ok 19 23 3 4 1 4 4 50 75 2 “ 0.24 0.04 0 k distracters are ok 20 31 66 20 10 4 12 8 15 “ k 0.24 0.07 0.05 option camended 21 8 7 23 14 22 58 18 2 14 “ 0.01 0.12 k 0.19 distracters are ok 22 10 32 42 35 47 “ k 0.08 distracters are ok 24 2 1 16 2 12 2 43 77 11 “ 0.01 0.17 0.12 k a good item 25 12 5 18 10 30 58 10 23 “ 0.08 0.10 k 0.12 distracters are ok 30 54 73 25 10 4 “ k 0.18 distracters are ok 31 3 70 27 12 4 “ k 0.18 a good item 32 22 60 59 23 2 “ k 0.43 a good item a good item 33 50 71 29 12 4 “ k 0.20 a good item 34 13 50 31 18 18 6 9 3 18 “ k 0.16 a good item 35 14 8 11 5 20 9 23 59 17 “ 0.07 0.07 0.13 k a good item 36 22 15 20 43 16 16 10 2 23 “ 0.08 k 0 0.12 distracters are ok 37 13 14 26 13 35 56 3 6 “ -0.01 0.16 k 0.04 option d replaced 40 42 78 17 1 4 2 11 2 9 “ k 0.19 0.02 0.12 option a amended 42 26 18 34 59 6 1 11 4 7 “ 0.01 k 0.06 0.08 distracters are ok 44 15 69 17 9 56 “ k 0.10 distracters are ok 45 55 43 10 32 9 4 4 1 8 “ 0.14 k 0.06 0.03 a good item 47 13 45 20 11 30 6 10 16 15 “ k 0.11 0.29 -0.07 distracters are ok 48 13 17 15 10 23 42 24 11 11 “ -0.04 0.06 k 0.16 option d replaced continue asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 12 source: lydia ijeoma eleje 49 27 27 5 2 11 3 30 47 15 “ 0.01 0.04 0.10 k option a replaced 52 21 21 5 11 11 2 37 54 18 “ 0.12 -0.07 0.11 k distracters are ok 56 13 13 16 2 8 4 44 70 6 “ 0.12 0.17 0.05 k replace option b 57 20 20 15 14 14 5 32 53 2 “ 0.11 0.01 0.11 k distracters are ok 58 26 26 9 3 7 7 24 3 22 “ k 0.07 0 0.25 option camended 60 19 67 23 4 14 5 15 6 13 “ k 0.23 0.11 0.11 distracters are ok 61 30 65 26 16 10 1 6 1 11 “ k 0.12 0.11 0.06 distracters are ok 64 24 5 10 1 4 2 34 73 13 “ 0.23 0.11 0.02 k distracters are ok 65 31 61 6 10 6 28 10 14 “ k 0.07 0.05 0.22 distracters are ok 67 5 9 37 54 5 6 28 14 8 “ -0.05 k -0.07 0.17 optiona&creplaced 68 49 7 7 1 17 4 3 3 6 “ k 0.07 0.16 0 optiond amended 73 52 79 23 4 8 “ k 0.23 a good item 74 39 68 23 8 4 2 3 3 16 “ k 0.18 0.02 0 optiond amended 76 4 3 3 12 13 48 66 17 “ 0.01 0.04 -0.01 k option c replaced 78 10 9 9 2 24 59 17 2 26 “ -0.08 0.08 k 0.18 option a replaced 79 43 11 11 1 5 3 8 2 17 “ k 0.12 0.02 0.07 distracters are ok 80 11 12 10 51 20 5 24 11 22 “ -0.01 k 0.18 0.16 option a replaced asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 13 research question 4 how valid is the eat? validity of the test was done by matching the test items from the objectives (see table 1) and presenting the whole test to two experts in the test construction and two experienced teachers in the content areas of ss2 economics for item review. these experts guaranteed that the instrument had strong content validity in which each item represented the content area being investigated, rather than asking unrelated questions. research question 5 to what extent is the det reliable? estimate of eat reliability using kuder-richardson formula 20(k-r20) gave an index of 0.81. 3. discussion the quality of a test is evident in the appropriateness of the test item parameters (difficulty, discrimination and distracter indices) obtained from item analysis. as shown in this study, 50 items that were found to be good with appropriate difficulty and discrimination indices were retained. items numbers 4, 23, 28, 69 and 75 had difficulty indices that were less than 0.20. this means that they were very difficult items. items numbers 8, 41, 53, 54 and 63 in the current study was found to be very easy. in this study, six (13, 27, 43, 50, 69, 75) items had negative discrimination indices. this indicated that low ability students performed better on those items than high ability students as previously described by eleje et al. (2016). such items discriminated but in the negative (wrong) direction. on the other hand, 24 items had low but positive discrimination values (0.0 ≤ 0.20). this implied that students who incorrectly answered these items also scored high on the test overall, while students who correctly answered the items scored low on the test overall. also observed in the it was also observed in table 3 that out of 50 eat items retained, 33 items have good/positive distracters and some distracter indices of the 17 items were either negative or zero. the positive value indicated that the distracters are good. it also implied that more of the students in the low ability group chose the distracter than those in the high ability group. the negative or zero value of the indices indicated that the distracters were bad or poor. the distracters with negative or zero values were reviewed then replaced or amended for improvement and ease of the test takers. other items were also improved by restructuring the manner of questioning to lesson confusions in answering this is also in line with a study conducted by eleje et al. (2016) and esomonu and agbonkpolo (2010). validity of the test was done by matching the test items from the objectives (see table 1) and presenting the whole test to two experts in the test construction and two experienced teachers in the content areas of secondary economics for item review. these experts guaranteed that the instrument had strong content validity in which each item represented the content area being investigated, rather than asking unrelated questions. this implied that all the objectives and content areas were well covered in the table of specifications. thus the economics achievement test has a good content validity. the reliability estimate of eat was done through kuder-richardson formula 20 analysis. the result shows that a reliability estimate of 0.81 was obtained. that is, there is 0.81 degree of consistency with which the item of eat evaluates economics achievement of ss2 students. a reliability index of 0.81 implied that the eat is highly reliable. according to ceniza and cereno (2012) the reliability coefficient within the range of 0.81 to 1.0 signified high reliability, 0.61 to 0.80 signified a moderate reliability, 0.41 to 0.60 signified fair reliability, 0.10 to 0.40 signified slight reliability, and less than 0.10 signified no reliability. therefore, the test reliability was high and could be used by teachers to assess senior secondary two (ss2) students’ achievement in economics. the use of kr20 in this study was appropriate. since this study involves development of a test instrument that is dichotomously scored and where scores for the various items will be added or aggregated to produce a single or composite score/grade (nworgu, 2006; osadebe, 2014). 4. conclusion a good, valid and reliable economics achievement test for ss2 students’ was developed in this study. this is evident in the results of reliability and item analysis of the test conducted. the item analysis conducted on the test items showed that the test overall difficulty were within the range of 0.25 to 0.79 and the discrimination indices were within the range of 0.20 to 0.58. this means that the eat has a moderate level of difficulty and the discrimination indices, a moderate one (ceniza and cereno, 2012; eleje et al., 2016). the validity of the instrument was determined through the use of test blue print or table of specifications and expert judgment. this helped to establish high face and content validity. a reliability estimate of the eat through the use of kuder-richardson formula 20 gave an index of 0.81. this implied that the currently developed economics achievement test (eat) is high reliability. hence, it could be concluded that the economics achievement test developed in this study is of good quality, valid and highly reliable. thus, the developed, validated and reliable eat can now be used in assessing ss2 students achievement in economics and to predict students that can do well in economics in their ss3. it is an instrument that can measure the desired trait of senior secondary two economics in nigeria. 5. recommendations since the findings of this study revealed that the eat is valid, reliable and of good quality, the researchers’ recommend that the test be used by the teachers to assess mid-senior secondary (ss2) students’ achievement in economics. teachers should also use the test to determine/predict students that will do well in economics in their final class (ss3) as well as those that will have good performance in economics external examinations (waec and neco). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 14 references allen, j.d., 2005. grades as valid measures of academic achievement of classroom learning. the clearing house: a journal of educational strategies, issues and ideas, 78(5): 218-223. view at google scholar | view at publisher anyaele, j.u., 2003. comprehensive economics for senior secondary schools. kwara: a. johnson publishers limited. anyanwuocha, r.a.i., 2006. fundamentals of economics for senior secondary schools. owerri: africana first publishers limited. ceniza, j.c. and d.c. cereno, 2012. development of mathematic diagnostic test for dorshs. retrieved from http://www.doscst.edu.ph/. dike, v., 2002. the state of education in nigeria and the health if the nation. retrieved from www.africaeconomicanalysis. eleje, l.i., n.p.m. esomonu, n.n. agu, r.o. okoye, e. obasi and f.e. onah, 2016. development and validation of diagnostic economics test for secondary schools. world journal of education, 6(3): 90. view at google scholar | view at publisher esomonu, n.p.m. and u.m. agbonkpolo, 2010. construction and validation of achievement test in senior secondary school economics. international journal of educational research and development, 4(1): 68-79. mahajan, g., 2015. construction and validation of achievement test in economics. international journal of humanities and social sciences studies, 1(6): 54-60. view at google scholar nworgu, b.g., 2006. educational research: basic issues and methodology. 2nd edn., enugu: university trust publishers. ohuche, r.o. and s.a. akeju, 1988. measurement and evaluation in education. onitsha: african –fep publishers ltd. olubodum, o.j., 2009. principles and techniques of test construction. retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/ojolubodun/principles-andtechniques-of-test-construction. onunkwo, g.i.n., 2002. fundamentals of educational measurement and evaluation. owerri: cape publishers international ltd. osadebe, p.u., 2012. procedures for construction, validation and standardization of test. a seminar paper presented at delta state university, abraka. osadebe, p.u., 2014. construction of economics achievement test for assessment of students. world journal of education, 42(2): 58. view at google scholar | view at publisher pintrich, p.r. and d.h. schunk, 2002. motivation in education. 2nd edn., upper saddler river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. suen, h.k. and s. mcclellan, 2003. item construction principles and techniques. encyclopedia of vocational and technological education, 1: 777-798. view at google scholar winarni, i., 2002. the development of a diagnostic reading test of english for the students of medical faculty. malang: brawijaya university. appendix-1. economics achievement test (eat) for senior secondary two (ss2) 1. (1) the means of production in a free economic system is owned and controlled by ___________________ 2. (2) in capitalist economic goods are not produced to yield profits. true false 3. (3) the major types of economic system includes (a) socialism (b) capitalism (c) mixed economy (d) all of the above 4. (5) socialism is different from capitalism in that government participation is (a) high (b) low (c) moderate (d) absent 6. (6) a mixed economic system has a mixture of the elements of both _____________ and _____________ (9) the downward slope of production possibility curve indicates or illustrates (a)marginal product (b)opportunity cost (c) marginal revenue (d) money cost 7. (11) if the number of the labourers is increased from 30 to 32 and production 3000kg to 3300kg of corn, generate the mp. (a)100kg (b)150kg (c)30kg (d)300kg 8. (12) which of the following best describe total product (tp)? (a) tp = mp + ap (b) ap + l = tp (c) tp = mp x ap (d) tp = ap x l 9. (14) cost of production is known as (a) variable cost divided by the total unit of output (b) various expenses incurred in the use of the four factors of production (c) money cost divided by the total unit of output (d) real cost incurred in the use of production plants unit of output 10. (15) in the long-run all factors of production ______________ 11. (16) the two view in cost are_____ and______ 12. (17) given that fixed cost is n500.00, variable cost is n1,500 and output is 50units, find the cost of producing one. (a) n2.00 (b)n60.00 (c) n50.00 (d.)n40.00 13. (18) calculate for tc (a) n50.00 (b)n2000.00 (c) n5000.00 (d) n40.00 14. (19) which of the following best describe revenue (a) marginal revenue from a firm’s sale of its commodities (b) income earned from government sale of its commodities (c) average and fixed revenue from firm’s sale of its commodities (d) income earned from a firm’s sale of it’s commodities. 15. (20) profit can be divided by (a) subtracting total cost from total revenue (b)subtracting average revenue from total cost (c)dividing total revenue by total output (d)dividing marginal revenue by marginal cost 16. (21) economics argues that cost must be viewed in terms of (a) money cost (b) amount of money spent (c) alternative forgone (d) total cost 17. (22) the two schools of thought in the analysis of utility are ____ and ____ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=grades%20as%20valid%20measures%20of%20academic%20achievement%20of%20classroom%20learning http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/tchs.78.5.218-223 http://www.doscst.edu.ph/ http://www.africaeconomicanalysis/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=development%20and%20validation%20of%20diagnostic%20economics%20test%20for%20secondary%20schools https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=grades%20as%20valid%20measures%20of%20academic%20achievement%20of%20classroom%20learning https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=grades%20as%20valid%20measures%20of%20academic%20achievement%20of%20classroom%20learning https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=grades%20as%20valid%20measures%20of%20academic%20achievement%20of%20classroom%20learning https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=construction%20and%20validation%20of%20achievement%20test%20in%20economics http://www.slideshare.net/ojolubodun/principles-and-techniques-of-test-construction http://www.slideshare.net/ojolubodun/principles-and-techniques-of-test-construction https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=construction%20of%20economics%20achievement%20test%20for%20assessment%20of%20students https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=construction%20of%20economics%20achievement%20test%20for%20assessment%20of%20students http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/wje.v4n2p58 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=item%20construction%20principles%20and%20techniques asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 15 18. (24) if the last naira spent on each commodity by a consumer gave him equal satisfaction it means the consumer has been able to (a) cut cost (b) maximize costs (c)increase profits (d)maximize utility 19. (25) a rational consumer utility maximization can be illustrated thus (a) mux > muy (b) mux = muy px py py py (c) mux = muy (d) mux < muy px py px py match the following items according to the expression given in a-e (30) demand curve slopes. (a)effective demand (31) supply curve slopes. (b) demand schedule (32) the higher the price the higher the quantity. (c) upwards (d) downwards (33) demand curve is a diagrammatical representation of. (e) demanded (f) supplied use the diagram below to answer questions 34-36 24. (34) at price op1 (a) demand exceeds supply (b) supply exceeds demand (c)demand equal supply (d) oq1 is the quantity demand. 25. (35) the equilibrium price is (a) op1 (b) op2 (c) p1 po (d) opo 26. (36) at price op2 (a)demand exceeds supply (b)supply exceeds demand (c)demand equal supply (d)oq2 is the quantity demand. 27. (37) demand in economics is synonyms with (a) needs not backed up with ability to pay (b) wants backed up with ability to pay at different time (c) wants supported with ability to pay at the same time (d) desire not supported with ability pay at the same time. 28. (40) which of the following is derived demand (a) labour (b)butter (c) television (d) bread 29. (42) a demand schedule is described as a table containing the (a) price and quantity of a commodity (b) relationship between price and quantity demanded of a commodity (c) relationship between quantity demanded and supplied of a market (d) quantity of goods the consumer is prepared to buy. 30. (44) a proportional tax is a tax whose percentage rate remains constant as the tax base _______________ 31. (45) which of the following best explains the budget? (a) plan of government financial operation for a year (b) detailed estimate of government financial operation for a year (c) satisfactory balance between income and expenditure for a year (d) plan for importation of essential goods and services for a year 32. (47) budget deficit is an economy can be solved with the use of (a) former reserves (b) full employment (c) trade unions (d) low price 33. (48) if demand is perfectly inelastic, the effective incidence of an indirect tax will be transferred to (a) employer (b) employee (c) consumer (d) civil servants. 34. (49) all the following are specific examples of indirect tax except (a)purchase tax (b) import duty (c) export duty (d) poll tax 35. (50) regressive tax is not a good tax system because it (a)is not convenient to pay asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 16 (b)is not certain what to pay (c)is not economical to collect (d)does not ensure equity in payment. 36. (56) an effect of unemployment include (a)population control (b) technological progress (c)earning capacity (d)escalation of crime 37. (57) to solve the problem of unemployment, government should do all except (a) restructure the educational curricula at all levels (b)encourage education beyond primary and secondary schools (c)develop the rural areas (d)use capital intensive method of production 38. (58) if there is 20million people in the working class age group and 5 million of them are unemployed, compute the rate of unemployment (a)25% (b)50% (c)20% (d)5% 39. (60) voluntary unemployment differs from structural unemployment because (a)it is deliberate refusal of labour to work (b)it involves immobility of labour (c) there is increase in dependants (d)people are partially unemployed 40. (61) the concept of unemployment could be used in relation to any of the factors of production which is (a)idle and not being utilized for production (b)not fully implemented in work (c)fully utilized for production (d)used part time in work 41. (64) examples of financial institutions include all except (a) finance house (b) central bank (c) stock exchange (d) trade by barter 42. (65) money market is made up of institutions which provide (a) short-term loan (b) long-term loan (c) capital-term loan (d) money-term loan 43. (67) one of this is an example of capital markets (a)discount houses (b)finance companies (c) saving banks (d)central banks 44. (68) development bank as a capital market is important because it (a)provide medium and long term loans to investors (b)develop money and capital market (c)acts as banker’s bank (d)acts as financial adviser to government 45. (73) the use of monetary policy to control, inflation is good because it reduces the rate at which commercial bank lend to the public. true false 46. (74) inflation in an economy can be recognized through a (a) persistent rise in the general price level b) rise in the general price level (c) fall in the general price level (d) persistent fall in the general price level 47. (76) examples of an industry include all except (a) manufacturing industry (b)construction industry (c)transport industry (d)galloping industry 48. (78) which of these does not encourage industrial development? (a)tax exemption (b) government direct participation (c)limitation of market for industrial products (d)provision of infrastructural facilities 49. (79) which of the following should be considered in the plan to locate an industry? (a)nearness to the market (b)a pool of skilled labour (c)high prices of inputs (d)nearness of pollution 50. (80) localization of industry is criticized in that it leads to (a) pool of skilled labour (b) high prices of inputs (c) improvement in infrastructure (d) co-operation among firms asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 6-17 17 appendix-2. economic acheivement test answer (key) fifty (50) objective test items 1 (1) private individuals 26 (36) b 2 (2) false 27 (37) c 3 (3) d 28 (40) a 4 (5) a 29 (42) b 5 (6) capitalism and socialism 30 (44) varies 6 (9) b 31 (45) b 7 (11) d 32 (47) a 8 (12) b 33 (48) c 9 (14) b 34 (49) d 10 (15) varies 35 (52) d 11 (16) economics and accountants 36 (56) d 12 (17) d 37 (57) d 13 (18) b 38 (58) a 14 (19) d 39 (60) a 15 (20) a 40 (61) a 16 (21) c 41 (64) d 17 (22) cardinal and ordinal 42 (65) a 18 (24) d 43 (67) b 19 (25) c 44 (68) a 20 (30) downwards 45 (73) true 21 (31) upwards 46 (74) a 22 (32) supplied 47 (76) d 23 (33) demand schedule 48 (78) c 24 (34) a 49 (79) a 25 (35) d 50 (80) b asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 151 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 151-158, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.151.158 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group analysis on sportspersonship orientations of students studying in faculty of sports sciences/school of physical education and sports özgür karataş1 buğra çağatay savaş2 ( corresponding author) 1i̇nönü üniversity, sports science faculty, malatya, turkey 2i̇nönü üniversity ph.d. in health sciences institute malatya, turkey abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze the sportspersonship orientations of students studying in the faculty of sports sciences/school of physical education and sports by different variables. the population of this descriptive research is composed of the students studying in faculty of sports sciences/school of physical education and sports in six different universities while the sample is composed of 949 students studying in different grades and departments. as the data collection tool, personal information questionnaire and “multidimensional sportspersonship orientation scale-msos” developed by vallerand et al. (1997) of which reliability and validity of turkish version was ensured by sezen-balçıkanlı (2010) were used. the scale comprises of four subdimensions and 20 questions. the reliability coefficient of the multidimensional sportspersonship orientation scale was found to be (0.89). data were analyzed in statistical package program. in the analysis of the study, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, independent samples t test and one way variance analysis were used. it has been determined in the study that the multidimensional sportspersonship orientation of students is high. it has also been ascertained that there are significant difference in the variables of sex, age and the grade studied in terms of the multidimensional sportspersonship orientation of students (p<0.05). however, no significant difference was observed in the variables of the university studied and doing sports (p>0.05). it has been concluded that the variables of university studied and doing sports aren’t effective on sportspersonship orientation of students while the variables of sex, age and the grade studied are effective on sportspersonship orientation of students. keywords: sportspersonship, faculty of sports sciences, school of physical education and sports citation | özgür karataş; buğra çağatay savaş (2019). analysis on sportspersonship orientations of students studying in faculty of sports sciences/school of physical education and sports. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 151-158. history: received: 14 november 2018 revised: 10 december 2018 accepted: 18 january 2019 published: 21 february 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 152 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 153 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 153 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 156 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 157 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 157 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.151.158&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/398 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/398 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 151-158 152 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction sportsman is defined as “person having the values required by sports” and sportspersonship is defined as “state of being sportsman (tdk). in sports competitions, all interested parties together with the audience await a completion performed with the spirit of true sportspersonship. sportspersonship behavior expresses fair play and respect towards teammates, rivals, sports officials and other sports participants before, during and after the competition (christian-elendu and dennis, 2017). the researches show that the sense of winning in sports is becoming more important today and causes moral problems that promote antisocial behavior (stornes and bru, 2002). according to feezell (1986) sportspersonship requires virtuous and normative behaviors which exist in the spirit of sports. a defeat of an athlete over her/his rival with a superior game and by avoiding unfair advantage incorporate behaving the rival kindly. arnold (1984) argues that treating opponents with respect, compassion, sacrifice and generosity is one of the most important characteristics of the sportspersonship behavior. virtue in sports terms, complying with the rules and the principle of equality, not using unethical ways, remaining calm in every case, “doing sports for sports” are the other characteristics sought in athletes (erdemli, 1996). morals is defined as “a set of principles and values that allow distinguishing between right and wrong” (pay, 2012) and “the self-control of the person without coercion, pulling oneself together with the effect of superego, mind, will, conscience and the emotions”. morals is also defined as “an internal strength that leads the person towards the goodness” (aydın, 2011). according to orhun (1992) one of the main purposes of the education provided at schools is bring youth in such concepts as morals, rules and sportspersonship. it is attempted to convey these concepts to the students through sports activities and physical education grades. in this regard, it is stated that the students taking physical education and sports grade should develop their communication skills, and the characteristics of cooperation, fair play, social responsibility, leadership, sensitivity to nature and respect for differences” and they should get the habit of behaving in line with the sense of fair play (meb, 2018). in order to contribute to the development of moral values of athletes, it will be beneficial to training them regarding sports ethics and sports morals. as the sports morals develops, the sense of sportspersonship and fair play will also develop. everyone should be aware of the fact that sports morals of young people will only be established through education not automatically (gürpınar, 2014). as erdemli (2012) states, the fair play problem occurs if sports is done professionally and amateurism is eliminated. the solution of this problem is only possible with education. unlike amateur performance of sports, it is necessary to train athletes for virtuous behavior in professional sports. otherwise, the athlete who accepts every behavior in a natural manner will exhibit extremely “rude and primitive” behaviors when the ambition to win prevails. in this case, there will be no values such as enthusiasm, tolerance, fraternity, accepting your opponent as friends and love and “the athlete will be lost.” according to yıldıran (2004) fair play concept known to have been used in sports as of the 18th century and created in england in the 19th century (renson, 2009) is defined as “patient, consistent and conscious compliance of athletes with the rules during the matches even under the difficult conditions, not accepting unfair advantages in order not to break the equality of opportunities, not trying to get benefit from the unfair disadvantages of the rival, valuing and considering the rival as an individual and partner with equal rights who ensures the realization of match rather than seeing as an enemy”. as believed by pehlivan (2004) fair play means accepting and applying the fair and honest competition as a moral situation as a matter of importance attached to the human dignity. veronica (2010) has stated that fair play is a concept that contains obeying the written and unwritten rules of sports and respecting the opponent accordingly and emphasizes the moral dimension of the sports behaviors. it is analyzed with the meaning of “unbiased game” all over the world as a special term, different evaluations are made and its dissemination in sports is aimed. fair play is defined as “a honest game, a game played based on rules and mutual tolerance” (tdk). table-1. perception of sports lumpkin et al. (2003); sezen-balçıkanlı (2017) motivation ideal reality good bad excellent play winning at all costs purpose sportspersonship good play strategies deceit tricky play strategies behavior correct incorrect purpose: gaining and advantage through excellence purpose: sending the opponent off the play, giving physical, emotional and mental damage source: obtained from primary data in table 1, the relation between the ideal and real has been analyzed in the dimensions of motivation, purpose and behavior. what is ideal should be winning with an excellent game and sportspersonship. winning by sending the opponent off at all costs by thinking of various tricks expresses the behavior that takes place against the spirit of fair play. the thought of absolute winning in sports may result in the accepting and rewarding the violence against the opponent and moral deterioration (lumpkin et al., 2003; sezen-balçıkanlı, 2017); (sezen-balçıkanlı, 2017). contest in sports foresees competing/contesting with the opponent based on the pre-determined rules of game/competition. the competition should be realized by making more effort than the opponent within the framework of respect (boxill, 2003; sezen-balçıkanlı, 2017). in this case, fair play has two dimensions. the behaviors that are adhered to the written rules of the competition/game are called “formal-written fair play”. the behaviors being out of the written rules, aiming to compete with the opponent in equal conditions, not foreseeing the unfair winning, having the false referee decisions corrected despite being in favor of oneself, not thinking about to give physical and mental damage to the opponent and based on not to exhibit extreme behaviors when losing are asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 151-158 153 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group called “informal-unwritten fair play” (yıldıran, 2004). according to pehlivan (2004) fair play principle states that you can support your team but you don’t have the right to insult the other team. donuk and senduran (2006) states that fair play is “good game”, “a good mood that suits the athlete” and “positive attitudes and behaviors”. actually, this should be thought as a lifestyle in sports. according to sahin (2016) protecting and developing the spirit of sportspersonship and all participants’ exhibiting behaviors in line with this understanding will contribute to the prevention of violence and aggression. due to the fact that the attitudes and behaviors directed to fair play can reveal themselves differently in various ways of doing sports such as sports branches, sex, age, contact, doing individual-team sports, being professional-amateur, they should be considered as variables in studies analyzing the sports-morals relation (sezen-balçıkanlı, 2017). 2. material and method research population is composed of the students studying in faculty of sports sciences and school of physical education and school of physical education and sports (besyo) in six different universities (i̇nönü, atatürk, gaziantep, fırat, yüzüncü yıl and muş alpaslan) for 2017-2018 academic year and the sample is composed of randomly selected students (n=949) studying in these faculties/schools. as the data collection tool, personal information questionnaire and “multidimensional sportspersonship orientation scale-msos” developed by vallerand et al. (1997) of which reliability and validity of turkish version was ensured by sezen-balçıkanlı (2010) were used. the scale comprises of four sub-dimensions and 20 questions. concerning the distribution of answers given to the scale questions, it has been determined that the reliability coefficient cronbach’s alpha is (0.82) for compliance with social norms, respect for rules and management is (0.74), commitment to responsibilities in sports (0.76) and respect for the opponent is (0.78). the total reliability coefficient of the scale was found to be (0.89). data were analyzed in spss 24 statistical package program. frequency, percentage and arithmetic mean, independent samples t test and anova tests were used to find the distribution of participants. the results obtained from the distributions are shown in tables, the findings have been interpreted and necessary solution offers have been presented. 3. findings table-2. characteristics of students related to the demographic variables variable group f % university studied i̇nönü 247 26.0 atatürk 182 19.2 gaziantep 151 15.9 fırat 162 17.1 yüzüncüyıl 177 18.7 muşalpaslan 30 3.2 total 949 100 sex male 615 64.8 female 334 35.2 total 949 100.0 age 18-20 373 39.3 21-23 270 28.5 24-26 217 22.9 27 and above 89 9.4 total 949 100.0 variable group f % grade 2nd grade 212 22.3 3rd grade 280 29.5 4th grade 193 20.3 total 949 100.0 2nd grade 212 22.3 doing sports yes 902 95.0 no 47 5.0 total 949 100.0 source: obtanied from primary data table 2 shows the information about the demographic distribution of the students participating in the research. it has been established that the highest participation is 247 students (26.0%) from i̇nönü university, 615 of them (64.8%) are male and 334 of them (35.2%) are female. 373 students (39.3%) are in the age group of 18-20, 270 students (28.5%) are in the age group of 21-23. 264 students (27.8%) are in the 1st grade, 193 students (20.3%) study in the 4th grade. 902 of the students (95.0%) have stated to do sports. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 151-158 154 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. msos anova results of students by the variable of the university studied sub-dimensions variable n ss sd f p compliance with the social norms i̇nönü u. 247 3.549 .682 5 .858 .509 atatürk u. 182 3.531 .677 gaziantep u. 151 3.551 .627 fırat u. 162 3.538 .590 943 yüzüncüyıl u. 177 3.456 .731 muş alpaslan u. 30 3.360 .737 total 949 3.521 .669 948 respect for rules and management i̇nönü u. 247 3.616 .616 5 1.422 .214 atatürk u. 182 3.627 .681 gaziantep u. 151 3.662 .600 fırat u. 162 3.596 .563 943 yüzüncüyıl u. 177 3.491 .697 muş alpaslan u. 30 3.586 .666 total 949 3.598 .636 948 commitment to responsibilities in sports i̇nönü u. 247 3.854 .746 5 1.019 .405 atatürk u. 182 3.838 .746 gaziantep u. 151 3.786 .698 fırat u. 162 3.800 .670 943 yüzüncüyıl u. 177 3.709 .743 muş alpaslan u. 30 3.713 .789 total 949 3.799 .727 948 respect for the opponent i̇nönü u. 247 3.280 .793 5 .277 .926 atatürk u. 182 3.260 .825 gaziantep u. 151 3.229 .797 fırat u. 162 3.290 .766 943 yüzüncüyıl u. 177 3.218 .832 muş alpaslan u. 30 3.173 .934 total 949 3.255 .806 948 msos mean i̇nönü u. 247 3.575 .577 5 .978 .430 atatürk u. 182 3.564 .601 gaziantep u. 151 3.557 .544 fırat u. 162 3.556 .487 943 yüzüncüyıl u. 177 3.468 .601 muş alpaslan u. 30 3.458 .633 total 949 3.543 .569 948 (p< 0.05) the findings obtained by the variable of university of students are shown in table 3. in this regard, no significant difference was observed in the msos scale mean scores and sub-dimensions (p>0.05). in terms of msos scale, the highest mean score ( =3.575) belongs to students in i̇nönü university and the lowest mean score ( =3.458) belongs to the students in muş alpaslan university. it can be stated that the multidimensional sportpersonship orientation of the participant students studying in different universities ( =3,543) are high (high=3.43-4.23). table-4. comparison of msos scores of students by the variable of sex (t-test) sub-dimensions sex n ss t p compliance with social norms male 615 3.509 .683 -.723 .470 female 334 3.542 .643 respect for rules and management male 615 3.525 .612 -4.822 .000 female 334 3.731 .658 commitment to responsibilities in sports male 615 3.762 .744 -2.141 .033 female 334 3.868 .690 respect for the opponent male 615 2.990 .739 -15.302 .000 female 334 3.741 .690 mean msos male 615 3.447 .557 -7.277 .000 female 334 3.721 .548 (p< 0.05) analyzing the msos scale and sub-dimension mean scores of students by the variable of sex, it is observed that there is a significant difference between females and males in scale mean scores and all sub-dimensions except for the first sub-dimension (compliance with social norms) by the variable sex (p<0.05). it can be stated that females have higher msos than males. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 151-158 155 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. msos anova results of students by the variable of age sub-dimensions variable n ss sd f p post hoc test groups p compliance with social norms 18-20(1) 373 3.498 .658 3 10.973 .000 tamhane 21-23(2) 270 3.563 .716 (3)>(4) (3)>(1) (1)>(4) (2)>(4) .000 .034 .000 .000 24-26(3) 217 3.646 .599 945 27 +(4) 89 3.182 .616 total 949 3.521 .669 948 respect for rules and management 18-20(1) 373 3.711 .639 3 8.763 .000 tukey (1)>(2) .000 21-23(2) 270 3.454 .613 24-26(3) 217 3.577 .625 945 27 + (4) 89 3.609 .636 total 949 3.598 .636 948 commitment to responsibilities in sports 18-20(1) 373 3.788 .652 3 9.096 .000 tamhane (1)<(2) (3)<(2) (1)>(4) (2)>(4) .028 .028 .033 .000 21-23(2) 270 3.946 .726 24-26(3) 217 3.757 .733 945 27 + (4) 89 3.503 .898 total 949 3.799 .727 948 respect for the opponent 18-20(1) 373 3.390 .777 3 15.358 .000 (2)>(4) (1)>(3) (1)>(4) (2)>(3) .003 .000 .001 .000 21-23(2) 270 3.351 .821 24-26(3) 217 3.023 .697 945 27 + (4) 89 2.961 .928 total 949 3.255 .806 948 mean msos 18-20(1) 373 3.597 .550 3 6.806 .000 (4)<(2) (1)>(4) .007 .002 21-23(2) 270 3.579 .551 24-26(3) 217 3.501 .549 945 27 + (4) 89 3.314 .678 total 949 3.543 .569 948 (p< 0.05) table 5 reveals the findings obtained regarding the variable of age. looking at the findings, a significant difference is observed between the age groups in msos sub-dimensions and scale mean scores (p<0.05). the lowest mean score belongs to the age group of 27 and above for the sub-dimensions of the compliance with social norms, commitment to responsibilities in sports and respect for the opponent while the lowest mean score is observed in the age group of 21-23 for the sub-dimension of respect for rules and management. the lowest mean score in terms of msos scale mean score belongs to the age group of 27 and above while the highest mean score is observed in the age group of 18-20. it is observed that the higher the age group is, the lower mean scores are. table-6. msos anova results of students by the variable of grade studied sub-dimensions variable n ss sd f p post hoc test groups p compliance with social norms 1st grade (1) 316 3.519 .641 3 4.862 .002 tukey 2nd grade (2) 197 3.655 .730 (2)>(4) .001 3rd grade (3) 276 3.504 .632 945 4th grade (4) 160 3.388 .684 total 949 3.521 .669 948 respect for rules and management 1st grade (1) 316 3.767 .578 3 12.350 .000 tamhane (1)>(2) (1)>(3) (1)>(4) .000 .000 .025 2nd grade (2) 197 3.508 .644 3rd grade (3) 276 3.481 .587 945 4th grade (4) 160 3.573 .742 total 949 3.598 .636 948 commitment to responsibilities in sports 1st grade (1) 316 3.810 .632 3 2.396 .067 2nd grade (2) 197 3.732 .732 3rd grade (3) 276 3.881 .766 945 4th grade (4) 160 3.721 .812 total 949 3.799 .727 948 respect for the opponent 1st grade (1) 316 3.386 .770 3 8.842 .000 tukey (1)>(3) (1)>(4) (2)>(3) (2)>(4) .000 .004 .003 .024 2nd grade (2) 197 3.362 .807 3rd grade (3) 276 3.104 .785 945 4th grade (4) 160 3.122 .850 total 949 3.255 .806 948 mean msos 1st grade (1) 316 3.620 .535 3 4.195 .006 tamhane (1)>(3) (1)>(4) .021 .031 2nd grade (2) 197 3.564 .592 3rd grade (3) 276 3.493 .522 945 4th grade (4) 160 3.451 .658 total 949 3.543 .569 948 (p<0.05) table 6 reveals the findings obtained regarding the variable of grade of students. it is observed concerning the findings that there is a significant difference between the grades in msos sub-dimensions and scale mean scores except for the dimension of the commitment to responsibilities in sports (p<0.05). the lowest mean score is observed in the 4th grade students in the sub-dimension of compliance with social norms and the highest mean score belongs to the students of 2nd grade. the lowest mean score for the sub-dimension of respect for rules and management belongs to the 3rd grade students and the highest mean score belongs to the students of the 1st grade. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 151-158 156 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the sub-dimension of respect for the opponent, the lowest mean score belongs to the students of the 3rd grade and the highest mean score belongs to the 1st grade students. in the msos scale mean score, the lowest mean score is observed in the 4th grade students and the highest mean score belongs to the students of the 1st grade. table-7. msos t-test results of students by the variable of doing sports sub-dimensions doing sports n ss t p compliance with social norms yes 902 3.504 .660 -3.395 .001 no 47 3.842 .752 respect for rules and management yes 902 3.599 .640 .261 .794 no 47 3.574 .555 commitment to responsibilities in sports yes 902 3.795 .734 -.866 .387 no 47 3.889 .574 respect for the opponent yes 902 3.248 .809 -1.153 .249 no 47 3.387 .731 mean msos yes 902 3.536 .570 -1.606 .109 no 47 3.673 .524 (p<0.05) table 7 shows the analysis results by the variable of doing sports. analyzing the findings obtained, it is observed that there is a significant difference between those doing and not doing sports in the sub-dimension of compliance with the social norms (p<0.05). however, no significant difference was observed in terms of three subdimensions and scale mean score (p>0.05). in this regard, it can be stated that there isn’t a difference between those doing and not doing sports in terms of msos. table-8. msos scale levels of students scale dimension n ss compliance with social norms 949 3.521 .669 respect for rules and management 949 3.598 .636 commitment to responsibilities in sports 949 3.799 .727 respect for the opponent 949 3.255 .806 mean msos scale 949 3.543 .569 (p<0.05) table 8 indicates the msos scale mean scores of students. msos values of students are observed to be high ( = 3,543 “3.43-4.23”). 4. discussion in table 3, no significant difference could be determined in msos values of students by the variable of the university studied. in terms of msos scale, the highest mean score belongs to students in i̇nönü university and the lowest mean score belongs to the students in muş alpaslan university. it can be stated that the multidimensional sportpersonship orientation of the students (¯x=3.543) are high (high=3.43-4.23). in the study of tel et al. (2017) conducted on the students of faculty of sports sciences and in the study of hacıcaferoğlu et al. (2015) performed on secondary school students, they have stated that sportspersonship behaviors of students are lower than the expected level (moderate level). it has been concluded in table 4 that females have higher msos values than males. in the study of tel et al. (2017) titled “opinions of the students in faculty of sports sciences about the sportspersonship behaviors”, it has been determined that females have higher sportspersonship scores than males. there are a lot of studies indicating that sportspersonship scores of females are higher (tsai and fung, 2005; akandere et al., 2009; gürpınar and kurşun, 2013; esentürk et al., 2015; gümüş et al., 2016; goksel and zorba, 2017; koç, 2017; yilmaz et al., 2017). these findings are in parallel with the results of our study. karafil et al. (2017) have stated that male secondary school students are more sporting than the females. in the study of başaran et al. (2017) on besyo students, the difference between the sportspersonship scores of females and males in the sub-dimension of respect for rules and management has been found significant in favor of females while there isn’t any difference between other subdimensions. there are also other studies that didn’t establish any significant difference in terms of the sportsperson ship orientations by the variable of sex (gürpınar and kurşun, 2013); (kayışoğlu et al., 2015). it is thought that the reason women adopt more sportsmanship is because women have a more emotional structure. it is thought that the reason women adopt sportsperson ship more is that women have a more emotional structure (gürpınar and kurşun, 2013). according to table 5, the lowest msos score belongs to the age group of 27 and above while the highest mean score is observed in the age group of 18-20. it can be stated that the higher the age group is, the lower sportsperson ship orientation becomes. previous studies (tsai and fung, 2005); (esentürk et al., 2015) have found the sportsperson ship orientations of older athletes lower. this finding complies with our study. gürpınar (2014) states that students start to exhibit un sportsperson ship orientations due to their increasing age and higher competition conditions. goksel and zorba (2017) express that sportsperson ship can get more importance while competing for small rewards at young ages; however, people can move away from the sportsperson ship due to increasing scale of reward in parallel to the age. gürpınar and kurşun (2013) have stated regarding msos that the sportsperson ship scores of athletes aged 22 and above are significantly higher than the athletes aged 21 and below in favor of 22-year old athletes concerning the sub-dimensions of respect for rules and management and respect for the opponent and total scores of scale. the fact that the desire to win takes the place of sportsperson ship at young ages due to their higher success desires and motivations can be thought to cause decreased sportsperson ship orientations in younger athletes. similarly, goksel and zorba (2017) state that opposite results obtained by the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 151-158 157 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group variable of age can arise from the branch differences between participants, different sports environments, rules, fields and winning conditions. in table 6, the lowest msos belongs to the 4th grade students in terms of the grade studied and the highest msos belongs to the 1st grade students. it is observed that sportsperson ship orientation reduces in parallel to the increase in grade level. there are also studies stating that sportsperson ship scores are higher in lower grades and lower in higher grades. in the study performed on secondary school students (yilmaz et al., 2017) it has been determined that the higher the grade becomes, the lower the sportsperson ship behaviors of students are. similar result is also observed in the studies of yakup (2013) and esentürk et al. (2015). hacıcaferoğlu et al. (2015) has concluded that there are significant differences among the students depending on the class level. kayışoğlu et al. (2015) has stated that there isn’t any statistically significant difference in terms of the class level. in table 7, a significant difference wasn’t observed between those doing and not doing sports in terms of msos. considering the values and ethical attitudes and behaviors provided by sports to the participants, this finding doesn’t meet our expectations. however, it can be stated that the students being in the sampling but not doing sports reflect a temporary situation rather than a consistent one because it is irrational to think that the students of faculty of sports/besyo stay out of sports, so the failure to find a significant difference has met our expectations. akandere et al. (2009) have stated that the students doing sports in secondary education have higher ethical judgement level than those not doing sports. başaran et al. (2017) have concluded that there are statistically significant differences between the sportsperson ship scores of the students actively doing sports and those not doing sports in the sub-dimensions of respect for rules and management and the commitment to the responsibilities in sports. 5. conclusion it has been concluded following the study that multidimensional sportsperson ship orientations of students are high. . it has also been ascertained that there are significant differences in the variables of sex, age and the grade studied in terms of the multidimensional sportsperson ship orientation of students (p<0.05). however, no significant difference was observed in the variables of the university studied and doing sports (p>0.05). analyzing the literature investigating the concept of sportsperson ship, it is possible to see that the relations between such universal principles as virtue, morality, tolerance, honesty, patience and friendship are evaluated and their importance are revealed. dissemination of these principles in sports environment depends on whether the students of faculty of sports sciences/besyo have these principles. thus, it is necessary that the students of sports departments at universities who will raise the future athletes and have the most important place in dissemination of sportsperson ship into the every field of sports should be trained in this field. in all schools, seminars, conferences and applied studies on sportsperson ship orientation can be organized to contribute to the personal development of students. references akandere, m., g. baştuğ and e.d. güler, 2009. the effect of sports participation on the moral development of children in secondary schools. niğde university journal of physical education and sports sciences, 3(1): 59-68. arnold, j., 1984. three approaches towards an understanding of sportspersonship. journal of philosophy of sport, 3: 61-70. aydın, u., 2011. ethics and ethics in public administration from theory to practice kahramanmaraş sütçü i̇mam university. journal of faculty of economics and administrative sciences, 1(2): 39-50. başaran, z., r.b. erdoğan, y. körmükçü and h. adalı, 2017. the examination of fair-play understanding of the students of the school of physical education and sports. journal of physical education and sports studies, 9(1): 35-43. boxill, j., 2003. the ethics of competition. in boxill j. 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any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 284 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 284-289, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.284.289 effect of computer simulations on secondary school students’ academic achievement in chemistry in anambra state okwuduba emmanuel nkemakolam1  offiah francisca chinelo2 madichie chinyere jane3 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of science education nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, anambra state, nigeria 3federal college of education technical, umunze, anambra state, nigeria abstract the poor performance of students in chemistry is often blamed on inadequate practical exposure during the teaching of chemistry due to hazardous nature of some chemistry experiments. consequently, the search for teaching method that will be used to overcome this practical constraint has continued to engage researchers. specifically, the main purpose of this study is to determine the effects of computer simulation on academic achievement of students in chemistry. quasi experimental research design, specifically, non–equivalent control group design was used. the sample consisted of 78 which is made up of 38 experimental group (18 males and 20 females) while control group was 40 students (16 males and 24 females) drawn from two coeducational secondary school in awka education zone of anambra state. instruments used for data collection was chemistry achievement test which was pilot tested for the period of one week in another zone. scores obtained was used to estimate the instrument reliability which was found to be 0.78 kuder richardson formulas 20. two research assistants were trained in carrying out the teaching using computer simulations. pretest was given to the students before treatment. after four weeks of teaching, a posttest was given. mean gain was used to answer the research question while hypotheses was tested with ancova to determine the significance difference. the result revealed that computer simulation was more effective in enhancing students’ achievement in chemistry than lecture method; there was no significant difference on students’ achievement due to gender. it was recommended that computer simulation should be adopted for teaching hazardous chemistry concepts. based on the findings, it was concluded that computer simulation should be employed in chemistry teaching as a means of improving students’ achievement in the subject and providing a real life experiment for dangerous chemistry practicals. keywords: academic achievement, chemistry concepts, computer simulations. citation | okwuduba emmanuel nkemakolam; offiah francisca chinelo; madichie chinyere jane (2018). effect of computer simulations on secondary school students’ academic achievement in chemistry in anambra state. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 284-289. history: received: 25 june 2018 revised: 2 august 2018 accepted: 15 august 2018 published: 20 august 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally in the plan, design and participated actively in carrying out the study. funding: this study was fully funded equally by the authors. competing interests: the authors declare that there is no conflict of interests among them. transparency: the authors certify that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study which was reported. also there is no omission of any key points in the study. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during the conduct of the research and reporting of the result. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 285 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 286 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 287 4. discussions ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 288 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 288 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 288 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 288 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.284.289&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1446 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-3300 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4529-7392 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6337-1760 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1446 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-3300 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4529-7392 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6337-1760 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1446 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-3300 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4529-7392 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6337-1760 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1446 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-3300 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4529-7392 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6337-1760 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1446 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-3300 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4529-7392 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6337-1760 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 284-289 285 1. introduction society guidelines and recommendations for the teaching of high school chemistry, 2012 stated that: some experiments are too dangerous or impractical to be included in the hands-on laboratory curriculum. such experiments and demonstrations may be viewed in classrooms capable of displaying video. for instance, nuclear fission reactions could be witnessed on a screen, eliminating the associated danger and required safety equipment (p.13) it further emphasized that hands-on laboratory experiences are critical to a quality high school chemistry program and technology should not be seen as a replacement for laboratory but rather as an enhancement. research findings have shown that computer could be used in the classrooms to improve students’ acquisition of basic skills. these can be achieved by blending text with multimedia, curriculum objectives through the use of animations and simulations to aid in demonstration (pierce and stacey, 2004; adyum, 2005; abdullahi, 2007). it has been identified by usman (2002) that computers can be used in three ways; as a tutor, a tutee, and a tool. when used as a tutor, the computer adapts to the student by selecting appropriate instructional resources and maintaining records of academic progress. as a tutee, the computer receives and executes instructions (in the form of programming language) from the student. as a tool, the computer is used to aid in calculation, graphical displays, animations, simulations and gaming. the main focus of this research is the use of computer for simulation purposes. simulations have been given different meanings by different authors; however, in a broad sense; simulations are imitations of systems. simulations are computational models of real or hypothesized situations or natural phenomena that allow users to explore the implications of manipulating or modifying parameters within them (clark et al., 2009). plass et al. (2009) proposed that a simulation differs from a static visualization (example, a diagram in a textbook) because it is dynamic. it also differs from a dynamic visualization (an animation) because it allows user interaction. computer simulations are therefore computergenerated versions of real-world objects. computer simulations provide near-authentic environment, context and situation for task-based learning (chen et al., 2013). computer simulations enable learners to view events, processes and activities, that otherwise may not have been available to them through interactive engagement. although at first, computer simulations were mainly used in applied field, such as aviation and medic imaging, but these technologies have now edged their way into science classrooms (kaheru et al., 2011; quellmalz et al., 2012). 1.1. statement of the problem the performance of the students in chemistry has been quite unsatisfactory over the years in nigeria. the external examination body like west african examination council (waec) has repeatedly reported a steady decline in the performance of students in chemistry. the picture emerging from research reports, chief examiners reports showed that students have difficulty in tackling some chemistry questions. according to the reports, the candidates’ weaknesses among others are poor knowledge of concept of gases, poor mathematical skills in calculating moles, molar mass and percentage purity, inability to balance chemical equation. the concern about performance of students in chemistry has led to several suggestions for improvement. unfortunately, those suggestions revolve around the inappropriate teaching methods and inadequate practical exposure as the major cause of students’ poor performance in chemistry. chemistry, being an activity-oriented subject should be taught experimentally. unfortunately, several contents cannot be taught with hands-on activities in the classroom, due to the hazardous nature of the experiments. such experiments can be demonstrated and viewed in a classroom capable of displaying videos. although some researchers like apkan (2002) and lunce (2006) have advocated the use of computer simulation which incorporates inquiry and cooperative learning in teaching science and mathematics. but to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, no such study has been carried out in the area of gases. the present study is set to fill the gap. 1.2. purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of computer simulations on secondary school students’ achievement and interest in chemistry in awka south local government area. specifically, the study sought to find out: 1. if difference exist between the mean achievement scores of students taught chemistry with computer simulations and that of those taught with lecture method. 2. there is difference between the mean achievements scores of students taught chemistry with computer simulation based of gender. 1.3. significance of the study the results from this study are expected to be of benefit to many stakeholders in education and chemistry subject. these are chemistry teachers, students, curriculum planners and instructional material designers and developers. the findings of the study will be useful to learners of chemistry because computer simulation was found effective in teaching chemistry. it helps the learners to learn some basic concepts on their own at their pace and time because they have access to the computer simulation software. from the findings, the use of this computer simulation software adapted from physics education and technology (phet) as a result of this study lead to raising student’s interest in chemistry especially in those contents like gases that are almost impossible to practice through experimental activities in school laboratory. learners’ interest to engage in irrelevant programs such as video games when they are supposed to be reading their books might be transferred to a more productive and educative pursuit by using interesting simulation software. the findings of the study were beneficial to chemistry teachers, most especially to chemistry teachers who served as the research assistants, because the computer simulations helped them to demonstrate chemistry concepts with ease and made their teaching of gases and matter practicable. they can, after being exposed to the package, asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 284-289 286 try to develop other computer simulation for teaching other difficult topics in chemistry. it would also arouse the interest of chemistry teachers generally to embrace computer instruction as a worthwhile alternative approach towards effective teaching. it is hoped that the use of computer simulation will enable the teachers of chemistry to cover a wide range of topics within a short period of time without the teacher going through much stress. it will also help the teacher to arrange learning tasks from simple to complex. research questions the following research questions guided the study: 1. what are the differences in the mean achievement scores of students taught chemistry using computer simulations and those taught using lecture method? 2. what are the differences in the mean achievement scores of students taught chemistry using the computer simulations based on gender? 1.4. hypotheses the following null hypotheses which were tested at 0.05 level of significance provided focus to this study. 1. there is no significant difference between the mean achievement scores of students taught chemistry using computer simulations and those taught using lecture method. 2. there is no significant difference between the mean achievement scores of students taught chemistry using the computer simulations based on gender. 2. method the study adopted a quasi-experimental, non-equivalent control group design. the study was carried out in awka south local government area in awka education zone of anambra state, nigeria. anambra state is one of the 36 states of nigeria and is located in the south-eastern part of the country. it lays approximately between latitudes 050481 and 060511 north of the equator and between longitudes 060381 and 070131 east of the greenwich meridian. the inhabitants are mainly civil servants and traders. the native people are mainly known for blacksmithing. the population of the study consists of all senior secondary two (ss2) chemistry students in 18 public coeducational secondary schools in awka south local government area of awka education zone of anambra state numbering 1279 students (687 females and 592 males) enrolled for 2014/2015 academic session. the sample consists of seventy-eight (78) ss2 students drawn from two schools out of the 18 co-educational secondary schools in the study area. the two schools were drawn purposively out of 18 schools because they have computer facilities. by flip of coin, one school was assigned experimental group and the other control group. data were collected using a teacher-made test tagged chemistry achievement test (cat). content validity of cat was established using table of specification in which questions were distributed among three bloom taxonomy namely knowledge, comprehension and application. reliability of the cat was established using kuder richardson 20 (kr20) because the items were dichotomously scored and this yielded a coefficient of 0.78. cat has a total of 25 multiple choice questions on gas laws, state of matter and kinetic theories of gases. some of the questions in cat are: 1. which of the following relationships correctly expresses the boyle’s law? (a.) p α v at constant t (b.) v α t at constant p (c.) p α 1/v at constant t (d.) v α 1/t at constant p 2. which of the following variables is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecule of a gas? (a.) density (b.) pressure (c.) temperature (d.)volume 3. the pressure exerted by a gas is a function of the (a.) total volume of the gas (b.) speed of the gaseous molecules (c.) mass of each gaseous molecule (d.) frequency of collision between gaseous molecules. 4. which of the following phenomena leads to decrease in volume of a liquid in an open container? (a.)brownian motion (b.) diffusion (c.) evaporation (d.) sublimation. 5. the gas law which describes the relationship between volume and temperature is (a.) boyle’s law (b.) charles’ law (c.) dalton’s law (d.) graham’s law. 6. the postulate that molecules are in constant random motion best explains why liquids (a.) can undergo solidification (b.) maintain their volumes (c.) are incompressible (d.)have no characteristic shape ………………………………. while their answers are: s/n correct answers 1 c 2 c 3 d 4 c 5 b 6 d …………………………….. the instructional tools that were used for teaching the students were the computer simulation models, the lesson plans and worksheets. the computer simulation models that were used were of two types namely; state of matter model and gas properties model. they were used respectively in teaching concepts of matter and concept of gases. the two models were adopted from online physics education technology (phet) interactive simulations (https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/chemistry). the students did not manipulate the simulations individually, but the teacher projected the simulations on the white board to create a virtual environment for the concepts he teaches. the concepts taught were state of matter and gas laws. https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/chemistry asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 284-289 287 students were given pre-test after which they were subjected to treatment which lasted for four weeks. the state of matter was taught for two weeks while the gas laws specifically boyle’s law, charles law and pressure law were taught for two weeks. thereafter, there was a post-test. mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested using t-test and analysis of co-variance (ancova). 3. results research question 1 what are the differences in the achievement mean scores of students taught chemistry using computer simulation and those taught using lecture method? table-1. means and standard deviations of pretest and posttest achievement scores of students in the experimental and control group pre-test achievement post-test achievement groups n mean (x) s d mean (x) s d gain in mean experimental 38 14.95 11.03 57.21 5.53 42.26 control 40 15.05 10.76 41.40 7.66 26.35 source: spss analysis data presented in table 1 show that the experimental group had a mean pretest achievement score of 14.95 and a mean posttest achievement score of 57.21. on the other hand, the control group had a mean pretest achievement score of 15.05 and a mean posttest achievement score of 41.40. it was observed from the table that the gain in mean achievement score of the experimental group (42.26) is higher than the gain in mean achievement score of the control group (26.35). this means that the group that was taught using computer simulation (experimental group) achieved more than the group that was taught using lecture method (control group) in chemistry. research question 2 what are the differences in the mean achievement scores of male and female students taught chemistry using computer simulation? table-2. means and standard deviations of pretest and posttest achievement scores of male and female students in experimental group pre-test achievement post-test achievement gender n mean x s d mean x s d gain in mean male 34 15.00 12.36 50.82 9.77 35.82 female 44 15.00 9.61 47.77 10.74 32.77 source: spss analysis data presented in table 2 show that in experimental group, the male students have a pretest mean achievement score of 15.00 and posttest mean achievement score of 50.82. on the other hand, the female students have a pretest mean achievement score of 15.00 and posttest mean achievement score of 47.77. it would be observed that the gain in mean achievement score of the male students (35.82) is higher than the gain in mean achievement score of the female students (32.77). table-3. analysis of covariance (ancova) of chemistry students’ mean achievement scores by teaching method and gender tests of between-subjects effects dependent variable: posttest source type iii sum of squares df mean square f sig. corrected model 4966.928a 4 1241.732 27.252 .000 intercept 63629.037 1 63629.037 1396.443 .000 pretest .326 1 .326 .007 .933 method 4590.956 1 4590.956 100.756 .000 gender 66.653 1 66.653 1.463 .230 method * gender 28.430 1 28.430 .624 .432 error 3326.252 73 45.565 total 196356.000 78 corrected total 8293.179 77 a. r squared = .599 (adjusted r squared = .577) hypothesis one there is no significant difference between the mean achievement scores of students taught chemistry using computer simulation and those taught using lecture method. the result in table 3 indicates that the probability of obtaining the f-value (100.756) is zero (0.00), which is less than the 0.05 level of significance. the null hypothesis therefore is rejected, which means that there is a significant difference between the mean achievement scores of students in chemistry taught with computer simulation and those taught with lecture method in favor of experimental group with high mean score. hypothesis two there is no significant difference between the achievement mean scores students taught chemistry with computer simulation due to gender. table 3 indicates that the probability of obtaining the f-value (0.143) is 0.230, which is higher than the 0.05 level of significance. the null hypothesis therefore is upheld, which means that there is no significant difference asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 284-289 288 between the mean achievement scores of male and female students taught chemistry with computer simulation and those taught with lecture method. 4. discussions 4.1. the effect of computer simulation on academic achievement in chemistry the findings of this study show that students taught chemistry using computer simulations performed better than students taught using lecture method. there is significant difference between the mean achievement scores of experimental group (computer simulation) and control group (lecture method) in favour of experimental group with higher mean. these findings appeared to be consistent with those of kotoka and kriek (2014) that students taught electromagnetism using computer simulation performed better than those taught with lecture method. also sentongo et al. (2013) findings aligned with the findings of the present study. they found that learners exposed with computer simulations performed better that those taught without computer simulations. findings of ezeudu and okeke (2013) also confirmed the results of the present study. they found that simulations increase students’ achievement in chemistry more than the lecture method. the superiority of the computer simulation over the lecture method could be explained by the fact that computer simulation provided virtual laboratories and feedback on the chemistry concept. computer simulation allows users to interact with it and minimizes abstractness of hazardous chemistry concept to the students. students in experimental group were able to visualize, explore and formulate scientific explanations in chemistry that were otherwise impossible to observe and manipulate by students in control group. this implies that computer simulation improves students’ achievement more when compared with lecture method. 4.2. influence of gender on academic achievement in chemistry the finding of this study reveals that mean achievement scores of male and female students taught chemistry using computer simulation were at the same achievement level. also the finding indicates that gender did not influence students’ achievement in chemistry significantly. these findings were in agreement with the findings of ezeudu and okeke (2013); egara (2010); udousoro (2011) that there is no significant difference in academic achievement of students in chemistry due to gender. contrary to the present findings was the report of uwaleke (2013); offiah and egolum (2007). among the results of uwaleke’ study was that female students perform better than male students in chemistry while offiah and egolum study revealed a significant gender difference on students’ achievement in favour of males. the difference in their performance can be attributed to gender stereotyping which encourage male and female students to show interest in subjects relevant and related to the roles expected of them in the society. 5. conclusion the study shows that computer simulation had significant effect on students’ overall mean achievement in chemistry. the experimental group taught chemistry with computer simulation had higher mean achievement than the control group taught with lecture method. the influence of gender on the students’ academic achievement and interest in chemistry concepts studied was not significant. 6. recommendations based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations were made: 1. chemistry teachers should incorporate computer simulation as one of the methods used in teaching hazardous concepts in chemistry. 2. computer simulation should also be used by chemistry teachers to enhance gender equity in achievement of all students in chemistry and other related disciplines. 3. the government should utilize the service of various bodies like the science teachers association of nigeria (stan), nigeria union of teachers (nut), chemical society of nigeria (csn) and others to organise seminars, workshop and conferences to inform and train chemistry teachers and other science teachers on the use of computer simulation in teaching and learning. 6.1. limitations of the study the researcher experienced the following as limitations in this study. the use of only public coeducational secondary schools instead of private and public school as well as single sex schools in carrying out the study made it difficult to generalise the findings. due to insufficient computers, students did not carried out the manipulation of the simulation individually. references abdullahi, l., 2007. procedural knowledge in the presence of a computer algebra system: rating the drawbacks using a multi – factorial evaluation approach. international journal for technology in mathematics education, 14(1): 14 – 20. view at google scholar adyum, e., 2005. the use of computers in mathematics education: a 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(unpublished master’s thesis). nnamdi azikiwe university, awka. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20use%20of%20interactive%20computer%20simulations%20with%20regard%20to%20access%20to%20education%20-%20a%20social%20justice%20issue https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20impact%20of%20computer%20simulations%20as%20interactive%20demonstration%20tools%20on%20the%20performance%20of%20grade%2011%20learners%20in%20electromagnetism https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20impact%20of%20computer%20simulations%20as%20interactive%20demonstration%20tools%20on%20the%20performance%20of%20grade%2011%20learners%20in%20electromagnetism http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10288457.2014.884263 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20effects%20of%20gender%20and%20mathematics%20ability%20on%20academic%20performance%20of%20students%20in%20chemistry asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 2, 78-83, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 78 awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers seema menon k.p1 1 assistant professor, n.s.s. training college, ottapalam, palakkad abstract the study aims to find out the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers. the sample for the present study consisted of 500 elementary school teachers of kerala. in this study the investigator used an awareness test on learning disabilities to measure the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers. the study reveals that elementary school teachers possess an average level of awareness on learning disabilities and also that there exist significant difference in the mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities with respect to gender, locale, type of management but no significant difference exist in the mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities with respect to teaching experience and also that there exist significant difference in the awareness on different dimensions on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers such as as dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia. keywords: awareness, learning disabilities, elementary school teachers. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 79 2. results .................................................................................................................................................................................. 80 3. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 83 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 83 bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................ 83 citation | seema menon k.p (2016). awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers. asian journal of education and training, 2(2): 78-83. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.78.83 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 26 october 2016/ revised: 13 november 2016/ accepted: 16 november 2016/ published: 19 november 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.78.83 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seema menon k.p http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.78.83 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.78.83 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seema menon k.p http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.78.83 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.78.83 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seema menon k.p http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.78.83 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 78-83 79 1. introduction education promotes all round development of the child, which unites the soul, in transmission of entire values. education is the tool which is used for the realization of individual and social aspiration and for meeting personal challenges. the national policy on education (1986) has made a significant contribution towards developing educational opportunities‟ for the disabled children. students of today are the citizens of tomorrow and they are going to be the pillars of the country. hence it is essential to ensure that each pillar is as strong as the other is. moreover, one cannot think of bringing about optimum human resource development without uplifting all categories of backward students. in india around 13-14% of all school children suffer from learning disorders (krishnakumar, 1999). unfortunately, most schools fail to lend a sympathetic ear to their problems. as a result, these children are often branded as failures. there has been an increasing awareness and identification of children with learning disabilities in the last two decades. despite this growing interest, we still do not have the exact estimate of the prevalence of the problem in india. learning disabilities are very big challenge for schools and teachers. if the learning disabilities are ignored, unnoticed and unanswered such children‟s needs are not met in regular class rooms or special education within the school; we can‟t fulfill the aim of universalization of elementary education and equalization of educational opportunity (lokanadhareddy, 2005). individuals differ from each other in their physical, intellectual, emotional and behavioral traits. teacher is an artist who moulds and shapes the physical, intellectual and moral power of the children. to accomplish their task effectively a teacher should be highly competent. the progress of a country depends up on the quality of its teachers and for this reason teaching is the noblest among all professions. identification of a learning disabled child is the first step to prevent learning disabilities. then only the teacher is able to distinguish between normal students and learning disabled students. therefore the teacher should possess awareness of learning disabilities in children. better awareness on the part of the teachers, about the concept, causes, characteristics, identification and assessment of instructional materials and guidance and counseling needs helps to modify the teaching environment. teachers are the child‟s first contact after school entry and the ideal person to detect a learning problem. unfortunately, most either ignore the deficiency or blame it on the child‟s personality branding it as laziness, an attitude problem or aggression. the child continues to graduate from one class to the other totally inept at handling the pressure of the higher classes. this also leads to behavioral problems. hence, there is a need to generate awareness regarding the problem amongst teachers. this study aims to identify the level of awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers. the teachers should realize that all children are special and that they have both strengths and weaknesses. to meet their learning requirements effectively, the teacher should have a thorough understanding of the nature of disabilities/abilities. for this, teacher should be familiar with the concept, causes, teaching method, guidance and counseling of learning disabilities. the present study intends to analyze the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers with respect to gender, locale, and type of management and teaching experiences. it also helps to improve the quality of education and good learning environment and help the teachers for identification of children with learning disabilities in their class room and provide good learning materials , guidance and counseling to children with learning disabilities. so the investigator selected the study to identify the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers. 1.1. statement of the problem the present study is aimed at finding out the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers and to test whether there exist significant difference in the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers with respect to gender, locale, type of management and teaching experience. the present study is entitled as “awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers”. 1.2. definition of key terms awareness. awareness is, „having knowledge of something / realizing something and also as interested in and knowing about something‟. in the present study, the word „awareness‟ is referred to the elementary school teachers‟ knowledge about various aspects of learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia. learning disabilities. “learning disabilities are a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorder manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. these disorders are intrinsic to individual and presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction” –national joint committee for learning disabilities (njcld). in the present study learning disabilities includes dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia. it is an imperfect ability to read, write, speak , spell, co-ordinate or to do mathematical calculation. elementary school teachers. elementary school teachers are those teachers teaching in one to seven classes. 1.3. variables of the study 1.3.1. criterion variable awareness on learning disability 1.4. classificatory variables  gender  locale  type of management  teaching experience asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 78-83 80 1.5. objectives of the study 1. to find out the level of awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers 2. to compare the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers based on a) gender b) locale c) type of management d) teaching experience 3. to compare the awareness on different dimensions of learning disabilities among elementary school teachers based on a) dyslexia b) dysgraphia c) dyspraxia d) dyscalculia 1.6. hypotheses of the study 1. there exist different levels in the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers. 2. there exists significance difference in the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers based on a) gender b) locale c) type of management d) teaching experience 3. there exists significance difference in the awareness on different dimensions of learning disabilities among elementary school teachers such as a) dyslexia b) dysgraphia c) dyspraxia d) dyscalculia 1.7. method of the study method adopted. the investigator used survey method for the present study. sample selected for the study. the sample for the present study consisted of 500 elementary school teachers from various schools. the investigator used stratified random sampling technique. the present study was carried out in palakkad, thrissur and malappuram districts of kerala state. tools used for the study. awareness test on learning disability statistical techniques used. the statistical techniques used for analyzing the data are:  descriptive statistics like mean, median, mode and standard deviation were employed to know the nature of distribution  skewness and kurtosis were worked out to establish the normality in the distribution  percentage analysis was done to find the level of awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers  test of significance of difference between two means (t-test) was done to find out the significance in the difference between two mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers  one way analysis of variance (anova) was done to find out the significance in difference between more than two mean scores  test of significance of difference between two proportions used to find out the significance of difference in the awareness on different dimensions on learning disabilities 1.7. procedure after administering the tool to elementary school teachers the responses were scored carefully and subjected to statistical analysis. percentage analysis, t test and anova were the statistical techniques used. 2. results classification of elementary school teachers according to their awareness on learning disabilities is given in table 1. the table also contains the number and percentage of elementary school teachers with different levels of awareness on learning disabilities. table-1. number and percentage of elementary school teachers falling in to different levels of awareness on learning disabilities groups (high, average and low) variable group score n % awareness on learning disabilities high ≥ 28 72 14.4% average 18 to 28 369 73.8% low <18 59 11.8% from the above table it is evident that that14.4% of the total sample of elementary school teachers have high level in awareness on learning disabilities, 73.8% have average level in awareness on learning disabilities and 11.8% have low level in awareness on learning disabilities. from the above table it can be concluded that majority of elementary school teachers possess average level of awareness on learning disabilities. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 78-83 81 to find out whether there is any significant difference in the mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers with respect to gender, locale t test was used. anova was used to find out the significant difference in the mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers with respect to type of management and teaching experience. comparisons of the mean scores of different subsamples on the awareness on learning disabilities are presented under the following heads. i. between male and female elementary school teachers table-2. represent the data and results of the test of significance of difference between the mean awareness on learning disabilities for male and female elementary school teachers. sample n mean standard deviation t value male 180 21.24 4.517 7.799** female 320 24.52 4.518 source:** significant at 0.01 level the critical ratio for the test of significance of difference in the mean score of awareness on learning disabilities of male and female teachers is found to be 7.799. hence the obtained critical ratio (7.799) is greater than the table value (2.58) at .01 level of significance. thus it may be concluded that there is a significant difference in the mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities of male and female teachers. ii. between elementary school teachers of urban and rural school table 3 represents the data and results of the test of significance of difference between mean awareness on learning disabilities for urban and rural elementary school teachers. table-3. data and result of test of significance of difference between mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities on the basis of locale sample n mean standard deviation t value rural 230 23.85 4.609 2.211* urban 270 22.91 4.890 the critical ratio for the test of significance of difference in the mean score of awareness on learning disabilities of rural and urban teachers is found to be 2.211. hence the obtained critical ratio (2.211) is greater than the table value (1.96) at .05 level of significance. thus there is significant difference in the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers based on locale. iii. between subsamples based on type of management summary of one way anova for awareness on learning disabilities of the subsamples based on type of management is presented in table 4 table-4. data and result of test of significance of difference between mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities on the basis of type of management of school source of variance sum of squares df mean squares f between group 1909.193 2 954.597 49.956** within group 9497.007 497 19.109 total 11406.200 499 source:** significant at 0.01 level table 4 it is revealed that the scores of awareness on learning disabilities of government, aided and unaided schools teachers is significant at 0.01 level since the calculated f value (49.956) is greater than the table value (2.58). this indicates that, there is a significant difference in the mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers belonging to different management institutions. further, to find out type of management where the teachers were having significant mean scores, scheffe‟s post hoc test was used. the details are given in table 5 table-5. scheffe post hoc test for identifying the awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers based on type of management type of management n subset for alpha=0.5 1 2 3 unaided 95 19.52 aided 145 23.31 government 260 24.75 thus the test reveals that government school teachers are more awareness on learning disabilities than aided and unaided school teachers. their mean score (24.75) is higher than aided (23.31) and unaided (19.52) school teachers. as per the result of anova it is proved that the differences between these mean scores are significant even at 0.01 levels. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 78-83 82 iv. between subsamples based on teaching experience summary of one way anova for awareness on learning disabilities of the subsamples based on teaching experience is presented in table 6 table-6. data and result of test of significance of difference between mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities on the basis of teaching experiences source of variance sum of squares df mean squares f between group 59.680 2 29.840 1.307 within group 11346.520 497 22.830 total 11406.200 499 the critical ratio for the mean difference in the scores of awareness on learning disabilities among teachers of below 10 yrs, 10-20 yrs and above 20 yrs teaching experience is not significant at 0.05 level since the calculated f value (1.307) is less than the table value of (1.96). awareness on different dimensions of learning disabilities among elementary school teachers such as dyslexia, dysgraphia,dyspraxia and dyscalculia. percentage of awareness in different dimensions on learning disabilities is given in the table 7 table-7. percentage of awareness in different dimensions on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers sl no dimension mean score obtained value 1 dyslexia 6000 3347 2 dysgraphia 4500 2367 3 dyspraxia 5500 2962 4 dyscalculia 5000 3122 table 7 shows that elementary school teachers have more awareness in dysgraphia (59.18%) and less in dyspraxia (53.85%). in order to compare the significant differences between these proportion. test of significance of difference between proportions is used. the z value obtained for the test of significance of difference between proportion are given in table 3 table-8. significance difference between proportions of different dimensions on learning disabilities dimensions z scores dyslexia – dysgraphia (55.78%) (59.18%) 3.358** dyslexia – dyspraxia (55.78%) (53.85%) 2.076** dyslexia – dyscalculia (55.78%) (56.76%) 2.059** dysgraphia dyspraxia (59.18%) (53.85%) 5.519** dysgraphia – dyscalculia (59.18%) (56.76%) 2.349** dyspraxia – dyscalculia (53.85%) (56.76%) 3.068** from table 8 it is revealed that the elementary school teachers are more awareness in dysgraphia and less awareness in dyspraxia. the z score of dysgraphia -dyspraxia (5.519) is higher than dyslexia-dysgraphia (3.358), dyslexia-dyspraxia (2.076), dyslexia-dyscalculia (2.059), dysgraphiadyscalculia (2.349) and dyspraxia-dyscalculia (3.068). as per the result of significance difference between proportions it is proved that the differences between these z scores are greater than the table value (2.58). hence difference in the awareness on different dimension on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia is significant at 0.01 level of significance. 2.1. educational implications based on the findings of the present study, the following suggestions are put forth for improving the existing educational practices  from the present study, it is noticed that awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers is average. the study point out the need for improving their awareness on learning disabilities  teachers need to understand the concept, features and symptoms of different types of learning disabilities. teacher should be aware of the characteristics of children with learning disabilities and also about the difficulties faced by them  teachers should provide appropriate guidance for those children with learning disabilities  early identification of children with learning disabilities is a must. only teachers with awareness on learning disabilities can do it at elementary level  the increasing identification of children with learning disorders highlights the particular need for guidance and counseling services within school to respond to individual students in distress.  guidance and counseling centre‟s should be made an essential part of the school system  a special education teacher should be appointed in schools for the services of differently abled students asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 78-83 83  the study suggests proper curriculum planning and implementation of learning disabilities related content in pre service teaching programmes for prospective teachers to develop a thorough knowledge on learning disabilities  awareness programmes on learning disabilities can be conducted state wide for all school teachers  organize seminars, workshops and special training programmes in every school for teachers dealing children with learning disabilities every year  teachers who are providing special service in this sector should be highly acknowledged and awarded by educational planners and authorities  humanitarian approaches in the education of children with learning disabilities should be taken as a slogan by all 3. conclusion the study shows that elementary school teachers possess average level of awareness on learning disabilities. from the study it is evident that elementary school teachers possess an average level of awareness on learning disabilities and also that there exist significant difference in the mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities with respect to gender, locale, type of management and, but no significant difference exist in the mean scores of awareness on learning disabilities with respect to teaching experience references krishnakumar, a., 1999. coping with a disability, frontline. retrieved from //http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl 1608/16081140.htm [accessed march 21 (2015)]. lokanadhareddy, g., 2005. awareness, attitude and competencies required for school teachers to deal children with disabilities for promotion of inclusive education. unpublished thesis, alagappa university, karaikudi. bibliography knee, k., 1991. memory of specific learning disabled readers using the california verbal learning test for children. paper presented on annual convention of the american psychological association. san francisco. sumi, c.s., 2015. awareness on learning disabilities among elementary school teachers. (unpublished master‟s thesis), university of calicut, kerala, india. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl 272 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 272-279, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.272.279 assessing student reflection in a malaysian classroom marianne estabella fung1 may siaw-mei liu2 ( corresponding author) 1,2mara university of technology, sabah, malaysia abstract studies into reflective thinking in education have proposed a link between reflection and transformative learning. it is thus important for classroom practitioners to be able to identify whether students are reflecting on the subject matter of an academic course that they are undertaking. to this end, reflective journals can provide valuable information regarding the emotional and cognitive processes of the students. this study seeks to identify the level of reflective thinking attained by final year university students in sabah, malaysia, who have enrolled in an english for specific purposes course. as a preliminary study of the population, degree students from mara university of technology malaysia were sampled and their reflective journals were analysed. the classification was done using a modified coding scheme proposed by past key researchers to classify students into the three categories of non-reflectors, reflectors, and critical reflectors. the results of this study can provide useful insights to course instructors. keywords: reflective thinking, reflective journals, english as a second language. citation | marianne estabella fung; may siaw-mei liu (2018). assessing student reflection in a malaysian classroom. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 272-279. history: received: 4 july 2018 revised: 2 august 2018 accepted: 9 august 2018 published: 13 august 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 273 2. theoretical framework ................................................................................................................................................................ 273 3. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 276 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 278 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 278 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 279 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.272.279&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1433 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2278-151x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5111-1072 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1433 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2278-151x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5111-1072 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1433 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2278-151x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5111-1072 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1433 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2278-151x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5111-1072 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1433 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2278-151x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5111-1072 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 272-279 273 1. introduction it has long been debated whether the kind of knowledge that academic training provides to learners at universities is the kind of competence required in professional practice (schon, 1983; kayapinar, 2016). one important component of critical thinking which has been linked to workplace competence is a person's ability to reflect on what was learned (basol and gencel, 2013; chittooran, 2015). in fact, past literature has found a link between learners' ability to reflect on their studies and their level of competence in the workplace. this, in turn, can lead to the transformation of thinking (mezirow, 2000). it is believed that if a student is able to reflect upon what is taught academically in a university environment, it can bridge the divide between theory and practice (lyons, 2010; casey, 2013). according to literature, if a university is able to produce reflective thinkers as opposed to mere academically competent graduates, it will mean that the university has produced graduates who are prepared for the challenges of professional work. for this reason, reflective thinking has been touted as an important learning goal in higher education (bell et al., 2011). nevertheless, training students to become reflective thinkers has become “one of today‟s fundamental challenges in education” (naghdipour and emeagwali, 2013). to this end, various studies have been conducted on the subject of reflective thinking using different samples from different locations around the world. for instance, wium and plessis (2016) conducted a study on students in south africa; kayapinar (2016) examined in-service teachers in the middle east, abednia et al. (2013) conducted a study on students taking a course on second language teaching methodology in tehran, iran; naghdipour and emeagwali (2013) focused on students studying english as a foreign language in cyprus; forneris and peden-mcalpine (2007) obtained their sample from novice nurses in the usa; and wong et al. (1995) did their study on nursing students at hk polytechnic university. to date, however, results assessing the level of reflective thinking in malaysian students have been scarce. just how reflective are the students at a typical malaysian university today? most academic practitioners are unable to answer this question because studies into reflective thinking levels of specific groups of students in a malaysian context have been rare. yet, it is a crucial area which needs to be understood in order to answer some of the pertinent questions raised by society today especially with regard to why some graduates are unable to perform at the workplace. this study aims to fill that gap by assessing the level of reflective thinking in students taking an english for specific purposes (esp) course in an undergraduate programme of study at the sabah branch of mara university of technology in malaysia. the research question which guides this study is, “what level of reflective thinking have the students at the sabah branch of mara university of technology attained?” it is necessary to first understand if students are reflecting upon their learning experience before instructors can come up with instructional strategies to aid these students. 2. theoretical framework studies into reflective thinking can be traced back to the early thirties when dewey (1933) defined reflective thought as the “active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions from which it tends” and proposed that it was an important skill which educators should aim to instill in learners (kember et al., 2008; dyment and o‟connell, 2011; chittooran, 2015). in recent years, education practitioners and researchers alike have not only welcomed the concept of reflective thinking but have also studied it extensively (abednia et al., 2013). notable studies in the area of reflective thinking include the oft-cited works of schon (1983); boud et al. (1985) and wong et al. (1990;1991). schon (1983) was one of the researchers who highlighted that the kind of knowledge which academic training provides to graduates may not be the kind of competence required in professional practice. based on his work, schon (1983) felt that there was a mismatch of “theory vs practice” in terms of the kinds of graduates which academic institutions were producing (lyons, 2010). boud called the kinds of learning in most academic institutions as “the relatively passive norms of conventional teaching” (boud, 1994). before any discussions on reflection can be made, it is necessary to examine how reflection fits into the learning process. boud (1994) believed that all learning draws upon prior experience which will determine the intent a learner brings to the learning process. this learning process is an active process which happens within the “learning milieu, i.e. the social, psychological and material environment in which the learner is situated” (boud, 1994). a three-stage model of learning from experience is proposed by boud (1994) and this is depicted in figure 1. figure-1. model of learning from experience source: boud (1994) asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 272-279 274 boud‟s (1994) model consists of three stages, which are, (i) the preparation stage (activities and experiences prior to the event), (ii) the experience stage (activities or experiences during the event), and (iii) the reflective processes stage (activities or experiences after the event). the preparation stage is the part where planning is made to ensure that learners can optimise their learning. it takes into account characteristics of the learner, the milieu (or social, psychological, and material environment), as well as the skills and strategies available for learning. during the „experience‟ stage, the learner engages with the milieu and this produces the learning experience. the three elements of „noticing‟, „intervening‟, and „reflection in action‟ happen during the learning experience stage as the learner draws upon his/her personal foundation of experience and intent. boud (1994) was of the view that crucial learning happens after an event as learners are now not distracted by the milieu since “some aspects inevitably take time” and after an event, learners should be more able to “view particular events in a wider context”. the three main reflective elements which happen after an event are „return to experience‟, „attending to feelings‟, and „re-evaluation of experience‟. a summary of these three elements is provided in table 1. boud (1994) has provided a useful framework to situate the reflective thinking process. other researchers have also contributed to the literature in this area and some have gone a step further to define critical reflection and link it with transformative learning. according to wong et al. (1990) reflection is a higher-order mental process by which a person uses existing beliefs to interpret a situation, make inferences, discriminate, evaluate, and judge. just like boud (1994), wong et al. (1990) was of the view that existing beliefs or prior learning is drawn upon to evaluate and critique or solve a problem. however, to wong et al. (1990) critical reflection goes a step further and involves questioning those prevailing beliefs and other existing presuppositions and perspectives. the process of critical reflection is often accompanied by strong emotions but critical thinking is the vehicle which leads to transformation of thinking or paradigm shifts (wong et al., 1990). when a paradigm shift happens, transformative learning then takes place. in mezirow‟s (2000) words, "transformative learning refers to the process by which we transform our taken-for-granted frames of reference (meaning perspectives, habits of mind, mindsets) to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change and reflective so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action". thus, reflection is an essential part of the process towards transformative learning. along the same lines, wong et al. (1995) see the transformation as the outcome of reflection as they believe that “the outcomes of reflection include a new way of doing something, the clarification of an issue, the development of a skill or the resolution of a problem. new perspectives on experience or changes in behaviour are developed”. due to increased interest in the area, there is a need to create, evaluate, and re-evaluate models and instruments to code and classify reflective thinking practices. some researchers have felt that there is a lack of proper instruments to assess reflective thinking and that existing tools and models do not appear to reflect a single definition which is universally accepted by the discourse community (naghdipour and emeagwali, 2013). despite the lack of agreement, existing models and coding mechanisms are still useful as a starting point to both researchers and practitioners when trying to identify the presence and levels of learners‟ reflective thinking. there are a few notable models of reflective thinking available today. other than the elements of reflective processes proposed by boud (1994), kember (1999) had also proposed a framework to evaluate reflective processes. the initial seven-category framework of kember (1999) consisted of the following categories, (i) habitual action, (ii) introspection, (iii) thoughtful action, (iv) content reflection, (v) process reflection, (vi) content and process reflection, and (vii) premise reflection. in a later development, however, it was felt that the seven categories were “too fine-grained” (kember et al., 2008) and thus, a newer four-category scheme for coding and assessing learners‟ level of reflection was proposed, which included (i) habitual action, (ii) understanding, (iii) reflection, and (iv) critical reflection (kember et al., 2008). table 1 provides a summary of this model. wong et al. (1995) also proposed a coding scheme to assess reflective thought which they based on earlier models by boud et al. (1985) and wong et al. (1991). in their model, they felt that the element “returning to experience” (wong et al., 1995) need not be coded as it was a given in their student assignment sample. as shown in greater detail in table 1, the six codes adopted in this model were thus (i) attending to feelings, (ii) association, (iii) integration, (iv) validation, (v) appropriation, and (vi) outcome of reflection. in the tradition of wong et al. (1991) the students in the sample were categorised into the three main categories of (i) non-reflectors, (ii) reflectors, and (iii) critical reflectors. non-reflectors did not show any evidence of reflective thinking although they may attend to feelings. reflectors showed elements of reflection (i.e., association, integration, validation, and/or appropriation) but did not show any “critical changes to perspective” (wong et al., 1995). critical reflectors, on the other hand, had the elements shown by reflectors but also showed changes to perspectives. it should be noted that wong et al. (1995) utilised a two-level analysis whereby after they had coded the students‟ reflective papers in the sample according to the six codes above and classified the students as non-reflectors, reflectors or critical reflectors, they coded the students again using the student as the unit of coding instead of the paragraphs of students‟ written work. in this second level of coding, they managed to obtain high reliability scores and agreement as to whether students should be classified as non-reflectors, reflectors or critical reflectors. while reliability of coding was attained for the second level of coding by wong et al. (1995) they admitted that they encountered problems in obtaining acceptable agreement levels among their five coders for the first level of coding. data showing evidence of reflective thought is usually obtained from many sources, including questionnaires, interviews, workshops, exams, academic papers, and workshops (dyment and o‟connell, 2011). while data can be collected from many sources, past studies have shown that the learning journal appears to be a common and popular choice (forrest, 2008; bell et al., 2011; abednia et al., 2013; donohoe, 2015). wong et al. (1995) called reflective journals a “valid tool for assessing students‟ accomplishment of learning” and donohoe (2015) felt that the students‟ reflective thinking could be detected through them. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 272-279 275 table-1. summary of coding models to assess reflective thinking boud (1994) three-stage model (see figure 1) wong et al. (1995) coding scheme adapted from boud et al. (1985) kember et al. (2008) fourcategory model to assess written work return to experience  the learner returns to and recaptures the experience in context in full impact.  the learner mentally revisits and vividly portrays the focus experience. attending to feelings  learners focus on the feelings and emotions which were/are present.  these feelings can inhibit or enhance possibilities for further reflection and learning.  negative feelings are discharged and positive ones can be celebrated. re-evaluation of experience  this includes the four aspects of association, integration, validation, and appropriation.  association relating new information with what is already known.  integration seeking relationships between new and old information.  validation determining the authenticity for the learner of the ideas and feelings which have resulted.  appropriation is the process of making the knowledge one‟s own and part of one‟s normal ways of operating.  all four aspects are not stages which learners should pass, but parts of a whole. attending to feelings  utilising positive feelings.  removing obstructive feelings. association  linking prior knowledge, feelings or attitudes with new knowledge, feelings or attitudes.  discovering prior knowledge, feelings or attitudes that are no longer consistent with new knowledge, feelings or attitudes.  re-assessing prior knowledge, feelings or attitudes and modifying them to accommodate new knowledge, feelings or attitudes. integration  seeking the nature of relationships of prior knowledge, feelings or attitudes with new knowledge, feelings or attitudes.  arriving at insights. validation  testing for internal consistency between new appreciations and prior knowledge or beliefs. appropriation  making knowledge one‟s own.  new knowledge, feelings or attitude entering into own sense of identity.  new knowledge, feelings or attitudes becoming a significant force in own life. outcome of reflection  transformation in perspectives.  changes in behaviour.  readiness for application.  commitment to action. non-reflection  the answer shows no evidence of the student attempting to reach an understanding of the concept or theory which underpins the topic.  the material has been placed into an essay without the student thinking seriously about it, trying to interpret the material, or forming a view.  largely reproduction, with or without adaptation, of the work of others. understanding  evidence of understanding of a concept or topic.  the material is confined to theory.  reliance upon what was in the textbook or the lecture notes.  a theory is not related to personal experiences, real-life applications or practical situations. reflection  a theory is applied to practical situations.  situations encountered in practice will be considered and successfully discussed in relation to what has been taught. there will be personal insights which go beyond book theory. critical reflection  evidence of a change in perspective over a fundamental belief of the understanding of a key concept or phenomenon.  critical reflection is unlikely to occur frequently. source: boud et al. (1985); boud (1994); wong et al. (1995) and kember et al. (2008) in terms of the sample size, dyment and o‟connell (2011) found that studies into reflective thought over the period of 1995-2009 utilised samples of between 15 to 79 respondents. in most qualitative analyses, the validity of data analyses is an important consideration. most studies used a minimum of two assessors although studies using one assessor only have also been reported. where two or more assessors or coders are used in studies, often, interrater reliability scores are provided to indicate the levels of agreement between and among assessors although the scores have varied between low (r=0.50) and high (r=0.88) acceptability levels (dyment and o‟connell, 2011). table-2. levels of learners‟ reflective thinking found in past research past research plack et al. (2005) thorpe (2004) wong et al. (1995) sample physical therapy students in the usa nursing students in canada nursing students in hong kong results (i) no evidence of reflection (14.7%) (ii) evidence of reflection (43.7%) (iii) evidence of critical reflection (41.9%) (i) non-reflectors (38.46%) (ii) reflectors (50%) (iii) critical reflectors (11.54%) (i) non-reflectors (13.3%) (ii) reflectors (75.6%) (iii) critical reflectors (11.1%) source: wong et al. (1995); thorpe (2004) and plack et al. (2005) in studies which have attempted to classify learners into non-reflectors, reflectors, and critical reflectors, results have been mixed in different fields. plack et al. (2005) studied 27 physical therapy students in the usa, thorpe (2004) studied 52 nursing students in canada and wong et al. (1995) studied 45 nursing students in hong kong. the results of these studies and their subsequent classification of levels of students‟ reflective thinking are summarised in table 2. overall, reflectors tend to make up the largest group of learners in each of the past research reported in table 2. however, there is insufficient data from other studies to make further meaningful generalisations regarding this. the data from this study will contribute to this area by adding to the literature. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 272-279 276 3. methodology 3.1. data collection method this study is focused on the aspect of planned and deliberate learning, which is “learning which is intentional in which learners are aware that they are learning; learning with a definite, specific goal rather than generalized learning” (boud et al., 1985). the study was conducted in kota kinabalu, sabah, malaysia. prior to data collection, the respondents involved in this study were given an explanation of the purpose and design of the data collection process. the sample was obtained in 2015 from a class of undergraduate students taking an english for specific purposes (esp) course. the students were enrolled in the bachelor of accountancy (hons) programme at the university and took the esp course communication and interpersonal skills, which was under the purview of the academy of language studies at the university. instructors met the students for face-to-face interaction two hours a week for a total of 14 weeks. the course aimed to equip students with the communication and interpersonal skills to perform well at job interviews. the first part of the course required students to analyse their own strengths and weaknesses, qualifications, and achievements as part of their preparation for employment. this part of the course became the focus of the inquiry. students were given a prompt in a self-exploration exercise during one of the face-to-face meetings in class with the instructors. to facilitate this self-exploration exercise, the instructors used a prompt taken from downes (2008) which was actually a game that provided various self-exploratory questions. students were divided into groups of four and were allowed to play this game over a two-hour session. prior to the start of the game, the instructor explained to students the learning objective of the activity. the instructor also briefed students about the need to write down their thoughts about the exercise in a learning journal after the session. the flow of activities in this process corresponded with boud (1994) model of learning, which consists of preparation, experience, and reflection (see figure 1). throughout the 14-week semester, students were required to continuously journal their reflections and thoughts in the written journal. the only format given by the instructor was the headings for the journal which indicated the activities or experiences relevant to the course outcome. the students‟ written journals were collected by the instructor at the end of the course. for the purpose of this study, only the journal section which contained the students‟ reflections on the self-exploratory exercise was analysed. in total, all 37 students in the class participated in this study and submitted their reflective journals (rj). all 37 journals were then randomly assigned a number, ranging from rj1 (reflective journal 1) to rj37 (reflective journal 37) for ease of discussion. 3.2. data analysis procedure in this study, only the section of the students‟ reflective journal which outlined their reflections on the selfexploratory exercise was extracted for analysis. this section was easily identifiable due to the lines of demarcation provided by the section headings. however, an actual analysis of the sample showed that 15 (or 41.67%) of the rjs were not written using the section headings provided by the instructors although they still contained the main elements. in cases where section headings were absent, the researchers extracted the required section through qualitative reading of the rjs. after reviewing available literature, several coding schemes were found to be relevant to the current study. to determine which coding scheme was more suitable to analyse the data obtained, a pilot test using 5 student journals was conducted using the available coding schemes which the researchers felt might be suitable for this study (see table 1). it was decided to adopt both models by boud (1994) and wong et al. (1995) for the purpose of this study. the decision to adapt these two models in this study was because they provided clear descriptions of their coding scheme, the models were oft-cited in literature and they appeared to fit in with the current study framework. the model by wong et al. (1995) was actually adapted from boud‟s earlier work but they omitted the first element of boud‟s model, which was “return to experience”. this was suitable for their sample but for the context of this study, the researchers decided to retain this element. the rest of the elements in boud (1994) model (i.e., “attending to feelings” and “re-evaluation of experience”) were adopted for this study as well. in this study, the category, “re-evaluation of experience” was taken as a whole and not separated into their individual elements (i.e., “association”, “integration”, “validation”, and “appropriation”) as done by wong et al. (1995) because the purpose of this study is to study the presence of reflective thinking and not to distinguish features of each element in-depth. this decision to not further sub-divide the “re-evaluation of experience” category is further reinforced by boud (1994) comment that “these aspects should not be thought of as stages through which learners should pass, but parts of a whole”. an additional category, “outcome of reflection” was added to reflect the critical reflection portion of the process. thus, the four categories or elements of reflective thinking adopted in this current study are, (i) return to experience, (ii) attending to feelings, (iii) re-evaluation of experience, and (iv) outcome of reflection, and a summary of each element is shown in table 3. table-3. four-category model to assess reflective thinking category code descriptor summary c1 return to experience  the learner mentally recalls the experience and captures the focus of the process. c2 attending to feelings  the learner expresses positive and negative feelings as a result of the experience. c3 re-evaluation of experience  the learner reflects on the experience using prior knowledge and belief systems.  this includes the four aspects of association, integration, validation, and appropriation. c4 outcome of reflection  the learner demonstrates an intention to act on the result of reflection. the principles of coding were also adapted from wong et al. (1995) in general for the coding of reflective practices as well as from other established practices in qualitative analyses of written discourse. in this study, the asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 272-279 277 unit of coding employed was the sentence (holmes, 1997; ozturk, 2007). however, in cases where there were compound and/or complex sentences, a t-unit was taken as the unit of analysis. a tunit consists of a main/independent clause and any subordinate/dependent clause/s or non-clausal structure attached to or embedded in it (ding, 2007; sachs and polio, 2007) should adjacent sentences or t-units contain the same information required of the code, then these were coded once only. only when shifts were noted would a different code be assigned. data containing student thoughts on administrative issues were not coded and only points with substantial evidence were coded. evidence was extracted qualitatively by reading the textual data using linguistic clues. once the coding was completed, a frequency count was done of every category (c1, c2, c3, and c4) for each rj in order for the second-coder reliability score to be calculated. to this end, both the first and second researchers discussed and agreed on the coding scheme during the pilot study. the second researcher then coded all the rjs, and the first researcher became the second coder. using the reliability formula suggested by wong et al. (1995) this process yielded a reliability score of 0.86 (i.e., r=0.86). in the coding process, students were assigned to the three categories of non-reflector, reflector, and critical reflector, as summarised in table 4. table-4. classification of students‟ level of reflection level of reflection classification rules non-reflector  shows none or up to the first two categories (c1 and/or c2, which are “return to experience” and “attending to feelings”) of the four categories of reflective thinking reflector  shows evidence of the third category “re-evaluation of experience” (c3), with or without the first two categories (“return to experience” and/or “attending to feelings”) critical reflector  has features of a reflector but also shows evidence of “outcome of reflection” (c4) it should be noted that the second level of coding done by wong et al. (1995) was not done as the researchers deemed that the first level of coding was sufficient for the purpose of this study. in addition, past researchers have accepted results using one level of coding (dyment and o‟connell, 2011) while other researchers have found the two-level coding process “harder to employ” (kember et al., 2008). table-5. frequency of each category of reflection and classification of level of reflection rj frequency of each category of reflective thinking classification of the level of reflection c1 – return to experience c2 – attending to feelings c3 – re-evaluation of experience c4 – outcome of reflection 1 2 1 2 0 reflector 2 2 0 3 1 critical reflector 3 1 0 1 0 reflector 4 2 0 2 1 critical reflector 5 1 1 1 0 reflector 6 0 0 0 0 non-reflector 7 1 1 1 0 reflector 8 1 1 1 0 reflector 9 0 1 1 0 reflector 10 1 0 1 1 critical reflector 11 1 1 1 0 reflector 12 1 1 1 1 critical reflector 13 2 0 1 0 reflector 14 3 1 4 0 reflector 15 0 0 0 0 non-reflector 16 1 0 1 0 reflector 17 0 0 0 0 non-reflector 18 2 1 1 0 reflector 19 1 2 1 0 reflector 20 0 0 1 0 reflector 21 0 1 1 0 reflector 22 1 0 1 0 reflector 23 2 0 3 0 reflector 24 0 0 1 0 reflector 25 0 1 1 0 reflector 26 0 0 1 0 reflector 27 2 1 1 0 reflector 28 1 0 0 0 non-reflector 29 1 0 1 0 reflector 30 0 0 1 1 critical reflector 31 0 2 1 2 critical reflector 32 1 1 1 0 reflector 33 0 1 1 0 reflector 34 1 1 2 0 reflector 35 0 0 1 0 reflector 36 0 0 1 0 reflector 37 0 0 1 0 reflector asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 272-279 278 4. results and discussion each category of reflective thinking was found to be present in the sample but they appeared with differing frequencies. table 5 shows the frequency count of each category of reflection for each rj, table 6 shows textual examples for each category and table 7 provides a comparison of the current research results with the results of past studies. the results show that 4 students (10.8%) were non-reflectors, 27 students (73.0%) were reflectors and 6 students (16.2%) were critical reflectors. this effectively provides answers to the research question outlined earlier regarding the level of reflective thinking attained by a particular group of students at the sabah branch of mara university of technology. table-6. examples of textual data for each category category examples of textual data c1 – return to experience (i) at first, i am (sic) not serious in answering the questions and try to make jokes out of it. (rj12) (ii) during the first week of lecture, we played a board game. the game was filled with questions about ourselves. it might sound simple but the truth is, i could not really answer the questions. (rj13) (iii) we form (sic) a group and we play (sic) the game by turn using a dice. (rj14) c2 – attending to feelings (i) i felt really upset. (rj1) (ii) but what i am worried the most now, right after i played these games with my classmates, i am quite shocked for not knowing deeply about my own self. (rj25) (iii) at first, of course, it was disappointing. (rj34) c3 – reevaluation of experience (i) i also never thought about asking my friends what they think about me (rj12) (ii) it made me think about myself more. honestly, i don‟t really know much about myself. (rj22) (iii) ermm, 22 years living in this world yet, i know nothing about myself? i‟m wondering what i had done for the past 22 years of my life. (rj23) c4 – outcome of reflection (i) i started to list my strengths and weaknesses and i realized i have many strengths but i didn‟t (sic) aware that it (sic) will help me to get employed. (rj2) (ii) besides that, i also started to ask my family and friends about my strengths and weaknesses. (rj12) (iii) then, i took an initiative to sit alone and think about who am i (sic)…then, i was struggling by searching in (sic) the internet on how to know better about myself. i play on (sic) the games and quiz (sic) provided just to know about myself…(rj31) table-7. comparison of current result with past research researchers this current study plack et al. (2005) thorpe (2004) wong et al. (1995) sample accounting students in malaysia physical therapy students in the usa nursing students in canada nursing students in hong kong results non-reflectors (10.8%) reflectors (73.0%) critical reflectors (16.2%) no evidence of reflection (14.7%) evidence of reflection (43.7%) evidence of critical reflection (41.9%) non-reflectors (38.46%) reflectors (50%) critical reflectors (11.54%) non-reflectors (13.3%) reflectors (75.6%) critical reflectors (11.1%) it can be seen that in general, for all the studies being compared, reflectors tend to dominate the sample. in the current sample, reflectors accounted for the largest percentage at 73.0%. however, it is interesting to note that there were more critical reflectors in the current sample of accounting students compared to wong et al. (1995) and thorpe (2004) samples of nursing students. even so, when compared with the work of plack et al. (2005), there were more critical reflectors among physical therapy students in the usa as their sample yielded 41.9% critical reflectors. although at varying degrees, it appears that results obtained from the current sample of study more closely resemble those from a sample of physical therapy students in the usa whereby the smallest group are the nonreflectors, the largest group are the reflectors and critical reflectors make up the second largest group. in nursing, however, the smallest group are the critical reflectors. the results of this study have allowed more comparisons to be made in this sense and have opened up other possibilities for future research into this area. 5. conclusion this study is the first of its kind to provide preliminary information regarding the reflective thinking levels in accounting undergraduates in sabah, malaysia. the findings of this study have contributed to the field by adding to the literature on reflective thinking. once practitioners are aware of the reflective thinking levels of students and how these thought processes contribute towards their acquisition of skills, classroom instruction can be finetuned to tailor to the needs of different students in order to encourage transformative learning. pedagogical concerns may also be addressed with a view towards the actual reflective processes which the students go through. the results of this research can provide the first step towards an inquiry in that direction. a comparison of the results of this study with those of similar past studies has also raised various interesting questions with regard to explorations in reflective thinking. one of these questions is whether the different fields of study may be producing students with different reflective thinking ability. another question is whether the different localities and thus backgrounds of the students in the sample have contributed to the reflective thinking abilities of the students. while these two questions open up many 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http://dx.doi.org/10.7196/ajhpe.2016.v8i2.586 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q= http://dx.doi.org/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=assessing%20the%20level%20of%20student%20reflection%20from%20reflective%20journals http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.1995.22010048.x 56 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 1, 56-61, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.56.61 scenario-based case study method and the functionality of the section called ‘from production to consumption’ from the perspective of primary school students ahu taneri̇1 1research assistant, department of primary education, university of niğde ömer halisdemir, turkey abstract in this research, the aim was showing the evaluation of students on scenario-based case study method and showing the functionality of the studied section called ‘from production to consumption’. qualitative research method and content analysis were used to reveal participants' experiences and reveal meaningful relations regarding problems of the research. the study consisted of 28 fourth grade students from the same classroom, in a public school of central district of ankara. the study group was selected by neutral assignment. lesson plans and forms developed by the researcher were used to obtain qualitative data in the research, which was carried out as a doctoral thesis study. four lesson plans have been developed in order to be able to achieve advances in the field of learning 'production, distribution and consumption' in the social studies course. each lesson plan includes a case study associated with the achievement but not finalized, a finalized scenario script covering the case study, open-ended questions, and digital and printed resources. the evaluation form that has been prepared to assess the functionality of the used method, includes the open-ended questions prepared for evaluating the function of the unit in terms of the students and thus, forms the basic data collection tool of this research. according to qualitative results of students answers, using scenario-based case study method is a positive experience. students are more active in the learning process, they are more caring and they pay more attention to the lessons. they want to use this method in other lessons in which they struggle to concentrate and by using this method they are more able to keep their focus.the results of this study show that scenario-based case study methods have been well received by the students, the learning process with this method is more functional and the learned information continues to be used in non-school settings. keywords: social studies education, scenario-based case study method, consumption awareness. citation | ahu taneri̇ (2018). scenario-based case study method and the functionality of the section called ‘from production to consumption’ from the perspective of primary school students. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 56-61. history: received: 11 january 2018 revised: 9 february 2018 accepted: 12 february 2018 published: 14 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 57 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 58 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 58 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 60 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 60 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.56.61&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1339-9159 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1339-9159 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 56-61 57 1. introduction while examining the social characteristics of humans; the paradigms and doctrines were used that were developed by humans and communities to reveal every prospect of relationship network of humans, their behavioral characteristics as a whole and its origins and to make sense of the phenomenon. the being of the society as an action system brings up the regulative function of these actions. this allows different events to be sorted in reality systems and sets their functions (richter, 2012). the functionalist paradigm, which recognizes human's motives and behaviors as essentially a function of the social values they internalize, argues that the main purpose of humans doesn’t exist by itself and is only created through the society they are born into. the functionalist paradigm also accepts the basic needs or functional necessities that are common to humanity and must be received by all societies (wallace and wolf, 2012). the function of education in a societal way is defined by the structure of the society, the needs of the society and the purpose of the society. the function of education in class, school and family, is its micro-function. and its relationship with social institutions such as language, religion, morals, economy, politics and its function in these areas create its macro function. having these both macro and micro functions create educations social functions. the contribution and influence of education on the activities that the child has in the small groups such as family, friends, school, the individual development line of the child and on the activities that include bigger part of the society, is quite large (celkan, 2014). bandura's social cognitive learning theory explains how learning takes place through modelling. they argue that students can gain important knowledge, skills, and manners by observing the model and that these skills, social behaviors, strategies, and manners are mostly learned directly or indirectly through the model. since the perceptions of the students lead them in their behaviors and learning, a rich learning environment should be provided to the students in terms of the model. according to social learning theory, the self-efficacy value and the expectation of outcome represent the students’ key perceptions of themselves. self-sufficiency, which regulates human life through cognitive, motivational, emotional and decision-making processes; is especially effective on the level and variety of students' effort to learn in class (alpan, 2015). learning, in social learning theory, is carried out before the performance. it does not need an external reinforcement to show the individual's behavior. knowing the positive and negative consequences of the model's behavior has an impact on the individuals follow through of this behavior. when students’ preferences, interests, needs and internal performance criteria are taken into consideration, the learned things become easier to perform (erdamar, 2011). scenario-based learning is a method in which the purpose of the problem can be grasped better, and the students can take ownership of the learning subjects. in scenario-based learning approach, different scenarios are designed to provide sensible learning by creating a constructivist approach in the classroom environment (çubukçu, 2012). in order for the scenario-based learning to be used effectively, it is necessary to prepare the scenario content suitable for students’ level of knowledge and create a scenario which will make students act, and provide a content that is in line with the teaching objectives and provides concepts that are integrated with the knowledge. it is necessary to create appropriate environments that direct students to self-study and have suitable questions for their research, suggest solutions for the current problem and provide alternatives (özerbaş and somuncuoglu, 2015). by applying previously learned concepts and principles, the case study method that brings students together with real-life problems contributes to filling the gap between theory and practice in the learning and teaching environment. the most distinct property of the case study method is that it allows students to create a relationship between facts and principles, acquiring problem-solving skills, getting the chance to work with others, and a consistent example allows them to reach their targets by making the students go through a case that happened or can happen in real life and therefore reinforce the teaching with these examples (sonmez, 2010). the social studies lesson taught in schools, which is one of the leading social communities of the individuals after the family, ensures the individual's reconciliation with the society while preserving the individuality of the person in society and aims to keep society as a whole with the other individuals. social studies education has an important role in creating the social and scientific knowledge, manners and behaviors of the individuals. many social issues which are included in the content of the course and have scientific aspects begin to be transferred through this course to the individual during early ages. the 'from production to consumption' section in the social studies course is revealed as a both social and a scientific topic. the informed consumer behavior, which is one of the main topics of 'from production to consumption' section, is a feature that every citizen should possess. elements of life such as time, knowledge, technology, nutrients, natural resources gain qualification thanks to informed producers and consumers. the 'from production to consumption' section of the fourth-grade social studies class is closely related to the functional paradigm and the social learning theory because it is functional from societal aspect and can be taught by model behaviors. the 'from production to consumption' section of the social studies class aims to give children the skills of determining consumer behaviors, demands and needs, choosing the right products, evaluating said products and knowledge of what rights they have as a consumer. 1.1. the purpose of the research in this research, the aim was showing the evaluation of students on scenario-based case study method and the functionality of the studied section called ‘from production to consumption’. below are the problems that were determined to achieve the purpose of the research. these are: 1. what are the opinions of the students participating in the research regarding the scenario-based case method used in the research process? 2. what are the similarities and differences between students’ consumeristic behaviors prior to the course and informed consumer behaviors they learned in class? asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 56-61 58 2. method 2. 1. research design in this research, qualitative research method and content analysis were used to reveal participants' experiences and reveal meaningful relations regarding problems of the research. 2.2. study group the study consisted of 28 fourth grade students from the same classroom, in a public school of central district of ankara, consist of 18 boys and 10 girls. the study group was selected by neutral assignment. 2.3. data collection tool lesson plan and forms developed by taneri (2017) were used in the study. while the forms were being developed, 2 surveying specialists, 4 turkish experts and 5 social sciences experts were consulted. in this research ‘have you used the teaching methods of the section called ‘from production to consumption’ in another course? if your answer is yes, in what course did you use this method and what are the similarities and differences with this course? if your answer is no, what is the difference between the teaching of this course and the other courses?’ questions were used to answer researched problems. 2.4. process this research was carried out within the scope of the doctorate thesis titled 'the effect of the scenario-based case method in social studies education in gaining production and consumption awareness'. the main aim of this doctoral thesis completed by taneri (2017) was determining the effect of scenario-based case study method on acquiring information on the production and consumption awareness. in this context, mixed methods research was used as an appropriate model for the purpose of obtaining reliable and comprehensive answers to the questions of the researchers and making the necessary measurement evaluations. in the study, quantitative data is collected by an experimental pattern model with the pre-test-post-test control group. in order to obtain quantitative data in the research, 'consumer awareness scale' is developed by the researcher. lesson plans, activities and questions were prepared by the researcher to state quantitative data and qualitative data of the research have been gathered. while the 'consumerism awareness scale' used in the research constitutes the dependent variable of the research; scenario-based case study method used to teach the students in the experimental group ‘from production to consumption’ section, and scenario-based case study method used to teach the students in the control group ‘from production to consumption’ section consisted the independent variable of the research. the research consisted of 28 students in the experimental group and 22 students in the control group. the experimental and control group in which the study was conducted were selected with a neutral assignment. in this study, the evaluation form prepared by the researcher was used to evaluate the function of scenario-based case method used in the above-mentioned research process. also, in order to be able to evaluate the functionality of the unit, the 'i am self-evaluating as a consumer' form was used to explain the similarities and differences between the students’ behaviors before they participated to the study and the consumer behaviors they learned throughout the study. 2.5. analysis of data the content analysis method is used in the analysis of the data obtained from the research. it is important to create a proper label system with note-taking that can collect all data such as dates, places, interviewees, information description and it is important that the field notes in the inventory held in the stage of preparation of the analysis are complete (patton, 2014). content analysis is a process that involves identifying, coding, categorizing, and labelling the first patterns on the data. it also means to analyze what is important in the main content (patton, 2014). content analysis is used as a systematic and reproducible method to identify the presence of certain words or concepts in text or text groups and code texts in certain categories (stemler, 2001). content analysis helps the researchers in making an inference about the message in the texts by being a technique used in the social sciences field to define certain features of a message objectively and systematically with certain rules based coding (büyüköztürk et al., 2016). when the qualitative data was analyzed, the students were coded as s1, s2, s3, ..., s28 according to the numbers in the class list and the data from the students have been analyzed by naming these numbers in the findings 3. findings students have been asked to evaluate the methods used, the teaching of the lesson and the activities. the questions on the evaluation form are as follows: 1. have you used the teaching methods of the section called ‘from production to consumption’ in another course? if your answer is yes, in what course did you use this method and what are the similarities and differences with this course? if your answer is no, what is the difference between the teaching of this course and the other courses? 2. what are the aspects you liked and disliked of the methods used in the course? 3. did the things you learned through the course had any contribution to your daily life? if so, what did it change in your life? 4. describe your thoughts and experiences about the methods used in the course. would you like to use this method in other courses too? please write it with your reasons included. the themes, codes, and categories determined according to the answers given by the students are as follows: asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 56-61 59 table-1. the theme, code, and categories about teaching methods. theme code category general evaluation evaluation of the teaching methods expressing that the lesson is fun, liking the teaching independent from the books, recommending the use of the same methods in other courses, expressing that having fun while learning and enjoying getting less homework. the answers that students have given for the question’; have you used the teaching methods of the section called ‘from production to consumption’ in another course? if your answer is yes, in what course did you use this method and what are the similarities and differences with this course? if your answer is no, what is the difference between the teaching of this course and the other courses?’ are below; ‘no we haven’t. normally we study lessons through books and watch from computers. but in this social study class, we are learning the content with games and activities. in short, this lesson is fun.’ (s9). ‘no we didn’t use this in other courses. in this course, we have never studied a lesson by using a book. but in other courses we always use books. we prefer to do lessons without using books. ‘ (s20). ‘no, i never used a method like this before. we go through the other lessons with a book, and boringly, while we are having fun with especially ahu teacher in this social studies course.’ (s22). ‘no it’s more fun, we are not getting bored. i understand more. we learned by having fun with the scenarios and with the games. ' (s25). the students answered the ‘what are the aspects you liked and disliked of the methods used in the course?’ question like this; ‘what i like is not having a book, not having too much homework, and having fun during the class.’ (s1). ‘there is nothing i don’t like. and the things i like are not going through a book and learning through scenarios.’ (s14). when asked ‘did the things you learned through the course had any contribution to your daily life? if so, what did it change in your life?’ and ‘describe your thoughts and experiences about the methods used in the course. would you like to use this method in other courses too? please write it with your reasons included.’ the students gave these answers; ‘i learned to be an informed consumer. i have a right to return the damaged products. i have a right to ask for the invoice, receipt, warranty document of the product i bought. and i know if i give priority to my needs instead of my desires, i would be an informed customer.’ (s1). ‘yes. i now make plans. i know my rights. i know my basic needs.’ (s3). ‘yes, it did have contributions. now when i buy a product i always get its receipt and bill. now i shop more comfortably and i avoid spending unnecessary money.’ (s21). ‘yes. now i make a shopping list.’ (s27). when the students are asked ‘describe your thoughts and experiences about the methods used in the course. would you like to use this method in other courses too? please write it with your reasons included.’, they gave these answers; ‘i think it is fun and educational. i think this should be used in all courses because we are having more fun.’ (s1). ‘i very much agreed with the methods used and i understood much more quickly. the scenario was good and can be used in other courses too’. (s11). 'the method is great! we are having a lot of fun while learning. i would like this method to be used in math class most.' (s22). 'it was fun and informative. yes, because then we would have learned easier.' (s25). ‘yes, i would. we have learned to become an informed consumer in this class. but in a fun way. i would like other classes to be like this.’ (s28) some of the explanations in the form of 'i am self-evaluating as a consumer', which were used to explain the similarities and differences between the students’ behaviors before they participated to the study and the consumer behaviors they learned throughout the study, are given below. ‘for example, before i left the water running while washing my hands but after reading this text i stopped, it was a very informative text. no, i don’t waste water or electricity, i’m very careful.’ (s9). ‘i thought we could only get our needs. but now i realize depending on our family budget we can both get our needs and our desires. identifying our needs and desires is the first step. i didn’t know this before. information and behavior in shopping are as important as money. ''the time left for shopping should be sufficient to inspect the goods and services.'' i didn’t know that. i knew how to make a shopping list, but i did not do it.' (s12). ‘i used to not use water efficiently in the past, like for example when i was brushing my teeth, i left it open. but now i do not do this, i understand how valuable the water is.' (s15). ‘i cared about the brand before but now i learned that the really important thing is that product being healthy and having a certain quality. i believed everything i saw in commercials but i now know that a research before buying is required. i buy the products in line with our budget. my mom usually plans for shopping. after the shopping, we do a case assessment. i check what i could have saved more. and it seems that at first we need to get our needs, and i did not do that.’ (s21). ‘instead of relying on the seller, we are investigating ourselves. we did not know about service net, now we do. we did not check the ce symbol, now we do. we check that the scales work correctly and we were already getting the packaged products. we only sign contracts after reading them carefully. we do not believe door-to-door vendors. we try to not to buy defective products. we keep documents like bills. i have learned i can go to arbitration board in 15 days. before this, i did not know how to apply to an arbitration board, or about call 175 line, or about consumer courts. i did not know the ministry of industry and commerce, the advertising board, the nongovernmental organizations. ' (s23). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 56-61 60 4. conclusion the results obtained from the findings of the research are given below: all of the students who were taught with the scenario-based case study method on the subject of ‘from production to consumption’, have enjoyed the process. no previous case scenario-based event method has ever been used in another course. the method used allowed students to learn while having fun. the students were pleased to be able to go through the course without books. students recommended the use of the method in other courses. teaching using scenario-based case method became functional for students. they are pleased that there was less homework. 4.1. also students continued to apply what they learned in non-school settings. started to exhibit informed consumer behaviors. come to be able to analyze whether their behavior is an informed consumer behavior. learned their rights as consumers. learned how to use consumer rights when they need it. when the results of the research were examined, it was seen that scenario-based case study method had left major positive impressions on the students. the results of the research revealed that the functionalist paradigm that constitutes the theoretical basis of the research, support the possible outcomes of education in terms of the social learning theory, the scenario-based learning and the case study method that are used. the functional paradigm draws attention to the functional links between educational institutions and other social institutions. it argues that education fulfills the social roles of individuals effectively through socialization and selection functions (tezcan, 2005). this feature of the functionalist paradigm supports the conclusion that students apply what they learn in out-of-school settings and begin to exhibit conscious consumer behavior. the functionalist paradigm also accepts the basic necessities or functional necessities that are common to humanity and that all societies must meet (wallace and wolf, 2012). this aspect of the functionalist paradigm supports students to learn when can they use their rights as consumers and how can they use them when they need. according to vygotsky, cognitive development gets developed from the society to the individual. children watch the interactions between people in the outside world in order to form their own development and they interact with others (koç and demirel, 2004). vygotsky's understanding of social learning can be viewed as the way in which students follow the behaviors of the model person and they evaluate the incidents through the behaviors of this person. behavioral patterns observed in the social environment emerge as a direct and indirect reflection of the compromising or conflicting expectations of people. this principle, which is referred to by bandura as mutual determination principle (aydin, 2014) and can be summarized as influencing the behavior of the model and getting influenced by the behavior of the model, supports the results obtained from the sample event completion studies used in the research process. the fact that the students learn by taking the main characters behaviors of the case studies as a reference and by creating new results with making changes on these behaviors, and the model field and the environment getting affected by this, shows that the social learning theory can be successfully used in the research process. learners of social cognitive learning should be aware of their existing response-outcome prospects because they have established the belief that they can put forward various behaviors and anticipations about the likelihood of response-outcomes for the future (ormrod, 2013). knowing the positive and negative consequences of the model's behavior has an effect on the individual's realization of this behavior (erdamar, 2011). students being able to play an active role in the learning environment while being aware of the events and without encountering any adverse situation, show that the scenario-based case method used in the research accomplishes the goals of social cognitive learning. observation and listening from live, symbolic or nonhuman (video or cartoon characters) electronic or printed models are the common sources of indirect learning in social cognitive learning (shunk, 2011). the symbolic characters in the case study which are used as a data collection tool can be shown as an indirect learning source for the students. moreover, it can be said that the students can observe the model from the printed sources through the newspaper news which is placed in the case study. scenario-based learning is the task of turning the situation into a script so that the purpose of the problem can be grasped better and the students can embrace the learning content (çubukçu, 2012). the fact that the scenariobased learning approach has brought the real world into the classroom environment has facilitated the transformation of the theoretical basis of the research into practice made it easy for students’ to adapt to the life after school, and allowed students’ to see the practical use of the theoretical knowledge (özerbaş and somuncuoglu, 2015). through the case study method used, the students were able to see in the classroom that the same event can have different outcomes, without them being directly affected by the event and without being harmed, and they had the opportunity to compare these different outcomes. references alpan, b.g., 2015. behavioral and cognitive learning theories. in: y. budak (ed.), teaching principles and methods. ankara: pegem a. pp: 127-149. aydin, a., 2014. educational psychology: development, learning, teaching. ankara: pegem. büyüköztürk, ş., ç.e. kılıç, ö.e. akgün, s.ş. karadeniz and f. demirel, 2016. scientific research methods. ankara: pegem academy. celkan, h., 2014. education and society. in: ç. özdemir (ed.), educational sociology. ankara: pegem a. 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ankara: east-west. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=an%20overview%20of%20content%20analysis https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=an%20overview%20of%20content%20analysis 146 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 146-149, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.146.149 contribution of plays and toys to children’s value education mustafa önder1 1cumhuriyet university, faculty of education faculty member of the department of primary education, turkey abstract plays and toys have an important place in the education of children. children learn by seeing and doing rather than reading, listening and understanding. play is an important “job” for children. the basic function of plays is to facilitate children’s adaptation to the world. children can understand the real world by playing. they deal with unwanted situations by playing games. moreover, they construct the building blocks of language and concept development through playing. they try different social roles by playing games. again, through playing, they find the stimulants that are not readily available in real life. children learn self-regulation, setting up rules and abiding by these rules through plays. they play to experience, understand and learn the things they cannot do in real life. for a child who ascribes a meaning to toys and objects, playing games and playing with toys is a serious business. situations which are imaginary at first help children learn some rules, take a step beyond their development and construct their own zone of proximal development. all children have an imaginary friend when they are small. during this process which is a normal development pattern and a helpful occupation, the playmate is usually a toy. playing games and playing with toys is not just an occupation, but also an activity that supports children’s mental health and helps them establish and develop emotional relationships. plays and toys have a close relationship with education, history, geography, sociology, psychology, politics, industry and tourism, in short, with culture. plays and toys are used as a method for early diagnosis of some disorders such as learning difficulty and autism. in these days where we seek solutions to digital addiction, plays and toys emerge as an important alternative. plays also provide a suitable environment for value and morals education. introducing plays and toys which have an important place in child education and using them more effectively in value and morals education together with other fields of development is of critical importance. in this theoretical article, we tried to address the importance of plays, toys and toy museums from this perspective. keywords: play, toy, toy museum, child education, value education. citation | mustafa önder (2018). contribution of plays and toys to children’s value education. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 146-149. history: received: 6 march 2018 revised: 27 march 2018 accepted: 2 april 2018 published: 4 april 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 147 2. plays and their importance ........................................................................................................................................................ 147 3. toys and toy museums................................................................................................................................................................ 147 4. conclusion and suggestions ........................................................................................................................................................ 149 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 149 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.146.149&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mustafa önder https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mustafa önder asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 146-149 147 1. introduction development and change of human characteristics is possible to a great extent through education. improvement of existing abilities and personality development occurs through education. this means that there is a need for educators, educational environments and materials. plays and toys are two of the most important components that contribute to the development of children. in addition to the other fields of development, plays and toys make a significant contribution to the value and morals education. while children make their wishes and desires come true while playing games, they gain some values within the framework of their knowledge and experience without being under the influence of others. they develop their conscience and emotions. they develop a loving personality that can self-regulate and perform internal control (sevinç, 2009; balat, 2012; koglın and petermann, 2013). children who play games were found to be more social, more easy-going, more creative and open to sharing than those who do not play games (akın, 2016). plays reinforce positive behaviors and help changing negative behaviors (yörükoğlu, 2008). plays and toys have a close relationship with education, history, geography, sociology, psychology, politics, industry and tourism, in short, with culture. it is possible to clearly see that in the toy museums established abroad, and recently in turkey. plays and toys are used as a method for early diagnosis of some disorders such as learning difficulty and autism (bakırcıoğlu, 2013; çakar, 2017). the long history of toys and the way they spread provides valuable information for anthropologists. nursery rhymes, folk songs and dialogues used in plays are very important for philologists (sen, 2012). plays and toys also include beliefs, values and moral elements. we tried to address these issues in this article. 2. plays and their importance plays and toys have an important place in all cultures. the history of plays is as old as the history of human civilization. their importance has begun to be realized better in today’s world. in our history, plays have already had a special place. there are also some cross-cultural similarities between plays. it can be seen that various games are known and played in different countries and geographies by similar names (poyraz, 2017). ibn-i sina says all children must play games (önder, 2014). mahmud al-kashgari also mentions about children’s games. evliya çelebi mentions about hundreds of stores that sell toys for children (sevinç, 2009). article 31 (1) of the “convention on the rights of the child” adopted in november 20, 1989 reads as follows: “states parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.” (sen, 2012). play is defined differently by different researchers. dönmez defined play as follows: “play is the most effective learning process for children, which serves a specific purpose or not and is played with or without rules, but always is a part of a real life and lies the basis for physical, cognitive, linguistic, emotional and social development (as cited in: poyraz (2017). playing games is the second most important need after love for the physical and personality development of children. it is impossible to think a childhood without plays. freud defines mental health as the ability to “love and work”. yörükoğlu briefly defines children’s mental health as “being loved and playing”. in his book titled “what men live by”, tolstoy says men live by love (tolstoy, 2011). children learn by seeing and doing rather than reading, listening and understanding. play is an important “job” for children. playing is also a useful occupation for adults, but its function is different. the basic function of plays is to facilitate children’s adaptation to the world. children can understand the real world by playing. they deal with unwanted situations by playing games. moreover, they construct the building blocks of language and concept development through playing. they try different social roles by playing games. again, through playing, they find the stimulants that are not readily available in real life (bacanlı, 2011). mildred parten, a researcher who conducts studies on children’s games, recognizes six different types of plays and emphasizes their importance for child development. among these six types of plays are unoccupied play, onlooker play, solidarity play, parallel play, associative play and cooperative play, all of which emphasize the importance of plays and toys (as cited in bacanlı (2011)). piaget, a cognitive theorist, classified plays in accordance with the theory he developed and said that plays derive from the desire to attribute a meaning to experiences. to him, play is an adaptation (sevinç, 2009; sen, 2012; erduran and yilmaz, 2016). another classification of plays put them into five classes as movement based plays, exploratory plays, imaginative plays, emotional and tricking plays and imitation plays. peter smith classifies plays into four as locomotor plays, object plays, social plays and imaginative plays. in these plays, toys are one of the main elements. they are the best friends of children and even their confidants (sezer, 2012). the psychologist vygotsky states that children learn how to self-regulate, how to set up rules and how to abide by these rules through plays. he suggests that children try experiencing, understanding and learning the things they cannot do in real life by playing and plays provide the most suitable environment for the functioning of cognitive mechanism (sevinç, 2009; sen, 2012). for a child who ascribes a meaning to toys and objects, playing games and playing with toys is a serious business. situations which are imaginary at first help children learn some rules, take a step beyond their development and construct their own zone of proximal development (bacanlı, 2011). children learn the most important roles such as being a mother or a father that they will experience in the future through plays. between 2 and 3 years of age or 9 and 10 years of age, children have an imaginary friend. during this process which is a normal development pattern and a helpful occupation, the playmate is usually a toy. playing games and playing with toys is not just an occupation, but also an activity that supports children’s mental health and helps them establish and develop emotional relationships (sezer, 2012). the process of playing also includes activities that help children learn values, beliefs and moral behaviors. plays provide the ideal environment where we can teach children to clean, to help each other, to be honest and fair, to respect others and to love. 3. toys and toy museums toys are actually a country’s imagination of the future since they are designed by adults. there are some studies suggesting that the company which manufactures barbie dolls today manufactured “german toy soldiers” asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 146-149 148 in 1933 based on hitler’s saying “ideas grow with children” dated many years before the world war ii and helped winning the war through the perception and motivation it created 6 years before the war. toys provide a common language for all children. at the same time, they are important indicators of the education system. the same holds true for our country, too. small toy windmills (pinwheel) used once by the children have been a source for today’s wind plants. robot toys once loved by children are frequently used in daily life in various sectors today. toy cars that transform like knight rider are in real life now. the paper kites of once are now in our life as drones. it means that plays and toys are very important materials that incorporate the codes of a country’s future. in recent years, tech toys and plays have dominated the whole world. such toys and plays do not allow children to make a decision. they do the entire job themselves, depriving children of the opportunity to research, explore and try. however, what is important in regards to plays and toys is that they provide children with the opportunity to do whatever they want, to try and explore and to be creative. therefore, it should be discussed whether the existing toys are “smart” or not (erduran and yilmaz, 2016). toy museums can be an alternative to this imported culture. one of the most effective methods to deal with children’s electronic or digital addiction, which has emerged recently as a serious and frequently discussed problem (bee and boyd, 2009; dilci, 2016; göka, 2017) is to establish toy museums in which national plays and local toys can be used for educational purposes. toys are not just for kids. they also concern adults. there is no adult who is not affected or moved upon seeing the toys of his/her childhood. since all children will be the adults, parents and teachers of the future, plays and toys are actually an important investment for the future. german educator günter stachel lists the outcomes of playing games with children and says that plays save a child from the complexity of the world which is under the hegemony of technology and provide children with the opportunity to create their own world (stachel, 2009). disregarding plays and toys means disregarding the child development (akın, 2016). yörükoğlu says the following: play is a creation environment for children. they overstep and expand their bounds through plays. children who play create their own imaginary world, but they imitate real-life experiences. they transfer their perceptions of real life into the play environment, incorporating them through their own interpretation. children are as strong and skillful as adults while playing games. what they ride is not a stick, but a strong horse. the toy plane they play with is a real plane that can fly around the world. their toy gun is more powerful than anyone (yörükoğlu, 2008). a toy museum will also attract the attention of adults as much as children. besides, it will contribute to the improvement of the national toy industry. in today’s world where the traditional plays and toys fade into oblivion and electronic toys of foreign origin spread across the world, resurrecting and manufacturing our plays and toys means protecting our deep-rooted culture and introducing it to the world. technocities are expected to make a supportive and creative contribution for the wooden toy manufacturers whose number has been decreasing gradually. repair and manufacture shops which will be established in toy museums will attract the attention of not only children, but adults as well. toys and toy museums incorporate the history of dreams and imaginations. humans first dream, and then they realize their dream. everything starts with a dream. there are various examples of toy museums abroad, and recently, in turkey. the toy museums founded by sunay akın in the cities like istanbul, ankara, izmir, antalya and gaziantep attract a great deal of attention and are liked by the children. the purpose of the ankara university faculty of education toy museum, which was founded in 1990, is to preserve the toys which are at the risk of perishing during the times of swift social change in turkey, to protect these toys, to hand them down to the next generations and to introduce them. such museums are recognized as scientific institutions that serve the purpose of researching child culture. the toys in the museum were classified as traditional, fabricated, foreign origin, antique and new toys. the history of toy museums which were predominantly in the uk, germany, france, italy, japan and russia dates back to ancient times. toys have changed in parallel with technological developments. once made out of soil, wooden and tin, toys have gradually become more electronic-oriented. it is a fact that the cities in turkey are lack of social fields and activities for children. social fields and activities are known to make a great contribution to the cognitive, affective and psycho-motor development of children. universities and the ministry of national education have the most important role in making up this lack of social fields and activities. pre-service preschool teachers studying at the faculty of education preschool teaching department also feel the lack of toy museums. establishment of toy museums has become a need that can no longer be postponed for these students to gain teaching experience. it is the responsibility of adults to make this dream of children who had to grow up without toys come true. scientific studies revealed that toys are important materials for children in all aspects of their development. more toy museums should be established to meet this need of teachers and children. toy museums aim to have a collection of toys, which constitute an indispensable part of child education, and to contribute to children’s creativity and their mental, emotional and psycho-motor development. toys are the subjects of the argument of today’s educators which is that “children learn through playing”. increasing the number and variety of toys will make children’s learning easier and make the museums an effective practice center for preschool teachers. besides, these museums will create cultural consciousness by introducing traditional plays (âşık, topaç, kuş, cüz, karagöz, hacivat, orta oyunu, regional plays) to our children as well as compiling the old toys used in turkey and creating the opportunity to examine their sociological, psychological and educational function. functioning as a social and cultural activity, the projects for founding toy museums will attract the attention of not only the people in the region they are founded in, but also those living around the region. there are toy museums only in a few cities of turkey. if we exclude ankara, we can say that there is not toy museum in the central anatolia and eastern anatolia regions. toy museums should be established in at least the big cities of these regions as soon as possible. toy museums will be a perfect practice center for the courses such as material design, creativity and other preschool teaching courses offered in the faculties of education. the existing toy museums are visited by a large number of students. these visits will not only be limited to the toy museums, but also ensure that the other historical and touristic places are visited. this will also increase the quality of education. the process first begins with visiting the toy museums at home and abroad. the toys used throughout the history are collected and those considered to make a contribution to children are identified and bought. museums asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 146-149 149 can be established by receiving support from those who have expertise in this field (like sunay akın). the process is run with a group that will consist of the faculty members studying in this field, and if necessary of the students, from the faculty of education. educational environments arranged especially for children constitute one of the most distinctive features of today’s modern cities. 4. conclusion and suggestions playing games and playing with specific toys is an activity that makes a great contribution to learning, creativity, problem solving, personality development, mental health, cultural development and moral development of children. besides, plays and toys are not just materials and activities that are needed in specific periods. playing is an activity that needs to go along with formal education and that contributes to the development of children at least as much as formal education. we should make time for children to play games and play with toys as much as we make time for formal education. it is for sure that plays and toys will make a great contribution to solving our problems such as digital addiction, which has spread around the world, devaluation of values and weakening of social ties. meeting with plays and toys, which is at least as important as love, is not just a need of children, but also is a teaching method for the adults who educate them. plays and toys, together with the establishment of toy museums, are of critical importance for the protection of cultures and values, teaching these values, internalization of moral behaviors and development of language and creativity. in today’s world where we frequently complain about the negative impacts of the media, plays whose content is well defined and which are guided by adults constitute one of the ways to solve this problem. we can say that the most important investment in the future of countries is to meet children with plays, toys and toy museums. references akın, s., 2016. the toys we broke. istanbul: i̇ş bankası publications. bacanlı, h., 2011. educational psychology. ankara: pegem akademi publishing. bakırcıoğlu, r., 2013. mental health of children and adolescents. ankara: anı publishing. balat, a., 2012. values education in early childhood and sample activities. ankara: pegem academy publications. bee, h. and d. boyd, 2009. child developing psychology the developing child. istanbul: kaknüs publications. çakar, f.s., 2017. adaptation and behavioral problems in elementary education, stages of life and adaptation problems. ankara: pegem academy publications. dilci, t., 2016. time for a digital diet. kayseri: geçit publishing. erduran, n. and m. yilmaz, 2016. game world game world my play world. ankara: educational publications. göka, e., 2017. internet and our psychology. istanbul: kapı publishing. koglın, u. and f. petermann, 2013. behavioral training in kindergarten. göttingen: hogrefe verlag. önder, m., 2014. turkish history of education. ankara: anı yayıncılık. poyraz, h., 2017. plays in early childhood and sample plays. ankara: anı publishing. sen, m., 2012. plays and their importance in early childhood education, early childhood education. (ed: ibrahim h. diken). ankara: pegem academy publications. sevinç, m., 2009. early childhood development and education. istanbul: morpa publications. sezer, t., 2012. basic charakteristics and needs of pre-school child in. fikret, g.-s.t. early childhood education. ankara: pegem akademi publishing. stachel, g., 2009. religious education in the family of today", religious education of infants. (prepared by: joseph sauer, trans. mustafa önder). tokat: arı ofset basımevi. tolstoy, l.n., 2011. what does a human live with? (what men live by). (trans. murat çiftkaya). istanbul: shule publications. yörükoğlu, a., 2008. child's mental health. istanbul: ozgur publishing house. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 356 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 356-362, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.356.362 a study on developing special teaching methods attitude scale for pre-service music teachers ceren saygı gerçeker1 1department of music, faculty of education, adnan menderes university, turkey abstract the objective of the current study is to develop an attitude scale for pre-service music teachers’ special teaching methods course. the data of the research was obtained in the spring semester of the 2017-2018 academic year. the study group consists of 388 pre-service music teachers who continue their education at eight universities in turkey. before proceeding to further analysis, the missing values and outliers were processed. as a result, mean substitution was performed for the missing data in the dataset and 2 participants with outliers were excluded from the study. the suitability of the data for factor analysis was determined by running the kaiser-meyer-olkin and bartlett’s test of sphericity. result of the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) value was found to be 0.97. the overall internal consistency coefficient (cronbach’s alpha) of the single-factor and 58 itemscale was determined to be 0.98. keywords: pre-service music teacher, special teaching methods course, attitude, scale development, special teaching methods. citation | ceren saygı gerçeker (2018). a study on developing special teaching methods attitude scale for pre-service music teachers. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 356-362. history: received: 11 may 2018 revised: 6 august 2018 accepted: 3 september 2018 published: 24 september 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 357 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 357 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 358 4. result ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 361 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 361 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.356.362&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1481 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0477-2177 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1481 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0477-2177 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1481 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0477-2177 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 356-362 357 1. introduction education is a triangle of knowledge, process and target. teachers are therefore the most significant agents in the educational process. because teacher is the one who manages and directs the process. in this respect, teachers need to be equipped with knowledge and skills required for both the teaching profession and their fields to run the process successfully. instead of preparing teaching competency areas for each field individually, ministry of national education general directorate of teacher training and education (2017) sets forth 3 fields of teaching competency, namely, “vocational knowledge”( field knowledge, field training, regulation knowledge), “vocational skill” (planning education and instruction, creating learning environments, managing learning and teaching process) and “attitude and values” (national, moral and universal values, approach to student, communication and cooperation, personal and vocational development) as it does in every discipline, it is of vital importance that pre-service music teachers must be equipped with certain competencies in the educational process. in this sense, it would be quite useful to touch upon the music education system in our country. music education program is offered by universities’ music education departments at the education faculties. students who pass university entrance exam are entitled to take a special talent examination performed in line with the certain criteria applied by universities’ departments, thereby being eligible for a candidate teacher. in music education departments, students are required to undertake following courses during their four-year program: individual courses (voice training, individual instrument training and piano playing), collective music education courses (chorus, orchestration, school instruments, music history) and courses on teaching profession. amongst the courses mentioned, special teaching methods course provides a strong bond between what is learned and what is to be taught. special teaching methods course duration is four hours per week in the second term of the 3th grade and the first term of the senior class. the course includes 2 hours theoretical and 2 hours practical sessions. according to the council of higher education (cohe), the special teaching methods i course content involves fundamental concepts of the field, the integration of fundamental concepts into field education, the regulations pertaining to the constitution and minister of education, objectives, materials, documents and analysis of documents. when it comes to the content of the special teaching methods course ii, it encompasses following subjects: the concepts of music education and training, activity and lesson planning (individual, collective, daily, monthly, yearly) for every phase and process of the education, evaluation of music education activities, assessment and evaluation. in terms of the course content, special teaching methods course plays a crucial role in raising a qualified music teacher. pre-service music teachers’ interests, enthusiasm, willingness to attend the course and working eagerly, in other words, their attitudes towards the course will influence their academic success. at this point, it would be useful to explain the concept of the attitude, one of the affective peculiarities influencing academic success, to understand the issue more clearly. kagıtcıbası (2006) argues that “an attitude is attributed to an individual and it is a tendency that arranges in an orderly manner that individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in relation with a psychological object (as cited in: kagıtcıbası (2006)). the concept of attitude is a core topic in social psychology. however, it was found that students’ attitudes towards dynamics of learning in education increases their academic achievements (pehlivan, 1994). the relationship between individual-objectstimulus and attitude are of such importance for vocational education since students’ attitudes towards their departments will reveal what kind of teaching behaviors they will adopt in the future. from this perspective, positive attitudes of pre-service teachers towards education are an important detail in terms of their teaching quality in the future (ustüner, 2006). to put it differently, “knowing attitudes towards a specific profession and its activities will certainly contribute to predict the success and satisfaction attained in the profession (erkuş et al., 2000). therefore, it is of essential importance to measure attitudes at universities delivering vocational education and accordingly to apply some adjustments in terms of quality of education and efficiency of the process. numerous attitude scales oriented at various dynamics in education have been developed both in our country and the world. “the attitude scale towards music theory course” developed by canakay (2006) consists of 37 items. cronbach’s alpha internal coefficients of the scale were calculated as .96. “piano course attitude scale” developed by tufan and güdek (2008) consists of 30 items and cronbach’s alpha internal coefficients of the scale was calculated as .97. the scale developed by ozevin (2010) towards “the special teaching methods course” in the music education undergraduate program includes 25 items. cronbach’s coefficients alpha for complete scale was .95. tyson (2006) rap scale, measuring rap-music attitude is a 24-item instrument. the 14 likert-type attitude scale developed by shaw and tomcala (1976) aims to measure primary school students’ attitudes towards music. the objective of the present study is therefore to develop an attitude scale to measure pre-service music teachers’ attitudes towards special teaching methods course. 2. methodology since the present study attempts to develop an attitude scale towards special teaching methods course, it is a descriptive research. the descriptive surveys intend “to explain the interaction among situations by considering their relationships between previous events and conditions” (kaptan, 1998). 2.1. study group the research consists of 388 pre-service music teachers enrolled in “special teaching methods” course at the department of music education. the data of the research was obtained in the spring semester of the 2017-2018 academic year. the distribution of the study group is as follows: 30 (7.7%) pre-service music teachers from bolu abant i̇zzet baysal university, 60( 15.5%) pre-service music teachers from van yüzüncü yıl university, 40 (10.3%) pre-service music teachers from muğla sıtkı koçman university, 52 (13.4%) pre-service music teachers from dokuz eylül university, 60 (15.5%) pre-service music teachers from pamukkale university, 53 (13.7%) pre-service music teachers from balıkesir university, 51 (13.1%) pre-service music teachers from trakya university and 42 (10.8%) pre-service music teachers from adnan menderes university. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 356-362 358 2.2. selecting the instrument for data collection before developing attitude scale items for measuring pre-service music teachers’ attitudes towards special teaching methods course, 39 pre-service music teachers enrolled in “special teaching methods i” course at adnan menderes university, faculty of education, department of fine arts and music education program were asked to write a composition entitled “opinions and thoughts on special teaching methods course”. after reviewing participants’ statements in the compositions and previously developed attitude scales (berberoğlu, 1990; kan and akbaş, 2005; arslan, 2006; canakay, 2006; karaca, 2006; tufan and güdek, 2008; turanlı et al., 2008; demir and akengin, 2010; ozevin, 2010; turan and demirel, 2010; seker, 2011; arslan, 2012) an initial item pool of 89 statements was formed. 2 experts in music education, 2 experts in educational sciences, 1 expert in turkish language and education and 1 psychologist were consulted to review the item pool. based on the experts’ feedbacks, items was rewritten by using more clear and simple language, and accordingly the scale was reduced to 76 items in total, including 19 negative items in the scale. the measurement tool was prepared by using 5 point likert-type. correspondingly, respondents’ answers were labelled as follows: “strongly agree”, “agree”, “agree slightly”, “disagree” and “strongly disagree”. 2.3. data collection data was obtained from eight universities. permission was obtained from the universities in advance. prior to the phase of the data collection, university instructors in the relevant field were informed about the process. 2.4. data analysis in this study, an attitude scale for special teaching methods course was developed and then statistical analyses were performed. before proceeding to further analysis, the missing values were examined. as a result, mean substitution was performed for the missing data in the dataset. then outliers were analyzed and 2 participants with outliers were excluded from the study. statistical analyses were performed using spss version 24. the tables presented in the study were taken form spss program. lastly, the suitability of the sample size and normality assumptions were tested. explanatory factor analysis (efa) was performed to determine construct validity of the scale. cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was calculated to figure out the reliability of the scale. 3. findings 3.1. the suitability of data for factor analysis before running analysis on developing an attitude scale for special teaching methods course, the suitability of the data for factor analysis was determined by running the kaiser-meyer-olkin and bartlett’s test of sphericity. results of the kaiser-meyer-olkin and bartlett’s test of sphericity are shown in table 1. table-1. kmo and bartlett’s test of sphericity kmo and bartlett’s test kaiser-meyer-olkin 0.970 bartlett’s test of sphericity chi-square 23076.326 sd 2850 p 0.000 as can be seen in table 1, the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) value was found to be 0.97. the result of the bartlett’s test of sphericity was found statistically significant. thus, we could contend that the sample size is appropriate for factor analysis. 3.2. determining the number of factors to determine the number of factors, the contribution of each variable to total variance and scree plot were analyzed. scree plot for the analysis shown in figure 1. figure 1 scree plot for the analysis shown in. figure-1. scree plot asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 356-362 359 after evaluating the contribution of each variable to total variance and scree plot, it was determined that the scale consisted of a single factor. as an extraction method, principal components analysis was performed to determine the factor design of the scale. 3.3. findings regarding the construct validity of the scale explanatory factor analysis (efa) was conducted to determine construct validity of the attitude scale for special teaching methods course. accordingly, 18 items (numbered 3, 5, 6, 11, 13, 20, 25, 27, 30, 32, 37, 47, 49, 53, 54, 62, 65, 66) whose loadings are less than 0.40 for every factor were excluded from the analysis and the analyses on the remaining 58 items were rerun. as a result of the analyses performed, a table of communalities indicating the percentage of explained common variance for each item is presented in table 2. table-2. communalities item number common variance item number common variance item number common variance item number common variance t1 ,546 t22 ,505 t42 ,490 t61 ,515 t2 ,355 t23 ,465 t43 ,488 t63 ,480 t4 ,583 t24 ,374 t44 ,407 t64 ,368 t7 ,463 t26 ,535 t45 ,468 t67 ,395 t8 ,452 t28 ,499 t46 ,574 t68 ,397 t9 ,354 t29 ,512 t48 ,547 t69 ,363 t10 ,413 t31 ,483 t50 ,383 t70 ,503 t12 ,396 t33 ,619 t51 ,431 t71 ,580 t14 ,532 t34 ,602 t52 ,372 t72 ,634 t15 ,611 t35 ,562 t55 ,348 t73 ,541 t16 ,561 t36 ,570 t56 ,604 t74 ,600 t17 ,511 t38 ,605 t57 ,503 t75 ,433 t18 ,444 t39 ,641 t58 ,554 t76 ,479 t19 ,390 t40 ,569 t59 ,634 t21 ,523 t41 ,606 t60 ,655 according to table 2, common factor variance of the factors on each variable was found to range from 0.348 to 0.655. as a result of the analysis performed, all potential factors and eigenvalues for the number of factors identified and the percentages of variance explained are tabulated in table 3. table-3. eigenvalues associated with factors and percentages of variance explained component values for all potential factors values for the number of factors determined eigenvalue percentages of variance explained percentage of total variance explained eigenvalue percentages of variance explained percentage of total variance explained 1 29,024 50,041 50,041 29,024 50,041 50,041 2 2,512 4,331 54,372 3 1,595 2,749 57,122 4 1,407 2,425 59,547 5 1,169 2,015 61,562 6 1,109 1,912 63,474 7 1,019 1,756 65,230 8 ,998 1,721 66,951 9 ,866 1,494 68,445 10 ,819 1,411 69,856 11 ,787 1,357 71,213 12 ,746 1,286 72,499 13 ,734 1,266 73,765 14 ,684 1,180 74,945 15 ,651 1,122 76,066 16 ,642 1,106 77,173 17 ,616 1,062 78,235 18 ,590 1,017 79,252 19 ,570 ,983 80,235 20 ,547 ,944 81,179 21 ,530 ,913 82,093 22 ,507 ,874 82,966 23 ,491 ,847 83,813 24 ,479 ,826 84,639 25 ,471 ,813 85,452 26 ,424 ,731 86,182 27 ,410 ,707 86,889 28 ,401 ,691 87,581 29 ,390 ,673 88,254 30 ,363 ,627 88,880 31 ,360 ,621 89,501 32 ,350 ,604 90,105 33 ,343 ,591 90,696 34 ,321 ,554 91,250 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 356-362 360 35 ,307 ,529 91,779 36 ,306 ,527 92,306 37 ,297 ,511 92,817 38 ,291 ,501 93,318 39 ,279 ,481 93,799 40 ,270 ,466 94,265 41 ,254 ,439 94,703 42 ,246 ,425 95,128 43 ,244 ,420 95,548 44 ,221 ,381 95,928 45 ,219 ,378 96,307 46 ,219 ,377 96,684 47 ,209 ,359 97,043 48 ,199 ,343 97,387 49 ,194 ,335 97,721 50 ,179 ,308 98,029 51 ,170 ,293 98,322 52 ,161 ,278 98,600 53 ,156 ,268 98,869 54 ,145 ,251 99,119 55 ,137 ,236 99,355 56 ,132 ,228 99,583 57 ,125 ,216 99,799 58 ,116 ,201 100,000 as can be seen in table 3, eigenvalue of the first factor is 29.024 and the contribution of the factor to the total variance is 50.041%. this means that the items in the scale explain 50% of the variance in the attitude scale towards special teaching methods course. factor loadings regarding the factor design of the scale are set forth in table 4 table-4. factor design of the special teaching methods course attitude scale item factor loading item factor loading item factor loading item factor loading t60 ,809 t40 ,754 t57 ,709 t44 ,638 t39 ,800 t35 ,750 t28 ,706 t68 ,630 t72 ,797 t16 ,749 t42 ,700 t12 ,629 t59 ,796 t58 ,744 t43 ,698 t67 ,628 t33 ,787 t48 ,739 t31 ,695 t19 ,625 t15 ,782 t1 ,739 t63 ,693 t50 ,619 t41 ,778 t73 ,736 t76 ,692 t24 ,612 t38 ,778 t26 ,731 t45 ,684 t52 ,610 t56 ,777 t14 ,729 t23 ,682 t64 ,607 t34 ,776 t21 ,723 t7 ,680 t69 ,602 t74 ,775 t61 ,717 t8 ,672 t2 ,596 t4 ,764 t29 ,716 t18 ,666 t9 ,595 t71 ,761 t17 ,715 t75 ,658 t55 ,589 t46 ,757 t22 ,710 t51 ,657 t36 ,755 t70 ,710 t10 ,643 considering the data in table 4, it is seen that factor loadings for all the items in the scale vary between 0.589 0.809. 3.4. findings regarding the reliability cronbach's coefficient alpha, a measure of the internal consistency, and item-total correlation coefficients were used to calculate the reliability of the scores obtained from the scale. cronbach’s alpha internal coefficients of the scale was calculated as 0.983 (58 items) which shows that the reliability of the obtained scores are at the high level (ozdamar, 2004). item-total correlation coefficients of the items in the scale are presented in table 5. table-5. itemtotal correlation test item correlation item correlation item correlation item correlation t1 ,726 t22 ,697 t42 ,685 t61 ,705 t2 ,582 t23 ,668 t43 ,685 t63 ,681 t4 ,752 t24 ,606 t44 ,633 t64 ,600 t7 ,673 t26 ,718 t45 ,670 t67 ,623 t8 ,658 t28 ,693 t46 ,746 t68 ,616 t9 ,588 t29 ,702 t48 ,727 t69 ,597 t10 ,628 t31 ,681 t50 ,603 t70 ,696 t12 ,621 t33 ,774 t51 ,649 t71 ,747 t14 ,715 t34 ,760 t52 ,597 t72 ,785 t15 ,769 t35 ,734 t55 ,574 t73 ,719 t16 ,733 t36 ,741 t56 ,762 t74 ,762 t17 ,699 t38 ,764 t57 ,694 t75 ,641 t18 ,653 t39 ,786 t58 ,728 t76 ,685 t19 ,608 t40 ,740 t59 ,786 t21 ,710 t41 ,764 t60 ,796 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 356-362 361 further analysis of the table 5 shows that item-total correlation coefficients of the items in the scale range between 0.574-0.796. overall findings demonstrated that this scale had high validity and reliability scores and that it may be used as a valid and reliable instrument for further studies. furthermore, the scale can be administrated to different groups, and after then additional validity and reliability evidences can be collected. 4. result in the present study, a valid and reliable measurement tool was developed to identify pre-service music teachers’ attitudes towards special teaching methods course. 39 pre-service music teachers enrolled in “special teaching methods course i” at adnan menderes university, faculty of education, department of fine arts and music education program during the spring semester of the 2017-2018 academic year were asked to write a composition entitled “opinions and thoughts on special teaching methods course”. after students’ statements in the compositions as well as previously developed attitude scales in the literature were taken into account, 89-item pool was formed. 2 experts in music education, 2 experts in educational sciences, 1 expert in turkish language and education and 1 psychologist were consulted to review the item pool. experts submitted their views to the researcher as regards to whether each item measures one behavior, written in a clear and open way and measures attitude components appropriately. based on the expert opinions, necessary additions, omissions and revisions were made and scale pool was reduced to 76 items. the final measurement tool was administrated to 388 students (3th grade and senior class) enrolled in “special teaching methods course” at the department of music education of eight universities (bolu abant i̇zzet baysal university, van yüzüncü yıl university , muğla sıtkı koçman university, dokuz eylül university, pamukkale university, balıkesir university, trakya university and adnan menderes university). before proceeding to further analysis, the missing values were examined. as a result, mean substitution was performed for the missing data in the dataset. then outliers were analyzed and 2 participants with outliers were excluded from the study. lastly, the suitability of the sample size and normality assumptions were tested. before running analysis on developing an attitude scale for special teaching methods course, the suitability of the data for factor analysis was determined by running the kaiser-meyer-olkin and bartlett’s test of sphericity. the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) value was found to be 0.97. the result of the bartlett’s test of sphericity was statistically significant. as well as determining the number of factors in the scale, the contribution of each component to total variance was analyzed through scree plot. after further analysis of the scree plot, it was determined that the scale consisted of a single factor. as an extraction method, principal components analysis was performed to determine the factor design of the scale. as a result of the explanatory factor analysis (efa) performed to figure out construct validity of the scale, 18 items (numbered 3, 5, 6, 11, 13, 20, 25, 27, 30, 32, 37, 47, 49, 53, 54, 62, 65, 66) whose loadings are less than 0.40 for every factor were excluded from the analysis and the analyses were repeated for the remaining 58 items. accordingly, eigenvalue of the first factor is 29.024 and the contribution of the factor to the total variance is 50.041%. cronbach's coefficient alpha, a measure of the internal consistency, and item-total correlation coefficients were used to calculate the reliability of the scale. cronbach’s alpha internal coefficients of the scale were calculated as 0.983. it was found that item-total correlation coefficients regarding the scale items varied between 0.57 and 0.79. the results show that the pre-service music teachers’ 58-item attitude scale towards special teaching methods course meets the validity and reliability criteria, and consequently can be utilized as a measurement scale for further studies. references arslan, a., 2006. attitude scale for computer-aided education. yüzüncü yıl university journal of education faculty, 3(2): 24-33. arslan, a., 2012. validity and reliability study of attitude scale against turkish language lesson in higher education. international turkish literature culture education journal, 3(1): 187-202.available at: https://doi.org/10.7884/teke.67. berberoğlu, g., 1990. measurement of attitudes towards chemistry. education and science, 14(76): 16-27. canakay, e.u., 2006. development of attitude scale for music theory. declaration of national music education symposium, pamukkale university faculty of education, 26-28 april 2006,denizli, turkey. demir, s.b. and h. akengin, 2010. development of an attitude scale towards social sciences course: validity and reliability study. e-journal of international education research, 1(1): 26-40. erkuş, a., n. sanli, m.t. bağlı and k. güven, 2000. development of the attitude scale for teacher education. journal of education and science, 25(116): 27-33. kagıtcıbası, e., 2006. developing an attitude scale for planning and evaluation lesson in teaching. 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research, eurasian journal of education research, 41: 151-164. pehlivan, h., 1994. educational attitudes towards the division of education. hacettepe university journal of education, 10(10): 49-53. seker, s., 2011. the effects of orff schulwerk-supported violin education on violin lesson, self-efficacy, self-confidence and violin playing skills in children aged 9-11 years. unpublished doctoral thesis, dokuz eylül university educational sciences institute, izmir, turkey. shaw, c.n. and m. tomcala, 1976. a music attitude scale for use with upper elementary school children. journal of research in music education, 24(2): 73-80.available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3344938. http://oygm.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2017_12/11115355_yyretmenlyk_mesleyy_genel_yeterlyklery.pdf http://oygm.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2017_12/11115355_yyretmenlyk_mesleyy_genel_yeterlyklery.pdf asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 356-362 362 tufan, e. and b. güdek, 2008. development of the piano lesson attitude scale. gü gazi education faculty magazine, 28(1): 75-90. turan, s. and ö. demirel, 2010. attitude scale reliability and reliability study on probing-based learning. education and science, 34(152): 113. turanlı, n., t.n. karakaş and v. keçeli, 2008. development of attitude scale for mathematics field courses. hacettepe university journal of education, 34(34): 254-262. tyson, e.h., 2006. rap music attitude and perception scale a validation study. research on social work practica, 16(2): 211-223.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1049731505281447. ustüner, m., 2006. validity and reliability study of attitude scale towards teaching profession. educational administration in theory and practice, 45(45): 109-127. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 128 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 128-131, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.128.131 socialization effect of physical activity in students who need special education mehmet ilkım1 halil tanır2 mehmet özdemir3 ( corresponding author) 1inonu university, sport sciences faculty, malatya, turkey 2adnan menderes university, physical education and sport high school, aydın, turkey 3selcuk university, sport sciences faculty, konya, turkey abstract in this study, it was aimed to determine the effect of physical activity on socialization in secondary school students who need special education. the sample of the research is composed of 40 middle school students (n=20 experimental group and n=20 control group) who were educated in malatya sehit yuzbası hakkı akyuz secondary school and indicated that they needed special education with the report given by guidance research center. the socialization scale developed by demirdağ (2010) was applied to the parents of the students before and after the 16-week activity program in determining the socialization levels of the students. statistical analysis revealed that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the students in the experimental group (p<0.05). the study found that the 16-week physical activity program, which was held at least 3 days a week, contributed to the socialization of middle school students who needed special education. keywords: special education, physical activity, socialization citation | mehmet ilkım; halil tanır; mehmet özdemir (2018). socialization effect of physical activity in students who need special education. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 128-131. history: received: 14 february 2018 revised: 6 march 2018 accepted: 9 march 2018 published: 12 march 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 129 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 129 3. statistical analysis of data .......................................................................................................................................................... 129 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 129 5. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 130 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 130 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.128.131&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0033-8899 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5626-8362 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2213-6403 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0033-8899 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5626-8362 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2213-6403 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0033-8899 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5626-8362 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2213-6403 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0033-8899 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5626-8362 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2213-6403 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 128-131 129 1. introduction some special arrangements that is included the concept of "at least limited educational environment" are made for the education of children who need special education. at least limited educational environment, in which children with special needs are placed in general education classes at the beginning, are being dealt with a new understanding of "integration" nowadays and children in need of special education are trained in general education classes by providing support services to themselves and their teachers (eripek, 2000). integration education is special education practices based on the principle of providing supportive education services to individuals who need special education and training with their peers without inadequacy in primary education, secondary education and non-formal education institutions. in other words, integration education is specifically including of children with disability together their peers who are normally developing to education and teaching in normal classes (macmillan, 1982). this education shows different developmental characteristics from their peers due to their physical, mental, emotional and social characteristics; but is an education given to students who attend full-time or part-time education with their peers. integration education is the place in which a student with special training needs, with the least restrictive training environment, meets their needs at the highest level and as much as possible with their peers who do not need special education (alver et al., 2011). the main problem for the individual with disability is to adapt to society and to pass to the manufacturer position. the main goal of integration education is to give children with disabilities to society. the basic understanding underlying integration education is that the interaction between people with disabilities and those without disabilities will increase so that social barriers will abolish and social acceptance will take place (kaner, 2000). the main aim of the education is to raise the potential of each individual to the highest level and to bring them into a producer position in society. the main problem for the individual with disability is to adapt to collecting and to pass to the manufacturer position (kayaoğlu, 1999). it is important to practice of integration education in order to acquire the skills of social life in environments where children with special needs have normal peers (koçyiğit, 2015). it was determined that children with disabilities who benefited from integration education showed the expected progress in the areas of language, cognitive, motor, perceptual and social development (bricker et al., 1982). the fact that children with disability receive integrated education in normal schools makes them partly easier to live as an individual in society. in addition, participation of a disabled child to a group of friends in the school and acceptance causes the child to feel less addictive and develop his sense of trust (demir and açar, 2010). the success of integration practices depends on the ability of individuals who need special education to adequately receive the necessary special education and normal education services (causton-theoharis et al., 2011). physical activity programs and recreational activities can be used as a means of contributing to the success of the educational process in the integration educations for disabled people. thus, during the physical and recreational activities of students participating in integration education, their interaction with other peers will increase; so it is anticipated that the students will be able to record advances in terms of social development and can adapt to social life more easily. for this reason, in this research, it was aimed to determine the socialization effect of the 12 week physical activity program which is performed at least 3 days in a week in the students who need special education. 2. method the sample of the research is composed of 40 middle school students (n=20 experimental group and n=20 control group) who were educated in malatya sehit yuzbası hakkı akyuz secondary school and indicated that they needed special education with the report given by guidance research center. students in the experimental group were given an activity program consisting of basic skills for football and basketball between 15.00 and 17.00 for 3 days a week (monday, wednesday and friday) for 16 weeks. students in the control group continue their normal lives without participating in any activity program. the socialization scale that is a 5-point likert-type scale developed by demirdağ (2010) was applied to the parents of the students before and after the 16-week activity program in determining the socialization levels of the students. the scale consists of 30 questions. the 1-9 questions on the scale refer to the level of socialization of the students, 10-16 questions about the parents' general thoughts about sport, 17-22 questions about sport effects and 23-30 questions about the effects of sports students on socialization levels. 3. statistical analysis of data the data were tested with the kolmogorov-smirnov test for normal distribution. paired sample t test was used to determine whether the difference between the mean of two independent groups was meaningful as it was understood that the data were normal distribution. the data obtained from the scale were evaluated in the spss 22.0 package program at a level of 0.05 significance and 95% confidence interval. 4. findings table-1. comparison of pre-test and post-test scores of the experiment group variables groups n x sd serror test df p socialization score pre test 20 125.85 7.52 1.68 -6.581 19 0.000* post test 20 133.45 4.28 0.95 * significance at 0.05 level table 1 shows that there is a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test results of the students in the experimental group (p<0.05). when the mean values were examined, it was seen that the socialization scores of the students in the experimental group increased after 16 weeks of activity program. t t asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 128-131 130 table-2. comparison of pre-test and post-test scores of control group variables groups n x sd serror test t df p socialization score pre test 20 127.60 8.30 1.85 2.415 19 0.026* post test 20 125.35 6.80 6.80 * significance at 0.05 level in table 2, it is seen that the students in the control group have a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test results (p<0.05). it is understood that the average socialization scores of the students in the control group decreased after 16 weeks without any activity. 5. discussion and conclusion socialization is the formation of many complex factors. by socialization, it is meant that the individual learns the culture he lives in and indirectly other cultures connected with this culture. in other words, socialization; one has to learn to obey the rules and values of the group and adopt these values. this learning continues throughout life, from birth to death, during which time the individual's relationship to the people around him and other environmental factors play an important role in social cohesion (yavuzer, 2000). individuals with special needs are individuals with different needs from their peers due to their physical, mental, emotional and social characteristics (kargın, 2004). individuals with special needs can be trained with the programs prepared according to their needs and with their healthy peers in the organized educational institutions with special support services (tsukerman and vygotskii, 2000). in this educational process, recreational activities and physical activity programs supporting the social development of students who need special education can be used as a tool. as a matter of fact, it was seen that the physical activity program which was performed between 03:00 pm and 05:00 pm (monday, wednesday and friday) for 16 weeks in this study contributes to the socialization of the students who need special education. when the literature is examined, it is possible to reach the results that supports this research. kestek and i̇biş (2006) reached the conclusion that the flexibility training program that is applied 3 times a week for 8 weeks to educable children with mentally disabled, contributed to the social development of children as well as to the development of flexibility in children. it was stated that behavioral changes occurred in children participating in the study and the activity program was an effective tool in the process of adaptation to social life. bayazıt et al. (2007) examined the effect of an 8-week amusing athletic training program (3 days a week) on the development of psychomotor skills in educable children with mentally disabled. in the study it was reported that the training program for the students in the experimental group provided skill development and social development. in addition, it was stated that the development was higher in the group with the partner study than in the group with the individual study. savucu and bicer (2009) reported that regular activities, group exercises and team sports such as basketball contribute to the physical, mental and social development of individuals with mentally disabled. it has been reported that sport enables disabled people to come together with their healthy peers so that it is an effective tool in providing 'integration' which is the main objective of special education. ilhan (2007) in his study that assessed effect of physical education and sport activities on the level of mental harmony children with disabled, concluded that and the children in the experimental group were reduced in neurotic behavioural problems. ilhan (2008) in his study to determine whether regular physical education and sport activities affect the social levels of educable children with mentally disabled stated that the physical education program contributed to the socialization of children with intellectual disabilities. it has been stated that this contribution is especially meaningful in the fields of interaction with others, participation in group activities and sharing. in a similar study, mcmahon (1998) demonstrated the importance of recreational activities in terms of social integration, friendship and social acceptance in disabled people. in his study, chiang (2003) stated that after activities in a fun environment, autistic children increase social natural interactions and friendship with their peers, feelings of loneliness decrease. dunn (1997) has stated that sports can be a tool for to provide social cohesion and contribute to socialization of disabled people. in this study found that the 16-week physical activity program, which was held at least 3 days a week, contributed to the socialization of middle school students who needed special education. for this reason, recreational activities and physical activity programs should be organized for the students who often need special education. thus, social values such as self-confidence, appreciation, work, courage, responsibility in students who need special education may develop. references alver, b., h. bozgeyikli and a. işıklar, 2011. an examination of the attitudes of the students of the psychological counseling and guidance program towards cohesion education. journal of atatürk university social sciences institute, 15(1): 155-168. bayazıt, b., b. meriç, m. aydın and e. seyrek, 2007. effect of fun athletic training program on psychomotor traits in educable mentally retarded children. spormeter journal of physical 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publisher yavuzer, h., 2000. child psychology. istanbul: golden books. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=inclusion:%20definition,%20development%20and%20principles https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20problem%20of%20the%20socialization%20of%20the%20upper-grade%20students%20of%20special%20schools%20for%20children%20with%20hearing%20disabilities http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/res1060-9393420556 56 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 56-62, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.56.62 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of academic self efficacy of university students in the sports area çalık veli koçak1 umut canli2 ( corresponding author) 1hitit university, faculty of sports science, department of physical education and sports education, turkey 2namık kemal university, school of physical education and sports, department of physical education and sports education, turkey abstract the purpose of this research; was to investigate the academic self-efficacy of the university students studying in the field of sports according to various variables. the sample group of the study consisted of 386 (female, 42.7% male, 57.3%) volunteer university students who were educated in physical education and sports teaching, sports management and coaching education departments by convenience sampling method. in order to collect the necessary information, a personal information form was used to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants and “academic selfefficacy scale'', which was conducted by ekici (2012) was used for turkish validity and reliability study. kolmogorov-smirnov test was applied to determine whether the data showed normal distribution. in the analysis of the data, independent sample t test was applied according to gender variable. one-way anova test was used in the analysis of the place where the participants' grew up, age, university, department, class variables and lsd test was used to determine the significant difference. pearson correlation test was used to determine the relationship between academic selfefficacy sub-dimensions and a significant relationship was found. as a result of the study, while there were no differences in terms of gender, age, university and department variables in academic selfefficacy subscales, a significant difference was found in the place where their families lived and class variables. when the results of the study were evaluated; it can be said that demographic variables are not an important factor in academic self-efficacy of the students. keywords: academic self-efficacy, university students, physical education and sports. jel classification: i29. citation | çalık veli koçak; umut canli (2019). investigation of academic self efficacy of university students in the sports area. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 56-62. history: received: 5 october 2018 revised: 13 november 2018 accepted: 18 december 2018 published: 3 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 57 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 57 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 58 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 60 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 61 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.56.62&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/379 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1403-0812 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8603-3492 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/379 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1403-0812 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8603-3492 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/379 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1403-0812 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8603-3492 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/379 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1403-0812 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8603-3492 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/379 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1403-0812 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8603-3492 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 56-62 57 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction the ideas that people have gained through their experiences throughout their lives affect their ability to carry out or not to carry out the same actions in the following years. besides, people's beliefs and trusts about their abilities are shaped by their activities. in other words, the knowledge and skills that people possess are behavioural according to their beliefs about their abilities and capacities (çubukçu and girmen, 2007). 1.1. self-efficacy considering the conceptual aspect of ''self-efficacy'', which bandura (1982) included in social cognitive theory; it is defined as the individual's trust in own abilities to do business individually (kurbanoğlu, 2004). self-efficacy beliefs lead people's behaviours to be related to self-esteem and ability perception. people think whether they will be successful in their job or not as to their abilities. sometimes they might think they're facing a number of constraints (koçak, 2017a; koçak, 2017b). on the other hand, there are some characteristics that make self-efficacy and self-confidence different from each other. the self-confidence of people refers to the awareness of the talent or potential they have. the concept of self-efficacy refers to the perception whether the potential of people can be transformed into a performance (i̇pek and bayraktar, 2009). self-efficacy belief has an important place in the behaviours of people. individuals with high self-efficacy beliefs have high levels of responsibility for solving the problems they face, whereas people with low self-efficacy are often less likely to take responsibility for solving the problems they face. besides, it is stated that individuals with high self-efficacy belief will have a better career line in their professional life (belgi, 2016). wood and bandura (1989) stated that individual's self-efficacy belief is nourished from certain sources and they sorted these resources from the most effective to the least effective as; ''direct experiences'', ''indirect experiences'', ''social or verbal persuasion'' and ''emotional state''. another factor that influences self-efficacy development is education (schwarzer and hallum, 2008). bandura (1982) stated that; self-efficacy belief affects choices of individual's activities, level of efforts, resilience against difficulties and performance. 1.2. academic self-efficacy bandura (1997) defined the academic self-efficacy belief; is to plan the whole of the actions necessary for the educational achievements previously planned and defined as the judgement related to capacity to carry out these actions. in general, academic self-efficacy is considered as an affective element affecting academic achievement (ekici, 2012). students' efficacy beliefs related to their skills ease the ability of students to perform academic tasks such as preparing for the exam, doing homework or preparing projects successfully, and form a part of their academic lives. at this point, it is important to determine the self-efficacy belief that can help students in their academic tasks (kandemir and özbay, 2012). schunk (1991) listed the factors affecting the academic self-efficacy belief as follows: targeting: determining targets and feedback are important cognitive processes in influencing self-efficacy. data processing: the practices by the teacher in these processes have a great effect on the learning and selfefficacy belief of the student. role models: modelling as a result of observation affects the self-efficacy belief of the student. feedback: source, timing, reliability and level are important for self-efficacy belief. awards: the awards associated with the student's success. bassi et al. (2007) reported that students who have high academic self-efficacy beliefs are more willing to perform academic tasks than low students. likewise, it is stated that students with high academic self-efficacy beliefs perform more successfully in academic tasks than students with low self-efficacy beliefs (edmonds, 2002). academic self-efficacy and motivation are the determinants of academic performance. academic self-efficacy is influenced by students' motivations and the quality of this interaction is reflected in academic performance in a positive or negative way (zimmerman et al., 1992). when we look at the information in the literature, it is seen that there are other variables that affect academic achievement and academic self-efficacy in a consistent way. at this point, it is necessary to examine the academic self-efficacy beliefs of the students in terms of some variables that are thought to be related to academic selfefficacy. on the other hand, it has been observed that the researches examining the academic self-efficacy levels of university students studying in the field of sports are limited. in this study, it is aimed to examine the academic self-efficacy of university students studying in the field of sports sciences in terms of gender, university, department, class and place of residence. the research is important in terms of the fact that university students studying in the field of sports at the international and national level are not a subject that is frequently studied in the sample and in this sense they will bring innovation to the literature. 2. method 2.1. model of the research descriptive survey method of research models based on observation was used in this study. this type of research is performed when researchers want to answer the questions they want to find answers and test whether the questions are correct; by developing hypotheses, surveys and scales (can, 2014). 2.2. research group in the 2016-2017 academic year, 386 students from hitit and atatürk university sports sciences faculties and bülent ecevit and cumhuriyet university physical education and sports schools' departments of physical education, sports management and coaching education were enrolled within the scope of the research. in determining the sample size, the sample size of n = 386 was determined by considering krejcie and morgan (1970) asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 56-62 58 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ''sample determination table''. the students were selected by convenience sampling method. information on personal characteristics of students is presented in table 1. table-1. personal information of participants gender f % female 165 42,7 male 221 57,3 university f % hitit university 121 31,3 bülent ecevit university 86 22,3 cumhuriyet university 87 22,5 atatürk university 92 23,8 department f % physical education and sports teaching 286 74,1 sports management 57 14,8 coaching education 43 11,1 class f % 1 103 26,7 2 146 37,8 3 103 26,7 4 34 8,8 students' place of grows f % village 61 15,8 district 142 36,8 province 183 47,4 total 386 100 source: this table is result of our studies. according to table 1, the survey participants consisted of 165 women (42.7%) and 221 men (57.3%). although the percentages of the university where the participants were studying were close to each other, the highest participation was from hitit university with 31.3% and the lowest with 22.3% was from bülent ecevit university. the majority of the participants were 74.1% in the department of physical education and sports and 37.8% in the second year. 47.4% of the participants stated that they grew up in the province, 36.8% in the district and 15.8% in the village. 2.3. data collection tools ''personal information form'' which was created by the researchers was used in the determination of the personal information of the students. the academic self-efficacy scale developed by owen and froman (1988) and studied turkish validity and reliability by ekici (2012) was used to determine the academic self-efficacy levels of the students. ''academic self-efficacy scale “consists of 33 themes and 3 sub-dimensions. the scale consists of three sub-dimensions: ''social status'', ''cognitive practices'' and ''technical skills''. 2. 3. 4. 11. 14. 15. 16. 17. 25. and 27. articles belong to the 'social status' sub-dimension, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 30, 31, 32 and 33 articles to the 'cognitive practices' sub-dimension and 23, 26, 28 and 29 articles belong to the 'technical skills'. in the turkish validity and reliability study, the cronbach alpha value of the scale was found to be 0, 86. the reliability coefficients of the sub-dimensions were found to be 0.88 in the 'social status' sub-dimension, 0.82 in the 'cognitive practices' sub-dimension, and 0.90 in the 'technical skills' sub-dimension (ekici, 2012). 174. data collection tools were applied by the researchers face to face. in practice, participants were required to voluntarily fill data collection tools. 2.4. analysis of data spss 22 program was used in the analysis of the obtained data and kolmogorov-smirnov test was applied to determine whether the data showed normal distribution and the significance level was accepted as 0.05 in the analyses. in the analysis of the data, independent sample t test was applied according to gender variable. one-way anova test was applied in the analysis of the variables of the university, department, class and place where the participants were studying and lsd test was used to determine the significant difference. pearson correlation test was applied to determine the relationship between the academic self-efficacy sub-dimensions. 3. findings table-2. investigation of academic self-efficacy level by gender dimensions gender n ̅ s.s sd t p social status female 165 34,24 5,47 -0,443 384 0,658 male 221 34,51 6,21 cognitive practices female 165 63,73 11,24 1,445 384 0,149 male 221 62,03 11,52 technical skills female 165 12,50 2,96 -1,198 384 0,232 male 221 12,87 2,98 general academic self efficacy female 165 110,47 17,18 0,575 384 0,566 male 221 109,41 18,47 source: this table is result of our studies. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 56-62 59 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group independent sample t-test was applied to determine whether the participants' academic self-efficacy general and sub-dimension levels differed according to gender. according to table 2; cognitive practices (63, 73-62, 03) subdimension and academic self-efficacy general average (110, 47-109, 41) were found to be higher in female participants and there was no significant difference between the academic self-efficacy and sub-dimensions of the students as to gender variable (t=384, p> 0.05). table-3. investigation of academic self-efficacy level according to university dimensions university n ̅ s.s f sd p social status hitit university 121 35,30 5,92 1,378 3 0,249 bülent ecevit university 86 34,00 5,60 cumhuriyet university 87 33,94 5,93 atatürk university 92 34,01 6,06 cognitive practices hitit university 121 63,73 12,47 0,890 3 0,446 bülent ecevit university 86 61,12 11,14 cumhuriyet university 87 62,87 10,26 atatürk university 92 62,90 11,28 technical skills hitit university 121 12,81 3,09 0,129 3 0,943 bülent ecevit university 86 12,65 3,03 cumhuriyet university 87 12,57 2,71 atatürk university 92 12,77 3,03 general academic self efficacy hitit university 121 111,83 19,00 0,903 3 0,440 bülent ecevit university 86 107,77 17,34 cumhuriyet university 87 109,39 16,33 atatürk university 92 109,68 18,43 source: this table is result of our studies. one-way anova analysis was performed to determine whether the participants' academic self-efficacy general and sub-dimension levels differed according to the university variable they were studying. according to table 3, it was found that the academic self-efficacy and sub-dimensions of the participants did not differ significantly according to the university variable (p>0.05). table-4. investigation of academic self-efficacy level according to department dimensions department n ̅ s.s f sd p social status physical education and sports teaching 286 34,44 6,04 0,140 3 0,869 sports management 57 34,04 5,36 coaching education 43 34,60 5,70 cognitive practices physical education and sports teaching 286 62,52 11,78 0,331 3 0,718 sports management 57 63,02 10,34 coaching education 43 64,00 10,47 technical skills physical education and sports teaching 286 12,71 3,00 0,200 3 0,802 sports management 57 12,72 2,85 coaching education 43 12,72 3,02 general academic self efficacy physical education and sports teaching 286 109,66 18,46 0,161 3 0,851 sports management 57 109,77 16,67 coaching education 43 111,33 16,01 source: this table is result of our studies. when table 4 is examined, it is seen that the one-way anova test was conducted to determine whether the academic self-efficacy general and sub-dimension levels differed according to the departments of the university, and the academic self-efficacy and sub-dimensions of the participants did not show a significant difference according to the departments they studied (p>0.05). the one-way anova test was applied to determine whether the academic self-efficacy and sub-dimension levels of the participants differ according to the grade level. according to table 5, there was a significant difference between social status sub-dimension and class level. (f=3.316, sd= 3, p=0.020, p<0.05) social status levels of 3rd grades were determined to be higher ( ̅=35, 81) than 2nd grades ( ̅=33, 59) and 4th grades ( ̅=33, 32). the lsd test was used to determine the difference between the groups and the difference between the 3rd grades and 2nd and 4th grades was significant. it was found that there was no significant difference between the participants' academic self-efficacy general, cognitive practices sub-dimension and technical skills sub-dimension (p>0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 56-62 60 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. investigation of academic self-efficacy level according to class level dimensions class n ̅ s.s f sd p difference social status 1 103 34,49 5,74 3,316 3 0,020* 3-2 3-4 2 146 33,59 6,22 3 103 35,81 5,19 4 34 33,32 6,36 cognitive practices 1 103 63,37 12,31 0,556 3 0,644 2 146 61,98 11,42 3 103 63,54 10,23 4 34 61,85 12,27 technical skills 1 103 12,53 2,73 0,465 3 0,707 2 146 12,74 3,08 3 103 12,95 2,88 4 34 12,41 3,47 general academic self efficacy 1 103 110,39 18,52 1,217 3 0,303 2 146 108,31 18,56 3 103 112,30 15,66 4 34 107,59 19,44 source: this table is result of our studies. table-6. investigation of academic self-efficacy level according to students' place of grew up dimensions students' place of grew up n ̅ s.s f sd p difference social status village 61 33,08 6,21 1,808 2 0,165 district 142 34,65 5,94 province 183 34,63 5,73 cognitive practices village 61 61,20 9,33 0,805 2 0,448 district 142 63,42 12,00 province 183 62,77 11,59 technical skills village 61 11,62 2,72 5,347 2 0,005** 1-2 1-3 district 142 12,76 2,92 province 183 13,04 3,02 general academic self efficacy village 61 105,90 16,37 1,800 2 0,167 district 142 110,83 18,38 province 183 110,44 17,96 source: this table is result of our studies. when table 6 is examined, it is seen that the one-way anova test was conducted to determine whether the academic self-efficacy general and sub-dimension levels of the participants differ according to where their place of grew up. the level of efficacy in the technical skills sub-dimension shows a significant difference according to the type of place of grew up. (f=5,347, sd= 3, p=0.005, p<0.01) in the technical skills sub-dimension, the participants who were village-grown were found to have lower levels of efficacy ( ̅=11, 62) compared to district ( ̅=12, 76) and province ( ̅=13,04). in order to determine the differences between the groups, the lsd test from post hoc tests was performed and the difference between the first group (village) and 2nd (district) and 3rd (province) groups was found significant. it was determined that there was no significant difference between the participants' academic self-efficacy general, social status and cognitive practices sub-dimensions and the place where students grew up (p>0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion in this study, the academic self-efficacy of university students studying in the field of sports is examined; it was determined that academic self-efficacy belief levels of students did not differ significantly according to gender variable. this result is consistent with sahin and çakar (2011) studies on 4th grade undergraduate students and the studies of demir and arı (2013) on primary school teacher candidates. in another study on non-thesis master degree students; azar (2010) concluded that academic self-efficacy beliefs did not show a significant difference according to gender. however, there are studies in the literature that do not show consistency with the results of this research (biricik, 2015; yağcı and aksoy, 2015). tschannen-moran and hoy (2001) stated that variables within the school have a feature that determines self-efficacy more effectively than students' demographics. in this study, it was determined that the academic self-efficacy levels of the students did not show a significant difference according to the education grade. there are no significant differences in the grade level, because it can be thought that the fact that students are in similar developmental periods although they are in different classes, have entered with similar academic achievement level and have similar motivational status. the findings of the class variable of this study are not consistent with the literature. in the literature, it was reported that academic selfefficacy levels of university students differed significantly according to the class variable (fırat-durdukoca, 2010; ağgül-yalçın, 2011) and that the academic self-efficacy levels of the students increased as the grade level increased (yaman et al., 2004; avara, 2015). it was determined that the academic self-efficacy levels of the students who participated in the study did not show a significant difference according to the department variable. even though the students have to study in different departments, it can be thought in the emergence of this result that the students take the special talent exam and get similar education. there are similar studies in the literature that academic self-efficacy levels differed according to the department variable (oğuz, 2012; alemdağ et al., 2014; koçer, 2014; biricik, 2015; yağcı and aksoy, 2015; pekel, 2016). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 56-62 61 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it was determined that the students had a significant difference according to their place of grew up. according to the findings, in 'technical skills' sub-dimension, it was determined that self-efficacy level of the students who were raised in the district or province was higher than the students who were educated in the village. in the literature, no positive or negative consistency was found with the results of this study. the basis of this result is that the academic equipment of the students who were educated in the village were lower compared to the students who were educated in the provinces and districts and the low level of education they received before the university may be considered. this finding also suggests that social life in large cities may affect learning and indirectly contribute to academic self-efficacy belief. in this study, the academic self-efficacy of university students studying in the field of sports is examined; it was concluded that the academic self-efficacy levels of the students showed a significant difference according to the place of residence; however, showed no significant differences as to gender, university, department and class variables. according to these findings, it can be said that socio-demographic variables are not a significant determinant of the academic self-efficacy levels of the students studying in the field of sports science. it is gratifying that showing no differences in their academic self-efficacy according to gender, university, department and class for the university students who are studying in the field of sports sciences, at the point of reaching the goal of the trainings which are given. however, it is thought-provoking that academic self-efficacy differs according to the place where the students grow up. therefore, it 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2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.45.50 home field advantage calculation for physical education and sport students tuğbay inan1 1dokuz eylul university, school of sport science and technology, izmir, turkey abstract it is a well-established fact that playing at home field is an advantageous condition for professional sport teams. for this reason, the home field advantage in team sports is an important issue to be explored. it is also one of the different topics that physical education and sports students can use when they want to perform performance analysis on various sports branches in the future. the concept of home field advantage is determined by the ratio of the points the teams get from matches played at home field compared to the overall points obtained at the end of the season. only when this advantage ratio is over 50% can we talk about such a benefit. the aim of this study is to show students how to calculate home field advantage in football in the physical education and sports departments in universities with turkish super league example. for this reason, 30 seasons and n = 18,052 matches from 1987 to 2017 were analyzed. data were obtained from tff.org, turkey football federation's official website. according to the results obtained, home-playing teams were found to score over 50% in the light of all seasons analyzed. in the study, the mean home team advantage was found to be 61.4 ± 2.95%. when the literature is examined, it presents similar results with this study. at the end of the study, it was also found that there are different variables by which both the home playing team and the visiting team are influenced when determining the home advantage. keywords: turkish super league, home field advantage, football, performance analysis. jel classification: l83, z20. citation | tuğbay i̇nan (2018). home field advantage trend in turkish football super league (1987-2017). asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 45-50. history: received: 16 january 2018 revised: 1 february 2018 accepted: 7 february 2018 published: 13 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 46 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 46 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 46 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 47 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 49 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.45.50&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3573-8086 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3573-8086 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 45-50 46 1. introduction statistical techniques have begun to be used in all areas of life, parallel to the advances in technology. different analysis techniques are used in the evaluation of sports competitions. the inability to predict the results of a game in many sport branches has particularly led the trainers to focus on new approaches in performance analysis. in essence, it is possible to develop tactics for the match, especially by collecting and analyzing various statistical data about competitors before a sports competition the aim of this study is to show how students who study in physical education and sports departments especially in universities can calculate the home field advantage in football in order to use in professional life in the future with turkish super league example. although the home field advantage is an important factor in determining the results of football matches, the exact reasons for this are not yet clear. in recent years, intensive research has been carried out on sports economy. the home field advantage has also become a subject, about whose existence the football players, the technical team, the fans and the media organizations talk from time to time, but they can not exactly be sure of its existence. the existence of a home field advantage has become known and explored since 1866, when the first game, in which some of today's football rules were determined, was played. the fact that the first scientific studies of the quantitative definition of the advantage of being a home team in sports was made about 40 years ago actually reveals the extent of the scientific interest the subject has aroused. schwartz and barsky (1977) and edwards (1979) investigated the causes and effects of the advantage of being home team in various sports branches. when these resources were examined, it was seen that there were implications that the crowd involvement effect created by the audiences coming to the games as a spectator also has an impact on the home field advantage. however, some studies suggest that the crowd involvement factor alone will not be sufficient to contribute to the home field advantage (dowie, 1982; pollard, 1986) the studies have mostly examined the social impact of density of the crowd in sports venues and the advantage of this density on being the home team. however, pollard (2008) in his study notes that the first quantitative research on the football was made by morris in 1981. the advantage of being a home team, as a still up-to-date subject of interest, has become the main theme of different sports branches in sports economy studies. the detailed literature review reveals that the home field advantage in various sports branches has been investigated through social, psychological and quantitative methods. when the studies related to the subject are examined, it is emphasized that the advantage of being a home team in team sports is especially important. for example, regarding basketball, (greer, 1983; jurkovac, 1983) dealt with a different dimension of home field advantage in university basketball, stating that the majority of players feel better and safer while playing in front of the active and supportive audience crowd. jones (2007) analyzed the quarters and extra time of all matches played in nba for two seasons. various researchers have attempted to investigate the effect of factors on being home team in such sports activities as football (nevill and holder, 1999) volleyball (marcelino et al., 2009) rugby (thomas et al., 2008) baseball (adams and kupper, 1994). 2. method the matches played in 30 seasons between 1987-1988 and 2016-2017 seasons of turkey super league, the top league in turkey football league, were analyzed. the league, initially founded as "national league" in 1959, used 2point system between 1959 and 1987. according to this system, the winning team got 2 points and 1 point for the draw, while the beaten team could not earn points. first put into practice in england in 1981, 3-point system has been in practice in turkey since the 1987-1988 season. starting from the 1987-1988 season, the system has been used, in which the beating team is awarded 3 points for a win, 1 point when the game is draw, and no points for a loss. in the study, a total of n = 18,052 matches for 30 seasons in which 3-point system were used were analyzed. the analyzed data was obtained from turkey football federation's official website (www.tff.org.). turkey's professional soccer league teams are required to play with other teams twice, one in their home, one in the other team's field. such league programs are scheduled to ensure a neutral home field advantage. there were 20 teams in the 1987-1988 season in turkey super league, while 19 in 1988-1989, 18 in 1989-1990, 16 teams in the 4 seasons between 1990-1994 and 18 teams in 1994-2017 season. in this study, pollard's method, which he specified in 2006, was used to determine the home field advantage. according to the method; it is said that the scheduling of a league where each team plays home and away the same number of times is important for the balance of the league. calculation of home field advantage in a balanced league is expression of total points earned by teams as the percentage at the end of the season. the total points earned from all matches. as a result of the calculation, if the ratio is 50%, it indicates that success has been achieved equally at home and away, and it means that there is no home field advantage. this figure indicates that there is no home field advantage under 50%, whereas the same figure indicates home field advantage once this percentage is above 50%. it can be said that the home field advantage also increases as this number grows. all data obtained in the study were created by calculating frequency and percentage values in spss 20.0 program. 3. results the teams played once as a home team and once as a visiting team in the other team's field. since the 19941995 season there are 18 teams in the super league. hence a team played with the other teams 17 times as the visiting team and 17 times as the home team until the end of the season. the main finding of super league was the percentage (61,407%) as an average of 30 seasons. this average is over 50% as pollard (2006) points out. when analyzed in light of these data, home field advantage for the teams in turkey super league throughout the 30 seasons was observed to be a very important factor. figure 1 shows the distribution of the seasons between 1987-2017 in turkey super league and the calculated home field advantage. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 45-50 47 figure1. matches distribution in turkish super league and calculation results of home field advantage according to the results in table 1, in all seasons analyzed, there is an advantage of over 50% for the teams playing at home. the season with the highest level of home advantage was detected to be the 1994-1995 season (67,6%). again, during the 30 seasons, the season with the least advantage was determined as the 2005-2006 season (55,3%) in which 306 games were played. table1. matches distribution in turkish super league and calculation results of home field advantage season number of matches home wins away wins draws home field advantage% 1987-1988 380 198 80 102 67,052 1988-1989 342 190 78 74 67,647 1989-1990 306 158 80 68 63,764 1990-1991 240 113 57 70 62,923 1991-1992 240 116 65 59 61,573 1992-1993 240 110 74 56 58,132 1993-1994 240 128 61 51 65,022 1994-1995 306 168 68 70 67,688 1995-1996 306 147 90 69 60,07 1996-1997 306 159 81 76 63,732 1997-1998 306 151 76 79 63,408 1998-1999 306 148 86 72 60,992 1999-2000 306 147 89 70 60,259 2000-2001 306 153 86 67 61,809 2001-2002 306 148 78 71 63,507 2002-2003 306 144 80 73 61,401 2003-2004 306 142 98 66 57,746 2004-2005 306 151 84 71 61,865 2005-2006 306 128 98 80 55,369 2006-2007 306 144 73 89 62,846 2007-2008 306 149 87 70 60,967 2008-2009 306 147 87 72 60,638 2009-2010 306 137 89 80 58,591 2010-2011 306 135 94 76 57,125 2011-2012 306 143 87 76 61,401 2012-2013 306 139 82 85 60,264 2013-2014 306 145 80 81 61,648 2014-2015 306 132 90 84 57,554 2015-2016 306 144 84 78 60,71 2016-2017 306 138 101 67 56,52 4. discussion the home field advantage is perceived as an important phenomenon that is caused by many factors of interaction. due to these reasons, this phenomenon worldwide is a complicated issue with different findings such as showing variations from country to country and league to league. this study was carried out to determine the significance of the home field advantage in turkey super league, the top league of the country. according to pollard (1986) in the review of the british league between 1888 and 1984, it was seen that home field advantage in one hundred year dropped from 67.9% to 63.9%, leading to a drop rate of 4%. courneya and carron (1992) found that the winning percentage of home teams was 3.5 percent for baseball, 57.3 percent for american football, 61.1 percent for hockey, 64.4 percent for basketball and 69 percent for football. following this work, carron and hausenblas (1998) reported that home field advantage exists both in professional and amateur sports, as well as in the individual and team sports, to the home team's favor. at the same time, he stated that this advantage could apply to international competitions. marques (2002) pointed out that the tendency to reduce the performance of teams while playing at home field during the 1960-2001 season in the portuguese football league caused a significant increase in the draws. at the same time, he emphasizes that the teams have started to gain an improvement in their performances, especially asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 45-50 48 when playing away since the early nineties. pollard and pollard (2005) stated that the percentage for being home team is between 60% and 65% in most of the countries playing soccer in europe. in his 2008 study, pollard noted that this home advantage has declined in the major leagues in europe over the last 15 years. this data indicates that there is a continuous downward trend over time, that is, the percentage of advantages in the home field gradually decreases with years. in a study conducted by garcia et al. (2013) it was found that the mean home team advantage in 32 out of 52 uefa countries was 61.5%. as the countries where home field advantage was over 60%, bosnia and herzegovina was found to be 76.10%, macedonia 63.23%, albania 63.18%, croatia 61.29%, bulgaria 60.99% and kazakhstan 60.32%. again, while this study suggested that there was no advantage of being home team since the mean value was under 50%, gomez, 2014 stated that there were some calculation errors in this study. in his study in 2017, leitte reviewed football leagues in ten different countries during the 2015-2016 seasons. according to results from this research, belgium, spain and turkey stand out as the countries where there is a home field advantage over 60%. according to this study, the russian league was found to be the lowest league with 55.3% of this home field advantage. in this study, the mean home field advantage was determined to be 58%. in this study by examining the total 3223 matches from 10 football leagues in europe, the home field advantage was found to be 61.2% in spain, 61% in turkey, 60.7% in belgium, 59.3% in italy, 57.5% in the netherlands, 57% in france, 56.4% in portugal, 56.2% in germany, 56% in england and 55.3% in russia. seckin and pollard (2008) detected in their study that the home field advantage in turkey super league(61.5%) and that of english premier league (61.0%) showed similarities, on the other hand armatas and pollard (2014) stated in their study they carried out on greece super league the mean home field advantage of 17 seasons was 65.89%. when examining these studies on home advantage in football, it seems that the numbers are close to each other. however, the fact that the studies are carried out in different time periods in different countries, the formation of different league level and quality, the different levels of competition within the leagues show that home field advantage is influenced by many different factors. one of the problems in identifying the home field advantage is that it is affected by different variables and that these variables interact with each other. it is difficult to investigate, isolate and quantify these variables. however, factors considered to have significant influence among these the variables mentioned in the literature were taken into consideration. 4.1. crowd effect the crowd effect can be defined as the noise or cheering that spectators create in different forms to affect the performance of the athletes in the field as well as the number and density of spectators. especially, large number of spectators coming to stadiums are said to have positive impact on the performance of the home team. schwartz and barsky (1977) argue that the more spectators in a competition, the greater the likelihood of success for the home team. according to, it was stated by pollard and pollard (2005) that this advantage can reach up to 12% from time to time. carmichael and thomas (2005) supported this, suggesting that football teams playing at their own stadiums displayed more effective shootings and aggressive games. gould et al. (1999) stated that the players are motivated by their ability to show their talents and their enthusiasm. when several studies available in the literature were examined, it was found that the number of spectators on their own fields brings more advantage for the home team. in general, most of the current studies support that a collective support for home teams is a factor that positively influences the performance of teams. in addition; the fact that the large number of spectators in the matches can affect the visiting team psychologically, which can negatively affect the performances of the team players. in addition, the pressure by the spectators will affect the decisions made by the referees. 4.2. referee bias it is known that one of the important variables affecting the home field advantage in football is referee bias. nevill et al.'s found in his studies dated (1996) and (2002) that the referees give decisions in favor of the home team and that there is an increase in the number of fouls given against the visiting team. also, some studies have shown us that the referees show more yellow and red cards to the players of the visiting teams, and they give more penalty desicions for the home team (nevill et al., 1996; boyko et al., 2007; poulter, 2009; goumas, 2012). nevill and holder (1999) revealed some evidence that the referees could be affected by the noise created by the fans of the home team. football leagues in scotland (nevill et al., 1996) uk (carmichael and thomas, 2005) in turkey (seckin and pollard, 2008) and germany (unkelbach and memmert, 2010) were analyzed in terms of frequency of disciplinary sanctions imposed by the referees and it was shown that the visiting teams received more sanctions than the home teams. in addition, referees may not be able to see behaviors that contradict sportsmanship or other disciplinary provisions, in some cases, due to their position on the field. if they cannot make a decision for such reasons, some situations might arise in which they are directed to take the final decision under the influence of the spectators. on the other hand, referees who have to preside over matches in the top leagues of countries, or in international competitions, face various difficulties from time to time. they spend a lot of time and receive long training sections specifically to preside over the matches in international competitions or in european and world cups. in fact, the referees are practicing as much as the players on the field. in some special circumstances they preside over a very important game in their league a few days after doing the same in an international match. this leads to another dominant variant that contributes to the home team's advantage. travel effect affects footballers as well as referees. 4.3. travel effect some studies in europe argue that travel effect does not explain the home field advantage rates in the matches held within the country (dowie, 1982; pollard, 1986; courneya and carron, 1992; smith et al., 2000). however, asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 45-50 49 clarke and norman (1995) stated that the distance between the home and visiting team is another is another variable that increases the home field advantage (n = 10,153 matches). perhaps today, especially the access to advanced transport infrastructure of european countries shortens the travel time in the country. the travel possibilities in european countries with well-developed transport infrastructure have made the travels of the clubs faster, safer and more comfortable. it is stated that these short trips will cause less fatigue and that footballers will feel more comfortable psychologically compared to the games to be played away (waters and lovell, 2002). apart from that, intercontinental competitions such as europe and world cups which might require quite long and tiring travels can cause physical and psychological stress on football players. such variables as being away from home or country and the adjustment process caused by differences (jet-lag) need to be examined as factors affecting the situation. 4.4. familiarity with venue another variable that influences the home field advantage is the familiarity with venue where the competition will be played. some researchers say that this variable is an important factor that can explain the home field advantage (clarke and norman, 1995) according to pollard (1986) familiarity can account for 24% of the home field advantage. when home field advantage is analyzed in terms of familiarity with the location, the home team gains a greater spatial awareness than the visiting athlete or team. the knowledge of specific conditions, such as wind, sun's positions and visual references previously obtained, provides benefits when preparing tactics or playing for the home team (dowie, 1982; pollard, 1986; pollard and pollard, 2005; dosseville, 2007) apart from that, there is some evidence showing that the climatic conditions and altitude of that area have positive effects in favor of the home team (pollard et al., 2008; seckin and pollard, 2008). the home field advantage is an issue that has been a subject of interest in individual and team sports for many years. according to many studies carried out, it is the subject of research in many team sports including football. this variable is also influenced by many factors in the football branch which is mentioned the most in terms of name and content in the world. on the other hand, these factors interact with each other. such variables as the influence of the spectators, the referee bias, the familiarity with the venue, the travel effect, etc. can be counted as effective factors. according to the data obtained in this study, the home field advantage in turkey super league is seen to be over 50% positive for the entire 1987-2017 analysis of the 30 football seasons. in turkey super league, playing at home field provides an advantage in the results of the games. 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=travel%20and%20the%20home%20advantage%20in%20professional%20sports http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/ssj.17.4.364 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=advantage%20in%20the%20six%20nations%20rugby%20union%20tournament https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=crowd%20noise%20as%20a%20cue%20in%20referee%20decisions%20contributes%20to%20the%20home%20advantage http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jsep.32.4.483 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=an%20examination%20of%20the%20homefield%20advantage%20in%20a%20professional%20english%20soccer%20team%20from%20a%20psychological%20standpoint 132 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 132-136, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.132.136 the effect of the web based digital story applications on the digital literacy levels of turkish teacher candidates halil erdem çocuk1  tugba yanpar yelken2 ( corresponding author) 1,2mersin university turkey abstract the technological developments that have directed 21st century skills have brought new content and dimension to narrative by integrating story narration, one of the earliest verbal narrative skills of mankind, with digital technology. the purpose of this study is to determine the effect of web-based digital story preparation on the literacy self-efficacy perceptions of turkish teacher candidates in the digital media using pre-test, posttest, experimental-control group and semiexperimental design. a total of 60 teacher candidates, including 30 experimental groups and 30 control groups attending to the teaching principles and methods course in mersin university education faculty turkish education department participated in the study in 2016-2017 academic year. the research data were collected by the "digital media-oriented literacy selfefficacy scale" developed by the researchers. as a result of the study, digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy levels were observed to increased in both groups. however, a statistically significant difference was found only between pre-test and post-test scores of the self-efficacy perceptions of the turkish teacher candidates who prepared a web-based digital story in the cooperative learning approach. it is suggested regarding the results of the study that in other studies, digital storytelling approach can be utilized by taking into consideration the content of both field and cultural courses, and also that researchers can investigate the effects of digital storytelling in terms of various variables. keywords: turkish education, digital literacy, digital story, cooperative learning, digital material preparation. citation | halil erdem çocuk; tugba yanpar yelken (2018). the effect of the web based digital story applications on the digital literacy levels of turkish teacher candidates. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 132-136. history: received: 22 december 2017 revised: 16 march 2018 accepted: 19 march 2018 published: 21 march 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this article is supported by mersin university with the project code 2016-2-tp3-1927. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 133 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 134 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 134 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 135 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 135 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.132.136&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0027-4223 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=tugba yanpar yelken https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0027-4223 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=tugba yanpar yelken https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0027-4223 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=tugba yanpar yelken asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 132-136 133 1. introduction the technological developments that have directed 21st century skills have brought new content and dimension to narrative by integrating story narration, one of the earliest verbal narrative skills of mankind, with digital technology. lambert (2010) took the lead in the creation of stories using digital media and began to call this process digital narrative. a lot of definitions are encountered when examining the literature about digital narrative. according to armstrong (2003) digital narration is sharing of information transfer or storytelling through media. digital storytelling is usually the creation of short films from personal narratives and reflection of these films on television, computer screens or projectors (davis, 2002). mellon (1999) describes digital storytelling as combining storytelling with multimedia software techniques. according to dreon et al. (2011) digital narration is the creation of storytelling art supported by different means. it seems that these definitions actually cover far-reaching actions that the technology at that time makes possible. today, it is possible to refer to a new structure that is created in computer environment rather than reflecting the digital narrative with the projector, including personal and historical events as well as educational contents. in the educational context, digital storytelling is a short story that students create by using visual and auditory multimedia facilities and environments (meadows, 2003; bull and kajder, 2004; robin, 2006). robin and pierson (2005) also described digital storytelling as the creation of meaningful stories that capture the imagination of students and teachers and praise their experiences. in addition, because digital narration can reach millions of readers via the internet, the impact size is greater than other materials (standley, 2003). there are many types of digital stories in the literature. however, robin (2006) collects digital narrative types under three main headings: informative and instructive narratives, personal (reflective) narratives and historical narratives. on the other hand, garrety (2008) distinguishes five sets of digital stories: traditional narratives, didactic narratives, project-based narratives, social justice and cultural narratives, and finally narratives reflecting one's inner world. there are also a number of constitutive items in digital narration. lambert (2010) identified seven items for the creation of effective digital stories: point of view, striking question, emotional content, use of sound, music, economy and rhythm. another concept that 21st century skills have brought forward is digital media literacy. both literacy and digital media-oriented literacy concepts are indeed a reflection of the changing technological process. this reflection is more noticeable in the context of educational technologies. according to karakoyun (2014) in particular, students need to learn how to use 21st-century tools to effectively use multimedia content and digital content, starting from primary education. students growing in the 21st century society are individuals with high expectations demanding that schools with technology infrastructure, use of digital media in lessons, group work, game-centered learning and adaptation of learners to individuals (kerr, 2005; oblinger and oblinger, 2005; ohler, 2006; moyle and owen, 2009). gils (2005) emphasizes that the use of digital story in education has many benefits. these benefits are described as different from traditional methods, personalizing learning, increasing student participation, making real life situations easier and cheaper, and making learning of subjects more interesting. it is also thought that the arrangement of the mother tongue education according to the abovementioned contents can be an important factor in the realization of the 21st century learning. because of the nature of mother tongue education, it gives opportunity to media use, group work and game centered activities. the development of reading, speaking, listening and writing activities in the digital environment starting from the primary school is expected to have a positive impact on both mother tongue education and how the digital world should be used. however, the number of the research in the field of digital story and digital media-oriented reading, especially in the context of language education falls short. digital narration, however, is functional in that both prospective teachers are able to maintain the development of the 21st century skills and it is an effective material tool. the creation of a techno pedagogical educational environment for language education, the use of digital stories in the development of digital literacy in 21st century skills and the testing of educational reflections of these processes are leading priorities of the study. there are many studies on digital narration. yavuz (2015) investigated the effect of creating digital story on resistance behaviours and learning approaches of teacher candidates. sadik (2008) and razmi et al. (2014) studied the effect of preparing digital stories on language skills of learners while yanpar et al. (2015) examined the effects of preparing digital stories on technological pedagogical field knowledge of teacher candidates, çıralı (2014) investigated the effect of digital storytelling on students' visual memory capacity and writing skills, and balaman (2016) studied the influence of digital storytelling on students' attitudes towards teaching techniques. use of digital story in open learning systems is argued by yüzer and kılınç (2015) while digital story narration as a means of expression is discussed by küngerü (2016) the changing nature of storytelling through technology during teaching process by kocaman (2015) and digital narration in children as a technology-focused visual communication and a dynamic way of visual communication by bedir (2017). in addition to these studies, there are also academic studies in which digital story is taken in different fields such as the use of digital story as a material designing tool (yürük and atici, 2016) and digital story use in foreign language education (tatlı and aksoy, 2016). in these studies, there was no study in which native language education and digital literacy were associated with digital story. in the context of the literature review above, the aim of this research is to determine the effects of web-based digital story writing on the perceptions of turkish teacher candidates on digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy. the main problem of the research for this purpose is the question "what is the effect of web-based digital story preparation in the course of instructional principles and methods of turkish teacher candidates on digital media-focused literacy self-efficacy perceptions?" the other subproblems underlying the main problem are listed as follows: 1) is there a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of self-efficacy perceptions of turkish teacher candidates who prepare a web-based digital story in collaborative learning approach? 2) is there a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of self-efficacy perceptions of turkish teacher candidates who prepare course activities based on collaborative learning approach? asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 132-136 134 2. method the pre-test, post-test, test-control group and semi-experimental design were used in the study that examines the effect of web-based digital story preparation of the turkish teacher candidates in the course of instructional principles and methods on their digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy perceptions. the experimental model is a research area under the control of the researcher where the data desired to be observed for discovering the causeand-effect relationships between variables are produced (büyüköztürk, 2007; karasar, 2016). semi-experimental design is the most commonly used experimental design, especially in the field of education, where it is not possible to control all variables. in this model, groups are formed as experimental and control groups by unbiased assignment (büyüköztürk, 2007; balcı, 2016). because the semi-experimental design was used in the research, universe and sample were not selected; instead, study groups were taken and the equality of groups was emphasized. in the control group, the instructional principles and methods course was continued while, in the experimental group, web based digital story applications were realized. the research design of the research process is shown in table 1. table-1. research design group matching pre-test process post-test experimental group (g1) academic achievement scores digital mediaoriented literacy self-efficacy scale creating a web based digital story with collaborative learning approach digital mediaoriented literacy selfefficacy scale control group (g2) academic achievement scores digital mediaoriented literacy self-efficacy scale course activities based on collaborative learning approach digital mediaoriented literacy selfefficacy scale 2.1. data collection tools the research data were collected with the "digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy scale" developed by researchers. the alpha reliability of the scale is 0.94, while the reliability of the factors are 0.911; 0.897; 0,857 and 0,761 respectively. 2.2. participants 60 of the 2nd grade students who attended in the teaching principles and methods course in mersin university education faculty turkish education department in the 2016-2017 academic year participated in this study. 3. findings whether there is a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of self-efficacy perceptions of turkish teacher candidates who prepare a web-based digital story in collaborative learning approach was examined. the t-test results for the related samples are shown in table 2 to determine whether there is a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of the digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy perceptions of the teacher candidates in the experimental group. table-2. experiment group digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy scale difference between pre-test and post-test n x s sd t p pre-test 37 74,21 11,05 36 -2,53 ,016 post-test 37 80,81 10,46 as seen in table 2, the arithmetic mean of the pre-test scores of the teacher candidates' digital media-oriented self-efficacy scale is x=74,21; s=11.05 while their arithmetic mean of the post-test scores is x=80,81, s=10,46. considering the arithmetic mean, it seems that there is an increase in favour of the post-test in the digital mediaoriented self-efficacy of the experimental group after the application. according to this result, it can be said that the digital media-oriented self-efficacy beliefs of teacher candidates are quite high. in addition, it can be indicated that there is a significant difference (t(36)=-2,53; p=0,016<0,05) between the pre-test scores and the post-test scores of the prospective teachers and this increase is in favour of the post-test. whether there is a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of self-efficacy perceptions of turkish teacher candidates who prepare course activities based on collaborative learning approach was examined. the t-test results for the related samples are shown in table 3 to determine whether there is a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of the digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy perceptions of the teacher candidates in the control group. table-3. control group digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy scale difference between pre-test and post-test n x s sd t p pre-test 37 70,29 13,97 36 -1,309 ,199 post-test 37 74,21 11,05 as seen in table 3, the arithmetic mean of the pre-test scores of the teacher candidates' digital media-oriented self-efficacy scale is x=70,29; s=13,97 while their arithmetic mean of the post-test scores is x=74,21; s=11,05. regarding the arithmetic mean, it seems that there is an increase in favour of the post-test in the digital mediaoriented self-efficacy of the control group after the application. according to this result, it can be said that the digital media-oriented self-efficacy beliefs of teacher candidates are quite high; however, this difference is not statistically significant (t(36)=-2,53; p=0,016 <0,05). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 132-136 135 4. discussion in this study which aims to investigate the effects of web-based digital story preparation on turkish teacher candidates' digital literacy self-efficacy perceptions, teacher candidates were made to create digital stories according to the curriculum of their field. within this context, the teacher candidates in the experimental group prepared their weekly lessons using digital story applications, while the control group prepared lesson plans. both groups were applied “digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy scale” for pre-test and post-test. an increase was observed in digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy levels in both groups as a result of the applications at the end of the semester. however, a statistically significant difference was found only between pre-test and post-test scores of the self-efficacy perceptions of the turkish teacher candidates who prepared a web-based digital story in the cooperative learning approach. there may be some inferences about the increase in both groups. although digital story is not used in the control group, digital media-oriented literacy self-efficacy levels show an increase in the arithmetic average; however, there is no statistical difference. the reason for this may be the indirect use of digital media in the preparation of teacher candidates' weekly assignments. while preparing the weekly lesson plans, the teacher candidates made researches in order to reach the information they needed, organized the information they obtained, added the pictures according to the contents of the lesson plan and tried to form a meaningful whole. it is inevitable that teacher candidates are not affected by the digital media in these processes. there are some studies about the effect of digital narrative on digital literacy in the field of literature. according to dogan (2012) students think that digital storytelling develops technological skills and media literacy the most. besides, ohler (2006) stated that digital narrative is a powerful tool to teach media literacy. jakes (2006) also took 21st century skills in four categories: digital age literacy, creative thinking, effective communication, and high productivity, and stated that digital narrative helped them earn these skills. michalski et al. (2005) found that digital storytelling improves the students’ written and verbal communication skills and increases their level of software knowledge and technology use. in his work, balaman (2016) found that digital literacy has evolved in a positive way, particularly in the context of questioning technology literacy and the process of visual communication, with visual literacy being effectively implemented. daigle (2008) stated that digital narrative requires knowledge of technology, writing skills and creativity. in addition, the digital narrative approach provides active participation of students and have positive effects by improving effective communication skills (robin, 2008; coutinho, 2010; gyabak and godina, 2011) aiding students to use communication technologies effectively (jakes and brennan, 2005) enabling different literacy areas in early childhood to be used effectively with technology integration (bratitsis et al., 2012; graham et al., 2012; hung et al., 2012) and 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work in physical education and sport teachers’ perceptions of success aydın karaçam1 1istanbul aydın university, faculty of sport sciences, i̇stanbul, turkey abstract the aim of the study is to determine the effect of zest for work on physical education teachers' perceptions of success and examine it together with some demographic variables. the study is a descriptive study using relational screening design. the sample of the study consists of 402 physical education teachers, 38% (n: 151) female and 62% (n: 251) male, employed within the ministry of national education in ankara and it was selected by stratified sampling method. the "perception of success scale" and the "zest for work scale" developed by erdoğan (2013) were used to measure physical education teachers' perceptions of success and their zest for work levels, respectively. analysis of the data was conducted via spss 21 package program. significance level was taken as p<.05. according to the results of the study, physical education teachers' zest for work levels significantly predicted their perceptions of success. there was a positive and significant relationship between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and their zest for work levels. it was found a positive and significant relationship between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and their ages. physical education teachers' perceptions of success and their zest for work levels showed a significant difference in favor of female teachers according to the variable of gender. there was no significant difference between physical education teachers' zest for work levels and their ages and the level of institution. it was found no significant difference between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and the level of institution. keywords: physical education teacher, perception of success, zest for work, teacher, physical education, education citation | aydın karaçam (2018). zest for work in physical education and sport teachers’ perceptions of success. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 391-395. history: received: 21 july 2018 revised: 3 september 2018 accepted: 11 october 2018 published: 6 november 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 392 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 392 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 393 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 394 5. result ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 394 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 395 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 395 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.391.395&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1532 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1532 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1532 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 391-395 392 1. introduction physical education teachers are responsible for the cognitive, affective and psycho-motor developments of their students (thomas and coral, 1982; tamer and pulur, 2001; yetim, 2005). there is a vital link between physical development and mental, social and emotional development. the investment made for children's physical health can also be considered as an investment for their mental, social and emotional developments ((thomas and coral, 1982; ozakpınar, 1987; yetim, 2005). it is aimed to raise healthy individuals by gaining a lifelong sports habit to children in physical education courses (günışık, 1973; ozmen, 1999; kale and ersen, 2003). besides, demirhan (2003) emphasizes that the basic functions and goals of physical education is to provide mental development and emotional balance, to socialize the individual by providing more productivity, to gain the individual the ability to solve the problems to be encountered in life, to make the individual adapted to nature, to make the individual realize himself, and to gain the individual body culture, and to provide social integration around the ideals. in this context, physical education teachers are among the most important parts of the education system. thus, it is important for physical education teachers to maintain their profession happily and successfully in terms of the development and success of their students. in this context, the variables that will enable the physical education teachers to carry out their professions happily and successfully must be well known. in recent years, in the studies of education, it has been shown that teachers' positive attitudes are associated with their achievements (erdoğan, 2013; sezgin and erdogan, 2015; karaçam, 2016; karaçam et al., 2017). therefore, the perception of success and zest for work, which are among the variables of positive psychology, were emphasized in the present study. the term "success" varies significantly depending on what is understood from this concept (demirtaş and çınar, 2004). however, it is clear what is understood from the term "successful teacher" (sezgin and erdogan, 2015). according to seker et al. (2005) teachers with competencies such as mastery in the field, personality traits, teaching, classroom management, planning, evaluation, technological awareness, communication, and guidance are thought to be desirable and successful teachers. on the other hand, for a physical education teacher, it is considered that a successful teacher should have a fit body, the competence to do the necessary academic orientations and a stable psychological state (thomas and coral, 1982; martens, 1998; tamer and pulur, 2001; demirhan, 2003). concerns about the future of education are directly related to those who prefer to be engaged in the field of education. in this context, it is important to know the factors that affect teachers' perceptions of success positively or adversely (bresnahan, 1997). the term "pleasure" derived from positive psychology is a concept that has recently been introduced into educational sciences. for all professions, the idea of pleasure can be associated with the job. pleasure foresees the job satisfaction and the life satisfaction (hoy and tarter, 2011). job satisfaction is defined as a pleasant or positive emotional state resulting from an individual's job or work experiences (lent and brown, 2006). life satisfaction can be mentioned as a general feeling of well-being (lent et al., 2011). the characteristic that distinguishes the concept of zest for work from job satisfaction is vitality. vitality is related to certain positive feelings like happiness, interest, and enthusiasm. vitality is differed from happiness and feeling good in terms of a high level of activation or energy (weinstein and ryan, 2009). according to josephson and vingård (2007) the concept of zest for work derives from the concept of pleasure of life and means the level of enthusiasm and satisfaction from the current working condition. the concept of zest for work can be interpreted as a broader concept than job satisfaction. besides satisfaction, it contains stronger emotions about enthusiasm and job satisfaction (erdoğan, 2013; sezgin and erdogan, 2015). when the concept of zest for work is considered, the lack of studies on zest for work in the related literature attracts attention. according to the results of a study conducted, there was a negative relationship between zest for work and job stress (josephson and vingård, 2007). in their studies, erdoğan (2013) and sezgin and erdogan (2015) found that teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work levels were positively related to each other. in addition, erdoğan (2013) and sezgin and erdogan (2015) showed that high levels of teachers' zest for work affects student achievement, and makes them feel important and followed by students in their pursuit of desired goals. from the above studies, it can be concluded that physical education teachers’ perceptions of success and zest for work are critical. studies reveal that the physical education teachers’ perceptions of success and zest for work levels are associated with the achievement of their students. zest for work and perception of success will enable physical education teachers to feel important and to be followed by students in their pursuit of desired goals. for this reason, it was aimed to determine the effect of zest for work on physical education teachers' perceptions of success and the relationship with each other in terms of certain demographic variables. 2. method 2.1. design this study was conducted using the relational screening design. although relational studies do not prove the existence of causality in a real sense, it is possible to make inferences about the cause-and-effect relationship by utilizing some advanced statistical techniques (fraenkel and wallen, 2009). 2.2. population and sample the population of the study was comprised of physical education teachers who are employed in public middle schools and high schools in ankara. the number of teachers in the population of the study is 1953 according to the data of 2016-2017 academic year. the sample was selected using a stratified sampling method. in this process, it was minded to select participants according to the ratio of the number of teachers in each district to the total number of teachers in the city center. the sample is comprised of total 402 physical education teachers 38% (n=151) female and 62% (n=251) male. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 391-395 393 2.3. data collection tools in this study, “the perception of success scale” developed by erdoğan (2013) was utilized to measure physical education teachers’ perceptions of success, and “the zest for work scale” developed by erdoğan (2013) was utilized to measure their zest for work levels. 2.3.1. the perception of success scale (pss) “the perception of success scale” developed by erdoğan (2013) was utilized to measure physical education teachers’ perceptions of success. the scale has 12 five-point likert type items. according to efa and cfa results, the variance explained for the pss was 43.11% and cronbach's alpha coefficient was .85. according to efa results, it was found that the scale items were clustered under a single factor. the results of cfa to confirm the singlefactor structure of the pss showed that the fit factor indices of the single-factor structure were acceptable. (2/sd = 1.39, rmsea = .05, cfi = .98, gfi = .92). in the analyzes made for the fitness of this scale for this sample group, cronbach's alpha coefficient was found to be .87, while the variance explained for the pss was 46.11%. according to the results of efa applied to the scale, scale items were clustered in a single-factor. the cfa results for validating the single-factor structure of the pss showed that the goodness of fit index of the model was acceptable (2/sd = 1.38, rmsea = .05, cfi = .95, gfi = .94). 2.3.2. the zest for work scale (zws) “the zest for work scale” developed by erdoğan (2013) was utilized to measure physical education teachers’ zest for work levels. the scale is comprised of 7 five-point likert type items. there is no reverse scored item in the scale. the high score on the scale means that zest for work level is high. while the variance explained for the zws was 54.24%, cronbach's alpha coefficient was found to be .89. the efa results showed that the items were clustered under a single factor. the results of cfa was found as 2/sd = 2.12, rmsea = .081, cfi = .97, gfi = .94. in the analyzes made for the fitness of this scale for this sample group, cronbach's alpha coefficient was found to be .88, while the variance explained for the zws was 56.01%. according to the results of efa applied to the scale, scale items were clustered in a single-factor. the cfa results for validating the single-factor structure of the zws showed that the goodness of fit index of the model was acceptable (2/sd = 1.38, rmsea = .05, cfi = .96, gfi = .95). 2.4. data analysis in the analysis of the data, the data set was examined from the point of error, outlier value, normality and multiple correlations. the analysis of the data was performed using spss 21 package program. the effect of physical education teachers’ zest for work levels on their perceptions of success was determined with the help of a regression analysis. pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work levels, and their ages. the t-test was used to compare physical education teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work levels, and the variables of gender and the grade of institution where they are employed. the significance level was taken as p<.05. 3. findings table-1. regression analysis results in the prediction of perception of success variable b standard error b β t p constant 29.82 1.73 17.18 .00* zest for work .79 .06 .54 12.84 .00* f = 164.92, p = .000; r = .54; r2 = .29 according to the regression analysis results in the prediction of perception of success (table 1), it can be stated that zest for work affects the perception of success positively (r = .54, p < .05). zest for work is accounted for 29% of the variance in the perception of success. table-2. the correlation between physical education teachers’ perceptions of success and zest for work levels variables 1 2 1. perception of success 1.00 .54** 2. zest for work 1.00 ** p < .01, * p < .05 according to table 2, there is a significant positive relationship between physical education teachers’ perceptions of success and zest for work levels. such a result can be interpreted as that physical education teachers’ zest for work levels increase as their perceptions of success are in desired levels and vice versa. table-3. the correlation between physical education teachers’ perceptions of success and zest for work levels, and their ages variables n age perception of success 402 .11* zest for work 402 -.03 ** p < .01, * p < .05 according to table 3, there is a significant positive correlation between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and their ages. such a finding can be interpreted as that teachers' perception of success is asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 391-395 394 increased as they are getting older. on the other hand, it was observed that there was no significant relationship between physical education teachers' zest for work levels and their ages. table-4. t-test results on physical education teachers’ perceptions of success and zest for work levels in terms of gender variables female (n = 151) male (n = 251) t sd p  s  s perception of success 52.82 5.27 51.30 5.91 2.55 400 .01* zest for work 28.15 3.31 27.34 4.14 2.03 400 .03* * p < .05 according to table 4, there is a significant difference between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work levels, and their gender in favor of female participants. table-5. t-test results on physical education teachers’ perceptions of success and zest for work levels in terms of the grade of the institution variable middle school (n = 209) high school (n = 193) t sd p  s  s perception of success 51.83 5.50 51.90 5.96 -.23 400 .81 zest for work 27.92 3.66 27.34 4.06 1.51 400 .13 * p < .05 according to table 2, physical education teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work levels do not show a significant difference in terms of the grade of the institution. 4. discussion in this study, it was aimed to determine the effect of zest for work on physical education teachers' perceptions of success and the relationship with each other in terms of certain demographic variables. according to the results of the study, the regression analysis result in the prediction of physical education teachers' perceptions of success showed that zest for work affects the perception of success positively. in parallel with the study, erdoğan (2013) and sezgin and erdogan (2015) concluded that zest for work influence teachers' perceptions of success. findings of the study showed that there was a positive correlation between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work levels. such a result can be interpreted as that physical education teachers’ zest for work levels increase as their perceptions of success are in desired levels and vice versa. in addition, erdoğan (2013) and sezgin and erdogan (2015) found a significant positive relationship between teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work levels. in this respect, the study is in parallel with other studies in the literature. the findings of the study showed that there was a positive correlation between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and their ages. such a finding can be interpreted as that teachers' perception of success is increased as they are getting older. moreover, erdoğan (2013) found a significant difference between the teachers' perceptions of success and their ages. in this respect, the study is in parallel with other studies in the literature. it was observed that there was no significant relationship between physical education teachers' zest for work levels and their ages. however, in contrast to the study, erdoğan (2013) and karaçam (2016) found that teachers' zest for work levels increase as they are getting older. in this context, the results of the studies in the literature and the results of this study are different. it is thought that such a difference is caused by the unique characteristics of the sample. it was found that there was a significant difference between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and their gender in favor of female participants. in parallel with the study, erdoğan (2013) and karaçam (2016) found a significant difference between teachers' perceptions of success and their gender in favor of the female participants. in this respect, the study is in parallel with other studies in the literature. it was found that there was a significant difference between physical education teachers' zest for work levels and their gender in favor of female participants. in contrast to the study, in their study, erdoğan (2013) and karaçam (2016) did not find a significant difference between teachers' zest for work levels and their gender. in addition, the results of the studies on the teachers' pleasure of life were found to be contrary to the present study (josephson and vingård, 2007; chan, 2009; fagerström, 2010). in this context, the results of the studies in the literature and the results of this study are different. it is thought that such a difference is caused by the unique characteristics of the sample. it was observed that physical education teachers' perceptions of success did not show a significant difference in terms of the grade of the institution. in parallel with this study, karaçam (2016) found no significant difference in physical education teachers' perceptions of success according to the grade of the institution. therefore, the study is in parallel with the other studies in the literature. it was observed that physical education teachers' zest for work levels did not show a significant difference according to the grade of the institution. however, karaçam (2016) found a significant difference in favor of teachers employed in middle schools in their study conducted on physical education teachers. in this respect, the results of the studies in the literature and the results of this study are different. it is thought that such a difference is caused by from the unique characteristics of the sample. 5. result according to the results of the study, physical education teachers’ zest for work levels predict their perceptions of success significantly. a significant positive relationship was found between physical education teachers’ asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 391-395 395 perceptions of success and zest for work levels. moreover, there was a significant positive correlation between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and their ages. there was a significant difference between physical education teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work levels, and their gender in favor of female participants. on the other hand, there was no significant difference between physical education teachers’ zest for work levels and their ages and the grade of the institution. finally, there was no significant difference between physical education teachers’ perceptions of success and the grade of the institution. 6. recommendations 1. this study focuses on physical education teachers' perceptions of success and zest for work, which are among the positive beliefs of teachers. further studies may focus on other positive beliefs of physical education teachers. 2. in this study, the perception of success and the concept of zest for work were considered perceptually in cognitive level. further practical studies based on this study may contribute to the literature. references bresnahan, h.r., 1997. a study of the perception of success in teaching of first year teachers as it relates to their decision to remain in the profession of teaching (unpublished doctoral dissertation). saint louis university, usa. umi number: 9803754. chan, d.w., 2009. the hierarchy of strengths: their relationships with subjective well-being among chinese teachers in hong kong. teaching and teacher education, 25(6): 867-875. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2009.01.010. demirhan, g., 2003. physical education and sports philosophical views of teachers. journal of sport sciences hacettepe university, 14(2): 4344. demirtaş, h. and i̇. çınar, 2004. the perception of success of managers, teachers, parents and students and their views on education. paper presented at the 13th national congress of educational sciences, malatya. erdoğan, o., 2013. academic optimism, hope and occupational pleasure as a predictor of self-efficacy and achievement perceptions of primary school teachers. unpublished master's thesis. gazi university, institute of educational sciences, ankara. fagerström, l., 2010. positive life orientation–an inner health resource among older people. scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 24(2): 349-356. available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6712.2009.00728.x. fraenkel, j.r. and n.e. wallen, 2009. how to design and evaluate research in education. 7th edn., new york: mcgraw-hill. günışık, e., 1973. physical education in primary schools. ankara: ministry of youth and sports general directorate of education publications. hoy, w.k. and c.j. tarter, 2011. positive psychology and educational administration: an optimistic research agenda. educational administration quarterly, 47(3): 427-445. available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161x10396930. josephson, m. and e. vingård, 2007. zest for work? assessment of enthusiasm and satisfaction with the present work situation and health–a 1.5-year follow-up study. work, 29(3): 225-231. kale, r. and e. ersen, 2003. introduction to physical education and sport sciences. ankara: nobel. karaçam, a., 2016. academic optimism, psychological well-being and physical respect as a predictor of the perception of success of physical education teachers. phd thesis. gazi university, institute of educational sciences, ankara. karaçam, a., p. a. and s.n. adiguzel, 2017. the investigation of the relationship between the physical graduation and physical self esteem levels of physical education teachers. journal of physical education and sport sciences, 11(2). lent, r.w. and s.d. brown, 2006. integrating person and situation perspectives on work satisfaction: a social-cognitive view. journal of vocational behavior, 69(2): 236-247. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2006.02.006. lent, r.w., l. nota, s. soresi, m.c. ginevra, r.d. duffy and s.d. brown, 2011. predicting the job and life satisfaction of italian teachers: test of a social cognitive model. journal of vocational behavior, 79(1): 91-97. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2010.12.006. martens, r., 1998. successful coaching (t. büyükonat, trans.). istanbul: beyaz. ozakpınar, y., 1987. basic concepts of psychology. konya: selcuk university press. ozmen, ö., 1999. education triangle in contemporary sports. 7th edn., ankara: bağırgan extension house. seker, h., s. deniz and i̇. görgen, 2005. evaluating the qualifications of non-thesis prospective teachers on teaching competencies. educational administration in theory and practice, 42: 237-253. sezgin, f. and o. erdogan, 2015. academic optimism, hope and zest for work as predictors of teacher self-efficacy and perceived success. . educational sciences theory & practice, 15(1): 7-19. tamer, k. and a. pulur, 2001. teaching methods in physical education and sport. ankara: ada. thomas, s. and l.a. coral, 1982. negligence and the physical education teacher. usa: legal procedures and guideliens physical educator. weinstein, n. and r.m. ryan, 2009. vitality. in s. j. lopez (eds.), the encyclopedia of positive psychology. singapore: blackwell. pp: 10231025. yetim, a., 2005. sociology and sports. istanbul: morpa cultural publications. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 70 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 70-74, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.70.74 the impact of thematic learning integrated ict in tabot bengkulu as cultural ceremony toward social interaction knowledge in elementary school endang widi winarni1  endina putri purwandari2 herman lusa3 sri dadi4 ( corresponding author) 1,3,4lecturer, elementary education department, education faculty 2lecturer, informatics department, engineering faculty university of bengkulu, bengkulu, indonesia abstract tabot bengkulu as one of cultural ceremony in bengkulu province is a cultural asset that held once a year in muharram month in islamic calendar. this ceremony has many character values in society such as religious, social care, and environment care. the use of local wisdom in learning can improve the social interaction knowledge for elementary students. the purpose of this research is to determine the impact of integrating ict with thematic learning and discovery learning model for tabot bengkulu as a cultural ceremony toward social interaction knowledge in elementary school. the research implemented pretest-posttest control group design. the research populations are two classes of fourth-grade students from the elementary school in bengkulu in the academic year 2017-2018. these classes are divided into two, one class from as the experiment group with discovery learning and ict from state elementary school 1 and the other one class as the control group with conventional media from state elementary school 22. the instrument used to measure student knowledge about the uniqueness of my residence area. the results showed that the average score difference between posttest and pretest in the control group was 23.46 and in the experimental group of 38.12 the analysis results for t value 0.13 and t table 2.00. it can be concluded that there is no significant effect of thematic learning based on the potential of the region with the discoveries of learning and ict media on the knowledge of elementary students about the cultural ceremony "tabot bengkulu". keywords: thematic learning, regional potential, knowledge, cultural ceremony. citation | endang widi winarni; endina putri purwandari; herman lusa; sri dadi (2018). the impact of thematic learning integrated ict in tabot bengkulu as cultural ceremony toward social interaction knowledge in elementary school. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 70-74. history: received: 26 september 2017 revised: 16 february 2018 accepted: 20 february 2018 published: 23 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: we would like to thank the directorate of higher education, ministry of research, technology, and higher education, republic indonesia for financial support throughout research grant in scheme “hibah bersaing” 2016 2017. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 3. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 72 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 74 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 74 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.70.74&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-4716 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2449-1740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5552-9847 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4595-1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-4716 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2449-1740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5552-9847 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4595-1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-4716 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2449-1740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5552-9847 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4595-1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-4716 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2449-1740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5552-9847 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4595-1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-4716 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2449-1740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5552-9847 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4595-1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-4716 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2449-1740 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5552-9847 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4595-1489 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 70-74 71 1. introduction the function of national education essentially develops the capabilities and improves the quality of life, human dignity and society in order to realize the goals of national education hence the role of teachers must undergo change. educational programs in schools need to pay more attention to the student development in cognitive, affective, conative, and psychomotor so that the education provided to students becomes the noble character. the ideal learning is to bring students closer to their environment or to use the ethno sciences approach. based on these descriptions, this paper presents technocracy-based learning and the development of future generations of character. strong characters will form a strong mental. thomas lickona, states that character is a person's natural traits in responding to the situation morally. in other words, that character is an attribute or trait that shapes and distinguishes the personal traits, ethical characteristics, and mental complexity of a person, a group, or a nation. ramly (2010) states that the values of character developed in school, including religious, honest, tolerance, discipline, hard work, creative, independent, democratic, curiosity, the spirit of nationality, appreciate achievement, friendly and communicative, love peace, love reading, social care, and environment care. learning is essentially an interaction between individuals and environment. the environment provides stimulus to individual and vice versa. the interaction process can changes individual, in the form of behavior change. the integrated thematic learning based on local culture by using discovery learning with ict media is expected to increase the values of character for elementary school students. ict focused transformation is regarded positively in terms making information access easier, increasing visual learning, increasing educational quality, and more efficient (coklar, 2013). the culture of acculturation is a combination of two or more cultures that influence by other cultures, which occur when the proponents of both cultures relate long. the second possibility of the process of interaction or communication will result in an intercultural interaction which is then shared as a collective culture. while the culture of assimilation is a blend of two or more culture, then become a new culture without any element of coercion. this process is common when two or more groups are willing to interact, open up, and feel comfortable with each other. characteristics of elementary students tend to study concretely, interactively, and hierarchically, therefore it is more appropriate to use integrative thematic learning. thematic lessons emphasize theme as the unifying of various subjects that are preferred to the meaning of learning and the relevance of various concepts. thematic learning provides direct experience to students. the focus of learning is directed to discussion with closest themes related to student life. one of the potential areas closest to students in the city of bengkulu is tabot as a cultural ceremony which is held every year in muharram month from 1 to 10 muharram. the procession of tabot celebration, many values of cultivated character are: religious, social, and environment care. approaches that use local wisdom to make learning more easily understood was developed researchers. nita et al. (2017) purpose the indonesia educational concept with “niteni”, “nirokake”, and “nambani” (3n) to improve the values of character for elementary school students. approaches that use local wisdom will be more easily understood by educators. yieng and khadijah (2017) develop technology leadership in malaysia’s highperformance school (hps). the hard work and effort by the headmaster of hps in the field of ict have shown a good result and outcome. okumura (2017) said that in the recent educational environment around japanese teacher, the use of ict is currently promoted in education. homeroom teachers need to equip ict knowledge and skills in association with teaching various subjects. objects and events around students become meaningfully used for independent learning if written and designed in a systematic order according to instructional principles into learning resources. principles of writing include: according to hierarchical learning, structured motivating, gradual and repetitive, and students learning outcomes. learning resources are everything that can be a source of learning materials and activities: (1) people (teachers, experts, practitioners, students, etc.), (2) books and publications (references of research reports, package books), (3) things that can be brought into class or not, (4) images and audio-visual media, and (5) environment (natural, social). based on the above description, the research purpose is: "knowing the effect of thematic learning using discovery learning with ict about "tabot ceremony" to the knowledge of elementary students about social interaction in tabot ceremony. 2. method the research implemented pretest-posttest control group design (winarni, 2011) in figure-1. figure-1. research design source: tuckman (1999) where: x1 = thematic learning with discovery learning and ict media x2 = thematic learning with discovery learning and tabot conventional media o1 = pretest for the experimental class o2 = posttest for the control class o3 = pretest for the experimental class asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 70-74 72 o4 = posttest for control class the study population is all fourth-grade elementary school students in bengkulu city of the academic year 2017-2018. the research sample is class state elementary school 1 and state elementary school 22 in the same condition determined from the different test from pretest average in control and experiment group, that is obtained t value equal to -0,25 and t table equal to 2,00. or it can be concluded that there is no difference for the initial state in both groups. in determining the experimental and control classes conducted by cluster random sampling. according to winarni (2011) cluster random sampling technique is used if there is a heterogeneous population in which the subpopulation is a group having heterogeneous properties, whereas in stratification samples each sub-population is homogeneous. the instrument used in this study is a test sheet to measure students' knowledge of social interaction in the uniqueness in my residence area. the test sheets used in this research are essay-type written tests. the data obtained were analyzed using the difference of two averages with t-test. before analyzing using t-test, two sample data have fulfilled two requirements that are normal and homogeneous distribution. the normality test result for pretest in experiment group is χ2 value = 22,1 and χ2 table = 43,77. because χ2 value< χ2 table then the experiment class distribution is normal. the normality test result for pretest in control group is χ2 value = 7,17 and χ2 table = 38,88. because χ2 value < χ2 table then the control class distribution is normal. the normality test result for posttest in experiment group is χ2 value = 39,85 and χ2 table = 43,77. because χ2 value < χ2 table then the experiment class distribution is normal. the normality test result for posttest in control group is χ2 value = 19,57 and χ2 table = 38,88. because χ2 value < χ2 table then the control class distribution is normal. homogeneity test results of two samples on pretest is f arithmetic = 1.03 and f table = 1.91. because the price of f is less than the price of f table, the distribution of pretest data in both groups is homogeneous. the result of homogeneity test of two samples on posttest is f arithmetic = 1,2 and f table = 1,91. because the price of f is less than the price of f table, the distribution of posttest data in both groups is homogeneous. 3. results and discussion the thematic lessons developed are for basic competencies especially on social science content "understanding humans in the interaction dynamics with natural, social, cultural, and economic". the indicator is to express community interaction to the sacred tabot ceremony in bengkulu. description for students’ activities on the experimental and control class lessons are as follows: (1) stimulation, at this stage, students are faced with something that raises a question mark, then proceeded to not give generalization, in order to arise the desire to investigate itself. in the experimental and control class, students and teachers asked questions about the contents of "tabot bengkulu" song. (2) the problem statement, students are given the opportunity to identify the problem that relevant to the subject matter, then one of them is selected and formulated in a hypothesis. in the experimental and control classes grouped the problem after reading the "tabot bengkulu" teaching materials. (3) data collection, students are given the opportunity to gather as much information as possible by reading tabot bengkulu teaching materials and observing objects to prove whether the hypothesis is true or not. in the experimental class, students in groups with teacher guidance observed video shows of tabot bengkulu ceremony. while the control class observed images of tabot bengkulu ceremony. (4) data processing, at this stage all the information reading results of teaching materials and observations of video tabot bengkulu ceremony, are classified and interpreted as the formation of concepts and generalizations. from the generalization, students will gain new knowledge about alternative solutions that need to get a logical proof. in the experimental and control class, students discussed the social interaction that took place in tabot bengkulu ceremony. (5) verification, students do a careful examination to prove whether the hypothesis is established with alternative findings, connected with the data processing results. in the experimental class, students match the suitability between the problem in student discussion sheets with the answers from video observation and discussion. while in the control class, students match the suitability between the problem in student discussion sheets with the answers from picture observation and discussion. (6) generalization (conclusions), the process of drawing conclusion can serve as a general principle and applies to all occurrences or similar problems, taking into account the verification results. in the experimental and control class, students with teacher guidance concluded to result from teaching materials and video observation about tabot bengkulu ceremony. although there are similarities and differences in learning activities between experiment and control classes, it turns out posttest understanding of social interaction in tabot bengkulu ceremony did not show a significant difference. recapitulation of pre-test results and student test posts is presented in table-1. table-1. pretest and posttest result student knowledge of social interaction num result experiment class control class pretest posttest pretest posttest 1. highest 100 100 100 100 2 lowest 30 45 35 50 3 average 28.13 66.25 37.69 61.45 4 standard deviation 37.97 37.65 37.45 41.21 source: from data collected the results showed that the thematic learning using discovery learning model with ict media can increase the knowledge of elementary students about social interaction that occurs in tabot bengkulu ceremony about 57.54%. while the thematic learning using the discovery learning model with teaching materials and asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 70-74 73 conventional image media can increase the knowledge of elementary students about social interaction in tabot bengkulu ceremony about 38.36%. based on the results of inferential statistical analysis shows that t-score 0.13 is smaller than 5% significant level of 2.00, then h0 is accepted, so it can be concluded that there is no significant effect of thematic learning using discovery learning model with ict media to social interaction knowledge in tabot bengkulu ceremony. discovery learning is an attempt to understand concepts, meanings, and relationships, through an intuitive process to finally come to a conclusion (winarni, 2012). discovery using local cultural sources like tabot is an annual event that occurs in the environment around students so that makes observation, classification, prediction, and determination more contextual. discovery learning resources are not presented in final concept information, students are required to perform various activities to collect information, compare, categorize, analyze, integrate, reorganize materials, and make conclusions. in this learning model, teacher role as a facilitator while student find and experience own. winarni (2012) statement that the attitude is formed by students interaction, by applying the student’s interaction actively looking for information that can be applied problems solving in daily life. students actively ask questions, conduct group discussions, work together to solve problems, mutual provide ideas in the learning process, respect friend’s opinions, and dare to defend opinions by showing evidence. from such activities, the desired attitude of the students will arise. the analysis result is in accordance with wibowo (2012) that character values as one of graduate’s competency aspect are holistic and their achievement is done through the process of receiving, running, appreciating, living, and practicing. integrated thematic learning based on local culture with ict media or conventional images can develop character values because learning is learner’s interaction process with educators and learning resources in the learning environment. the use of media in accordance with winarni (2016) that learning is a channel or intermediary learning messages stimulate thoughts, feelings, and willingness conveyed by teachers to students with the aim that the message can be absorbed quickly by students accordingly with purpose. learning media can work for teachers and students. for teachers, the learning media serves as a tool for teachers to simplify, simplify and accelerate the process of teaching and learning, presenting information, designing the scope of information and skills systematically according to the level of ability and time allocation. while the learning media for students serves as a tool in activating psychological function in him. thus it can be concluded that the learning media can build conditions that make students able to gain attitudes, knowledge, and skills. the results showed that the concept of social interaction occurring in "tabot bengkulu ceremony" did not show any significant difference between the students in the experimental class using ict media with students in the control group using conventional media. baugh (in arsyad (2009)) discloses the findings of this study relevant to previous studies of experts, that approximately 90% of a person's learning outcomes are obtained through the senses of view, and only about 5% is acquired through the senses of hearing, and 5% more with other senses. the social interaction concept that occurs in "tabot bengkulu ceremony" for elementary school students in bengkulu city is very familiar because almost 100% of students have observed directly during tabot celebration held once every year. these direct observations make the learning experience level build a communication process. it showed that tabot experience can help children to absorb information. the environment provides a stimulus to the individual and otherwise, the individual responds to the environment. the interaction processes can change in the individual behavior changes both positively and negatively. johnson (2002) states that learning should bridge the blend of student culture with scientific culture in schools so as to streamline student learning. students will learn formally to understand their environment with various problems around them. thus, there will be didactical phenomenology which implies that in learning the concepts, principles, and other materials in science, students need to depart from problems in the contextual world. students in the environment and observe objects and subjects contextually during the learning process can improve students' thinking development. subsequent impacts will make students have environmental awareness. real-life-oriented learning has proven to be very helpful and valuable in the context of students' daily life (borko and putnam, 1998). meanwhile, the new concept that students learn in the classroom will be more easily accepted by students if it is related to the knowledge scheme they have, so there is assimilation or association process. if the new conception adds or enriches the thinking schemes that students have previously possessed, this can be said to have assimilated; while the association process occurs if the new conception turns or modifies a previously existing scheme. learning only occurs when students process information or new knowledge in such a way that it is felt to be reasonable in terms of the frame of mind it has (memory, experience, and response). this approach assumes that the mind naturally seeks the meaning of context according to the real situation of one's environment, and that can occur through the search for a reasonable and useful relationship. contextual learning presents a concept that links the subject matter learned by the student to the context in which the material is used, and relates to how one learns or the way students learn. through the context of their lives, and find meaning in the learning process, so that learning will become more meaningful and fun. a meaningful, thematic lesson that facilitates students actively solves the problems that he gets according to the concept of the material being studied. one concept that is familiar with the environment is the concept of human activity that can affect the balance of nature. this concept becomes more meaningful if in the lessons students are invited directly to the field to investigate the problems they face "(badeni et al., 2014). through this learning, students' learning outcomes will be maximized if students are taught in contextual nuances in which the student does not passively receive knowledge and skills but he or she has experienced actively involved by using as many elements of his senses (listening, seeing, feeling, feeling and doing) about what is learned or the social environment both individually and in groups. the social environment as a source of learning concerns human interaction with social life, such as social organization, customs, livelihood, culture, education, population, government structure, religion and value system. the social environment is very appropriate to study the social sciences and humanity asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 70-74 74 4. conclusion implementation of thematic learning using discovery learning model with teaching materials and ict media can increase the knowledge of elementary students about social interaction that occurs in tabot bengkulu ceremony of 57.54%. while the implementation of thematic learning using the discovery learning model with teaching materials and image media can increase the knowledge of elementary students about social interaction that occurs in tabot bengkulu ceremony for 38.36%. there is no significant effect of thematic learning using discovery learning model with ict media to elementary school student’s knowledge about social interaction that happened in tabot bengkulu ceremony. teachers in learning should use learning resources and contextual media that are available to students because it creates observation, classification, prediction, and determination. with learning resources and contextual media, students are able to perform various activities of collecting information, comparing, categorizing, analyzing, integrating, reorganizing materials and making meaningful conclusions in solving their lives. references arsyad, a., 2009. instructional media. jakarta: rajawali pers. badeni, s. sri and m. agus, 2014. character education model based local wisdom for elementary school students. journal of elementary school, 1(1): 19-20. borko, h. and r. putnam, 1998. the role of context in teacher learning and teacher education. in contextual teaching and learning: preparing teachers to enhance student success in and beyond school. columbus, ohio, usa: eric. pp: 35-74. coklar, a.n., 2013. areas affected most by students from the ict focused technological transformations and its effects on education. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 4(9): 249-252. view at google scholar | view at publisher johnson, e.b., 2002. contextual teaching learning. california: corwin press. nita, c.i.r., j. muhammad, s. totok and s. suminto, 2017. niteni, niroake, nambani (3n) concept in the learning of dance in elementary school. mediteranean journal of social sciences, 8(5 s1): 137-142. view at google scholar okumura, s., 2017. homeroom teachers or specialist teachers? considerations for the workforce for teaching english as a subject at elementary schools in japan. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 1-5. view at google scholar | view at publisher ramly, m., 2010. development of cultural education and nation character. jakarta: ministry of national education. tuckman, b.w., 1999. conducting educational research. orlando, united states of america: harcourt brace college publishers. wibowo, a., 2012. character building character building character building nations facing. jogyakarta: pustaka belajar. winarni, e.w., 2011. educational research. bengkulu: fkip unib press. winarni, e.w., 2012. innovation in science lesson. bengkulu: fkip unib. winarni, e.w., 2016. environmental-based character education to build competence for future generation. presented in international conference. university malaysia sabah. september 22nd. yieng, w.a. and b.d. khadijah, 2017. technology leadership in malaysia’s high performance school. journal of education and e-learning research, 4(1): 8-14. view at google scholar | view at publisher asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=areas%20affected%20most%20by%20students%20from%20the%20ict%20focused%20technological%20transformations%20and%20its%20effects%20on%20education http://dx.doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n9p249 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=niteni,%20niroake,%20nambani%20(3n)%20concept%20in%20the%20learning%20of%20dance%20in%20elementary%20school https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=homeroom%20teachers%20or%20specialist%20teachers?%20considerations%20for%20the%20workforce%20for%20teaching%20english%20as%20a%20subject%20at%20elementary%20schools%20in%20japan http://dx.doi.org/10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.1.5 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=technology%20leadership%20in%20malaysia’s%20high%20performance%20school http://dx.doi.org/10.20448/journal.509/2017.4.1/509.1.8.14 asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 2, 63-69, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 63 the role of peer counselors in the promotion of student discipline in ugunja sub-county, kenya john mark osodo1 joseph osodo2  jane wagumba mito3 pamela raburu4 peter aloka5 1 lecturer, siaya institute of technology, kenya 2 lecturer, maseno university, kenya 3 phd candidate, jaramogi odinga oginga university of science and technology, kenya 4,5 lecturer, jaramogi oginga odinga university of science and technology ( corresponding author) abstract in spite of the existence of guidance and counseling services in schools in siaya county for the management of discipline, in 2012, 32 schools went on the rampage. this scenario was suspected to be occasioned by lack of an effective alternative strategy to contain student indiscipline. the purpose of this study was to determine the role of peer counseling in promoting discipline among students in public secondary schools in ugunja sub-county, kenya. the study adopted descriptive survey design. the population of the study comprised of 3500 students from public secondary schools. the researchers used the table of krejcie and morgan to determine the sample size of 246. instruments for data collection were questionnaires and interview schedules. piloting was done in 4 institutions to obtain the instruments reliability. face validity of the instruments was ascertained by the experts from the department of psychology and educational foundations. quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, and percentages. qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis. the study findings indicated that peer counseling has a significant role in promoting discipline among students in public secondary schools. the study recommends that peer counselors should be motivated in order for them to perform optimally. keywords: peer counselling, student discipline, public secondary schools, discipline management contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 64 2. objective of the study.......................................................................................................................................................... 64 3. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................ 64 4. research methodology ........................................................................................................................................................ 65 5. findings and discussion ...................................................................................................................................................... 66 6. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 69 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 69 citation | john mark osodo; joseph osodo; jane wagumba mito; pamela raburu; peter aloka (2016). the role of peer counselors in the promotion of student discipline in ugunja sub-county, kenya. asian journal of education and training, 2(2): 63-69. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 13 october 2016/ revised: 5 november 2016/ accepted: 7 november 2016/ published: 9 november 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=john mark osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=joseph osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jane wagumba mito https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pamela raburu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=peter aloka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=john mark osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=joseph osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jane wagumba mito https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pamela raburu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=peter aloka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=john mark osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=joseph osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jane wagumba mito https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pamela raburu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=peter aloka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=john mark osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=joseph osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jane wagumba mito https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pamela raburu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=peter aloka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=john mark osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=joseph osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jane wagumba mito https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pamela raburu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=peter aloka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=john mark osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=joseph osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jane wagumba mito https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pamela raburu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=peter aloka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=john mark osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=joseph osodo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=jane wagumba mito https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pamela raburu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=peter aloka http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.63.69 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 63-69 64 1. introduction counseling was first introduced into schools in the late nineteenth century. this program focused on helping “students develop character, avoid problems, and relate vocational interests to coursework (dahir and stone, 2012). since then, the field of school counseling changed. in united kingdom, guidance and counseling services was noted to have enhanced the educational skills, self management skills and knowledge of self among the students in washington state middle school (webs et al., 2005). similarly, in united states of america, guidance and counseling services was reported to have impacted positively on the students’ academic performance and behavior (national center for education statistics, 2005). the study further reported that guidance and counseling services and programs helped students resolve emotional, social or behavioral problems and help them develop a clearer focus or sense of direction. effective counseling programs are important to the school climate and a crucial element in improving student achievement (nces, 2005). in addition, carey (2013) highlighted that school counseling design deliver comprehensive school counseling programs that promote student achievement. guidance and counseling provide individual and small group counseling services to students, ensure student records are maintained, provide counseling to students who have disciplinary actions and provide teachers with suggestions for effective management. moreover, bano and ahmed (2013) mentioned that the purpose of guidance and counseling (g&c) is to ensure that each student acquires the knowledge, skills, habits, and attitudes necessary for success in school and in life by focusing on the success of each individual student. that requires the working together by many people including the students themselves, work done by teachers, administrators, staff, families, and volunteers in support of the student. wanjohi (2011) established the role of peer support among immigrants while the present study established the role of peer counselors in promoting discipline among students in secondary schools. moreover the foregoing study was carried out in finland whereas the current study was done in ugunja sub-county. in the reviewed study openended interviews were conducted via telephone with immigrants while the present study did its open-interviews faceto-face with principals. in contrast, chireshe (2013) in a study on peer counseling in zimbabwean secondary schools sought to establish the status peer counseling in some zimbabwean secondary schools as perceived by teachers. a qualitative design was used. an open-questionnaire was completed by 26 secondary school teachers who were then enrolled for bachelor’s degree. the results revealed that most of the secondary schools from which the respondents came from, did not have peer counselors and the few which had selected the peer counselors on the basis of their good characters. the peer counselors were involved in hiv and aids, and related issues such as unwanted pregnancies, sexual abuse, drug abuse, problem solving and overcoming peer pressure. the teachers wished the peer counselors could receive training in managing depression study and listening skills, ethical issues and managing disputes among students. chireshe (2013) however, focused on the status of peer counselors as perceived by teachers whereas the current study was based on the role of peer counselors on promotion of discipline among students in public secondary schools in ugunja sub-county in kenya. open-ended questionnaires were completed by 26 teachers in reviewed study while the present study employed close-ended questionnaires that were filled by 246 students and 12 teacher counselors and open-ended interview schedules completed by 12 principals in ugunja sub-county kenya. 2. objective of the study the objective of the study was to establish the role of peer counseling in promoting discipline among students in public secondary schools in ugunja sub-county. 3. literature review adolescence establish a sense of personal identity and avoid the dangers of role diffusion and identity confusion. identity achievement implies that the individual access their strengths and weakness and determines how they deal with the same. to achieve this, the adolescent must find an identity or senses of sameness and continuity thus path (2006) posits that during this time young people are deciding who they are, what they do well, and what they wish to be after school. as they begin to evaluate their strengths, skills and abilities, the peer group influences them significantly (path, 2006). wanjohi (2011) study was based on peer support among immigrant women to promote their psychological wellbeing. the study was based under emy (espoo mental health association) in espoo, finland. emy’s peer support activities take place in a non-hospital setting. its aims to unite activate its resident members and the neighboring municipalities, by organizing rehabilitative activities, study tours and trips for members. a qualitative design was used, and the study aimed to explore how immigrant women can use peer support as a tool to foster wellbeing based on literature reviewed. data was collected through literature and 2 open-ended interviews conducted via telephone to emy workers in espoo (n=2). data was analyzed through content analysis and, the findings showed that when immigrants actively participate in peer support activities they get empowered, they are socially integrated and they feel more confident and loneliness is reduced. peer support foster hope and expectation for change. in zambia, according to youth net brief: zambia (2005) a case study with high hiv prevalence found it difficult to reach young people with hiv and reproductive health information in the schools in order to protect the nation’s future. handling reproductive health (rh)/hiv issues was difficult or was considered embarrassing by the teachers. they could also not be held accountable for teaching what amount to optional subjects. the only solution that was found to be working was peer educator program. it helped reduce the number of pregnancies in the schools, assisting girl students to be assertive and to understand the consequences of getting pregnant. kavula (2014) in a study on the effects of principals’ alternative disciplinary methods on students’ discipline in public secondary schools in kitui county, kenya, sought to investigate the effects of principals’ alternative asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 63-69 65 disciplinary methods on students’ discipline. the study was based on the systems theory. ex post facto research design was adopted. the target population for the study was 333 public secondary schools consisting of 333 principals, 333 deputy principals, 1665 hods (heads of departments) guidance and counseling, board of management (bom) chairpersons, the county director of education and kitui law courts resident magistrate. the sample size was obtained by stratified proportionate sampling procedure, purposive sampling and simple random sampling. the study sample size consisted of 101 public secondary schools consisting of principals, deputy principals, hods guidance and counseling, 15 board of management members, kitui county director of education and kitui law courts resident magistrate. purposive sampling was used to select some schools, hods guidance and counseling, kitui county director of education and kitui law courts resident magistrate because of their number and because they had useful information in relation to this study. the total respondents for the study were 320. a test-re-test technique was used to test reliability. data collection tools included questionnaires and interview guides. data was analyzed using spss. descriptive statistics was used to analyze, tabulate and present data. results of data gathered from closed ended and open ended items were reported in frequency tables, cross tabulation tables and explanation of the findings were made based on themes. the chi-square(x2) test was used to determine the strength of association between alternative disciplinary methods and students’ discipline and to test whether the observed relationship is significant or not. the significance level was set at alpha = 0.05. the study established that peer counseling had the highest p-value 0.518. students’ expulsion was rated second with p-value 0.491. holding class meetings with students for collaborative decision making was rated third with a p-value 0.373 while suspension of indiscipline students was rated fourth with a p-value 0.351. it was concluded that principal use of alternative disciplinary methods had no significant effect on students’ discipline. the study revealed that peer counseling had the strongest association with students discipline with a p-value 0.518 whereas suspension has the weakest relationship with students’ discipline. kavula (2014) studied the effect of principals’ use of peer counseling; suspension of indiscipline students; students’ expulsion and use of class meetings with students for collaborative decision making on students’ discipline in kitui county, kenya while the present study was on the role of peer counseling on promotion of student discipline in secondary schools in ugunja sub-county, kenya where such a study has not been done. moreover, the reviewed study did not use students as respondents thereby excluding a lot of information, a gap which the present study filled by interviewing students. according to arudo (2008) the area of specific need varies from school to school and generally includes human growth and development, personality and grooming (hygiene), human sexuality, adolescence and early pregnancy, drug and substance abuse, hiv /aids, stds (sexually transmitted diseases), relationships, study skills, goal setting, career development and the media. in concurrence, arudo (2008) in his study on peer counseling stated that peer education aimed at reducing irresponsible behavior, sexual responsibilities, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, including hiv/aids and drug abuse. on personal issues areas that needed to be addressed included academic group discussions, time, stress and disaster management, self esteem, self motivation and personal hygiene, teamwork, special activity such as debate, and role modeling (arudo, 2008). the large number of students, limited number of teacher counselors, heavy workloads, and social economic and technological changes all put pressure on the teacher, students, parents and society (arudo, 2008). the above study though done in kenya, was not carried out in ugunja sub-county siaya. ndichu (2005) highlighted that while in the area of hiv stigma and health seeking behavior it made both teachers and students to open up and attend vcts. the teachers wanted peer education program to continue because they feel that students were more likely to respond positively to messages heard from their peers, and more likely to approach their peers with a question or problem (ndichu, 2005). in siaya county, kenyatta university peer counselors attached its members to st. francis rang’ala girls, rang’ala boys, jera mixed, sega girls, inungo mixed day and bishop okoth mbaga girls due to demand to bring a change in academic performance by offering guidance and counseling services to the learners so as to enrich their moral, psychological and academic performance by addressing areas touching most of the students which are abject poverty, domestic violence and family related issues and hiv/aids pandemic (kenyatta university peer counselors (kupc), 2012). while concurring with the present study on the role played by the peer counselors, the past reviews done by kupc (2012) did not specify the aspect of time, academic ability of the peer counselors, the role of the teacher to the peer counselor and the contribution of the administration on peer counseling which the present study intends to address. additionally, in spite of the facts that peer counseling is established in many secondary schools in kenya, its contribution to behavior change in secondary schools has not been documented through research. the present study therefore sought to find out the contribution of peer counseling to student behavior change in ugunja sub-county, kenya. 4. research methodology this study used descriptive survey design, which creswell (2014) describes as a type of research that depicts the state of affairs as it exists, where the researcher has no control over the variables and can only report what has happened or what is happening and attempts to discover causes when they cannot control the variables. according to kothari (2011) descriptive research is a systematic collection and analysis of data in order to answer questions concerning current status of a program, project or activity. it is used to obtain data useful in evaluating present practice and providing basis for decision (mugenda and mugenda, 2013). this design was appropriate for this study as it focused on determining the role of peer counselors, role of teachers and the challenges of guidance and counseling in the promotion of discipline. the total number of students in the sub-county was 3500 and the researcher used the table of krejcie and morgan (1970) to determine the sample size, which were 246 students. these participants were selected using simple random sampling technique. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 63-69 66 the study utilized questionnaires for the students. these were used to collect information on students’ opinions on the role of guidance and counseling services on promotion of discipline. the questionnaire had closed ended items. according to mugenda and mugenda (2013) closed-ended items have an advantage that they are easy to administer, analyze and also economical in terms of time. according to frankel and wallen (2006) validity is the accuracy and meaningfulness of inferences based on research results. it is the ability of the instrument to measure well what it purports to measure. face validity of the instruments was ascertained by the assistance of experts from the department of psychology and educational foundation, jaramogi oginga odinga university of science and technology (jooust). their suggestions and recommendations were used to improve on the instruments with a view to make it more valid. the questionnaire was tested in order to check its content, construct and face validity. content validity was done to ensure it contains adequate domain of content it was supposed to represent. face validity dealt with formatting the instrument and included aspects like clarity of printing, font size and type, adequacy of workspace, and appropriateness of language among others. construct validity determined the nature of psychological construct or characteristics measured by the instrument. experts and peers in research were engaged to ensure the instrument accurately measured the variables it was supposed to measure. kasomo (2006) recommended a test of reliability of instruments in order to ensure dependability. in case the reliability is low, correction and modification is done to attain a cronbach reliability of α = .7 which is the minimum threshold for social sciences research. the instrument was pre-tested for reliability using cronbach alpha approach with a sample of 12 secondary schools (33.33%) in siaya county, kenya randomly selected from the target population. the reliability coefficient was 73.0 . the number 12 was chosen for pre-test because it is the smallest number that could yield meaningful results in data analysis of a survey research (mugenda and mugenda, 2013). quantitative data from closed ended items of the questionnaires were coded and analyzed by descriptive statistics such as frequency counts and percentages. thereafter, data were entered into the computer clearing process and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 22.0. according to kothari (2011) descriptive analysis involves a process of transforming a mass of data into tables, charts, with frequency distribution and percentages. data from questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive analysis with the help of spss version 22. the researcher informed the selected participants about the purpose of the study and gave the freedom to participate in the study or not. confidentiality and anonymity was achieved by not asking the participants not to write their names on the questionnaires. participants were identified by serial numbers instead of by names. anonymity was also guaranteed through grouping data rather than presenting individual responses. the respondents in this study were not exposed to any form of harm by not seeking from them private or sensitive information. 5. findings and discussion out of the 223 students’ respondents, whose questionnaires were received back, the females were 58 (26.01%) and males were 165 (73.99%). this means that for every one girl in a secondary school in this area of the study there were nearly three boys; high disparity in terms of gender balance was therefore noted. it was observed that more than half (56.05%) of student respondents were from mixed secondary schools. the remaining students came from boys boarding (20.67%) and mixed boarding secondary schools (23.32%). none of the students came from purely girls’ secondary school. table 1 shows the percentage distribution of the student respondents in terms of their age and gender. table-1. distribution of students, respondents by age and gender gender/age 18-20 yrs over 20 yrs total frequency 201(90.13%) 22(9.87%) 223(100.0%) male 149(90.30%) 16(9.7%) 165(100.0%) female 52(89.66%) 6(10.34%) 58(100.0%) source: ugunja sub county education office,, kenya figure-1. distribution age by gender of the respondents source: ugunja sub county education offie,kenya asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 63-69 67 from table 1, it is indicative that a bigger majority (90.13%) of the student respondents were in the age group of 18-20 years and those who were in the age of over 20 years constituted only 9.87% of the students’ respondents. in the age group of 18-20 years, which was the majority of respondents, male students had the highest proportion (74.13%). the table also reveals that out of the 9.87% of the student’s respondents whose ages were above 20 years, there were still more males (72.73%) than females (27.27%). it was further noted that, whereas 10.3% of the female students’ respondents were aged above 20 years, only 9.7% of the male counterparts were in the same age group. this fact is further shown by figure 1. on the side of representation per class, the findings of the study show that 71.75% of the respondents were form three students and the rest (28.25%) were formed four students. the exploratory findings of the study reveal that each class had unbalanced gender proportions; there were more male students than female students in class. 73.75% of the form three students’ respondents were males and similarly 77.78% of the form four students were males too. girls only constituted just about a quarter of population of each class; form three (26.25%) and form four (22.22%). the findings of the study also revealed that out of all the form three students’ respondents, 88.75% of them were in the age group of 18-20 years. this was also replicated in form four, where the majority (93.65%) of them was 1820 year olds. the research objective was to establish the role of peer counseling in promoting discipline among students in public secondary schools in ugunja sub-county. the researchers developed questionnaire designed to determine role of peer counselors in promoting discipline among students in school. in exploring this construct, items were drawn relating to concepts which were important components of the role of peer counsellors. they were likert-scaled item type questions, in which respondents choose from 5-point score; strongly agree(sa), agree(a), undecided(u), disagree(d) and strongly disagree(d). the respondents were asked to score on statements about the role of peer counselors in promoting discipline among the students in school.the researchers computed percentage frequencies of the responses from the students on role of peer counsellors’ in schools and were tabulated as shown in table 2. table-2. importance of peer counseling in schools statement sa a u d sd peer counselors show new students around. 27.06 41.76 17.06 0.00 14.1 peer counselors listen to peers who have concerns. 27.60 59.73 3.17 4.98 4.52 peer counselors identify students with problems and referring them to school counselor 35.29 33.03 2.71 11.31 17.65 peer counselors conduct hiv/aids peer education. 14.03 31.22 25.79 9.05 19.91 peer counselors attend to withdrawn peers. 5.05 46.79 20.18 22.02 5.96 peer counseling lessen school counselors’ workload by assisting students with minor problems. 25.23 3.21 23.39 30.73 17.43 peer counseling helps to improve the study habits. 50.70 30.70 0.00 9.30 9.30 peer counseling helps to improve on time management. 56.77 23.96 0.00 8.85 10.42 peer counseling helps to improve on academic achievements 61.01 25.23 5.96 7.80 0.00 peer counseling helps to improve classroom behavior. 50.92 33.49 7.80 7.80 0.00 peer counseling helps to develop positive attitude towards the school. 42.66 44.95 9.17 3.21 0.00 peer counseling helps to reduce student’s anxiety. 25.64 18.46 28.21 27.69 0.00 peer counseling helps to develop a positive selfimage. 19.27 70.64 3.21 5.50 1.38 peer counseling helps to provide knowledge on how to apply for a job. 16.97 33.94 15.14 10.55 23.39 peer counseling helps to provide knowledge of various careers. 40.83 24.31 17.43 5.05 12.39 peer counseling helps to enables one to understand oneself. 49.54 33.49 0.00 4.59 12.39 peer counseling helps to establishing a secure school environment. 26.51 35.81 15.35 13.02 9.30 source: researcher the findings of the study showed that peer counseling has substantial role in helping to promote discipline among students in public secondary schools. this has been attributed to their being able to identify the needs of their fellow students in time quite easily, as observed by 87.33% of the respondents who reiterated that peer counselors are always available to listen to peers who have concerns. they argue that peer counselors are likely to respond positively to messages from their peers, approach them regularly and influence them more effectively. this statement is supported by ndichu (2005) who highlighted that students are more likely to respond more positively to messages heard from their peers and more likely to approach their peers with a question or problem. the assertion that students are likely to contact fellow students when they are experiencing certain problems and concerns before they approach their teachers especially on matters they consider embarrassing such as rape, hiv/aids and stis, the study established that peer counselors conducted hiv/aids peer education among their fellow students, as was noted by 45.25% of the respondents. this is in concurrent with chireshe (2013) who observed that peer counselors were involved in hiv and aids peer education. on the same note, 68.32% of the respondents said peer counselors were able to identify students with problems and refer them to school counselor on areas they are not able to address. this finding of the study was in agreement with ndichu (2005) who established that students were able to respond positively to messages they heard from their peer, and more likely to approach asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 63-69 68 their peers with a question or problem. this calls for need to have peer counselors’ equipped with adequate sexual reproductive health knowledge and information about the risks, responsibilities, outcomes, and impacts of sexual actions with their peers. despite the challenges faced by peer counselors such as lack of expertise especially on how to deal with unpleasant and acute emotional disturbance among their fellow students, the findings of this study indicate that peer counseling help in promoting discipline among students by enabling the students to understand themselves and their fellow students. more than four out five (82.99%) of the respondents affirm that when peer counselors are supported and developed, they may become the best group to reach out to the fellow students in curbing disciplinary issues. allen and antonishak (2008) argued that peer counseling is founded on the premise that young people are more likely to change their behavior if peers they like and trust advocate change of social norms on community context. youth net brief: zambia (2005) also confirmed this by stating that peer counseling is based on the fact that students are more likely to accept and feel at home with counseling information validated and disciplined to them by their peers than they would receive the same from trained professionals whom they often consider as out of tune with needs of younger generation. ndichu (2005) also concurs that peer counselors are often more perceptive and sympathetic than the teacher counselor for they are the first to notice when their own fellow student is worried or depressed, and they often confide in one another’s immediate concerns, fears and issues that disturb them. the peer counselors’ reaction is immediate acceptance, both understanding and consoling, as well as provision of a warm and physical support. another important role of the peer counselors, as found out by this study, is promotion of discipline by encouraging good academic participation and achievement among the fellow students, as was noted by 86.24% of the respondents who said that peer counseling helps to improve on academic achievements. this was confirmed by 84.41% of the respondents who agreed that peer counseling helps to improve classroom behavior, which of course is prerequisite condition for good academic achievement. chireshe (2013) concurs with this finding stating that peer counselors help other students in problem solving and problems of study and listening skills. another 87.64% of respondents support this by saying that peer counseling helps to develop positive attitude among the fellow students towards the school. this improved attitude among the students impact positively towards academic achievement as it breeds character of self-motivation which is an essential condition for good performance. the findings of this study concurs with path (2006) that highlighted that peer counseling would help students to identify their strengths and weakness and thus influence the students attitude towards academics. majority (81%) of the respondents also observed that peer counseling helps to improve study habits and another 80.73% of the student respondents argue that peer counseling helps to improve on time management in school. this finding is in consistence with arudo (2008) who established that peer counseling assist students to reduce irresponsible behavior, sexual responsibilities, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections including hiv/aids and drug abuse. it is generally known that counselors’ may possess wide knowledge in counseling both theoretical and practical yet lack human qualities of comparison, caring, honesty, realness and sensitivity hence rendering one to be a mere technician. the findings of this study revealed that when peer counselors act as role model among their fellow students, good character in them are often admired and copied by other students. kupc (2012) concurs with this finding citing that peer counselors can bring behavior change among students. contrary to the common notion that disciplinary matters in secondary schools today is a preserve for the teachers alone, the results of this study revealed otherwise. peer counselors have got a niche in issues of school discipline and order. it overwhelmingly emerged from the findings of this study that peer counseling helps in establishing a secure school environment, as pointed out by 62.32% of the students’ respondents. this finding concurs with that of kavula (2014) who established that peer counseling had the strongest association with students’ discipline. although more than a fifth (23.39%) of the respondents were undecided on the issue of whether peer counseling lessen school teacher counselors’ workload by assisting students with minor problems and another 17.43% strongly refuted the fact that peer counselors in any way lessen teachers tasks, nearly a third (28.44%) of the students’ respondents agreed that peer counselors significantly lessen school teacher counselors’ workload. this finding is in line with path (2006) which established that peer counselors helped students especially the adolescence to establish a sense of personal identity and avoid dangers of role diffusion and identity of confusion. this is true because peer counseling programmes in schools integrate into the range of preventive strategies that promotes harmony, between the students and the school administration. peer counseling reinforces the value of discussing problems and difficulties experienced by the students amicably without resulting into violence that is, talk it out rather than act it out. this creates ownership amongst the students of the need to maintain peace by recognizing the peers’ role in problem-solving. on the same note, it is generally believed that benefits from the use of peer counselors include: expanded services and reduced costs because professionals are freed for other duties; traditional counseling services enhanced by the unique abilities and skills of peers; the opportunity to gain special insight into the needs and problems of the students; and a bridge for the gap between professionals and the diverse student body. on career development, the findings of this study reveal that peer counseling helps to provide knowledge in various careers that are available. this fact was supported by nearly two thirds (65.14%) of the respondents against just a mere 12.39% of the students who had a conflicting perception. however, on whether peer counseling could help in providing knowledge on how to apply for a job the respondents had markedly divergent views; whereas 15% of them were undecided, about half (50.91%) of the students felt that peer counselors could help in provision of knowledge and information on job related matters and 33.94% argued that peer counselors do not have the right knowledge and experience to provide information on job applications. this finding is in agreement with the kupc (2012) that highlighted that peer counseling helped students to enrich their moral, psychological and academic performance by addressing areas touching most of the students. where there was evidently commonness in thought among the students’ respondents was in the issue of image of students. whilst only 6.86% of the respondents refuted the assertion that peer counseling helps to develop a positive asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 63-69 69 self-image of the students, almost nine out ten (89.91%) of the students’ respondents granted that peer counseling helps to develop a positive self-image of the students. this finding concur with path (2006) which established that peer counselors helped students especially the adolescence to establish a sense of personal identity and avoid dangers of role diffusion and identity of confusion peer counseling is the best alternative for the adolescents’ need to identify with their peers. students join cliques and groups for the various divergent reasons such as provision of personal needs of affiliation and companionship, for reward that is either material or psychological; that is prestige and recognition, enjoyment and excitement, provision of information for raising of their self-esteem and as a means of gaining identity. this is in agreement with path (2006) which observes that adolescents establish a sense of personal identity, senses of sameness and continuity. 6. conclusion the study concluded that peer counseling has substantial role in helping to promote discipline among students in public secondary schools. peer counseling helped students to improve their behaviors. it concluded that peer counseling helped students to understand themselves and their fellow. further, peer counseling helped students to improve on time management, classroom behavior. the study further concluded that peer counseling helped to establish secure school environment and also assisted students in developing self-image. similarly, the study concluded that peer counseling help students to improve academic achievements and also provided knowledge and information on job related matters. based on the study findings, the following recommendations are made:  peer counselor structures should be established and recognized by the school administration for effective promotion of students discipline in school.  motivation for peer counselors as leaders should be enforced as school policy because other students tend to approach them more with their personal problems. references allen, j. and j. antonishak, 2008. adolescent peer influences: beyond the dark side. understanding peer influence in children and adolescents. new york: guilford. arudo, t., 2008. peer counseling experience among selected kenyan secondary schools. kapc conference, safari park hotel. bano, f. and a. ahmed, 2013. the role of community in students guidance at secondary school level in pakistan. interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business, 4(10): 10-14. carey, j., 2013. a statewide evaluation of the outcomes of the implementation of asca national model school counseling programs in rural and suburban nebraska high schools. professional school counseling, 16(2): 100-107. chireshe, r., 2013. the state of inclusive educationin zimbabwe: bachelor of education (special needs education) students perceptions. journal of social sciences, 34(3): 223-228. creswell, j., 2014. mixed methods research. university on nebraska. lincoln, usa: sage publishers. dahir, c.a. and c. stone, 2012. the transformed school counselor. 2nd edn., belmont, ca: brooks/cole engage learning. frankel, j.r. and n.e. wallen, 2006. how to design and evaluate research in education. new york: mc graw-hill. kasomo, d., 2006. research methods. njoro: egerton university press. kavula, m., 2014. effects of principals’ alternative disciplinary methods on students’ discipline in public secondary schools in kitui county, kenya. unpublished phd thesis, nairobi university, kenya. kenyatta university peer counselors (kupc), 2012. peer counseling to develop tomorrow's leaders: experience among selected kenyan schools. department of phylosophy and religious studies, kenyatta university. kothari, c.r., 2011. research methodology, methods and techniques. new delhi: new age international publishers. krejcie, r. and d. morgan, 1970. determining sample size for research activities. educational and psychological measurement. retrieved from http://www.fns.usda.gov/fdd/processing/info/sales/verificationtable [accessed july 28, 2010]. mugenda, a. and o. mugenda, 2013. research methods: quantitative and qualitative approaches. nairobi: acts press. national center for education statistics, 2005. state non-fiscal public elementary/ secondary education survey. american counseling association. ndichu, j., 2005. guidance and counseling: handbook for schools. nairobi: kur career ventures. path, 2006. tuko pamoja: adolescent reproductive health and life skill curriculum. nairobi: programme for appropriate technology (path). wanjohi, c., 2011. peer support among immigrant women to promote the psychological wellbeing. laurea otaniemi: laurea university of applied science. webs, l., g. brigman and c. campbell, 2005. linking school counselors and student success: a replication of the student success skills approach targeting the academic & social competence of students. professional school counseling, 8: 407-411. youth net brief: zambia, 2005. peer educators bring rh/hiv messages to the classroom in zambia. retrieved from http://www.fhi.org/nr/rdonlyres/eajhaq5ugapy4qb5a2slwmykuejfnbofa3vrj3gfe2mlzd3yhhoapnjk5ekm5zgowyny2wtuyfpzoa/zamb iaclassroompeeredenyt.pdf [accessed july 18, 2012]. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.fns.usda.gov/fdd/processing/info/sales/verificationtable http://www.fhi.org/nr/rdonlyres/eajhaq5ugapy4qb5a2slwmykuejfnbofa3vrj3gfe2mlzd3yhhoapnjk5ekm5zgowyny2wtuyfpzoa/zambiaclassroompeeredenyt.pdf http://www.fhi.org/nr/rdonlyres/eajhaq5ugapy4qb5a2slwmykuejfnbofa3vrj3gfe2mlzd3yhhoapnjk5ekm5zgowyny2wtuyfpzoa/zambiaclassroompeeredenyt.pdf 176 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 176-181, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.176.181 examination of the level of participation of secondary school students in extracurricular sports activities [burdur example] mehmet şahi̇n1 1european university of lefke trnc, northern cyprus abstract this research aims to determine the level of participation of secondary school students in burdur in extracurricular sports activities and the issues they experience. 247 secondary school students in burdur participated in this research. a survey composed of a total of 19 questions developed by selçuk (2006) was used. in conclusion; when taking into account the factor of which grade secondary school students are in, it has been determined that football and volleyball are the most preferred branches of sport in all grades, and that there are statistically no significant differences between extracurricular sports activities according to which grade students are in. it has been determined that secondary school students who have participated in the study statistically present no significant differences in their extracurricular sports activities according to the profession of their fathers. it has been determined that the support shown by the families of students participating in the study in terms of their engagement in sports, statistically demonstrates no significant difference according to the number of people in the family. it has been determined that the support shown by the families of students participating in the study in terms of their engagement in sports, statistically demonstrates no significant difference according to the profession of their mothers. it has been observed that the rate of support given for engaging in sport by families of participants whose mothers are white collar workers are higher than other families. it has been determined that statistically, there are significant differences between extracurricular sports activities secondary school students engage in, according to their genders. it was found that the changes in academic status during the which secondary school students participate in extracurricular sports competitions statistically demonstrates no significant difference according to their genders. keywords: secondary school students, extracurricular, sports activities. citation | mehmet şahi̇n (2018). examination of the level of participation of secondary school students in extracurricular sports activities [burdur example]. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 171-176. history: received: 2 april 2018 revised: 16 april 2018 accepted: 20 april 2018 published: 23 april 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 177 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 177 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 178 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 180 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 180 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.176.181&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3705-4585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3705-4585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3705-4585 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 176-181 177 1. introduction the term education is defined as the process during which changes are implemented on the terminal behavior of an individual by means of his/her own experiences and in an intentional manner (ertürk, 1975). education is the process which brings forth changes in behavior or creates certain behavior; in fact, it mostly does both at the same time. behavior to be generated are not random, they must be desired, or, in other words, target-specific, and the development of these will be ensured with planned activities. terminal behavior and educational activities to be used in creating these, the evaluation of the degree of effectiveness of these activities, and in accordance with the results obtained from the evaluation, the planning of corrective measures and implementations to remedy deficiencies and principles in relation to these are explained in education programs. extracurricular sports activities are "planned, programmed, regular activities which take place in schools, outside of class time, in accordance with educational objectives, in line with students' interests and needs, for their physical and spiritual development, with the knowledge of school management and under the guidance of physical education teachers" (binbaşıoğlu, 2000). the secondary school period, a transitional stage from childhood to adulthood, is one during which students' physical, spiritual, social and cultural development is at its highest level. students need an education which will meet all their needs during this period. developing students with their physical, mental, spiritual, social and cultural aspects as a whole, is the general objective of education. seeing as physical education is considered to be an inseparable part of general education; general education and physical education must share the same objectives and there must not be any discrepancies between objectives (cömert, 1999). it is impossible for students to obtain the sufficient development and education that is in accordance with the requirements of physical education and sport, solely with classroom activities. for this reason, extracurricular activities must be given importance, these activities must be considered and valued as a continuation of and an inseparable part of curriculum (karakücük, 1995). apart from units and subjects covered in lessons in school, extracurricular sports activities are carried out in a manner that is distanced from a competitive environment and with types of activities that is in accordance with students' knowledge and abilities. the main power of educational practices is student social activities. with such social activities, students gain democratic attitudes as well as knowledge and skills in line with their interests and talents. a huge responsibility falls on physical education teachers here (gündüz, 1997). it is a well known fact that participation in sport is an effective method in the development of social characteristics during the secondary school period. individuals' interest in sports activities during the secondary school period can be observed by whether they wish to participate in extracurricular sports activities in the school environment during their free time. for this reason, as much as it is important for secondary school students to be encouraged to do sport and for them to exhibit positive behavior through sport, for them to enjoy sport and ensure they embrace sport as a lifestyle, and the importance of their interest and needs for such activities, solving the problems they face carries just as much significance (selçuk, 2006). in this respect, this research aims to determine the level of participation of secondary school students in extracurricular sports activities and the issues they experience according to certain variables. seeing as people are the most valuable assets of our society, educating them in the best way, developing their skills, kneading them with qualities that are positive in every aspect should also be a mandatory an essential and fundamental duty of society. with a good education, an individual can become a valuable asset to themselves, their families and their nation. the wrong education, however, will result in a value wasted, a life lost (hergüner, 1992). physical education must educate a person by physical means. sports activities have both a learning value within themselves and the value of educating young people with sport (orhun, 1990). hence, countries such as canada and east germany who have demonstrated success in sports have ensured their current success by establishing their sports systems on school sports with the principle of encouraging everyone to do sport and by raising elite athletes (açıkada and ergen, 1990). education is a series of constant activities implemented to develop and help gain information, behavior and abilities. as an education method, if we also consider sport as a physical and spiritual education, we can accept sport and education as identical concepts (erkal, 1986). for individuals who do sport, it is a process which results in altering one's behaviors via their own sporting life and which ensures individual and societal change and exchange via athletic activities with the aim of terminal transformations in social life. sport is an activity assigned to students by schools and which socializes and matures them. sport can be offered or imposed on students by schools. along with this, for many children, sport represents wealth in terms of cultural activities, and this is a quality which schools accept and use in accordance with their objectives. and this is a form of social activity (walker, 1987). 2. method one of the descriptive models which tries to determine the current situation in this study, the cross-sectional scanning model of the scanning models carried out on large groups was used. in studies which cross-sectional scanning models are used, measurements are taken from the research group at one time and in a momentary fashion (donmez and azizoglu, 2010). in this scope, the data collection tool was once and momentarily applied to the secondary school students that comprised the research group, data obtained has constituted the findings of the research. 247 students of the 2016-17 academic year in burdur's secondary education institutions comprised the study group of the research conducted according to the descriptive scanning model. the students which comprise the study group were selected from burdur secondary schools with a simple neutral sampling method. in researches which use the simple neutral sampling method, each individual in the universe has an equal chance of being added to the sampling (can, 2014). the simple neutral sample determining model was used in the selection of the study group for this reason. a survey composed of a total of 19 questions developed by selçuk (2006) was used for the collection of research data. statistical analysis of data collected was conducted with the spss22.0 program. frequency analysis was used to determine the percentage distribution of participants' demographic information. taking advantage of custom tables, a chi-square analysis was used for the comparison of the answers participants gave to multiple answer questions in the survey (questions 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19) according to their genders. a chi-square analysis was applied by using crosstabs for the comparison of participants' extracurricular sports activities asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 176-181 178 according to their gender, grade, professions of their mothers and fathers; the comparison of changes in academic performance as a result of participation in extracurricular sports activities according to grade and gender; and the comparison of family encouragement for engagement in sport according to the profession of parents and the number of people in the family. level of significance in the chi-square analysis has been determined as p<0.05. 3. findings table-1. frequency and percentage distribution of participants according to their genders gender f % female 127 51.4 male 120 48.6 total 247 100.0 51% of participants are female, whilst 48% are male. table-2. frequency and percentage distribution of participants according to which grade they are in grade f % 10th grade 91 36.8 11th grade 83 33.6 12th grade 39 15.8 9th grade 34 13.8 total 247 100.0 the highest participation in the study was received by 10th and 11th grade students. table-3. frequency and percentage distribution of participants according to the age they started doing sport age they started doing sport f % ages 7-10 132 53.4 ages 11-14 63 25.5 ages 3-6 44 17.8 ages 15-16 8 3.2 total 247 100.0 more than half of the participants in the study (53.4%) started doing sport at ages 7-10. table-4. frequency and percentage distribution of participants according to their family's economic status family's economic status f % mid 142 57.5 good 96 38.9 very good 6 2.4 bad 2 0.8 very bad 1 0.4 total 247 100.0 while more than half the participants have families with an average economic status(57.5), an important portion (38.9%) are from families which have a good economic status. table-5. distribution of participants with family members who regularly do sport are there any individuals f % no 184 74.5 yes 63 25.5 total 247 100.0 74.5% of participants have an individual at home who regularly does sport. table-6. frequency and percentage distribution of participants according to whether their families encourage them to do sport family's encouragement to do sport f % supportive 179 72.5 indifferent 65 26.3 unsupportive 3 1.2 total 247 100.0 while 72.5% of participants are supported by their families to do sport, 1.2% are not supported. 26.3% of participants have families who are indifferent. table-7. frequency and percentage distribution of participants according to the extracurricular sport activities they engage in. sports activities f % football 73 29.6 volleyball 66 26.7 other 57 23.1 basketball 25 10.1 athletics 16 6.5 karate, judo 6 2.4 handball 4 1.6 total 247 100.0 more than half of participants in the study engage in football and volleyball. table-8. frequency and percentage distribution of participants according to the impact of their participation in extracurricular sports competitions on their academic success impact f % no impact on success 193 78.1 success increased 47 19 success decreased 7 2.8 total 247 100.0 while 78.1% of participants indicated that their participation in extracurricular sports competitions have not had an impact on their academic success, 19% have stated their success has increased, and 8% have stated their success has decreased. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 176-181 179 table-9. comparison of the effects of extracurricular sports competitions on participants according to their gender (multiple answer) effects statistics female male total it improved my self-confidence f 62 68 130 % 31.8 28.7 30.1 it improved my sense of sharing and helping f 19 36 55 % 9.7 15.2 12.7 it helped my social development f 41 51 92 % 21.0 21.5 21.3 it helped my physical and spiritual development f 31 38 69 % 15.9 16.0 16.0 it had a positive effect on my academic success f 4 4 8 % 2.1 1.7 1.9 it made it easier for me to adhere to social norms f 3 5 8 % 1.5 2.1 1.9 it ensured my spiritual comfort f 9 10 19 % 4.6 4.2 4.4 it improved my leadership skills f 1 5 6 % 0.5 2.1 1.4 it did not have any negative or positive effects f 15 8 23 % 7.7 3.4 5.3 other f 10 12 22 % 5.1 5.1 5.1 total f 117 112 229 % 100.0 100.0 100.0 x2 = 19.449; df = 10; p = .035 statistically, the impact of participation in extracurricular sports events vary significantly according to the gender of participants (p<0,05). while female participants have experienced the effect of an increase in their selfconfidence, male participants demonstrate a higher rate in the development of their sense of sharing and helping. table-10. comparison of extracurricular sports activities according to which grade participants are in. activities statistics 9th grade 10th grade 11th grade 12th grade total athletics f 3 3 5 5 16 % 8.8 3.3 6.0 12.8 6.5 football f 14 25 25 9 73 % 41.2 27.5 30.1 23.1 29.6 basketball f 4 8 10 3 25 % 11.8 8.8 12.0 7.7 10.1 handball f 0 1 2 1 4 % 0.0 1.1 2.4 2.6 1.6 volleyball f 7 24 25 10 66 % 20.6 26.4 30.1 25.6 26.7 karate, judo f 0 4 1 1 6 % 0.0 4.4 1.2 2.6 2.4 other f 6 26 15 10 57 % 17.6 28.6 18.1 25.6 23.1 total f 34 91 83 39 247 % 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 x2 = 14.713; df = 18; p = .682 statistically, no significant differences have been identified between extracurricular sports activities according to the grade which participants are in (p>0,05). table-11. comparison of extracurricular sports activities according to the gender of participants activities statistics female male total athletics f 6 10 16 % 4.7 8.3 6.5 football f 5 68 73 % 3.9 56.7 29.6 basketball f 9 16 25 % 7.1 13.3 10.1 handball f 3 1 4 % 2.4 0.8 1.6 volleyball f 60 6 66 % 47.2 5.0 26.7 karate, judo f 3 3 6 % 2.4 2.5 2.4 other f 41 16 57 % 32.3 13.3 23.1 total f 127 120 247 % 100.0 100.0 100.0 x2 = 113.369; df = 6; p = .000 statistically, there are significant differences between extracurricular sports activities according to the gender of participants (p>0.05). while it is mostly football with males, most females participate in volleyball. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 176-181 180 4. conclusion in conclusion, when taking into account the factor of which grade secondary school students are in, it has been determined that football and volleyball are the most preferred branches of sport, and that there are statistically no significant differences between extracurricular sports activities according to which grade they are in. it has been determined that secondary school students who have participated in the study statistically present no significant differences in their extracurricular sports activities according to the profession of their fathers. it has been determined that the support shown by the families of students participating in the study in terms of their engagement in sports, statistically demonstrates no significant difference according to the number of people in the family. it has been determined that the support shown by the families of students participating in the study in terms of their engagement in sports, statistically demonstrates no significant difference according to the profession of their mothers. it has been observed that the rate of support given for engaging in sport by families of participants whose mothers are white collar workers are higher than other families. it has been determined that the support shown by the families of students participating in the study in terms of their engagement in sports, statistically demonstrates no significant difference according to the profession of their fathers. it has been determined that the support shown by the families of students participating in the study in terms of their engagement in sports, statistically demonstrates no significant difference according to their genders. it has been determined that statistically, there are significant differences between extracurricular sports activities secondary school students engage in, according to their genders. it was found that the changes in academic status during the participation of secondary school students in extracurricular sports competitions statistically demonstrates no significant difference according to their genders. in the instance which there have been changes in academic status due to extracurricular sports competitions, statistically there were no significant differences according to the grade which participants are in. those whose academic success increased the most were 10th and 11th grade students. those who demonstrated no change in success were mostly 9th and 12th grade students. it has been determined that statistically, there are significant differences between the reasons behind which extracurricular sports activities middle school students choose to engage in according to their genders. while males prefer football a lot more, females prefer volleyball. statistically, there are significant differences in the problems experienced due to participants taking part in extracurricular sports competitions according to their genders. the rate of males who do not experience problems is higher than females. whilst the issue of school management being reluctant in solving problems is experienced more by males, females experience a lot more problems in terms of attending lessons, issues in academic success and not finding enough time for homework. it has been determined that the problems experienced by middle school students in their education as a result of their participation in extracurricular sports competitions statistically present no significant differences according to which grade they are in. statistically, there are significant differences in how participants feel on a spiritual level when they do sport according to their genders. whilst females present a higher rate in feeling happy and feeling better, males present a higher rate in feeling closer and more intimate towards their friends as well as feeling more joyful when they do sport. it has been determined that statistically, there are no significant differences between the views of middle school students regarding how they physically feel when they do sport according to their genders. statistically, there are significant differences between the people who encourage participants in taking part in extracurricular sports competitions according to their genders. whilst females present a higher rate in terms of family encouragement, males present a higher rate in the encouragement o pe teachers and friends. it has been determined that statistically, there are no significant differences between the problems experienced my secondary school students within the organization when taking part in extracurricular sports activities according to their genders. this outcome presents discrepancies with the results of salar (2015). the effect of participation in extracurricular sports organizations statistically present significant differences according to the genders of participants. while female participants have experienced the effect of an increase in their self-confidence, male participants demonstrate a higher rate in the development of their sense of sharing and helping. 1. it has been observed that the participation of secondary school students in extracurricular sports activities have an impact on their educational lives. necessary adjustments can be made for extracurricular sports activities to be designed in a fashion which will not have an impact on students' educational lives. in this respect, the number of sports activities which students can attend on weekends can be increased. 2. it has been identified that gender is an important determent in the participation of secondary school students in extracurricular sports activities and that there are differences in the extracurricular sports activities preferred by males and females. likewise, the benefits students gain from extracurricular sports activities present significant differences according to their genders. in this respect, extracurricular sports classes and contests which will attract the interest of both females and males can be organized. 3. it has been determined that there are no significant differences between the problems experienced my secondary school students whilst taking part in extracurricular sports activities according to their genders. besides this, the opinions of students concerning a more productive execution of extracurricular sports activities present no significant differences according to their genders. for this purpose, it can be considered beneficial for management and administrative bodies of secondary school institutions to carry out studies to determine the needs and expectations of students regarding extracurricular sports activities, to determine the problems experienced by students of both genders and to take certain measures to reduce the issues in question. references açıkada, c. and e. ergen, 1990. science and sports. ankara: culture press. binbaşıoğlu, c., 2000. extracurricular activities in school. ankara: meb publications. can, a., 2014. data analysis in scientific research process with spss. 2nd edn. ankara: pegem academy. cömert, s., 1999. child health and sports culture. ankara: remzi kitabevi. donmez, f. and n. azizoglu, 2010. investigation of the students' science process skill levels in vocational schools: a case o f balıkesir. necatibey education faculty electronic science and mathematics education journal, 4(2): 79-109. view at google scholar erkal, m.e., 1986. sports from sociological perspective. national education ministry of youth. b.t.s.g. directorate publication no: 30. ankara: national education printing house. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=investigation%20of%20the%20students'%20science%20process%20skill%20levels%20in%20vocational%20schools:%20a%20case%20of%20balıkesir asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 176-181 181 ertürk, s., 1975. program development in education. ankara: yelkentepe publications gündüz, h., 1997. teacher and manager opinions on the effectiveness of trainers' work. graduate thesis, hacettepe university institute of social sciences, ankara. hergüner, g., 1992. education-sports relationship. 19 may university education faculty magazine. samsun: eser press. karakücük, s., 1995. recreation, evaluation of leisure time, concept scope and research. ankara: remzi bookstore. orhun, a., 1990. new didactic approaches to school physical education and sports. first national symposium of sports sciences ankara. salar, b., 2015. levels and problems of secondary education students' participation in extracurricular activities. mehmet akif ersoy university educational sciences institute. master thesis. burdur selçuk, t., 2006. levels and problems of secondary education students' participation in extracurricular activities. mersin university, institute of health sciences. master thesis. mersi̇n walker, j.c., 1987. school sport, ethnicity and nationality: dimensions of male youth culture in an inner-city school. australian journal of education, 31(3): 303-316. view at google scholar | view at publisher asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=school%20sport,%20ethnicity%20and%20nationality:%20dimensions%20of%20male%20youth%20culture%20in%20an%20inner-city%20school http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000494418703100306 asian journal of education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 3, no. 1, 53-63, 2017 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 53 influence and challenges of the capitation grant on education delivery in basic schools in ghana edison pajibo1 emmanuel m. j. tamanja2  ( corresponding author) 1,2 research fellows at the institute for educational research and innovation studies (ieris) university of education, winneba, ghana abstract in ghana, some children do not attend school, because their parents are unable to afford levies and fees charged by schools. this led to the introduction of the capitation grant scheme in 2005. this study investigates the influence of the capitation grant scheme on education delivery in basic schools in ghana, through a close study of the ga west municipality. it is a descriptive survey, involving teachers, head teachers and parents as the target population. purposive, stratified and simple random sampling techniques were used to select participants, while questionnaire and documentary sources were used as instruments to gather information which was summarized statistically in percentages and analysed in themes. the main finding revealed that the introduction of the capitation grant scheme was found to be very relevant and has led to an increase in enrolment in basic schools. however, the increase in enrolment brought about some challenges such as inadequate classrooms, furniture, textbooks, teaching and learning materials and a high pupil-teacher ratio. the researchers recommend an increase in the quantum of the grant per pupil and direct payment into the accounts of schools to reduce annual delays in disbursement. keywords: capitation grant, education delivery, basic school, policy, scheme. contents 1. background and context ..................................................................................................................................................... 54 2. literature ............................................................................................................................................................................. 55 3. methodology......................................................................................................................................................................... 57 4. findings ................................................................................................................................................................................ 57 5. conclusion and implications ............................................................................................................................................... 60 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 60 bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................ 61 citation | edison pajibo; emmanuel m. j. tamanja (2017). influence and challenges of the capitation grant on education delivery in basic schools in ghana. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 53-63. doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 20 february 2017/ revised: 24 march 2017/ accepted: 30 march 2017/ published: 5 april 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=edison pajibo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emmanuel m. j. tamanja http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=edison pajibo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emmanuel m. j. tamanja http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=edison pajibo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emmanuel m. j. tamanja http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=edison pajibo https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=emmanuel m. j. tamanja http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.53.63 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 54 1. background and context education is a human right that has immense power to transform society. its foundation rests on the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development. it can provide children with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life and is associated with increased incomes, reduced poverty and improved health (unicef, 2006). naturally, the thinking is that when the right to education is assured, the whole world gains. there are no instant solutions to violations of that right, but it begins with a simple proposition: that on the eve of the 21 st century, there is no higher priority, and no mission that is more important than that of education for all. recalling the words of governor guggisberg, „education is the cornerstone of a people‟s life and happiness‟ (mcwilliam and kwamena-poh, 1975). drucker (2006) noted that an abundant and increasing supply of highly educated people has become an absolute prerequisite for social and economic development in the world. it would seem logical that politicians and educators have come to accept this fact. denison (2007) noted that about 21 percent of the economic growth in the united states, between 1929 and 1957 was attributed to education. according to him, this contribution of schooling exceeded that of material capital. sadly, however, “about 124 million children and adolescents are denied opportunities to enter and complete school including around 59 million children of primary school age and 65 million young adolescents of lower secondary school age while more than half of the primary school aged children who are not in school live in sub-saharan africa” (unicef, 2016). nevertheless, most african countries have started devoting substantial proportion of their incomes as well as their foreign aid to the education sector. this awareness is also seen in the declaration of the conference of african states held in addis ababa in 1961 that „education is africa‟s most urgent and vital need, and that education is a matter of key developmental importance throughout the world (dzamboe, 2005). cognisant of the importance of education to national development, various governments have contributed to the advancement of the educational system in ghana. the ideological underpinning is the continuing aim to make education more relevant to the world of work after school, to rural development and modernization of the predominantly agriculture-based economy, as well as to promote national and cultural identity, and citizenship. based on these propositions, several education reforms have been instituted at one time or the other since 1951, ostensibly to make education more accessible to every section of the society. some of these educational reforms, according to adedze (2005) include: a. for numbered lists accelerated development plan of education of 1951 b. the education act of 1961 c. the education review committee 1967 d. the dzobo education reform programme of 1974 e. the educational reform program of 1987 f. the review of education reforms in ghana in 2002 these educational reviews and reforms were intended to strengthen the educational system. however, over the years, the cumulative effects of these educational reviews and reforms have not met the desired objectives of achieving access and appropriate educational management at the basic level. antwi (1992) opines that educational reforms must be borne out of evolving social needs. hence, in 2005, the government of ghana introduced the capitation grant policy aimed at meeting the educational needs of access and school management. capitation is a payment of an equal amount of money to each person (in the context of this research, for each basic school pupil). the introduction of the capitation grant is rooted in the 1992 constitution of the republic of ghana, which made provision for a policy on free education to be implemented within two years of its coming into force. this led to the policy of free compulsory universal basic education (fcube). the fcube policy requires that every ghanaian received basic education by 2005, at the expense of the state. specifically, article 25 of the 1992 constitution states that „all persons shall have the right to equal educational opportunities and facilities and with a view of achieving the full realization of that right, basic education shall be free and compulsory to all‟. however, the implementation of the fcube could not be achieved in full, with regards to its primary aim of accessibility and free education, due to unfavorable economic conditions of the country (atagra, 2005). to enable all school-going age children in ghana attend school, the government introduced the capitation grant scheme in 2005. prior to the introduction of the capitation grant, basic school enrolment rate decreased by 5% (akyeampong et al., 2007). as shown in figure 1, enrolment decreased from 3.7 to 3.6 million pupils between 2004 and 2005. the scheme, which started with some pilot districts, now has been extended to embrace all public basic schools in the country with effect from september, 2005. under the scheme, gh¢4.5 (equivalent to us$1.40 as of january, 2015) per child per annum is paid to all basic school pupils in all public schools in the country (bonney, 2006). but it can be well argued that many educational policies and or programmes have always raised critical controversies and therefore, require research and serious lengthy public debates to arrive at what is appropriate and acceptable to the society in general to become good social policies. the capitation grant was to give schools the necessary funds to improve teaching and learning, manage and relief financial burdens of parents (ministry of education science and sports, 2005) as several levies (see figure 2) were imposed as a way of schools making up for inadequate funding. the introduction of the capitation grant, though lauded by many ghanaians, is criticized by others. however, soon after the introduction of the grant, net enrolment increased by 6% in just one year and then increased to over 10% (see figure 3) in three years (akyeampong et al., 2007). despite various interventions to salvage the teething problems of the grant through workshops and other sensitization programmes, the full influence and challenges of the grant are yet to be ascertained in terms of enrolment of pupils in public basic schools in ghana (dzamboe, 2005). 1.1. research problem the prevailing argument is that, in spite of the efforts and provisions made by various governments in ensuring accessible and free compulsory basic education in the country, including the introduction of the capitation grant, asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 55 there are still some ghanaians who are either semi-literate or illiterate and children of school-going age who are not in school (dzamboe, 2005). as in other parts of ghana, provision of formal education has been part of the challenges of the ga west municipality for a very long time. there are 106 public basic schools in the municipality. these schools are beneficiaries of the capitation grant introduced nationwide by the government in the 2004\2005 academic year. this notwithstanding, the community lags behind in education despite the introduction of the capitation grant. this study therefore, seeks to answer the key question of how the capitation grant scheme influenced education delivery and the attendant challenges in public basic schools in the ga west municipality in ghana. 1.2. research questions the need for a systematic unveiling of the influence of the capitation grant resulted in the formation of the following research questions: • what influence does the capitation grant scheme have on public basic schools in the ga west municipality in ghana? • what factors serve as impediments to the full implementation of the grant in public basic schools in ga west municipality? • in what way(s) can stakeholders improve education delivery in ga west municipality using the capitation grant? 1.3. purpose and significance this study sought to investigate the influence of the capitation grant scheme on education delivery in public basic schools through a close study of the ga west municipality of the greater accra region in ghana. the study will be of great importance to educational stakeholders such as the ges and the ministry of education by creating awareness on the challenges bedeviling the capitation grant scheme. it will also help educational stakeholders to effectively implement the scheme by appreciating the problems that have arisen as a result of its introduction. 2. literature available literature suggests that capitation grant, like any social intervention, would have some influence (both negative and positive) on education (denison, 2007). 2.1. gains of the capitation grant 2.1.1. high enrolment some authorities have argued that the introduction of the policy in ghana has contributed in getting more children in schools. a report from the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) revealed that universal primary education has been well received, according to various stakeholders such as the ghana education service (ges), the ministry of education (moe) and parents (unesco, 2006). among the sub saharan african countries to adopt this policy was uganda in 1997 and with the introduction of this policy, the country experienced a robust increase of primary enrolment from 2.8 million in 1997, to 10.7 million in 2013 (agyeman, 2013). this has not been different in ghana. for example, atagra (2005) argues that the implementation of the capitation grant scheme in september, 2005 increased enrolment in preschools by 24.5% and primary school by 9.3%. specifically, enrolment increased to 3,698,448 in 2004\2005 academic year, representing 16.7% increase in a year compared to gross enrolment ratios over the past few years, which stood at an average of 1.7%. at present, the capitation grant has led to enrolment of more than 10.7 million children in school (agyeman, 2013). although the data is impressive at the national level, the extent to which the grant has specifically influenced enrolment in the ga west municipality is not ascertained. the gross enrolment ratio (ger) in primary schools increased by 18.6% points from 86.4 percent in 2005/2006, the year immediately after the nationwide roll-out of the capitation grant, to 105% in 2012/2013 (figure 4). this is significantly higher than the rate of increase before the capitation grant scheme was introduced, which was only about 3.3 percentage points from 80% in 2001/02 to 83.3% in 2004/05. the ger in jhs also increased at a rate of 11.8% from 70.4% in 2005/2006, the year immediately after the nationwide rollout of the capitation grant, to 82.2% in 2012/2013. this is significantly higher than the rate of increase before the introduction of the capitation grant scheme which was only 6.2% from 64% in 2001/02 to 70.2% in 2004/05. primary schools experienced the most significant ner increase from 2005/06 (immediately after the introduction of the capitation grant), increasing at a rate of 15.3 percentage points from 68.8% in 2005//06 to 84% in 2012/13 (figure 5). this is significantly higher than the rate of increase between 2001/02 and 2004/05 which was only 0.1%. the ner in jhs increased at a rate of 6 percentage points between 2005/06 and 2012/13 from 41.6% to 47.8%. this is significantly higher than the rate of increase before the capitation grant scheme which was about 3.3 percentage points from 80% in 2001/02 to 83.3% in 2004/05. the ner in pre-schools remained almost the same before and after the capitation grant scheme at 23.5% and 24.8%, respectively. this notwithstanding, the ga municipality lags behind in education despite the introduction of the capitation grant. 2.1.2. gender disparities in enrolment levels the gross enrolment ratio (ger) and net enrolment ratio (ner) in primary schools of boys continue to be slightly above that of girls over the years from 2001 until 2012, even though the gap in ner seems narrower compared to the ger (figure 6). the ger seemed to have matched in the 2012/13 academic year signifying an overall improvement in girls‟ ger at the primary school level. the gap between boys and girls in terms of ner has on average been closing up. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 56 the gap was wider in 2001 and 2002, around three percentage points, but closed up towards 2005. as reflected in the ger, since 2009 the gap between boys and girls in ner in primary schools has closed up quite considerably to a difference of only 0.3 percentage points. there is however, a wider gap in ger at the jhs level between boys and girls, continuously moving towards boys, and averaging around seven percentage points. one could argue that the gap between girls and boys closed due to the government‟s policy on girl-child education. the ner on the other hand increased remarkably immediately after the introduction of the capitation grant for both boys and girls in jhs before declining in 2008 (figure 7). it averaged around 54% and 51.8% for boys and girls respectively, at a rate of 10 percentage points between 2005 and 2007. since 2008, the ner for jhs has been declining, and declining much faster for girls compared to boys. it only started to peak again around 2010. unlike for primary schools, the gap between boys and girls ner at jhs has been widening. while before the introduction of the capitation grant (2001-2004), ner for girls in jhs was slightly above boys; the trend reversed since 2006 and the gap has since been widening. the disparity increased significantly between 2008 and 2009 at a rate of 4.7 percentage points. even though this declined to less than two percent in 2011, the gap widened again to nearly seven percentage points in 2012. the implication of this is that not all girls completing primary school enter into jhs. this requires serious policy attention, especially with regard to some socio-cultural and economic practices that give preference to boys in making educational choices for children in the family. it can fairly be argued as per the data in figures 6 and 7 that enrolment rates for boys and girls in basic school increased up to 2013 but decreased in 2014. a plausible explanation of this could be that, there were challenges with the disbursement of statutory funds for the grant. some of these challenges are expatiated in the next section of the review. 2.2. challenges of the capitation grant 2.2.1. shift system and inadequate infrastructure the experience of high enrolment, generates a problem by which classrooms can hardly accommodate the large number of intake of pupils. dzamboe (2005) opines that as a result of introduction of the grant some authorities adopted the shift system where some students attend school in the morning while others come in the afternoon. one clear impression that does emerge in terms of this challenge relates to the failure of educational planners to build more infrastructure to accommodate the anticipated large influx of school children. 2.2.2. inadequate infrastructure additionally, the introduction of the capitation grant scheme has brought enormous challenges to the government, as a result of the increase in enrolment. gross enrolment for primary education reached 107.4% in the 2015/2016 academic year. one of such challenge is the provision of more infrastructures for basic schools. for instance, bonney (2006) reported in the saturday, january 14, edition of the daily graphic, that the secretary of the conference of heads of basic schools (c.h.o.b.s.) urged the government as a matter of urgency, to provide more classrooms and furniture to cater for the increase in enrolment. lack of attention in addressing this problem constitutes another policy challenge in terms of educational planning. essentially, when classes become too large or overcrowded and resources are not increased proportionately, the results can reverse the hard-earned gains and demotivate teachers, parents and pupils. 2.2.3. changes in pupil-teacher ratio the pupil-teacher ratio (ptr) in basic schools as reported in education management information service (emis) shows a slight increase from an average of 27 pupils to a teacher in the period before the capitation grant (2001-2004) to about 28 pupils to a teacher in the period after the introduction of the capitation grant (20052013). a plausible explanation for the upward change in the pupil-teacher ratio could be the disproportionate enrolment of pupils to the number of teachers the government employed within the period of 2001 to 2005. as shown in figure 8, during the 2009/10 academic year, the pupil-teacher ratio declined remarkably to about 21:1, but rose to 28 pupils to a teacher in 2012/13. however, ghana‟s ptr is still significantly below the ratio in neighbouring countries which is slightly above the ideal ratio of 40:1 or less. according to the education strategic plan (esp), government set a long-term target of ptr at kindergarten level at 25 and primary schools at 35 (world bank, 2011). clearly, the ratios do not indicate a worse ptr in basic schools in ghana by the ges standards of 35:1. 2.2.4. provision of teaching and learning materials high enrolment of students has also resulted in inadequate provision of teaching and learning materials. the ghana national education campaign coalition (g.n.e.c.c.) held a press conference on ghana‟s educational policy direction at the accra international press centre on the 8 th august, 2012. it held the view that the improvement upon the quality of pupils in basic schools also depends on pupiltextbook ratio (atagra, 2005). unfortunately, the supply of textbooks is inadequate, coupled with high enrolment as a result of the introduction of the capitation grant. 2.2.5. inadequacy of the grant an analysis of the background issues and the views expressed in the literature show that the capitation grant scheme reflects two major strategic directives. the first is the fee free tuition and the second is the school capitation to replace levies. currently, the government pays gh¢4.5 (this was equivalent to approx. us$1.40 as of january, 2015) per annum per pupil enrolled. however, some of the amount is used for sports and cultural activities and the remaining for the provision of teaching and learning materials, minor repairs in the schools, and examination (dzamboe, 2005). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 57 2.3. study area the ga west municipality was created in 2008 and forms part of 16 metropolis, municipalities and districts in the greater accra region. the municipality was carved out of the erstwhile ga district which was created in 1988. in 2004, the ga district was divided into two districts namely, ga east and ga west and in 2008, ga west district was further divided into ga west and ga south municipalities with amasaman the former district capital remaining the capital for the newly created ga west municipality (study district). it shares boundaries with the ga east and the accra metropolitan area to the east, akwapem south to the north, ga south to the south and ga central to the north-south and occupies a total land surface area of 299.578 square kilometres (ghana statistical service (gss), 2014) with 102 basic schools and gross enrolment of 37,245 in 2014/15 academic year (ministry of education (moe), 2001). the rationale for selecting the ga west municipality is that, it represents one of the municipality that was previously part of an existing district and lies in the peri-urban area, hence assuming some characteristics of both rural and urban centres. this will make generalization easier. 3. methodology 3.1. research design the study adopted the descriptive survey design that focused on the influence of the capitation grant on basic education delivery in the ga west municipality. the survey design allowed the gathering of information from a large population (from schools) and from secondary sources (documents) made room for generalization. the researchers obtained numerical data that were translated into frequency tables and percentages. 3.2. population the target population of the study constituted section of the stakeholders of the capitation grant scheme. these included head teachers, teachers as well as parents. available data from the education management information system (emis) for 2014/15 academic year indicate 203 public basic schools, consisting of 2 nurseries, 65 kindergartens, 69 primary and 67 junior high schools in the ga west municipality. 3.3. sampling a sample of 15 basic schools (consisting of primary and jhs) were purposely and randomly selected for this study. the schools were first stratified into circuits, from which at least a school was selected to ensure that all the educational circuits were represented. head teaches from the sampled schools were automatic members while 5 teachers were randomly selected in each school. this was intended to give all teachers the opportunity to be selected. incidental sampling was used to select 3 parents each, from the communities where the 15 selected schools were located. in all, a total of 138 participants (15 head teachers, 75 teachers, 45 parents and 3 circuit supervisors) participated in the study. a questionnaire was developed and used to obtain primary data while documents were used as secondary data. the secondary data were situated in the background and literature whereas the primary data constituted responses from participants in ga west municipality. 4. findings the key findings of the study are categorized in line with the research questions and key variables investigated. 4.1. benefits of capitation grant on basic schools in ga west municipality 4.1.1. enrolment the trend in enrolment in the municipality from 2001 to 2015 is presented in figure 9. as shown in figure 9, before the introduction of the capitation grant scheme in 2005, enrolments in public basic schools in the then ga west district in 2004, which was created from ga district was 26,742 but increased to 43,130 in 2007 and further to 54,854 in 2009/10. at the time of introduction, the amount was gh¢3 per pupil, but was increased to gh¢4.5 in 2009. this probably, could account for the further increase in enrolment in 2009 and 2010. it however decreased to 27,509 in 2011. the discrepancy or low enrolment for the period 2010/11 to 2014/15 could be attributed to the further split of the district in 2008 to current ga west and ga south municipalities. the pre-2010/11 enrolment figures must have included schools which are now in other districts and municipalities before the separation in 2008. nevertheless, enrolment has steadily increased from 27,509 in 2010/11 to 37,245 in 2014/15. this increase, although low, could be attributed to the capitation grant. 4.1.2. teaching and learning teaching and learning materials play important roles in classroom interaction. table 1 shows the responses of teachers on how the introduction of the capitation grant affected the production and use of teaching and learning materials in large classes. table-1. improvement in teaching and learning as a result of the grant improved teaching and learning frequency percentage to a large extent 20 26.7 to some extent 48 64.0 not at all 7 9.3 total 75 100 source: field data, 2016 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 58 according to the respondents, as shown in table 1, the introduction of the scheme encouraged the production and use of teaching and learning materials. a combined score of 90.7% of the respondents said the scheme improved teaching and learning, with only 7 (9.3%) saying it did not improve teaching and learning. the introduction of the capitation grant scheme was to help public schools have access to teaching and learning materials to enhance education delivery. it was therefore not surprising that majority of the participants saw an improvement in the provision of teaching and learning materials. this finding is congruent with the argument of bonney (2006) and drucker (2006) that any intervention that addresses the central pillars of education (teaching and learning) is warranted and should be sustained. 4.2. influence of capitation grant on parents to send their children to school on the variable, influence of the introduction of capitation grant scheme on parents to send their children to school, 42 (94%) of the respondents said there had been some influence and 3(6%) said the introduction of the scheme had not got any influence on them (parents) sending their children to school. from the responses of the head teachers and teachers, one can deduce that the grant largely had an influence on parents sending their children or wards to school. the implication is that parents who could not pay the levies that were being charged by the school had the opportunity to send their children to school. despite the increase in enrolment, some children were still out of school. this could possibly explain why some of the respondents said the introduction of the capitation grant did not have any influence on the parents sending their children to school. table-2. head teachers‟ and teachers‟ perceptions on state of accommodation state of accommodation frequencies percentages excellent very good 9 10 good 18 20 poor 63 70 total 90 100.0 source: field data, 2016 in table 2, about 70% of the respondents indicated that the classroom accommodation situation after the introduction of the grant was poor. about 20% said the classroom accommodation situation after the introduction of the scheme was good, while only 10% said the accommodation situation was very good. analytically, the introduction of the capitation grant rendered the classroom situation poor, apparently owing to the large influx of students in the classroom. this data confirms the literature (see figure 3) that once the capitation grant was introduced and there was no corresponding increase in accommodation, the classroom situation was obviously going to be poor, owing to congestion. 4.2.1. availability of textbooks increase in enrolment had an influence on the availability of textbooks for use by pupils in class (see table 3). table-3. teachers‟ perception on availability of textbooks in schools percentage of students with textbooks frequencies percentages 1-20% 1 1.3 21-40% 5 6.7 41-60% 6 8.0 61-80% 41 54.7 81-100% 22 29.3 total 75 100.0 source: field data, 2016 as shown in table 3, responses from teachers on available textbooks show that only about 8% responded that up to 40% of pupils in their classes had access to textbooks. on the other hand, 54.7% said between 61% and 80% of pupils in their classes had access to textbooks while 29% responded that between 81% and 100% of pupils had textbooks in their classes. the significance of textbooks in schools especially at the basic level cannot be overemphasizedhence, this data reflects a serious challenge to the policy. the researchers‟ interactions with head teachers of the study schools revealed that, textbooks were supplied based on the enrolment figures for 2009/10 academic year, after the split of the municipality. increased enrolment in schools had implicitly made the available textbooks inadequate as 29% of teachers admitted that between 81% and 100% pupils had access to all textbooks. the data lend support to the argument made by the ghana national education campaign coalition in 2012 that the improvement in the quality of basic education depends on pupiltextbook ratio. 4.2.2. pupil-teacher ratio from the data collected, about 97.6% of teachers regarding the number of pupils in their class show that some classes had as many as seventy pupils. in the case of some junior high schools, 95.3% of teachers who taught more than one subjects, taught more than two hundred pupils. the study generally found that there had been an increase in the pupil-teacher ratio as a result of the increased enrolment, due to the introduction of the capitation grant scheme. this situation definitely does not offer a better opportunity for pupil-teacher interaction. teachers apparently found it difficult controlling, supervising and marking exercises. implicit here then is the belief that teaching and learning was therefore not effective. the data on pupil-teacher ratio confirm documentary evidence in the literature (see asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 59 figure 9) which show a decline in pupil-teacher ratio especially in the 2005/06 academic year, although the ptr did not go above ges standard of 35:1 (world bank, 2011). 4.2.3. impressions on the amount per pupil the manner in which people accept or reject a new policy or idea depends on their impressions about that new policy or idea. when asked to give their impressions on the gh¢4.5 paid for each pupil per annum, whether it was sufficient or not, the following were the responses from teachers and head teachers. all the 15 head teachers and 95% of the 75 teachers said the amount was not adequate to support the running of their schools. only 5% of the teachers said the amount was adequate. this implies that, head teachers and teachers were of the view that the gh¢4.50 per pupil, per annum given to public basic schools was largely inadequate. the inadequacy of the grant has attracted some comments from sections of the ghanaian society. for example, the integrated social development centre (isodec), after commending the government for implementing child-friendly policies and programmes, for example, the capitation grant, also appealed to the government to increase the grant of gh¢4.5 per pupil per annum (world bank, 2011). also, the committee of heads of basic schools (chobs) commented on this point earlier by describing the gh¢4.5 as meagre and appealed to the government to increase it to gh¢6.0 (bonney, 2006). the impressions of parents were not different from those expressed by the head teachers and teachers on the amount paid per pupil (see table 4). table-4. attitude of parents towards the capitation grant scheme attitude frequency percentage supportive 40 88.9 not supportive 5 11.1 total 45 100 source: field data, 2016 as can be seen in table 4, only 5 out of 45 parents were not supportive of the grant. the researchers‟ deduction is that, most parents did not want to contribute, (cash or kind) towards the running of the school as a result of the grant government is paying to the schools. it might reasonably be claimed from the data that some parents viewed the introduction of the capitation grant as an avenue for an absolutely free educational intervention in which they (parents) will not have any financial responsibility for their children‟s education. similarly, parents considered the capitation grant to relieve them of fees and other expenses they incur. as can be seen in table 5, the capitation grant brought great relief to parents as 60% of them said it brought great relief to them through exemption from payment of fees. about 35.6% said it brought relief in the area of fees and provision of school materials while 4.4% said it brought relief due to the provision of school materials by the government. table-5. relief of the capitation to parents relief frequencies percentages fees 27 60.0 school materials by the government 16 35.6 fees and material 2 4.4 total 45 100 source: field data, 2016 this means that parents saw the non-payment of fees, provision of textbooks and exercise books by the government as a good motivation in helping them send their children to school. by implication, it means and as seen in the view of unesco (2006) such intervention by the government of ghana should be sustained. 4.3. impediments to the full implementation of the grant from open-ended responses, the researchers gathered from respondents that the introduction of the capitation grant was being faced with the following problems: • head teachers found it very difficult preparing the school performance improvement plans (spip) for their school. this was a condition for accessing the capitation grant. • teachers who were not heads did not have enough information on the scheme and its management. • teachers did not co-operate with their head teachers in the preparation of the school performance improvement plans. they did not make inputs of their needs into the spip but would like to have some money spent on their needs when the money had been released. • head teachers found it very difficult preparing their cashbooks, because they apparently had little or no knowledge in accounting, and thus found difficulties in accessing the grant. • head teachers complained about the number of documents to be completed for a single activity performed which made their work cumbersome. the conclusion that can be drawn from the above account is that more determined effort should be applied to train and orientate school authorities on responsibilities that come along with accessing the grant. dzamboe (2005) acknowledges that every intervention or policy has its inherent challenges, hence, it is incumbent on the ges to organize workshops in coping with these challenges. 4.4. ways by which capitation grant can be used to improve education delivery when asked to suggest ways of improving the scheme, the following suggestions from open-ended questions were given by the respondents:  early release of the grant to schools.  district quota deduction should not to be taken once but spread to cover the whole year. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 60  increase of the amount of gh¢4.50 per pupil per annum to gh¢10.00  provision of more educational facilities like additional classrooms, furniture and textbooks, to cater for the increasing numbers.  more teachers should be trained.  more educational programmes on the scheme should be organized to sensitise parents to play their roles to augment the effort of the government.  parent -teacher associations (ptas) should continue to support schools in which their wards are enrolled, by paying dues or pta contributions. it is clear from the suggestions that, timeous disbursement of the capitation grant, increase in the amount per child relative to the grant, improved infrastructure, more manpower (especially teachers) and continuing education regarding the implementation of the grant were key for improving education delivery under the grant. but much to be emphasized is the expected education of various ptas as key stakeholders in implementing the capitation grant. 5. conclusion and implications parents saw the introduction of the scheme as a great relief to them. the data indicate increased enrolment in all the schools sampled. this meant children of school-going age who were not in school took advantage of the introduction of the scheme to go to school. however, a side effect of this was congestion in schools, inadequate accommodation and furniture, high pupil-teacher ratio, shortages in teaching and learning materials, and textbooks. it therefore, behoves government to institute appropriate measures to address these problems. the results of the research showed an increase in enrolment since the introduction of the capitation grant scheme. this was apparently due to the fact that, parents who hitherto could not afford the levies that were being charged in schools could now send their children to school. findings of the study imply that the scheme will help more children who are not in school to be enrolled. it must be noted that if the law on compulsory education is not enforced, parents will not feel compelled to send their children to school. when children of school-going age do no go to school, the country cannot achieve the aim of having all children of school going age in school. the introduction of the capitation grant scheme, if sustained, could be a way of achieving the objectives of the education for all (efa) and the sustainable development goals. stakeholders in education should therefore, ensure the sustainability of the scheme. 5.1. recommendations  to minimize the delays encountered in the payment of the capitation grant to the schools, as revealed in the findings the director in charge of basic education should work hand in hand with the district directors and ministry of finance to compile the account numbers and banks of all the basic schools to enable payment of the grant directly into the accounts of the schools.  based on the inadequacy of the funds as shown in the results, the ministry of education in collaboration with the ministry of finance should make budgetary allocations with the help of non-government organisations (ngos) like the united states agency for international development (usaid) and world vision international for the provision of classroom accommodation throughout the country to help solve the problem of inadequate classrooms as a result of the introduction of the capitation grant scheme.  the results revealed inadequacy of furniture in the schools; the district education oversight committee (deoc) and the district assemblies should therefore seek the help of non-governmental organizations in their districts to assist in providing furniture for the schools to help solve the problem of inadequate furniture.  the ministries of education and finance should make sure the programme is sustained by providing the funding needed for the programme each year. this can be done by allocating about ten per cent of the ghana education trust fund (getfund) money to the payment of the capitation grant for basic schools each year.  district directors of education, circuit supervisors and school management committee members should organize forums to educate parents to make them aware of their role on the education of their children.  district assemblies should promulgate bye-laws to enable parents who refuse to send their children to school sanctioned.  the supply and logistics division of the ghana education service, should acquire more trucks that will enable them ensure timely delivery of textbooks and exercise books from the headquarters to the basic schools.  the teacher education division of the ghana education service should make provision for more workshops to be organized for all heads of basic schools to enable them better understand the management process of the grant.  assistant directors in charge of supervision should ensure that workshops are organized for all teachers who are not heads, to enlighten them on the preparations of school performance improvement plans and records keeping with reference to the capitation grant scheme. references adedze, v., 2005. capitation grant increases enrolment in schools. daily graphic friday december 23, no. 149619: 11. agyeman, d.l., 2013. sociology of education for african students. accra north: ghana black mask ltd. akyeampong, k., j. djangmah, a. seidu, a. oduro and f. hunt, 2007. access to basic education in ghana: the evidence and the issues. country analytic report. create. antwi, m.k., 1992. education, society and development in ghana. accra: ghana unimax publishing limited. atagra, c., 2005. capitation raise school enrolment by 9.3%. ghanaian times wednesday december 21, no. 14712: 21. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 61 bonney, e., 2006. capitation grant, free ride and school feeding; the catalyst for high enrolment. daily graphic friday december 23, no. 149619: 11. denison, e.f., 2007. the sources of economic growth in the united state and the alternatives before us. new york: committee for economic development. drucker, p.f., 2006. landmarks of tomorrow. new york: harper and bros. dzamboe, t., 2005. capitation grant does it; enrolment doubles in north tongu district. daily graphic saturday october 22, no. 149566: 27. ghana statistical service (gss), 2014. district analytical report: ga west municipality, 2010 population and housing census. accra: gss. mcwilliam, h.o.a. and m.a. kwamena-poh, 1975. the development of education in ghana. new edn., london: longman. ministry of education (moe), 2001. education management information system (emis) (2001 2015). report on basic statistics and planning parameters for basic education in ghana. accra: ministry of education. ministry of education science and sports, 2005. linking esp and the white paper reform, november 2005. accra: moess. unesco, 2006. efa global monitoring report 2007: strong foundations early childhood care and education. paris: unesco publishing. unicef, 2006. abolition of school fees, issue briefing note no. 9. accra: unicef unicef, 2015. implementation of the ghana shared growth and development agenda (gsgda), 2010-2013. 2014 citizens‟ assessment report on the capitation grant scheme “is the capitation grant achieving the objective of eliminating fees and charges at the basic school level?. accra: unicef unicef, 2016. the state of the world's children 2016: a fair chance for every child. new york, usa: unicef. world bank, 2011. education in ghana: improving equity, efficiency and accountability of education service delivery. report no. 59755-gh, republic of ghana. afted africa region. bibliography ministry of education science & sports, 2006. report on the education sector annual review (esar) june 2006. accra. retrieved from http://planipolis.iiep.unesco.org/sites/planipolis/files/ressources/ghana_esar_2006_report_final.pdf. figure-1. basic school enrolment in ghana from 2001 to 2006 source: computed from moe/emis (2001 2007) figure-2. fees capitation grant seeks to alleviate source: unicef (2015) figure-3. enrolment in basic schools from 2005 to 2008 source: computed from moe/emis (2005 2009) http://planipolis.iiep.unesco.org/sites/planipolis/files/ressources/ghana_esar_2006_report_final.pdf asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 62 figure-4. gross enrolment rates in basic schools in ghana source: computed from moe/emis data (2001 – 2015) figure-5. net enrolment rates in basic schools in ghana source: computed from moe/emis, 2014 figure-6. gross enrolment rates for boys and girls in basic schools in ghana source: computed from moe/emis 2015 figure-7. net enrolment rates for boys and girls in basic schools in ghana source: computed from moe/emis (2001 2014) figure-8. pupil teacher ratio in basic public schools in ghana source: computed from moe/emis, 2001 2015 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 53-63 63 figure-9. enrolment in the ga west municipality from 2001 to 2015 source: computed from moe/emis, 2001 2015 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 51 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 1, 51-55, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.51.55 practical example of introductory engineering education based on the design process and teaching methodology using a gyro bicycle yoshikazu higa1  ken shimojima2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of mechanical systems engineering, national institute of technology, okinawa college, japan abstract this report describes a workshop on the dynamics of machinery based on the fabrication of a gyrobicycle in a summer school program for junior high school students. the workshop was conducted by engineering students who had completed “creative research”, an engineering design course at the national institute of technology, okinawa college (okinawa kosen). the paper reports on the approximately one month run-up to the workshop and describes the classroom scene on the day of presentation. at the close of the workshop, participants were asked to complete an evaluative questionnaire. responses were quite positive with respect to the lecture slides, guidance and workshop content. on the instructor side, it was confirmed that to promote student understanding, communications and teaching skills are crucial, although it has a passive impression for the achievement level of the workshop. keywords: introductory engineering education, creative research, design process, teaching skill. citation | yoshikazu higa; ken shimojima (2018). practical example of introductory engineering education based on the design process and teaching methodology using a gyro bicycle. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 51-55. history: received: 22 december 2017 revised: 7 february 2018 accepted: 12 february 2018 published: 14 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. the authors would like to express our sincere thanks to emeritus prof. junji matsue for his contribution to summer school and its planning. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction: what is “creative research”? .............................................................................................................................. 52 2. student approach to “creative research” .................................................................................................................................. 52 3. results of questionnaire ................................................................................................................................................................ 53 4. conclusions ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 54 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 54 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.51.55&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4669-360x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6881-5220 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4669-360x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6881-5220 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4669-360x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6881-5220 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4669-360x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6881-5220 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 51-55 52 1. introduction: what is “creative research”? the first national college of technology (kosen) was established in 1962. since that time, kosen alumni have been recognized by both industry and academia as skilled engineers possessing not only a high level of knowledge but also impressive hands-on skills that have contributed significantly to the field. today, kosen education is offered at 51 colleges (55 campuses) across japan, forming, in close cooperation with industry, a unique and successful higher-education system for young students from the age of 15 (kobatake, 2013; edu-port japan, 2017). the early practical engineering education offered by kosen schools has been highly acclaimed by oecd member countries (newby et al., 2009) and has received the attention of many rising countries throughout the world. the national institute of technology, okinawa college (okinawa kosen) is situated in okinawa prefecture on the southernmost island of japan. the college was founded in 2002, becoming the 55th and youngest national college of technology in japan. we have a five-year general course consisting of mechanical systems engineering, information and communication systems engineering, media information engineering and biological resources engineering, as well as a two-year advanced course for creative systems engineering majors. in march of 2017, we held our ninth graduation and our seventh advanced course graduation. the mission of our school is “to contribute to the development of society by training trusted, innovative-minded engineers.” throughout their five years of technical training, okinawa kosen students have the opportunity to become truly creative engineers (araki, 2010; national institute of technology okinawa college, 2017). in order to advance this purpose, we have introduced unique educational elements such as the okinawa kosen seminar (higa et al., 2010) the creative seminar, the creative industry seminar, internships, and so on. in this paper, we highlight “creative research”, an engineering design course that students are able to complete during their first year. this class enables students to experience the research project/process as part of their introductory education and is designed to promote practical engineering. in order to highlight our technical specialties, the college has organized numerous activities, events and promotions. as one of these promotional events, summer school offers an opportunity to learn about our school’s educational offerings by allowing individuals to experience the technical education presented by each department. since 2011, the authors’ department, mechanical systems engineering, has conducted technical education in such classes as engineering materials, heat engine dynamics, mechanisms, and the dynamics of machines. in 2014, classes in mechanisms, control engineering, thermal and fluids engineering, and the dynamics of machines were offered. as described in this paper, the dynamics of machines class produced the “self-standing” (gyro-) bicycle (murata, 2011). several years ago, six third-year students in mechanical systems engineering who were finishing their “creative research” class introduced the dynamics of machines in summer school by using the assembly of a gyrobicycle as a way to teach the subject. to conduct such a class, it was necessary to identify and explore the necessary talents, including communication skills, teaching and coaching skills, task competences, and activities that would be needed. this paper shows the lecture and the activities planned by the students. the results of a questionnaire given to participants following the lecture provided the means to assess the effectiveness of the class. 2. student approach to “creative research” 2.1. planning and discussion of the class to encourage discussion and indicate the goal of the lecture, we prepared a syllabus for the class. table 1 shows the contents of the class as outlined in the syllabus. the number of hours indicates the actual time spent. all sessions were conducted after school, outside the regular curriculum. the six students who had completed their “creative research” course discussed how to build the gyro bicycle and how to use the fabrication process to teach the dynamics of machines. at the end of each lesson, we identified any problems that would need to be addressed in the next lesson. these were shared by all members of the team in the form of a daily report. including the above reports, grades were evaluated based on teaching method (e.g., slide data); questionnaire responses served as a means of self-evaluation. as shown in table 2, the elements for making a gyro-bicycle were enumerated by the students. they set the workshop goals as follows: 1) conduct two one-hour lessons for 18 students; 2) make and test a gyro-bicycle during the course of the workshop. it was decided that only some of the necessary activities (those indicated by * in the table) would be conducted during the workshop; the other work would be prepared in advance. table-1. contents and outline of the class. items hours contents and outline of class examine instruction method 2 examine instruction method for making gyro-bicycle related to the dynamics of machines and list the necessary parts and their purchase through team discussion. assembly production and reexamination 10 machining and cutting based on the parts list. reexamine the instruction method and make the documents for the class. demonstration 4 demonstration, including pre-post-preparation self-evaluation 1 self-evaluation associated with the class table-2. elements and units for making a gyro-bicycle, including pre-process and machining. process of cutting wood for the gyro bicycle frame hole opening process for motor base hole opening process at front wheel position plastic bending process for motor base *1 installation of rear wheel (tightening with wood screw) *4 installation of motor on its base hole opening process for the front wheel caster process of cutting circular plate from acrylic board *2 installation of acrylic circular plate into motor axis installation of pinion gear in circular plate *3 installation of front wheel (tightening + double nut of bolt) *5 wiring the battery box to the motor process of cutting metal sheet for motor base *6 attaching the battery box to the wood frame asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 51-55 53 2.2. the day of the summer school workshop figure 1 shows the lecture room scene on the day of the workshop. as pictured, three junior high participants and one tutor who had finished his “creative research” course sat at each table in the room. at the start of the workshop, an outline of the process was provided by an instructor using a projector at the front of the lecture room. the process was then politely demonstrated and explained by the tutors at each table as the participants proceeded to construct their own gyro-bicycle. the tutors monitored the progress of the work and provided guidance on an individual basis. 3. results of questionnaire 3.1. questionnaire for summer school participants after the lecture to assess opinions before and after the workshop, we administered a questionnaire to all who participated. the questionnaire sought to measure student impressions of the level of difficulty of the practical work involved, before and after the class, and the practice and lecture performance of the tutors. participants were also asked to provide a self-evaluation of their finished product and to indicate their degree of understanding of why a moving bicycle remains upright. figure 2 shows a radar chart of questionnaire results relating to the activities in table 2. the square and triangle symbols indicate participant impressions before and after the lecture, respectively. the scores show the average responses of 30 participants (there were 30 valid responses; the total number of participants was 35); a lower score indicates greater difficulty. from the chart, it is apparent that prior to the start of the workshop the hard work such as installation of the front wheel gave the impression of being relatively easy. on the other hand, some of the simpler work, as we predicted, was perceived as more difficult. figure 3 shows the results of the questionnaire given to participants at the conclusion of the workshop. responses to question 1, 2 and 3, which focus on the lecture and the coaching by the tutors, were generally quite favorable. given their responses to question 4, which involves a self-evaluation of the gyro-bicycle construction process, the participants appeared to be very satisfied, apart from approximately 10% of the students who answered "average" or "dissatisfied." participant understanding of the mechanical phenomena associated with the gyro effect also appeared to be quite good. additionally, the authors checked participant impressions of the tutors in the form of free description. there were many appreciative comments mentioning that the tutors 1) prepared parts in advance, including difficult processing, 2) made appropriate comments and suggestions, and 3) taught carefully and politely. figure-1. scene in classroom (left) and finished product (right). figure-2. results of participant questionnaire source: 5: very easy, 4: easy, 3: average, 2: difficult, 1: very difficult asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 51-55 54 3.2. questionnaire for the tutors following the lecture as shown in table 1, the tutors held a final meeting to discuss the lectures and enumerate any problems that arose in the classroom. their impressions of the lectures were generally positive. as to workshop preparation, however, there were some negative responses due to the lack of assembly parts in the second workshop. on the other hand, the tutors evaluated the teaching and communication skills positively, as shown in fig. 3. the tutors’ comments were as follows:  it was pretty fun to teach when the lecture was given.  it was my first time to teach, so it was a very fresh and good experience.  i was better able to understand the difficulty of teaching students.  i was able to experience the challenge of teaching and understanding things.  i had a valuable experience in teaching students and would like to take advantage of this experience in the future. as indicated in the tutors’ impressions, communication skills, teaching and coaching skills, and task competences are essential for creative engineers (dym et al., 2005; litzinger et al., 2011). this result suggests that the lecture designed by the authors made a meaningful contribution to the development of creative engineers. figure-3. results of the participant questionnaire. the items in the questionnaire were as follows: q1: how was the quality of practice and work content?; q2: how was the teaching skill and the comments regarding practice?; q3: what was your impression of the slides? q4: how satisfied are you with the gyro-bicycle that you created? q5: what is you level of understanding of the gyro effect. source: tutor’ impression 4. conclusions this paper describes a summer school workshop for junior high-school students on the dynamics of machines using the fabrication of a gyro-bicycle. the workshop was presented by okinawa kosen students who were registered in the “creative research” class. after the workshop lecture, to confirm student satisfaction and their level of understanding of the principles taught in the lecture, a questionnaire was completed by the participants and the university students who served as workshop tutors. the results were as follows: 1. a number of comments were highly favorable with respect to the lecture slides, guidance and content. 2. the participants’ level of understanding of the mechanical phenomena associated with the gyro effect was fairly good. as instructors who were registered in the “creative research” course confirmed, to promote student understanding, communication and teaching skills are essential. references araki, m., 2010. kosen: 5-year engineering education starting from age 15. ifac proceedings, 42(24): 326-331. view at google scholar | view at publisher dym, c.l., a.m. agogino, o. eris, d.d. frey and l.j. leifer, 2005. engineering design thinking, teaching, and learning. journal of engineering education, 94(1): 103-120. view at google scholar edu-port japan, 2017. retrieved from https://www.eduport.mext.go.jp/en/ [accessed 2017.12.06]. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=kosen:%205-year%20engineering%20education%20starting%20from%20age%2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.3182/20091021-3-jp-2009.00062 http://dx.doi.org/10.3182/20091021-3-jp-2009.00062 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=engineering%20design%20thinking,%20teaching,%20and%20learning http://www.eduport.mext.go.jp/en/ asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 51-55 55 higa, y., o. makishi, h. toba and h. yamashiro, 2010. a first year engineering education targeted fundamental physical sciences in dept. mechanical systems engineering, okinawa national college of technology –a practical example of mechanics education in oknct seminar –, proceedings of national college of technology education lecture. pp: 489-492. kobatake, h., 2013. the past and the next-centuries of kosen. journal of japanese society for engineering education, 61(1): 6-10. view at publisher litzinger, t., l.r. lattuca, r. hadgraft and w. newstetter, 2011. engineering education and the development of expertise. journal of engineering education, 100(1): 123-150. view at google scholar | view at publisher murata, k., 2011. high school physics notebook. tokyo: kohgakusha. national institute of technology okinawa college, 2017. retrieved from http://en.okinawa-ct.ac.jp/ [accessed 2017.12.04]. newby, h., t. weko, d. breneman, t. johannesson and p. maassen, 2009. oecd reviews of tertiary education japan. retrieved from www.oecd.org/publishing/corrigenda [accessed 5th december 2013]. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.4307/jsee.61.1_6 http://dx.doi.org/10.4307/jsee.61.1_6 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=engineering%20education%20and%20the%20development%20of%20expertise http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2011.tb00006.x http://en.okinawa-ct.ac.jp/ http://www.oecd.org/publishing/corrigenda 156 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 156-160, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.156.160 the analysis of stress levels of the female wrestlers studying in higher education (a case of batman provice) nevzat di̇nçer1  zühal kilinç2 ( corresponding author) 1,2batman university, batman, turkey abstract the purpose of this paper was to analyze the stress levels of the female wrestlers studying in higher education. the trial group of the research consisted of 52 volunteer female wrestlers studying in higher education in the province batman. the research data were collected with “work stress scale” developed by house and rizzo (1972) adapted into turkish by yalçın (2009). in the analysis of data, the mann whitney-u and kruskall wallis-h tests were benefited from as well as the descriptive statistical techniques. as a result of the research, the female wrestlers were considered to experience stress occasionally. while there were not any differences in the female wrestlers’ stress levels in accordance with the variables of bachelor year, persons who they live and income status, there were some differences in their stress levels about whether family members were keen on sport or not. keywords: wrestling, female wrestler, stress levels, education. citation | nevzat di̇nçer; zühal kilinç (2018). the analysis of stress levels of the female wrestlers studying in higher education (a case of batman provice). asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 156-160. history: received: 8 march 2018 revised: 13 april 2018 accepted: 18 april 2018 published: 23 april 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 157 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 157 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 158 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 159 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 160 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.156.160&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-7851 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5760-660x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-7851 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5760-660x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-7851 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5760-660x asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 156-160 157 1. introduction stress has been regarded as a disease of modern societies. stress, which has become a part of daily life, has been experienced even without awareness by many people now (güçlü, 2001). the stress concept, which shows itself almost in each part of our lives, direct us towards different images in physical, mental and psychological aspects. that’s why, it is not possible to isolate stress from our lives (bozkurt et al., 2010). today in modern societies, especially in ultimately developed and so complex organizations it is not likely for people to live without stress. people spend most of their lives on thinking about work and work-related activities. this situation necessarily allows them suffer from negative physical and psychological factors in work process or issues following work process. in this age we live, individuals become isolated day by day, only a sense of achievement prevails, this also pulls people into depression and stress. stress is a situation of tension in individuals resulting from extraordinary demands, pressures or opportunities (schermerborn et al., 1988). stress is a reaction to differences between a person’s real life and expectations (magnuson, 1990). stress is defined as a result of opportunities, limitations or demands encountered by persons, it represents unclear and prominent dynamic conditions (robins, 1996). individuals go into deliberative actions in order to fulfill their physical, psychological and social needs. when we face with tension-leading conditions, our body tries to adapt to this situation with some reactions. when human existence having biological balance in homeostatic limits is confronted with stress stimulus from internal or external environment, it reacts making physiological or psychological defenses. stress reaction has short life. it urgently gives energy required by an organism. if there is any time to refresh oneself between two stressful events following each other, all is well. but today increasing life tempo without stopping and stressful situations following each other create continuously growing stimulation and liveliness in us. this situation may make an individual feel psychologically uneasy, more frustrated and inclined to make fault. it is necessary to reveal personal reactions to individual and changing stress situations in accordance with beliefs, habits, personalities and body structures as soon as possible. if stress reaction has a rising tendency for a long time, this situation may cause various physical damages as well. reactions in individuals by stress are analyzed in three titles; non-specific reactions, general harmonisation syndrome and fight or flight reaction (makın and lındley, 1995). stress is a phenomenon that can be perceived and experienced according to many variables. economic, social, cultural, organizational, individual and demographic reasons as well as work and working environment, economic and political progress of the country, family structure, life conditions etc. there are many stressful factors. it is important to try to understand these from different angles to understand the stress-generating capacity of each factor (ayşen, 2015). stress-related researches primarily focused on the effects of stress, started with a view to getting rid of the negative effects of stress. in time stress was regarded to have many reasons and a series of results, stress was considered to be a physiological and psychological event which was researched more and more. when any type of stress is confronted, reactions by an organism vary depending on various factors. these are stress and individual characteristics. an individual’s age, gender are among these factors and stress-leading situations and its own effects vary from each other, depending on an individual’s development characteristics (durmus and asçıoğlu, 2005). education background, world viewpoints, opinions about the relevant events may affect the volume of stress experience. because life philosophies, which occur following individuals’ beliefs, life experiences and education backgrounds, let them assess events in different ways (arık, 1996). from this point of view, each person’ stress load varies from each other to take. to some extent, when success rates go up, individuals’ stress levels rise as well. at this point, it is not possible to consider success as an undesirable result. success is the greatest prize for the active person. stress may have positive-negative effects on persons, however, work stress-related researches have focused on negative effects more (arık, 1996). now most of athletes are witnessed to attribute different and wrong meanings to stress, a current concept in psychology. stress is perceived in sport community and among athletes in negative ways. furthermore, it is necessary not to ignore that the stress concept is beneficial in current conditions. in the light of psychological and psychosomatic syndromes, stress affecting individual performance in various levels among athletes, the following questions were searched for answers within this paper aimed at the analysis of stress levels of the female wrestlers studying in higher education; 1-at which levels do the female wrestlers experience stress? 2do the female wrestlers’ stress levels significantly differ in the variables of bachelor’s year, persons they live with, existence of persons interested in sport in their families and family income levels. 2. method 2. 1. research design this research was designed with the descriptive screening model aimed at analyzing the stress levels of the female wrestlers having education in higher education. 2.2. study group the trial group of the research consisted of 52 volunteer female wrestlers studying at higher education in the province batman and wrestling. 2.3. data analysis the research data were collected with “the work stress scale” developed by house and rizzo (1972) adapted into turkish by yalçın (2009). the scale involved two parts, 17 questions including 7 questions aimed at determining the personal characteristics of the female wrestlers in the first part, 10 questions aimed at determining the stress levels of the female wrestlers in the second part. the scale items were pointed with the five point likert scale as 1:never, 2: rarely, 3:sometimes, 4:often, 5:very often. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 156-160 158 the highest point from the scale was 50, the lowest point was 10. since the gap width of the scale was estimated as “range width/relevant group number”, the average intervals for the findings were; (1.01–1.80) never, (1.81–2.60) rarely, (2.61–3.40) sometimes, (3.41–4.20) often, (4.21–5.00) very often. the cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale was found to be .83, so this scale was regarded to be reliable. in the analysis of data, one sample test kolmogorow smirnov test was primarily applied for seeing whether data showed a normal distribution, thus data did not show any normal distribution (z=.090; p<0.05). in this scope, mann whitney-u and kruskall wallis-h tests from non-parametrical tests were benefited from as well as the descriptive statistical techniques. in the interpretation of findings, the significance level was regarded to be p<0.05. 3. findings table-1. the distributions of personal characteristics of participants bachelor year n % 1-2 years 34 65,4 3-4 years 18 34,6 who do you live with? n % family 38 73,1 club 14 26,9 are there family members interested in sport? n % yes 17 32,7 no 35 67,3 family income status n % 450 tl below 13 25,0 451 tl -850 tl 11 21,2 851 tl-1.250 tl 13 25,0 1.251 tl-2.000 tl 8 15,4 2.001 tl-3.000 tl 7 13,5 total 52 100,0 according to table 1; of the female wrestlers, 65,4% (34 persons) had a bachelor degree of 1-2 years, 34,6% (18 persons) had a bachelor degree of 3-4 years. of the female wrestlers, 32,7% (17 persons) consisted of family members interested in sport, 67,3% (35 persons) did not have any family members interested in sport, 73,1% (38 persons) lived with their families, 26,9% (14 persons) lived with their club members. in accordance with family income status, the income level was below 450 tl in 25,0% (13 persons) between 451 tl-850 tl in 21,2% (11 persons), between 851 tl-1.250 tl in 25,0% (13 persons), between 1.251 tl-2.000 tl in 15,4% (8 persons), between 2.001 tl-3.000 tl in 13,5% (7 persons) among the female wrestlers. table-2. the descriptive statistical results of stress levels of participants stress level items avg. ss 1.how often did you feel unhappy when you experienced an unexpected event in the last month? 1,88 0,65 2. how often did you feel unhappy when you could not take important things under control in your life in the last month? 1,77 1,02 3. how often did you feel angry and stressful in the last month? 2,58 1,04 4. how often did you feel self-confident in overcoming with your personal problems in the last month? 2,54 1,34 5. how often did you think that everything was ok in the last month? 2,73 1,33 6. how often did you think that you could not do what you needed to do in the last month? 2,13 1,21 7.how often did you take events which disturbed you, under control in the last month? 2,63 1,16 8. how often did you feel yourself important in the last month? 2,35 1,20 9. how often did you feel frustrated when you could not take events under control in the last month? 2,27 1,19 10.how often did you feel that difficulties accumulated and you could not overcome with these difficulties in the last month? 2,17 1,20 total 2,31 1,13 (1:never, 2:seldom, 3:sometimes, 4:often, 5:very often) according table 2, the female wrestlers’ stress levels were generally regarded to be rarely (2,31±1,13). in other words, the female wrestlers claimed to experience stress occassionally. when the female wrestlers’ stress levels were analyzed, they could take the events which disturbed them, under control in their lives in the last month (1,77±1,02), they did not feel unhappy when they were confronted with unexpected events (1,88±0,65) but they could not occassionally do what they needed to do in the last month (2,13±1,21), they could not overcome with difficulties when difficulties increasingly became more (2,17±1,20), they felt more important than everything (2,35±1,20), angry and frustrated (2,58±1,04), they thought that everything was ok (2,13±1,21), they rarely felt angry when they could not take some events under control (2,27±1,19), they could control some events (2,63±1,16), they felt self-confident in overcoming with their personal problems (2,54±1,34). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 156-160 159 table-3. the mann whitney-u test results of their stress levels in accordance with the variables of participants’ bachelor year, persons they live with and family members interested in sport bachelor year n s.o. s.t. u p 1-2 years 34 28,53 970,00 237,000 0,18 3-4 years 18 22,67 408,00 total 52 who do you live with? n s.o. s.t. u p family 38 25,82 981,00 240,000 0,59 club 14 28,36 397,00 total 52 are there family members interested in sport? n s.o. s.t. u p yes 17 35,21 598,50 149,500 0,00* no 35 22,27 779,50 total 52 *p<0,05 according to table 3, the female wrestlers’ stress levels did not significantly differ in bachelor year and people they live with (p>0,05). however, the female wrestlers’ stress levels significantly varied when there was any family member interested in sport (p<0,05). when the female wrestlers’ mean ranks were assessed, the group involving individuals doing sport in family had higher stress levels. table-4. the kruskall wallis-h test results of their stress levels in accordance with the variable of participants’ family income level income level (tl) n s.o. chi-square df p 450 below 13 31,58 4,56 4 0,33 451-850 11 22,23 851-1250 13 21,35 1251-2000 8 29,00 2001-3000 7 30,50 total 52 according to table 4, the female wrestlers’ stress levels did not significantly vary in family income levels (x2=4,56 ;p>0,05). 4. conclusion and discussion this research was done to reveal the stress levels of the female wrestlers. in this research, the female wrestlers generally said to experience stress occasionally. the female wrestlers were observed to take events which disturbed them, under control in their lives in the last month and not to feel dissatisfied with the unexpected events they experienced but they had a few difficulties following each other, they could not overcome with these issues and achieve in these in the last month occassionally. this shows that the female wrestlers value themselves above everything, rarely feel angry and stressful and frustrated when some events occur beyond their control but yet they can keep events under control. in the face of all these events, the female wrestlers were deemed to feel self-confident while overcoming with these personal problems. as long as an individual’s capabilities for coping mean handling with stressful events, the person can stay away from high tension. but if the requirements of events are more serious and the person has difficulty in adapting to these requirements, unbalanced situations occur and bodies undertake any responsibilities over physical and psychological carrying capacities. an individual may take these heavy responsibilities to some extent. but if this situation goes on, signs of excessive stress show up, burnout syndrome or stress-related diseases follow these signs (gülbeyaz, 2006). there was a statistically significant and positive relationship between self-interpretation stressors and physical stressors, desperate approach, submissive approach, and social support seeking. there was a statistically significant and negative correlation between stressors and selfa relationship has been identified (nesrin, 2016). furthermore, the participants suggested to feel self-confident in overcoming with their personal problems. this situation may be related with the female wrestlers’ sportive performance. ceylan (2005) dealt with the effects of gender and personality variables on using cognitive strategies in managing stress. this research indicated that there was a significant relation in the levels of using cognitive strategies to struggle with stress among the female and male athletes. durmaz (2017) found a statistically significant difference in stress levels between women and men. women's stress levels average score 80,56; while the average for men is 62.49. according to this, it is seen that women are more stressed than men. the other findings showed that there were not any significant differences in the female wrestlers’ stress levels in accordance with the variables of bachelor year, persons they live with and income status. but the female wrestlers’ stress levels significantly differed when their family members interested in sport. however , uluruh (2008) suggested that the high school students’ viewpoints about stress-leading manager behaviours varied from the students’ different personal and family characteristics. family has a great role for children to have tendencies for sport. in dissemination of sportive activities necessary for individuals’ healthy development, significant tasks correspond to all education institutions, families at first. they must intend to canalize children in sport at a young age and lots of efforts must be made. then our children are the future of our society and building stones, preparing them for social life in each aspect must be among the most important tasks for us (hergüner, 1991). as a result of these, providing opportunities to young athletes starting sport at an early age in order to show performance in sport away from stress, keep them away from stress affect athletes’ individual performance at various levels, basic stress items leave negative marks on athletes’ performance, so young athletes must be kept away from stressful environments. family support in sport cannot be ignored, they must support their children when starting at sport and achieving in this field in future. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 156-160 160 references arık, a., 1996. introduction to motivation and excitement. i̇stanbul: çantay bookstore. pp: 240-250. ayşen, p., 2015. struggle with stress and stress in working life, antalya atatürk state hospital sample of nurses, institute of social sciences, beykent university, i̇stanbul, 2015, s. 10. ( unpublished master's thesis). bozkurt, t., m. uluğ, c.a. turpoglu, z. oktuğ, s. i̇çellioglu, m.s. özden and ö. soysal, 2010. stress. istanbul: istanbul culture university. ceylan, m., 2005. “the influence of gender and personality variables on the use of cognitive strategies in stress management. published graduate thesis, ege üniversity health sciences institute sporda psycho social fields, i̇zmir. durmaz, e., 2017. an analysis of the effect of stress levels of labor on health staff: a hospital example. published graduate thesis, i̇stanbul gelişim university social sciences institute, i̇stanbul. durmus, l. and m. asçıoğlu, 2005. the effect of social isolation stress on learning in male juvenile rats. journal of health sciences, 14(1): 52–56. view at google scholar güçlü, n., 2001. stress management. gazi university gazi education faculty magazine, 21(1): 91-109. gülbeyaz, o., 2006. organizational stress sources of administrators and teachers who work in boarding elementary schools and boarding primary schools. published graduate thesis, i̇nönü üniversity institute of social sciences educational sciences department. hergüner, g., 1991. the role of the family in the direction of the sport for the child and its importance. ondokuz mayıs üniversity faculty of education. 6: 87-91. house, r.j. and j.r. rizzo, 1972. role conflict and ambiguity as critical variables in a model of organizational behavior. organizational behavior & human performance, 7(3): 467-505. view at google scholar | view at publisher magnuson, j., 1990. stress management. journal of property management, 55(3): 74-79. makın, p.e. and p.a. lındley, 1995. positive stress management. i̇stanbul: çev. aysun arslan, rota broadcast production promotion trade ltd.sti. publications. nesrin, ü., 2016. stress and management of hospital workers. journal of balkan and near east social sciences, 2(2): 28-37. robins, s.p., 1996. organizational behavior. 7th edn., usa: prentice hall inc. schermerborn, j.r., j.g. hunt and r.n. osborn, 1988. managing organizational behavior. 3rd edn., new york: john wiley & sons, inc. uluruh, a., 2008. stress-generating manager behaviors and students' coping behaviors in secondary school students. published graduate thesis, dokuz eylül üniversity department of educational sciences. yalçın, y., 2009. the effect of sports satisfaction on the athletes' stress and aggression levels: an application in antalya province to determine the role of coach gender. published graduate thesis erciyes university social sciences institute sports management department, kayseri. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20effect%20of%20social%20isolation%20stress%20on%20learning%20in%20male%20juvenile%20rats https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=role%20conflict%20and%20ambiguity%20as%20critical%20variables%20in%20a%20model%20of%20organizational%20behavior http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(72)90030-x 18 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 18-24, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.18.24 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group comparison of participation constraints in recreational physical activity of the teachers working iğdir and erzurum provinces mehmet ali öztürk1 1karabük university, school of physical education and sports, turkey abstract the aim of the study is to compare the participation constraint for leisure activities of teachers who working in the ministry of national education (mne). in order to determine the leisure time constraints leisure constraints scales (lcs) were applied to the participants. a total of 413 teachers (258 male and 155 female) working in the ministry of national education participated in the study in iğdır and erzurum provinces. no statistically significant difference was found at the level of p <0,05 in any of the sub-dimensions as a result of the inter-city comparison of the female participants. while there was a significant difference in the lack of information, facilities and time sub-dimensions of the male participants in the study, p <0.05 was not significant difference in the other sub-dimensions. it is seen that the difference is in favor of the participants from the province of erzurum. there was no statistically significant difference between the two cities in terms of lack of information, facilities and time (p <0,05) in the subscales, as in male participants. the female teachers who working iğdır and erzurum province there was no difference between the scores in the lcs and the mean scores of both groups were close to each other. for the male participants working in iğdır province, it was determined that the lack of information, facilities and time constraints were more effective in participation of recreational physical activities than male participants working in erzurum province. keywords: recreation, physical activity, leisure constraints, teachers. jel classification: l83. citation | mehmet ali öztürk (2019). comparison of participation constraints in recreational physical activity of the teachers working iğdir and erzurum provinces. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 18-24. history: received: 5 september 2018 revised: 9 october 2018 accepted: 12 november 2018 published: 4 december 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 20 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 21 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 23 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 23 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.18.24&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/373 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4863-9340 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/373 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4863-9340 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/373 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4863-9340 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 18-24 19 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction when leisure time studies are examined, it's seen that those related to leisure time constraints are important. however, the literature contributed significantly to the knowledge of leisure time constraints and provided insights into the relationship between leisure time constraints and leisure time experienced (wang and wu, 2016). while the first studies on leisure time are more theoretical (crawford et al., 1991; samdahl and jekubovich, 1997) especially in the 2000s, empirical results have been put forward to cover a very large part of the society such as adults, women and disabled people (wang and wu, 2016). leisure constraints are defined as factors that influence the ability of individuals to choose leisure preferences for specific activities and to limit their capacity to participate in activities (jackson and scott, 1999). crawford and godbey (1987) used the three-dimensional classification of leisure time constraints (intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural), which were initially applied to address multifaceted relationships with other variables such as preferences and participation. due to the strong interactions between the dimensions, the fact that the factors were not discriminatory and the low internal consistency brought about many concerns about the use of this tripartite approach (godbey et al., 2010). for this reason, some scientists (gilbert and hudson, 2000; jun and kyle, 2011) also benefited from different constraints within a certain activity and environment. crawford and godbey (1987) first mentioned three possible constraints, namely intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural, for participation to leisure constraints of families. examples include intrapersonal situations such as anxiety, depression, religiosity, stress and perceived self-skill. interpersonal constraints can be defined as the result of interpersonal interaction among intrapersonal. structural constraints can include climate, season, financial resources, workload and so on. for these three identified constraints, then the category of hierarchically arranged leisure constraints was developed (wang and wu, 2016). raymore et al. (1993), crawford and godbey (1987) and crawford et al. (1991) mentioned three intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural leisure time constraints, each of the sub-headings have been mentioned in a comprehensive time constraints criterion. intrapersonal constraints: faith, introversion, shy, skill, discomfort and living with the family; interpersonal constraints; information about activities, money status, obligations, capabilities, time, transportation and distance; structural constraints: suitability, availability, financial situation, non-crowded places, time and other elements (wang and wu, 2016). studies focusing on leisure constraints have been revised with new developments with the development of various conceptual models (jackson, 2005). one of the most noteworthy of these models is the hierarchical model (figure 1) of leisure time constraints proposed by crawford et al. (1991). according to the first phase of this model, potential participants in the decision-making process for their first participation in leisure activities face a number of constraints. the second stage shows how participants who participate in recreational activities and who have experience in participation in these activities progress to a higher level of entertainment (bryan, 1977; stebbins, 1992). in this model, many researchers test whether three-level constraints create different categories or structures, as well as many researches that directly or indirectly describe the types of constraints to be connected to three levels. for example; raymore et al. (1993) demonstrated the validity of the three-dimensional structure using confirmatory factor analysis. their results provided preliminary evidence supporting the existence of three subgroups. crawford et al. (1991) estimate that social classes, which are generally shaped by income and education, have a strong influence on people's perceptions and experiences about constraints, which ultimately affect their participation in leisure activities. although not directly or indirectly present in this proposition, this study does not include any empirical evidence, but many studies addressing relationships between demographic variables (such as gender, income, education, ethnic background) and perceived constraints (jackson, 2005). mccarville and smale (1993) examined perceived constraints in five main areas that affect participation in leisure activities (physical activity and exercise, arts and entertainment, hobbies, social activities and home entertainment). the findings suggest that the constraints do not show a balanced distribution within the total population. people in the low-income group exhibit more constraints than those who are wealthy (perceived age compliance, health, difficulties in communication language, costs, lack of companion, information, accessibility / compliance). alexandris and carroll (1997b) conclude that psychological, interest, and negative past experiences, perceived absence, lack of information, accessibility / financial constraints are more common among the less educated individuals. these findings obtained from raymore et al. (1994) in accordance with the results of the study. in their study, they examined the relationships between socio-economic status (perceived household income and education levels of parents) and perceived constraints and found that socio-economic status was in an inverse relationship with interpersonal constraints. they also concluded that there was no significant relationship between the other two types of constraints and socio-economic status. to summarize, the distribution of constraints in socio-economic steps in current studies, crawford et al. (1991) the evidence supports the existence of a social privilege hierarchy in general to experience leisure constraints. furthermore, a common finding from the present literature indicates that women experience more constraints on leisure than men, especially in terms of interpersonal constraints (culp, 1998; henderson and ainsworth, 2000; shaw and henderson, 2005). we also believe that gender equality issues support the hierarchical social concession proposition indirectly (crawford et al., 1991). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 18-24 20 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. hierarchical model of leisure constraints (lyu and oh, 2014). source: the source is already given under figure (lyu and oh, 2014). 2. method 2.1. model of research the research was carried out to compare the factors that constraints the participation of teachers in iğdır and erzurum provinces in their leisure activities. screening model was used in the research. the screening model is known as a research approach that aims to describe a situation that has existed in the past or is still present. the subject, object, event, subject to the study is tried to be defined in its own conditions and as it is karasar (2000). 2.2. sampling the population of the study was composed of the secondary schools and high schools of the ministry of national education (mne) in the provinces of iğdır and erzurum, and the sample of the 13 schools included in the study. a total of 413 people, 258 male (62.5%) and 155 female (37.5%), participated in the study. 2.3. data collection tool in the study; the leisure constraint questionnairewas (lcq) used to determine and compare the constraints to participation in the leisure activities of teachers. the turkish validity and reliability study of the scale was performed by öztürk et al. (2017). the original of the lcq was developed by alexandris and carroll (1997b) by applying 153 people in larissa, greece. after the factor analysis, it was determined that the scale was composed of 7 sub-dimensions (psychological, knowledge, facilities, accessibility, interest, partners and time) and the contribution of these factors to the total variance was 61%. as a result of the internal consistency analysis applied to the original scale, cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole scale and for each sub-dimension was between 0.59 and 0.81 and the scale was accepted as reliable for usability in the study (alexandris and carroll, 1997a). in addition, as a result of the internal consistency analysis performed by öztürk et al. (2017) cronbach's alpha value for the whole scale was: 0,876, spearman-brown correlation value: 0,754 and guttman split half correlation value: 0,754. the scale consists of 29 items. the scale was scored as 5-point likert (1: i completely disagree, 5: completely agree). for this reason, while interpreting the research findings; the higher the scores obtained from the scale, the participants were evaluated as a negative result. 2.4. analysis of data demographic characteristics of the participants were determined by descriptive statistics. the usability of the lcq in our study was measured by internal consistency analysis. internal consistency analysis reliability test cronbac'h alpha value was determined as 0.874 for all the scale and for sub-dimensions knowledge: 0,698, psychological: 0,704, time: 0,716, interest: 0,738, partners: 0,753, facility: 0,774 and accessibility: 0,779. these values were found to be acceptable for usability of the scale in our research. whether the scores of the participants in the lcq differed for seven sub-dimensions of gender and marital status between the two cities were first measured by one way manova. the manova test was found level of p<0.05 as a result of the covariance equation and it was determined that the covariances of the groups were not equally distributed in sex and marital situations. (table 1). for this reason, whether or not the scores differed significantly by applying the filtering technique (first, only male participants were filtered and compared to the city. therefore, the difference between the two cities gave us only findings about male participants. the same procedure was applied to female participants. for marital status, statistics were applied with gender measurement technique.) for gender and marital status were measured by independent sample t-test due to the normal distribution of the data. normality distributions were found by applying z-test. the z-test is a test used for normal distribution using the kurtosis and skewness values. the z value is obtained by dividing the kurtosis or skewness data by its own standard errors (kim, 2013). in the studies where the significance of p <0.05 was considered, the absolute value of the z score was between 1.96 and -1.96, indicating that the data were normally distributed (ghasemi and zahediasl, 2012). the two-way manova test was used to determine whether there were any differences in the sub-dimensions between the two cities. the significance level was accepted as p <0.05 and the confidence interval was 95%. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 18-24 21 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. covariance matrix equation test independent variabale df1 df2 f p gender 84 243750,790 2,436 0,000 marital status 84 319888,139 3,647 0,000 source: this table is result of covariance matrix test of our studies. 3. results table 2 gives demographic information about the participants in the study. 258 male participants (62.5%, iğdır: n = 116, erzurum: n = 142) from erzurum and iğdır, and 155 female participants (37.5%, iğdır: n = 66, erzurum: n = 89). a total of 413 teachers participated. 56.4% (n = 233) of the participants were married and 43.6% (n = 180) were single. in terms of working year; 186 people (45%, igdır: n = 82, erzurum: n = 104) between 1-5 years, 100 people (24.2%, igdır: n = 40, erzurum: n = 60) between 6-10 years, 56 people (13.6%, igdır: n = 27, erzurum: n = 29) between 11-15 years and 71 people (17.2%, igdır: n = 33, erzurum: n = 38) 16 years and it is observed that they have working year experience. table 3 shows the scores of women and men by province. according to this; although the female participants from the province of erzurum have a lower score than the women who participated in the study from iğdır province, this score is not statistically significant. in terms of male participants, the scores of the participants from erzurum were lower in all sub-dimensions. according to this result, the knowledge (t=-3,492; p = 0,001), facilities (t=-2,306; p=0,022) and time (t=-4,078; p=0,000) sub-dimensions p <0.05 level of significant difference has created. in terms of marital status (table 4); it was determined that the married and single participants who participated in the study from the province of erzurum received lower scores than the married and single participants from iğdır province. however, the difference in points between the groups did not constitute any significant difference in any sub-dimension. the comparison of the scores of the participants in terms of the working years was done by monova test in table 5. as a result of the analysis, it was determined that there were no differences between the sub-dimension dependent variables in the province, the working year and the working year *province. table-2. demographic characteristics of participants gender province n % male iğdır 116 45 erzurum 142 55 female iğdır 66 42,05 erzurum 89 57,05 working year province n % 1-5 years iğdır 82 44,01 erzurum 104 59,09 6-10 years iğdır 40 40 erzurum 60 60 11-15 years iğdır 27 48,02 erzurum 29 51,08 16 years and over iğdır 33 46,05 erzurum 38 53,05 martial status province n % married iğdır 97 41,06 erzurum 136 58,04 single iğdır 85 47,2 erzurum 95 52,8 source: this table is result of our studies. table-3. independent sample t-test comparing male and female participants' scores between provinces gender province n mean ss(±) t p psychological female er 66 3,684 1,465 ,770 ,442 iğd 89 3,509 1,346 male er 116 3,419 ,141 -1,795 ,074 iğd 142 3,733 ,108 knowledge female er 66 2,433 1,126 -1,818 ,071 iğd 89 2,788 1,257 male er 116 2,556 ,115 -3,492 ,001* iğd 142 3,094 ,102 facilities female er 66 3,454 1,713 -,589 ,557 iğd 89 3,604 1,451 male er 116 3,194 ,128 -2,306 ,022* iğd 142 3,570 ,103 accessibility female er 66 3,200 1,391 -1,069 ,287 iğd 89 3,449 1,461 male er 116 3,122 ,128 -1,953 ,052 iğd 142 3,459 ,114 interest female er 66 2,280 1,689 -,425 ,672 iğd 89 2,387 1,449 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 18-24 22 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group male er 116 2,633 ,155 -,727 ,468 iğd 142 2,778 ,127 partners kadın er 66 3,237 1,551 -1,051 ,295 iğd 89 3,516 1,697 erkek er 116 3,371 ,124 -1,443 ,128 iğd 142 3,568 ,120 time female er 66 2,742 1,132 -1,372 ,172 iğd 89 3,005 1,216 male er 116 2,484 ,092 -4,078 ,000* iğd 142 3,068 ,105 * p<0,05, er= erzurum, iğd= iğdır table-4. independent sample t-test comparing the scores of married and single participants among provinces gender province n mean ss(±) t p psychological married iğd 97 3,273 1,357 -1,773 ,077 er 136 3,511 1,234 single iğd 85 3,598 1,484 -,001 ,999 er 95 3,598 1,340 knowledge married iğd 97 2,830 1,207 -1,275 ,192 er 136 3,014 1,164 single iğd 85 2,604 1,197 -1,666 ,097 er 95 2,922 1,342 facilities married iğd 97 3,508 1,580 -1,057 ,245 er 136 3,755 1,325 single iğd 85 3,687 1,577 -,479 ,632 er 95 3,581 1,389 accessibility married iğd 97 3,433 1,340 -,643 ,524 er 136 3,516 1,399 single iğd 85 3,285 1,431 -,392 ,635 er 95 3,368 1,408 interest married iğd 97 2,510 1,636 -,804 ,422 er 136 2,680 1,554 single iğd 85 2,500 1,740 -,223 ,824 er 95 2,552 1,428 partners married iğd 97 3,494 1,508 -1,330 ,115 er 136 3,720 1,504 single iğd 85 2,992 1,308 -1,434 ,153 er 95 3,301 1,559 time married iğd 97 2,876 ,982 -,362 ,688 er 136 2,954 1,199 single iğd 85 2,917 1,111 -1,133 ,228 er 95 3,173 1,284 * p<0,05, er= erzurum, iğd= iğdır table-5. the manova test results of the participants were compared between the provinces according to the working years. resource mean square df f p psychological w. years 2,296 3 1,896 ,107 prv 2,651 1 1,472 ,226 w. years * prv ,275 3 ,153 ,928 knowledge w. years ,118 3 ,078 ,972 prv 2,387 1 1,388 ,268 w. years * prv ,710 3 ,470 ,704 facilities w. years 2,091 3 1,925 ,095 prv 1,455 1 ,918 ,387 w. years * prv ,1836 3 ,864 ,460 accessibility w. years 2,037 3 1,043 ,373 prv ,735 1 ,497 ,685 w. years * prv ,708 3 ,363 ,780 interest w. years 1,589 3 1,443 ,230 prv 1,430 1 ,1,115 ,320 w. years * prv 1,766 3 1,514 ,214 partners w. years 1,251 3 ,665 ,548 prv 1,684 1 1,143 ,188 w. years * prv ,824 3 ,375 ,771 time w. years 1,042 3 ,883 ,486 prv 2,184 1 1,784 ,158 w. years * prv ,231 3 ,173 ,915 w. years = 1-5 years, 6-10 years, 11-15 years, 16 years and over, prv = province asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 18-24 23 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. conclusion studies on recreation and leisure constraints have been increasing rapidly in recent years (kim et al., 2015). constraints were defined as the barriers to not participating in the activities in the first studies. in later studies, barriers were evaluated as constraints, and studies were carried out to deal with those constraints (alexandris et al., 2007). many theoretical and empirical research was based on factors such as budget, time, facilities and psychological status (crawford and godbey, 1987; crompton and kim, 2004; hung and petrick, 2010). the scale used in our study measures the extent to which these factors are effective in the constraints on participation in leisure time activities. at this point, the findings of this part of the research are discussed and the results are presented. in erzurum and iğdır provinces, the main purpose of this study is to compare the participation constraints of secondary school and high school teachers in leisure activities. a total of 413 people from both provinces participated in the study. those who participated in the study from erzurum (n=231) took more places than those from iğdır province. considering the fact that erzurum has much more population than iğdır and the number of students and teachers in schools is high, this result can be considered as normal. in addition, men and 258 women and 155 people contributed to the study. when the participants were evaluated in terms of the working year; it was observed that most of the groups were teachers with working experience between 186 and 1-5 years, and between 100 and 6-10 years. in addition, 71 teachers with 16 years and more and 56 teachers with 11-15 years experience were included in the study. erzurum and iğdır are located in the eastern part of our country. in particular, it is known that most of the teachers perform the compulsory eastern tasks during years they were first appointed. this situation can be said to be the main reason for young teachers to be more involved in the research. it is thought that most of the teachers with long term duty are registered to the population in the city where they are located. 56.4% of the participants were married and 43.6% were single participants. in all sub-dimensions (psychological, knowledge, facilities, accessibility, interest, partners and time), female participants in the province of erzurum has lower scores than the female participants in the province of iğdır was determined. however, these differences did not make any statistically significant difference. according to this result; the fact that women who participated in the study from iğdır could not participate in leisure time activities compared to the women who participated in the study from erzurum province can be interpreted that all factors are more effective. when evaluated in terms of male participants; the scores of the participants from the erzurum province were lower in all sub-dimensions. however, this difference in score, knowledge (t = -3,492; p = 0,001), facilities (t=-2,306; p=0,022) and time (t=-4,078; p=0,000) sub-dimensions there was a significant difference the level of p<0.05. ayhan et al. (2018) found a significant difference between women and men in favor of women in all sub-dimensions according to the results of the study, which examined the barriers of participation of recreational students in recreational activities. they concluded that women were more involved in such activities than men. barkın et al. (2017) found differences in faculties and high school students sub-dimensions of facilities and side causes in their studies comparing the constraints on participation in recreational activities. it was determined that the married and single participants who participated in the study from the province of erzurum received lower scores than the married and single participants who participated in the study from iğdır but these differences did not make any significant difference. as a result of comparison of the scores of the participants in terms of the working year, it was determined that the dependent variables did not make any difference between the province, the working year and the working year *province. in our study, the factors of non-participants of of leisure time activities in iğdır province were lower in all subdimensions than in erzurum. although the scores of the participants from erzurum province are lower in all subdimensions; the main factors that stand out can say as knowlegde, facilities and time. in other words, these three factors have been much more effective in their inability to participate in the activities of teachers working in iğdır. in a study conducted on university students; it was determined that the most constraints on students' participation in activities were caused by structural reasons (richard et al., 2011). in another study in which teachers' leisure time constraints were determined, it was found that lack of time and knowledge was the most important factor in the restriction of participation in activities (üstün et al., 2017). the results of the research revealed that the participants in erzurum province have less disability to participate in leisure activities than the participants of iğdır province. the reasons such as the fact that erzurum has much more social and cultural opportunities compared to iğdır and at the same time it is much larger in terms of population may have caused this result to be in the research. 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sport and exercise, 19(2): 157-161. available at: https://doi.org/10.15314/tsed.301569. wang, t.w. and c.t. wu, 2016. identifying leisure constraints among college students – application of a fuzzy approach. international journal of organizational innovation, 8(4): 177-187. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 2, 53-62, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 53 college students’ perspectives of e-learning system use in high education ju-yin yanga1  yen-chen yenb2 1 department of applied english, kainan university, taoyuan, taiwan 2 graduate institute of information and computer education, national taiwan normal university, taipei, taiwan ( corresponding author) abstract the purpose of this study was primarily to create, on a digital learning platform, a digital learning environment with freedom from such constraints for a group of seven college students. the researchers selected seven students from the applied english program that were taking part in an internship combination program at san diego state university. the study makes use of in-depth interviews in carrying out a qualitative investigation to determine whether or not utilizing a digital learning system provides students with a superior mode of educational interaction. thirty-minute interviews inquiring into the students' feelings about handling all coursework over the digital learning platform were held once every two months, for a total of three interviews per student during the semester. at the same time, the researchers made use of questions and uploaded homework from the students to record each student's progress, which formed the second class of data for analysis. results indicate that compared with the traditional ways of learning, through the digital learning server system, teacher-student interactions increased, with the real-time discussion area emerging as the students' favorite function. moreover, the instructor was able to provide timely feedback, which was encouraging to these students living so far from home for the first time. in sum, the digital learning environment effectively assisted the teacher in establishing a ubiquitous learning environment. keywords: e-learning, ubiquitous learning, computer assisted instruction, internship experience. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 54 2. theoretical framework ....................................................................................................................................................... 54 3. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................ 55 4. methods ................................................................................................................................................................................ 57 5. results .................................................................................................................................................................................. 58 6. discussion ............................................................................................................................................................................. 60 7. recommendations for future research.............................................................................................................................. 60 8. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 60 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 61 citation | ju-yin yanga; yen-chen yenb (2016). college students‟ perspectives of e-learning system use in high education. asian journal of education and training, 2(2): 53-62. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 24 september 2016/ revised: 20 october 2016/ accepted: 26 october 2016/ published: 1 november 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ju-yin yanga https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yen-chen yenb http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ju-yin yanga https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yen-chen yenb http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ju-yin yanga https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yen-chen yenb http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ju-yin yanga https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=yen-chen yenb http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.53.62 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 54 1. introduction in the wake of continuing technological progress and innovation have come great changes in how people obtain knowledge, exchange information and communicate with each other (he and wei, 2009; ahmed, 2010; ng, 2012; mohammadyari and singh, 2015). this is especially apparent in the way things are being learned and taught in universities, where there is a gradual movement from traditional face-to-face student-teacher interactions, to more open modes of digital of learning (piccoli et al., 2001; liaw et al., 2007). at the national institute of education at nanyang technological university, singapore‟s sole institution for the training of teachers, the ideal of “every place is a place to learn, regardless of where or when” has been realized, freeing teaching and learning from constraints of space and time, while broadening and enriching the available choices. with technological innovation and progress, the ways in which people acquire knowledge, exchange messages, and communicate have undergone great changes. when people today need access to expert answers or other information, they no longer have to make a trip to a library to look up the material, but can instantly search online for the needed information, while sharing functions of cloud computing allow people to instantly transmit data to each other. from these perspectives, all the learning styles are definitely impacted by the three factors: society, culture, and technology (phelan et al., 1997; fahraeus, 2004). latest technology devices have become new domain tools for instructors and learners in e-learning environment (wu and hiltz, 2004; huang et al., 2007; huang et al., 2008). mobile devices, such as pdas, ipads, and smartphones, with their wide range of built-in functions, are also used to receive and transmit different types of messages. people can email each other or “line” their friends directly over the internet, sidestepping phone messages and the traditional methods of paper letters and telephone communication. in short, digital communication has effectively become an indispensable part of contemporary human life (thorne, 2005; lu, 2008; shen et al., 2008). these phenomena are especially prominent in higher education, where digital technology plays an increasingly important role as a supporting tool in classroom instruction (warschauer, 1996; simpson, 2006). in terms of the forms of interaction between teachers and students, a gradual development from traditional face-to-face teacherstudent interaction towards more open forms of digital learning has become visible. learner autonomy is highlighted in digital learning, since it can provide course content and teaching styles suited to the individual‟s needs, free of the constraints of classroom and meeting times (virvou and alepis, 2005; markett et al., 2006; yang, 2006). the e-learning is estimated about 56.2 billion worldwide in 2014 and is anticipated to double in growth rate in 2015 (e-learning industry, 2014). notably, electronic learning (e-learning) is one of the most popular learning environments in the „information age‟ (liaw et al., 2007). for example, in 2004, to encourage the free exchange of information, the physics and engineering college at the massachusetts institute of technology (mit) put more than 900 course syllabi from 13 different fields on their digital platform open to public use under creative commons licensing. mit‟s intent was to provide virtual courses online, and they view e-learning courses as an important factor in higher education (wu et al., 2006). this was an important step toward the goal of increasing the effectiveness of learning by allowing students to voluntarily participate in educational programs in the context of new high-tech, highly interactive, highly cooperative e-learning environments (wu, 1997; yang and wu, 2013). in the classroom, teachers set up five different environments, including “campus life” and “social occasions.” each desk is equipped with large touch screens automatically accessed by any “electronic book bag” placed near it, and linking it into the classroom network. the main role of technology in language education assists learners to acquire skills and knowledge (stokes, 2001; butler-pascoe and wiburg, 2002). this facilitates student interchange, interaction, and group work. while an activity is in progress, the desk screen also can be used for tasks set by the teacher, such as web searches for specific information (huang et al., 2010). it is easy to see that digital learning has virtually become the new mainstream of education, and the incorporation of information technology into higher education has been given increasing importance by governments. the r.o.c. ministry of education (moe) encourages institutes of higher education in taiwan to develop e-learning courses, and on september 8, 2006, following a revision in the university code, enacted the implementation of distance learning in universities act, increasing the number of digital learning credits from one third of the number necessary for graduation to one half. with this in mind, this study employs action research to take advantage of seven students' overseas study aim to leap into the digital education mainstream while simultaneously ensuring that the overseas students would be able to keep up with their taiwan classmates and complete the work for their graduation requirements. in this study, there were seven students from applied english department participated in an academic and internship exchange program with a sister school utilize an e-learning system. by having students log on and study, turn in homework, and take part in tests and discussions, their coursework would not be negatively impacted by participation in the overseas internship program. the researcher contacted professors at san diego state university to discuss the possibility and feasibility of mutual cooperation on a digital course. during this course, qualitative research was undertaken by means of periodic in-depth interviews in order to determine whether the e-learning modality could provide teachers and students in long-distance teaching and learning situations with a superior mode of interaction. 2. theoretical framework this paper is based on the conceptual theory of three-tier technology use model (3-tum) for understanding college students‟ perspectives of using e-learning platform. the theory of 3-tum has three tier. the first tier is the individual experience and the system quality toward the technology use. this tier believes that the user personal experience influences the attitude of subject accepting (davis et al., 1989) and the quality of the system affects the perspectives of using technology devices. liaw et al. (2007) described system quality is a key element for individual uses in technology using attitude. e-learning platform is the main instrument in this research and be viewed as the teaching and learning format. that is, the attitude of using technology is determined by the individual experience and could be the system quality. the second tier is the affective and cognitive, which are directly influenced by the first tier. from this tier, the researchers can understand how the individual experience and system quality impact the component of affective and cognitive factors. a noticeable shared the definition is that “cognition is a complex asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 55 process of individuals interacting and affecting each other and their environment” (li et al., 2013). last but not least, the third tier is the behavior intention. the behavior intention means the individual users intend to conduct the technology with their learning based on the specific purpose. 3. literature review 3.1. the development of e-learning in higher education the term “e-learning,” that is, learning conducted through digital media, originated in 1996 at the annual meeting of the american society for training and development and the international conference and exposition, where it was defined as “the process by which a learner applies digital media, including internet, computers satellite broadcast, audio and videotapes, and interactive television or cds, in learning” (qiu and liao, 2012). in england, elearning is defined as “making use of information broadcast techniques to assist in the activity of learning” or “flexible learning,” that is, using information technology to help students learn, making learning independent of the classroom, to broaden the field of learning, and then based on this, enabling lifelong learning (willetts, 1992; chisolm, 1998; butler-pascoe and wiburg, 2002; lim, 2005). according to rankings listed in the economist report entitled, “digital economy ranking 2010: beyond ereadiness,” taiwan ranks twelfth in asia for being “beyond e-readiness,” coming in just after hong kong and singapore, but ahead of other asian countries like japan and china. moreover, in the “2003 e-learning readiness rankings” from the same source, there were at least 60 countries whose government institutions, citizen groups, educational systems, and work places had begun work on developing and promoting e-learning programs, thus demonstrating the high importance attached to the potential of e-learning. a nation‟s institutions of higher education are where its future leaders and professionals are trained and formed, and students come from diverse backgrounds to take part in a wide range of classes. the integration of technology with teaching can better meet the needs of students, enabling them to participate in learning, such as for group discussion, peer tutoring, and brain-storming no matter where they are (butler-pascoe, 1995; deshpande and hwang, 2001; huang et al., 2008). indeed, based on agnes (2012) “there must be opportunities for concrete experiences capable of generating a personal conviction that a given technology is worth using and an understanding of the contexts in which it is best used.” such advantages have made the spread of the digital education inevitable. in general, “e-learning‟s characteristics fulfill the requirements for learning in a modern society and have created great demand for e-learning from business and institutes of higher education” (sun et al., 2008). thus, the expansion of e-learning programs has allowed schools in the u.s. and the u.k. to see benefits in terms of tuition income that represent a considerable profit. with the unceasing efforts in developing e-learning shown by public and private institutions, e-learning course offerings at colleges and universities are have become more diverse and are growing steadily (leonard and guha, 2001; song et al., 2004). the major countries promoting e-learning education are the u.s., the u.k., china, taiwan, canada, and japan (see table 1). in the survey of allen and seaman (2010) have discussed many u.s. institutions of higher education have reported to see an increase in need for e-learning online courses and programs. table -1. early -stage promotion of the establishment of digital classes and amount of profit by institutes of higher education according to nation source: “market research report on distance learning in higher education,” institute for information industry, 2006. e-learning can overcome environmental limitations and provide learners with a flexible and convenient way to learn. more importantly, by means of interaction and discussion via the server, rigid methods of traditional education can be improved upon and can greatly increase the frequency of teacher-student interaction (see table 2). a 2010 report issued by the taiwan moe entitled “white paper on the creation of digital equal opportunity,” encouraged institutions of higher education to move forward on strategic alliances to promote international e-learning classes, year country summary example 1996 2004 usa by actively promoting distance learning courses, encouraged the growth of online universities the higher education e-learning market in the united states reaches a total market value of usd 750,000,000 university of phoenix “market report on distance learning in higher education” 1998 2003 2012 united kingdo m government support of the development and training in every aspect of e-learning; started the learning resources database project inspiral (investigating portals for information resources and learning) it was established in 1969 and now, it is with 208,710 number of students registered a distance learning business college university of strathclyde open university 1998 2007 china modern distance-education project e-learning market value at ntd 111,000,000 67 universities, including tsinghua university, hunan university, zhejiang university, and beijing university of posts and telecommunications 1999 2014 taiwan ministry of education encourages major universities to design e-learning courses e-learning production value at ntd 30,221,000,000 national taiwan university, national tsing hwa university, national chiao tung university, national cheng kung university, national chung cheng university 2001 canada established teaching community knowledge network; issued directive calling for the development of a learning object repository for ontario 2001 2003 japan e-japan program e-learning production value: jpy 170,000,000,000 spearheaded by prime minister junichiro koizumi asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 56 saying each institution of higher education may form strategic alliances between schools and businesses to develop specialized international classes or study programs. table-2. analysis of benefits of e-learning for teaching: taiwanese and foreign perspectives taiwanese literature foreign literature lin and tsai (2011) rosenberg (2001) study more flexible in terms of place and time teaching materials updated more quickly effective learning at lower cost supports a self-directed learning environment fosters skills in communication, thinking and problemsolving increases student participation in class spurs group cooperative learning lowers the costs of educational training accelerates reaction speed free selection among customized courses continuous updating of materials fewer time constraints on learning low barriers to learning overcomes geographical restrictions can form communities easily broadcast increases benefits of internet use source: lin and tsai (2011) & rosenberg (2001) 3.2. e-learning in taiwan in an april 2014 report entitled “the demand for internet infrastructure continues to be driven by the demand for smart devices and byod.” one of an experienced internet data analysts at international data corporation states with the impetus provided by higher and higher levels of smart device market penetration, it is expected that the specifications for the market of this year's consumer devices will rapidly make progress towards 5th generation wifi (802.11ac), and that education, manufacturing, and hotel industries will continue to expand and improve their wifi capability. owing to the rapid development of smart device systems, the government, private enterprises, and education in taiwan have all taken the initiative to promote e-learning. in the area of government activity, the national science council set forth in 2002 the national science and technology program for digital learning, allocating four billion taiwanese dollar to this project with the hope of bringing taiwan closer to becoming a highly digital society, establishing an e-learning environment, and developing digital enterprises. in the private sector, this growth starts as research and development in e-learning technology and from there expands into other business fields, such as trade and industry training networks like the china airlines elearning management system, which was commended by the institute for information industry. this is a system that integrates personnel data and pre-job training for positions in ticketing, flight attendant duties, ground staff service, management, and maintenance (yang, 2004). on university campuses, smartphones and handheld mobile devices have already become an indispensable piece of basic equipment for the great majority of students. as traditional textbooks, papers, and pens along with classroom-style teaching begin to decrease in importance, e-learning usage will swell so that future learners will need only take out their “learning terminals” and anyplace can be their classroom, whether at home, outdoors, or anywhere else. a review of previous research of the critical factors influencing public university learners in taiwan (sun et al., 2008) mentioned, “every college student is required to take at least one introductory course to enhance computer literacy and computing skills.” taiwan is on the forefront of promoting e-learning in its schools, using it as a means to enrich the education of children living in remote areas, and of students with physical or mental disabilities, to reduce disparities between urban and rural universities, and other projects too numerous to mention (see table 3). it is thus clear that the idea of combining smart devices with the internet opens the way to new, enlivening modes of teaching, while overcoming the constraints of time and space, to widely influence education with its teaching effectiveness. the term “learning terminal” is viewed as a reference to learner's use of devices such as smartphones, electronic books, electronic teaching materials, and language learning devices (yang, 2006). these devices facilitate online learning courses to connect the world (peter, 2009). additionally, yang (2006) has also mentioned that educators in taiwan already make wide use of e-learning systems as tools for learning. institutes of higher education showing exceptionally fine performance in this area include: the national taiwan university ondemand e-learning website (ceiba), national central university's use of the black board learning system, and the web-based learning system at chung yuan university. students' utilization of and skills with technological products increases with each passing day, and technology serves as a scaffold when students study in their subject areas (burner, 1986; carmody and berge, 2005). table-3. institutions of higher education in taiwan using e-learning systems year institution policy 2006 national chi nan university “internet tutoring platform” enabled disadvantaged children living in remote areas to receive long-distance teaching and guidance in one-to-one or one-to-many modalities. 2007 fu jen catholic university, national chi nan university, wen zao ursuline university of languages provides teaching and guidance to elementary and middle school students living in remote areas. 2007 national taiwan normal university utilizes the blackboard digital learning system to assist special needs students. 2013 national taitung university going forward with the implementation of the project for online tutoring for after-school learning. source: these information were collected by each school website. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 57 3.3. research questions this study answers the following two research questions: 1. what are the students‟ perspectives of using e-learning platform as a learning tool during the internship period? 2. what are students‟ experiences of using e-learning platform to facilitate learning? 4. methods the focus of this study is on the perceived effectiveness of conducting a required graduation project/internship course on an e-learning platform system with a group of seven students from applied english department. besides evaluating effectiveness, the study also sought to answer whether or not the students felt that this use of a ubiquitous learning environment succeeded in overcoming barriers of distance and time between teacher and student, ultimately better facilitating their interactions. since both forms of data are subjective perceptions, a qualitative approach to gathering data was chosen. seidman (2005) indicated that human feelings, ideas, and views cannot be explained in quantitative terms (kvale, 1996). interviews can be used to conduct research on specific groups in regard to issues of interest. qualitative interviewing focuses primarily on the students' views regarding individual feelings, experiences, life, and situations. the researcher and the students use a common language to create mutual understanding so that the researcher can understand the interviewee's true ideas and conceptions about a topic (tayor and bogdan, 1984; minichiello et al., 1995). this study made use of structured, in-depth interviews of 30-minute duration carried out once every two months with each of the students, for a total of three interviews per student. through the interviews, the researcher was able to gather students‟ views on the experience of using an e-learning platform for a long-distance class. the e-learning platform has three sectors: first is the learning interaction sector, which served as a discussion platform for participants to express themselves through submitting comments and as well as for teachers to give a class announcement; second is the evaluation sector, which allowed students to submit their homework and reports; third is the individual sector, which provided students to review their learning progress. moreover, the researcher collected data from students‟ activities on the e-learning platform for analysis. all learning progress of the students was recorded in order to get a better understanding of educational interaction pattern. 4.1. participants the participants of this study were seven fourth-year students from the department of applied english at a university in northern taiwan, their age‟s range from 22 to 23 years old. they were accepted into a one-year academic/internship program at san diego state university in san diego, california (u.s.). there were five students met the language requirements of the sister school by passing the intermediate level of the general english proficiency test, while the other two students passed toeic with a score of 650. these seven students participated in the class via the e-learning system for one semester, and were able to operate and utilize the e-learning platform system with great facility (see table 4). table-4. e-learning experience of participants participants gender year mobile device english level e-learning experience (in what year did you first use e-learning platform? in what year did you use it most frequently?) a f 4 iphone 5 tablet gept, intermediate two years of experience starting in sophomore year. used in a required writing class to turn in homework. b f 4 iphone5 toeic, 700 two years of experience starting in sophomore year. used in a required writing class to turn in homework. c f 4 iphone tablet gept, intermediate one year of experience, starting in junior year. used in elective “business english” class to turn in homework. d m 4 iphone tablet gept, intermediate two years of experience starting in sophomore year. used in elective “english for international trade” class to turn in homework. e f 3 iphone 5 gept, intermediate two years of experience starting in sophomore year. used in a required writing class to turn in homework. f f 3 iphone tablet toeic, 680 two years of experience starting in freshman year. used in required “basic grammar” course to hand in homework and take tests. g m 3 iphone tablet gept, intermediate two years of experience starting in freshman year. used in a required writing class to turn in homework. source: this was from the interview data. the researchers collected the information from interview. 4.2. data collection according to creswell and clark (2007) qualitative interviews fall into three types: structured interviews, semistructured interviews, and unstructured interviews. in this research project, the structured interview, also called standardized interview, was used. the defining characteristic of this type of interview is in the fixed nature of the questions and the order they are asked in, focusing the responses of interviewees to reduce the degree of complexity and deviation and produce more easily compared responses from a number of students. individual online interviews were conducted with the seven students, after first outlining the questions and framework of the interview. question items included such things as their views about the integration of the elearning system with the graduation project/internship class, their experiences and views about the different functions installed within the platform system, and how well the platform supported long-distance learning. given the asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 58 importance of the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, the design of the interview questions enabled the researcher to let the interviewees speak without inhibition, and gave the clearest possible answer to the question. for this reason, it was necessary that the researcher be able to make suitable modifications in content due to demands encountered in particular interviews. the researcher also requested that all seven students to register for the class on the e-learning network before the formal commencement of classes began. after students entered their basic personal information, they were able to make use of the different functions of the e-learning platform and get more familiar with the e-learning system before the class started. 4.3. data analysis after all the data were gathered, an integrated analysis was conducted and a verbatim transcription of the each interviewee‟s spoken material and affective expressions was prepared. finally, after assembling records of each student‟s use of the e-learning platform, time spent on reading class materials, and frequency of using the learning interaction sector for discussion were coupled with the oral interview material and subjected to a combined analysis. 5. results results of the analysis indicated that the e-learning platform was able to mitigate the distance between teacher and students, and in fact enhanced their interaction. a number of interesting advantages emerged from the data, which were categorized as follows: 1) facilitating autonomous learning and strengthening motivation; 2) enhancing enjoyable learning; 3) enabling teacher-student interaction and fostering better teacher-students relationship; 4) improving problem solving skills; and 5) providing feedback from students. these results are presented in table 5 to 9 as below. table-5. e-learning network facilitates autonomous learning, and strengthens learning motivation advantage student comments study materials are clear and precise class regulations and instructions for homework were available on the e-learning network from the first week of class. this allowed us to start planning their class work right away. (students a, b, d) we are able to download the class readings ourselves when we need them, without worrying about losing them, or missing out on important handouts if you miss one class. (c) i never used to go the first day of a class, because it seemed like a waste of time. the teacher would just read off the requirements and syllabus and then leave. it was only after i got to the u.s. that i realized how important the course requirements and the explanations of how to use the course materials really well. (e, g) the descriptions the teacher gave us on the e-learning net in this regard were really clear, and made me understand course better. (f) learning behaviors and modes i can make my own decisions about when to study the material or to logon to the online discussion area. (a, b, c) there is not any need to follow along with everyone and rush to get the homework done. some of the reading is kind of hard, but i can take my time and read it carefully. for example, for our homework the teacher sometimes wants us to interview foreigners, and it takes me some time to get up the nerve to ask one of them [if i can interview him or her]. i think that with writing you need to allow some time to think your ideas through. (g) actually, i am not really good at planning ahead for studying or turning in homework, but on the elearning network, the times are already set; the upload function shuts down after the deadline. so i now regularly check the deadlines, which has saved me a lot of time. (f) the time of day and number of times you logon to study is recorded in the e-portfolio, so i sometimes logon and read just to get more times recorded. (d) you can preview the material before class and get your questions ready. materials are readily available; students are more proactive about preparing for class, exhibiting enhanced motivation. (b) as for learning over the e-learning network, it was only after i went abroad that i realized that there were lots of online courses, that were called “diversified learning resources,” and that students don‟t have to be in a classroom for it to be learning. (a, e) time flexibility you can turn in your homework online at anytime anywhere in the united states. we could take lessons ourselves more flexible in different places and time. (a, b, c, d, e, f, g) here we are a day earlier than it is in taiwan, so when our teacher tells us to turn in something by wednesday, it‟s still only tuesday in the u.s., so it feels like we got an extra day. (c) when i used to turn in homework via email in taiwan, the email went straight into teacher‟s trashcan folder. it ended up i didn‟t submit homework in time. but with the e-learning network, you can check the time you uploaded it without having to write and ask the teacher if he or she got it. (b, d, f) because of the time difference, our teacher shut down the homework upload area. at the moment, we were so shocked that we couldn‟t submit the papers. we posted the message immediately, once the teacher understood all the details. she expended the date and time again. that gave us all a good scare. (g) continuous updating in response to student requests, the teacher updated the study material section of the e-learning network. (b, c, d) the teacher posts notices of important school matters and deadlines, so we can be aware of what we need to do to keep up our student status while we are abroad. (a, b, c, d, e, f, g) before when we took a class in the commercial recreation and attraction tourism, one of our teachers had us set up our own business and market a product. since i didn‟t know how to set up a business, i got right online to try to get some support. the next day, our teacher (i.e., the researcher) had posted material on setting up a taiwan pearl milk tea business in the discussion area, and really saved our skins. (b, f) source: these were interview data. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 59 table-6. the e-learning network makes learning more enjoyable and engaging advantage student comments multimedia files it is easy to go online and search for information now; in addition to the lesson materials already online, our teacher also provided us with some useful video files to watch. (a, b, c, d, e, f, g) we share links to things like dvds, vcds, youtube, and ted talks. we are learning from alternative media sources, as opposed to traditional textbooks and these represented the latest information. we felt more interesting in the way of learning (a, b, c, d, e, f, g). to tell the truth, studying abroad is really hard work, and not nearly as nice as i had imagined. i get pretty low sometimes, but when i watch the motivational videos that our teacher posts on the e-learning network, my confidence comes back. (b, c) source: these were interview data. table-7. e-learning network enables teacher-student interaction and fosters better teacher-student relationships advantage student comments uses the students‟ language i don‟t usually greet or chat with my teachers a lot, but whenever i go into the discussion section i always say hello to our teacher. (g) i have noticed that our teacher uses a lot of colloquial speech, talking with her feels just like talking to a classmate. (a) in traditional classroom, at the most you just discuss the stuff in the book, but in elearning we share stuff like videos, our own thoughts about what we learned, and our feelings. (b, c) our teacher doesn‟t seem like alien from outer space anymore; instead we have professor yang who comes from the e-learning net! (d) i feel like my teacher and i are speaking the same language. (g) less anxiety for me it is hard enough to stand up in front of a bunch of people and give a speech, not to mention in front of teachers, but i am much less of afraid of doing it on the e-learning network. (d) source: these were interview data. table-8. discussion area of the e-learning network, student questions and problems are more easily solved source: these were interview data. advantage student comments immediate solutions to problems group discussion sometimes i post questions about daily life in the discussion area, and the teacher usually responds within 24 hours. it‟s a good thing that she used to study in san diego, so she can solve lots of our problems right away. (a) our teacher responds really quickly; as soon as we ask a question she comes back with an answer, we never have to wait too long. when i first got to the u.s., i didn‟t even know how to make a phone call back home, what kind of cellphone i should get, or even what bus i had to take to get to 99 market. (b, c) in the u.s., once i was taking notes and missed a few words, so i took a look at my neighbor‟s notes. he got really mad and accused me of cheating and not respecting him. i was shocked. everyone does this in taiwan. i was really upset, but after talking about it with the teacher in the discussion area, i had some idea of the culture differences [that caused the misunderstanding], i felt quite a bit less embarrassed (a, e). i like to use online discussion area as a place to express myself. in class, i usually have to answer right away in front of a big group of people, which makes me very anxious. (g) i can take some time to look at what other people have already said and then think my ideas through again. (d) when we all discuss something together, we can brainstorm as a group and get even more ideas [than we could alone]. teachers in the u.s. don‟t seem to like to give answers, but they always saying, “think, you know, think!” (e) in the u.s. all of us chose different classes based on our own needs and interests. the real-time discussion area was a place for all of us to get together and talk during our free time. it helped us solve some of our common problems. (f) i felt sorry for the teacher, who had to deal with our questions or problems whenever they came up. she seemed to be online 24 hours a day. did we make her do that? or did the school? (g) i had never been any kind of a “leader” before, but when the teacher formed us into small groups, she made me a group leader. (b) in small-group discussions, clicking away on a tablet, it was a lot of fun. the classmates are really creative and had lots of fun. also, through another person, you can see things you would never have thought of yourself, it was fun. (a, c, d) everybody was doing a different internship, so it felt really good to make use of our (online) classroom interaction and discussion to share our various work experiences with each other. (e, f) asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 60 table-9. student‟s suggestions for the e-learning network problem description and suggestions personalization the look is really monotonous. an e-learning network screen design should always be updated or should allow the user to set preferences and upload pictures [on to the screen]. you should think about getting the line emoticons on the system; that would be lots of fun. real-time discussion area when we are in the real-time discussion area everybody is always sending messages. can we implement some kind of “raising your hand” function or keep everyone from answering at once for when we formally discuss issues? smartphones and tablets in the u.s., it was really hard to get on the e-learning network over the cellphone, either it was impossible to log on or you could log on but then had to wait for a long time, or it would not display the page. sometimes i had to bring my tablet with me if i planned on turning in homework. since e-learning is all about learning anywhere at anytime, you really should consider a cellphone version. discussion plagiarism teacher, you required all of us to share our views or make suggestions, but some students aren‟t serious about it or they don‟t have any ideas, they just say “i agree with the above” or even copy and paste other people‟s ideas. maybe we could add something about not copying other people‟s messages and writings? source: these were interview data. 6. discussion 6.1. key findings the results showed that the e-learning platform provided learners with a diverse and rich learning experience. the students were able to strengthen their autonomous learning capability. since the students were able to access clear guidelines and schedules for the course even before it began, they could arrange their own time to meet assignment deadlines, read the assigned material, and report to the online discussion area. findings also indicate that the use of audio-visual media made learning the material more interesting and enjoyable, and the multiple online functions of cellphones and tablet computer also increased student motivation. further, students found that doing the homework for in-class reports with classmates from other countries was particularly difficult. in the discussion area of the e-learning platform, students were able to deal with problems of class work and of adapting to the many challenges of living in a foreign environment and culture. it also increases teacher-student interaction and forms a closer relationship between the two in the online teaching environment. 6.2. limitations of the study the study has been viewed as a light of several limitations. first, the results of the study cannot be generalized to all students in this university; it was designed as a cross-national study, which limited the majors of students. only, by focusing on the students who did the exchange program in san diego state university, it may be less generalizable to other populations because of some points of view related to obtain the internship experience of the tourism and hospitality management. second, some interview questions were self-administrated, which meant students mentioned whatever they would like to say. it is rarely to control or to measure in a matter that they were expected to answer the way which researchers designed for. 6.3. implications for practice this study shows that teachers would use e-learning system not only provide the professional information but also using the e-learning platform as the self-learning platform to help students collect their learning data and analyze what they have learned in classes. it also helps teachers to have a better understanding of students‟ learning attitude and behavior. besides, e-learning platform supports students to build their social relationship with the teacher and other classmates. nowadays, many students apply for the on-line learning, or open courseware learning, teachers can viewed elearning platform as a base with the regard to the adoption and continue use of technology assisted language teaching and learning tools. e-learning platform can provide the contexts with an interesting way and offer the creative activities for students. 7. recommendations for future research future study may possible generalize to include more students in colleges and universities. further qualitative and quantitative research is needed to explore the use of mobile devices and e-learning system for students‟ english language proficiency skill and their learning motivation. in addition, the researchers may also want to involve a variety of learning platform such as mobile learning, ubiquitous learning, or context-aware learning mode in studies to examine students‟ preferences in learning attitude, learning behavior, and self-learning development. 8. conclusion at the present time, the problems facing the higher education in taiwan is how to raise student motivation and draw teachers and students closer together. the responses given by most of the students indicated that in their past experience, teachers had only used the e-learning network for collecting homework assignments instead of having teacher-student interactions. through the interviews, it was found that integrating technology devices with the acquisition of professional knowledge have shown itself to be an effective channel for education and social interaction. besides, the researcher also found that since students were allowed to decide when they should upload their homework and when to take the exam themselves, all of the students turned their homework in on time. this is another point that teachers may keep in mind when considering the integration of digital technology in classroom teaching. these experiences in higher education might be a great value for the new style of learning and teaching between teachers and students. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 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training, 2016, 2(2): 53-62 62 yang, h.y. and s.l. wu, 2013. future classroom in igcs apply in junior high school english education. technology education and learning, 1(1): 66-86. yang, s.j., 2006. context aware ubiquitous learning environment for peer-to-peer collaborative learning. educational technology & society, 9(1): 188-201. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 161 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 161-169, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.161.169 sources of reading anxiety among the learners of turkish as a foreign language hatice altunkaya1  ayşe ateş2 ( corresponding author) 1department of turkish education, adnan menderes university, aydin, turkey 2i̇nonu university, malatya, turkey abstract language instruction is conducted by utilizing the data provided by contemporary educational sciences and based on the fact that learning is both a cognitive and affective process. instruction of reading skills, one of the four basic language skills in turkish as a foreign language instruction, is a complex process that range from the introduction of sounds to the reading comprehension process. during this education, in addition to cognitive training of learners, reading anxiety, which is considered as an affective dimension of reading, can also be considered as a factor that affect the reading process. the present study was conducted with the interview technique, which is one of the qualitative research methods. a focus group interview was conducted with six turkish instructors as a foreign language and eight students learning turkish as a foreign language using the developed semi-structured interview form. in the study, the sources of reading anxiety in learning turkish as a foreign language were determined as "tonal attributes and pronunciation", "language levels (course levels a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2)", "the fact that turkish is an agglutinative language", "properties of reading texts", "unknown words" “unknown topics", "culture" and "fear of making mistakes". keywords: turkish as a foreign language, reading, reading anxiety. citation | hatice altunkaya; ayşe ateş (2018). sources of readıng anxiety among the learners of turkish as a foreign language. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 161-169. history: received: 13 march 2018 revised: 16 april 2018 accepted: 20 april 2018 published: 23 april 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 162 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 162 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 164 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 167 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 168 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.161.169&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4498-194x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8732-3034 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4498-194x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8732-3034 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4498-194x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8732-3034 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4498-194x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8732-3034 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 161-169 162 1. introduction language skills include expression skills of speech and writing, and comprehension skills of listening and reading. the aim of both native and foreign language education is the acquisition of the four basic language skills by the student. it was reported in various studies that reading has a crucial role in learning a language (anderson, 1994; celce-murcia et al., 1995; day and bamford, 1998). a student who learns turkish as a foreign language begins to learn turkish language sounds, including those that are not found in her or his native language. the student would encounter factors such as reading the sounds, the perception of the words, the recognition of the language structure, agglutinative characteristics of the turkish language, and the differences in sentence structure when reading aloud. in this process, as the students try to learn this complex process cognitively, affective factors such as motivation, self-efficacy and anxiety would come into effect and play a decisive role in the achievement of the student. a part of the affective dimension of reading, anxiety includes the emotions such as avoidance, fear of assessment, fear of not able to read and making mistakes when the student is required to read a text aloud or otherwise. anxiety has negative effects on achievement, while it also stimulates and motivates the individual. thus, the level of anxiety is the key element. according to kennedy (2010) although anxiety is considered healthy at a certain level, extreme anxiety is considered harmful. chastain (1975) and kleinmann (1977) stated that foreign language anxiety triggers student achievement. horwitz et al. (1986) described foreign language reading anxiety as a separate compound of students' self-perceptions, beliefs, emotions and behaviors related to learning language in the classroom due to the uniqueness of the process of learning a language. research on foreign language reading anxiety have focused on teaching english as a foreign language. in the literature, there are several studies that reported the negative impact of reading anxiety on achievement (horwitz et al., 1986; macıntyre and gardner, 1989; saito and samimy, 1996; sellers, 2000; matsuda and gobel, 2004; zhao, 2009; lien, 2011; mohammadpur and ghafournia, 2015; altunkaya and erdem, 2017; i̇şcan, 2017). students who learn turkish as a foreign language may encounter cases that are different than their native languages and may lead to anxiety such as unfamiliar phonetics, sentential structure, vocabulary, and a different cultural structure. these differences may trigger anxiety, which includes the sub-dimensions of discomfort, concern, fear, etc. (altunkaya and erdem, 2017). altunkaya and erdem (2017) investigated the correlation between reading anxiety and reading comprehension in a quantitative study conducted on the anxiety about reading turkish as a foreign language and found that high reading anxiety had a negative effect on reading comprehension. several studies were conducted on reading anxiety in the field of learning a foreign language. zhao et al. (2013) reported a negative correlation between reading anxiety and reading performance. xiao and wong (2014) utilized speech, listening, reading, writing and general anxiety scales in their research and found that writing anxiety was the most prominent type of anxiety among students. in the study, writing anxiety was followed by reading, speech and listening anxiety in prevalence. al-shboul et al. (2013) investigated the sources of reading anxiety among the students learning english as a foreign language at yarmouk university in jordan and found that there were two main factors, namely personal factors and textual properties. in the study, it was determined that the personal factors that caused anxiety included fear of making mistakes and reading anxiety, while textual properties included unknown words, unknown topic and the unfamiliar culture. in the literature review conduced on reading skills education in learning turkish as a foreign language, it was determined that there was no previous study on the sources of reading anxiety. students who read in a foreign language attempts to acquire reading skills in a complex process that entails learning different voices, improving the vocabulary, comprehension of foreign cultural elements, etc. in this process, identifying the sources of reading anxiety, which has an impact on reading achievements, could illuminate the reading skills instruction and learning process. 1. 1. the objective of the study turkish as a foreign language instruction has become a significant teaching field with the ever-increasing number of foreign students in turkish universities and the global activities of the yunus emre institute for turkish as a foreign language. in this field, several studies are required to conduct successful instructions. reading skills, which are the basis of language instruction, is a key factor in learning. based on the significance of reading skills, the present study aimed to determine the sources of reading anxiety among the students who learn turkish as a foreign language. 2. method the study was conducted as a case study, a qualitative research design. case study is used to analyze one or more specific cases in depth (creswell, 2005). focus group interview, a qualitative research method, was preferred in the study. the focus group interview was defined by krueger and casey (2000) as "a carefully planned series of discussions that aim to obtain the perceptions about a predetermined subject in a moderate and non-hostile environment". in other words, the main objective of focus group interviews is to understand the thoughts and emotions of individuals about a topic, product, or service (yıldırım and şimşek, 2013). 2.1. study group the groups that the focus group interviews were conducted with included eight students attending b2 level courses at i̇nönü-tömer during the 2017-2018 academic year and 6 teachers who taught turkish as a foreign language at the same institution. the demographics of the students attending the b2 level are presented in table 1: asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 161-169 163 table-1. student demographics participants age gender nationality 1. student 18 female iraq 2. student 25 female iraq 3. student 18 female syria 4. student 18 female syria 5. student 18 female syria 6. student 25 male afghanistan 7. student 19 male afghanistan 8. student 18 male turkmenistan table 1 demonstrates that the student age varied between 18 and 25. furthermore, one iraqi female student was learning turkish towards her master's degree. the other students stated that they were learning turkish to attend undergraduate level courses. the instructors that participated in the interviews were employed in the field of teaching turkish as a foreign language. the demographics of the instructors are presented in table 2: table-2. instructor demographics participants years in teaching turkish gender instructed course levels 1. instructor 5 years male all 2. instructor 1 year male b1, b2, c1 3. instructor 5 years male all 4. instructor 6 years female all 5. instructor 1,5 years male all 6. instructor 4 years male all table 2 demonstrates that the instructors that participated in the interviews were experienced in almost every course level. it was determined that one of the instructors had a phd in turkish education and another had a phd in turkish language and the remaining 4 instructors were in the process of giving their dissertations. 2.2. data collection instrument a semi-structured interview form was used as the data collection instrument in the study. the most important convenience provided by the semi-structured interview technique for the researcher is to provide more systematic and comparable data based on the fact that the interviews are conducted with a predetermined interview protocol (yıldırım and şimşek, 2013). in the present study, initially, the literature on reading anxiety in learning turkish as a foreign language was reviewed and a semi-structured interview form for students and instructors was developed. the interview questions were read to ten separate students who were learning turkish as a foreign language and were not included in the study group to test the comprehensibility of the study and their feedbacks were recorded. the questions developed for the students and instructors were also presented to 6 experts, who teach turkish as a foreign language and not included in the interview group, and 2 experts in the field of measurement and evaluation. based on the expert feedback, interview questions were finalized. 2.3. data collection instrument validity and reliability semi-structured interview questions designed to collect data were developed to include reading anxiety topic and presented to 6 instructors who teach turkish as a foreign language to obtain expert opinion. the questions revised based on the expert feedback were applied to eight students who were not in the study group and at the same level with the study group (b2) as a pilot scheme. the data obtained in the interviews were coded separately by two field expert authors of the present study, then the codes and themes were finalized with inter-author agreement. 2.4. data collection process steps the study data were collected on a voluntary basis. separate dates were set up to conduct the focus group interviews with the students and the instructors. prior to the interviews, the study group members were informed about the objective and duration of the interview and the details on the use of interview data in the present scientific study. participants were informed that their names were kept confidential and face-to-face interviews were conducted, the interviews were recorded with a voice recorder upon receipt of participant approval and the researcher took notes. the interview data that included voice recordings between 45 minutes and 1 hour were transcribed as interview forms. the following questions were included in the student interview form: 1. do you feel comfortable or anxious when reading turkish texts? advanced analysis questions: a) why do you feel anxious when reading turkish texts? b) what makes you feel comfortable when reading? c) how are you affected by unknown words when reading turkish texts? d) does reading a turkish text on a subject that you are not familiar with influence your comprehension? how? e) what are your views on reading comprehension of texts on turkish culture when reading turkish texts? f) what are your emotions and thoughts about making mistakes when reading turkish texts aloud or silently? asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 161-169 164 g) what are the factors that reduce your motivation to read? what are the factors that increase your motivation to read? 2. does the type of the text you read make you feel comfortable ot anxious in the reading process? advanced analysis questions a) how do the types of text such as story, novel, tale, article affect your reading comprehension in the reading process? b) reading and comprehension of what type of texts cause anxiety? the following questions were included in the instructor interview form: 1. what are the moods of your students when reading turkish texts? do they feel comfortable or anxious? advanced analysis questions: a) what factors affect the anxiety of your students when reading turkish texts? b) what makes your students comfortable when reading? c) how do unfamiliar words affect your students when reading texts? d) how is the reading comprehension capacity of your students affected when reading a turkish text on an unfamiliar topic? e) what are your views on reading comprehension levels of your students when reading texts on turkish culture? f) do your students have the fear of making mistakes when reading turkish texts aloud or silently? how does this factor affect their reading comprehension? g) in your opinion, what could be the factors that reduce the desire of your students to read turkish texts? what could be the factors that increase the desire of your students to read turkish texts? h) can you provide examples for the behavior of your students with high reading anxiety? g) can you provide examples for the behavior of your students with low reading anxiety? 2.5. data analysis content analysis method was used in the study. content analysis requires in-depth analysis of the collected data and allows for the clarification of previously ambiguous themes and dimensions (cohen et al., 2007; yıldırım and şimşek, 2013). content analysis was reported to be a research method that includes the organization, classification and comparison of the texts, and the deriving theoretical conclusions from the texts. for data analysis, initially, the data were coded, the themes were constructed based on reading anxiety in turkish as a foreign language, the codes and themes were organized separately based on the student and instructor views and finally the findings were described and interpreted. in document analysis conducted on the interviews, the students were code-named as 1. student, 2. student, and instructors as 1. instructor, 2. instructor, etc. the data were coded separately by the two authors. and to conduct reliability analysis on these codes, miles and huberman (1994) reliability = [agreement / (agreement + disagreement)] x 100 formula was used and the result was obtained as 0.85 between the codes assigned by the two authors. since coding reliability should be at least 70% (miles and huberman, 1994) the obtained value (85%) demonstrated that the coding was reliable. in the presentation of the codes and themes, the student and instructor views are presented in italics and between quotation marks, supporting the conclusions. 3. findings the findings of the present study that aimed to investigate the sources of reading anxiety of the students who learn turkish as a foreign language were assigned themes based on the teacher and student views and presented under the theme titles. 3.1. tonal attributes and pronunciation of turkish language language education should utilize the data provided by several scientific fields such as physiology, psychology, sociology and neurology. in the beginning of the education, initially the sounds of the target language are learned. according to constructivist approach, reading is a process where the preliminary information is integrated with the information available in the manuscript and re-interpreted. this process consists of several processes that occur in the eye, audio and brain including sight, voicing and structuring (güneş, 2014). the students start the foreign language learning process with the voice repertoire that they transfer from their native language. they advance by adding new voices to this repertoire. on this process, instructor 3 emphasized the anxiety experienced in the process of learning the tonal attributes of turkish: "they are concerned about the pronunciation, that is when voicing the new sounds. they care a lot about pronunciation. they care very much about the pronunciation of the words in the text. they check if their pronunciation is correct in a1 and a2. they are concerned about other topics as well. they mainly experience problems in pronunciation. they experience difficulties in the pronunciation of long words. in a1 and a2, they feel anxious. but as long as they are accustomed to the basics of the language, they start to feel comfortable starting from b1 and b2. there are voices in turkish that do not exist in their native languages. they can read these words incorrectly. then, they feel anxious." as the students try to learn the sound that do not exist in their native language, they may experience various problems. this issue was stated by the instructor 2 as follows: "there are sounds that exist in their language, but missing in turkish, and they try to speak by adapting their language to ours, for example, my student in ukraine makes a different sound for the letter ‘r’." learning the sounds completely in the basic courses is absolutely necessary to build a sound foundation for the advanced course levels. the significance of this fact was emphasized by instructor 1 as follows: "if the sounds were not instructed completely in the basic course and a firm grammatical foundation was not established, the child would not be able to read fully." the requirement of establishing the sounds and pronunciation in the initial courses mentioned by the instructor 1 was also indicated by the instructor 5: “there could be students who did npt comprehend the turkish vowel system. there may pronunciation issues. this would reduce the desire to read. such problems could be observed even in students who attend c1 level. they may be worried about being belittled in the class.” the instructor stressed that these skills should be given in the basic level to avoid reading anxiety of the students. the asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 161-169 165 instructor 3 emphasized that pronunciation is one of the basic sources of reading anxiety: "they feel anxious when they pronounce new words, producing unfamiliar sounds. they care a lot about pronunciation. they care very much about the pronunciation of the words in the text. they check if their pronunciation is correct in a1 and a2. they are concerned about other topics as well. they mainly experience problems in pronunciation when reading. they experience difficulties in the pronunciation of long words." in the theme of the tonal attributes and pronunciation of turkish language, students generally stated that they experienced anxiety about pronouncing the words incorrectly when reading. student 5 stated the following: "i am concerned when a word is long. i feel comfortable with short words. i am shy about reading aloud." student 7 stressed the anxiety they felt about pronunciation: “we read aloud in the classroom when the teacher asks us to read. we are more relaxed when we read the texts silently at home. i am more comfortable when i read the text silently i'm more relaxed when i read it quietly. my friends do not my mistakes when i read it silently." the student 3 who had lower reading anxiety considered it as an opportunity for him to read the texts aloud: "i do not recognize my mistakes when i read silently, but when i read the texts aloud, i hear my mistakes and am not ashamed, if the teacher would not correct my pronunciation, how can i learn it? when another student laughs, i would be ashamed, but the students do not laugh." as of this statement, it could be stated that students with low reading anxiety would not be concerned about pronunciation mistakes they make in the class and would be able to receive a more accurate vocal education. 3.2. language levels (a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2 course levels) the common european framework of reference for languages indicates six different language levels: a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2. the language skills that students should acquire in each language level are detailed in the abovementioned document. teaching turkish as a foreign language also aims the students to achieve the language competencies required for these levels. instructors who teach turkish as a foreign language stated that they observed changes in students’ reading comprehension levels based on the language levels. instructor 3 stated that the reading anxiety of the students decreased as their language levels increased: "they feel anxious in a1 and a2. but as long as they are used to the sound fundamentals of turkish, they start to feel comfortable from b1 and b2". instructor 5 also stated that students feel less anxious in advanced courses and added that student traits also affect their anxiety levels: "students are more comfortable in c1. probably, they were more relaxed and carefree in reading with confidence. personal problems can be a bit of a problem. the child is not a stutterer, but i had a student stuttering when reading. the student was always anxious in the class. because, the student was comfortable talking to me. but (s)he was excited in the class." although instructors generally indicated that reading anxiety levels were reduced at advanced levels, instructor 1 stated that students who encounter words formed with different suffixes in turkish, which is an agglutinative language, in advanced levels could feel additional reading anxiety: "starting in b1, the student could experience problems due to the length or the word when they encounter different words with different suffixes. even when they encounter the suffixes they already know in new words, this could be a problem. this might alleviate reading anxiety." students stated that their reading anxiety levels increased in advanced levels. similar to the instructor 1, students also stated that, at advanced levels, the new words they encounter and increasing vocabulary such as proverbs increased their reading anxiety. student 3: "some books may be easy. i felt no anxiety when i was reading in a1, but i was concerned when i encountered the different sentences in the second book." student 7: "i was not concerned too much in a1 and a2, because they were easy. but since b1, there are new words and proverbs, but i do not feel anxious because of these, but i feel anxious about (reading) turkish and other books." 3.3. the fact that turkish is an agglutinative language and the properties of reading texts the general characteristic of agglutinative languages is the addition of certain suffixes to the word root to obtain new words. since turkish is an agglutinative language, this could lead to reading stress in individuals whose native language is not an agglutinative language. instructors and students both expressed during the interviews that the sources of reading anxiety included the long words (with several suffixes), long texts, or noninteresting text or genres. manuscripts are the main tools in language education. the use of manuscripts in language instruction has a long and established history. this practice was not based on actual theoretical and practical research. however, it was always emphasized that language instruction using texts is easier, and different types of texts are used in language instruction. these texts are presented to the students as a model and are considered as a special assistance in the language instruction process. furthermore, the use of texts is considered useful for students in learning new vocabulary and grammatical rules, to conduct various researches and to improve their comprehension skills (cuq and gruca, 2005 cited by güneş (2013)). the instructors stated the following on the manuscripts that are considered beneficial in language education: instructor 2: “when they encounter a long text, they develop a prejudice or a concern. students also think they will be challenged. or when they encounter a long word, they start to stutter since they are worried about making a mistake due to this prejudice. generally, students do not experience serious problems. they do not worry too much, with a few exceptions, students are generally good.” instructor 1: “when a word contains too many suffixes, usually a blockage occurs. starting with b1, when there are different suffixes in different words, the student may experience difficulties due to the length of the word. newly encountered words may lead to problems, even when they contain familiar suffixes. the student could feel reading anxiety.” instructor 3: “i think that the text should be read by different students. i think that each sentence or paragraph should be read by different students. the student feels comfortable when the text is short. thus, the student does not feel discomfort. the student feels uncomfortable when the reading text is long. this leads to the concentration of other students; they remain ready, and also when the student makes a mistake, it happens in a short period of time. the student thinks about making mistakes when the text is long, and eventually (s)he makes mistakes.” instructor 3 stated that the subject matter of the text, the words it contains and the rate of unknown words were also important: “an uninteresting text, several unknown words, several long words are among the factors that increase asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 161-169 166 reading anxiety.” instructor 6 stated that the sources of reading anxiety were based on individual and environmental factors: “the lack of knowledge, vocabulary, and reading level of the student could lead to reading anxiety. as environmental factors, the class the student attends, friends, teacher's attitude are the sources of reading anxiety. the type of text can also lead to reading anxiety. while storytelling texts draw attention, students may feel anxious when reading informative texts such as articles. furthermore, the length of the sentences in the text is also influential. they are afraid of reading long sentences, they do not want to read these.” students stated that they feel anxious when they encounter words with several suffixes. student 2: "sometimes i cannot find the word in the dictionary when it has too many suffixes. this stresses me. i am relieved when i encounter adequate words." student 3; "the presence of words with less number of suffixes increases my desire to read." almost all students stated that they experienced difficulties and felt tense when reading long texts. according to student views, they preferred to stories and tales when compared to informative texts. student 1: "tales are more fun, so i feel more comfortable. novels makes me feel anxious." student 7: "i feel more comfortable and carefree when i understand all the text. we feel comfortable with stories and tales, but i do not feel comfortable in science and article. i comprehend the stories and tales better. i do not understand it when there are new words in articles." student 3 agreed: "for instance, we are not worried about reading a story or a tale." student 1 added that they can also feel anxious about reading poetry: "understanding the poems is a problem, i feel anxious". 3.4. unknown words contemporary language instruction methods emphasize learning a word by imprinting the word cognitively instead of memorizing the words one by one and by deducting the unknown words using the context. vocabulary plays a significant in conveyance of the meaning, while the lack of vocabulary is a major obstacle to transfer of meaning, and vocabulary plays an important role in utilization of basic language skills (krashen, 1989; kocaman and kızılkaya, 2014). in the interviews, the instructors mostly stated that they tried to instruct the class to prevent the students to develop anxiety, promoted the use of dictionary, and attempted to make them learn new words with feedbacks. instructor 1 explained this as follows: "when they encounter an unknown word, they check it out using the dictionary on their mobile phones immediately. first, i read the text and analyze it, and then i ask the children to read it, it usually contains words that they do not know, it can contain idioms and proverbs. the student cannot always rely on context. for example, they can encounter the word "test light" in a text. the student may not know the meaning of test light, so i think dictionaries are necessary as well." instructor 3: "they stop (while reading) the text and ask the (meaning of the word) they do not know. i read sentence by sentence. i explain the (meanings of) the words they do not know. if i would not explain, they might feel anxious." the student interviews demonstrated that unknown words were among the sources of reading anxiety. the students expressed this fact as follows: student 4: “i do not feel anxious when i understand all the words. i feel comfortable. however, if there are a few unknown words, then i can feel anxious.” student 2: “when there is a word that i do not know, it breaks the chain. i check it out in the dictionary and i feel anxious. i can even stop reading. i may close the book and leave it aside.” student 7: “i get bored, i do not want to read. when there is a word that i do not know, when there were two or three words, i could not read it and i did not understand and that stressed me. i do not want to read. two or three words do not matter. this is not difficult to understand, but when there are too many words, i get really bored.” student 6: “i sometimes read poems in turkish. i do not understand many words and i look up (these words) in the dictionary. they do not appear, and i feel completely bored and i stop reading. if there are too many words, for example, if there are more than 10 words that i do not know in a text, it bothers me, and it spoils the text, and the meaning of this text is no longer good.” certain students considered the unknown words in a text as an opportunity for learning. these were as follows: student 3: “i do not feel worried when i encounter words that i do not know, i feel happy. because, i learn new words and i underline the words i do not know while reading the text. then i look these up the dictionary. so, i am not concerned. if there are 10 words in the first text, there could be 5 words in the second text, which could reduce gradually.” student 5: “how would i learn if there are no words that i do not know, as long as there are not many words, i am not bored.” it was determined in the interviews conducted with the students that a certain number of unknown words in the texts helped improving the vocabulary. however, when the number of unknown words in the texts is increased, this was a source of reading anxiety. 3.5. unknown topic in the interviews, all instructors stated that the students felt anxious when they encountered a text on a previously unknown topic. instructors indicated that previous knowledge on the text topic could be a factor that reduces reading anxiety. instructor 3: "we learn the language with our experiences in life. they experienced problems in a text about the invention of the stethoscope. because, they were exposed to a part of life that they could not experience. if you provide a text to a farmer on farming, he would understand it better. as long as (the text) is relevant to their areas of interest, students would understand (this text) better." instructor 4: "females can understood a text on food a lot better, also male students can understand a text on soccer better." in student interviews, it was also determined that they felt reading anxiety when they read a text on an unknown topic. in texts on unknown topics, the lack of knowledge about the meanings of idioms and proverbs was also indicated by most students as a source of reading anxiety. student 2: "i am concerned when i do not know the meaning of the words and proverbs. i know the meaning of all the words that make up the idioms and proverbs, but i may not know the meaning of the whole phrase. that is why i am worried." student 4 expressed the impact of a text on an unknown topic on reading comprehension as follows: "the exam included a topic that i knew nothing about and i did asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 161-169 167 not understand it at all. i did not understand the words and i did not know how to answer the questions. i felt bad and i tried to translate it, but i could not understand it very well, i was worried when reading." 3.6. culture culture is an important factor as a basic element that kneads the texts that form the language in foreign language instruction. in every language, the traces of the culture of that society can be found. kramsch (1993) stated that foreign language/second language learners should also learn the culture of the target language, and the language cannot be learned without learning the cultural context. i̇şcan (2017) stated that one of the most important goals in teaching turkish as a foreign language is to convey all aspects of the cultural elements of turkish society to the students. instructors stated the following on the instruction of culture: instructor 1: “there are statements such as ’40 meat pastries can fit in a spoon’ in the texts. it is very difficult for them to understand this, they fee anxious.” instructor 6: “i instructed a topic about jerid in the past and students can experience problems in texts about our culture. naturally, that affects their comprehension capacity as well. because, the texts include terms. the terms used are elements of the national culture, thus reducing the comprehension capacity of the students.” it was determined in the interviews conducted with students that the students generally considered learning the related culture as necessary in the process of learning a language. sample student responses are as follows: student 2: “learning a language is learning another culture. i like the texts on turkish culture better if i feel that culture as such, i do not feel concern.” student 8: “learning turkish culture makes it easier for me to learn new words.” student 5: “i would like to read (the texts) on turkish culture, i do not like to read (the texts) on other topics, i am familiar with the words related to turkish culture since i watch the serials (on tv).” 3.7. fear of making mistakes in the study designed to investigate the sources of reading anxiety, it was revealed that affective personality traits of the students and especially the fear of making mistakes were among the sources of the reading anxiety in the interviews conducted with both students and instructors. instructor 2 stressed this as follows: "there are several differences between the students reading the texts aloud and silently. since the mistakes are more obvious when reading aloud and they are ashamed of other students, the students are concerned more when reading loud. this naturally would affect the reading comprehension." instructor 1 stated that the students said that "i do not experience any problems when i read silently or reading in front of a mirror, but when i read in front of an audience, i make mistakes and i feel anxious." instructor 6, on the other hand, indicated the differences between the achievement levels of the students: “if there is a difference between the level of students, this can lead to reading anxiety among the students. i provide feedback to the students during the reading. it is possible that students could be shy and anxious due to problems induced by personality traits such as feeling uncomfortable in the class, thinking that they would be belittled in the class, being ashamed, correction of even the smallest mistakes by the teachers, correction of the problems by other students.” instructor 4 stated her/his efforts to reduce reading anxiety in the class as follows: "i do not want students to correct their friends under any circumstances. i want to provide the feedback myself. thus, i try to prevent them to feel ashamed." in the interviews conducted with the students, all students stated that they were afraid of making mistakes and other students making fun of them due to these mistakes in the classroom. student responses are as follows: student 5: “i feel really ashamed when i make a mistake. i feel more ashamed when the teacher corrects my mistake.” student 6: “i am so ashamed that i can even leave the classroom at that moment.” student 7: “i am not ashamed when i make mistakes when i read in my native language, but when i read in turkish, i am ashamed, five people are ashamed, three people are not.” 4. conclusion and discussion the sources of reading anxiety among the learners of turkish as a foreign language were determined based on teacher and student views. in the light of these views, it was observed that the first source of reading anxiety was the tonal attributes of turkish language, and consequently, the factor of pronunciation. one of the biggest problems in teaching turkish as a foreign language is that the inability of the students to fluently and accurately pronounce the phonemes and the fact that different pronunciation of the same symbols in their native languages in turkish or the presence of different symbols that do not exist in their native languages, thus preventing the communication of the students. furthermore, it was suggested that especially the words that include problematic phonemes should be repeated and these words and phonemes should be supported with visuals in order for the students to recognize the turkish phonemes and the location of the accents and intonations. tüm (2014) examined the most significant difficulties faced by individuals learning english as a foreign language in six categories: 1) the native language, 2) pronunciation ability, 3) the environment where the subject is exposed to the language, 4) personality and attitude, 5) age, and 6) motivation (şenel, 2006, cited by tüm (2014)). in the study, language level was determined as the second source of reading anxiety and accordingly, the instructor and student views were presented in detail. it was determined that the students who have encountered different vocabulary elements as a result of the advanced language levels could experience reading anxiety, however since the students would apprehend the tonal attributes of turkish in advanced levels, their anxiety associated with pronunciation decreased in these levels. it was determined that the agglutinative nature of turkish language and longer texts caused reading anxiety in the theme of turkish as an agglutinative language and the properties of reading texts. both instructors and students stated that reading anxiety could increase in informative texts depending on textual properties. bahmani and farvardin (2017) investigated the impact of different manuscript types on reading comprehension and reading anxiety of learners of english as a foreign language and reported that the different text types did not result in different reading comprehension levels in the study and control groups, however they found that reading anxiety asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 161-169 168 was higher among the students in the group with the higher text difficulty. güneş (2013) stated that the view "language is a social interaction instrument" became prominent with the constructivist education approach and the activities, tasks and projects that would improve the language, cognitive, emotional and social skills of the students are emphasized, and unique and special texts and activities are used in the learning-teaching process. it can be argued that it would be beneficial to design the texts specially for teaching turkish as a foreign language and the difficulty of the texts should be adjusted based on the levels of students. study findings demonstrated that unknown words were among the sources of reading anxiety experienced by the students. the students considered the presence of a limited number of unknown words in the texts as a motivating factor to learn new words, however they stated that higher number of stated that unknown words in the texts was a source of reading anxiety. zhou (2017) investigated the reading anxiety of students learning chinese as a foreign language in the united states and indicated three major sources: the unknown subject, the unknown tones, and the feeling of uneasiness they experienced when reading aloud in the classroom. in the present study, it was determined that the students experienced reading anxiety when they encountered texts written on a topic that they had no previous knowledge. the reading comprehension process entails combining, interpretation and synthesizing the preliminary knowledge and the information provided in the text. in this process, it was observed that the lack of preliminary knowledge about the text being read was among the sources of reading anxiety. saito et al. (1999) stated that the sources of reading anxiety in a foreign language are the unknown writing system, unknown culture and unfamiliar topics. as a result of the present study, it was determined that students who were learning turkish as a foreign language experienced reading anxiety due to their lack of knowledge on turkish culture. kutlu (2015) stated that in teaching turkish to foreigners, determination of turkish cultural elements and acquisition of these elements at the appropriate skills levels would contribute significantly to learning, and it should be noted that texts should reflect turkish language and culture adequately. byram and morgan (1994) also emphasized the significance of learning the culture in learning a language and stated that learning the culture is an integral part of learning a language. the study findings also demonstrated that the students’ fear of making mistakes was a source of reading anxiety. all students and instructors stated that the fear of making mistakes while reading the texts aloud in the classroom was a source of reading anxiety. zhou (2017) reported that the reading anxiety was triggered when students learning chinese as a foreign language in the united states attempted to read the texts aloud in the classroom and could not pronounce the words accurately. the study results demonstrated that the sources of reading anxiety among the learners of turkish as a foreign language were identified as "turkish tonal attributes and pronunciation", "language course levels" (a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2 course levels), “the fact that turkish is an agglutinative language and the properties of reading texts”, "unknown words", "unknown topic", "culture" and "fear of making mistakes". shboul et al. (2013) found that the sources of reading anxiety among students who were learning english as a foreign language included textual properties such as unknown words, unknown topic and unfamiliar culture and personal traits such as anxiety about the impact of reading and fear of making mistakes. these findings are consistent with the results of the present study. reading anxiety, which is a part of the affective dimension of reading skills, is a factor that has an impact on instructional achievements. thus, in order to prevent the reading anxiety to reach a level to obstruct learning, the textual properties should be well defined as observed in the study result.  texts should be adequate for the student level,  texts should contain elements of turkish culture,  include unknown words that are adequate for the student level,  the text topics should be selected with care and topics that are likely to be unfamiliar should be included in the texts reserved for advanced levels, another 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=exploring%20heritage%20language%20anxiety:%20a%20study%20of%20chinese%20herit%20age%20language%20learners http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2014.12085.x https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=foreign%20language%20reading%20anxiety:%20chinese%20as%20a%20foreign%20language%20in%20the%20united%20states http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2013.12032.x https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=foreign%20language%20reading%20anxiety%20in%20a%20chinese%20as%20a%20foreign%20language%20context asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 86-91, 2017 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.86.91 86 utilization of educational programmes in reformation of prison inmates in nigeria ogbaka, luke chidiebele1 ewelum, johnson nnadi2  apiti anthony3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3department of adult education, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, anambra state, nigeria abstract education is the most powerful instrument for change in behaviour. reformation of prison inmates can only be achieved through education and training. prison education is therefore an alternative strategy that would enable the prisoners leave the prison with more skills and be in position to be employed at released. this paper, therefore, discussed some concepts, purpose of prison education, educational programmes for prisoners and then came up with conclusion and recommendations. keywords: reformation, prison education, prison inmates. citation | ogbaka, luke chidiebele; ewelum, johnson nnadi; apiti anthony (2017). utilization of educational programmes in reformation of prison inmates in nigeria. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 86-91. history: received: 15 august 2017 revised: 15 september 2017 accepted: 22 september 2017 published: 27 september 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 87 2. conceptual clarifications ............................................................................................................................................................... 87 3. purpose of prison education ......................................................................................................................................................... 87 4. educational programmes for prisoners ...................................................................................................................................... 88 5. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 91 6. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 91 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 91 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ogbaka, luke chidiebele https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ewelum, johnson nnadi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=apiti anthony https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ogbaka, luke chidiebele https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ewelum, johnson nnadi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=apiti anthony https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ogbaka, luke chidiebele https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ewelum, johnson nnadi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=apiti anthony https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ogbaka, luke chidiebele https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ewelum, johnson nnadi https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=apiti anthony asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 86-91 87 1. introduction one of the goals of education for all (efa) is equal education opportunities for all by the year 2015. prisoners are not left out in this efa goal so as to be integrated into the society after reformation. reformation in this sense means correcting, educating, re-orientating and rehabilitating the inmates so that they could become better citizens when they are released from the prison. according to afujue (2004) some of the functions of the nigerian prisons service are to treat, train and reform those legally charged and convicted so that on their discharge they could be useful to themselves and the society at large. afujue further stated that those who have committed crimes should be assisted to live a good life rather than punishing them for the crime they committed. this view is predicated upon the understanding that those (offenders) who have broken the collective norms and laws of their societies as expressed in criminal laws of their societies are those who have had problems of adaptation and conformity with the general value system of their societies. therefore, when they commit crimes, they are sent to prisons for reformation. the nigerian prisons service has to embrace prison education as a means of reforming prison inmates. this is because, statutory function of the prisons is to reform inmates and prepare them for crime free life (human rights commission, 2005). according to ogundipe (2008) the nigerian prisons service has developed pragmatic educational strategies for reforming the prison inmates. these strategies according to him include vocational skill development programme (vsdp) which aims at empowering the prisoners with the needed skills for selfsustenance and actualization, and adult and remedial education programmes designed to help prisoners who were pursuing one academic programme or the other before their incarceration. vsdp enables prison inmates to learn skills in vocations such as tailoring, plumbing, carpentry, among others. this paper, therefore, is limited to conceptual clarification, purpose of prison education and educational programmes for prisoners. 2. conceptual clarifications 2.1. prison education prison education is a broad term that encompasses number of educational activities, occurring inside a prison. these educational activities include both vocational training, academic and general education. the goal of such activities is to prepare a prisoner for successful adjustment outside the prison. education programmes that take place inside prisons are completely provided and managed by the prison authorities (wikipedia, 2014). according to rhode (2004) prison education is the form of education designed for prisoners to enable them leave the prison with more skills and be in a position to find meaningful employment or create employment. in agreement with the above definitions, prison education is education designed for prisoners to equip them with veritable skills and knowledge to enable them to be productive on release. 2.2. reformation the word “reformation” has no specific definition. it varies from one author to another. according to collins thesaurus of the english language (2002) reformation is an improvement in the existing form or condition of institutions or practices. it is also defined as the process of rescuing from error and returning to a rightful course. for the purposes of this study, reformation means changing from a sinful to a normal life. thus, reformation of prison inmates means changing prison inmates from a sinful life to a normal life. 2.3. prison inmate a prison inmate is a person who is deprived of liberty because he went against the law. this can be by confinement, captivity, or by forcible restraint. the term applies particularly to those on trial or serving a prison sentence in a prison. a prison inmate is also known as a prisoner or a detainee (wikipedia, 2014). in section 1 of the american prison security act 1992, the word "prison inmate or prisoner" means any person for the time being in a prison as a result of any requirement imposed by a court or otherwise that he be detained in legal custody. in section 19 of the nigerian prison security act 1972, prisoner means any person lawfully committed to custody. prisoner is a legal term for a person prosecuted for felony. it is not applicable to a person prosecuted for misdemeanour. in other words, prison inmate is any person legally held in custody. 3. purpose of prison education prison or correctional education involves academic and vocational training designed mainly for prisoners' reformation. it is aimed at preparing prison inmates for living productive life at the time of acquittal. prison education is provided by prison authorities and the voluntary organizations outside the prison. in the past, prison education was viewed as a means of keeping prison inmates occupied. skeptics of this educational system argued that prison education in most cases has produced nothing but "better educated criminals". however, evidences abound in the literature to show that prison education has helped many prison inmates to be fully reformed so as to stay out of jail (firefox, 2004). historically, prison education was introduced in the nigerian prisons service in 1946 by mr. r.h dolan who was at that time the colonial director of prisons. as part of the rehabilitation programme of the nigerian prisons, he introduced vocational education (kalu, 2002). according to kalu (2002) the prison system at independence in 1960 was decidedly reformative as a result of the introduction of certain educational programmes for inmates and the establishment of the prison industries where prison inmates were trained on various skills and trades. the trades and vocations available at that time were carpentry, tailoring, wood and metal works, painting, weaving, masonry, fine arts, electrical works etc. in addition, adult and remedial education programmes were also introduced for prisoners' self-development prison education can open opportunities, enlighten prison inmates, broaden their horizons and build their selfconfidence. the nigerian penal system is capable of producing the required changes in criminals (idris, 2007). the over-riding aim of prison education is to ensure that the inmates get a new orientation that will help them reshape their lives so as to be better at the time of release. prison education can make prison inmates to be aware of things asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 86-91 88 that will help them not to engage in any criminal act if released. it can help them to engage in legitimate activities which will lead them to achieving success (braggins and talbort, 2000). one of the cardinal goals of correctional education is to reduce recidivism. evidence abounds in the literature to show that prison education reduces the rate of recidivism (lopinto, 2008). prison education practitioners now view prison education as an element of life-long education which its success cannot be determined only by a reduction in recidivism. the new thinking now is that prison education should provide prison inmates with opportunities for continuous education even after their jail terms. in agreement with this, lopinto (2008) posited that one of the priorities of prison education is to support the principles of lifelong education. evidences in the literature suggest that prison or correctional education has achieved some successes in the nigerian prisons (ogundipe, 2008). the reduction in recidivism has been the yardstick for measuring the success of prison or correctional education. the use of reduction in recidivism as standard for measuring the success of prison education possesses some problems as it is not possible to use it to study controlled groups and small sample (lopinto, 2008). there are some scholars who view prison as a means of strictly punishing the inmate and hold no interest in providing offender service programmes (zimring and hawkins, 1995). other scholars suggest that there is sufficient evidence to prove the success of rehabilitation programmes and the need for increased government funding towards treatment programmes (gehring et al., 1998). the programmes would help in correcting the behavior of the inmates before release to the society. in the same vein, sutton (1993) noted that there are three main immediate objectives of prison education at the basic level namely: (i) to keep inmates meaningfully busy (ii) to change attitudes and behavior (iii) to enable employment, vocational skills and/ or advance to further education and training. finally, wolford (1989) suggests that the purpose of prison or correctional education can be classified into six key factors: i. to provide inmates with basic academic and vocational skills ii. to provide inmates with an opportunity to change their personal behaviours and values iii. to reduce recidivism iv. to provide passive control of inmates' behaviour v. to support the operational needs of the correctional institution vi. to provide institutional work assignments. . 4. educational programmes for prisoners 4.1. technical and vocational education and prisoners' reformation vocational education was introduced in the nigerian prisons service since 1946 (kalu, 2002). this was as a result of the reform initiative of the then colonial government in nigerian prisons. it is evident in the literature that most people commit crimes due to lack of a legitimate means of livelihood. reformation programmes of the then colonial government were designed to equip prison inmates with the vocational skills and knowledge that will help them to settle down in some vocations on their release back to the society. vocational education programmes in prison involve instruction for a specific trade, occupation or vocations such as welding, auto repair, building maintenance, and graphic arts. the primary goal of vocational education is to help offenders develop marketable job skills upon release to the community. vocational training or career technical education programmes in prison are designed to teach inmates about employment skills or skills needed for specific jobs and industries. the overall goal of vocational training is to reduce inmates' risk of recidivating by teaching them marketable skills they can use to find and retain employment following release from prison. vocational and technical training programmes in handicraft and other trades such as barbing and electrical works can reduce anti-social behaviour by replacing inmates' idle time with constructive work (wilson et al., 2000). in addition, some vocational training programmes can assist in the operation of prisons by having inmates assist in institutional maintenance tasks. there are several obstacles that incarcerated adults must face upon their release from prison, including the prospect of unemployment. a lower level of educational attainment, an absence of a steady history of employment and a lack of vocational skills can hinder effort to find a job and make a decent wage. providing educational programmes and vocational training to adults while they are in prison can help them overcome these challenges by fostering the skills needed to find employment (davis, 2014). most of our educated youths lack competences in vocational trades that would have enabled them to secure employment. according to the punch newspaper as cited by ogundipe (2008) 64 million youths in the country are jobless. he lamented that the implication of this was a frustrated youth population with the tendency towards vices such as prostitution, cultism, armed robbery, drug and child trafficking, kidnapping and hostage taking. education without competences in certain vocational trades is likely to make recipients not to secure employment on time. nonformal education system is the most effective approach to deliver quality education to most prison inmates. according to the independent newspaper as cited by ogundipe (2008) beneficiaries of nonformal education performed better in business transactions through effective communication, better bargaining and self-employment. vocational training equips the recipients with the necessary skills needed for proficiency in one's chosen vocation. 4.2. civic education and prisoners' rights in nigerian prisons civic education is a critical and effective empowerment tool for promoting citizen participation in democratic processes. it empowers citizens, both as individuals and as part of collective groupings. all citizens-male and female; young and old; civil servants, politicians; rural or urban can benefit from civic education. civic education is an important aspect of prison education. it inculcates national values, norms and aspirations in the minds of the citizens. citizens are made to know their basic rights and social obligations through civic education. according to ani (2003) civic education enables an individual to learn how to do something for the betterment of his country or community, function as a socio-economic agent such as an active member of a trade union or a cooperative society and also participate in politics actively by learning how to vote or understand a new constitution. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 86-91 89 civic education is targeted at people who are potential victims of human rights abuse in the society. this group includes the rural poor, minority groups, street children and other marginalized people such as the incarcerated. these groups of people are exposed to human rights abuse and repressive violence. repressive violence is the most common form of human rights violation. according to schweitzer et al. (2006) repressive violence occurs when there is violations of the civic rights such as denials of freedom of thought, religion and movement or equality before the law including the right to a fair hearing. civic education is very important, especially in the prisons where the prisoners' rights are violated. most of these prisoners are not aware of their rights and social obligations as citizens of the country. prisoners are not totally stripped off their rights as citizens of their countries or as human beings just because they are being incarcerated. they are protected by series of rights and other legal the 1979 constitution of the federal republic of nigeria makes elaborate provisions for safeguarding the fundamental human rights of her citizens. these rights are provided for in chapter iv, section 30-39 of the constitution. these provisions laid down the circumstances in which a person in nigeria may be deprived off his or her rights or liberty and in this way provide the constitutional basis for our prison systems (agomoh et al., 1999). the prisons regulation of 1974 is a set of rules designed to ensure that the country's prisons service complied with the un standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners. the prison regulation is divided into three parts namely: part i, part ii and part iii. part i deals with matters concerning the procedure for admission and discharge of prisoners. part ii handles the core duties of all the prison staff while part iii provides for the rights, privileges and powers of visiting committees (agomoh et al., 1999). the united nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners, (unsmr) is a compilation of 95 rules made by the un in 1955 and approved in july 1957. according to agomoh et al. (1999) the prisoners' rights enshrined in these rules are: i. the right to life and integrity of the person ii. the right to be free from torture or other ill-treatment. iii. the right to health iv. the right to respect human dignity v. the right to due process of law vi. the right to freedom from discrimination of any kind. vii. the right to freedom from slavery viii. the right to freedom of thought. ix. the right to freedom of religion x. the right to respect family life xi. the right to self-development. despite the fact that nigeria is a signatory to these international legal instruments, prisoners' rights are still violated in the nigerian prisons with impunity. according to the guardian newspaper as cited by ogbodo (2011) nobody goes through the nigerian prisons system without being traumatized. the amnesty international report as cited by the vanguard (2008) and the punch (2008) maintained that people were convicted without fair trial and in some cases were not offered the services of a lawyer throughout the proceedings. 4.3. recreation, leisure and prisoners' self-development recreational activity is a medium in which participants can change their self-image and gain personal satisfactions. development of a positive self-esteem and self-image is important among prisoners. it is also an important aspect of correctional education. this is because prison inmates generally feel dejected and have a very low self-esteem. improving prison inmates' selfesteem will help them regain confidence in their ability to live a positive life. according to frank and gustafson (2001) consistent physical activities increase self-esteem. recreational and physical activities improve mental engagement and increase self-awareness, clarification of values, creative engagement and spiritual renewal among those that participate in it. this assertion was supported by tarrant et al. (1994) who stated that physical and recreational activities enhance personal and social system. recreational activities are designed to teach inmates how to make good use of their leisure time, how to relax and engage themselves in recreational activities such as playing or listening to music, reading, watching movies or tv and gardening, among others in order to reduce tension and depression. recreational programming is meant to provide inmates with physical, mental and emotional outlets to enhance their well-being. prison recreation programmes offer numerous benefits to inmates and correctional staff alike. sport can reduce tension and stress while promoting good health and well-being. it is thought to prevent major diseases like cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes (geoffrey and wanda, 2004). a number of activities like football and basketball are specifically designed to help reduce the stresses of incarceration by providing physical stimulation. other courses like art, writing and music provide more creative outlets. some prisons have music bands that perform for the prisoners or provide opportunities for incarcerated artists to sell their artwork. recreation increases discipline and creativity, self-esteem, and improves positive socialization skills, which help reduce re-offending (geoffrey and wanda, 2004). today, recreation is a vital aspect in almost all prisons. advocates for prison recreation argue that recreation is used as a therapeutic tool, and it may reduce recidivism. the benefits and skills that inmates obtain from exercise, such as time management, wellness, stress relief and anger management, will assist them in the community as well. sport and leisure programmes sometimes create incentives for participation as well as developing skills: prisoners develop pride in winning in sporting events, or in improving themselves in writing, acting and public speaking. recreation programmes also awaken skills or encourage prisoners to renew their interest in developing previous skills. this allows for a smoother transition back into the society (geoffrey and wanda, 2004). recreation and leisure can also be used in fighting depression. depression is psychological disorder which comes in various forms. it is a mental illness that has the following symptoms; feelings of loneliness, despair, hopelessness and worthlessness, unshakeable sadness and diminished interest in group activities (minino et al., 2002). they reported that as a result of depression alone, 29,350 people committed suicide in the united states in the year 2000 which asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 86-91 90 made it the third major cause of death in the united states among adults between the age of 15 and 24 years that year. participation in recreational activities provides relief from alienation, loneliness and isolation. according to participation in outdoor activities increases self-esteem, lowers depression and reduces suicide rate. thus, recreation and leisure can be of immense benefits to prison inmates for fighting depression and improving selfimage and self-esteem. 4.4. health education programmes and prisoners health education programmes in prison are programmes designed to promote healthy living among inmates. provisions and promotion of good health and sanitary practices are enshrined in the united nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners (unsmr). many countries including nigeria are signatories to these rules and other basic human rights provisions as enshrined in the international legal instruments. specifically, rule 22 of the unsmr stipulates that: i. every prison should make the services of a qualified medical officer available to the prisoners. ii. a qualified dental officer should be available to every prisoner (agomoh et al., 1999). despite the fact that nigeria is a signatory to these rules, medical and sanitary conditions in nigerian prisons remained in poor state. in agreement with this, the civil liberties organization (1993) reported that medical and sanitary conditions in the nigerian prisons are nothing one can write home about. a functional health and good sanitary practices in the prisons can be an effective tool for the reformation of prison inmates, especially the mentally impaired who are criminal lunatics. finally, physical education provides opportunities for those incarcerated to release tension, boredom and achieve psychological and social rejuvenation. physical education in the prison is also important in that it will empower prison inmates to cope with the dilapidating health system in the prisons. healthy mind promotes healthy body. emotional health of prison inmates is as important as their physical health. most often, prison inmates are overwhelmed by the weight of their past infamous life styles. this condition makes them relapse into depression. 4.5. family life education and prisoners' reformation family life education programme as an aspect of prison education is aimed at helping prison inmates maintain healthy relationship between them and their family members. it is designed to rejuvenate deteriorated family relationship between the inmates and their family members (bayse et al., 1991). there is a great responsibility on the part of the family members of the prison inmates to help them repair their already damaged personality. evidences abound in the literature to show that inmates who learnt how to repair and maintain their family relationships have lower recidivism rates and less disciplinary problems within the prison system (brodsky, 1995). incarcerated people often look upon their family relations as the last resort for affection and love (amuchie, 2003). according to the national council on family relations (2002) family life education is the educational effort to strengthen individual and family life through a family perspective. the objective of family life education is to enrich and improve the quality of individual and family life. inmates always enter prison with their family relationships in distress and rapidly deteriorating according to jeffries et al. (2001) communication between prisoners and their families provides the most concrete and visible strategy that families and prisoners use to manage separation and maintain connections. families visit their imprisoned relatives at the institutions where they are held, talk with them by phone, and exchange cards and letters as a means of staying connected. these contacts allow adults, parents and children to share family experiences and participate in family rituals, for example, birthday celebrations, and religious observations, among others and help them to remain emotionally attached. they help assure incarcerated parents that their children have not forgotten them and children that their parents love and care about them. most prisons for women, and a few for men, provide parent education courses and a few offer other parenting supports including counseling, parent support groups and special visiting areas and programmes for parents and their children (jeffries et al., 2001). family life education can be used in reducing narcissistic behaviour among prison inmates. narcissistic individuals have poor relationships as they are not able to show empathy and try to exploit those they associate with american psychiatric association (1987). 4.6. basic literacy and prisoners' reformation according to the american english doctor (n.d) basic literacy has to do with enabling a person to read, without difficulty; read, with understanding, a nonfiction book or speak a standard form of the native language whenever required and write a simple coherent note or letter that conveys the person's thoughts. it emphasizes teaching of reading, writing and computations. the philosophy behind the adoption of this type of literacy approach is to help recipients acquire the necessary skills and knowledge that can be applied immediately for solving socio-economic problems. according to unesco (1972) the very process of learning to read and write should be made an opportunity for acquiring information that can immediately be used for improving standards. basic literacy is popular among prison education practitioners. this is because of the belief that prison inmates should be helped to acquire reading, writing and computational skills and knowledge that will help them to be productive if released back into the society. prison inmates generally are people with poor reading, writing and computational skills, and are school dropouts. basic literacy programme can be employed to help these inmates acquire skills (reading, writing and computational skills) and competencies that will make them to become better on their release. according to british house of commons (2004) half of all the prisoners in the uk were at or below the level expected of an 11years old in reading, two-third in numeracy and fourth-fifth in writing. basic literacy makes it possible for the recipients to apply what they have learnt in literacy classes to their everyday activities. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 86-91 91 5. conclusion from the foregoing, it can be deduced that reformation of prison inmates is a core function of nigerian prison service which can be achieved through educational programmes and training to equip the prisoners with useful skills before release. prison education programmes open up opportunities, enlighten prison inmates and build their self-confidence which has been depleted by incarceration. such programmes include technical/vocational, civic, recreation, leisure, family life health and basic education programmes. it is expected that when the programmes are fully implemented, the problem of recidivism would be solved. 6. recommendations the following recommendations are made: 1. the government at all levels should recruit qualified instructors and counsellors who will impart the desired knowledge and skills into the learners that would be useful to them when they are released. 2. the government should also make provision for 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| view at publisher wolford, b.i., 1989. correctional facilities. in s.b. merrian & p.m. cunningham (eds), handbook of adult and continuing education. san franasco: jessey bass. zimring, f.e. and g. hawkins, 1995. incapacitation: penal confinement and the restraint of crime. new york: oxford university press. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=family%20life%20education:%20an%20effective%20tool%20for%20prisoner%20rehabilitation http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/585008 http://www.publication.parliament.uk/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=recollections%20of%20outdoor%20recreational%20experience:%20a%20psychological%20perspective https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=a%20meta-analysis%20of%20corrections-based%20education,%20vocation,%20and%20work%20programs%20for%20adult%20offenders http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022427800037004001 170 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 170-175, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.170.175 the physical education and sport studies in the framework of social demandsinstitutional structuring and teacher training the developments before and during turkey training community alliance period (1922 1936) murat özmaden1 fikret soyer2  harun özmaden3 ( corresponding author) 1department of coaching, adnan menderes university, aydın, turkey 2department of physical education and sport teaching, faculty of sports sciences, sakarya university, sakarya, turkey 3free researcher, bursa, turkey abstract the purpose of this study was to evaluate the physical education and sports studies and institutional structuring, the developments before and during turkey training community alliance (ttca) period in the framework of social demands within the historical process. in the study, the screening model was taken as a basis, historical and descriptive methods were used. the periodicals belonging to the period of 1922-1936 were reviewed to address how ttca activities in physical education and sport had influenced the social life, and what sort of discussions had been made about the subject. as a result, the physical education and sport are thought to be used as suitable tools for providing the physical and spiritual development as well as fulfilling the functions which would create powerful community; and it's seen that the effort was made to practice those ideas as much as possible. keywords: turkey training community alliance, teacher training, physical education. jel classification: i29. citation | murat özmaden; fikret soyer; harun özmaden (2018). the physical education and sport studies in the framework of social demands-institutional structuring and teacher training the developments before and during turkey training community alliance period (1922 1936). asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 170-175. history: received: 13 march 2018 revised: 16 april 2018 accepted: 20 april 2018 published: 23 april 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 171 2. physical education and sport activities in the late period of ottoman empire ............................................................ 171 3. physical education and sport studies in republican period................................................................................................ 173 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 174 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 174 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.170.175&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5913-6653 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8361-5216 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5913-6653 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8361-5216 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5913-6653 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8361-5216 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5913-6653 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8361-5216 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5913-6653 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8361-5216 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 170-175 171 1. introduction physical education and sport are defined as the movement forms that aim to develop people's physical strength and abilities at the same level of their mental and spiritual education. however, it is known that sport activities have been applied for various reasons during the historical process, and they have fulfilled quite different functions for both individuals and societies. in ancient times, providing a number of physical, mental and social qualities such as hunting to survive, being able to dominate the horse in different terrain conditions, being able to shoot moving objects while moving, predicting the movements of the prey, acting in harmony with the group, and conducting a group was not only economically important, but improved the military, administrative, social and athletic skills as well (yıldıran, 1996). in the ottoman empire, the sport, which were protected and encouraged till the regression period and institutionalized through private sport fields and lodges, began to lose importance in the early 18th century. with the new regulations introduced with the tanzimat, the application areas of traditional sports such as archery, wrestling and throwing javelin, which are supported by the state and the foundations, were narrowed down. just as it was in the whole world, the industrial revolution also showed its effect in the ottoman empire, albeit slightly delayed. increased relations with the west led to westerners bringing modern sport to the country towards the end of the 19th century. however, due to the successive balkan wars, world war i and the war of independence, serious sport events could not be organized. the fact that the physical and mental weakness of the turkish youth who had been away from the concept of being in sportive activities for a long time was shown as one of the most important reasons for the failure in the balkan wars brought the idea of using the benefits of the physical education and sports back to the agenda. in such an environment, the first management organization of turkish sport which was initially founded as a temporary committee in istanbul in 1922, and the headquarter of which was taken to ankara in 1923, was established, and then it went into action under the name of turkey training community alliance (ttca) the organizational form of ttca which was in the effort to be organized in the whole country, and which functions the sport studies fulfill have not been a research topic in a sufficient level. it is thought that this study will be important in understanding to which social demands the physical education concept was oriented in the period of ttca which is a unique part of our recent history, and in establishing a model for the researches on the historical descriptions of the physical education and sport studies of later periods. from here, it is important to know the development process of physical education and sports studies before and during ttca period. 2. physical education and sport activities in the late period of ottoman empire 2.1. school programs and institutional structures school physical education and sport activities in pre-turkey training community alliance period enderun school (school where government officials were educated) and dervish lodges (place of worship and education), which hosted sport activities under their roof indirectly and directly in ottoman period, lost their functions with the tanzimat. in general, these sport activities in the traditional sports context were replaced by the practices taken from the west both at the school and outside, or by the modern sports that were being put into practice by westerners themselves especially since the first constitutional monarchy. firstly, in 1863, they were included in the curriculum under the title of modern gymnastics (riyazat-ı bedeniye) in the turkish military academy and appropriate gym equipment was provided for the course (kocer, 1970; özçakır and yıldıran, 2016). the main progress in the schools, on the other hand, was made in galatasaray high school, which was established in 1868. after the rescript of gulhane (tanzimat fermanı), it was proposed to open new kind of schools by stating that a religious education system could not meet the needs of the day. with this in mind, in 1845, junior high schools (rüştiyeler), which educated students for specific areas such as education, military academy and medical school were started to open whereas in 1868, common high schools were started to open. galatasaray high school was established as the first high school (kocer, 1970). in 1862, bayonet and fencing lessons were introduced into the curriculum of military schools and these lessons were given by kolağası (officer phase between the squadron leader and lieutenant in the ottoman army) mr. akif efendi (tayga, 1990). an italian teacher named martini was assigned to the naval academy as a gym class for the first time. later in 1864 sadik bey was appointed as a gym teacher. it was thought that these courses, which continued just as exercises in the beginning, would be incomplete without a book, and military translator colonel mustafa hami bey was assigned to write a gymnastic book (gökdağ, 1939). in these years, while there was no physical education and gymnastics in the curriculum of the girls' teacher training schools, the gym class was introduced in the naval academy in 1884 (unat, 1964). in naval academy, swimming science lessons were taught as well as applied courses (kaplan, 1986). students who had learned this lesson theoretically also learned it in a practical way with swimming suits and materials. among the students who were educated, the first big name was ali faik (üstünidman) bey (atabeyoğlu, 1985). in galatasaray high school (mektebi sultaniye), the first physical education teacher was a french person named moireaux. moireaux taught the gymnastics course known as "i̇dman ve riyazet-i bedeniye (workout and gymnastics)" (atabeyoğlu, 1972). later, moireaux was replaced by a french teacher named curel. the first thing curel made was to turn the part allocated to him in the school into a gym and to put the gym equipment he brought with him from france into the use of his students (tekil, 1985; doğan, 2010). in the following period, after the french teachers, greek-origin stangalli became the teacher of the school. it's seen that stangali, whose main profession was doing acrobatics worked as a gymnastics teacher (ergin, 1977). stangali opened a gym in beyoglu during his teaching period at galatasaray high school and trained many students (bilge, 1988). with the departure of stangali in 1879, his student ali faik (üstünidman) took up his position. ali faik bey was the first turkish gymnastics teacher of his time and remained in this position for 44 years until 1923 (ergin, 1977). in the country, gymnastics lessons were practiced in the style of "jahn-amoros gymnastic" in those years. regarding asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 170-175 172 these classes, selim sırrı tarcan stated: "there were rings, trapezes, ropes, bars, rope ladder, all of which were hanging from the ceiling, on one side, and fixed iron bars and shot puts in various weights on the other side. the aim expected from this class is to train strong athletes and acrobats having hard muscles " (tarcan, 1928). selim sırrı tarcan argued that physical education and gymnastics class in this period wasn't of value in terms of science and education, but merely was about talent, a skill (ergin, 1977). the founder of the jahn-amoros gymnastics, which were the first practices in turkey as school physical education activities, is the spanish colonel don francesco amoros (1770-1848). amoros, who was influential in france's physical education for about thirty years, placed great importance on military gymnastics movements under the influence of jahn. in jahn gymnastics, much improvement was made in terms of the equipment used, as a consequence, parallel, bar, horse, ring were introduced into gymnastics as equipment by himself. in addition, widespread practices such as climbing, swinging, pulling, pushing, lifting, jumping and wrestling were widely practiced in jahn's gymnastics (mengutay, 1992). amoros was accused of bringing a compelling method not suitable for gradual development by mixing each equipment and system he saw, and it was argued that only a few acrobats were satisfied with this method (alpman, 1972). at the end of the nineteenth century, an increasing number of school-aged youngsters tended towards sports first at schools, then outdoors secretly in response to these programs, which resembled a complete military training exercise and aimed at strict discipline and blind obedience (fisek, 1983). in addition to being the school where the gymnastic lessons were applied as a modern sport activity for the first time, galatasary high school was also the school in which the modern sports rather than gymnastics, particularly football, started to be practiced (daver, 1929). as people who led turkish sport such as selim sırrı tarcan, faik üstünidman, vildan aşır savaşır were educated in galatasaray high school; educators such as selim sabit, hacı mustafa and şemsi efendi placed importance on the physical education and sport, and defended the idea of including the sport in curriculum as a part of the education given at schools (akyüz, 1985). thus, in accordance with this view, in aşiret (tribe) school established in istanbul in 1892, training lesson, "tâlim", was given to the first and fourth grades, and foot training lesson, "ayak tâlimi” was taught to the fifth grades (ayaz, 1948). on the other hand, the sport branches such as basketball and water polo were popularized throughout turkey for the first time by "robert college", one of the foreign schools, in 1904, and the first competition was also held by this school (alptekin, 1982). gymnastics lesson in the curriculum of naval academy, and military schools by getting necessary equipment and building facilities. during the period of 1863-1903, when moda, elips, imogene and kadıköy clubs came together and founded istanbul football alliance, physical education and sports histories were merged at schools and outside, and as a consequence, "sport" was integrated with the formal education system. in the 1870s, some running events were organized in kağıthane district of istanbul, amateurs gathered around football matches in which the english players played between 1885 and 1890 first in izmir and then in istanbul. later in 1908, the freedom atmosphere in the political and intellectual life, formed with the declaration of the second constitutional monarchy (the period of the ottoman empire, which began with the constitution of 1876 and lasted until the 1918 mudros armistice, called the first and second constitutional periods) enabled education, physical education and sport lessons to develop positively. along with this revival in political life and intellectual life, the importance of increasing the number of students and teachers in education was emphasized. while the first higher education institution for girls was established during these periods, the life-related courses started to be given again in curriculums. physical education and sports lessons were tried to be spread rapidly in regular schools and teacher training schools. in accordance with the statute on general education dated 1869 (law regarding to establish the secondary school), high schools in which education was carried out in two three-year semesters were established. in every grade of these schools, sports lessons started to be given under the name of physical education for an hour a week. these lessons also started to be given as two hours in all grades (1st to 6th) of galatasaray high school (bilge, 1988). selim sırrı tarcan, who fully understood the importance of physical education and sports, opened the "physical education school" in a large commercial complex on the mercan hill towards the end of 1908. this private school with gymnastics, fencing, boxing and horseback riding in its program was not different from the schools that french gymnasts had previously opened. the school was able to continue its education until april 1909, as selim sırrı tarcan went to sweden to study physical education in may 1909. having completed his physical education studies in sweden, tarcan returned to turkey in 1910, left his military service and was appointed as "the whole ottoman physical education inspector" on 14 july 1910. on january 19, 1911, tarcan opened a new special quality "physical education school". unlike the other schools, this second school provided applied and theoretical education such as anatomy, physiology, and medical knowledge with more scientific methods (çapan, 1999). the most prominent feature of this period was the struggle between empirical gymnastics and swedish gymnastics, which is a system. even though these two approaches didn’t improve sufficiently, they found practice. after all, selim sırrı bey, who brought swedish gymnastics to our country, made a lot of efforts for the dissemination of physical education lessons in schools and took an important place in the history of physical education (batum, 1943). in 1913, in the high school curriculum, physical education lesson was given in 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grades, also in 10th, 11th, 12th grades (the second cycle of secondary education), and in girls' high school as two hours a week. moreover, in the curriculum of "mektebi i̇ptidaiye-i umumiye" (primary school) established in 1913, there were military exercise classes for male students along with the "physical education and school games" course. in 1915, in the curriculum of the boys' and girls' high schools, students, in addition to the physical education classes for an hour a week, performed physical education, shooting exercises, and played educational games in the mornings and evenings on two or three days of the week determined by the school administration (bilge, 1988). during the period of the second constitutional monarchy, in the curriculum published for the high schools in 1913 and 1915, physical education classes included swedish exercises and games. in the curriculum published in 1915; information on activities such as jumping, capturing, handball, discus and javelin throw, tug of war, running, asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 170-175 173 hockey, tennis, swimming, rowing, cycling, fencing, soccer and sighting, all of which can be applied outside the lessons was also presented. on the basis of this information, during the period of the second constitutional monarch, in formal curriculum published for high schools, it was suggested to apply sweden gymnastics in physical education classes and english-style sports in times other than the school hours; and it was requested that no artistic gymnastics applied in previous periods be included. this pointed to the transformation that took place in the field of physical education. however, it is also conceivable that the teachers who worked at galatasaray high school preferred the system which was suitable for their own understanding of physical education in terms of practice (özçakır and yıldıran, 2016). the rapid development of physical education and sports lessons after having been put into schools' curriculum led to a need for teachers in this field. therefore, in 1915, for the first time in turkish sports history, a school was needed to train physical education teachers. this one-year school, which was affiliated to the higher teacher education school, the lessons of which were planned to be carried out as theoretical and applied lessons, could not be opened due to world war i (unat, 1964). 3. physical education and sport studies in republican period 3.1. their position in school programs, and institutional structuring (ttca 1923-1936) turkey training community alliance (tic is) period school physical education studies; with the proclamation of the republic in turkey, it was believed that making some changes and regulations which could respond to the needs of the community was necessary. in order to make progress and advance in sport, the importance of the physical education teacher was recognized, and it was stated, in the second article of ttca statute, that a school of physical education which would have the task of educating trainers for the country should be established. on march 2, 1924, the law on unification of education (tevhid-i tedrisat kanunu) no 430 dated 1924 was adopted by grand national assembly of turkey, and all educational institutions in the country were placed under the ministry of education. unity in education was established, caliphate was abolished by the law no 431, and dervish lodges and monastic institutions were abolished by the law no 677 and issued on november 30, 1925. on march 22, 1926, the permission to open a school was granted only to the state, the principles of education were determined, and most of the lessons taught during the ottoman period were abolished (arun, 1990). with the establishment of the republic, a high school was not considered as an advanced and complete high school unless it did not have a gymnastics lesson in its curriculum, anonymous (1923). however, when it was the 1930s, it was argued that the sweden-style physical education activities which were used for enabling turkey to have a place in sport in the developing world was not able to train the individual bodies adequately, and ministry of national education was asked to make some studies to abolish all those activities (bedi, 1934). in 1930, the ministry of national education banned primary and secondary school students from going to sports clubs outside of schools and participating in competitions either as individuals or as teams, except for schools, with the "regulation on student sports organization at schools". with this banning; formal private boys' high schools and teacher training schools as well as "student sports house" were established with the same regulation (yucel, 1994). the revenues of these sports houses were the fees given by the students who were sports enthusiasts. with the help of the school administration, those fees increased. expenses for sports equipment and sports activities were covered with this money (anonymous, 1934). in schools, although the physical education and sport class were available in all grades of primary schools, middle schools, and high schools for an hour a week, the universities didn't have it. therefore, the activities of children and young people performed in company with specialists did not exceed one hour a week during the whole course of their education (aşir, 1936). with the idea that sweden gymnastics which had been practiced for 20 years was no longer an option, it was expressed by the recent officials of that period that either younger and newer american or german gymnastics models would be practiced or a "turkish gymnastics model" which would be more compatible with our national culture would be established (fetgeri, 1931). one important reason for discussions on physical education practices and systems was the inconveniences of sweden-style gymnastics' turkish way of practice. one of these inconveniences was that all students were expected to do the same movements as if they were a machine, regardless of their being weak, strong, sick, robust, large, or small, and only one teacher was allocated to 60-70 students. it was impossible for a teacher to control the movements that 60-70 students have done together, and made his/her students do each movement in the right way. since the number of physical education teachers was not sufficient, it was necessary to increase the number of teachers in order to reach the goal (fetgeri, 1931). the education congress ("maarif kongresi"), which assembled in 1921 but then dissolved not having finished its studies, continued on between july 15 and august 15, 1923 following "the law on the establishment of secondary school", and passed into our history of education as the first science committee ("birinci heyet-i i̇lmiye") as a result of the work of this committee, the 6th article of the cabinet's decree issued on august 14, 1923 reads: "physical education improves the moral abilities of the individual as well as his physical and mental abilities. for these purposes, a physical education teacher training school will be opened and the scouting organization will be renewed". as a result of taking that decision, the training of physical education teacher was designated as a "government task". selim sırrı tarcan was appointed to this task so taht that this decision could be realized (arun, 1990). in order to meet the needs of physical education teachers and learn the methods that the european nation pursued in terms of physical education, in 1925, one student was sent to germany and three students were sent to the royal higher physical education institute in stockholm, sweden by the ministry of national education (anonymous, 1947). since it was not possible to meet the needs of physical education teachers in schools during the ttca period, in 1926, when mustafa necati was the minister of national education, a course was opened to train physical education teachers for the first time for the purpose of minimizing the deficiency (bilge, 1988). this course was opened so as to inform individuals who had received a license for physical education teacher in any way up to that time, and promote their professional development (anonymous, 1947). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 170-175 174 the course was one year long and consisted of male and female classes. the course's curriculum included physical education theories, physiology, anatomy, foot movement, medical knowledge, sports theories and applied courses (bilge, 1988). prospective teachers who had successfully completed girls' and teachers training school as well as talented, successful primary school teachers of each province were invited to the course along with the officers from the army and fire department who had certain characteristics (abalı, 1974). those who graduated from that course with the qualification certificate titled "physical education teacher" were assigned to secondary schools. 148 boys and 63 girls graduated from these courses producing graduates for three years, and they were assigned to secondary schools. due to the low number of secondary schools, the number of physical education teachers was considered adequate, and the training in those courses was stopped after 1930 (güven, 1996). kur dainas, a specialist physical education teacher from germany, was appointed to gazi education institute, the first institution that trained physical education teacher at the college level in turkey, as a faculty member by the ministry of education. meanwhile, turkish physical education teachers started to teach physical education in various places of the country. of these, nizamettin kırşan from istanbul teacher training school, vildan aşır savaşır from galatasaray high school, and zehra alagöz from i̇smet paşa girls' institute, the department of physical education (after she completed her education) were brought to gazi education institute. this institution, which only educated male physical education teachers until 1937, began to train female physical education teacher since then. in order to give lectures to female students, margarate korge, istanbul german high school female physical education teacher, was sent to berlin university, physical education institute in germany for three-year training after she had been selected as a teaching staff of the department (güven, 1996). the period of study in gazi education institute was three years at first. however, this practice was changed in the middle of 1937 because of the necessity of the physical education teacher in secondary education by reducing the period of study of the department from three to two. in the same year, students in the third year became physical education teacher as a graduate of "2.5" years in the second half of the year (anonymous, 1947). 4. conclusion the influence of the culture on sports has been an ongoing phenomenon with different styles and effects throughout the ages. in this sense, turkish sports have been fed from the living culture of the society and have come to this day, becoming diversified in proportion to its feeding rate. as turkish sports involve basic cultural values, it is a social phenomenon that has the potential to transfer these values to the participants. sport, as a social phenomenon, is a reflection of the socio-cultural system it is in. turkish sport is a part of and complementary to the culture as it carries the characteristics of the society in which it is present and practiced. physical education and sports studies that experienced many stages; during the ttca period, the inclusion of physical education and sports courses in all the schools and their rapid development created a need for teachers of this field. in order to meet the needs of the teachers, physical education teacher trainings were made both at home and abroad with the republican government's financial and moral support. balkan wars, world war i, and the war of independence were considered as the reasons for orienting ttca management to benefit from the positive effects of the physical education and sports on the physical and spiritual development. the turkish nation who got tired during these wars and most of the young people who were called to the military was "sick, handicapped, hunchback and weak", and besides these physical negativities, there were immobility, half-heartedness and mental disorder which were considered as the worst of diseases in the society. it was thought that the ttca management would fulfill the functions of "creating strong society" by correcting this situation. physical and mental disorders seen in the vast majority of society is naturally 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abstract people face many different small or great problems in certain periods of their lives. the most distinct quality of problem-solving skills is to eliminate all negative phenomena in order to achieve a certain goal. this study aims to understand whether problem-solving skills of some students studying at the departments of physical education teaching, coaching education and sports management at different schools of physical education and sports vary depending on their university, department, gender, and socio-economic status. 243 female and 351 male students (n=594) studying at school of physical education and sports at the university of the yozgat bozok, erciyes university and omer halis demir university during 2017-2018 academic year comprise the sample of the present study. to this aims, problem-solving inventory (psi), which was developed by heppner and petersen (1982) and adapted by sahin et al. (1993) was used as a data collection tool. data normality was tested using kolmogorov-smirnov and shapiro-wilks tests. t-test and one-way analysis of variance (anova) were also applied to independent samples to test hypotheses. when the number of independent variable groups was more than one and anova results were significant, post-hoc lsd test was applied in order to identify differences between groups. the data analysis demonstrated that female students' problemsolving skills were significantly higher compared to male students. in addition, the participants' average problem-solving skill scores displayed a significant difference. it was found out that average problem-solving skill scores of students studying at the university of yozgat bozok were significantly higher than those studying at erciyes university and omer halis demir university. keywords: problem, skill, teacher, coaching, sports. citation | bekir barış ci̇han (2018). the analysis of problemsolving skills and related factors for some students studying at different schools of physical education and sports. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 295-301. history: received: 16 july 2018 revised: 10 august 2018 accepted: 16 august 2018 published: 20 august 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 296 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 296 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 297 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 300 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 300 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.295.301&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1448 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3107-3849 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1448 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3107-3849 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1448 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3107-3849 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 295-301 296 1. introduction an individual will always encounter problems in different amounts and quality throughout their lifetime, and their problem-solving methods will vary depending on their intelligence, experience and character. it is not possible to live a life without any problems. therefore, instead of expecting a problem-free life, it is of vital importance to learn various techniques for overcoming problems as problem-solving skills directly influence an individual's life quality. korkut (2002) defines problem-solving as repeating certain experienced behaviours as well as offering alternative strategies. in addition to cognitive skills, problem-solving is a complex concept that addresses emotional, behavioral and social skills. additionally, problem-solving is closely related to an individual’s psychological well-being, self-confidence, sufficient communication skills and decision-making. ulger (2003) defines problem-solving as making right moves for the solution and offering satisfactory and analytic solutions to complex situations. in this respect, an individual must gain skills that will help them obtain positive results, and problem-solving must become a regular behavior. ferah (2000) states that an individual’s self-confidence is positively influenced by their ability to solve problems and that this enables them to solve their problems in a more courageous, determined and bolder manner. as a result, positive and satisfactory results encourage them to approach their future more optimistically. according to soylemez (2002), personal traits that today's students need to bear are high social communication skills, scientific, logical and cognitive thinking skills, a satisfactory level of technological knowledge and humanitarian values. an individual with a high level of problem-solving skills will definitely attempt to raise their children with a high problem-solving success, which is strongly associated with that individual’s ability to overcome his/her own problems (güçlü, 2003). people with high problem-solving skills can also be considered as positive, confident, bold and self-criticizing individuals who take responsibility and always come up with new ideas. university education occupies a critical position in an individual’s life and character. in this period, an individual experiences different physical, mental, emotional and social states. at the beginning of their education, university students try to adapt to a new city and social environment/circle/group and separate from his family for the first time in their life, which leads to various problems. therefore, they need to gain skills for analyzing their problems, offering creative solutions to these problems and realizing their skills in real-life situations. a school of physical education and sports and a faculty of sports sciences are 4-year educational institutions where sports are analyzed from a scientific perspective. these institutions offer a formal education at the departments of physical education and sports teaching, sports management, coaching education and recreation. sports management aims to train students and provide them with sport-related skills in the fields of communication, business administration, and finance. in addition, it is aimed to train administrators which will manage and lead a certain group thanks to their leadership skills in the field of sports. coaching education entails formal education related to physical movement and training. these schools train technical officers, coaches, analysis expert, masseurs and fitness trainers. finally, physical education and sports teaching department aims to train teacher candidates with a high physical, emotional and psychological capacity and who can apply their knowledge in the most efficient ways. a teacher, coach, and sports manager with a high level of problem-solving skills should be trained so as to possess suitable skills that will increase their colleagues' and students' living conditions. this can only be achieved by a well-prepared physical education and sports curricula which take all dimensions of human development into account, satisfy modern requirements, and identify and offer solutions to students' problems. this study aims to compare and identify problem-solving skills of students studying at different departments of the school of physical education and sports and analyze these data using different variables. 2. material and method 2.1. study group a cross-sectional research design was used in this study. the study group is comprised of 594 students who were selected based on convenience sampling and study at different sports departments of three different universities in the central anatolian region of turkey. inconvenience sampling method, researchers select their sample by taking various factors into consideration such as cost, time and sample accessibility (cohen et al., 2007). 334 male (59%) and 228 female students (%41) participated in the study. participants’ age varies between 18 and 35, and their average years of age is 20.55 (s.d: 2.16). while 185 (%32.9) students study physical education and sports teaching, 233 (41.5%) and 144 students (25.6%) study coaching education and sports management, respectively. 2.2. data collection tools personal information form: this form was developed in order to gain information concerning participants’ socio-demographic features. it can be used to identify participants’ gender, age, university, family, location/residence, department, socio-economic status, sports branch, and coaching/referee license. problem solving inventory (psi): developed by heppner and petersen (1982) psi is generally used to analyze participants' problem-solving capacity, skills, and style as well as their awareness. different researchers have so far adapted psi to turkish context and tested its validity and reliability (taylan, 1990; sahin et al., 1993; cam, 1995). the present study benefits from psi adapted by sahin et al. (1993). findings on the construct validity of this scale indicate that it consists of six sub-dimensions as impulsive, reflective, avoidant, monitoring, confident and the planful styles (sahin et al., 1993). its known-group validity demonstrated that total psi scores of non-depressed and non-anxious groups were significantly lower compared to depressed and anxious groups (sahin et al., 1993). in other words, it was observed that individuals with a lower level of depression and anxiety had significantly higher problem-solving skills. convergent and discriminant validity of the scale indicates that total psi scores display a moderate positive significant correlation with depression (r= .33) and anxiety (r= .45), which means that individuals with a lower level of problem-solving skills had a higher level of depression and anxiety (sahin et al., asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 295-301 297 1993). validity findings of the scale demonstrate that its cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient in a sample consisting of university students was .88 (sahin et al., 1993). psi can be employed for its sub-dimensions or measuring total scores. because this study aims to measure participants’ general problem-solving skills, psi was used to assess total scores. psi is a six-point likert-type scale consisting of 32 items. participants choose one of the statements ranging from “i always behave like this” (1) to “i never behave like this” (6) in order to state the suitability of each scale item for them. 14 items are reverse coded in the scale. reverse coded items are re-coded before total scores are calculated, and participants can reach a total score of 32 to 192. a lower score points to more functional and effective problem-solving skills. a sample item from psi is as follows: “i can usually offer creative and effective solutions to my problems”. cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient of psi for this study was calculated as .88. 2.3. procedure the data were collected from students who studied at schools of physical education and sports at three different universities in the academic year 2017-2018. before surveys were conducted, participants were informed about voluntary participation in the study and optional withdrawal from the study at any time, and they were ensured that their answers would remain anonymous and be only used in parallel with the aim of this study. in addition, all participants were asked to sign a written consent form prior to the survey. none of the students refused to participate in the study. surveys lasted nearly 20 minutes. 2.4. data analysis all data were statistically analyzed using spss 23 program. as tabachnick and fidell (2012) suggest, a preliminary analysis was performed prior to the data analysis. data accuracy, missing data, outliers, and statistical analysis assumptions were investigated at the beginning. minimum and maximum values in the data set were analyzed in order to test data accuracy, and it was found out that all variables were within expected value ranges. no missing data were found in the data set. participants' psi scores were standardized and converted to z-scores in order to detect univariate outliers and, as tabachnick and fidell (2012) suggests, two participants whose z scores were between -3.29 and + 3.29 were omitted from the data set. t-test and one-way analysis of variance (anova) were also applied to independent samples to test hypotheses. when the number of independent variable groups was more than one and anova results were significant, post-hoc lsd test was applied in order to identify differences between groups. the reason why this post hoc test was used is that it had a higher statistical strength and a much lower type i error rate compared to other post hoc tests (e.g. scheffe, tukey hsd) when the number of groups was three (hayter, 1986; levin et al., 1994). t-test and anova can be used to statistically test independent samples in terms of normality and variance homogeneity assumptions (ho, 2013; green and salkind, 2014; george and mallery, 2016; pituch and stevens, 2016). skewness and kurtosis values of psi scores for each independent variable category was analyzed to assess the normality assumption. as a general rule, a skewness and kurtosis value varying between -2 and +2 indicate a near-normal data distribution (field, 2013; george and mallery, 2016; pituch and stevens, 2016). it was observed in the data that skewness and kurtosis values of psi in all categories were within this range. in this respect, it can be stated that the data display a near-normal distribution. levene test, which analyzes changes independent variables in the sub-categories (groups) of the independent variable, was used to test the variance homogeneity assumption. the levene test results indicate that the data did not violate variance analysis homogeneity assumption. recommended if variance homogeneity is violated, welch f testy (howell, 2013) was also used to test the difference between average group values, and the same results were obtained. as a result, anova results were reported in the findings section. the data analysis was reported along with effect size estimations. while cohen's d is the most widely used effect size to measure the effect size of the difference between average values of two groups, eta-squared (ƞ2) effect size is often used in anova when the group number is higher than two. the effect size classification proposed by cohen (1992) divided values into three groups as a small effect, i.e. lower than .20, medium effect, i.e. nearly .50, and large effect, i.e. higher than .80. as for eta-squared values, .01, .06 and 14 are classified as a small, medium and large effect, respectively. type i error rate was taken as .05 in all analysis. 3. findings in this section, descriptive statistics of the students participating in this study are given, and later hypotheses are tested. participants’ socio-demographic features are given in table 1. as shown in table 1, most of the participants (59.1%) are male and study at university of yozgat bozok (39.9%). while a large part of the participants lives with a housemate (35.2%), a small part of them (11.1%) spent most of their lives in a town or village. while a large part of the participants (41.2%) study coaching education, most of them state that the economic status of their family is average (77.9%). while most of the participants (49.2%) are engaged in team sports, only a very small part of them do not have a sibling (6.9%). finally, a large part of the participants does not possess a coaching or referee license. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 295-301 298 table-1. students’ descriptive statistics variable n % gender male 351 59.1 female 243 40.9 university yozgat bozok 237 39.9 erciyes 198 33.3 omer halis demir 159 26.8 residence living with my family 197 33.2 living with a housemate 209 35.2 at dormitory 188 31.6 location province 411 69.2 city 117 19.7 village/town 66 11.1 department teaching 194 32.7 coaching 245 41.2 management 155 26.1 economic status low 80 13.5 moderate 463 77.9 high 51 8.6 sports branch individual 232 39.0 team sports 292 49.2 no branch 70 11.8 siblings no siblings 41 6.9 i have sibling(s) 553 93.1 coaching license yes 216 36.4 no 378 63.6 n= 594 tablo-2. t-test results of independent samples in terms of gender m sd df t p cohen’s d male 98.76 18.06 592 3.14 .002** .26 female 93.89 19.23 p<.05*, p<.01** average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations and t-test results in terms of independent samples for both genders are given in table 2. this table demonstrates that females students’ problem-solving skills are significantly higher than males (t (592) = 3.12, p<.01, cohen’s d=.26). however, this difference has a low effect size. tablo-3. anova results in terms of universities where participants study m sd df1,df2 f p η2 post-hoc 1.bozok 93.52b 18.86 2, 591 6.28 .002** .02 1-2, 1-3 2. erciyes 98.34a 17.69 3.ömer halis demir 99.64a 19.01 p<.05*, p<.01**, a>b. average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations, and anova results in terms of universities where participants study are given in table 3. this table demonstrates that participants' universities display a significant difference in terms of their average problem-solving skill scores (f (2, 591) = 6.28, p<.01, η2=.02). however, these differences have a low effect size. post-hoc lsd tests indicate that problem-solving skills of students studying at university of yozgat bozok (m= 93.52) were significantly higher compared to those studying at erciyes university (m=98.34) and omer halis demir university (m= 99.64). no significant differences were observed among other groups. table-4. anova results in terms of residence m sd df1,df2 f p η2 post-hoc 1. living with my family 98.06a 18.12 2, 591 13.77 .001** .05 1-3, 2-3 2. living with my friends 100.57a 18.12 3.at dormitory 91.18b 18.67 p<.05*, p<.01**, a>b. average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations and anova results in terms of participants’ residences are given in table 4. this table demonstrates that participants’ residences display a significant difference in terms of their average problem-solving skill scores (f (2, 591) = 13.77, p<.001, η2=.05). however, these differences have a low effect size. post-hoc lsd tests indicate that problem-solving skills of students living at asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 295-301 299 dormitory (m= 91.18) were significantly higher compared to those living with their family (m=98.06) and living with a housemate (m= 100.57). no significant differences were observed among other groups. tablo-5. anova results in terms of the location where participants spent most of their lives m sd df1,df2 f p η2 1. province 97.57 18.65 2, 591 1.31 .271 .00 2. city 95.33 17.36 3. village/town 94.29 21.00 p<.05*, p<.01** average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations and anova results in terms of locations where participants spent most of their lives are given in table 5. this table demonstrates that no significant differences were observed among participants’ average problem-solving skill scores in terms of locations where they have spent most of their lives (f (2.591)= 1.31, p>.05, η2=.00). table-6. anova results in terms of departments at which participants study m sd df1,df2 f p η2 1. teaching 95.74 19.34 2, 591 1.80 .166 .01 2. coaching 98.49 17.58 3. management 95.32 19.44 p<.05*, p<.01** average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations, and anova results in terms of departments at which participants study are given in table 6. this table demonstrates that no significant differences were observed among participants' average problem-solving skill scores in terms of departments at which they study (f(2, 591)= 1.80, p>.05, η2=.01). table-7. anova results in terms of participants’ perceived economic status m sd df1,df2 f p η2 1. low 92.99 19.19 2, 591 2.01 .135 .01 2. moderate 97.48 18.48 3. high 96.18 19.45 p<.05*, p<.01** average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations and anova results in terms of participants’ perceived economic status are given in table 7. this table demonstrates that no significant differences were observed among participants’ problem-solving skill scores in terms of their perceived economic status (f (2, 591)= 2.01, p>.05, η2=.01). table-8. anova results in terms of participants’ sports branches m sd df1,df2 f p η2 1. individual 98.65 17.82 2, 591 2.31 .100 .01 2. team 95.97 19.59 3. no branch 93.84 17.25 p<.05*, p<.01** average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations and anova results in terms of participants’ sports branches are given in table 8. this table demonstrates that no significant differences were observed among participants’ problem-solving skill scores in terms of their sports branches (f (2, 591) = 2.31, p> .05, η2=.01). table-9. t-test results of independent samples in terms of number of siblings m sd df t p cohen’s d no siblings 98.63 19.51 592 .66 .508 .11 one or more siblings 96.63 18..34 p<.05*, p<.01** average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations and t-test results of independent samples in terms of participants’ number of siblings are given in table 9. this table demonstrates that no significant differences were observed among participants’ problem-solving skill scores in terms of their number of siblings (t (592) = .66, p>.05, cohen’s d= .11). table-10. t-test results of independent samples in terms of coaching/referee license m sd df t p cohen’s d yes 97.53 19.45 592 .76 .450 .06 no 96.33 18.25 p<.05*, p<.01** average problem-solving skill scores, standard deviations and t-test results of independent samples in terms of participants’ coaching/referee licenses are given in table 10. this table demonstrates that no significant differences were observed among participants’ problem-solving skill scores in terms of their coaching/referee licenses (t (592) = .76, p>.05, cohen’s d= .06). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 295-301 300 4. discussion it was clearly demonstrated in this study that female students had significantly higher problem-solving skills compared to male students. in their study on teacher candidates, katkat and mizrak (2003) reported that females had better problem-solving skills compared to males. on the other hand, tümkaya and i̇flazoğlu (2000) state that no significant differences were found between gender in terms of problem-solving skills. similarly, genç and kalafat (2007) found out that no significant differences were observed between males and females in terms of problem-solving skills. therefore, it can be concluded that females behave more calmly, patiently and in a more determined manner thanks to their personal traits when solving their problems in a more reasonable way. participants' average problem-solving skill scores in terms of universities where they study display a significant difference. it was observed that problem-solving skills of students studying at the university of the yozgat bozok were significantly higher compared to those studying at erciyes university and omer halis demir university. pehlivan and konukman (2004) demonstrated that no significant differences were observed among teachers’ problem-solving skills in terms of their branches. demirtas and donmez (2008) too, did not find any significant differences among high school teachers’ problem-solving skills in terms of their branches. therefore, our findings in the present study overlap these studies. another finding of the present study is a significant difference among participants’ average problem-solving skill scores in terms of their residence. in a study on students studying at school of physical education and sports, tasgin (2004) analyzed their problem-solving skills in terms of socio-cultural differences and concluded in this study that students who came from the suburbs of the city were more sociable and outgoing. in the present study, it was found out that students who lived at a dormitory had significantly higher problem-solving skills compared to those who lived with their family or with a housemate. this can be associated with the fact that students living in a dormitory encounter problems more frequently and thus they need to find solutions to these problems by taking alternative schemes into account. no significant differences were found among participants' problem-solving skill scores in terms of coaching/referee license and their sports branches. in a study of different sports branches, agılonu (2014) indicated that participants’ problem-solving skills had no significant differences in terms of their sports branches. in a study on football referees’ problem-solving skills, efe et al. (2008) found a significant difference between candidate and classification referees and provincial and classification referees in favour of classification referees. altuncekic et al. (2005) argue that an individual's education process and their problem-solving experiences in this period help them use their problem-solving skills more efficiently. therefore, it can be stated that it is possible to reach solutions more easily if an individual approaches their problems more positively. no significant differences were observed among participants’ average problem-solving skill scores in terms of their perceived economic status. turkcapar (2007) did not find any significant differences between total problemsolving skill scores of students studying in the department of physical education and sports and their monthly incomes. sah (2005) demonstrated that a monthly income and regular job were among factors which positively influenced problem-solving skills. it can be argued that children coming from a poor community display better psycho-motor behaviors and that students with an average or high socio-economic status overcome cognitive problems more easily thanks to various 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corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=problem%20solving%20skills%20of%20high%20school%20students https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=problem%20solving%20skills%20of%20high%20school%20students https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=a%20controlled,%20powerful%20multiple-comparison%20strategy%20for%20several%20situations http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.115.1.153 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=comparison%20of%20physical%20education%20teachers%20and%20other%20branch%20teachers%20in%20terms%20of%20problem%20solving%20abilities https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=psychometric%20properties%20of%20the%20problem%20solving%20inventory%20in%20a%20group%20of%20turkish%20university%20students http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf01177661 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=an%20investigation%20of%20automatic%20thought%20and%20problem%20solving%20levels%20of%20students%20in%20classroom%20teaching%20unit%20of%20çukurova%20university%20according%20to%20some%20socio-demographic%20variables asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 2, 44-52, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 44 secondary school students’ conceptual understanding of physical and chemical changes hanson, r.1 twumasi, a. k.2 aryeetey, c.3 sam, a.4 adukpo, g.5 1,2,3,4 department of chemistry education, university of education, winneba, winneba 5 department of chemistry, college of physical science, university of cape coast, cape coast ( corresponding author) abstract in recent years, researchers have shown an interest in understanding students’ own ideas about basic chemical principles and guiding them through innovative ways to gain conceptual understanding where necessary. this research was a case study designed to assess 50 first year high school students’ conceptual understanding about changes in matter, with interpretive underpinnings. a diagnostic probe was administered to find out if discrete particles could be used to differentiate chemical changes from physical changes and to unravel the different conceptual interpretations that students had. submissions obtained from the students were classified on levels of conceptions, and analysed using frequency counts and percentages, after which an interview was conducted to gain a deeper insight into their unscientific submissions. findings from the study indicated that only a few students had difficulties in distinguishing between physical and chemical changes. these few did not associate the changes in states with associated physical and chemical properties, as was expected at their level. neither did they base their explanation on the breaking nor formation of bonds, nor with changes in the constitutions of entities. they overwhelmingly intimated that physical changes were reversible whilst chemical changes were not. about 38% of participants who provided correct definitions for physical and chemical changes in two of the probes could not assign reasons for them. however, almost 79% of the participants showed an appreciable knowledge of types of changes that occur in chemistry. the adopted diagnostic probe and interview were useful in identifying students’ alternative conceptions about changes in chemistry. diagnostic probes are recommended as a pre-requisite for conceptual change strategies. keywords: chemical change, chemical property, conceptual change, physical change, physical property. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 45 2. research design ................................................................................................................................................................... 45 3. results .................................................................................................................................................................................. 46 4. discussion ............................................................................................................................................................................. 47 5. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 48 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 49 citation | hanson, r.; twumasi, a. k.; aryeetey, c.; sam, a.; adukpo, g. (2016). secondary school students’ conceptual understanding of physical and chemical changes. asian journal of education and training, 2(2): 44-52. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 11 july 2016/ revised: 21 october 2016/ accepted: 27 october 2016/ published: 1 november 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hanson, r. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=twumasi, a. k. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=aryeetey, c. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sam, a. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adukpo, g. http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hanson, r. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=twumasi, a. k. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=aryeetey, c. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sam, a. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adukpo, g. http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hanson, r. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=twumasi, a. k. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=aryeetey, c. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sam, a. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adukpo, g. http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hanson, r. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=twumasi, a. k. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=aryeetey, c. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sam, a. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adukpo, g. http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hanson, r. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=twumasi, a. k. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=aryeetey, c. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sam, a. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adukpo, g. http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hanson, r. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=twumasi, a. k. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=aryeetey, c. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sam, a. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adukpo, g. http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hanson, r. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=twumasi, a. k. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=aryeetey, c. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=sam, a. https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=adukpo, g. http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.44.52 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 44-52 45 1. introduction chemistry is an active discipline which involves principles that are important to both the realms of nature and society. it deals with the composition of matter and its principles (mailumo et al., 2009). in addition, it is seen as a central science that unifies the other science subjects (agogo and otor, 2013). it therefore implies that chemistry is needed for the development of human life and societies. this also suggests that chemistry education should be emphasised at the secondary school so that students can understand and apply chemical principles that are taught in their daily lives. interestingly, there has been a consistent decline in the performance of students in national chemistry examinations conducted by the west african examinations council (waec) (samba and eriba, 2012; west african examinations council, 2012). the reports surmise that ghanaian students are not acquiring the necessary requisite skills and knowledge required for life from their chemistry studies. a presumptive inference to be made from this knowledge could be that ghanaian students may be having conceptual difficulties in acquiring chemical principles and phenomena. several studies have identified conceptual difficulties that students express in their study of basic chemistry (kind, 2004; horton, 2007). concepts are formed when ideas or thoughts are developed upon common properties of objects or events by abstraction. duit (2007) found in a study that students hesitate to answer questions set on concepts that are difficult for them. perhaps avoidance of some test items based on conceptual challenges could be a reason for students’ poor performance in chemistry assessments. the concept of change in matter, for example, is an area of study which has been found to be difficult for students at secondary schools (kind, 2004). changes in matter are broadly classified into chemical and physical changes. ‘chemical change’ is any change that results in the formation of new chemical substances. at the molecular level, a chemical change involves making or breaking of bonds between atoms. it often takes ‘extraordinary’ means to separate the changed product into the starting or original materials. here, chemical reactions are implied. ‘physical change’ is about the rearrangement of particles in matter without affecting their individual internal structures (senese, 2016). in effect, as no bonds are broken, changes could affect only colour, density, volume or mass, without a change in the chemical nature of the substance. changes in matter (that is physical and chemical changes) are important and fundamental topics in science from as early as the primary level to the undergraduate level. often teachers teach the differences between chemical and physical changes shallowly and incorrectly, with very few examples to substantiate assertions they make. thus, their distinctions are not absolute and lead learners to develop misconceptions about them. hanson et al. (2011) in a similar study on bonding in matter found out that, undergraduate students in most cases could not give correct reasons to explain processes that were physical and chemical. the missing gap was students’ inabilities to understand and differentiate between physical and chemical properties of matter. they noted that introductory concepts on matter and its changes were not mastered effectively by junior high school (jhs) students before entry into the senior high school (shs), and subsequently to the university. in order to fully understand changes in matter, students must be familiar with fundamental concepts such as those associated with physical properties, chemical properties, the particulate nature of matter and chemical bonding. students’ misconceptions regarding changes in matter appear to be worldwide (taber, 2002). we live and operate within the macro and micro world of matter but cannot follow shifts between these levels logically (harrison and treagust, 2000; robinson, 2003). consequently, we tend to build alternative conceptions and non-scientific metal models (taber and coll, 2002) as a result of improper and uncoordinated linkages. ahetee and varjola (1998) interviewed students from the 7 th and 8 th grades at the upper stage of senior secondary school and first year general chemistry course at a university and asked them to describe the concept of chemical reactions. their responses indicated that students at various levels of education have alternative concepts about changes in matter. they showed difficulties in the usage of terms such as ‘substance’, ‘molecule’ and ‘atom’. only 6% of their 7 th and 8 th graders and 14% of the university students in their study were able to describe some changes in chemical reactions. ahetee and varjola attributed their students’ difficulties to instructional incompetence. yan and talanquer (2015) also found from review studies that students encounter difficulties in their studies about transformations in matter. they attributed their observations of these student behaviours to difficulties that could have stemmed from under-developed concepts about substances. in a related study, johnson (2000) found that students do not often consider chemical reactions as complete transformations of matter, but only as change in appearance or state of matter. this suggests that students make misguided distinctions between physical and chemical changes. in teachers’ attempts to help, they sometimes introduce chemical reactions as rearrangement of atoms without explaining that it implies changes in the discrete and constituent particles that result from the formation of new substances which emerge as a result of ‘re-bonding’. they fail to link this new concept to students’ own understanding about chemical and physical properties of matter. these findings from literature on students’ difficulties in their understanding of changes in matter led the researchers to find out whether ghanaian senior high school students also experience these difficulties, or that it was peculiar to a part of the world. 1.1. aim of the study the aim of this study was to investigate students’ own conceptual interpretations and applications of changes in matter. 2. research design the research was a case study cohen et al. (2011) to assess first year senior high school (shs) students’ conceptual understanding about changes of matter in chemistry. a validated diagnostic concept probe titled ‘changes in chemistry’ was extracted from the royal society of chemistry (rsc) resources and administered to students for 20 minutes. the probe (appendix a) contained five items. in the first two items, students were asked to explain what they thought about the terms, ‘physical’ and ‘chemical changes’. the next three items contained particle diagrams for asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 44-52 46 ‘before activity’ and ‘afterwards’ to further probe the application of their understanding of changes in chemistry. they were to decide whether the change in each diagram was a physical or chemical change and to explain their reasons for whatever choice that they made. the written responses from the students were scored and classified on levels of conception. probes provide evidence of students’ thoughts. the criterion for classifying levels of conceptual understanding is presented in table 1. table-1. criteria for classifying levels of conception degree of conceptual understanding criteria for selecting responses sound conception responses that include all components of the validated responses. partial conception responses that include at least one of the components of the validated response, but not all the components. alternative conception responses that include illogical, incorrect, irrelevant or unclear responses, no response or blank space. source: hanson et al. (2015) after analysing students’ responses to the diagnostic probes, 20 of the participants were interviewed individually for 5 minutes each to get their in-depth understanding about some of the unscientific answers that they provided in the probes. the interview protocol was culled from the probe. the selection of interviewees was purposive as five students were selected from the sound conception group, 10 from the partial conception group, and another five from the high alternative conception group. 2.1. sample and sampling procedure the target population for the study comprised all science students in senior high schools in the agona west municipality of central region, ghana. a random sampling method was used to select an experimentally accessible population for the study. first year science students in a senior high school in the agona west municipality who numbered 50, were all selected to participate in the study, which they willingly obliged to. this sample was an intact class and everyone participated in the study. whole class effects have significant influence on the strategies for conceptual change used by teachers. 2.2. data analysis the numbers of respondents possessing various degrees of conceptual understanding were determined using frequency counts and percentages. 3. results based upon the developed criterion for distinguishing levels of comprehension as described in table 1, the percentage distribution of students’ conceptual understanding based on the set criteria are presented in table 2. table-2. distribution of levels of conceptions about changes in chemistry through a diagnostic probe item sound conception (%) partial conception (%) alternative conception (%) 1 32.0 32.0 36.0 2 32.0 38.0 30.0 3 62.0 20.0 18.0 4 76.0 20.0 04.0 5 58.0 24.0 18.0 source: fieldwork data (2016) table 2 was translated graphically for clarity and shown as figure 1. figure-1. a bar graph indicating the percentage distribution of students’ conceptual understanding of changes in chemistry source: graphical field data from table 2. figure 1 is a display of students’ performance in their interpretation of some changes in chemistry. 3.1. findings a general overview of the graph shows that items 1 and 2 had the highest partial and alternative conceptions of 32%, altogether. the least sound conceptions were observed here. incidentally, in items 3 to 5, where knowledge of changes had to be applied, very high sound conceptions (over 50%) were recorded. students had no problem identifying and interpreting changes in matter at different levels. levels of partial conceptions were highest for item 2 (38%), as a few of the students could not explain what a chemical change was, with the appropriate chemical language or descriptive terms. it was clear that they had problems in using appropriate scientific language in asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 44-52 47 describing changes in phenomena; no wonder they scored poorly in items 1 and 2, where a display of appropriate descriptive chemical terms were required. the highest level of sound conception was recorded with item 4 (76%). from figure 1 (table 2) it was observed that 32%, 32% and 36% of the respondents gave sound conception, partial conception and alternative conception respectively on the definition of ‘physical change’. altogether, 64% demonstrated had fair ideas about what physical and chemical changes were. also, 32%, 38% and 30% of the respondents gave sound conception, partial conception and alternative conceptions respectively on the definition of ‘chemical change’. the respondents who had alternative conceptions about ‘chemical change’ were less than those with sound and partial conceptions put together. students who failed to explain the concept of physical change said that it was a change that was accompanied by physical observations such as the evolution of gas or a kind of scent, instead of stating that physical changes involved change in state or form of matter which did not cause any change in the chemical composition of the combining elements or particles. they could also have explained the event on the basis of physical properties; that an aspect of matter was being observed or measured without change to it. their answers showed no inclinations towards the physical properties of matter. in a similar manner some students defined chemical change without linking it to a change in chemical composition of the combining substances due to the breaking and formation of new bonds. some of their responses are presented as appendix d. majority of students who held acs about changes, used the words ‘reversible’ and ‘irreversible’ indiscriminately in their definitions. in item 3 students were asked to state and explain whether cooling liquid nitrogen until it froze was a chemical or physical change. the results showed that 62%, 20%, and 18% of them respectively had sound, partial and alternative conceptions about the phenomenon. most of the students explained their observations as being that of a physical change. those who showed partial understanding were able to identify the phenomenon as a physical change but could not give logical reasons for their choices. they failed to relate the change to a permanence or otherwise of an original state. students who showed alternative conceptions based their explanations on the spaces in the given diagram as it appeared before and after freezing. their explanations were not linked to any scientific theory such as a change in state, the breaking and creating of bonds or permanence of entities after an ‘apparent’ change as was expected. neither were changes interpreted with respect to differences in energy. one student wrote that a chemical change has occurred because a new substance has resulted, though it contains the same molecule. he added that only arrangement was changed. students were asked to state and explain whether burning of magnesium in oxygen was a physical or chemical change in item 4. data gathered indicated that 66%, 20% and 14% respectively had sound, partial and alternative conceptions about the phenomenon. most of them were able to state and justify the reason why they considered it a chemical change. perhaps their knowledge about reversible and irreversible changes were successfully applied here. some of them were able to state that burning magnesium ribbon to ash was a chemical change but were not able to assign reasons to their initial choice. a student with an alternative conception wrote that the phenomenon was a physical change as magnesium would scatter in oxygen due to its physical properties and that after heating the magnesium became attracted to oxygen to form a uniform substance. the last item (5) required students to state whether the dissolution of sodium chloride in water would demonstrate a physical or chemical change and to write supporting reasons. their answers indicated that 58%, 24% and 18% respectively gave sound, partial and alternative conceptions about the phenomenon. although a higher percentage of the students gave sound reasons for the change, a few had challenges in making choices; thus, no supporting reasons were given. 3.2. interviews in order for appropriate remediation to be given to the students, 40% of the participants, from across the various conceptual levels, were interviewed individually for 5 minutes each, in order to identify the root cause of their unscientific answers in the probe. the semi-structured interview questions are presented as appendix c. results gathered from the interview sessions showed that only few students’ understanding about changes in chemistry were shallower than deduced from written responses. they were able to soundly and logically explain and classify changes in dissolution processes and change of states during solidification, melting and burning of substances. 4. discussion students in this study were asked to explain in their own words the meaning of chemical and physical changes and to classify some changes in matter through probes. it demonstrates that they process knowledge and sometimes improve on their process skills, as they think before they justify their observations. in this study, the researchers found that most students were able to identify both the chemical and physical changes but had difficulties in giving correct reasons for identifications. the study further revealed that students had challenges with the use of appropriate chemical terms. they also had limited conceptual frameworks about matter and its changes. for example, the words ‘reversible’ and ‘irreversible’ were over used in their descriptions of chemical and physical changes. most students stated that all chemical changes in matter were irreversible while all physical changes could be reversed (appendix b). this was clearly an over generalisation of the terms as well as the concept of change. they showed a bias towards the complete disappearance of a substance as being a chemical change while they intimated that the substances would remain unchanged for physical changes. they defined a chemical change as ‘a change which occurs when substances combine chemically’ while physical change according to them, ‘occurs when substances combine physically’. it was expected that at their level, they would use descriptions such as ‘a change that did not involve the breaking or formation of strong chemical bonds’, or ‘where atoms, molecules or ions were merely arranged’, in the latter case. again, they were expected to know that a chemical change ‘involved the breaking or formation of strong chemical bonds which resulted in the formation of new molecules’. changes in reversibility were not observable in the diagnostic probes and so were not expected to be used in their answers. change in energy (mg + 1/2o2 to form mgo) was not very explicit. thus, not much was expected from students either. nevertheless, a few were able to figure this out. they intimated that a new substance, mgo was asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 44-52 48 formed. bonds had been broken and new ones formed, at the molecular level. they added that the new substance formed was going to require ‘extraordinary’ means to separate the various ‘ingredients’ out into their original forms. other responses associated chemical combination with processes in which heat was applied while physical changes were not affected by heat. most changes in real life go through various steps, some of which involve both changes and can be quite confusing to students when asked to make choices between physical and chemical changes. however, the probes used in this study were common examples of changes which should have posed no interpretative challenges. furthermore, some students’ written responses indicated that they did not yet know that in a chemical change there was an alteration in the chemical composition of the substance in question through the breakage and formation of new bonds, and that in a physical change there was only a difference in the appearance of the sample matter without change in chemical composition. such fundamental reasons, which indicate a deeper and more permanent understanding of the chemical procedures, were not assigned to the changes that they were probed on. their overall performance was quite encouraging, though some remediation was required. in order for an appropriate remediation to be given to the students, 40% (20) of the participants were interviewed. the semi-structured interview questions are presented as appendix c. results from the interview showed that the ghanaian students had appreciable knowledge about changes that occurred in chemistry and life in general and could distinguish between them appropriately. findings from this study differed from that of ahetee and varjola (1998) which showed that about 80% of their 18 pupils interviewed could not make a clear distinction between physical and chemical changes. in ahtee and varjola’s study, pupils approved both melting of ice, dissolving of salt, fermentation of berry juice and rusting of iron as examples of chemical change. interview results from this current study placed the ghanaian students in a higher level of conceptual understanding about changes in chemistry. about 60% (12) of the interviewees in our study clearly distinguished between physical and chemical changes and were also able to explain that solvation was a physical process. they further added that if a salt solution was evaporated and the vapour collected, somehow, water would be obtained while pure dry salt would be retained in the beaker. it was however obvious that they lacked both everyday english and the appropriate chemical language to express themselves appropriately. again, this current study contradicts findings from review by yan and talanquer (2015) that students struggle to understand transformations in matter. in our study 52% of our sample demonstrated sound conceptions about transformations in matter in their written probes, while 65% of the interviewees (especially those from the partial conception bracket) were able to explain these transformations orally. about 26.8% demonstrated close to sound conception, herein termed partial conception. thus in all, about 78.8% of the sample had a good understanding about these changes in chemistry, per the probes. only 21.2% of the students who participated demonstrated alternative conceptions in their definitions and explanations of the changes. an in-depth analysis of students’ descriptions of the diagnostic probes revealed that some definitions of physical changes were associated with processes in which there was colour change, smell and evolution of gas. from our findings 18% of students did not know that any reaction that involved burning was a chemical process. they were unable to identify the change of oxygen to its oxide and neutral magnesium atoms in the metallic state to magnesium ions. this could have been because the symbolic forms of the species were used. in addition, students failed to recognise the new ionic states. perhaps they only recognised the symbols mg and o in the ‘after’ state. they could not perceive that the new ionic dispositions were a change. besides, they failed to take note of the word ‘heat’ which suggested that energy changes were involved. though energy changes are not the best way to characterise changes, in this particular example different particles were obtained after the change. students mixed up concepts related to observations made in the real world with the theoretical concepts needed in the explanations. a compilation of misconceptions gathered in this study demonstrated that they did not consider chemical reactions as a complete transformation of matter, but only as a change in appearance or as a change in its state, which is not the true case. these interpretations led to the few observed warped distinctions between physical and chemical changes. it must be remembered that the distinction between some changes are not absolute and so teachers themselves sometimes find it difficult to decipher between the two main changes, which could be sources of teacher-made misconceptions. the undue emphasis on reversibility and non-reversibility could also pose a problem for students in their study of chemical equilibrium. results from this study further indicated that few students had difficulties in distinguishing between physical and chemical changes that matter undergo. some provided correct definitions for physical and chemical changes but could not apply them in subsequent probes; an indication of a superficial understanding of the concepts. they intimated that physical changes could be seen physically and were reversible but added that the composition sometimes altered. there was clearly a mix of concepts here. most of the students who provided partially correct answers failed to use the appropriate chemical language as was expected. in an interview session with 10 of these students, it was obvious that they had a good understanding of the concepts but had challenges in using scientific terms to construct logical statements. it is therefore important to teach conceptual terms associated with topics to enable students build scientific frameworks. during the interview session, they recognised that a mixture was formed in item 5 as there were the same particles of salt and water entities before and after dissolution. answers from items 4 and 5 also showed that the participants had adequate conceptions about solvation, combustion, and change of state. only one student intimated that a chemical change occurs when a substance changes due to dilution or concentration. he added that a deformity had occurred and the process was irreversible. it was clear that this student clearly had conceptual problems which were non-scientific. on the average, over 60% of students had fair conceptions about the concepts under study in all the five probes, and this is a good start for teaching and learning. 5. conclusion the study sought to implicitly make students aware of concepts about changes in matter which are necessary for building conceptual frameworks through the use of a diagnostic probe. the diagnostic probe was useful in asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 44-52 49 identifying students’ alternative conceptions. besides unearthing their misconceptions, it exposed their inadequate scientific vocabulary especially that required for useful discussions about chemical changes. diagnostic assessments must be encouraged as a pre-requisite for conceptual change approach as it gives a lead to especially young teachers in identifying areas to strengthen in their teaching. if learners engage in learning by investigating, inquiring, collaborating, discussing and forming mental models they will learn more meaningfully. 5.1. recommendations from the findings, it is recommended that: 1. teachers should be encouraged to use conceptual change approaches in their teaching. 2. in their use of conceptual change approaches, they must purposefully use directed methods in instances where students need to make distinctions between chemical terms. 3. appropriate science or chemical language must be used clearly for students to build up authentic conceptual frameworks. 4. it is suggested that video animations of the formation of compounds and mixtures be shown and discussed at length with students with similar problems. references agogo, p. and e. otor, 2013. basic issues in the chemistry of matter. ibadan, nigeria: optimism press. ahetee, m. and i. varjola, 1998. students' understanding of chemical reactions. international journal of science education, 20(3): 305-316. cohen, l., l. manion and k. morrison, 2011. research methods in education. 7th edn., new york: routledge falmer. duit, r., 2007. science education research international: conceptions, research methods, domains of research. eurasia journal of mathematics, science & technology education, 3(1): 3-15. hanson, r., t.a. kwarteng and v. antwi, 2015. undergraduate chemistry teacher trainees’ understanding of chemical phenomena. european journal of basic and applied sciences, 2(3): 8-14. hanson, r., k. taale and v. antwi, 2011. investigating senior high school students' conceptions of introductory chemistry concepts. international journal of educational administration, 3(1): 41-57. harrison, a.g. and d.f. treagust, 2000. learning about atoms, molecules, and chemical bonds: a case study of multiple-model use in grade 11 chemistry. international journal of science education, 84(1): 352-381. horton, c., 2007. students' alternative conceptions in chemistry. california journal of science education, 7(2): 1-25. johnson, p., 2000. developing students' understanding of chemical change: what should we be teaching? chemistry education research and practice in europe, 1(1): 77-90. kind, v., 2004. beyond appearances: students' misconceptions about basic chemical ideas. 2nd edn., durham, uk: school of education, durham university. mailumo, p., p. agogo and j. kpagh, 2009. education in fundamental chemistry. makurdi: journal of publishers (nig) ltd. robinson, w., 2003. chemistry problem solving: symbol, macro, micro, and process aspects. journal of chemical education, 80(9): 978-982. samba, r. and j. eriba, 2012. background information on teaching difficult science concepts. in r. m. samba, & j. o. eriba (eds.), innovative approaches in teaching difficult science concepts. makurdi, nigeria: destiny ventures. senese, f., 2016. what is the difference between chemical and physical change? retrieved from http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/matter/faq/print-physical-chemical.shtml. taber, k.s., 2002. chemical misconceptionsprevention, diagnosis and cure: theoretical background. london: royal society of chemistry, 1. taber, k.s. and r.k. coll, 2002. bonding. in j. k. gilbert, o. de jong, r. justi, d. f. treagust, & j. h. van driel (eds.), chemical education: towards research-based practice. dordrecht, the netherlands: kluwer. pp: 213-234. west african examinations council, 2012. chief examiners' reports2011 and 2012. lagos: waec. yan, f. and v. talanquer, 2015. students' ideas about how and why chemical reactions happen: mapping the conceptual landscape. international journal of science education, 37(18): 3066-3092. appendix-a. the adopted rsc diagnostic resource/probe: changes in chemistry http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/matter/faq/print-physical-chemical.shtml asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 44-52 50 appendix-b. evidence of students’ responses asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 44-52 51 appendix-c. semi-structured interview 1. how would you define a physical change? 2. when does one say that a chemical change has occurred? 3. if i freeze palm oil, will the frozen oil have undergone a chemical or physical change? explain. how about mashed kenkey? what if i allow it to keep for three days? 4. are you familiar with magnesium ribbon? how about wood? if we burn these two materials what would we see? would the change be physical or chemical? explain. 5. if i add some salt to water and i stir it, what will happen? how will you classify that change? explain your answer further. 6. what are some terms that we can associate specifically with chemical changes? 7. do physical changes occur in our homes and around us all the time? what are some of these changes? 8. how can you explain the process of physical change to a primary school child without using the terms ‘reversible and irreversible’? asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 44-52 52 appendix-d. alternative conceptions some alternative conceptions about changes in chemistry from students’ responses 1. in physical change, the change can be seen physically 2. chemical composition is altered in a physical change 3. a physical change is a change that is experienced physically. 4. physical change seen with the naked eye. 5. physical change is a reversible change but chemical change is not reversible 6. physical change is a change that occurs in a substance without any addition of chemicals to change its nature 7. in a chemical change molecules can be seen. (this was also a definition for physical change) 8. in a physical change, particles are forced in the beginning until they cling together and after that they go back. 9. salt reacts with water to form a new substance (sometimes when it is heated). 10. chemical change is change in concentration and mass of a substance. in n2, new substance is formed. 11. physical change is seen with naked eye but chemical change is not seen with the naked eye 12. in physical change, the changing process can be seen but not in chemical change. 13. physical change is irreversible but chemical change is reversible to the original state. 14. in a physical change, there is change in state of matter after reaction but in a chemical change, there is no change in matter. 15. physical change is a change in physical appearance of a particle but chemical change is the reaction of a particle. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 80 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 80-84, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.80.84 examination of the attitudes of school of physical education and sports students towards teaching profession in terms of various variables turan çeti̇nkaya1 abdurrahman kirtepe2 fatih mehmet uğurlu3  ( corresponding author) 1ahi evran university school of physical education and sports, turkey 2,3firat university sports sciences faculty, turkey abstract the aim of this research is to determine the attitudes of the students who are studying in the physical education and sports departments towards the teaching profession. 244 students attending ahi evran university school of physical education and sports and fırat university sports sciences faculty physical education and sport teacher training, sports management and coaching education departments participated in the research. in the research, personal data form and attitude scale for the teaching profession composed of 34 items were used as data collection means. distribution, frequency, t test and anova test were performed in the comparison of the related data. statistical analyzes show that attitudes of participants to the teaching profession do not differ in terms of gender and whether they are teachers in the family, the university in which the training was conducted and the type of sport made. keywords: teaching profession, attitude, college of physical education and sports students, university students. citation | turan çetġnkaya; abdurrahman kirtepe; fatih mehmet uğurlu (2018). examination of the attitudes of school of physical education and sports students towards teaching profession in terms of various variables. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 80-84. history: received: 30 january 2018 revised: 15 february 2018 accepted: 20 february 2018 published: 23 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 81 2. material and method....................................................................................................................................................................... 81 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 82 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 83 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 84 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.80.84&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6363-5300 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3268-2192 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6830-4383 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6363-5300 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3268-2192 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6830-4383 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6363-5300 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3268-2192 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6830-4383 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6363-5300 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3268-2192 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6830-4383 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 80-84 81 1. introduction teaching profession is a profession that undertakes important and difficult tasks such as educating people. this profession, which is a product of humanity and creates societies of the future, is very different from all other professions and specific in its field. of course, professional attitudes will contribute significantly to the individuals who will be performing this profession so that they can succeed in this particular field and offer human products useful to the societies. nowadays, as the greatest source of wealth, well-trained human power is seen. teachers are also the most important professionals to carry out human rearing. for this, it is necessary for the teachers who are the community architects to be trained in the quality to respond to the needs of the country and the age. because the development of a country and the increase in the welfare of its members depends on the education of the most important teachers of education and the professional and personal qualities that can best fulfill their duties (yetim and göktaģ, 2004). the concept of attitude is seen as a structure, not directly observable because attitude is described as a form of "pre-thought" or "spiritual and nervous preparation". attitudes have functions such as self-definition, situations, and a summary of feelings, thoughts and behaviors directed at individuals (feldman, 1996). tavģancıl (2002) expresses in the form of emotional and mental preparedness which is a direct or dynamic influence force on the behavior of the individual against all the objects and situations which are related, the result of experiences and experiences. just as most of our behaviors are, our attitudes are gained through learning. attitudes are part of a person's acquired personality traits and are learned through classical or operant conditioning, such as other acquired personality traits, or by monitoring and imitation of models morgan (2000). attitude is not just a thought or feeling. the tendency we define as attitudes includes behavioral cognitions that include emotional and observable activities, including cognitive, emotional, and emotional expressions of self as beliefs (cüceloğlu, 2000). one of the processes of the teaching profession is attitudes. the source of attitudes, the influence of behavior and its change over time has attracted the interest of social psychologists and has been the subject of many researches (cüceloğlu, 1996). it can be said that your teacher is a personality profession. gaining the knowledge and skill required for any profession at the level of expertise generally does not require any other condition to be successful. his special experience; attitudes, behaviors, and attitudes of the students. but it can be said that every attitude, every attitude and every behavior of the teacher is related to its teaching qualities and it directly affects its success (ataünal, 2003). the extent to which individuals are likely to respond to their surroundings is largely shaped by their attitudes. for an individual, the attitude object can be a matter, a group, or a profession. the attitude of an individual to a profession influences the success and satisfaction of that occupation. when it comes to vocational teaching, the importance of the subject is increasing (cakir et al., 2000). when it comes to vocational teaching, the importance of the subject is increasing. patience, self-sacrifice and continuous work are essential to make this profession lovingly and willingly in order to be successful in the teaching profession (aģkar and erden, 1987). when the related literature is examined, it is possible to find many studies related to attitudes towards the teaching profession, which are related to different variables. when üstüner et al. (2009) conducted a study on the teaching program from physical education and sport teachers and other fields, the scores of the physical education teacher candidates were higher than the other departments. pehlivan (2010) reports that physical education teachers' attitudes toward the profession are moderately attitudes towards physical education teachers and that female physical education teacher candidates have higher attitudes than men. from this point of view, the purpose of this study is to determine whether the attitudes of the students who are studying in the field of physical education and sports to the teaching profession differ according to various variables. therefore, the following questions in the research express the hypotheses of researching the questions; 1. do the participants' attitude scores towards the teaching profession differ from gender perspective? 2. do the attitude scores of the participants on the teaching profession differ from the point of view of the fact that they are teachers in the family? 3. do the participants' attitude scores for the teaching profession differ from the university change perspective? 4. do the participants’ attitude points towards the teaching profession differ from the point of view of the type of sports variant? 2. material and method 2.1. universe and sampling the universe of this study was male and female students studying in ahi evran university school of physical education and sports and faculty of sports sciences of fırat university in physical education and sports teaching, coaching education and sport management in 2017-2018 education periods. the research population consisted of approximately 1300 students and the sample consisted of 244 students. 2.2. data collection tool personal information form and validity and reliability study were used as data collection tool in the research. attitude scale for the teaching profession made by üstüner (2006) was used. measuring tool 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = undecided, 2 = not agree, 1 = strongly disagree. the scale is a one-dimensional measure. since 10 of the scale items contain negative judgments, the data input is transferred to the computer environment. the internal consistency coefficient of the measurement tool is determined by.93. in this study, cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of scale was calculated as 86. 2.3. collection of data the questionnaires used in the research were applied to ahi evran university physical education and sports college and fırat university sports sciences faculty physical education and sports teacher training, coaching asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 80-84 82 education and sports management students in 2017-2018 education periods. prior to participating in the study, the athletes involved in the study provided necessary explanations about the purpose of the study and detailed information about filling the data collection vehicle. the data collection tool collected by the researcher was excluded from the investigation by checking and missing or misplaced. then, the valid and acceptable qualities (244) from the data collection form applied to the participant were transferred to electronic medium by being coded for evaluation. 2.4. analysis of data analysis of data collected in the study was made in spss 20.0 statistical package program. in the evaluation of the data; distribution, frequency, t test and anova test. in the tests for the analysis of the data; the principle of equality of variances from the limits of parametric tests is taken as a basis and no significant difference between the groups is sought even if the variances are not equal, even if the value of "p" is less than the significance level. the level of significance in analyzes was determined as α = 0.05. 3. results table-1. total score of the scale scale n average ss total 244 2,87 .96 the participants' scores on the attitude scale for the teaching profession were 2.87 and the standard deviation was .96. (table 1) table-2. factor loads of scales scale items s 1. it even appeals to me to be a teacher. 2,92 1,69 2. the teaching profession is boring to me. 2,91 1,73 3. i like being a teacher myself. 2,85 1,68 4. if i were to choose a profession again, i would choose teaching again. 2,90 1,62 5. i think your teaching is not a profession for me. 2,93 1,71 6. i think your teacher does not fit your lifestyle. * 2,94 1,69 7. i think your teacher is not suitable for your personality. * 2,92 1,70 8. i regret choosing my teaching profession. 2,93 1,74 9. i believe that i will succeed in teaching. 2,92 2,08 10. i am happy to have chosen this part of the teaching profession. 2,79 1,67 11. i believe i can overcome the challenges i face in the teaching profession. 2,81 1,65 12. i want to teach even under difficult circumstances. 2,75 1,61 13. i am self-confident about the requirements of the teaching profession. 2,76 1,66 14. i believe that i have a special ability in teaching. 2,84 1,57 15. i think your teaching is not a proper job for me. 3,06 1,69 16. i think your teacher will give me opportunities to produce and create something. 2,88 1,58 17. i believe that i can practice teaching professionally. 2,74 1,59 18. it makes me happy that i will teach people something they do not know. 2,77 1,64 19. i sympathize with the people who teach. 2,80 1,64 20. it frightens me to think that i will be a teacher. 2,89 1,66 21. i do not recommend teaching to those who choose a profession. * 2,92 1,71 22. i think there's a lot i can do when i'm a teacher. 2,73 1,66 23. the working conditions of your teacher are appealing to me. 2,80 1,63 24. i am important to be successful in the teaching profession. 2,87 1,71 25. i like to talk to the teachers. 2,80 1,65 26. discusses the issues of education, learning, teaching and teaching, speaking. 2,82 1,60 27. i think i will be a knowledgeable and sufficient teacher. 2,71 1,62 28. i believe that your teacher will earn me respect in society. 3,06 1,72 29. i voluntarily selected the teaching program i am currently studying. 3,00 1,60 30. i am concerned that the teaching profession is making me feel tired. 2,81 1,47 31. i find it very proud to direct people's life through education through teaching. 3,01 1,62 32. i do not like talking about education, learning, teaching, and teaching. * 3,05 1,71 33. i believe that the environment will give me enough value when i am a teacher. 2,85 1,57 34. the continuity of the teaching profession gives me confidence. 2,86 1,68 '*' inverse coded elements in the scale. table-3. frequency and percentage distributions of participants' demographic information variables sub variables f % university fırat 128 52.5 ahi evran 116 47.5 gender male 127 52 woman 117 48 teacher in the family there is 95 38.9 no 149 61.1 the kind of sport you do individual 120 49.2 team 72 29.5 both of them 52 21.3 total 244 100 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 80-84 83 a total of 244 students participated in the research, 128 from firat university and 116 from ahi evran university. 127 students were male and 117 were females. the number of students who say that they are teachers in their family is 95 and the number of students who are not teachers in the family is 149. when the sports students who are educated are found, it is determined that 120 persons engaged in individual sports, 72 persons engaged in team sports and 52 persons interested in sports are determined to be 52 persons. (table 3) table-4. t-test results of participants' attitudes towards teaching profession towards gender variable gender n x ss t p male 127 2,84 0,97 0.426 0.670 woman 117 2,90 0,96 *p<.05 no significant differences were found between the sexes of the students in the study group and the attitudes towards the teaching profession (table 4). table-5. results of t-tests on attitudes of attendees towards teaching profession versus whether they are family or teacher teacher in the family n x ss t p there is 95 2,89 0,94 1,998 0.57 no 149 2,77 0,97 *p<.05 there was no statistically significant difference between the level of attitudes of the students to the teaching profession and the variable of being a teacher in their families (table 5). table-6. t-test results of participants' attitudes towards the teaching profession towards the university variable university n n ss t p firat 128 2,54 0,92 6,08 0.00 ahi evran 116 3,24 0,88 *p<.05 it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the attitudes of the students in the research group to the teaching profession and the teaching profession (table 6). table-7. anova results for the kind of sport type attitudes of participants' attitudes towards teaching profession type of sport n average ss f p significant difference 1.individual 120 2,64 1,00 7,466 0,001 1-2 0 1-3 2. teams 72 3,14 0,87 3. both 52 3,03 0,85 *p<.05 the tukey hsd test was conducted to determine the difference in the level of attitudes towards the teaching profession among the students in the study group (p <0.05, table 6). the average of individual sports participants is 2.64, while the team is 3.14 for sportsmen and 3.03 for both sportsmen (table 7). 4. discussion and conclusion in this part of the study, the attitudes of the participants towards the teaching profession are given, and these parameters are gender, whether they are teachers in the family, the results related to the sports type variables were discussed and discussed. according to our research findings, there was no difference between participants' attitudes towards the teaching profession in terms of gender change. when the relevant literature is examined, the results of küçük et al. (2016) on our study of physical education prospective teachers reached our results in support of our findings and there was no difference in terms of attitude scores and gender variation of the participants. pehlivan (2010) and cinpolat et al. (2016) also report attitudes scores of female participants higher than male participants in the study of physical education and sports teacher candidates. these studies differ from our findings in terms of their results. it is possible to come across many studies which have different results from the perspective of gender change, which is formed by different sample teaching programs. the results of karahan (2005) study indicate that there is no difference between our findings and attitudes of the participants towards the teaching profession in terms of gender change. again; (demirtaģ et al., 2008; korkmaz and usta, 2010; jaiswal, 2013; sandıkçı and öncü, 2013) the studies they have conducted have resulted in parallel results in terms of gender change. area literature is also available in studies that have obtained different findings in terms of gender variation. (çapri and çelikkaleli, 2008; sağlam, 2008; çetinkaya, 2009) reported that attitude scores of female teacher candidates were higher and more significant than male candidates in their research. it is thought that the differences in the results of the research may be due to the socio-economic, cultural and regional diversity of the participating groups. according to my research, there is no significant difference between attitude scores of participants according to the variable of being a teacher in the family. aslan and köksal-akyol (2006) indicate that the results of your study in parallel with the study do not make any difference in terms of attitude scores among the participants whether they are teachers in the family. researchers believe this is the case; families of teachers who are candidates, their families can be considered for vary according to non-teachers, however, have a positive outlook said that and in society generally refers perceived as a respectable profession of teaching for the overall teaching profession to get someone working as a teacher in families in turkey or not . for this reason, teachers and non-teachers in the family report that the scores of the candidate candidates may not be significantly differentiated. tanel et al. (2007) and in kartal and afacan (2012) they also report that the attitude scores of the participants did not differ according to whether they were teachers asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 80-84 84 or not at the time of their studies on the teacher candidates who received pedagogical formation training. the results of the analysis of the participants' attitudes towards the teaching profession towards the university variable in which they were educated showed a significant difference in favor of the students of firat university. the attitude scores of the students of fırat university sports sciences faculty towards the teaching profession are higher than those of ahi evran university physical education and sports college students. this result is thought to be due to the socio-cultural characteristics of the research group. the study, which includes the researcher dicle and fırat universities, reports that there is no difference between the attitude scores of the teacher candidates in terms of university change. this study differs from our study in terms of findings. according to our findings, physical education and sports teachers' attitudes towards the profession differ in terms of the types of sports they do. participants' attitudes to individual sports are lower than team sports and participants of both sporting types. these results are thought to originate from the peculiar structure of individual sports. collaborative elements in team sports and endeavors to achieve integrity for the same purpose differ in many ways from individual sports. therefore, it is considered that the sport type variable made by the sport can give different characteristics to candidates in terms of professional qualities. in the related literature, studies on attitude scores in terms of sport type are extremely limited. the main focus of the teaching profession is to educate qualified individuals and to provide beneficial citizens with every aspect of gathering. positive and high attitudes towards this profession, which is such an important and different output from all other professions, will surely provide significant gains in order to achieve this task. especially, it is important that the institutions that educate teachers in the discipline of physical education and sport sciences should be able to construct such a way that this process student will gain positive attitudes towards the profession during the period of undergraduate education or before the license period. references aģkar, p. and m. erden, 1987. attitude scale of teacher candidates towards teaching profession. journal of contemporary education, 12(121): 8-11. aslan, d. and a. köksal-akyol, 2006. examination of preschool teacher candidates' attitudes towards the teaching profession and their professional self esteem. cukurova university journal of social sciences institute, 15(2): 51-60. ataünal, a., 2003. why and what kind of teacher? , ankara: national education foundation 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bookstore. demirtaģ, h., m. cömert and n. özer, 2008. the relationship between attitudes of teacher candidates towards the teaching profession and self-efficacy perceptions. proceedings of the international conference on educational science, 1, 23-25 june. famagusta north cyprus. feldman, r.s., 1996. understanding psychology. new york: mcgraw-hill. jaiswal, p.n., 2013. a study of relationship among teaching efficiency, attitude towards teaching profession and academic achievement of b.ed. students. indian streams research journal, 3(3): 1-3. karahan, h., 2005. investigation of geography teachers working in secondary education institutions in terms of teaching attitudes with other teachers. marmara university institute of educational sciences, ma thesis, istanbul. kartal , t. and ö. afacan, 2012. investigation of attitudes of teacher candidates related to pedagogical formation education on teaching profession. mehmet akif ersoy university journal of education, 12(24): 76-96. korkmaz, ö. and e. usta, 2010. the relationship between teachers' attitudes towards teaching profession and their perceived interactiontracking concerns and problem solving skills. turkey social research journal, 3: 1-22. küçük, k.s., h. cihan and e. öncü, 2016. physical education teacher candidates' cognitive learning strategies, academic self -sufficiency and attitudes towards teaching profession. journal of sports sciences, 26(3): 77-89. morgan, c.t., 2000. psychology entrance. ankara: hacettepe university department of psychology publications. pehlivan, z., 2010. analysis of physical education self-perceptions and attitudes towards the teaching profession. education and science, 35(156): 126-141. view at google scholar sağlam, o.a., 2008. attitudes of students in the music teacher department towards the teaching profession. journal of education faculty, 5(1): 59-69. sandıkçı, m. and e. öncü, 2013. determination and comparison of competence perceptions and attitudes of the teacher candidates in the field of education with the diggers in relation to the teaching profession. pamukkale journal of sport science, 4(1): 135-151. tanel, r., ġ.s. kaya and z. tanel, 2007. investigation of physics teacher candidates' attitudes towards teaching profession in terms of different variables. pamukkale university education faculty journal, 2(22): 1-9. tavģancıl, e., 2002. measuring attitudes and data analysis with spss. ankara: nobel publication distribution. üstüner, m., 2006. validity and reliability study of attitude scale towards teaching profession. educational administration in theory and practice, 45(45): 109-127. üstüner, m., h. demirtaģ and m. cömert, 2009. the attitudes of prospective teachers towards the profession of teaching. case of inonu university, faculty of education, 34(151): 140-155. view at google scholar yetim, a.a. and z. göktaģ, 2004. professional and personal qualities of the teacher. kastamonu education journal, 12(2): 541-550. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=analysis%20of%20physical%20education%20self-perceptions%20and%20attitudes%20towards%20the%20teaching%20profession https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20attitudes%20of%20prospective%20teachers%20towards%20the%20profession%20of%20teaching asian journal of education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 3, no. 1, 74-81, 2017 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 74 activities at early childhood centers in ghana: observations of early childhood teacher-trainees ahmed abdulai1 1 department of early childhood education university of education, winneba, ghana abstract this study looked at activities at early childhood education centers in ghana in the areas of; nature and use of curriculum, environmental conditions, pedagogical practices, and the nature and use of assessment. using the quantitative research approach, 136 final year early childhood teacher-trainees engaged in teacherinternship practice in the 10 regions of ghana administered a researcher designed observation checklist to a number of early childhood centers in the country. findings that emerged were that participants were fairly satisfied with teaching and learning conditions at the different early childhood centers they visited, and that the curriculum used at the centers were relevant, meaningful, and based on learner’s prior experiences. the early childhood environment was described as one that enhanced teaching and learning. pedagogical practices as seen by participants was one that promotes learning, and also assessment tools were described as encouraging and appropriate. despite this encouraging information presented by participants, shortfalls such as a one-fit-all curriculum, learners not allowed to learn at their own pace, lack of space for private learning at classrooms, as well as lack of parental involvement in evaluating assessment data also emerged in the findings. based on these, the study provides a number of recommendations of which include the need for flexible curriculum to carry on board all learners, the need for training for educators in the area of manipulating the curriculum to meet individual learner needs, and also a rethink of early childhood classroom architectural design to accommodate the learning needs of all levels of learners. keywords: early childhood education, curriculum, environment, pedagogy, assessment. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 75 2. statement of the problem .................................................................................................................................................... 75 3. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................ 75 4. research methodology ........................................................................................................................................................ 77 5. results and findings ............................................................................................................................................................ 77 6. summary conclusions and recommendations ................................................................................................................... 80 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 80 bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................ 81 citation | ahmed abdulai (2017). activities at early childhood centers in ghana: observations of early childhood teacher-trainees. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 74-81. doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.74.81 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 24 march 2017/ revised: 10 april 2017/ accepted: 17 april 2017/ published: 21 april 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.74.81 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ahmed abdulai http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.74.81 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.74.81 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ahmed abdulai http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.74.81 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.74.81 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ahmed abdulai http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.74.81 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 74-81 75 1. introduction in the year 2003, under the auspices of an education reform program, the ministry of education and sports; ghana, issued an education strategic plan (esp, 2003-2015) to serve as a guiding principle in the attainment of its educational commitment as stated in the millennium development goals (mdgs). key areas contained in the esp was access, quality and management of education as the driving force in ghana’s developmental aspirations. of immense importance in this process was the incorporation of early childhood education into mainstream formal education. early childhood education within the ambit of the esp was to serve as the foundation of basic education in ghana. ghana’s commitment to early childhood care and education even before the esp was early childhood care and education being catered for in ghana’s constitution (1992 constitution of ghana; act 38). in ghana, early childhood education programs are represented as any program in a center or school, or any other facility that caters for the educational needs of children from 0-8 years old. such programs include but not limited to child care centers, family child care homes, private and public schools, and kindergarten (early childhood care and education policy, 2005). whiles ghana’s commitment to early childhood education as evidenced in the above policy initiatives are commendable, it is also instructive to investigate the extent to which ghana’s early childhood educational practices conform to developmentally appropriate practices. children’s development and learning especially at the early childhood level have been of immense interest to ghanaians. professionals, parents, and policy makers in ghana alike have increasingly been interested in the quality of services and the documentation of their effectiveness in early childhood programs. the extent to which quality is adhered to in the dispensation of early childhood education programs in ghana has gained much attention in recent times. this desire is partly informed by research; that longterm effects of early childhood programs indicate that children who attend high quality child care programs even at the very young age demonstrate positive outcomes than their counterparts who attend low quality programs (barnett and hustedt, 2003). hence, it becomes imperative to find out what is happening at the early childhood classroom and the extent to which such practices adheres to the development of the learner? developmentally appropriate practices (dap) as defined by la paro et al. (1998) represents a philosophical positioning that children actively learn and construct their own knowledge when allowed to interact with their peers, teachers, and materials, and also that each child has his/her own unique developmental characteristics and should be allowed to develop at his/her own pace. though there are some who have argued against the universality of dap across countries due to unique socio-cultural happenings (see; (o'brien, 1996; lubeck, 1998)) there is unanimity that best standards relative to early childhood education cannot be realized without adherence to certain basic indispensable quality education variables such as; class size with low ratios of children to teachers, teacher background and training, child focused communication, the nature and use of the curriculum, classroom processes, mode and means of assessment, parental involvement, and classroom and school environment (bredekamp, 1987). in this study, perspectives of early childhood teacher-trainees of the university of education, winneba who participated in an internship teaching practice in the different regions of ghana on what pertain at the various early childhood centers where they did their internship programs are sought. in doing this, this study provides a snapshot of activities at the different early childhood centers in ghana as presented by participants of this study, and that information gathered by this study do not represent what participants of this study present as their actions whiles at the different early childhood centers, instead what they present as having observed at the different centers they taught. whiles this study sought to investigate what pertains at the early childhood level in ghana as presented by early childhood teacher-trainees who embarked on teacher internship program from the university of education, winneba, it is important to state that such term as developmentally appropriate practices was never used in an observation checklist administered by participants in the gathering of data for this study. instead, participants were asked to respond to questions relative to activities they observed whiles at the different early childhood centers where they served as interns. 2. statement of the problem as early childhood education became part of ghana’s educational program so too was the proliferation of early childhood centers especially by private and non-governmental organizations. currently, it is the policy of the government of ghana that every public primary institution should have at least a two-class room early childhood center attached to it eccep (2005). this policy has led to an increase in the number of early childhood centers across the country. activities at most of these centers in the direction of quality of services provided is mostly unknown. as a result, partly informed by the suggestion of crosser (1996) that it is always wise for us as early childhood educators to take a step back and look at what we are doing in our preschool classroom, this study seeks to bring to the fore activities of early childhood centers in ghana in the area of quality of services. whiles addressing the above problem, it is anticipated that this study will serve as a source of information in the practices of early childhood centers in ghana in the areas of; the nature of curriculum at ghanaian early childhood centers, the kind of early childhood environments in ghana, instructional strategies used at the different early childhood centers in ghana, and the place of assessments at ghana’s early childhood centers. 3. literature review literature review for this study is done in the areas of; curriculum in early childhood education, the environment in early childhood education, pedagogical practices at the early childhood level, and assessing the early child. 3.1. curriculum in early childhood education curriculum as a term is usually described as the totality of learning experiences encountered by the learner in a school (tanner and tanner, 1995). for adentwi (2005) it constitutes educationally valuable experiences that the learner absorbs under the auspices of an educational institution. the consensus regarding what constitutes curriculum asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 74-81 76 is represented as what is learnt, when it is learnt, and how it is learnt. curriculum by all intent and purposes serves as the pivotal point around which an educational program guided by a school revolves. when it comes to early childhood education, the widely accepted and best form of curriculum is what is described in the literature as child-centred curriculum. pioneer early childhood educators such as john dewey (18591952), friedrich froebel (1782 – 1852), and maria montessori (1870 -1952) have all advocated for a child centred curriculum. this form of curriculum according to dewey is hinged on the needs and interests of the learner. put differently, froebel argues that learning should be one that emphasizes on the externalization of the child’s innerself, because as froebel presents it, every child has an inner spirituality, and the duty of the educational program represented in what is learnt and how it is learnt (curriculum) must help in the externalization of this innerspirituality. indeed, the national association for the education of young children (naeyc) in its publication on developmentally appropriate practices at the early childhood level calls for practices that takes into consideration the needs of children (bredekamp and copple, 1997). the idea that learning at the early childhood level should be grounded in child-centeredness is definitely not disputed (o’sullivan, 2004) in addition, there is also the argument that children learn with their affective and social domains, and as a result the early childhood curriculum should be one that establishes relationships between what is learnt in school and what pertains in society (dewey, 1915). the concept of learning being a multisensory enterprise is also stressed in early childhood educational curriculum (shams and seitz, 2008). dinnebeil et al. (2013) argue that the early childhood educational curriculum design should be one grounded in flexibility. again, play is also described as a critical and cardinal ingredient in every successful early childhood educational curriculum (estes, 2004; armstrong, 2006; elliott, 2010). in ghana, basic education starts from kindergarten one (1). kindergarten education serves as the only aspect of early childhood education represented in the ghanaian formal educational program. ghana’s kindergarten education is guided by a uniform curriculum developed by the ghana education service (curriculum research and development division) in collaboration with unicef; ghana. this curriculum is used by all public/government funded kindergarten centers in ghana. ghana’s kindergarten curriculum according to abrompah (2010) aims at developing the totality of the learner shaped in physical, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive development. when it comes to private institutions relative to what kind of curriculum is used, there is not a single standardized type of curriculum. 3.2. the environment in early childhood education the type of environment that characterizes every educational program has always been of concern to stakeholders involved in any educational program. gandini (1998) points to the fact that physical environments impacts learning and development and as a result makes it very essential in any educational approach. this observation is seen as relevant and applicable to early childhood education (tracey and morrow, 2012). learning environment is described by tomlinson (2001) as how a classroom works and feels. the learning environment is seen as the totality of ingredients that makes teaching and learning effective and efficient. and this will include class room space, teacherlearner ratio, qualification of teachers and caliber of staff, availability of teaching learning materials, and the kind of relationship and connection between the school and community, and parents (obiadike and enemuo, 2013). concerns of increasing teacher-child ratio especially at the early childhood level has persisted and continue to receive attention in the field of research (dodge and colker, 1992). in ghana, these concerns are profound due to the limited number of qualified educators who teach at the early childhood level (asemanyi and wunku, 2007). 3.3. pedagogical practices at the early childhood level it is assumed by many that the success of every educational program is based in part by the pedagogical approach adopted for such program and this is particularly true when it comes to early childhood education. pedagogy according siraj-blatchford (1999) represents the how or practice of educating. for the author, pedagogy refers to the instructional techniques and strategies which enables teaching and learning to take place, and that it should aim at providing opportunities for learners to acquire the skills, knowledge, attitudes and dispositions within a particular socio-cultural context. instruction at the early childhood level is described as one that should be devoid of adult control; that is, giving of commands, asking questions with single right answers and providing instructions to the whole class instead of to individuals (hayes et al., 1990). early childhood pedagogical practices according to hohman and weikart (1995) should be shaped as active learning which for the authors is one based on where learners are encouraged to develop their unique patterns or interests, talents and goals with learning experiences presented in a manner where learners are able to master, generalize and retain what they learn and relate it to previous experiences. herbert (2004) calls for a learner-centred pedagogical approach also known as child-centred learning at the early childhood level. this approach according to herbert is one where learning mainly focuses on the needs and interests of the learner instead of that of teachers and administrators. 3.4. assessing the early child assessment has always been an important component of early childhood education. it is described by meisels (2001) as the process where comprehensive and ongoing information is gathered about learner’s knowledge, skill level, and personality for the purposes of arriving at evaluative decisions. at the early childhood level, neisworth and bagnato (2004) are of the view that assessment methods of children should aim at supporting children’s developmental changes. there is no doubt that children at the early childhood level learn differently from adults and as a result, bredekamp and rosegrant (1995) proposes that modes of assessing children should be one that is continual and ongoing with the aim of helping children develop positively. this means, the importance and relevance of assessment at the early childhood level definitely cannot be underestimated. kellough and kellough (1999) for instance argue that teaching and learning are reciprocal and that through assessment we are able to know if teaching is done well, just as we are also able to determine if the learner is also learning. these notwithstanding, there are asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 74-81 77 some concerns raised about the capacity of early childhood educators to effectively administer assessment for learner’s development. for example, neisworth and bagnato (2004) lament about the inability of some of the most skilled and experienced early childhood professionals to properly administer assessment due to their limitation in professional development. in summary, the literature review reveals that curriculum being the center of every educational program should be one that at the early childhood level is child-centred and flexible aimed at using play as a means of realizing it. again, the environment serves as an important and fundamental ingredient in early childhood education, and that teacher-learner ratio as well as the background and professional training of educators needs to be factored in every successful early childhood education program. in addition, since children are active learner’s, instruction represented as pedagogical practices should be one of active learning and learner-centred. finally, assessment which serves as a representation of gathering information about a learning program should emphasize on aiding the development of the learner. with these aforementioned themes emanating from the literature review, the study proceeds to address the below research questions: 1. how does ghana’s early childhood education curriculum stimulate learning? 2. to what extent does ghana’s early childhood education learning environment stimulate learning? 3. to what extent do instructional strategies of ghana’s early childhood education used to facilitate learning? 4. how do assessment procedures at ghana’s early childhood education program stimulate learning? 4. research methodology this study is a quantitative research of the survey design where 136 early childhood teacher-trainees drawn from the university of education, winneba; ghana presented their perspectives on happenings at early childhood educational centers in some selected schools in ghana. the instrument for data collection was a researcher developed observation checklist. participants prior to embarking on a six-month mandatory teaching internship program were taken through a two-hour training on how to administer an observation checklist on practices of early childhood centers that they will be performing their teaching practice. the sampling approach used was purposive sampling because participants had to be students of the university of education, winneba, and had to be in their final year at the department of early childhood education (bachelor of education, early childhood education). data analysis were done using descriptive statistics guided by the research questions that informed the study. the research instrument gathered information in the arears of; participant’s bio-data, curriculum practices at early childhood centers, the school environment, instructional strategies, and the mode and purpose of assessment at the early childhood centers visited by participants. each section of the instrument consisted of a number of individual questions tailored towards addressing the research questions of this study. using a likert scale, participants indicated in their responses the existence of some variables relative to practices of early childhood education. the likert scale is presented as; 1.2 – 1.7: to a large extent, 1.8– 2.3: quite a bit, 2.4 – 3.0: not at all. 5. results and findings bio-data information of participants indicate that of the 136 participants who undertook this study, 98 were female, whiles 38 were male. participants taught in all 10 regions of ghana with majority teaching at the central region. also, most participants fell within the age bracket of 20-25 years old, and majority taught at the kindergarten level, and at public/government schools. in answering research question 1, responses from participants aimed at determining the extent to which curriculum practices at early childhood education centers stimulated learning. responses by participants relative to the above question was that to a large extent the curriculum is relevant, meaningful, and based on prior experiences allowing children to make connections. they agreed that the curriculum is integrated across all domains of child development – physical, social, emotional, linguistic, and cognitive. the overall average score was 1.69 as presented in table 1. table-1. early childhood curriculum learning facilities descriptive statistics n mean std. deviation the curriculum is designed to allow children to learn at their own pace. 136 1.92 0.741 the curriculum is designed based on where each child is developmentally. 136 1.89 0.685 everyone is required to acquire the same skills and information. 136 1.74 0.762 the curriculum is integrated across all domains of child development – physical, social, emotional, linguistic, and cognitive. 136 1.45 0.581 the curriculum is relevant, meaningful, and based on prior experiences allowing children to make connections. 136 1.43 0.54 total 1.686 0.6618 source: ahmed abdulai also, participants fairly agreed that everyone is required to acquire the same skills and information as well as the curriculum being designed is based on where each learner is developmentally. these conclusions are presented in figure 1. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 74-81 78 figure-1. early childhood curriculum learning facilities mean bar chart source: ahmed abdulai regarding the effect of the early childhood environment in stimulating learning, respondents were fairly satisfied with an average score of 2.01. generally, respondents agreed that learning environment of early childhood centers are appropriate and promote learning. respondents acknowledged that the school environment enhances effective teaching and learning, the school environment is fairly the one that children could learn whiles playing as well as having a variety of materials to encourage meaningful experiences. these responses can be found in table 2. table-2. learning environment of early childhood descriptive n mean std. deviation the classroom contains areas in which children can select and plan their activities. 136 2.31 0.735 the classroom has areas for quiet and active social interactions. 136 2.14 0.732 the classroom setting is not over-stimulating. 136 2.04 0.847 the classroom contains clearly labelled areas with words and pictures to encourage independence. 136 2.01 0.834 the classroom has a variety of materials to encourage meaningful experiences. 136 1.98 0.683 the school environment is one that children could learn whiles playing. 136 1.93 0.785 the school environment enhances effective teaching and learning. 136 1.68 0.629 total 2.0128571 0.749285714 source: ahmed abdulai despite the positive feedback, participants also indicated as shown in figure 2, that the classroom does not contain areas in which children can select and plan their own activities. also, the classroom does not have areas for quiet and active social interactions but its setting is fairly stimulating. figure-2. learning environment of early childhood mean radar chart. source: ahmed abdulai asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 74-81 79 with regards to instructional strategies used at early childhood centers which served as research question three, responses were that instruction was used to promote learning with satisfactory scoring of 1.88 as shown in table 3. respondents indicated that teaching is done through the use of l1 or english and children involvement in teaching is quite high table-3. instructional strategies used in early childhood centers descriptive n mean std. deviation teaching is teacher centred. 136 2.66 0.647 learners are allowed to choose and plan their own learning activities. 136 2.38 0.688 parents are involved in school activities. 136 2.03 0.655 children are allowed to learn at their own pace. 136 1.95 0.744 teaching is done through play. 136 1.62 0.632 children involvement in teaching. 136 1.27 0.523 teaching is done through the use of l1 or english. 136 1.24 0.561 total 1.8785714 0.635714286 source: ahmed abdulai nevertheless, respondents disagreed that learners are allowed to choose and plan their own learning activities, and also allowed to learn at their own pace. respondents also responded negatively that parents are involved in school activities. these responses are presented in figure 3. figure-3. instructional strategies used in early childhood centers mean column chart source: ahmed abdulai finally, on the question of the mode and place of assessment in early childhood education, respondents’ impression on assessment procedures used at early childhood centers in ghana as presented in table 4 was that it is encouraging. early childhood teacher-trainees of this study agreed that assessment helps to show progress and growth over time and it is basically used for promotion. in addition, they accepted that assessment is ongoing, with many opportunities for teachers to observe and reflect on learners’ accomplishments. table-4. assessment procedures at early childhood centers descriptive n mean std. deviation children who do not finish their work are not allowed to go on break. 136 2.57 0.696 assessment includes anecdotal notes and observations to enhance curriculum development. 136 1.78 0.717 assessments are paper and pencil based. 136 1.73 0.856 teachers and parents share useful information about children’s learning strengths and needs. 136 1.73 0.626 observation and evaluation of each learner’s learning styles are keys to assessing learning and growth. 136 1.55 0.653 assessment is ongoing, with many opportunities for teachers to observe and reflect on learners’ accomplishments. 136 1.53 0.608 assessments are used for promotion. 136 1.37 0.581 assessment helps to show progress and growth over time. 136 1.3 0.461 total 1.695 0.64975 source: ahmed abdulai despite scoring 1.70 on the appropriateness of assessment at the early childhood level, respondents also disagreed that children who do not finish their work are not allowed to go on break and assessment includes anecdotal notes and observations to enhance curriculum development. additionally, respondents generally disagreed that assessments are paper based (see; figure 4). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 74-81 80 figure-4. assessment procedures used at early childhood centers mean line chart. source: ahmed abdulai 6. summary conclusions and recommendations this study aimed at presenting perspectives of early childhood teacher-trainees on activities at early childhood centers in ghana in the areas of; curriculum content and its relevance to child development at early childhood centers, the nature and type of early childhood environments and their roles in stimulating learning, pedagogical practices at early childhood centers, and the nature and types of assessment tools at early childhood centers. the study findings on the relevance of school curriculum encountered by participants shows clearly that they were quite satisfied with the content, relevance, and its place in the development of the learner. indeed, the curriculum as observed by participants is tailored towards the total development of the learner, hence, confirming the position of abrompah (2010) that ghana’s early childhood educational curriculum is shaped to develop the child physically, emotionally, spiritually, and cognitively. this notwithstanding, it is of concern that the findings of this study also reveal that children are required to acquire the same skills, thus departing from what most of the literature recommends (see; (laevers, 1994; dinnebeil et al., 2013)). again, though the school environment was described to enhance teaching and learning, it is also the case that such environments especially the classroom did not allow for children to select their own activities, as well as interact socially. in addition, it is also revealing that pedagogy at the early childhood level though one that makes use of l1 and english language, and helps to promote learning, is also structured such that it deprives children of choice relative to what to learn, and also do not allow children to learn at their own pace. comments by participants on the nature and uses to which assessment is put at best can be described as encouraging. overall, it is the conclusion of this study that participants who partook in this study are fairly satisfied with the curriculum, environment, instructional strategies, and assessment tools found at early childhood centers where they undertook their teaching internship programs. however, it is equally true that what is learnt at early childhood centers represented as curriculum is structured for learners to acquire the same information, and this is reinforced by classrooms that do not allow learners to learn at their own pace, and being able to select their own activities. this definitely deviates from what have always being held as idle practices of early childhood education; children learn efficiently when through learning of what interests them (shepard et al., 1998). a curriculum program that makes room for the needs and interests of individual learners is necessary and this is a recommendation by this study. though the early childhood curriculum can be universal as applies to kindergarten education in ghana, it must also be modelled to meet the unique individual needs and capabilities of learners. this will mean educators will have to be equipped with skills and techniques of differentiated instruction. again, information gathered through assessment must be shared with parents and as much as possible parental involvement in teaching and learning should be encouraged. finally, classroom architecture for early childhood centers in ghana must consider space for individual learning and activities. it is worth stating, that this study does paint a picture of developmental appropriateness of early childhood education programs in ghana. but it is also instructive that its findings are limited due to its scope. observations by 136 early childhood educators who mostly taught at urban centers definitely cannot be a reflection of happenings in the entire country, ghana. however, it is refreshing that though limited in scope as the study may be, it presents to stakeholders the opportunity to appreciate the activities that are taking place at some selected early childhood centers in ghana especially in the areas of curriculum practices, environmental conditions, pedagogical practices, and assessment. this information limited as it may be, provide impetus in the areas of where efficient early childhood educational practices are 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development in children: implications for learning victor e. dike1 1 founder and ceo, center for social justice and human development (csjhdev) an ngo in sacramento, california, united states abstract debates on the effect of poverty on brain development in children and its implications for learning have been raging for decades. research suggests that poverty affects brain development in children and that the implications for learning are more compelling today given the attention the issue has attracted. for instance, studies in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, educational neuroscience, and developmental psychology have shown that living in poverty may indeed change how the brain grows and develops and may have implications for learning through adulthood and professional opportunities. this paper argues that living in poverty may put pre-school and school-aged children at health risks and behavioral problems in the classroom as it upsets brain development. drawing from available pertinent literature, this paper will through descriptive design and in-depth analysis identify areas of the brain affected by poverty, implications for learning, and recommend possible ways teachers can apply their knowledge of the brain in the classroom to ameliorate the challenges faced by children living in poverty. keywords: brain, development, children, learning, teaching, behavior, classroom. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 65 2. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 67 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 67 citation | victor e. dike (2017). poverty and brain development in children: implications for learning. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 6468. doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.64.68 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 6 march 2017/ revised: 10 april 2017/ accepted: 14 april 2017/ published: 21 april 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.64.68 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=victor e. dike http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.64.68 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.64.68 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=victor e. dike http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.64.68 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.64.68 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=victor e. dike http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522.2017.31.64.68 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 64-68 65 1. introduction this paper explores poverty and brain development in children as it seeks to have a better understanding as to whether poverty alters the structure of the brain of children during its growth and development and the implications on academic performance. drawing from pertinent available literature on the topic it will identify areas of the human brain affected by poverty, and their impacts on children‟s learning process. it will also recommend possible ways teachers can apply their knowledge of this topic in the classroom to ameliorate the challenges faced by school-age children living in poverty. poverty is ubiquitous and has varied definitions. however, for this paper, poverty is defined as “a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials to enjoy a minimum standard of life and well-being that is considered acceptable in society” (investopedia, n.d). studies in the field of educational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology with the emerging brain technologies have exposed the inner structure of young human brain and how it grows, develops, and functions (hair et al., 2015). for sousa (2011) “learning involves the brain, the nervous system, and the environment, and the process by which their interplay acquires information and skills” (p.91). hair et al. (2015) that examined the scores on “cognitive and academic achievement and brain tissue” as well as “the gray matter of the entire brain, frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and hippocampus” found that children living in poverty performed poorly in school relative to children not expose to similar life condition. the study warned that the longer children are exposed to poverty, the more “their academic deficits” (p.827). it also observed that these conditions will continue until they are adults and, therefore, will contribute to low life and poor professional achievement (hair et al., 2015). according to mani et al. (2013) quite often the poor, including children living in poverty are unable to perform some cognitive-related tasks, because poverty enforces a mental “burden” on them, diverts “attention and reduces effort.” this is probably because “poverty-related concerns” drains their mental “resources” thereby “leaving” them with less mental energy for other activities (p.976). thus poverty “reduces cognitive capacity” of the poor as other studies show that poverty influences language that is linked to the temporal lobe, executive functioning, and the frontal lobe (noble et al., 2006; kishiyama et al., 2009; hackman et al., 2010). deficiencies in the executive functioning of people exposed to poverty occur during infancy, childhood, and adolescence through adulthood (hair et al., 2015). the executive function that is supported by a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (casey et al., 2000) can be vulnerable in children with past experiences with poverty. given the delicate nature of the brain, toxic environments are said to affect the major areas that are involved with the thinking and learning process (sousa, 2011). the effect of poverty on brain development during childhood is said to be a widespread social condition that can cause neurological problems. the longer a child is the exposed to poverty and stress, the larger the negative impact on the cognition, emotion, and self-regulatory learning skills of the person (lipina and colombo, 2009). although impoverished environments and stress have undesirable effects on brain development, but the implications on learning may vary on individuals (lupien et al., 2009). those living in poverty or in low socioeconomic status (ses) may suffer from depression or chronic stress more than those in higher ses (almeida et al., 2005). this brings us to the next section that focuses on the areas of the brain affected by poverty. 1.1. research methods information for this descriptive paper was derived from the review of pertinent literature in the areas of educational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology. this means that the primary method of collecting data for this paper was an extensive review of available related literature for an in-depth analysis of poverty and brain development in children and implications for learning process. 1.2. problem statement debates on the implications of poverty on brain development in children, and their ability to learn effectively have been on-going for decades, but they are much more compelling in the 21 st century technologically-driven learning process. for teachers to function effectively they need to have deeper understanding of how the brain works, how stress and poverty affect the thinking and learning process of their students, particularly the young ones, so as to adopt differentiated instructional strategies to meet the needs of all students. 1.3. research questions this paper focuses on the following questions: how much can a child‟s environment affect the growth and development of his or her brain? what sections of the brain are affected by poverty? what sections of the brain are essential for learning? how can teachers apply their knowledge of poverty and brain development to the classroom? 1.4. areas of the brain involved the parts of the brain affected by prolonged experience with poverty include those linked with the working memory, impulse regulation, visuospatial, language and cognitive conflict (noble et al., 2005). the magnetic resonance imaging (mri) (sousa, 2011) brain scans of children during a long duration with poverty have shown that children from „poor and near-poor households‟ have „lower average in frontal and parietal lobe volumes of gray matter‟ (hanson et al., 2013; kolb and gibb, 2015) than children from well-off families. research suggests that poverty in early childhood may influence the development of hippocampal and amygdala connectivity in a way that will lead to negative mood symptoms during the latter part of childhood (barch et al., 2016). by focusing on the training of basic cognitive skills with the help of “functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri)” (sousa, 2011) and other neuroscience derived techniques, studies have found the possible cognitive effects of poverty and stress on learning (mani et al., 2013). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 64-68 66 the frontal lobes that are at the front of the brain and behind the forehead are the prefrontal cortex are collectively branded the “executive control center” of the brain. they deal with planning, thinking, solving problem, and regulating emotional system as well as paying attention (sousa, 2011). any distress to the frontal lobe can cause behavior and personality changes. the temporal lobes deals with sound, music, face, and object recognition and some part of long-term memory as well as house the speech center. the occipital lobes are used mainly for visual processing, while the parietal lobes focus on spatial orientation, calculation and some types of recognition (sousa, 2011). these areas are associated with the working memory, impulse regulation, visuospatial, language and cognitive conflict (noble et al., 2005). while the thalamus controls all incoming sensory information (except smell) and directs them to the brain, the hypothalamus monitors the internal systems to maintain the body balance. it is, therefore, harmful if the body system slips out of balance, as “the individual” cannot “concentrate on cognitive processing of curriculum materials” (sousa, 2011). the hippocampus is central to learning, memory, and stress response, while the amygdala processes emotional (especially fear) and social information (sousa, 2011). and the gray matter is said to be one of the two major tissues in the brain (the other is white matter) that is processing information and executing actions. the social and economic condition in which a child is raised affects his or her learning potential. studies have observed that those living in poverty may suffer from depression or chronic stress more than those in higher socioeconomic class (ses) (almeida et al., 2005). thus „nurture and not nature‟ is said to play an important role in brain development and cognitive function of children living in poverty (hair et al., 2015). next section will focus on the implications on children‟s learning process. 1.4. implications for learning this paper also seeks to understand whether the effect of poverty on brain development can hamper the academic performance of children. for woolfolk (2014) “extreme deprivation can have negative effect on brain development” and individual‟s ability to learn (p.38). hair et al. (2015) has warned that the longer children are exposed to poverty, the more “their academic deficits” (p.827). thus any forces that have adverse impact on physical development of the brain and the cognitive development will lead to “changes in thinking, reasoning, and decision making” (woolfolk, 2014) with possible adverse implications on children‟s learning. trauma to the focal brain areas that include the frontal lobe (the brain region that is mainly central to the control of attention, inhibition, emotion regulation, and complex learning) is likely to impair learning (sousa, 2011; woolfolk, 2014). a student may not learn effectively without the ability to pay attention in class and control his or her emotion. thus there is an undeniable connection between the brain and classroom learning in the domain of emotion and stress (woolfolk, 2014). the temporal lobe that controls memory and language comprehension, such as recognizing words, connecting sounds with letters of the alphabet, and attaching meaning to words, is critical to learning. students cannot learn effectively without the capability of processing information and attaching meaning to words heard in the classroom (sousa, 2011). the hippocampus, which is a brain structure that plays a central function in processing spatial information and connected to long-term memory functioning is critical to learning, because it is “essential to the creation of meaning” (sousa, 2011). anything that disrupts this process impairs learning as material learned in class will be difficult to be recalled for such children (sousa, 2011). the thalamus controls all incoming sensory information (except smell) and directs them to the brain, while the hypothalamus monitors the internal systems to maintain the body balance. learning will be impaired if the body system glides out of balance as “the individual” affected cannot “concentrate on cognitive processing of curriculum materials” (sousa, 2011). the hippocampus is central to learning, memory, and stress response, while amygdala processes emotional (especially fear) and social information or how individuals interact with the environment (sousa, 2011; barch et al., 2016). the cortex is said to be more susceptible to environmental influences than other areas of the brain (gluck et al., 2008; schacter et al., 2009; woolfolk, 2014). it is, therefore, logical to argue that deficit in the observed processes may considerably affect children‟s learning, educational and professional success in future. there are some relationships between socioeconomic status (ses) and learning or academic achievement. children living in poverty have myriads of social and academic problems, including stress or chronic stress and negative peer influences (o‟connor, 1997). as noted earlier, this group of children may suffer from depression more than their peers in higher ses (almeida et al., 2005). the longer a child lives in poverty, the greater the level of its impact on his or her academic achievement (woolfolk, 2014). their social and economic conditions notwithstanding, some children living in poverty are high academic achievers (o‟connor, 1997). living in poverty can give some children the intrinsic motivation or “mindset” dweck (2006) to work harder to succeed and thus escape poverty. poor children with “growth-mindset” (dweck, 2006); dweck (2006) can perceive themselves as “works-in-process” (dweck, 2007) as they believe that their situation is not “fixed”that it is malleable and can be developed through “hard work.” for them challenges can be morale boosters and not intimidating as they believe that they can improve their conditions by putting more efforts in whatever they are doing. finally, next segment will discuss how teachers could apply their knowledge of this topic to the classroom. 1.5. teachers and application to the classroom teachers are major players in the learning process as they have always endeavored “to change the human brain everyday” (sousa, 2011) and how it learns. they enter the classroom everyday armed with their lesson plans, indepth knowledge of the content, and experience with the hope that they will change the mind-set of their students‟ and thus help them to understand and remember what they will teach. teachers apply their knowledge in the asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 64-68 67 classroom to ameliorate the challenges of learning created by the impact of poverty on children‟s brain development (sousa, 2011). to help children living or affected by poverty, teachers should first understand the nature of their problems through brain-based evaluation or assessment. knowing the issues facing them will determine the intervention strategies a teacher should adopt (woolfolk, 2014). since classrooms are today populated by children with varied background and learning style, teachers should adopt multiple instructional approaches or strategies to meet their learning needs and improve their educational outcomes (burden and byrd, 2010; sousa, 2011; woolfolk, 2014). the ability of learners, especially those with learning difficulties to retain information, differs with teaching methods applied by the teacher and the learning environment (sylvester, 2003). in addition, since children exposed to toxic environment are prone to stress, emotion, and anxiety that impede learning, it is important for their classrooms to become „as stress-free as possible‟ (sousa, 2011) if students are not feeling safe, and if they are anxious, they are unlikely to focus in classroom activities or learning (sylvester, 2003; woolfolk, 2014). for sousa (2011) “learning occurs more easily in environments free from threat or intimidation…whenever a student detects a threat, thoughtful processing gives way to emotion or survival reactions”(p.66). teachers should also attract the students‟ attention by giving them interesting and challenging assignments they can apply in the real world. without that teaching and learning will suffer. as sousa (2011) has observed, “people will participate in learning activities that have yielded success for them and avoid those that have produced failure” (p.58). additionally, teachers should develop a democratic classroom climate where students are treated as equals and allowed to express their opinion without unnecessary interruption during class discussion. in such an environment that is motivating, students will “develop trust in the teacher; exhibit more positive behaviors; are less likely to be disruptive; show greater support for school policy; and sense that thinking is encouraged and nurtured” (sousa, 2011). family and community support are important for children in living poverty. families living in poverty should work with schools in their efforts to educate their children. but for this cooperative venture to be successful, schools must respect the culture of the families and what they stand for (burden and byrd, 2010). lev vygotsky‟s social perspective theory of learning emphasized the importance of social interaction and cultural tools (woolfolk, 2014). positive outcomes are produced when parents and schools are working together (burden and byrd, 2010). 2. conclusion this paper has provided a brief overview of how poverty affects brain development in children, the areas of the brain affected, and implications on learning abilities. it has noted that poverty has destructive impact on children‟s basic brain development, learning, and academic performance. the paper also noted that neuroscience has added much more information as to what is known about how poverty affects the brain, how students living in poverty learn, and how the brain functions. furthermore it has noted that some of the parts of the brain affected by prolonged experience with poverty include those associated with the working memory, impulse regulation, visuospatial, language and cognitive conflict (noble et al., 2005). in addition, it emphasized 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(2006). dike has also written numerous peer-review articles including, “human capital development, technological capabilities and national development: the nigerian experience,” african journal of science, technology, innovation & development, 2012, 4(2), 11-28; “planned intervention and organizational development: the role of leadership in change initiatives. african journal of science, technology, innovation and development, 2014: 1-6; “leadership and the nigerian economy”. sage open, march 2, 2014, (4), 1–10; and '“why nations fail” to develop: the case of nigeria.' sage open, october 28, 2015, 5(4), 1-12. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 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2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.150.155 investigation of proactive personality characteristics of the students of high school of physical education and sports through various variables burhan ozkurt1 cemal berkan alpay2  ( corresponding author) 1ministry of interior, batman provincial police headquarters, batman, turkey 2department of coaching, omer halisdemir university, nigde, turkey abstract the purpose of this study is to determine the personality characteristics of the students who study at the high school of physical education and sports and to determine the differences between the personalities according to the demographic characteristics of them. the "proactive personality scale" was used for collecting research data. independent t-test was used for two groups and the one-way analysis of variance for more than two groups in the comparison of the subjects' opinions, in terms of the proactive personality traits, according to their individual characteristics. as a conclusion, though there were no statistically significant difference between gender, number of siblings, environment they lived in, sports branches, education level of mother, education level of father, and income levels of the students participated in the survey (p>0,05), significant difference was detected in terms of sporting status, sport ages, achievement levels, and family income levels of (p <0.05). keywords: physical education and sports, proactive personality, university students. jel classification: p36 education and training citation | burhan ozkurt; cemal berkan alpay (2018). investigation of proactive personality characteristics of the students of high school of physical education and sports through various variables. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 150-155. history: received: 24 august 2016 revised: 1 september 2016 accepted: 26 september 2016 published: 23 april 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 151 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 152 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 152 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 154 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 155 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.150.155&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6852-7798 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5482-5305 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6852-7798 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5482-5305 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6852-7798 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5482-5305 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 150-155 151 1. introduction some new concepts have been taking their parts in our lives along with today's changing conditions. these concepts influence our lifestyle, our point of view for the world, our relationships, and our plans for the future. one of these concepts is proactive personality. the proactive personality was found to be worthy of investigation because of things it presented to persons and, meanwhile, the advantages it provided to the community and business life; its effectiveness in increasing the quality of life, and the fact that the work done in this country is not sufficient. the proactivity, which can be found in all areas of life influenced by the human factor, is defined as the difference in the mental structure of people in a movement or initiative to influence the environment they live in (bateman and crant, 1993). this difference helps also to identify the proactive personality. when the concept of the proactive personality is examined in general terms, it is defined by a personality structure that performs risk analysis, not quitting control means, taking risks in place and on a good time, and able to teach a life lesson even from failures. the proactive personality is characterized by a pattern of self-peaceful, self-esteemed, and high selfrespect behavior. the ones who are in this personality profile perform "every elective behavior as a unit" as a result of reasoning and risk analysis. they use their knowledge and intellectual abilities together with their common sense. there is a symphonic harmony between their cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, and spiritual intelligence. they confront their concerns with reality. they approach the reality realistically. they pass their fear and anxiety through the "reality filter". thanks also to these personality patterns, they assimilate to learn in every field of life. they convert their troubles and mistakes into a new learning experience and life-style. they confront their problems, using all of their existential energies at a high level. they do not leave the control means untouched. they do not part from their internal disciplines. they are willing, at all costs, to try and learn. they learn the truth from mistakes when they make mistakes and the perfection of the truth when they do right. the individuals with the proactive personality patterns internalize by rationalization the problem subjects outside of themselves. they pass the problems through the reality filter to make their internal world accept them. that is, the process cannot direct him or her, on the contrary, he/she continues on his/her way and so, he/she can distribute his/her energy and performance throughout life (sahin, 2006). the proactive personality behaviors are accepted as conscious and pre-assumed behaviors. while explaining the proactive personality, baltaş (2008) stated that the individuals acted for their behavior purposefully, and the aim prompted them to create an effect that would cause a change. the proactive individuals perform very well for participating in different activities, performing successful exchanges, and going beyond expectations. the proactive ones have a belief that they can change, as a result of their behavior, the conditions. for this reason, they tend towards entrepreneurial actions. they become a pioneer and active participant of change. the proactive persons do not stop at designing and launching change, but they end up it and so succeed. they are defined as the ones who try to arrive at a target and be successful by really making an effort to get whatsoever is to be performed (baltaş, 2005). they will, in other words, not only change the existing conditions but will endeavor to develop the existing conditions in accordance with their aims in order to achieve a successful result. webster's medical dictionary (2002) defines the proactive person as "the one who can perform the appropriate action, not after the problem has arisen, but before the problem has emerged." in this sense, it is expressed that the proactive person constitutes strong predictions for the opportunities and risks in which he/she assesses the current situation. the proactive personality is defined as a person who takes initiative to create new conditions by discovering opportunities besides developing current conditions, persevering until there is a meaningful change rather than passively adapting to the existing conditions (crant, 2000). the proactive ones do not progress through only one solution to the conditions they want to create. they always have a backup plan and an alternative solution and they have more self-discipline than other people. they make a case evaluation for the difficulties they face in life and make effort to reach a better result. they are aware of their responsibilities. they are, therewithal, more likely to succeed because they not only accept their faults of behavior but also try to change them (çini, 2014). that their progressing, not insisting on their mistakes, but taking lessons from mistakes, shows that their awareness is high and they are exposed to development. since the proactive approach drives persons for attention and thought, the ones with this approach have the opportunity to foresee and evaluate the opportunities prior to others. they are competent in adapting to new conditions. because of systematic thought structures, they determine their targets easily and reach the result. the proactive ones try to create new environmental conditions by determining conditions that are not suitable for their values in the environment they are in since they are change-oriented (van and de, 2012). it can be observed that the proactive people constitute, by the help of the features they possess, their own values and apply their values in their lives. while the behaviors of others are determined by their surroundings, the proactive individuals do not forget their true values and so they choose their own actions themselves. the proactive individual has a vision. he has assigned his vision to reach his goals and works for it, creating the meaning of his life. for example, politicians, business people, teachers, and athletes can dream of contesting with others, but these are not imaginary, and they imagine the things that might be and set out their goals through their visions (schwarzer, 1999). the proactive individuals are counterparts for the active individual needs of the community through their available features and the structures that will make their presence felt in social life. it is solid that the ones with the proactive personality traits will also be involved in all areas of life. it is expected, as in other fields, that these personality traits will be actively involved in also sports and education fields. it is important to trace the proactive traits and determine the contributions of it to both life and him/her through the characteristics they put forward. the aim of this study was, in the light of the information forgiven, to determine the proactive personality profiles of the students who study at the high school of physical education and sports and to examine the differences between various variables and proactive personality traits. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 150-155 152 2. material and method 2.1. subjects total 1432 students, 847 of the males and 585 females, ages ranging between 18 and 47, studying at different departments of the high school of physical education and sports from 28 universities located on 7 regions of turkey during the 2014 to 2015 education-teaching year, participated voluntarily in the research. 2.2. proactive personality scale the proactive personality scale developed by bateman and crant (1993) and adapted to turkish by akın et al. (2011) was used to determine the personality traits of the students attending the high school of physical education and sports. the proactive personality scale is one-dimensional and consists of 17 items. the scale consisting of total 17 items is of septate (with 7) likert type and is graded between 1 and 7 (1: absolutely disagree, 2: disagree, 3: partially disagree, 4: undecided, 5: partially agree, 6: agree, 7: absolutely agree). the reliability coefficient of the scale used in this study was determined through the cronbach's alpha values and found to be 0.93. 2.3. data collecting the students from the high school of physical education and sports were randomly selected and they volunteered to participate in the study. the questionnaire (survey) technique was used as a data collecting means in the research. 1500 questionnaires were distributed and 1432 questionnaires total were used as data. 2.4. statistical analysis of data the statistical package for social sciences (spss) 18.0 program was used for the analysis of the data obtained. the independent samples t-test for two groups and one-way anova for multiple groups were used to compare subjects' opinions on proactive personality traits according to their individual characteristics. the tukey test was applied, therefore, to determine from which group or groups the group differences was/were emerged. the confidence range was chosen as 95% and the values below p <0.05 were considered statistically significant. 3. results the results obtained by comparing the opinions of students, who participated in the questionnaire(s), for the scale applied in the study to their personal characteristics are as follows: table-1. comparison of subjects’ views by gender variables gender n s.d. t p proactive personality male 847 5,34 1,10 -0,465 0,642 female 585 5,36 1,10 that the subjects' proactive personality traits did not show any significant difference according to gender is clear as indicated above (p>0.05). table-2. comparison of subjects’ views by age groups variables age group n s.d. f p proactive personality 16-20 559 5,42a 1,08 3,846 0,022* 21-25 758 5,28b 1,11 ≥26 115 5,49a 1,09 *p<0.05; a, b different letters represent the inter-group differences. that the subjects' attitudes towards the proactive personality characteristics showed significant difference according to age groups (p<0,05) is obvious. when the average values in table 2 are taken into account, the age group of 16-20 years (mean=5.42) and the age group of 26 and above (mean=5.49) are statistically similar while the age group of 21-25 years (mean=5.28) have low mean and so considered statistically different. table-3. comparison of subjects’ views according to the number of siblings scale sibling number n s.d. f p proactive personality 0-2 438 5,36 1,06 0,711 0,491 3-5 755 5,37 1,1 ≥6 239 5,27 1,15 p >0,05 that the subjects' proactive personality traits did not differ significantly from the sibling group (p>0,05) is obvious as shown. table-4. comparison of subjects’ views according to locations they live in scale the location they live in n s.d. f p proactive personality village 92 5,34 1,12 0,475 0,754 town 54 5,31 1,05 district 327 5,28 1,10 province 919 5,38 1,10 abroad 40 5,34 1,16 p >0,05     asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 150-155 153 that the subjects' proactive personality traits did not show any significant difference compared to places where they have lived is shown above (p>0.05). table-5. comparison of subjects’ views per the sports branches scale branch n s.d. t p proactive personality individual 739 5,33 1,11 -0,823 0,411 team 693 5,37 1,09 p >0,05 it is clear from the table above that the subjects' proactive personality traits did not differ significantly in terms of the sports branches (p>0,05). table-6. comparison of subjects’ views according to mother's educational status scale educational status n s.d. f p proactive personality none 115 5,47 1,07 1,385 0,227 primary school 653 5,31 1,13 secondary school 307 5,4 1,03 high school 257 5,39 1,07 university 94 5,26 1,21 p >0,05 that the subjects' proactive personality traits did not show any significant difference in terms of their mothers' education level is indicated above (p>0,05). table-7. comparison of subjects’ views according to father's educational status scale educational status n s.d. f p proactive personality none 65 5,45 1,17 1,047 0,389 primary school 441 5,30 1,17 secondary school 347 5,37 1,01 high school 386 5,40 1,05 university 183 5,31 1,16 postgraduate 10 4,79 0,97 p >0,05 it is shown in the table above that the opinions of the subjects about the proactive personality traits did not show any significant difference in terms of the father education level (p>0,05). table-8. comparison of subjects’ views according to the family monthly income scale family monthly income n s.d. f p proactive personality 0-1000 ₺ 357 5,19a 1,17 4,742 0,009 1001-2000 ₺ 810 5,40b 1,03 2000 and over ₺ 265 5,39b 1,17 * p <0.05; a, b different letters represent inter-group differences. the attitudes of subjects towards the proactive personality characteristics showed significant differences in terms of family monthly income (p<0,05). when the average values in table 8 are taken into consideration, the average monthly income level between ₺ 0 to 1000 (mean=5,19) and ₺ 1001 to 2000 (mean=5.40), and ₺ 2000 and above (mean=5.39) are statistically different from each other. table-9. comparison of subjects’ views according to their own monthly income scale monthly income n s.d. f p 0-330 ₺ 738 5,36 1,09 0,940 proactive personality 331-660 ₺ 263 5,35 1,17 0,062 661 and over ₺ 431 5,33 1,07 p >0,05 that the subjects' proactive personality traits did not differ significantly in terms of their monthly income is clear from the table above (p>0.05). table-10. comparison of subjects’ views by sports age groups scale sports age group n s.d. f p proactive personality 1-5 552 5,22a 1,08 6,305 0,002* 6-10 599 5,42b 1,1 >10 281 5,45b 1,11 * p <0.05; a, b different letters represent inter-group differences. the attitudes of subjects towards the proactive personality characteristics were significantly different in terms of sports age groups (p<0,05). when the averages in table 10 are taken into consideration, the average of 1 to 5       asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 150-155 154 sports age group (mean=5,22), 6 to 10 sports age group (mean=5.42), and 11 and above sports age group (mean=5.45) were statistically different from each other. table-11. comparison of subjects’ views according to the sports achievement scores scale degree n s.d. f p proactive personality no degree 778 5,26a 1,15 5,480 0,004* national success 539 5,47b 0,98 international success 115 5,38ab 1,25 * p<0.05; a, b different letters represent inter-group differences. the attitudes of subjects towards proactive personality characteristics showed significant differences according to their grade status (p<0,05). when the averages in table 11 were taken into account, it was determined that the students with no degrees had lower proactive personality traits (mean=5.26) than those with both national success (mean=5.47) and international success (mean=5.38). table-12. comparison of subjects’ views according to taking part in sports activities scale engaged in sports n  s.d. f p proactive personality no, i'm not engaged in sports. 166 5,16a 1,19 2,787 0,040* yes, i'm on the school team. 186 5,40b 1,09 yes, i am a licensed sportsman in a club. 588 5,42b 1,04 yes, i'm not licensed, but i do sports on certain days. 492 5,31b 1,13 *p<0.05; a, b different letters represent inter-group differences. table 12 gives the results of variance analysis on the comparison of subjects' views on the scale with respect to their sporting status. it is clear, as shown above, that the subjects' proactive personality traits were significantly different in terms of their sports activities (p<0,05). if we take into account the averages in table 11, the average of the ones claiming that “no, i'm not engaged in sports” (mean=5,16) is lower than the averages of the ones claiming "yes, i am on the school team" (mean=5,40), "yes, i am a licensed sportsman in a club" (mean=5,42), and "yes, i am not a sportsman, but i do sports on certain days" (mean=5,31). 4. discussion in this research, the proactive personality traits of the students attending the high school of physical education and sports were examined through miscellaneous variables. an answer is looked for, also, the questions whether the aspects of the students such as age, gender, number of siblings, sports activities, sports branches they engaged in, maternal and paternal educational status, monthly income levels, sports age, family income levels, highest achievement obtained, economic status, surroundings they live in etc. were differentiated or not per the independent variables. it has been found that the proactive personality plays an important role in the quality of life based on the findings obtained by examining the previous studies accomplished on this subject and analyzing the findings during the adaptation period of the scale. no significant difference is observed, according to research findings, in the distribution of the subjects in terms of their proactive personality characteristics and their genders. karasu (2013) compared, in his study, the autonomy development, attachment styles, and proactive personality structures of the students and concluded that there was no significant difference, per the t-test results, in the autonomy development in terms of gender. it is clear that the respondents did not show any significant difference according to the results of variance analysis on the comparison of the scale-oriented opinions of the subjects in terms of the places they live in. the results of the study conducted by sahin (2006) in his research gives support to our findings and, according to the results of this research, the proactive handling and handling strategies that we consider as sub-dimensions are the gains that are acquired later and can only be developed by the individual at his/her own will. that having these gains, meanwhile, is not much affected by the environmental conditions. the researches about the proactive personality traits and sporting situations have been investigated and the findings obtained have been supporting the researches accomplished. a significant relationship was detected between the proactive personality traits and sporting situations. bayar (2003) notes that the ladies engaged in sports are the ones who are more extrovert, adventurous, with high the risk-taking feature, docile, normative, obedient, generally more rigid, talented, emotionally balanced, and with high confidence in themselves. when the questions regarding the comparison of subjects' views on the scale with respect to the sports branches are examined, on the other hand, it is clear that the opinions about the proactive personality characteristics of the subjects did not show any significant difference compared to the sports branches. cetinöz (2005) concluded, in his study comparing personality traits, that the individual athletes were more determined, responsible, and mature than the team athletes. when we analyzed the comparison of the results of variance analysis to the views of subjects on the scale, therefore, it is clear that the opinions about the proactive personality characteristics of the subjects have shown the significant difference compared to the sports age groups. hoffstetter et al. (1990) revealed, in their studies, the correlation between the ones beginning sports at the ages of 6-14 for primary education, 15-18 ages for secondary education, and during higher education and regularly performed sports activities of the adults, social learning, and sports activities in terms of social competence expectancy. it is known that an early start to make sports has many advantages. it is well known that not only some important factors such as the prevention of health problems and obesity can be prevented for the ones engaged in sports for long times, but it also helps them to attain some important capabilities such as the rules included within the sports, self-discipline, coping with competition, trying again, aiming for a given purpose, making progress to a target, and gaining some attitudes those may affect the quality of life. making sports increases the acceptance of the individual in society and the self-confidence of the individual. according to the results of the analyzes obtained by considering the aspects that some positive effects  asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 150-155 155 could be put on the performances by using psychological skills such as self-confidence, goal setting, and having a preparation plan in coping with the problems and that how the ones with aforespecified features could have the proactive personality traits, were significantly different according to their grade levels. the proactive personality scores of non-successful athletes have, per aforementioned aspects, lower averages than the athletes with national or international success. it was found in another research that there were some important differences, in terms of self-confidence, among the successful and unsuccessful wrestlers (highlen and bennett, 1979; gould et al., 1981) gymnasts (mahoney and avener, 1977) and racketball athletes (meyers et al., 1979). individuals can develop some skills by doing sports and use these skills when needed in tough environments. the capabilities such as making decisions under pressure and developing tactics according to different situations may be prerequisites for being successful. it is evident that the self-confidence puts positive contributions to the performance. it was determined, in our study, that the opinions of the subjects about the proactive personality characteristics did not show any significant difference according to their monthly incomes. sahin (2006) claimed in his research, in which he investigated the socio-economic level of the individual and proactive personality structure, that there was no correlation between the socio-economic level of the individual and the proactive personality structure. however, karasu (2013) compared in his survey the autonomy, attachment styles, and proactive personality structures of the students based on their socio-economic status and reached a result that though there was relative difference in terms of autonomy and proactive personality structures for the socio-economic status of the students between the averages of the lower and upper-class groups, there was no statistically significant difference thereof. the results above support our research findings. as a result, the training administrators can support, starting from the first developmental periods and spreading to the individuals at all levels of education, the sports for which we both observed and understood that it puts some positive effects in the presence of individuals with proactive personality traits. it is considered and suggested that accomplishing more studies in education, psychology, sociology, and sports fields in this direction will put the positive contribution to the understanding, development, and diffusion of the proactive personality traits. it is thought that the new generations will benefit from the development of their personality traits and their positive characteristics in their lives. the study accomplished can be regarded as the first 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 488-494, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.488.494 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a model proposal for the evaluation of chemistry education in the context of learning environment mehmet yüksel tusaş kazan vocational school, gazi university, ankara, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was conducted to evaluate chemistry education in the context of the elements that form the learning environment. the weights of learning environment components were determined by analytic hierarchy process. the significance levels of learning environment dimensions were also calculated. according to the findings of the study, the order of the relative weights of personal interest was found as the highest weighted component. among the components of the learning environment, the second-order weight is competition, participation in the third place, teacher support in the fourth and innovation in the last component. in addition, the global weights of sub-component was calculated. the evaluations study was conducted to evaluate the 9th grade chemistry course learning environment based on the opinion of the teacher who works as the head of chemistry course in a high school in ankara were indicated that 61.8% of the chemistry course in the research has a medium learning level. keywords: learning environment, chemistry course, analytic hierarchy process. citation | mehmet yüksel (2019). a model proposal for the evaluation of chemistry education in the context of learning environment. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 488494. history: received: 28 june 2019 revised: 5 august 2019 accepted: 13 september 2019 published: 11 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 489 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 489 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 491 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 493 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 493 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.488.494&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1060 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0124-1992 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1060 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0124-1992 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1060 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0124-1992 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 488-494 489 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the learning environment for a chemistry course in high school based on chemistry teacher’s opinions. 1. introduction there are many factors that determine the sustainability and development of human species in the historical process (gungor, 1998; özüşen and yıldız, 2012). however, when the gains and accumulations in human history are taken into consideration, education which is a product of human and invention (bircan, 2018) has a primary role. as a matter of fact, when we look at it from the macro perspective, it is seen that education is the main tool used by mankind to maintain its existence and improve the quality of life on our planet. as a living species, human beings have used the method of education to produce and acquire what was given to them by nature. education has been the basic behavior that distinguishes human beings from other living things. the production, protection, reproduction and use of the information transferred from the prehistoric man to the present has been possible through education. the main reason why education is functional for human beings is due to the suitability of human nature to education. in other words, when compared to other living things on the planet we live in, the educable potential of the unique superiority of human beings is more (şişman, 2007; bircan, 2018). with the discovery of the qualification of being educable, the sustainability of human beings in the historical process has become more powerful and developmental than other creatures. it shows that the functionalities of education and the acquisitions of human beings are possible with the learning phenomenon of various cultures and civilizations formed in the historical process. in the literature, it is stated that one of the explanatory variables is the learning environment when the scientific studies aimed at explaining the learning phenomenon and realizing the learning are examined (demirtas et al., 2015). the learning environment defines the choice of teaching method that will enable learning to take place, the design of the appropriate teaching environment, the execution of the planned activities and the evaluation of the whole process (keser and ali, 2002). the specificity of the learning environment principles and rules, the criteria of reward and encouragement, the ability of the teacher, the behavior of participation in the lesson, norms, physical environment characteristics, as well as the relationship pattern between stakeholders, in other words, between managers, students, teachers, school, and family. these characteristics affect students' academic knowledge, attitudes and behaviors in different ways (kose and kucukoglu, 2009). the learning environment has an impact on the achievement of the intended education, in other words, on the realization of learning effectiveness. as a matter of fact, there is the opinion that learning is not dependent only on the learner and the teacher in the constructivism philosophy which forms the basis of the turkish education system today. at the same time, learning environments are decisive in the realization of learning (giallousi et al., 2010; demirtas et al., 2015). from this point of view, the issue of learning environments has been the subject of numerous studies in terms of various contexts and variables. in the review of literature, it was seen that learning environment was the subject of studies in the contexts of students, teachers, teaching program, classroom environment, and school environment (telli et al., 2009; den brok et al., 2010; tuncer et al., 2012; schreglman and mengi, 2013; demirtas et al., 2015; özerem and akkoyunlu, 2015; tunca, 2015; aydogdu and ay, 2016). the studies on the learning environment were conducted with a descriptive and relational approach. although the studies in the literature have provided important findings and information on the learning environment and the effectiveness of education, there are some issues that may be the subject of research. one is how to assess the appropriateness of the learning environment for the intended education with a holistic approach. a systematic evaluation of the level of appropriateness of the learning environment to the targeted education is a necessary study in order to determine the effectiveness of the given education objectively. however, it can be stated that the model to allow the evaluation of the education given in the context of learning environment should contain some characteristics. the first is that the learning environment assessment model needs to be inclusive and holistic because the nature of the learning environment is composed of many different components with various natures. therefore, the model for assessing the learning environment should allow for a multi-dimensional assessment. as a matter of fact, in the literature review, it is seen that the solution and evaluation of the problems which have a multi-dimensional structure were made with multi criteria approaches (vaidya and kumar, 2006; melon et al., 2008). another issue that should be mentioned is that the learning environment assessment model should be capable of providing data and information on the level of acceptability of education in terms of effectiveness. however, a model with these characteristics may be able to evaluate the education given in the context of learning environment. considering the above-mentioned issues in the assessment of the learning environment is important for the realization of the effectiveness of education. as küçüközer et al. (2012) stated, it is important to create an environment suitable for its purpose, analyze the learning environment with appropriate methods, identify the deficiencies and improve the learning environment. based on the above considerations, the main purpose of this study is to provide an analytical model for evaluating chemistry education in the context of the elements that make up the learning environment. the first of the sub-objectives of the study is to determine the importance levels of the elements that constitute the learning environment within the learning environment with a holistic approach that takes other elements into consideration. the second sub-objective of the study is to evaluate chemistry education according to the elements of the learning environment in the opinion of the teacher who works as the head of the chemistry course in a high school in ankara. 2. method in this study, the content of 9th grade chemistry course constitutes the scope of the study in relation to the evaluation of chemistry education on the basis of learning environment. the analysis unit of the study is a 9th grade chemistry course learning environment in a public school in ankara. in the study, the analysis of the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 488-494 490 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group learning environment was structured with a multi-criteria model. approaches of multi-criterion studies in the literature were taken as basis in the formation of the model for the evaluation of chemistry education according to the learning environment (yüksel and dağdeviren, 2006; yüksel and geban, 2015). the assessment of chemistry education in the context of learning environment was carried out with the analytical hierarchy process (ahp). the reason for using ahp (saaty, 1980) technique in this study is its suitability to the purpose and characteristics of the problem. since the assessment of the learning environment requires a multidimensional analysis and evaluation, ahp, which has a multidimensional characteristic, was used in the study. ahp was developed by saaty (1980) as a multi-criteria decision making technique. ahp technique is a multi-criteria decision making approach with mathematical axioms (saaty, 1980; 1986; 1991; 1994). it is possible to solve the problems that are multidimensional and hierarchical in nature by ahp technique. therefore, in order to solve a problem in ahp technique, firstly the hierarchical model which expresses the structure of the problem should be determined. for this purpose, the components that constitute the nature of the problem are determined first. components and sub-components or alternatives are categorized at hierarchical levels to form a model (saaty, 1990). another process in ahp technique is to make binary comparisons according to component and subcomponents in the model representing the problem. the relative weights of each component can be calculated by means of matrices created as a result of binary comparisons in ahp. comparison of the two components 'i.' and 'j.' in ahp is defined as aij. in contrast, the comparison of the 'j.' component with the 'i.' component is represented by the term aji. another feature is that the term aij corresponds to aji (aji = 1 / aij). however, aij is ≠ 0 (vashishtha and ramachandran, 2006). in ahp, the scale given in table 1 (saaty, 1980) is used for binary comparisons (yüksel and geban, 2018). the reason for using ahp (saaty, 1980) technique in this study is its suitability to the purpose and characteristics of the problem. table-1. importance levels in binary comparisons. aij definition explanation 1 equal importance two activities contribute equally to the objective 3 weak importance an activity is favored very slightly over another 5 strong importance an activity is favored strongly over another 7 very strong or demonstrated importance an activity is favored very strongly over another 9 extreme importance the evidence favoring one activity over another is of the highest possible order of affirmation 2,4,6,8 intermediate values used when necessary in ahp, the matrices determined as a result of binary comparisons of the elements contained in the model are square (nxn) matrices. in each binary comparison matrix, a size-dependent comparison is performed. the weight of one element of the binary comparison matrix is calculated by the equation (amax ) w = 0. in the equation, “a” refers to matrix and “w” refers to eigenvector. “max” term, on the other hand, represents “a”s eigenvalue (chou et al., 2004). another feature of ahp is the ability to calculate the consistency of comparisons. this feature predicts that the comparisons will be consistent. consistency is based on the logical consistency of comparisons. for this, inconsistency levels of matrices are calculated. to do this, consistency index (c.i) is calculated first. the consistency index is obtained by the equation (max–n)/(n-1). in this equation, “n” refers to the dimension of binary comparison matrix. following the calculation of consistency index, the inconsistency ratio (ir) is obtained by (c.i)/(r.i) (saaty, 1977; ananda and herath, 2003; herath, 2004). the random index (r.i) value in the equation differs according to the size of the binary comparison matrix. if the calculated inconsistency value is less than 0.10, it means that significant comparisons are made (saaty, 1994; cheng and li, 2007). otherwise, as there is inconsistency in binary comparisons, binary comparisons are performed again. when the elements (n) of the comparison matrices are large (n≥5), the calculations are performed with the expert choice (2000) decisionmaking program. there are many scales developed in the literature to evaluate learning environments (keser and ali, 2002; kose and kucukoglu, 2009; giallousi et al., 2010; küçüközer et al., 2012; valdez, 2012; schreglman and mengi, 2013). in this study, the scale developed by giallousi et al. (2010) was used. the main reason for this is that the scale was prepared for chemistry course. the scale consists of a total of 28 items collected under five dimensions. the dimensions and items related to the learning environment are: 2.1. innovation (in) trying out new ideas in the classroom (in1). using new and different teaching methods in the classroom (in2). teacher’s liking students who try original projects (in3). teacher’s producing new and interesting activities for students to do (in4). teacher’s giving lecture notes in chemistry class (in5). 2.2. personal relevance (pr) learning about the world outside the school (pi1). new learning beginnings are problems with the world outside the school (pi2). learning how chemistry is a part of life outside the school (pi3). better understanding of the environment outside the school (pi4). learning interesting things about the world outside the school (pi5). 2.3. competitiveness (cp) being stressful when competing with schoolmates (cp1). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 488-494 491 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group making huge efforts to get the highest grades (cp2). chemistry grades being very important for students (cp3). taking notes of classmates into consideration (cp4). working hard to get high grades (cp5). the class’s sometimes being divided into competing groups (cp6). 2.4. participation (pt) discussion of ideas in the classroom (pt1). speaking of ideas during class discussion (pt2). teacher’s asking questions (pt3). using ideas and suggestions in the class discussion process (pt4). asking questions to the teacher (pt5). explaining their thoughts to other students (pt6). discussion of the solution of the problems related to mathematical calculations with the student (pt7). asking students how to solve mathematical problems (pt8). 2.5. teacher support (ts) teacher's effort to help the student (ts1). teacher's consideration of the student's views (ts2). teacher's help in case of problems during study (ts3). teacher’s talking with the student (ts4). teacher's interest in student's problems (ts5). teacher's questions help the student understand (ts6). data for the study were gathered in two ways. the first one was the data provided by the expert group in determining the relative weight of the learning environment dimensions and sub-dimensions covered by the analytical hierarchy process model proposed in the study. the opinions of the expert group were used in the binary comparisons of the components and sub-components in the ahp model. the expert group made the evaluations with the scale (saaty, 1980; yüksel and geban, 2018) given in table 1. the expert group of the research consisted of two experienced chemistry teachers who gave 9th grade chemistry lessons and the author of the study. the second data required for the study was obtained from the answers given to a scale consisting of 28 items for the 9th grade chemistry course learning environment of an experienced chemistry teacher working as the head of chemistry course in a high school in ankara. in this study, the evaluations of the experienced chemistry teacher who worked as the head of the chemistry course for the learning environment items were made with the scale given in table 2 (yüksel, 2012). table-2. evaluation scale. current status level level value certainly acceptable (ca) 1.00 acceptable (ac) 0.75 satisfactory(sa) 0.50 not satisfactory (ns) 0.25 certainly unacceptable (cu) 0.00 3. results in the study, the weights of learning environment components were determined by analytic hierarchy process. in addition, the significance levels of the 28 learning environment sub-dimensions were also calculated. the consistency levels of the pairwise comparisons, which are the basis for the calculation of the weights of the dimensions and the sub-dimensions, were calculated and the consistency levels of the paired comparisons in the study were found to be acceptable. in the study, the matrix and the results for determining the weights of the learning environment components were given in table 3. when the weights of learning environment components were examined, personal interest was found as the highest weighted component. among the components of the learning environment, the secondorder weight is competition, participation in the third place, teacher support in the fourth and innovation in the last component. consistency ratio of the components of the learning environment was found to be acceptable (0.08). table-3. components of learning environment. components in pr cp pt ts local weight innovation (in) 1 1/5 1/5 1/5 1/3 0.046 personal relevance (pr) 1 3 3 5 0.444 competitiveness (cp) 1 3 3 0.260 participation (pt) 1 3 0.166 teacher support (ts) 1 0.085 cr: 0.08 comparisons and calculated weights of the learning environment sub-components were presented in table 4-8. the relative weights and consistency ratios (cr) of the subcomponents were given in these tables. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 488-494 492 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. innovation. components in1 in2 in3 in4 in5 local weight trying out new ideas in the classroom (in1) 1 2 3 2 5 0.362 using new and different teaching methods in the classroom (in2) 1 3 3 5 0.304 teacher’s liking students who try original projects (in3) 1 1/3 3 0.104 teacher’s producing new and interesting activities for students to do (in4) 1 3 0.177 teacher’s giving lecture notes in chemistry class (in5) 1 0.053 cr: 0.06. table-5. personal relevance components pr1 pr2 pr3 pr4 pr5 local weight learning about the world outside the school (pi1) 1 1 1/3 1/5 1/3 0.077 new learning beginnings are problems with the world outside the school (pi2) 1 1 1/3 1/5 0.091 learning how chemistry is a part of life outside the school (pi3) 1 1/3 1/5 0.120 better understanding of the environment outside the school (pi4) 1 1 0.331 learning interesting things about the world outside the school (pi5) 1 0.382 cr: 0.05. table-6. competitiveness. components cp1 cp2 cp3 cp4 cp5 cp6 local weight being stressful when competing with schoolmates (cp1) 1 5 3 5 5 7 0.452 making huge efforts to get the highest grades (cp2) 1 3 3 3 5 0.211 chemistry grades being very important for students (cp3) 1 3 3 5 0.152 taking notes of classmates into consideration (cp4) 1 3 3 0.090 working hard to get high grades (cp5) 1 3 0.062 the class’s sometimes being divided into competing groups (cp6) 1 0.034 cr: 0.09. table-7. participation. components pt1 pt2 pt3 pt4 pt5 pt6 pt7 pt8 local weight discussion of ideas in the classroom (pt1) 1 1 5 1 5 1 5 5 0.198 speaking of ideas during class discussion (pt2) 1 5 1 5 1 5 5 0.198 teacher’s asking questions (pt3) 1 1/5 1/5 1/5 3 3 0.045 using ideas and suggestions in the class discussion process (pt4) 1 5 1/3 5 5 0.181 asking questions to the teacher (pt5) 1 1/5 5 5 0.087 explaining their thoughts to other students (pt6) 1 5 3 0.231 discussion of the solution of the problems related to mathematical calculations with the student (pt7) 1 1 0.028 asking students how to solve mathematical problems (pt8) 1 0.032 cr: 0.10. table-8. teacher support. components ts1 ts2 ts3 ts4 ts5 ts6 local weight teacher's effort to help the student (ts1) 1 1/5 1/3 1/3 1/3 1/3 0.047 teacher's consideration of the student's views (ts2) 1 5 5 3 3 0.438 teacher's help in case of problems during study (ts3) 1 5 3 3 0.229 teacher’s talking with the student (ts4) 1 1 1 0.086 teacher's interest in student's problems (ts5) 1 1 0.100 teacher's questions help the student understand (ts6) 1 0.100 cr: 0.08. in the study, the global weights of subcomponents calculated as a result of binary comparisons are given in the fourth column of table 9. the evaluations made by the head of the chemistry class in the school, where the study was conducted to evaluate the 9th grade chemistry course learning environment, were indicated in the fifth and asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 488-494 493 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sixth columns of table 9. in the fifth column, the current status level of the learning environment sub-component and in the sixth column were given the corresponding numerical value. in the last column of table 9, the evaluation level of each learning environment sub-component was calculated. in the last line of table 9 is the general level of assessment of the chemistry course within the study. according to the findings of this study, the calculated value is 0.618. it can be said that this value indicates that 61.8% of the chemistry course in the research has a medium learning level. as a matter of fact, according to the model proposed in this study, the maximum value that can be taken in the assessment of learning environment is 1.00 and the minimum value is 0. therefore, as the result of the evaluation approaches 1.00, it is understood that there is an acceptable learning environment. table-9. evaluation of chemistry education according to learning environment. components and weights of learning environment subcomponents local weights general weights (gw) level status value (v) evaluation level (gw×v) innovation (in) in1 0.362 0.017 ac 0.75 0.013 0.046 in2 0.304 0.014 ac 0.75 0.011 in3 0.104 0.005 ca 1.00 0.005 in4 0.177 0.008 ac 0.75 0.006 in5 0.053 0.002 ca 1.00 0.002 personal relevance (pr) pr1 0.077 0.034 ac 0.75 0.026 0.444 pr2 0.091 0.040 sa 0.50 0.020 pr3 0.120 0.053 sa 0.50 0.027 pr4 0.331 0.147 ns 0.25 0.037 pr5 0.382 0.169 sa 0.50 0.085 competitiveness (cp) cp1 0.452 0.117 ca 1.00 0.117 0.260 cp2 0.211 0.055 ac 0.75 0.041 cp3 0.152 0.040 ac 0.75 0.030 cp4 0.090 0.023 acs 0.75 0.017 cp5 0.062 0.016 sa 0.50 0.008 cp6 0.034 0.009 cu 0.00 0.000 participation (pt) pt1 0.198 0.033 ac 0.75 0.025 0.166 pt2 0.198 0.033 ac 0.75 0.025 pt3 0.045 0.007 ca 1.00 0.007 pt4 0.181 0.030 sa 0.50 0.015 pt5 0.087 0.014 ca 1.00 0.014 pt6 0.231 0.038 ns 0.25 0.010 pt7 0.028 0.005 ca 1.00 0.005 pt8 0.032 0.005 ca 1.00 0.005 teacher support (ts) ts1 0.047 0.004 ca 1.00 0.004 0.085 ts2 0.438 0.037 ac 0.75 0.028 ts3 0.229 0.019 ca 1.00 0.019 ts4 0.086 0.007 ac 0.75 0.005 ts5 0.100 0.008 ca 1.00 0.008 ts6 0.100 0.008 ac 0.75 0.006 total 0.618 4. discussion and conclusion according to the results of the study, it was seen that the learning environment for a chemistry course can be evaluated in detail with the proposed analytical model. in the study, the proposed model for the assessment of the learning environment was found to be functional and gave meaningful results. as a matter of fact, it was observed that the pattern of a learning environment can be formed with the model proposed and evaluated with a mathematical approach on the basis of the pattern. with the methodically proposed model, it can be said that it is possible to evaluate the learning environments related to courses in other fields of science. however, the results obtained as a result of the analysis of the data produced within the scope of this study are limited to the class in the study. it is an expected result that different research data and application results of the model may differ. therefore, it is important to consider this limitation in the interpretation of the results of the study. another aspect is the analysis techniques used by the proposed model. in this study, one of the components and sub-components of the model representing the learning environment is assumed to be independent of each other. but one of the components and sub-components that make up the learning environment may be related to each other. therefore, this issue needs to be taken into consideration in the creation of a learning environment model. in the following studies, it can be said that studies that take into consideration the relationship between the learning environments between the components or the sub-components 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journal of education, 30(1): 299-312. yüksel, m. and ö. geban, 2018. student performance task assessment using multiple criteria decision making (mcdm) techniques: an application for 9th grade chemistry course. bartın university faculty of education journal, 7(3): 874-901. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 124-130, 2017 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.124.130 124 investigation of effects of theoretical and applied education on success and recall level in analytical chemistry ayşen demir mülazımoğlu1 1necmettin erbakan university, ahmet keleşoğlu education faculty, chemistry department, konya, turkey abstract in this study, a true-false test, selected from analytical chemistry textbook, was applied to investigate the effects of lesson learned in theoretical and applied in analytical chemistry to students' achievement and recall levels. a 30-item test, selected from the basic subjects, was applied to a group of 81 students as the secondary chemistry education program of faculty of education. this group was selected from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grades and tried to apply to the groups of approximate twenty students to compare female and male students in every class. as a result of the study, it has been determined that analytical chemistry topics are easier to understand and remember when they are thought as applied in the laboratory. another result of this study was found that female students were more successful than male students. when the overall female students are taken into account along with the other lessons this is an expected result. one of the expected results of this study is that 2nd grade students were more successful than the other grades due to analytical chemistry and its application are given at the 2nd grade in the program. besides all these results 4th graders are found to be more successful than 5th graders due to teaching of the pedagogical lessons at the last three terms of the program. keywords: analytical chemistry, applied education, gender difference. citation | ayşen demir mülazımoğlu (2017). investigation of effects of theoretical and applied education on success and recall level in analytical chemistry. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 124-130. history: received: 13 november 2017 revised: 4 december 2017 accepted: 11 december 2017 published: 14 december 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 125 2. purpose............................................................................................................................................................................................. 125 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 125 4. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 127 5. discussions ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 128 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 128 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 129 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ayşen demir mülazımoğlu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ayşen demir mülazımoğlu asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 124-130 125 1. introduction it is an indisputable fact that many theoretical studies have supported the theoretical lesson with its application has positive effects on the level of learning and remembering. in addition, it should be known that the theory and the implementation must overlap one another. on the basis of the theoretical teaching give regularly, the reinforced teaching constructed by repeating the application is placed in the memory in an unforgettable way and makes it easier to remember again when it is necessary. chemistry is an active subject which involves principles that are essential to both the realms of nature and society. it deals with the composition of matter and its features (mailumo et al., 2009). in addition, it is seen as a center of science that unifies the other science subjects (agogo and otor, 2013; hanson et al., 2016). chemistry is a difficult lecture to learn because students mostly encounter physical phenomena in their daily lives rather than chemical ones (hand and treagust, 1991). although there are many methods offered by researchers in order to learn chemistry well (e.g., laboratory activities, multimedia, it etc.), for the permanence of this knowledge, namely to become an expert in chemistry, a cognitive structure of the basic knowledge, problem-solving skills and expertlike attitudes and approaches are required (duran, 2016). the researches that have been performed for a long time show that the laboratory studies increase the interest and the abilities of the students towards science subjects (bryant and edmunt, 1987; bekar, 1996; bayrak et al., 2007). if we list the benefits of applied education, especially given laboratory practices are crucial as theoretical training support, we would reach the following results. -in theoretical teaching, students may not comprehend the subject very well. this problem may be overcome in applied teaching that would be interesting to the students. -laboratory applications are much more enjoyable because they are student centered compared to theoretical lessons. -an application performed with interest focused affects the motivation of the students positively. -appropriate equipment for the purpose of practice strengthens learning. -learning becomes faster and more reliable because the students make observation and take measurement by themselves. -all pre-acquired information is transferred to practice through applications. since the final results are achieved, the knowledge learned by the applications performed is better placed in the permanent memory and is easily remembered when it is necessary. the report prepared at the end of the performed experiment makes it possible to review and reinforce the interpretation of the results obtained. the scientific researches clearly state that use of the laboratory at the stage of chemistry education in general according to the knowledge acquired during the practice provides; -understanding the essence and method of science -improving problem solving ability -reviewing daily life events with more conscious -improving the ability to analyze and generalize. in addition to these skills, -increasing the interest and motivation for the lecture -gaining positive attitude towards scientific research and being a scientist -better understanding in grouping and organizing ideas by exchanging the ideas with each other (whisnant, 1982; rigano and ritchie, 1994; nakiboğlu and sarıkaya, 1999; coştu et al., 2005). the widespread practice of students' practical work in the laboratory to wonder how they have contributed to the understanding of the topics taught in the theoretical lessons, and high practical cost of doing so has widened the scope of research on the learning environment in classroom and learning environments in science laboratory lessons have also been addressed (tobin, 1990; woolnough, 1991). it is a known fact that males and females have different interests of subjects. this applies to all analytical chemistry and laboratory as well as to the theoretical and practical lessons. for the education to be effective for all students in the class to be successful, the teacher should remember that each student has its own characteristics while considering the common characteristics of the students in preparing the curriculum and should offer alternative activities appropriate to the individual characteristics of the students (coşkun et al., 2007; mülazımoğlu et al., 2008). the present study is very important in terms of applying the analytical chemistry lesson in chemistry education and the students who have already seen the laboratory practice and assessing the results according to the gender differences as well as between the classes. 2. purpose the aim of this study is to examine the contribution and effects of learned knowledge to the level of learning and remembering in theoretical and its application which is given as separate lessons in the undergraduate program. 3. method 3.1. sample the sample of this work consists of a group of 81 students consisting of 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grades who are educated in chemistry education department of selçuk university, education faculty, department of secondary education science and mathematics education. the distribution of this sample by classes and genders is given in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 124-130 126 table-1. distribution of student numbers by class and gender class female male total ii 13 5 18 iii 9 11 20 iv 12 12 24 v 7 12 19 source: selçuk university, education faculty 3.2. data collection tool in the study, a total of 30 questions were selected for the sample group, 15 questions from the theoretical background and 15 questions from the practical background along with the theoretical basis. correct or incorrect markings were required. the groups were given 15 minutes to answer these questions. there are two reasons for limiting the time; the first one is to ensure that the learners give the first thought of answer to the questions, thus preventing the question from returning again, and the second is to prevent them from cheating. the questions and the answers directed to the students in the study were given as annexes. 3.3. application the 30-item test, which was directed to the students in the study, was classified according to the degree of difficulty and it was tried to determine which questions were more difficult. although higher accuracy rate was expected from the application basis questions in some theoretical basis questions higher accuracy was observed. the test results were evaluated among the classes and success rates were compared. females and males were compared within their groups and in general. in some questions, males were found to be more successful. but it is seen that females in all grades and in total were found to be more successful generally. table-2. classification of questions according to difficultness grade difficulty level and questions 0,00-0,10 0,11-0,30 0,31-0,60 0,61-0,90 0,91-1,00 2 --3, 23 2, 7, 9, 11, 14, 19, 22, 27, 30 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29 8 3 7 3, 23, 27 2, 5, 10, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 28, 29, 30 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 25, 26 24 4 7 22, 23 1, 2, 3, 9, 14, 19, 21, 27, 29 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 24, 25, 28, 30 6, 17, 26 5 --3, 7, 14, 22, 27 1, 2, 8, 9, 13, 19, 23, 29 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30 12, 16 source: author's field work the distribution of the 30 questions asked to the students in theory and practice in the study is given in table 3. table-3. classification of questions directed to students according to the topics taught in theory and practice question no theory theory + practice question no theory theory + practice 1 x 16 x 2 x 17 x 3 x 18 x 4 x 19 x 5 x 20 x 6 x 21 x 7 x 22 x 8 x 23 x 9 x 24 x 10 x 25 x 11 x 26 x 12 x 27 x 13 x 28 x 14 x 29 x 15 x 30 x source: author's field work the distribution of the 30 questions in the analytical chemistry curriculum according to the subjects is given in table 4. table-4. distribution of questions by subject area question no subject 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 16, 17, 21 gravimetric analysis methods 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 19 titrimetric analysis methods 4, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 29 aqueous solution chemistry 17, 20, 24, 28 the impact of ionic balance 10, 18, 22, 25, 26, 29 application of equilibrium calculations to complex balances 10, 22, 23, 29 theory of neutralization titrations 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 25, 26, 27 titration curves for complex acid / base systems 13, 19, 25, 29 applications of neutralization titrations 6, 10, 12, 19 precipitation titrations 21, 30 complex formation titrations source: author's field work asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 124-130 127 4. conclusions the data obtained in the study were evaluated with spss 15.0 package program. through this program, the difficulty ratings of the questions were determined, comparisons were made between male and female students and among the classes, and the results were given in the figures. as a result of the study, it was determined that the 2nd grade students were more successful than the other classes, but the success rates of the 4th grade students were similar to the 2nd grade students. it is commented that the majority of the 4th classes are taking these two lessons again, which might have a positive effect on the success of the test. however, it is an unexpected result that 4 th grade students should be more successful than 3rd grade students and it is necessary to work on them. such that the majority of third grade students take these two lessons again. in this case, the success of 4th grade students may arise from their experience and their approaches to the topics with more consciousness. when table 2 is examined, it is seen that the questions 3 and 23 are difficult to answer while there are no questions that are very difficult for 2nd grade students. this situation is confronted as seventh question in 3rd grade students, and it is seen that the 3rd grade students are difficult to answer the questions 3, 23 and 27, and 4th grade students are difficult to answer the questions 22 and 23. while there were not very difficult questions for 5 th grade students, it was seen that they were difficult to answer the questions 3, 7, 14, 22, 27. it is seen that 2nd grade students answered very easily to question 8 and 3rd grade students answered very easily to question 24. when table 2 is examined, it is seen that 4th grade students answered the questions 6, 17 and 26 and 5th grade students answered the questions 12 and 16 very easily. in table 3, it is seen that the questions that are very difficult for the 3rd and 4th grades are given only theoretically in analytical chemistry lesson. according to table 3, it was determined that the level of correct answer and remembering is higher for the questions about the subjects that students usually learned in practice following the theory. this is very important in terms of revealing how important analytical chemistry needs to be practiced in the laboratory as well as theory. furthermore, when the answers given by the students to these questions were examined, it was determined that they gave false answers to the questions. due to the fact that even though the graders had been thought theoretically, they couldn’t have visualized the topics in their mind. this case can be understood when the answer to the seventh question is examined. for this question although the students are well aware of the theoretical aspect of precipitate formation, they couldn’t have visualized this formation in their mind. the same reason is valid for the answers of the questions 3, 14, 23 and 27. students are quite successful answering the questions number 6, 8, 12, 16, 24 and 26, as the practice on these questions is performed in the laboratory and they observe the real application about the topics in the laboratory. when the right and wrong answers given to the questions were examined statistically, it was found that seventh question was the most correct answer by 2nd grade. there is a significant difference between the results of 2nd grade and the other grades. in addition, it was determined that eighth and thirteenth questions were the most wrongly answered by 5th grade and the found difference was significant. the thirtieth question was the most wrongly answered by 2nd grade students and thus a significant difference was calculated. statistically, no significant difference was calculated among all grades. figure-1. overall success rates between classes. source: author's field work when figure 1 is examined, the success rates of the classes over the totals of male and female students are determined as 2nd, 4th, 3rd and 5th grades, respectively. this result supports what is initially expected. the low success of both males and females in the 5th grade is a situation that needs more attention and caution. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 124-130 128 figure-2. comparison of correct response rates between male and female students among classes. source: author's field work figure-3. comparison of wrong answer rates between male and female students among classes. source: author's field work when figure 2 and figure 3 are examined, there is no significant difference between the male and female students according to the answers given to the questions in general. despite this, it is seen that females are more successful in all classes in figure 1. this situation overlaps with the fact that female students have higher student selection and placement test scores and their success rates are higher than male students in the classroom environment they are studying. 5. discussions when the conducted study and the evaluated data are taken into account, the following results have been reached. -the analytical chemistry is a quite difficult lecture for the students when they consider the wrong answer rates. -the knowledge acquired in practice for students is more permanent as well as more accurate. -even if students have seen some subjects in theory or practice, they cannot learn the notions that they cannot recall easily in their minds or they forget very easily. -it is more permanent and easier to remember information that students learn by visualizing. -female students who were found to be more successful in their undergraduate studies were successful as a result of evaluating the answers given to the questions. -the student selection and placement test scores they receive when entering the chemistry education program are important indication of the success of students in their undergraduate studies. -the high number of students who repeat both analytical chemistry and analytical chemistry laboratory lessons should be considered as a factor that reduces their success due to the prejudices of the students taking this course for the first time. 6. recommendations it is obvious from this study that analytical chemistry lesson should be given with its more intense application. it is necessary for the students to be taught that each lesson is easy and understandable and that no lesson should be approached with prejudice. the idea that every work approaching with prejudice will be lost from the beginning must be known by the students. since more regular and planned female students are more successful, male students should have the same behavior. one of the reasons for the low level success of the students is that they are worried about not being able to do their profession after completing the chemistry program. one recommendation could be a better correlation between the theoretical and application basis. the 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chemistry laboratory. journal of chemical education, 59(9): 792-794. view at google scholar | view at publisher woolnough, b.e., 1991. practical science: the role and reality of practical work in school science. england: open university press. examination test asked to students for “investigation of effects of theoretical and applied education on success and recall level in analytical chemistry” description: the following is a true-false answer questions thirty blended from selected some topics in analytical chemistry. please give all questions the answers that come to you first and that you know correctly or that are most reasonable to you. t f 1 gravimetric analysis also be consulted while the titration process. x 2 we measure the mass in lab also the fact that we say we measure we use weights and weight in the calculations. x 3 stoichiometry refers to the qualitative relationship between the amount of product with reactants. x 4 gravimetric analysis methods are based on an analytical balance to measure mass. x 5 a colloidal particle is a solid with a diameter ranging from 10-4 to 10-7 cm. x 6 the supersaturated solution is an unstable solution and tends to collapse. x 7 precipitates; nucleation, grain growth, mechanical drift, and entrapment. x 8 the solutions prepared from primary standard materials are called standard solutions. x 9 secondary standard substances can also be used as reference substances in titrimetric analyzes. x 10 in particular, when no suitable indicator is found, the back titration procedure is used. x 11 the formula that shows the simplest integer ratios of the atoms in a chemical compound is the molecular formula. x 12 actually; a turning point is an interval, the equivalence point is a theoretical point. x 13 in order for the buffer solution to form, the compounds must have an analytical concentration. x 14 conjugate acid-base pairs can react in some cases. x 15 perchloric acid and hydrochloric acid are stronger in perchloric acid if they are ionized in methanol, although the acidity forces are the same in ionized form in water. x 16 surface adsorption in the formation of precipitates is a contamination event. x 17 the common ion in the dissolution of solids reduces the solubility. x 18 when preparing an acid solution, the addition of some water is due to the fact that the ionization of the acid is endothermic. x 19 although the equivalence point is known as the point at which the number of moles of the analyte is equal to the standard reagent added in the titration, it is actually the point where the concentrations are equal to each other. x 20 neglect in analytical chemistry problem solving can be done only in equations of addition and subtraction. x 21 edta solutions are prepared from the disodium salts due to the fact that the primers are standard. x 22 they can be used as titrant in weak acid and base in some cases in titration process. x 23 in some cases, the ph may be negative, such as near zero. x 24 a kind of activity is a measure of the effective concentration. x 25 an acidic salt consists of a mixture of a weak acid with a slight amount of a strong base. x 26 in the solution environment, both proton-accepting and proton-yielding species are called amphiprotic species. x https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=to%20compare%20the%20effects%20of%20computer%20based%20learning%20and%20the%20laboratory%20based%20learning%20on%20students’%20achievement%20regarding%20electric%20circuits https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=they%20like%20lab-centered%20science determining%20preservice%20science%20teachers’%20competences%20in%20preparing%20solutions%20and%20in%20use%20of%20laboratory%20toolshttps:/scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=an%20academic%20survey%20concerning%20high%20school%20and%20university%20students’%20attitudes%20and%20approaches%20to%20problem%20solving%20in%20chemistry http://dx.doi.org/10.12973/ijese.2016.407a https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=student%20achievement%20and%20science%20curriculum%20development%20using%20a%20constructivist%20framework http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.1991.tb12073.x https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=secondary%20school%20students’%20conceptual%20understanding%20of%20physical%20and%20chemical%20changes https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=students'%20thinking%20in%20a%20chemistry%20laboratory https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=students'%20thinking%20in%20a%20chemistry%20laboratory http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf02356353 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=resarch%20on%20science%20laboratory%20activities:%20in%20pursuit%20of%20better%20questions%20and%20answers%20to%20i̇mprove%20learning http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.1990.tb17229.x https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=descriptive%20chemistry%20in%20the%20general%20chemistry%20laboratory https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=descriptive%20chemistry%20in%20the%20general%20chemistry%20laboratory http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed059p792 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 124-130 130 27 the carbonate defect is the presence of excess carbonate ions in the solution environment. x 28 in order for debye-hückel equality to be available, the solvent must be water. x 29 the use of a buffer solution having a ph of 4.74 in a desired solution having a ph of 3.50 is not suitable. x 30 since the eriochrome black-t indicator is a basic indicator, it is more suitable to use for solutions with a ph lower than 7.00. x asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 290 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 290-294, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.290.294 goal orientation and motivational climate in university student-athletes eylem gencer1  arda öztürk2 ( corresponding author) 1kirsehir ahi evran university, school of physical education and sports, kirsehir, turkey 2harran university, school of physical education and sports, sanliurfa, turkey abstract the aim of the study was to investigate the goal orientation and the motivational climate of university student-athletes and to reveal the relationship between the goal orientation and the motivational climate. the sample of the research consists of 212 student-athletes studying at universities. teosq (duda, 1989a;1992; duda and nicholls, 1992) and pmcsq (walling et al., 1993) were used as data collection tools. the results indicated that university student-athletes were task orientated and perceived the motivational climate as mastery climate. besides, performance climate predicted ego orientation and mastery climate predicted task orientation. moreover, age and career were negatively related to goal orientation and motivational climate. the results of the research contribute to a better understanding of the motivational process in physical education and sports environments by suggesting some implications both to the practitioners (teachers and coaches) who work in the field and to the researchers who are doing theoretical and empirical studies. keywords: goal orientation, motivational climate, university student-athlete. citation | eylem gencer; arda öztürk (2018). goal orientation and motivational climate in university studentathletes. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 290-294. history: received: 17 july 2018 revised: 9 august 2018 accepted: 15 august 2016 published: 20 august 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 291 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 291 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 292 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 293 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 294 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.290.294&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1447 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1447 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 290-294 291 1. introduction motivation is considered as a concept that determines both participation in physical activity and sports in physical education and sports environments and the direction and degree of behaviors in physical education and sports environments. it is argued that motivation embodying ambitions, desires, demand, impulse and interests that stimulate and energize an organism for a specific purpose affects every behavior of human (cüceloğlu, 2008). in addition, it is stated that in order to understand the motivation of an individual in physical education and sports environments, it is required to comprehend the psychological structures that energize, direct and shape achievement behavior (roberts et al., 2007). from this point of view, it can be said that the concept of motivation has a directing influence both in our behaviors in daily life and in our behaviors in physical education and sports environments. similarly, sage (1977) while describing the motivation, points to the direction and intensity of one's effort. while the direction of the effort means approaching or avoiding a situation; the intensity of the effort explains how much effort is spent in a situation. even though there are a great number of statements and theories in the literature about motivation, motivation in the sports environment has often been tried to be explained with three views including participant-centered view, situation centered view and interactional view. participantcentered view suggests that motivated behavior is primarily a function of individual characteristics whereas situation centered view suggests that personal attitudes are insufficient in determining motivation, and motivation level is primarily determined by the environment. interactional view, on the other hand, states that the best way to understand motivation is to consider the interaction of participant-centered and situation centered views. interactional view, which is a combination of personal characteristics and situations that help develop motivation, has important implications for teachers and coaches (weinberg and gould, 1995; anshel, 1997). achievement goal theory, which is one of the most important theories explaining motivation in physical education and sports, is regarded as a social cognitive approach that assumes the individual is an intentional, goaloriented organism that operates in a rational manner and that achievement goals direct individual's achievement beliefs and guide his subsequent decisions and behaviors in achievement context (roberts, 2012). according to this approach, in order to understand the motivation of an individual, it is necessary to consider the function and meaning of the achievement behavior for the individual and the purpose of the action should be understood (moran, 2013). the approach, which assumes that individuals give meaning to achievement behaviors through the goals they have embraced, indicates that these goals reflect the aims of the effort to achieve. in other words, achievement goal theory refers to goal types (aims or reasons) that guide achievement-related behaviors (roberts, 2012). according to this approach, there are two main goal orientations that individuals have adopted in achieving success in sports environments. these two orientations, which are related to the one's judging his/her own ability level and which can differ according to one's understanding of his/her ability, are expressed as "task orientation" and "ego orientation" (nicholls, 1984). it is stated that individuals who adopt task orientation focus on skill learning, skill development, mastery and hard work (roberts, 2012) whereas ego-oriented individuals concentrate on their superior ability and aim to overcome their opponents with less effort (duda, 1993). task-oriented athletes are more satisfied with their own performances, enjoy the practice and show more interest in the task. on the other hand, ego-oriented athletes feel more satisfied with their performance, they get more pleasure from sports and they show more interest in sports as they perform better. in the studies conducted, it was revealed that every athlete has goals related to task and ego to a certain degree, and the combination of both of these two independent achievement ideas identifies the athlete (jagacinski and nicholls, 1984). therefore, while the athlete has a skill and task orientation to a certain degree; he/she may wish to remain superior at certain degrees. motivational climate, which is believed to have an effect on the athletes' motivation and which is assumed to affect the individual's goal orientations includes various features such as competition level, instructional styles, and the influence of important people on team culture (roberts and ommundsen, 1996). according to ames (1992) motivational climate refers to a structure that is shaped by the attitudes and behaviors of the coaches. in another definition, the perceived motivational climate is how athletes evaluate the environment they are in with the influence of external factors such as coach, family, friends etc. (shaw et al., 2005). there are two different motivational climates in a sports environment. the first one is the mastery climate that supports training and learning that include skill development while the second one is the performance climate, which makes it easier to focus on the opponent's talents and what he/she is doing and enables athletes to become star and to overcome competition (roberts and ommundsen, 1996). the studies carried out clearly show that motivational climate is a factor in determining the goal orientations of athletes (duda, 1989b; roberts and ommundsen, 1996; duda and whitehead, 1998; arıburun and aşçı, 2005; toros and koruç, 2005). roberts et al. (1998) asserted that the motivational climate in which athletes are included in and they perceive is an essential factor contributing to their sportive goals and performance related to these goals. roberts (2001) pointed out that teachers and coaches build either a mastery or a performance-oriented climate in their teams through various guidelines, reinforcements. in this regard, this study aims to investigate student-athletes' goal orientation and their perception of motivational climate, to reveal the relationship between these two conceptual structures and to clarify motivational processes, a key term for success in physical education and sport. 2. method 2.1. participants the sample of the study consisted of a total of 212 male student-wrestlers, consisting of 140 national athletes, who continue their university education and whose age average is 21.09 (sd=3.38). the average year of the participants' sports career is 9.26 (sd=3.58) 2.2. data collection tools task and ego orientation in sport questionnaire: task and ego orientation in sport questionnaire developed by duda (1989a;1992) and duda and nicholls (1992) consists of a total of 13 items, 7 of which are about asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 290-294 292 task orientation and 6 of which are about ego orientation. the scale is a five-point likert type scale. in the scale analysis, the internal consistency of the scale was found to be .79 for task orientation and .81 for ego orientation (duda and whitehead, 1998). duda (1992) determined three-week test-retest reliability of the scale to be .68 for the task orientation and .75 for the ego orientation. adaptation study of the scale into turkish was performed by toros (2001;2004). in the study, the internal consistency of scale was found to be .87 for task orientation and .85 for ego orientation, and three-week test-retest reliability was calculated as .65 for task orientation and .72 for ego orientation. perceived motivational climate in sport questionnaire: perceived motivational climate in sport questionnaire developed by walling et al. (1993) consists of 21 items including 9 items for performance climate and 12 items for mastery climate. the scale is a five-point likert type scale. in the scale analysis, the internal consistency of the scale was found to be .73 (selfriz et al., 1992) and .84 (walling et al., 1993) for performance climate and .80 (selfriz et al., 1992) and .81 (walling et al., 1993) for mastery climate. the adaptation study of the scale for turkish athletes was conducted by toros (2001). in the study, the internal consistency of the scale was determined to be .84 for mastery climate and .90 for performance climate, and three-week test-retest reliability was found as .66 for the mastery climate and .74 for the performance climate. 2.3. data analysis analyses were performed by using spss (version 20.0). descriptive statistics including means, standard deviations, bivariate correlation, and linear regression were calculated for the study variables. 3. results table-1. goal orientation and motivational climate scores of student-wrestlers n mean sd ego orientation 212 3.43 .70 task orientation 212 3.78 .67 performance climate 212 3.62 .51 mastery climate 212 4.29 .63 table 1 presents the goal orientation and the motivational climate scores of student-athletes. results show that the ego orientation scores mean is 3.43, the task orientation scores mean is 3.78, the performance climate scores mean is 3.62, and the mastery climate scores mean is 4.29 of student-athletes. table-2. relationships between goal orientation and motivational climate ego orientation task orientation performance climate mastery climate ego orientation r p n 1 212 .56 .00 212 .44 .00 212 .30 .00 212 task orientation r p n .56 .00 212 1 212 .28 .00 212 .46 .00 212 relationships between the goal orientation and the motivational climate of student-athletes were analysed by bivariate correlation. as seen in table 1, the greatest correlations between the goal orientation and the motivational climate is observed between ego orientation-performance climate (r=0.44, p˂0.01) and task orientation-mastery climate (r=0.46, p˂0.01). table-3. regression analysis on predicting ego orientation variable b standart error beta t p constant performance climate 1.24 .60 .31 .09 .44 3.99 7.10 .00 .00 r = 0.44, r² = 0.19, f (1, 210) = 50.02, p = .00 table 3 presents the regression analysis of performance climate on predicting ego orientation. the result reveals that performance climate is a significant predictor of ego orientation (r = 0.44, r² = 0.19, f (1, 210) = 50.02, p ˂ 0 .01) and it can be stated 19% of the total variance related to ego orientation is accounted by the performance climate. table-4. regression analysis on predicting task orientation variable b standard error beta t p constant mastery climate 1.71 .48 .28 .07 .46 6.03 7.41 .00 .00 r = 0.46, r² = 0.21, f (1, 210) = 54.89, p = .00 table 4 presents the regression analysis of mastery climate on predicting task orientation. as can be seen in the table, mastery climate is a significant predictor of task orientation (r = 0.46, r² = 0.21, f (1, 210) = 54.89, p ˂0.01) and it can be stated 21% of the total variance related to task orientation is accounted by the mastery climate. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 290-294 293 table-5. relationships between age, career and goal orientation and motivational climate ego orientation task orientation performance climate mastery climate age r p n -.16 .02 212 -.25 .00 212 -.08 .23 212 -.22 .00 212 career r p n -.17 .01 212 -.15 .03 212 -.07 .30 212 -.15 .03 212 in table 5, relationships between the age, the career and the goal orientation and the motivational climate were analysed by bivariate correlation. results put forward that the age is negatively and significantly related to the goal orientation (ego orientation, r= -.16, p˂0.05, task orientation r= -.25, p˂0.01). besides, the results also reveal that the age is negatively and significantly (except performance climate) related to the motivational climate (performance climate, r= -.08, p˃0.05, mastery climate, r= -.22, p˂0.01). when assessed in terms of the career, similarly to the age, the career is negatively and significantly related to the goal orientation (ego orientation, r= .17, p˂0.05, task orientation r= -.15, p˂0.05) and motivational climate (except performance climate) (performance climate, r= -.07, p˃0.05, mastery climate, r= -.15, p˂0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion in this study, it was aimed to investigate the goal orientation of the student-athletes studying at universities and their perception of the motivational climate and to reveal the relationship between these two concepts and also to determine the relationship between age and career variable and the perceptions of goal orientation and motivational climate of the student-athletes. the findings obtained in the study suggest that the student-athletes were task orientated and perceived the motivational climate as mastery climate. in line with this finding, it can be said that the student-athletes included in the sample concentrated on skill development, skill learning, mastering in the task and hard work, rather than focusing on their own superior skills and defeating their opponents with less effort in goal setting process. in addition, in the study, the findings related to the relationship between goal orientation of the studentathletes and their perception of motivational climate demonstrated that the greatest correlations between the goal orientation and the motivational climate are observed between ego orientation-performance climate and task orientation-mastery climate. as a result of the correlational results gathered in the study, it was revealed that performance climate is a meaningful predictor of ego orientation, and mastery climate is a meaningful predictor of task orientation. the findings obtained in the study show parallelism with the results of the studies in the literature. ames (1992) stated that the motivational climate is a structure that is shaped by the attitudes and behaviors of coaches. likewise, roberts and ommundsen (1996) stated that motivational climate includes the influence of important people on team cultures, while shaw et al. (2005) stated that external factors such as coaches are also influential on the motivational climate. arıburun and aşçı (2005) stated that the motivational climate is related to how the training environment is perceived in physical education and sports. based on these findings, it can be said that individuals such as teachers and coaches having an influence on student-athletes may have a directing role in goal setting process with the motivational climate they create. in this way, by creating a mastery climate in the processes of skill learning and skill development, the concepts of effort and diligence are highlighted in the goal setting process of student-athletes and so it can be ensured that process-oriented goals can be set. besides, for student-athletes with special abilities, a performance climate can be created so that individuals can be helped to focus on their own superior abilities and contributed to set result-oriented goals based on these abilities. as can be seen in this study and some others, the motivational climate is a concept which affects the goal orientations of student-athletes. in this direction, a unifying model can be created to enable individuals to set both ego-oriented and task-oriented goals. indeed, an environment that will be created by only focusing on the performance climate may cause student-athletes to concentrate on their superior abilities and determine goals in order to overcome their opponents by means of these abilities, in other words, to determine only the resultsoriented goals and to ignore the concepts of diligence and effort by distracting them from the process. on the other hand, a mastery climate, where effort, diligence and hard work are the primary focus in new skills learning and skill development, which contributes to the emergence of process-oriented goals, can contribute to setting more desired goals by ensuring that the student-athlete focuses not only the result itself but also the process. as is known, the sport is both process-oriented and result-oriented. while process-oriented goals lead individuals to situations such as hard work, skill development, effort, and co-operation, result-oriented goals contribute to individuals to achieve success. therefore, a combination of mastery and performance climate that is created according to right time and place can contribute to setting both task-oriented and performance-oriented goals in the goal-setting process of student-athletes. another finding of the study indicates that there is a negative, meaningful relationship between the age variable and goal orientation of student-athletes. it was seen that as age increases, ego orientation and task orientation decreases. in the light of this finding, it can be seen that the age variable has a negative effect on the goal orientations of student-athletes. in order to make generalizations about this finding, it is certain that conducting new studies is essential. moreover, in the case that similar results are found in the new researches to be carried out, individuals from lower age groups and upper age groups can be selected and the underlying reason for this situation can be examined in depth by individual interviews. similar to the age variable, as the year of studentathletes' careers increases, their goal orientation decreases. the reason for this situation may be because the achievements based on a career may make student-athletes satisfied, yet it is clear that new studies are needed to generalize the findings. finally, it was found out that there is a negative relationship between age and career variable and the student-athletes' perception of motivational climate, and the relationship between age and career variable and the student-athletes' perception of mastery climate is negative and statistically meaningful. this asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 290-294 294 finding suggests that age and career variable, as in the goal orientation, may also have a negative effect on motivational climate perceptions of student-athletes. the results of the study present some implications for both practitioners (teachers, coaches) and researchers. these are as follows: teachers and coaches are the main actors in creating a motivational climate in physical education and sports environments; 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20relationship%20of%20perceived%20motivational%20climate%20to%20intrinsic%20motivation%20and%20beliefs%20about%20success%20in%20basketball http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jsep.14.4.375 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=rellability%20and%20validity%20of%22%20task%20and%20ego%20orienta%20tion%20in%20sport%20questionnaire-teosq-%22%20for%20turkish%20athletes https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20relationship%20between%20goal%20orientation%20and%20perceived%20motivational%20climate%20among%20high%20school%20volleyball%20players%20in%20turkey https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20perceived%20motivational%20climate%20in%20sport%20questionnaire:%20construct%20and%20predictive%20validity http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jsep.15.2.172 197 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 197-200, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.197.200 does motivational music influence maximal bench press strength and strength endurance? bereket köse1 1sirnak üniversity, school of pyhsical education and sports, sirnak, turkey abstract the purpose of this study is to examine whether motivational music selected by participants has an effect on maximal bench press strength and strength endurance (number of repetitions to failure with a 60% of 1-rm). 26 healthy male students with an average age of 23.92±2.05, average weight of 73.57±4.14 and average height of 178.57±3.65 who were having at least three strength workouts a week participated in the study voluntarily. the participants were grouped in two as experimental group and control group. the measurements of the experimental group were taken in two different sessions as with music and without music with 1 repetition maximum and number of repetitions to failure with 60% of 1 repetition maximum. the two sessions of the control group were conducted without music. at the end of the study, it was found that in experimental group motivational music was not effective on maximal strength (1rm) (p>0.05), while it was found to increase strength endurance statistically by 3.9% (p<0.05). in the control group, no statistically significant difference was found in both sessions (p>0.05). as a conclusion, it is stated that listening to fast music creates an ergogenic acute effect and it is recommended to use music during strength workout to have a better strength endurance performance. keywords: motivational music, strength, bench press. citation | bereket köse (2018). does motivational music influence maximal bench press strength and strength endurance? asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 197-200. history: received: 25 april 2018 revised: 16 may 2018 accepted: 18 may 2018 published: 21 may 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 198 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 198 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 198 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 199 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 199 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 199 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.61.2017.510.171.181&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5315-9195 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5315-9195 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 197-200 198 1. introduction music has been in people’s lives for centuries and human beings have continually used music and are still continuing to use music in various ways. music has sometimes been used to heal patients physically and mentally (bally et al., 2003; habibzadeh, 2011; uyar and akın, 2011) sometimes it has been used to encourage shopping customers to shop more (radocy and boyle, 2003) and sometimes it has been used to help people express their feelings to others (somakçi, 2003). recently, it has been shown by some authors that music develops physical performance, physiological parameters and moods of people who take exercise. studies have reported that exercise with music positively influences rate of perceived exertion, increases running exhaustion time and positively influences participants psychologically and physiologically (mohammadzadeh et al., 2008; karageorghis et al., 2009; thakur and yardi, 2013). terry et al. (2012) stated that motivational music increases exhaustion time while running by 18.1% when compared with no music. in addition, it has been found that mood is more positive in motivational music, exercise with music decreases o2 consumption with a rate of 1-7% and motivational music influences running economy better. music needs to have some characteristics to be able to stimulate the person and influence exercise performance. karageorghis et al. (1999) stated that it is important for musical rhythm, music type and harmony, cultural effect and musical tempo to be 120 beat per minute (bpm) and higher so that music can encourage effort. studies conducted have generally examined the effect of music on cardiovascular performance and anaerobic performance; however, the effect of music on strength has been examined by a few researchers. thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of motivational music on maximal bench press strength and strength endurance. 2. method 2.1. research group 26 healthy male students studying at sirnak university with an average age of 23.92±2.05, average weight of 73.57±4.14 and average height of 178.57±3.65 who were having at least three strength workouts a week participated in the study voluntarily. the participants were randomly assigned in two as experimental group (average age 24.69±1.84; average weight 72.69±6.67; average height 176.61±3.19; n:13) and control group (average age 23.15±1.95; average weight 74.46±3.50; average height 180.53±3.09; n:13). research procedures were approved by the ethics commission of the university of sirnak. the participants who had any upper extremity injuries were not included in the study. the participants were asked not to have intense workout, not to consume alcohol and supplements that can produce any ergogenic effects at least 48 hours before the measurements. 2.2. procedure two measurements were performed on each group at the same hours of the day with one week in-between the measurements (test 1 and test 2). experimental group performed the tests with and without music. control group performed both tests without music. in the first measurements (test 1) strength endurance (number of repetitions to failure with a 60% of 1-rm) of the control group was measured without music after 1 repetition maximum (1rm) and 5-minute long passive rest. in the experimental group, strength endurance (number of repetitions to failure with a 60% of 1-rm) and repetition maximum (1rm) were found by dividing the group in two as with music and without music in test 1 in order to prevent learning. one week later (test 2), 1rm and strength endurance measurements of the control group were made again with no music. in the experimental group, the participants whose measurements were taken with music in test 1 did not listen to music, while those whose measurements were taken without music in test 1 listened to music. the participants participated in the tests with the motivational music they selected and the group that listened to music continued to listen to music with music players and ear phones from the warm-up period until the measurements ended. beats of the music (tempo) were adjusted as >120 bpm as recommended by terry and karageorghis (2011). according to this, it is emphasized that music with 120 and higher bpm, strong beats, obvious sound flow and rhythmical characteristics motivates and activates the individual (terry and karageorghis, 2011). the music used in the study was adjusted between 135140 bpm in order to standardize all the music. 2.3. measurements in the first session (test 1), the participants first had a light run of 10 minutes on the treadmill by listening to music they selected and after this, they had 5 minutes of static and dynamic stretching. later, the participants performed bench press to familiarize with lower loads. 1 repetition maximum (1rm) and strength endurance test (60% of 1rm) were found according to nsca guidelines. while measuring 1rm bench press and strength endurance, the participants lied back with their heads, shoulders and hips on the sitting bench and legs touching the ground. the arms gripped the bar a bit wider than the shoulder width and for safety purposes, one person accompanied with the descending and ascending bar. for the start position, the participants lowered the bar to the point that could touch their chest and continued to lift until the elbows came to the full extension position. during the movement, the participant’s head, shoulder and hip continued to touch the sitting bench (miller and conditioning association, 2012). 2.4. statistical analysis statistical analysis was performed with spss-20 version. kolmogorov-smirnov test was conducted to find out whether the data were normally distributed. paired sample t-test was conducted to measure the differences between the groups. p<0.05 confidence interval was used for statistical procedures. 3. results table 1 shows the 1rm and strength endurance (number of repetitions to failure with a 60% of 1-rm) of the experimental and the control group. it was found that listening to motivational music influenced 60% of 1rm statistically better in the experimental group when compared with no music state (p<0.05). however, listening to music does not influence maximal strength (p>0.05). in the control group, the measurements of the participants asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 197-200 199 were made in test 1 and test 2 without listening to music and in both sessions, no statistical changes were found in 1rm and 60% of 1rm (p>0.05). table-1.1.maximal strength and 60% of maximal strength and bench press performance values of the experimental and control group test 1 test 2 p mean ± sd mean ± sd experimental group; n:13 1rm (kg) 60% of 1rm 67.44 ± 2.61 21.84 ± 0.98 67.61 ± 2.57 22.69 ± 1.18 0.304 0.005* control group; n:13 1rm (kg) 60% of 1rm 70.11 ± 5.30 20.38 ± 1.38 70.46 ± 5.44 20.61 ± 1.44 0.121 0.427 *p<0.05. 60% of 1rm: the number of repetitions to failure with 60% of 1 repetition maximum rm: repetition maximum 4. discussion a great number of studies conducted in literature have examined the effect of different types and tempo of music on endurance performance and anaerobic capacity, while a few studies have researched the influence of music on strength and strength endurance. the purpose of this study is to research the influence of participants’ listening to motivational music they selected during workout on maximal strength and strength endurance and to contribute to literature. this study conducted found that listening to music before and during exercise did not increase maximal strength. some researchers predict that the reason why music does not increase maximal strength can be that music does not have an influence in maximal strength and that there is no rhythmical compound in one repetition at high load. another reason predicted to decrease the effect of music on performance is the maximum intensity of 1rm test (simpson and karageorghis, 2006; bateman and bale, 2008; bartolomei et al., 2015). some researchers state that when work load is too high, the individual’s attention is directed to the painful effects of effort and since the attention is not focused on music, the individual cannot make use of music during exercise (as cited in: waterhouse et al. (2010)). in loads with maximal strength or close to maximal strength, the organism gets under stress due to the load on the organism and the central nervous system gives all its attention to overcome this load in order to overcome the stress. as a result of this, it is predicted that music does not increase performance during maximal exercise since the brain cannot pay attention to music. an interesting result of this study is that motivational music increases strength endurance (bench press repetitions to failure with 60% of 1rm) by 3.9%. in a similar study, bartolomei et al. (2015) found that music did not influence maximal strength but increased strength endurance by 5.8%. crust (2004) reported that listening to music during strength workout would ensure higher muscle endurance and on the contrary to listening to music before exercise, listening to music during the whole workout increased strength endurance time. karageorghis et al. (1996) reported that motivational music created a positive effect on grip strength. unlike these studies, biagini et al. (2012) reported that music selected by participants did not increase performance in bench press strength endurance. in our study, the participants started to listen to self-selected motivational music and they continued to listen to this music during exercise because starting to listen to music before exercise simulates individuals and helps to motivate them. studies conducted have reported that starting to listen to motivational music with warm up before starting to exercise increased strength endurance time and short term maximal performance (crust, 2004; chtourou et al., 2012). listening to self-selected music with exercise was reported to increase performance when compared with listening to non self-selected music (nakamura et al., 2010). thus, it is recommended that in order to increase performance, athletes and individuals who have exercise should listen to self-selected music during the exercise session starting from the warm up. 5. conclusion in this study conducted, acutely 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abstract the study was carried out to discover the relationship between the performance characteristics (20 m. running, vertical jump, standing long jump, ball throwing, shuttle run) and the body mass index of 8-10 year-old school children. 3772 children (1995 male and 1777 female) aged 8-10 from ankara participated in the study voluntarily. to measure the height of the children a stadiometer with ± 1mm graduation (holtain, uk) and to measure their weight a stand art medical scale with ± 0.1kg readability were used. after the height and weight measurements, body mass indexes (bmi) of the children were calculated. then, 20 m. running, vertical jump, standing long jump, ball throwing, shuttle run tests were applied to the children. to compare the mean values and to determine the differences between the groups t test was applied and statistical correlation analysis was done to study the relationship between the body mass index (bmi) and the performance characteristics(20 m. running, vertical jump, standing long jump, ball throwing, shuttle run). a statistically meaningful difference was defined between the female and the male participants when their mean points in body weight and height, body mass index, vertical jump, standing long jump, 20 m. run, ball throwing, and shuttle run(p<0.05) compared. in this comparison, while the average points of the male children in body weight and height, body mass index, vertical jump, standing long jump, ball throwing, and shuttle run were higher, their average points in 20 m. run were lower than the female children. it was observed that there was a relationship at a meaningful level and with a negative tendency between the points of body mass index of the male and female children and their vertical jump(r=-0.046, p<0.01), and standing long jump(r=-0.046, p<0.01) and shuttle run points(r= -0.229, p< 0.01). as to the relationship between the body mass index and 20 m run(r= 0.094, p< 0.01) and ball throwing (r= 0.286, p< 0.01), it was meaningful with a positive tendency. in our study, it was determined that the male children had better results than the female children according to the test results related to the physical characteristics and performance measurements. it has been concluded that the differences found stem from the gender difference and depending upon the environmental and cultural factors at these ages, the male children are thought to have a better development in terms of performance characteristics. keywords: performance test. citation | vedat ayan (2018). a study on the relationship between the performance characteristics and the body mass index of 8-10 year-old children. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 108-113. history: received: 14 february 2018 revised: 2 march 2018 accepted: 5 march 2018 published: 7 march 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 109 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 109 3. data collection............................................................................................................................................................................... 109 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 110 5. dıscussıon and result ................................................................................................................................................................... 111 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 112 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.108.113&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1887-5334 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 108-113 109 1. introduction it has been known that the participation in sports and physical activities in childhood period is important for improvement in general public health (hekim, 2014). having a sporting habit in childhood period minimizes the probable future physical, metobolical and functional health risks (taģkınöz, 2011). for that reason, in the studies it has been emphasised that the necessary precautions should be taken to increase the physical activity levels of children both at school and after school (ġimģek et al., 2005; ağca and koçoğlu, 2010; beģikci, 2010; altunkan, 2013). it has been seen that today’s children are physically less active and heavier and have more skinfold thicknesses than the children of our childhood period. when the reasons are considered sedentary apartment living, inadequate number of playgrounds, easy commuting, parents motivating their children play at home because of controlling them more easily, children’s spending their time in front of tv and on computers especially after classes during the school year are the first to come up (özer and özer, 2004). in addition to sedentary living style of children, the increase in the irregular fast food consumption habit causes to many health problems. it has been known that when sports, physical activity and exercise program are applied to the children along with diet, it decreases many health problems. beside being a physical problem and having a negative effect on motor skills and performance, fatness in children stemming from especially sedentary lifestyle and unbalanced dieting is also considered as a psychological problem. since all these medical, psychological, social and physical problems mentioned above are known, encouraging children to have a sporting habit and a physically active life style at early ages is significant in terms of creating a healthy society in future. concerning this matter, in our study the relationship between body mass index and sportive performance-determinants in healthy and active lifeof children is aimed to study. 2. method 3772 children (1995 male and 1777 female) aged 8-10 from ankara participated in the study voluntarily.in our study body height and weight measurements were taken and vertical jump, standing long jump, 20 m speed run, ball throwing and shuttle run tests were applied. 3. data collection body height and body weight: to measure the height of the children a stadiometer with ± 1mm graduation (holtain, uk) was used. body height measurements were taken in “cm” after the participants took anatomic position barefoot and heels touching each other and held their breath.to measure body weight, a stand art medical scale with ± 0.1kg readability was used. the body weight measurements of the particapants were taken in “kg” while they were barefoot in anatomic position in shorts and t-shirts (lohman et al., 1988). 3.1. body mass i̇ndex (bmi) after the body height and weight measurements of the children had been taken, bmi (body mass index) were calculated using the following formula. bmi= body weight (kg) / body height (m)2 (bulgan and baģar, 2018) 3.2. vertical jump test vertical jump test; the athlete tried to jump as high as possible in front of a platform on the wall. before the test, standing reach height of the athlete was measured. after the test the difference between the standing reach height and jump height was calculated and vertical jump distance was recorded in cm. the athletes were tested twice and the best scores were recorded (sevim, 1997). 3.3. standing long jump after the long jump done using two foot take off and two legs coordinated, the distance between the start line and the last track of the athlete was measured in cm. the athletes were tested twice and the best scores were recorded (sevim, 1997). 3.4. 20 m speed run test the children ran a maximum sprint on a 20 m limited track. the running time was recorded in seconds using a stopwatch. two trials were given and the best time was recorded (sevim, 1997). 3.5. ball throwing test the line where the children would throw the ball is marked the children are given the instructions related to the test. all the arrangments are done fully. the children take their place at the line, medicine ball held by two hands is brought to the back of the head. after bending the body slightly backward, the ball is released at the furthest distance above the head by flinging the arms forward. the athlete is tested twice after a two-minute interval and the best result is recorded (sevim, 1997). 3.6. 20 m shuttle run test it is a 20 m distance shuttle run test. the running speed is controlled using a tape recorder giving signals or beeping at certain intervals. test is ended when the athlete could not catch the signal twice or quits the test (sevim, 1997). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 108-113 110 3.7. statistical analysis independent samples t test was used to compare the mean values of the groups and determine the difference, and correlation statistical analysis was used to study the relationship between performance characteristics (20 m speed run, vertical jump, standing long jump, ball throwing and shuttle run ) and body mass index (bmi). spss 22 program eas used assess the data collected. 4. findings table-1. min.-max. in terms of gendermean values and t test results gender n min. max. o ss t p body weight(kg) female 1777 15,00 83,00 29,56 6,45 -5,113 0,00* male 1995 16,00 71,00 30,67 6,90 body height (cm) female 1777 109,00 159,00 131,86 6,32 -5,721 0,00* male 1995 104,00 156,00 133,01 5,99 body mass index (kg\m2) female 1777 10,81 40,59 16,88 2,76 -3,578 0,00* male 1995 9,40 32,86 17,21 2,99 vertical jump (cm) female 1777 11,00 38,00 17,27 4,09 -4,989 0,00* male 1995 9,00 40,00 18,03 5,28 standing long jump (cm) female 1777 30,00 165,00 94,72 16,83 -23,089 0,00* male 1995 30,00 210,00 108,14 18,86 20 m. run (sec.) female 1777 3,80 7,74 4,76 ,47 11,479 0,00* male 1995 3,26 4,10 4,47 ,94 ball throwing (cm) female 1777 11,00 186,00 78,16 23,39 -17,020 0,00* male 1995 10,00 233,00 92,60 28,66 shuttle run (number) female 1777 6,00 49,00 19,19 7,37 -19,673 0,00* male 1995 3,00 79,00 25,13 10,99 *p<0,05 a meaningful difference was found between the mean body weight points depending upon the gender of the children; the mean body weight value of the male children (mean= 30.67, sd=6.90) was higher (t= -5.113, p<0.05, table 1) than the mean body weight value of the female children (mean= 29.56, sd=6.45). a meaningful difference was found between the mean body height points depending upon the gender of the children; the mean body height value of the male children (mean= 133.01, sd=5.99) was higher (t= -5.721, p<0.05, table 1) than the mean body height value of the female children (mean= 131.86, sd=6.32). a meaningful difference was found between the mean body mass index points depending upon the gender of the children; the mean body mass index value of the male children (mean= 17.21, sd=2.99) was higher (t= -3.578, p<0.05, table 1) than the mean body mass index value of the female children (mean= 16.88, sd=2.76). a meaningful difference was found between the mean vertical jump points depending upon the gender of the children; the mean vertical jump value of the male children (mean= 18.03, sd=5.28) was higher (t= -4.989, p<0.05, table 1) than the mean vertical jump value of the female children (mean= 17.27, sd=4.09). a meaningful difference was found between the mean long jump points depending upon the gender of the children; the mean long jump value of the male children (mean= 108.14, sd=18.86) was higher (t= -23.089, p<0.05, table 1) than the mean long jump value of the female children (mean= 94.72, sd=16.83). a meaningful difference was found between the mean 20 m run points depending upon the gender of the children; the mean 20 m run value of the male children (mean= 4.47, sd=0.94) was lower (t= 11.479, p<0.05, table 1) than the mean 20 m run value of the female children (mean= 4.76, ss=0.47). a meaningful difference was found between the mean shuttle run points depending upon the gender of the children; the mean shuttle run value of the male children (mean= 25.13, sd=10.99) was higher (t= -19.673, p<0.05, table 1) than the mean shuttle run value of the female children (mean= 19.19, sd=7.37). tablo-2.the relationship between body mass index and performance values of the female children vertical jump (cm) long jump (cm) 20 m. run (sec) ball throwing (cm) shuttle run(number) body mass index (kg\m2) r -,015 -,075 ,108 ,263 -,225 p 0,518 0,001** 0,000** 0,000** 0,000** n 1777 1777 1777 1777 1777 **p<0,01 it was found out that there was statistically no significant difference with negative tendency between the body mass index and the vertical jump points of the female children (r= -0.015, p> 0.05). while a relationship with a negative tendency between the body mass index and long jump (r= -0.075, p<0.01) and shuttle run points (r=0.225, p<0.01) was observed, a relationship with a positive tendency was noticed between the body mass index and 20 run (r= 0.108, p<0.01) and ball throwing points (r=0.263, p<0.01). table-3.the relationship between body mass index and performance values of the male children vertical jump (cm) long jump (cm) 20 m. run (sec) ball throwing (cm) shuttle run (number) body mass index r -,074 -,175 ,112 ,295 -,281 p 0,001** 0,000** 0,000** 0,000** 0,000** n 1995 1995 1995 1995 1995 **p<0,01 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 108-113 111 a meaningful relationship with a negative tendency between the body mass index points of the male children and their vertical jump (r= -0.074, p<0.01), long jump (r= -0.175, p< 0.01) and shuttle run points (r= -0.281, p< 0.01) was found. a meaningful relationship with positive tendency was determined between their body mass index points and 20 m run (r= 0.112, p< 0.01) and ball throwing points (r= 0.295, p< 0.01) table-4.the relationship between body mass index and performance values of the male and female children vertical jump (cm) long jump (cm) 20 m. run (sec) ball throwing (cm) shuttle run (number) body mass index r -,046 -,104 ,094 ,286 -,229 p 0,005** 0,000** 0,000** 0,000** 0,000** n 3772 3772 3772 3772 3772 **p<0,01 it was found out that there was a meaningful relationship with a negative tendency between the body index points of the male and female children and their vertical jump (r=-0.046, p<0.01),long jump (r= -0.104, p< 0.01) and shuttle run points (r= -0.229, p< 0.01). as to the relationship between the body mass index points and 20 m run (r= 0.094, p< 0.01) and ball throwing points (r= 0.286, p< 0.01), it was meaningful with a positive tendency. bmi dispersions of the female and male children are shown in graphic 1 and graphic 2. graphic-1. dispersion of the bmi of the female children graphic-2. dispersion of the bmi of the male children. 5. dıscussıon and result today, sport might be accepted as one of the fundamental elements of a healthy and a balanced life and also one of the most useful social activities. especially sportive activities done during childhood period have an important role in the development and preservation of a healthy physical structure. regular sporting has a great importance in a child’s healthy and balanced development. every child should be engaged in a certain physical activity in order to have a healthy growth and development (açıkada and ergen, 1990). in addition, the acquisition of sports consciousness during childhood and the increase of physical activity together with sports education in the school environment is an important factor in achieving a healthier structure for children. in our study, the mean measurements of body weight and height were found as 29.56±6.45 kg, 131.86±6.32 cm for female and 30.67±6.90 kg, 133.01±5.99 cm for male children and a statistically meaningful difference was found(p<0.05). in the study on the health and performance profiles of the athletes at training centers, the mean values of the body height and weight of the 9 year-old female and male athletes were found as 27.26±4.03 kg, 129.77±4.70 cm and 24.13±1.82 kg, 125.55±3.32 cm consecutively (beģikci, 2010). polat, y at al in their study on assessment of physical fitness of footballer children found body weight and height mean values of 9 year old female and male athletes as 27.26±4.03 kg, 129.77±4.70 cm(females) and 24.13±1.82 kg, 125.55±3.32 cm (males)(yahya et al., 2003). their study results are not similar to our findings. in our study, the mean measurements of the body mass index were found as 16.88±2.76 for female and 17.21±2.99 for male children and a statistically meaningful difference was found between the measurements (p<0.05). dursun güler at all in their studythe assessment of 8-10 year-old female turkish children’s physical fitness related to health and the normsfound body mass index measurement as 17,36 ±2,46 for 9 year-old female children (güler et al., 2007). aksel çelġk at all in their study –the assessment of physical and motoric characteristics of 7-9 year old secondary school studentsfound body mass index measurement of 9 year old females as 16.51±2.44 and as 17.65±2.64 for males (aksel et al., 2013). their study results are similar to our findings. in our study, the mean measurements of vertical jump were found as 17.27±4.09 cm for female and 18.03±5.28 cm for male children and a statistically meaningful difference was found between the measurements (p<0.05). polat, y at al in their study on assessment of physical fitness of footballer children found vertical jump mean measurement values of 9 year old male athletes as 26.58±4.62 cm (yahya et al., 2003). ömer alici at all in their studya comparison of some parameters of 13-15 aged wrestlers, handballers, and children with a sedentary asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 108-113 112 lifestyle-found vertical jump mean value of the participants with sedantarybehaviour as 36.00±4.98 cm (ömer and rüçhan, 2015). their study results are not similar to our findings. in our study, the mean measurements of standing long jump were found as 94.72±16.83 cm for female and 108.14±18.68 cm for male children and a statistically meaningful difference was found between the measurements (p<0.05). ayģegülevren at al in their studya comparison of physical characteristics of 7-8 aged female gymnastic athletes and the same aged females not participating in sport activitiesfound standing long jump mean value as 122±0.12 cm (ayģegül and sürhat, 2005). hacıahmet pekel at all in their study-the assesment of the physical fitness test results of the children engaged in athletics and some anthropometric characteristicsfound the mean standing long jump measurements found as 163.2±9.4 cm for 10 year old females and 171.3±17.3 cm for 10 year old males (haci et al., 2007). their study results are not similar to our findings. in our study, the mean measurements of 20m run were found as 4.76±0.47 sec for female and 4.47±0.94 sec for male children and a statistically meaningful difference was found between the measurements (p<0.05). gamze erġkoğlu at all in their studythe assesment of performance parameters with eurofit test battery according to gender and age groups at 7-12 year old childrenfound 20 m sprint test mean values as 4.78±0.6 sec. for females and 5.94±7.4 sec for males (gamze et al., 2009). hacıahmet pekel at all in their study-the assesment of the physical fitness test results of the children engaged in athletics and some anthropometric characteristics found 20 m sprint test mean values as5.34±0.06 sec. for 10 year old females and 5.15±0.22 for 10 year old males (haci et al., 2007). their study results are not similar to our findings. in our study, the mean measurements of ball throwing test were found as 78.16±23.39 cm for female and 92.60±28.66 cm for male children and a statistically meaningful difference was found between the measurements (p<0.05). arabacı, r at all in their study found mean ball throwing test value found as 5.33±0.94 m for 9-10 year-old females and 5,66±1,12 m for 9-10 year-old males (arabacı et al., 2008). gül at all, in their study on 10-12 year old male children, found mean ball throwing value as 5,07±0,92 m for subject group and 6,14±1,25 m for control group (gül et al., 2006). their study results are not similar to our findings. in our study, the mean measurements of shuttle run test were found as (n=1776) 19.19±7.37 times for female and 25.13±10.99 times for male children and a statistically meaningful difference was found between the measurements (p<0.05). gamze erġkoğlu at all in their studythe assesment of performance parameters with eurofit test battery according to gender and age groups at 7-12 year old childrenfound shuttle run test mean values as 27.5±5.40 times for females and 33.28±5.38 times for males (gamze et al., 2009). in the study on the health and performance profiles of the athletes at training centers, shuttle run test mean values of the 9 year-old children were found as 46.89±4.78 times for females and 37.71±6.26 for male athletes (t.c prime ministry directorate general of youth and sports directorate of health affairs, 2010). their study results are not similar to our findings. the best explanation for the gender difference at motor performance is “social and cultural differences”(özer and özer, 2004). as a conclusion, in our study, it was determined that the male children had better results than the female children according to the test results related to the physical characteristics and performance measurements. it is concluded that the differences found stem from the gender factor and the male children have a better development in terms of performance characteristics due to the environmental and cultural factors at these ages. references 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unpublished master's thesis, muğla sıtkı koçman university social sciences institute. yahya, p., ç. vedat, ġ. mustafa and y. rahmi, 2003. the assessment of physical fitness of footballer children. iu journal of sports sciences, 11(3): 196-199. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 13 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 1, 13-17, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.13.17 effect of verbal feedback in twelve weeks handball training on self-efficacy and life satisfaction turhan toros1 1school of physical education and sports, coaching education department, mersin university, turkey abstract the aim of this study was investigate the effect of verbal feedback on self-efficacy and life satisfaction. a total of 30 students as experimental group (n=15, mean age= 20.13±1.79) and control group (n=15, mean age=20.57±1.62) with similar characteristics were included in the study. self-efficacy scale that originally developed by riggs et al. (1994) and adapted to turkish population by öcel (2002) and life satisfaction scale that originally developed by diener et al. (1985) and adapted to turkish population by yetim (1991) were used. shapiro-wilk test was interpreted for normality in data analysis and it was observed that the distribution was not normal. and so wilcoxon marked rank test was used to determine the development and skills of the groups themselves. the mann-whitney u test was used to assess the development of the experimental and control group in terms of pretest and posttest scores. cronbach alpha reliability analysis was also performed for the scales used in the research. according to research findings, there was a statistically significant difference between test and control groups posttest, selfefficacy values and life satisfaction values (p <0.05). as a result, verbal feedback given to handball players over a twelve-week training period was found to have a positive effect on self-efficacy and life satisfaction. keywords: handball, feedback, verbal feedback, self-efficacy, life satisfaction. citation | turhan toros (2018). effect of verbal feedback in twelve weeks handball training on self-efficacy and life satisfaction. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 13-17. history: received: 14 december 2017 revised: 8 january 2018 accepted: 12 january 2018 published: 15 january 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 15 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 16 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 17 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.13.17&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8328-2925 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8328-2925 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 13-17 14 1. introduction the emphasis on the necessity of more objective investigations began to manifest itself in the early 1900s. it is based on learning that the active role of the past is to integrate with the situation in which day-to-day mankind is involved and to be able to adapt to the environment. the concept of learning leads people to behave in the future by reminding them of the past (howe, 2001). today, the need for learning of mankind is increasing (ormrod, 2013; sönmez, 2015). learning can take place in many places and in many ways. people want to realize learning for the satisfaction of his inner feelings at any moment of his life, like showing themselves, learning money, being famous, being successful at work or just to be able to grow trees (ormrod, 2013). learning; is defined in many different forms but in general defined as continuous changes that are independent of the genetic characteristics of the person and have the process of being affected by the environment (çelen, 1999; fidan, 2012) the continuity of behavior as a result of repeats and experiences (güney, 2014) or changes in the nervous system and therefore behavior with the person's experiences (carlson, 2011). therefore, the concept of motor learning can be explained in many ways. in addition to explaining the concept of motor learning in different ways, basically it is the capacity of the person in order to be able to make any move (schmidt and wrisberg, 2012). psychomotor behavior is all of the behaviors that allow the creation of a whole by combining the patterns and the coordinated operation of the muscles and minds that provide convenience to the individual at every moment of life. all of the patterns of psychomotor behavior, done correctly, quickly and in a series, are defined as skills (fidan, 2012). in the process of learning a skill, the practitioner achieves his goal in a long program, which is complicated and able to carry out many learning tasks. instructors use a variety of methods in the teaching of skills, trying to ensure that the practitioner learns to be successful. in this process, the instructor's most frequently used assistant is feedback given to the practitioner (schmidt and wrisberg, 2012). feedback is defined as any sensory information given to a practicing person at the moment of act or at the end of the act. according to schmidt and lee (2014) feedback is information about the performance of a person during or after his or her performance. according to singer (1975) feedback is information that one receives from sensory receptors about the end result of self-motion. in general, feedback is seen as a comparison between the applied skill and the target skill. feedback during the learning phase is confronted in two ways. the first is the internal feedback that can be continuously received from the senses without the need for external support by the practitioner as information coming from the proprioceptive senses, the muscles of the body sensation, and the joints or tendons (magill, 2010). the other is that the information about the detail or quality of movement is provided from external sources of the individual when the internal feedback is not enough about the action of the practitioner, which is often used by instructors in the teaching phase. external devices such as verbal and non-verbal forms, chronometers, videos provide feedback, etc. provided by the coach or teacher as external feedback. external feedback is shown as an important teaching assistant in many studies (zelaznik, 1996). external feedback is frequently used in two categories. some of them give conclusions about the movement and the extent to which someone has reached or failed to achieve the goal of the skill he has applied; and the other is the feedback given by all instructors and coaches to the practitioner about the kinematics of movement such as speed, flow, etc. (schmidt and wrisberg, 2012). it is stated that external feedback is mostly given as verbal expressions and visual presentations (coker, 2004). verbal feedback varies according to the manner of administration. according to mosston and ashworth (2000) verbal feedback has been grouped into four main categories: delivery patterns, corrective expressions, value expressions, unbiased expressions and ambiguous expressions. in addition to the verbal feedback given to the individual, feedback can also be provided by using video recording to give information about the kinematics of the movement that the person has applied through the progress of the technology and the use of various instruments today, and to see how the movement can be more effective. it has been shown that external feedback is more effective for target movement in studies conducted both verbally and visually, rather than verbally or visually alone (magill, 2010). bandura (1997) explains self-efficacy with the definition of selfsufficient, which describes the sense of competence and competence that one can feel during his life. it is stated that people's feelings of skill and feelings that they can feel can be perceived internally and affect their behaviors. people who feel they can handle themselves are much more comfortable, successful, confident and consistent in the things they face in their lives, while those with low self-esteem are seen to be helpless and therefore unhappy in their negative situations. they think that there are no energies or powers that can produce solutions to these negative situations that affect them. if they are in a negative situation, if they get bad results, they seem to have given up on what they have already done. bandura argues that person behavior change is not through reinforcements. at the same time, learning is described as monitoring other people and trying to imitate behavior as a model by taking them as a model (schultz, 2007). it is described as a skill that the person who learns a skill will be able to perform or a thought about how well he can do the action. an athlete who runs a short distance may have a high belief in himself at 100 m, but the same athlete may not be able to see it in a marathon run. a student who is good at social classes may not see enough competence in numerical courses in his / her own (stodolsky et al., 1991). a person with a high self-efficacy in jumping on a trampoline in a swimming class may not be self-efficient to go underwater from one side to the other (ormrod, 2013). life satisfaction is expressed as a result of people gazing at the difference between their anticipated lives and their existing lives by comparing their current lives with their expectation and being able to see their motivation at the top level and to be well with the life satisfaction (özer and karabulut, 2003). it is the evaluation of the information that exists in relation to the life of the person (diener et al., 1985). it is the emotional state that is evidenced by the consistency of the situation between the person's expectations and life (mutlu, 2012). it is life satisfaction that humans compare life situations they live in with life expectancies, and they are close to the expectations of their lives (turan, 2013). flanagan (1978) stated that factors affecting quality of life are physical and material wellbeing, human relations, social citizenship activities, personal development and satisfaction with their potential and recreation. it is presented through various researches that it is possible for the athlete to meet life expectancy by accessing the life satisfaction variable, the complicated and difficult movement that the athlete has just learned, and the achievement of the target behavior in the application result. sports psychology is a asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 13-17 15 versatile field that includes learning skills, cognitive and affective domains. for this reason, skills must be learned in the most accurate way in the learning of skills. in this research, the effect of verbal feedback on life satisfaction and self-efficacy was investigated, which is believed to increase the handball qualities of athletes and to have a great share in the learning of the skills that are subject to many researches all over the world. the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of verbal feedback, self-efficacy and life satisfaction on twelve-week training. 2. method 2.1. research group thirty male volunteers participated in the survey, which had never played handball and did not know any handball games. 15 students in 12-week training with verbal feedback in the experimental group and 15 students in 12-week training with no verbal feedback were included in the control group. the mean age of the research group; for the experimental group (20.13±1.79) and for the control group (20.57±1.62). experimental group participated handball training for 12 weeks, two days a week and 60 minutes per day. verbal feedback was given to experimental group during training. control group also participated handball training for 12 weeks, two days a week and 60 minutes per day with no verbal feedback. self-efficacy and life satisfaction scales were applied as pretest and after 12 weeks scales were applied again as posttest and the effects of verbal feedback were examined. 2.2. process the points to be noted in the practice of the handball training exercises explained by the trainer to the experimental group with verbal feedback. the number of repetitions and the duration of the training were the same as the control group. athletes were given at most 2 verbal feedbacks in the 4th practice after every 3rd set. in every training day, all athletes were given equal 15 verbal feedbacks. verbal feedback was determined according to handball training drills. 2.3. data collection 2.3.1. self-efficacy scale in this study, self-efficacy scale was used that developed by riggs et al. (1994). the self-efficacy scale was developed to measure the beliefs in their capacities of individuals. adapting the scale to turkish developed by öcel (2002) and the scale is composed of 10 items in total. the scale is evaluated on the 5th likert type and a single qualification score is obtained by adding the numerical values marked for the items. the lowest score that can be taken from the scale is 10, the highest score is 50 and the high score is considered as a strong self-efficacy belief. as calculated by riggs et al. (1994) and reported by other researchers, the internal consistency coefficient is .80. on the other hand, the internal consistency coefficient of the scale is calculated as .61. although this value is not high as expected, it is found to be sufficient level (öcel, 2002). internal consistency in the study was calculated as .92. 2.3.2. life satisfaction scale the life satisfaction scale was formed in the same way in 5 expressions. participants were asked to report their level of participation in each item according to a 7-point evaluation system (1 totally disagree-7 totally agree). test-retest reliability of the scale was found to be 0.58 in the four-year period and 0.58 in the six-year period (yetim, 1991). the turkish version of the scale developed by diener et al. (1985) was made by yetim (1991). the internal consistency of the scale in turkey is .78 (yetim, 1991) and the internal consistency in this study is calculated as .70. 2.4. data analysis descriptive statistics were used to determine the age and number of participants in the study groups. if the group size is less than 50, shapiro-wilk, if it is greater than 50, kolmogorov-smirnov tests are two tests used to determine normality. the distribution is normal in the case of p> .05 (aron and aron, 2003). the shapiro-wilk test was interpreted for normality. for the experimental group the distribution did not show a normality values below p <0.05 in all variables. the distribution did not show normality in all variables for bot experimental and control groups. the wilcoxon marked rank test was used to determine the development and skills of the groups themselves. the mann-whitney u test was used to assess the development of the experimental and control groups in terms of pre-test and post-test scores. cronbach alpha reliability analysis was also performed for the scales used in the research. significance level taken as p<.05. spss-22 statistical package program was used in the analysis of the data obtained in the research. 3. results table-1. pre-test and post-test self-efficacy findings of experimental group according to wilcoxon signed rank test. experimental group pretest–posttest selfefficacy n rank average rank sum z p negative rank 1a 5,00 5,00 0,941 0,321 positive rank 5b 2,00 13,00 equal 9c table 1 shows that there was no statistically significant difference between pre-test post-test self-efficacy values of the experimental group (z =0,941 p>.05). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 13-17 16 table-2. pre-test and post-test self-efficacy findings of control group according to wilcoxon signed rank test. control group pretest–posttest selfefficacy n rank average rank sum z p negative rank 6a 7.44 48.5 1.500 0,104 positive rank 7b 11.45 124.5 equal 2c table 2 shows that there was no statistically significant difference between pre-test post-test self-efficacy values of the control group (z =1,500 p>.05). table-3. pre-test and post-test life satisfaction findings of experimental group according to wilcoxon signed rank test. experimental group pretest– posttest life satisfaction n rank average rank sum z p negative rank 1a 4,00 6,00 0,734 0,493 positive rank 4b 3,50 9,00 equal 10c table 3 shows that there was no statistically significant difference between pre-test post-test life satisfaction values of the experimental group (z =0,734 p>.05). table-4. pre-test and post-test life satisfaction findings of control group according to wilcoxon signed rank test. control group pretest–posttest life satisfaction n rank average sum of rank z p negative rank 4a 8.92 31.68 0,958 0,354 positive rank 7b 7.67 66.50 equal 4c table 4 shows that there was no statistically significant difference between pre-test post-test life satisfaction values of the control group (z =0,958 p>.05). table-5. mann-whitney u test results for the comparison of the post test self-efficacy averages of the experimental and control groups. group n rank average sum of rank u p experimental 15 19,32 486,65 118,500 0,039 control 15 11,60 330,70 according to the results of mann whitney u, there was significant difference between the handball players’ self-efficacy means (u=118,5, p<.05). when rank order is taken into consideration, it is understood that handball players with verbal feedback have higher self-efficacy averages than other group. table-6. mann-whitney u test findings for comparison of life satisfaction averages of the experimental and control group group n rank average sum of rank u p experimental 15 19,27 528 104 0,008 control 15 9,73 311 according to the results of mann whitney u, there was significant difference between the handball players’ life satisfaction means (u=104, p<.05). when rank order is taken into consideration, it is understood that handball players with verbal feedback have higher life satisfaction averages than other group. 4. discussion and conclusion in comparison of the self-efficacy scores of the control and experimental groups, it was found that there was a significant difference between the self-efficacy mean scores of the handball players with verbal feedback and the handball players without verbal feedback in the result of twelve-week training. when the rank average is taken into consideration, it is seen that the rank average of the handball players in the experimental group is higher than the control group. according to these findings, in the eight-week training with verbal feedback, handball players are believed to be able to achieve success and to increase their belief in doing the same skills in the future. miçooğulları et al. (2015) investigated the exercise self-efficacy and exercise viewpoint of young adult individuals according to the gender and exercise behavior change stages. they found that individuals who regularly participate in exercises felt more efficient and they perceived exercise as a process of success. the findings of their study are similar to our study. comparing the mean scores of life satisfaction of the control and experimental groups, it was found that there was a significant difference between the scores of handball players with verbal feedback and others scores of twelve weeks of training. when the order average is taken into consideration, it is seen that the row average of the handballs in the experimental group is higher than the control group. according to these findings, verbal feedback during the twelve-week training period is believed to be beneficial when handball players are entrusted by professional coaches and enjoy the environment they are in, and that they can achieve success from the training they have applied. in the study of toros (2001) studying the effect of goal orientations on elite and non-elite male basketball players, goal orientation and motivational climate, difficulty level characteristics on life satisfaction, individuals asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 13-17 17 who are satisfied with life moderately satisfy this modesty, and that they prefer to have a sense of superiority. these findings are similar to our study. references aron, a. and e.n. aron, 2003. statistics for psychology. 3rd edn., upper saddle river, new jersey: prentice hall. bandura, a., 1997. self-efficacy: the exercise of control. new york: macmillan. carlson, n.r., 2011. physiological psychology. 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(in turkish). doctoral thesis. i̇zmir: ege university, social sciences institute. zelaznik, h.n., 1996. advances in motor learning and control. champaign: human kinetics. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20satisfaction%20with%20life%20scale https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=a%20research%20approach%20to%20improving%20our%20quality%20of%20life http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.33.2.138 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.33.2.138 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=examinations%20of%20young%20adults’%20exercise%20self-efficacy%20and%20decisional%20balance%20with%20regard%20to%20gender%20and%20exercise%20stage%20of%20change https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=satisfaction%20of%20life%20in%20elderly%20individuals https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=development%20and%20validation%20of%20self-efficacy%20and%20outcome%20expectancy%20scales%20for%20job-related%20applications http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013164494054003026 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=student%20views%20about%20learning%20math%20and%20social%20studies http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1162880 121 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 121-127, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.121.127 the ‘push and pull’ factors of distributed leadership: exploring views of headteachers across two countries dandy george dampson1  evelyn ama frempong2 ( corresponding author) 1university of education, winneba, ghana 2dolly memorial school, ghana abstract governments and other stakeholders in education are beginning to recognize the important roles school leaders can play in school development and efforts are being made to allow them to become more involved in managing schools. however, despite these efforts, head teachers are challenged with the perfect leadership style to improve schools. many scholars have lauded the positives of distributed leadership as one if not the best leadership for school improvement. this study sought to explore distributed leadership across primary schools in accra-ghana and northampton-uk. the study adopted the explanatory sequential mixed method design. in this design, face-to-face interviews and non-participants observations were employed while closed ended questionnaires were given to 65 head teachers and 10 out of the 65 head teachers were sampled and interviewed. two schools were purposive sampled and observed. the findings of the study revealed that head teachers from both countries understood the concept of distributed leadership as giving leadership opportunity to other teachers to meaningfully accept and take full responsibility for their leadership roles. despite these findings, head teachers from the two countries have their own style of distributing leadership in the school. admittedly, head teachers echoed that team work and trust is a necessity for effective and successful distributed leadership in schools. notwithstanding these benefits of distributed leadership, head teachers from both northampton and accra are confronted with some challenges such as who should be involved and to what extent. the researchers recommend that head teachers should find ways of giving freedom to teachers who have the requisite expertise and ready to lead particular areas of the school even if it is for a shorter time. additionally, a well-structured programme of high quality in-service training should be developed and offered to every head teacher and teacher in order for every school to develop appropriately. keywords: distributed leadership, school improvement, push and pull. citation | dandy george dampson; evelyn ama frempong (2018). the „push and pull‟ factors of distributed leadership: exploring views of headteachers across two countries. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 121-127. history: received: 22 december 2017 revised: 5 march 2018 accepted: 9 march 2018 published: 12 march 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 122 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 123 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 124 4. conclusion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................. 126 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 126 bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 127 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.121.127&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7185-7189 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9188-6182 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 121-127 122 1. introduction distributed leadership in education has become one of the key issues in ghana‟s education development agenda. ghana like any other african country has initiated a number of reforms in the past, the latest being the 2002 educational reforms and the free compulsory universal basic education (fcube) to improve quality of teaching, learning and participation. in order to achieve these expectations, oduro (2007) argues that for schools to improve, distributed leadership should be encouraged and teachers should be involved in decision-making activities which are the key to the successful implementation and achievement of these policies. numerous studies (oduro, 2007; harris, 2013; lizotte, 2013; dampson, 2015) have proved that school leaders can make a change in school and student achievement, if teachers are allowed the ability to make meaningful opinions. however, autonomy does not inevitably lead to development unless it is well sustained. the obligations of head teachers in schools, according to the oecd (2001) should be defined through an understanding of the practices most likely to improve teaching and learning. in this context the researchers opine that distributed leadership which is primarily concerned with shared, collective and extended leadership that builds the capacity for change and improvement is the key to effective practices in schools. in ghana and other african countries, effective school leadership has become necessary in order to address global education agenda (oduro, 2004; wadesango, 2011). this is very important because scholars such as jones and harris (2013) argue that the importance of distributed leadership is a potential contribution to positive change and school improvement. the concept `distributed leadership‟, in turn, attracts a range of meanings and is associated with a variety of practices. mayrowetz (2008) states that different uses of this term have emerged and refers to distributed leadership as “an emerging theory of leadership with a narrower focus on individual capabilities, skills, and talents” that focuses on a joint responsibility for leadership activities. according to macbeath (2005) distributed leadership means the same as dispersed, shared, collaborative and democratic leadership. in this study distributed leadership is where head-teachers share leadership responsibilities among teachers to participate in all school activities. these definitions are summed up by harris (2013) as mobilising leadership expertise at all levels in the school in order to generate more opportunities for change and to build capacity for improvement. there is no doubt that the practice of distributed leadership in schools goes with numerous prospects. various studies conducted in both developed and developing countries by scholars such as (danielson, 2006; spillane, 2006; abu, 2010; wadesango, 2011; harris, 2013). danielson (2006) confirm the numerous prospects of distributed leadership in schools. for example danielson conducted a study and found 2 broad categories of the benefit of distributed leadership, namely cultural and structural development benefits. leithwood et al. (2009) assert that the difference in high and low performing schools can be attributed to different degree of leadership distribution. it is possible that distributed leadership could support the abuse of power (mayrowetz, 2008). teachers can become overstressed by shared decision-making and the benefits of participation do not necessarily accrue to better teaching practice or to the benefit of the school as a whole, especially if teachers‟ and organisational goals are not well aligned (mayrowetz, 2008). distributed leadership for efficiency and effectiveness has been contested. while some advantages and benefits have been outlined, there are also risks that distributing leadership will not add to school improvement. leithwood and jantzi (2000) found that “higher scores on total or distributed leadership in schools, defined as both teachers and principals engaging in leadership work, have actually been associated with lower levels of student engagement.” timperley (2005) concluded that “distributing leadership is a risky business and may result in the distribution of incompetence”. a study conducted in ghana by oduro (2004) revealed that practice of distributed leadership in schools may be promoted or inhibited by both internal and external forces which he termed them as 'pull' and 'push' factors. he noted that the 'pull' forces are those which tend to make distributed leadership favourable and attracted to head teacher, whereas, the 'push factors are those which frustrate and do not allow head teachers distributed power fairly to teachers. these factors are shown in the diagram below. diagram-1. the pull and push factors another study conducted by macbeath (2005) in the united kingdom revealed that one of the major challenge of distributed leadership is the accompanied pressure from work load. he stressed that the burden of workload on teachers tend to have a negative effect on their work performance and ethics. although this may sound contradictory to the benefit of distributed leadership, studies have shown that distributed leadership goes with workload. another major 'challenge to distributed leadership is the bureaucratic and hierarchical structures that exist in schools. in macbeath's study, head headers interviewed indicated that they find it difficult to distribute leadership asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 121-127 123 because of the bureaucratic and hierarchical structures which inhibit the implementation of distributed leadership. macbeath further advise that for head teachers to deal with the bureaucratic and hierarchical structures, they need to adopt strategic distribution which places emphasis on people as team players rather than individual competences and favouritisms. hargreaves et al. (2010) and hargreaves et al. (2014) confirm that one of the major challenges of distributed leadership in the accountability and responsibility of leadership. similarly, study conducted by abu (2010) revealed that teachers lacked an understanding of the concept of distributed leadership despite being practised by their head-teachers whiles lizotte (2013) also reported that most teachers have high feelings of incompetence and felt unprepared to lead their colleagues since most of them were trained to be members and not team leadership. in short, distributed leadership comes with it benefits and challenges. from the ongoing discussion the 'push' factors seem stronger than the 'pull' factors, it imperative to note that in practical distribution of leadership in schools, the 'push' factors make it difficult to succeed. although distributed leadership have so many prospects, most of the problems which has made it difficult to succeed in schools are the 'pull' factors such as dishonesty on the part of teachers, too much workload, flexibility, bureaucratic and hierarchical structure plays a major hindrance in its success. many studies have been conduct on distributed leadership, however, little empirical studies have been conducted across countries. thus, this research strives to explore factors that facilitate or prevent teachers in ghanaian and uk primary schools from using distributed leadership and ways by which distributed leadership affect school improvement in both settings. additionally, the study also looks at the extent to which head teachers in ghanaian and uk primary schools perceive and adopt distributed leadership as a tool for school improvement. 2. methodology 2.1. research design the study adopted the mixed method approach where the researchers used both qualitative and quantitative tools to collect data. given the study‟s emphasis on the push and pull factors the researchers adopted the sequential explanatory mixed method design which fits into the three phases of data collection (creswell, 2012). the rationale for this approach was to use quantitative data and results to provided a general picture of the research problem, more analysis and specifically use qualitative data collection to refine and explain the general picture. in this design, the researchers first collected and analysed the quantitative (numeric) data. the qualitative (text) data were collected and analysed after obtaining the quantitative results. in order to address the research questions set out by this study, the study was designed in three phases. in each phase the researchers adopted specific research tool(s) to answer the research questions. phase one of the study was designed to collect data from respondents in a survey using a close-ended questionnaire. phase two employed semi-structured interview to elicit responses from participants, while in phase three a case study approach was employed through the use of microethnography/participant observation (bryman, 2012) to garner data to support the findings from the questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews in phases one and two. the quantitative data was analysed using simple frequency counts (percentages) to rank the responses while the qualitative data (semi-structured interviews) was analysed using the thematic analysis. the analysis and results obtained from both the close-ended questionnaire survey from phase one was used to develop a semi-structure interview guide for phase two. in phase three, the findings from phase one and two were used to select a school each from ghana and uk for observation. 2.2. sample and sampling procedure keeping in mind issues arising with access to schools and given the geographical terrain of ghana and related transport barriers the population for the study was limited to 17 primary schools in accra (ghana) and 16 in northampton (uk) with a total number of thirty-three (33) head-teachers and thirty-two assistant head-teachers (32). in all 33 primary schools were involved in the study. as this study is information-rich the researchers employed census sampling technique to select all head-teachers and their assistants. the participants were selected as they could best help the researchers understand the phenomenon that is being investigated (creswell, 2012). in northampton and ghana each primary school have a head-teacher and an assistant. using the census sampling, seventeen (17) head teachers and their assistants (17) from accra-ghana and sixteen (16) head-teachers and their assistants (15) from northampton were sampled to answer the questionnaire. during the second phase of data collection, the simple random sampling technique was adopted to select 5 head-teachers each from accra-ghana and northampton-uk and were interviewed. purposive sampling was then employed in the third phase to sample a school each for observation based on the outcome of the interview. the analysis from the interview data were used to select two schools for observation. 2.3. instrumentation and data collection three instruments (closed-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and participant observation) were used to collect data from head-teachers and their assistants. the purpose of analysis is to describe or explore data, to test a hypothesis, to seek correlations, to identify differences between two or more groups and to look for underlying groupings of data (cohen et al., 2011). in analysing quantitative data, bryman (2012) and cohen et al. (2011) suggest that selecting a statistical test to be used depend on the scales of data being treated (nominal-ratio) and the task which the researchers wishes to perform – the purpose of the analysis informed the researchers to use simple percentages. the researchers transcribed all the interviews, read, reread all the transcript. the researchers further analysed the transcripts by coding using thematic approach. field notes were taken during the observations and were also analysed using thematic approach. ethical consideration such as access and consent, confidentiality and anonymity, rights, safety and well-being of participants and the researchers were all considered before, during and after the research. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 121-127 124 3. findings the successful implementation of distributed leadership involves the push and pull factors discussed in the introduction. the findings of this study were perceived to have linkages with the practicality of these factors. the quantitative data sought to explore the similarities and differences that exist between the 'pull and push' factors among the two countries. head-teachers and assistants from both countries were asked to rank the pull and push factors as shown in table 1 and 2. a total of 65 head teachers and assistants answered the questionnaire, thirty-four (34) from accra-ghana and thirty-one (31) from northampton-uk. admittedly, all the participants agreed that the practice of distributed leadership goes hand in hand with some challenges and benefits that are related to the push and pull factors. table 1 shows how head-teachers from the two countries ranked their benefits (pull). table-1. the pull factors pull factors head-teacher/assistants (northampton) head-teacher/assistants (accra) common vision 96.7% (rank 1) 67.6% (rank 5) willingness to share 83.8.% (rank 2) 61.7% (rank 6) support for each other 80.6% (rank 3) 76.4% (rank 3) financial capacity 77.4% (rank 4) 73.5% (rank 4) good relations 74.1% (rank 5) 88.2% (rank 2) recognition 61.2% (rank 6) 94.1% (rank 1) source field data (2017) table 1 shows the pull factors that facilitate distributed leadership in both countries. interestingly, there are differences in the pull factors across the two countries. data analysed using simple percentages indicate that majority of the head-teachers in northampton perceived common vision, willingness to share and support for each other as the most important factors that facilitate distributed leadership in schools with recognition being the least. contrary, head-teachers in accra-ghana perceived recognition, good relation and support for each other as the most important factor that facilitate distributed leadership. these findings which also emerged from the interviews supported by observations made by the researchers imply that head teachers in accra, ghana are to some extent unwilling to share power as a result of fear of losing their positions through mistakes whiles conditions in northampton schools makes is more easy for headteachers to distribute leadership. it is equally important to note that geographical location, code of ethics, individual leadership style and resources available play important role in facilitating distributed leadership in schools, specifically in accra. it is evident from this study that distributed leadership goes with numerous benefits such as common vision, develops individual capacity, and shared decision-making. however, the researchers argue that these benefits are more contextualized rather than applicable in all situations and context. literature on distributed leadership by (danielson, 2006; spillane, 2006; jones and harris, 2013) is consistent with the findings of this study that the practice of distributed leadership in schools goes with numerous benefits but however failed to contextualize the benefits revealed in this study. in this context hargreaves et al. (2014) argue that when distributed leadership works, individual are accountable and responsible for their leadership actions, new leadership roles created, and there is collaborative teamwork. similarly, oduro (2004) also found that head teachers who practice distributed leadership in ghanaian basic school tend to improve teacher involvement in school decision-making. the interviews and observations conducted by the researchers confirmed that head-teachers who practice distributed leadership experienced collaborative and collegial school environment as argued by hargreaves et al. (2014). recounting his experiences, a male head teacher from united kingdom (male head teacher, uk2) said: i think the benefits are huge because if you are there on your own and you are making the decisions, that is only your mind and your way of doing things and also lots of research has shown that if there is dialogue between people; if people pass ideas of each other, there is coalition approach to things, then the results are better. a male head teacher from ghana (male head teacher, gh4): it helps working in a team to achieve your objectives by accepting the cultural values of our school. if you have vision, it helps you to realize it and it creates a serene atmosphere for effective work to go on. these responses from the head teachers indicate that the prospects of distributed leadership are categorized in three main themes namely: cultural conditions, structural conditions (danielson, 2006) and capacity building (harris, 2002). according to danielson (2006) there are three aspects of a school‟s culture that promote the emergence of teacher leaders; a culture of risk taking, establishing democratic norms and treating teachers as professionals. the researcher argue that it is imperative for head-teachers to convey and assure to all the staff members that the environment in which they are operating is safe to take their professional risks. this suggests that there are no penalties for mistakes as such mistakes will provide insights into how new ideas can be tried and modified. table 2 below shows how head-teachers from the two countries perceived the factors that prevent them from using distributed leadership in their schools. table-2. the push factors push factors head-teachers/assistants (northampton) head-teachers/assistants (accra-ghana) hierarchical structure 96.8% (rank 1) 64.7% (rank 6) workload 93.5% (rank 2) 97% (rank 1) dishonesty 77.4% (rank 3) 73% (rank 5) distrust 74.1.% (rank 4) 91.2% (rank 3) insecurity 70.9% (rank 5) 88.2% (rank 4) accountability 64.5% (rank 6) 94.1% (rank 2) source: field data (2017) asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 121-127 125 as demonstrated in table 1, there were differences in the perceived factors that hinder the use of distributed leadership. majority of the head-teachers from northampton-uk perceived hierarchical structure, workload and dishonesty as the main push factors with accountability being the least. contrary head-teachers from accra-ghana perceived the push factors as workload, accountability and distrust with hierarchical being the least. these findings between the two countries implies that although other push factors such as distrust, insecurity and dishonesty play vital role, the hierarchical structure with its bureaucratic nature which comes with it heavy responsibilities makes head-teachers desist from using distributed leadership in schools. the researchers therefore argue that despite the efforts made by head-teachers to embrace distributed leadership they knew the workload that accompany leadership and its associated roles and tasks is time consuming. it is interesting to note that data collected through interview revealed that all the head teachers in the northampton primary schools were concerned that distributed leadership may result in delaying tactics, high tariff with accountability within the school. they were passionate that in distributed leadership, the head teacher remains answerable for all decisions made. a male head teacher (2) from northampton narrated: “there is such a high tariff with accountability with people’s progress. if we don’t achieve these targets within the expectations, then the people within the staff room don’t feel that it won’t worth the same people that are getting the distribution of the leadership.” all the head teachers in ghana expressed concerns in situations where distributed leadership delays certain activities due to the collaboration and involvement of individual initiatives furthermore; workload was seen as the major push factor in distributed leadership in ghanaian basic schools which in turn serve as a stressor to teachers. these findings from the study confirm and are consistent with the findings of mayrowetz (2008) who established that through distributed leadership, teachers can become overstressed by shared decision-making and the benefits of participation do not necessarily accrue to better teaching practice or to the benefit of the school as a whole, especially if teachers‟ and organisational goals are not well aligned. furthermore, harris (2004) outlines some additional difficulties which are consistent with the findings of this study. she argues that because the bureaucratic structures that exist in schools deter some teachers who wish to express their opinion recoil, especially if their views differ from the traditional or prevailing opinion of the head teacher. the study further sought to find out how head teachers perceive and implement distributed leadership in their schools. the two sub-themes that emerged from the interview responses are reactions and changes in terms of leadership style. during the interview nine (9) out of the ten (10) head-teachers admitted that different leadership style adopted by school head teachers influence how they distribute leadership. it was evident across the two countries that although all the head teachers use distributed leadership, they agreed that they use other leadership style such as situational and transformational alongside distributed leadership styles. this combination according to the head teachers makes it difficult to strictly follow the principles of distributed leadership. some of the following comments were made: male head teacher, uk1 (mht uk1) narrated: “it’s quite difficult because, when at times you are overshadowed by your domineering leadership style while trying to adopt distributed leadership style. this is simple, i am a transformational leader.” in ghana, a female head teachers (fmht gh2) emphasized by saying: “to be honest with you, as a situational leader practicing distributed leadership i sometimes get caught in my own web” even though there are positive reactions to the practice of distributed leadership, through interview and observation the researchers found adverse reactions in the implementation and practice of the distributed leadership style. these reactions emanated from the dynamics and different personalities on staff, age and academic qualification. according to the majority of head teachers, some teachers are reluctant to take up responsibilities when given the opportunity. basically, not all teachers are interested to be part of school leadership others are content with their role as a classroom teacher. notwithstanding these dynamics the researchers cautioned head teachers not to dump work and tasks on their staff in the name of distributed leadership but need to be tactical in distributing. the implication from this finding is that head teachers need to identify the capabilities of each member of staff before distribution whiles motivating teachers who are reluctant to work. admittedly, the results from the interviews and observation provide evidence that distributed leadership has and is gaining roots among school leaders. initially, the very old fashion or traditional style of leadership that was practiced by head teachers made staff members become afraid and timid to take risk. head teachers were cautious and afraid of getting it wrong and the consequences associated with it as echoed by male head-teachers from northampton-uk and accra-ghana i have been the head teacher for the past 13 years, initially i was i bit scared of sharing power because i feared i might been seen by my staff as a failure. after attending some workshops i can confidently distribute work ….............. with the benefits of distributed leadership i hardly practice my old style of leadership mht2, gh2 the above statement was echoed by another male head-teacher from northampton; well during my 10 years of headship at the primary school i have come to know that most inexperienced head-teachers still adopt the traditional leadership style of more dictatorship and a bit of democracy where decision-making is centralized. but currently almost all head-teacher are trying to distribute power because of it numerous benefit. in each of the schools observed, there were evidence of distributed leadership across all levels where the headteachers provided opportunities for teachers to lead. the two head-teachers from the schools observed acknowledged the importance of including teachers who have expertise in every level of school management which also provide opportunities for schools to benefit from the capacities of teachers. with regards to school improvement, there was however consensus among all the head teachers in the study that one of the significant changes has been the involvement of teachers in most aspects of the administration of the schools which has led to school improvement. they argued that any idea and suggestions relating to the introduction of changes in the school, the opinions of teachers vis-à-vis that of the head teacher are considered through whole school meetings or sectional or department meetings. according to majority of the participants, no asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 121-127 126 decision is taken without the participation of all staffs members and this has brought about a cohesive team with a common vision and goal, working towards school improvement. all the head-teachers interviewed voiced out that whenever leadership is distributed they become less stressful and are able to manage their time effectively leading to school improvement. they further added that distribution of leadership enable them to plan strategically to develop their schools. this is clearly illustrated in the statement of a female head teacher (female head teacher, gh1): “well, this style of leadership is helping because the load of work is not only on the head-teacher; you make people responsible in other areas too, and enable me to plan well in advance.” similarly, a study conducted in the uk by macbeath (2005) confirms the findings of this study as macbeath reported that head teachers' agreed that distributed leadership style allows them to offload work to other teachers which in turn gives them time to implement decisions. distributed leadership brings sustainability employing a model that could trigger the need to share responsibilities which improves school. a male head teacher (mht, uk1) echoed: “most successful schools have fantastic model of distributive leadership. i think all the evidence point to that, because it means the school is sustainable, it means that its approaches to teaching and learning and school organisation is based on cohesive understanding and shared vision for the school, shared workload, etc. it doesn’t come from just one person but collectively.” the findings of the study that distributed leadership off load work and improve schools is consistent with oduro (2004) claims that head teachers are of the view that the distribution of leadership is a way of reducing the pressure of the workload on them. in spite of the views of head teachers on distributed leadership as a way of reducing their workload, it is important to point out that the head teachers were also persuaded that leadership distribution added to effective school leadership because they assumed that teachers were motivated and they were also able to use their expertise furthermore, it can be inferred from the interview responses that head teachers in ghana and uk have embraced the concept of distributed leadership as a tool to improve learning outcomes in schools. from the interviews and observations, it was established that distributed leadership enhanced teacher capacity for building because the confidence level of teachers and leaders of schools are developed and are given the chance to practice leadership that will make them feel that they are part of the whole school development rather than being passive. from the findings discussed and the literature reviewed, it has been established that majority of the head teachers in accra and northampton primary schools in the study are currently practicing distributed leadership. the outcome of distributed leadership relies upon the head teacher who is ready to sacrifice power, and the employees of the organization accepting the opportunity. the researchers therefore argue that it is the duty of the head teacher to make sure that leadership duties are made clear to all since time is an important factor when it comes to distributed leadership. it is also essential that all educational practitioners of all levels adopt distributed leadership in way to develop the growth of the school. we further opine that head-teacher should give the appropriate roles to teachers who have the knowledge and ability to give out their best. in this context we argue that allowing teachers to engage in unfamiliar work in which they have no expertise may in the end give more work to the leader rather than lessening similarly, allowing incompetent teachers to participate in managing the school is in a way a risk to the development of the school. we therefore suggest that teachers must demonstrate readiness and willingness to take and accept various leadership roles before they are assigned. this is because it is a necessity to have the ability of trust and responsibility from everyone in the school because if this trust is left to the head-teacher it will not be respected. 4. conclusion and recommendations in conclusion for effective distributed leadership in schools, head teachers should endeavour to create network and support among teachers and head-teachers. this will be helpful in way to improve and achieve the abilities and talents of teachers and head teachers across schools. given the findings, the researchers recommend that head teachers should find ways of giving freedom to teachers who are deemed and ready to lead particular areas of the school even if it is for a shorter time. additionally, a well-structured programme of high quality in-service training should be developed and offered to every head teacher and teacher in order for every school to develop appropriately. finally we argue that it is necessary to provide much specific programmes that are related to leadership skills and knowledge for head-teachers and teachers periodically to keep them abreast to the dynamic nature of distributed leadership. references abu, n.m.s., 2010. distributed leadership in secondary schools: possibilities and impediments in bangladesh. arts faculty journal, 19(32): 19-32. bryman, a., 2012. social research methods. 4th edn., new york: oxford university press. cohen, l., l. manion and k. morrison, 2011. research methods in education. 7th edn., london: routledge. creswell, 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(1992) and “positive perception scale” adapted by akın and kaya (2015) for the turkish language were used. for the analyses of the data; histogram technique was employed in order to find whether or not data followed a normal distribution and as a result, it was identified that all sub-dimensions of mental endurance and positive perception scale followed a normal distribution. accordingly, t test and one-wayanova tests were employed in order to explore basic differences and canonical correlation analyses were performed in order to find the effect between personality and positive perception levels. as a result; it was concluded that athletes demonstrated moderate level of personality and positive perception. it was seen that there was a moderate and significant correlation between sub-dimensions of eysenck personality inventory and positive perception scale. keywords: personality, positive perception, sports, athlete, student, female. citation | temel veysel; nas kazim (2019). the effect of personality characteristics of students on positive perception level: a study to hockey super league players. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 269-274. history: received: 3 january 2019 revised: 5 february 2019 accepted: 8 march 2019 published: 19 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 270 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 270 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 271 4. canonical correlation findings .................................................................................................................................................. 272 5. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 273 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 273 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 273 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/414 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.269.274&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 269-274 270 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction athletes’ physical quality and high ability may affect results of competitions positively or negatively. losing or winning athletes’ a competition depends on their performances during the competition. if athletes are physically the same, success is achieved by those athletes with mentally better skills (weinberg and gould, 2015). people are living beings that are shaped physically, socially and mentally. people are emotionally, physically and socially a whole. athletes’ sportive skills may be increased to an elite level by bringing these components together, planning and implementing them with the necessary studies and works (erdoğan and kocaeksi, 2015). psychological and mental factors are determinant factors in choosing athletes if they are at the same level in such characteristics as physiological, motor, technical and tactical status. during the season, athletes’ mental performance may play a key role in their and teams’ achievements and success in pitch (altıntaş and akalan, 2008). in this sense, perception –one of the psychological abilitiesis one of the most effective characteristics that greatly influence one’s internal and external emotions, thoughts and behaviors. e. husserl’s quote “reality is not what appears but what is perceived” (öğretir, 2004) puts an emphasis on how important perception is. according to psychologists; perception -regarded as realityintegrates and interprets emotional data transferred by sense organs and is defined as a process by which people make sense of stimuli around them and those stimuli coming from outer world are mentally processed (arkonaç, 1998; willimon, 2000; johansson and xiong, 2003; bakan and kefe, 2012). positive perception plays an important role in educational organizations where people spend most of their social and educational lives, too. actually, peoples’ positive or negative perceptions about themselves and others are one of the factors that affect their motivation directly. the difference between people’s roles and those given to them by their superiors or ambiguities related to the roles may lead to inner conflicts in individuals or outer conflicts with their social circles (sütlü, 2007). in this sense, it is important whether or not employers have positive and negative perceptions about employees and how they reflect these positive and negative perceptions towards employees. in the nature of leadership, there is an influence and guidance (kurt, 2014). this requires employers to have a positive perception towards employees by trusting in them, treating them justly and believing that employees can perform their tasks in the best way. generally, positive perception can be defined as a communication style. actually, styles by which people who are in contact perceive each other determine their attitudes towards each other and quality of their communication (kepekcioglu, 2015). positive perception uncovers individuals’ assessments of themselves, of others and being assessed by others in general manner. therefore, using positive perception in every management phase and in motivation management effectively is important in terms of quality of employees. one’s perceptions of themselves and others are continual and influence their psychological and daily life depending on these perceptions being positive or negative. personality is one of the psychological equipments, too. personality expresses one’s distinctive structure regarding all factors that are effective upon their sensing, thinking and behaving styles. personality – continuously occurring with inner and outer stimuliincludes individuals’ all hereditary and acquired skills, emotions, expectations and attitudes in biological and psychological terms (tınar, 1999). in other words; personality points out a structure that simultaneously includes the basic qualities that come with birth and the dynamics produced by the environment where they are (tiryaki and aykaç, 2013). it is known that personality characteristics reduce anxiety and increase self-confident; thus enhance social relations (tazegül, 2014). personality is a spiritual unity that brings one’s specific characters together. this unity includes individuals’ physical structure, physical appearance, intelligence, abilities, excitement, reactions, emotions, interests and general culture (adasal, 1979). the study aimed at determining the effect of personality characteristics of athletes who participated in hockey super league competitions upon their positive perception level. 2. methodology 2.1. research model this study is a descriptive method aimed to investigate the various variables of students athletes. descriptive method is a method to aim to define existing event without intervention of researcher (karasar, 1995). descriptive studies are to define typical characteristics of a particular group and to make conclusions about how people in a particular group will behave in response to certain situations (borg and gall, 1989). 2.2. research group research group; there were 1116 students female athletes who participated in hockey super league competitions in konya province on 15-28 april 2018 (age = 18,21 ± 2,98). the research scale was voluntarily applied on athletes face to face by being interviewed where they played. 2.3. data collection tools the data collection tools required to reach the determined objectives related to the research are given below: 2.4. personal information form in order to collect information about the personal characteristics of the participants and to establish the independent variables of the research, an information form consisting of 3 variables (income status, sport year and difficulty in leisure time) were prepared by the researcher. 2.5. revised eysenck personality questionnaire-abbreviated form (epq-repq) francis et al. (1992) eysenck personality questionnaire (eysenck and eysenck, 1975) and the short form of the same questionnaire (48 items) (eysenck et al., 1985) were formed by reviewing the epq-repq. the questionnaire consists of 24 items, evaluating personality in 3 main factors: neuroticism, extraversion, psychoticism. in addition, with the lying subscale, it is aimed to prevent bias during the implementation of the questionnaire and to check its validity. in this survey, where each factor is evaluated with 6 items, the participant is asked to respond to the 24 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 269-274 271 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group questions in the format yes (1) no (0). for items 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, yes = 0 point , no = 1 point and aslo for items 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, 23, 24 yes = 1 point , no = 0 point. the score for each personality trait varies are from 0 to 6. the internal consistency (cronbach alpha) reliability coefficients of this study; .82 for neuroticism, .86 for extraversion; .74 for psychoticism was found. 2.6. positive perception scale the validity and reliability of the turkish version of the positive perception scale was performed by akın and kaya (2015). as a result of the confirmatory factor analysis applied for the construct validity of the scale, the scale was found to conform to the three dimensions of the original form (self in past, self-ability and human nature) (x2=24.28, sd=16, rmsea=.045, nfi=.96, nnfi=.97, ifi=.99, rfi=.93, cfi=.99, gfi=.98 and srmr=.032). factor loads of the items are listed between .57 and .95. the cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients of the positive perception scale were found to be .80 for self in past , .71 for human nature and .75 self-ability from sun dimensions’ of the positive perception scale. corrected item-test correlations of the positive perception scale are listed between .55 and .65. there is no reverse coded substance as the self-ability = 6,8; self in past = 1,2,4,7; human nature = 3.5. the internal consistency (cronbach alpha) reliability coefficients of this study; .71 for self-ability, .80 for self in past, and .72 for human nature. 2.7. data collection firstly, the available information on the purpose of the research was given in a systematic way by searching the literature. hence, a theoretical framework has been established. secondly, " positive perception scale-pps developed by akın and kaya (2015) revised eysenck personality questionnaire-abbreviated form (epq-repq developed by francis et al. (1992) and information form to gather the participants' personal information were used. 2.8. data analysis during the analysis and evaluation of the data; the data were analyzed using the spss 25.0 for windows package program. percentage and frequency methods were used to determine the distribution of the personal information of the participants. in order to test whether the sub-dimensions of both scales show normal distribution, histograms were examined, and finally, and positive perception scale and eysenck personality questionnaire all sub-dimensions were found to have normal distribution. accordingly, one way anova and ttest analysis were performed to determine the main differences. post hoc tukey and tamhane t2 were examined to determine the source of the difference. pearson moment product correlation and independent regression analysis were used for the relationship between independent variables, personality characteristics and dependent variable positive perception levels. 3. results 3.1. personal characteristics of the research group the data and comments on the demographic characteristics of the students are given below. table-1. distribution of demographic characteristics of the sample group participated in the study. n % sports year 0-1500 tl 60 51,7 1501-3000 tl 56 48,3 difficulty in leisure time 3-5 year 63 54,3 6-8 year 31 26,7 9 and + 22 19,0 income statue always 27 23,3 sometimes 46 39,7 never 43 37,1 according to table 1, 60% of the total income is between 0-1500 tl and 56% is between 1501 3000tl. according to sports year of the athletes, %54,3 of the athletes is between 3-5 years, %26,7 between 6-8 years and %19,0 between 9 and over years. according to the difficulty in leisure time, 23.3% of the athletes is always, %39,7 sometimes and %37,1 never. table-2. results of the participants' personality and positive perception on total score and sub-dimension levels. n x ss min max personality neuroticism 116 3,52 1,399 1,00 6,00 extraversion 116 3,67 1,538 ,00 6,00 psychoticism 116 2,28 1,296 ,00 5,00 positive perception self-ability 116 11,26 2,381 6,00 14,00 self in past 116 20,80 5,399 10,00 28,00 human nature 116 10,45 2,599 6,00 14,00 source: this table is about the result of participants’ min. and max. points. in table 2, the mean scores of personality level sub-dimensions of the participants were examined. as a result of this review; it can be said that the participants’, included in the study, level of neuroticism with 3.52 is over the mid-level, level of extraversion with 3.67 is over the mid-level and level of psychoticism with 2.28 is under the mid-level asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 269-274 272 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group mean scores of positive perception sub-dimensions of the participants were examined. as a result of this review; it can be said that the participants’, included in the study, level of self-ability with 11.26 is over the midlevel, level of self in past with 20.80 is over the mid-level and level of human nature with 10.45 is the mid-level table-3. personality scale sub-size scores independent group f test results to determine whether athletes differ according to sports year variable. n mean ss sd f p-value meaningful difference neuroticism 3-5 year 63 3,48 1,306 113 5,899 ,004* 2-3 6-8 year 31 4,10 1,300 9 and + 22 2,82 1,500 extraversion 3-5 year 63 3,41 1,455 113 2,271 ,108 6-8 year 31 3,81 1,701 9 and + 22 4,18 1,435 psychoticism 3-5 year 63 2,38 1,300 113 ,959 ,386 6-8 year 31 2,00 1,291 9 and + 22 2,36 1,293 *p<.05. in table 3, the average of the sub-dimension scores of the athletes according to the sports year variable was examined by the f test. as a result of the review; there was a significant difference in neuroticism from personality sub-dimension according to income status variable(f:5.90 p=0.004<0,05). table-4. independent group f test results for determining if the positive perception scale sub-size scores differ according to sports year variables. n mean ss sd f p-value meaningful difference self-ability 3-5 year 63 10,95 2,485 113 1,630 ,201 6-8 year 31 11,35 2,288 9 and + 22 12,00 2,116 self in past 3-5 year 63 19,95 5,726 113 1,969 ,144 6-8 year 31 21,38 5,383 9 and + 22 22,41 4,008 human nature 3-5 year 63 9,84 2,503 113 4,250 ,017* 1-2 6-8 year 31 11,39 2,319 9 and + 22 10,86 2,867 *p<.05. in table 4, the f test was used to determine whether the mean scores of the positive perception sub-dimension scores of the players differ according to the sports year variable. as a result of the review; there was a significant difference between the positive perception scale sub-dimension according to sports year variable in terms of positive perception subscale of human nature (f:4.25 p=0.017<0,05). table-5.independent group f test results for determining if the positive perception scale sub-size scores differ according to the difficulty in leisure time variable. n mean ss sd f p-value meaningful difference self-ability always 27 10,37 2,273 113 2,882 ,060 sometimes 46 11,32 2,348 never 43 11,74 2,381 self in past always 27 17,33 5,385 113 8,709 ,000* 1-2 1-3 sometimes 46 21,35 5,104 never 43 22,40 4,826 human nature always 27 9,81 2,704 113 1,290 ,279 sometimes 46 10,46 2,656 never 43 10,84 2,449 *p<.05. in table 5, the f test was used to determine whether the average of the positive perception subscale scores of the players differ according to the difficulty in leisure time. there was a significant difference between the positive perception scale sub-dimension according to the difficulty in leisure time in terms of positive perception subscale of self in past (f:8.71 p=0.000<0,05). 4. canonical correlation findings in the study, the correlation between sub-dimensions of eysenckpersonality inventory (neuroticism, extraversion, psychoticism, lying) and positive perception scale [self-ability (sa), self in past (sp), human nature (hn)] was examined. canonical correlation coefficient (rc) was calculated as .57; which indicated an above-moderate level of significant correlation between sub-dimensions of eysenckpersonality inventory and positive perception scale. according to these findings; first canonical variable was found to be .41 while second variable .55. according to these findings, first canonical coefficient accounted for % 41 of personality variables while the second canonical coefficient accounted for % 55 of positive perception scale. besides, personality variables accounted for % 41 of total variance of positive perception scale. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 269-274 273 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. correlations between personality level and positive perception levels variations standardized equivalent variances, canonical correlations and variance percentages table. canonic variate correlation coefficient personalıty neuroticism ,411 ,078 extraversion -,217 ,874 psychoticism ,498 -,696 percentage of variance ,41 redundancy ,13 posıtıve perceptıon self-ability -,091 -1,176 self in past -1,053 ,547 human nature ,222 ,652 percentage of variance ,55 redundancy ,18 canonical correlation ,57 source: the table is about the canonical correlations of the study as for the positive perception scale variables, it explained % 55 of personality variables. according to first canonical variable, there was a statistically significant correlation between personality inventory and positive perception scale variables (f (12, 288.68) =4.80, p<.05). extraversion (-.22) placed in the first variable set was found negatively to be lower than critical threshold of .30 while neuroticism (.41) and psychoticism, (.49) were found positively to be higher than ≥.30 (tabachnick and fidell, 2013). in the second canonical variable; self in past (1.05) was found negatively to be higher than the critical threshold and human nature(.22) was found positively to be lower than the critical threshold while self-ability (-.09) was found negatively to be lower than the critical threshold (tabachnick and fidell, 2013). according to the findings, it was identified that sub-dimensions of eysenck personality inventory placed in the first variable set affected significantly sub-dimensions of positive perception scale placed in the second variable set. 5. discussion and conclusion according to the findings of the study, it was concluded that hockey athletes’ neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism sub-dimensions of personality inventory was at a moderate level. the study of sar (2016) which -we thinkconcurred with our study, looked at those doing sports and those not doing sports and found that the participants’ personality levels were higher. the study of cameron et al. (2006) identified that ice hockey attackers showed higher level of extraversion than defensemen and centers in terms of ice hockey position; which supported the current study, too. it is also important for the current study in the sense that the study of shariati and bakhtiari (2011) found that sports influenced personality positively. it may also be suggested that participants’ sub-dimensions of positive perception scale -self-ability, self in past and human naturewere at moderate level and above-moderate level. there was no statistically significant difference between hockey athletes’ personality inventory-sub-dimensions and income level and difficulty spending free time productively whereas statistically significant difference occurred between their personality inventory-sub-dimensions and duration to do sports (in years). accordingly, it may be argued that hockey athletes who did sports for 6-8 years were angrier or more anxious than those who did sports for ≥9 years in terms of neuroticism subscale. on the other hand, it may be concluded that those who did sports for ≥9 years were calmer than others. the reason may be that longer duration to do sports (in years) may have produced experience. there was no statistically significant difference between hockey athletes’ positive perception scale-subdimensions and income level while statistically significant difference was found between hockey athletes’ positive perception scale-sub-dimensions and difficulty spending free time productively and duration to do sports (in years). accordingly, it may be argued that hockey athletes who did sports for 6-8 years demonstrated higher positive perception levels in terms of human nature as compared to those who did sports for 3-5 years. again, it may be argued that those who always had difficulty spending free time positively had lower scores in terms of self in past subscale than those who sometimes or never had difficulty spending free time positively. this may be due to the possibility that using free time productively made positive contributions to personal growth. according to canonical correlation findings, it may be concluded that an above-moderate level of significant correlation was found between eysenck personality inventory-subscales and positive perception scale-subscales. canonical variable accounted for 41% of personality variable but second canonical variable accounted for 55% of positive perception scale variables. in light of the findings, eysenck personality inventory-sub-dimensions placed in the first variable set affected positive perception scale-sub-dimensions placed in the second variable set at a statistically significant level. 6. recommendations more studies are needed to examine the relationship between variables in this area. because the lack of empirical studies in the related literature has made it difficult to interpret the findings. references adasal, r., 1979. personality and character portraits of normal and abnormal 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different personality types. journal of history school, 6(16): 605-626. weinberg, r.s. and d. gould, 2015. introduction to psychological skills training. foundations of sport and exercise psycholog: 247-271. willimon, w.h., 2000. your message here. trusteeship, 8(3): 21-24. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 82-85, 2017 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.82.85 82 a look at the relationship of curriculum and instruction and the art and science of teaching lee hatch flake1 1nagasaki university japan abstract the definition of instruction and curriculum may take on different meanings based on the purpose or interpretation whether political, social, or educational. teaching effectively requires the skill of a knowledgeable and experienced educator. teaching can be convincingly debated as being an art or a science or defined collectively as an art and a science. the different approaches and ways to teach make teaching an art but the necessary knowledge of the material being taught makes teaching a science. an understanding of teaching as an art and a science enables educators to teach more effectively by providing perspective on different teaching approaches. keywords: curriculum, instruction, teaching. citation | lee hatch flake (2017). a look at the relationship of curriculum and instruction and the art and science of teaching. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 82-85. history: received: 27 july 2017 revised: 25 august 2017 accepted: 1 september 2017 published: 7 september 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 83 2. the art and science of teaching ................................................................................................................................................. 83 3. conclusion / author’s thoughts .................................................................................................................................................. 84 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 85 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=lee hatch flake https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=lee hatch flake asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 82-85 83 1. introduction the definition of instruction and curriculum is subjective. both curriculum and instruction may take on different meanings based on the purpose or interpretation whether political, social, or educational. curriculum is what is taught in schools, instruction is how curriculum is delivered and learning is what knowledge or skill has been acquired (wiles et al., 2002). the most common definition of curriculum is based on overt curriculum which supports an intentional instructional agenda of an educational institute (wilson, 2005). furthermore, curriculum is the content of what is being taught and instruction is the implementation of teaching according academic curriculum. according to random (2016) the term instruction is derived from the late middle english word instruccioun meaning to provide structure and direction. curriculum is derived from the latin word currere which is associated with the idea of running a racecourse (hlebowitsh, 2005). this author, as a marathon runner, finds interest in this comparison. running an open course with a direction or goal in mind maintains more interest than the boredom of running around a track. the changes in scenery and terrain, curves and straights, inclines and declines in conjunction with weather changes make an open course more interesting. likewise, changes disrupt and redirect the course of curriculum development making the course which curriculum takes more interesting than circling a predictable track. curriculum closely follows or is imposed to counteract the influence of changes—especially social forces have a profound influence on curriculum (wiles et al., 2002). changes alter conventional wisdom as new fields of knowledge are constantly being developed. technology is an example of such changes. technology is always changing and has a direct influence on curriculum trends and development. political agendas might also have an influence on curriculum development. changes in curriculum also coincide with paradigm shifts in knowledge and the necessity of knowledge. for example, learning shorthand is no longer a skill that is necessary in this age. such programs are removed from curriculum that was once considered standard decades ago. environmental changes have also sparked curriculum such as “green education” in schools around the world. “peace education” is a curriculum standard in japan. demographic changes and globalization also influence curriculum as in the case of bilingual and esl education in the united states. the relationship between curriculum and instruction is intimate. the relationship being so intimate that curriculumandinstruction is often said as though the terms are one word. yates (2000) further introduces curstruction and instriculum as morphed words to describe the seemingly inseparable relationship between curriculum and instruction. one of the views hlebowitsh (2005) provides describes curriculum as providing structure, outline and purpose to experiences in school; however, the author does not limit curriculum to this single definition. this author would describe the relationship between curriculum and instruction as a parent and child relationship. curriculum takes the role of a parent who is independent and may function without instruction; whereas, academic instruction is inherently dependent upon curriculum—much like a child is dependent upon a parent. curriculum provides direction for instruction since instruction is the method of delivering academic curriculum. instruction may exist without curriculum but would serve no direct purpose. curriculum and instruction must be compatible and maintain a close relationship in order to maximize student learning. the design of curriculum influences student learning. curriculum is a vessel that helps learners gain knowledge, develop skills and broaden understanding and has outcomes that may be measured (yates, 2000). instruction, on the other hand, is as capricious as an unpredictable child. the design of instruction is influenced by an educator’s philosophy and instructional beliefs. instruction design is developed according to curriculum but maintains individuality while being dependent upon curriculum and standards. the prioritization of information found in overt curriculum and what instruction techniques are used is reflected by a teacher’s philosophy. teachers are individuals composed of different biases, attitudes, and personal philosophy—this human element plays a role in instructional practices. teachers instruct according to their personal philosophy. curriculum and instructional design alters according to society and is influenced by new technology and information. the parent-child relationship of curriculum and instruction suggests opportunity for growth as both the parent and child learn from each other. knowledge of the relationship between curriculum and instruction may help educators strive to provide a quality education to students. 2. the art and science of teaching teaching effectively requires the skill of a knowledgeable and experienced educator. an understanding of the definition of teaching aids the educator by providing perspective on different teaching approaches. teaching can be convincingly debated as being an art or a science or defined collectively as an art and a science. the different approaches and ways to teach make teaching an art but the necessary knowledge of the material being taught also makes teaching a science. to properly assess the full spectrum of approaches which teaching encompasses, it is important to understand the different concepts concerning and defining teaching as an art and a science. 2.1. teaching as a science science refers to skills and knowledge that are uniform and structured. the science of teaching is also in reference to the credentials and qualifications of the teacher. standards are scientific as they are used to represent an absolute. standards used to test a teacher’s knowledge and ability is based upon pre-determined criteria. the tests to determine aptitude have the standards and criteria down to a science. however, such criteria does not calculate the teacher’s individual personality traits and ability based on the attitude and character of the instructor. a teacher with knowledge might not be able to reach students as effectively as one who, although less knowledgeable, is entertaining and witty. however, the science=knowledge aspect of teaching might also represent a specific learned skill. an instructor’s teaching portfolio is another example of how teaching is also a science. the term “portfolio” is often used by artists to represent a collection of an artist’s noted works that give evidence of the artist’s skills, ability and talent. likewise, an instructor’s portfolio is a collection of samples that demonstrates the teacher’s knowledge, skills and ability (frederick et al., 2000). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 82-85 84 the author has found through experience that there is an extreme difference between teaching youth and adults. after teaching adults at university and at various language academies, the author thought of teaching as a science. teaching was a matter of knowledge being reiterated to the class. aged students have a different attitude concerning education; most adult students learn because they have personal interest in study, not because education is imposed on them. experimentation with different lesson material in order to find what was effective was irrelevant as to the actual material being taught when concerning adult students. the author’s experiences of education in the university setting were also a science as skills and knowledge were uniform and structured. standards used to assess the class and the author, as an instructor, were based on structured criteria. exams and grading of the students were also based on specific criteria making the content and curriculum of the class a science. to the author’s surprise, the class average was also set as a pre-determined average by the university. although this practice has ended, as an instructor, the author’s task was to scientifically calculate the results of the students test scores to conform the pre-determined class average while endeavoring to maintain a fair representation of each student’s individual performance in the class. individuality and personality traits were not part of the calculation to determine teaching credentials. credentials were based entirely upon knowledge and assessable skills. however, after taking on teaching contracts with kindergarten-aged youth and working at elementary schools, middle schools, and a high school, the authors has had a paradigm shift to support teaching as also an art and not limited to being a science by self-determining structure and knowledge. an educator with knowledge might not be able to reach a class as effectively as one who is entertaining and humorous. in the university setting, it was not necessary nor was it encouraged to entertain the students. if the teacher is able to capture the attention of the students, the material being taught is more readily absorbed due to the undivided attention of the class. sometimes it takes a while to get into the groove of teaching and finding exactly what works. in retrospect, the quality of the author’s work as an educator during his early days of teaching university courses was perhaps not up to the standard that one should have aimed for. it was not until teaching youth that the author started experimenting with different lesson material and instruction strategies. the author was concentrating more on the work or course material and conforming to the syllabus than the students. the author has since come to realize that although knowledge of material being taught is essential, teaching purely as a science neglects those who are being taught. teaching is not simply regurgitating information, it is the expression and personalization of the information that makes the educator unique and gives “flavour” to the information being taught. 2.2. teaching as an art in teaching, as in art, there is no consistency. fine art is expressed through many different styles including impressionism, mannerism, modern, romanesque, baroque, classic, abstract, asian, coptic, byzantine, and the list continues (zeroland, 2016). likewise, the art of teaching takes on many different styles including the cognitive approach, total physical response, natural approach, direct and indirect instruction methods, discussion, cooperative, and self-directed instruction as well as functional approaches are examples of the numerous teaching styles (krueger et al., 2000). there are countless ways to teach. as there are many different styles in art, there are also many styles in teaching. how teaching is performed also makes teaching an art. teaching performance is based on competence for a variety of genres besides scholastic subjects such as narration, computers, dance, drama, instrumental music, and art. how a subject is being taught is directly related to the effectiveness of the lesson. teaching requires intuition which is ideally described as an art (brumfit and johnson, 1994). in art, individualism and expression are the norm. as in teaching, there are numerous styles and approaches on teaching. the attributes that make a teacher effective and able to reach the students might be unique to the individual. a certain disposition and one’s individual way of expression, such traits are difficult to duplicate. a knowledgeable educator might not necessarily be an effective educator since it is often the personal attributes of the educator that capture the attention of the student. when teaching young children who have extremely short attention spans, it is important to alter the material being taught and find an entertaining approach. during the author’s early years as a kindergarten instructor, he felt that his lessons were simply to keep the children entertained and english instruction was secondary. it was not until the author received some advice and helpful teaching material from senior instructors that he was able to teach the children effectively. to teach young children requires a total physical response approach on teaching; it is impossible to keep such young students attention without involving movement in the teaching. the author had previously experienced teaching university students and adult classes at a language academy. teaching methods between the adults and the young kindergarten children were in total contrast of each other. what is effective in one classroom is absurd in another. likewise, as the author taught junior high children and teenagers at high school, he learned that as the age of the students increase or decrease the teaching techniques must also change to conform to the age of the students. among the same age groups there are also variations depending upon the atmosphere and the “feel” of the classroom. what works in one classroom might not in another. games are enjoyed by all (even adults), however, it is the sophistication of the game that makes it appealing to each age group. finding what works and learning how to read the “feel” of the classroom is a learned talent that every instructor endeavors to foster. such skills are what contribute to the definition of teaching as an art and not merely a science. 3. conclusion / author’s thoughts interpretation, perception and reception of information suggest that not only teaching but learning also is an art and a science. individual learning styles are often unconsciously used as teaching styles by educators. if the class is comprised of kinesthetic or tactile learners, and the instructor is a visual learner, then the instructor is more likely to teach visually rather than kinesthetically or tactually. teaching styles are affected by individual perception and internalized knowledge (rivers and temperley, 1978). in the author’s opinion, although teaching is both an art and a science, the art aspect of teaching is more evident in modern teaching strategies. technology and different teaching styles share the same purpose of trying to maintain the student’s attention and interest. to motive the asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 82-85 85 class and keep the students interested in learning is a challenge. students need to be taught to be involved in their own learning. distractions and lack of attention in the class prevents students from obtaining their learning potential (owca et al., 2003). in the author’s opinion, the science “knowledge” variable is much less important than it was a century ago. with the internet, teachers and institutes no longer have a monopoly on knowledge and information. history has proven that knowledge is subjective and might differ from truth. science adjusts its views according to research and evidence. what was once considered scientific truth is sometimes proven incorrect through time. deductive and inductive logic also dictate that information may be manipulated to produce certain results. information is not an absolute. as james (1989) stated over a hundred years ago “teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.” education is not a pure science, if education was purely a science than any educated individual could teach. unfortunately, teaching is not about simply repeating information to the class as much as it is in the presentation of the information and creating a desire within the students to find out knowledge of truth for oneself. james (1989) stated that “…in teaching, (one) must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in connection with the subject are.” skillful educators make information understood in an entertaining way. an educator with excellent knowledge (science) might not be able to captivate the interests of the class compared to an entertaining instructor with excellent presentation skills (art). effective educators possess a personality which is naturally captivating and unique to the individual reinforcing the humanistic approach that teaching is an art. unfortunately, not everyone has the disposition and personality to be entertaining in the classroom. it is also good to be true to oneself and find a teaching style that works matching one’s own personality. students are people and all people are the unpredictable and ever-changing element of any system making methods of teaching that were effective in the past become less effective as the student’s attention spans become shorter. attributes that are unique to the individual—compassion, kindness toward the students combined with a sense of humor or somehow making the lesson material more exciting and interesting helps. finding what is effective is a day-by-day and a class-by-class effort. discovering what teaching style is most effective takes time. experience and endeavors of the instructor are important for an educator to learn the art and science of teaching. references brumfit, c.j. and k. johnson, 1994. the communicative approach to language teaching. 8th edn., oxford university press. pp: 21. frederick, l., r. mcmahon and l.e.j. shaw, 2000. preservice teacher portfolios as autobiographies. education, 120(4): 634-638. view at google scholar hlebowitsh, p.s., 2005. designing the school curriculum. 1st edn., boston, ma: pearson custom publishing. james, w., 1989. talks to teachers on psychology. psychology and the teaching art, 83(496): 155. krueger, k., j. saul and p.y. lin, 2000. the learning curve. teaching styles. available from library.thinkquest [accessed february 8, 2014]. owca, s., e. pawlak and m. pronobis, 2003. improving student academic success through the promotion of listening skills. reference number ed478233: 60. random, h., 2016. random house unabridged dictionary. retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/instruction [accessed october 4, 2016]. rivers, w.m. and m.s. temperley, 1978. a practical guide to the teaching of english as a second or foreign language. oxford university press. pp: 63. wiles, j., j. bondi and e.j. sowell, 2002. foundations of curriculum and instruction. boston, ma: pearson custom publishing. wilson, l.o., 2005. wilson’s curriculum pages. retrieved from www.uwsp.edu [accessed september 13, 2011]. yates, r., 2000. curriculum overview. retrieved from http://www.multiageeducation.com/russportfolio/curriculumtopics/curoverview.html [accessed october 4, 2016]. zeroland, 2016. arts online: art movements art periods and art styles. retrieved from http://zeroland.co.nz/directory/visualarts/art_movements/ [accessed september 15, 2016]. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=preservice%20teacher%20portfolios%20as%20autobiographies https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=preservice%20teacher%20portfolios%20as%20autobiographies http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/instruction http://www.uwsp.edu/ http://www.multiage-education.com/russportfolio/curriculumtopics/curoverview.html http://www.multiage-education.com/russportfolio/curriculumtopics/curoverview.html http://zeroland.co.nz/directory/visual-arts/art_movements/ http://zeroland.co.nz/directory/visual-arts/art_movements/ asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 97-104, 2017 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.97.104 97 the effectiveness of the chemistry pbl method via facebook on the soft skills of college students mohd shahir mohamed sunar1  ahmad jelani shaari2 ( corresponding author) 1mara college kuala nerang, kuala nerang kedah, malaysia 2faculty of education and modern languages, northern university of malaysia (uum), malaysia abstract it is undeniable that social media such as facebook has such a great influence in all fields, including education. the main objective of this research is to study the interaction effects of the vark learning style and students’ learning approach on the development of their soft skills using the problem-based learning (pbl) methods via facebook in learning chemistry. the research sample consists of 120 kolej mara students who were randomly selected to undergo pbl via facebook treatment for nine weeks. this quantitative research uses experiment design with descriptive and factorial 4x2 (two-way anova) data analysis. the descriptive data analysis result finds that the problem-based learning method via facebook is successful in developing soft skill elements such as communication skills, teamwork and leadership skills, problem-solving skills, self-ethics and moral worth, and continuous learning and information management skills. for the two-way anova analysis, the main effects studied are the vark learning style and the students’ learning approach, as well as the interaction of the two towards the development of the students’ soft skills after they were involved in problem-based learning method via facebook. test results show that the main effect of the vark learning style on the development of their soft skills is insignificant across the students’ learning approach using problem-based learning method via facebook. the same goes for the main effect of the learning approach, which is also insignificant across the students’ vark learning style. the interaction effect between both free variables (vark learning style and learning approach) on the development of soft skills is also found to be insignificant. keywords: vark learning style, deep learning approach, surface learning approach, problem-based learning method, soft skills. citation | mohd shahir mohamed sunar; ahmad jelani shaari (2017). the effectiveness of the chemistry pbl method via facebook on the soft skills of college students. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 97-104. history: received: 18 october 2017 revised: 9 november 2017 accepted: 13 november 2017 published: 16 november 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 98 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 98 3. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 100 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 102 5. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 103 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 103 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mohd shahir mohamed sunar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ahmad jelani shaari https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mohd shahir mohamed sunar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ahmad jelani shaari https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mohd shahir mohamed sunar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ahmad jelani shaari asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 97-104 98 1. introduction the widespread use and influence of facebook, twitter, whatsapp and telegram in our daily lives is undeniable, even causing the transformation to happen in all aspects of life such as politics, economy, education, social, method of getting information and even the working culture (boyd and ellison, 2008). facebook emerged as the most popular social media platform in the world within a short period, reaching up to 500 million active users in july 2010, only six years after its inception (paul, 2010). the number continued to rise and on 4 october 2012, the number of facebook users reached 1 billion (facebook.com, 2012). as of 27 june 2017, facebook announced that there are 2 billion active users on facebook (facebook.com, 2017). social media applications such as facebook caught the attention of researchers across various sectors or fields, with education being one of them (alexander, 2006; lateh, 2014). it is also observed that social media has a huge potential in catering the needs of students today (manca and ranieri, 2013) since its use is suitable for students with their own learning styles and approach, and they are able to increase their learning experience through self-adjustment, increase their self-confidence and have a bigger opportunity or space to build their network and collaborations (bryant, 2006; mao, 2014). according to hwang et al. (2004) social media need to be given due consideration to be integrated into the college or university education system, since the learning environment itself is a social system that allows students to interact with each other within the context of education. furthermore, some research done in term of the perception found that social media usage in education is able to create a network of interaction, collaboration, sharing of resources, active participation and also critical thinking among students (ajjan, 2008; tess, 2013). however, there is a lack of past research that studied the effectiveness of social media as a tool, taking into consideration the students’ background such as their learning styles and approach, the suitable pedagogy type and their learning methods. this shows that the scope of this research has yet to be studied in depth (sobaih et al., 2016). however, based on the research by (aghili et al., 2014) the implementation of social media integrated learning using active and contemporary learning methods such as problem-based learning (pbl) is expected to raise the level of thinking and develop deeper knowledge among students. besides, such learning method has the potential in developing soft skill elements that the students need (tess, 2013). we cannot deny the fact that every student must possess soft skills along with good academic achievement (yahya, 2004; ministry of higher education, 2006). according to kamsah (2004) one of the reasons of university graduates marketability failure in the job market is because they are lacking in soft skills. the ministry of higher education is aware of this issue and they are seriously looking into it by developing a soft skill development module for students in institutes of higher learning in malaysia (mhe, 2006). 2. literature review 2.1. social learning theory and sociocultural learning theory the suitability of social media such as facebook for the integration into the teaching and learning process is based on two famous social learning theories, i.e. social learning theory (bandura, 1977) and sociocultural learning theory (vygotsky, 1978). social learning theory emphasized on learning interaction with friends by looking at learning as a social process where each individual will interact with their peers, their models and their surrounding situation. on the other hand, the sociocultural learning theory states that the learning process must give more focus on social, language and cultural interaction. this theory emphasizes on a learning process that is not only seen as a process involving individuals, but it is also an individual development process in a social environment sphere (hung, 2002). 2.2. learning approach learning approach is a concept that explains a student’s acceptance and perception of a given subject or assignment (ramsden, 1992). according to watkins (1982) there are two types of learning approaches the deep learning approach and the surface learning approach. if the student has a positive perception on a subject, they will adopt a deep learning approach, but on the other hand, if they have a negative perception on a subject, they will adopt a surface learning approach (ramsden, 1992). the student will consciously pick a deep or surface learning method, and the implication of the choice is important in determining the results of the student’s achievement, apart from the learning method used (biggs et al., 2001). this is because the learning approach is a basic concept that takes into consideration the learning process and the quality of the learning results (duff et al., 2004). 2.3. the vark learning style learning style refers to the ways or methods that are usually applied in students’ individual learning process (hawk and shah, 2007). according to the ministry of education malaysia (2008) there are two types of learning style models that are frequently used in national level research, namely the vark learning style model and dunn & dunn. this is because both learning style models have moderately high validity and credibility support values, and accessible as they are web-based (hawk and shah, 2007). the vark learning style model classified students into four different learning styles modes, based on different sensory inclinations known as visual (v), aural (a), read & write (r) and kinaesthetic (k). 2.4. soft skills soft skills refer to behavioural skill elements such as problem-solving, analyzing, working in a team, handling new problems, communicating through writing and having the ability to plan their work (wilson and lizzio, 1997). having soft skills is a critical factor and given high priority for a university graduate to get hired in a sector. however, based on the report by the mhe (2006) there have been complaints that questioned the deterioration of the students’ skillsets as the result of the current education system, especially that related to communications, leadership and self-identity, despite being a university graduate and recognized intellectually. one of the reasons graduates of higher learning institutions fail to secure positions in the job market is because they lack soft skills (hasliza, 2002). mhe (2006) has set seven main elements of soft skills to be implemented in institutions of higher learning and mastered by students, namely communication skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 97-104 99 teamwork skills, continuous learning and information management, entrepreneurial skills, professional ethics and moral, and leadership skills. for the purpose of this research, the entrepreneurial skill element is not included since it is beyond the research context, which is to study the soft skills values that can be instilled when social media is integrated into teaching and learning. 2.5. problem-based learning (pbl) problem-based learning was introduced by howard s. barrows and was first implemented at mcmaster university in the medical field circa the 1960s (barrows and tamblyn, 1980). it started with the medical field and now it is widely used in other fields in almost all universities around the world. in developed countries such as the united states of america, problem-based learning is not only practised in university but also introduced in secondary schools from as early as the 1990s (barrows and kelson, 1993). the problem-based learning method is also familiar to most students in malaysian public and private universities. however, a research done by tan and mohammad (2014) found that this method is not widely practised in most universities in malaysia, even though the method has been a common knowledge for a while. most university students were only introduced to problem-based learning when they enter university (tan and mohammad, 2014). in other words, this method was not exposed to students during their secondary school years and even during their pre-university programmes such as sijil tinggi pelajaran malaysia (stpm), matriculation or a-levels (hussain and berhannudin, 2009; tan and mohammad, 2014). in fact, most students and teachers in malaysian secondary schools have never thought of or even know about problem-based learning and how to implement them (faaizah and halimah, 2007). initially, the idea to implement problem-based learning surfaced when it was found that most medical students at that time fail to apply their knowledge in the actual clinical environment, despite getting excellent results in their finals. problem-based learning was developed in an effort to prep students with a learning environment that is similar to actual clinical environment or practice. this kind of learning environment would be able to equip students with skills relevant in the real world as well as encouraging the students to adopt a deeper learning (tan and mohammad, 2014). 2.6. blended learning model through social media via problem-based learning the problem-based learning method has gone through various transformations, moving concurrently with the ever-evolving technology. the development of the web 2.0 technology has allowed easier interaction and collaboration among students especially during the discussion process in order to find a solution to a certain problem (treepuech, 2011; sobaih et al., 2016). social media (like facebook), one of web 2.0’s most important technologies, has the potential to facilitate the implementation of the problem-based learning process (wiboolyasarin, 2014). further research has successfully developed learning models that utilised social media such as facebook as a learning tool. for example, blended learning model via social media using problem-based learning (wiboolyasarin, 2014) that has eight levels of learning, which are preparing, identifying, analysing, researching, creating, testing, gathering and evaluating. diagram 1.0 shows the flowchart of each activity based on the social media blended learning model based on problem solving methods. diagram-1. social media blended learning model based on problem-solving methods 2.7. research objective the research objectives are: 1. identifying the soft skill levels of kolej mara students after receiving problem-based learning method via facebook treatment. 2. identifying the effects of the kolej mara students’ learning styles (visual, aural, read & write and kinesthetic) on their soft skills across the students’ learning approach (surface and deep) using problembased learning method via facebook. main effect a) 3. identifying the effects of the kolej mara students’ learning approach (surface and deep) on their soft skills across students’ learning styles (visual, aural, read & write and kinesthetic) using problem-based learning method via facebook. (main effect b) 4. identifying the interaction effects of the students’ learning styles (visual, aural, read & write and kinesthetic) on the soft skills of kolej mara students who adopted the learning approach (surface and deep) using problem-based learning method via facebook. (interaction effect axb) asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 97-104 100 2.8. research hypothesis three null hypotheses were formulated based on the research objectives. the first research objective did not have a hypothesis because the analysis was done descriptively. first hypothesis: there is no significant difference in the effect of students’ learning style (visual, aural, read & write and kinaesthetic) on the soft skills of kolej mara students across their learning approach (deep and surface) using the problem-based learning method via facebook. second hypothesis: there is no significant difference in the effect of students’ learning approach (deep and surface) on the soft skills of kolej mara students across their learning styles (visual, aural, read & write and kinaesthetic) using the problem-based learning method via facebook. third hypothesis: there is no significant difference in the effect of students’ learning style interaction (visual, aural, read & write and kinaesthetic) on the soft skills of kolej mara students who adopted the learning approach (deep and surface) using the problem-based learning method via facebook. 3. methodology 3.1. research design this research utilised the quantitative method using the 4x2 factorial experiment design. the main effects studied are the vark (visual, aural, read & write and kinaesthetic) learning styles and learning approach (deep and surface). the result of the interaction between the two variables was measured by the development of the students’ soft skills after undergoing problem-based learning methods via facebook. 3.2. sampling technique this research utilised the stratified random sampling method. the students were asked to answer the learning approach instrument while the vark learning style was carried out online. each student was then classified according to the two learning styles and approach and later randomly picked (was assigned the treatment at random) to receive treatment on problem-based learning methods via facebook in smaller groups. the gender factor was also taken into consideration so each small group formed will have a balance of both males and females. there were eight treatment groups formed of 15 students who were randomly picked (refer to table 1). the total number of students who took part in this research is 120 respondents of 58 male students and 62 female students. table-1. research group number of students learning approach vark learning style 1. 15 surface visual 2. 15 surface aural 3. 15 surface reading & writing 4. 15 surface kinaesthetic 5. 15 deep visual 6. 15 deep aural 7. 15 deep reading & writing 8. 15 deep kinaesthetic source: adapted from wiersma (2000) 3.3. data collection data collection for this research involves problem-based learning activities for 11 facebook groups of students, a survey on students’ vark learning style, students’ learning approach and soft skills. problem-based learning activities via facebook was conducted for nine weeks, while the survey on vark learning style and learning approach were given before the pbl via facebook treatment was conducted. then, a survey on soft skills was given to students after they have completed the treatment. the students’ learning styles were measured using the vark learning style version 7.0 (flemming and charles, 2004) instrument that contains 16 items. this instrument was obtained online from the official vark learning style official website. students can answer the survey online and receive immediate results. meanwhile, the revised two factor study process questionnaire rspq-2f (biggs et al., 2001) instrument was used to measure the students’ learning approach. next, to measure the students’ soft skills, the course experience questionnaire (ceq) (wilson and lizzio, 1997) instrument which has nine items, combined with an additional four items prepared by the researcher was utilised. the addition of the four items is to ensure that the soft skill elements measured were parallel with the soft skill elements suggested by the mhe (2006). this is because there are some elements suggested by the ministry of higher education that are not included in the course experience questionnaire (ceq). 3.4. students’ facebook chemistry pbl group students involved in this research were asked to join their respective facebook groups as assigned by the lecturer. problem-based learning (pbl) took place to include the lecturer who is also a member of the group, but the lecturer only acted as a facilitator and monitored every student’s discussion. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 97-104 101 diagram-1. sample front page display of one of the pbl group’s discussion 3.5. research procedure diagram-2. research implementation procedure 3.6. chemistry pbl via facebook learning process the chemistry pbl via facebook learning process is based on the blended learning model through social media via problem-based learning that was introduced by wiboolyasarin (2014). there are eight main phases based on the model, namely preparing, identifying, analyzing, researching, creating, testing, gathering and evaluating. the followings are the explanation for the activities in each phase, sorted by week: 1. preparing (first week): during this stage, the lecturer explained the learning objectives, learning activities, evaluation process and communication means that could be done via facebook. problem scenarios were also given to each group and this activity is done face-to-face 2. identifying (second week): students were asked to study the problem’s situation, to discuss, and to list down as many ideas to handle the problem. the activity was done online on facebook. 3. analyzing (third week): planning to collaborate, doing job distribution, problem analysis and planning problem-solving. the activity was done online on facebook. 4. researching (fourth and fifth week): students did their studying, searching, researching and information gathering from various sources. the activity was done face-to-face and online on facebook. 5. creating (sixth week): students came up with their hypothesis based on information gathered and their existing knowledge and experience. the activity was done online on facebook. 6. hypothesis testing (seventh week): students discussed and exchanged information before the information was used to test the hypothesis. the activity was done online on facebook. 7. summarizing (eighth week): each group was asked to do a summary of the ideas, approach and analysis done in solving a problem. each report was uploaded onto the chemistry pbl facebook page and other asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 97-104 102 team members gave their opinions and comments on the work of other groups. the activity was done faceto-face on facebook. 8. evaluating (ninth week): each group presented their research findings (solution) to the problem statement received. fellow students from other groups were allowed to voice their opinions. the lecturer gave his/her comments and evaluation, including on the cooperation of each team member in a group. the activity was done face-to-face and online on facebook. 4. findings findings obtained from the survey were analysed using the spss 19.0 software to get the mean score, percentage and standard deviation for each variable. the mean score for each variable was interpreted according to the scale range as in table 2: table-2. mean score interpretation for each variable score mean score range mean score interpretation 1 1 to ≤ 1.80 highly disagree 2 > 1.80 to ≤ 2.60 disagree 3 > 2.61 to ≤ 3.40 not sure 4 > 3.41 to ≤ 4.20 agree 5 > 4.21 to ≤ 5.00 highly agree (based on wiersma (2000)) descriptive analysis was used to analyze the first research objective while factorial analysis (two-way anova) was used to test the second, third and fourth research objective. 4.1. the soft skills levels of kolej mara students after receiving the problem-based learning (pbl) method via facebook treatment the analysis was done to soft skills instruments given to 120 kolej mara students as soon as they completed problem-based learning method via facebook. based on descriptive statistics (table 3), communication skills obtained the highest agreed value ((m=3.92, sp=0.33) as compared to other soft skills. this shows that most students agreed that problem-based learning method via facebook is successful in developing effective communication skills among students. overall, it was found that all kolej mara students agreed that problembased learning method via facebook is successful in developing the soft skill elements needed especially in studying chemistry. table-3. mean score of students’ soft skill aspect after undergoing pbl via facebook treatment (n=120) construct mean score standard deviation mean score interpretation communication 3.92 0.33 agree teamwork and leadership 3.89 0.43 agree problem solving 3.86 0.38 agree self-ethics and moral worth 3.82 0.57 agree continuous learning and information management 3.77 0.84 agree total 3.85 0.51 agree source: adapted from nabilah (2012) the next analysis was to study the main effect and interaction effect between two independent variables, the vark learning style factor and learning approach adopted by the students, towards the development of soft skills. table 4 shows the two-way anova analysis findings. table-4. anova analysis on learning style and learning approach towards soft skill development. source df pt ptm f sig learning style (a) 3 0.80 0.27 0.98 .405 learning approach (b) 1 0.77 0.77 2.84 .095 learning style*learning approach (a x b) 3 0.211 0.07 0.26 .855 error 112 30.363 0.27 total 120 1653.947 *significance level 0.05 df = degree of freedom pt = power of two ptm = power of two mean f = f statistic sig = significance 4.2. the effect of students’ vark learning style on the development of soft skills across their learning approach using problem-based learning (pbl) method via facebook the anova test result shows insignificant main effect of the learning style on soft skills, f(3,112) = 0.98, p>0.05. this result failed to negate the first hypothesis, hᵒ1. this situation shows that the development of soft skills using problem-based learning method via facebook is the same for visual, aural, read-write and kinaesthetic learning styles across students’ learning approach that they adopted. 4.3. the effect of students’ learning approach on the development of soft skills across their vark learning style using problem-based learning (pbl) method via facebook the anova test result shows insignificant main effect of the learning approach (surface and deep) on soft skills, f(1,112) = 2.84, p>0.05. this result failed to negate the second hypothesis, hᵒ2. this situation shows that asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 97-104 103 the deep learning approach does not exhibit a significant difference towards the surface learning approach on the development of soft skills across students’ learning styles using problem-based learning method via facebook. 4.4. the effect of students’ vark learning style on the development of soft skills of kolej mara students who adopted the learning approach (surface and deep) using problem-based learning (pbl) via facebook method the anova test result shows insignificant effect of the interaction between the two variables, learning style and learning approach, on the soft skill dependent variable, f(3,112) = 0.26, p>0.05. this result failed to negate the third hypothesis, hᵒ3. 5. discussion and conclusion the descriptive analysis found that the soft skills mean factor value is 3.85 after students underwent problembased learning method via facebook. this shows that students agree with the statements that test soft skill elements. in a study done to secondary school students by nabilah (2012) the mean factor value comprising of elements set by the mhe (2006) is 3.57, which is slightly lower than this research. however, the research finding by noor and khoo (2010) shows that the level of soft skills with elements such as communication skills, teamwork, problem-solving, the ability to adjust in various situations, lifelong learning, self-efficacy, and self-moral and ethical values shows a higher mean at 4.21. there are a few possibilities that caused this research to have higher soft skills mean factor value as compared to the research by nabilah (2012) but lower than the research done by noor and khoo (2010). one of the possibilities is the students’ age and experience. the students who were involved in this study are pre-university students (secondary school leaver) as opposed to those involved in the study done by nabilah (2012) who were the secondary school students. meanwhile, the research by noor and khoo (2010) studied the soft skills levels of universiti teknologi malaysia (utm) final year students. thus, it is possible that the students’ soft skills levels increase with age and maturity, as well as the experience gained during the secondary school, pre-university and the university level. overall, findings obtained from two-way anova factorial data analysis fail to negate the null hypothesis and does not have any similarities to most of the earlier research. for example, the research findings are not parallel to the research by vijayalakshmi and renuga (2012) which found a relationship between students’ learning styles and soft skills through learning english literature. this can happen if the materials and learning methods were properly planned and took into consideration the suitable stimulus for visual, aural, read-write and kinaesthetic learning styles (vijayalakshmi and renuga, 2012). the research by vijayalakshmi and renuga (2012) also used the vark learning style to measure the learning styles adopted by the students and some of the soft skills that can be applied are leadership qualities, interpersonal relationship, teamwork and stress management. the research also found no difference in soft skills development between students who adopted surface learning approach and those who adopted the deep learning approach. the result is in line with the research done by gijbels et al. (2005) that found no significant relationship between surface and deep learning approach with problem-solving skills (one of the soft skill elements). however, the findings are different from the findings of lizzio et al. (2002) that found students who are more inclined towards deep learning approach could increase their soft skills compared to students who adopted the surface learning approach. the same goes to the qualitative study by green (2007) that found students who adopted the surface learning approach have lesser command of several soft skills elements such as self-confidence, ability to present arguments and the ability to communicate as opposed to students who adopted the deep learning approach. besides, the findings of this research contradict the findings by nabilah (2012) where the deep learning approach has a significantly positive relationship with soft skills while the surface learning approach shows a significantly negative relationship with soft skills. this research found that the development of soft skills elements could be done through problem-based learning via facebook method, especially in chemistry. based on feedback from the students, the three most effective soft skill elements developed from the learning method are communication skills, teamwork and leadership skills, and problem-solving skills. hence, the problem-based learning via facebook method especially in learning chemistry should begin at an earlier stage (for example, in the pre-university level). other than being able to develop their soft skills much earlier, early exposure to problem-based learning could also help students to apply the knowledge or theories learnt in class into real-life situations. this early exposure could also be beneficial to the students by being familiar with the method before learning about it in the university. since this research required the students to self-evaluate their level of soft skills, there is a tendency for them to rate themselves highly for each soft skills element. for future research, it is recommended that the soft skills rating to be done by another party that is truly authoritative, knows the student and are directly involved with the student 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answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/457/one-billion-people-on-facebook http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=780093 http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/ict+and+learning+styles http://www.pcworld.com/article/201650/facebooks_half_billion_users_ asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 1, 1-6, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 1 the perception of malaysian esl tertiary level students on the ielts test dhiya amalina zahari1 jeremiah dhayaalan jackson dhayaalan2 1,2 faculty of educational studies, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia ( corresponding author) abstract currently, the most acknowledged test to qualify for overseas universities is the ielts test which is referred to as the international english language testing system. it is implemented as an accreditation tool and is believed to be a reputable and trustworthy tool of language competence by tertiary institutions which employ its use. regardless of the current attention received by ielts today, the views and opinions of candidates sitting for the test have seldom been looked into. thus, this research is focused on examining the perception of kolej mara banting candidates on the ielts test. consequently, a 9 item questionnaire on perception was given to 20 participants prior to and after sitting for the ielts test. the data gathered was evaluated using ttest analysis to investigate the comparative differences among the learners‟ perception prior to and after sitting for the test. results proclaimed that candidates obtained a notably more positive perception after the test. hence, some implications are made for all stakeholders especially those learners who are planning to take the test, educational organizations that are overseeing ielts preparatory programs, educators who aspire to train candidates in such programs and administers of the test. keywords: attitude, perception, beliefs, ielts, tertiary education. contents 1. introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. review of the related literature .......................................................................................................................................... 2 3. methodology........................................................................................................................................................................... 3 4. outcomes and findings ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 5. findings .................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 6. conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 5 references .................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 citation | dhiya amalina zahari; jeremiah dhayaalan jackson dhayaalan (2016). the perception of malaysian esl tertiary level students on the ielts test. asian journal of education and training, 2(1): 1-6. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.1.6 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 12 september 2015/ revised: 23 december 2015/ accepted: 2 january 2016/ published: 6 january 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.1.6 http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.1.6 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.1.6 http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.1.6 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 1-6 2 1. introduction language is known to one of the most significant aspects in our life as humans. we use language to express our thoughts, emotions, to communicate with others by fulfilling our needs and wants and to make sense of our environment. human development theorists have stated that language can be defined as verbal, physical, biological and importantly a basic form of communication. as a human, we are nurtured and natured to speak in our mother tongue or the first language since the day we were born. however, challenges take place when we are required to learn a second language which is unknown to us. we may feel uncomfortable, fear as well as anxiety or if we are positive about it, we may feel excited about learning that new language. however, that depends on our perception on how and what we perceive about that second or new language. this is especially critical and important in the life of a student who is a „foreigner‟ to this new language, especially english in this day and age. hence, this was the reason that hosseini (2013) claims that as a teacher or instructor, in order to explore and get intuned with a language leaner‟s mind, one needs to firstly take the initiative to understand the belief system and the perception of that language student. this is because, in the recent days in language instruction, greater focus has been placed in styles and variables of students as a whole. it is claimed that a learner‟s beliefs and perception are connected to learning and are currently developing in areas of research in teaching. in most language classrooms, especially in the english lesson, learners usually carry all their personal characteristics and language styles towards learning itself. to an extent, most of the academic researchers concede that in acquiring languages, efficient language learners are inclined to what they are able to anticipate and ways to assess the target language, people who communicate with the target language which indeed play a vital role in the learning process. by just examining the general context of perceptions, beliefs and personal attitudes would not determine any acquisition; those criteria can eventually be the plans or future steps to be taken, where learners play an important role in most of learning. based on research, social psychologists generally show interest in explanations and investigation which becomes the focal point especially on focusing the concept of a learner‟s attitude and perception in many fields of study. according to bailey (2015) attitude is the tendency for a reaction towards a person, idea, object, or situation to be negative or positive. usually, learners might have a negative or positive attitude concerning the language that they wish to learn or the person they want to communicate with. according to malallaha (2000) positive attitude towards any examination or test becomes the reason for the learners to obtain better grades in the test. in relation to this, many studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between beliefs and competence in language such as those carried out by bachman (1990); malallaha (2000) and coleman et al. (2003). furthermore, gardner (1985) is certain that behaviour together with other emotion based variables are equally crucial abilities for language achievement. this is indeed true because students who have a positive attitude towards learning language, in general, will have internal motivation which will enable them to stay focused and do well in their learning process which in the end does lead to high achievement in their academics especially in language. in a general context, social psychologists have defined perception as the human‟s recognition and interpretation which is based on the sensory information. perception is also known as the way we as humans react towards the knowledge gain. perception is a means in which to receive audio-visual information from the environment and use that information to merge with our environment and make it to something meaningful. besides that, sensation is commonly referred to the instantaneous, comparatively whole result of stimulation which is stimulated by all five senses. conversely, perception is better explained as one‟s decisive understanding of the world and stereotypically includes additional processing of sensory input. it is understandable that both perception and sensation are inseparable aspects which are not on its own, but are known to be a continuous process in human‟s daily life which allows us as a human to explore the world as a whole (hosseini, 2013). when a student has a positive perception about language learning, effortlessly there will be a positive attitude in that student to actually learn more about the language, to perform well in the class and in the end to achieve good results or achievement in that language class. 2. review of the related literature 2.1. ielts the international english language testing system or commonly, known as, ielts, is an international proficiency test developed or standardized for non-native speakers. this test has been recognized since the year 1989 and it is managed by the british council, idp: ielts australia and cambridge english language assessment. at this present day and age, ielts is known to be one of the important englishlanguage tests worldwide, which includes the toefl, toeic and opi. every year, almost 25,000 students sit for this test and they then will be accepted to enrol in undergraduate or postgraduate study in australian and british tertiary education together with professional and technical education. ielts was created on the center of new methods to language teaching and testing. the founders stated that ielts is based on content, assignment oriented and is importantly original since it relates to real life scenarios. hence, it is known that ielts helps one to change the way they live as they look for chances for their education, migration, job opportunities and etc. according to hosseini (2013) these are the reasons that made ielts a high stakes test which is indeed tough and has a high demand in measuring english language proficiency. as cited in hyatt and brooks (2007) from criper and davis (1988) and hughes et al. (1988) the ielts was once known as english language testing service (elts) and it was implemented to evaluate the prospective of tertiary education learners‟ language efficiency that was then taken care of by english proficiency test battery (eptb) in the mid-1960s. following a few practical administrative problems revolving around the test content it was examined before it could receive approval for research by the elts revision project to create a new test. currently its name has been simplified and internationalized to international english language testing system (ielts) which was developed in the year 1989. between the years of 1989 to 1994, ielts was monitored based on research evaluations and it was then modified again before being introduced in the year 1995 to replace the three subjectspecific subtests, namely, the academic writing and academic reading modules as well as the elimination of thematic link that existed between the writing and reading modules. other aspects that were modified in the tests asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 1-6 3 were the score of convergence in all modules to nine bands, introduction in checking the consistency of marking, procedure to appeal, procedures of new validation, security and procedures of the computerized administration. charge and taylor (1997) stated that the change took place due to the feedback from ielts administrators and examiners and through research by clapham (1993) which was into esp and second language. clapham then stated that regardless of the candidates‟ disciplinary area, the single test did not oppose and can determine the accessibility. with this, many researches were conducted worldwide in order to investigate any issues pertaining to ielts. 2.2. perceptions and beliefs oxford (2003) stated that it is important to study beliefs in the research of second language learning because successful language students establish understandings into beliefs about the language learning process, potentials and implementation of efficient learning strategies in classroom and the outer environment (oxford, 2003). puchta (1999) argues some beliefs may positively affect learning, while other beliefs can impede the learning. facilitative beliefs may sort out the issues and increase one‟s motivational drive, while pessimistic beliefs reduce the motivational drive, frustrates the person and may lead the person to be more anxious. holmes (1992) in ata (2015) asserts that people who feel positive towards those who use the language would be more effective and have a greater drive to use it. ata (2015) also cites johnson & johnson (1998) who note that studies on attitude that have been carried out with respect to learning language “range from anxiety about the language and the learning situation to attitudes towards speakers of the second language the country in which it is spoken, the classroom, the teacher, other learners, the nature of language learning, particular elements in the learning activities, tests and beliefs about learning in general”. brown (2000) contends that second language learners of english gain optimism because pessimism leads to reduction of motivational drive. however, ata (2015) states that pessimism changes, through acquaintance with truth, in which, the learner meets with actual people from other cultures. in contrast to this, many views have shown the drawbacks of having undesirable attitudes towards the learning of a second language. such views can be seen in gardner and lambert (1972) where the students who perceive l2 negatively are those who don‟t use the effort to speak for acquiring l2 aspects, apart from being uncongenial and adopting the transfer of l2. littlewood (1983) agrees with this, asserting that such attitudes obstruct the learners‟ learning process, causing them to lose interest and prevent them from gaining new knowledge in learning the second language. ata (2015) stated that one will not be able to obtain significant progress in the language learning process if a person has negative attitudes on the targeted language and towards others who uses that language. truitt (1995) on the other hand quoted that cultural background and previous experiences vary and influence the students‟ beliefs and attitudes about language learning. hence, it can be debated that positive and negative attitude happens due to reasons rather than being unintentional. in a study by malallaha (2000) the attitudes of kuwaiti students on english were investigated and the study showed that these students have positive attitudes on english language. apart from that, the students‟ proficiency and their attitude in english language were also positively related. hence, it can be concluded that there will be an effect on students‟ performance on language test despite having positive or negative attitudes about it ata (2015). studies carried out on the perception of ielts higher education in australia, uk, and china by coleman et al. (2003) found that some students felt that the ielts course did not improve their english because it was form of training that would help them to do well in the exam. thus, students are not intrinsically motivated to learn english through the ielts course but rather they are forced to go through with the process because it is the only way for them to get into university. when a student is forced into a situation they will not be able to fully learn from it because the knowledge that they acquire is meaningless to them. other studies carried out on the ielts test found in ata (2015) include merrylees (2003) study on two user groups of ielts. one group consists of candidates who took ielts for the purpose of immigration and the other group took the test with the purpose of secondary education. with the entry of both groups, merrylees (2003) believed that there is a need to investigate and analyze the way the both groups do on the test based on their race, age, sex and any other variables instead of making a broad comparative analysis. ata (2015) also found arab-speaking students with a poor lexical or specific cultural knowledge of english can cause several negative interferences. his study produced a significant proposition – one which infers that it is important for ielts to prepare the materials inclusive of texts and tasks that can enhance the collective and theoretical acculturation aspect of the students. hence, according to hosseini (2013) based on the students mentioned above, and the impact which includes perception, attitude, and belief towards learners‟ performance, it is indeed important to assess and evaluate the attitudes and perception of ielts candidates. therefore, this study is conducted in order to investigate the correlation of learners‟ perception to the ielts test prior to and after they sit for it. 3. methodology a standardized ielts test that has 25 items on listening comprehension, 35 items on reading comprehension and 2 items on writing were given to a group of 40 ielts students from kolej mara banting from various engineering classes. 3.1. instruments this study involved the use of three instruments in order to collect the data needed. 1. a standard ielts (general module, 2007) 2. questionnaire on perception that was created and validated by ransom et al. (2005) based on survey regarding international esl students‟ attitudes and outlook on english language necessities of learning and support from the university of melbourne. 3.2. data analysis three levels of analysis were carried out: 1. a normality test comparing the ielt‟s learners‟ perceptions prior to and after taking the test. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 1-6 4 2. a paired samples t-test comparing the ielt‟s learners‟ perceptions prior to and after taking the test 3.3. procedure the participants sat for ielts test and based on the test‟s results, 20 subjects were randomly selected for this study. the candidates will firstly answer the questionnaire on their perceptions. next they will be given the ielts general module test and finally they will receive the same questionnaires on their perceptions. at the end of this study, the learners‟ responses to the questionnaire on perception before and after the ielts will be compared in order to identify any significant difference in the perceptions before and after taking the test as well as the correlation in their response. 4. outcomes and findings to test any sets of data parametrically for analysis, assumptions on interval data, subject independence, normality distribution and variances of homogeneity are crucial elements to be analysed. the data consisting of independent subjects were measured on an interval scale. the assumption for a normal distribution was tested empirically over their standard deviation through skewness and kurtosis ratios. as an outcome of the result, the table shows that the pre-test is not significant but post-test is significant. we can conclude that the pre-test data is normally distributed but post-test is not. as displayed in table 1 the mean score of the students on the posttest of perception (m = 3.667) shows improvement over the mean score on the pretest (m = 3.344). table-1. pre and post test mean and standard deviation paired samples statistics mean n std. deviation std. error mean pretest 3.3444 20 .50456 .11282 posttest 3.6667 20 .33817 .07562 source: adapted from hosseini (2013) table-2. paired samples ttest paired samples test paired differences mean std. deviation std. error mean 95% confidence interval of the difference t df sig. (2tailed) lower upper pair 1 pretest – posttest -.32222 .49151 .10991 -.55226 -.09219 -2.932 19 .009 source: adapted from hosseini (2013) the results of the paired samples t-test provide evidence for a significant and meaningful difference among the mean scores of the candidates on the pre-test and post-test of perception (t (19 = -2.932, p = 0.009 < .05 it does represent a large effect size). based on these results it was concluded that there are significant difference between the candidates‟ perception before and after taking the ielts test. the following discrete data plot illustrates the mean scores of the subjects‟ perceptions before and after the ielts test. figure-1. average scores on perception of ielts, pre-test and post-test 5. findings the results showed that there is a significant difference in ielts learners‟ perceptions prior to and after the ielts test. the result indicates candidates‟ perceptions towards the test are affected in the real situation of test taking. the result of this study is agreeable to the past researches from cook (1999); griffith and parr (2001); asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 1-6 5 modiano (2001); sherry et al. (2004). hence, based from this study, it is agreeable that students who participate in high stake examinations do experience great level in stress and are more anxious and in the end effect their test performance. skehan (1998) stated that students‟ perceptions towards test and their expectations from the test are appositively correlated with their assumption on learning either for authentic or original. dornyei and skehan (2003) stated assumption and perceptions of a person in language learning and teaching process is also affected by the students‟ individual differences. the researchers also stated that the iranian students take part in cramming courses which is targeted to prepare students for the high state examinations such as ielts and toefl. hosseini (2013) stated that this type of courses has mock exams in order to prepare the students with an understanding prior knowledge of the students and the degree they can do in actual test. hence, the result shows that there is a high difference when the students who participated in this research do look forward for the similar experience as their perceptions about ielts exam prior to and after taking the test. based on the comparison in mean scores during the pretest and the posttest of perception results it was found that students who participated in the study experienced greater and a more positive perception of the ielts after taking the test. this is due to the nature of the test itself which positively impact the students. the result of this study is agreed on by many researchers. for instance, read and hayes (2003) did a study to investigate the correlation of ielts preparation programs with the candidates‟ performance on the actual ielts test in new zealand. the results showed that candidates who went through the preparation programs had substantial difference in performance compared to candidates who did not go through the preparation program. 6. conclusion the objective of the study was to examine the link among learners‟ perception prior to and after taking the ielts test. to carry out the research 20 ielts subjects were chosen. prior to and after the ielts test, the participants were given questionnaires to assess their perceptions. after collecting the mandatory data, a paired samples t-test was conducted to examine any major significance among the perception of the ielts learners prior to and after taking the test. the findings showed, there was a significant improvement upon completing the rest. it is hoped that the study will benefit all ielts stakeholders especially those candidates who are planning to take the test, educational organizations who are overseeing ielts preparatory programs, educators who aspire to train candidates in such programs and administer the test. there are a few recommendations that could be carried out to further probe issues relevant towards ielts in malaysia which includes: 1. research which includes ielts reading and listening tests. 2. research involving test preparatory methods and analysis of the intellectual processes of ielts test takers 3. lastly, continuous research should be conducted to question the development in writing ielts test components. importantly the researchers of this study believe perceptions do play an important and vital role in the attitude of a person. as for this study, when the students have positive perception towards their studies (in general) and ielts test (specifically), they will have the internal motivation and will put the effort to achieve well in their academics. however, if the students choose to be negative minded, they may end up failing or not succeeding in their academics. this attitude definitely will be carried out as the students move on to the next phase of life. hence, the researchers conclude that, positive perception does lead to optimistic attitude will bring success to one‟s life, while the negative perception which leads to pessimistic attitude will be an obstacle in one‟s life to succeed. references ata, a., 2015. knowledge, education, and attitudes of international students to ielts: a case of australia. journal of international students, 5(4): 2015-2015. bachman, l., 1990. fundamental considerations in language testing. oxford: oxford university press. bailey, c.d., 2015. psychopathy, academic accountants‟ attitudes toward unethical research practices, and publication success. accounting review, 90(4): 1307-1332. brown, d.h., 2000. principles of language learning and teaching. 4th edn., white plains, ny: pearson education. charge, n. and l. taylor, 1997. recent developments in ielts. english language teaching journal, 51(4): 374-380. clapham, c., 1993. is esp testing justified? in d. douglas & c. chapelle (eds.), a new decade of language testing research. alexandria, va: tesol. pp: 257-271. clapham, c. (1995). what makes an esp reading test appropriate for its candidates? in a. cumming & r. berwick (eds.), validation in language testing. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters ltd. pp: 171-193. coleman, d., s. strafield and a. hagan, 2003. the attitudes of ielts stakeholders: student and staff apperception of ielts in australian, uk, and chinese tertiary institutions. ielts australia research, 5: 20-34. cook, v., 1999. going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. tesol quarterly, 33(2): 185-209. criper, c. and a. davis, 1988. elts validation project report: research report 1(i). the british council/university of cambridge local examinations syndicate. dornyei, z. and p. skehan, 2003. individual differences in second language learning. in c.j. doughty & m. h. long (eds.), the handbook of second language acquisition. usa: blackwell publishing ltd. pp: 589-630. gardner, r.c., 1985. social psychology and second language learning: the role of attitudes and motivation. london: edward arnold publishers. gardner, r.c. and w.e. lambert, 1972. attitudes and motivation in second language learning. rowley, massachusetts: newbury house. griffith, c. and j.m. parr, 2001. language-learning strategies: theory and practice. elt journal, 55(3): 247-254. holmes, j., 1992. an introduction to sociolinguistics. new york: longman group uk limited. hosseini, s.b., 2013. a study on the perception of iranian candidates towards the general ielts test. international journal on new trends in education and their implications, 4(4): 184-196. hughes, a., d. porter and c. weir, 1988. elts validation project report: proceedings of a conference held to consider the elts validation project report research report 1(iii). the british council/university of cambridge local examinations syndicate. hyatt, d. and g. brooks, 2007. investigating stakeholders perceptions of ielts as an entry requirement for higher education in the uk. ielts research reports, 10: 1-50. littlewood, w., 1983. communicative language teaching: an introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press. malallaha, s., 2000. english in an arabic environment: current attitudes to english among kuwait university students. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 3(1): 19-43. merrylees, b., 2003. an impact study of two ielts user groups: candidates who sit for the immigration purposes and candidates who sit for secondary education purposes. ielts australia research, 4(1): 27-39. modiano, m., 2001. ideology and the elt practitioner. international journal of applied linguistics, 11(2): 159–173. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 1-6 6 oxford, r., 2003. language learning styles and strategies: concepts and relationships. international review of applied linguistics in language teaching, 41(4): 271-278. puchta, j., 1999. beyond materials, techniques, and linguistic analysis: the role of motivation, beliefs, and identity. plenary paper. 33rd international iatefl annual conference, edinburgh. ransom, l., w. larcombe and c. baik, 2005. english language needs and support: international-esl students‟ perceptions and expectations. language and learning skills unit, the university of melbourne, victoria, 3010, australia. available from http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/llsu/ [accessed october, 8, 2015]. read, j. and b. hayes, 2003. the impact of ielts on preparation for academic study in new zealand. ielts research reports, 4. ielts australia, canberra. sherry, c., r. bhat, b. beaver and a. ling, 2004. students as customers: the expectations and perceptions of local and international students. paper presented to the higher education research and development conference, curtin university, 2004. skehan, p., 1998. a cognitive approach to language learning. oxford: oxford university press. truitt, h., 1995. beliefs about language learning: a study of korean university students learning english. texas papers in foreign language education, 2(1): 1-16. appendix-1. questionnaire on the perception of language learning source: ransom et al. (2005) based on a survey of international esl students‟ perceptions and expectations of english language learning needs and support at the university of melbourne asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. no. item 1 2 3 4 5 1 how do you rate your current english language skills? low intermediate intermediate high very high native proficiency 2 how many hours per week do you plan to none 1 to 2 3 to 4 5 to 6 7+ spend outside your classes further developing your english language skills this year (other than by social conversation)? 3 which one of the four key english language skills do you think is most important for getting high marks in your exam? (select only one) writing reading speaking listening all skills 4 which one of the four key english language skills do you think you need to improve most? (select only one) writing reading speaking listening all skills 5 what is the lowest mark that you would be happy with for the test? 4 to 5 5 to 6 6 to 7 7 to 8 8 to 9 6 how important is it for you to improve your conversational english? not a little somewhat much very 7 how important is it for you to improve your academic english? not a little somewhat much very 8 for your major, do you think english language proficiency will be important for getting a better admission overseas? not a little somewhat much very 9 how much do you think the results of the exam will affect your future life? not a little somewhat much very http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/llsu/ asian journal of education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 3, no. 1, 18-24, 2017 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 18 providing academic leadership in universities in cross river state, nigeria: assessment of departmental heads’ effectiveness basil a. akuegwu1  felix d. nwi-ue2 ( corresponding author) 1 department of educational administration and planning, university of calabar, calabar nigeria 2 department of general studies rivers’ state polytechnic, bori. abstract this study assessed heads of departments’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership at the departmental level. i research question and 2 hypotheses were formulated to give direction to this investigation. survey design was adopted for the study. the population of the study comprised 110 heads of departments from 2 universities in cross river state who were purposively constituted into the sample. data were collected using “academic leadership effectiveness assessment questionnaire (aleaq)” constructed by the researchers. data obtained were subjected to statistical analysis using descriptive statistics (x and sd), population t-test of single mean and independent t-test statistical techniques. results obtained indicated that hods are most effective in providing academic leadership in the aspect of providing professional development, while they are least effective in strengthening leadership skills; hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership at the departmental level is significantly low; type of university does not significantly influence hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership at the departmental level. it was therefore recommended, amongst others that heads of departments should be given orientation at the time appointment and retreat organised for them from time to time to equip them with the necessary skill to provide academic leadership. keywords: heads of departments, academic leadership, effectiveness, administration, universities. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 19 2. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................ 20 3. methods ................................................................................................................................................................................ 21 4. results .................................................................................................................................................................................. 21 5. discussion of findings ......................................................................................................................................................... 22 6. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 23 7. recommendations ................................................................................................................................................................ 23 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 24 citation | basil a. akuegwu; felix d. nwi-ue (2017). providing academic leadership in universities in cross river state, nigeria: assessment of departmental heads’ effectiveness. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 18-24. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 6 august 2016/ revised: 7 january 2017/ accepted: 17 january 2017/ published: 25 january 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=basil a. akuegwu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=felix d. nwi-ue http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=basil a. akuegwu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=felix d. nwi-ue http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=basil a. akuegwu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=felix d. nwi-ue http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=basil a. akuegwu https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=felix d. nwi-ue http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.18.24 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1):18-24 19 1. introduction universities all the world are undergoing change brought about by science and technology. these changes are experienced in all aspects of university life. the ability to respond positively to these changes places one university above the other. thus, universities have found themselves in a competitive mood, whereby each strive to outclass others and have competitive advantage over them through reformation, transformation, modification and outright over-hauling of their academic programmes and organisation structures to meet global requirements. in a bid to catch up with others and remain relevant, universities in nigeria are having critical reassessment of their tripartite core mandates of teaching (knowledge transmission), research (knowledge generation) and community service (knowledge application). however, one thing is to reassess the trifocal functions, another is to let the outcome stand the test of time. to realize this calls for proactiveness in university administration. this is because administration is central to effective functioning of universities. without it, university existence has the tendency to pale into insignificance. university administration is categorized into top or strategic management made up of the vice chancellor and other principal officers, middle or tactical management made up of deans of faculties and directors of institutes, and junior or operational management made up of heads of departments. each of these three categories plays important roles in university administration, and so is indispensible. while the roles of the three categories of university administration are important, those of heads of departments remain outstanding. this is because the department is the basic academic unit of the university where implementation of policies regarding students’ learning outcomes are carried out, and so is particularly important in the determination of professional values and academic expertise (barakonyi, n.d). interestingly, students’ learning outcomes fall under the purview of teaching function, which standout as the “primus enta paris” (first among equals) of the trifocal functions and it constitutes, first and foremost, the main essential demand by university education (akuegwu, 2015). teaching function takes place mainly at the departmental level and is central to the delivery of university mandate. it is closely followed in this regard by research function. these two functions in most cases define the academic position of universities and the essence of their existence. however, teaching and research functions need to be properly coordinated at the departmental level in order for them to achieve the desired results. this is where academic leadership derives its pride of place. academic has to do with scholarly activities or practices such as classroom teaching and learning, and research projects designed by a school or university to enhance students’ learning outcomes. these activities are more prominent in the departments. leadership, on the other hand, is the ability to inspire confidence and support, influence, motivate and enable people to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the organisation of which they are members (kim and mauborgne, 1992; house, 2004). therefore academic leadership is the ability to develop leading ideas and the formation of new academic directions, and inspiring others by being a role model, self aware, self reflective as well as being decisive, visionary, planning ahead and handling finances (berg and jarbur, 2014) aimed at promoting academic excellence. according to joyce and o’boyle (2013) academic leadership is understood to incorporate the core academic functions of teaching/learning and research and scholarship together with a broader focus on academic values and identity. it therefore follows that academic leadership is paramount in departmental administration. this is because it gives direction to teaching/learning and research activities and determines the extent of the achievement of scholarship excellence at the departmental level in particular and university in general. to a great extent, the quality of education that is imparted depends largely on the quality of leaders at various levels within the university from heads of departments to principal officers (ayuba, n.d). the onus of academic leadership rests on the shoulders of heads of departments (hods), who are appointed to coordinate departmental affairs and act as a liaison for the university at the departmental level for a period of three years for professors and two years for other categories of academic staff, with the later serving on acting capacity. the need for academic leadership stems from the fact that universities have continued to undergo significant changes in response to such factors as government policy, continuing growth in demand for ever higher level of academic attainment and credentials, rapid economic development, pervasiveness and society-wide impact of information and communication technologies (icts), demand for increased access, internationalization and globalization (skilbeck, 2001; bolden et al., 2012; jones et al., 2012). in furtherance to this, the mandate of universities, which has continued to remain teaching/learning and research has been affected tremendously by the knowledge age resulting to major impact on their operations. it has therefore become imperative for a sound, purpose-driven and articulate academic leadership to give direction to universities starting from the departmental level, to modify from time to time, their goals, missions and methodologies. according to dubrin (2010) to lead others effectively is a rare quality. it becomes even rarer at the highest levels in an organisation because the complexity of such positions require a vast range of leadership skills. this is why a person who assumes the role of departmental headship must be visionary and has enormous powers and ability to influence decisions so as to achieve the desired results. achievement of departmental academic goals effectively rests on the leadership acumen of heads of departments, and so, they receive credit for success and condemnation for failure. in order to provide academic leadership effectively, departmental heads are required to perform these roles as articulated by berg and jarbur (2014) and university of limerick (n.d): strengthening leadership skills, academic management (teaching and research), resource management (teaching staff and facilities), promoting capacity for innovation, promoting commitment to performance improvement, providing professional development, enhancing quality assurance and standard, providing effective supervision of instruction and providing leadership for curriculum development. discharging these roles effectively, hods have to exercise the power embedded in their position and have the capacity and willingness to influence departmental decisions to achieve the required outcome. it is against this backdrop that this study focuses on assessing departmental heads’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership in universities in cross river state. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1):18-24 20 1.1. statement of the problem one thing is to provide academic leadership, the other is to exercise the power inherent in the position of headship of departments and influence decisions for the purpose of achieving teaching/learning and research goals. as important and central to effective departmental functioning as teaching/learning and research, heads of departments have not been able to give effective academic leadership to make these two functions stand the test of time. lecturers often teach their students, administer examinations, grade students and submit results at their own convenience. these have resulted in delay in releasing students’ results, prolonging graduation periods for final year students and denying students their right of knowledge of their academic standing at the end of the semester or session. worse still, the conduct of research has been confined to the dictates of lecturers. these anomalies abound because hods do not give deadlines and enforce them. some of them lack knowledge of the powers inherent in their positions to give leadership to teaching/learning and research functions. even at that, they lack the ability to influence decisions regarding effective conduct of academic activities in their administrative domains. realising the handicap of hods in providing effective academic leadership, the central university administration in the study area have come out with deadlines regarding the conduct of examinations and publication of results. in addition modalities have been initiated to encourage research activities by motivating lecturers through funding and provision of enabling environment. however, as laudable as these efforts are, the expected results have not been achieved. given this state of affairs, the problem of this study is articulated thus: what is the level of heads of departments’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership in universities in cross river state? 1.2. research question which academic leadership role is hods most effective in providing? 1.3. hypotheses 1. the effectiveness of hods in providing academic leadership in their administrative domains is not significantly low. 2. type of university does not significantly influence hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership. 2. literature review the politics of successful academic leadership at the departmental level in universities requires that the hods be effective in exercising their powers in providing leadership to academic-related activities and as well be alive to influencing decision making in the department to achieve academic excellence. to this end, several studies have come up with findings which identified academic leadership qualities hods need to possess in order to provide effective academic leadership. the qualities identified by the studies include: integrity, courage and passion, trustworthiness, consideration, responsiveness, adaptability; being able to adapt and change to envision alternative futures, to develop people and collaborative partnerships, to create a positive and collegial working atmosphere; being both supportive and able to get necessary support and being able to influence others positively (sathye, 2004; drew, 2006; vilkinas and cartan, 2006; bryman, 2007). riaz and haider (2010) in their study revealed that academic leadership is collegial and cut across policy formulation to dictate and guide the teaching/learning activities as well as research productivity in the department. to ensure the success of the policy, hods need to be close and monitor teaching and learning situation, research and scholarship to ensure that he/she influences decisions about them and motivate academics towards better performance. similarly, lyons (2008) reported that in providing academic leadership, hods are the custodian of academic standards charged with monitoring the departmental curriculum, ensuring that course assignments are judiciously carried out by aligning individual lecturer’s talents and areas of specialty with instructional needs, encouraging and supporting continued personal and professional growth of lecturers, and attesting to the adequacy of instruction and research they engage in. effectiveness in providing academic leadership in these regards demands that hods exercise their powers and influence decisions to bring about good and quality results in the pursuit of academic programmes. by so doing, lecturers and students become aware of their responsibilities and the likely outcome should there be failure in living up to expectations. research finding have revealed that academic leadership effectiveness of hods hinges on their abilities to implement change and assure quality of academic programmes, lead curriculum review and implement departmental goals and policies (hesselbein and goldsmith, 2006). accordingly they pointed out that hods’ effectiveness in providing the leadership required to implement policies is a function of their perception of the position they occupy or the credibility which they have been able to build or the impression they have been able to create among lecturers and students. these depend on their honesty or integrity, reliability, courage, consistency, creativity, goal-oriented and innovative. displaying these qualities has the tendency to win the support and cooperation of the lecturers and students, and as such, be in a position to follow the directives of the hods to achieve departmental academic and scholarship goals. head of departments’ positions are created mainly to lead academic activities and enthrone the culture of scholarship where excellence is the hallmark. this is the purpose for which vice chancellors appoint persons to those positions, and they do not expect less. failure to meet up this expectation, not only alters the vision of the university towards academic excellence, but also results to frustration on the part of lecturers and students. it is for this reason that erkutlu (2008) admonished hods to be keen on academic achievement of their departments. proper exercise of their academic leadership responsibilities is capable of enabling departments realize high academic achievements and promote excellent teachings. undoubtedly, academic departments play important roles in the success of universities and are established to develop, preserve and transmit knowledge. in agreement, sung (2007) reported that the main focus of academic leadership is to enlist and guide the talents and energies of teachers, students and parents towards achieving common educational goals. therefore, hods should be willing to provide asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1):18-24 21 enabling environment for lecturers to develop and revise their teaching strategies and methods, so as to make the jobs of educating students easier and result-oriented. 3. methods cross river state of nigeria provided the setting for this study. its capital is calabar. it is one of the states in south-south geopolitical zone and the oil-rich niger delta region, lying on the coastal axis. two universities are domiciled in this state one conventional and the other, specialised. purposive sampling technique was adopted whereby 110 hods, who constituted the population, also formed the sample. breakdown shows that university of calabar provided 71 hods, meaning that there are 71 departments in it, while cross river university of technology (crutech) had 39 hods, which means that there are 39 departments therein. data collection was carried out with a researchers-constructed instrument titled “academic leadership effectiveness assessment questionnaire (aleaq)”. it had two sections a and b. section a contained two demographic variables, while section b arranged on a 5-point rating scale consists of 44 items, 4 of which measured each of the 11 variables isolated for this study. the instrument was face-validated by 2 former hods, and 2 experts in measurement and evaluation. a trial test was conducted using 30 hods from two other tertiary institutions in the state, while conbach alpha method was used to establish the internal consistency, which yielded .81 as the coefficient. this figure was considered reliable for use in achieving the objective of this study. descriptive statistics (x and sd), population ttest of single mean and independent t-test statistical techniques were used to analyse the data obtained. results were presented in tables. 4. results 4.1. research question which academic leadership role is heads of departments most effective in providing? the variable in this question is academic leadership role. descriptive statistics (x and sd) were used to answer this question. summaries of the results are presented in table 1. table-1. summaries of mean (x) and standard deviations (sd) of the responses of hods regarding their effectiveness in providing academic leadership n = 110 variables x sd rank providing professional development 13.90 2.93 1 st resource management: teaching staff 13.67 3.39 2 nd facilities 13.64 3.67 3 rd enhancing quality assurance and standards 13.63 3.85 4 th promoting capacity for innovation 13.50 3.56 5 th providing effective supervision of instruction 13.42 4.30 6 th providing leadership for curriculum development 13.39 3.18 7 th academic management: teaching 13.35 2.74 8 th research 13.11 3.72 9 th promoting commitment to performance improvement 12.30 3.76 10 th strengthening leadership skills 12.16 3.78 11 th source: authors’ field work summaries of the results presented in table 1 revealed that hods are most effective in providing academic leadership bothering on providing professional development (x = 13.90), followed by resource management in terms of academic staff (x = 13.67), resource management in terms of facilities (x = 13.64). in the fourth position is enhancing quality assurance and standards (x =13.63), followed by promoting capacity for innovation (x = 13.50), followed by providing effective supervision of instruction (x= 13.42). in the seventh position is providing leadership for curriculum development, (x = 13.39), followed by academic management in terms of teaching (x = 13.35), followed by academic management in terms of research (x = 13.11). in the tenth position is promoting commitment to performance improvement (x = 12.30) and lastly strengthening leadership skills (x =12.16). it therefore follows that hods are most effective in providing academic leadership in the aspect of providing professional development, while they are least effective in strengthening leadership skills. therefore, providing academic leadership in professional development is what hods do best in their administrative domains. 4.2. hypotheses ho1. the effectiveness of heads of departments in providing academic leadership in their administrative domains is not significantly low. the only variable is hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership. population t-test of single mean is used to analyse data obtained from this variable. summaries of the results are presented in table 2. summaries of the results presented in table 2 disclosed that the calculated t-values were higher than the critical tvalue of 1.980 given .05 level of significance and 109 degrees of freedom. in specific terms, the calculated t-values were: strengthening leadership skills (t = 33.710, p <.05), academic management: teaching (t = 51.092, p <.05), research (t = 36.931, p <.05), resource management: teaching staff ( t = 42.308, p <.05), facilities (t = 38.979, p <.05), promoting capacity for innovation (t = 39.800, p <.05), promoting commitment to performance improvement (t = 24.001, p <.05), providing professional development (t = 49.752, p <.05), enhancing quality assurance and standards (t = 34.099, p <.05), providing effective supervision of instruction (t = 32.717, p <.05), and providing asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1):18-24 22 leadership for curriculum development (t = 44.166, p <.05). with these results, the null hypothesis was rejected and so hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership at the departmental level is significantly low. table-2.summaries of population t-test of single mean analysis of hods effectiveness in providing academic leadership n = 110 variables observed mean(x) assumed mean(µ) sd t strengthening leadership skills 12.16 12.00 3.78 33.710* academic management: teaching 13.35 12.00 2.74 51.092* research 13.11 12.00 3.72 36.931* resource management: teaching staff 13.67 12.00 3.39 42.308* facilities 13.64 12.00 3.67 38.979* promoting capacity for innovation 13.50 12.00 3.56 39.800* promoting commitment to performance improvement 12.30 12.00 3.79 34.001* providing professional development 13.90 12.00 2.93 49.752* enhancing quality assurance and standards 13.63 12.00 3.85 34.099* providing effective supervision of instruction 13.42 12.00 4.30 32.717* providing leadership for curriculum development 13.39 12.00 3.18 44.166* *p < .05; df = 109; critical t-value = 1.980 a cursory observation of the results indicated that the observed mean (x) effectiveness of hods in providing academic leadership were higher when compared with the assumed mean (µ) of 12.00. statistical comparison of the observed mean (x) values and the expected mean value (µ) of 12.00, using population t-test of single mean yielded positive t-values. this therefore, means that hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership at the department level is significantly low. ho2.type of university does not significant influence hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership. the independent variable is type of university, while the dependent variable is hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership. independent t-test statistical technique is used to compare the mean scores from the two categories of hods. summaries of the results are presented in table 3. table-3. summaries of independent t-test statistical analysis of the influence of type of universities on hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership at the departmental level type of university conventional specialized n = 71 n = 39 variables (x) sd (x) sd t strengthening leadership skills 12.30 3.69 11.92 3.99 .492 academic management: teaching 13.48 2.72 13.14 2.79 .640 research 13.32 3.74 1272 3.71 .815 resource management: teaching staff 13.82 3.39 13.41 3.42 .600 facilities 13.89 3.51 13.18 3.95 .968 promoting capacity for innovation 13.72 3.45 13.10 3.75 .867 promoting commitment to performance improvement 12.11 3.82 12.64 3.77 -.679 providing professional development 14.07 2.94 13.59 2.92 .822 enhancing quality assurance and standards 13.75 3.64 13.41 4.26 .436 providing effective supervision of instruction 13.30 4.43 13.64 4.09 -.401 providing leadership for curriculum development 13.72 12.79 2.80 1.465 p> .05; df = 108; critical t-value = 1.980 summaries of the results presented in table 3 revealed that the calculated t-values were lower than the critical tvalue of 1.980 given .05 level of significance and 108 degrees of freedom with respect to strengthening leadership skills (t = .492, p > .05), academic management: teaching (t = .640, p > .05), research (t = .815, p > .05), resource management: teaching staff (t = .600, p > .05), facilities (t = .968, p > .05), promoting capacity for innovation (t = .867, p > .05), promoting commitment to performance improvement (t = -.697, p > .05), providing professional development (t = .822, p > .05), enhancing quality assurance and standards (t = .436, p > .05), providing effective supervision of instruction (t = -.401, p > .05) and providing leadership for curriculum development (t = 1.465, p > .05). with this result, the null hypothesis was not rejected, and so, type of university does not significantly influence hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership at the departmental level. further examination of the results indicated that hods from the conventional university had higher mean values in 9 of the variables studied. in contrast, hods from the specialized university had higher mean values in 2 of the variables. 5. discussion of findings summaries of the results in table 1 revealed that hods are most effective in providing academic leadership in the aspect of providing professional development and least effective in strengthening leadership skills. this by implication means that hods are alive in providing professional development than any other responsibility associated with providing academic leadership at the departmental level. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1):18-24 23 this finding suggests that hods invest more of their time and resources in providing for professional development of themselves and the lecturers. by so doing, they acquire more knowledge, technique and experience to undertake their academic leadership roles effectively. in the case of lecturers providing for their professional development implies that hods believe in updating of knowledge to enable them be abreast with the latest techniques and development in teaching or instructional delivery; assets which lecturers need essentially to discharge their teaching responsibilities effectively. this outcome is in line with the findings of chase (2005) that academic staff feel that their development is greatly affected by freedom to attend conferences (professional development) as this enhances their professional status and raises their awareness of new developments in the field. this must have informed the desire of hods to provide for professional development of lecturers more than any other responsibility. interestingly, this finding reported that hods are least effective in strengthening leadership skills. this must have accounted for poor academic outcomes among students and lack of commitment to duty among lecturers. this outcome can be explained from the fact that a lot of politics is involved in the appointment of hods. often, lecturers who are close to the apex internal administration are appointed to this position disregarding the policy of appointing the most experienced lecturer in the department. therefore, those who are unduly favoured in this appointment, without the requisite administrative experience shall only display least effectiveness in strengthening leadership skills, and so are not able to provide academic leadership in their departments. summaries of the result of hypothesis 1 displayed in table 2 indicated that hods effectiveness in providing academic leadership at the departmental level is significantly low. by implication, this finding had it that hods are not very effective in providing academic leadership in their departments. this finding suggests that hods are not living up to expectation in discharging their academic leadership responsibilities. that is, they add little or no value to academic activities because of their failure to provide academic leadership or influence decisions on it. perhaps, this accounts for laxity on the part of some lecturers in discharging their instructional responsibilities, a situation that has resulted in late submission of students’ results, inability to cover course outlines and graduate students on time. the departments are more or less operating in a manner devoid of clear cut policy directives and the will power to enforce decisions. failure to provide effective academic leadership in the departments by hods can be attributed to lack of exposure to the dictates of their jobs prior to appointment. this articulation is corroborated by lussier and achua (2007) who reported that heads are often uncertain about their roles and that no one explained what was expected of them in this position which they assumed without the benefit or advantage of any leadership or managerial training. it therefore followed that hods were sentenced to failure right from the onset of their assignments. the low effectiveness of hods in providing academic leadership in the departments is not a fault of theirs. the university system programmed it to be so. summaries of the results of hypothesis 2 displayed in table 3 showed that type of university does not influence hods’ effectiveness in providing academic leadership in the departments. this means that the type of university does not determine the effectiveness of hods in providing academic leadership. whether hods are effective or not does not depend on their university of affiliation. the reason for this finding is that universities operate the same policies regarding the appointment of hods and so, there is no likelihood of type of university influencing hods effectiveness in providing academic leadership. ordinarily, one would have expected the type of university hods belong to dictate their effectiveness in providing academic leadership to their departments. conventional universities with more liberal academic programmes, and therefore have more latitude in their decision making are expected to provide better enabling environment for hods to showcase their academic leadership effectiveness. in contrast, the specialized universities with more of a single programme of study, although with many branches, are expected to be guided by their nature in discharging their responsibilities. thus, technology-based university (one of the universities studied) is supposed to tailor the operations of the departments particularly, academic leadership towards fulfilling their mandate of providing technology-based education. so, this role tends to be confined to the nature of their programme. in this case, conventional university is favoured to have more robust environments, and so, hods in them are likely to be more effective in providing academic leadership. this articulation explained why hods from conventional university had higher mean effectiveness in providing academic leadership than their specialized university counterpart. another plausible reason for hods from conventional university having higher mean values in their effectiveness in providing academic leadership might be that conventional university has been in existence for more than twenty-five years before the specialized university was established. so, their long period of existence might have provided more experience for their hods to display their academic leadership effectiveness. 6. conclusion the finding of this study have clearly shown that hods are most effective in providing professional development for their lecturers and least effective in strengthening leadership skills in their academic leadership responsibilities. despite this, they were low in their effectiveness in providing academic leadership, and their type of university does not influence their effectiveness in providing academic leadership. apart from being low in their effectiveness in providing academic leadership in their departments generally, they displayed effectiveness in providing professional development. therefore hods in the area of study are not totally failures in providing academic leadership in their departments, they recorded some degrees of success. 7. recommendations arising from the findings, the following recommendations are articulated: asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1):18-24 24 1. heads of departments should be given orientation at the time of appointment and retreat organised for them from time to time. these might not only expose them to the nature of position they are occupying and the expectations, but also prepare them effectively for the task of providing academic leadership. 2. there is need to prepare manual for hods, which should be made available to them upon their appointment. this should clearly spell out their responsibilities, and the powers inherent in their positions. through this, hods are better equipped to succeed in the task of providing academic leadership. 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http://www.ul.ie/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20integrated%20competing%20values%20framework:%20its%20spatial%20configuration http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02621710610670092 75 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 75-79, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.75.79 the effect of motor performance on sportive performance of children in different sports branches zait burak aktug1  ruckan iri2 ( corresponding author) 1,2university of nigde omer halisdemir, school of physical education and sports, nigde, turkey abstract the aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between motor performances of children aged 10-14 years and ball striking speeds made by specific technique and to determine motor performance differences between the branches. a total of 64 children (football = 22, volleyball = 19, tennis = 23) aged 10-14 years participated in the study. the motor performances of the children participating in the study were determined with the dordel koch test and the ball hitting velocities with the radar instrument. the spearman correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between ball hitting velocities and motor performance, and the kruskal-wallis test was used to determine the difference between the engine performances of the branches. according to the results obtained, there was a positive correlation between the dktstanding long jump performance of the soccer players and the shooting speeds, between the volleyball players' dktshuttle and dktpush-up performances and the service speeds, between the dktshuttle and dktpush-up performances of the tennis players and service and forehand strokes p<0.01. it was determined that soccer players had higher performance than both tennis players and volleyball players in the dktpush-up test, while football players in dktbalance test had lower performance than both tennis players and volleyball players p <0.05. as a result, it has been found that motor performances differ according to the children’s branches. in addition, it is considered that the requirements of the sports branch (active use of the lower extremity, volleyball and upper extremity in the football) are effective on motor performance. keywords: children, dordel koch test, motor performance, service speed, shooting speed, forehand-backhand speed. citation | zait burak aktug; ruckan iri (2018). the effect of motor performance on sportive performance of children in different sports branches. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 75-79. history: received: 1 february 2018 revised: 16 february 2018 accepted: 20 february 2018 published: 23 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 76 2. material and method....................................................................................................................................................................... 76 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 77 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 78 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 78 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.75.79&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5102-4331 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6520-873x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5102-4331 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6520-873x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5102-4331 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6520-873x asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 75-79 76 1. introduction sports scientists have recently increased their efforts to determine motor skills and motor performance of children and adolescents (iivonen et al., 2015). this is due to the fact that motor skills and motor performance are powerful indicators of children's health conditions and success in sports (vandorpe et al., 2012a; callewaert et al., 2015; pion et al., 2015). it is evident that there are several factors that affect motor performance, one of which is the participation in sports. some studies have indicated that contribution of sports to motor skills is not high. for example, vandorpe et al. (2012b) found that children who actively participated in the activities of more than three years in athletic sports clubs work do not contribute to motor skills development in long-term. contrary to the study conducted by vandorpe et al. (2012b) there are studies showing that motor skills of those who actively participate in sport activities have improved. rudd et al. (2014) reported that children aged 6-12 years whose motor skills are assessed through test of gross motor development-2 and korpercoordination test für kinder (ktk), and suggested that 10-week gymnastic activities improved children's motor skills. in a similar study, montezuma et al. (2011) reported that different dance activities improved children's motor skills. differences in the development of motor skills in children from the age of 10 onwards lead children to turn to any branch in sports. leading children to different sports branches may result in differences in motor skills performances depending on the needs of the sport branch. when literature is examined, only 2 studies examining motor skills of children participating in different sports branches are available. opstoel et al. (2015) identified motor skill differences in dance, ball games, gymnastics, racket games and swimming, and timo et al. (2017) compared to the branches of swimmers, ice hockey and children performing gymnastics. motor skill is defined as a relatively stable general physical structure involving various aspects of motor ability (vandorpe et al., 2012b; lopes et al., 2013). motor performance is defined as the action required to perform a motor task (mosston and ashworth, 1986) or as an action to perform a mobility skill (gallahue et al., 2012) such as a 50 meter running speed, a ball throwing speed. there are studies in the literature evaluating motor performance and sportive performance. for example, sögüt (2017) has found a positive relationship between motor skill and service speeds, examining the relationship between service speeds and the ktk motor skills test, in which motor performances such as balance, jumping and sideways movement of children playing tennis are determined. the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between children's motor performances and specific speeds, and to determine motor performance differences between the branches. in addition, in the literature, ktk test, tgmd2 test, eurofit test and bruininks-oseretsky test were used in most of the studies on motor performance and motor performance, while dordel koch test was used to determine motor performance in the current study. 2. material and method a total of 64 boys aged 10 to 14 years participated in the study. twenty-two of the children participating in the study were 22 of them playing soccer, 19 of them were volleyball players and 23 of them were tennis players for 1 year. measurements of children participating in the study were conducted through the tanita bc-418 segmental body analysis system (tanita corporation, tokyo, japan) using a standard steel stadiometer, lean feet with a precision of 0.1 cm, bare weight measurement and no metal on. children's bmis are assessed by formula [body weight (kg) / height (m2)]. with the dordel koch test, the shoot speeds of volleyball players, volleyball players' speeds, forehand, backhand, and service speeds of the tennis players were determined by radar tool with the help of push-ups, balance, standing-long jump, flexibility, sideward jump and 6 min running performance. 2.1. dordel koch test dordel and koch (2004) is a test designed to determine the motor performance and basic functions of children and young people aged 6-16 years. the dordel-koch test consists of 7 different tests. 6 of which are grouped in the established stations (jumping, balancing, standing long jump, shuttle, push-up, flexibility), 6 min running was conducted as a final test. the best results were included in the study (dordel and koch, 2004). dktsideward jump test; the child was folded four times in 15 seconds and applied at the highest speed on the fixed rope in the form of left and right jumping without touching the two feet and the ipe. the test was applied twice to the total score recorded. dktflexibility test; is a test that measures the flexibility of the waist and especially the hamstring muscles. children's feet are based on the base of the flexibility board, measured in a straight line extending to the last point where they can reach with their fingers. the point on which the foot base stands is determined as zero (0), the side on which the feet extend is positive (+) and the side with the calf is negative (-). the test was conducted twice and the best value was recorded in cm. dktstanding-long jump test; the child was measured in the form of a double leg jumble to the farthest point where the legs can reach next, taking the force from the arms behind the determined zero. the last point of the child's heel was recorded in cm. 2 trials were implemented and the best result was included in the study. dktshuttle test; the child's head is measured in the back of the head, with the jaws open sideways, and the body bent away from the knees and approaching the knees. each full motion performed within 40 seconds was accepted as 1 and recorded as units. dktbalance test; children were measured as single legs for 60 seconds on a fixed rope in double layer. the number of contacts of the legs which was not on the rope was recorded as number. dktpush-up test; the children started the the push-up test while lying flat on, and the hands were on their hips. at the beginning of the allocated time, the hands were pressed under the shoulders and the body was lifted and the movement was completed by returning the starting position after touching one hand to another in the same position. the number of push-ups the child could make within 40 seconds was recorded as number. dkt6min-running test; this test was conducted when the children ran around the area of a volleyball field (54m) for 6 minutes as fast as possible. the children completed this length within 6 minutes either by running or walking when they felt tired. the total distance was recorded in metre. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 75-79 77 each of the subscales of dkt are scored and evaluated separately, and a general score and evaluation are not conducted in dkt. dkt sub-dimension performances are indicated by scores from 1 to 6. 1 = very good, 2 = good, 3 = moderate, 4 = adequate, 5 = poor, 6 = very poor. 2.2. the determination of velocity of striking ball stalker solo2 (plano, usa) brand radar tool was used to measure the speed of the ball, which is specific to branches of soccer players, volleyball players and tennis players participating in the study. the soccer players’ shooting speed of the ball was measured as they shot at 12 m away from the top at the highest speed (right and left). the volleyball players’ speed was measured as they hit the ball with the service line running at the highest speed. the determination of the ball hit rates of tennis children was performed in the form of exhibits forehand, backhand and service strikes at the highest speed. all ball strikes were repeated twice and the best value was included in the study. 2.3. statistical analysis after analyzing the data through the spss 24 packet program, the kruskal-wallis test was used to determine motor performance differences between the branches, and the spearman correlation test was used to determine differences between motor performance and specific pulse rates. the level of significance in the study was accepted as p <0.01 and p <0.05. 3. findings table-1. average and prevalence of demographic variables of soccer, volleyball and tennis players soccer volleyball tennis n 22 19 23 age (year) 11.82 ± 0.95 13.05 ± 0.85 12.09 ± 1.09 height (m) 1.54 ± 0.13 1.63 ± 0.08 1.55 ± 0.09 kilo (kg) 44.75 ± 17.55 53.00 ± 8.63 43.26 ± 8.42 bmi (kg/m2) 19.42 ± 5.43 19.70 ± 2.42 17.79 ± 2.50 sport age (year) 1.9 ± 0.43 2.44 ± 0.56 2.19 ± 0.64 table-2. correlation between the radar velocities of soccer, volleyball and tennis players and the dkt subtests (km/s) dktsideward jump dktflexibility dktstanding long jump dktshutle dktbalance dktpush-up dkt6min running soccer shoot (right) n 22 22 22 22 22 22 22 p 0.14 0.76 0.00 0.21 0.25 0.31 0.81 r 0.33 -0.07 0.57** 0.28 -0.26 0.22 0.05 shoot (left) n 22 22 22 22 22 22 22 p 0.26 0.15 0.01 0.19 0.18 0.32 0.92 r 0.25 -0.32 0.51* 0.29 -0.30 0.22 -0.02 volleyball service n 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 p 0.80 0.28 0.45 0.00 0.19 0.00 0.07 r 0.06 -0.26 0.18 0.64** -0.31 0.72** 0.43 tennis forehand n 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 p 0.53 0.51 0.06 0.00 0.09 0.03 0.79 r -0.14 0.14 0.39 0.70** -0.35 0.43* 0.06 backhand n 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 p 0.41 0.55 0.23 0.15 0.95 0.18 0.48 r -0.18 0.13 0.26 0.31 -0.01 0.29 0.15 service n 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 p 0.79 0.66 0.22 0.18 0.90 0.53 0.22 r -0.06 -0.01 0.26 0.29 0.02 0.14 0.27 **p<0.01 when table 2 is examined, it is clear that soccer players have a positive relationship between right foot shooting speeds and standing long jump sub-test (p <0.01). it is also clear that there is a positive correlation between the left foot shooting speeds of the soccer players and the long jump subtest (p <0.01). it is evident that there is a positive correlation between the service speeds of the volleyball players and the shuttle sub-test (p <0.01). there is a significant positive correlation between service speeds of volleyball players and push-up sub-test (p <0.01). there is a positive correlation between the forehand strike speeds of the tennis players and the shuttle subtest (p <0.01). table-3. kruskal-wallis test of soccer, volleyball, and tennis players comparing dkt subtests 1. soccer 2. volleyball 3. tennis x sd p post-hoc test n x ± sd n x ± sd n x ± sd dktsideward jump 22 34.50 ± 7.02 19 36.79 ± 4.37 23 32.65 ± 4.88 5.87 2 0.06 dktflexibility 22 -0.82 ± 7.35 19 4.68 ± 8.38 23 -5.17 ± 6.14 13.64 2 0.00* 2-1 dktstanding long jump 22 146.64 ± 21.62 19 159.42 ± 15.74 23 137.00 ± 20.97 11.25 2 0.00* 2-1/2-3 dktshutle 22 21.32 ± 7.23 19 17.74 ± 6.30 23 15.83 ± 6.86 7.07 2 0.03* 1-3 dktbalance 22 1.50 ± 1.41 19 0.68 ± 1.06 23 0.78 ± 1.31 7.02 2 0.03* 1-2/1-3 dktpush-up 22 17.59 ± 3.47 19 14.11 ± 4.03 23 14.70 ± 5.45 8.23 2 0.01* 1-2/1-3 dkt6min running 22 883.36 ± 145.79 19 1007.95 ± 254.05 23 975.00 ± 202.67 4.04 2 0.13 *p<0,05 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 75-79 78 when table 3 is examined, a significant difference is found between soccer and volleyball players in the flexibility subtest, and the difference is found to be in favor of volleyball players (p <0.05). a significant difference is found between volleyball and tennis players in the flexibility test, and this difference is found to be in favor of volleyball players (p <0.05). a significant difference is found between the volleyball and tennis players in the standing long jump sub-test, and this difference is found to be in favor of volleyball players (p <0.05). a significant difference is found between soccer and tennis players in the shuttle test, and this difference is found to be in favor of soccer players (p <0.05). in the push-up subtest, a significant difference is found between soccer and volleyball players, and this difference is found to be in favor of soccer players (p <0.05). 4. discussion in the current study, it is determined that dordel koch test sub-dimension motor performance results are different depending on sports branches. there are only a few studies in the literature that have examined the motor skills of sports branches. in a study conducted on swimmers, ice hockey and gymnastic children by timo et al. (2017) they found that gymnasts generally perform better than swimmers and ice hockey players. it was found that gymnasts had a higher balance performance than ice hockey players and swimmers. it was found that in the right-left bounce test ice-hockey players had better performance than the swimmers and gymnastics, but the swimmers had better performance than the ice hockey players in the side-loading test. in another study conducted with children ages 9-11 by opstoel et al. (2015) they classified children selected from 25 different sports branches as dancing, ball games, gymnastics, racket games and swimmers. opstoel et al. (2015) stated that the severity of training was determined not by sports branches but by motor skills. the results of this study is parallel with the results of timo et al. (2017) and in their study, it was determined that motor performance varied depending on sports branches. this can be explained by the fact that the dominant requirements in the sport branch make it possible to develop different motor performances. in the current study, it was examined the relationship between child's motor performances and specific ball kicking speeds. dktstanding long jump test showed lower extremity muscle strength of soccer players, and dktshuttle and dktpush-up test showed upper extremity muscle strength of tennis and volleyball players. however, in the current literature, there are limited numbers of studies in the literature that examine motor skills and ball striking speeds. sögüt (2017) examined the relationship between motor skills and service speeds of tennis children who were classified as clubs and elites. sögüt (2017) stated that elite athletes had higher motor skills and service speeds, which is related to the increase in motor skills due to the fact that elite tennis players performed more intensive training. in a similar study conducted by farrell and van de braam (2015) they noted that the development of motor skills is important both in controlling body parts properly and successful strikes. when the results of the study were examined, there was a positive relationship between the dktstanding long jump performances of the soccer players and the shooting performances. this can be explained by the fact that quadriceps muscle strength is the main determinant of performance during both the shooting and long jump (malliou et al., 2003). similarly, there was a significant positive relationship between ball speeds and dktshutle and dktpush-up test which determine upper extremity strength in the volleyball and tennis branches in which the upper extremity is heavily used. this can be explained by the fact that the body and arm muscles are a determining factor in the ball striking performance in both branches. as a conclusion, it is 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according to their recreational sport participation, gender, age and their socioeconomic status. the data's of the study collected from middle schools in the city center of kutahya, 342 (113 woman, 198 man) students randomly recruited and voluntarily participate to the study, age range 11-15. the easy sampling method was preferred in the present study. as a data collection tool "depression scale for kids" was used improved by kovacs (1985) and adapted to turkish by öy (1991). in the evaluation of data first skewness and kurtosis values were evaluated and no skewness or kurtosis issues were found. than reliability of the scale was assessed via cronbach's alpha method and cronbach's alpha calculated as .657. lastly for definition of the data's mannwhitney u and kruskal wallis test used. data analyses were conducted using spss version 21. for windows. as a result there were not any significant difference between gender, age, sport involvement and depression level of the students (p>0, 05). but, there were a significant difference between socioeconomic status and depression level of the students (p<0, 05). the difference was between bad income and very good income. keywords: depression, middle school, student, recreation. citation | nurullah emir eki̇nci̇ (2018). investigation of depression level of middle school students’ according to some variables. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 280-283. history: received: 12 june 2018 revised: 9 july 2018 accepted: 26 july 2018 published: 20 august 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 281 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 281 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 281 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 282 5. limitations and suggestions ....................................................................................................................................................... 282 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 283 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.280.283&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4526-4339 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4526-4339 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4526-4339 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4526-4339 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 280-283 281 1. introduction today's education system is not the only aim at future professions. schools are obliged not only to provide information but also to socialize the individual. because there are lots of depressive symptoms and poor coping skill exist for students, who constantly deal with multiple stressors in a complex society (puskar et al., 2003). depression is among one of the most disabling disorders and frequently begins early in life (fergusson and woodward, 2002). depression is a syndrome with symptoms, a feeling or a state of depression in the deep gloom of thought, slow down and recession on speech and movements, negative expectations, worthlessness, hopelessness, smallness, weakness, reluctance, pessimism, slowdown on thoughts and feelings with physiological functions, increases the risk of suicide and school refusal (craft and perna, 2004; essau et al., 2013; ollendick, 2013). depression is a common and persistent mental illness in children and has detrimental effects on child development feelings and physical well-being (brosse et al., 2002; costello et al., 2011; sun and wang, 2015). it is known that as a part of the social life sport not only upgrades the quality of life but also has a therapeutic effect on depression (martikainen et al., 1999). several reviews of the literature have focused on observational and intervention studies which have assessed the relationship between physical activity and depression (paluska and schwenk, 2000; rohan et al., 2004)(o'neal & dunn, 2000). self-reported level of recreational physical activity correlated with better mental health, including fewer symptoms of both anxiety and depression, after controlling for confounding variables including sex, age, socioeconomic status, and physical illness (salmon, 2001). also, its known that sports increase serotonin and endorphins hormone, reduced stress reactivity, and activity related increases in control, mastery, self-efficacy, physical health as well as mental health benefits (mackenbach et al., 1997; karakaya et al., 2006). depression is a mental disorder affecting performance and some social skills that can lead to serious problems if left untreated (saxena et al., 2005). that is why; our motivation in this study was to investigate the effect of gender, age, welfare and sport on the depression level of middle school students to see the positive and negative effect of variables on middle school students. 2. methodology 2.1. study design in the study, a cross-sectional method used as study design, and according to gratton and jones (2010) this method is perhaps the most commonly used method in social and sport based studies. according to this method, the data obtained from a sampling group relationship is identified and generalized back to the population. 2.2. sampling group a total of 414 randomly chosen primary school students from several schools of kutahya city center – a city in the west part of turkey with the population of 325.000voluntarily participated in the study. but, after outliers were analyzed answers of 10 students eliminated. so finally the sampling group has consisted of 404 primary students [(n=173) female, (n=231) male]. 2.3. data collection tool different methods such as clinical interviews, structured interviews, and self-report questionnaires have been developed to measure depression symptoms. the children's depression inventory (kovacs, 1985) is the most established self-report measure of depressive symptoms in children. it is intended to measure depressive symptoms in children 7–17 years old with basic reading and comprehension skills. in the present study, a turkish version of kovacs (1985) the children's depression inventory (cdi) was used. the turkish adaptation of the scale was done by öy (1991). the cdi is a 3-item likert type, single-dimension scale made up of 27 questions. possible total score range from 0 to 54. higher scores indicating higher levels of depressive symptoms. the cronbach's alpha coefficient was .80. for each item on the cdi, children are asked to endorse one of three statements that best describe the way they have been feeling during the past two weeks (e.g., ‘‘i am sad once in a while,'' ‘‘i am sad many times,'' or ‘‘i am sad all the time''). responses are scored quantitatively on a scale of 0 (the symptom is not present), 1 (the symptom is present and mild), and 2 (the symptom is present and marked). 2.4. data analyses spss 22 software program (spss inc., chicago il, usa) was used for statistical analysis. in the analysis of the data; mean value is given as the descriptive statistic. kolmogorov-smirnov test was used for the normality of data. moreover, mann whitney u test and kruskal wallis h test applied for comparison of categorical variables and dunn’s post hoc test was used for multiple comparison tests after kruskal wallis h test. the level of significance was set at 5%. cronbach's alpha value of the scale was calculated as .753 in the present study. 3. findings table-1. mann whitney u test results according to recreational sports participation and gender variable. recreational sports n mean u p yes 239 152.43 7751.5 0.199 no 72 167.84 gender n mean u p woman 113 145.85 10040.5 0.130 man 198 161.79 p>0,05 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 280-283 282 according to table 1 analysis results shows that there is no any significant differences between depression and recreational sports participation (u=7751.5; p=0.199; p>0.05). also between depression and gender (u=100400.5; p=0.130; p>0.05). table-2. kruskal wallis test result according to age variable age n mean x² p 9-11 105 152.33 1.01 0.603 12-14 114 162.69 14+ 92 151.90 p>0,05 according to table 2 analysis results shows that there is no any significant differences between depression and age (x²=1.01; p=0.603; p>0.05). table-3. kruskal wallis test result according to their socioeconomic status. economic status n mean x² p bad 20 215.40 15.476 0.001* normal 104 157.99 good 140 157.23 very good 47 122.65 difference between groups n mean u p bad 20 47.63 197.5 0.001* very good 47 28.20 *p<0,05 according to table 3 analysis results shows students' socioeconomic status according to data's 20 students have "bad," 104 students have "normal," 140 students have "good," 47 students have "very good" income level. analyses of the data show there was a significant difference between depression and income level of students (x²=15.476; p=0.001; p<0.05). to determine the binary combination of groups mann-whitney u test is done. test results showed that the significant difference was between students who have "bad" income level and the students who have "very good" income level (u=197.5; p=, 000; p<0.05). 4. conclusion and discussion according to the findings of the study, there were no significant differences in depression scores of students' recreational sports activities participation. however, depression scores of the students who engaged in recreational sports activities have been identified much less than students who not participated. in the literature, there are some studies which support this result. according to strawbridge et al. (2002) individuals with low activity levels were at much higher risk for depression compared to a high activity reference group. kritz et al. (2001) found that more intensive and frequent activity associated with lower scores on depression. also, individuals who engage in more physical activity are less likely to be concurrently depressed (tsuang and faraone, 1990; mackenbach et al., 1997; o'neal et al., 2000). it has observed that there were no significant differences in depression level between students according to the gender variable. the reason can be taught that under the terms of their ages, students are similarly emotional, self-conscious and have stress at the same level (erözkan, 2009). in contrast to this result, in general, according to gender variable, significant differences have been observed in other studies (brosse et al., 2002; arslan et al., 2011). for instance, in the study of eskin et al. (2008). about the factors related to depression in high school students, they found that 141 students (17.5%) scored on and above the cut-off point on the children depression inventory (cdi) were the girl. also, it has determined that there were no significant differences according to gender variable in ören and gençdoğan (2007) study on students who attend high school. according to essau et al. (2013) studies that used self-report questionnaires such as the centre for epidemiological studies depression scale for children (ces-dc) have similarly shown girls to report significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms than boys. according to analyses results, there were no significant differences in depression scores of the students who are in different age ranges. also karakaya et al. (2006). did not find any significant difference on professional swimmer children. according to the above result, we may say a small age difference between students gives the same effect. the study of bettge et al. (2008) support this theory. according to bettge depressive symptoms were significantly higher among adolescents (12–18 years) than children (6–11 years). also in the literatüre, some studies showed that there is a significant relationship between the prevalence of depression and age (kashani et al., 1987). analyses result showed that there was a significant difference between the socioeconomic status of the students. results showed that the difference was between the students who have bad income and the students who had very good income level. according to lawlor and hopker (2001) and lopez et al. 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education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 3, no. 1, 25-29, 2017 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 25 a comparative study on the teaching effects of triz courses for the humanities luo lingling1  li peng2 zhang ping3 ( corresponding author) 1,2 research center for philosophy of science and technology northeastern university, china, shenyang 3 school of humanities and law northeastern university, china, shenyang abstract in order to test the feasibility of the curriculum system of triz used in humanities and social science majors, this study will test whether it is effective to cultivate students’ creativity and to train their ability to solve problems. this study designs the randomly experimental targets in the two control groups for pretest and post-test. this study tests creative thinking and student self-evaluation questionnaire by use of the china taiwan scholar, wu jingji’s design. the result indicates that the post-test, for the two groups of students, their creative thinking indicators have improved significantly. the results showed that triz had a significant effect on improving students' creativity. finally, this study has discussed the value of triz course contained in humanities and social science teaching and addressed the needs to improve. keywords: triz, triz courses, creative development course, creative, effect, comparative study. contents 1. the theoretical background of this study ......................................................................................................................... 26 2. study design ........................................................................................................................................................................ 26 3. findings ................................................................................................................................................................................ 27 4. results .................................................................................................................................................................................. 28 5. discussions ........................................................................................................................................................................... 29 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 29 citation | luo lingling; li peng; zhang ping (2017). a comparative study on the teaching effects of triz courses for the humanities. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 25-29. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 18 november 2016/ revised: 9 january 2017/ accepted: 20 january 2017/ published: 2 february 2017 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=luo lingling https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=li peng https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=zhang ping http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=luo lingling https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=li peng https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=zhang ping http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=luo lingling https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=li peng https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=zhang ping http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=luo lingling https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=li peng https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=zhang ping http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=luo lingling https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=li peng https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=zhang ping http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.25.29 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 25-29 26 1. the theoretical background of this study 1.1. the feasibility for triz innovation theory used in non-technical areas the earliest works of this field come from the scholars ,boris zlotin and alla zusman , who explore the possibility of triz innovation theory in the social sciences (boris and alla, 1993). and later, some researchers began to explore the possibility of triz innovation theory applied to non-technical areas. because triz analytical tools and psychological operators can be applied directly or can be easily changed to be applied to non-technical areas; for instance, separation and self-service can be seen as parts of the principle of universal (boris et al., 2000). regarding the triz innovation theory applied to specific applied research in non-technical areas, darrell mann has led the research team that have made the mostly contributions. on the basis of more than 3 million copies for worldwide successful business management cases, they propose that the triz innovative measures and contradictory parameter matrix can be applicable to business management areas. they argue that the contradictions parameters can be defined from the basic problems arising from business management (darrell, 2002). gennady retseptor presented 40 innovative measures in the field of quality management (retseptor, 2003) and increased customer satisfaction for the 40 innovative measures (retseptor, 2007). jun zhang, kah-hin chai, kay-chuan tan and others give 40 principles of areas of service operations and they have been equipped with the cases for a corresponding service operation field (zhang et al., 2003). dana g.marsh et.al who give the corresponding cases and 40 innovative measures in the field of education (marsh, 2004). yonghai and jianhua (2009) demonstrated in the study of how to use the principle of separation of four methods the time separation, spatial separation, separation conditions, separation systems-for business model innovation (yonghai and jianhua, 2009). lv et al. (2010) address the application of innovative measures and contradictory arguments on china’s express delivery company's innovation strategy (lv et al., 2010). zhang yaqiang, sang xiufeng et al have defined 35 parameters generally from the management areas, and proposed the principle of separation of management field (zhang and sang, 2011). iran’s scholar, dr.mohammad h.saliminamin, based on summarizing the previous migration studies of innovative measures of triz, argues that triz innovative measures virtually are contained in some philosophical elements. these elements are the unit of practical effects in principle and are universal (saliminamin and nezafati, 2003). the chinese scholar, zhang dengbo, who pointed out that due to maladaptation to the structural problems, they lead to the triz innovation theory in the field of engineering and technology which can not be directly applied to the non-technical areas. they should abstract triz innovative measures from philosophical and methodological perspectives, interpreted it as a social sphere for innovation measures and test these principles by use of cases (zhang et al., 2008). 1.2. cultivating how to access the creativity teaching as early as 2004, it was suggested that the difference between creative teaching and teaching creativity should be clear. the former refers to the use of imaginative approaches to make learning more funny and effective, while the latter concerns about the attitudes of creative teaching, and teaches how to develop students’ creative thinking and behavior. despite the creative teaching has its undeniable value and it is believed that it has a lasting impact, education ultimately should focus on creativity training (magdalena et al., 2013). according to csikszentmihalyi’s creativity systems theory (1999), the teacher is the gatekeeper of students’ creativity and creative product, whose teaching attitudes and academic expectations of students are under the direct control of the creative results (csikszentmihalyi, 1988). creative potential is usually defined as divergent thinking ability, but as novelty and feasibility. indicators of divergent thinking is used to examine the improvement of students' creativity as an important way. 2. study design 2.1. the purpose of the experiment the purpose of the experiment is to understand how to implement the triz innovative methods in humanities and social sciences. summarizing directions and recommendations to improve such teaching. this study chooses the students’ innovative teaching contents and manners in humanities and social science as the target and designs teaching triz innovative methods. the different effects of two teaching triz system for training students' creativity are compared. 2.2. assessment tools wu jingji’s creative thinking test scale. the scale is divided into two parts: a new version of chinese language for creativity thinking test-unusual uses for bamboo chopsticks, a new version of graphics for creativity thinking test-human shape drawing. wu jingji is a well-known scholar of creativity research in china taiwan, who is the student of e.p. torrance as the pioneer of creative thinking test (ttct). he has inherited ttct measuring mode, but made ttct test simplify. they use the chopsticks and chinese words in chinese culture as the stimuli factor for test, which is more suitable for chinese participants. the reliability and validity of wu jingji’s creative thinking test scale have reached a higher level. the factors for this scale include fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. this kind of divergent thinking test is mainly used to measure divergent thinking creative potential, which is the most mature one for the creativity measurement. 2.3. experimental design types randomly assigned to subjects of two controlled group measured before and after the experiment 2.4. experimental hypothesis the experimental studies’ assumptions include the following three groups: asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 25-29 27 assumption 1: there are no significant differences between post-test score for the ones who have accepted the primary triz training in liberal arts major in their creative thinking (verbal / graphic) and the ones who have accepted the creative training on a general scale and higher than pretest score. assumption 2: the post-test scores of the ones who have accepted the primary triz training in liberal arts major in their creative thinking (verbal / graphic) will be higher than the scores of the ones who accepted the creative training on a general scale. 2.5. research procedures (1) use the creative thinking test (verbal/graphic) to do the experimental pretest for the college students’ creative thinking levels in the experimental group and the control group. (2) for the formal experiment, the control group received 40 hours for learning the general creativity developing courses and the experimental group received 40 hours for triz initial training. (3) after 10 weeks, at the end of the experiment, the creative thinking test (verbal/graphic) is used again to do the experimental post-test for the college students’ creative thinking levels in the experimental group and the control group. (4) statistical data processing. 3. findings in this experiment, the students in the experimental group are from the major of administration management, public utilities management business, ideological and political education. the teaching content is about triz. in order not to affect the normal school teaching order, this experiment takes the teaching classes as a unit, and teaching assignment is carried out in accordance with the normal teaching schedule. the experiment has been done from the second semester of the academic year, namely, from 2014 to 2015, through 1 week to 10 weeks (10 weeks with 40 hours). the experimental group (using triz teaching) and control group (using the traditional teaching of creation) are compared. test is divided into the following groups: in the experimental group, verbal test of creative thinking for triz teaching (i.e. chopsticks test), and it is short for experience group chopsticks test. the number of effective sample is 63. in the experimental group, graphic test of creative thinking for triz teaching (i.e. human shape test), and it is short for experience group human shape test. the number of effective sample is 81. in the control group, verbal test of creative thinking for traditional teaching (i.e. chopsticks test), and it is short for group 2 chopsticks test. the number of effective sample is 68. in the control group, graphic test of creative thinking for traditional teaching (i.e. human shape test ), and it is short for group 2 human shape test. the number of effective sample is 76. during pairwise comparison, the number of the samples in pretest and post-test has been naturally decreased. 3.1. the contrast between pretest and post-test within groups for the same group of students, they are tested in accordance with the four dimensions, namely, fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration before and after the course learning. the researchers put the tested scores of each item into the spss software and give the paired samples t-test, by measuring whether there is significant differences of creativity existing before and after the training. (1) the comparison between pretest and post-test within the chopsticks test group in experience group within experience group, for the chopsticks test, before the creative teaching of students, the mean scores of the fluency is 12.429. after using triz teaching methods, the students’ fluency scores have been increased to 20.163. similarly, the mean scores of the flexibility have been increased from 7.653 to 10.857, and that of originality level have been increased from 10.47 to 16.43. in summary, the overall measuring scores have been increased from 30.551 to 47.449, and it has been increased to 55.3 %. table-1. descriptive statistics of pretest and post-test for experience group chopsticks test and comparison with the differences in indicators paired.samples test paired difference t df sig. (bilateral) mean value standard deviation se mean the difference of the 95% confidence interval upper limit lower limit paired 1 experience group posttest fluency-experience group pretest fluency 20.163 12.429 8.7115 5.2281 1.2474 10.2427 5.2267 6.201 48 .000 paired 2 experience group posttest flexibilityexperience group pretest flexibility 10.857 7.653 2.4238 2.6891 .4601 4.1292 2.2789 6.963 48 .000 paired 3 experience group posttest originality -experi ence group pretest origi nality 16.43 10.47 10.930 5.676 1.602 9.181 2.737 3.719 48 .001 paired 4 total scores of experience group posttest total scores of experience grouppretest 47.449 30.551 20.9434 12.9809 3.1154 23.1620 10.6339 5.424 48 .000 source: questionnaire data analysis file:///c:/users/admin/appdata/local/youdao/dict/application/6.3.69.5012/resultui/frame/javascript:void(0); http://dict.youdao.com/w/mean%20value/#keyfrom=e2ctranslation http://dict.youdao.com/w/standard%20deviation/#keyfrom=e2ctranslation http://dict.youdao.com/w/standard%20deviation/#keyfrom=e2ctranslation asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 25-29 28 for the first group, triz techniques’ training of chopsticks pretest and post-test, the fluency, flexibility, originality and the total scores in the pretest and post-test sig. are .000, indicating that mean value of these groups has no significantly differences. this kind of way for creativity training can significantly influence students’ thinking fluency, flexibility and originality, namely, it is effective in influencing the students' creativity. seen from the t value, the flexibility level is highest significant, followed by fluency and originality. however, by the standard deviation and standard error values, it can be seen that the total score and sub-scores have increased the degree of dispersion. it indicates that in the post-test of chopsticks, this group of students have the large gaps for the scores among individuals. when compared with the untrained generally flat creativity, some students accept the extent of the teaching method which is too high, resulting in a more significant upgrade of creativity, and some other changes are relatively weak. (2) within experience group human shape test, the comparison between pretest and post-test for the human shape test of the group1, the mean score of the students’ fluency before getting the creativity teaching is 16.262. after learning triz teaching methods, the scores of fluency has been upgrading to 21.4. equally, the overall level of flexibility of the students in this group has been rising from 10.554 to 11.569. the level of originality has been rising from 15.15 from 12.78. in summary, the overall measured score has been rising from 46.154 to 53.908, and the indicator has been increasing to 16.8%. however, it is worth noting that the elaboration of the group shows a downward trend from 6.55 down to 5.78, but the standard deviation has increased by indicating that the level of elaboration shows an overall decline after training while the differences between individuals also have increased. in human form tests, the students from experience group triz training have the score in the fluency, the originality of the pretest and post-test and total scores for the pretest and post-test. here, sig is less than 0.05, indicating that for such graphics training, students’ fluency, originality and the overall level have been rising significantly after getting triz techniques training. the overall score of originality and elaboration has been improved but it is not obvious. however, by the standard deviation and standard error values, it can be seen that the total score and sub-scores has increased the degree of dispersion. it indicates that in the post-test of human shape, this group of students have the large gaps for the scores among individuals. when compared with the untrained generally flat creativity, some students accept the extent of the teaching method which is too high, resulting in a more significant upgrade of creativity, and some other changes are relatively weak. table-2. descriptive statistics of pretest and post-test for experience grouphuman shape test and comparison with the differences in indicators paired samples test paired difference t df sig. (bilateral) mean value standard deviation se mean the difference of the 95% confidence interval upper limit lower limit paired 1 experience group posttest fluency-experience group pretest fluency 21.400 16.262 9.3086 6.1117 1.0282 7.1925 3.0844 4.998 64 .000 paired 2 experience group posttest flexibilityexperience group pretest flexibility 11.569 10.554 4.5859 4.2940 .5373 2.0888 -.0580 1.890 64 .063 paired 3 experience group post-te st originality -experience group pretest originality 15.15 12.78 9.413 9.413 1.077 4.521 .217 2.199 64 .031 paired 4 experience group posttest elaborationexperience group pretest elaboration 5.78 6.55 8.230 6.106 1.225 1.679 -3.217 -.628 64 .532 paired 5 total scores of experience group posttest total scores of experience group pre-test 53.908 46.154 24.9817 17.0992 2.9410 13.6292 1.8785 2.636 64 .011 source: questionnaire data analysis (3)within group 2 chopsticks test, the comparison between pretest and post-test for the human shape test of the group2, the mean score of the students’ fluency before getting the creativity teaching is 11.379. after learning triz teaching methods, the score of fluency has been upgrading to 21.931. the overall level of flexibility of the students in this group has been rising from 7.207 to 11.328. the level of originality has been rising from 9.19 to 17.10. in summary, the overall measured score has been rising from 27.776 to50.362. this rising tend is significant and it accounts for 81.3%. 4. results experimental assumption 1is accepted. experimental assumption 2 that the original part of the speech test can be accepted, and the other does not accepted. http://dict.youdao.com/w/mean%20value/#keyfrom=e2ctranslation http://dict.youdao.com/w/mean%20value/#keyfrom=e2ctranslation http://dict.youdao.com/w/standard%20deviation/#keyfrom=e2ctranslation http://dict.youdao.com/w/standard%20deviation/#keyfrom=e2ctranslation asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 25-29 29 5. discussions first, for humanities and social science students, the effectiveness of teaching triz method is not clearly superior to that of the traditional teaching of creation. triz method is originated from the inventive methods for solving technical problems as their advantages. for the humanities and social sciences, this method should be given further exploration. second, in this experiment, triz teaching in cultivating students’ unique nature has certain advantages. however, the data were merely obtained through the creative thinking test but they are in short of the examination of creative products, so they need to be proved further by experiments. third, triz in the field of humanities and social sciences has not a long history in teaching and needs to strengthen the combination of the case studies of this field with the summary of innovative principles, in order to get better teaching results. references boris, z. and z. alla, 1993. evaluation of organizations and social systems [j]. journal of 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ieee. pp: 1-5. zhang, j., k.h. chai and k.c. tan, 2003. 40 inventive principles with applications in service operations management [j].triz journal: 1-16. zhang, y. and x. sang, 2011. application of separation principle in management innovation based on triz[c]//computer science and service system (csss), 2011 international conference on. ieee, pp: 2116-2119. for the college students, triz methods in business and science and engineering majors, such as mechanical design expertise in promotion get better results. but there are different opinions on whether the students coming from the humanities and social sciences majors carry out related training programs. some scholars have begun to study how to apply triz theory in the field of non-engineering technology, and have achieved certain results. triz is no longer merely seen as “the methods for technical invention “but should be regarded as “innovative ideas”. whether this course system can be applied to the students in the field of humanities and social sciences? whether triz teaching system has the effective ways in the training of students' creative ability or solving problems ? asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 110-117, 2017 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.110.117 110 patriotism among secondary school students and its relationship with their interests towards learning history subadrah madhawa nair1  rajeswary p.sinasamy2 ( corresponding author) 1department of education, help university, kuala lumpur, malaysia. 2smk sungai acheh, tanjung berembang nibong tebal, pulau pinang, malaysia abstract in this modern era, students are found to be lacking in their sprit of patriotism. this paper is based on a descriptive study using questionnaires to collect the data. the objective of the study is to identify patriotism among form four students (16 years old) according to gender, race and subject streams. the study also aims to determine the relationship between patriotism and students’ interests towards learning history. the sample of the study consists of 120 students who were chosen randomly from two secondary schools in penang (40 malays, 40 chinese and 40 indians). the questionnaires using 4 likert scales consists of 40 items (30 items were on patriotism and 10 items were on students’ interest towards learning history) were distributed to students. the data obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed using independent samples t test, one way anova and pearson correlation. findings indicated that there was no significant difference in students’ mean score for patriotism according to gender and subject streams. this study revealed that the malay students’ mean score for patriotism was significantly higher compared with the chinese and indian students. in addition, the findings also showed that there was a significant correlation between the students’ mean score for patriotism and their interests towards learning history. these findings have strong theoretical, pedagogical and practical implications. in terms of theoretical implication the findings support constitutional patriotism by muller. in terms of practical implications teachers should employ the right strategies and use effective teaching materials to enhance students’ interest and understanding of history which will also help to enhance their level of patriotism. in terms of practical implication ministry of education, teachers training division and other stake holders should find ways to unite young generation by bridging their gap in patriotism. keywords: patriotism, gender, subject streams, race, history. citation | subadrah madhawa nair; rajeswary p.sinasamy (2017). patriotism among secondary school students and its relationship with their interests towards learning history. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 110-117. history: received: 10 october 2017 revised: 10 november 2017 accepted: 13 november 2017 published: 16 november 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 111 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 112 3. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 113 4. findings and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................... 114 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 115 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 116 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=subadrah madhawa nair https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rajeswary p.sinasamy https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=subadrah madhawa nair https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rajeswary p.sinasamy https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=subadrah madhawa nair https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rajeswary p.sinasamy asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 110-117 111 1. introduction in the present age of globalization study on nationalism, patriotism and citizenship has been concern of educationist. as stressed by grammes (2011) that nationalism, patriotism and citizenship have been ambivalent educational concepts. the education system in malaysia has always been the main channel used to create united and patriotic citizens of the country. according to lee (2002) education has always been perceived as the core determinant factor in creating national unity as well as to initiate loyalty among the multiracial citizens of malaysia. in the malaysian education system, history is one of the compulsory subjects to be taken by all students at the secondary school level, as specified in the secondary school integrated curriculum or locally known as kurikulum bersepadu sekolah menengah (mem, 1989). subsequently, one of the main objective in the national education system is to inculcate the spirit of patriotism in students. the curriculum on history at the secondary school level has been geared towards cultivating the spirit of patriotism among pupils, through the appreciation of local history and understanding the values of unity and tolerance among the different races, strengthening their identity as malaysians and promoting goodwill with other countries in the globalized world. 1.1. statement of problem in this modern era, students are found to be lacking in their spirit of patriotism. there is an example of an incident where the malaysian national anthem was made into a rap song and the contents of the song were altered such that it insulted the nation and the song was broadcasted over the internet. this shows the low spirit of patriotism in the student (ku hasnita and mohd haizam, 2009). according to ku hasnita (2007) and aniza (2008) the act of the student in altering the lyrics of the malaysian national anthem has left a black mark on the spirit of unity in the multiracial society of malaysia. there are many similar incidents which clearly showed how low the spirit of national pride is among the younger generations (ahmad shah et al., 2011). according to awang (1983) the education system that was formed after independence faced the crucial challenge of developing the spirit of patriotism and national pride among the younger generation. awang (1983) also opined that the creation of a nation depends on the foundation of patriotism in order to build a sense of loyalty and national pride among the citizens. mohammad (2010) is worried about the phenomena in malaysian society that has always been busy trying to create a nation that is worthy of respect in the international arena but has neglected the values of citizenship and independence. according to suhaimi (2005) there are a few indicators that can be used to measure the fading spirit of patriotism, such as the rise in crime rate, vandalism, the selling of national secrets, cd piracy and corrupted politics, all of which work towards creating a negative image of the country. sitti et al. (2015) also opined that the spirit of patriotism among the young generation is declining. many researchers are therefore of the opinion that history as a school subject can be used as the main tool to inculcate and strengthen the spirit of national loyalty and identity among malaysians (awang, 1983; abdul, 2000; mohd and rohani, 2004). malaysia is a multiracial country, as such, with the right knowledge and appreciation of local history, students should be able to understand the mind-set of the local society and the nation, and its relations to world history (ministry of education malaysia, 2000). it is also hoped that patriotism will be a unifying factor among multiracial and multi-ethnic groups in malaysia and resolve the differences and tension between the groups. the may 13 1969 racial clash in kuala lumpur malaysia which had created a black mark in malaysian history after independence was also as a result of racial tension, economic divide among races and lack of patriotism. since then the malaysian government, especially the ministry of education has taken rigorous steps to unite the people in malaysia through cultivation of their love for the nation. five tenets were formulated by malaysian government to uphold unity among people to ensure patriotism. these are: 1. faith in god 2. loyalty to king and country 3. supremacy of constitution 4. supremacy of law 5. courtesy and chastity in malaysian context the spirit of patriotism is vital for the multiracial society to live harmoniously despite their vast differences in culture and religious belief. through the teaching of history in schools students learn to appreciate the sacrifices of various races and ethnic groups in malaysia to achieve the independence. in addition, they also learn and understand the existence of plural society in malaysia and appreciate the contribution of all the races and ethnic groups in nation building. cultural diversity is accepted and respected. besides that, through history students also learn to appreciate the global civilization and respect other nations. in other words patriotism instilled through the history curriculum (mem, 1989) prepare students to be open minded, tolerant, promote goodwill and lead a harmonious life within and outside the country. research related to patriotism is very limited in malaysia. as such this study embarks on patriotism among malaysian students according to gender, subject stream and race (malay, chinese and indian). since history is used as tool to cultivate patriotism among students, this study also investigates the relationship between interest towards learning history and patriotism. in this study, patriotism is defined as students’ love and pride towards the country (curti, 1946; lamachia, 2000; haji, 2005; muhamad, 2009). patriotism is also related to the practice of patriotic values, how students perceive teaching of patriotism in the history subject and students’ interest towards learning history. 1.2. objectives of the study the study seeks to identify patriotism generally among form four students in two secondary schools, according to gender, subject stream and race. apart from that, this study also hopes to determine the relationship between patriotism and the interest of students towards learning history. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 110-117 112 1.3. research hypotheses there are four hypotheses formulated and tested in this study. the hypotheses are stated in the form of null hypotheses and they were tested at the 0.05 level of significance. the hypotheses are as follows: ho 1 : there is no significant difference in the overall mean scores of students’ patriotism based on gender. ho 2 : there is no significant difference in the overall mean scores of patriotism based on subject streams. ho 3 : there is no significant difference in the overall mean scores of students’ patriotism based on race. ho 4 : there is no significant relationship between the students’ mean scores on patriotism and their interest towards learning history. 2. literature review the word patriotism originates from the greek word patriot, meaning fellow countryman and patrice means fatherland or country. patriotism is normally defined as the feeling of love and loyalty towards the nation. according to ruhanie (2005) patriotism is the manifestation of the willingness to fight and sacrifice for the country. there is a difference between patriotism and nationalism; patriotism is not based on ideology whereas nationalism is based on a nation’s ideology. nationalism is cultivated after patriotism is instilled among individuals in a society (ahmad shah et al., 2011). doob (1964) stressed that nationalism is more related to the ideology of a race, language and culture whereas patriotism is associated with love and feelings towards the country. however, zdenko (2011) warns that schools should not promote extreme patriotism which may lead to hostility towards other countries, international tensions and conflicts. 2.1. constitutional patriotism theory the constitutional patriotism theory which was first introduced by muller (2007) is based on the social controversial theory which offers a rational and modern explanation that is related to the constitutional patriotism theory by habermas. the main point about this constitutional patriotism theory is that it supports the rules based on free, democratic and liberal citizenship that spells equality for all (muller, 2007). constitutional patriotism is said to be about loyalty and identity, which is related to political beliefs and it inculcates the concept of history in some ways and also the re-construction of moral development. constitutional patriotism also has its own boundaries; each individual needs to recognize his own as well as others’ freedom, acknowledge the rights of equality and learn to live together in a fair manner. constitutional patriotism also gives focus to political boundary. in this matter, the lack of liberal thinking is more general, which in turn translates into political boundaries. study by omelchenko et al. (2015) in russia indicate that patriotism is not only love and respect for the country , but education as a whole, battle against drugs and alcohol, labour for the welfare of the state, care for people and so on. their findings show that factors blocking patriotic feelings are low standard of living, lack of institutional trust, social inequality and incertitude. a study by egorova (2015) in russia concluded that school and family play a vital role in the development of patriotic feelings of children. in this study, patriotism refers to the feeling of love and loyalty towards a country and willingness to sacrifice for the development of the country in a broader and positive perspective. a student’s patriotism is measured through three constructs, namely the feeling of love towards the country, patriotic value practices and also patriotism through history. 2.2. studies on patriotism holley (2006) has studied the level of patriotism among teenagers at the age of 18 as well as adults. the study sample consisted of 608 individuals, whereby 304 of them were individuals from the age of 18 to 49 and the other 304 were individuals from the age of 50 and above. the findings showed that the males were more patriotic compared to their female counterparts and males over the age of 50 were more patriotic compared to the teenagers. apart from that, those who earn higher salaries and have better education were found to be more patriotic. a study in australia by betts and virginia (1997) revealed that australian-born of australian-born parents are more patriotic than migrants and their australian-born children. on the other hand a study by ho (2006) among 243 form four students in johor, malaysia indicated that there was a high level of patriotism among the multi-ethnic students. 2.3. the relationship between patriotism and history chua (2007) studied the values of patriotism in the process of learning and teaching the history subject in secondary schools. the findings showed that the teachers used minimum time to inculcate the elements of patriotism among students. the findings also revealed that the absorption of patriotic values in the process of learning and teaching history is relatively low in the four schools. on the other hand a study by mohmad (2006) indicated that direct incorporation of elements of patriotism in teaching history had a significant effect in enhancing students’ patriotism. the study by rahmat (2007) also showed that there is a relationship between the learning of history and the spirit of patriotism. his study indicated that students with high interest in history also had high spirits of patriotism. as stressed by schraw and lehman (2001) interest is actually a positive attitude regarding an aspect that is chosen from the surroundings, which triggers a person to become more active in a certain field. similarly a study by rambely and nor (2006) also indicated that undergraduate students who have high scores in history at high school also have high scores in citizenship courses. this finding clearly showed that the students’ knowledge in history had helped them to understand and achieve high scores in the citizenship courses. in contrast a study by anuar (2001) in negeri sembilan, malaysia showed that 76% of teachers are not prepared to instil elements of patriotism in teaching history. the majority of the teachers find that it is much easier to instil moral values compared to elements of patriotism. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 110-117 113 studies by putman (1998) also indicated that most teachers do not have the skills to instil patriotism in the process of teaching and learning. similarly haminah (2010) asserted that teachers were unable to instil the patriotic spirit among students during history because of low literacy level among students (13 years old). 2.4. patriotism race and ethnicity ku hasnita and mohd haizam (2009) studied the level of patriotism among students in higher institutions in klang valley, malaysia. the findings showed that the level of patriotism among non-malay students was at a moderate level. a similar study by ahmad shah et al. (2011) also showed that most of the students in public universities who join palapes (voluntary army officers) are malays and the number of non-malays were obviously very low. the researchers concluded that the patriotic spirit among non-malay students in malaysian public universities is very low. similarly a study by mohd et al. (2013) among 1010 youths in malaysia indicated that the level of patriotism of the malay youths was the highest, followed by the indigenous youths from sabah and sarawak, next was the indians and lowest was the chinese youths. studies by mohmad (2006) in johor, malaysia indicated that there is no significant difference among students in their level of patriotism according to race. parallel to mohmad (2006) findings, studies by rambely and nor (2006) also revealed that there is no difference among students in their level of patriotism according to race. a study by anuar et al. (2009) among 436 form five students (17 years old), from the states of perlis and penang, malaysia, showed that there is no significant difference in students’ achievement in history according to race. 2.5. gender gap in patriotism and history studies on the effects of gender on patriotism are limited in malaysia. however studies by anuar et al. (2009) highlighted that there was no significant difference between male and female trainees in their knowledge, perception and understanding of patriotism. similarly study by anuar et al. (2009) indicated there is no significant difference in students’ achievement in history based on gender. a study by ramesh (2004) also indicated that there was no significant difference in students’ interest towards learning history based on gender. findings by rambely and nor (2006) also revealed that there was no significant difference in students’ scores in citizenship courses based on gender. a study by holley (2006) also indicated there was no significant difference in patriotism among youth and adults based on gender. however, several studies such as that by machin and sandra (2006) revealed that there is a marked gender gap in students’ achievement in school. on the other hand a study in germany by weis et al. (2013) revealed that female students outperformed the males in german achievement and behavior regulation. a similar study by pajares and valiante (2001) showed that female students have better writing skills, self-efficacy and self-concept, compared with the male students. a study by chua (2007) indicated that there were no significant difference in the patriotic spirits among the students based on their field of study. similarly, a study by rambely and nor (2006) in a public university in kedah, malaysia also showed that there is no significant difference in the scores on citizenship courses among students based on their field of study. 3. methodology this study employed descriptive research design. the study sample consists of 120 form four students who were chosen randomly from two national secondary schools located in the district of south seberang perai, penang (40 malay students, 40 chinese students and 40 indian students). the researchers employed purposive random sampling in choosing the sample. the sample consisted of 50 students from the science stream and the remaining 70 students were from the humanities field. table-1a. students from science stream and humanities. race stream malay chinese indian total science 20 15 15 50 humanities 20 25 25 70 total 40 40 40 120 3.1. study instrument a set of questionnaires consisting of 40 items was used as the instrument in this study. section a in the questionnaire consists of the students’ personal information (gender, race and stream). section b consists of 30 items on patriotism, 10 items were related to the feelings and love towards the country, 10 items were related to the practice of patriotic values and 10 items were related to patriotism in the history subject. in section c there were 10 items related to students’ interest towards learning history. the items in the questionnaires used 4 likert scales (4 = strongly agree, 3 = agree, 2 = disagree, 1 = strongly disagree). the scores for all the items for each construct (patriotism item 130 and interest towards learning history item 31 to 40 ) were added and analyzed using the spss programs for windows version 24. the validity of the questionnaire was obtained by asking two senior history lecturers from the school of humanities, universiti sains malaysia and also two senior history teachers (having 20 years of experience in teaching the subject) to validate the items in the questionnaire. sekaran and bougie (2013) explained that validity refers to how precisely the study instrument can be used to measure the concept that is being focused on and not some other matters. 3.2. pilot study a pilot study was carried out in order to obtain the reliability of the questionnaire. according to sekaran and bougie (2013) reliability refers to the stability and consistency of the instrument being used to measure the concept and to assist in getting access to a certain measurement. the pilot study was carried out on 45 form four asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 110-117 114 students (15 malay students, 15 chinese students, and 15 indian students) whereby the characteristics of the students were similar to the study sample. the findings of the pilot study were then analysed using the spss programme for windows version 24.0 (statistical package for the social science). the reliability co-efficient that was used for the purpose of this study was cronbach’s alpha. the overall alpha value for the patriotism items was 0.968. according to pallant (2001) the value of a cronbach’s alpha which is 0.80 and above indicates a good level of reliability. 3.3. data collection the actual study was carried out in two sub-urban schools located in the district of south seberang perai, penang, malaysia. before conducting the study, the researchers had gathered data regarding the students who were multiracial in composition at the selected schools. the researchers also obtained permission from the malaysian ministry of education and the school principal to conduct the study. the researchers had also prepared the questionnaires to be distributed to the students. 3.4. data analysis quantitative data which were gathered form the questionnaires were analysed using spss windows version 24.0. the researchers used the t-test (independent samples t-test), one way anova test, and the pearson correlation test to analyse the data. the significant level that was predetermined was p=<0.05, in order to accept or reject the null hypothesis. 4. findings and discussion ho 1: there is no significant difference in the overall mean scores on students’ patriotism based on gender. table-1b. students’ overall mean scores on patriotism according to gender mean male 3.0252 mean diff t value df p value female 3.0841 -0.05892 -0.537 118 0.592 * level of significance at p<0.05 the findings from table 1b show that the mean score of the male students towards patriotism is lower ( mean=3.0252) than the female students (3.0841). the findings from the independent samples t-test showed that there were no significant difference in the overall mean score on patriotism among the students according to gender (t value =-0.537; df=118; p=0.592). as such, the findings failed to reject null hypothesis 1. the results indicated there is no significant difference between the male and female students in their level of patriotism. the present findings are parallel to the findings by holley (2006) who also stated that there is no significant difference between the male and female students in their patriotic spirit. this was probably because their history teachers were experienced and have knowledge and skills to cultivate the knowledge of patriotism among their students irrespective of gender. the findings also support the findings by rambely and nor (2006) which showed that there was no significant difference in students’ scores in the citizenship course according to gender. similarly studies by anuar et al. (2009) and ramesh (2004) also indicated that there was no significant difference in students’ achievement in history according to gender. however these findings contradict the findings by weis et al. (2013); pajares and valiante (2001); machin and sandra (2006) which revealed that there were gender gaps among students in their achievement scores. ho 2: there is no significant difference in the overall mean scores of patriotism based on subject streams. table-2. students’ mean scores on patriotism based on their subject streams. mean mean diff t value df p value science 3.1693 0.19076 1.747 118 0.083 humanities 2.9786 * level of significance at p<0.05 the findings from table 2 show that the mean score on patriotism among the science stream students is higher ( mean = 3.1693) than the students from the humanities (mean = 2.9786. the results of the independent sample ttest show that there is no significant difference in students’ patriotism based on their subject streams (t value=1.747; df=118 ; p=0.083). therefore, these findings failed to reject the null hypothesis 2. the findings from this study also revealed that there is no significant difference in the students’ scores in patriotism according to their stream of studies. students from the science stream and humanities revealed same level of patriotic spirit. this is probably due to the fact that in the malaysian education system, history is taught as a core subject at the secondary level and one of the main objective in teaching history is to cultivate the spirit of patriotism among students. findings by chua (2007) also indicated that there were no significant difference in the patriotic spirit among the students according to their streams of studies. in addition, these findings also support earlier findings by rambely and nor (2006) which indicated that there is no significant difference in the scores on citizenship courses among undergraduates according to their field of study. ho 3 : there is no significant difference in the overall mean scores of students’ patriotism based on race. table-3a. the one way anova test showing the difference in students overall mean scores on patriotism according to their race. sum of squares df mean square f value p value between the malays, chinese, and indians 16.392 2 8.196 0.000 * level of significance at p<0.05 the anova test in table 3a shows that there is a significant difference between the malay, chinese, and indian students in their overall scores on patriotism (f = 37.274, p value= 0.000 , df= 2, n=120). asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 110-117 115 table-3b. post hoc tukey test comparing the mean difference in students’ scores on patriotism according to race mean difference std. error p value malay chinese 0.90500 0.10485 0.000 indian 0.47333 0.10485 0.000 chinese malay -0.90500 0.10485 0.000 indian -0.43167 0.10485 0.000 malay -0.47333 0.10485 0.000 indian chinese 0.43167 0.10485 0.000 * level of significance at p<0.05 the findings of post hoc tukey test in table 3a, also indicate that the malay students’ overall mean score for patriotism is significantly higher compared with the chinese (mean difference=.90, p=.000) and indian students (mean difference=.47, p=.000). these findings show that the patriotic spirit among the malay students is significantly higher compared with the chinese and indian students. apart from that, the scores of the indian students are also significantly higher compared to the chinese students (mean difference=.43, p=.000).. the chinese students had the lowest patriotic scores compared to the malay and indian students. on the other hand the findings revealed that there is a significant difference in their mean scores for patriotism according to race. the mean score for patriotism among malay students is significantly higher than the non-malay students. these findings support earlier findings by ku hasnita and mohd haizam (2009); ahmad shah et al. (2011) and mohd et al. (2013) which showed that the level of patriotism among the younger generations of the nonmalays is lower than the malays. study by betts and virginia (1997) also indicated that migrant origin matters in the level of patriotism. according to mohmad (2006) and rahmat (2007) the spirit of patriotism is closely related to teaching and learning of history in schools. the history syllabus are more related to malay cultural background and the malay students who are more fluent in the malay language (the medium of instruction in schools) are able to understand and appreciate the history lessons more than their non-malay counterparts which could be a contributing factor of low level of patriotism among non-malay students. on the other hand these findings contradict the findings by mohmad (2006) and rambely and nor (2006) which indicated that there is no significant difference in students patriotism according to race. the significant difference in the overall mean scores on patriotism among different races (students) in this study could be due to the influence of their cultural background, parental influence and social influence (egorova, 2015). the nonmalay students (chinese and indians) in malaysia are malaysian citizen and already fourth or fifth generation of their forefathers from china and india. as such, there should not be any significant difference in their scores for patriotism according to race. we should not point fingers and blame any party in this matter. further studies should be conducted to determine factors contributing to these differences. ho 4 : there is no significant relationship between the students’ scores on patriotism and their interest towards learning history. table-4. pearson correlation between students’ overall scores on patriotism and their scores on interest in learning history. pearson correlation between patriotism and interest towards learning history correlation between patriotism and interest towards learning history r = 0.770 p = 0.000 n = 120 * level of significance at p<0.05 the results from the pearson correlation explained in table 4 indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between students’ overall scores on patriotism and their scores on ’ interest towards learning the history subject (r = 0.770; p = 0.000; n = 120). in other words students’ patriotism is highly correlated with their interest towards learning history. therefore, the findings failed to accept null hypothesis 4. this study also indicated that there is a significant correlation between students’ interest in learning history and their scores for patriotism. these findings are in line with the findings from an earlier study conducted by rahmat (2007) which indicated that the interest towards history has a positive impact on the spirit of patriotism among the students. besides that, these findings also support the findings by putman (1998) and mohmad (2006) which showed positive relationship between history and patriotism. 5. conclusion this study has resulted in a few interesting and crucial findings which has strong theoretical, pedagogical and practical implications. the findings revealed that there is no significant difference in the scores on patriotism among students based on gender. the findings indicated that the male and female students are almost equal in their patriotic spirit. apart from that there is also no significant difference in their scores on patriotism based on subject streams. students from the science steam and humanities exhibited no significant difference in their level of patriotism. these findings support constitutional patriotism by muller (2007) which advocate that constitutional patriotism is about loyalty and identity which is related to political beliefs and it inculcates the concept of history in some ways and also the re-construction of moral development. in contrast there was a significant difference in students mean score on patriotism according to race. the malay students’ mean score for patriotism was significantly higher compared with the indian and chinese students. the mean score on the patriotism of the indian students was lower compared with the malay students but was significantly higher compared with the chinese students. a significant difference in patriotism among the secondary school students based on race is unhealthy because as malaysians, all the races in the country should have high patriotic spirits. the curriculum and the cocurriculum activities in malaysian schools are geared to cultivate the spirit of positive patriotism among students equally. besides that, a positive spirit of patriotism can unite all the races and ethnic groups in malaysia towards goodwill, tolerance, love for the country and nation building. further studies should be conducted in order to identify the factors that contribute to the lower level of asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 110-117 116 patriotism among the chinese and indian students compared to the malay students. further action should be taken by the school administrators, parents and the ministry of education to increase the level of patriotism among the chinese and indian students. current study also showed that there is a significant positive correlation between students’ scores on patriotism and their interest towards learning history. this finding is very important since it explains that the students who have a high level of interest in history also have high scores in patriotism. therefore, in terms of pedagogical implication, history teachers should employ the right strategies to enhance students’ level of interest towards history. history teachers should also utilise effective teaching materials to arouse students’ interest and understanding of history. raising the interest in history among the students would also help to enhance the level of patriotism among the students. in terms of practical implication ministry of education and teachers training division and other stake holders should find ways to unite the young generation by bridging their gap in patriotism. this is important because in malaysian context patriotism is vital for the next generation in order to face challenges in nation building irrespective of race, religion and culture. as stressed by sitti et al. (2015) the spirit of patriotism should be cultivated among young generation so that they are proud of being malaysian, have the spirit of loyalty and a sense of belonging to the country. there are certain limitations in this study. the study sample only involves two secondary schools; and only malay, chinese and indian students were involved in the study. as such, it is hoped that further studies will be carried out involving more schools from all the states in malaysia, and also involving all the races and ethnic groups in order to get more in-depth findings regarding the level of patriotism among the students. future studies can also be carried out in primary schools to determine the level of patriotism among primary school children. as this is a quantitative study, it is hoped in future researchers will employ both quantitative and qualitative approach to study how patriotic elements are cultivated among students through subjects taught in schools. apart from the above, the findings of this study indicate that cultivating patriotism among multiracial students is crucial and should be taken seriously by all parties especially teachers, ministry of education, parents and administrators. this is mainly because students are the future generation of the country and patriotism is one of the unifying factors among multi-racial and multi-ethnic groups in malaysia. references abdul, s.a.b., 2000. sukatan pelajaran sejarah tingkatan iv [history form iv syllabus]. malaysian ministry of education. kuala lumpur: curriculum development centre. ahmad shah, p.m., h.s. sulhairil hafiz, o. muhammad fuad, c.j.y. mohd ashraf and h. hudrus, 2011. patriotism dilemma among malaysian youth: between strategy and reality. international journal of business and social science, 2(16): 219-227. aniza, 2008. memupuk semangat patriotisme nurturing the spirit of patriotism. retrieved from http://cikguanizaisupendidikan.blogspot.com/2008/12/memupuk-semangatpatriotisme.html. anuar, a., 2001. warganegara patriotik, masyarakat sivil dan pendidikan sejarah [patriotic citizens, civil society and history education]. persidangan kebangsaan pendidikan sejarah ke arah pembentukan warganegara, malaysian ministry of education, curriculum development center & malaysia historical society. kuala lumpur: 8-12 october. anuar, a., h.a.r. siti and a.a.t. nur, 2009. tahap keupayaan pengajaran guru sejarah dan hubungannya dengan pencapaian murid di sekolah berprestasi rendah. 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=gender%20differences%20in%20school%20achievement:%20the%20role%20of%20self-regulation http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00442 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=is%20education%20for%20patriotism%20morally%20required,%20permitted%20or%20unacceptable? http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11217-011-9233-z 220 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 220-223, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.220.223 the determination of the relationship between somatotypes and speed of subelite athletes i̇rfan marangoz1 1ahi evran university, school of physical education and sports, kırşehir, turkey abstract this study aims to analyze the relationship between somatotypes and speed of 180 male sub-elite athletes aged between 18 and 25. athletes were divided into two categories as balanced group (balanced somatotype groups) and randomly selected groups (groups outside balanced somatotypes groups) based on their somatotype structures. the arithmetic means and standard deviations of groups are (n=30) 21.95±2.80 years of age, height 168.40±2.62 cm, weight 69.20±5.26 kg in balanced endomorph group, (n=30) 21.60±3.15 years of age, height 170.25±6.39 cm, weight 67.25±6.09 kg in balanced mesomorph group, and (n=30) 20.40±1.46 years of age, height 175.10±5.02 cm, and weight 60.05±5.09 kg in balanced ectomorph group. on the other hand, the same values are (n=30) 21.35±2.30 years of age, height 160.10±2.20 cm, and weight 69.30±5.70 kg in random endomorph group, (n=30) 21.36±2.40 years of age, height 169.24±2.21 cm and weight 65.40±3.25 kg in random mesomorph groups, and (n=30) 20.50±1.85 years of age, height 176.15±3.30 cm and weight 70.10±4.45 kg in random ectomorph group. the measurement data were analyzed using spss 2.0 package program for windows. somatotype calculations were done in somatoturk calculation program. the statistical analysis demonstrated that a highly positive significant correlation (p˂0.001) was found between balanced somatotype groups (balanced endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph) and randomly selected somatotype groups (random endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph). keywords: sub-elite athletes, somatotypes, speed. citation | i̇rfan marangoz (2018). the determination of the relationship between somatotypes and speed of sub-elite athletes. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 220-223. history: received: 14 may 2018 revised: 4 june 2018 accepted: 6 june 2018 published: 8 june 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 221 2. materials and method ................................................................................................................................................................... 221 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 222 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 222 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 223 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.220.223&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7090-529x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7090-529x asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 220-223 221 1. introduction it is not possible to reach a certain level of performance without physical properties suitable to the sports that an individual performs (marangoz and polat, 2017). body structure is one of the factors influencing performance. physical properties or body structures affect an individual’s physiological capacity (hazır and açıkada, 2002). strength and condition training are key elements in terms of reaching a high speed. athletes need to effectively reach a maximum speed running speed for a successful performance (murphy et al., 2003). success requires a fast start, reaching the highest running speed as possible and keeping it for a certain duration (delecluse et al., 1995; johnson and buckley, 2001) which is influenced by anthropometric, metabolic, neural and biomechanical factors (abe et al., 2001; ross et al., 2001). 2. materials and method 180 male sub-elite athletes aged between 18 and 25 and living in kırşehir and kahramanmaraş provinces of turkey voluntarily participated in this study. they were divided into two categories as balanced group (balanced somatotype groups) and randomly selected groups (groups outside balanced somatotypes groups) based on their somatotype structures. the somatotypes and speed of sub-elite athletes were measured. average means and standard deviations are given below: balanced endomorph group (n=30) 21.95±2.80 years of age, 168.40±2.62 cm height, 69.20±5.26kg weight. balanced mesomorph group (n=30) 21.60±3.15 years of age, 170.25±6.39 cm height, 67.25±6.09 kg weight. balanced ectomorph group (n=30) 20.40±1.46 years of age, 175.10±5.02 cm height, 60.05±5.09 kg weight. random endomorph group (n=30) 21.35±2.30 years of age, 160.10±2.20 cm height, 69.30±5.70 kg weight. random mesomorph group (n=30) 21.36±2.40 years of age, 169.24±2.21 cm height, 65.40±3.25 kg weight. random ectomorph group (n=30) 20.50±1.85 years of age, boy 176.15±3.30 cm height, 70.10±4.45 kg weight. 2.1. determination of somatotypes the somatotype values of the participants were determined using heath carter method of somatotyping. based on this method, body weight, height, biceps and calf circumference during flexion, humerus and femur breadth, triceps, subscapular, suprailiac and calf skinfold as well as following formulas (ross and marfell-jones, 1991; carter, 2002) are used to calculate somatotype values. in addition, “somatoturk” program was used for calculations (marangoz and özbalcı, 2017). 2.1.1. determination of endomorph a = triceps + subscapular + suprailiac b= (170.18 / height) (adjustment coefficient for height) adjusted sum x = a.b endomorph= 0.7182 + 0.1451 (x) 0.00068 (x2) + 0.0000014 (x3) 2.1.2. determination of mesomorph mesomorph = (0.858 hb + 0.601 fb +0.188 cag + 0.161 ccg) (0.131 h) + 4.5 hb : humerus breadth (cm) fb : femur breadth (cm) cag : arm circumference during flexion – triceps skinfold /10 ccg : maximal calf circumference – calf skinfold /10 h : height (cm) 2.1.3. determination of ectomorph height and weight are calculated in cm and kg, respectively. height is divided by the cube root of weight to calculate hwr (hwr=height/cube root of weight). ectomorph is calculated based on hwr value using one of the formulas below: if hwr ≥ 40.75, ectomorph = 0.732× hwr– 28.58 if 38.25 < hwr < 40.75, ectomorph = 0.463× hwr– 17.63 if hwr ≤ 38.25, ectomorph = 0.1 2.2. 10 and 20 m speed performance 10 m and 20 m speed performances were measured using a new test 2000 photocell device. the athletes warmed up for 10 minutes prior to the test. the track closing time was recorded in milliseconds. the test was repeated twice following a full rest, and the best results were used in the study. 2.3. statistical analyses in this study, which analyzes the relationship between speed and balanced/randomly selected endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph groups of sub-elite athletes, windows spss 22.0 package program was used for spearman correlation analysis with a significance level of 0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 220-223 222 3. findings table-1. descriptive analyses of balanced and random somatotype groups balanced groups random groups endomorph group (n=30) mesomorph group (n=30) ectomorph group (n=30) endomorph group (n=30) mesomorph group (n=30) ectomorph group (n=30) x±sd x±sd x±sd x±sd x±sd x±sd age (years) 21.95±2.80 21.60±3.15 20.40±1.46 21.35±2.30 21.36±2.40 20.50±1.85 height (cm) 168.40±2.62 170.25±6.39 175.10±5.02 160.10±2.2 169.24±2.21 176.15±3.30 weight (kg) 69.20±5.26 67.25±6.09 60.05±5.09 69.30±5.70 65.40±3.25 70.10±4.45 10 m (sec) 2.30±0.09 1.90±0.18 2.05±0.13 2.63±0.14 2.40±0.19 2.26±0.18 20 m (sec) 3.05±0.15 2.40±0.29 2.81±0.12 3.25±0.16 2.98±0.22 2.99±0.14 (±) (mean and standard deviation) table-2. the comparisons of 10m pearson correlation analysis between balanced and randomly selected somatotype groups balanced endomorph random endomorph balanced mesomorph random mesomorph balanced ectomorph random endomorph r 1.000*** balanced mesomorph r 1.000*** 1.000*** random mesomorph r 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** balanced ectomorph r 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** random ectomorph r 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** ***p<0.001 table-3. the comparisons of 20m pearson correlation analysis between balanced and randomly selected somatotype groups balanced endomorph random endomorph balanced mesomorph random mesomorph balanced ectomorph random endomorph r 1.000*** balanced mesomorph r 1.000*** 1,.000*** random mesomorph r 1.000*** 1.000*** 1,.000*** balanced ectomorph r 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** random ectomorph r 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** 1.000*** ***p<0.001 pearson correlation between balanced and randomly selected somatotype groups for 10m and 20m distance ranges were compared as shown in table 2 and 3. the results indicate a very highly positive correlation with a significance level of p˂0.001 between balanced somatotype groups (balanced endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph) and randomly selected somatotype groups (random endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph) for 10m and 20m distance ranges. graph-1. speed graph of balanced and randomly selected somatotypes 4. discussion speed is the rate of change that enables a player to reach the highest speed within the shortest amount of time (gambetta, 1996). in a study on 24 male sub-elite athletes (8 rugby players, 8 sprinters and 8 active athletes), 510m test values of rugby players, sprinters and active athletes were measured as 0.71±0.09, 0.68±0.04 and 0.74±0.04, respectively. on the other hand, the same study found out 10-15 m test value of rugby players, sprinters and active athletes as 0.63±0.03, 0.63±0.03 and 0.66±0.05, respectively. a significant was also found between rugby players and sprinters in terms of group correlation (dowson et al., 1998). speed times of physical education students whose average years of age was 20.1±0.9, height was 1.79±8.4 cm and weight was 74.5±9.8 kg (n=24) were measured for 0-5m, 5-10m and 10-15m distance ranges, and average time was measured as 1.86±0.06 seconds for 5-10 m and as 2.60±0.10 for 10-15 m (kukolj et al., 1999). a study found 10 m speed of 14 sub-elite male athletes as 1.7 seconds (chaouachi et al., 2009). in a similar study, 10 m speed values of 16 male athletes were measured as 1.92±0.15 (cochrane et al., 2004). another study found speed values as 0.80±0.05 for 5-10m and as asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 220-223 223 0.72±0.05 for 10-15m (gabbett et al., 2008). while speed is defined as the time that elapses in the first 10 m, maximum speed time is defined as the time that elapses in 20 m (little and williams, 2005). in conclusion, when the correlation between balanced and randomly selected somatotype groups of sub-elite athletes and their speed in 10m and 20m distance ranges is analyzed, it was observed that the speed of athletes who have balanced endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph groups are fairly better than sub-elite athletes who have random endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph groups, and that a highly positive correlation with a significance level of p˂0.001 was found between them. it can be argued that this results from differences of physical properties and sports branches. references abe, t., s. fukashiro, y. harada and k. kawamoto, 2001. relationship between sprint performance and muscle fascicle length in female sprinters. journal of physiological anthropology and applied human 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=kinematic%20determinants%20of%20early%20acceleration%20in%20field%20sport%20athletes https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=neural%20influences%20on%20sprint%20running http://dx.doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200131060-00002 http://dx.doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200131060-00002 114 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 114-120, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.114.120 flow experiences in physical education classes: the role of perceived motivational climate and situational motivation elif nilay ada1  zisan kazak çeti̇nkalp2 m.ersin altiparmak3 f.hülya aşçi4 ( corresponding author) 1mersin university, physical education and sport department, çiftlikköy campus, yenişehir/mersin, turkey 2,3ege university, faculty of sport sciences, bornova/i̇zmir, turkey 4marmara university, faculty of sport sciences, anadoluhisarı campus, beykoz/i̇stanbul, turkey abstract the purpose of this study was to determine the role of perceived motivational climate and situational motivation levels on dispositional flow in physical education classes. 242 boys (mage=13.38; sd=0.95) and 251 girls (mage=13.27; sd=0.88) a total of 493 secondary school students (mage=13.32; sd=0.91) voluntarily participated in this study. physical education situational motivational scale, learning and performance orientation in physical education classes questionnaire and physical education dispositional flow scale-2 were administered to all participants. hierarchical regression analysis indicated that identified regulation, intrinsic motivation, pupil learning climate and teacher-initiated learning explained a significant amount of variance in dispositional flow in physical education (p<0.05). the pupil learning climate, identified regulation and leisure time sport participation were the strongest predictors, respectively. these findings suggested that promoting mastery-oriented climate, self-determined situational motivation, and participation in sport will foster dispositional flow in the physical education setting. keywords: dispositional flow, situational motivation, motivational climate, physical education. citation | elif nilay ada; zisan kazak çeti̇nkalp; m.ersin altiparmak; f.hülya aşçi (2018). flow experiences in physical education classes: the role of perceived motivational climate and situational motivation. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 114-120. history: received: 13 february 2018 revised: 2 march 2018 accepted: 5 march 2018 published: 7 march 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 115 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 116 3. measures .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 116 4. data analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................. 116 5. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 117 6. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 118 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 119 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.114.120&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8817-6136 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7588-411x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1478-2691 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6650-6931 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8817-6136 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7588-411x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1478-2691 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6650-6931 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8817-6136 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7588-411x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1478-2691 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6650-6931 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8817-6136 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7588-411x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1478-2691 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6650-6931 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8817-6136 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7588-411x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1478-2691 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6650-6931 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 114-120 115 1. introduction school physical education (pe) has been recognized as one of the most important contexts for obtaining lifelong physical activity habits in youth (koka and hagger, 2010). it has been argued that sport, physical activity, and pe have some potential benefits for young people, such as developing physical skills, building character, fostering life skills, encouraging sportsmanship, enhancing teamwork skills, and preparing young people for adult life (pate, 1983; goldstein and iso-ahola, 2006; telema et al., 2006; massarella and winterstein, 2009; bernstein et al., 2011; leech and marston, 2016). it is accepted that school physical education is likely to play a critical role in encouraging pupils' participation in the regular physical activity, (biddle and chatzisarantis, 1999; bakirtzoglou and ioannou, 2011). pupils who feel motivated toward pe are more likely to gain exercise habits for lifelong (adams ii and brynteson, 1992). as stated by pharez (2016) positive experiences in physical education classes can be an essential step toward a more active and healthy lifestyle for all pupils and also a key factor to further participation in other sports activities. another important key factor is the physical education teacher. accordingly, creating a positive experience should be the most important duty for pe teachers (cherubini, 2009; pharez, 2016; rukavina and doolittle, 2016). moreover, positive climates help to emerge the adaptive outcomes, such as enjoyment and happiness (ntoumanis, 2001). in positive psychology, there is also a fundamental construct called as flow. theoretically, this concept accepts the importance of positive experiences. the flow concept was initially introduced by csikszentmihalyi (1975) and applied in the sport and physical activity contexts by jackson (1996) and jackson and marsh (1996). optimal experience or flow typically occurs when a person perceives a balance between the challenges associated with a situation and his or her capabilities to accomplish or meet these demands (csikszentmihalyi, 1990). it is also very important to know which factors effect flow experience. swann et al. (2012) have summarized the factors to be the facilitator and inhibitor related to flow in their systematic review study. some facilitating factors are optimal motivation, optimal arousal, positive thoughts and emotions, and positive feedback whilst the preventing factors have been identified as lacking motivation, lacking confidence, negative feedback, negative thoughts and emotions and poor performance. the factors that inhibit and facilitate the flow are still unclear (kawabata and mallett, 2016). this situation is also still unclear in physical education settings. in addition to these factors, the perceived motivational climate is known as one of the contextual elements that facilitate or inhibit the flow (kowal and fortier, 2000; moreno-murcia et al., 2008a). the motivational climate has been proposed to have two dimensions called as learning-involving climate (task-involving) and performanceinvolving climate (ego-involving) (nicholls, 1989; ames, 1992; duda, 2001; xiang et al., 2004; jaakkola et al., 2016). while learning-involving climate focuses on task mastery, learning, effort exertion and self-improvement (ames, 1992; newton et al., 2000) performance-involving climate emphasizes performance outcomes and social comparison between the pupils. however, a performance involving climate leads to increased external motivation and anxiety as well as decreased interest and enjoyment (duda and whitehead, 1998). research which carried out in the field of physical education has shown that task-involving and ego-involving climate are positively related to flow (papaioannou and kouli, 1999; kowal and fortier, 2000; cervello et al., 2007; sicilia et al., 2008; moreno-murcia et al., 2008a). thus, it seems necessary to create a motivational climate that promotes intrinsic motivation, which, in turn, may foster flow. papaioannou and kouli (1999) found that pupils’ task orientation and perceptions of a taskinvolving motivational climate predicted higher levels of concentration, a more autotelic experience and an absence of self-consciousness. more recent research in physical education settings (bakirtzoglou and ioannou, 2011) revealed that both task-involving and ego-involving motivational climates were significantly and positively related to pupils’ dispositional flow. another research has shown that motivation, motivational climate and flow state (flow experience) are interrelated (kowal and fortier, 1999; papaioannou and kouli, 1999; moreno-murcia et al., 2008a; gonzález-cutre et al., 2009). more specifically, previous studies have shown positive associations between flow state and intrinsic motivation (deci and ryan, 1985; kowal and fortier, 1999; camacho et al., 2008). conversely, there is a criticism about the relationship between flow and self-determined motivation. kawabata and mallett (2016) have stated that full concentration is sufficient for experiencing flow, and people are likely enjoy any activity as long as they entirely concentrate on the activity, regardless of whether they are motivated intrinsically or extrinsically. on the other hand, people need to experience the activity as autonomous to foster intrinsic or self-determined motivation for doing the activity. however, autonomy is not represented as an element in flow theory. therefore, it is said that motivation type might change, regardless of whether motivation type is needed for experiencing flow. so, the current study also tries to find out the role of situational motivation as well as the perceived motivational climate on flow experiences in the pe context. that is why the relationship between perceived motivational climate, motivation and flow can be further importance, because intrinsic motivation depends on motivational climate that promotes positive outcomes (e.g., scott et al. (2003)). intrinsic motivation also can help to find out the flow concept (deci and ryan, 1985; camacho et al., 2008). due to all the mentioned reasons, the facilitation of pupils’ flow experiences in physical education seems very important, because it can help to enhance a pupil’s enjoyment at physical education, as well as motivate participation in physical activity voluntarily during adolescence and later on in life. in the light of these reasons, flow concept can be helpful to teachers, pupils, and the other related persons. moreover, flow experiences in physical education lessons as an optimal psychological state may be the first factor that affects situations in pe such as pupils’ participation and perceived motivational climate. nevertheless, it is not clear whether motivation level and perceptions of motivational climate influence optimal experience (flow) in secondary school pupils. to extend previous research, the present study aimed to analyze the role of perceived motivational climate and situational motivation on dispositional flow in physical education classes. therefore, we hypothesized that motivational climate and situational motivation could be the predictor for dispositional flow in physical education settings. as far as our knowledge, no previous studies on the issues mentioned in this study were examined in turkey. when the literature is examined, any study had carried out with the same measurement tools and sample group. additionally, there was no study in the literature about the interaction effect with regard to similar variables. for this reason, the findings obtained from this study can be interesting in comparison to other studies’ findings in the literature. however, the previous studies (kowal and fortier, 1999; papaioannou and kouli, 1999; moreno-murcia asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 114-120 116 et al., 2008b; gonzález-cutre et al., 2009) have used the older students, nonstudents or athletes, which is unlike the present study. in this context, the secondary school pupils in turkey have been seen worthy of investigation, regarding participation motivation, perceived motivational climate and dispositional flow. 2. methodology 2.1. participants the participants were recruited from secondary schools in three regions of izmir city of turkey. the schools were selected randomly. two hundred forty two boys (mage=13.38; sd=0.95) and 251girls (mage=13.27; sd=0.88) totally 493 (mage=13.32; sd=0.91) secondary school students voluntarily participated in this study. the students were also recruited randomly in each grade level. it was determined that 192 boys and 136 girls participated in sports activities in their leisure time, though 50 boys and 115 girls did not participate in sports activities in their leisure time. 3. measures 3.1. the situational motivation scale for physical education the situational motivation scale (sims; guay et al. (2000)) was used to assess individuals’ situational (or state) motivation. it has four subscales and four-item subscales that measure intrinsic motivation (im), identified regulation (ir), external regulation (er) and amotivation (a). responding to stem, “why are you currently engaged in physical education?” participants rate their reasons for participating in physical education class. a 7point likert type scale (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree) was used to rate the importance of each of the 16 items. the validity and reliability study for physical education lesson were carried out by daşdan et al. (2012a). the confirmatory factor analysis provided good support for construct validity (χ2/df=2.62, rmsea=0.06, nfi=0.94, nnfi=0.96, cfi=0.97, gfi=0.93 and agfi=0.89). the internal consistencies of subscales were 0.71 for intrinsic motivation, 0.72 for identified regulation, 0.79 for external regulation and 0.78 for amotivation (daşdan et al., 2012a). 3.2. learning and performance orientations in pe classes questionnaire (lapopecq) the original 26-item lapopecq (papaioannou, 1994) was administered to measure pupils’ perception of achievement orientations in pe classes. the measurement tool had a hierarchical model with five first-order factors and two second-order factors (for review, see papaioannou (1994)). the scale consists of five subscales: the pupil learning orientation (7 items), the teacher initiated learning orientation (5 items), the pupil competitive orientation (5 items), the pupils' worry about mistakes (5 items), and the outcome orientation without effort (4 items). each item which is following the stem "during today's pe lesson..." was placed on a 5-point likert-type scale anchored by 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). the validity and reliability of the scale for the physical education lesson was conducted by daşdan et al. (2012b). researchers reported that the results of cfa confirmed the five factors structure. (χ2/df=2.35, rmsea=0.05, nnfi=0.98, nfi=0.92, cfi=0.98 and agfi=0.86). in their study, it has reported that internal consistency values were for subscales 0.88 for pupils’ learning, 0.68 for teacher-initiated learning, 0.67 for pupil competitive orientation, 0.72 for pupil worry and 0.50 for outcome orientation without effort. 3.3. dispositional flow state-2 for physical education dispositional flow state-2 which consists of 36 items is used to measure the dispositional optimal experience level in a particular activity. participants responded to the items on a 5-point likert type scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). the dfs-2 has nine subscales (i.e., challenge-skills balance, action-awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration on the task at hand, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, the transformation of time, and autotelic experience) (jackson and eklund, 2002). the dispositional flow scale-2 for physical education lesson (dfs-2 for pe) which adapted to turkish by daşdan et al. (2012c) was used in this study. in this study, the results of confirmatory factor analysis revealed good fit index values (χ 2/df = 863.11/558 = 1.55, rmsea = 0.043, nnfi = 0.96, cfi = 0.97). also, it has reported that the internal consistency values were ranged from 0.46 (challenge-skill balance) to 0.79 (loss of self-consciousness) (daşdan et al., 2012c). the total scale score was used in this study. 3.4. demographic information participants were asked to provide demographic information for research purpose only (student’s age, sex, grade, school name, leisure time sport activity information-where, when, how long and how often). personal information form did not contain any identity details about students in order that they can give friendly and correct answers. 4. data analysis hierarchical multiple regression analysis (enter method) was used to determine the role of sex, leisure time sport participation, perceived motivational climate and situational motivation on dispositional flow. the model included three steps: (a) sex and leisure time sport participation; (b) subscales of situational motivation and (c) perceived motivational climate subscales. hierarchical multiple regressions assume that there is little or no multicollinearity in the data. multi-collinearity occurs when the independent variables are not independent from each other (source/reference). therefore, multi-collinearity was checked in terms of these keys such as adequate sample size, multiple linear correlations (tolerance and vif), singularity, the extreme values and normal distribution (seçer, 2015) criteria. if the tolerance value is less than 10 and the value of the variance inflation factor is over 10; it means that there is a high relationship between independent variables (dormann et al., 2013). the results of the analysis showed that asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 114-120 117 the tolerance values of all independent variables were between 0.43 and 0.93, and also variance inflation factor values were between 1.08 and 2.33. namely, these findings have indicated that there is no statistically significant relationship between the prediction values. 4.1. data collection all the required institutional and school approvals were obtained before the start of the study. all potential participants were informed about of the current study, and necessary explanations for the filling of the scales were given by the first researcher. personal information form and three scales were used in this study. the questionnaires took approximately 25 minutes to complete. 5. results 5.1. descriptive results means and standard deviations of the study variables with regard to sex and leisure time sport participation are presented in table 1. table-1. means of all scales with regard to sex and leisure time sport participation sex sport participation m sd s it u at io n al m o ti v at io n s u b sc al es intrinsic motivation boy yes 6.03 0.87 no 5.40 1.03 girl yes 5.74 1.08 no 5.64 1.03 identified regulation boy yes 5.85 1.09 no 5.20 1.20 girl yes 5.49 1.21 no 5.16 1.24 external regulation boy yes 3.11 1.51 no 3.55 1.58 girl yes 2.83 1.42 no 3.65 1.64 amotivation boy yes 2.52 1.50 no 2.81 1.41 girl yes 1.93 1.41 no 2.58 1.49 p er ce iv ed m o ti v at io n al c li m at e su b sc al es pupils’ learning boy yes 3.96 0.92 no 3.64 0.88 girl yes 4.22 0.77 no 3.98 0.84 outcome orientation without effort boy yes 3.20 0.96 no 3.03 0.86 girl yes 3.15 0.83 no 3.14 0.91 pupil worry boy yes 3.24 0.92 no 2.93 0.84 girl yes 3.29 0.90 no 3.44 1.00 pupil competitive orientation boy yes 3.45 0.89 no 3.22 0.87 girl yes 3.45 0.80 no 3.34 0.84 teacher initiated learning boy yes 3.88 0.92 no 3.66 0.93 girl yes 4.08 0.84 no 3.83 0.90 dispositional flow boy yes 3.95 0.67 no 3.48 0.66 girl yes 3.94 0.54 no 3.62 0.68 5.2. main analyses the results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis to determine the role of motivational climate, situational motivation, on dispositional flow is presented in table 2. sex and leisure time sport participation had been included as control variables in the analyses. hierarchical multiple regression analysis results indicated that sex did not predict dispositional flow. on the other hand, leisure time sport participation significantly and negatively predicted dispositional flow. as shown in table 2, sex was not correlated with the dispositional flow (β=0.028, p>0.05), while leisure time sport participation was negatively correlated with the dispositional flow (β= -0.271, p<0.05). leisure time sport participation explained 7% of the variance of dispositional flow in the first stage. as shown in table 2, intrinsic motivation and identified regulation were positively correlated with dispositional flow (β=0.145, p<0.05; β =0.254, p<0.05, respectively), while leisure time sport participation and amotivation were negatively correlated with dispositional flow (β=-0.186, p<0.05; β=0.151, p<0.05, respectively). leisure time sport participation, intrinsic motivation, identified regulation and amotivation explained % 25 of the variance in the second stage. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 114-120 118 table-2. the results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis to determine the role of motivational climate, situational motivation on dispositional flow. s = sex, ltsp = leisure time sport participation, im = intrinsic motivation, ir = identified regulation, er= external regulation, a = amotivation, plo = pupil learning orientation, oowe = outcome orientation without effort, pw = pupil worry, pco = pupil competition orientation, til= teacher initiated learning in the last model, intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, pupil learning orientation and teacher initiated learning were positively correlated with dispositional flow (β=0.121, p<0.05; β=0.137, p<0.05; β=0.332, p<0.05; β=0.125, p<0.05, respectively), while leisure time sport participation was correlated negatively with dispositional flow (β=-0.156, p<0.05). leisure time sport participation, intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, pupil learning orientation and teacher initiated learning explained 7% of the variance. regarding the predictive power of each predictor variable on dispositional flow, the results explained that pupil learning climate, identified regulation and leisure time sport participation emerged as the strongest predictors. pupil learning climate and identified regulation were positively and the stronger predictors while leisure time sport participation was negatively and the stronger predictor. 6. discussion this study aimed to examine the role of perceived motivational climate and situational motivation on dispositional flow. regression analysis demonstrated that the situational motivation and perceived motivational climate were positive predictors of flow. the meaning of this finding is that flow can emerge if a positive atmosphere can be created during the lesson, such as a more self-determined and supportive climate. on the other hand, it is understood that these positive outcomes are facilitators for experiencing flow. previous studies had also shown that an individual who is intrinsically motivated should be more prepared to experience flow because she will be interested in the task at hand (deci and ryan, 1985; camacho et al., 2008). with regard to the positive relationship between situational motivation and flow, the majority of the empirical evidence supports sdt and collaboratively suggests more self-determined motivational types, such as intrinsic motivation, will have more positive consequences than the others (jackson-kersey and spray, 2013). intrinsic motivation has become a facilitator for getting other positive outputs (ryan and deci, 2000). there are supportive studies (e.g., (fullagar and mills, 2008; stavrou, 2008)) in the literature about self-determined motivation predicts as positively to flow state. kowal and fortier (2000) have found that self-determined motivation were positive predictors of dispositional flow. a study conducted by fullagar and mills (2008) found that amotivation in physical education negatively predicted the sense of control and autotelic experience. it means that if a pupil has amotivation, it is not expected to enter the flow channel from her\him (fullagar and mills, 2008). as consistent with the hypothesis of the study, it was found that learning climate (mastery involving)facilitate flow situation. this result has supported the literature. as stated previously, teacher-initiated learning refers to mastery involving climate. research in pe (e.g., (papaioannou, 1995; solomon, 1996; treasure, 1997; carpenter and morgan, 1999; christodoulidis et al., 2001)) has revealed that perceptions of a mastery climate relate to more positive attitude toward moreno-murcia et al. (2008b) have also shown that mastery involved climate in physical education provides a positive and significant prediction of dispositional flow. the researchers showed that mastery involving dimensions were stronger predictors than performance involving dimensions. in this sense, the findings obtained from this study seem to be consistent with the literature.it is understood that if the teachers want to promote dispositional flow in their lesson, the teachers should create a mastery involving climate. as a result, sport related behaviors can facilitate dispositional flow state. therefore, children should be encouraged to take participate in sport, and its benefits should be told to every related person (children, families, teachers, and administrations). some important interventions, such as diversity in the learning environment, to prepare a correct lesson plan according to interest and need, to get pupils involved in the decision-making process, and to change the activity difficulty level according to the main purpose of the course, can be helpful in getting more pleasure, establishing positive outputs and experiencing flow as well. in order to reach these all, the class environment might also be reorganized more effectively and efficiently. the present findings need to be considered in light of several limitations. first, the findings are based entirely on data from secondary school students, and the data was not collected from other grades as well as teachers. comparative studies would be necessary for this study. secondly, the design was correlational, and results could not be interpreted causally. in the future, longitudinal research designs or case studies should be used to understand factors that affect the motivation of students in physical education settings. future studies can replicate this study on different samples and include both students and teachers by using the different approaches. model 1 model 2 model 3 b t β p b t β p b t β p s 0.04 0.61 0.03 0.06 0.99 0.04 0.33 -0.04 -0.74 -0.03 0.46 ltsp -0.38 -5.99 -0.27 0.000 -0.26 -4.32 -0.19 0.000 -0.22 -4.06 -0.16 0.000 im 0.09 3.07 0.15 0.002 0.08 2.86 0.12 0.004 ir 0.14 5.24 0.25 0.000 0.08 3.07 0.14 0.002 er 0.01 0.58 0.03 0.58 0.01 0.79 0.03 0.43 a -0.07 -3.24 -0.15 0.001 -0.03 -1.79 -0.08 0.07 plo 0.25 6.12 0.33 0.000 oowe 0.02 0.52 0.02 0.61 pw -0.00 -0.02 -0.00 0.98 pco 0.02 0.52 0.02 0.60 til 0.09 2.42 0.13 0.02 r 0.27 0.48 0.63 r2 0.07 0.32 0.39 f 18.461 (2;490) 24.688 (4;486) 25.931 (5; 481) p 0.00 0.00 0.00 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 114-120 119 references adams ii, t.m. and p. brynteson, 1992. a comparison of attitudes and exercise habits of alumni from colleges with varying degrees of physical education activity programs. research quarterly for exercise and sport, 63(2): 148-152. view at google scholar | view at publisher ames, c., 1992. achievement goals, motivational climate, and motivational processes. in g. c. roberts (ed.), motivation in 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jsep.19.3.278 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=using%20achievement%20goal%20theory%20to%20assess%20an%20elementary%20physical%20education%20running%20program http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-1561.2004.tb07936.x asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 2, 70-77, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 70 assessment of an integrated nutrition communication approach to educate the school going adolescent girls living in urban slums of hyderabad, telangana state, india d. raghunatha rao1  t. vijayapushpam2 n. amulya rao3 anilkumar dube4 k. venkaiah5 1,2,3,4 extension and training division, national institute of nutrition (nin), hyderabad, india 5 biostatistics division, national institute of nutrition (nin), hyderabad, india ( corresponding author) abstract purpose: consumption of right diet during the adolescent phase is a critical issue among the adolescent population as their eating behavior is significantly influenced by the peers. therefore, a study was carried out to educate the school going adolescent girls living in urban slums of hyderabad, telangana, india on right nutrition. methods –the study was carried out in two randomly selected government schools after obtaining approval from the scientific advisory committee (sac). about 200 girls each from eighth and ninth standards were recruited as study subjects. the age of the participants ranged from 13-15 years. after obtaining baseline data, intervention was carried out on 8 focal themes related to nutrition, health and family life education, by using well designed educational material. results: a significant increment in the knowledge levels on all the focal themes was observed among the adolescent girls in the experimental school. after completion of the study, considering the ethical issues, the control group was also given education on 8 focal themes. conclusions and implications: it was observed that an integrated approach in communication methods such as combining print media like charts, folders with electronic media, using cd alongside interpersonal communication significantly improved the knowledge levels of these girls on nutrition and family-life education. keywords: adolescent girls, family life education, iron deficiency anaemia, iodine deficiency disorders. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 71 2. methods ................................................................................................................................................................................ 71 3. results .................................................................................................................................................................................. 72 4. discussion ............................................................................................................................................................................. 74 5. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 75 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 75 citation | d. raghunatha rao; t. vijayapushpam; n. amulya rao; anilkumar dube; k. venkaiah (2017). assessment of an integrated nutrition communication approach to educate the school going adolescent girls living in urban slums of hyderabad, telangana state, india. asian journal of education and training, 2(2): 70-77. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.70.77 licensed: contribution/acknowledgement: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. history: received: 28 september 2016/ revised: 10 november 2016/ accepted: 15 november 2016/ published: 19 november 2016 ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=d.%20raghunatha%20rao https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=t.%20vijayapushpam https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=n.%20amulya%20rao https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=anilkumar%20dube https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=k.%20venkaiah http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.2/522.2.70.77 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 70-77 71 1. introduction adolescent phase is a transitional and critical phase of life between childhood and adulthood. during this period, rapid physical growth and development takes place and this is characterized by physiological and emotional changes. food and nutrition play a very important role during this period. adopting healthy eating habits and regular physical exercise regimen is essential for optimal growth and development. during this phase, there is an increased demand for adequate nutrient intake for meeting the requirement of body and bone growth as adolescents gain 50% of their adult weight, more than 20% adult height and 50% of the skeletal mass (tarvinder et al., 2007). adolescent girls need to be educated on nutritional themes as they play a vital role as “home makers” in future. maternal nutrition plays an important role in the development of foetus and the outcome of pregnancy. poor nutritional status and lack of awareness about the requirement of nutrition during pregnancy and lactation always push the vulnerable and the undernourished women at risk to pregnancy related complications and may lead to delivery of low birth weight babies. there are various factors which influence adolescents‟ eating behaviour and these include taste preferences, knowledge on nutrition, socio-economic factors, media using habits and other factors like accessibility to fast food centres (mollie et al., 2007; ruchi et al., 2009). in a study, it was observed that adolescent girls preferred more carbonated beverages and fast foods to nutritious traditional foods irrespective of their socio-economic background (raghunatha et al., 2007). also, these girls were found to be lacking knowledge on many important nutritional themes (reza and maryam, 2006). lack of education on aspects of nutrition and family life have been shown to be a major reasons behind the high morbidity and mortality rates among pregnant and lactating women and children. therefore, the present study was taken up to sensitize the adolescent girls, on vital aspects of nutrition through need-based and pre-tested print and audio-visual educational material. 2. methods 2.1. selection of schools after obtaining approval from the sac (institution review board) vide reference no., et02/st/1/08-09 and institutional ethical committee (iec17/13/i) the study was carried out in randomly selected schools. the schools were matched for their students‟ strength, economic strata, nutrition knowledge levels and age group before initiating the study. the adolescent girls belonged to the lower economic strata. they were in the midadolescent age group as per who classification (13-15yrs), studying in 8 th and 9 th classes and their age ranged from 13-15 years. the study was a follow-up study as the subjects were the same both at the baseline as well as at the end line. 2.2. development of an interview schedule and pre-test interview schedule with 90 short questions covering 8 focal themes related to nutrition, health and family life was developed consisting of both open and closed ended questions. questions related to demographic details were also included. the questionnaire was pretested among adolescent girls in a school before study. the school where the pretest was carried out was not included in the main study. 2.3. main study two schools of zilla parishad govt. high schools were randomly selected from the lower economic strata in hyderabad, india from the list obtained from the district education officer. by adopting purposive sampling, 200 girls of the 13 -15 yrs age group were recruited and all the subjects were assessed for their baseline knowledge on the following 8 focal themes after collecting their demographic particulars. 1. adolescent phase 2. nutrition and calcium 3. breast feeding and complementary feeding/infant feeding 4. food groups and balanced diet 5. vitamin a 6. anaemia and folates 7. iodine deficiency disorders(idd) 8. family life / education after the analysis of the baseline data, information, education and communication (iec) material such as folders, charts and a folk art based video cd (fig 1; 6 no.) in regional language were developed on the above mentioned themes and administered to the adolescent girls through the science teachers in a class room setting. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 70-77 72 the folders were distributed among the adolescent girls before 15 days of the intervention. the intervention was given through oral presentation by the science teachers on all the focal themes in the presence of project investigators. the charts were displayed at the venue. after a week, the video cd containing relevant nutrition information on selected themes was screened to the students. the end line survey was conducted after a 15 day interval by using the same interview schedule which was used at the baseline study and the post interventional knowledge was assessed. 2.4. statistical analysis mean percentage value was calculated for the monthly income of the parents. for all other aspects spss 19.0 version was used to calculate x2 value for both baseline and endline data in experimental and control group. the value <0.05 was considered to denote significant knowledge improvement. 3. results the baseline data of the both intervention (malkajgiri area) and control group (uppal area) were matched as no significant difference in the knowledge levels of the adolescent girls was observed. 3.1. demographic particulars the age of adolescent girls ranged from 13 to 15 years with the mean being 12.8 years. most of the girls had no knowledge about their height (98%) and weight (89%). about 64% of the mothers were illiterate and 35% of the girls' mothers were home makers. others were labourers, maids employed at homes and were involved in other odd jobs to earn their livelihood. around 58% of the girls' fathers were illiterate and were involved in construction work, labour work, painting, driving of cabs and rest of them had primary and higher secondary education. the family‟s income ranged from rs.2000/ (30 us$) to rs.3000/ 45 us$/ month (1us$ = rs. 66.6). the results obtained after analyzing the post intervention data are discussed here and the knowledge increment percentages are given in table 1. 1) adolescent phase adolescent phase is the key stage in the lifecycle to be understood by the adolescents. therefore, creating awareness among the adolescent girls is all the more important as this phase is very critical in the life cycle. as regards the adolescent phase, 4 aspects of the theme i.e., adolescent phase, adolescent age, physiological changes, physical changes such as height, weight and other growth spurt indicators were assessed. an increment of 20.1% in the knowledge levels of the adolescent girls about the adolescent phase was observed in the experimental group as against a marginal increment of 5.2% in the control group. however, with regard to the other aspects of the theme such as adolescent age, a significant improvement was observed as 22% of increment in the knowledge levels was observed in the experimental group as against 2.4% in the control group. as regards the physiological changes, a significant increment of 17.5% in the knowledge levels was observed in the experimental group as against 9.3% in the controls during the same period. in the control group, there was no improvement as no significant difference in knowledge levels between the baseline and endline was found, indicating impact of nutrition education as intervention in the experimental group. 2) nutrition and calcium right nutrition plays a very important role in the proper growth of adolescent girls and calcium requirement is very high during this period. at the baseline in the experimental group, about 84.4% of the adolescent girls indicated the importance of proper nutrition for normal and healthy growth during the adolescent phase. about 67.2% girls indicated the requirement of calcium as one of the nutrients for proper growth and development. as regards the knowledge related to calcium-rich foods such as milk, milk products, egg and meat etc., 22.7% of the girls reported right information. however, 50% of the girls indicated the importance of calcium in bone development. a significant increase (p<0.01) in the knowledge levels of adolescent girls about the requirement of nutrients (84.4 to 93.7%), calcium requirement (67.2 to 90.1%), calcium for bone development (50 to 82.4%) was observed in post intervention data. knowledge related to calcium-rich foods increased from 22.7% to 35%. in the post intervention, when compared to the knowledge increment between and control and the experimental group, it was observed no significant improvement in the knowledge levels on the importance of requirement of asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 70-77 73 nutrients between these two groups. however, the rest of the parameters related to calcium requirement, bone development and health and knowledge about calcium rich foods a significant increment in the knowledge levels was observed in the experimental group over control group. 3) breast feeding and complementary feeding education on breast feeding and complementary feeding practices is very important for the adolescent girls as they are at the threshold of family life. at the baseline in the intervention group, although 76.6% of the adolescent girls indicated the necessity of breast feeding to infants, only 44.5% of them cited the importance of feeding „colostrum‟ immediately after delivery. after intervention, a significant improvement was observed in the knowledge levels as 76.8% of the adolescent girls indicated the importance of colostrum in the post intervention phase. also, 30% of these girls indicated the presence of maternal antibodies in the post intervention as against 16% of girls before the intervention. as regards the exclusive breast feeding practices for the first 6 months, about 76.6% expressed their awareness at the baseline and this was increased to 93.7% in the post intervention. all the parameters related to breast feeding and complementary feeding practices were statistically significant (p<0.01) after post intervention. regarding knowledge levels of complementary feeding, 35.9% children reported that complementary feeding should be initiated after 6 months at the baseline and there was significant increment (59.2%; p<0.01) in the knowledge levels after intervention in the experimental group. in the post intervention, the knowledge increment with regard to exclusive breast feeding (17.1% as against 5.5% in the control group), importance of colostrum (32.3% as against 11.4%) and complementary feeding (23.5% as against 2.5%) were significant in the experimental group as compared to the control group. 4) food groups and balanced diet rapid physical growth during adolescence demands more energy as well as macro and micro nutrients. as regards the classification of foods, a significant improvement in the knowledge levels among the adolescent girls in the experimental group was observed from 46.9 to 85.2%, energy foods (4.7 to 22.5%), sources of energy (49.2% to 85.9%), importance of fats in the diet (62.5 to 83.1%). with regard to the reason for intake of fats, at the baseline 20.3% of the girls mentioned that fats are important for the growth and also since they contain essential fatty acids (efas). after intervention, 52.1% of the girls realized the importance of the fats. a significant improvement in the knowledge levels was observed on protein rich foods (35.9 – 52.1%), protective foods (63.3 – 84.5%). regarding the protective foods, adolescent girls were aware that leafy and other vegetables are the important sources vitamins and minerals. about 46.9% of the girls were aware of the concept of balanced diet. after intervention, 79.6% could also explain different functions of food groups indicating efficacy of the iec material. the percentage knowledge increments in the experimental and control groups are given in the table 1. 5) vitamin a at the baseline in the intervention group, about 77.3% adolescent girls indicated that they were aware about night blindness but the correct reason for night blindness due to vitamin a deficiency (vad) was mentioned by only 44.5%. but, when the girls were asked to indicate the symptoms of vad, only 43.8% indicated the symptoms vad such as bitot‟s spots. as regards the prevention of vad, 9.4% of the girls indicated the importance of doctor‟s consultation and 50% of the girls indicated importance of dietary modification. about 37.5% of the girls provided the details of vitamin a rich foods like green leafy vegetables (glvs), yellow coloured fruits and vegetables such as papaya, yellow pumpkin etc. after intervention, a significant improvement in the knowledge levels of night blindness (77.3 to 90.8%), causes of blindness due to vad (44.5 to 73.9%), symptoms of vad (43.8 to 68.3%), dietary modifications to combat vad (50 – 83.8%) and vitamin a rich foods (37.5 to 83.8%) was observed. the knowledge increment with regard to dietary modification of vitamin a (33.8 against 15.2% in control) and vitamin a rich foods (46.3 against 6.3% in control) was significant over the girls in the control group. 6) anaemia and folates in the intervention group, about 36.7% of the adolescent girls indicated that they were aware about the causes of iron deficiency anaemia (ida), 55.5% of the girls indicated the symptoms of anaemia like pallor, weakness, disinterest in work etc. as regards the prevention of anaemia, about 37.5% of the girls indicated the importance of iron and folic acid tablet consumption while 34.4% of the adolescent girls expressed the importance of asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 70-77 74 consumption of glvs. regarding folate and folate-rich foods, 46.1% of the girls indicated the importance of folate in neural tube formation and 28.1% of the girls emphasized folate-rich foods like glvs etc., similarly, there was a knowledge improvement in the intervention group with regard to the causes (36.7 to 64.1%) with an increment of 27.5% and prevention of anaemia (37.5 to 76.8%) with an increment of 39.3%. as regards the folate rich foods, about 28.1% of the girls had knowledge about folate-rich foods and after intervention the knowledge increased to 43% with an increment of 14.9 over the control group. as regards the knowledge increment of intervention group viz., symptoms of anaemia (32.5 against 18.2% in control group), causes for anaemia (27.5 against 1.5% in control group), prevention of anaemia by through consumption of ifa (39.3 against 2.5% in control) and importance of folate (32.8 against 5.9% in control). 7) iodine deficiency disorders (idd) at the baseline in the intervention group, about 46.1% of adolescent girls had awareness about idd but they were not aware about the significance of iodine fortified salt as 13.3% of them only could identify it as a preventive method. after intervention, a significant improvement in the knowledge of idd (46.1 to 83.8%) with an increment of 37.7% in the intervention group and its prevention by using iodized salt (13.3 to 44.4%) was observed with an increment of 31.1%. 8) family life education health educators lay firm emphasis on family life education as most of the girls get married during adolescence. as the adolescent girls comprise a major portion (about one-fifth) of country's population, important concepts like puberty, sexually transmitted diseases (stds) and human immuno deficiency virus (hiv), education on avoidance of early marriages and other hygiene related issues were emphasized. in both intervention and control groups, most of the adolescent girls were aware of the age at which girls attain menarche and there was no significant difference between the baseline and endline. similarly, there was no significant difference in the knowledge levels of right age for marriage as more than 85% in both control and intervention group adolescent girls could correctly cite it as 18 years and above. when the girls were asked about acquired immuno deficiency syndrome (aids), 63.3% of the adolescent girls expressed that they were aware of hiv/ aids and 50% of the girls of the intervention group could identify the modes of transmission. after intervention, awareness about aids and mode of its transmission increased to 95.1% and 92.3% respectively with an increment in the knowledge levels about hiv (31.8 against 18.1% in the control group) and mode of transmission (42.3 against 16.3 in the control group) 4. discussion adequate nutrition for adolescent girls is a public health challenge in india. this becomes even more daunting among girls belonging to the under privileged sections such as slums/rural areas. nutrition education is being considered as an affordable and sustainable public health measure in this direction. schools provide suitable settings for any health intervention as most of the adolescent girls gather at one place. adolescent girls are the most important group as this phase though transitional, critical and important stage of life (nurul et al., 2010). the girls of this age group are prospective mothers and home makers. therefore, the present study was carried out in the schools to educate adolescent girls living in urban slums on aspects of nutritional knowledge and family life education. recent reports indicate that most of the adolescents are obese or over weight and on other hand, 50% of the children were also reported to be under nourished due to unhealthy eating practices (sandra, 2006). so, as to improve the quality life of the adolescent girls, eight themes were considered for the present study. as most of the adolescent girls were found to be aware of the aspects of physical and physiological changes, the knowledge related to nutrition in a life cycle approach was inadequate. the present study intervention significantly improved knowledge levels on all the focal themes. as most of the adolescents are influenced by their peer groups regarding their food choices, there is high probability of those children consuming more junk foods and carbonated beverages (alexandra et al., 2013). therefore, it is important to form nutrition clubs in the schools to promote nutrition education as well as physical activity among adolescents to maintain their health and also to check overweight and obesity among this group. content analysis of school science curricula reveal that nutrition component in the text books was inconsistent and inadequate. also, there is no continuity of nutrition topics between 8 th class and 9 th grades, while, knowledge related to these topic is very much essential for the adolescent girls (subba et al., 2011). therefore, two schools included in this study belong to poor income group and parents‟ qualification also was not asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 70-77 75 very high. based on the baseline data and science curriculum of sixth to tenth class, the questionnaire and iec material were developed and used for education of the adolescent girls. the intervention material includes eight focal themes in the form of folders and a folk art based video cd in the regional language. covering all the aspects of these themes, the questionnaire was re-administered after the intervention. the significant improvement in the experimental group indicated the efficacy of the intervention material namely folders and folk art based video cd. no significant improvement was observed in control group inspite of exposure to media and teaching of the lessons related to nutrition through the teachers. further, this study suggested that comprehensive school intervention should include regular attendance and hands-on learning in gardening and cooking. it has also revealed that the changed school meal programme giving adequate importance to nutrition, environment for proper physical activity (morton et al., 2016) gardening and cooking lessons has effectively increased the preference for a variety of fresh foods and vegetables. further, it is important to develop effective family based intervention strategies to promote the consumption of vegetables and fruits among the adolescents for the improvement of micro-nutritional status (nicole et al., 2004). therefore, there is a need to revise the science curriculum on different aspects of nutrition including family life education. strong emphasis needs to be laid on dietary diversification like inclusion of variety of foods in the daily diet, especially coarse cereals and millets and fresh fruits and vegetables. seasonal foods are relatively inexpensive and hence their use should be advocated. this vital message on the significance of dietary diversification was emphasized in the study. this, perhaps, is fundamental in popularizing the concept of balanced diet among the target group. 5. conclusion the iec material (print and audio visual) which was developed for adolescent girls on different focal themes significantly improved the knowledge levels of adolescent girls. the material can serve as a resource material for the trainers of front line health functionaries involved in health education. formation of nutrition clubs, „oorja‟ (energy) clubs in the schools to inculcate interest among adolescents to practice right nutrition with proper physical activity would promote good health among youngsters, which in turn can build better societies in the future. references alexandra, b., d. maria, t. andreas and n.k. georgios, 2013. eating habits and factors affecting food choice of adolescents living in rural areas. hormones, 12(2): 246-253. mollie, h.w., b.b. sue and d.w. kevin, 2007. school-based nutrition programs produced a moderate increase in fruit and vegetable consumption: meta and pooling analyses from 7 studies. journal of nutrition education and behavior, 39(4): 186-196. morton, k.l., a.j. atkin, k. corder, m. suhrcke and e.m.f. sluijs van, 2016. the school environment and adolescent physical activity and sedentary behaviour: a mixed-studies systematic review. obesity reviews, 17(2): 142–158. nicole, i.h., n.s. dianne, e.e. marla, s. mary and w. melanie, 2004. associations between parental report of the home food environment and adolescent intakes of fruits, vegetables and dairy foods. public health nutrition, 8(1): 77–85. nurul, a., k.r. swapan and a. tahmeed, 2010. nutritional status, dietary intake, and relevant knowledge of adolescent girls in rural bangladesh. journal of health, population and nutrition, 28: 86-94. raghunatha, r.d., t. vijayapushpam and r.g.m. subba, 2007. dietary habits and effect of two different educational tools on nutrition knowledge of school going adolescent girls in hyderabad, india. european journal of clinical nutrition, 61(9): 1081-1085. reza, a. and s. maryam, 2006. nutrition education alone improves dietary practices but not hematologic indices of adolescent girls in iran. food and nutrition bulletin, 27(3): 260-264. ruchi, s., s. nalini and a. abha, 2009. educating adolescent girls and young women on family issues with the use of communication aids in a village of uttrakhand. journal of social sciences, 21(1): 73-78. sandra, m., 2006. malnutrition and poor academic performance: critical contributions. estudos avancados, são paulo, 20(58): 133-146. subba, r.g.m., t. vijayapushpam and k. venkaiah, 2011. quantitative and qualitative analysis of nutrition in school science textbooks of india. health education journal, 71: 725-735. tarvinder, j.k., g.k. kochar and a. taru, 2007. impact of nutrition education on nutrient adequacy of adolescent girls. stud. home comm. sci, 1(1): 51-55. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 70-77 76 table-1. impact of iec on nutrition and health knowledge levels among adolescent girls living in urban slums si. no parameter control experimental uppal malkajigiri baseline final / endline baseline final / ennline 1. adolescent phase adolescent phase 75.2 70.6 (ns) 75.0 95.1** adolescent age (10-18 yrs) 66.4 64.0 (ns) 69.5 91.5** physiological changes during adolescent phase 68.1 58.8 (ns) 71.9 89.4** type of physiological changes (height, weight and facial changes) 9.4 8.1 (ns) 53.9 66.2** 2 nutrition & calcium requirement of nutrients 84.0 77.2 (ns) 84.4 93.7* calcium requirement 55.0 51.5 (ns) 67.2 90.1** importance of calcium for bone development 27.7 22.1 (ns) 50.0 82.4** knowledge about calcium diet food milk & milk products, egg, meat 12.7 11.8 (ns) 22.7 35.0** 3 breastfeeding and complimentary feeding exclusive breast feeding (6 months) 74.6 69.1(ns) 76.6 93.7** importance of colostrum 26.1 14.7* 44.5 76.8** complimentary feeding (after 6 months) 22.5 25.0 35.9 59.2** 4 food groups and balanced diet food group classification 13.4 5.1* 46.9 85.2* knowledge about foods (energy yielding foods) 10.1 2.2 4.7 22.5** sources of energy 63.5 63.2 (ns) 49.2 85.9** knowledge about fats 15.6 17.2 (ns) 62.5 83.1** reasons, why we need fat growth of the body, essential fatty acids 27.2 30.2 (ns) 20.3 52.1** protein rich food 21.8 12.5 (ns) 39.1 49.3** knowledge about protein rich foods pulses, egg, milk, meat 12.7 14.0 (ns) 35.9 52.1* vitamin and mineral rich food 33.9 31.6* 63.3 84.5** balanced diet 15.0 5.9** 46.9 79.6** define balanced diet (meat, glv, rice, vegetable, dal) 2.6 1.4 1.6 31.7** 5 knowledge about vitamin a knowledge about night blindness 71.7* 60.3* 77.3 90.8** causes of night blindness deficiency of vitamin a 36.8 22.1** 44.5 73.9 symptoms of vitamin a deficiency bitot spots 9.4 11.0 43.8 68.3** prevention of vitamin a deficiency consulting doctor 30.6 24.3 9.4 16.2** dietary modification of vitamin a 40.1 25.0** 50.0 83.8** vitamin a rich foods (glv, yellow coloured fruits) 54.1 47.8 37.5 83.8** 6 anaemia and folate symptoms of anaemia 39.7 21.5* 55.5 88.0** causes for anaemia deficiency of iron 4.6 5.1 36.7 64.1** importance of folate 4.6 3.7 (ns) 17.2 33.8** symptoms of anaemia 19.2 11.8* 46.9 70.4** prevention of anaemia take iron tablets 6.2 3.7 37.5 76.8** knowledge about iron rich food items (glv) 14.3 11.8 34.4 46.5** importance of folate 19.9 14.0** 46.1 78.9 folate rich foods (glv) 5.5 0.7 28.1 43.0* 7 iodine deficiency disorders (idd) knowledge of idd 39.2 40.1 46.1 83.8** prevention of idd by iodized salt 16.1 18.2 13.3 44.4** 8 family life education menarch age what 73.6 66.2** 80.5 82.4 (ns) right age – marriage 18< 87.0 83.1 (ns) 85.2 85.9 (ns) aids/ hiv – do you know 53.4 35.3** 63.3 95.1** mode of transmission of aids 36.2 19.9** 50.0 92.3* ns – not significant; *p<0.05; **p<0.01 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(2): 70-77 77 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 1 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 1, 1-8, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi:10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.1.8 software solution of web questionnaires for the analysis of the economy in relation to the competence of students vlado simeunović1 sanja milic2  ( corresponding author) 1,2faculty of education bijeljina, university of east sarajevo, bosnia and herzegovina abstract the basic idea of the research was to take advantage of it and establish a direct contact between businesses (employers) and universities in order to exchange relevant data on the knowledge, skills and competencies of students who got their first job in the economy. we used the best practices from previous papers that dealt with designing web questionnaires to more or less similar theme. we created the instruments for data collection which represent the essence of the research, conducted the survey, and programmed the software. the questionnaire is based on likert-type questions. the programming is done in familiar web technologies. relying on existing theoretical knowledge we modeled the research, and we are in the first part we constructed an instrument (a questionnaire with 44 questions of likert type), performed necessary determining of its metric values, and then created a web application for its easy use. as a result of the specific method of programming and designing of pages, we got a functional software that presents web questionnaire which employers can access and evaluate newly hired students. keywords: web questionnaire, economy, students, software, faculty, employers. citation | vlado simeunović; sanja milic (2018). software solution of web questionnaires for the analysis of the economy in relation to the competence of students. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 1-8. history: received: 12 december 2017 revised: 28 december 2017 accepted: 4 january 2018 published: 10 january 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. review of literature ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2 3. metodology .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 5. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 8 references ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.1.8&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ file:///c:/users/saleem/appdata/roaming/skype/my skype received files/orcid.org/0000-0002-8119-5190 file:///c:/users/saleem/appdata/roaming/skype/my skype received files/orcid.org/0000-0001-6182-4917 file:///c:/users/saleem/appdata/roaming/skype/my skype received files/orcid.org/0000-0002-8119-5190 file:///c:/users/saleem/appdata/roaming/skype/my skype received files/orcid.org/0000-0001-6182-4917 file:///c:/users/saleem/appdata/roaming/skype/my skype received files/orcid.org/0000-0002-8119-5190 file:///c:/users/saleem/appdata/roaming/skype/my skype received files/orcid.org/0000-0001-6182-4917 file:///c:/users/saleem/appdata/roaming/skype/my skype received files/orcid.org/0000-0002-8119-5190 file:///c:/users/saleem/appdata/roaming/skype/my skype received files/orcid.org/0000-0001-6182-4917 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 1-8 2 1. introduction given that knowledge is one of the most important resources of development of any society, many countries in the world, as well as the republic of srpska (bih), through the reform of higher education are constantly trying to contribute to the development of the national economies (vlada republike srpske, 2015). the european commission has a vision that 'the contribution of higher education to economic growth and employment can be increased only in the continuing integration of education, research and innovation the three sides of the 'knowledge triangle'. in the same report, which includes all eu countries, twelve countries said the problem needs continuous monitoring of newly achieved competence of students in order to raise the efficiency of higher education (ministarstvo civilnih poslova bih, 2011). some of these countries in the reports cited negative interrelationship between these two important segments of social development. the above views were expressed fifty years ago in the work of american economist theodore (1961) which proves that the skills and knowledge are forms of capital. success can be achieved only by producing high quality goods and services that cannot be achieved anywhere else. in order to be positioned in the global market, companies must provide competitive and high quality offer. such competitiveness can only be achieved with the help of the workforce that has received the best possible education and training and which is to be improved for the entire service life. the focus is placed on the obligation of universities to monitor changes in both social and technological development in order to meet the educational needs of the changeable business environment. although we can not expect to solve all the problems of society through activities in higher education, it is desirable to determine the attitude of employers towards the key competencies that students acquire at higher education institutions. employers are mainly interested in which generic skills and knowledge students acquire during their education, whether it is the skills that are immediately applicable in practice or academic knowledge of high level with high indicators of generality that abound in knowledge of the basic concepts and principles with a slim chance that without additional training turn to the work ability. certificates that students receive are mainly of the same (template) method, and competencies that are attributed to a student are generally not consistent with real knowledge. in practice, the range is from a minimum of knowledge to that that enables a successful independent practice. there is concern that the current curricula do not allow students to acquire the knowledge, skills and habits they need to be successful in their professions. one of the main problems is related to the capacity for lifelong learning, which includes, besides knowledge, acquired working habits, intellectual skills and the necessary level of motivation. this paper is based on the above facts. the focus was on solving the problems that are reflected in the empty space that exists in communication between companies and universities when it comes to profiling of professionals. the idea is that there is an online questionnaire available in all schools, through which the company would be able to fully evaluate newly hires students. this would eventually improve the understanding of the demands made by the company in the recruitment of new staff. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. the following section provides an overview of some of the most important studies that have been conducted on this topic. detailed description of the methodology and models is available in the section 3. the section 4 describes the final product, i.e. software, and the results that were obtained. chapter 5 provides conclusions and messages to improve the software. 2. review of literature in the paper "conducting research on the internet: online survey design, development and implementation guidelines" (andrews et al., 2003)they state functionalities that electronic questionnaire should possess, including: (1) support multiple platforms and browsers, (2) prevent multiple responses from the same user, (3) to be designed as to represent the questions in a logical and natural manner, (4) provide the option to save the operation if it is a long questionnaire (more than 50 questions), (5) collect answers to closed and open questions, (6) provide feedback part for the intended user. they also mention some of the benefits offered by online questionnaires compared to conventional ones. these advantages are reflected in the low cost and fast distribution to a large number of respondents, followed by the ability that responses are automatically recorded in the database, eliminating errors in transcription/interpretation of the answers, as well as preventing any modification of the questionnaire by the user. these advantages are confirmed by schleyer and forrest (2000) in the paper "methods for the design and administration of web-based surveys" and add that it is very important that the application is thoroughly tested before launch in order to eliminate software defects or certain incompatibilities. some of the variables which allow the software to be tested are different operating systems, browsers, types of internet connection, etc. as they say, a systematic approach to identifying these and other variables and their testing significantly reduces the chance of failure when the software is delivered to users. schleyer and forrest (2000) once again emphasize the process of pilot testing, and they claim that it is very important that the sample on which it is to be carried out must be big enough. careful analysis of the first results may indicate errors which have been observed prior to a user interaction with the software from technical to semantic errors. small errors that can reduce the validity of the data are more likely to happen in online questionnaires than in conventional surveys, because every user has different experiences of questionnaire based on the size of the screen from which you read, platforms, browsers, internet connection, etc. these, they say, are the real phenomena that must be taken into account, and many who develop online questionnaires ignore them. on the other hand, regarding the topic of this paper, numerous studies have been conducted to determine what competencies employers recognize in new recruits and those which they lack, namely those which are necessary for functioning in the business world. accordingly, the association of graduate recruiters agr (1995) with the theme of skills for graduates in the 21st century, vescio (2005) australian association of australian association of graduate employers – aage. (1993);andrews and higson (2008);simeunović (2009) show that employers successfully recognize skills, positive attitude, motivation, but also often emphasize the lack of communicative asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 1-8 3 competence, insufficient capacity for teamwork, initiative, dedication, perseverance and similar skills that employers require from employers. in support of the bologna process there is in place a program of harmonization of educational structures and competences in europe (gobbi, 2005). tuning project focuses on two different sets of competences generic competences and a branch-specific competencies. generic (general) competences are a set of knowledge, skills and values that are widely used in various fields of activity and allow flexible adaptation to a variety of highly skilled jobs. these qualities and skills are common to all study levels and certain social groups consider them important. according to tuning, the competences are: instrumental competence (cognitive abilities, methodological abilities, technical skills and linguistic skills), interpersonal competence (individual abilities like social skills), systemic competencies (abilities and skills relevant to the systemic approach (combination of understanding, sensibility and knowledge). regional-specific competencies are the backbone of every level of the study program and are associated with appropriate expertise in certain fields of study. they are also called academic competence, because they characterize and determine the study program and give it consistency. european economies rely on producing and applying knowledge (2015). strong links between business and higher education are essential. businesses are increasingly involved in european education and training programs (2008), with positive results for both sides, leading to long-term partnerships. as an example of this attitude are elements of the erasmus programs (2015), which are offered to business and education sectors in the european area of education: practice for students: students gain work experience in a company abroad for up to one year; "the mobility of staff" for learning: company staff acquires skills at higher education institutions; "staff mobility" for training: teaching and other staff can gain experience and explore in foreign companies; cooperation: representatives of the business sector or representative associations may participate in projects through strategic partnerships, capacity-building projects and the creation of 'knowledge alliances'. thus, the essential aim of this project is to raise awareness in our business and academic community on the need for joint action in the way of a developed society based on knowledge, skills and innovation. 3. metodology the main objective of the research is focused on software development that will serve to collect information from employers about their vision of competences of graduates who are employed in certain enterprises. the plan is that the software be installed in all schools so that any employer can assess the student who is employed with the employer after leaving from a specific college. the ultimate goal and basic purpose of the program is to enable employers to indicate to managers at the university the strongest and weakest sides of applied curricula, in order to modify these programs to labor market needs. we assumed that this research will create the elements for a successful programming software for data collection from employers about the competence of graduate students. based on the research results to program and create software for data collection from employers about the competence of students who graduated. 3.1. methodological preparation of the instrument for information gathering methodological preparation of the instrument for examining the attitudes of employers about the competences of graduates included the development and validation of the instrument applied to the sub-sample in the preliminary research stage.the population of the research consisted of 553 trainees employed in the 'project for hiring apprentices'. the study sample consisted of 102 trainees who were employed in the territory of the branch employment in bijeljina. for the study we constructed a questionnaire of 46 questions of likert type where employers are able on a scale of 1-5 from their perspective to indicate whether graduates possess characteristics, abilities, skills and knowledge to perform the job effectively. questions have been constructed so that in the latent way features (competences) may be recognized as the key ones, as follows: 1. creativity and innovation (because it will allow employers greater success and competitiveness of companies in the market); 2. the ability of critical and analytical thinking, logical reasoning and decision-making; 3. social and interpersonal skills (communication, teamwork, responsibility); 4. the ability of clear expression (both verbal and written); 5. ability to apply knowledge in real life; 6. ability of solving complex problems (identification and analysis of the problem, the formulation of test solutions and their testing); 7. ability for lifelong training (economic and technological development, especially the development of information technology have changed the traditional ways of working, requiring new and different abilities and skills, not only professionally, but also in the ability of production, analysis and transformation of information and effective interaction and cooperation with others . learning becomes a lifelong activity.) 8. multiple technical skills and knowledge (employees are now faced with increasing and varied challenges. a large number of employers consider it very important owning a wide range of skills and knowledge in addition to the basic one that is required for a particular job to be filled in). for all the evaluation scales an explanatory factor analysis was performed (component analysis with varimax rotation) for determining the dimension of the latent instruments. criteria for the extraction of factors, with the guttman-kaiser criterion was their interpretability. we then calculated the coefficient of reliability (cronbach a) for all four scales of assessment, as well as for the entire instrument. with factoral analysis we have selected four factors, which we defined as personal qualities, communication skills and understanding of human relationships, intellectual abilities and generic and specific skills and knowledge. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 1-8 4 substantially the instrument measures four constructs covering 81% of the total variance, which proves the validity of the instrument. to compute the internal consistency (cronbach a) for the scale of personal characteristics it is 0.79; the intellectual abilities 0. 76; the ability to communicate and understand interpersonal relationships 0.82 for generic and specific skills and knowledge 0.80. all coefficients are significant, but the overall reliability of the instrument is 0.84. initial research has given us the basis to approach the development of web questionnaire with which we can relatively easily over a longer period of time collect relevant data on the needs of the economy and in the context of key competencies that are acquired at the university. 3.2. software development for the purpose of this study we developed a special software appropriate to the circumstances of functioning in our environment. existing tools limesurvey or surveymonkey could not be used for this work but we had to develop a specific solution. advantage of having our own solution is the possibility of integration with the information system of student services and other information resources at the university where it is possible to reach precise conclusions regarding the competence of graduates. for programming software we used web technologies as follows: php, html5, css (for web site design), javascript for functionality, i.e. specifically to check the entered data. we used mysql database. when checking the code we checked line by line. in the initial phase of testing we gave the answer to every question, and the corresponding entry is checked in the database. the questionnaire is programmed to validate each page, i.e. to determine whether an answer was given to every question, that personal data are entered correctly (year, evaluation...). testing was conducted on several browsers. the program showed no error in testing. the principle of "sequential screens" was used that enabled a complete view of issues with a particular party, and thus prevented the need for a user to scroll excessively and potentially "get lost" in the questions. index page (index.html) was designed that contains all the elements of the user login and data entry for survey. it is also used to administer users when opening the administrative part of the site. it uses the following technologies: html and css to design web pages. fig-1. index html source: from data collected at the beginning the initializing of the variables that the application will use is done. the variable that indicates the position is defined which shows the current user is by using a multidimensional array: varpos = 0, test, test_status, question, choice, choices, choicea, choiceb, choicec, choiced, choicee. then one more multidimensional array containing all the questions is created. through the property innerhtml we defined the type of response, in this case the checkbox so that when the user selects an answer to the question, javascript will asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 1-8 5 be able to return the value for the question to be answered. since the questionnaire contains a large number of question, the list of all the questions is in the file listofquestions.js which we included in the file where we define the structure of questons. <script src = “listofquestions.js”> all the user‟s responses are stored in the database. a special page has been created for the user login enter your login institutions, headquarters, activities, years of employment, degrees, titles, ratings. these data are forwarded from insert.php method on a page that is exclusively used for entry into the database. page for entering data for the survey is defined in the same way as the page to enter personal data, except that on this page are entered data such as communication skills and understanding of human relations, intellectual abilities, generic and specific skills and knowledge. as stated in transition to the login user, this information is also forwarded from insert.php method on a page that is exclusively used for entry into a database, provided that previously is executed a check of data such as whether the user has entered all the necessary information. the method of checking the entered data is written in javascript i.e. executed on the user page so that the data is not sent first to the server to check, but this is done directly by the user, and then he is informed of the faults of entered data or lack of data at the input of the survey. the advantage of this system is that it reduces the consumption of network resources and servers for data verification. this leads to a higher speed of operation of the website. data validation is implemented using the parsley validation framework. fig-2. validation of data source: from data collected the methods for entering the data entered by the user – the code is executed after a successful data validation by the javascript method, and only after that it is possible to enter valid data in the database. the data entry is based on the following methods in php: mysql_query, mysql_fetch_array, mysql_free_result, mysql_close and header. 1. mysql_query – this php method is used for various need during entering data, such as: select, insert, update, delete, i.e. during exerting, inserting, updating or deleting the data from the database; 2. mysql_fetch_array – it is used mainly when from the previous question (select) we pull out the syllables of data from the question itself; 3. mysql_free_result – releasing the values from the question for cleaning the objects from the server after the entered data and into the database; 4. mysql_close – method used for closing the connection with mysql service; 5. header – php function that is used for forwarding into the next page as, for example, going back to the index page after entering data. administration of data in this segment we can see all the information entered by the survey. in this part we used methods and the javascript functions to print values in the fields on the screen, mysql to read data that is forwarded from the base of the user's needs and html and css to display the view and web site design. $(function () { parsley.addvalidator('checkfields', { messages: {en: 'sve kolone su prazne! molimo vas unesite u jednu kolonu vaše mišljenje.'}, requirementtype: 'integer', validate: function(_value, requirement, instance) { for(var i = 1; i <= requirement; i++) if (instance.parent.isvalid({group: 'input-' + i, force: true})) return true; return false; } }); parsley.on('form:submit', function() { return true; }); $('.main-form').parsley({ inputs: parsley.options.inputs + ',[data-parsley-check-fields]' }); }); asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 1-8 6 fig-3. reading data from the database source: from data collected 4.results as a result of the specific method of programming and designing of pages, we got a functional software that presents web questionnaire which employers can access and evaluate newly hired students. we present also the uml use case dijagram: fig-4. use case diagram for the purpose of understanding the simplest use of the website, we herewith describe a specific case, through the steps. 1. the user runs the site and as a view gets a home page with a form for data entry: asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 1-8 7 fig-5.initial page 2. he fills in personal data (figure 5); 3. the first part of the evaluation of the employee which user is filling refers to the personal attributes of the employee (figure 6); 4. the second part relates to the evaluation of the ability to communicate and understand interpesonal relationships (figure 6); fig-6. evaluation of the employer 5. the third part comprises the intellectual capabilities of the employed (figure 6); 6. in the fourth part generic and specific skills and knowledge are evaluated (figure 7). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 1-8 8 fig-7.evaluation and confirmation of entry 7. at the end it performs confirmation of entered responses, and data are stored in the database (figure 7). 5. conclusion the basic idea of the research was to take advantage of it and establish a direct contact between businesses (employers) and universities in order to exchange relevant data on the knowledge, skills and competencies of students who got their first job in the economy. various research, studies, strategies and similar documents show that there is a discourse between the competencies acquired at the university and the need of ever more dynamic economy that is relatively quickly transformed in line with scientific and technological changes. on the other hand, many universities are still holding the old paradigm thus failing to provide the conditions for students to acquire knowledge, develop skills and abilities to work in the new ''modified'' conditions that require a different kind of competence. relying on existing theoretical knowledge we modeled the research, and we are in the first part we constructed an instrument (a questionnaire with 44 questions of likert type), performed necessary determining of its metric values, and then created a web application for its easy use. for programing we used php, html5. javascript supported application's functionality. css was used for design, and all data are stored in a mysql database. the software was tested and when tested did not produce any mistakes. in the next step we shall implement the software on universities and involve companies i.e. employers to provide feedback on the work of software and marks of students. further research will be based on the data obtained from employers, which will serve as a basis for solutions and theoretical generalization. references andrews, d., b. nonnecke and j. preece, 2003. electronic survey methodology, a case study in reaching hard to involve internet users. international journal of human-computer interaction, 16(2): 185-210.view at google scholar | view at publisher andrews, j. and h. higson, 2008. graduate employability,„soft skills‟ versus „hard‟business knowledge: a european study. higher education in europe, 33(4): 411-422.view at google scholar | view at publisher association of graduate recruiters agr, 1995. skills for graduates in the 21st century. cambridge: agr. australian association of graduate employers – aage., 1993. national survey of graduate employers. sydney, australia: aage. gobbi, m., 2005. tuning educational structures in europe summary of outcomes: nursing , bilabo, spain tuning project: 14. retrieved from http://www.unideusto.org/tuning/. ministarstvo civilnih poslova bih, 2011. basics of the qualification framework in bih. official gazette of bih. pp: 31. retrieved https://ec.europa.eu/epale/hr/resource-centre/content/osnove-kvalifikacijskog-okvira-u-bosni-i-hercegovini. schleyer, t.k.l. and j.l. forrest, 2000. methods for the design and administration of web-based surveys. journal of the american medical informatics association, 7(4): 416–425.view at google scholar | view at publisher simeunović, v., 2009. obrazovanje u funkciji privrednog razvoja u republici srpskoj. naša skola, 3-4: 235-266. theodore, w.s., 1961. investment in human capital. american economic review, 51(1): 1-17.view at google scholar vescio, j., 2005. an investigation of successful graduates in the early stages of their career across a wide rangeof professions. university of technology sidney. retrieved from http://www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/7363/uts_succ_grads_project_report_j.vescio_2005.pdf. vlada republike srpske, 2015. draft strategy for the development of education of republika srpska for the period 2015. – 2020 years. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=electronic%20survey%20methodology,%20a%20case%20study%20in%20reaching%20hard%20to%20involve%20internet%20users http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327590ijhc1602_04 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=graduate%20employability,‘soft%20skills’%20versus%20‘hard’business%20knowledge:%20a%20european%20study http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03797720802522627 http://www.unideusto.org/tuning/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=methods%20for%20the%20design%20and%20administration%20of%20web-based%20surveys http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jamia.2000.0070416 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=investment%20in%20human%20capital http://www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/7363/uts_succ_grads_project_report_j.vescio_2005.pdf asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 1, 16-22, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 16 perspectives upon integrating music into freshman english pronunciation training classroom ai-hwa chen1 1 hsiuping university of science and technology abstract this study explores the effects of integrating music into english pronunciation practice. ninety-five english major students from a technological university located in central taiwan participated in this project. six songs were selected and played by means of using youtube. students were given a list of vocabulary words selected from the lyrics and learned pertinent pronunciation rules that were augmented with phonetic symbols. they were asked to take quizzes that required memorizing the song’s lyrics. the findings point out that almost all students enjoyed listening to songs and indicated that they had become more familiar with many english songs and the rules of pronunciation by practicing singing and memorizing the lyrics. keywords: english songs, youtube, pronunciation practice, phonetic symbols, lyrics memorization. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 17 2. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................ 17 3. methodology......................................................................................................................................................................... 18 4. findings: results and discussion ........................................................................................................................................ 19 5. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 21 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 21 bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................ 22 citation | ai-hwa chen (2016). perspectives upon integrating music into freshman english pronunciation training classroom. asian journal of education and training, 2(1): 16-22. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.16.22 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.16.22 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ai-hwa chen http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.16.22 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.16.22 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ai-hwa chen http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.16.22 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.16.22 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ai-hwa chen http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.16.22 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 16-22 17 1. introduction music can bring a lot of fun for people in their daily life, as well as stimulate the restrained atmosphere in the fixed traditional classrooms. in this study, the teacher/researcher attempted to examine how students perceive the effects of reinforcing pronunciation skills by incorporating music retrieved from youtube. ninety-five english major freshman students from a technological university located in the center of taiwan participated in this project. they were taking a course, titled english music appreciation while the study was conducted. the goal of this course aimed at enhancing students’ english pronunciation skills. based on the english lyrics, learners heightened their understanding of the basic pronunciation rules, which include recognizing the phonetic signs, learning the pronunciation practices applied by native english speakers, and distinguishing syllables and stress. in addition to merely listening to the melodious notes and the song’s stories, learners were expected to become aware of the meanings in the songs that were involved and be able to recite english lyrics and sing various english songs by themselves. many different kinds of learning and teaching resources related to pronunciation instruction can be found in the bookstores and websites in taiwan, such as the textbooks titled english pronunciation practice published by lttc (the language training & testing center) and english pronunciation made easy published by cave bookstore, and introduction to phonetics i, an open courseware offered by national taiwan university. in addition, many music cds/mp3 also focus on english learning, such as the materials titled 唱歌學英語：冠軍風雲特輯, 跟著西洋情歌學 英文 , and let’s sing. however, few teaching materials specifically contain both text and music in one on pronunciation instructions. therefore, based on the requirements of helping students obtain the pronunciation skills through music appreciation, the teacher/researcher applied e-materials downloaded from the internet, which contained music and its relevant lyrics, especially music from youtube, to conduct the class. for the purpose of assisting students to develop a better set of global contexts and using music to polish their pronunciation, the music selection inclined towards ageless music with slower tempos, for example songs such as sound of music and all kinds of everything. six songs were selected in total. in addition to just listening to the beautiful music, students were asked to read the lyrics aloud at the beginning of the semester, and later on were asked to memorize the lyrics so that they could sing songs independently and refine their pronunciation skills. in order to help students realize the meaning of the lyrics and maintain enthusiasm for the music, movie viewing was also included in the syllabus. the film selected for this was titled sound of music. through the integration of music into pronunciation practice, the teacher/researcher attempted to explore what perspectives students initially had, to what extent they could then reinforce their pronunciation skills in both phonetics cognition and phonetic symbols recognition, and to understand what kinds of songs students preferred and how music helped the students to develop their english pronunciation ability. most importantly, the music provided from the internet helped to open a door of understanding for the efl learners by encouraging them to better appreciate a variety of beautiful songs sung in english. 2. literature review some esl teachers working with adult learners do not have training in teaching pronunciation. for example, macdonald (2002) researched the perspectives of eight esl teachers in language centers in australia who reported that they were somewhat reluctant to teach pronunciation to esl students. several teachers commented that in comparison with other skill areas, pronunciation was a relatively neglected area. however, schaetzel and low (2009) argued that although there are challenges to teaching and learning english pronunciation, it is an area vital to adult english language learners’ communicative competence. they stated that teachers can help learners gain the skills they need for effective communication in english. however, how can teachers effectively help esl/efl students improve their pronunciation skills? many researchers believe that the use of songs can contribute to the development of many language skills, from grammar to pronunciation. for instance, lems (2001) offers strategies for using music in the adult esl classroom which cover listening, oral, reading, writing, vocabulary building, and cultural knowledge instruction. neurologists have found that musical and language processing occur in the same area of the brain, and there appear to be parallels in how musical and linguistic syntax are processed (lems, 2001; maess and koelsch, 2001). many studies have investigated the effects of employing music in the esl/efl and foreign language classroom (domoney and harris, 1993; fitzgerald, 1994; smith, 2003; sariçobana and kuc, 2010; keskin, 2011; laramie, 2012). for example, in their study, domoney and harris (1993) described a teacher training workshop in which, through a series of linked tasks, teachers explore how pop music can be integrated into their english programs. this method was viewed as an important success in the reorganization of curriculum. when using various songs and games to improve pronunciation of turkish young learners, sariçobana and kuc (2010) claimed that it is an effective way of teaching pronunciation to young learners. in the study of using songs as audio materials in teaching turkish as foreign language, the researcher also pointed out that “ melodies, rhythms and rhymes in a song facilitate language learning improve students’ reading, writing, speaking and listening skills (keskin, 2011).” laramie (2012) investigated whether or not the integration of music into a beginner german course in higher education affected students’ proficiency levels when considering only the choice of song. one of the tools the researcher employed was to provide students access to the song lyrics through a youtube video. test results indicated slightly higher vocabulary scores and slightly lower grammar scores during music instruction. in the study, it suggests that youtube.com might be used effectively during and outside of class to increase exposure to foreign language practices. likewise, with the help of youtube, chou (2013) investigated the effects of youtube-based english song teaching on elementary school students’ listening comprehension and learning motivation. she indicated that youtube-based english song instruction not only could reinforce students’ listening comprehension, it also helped them learn new words in a more efficient way. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 16-22 18 many researchers have investigated the effects of employing english music to language learning in taiwan (fang, 2001; chiang, 2003; lin, 2005; huang, 2007; wen, 2009; kuo, 2010; lin, 2010; chen, 2013). in their findings, they all agreed with the positive effects of integrating english music into english learning. however, the participants involved in their studies were either from the elementary or junior high schools. will the different educational levels influence the english learning performance through exposing music? in this study, the teacher/researcher employed youtube as a supplementary tool in pronunciation practice performed by a group of efl college students. by means of using music as audio and visual materials, the researcher proposed two research questions that were designed to explore the efl learners’ perspectives on integrating the english songs into the pronunciation practice. 2.1. research questions exploration 1. what extent did the students enjoy the music appreciation class? 2. how did they perceive the pedagogy of integrating music into pronunciation practice? 3. methodology the research site was located in a technological university situated in the center of taiwan. the data sources included three survey questionnaires, four quizzes, a mid-term exam, and a final exam. 3.1. participants the participants were 95 freshman students from the english program. they enrolled in the required course, titled english music appreciation, instructed by the teacher/researcher during their very first semester. it was a twohour class and was conducted in a traditional classroom equipped with internet access. 3.2. instructional materials as mentioned earlier, there were no appropriate textbooks for the class; therefore, all teaching materials, such as the music and the lyrics, were retrieved from the internet. the e-texts contained the music with the lyrics, the lists of vocabulary words, and phonetic symbols displayed as power point slides. the students were informed of the titles of the six selected songs in the first class meeting so that they were able to use youtube to listen to the music according to their personal schedules. they were also asked to download the list of lyrics with specific highlighted vocabulary words uploaded by the teacher to the e-platform beforehand. they had to check those vocabulary words phonetic symbols and chinese meaning and then upload completed assignments to the designated files in the e-platform. in addition, the teacher prepared a series of phonetic symbols with relevant vocabulary words and demonstrated them in the form of power point slides. hence, it was not necessary for students to bring traditional textbooks to class. instead, assisted by the facility equipped with computers and internet access, the students could watch, listen, and read the specific parts of the lesson as they were projected on the screen. 3.3. time frame the study lasted one semester with two weekly contact hours in the traditional classroom. in addition to the weeks for the mid-term and final exams, students were required to attend the class once a week. they also had to have access to the internet to do assignments after class. 3.4. data collection 3.4.1. feedback sheets: three kinds of survey questionnaires the pre survey was conducted in the first class meeting. it mainly focused on students’ knowledge about pronunciation rules and their phonetic symbol conceptions. it also included perspectives on incorporating pronunciation practice with music. halfway through the semester, an on-going survey was conducted. students gave feedback about their preferences of music, familiarity with the pronunciation rules and their perception of the effects of integrating music for pronunciation improvement. for the post survey, the above questions were asked once again in order to better pinpoint their views on the use of music appreciation upon the improvement of pronunciation skills throughout the semester. students also indicated what instructional style they preferred and were asked to reflect upon what they had learned in the class. 3.4.2. four quizzes during the semester, students were given four quizzes, which covered six designated songs, as well as sections covering writing lyrics from memory, and phonetic symbols familiarity. at the end of the semester, the students were asked to indicate which song they liked the most. the outcomes of students’ preferences are illustrated in table 1. table-1. the preference on selected songs titles of songs 1 st 2 nd 3 rd 4 th 5 th 6 th words of lyrics 134 232 51 151 310 277 rank of preference 5 1 2 4 6 3 ratio of correction 45 87 81 81 77 - note: 1st: all kinds of everything ('70); 2nd: colors of the wind ('90); 3rd: do rei me ('60); 4th: edelweiss; 5th: sound of music; 6th: you’ve got a friend ('70). rank of preference: 1: the most; 6: the least. “ratio of correction” refers to the ratio of correct answers that the students supplied to questions they were asked in specific quizzes pertaining to the memorization of a given song’s lyrics. for example, in a quiz of ten questions in which six were answered correctly; the ratio of correction would be 60. the participants were given quizzes on writing lyrics from memory of five songs but the sixth song, you've got a friend, was skipped; thus, the section of the ratio of correction indicated in the table above also does not include asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 16-22 19 this song. the table shows that the fifth song, sound of music, possesses the largest number of lyrics, but was the least preferred and demonstrated the second to lowest number of the ratio of correction figures. the most preferred song, colors of the wind, earned the highest ratio of correction score with the second largest number of lyrics. in addition, the song, all kinds of everything, was second to last in preference and had the lowest ratio of correction. it seems that the preference of songs and the ratio of correction are relatively in direct proportion and that the number of lyrics in a given song might not influence the preference for it or the number of corrections that were required. 3.4.3. mid-term and final exams students were asked to write specific song lyrics from memory in the mid-term and final exams. the lyrics were presented in the form of a cloze test. the teacher would sing the song for the students to give them a reminder and students would listen and put the correct spelling words in the right blanks. the purpose for these exams was to test students’ listening comprehension on the pronunciation of specific words and their spelling. in addition, students indicated that they preferred the teacher’s singing to the recorded singers during the exam because the teacher would sing slower than the recorded singers. 3.4.4. procedures of pronunciation instruction before the class, the teacher/researcher downloaded the lyrics of specific song from the website and confirmed its lyrics with the subtitles illustrated on its music video showed in the youtube. then highlighting twenty to thirty vocabulary words on each lyric, she then uploaded the lyrics to the e-platform set by the university so that the participants could download them. students were asked to give the highlighted words phonetic symbols, sort vowel sounds, and their chinese meaning, and upload their accomplished assignment using microsoft office excel worksheet. simultaneously, the teacher/researcher would also prepare a series of phonetic symbols and relevant vocabulary word examples in the form of power point slides (ppt slides). in the class, by means of projecting ppt slides with phonetic symbols and a list of vocabulary words on the classroom screen, students focused on pronunciation practice and refining their understanding of pronunciation rules. in between times, they would listen to the music retrieved from youtube. after they had learned three relevant songs, do rei me, edelweiss, and sound of music, one specific film, the sound of music, was selected for students to watch so as to gain their interest and to help them to enjoy the class, 4. findings: results and discussion 4.1. results based on the survey questionnaires collected, the author will illustrate how the participants enjoyed the music and what awareness of phonetic symbols they learned. students’ perspectives on integrating music into pronunciation practice will also be explored.  what extent did the students enjoy the music appreciation class? the preference on music and experiences of karaoke bar attendance are illustrated in table 2. table-2. the preference on music music preference (n=95) singing yes 73 (77%) no 22 (23%) listening yes 93 (98%) no 2 (2%) singing + listening yes 73 (77%) no 2 (2%) karaoke bar attendance (n=95) yes 80 (84%) no 15 (16%) familiarity with the pronunciation rules mid term exam (n=95) yes 90 (95%) no 5 (5%) final exam (n=92) yes 89 (97%) no 3 (3%) it shows that 77 percent of the students were fond of singing and 98 percent preferred to listen; thus, almost all students were interested in listening to music. eighty-four percent of the students had been to karaoke bars with their family or friends. in taiwan, songs are usually provided in five different languages at the bar, i.e. mandarin chinese, taiwanese, japanese, english and cantonese. the number of students who sang songs in each language was: mandarin chinese 71; taiwanese 40; japanese 3; english 22; cantonese 0. this indicates that students mostly sang mandarin chinese songs and no one sang in cantonese. in addition, the students preferred taiwanese to english songs. the question about the concepts on the familiarity with the pronunciation rules was asked twice. in the midterm exam, 95 percent of students agreed that they had made progress and in the final 97 percent of students agreed to having done so. table-3. preference of the type of class conducted preference of the class conducted teacher oriented 71% student oriented 23% both 6% preference of dealing with music writing the lyrics from memory 49% singing in public 19% giving presentation about specific songs 32% asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 16-22 20 table 3 illustrates how students preferred the way the class was conducted and their preferred way to deal with the music appreciation classes in subsequent semesters. seventy-one percent of the students indicated that they preferred a teacher oriented class, twenty-three percent preferred a student oriented class, and six percent liked both. at the end of the semester, students were asked how they would prefer the music appreciation classes to be structured in subsequent semesters. three choices were provided: (1) writing the lyrics from memory; (2) singing in public; (3) giving a presentation about specific songs. it seems that writing lyrics from memory was the preferred method of learning.  how did they perceive the pedagogy of integrating music into pronunciation practice? in the post survey questionnaire, by means of reviewing the overall learning stages so as to examine what extent students benefitted from pronunciation practice, the question: "what have you learned this semester?", was asked. in addition, in the music oriented pronunciation learning model, students were also asked to list as many vowels sounds as they could. overall, student responses can be grouped into three categories: 4.1.1. singing english songs became more fun many students indicated that as they became more familiar with english songs they began to enjoy listening to and singing them more and more. they found, as a matter of fact, it is not so difficult to learn english songs. one student uttered, "i did not know the song the sound of music before, but i am really enjoying listening to it. the more i listen, the more i love." another student stated that “i used to listen to noisy music, such as rock and roll and rap, but i have found many good music through participating in the class”. many of them reflected that they obtained better performance in this class than other classes they were taking, such as those involving rote grammar lessons, listening comprehension training, and general english practice. 4.1.2. being aware of pronunciation rules assisted with the phonetic symbols in the quiz, approximately 20 percent of the students were not able to list vowel sounds correctly, eighty percent mixed up the alphabet letters and phonetic symbols, and a full twenty percent had no comprehension whatsoever about the symbols. most students, however, grew more familiar with the pronunciation rules and the assisting tool, the phonetic symbols. they indicated that they knew how to autonomously pronounce specific vocabulary words assisted with the phonetic symbols via the dictionary. some students indicated that they could more easily and accurately pronounce vocabulary words if they could recognize the phonetic symbols. 4.1.3. vocabulary word banks increased students were given several quizzes on writing lyrics from memory. from this, they indicated that they not only learned many words they did not know before, they also memorized spelling more effectively since they knew the pronunciation rules. most importantly, by memorizing the lyrics, they were able to pronounce unfamiliar words more easily. 4.2. discussion it is feasible to integrate music into pronunciation practice. it indicated that the preference and familiarity of specific songs could be significant factors to affect learning outcomes. although it was easy for the teacher/researcher to retrieve specific songs and lyrics from the internet as teaching materials; before demonstrating them to students, all materials needed to be organized according to pronunciation training purpose in advance. 4.2.1. music preference strengthening learning outcomes more than 90 percent of students agreed that they grew more familiar with the pronunciation rules through this class. the teacher/researcher gave pronunciation instruction including both identifying phonetic symbols and practicing pronunciation forms used by native english speakers. in addition, students had to keep listening and singing specific songs covered in their quizzes. through this, many of them eventually learned the pronunciation skills. it is worth mentioning that the song, colors of the wind, was the most popular with students because many of them indicated that they had seen the movie and listened to the song when they were in elementary or junior high schools. in addition, for those students who lived in the dormitory, the lyrics of you’ve got a friend were particularly meaningful. it made them better realize the importance of friendship when they were far away from home and thus resonated with them strongly. however, the other songs, such as all kinds of everything and sound of music, were not as popular. thus, the familiarity of the songs and the contents of the lyrics may both influence learning outcomes. for example, the song, sound of music, issued in the 50’s, was the least preferred and this resulted in unsatisfactory performances on the written quiz. students simply were not familiar with the song and this affected learning negatively. in addition, the number of words in the lyrics of this song, which is close to 300, also seemed to contribute to its unpopularity. this, in turn, was reflected in poor quiz performances. 4.2.2. the effects of writing the lyrics from memory through youtube assisted stemming from both the unfamiliarity with english songs and the traditional learning style, the students sang mandarin chinese songs much more than english songs at the karaoke bars. they also preferred the teacher oriented mode. that is, they preferred it when the teacher led them step by step when learning to sing the songs. however, the goal of the class aimed at reinforcing pronunciation skills instead of singing skills instruction. in this, a very helpful supplementary tool, youtube, provided immediate assistance. students could gain access to the internet to download the music and listen to it repeatedly. not only could they autonomously learn the songs, they also increased their vocabulary word banks by memorizing the song lyrics. the technical tool, youtube, indeed, thus could be used effectively in a music appreciation class. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 16-22 21 4.2.3. the perspectives of incorporating music into pronunciation skill development in the feedback, one student commented, “in this class, i have learned many phonetics symbols and the pronunciation skills. i also have listened to more good songs than before. in addition, i can practice the pronunciation autonomously by means of listening to the music.” this pointed out that the student not only enjoyed listening to the music, he/she also learned specific vocabulary words found in the lyrics. combining the lyrics resulted in its being easier for students to learn to sing and develop their pronunciation skills. thus, music indeed helps students to learn pronunciation skills. in the process of attempting to familiarize themselves with the lyrics, the students needed to listen to the music constantly and mimic singing the songs. gradually, students may thus enhance their pronunciation skills. even so, a small portion of students did not agree with the practice of using music to augment pronunciation practice. some of them were simply not interested in singing; therefore, they had less opportunity to practice the unfamiliar words listed in the lyrics. others got used to separating spelling and pronunciation and focused on memorizing the spelling of the word without attempting to read it. thus, music and pronunciation were in two different worlds to them. on the other hand, most students were contextually fond of listening to music, which can stimulate students’ interests and motivate them to pay attention to the pleasant and melodic sounds. in this, it will lead them to more time on task and therefore improve outcomes, pronunciation skill development. 5. conclusion in this study, by listening to music retrieved from the internet, students not only enjoyed the beautiful melodies, most importantly, many of them also achieved the main goal of developing pronunciation skills. based on the lyrics, the teacher/researcher selected vocabulary words with different vowel sounds and instructed students with the pronunciation rules associated with identifying phonetic symbols. furthermore, by means of learning to sing selected songs, students were required to know how to read the specific vocabulary words that appeared in the lyrics. gradually, they became familiar with the pronunciation rules and could read vocabulary words aloud without hesitation. in addition, most of them gained awareness of recognizing phonetic symbols. at the beginning, some of the students did not know what vowel sounds were and could not complete the assignments the teacher requested. afterwards, many students claimed that they could pronounce unknown words accurately on their own via the phonetic symbols illustrated in the dictionary. overall, many students made progress when their pronunciation skills were assisted with the music displayed on youtube. however, which specific songs are selected should be considered carefully. it seems that students had better performance on the songs issued in the 90s than those released earlier. while teachers cannot find appropriate textbooks for the class, it is worth employing e-resources as instructional materials. to do so, of course, it is imperative that classrooms be equipped with access to the internet. 5.1. pedagogical implications with access to the internet, the instructional materials applied in a music appreciation class can provide efl learners more learning avenues. using the preferred songs and lyrics presented on the web, most students achieved more satisfactory performances by means of writing the lyrics from memory. this approach unquestionably benefits students on both pronunciation skill reinforcement and vocabulary word development. instructors can also encourage their students to upload their satisfactory works to youtube to share with others. as such, students may become more autonomous, creative, motivated, responsible, and serious in their study. references chen, t.y., 2013. the effects of using english songs in english grammar remedial instruction program on english learning motivation and academic achievement of underachieved second-grade junior high school students (master’s thesis). national university of tainan, taiwan. chiang, h.y., 2003. incorporating english into content-based classes in an elementary school efl setting (master’s thesis). national taipei university of education, taiwan. chou, y.l., 2013. the use of youtube in english song teaching in elementary efl classroomsempowering efl learning in terms of listening comprehension and learning motivation (master’s thesis). taiwan: national cheng kung university, taiwan. domoney, l. and h. harris, 1993. justified and ancient: pop music in efl classroom. elt journal, 47(3): 234-241. fang, s.f., 2001. a case study of immerging songs into english class in the after-school alternative program (master’s thesis). national pingtung university of science and technology, taiwan. fitzgerald, l., 1994. a musical approach for teaching english reading to limited english speakers. master's thesis, national-louis university. ed 371571. huang, s.f., 2007. research on teaching songs and chants impact upon elementary school students attitude toward morning english tv program (master’s thesis). national taipei university of education, taiwan. keskin, f., 2011. using songs as audio materials in teaching turkish as a foreign language. turkish online journal of educational technology, 10(4): 378-383. kuo, c.l., 2010. the effects of english song-teaching instruction on english vocabulary ability and english learning attitude of low english achievers (master’s thesis). national taipei university of education, taiwan. laramie, b.i., 2012. the effects of integrating music into foreign language classrooms. proceedings of american institute of higher education. pp: 314-328. lems, k., 2001. using music in the adult esl classroom. eric digest. ed 459634 2001-12-00. lin, h.l., 2005. teaching english nursery rhymes to second graders: an action research (master’s thesis). national taichung university of education, taiwan. lin, h.y., 2010. a study on the effects of english song instruction on listening comprehension for efl junior high school students (master’s thesis). national changhua university of education, taiwan. macdonald, s., 2002. pronunciation views and practices of reluctant teachers. prospect, 17(3): 3-18. maess, b. and s. koelsch, 2001. musical syntax is processed in broca's area: an meg study. nature neuroscience, 4(5): 540-545. sariçobana, a. and a. kuc, 2010. teaching problematic consonants in english to young learners. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 2: 943–947. schaetzel, k. and e.l. low, 2009. teaching pronunciation to adult english language learners. center for adult english language acquisition. smith, g., 2003. foreign language acquisition and melody singing. elt journal, 57(2): 113-121. wen, s.h., 2009. an action research of using english pop songs as teaching material to improve english learning attitude and efficiency for grade six students (master’s thesis). national taipei university of education, taiwan. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 16-22 22 bibliography chung, k.s., 2012. introduction to phonetics i with pronunciation practicum. available from http://ocw.aca.ntu.edu.tw/ntuocw/index.php/ocw/cou/101s102. lai, s.x. (2008). sing alone. available from https://www.ivy.com.tw/mod/product/index.php?request_id=98fd196f2c144d97215f37756f318d2afb5503f09b75a385e04cdeaf9 42d5b6c . tsai, x.w. (2008).let’s sing. available from http://24h.pchome.com.tw/books/prod/djaf09-a36894374. xing, pei-pei, 2014 learning english by english love songs. available from http://www.kingstone.com.tw/book/book_page.asp?kmcode=2018052594123&actid=bw_pagealsobuy. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of education and training shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. http://ocw.aca.ntu.edu.tw/ntu-ocw/index.php/ocw/cou/101s102 http://ocw.aca.ntu.edu.tw/ntu-ocw/index.php/ocw/cou/101s102 https://www.ivy.com.tw/mod/product/index.php?request_id=98fd196f2c144d97215f37756f318d2afb5503f09b75a385e04cdeaf942d5b6c https://www.ivy.com.tw/mod/product/index.php?request_id=98fd196f2c144d97215f37756f318d2afb5503f09b75a385e04cdeaf942d5b6c http://24h.pchome.com.tw/books/prod/djaf09-a36894374 http://www.kingstone.com.tw/book/book_page.asp?kmcode=2018052594123&actid=bw_pagealsobuy asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(4): 257-265 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 4, 257-265, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.44.257.265 research on social anxiety level and communication skills of secondary school students mustafa koç1 ( corresponding author) aykut dündar2 1,2adıyaman university, school of physical education and sports, adıyaman, turkey abstract the aim of his study is to examine the social anxiety level and communication skills of secondary school students in terms of some variables. a total of 382 students, 192 males and 190 females attending the secondary education institutions of the province adıyaman in the academic year 2016-2017, participated in the study. the scale developed by özbay and palancı (2001) to measure the social anxiety level of the students and the scale developed by korkut (1997) to measure communication skills were used. in the analysis of the data, the statistical package program was used. t-test and variance analysis (anova) were used in independent groups, post hoc tukey test was used for the differences between groups and pearson correlation test was used for finding relationship; error level is obtained as 0,01 and 0,05. as a result of the research, there was no significant difference was found in social anxiety and communication skills in terms of the students' genders and the fact that whether they do sports or not. a statistically significant relationship was found between the communication skills of the individuals and their social anxiety scores in the strong negative direction. it was seen that the students with more communication skills had lower social anxiety scores. a statistically significant relationship was found in the strong positive direction between the students' social anxiety level and social anxiety sub-scale scores. a statistically significant relationship was found in the positive direction between the students' communication skills and communication skills sub-scale scores. keywords: student, communication skills, social anxiety. citation | mustafa koç; aykut dündar (2018). research on social anxiety level and communication skills of secondary school students. asian journal of education and training, 4(4): 257-265. history: received: 3 july 2018 revised: 19 july 2018 accepted: 25 july 2018 published: 31 july 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction 258 2. method 258 3. findings 259 4. discussion and conclusion 264 references 264 1. introduction adolescents enter a wider social environment in school and other social activities not limited to the family and they start to enter different environments in which they initiate and sustain new relationships. it is both a developmental task and a source of anxiety for the adolescent to show themselves in different social environments, to establish close relation with the opposite gender, to achieve academic success, to choose a profession, to prepare for a career and business life and to succeed in matters such as choosing a spouse (eren, 2006). communication has an important role in human life. by nature, people are in need of communicating with other people (cüceloğlu, 2000). through communication, people make sense of the messages by conveying the messages they want to each other and they give feedback to the other individual. the other person also passes through the same process and gives a feedback. this transmission network creates communication (dökmen, 1994). social anxiety is a type of anxiety that is expected to be experienced in relationships. individuals experiencing social anxiety show tension and it is very difficult for them to intensify attention on a certain topic. these individuals are aware that the situation they are experiencing comes to existence in social environments. although tension is fairly normal before a date or a meeting, the distinctive point in here is that it is continuous and impairs the individual's daily functioning (burger, 2006); (cağlar et al., 2012). through communication, a person becomes part of a society and gets over loneliness. while individuals express desired behaviours through communication, he or she may want other people in society to act on his or her wish and may accomplish this. the communication form of a person may vary according to the existing environment. in this way, the person will have adapted to the environment (urgüplü, 2006). in the behavioural changes teachers try to create in their students, in the provision of learning, communication skills come to the forefront. students benefit from the communication skills of their teachers while acquiring new knowledge and skills through learning (ergin and birol, 2000). in addition to being the totality of some physical activities, sports also express a concept that helps the individual to socialize by giving people a sense of personal and social identity and group membership (küçük and koç, 2004). sports is interwoven with many sciences that concern humans. sports, a multidisciplinary science, is closely related to the field of psychology. along with the improvements in sports psychology, sports and personality have been one of the most studied topics in recent years (oda, 2014). if sports, which is a form of education, is considered as a physical and spiritual education, it is seen that sport and education are the same. sports is of great importance in terms of both physical development and mental and social health of the individual (güçlü, 2000). being healthier, hopeful, assertive and socially better of young people, who are the guarantee of the future, depend on many causes. these can be accomplished by performing the activities of arts, cultural centres, music, conversation and sports etc (ozer, 2017). 2. method the research was conducted using a screening model in order to determine the relationship between social anxiety level and communication skills of secondary school students. 2.1. study group the sample of the study consist of a total of 382 (190 females, 192 males) students selected with simple unselected sampling method and studying at the secondary schools in adıyaman province in 2016-2017 academic year. 2.2. data collection the data of the study were obtained using the communication skills questionnaire, social anxiety scale and personal information form. the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants were obtained by the personal information form prepared by the researcher. 2.2.1. social anxiety scale the scale developed by özbay and palancı (2001) was used to identify students' social anxiety problems. the social anxiety scale has three sub-dimensions named as social avoidance, anxiety of evaluation (criticism) and individual sense of worthlessness. anxiety about social avoidance, communication and social interaction include various conditions or symptoms of social anxiety such as difficulty in speaking, reluctance, difficulty in getting involved in the crowd, living anxiety about authority, fear of being watched, seen by others. anxiety of evaluation includes concerns such as being negatively evaluated by others, fear of being humiliated in front of others and rejection. sense of worthlessness dimension reflects the situations and contents such as feeling self-worthless, not accepting personal characteristics, not trusting oneself, not being satisfied with oneself, feeling unsuccessful. 2.2.2. communication skills scale the scale developed by korkut (1997) was used to measure the communication skills of the students. it was developed as a 5-point likert type with a total of 25 items. the increase in the scores indicates that communication skills are increasing. the sample has four sub-dimensions; basic communication skills, the self expression skill, effective listening and non verbal communication skills, ability of willingness to establish communication. 2.3. data analysis in the analysis of data obtained from communication skills scale and social anxiety scale spss (statistical package for social sciences) for windows 18.0 statistical package program was used. before testing students' communication skills and their level of social anxiety according to various demographic variables, whether the research data carry the normal distribution feature was subjected to normality test. since the data showed normal distribution characteristics as a result of the normality test, parametric analysis methods were used. statistical significance was evaluated as p<0.05 for all tests. 3. findings in the study, the relationship between social anxiety and communication skills was examined. whether the level of social anxiety and communication skills of the individuals differ according to the gender, sport and educational status of the parents were examined with the spss (18.00) statistical program. while statistically one way anova and differences between groups were examined with post hoc tukey test, bivariate pearson correlation method was used to find the relationship. table-1. distribution of students, participating in the study, according to demographic characteristics variables n % genders male 192 50,3 female 190 49,7 grades 1th grade 64 16,8 2 th grade 182 47,6 3 th grade 108 28,3 4 th grade 28 7,3 schools regular high schools 28 7,3 sports high schools 86 22,5 anatolian high schools 158 41,4 private high schools 110 28,8 doing sports sports 166 43,5 non-sports 216 56,5 families member doing sports sports 100 26,2 non-sports 282 73,8 father's educational status primary school, 96 25,1 secondary school 112 29,3 high school 112 29,3 university 62 16,2 mother's educational status primary school, 182 47,6 secondary school 92 24,1 high school 78 20,4 university 30 7,9 source: author's field work as shown in table 1, (190) 49.7% of the participants are female, (192) 50.3% are male. 16.8% of participants are 1st grade students, %47.6 are 2nd grade, 28.3% are 3rd grade and 7.3% are 4th grade students. 7.3% of the students are studying at regular high schools, 22.5% are at sports high schools, 41.4% are in anatolian high schools and 28,8% of them are studying in private high schools. 43.5% of the students are doing sports, 56.5% are not. 73.8% of the individuals do not have other family members doing sports and 26.2% of the individuals have other members in their families doing sports. table-2. students' social anxiety and sub-dimensions and t test results of communication skills and their sub dimensions according to gender variable variables gender n x sd t p social avoidance male 192 2,3281 ,81888 ,389 ,697 female 190 2,2956 ,81269 anxiety of evaluation male 192 2,6771 ,84661 -,641 ,522 female 190 2,7295 ,74746 sense of worthlessness male 192 2,2070 ,75518 -,552 ,581 female 190 2,2500 ,76614 total social anxiety male 192 2,4122 ,75086 -,215 ,830 female 190 2,4281 ,69643 basic communication skills, male 192 3,7323 ,83227 -1,649 ,100 female 190 3,8674 ,76697 self-expression skill male 192 3,7474 ,87317 -,514 ,607 female 190 3,7921 ,82508 effective listening and non verbal communication skills male 192 3,5729 ,84307 -3,660 ,000* female 190 3,8684 ,73017 willingness to establish communication skill male 192 3,6583 ,83380 1,485 ,138 female 190 3,5326 ,82017 total communication skill male 192 3,6817 ,75421 -1,463 ,144 female 190 3,7886 ,67268 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05 as shown in the table 2, it has been found that there is a significant difference between male and female students in effective listening and nonverbal communication skill, which is the sub-dimension of communication skills. the score average of the female students has been found higher than the average of the male students. there was no significant difference in terms of gender in communication skills and their other sub-dimensions as well as social anxiety and its sub-dimensions. table-3. social anxiety and its sub-dimensions, t-test results of communication skills and their sub-dimensions according to whether or not students are doing sports variables doing sports n x sd t p social avoidance sports 166 2,3504 ,88199 ,808 ,420 non-sports 216 2,2824 ,76010 anxiety of evaluation sports 166 2,7843 ,84142 1,748 ,081 non-sports 216 2,6407 ,75944 sense of worthlessness sports 166 2,2831 ,84209 1,235 ,218 non-sports 216 2,1863 ,68931 total social anxiety sports 166 2,4771 ,78843 1,352 ,177 non-sports 216 2,3762 ,66771 basic communication skills sports 166 3,7072 ,86561 -1,978 ,049 non-sports 216 3,8704 ,74425 self-expression skill sports 166 3,6928 ,93040 -1,554 ,121 non-sports 216 3,8287 ,77733 effective listening and non verbal communication skills sports 166 3,6305 ,87079 -1,917 ,056 non-sports 216 3,7886 ,73895 willingness to establish communication skill sports 166 3,5759 ,89410 -,411 ,681 non-sports 216 3,6111 ,77584 total communication skill sports 166 3,6602 ,77561 -1,791 ,074 non-sports 216 3,7922 ,66250 source: calculated from primary data level of significance at p<0.05 as seen in table 3, in social anxiety and its sub-dimensions, communication skills and their sub-dimensions there was no statistically significant difference between the scores of the students who did sports and those who did not.      table-4. t-test results of students' social anxiety and subscales, communication skills and subscales according to kind of sports variables kind of sport n x sd t p social avoidance individual sports 76 2,3289 ,78409 -,287 ,774 team sports 90 2,3685 ,96092 anxiety of evaluation individual sports 76 2,7500 ,71657 -,482 ,630 team sports 90 2,8133 ,93703 sense of worthlessness individual sports 76 2,2072 ,84226 1,068 ,287 team sports 90 2,3472 ,84130 total social anxiety individual sports 76 2,4368 ,69690 -,604 ,547 team sports 90 2,5111 ,86060 basic communication skills individual sports 76 3,7053 ,86223 -,027 ,979 team sports 90 3,7089 ,87328 self-expression skill individual sports 76 3,6711 ,91671 -,276 ,783 team sports 90 3,7111 ,94654 effective listening and non verbal communication skills individual sports 76 3,5789 ,90245 -,700 ,485 team sports 90 3,6741 ,84575 willingness to establish communication skill individual sports 76 3,6105 ,85285 ,457 ,648 team sports 90 3,5467 ,93126 total communication skill individual sports 76 3,6505 ,74714 -,148 ,883 team sports 90 3,6684 ,80294 source: calculated from primary data level of significance at p<0.05 when the table 4 is examined, there was no significant difference found between students' social anxiety and its sub-scale scores and communication skills and their sub-scale scores according to the sport they do.                                      table-5. correlation analysis results between social anxiety level and its sub dimensions communication skills and their sub-dimensions variables basic communication skills self-expression skill effective listening and non verbal communication skills willingness to establish communication skill total communication skill social avoidance r -,156** -,298** -,114* -,126* -,186** p ,000 ,000 ,026 ,014 ,000 anxiety of evaluation r -,066 -,192** -,020 ,018 -,067 p ,196 ,000 ,703 ,726 ,190 sense of worthlessness r -,151** -,277** -,105* -,049 -,160** p ,003 ,000 ,040 ,340 ,002 total social anxiety r -,137** -,283** -,088 -,064 -,153** p ,007 ,000 ,086 ,213 ,003 source: calculated from primary data ** level of significance at p<0.01 * level of significance at p<0.05 when the table 5 is examined, in the social avoidance sub-dimension, there is a strong and meaningful relationship between scores of all sub-dimensions of total communication skills and communication skills in the negative direction. in the evaluation anxiety sub-dimension, there is a strong and meaningful relationship in the negative direction between self-expression skill sub-scale scores. there is a significant negative relationship among the scores of the sub-dimension of sense of worthlessness basic communication skills, self expression effective listening and nonverbal communication skills and total communication skills there is a strong and meaningful relationship in the negative direction between the individuals' total social anxiety score and total communication skills score. table-6. correlation analysis results between level of social anxiety and sub dimensions variables anxiety of evaluation sense of worthlessness total social anxiety social avoidance r ,754** ,752** ,939** p ,000 ,000 ,000 anxiety of evaluation r ,696** ,903** p ,000 ,000 sense of worthlessness r ,875** p ,000 source: calculated from primary data ** level of significance at p<0.01 a significant and positive relationship was found between social anxiety level score and sub-scale scores in the social anxiety scale total point averages. there was a significant positive relationship between the social avoidance sub-scale and the sub-scale of evaluation anxiety and sense of worthlessness. there was a significant positive correlation between the evaluation anxiety sub-scale and the sense of worthlessness sub-scale. table-7. correlation analysis results showing relationship between communication skills and their sub dimensions variables self-expression skill effective listening and non verbal communication skills willingness to establish communication skill total communication skill basic communication skills r ,654** ,758** ,695** ,937** p ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 self-expression skill r ,640** ,660** ,807** p ,000 ,000 ,000 effective listening and non verbal communication skills r ,611** ,871** p ,000 ,000 willingness to establish communication skill r ,833** p ,000 source: calculated from primary data ** level of significance at p<0.01 there was a significant positive correlation between communication skill scale total score average and communication skill sub-scales. there was a significant positive correlation between scores of communication skill sub-scales. table-8. one-way analysis of variance (anova) results of social anxiety level and communication skill sub-dimensions according to the schools that the students study variables n x sd f p social avoidance regular high school 28 2,5417 ,64290 ,811 ,488 sports high school 86 2,2810 ,93760 anatolian high school 158 2,2943 ,78251 private high school 110 2,3030 ,79777 anxiety of evaluation regular high school 28 2,7571 ,69358 ,487 ,691 sports high school 86 2,6302 ,96248 anatolian high school 158 2,7494 ,71148 private high school 110 2,6800 ,80489 sense of worthlessness regular high school 28 2,4643 ,79412 1,953 ,121 sports high school 86 2,0959 ,85785 anatolian high school 158 2,2231 ,63774 private high school 110 2,2795 ,81975 total social anxiety regular high school 28 2,5929 ,61906 ,821 ,483 sports high school 86 2,3481 ,84995 anatolian high school 158 2,4270 ,64577 private high school 110 2,4224 ,74724 basic communication skills regular high school 28 3,7714 ,90220 1,415 ,238 sports high school 86 3,6721 ,98011 anatolian high school 158 3,8886 ,63245 private high school 110 3,7782 ,83539 self-expression skill regular high school 28 3,5536 ,66791 2,405 ,067 sports high school 86 3,6512 1,03914 anatolian high school 158 3,8956 ,68956 private high school 110 3,7364 ,91298 effective listening and non verbal communication skills regular high school 28 3,5833 ,66589 2,331 ,074 sports high school 86 3,6008 ,94498 anatolian high school 158 3,8439 ,73693 private high school 110 3,6697 ,78563 willingness to establish communication skill regular high school 28 3,4857 ,57459 ,182 ,909 sports high school 86 3,6140 ,88745 anatolian high school 158 3,6000 ,76082 private high school 110 3,6036 ,93022 total communication skill regular high school 28 3,6343 ,65063 1,503 ,213 sports high school 86 3,6400 ,87101 anatolian high school 158 3,8213 ,56730 private high school 110 3,7105 ,78117 source: calculated from primary data level of significance at p<0.05 when table 8 is examined, no significant difference has been found between social anxiety and its sub-dimensions and communication skill and its sub-scale scores according to the schools where the students study. table-9. one way analysis of variance (anova) results of the social anxiety level and communication skill sub-dimensions according to father's educational status of students variables n x sd f p social avoidance 1. primary school, 96 2,4167 ,91814 5,133 ,002** 1-4 2-4 2. secondary school 112 2,4539 ,83107 3. high school 112 2,2560 ,75102 4. university 62 1,9946 ,62395 anxiety of evaluation 1. primary school, 96 2,9104 ,95966 5,347 ,001** 1-3 1-4 2. secondary school 112 2,7875 ,73963 3. high school 112 2,5286 ,71904 4. university 62 2,5452 ,66866 sense of worthlessness 1. primary school, 96 2,2396 ,83107 1,762 ,154 2. secondary school 112 2,3415 ,71088 3. high school 112 2,1094 ,69832 4. university 62 2,2218 ,82153 total social anxiety 1. primary school, 96 2,5340 ,84953 4,032 ,008** 2-4 2. secondary school 112 2,5351 ,69583 3. high school 112 2,3077 ,65317 4. university 62 2,2387 ,62113 basic communication skills 1. primary school, 96 3,8271 ,77044 1,130 ,337 2. secondary school 112 3,8964 ,77714 3. high school 112 3,7179 ,88940 4. university 62 3,7290 ,72211 self-expression skill 1. primary school, 96 3,8646 ,79299 3,091 ,027* 3-4 2. secondary school 112 3,7768 ,79650 3. high school 112 3,5848 ,99806 4. university 62 3,9435 ,66748 effective listening and non verbal communication skills 1. primary school, 96 3,8229 ,74959 1,934 ,124 2. secondary school 112 3,7411 ,74731 3. high school 112 3,5744 ,90760 4. university 62 3,7849 ,75046 willingness to establish communication skill 1. primary school, 96 3,5833 ,78280 1,847 ,138 2. secondary school 112 3,6929 ,72232 3. high school 112 3,4571 ,97294 4. university 62 3,6903 ,77305 total communication skill 1. primary school, 96 3,7833 ,65492 1,640 ,180 2. secondary school 112 3,7993 ,66016 3. high school 112 3,6100 ,84279 4. university 62 3,7690 ,63743 source: calculated from primary data ** level of significance at p<0.01 * level of significance at p<0.05 when the table 9 is examined, according to the educational status of the students' fathers; there is a significant difference between the scores of the university graduates and the primary and secondary school graduates in the social avoidance subscale; in the evaluation anxiety sub-dimension, there is a significant difference between primary school graduates and high school and university graduates and in the social anxiety sub-dimension, there is a significant difference between the scores of secondary school graduates and university graduates. according to the educational status of the father, there is a significant difference between the scores of high school graduates and university graduates in the sub-dimension of self expression skill. there was no significant difference was found between the scores of communication skill and other sub-dimensions according to father's educational status. table-10. one way analysis of variance (anova) results of the social anxiety level and communication skill sub-dimensions according to mother's educational status of students variables n x sd f p social avoidance 1. primary school, 182 2,4130 ,83783 1,811 ,145 2. secondary school 92 2,2228 ,78797 3. high school 78 2,2286 ,82282 4. university 30 2,1889 ,68821 anxiety of evaluation 1. primary school, 182 2,8253 ,78812 2,910 ,034* 1-3 2. secondary school 92 2,6130 ,75582 3. high school 78 2,5462 ,81219 4. university 30 2,6467 ,87247 sense of worthlessness 1. primary school, 182 2,2088 ,69778 ,556 ,644 2. secondary school 92 2,1929 ,76258 3. high school 78 2,2564 ,82077 4. university 30 2,3833 ,94967 total social anxiety 1. primary school, 182 2,4960 ,71103 1,319 ,268 2. secondary school 92 2,3449 ,69624 3. high school 78 2,3419 ,76037 4. university 30 2,3933 ,76955 basic communication skills 1. primary school, 382 2,4201 ,72339 1,277 ,282 2. secondary school 182 3,7330 ,76470 3. high school 92 3,8783 ,86442 4. university 78 3,9000 ,80259 self-expression skill 1. primary school, 30 3,7000 ,81621 1,598 ,189 2. secondary school 182 3,7830 ,76546 3. high school 92 3,6250 ,98023 4. university 78 3,8333 ,86290 effective listening and non verbal communication skills 1. primary school, 30 3,9667 ,83494 ,714 ,544 2. secondary school 182 3,6722 ,83525 3. high school 92 3,7536 ,78114 4. university 78 3,7265 ,75544 willingness to establish communication skill 1. primary school, 30 3,8889 ,78214 ,789 ,500 2. secondary school 182 3,5604 ,73865 3. high school 92 3,6348 ,80799 4. university 78 3,6872 ,96462 total communication skill 1. primary school, 30 3,4533 1,01700 ,503 ,681 2. secondary school 182 3,6919 ,66297 3. high school 92 3,7591 ,75637 4. university 78 3,8051 ,76967 source: calculated from primary data * level of significance at p<0.05 looking at the table, there is a significant difference between the scores of primary school graduates and high school graduates in the sub-scale of evaluation anxiety of social distress. there is no significant difference between social anxiety level and communication skill scores according to mother's educational status. 4. discussion and conclusion the aim of this study is to examine the level of social anxiety and communication skills of the students studying in secondary school. in this study, no statistically significant difference was found between social anxiety and its sub-scales. in the researches conducted by temizel (2014); erkan (2002) and gümüş (2002) it was concluded that social anxiety did not change according to gender. from a literary perspective, it is seen that research findings about the gender that the social distress is seen more are not consistent with each other. while in some studies men's social anxiety levels are different, there is no statistically significant difference in some studies (leary and kowalski, 1995; montgomery, 1995). in terms of social anxiety, it is thought that the absence of any difference between the genders may be due to the following reasons: the students involved in the survey are the students who go to school in the same province, and in this context, having similar social activities, having similar social areas, living in the same cultural environment. in their study with (9th grade) students, warren et al. (1984) have stated that there is no statistical difference regarding gender. more researches are needed to clearly demonstrate the role of gender on social anxiety. this research is consistent with the findings obtained. in terms of the gender of the students, there was no significant difference between the average scores of total communication skills. significant difference was found only between male and female students in the effective listening sub-dimension. the score averages of female students have been found higher than that of men. when the literature is examined, there are findings supporting our research (erözkan, 2007). meaningful relationship was found in the negative direction between basic communication skills and social avoidance from communication skills and feeling of worthlessness and total social anxiety. this finding means that as the basic communication skills increase, the level of social avoidance, feeling of worthlessness and social anxiety decreases. findings are suitable for anticipation. it is consistent with the field of literature (gümüş, 2010; yıldırım et al., 2011). there is a meaningful relationship in the negative direction between expressing oneself, from communication skills scale sub-dimensions, and social avoidance, anxiety of evaluation, feeling of worthlessness and total social anxiety. this finding implies that as self-expression increases, social avoidance, evaluation anxiety, sense of worthlessness and social anxiety levels decrease. the finding is consistent with the literature (burger, 2006; gümüş, 2010). it is thought that those who express themselves comfortably are more likely to be individuals who have high self-esteem, find themselves self-worthy, and think that they will not be evaluated negatively. there is a significant relationship at the high level in the negative direction between active listening contact skills scale sub-dimension and non-verbal communication and social avoidance, sense of worthlessness. this finding means that as the effective listening and nonverbal communication increase, the level of social avoidance and sense of worthlessness decrease. as a consequence, it is in consistency with the field of the literature (baltacı, 2010; cakır, 2010). there is a significant relationship at the high level in the negative direction between communication skills scale sub-dimension willingness to communicate and social avoidance. this finding implies that as the willingness to communicate increases, the level of social avoidance decreases. increase in willingness to communicate, low levels of comfortable social avoidance in communication with other people are expected situations. as a consequence, as communication skills increase, social avoidance, evaluation anxiety, feeling of worthlessness and social anxiety levels are decreasing. a significant difference was found in terms of education levels of the parents in students' social anxiety level and its sub dimensions. it is seen that the level of social anxiety of the students increases as the educational level of the parents decreases. in the studies gümüş (1997) and erkan (2002) conducted, they found that social anxiety levels changed according to the educational status of the mother and the father; this finding is supporting our work. a significant difference was found in terms of education levels of the parents in the sub-dimension of the self-expression skill of the students' communication skill. in the communication skills and other sub-dimensions, there was no significant difference was found between the educational levels of the parents. there was no significant difference in social anxiety and communication skill scores in terms of whether or not participants did sports. also in the study of cağlayan (2015) there was no difference between the levels of social anxiety of those who do sports and those who do not, which is parallel to our study. however, the fact that in our study the students who did sports had higher scores than those who did not can be stated as a result of the effect of sports on socialization. references baltacı, ö., 2010. analysis of relationship between universty students' social anxiety, social support and problem solving approach. (unpublished master thesis). konya: selçuk university educational sciences institute. burger, j.m., 2006. personality. (i̇.d. erguvan sarıoğlu, transl.). i̇stanbul: cactus publications. cağlar, m., s. dinçyürek and n. arsan, 2012. examinataion of social anxtiety at university level students. hacettepe university, journal of education, 43(43): 106-116. view at google scholar  cağlayan, t.a., 2015. effects of sports on social anxiety and sobjective well – being levels of university students. (unpublished master thesis), konya: selçuk university, healt sciences institute. cakır, s., 2010. the effect of overcoming social anxiety program. which is based on the cognitive behaviorist approach, on high school students' level of social anxiety. 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urgüplü, s.k.f., 2006. the effect of communication skills on teachers communication skills. unpublished master thesis, ankara: hacettepe university, social sciences institute. warren, r., g. good and e. velten, 1984. measurement of social evaluative anxiety in junior high school students. adolescence, 19(75): 643-648. view at google scholar  yıldırım, t., y. cırak and n. konan, 2011. social anxiety among candidate teachers. journal of the faculty of education, 12(1): 85–100. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 257 265 image1.png image2.png image3.png image4.png image5.png image6.png 201 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 3, 201-209, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.201.209 school administrators who serve in different institutions ethical dilemmas and their attitudes towards these dilemmas saffet karayama1 1ministry of national education, school director, 34000, i̇stanbul/turkey abstract the aim of the study was to determine what ethical dilemmas are faced by school administrators working in different institutions, what they are doing to solve the dilemmas / according to the motives. the research is a patterned qualitative case study and multiple case design is used. 50 school administrators participated by easy-to-reach state sampling method participated. the data were collected by standardized open-ended interview technique and examined by categorical content analysis method. according to the study, all school administrators have the highest ethical dilemma related to "student affairs", "school external affairs", "personnel affairs", "monetary business of the school" and "school and student-parent associations" were experienced. it has been found on all school type, to be solved these dilemmas by "taking risks for the benefit of the school / student", "listening to the voice of the conscience", "doing what the law says it" or "seeking ways to compromise". these results are discussed in the light of literature and suggestions are presented. keywords: ethics, ethical decision, ethical behavior, ethical attitude, school administrators. citation | saffet karayama (2018). school administrators who serve in different institutions ethical dilemmas and their attitudes towards these dilemmas. asian journal of education and training, 4(3): 201-209. history: received: 11 april 2018 revised: 1 june 2018 accepted: 5 june 2018 published: 8 june 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 202 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 203 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 205 4. discussions, conclusion and suggestions ................................................................................................................................. 207 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 209 bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 209 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.43.201.209&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5624-4678 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5624-4678 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5624-4678 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 201-209 202 1. introduction management is a phenomenon that begins with the existence of mankind. the oldest of the arts is called the newest of the sciences. if there are people, there is management and organization. within the historical development process of human civilizations, the importance of management has increased, and scientific research has become a subject that is being researched more and more every day. nowadays, management is handled separately in each specialty and profession; such as health institutions management, education management, and marketing management. these areas have a separate emphasis on the management of the educational entity that designs the future of communities. decision making is the essence of management work. koçel (2013) adds that "the most basic element of management is the decision making," he adds. in fact, it can be said that '' life is itself made up of decisions.'' management is getting more and more important when it comes to higher levels. supervisors are more likely to make decisions under strategic and unscheduled and uncertain conditions (koçel, 2013). between executives and decision-makers, over 350 international business executives, the most important features of high-performance organizations in their research on the effectiveness of organizations have been to pass on the quality, speed and decisions they make (turkey metal industrialists' union, 2007). there are many factors that influence the decision-making process. all the information and data that need to be taken are relevant to the past, even though every decision is related to that moment or the future. the importance of such information and data used in decision-making, as well as the manner in which they are presented is of utmost importance. einstein emphasizes the importance of this issue by saying that '' the expression of a problem, that is, its formulation is much more important than its solution ''. this presentation style can be expressed as '' manipulation '' or '' framing effect '' (koçel, 2013). again, ethical decision-making, the lifestyles, beliefs, moral systems and traditions of societies come to the forefront. for example; the motives and reasoning styles that an american business manager and a japanese business manager consider when deciding are different. there are a lot of research on this (koçel, 2013). in short, ethical concerns come to the forefront when the manager decides. due to its position as school manager, s/he is in contact with many sections of the society. these different sections have different expectations and wishes from the school administration. parents; in the selection of teachers. political groups, on the registration of students who are most outside the registration area. public union; in terms of membership, religious groups; making demonstrations in school, hanging posters, registering students in their dormitories with the school and participating in the meetings (urun and gökçe, 2015). these expectations and requests constantly bring school administrators with ethical problems. in such cases, school administrators are expected to behave in accordance with the laws and policies as well as professional ethical principles when they fulfill their duties (taymaz, 2003). requests from various authorities have to pass a filter between their ethical beliefs and their anxiety about what they would do if they did not. we can also express the ethical decision-making process of school administrators with the 'decision process model we have developed figure 1. figure-1. school manager ethical decision process model source: this figure is provided by researcher. school administrators have responsibilities for both the students, the foremen, the superiors, and for the social environment as a result of their work. because decisions they make directly or indirectly affect all of them. when school administrators decide on any issue, they should evaluate all these responsibilities and make decisions as balanced as possible. school administrators may have some ambivalence or dilemma about which behavior is ethical when trying to make a decision based on all these balances. "every decision in the administration is a restructuring of human life. therefore, the solution of ethical dilemmas will take place in the heart of the administration"(erdoğan, 2012). in short, ethical dilemma; when there is ambiguity about which option is better between two or more options, the alternatives for solution do not suffice (akfert, 2012). school administrators need to learn and internalize ethical decision-making strategies in order to cope with ethical dilemmas. basically, these managers need to be sensitive, accountable and questioning in order to have ethical awareness. from here, school administrators need to be aware of developments in the scientific literature, to have a conscience that integrates personal morality and professional morality, and constantly question themselves as they know ethical standards and legal responsibilities of the profession very well. there was no coincidence in the literature as to which principals the ethical decision-making behavior of the school administrator should be examined. some researchers have been based on the criteria of the association of america's school administrators, while others have conducted research on some of the principles that have taken place in the summer. each society is different from the others by their traditions, customs, their way of life and their way of looking at events. this difference is also reflected in public administration styles. therefore, in turkey and in each country, a unique school management should be developed based on the country’s own ethical asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 201-209 203 principles. the school administrator is perhaps the most engaged public official. in this respect, instead of the ideal and more fictional approaches mentioned in theory, the schoolmaster must actually transfer the events that he lived in his school to his work. for this purpose, it is necessary to first determine the school administrators' duties. in our work, we tried to group the day-to-day affairs of the school administrators into the legal regulations of the ministry of national education (meb) in terms of the quality of the reality. inspection guides have also been examined to see what the ministry expects from the school administrator. the meb regulates the activities of school and institution types and the activities have been carried out accordingly. in these laws and regulations, it is clear who the school administrator is, the definition and what the duties are. the duties of the school administrator in the regulation of meb secondary education institutions published in the official gazette dated 07 september 2013 and numbered 28758; a) research and planning, b) organizing, c) guidance, d) monitoring, supervision and evaluation, d) communication and governance. again in the regulation of pre-school education and primary education institutions issued by the official gazette dated 26/07/2014 and numbered 29072, in terms of duty, authority and responsibility of the schoolmaster “the manager” have been defined as “s/he makes the duties to be done regarding the all kinds of education, administration, personnel, accrual, movable property, correspondence, education and social activities, boarding, scholarship, movable education, security, nutrition, care, protection, cleanness, order, guard duty, public relations and the like and also duties assigned by meb and the provincial/provincial directorates of national education” (meb.gov.tr.mevzuat bankası, 2017). in the guide book of the inspectors of meb supervisory board presidency, school management activities have been defined as: 1. research and planning, 2. organization, 3. student work, 4. boarding work, 5. human resources work and operations, 6. surveillance, monitoring and evaluation, 7. communication and governance, 8. it systems (ministry of national education, inspection board, 2017). as a result of all these examinations, the task scope of the schoolmaster can be determined as follows; 1. student affairs: a) admission acceptance class processes such as jumping, changing, graduation, clothing, course selection, help, health, permission, acceptance to class, nutrition, etc. b) the student's grade and academic achievement, relationships with school / class mates, and his/her compliance with class / school rules, discipline, sanction, guidance. 2. personnel work / human resources 3. school management (school family association and monetary transactions) 4. school parents relations 5. school outer environment relations: a) school local governments associations relations, b) education unions, c) ngos and religious structures-groups 6. correspondence, representation and office work. in the preliminary studies of data collection in our research it has also been seen that these groupings have been frequently expressed and samples have been given according to these categories. although there has been no study in turkey regarding the ethical dilemmas that the school administrators face and their attitudes towards these dilemmas, there are studies measuring the status of the principals in ethical decision making. out of these researches, küçükkaraduman (2006) it has been found that the behaviors of school principals are generally in conformity with the ethical principles. in a study (erdoğan, 2012) in which the attitudes of the principals have been evaluated according to the ethical principals have been evaluated both by teachers, principals and also the inspectors who audit the principals, the level of school principals 'compliance with ethical principles was found to be of the higher than the school principals' perceptions, but lower than the educational inspectors’ perceptions, however partially higher according to teachers’ perceptions. despite the importance of the ethical concept in school management profession, when we examine the studies in the school management in turkey, it has been seen that the studies regarding the ethical dilemmas and the structures of the ethical infringements are insufficient. therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the structure of ethical dilemmas faced by school administrators working in different school types, as well as to learn what they have been doing to solve these dilemmas and also what are the obstacles they face in solving these dilemmas. it has been thought that when these determinations have been done, it will create a unique data base to construct ethical standards in the field of school managers and contribute to the literature of the school administrator’s ethics. it is being thought that these findings will contribute as scientific information on the ethical behaviors of school principals in topics such as laws and regulations, regulations on institutional policies, and determination of in-service training needs, etc. additionally, it is being hoped that the research findings will create an awareness of ethical behavior in school principal’s management and draw attention to the ethical principles in school management. 2. method 2.1. research model in this study, multiple situation models were used in qualitative research designs. in this study; school managers working in different segments of the educational levels such as primary school, middle school and high school levels school have been considered as different analysis units. again, the status of the school making normal and bilateral education, the tertiary graduation level of the administrator, his/her experience time in the profession, his/her gender, marital status and age have been examined as other variables. 2.2. research group this study has been conducted with 50 school administrators who work at various school levels in istanbul’s european side, who do not mind giving information and contact addresses about participation. participants have been identified with an easily accessible status sampling. this method of sampling gives speed and practicality to the research (yıldırım and şimşek, 2006). according to this, while determining the school administrators who do not have any inconvenience in giving the communication addresses, their information of gender, age, institution asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 201-209 204 s/he has been working in, educational status and working years of the field have been taken into consideration. it has been reported that there are 5736 official and private educational institutions in istanbul according to the official website. all of these have been governed by the same legislation. 44% of the participants in the survey are in primary school, 36% are in junior high school and 20% are high school administrators. it has been found that 80% of the participants were male (n = 40), 20% were female (n = 10), their age average has been between 20-30 and the average of their working years has been between 1-4 years. in addition, 34% of the participants stated that their education status is graduate and 66% of them have bachelor's degrees. it has been seen that 80% (n = 40) of the schools in which the participants were working has dual education and 40% (n = 20) has normal that is all day education. types of schools in which the participants are working; age, gender, school level graduated, years of management, and the type of school studied (dual education / normal education) can be seen in table 1. table-1. demographic distributions of participants according to school types. primary secondary high school gender male 18 15 7 female 4 3 3 age 20-30 10 9 4 31-40 5 6 3 41-50 4 2 2 51 + 3 1 0 school graduated graduate 12 13 8 master of arts 7 6 4 management experience (years) 0-1 6 5 2 1-4 10 6 4 5-8 4 4 3 9 + 2 3 4 education type of the school dual 19 15 6 single 3 3 4 source: demographic distributions of participants according to school types in this article. the results obtained here are shown in table 1. 2.3. data collection tool the data for the study have been obtained by standardized open-ended interview technique. this interviewing approach involves asking the same type of questions carefully written and put into a certain order to be asked in a certain order and at the same style and order for each person interviewed (yıldırım and şimşek, 2006). while preparing the interview questions, literature was utilized. the scope validity of the interview questions has been realized by consulting the opinions of 5 school administrators’ still working in the field. in addition, the interview questions have been presented to a faculty member who is a management science teaching specialist and another faculty member specialist in research methodology in the institute of social sciences of the university of gelişim. the interview questions have been revised after the results of the preliminary study and the comments of the instructors. in the first part, demographic information regarding the gender, marital status, ages, education status, total working time in the area, school level, school learning style (dual-singles) have been asked to the participant. in the second part, the following questions have been included: 1. what kind of ethical dilemmas do you face when you are working on the field? 2. how do you deal with these ethical dilemmas and how do you decide? apart from the two basic questions of the survey, sub-questions have also been created depending on the responses of the participants during the interviews. for example, a participant who said that he / she had an ethical dilemma related to student enrollment had been asked "could you give an example of these dilemmas you experienced?" also. in the scope of external reliability of the research, the processes of data collecting, processing, analyzing, interpreting and reaching results have been explained clearly and in the scope of the internal reliability, the collected data has been presented directly using a descriptive approach without any comments. 2.4. collection of data the data in the study have been collected during the first semester of the academic year of 2017-2018. the interviews have been carried out by the researcher. the interviews have been realized face-to-face in environments where participants felt comfortable and each interview lasted around 30-40 minutes. during the interview, participants had been informed about the purpose of the study, and their permissions had been requested for the voice recording; they have been given promise about that the privacy will be emphasized and the information will be used for research purposes. there were participants who did not need voice recording and responded in writing. it is stated that personal information will only be used for follow-up. 2.5. analysis of data in the analysis of the data obtained from the school administrators, categorical content analysis has been used out of the content analysis types, and the data has been analyzed in four stages. 2.5.1. encoding the data in the analysis of the data in the research, the voice recordings of the participants had been written by the researcher and a 62-page word document had emerged. later all the data obtained from the participants have been examined and divided into meaningful parts and these parts forming meaningful totals in themselves have been coded by giving names. after all the data has been encoded this way, a "code list" has been created. in the determination of codes and categories, besides the related literature, the concepts emerged in the findings have also been influential. first, the data of 10 administrators selected out of 50 participants had been evaluated by two specialist lecturers besides the researcher; and the consistency of the two data processors has been examined. for reliability, the formula of reliability=opinion alliance/opinion alliance+opinion separation x 100 has been asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 201-209 205 applied on the coding made by both experts (saban, 2008). as a result of the calculation, the consistency has been found to be 95%. because the reliability over 70% or more has been found sufficient, the consistency of data analysis has been provided. later, the transformation of the data into the thematic has been carried out by the researcher and the expert lecturer discussing until a common opinion has been reached. 2.5.2. finding themes at this stage, the codes determined in the coding process of the data collection has been put into certain categories and the themes have been created. for example, in case of the registration of a student from outside of the school registration area, the dilemmas experienced by the school administrators have been taken into the scope of student registration and transfer work which is the sub contact of the main subject of student work and the common directions between the codes have been tried to be found. in the determination of codes and categories, concepts emerging from findings have also been influential as well as the literature. 2.6. organizing the data according to codes and themes at this stage, participants' opinions have been explained to the reader. footnotes have been used to determine the participants, and the interview notes have been given in quotation marks. then, the participant has been indicated in parentheses. findings have been written in the order of the school types of the participants. the same order has been used in the quotations also. additionally, there are not any comments that may reveal the participants' information while the school administrators are quoted from the interview notes because of their limited and limited number. 2.7. interpretation of findings the collected data were interpreted through the steps required by qualitative research and the results were extracted. these results are supported by the literature and explanations about the importance of the results are given in the discussion section of the study. 3. results 3.1. ethical dilemmas faced by school administrators when analyzing the answers given by the school administrators to the question of "what kind of ethical dilemmas do you encounter when working in the field?", the ethical rules valid for the civil servants working in turkey (sen, 2017) and the regulations related to the task scope of the school administrators stated by the laws and the law defined the regulations regarding school administrators task areas (meb.gov.tr, tkb.meb.gov.tr), (meb.gov.tr, the legislation bank) have been taken into consideration. as a result of the content analysis, the ethical dilemmas experienced by the school administrators have been analyzed into 6 themes (student affairs, personnel affairs, school business / school monetary affairs, school parent relations, school external relations / local administrations, politicians, unions and office work, correspondence, and representation work). the dilemmas faced by the school administrators have been presented in table 2 according to the school type. table-2. distribution of ethical dilemma themes of school managers according to school types. ethical dilemma areas primary secondary high school f % f % f % 1.main theme/ student affairs 5 %10 4 8 4 %8 -student enrollment, transfer, class determination 4 %8 3 %6 1 %2 -student marks, discipline, guidance 1 %2 1 %2 3 %6 2.main theme /personnel affairs 0 0 2 %4 3 %6 3.main theme / school management 4 %8 4 %8 2 %4 4. main theme / school parents relations 4 %8 2 %4 0 0 5.main theme /school outer environment relations 5 %10 4 %8 5 %10 -unions 3 %6 2 %4 3 %6 -religious groups 0 0 2 %4 1 %2 -local managements and politicians 2 %4 2 %4 2 %4 6.main theme /office works, representation, correspondence 1 %2 0 0 1 %2 source: in this study, multiple situation models were used in qualitative research designs. the results obtained here are shown in table 2. it has been found that the themes related to student work, school external environment associations and school management are common dilemmas in all types of institutions. apart from this, least the dilemma experiencing areas have been reported as office work, representation and correspondence. these have been described below in the main headings. 3.1.1. student affairs in this study, the theme of student affairs consists of the main purpose of the school is the education of the student. student’s enrollment, transfer, class, teacher, health, leave, health report, discipline, note, extracurricular studies, friendship relations etc. cover all situations. the structure of the school administrators' ethical dilemmas according to the student affairs has been regarded considering the types of schools they work. it has been found that ethical dilemmas experienced by school administrators with student records rank first for high school for school administrators working in elementary and secondary school types. in the sub-dimensions; student enrollment procedures were found to be the first ethic conflict area in primary schools, whereas in middle schools and high schools students discipline and note dimension were the most encountered ethical conflict areas (table 2). some participants gave the following answers regarding the dilemmas related to the issues of enrollment, transfer, classroom identification, classroom change of the students in the subjects: asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 201-209 206 "we have to take students from outside the registry. the system does not allow it anyway.'' but he finds a vacant apartment on the spot where he finds his name on paper and i come here to sit. i am experiencing internal unrest, internal conflicts about what to do in this situation."(k22) "a parent wanted to give the name of a teacher and give his child to that class at the beginning of the year. teacher selection requests like this are very common.”(k37) regarding the ethical dilemmas of the student's grade and academic achievement, their relationship with other friends, and their adaptation to class/school rules, discipline, sanctions etc. some participants expressed the following: "the student who received a lower grade in the physical education course said that the other grades were higher and he wanted the grade to be raised. he said your child dropped the grade average. indeed, his other grades were high."(k36) ''a student who went to high school last grade had a problem with his mathematics teacher and was referred to the discipline board. the board decided to sanction. however, because the child was in the last grade and the university preparatory stage, the family was found to be insistent. ethical conflict in the implementation of this decision.'' (k8) 3.1.2. personnel affairs in this work, the theme includes teachers working in the school, assistant personnel and security, job sharing of all employees such as civil servants, personal affairs. this theme has been observed to be reported in middle school administrators at most, and it has been the least experienced ethical dilemma in high school administrators, but it has never been reported in primary school administrators. some participants said: "a successful teacher wanted us to clear his classes on fridays. we could not refuse this request because our teacher was very self-sacrificing. but we also knew that if the other teachers had similar demands, the curriculum would not sit down."(k19) ''our teacher, who objected to every subject, objected to constant patrols. i created the seafaring preparation commission and gave this friend the task of commissioning the seizure preparation commission. but he objected. the board decided to give it by decision. he stated that other teachers should also be asked. i gave it to him because he objected to everything.''(k2) 3.1.3. school parents relations in this study, the meaning of the school parent relationship is the request of the school administrators from parents, and the requests of the parents from the school. the area of parental involvement has been found to be the area of ethical dilemma that most elementary school administrators faced and less faced by middle school administrators. there has been no sample in this area in high schools. a few of these dilemmas have been presented below. "we had a parent who said that the psychology of the teacher's child was broken. he was constantly coming and complaining about your teaching. the teacher changed the classroom layout, did not give equal rights to students, did not pay much attention, and so on. we've been reviewing the situation over and over again and saying that nothing like that happened. however, the parents were constantly busy. we were experiencing internal unrest every day listening to this child and listening."(k5) ''our region, such as municipal wardrobe, stationery and so on. it distributes constant aid and this is being abused. the welfare is forming the confluence on the doors of the school administrators. the municipality is asked to identify poor people. some parents and i have made it a habit, and they come to the room for continuous help. i cannot go out anymore."(k27) 3.1.4. school management/economic needs of the school and school parents association in this study, the concept of economic needs of school and the school-parents association involves economic needs of school assistant personnel, servants, security needs, cleaning materials, repair maintenance, stationery and all kinds of building physical needs. this group of ethical dilemmas, defined as school administration in the field of literacy, has been found to be encountered in all kinds of schools. it is the highest group of dilemmas that elementary and secondary school administrators’ face. in the high school administrators, it is in the 5th rank. a participant related to this said: “in his mind all the needs of the school are met by the state and it is called free. however, there are not even 1 staff that the government gives in a school where 10 servants work.''(k40) 3.1.5. school external environment relations this ethical dilemma, defined as the external stakeholders of the school, not related to direct service exchange with schools, but to the communities in the same society, local governments, non-governmental organizations, local politicians and religious groups, has been found to be ranking 1st in all school types. subheadings were created according to the most intense encountered situations. relations with unions, local administrators and politicians came first in all school types. a participant associated with it expressed the dilemma that they experienced: ''the municipality is distributing constant aid such as clothes, stationery, and this is being abused. since the municipality has done this work on us, we are asked to identify the poor. some parents and i have made it a habit. we cannot determine the economic situation of the lord. but we have to do it in a way.''(k29) ''since my school is anatolian high school students will automatically come with exam scores. we do not have a chance to intervene. despite this, he is looking for a deputy mayor and he sends us to him.''(k31) ''the reeve of the neighborhood came to me to receive a child outside the registry. we have been told many times that this man and wife could not have done this before. we also talked about it. but the headman complained about us as soon as we became a governor."(k9). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 201-209 207 3.1.6. office work, correspondence, representation work this theme refers to jobs represented by school administrators such as correspondence with superiors and other institutions, information processing integration and coding processes, participation in meeting interviews representing the office of the director, reception, visitation and visit. this theme has been seen as the least encountered theme of ethical dilemmas for all school types. some examples have been given at primary and middle school levels and no examples have been given in high school managers. these two examples presented are as follows. "as school administrators, we are invited to at least one meeting every week. most of them are unnecessary meetings. both the manager and assistant manager are being called. we attended a recent meeting. the attendant was unable to open the computer program, it was already late. finally, you said you would open it and go."(k50) ''we have to make interviews with parents who watch for hours. some parents think that this is the manager solving. i do not think managers should be put forward to make any decisions on every issue. it is both unnecessary waste of time and misunderstanding when sending to the assistant manager or the concerned person.”(k11). 3.1.7. the attitudes and behaviors of the ethical dilemmas faced by the school administrators question of "how do you deal with these ethical dilemmas and how do you decide?" to be examined, the school administrators reported their opinions in 9 themes. the school administrators said that "by putting themselves at risk for the benefit of the school or the student", "listening to the voice of their conscience", "doing what the law says", "flexing the rules to solve the problem", "seeking compromise" or "they have tried to solve the dilemmas by leaving it to time". the attitudes and behaviors of the school administrators regarding the dilemmas they faced have been presented in table 3 according to the institution type they have been working in. table-3. distribution of school administrators’ attitudes and behaviors towards ethical dilemmas according to school types. school administrator’s attitude and behavior in case of the ethical dilemma primary secondary high school f % f % f % i take the risk for the benefit of the school/student. 6 %12 4 %8 2 %4 i listen to my conscience. 4 %8 4 %8 2 %4 i do what the law says. 2 %4 2 %4 4 %8 i solve the problem by flexing the rules. 2 %4 1 %2 1 %2 i try to find a way to compromise. 4 %8 2 %4 1 %2 i try to solve the case before it piles up. 0 0 1 %2 0 0 i seem to be doing but don’t do it. 2 %4 1 %2 1 %2 i transfer it to my superiors. 0 0 1 %2 1 %2 i leave the case as it is, i wait until it resolves itself. 1 %2 1 %2 0 0 source: in this study, multiple situation models were used in qualitative research designs. the results obtained here are shown in table 3. as seen in table 3, elementary and secondary school administrators have been trying to produce a solution when they see ethical dilemmas, by taking the risk for school / student benefit, listening to the voice of conscience and trying to compromise. in all three school types, the least mentioned attitudes have been referred as ''transferring to the superiors'', “trying to solve the case before it piles up” and ''leaving the case as it is'' respectively. some participants expressed the following opinions in relation to this situation: "i act in a way that will benefit my student when i meet ethical dilemmas. because our aim is to provide education for the child, we will evaluate it in this direction."(k20) "sometimes we encounter such things that the rule creates victimization. in such situations, i decide how my conscience is comfortable."(k6) ''sometimes such projects are being implemented so that they do not get in on their usefulness or functioning. but you need practice. you cannot appeal because the county office believes that it seems to be more successful in this regard than the top authorities. for example, '' orphan sister project"(k16) ''i seem to have to do it. if you do not, the county manager will be able to reduce your rating on your supervisor and interviews, performances, etc. so if you want to continue your mission you will do.”(k30) however, the high school administrators, have stated that they found solutions to ethical conflicts by doing what the law says, listening to the voice of their conscience and taking risks for the benefit of the school / student. a high school manager said: "in this case, i prefer not to go into the details of the law. i am reviewing the legislation again. i look at how they found solutions to similar issues."(k44) 4. discussions, conclusion and suggestions the findings of the research have been mentioned above and these findings have been interpreted and suggested as in the following. it has been stated that the interpretation of the collected data and making inferences out of it have been very important. the most important and most useful part of the research has been the final step where the researcher has interpreted the data he collected by using the cause and result relations (yıldırım and şimşek, 2006). the interpretation of findings about the types of ethical dilemmas faced by school administrators; in the study, it has been seen that the school administrators working in different institutions mostly have dilemmas with the student affairs and the relations of the school with the external environment. when it is thought that the main element of the school is the student, it is natural that the student affairs have been the area where the school administrator works the most. it can also be said that on the basis of the relations with the external environment of the school there is also the case related to the student. there have been supportive studies in the literature about this (urun and gökçe, 2015). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 201-209 208 another area of ethical dilemma frequently encountered has been the area of parent’s involvement. it can be said that the reason for this theme to come to the forefront has been that the student's education has been the main purpose of the school. the student has been the most valuable asset of the parent, and this situation requires a strong relationship between the school and the parent. in this connection, it has been understood out of the participants’ views that the level of education and the socio-cultural structure of the parents have also been determinative factors. many participants have emphasized this with the expressions such as 'ignorance of the parents' and 'parents having difficulty in understanding'. this subject varies according to the socio-economic structure of the school. again, it can be said that the reason for this theme to be mentioned more frequently by primary school administrators than the other school types administrators has been that the age group in which the first meeting with the school becomes in the primary school and therefore it requires more attention. the narrations about the relationships with the external environment of the school show that the unions, local politicians, local governments and religious groups can easily intervene in the functioning of schools. the reasons for the more intensive expression of relations with religious groups have been in secondary and high schools can be regarded as the age group of the students and the start of the school branching. requests for making activities at school from groups such as religious associations and foundation, requiring students to the meetings such as political meeting rallies for crowded attendance have been stated by the participants. a statement of the istanbul provincial mufti which has been reflected in the media also, supports this issue in a sense by emphasizing the uncontrollability of religious groups (hurriyet newspaper, 2018). the reason for the primary school administrators have not provided a sample of relations with the religious groups could be that the primary school age group has not been in the scope of any religious organization nor the activity. in other words, it can be said that primary schools have not been regarded as potential for religious groups. however, while the religious group theme has been low in primary schools, the unions theme has been found high. it has been reported that the education union administrators communicate in terms of recruiting members, assigning school administrators, board commissions, class assignments, interfering with teacher supervisor relations. similar studies have also been found supporting this conclusion (urun and gökçe, 2015). while the school management issue ranks high in primary and secondary schools, it ranks 5th in high schools; the reason for this could be that the high schools get some subsidy. it has been thought that the reason for the school parent’s association and the meeting of the school’s economic needs issues to be ranking high in primary and secondary schools could be that these schools have not got subventions and they have to meet their financial expenditures for the cleaning and servant needs using the donations from parents. the interpretation of findings on attitudes and ethical dilemmas faced by school administrators; in the case of the ethical dilemma encountered, the indication of all school administrators about taking risks for the school / student benefit can be regarded as a consequence of the responsibilities of education administrators about the future of the student and the administration of the school. it is stated that the first ranking ethical attitude of the school principals should be the benefit of the student in every decision (erdoğan, 2012). the intensive expression of the "i listen to the voice of my conscience" can be attributed to the fact that the conscience has been the basis of the ethical concept (cerit, 2010). one of the important findings of the study has been that the theme of "i do what the law says" has been more frequently expressed in high schools than other school types. the reasons for this theme came first in high schools could be that the decisions made by the high school administrator has more influence and the compensations have been difficult. because the student has become an adult and is in an important period of transformation in his life. it is the period during which the university exam and professions have been selected. the decision given by the school administrator can also be questioned in the field of law. in this case, school administrators may not want to take such a risk. the fact that the school directorate has not been affiliated with a cadre and that the assignment has been mandatory (meb school director appointment directive), the duration of the assignment is limited and it works according to the interviewing system, it affects the daily decisions of the principals about their work. it can be said that this status weakens the power of school administrators to stand ethically against external authority interventions. as mentioned above, the method of appointing the school administrator can be regarded as causing the school administrators to worry. the second important finding for demographic variables has been the fact that there have been too many ethical problems in the field of parental involvement in dual education schools. the reasons for this have been that the school needs to deal with more parents, and bilateral education is overly complained by the parents to the channels such as 147, bimer, cimer, and school administrators have been seen as interlocutors. another point is that most of the school principals have been giving decisions about ethical principles with scrutiny, however hesitant to apply ethical filters for the requirements from external authorities and superiors. it can be regarded as the school administrator has been anxious about his / her future. at the same time, these results also draw attention to the interventions of external authorities to be directed to school administrators, the process of appointing and retaining school administrators, the worry that the interview method has been caused, and the problem of not being paid to schools. when questioning whether the school administrator's decision has been ethical, it should not be ignored that the school administrator has been in such a difficult situation. in future work, it may be advisable to focus on the reasons that push school administrators out of ethics. it is understood from the examples of the participants that the district national education directors may form the demand sources which cause ethical dilemmas. appointments to these positions requires to be done with important and objective criteria, with announcements and exams that will provide equal opportunity. currently, meb does not include a test in its own internal regulation (meb.gov.tr, legislation bank, regulation of promotion and change of title) whereas the government personnel headquarters foresees a test. for example; a teacher or a vice school principal who has not got administrator experience can be appointed as the district national education directorate. this can be seen from the career process in the curriculum vitae pages of county directorates, although it has not been deemed appropriate by the researcher to show the name of any district national education curriculum as a source of the study. it can be stated that this prevents the district national education directors from resisting some unethical demands. it has been understood from the participant's opinion that various pressure asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(3): 201-209 209 groups have been the vehicles for some requests. it must be remembered that the development of societies can only be possible through education (petrov, 1925). in order to resolve ethical dilemmas faced by school administrators in turkey; it is necessary that the “school management” should not be regarded as the second duty, to eliminate the anxieties of the school administrators about the future of their positions and transfer their cadres from the education and training service class to the management services class. in this way school administrators' ethical decision-making power can be increased. because increasing ethical sensitivities of school administrators through in-service trainings does not make sense by itself, the ethical standards and legal legislations (such as unions, religious groups, politicians) must be established and existing laws must be applied resolutely for the external stakeholder groups, references akfert, s.k., 2012. ethical dilemmas experienced by school administrators working in different institutions and their attitudes towards these dilemmas. journal of educational sciences in theory and practice, 12(3): 1791-1812. cerit, b., 2010. an examination of the relationship between nurses' professional behavior and the level of ethical decision-making. doctoral dissertation. institute of health sciences, hacettepe university, ankara, turkey. erdoğan, ç., 2012. the behavior of primary school principals is in compliance with the ethical principles. master education journal,, 20(2): 503-518. hurriyet newspaper, 2018. extraordinary exit from the istanbul mufti. hürriyet. retrieved from www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/24510354 [accessed 11.01.2018]. koçel, t., 2013. business administration. istanbul: beta printing. küçükkaraduman, e., 2006. investigation of ethical behaviors of elementary school principals. master dissertation. institute of educational sciences, gazi university, ankara, turkey. petrov, g., 1925. in the country of white lilies. (e. osmanov, translated). istanbul: corridor publishing. saban, a., 2008. metaphors about school. journal of educational administration: theory and practice, pegem academy, 14(3): 459-496. sen, m.l., 2017. the ethics guidance of staff officers. ankara: prime ministry public servants ethics committee. taymaz, h., 2003. school management. 7th edn., ankara: pegema publishing. turkey metal industrialists' union, 2007. making the right decision (a. kardam, translated). istanbul: harward business review. urun, z. and a.t. gökçe, 2015. turkish teachers' tactics of beginning with the demands of print groups. journal of teacher education and educators, 4(1): 102-125. view at google scholar yıldırım, a. and h. şimşek, 2006. qualitative research methods in the social sciences. ankara: seçkin publishing. bibliography jones, g.r., 2004. organizational theory, design, and change: text and cases. 4th edn., new jersey: pearson prentice hall. meb, 2018. high school and balanced schools inspection and supervision guide. retrieved from http://tkb.meb.gov.tr/www/yayinlarımız/icerik/13. meb, 2018. preschool and primary education institutions regulation. retrieved from http://mevzuat.meb.gov.tr/html/ilkveokuloncyon_0/ilkveokuloncyon_0.html. 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[accessed 16.01.2018] asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/24510354 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=turkish%20teachers'%20tactics%20of%20beginning%20with%20the%20demands%20of%20print%20groups http://tkb.meb.gov.tr/www/yayinlarımız/icerik/13 http://mevzuat.meb.gov.tr/html/ilkveokuloncyon_0/ilkveokuloncyon_0.html https://ogm.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2016_11/03111224_ooky.pdf 381 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 381-385, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.381.385 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effects of different types of strength training for recreational purposes on the body composition and strength development of university students serhat özbay faculty of sport science, erzurum technical university, erzurum, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of crossfit and resistance training on maximal strength, isometric strength and strength continuity in recreational student athletes. 28 healthy male volunteer students who were doing sport for recreational purposes participated in the study. after the participants were randomly divided into two groups, strength tests were performed and body composition measurements were taken before and after the 16-week training period. bench press and squat were applied to determine maximal force; leg and handgrip strength were applied to determine isometric force; pull-up and push-up tests were applied to determine the continuity of strength. body composition measurements were performed with electronic scales. statistical analyses were performed with spss 21.0 program. significance level was accepted as p <0.05. the crossfit training program included consecutive 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squat exercises for 20 minutes (crossfit-cindy). resistance training program consisted of 3 sets of bench press, lat pull down, leg press, biceps curl and triceps extension exercises with 3 minute intervals using 70% of the weights the participants could perform with pre-determined maximum 1 repetition. the results of the study showed that body fat percentages of both groups decreased significantly, performance variables increased significantly and body weight did not change significantly. in addition, the increase in push-up exercise was higher in the crossfit group than in the resistance group. thus, this study shows that although crossfit training is short-termed, it can be used as an alternative to classical resistance training. keywords: cross fit, resistance exercises, strength, body composition, recreational, training. citation | serhat özbay (2019). the effects of different types of strength training for recreational purposes on the body composition and strength development of university students. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 381-385. history: received: 26 march 2019 revised: 1 may 2019 accepted: 7 june 2019 published: 9 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 382 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 382 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 383 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 383 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 384 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.381.385&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/908 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6424-8871 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/908 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6424-8871 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/908 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6424-8871 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 381-385 382 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the effect of crossfit and resistance training on maximal strength, isometric strength and strength continuity in recreational student athletes. 1. introduction recreational sports are activities which are done to meet the individual's needs (entertainment, health, aesthetics, psychological) without expecting any performance output (professional success). the content of recreational sports may vary according to the individual's expectations. some individuals take part in activities that include recreational hiking, water sports, extreme sports, team or individual sports, while others prefer the fitness center. in all of these regular activities, the individual gets positive physiological and psychological benefits. regular activities, especially those done in fitness centers, result in an increase in strength output. strength is an important component in many sports (ribeiro et al., 2017; colquhoun et al., 2018; rajkumar and divya, 2018). resistance exercises, which are mostly preferred for strength development, are frequently used in sports sciences, especially in research designs where the effects of any intervention, such as training, are examined (weir, 2005; ritti-dias et al., 2011; özbay and ulupınar, 2018). crossfit® (crossfit, inc., washington, dc, usa) is a high intensity functional training model that has become very popular in recent years (butcher et al., 2015). crossfit is one of the fastest growing functional methods of high intensity training. it is thought that more than 200,000 athletes participate in crossfit training in approximately 11,000 gyms (maté-muñoz et al., 2018). when the literature was examined, significant benefits of crossfit trainings were found on health and wellness (glassman, 2006; sparkes and behm, 2010; kliszczewicz et al., 2014; fernández et al., 2015; eather et al., 2016; sousa et al., 2016; yüksel et al., 2019). crossfit training also affects both aerobic and anaerobic performance (smith et al., 2013). basically, crossfit is a training model in which high-intensity functional exercises are combined with cardiovascular exercises and gymnastics, body weight and weights (glassman, 2010; sibley, 2012; gregory et al., 2017). programs are usually in the form of “workout of the day” (wod). wod consists of different, functional motion models. they can be scaled regardless of the participants‟ strength and form level (eather et al., 2016; dilber and doğru, 2018). high intensity interval training and body weight workout ranks among the top three in 2017 worldwide sports trend list thompson (2017). there are many factors affecting strength and development. one of these factors is the proportion of body fat and body fat percentage. strength training not only increases muscle resistance, but also regulates the composition of the body. two muscles with the same circumference and volume produce different amounts of strength due to the different fatty tissue they contain. fat impedance not only reduces the contraction force but also limits the size and speed of contraction of the muscle fibres by creating friction (viscosity). as a result, excess fat in the body means extra burden as it will cause extra energy consumption to transport fat for performance (tamer, 1991; yüksel et al., 2017). the aim of this study is to examine the effects of crossfit and resistance training on maximal strength, isometric strength, strength continuity and body composition in students who do sport for recreational purposes and to show whether these training methods are alternative for each other. 2. method 2.1. participants 28 healthy male volunteer students doing sport for recreational purposes participated in the study. after the participants were divided into groups, the differences between anthropometric measurements and 1tm loads were tested and if the difference was significant, the groups were randomly redistributed. the participants were randomly divided into two groups [crossfit group (n=14), resistance group (n=14)], strength and anthropometric measurements were performed before and after the 16-week training period. the participants did not receive any additional food or nutritional supplements during the training period. they were selected on a voluntary basis from individuals without temporary disability or disease. they were provided with detailed explanations and they signed informed consent prior to volunteering for the study. all this process was conducted according to the helsinki declaration. 2.2. anthropometric measurements the height of the participants were measured by stadiometer (holtain ltd., uk); weight, body mass index (bmi) and body fat percentage (bf%) were measured by bioelectrical impedance analyser (tanita tbf 401, japan). 2.3. strength tests maximal dynamic strength of participants was measured using one repetition squat and bench press test. the wrestlers performed 3 trials for both test at 5-min intervals. the load was increased by 3-10% in valid trials or reduced by 3-10% in invalid trials according to the request of the participants. for a trial to be considered valid, it was based on completing a full range of motion and returning to the starting position. isometric strengths of participants were measured via relevant dynamometers (takei a5001 hand grip dynamometer and takei a5002 leg dynamometer, tokyo, japan). dominant hand was preferred during the hand grip strength test. during the leg strength test, the pull-bar of the dynamometer was placed in the hands and the angle of the knees was set at 45 degrees. in both tests, the highest score from two trials with 3-min rest intervals was considered valid. strength endurance performances of participants were determined via pull-up and push-up tests. for the pullup test to be valid, the total number of repetitions the participant was able to pull the chin above the constant bar were calculated. for the push-up test to be valid, the total number of repetitions the participant was able to complete full range of motion and to return to the starting position were calculated. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 381-385 383 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1tm loads of the participants were determined on two different days after a practice workout. rest periods of 2-3 days were used between these exercises. on the first day, 1tm loads of bench press and squat exercises were determined. on the second day, the same tests were repeated to ensure test-retest reliability. the higher load between the two test days was determined as the valid 1tm load. for each exercise, participants were given 5 rights with 5 minute intervals. the other exercise was started after a rest of at least 10 minutes. the same procedure was reapplied after 16 weeks of training to determine performance improvement. 2.4. workout protocols crossfit workout program was applied to the participants as cindy model three days a week for 16 weeks. the workouts were made for 20 minutes without rest as consecutive 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squat exercises with body weights (butcher et al., 2015). all workouts were observed by the researcher. resistance training, resistance training group received resistance training for 16 weeks. workouts were done three times a week. in resistance training, bench press, lat pull down, leg press, biceps curl and triceps extension exercises were applied in 3 sets with 3 minute intervals. the subjects attempted to achieve maximum repetition in 70% of their 1tm load while performing the exercises. before starting the exercises, the subjects performed a warm-up of 15 repetitions in 50% of their load. all workouts were observed by the researcher. 2.5. statistical analysis statistical analyses were performed with spss 21.0 program. significance level was accepted as p <0.05. mean and standard deviation were used for data analysis. independent t-test was used to determine whether there was a difference between the groups at the beginning of the study. paired t-test was used to determine the difference between the measured values of a group before and after the research period. in addition, two-way anova test was used for repeated measurements to determine the group x time (before-after) interaction. 3. findings table-1. descriptive and performance features of the participants (n=28). descriptive and performance crossfit group (n=14) resistance group (n=14) t p age (year) 20.8 ± 2.0 19.7 ± 1.8 1.475 0.152 height (cm) 171.4 ± 10.2 170.1 ± 9.2 0.350 0.729 weight (kg) 66.5 ± 9.3 66.2 ± 9.9 0.074 0.941 bmi (kg / m2) 23.2 ±1.9 23.1 ± 2.6 0.074 0.941 fat% 9.1 ± 2.3 10.5 ± 3.25 1.383 0.178 bp (kg) 70.1 ± 10.1 69.7 ± 11.3 0.088 0.930 sq (kg) 106.3 ± 14.9 105.9 ± 15.9 0.075 0.941 ls (kg) 143.3 ± 22.9 136.6 ± 23.0 0.765 0.451 hgs (kg) 38.0 ± 3.9 41.0 ± 6.2 1.614 0.119 push-up (repetition) 15.6 ± 3.1 14.6 ± 2.2 1.318 0.199 pull-up (repetition) 31.6 ± 6.9 34..8 ± 5.6 1.041 0.307 values were presented mean ± sd bp = bench press; sq = skuat; ls = leg strength; hgs = handgrip strength initial descriptive and performance characteristics of the groups were examined and no significant difference was found between the groups table 1. table-2. performance values of the participants before and after 16 weeks training period (n=28). crossfit group (n=14) resistance group (n=14) before after before after weight (kg) 66.5 ± 9.3 66.3 ± 9.5 66.2 ± 9.9 66.4 ± 10.6 fat% 9.4 ± 2.3 8.6 ± 1.8* 10.8 ± 3.2 10.3 ± 3.0* bp (kg) 70.1 ± 10.1 77.9 ± 9.6* 69.7 ± 11.5 76.4 ± 11.6* sq (kg) 106.4 ± 14.9 114.9 ± 14.5* 105.9 ± 15.9 114.2 ± 17.1* ls (kg) 143.2 ± 22.9 152.7 ± 20.9* 136.6 ± 22.9 145.1 ± 23.7* hgs (kg) 38.0 ± 3.9 40.8 ± 4.6* 41.1 ± 6.1 42.7 ± 6.2* push-up (repetition) 15.6 ± 3.1 18.1 ± 4.3* 14.6 ± 2.2 18.5 ± 3.4* pull-up (repetition) 34.7 ± 5.6 44.1 ± 6.6*# 31.6 ± 6.9 38.4 ± 7.9* values are presented mean ± sd. * there is significant difference between before and after values. # group x time (before-after) interaction is significant. bp = bench press; sq = skuat; ls = leg strength; hgs = handgrip strength anthropometric measurements and performance values of the participants were monitored before and after the 16-week training period table 2. while both groups showed a significant increase in all performance variables; body fat percentages decreased significantly; however, there was no significant change in body weight. in addition, the increase in push-up variable in the crossfit group was significantly higher than the increase in the resistance group. 4. discussion and conclusion the number of students doing sports for recreational purposes is increasing day by day. “crossfit”, which includes various types of workout, is a serious alternative for students doing recreational sports. this study was conducted to investigate the effect of crossfit and resistance training on maximal strength, isometric strength and strength continuity in recreational student athletes and to show whether these training methods can be an asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 381-385 384 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group alternative for each other. anthropometric measurements and performance values of the participants were monitored before and after the 16-week training period table 2. while there was a significant increase in all performance variables in both groups; a significant reduction was found in body fat percentages. however, there was no significant change in the body weight of the participants. in addition, it was found that the increase in pushup variable in the crossfit group was significantly higher than the increase in the resistance group. when studies about resistance training were examined, both crossfit and classic resistance training methods were shown to have positive effects on body composition and strength increase. in their study, murawskacialowicz et al. (2015) stated that three month long crossfit workout preformed with 15 young female participants decreased body fat percentage significantly (murawska-cialowicz et al., 2015). fatoba (2016) found that the decrease in body fat percentage was significant at the end of 12-week-long circular resistance training program applied to elite volleyball players (fatoba, 2016). in a study in which 6-week-long different strength training methods were applied on 33 female participants, yüksel et al. (2017) reported that the decrease in body composition in both crossfit and definition training program was significant (yüksel et al., 2017). in a study conducted on young men and women, (uçan, 2013) found significant change in body fat ratio as a result of 10-week resistance training, while no significant change was found in body weight and bmi (body mass index) (uçan, 2013). in their study they applied crossfit-based high intensity strength program, smith et al. (2013) found 3,7% decrease in body fat percentage (smith et al., 2013). according to the results of our study, it is thought that the greater decrease in fat ratio is due to the intensity of workout protocols and the differences in diets applied in the study. in their study they compared crossfit training method and classical resistance training, gerhart and pasternostro (2014) found that the difference between was significant in favour of crossfit (gerhart and pasternostro, 2014). on the other hand, in their study which included 60 participants, barfield et al. (2012) did not find a significant difference in body mass index and hand grip strength (barfield et al., 2012). in their study they applied crossfit workout method, dilber and doğru (2018) reported a significant increase in body fat percentage, left and right grip and leg strength of the participants (dilber and doğru, 2018). in their study they applied crossfit (cindy) workout program on 32 participants for 8 weeks, yüksel et al. (2019) found that this method developed strength ability (yüksel et al., 2019). in conclusion, it can be seen that both training methods have positive effects on body composition and strength. when it is considered that crossfit training method, which has become very popular recently, can be designed for different purposes and is practical and saves time, it is thought that it is a serious alternative to resistance training in today‟s world. references barfield, j., b. channell, c. pugh, m. tuck and d. pendel, 2012. format of basic instruction program resistance training classes: effect on fitness change in college students. physical educator, 69(4): 325. butcher, s.j., t.j. neyedly, k.j. horvey and c.r. benko, 2015. do physiological measures predict selected cross fit® benchmark performance? open access journal of sports medicine, 6: 241 247. colquhoun, r.j., c.m. gai, d. aguilar, d. bove, j. dolan, a. vargas, k. couvillion, n.d. jenkins and b.i. campbell, 2018. training volume, not frequency, indicative of maximal strength adaptations to resistance training. the journal of strength & conditioning research, 32(5): 1207-1213.available at: https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0000000000002414. dilber, a.o. and y. doğru, 2018. the effect of high-intensity functional exercises on anthropometric and physiological characteristics in sedantery. international journal of sport exercise and training science, 4(2): 64-69.available at: https://doi.org/10.18826/useeabd.425483. eather, n., p.j. morgan and d.r. lubans, 2016. improving health-related fitness in adolescents: the crossfit teens™ randomised controlled trial. journal of sports sciences, 34(3): 209-223. fatoba, m., 2016. impact of resistance circuit training programme on the skinfolds of state elite volleyball players. international journal of science and science education, 6(1): 8-11. fernández, j.f., r.s. solana, d. moya, j.m.s. marin and m.m. ramón, 2015. acute physiological responses during crossfit® workouts. european journal of human movement, 35: 114-124. gerhart, d.h. and b.m. pasternostro, 2014. a comparison of crossfit training to traditional anaerobic resistance training in terms of selected fitness domains representative of overall athletic performance. in international journal of exercise science: conference proceedings, 9(2): 26. glassman, g., 2006. validity of crossfit tested. the cross fit journal articles, 41: 1-4. glassman, g., 2010. cross fit training guide level 1, april; 2-3. available from http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/cfj_english_level1_trainingguide.pdf [accessed 15 june 2019]. gregory, r.m., h. hamdan, d. torisky and j. akers, 2017. a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet combined with 6-weeks of crossfit training improves body composition and performance. international journal of sports and exercise medicine, 3(2): 1-10.available at: https://doi.org/10.23937/2469-5718/1510054. kliszczewicz, b., r. snarr and m. esco, 2014. metabolic and cardiovascular response to the cross fit workout „cindy‟: a pilot study. journal of sport and human performance, 2(2): 1-9. maté-muñoz, j.l., j.h. lougedo, m. barba, a.m. cañuelo-márquez, j. guodemar-pérez, p. garcía-fernández, m.d.c. lozano-estevan, r. alonso-melero, m.a. sánchez-calabuig and m. ruíz-lópez, 2018. cardiometabolic and muscular fatigue responses to different crossfit® workouts. journal of sports science & medicine, 17(4): 668. murawska-cialowicz, e., j. wojna and j. zuwala-jagiello, 2015. crossfit training changes brain-derived neurotrophic factor and irisin levels at rest, after wingate and progressive tests, and improves aerobic capacity and body composition of young physically active men and women. journal physiol pharmacol, 66(6): 811-821. özbay, s. and s. ulupınar, 2018. reliability of 1tm, 5tm and 10tm tests in upper body resistance exercises. turkish journal o f sport sciences, 2(1): 1-7. rajkumar, r. and k. divya, 2018. impact of specific training on selected speed, explosive power and muscular strength parameters among school men handball players. indian journal of applied research, 7(9): 587-588. ribeiro, a.s., b.j. schoenfeld, s.j. fleck, f.l. pina, m.a. nascimento and e.s. cyrino, 2017. effects of traditional and pyramidal resistance training systems on muscular strength, muscle mass, and hormonal responses in older women: a randomized crossover trial. the journal of strength & conditioning research, 31(7): 1888-1896. ritti-dias, r.m., a. avelar, e.p. salvador and e.s. cyrino, 2011. influence of previous experience on resistance training on reliability of onerepetition maximum test. the journal of strength & conditioning research, 25(5): 1418-1422. sibley, b.a., 2012. using sport education to implement a cross fit unit. journal of physical education, recreation & dance, 83(8): 4248.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07303084.2012.10598829. smith, m.m., a.j. sommer, b.e. starkoff and s.t. devor, 2013. crossfit-based high-intensity power training improves maximal aerobic fitness and body composition. journal strength cond reserch, 27(11): 3159-3172. sousa, a.f.d., g.b.d. santos, t.d. reis, a.j. valerino, s. del rosso and d.a. boullosa, 2016. differences in physical fitness between recreational crossfit® and resistance trained individuals. journal of exercise physiology online, 19(5): 112–122. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 381-385 385 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sparkes, r. and d.g. behm, 2010. training adaptations associated with an 8-week instability resistance training program with recreationally active individuals. the journal of strength & conditioning research, 24(7): 1931-1941.available at: https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0b013e3181df7fe4. tamer, k., 1991. measurement and evaluation of physical performance. ankara: gökçe ofset printing. thompson, w.r., 2017. worldwide survey of fitness trends for 2018: the crep edition. acsm's health & fitness journal, 21(6): 10-19. uçan, y., 2013. effects of different types of exercises on body composition in young men and women. life science journal, 10(3): 1799-1806. weir, j.p., 2005. quantifying test-retest reliability using the intraclass correlation coefficient and the sem. the journal of strength & conditioning research, 19(1): 231-240. yüksel, o., m.s. erzeybek, f. kaya and m. gülaç, 2017. effects of different strength training on body composition in female athletes. turkey clinics journal sports science, 9(3): 101–107. yüksel, o., b. gündüz and m. kayhan, 2019. effect of crossfit training on jump and strength. journal of education and training studies, 7(1): 121-124.available at: https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v7i1.3896. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 538 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 538-547, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.538.547 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group pre-service social studies teachers' opinions on using comic books in social studies teaching ayten kiriş avaroğulları1 zeynep mutlu2 ( corresponding author) 1assoc. prof. muğla sıtkı koçman university, faculty of education, turkey. 2m.a. muğla sıtkı koçman university, faculty of education, turkey. abstract in the age of technology which is ever changing and developing, not only the technologies but also the generations have different characteristics. therefore, the methods and the materials used in teaching are changing as well. today, comic books are one of the materials that are used for bringing students' attention into the class and motivating their active participation in the class. this study examines the opinions of the 4th-grade pre-service social studies teachers, who are educated in preparing comic books, on designing and using comic books in social studies teaching. this research is a descriptive study. the study was carried out in the 2018-2019 school year with the pre-service social studies teachers, who continue their education at a university in western turkey. the practice of the preparation of comic book panels was carried out for six weeks. before and after the comic book preparation practices, participants took surveys with open-ended questions that were provided by the researchers. the data acquired from the open-ended survey forms are used for content analysis. according to the findings obtained throughout the research, it has been concluded that the fourth-grade pre-service social studies teachers, who are trained in preparing comic book panels, have positive views on preparing and using comic books in social studies teaching. several propositions are made in light of these findings. keywords: preservice social studies, comic book, teaching materials, history teaching, travels of ibn battuta, active learning. citation | ayten kiriş avaroğulları; zeynep mutlu (2019). preservice social studies teachers' opinions on using comic books in social studies teaching. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 538-547. history: received: 24 july 2019 revised: 29 august 2019 accepted: 4 october 2019 published: 12 november 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: this study includes some of the findings from the zeynep mutlu’s master's thesis, named "prospective social studies teachers' opinions on using comic books in social studies teaching",conducted under the supervision of ayten kiriş avaroğulları. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 539 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 539 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 540 4. participants ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 540 5. data collection............................................................................................................................................................................... 540 6. procedure ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 541 7. data analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................. 542 8. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 542 9. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 545 10. conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 546 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 546 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.538.547&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1101 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7721-0853 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1351-7151 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1101 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7721-0853 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1351-7151 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1101 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7721-0853 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1351-7151 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1101 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7721-0853 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1351-7151 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 538-547 539 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the contribution of this research to the related literature, the fourth-grade pre-service social studies teachers have positive views on designing and using comic books in the social studies courses teaching especially in teaching history subjects. that is why in the training of the social studies teachers, it is necessary to offer course options on specific subjects focused on making different course materials that are more suitable for technology-assisted innovative classrooms. 1. introduction evolving technology and generations bring new perspectives to education. especially generation z (those who were born in 1997 or after) can be described as digital students who grew up in familiarity with technology (adıgüzel et al., 2014). as a natural outcome of the fast advancement of technology and diversification of generations, the materials used in classes are varied in terms of technology. with the constructive approach emphasized in the teaching programs in turkey, it is aimed to have students to engage various materials and to involve in an active learning environment. as a matter of fact, it was observed that active-based lessons increased the students' interest towards the social studies lesson in the activity-based practice examples (avaroğulları and capar, 2016; akbaba et al., 2019). both the education for pre-service social studies teachers and the social studies curriculums at the secondary school level (meb (national ministry of education), 2018) emphasize technological competency. it is known that the main course materials used in social studies lessons by both teachers and students in secondary schools are course books. in addition to different methods and techniques, teachers are expected to utilize different materials during lessons in order to attain greater student participation. as in many other countries in the world (pegrum et al., 2013) schools are starting to give greater importance to technology in turkey as well (aslan and görgen, 2015). due to these developments, it is inevitable that the technology supported materials prepared by teachers and students are going to be used in schools in the near future. additionally, current research in education indicates that use of comic books in social studies education enhances motivation and academic achievement of students (ilhan and oruç, 2019; unal and demirkaya, 2019). for this reason, teachers, who play important roles in organizing the teaching environment, are required to gain experience in this subject both in their teaching career and in their vocational life. in fact, according to the study by aslan and görgen (2015) it is found that teachers are aware of teaching technologies and materials, but they need further instructions for putting them into use. also (kormos, 2019) stated new social studies teachers with limited experience and unfamiliarity with technology often hesitate to seek and find new technology for their classroom. this study will participate in the literature about views of social studies teacher candidates regarding design and use of technology supported teaching materials. a review of the studies focusing on comic books' use as teaching materials (topkaya and simşek, 2015; ilhan, 2016; orçan and kandil, 2016; topkaya, 2016) shows that the research participants of these studies usually comprised of secondary school and high school students. furthermore, in these studies, the comic book panels that were prepared according to the research themes by the researchers who carried out the studies themselves or the published and commercially available comic books were used as teaching materials. any other study that captured the views on using comic books in social studies teaching after conducting an experimental practice with preservice social studies teachers has not been found. in this paper, where pre-service social studies teachers design comic book panels for social studies teaching and then give their opinions on the use of comic books in social studies teaching based on their experiences and observations. this study is thus important for filling a gap in the literature and demonstrating the exemplary practices that are carried out during the experimental procedure. the question of this study is stated as "what are the opinions of the 4th-grade prospective social studies teachers on the use of comic books in the social studies teaching based on their experience in making comic books?" for this purpose, the design of a comic book was done to the pre-service teachers. based on these experiences, opinions about designing and using comics in social studies lessons were taken. kormos (2019) state it is important for teacher education programs to implement one-on-one mentoring. 2. literature review comic books are one of the opportunities offered by advanced technology for use in a class environment. a comic book is a form of art, where pictures and text come together around a fiction, and which contains sequences (eisner, 1985). the significant increase in the number of comic book publications both in turkey and in the world and the comic book publications of lives of historical figures intended for children demonstrate that the interest in comic books is also present in the education (cantek, 2014). according to multiple studies in different disciplines, the comic books are found to have positive effects on the student achievement and attitude towards classes (kılıçkaya and krajka, 2012; topkaya and simşek, 2015; ilhan, 2016) on creative thinking (orçan and kandil, 2016) on critical thinking (krusemark, 2016) and on increased quality of grammar use and sentences (kılıçkaya and krajka, 2012). social studies can be described as a course, which utilizes the information and methods it takes from social sciences (history, geography, archeology, law etc.) in order to train active citizens who are capable of making decisions and solving problems under changing circumstances (oztürk, 2009). in this course, creating new materials with the help of technology is also important for attracting the attention of new generations. along with this line of thought, in using technology not just as a tool but as effective teaching material in order to create innovative educational environments in social studies teaching, teachers and pre-service teachers are required to use different materials or be able to create them. although there is a consensus that using visual materials in social studies lessons positively affect learning (celikkaya, 2013) it is found that course materials are not utilized effectively in social studies courses (ulusoy and gülüm, 2009) and students have a low rate of preparing materials in social studies courses (sanlı, 2018). the study by celikkaya (2013) showed that social studies teachers use the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 538-547 540 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group blackboard, the map, and written materials (encyclopedias, journals etc.) the most, whereas they use timetables, computers, projectors, panels (bulletin boards), newspapers, chart, and tables several times in a month. creating new materials with the help of technology is especially important for attracting the attention of new generations. therefore, teachers and pre-service teachers should be able to use or prepare different materials in order to make use of technology not only as a tool but also as effective teaching material in creating innovative teaching environments in social studies teaching. kormos (2019) stated that educational technologies provide social studies teachers an ability to create a student-centered learning environment and promote 21st-century skills. actually it is clear that social studies teachers need in-service training in preparing technology supported materials. as a matter of fact, social studies teachers take “teaching technologies and material design” course as a compulsory course during their training in teaching. among the goals of this course are giving pre-service teachers the skills to make use of technological tools and to design and develop original materials (uzunöz et al., 2017). also, in social studies teaching undergraduate programs, there are elective courses focusing on using technology effectively, such as “computer assisted education” and “computer-based education”. this way, preservice teachers are encouraged to prepare and use teaching technologies in their pre-service training programme. prospective teachers who do not already have knowledge and skills related to technology integration may not be consistently adopted in the teaching of technology in social studies lessons (gulbahar and guven, 2008; kormos, 2019). a comic book is one of the new opportunities in the class environment given by advancing technology. the comic book is a form of art, where pictures and text come together around a fiction, and which is composed of sequences (eisner, 1985). in comic books, pictures and texts are used in conjunction when conveying the behaviors, actions, emotions, and thoughts of the comic book characters in their adventures to the reader (yağlı, 2018). as in the rest of the world, there has been a significant increase in comic book publications in recent years in turkey as well (cantek, 2014). especially the publication of comic books that are geared towards children and focused on the lives of historical characters makes them promising sources to be used in teaching. the studies on using comic books in classes as teaching materials also attest to this observation. various studies in different disciplines found that comic books have positive effects on students' success and attitudes towards the class (kılıçkaya and krajka, 2012; ilhan, 2016; topkaya, 2016) creative thinking (orçan and kandil, 2016) critical thinking (krusemark, 2016) and the quality of sentences (kılıçkaya and krajka, 2012). there is no study focusing on the opinions of prospective teachers on comics prepared by themselves. the aim of this study is to analyze the opinions of social studies teacher candidates who have designed a comic book about social studies teaching with regard to comics and design and their use in social studies teaching. 3. method this research was is designed as phenomenological study which is a qualitative research designs to describe preservice social studies teachers' opinions on designing and using comic books in social studies teaching. phenomenological studies are such research methodologies that allows to define all participants experiences are in depth study of an event or phenomenon (creswell, 2007). 4. participants the participants consist of 56 people (26 females and 30 males) who continue their education in the 4th-grade social studies teaching during the 2018-2019 school year in a public university in turkey. the participants are selected through purposive sampling, which is a type of non-random sampling. in turkey, the period of study for pre-service social studies teachers in the faculty of education is 4 years or 8 semesters. the pre-service teachers who graduate after their 4-year education in teaching wait to be appointed at public schools by the ministry of education. in this study, the participants are the pre-service social studies teachers who are in their senior year. one of the reasons for selecting the pre-service social studies teachers in their senior year is the assumption that they are knowledgeable about preparing technology-assisted course materials as they have already taken courses (such as teaching technologies and material design, computer assisted education, computer oriented education, history of middle ages, and special teaching methods) that would give them the background and skills required for this study. moreover, thanks to their experience as interns in social studies courses in secondary schools as a requirement for the “teaching practice” course they take in their last year, it is posited that they are familiar with the skill level of secondary school students (ages 11 to 14), for whom the comic books they prepared were intended. 5. data collection in this study, data were analyzed by using descriptive analysis technique within the scope of qualitative research method. the data obtained in descriptive analysis are summarized and interpreted according to previously determined themes (yıldırım and simşek, 2008). in the study, to determine the prospective teachers who participated in the design of comic books 2 survey forms with open-ended questions are used as tools for collecting data. after reviewing the relevant literature and receiving expert who had phd degree in the area of social studies education opinions, 2 survey forms with openended questions were prepared. in order to avoid complications, a preliminary survey was taken; experts were consulted for their opinion again, and the 2 survey forms with open-ended questions were given their final shape. the participants were given a 6-week training in preparing comic books in order to enhance their knowledge of preparing and using comic book panels in teaching. before the process of preparing comic book panels started, the pre-service social studies teachers in their senior year were asked to answer the first questions in the first openended survey form. after they were trained in preparing comic books, they answered the open-ended questions in the second survey form. during the exercise, every participant was asked to prepare 10 panels using the free software (pixton comic maker, 2018). as this program includes pre-made templates and characters, preservice teachers do not need to create a new character from scratch. the researchers then take and collect screenshots of asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 538-547 541 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group comic book panels prepared by pre-service teachers. although the content of these panels has been analyzed, the analysis is not included here as it requires a separate paper. 6. procedure the process of preparing comic book panels which was realized with the efforts of 56 participants was completed over the course of 6 weeks (2 class hours each week). however, the participants were able to discuss the exercise with the researchers when they needed. at the end of the exercise, each participant prepared 10 panels. the researchers have examined the comic book named “marco polo silk road” (tabilio, 2017); and journeys of that the traveler from the islamic world, i̇bn battuta, who had been to the same routes as marco polo but had no comic books written on him, was selected as the main theme of the comic book panels to be prepared by the preservice teachers. the inclusion of the excerpts from i̇bn battuta's works in the 6th and 7th grades course books thanks to the updated social studies courses teaching programs was another reason contributing to the selection of the theme. i̇bn battuta's name passes in the teaching sections of culture and heritage of the updated 6th grade social studies course book (yılmaz et al., 2018). as well as of the updated 7th grade social studies course book (gültekin et al., 2018). therefore, special attention was given to have the panels prepared by the pre-service teachers geared towards the skill levels of 6th and 7th-grade secondary school students. after implementing the open-ended survey form as a preliminary test, the exercise continued as follows: 1st week • the researcher gave information to the participants on the goals and procedure of the study. • 14 copies of the comic book “marco polo silk road” (tabilio, 2017) brought to the class by the researcher were handed out to the participants to be read in groups. the content of the comic book under concern is discussed with the participants in a brief question and answer session. the participants were given the comic book marco polo silk road and asked to read it in rotating order until the next week. • during this exercise, it has been explained that the theme of the product they are going to prepare using the pixton comic maker (2018) will be journeys in anatolia, which is included in i̇bn battuta's travelogue. 2nd week • the critical thoughts of the participants, who attended the class having read the comic book marco polo silk road, were received. • the participants were informed about marco polo and i̇bn battuta and encouraged to make a connection between the two travelers. the participants were informed about “rıhle” that is included in travel of i̇bn battuta in order to allow them to use primary sources. the section containing journey in anatolia in i̇bn battuta’s travel was reviewed and summarized by the researchers and handed out to the participants. the prepared summary was used to raise awareness on the subject among the pre-service teachers and lead them to access the electronic or printed copies of travel, which is a primary source. • the comic book scripts, which were reviewed beforehand, were critically examined in order to learn about comic book scenarios. • furthermore, the participants were asked to write a simple script on i̇bn battuta until the next week. 3rd week • the participants received feedback on the scripts they had prepared. • i̇bn battuta's journey in anatolia was reviewed in detail among the participants. • some sections of this travel book were read and discussed. sample script writing exercises were carried out. participants were asked to start making their panels according to the feedback they had received. 4th week • feedback was given on the scripts prepared by the participants. • the participants expressed their opinions on using the software for creating panels. • the participants were led to gain more experience with another scriptwriting exercise and further use of the pixton program. 5th week • the participants received feedback on the comic book pages they have made by using the software in order to make the final corrections. the sample texts from i̇bn battuta's travel and other relevant sections were read and a brainstorming exercise was carried out for improving their scripts. • using the sample panels, the feedback on script content and design was given. 6th week • the participants were asked to give the comic book panels they prepared their final shape and email them to researchers. • the open-ended survey forms (6 questions) prepared by the researchers were delivered to the participants as the final test. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 538-547 542 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. examples of one comics panel. source: prepared by preservice teacher participating in this study. 7. data analysis in the study, the content analysis was carried out on the participants' responses to the open-ended survey forms. the coders examined the participants' long responses to the open-ended survey questions in detail and created themes by giving defining codes to the statements with the common meanings in the responses. the results of the frequency of statements in these categories are given in percentage. the students are given code names from s1 to s56. in order to ensure the reliability, the pre-service teachers' responses to the open-ended survey questions were coded by both of the researchers together. in this way, an agreement on the definition of codes was reached. afterwards, the responses were independently coded by the researchers. after this operation, the themes that indicate unity and difference of opinions among the coders were identified. then, the rate of reliability among the coders was determined. this rate is found by using (miles and huberman, 1994) reliability formula (reliability formula: consensus/consensus + dissidence). thus, the rate of reliability among the coders on pre-service teachers' responses to open-ended survey questions was found to be 0.95. this shows that coding are reliable. the direct quotations from the participants' responses are presented along with relevant categories in order to enhance the reliability of the study. 8. results the findings from the open-ended survey forms given to 56 pre-service teachers participating in the research before the exercise carried out in 6 weeks are shown in frequency and percentage distributions. table-1. pre-service teachers' conditions of reading and working with comic books. condition f % reading comic books 37 66% not reading comic books 19 33.9% working with comic books 4 7.1% not working with comic books 52 92.8% total 56 100% in view of the responses by the pre-service teachers from table 1, it can be concluded that 37 people (66%) are reading comic books, whereas 19 people (33.9%) are not reading comic books. among the pre-service teachers who stated that they read comic books, the comic books they noted in the survey forms are: tommiks, texas, around the world in eighty days, trip to the moon, batman, spider man, iron man, abdülcanbaz, corto maltese, death note, harry potter, infinity war, karaoğlan, malkoçoğlu, persepolis, red kit, robin hood, sin city, sherlock holmes, tarkan, the punisher, v for vendetta. it is understood that the pre-service teachers are familiar with domestic and foreign comic books, and pre-service teachers who read comic books usually prefer similar styles of comic books. also, based on the pre-service teachers' responses, it is found that a great majority of them (37 people, 52%) have not been involved in preparing or using comic books in teaching. therefore, it can be inferred that the preservice teachers have not used comic books as the course material in any stage of their educational experience and they do not have experience in preparing comic books. the reason why 4% of the participants have responded that they have experience in working with comic books is that they created educational panels using other computer software as a requirement for the “computer assisted education” they have taken as an elected course in the faculty of education. at a point when 4th-grade pre-service social studies teachers are about to graduate from the teaching program, not having the experience in preparing comic books and using them as course materials is most certainly a shortcoming that needs to be amended. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 538-547 543 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. pre-service teachers' perceptions of comic books. categories f % entertaining 19 33.9% characters with supernatural powers 6 10.7% creativity 6 10.7% combination of pictures and text 6 10.7% superheroes 4 7.1% cartoons 4 7.1% illustrated novel 3 5.3% speech bubble 2 3.5% adventure and action 2 3.5% encouraging reading 3 5.3% thought-provoking 2 3.5% interesting 3 5.3% hyperbolic story 1 1.7% total 56 100% it is apparent from table 2 the most frequently coded theme in the pre-service teachers' perceptions of the comic books is found to be “entertaining”. this may be an outcome of the type of comic books enjoyed by the preservice teachers. as stated above, it is found that the pre-service teachers do not read comic books for educational purposes or for using them as course materials, but rather read them usually for entertainment purposes. after the pre-service teachers who joined the research had the experience of creating 10 panels and writing scenarios based on “i̇bn battuta's travel”, their opinions on using comic books as effective course materials in teaching social studies in a conscious way were collected within the scope of other questions in the open-ended survey. from this point on in the study, the pre-service teachers' opinions after having the experience of making comic books are examined. table-3. pre-service teachers' opinions after the practice of making comic books. categories f % it was entertaining 31 55.3% it made me happy 30 53.5% it boosted my creativity 5 8.9% it was difficult 5 8.9% it was informative 5 8.9% it was a waste of time 3 5.3% it improved critical thinking 2 3.5% total 56 100% the participants' responses to the question, “what are your opinions and feelings after designing a comic book?” are given below. for example; with regard to the theme entertaining s37 stated that “after a very entertaining process of designing a comic book, i thought that i can use this material in the future and entertain students as well by engaging with appropriate subjects. i thought that i can introduce a very boring subject to students comfortably using comic books.” some of the social studies preservice teachers opinions about designed a comic book about i̇bn battuta's seyahatname”, are given below: s52; “before starting the study, i was thinking that i would have had a difficult time, failed to decide on a scenario, and become unsuccessful. as i continued my study, i became satisfied with what i created. i felt a sense of achievement. i started to have the opinion that i have done a good job.” s10; “using the characters and making them talk stimulated my imagination. it boosted my creativity.” s11; “this is a difficult method for a student.” s15; “it was a very fun exercise; it was entertaining and informative.” s5; “i don't see myself creating comic books. it takes too much time.” s56; “it made me think about what i have created.” based on the student opinions showed in table 3 after the exercise, a majority of pre-service teachers had positive views on designing comic books in social studies teaching, while the rest of the participants had negative views on the subject. it is found that the pre-service teachers with positive views enjoyed being active and creating new products. on the other hand, the pre-service teachers with negative views are shown to be reluctant after the exercise due to the time-consuming nature of preparing comic books and the difficulty of creating a design. the participants' opinions on designing comic books in teaching social studies and making their students design comic books are given below. table-4.pre-service teachers' opinions on designing comic books in social studies teaching. categories f % i'd like to design 43 76.7% i'd not like to design 8 14.2% i am indecisive 5 8.9% total 56 100% based on the pre-service teachers' opinions and upon examining table 4 it can be seen that the pre-service teachers are eager to design comic books, and they aim to be active in their classes and make their classes entertaining and memorable. some of them are identified to be more reluctant as they think designing comic books asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 538-547 544 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group is hard and complex. in addition, the indecisive participants show their lack of knowledge as a reason for their indecisiveness. examples from participants' opinions on designing comic books are shown below: s32; “i think i can create designs. i think that i can even help the students learn more permanently using comic books.” s12; “i don't think that i can. because it requires professional training. if it is not a high-quality comic book, then the information given to children would be lacking.” s12; “i am not fully sure. i need to learn more.” table-5. pre-service teachers' opinions on making their students design comic books in social studies teaching. categories f % would like to make students design 30 53.5% would like to make students design on particular subjects 20 35.7% would not like to make students design 6 10.7% total 56 100 according to table 5 a number of pre-service teachers think that comic books would not be appropriate for every subject or they would bore students and would like to make students design comic books in particular subjects. others prefer not making their students design comic books, because they think that designing comic books would be too difficult for students or students would be uninterested in designing them. some examples about participants' responses to the question “what are your thoughts on having the students actively design comic books in the social studies courses?” are given below: s3; whether it can be used for every subject is debatable. however, it would be beneficial to use them for particular subjects. s22; they should not be prepared; they should be read more frequently. however, this can be offered as a course to the university students. in order to determine what their thoughts and feelings regarding such a practice in the last general sense are, the question “did you exercise you performed influence your view of comic books? was asked to preservice teachers. based on the pre-service teachers' opinions, it can be concluded that the participants overcame their prejudices after designing comic books, became aware of the educational uses of comic books, and learned how to design a new product. due to some pre-service teachers having a difficult time during the exercise, their views were affected negatively and their opinion that the exercise was not useful remained unchanged. below some statements about this question are presented. s5; it did influence. after creating a comic book, i decided that i can use this in my work life.” s6; i have always thought that making comic books is very difficult. thanks to this exercise, i started thinking that individuals of all ages can write comic books. i also thought that i could use comic books as a course activity. this is a good educational application that can be practiced by both teachers and students.” s20; i didn't enjoy it much because i found it difficult. so, it did not have a positive influence on me. after the exercise, the pre-service teachers' preferred subject matters in which they would like to use comic books in the social studies teaching are given below. the pre-service social studies teachers' responses to the question are as follows: figure-2. the subject matters in which the pre-service teachers would like to create comic books in social studies teaching. based on figure 2 and the opinions of the pre-service teachers, it is found that they would like to design comic books in certain subjects. it is found that the pre-service teachers draw connections between other sciences that are subfields of social studies and make use of interdisciplinary connections. it is also found that pre-service teachers learn more about verbal subjects less towards quantitative subjects. it can be seen that the pre-service teachers prefer history in which they would like to design comic books the most. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 538-547 545 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the preservice teachers asked whether they recommend use of comic books in social studies courses to other teachers. their answers are summarized in table 6. table-6. frequency and percentage distribution of pre-service teachers according to their recommendation of using comic books in social studies courses. condition f % recommending 51 91% not recommending 5 8.9% total 56 100% the results indicate that great majority of teacher candidates recommend the use of comic books. the statements below illustrate some of their views. s5; yes, i'd recommend it. the students are usually bored with social studies courses. reading comic books might improve their reading habits and increase class participation. s4; i recommend it. because in constructive education, as the student thinks more and is at the center so the education is effective. s12; no. it is more suitable at a high school level. s20; i would not. it is too challenging. considering the pre-service teachers' opinions given in table 6, it is found that most of them realized the importance of using comic books as an educational tool in the social studies teaching and recommended using comic books. based on this finding, it can be argued that the pre-service teachers were made cognizant of the significance of using comic books in the social studies teaching and had the necessary awareness. only a small percentage of the participants continue to have their negative views, and they find the comic book designing phase particularly challenging. 9. discussion the research aimed at examining the 4th-grade pre-service social studies teachers' opinions on preparing and using comic books in the social studies teaching. according to the results of the research, a great majority of 56 pre-service teachers read comic books before. some of the pre-service teachers who did not read comic books before still show an interest in comic books as they have skimmed through comic books before. however, in a study done by aktekin and pata (2013) it was reported that the most of the secondary school students (%59.7) who participated in the study never read comic books, 28.3% of students read comic books in a middling frequency, whereas 12% of students read comic books frequently. the source of their interest of preservice teachers in comic books might be the high amount of pictures, low amount of text, colorfulness, and entertaining character of comic books. this situation has been determined by unal and demirkaya (2019) as well in a study they conducted with participation of 5th grade middle school students. before the exercise, the overall opinion of the pre-service social studies teachers on comic books was that they find comic books entertaining. before the exercise, participants did not express any opinions on the educational aspects of comic books. thus, it can be concluded that before the exercise, the pre-service teachers perceived comic books as entertaining leisure activities rather than the educational materials. on the other hand, the participants' lack of experience in preparing and using comic books in their educational lives in the past might have been a reason for their limited knowledge on the instructive aspects of the comic books and for their emphasis on their entertaining aspects. after the exercise, it is seen that the participants were more focused on the educational aspects of comic books on the social studies teaching, and gained awareness of using comic books as visual teaching materials. in view of the pre-service teachers' perceptions of designing comic books and making their students design comic books after the exercise, it can be suggested that the majority had a positive view on designing and making their students design them in the future. thus, the view favoring the use of educational comic books in the social studies teaching was dominant. the reason for the favorable opinions of the pre-service teachers might be their grasp of the significance of the instructive value of comic books. it was seen that teacher candidates tried to express that they were aware of their educational value despite the difficulties they faced in using comics. as reported by mcgrail et al. (2018). the pre-service teachers with negative views might express their dissatisfaction with the exercise due to the difficulties they had performing it. the reason for some pre-service teachers' negative or indecisive views on designing comic books might be insufficient knowledge or practice. these shortcomings can be amended through the project tasks assigned in technology-oriented courses they take in their faculties. it is clear that the pre-service teachers had some concerns regarding comic book design. some of the participants remarked, “it takes too much time and it is difficult”. therefore, extending the period of training for comic book preparation and letting students gain further experience might alleviate these concerns. also, the pre-service teachers had concerns about whether the informational content of comic books they prepare would be suitable for secondary school students. a study by uygun et al. (2016) also reports that the pre-service social studies teachers had concerns regarding the failure of effectively passing their knowledge to students. the pre-service teachers preferred preparing comic books in subjects connected with the social studies, and especially in history. this might be due to the strong link between the subjects of history and actual life, and the ease of transferring historical events from different sources into a scenario (ilhan and oruç, 2019). in addition, currently available comic books focused on history and the historical content of the exercise they performed for this study might have influenced the opinions of the pre-service teachers. since there were not many comic books in other subjects that could constitute an example, and they did not know how to translate other subjects into their scenarios, these subjects were not very influential on the choices of pre-service teachers. since most of the pre-service teachers recommended using comic books in the social studies teaching, it can be concluded that the pre-service teachers have a positive view on using comic books in teaching and have an understanding of the importance of using comic books in teaching. however, since some participants did not asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 538-547 546 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group recommend the use of comic books in social studies, it can be suggested that the awareness in using comic books in education has not yet reached maturity. ilhan (2016) reported that the students who did not have any experience with the comic books approached the comic books with prejudice, but at the end of the study, their perspective changed in a positive direction. muzumdar (2016) in a study which used comic books as additional materials and focused on the students of faculty of pharmacy, found that the students have positive views of using comic books and comic books helped the students understand the course subjects better. at the end of his research, yıldırım (2016) found that the pre-service class teachers had positive views on educational comic books. furthermore, the findings of the studies on the use of comic books among social studies students at secondary school level (topkaya and simşek, 2015; ilhan, 2016; topkaya, 2016) and the results of this study, which focused on the pre-service social studies teachers, are parallel and support each other. this study has some limitations. an obvious limitation of this study is that it adopts a case study approach, and thus the findings may not be generalizable. the second limitation of this case study is that it could have been designed to focus on the subjects of other disciplines rather than choosing the discipline of history and specific agencies/actors as its main subject matter. furthermore, participants are asked to create comic book panels only on a specific subject, since creating a comic book, writing a script and identifying the appropriate pictures for that script, and transferring them to comic book strips are time-consuming. participants, in groups, could have prepared different studies focusing on different subject matters. this way, it would have been possible to assess the effects of the comic books prepared by participants on academic achievement. 10. conclusion as a conclusion, it is found that the fourth-grade pre-service social studies teachers have positive views on preparing and using comic books in the social studies teaching. when the content of the panels prepared by the participants was examined, it was observed that they wrote understandable dialogs, had relatively accurate usage of chronological information and paid attention to the match between the subject and the chosen characters and settings. although there were weekly briefings on the subject, when the scenarios of the completed panels were examined in detail, it was recognized that there were problems in the use of historical language and concepts, and in establishing the historical relevance. despite these shortcomings, it is clear that the pre-service social studies teachers who performed the exercise gained awareness of the effective use of comic books in easing making connections between subjects or making subjects concrete in the social studies teaching. furthermore, it is suggested that designing comic books not only in the subjects of all disciplines related to the social studies but also in the contemporary subjects can be beneficial for making the pre-service social studies teachers active and increasing their creativity. in the training of the social studies teachers, it is necessary to offer course options on specific subjects focused on making different course materials that are more suitable for technology-assisted innovative classrooms. one of these courses should be making comic books, which would be oriented towards creating technology assisted products. comic books can be used in the social studies teaching in order to ease making connections between subjects or to make some subjects more concrete, and for improving students' reading and writing skills in social studies courses. it can also be suggested that assigning projects on contemporary subjects can be beneficial for making pre-service social studies teachers more active and for enhancing their creativity. although there are comic books in the field of history focused on the lives of sultans, there is a need for publishing comic books on social and economic subjects and on the subjects of interest of other disciplines. future research can look into how teachers make sense of the designed lessons with comics in social studies teaching. further studies with extended observations and interviews can focus on in-service teachers' circumstances/desires to have training on preparing comic books or similar visual materials, whether they have experience in preparing comic books, and whether they use comic books in social studies courses. furthermore, it could be worthwhile to study the effects of the comic book preparation activities in different subject matters carried out by secondary school students on students' academic success, their attitudes towards and motivation for social studies courses. in sum, with this study, it is possible to make a proposal to the decision makers to rearrange and enhance the pedagogical skill sets of pre-service and in-service social studies teachers required for preparing technologyassisted teaching materials. again, creating an environment where pre-service and in-service social studies teachers could prepare sample comic book panels in collaboration with each other could be the right step towards the effective use of technology. it is recommended for other researchers to examine the writings inside the square or the circular speech bubbles in the comic book panels prepared by students, prospective teachers, and in-service teachers, in order to assess participants' skills in literacy. in this study, the usability of the material was emphasized rather than content. in future studies, the content of the script can be examined in terms of disciplinary literacy. references adıgüzel, o., h. batur and n. ekşili, 2014. generation’s changing side and the newly arisen work style after y-generation: mobile collars. journal of süleyman demirel university institute of social sciences, 1(19): 165-182. akbaba, b., f. oztürk, h. adalar and m. ekiçi, 2019. infographic design as teaching and learning tools. research and experience journal, 4(1): 38-53. aktekin, s. and a. pata, 2013. secondary school students’ attitudes towards learning history in their free times: the case of trabzon. journal of kırşehir education faculty, 14(2): 20-37. aslan, b. and i̇. görgen, 2015. primary and secondary education subject matter teachers' awareness level on instructional technologies and materials. international periodical for the languages, literature and history of turkish or 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(l. t. basmaci,). istanbul: alfa publications. topkaya, y., 2016. the impact of instructional comics on the cognitive and affective learning about environmental problems. education and science, 41(187): 199219. topkaya, y. and u. simşek, 2015. impact of instructional comics on the attitudes towards citizenship and democracy education. journal of computer and education research, 3(6): 152-167. ulusoy, k. and k. gülüm, 2009. to use of teachers to the teaching materials while studying history and geography subjects in social science lessons. ahi evran university journal of educational sciences, 10(2): 85-99. unal, o. and h. demirkaya, 2019. a semi-experimental study on the use of educational comics in social studies. international journal of geography and geography education, 40: 92-108. uygun, k., m. avaroğulları and m. oran, 2016. investigation of professional anxiety levels of social studies teacher candidates. turkish studies -international periodical for the languages, literature and history of turkish or turkic, 11(21): 417-436. uzunöz, a., v. aktepe and m. gündüz, 2017. candidate teachers' views on professional achievements in instructional technologies and material design a qualitative study. journal of qualitative research in education, 5(3): 317-339. yağlı, a., 2018. some symbols and body languages used in the comics. journal of social and humanities sciences research, 5(24): 1437-1445. yıldırım, a. and h. simşek, 2008. qualitative research in social studies. 6th edn., ankara: seçkin publications. yıldırım, e., 2016. examining opinions of classroom teacher candidates on educational comics. journal of social sciences, 6(11): 52-70. yılmaz, f.g., h. bayraktar, m.k. ozden, m. akpınar and ö. evin, 2018. secondary cchool 6th social studies textbook. ankara: national ministry of education publishing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 70 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 70-73, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.70.73 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between attitudes towards physical activity and self-esteem of high school students h. fatih kucukibis1 mehmet gul2 ( corresponding author) 1,2school of physical education and sports, cumhuriyet university, sivas, 58140, türkiye abstract the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between attitudes towards physical activity and self-esteem of high school students. three different scales were used on 626 adolescents in total who lived in sivas, found by random sampling method. the first scale is “the personal information scale” consisting of 6 items to determine the demographical characteristics of the participants; the second scale is “the cognitive behavioral physical activity questionnaire (cbpa)”, which was developed by schembre et al. (2015) and was adapted to turkish by eskiler et al. (2016) to determine the participants’ attitudes towards physical activity; and the last scale is “the self-esteem scale” by rosenberg (1965) and adapted to turkish by çuhadaroğlu (1985) to determine the levels of self-esteem of the participants. the study data was analyzed by spss 25 package software. the obtained data were represented as values of frequency (f), percentage (%), average (x-), and standard deviation (±). pearson correlation analysis was applied in order to determine the effect of physical activity attitudes on self-esteem. the age average of the participants was determined to be 16,28 (±0,97). the gender distribution was 312 females and 314 males, and the number of those who were participating in licensed sports was 336, and that of those who were not was 290. it was determined that there was a positive correlation between the participants’ attitude towards physical activity and their self-esteem. in conclusion, a positive correlation was found between the attitude towards physical activity and self-esteem. in the study, it was suggested that the tendencies towards physical activity should be protected. keywords: adolescence, self-esteem, physical activity, attitude, high school, students jel classification: l29. citation | h. fatih kucukibis; mehmet gul (2019). the relationship between attitudes towards physical activity and selfesteem of high school students. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 70-73. history: received: 11 october 2018 revised: 16 november 2018 accepted: 24 december 2018 published: 8 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 2. material and method....................................................................................................................................................................... 71 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 71 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 72 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 73 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.70.73&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/381 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3973-2837 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3080-5155 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/381 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3973-2837 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3080-5155 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/381 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3973-2837 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3080-5155 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/381 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3973-2837 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3080-5155 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 70-73 71 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction physical activity is an important form of activity that enables individuals to improve their biomechanical activity and remove their biochemical energy excess, and it has the ability to prevent mental and physical breakdowns caused by stress and over nutrition. physical education and sports activities improve individuals’ selfconfidence, giving such significant support to psychological balance that individuals performing sports are cheerful, merciful, competitive and courteous (erkan, 1991; erkan, 1998). therefore, individuals, who have devoted their lives to physical activity with a positive attitude, gain a dynamic, healthy, and productive personality. in line with these opinions and thoughts, the positive approach of all the developed countries towards physical activity facilitate their goal to raise a spiritually, physically, and mentally healthy society with a holistic educational approach (yaka, 1991). attitude, one of the crucial components of human behavior, can be defined as learned tendencies which impel the individual to show certain behaviors in the face of certain individuals, objects, and situations. the fact that attitude is a determinant for the individual in participation to various activities and fields made it necessary to discuss this matter within the context of its relationship with physical activity (koca and aşcı, 2004). for example, according to graham (1995) the key to improve the individual’s tendencies towards physical activity is to understand his/her perception, thoughts, and attitudes self-esteem is defined as the individual respecting, interiorizing, dignifying, appreciating, approving him/herself, being pleased with him/herself, and finding him/herself positive and valuable (bilgin, 2001; kacan et al., 2015). in literature, it has been reported that individuals with low self-esteem have limited social interactions, in which they experience many spiritual problems, and introverted personalities, and that they prefer loneliness (inanc et al., 2004; altıok et al., 2010). it has been found that sports and physical activities have a negatively correlated relationship between sports and physical activities and stress, anxiety and depression level; and a directly proportional relationship with self-esteem and self-perception (karakaya et al., 2006). the increase in the number of studies on adolescents’ self-esteem and their attitudes towards physical activity in the field of sports sciences may be linked with the fact that adolescents’ attitude towards future physical activities has a positive effect on their self-esteem. the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between adolescents’ attitude towards physical activity and their self-esteem. 2. material and method the study has descriptive quality in survey model. the first scale used in the study is “the personal information form”, which consists of 6 items to identify the demographical characteristics of the participants. the second scale is “the cognitive behavioral physical activity questionnaire (cbpa)”, which was developed by schembre et al. (2015) and was adapted and validated into turkish by eskiler et al. (2016). it was used to identify the participants’ attitudes towards physical activities. the cbpa questionnaire consists of 15 statements which was prepared as 5-point likert format (1: strongly disagree, 2: disagree, 3: undecided, 4: agree, 5: strongly agree) and 3 subscales. the subscales are result expectation (1,2,9,13,14), self-organization (3,4,5,6,8), and personal obstructions (7,10,11,12,15). the scores acquired from the scale were reflected according to the average score values between 1 and 5. the last scale is “the self-esteem scale” by rosenberg (1965) and adapted to turkish by çuhadaroğlu (1985) which consists of 10 items in the 4-point likert scale format (: very true, 2: true, 3: false, 4: very false) to determine the levels of self-esteem of the participants. the scale is graded based on total score. the statements 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10 were inversely coded. the study scales were administered in the in-person interviews with 626 adolescents in total selected by random sampling method, who were 14-18 years old and were studying in the high schools in the central district of sivas province in 2018. the data analysis was done by spss 25 statistics software. the data acquired were represented as values of frequency (f), percentage (%), average (x-), and standard deviation (±). pearson correlation test was applied in order to determine the effect of physical activity attitudes on self-esteem. the age average of the participants was determined to be 16,28 (±0,97). the gender distribution was 312 females and 314 males, and the number of those who were participating in licensed sports was 336, and that of those who were not was 290. 3. results table-1. grades of participants variables frequency percentage(%) 9th grade 172 27,5 10th grade 178 28,4 11th grade 246 39,3 12th grade 30 4,8 total 626 100 as seen in table 1, the number of 11th graders is higher than that of others. table-2. income of participants variables frequency percentage(%) tl 0-1601 129 20,6 tl 1602-3200 309 49,4 tl 3201 and over 180 28,8 total 618 98,7 as seen in table 2, it was revealed that the income average of tl 1602-3200 is higher than other averages. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 70-73 72 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. physical activity status of participants frequency percentage yes 336 53,7 no 290 46,3 total 626 100 as seen in table 3, the number of licensed students who perform sports activities is higher than that of those who do not perform any sports activities. table-4. sports branch status of participants frequency percent sedanter 290 46,3 individual sport 160 25,6 team sport 176 28,1 total 626 100 as seen in table 4, the percentage of the student who are not licensed in any branch of sports is higher than that of those who perform individual or team sports. table-5. the relationship status between the participants’ attitude towards physical activity and their self-esteem result expectation self-organization personal obstructions self-esteem result expectation pearson correlation 1 ,535** ,194** -,200** p ,000 ,000 ,000 n 626 626 626 626 self-organization pearson correlation ,535** 1 ,150** -,043 p ,000 ,000 ,285 n 626 626 626 626 personal obstructions pearson correlation ,194** ,150** 1 ,132** p ,000 ,000 ,001 n 626 626 626 626 self-esteem pearson correlation -,200** -,043 ,132** 1 p ,000 ,285 ,001 n 626 626 626 626 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). as seen in table 5, it was determined that there was a positive correlation between the participants’ attitude towards physical activity and their self-esteem. 4. discussion and conclusion most of the individuals who participated in the study are licensed in a branch of sports (53,7%). the percentage of the individuals who are not licensed in any branch of sport is 46,3%. upon reviewing the grades of the participants, we can state that the percentage of 11th graders (39,3%) are higher than that of others. we can also say that nearly half of the participants have an income over minimum wage. when we look at the sports branch status of the participants, the percentage of those who are not licensed in any branch is higher than that of those who perform individual or team sports. it was determined that there was a positive correlation between the participants’ attitude towards physical activity and their self-esteem. therefore, motivating the self-esteem of adolescent individuals can play an efficient role in positively affecting their attitudes towards physical activity. the studies have shown that the frequency of participating in physical activities decreases in adolescence, and that individuals tend towards occupations with low activity, thus, it has been suggested that the school-age individuals perform physical activity for 60 minutes daily akman et al. (2012); stang and bayerl (2003); garipaiaoilu et al. (2008); vadiveloo et al. (2009); wrotniak et al. (2007). the study by ryan (2009) on 994 high school students between the ages of 11-16 in florida revealed that physical activity status decreases as the students grow. modern life style and the change in the socio-cultural structure has minimized the need for physical activity for adolescents, thus, giving birth to sedentary life style. as commonly known, sedentary life style is defined as a risk factor in the development of coronary artery diseases, hypertension, obesity, type-ii diabetes, some forms of cancer, and some chronic diseases. a life style that based on physical inactivity in daily life plays an important part in disability and mortality (american college of sports medicine, 1998). with regards to this result, we can say that adolescent individuals may participate more in physical activities when we improve their self-esteem. it was found that the attitude of students, who do sports in their free time or are players in a sports club, towards physical education lesson was higher. this may be due to the desires of students to attend the physical education lesson related with their interest in sports okut (2017); imamoglu (2011); zengin (2013). the fact that most of the adolescent individuals in our study do sports (%53,7) may suggest that these individuals have tendencies towards physical activity. sports have positive effects on the development of the features of self-esteem (mcduff and baron, 2005). the study by aksaray (2003) on the effect of skills education and activities towards developing self-esteem included two different experiment groups: the placebo group and the control group. the findings showed that general, social, family, school and total self-esteem scores of students, who had attended to skills and activity programs, increased. the literature survey results show that those who perform sports activities have higher self-esteem than those who do not polat (2014); aksaray (2003); utku et al. (2006). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 70-73 73 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the study of polat (2014) revealed that there was a significant difference between the group who do not exercise and the group who do exercise for 25 months and over, when the self-esteem scale is considered. the selfesteem of the group who do regular exercise is higher than that of the group who do not. there is an inverse proportion between the average value in the self-esteem scale and self-esteem, which means that self-esteem is considered high when the average is low. this result is of supportive quality for our study. in addition to that regular exercise makes the individual physically fit, it also provides a spiritual and psychological relaxation. it can be concluded that the individuals who attend exercise program will get more body satisfaction, thus, will be able to cope with psychological problems, such as anxiety, depression etc., and that their self-esteem will improve. in the situation of depression and anxiety, an activity like exercising, which will occupy the mind and will draw personal attention to somewhere else, will keep the disturbing thoughts out of the mind. it was revealed that high self-esteem had a significant effect on the participants’ attitude towards physical activity. we can state that most of the studies in turkey are on “the attitudes towards physical education lesson in terms of gender and socio-cultural variables”, and that there are few studies on “the attitude towards physical activity and sports”. adolescents do not have sufficient information on physical activity. further studies can examine school-and environment-related factors that increase self-esteem, the levels of attitude towards physical activity and whether these factors are determinant in the individuals’ self-esteem and their attitudes towards sports. references akman, m., s. tüzün and p.c. ünalan, 2012. health nutrition and physical activity in adolescents. nobel medicus, 22(8): 24-29. aksaray, s., 2003. the effect of skill training and activity centered programs on self-esteem in adolescents. phd thesis, cukurova universty, adana. altıok, h.ö., n. ek and n. koruklu, 2010. an investigation of some variables associated with self-esteem level of university students. adnan menderes university faculty of education journal of educational sciences, 1(1): 99-116. american college of sports medicine, 1998. the recommended quantity and quality of exercise for developing and maintaining cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, and flexibility in healthy adults. medicine & science in sports & exercise, 30(1): 975-911. bilgin, g., 2001. the relationship between anxiety and self esteem in adolescents. unpublished master's thesis. marmara university, istanbul. çuhadaroğlu, f., 1985. research on self esteem among young people. xxi. national congress of psychiatry and neurological sciences, mersin. erkan, n., 1991. m scientific scope of physical education and sports culture -21 1. education and sports symposium in national education institutions, 19-21 december 1991 i̇zmir: meb publication. pp: 55-56. erkan, n., 1998. lifestyle sports. ankara: bağırgan publisher. eskiler, e., f. küçükibiş, m. gülle and f. soyer, 2016. the cognitive behavioral physical activity questionnaire: a study of validity and reliability. journal of human sciences, 13(2): 2577-2587. available at: https://doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v13i2.3806. garipaiaoilu, m., y. sahip, n. budak, ö. akdikmen, t. altan and m. baban, 2008. food types in the diet and the nutrient intake of obese and non-obese children. journal of clinical research i̇n pediatric endocrinology, 1(1): 21-29. available at: https://doi.org/10.4008/jcrpe.v1i1.5. graham, g., 1995. physical education through students’ eyes and in students’ voices: introduction. journal of teaching in physical education, 14(4): 364-371. available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/jtpe.14.4.364. imamoglu, c., 2011. the comparison of attitudes of physical and non-active high school students towards physical education course. master thesis, gazi university, institute of educational sciences, ankara. pp: 48-49. inanc, n., h.a. savas, h. tutkun, h. herken and e. savas, 2004. clinical and socio-demographic characteristics of the psychiatric patients in the medico-social center of the university of gaziantep. journal of anatolian psychiatry, 5(4): 222-230. kacan, s.h., k.g. ulas, u. demirci, e. kilinc, a. kandemir and b. durak, 2015. an analysis of the level of self -respect and loneliness observed in the senior university students and the influential factors. gumushane university journal of health sciences, 4(2): 227243. karakaya, i., a. coskun and b. agaoglu, 2006. evaluation of depression, self-esteem and anxiety levels of the swimmers. journal of anatolian psychiatry, 7(3): 162-166. koca, c. and h. aşcı, 2004. the effect of athletic competence level and gender on attitudes toward physical education and sport. gazi journal of physical education and sport sciences, 9(1): 15-24. mcduff, d.r. and d. baron, 2005. substance use in athletics: a sports psychiatry perspective. clinics in sports medicine, 24(4): 885-897. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csm.2005.06.004. okut, s., 2017. a study on the attitudes of physical education and sports attitudes towards physical education and sports in mus province and the districts of mus. master thesis, agrı ibrahim cecen university, agrı. polat, g., 2014. the effect of exercise on self-esteem and body satisfaction in women exercising regularly. master thesis, kahramanmaras sutcu imam university, institute of health sciences department of physical education and sports, kahramanmaras. rosenberg, m., 1965. soicety and the adolescent self-image. princetor: princeton university press. ryan, s., 2009. body shape perceptions, attitudes toward physical education, and physical activity levels of middle school students. (2): 21-30. schembre, s.m., c.p. durand, b.j. blissmer and g.w. greene, 2015. development and validation of the cognitive behavioral physical activity questionnaire. american journal of health promotion, 30(1): 58-65. stang, j. and c. bayerl, 2003. position of the american dietetic association: child and adolescent food and nutrition programs. journal of the american dietetic association, 103(7): 887-893. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0002-8223(03)00468-1. utku, b., z. koruc and s. kocaeksi, 2006. women's body image and its effect on self-efficacy belief. 9th international sports science congress, 3-5 november, muğla university, muğla. vadiveloo, m., l. zhu and p.a. quatromoni, 2009. diet and physical activity patterns of school-aged children. journal of the american dietetic association, 109(1): 145-151. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2008.10.012. wrotniak, b.h., n. zimmer, k. dingle, a. dingle, a. miller, a. knoell and e. weiss, 2007. physical activity, health, and dietary patterns of middle school children. pediatric physical therapy, 19(3): 203-210. available at: https://doi.org/10.1097/pep.0b013e31812a3580. yaka, a., 1991. the importance of physical education in schools in terms of integrity in education. i. physical education and sports symposium in educational institutions, meb publications, i̇zmir. zengin, s., 2013. examination of self-esteem levels and self-esteem levels on physical education and sport course of 12-18 year-old boys serving in children and youth centers. master thesis, sakarya university, sakarya. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 102 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 102-107, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.102.107 the influence of information technology on student’s behavioural nature in the class room liaqat ali1 1ajman university, fujairah, uae abstract the use of mobile phones and other gadgets in the university class room is becoming a culture in the modern age of technology. some students use this technology for the purpose of information only. however, it was noted that others use mobile phone to receive messages through different applications such as whatsapp, facebook, instagram and viber. it is therefore important to understand the impacts of their behaviour. on the other hand, the use of mobile technology effects the teaching strategies. teachers need to adopt new teaching methodologies to make sure that educational objectives and student’s deep learning could be achieved together. it is therefore critical to adopt a balance approach. the research in this paper conducted a survey to find the relationship between student’s behaviour and the use of mobile technology. the analysed data is used to balance the approach and to achieve educational objectives. keywords: information technology, mobile apps, class room, teaching, students, educational objectives. citation | liaqat ali (2018). the influence of information technology on student’s behavioural nature in the class room. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 102-107. history: received: 2 november 2017 revised: 2 march 2018 accepted: 5 march 2018 published: 7 march 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 103 2. statement of the problem ............................................................................................................................................................ 103 3. research objectives ...................................................................................................................................................................... 103 4. research hypothesis ..................................................................................................................................................................... 103 5. significance of the study .............................................................................................................................................................. 103 6. research scope and limitation ................................................................................................................................................... 104 7. conceptual framework / theoretical framework ................................................................................................................. 104 8. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 104 9. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................. 105 10. data analysis and results .......................................................................................................................................................... 105 11. research conclusion and discussion ....................................................................................................................................... 107 12. recommendations........................................................................................................................................................................ 107 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 107 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.102.107&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3024-3014 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3024-3014 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 102-107 103 1. introduction the role of internet in education is important because it provides instant access to available information around the world. education could be provided remotely across the world through the medium of internet and its resources. traditional learning and teaching processes are changing due to the plethora of information available through internet resources. teachers and learns both have instant access to the information on virtually any subject. the rapid development of internet resources and its availability to conduct leaning in virtual environment lead students and teachers to adopt new mechanisms and techniques during the process learning and teaching. in many classrooms across universities and colleges students bringing and using their gadgets and mobile phones are affecting learning processes. it is obvious that learners may use the technology for information related purposes during learning processes in the class rooms. however, some students may use mobile technology and other gadgets to communicate with friends and families through available social applications and other networking sites. due to this, the author of this research became interested in findings the behaviours of the students in the class room environment. also, the researcher is interested that how this behaviour of students affects the teaching methodologies of the teachers and how this could be balanced when teaching in class rooms. the author is interested to find out that how the use of mobile technology and social networking applications effect student’s learning process. research has shown that the use of mobile technology is a great experience for students during the provision of teaching. mobile technology could be used for efficiency and effectiveness while collecting information from the web. students could use mobile technology for audio recording purposes in the class room. this is how they record teacher’s lectures and this further helps students to learn in effective ways. mobile technology is a great tool for the live polling, if the class room strength is heavy. this will help teachers to understand student’s thinking and effective teaching could be delivered through this process. 2. statement of the problem 2.1. general students using mobile phones and other gadgets certainly effect the way of teaching and learning during class room environments. in universities, it is becoming a fashion or culture to use mobile and other electronic gadgets. students frequently use mobile applications during the process of teaching and learning. this behaviour leads to harm the process of teaching and learning. a balance approach is therefore required to make sure that educational objectives could be achieved. 2.2. specific 1. there is a crucial need to adopt new teaching methods to balance the use of mobile technology and teaching objectives. 2. it’s important for educational organizations to maximize the use of information technology and to use all existing tools and gadgets to achieve educational objectives. 3. research objectives this research is based on the following objectives; to critically investigate the use of information technology and its applications in education especially in the class room environment. to understand the effects of information systems and technology on student’s behaviour to investigate the new teaching methodologies that can balance learning and teaching processes through the use of information system and technology and its available applications. to recommend an approach that could balance the learning and teaching processes through the use of information system and technology. 4. research hypothesis the research is based on the following 6 major hypothesis; h1the use of mobile technology and its applications got positive impacts on student’s academic performance. h2the use of mobile technology and its applications got negative impacts on student’s academic performance. h3the use of mobile technology and its applications got positive impacts on student’s behaviour in class room environment. h4the use of mobile technology and its applications got negative impacts on student’s behaviour in class room environment. h5the use of mobile technology and its applications got positive impacts on teaching strategies in class room environment. h6the use of mobile technology and its applications got negative impacts on teaching strategies in class room environment. 5. significance of the study the significance of this research could be measured by the effective outcomes and recommendations made in this research to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning processes in the class room environments. the conducted research would be beneficial for educational industry especially for teachers in higher education facing problems with students due to the use of their gadgets during the delivery of their lectures in the class room environments. further, the research would benefit the universities in the policies of teaching and learning, looking to develop new approaches that could balance the approaches of learning process between teachers and learners. the research will provide a comprehensive reading for universities students to understand the importance of mobile asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 102-107 104 technology and other gadgets and will provide them guideline on how to effectively use them while the provision of teaching and learning. 6. research scope and limitation the conducted research will be useful for the education industry as it will help teachers to adopt new teaching techniques and methodologies in the class room environment and to balance to use of information technology and systems. the research is also beneficial to understand the behaviour of the students due to the impacts of the technology and information systems in education. the scope of the research could be measured through the scope of information technology and its use in the educational environment. time and available resources could be the possible limitations of this research. from academic and educational point of view, the research will provide a comprehensive approach adopted to understand the use of mobile technology and its role in the education especially in the class room environment. from social aspect, the research will provide an opportunity to understand the behaviour of students and its relationship with technology during the provision of teaching and learning. the scientific value of the research will be the outcomes in the form of recommendations that would be helpful to balance the use of mobile technology and new teaching methodologies to achieve educational objectives. 7. conceptual framework / theoretical framework this research follows the following conceptual/ theoretical framework. figure-1. conceptual/theoratical framework 8. literature review one of the biggest challengers teachers face nowadays in classroom is related to retaining the interest of student in classes while students have the option to remain connected to the virtual world using their smart phones. it is one of the biggest debates as to whether these devices affect the academic performance of students or not. it’s time for the college faculty to accept that students will bring their mobile device with them to class. the important factor that needs to be considered is the impact of these devices on learning process. a number of researchers have conducted research on the impact of technology and its usage on academic achievement. according to a study jeffrey et al. (2015) it was found that the students who are constantly using mobile phones are outperformed by students who abstain from that. the study also concluded that frequent messaging which were not related to class content interferes with student learning while in class. numerous studies have also been conducted to find the relationship between academic performance, educational objectives and the use of social networking sites. according to the paper (kirschner and karpinski, 2010) it was found that learners who spent additional time on facebook usually have lower gpa compared to others. another study junco (2012) conducted in the same area found out that the time spent on facebook was strongly and significantly related to overall gpa while only weakly related to time spent preparing for class. it was also found that using facebook for collecting and sharing information was positively predictive of the outcome variables, while using facebook for socializing was negatively predictive (junco, 2012). research studies have also pointed out that multitasking as one of reason for negative relationship between electronic media use and academic performance. a recent study wood et al. (2012) measured the influence of multitasking with a collection of electronic media on the student’s ability to learn from lectures in university. mobile phone, messenger, emails and texting through available social media network sites are the four digitally based multi-tasking activities which were compared to three control groups (paper-and-pencil note-taking, wordprocessing note-taking and a natural use of technology condition) over three consecutive lectures. it was found that the students multitasking with these technologies were linked with lower grades on tests compared to students who don’t multitask (saraswathi et al., 2015). another study junco and cotton (2012) used hierarchical regression to analyse the impact of multitasking to college gpa. it was found that multitasking may affect the capacity for cognitive processing and prevent deeper learning. according to another study rosen et al. (2011) it was found that students who received more text message interruptions during a class suffered in terms of their marks. research was also done to study the impact of technology-based multitasking behaviours inside and outside classrooms. the study demonstrated that students who multitask frequently in class have lower gpa. the relation remained significant even when the perceived multitasking efficiency and time spent studying outside of class was controlled. it was also found that those students who multitasked while doing their academic work used up additional time studying outside of class, which meant unproductive study behaviours. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 102-107 105 based on the available research, it shows that there is strong link between the usage of mobile phones and academic performance. 9. research methodology the methodology of this research adopted both qualitative and quantitative approach and has conduct a student’s survey to understand the relationship among their behaviour and the use of mobile technology in the class room environments. the research used both primary and secondary data resources to accomplish the results. for the purpose of primary data, a research questionnaire was developed and distributed among the students of the university for both undergraduate and postgraduate level. data was collected and was further analysed with the help of spss. a total of 350 students both from undergraduate and postgraduate participated in the survey. the results were compiled based on the scale of strongly agree, agree, not agree not disagree, disagree and strongly disagree from male and female students with undergraduate and postgraduate students of different age groups. following are the questions statements asked during the survey of this research. a) i always use a mobile phone in class during the process of teaching. b) i like to chat with friends/family through a mobile device during class time c) i share information in class through whatsapp, viber, email, text message or other. d) i like to browse the following apps in class timings e) i use mobile because i feel the teacher/lecturer is boring f) it is the students’ rights to use mobile devices whenever they want. 10. data analysis and results a) i always use a mobile phone in class during the process of teaching. figure 2 shows the relationship between gender and mobile usage during the process of teaching in the classroom. both males (19.2%) and females (31.3%) are uncertain on whether or not to use a mobile phone in class rooms during the delivery of lectures. however, males are more inclined towards using a mobile phone in class. on the other hand, females are more inclined towards not using a mobile phone in class. figure-2. relationship between gender and mobile usage in class b) i like to chat with friends/family through a mobile device during class time the response of males and females regarding chatting with friends and family through a mobile device during class is conveyed in figure 3 below. the results show that 22.2% females are uncertain, while 19.2% disagree and 9.1% are strongly disagree. in the case of the male percentage, 14.1% disagree and 12.1% are strongly disagree with the statement. only 1% male students strongly agree, however, further 8.1% students accepted or agreed that they are using mobile devices to chat with their friends and families during the process of lecture delivery in class rooms. out of 350 respondents, only 2% female agreed with statement of this question. figure-3. relationship between gender and chat in class c) i share information in class through whatsapp, viber, email, text message or other. the relationship between gender and sharing of information in class is reported in figure 4. whatsapp is considered by both male (39.1%) and female (31.5%) as the most common method of sharing information in class, followed by email. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 102-107 106 figure-4. relationship between gender and sharing information in class d) i like to browse the following apps in class timings figure 5 shows the relationship between program (undergraduate and graduate) level and browsing in class time by students. instagram is indicated as the major browsing app during class time by 51.1% of undergraduate and 4.3% graduate students. 5.3% undergraduate and 3.2% graduate students accepted the use of facebook application. 8.5% undergraduate students agreed with the use of twitter application. however, graduate students (7.4%) respond with other apps during class for browsing. the analysis proves that undergraduate students are more motivated to browse data and other applications during the delivery of lectures in class room environments. the graduate or postgraduate students are motivated to concentrate more on the lecture delivery of their teachers. on the other hand, the analysis of collected data proved that the application of instagram is more famous among students compare to facebook, twitter and other applications available on the platforms of social media. more than 51% undergraduate students agreed with the use of instagram application. figure-5. relationship between program level and browsing in class e) i use mobile because i feel the teacher/lecturer is boring the relationship between mobile usages because teacher/lecture is boring and different age groups of student is reported in figure 6. younger students are more uncertain, while elder students strongly disagree with the statement. as per figure 6 below, young students between the ages of 18-25 strongly agree (4.2%) and agree (13.5%) that they use mobile during the course of lecture delivery and feels that their lesson or teacher is boring. this further proves that teachers need to concentrate more on students of young ages to make sure that they can fully concentrate on the process of lecture delivery in class room environments. figure-6. relationship between age group and lecture f) it is the students’ rights to use mobile devices whenever they want. figure 7 shows the relationship between different age groups and the rights of students to use mobile devices whenever they want. younger students (18-25) agree with the statement (28.9%) and (4.1%) strongly agreed, and (21.6%) were found uncertain with the statement. 12.4% students of the same age group (18-25) disagreed while 4.1% strongly disagreed with the same statement. further, the analysis proves that the age group 26-30 is uncertain with the statement (9.3%). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 102-107 107 figure-7. relationship between age group and rights of the students to use mobile devices. 11. research conclusion and discussion the conducted research proved that there is a strong relationship between the use of mobile technology and student’s behaviour. certainly, the use of mobile applications and technology effects students’ behaviour, academic performance and teaching strategies. alternatively, the educational objectives got a direct link between with the use of mobile technology in the class room environments. it is impossible to stop students from using mobile during the course of lecture deliver and therefore teachers need to adopt new techniques and methodologies to balance this and overcome issues raised due to the use of mobile applications. it is equally important to look on the behaviour of teachers who use mobile technology during the course of their lecture delivery. in a survey conducted by pew research centre in united sate of america was found that 73% of the teachers reported using mobile technology in their classrooms, either through their own instruction or by allowing students to use it to complete assignments (pew research centre, 2015). the world of e-leaning in higher education is in transformation and we need to benefit from the available information technology and applications. this is the responsibility of the teachers to make sure and balance the use of information system and technology during the course of their lecture delivery in class room environments. 12. recommendations based on the data analysed, this research recommends the following to balance the course of lecture delivery and the use of mobile technology among university students;  e-readers should be introduced in class rooms to balance the approach and also to benefit from the latest information available over the internet compare to traditional books where much of the information is outdated.  universities and higher educational class rooms should be more equipped with the available latest information technology to motivate students to deep learning process.  teachers should motivate students to use information technology positively for educational purpose in class room environment.  social media and its applications should be adopted by teachers during the course of their lecture delivery.  creative teaching should be adopted in universities and higher educational institutions with the help of creative tools to stimulate creativity.  there is need to incorporate audio and visual materials during the course of lecture delivery to motivate students to concentrate on their educational objectives rather than using their mobile applications without any educational purpose. universities and higher educational institutions need to consider on how educators/lecturers can become more skilled in learning design and delivery with the help of information technology and mobile applications to maximize student’s learning process and to achieve educational objectives. references jeffrey, k.h., m. stevie and t. scott, 2015. mobile phones in the classroom: examining the effects of texting, twitter, and message content on student learning. communication education, 64(3): 344-365. view at google scholar | view at publisher junco, r., 2012. too much face and not enough books: the 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=too%20much%20face%20and%20not%20enough%20books:%20the%20relationship%20between%20multiple%20indices%20of%20facebook%20use%20and%20academic%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.08.026 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=no%20a%204%20u:%20the%20relationship%20between%20multitasking%20and%20academic%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.12.023 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=facebook%20and%20academic%20performance https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=facebook%20and%20academic%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.03.024 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=an%20empirical%20examination%20of%20the%20educational%20impact%20of%20text%20message-induced%20task%20switching%20in%20the%20classroom:%20educational%20implications%20and%20strategies%20to%20enhance%20learning http://dx.doi.org/10.5093/ed2011v17n2a4 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=make%20it%20our%20time:%20in%20class%20multitaskers%20have%20lower%20academic%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.06.027 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=examining%20the%20impact%20of%20off-task%20multi-tasking%20with%20technology%20on%20real-time%20classroom%20learning http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.08.029 85 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 2, 85-90, 2018 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.85.90 using generalizability theory to assess the score reliability of communication skills of dentistry students n. bilge uzun1  mehtap aktaş2 semih aşiret3 seha yorulmaz4 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3,4department of measurement and evaluation in education, faculty of education, mersin university, mersin, turkey abstract the goal of this study is to determine the reliability of the performance points of dentistry students regarding communication skills and to examine the scoring reliability by generalizability theory in balanced random and fixed facet (mixed design) data, considering also the interactions of student, rater and duty. the study group of the research consists of the 16 dentistry students who took communication skills elective course in hacettepe university in 2014-2015 academic year. in the study, the variability sources are taken as student (s), rater (r), occupation (o) and task (t). 16 students are assigned with 16 different duties and whether the students fulfill the duties is rated by 8 raters from two different occupation groups, 4 standard patients and 4 academicians. on these facets using different designs g study has been performed. within the scope of this study the sxrxt design where all variability sources are crossed; sx(o:r)xt design where the occupation nested on rater as the result of scoring of the students by two different occupation groups as standard patient and academicians; sxaxt and sxspxt facets where rater facet is taken as fixed facet according to occupation groups (sp: standard patient, a: academician) were examined. for each design estimated variance components are discussed separately. keywords: communication skills, performance evaluation, reliability, generalizability theory. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 86 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 87 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 87 4. discussion, conclusion and implications.................................................................................................................................... 88 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 89 bibliography .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 90 citation | n. bilge uzun; mehtap aktaş; semih aşiret; seha yorulmaz (2018). determinants of job satisfaction of colleges of education lecturers: a study of nasarawa state college of education, akwanga. asian journal of education and training, 4(2): 85-90. history: received: 29 january 2018 revised: 16 february 2018 accepted: 20 february 2018 published: 23 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.42.85.90&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2293-4536 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3192-7445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0577-2603 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8385-3724 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2293-4536 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3192-7445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0577-2603 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8385-3724 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2293-4536 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3192-7445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0577-2603 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8385-3724 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2293-4536 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3192-7445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0577-2603 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8385-3724 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2293-4536 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3192-7445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0577-2603 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8385-3724 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 85-90 86 1. introduction in measurement studies the goal is to provide that the acquired score regarding the measured property to be as close as possible to the actual score. the proximity of the value obtained from measurement results to the true value of the measured property is obtained by capability of making error free measurements thus called reliability. reliability coefficient takes various values between “0” and “1” and defined as a measurement of measurement results being free of random errors. measurement results always carry some degree of error. as it will affect the accuracy of the decisions taken by the help of the measurement tools used to minimize this error, it shall be accurate to say that the reliability studies have a critical importance. in this regard, reliability has a critical importance also in performance based measurements in education activities. performance is a concept which defines how well people use their own potential or actual knowledge, abilities in order to reach their goals or expectations (helvaci, 2002; erşangur, 2003). according to deliceoğlu (2009) performance is the percentage of ability to use the capacity of a person in completing a job in a given time period with success. the reliability coefficient is generally low in measurement of performance. in performance evaluation, the reason why this coefficient is low is that the scoring in general is done dependent on the rater judgements, in a word subjectivity. it is clear that the rater would not be the only source of error that affects the reliability in performance measurements because there are various sources of variability affecting these measurements. in general, there are different sources of variability in measurements based on performance. one of these sources of variability is the individuals. individual source of variability is the abilities of individuals that show their talent or knowledge related to a problem, task or product. it is expected that the abilities of individuals evaluated would be different from one and other. in evaluations based on performance, raters are also a variability source. in performance evaluation raters have a very important place. this is because there are different approaches and responses of raters that affect their scoring. another variability source is the task or item that the individual expected to fulfill. the items and tasks related to performance should be clear and accurate as to provide individuals to make their performances visible and also should carry the details that will bring up the differences between individuals. the number and parameters of tasks or items within the performance are among the properties that affect the performance of the individuals. in cases that the performance measurement is necessary, it is required to examine these variability sources that form the measurement and their interactions with each other. it is assumed that the measurable ability of an individual can be estimated by the performance he/she shows in the task requested to be performed. however, it should not be dismissed that these performances of individuals are in interaction with the raters being in different strictness levels or items and duties being in different difficulties (güler, 2008). when these defined variability sources are considered, rater becomes an important source of error that decreases the reliability of the evaluation of performance, where interaction with factors such as duty or time can also be an error source as important. thus it is not sufficient for rating reliability just to provide interrater or intrarater consistency and also the interaction between sources of error should be considered in calculation of reliability. however all the methods used for calculation of reliability of performance evaluation handle together the interaction both with rater and other error sources. the reliability of performance evaluation functions with methods based on the three basic theories of measurement, classical test theory (ctt), item response theory (irt), and generalizability theory (gt) (güler, 2008). in performance evaluation, one of the advantages that the generalizability theory provides over classical test theory is that it is possible to evaluate together the errors from many sources in generalizability theory (brennan, 2001). thus a more realistic error determination is made by generalization theory and it is possible to reach more realistic results and decisions. when studies in literature are examined, it is seen that generalizability theory is used often in determination of reliability in performance evaluation (ludlow, 2001; barneveld, 2005; lee and kantor, 2007; atılgan, 2008; güler and gelbal, 2010; yelboğa and tavşancıl, 2010; yılmaz and gelbal, 2011; yılmaz and başbaşa, 2015). different measurement tools can be used in performance measurements in the field of medicine. besides which ability is measured by which tool, the used tools to be valid and reliable is important and also it is required that the measurements taken should be reliable (kurtz et al., 1998). the reliability of the measurement tools used in fields like medicinal training where especially the evaluations made often rely on performance evaluation should be as high as possible. in medicine training; patient-doctor interaction is a very important process that is in the center of the applications based on performance and where the doctor listens to complaints of the patient and help his/her problems (good medicine application program booklet, p:10), communication in medicinal training is a professional ability and should be developed. the teaching of communication skills in medicinal training cannot be considered as a selective application. it should be taught as the other occupational abilities within the medicinal training.16 in this regard, on the subject of student evaluation in medicinal training, the third step of the clinical evaluation pyramid, performance evaluation (knowledge and ability, attitude to be shown with application under surveillance and within training environment) defined by miller that is used often carries a critical importance. moreover, the communication skills evaluation that is in the scope of this study can be examined under this step. the communication skills course can be considered as a sort of preparation for real life conditions. especially for performance weighted aspects, it is important to provide genuine conditions in these trainings. thus, standard patients are used in these trainings, so that possibilities of diversification of interviews within a standard content, providing their repetition, creation of special cases and hard conditions can be offered (good medicine application program booklet, p:155). in fields like medicinal training where applications based on performance evaluation come forth, the studies done regarding the extensive reliability analysis of measurements via handling multivariable sources of error together are too scarce in our country (yılmaz and gelbal, 2011; yılmaz and başbaşa, 2015). when the performance is evaluated, it is considered that the extensive reliability analyses to be performed for used measurement tools and studies that handle multivariable sources of error to be done are important and this study will provide contribution to the literature in this regard. in the scope of this research, communication skills elective course is considered. mentioned course consists of evaluation of patient interview of students in occupational sense. in this study, it is aimed to have the ratings of performance evaluation tasks obtained as the result of rating of raters from more than one, different occupational origins to be examined by generalizability theory and to be asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 85-90 87 analyzed with multifacet fixed designs. broadly, it separates obtained measurement results into different variance sources, evaluates and defines them, then provide the generalization of the observed ratings of the individuals subject to measurement to the universal ratings that correspond to actual rating concept in classical test theory. findings of this research are limited to sixteen dentistry students who took communication skills elective course in 2014-2015 academic year in hacettepe university and eight raters coming from two different occupational groups that rate these students; and the data from communication skills checklist consisting of sixteen duties that aim to measure communication skills of these students. 2. method 2.1. research design this research consisting of determination of the reliability of the performance scores acquired in the practice examination in the communication skills elective course is a scanning type of research. 2.2. study group the study group of this research is formed by the sixteen dentistry students who took communication skills elective course in 2014-2015 academic year in hacettepe university. in evaluation of the performance conditions of the students’ eight raters, four academicians and four standard patients who participate in trainings were used. 2.3. data collection tools in evaluation of the performance of the students regarding communication skills, the “communication skills evaluation form” prepared by hacettepe university medicinal education and informatics department was used. in this evaluation form, there are sixteen tasks. tasks were scored as whether the student had the related skill (1), or not (0). 2.4. data collection in this context, each of the raters scored different numbers of students’ recursively. four academicians and four standard patients who participated in trainings, totally eight raters scored the 16 students for same tasks. in the study, student (s), rater (r), occupation (o) and task (t) were handled as variability sources. sixteen students were assigned to sixteen different tasks and whether the students succeed the task or not was scored by eight raters from two different occupation groups which one is composed of four standard patients and other is composed of four academicians. on these facets, g study was conducted by using different designs. within the scope of this study, the sxrxt design where all variability sources were crossed; different from the all crossed design, sx(o:r)xt design where the occupation nested on rater as the result of scoring of the students by two different occupation groups as standard patient and academicians; rater facet from sxrxt design was taken as fixed facet with regard to occupation groups (sp: standard patient, a: academician) and as a result sxaxt and sxspxt designs were examined. 2.5. data analysis in the analysis of the data, edug software was used. for each design, estimated variance components were discussed 3. findings the variance components estimated as the result of the g study conducted via sxrxt design totally crossed according to each of the 8 raters rating 16 students in line with 16 tasks are given in table 1. table-1. estimated variance components for oxpxg design variance source squares total freedom degree squares average corrected components % s 18.851 15 1.256 0.007 2.8 r 13.933 7 1.990 0.006 2.3 t 181.069 15 12.071 0.091 35.2 sr 25.246 105 0.240 0.008 3.0 st 50.297 225 0.223 0.013 5.1 rt 37.152 105 0.353 0.015 5.7 srt,e 186.542 1575 0.118 0.118 46.0 total 513.093 2047 100 g coefficient 0.73 phi coefficient 0.44 as is shown table 1, there are totally seven variance components in g study conducted with sxrxt design. when the estimated variance components of these variance sources are examined, the variance component of the main effect of the task variability source is 0.091 and explains 35.2% of the total variance. this shows that difference between difficulty levels of the tasks is considerably high (shavelson and webb, 1981; cardinet et al., 2010). the rate of definition of the estimated variance for relative student and rater main effect of the total variance shows that the group of students is a homogenous group regarding performance and there is no effect due to rater difference. furthermore, it can be seen that the variance percentage of the residual component with the biggest variance is 46%. hence, it can be said that 46% of the total variance is due to unexplained systematic or unsystematic errors. the g and phi coefficients of the totally crossed design are calculated as 0.73 and 0.44 respectively. when it is considered that the scoring are done in absolute, it can be said that the reliability could be low regarding the phi coefficient. asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 85-90 88 the estimated variance components of the sx(o:r)xt design different from the all crossed design where the occupation nested on rater as the result of scoring of the students by two different occupation groups as standard patient and academicians are given in table 2. table2. estimated variance components for ox(m:p)xg design variance source squares total freedom degree squares average corrected components % s 18.851 15 1.257 0.007 2.5 r 11.412 3 3.804 0.006 2.2 o:r 2.522 4 0.630 0.001 0.4 t 181.070 15 12.071 0.091 35.0 sr 15.299 45 0.340 0.005 1.7 st:r 9.947 60 0.166 0.004 1.5 st 50.297 225 0.224 0.011 4.2 rt 17.643 45 0.392 0.001 0.4 ot:r 19.510 60 0.325 0.014 5.3 srt 92.021 675 0.136 0.016 6.1 sot:r,e 94.522 900 0.105 0.105 40.6 total 513.093 2047 100 g coefficient 0.66 phi coefficient 0.38 when table 2 is examined, as it is in the totally crossed design, it is seen that the second biggest variance component is the task component with 0.091. the variance of task variability source explains 35% of the total variance. hence, it can be said that the difference between difficulty levels of the duties is high for this design. similarly, the residual component variance with 40.6% is the most contributing one to the total variance. when components in totally crossed design and this nested design are compared, it is seen a nearly 6% reduction. it is thought that this reduction is due to “srt” common effect, however, the explained ratio of the total variance of the other components is seen to be relatively low. this situation shows that the design where the occupation is nested to rater against the totally crossed design does not reveal a big difference in estimated variance components. when compared to totally crossed design, it can be said that the g coefficient (0.66) and phi coefficient (0.38) of this design is reduced. “sxrxt” design where rater is taken as fixed facet according to occupation groups (sp: standard patient, a: academician) is conducted as totally crossed two different designs as sxaxt and sxspxt and g study was performed. the obtained variance components of these two patterns are given in table 3 comparatively. table-3. estimated variance components for fixed facet crossed designs source of variance oxsxg oxaxg squares average corrected components % squares average corrected components % s 0.467 0.004 1.7 1.139 0.012 4.8 r 0.730 0.002 0.8 0.678 0.001 0.2 t 7.715 0.117 47.0 5.064 0.072 27.9 sr 0.144 0.002 1.0 0.301 0.011 4.1 st 0.160 0.014 5.6 0.186 0.014 5.3 rt 0.181 0.005 1.9 0.409 0.017 6.7 srt,e 0.104 0.104 42.0 0.131 0.131 51.0 g coefficient 0.57 0.69 phi coefficient 0.27 0.54 when table 3 is examined, it is seen that while the variance component of students is 0.004 in sxrxt design and it is 0.012 in sxaxt design. in this case, it can be said that when academicians scored students occupies, difference between students’scores is greater. the percentage of explaining total variance of the task variability source is 47% for sxspxt design and 27.9% for oxaxg design. it can be said that the difference between difficulty of the tasks is greater than when the patients score. the percentage of explaining total variance of the rater-student common effect for sxrxt design is 1%, and for sxaxt design it is 4.1% and it can be explained as the interaction between the academician and the student is relatively more than the interaction between the patient and the student. similarly, when “rt” common effect is examined in table 3, it can be inferred as that the standard patients compared to academicians differ less in rating tasks. however, it should also be considered that the contribution the estimated variance of this common effect to the total variance is relatively low. it is seen that the percentage of definition of the total variance of the residual variance source for sxspxt design (51%) is higher than that of the sxaxt design (42%). it can be inferred that the residual variability source is considerably big in fixed facet designs as in the random facet designs. when reliability coefficients are compared for both with fixed facet designs, the score reliability of academicians (phi coefficient = 0.54) is higher than the score reliability of the standard patients (phi coefficient = 0.27). 4. discussion, conclusion and implications the performances of dentistry students regarding osce communication skills have been examined in the frame of generalizability theory using multifacet designs and the results obtained are specified below. students are taken as the measurement object in totally crossed and nested designs. for both designs, the estimated variance component of students has very low effect in explaining the total variance. when the related literature is investigated, there is a common idea that the measurement object should have a significant effect in asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(2): 85-90 89 explaining the total variance. however, in the literature, there are studies which report that variance percentages of the measurement object is low in the cases that the measurement object does not differ regarding the measured attributes.19 in this study, it is concluded that the students do not differ significantly in performances of students regarding the communication skills are succeeded. when the studies conducted in all designs are examined, it is inferred that the variance of the task component is too large. this inference indicated that the tasks for the communication skills differ in regarding the difficulty levels with itself. this finding is consistent with findings what has been reported by yılmaz and gelbal (2011) and kozan et al. (2015). in this and similar studies, the findings related to tasks indicate that the weighted scoring of the tasks that form the skill in fields like medicine can be more suitable. similarly, the control lists, as they do not give information about to what degree the performance levels or criteria are met (moskal and leydens, 2000) in field specific studies, it is suggested to the field experts that the rubrics that facilitate to inform about the level of the performance to be developed. the studies in the literature, it is reported that the rater variability source main effect is relatively low effect on explaining total variance and concluded that raters are consistent in scoring the students with regard to tasks internally. these results are parallel with the results from the studies in which the different abilities within hacettepe university osce examination are evaluated of yılmaz and gelbal (2011); yılmaz and tavsancıl (2014) and yılmaz and başbaşa (2015). unexplained variance is too large in all designs. this situation reveals the requirement that the different variability sources should be included in the designs. when the raters with respect to the occupation groups are taken as fixed, according to the scoring by academicians, the duties are differed more regarding the difficultness-easiness in cases the students are rated by standard patient. when residual effects are examined according to the occupation groups, the unexplained variance ratio revealed higher in cases that the academicians score to task of the students. one reason of this difference is thought to be due to the differentiation between tasks. other reason of this difference is due to the academicians participating in scoring are experts in field of medicine. field experts evaluating these tasks in more equivalent qualities and giving similar importance to all the tasks forming the skill could have increased this difference. overall, it is said that phi coefficients in all designs are low. one reason of this is that unexplained variance is large thus it has too much errors. another reason is that the task variability source has a large variance value. beside these, putting out the differences between performances of communication skills of students who are measurement object is also a factor which decreases the reliability. however, it is concluded that the reliability is higher in fixed facet studies when the academicians score the students. it is thought that the reason why academicians evaluated the students more reliably is due to the doctor academicians acting more consistently in sorting tasks and scoring. researches can perform similar studies to this one where different raters are used, different variability sources are considered in different conditions with mixed designs. at the same time in performance evaluation the generalizability theory is important as it can perform a more realistic and extensive reliability analysis via evaluating many error sources and their interactions together and therefore in order to perform extensive reliability analysis, to collect information on student performances, evaluation, tasks, raters and to perform decision studies that shed light to future studies, it is suggested that the generalizability theory to be used in performance evaluation studies. references atılgan, h., 2008. using generalizability theory to assess the score reliability of the special ability selection examinations for music education programmes in higher education. international journal of research & method in education, 31(1): 63-76. view at google scholar | view at publisher barneveld, c.v., 2005. the dependability of medical students’ performance ratings as documentedon in-training evaluations. academic medicine, 80(3): 309-312. view at google scholar | view at publisher brennan, r.l., 2001. generalizability theory. new york: springerverlog. cardinet, j., s. johnson and g. pini, 2010. applying generalizability theory using edug. usa: 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=comparison%20of%20balanced%20and%20unbalanced%20patterns%20in%20generalizable%20theory%20with%20intramuscular%20injection%20station%20data http://dx.doi.org/10.15390/eb.2014.2408 329 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 329-334, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.329.334 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the investigation of ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates emre ünal department of primary education, faculty of education nigde omer halisdemir university, nigde, turkey abstract the aim of this study is to investigate the ecological citizenship of teacher candidates in terms of different variables and to determine the variables influencing the ecological citizenship level. the study group consists of 318 voluntary senior students who study at the departments of primary school teaching, social studies teaching, primary school mathematics teaching, science teaching and physical education and sports teaching in the faculty of education at a state university. the data were obtained through ecological citizenship scale developed by karatekin and uysal (2018). the study was designed in survey method, which is a quantitative research method. the results of the study showed that the ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates did not differ significantly in terms of the variables of gender, mother educational attainment level, father educational attainment level, membership to non-governmental organizations and membership to student organizations while significant differences were found in terms of the variables of department and participation in social projects. keywords: ecology, citizenship, teacher candidate, ecological citizenship, environment, environmental problem. citation | emre ünal (2019). the investigation of ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 329-334. history: received: 1 february 2019 revised: 13 march 2019 accepted: 18 april 2019 published: 31 may 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 330 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 330 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 331 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 332 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 333 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.329.334&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/423 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1213-3965 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/423 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1213-3965 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/423 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1213-3965 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/423 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1213-3965 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 329-334 330 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction the beginning of environmental problems to threaten the current order can be dated back to the first half of the 19th century; in other words, the industrial revolution. in fact, in this period, the relationship between man and nature began to change in a unidirectional manner to the detriment of nature and environmental problems started to become a threat to human life. it is stated that, in addition to industrialization, liberalization (jagers, 2009) and the capitalist economic system (houser, 2009) are the other reasons for the increase in environmental problems. the reasons for this may be that liberal democracy does not force citizens to be more sensitive towards the environment (barry, 2001, cited in 2001 by jagers (2009) and that capitalist economic system has unlimited concepts of production and consumption. environmental problems emerge from the collective results of the citizens‟ unsustainable lifestyles, which makes it necessary to ensure that they take ecological considerations and responsibilities into account while trying to overcome environmental problems (jagers et al., 2014). the fact that environmental values have an important place in the expression of citizens' environmental responsibility behaviors (biagi and ferro, 2011) has led to many studies examining opinions and beliefs of teachers and teacher candidates on environmental education, sustainability and nature in different countries (cotton, 2006; munoz et al., 2009; manolas and tampakis, 2010; begum, 2012; ahi et al., 2017; uitto and saloranta, 2017; aarniolinnanvuori, 2019). green et al. (2016) addressed the role of governments in overcoming environmental problems in their study and highlighted the need to handle the solution in the dimensions of citizen and government. such that, the limited content and structure of environmental education have formed a basis for the idea that the evaluation of related studies in terms of citizenship is more important in the protection of the environment and in creating a sustainable habitat. considering the issue globally, it is understood from this point of view that environmental concerns have started to be regarded as a problem in various strata of society and that a connection between citizenship and environment is tried to be established especially in the last years (jelin, 2000; wolf et al., 2009; latta and wittman, 2010). in this sense, ecological citizenship concept is increasingly getting important in solving environmental problems (latta, 2007). it is evident that the environmental problems, once regarded as local issues, have gained an international dimension with the globalization process. this globalization process leads to the implementation of policies involving approaches different from the traditional approach in both the definition of social problems and the search for political solutions (sáiz, 2005). the most significant one of these policies is the adoption of the concept of “ecological citizenship”, which includes the increase in the environmental sensitivity of citizens. because, as an ecological citizen, the individual has the responsibility to exhibit behaviors that include the daily lifestyle which will reduce the ecological pressures on nature (lummis et al., 2017). in the literature on environment, “ecological citizenship” is frequently associated with “environmental citizenship” whereas the issues that constitute the content of this definition are considered under the names of “sustainable citizenship“ and “green citizenship” in some studies (bell, 2005). kenis (2016) stated that ecological citizenship refers to a conscious choice that is intended to change the individual behavior of the individual and to reject practices in which this behavior is guided by economic incentives or advertising campaigns, thereby altering the underlying motivation of environmental action. macgregor and szerszynski (2003) expressed environmental citizenship as a personal commitment to learning more about the environment and to taking measures against environmental problems (cited in bell (2005). on a basic level, ecological citizenship is related to citizens' status, rights and participation processes related to natural environment (crane et al., 2008). in this context, “ecological citizenship” consists of environmental information, environmental awareness, environmental concern, personality variables, socio-demographic variables, environmental education, environmental literacy and performing environmentally responsible behaviors (hawthorne and alabaster, 1999). as stated by green et al. (2016), teachers have the potential to influence students‟ environmental citizenship levels significantly by affecting their knowledge, value, belief and environmental actions. the necessity for every single child to adopt being productive starting from his/her school environment, to know about nature and culture and to be an active practitioner in the protection of nature and culture (p.84) is stated in the document called "strong turkey happy children educational vision 2023" by the ministry of education. also, the need to arrange awareness and skills education programs concerning multiple-literacies such as digital literacy, financial literacy, health literacy, ecological literacy, social media literacy, etc. as the 21th century skills is mentioned under the title of lifelong learning (meb, 2018). considering the issue with these dimensions, it can be claimed that teachers will assume important tasks in transferring environmental sensitivities to students. the purpose of this study is to investigate the ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates in terms of the variables of gender, mother educational attainment level, father educational attainment level, membership to non-governmental organizations, participation in social projects and membership to student organizations. 2. methodology 2.1. research model in this study, survey method, which is among quantitative research methods, was used. a survey is a type of research to describe an existing situation as it is büyüköztürk et al. (2010). in this study, survey method is used as it aims to determine the ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates in terms of different variables. 2.2. study group this study was carried out in 2018-2019 academic year with 318 senior students studying in the faculty of education at a state university. the study group consists of 105 male and 213 female teacher candidates. as for the department variable, the study group includes 131 teacher candidates from the elementary school teaching program, 76 teacher candidates from the science teaching program, 20 teacher candidates from the elementary mathematics teaching program, 32 teacher candidates from the social studies teaching program and 59 teacher candidates from the physical education and sports teaching program. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 329-334 331 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. data collection in this study, ecological citizenship scale developed by karatekin and uysal (2018) was used as the data collection tool. the scale consists of 24 items and 4 sub-dimensions. in the exploratory factor analysis to examine the construct validity of the scale, the total variance was found 49.81% and the internal consistency coefficient, cronbach-alpha, was found as .901 for the whole scale (karatekin and uysal, 2018). in the exploratory factor analysis which is the structural validity analysis for this study group, the total variance was 51.32% and the cronbach-alpha internal consistency coefficient was .886 for the whole scale. the ecological citizenship scale is a valid and reliable scale for this study group. 2.4. data analysis in order to determine the analysis techniques to be used in the study, it is examined whether or not the data showed normal distribution. for this purpose, kurtosis and skewness were examined. it is stated that the kurtosis value must be between +1 and -1 (george and mallery, 2010) and the distortion value must be between +1 and -1 (hair et al., 2013). it was concluded that the kurtosis and skewness values in this study were among the required values and that the data showed normal distribution. as a result, independent t test and one-way analysis of variance were used to analyse the data. 3. findings the teacher candidates‟ ecological citizenship levels in terms of gender are given in table 1. table-1. the independent t-test results showing teacher candidates' ecological citizenship levels in terms of gender. gender n ̅ s t p male 105 3,43 ,66 1,901 ,058 female 213 3,56 ,53 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. the t-test results in table 1 indicate that ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates do not differ significantly in terms of their gender. although the mean scores of female teacher candidates were higher than those of males, no statistically significant difference was found. the teacher candidates‟ ecological citizenship levels in terms of the department variable are given in table 2. table-2. the one-way analysis of variance test results showing teacher candidates' ecological citizenship levels in terms of the department variable. department sum of squares df mean square f p source of difference (scheffe) between groups 4,793 4 1,198 3,697 ,006 sö-sbö i̇mö-sbö within groups 101,768 313 ,324 total 106,561 317 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. according to the one-way analysis of variance test results in table 2, ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates vary significantly in terms of the department variable. scheffe test was conducted to investigate the source of the difference. it was seen that the difference is between the social studies teacher candidates and the primary school teacher candidates, and social studies teacher candidates and the primary school mathematics teacher candidates. the difference was found to be in favour of the social studies teacher candidates in both situation. the teacher candidates‟ ecological citizenship levels in terms of their mothers‟ educational attainments variable are given in table 3. table-3. the one-way analysis of variance test results showing teacher candidates' ecological citizenship levels in terms of their mothers‟ educational attainments variable. mothers’ educational attainments sum of squares df mean square f p between groups ,522 4 ,130 ,386 ,818 within groups 106,039 313 ,338 total 106,561 317 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. the figures in table 3 show that ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates do not differ significantly in terms of the mothers‟ educational attainment variable. it was found that mother educational attainment levels of teacher candidates had no effect on their ecological citizenship levels. the teacher candidates‟ ecological citizenship levels in terms of their fathers‟ educational attainments variable are given in table 4. table-4. the one-way analysis of variance test results showing teacher candidates' ecological citizenship levels in terms of their fathers‟ educational attainments variable. fathers’ educational attainments sum of squares df mean square f p between groups 1,808 5 ,362 1,080 ,371 within groups 104,753 312 ,335 total 106,561 317 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 329-334 332 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as it can be seen in table 4, ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates do not differ significantly in terms of their fathers‟ educational attainment levels. the figures indicate that fathers‟ educational attainment levels have no effect on the teacher candidates‟ ecological citizenship levels. the teacher candidates‟ ecological citizenship levels in terms of membership to non-governmental organizations (ngos) are given in table 5. table-5. the independent t-test results showing teacher candidates' ecological citizenship levels in terms of membership to ngos. ngos membership n ̅ s t p yes 44 3,67 ,53 1,918 ,056 no 274 3,49 ,58 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. according to the figures in table 5, ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates do not show a significant difference according to their membership to ngos. although the mean scores of the teacher candidates who are members of ngos are higher than those of the teacher candidates who have no membership to any ngos, there is no statistically significant difference. the teacher candidates‟ ecological citizenship levels in terms of participation in social projects variable are given in table 6. table-6. the independent t-test results showing teacher candidates' ecological citizenship levels in terms of participation in social projects variable. participation n ̅ s t p yes 124 3,64 ,60 2,975 ,003 no 194 3,44 ,56 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. the independent t-test results in table 6 show that ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates vary significantly in terms of their participation in social projects. the mean scores of the teacher candidates who participate in social projects are higher than those of the teacher candidates who do not take part in social projects. in this case, it can be concluded that participating in any social project increases the ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates. the teacher candidates‟ ecological citizenship levels in terms of membership to student organizations variable are given in table 7. table-7. the independent t-test results showing teacher candidates' ecological citizenship levels in terms of membership to student organizations variable. student organization n ̅ s t p yes 93 3,46 ,60 1,090 ,276 no 225 3,54 ,57 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. the figures in table 7 indicate that ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates do not differ significantly in terms of their membership to student organizations. it can be concluded that membership to a student organization has no effect on ecological citizenship levels. 4. results and discussion the concept of ecological citizenship is still debated today (karatekin and uysal, 2018) because it contains many definitions such as individual information, environmental literacy and attitude towards the environment. in this respect, there are no comprehensive studies on the concept of ecological citizenship in the literature. also, the concept hasn‟t yet been addressed on the basis of different variables in the studies that handle it indirectly. likewise, the ecological citizenship scale developed in our country has not been adequately addressed in terms of variables either. it is thought that this study will contribute to the field in this context. the first one of the variables that are taken into consideration in relation to ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates is the gender variable. although the mean scores of female teacher candidates are higher than those of the male teacher candidates, there is no statistically significant difference in terms of gender. the reasons for the high mean scores of female teacher candidates may be that society considers the teaching profession as a woman‟s profession in which women can perform family and business life together and that women internalize this social value (dogan and coban, 2009) and environmental sensitivities more than do men. it can be stated that women's critical thinking tendencies are higher (can and kaymakçı, 2008) and that, in terms of critical thinking tendency, women have more attitudes and values such as approaching a problem from a sceptical and curious point of view, analysing decisions while making decisions about the solution of the problem, being planned, reasoning the decisions out, questioning and criticizing the events encountered, thinking about the details of the situation, conducting in-depth observations, fulfilling the responsibility given, taking the appropriate conditions into consideration during the decision-making process and being tolerant (yıldırım, 2018), which supports the finding obtained in the research. it was found that ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates differ significantly in terms of the departments in which they study. the difference was found to be between the social studies teacher candidates and the primary school teacher candidates, and social studies teacher candidates and the primary school mathematics teacher candidates. in both situations, the difference was in favour of the social studies teacher candidates. the reason for this result may be that this process is managed more effectively in some courses (social project asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 329-334 333 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group development, citizenship knowledge, today's world issues) which are only included in the undergraduate programs of social studies teacher candidates. it was concluded that the ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates do not differ significantly in terms of mother and father educational attainment levels. the educational attainment levels of teacher candidates‟ fathers and mothers have no effect on ecological citizenship levels of the teacher candidates. considering that the teacher candidates in the study group are senior students, this result is thought to stem from the idea that their personal values, beliefs and attitudes are already internalized. ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates do not show a significant difference in terms of their membership to ngos. although the mean scores of the teacher candidates who are members of a ngo are higher than those of the teacher candidates who have no membership to any ngos, no statistically significant difference was found. it can be inferred from this result that teacher candidates who are members of ngos have more democratic values and adopt democratic values more (akin and ozdemir, 2009) and that membership to ngos enable individuals to be active in environmental development and problem solving, improving their social involvement competencies (ersoy, 2014). ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates vary significantly in terms of participation in social projects variable. the mean scores of the teacher candidates who participate in social projects are higher than those of the teacher candidates who do not take part in any social projects. in this case, it can be concluded that taking part in any social project increases the ecological citizenship levels of teacher candidates. teacher candidates are supposed to gain social sensitivity and responsibility, have entrepreneurship and self-confidence, integrate into society and take the leadership role in society in the pre-service period 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publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 41 asian journal of education and training vol. 4, no. 1, 41-44, 2018 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.41.44 the investigation of the relationship between children’s 50m freestyle swimming performances and motor performances zait burak aktug1  ruckan iri2 elif top3 ( corresponding author) 1,2university of nigde omer halisdemir, school of physical education and sports, nigde, turkey 3university of usak, faculty of sport sciences abstract the aim of the study is to examine the relationship between children’s 50 m freestyle swimming performances and motor performances. there were 32 swimmers (male = 21, female = 11), who had been swimming for at least one and a half year, participated in the study. the motor performances of the participating swimmers were determined through the dordel koch test (dkt) and 50 m swimming performances via the stopwatch. the spearman correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between children’s motor performances and the swimming performances of 50 m. as a result of the statistical analysis, it was determined that the performance categories of dkt sub-dimensions were dktshuttle, dktpush-up and dktbalance performances of the categories in which both girls and boys were the best. it was determined that male swimmers would perform dkt6min running and female swimmers would have a positive effect on the 50 m freestyle swimming performance of dktsideward jump performances (p <0.01, p <0.05). in addition, it was determined that all the swimmers had a positive effect on the 50 m freestyle swimming performances of the dkt sideward jump, dkt6min running and dktflexibilty performance (p <0.01, p <0.05). as a result, it can be stated that dkt6min running, which is the demonstration of aerobic performance, increased dktflexibility and dktsideward jump performance will contribute to 50m swimming performance.. moreover, it can be suggested that the performance development of the upper extremity (dktshuttle and dktpush-up), which is required for the branch in the performance, is categorized as performance. keywords: children, swimming, motor performance. citation | zait burak aktug; ruckan iri; elif top (2018). the investigation of the relationship between children’s 50m freestyle swimming performances and motor performances. asian journal of education and training, 4(1): 41-44. history: received: 12 january 2018 revised: 1 february 2018 accepted: 5 february 2018 published: 6 february 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 42 2. material and method....................................................................................................................................................................... 42 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 43 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 43 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 44 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2018.41.41.44&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5102-4331 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6520-873x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0448-9731 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5102-4331 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6520-873x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0448-9731 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5102-4331 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6520-873x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0448-9731 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5102-4331 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6520-873x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0448-9731 asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 41-44 42 1. introduction motor skill is specified as the movement or voluntary movement task of one or more body parts towards the learned goal (gallahue and ozmun, 2006; lopes et al., 2013). motor performance is defined as the motor performance required to perform the motor task (mosston and ashworth, 1986) or an act of performing a mobility skill (gallahue et al., 2012). motor skills and motor performance are strong indicators of children's health state and achievement in sports (vandorpe et al., 2012; callewaert et al., 2015; pion et al., 2015). motor skills and motor performance are closely related to intelligence, age, general motivation concern, fatigue, environmental factors as well as physical activity or level of participation in sports (level of fitness, training status) (timmons et al., 2007; sayın, 2011). in a study examining the effect of sports participation on motor skills, iri and aktuğ (2017) determined the motor skills of children who did not play sports through the körperkoordinationstest für kinder test. iri and aktuğ (2017) stated that the motor skills of children performing sports were significantly higher than those of non-athletic children. likewise, fransen et al. (2012) reported that children with high motor skills were more successful in physical fitness tests and they participated in sports more frequently. all physical activity and sports have positive effects on motor skills and motor performance and swimming is amongst these sports. swimming is a sport branch that combines a number of factors such as high-level muscular strength, technical skill, coordination, rhythm, speed, explosive strength and correct technique (garrido et al., 2010; morouço et al., 2012; yapıcı et al., 2016). the fact that swimming is of great benefit to children in terms of heart, lung capacity, endurance, flexibility, balance, physical appearance, muscle strength and weight control (malina and bouchard, 1991; çelebi, 2008) has been regarded as both as a sport and a recreational activity in recent years. the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between motor performance and 50m free style performance. in addition, when the literature related to motor and performance in turkey was examined, the studies mostly used the ktk test, tgmd2 test, eurofit tests and bruininks-oseretsky test, whereas in the current study, dordel koch test was used to determine motor performance, which indicates the originality of the current study. 2. material and method a total of 32 (male = 21, female = 11) swimmers between the ages of 10 and 13 were included in the study. swimming athletes engaged in swimming were included with the experience of at least one and a half years (average of female swimmers = 1.77 ± 0.47 years, average of male swimmers = 2.07 ± 0.68 years). the selected subjects swim for 4 days a week so that each training will take about 90 minutes on average. the height of the swimmers participating in the study was measured by means of tape measure and their body weights were measured through an electronic scale. children's bmis are calculated by formula [body weight (kg) / height (m2)]. children's shuttle, push-up, balance, long jump, flexibility, sideward jump and 6min running motor performances were measured via the dordel koch test, free-standing swimming performances were determined with a stopwatch. 2.1. dordel koch test dordel and koch (2004) is a test designed to determine the motor performance and basic functions of children and young people aged 6-16 years. the dordel-koch test consists of 7 different tests. 6 of which are grouped in the established stations (jumping, balancing, stopping, long jump, shuttle, push-up, flexibility), 6 min running was conducted as a final test. the best results were included in the study dordel and koch (2004). dktsideward jump test; the child was folded four times in 15 seconds and applied at the highest speed on the fixed rope in the form of left and right jumping without touching the two feet and the ipe. the test was applied twice to the total score recorded. dktflexibility test; is a test that measures the flexibility of the waist and especially the hamstring muscles. children's feet are based on the base of the flexibility board, measured in a straight line extending to the last point where they can reach with their fingers. the point on which the foot base stands is determined as zero (0), the side on which the feet extend is positive (+) and the side with the calf is negative (-). the test was conducted twice and the best value was recorded in cm. dktstanding-long jump test; the child was measured in the form of a double leg jumble to the farthest point where the legs can reach next, taking the force from the arms behind the determined zero. the last point of the child's heel was recorded in cm. 2 trials were implemented and the best result was included in the study. dktshuttle test; the child's head is measured in the back of the head, with the jaws open sideways, and the body bent away from the knees and approaching the knees. each full motion performed within 40 seconds was accepted as 1 and recorded as units. dktbalance test; children were measured as single legs for 60 seconds on a fixed rope in double layer. the number of contacts of the legs which was not on the rope was recorded as number. dktpush-up test; the children started the the push-up test while lying flat on, and the hands were on their hips. at the beginning of the allocated time, the hands were pressed under the shoulders and the body was lifted and the movement was completed by returning the starting position after touching one hand to another in the same position. the number of push-ups the child could make within 40 seconds was recorded as number. dkt6min-running test; this test was conducted when the children ran around the area of a volleyball field (54m) for 6 minutes as fast as possible. the children completed this length within 6 minutes either by running or walking when they felt tired. the total distance was recorded in metre. each of the subscales of dkt are scored and evaluated separately, and a general score and evaluation are not conducted in dkt. dkt sub-dimension performances are indicated by scores from 1 to 6. 1 = very good, 2 = good, 3 = moderate, 4 = adequate, 5 = poor, 6 = very poor. 2.2. 50 m freestyle swimming performance measurement the 50m freestyle swimming performances of the children were measured through a stopwatch (casio, japan) measuring at a precision of 0.01 sec. the children were individually tested after 5 minutes of running and flexing asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 41-44 43 movements on land and after 10 minutes of low and high intensity exercises in water. the 50 m free style swimming test was started with push-out command when they push the pool wall with their feet. when the distance of 50 m was completed, the test was ended. two measurements were taken from each swimmer and the swimmers were given 30 minutes rest between 2 measurements. the best value was included in the study. 2.3. statistical analysis spearman correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between 50 m free-style swimming performance and dkt sub-dimensions after the data were analyzed through the spss 24 software program. 3. findings table-1. the swimmers’ average and standard deviations of demographic variables male (21) female (11) total (32) mean±sd mean±sd mean±sd age (year) 12.19 ± 1.72 10.91 ± 1.45 11.75 ± 1.72 height (m) 1.57 ± 0.11 1.52 ± 0.11 1.55 ± 0.11 weight (kg) 49.62 ± 13.58 37.63 ± 11.09 45.50 ± 13.86 bmi (kg/m2) 19.73 ± 3.51 15.87 ± 2.81 18.41 ± 3.73 sports age (year) 2.07 ± 0.68 1.77 ± 0.47 1.97 ± 0.62 table-2. correlation table between 50m free-style swimming rates and dkt subtests dktsideward jump dktflexibility dktstanding long jump dktshuttle dktbalance dktpush-up dkt6 min running male 50m swimming n 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 p 0.08 0.08 0.07 0.09 0.18 0.16 0.01 r -0.39 -0.39 -0.41 -0.38 0.31 -0.31 -0.55** female 50m swimming n 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 p 0.04 0.35 0.67 0.93 0.55 0.57 0.25 r -0.63* -0.31 -0.15 -0.03 0.20 -0.20 -0.38 total 50m swimming n 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 p 0.00 0.03 0.05 0.18 0.15 0.16 0.00 r -0.48** -0.38* -0.34 -0.24 0.26 -0.25 -0.51** *p<0.01, *p<0,05 when table 2 is examined, it is seen that there is a negative correlation between male swimmers' 50 m free style rates and dkt6 min running test (p <0.01). it was determined that there was a negative correlation between the 50m freestyle rates of female swimmers and dktsideward jump test (p <0.01). it was found that there was a negative correlation between total swimmers' 50 m free style rates and dktsideward jump (p <0.01). it was determined that there was a negative correlation between the total swimmers' 50m free style rates and the dkt flexibility test (p <0.01). there was a significant negative correlation between total swimmers' 50m freestyle rates and dkt6 min running test (p <0.01). table-3. performance categorization of dkt sub-dimensions male (21) female (11) total (32) dktsideward jump 6.00 ± 0.00 5.91 ± 0.30 5.97 ± 0.18 dktflexibility 3.43 ± 0.98 3.55 ± 1.37 3.47 ± 1.11 dktstanding long jump 3.33 ± 1.28 3.73 ± 0.79 3.47 ± 1.13 dktshutle 1.95 ± 1.20 1.45 ± 0.98 1.78 ± 1.13 dktbalance 2.24 ± 1.81 2.73 ± 2.00 2.41 ± 1.86 dktpush-up 2.33 ± 1.24 1.91 ± 1.58 2.19 ± 1.35 dkt6 min running 3.33 ± 1.20 2.64 ± 1.12 3.09 ± 1.20 when table 3 is examined, it is seen that for both male and female swimmers; dktsideward jump performance were is in the poor category, of dktflexibility, dktstanding long jump and dkt6 min running performances were in the middle category. in addition, it was determined that both female and male swimmers’ best categories were dktshuttle, dktpush-up and dktbalance performances. 4. discussion as a result of the study, it can be determined that according to the performance categorization of dkt subdimensions, dktpush-up indicating the strength of arm and chest muscles, dktshutle indicating the strength of body muscles, dktbalance indicating the coordination sensitivity, are all at a good level. senol and gulmez (2017) used a group of 13-year-old swimmers, they were categorized into 3 groups; those performing exercise band (trx) activities in addition to swimming training, those performing exercises with body weight in addition to swimming training and those performing only swimming exercises. as a result of the study, it can be stated that the strength values of the children who performed extra exercises band increased; moreover, the swimming exercise alone did not lead a change in the children's strength parameters. değirmenci and karacan (2017) stated that swimmers aged 11-13 years significantly increased their free-standing grades of 25 m, 50 m, 100 m, 150 m and 200 m in the last test, which applied the theraband stregth exercises for the upper and lower extremities for 12 weeks. in a similar study, the relationship between muscle strength and performance at 50 m and 400 m was determined and found to be positively correlated with free style swimming performance of the upper and lower limb strengths (hawley et al., 1992). asian journal of education and training, 2018, 4(1): 41-44 44 the results of the study showed that lower extremity muscle strenghts (dktsideward jump and dktstanding long jump) were lower than the desired level, although upper extremity muscle strengths (dktshutle and dktpush-up) were at the desired level according to performance categorization of dkt subdimensions. since the 50 m free style is evaluated as short distance and speed swimming performance, the speed characteristic of this distance swimmers is very important. it is hardly possible to reach the maximum speed with lower muscle strength. for this reason, swimmers need to develop all body strengths. the fact that children participating in the current study do not have dktsideward jump and dktstanding long jump performances with dkt, indicating lower extremity muscle strength, may be due to the fact that swimmer children generally do not utilize jump and leap movements to perform exercises in water. in the current study, there is a negative relationship between swimmers’ dktflexibility and dkt6 min running values and 50m free-style swimming speeds. in other words, as the flexibility and aerobic endurance of swimmers increase, swimming speeds improves. the flexibility and mobility of the joints and muscles as well as the strength of the muscles are very important for simmers (megep (milli eğitim ve öğretim sisteminin güçlendirilmesi projesi), 2008). sevim (2002) stated that the flexibility of the children between the ages of 10-13 is good and participating in sports will increase flexibility. also, sevim (2002) stated that flexibility at the desired levels will improve the performance of the motoric properties. as a result, it can be stated that dkt6-min running, dktsideward jump and dktflexibility performances, which are indicators of aerobic performance, positively affected 50m freestyle swimming performances of swimmers. in addition, it can be said that the performance improvement of lower 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https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20effect%20of%20a%206-week%20land%20and%20resistance%20training%20of%2013-16%20years%20old%20swimmers%20groups%20to%20lower%20limb%20i̇sokinetic%20strength%20values%20and%20to%20swimming%20performance https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20effect%20of%20a%206-week%20land%20and%20resistance%20training%20of%2013-16%20years%20old%20swimmers%20groups%20to%20lower%20limb%20i̇sokinetic%20strength%20values%20and%20to%20swimming%20performance http://dx.doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v13i3.4158 616 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 616-620, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.616.620 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the attitudes of high school students studying in sports high schools in turkey toward addictive substances yakup kilic1 zeki coskuner2 ( corresponding author) 1,2phd, firat university, faculty of sports sciences, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to reveal the attitudes of students, who study in sports high schools in turkey, toward addictive substances. the study group consisted of 326 randomly selected students from elazig, erzincan and malatya sports high schools. in order to obtain the data from the research group, the attitude toward addictive substances scale, consisting of 45 items, was used. the data obtained from 326 students were analyzed in spss 22 package software. firstly, normality analysis was performed and it was decided to perform parametric and non-parametric tests according to the results. there was a statistically significant difference in age and class variables of the students. there was no statistically significant difference between the variables of gender, monthly income of the family and educational status of the parents. as a result of the study, it was observed that male and female students' attitudes toward addiction increased as age and class levels progressed. in this context, more attention should be paid to education-oriented studies to prevent addiction. it is suggested that educational activities, such as psychological support and health programs, provided by guidance teachers and psychological counselors should be increased in number. keywords: addiction, substance abuse, sports, students, turkey. citation | yakup kilic; zeki coskuner (2019). the attitudes of high school students studying in sports high schools in turkey toward addictive substances. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 616-620. history: received: 27 september 2019 revised: 30 october 2019 accepted: 4 december 2019 published: 2 january 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 617 2. materials and method ................................................................................................................................................................... 617 3. results and interpretation ........................................................................................................................................................... 618 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 619 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 620 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.616.620&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1196 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4889-5571 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3955-8525 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1196 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4889-5571 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3955-8525 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1196 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4889-5571 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3955-8525 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1196 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4889-5571 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3955-8525 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 616-620 617 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the literature in terms of perceptions of substance abuse in high school students, which is one of the most critical demographic units in terms of drug use. it is believed that investigating and reporting perceptions of high school students will provide vital insight regarding substance abuse, which will enable professionals in this field to analyze, help and support high school students in a more efficient way. the study will also guide future studies on this subject via its materials, methods and results. 1. introduction there are many problems related to young people. among these problems, especially the problems related to substance use and drug addiction, which concern the young generation, are noteworthy (baskurt, 2012). addiction is defined as the continuation of the substance intake despite the physical, mental or social problems that arise during the process of taking a substance to obtain a significant effect, its inability to be released despite the desire to quit, increasing the amount of substance taken to achieve the same effect and the desire to stop the substance (ministry of health (moh), 2019). when it comes to matter, the object that can be perceived and divided by the senses comes to mind. substances are objects that cause intoxication in people and disrupts the health of physical and mental life (alcohol, tobacco, heroin, poppy, drugs, etc.), which prevents the mind from performing its activities (budak, 2000). substance abuse differs from other health problems with its various features. one of the simple differences that distinguish substance abuse from other disorders (depression, anxiety disorders, etc.) is that starting to use drugs can be considered as a behavior of the person's choice. it is unclear whether this choice is a rational choice. however, this behavior, which initiates the path to addiction later, forms the basis for addressing addiction as a behavioral problem and cognitive and behavioral approaches that have an important place in the treatment (polat, 2014). substance abuse that occurs as a deterioration of the individual, social and professional life of the person who shows long-term physiological and psychological dependences on the substance used is substance abuse. in connection with the deterioration of life, failure to fulfill basic responsibilities in work, school or home life, having problems in legal relations with the substance or interpersonal relations, or using the substance despite aggravating the existing problems may indicate substance abuse. however, in order to be able to make this diagnosis, it is necessary to repeat the use of the substance frequently over a long period and to develop a tolerance for the substance taken. substance addiction is an important problem since the discovery that addictive substances change a person's mental state and make him/her feel different, even though for a short time (beyazyürek and satır, 2000). addiction is a process that destroys the individual's freedom and autonomy (doğan, 2001). substance addiction can be largely defined by behaviors related to searching for and receiving the substance. at the heart of these behaviors are individuals' decision-making processes, such as choosing to take medication for more positive social activity (stoops and kearns, 2018). substance abuse can also be used by addicts to solve psychological problems and meet personal needs. these unhealthy cognitive factors are often effective in applying the substance. many personality traits such as low self-esteem, individualization, irrational attitudes and beliefs, high tendency to rebel, inability to adapt to conflict and conflict management skills, low self-esteem to group and community, and low self-esteem may be effective in the emergence of these cognitive factors (gürol, 2008). the use of addictive substances by adolescents disrupts their social and psychological structures and affects their quality of life and thus becomes one of the most important problems for them (köknel (1998). turkish national monitoring centre for drugs and drugs addiction (tubim), in their study conducted in 2011-2012 with 11812 high school sophomore students reported that 1.5% of the students demonstrated at least one substance use behavior (turkish national monitoring centre for drugs and drugs addiction (tubim), 2012). the increase in substance use and addiction has become one of the most important public health problems that all societies have to face by overcoming racial and ethnic differences (dumas et al., 1999). according to the research of the turkish national monitoring centre for drugs and drugs addiction in 2011, the smoking rate in the 15-24 age group was 4.6%, while the rate of alcohol use was found to be 10.4%. according to the data of substance use in the 15-24 age group is 2.9%. compared to other age groups, this group is the age range in which substance use is highest (turkish statistical institute (tsi), 2012). sports schools as educational institutions in turkey, depending on the ministry of education is an institution that has started training in 2004. these educational institutions provide 4 years of education and training in the field of sports education. in line with their interests, desires and abilities, students are educated to acquire basic knowledge and skills related to sports education and they grow up as successful individuals in their fields. students are preparing for higher education programs related to sports in these educational institutions. they grow as individuals who contribute to turkish art, culture and sports and successfully represent their country. in these educational institutions, students are provided with sports disciplines and grow as individuals who adopt the gentlemanliness (ministry of national education (mone), 2019). it is the duty and responsibility of adults to protect the physical and mental health of these young people, who are carriers of societies and societal cultures for the future. their healthy upbringing is the basic issue of all societies. the study was done in this context, the critical age range representing the sports high school students' attitudes toward the addictive substances in turkey were examined. 2. materials and method in this research, the “quantitative method” was used and the relational survey type was preferred as the research design. karasar (2014) described the relational screening model as a research model aiming to determine the existence and the degree of co-change between two and more variables. the study group consisted of 326 students randomly selected from the elazig sports high school (145 students), erzincan sports high school (104 students) and malatya sports high school (77 students). in order to obtain the data from the research group, the validity and reliability study developed by aksoy (2006) was asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 616-620 618 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group conducted. in this study, cronbach-alpha internal consistency coefficient was found to be 0.821 in the validity and reliability study. as a result of the data obtained from 326 students, first of all, the normality test was performed to determine whether the attitude toward addictive substances scale fulfills the assumption of normality. as it can be seen in table 1, the skewness and kurtosis values of the attitude toward addictive substances scale were found to be between +1.5 and -1.5 and it was determined that the normality was realized. because, in tabachnic and fidell (2007) skewness and kurtosis values in the range of +1.5 to -1.5 stated that the distribution can be interpreted as normal. table-1. result of the normality test of the attitude toward addictive substances scale scale n sd mixture corruption attitude toward addictive substances scale 326 3.032 0.681 [-0.210; 0.135] [0.796; 0.269] afterward, frequency and percentage calculations were made to reveal the distribution of the research group according to individual variables. independent variables; sample independent sample t-test den, one of the parametric tests, to assess the level of differentiation according to gender variable; (t-test) was used to determine differentiations according to age, family income and class variables. for the variables of the education level of fathers and mothers of the research group, “kruskal wallis test” was performed, which is one of the nonparametric tests. in the study group, the kruskal wallis test was preferred from non-parametric tests because the educational status of the parents of the students was less than 30. lsd test was used to moderate the differences between the independent variables. the level of statistical significance was accepted as p<0.05. 3. results and interpretation in this section, the findings obtained from the opinions of sports high school students receiving sports education are given for the purposes of the research. table-2. results of the t-test according to the genders of the research group. scale gender n sd t-value p-value attitude toward addictive substances scale male 233 2.998 0.702 -1.416 0.158 female 93 3.116 0.621 note: independent sample t-test, p<0.05. when the attitudes of sports high school students toward addictive substances were examined, according to gender variable; no statistically significant difference was observed (p> 0.05). table-3. results of anova analysis according to the age variable of the research group. scale age n sd f p-value lsd attitude toward addictive substances scale (a) 14-15 age 106 2.899 0.602 3.345 0.036* a, b a, c (b) 16-17 age 158 3.072 0.707 (c) 18-19 age 62 3.156 0.715 note: one way anova (lsd), p<0.05. there was a statistically significant difference between sports high school students' attitudes toward addictive substances, according to the age variable (p <0.05). the attitudes of the students between the ages of 14-15 to addictive substances were lower than the students in the other age groups table 3. table 4. anova analysis results according to the monthly income of the family. scale monthly income n sd f p-value attitude toward addictive substances scale (a) 0-1500 tl 78 3.053 0.581 1.048 0.372 (b) 1501-3000 tl 150 2.996 0.735 (c) 3001-5000 tl 64 2.992 0.636 (d) 5001 tl and above 34 3.215 0.726 note: one way anova, p<0.05. sport high school students' attitudes toward addictive substances did not show a statistically significant difference, according to the monthly income of the family (p> 0.05). table-5. results of anova analysis according to the class levels of the research group. scale class level n sd f p-value lsd attitude toward addictive substances scale (a) 1.class 89 2.793 0.620 5.403 0.001* a, b a, c a, d (b) 2.class 77 3.165 0.681 (c) 3.class 84 3.118 0.641 (d) 4.class 76 3.081 0.734 note: one way anova (lsd), p<0.05. sport high school students' attitudes toward addictive substances showed a statistically significant difference, according to their level of education (p <0.05). it was observed that the attitudes of 1st-grade students toward addictive substances were lower than that of other grade students table 5. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 616-620 619 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. the results of the analysis of the kruskal-wallis test according to the educational status of the father of the research group. scale education n sd x2 p attitude toward addictive substances scale (a) illiterate 13 183.08 1.563 0.815 (b) primary school 82 165.21 (c) secondary school 104 161.77 3.032 (d) high school 100 165.93 (e) university 27 146.56 note: independent samples (kruskal-wallis h), p<0.05. there was no statistically significant difference between the attitudes of sports high school students toward the addictive items regarding their fathers' educational level (p> 0.05). table-7. the results of the analysis of the kruskal-wallis test according to the educational status variable of the mother of the research group. scale n rank sd x2 p attitude toward addictive substances scale (a) illiterate 36 156.90 0.3 60 0.986 (b) primary school 121 166.33 (c) secondary school 94 163.34 0.681 (d) high school 54 160.61 (e) university 21 166.64 note: independent samples (kruskal-wallis h), p<0.05. there was no statistically significant difference between the attitudes of mothers of sports high school students toward the addictive items regarding their educational status (p> 0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion the findings obtained as a result of the analyzes carried out within the scope of the objectives of the research are evaluated as follows: there was no significant difference between men and women according to the gender variable of the study group table 2. it can be said that male and female students are undecided about their attitudes toward addictive substances. when other studies were examined, the following conclusions were reached: turhan et al. (2011) reported that male students had a higher incidence of smoking, alcohol and drug use compared to female students. yalçın et al. (2009) in 2119 students, the prevalence of substance use was found to be 4.9 times higher than male students. in addition, in another study conducted on university students, a study on the 12-month prevalence of nicotine, alcohol and substance addiction revealed that all students diagnosed with alcohol dependence were male (kaya and cilli, 2002). in their study, tansel (2017) found no significant difference in the attitudes of male and female students toward addictive substances. a significant difference was found in the age variable in the study group. this difference was found to be between the ages of 14-15 and other groups. the attitudes of the group in the 14-15 age group were less than the other groups table 3. the reason for this is thought to be related to the fact that students in this age group are at the beginning of adolescence. as age progresses, it can be said that the attitude toward addictive substances has changed negatively in high school students. when the other studies were examined, it was seen that the same results were reached (aksoy, 2006; turhan et al., 2011). in the study group, the attitudes of the family toward addictive substances did not differ statistically according to the monthly income level table 4. ulukoca et al. (2013) the same results were reached. the attitudes of the study group toward addictive substances showed statistically significant differences according to the level of education they received table 5. it was found that the attitudes of 1st grade students toward addictive substances were lower than the students in the other grade. it can be said that the attitudes of the students increased as the grade levels increased. in the study of erdamar and kurupınar (2014) similar results have been reached with these results. there was no statistically significant difference between the fathers of the research group according to their educational level table 6. when the educational status of the mother was examined, the same results were obtained table 7. coşkun (2008) concluded that the education level of the father was effective in substance use. ulukoca et al. (2013) did not reach a significant difference. education levels of parents do not affect students' smoking behavior. according to the results of the study, the prevalence of substance use among young people seems to be a serious problem. young people who use any of these types of matter with curiosity or a perception that nothing happens to me find themselves in this swamp. this addiction leads to personality disorders such as being suicidal, aggression, anger, nervous breakdown and restlessness. young people who do not want to fall into this situation, despite all these financial and medical difficulties continue to consume substances. it is of utmost importance to protect the future of our country in general and the health of young people in particular by taking preventive measures. according to the results of the study, it was concluded that male and female students' attitudes toward addiction increased as their age and grade levels progressed negatively. in order to prevent this picture, more attention should be paid to education-oriented prevention activities and the number of educational activities such as psychological support and health programs for young people should be increased by guidance counselors and psychological counselors. informative training should be provided not only for students, but also for parents, such as adolescent psychology and communication with young people, and then they should be actively involved in this preventive program. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 616-620 620 © 2019 by the authors; 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 386-391, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.386.391 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group turkish efl teacher candidates’ early teacher identity m. pinar babanoğlu1 reyhan ağçam2 ( corresponding author) 1mersin university, turkey. 2kahramanmaraşsütçü i̇mam university, turkey. abstract the topic of teacher identity has lately begun to be associated with general notions of teacher training and development. becoming an expert through gradual learning and teaching also calls for awareness of self-identity as a teacher when considering the standards of the teaching profession. language teachers start to develop their identity as a teacher during their higher education at language teaching departments, and the development in concern constitutes the basis of their roles in the teaching process. with that in mind, the current study was motivated to investigate perceptions of turkish efl teacher candidates on their early teacher identity. the participants of the study were senior students enrolled in two english language teaching departments at a state university and a private university in turkey. data were collected from the students in concern through a likert-type questionnaire during their teaching practicum. the research findings indicated that they held a high level of early teacher identity scores, and that they somehow significantly differed in their perceptions about early teacher identity with regard to gender and the attended university type. keywords: early teacher identity, efl teacher candidates, pre-service teachers, teacher training. citation | m. pinar babanoğlu; reyhan ağçam (2019). turkish efl teacher candidates‘ early teacher identity. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 386-391. history: received: 29 march 2019 revised: 6 may 2019 accepted: 12 june 2019 published: 9 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 387 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 387 3. data analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................. 388 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 388 5. discussion, conclusion and suggestions .................................................................................................................................. 389 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 391 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.386.391&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/909 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8166-974x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5445-9031 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/909 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8166-974x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5445-9031 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/909 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8166-974x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5445-9031 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/909 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8166-974x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5445-9031 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 386-391 387 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating perceptions of turkish efl teacher candidates on their early teacher identity. the research findings indicated that they held a high level of early teacher identity scores, and that they somehow significantly differed in their perceptions about early teacher identity with regard to gender and the attended university type. 1. introduction it is undoubtedly obvious that teachers' role in the teaching process has changed recently and teachers' responsibilities have been concerned as crucial in the learning process (vick, 1998). for becoming a professionally well-developed teacher, one should ask himself/herself the question ‗who am i' as they are mostly attributed with the role model in the classroom. côté and levine (2002, cited in krzywacki (2009) explain teacher identity formation as a continuous process between ego, personal and social levels where the identity can express itself. to be more specific, the ego identity represents internal mental processes that are the basis for individual understanding of one‘s own teacher identity while personal identity level refers to the personal engagement in interaction with others in a particular context. social identity, on the other hand, represents a socially constructed understanding of reality, in this case, socially shared perceptions of being a teacher, a social reality which influences a person and can be influenced by a person through everyday interaction with other people (krzywacki, 2009). in relation to the idea of being lifelong, ever-growing and ongoing, teacher identity is defined as a process in which teachers constantly re-interpret their experiences (beijaard et al., 2000). lasky (2005) defines it as the way teachers define themselves to themselves and to others (p.899) and ―teacher identity –what beginning teachers believe about teaching and learning as self-as teacheris of vital concern to teacher education‖ (bullough, 1997). examining new teacher identity can be considered as an important step to develop more effective teacher training programs and identity development of a teacher is related to understanding the notion of self (beauchamp and thomas, 2009). day (2004) argues that it is crucial in teacher education to prepare teachers who are informed and flexible to manage the imposed changes in the curriculum and education policies while trying to understand issues such as teachers‘ sense of educational aim, practices, teacher identity, and agency (cited in torres-rocha (2017)). language teachers start to develop their identity as a teacher during their higher education at language teaching departments. the development process in concern constitutes the basis of their roles in the teaching process. it is important to identify the self-perceptions of pre-service language teachers related to teacher identity. developing new teacher identity is crucial especially for prospective non-native efl teachers owing to the challenging nature of language teaching (e.g. field-specific challenges and instructional challenges). tüm and kunt (2013) point out that efl teacher students may have foreign language anxiety and this may have adverse effects on the application of grammar rules and the execution of speaking skills. for non-native efl teachers: "the issue of teacher identity plays a major role in describing the many identities adopted by these non-native speaker teachers, who need to juggle at least 3 identities—l2 user, l2 learner, and l2 teacher—along with various sociocultural and political identities that are established in various institutional and interpersonal contexts‖ (ortaçtepe, 2015). in respect of instructional challenges, yazan (2016) states that although pre-service teacher education programs introduce them to theoretical aspects of teaching and learning english as a foreign language along with teaching methodologies, they have to engage in further learning activities in the workplace when they start their classroom practice as novice teachers. the dynamic, complex, and ongoing nature of teacher learning leads to understand teachers‘ preparation as a process which is closely connected with their past experiences and future aspirations and especially in early stages in career, teachers may encounter many challenges and have to make strategic decisions and take strategic actions (yazan, 2016). they are considered capable of overcoming such instructional or institutional difficulties once they are well-prepared and they develop awareness of professional identity and social reality as a teacher. the relevant literature review shows that teacher identity has been investigated from different perspectives. varghese et al. (2005) scrutinized theoretical perspectives on language teacher identity while farrell (2011) examined experienced esl teacher professional role identities. xu (2013) studied efl teacher identity formation and change in a longitudinal way and reported that imagined identities can change due to institutional and educational reasons. wu and garza (2015) looked at pre-service bilingual esl teacher identity development and underlined the importance of suggested activities in teacher education programs. in a study on language teacher identity formation, tran and sanchez (2016) emphasized professional and personal factors. yuan (2016) showed that teaching practicum and mentoring teachers influence identity formation of student language teachers whereas negative mentoring can impede it. karimi and mofidi (2019) attempted to explore l2 teacher identity and concluded that education initials should establish an explicit focus on teacher identity. all in all, to the best of the researchers‘ knowledge, most of the previous research has been conducted with a core focus on in-service rather than pre-service teachers‘ professional identity (farrell, 2007; chiang, 2008, cited in wu and garza (2015)). hence, in order to bridge the research gap, the current study was set out to examine the turkish pre-service efl teachers‘ views and perceptions on their early career identities. accordingly, the following research questions were posed: 1. what are the perceptions of turkish pre-service efl teachers on their early teacher identity? 2. do turkish pre-service efl teachers significantly differ in their early teacher identity regarding gender and the attended university type (private vs. state)? 2. method based on the research objective, the quantitative research method was employed in this study. a quantitative research method involves the use of numerical data to summarize, describe, and explore relationships among traits (mcmillian & wergin, 2006, cited in liu and channell (2015)). the following sub-sections are intended to describe and outline the research sampling, data collection tool and data analysis procedure. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 386-391 388 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.1. participants 96 senior students attending the english language teaching program at a state university and a private university in turkey participated in the current study. they were chosen through the purposive sampling method, which is ‗a technique widely used in qualitative research for the identification and selection of information-rich cases for the most effective use of limited resources‘ (patton (2002) cited in palinkas et al. (2015)). their demographic features are presented in table 1: table-1. demographic features of participants. demographic variable groups n % gender female 76 79,2 male 20 20,8 university type state 65 67,7 private 31 32,3 as illustrated in table 1, female participants outnumbered their male counterparts (f=79%; m=21%).. at the time of data collection, approximately 68% of all participants were studying elt at a state university while 32% of them were studying the same discipline at a private university in turkey. furthermore, they were undergoing teaching practicum as part of their compulsory education. 2.2. data collection tool the research data were comprised of turkish pre-service teachers‘ views on their early teacher identity that were obtained through the turkish version of early teacher identity measure (etim) (friesen and besley, 2013; arpacı and bardakçı, 2015). the tool in concern consisted of likert-type questionnaire with 17 statements on new teacher identity to be judged as i strongly disagree, i disagree, neutral, i agree, and i strongly agree. one of the statements is exemplified below: 1. i often doubt whether i am the right person to be a teacher. within the questionnaire, some items were about self-categorization (participants‘ perceptions of themselves as a teacher) (items 5,8,9,10,17), some of them are related to confidence in becoming a teacher (items 1,3,7,11,12,16) while the others address the involvement with children as a teacher (items 2,4,6,13,14,15). it is noteworthy that items 1, 3, 7 and 10 were coded reversely as they included negative statements. the results were interpreted taking into consideration the fact that the higher the total score of the scale, the higher level of positive perception of early teacher identity. 3. data analysis data were gathered from the participants via the afore-mentioned questionnaire, and processed and analyzed using spss 15.0. the reliability of the questionnaire was high with a cronbach's alpha of 0.90. the independent samples t-test was applied to the elicited responses for comparison of the participants in terms of gender and the attended university type, and the significance level was set at 0,05 (p<0,05). 4. results initially, all items in etim voted by participants were processed for general descriptive statistics which emerges the total means of items. table-2. descriptive statistics of overall scores of items in etim. item m sd 1. i often doubt myself whether i am the right person to be a teacher. 3,85 1,25 2. if i had more time to work voluntarily, i would prefer to work with children. 3,72 1,20 3. i have no idea about what it is to be ―a good teacher‖. 4,31 0,99 4. my family often asks my advice about working with and taking care of children and adults. 3,35 1,10 5. i see myself as a teacher. 3,84 1,12 6 i feel pleasure to help children learn and discover new things. 4,26 1,05 7. i often doubt my competencies about being a good teacher. 3,63 1,13 8. i easily imagine myself to work with children and adults and to help their development. 4,06 1,00 9. i can easily qualify myself as a teacher. 3,84 1,00 10. i hardly imagine myself teaching a group of children and adults. 3,81 1,18 11. i am sure that i can develop the necessary skills and methods to be a good teacher. 4,23 0,85 12. i am sure i will be a good teacher one day. 4,32 0,84 13. i do best to work with children and adults in my free time. 3,79 1,04 14. it is so satisfying for me to help a child to learn something new. 4,46 0,86 15. i feel happy when i help children in their activities. 4,33 0,88 16. i am pleased with the progress that i have made in my teacher training. 4,00 0,94 17. teaching is inherent to me. 3,75 1,11 total 67,57 10,87 according to table 2, efl teacher candidates‘ scores of early teacher identity are in total 67,57±10,8, which refers to ―positive at high level‖1. the highest scores respectively are; ―14. it is so satisfying for me to help a child to learn something new‖ (4,46±0,86), ―15. i feel happy when i help children in their activities‖ (4,33±0,88), ―12. i am sure i will be a good teacher one day‖ (4,32±0,84), "3. i have no idea about what it is to be "a good teacher" 1 85-17=68/5=13,60; 17,00-30,60: very low, 30,61-44,20: low; 44,21-57,80: medium level; 57,81-71,40: high; 71,41-85,00: very high asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 386-391 389 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (4,31±0,99), ―6. i feel pleasure to help children learn and discover new things‖ (4,26±1,05), ―11. i am sure that i can develop necessary skills and methods to be a good teacher‖ (4,23±0,85) revealed at ―positive at very high ‖ level scores. the least score was found for item ―4. my family often asks my advice about working with and taking care of children and adults‖ (3,35±1,10) which has ―positive at low‖ level points. subsequently, the independent samples t-test was administered to the data to see whether the participants significantly differ in their perceptions on early teacher identity with respect to gender. the related results were provided in table 3. table-3. t-test scores of gender comparison. item gender n m sd t p 1. i often doubt myself whether i am the right person to be a teacher. female 76 2,18 1,28 -0,59 0,560 male 20 2,00 1,12 2. if i had more time to work voluntarily, i would prefer to work with children. female 76 3,86 1,12 2,21 0,029 male 20 3,20 1,40 3. i have no idea about what it is to be ―a good teacher‖. female 76 1,58 0,90 -2,14 0,035 male 20 2,10 1,21 4. my family often ask my advice about working with and taking care of children and adults. female 76 3,47 1,06 2,10 0,038 male 20 2,90 1,17 5. i see myself as a teacher. female 76 3,92 1,00 1,33 0,188 male 20 3,55 1,47 6. i feel pleasure to help children learn and discover new things. female 76 4,28 1,07 0,29 0,774 male 20 4,20 1,01 7. i often doubt my competencies about being a good teacher. female 76 2,30 1,03 -1,23 0,222 male 20 2,65 1,42 8. i easily imagine myself to work with children and adults and to help their development. female 76 4,11 0,95 0,81 0,418 male 20 3,90 1,21 9. i can easily qualify myself as a teacher. female 76 3,84 0,98 -0,03 0,975 male 20 3,85 1,09 10. i hardly imagine myself teaching a group of children and adults. female 76 2,12 1,12 -1,12 0,266 male 20 2,45 1,39 11. i am sure that i can develop the necessary skills and methods to be a good teacher. female 76 4,26 0,77 0,76 0,449 male 20 4,10 1,12 12. i am sure i will be a good teacher one day. female 76 4,36 0,83 0,73 0,465 male 20 4,20 0,89 13. i do best to work with children and adults in my free time. female 76 3,82 1,00 0,44 0,659 male 20 3,70 1,17 14. it is so satisfying for me to help a child to learn something new. female 76 4,50 0,87 0,93 0,356 male 20 4,30 0,80 15. i feel happy when i help children in their activities. female 76 4,39 0,87 1,34 0,183 male 20 4,10 0,91 16. i am pleased with the progress that i have made in my teacher training. female 76 4,01 0,93 0,27 0,791 male 20 3,95 1,00 17. teaching is inherent to me. female 76 3,79 1,07 0,68 0,498 male 20 3,60 1,23 total female 76 68,42 9,95 1,50 0,137 male 20 64,35 13,67 in gender comparison, the t-test scores revealed a significant difference between female and male student teachers in certain items. for instance, ―item 2. if i had more time to work voluntarily, i would prefer to work with children‖.(t=2,21; p<0,05), and ―item 4. my family often asks my advice about working with and taking care of children and adults‖(t=2,10; p<0,05) indicated a significant difference in favor of the female participants who obtained significantly higher scores than the male participants. in ―item 3. i have no idea about what it is to be ―a good teacher‖, the male participants had significantly higher scores than females (t=-2,14; p<0,05). the scores for the other items did not yield a significant difference between the participant groups in terms of gender (p>0,05). in the last analysis, participants‘ etim scores were compared via independent samples t-test concerning the attended university type. the test results are shown in table 4. the comparison of the etim scores regarding the attended university type indicated a significant difference in "item 1. i often doubt myself whether i am the right person to be a teacher." (t=2,24; p<0,05). the participants attending the state university had significantly higher scores than those studying at the private university. no significant difference was found for the other items (p>0,05). 5. discussion, conclusion and suggestions as pointed out in beauchamp and thomas (2009) investigating new teacher identity is an important issue both for developing an identity for a future teaching job and to guide for more effective teacher training programs. this fact is more significant for language teachers due to the challenging nature of their future job. this challenge is probably bigger for the turkish pres-service teachers of english who will be working at state schools in turkey since they are going to be supposed to teach a foreign rather than a second language, which increases the probability of being the only source of information and model in the learning process for their students. besides, they are going to be expected to teach that specific language within a very limited class hours and to stick to the assigned curriculum which is designed by the ministry of national education (mone). moving from this particular fact, the present study examined the early teacher identity of these pre-service teachers in order to gain a deep insight into their perceptions about their future role as efl teachers. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 386-391 390 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4.t-test scores of type of attended university comparison. item uni.type n m. sd t p 1. i often doubt myself whether i am the right person to be a teacher. state 65 2,34 1,29 2,24 0,028 private 31 1,74 1,06 2. if i had more time to work voluntarily, i would prefer to work with children. state 65 3,88 1,14 1,89 0,062 private 31 3,39 1,28 3. i have no idea about what it is to be ―a good teacher‖. state 65 1,69 0,93 0,07 0,945 private 31 1,68 1,11 4. my family often asks my advice about working with and taking care of children and adults. state 65 3,38 1,04 0,39 0,698 private 31 3,29 1,24 5. i see myself as a teacher. state 65 3,86 1,03 0,22 0,823 private 31 3,81 1,30 6. i feel pleasure to help children learn and discover new things. state 65 4,40 0,75 1,91 0,059 private 31 3,97 1,47 7. i often doubt my competencies about being a good teacher. state 65 2,32 1,12 -0,65 0,516 private 31 2,48 1,15 8. i easily imagine myself to work with children and adults and to help their development. state 65 4,12 0,74 0,86 0,394 private 31 3,94 1,41 9. i can easily qualify myself as a teacher. state 65 3,74 0,92 -1,51 0,135 private 31 4,06 1,12 10. i hardly imagine myself teaching a group of children and adults. state 65 2,11 1,05 -0,96 0,341 private 31 2,35 1,43 11. i am sure that i can develop the necessary skills and methods to be a good teacher. state 65 4,29 0,72 1,05 0,295 private 31 4,10 1,08 12. i am sure i will be a good teacher one day. state 65 4,35 0,74 0,52 0,604 private 31 4,26 1,03 13. i do best to work with children and adults in my free time. state 65 3,82 0,95 0,32 0,747 private 31 3,74 1,21 14. it is so satisfying for me to help a child to learn something new. state 65 4,51 0,71 0,82 0,417 private 31 4,35 1,11 15. i feel happy when i help children in their activities. state 65 4,43 0,71 1,59 0,116 private 31 4,13 1,15 16. i am pleased with the progress that i have made in my teacher training. state 65 3,92 0,89 -1,16 0,248 private 31 4,16 1,04 17. teaching is inherent to me. state 65 3,83 1,07 1,04 0,302 private 31 3,58 1,18 total state 65 68,08 9,53 0,66 0,514 private 31 66,52 13,38 outcomes of etim analysis administered to their responses revealed that their early teacher identity scores were quite high in general, indicating their highly positive attitude about their future job. they obtained the highest scores for items 15 and 14 (involvement with children), followed by items 12-11-3 (confidence in becoming a teacher). the participants attending the state university had higher scores in item 1 ―i often doubt whether i am the right person to be a teacher‖, which is related to confidence in becoming a teacher. this might be attributed to several facts such as social, financial and employment concerns even if it is not a distinguishing factor in favor of private universities as being better teacher training providers. azizi et al. (2013) underline that some weaknesses that public universities encounter such as the focus on knowledge rather than competencies, insufficient control of student practice and lack of student success in professional arena directly influence students' perception about their professional identity. moving from this argument, public universities and the council of higher education could be encouraged to take necessary precautions to overcome these weaknesses. namely, the teacher training programs might be redesigned with a distinctive emphasis on competencies rather than knowledge and the practitioners could be encouraged to follow these programs. the practitioners in concern could also be recommended to and create more opportunities for the pre-service teachers to gain experience in real teaching settings, and to provide them with effective guidance when needed. in comparison of etim scores regarding gender, the male participants obtained significantly higher scores than the female participants only in item 3 ―i have no idea about what it is to be ―a good teacher‖ whereas the reverse was revealed for item 2 ―if i had more time to work voluntarily, i would prefer to work with children‖ and item 4 ―my family often asks my advice about working with and taking care of children and adults‖. as item 3 is related to confidence in becoming a teacher while items 2 and 4 express involvement with children, these results may stem from the social and environmental factors, point of views and gender stereotypes which urge the general ideas of teaching is generally associated with women and taking care of children is their natural job (ullah, 2016) and which may unavoidably affect the male teacher candidates' approaches to professional roles as teachers. as a concluding remark of the study, as noted in karimi and mofidi (2019), the education initials should establish an explicit focus on teacher identity especially at state universities that offer efl teaching programs. even if the general tendency of the participants were positively high towards the early career teacher identity in this research, it is understood that the notion of ―to be a teacher‖ in addition to ―to be a language teacher‖ should be emphasized in practical ground and addressed particularly in teaching practicum period in order to create internalization by efl teacher candidates and take the load off their minds for teacher future jobs in advance which may help them to constitute a wholesome language teacher identity. the present study was limited to the data obtained from 96 pre-service efl teachers enrolled in one state university and one private university in turkey. it was also restricted to a single data collection tool with closedasian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 386-391 391 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ended questions. hence, future attempts might explore an increased number of teacher candidates adding openended and/or 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study on novice efl teachers' professional identity change in china. teaching and teacher education, 31: 79-86.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.01.006. yazan, b., 2016. early career efl teachers instructional challenges. theory and practice in education, 12(1): 194-220. yuan, e.r., 2016. the dark side of mentoring on pre-service language teachers' identity formation. teaching and teacher education, 55: 188-197.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.01.012. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 80 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 80-85, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.80.85 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group using information retrieval activities to foster analytical thinking skills in higher education in thailand: a case study of local wisdom education puchit puchumni1 sumalee tungpradabkul2 ratana magee3 ( corresponding author) 1department of mathematics, faculty of education, kanchanaburi rajabhat university, thailand 2department of biochemistry, faculty of science, mahidol university, thailand 3learning promotion counselor, singapore abstract three information retrieving lessons were designed to foster analytical thinking in freshmen with minimal prior active learning experience. thailand local wisdom contents were used as an online information platform due to the scarcity in well-established credible information sources. the lessons were collaborative learning both within own group and between groups. the information retrieving, credibility sorting, classroom sharing, analytical thinking assessments, and selfevaluating activities were conducted in sequential steps and repeated in three trials. a reflective pause was introduced between trials. the self-evaluating pause procedure using teacher’s feedback was possibly a major reason for gains, from 65.0% to 82.5% and to 92.5%, in the number of students exhibiting analytical thinking evidence. a free-response survey after the learning experience showed that the students express high appreciation for the active learning activities as fun and analytical-thinking-promoting learning experiences. keywords: active learning, local wisdom, local knowledge, information retrieval, information credibility, analytical thinking citation | puchit puchumni; sumalee tungpradabkul; ratana magee (2019). using information retrieval activities to foster analytical thinking skills in higher education in thailand: a case study of local wisdom education. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 80-85. history: received: 17 october 2018 revised: 19 november 2018 accepted: 31 december 2018 published: 21 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: the authors wish to express their gratitude to the office of the higher education commission, ministry of education, thailand for the financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 81 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 81 3. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 82 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 84 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 85 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.80.85&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/383 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7738-8064?lang=en https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7225-6254 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1305-8490 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/383 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7738-8064?lang=en https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7225-6254 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1305-8490 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/383 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7738-8064?lang=en https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7225-6254 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1305-8490 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/383 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7738-8064?lang=en https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7225-6254 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1305-8490 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/383 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7738-8064?lang=en https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7225-6254 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1305-8490 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 80-85 81 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction although active learning has been regularly practiced in schools in the us for decades and in many different forms, one of which is the opportunity for students to engage in retrieving, analyzing, and making use of obtained information vastly available on the internet, only a tiny portion of non-science classrooms in asia have witnessed such active learning activities, especially in thailand education. while science classrooms can offer ample opportunities for students to be active in their learning, due to limited resources and the apparent inequality in education, thai students in the rural areas do not necessarily have access to active science learning. furthermore, non-science subjects, e.g. languages and social studies, often are conducted in a passive learning fashion. as a result, most rural students lack the opportunity to actively engage themselves in the higher-order thinking levels of learning; namely, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating learning (forehand, 2005). active learning was first introduced in thailand’s basic educational curriculum in 1999 and discussion of active learning classroom implementation at the national level started in early 2000 (office of the education council, 1999). however, there have not been official mandates from the government for active learning implementation in any of the three types of thai educational institutes : formal, non-formal, and informal. attempts and initiatives to convert traditionally passive learning classrooms in some rural areas into active ones have been reported (climer et al., 2009). teemuangsai and meesook (2017) reported that the classroom practices in 90 secondary schools (2430 students in grades 7-12) in the northeastern region of thailand were traditional methods. the students in the study suggested a need for change in the teaching style to make the lessons less boring, more engaging and relevant to real life. in this study, we are presenting another example of a rare active learning practice in a thai classroom aiming to foster analytical thinking skills through retrieving information activities on thai local knowledge, also widely known as local wisdom. several meanings of local wisdom are shown here. meaning 1: local wisdom (noun) the knowledge that has been discovered or acquired by local people through long experience the bangkok post meaning 2: local wisdom – a set of ideas or policies based on the values of the virtues found in a community and often applied, believed two be the guidance of life, and handed down from time to time (sopa, 2018). meaning 3: local wisdom – basic knowledge gained from living in balanced with nature and related to culture in the community which is accumulated and passed on (mungmachon, 2012). thailand has enjoyed a reputation of richness in deeply rooted culture throughout its long history. it is the only nation in southeast asia that has never been governed by any western nations during the colonial period. as a result, indigenous people in different parts of siam (former name of thailand during the colonial days) had liberty in creating own ways of life without much of foreign influences. through generations, these independent creations have become indigenous knowledge or local knowledge or local wisdom. over the years, many thai governments put emphasis on the importance of the diversity in local wisdom but not until 1997 a local wisdom study and appreciation mandate at all educational levels was embarked by its inclusion in the constitution of the kingdom of thailand b.e. 2540 (office of the national education commission, 1997). educational institutions in the provincial areas are strongly encouraged to integrate local knowledge contents in own areas into their lessons. the so called ‘local curricula’, embedding local knowledge contents, were built to offer learners to learn from real world and local communities (henschke and ratana-ubol, 2015). ratana-ubol (2016) also pointed out the use of local wisdom as a lifelong learning tool in thailand educational systems. as most of the local knowledge evolved many generations ago, by local people's ways of life, the original records of the associated knowledge and know-how are often non-existing. the acclaimed local knowledge contents have been verbally passed on from one generation of local folks to the next. it can be stated that the majority of the available local wisdom contents, in prints or online, are compilation work of the verbally transferred knowledge and know-how; thus, thailand’s local wisdom information seekers are presented with a challenge of reliability of the collected contents. kanchanaburi rajabhat university, kru, is one of the forty pioneer rajabhat universities whose main mission is to provide higher education, with the national mandate on local wisdom education and appreciation, to thai students in the provincial areas. kru is situated in the central-west region of thailand in kanchanaburi province which shares a rich culture with myanmarese inhabitants along the borders between thailand and myanmar. the local knowledge education at kru spreads throughout the four-year curriculum with a variety of learning activities: research, experiential learning through field studies, interviews and surveys, immersion in local communities, etc. freshmen are usually tasked with an overview study of kanchanaburi’s local wisdom topics. in this study, we created an opportunity for a group of freshmen to develop self-learning and analytical thinking skills by taking advantage of the lack of the original or official records of the local knowledge contents in kanchanaburi. in three consecutive steps, a freshman student, working collaboratively with a peer and cross peer groups, evaluated retrieved information on local wisdom topic of choice from no fewer than two different online sources. the analyzed sets of information that appeared to be consistent or in-line among the searched sources were then deemed credible for future use. a free-response survey after the learning experience shows promising results in students’ active learning appreciation and a gain in analytical thinking skills. many other desirable byproducts, e.g. responsibility, self confidence in learning and decision making skills were also reflected in the students’ self-reflection. 2. method the subjects of this study are a freshman group of 40 students who started their college study in 2011 in the department of mathematics, faculty of education, kanchanaburi rajabhat university (kru) in kanchanaburi province of thailand. the subjects comprise of 11 male and 29 female rural students from kanchanaburi province and its nearby provinces. they could be characterized as academically disadvantaged and largely ranked in the bottom half when compared with their peers in the central regions of thailand. the subjects had no to little asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 80-85 82 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group academic information retrieval skills including experience in evaluating retrieved information from the internet. a list of local wisdom topics which are indigenous to kanchanaburi province was provided by the teacher and the subjects, worked in groups of two, chose their topic of interest. in three consecutive steps, the students searched online information on three important aspects of the chosen topic: aspect1 origin, aspect 2 production methods and aspect 3 usage and applications. in each step, after an aspect's information search, group members reviewed, discussed, and compared and contrasted the obtained information. groups with the same local wisdom topic performed a secondary cross-content analysis between groups. each group was asked to reflect and share their learning experiences from the previous step in a whole classroom setting before starting the next aspect task. after each aspect tasks, the student independently submitted a report detailing personal work on three activities (activity 1 – collected information substantiated by at least two sources, activity 2 bibliography details of the sources and activity 3 student’s own analysis and evaluation details aiming at extracting credible information) to the teacher for assessments on punctuality, completeness and analytical thinking evidence. at the end of the retrieval, analysis and evaluation processes of all three aspects of the chosen local wisdom topic, the student was asked to independently perform a self-reflection evaluation on direct experience gained from these active learning lessons by answering free-response questions. the probing questions were 1. what is your general impression of these active learning lessons? 2. what skills do you think you have acquired during these active learning lessons? 3. results and discussion there is a wide consensus among educators and administrators that the 21st century has provided students with flux of information over the internet and on many different media platforms such as blogs, wikis, facebook and social q&a sites. such information can come from many different types of sources, ranging from governmental agencies, well-known news organizations, self-made gurus, frequent bloggers to a lay person; thus, there is a need to validate the credibility of the obtained information (kim, 2010). the active learning lessons in this study were designed to foster analytical thinking skills on information retrieval in an environment where reliable references are scarce and a multitude of online search results are readily available at the fingertip of the students. the information in the retrieving activities in this study was solely indigenous to kanchanaburi habitats. the online media platforms employed in the search process comprised of multiple formats namely wikis, blogs and webpages. while there are many other information seeking goals when people perform an information search process, the most succinct or the most entertaining information rather than the most credible information possible as reported by metzger et al. (2010) work, or the efficiency of the search process itself can be at the center of an information retrieval study, for example how to formulate effective keywords or which search engines would yield desirable results, the primary objective of our study focuses on students filter out credible information from thai local wisdom online information by analyzing and evaluating the obtained information. in the traditional sense, information credibility are believed to be directly related to source credibility. as mentioned earlier in this report, there are no official collections of thai local wisdom materials and the available local wisdom contents are merely compilation works of the verbally transferred knowledge from one generation to the next. these sets of knowledge are made available online by authos who may not necessarily have training and/or education relevant to thai local knowledge. metzger and flanagin (2013) stated that credible sources of information are easily recognized by virtue of their observable and verifiable credentials which are rooted in specific qualifications or training. the specific qualifications or training in the field of local wisdom of most thai local wisdom online sources were not readily observable or verifiable. as a result, we assume that the online sources are not necessarily credible sources on thai local wisdom domain and the credibility of the searched results should be focused on the information not the sources. with this assumption in mind, we designed the active learning activities for the freshmen to evaluate the credibility of the information. we aimed that the students would gain some analytical thinking skills from repetitive analysis and evaluation steps. content understanding and local wisdom appreciation aspets were also parts of the learning goals but will not be discussed in this report. the subjects in this study were freshman starting their first semester at kru in 2011. since the college placement in thailand was mainly based on the national admission system of academic achievements in high school years and the college admission test scores, it is safe to say that the academic standing of this group of students was in the lower half of their national peers. their learning experiences in the primary and secondary school years prior to kru admission can be described as traditionally passive, teachers passed on knowledge to students, which was also discussed in teemuangsai and meesook (2017) report. the students also had very little experience in actively acquiring information prior to participating in this study. it is also worth noted that they came from socioeconomically disadvantaged background when compared to their counterparts in the central regions of thailand. kru has launched a general education curriculum that requires all freshmen to earn three credit hours in thai living which encompasses national and kanchanaburi local wisdom studies. the active learning lessons in this study were conducted in part with the thai living curriculum. the lack of active and analytical thinking learning experiences in their previous academic settings made these freshmen, future classroom teachers, suitable for this study where the authors integrated information retrieving activities and widely unevaluated online local wisdom contents into a learning means to promote the students’ analytical thinking skills. each student worked collaboratively with a learning partner on their chosen topic of interest from a list of six local wisdom topics that are indigenous to the kanchanaburi areas. the topics were 1. 100-color fabrics 2. sangkra fabrics 3. gems 4. pocket knives 5. bamboo rice mills and 6. carved wood furniture. each group conducted online information search from no fewer than two different sources on three aspects of the chosen local wisdom topic, namely, origin, production, and application. each aspect task can be described in three activities: activity 1 information retrieval from multiple sources, activity 2 bibliography details and activity-3 content analyses. a first analytical thinking opportunity arose when the group partners reviewed and analyzed the retrieved information. they compared and contrasted did the contents to filter out credible information using consistency heuristic which was reported in metzger et al. (2010) work as a relatively fast and frugal means of arriving at the credible judgment of information. a second analytical thinking opportunity occurred when each asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 80-85 83 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group group performed a cross-content analysis with other groups working on the same topic. at this cross-group checking, some groups were able to arrive at more consistent contents between groups which allowed the students to realize the importance of collaborative work that enabled them to gain more breadth in their search. in conclusion, after working on the three aspects of the local wisdom search, each student had six sessions to learn and practice analytical thinking skills. after each aspect, a classroom discussion followed in which the students shared their findings and simultaneously learned other local wisdom topics from their peers. formative assessments on each student’s report provided feedback on the previous aspect’s performance prior to the start of the next one. each student’s evidence of analytical thinking was drawn from the three components of the submitted report: 1. data collection : from at least two sources, 2. analysis and evaluation : break down complex information to relavant smaller and manageable chunks and scrutinize the data for consistency, and 3. decision making : conclude credible information. figure 1 shows a gain in the number of students who demonstrated evidence of analytical thinking. a possible explanation for the constant gains from aspect 1 (65.0%, n = 26) to aspect 3 (92.5%, n = 37) could be attributed to the strategic pause for self-review in between aspects that allowed some students to have more time to gain deeper understanding of the thinking process either by discussing with their peers or utilizing the teacher’s feedback or both. pause procedure has been reported to enhance student engagement and learning in various fields of study such as in medicines (bachhel and thaman, 2014) and in accounting (chowdhury, 2016). the proposed reason for analytical thinking gains in this study is well in line with the effectiveness of pause procedure concluded in bachhel et al. and chowdhury’s studies. figure-1. percent analytical thinking evidence after each aspect’s activities a further look at individual student’s analytical performance in all three trials revealed that, when compared to the total number of students, both the 17.5% (n = 7) gain from aspect 1 to aspect 2 and 10.0% (n = 4) gain from aspect 2 to aspect 3 represented new students from the previous step. it can be concluded that 65.0% (n = 26) of the stubject group in this study consistently learned and practiced their analytical thinking skills in sorting credible information throughout the lessons. a 27.5 percentage (n = 11) of the students successfully demonstrated analytical thinking evidence after the first or second aspect tasks. at any stage of the three aspect search tasks, a 7.5 percentage (n = 3) of the group did not exhibit minimum analytical thinking evidence in their content credibility discussions and reports. lack of motivation and being extremely reluctant learners in nature could be plausible causes for the observed low performance. however, the exact cause of this learning behavior requires a further exploration. another analytical thinking evidence stemmed from the students’ self reflection after the completion of the lessons. the students’ answers to the open-ended questions – 1. what is your general impression of these active learning lessons? and 2. what skills do you think you have acquired during these active learning lessons? shed some light on students’ own thinking skill assessments. while other skills such as thoroughness, planning, observation, decision making and responsibility were reported in the students’ answers (figure 2), the thinking skill was widly cited by the students. 95.0% (n = 38) of the students indicated some versions of analytical thinking engagement in their responses. examples of students’ related responses are: student 1 by comparing materials, it helped me think and remember the contents better. student 19 this activity made me think and see more viewpoints. student 29 i will be more prudent (analytical thinking) in my future search. student 34 i liked activity 3. i got to evaluate! student 35 i had to think analytically and really hard in this activity. some students (30.0%, n = 12) cited the specific ‘analytical thinking’ term in their free responses as an acquired skill after completing the lessons. examples of students’ related responses are: student 3 when we applied analytical thinking, i enjoyed this step! student 8 i know how to use analytical thinking to sort reliable information. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 80-85 84 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-2. students’ own assessments on acquired skills students’ general impressions of the lessons are exhibited in figure 3. 72.5% (n = 29) saw the lessons as fun, challenging or exciting activities. they also expressed a wish for more lessons to be of active type (student 3 i really liked this self-learning more than sitting in a seat. i wished other teahcers would do the same.) which had helped them stay focused (student 20 i got to plan my own work. i wanted to learn more.). this finding further confirms the conclusion in teemuangsai and meesook (2017) study which stated there is a need, in thai classrooms, for change in the teaching style to make the lessons less boring, more engaging and relevant to real life. the students’ reflections revealed instances where they viewed the lessons as enabling agents for self confidence (n = 1) and perseverance (n=1). also, 3% (n = 1) reported a difficulty in group working environment. figure-3. students’ general impressions of the active learning lessons a follow up study after the study group has entered their teaching careers for 2 years displayed a strong influence of this active learning experience on their career practice. we were able to collect responses from 23 respondents which accounted for 57.5% of the subjects in this study. 91.3% (n = 21) of the respondents were classroom teachers and 8.7% (n = 2) worked in private sectors. among classroom teachers, 85.7% (n = 18) clearly stated that credibility of information they acquired from online sources was their primary concern in lesson preparation, 57.1% (n = 12) applied their direct experience from this study in their teaching practice by creating platforms for their students to actively acquire information and filter credible contents. 38.1% (n = 8) of the respondents found the discussions within and among groups during the content analysis steps in this study helpful in conduction communications with colleagues in the workplace. 4. conclusion we believe that traditional passive learning is likely to limit the opportunity for any learners to independently develope and practice analytical thinking skills. by giving this platform of active learning and information credibility evaluation, the students were better prepared to be analytical-thinking teachers which in turn would be capable to produce analytical-thinking students. the follow-up study did provide a sign of hope for the latter as it showed some evidence of analytical thinking skill practice transferred from the subject group to their school students. though the subject group represented only a small number of teacher students, the results of the analytical thinking skill fostering method in this study are encouraging. however, more analytical/critical thinking skill practice is needed in teacher students’ preparation in order to further a possibility to shape up the critical thinking profile in thailand’s education. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 80-85 85 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references bachhel, r. and r.g. thaman, 2014. effective use of pause procedure to enhance student engagement and learning. journal of clinical and diagnostic research, 8(8): xm01–xm03. chowdhury, f., 2016. the power of using pause procedure during accounting lecture: an action research study. european journal of business and social sciences, 5(06): 101-108. climer, n., m. king, k. miranda, i. moon, b. uapipatanakul and s. zamora, 2009. promoting active teaching methods in rural thailand: a case study on science laboratory activities. undergraduate report, worcester polytechnic institute. forehand, m., 2005. bloom’s taxonomy: original and revised. in m. orey (ed.), emerging perspectives on learning. teaching, and technology (e-book). pp: 41-47. available at https://textbookequity.org/textbooks/orey_emergin_perspectives_learning.pdf. henschke, j.a. and a. ratana-ubol, 2015. cultural learning processes through local wisdom: a case study on adult and lifelong learning in thailand. international journal of adult vocational education and technology, 6(2): 41-60. available at: https://doi.org/10.4018/ijavet.2015040104. kim, s., 2010. questioners' credibility judgments of answers in a social question and answer site. information research, 15(2): 5. metzger, m.j. and a.j. flanagin, 2013. credibility and trust of information in online environments: the use of cognitive heuristics. journal of pragmatics, 59: 210-220. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.07.012. metzger, m.j., a.j. flanagin and r.b. medders, 2010. social and heuristic approaches to credibility evaluation online. journal of communication, 60(3): 413-439. available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01488.x. mungmachon, m.r., 2012. knowledge and local wisdom: community treasure. international journal of humanities and social science, 2(13): 174-181. office of the education council, 1999. national education act b.e.2542 and amendments (second national education act b.e.2544 (2002). bangkok: office of the educational council. office of the national education commission, 1997. constitution of the kingdom of thailand, b.e.2540. bangkok: printer department of religion. ratana-ubol, a., 2016. enhancing local wisdom through lifelong learning in thailand. culture, biography & lifelong learning, 2(2): 57-68. sopa, m., 2018. local wisdom in the cultural symbol of indonesian traditional house. the 1st annual international conference on language and literature, kne social sciences. pp: 524-531. teemuangsai, s. and c. meesook, 2017. thailands classroom learning practices in secondary level: are we ready for learning in the 21stcentury? international journal of science and technology education research, 8(1): 1-12. available at: https://doi.org/10.5897/ijster2017.0403. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training vol. 1, no. 1, 1-7, 2015 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 1 using mobile phone technologies to maintain quality of education in ethiopia: a view beyond the prevalence of academic dishonesty mebratu mulatu bachore 1 1 school of languages and communication studies college of social sciences and humanities hawassa university, ethiopia abstract the 21 st century is characterized by the increasing access to sophisticated but affordable and portable technologies that are contributing much to the world. specifically, in ethiopia, mobile technologies are rapidly attracting new users, providing increasing capacity, and introducing more sophisticated uses to the citizens. however, it is becoming somehow common to ban using mobiles phones in classrooms among teachers in ethiopia due to fear of cheating and plagiarism. at the same time, various scholars around the world have been investigating the trends of using these technologies for learning in both formal and informal contexts. the integration of such technologies into teaching and learning has been more gradual, as educators need to understand how they can be effectively used to support various kinds of learning and develop effective methods and materials for mobile assisted learning. therefore, this review article analyses the trends, principles, merits and demerits, global experiences, and future considerations of using mobile to maintain the quality of education in ethiopia which is becoming the due concern of our nation. keywords: mobile phones, learning, quality education, academic dishonesty. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license asian online journal publishing group contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................. 2 2. the impacts of mobiles in educational outcomes ................................................................................................................... 2 3. quality education ....................................................................................................................................................................... 3 4. merits and demerits/ limitations of mobile learning ............................................................................................................ 4 5. best practices in mobile learning ............................................................................................................................................. 5 6. feasibility to practice in the ethiopian context ....................................................................................................................... 5 7. conclusions .................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 references ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 6 bibliography .................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 1-7 2 1. introduction in recent years, there has been a growing body of evidence that the spread of ict (information and communications technologies) can have substantial benefits for economic development. the growing use of the internet and email has, for many people and organizations, revolutionized the speed and ease of communications, both within their own countries and, especially, across international borders. as a part of the world, ethiopia is also showing a significant development in exploiting advanced technologies such as mobile phones with their sophisticated applications. according to the ethiopian telecommunication corporation website, 17.4 million citizens are subscribed to use mobile phones (the official website of etc). this figure is target to be 65 million in 2015. this implies that currently almost one of every five citizen has a mobile phone since the total population is about 85 million. thus, it is a high time for educators have to design strategies to exploit this technology, which is becoming accessible for most of the people, to improve the quality of education across the nation. on the other hand, more than one-third of the world’s adult population, most living in the developing world like ethiopia, has no access to printed knowledge, new skills, and technologies that could improve the quality of their lives (dhanarajan, 2009). inequalities in access to education continue to pose major barriers in the developing world, and the delivery of cost-effective and quality education remains a persistent problem. in the attempt to find viable solutions to these problems, much hope has been placed in new information and communication technologies (icts). it is believed that icts can empower teachers and learners by facilitating communication and interaction, offering new modes of delivery, and generally transforming teaching and learning processes. of the many different forms of icts, mobile phones are thought, for several reasons, to be a particularly suitable tool for advancing education in developing regions. with the increasing attention now being given to the role of mobiles in the educational sector in developing countries, there is a need at this juncture to take stock of the available evidence of the educational benefits that mobile phones provide in the developing world. 2. the impacts of mobiles in educational outcomes the literature on mobile learning points to a variety of benefits that mobile phones could have on the educational sector. for heuristic purposes, the impacts of mobile phones on educational outcomes that are identified in the mobile learning literature can be classified into two broad categories. on the one hand, mobiles supposedly impact educational outcomes by improving access to education while maintaining the quality of education delivered. on the other hand, mobiles purportedly impact educational outcomes by facilitating alternative learning processes and instructional methods collectively known as new learning. 2.1. the role of mobiles in improving access to education in theory, mobile learning increases access for those who are mobile or cannot physically attend learning institutions – those who would not otherwise be able to follow courses in a traditional educational setting due to the constraints of work, household activities, or other competing demands on their time. mobile learning makes education more accessible in that it enables learners to pursue their studies according to their own schedule. the portability of mobile technology means that mobile learning is not bound by fixed class times; mobile learning enables learning at all times and in all places, during breaks, before or after shifts, at home, or on the go. interestingly, however, while mobile learning is portable, it is not necessarily associated with physical movement. according to a study conducted by vavoula, few people actually utilize the time spent in transit to learn (sharples et al., 2005).mobile learning, as visser and west (2005) suggest, can also increase access in those situations where cost represents a significant barrier to learning. for those in rural or remote areas where environmental and infrastructure challenges hinder other learning modalities, particularly elearning, mobile learning presents great opportunities. for the individual learner, mobile technology is much less cost-prohibitive than other technologies like personal computers and broadband connections that are necessary for elearning. the ubiquity of mobile phones, moreover, means that educational services can be delivered with learners’ existing resources. in as much as mobile technology presents a less cost-prohibitive medium for learning, it represents an important avenue by which to reduce the gap between the haves and the have-nots in contemporary society where access to knowledge and information is increasingly important (van weert, 2005). in regards to cost, the benefit of increased access afforded by mobile learning is particularly relevant in the developing country context. many developing countries are completely bypassing investments in costly, fixed telephone infrastructure for the installation of mobile phone networks (traxler and dearden, 2005; sharples et al., 2007; motlik, 2008). thus, mobile learning provides a potential way forward for the expansion of education programs to larger segments of the population rather than via the elearning model that has been adopted in much of the developed world. mobile learning allows a method of educational delivery that could be more cost-effective than internet earning methods, not to mention that the ubiquity of mobile phones means that many people are already familiar with mobile phone applications (motlik, 2008). in so much as mobile learning exerts an impact on educational outcomes by increasing access, mobile learning represents a continuation and improvement of distance learning through increased utility and applicability (keegan, 2002). mobile learning, the literature suggests, broadens the availability of quality education materials through decreased cost and increased flexibility while also enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of education administration and policy. 2.2. the role of mobiles in promoting new learning others suggest that the benefits of mobile phones are not merely limited to increased access to educational services. mobile learning, they indicate, can also facilitate changes in the character of learning modalities that in turn asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 1-7 3 impact educational outcomes. in this regard, mobile learning represents more than a mere extension of traditional forms of education; mobile learning facilitates alternative learning processes and instructional methods that the theories of new learning identify as effective for learning. according to proponents of new learning, mobiles facilitate designs for personalized learning in that they are responsive to difference and diversity in the way learning occurs. they facilitate designs for situated learning by providing learning during the course of the activity – in the field for a botany student, in the classroom for a teacher trainee, or in the workshop for an engineer. in this sense, mobile learning also facilitates designs for authentic learning, meaning learning that targets real-world problems and involves projects of relevance and interest to the learner (kukulska-hulme and traxler, 2007; traxler, 2007). the supposed value of mobiles also arises from the manner in which they facilitate lifelong learning. mobiles can support the great amount of learning that occurs during the many activities of everyday life, learning that occurs spontaneously in impromptu settings outside of the classroom and outside of the usual environment of home and office. they enable learning that occurs across time and place as learners apply what they learn in one environment to developments in another (sharples et al., 2005; 2007). mobile phones theoretically make learner-centred learning possible by enabling students to customize the transfer of and access to information in order to build on their skills and knowledge and to meet their own educational goals (sharples et al., 2007). mobile learning thus exerts a democratizing effect on the learning experience as learners take a greater responsibility for the learning process instead of being passively fed information by an instructor. whereas in traditional models of education the goal is the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, mobile learning empowers students to actively participate in the learning process to make it a process of construction and not mere instruction (dela pena-bandalaria, 2007). mobile learning thus represents learning that is not ‘just-in-case,’ education for the sake of producing a bank of knowledge, but rather represents learning that is ‘just-in-time,’ ‘just enough,’ or ‘just-for-me’ (traxler, 2007). as a facilitator of new learning, mobile learning goes beyond an emphasis on the possession of information to enabling learners to find, identify, manipulate, and evaluate existing information (brown, 2003). mobiles can also supposedly facilitate knowledge-centered learning by providing efficient and inventive methods by which students can learn with understanding – meaning that they deepen their understanding of a specific subject matter rather than merely memorizing large amounts of information – and then use this knowledge as a basis for new learning through integration and interconnection. mobile devices make possible assessment-centered learning as well by enabling the provision of continual feedback throughout the learning process, presenting learners with diagnosis and formative guidance as to what might be improved or what might be learned next. moreover, in providing prompt feedback, mobile learning maintains the appeal of learning and provides a motivating factor that can at times be lacking in traditional modes of education (geddes, 2004). mobile phones also facilitate communitycentered learning, meaning learning that the learner deems valuable because of its relevance to the surrounding social context; mobile learning facilitates learning that can be used to achieve socio-economic goals that respond to problems, such as problems related to health or family care confronting the surrounding community (wagner and kozma, 2005; sharples et al., 2007). given that social interaction is central to effective learning, as indicated by theories of new learning, mobile phones should also impact educational outcomes by facilitating communication. mobiles permit collaborative learning and continued conversation despite physical location and thus advance the process of coming to know, which occurs through conversations across contexts and among various people. via mobile technology, learners engage in conversation whereby they resolve differences, understand the experiences of others, and create common interpretations and shared understanding of the world (nyiri, 2002; sharples et al., 2007). in promoting educational modalities that accord with the theories of new learning, mobile learning should offer an appeal aspect that also impacts educational outcomes. mobile learning can be particularly appealing for those who have not succeeded in traditional learning environments; it can attract those not enamoured by traditional learning approaches that are generalized and decontextualized in nature. mobile learning is also beneficial in that it can provide immediate feedback and thus provide continued motivation for those who are not motivated by traditional educational settings. moreover, mobile learning presents an appeal simply because the use of mobile technology in and of itself presents something new and exciting for a great array of learners (geddes, 2004). mobiles, therefore, should impact educational outcomes by altering the character of education and learning because the nature of mobile technology converges with and facilitates new learning. the new learning is personalized, learner-centred, situated, collaborative, ubiquitous, and lifelong. likewise, mobile technology is increasingly personal, user-centred, mobile, networked, ubiquitous, and durable (sharples et al., 2007). the literature indicates that the benefits afforded by this convergence should exert a positive impact on educational outcomes. 3. quality education what does quality mean in the context of education? many definitions of quality in education exist, testifying to the complexity and multifaceted nature of the concept. the terms efficiency, effectiveness, equity and quality have often been used synonymously (adams, 1993). considerable consensus exists around the basic dimensions of quality education today, however. quality education includes:  learners who are healthy, well-nourished and ready to participate and learn, and supported in learning by their families and communities;  environments that are healthy, safe, protective and gender-sensitive, and provide adequate resources and facilities;  the areas of literacy, numeracy and skills for life, and knowledge in such areas as gender, health, nutrition, hiv/aids prevention and peace; asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 1-7 4  processes through which trained teachers use child-centered teaching approaches in well-managed classrooms and schools and skilful assessment to facilitate learning and reduce disparities;  and positive participation in society. this definition allows for an understanding of education as a complex system embedded in a political, cultural and economic context. 4. merits and demerits/ limitations of mobile learning it is often clear that technological innovations have great roles in promoting learning in various contexts. learning through some technological devices enables the learners to learn in a non-classroom environment when they are at home in front of their personal computers online or offline. however, there is also considerable number of challenges or limitations. 4.1. merits of mobile learning a. improved access to education mobile learning improves the access of educations due to its very nature. first, individuals can use relatively inexpensive everyday technologies that can be manageable at lower income level. it also provides better opportunities to acquire skills at one’s own pace, with a degree of privacy that may be missing when using shared computer facilities or relying on equipment belonging to somebody else. this is particularly important for women and girls. moreover, it gives good support for preferred modes of interaction, e.g. accessing audio content or participating in social networks on the move. it also avails authentic learning needs and caters for interests beyond what is provided in class, through access to additional content such as podcasts or free learning materials. b. support for vital communication quick communication with valuable response/feedback is very important in classroom environment. mobile learning supports this by creating opportunities for learners to give immediate feedback on their learning experience. this leads to better assessment and diagnosis of learning problems as they occur. mobile learning also provides psychological support for those at risk of dropping out, through social networks or personal guidance from a mentor. c. attracting underserved populations of potential students this one is a critical advantage of mobile learning that contributes for both access and quality of education. it is clear that mobile learning makes learning materials accessible to a larger audience, through podcasts, mobile applications, blogs and e-books, which are seen by potential students. this provides opportunities for disadvantaged social groups to improve their life chances through learning. d. improving teaching quality mobile learning revitalizes the curriculum. it provides opportunities for teachers to rethinking teaching methods and implementing improved feedback to learners. in addition, it turns geographically dispersed learners into a valuable teaching resource by enabling them to contribute their local knowledge and research data more easily. mobile learning also supports learner retention, progression and transition. e. supporting continuing education it makes the learning experience more tailored to the changing needs of individuals, encouraging learners to return for knowledge updating and further study. moreover, it provides equitable access to education, for those suffering exclusion for social or economic reasons. it fosters the culture of lifelong learning by which learners are taking part in organized education but also habitually using personal technologies to support inquiry and knowledge building whenever the need arises. mobile leaning develops a culture of life-wide learning, whereby individuals recognize the value of learning in unconventional or everyday contexts and are enabled to realize the full breadth of their potential contributions to society. 4.2. demerits or limitations of mobile learning a. awareness creation and management educational establishments face the challenge of persuading educators that mobile technology is a serious option for education rather than a gimmick. established educators resent the loss of control implied by mobile learning activities that are learner-led and take place outside the classroom. uncertainty about digital content rights management may inhibit production of mobile-friendly content. development of mobile applications requires upskilling or employing specialist staff. b. skills and competence educators often lack the competences required to develop mobile learning opportunities for their students. conventional assessment or evaluation practices are put under scrutiny as mobile learning may call for different outcomes. learners may be familiar with mobile devices in general but not as learning tools. educators may not feel competent to support learners who are primarily focused on real-life learning, and those who expect mobile learning to cater to their individual preferences or needs. c. finance challenges approaches to the implementation of mobile learning have included sponsorship from device manufacturers which has enabled organizations to provide whole cohorts of learners with devices. whilst this is useful as a asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 1-7 5 springboard, it raises issues of ownership and sustainability. recent thinking favours use of learners’ own devices or assisting them to buy an inexpensive device. d. musclenous challenges the need to keep a mobile device charged for longer periods of use remains an issue. small screen size can limit activities such as reading, although many learners are content to read in this way. costs of connectivity must be considered alongside the cost of the mobile device, as both teachers and learners perceive this as a barrier to widespread use. environmental factors such as sunshine and rain impact on the practicality of learning outdoors. unwanted noise and interruptions can impact on the quality of learning in public areas and when travelling. 5. best practices in mobile learning as mobile learning fosters the quality of the teaching learning process, various countries has been exploiting it. according to unesco (2010) institute of information technologies policy brief has examined the practice across the world and forwarded the following as the best ones. a. individual and mass education mobile learning works best when used to support learner-led inquiry, communities and social networks, workbased, field-based and game-based learning, continuous reflection, as a way to collect evidence of achievement, to promote social inclusion and to sustain lifelong learning. learners should be encouraged to collaborate with teachers to define how a mobile device can best support their learning, and to share this knowledge with others. by attending to the needs of learners with disabilities, learning provision is also improved for those who have hidden disabilities and those who learn more effectively when material is presented in alternative ways. in mass education, mobile learning should be used to support wide-scale literacy and numeracy increase and teacher training. it can improve classroom interaction by giving learners the chance to communicate their ideas by texting or responding to surveys through their mobile phones, which helps to overcome shyness and leads to improved participation. it can also be used to offer a personalized learning experience within a large group. mass distance education can be enhanced by using mobile devices as an additional means of contact and a way to capture experiences and data from different parts of the globe. b. teacher training teacher education for mobile learning should cover mobile pedagogy as well as some technical training to build confidence. teachers need opportunities to use mobile technology for personal learning and preparation of teaching materials, and to share resources and practical case studies. informal mutual support pairings and networks are beneficial, since access to technical assistance may be difficult in remote locations and these structures also help teachers keep abreast of rapid developments in technology and pedagogy. c. gender-related and child education mobile devices appeal to girls and women as well as boys and men, although they may favour different activities. mobile learning supports empowerment of underprivileged, marginalized groups, particularly women and children in rural areas. developing literacy and numeracy skills leads to reduced dependence on others. for example, women can take part in mobile learning programmes which enable them to receive text messages on the phone to practise their reading and writing. mobile games have been used by children and elders in rural areas in india to learn the english language. d. learners with disabilities the organizer functions usually included in mobile devices are useful for those with learning difficulties, to help them organize their lives and achieve some independence if relevant. dictionaries downloaded to mobile phones or games consoles, are helpful as reference tools for learners with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. text-tospeech conversion and voice recognition are valuable for users with disabilities or learning difficulties. 6. feasibility to practice in the ethiopian context ethiopia is one of the african countries which has given due emphasis to access quality education to its citizens. in this effort, it has established more than many universities, colleges, high schools and primary schools. these days the government is committed to work towards ensuring the quality of education in different academic levels ranging from the lower to the higher levels. as the issue of quality becomes the critical in the ethiopian context, it is feasible to support the teaching learning process through recent technological innovations like mobile phones which are almost accessible for most of the students. the best experiences which various countries practiced to bring quality in education can be considered and adapted to the ethiopian context. one of the quality issues in education is teacher training. if teachers are not well trained and equipped with varieties of methodological knowledge, it will be difficult to maintain the quality of classroom instructions. mobile learning provides teachers with varieties of teaching methods whenever they want to use them in classrooms regardless of time and place constraints. that means it trains them in informally. likewise, teachers in ethiopia should be trained how to use their mobiles in order to access for varieties of teaching methodologies so as to be used in a classroom to meet their students’ interest. mobile learning considers gender related issues in education. ethiopia is making a significant progress in bridging gender gaps. this attempt can be better achieved if mobile learning is introduced in various levels. as asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 1-7 6 mobile phone is common for boys and girls (men/ women), it creates equal opportunity to access resources and learning materials depending on their needs. the other best practice which seems to be very importance for ethiopia is the use of mobile learning for learners with disabilities. as the regular classroom doesn’t give equal opportunity for the learners with disabilities, it is better to look for other mechanism to bridge the gapthat is mobile learning. learners with disabilities of download lectures on specific topics, dictionaries embedded with pronunciation and etc. which really make them competent with other students. finally, mobile learning has a lot to contribute for the quality of education. experiences revealed that developed and developing countries are exploiting it in their education system. but, they included it in their education policy with details of strategies that consider their contexts. likewise, ethiopia, as a beginner, is expected to incorporate mobile learning in a policy framework for its formal implementation. 7. conclusions many teachers in developing nations think the quality of education learners in the rural setting are getting is of low quality as a result of overcrowded classes as well as limited resources (wabwoba, 2011). this becomes true in ethiopia in which 85% of the population lives in the rural areas. this calls for thought of information communication technologies, especially mobile technologies which are becoming accessible to the rural community today, to fill the gap it is not in doubt, however, that mobile technologies has the potential to play a more powerful role in increasing resources and improving the environment for learning. mobile phone technologies also have the potential to improve greatly the accessibility of education to all irrespective of place, time and shortage of resources. wireless technologies that are inclusive of mobile phones have great potential and are fairly affordable in many developing nations. mobile devices enable both the teacher and students to employ computing power without time or location constraints. however, these very mobile phones have raised a lot of debate and seem to be very controversial within the schools. love them, or hate them, the chances are very high that students already own cell phones. instead of burning them in schools it is better to consider how best they can be used positively thus integrating them into the classroom routines. since the students already own this technology, and need very little teaching on how to use it, educators need to think of how to take advantage of the opportunity that they present. wireless learning environments, which are embedded in mobiles, offer many educational possibilities that are near impossibility to achieve in any other learning environments. wireless learning environments have the following features based on its ability to link to various computing powers with mobile learning devices: enhancing availability and accessibility of information networks; engaging students in learning-related activities in diverse physical locations; supporting group work in projects; improving communication and collaborative learning in the classroom, and supporting quick content delivery. thus, the ethiopian education system should consider those advantages which have significant potential to ensure the quality of education in the country. that means, instead of banning mobile phone in schools, we have to design policy and strategies to exploit them in the way mobile technologies contribute to the quality of education. similarly, stakeholders should be oriented and trained formally on how to exploit the technology before officially launching it. references adams, d., 1993. defining educational quality. improving educational quality project publication #1: biennial report. arlington, va: institute for international research. brown, t., 2003. the role of m-learning in the future of e-learning in africa? paper presented at the 21st icde world conference, hong kong. dela pena-bandalaria, m., 2007. impact of icts on open and distance learning in a developing country setting: the philippine experience. international review of research in open and distance learning, 8(1). available from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/334/793. dhanarajan, t., 2009. education for all in the digital age. in s. akhtar & p. arinto (eds.). digital review of asia pacific 2009-2010. new delhi: sage publications. pp: 45-49. geddes, s.j., 2004. mobile learning in the 21st century: benefits for learners. knowledge tree. knowledge tree e-journal: an ejournal of flexible learning in vet, 30(3): 214-228. keegan, d., 2002. the future of learning: from elearning to mlearning. hagen, germany: fern universitat. kukulska-hulme, a. and j. traxler, 2007. designing for mobile and wireless learning. in h. beetham & r. sharpe (eds). rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: designing and delivering e-learning. london: routledge. pp: 180-192. motlik, s., 2008. mobile learning in developing nations. international review of research in open and distance learning, 9(2). available from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/564/1071. nyiri, k., 2002. towards a philosophy of m-learning. paper presented at the ieee international workshop on wireless and mobile technologies in education, vaxjo, sweden. sharples, m., j. taylor and g. vavoula, 2005. towards a theory of mobile learning. paper presented at 4th world conference on mlearning, cape town, south africa. sharples, m., j. taylor and g. vavoula, 2007. a theory of learning for the mobile age. in r. andrews & c. haythornthwaite (eds). the sage handbook of e-learning research. london: sage publications. pp: 221-247. traxler, j., 2007. defining, discussing and evaluating mobile learning: the moving finger writes and having writ. the international review of research in open and distance learning, 8(2). available from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewarticle/346. traxler, j. and p. dearden, 2005. the potential for using sms to support learning and organisation in sub-saharan africa. proceedings of development studies association conference, milton keynes, september 2005. unesco, 2010. mobile learning for quality education and social inclusion: iite policy brief. moscow: unesco institute for information technologies in education. van weert, t., 2005. lifelong learning in knowledge society: implications for education. in t. j. van weert (eds). education and the knowledge society: information technology supporting human development. boston: kluwer academic publishing. pp: 15-25. visser, l. and p. west, 2005. the promise of m-learning for distance education in south africa and other developing nations. in y. l. visser, l. visser, m. simonson, & r. amirault (eds). trends and issues in distance education: international perspectives. greenwich, ct: information age publishing. pp: 117-129. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/334/793 http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/564/1071 http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewarticle/346 asian journal of education and training, 2015, 1(1): 1-7 7 wabwoba, f., 2011. the role of wireless technologies in taking education to rural villages in developing countries. international journal of information and communication technology research, 1(7): 300-303. wagner, d. and r. kozma, 2005. new technologies for literacy and adult education: a global perspective. paris: unesco publishing. bibliography liu, t.c., 2007. teaching in a wireless learning environment: a case study. educational technology & society, 10(1): 107-123. ministry of education, 2006. ict training manual nairobi ict unit. nairobi: government printers. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of education and training shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of education and training issn(e) : 2519-5387 vol. 3, no. 1, 30-42, 2017 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 30 youth development and conflict resolution in nigeria: assessment and intervention strategies victor e. dike1  ngozi i. dike2 ( corresponding author) 1 founder/ceo center for social justice & human development (csjhdev), sacramento, california, usa 2 lecturer in the department of biology, federal college of education, zaria, nigeria abstract this article explores youth development, social conflicts and unrest that often degenerates into violence and threaten nigeria‟s sociopolitical stability, economic growth and development. in spite of the promises by the successive political leaders and policymakers that youth development will be given priority attention nigeria has an army of unskilled, jobless and poverty-stricken youth who are prone to anti-social behavior and violence because many of them appear to lack home and community supports as well as economic opportunities. this article argues that investment in positive youth development programs is the key to empowering them with the skills and knowledge to grow into productive and responsible adults; it also helps to improve their living conditions, take care of others as well as to resolve social conflicts effectively. drawing from available pertinent literature this article will, through descriptive design and in-depth analysis, recommend strategies to assess the efficacy of youth development programs and manage, control or resolve conflicts in nigeria. keywords: youth development, skills acquisition, conflict resolution, intervention, assessment, strategies, adult role model, community development, nigeria. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 31 2. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................ 33 3. youth development framework ......................................................................................................................................... 35 4. final conclusions and recommendations .......................................................................................................................... 38 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 39 citation | victor e. dike; ngozi i. dike (2017). youth development and conflict resolution in nigeria: assessment and intervention strategies. asian journal of education and training, 3(1): 30-42. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 issn(e) : 2519-5387 licensed: contribution/ acknowledgment: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. history: received: 10 december 2016/ revised: 16 january 2017/ accepted: 26 january 2017/ published: 6 february 2017 publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=victor e. dike https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ngozi i. dike http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=victor e. dike https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ngozi i. dike http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=victor e. dike https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ngozi i. dike http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=victor e. dike https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ngozi i. dike http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2017.3.1/522.1.30.42 asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 31 1. introduction this article focuses on having a better understanding of the processes, approaches, principles and practices of youth development and conflict resolution in nigeria as well as the assessment and intervention strategies to empower the youth with the skills and knowledge to participate in peacebuilding and conflict resolution. the problem facing youth development and conflict resolution strategies have been noted (sacramento, 2013; youth development network, 2014). the youth need programs that will provide them “life-changing experiences” to enable them “thrive and succeed” as adults (ydn, 2014). conflicts permeate all areas of human existence as they are common in families and organizations; they range from inter-tribal conflicts, religious conflicts and social conflicts, political conflicts and economic conflicts (sacramento, 2013). conflicts also exist at institutional levels (educational conflicts), regional (or community) levels and international levels (okoh, 2005). individuals are subjected to internal (intra-personal) conflicts, group conflicts and external conflicts. each conflict category is said to require a different attention (sacramento, 2013). unresolved conflicts could result in violence, which would lead to loss of life and destruction of property. in nigeria, as in other countries around the globe, conflicts are caused by varied forces with diverse implications (francis, 2012a; igbinijesu, 2013). . for instance, nigeria is currently dealing with the niger delta conflict caused by environmental damages from oil spillage as a result of operations by oil corporations. conflict between the communities and oil companies is, thus, prevalent (okoh, 2005). the long-running misunderstanding between the federal government and the academic staff union of universities (asuu)-a union of university academic professors founded in 1978-has disrupted the academic calendar of higher institutions for months (akinnaso, 2013). the universities in the country have also been battling cultism that has destroyed some lives and property (aina, 2003). conflicts over the sharing of resources have also been prevalent in the society. the relentless drop in global oil prices is also putting enormous pressures on the government that lacks any lasting solution to the problem, leading to socioeconomic crisis. thus, nigeria, as the nation, is facing severe economic crisis with the naira depreciating in the black market, as demand for the us dollar continues to rise. the poor monetary policy of the central bank of nigeria (cbn), including restriction on foreign exchange, has worsened the situation. additionally, the severe fuel scarcity has resulted in hours of queues at fuel stations while other stations are closed because of lack of fuel supply. this has created an economic hardship that could lead to social violence! worse still, the boko haram (a militant islamic group) onslaught (aina, 2003; carson, 2015) in the northeast is threatening to destabilize nigeria. according to report by kieran guilbert of thomson reuters foundation, on december 22, 2015, the united nations have noted that the boko haram violence has forced „one million children out of school in northeast nigeria and neighboring countries (cameroon, chad and niger) exposing them to “abuse, abduction and recruitment by armed groups”. for some time now communities of aguleri and umuleri in anambra state, the brass and nembe communities of bayelsa and rivers state, among other communities, have witnessed civil unrests and conflicts stemming from boundary disputes. the bakassi peninsula, which is the international boundary between nigeria and cameroon, is also in dispute (igbinijesu, 2013). this is not to mention the nigeria/biafra conflict (july 6, 1967 through january 15, 1970) caused by a combination of factors, including political, economic, ethnic, cultural and religious forces among people from different regions. the youth can help to resolve a conflict only when they have in-depth knowledge of the conflict and the skill. conflict is costly and inherently adds to business risk (ross, 2006; kaplan and mikes, 2010; davis and franks, 2014). before we continue, it is imperative to have a conceptual clarification of the terms in discourse. 1.1. conceptual clarification these areas noted above serve as laboratory for conflicts and their implications on national and community development (banfield et al., 2005). while crisis continues to propel skyward at a disturbing rate in the society the leaders continue to give promises they cannot fulfil. some scholars, educators and stakeholders perceive conflict as the “basic unit for understanding social existence” (nnoli, 1998). for others, conflict is the pursuit of incompatible interests and goals by different groups (best, 2006a). conflict, among other things, is a struggle over values or claims to status, power, and scarce resources in which the aims of the parties are not only to gain the desired values, but to neutralize, injure, or eliminate the rivals. conflict will escalate if not resolved on time and amicably (best, 2006b). the causes of conflict are many, including social, religious, political and economic factors. conflict can also arise because of miscommunication between people with regard to their unmet needs, ideas, beliefs, goals, or values. as if the crowded definition is not enough, other scholars have added that “conflict is perceived as a sense or perception, whether real or imagined, by one entity/person that his/her primary self-interests are being threatened by another entity” (uwazie et al., 2008). . since “conflict is inevitable in any social interactions or human relations” (uwazie et al., 2008; sacramento, 2013) the challenge hinges on its management, control, or resolution.‟ however, prevention of conflicts, “although often desirable, may not be possible at all times” (uwazie et al., 2008; sacramento, 2013). some conflicts/disputes produce good results (some provide useful life experiences and lessons (growth and happiness), while others yield negative results. irrespective of its occasional positive results, „conflict could be damaging, painful and costly, when and if, ignored or repressed, or when the only responses to conflicts are selfhelp, violent/forceful behaviors of parties or total avoidance‟ (uwazie et al., 2008; sacramento, 2013). adopting an effective conflict resolution strategy is, therefore, desirable in every crisis situation. conflict resolution is a form of „crucial conversation‟ as it involves tough issues. it „is the types of discussion between two or more people where stakes are high, opinions vary and emotions run strong‟ (patterson et al., 2002). resolution is, therefore, an act of finding a lasting solution to problems or a conflict (burton, 1990). this can be achieved through well-planned and executed conflict resolution strategies. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 32 when a society, a person or an organization has a problem, the first instinct will be to find a solution(s) to the problem (kahane, 2005). a well-designed strategy is a symbol of action that will enable the authorities to achieve the desired goal-whether it is changing the behavior of a people or engineering a social change. a strategy is a “game plan” to achieve one or more goals; it is a plan, a “how” and “a means of getting from here to there” (mintzberg, 1994). conflict resolution strategy is, thus, a method developed for peaceful and amicable means of ending a state of conflict/dispute. it is also a variety of approaches adopted for settling conflicts through the utilization of amicable and constructive ideas (miller, 2003). it is imperative to learn how to manage conflict in all human endeavors. thus, any person who wants to get involved in conflict management must first acquire the knowledge and skills related to conflict resolution, conflict modes, conflict resolution communication skills and establish a structure for managing conflict (uwazie et al., 2008; sacramento, 2013). when selecting a conflict resolution strategy the first decision to deal with is whether or not to confront or avoid the conflict (umstot, 1987). but “violence is often preceded by prolonged period of silence; [or] after allowing unresolved problems to build up and then boils over,…(umstot, 1987). thus, “inability to work through tough issues devastates individual, ruins families, and poison communities” (patterson et al., 2002). however, when confronted with conflict, human beings may respond to the situation in different ways, including avoidance (moving away from the source of the conflict, or psychologically tuning off), accommodation (giving the other party whatever they want and expecting little or nothing in return), and competition (“my way” or nothing; “i win, you lose”). others include, compromise (“i will meet you in the middle” or half way); and collaboration (“our way”; “win/win”) (uwazie, 2008; uwazie et al., 2008; thomas and kilmann, 2010; uwazie and yamshon, 2013). the recurring crises in nigeria (or in any other society) have tremendous effects, not only on the nation‟s political stability, but on national development. the youth in nigeria who appear to be lacking the social support and economic opportunities, and who often think that they are invincible, seize every opportunity to get into violent activities. some of them in higher educational institutions get involved in cultism, among other violent and unlawful activities (aina, 2003). there is no single definition of what constitute the „youth‟ as definitions vary from countries and organizations. for instance, the united nations general assembly has defined the youth as young people (boys and girls) between the ages of 15 and 24 (international labour organization (ilo), 2010) in nigeria, the youth comprises those in the age group of 18-35 (federal republic of nigeria, 2001; onyeizugbo, 2007) in britain, it is those in the age group of 16-18 (cuddy and leney, 2005) in northern italy, it is those in the age group of 14-29; and in southern italy, it is those in the age group of 14-32 (o‟higgins, 1997). but in jordan, the lowest age range for youth is 12; and it is 35 in a number of african countries, including sierra leon and rwanda. in practice, however, what constitute youth is said to be better understood as a transitional stage in life between childhood and adulthood, rather than on age (twb, 2005; the world bank, 2007). therefore, „youth is a period of life coming between childhood and maturity or adolescence; it is an early stage of growth or existence‟ (webster‟s new world college dictionary, 2001). like in every living thing, human beings go through stages or steps in growth or development. the youth are affected by an array of social and economic problems that require serious attention, including poor education, high unemployment/underemployment, poverty, hiv/aid and other sexual transmitted diseases (united nations population fund (unfpa), 2012). in nigeria, which is the main focus of the discourse, the youth constitute over 47 per cent of the estimated 170 million people in the country. it is projected that the population of the youth (10-24) of age will be hovering around 73 million by 2025 and 116 million by 2050 (national population commission (npc), 2013). the growing number of the youth makes it imperative for the political leaders and policymakers to give priority attention to issues that affect them in policy decision and implementations. like in social development, youth development is a process of human growth through which young people are nurtured to move from being taken care of by adults to taking care of themselves and others in the community in which they live (leftkovitz et al., 2014). as in most african countries (or sub-saharan african countries), the youth in nigeria appear to be lacking the knowledge and skills to handle their own internal crisis and to participate effectively in conflict resolution. the government should, therefore, invest copiously in youth development programs backed by effective principles and best practices to meet their myriad needs for political stability, economic growth and development of nigeria. achieving this objective is not an easy feat in nigeria given the country‟s inept leadership and governance and corruption that is littering the political landscape (dike et al., 2014). for nigeria to become an economically prosperous and politically stable society, the policymakers should, therefore, change their “mindset” (dweck, 2007) and begin now to restructure the economy, plan, and design and implement effective youth development programs to empower them with the skills and knowledge to succeed in life, including training them in conflict resolution strategies. 1.2. purpose the purpose of this article is to explore the processes, approaches and principles of youth development and conflict resolution strategies as they relate to nigeria. it will also assess the intervention strategies to the constructs and offer some approaches to plan, design and implement youth development programs that will empower them with the skills and knowledge to reach their full potential as adults and contribute to the well-being of the society. 1.3. research methods information for this descriptive article was derived from extensive review of pertinent literature for an in-depth analysis of the issues surrounding youth development, conflict resolution and the intervention strategies in nigeria. the sources of the information were thoroughly evaluated and analyzed to determine their authenticity. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 33 1.4. research questions this article focuses on the following questions. 1) what youth development initiatives can enhance the knowledge and skills of the youth in nigeria? 2) how will youth program directors know if the youth have acquired the intended knowledge, skills and dispositions to grow into productive adults? 3) what are the major sources of youth related conflicts in nigeria? 4) what conflict resolution strategies (crss) will resolve the recurring conflicts in the society? 2. literature review discussions on youth development programs and conflict resolution strategies are not new because there have been a growing number of scholarly work on the approaches, processes and principles on the constructs. in particular, the problems facing youth development initiatives that empower youth with the knowledge and skills to become successful and productive adults (u.s. department of health and human services, 1996; community, 2002; pittman et al., 2002; teipel, 2002) have made this study much more compelling. however, “positive youth development,” which is the focus of this article, is a policy viewpoint that emphasizes providing social support and economic opportunities to the youth to enable them develop “a sense of competence, usefulness and belonging and empowerment” has equally attracted the attention of scholars and analysts (positive youth development and policy: “what is youth development; see htt://cyd.aed.org/whatishtml). although individual programs can provide youth development activities, „the youth development approach‟ works better when an entire community, including the youth, is involved in developing the programs (community, 2002). this approach helps to create a range of services and opportunities that the youth need to become happy and “healthy adults” (positive youth development, 2001). youth development is thus, about people, programs, institutions and systems that provide the youth, both „troubled‟ or not, „with the supports and opportunities they need to empower themselves‟ (pyd, 2001). youth development focuses on the issues that are crucial to the „youth development approach‟ (teipel, 2002). however, „youth development strategies‟ focus on giving the youth „the chance to form relationships with caring adults, build skills, exercise leadership roles, and help their communities‟(center for youth development and policy: what is youth development? see onlinehttp://cyd.aed.org/whatis.html). the underlying philosophy here is all-inclusive, focusing on the development of assets and competencies in the youth. for the writers of this paper, youth development is about adults building healthy relationship with the youth and teaching them social and academic skills that will enable them growth into productive and successful adults. the youth will certainly misbehave as they grow up, but how we response to their misbehavior is what matters. the youth are viewed as valued and respected asset in every society; and social policies and programs should focus on their evolving developmental needs and tasks as adolescents. the future of every society depends on the welfare of the youth. they perceive the youth as partners rather than clients; and families, schools and communities are engaged in creating environments that support the youth (teipel, 2002). caring adults are involved in activities that enhance their „competence, connections, character, confidence and contribution to society. they are also being provided an opportunity to experiment in a safe environment to develop positive social values and norms and “engage in activities that promote self-understanding, self-worth, and a sense of belonging and resilience” (teipel, 2002). research by scholars, organizations and institutions on youth development programs has acknowledged the „essential component‟ that the youth need. prominent among them are safety, structured places to learn, and links to basic services that will enable them to function effectively within the society (pyd, 2001; center for youth development and policy, n.d). other researchers and analysts have also emphasized “personal and social assets” that support the youth‟s “well-being and outcomes of community program participation” (leffert et al., 1996; national research council on community programs to promote youth development, 2002). but for „positive youth development program‟ to be successful the designers should „develop standards and assessment tools‟ for ensuring physical and psychological safety and provide appropriate structure and supportive relationships. other features include giving the youth opportunities to belong regardless of one‟s gender and ethnicity and provide them positive social norms. they include rules of behavior and expectations, values and morals. others are obligations for service and support for efficacy and integration of family, school, and community efforts into the programs (leffert et al., 1996; nrccppyd, 2002). research by the writers of this paper concur with scholars that have argued that for these components to be effective, youth development programs must include practices that embrace supportive environment and responsive and meaningful challenge and practices, which focus on improving their conditions. that means that the programs must have „built-in opportunities for skill-building, including opportunities to learn physical, intellectual and psychological skills, emotional, social and communication skills, good habits of the mind as well as preparation for adult employment and opportunities to develop social and cultural capital‟ (leffert et al., 1996; nrccppyd, 2002). successful and „positive youth development‟ will depend, among other things, upon the quality and competencies of the staff implementing and directing the programs. in other words, the individuals and organizations/institutions that work with the youth should seriously be engaged in youth development with evidence that they are providing genuine strategic social supports and economic opportunities to enable them become successful in life. the „supports‟ and „opportunities‟ provided should give the youth the chance to experiment with ideas, behaviors and different roles. above all, “the services must be of good quality in the areas of education, health, employment, and juvenile justice” (center for youth development and policy, n.d). the term, youth development, is applied in at least three different ways. it is used as a natural process of development, principles and practices, all of which are important, and logically related (hamilton et al., 2004). as a natural process, youth development leads to the growing capacity of the youth to understand and act on the environment in which they live. this term and its usage are identical to child or adolescent development. human development is, therefore, a natural growth inherent in human beings in relation “to the challenges and supports of http://cyd.aed.org/whatis.html asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 34 the physical and social environment” (hamilton et al., 2004). development in the youth, therefore, enables them to lead a healthy, satisfying, and productive life after which they transit into adulthood where they develop the competence to earn a living as they engage in public or private activities. but one must understand that human beings have different levels of aspirations and interests that can shape their pace of development through the choices they make in live (hamilton et al., 2004). youth development is also a set of principles or philosophy and approach that emphasizes „active support for the growing capacity of young people by individuals, organizations, and institutions, especially at the community level‟ (hamilton et al., 2004). however, youth development approach appears to be ingrained in a society‟s commitment to help the youth to thrive. literature shows that initially, youth development emphasized „problem prevention and treatment programs‟ as youth practitioners would classify individuals according to their shortfalls and try to cure their deficits‟ (hamilton et al., 2004). certainly, if all the youth are to thrive, some of them would need „preventive measures‟ while others would require some „treatment‟ (hamilton et al., 2004). in youth development, practices are utilized “to describe a range of practices in programs, organizations and initiatives” (hamilton et al., 2004). in this sense, „youth development‟ refers to the application of the principles to a planned set of activities that foster the developmental process in the youth. according to research, the distinction between principles and practices is „especially useful when considering the contexts in which the youth spend their time. thus, youth „development takes place in families, neighborhoods, youth organizations, faith-based organizations, schools, and a multitude of other places, including cyberspace‟. although “the specific practices that adults use to create and sustain such opportunities differ across settings, the principles are consistent” (hamilton et al., 2004). literature shows that youth development and conflict resolution can be defined in varied ways given the lens through which the writers view the constructs. “youth development” is also perceived by some writers as a policy and “community approach” focusing on empowering the youth to achieve healthy results and transition into thriving young adults (gambone and connell, 2004). others have observed that proper youth education and youth programs will lead to “youth development” as they have the potential to equip them with the knowledge and skills to resolve conflicts, when and if, they arise (youth development guide: engaging young people in after-school programming, 2001; ydn, 2014). as mentioned earlier, human beings are prone to conflicts because it is a product of co-existence of individuals of different personalities. as a result, conflict has been defined as the pursuit of discordant interests and goals by different groups (best, 2006a). conflict also indicates differences of opinion, misrepresentations, discrepancies, and bitterness prevailing in a particular organization/society or between individuals. but this is different from “armed conflict,” which “is the resort to use of force and armed violence in pursuit of incompatible and particular interest and goals” (francis, 2012b). when analyzing dispute/conflict one should approach it through the “categories of conflicts”, because no single solution would fix all disagreements. social scientists, practitioners and analysts have espoused myriad theories as the root causes of conflicts/disputes. that means that there is no single, unified and complete explanation to the causes of conflicts. theories on the causes of conflicts/disputes are said to fall into five categories (sacramento, 2013) data disputes: it perceives conflict as revolving around or being created by information (or misinformation, lack of information or unfamiliar information); 2) structural disputes: they are said to occur within or between institutions and or bureaucracies (the struggle of social factions hostile to each other); 3) value disputes: they are caused by a clash of ideas or belief systems (example are issues arising from values tied to communism and capitalism or entrenched moral belief); 4) relationship disputes: they are very common among human beings or organizations where there are clashes in behavior or commercial relationships; and 5) behavioral disputes: they can be caused by clashes in habits, behavior, custom and or culture (sacramento, 2013). other theories about the causes of conflicts include unbearable long-lasting moral difference, such as fundamental moral, religious and personal values that cannot be changed easily (barnett and littlejohn, 2002) and issues of justice such as when people believe that they are being treated unjustly or unfairly (deutsch, 2000).yet, others include right-based grievance such as when one person or group of people makes a demand on another group and it is rejected particularly when they advance their claim as „rights‟ (cassese, 1990; glendon, 1993) . for others, the causes of conflict are unmet or unfulfilled human needs such as basic needs for food, water, and shelter as well as complex needs such as safety, security, self-esteem, and personal fulfillment (burton, 1990) as well as identity issues such as when a group feels that their sense of self is under threat (coleman, 2003). however, „there is nothing as practical as a good theory‟ (lewin, 1952). another good theory that explains the cause of conflict is grievance theory (collier and hoeffler, 2000) as noted earlier. three types have been identified: i) hatreds between groups; ii) political exclusion; and iii) vengeance (collier and hoeffler, 2000). also, indoctrination of a group against others can lead to conflict or crisis. yet, another theory on conflict is economic theory, which states that poverty and unemployment could lead to political protest, civil unrest or rebellion (collier, 2006). however, rebellion, like “armed conflict”, is a different matter as it requires financial backing, and thus, a more serious conflict (collier, 2007). but others seem to believe that rebellion will occur when it is possible no matter the condition (ali, 2009). another theory is branded relative deprivation theory, which hinges on economic inequality (box-steffensmeier et al., 2005). this type of conflict occurs when people perceive that there is a huge gap in what they are getting now and what they used to get; and that may fuel tensions among people and lead to discontent (box-steffensmeier et al., 2005). some scholars seem to agree that groups of people fight together because they perceive themselves as being members of a common culture, ethnic or religious group. and they may be in conflict with others to preserve their cultural identity (stewart, 2001; stewart and fitzgerald, 2001; steward, 2002). this review on the causes of conflict may not be complete without mentioning marxist theory of rebellion. this theory hinges on the proposition that market crises could create revolts among the peasant and their masters (employers of labor) who exploit them (marx, 1850). this is a kind of class conflict because the poor working class is being exploited by the factory owners (employers of labor). the fact remains that prolonged exploitation may lead to revolution or violence. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 35 3. youth development framework building a coherent conceptual framework or an outline of the possible course of action will enable the readers to understand the problem facing youth development programs and conflict resolution in nigeria. like in other sectors of the polity, the problems bedeviling youth development programs and training in conflict resolution emanates from lack of attention from political leaders on how to help young people (boys and girls) reach their full potential. as noted, youth development framework focuses on evidence-based process, principle and approach that provide young people with the needed supports and opportunities to develop coping skills to become successful adults (ydn, 2014). the youth are important segment of any society. therefore, neglecting their needs will expose them to bad influence and push them into anti-social activities. this will threaten the peace, stability and security of the society, and thus, prevent them from thriving socially, politically and economically. also, understanding the needs of the youth will enable youth development practitioners, parents, and schools (in fact, the entire community) to provide them with life changing experiences and supports to become productive adults (ydn, 2014). the role of the youth as peace-builders in nigeria (and other countries around the globe) cannot be overemphasized. for the youth to function properly, successful adults with good moral compass should guide them so as to imbibe in them positive values, attitudes and behaviors. this will enable them to learn to make good decisions in time of crisis, resolve conflicts and become good leaders in their communities and promote harmonious relationships among their peers and adults (ydn, 2014). as noted, „youth‟ is a period of life coming between childhood and maturity; [or] adolescence‟ or “an early stage of growth or existence” (wnwcd, 2001). and „development‟ (as it relates to youth and growth) is “a step or stage in growth…” (wnwcd, 2001). thus, to develop is to become larger, fuller and better. put differently, „development‟ is “a process of human growth through which young people move from being taken care of to taking care of others and themselves”. it is also “an approach in which young people are supported as they build their capabilities and strengths to meet their personal social needs” (ydn, 2014). this framework has identified five main „supports and opportunities‟ that will produce positive results in the lives of the youth (ydn, 2014): a) to provide the youth access to emotionally, physically and culturally safe environment; b) to provide them with caring and consistent healthy adult relationships; c) to provide them experiences and opportunities for meaningful participation in civic activities; d) to provide the youth opportunities to contribute to and gain knowledge of the community in which they live; and e) to acquire applicable skills to engage in challenging and productive activities. the youth development practices (ydgeypasp, 2001) that are based on the research by michelle a. gambone and james p. connell also involve “supports and opportunities” the youth need to transit into productive adults (gambone and james, 1999). the “supports and opportunities” include: safety: this entails emotional and physical safety. with this, the youth will feel secure that adults will protect them from harm; they will know that they are protected by a set of fair and consistently applied rules or agreement; and feel secure that they will be valued and accepted by the community and their peers. for them, this means building a safe and supportive environment (gambone and james, 1999; ydgeypasp, 2001). relationship building: this means providing the youth guidance, emotional support, practical support, and knowledge. with that, they will experience those supports and guidance from adults and their peers, and thus, develop functional knowledge of adults and their peers (gambone and james, 1999; ydgeypasp, 2001). youth participation: this means allowing the youth to make meaningful inputs in decision making process by giving them leadership opportunities, and thus a sense of belonging. in other words, giving them „guidance and support‟ the youth will have the opportunity to participate in decision-making and to develop and practice leadership (gambone and james, 1999; ydgeypasp, 2001). community involvement: this means ability to impact the community and build or acquire knowledge of the community in which they live. with this, the youth will have the opportunity to give back to the community or positively contribute to their community development or provide them a sense of connection with the larger community (gambone and james, 1999; ydgeypasp, 2001). skills building: the youth will be motivated with activities that are challenging and interesting to them and useful to their community; and they will have the opportunity to stretch their knowledge, skills and abilities and perceive their growth, development and progress (gambone and james, 1999; ydgeypasp, 2001). other critical elements essential for healthy development of the youth (konopka, 1973; pittman, 1991) include allowing them to discuss conflicting values (to make mistakes they will learn from and develop coping skills); and they will form their own opinion and feel the pride and accountability that comes with mastery of issues facing them and their community. this will enable them to expand their capacity to enjoy life and to know that success is possible (as cited in “keys to quality youth development (n.d) developed by patricia almquist, et al). according to the youth development approach perspectives of this framework, providing the youth with all these „basic elements‟ are among the effective strategies to manage, control and, thus, prevent them from falling into the wrong hands or getting involved in self-destructive activities. the cooperative efforts and influences of the family, school and effective community-based programs are required for all these practices to be possible (ydgeypasp, 2001). 3.1. intervention and assessment of youth development programs the upsurge in youth-related violence and crisis around the globe (including nigeria) has amplified call for the review and assessment of youth development programs for their efficacy (hamilton and hamilton, 2012). for instance, nigeria has the federal ministry of youth development devoted to youth development, yet the ministry does not seem to have reliable information about the youth in nigeria including their unemployment/ underemployment figures and those who need assistance of any kind (the federal ministry of youth development, 2013). how can the policymakers plan, design and implement effective youth development programs without knowing the number and the needs of the participants? like in every statistics nigeria uses in planning, the number of the youth in the population is just a guess work. asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 36 it takes more than political rhetoric to develop the youth in nigeria and to maximize their success; it takes effective intervention strategies to achieve and sustain positive youth development outcome. youth intervention strategies should be fashioned in a manner that will meet their needs and specific social, economic and cultural conditions of the society. a development conscious and serious society must develop programs that provide the youth the experiences and skills they need to become creative, innovative and productive, and thus, successful in life. for such programs to be successful, they should be properly planned, implemented, evaluated, and assessed to ensure that they meet the needs of the youth. this is because unmet needs could lead to frustration and social violence. thus, any well-planned youth development programs must have the essential tools to empower them with the knowledge and skills they need to become economically self-sufficient. in other words, “they should be able to support themselves and their families”. to prevent the youth from getting involved in anti-social activities, the society should provide them with high quality education (including technical and vocational education and skills training with practical application on the job and health education in school and out-of-school) that will enable them to secure decent jobs and change jobs, when and if they need to change jobs (ydn, 2014). youth empowerment strategies that are rooted on educational programs and quality skills training must be sustainable if they are expected to make a difference or significant impact on youth development. in addition, the society should provide the youth with the skills and knowledge to participate effectively in conflict management and conflict resolution (ofem and ajayi, 2008). the youth program providers and caretakers (parents, extended family and teachers) should be involved in the planning and implementation of youth development programs. and the youth who are the beneficiary of the programs should not be left out in the process of planning, designing, implementation and evaluation of the programs to determine their efficacy (leffert et al., 1996). in terms of education and training concerning conflict resolution, participatory approach places equal priority on the relationship with other parties in the conflict to achieve mutual satisfying results (kepner and likubo, 1996). the strategies of „problem solving‟ and conflict management style are said to include building trust and team, searching for alternative resolutions and „win-win‟ solution, instead of “i win, you lose” solution (kepner and likubo, 1996). the youth need counseling and other services that will respond to their psychological needs, because unfulfilled psychological needs may lead to frustration, anti-social activities, social unrest and violence. thus, nigeria must ensure that the youth have access to potable water, food, warmth, shelter, health care and clean environment, safety and security (to protect everyone from harm). they should also have a sense of belonging and love from family and friends to boost their self-esteem (yamshon, 2001). these issues have provoked the demand for effective intervention strategies in the planning and implementation of youth development programs (hamilton and hamilton, 2012). however, for any youth development programs to make a difference, the society should invest copiously in the programs and increase collaboration among other agencies serving the youth (ydn, 2014). to bring all this together, the program planners should have clear cut goals and proper indicators to measure their efficacy while building, implementing, and monitoring and evaluating youth development programs. the programs should promote ethnic and religious tolerance, instead of steering division (ydn, 2014). in a multi-ethnic (or tribal) and multi-religious nigeria, religious tolerance should be one of the key topics of discussion in youth development programs. societal conflict is said to be rampant in polarized societies. conflict management, control and prevention as well as peace-building should be a significant part of any youth development program if nigeria expects the youth to participate effectively in conflict resolution. religious leaders and faith-based organizations that are dispensers of religious ideas can play important roles in youth development programs. this approach will help to achieve greater social cohesion and provide critical foundation for enhancing youth development, national integration and economic growth and development (haynes, 2009). it is worthy of note, in conclusion, that any society that does not satisfy the needs of the youth may degenerate into disorder because violent activities will become their main form of expression. 3.2. youth and national development the youth play a prominent role in every society, including national development, as they are seen as the leaders of tomorrow (gribble, 2010). their numerical strength is growing in every society, as “almost half of the world‟s population is under age 25” (gribble, 2010). according to literature, the youth between ages 15 and 24 are in greatest needs of social services, including the need for sexual and reproductive health services; and those who are younger will quickly come of age and share the same needs. literature also show that the size of the population of the world in age bracket of 15 to 24 is hovering around 1.2 billion and it is expected to continue growing for at least 20 more years” (gribble, 2010). the youth have creative and modern ideas they acquire from the emerging technologies, and thus, have the potential to propel any society to greatness if their needs are provided. nigeria‟s national youth development policy has declared that the youth are the foundation of a society (frn, 2001). but this pronouncement appears to be the regular rhetoric the policymakers toss around because the federal ministry of youth development in nigeria (abuja), as noted earlier, does not seem to have reliable information on the demography of the youth such as their unemployment/ underemployment figures (onyeizugbo, 2007). that is the crux of the matter with poor or ineffective youth development programs in nigeria. however, the level of investment a nation makes on the well-being of the youth determines the pace of economic growth and development, and security of the nation. through their creativity, ingenuity, emerging talents and social capital a nation makes a giant stride in economic development and sociopolitical accomplishments. this is particularly the case with societies that have invested copiously on youth development programs and general human capital development (education and health care). this is because “in their dreams and hopes, a nation founds her motivation; on their energies, she builds her vitality and purpose; and because of their dreams and aspirations, the future of a nation is assured” (frn, 2001). drawing from the work of scholars, researchers and practitioners as well as from our own practical experiences as educators, youth coaches and writers, it is not an overstatement to say that the youth are the most active segment asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 37 of any society, and thus, major contributor to peace and stability as well as violence in nations. despite the myriad problems facing them, the youth in nigeria have made some impressive inputs on national development through the national youth service corps (nysc) program, among other activities (frn, 2001). the society should, therefore, establish other similar programs and properly fund and implement them. more importantly, the participants should be properly motivated (financially) and provided with safe living and working environment. since violence is especially a serious problem among the youth (this cannot detract from their role as nationbuilders) we (the authors) can venture to say without fear of contradiction that the degree of lawlessness and instability in a society is also greater among the youth (dudley, 1973; aina, 2003). although developed nations are known to be very good at keeping track of the number of deaths and injuries resulting from youth violence (ilo, 2010) this is not the case with nigeria. this calls for a serious study/research in this area. good character education (social and emotional learning) or behaviors and how to build good relationships with adults should be included in schools and youth development programs; with that the society can become a true change maker in the young peoples‟ lives. peace and stability is a harbinger of development in a democratic society (huntington, 1996). the absence of those in a society means that significant development is unlikely to occur. nigeria‟s national youth policy has asserted that the youth‟s “responsible conduct and roles in society is positively correlated with the development of their country” (frn, 2001). the society should, therefore, provide them high quality education and health care, technical and vocational education and skills training, build a healthy economy as well as good leadership and governance (dike, 2009; dike, 2010). this will enable them to go beyond what they perceive as their limits. although the political leaders, through some development agencies, have adopted a multitude of policies to promote youth development programs in the country, their efficacy remain inadequate. for example, youth development agencies such as nigeria‟s national youth corps (nysc) remains grossly underfunded and mismanaged. this has negatively affected the nation‟s youth development agenda and the social, political and economic development of nigeria. lack of effective youth development programs and conflict resolution skills are therefore among the myriad challenges facing the youth in nigeria today. these problems are deep-rooted in the seemingly „anti-growth‟ “mindset” of the political leaders and the nation‟s extractive political and economic institutions (acemoglu and robinson, 2012). consequently, there is a serious disconnect between “ego-system thinking and “eco-system reality” (scharmer and kaufer, 2013). the state of our mind-sets or mental models affect what we do-our performance, decision-making process, and how we manage ourselves (senge, 2006). for nigeria to move forward socially, politically and economically, the political leaders and their followers (in collective, collaborative and shared leadership) must engage in a deeper shift in their “mind-sets” and gravitate toward “eco-system awareness” from their engrained “egosystem thinking” (scharmer and kaufer, 2013). albert einstein‟s famous dictum has said it all: “we cannot solve our present problems with the same level of mind-set or consciousness that created them.” thus, what nigeria will become is the society the leaders and the followers have decided to create. 3.3. conflict management and resolution strategies research shows that no single strategy will achieve peace or resolve conflict in any society (fisher, 2000). although those who thrive on conflicts will always try to stir the amber of hatred during disputes, but if the society properly educates the youth and the citizens in general, she will create awareness of peace, reduce intolerance and ignorance, and thus, increase social interaction among the many groups in the society. with that, the society or community can manage, control and resolve conflict through collective efforts and with a combination of strategies or actions that will make a real difference (fisher, 2000). some scholars, including dudley weeks (weeks, 1992) have noted three approaches for dealing with conflicts in any social situation: a) conflict prevention-a process by which individuals and groups select from a wide range of actions, interventions, programs, activities, mechanisms and procedures that can be used to prevent destructive and potentially violent conflict; b) conflict transformation-a process by which a conflict is changed in a creative way to become a constructive and functional process; and c) conflict resolution-a process of finding a lasting solution to a conflict by addressing the interest of each party to the extent that both sides are satisfied with the outcome (weeks, 1992). it has also been observed in conflict management in nigeria (imobighe, 1997) that conflict management model, which sees conflict management as a process, calls for embracing the three levels of activities mentioned above, namely, “conflict prevention, conflict control and abatement and conflict resolution” (imobighe, 1997; academic association peace works (aap), 2004). meanwhile, those who are involved in conflict resolution should at the onset of the process, create an atmosphere or supportive environment where the parties in conflict are really partners in solving the problem (weeks, 1992). it is most likely that a mutual agreement will be reached when participants in a dispute have given careful consideration to creating such an alluring atmosphere. some of the major conflict resolution strategies discussed in this article include the following: arbitration: this is an action by a third party with authority to decide and enforce settlement. the decision of the arbitrator is binding on the conflicting parties (fisher, 2000). advocacy: this is giving a public support to an idea, a course of action or belief (hornby, 2006). it means to defend how one feels about an issue by presenting a different point of view. advocacy may assume different forms such as self-advocacy, which means a person standing by his/her opinion; peer advocacy that takes place when the individual providing the differing view point is going through or has gone through similar experience; and statutory advocacy, which is when a person has legal responsibility (such as a legal practitioner) to represent another person (hornby, 2006). mediation: this is an intervention of a third party in resolving a conflict between two parties (miller, 2003). it is also “a process guided by a third party that can enable the conflicting parties to find their own agreed settlement” (fisher, 2000). mediation is a major collaborative technique (sacramento, 2013). the mediator is a neutral person asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 38 who has no personal interest in the out-come of the case. he/she is not there as a decision-maker or a judge, but to facilitate the discussion between the disputants. however, the mediator uses his/her expertise in negotiation to get the parties to make informed decisions. there are three phases in mediation: i) introductory phase; ii) problemsolving; and iii) closure (fisher, 2000). negotiation: this is “a process [or a strategy employed in conflict resolution] enabling parties to discuss possible options and reach a settlement through face-to-face interaction” (fisher, 2000). it has also been described as a structured process of dialogue between conflicting parties (best, 2006a). the process goes back-and-forth between the parties trying to resolve their conflict with the goal of finding a lasting solution. in successful negotiations, the needs of both parties are put into consideration. a negotiated settlement can become a contract and be enforceable if the parties are satisfied with the outcome or reached a mutually acceptable agreement (best, 2006b). other conflict intervention strategies include: i) confidence-building; and ii) facilitating dialogue (fisher, 2000). for instance, confidence-building involves rebuilding and enhancing mutual respect, trust, and confidence between the conflicting parties, while facilitating dialogue is a process of enabling conflicting parties to have direct communication (fisher, 2000). 3.4. nigeria and conflict management strategies conflict resolution strategies in nigeria do not appear to have gone beyond the traditional or customary methods of resolving crisis. at best, the society uses some rudimentary modern conflict management or conflict resolution strategies. generally, in nigeria when aggrieved parties (individuals and communities) are trying to resolve conflicts/disputes and feel that negotiation would not resolve their problem there is the tendency for them to become agitated and aggrieved. they could at this point resort to violence and strategies that would not move the process forward. when individuals or groups feel that their rights are being violated by powerful political forces they will either resort to violence or engage „in an all-or-nothing contest‟ to reclaim their entitlements when their customary strategies fail to yield positive result (frn, 2001). the prevailing approach to conflict resolution in nigeria is rooted in the culture. for instance, conflict management strategies in the niger delta region of nigeria where the communities and oil corporations operating in the area have engaged in an unending dispute/conflict, seem to reflect the conflict management strategies prevalent in the society (frn, 2001). the conflict management strategies espoused by the participants in conflicts (the communities, the oil corporations and the government) demonstrates how seriously they have identified the issues in dispute. they perceive the conflicts in the region as abuse, rights violation, and injustice against the natives. the communities in the region (and individuals elsewhere in nigeria) that feel that they have been marginalized or that their properties have been taken away from them, will be fighting by any means to reclaim their rights. the collapse of „civic institutions‟ (because of corruption, poor leadership and governance) have contributed to the delay in the settlement of conflict or resort to traditional strategies. under intense pressure, the communities through their representatives would take some rash decisions and adopt reactionary strategies and policies that are combative in nature (onosode, 2003). for instance, the aggrieved communities in the niger delta region have a list of demands for the government and oil corporations: they include „political empowerment‟ (they claim that their voices have been drowned); increase in monetary allocation from the oil revenue; or outright control of the oil resources to enable them develop the region (osaghae, 1998). some of the strategies adopted to resolve the conflicts in the niger delta region (and in other conflict situations such as in labor disputes) include “unorganized and organized verbal threats or agitation; community meetings; sitins and vigils, and written petitions to the oil companies and the government” (onosode, 2003). others include media interviews and newspaper publications, delegations to oil companies and government, announcements, mass rallies and demonstrations and temporary occupation of oil installations and premises of oil corporations. yet, other strategies comprise “abduction of oil corporations‟ workers, obstructions and disruptions of company operations, legal suits, sabotage, and hostilities between the contending communities and political action” (onosode, 2003). these strategies appear to have only succeeded in causing more violence, and thus, intensify the “tension, insecurity and conflicts in the region” (okoh, 2005).the „win-lose‟ stance is not conducive to resolving lingering conflict (coleman, 2003). alternative strategies such as conflict prevention, conflict control, conflict management and dialogue and other modern conflict resolution strategies with inbuilt participatory approach to conflict management are imperative. this is because they are more likely to produce desired outcome, which is peaceful coexistence and „win-win‟ solution (okoh, 2005; uwazie et al., 2008). although change, as we know it, is constant, it is not easy for people to change from the ingrained belief system. as a result, in communities where they are skeptical about change, the people will more often than not, praise the past and thus prefer to keep the status quo. thus, during community crisis they could resort to the customary system of conflict resolution where the chiefs and elders in the community would step in to resolve conflicts between aggrieved individuals and groups in the communities. this approach empowers authorities in the community to take active part in resolving conflicts or problems. they think it is „the way they have always done it‟ as the conflict resolution based on the customs and belief system was handed down to them by their forefathers. there are also occasions when parents, grandparents and uncles as well as aunties would step in to mediate basic disputes that produce lasting solutions. the first step in resolving a conflict/dispute is to recognize it and respond with effective strategies before it escalates. but for individuals (or the youth) to effectively participate in conflict resolution it is essential that they should have adequate training in conflict mediation and crisis intervention. nigerians are, thus, advised to “seek dialogue” when they are confronted with conflicts/disputes, instead of “confrontation” to avoid conflicts from escalating into violence (united nations development programme (undp), 2003; undp, 2005). 4. final conclusions and recommendations any published work is to a certain degree like an iceberg, because what is visible is only a small portion of the whole. this article has discussed youth development and conflict resolution frameworks for a better understanding of asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 39 issues surrounding youth development and conflict resolution strategies in nigeria at both individual and group settings. it has also discussed their intervention and evaluation strategies and explored some connections with different disciplines in building plausible theoretical and practical perspectives and procedures to enable readers and policy makers assess and evaluate the efficacy of youth development programs and conflict resolution strategies. after a thorough review and analysis of pertinent literature and given the findings from their own research on the issues in discourse, the authors of this article have concluded that it is imperative for the political leaders and policy makers to address the myriad pressing needs of the youth in nigeria. this study has therefore offered the following recommendations, which are by no means exhaustive: 1) to include youth development and conflict resolution strategies as integral part of peacebuilding education in nigeria‟s institutions of higher learning to enable the youth learn the importance of peaceful coexistence, cooperation with their peers and cultural tolerance; 2) to establish youth development centers in all the local government areas as part of the youth development initiative to empower the youth and drive development in communities where such resources are lacking or not properly managed. 3) to embrace peace building process through proven youth development programs and conflict resolution strategies; 4) to periodically organize youth development seminars, workshops and conferences in peace building and conflict resolution to enable the people recognize, control and better manage conflict situations; 5) to draft and implement guidelines for youth safety and security in-and-out of school and to make it compulsory for police verification of teachers and youth care givers before hiring them; 6) to ensure that youth development program directors and care givers are properly educated, trained and motivated; 7) to provide proper counselling to the youth to address their needs and concerns about schools and other youth-related activities; 8) to create a supportive environment that will empower the youth to thrive, develop their skills, broaden their scope for action, and to empower them with knowledge and skills to become successful and productive adults; 9) to empower the youth with technical and vocational skills to enhance their entrepreneurial skills to enable them improve their living conditions and, thus, reduce youth-related unrests and conflicts; 10) to create an enabling environment that will allow the youth to start up new businesses, introduce new products and improve their management and leadership skills; 11) to appoint or elected the youth to leadership positions that involve decision making process to enable them participate effectively in conflict resolution; 12) to ensure proper implementation of youth development and conflict resolution guidelines by providing systematic professional development to teachers and other youth development professionals or care givers; and 13) to assess and evaluate the efficacy of youth development activities and program to ensure quality. the authors, however, hope that this article will contribute to the growing literature on youth development programs and conflict resolution as it has proffered potential solutions to the issues in discourse. it is expected that the knowledge and skills gained (or lessons learned) from this article will enable the reader, and particularly the youth, and their care givers and agencies to plan, design and deliver youth development programs more effectively and efficiently. given their antecedents, majority of the leaders of nigeria want power for the sake of power. they are not thinking of developing and implementing effective policies to fix the myriad problems facing nigeria, particularly in the area of youth development. the growing rate of youth unemployment in nigeria has been traced to the poor business environment and anti-job creation policies of the government (federal, state and local). the seemingly lack of proper youth development programs (particularly entrepreneurship skills) should be tackled without further delay to sustain national development. it was estimate that of the millions of nigerians that are unemployed at second quarter of 2016 youth unemployment was 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(edited by michael agnes and david b. guralnik). 4th edn., foster city: ca, idg books worldwide, inc., pp: 1662, 306, 1220, 394. weeks, d., 1992. the eight essential steps to conflict resolution. new york, ny: jeremy p. tarcher inc. yamshon, d., 2001. abraham maslow‟s hierarchy of human needs. powerpoint assembled by daniel yamshon based on the theories of abraham maslow. capcr. retrieved from www.adrservicesinternational.com. youth development guide: engaging young people in after-school programming, 2001. community network for youth development; 657 mission street, suite 410, san francisco, ca 94105. youth development network, 2014. connecting the research with what we do. contributing writers: bina leftkovitz, anddrian ruiz, scott mautte & rachel bingham, 5115 dudley blvd., mcclellan, ca3222: 2-17. retrieved from www.ydnetwork.org. author(s) biography victor e. dike 1 , edd, is the founder and ceo of the center for social justice and human development (csjhdev), an ngo in sacramento that provides educational and skills training services to the underserved groups in the area. a professional educator, he has more than 20 years of experience in education, ranging from high school/adult education to the university level. victor dike was formerly an adjunct professor, school of engineering, technology and media, national university (sacramento campus), california. he holds a doctorate in educational leadership and management (with concentration in human resource development) from drexel university, philadelphia, pennsylvania (2013). a prolific writer, he is the author of several books and has contributed chapters to other books. his books include leadership and governance: implication on the nigerian economy. north https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=effects%20of%20youth%20empowerment%20strategies%20on%20conflict%20resolutions%20in%20the%20niger-delta%20of%20nigeria:%20evidence%20from%20cross%20river%20state http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jard.v6i1.1671 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=conflict%20management%20in%20the%20niger-delta%20region%20of%20nigeria:%20a%20participatory%20approach http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajcr.v5i1.39387 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=managing%20multiple%20minority%20problems%20in%20a%20divided%20society:%20the%20nigerian%20experience http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022278x9700267x https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=a%20closer%20look%20at%20oil,%20diamonds%20and%20civil%20war http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.081304.161338 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.081304.161338 http://www.youthdevelopment.gov.ng/ http://www.ccp.com;/ http://www.cpp.com/pdfs/smp248248.pdf http://www.scribd.com/doc/40981583/conflict-related-development-analysis-2003-undp-bureau-for-crisisprevention-recovery http://www.scribd.com/doc/40981583/conflict-related-development-analysis-2003-undp-bureau-for-crisisprevention-recovery http://www.prb.org/reports/2012/status-report-youth.aspx http://www.prb.org/reports/2012/status-report-youth.aspx http://www.prb.org/pdf12/status-report-youth-subsaharan-africa.pdf http://www.adrservicesinternational.com/ http://www.ydnetwork.org/ asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(1): 30-42 42 charleston, sc: createspace independent publication (co-authored with dr. meshack okpala and dr. agatha ekeh, january 10, 2014); leadership without a moral purpose, booksurge publications (2009); and democracy and political life in nigeria (2 nd edition), iuniverse, inc. (2006). dike has also written numerous peer-review articles including, “human capital development, technological capabilities and national development: the nigerian experience,” african journal of science, technology, innovation & development, 2012, 4(2), 11-28; “planned intervention and organizational development: the role of leadership in change initiatives. african journal of science, technology, innovation and development, 2014: 1-6; “leadership and the nigerian economy”. sage open, march 2, 2014, (4), 1–10; and '“why nations fail” to develop: the case of nigeria.' sage open, october 28, 2015, 5(4), 1-12. ngozi i dike 2 , phd, is a chief lecturer in the department of biology, federal college of education, zaria, nigeria, where she teaches undergraduate students. she has more than twenty five years of teaching experience. she has published several articles both in national and international journals. her article has appeared in the international business research, international research in environmental science and technology and world science journal among other journals and has contributed chapters to text books. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 213 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 213-223, 2019 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.213.223 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teacher candidates' socialization process: a grounded theory study fatma köybaşı1 celal teyyar uğurlu2 ( corresponding author) 1,2cumhuriyet university, turkey abstract the purpose of this research is to reveal teacher candidates' experiences from the beginning of their service until being a teacher. in this study, the grounded theory research design was preferred. the study group was determined with criterion sampling. based on the criterion that the participants have just completed the one-year candidacy process, 12 teachers from different branches participated in this research. interview technique was used as a data collection tool. the data were collected through a semi-structured interview form. according to the result of the model, teacher candidates have emotional responses regarding their prospective professional life before starting such as excitement or nervousness. the first stage is called the adaptation process. the second stage indicates that the implementation stage is associated with the experiences in the adaptation. as for the third phase, experience-gaining, the teachers who could identify and improve the shortcomings in the implementation process, gained experiences. keywords: teacher candidates, socialization process, teacher candidates' socialization process. citation | fatma köybaşı; celal teyyar uğurlu (2019). teacher candidates' socialization process: a grounded theory study. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 213-223. history: received: 5 december 2018 revised: 10 january 2019 accepted: 14 february 2019 published: 12 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 214 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 215 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 216 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 220 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 222 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.213.223&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/406 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8684-1235 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7933-9327 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/406 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8684-1235 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7933-9327 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/406 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8684-1235 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7933-9327 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/406 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8684-1235 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7933-9327 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 214 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction a teacher candidate is a teacher who has been assigned to a formal or private education institution affiliated to the ministry of national education and has started their profession but has not been a regular teacher yet (duran et al., 2011). they are prepared for the teaching profession by receiving the necessary training within a certain period. teacher candidates complete the process of candidacy by receiving preparatory training, basic training, and applied training in the institution they are first assigned to. their education and experience in early years of and school allows them to familiarize themselves with their professions, to conduct trial implementation studies, to observe organizational behaviours and to enter organizational socialization process through modelling. in organizational institutions, which are described as collective reaction within the community or as life habits of the community (mead, 1962) the process of socialization starts which enables the individual to integrate with a particular community and class (ozankaya, 1999) the force applied by the organization to the individual to fully adopt them to itself is defined as socialization (balcı, 2000). organizational socialization includes forming of logical schemas by means of learning of new information, skills, values and relationships (cooper-thomas and anderson, 2006).organizational socialization includes the abandonment of old attitudes and values and the acquiring of the ones, at the same time learning of means, responsibilities, organizational values and norms necessary to realize the goals of the organization. in fact, organizational socialization is to learn organizational culture and to adapt organizational culture (calık, 2003). it is related to the socialization process to teach the skills and abilities required by the job and appropriate role behaviours, and working groups act in accordance with their norms and values (feldman, 1980).organizational socialization is the process of learning the attitudes and behaviours necessary to assume the roles within the organization (güçlü, 2004). according to balcı (2003) the candidacy process, which is the previous stage before being entitled to be a teacher, is a transitional period for ensuring organizational socialization. in school, organizational socialization is seen as the acquisition of the roles of teachers and administrators, their adaption of school cultures, the formation of work attitudes and behaviours, and acquisition of the new functional identity (kartal, 2007). socialization of teachers includes acceptance of professional values, attitudes, interest and learning how to change these (memduhoğlu, 2008). for educational institutions, socialization can be interpreted as schools' adapting teachers to their own values and cultures. in the process of organizational socialization, the main goal is to make the employee an effective member of the organization (can, 2002) and it can be aimed at ensuring that teachers are effective at the optimum level in schools. cheng and pang (1997) argue that the profile of the employee will be shaped according to two different approaches adapted in the socialization process (functionalist and dialectic). in educational institutions, a teacher, who is socialized with a functionalist point of view, is seen as a passive object of the socialization process. in other words, the teacher's adaption to the community is ensured. from a dialectical point of view, there are more complex, interactive, mutual and transient situations in the socialization process. the effects of both functional and dialectical approaches are observed in the socialization process of teachers based on the legal regulations of turkish ministry of national education and the philosophy of education. in a way, it is a socialization process in which the teacher is always in the process of socialization and cannot be restricted by specific area and education. in the turkish education system, the approach adapted by teachers in the socialization process may be a decisive factor in the role of the teachers. multiple factors can be involved when teachers' socialization experiences are assessed in the context of school stakeholders. literature review was carried out on the theories and particular studies about what factors and stages are involved in the socialization process, how to identify and limit the relationship between them; as a result, these have led to describe the socialization process of teachers. studies defining the organizational socialization and content dimensions of socialization process, which consist of several independent dimensions, can be effective in identifying the criteria that can accurately assess success in organizational socialization (chao et al., 1994) and unearthing teachers' content dimensions in the socialization process. the research on the other side reveals that the individuals within the organization combine their behaviours with proactivities of new recruits in order to improve the socialization process, and adaption of the common ideas by employees is ensured (slaughter and zickar, 2006).from this point, it can be determined whether teacher candidates benefit from their experienced colleagues and whether a new learning process is started via exchange of ideas. it is found out that recent studies on the socialization process have been carried out with long-term research processes (taormina, 2004) and studies related to organizational socialization are gradually increasing (chao et al., 1994; erdoğan, 2012) however, the findings from the studies are varied and the scope is not wide enough (adkins, 1995; erdoğan, 2012; araza et al., 2013). in relation with socialization process, which presents different results for each organization and sample, the stages for the teacher candidates and both generic and specific situations in each stage can be determined. it seems that great efforts are being made to develop stage models in the studies on socialization theory (calık, 2003). ashforth et al. (2007) classified the models of socialization processes (between years 1974 and 2001) as initial, integrative and specialized models. it puts socialization process models into (initiation, integration and privatization) in accordance with the theories on which socialization approaches (dialectical and functional) are based. it can be said that examining the socialization process of teachers in a separate framework will give more accurate results. king et al. (2005) in their research on socialization process, emphasized the need for consideration of the selection of samples and new participation in the organization, and stated that research carried out with information based on personal reporting in conjunction with a complementary research design would produce healthy outcomes. in the light of the results of the mentioned researches, the focus of this work became clear in terms of contributing to the literature and yielding results beneficial for educational institutions. taking into account the following criteria which provide healthy results regarding socialization research, decision was made for i) studying on a specific sample of newly-recruited teacher candidates, ii) covering a certain period of time, iii) comparisons asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 215 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group with relevant theories as a complementary research design, and iv) collecting data based on personal reporting, and the research was designed accordingly. therefore, we focused on developing a model of the socialization process about stages of the socialization process experienced by teacher candidates and the influential factors in each stage by means of interviews and comparing the obtained data with relevant theories. the purpose of this research is to reveal teacher candidates' experiences from the beginning of their service until being a teacher. to this end, answers to the following questions were sought. 1teachers in the first two months a) how did you feel about your first day in teaching, what did you feel? b) what are your experiences during the first few months (within 1-2 months) in adapting to the teaching profession? c) in the first few months (within 1-2 months) have you had any problems as a candidate teacher? who have helped you with those problems? d) what were your occupational expectations in the first months (within 1-2 months)? how do you think your expectations were/were not met? 2what are your experiences (as a teacher) where you have felt belonging to the teaching profession over the course of a year? 3as a teacher, what kind of classification would you make if divided your on-year long candidacy period? 2. method qualitative research method was used since it was needed to understand and deeply analyze a social phenomenon to find out the feelings, experience, problems, and the critical developmental periods of teacher candidates during the first months and in the end of the one-year candidacy period. 2.1. research design in this study, the grounded theory research design was preferred as a type of qualitative research design because while investigating teacher candidates' socialization process, instead of a traditional hypothesis testing approach, it was aimed to expose the unexplained factors that support the theory but are not included in the theory by means of analyzing the data. charmaz (2003) argues that grounded theory shows the links between more general social forces at the micro level (the social theory which focuses on the events and phenomena of short periods of social life (neuman, 2008) in order to reconstruct theory and inform social action.this study deals with the differentiation in stages that teacher candidates go through from the first months until the completion of the one-year candidacy period, and is explained by sequential theory. sequential theory depicts a flow of life events that differ in the meaning of roles and activities (oesterle et al., 2004). we think sequential theory is suitable for this study since it allows determining the steps taken by teacher candidates in the process of socialization and the ways to the following steps. 2.2. participants in this study, study group was selected by using the purposeful sampling method, which has mostly been used in qualitative research (yıldırım and şimşek, 2005). the study group was determined with criterion sampling under the purposeful sampling methods. based on the criterion that the participants have just completed the oneyear candidacy process, 12 teachers from different branches participated in this research. the teachers started working in suşehri and akıncılar districts of sivas province in the 2014-2015 academic year. the demographic data for the participants are given in table 1. table-1. participants' demographic data. teacher gender branch type of school worked teacher 1 male information technologies technical-vocational high school teacher 2 male science and technology secondary school teacher 3 female physical education multi-program high school teacher 4 male literature agricultural-vocational high school teacher 5 female school counselor anatolian high school teacher6 male geography vocational high school teacher 7 female turkish language secondary school teacher 8 male religious culture secondary school teacher 9 male agriculture and technology agricultural high school teacher 10 female classroom teacher primary school teacher 11 female english language i̇mam hatip high school teacher 12 male chemistry anatolian high school source: author’s field work. 2.3. data collection tool and collection of data interviewing is one of the most common data collection methods in grounded theory (robson, 2015). in this study, interview technique was used as data collection tool and interviews were conducted individually. the data were collected through a semi-structured interview form. a comprehensive review of literature was conducted in order to form the conceptual framework and prepare good interview questions. during preparation of the research questions, opinions of two experts experienced in qualitative research were obtained first. the questions were primarily applied to 2 female teachers outside the study group. the questions were revised in the light of their comments. a final interview form consisting of 3 open ended questions was prepared. attention has been paid to the criteria that increase the quality of the interview process (to be objective in the interview process, to get reminders, to get concise and deep answers, and not to interfere with the participant's ideas). before face-to-face interviews with the selected teachers, they were informed about the purpose and content asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 216 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of the study. the interviews were recorded in the interview forms with the permission of the teachers, and only two interviews were not voice recorded because only two interviewers allowed the recording of the voice recordings. most participants did want their views to be recorded. as well as the opinions of the participants were confirmed by the reading of the documents converted by the researchers into the notes. each interview lasted an average of 30 minutes. they were held in teachers' schools at noon or outside of class hours. 2.4. analysis of data for analysis of the study data, continuous comparative analysis method was used, which is used in grounded theory approach and allows interpretation and interpretation of data at a very high level in depth and expansion (sönmez and alacapınar, 2011). in continuous comparative data analysis, the data are analyzed in three stages as open, axial and selective coding (strauss and corbin, 1998). then, a visual model was displayed and recommendations were brought. moreover, in sequential analysis strategy as a type of qualitative research strategy, as progress is made towards conditions and probabilities, the researcher refines the generalizations and relationships to better reflect the evidences (neuman, 2008). in order to create a more accurate and reliable model with the successive approximation strategy, the evidence and theory was analyzed by switching successively at each step in a way to shape each other. in the data analysis process, the three steps are as follows (strauss and corbin, 1998) open coding: the concepts, terms and features regarding the topic under investigation are put into categories; ii) axial coding: the categories above are lowered to one single category in a generic, open and concise way; iii) selective coding: based on the preceding codings, combination and categorization are carried out for building the theory with a logical method. in the combination action, the meanings of the data were tried to be determined. in categorization, a set of rules defining the relationship among the categories are obtained by identifying the similarities and the diffeences between the categories. this process allowed for the creation of a logical sub-structure in modelling. 2.5. validity and reliability in qualitative research the concept of validity in qualitative research is quite different from the generally accepted concept of validity in quantitative studies (ekiz, 2003). in qualitative research, five different validity are provided as descriptive, interpreting, theoretical, generic, and evaluative validity conditions (maxwell, 1992). in order to provide descriptive validity, the data obtained in the research were transferred in integrity in an objective way without changing the meaning. for interpreting validity, researchers adhered to the view-union principle in the creation of codes and categories in order to fully demonstrate how participants express what they say. also, as an interpretation criterion, attention was paid to transmit the participants' expressions without adding any comments. since theoretical validity is the level of disclosure of the investigated subject, the steps required to reveal the factors included in the theory covered in the research were explained one by one and the research process was tried to be explained in detail. as for generic reliability, it was attempted to achieve a consistent generalization by examining theoretically the situations that teacher candidates experienced during the socialization process in order to obtain generalizability that would give rise to similar situations and to understand possible situations. finally, evaluative validity was ensured by making a final assessment in the direction of the data obtained from the research and concrete model exampled was developed. to ensure reliability in the qualitative study, triplet technique was utilized to avoid errors in the data collection and analysis process and to minimize the variables that can inhibit the research. among denzin (1988) triplet types, the data were collected and compared by researchers and observers, to ensure consistency. during the study, the research questions were clearly expressed by the researchers and data were collected meticulously and carefully. data analysis and evaluation process are given in detail. in addition, each stage of the research process (questions, identification of the questions in the interview form, demographic data of the participants, data collection and analysis of the data) were reported clearly and openly. raw data are kept in order to examine their conformity with next researches to be carried out in this topic. 3. results 3.1. findings obtained by open coding a) in order to reveal the experiences of the teachers in the socialization process, firstly opinions were taken about their first day. the open codings regarding their experience of the first day are given in table 2. table-2. teachers' feelings on their first day. categories f percentage being happy 14 29,78 feeling excited 10 21,27 feeling nervous 9 19,14 being proud 4 8,51 disappointment 4 8,51 comfort 2 4,25 curiosity 2 4,25 confusion 2 4,25 total 47 %100 source: obtained from primary data. as for the experience of the first day at work, being happy (f = 14) was the most frequently mentioned opinion followed by feeling excited and nervous (f = 9). some of the participants stated their opinions on the subject as following: “i was excited, the school principal (headmaster) met me at the school, he offered me hospitality in his home for 3 days, and he even met me at the entrance of the district, and made me feel valuable. the school principal (headmaster) was very friendly, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 217 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group so were the teachers. despite it was my first day at school, i felt very experienced thanks to the experience in the school i was doing internship”(t3) “i was happy because i came to a newly opened school, there was a warm and interested welcome due to the small number of teachers, and i was appointed to a close to my hometown, i had the excitement of earning my life. i had the excitement of making my father proud.”( t5) “i was very nice, i was excited, and the school principal (headmaster) was very helpful in making entries. my colleagues were also very helpful. i taught the students. i was very excited.”(t7) b) in order to reveal the experiences teachers had in their socialization process, secondly, the open codings about their adaptation to the school and the teaching profession in the first month are given in table 3. table-3. teachers' opinions on their adaptation to school and teaching profession in the first month. categories f percentage willingness to be idealist and devoted worker 7 31,81 failure to establish healthy contact 5 22,72 positive attitudes of school staff 3 13,63 hectic pace of work 3 13,63 insufficient physical features of school 2 9,09 sufficient quality of the university education 2 9,09 total 22 100 source: obtained data in the first month relation to adaptation. the participants stated that their experience in adapting to the school and teaching profession in the first month was most affected by idealist and devoted work (f = 7). then, the lack of healthy communication and positive attitudes of school staff were mentioned (f = 4). some of the participants' opinions on the subject are stated in their own words as following: “in the first month, as i asked questions and learned a lot, i adapted to the school and to the profession, i worked in a devoted manner. i prepared materials, presentations and additional resources outside school. “in the first month, i worked hard to fulfill my students and responsibilities. i did not give up.”( t5) “i immediately adapted to the reading. my colleagues also made it happen.”( t3) c) in order to reveal the teachers' experiences in the socialization process, the codings regarding the main problems they experienced in the first month and the persons they referred to, are presented in table 4 and table 5, respectively. table-4.teachers' opinions on their main problems in the first month. categories f percentage indifference of students to classes 8 23,52 lack of knowledge about paperwork 6 17,64 students' lower academic levels 5 14,70 physical inadequacy of school 4 11,76 failure to maintain classroom discipline 4 11,76 lack of learning and teaching skills 4 11,76 inability to communicate with administrators and teachers 3 8,82 total 34 %100 source: obtained data in the first month relation to main problems. d) as for the main problems faced during their first month, teachers reported indifference of students towards the classes (f = 8) the most and their now knowing the paperwork. some of the participants' opinions on the subject are in their own words: “the basic problem was that i was prepared for the class, i was expecting the students to force me, to put pressure on me, to ask questions, but it did not happen. the level of the students, their indifference was the biggest problem for me.” (t1) “paperwork, i did not know how to fill out the class book. there were security problems around the school.”(t4) „the students were in vocational high schools and they were lacking in terms of hard work and knowledge. “ (t6) table 5 summarizes the opinions of teachers about the persons who helped them with the problems they encountered in the first month. table-5. teachers' opinions on reference persons regarding their problems in the first month. categories f percentage consulting with experienced colleagues 6 50 consulting with close friends 4 33,33 consulting with academics 2 16,67 total 12 100 source: obtained data in the first month relation to on reference persons regarding main problems. the teacher candidated indicated that they were receiving help from more experienced colleagues (f = 6) in the first month the most. some of the participants' opinions on the subject are expressed in their own words: “i did not know the paper work, i learned by asking the school counselor and other teacher friends.”(t3). “i learned to fill out the class book by asking my colleagues. „‟ (t10). “i solved the problems i faced in my school with help from colleagues and experienced friends.”( t11). e) in this section, it was examined whether the expectations of the teachers were met within the first month of their work. table 6 gives the open codings regarding meeting of their expectations. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 218 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. teachers’ opinions on meeting of their expectations within the first month. expectations met expectations not met categories f % f % occupational satisfaction 2 25,00 10 43,47 social activities 2 25,00 6 26,08 financial expectations 2 25,00 5 21,73 a warm work environment 2 25,00 2 8,69 total 8 23 100 source: obtained data within the first month about expectations. it is understood that expectations of the teacher candidates were not met during the first month (f=23) and the first of such expectations is (f=10) the occupational satisfaction (f = 10). some of the participants' opinions on this matter are quoted as below: ‘i was expecting occupational satisfaction, it was not met because it was a vocational high school.”(t5). “i was expecting students to be ready to learn. i was disappointed to see that the lessons i taught were forgotten by students in a short time.” ( t4). “i was expecting more sociality but it did not happen, i thought my students would learn as i taught in a really nice way; but i realized it was harder, i realized that teaching is not just about teaching subjects.”(t10). 3.2. teachers' opinions on the experiences making them feel belonging to teaching profession open codings regarding the teachers' experiences are given in table 7 that help them feel teachers. table-7. teachers' opinions about the experiences with feeling of belonging to teaching profession. categories f percentage observing the acquisitions in students' behaviours 11 40,74 experiencing students' affection and respect 7 25,92 guiding students 4 14,81 to observed increased motivation of the students 3 11,11 students' transferring their learning to life 2 7,40 total 27 100 source: obtained data about experiences with feeling of belonging to teaching profession. the teachers stated that they felt they belonged to this profession the most when they observed acquisitions by students (f = 11). the fact that students love and respect teachers (f = 7) is also among the most frequently reported opinions. some of the participants' opinions on the subject are quoted in their own words as following: teaching is my cup of tea. when i the pupils something and see the result and when i see the students interested in me, i feel beloging to the profession.”(t3). “when i see that the student understands what i'm teaching, when i feel that glitter, i become happy, i say teaching is a nice job.”(t1). “when the information that i teach is understood by students and when i receive feedback, i feel myself belonging to teaching profession.”(t6). 3) teachers' opinions on dividing the one-year process into periods. the teachers' views about the reasons for classifying the one-year candidacy process are presented in table 8. table-8. teachers' opinions on dividing the one-year process into periods. categories f percentage familiarization 12 26,08 gaining experience 9 19,56 acceptance 9 19,56 identifying the shortcomings and self-sacrificing work 9 19,56 being idealist 5 10,86 freedom 2 4,34 total 46 %100 source: obtained data about dividing the one-year process into periods. teachers focused on the process of familiarization (f = 12) the most and gaining experience (f=7) as a reason for classifying the one-year candidacy process. some of the participants' opinions on the subject are given in their own words: „i am following the system i set up after the adaptation process, and you are correcting the deficiencies and establishing the method.” ( t1). „i was gaining experience, i was acting according to the conditions in the process of one year.” ( t9). 3.3. findings obtained by axial coding the concepts were determined from the data obtained with open coding, a predictive model of the socialization process of the teachers was obtained and the relation of this model with the theory was examined by the sequential strategy method. the contextual relationship of the codings regarding the teachers ‘experiences with socialization in the candidacy process with the axial coding (concepts) can be shown as following. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 219 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. experiences on possible steps in the socialization process. source: obtained by axial coding. in the socialization process of the teachers, related with the begining stage of teaching profession which is approached with emotional responses (happiness, nervousness, etc.), it can be argued that failure to establish healthy communication makes adaptation difficult, whereas the experience of familiarization plays a facilitating role. in completing the socialization process, it can be suggested that occupational satisfaction is one of the factors that make teachers feel that they are fulfilling their occupation. also in completion of the socialization process, it seems that students' acquiring positived behaviors and showing love and respect to teachers play an important role in teachers' feeling belonging to the teaching profession. 3. axial codings of the stages of the one-year candidacy period divided by teachers are given in table 9. table-9. transformation into themes of categories related to socialization process stages of teachers. themes categories adaptation recognition getting familiar implementation identifying the shortcomings and self-sacrificing work being idealist gaining experience gaining experience acceptance freedom source: obtained data about socialization process stages of teachers. 3.4. findings by selective coding in order to describe the process of socialization for grading the experiences of the teachers during their candidacy periods, we made an attempt to draft a general model of the socialization process by using selective coding. in this phase, the concepts obtained by axial coding were subjected to selective coding (creating the main theme) and the theoretical model explaining the socialization process of the teachers was developed. first, the reasons for classifying the teachers' one-year process were combined under common themes and three stages were identified: adaptation, implementation and gaining experience. the teachers' experiences regarding the socialization process from the first one month till completion of the one-year are shown in figure 2. figure-2. experiences observed in socialization process. source: obtained data by selective coding. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 220 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the stages of socialization as adaptation, implementation and gaining experience were classified based on the similarities and differences through open coding and axial coding. the resulting model can be shown as follows. figure-3. model for the socialization stages regarding teachers candidates. source: authors’ model for the socialization stages regarding teachers candidates. this study implies that teachers have emotional responses regarding their profession in pre-service period, such as being excited or nervous. the experiences that occur when teachers easily or hardly pass each stage of the socialization process are as follows: in stage one; while failure in healthy communication makes the adaptation process more difficult, it can be said that experiences regarding recognizing are facilitators. it was found out that different experiences were lived during the implementation stage depending on whether the adaptation passed with difficulty or smoothly. so, the adaptation stage seems to play a mediating role in identification of shortcomings when it takes place with difficulty; otherwise, it becomes mediating for emergence of idealist experiences in the implementation process. because the stage of adaptation is likely to be the expectation of the emergence of idealist experiences in the implementation process .lastly in the experience-gaining stage, the teachers who went through the implementation process by completing the shortcomings gained experiences; whereas those who focused on being idealist during the same period experienced acceptance. in this recent period, they were focused on being idealistic also gained experience accepting that the socialization process will not be complicated and suddenly complete. the model and stages on the socialization process were compared with the literature and supporting of the model by the literature is described below. 1. wanous (1980) comparing the socialization process stages with stages of the model. stage one: instruction (new knowledge and skills) & stage two: teaching (preparing for the role by providing information about the job) ≡ adaptation stage. stage three: apprenticeship (work with supervisor) & stage four: solving (ensure the organization to influence oneself) ≡ implementation stage. stage five: dissuading the candidate (do what the organization wants) ≡ gaining experience. 2. a comparison of the stages in the general regulation regarding bringing up of candidate civil servants with stages of the model. basic training: training for giving the minimum information to candidates≡ adaptation stage preparatory training: training for gaining knowledge and skills by candidates ≡ implementation stage internship: the final stage towards gaining experience ≡ experience-gaining stage. above, the stages of socialization in the literature seem to be in parallel with the stages of the resulting model about teachers' socialization. therefore, any corrections or changes, reassessmentwere made on the model. 4. conclusion and discussion this section is dedicated to the conclusions built upon the results about teacher candidates' socialization process stages from the first month up to the completion of the one-year period, as well as their experiences in each of these stages. study results are discussed in comparison with other studies and theories about this subject, and finally recommendations are presented. in this study, it was observed that during the first months, teacher candidates had the most intense emotional responses towards the teaching profession such as excitement, warmly welcome and nervousness. according to güçlü (2004) teacher candidates want to be recognized by students, colleagues and managers, and want to overcome their negative feelings such as loneliness, fear, anxiety, and instabilities. beginners who are often faced with excessive workload can sho emotional responses rather than professional responses (calık, 2006). unlike the emotional response, professional response is a reaction to understanding the problem first, to review the deficiency if it originated from itself, and to be focused on the solution if it originated from others. excitement and nervousness of teacher candidates can be explained with their inexperience and uncertainty about following happenings. at the end of the one-year process, the teachers reported gaining experience, which implies that professional responses started to rise then. socialization helps formation of real expectations about the job, develop positive attitudes, and achieve job satisfaction (güçlü, 1996; özgen et al., 2002). ravishankar and pan (2008) found out that teacher candidates informally identify themselves with experiencing of different emotions in organizational socialization process. it was concluded that during the first months (in 1-3 months); being idealist, devoted work and establishing healthy communication appeared to be effective in adaptation to the teaching profession in the process of socialization. the literature extends support to our findings as it suggests that creating an idealist image is a part asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 221 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of pre-socialization (ashforth et al., 2007) and teachers remain idealist during the pre-service period (kartal, 2007). in our study, we also observed in the participants' adaptation process that communication is an effective means of socialization (jablin, 1987; chao et al., 1994; erdoğan, 2012). it can be seen that the findings of the previous studies on socialization stages are similar to our study findings. in pre-socialization stage of teacher candidates, the factors of being idealist, devoted work and communication can be said to be dominant factors. it was noted that teacher candidates did not know the paperwork and focused on lower academic levels of students during the early months (in 1-3 months). in a study conducted by duran et al. (2011) teacher candidates stated that they have to deal with unnecessary paperwork and correspondence and they have missing knowledge about official correspondences. on the grounds that socialization process brings new knowledge and experience, it is expected that teacher candidates find their shortcomings in paperwork in the first months. the teacher candidates' finding low levels of academic success might vary according to school type, teaching methods or teacher expectations; and academic success level can be regarded as an observed variable changeable depending on the situation. it was found out that teacher candidates get help from more experienced colleagues on challenging issues during the socialization process. it was also seen that in the socialization process, the helping by employees experienced within the organization for new arrivals positively affects the process (ostroff and kozlowski, 1992; morrison, 1993; özgen et al., 2002; kartal, 2007; erdoğan, 2012). it can be inferred from the relevant literature that the help of experienced people for new recruits contributes to the process of socialization. it was found out that the paramount professional expectations of teacher candidates are professional satisfaction and social activities-social sharing. according to calık (2003) organizational socialization is a way whereby the chance for employees' achieving greater job satisfaction and meeting their needs reaches the maximum level. in studies carried out by bauer et al. (1998); saks and ashforth (1997) and hartley (1992) job satisfaction was found to be one of the results of socialization. the studies by elçi (2008) and kartal (2005) reveal that organizational socialization varies in job satisfaction. organizational socialization must take place in a healthy way to ensure job satisfaction (hellriegel et al., 1998; balcı, 2000). as a study finding, the effect of prospective teachers' organizational socialization on their job satisfaction is understood to be a common result. it can be argued that successful socialization process of prospective teachers could have a positive impact on their professional satisfaction. in this study, positive experiences had by teachers in the process of socialization show that positive experiences can be experienced in the next stage. however, longitudinal studies are needed to determine the effectiveness of the teacher's socialization process on direct job satisfaction. the experiences by which teacher candidates feel themselves belonging to the teaching profession in the first years of their professional lives are more likely to be about affecting student behaviours and gaining their love and respect. one of the characteristic problems of teachers is related to the appreciation and evaluation by students (güçlü, 1996). students constitute one of the factors involved in socialization of teachers (staton-spicer and darling, 1987) helping to solve students' problems is one of the indicators of the socialization of teachers (kartal, 2007). according to zeichner (1980) students play a role in the socialization process of teachers. kirby et al. (1992) reported that teaching in schools with high achievement levels of students supports socialization of teachers. it seems that the literature extends support for our findings regarding teacher candidates' belongingness to the profession, observing positive changes in student behaviours and earning their love and respect. when prospective teachers' socialization process is divided into stages in the one-year period; the first stage can be referred to adaptation, the second stage to implementation and the last stage for gaining experience. the review of literature demonstrated that mostly a three-stage model (pre-socialization, getting familiar and role management) is used in studies (araza et al., 2013). schein (1978) stages of the socialization process includes three stages as introduction, socializing and, mutual recognition. wanous (1980) divided the socialization process into five stages: training, teaching, apprenticeship, solving, and dissuading the candidate. feldman (1981) discusses it in three stages as pre-socialization, adaptation and role acquisition. buchanan (1974) divides organizational socialization into stages of basic education and acceptance, performance indicator, organizational reliability and commitment. porter et al. (1975) divided the stages of socialization into three stages: pre-arrival, welcoming, and change and winning. kartal (2007) deals organization socialization in stages of pre-socialization, selection, placement, on-the-job training, friend and work groups, trial and error. the studies imply that stages of socialization vary. the stages might vary depending on the time and setting of the research, also it is likely that different socialization processes take place for each profession. flanagin and waldeck (2004) bearing in mind the current technological, economic, social and organizational changes, focused on the importance of carefully determining the factors on which future studies of socialization process should focus. departing from this, a new model was created by discussing the socialization process steps of teacher candidates under one single heading. according to the model, teacher candidates have emotional responses regarding their prospective professional life before starting such as excitement or nervousness. the first stage is called adaptation process. adaptation process involves consultations with experienced colleagues, close friends and academicians in order to solve the problems (indifference of students to classes, lack of knowledge about paperwork, students' lower academic levels etc.) that might occur during the first teaching year. teacher candidates demonstrate that failure to establish healthy communication makes the adaptation process more difficult; on the contrary, being idealist and selfless work facilitate the integration process. the second stage indicates that the implementation stage is associated with the experiences in the adaptation. if the adaptation process is painful, shortcomings can be identified in implementation process. on the other hand, as a result of a smooth adaptation period, emergence of being idealist is mediated during the implementation process. as for the third phase, experience-gaining, the teachers who could identify and improve the shortcomings in the implementation process, gained experiences. the teachers who have completed the implementation process by focusing on being idealist, were found to exhibit acceptance behaviours in the experience-gaining stage. it seems that the steps in the resulting socializing process overlap with güçlü (2004) argument about the socialization process content as teachers' establishing positive relations with other employees in school, their contributing to solving student problems and learning basic values. teachers learn the core values, norms, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 213-223 222 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group philosophy and mission of the school through socialization. also it is seen that the process steps and teachers' experiences in our model are in parallel with certain findings in the literature that teachers go through a change in the socialization process due to the school's 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use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 518 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 518-525, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.518.525 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group fine motor skills, writing skills and physical education based assistive intervention program in children at grade 1 sinan akin kütahya dumlupınar university, school of physical education and sports, kütahya, turkey. abstract the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of physical education based intervention program, aiming to help the development of writing skills of primary school children, on fine motor skill precision and fine motor skill integration. a total of 104 primary school children at grade 1 with at least 2 years of preschool education participated in the study. children in the experimental group, together with the curriculum studies, did adapted ball control drills three times a week, each 40 minutes, for 10 weeks. fine motor skill levels of the children were examined with tests of manual dexterity, upper limb coordination, fine motor skill precision and fine motor skill integration sub-dimensions in the complete form of the bruininks-oseretsky test of motor proficiency second edition (bot-2). the first measurement was made in the first week of school education, and the last measurements were made after a 10-week intervention period. data were evaluated by repeated measures analysis of variance and simple effect test. at the end of the intervention, dexterity, upper extremity coordination, fine motor skill sensitivity and fine motor skill integration values improved in the experimental group compared to the control group. this difference between two groups was determined to be statistically significant. as a result, it can be said that physical education based intervention programs for small muscle groups positively affect children's fine motor skills development and thus their interest in writing and schooling. keywords: fine motor skill, fine motor integration, fine motor precision, handwriting, manual dexterity, physical education program, primary school, upper limb coordination, bruiniks-oseretsky motor proficiency test-2. citation | sinan akin (2019). fine motor skills, writing skills and physical education based assistive intervention program in children at grade 1. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 518-525. history: received: 9 july 2019 revised: 16 august 2019 accepted: 26 september 2019 published: 31 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 519 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 520 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 521 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 523 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 523 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 524 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.518.525&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1086 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5921-3559 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1086 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5921-3559 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1086 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5921-3559 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 518-525 519 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by investigating the effect of physical education based intervention program, aiming to help the development of writing skills of primary school children, on fine motor skill precision and fine motor skill integration. 1. introduction developmentally, a preschool child sharpens the visual perceptual and fine motor skills necessary to perform activities that require visual-motor integration, such as handwriting (beery, 1997). fine motor skills also play an important role in sustaining people's daily lives (linde et al., 2013). fine motor skill competence is an essential component of daily life activities. poor fine motor skills can cause increased anxiety, distress in academic achievement and poor self-esteem (gaul and issartel, 2016). the majority of the daily life of school-age children is spent at school and 30-60% of this time is spent performing fine motor tasks (mchale and cermak, 1992). almost 85% of the time spent on fine motor tasks consists of paper and pencil-based activities, which are perhaps about the most important skills for academic achievement (marr et al., 2003). it was found that children with strong fine motor skills showed earlier development in reading skills and higher academic achievement (cameron et al., 2012). due to the development of technology, the amount of time children are exposed to technology products increases day by day (lauricella et al., 2015) which limits the movement experiences necessary for children to continue their daily lives (maitland et al., 2013). however, some studies have suggested that fine motor skills are not adversely affected because fine motor skills are required to use technological products (adams et al., 2012). nevertheless, these skills are forced to a different orbit, which leads to the loss of fine motor skills that an individual needs in daily life (coll, 2015). considering that an individual has to master the motor skills by the age of 10 (gallahue et al., 2012) many fine skills may be considered at risk. it is stated that children with such motor impairment as developmental coordination disorder (dcd) have difficulty in tying shoelaces, buttoning shirt button, opening and closing the zipper, brushing teeth and using cutlery (wang et al., 2009; magalhaes et al., 2011). unfortunately, if intervention is not performed at the right time, these difficulties may continue throughout life and ultimately affect their quality of life (gaul and issartel, 2016). fine motor skills are the types of skills performed using small groups of muscles necessary to move objects (gallahue et al., 2012). in addition, fine motor skills include graphomotor skills (gs) including the control and strength of the muscles (levine, 1987). fine motor skill represents a set of skills connected to a set of similar structures, such as hand-eye coordination, transformation of a visually perceived object into motor output, skills involved in writing, and even handwriting (bart et al., 2007). however, in some studies, the definition of fine motor skill has been expressed as ―small muscle movements requiring close hand-eye coordination‖ (suggate et al., 2019). good motor skills can serve as a buffer for normative difficulties experienced by children in transition to school whereas poor motor skills emerge as a weakness in transition to primary school education (bart et al., 2007). the majority of school-age children display poor drawings and handwriting (bingham and snapp-childs, 2019). difficulties in handwriting skills among children of primary school age have been shown as one of the most common reasons for directing children to pediatric occupational therapy services worldwide (feder et al., 2000). weak fine motor control, lack of coordination in muscle contraction, irregularity in impact rate and strength can lead to distorted and illegible handwriting, and therefore, evaluation of fine motor control in handwriting movement is important in the comprehensive assessment of handwriting dysfunction. clinical observations and performance tests are traditionally part of the handwriting evaluation (rosenblum et al., 2003; di brina et al., 2008; lam et al., 2011). handwriting incompetency may be caused by inappropriate external factors such as biomechanical or environmental components, or internal factors such as poor performance in perceptual and motor skills. monitoring and drawing tasks are the prominent tools for evaluating various aspects of motor control. therefore, many exemplary models designed to study motor control included them as part of their assessment (smits et al., 2018). factors such as visual perception show little correlation with handwriting, whereas tactile kinaesthetic, visual motor and motor planning are more closely related to handwriting (tseng and cermak, 1993). as well as handwriting, visual-motor coordination abilities, motor planning, cognitive and perceptual skills, a mix of tactile and kinaesthetic sensitivities are complex perceptual-motor skills (maeland, 1992). furthermore, handwriting appears as a perceptual motor skill acquired through repetitive practice (feder and majnemer, 2007) and is often presented as an example of motor skill acquired through procedural learning processes (wilhelm et al., 2012). handwriting is actually a very complex skill. a proper handwriting requires fine motor skills, visual perception, cognition integration and maturation (volman et al., 2006; shams and kim, 2010). therefore, fine motor skills are important because correctly formed letters can only be produced with force control and proper timing of coordinated finger, hand and arm movements (alston and taylor, 1987). there are many basic skill components that will interfere with handwriting performance. before starting the handwriting process, children need to develop preparation skills to form letters, such as development of large and small muscles, visual perception, fine motor skills, and hand manipulation skills (lamme, 1979). when copying letters and words, children need not only keeping the task in mind, attention, visual and manual coordination, but also control of fine movements and enough power of the finger and the hand (stevenson and just, 2014). it is seen that motor competence measures related to handwriting production have an indirect effect on handwriting in school age children (berninger, 2009). acquiring handwriting skills at the beginning of education is the basis of future academic success (cahill, 2009). it is seen that handwriting errors in the first grade of primary school are related to academic achievement up to 6th grade (moore and rust, 1989). therefore, it is essential to develop intervention methods to facilitate the development of graphomotor and skills fine motor of 1st grade children in primary school. in this context, the studies which are already presented intensively in line with the teaching programs in schools may affect their opinions about school due to not taking their developmental level and maturation into account. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 518-525 520 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in this study, it is aimed to investigate the effects of physical education based intervention program, which was prepared out of writing activities of children, on fine motor integration, fine motor precision, manual dexterity and upper limb coordination level and indirectly on writing activities of primary school 1st grade children. 2. material and method 2.1. research model quantitative research model was used in the study. data for the motor development of the participants were obtained by experimental method in the form of pre-test/post-test. 2.2. research group a total of 123 1st grade students of a private school with at least 2 years preschool education were included in the study for the sake of implementing the same curriculum in kütahya province. the classes were randomly assigned to the study and control groups. however, 104 participants (59 experimental group, 45 control group) were evaluated in the experimental dimension of the study according to the attendance record of the children. the mean age of the participants in the experimental group was 6,08±0,281 while the mean age of the control group was found to be 6,13±0,344. 53 of the participants were male and 51 were female. 2.3. data gathering tools the participants' upper limb coordination, manual dexterity, fine motor skill integration and fine motor skill precision levels were analysed using the complete form of the bruininks-oseretsky test of motor proficiency second edition (bot-2). shape filling-circle, shape filling-star, drawing a line-crooked, drawing a linecurved, connecting dots, paper folding and cutting a circle were applied to determine fine motor skill precision. circle copy, square copy, overlapped circle copy, curved line copy, triangle copy, diamond copy, star copy, overlapped pencils copy were applied for fine motor skill integration. in order to determine the manual dexterity, the participants were made to put dots in a circle, transfer coins, arrange plastic nails, classify cards and rope blocks. in order to determine the upper limb coordination, ball-release and two-handed catch, two-handed ballcatch, ball-release and one-handed catch, the preferred hand ball-catch, the preferred hand ball-bounce, ball-bounce with two-hand sequence and the preferred hand ball-throw to a target were applied. the evaluation of the tests was made by 3 referees and the middle value was taken into consideration omitting the highest and the lowest values. the raw values obtained were converted to point scores and the total values of each sub-dimension were determined. 2.4. ethical considerations the families of the participants were informed about the current motor development level of the participants and the intervention program and informed consent was obtained. 2.5. application protocol students were divided into specific groups of 20 subjects and were placed in 10 stations, each with 2 students. considering the age and attention span of the students, each student performed the specified movement for 2 min. at each station. each station used a different size ball randomly (basketball, volleyball, handball, soccer ball, tennis ball, etc.). every two minutes, students changed the station in pairs. these 10 stations were carried out 2 rounds. a sample protocol is shown in details in table 1. table-1. sample course plan. objectives acquisition training program methods -one-handed and twohanded ball control without contacting the palm controlling moving ball/objects with hands and fingers -ball orientation with fingers moving the ball along the specified route applying force to the ball with different pressures following the ball with the eye and moving it in the same orbit 1. can control an approaching object with one hand and two hands. 2. can move the object with right and left hand where it is or on a specified route. 3. can move objects along specified path using only fingers. 3. can apply pressure to objects at different rates. 4. can repeat the movement s/he sees. station 1: balls are thrown into the air with two hands and caught. station 2: balls are thrown into the air with one hand in turn and captured. station 3: the ball is bounced and caught with one hand and two hands. station 4: the ball is turned around the head without contacting the palm. station 5: the ball is turned around the waist without contacting the palm. station 6: the ball is rotated with fingers around the feet on the ground. rotation is changed once every 2 turns. station 7: the ball is rotated with fingers by drawing 8 between the feet on the ground. rotation is changed once every 2 turns. station 8: sitting on the ground, the ball is turned around the body with fingers without contacting the palm. station 9: transferring the ball from right to left and from left to right. in the prone position, arms open on both sides at chest level, the ball is rolled up to the top of the head with right hand fingers and carried with left hand fingers again down to chest level. station 10: the ball is squeezed two-handed in opposite directions without palm contact. learning by doing and experience, expression, demonstration source: developed from the data in ―https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/fundamentals/ballhandling.html‖. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 518-525 521 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.6. statistics the quantitative data were evaluated by repeated measure anova and simple effect test in spss 24.0. 3. findings figure-1. fine motor precision comparison. repeated measure anova, p<0,05. in figure 1, according to the results of the repeated measurements anova test, when the change in the group time interaction dimension between the post-test and pre-test of the experimental group and the change between the post-test and the pre-test of the control group were compared, the former was found to be higher than the latter. this difference was statistically significant (f1,102; 6.093; p<0,05). table-2. comparison of fine motor precision measurements in simple effect test. groups measurement (i) measurement (j) mean difference (i-j) std. error f sig. control group post test pre test 1.778 0.869 4.181 0.043 experimental group post test pre test 4.627 0.759 37.136 0.000 simple effect test, p<0,05. in table 2, according to the results of the simple effect test, both the change occurring between the post-test and pre-test of the experimental group (f1,102; 37.136; p<0,05) and the change between the post-test and pre-test of the control group (f1,102; 4.181; p<0,05) were found to be statistically significant. figure-2. fine motor integration comparison. repeated measure anova, p<0,05. in figure 2, according to the results of the data analysis, when the change between the post and pre-test values of the experimental group and that of the control were compared, the change in the experimental group was higher than the control group. this difference between two groups was determined to statistically significant. (f1,102;18.460; p<0,05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 518-525 522 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. comparison of fine motor integration measurements in simple effect test. groups measurement (i) measurement (j) mean difference (i-j) std. error f sig. control group post test pre test 1.822 0.792 5.296 0.023 experimental group post test pre test 6.339 0.692 84.029 0.000 simple effect test, p<0,05. in table 3, when the results of simple effect test were examined, it was seen that there was a significant difference between the measurements when the change between the post-test and pre-test of the control group was compared (f1,102;5.296; p<0,05). similarly, when the change between the post-test and pre-test of the experimental group was compared, a statistically significant difference was found between the measurements (f1,102;84.029; p<0,05). figure-3. manual dexterity comparison. repeated measure anova, p<0,05. in figure 3, data analysis results showed that when the change between the pre and post-test values of the experimental group and that of the control were compared, the change was found to be higher in the experimental group than the control group. the differences between the measurements were statistically significant when compared in group dimension (f1,102;17.739; p<0,05). table-4. comparison of manual dexterity measurements in simple effect test. groups measurement (i) measurement (j) mean difference (i-j) std. error f sig. control group post test pre test 2.533 0.553 20.966 0.000 experimental group post test pre test 5.627 0.483 135.628 0.000 simple effect test, p<0,05. in table 4, when the results of simple effect test were examined, it was seen that there was a significant difference between the measurements when the change between the post-test and pre-test of the control group was compared (f1,102;20.966; p<0,05). similarly, when the change between the post-test and pre-test of the experimental group was compared, a statistically significant difference was determined between the measurements (f1,102;135.628; p<0,05). figure-4. upper limb coordination comparison. repeated measure anova, p<0,05. in figure 4, according to the results of the data analysis, when the improvement between the post and pre-test values of the experimental group and that of the control were compared, the improvement was found to be higher in the experimental group than the control group. this difference between two groups was determined to statistically significant. (f1,102;19.494; p<0,05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 518-525 523 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. comparison of upper limb coordination measurements in simple effect test. groups measurement (i) measurement (j) mean difference (i-j) std. error f sig. control group post test pre test 2.622 0.805 10.620 0.002 experimental group post test pre test 7.339 0.703 135.628 0.000 simple effect test: p<0,05. in table 5, according to the results of the simple effect test, both the change occurring between the post-test and pre-test of the experimental group (f1,102;135.628; p<0,05) and the change between the post-test and pre-test of the control group (f1,102;10.620; p<0,05) were found to be statistically significant. 4. discussion it was determined that the manual dexterity level of the children who started primary school grade 1 at an early age was behind that of the older grade 1 students (kildan and ahi, 2014). in some studies, visual motor integration came to the fore in individuals who had problems in writing skills, while manual dexterity and upper limb coordination came into prominence in normal writing skills (tseng and chow, 2000; volman et al., 2006). children with higher scores at standardized visual motor integration tests were shown to produce faster (tseng and chow, 2000) and more legible handwriting than those with lower scores (cornhill and case-smith, 1996). in another study, it was found that children with handwriting problems showed a lack of fine motor control (smitsengelsman et al., 2001). in addition, studies on brain function using fmri revealed a close relationship between visual and motor systems related to handwriting (james, 2010). in addition, a statistically significant relationship between object control skills and visual motor integration was revealed in a study by du plessis et al. (2015) investigating the relationship between grade 1 learners' visual motor integration, visual perception, motor coordination and object control skills. a study examining the effect of fine motor skills on handwriting legibility in preschool age children showed a high level of relationship between fine motor skills and handwriting legibility. the study revealed that the accuracy of hand manipulation skills is factors that influence handwriting legibility (seo, 2018). while tseng and chow (2000) found a high correlation both between writing speed and upper limb coordination and manual dexterity values of normal writing individuals and between writing speed and visual motor integration values in slow writing individuals (tseng and chow, 2000). kaiser et al. (2009) investigated the relationship between visual motor integration, eye-hand coordination and handwriting quality and concluded that the relationship between visual-motor integration and hand-eye coordination can be used to predict the quality of handwriting. the findings of our study showed that the group who received physical education based intervention program had more improvement in fine motor integration, fine motor precision, manual dexterity and upper limb coordination skills compared to control group. kambas et al. (2002) investigated the effect of a motor intervention program emphasizing space and time in children aged 4-5 years. the graphomotor skills of the participants were evaluated with the following botmp-cf articles. a significant difference was found between the control and experimental groups after the intervention process. in addition, spanaki et al. (2008) examined the effect of motor development intervention program on graphomotor, gross and fine skills of children from preschools and primary schools. at the end of the process, regardless of motor competence, the improvements in graphomotor, gross and fine skills were important for all participants. in another study on the effects of intervention program on the development of fine motor and visual motor integration skills in preschool students, the participants in the intervention group showed a statistically significant increase in fine motor and visual motor skills, while the control group showed a slight decrease in both areas (ohl et al., 2013). the effect of structured handwriting reading program applied to children included in the head start program on fine motor skills was examined and the data showed a positive effect on the development of manual skills and fine motor integration in preschool children (winslow, 2011). in another study, upper limb coordination, manual dexterity, fine motor precision and fine motor integration values were compared in fine motor and early writing pre-k curriculum (fmew) program applied-experimental group and handwriting without tears get set for school curriculum (hwt) program applied-experimental group and control group participants. in the study, the participants in the fmew group achieved the highest score in the sub-tests of fine motor precision, manual dexterity and upper limb coordination (lear, 2012). in another study on the relationship between handwriting skills and visual motor integration of preschool children, the students who were able to copy the first nine forms in visual motor integration performed significantly better compared to the students who could not copy the first nine vmi forms correctly in both versions of the modified script (daly et al., 2003). in a study by ratzon et al. (2007) participants in the study group achieved significant gains compared to the control group both in graphomotor test and in the bruininks-oseretsky motor efficiency test long + form. the study on the effects of short-term graphomotor program aimed at improving writing preparation skills of 1st grade students revealed that motor skill development levels were higher in the intervention group. jongmans et al. (2003) found that neuromotor task studies gave positive results on handwriting development. likewise, some studies have shown that visual motor and fine motor intervention programs of occupational treatment are effective in preschool and primary school (bazyk et al., 2009). in a study investigating the effects of developmental coordination disorder (dcd) motor skills program, significant improvements were observed in hand skills, ball skills and handwriting skills after the training period (farhat et al., 2016). all these studies support our hypotheses within the scope of our research. 5. conclusion many studies have revealed a relationship between fine motor skills and handwriting of children. however, as a result of the pressure exerted on teachers and children who are still in play age due to the academic achievement criteria of the parents, children are subjected to intensive writing education with transition from preschool education to primary school. in fact, this pressure causes children to forget to play during this period and their asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 518-525 524 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group attitudes towards school in the preschool period are negatively affected. drawing line and similar studies aiming to improve children's writing skills in line with the curriculum can put excessive burden on children depending on their maturation and readiness levels. this may have a negative impact on the future perspective of education of children who will be in education for long periods of time according to the education system of the country in which they live. in informal interviews with 1st grade students and their parents, they stated that children liked kindergarten more than primary school and they got very tired during writing drills. on the other hand, it was determined that the students in the intervention program group had no negative thoughts about the school. it can be thought that this may be due to transferring the children's concentration away from play on writing skills. for this reason, it can be stated that intervention programs developed based on physical education can positively affect children's fine motor skills development and indirectly writing skills. in this regard, physical education-based programs for fine motor skills development can be added to the primary school grade 1 curriculum. in addition, it is important to conduct a qualitative research in order to reveal the reasons of the negative thoughts that the children have developed against school and to eliminate these negative factors. references adams, b.j., f. margaron and b.j. kaplan, 2012. comparing video games and laparoscopic simulators in the development of laparoscopic skills in surgical residents. journal of surgical education, 69(6): 714–717.available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2012.06.006. alston, j. and j. taylor, 1987. handwriting: theory, research, and practice. new york: croom helm. bart, o., d. hajami and y. bar-haim, 2007. predicting school adjustment from motor abilities in kindergarten. infant and child development: an international journal of research and practice, 16(6): 597-615.available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.514. bazyk, s., p. michaud, g. goodman, p. papp, e. hawkins and m.a. welch, 2009. integrating occupational therapy services in a kindergarten curriculum: a look at the outcomes. american journal of occupational therapy, 63(2): 160-171.available at: https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.63.2.160. beery, k.e., 1997. the beery-buktenica developmental test of visual-motor integration (4th edn.). parsippany, nj: modern curriculum press. berninger, v.w., 2009. highlights of programmatic, interdisciplinary research on writing. learning disabilities research & practice, 24(2): 69-80.available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5826.2009.00281.x. bingham, g.p. and w. snapp-childs, 2019. training children aged 5–10 years in manual compliance control to improve drawing and handwriting. human movement science, 65: 42-50.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2018.04.002. cahill, s.m., 2009. where does handwriting fit in? 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neuroscience & biobehavioral reviews, 36(7): 1718-1728.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.03.002. winslow, b., 2011. effects of a structured handwriting readiness program on the fine motor skills of children in head start. master‘s thesis. eart carolina university. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 275 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 275-279, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.275.279 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between the body mass index and different education times in secondary schools soner karadeniz1 sema can2 ( corresponding author) 1fatih sultan mehmet secondary school, sivas, turkey 2hitit university, faculty of sports science, çorum, turkey abstract the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between body mass index (bmi) and educational periods in secondary school students. the study was conducted on 832 students, 418 girls (mage: 12.99±.83) and 414 boys (mage: 12.92±.85), who received dual and full-time education in the centre of sivas province. as data collection tool, bmi was calculated by measuring weight and height, and the percentile curve developed by neyzi et al. (2008) in the classification of obesity and underweight was used. as the statistical analysis, the mean, standard deviation, frequency, percent values were used for descriptive statistics of all variables and pearson chi square test. according to findings of the research, the underweight student rate was 11.9% (girls: 6.1%; boys: 5.8%), overweight student rate was 9.1% (girls: 5%; boys: 4.1%) and obese student rate was 8.6% (girls: 5.2%; boys: 3.4%). according to their bmi, 33.3% of underweight students receive dual education, 66.7% full-time education; 47.1% of normal weight students dual education, 52.9% fulltime education; 61.8% of overweight students dual education, 38.2% of obese students full-time education; 59.2% of obese students dual education, 40.8% full-time education. a statistically significant relationship was found between the type of education and bmi (p<0.05). as a result, it can be said that the dual education system has increased the rate of obesity. however, the fact that the number of underweight students is higher than the number of overweight and obese students is important for introducing the habits of healthy eating. keywords: body-mass index, dual education, education times, full-time education, obesity, secondary school students. citation | soner karadeniz; sema can (2019). the relationship between the body mass index and different education times in secondary schools. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 275-279 history: received: 4 january 2019 revised: 7 february 2019 accepted: 1 march 2019 published: 20 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: this study was produced from a master thesis with the title of “investigation of relationship between nutrition, physical activity and obesity in 12-14 years-old secondary school students (sivas province sample)”. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 276 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 276 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 276 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 277 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 278 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 278 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.275.279&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/415 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3326-9383 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1931-2226 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/415 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3326-9383 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1931-2226 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/415 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3326-9383 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1931-2226 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/415 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3326-9383 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1931-2226 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 275-279 276 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction according to the world health organization (who), obesity is defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health (who, 2000). according to the who 2016 data, the number of overweight and obese children under 5 is over 41 million. over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016 (who, 2018). the childhood obesity has been considered as one of the most important social health problems of the 21st century in developed and developing countries. obesity causes, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and the social and psychological problems (nuttall, 2015; tarakçı et al., 2016; sakarya et al., 2017; glinkowska and glinkowski, 2018). for this reason, it is seen as a public health issue requiring the measures to be taken. among the factors that cause obesity in children, genetic and environmental factors are foremost. there are many reasons such as passive life style owing to the technology, boost of urbanization, drop in play areas, and excessive and unbalanced eating (tarakçı et al., 2016; ncd risk factor collaboration (ncd-risc), 2017). on the other hand, the fact that little time is spared for the physical education and sports classes in our country may be a risk factor. in our country, the education system is carried out in two ways which are full-time and dual educations. full-time education and dual education systems can vary according to the number of student, classroom, and school. the courses are given between 08:30 15:20 in full-time education and it is between 07:00 12:45 in the morning and 13:00 18:45 in the afternoon in dual education in sivas. in this regard, there are many studies in our country to determine the prevalence of obesity seen in childhood (öner et al., 2004; semiz et al., 2008; ozcebe et al., 2015). however, in our country, no study was found the relationship between the obesity with dual and full-time education. in this regard, the aim of this study is to examine the relationships between the different education time and bmi in 6,7,8th classes students in secondary schools. 2. material and method 2.1. research group a total of 832 secondary school students (girls: n=418; boys: n=414) who were educated in sivas in 6,7,8th grades in full-time and dual education, voluntarily participated in the study. among 47 secondary schools in sivas, 11 of them without an indoor sport facility were randomly selected. acknowledging that each school is a layer, the number of boys and girls students was determined by the proportional selection method. acknowledging the branches of each class in the schools as a cluster, students were selected by sampling method from each class and branch and the research was conducted in may 2015-2016 educational year. before the research, the official permission from the sivas provincial directorate of national education, dated 30.04.2015 and 92255297-605.01e.4542785, and the committee approval from the omu clinical research ethics committee, dated 10.12.2015 and b.30.2.odm were taken. 2.2. data collection the length measurements of the participants included in the study were carried out with the seca brand tape measure and body weights were carried out using the tefal brand portable measurement tool, in compliance with the protocol (gordon et al., 1988). the bmi (kg/m²) of all students was calculated using height and weight measurements. the bmi values obtained were classified according to the reference bmi values that were adapted to the age and gender specific to children of our country. according to this, below the 5th percentile was classified as underweight, 5th to 85th percentile normal, and 85th to 95th percentile overweight, whereas over 95th percentile was classified as obesity (neyzi et al., 2008). 2.3. statistical method as part of the descriptive statistics of all variables, the mean, standard deviation, frequency (f), percent (%) values were given. pearson chi square test was used to analyse the relationship between the categorical variables. all statistical procedures were performed in spss 20.0 package program under windows and error level was taken as 0.05. 3. findings table-1. descriptive characteristics of the students. variables girls boys total n = 418 n = 414 n = 832 mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd age (years) 12.99 ± .83 12.92 ± .85 12.95 ± .84 height (cm) 156.19 ± 7.53 156.29 ± 10.44 156.24 ± 9.09 weight (kg) 49.27 ± 7.53 48.66 ± 13.64 48.97 ± 12.59 source: this table is result of our research according to the table 1, the mean and standard deviation values of the age, height, weight of the students included in the study, respectively were calculated as 12.95±.84; 156.24±9.09; 48.97±12.59. according to the table 2, 33.5% of the students are in the 6th class; 34.5% 7th class; 32% 8th class student. 47.8% of the students receive dual education and 52.2% receive full-time education. according to the table 3, 6.1% of underweight students were girls, 5.8% were boys; 33.9% of normal weight students were girls, 36.5% were boys; 5.0% of overweight students were girls, 4.1% were boys; 5.2% of obese students were girls, 3.4% were boys. no statistically significant correlation between gender and bmi was found (p>0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 275-279 277 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. frequency (f) and percentage (%) distribution of variables. gender f % girls 418 50.2 boys 414 49.8 total 832 100.0 education level 6. 279 33.5 7. 287 34.5 8. 266 32.0 total 832 100.0 education times dual education 398 47.8 full-time education 434 52.2 total 832 100.0 source: this table is result of our research table-3. frequency (f) and percentage (%) distribution of gender, education level, and education times according to bmi. variables underweight (<5) normal (5-85) overweight (85-95) obese (>95) x2, p f % f % f % f % gender girls 51 6.1 282 33.9 42 5.0 43 5.2 x2=4.909 p= 0.179 boys 48 5.8 304 36.5 34 4.1 28 3.4 total 99 11.9 586 70.4 76 9.1 71 8.6 education level 6. 38 38.4 197 33.6 27 35.5 17 23.9 x2 =8.711 p= 0.190 7. 39 39.4 200 34.1 22 28.9 26 36.6 8. 22 22.2 189 32.3 27 35.6 28 39.5 education times dual education 33 33.3 276 47.1 47 61.8 42 59.2 x2=18.092 p= .001 full-time education 66 66.7 310 52.9 29 38.2 29 40.8 total 99 100.0 586 100.0 76 100.0 71 100.0 source: this table is result of our research according to the table 3, 38.4% of the underweight students were in 6th class, 39.4% were in 7th class, 22.2% were in 8th class; 33.6% of students with ideal weight were in 6th class, 34.1% were in 7th class, 32.3% were in 8th class; 35.5% of the overweight students were in 6th class, 28.9% were in 7th class, 35.6% were in 8th class; 23.9% of obese students were in 6th class, 36.6% were in 7th class, 39.5% were in 8th class according to bmi. a statistically significant relationship between educational levels and bmi was not found (p>0.05). according to the table 3, 33.3% of the underweight students compared with their bmi were at dual education, 66.7% of the students at full-time education; whereas, 47.1% of the students with normal weight with at dual education and 52.9% at full-time education; 61.8% of the overweight students were at dual education and 38.2% of them were at full-time education, 59.2% of the obese students were at dual education and 40.8% at full-time education. a statistically significant correlation between education and bmi was found (p<0.05). 4. discussion the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between education times and bmi in secondary school students who receive education in 6th, 7th and 8th grades. in the present study, the rate of underweight was 11.9%, overweight rate was 9.1%, and the obesity rate was 8.6% table 3. when the literature studies are examined, similar results are given by the data of turkey nutrition and health survey (tbsa, 2010, 2014) that indicates 14.9% of children aged 6-18 years are underweight, 14.3% are overweight and 8.2% are obese. dündar and öz (2012) found the obesity frequency as 10.3% in their research on secondary school students with an average age of 12.8 in samsun. barbiero et al. (2009) reported that the prevalence of overweight as 17.8%, and the rate of obesity as 9.8% among students aged 10-18 years in brazil. amin et al. (2008) reported that the prevalence of overweight in children between 10-14 years of age as 14.2% and 9.7% of obesity rate in saudi arabia. ozturk and akturk (2011) found the overweight as 12.4% and the prevalence of obesity as 6.5%. the findings of this study and the literature demonstrate that the rate of overweight in children is higher than the obesity. in addition, it has been observed that the obesity prevalence rates were similar to our results. according to these results, being overweight is considered a major problem and will form a risk factor for obesity in the future. in addition, it has been seen that the rate of the underweight is also a major problem in the study, and it shows parallelism with the data of the most comprehensive study (tbsa, 2010, 2014). in this study, when the bmi was examined by gender, 6.1% of the underweight students were girls, 5.8% were boys; 5.0% of the overweight students were girls, 4.1% were boys, and 5.2% of obese students were girls and 3.4% were boys. it is observed that being underweight and excessive weight/obesity are higher in girls table 3. simsek et al. (2005) reported that 55.6% of the obese children which is a higher percentage than the boys were girls, and korkmaz (2008) stated that 66.0% of the obese students were girls. when we look at the gender distribution percentages, it is observed that it shows similarities with the results of our research table 3. in contrast to these results, some studies (tremblay et al., 2002) observed that the rate of being underweight and overweight in boys is higher as well. öner et al. (2004) reported in the study conducted in edirne between 12 to 17 years olds that reported that the prevalence of underweight, overweight and obesity among young girls between the ages of 12 and 17, was 11.1%, 10.6%, 2.1%, and the rates were 14.4%, 11.3%, and 1.6%, respectively, in boys. according to barbiero et al. (2009) the prevalence of overweight was 19.9% in girls and 15.3% in boys, and the obesity was 8.2% in girls and 11.8% in boys. dündar and öz (2012) stated that the frequency of overweight and obesity in boys is higher than girls. variables such as physical, physiological, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 275-279 278 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group metabolic rapid changes due to gender and age, biological differences in energy requirements in both sexes regarding growth and timing during sexual maturity period, and regional and social gender differences may be factors in obesity or overweight rates between genders (al-rethaiaa et al., 2010; goyal et al., 2010; biswas et al., 2017; gebrie et al., 2018). in addition, it has been stated in a wide range of previous studies that the rates of obesity vary according to socio-economic level and region as well (the toçb, 2011; cosi-tur, 2013). in this respect, the fact that sivas is a city located in the central anatolian region may have affected the results. in the study, according to the class levels, it is seen that the overweight rate of 35.6% and obesity rate of 39.5% are seen in 8th grade; however, no statistically significant difference between the grade and the bmi was found table 3 in our country, hours of education might vary from one region to another according to the number of schools, classrooms and students in our country. there are efforts for changing the timing of education which is seen as a major problem in the education system of our country and endeavours for full-time education continues. in line with this, this study in which the relationship between the times of education and bmi was examined, indicates that 33.3% of underweight students are at dual education, approximately 66.7% are at full-time education; 61.8% of overweight students are at dual education and 38.2% are at full-time education; it was observed that 59.2% of obese students were at dual education, 40.8% were at full-time, and there was a significant correlation between these rates and education times table 3. in the light of these findings, it can be said that dual education increases the rate of underweight, overweight and obesity. in addition, in the formation of this situation, breakfast /eating habits and many factors such as sleep time is thought to be effective. 5. conclusion in this study, the fact that underweight, overweight, and obesity rates are high especially in the dual education system, measures to be taken for the health of future generations. first of all, it is recommended to gain adequatebalanced eating habits for a healthy lifestyle, increase physical education and sports course hours, and establish the necessary physical environment for game and sports activities. in this respect, the high prevalence of obesity in the students who are studying in the “dual education” system shows the importance of the “full-time education” system. besides, being the first study that examines the relationship between the time of education and bmi is the strong side of this study. a more comprehensive research might be made for different region and age groups across the country. references al-rethaiaa, a.s., a.-e.a. fahmy and n.m. al-shwaiyat, 2010. obesity and eating habits among college students in saudi arabia: a cross sectional study. nutrition journal, 9(1): 1-10.available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-39. amin, t.t., a.i. al-sultan and a. ali, 2008. overweight and obesity and their relation to dietary habits and socio-demographic characteristics among male primary school children in al-hassa, kingdom of saudi arabia. european journal of nutrition, 6(47): 310-318.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-008-0727-6. barbiero, s.m., l.c. pellanda, c.c. cesa, p. campagnolo, f. beltrami and c.c. abrantes, 2009. overweight, obesity and other risk factors for ihd in brazilian schoolchildren. public health nutrition, 12(5): 710-715.available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980008003200. biswas, t., a. islam, m.s. islam, s. pervin and l.b. rawal, 2017. overweight and obesity among children and adolescents in bangladesh: a systematic review and meta-analysis. public health, 142: 94-101.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2016.10.010. cosi-tur, 2013. turkey childhood (7-8 years) obesity research (co-eng). ankara, 2014: ministry of health, public health agency of turkey, ministry of education, hacettepe university, department of health publication no: 921. dündar, c. and h. öz, 2012. obesity-related factors in turkish school children. the scientific world journal, 2012: 1-5.available at: https://doi.org/10.1100/2012/353485. gebrie, a., a. alebel, a. zegeye, b. tesfaye and a. ferede, 2018. prevalence and associated factors of overweight/obesity among chi ldren and adolescents in ethiopia: a systematic review and meta-analysis. bmc obesity, 5(1): 1-12.available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40608-018-0198-0. glinkowska, b. and w.m. glinkowski, 2018. association of sports and physical activity with obesity among teenagers in poland. international journal of occupational medicine and environmental health, 31(6): 771-782. gordon, c.c., c.c. chumlea and a.f. roche, 1988. stature, recumbent length and weight. (eds), lohman, tg, roche, af & marorell, r. anthropometric standardization reference manual. illinois: human kinetics books. pp: 3-8. goyal, r.k., v.n. shah, b.d. saboo, s.r. phatak, n.n. shah, m.c. gohel, p.b. raval and s.s. patel, 2010. prevalence of overweight and obesity in indian adolescent school going children: its relationship with socioeconomic status and associated lifestyle factors. the journal of the association of physicians of india, 58: 151-158. korkmaz, a., 2008. the obesity frequency of the students which are in the 6.7. and 8. level classes of a primary school in the gebze town of kocaeli. master thesis. selçuk university: konya, turkey. ncd risk factor collaboration (ncd-risc), 2017. worldwide trends in body-mass index, underweight, overweight, and obesity from 1975 to 2016: a pooled analysis of 2416 population-based measurement studies in 128.9 million children, adolescents, and adults. lancet, 390(10113): 2627-2642. neyzi, o., h. günöz, r.b. furman and g. gülbin, 2008. weight, height, head circumference and body mass index references for turkish children. journal of child health and diseases, 51: 1-14. nuttall, f.q., 2015. body mass index: obesity, bmi, and health: a critical review. nutrition today, 50(3): 117-128.available at: https://doi.org/10.1097/nt.0000000000000092. öner, n., ü. vatansever, a. sari, e. ekuklu, a. güzel, s. karasalihoğlu and n.w. boris, 2004. prevalence of underweight, overweight and obesity in turkish adolescents. swiss medical weekly, 134(35-36): 529-533. ozcebe, h., t.b. bosi, n. yardim, e. celikcan, n. celikay, b. keskinkilic and s. ozkan, 2015. owerweight and obesity among children in turkey. taf preventive medicine bulletin, 14(2): 145-152.available at: https://doi.org/10.5455/pmb.1-1409314914. ozturk, a. and s. akturk, 2011. obesity prevalence and associated risk factors in school-aged children. taf preventive medicine bulletin, 10(1): 53-60.available at: https://doi.org/10.5455/pmb.20101119041916. sakarya, s., s. 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[accessed 16.02.2019]. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 1, 11-15, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 11 smart schools an innovation in education: malaysian's experience hassan mirzajani1 mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei2 meysam rajaby kookandeh 3 seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee4 ali akbar kamalifar5 hassan razaghi shani6 1 faculty of educational studies, university putra malaysia 2 faculty of education, university malaya, kuala lumpur, malaysia 3 faculty of humane resoure management, islamic azad university, gaemshahr branch, iran 4 master of nahjolbalaghe, islamic azad university, azadshahr branch, iran 5 ph.d candidate of philosophy in management, lincoln university in malaysia 6 department of management lincoln university college malaysia, branch iran ( corresponding author) abstract according to the new environment created by the information period, training and learning new skills are being inevitable. retraining the skills of group working to coordinate the information age has created special conditions for education. smart schools are one of the strategies adopted by schools in response to today's modern needs. smart schools are active for entrepreneurship, using modern methods to improve the quality of education, and training qualified people who at any time have the capability and efficiency of modern industry. the purpose of this study, is the use of ict in malaysian smart school and comparing it with the smart schools in iran. to conduct this study, library, documents, web sites and electronic journals are available. the results of this study show that although there are significant differences between the education system and deployment of ict in iran with the standards in smart schools in leading countries like malaysia, according to the original development of smart schools in iran which has been adapted from malaysia, recognizing the realities of this action in malaysia, can be effective in the development of schools in the country and prevent indiscriminate development. keywords: smart schools, ict, education, malaysia, iran. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 12 2. the historical trend of smart schools’ project ................................................................................................................ 12 3. smart school projects in iran ............................................................................................................................................. 12 4. smart school initiative in malaysia .................................................................................................................................... 13 5. smart schools features in malaysia ................................................................................................................................... 13 6. obstacles and challenges of smart schools: malaysian experience ................................................................................. 14 7. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................ 15 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 15 citation | hassan mirzajani; mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei; meysam rajaby kookandeh; seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee; ali akbar kamalifar; hassan razaghi shani (2016). smart schools an innovation in education: malaysian's experience. asian journal of education and training, 2(1): 11-15. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan mirzajani https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=meysam rajaby kookandeh https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ali akbar kamalifar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan razaghi shani http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan mirzajani https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=meysam rajaby kookandeh https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ali akbar kamalifar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan razaghi shani http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan mirzajani https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=meysam rajaby kookandeh https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ali akbar kamalifar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan razaghi shani http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan mirzajani https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=meysam rajaby kookandeh https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ali akbar kamalifar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan razaghi shani http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan mirzajani https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=meysam rajaby kookandeh https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ali akbar kamalifar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan razaghi shani http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan mirzajani https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=meysam rajaby kookandeh https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ali akbar kamalifar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan razaghi shani http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan mirzajani https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=meysam rajaby kookandeh https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ali akbar kamalifar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan razaghi shani http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan mirzajani https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=mehraneh delaviz bayekolaei https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=meysam rajaby kookandeh https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=seyede safoora razzaghpoor rezaee https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=ali akbar kamalifar https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=hassan razaghi shani http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.11.15 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 11-15 12 1. introduction the use of ict in education has many advantages and can provide more effective and deeper knowledge to the students. the impact of information and communication technology (ict) in various aspects of life is so fundamental that distinguishes our era by past era. what distinguishes today's nations is the utilization and application of ict more than any other factor. new technologies free students and teachers from the traditional learning environment of schools and certainly reduces the control of teacher on students’ thinking, feeling and behavior (mirzajani et al., 2015). this increases learning motivation and makes students to be active, creative and effective. their desire to gain information and knowledge increases and naturally training can be on the actual track (ebadi, 2004). of course, the key element of progress in the modern societies is education. if the education system gets busy with theoretical arguments and continue with old and inefficient methods, certainly all aspects of society will face with pervasive recession. entering the information age and the prevalence of technology-based global networks and computers would create a new formal and non-formal learning environment. smart school is one of the adopted approaches to meet today's modern needs (millton, 2003). smart schools is an educational approach that will lead to fundamental changes in learning and teaching process with the integration of information technology and curriculum, in the approach teacher has the role of a guide, not a transferor of knowledge, and the role of students rather than passive consumption of organic knowledge is as an active, creative, critical and participation person. evaluation system changes a process-driven inquiry (attaran, 2011). smart schools are the major achievements in the development of information technology in education programs that not only influences educational environments but also it will be a development with real experiences for students and their tomorrow life. smart school is a practical and targeted offer to run the most advanced and new teaching methods and scientific look at the current state of the educational system (yoong and lew, 2009). 2. the historical trend of smart schools’ project in 1984, perkins and his colleagues at harvard, offered smart school project as a new experience in education programs by ict. according to perkins (1992) in smart schools two important points should be borne in mind, one is that learning is the product of thought and all students can learn well thought, and that learning requires deep understanding and flexible and active use of knowledge. this scheme was implemented gradually in a number of school and later expanded somewhat. many developed countries use these schools to train their human resources development programs (madras, 2011). perkins (1992) believes that seven basic principles are necessary to smart schools, the management of the school and its staff: generated knowledge: useful choice of lessons for students; conception of intelligence as something acquired and achieved and not a fixed attribute; emphasis on understanding; tutorials to learn and not exam; assessment to learn and not exam; the role of school as a learning organization; dealing with complex situations. the so-called smart schools inclusively, was raised the first time in malaysia in 1996 with a focus on preparing students to enter the information age and accordingly, drastic changes were considered in malaysian schools and believed that ultimately all schools become smart. in these schools learning is based on the speed of the individual, partnership, self-coherence between the subjects and the course content is not limited to printed books but also ebooks, software, multimedia courseware and databases. simultaneously some plans are being prepared for individual differences in learning styles of each student. the project was launched in 1999 and pilot implementation completed in 2002 (attaran, 2011). singapore is another southeast asian country that uses ict methods in education. in 1997, the first large-scale initiative was developed in order to make use of ict in education infrastructure and equipping teachers with the skills they need for the use of ict in their lessons. the second major project for the use of ict in education (20032008) was more about infrastructure and the integration of ict with teacher training schools. finally, the third master plan (2009-2014) on the integration of ict with curriculum, emphasizes training and evaluation. the plan is based on the belief that ict, encourages students in any place and time to search for self-learning and experiential learning and increases them for the 21st century learning (singapore ministry of education, 2011). 3. smart school projects in iran smart school project was launched in 2003 in iran with inspiration from the original idea in malaysia. shahid aghayee was a non-profit school who taught with the use of audio-visual technology. the founder of the school later carried out similar school projects in yazd and qazvin province in public high schools (attaran, 2011). in 2004, four public high schools in tehran, smart school project was implemented as a pilot project by the education ministry in tehran. in 2007, after three years of implementation of the smart school pilot in tehran, smart schools began and teachers were taught based on the strategic plan of the project. for the realization of smart schools in this project 100 schools were chosen by ministry of education, 50 were part of high schools in different provinces of the country (omidinia, 2009). education institution in tehran in 2010 published a book with the title of “roadmap of smart schools “where in addition to the smart school goals, how to implement smart schools and their evaluation model were presented. in 2011 the ministry of education changed some schools into smart schools in most major cities in iran. this project seeks a master plan which was chosen by education institution for development of ict in iran. in fact, officials of education gradually came to a deeper understanding of global developments and the role of ict in development (attaran, 2011). this led to the development of ict in this phase as a general direction taken by the managers of education. in 2009 the road map of smart schools which was developed by the ministry of education of iran, smart schools have been mentioned as one of the key requirements of knowledge-based societies through the development of knowledge and entrepreneurial skills of students in these schools. objectives and activities of the schools are based on the malaysian smart school but the sub structure are different in two countries. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 11-15 13 4. smart school initiative in malaysia the smart school in malaysia was established in fact malaysia is the initiator of the project. the malaysian government for its 2020 vision, considered a plan as large multimedia corridor (msc) and an electronic city to provide the country’s entrance in information age (bajunid, 2008). smart school project was one of the seven great design by msc. in 1997 government statement on the matter reads as follows: malaysia needs a serious transition from an industrial country to a leading country in the information age. malaysia should become a country with deep technological literacy. and it also needs labor force thinking that we have to work in the global economy and the skills to use the tools of the information age. to achieve this transformation, a transformation of the educational system should be maximum (bajunid, 2008). smart schools program focuses on the establishment of the infrastructure of ict in the education system which consists of virtual network equipment, data center and software packages based on the teaching and learning of four subjects of "national language", "english," "science" and "mathematics" in malaysian schools, in this way, the ministry of education in malaysia and smart schools are better connected. these schools have a computer integrated management system that covers the whole range of tasks and smart schools. the purpose of this work is to reinforce the use of ict in primary and secondary schools with a radical change in the educational system through the restructuring teaching-learning process that by the integration of ict in the lesson plans, education and assessment methods, teaching and learning become attractive (yoong and lew, 2009). malaysian smart school project was launched in january 1999 and the experiment ended in 2002. in the pilot project, 78 million dollars was considered and the largest share of 38% of the budget was devoted to the preparation of training materials (puteh and vicziany, 2004). at the end of this experience, it was decided that such schools have to be designed based on the following elements: search-based curriculum and related materials written for courses in malay, english, science and mathematics. computer management systems of smart schools. technology infrastructure of smart schools involves the use of it and non-it equipment, local area network and virtual private network with the ability to connect the pilot schools, data centers and services of the ministry of education. centralized support centers across the country to support and maintenance. specialized support such as integrated systems, project management, re-engineering business process and change management (foong, 2002). malaysia ministry of education (1997a) described five features of smart school curriculum as below: holistic training and education that emphasizes thinking skills, effective communication skills and emotional, cognitive and social development; integration of life skills, language and moral values knowledge; integration of vertical evaluation method; integration of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary curriculum; integration of technology as a tool in the teaching and learning process (ya’acob et al., 2005). 5. smart schools features in malaysia smart school students take advantage of the internet to access information and resources for getting answers to their questions in addition to the communication with class teacher other and students. content is provided in an electronic form and the teacher is a guide. the school is trying to help new technology learning difficulties such as problems related to lack of computer literacy, information literacy, teaching and problems associated with the traditional methods. the following can be noted as other features of these schools. 5.1. curriculum curriculum in smart schools should be meaningful. this program must develop a sense of responsibility in students so that they become aware of their duties as a citizen. other features of this program reflects the skills and attitudes that enable them to think critically, creatively and be positive. comprehensive curriculum, creates an opportunity for all aspects of human intelligence and help students to see the connections between different subjects. in addition, the smart school curriculum is aim-centered and the objective is that all students develop their critical skills and knowledge they need to live as a citizen (mme, 1997b). in total, the smart school curriculum promotes holistic learning and creates opportunities for student achievement and talent and at the same time concerns the interests and needs of the students (attaran, 2011). 5.2. evaluation smart school evaluation system should be such that provides a more accurate picture and a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of the students. in this system, teachers, students and parents can access to various parts of the evaluation via the internet (madras, 2011). the purpose of the evaluation in the schools is the realization of the philosophy of education, therefore, a comprehensive and accurate picture of the performance of students is required. in this system, teachers, students and parents have online access to the evaluation questions. smart schools’ evaluation system is flexible, familiar and easy to use for learner. the information obtained from the evaluation has appropriate credit. evaluation of students in such schools is done every day, consistently, on line and on distance. parents can also be connected with a simple instruction to school evaluation system and thereby informed of the status and progress of their child's education. usually at these schools at the end of the class an e-mail will be sent from the school to inform parents of their children's education situation. 5.3. content and learning of the curriculum smart schools need new content, well designed and innovative methods of teaching for teaching and learning. such programs will supply the needs of students with different abilities, and thus reveals capabilities and give the opportunity to students to accept more responsibility for managing and directing their own learning. teachers in such asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 11-15 14 schools can use databases and software programs and other new courses designed to suit the needs and interests of students and change or modify the content of the courses in the schools. therefore, the learning content will be somewhat different from other schools. 5.4. teachers the role of teachers in such schools is largely changed from teaching and evaluation of students to track their personal training and thus the opportunity and more time to address their professional growth and development programs (study, constructive communications and interactions, promoting their knowledge and teaching skills and ...). so for the effectiveness of the plan smart schools need trained and skilled teachers and administrators and welldesigned processes to support themselves (mme, 1997b). as the malaysian smart school project team stated, teachers' professional development is crucial to the success of smart schools. training teachers need to use information technology and its integration with classroom activities to enhance thinking and creativity of the students. at the same time, teachers need to be smart in order to facilitate and encourage students to learn better, and in the long term, they need to increase their skills for the use of technology in education (mme, 1997a). 5.5. technology at school level technology has diverse roles in smart schools; such as teaching and learning process to help manage the schools. according to the team, equipping schools include the following: classrooms with multimedia courseware and e-mail for teamwork; library or media center multimedia software with a central database for studies and network resources such as access to the internet; computer laboratory and audiovisual equipment; a studio with a centralized control room for audio-visual equipment, video conferencing chamber, workout sound and image studio; teachers’ room with online access to lesson plans and detailed content of each subject and databases, information and resource management systems, advanced communications tools, such as e-mail; management room with the ability to manage databases and students’ facilities, track student and teacher performance and the distribution of leaflets and other electronic information; server room equipped to access applications, database management and network servers, security, telecommunications and access to network resources (mme, 1997a). 6. obstacles and challenges of smart schools: malaysian experience studies show that the development of smart schools in malaysia has been successful in its technology part but the training has progressed slowly. teachers resist to such schools and are not prepared to teach in such schools. they also worry that the insistence on the use of ict in teaching, increase the amount of work (puteh and vicziany, 2004). yoong and lew (2009) in this regard, reported that in most schools, teachers do not have sufficient skills in the implementation of ict applications. a number of studies on the implementation of the pilot phase showed that the integration of ict in the malaysian classroom is still in the early stages and a lot of teachers are able to use ictbased educational strategies, while for the successful implementation of the project, preparation of teachers and schools, was a key issue. although the ministry of education in malaysia held short-term and intensive courses for teachers, but research has shown that these efforts did not help to improve the ability of teachers to implement ict in teaching because they believe that almost half of teachers they have been able to reach half of their goals by internal training (mdc smart school department, 2005). the study of ali et al. (2009) about smart schools pointed out that teachers were facing problems during the process of integrating ict in schools. difficulties integrating ict in malaysian smart schools include: the time factor, unrelated course content and technological failure. in addition, the teachers complained that their free time was not enough to prepare for the course in which the use of ict was a must. it takes time to surf the internet, search for information, review and selection of information. the findings also show that some teachers with lack ict skills feel that to save time they can teach more content with more traditional methods, finish the curriculum and succeed in national examination. in addition to this research yoong and lew (2009) also suggest that these schools’ support costs has increased. the school management has been over-reliance on ict and everyday human interaction between the collection of teachers and management decreases. the new philosophy of smart schools says teachers must use teamwork, talk less and take advantage of a wide range of educational activities and learning with ict applications. of course search, design and synthesis of new materials suitable for learning environment are time consuming. in addition to the normal working hours of teachers in school they have to spend more hours in school to complete their tasks. however, they are not given any reward for this work. for the realization of the smart school concept, teachers should have a very high commitment. the arrival of ict in smart schools must conjugate with the use of interactive educational lesson that combine sound, graphics and animation in such a way that students find their ability to explore and construct knowledge. funding for this application is essential. pilot smart school administrators have complained about the non-allocation of funds for the purchase and preparation of required software. research reports indicate iran has more or less similar problems. mahmoudi et al. (2008) in their study consider the basic challenges of smart schools as below: • the lack of rules and regulations required by the ministry of education of iran, with respect to the issue that in smart schools, control, monitoring and evaluation is done in an intelligent computer-based technology. lack of regulation in this area is causing problems at school. for example, teacher is not responsible for creating multimedia asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 11-15 15 content and if a teacher prepares the content for personal interests, there is no legal basis for the payment of financial compensation. • lack of infrastructure, internet connectivity, hardware, pc, and lack of adequate resources in schools, which has led to one of the most important challenges. incompatible relationship between structure and organization of schools, a structure in which information technology has no place. noting the crucial role of information technology in smart schools, the need to fit specific organizational structures of schools with information technology is felt. attaran et al. (2012) research reports suggest that despite many material resources allocated by ministry of education on the development of smart schools, the results do not match expectations. 7. conclusion one of the most important features of the present period is momentum of scientific, technological, and social developments. almost in all countries it is expected that the ministry of education be the source of changes and innovation. this means that the education system should also align itself with the development of modern society and the changes and predict future changes and in order to create favorable developments in the future for guidance. in this regard, one of the approaches that can be beneficial to meet the requirements within the educational system and in many developed countries have implemented or are being implemented, is the use of information and communication technologies in the educational system and consequently the establishment and development of smart schools. these schools were actually a new concept and philosophy of education and by abandoning the traditional series of inhibitors, they try to use information technology to provide training. malaysia has a national policy and master plan for infrastructure and ict integration in education. effort and many resources have been spent on smart school project. providing or improving infrastructure and ict facilities in schools are only one step to go a long way towards integrating ict with education at schools. however, there are many potential abilities to stimulate educational systems in support of the integration. some of the initial steps in that direction are equipping schools with ict infrastructure, training teachers and administrators to gain expertise and familiarity with basic applications of ict and software development courses. as regards ongoing training for teachers and administrators with a range of ict applications and giving them time to enhance their confidence is a priority. case studies show that with proper and pre-planned training, teachers and students can be motivated to internet resources for teaching and learning effective and interactive benefit (yoong and lew, 2009). as a result, and according to the original development of smart schools in malaysia, recognizing the realities of this action in malaysia, can be effective in the development of schools in the country and preventing excessive development is effective. so for the effective and efficient utilization of information technology, especially in the development of education we need to improve approaches, review education policy, reorganization of content, improvement of human resources and curricula designed to provide effective and evolution of cultural norms coexist with novel technology. references ali, w.z.w., h.m. nor, a. hamzah and n.h. alwi, 2009. the conditions and level of ict integration in malaysian smart schools. international journal of education and development using information and communication technology (ijedict), 5(2): 21 – 31. attaran, m., 2011. how and why smart schools. journal of teacher development, publications of training research and planning, ministry of education. iran, 7: 2-4. attaran, m., s. saedah and a. norlidah, 2012. learning culture in a smart school: a case study. working paper at international educational technology conference (ietc 2012). taoyuan، taiwan. bajunid, i.a., 2008. from traditional schools to smart schools: the malaysian educational odyssey. kuala lumpur: oxford fajar. ebadi, r., 2004. e-learning. tehran: amir kabir publications. foong, c.m., 2002. ict in malaysian schools: policy and strategies. in a workshop on the promotion of ict in education to narrow the digital divide. pp: 15-22. madras, s.a., 2011. smart schools. tomorrow school's roshd journal, publications training, research planning, ministry of education. iran, 20: 7-18. mahmoudi, j., s. nalchigar and s.b. ebrahimi, 2008. the challenges of smart schools in iran. iran: publication of educational innovations. malaysia ministry of education, 1997a. the malaysian smart schools implementation plan. kuala lumpur, malaysia: smart school project team, ministry of education. mdc smart school department, 2005. malaysian smart school roadmap 2005 – 2020: an educational odyssey – a consultative paper on the expansion of the smart school initiative to all schools in malaysia. cyberjaya: multimedia development corporation. millton, p., 2003. trends in the integration of ict and learning in k-12 system. ca: canadian education association. mirzajani, h., k. hajializadeh, o.h. gorji, s.e.o. mohammadi, r. sohaei and m.d. bayekolaei, 2015. the need for recognition and implementation of educational technologies by teachers in the educational and learning process. international journal of learning and development, 5(3): 14-24. mme, 1997b. the malaysian smart school: a conceptual blueprint. kuala lumpur, malaysia: ministry of education, 11 july 1997. omidinia, s., 2009. development of ict strategic plan for smart school in iran (case study: ministry of education in iran). masters thesis، universiti teknologi malaysia، faculty of computer science and information systems. perkins, d.n., 1992. smart schools: from training memories to educating minds. new york: the free press. puteh, m. and a. vicziany, 2004. how smart are malaysia's smart schools? in 4th global congress on engineering education (unesco international centre for engineering education (uicee) and king mongkut's university of technology 5 july 2004 to 9 july 2004). pp: 223-228. singapore ministry of education, 2011. education in singapore: finding from international benchmarking studies. singapore: ministry of education. ya’acob, a., n.n. mohd and h. azman, 2005. implementation of the malaysian smart school: an investigation of teaching-learning practices and teacher-student readiness. internet journal of e-language learning & teaching, 2(2): 16-25. yoong, s. and l.y. lew, 2009. enhancing ict application in science and mathematics education: the malaysian smart school experience. multiple literacy and science education: icts in formal and informal learning environments: icts in formal and informal learning environments, 142. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of education and training shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. 31 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 31-38, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.31.38 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an analysis of the relationship between digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction among children zekihan hazar nigde omer halisdemir universty school of physical education and sports, turkey abstract the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between digital game addiction and the motivation for digital game-playing, and to develop suggestions towards the solution of the research problem through the relationship between these two concepts. the study is designed according to the quantitative research method and the relational screening model was administered. in the study, a personal information form, digital game addiction scale for children, and the digital game-playing motivation scale were used. the data obtained were analyzed with the spss 24 package program, and descriptive statistics, t-test and oneway anova, pearson correlation and regression analyses were run on the data. according to search results, a positive and significant correlation was seen between the participants' digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction. in addition, higher levels of digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction among the participants whose parents play digital games; lower levels of digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction among the participants who hold athlete's license and the finding that digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction increase in parallel with age are important results of this study. keywords: game, digital game, addiction, digital game addiction, motivation, sport. citation | zekihan hazar (2019). an analysis of the relationship between digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction among children. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 31-38. history: received: 10 september 2018 revised: 15 october 2018 accepted: 2 november 2018 published: 11 december 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 32 2. material and method....................................................................................................................................................................... 32 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 33 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 36 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 38 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.31.38&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/375 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9305-4010 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/375 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9305-4010 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/375 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9305-4010 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 31-38 32 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction in today's world, the meaning expressed by the concepts of ”child and technology" is considered more to be "child and digital games". the children's world, which was built on traditional games in the past, has been substituted by a world of computer-based technological virtual games. this virtual game world, which surrounds children from all directions, sometimes causes children to become addicted to games because of a number of risk factors it incorporates. in this context, the population of this study is students of the 10-14 age group who are studying at the 5 şubat elementary school affiliated to niğde provincial national education directorate. in this context, 177 female and 240 male students have voluntarily participated in this study. one of the novelties brought about by the computer sector, which affects today's people of every age, especially the lives of children is the concept of "digital games" (erboy, 2010). all sorts of games played at the playgrounds, streets, parks, even coffee houses until recently are now played at homes, offices, internet cafes and play station houses (kaya, 2013). sapsağlam (2018) states that traditional children's games have been replaced today by digital games, which are a kind of screen addiction. scholars consider excessive computer use and digital game playing to be an addiction behavior (lemmens et al., 2009). game addiction, which is defined as divergent and obstinate behavior as a result of video gaming, is considered to be a kind of technology addiction (gökçearslan and durakoğlu, 2014). various terminologies are used for game addiction (irmak and erdoğan, 2016). griffiths (2005) states that, regardless of the terminology used, playing digital games at extreme levels could lead to addiction. pallesen et al. (2015) define digital game addiction as playing excessively and obsessively although it yields to social and emotional problems; and as the individual's failure to control this excessive situation. hülya and örsal (2018) stress that digital game addiction causes many mental and social problems. several negative impacts of digital games are addressed in the literature. it is stated in the literature that these games may generally steer players to aggressive behavior, provoke unstable individual attitude, hinder creative gaming, and lead to negative psychological and social consequences such as feelings and thoughts of aggression, aggressive behavior and diminishing in social behavior (gentile and anderson, 2006; işçibaşı, 2011; akçayır, 2013; aydoğdu-karaaslan, 2015). on the other hand, one of the most important points that should be debated within this context is the individuals' playing these games at an addictive level. it is a crucial matter to reveal what factors motivate people to digital game addiction despite it causes several individual and social problems. motivation is defined as forcing the individual to reactions towards a certain action (selçuk, 1999) as a feeling that enables the individual to explore (deci and ryan, 1985) as a force that invokes the organism in line with the target behavior, enable the maintenance of the movement and drive it. literature shows that there are various motivators for individuals to play these games. young, suggests that the source of the problem is the people who use your computer, rather than the computer itself (kelleci, 2008). terek-unal and west (2011) contend that feelings such as joy, excitement, pleasure, achieving the levels, that are experienced during games, might cause the development of addictive behaviors among children over time. doğu (2006) argues that the fact that individuals easily have the things in the virtual domain that are rather difficult to have in the real world steers them into the world of games. bakan and öztüfekçi (2018) state that the sound and effects in digital games affect the players and shape their play motivations and behaviors. kircaburun et al. (2018) stress that the problematic game-playing behavior that makes many negative psychological and physical effects on individuals is associated with poor will and aggressive personality characteristics. in general, motivators of digital gaming involves curiosity, challenge, sense of dominance, competition, social communication, diversity, exhilaration effect, providing oneiric environments, relaxation, avoiding stress, being able to start over for many times, resting, spending spare time, and escaping from the real life (horzum et al., 2008; pala et al., 2011). the review of the literature shows that there are several motivators directing children to the digital gaming behavior. yet, these studies' way of handling the subject mostly depend on expert opinions and the number of studies that might directly reveal the relationship between "digital game addiction and the motivation for digital gaming" is scarce. while expert opinions are important in such kind of studies, it is more important to develop an original research model that could elicit the relationship between the concepts of addiction and motivation, obtain the respective findings and examine the results. in this respect, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between digital game addiction and the motivation for digital game-playing, and to develop suggestions towards the solution of the research problem through the relationship between these two concepts. 2. material and method the study is designed according to the quantitative research method and the relational screening model was administered. screening models are survey arrangements conducted on a population that consist of several units with the entire population, or a group or sample to be selected out of it in order to reach a general judgement about the population. screening models are research approaches that aim to describe a past or current situation as they are. the essence of this model is to observe a situation without altering it karasar (2006). 2.1. population the group including all individuals (units) on whom the research can be conducted or generalizations can be made is called population (erkuş, 2013). in this context, the population of this study is students of the 10-14 age group who are studying at the 5 şubat elementary school affiliated to niğde provincial national education directorate. 2.2. sample in this study, homogeneous sampling method, which is among purposeful sampling methods, was used. the homogeneous sampling method identifies an operation where a homogeneous sub-group a situation is selected from asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 31-38 33 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the population in relation to the research problem and the research is conducted on this very group (büyüköztürk et al., 2016). in this context, 177 female and 240 male students have voluntarily participated in this study. 2.3. data collection tool in the study, a personal information form prepared by the author, the "digital game addiction scale for children" whose validity and reliability was conducted by hazar and hazar (2017) and the "digital game-playing motivation scale" whose validity and reliability was conducted by hazar and tekkurşun (2018) were used. 2.4. measurement tools digital game addiction scale for children: the "digital game addiction scale for children" developed by the hazar & hazar was used together with the 6-item personal information form. when the personal information form was created, a literature search was conducted to find out what the independent variables considered to be related to digital game addiction were and the personal information form for variables such as age, gender, daily average playing time of digital game was created. the relationship between each variable and the total addiction scores from the scale was considered in the study. the "digital game addiction scale for children" used in the research consists of four sub-factors. the cronbach alpha coefficients of the sub factors were found to be .75 for the first sub-factor, .80 for the second sub-factor, .72 for the third sub-factor, .56 for the fourth sub-factor and .88 for the total sub-factor. a 5-point likert-type scale was used in evaluating the expressions in the measure (1 = never, 2 = not agreeable, 3 = undecided, 4 = agree, 5 = completely agree). factors; excessive focus and conflict on playing digital game, tolerance development in game play and value added to game, postponement of individual and social duties / assignments, psychological-physiological reflection of dysnity and diving in game. digital game-playing motivation scale (dgpms): the scale was developed in 2018 by hazar and tekkurşundemir in order to determine the motivation levels of children in playing digital games. the scale has three subfactors and a total of 19 items. a 5-point likert type scale was used (1 = totally disagree,..., 5=totally agree) in the evaluation of the statements. the items under the third sub-dimension of the scale are reverse-coded. the lowest score to be obtained from the scale is ”19” and the highest score is “95“. in the evaluation of the scale scoring; a higher total score refers to higher levels of motivation. scale sub-factors and reliability values for this study are as follows; the achievement and exhilaration (intrinsic motivation) sub-dimension (.86),curiosity and social acceptance (external motivation) (.83)uncertainty in gaming desire (lack of motivation) (.77),and scale total(.88). personal information form: variables such as gender, age, having athlete's license and parents' digital gaming habits that are thought to be associated with the results of the study are included in the personal information form. 2.5. data collection and analysis in the process of data collection, the measurement tool was applied to 500 students who accepted to voluntarily participate in the study; however, 83 of the completed survey forms were not taken into consideration because they did not conform to the validity and reliability criteria of the study. the data obtained were analyzed with the spss 24 package program, and descriptive statistics, t-test and oneway anova, pearson correlation and regression analyses were run on the data. 3. results the analyzes and results of the data obtained in this section of the research are given. table-1. descriptive statistics of participants' total scores. gender scale min. max. mean sd. female dgasc 24,00 109,00 48,71 15,93 dgpms 21,00 90,00 51,86 11,36 male dgasc 24,00 108,00 57,60 18,65 dgpms 24,00 92,00 57,41 12,20 when the scale scores of the participants are examined, it is seen that both groups have similar scores. when dgasc mean scores are considered, it is seen that both groups are in the risk group. play motivation scores “dgmps” were high in both groups. table-2. pearson correlation for scale total scores. scale total scores dgasc dgpms r p dgasc 1 ,646** ,00 dgpms 1 *p<0,05 according to the correlation analysis results of the scale total scores, there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between the scale total scores. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 31-38 34 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. pearson correlation analysis for dgpms total scores and dgasc’s sub-dimensions scale scores total score of dgpms 1.sub fact. of dgasc 2.sub fact. of dgasc 3.sub fact. of dgasc 4.sub fact. of dgasc r r r r total score of dgpms 1 ,611** ,664** ,405** ,434** p =,00 p=,00 p=,00 p=,00 n=417 n=417 n=417 n=417 1.sub fact. of dgasc 1 ,732** ,680** ,622** p=,00 p=,00 p=,00 n=417 n=417 n=417 2.sub fact. of dgasc 1 ,559** ,556** p=,00 p=,00 n=417 n=417 3.sub fact. of dgasc 1 ,491** ,00 417 4.sub fact. of dgasc 1 *p<0,05 as a result of the correlations between the dgpms total score and the dgasc sub-dimensions, there is a statistically significant correlation between the scores. table-4. pearson correlation analysis for dgasc total score and dgpms sub-dimensions. scale scores total score of dgasc 1.sub fact. of dgpms 2.sub fact. of dgpms 3.sub fact. of dgpms r r r total score of dgasc 1 ,735** ,673** -,425** p=,00 p=,00 p=,00 n=417 n=417 n=417 1.sub fact. of dgpms 1 ,708** -,398** p=,00 p=,00 n=417 n=417 2.sub fact. of dgpms 1 -,463** p=,00 n=417 3.sub fact. of dgpms 1 *p<0,05 as a result of the correlation analysis of dgasc total score and dgpms sub-dimensions, a positive and statistically significant high correlation is found between the scores. table-5. the t-test analysis of gender variable of dgasc scores. total score of scale gender n x sd t p total score of dgasc female 177 48,71 15,93 -5,116 ,00 male 240 57,60 18,65 1.sub fact. of dgasc female 177 13,41 5,33 -4,367 ,00 male 240 15,97 6,31 2.sub fact. of dgasc female 177 14,51 5,46 -4,878 ,00 male 240 17,19 5,59 3.sub fact. of dgasc female 177 10,49 4,26 -4,884 ,00 male 240 12,92 5,49 4.sub fact. of dgasc female 177 8,23 3,10 -2,309 ,02 male 240 8,98 3,37 *p<0,05 in the analysis of dgasc total score and sub-dimensions according to the gender variable of the participants, it is seen that the addiction levels of male participants are higher than female participants and this difference is statistically significant. table-6. the t-test analysis of gender variable of dgmps scores. total score of scale gender n x sd t p total score of dgpms female 177 51,86 11,36 -4,716 ,00 male 240 57,41 12,20 1.sub fact. of dgpms female 177 12,36 4,65 -4,479 ,00 male 240 14,52 5,02 2.sub fact. of dgpms female 177 22,27 9,01 -4,609 ,00 male 240 26,64 9,90 3.sub fact. of dgpms female 177 17,17 5,51 1,688 ,00 male 240 16,24 5,62 *p<0,05 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 31-38 35 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as a result of the analysis made for the total score and subscale scores of the dgpms, according to the gender variable, the total score of the scale and the sub-dimension scores are in favor of the male participants. table-7. the t-test analysis of dgasc scores for "having an athlete license" variable. total score of scale athlete license n x sd t p total score of dgasc have 144 56,01 18,29 1,795 ,07 not having 273 52,68 17,88 1.sub fact. of dgasc have 144 15,45 6,55 1,373 ,17 not having 273 14,59 5,75 2.sub fact. of dgasc have 144 16,61 5,60 1,439 ,15 not having 273 15,76 5,71 3.sub fact. of dgasc have 144 12,62 5,33 2,122 ,03 not having 273 11,50 5,00 4.sub fact. of dgasc have 144 8,94 3,19 1,258 ,20 not having 273 8,52 3,32 *p<0,05 although the level of addiction of the participants who have an athlete license is higher than the ones who not have an athlete license in general, it is seen that there is a statistically significant difference in only the 3rd sub-dimension scores. table-8. the t-test analysis of dgpms scores for "having an athlete license" variable. total score of scale athlete license n x sd t p total score of dgpms have 144 56,07 11,09 1,236 ,21 not having 273 54,52 12,66 1.sub fact. of dgpms have 144 14,09 5,13 1,448 ,14 not having 273 13,35 4,89 2.sub fact. of dgpms have 144 24,98 9,55 ,289 ,77 not having 273 24,69 9,89 3.sub fact. of dgpms have 144 16,99 5,54 ,942 ,34 not having 273 16,45 5,62 *p<0,05 although the level of addiction of the participants who have an athlete license is higher than the ones who have an athlete license in general, this difference is not statistically significant. table-9. the t-test analysis of the dgasc scores for the parents to play digital games. total score of scale parent play status n x sd t p total score of dgasc yes 107 56,41 15,91 1,710 ,08 no 309 52,94 18,73 1.sub fact. of dgasc yes 107 15,46 5,64 1,146 ,25 no 309 14,68 6,18 2.sub fact. of dgasc yes 107 17,26 5,24 2,545 ,01 no 309 15,64 5,79 3.sub fact. of dgasc yes 107 12,38 5,21 1,151 ,25 no 309 11,71 5,12 4.sub fact. of dgasc yes 107 8,99 3,24 1,155 ,24 no 309 8,56 3,28 *p<0,05 when table 9 is examined, it is seen that the addiction scores of the participants who children playing parents digital games are high and but this difference is statistically for 3rd sub-dimension. table-10. the t-test analysis of the dgpms scores for the parents to play digital games. total score of scale parent play status n x sd t p total score of dgpms yes 107 56,52 12,88 1,41 ,15 no 309 54,59 11,88 1.sub fact. of dgpms yes 107 14,51 4,77 2,15 ,03 no 309 13,31 5,02 2.sub fact. of dgpms yes 107 26,15 9,38 1,67 ,09 no 309 24,31 9,88 3.sub fact. of dgpms yes 107 15,78 5,78 -1,89 ,05 no 309 16,96 5,47 *p<0,05 when the total scores of the participants and their scores related to the sub-dimensions were examined, it was observed that the scores were statistically significantly higher in the 1st and 3rd sub-dimensions. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 31-38 36 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-11. anova results for the age variable. scale age x sd f p difference total score of dgasc 10 49,26 13,09 3,029 ,01 11 52,68 17,39 12 52,19 16,11 14*-10 13 56,79 20,09 14 60,48 22,43 ölçek age x sd f p difference total score of dgpms 10 52,45 13,00 2,637 0,2 14*-10 14*-11 11 53,46 11,32 12 55,51 13,07 13 56,97 11,84 14 58,76 11,42 “the groups that are in favor of the score average are indicated by (*)”*p<0,05 when the total score of dgasc is examined according to the age variable of the participants, it is seen that there is a difference between all age groups, but it is seen that the scores of the participants in the 14 age group are significantly higher than the participants in the 10 age group. when the total scores of the dgpms scores of the participants were examined, it was seen that there was a difference between all age groups, but it was seen that the scores of the participants in the 14 age group were significantly higher than the participants in the 10 and 11 age groups. table-12. simple linear regression analysis for dgpms. variable b std. error beta t sig. (constant) ,92 3,14 ,64 ,29 ,76 mottop ,96 ,05 17,21 ,00 r= 64, r2= 41, f=29, p= ,00. dependent variable: digital game addiction level in table 12, dgpms revealed dgasc at 41% and this was statistically significant. 4. discussion and conclusion in this part of the study, the results obtained from the analyses are discussed and contrasted with the literature. when table-1 is examined, while the mean scores of the participants in digital game addiction is higher among male participants, it is seen that the mean scores of both female and male (female: 48.71, male: 57.60) participants are in the risk group according to the scale evaluation criteria(the lowest score to be obtained from the scale is ”24” and the highest score is “120“. in the rating of the scale scoring; "1-24 are accepted to be normal group, 25-48 to be low risk group, 49-72 to be risky group, 73-96 to be addict group, and 97-120 to be highly addict group). when the participants' mean scores for motivation for playing digital games are examined, it is seen that both female and male participants have similar scores (female: 51.86, male: 57.41). considering the mean scores, it can be said that the motivation levels of the participants are high. when table-2 is examined; it was found that there is a positive correlation between the participants' total scores of "digital game addiction" and "digital game playing motivation" and that this relationship is statistically significant (r:, 646).**, p:, 00). according to these results, it can be argued that there is a significant relationship between the digital game addiction and the motivation resources for digital gaming of the participants. details of this relationship are shown in table-3 and table-4. when table-3 is examined, it is seen that there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between the total score of the "digital game playing motivation scale" and the sub-dimension scores of the "digital game addiction scale" (1st sub-dimension: r: .611 **, 2nd sub-dimension: r: .664 **, 3rd sub-dimension: r: .405. 4th sub-dimension: .434 **). when table-4 is examined, it is seen that there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between the total score of the digital game addiction scale and the sub-dimension scores of the digital game playing motivation scale. (1st sub-dimension-intrinsic motivation (r: .735**), 2nd sub-dimension-external motivation" (r: .673** 3rd sub-dimension-lack of motivation ”(r: -.425**). especially the correlation between the addiction total score and the 1st sub-dimensionintrinsic motivation score is seen to be higher than other sub-dimensions. according to these results, it can be argued that the factors that drive participants into digital game addiction are more of the intrinsic motivation sources. internal motivation is stated to involve the individual's taking action by his own will and desire to join an activity without the repression or instructions of others, as well as the individual's interest in and pleasure acquired from this situation; and it should totally stem from within the individual (deci and ryan, 1985; wann, 1997). terek-unal and west (2011) state that intrinsic motivation sources such as joy, excitement, pleasure, and feeling of achievement are effective in pushing individuals into playing digital games. kircaburun et al. (2018) stress that the problematic game-playing behavior that makes many negative psychological and physical effects on individuals is associated with poor will and aggressive personality characteristics. still, it is seen that the external motivation sources are also important in digital game addiction of participants (r: .673**, p: .00). blinka and mikuška (2014) found positive and high association between online game addiction and social motivation and duration of game-playing in their study entitled "the role of social motivation and socialization in online game addiction". kneer et al. (2014) enumerate factors such as social interaction established through the games, success, lack of friends, bad family history, lack of other hobbies as motivation sources in their study entitled (risk factor awareness related to digital game addiction. bakan and öztüfekçi (2018) state that the sound and effects in digital games affect the players and shape their play motivations and behaviors. while the results of this study are congruent with other studies in the literature, it can be stated that the intrinsic and external motivation sources are equally effective as the motivators dragging the participants to digital game addiction. when table 5 and 6 are examined, it is seen that there is a statistically significant difference in favor of males in all scale and sub-dimension total scores of participants from both the digital game addiction scale and the digital game-playing motivations scale. the main reasons of this finding can be the fact that digital games are mostly asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 31-38 37 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group designed with a male-dominant approach and that the male participants access more easily to the off-home gaming venues such as internet cafes and gaming houses than females. these results are similar to several other studies in the literature. for example (horzum, 2011) concludes that addiction levels of male students are significantly higher than female students, and as the main reasons for these results, the researcher points to the fact that computer games are considered to be more manly games and that boys are more likely to go to internet cafes, in his study entitled examination of computer game addiction levels of primary school students according to different variables. in a study they address "the risk factors driving individuals to problematic game playing behavior, kneer et al. (2014) state that gender is an important variable and that men are interested in these games more than women and they can be affected by these games more easily. based on these results, it can be argued that male participants have higher motivation levels than females and therefore this situation enhance their level of digital game addiction. when table-7 and 8 are examined, it is seen that participants' scores from both the digital game addiction scale and the digital game playing motivation scale are higher in favor of the participants who do not hold any "athlete's license" but this difference is only significant in the 3rd sub-dimension of the digital game addiction scale. although the differences found are statistically insignificant, the fact that the participants who does not hold athlete's licenses have higher digital game addiction and motivation for digital games than those who hold these licenses reveal the role of sports in the solution of this problem. sports is the most practical, inexpensive and most useful method for individuals to be healthy in terms of cognitive, affective, psychomotor and social aspects and to stay away from substance and behavior addictions especially in today's world. for instance, in hazar and tekkurşun (2018) entitled “the impact of games involving physical mobility on the digital game addiction of 11-14 year old elementary school students” students with high levels of addiction are detected and treatment (n=40) and control (n=40) groups are created with the random assignment method. after 12 weeks of training including "games with physical activities", post-test results are collected and analyzed from the treatment and control groups. the results showed that there are significant differences between pre-test and post-test scores of the treatment group in both sub-dimensions and total addiction scores and that the post-test scores are lower than the pre-test scores. the addiction post-test scores of the control group were found to be significantly higher than their pre-test scores. when the addiction post-test results of the control and treatment groups are examined, the addiction scores of the treatment group is found to decline significantly in comparison with the control group. landade and roderisk (2014) stress that although its psychological and physical benefits on human health is known, sports is not attached enough importance in the fight against addiction programs. stating that the number of studies examining the role of sports in treating alcohol and substance abuse is rather limited, the scholar emphasizes that sports is of crucial importance in enhancing the life quality. these results suggest that exercisesports might be an effective method in the fight against addiction. by the same token, when the literature is reviewed many other scholars state that one of the most effective ways in fighting against digital game addiction is to encourage people to sports. when table 9 and 10 are examined, it is seen that digital game addiction and digital game playing motivation scores of the participants whose parents regularly play digital games on a daily basis are higher than those whose parents do not play digital games, but this difference is only significant in the 2nd sub-dimension. according to these results, it can be argued that the participants whose parents play digital games are more motivated to these games and therefore these factors are important in their digital game addiction levels to be higher. toran et al. (2016) suggest that children first experience digital games by means of their parents most of the time and the parents are the first role models in this regard. moving from this suggestion, it can be argued that children first meet with the digital game addiction which is one of the important behavioral addiction types among children through their parents. in their study entitled "internet-usage types of elementary school students: risky behaviors and opportunities", gökçearslan and seferoğlu (2016) found that using with "parents" is the most commonly exhibited internet usage type and "playing games" is is the most commonly exhibited internet usage objective among children. although the number studies on how parents might affect children in digital game addiction is limited in the literature, it can be argued that the results of this study show that parents' attitude can be among the important motivation sources in the participants' digital game motivation and digital game addiction. when table-11 is examined, it is seen that the participants' digital game addiction scores increase in parallel with age in all age groups, however the difference between the age groups is significantly higher in favor of the 14 age group between the 14*-10 age groups. similarly, it is seen that the participants' digital game motivation scores increase in parallel with age in all age groups, however the difference between the age groups is significantly higher in favor of the 14 age group between the 14*-10 and 14*-11 age groups. according to these results, it can be argued that the participants' motivation and addiction levels for digital games enhance in parallel with age. when the literature is examined, the main reason for this situation is stated to be the fact that children exert great effort to emancipate from parent control and establish more peer relationships at this age period. digital games account for a significant denominator of the fellowship relationships of especially the children of this age group. digital games are accepted as an important means for children who try to get socialize more at this period in accommodating themselves to the peer environment. kale and erşen (2003) state that children start to get away from the family at the adolescence period, establish strong links with peer groups and construct these links on certain values. in terms of the classification of digital game playing according to age, toran et al. (2016) contend that digital games reach as far as one year-old, but the usage is at the peak level for 5 year-old and above. in a study on the game choices of children, sapsağlam (2018) found that digital games account for 5% of the game choices of 3 year-old children, that this is rate ascends to 15% for 4 year-old children, and 18% for 5 year-old children. given these results, it can be asserted that there is a linear relationship between digital game playing motivation, digital game addiction and age. in table 12, dgpms revealed dgasc at 41% and this was statistically significant. these results show that the motivation resources of digital games play an important role among the participants in the digital game addiction behaviors. in a similar study, polat and yıldız (2018) found that the motivation of playing games is an important factor in explaining the behavior of individuals in internet addiction. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 31-38 38 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in conclusion, a positive and significant correlation was seen between the participants' digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction. in addition, higher levels of digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction among the participants whose parents play digital games; lower levels of digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction among the participants who hold athlete's license and the finding that digital game playing motivation and digital game addiction increase in parallel with age are important results of this study. if the contribution of this study to the literature to be evaluated, in the literature review, it has been seen that the studies related to digital game addiction and digital game motivation are quite limited and that especially there is no correlational study using together the scales developed in relation to these two subject matters. when assessed in this regard, determination of the motivation sources in digital game addiction will shed light on the solution of the problem. the biggest limitation of this study can be pointed out as the utilization of the quantitative research method only. different aspects of the research problem can be revealed from various aspects and more comprehensive solution proposals can be introduced by benefiting from the qualitative research method as well in studies to be carried out in the following periods. references akçayır, g., 2013. health effects of digital games. ankara: pegem academy. aydoğdu-karaaslan, i̇., 2015. digital games and digital violence awareness: a comperatıve analysis made on parents and children. the journal of international social research, 8(36): 806-818. bakan, u. and m. öztüfekçi, y., 2018. an investigation of the influence of video game music on university students' behavior. ekod, 12(2): 51-68. blinka, l. and j. mikuška, 2014. the role of social motivation and sociability of gamers in 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selçuk, z., 1999. development and learning. 6th edn., ankara: nobel. terek-unal, g. and u. west, 2011. digital games. istanbul: derin. toran, m., z. ulusoy, b. aydin, t. deveci and a. akbulut, 2016. evaluation of mothers 'views on the use of the digital games of children. kastamonu education journal, 24(5): 2263. wann, d.l., 1997. sport psychology. upper saddle river, new jersey: pretice-hall. pp: 158-183. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 526 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 526-530, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.526.530 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of appearance anxiety and the gender role in women's sports except for social gender norms gulsum bastug1 taner yilmaz2 erkan bingol3 ilker gunel4 ( corresponding author) 1,3mugla universty, faculty of sports science, mugla, turkey. 2usak universty, faculty of sports science, usak, turkey. 4provincial directorate of youth and sports, antalya, turkey. abstract the bem sex-role inventory (bsri), conducted by hart et al. (2008) and adapted to turkish by dogan as social appearance anxiety scale (saas) (dogan, 2010) was used in our study. in the analysis of the data, t-test and anova test were used. as a result; there was a significant difference between female athletes' hormone use variable and appearance anxiety and gender role (p <0.05). it was determined that female athletes using hormone had appearance anxiety. a significant difference was found between maternal educational status and appearance anxiety and gender role. a significant difference was found between the paternal education status variable and the masculine gender role. a significant negative correlation was found between the age variable and appearance anxiety of female athletes. there was a positive relationship between appearance anxiety and masculine gender role. when the gender role values increase the values of appearance anxiety increase. it is recommended that special contact with women athletes who go beyond the social gender norms should be established according to expert opinions and all actors such as sports managers, trainer, sportsman, referee, physical education teacher etc. should be informed. in order to increase the proportion of women engaged in sports in the society, to support the girls who are new to the sports and not to create false opinions about the sportswomen, it is recommended to put forward the role models suitable for the female athlete profile. keywords: female athletes, perception of appearance, gender role. citation | gulsum bastug; taner yilmaz; erkan bingol; ilker gunel (2019). investigation of appearance anxiety and the gender role in women's sports except for social gender norms. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 526-530. history: received: 12 july 2019 revised: 19 august 2019 accepted: 30 september 2019 published: 6 november 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 527 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 527 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 528 4. discussion and result ................................................................................................................................................................... 529 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 530 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.526.530&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1098 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-2042 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9425-4623 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7642-1707 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1098 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-2042 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9425-4623 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7642-1707 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1098 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-2042 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9425-4623 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7642-1707 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1098 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-2042 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9425-4623 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7642-1707 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1098 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-2042 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9425-4623 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7642-1707 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 526-530 527 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the female athletes who are out of gender norms. in the literature, there are very few studies on gender norms, female athletes have a male-specific appearance, and the attitudes and behaviors of women athletes that we are not familiar with are the basis of this study. 1. introduction gender refers to the genetic, biological, physiological characteristics and differences of the individual as female or male (cherry, 2005). gender is socio-cultural which points to masculine and feminine qualities, behavioral patterns, roles, responsibilities (bhasin, 2003). in modern societies, sport plays an important role in the formation of gender roles in both men and women. the male body is accustomed to behaviors such as hardness, endurance, and combat being disciplined through men's sports such as boxing, wrestling, karate, football and males who do not or cannot participate in such behavior are excluded and subordinated (sancar, 2013). for female students, it is seen that they are not accepted as normal when they prefer to participate in football and basketball, which are deemed appropriate for men, rather than gymnastics and volleyball which are deemed appropriate (koca and demirhan, 2005). women athletes other than gender norms are exposed to labeling and negative judgment of the society such as "masculine" or "lesbian" “(koca, 2006; kleindienst-cachay and heckemeyer, 2008). nowadays, even if women's participation in different forms of sports increases, traditional female roles and the meaning attached to the female body; beautiful, elegant naive and aesthetic elements are more acceptable to turn to sports branches (kavasoğlu and yaşar, 2016). gymnastics, plates, step-aerobic, volleyball, swimming, ice skating, tennis, and walking are regarded more suitable for women in our country while football, basketball, boxing, wrestling, and weightlifting are regarded as more suitable sports for men (koca and demirhan, 2005). turkey is seen to be socialized in traditional gender roles (imamoĝklu and karakitapoĝklu-aygüun, 2004; imamoğlu and karakitapoğlu‐aygün, 2006). individuals strive to make a more effective impression on other people and look attractive. most people want to communicate more with attractive individuals (yousefi et al., 2009). this is defined as self-presentation or impression management. the individual who thinks that he/she cannot make a good impression on other people is experiencing anxiety (leary et al., 1988). according to harter (1983) the feelings of the person about his appearance, that is his physical respect, is the most important factor affecting the whole selfesteem. the significance paid attention to the appearance and assessment about appearance may vary depending on the time and culture of the society. according to hart et al. (2008) the notion of social appearance anxiety, including the body image and body image, such as skin color, facial shape (nose, eyes distance, smile, etc.) of the individual, beyond the general physical appearance such as height, weight and muscle structure; is a comprehensive concept. social appearance anxiety can be considered as a result of the negative body image of the individual's body and appearance. most socially anxious people have negative beliefs about their value and importance as in depression. however, as in the case of depressed individuals, these beliefs are not continuous in socially anxious individuals, and when they do not perceive threats from others, they become very positive thoughts towards the self when they are alone (clark and wells, 1995). in a study examining the relationship between self-esteem, social appearance anxiety, depression, and anxiety among women in adolescence and young adulthood, a significant relationship was found between social anxiety level and self-esteem (ozcan et al., 2013). it was found that participation in sports was an important factor in gender structure and that most of the athletes had androgynous (femininity and masculinity score 15) and masculine gender roles (koca et al., 2005). androgynous gender role is defined as the role of gender in which both the feminine and masculine characteristics of the individuals exhibit together and at different degrees (mayer and sutton, 1996). it has been found that individuals who exhibit androgynous gender roles exhibit both masculine and feminine characteristics at a high level, are more flexible and can exhibit more gender-matched behaviors in different settings (dökmen, 2004). baştuğ (2011) said that athletes’ body perception levels were examined, the features of physical competence orientation, health orientation, appearance evaluation, fitness evaluation, health evaluation, and body areas satisfaction were found to be higher than non-athletes’. athletes care about health, appearance and physical competence, are satisfied with their body parts because of their muscular body structures developing due to exercises, and they have a flexible personality to show feminine and masculine features that the environment needs in terms of gender roles. that women athletes show dominant, strong, ambitious, aggressive features in sports environments and traditional feminine roles out of sports environments bring them closer to androgynous (both feminine and masculine) or male gender roles. competition, power, and desire to win are seen as women athletes moving away from feminine traits and exhibiting their attitudes towards men. perhaps sports is seen as a social space in which the behaviors other than those social norms in women gain meaning. the fact that women athletes have a male-specific appearance and attitudes and behaviors that we are not used to seeing in women athletes are the most remarkable elements in sports environments. based on these observations, it is aimed to examine the female athletes except the perception of appearance and gender norms. 2. material and method 83 female athletes with a mean age of 19.98 ± 1.44 were included in the study. to determine the perceptions of the athletes participating in the research on gender roles, the bem sex-role inventory (bsri), conducted by hart et al. (2008) and adapted to turkish by dogan as social appearance anxiety scale (saas) (dogan, 2010) was used. in the analysis of the data, t-test and anova test were used. the bem sex-role inventory, which was developed by bem (1974;1975) to evaluate the gender roles, has 20 adjectives showing the feminine and masculine characteristics. the total scores obtained from the femininity (f) and masculinity (m) scales are evaluated according to the median of the group and individuals are classified according to the four gender roles (feminine, masculine, androgynous and uncertain). accordingly, the classification is;the femininity score is below the feminine median, but the masculinity score is above the masculinity median is called as masculine; the femininity score is above the feminine median but the masculinity asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 526-530 528 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group score is below the masculinity median is called as feminine; the femininity score is above the feminine median and the masculinity score is above the masculinity median is called as androgynous; the femininity score is below the feminine median and the masculinity score is below the masculinity median is called as uncertain. turkish adaptation of bsri was made by kavuncu (1987). the test-retest reliability coefficient (n = 208) of the turkish version of bsri was found to be .75 for f and .89 for m (kavuncu, 1987). also in the criterion validity study conducted by dökmen (1991). significant relationships were found between bsri and gender role scale about gender roles (for f, r = .51; r = .63 for m). social appearance anxiety scale-saas, being a 16-item 5-point likert-type scale, was developed by hart et al. (2008). the scale of social appearance anxiety is composed of cognitive, emotional and behavioral expressions related to the individual's appearance anxiety. the increase in the score obtained from the scale is considered as an indicator of the decrease in self-esteem. the turkish validity and reliability study of the scale was performed by dogan (2010). in the study conducted with 340 students, the internal consistency coefficient of the scale was 0.93 and the reliability coefficient calculated by the test-retest method was 0.85. according to the result of exploratory factor analysis (efa) to determine the structural validity of the saas, factor loads related to the items of the scale ranged between .35 and .87. in the analysis of the data, t-test and anova test were used. 3. findings table-1. investigation of appearance anxiety and gender role in female athletes based on hormone usage variable. variables do you use hormones? n x sd. t p appearance anxiety yes 7 45,00 23,85 2,173 ,033 no 76 33,14 12,66 gender role masculine yes 7 129,28 8,82 3,004 ,004 no 76 111,21 15,63 feminine yes 7 114,71 11,68 1,103 ,273 no 76 107,48 16,92 p<0.05 as shown in table 1, there was a significant relationship between female athletes with the use of hormones intended to change gender appearance anxiety and masculine gender role (p <0.05). the average of female athletes using hormone was 45.00 ± 23.85 while the average of female athletes not using hormones was 33.14 ± 12.66. the masculine gender role was found to be 129.28 ± 8.82 in female athletes using hormones and 111.21 ± 15.63 in females without hormones. female athletes using hormones for gender change have been found to have high masculine gender role and appearance anxiety. table-2. anova chart between maternal education level and appearance anxiety and gender (feminine-masculine) role in women athletes. variables sum of squares df mean square f p lsd appearance anxiety intergroup 1281,058 2 640,529 3,400 ,038 1-2 in-group 15069,207 80 188,365 total 16350,265 82 gender role masculine intergroup 3387,025 2 1693,513 7,738 ,001 1-2 in-group 17509,143 80 218,864 total 20896,169 82 feminine intergroup 3275,132 2 1637,566 6,763 ,002 1-2 in-group 19370,097 80 242,126 total 22645,229 82 p<0.05 as shown in table 2, a significant difference was found between the appearance anxiety, feminine gender role, and masculine gender role groups according to maternal education level variable (p <0.05). it was determined that the level of maternal education affected the female anxiety, masculine and feminine gender roles on female athletes. table-3. anova chart between the level of education and the appearance anxiety and the gender (feminine-masculine) role of female athletes. variables sum of squares df mean square f p lsd appearance anxiety intergroup 781,669 2 390,834 2,008 ,141 in-group 15568,596 80 194,607 total 16350,265 82 gender role masculine intergroup 1823,063 2 911,531 3,823 ,026 1-2 in-group 19073,106 80 238,414 total 20896,169 82 feminine intergroup 132,412 2 66,206 ,235 ,791 in-group 22512,817 80 281,410 total 22645,229 82 p<0.05 as seen in table 3, there was a significant difference between the groups according to the paternal education level and the male gender (p <0.05). it has been determined that the level of paternal education affects the masculine gender roles of female athletes. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 526-530 529 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. correlation table between variables. variables age sport age appearance anxiety masculine gender role appearance anxiety r -,229* ,110 p ,037 ,321 n 83 83 gender role masculine r -,154 ,139 ,320** p ,164 ,210 ,003 n 83 83 83 feminine r -,163 ,031 ,222* ,546** p ,141 ,778 ,044 ,000 n 83 83 83 83 as seen in table 4, a negative correlation was found between the age variable and appearance anxiety. as age increased, there was a decrease in the scores of appearance anxiety level. a positive relationship was found between appearance anxiety and gender roles. as the anxiety scores of the female athletes increased, the average score of the feminine and masculine gender roles increased. 4. discussion and result in the study which examined gender role and appearance anxiety in women athletes except for gender norms; in female athletes, when the hormone-induced appearance anxiety and gender role were examined, a significant difference was found between appearance anxiety and masculine gender role (p <0.05). the female anxiety and masculine gender role of female athletes using hormones are found to be higher value than those who do not use hormones table 1. when evaluated in terms of gender roles, masculine gender role is dominant, rational, oppressive, fearless, safe, independent, cold-blooded, strong, solid, aggressive, active and problem-solving skills to be successful while feminine gender role is defined such as loving, emotional, sensitive, moderate, dependent, compassionate, submissive, modest, delicate, caring, passive (lips, 2008; dökmen, 2012). past studies have shown that gender identity is related to sports participation and female participants are mostly androgynous and masculine (clément-guillotin and fontayne, 2011; hively and el-alayli, 2014). a significant difference was found between the appearance anxiety, feminine gender role, and masculine gender role groups according to maternal education level variable (p <0.05). it was determined that the level of maternal education affected the female anxiety, masculine and feminine gender roles on female athletes table 2. the traditional roles of women and men in societies where the education level of women increased and entered the working life started to change in favor of women (attanapola, 2004). in a study investigating the gender role attitudes of sports workers, there was a significant difference between gender roles and gender, education and parental education. it is noteworthy that the traditional attitude of women's sports workers and the egalitarian attitude values of male sports workers are high (baştuğ et al., 2017). there was a significant difference between the groups according to the paternal education level and the male gender (p <0.05). it has been determined that the level of paternal education affects the masculine gender roles of female athletes table 3. some studies show that there may be changes in the role of gender together with doing sport (melli, 2000; gerek, 2015). mccutcheon and mitchell (1984) found that female runners tend to have androgynous and masculine tendencies rather than feminine. gill (1992) showed that female athletes exhibit androgynous properties and also show very low 1322% feminine characteristics and female athletes have higher masculine and feminine characteristics compared to non-athletes females (koca et al., 2005). in this study which investigated the gender role characteristics between elite women athletes and women academics and non-sports women, it was found that elite women athletes have an androgynous role, academician women have masculine role and women who do not do sports have a feminine role (noyan, 2006). a negative correlation was found between the age variable and appearance anxiety. as age increased, there was a decrease in the scores of appearance anxiety level. a positive relationship was found between appearance anxiety and gender roles. as the anxiety scores of the female athletes increased, the average score of the feminine and masculine gender roles increased table 4. it has been determined that sport is a factor that increases the level of body perception and gender role in individuals stating that athletes care about health, appearance and physical competence and they are satisfied with body parts due to their muscular body structures developed according to their sports in terms of gender role as well as they have an androgynous personality which can show the feminine and masculine features required by the environment (baştuğ and kuru, 2009). in a study that examined the level of self-esteem and appearance of the athletes, it was determined that there was a positive increase in self-confidence and appearance perception values after weight loss in athletes (bastug et al., 2016). barlett et al. (2008) reported that pressure from the mass media was related to body satisfaction, body esteem, self-esteem, psychological disorders (e.g., depression) and behavioral outcomes (e.g., excessive exercises). as a result of the studies of koca et al. (2005). it was found that participation in sports can be determinants of gender roles of individuals and athletes had androgynous and masculine gender roles respectively compared to non-athletes. in the study which examined the relationship between social concerns and gender roles in youth, a significant relationship was found between gender role and appearance anxiety and gender role was determined to decrease the appearance anxiety when femininity and masculinity scores increased (ülkü, 2017). in the study which investigated the level of loneliness and social anxiety in university students, it was found that women experienced social anxiety more than men and there was a significant difference in age-related anxiety level (baştuğ et al., 2018). in a study investigating whether sports affect the gender role of women, masculinity and social acceptability characteristics of women who exercise sports are higher than those who do not. there was no difference in the feminine gender role, but it was determined that female athletes exhibited more androgynous characteristics than non-athletes females (gerek, 2015). these studies support our work. the female anxiety and masculine gender role of female athletes using hormones are found to be higher value than those who do not use hormones. it was determined that the level of maternal education affected the female anxiety, masculine and feminine gender roles on female athletes. it has been determined that the level of paternal asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 526-530 530 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group education affects the masculine gender roles of female athletes. in female athletes, it has been determined that as the age increases, the appearance anxiety decreases and when appearance anxiety rises, feminine and masculine gender roles rise. it is recommended that special contact with women athletes who go beyond the social gender norms should be established 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publications. pp:168-191. ülkü, h., 2017. the relationship between social appearance anxiety andsocial anxiety in youth in the context of social gender. uskudar university, social sciences institute, master thesis, i̇stanbul. yousefi, b., z. hassani and o. shokri, 2009. reliability and factor validity of the 7-item social physique anxiety scale (spas-7) among university students in iran. world journal of sport sciences, 2(3): 201-204. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training vol. 2, no. 1, 23-33, 2016 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu 23 the effect of storytelling and retelling and higher order thinking on oral performance of elementary students in english as foreign language (efl) program: a pilot study in mainland china and taiwan pei-lin yang1 fuhui tong2  beverly j. irby3 rafael lara-alecio4 norma ramos5 miranda nava-walichowski6 1,2,3,4,5,6 center for research and development in dual language and literacy acquisition college of education and human development texas a&m university college station, tx 77843-4225 ( corresponding author) abstract the purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the effect of story telling and retelling and higher order thinking for english language and literacy acquisition (stella) on the english oral proficiency of elementary students in mainland china and taiwan, where english is taught as a foreign language. the 6-week intervention incorporated direct vocabulary instruction, modeling reading, and leveled questioning strategy through storytelling and retelling, and was delivered by certified english teachers who received weekly virtual professional training in two public schools in mainland china and taiwan. an english oral vocabulary measure was administered among 10 students in mainland china and 9 students in taiwan before and after the intervention. paired-sample t-tests were conducted to examine the progress from pretest to posttest on the two cohorts, respectively. the results showed a significant improvement on students’ oral proficiency at both sites. keywords: english oral performance, story telling/retelling, elementary school, efl, leveled questions. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 24 2. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................ 24 3. method ................................................................................................................................................................................. 27 4. results and discussion ......................................................................................................................................................... 30 references ................................................................................................................................................................................ 31 bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................ 33 citation | pei-lin yang; fuhui tong; beverly j. irby; rafael lara-alecio; norma ramos; miranda nava-walichowski (2016). the effect of storytelling and retelling and higher order thinking on oral performance of elementary students in english as foreign language (efl) program: a pilot study in mainland china and taiwan. asian journal of education and training, 2(1): 23-33. doi: 10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 licensed: author(s) contribution: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. publisher: asian online journal publishing group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pei-lin yang https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=beverly j. irby https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rafael lara-alecio https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=norma%20ramos https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=miranda nava-walichowski http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pei-lin yang https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=beverly j. irby https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rafael lara-alecio https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=norma%20ramos https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=miranda nava-walichowski http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pei-lin yang https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=beverly j. irby https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rafael lara-alecio https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=norma%20ramos https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=miranda nava-walichowski http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pei-lin yang https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=beverly j. irby https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rafael lara-alecio https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=norma%20ramos https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=miranda nava-walichowski http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pei-lin yang https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=beverly j. irby https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rafael lara-alecio https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=norma%20ramos https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=miranda nava-walichowski http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pei-lin yang https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=beverly j. irby https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rafael lara-alecio https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=norma%20ramos https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=miranda nava-walichowski http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pei-lin yang https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=beverly j. irby https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rafael lara-alecio https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=norma%20ramos https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=miranda nava-walichowski http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=pei-lin yang https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=fuhui tong https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=beverly j. irby https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rafael lara-alecio https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=norma%20ramos https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=miranda nava-walichowski http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.20448/journal.522/2016.2.1/522.1.23.33 asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 23-33 24 1. introduction english, undeniably, has shifted to a global language for communication among people with diverse national, cultural, racial, and linguistic backgrounds in different areas in the world (mckay and bokhorst-heng, 2008). except for the dominant status of english in the notion of the inner circle (i.e. the traditional english-speaking countries such as the united states, england, and canada) and the outer circle (i.e. countries where english is not the native tongue but has an institutional role such as india and malaysia) (kachru, 1986) the rapid spread of english in the expanding circle (i.e. countries where english is used as a medium of international communication such as china and japan) also has contributed to making english a truly international language (crystal, 2003). among the populous regions in the expanding circle, mainland china and taiwan are the two regions that play important roles by integrating english into the educational curriculum (chen and tsai, 2012; hu and mckay, 2012). furthermore, in mainland china and taiwan, english is widely used and required in many fields, such as internet communication, tourism, mass communication, and domestic and foreign trade. indeed, power of english also has had a great impact on education policy and instructional practice at all levels (feng, 2012). 2. literature review 2.1. status of english language in mainland china and taiwan easily observed in mass media or academic articles, learning english has become a passionate movement from preschoolers to adults, not only in educational settings, but also in social environments in some asian regions. feng (2012) noted that in the territories called great china, which, according to him, includes mainland china, hong kong, taiwan, macao, and singapore, people generally perceive the importance of english and have great enthusiasm to engage themselves in learning the language. this phenomenon is also noticed in academic fields and addressed by scholars as an english craze (jiang, 2003; hu, 2007;2008) a mania for english (gil and adamson, 2011) a national obsession in english or english fever (chen and hsieh, 2011) and english-knowing bilingualism or english dominant bilingualism (tupas, 2011). it was estimated that since the mid-1980s, over 300 million people took an english course in various types of institutions in mainland china (honna, 2006). a similar phenomenon has been observed in taiwan. in fact, it was pointed out that english learning would be a domestic movement in the twenty-first century in taiwan, with a budget at approximately $590-738 million u.s. dollars every year listed by the english language teaching (elt) industry, excluding the e-learning industry investing another u.s. $90 million dollars a year (chern, 2002). further, in mainland china, english proficiency is not only an academic requirement, it is also tested for job promotions; therefore, having a high level of english proficiency is the key to success for many people (cheng, 2008). in other words, english proficiency has become the symbol of gatekeeping access, opportunity, status, and power (hu and alsagoff, 2010; hsu, 2015). similarly, in taiwan, the importance of english learning was reinforced in challenge 2008, a 6-year development plan (government information office, 2002) by establishing basic english classes for people from all walks of life attempting to promote internationalization. 2.2. challenges in english education in mainland china and taiwan even though many asian people have recognized the importance and practicability of english and have been devoted to learning the language, there are still weaknesses and limitations to the curriculum and instruction in both mainland china and taiwan. first, there is a lack of intensity in english instruction in the formal curriculum framework (chen and tsai, 2012; hu and mckay, 2012). the english curriculum with only 2-3 hours each week is called a drip-feed program (baker, 2006). pedagogically speaking, another limitation is the use of grammartranslation method which only addresses teaching grammar of the target language (liu and shi, 2007). this approach has been criticized as one of the biggest obstacles in learning english, because it pays little attention to students’ communicative proficiency (liu and shi, 2007). it also has been considered as the major reason that students lose the interest of learning english, because students often get frustrated from memorizing endless grammar rules and vocabulary words (liu and shi, 2007). such an approach is mostly test-driven, with very little emphasis on listening comprehension and oral communication skills. in the research conducted by pan and block (2011) 71.5% of teachers and 56.7% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the current english education in china is examination oriented, while 69.1% of teachers and 69.3% of students agreed that current english examinations are mostly about the assessment of english grammar. in taiwan, the aim of english instruction also has been to help students pass the entrance examinations to senior high schools and universities (su, 2000). even at college level, the focus of english curriculum is still reading and grammar translation; mainly in reading and translating anthologies of literary works (chern, 2002). in mainland china and taiwan, the pressure from parents’ expectations and passing various types of examinations caused insufficient instruction in developing students’ communicative english proficiency (chen and tsai, 2012; zhang, 2012). these weaknesses which have existed in the mainstream schools for many years, along with limited exposure to english in a non-english dominant society can be an obstacle to the development of students' english literacy skills, especially the oral language skills. 2.3. the significance of oral language proficiency although the lack of opportunity to develop oral language proficiency appears to be the biggest challenge for english instruction in an english as foreign language (efl) environment, it is a crucial factor for successful language acquisition (slavin and cheung, 2005). among the four literacy domains – listening, speaking, reading, and writing, the latter two have been traditionally considered as academic domains; however, the first two domains are, in fact, as important as reading and writing (gibbons, 2002). for english language learners (ells), expressive oral proficiency can play a critical role in second language acquisition. smith and ellis (2003) pointed out that the oral competence in the second language for ells can be an indicator for other subsequent literacy skills in that language, because higher level of oral proficiency is associated asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 23-33 25 with increased listening and speaking vocabulary, which can lead to reading and writing vocabulary through direct and structured instruction (reese et al., 2000; miller et al., 2006). gambrell et al. (1991) reinforced the positive correlation between oral proficiency and reading skills, and reported that especially for young ells, oral language competence is a critical factor to impact their academic performance. according to the researchers, children subconsciously acquire oral language proficiency at young age, approximately from birth to age 5 then increasingly acquire phonology, vocabulary, grammar, semantics, and pragmatics in their native language (ovando and collier, 1998). furthermore, a child will be very likely to encounter reading problems if that child is deprived of a literacypromoting environment (snow et al., 1998). therefore, many english learning programs put emphasis on children’s oral development in their early grades until the students achieve a specified level of language proficiency (saunders and o'brien, 2006). 2.4. critical components to facilitate oral language proficiency in 1996, kame'enui, adams, and lyon indicated that the academic underachievement of ells could be a result of reading problems related to comprehension skills, vocabulary knowledge, and content structure of the target language. seven years later, august (2003) pointed out that to enhance english oral proficiency, the three literacy skills that should be addressed are vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension. mcvey (2007) also indicated that along with correct grammar, vocabulary knowledge can promote the communication ability of ells, both verbally and in writing. due to the limited instructional time in classroom and exposure outside school settings, it is extraordinarily important for learners in efl programs to receive effective vocabulary instruction in order to facilitate oral language development. among various ways to promote vocabulary competence for ells, the most effective is to teach through direct instruction (kamil, 2004) and as indicated by roberts (2008) among different strategies of direct instruction, story reading can be used as an effective tool to increase students’ vocabulary, especially through repeated reading. even in a native english-speaking environment, story reading has been considered as a popular approach in school and family environments. other than appropriate instruction, one of the important assignments for educators of ells is the appropriate and periodical, ongoing assessment of the literacy development, because it serves as the indicator of the efficacy of curriculum and instruction. to ensure the academic success by developing english language literacy, tong et al. (2008) recommended when applying explicit and systematic english-as-a–second language instruction, structured story retell can be used as an effective pedagogical tool, because it provides modeling of language use, intonation, and prosody. 2.5. the effect of the storytelling on language learning storytelling and l1. sharing stories has been suggested to be effective in language learning for young children and often incorporated in children literature and early childhood texts (raines and isbell, 1994). sobol (1992) described that in a traditional oral storytelling event, the story text was the primary references of the communication expressed in its emergent, imaginative substance and the relationship between listeners and tellers in interactive performance. therefore, the words in the text are not memorized but utilized through spontaneous performance assisted by the audience participation and interaction (isbell et al., 2004). different from story reading, in which listeners might receive the information passively, storytelling required audience participation. during the storytelling process, the audiences are encouraged to give repetitive phrases or refrains or even to suggest variations in some certain free story components. these elements in the storytelling strategy were therefore described as a type of twoway co-creative communication (roney, 1996). it has been recognized that storytelling can have important practical implications in educational settings, especially in primary school level (collins, 1999). as far back in 1982, ferrell and nessell argued that storytelling could enhance students' vocabulary acquisition, reading fluency and story recall proficiency. peck (1989) also found that, in addition to facilitating reading and listening comprehension, telling stories in classroom also improved students' written and oral language development. in the study conducted by isbell et al. (2004) the students who received a 12-week storytelling intervention had a significant better performance in providing the story setting, the moral, a formal ending and remembering the story characters, which lead to a conclusion that storytelling enhanced the imaginative recollection of the story with verbal development in the story transmission. more researchers have found positive results on the effect of storytelling strategy. lever and sénéchal (2011) determined that children who received dialogic story reading intervention performed better in narrative ability and expressive vocabulary knowledge. massey (2013) also concluded that through interactive storytelling incorporated scaffolding instruction help young children promote their oral language development. furthermore, mokhtar et al. (2011) identified the positive effects of storytelling on students' communication ability. their findings showed that with storytelling instruction, students were more able to associate meanings with words and to use certain words and phrases orally. storytelling and esl/efl. compared with studies on monolingual english-speaking children, researches regarding the effect of storytelling on ells are limited. collins (2010) implemented a three-week storytelling intervention with direct and rich vocabulary instruction on ell preschoolers. the results of her study showed a significant contribution to sophisticated vocabulary acquisition from a storytelling context, and vocabulary knowledge is one critical component to promote the oral communication ability of ells (mcvey, 2007). dockrell et al. (2010) also found a positive effect of the storytelling intervention on the expressive language ability of young ells. for the learners who learn english as a foreign language in asia, it was reported that storytelling with enriched illustrations and repeated structure and instruction could improve their vocabulary knowledge (elley, 1989; malderez, 2010). for example, chien and huang (2000) argued that utilizing storybooks with interactive instructional application was effective to build the oral ability and improve the literacy development of efl learners. in the study conducted by moon and maeng (2012) 20 fourth-grade students in korea received a 10-week asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 23-33 26 storytelling intervention and a significant improvement in reading comprehension in english of the participants was observed. similarly, hsu (2015) implemented a six-week storytelling intervention on 21 bilingual kindergarteners in taiwan and found positive effect of the strategy in triggering students' learning interests and lowering their learning anxiety. however, the studies mentioned above only focused on one single component -storytelling. stella, instead, is a comprehensive intervention incorporated with storytelling, retelling, direct vocabulary instruction, esl strategies and higher-order questioning skills. with the implementation of stella, we seek to examine the effect of these combined instructional practices on english vocabulary learning in efl settings in asia. 2.6. the effect of story retelling strategy on oral language proficiency the importance and function of story retelling was first addressed and reported almost four decades ago. hansen (1978) declared that story retelling could provide teachers with an alternative to assessing students' abilities and for retrieving and obtaining information about students’ comprehension. according to morrow (1996) story retelling is a post-reading and post-listening recall activity for students to express what they have learned and discussed previously. slavin and madden (1999) further defined story retelling as the summary of the main points of the story made by students and shared with their peers after reading and discussing the story. lara-alecio et al. (2015) defined storytelling and retelling as a teaching strategy that engages students prior to, during, and after story read aloud with storytelling/retelling. teaching strategies for their stella model also include asking leveled questions, particularly higher order questions, which are integrated during the activities (such questions are strategically placed within the lesson). they indicated the overall purpose of stella is to increase the pre-during-and-post listening and reading opportunities for ells to acquire and practice oral language skills. it has been found that story retelling can offer students opportunities to orally construct the story, which can be a challenge for ells (snow, 2002). in addition to the current knowledge, for ells to retell the stories, they also need to connect their prior knowledge with the new input; therefore, to accomplish story retelling, listeners or readers need to demonstrate what they remember or understand according to the comprehension they built (gibson et al., 2003). story telling/retelling serves as not only an effective instructional strategy for students’ literacy development but also a valuable tool to enhance and evaluate their learning process. for teachers, structured story retelling via wellplanned and scripted lessons can utilize research-based learning strategies can provide an access to understanding the process of students’ oral composition and reconstruction (lara-alecio et al., 2006). it is also the reason why story retelling is preferred over other comprehension-like assessment (roberts et al., 2005). for students, story retelling requires active engagement and organization of thoughts and provides students with motivation and a critical gateway to a higher level of thinking and comprehension skills (irby et al., 2008). followed by the story content discussion, in which the teacher acts as a facilitator of students’ expressive language, story retelling creates an environment where students can be the center of learning by demonstrating their comprehension and oral skills while elaborating their ideas and thoughts at the same time (anderson and roit, 1998). the stella strategy of story retell makes students focus on reading the story as a whole instead of segmental passages and the focus provides readers with the framework to improve comprehension (irby et al., 2008). gambrell et al. (1991) conducted a study on 48 fourth grade participants to investigate the effect of story retelling on students’ reading comprehension. the result of the research showed that the readers who practiced recalling remembered more propositions and story structure and improved in free and cued recall retelling. this study also showed a strong positive relationship between oral language and reading comprehension. having students to retell a passage of a story is also an effective pedagogical tool to monitor the listening and reading comprehension of ells. assessment of comprehension of ells is always a great challenge to teachers and educators because the literacy development of ells might not be sufficient enough to express their understanding of the curriculum. therefore, the curriculum-based measurement may provide more valuable information than the norm-referenced assessment because it can provide teachers with closer and continuous monitoring of students’ comprehension (domínguez and shapiro, 2007). story retelling is a strategy that can be processed in different formats, including summarizing the story individually, group discussion and peer sharing in big or small groups. according to saenz et al. (2005) story retelling can also be considered as part of peer-assisted instruction, and such is employed in stella. in conclusion, story retelling has been identified as an effective instructional strategy to facilitate ell’s oral proficiency, which is considered as a critical element in second language acquisition because it is closely related to other literacy skills that will impact the academic performance of ells (smith and ellis, 2003; slavin and cheung, 2005; saunders and o'brien, 2006). however, these studies have focused on the development of ells in an englishspeaking environment, and we found limited research conducted in efl settings. therefore, the main purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the storytelling and retelling on the english oral proficiency of efl students in a non-english speaking environment. 2.7. significance and purpose of the study the main goal of teachers and school administrators is to help students pass various types of english examinations because of the test-oriented educational system and parents’ expectations in mainland china and taiwan (chen and tsai, 2012; zhang, 2012). unfortunately, the lack of sufficient and effective instructional approach to enhance english communicative proficiency results in the fact that students who pass high level traditional english tests still cannot communicate fluently in english (chen and tsai, 2012; zhang, 2012). in order to address such limitation, innovative teaching strategies can be a critical solution to the problem. the intervention, story telling and retelling and higher order thinking for english language and literacy acquisition (irby et al., 2004) has been found to be an effective intervention to promote oral proficiency and literacy skills for ells in english speaking environment (irby et al., 2004; quiros, 2008; tong et al., 2008; quiros et al., 2012) but it has not been tested in non-english speaking areas. this current study is the first to include students in an efl environment in which english is not the main communication medium. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 23-33 27 therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of stella on the english oral proficiency of students in efl settings in asia. stella is a structured story-reading/telling and retelling and higher order thinking instructional intervention which has already been found to be effective in facilitating oral language, vocabulary, comprehension, and critical/higher level thinking skills of ells in the united states (quiros et al., 2012). the basic element of the intervention is story reading, telling, and retelling; direct vocabulary instruction, and integration of higher-order thinking questions strategies. we explored the effect of stella on the oral proficiency of students in two elementary schools in asia, one in mainland china and one in taiwan, where english is not the main communicative tool in the society. by implementing this intervention in asia, we sought to answer the following research question: is students’ english oral proficiency significantly improved after receiving stella intervention in efl settings in asia? 3. method 3.1. context and participants this study was conducted in two elementary schools, one in mainland china and one in taiwan. the school in mainland china was included because the researchers knew the dean of the school of education at a local university. he had worked with the school on various projects and introduced the team to the school principal. the experimental site in mainland china is a public primary school located in an urban area with approximately 2,000 students from grades 1 to 6. the intervention was implemented in a fourth-grade classroom with 43 students with even gender proportions. most students come from families with medium to high social economic status. all these students received a 40-minute english instruction each day for 5 days a week outside their english curriculum block. although the whole class received the intervention, 10 nine-year-old students (five high performers and five low performers as determined by the teacher) were randomly selected to participate in the assessment. the school in taiwan is a small public primary school in the rural area. we were introduced to this school by one of the researchers who is from taiwan and who had worked previously at this school. there are only 91 students from grades 1 to 6. the class in which the intervention was conducted is a third-grade classroom with 11 eight-yearold students, who come from diverse family backgrounds ranging from low to high social economic status. the 45minute intervention was delivered in one of the formal english classes of the week and also conducted in extra time slots during the day. the intervention was also conducted to the whole class of 11 students, nine of which gave the consent to participate in the assessments. at both sites, mandarin chinese is the official and major language spoken at home, while english is taught as a foreign language in school settings. the two teacher participants are each certified with more than 7 years of english teaching experiences. 3.2. research design the main purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of stella on the oral proficiency development among elementary students in efl settings. the same instructional intervention was first implemented in the school in mainland china, followed by the school in taiwan. each intervention was for 40-45 minutes each day for 5 days a week and lasted for 6 weeks. the weekly intervention was based on the storybook selected by the curriculum experts and 6 stories were introduced during the whole intervention. the english subject is incorporated into the formal curriculum in both mainland china and taiwan. in mainland china, students have an english class session of 40-45 minutes each day while the students in taiwan only have two 40-minute english sessions every week. a curriculum-based vocabulary fluency measure was conducted to 10 randomly selected participants in china and nine randomly selected participants in taiwan by the english teachers before and after the intervention. the orally constructed sentences were recorded by the english teachers who were trained by the researchers and scored by the researchers. sentences were recorded prior to the intervention and after the intervention and were used as pretest and posttest scores for data analysis. 3.3. instructional intervention: stella a 40-45 minute stella lesson was implemented each day, 5 days a week, for a total length of 6 weeks at both sites. the teachers received one-hour training via an online meeting tool every week provided by a curriculum expert, who is also in charge of the modification of stella curriculum to be implemented in elementary schools in the united states. the training included detailed information about picture description, story reading, vocabulary instruction, esl strategy, and questioning strategy to be delivered to the students in the upcoming lesson. each week there was a story, for a total of six stories in this study. during the entire intervention, english was the major language and students’ native language was used for clarification when necessary. six target stories were selected before the training according to the complexity of the story structure and content and were implemented with the scripts in sequence during the 6-week period. with the scripted lesson plans, the teacher provided direct vocabulary instruction, story reading and structured higher-order thinking questions, scaffold interactive discussion among peers and story retelling from students. an example of the 5-day lesson in the first week is described as follows and is depicted in figure 1. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 23-33 28 figure-1. stella 5-day lesson. source: lara-alecio et al. (2016). on day 1, instead of reading the text of the story, the teacher first introduced the author and the illustrator to motivate students’ imagination and curiosity before leading students to read the story text, then target vocabulary was directly introduced. a brief introduction of the story content was discussed at the end so students could have preparation and expectation towards the following lesson next day. on day 2, the target vocabulary was firstly reviewed with explicit instruction, teacher’s modeling and picture cards to establish connection with the previous knowledge. after introducing the main characters by using leveled and higher-order thinking questioning strategies, the teacher would begin to read the whole story text to the students. in this process, after reading the page with the target vocabulary, the teacher would stop to ask students leveled questions to increase comprehension. the information activated on day 1 facilitated students' understanding of the story in the target language. these teacher-led questioning and answering could assist students in analyzing the whole text into bits of information, thus making connections between text and illustration. this strategy guided students in the comprehension process showing that illustrations convey a message apart from the text. on day 3, the teacher reviewed the vocabulary and story content by showing the picture cards and rereading the text. during the reading aloud, the students were invited to recall the target vocabulary, the title, main characters and the setting. then the students would do the story critique utilizing their literacy skills under the scaffolding of the teacher in an encouraging and risk-free environment. on day 4, the teacher led students to review the story vocabulary as how they were related to the story plot with questioning strategy. then the students were invited to recall the title, the author and illustrator, and the characters of the story. after the review, the students would be asked to do interactive group retelling by rereading the story text with the vocabulary covered by the teacher so they can fill in blanks by saying them aloud together. on day 5, students would review all vocabulary, repeat interactive group retelling, and reread the whole story. there was a brief writing activity that was also incorporated on day 5. the number of target vocabulary and the complexity of the story plot, structure, and text would increase as the intervention proceeds with the remaining stories. the degree of the difficulty of the students’ tasks would also increase accordingly. for example, there were only three target words in the first story but the sixth story had seven words and six of them were compound. at the end of the last week intervention, the students were asked to review by using vocabulary mapping and to do a science project by writing a complete passage using academic sequence adverbs. during the intervention, except reviewing the content introduced in the previous class, the teacher gradually provide explicit vocabulary instruction, storytelling and retelling, description of plots, characters and context of the story, along with structured questioning strategies; and the students were involved in guided literacy instruction, interactive peer discussion, reading and retelling the story and answering higher-order thinking questions. vocabulary instruction. direct vocabulary instruction is the core of the stella curriculum in order to facilitate the vocabulary knowledge and comprehension of learners. the target vocabulary was embedded in the story contexts and introduced to the students with graphic organizers, vocabulary cards, and word walls. all the visual aids were applied as scaffolding for students to enhance vocabulary acquisition and comprehension of the text. authentic pictures of the target vocabulary with the explicit definition were presented on the vocabulary cards as depicted in figure 2. review of the learned vocabulary was constantly addressed in the five-day lesson to provide students with repeated exposure to reinforce students’ memory of the target vocabulary. a word wall composed of different word cards was also utilized in this phase to assist students for word review and provide a scaffolding for spelling check when students began to get engaged in writing activities or sentence construction. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 23-33 29 figure-2. example of stella vocabulary cards source: irby et al. (2008). used with permission. higher-order thinking questioning strategy. unlike low-level questions, higher-order thinking questions demand learners to elaborate and process information to a deeper level by exposing them to a novel problem-solving scenario (fenesi et al., 2014). in stella curriculum, higher-order thinking questions were addressed to enhance students’ comprehension in an interactive process. open questions like “explain what is happening on these two pages?” were asked to stimulate students’ motivation and encourage them to answer in complete sentences. along with the vocabulary and reading instruction, questions such as “how would you feel if you saw a tadpole wriggling out of its jelly shell” were asked for students to elaborate and extend the story context to their real life experiences. in the review phase of the lesson, teachers asked questions like “what are some of the problems that you could encounter in a pond?” to reinforce students’ current knowledge and elaborate to a deeper level. esl strategies. esl strategies can enhance the learning process of english language learners and also help them to reduce the anxiety level when learning a new language (quiros, 2008). instructional activities applied in stella supported the implementation of the curriculum, such as interactive read aloud, group discussion, graphic organizers, and sentence stems. they all require large amount of language practice during the lesson, so students can take an active role during learning. the purpose of applying effective esl strategies into stella instruction was to assist students to connect their prior knowledge to the current content as well as facilitate the language learning process in academic settings. teacher training. to ensure the fidelity of intervention and testing, professional trainings were provided by a curriculum expert to the teachers at both sites during the whole period of the intervention. all the material and storybooks were delivered to both sites before the intervention and all professional training sessions were conducted through virtual access, such as gotomeeting software. the virtual trainings were held weekly during the intervention to discuss students’ progress and review the scripts and lesson plans for the upcoming week. the trainings provided to the teachers covered all the major components in stella. in addition to explaining the scripted lesson plans page by page, the curriculum expert also provided training in oral language and vocabulary development, leveled questions, esl strategies and suggestions in responsive to teachers’ inquiries. 3.4. assessment and scoring in this study, a curriculum-based assessment, stella oral vocabulary measure (figure 3), was used to assess english oral proficiency of the participants, who were given 31 target vocabulary words that were included in the six stories, and were asked to orally produce a complete sentence with each word. the same test was given before and after the intervention by the english teachers, who were trained by the researchers. the participants were tested individually and given directions and practice before the test. during the test, if a student remained silent for over seven seconds, s/he would receive a score of zero. if a student could initiate a sentence within seven seconds, the tester would wait until the student finished and then write down the spoken sentence on the measure record. see asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 23-33 30 figure 3 for a list of vocabulary used in the current study. if a student could not respond for five consecutive words, the test would be discontinued. after the oral sentences documented by the teachers were collected, four trained graduates majoring in education rated these oral production according to the rubric of semantic + syntactic scoring system (s4) (walichowski, 2009). s4 was created and developed specifically for stella oral vocabulary measure. with this rubric, teachers were able to use the target vocabulary included in the curriculum to assess the word knowledge, sentence structure and oral proficiency of each individual student. the scores of the system range from 0 to 4 according to (a) the structure of the sentence, (b) the associated knowledge with the target word, (c) the context where the sentence is set, and (d) the elaboration of the syntactic sentence structure. the inter-rater reliability among the four raters reached over .95. word (单词) sentence(句子) time(时间) 1 feathers 2 fur 3 llama 4 journey 5 munch 6 boulder 7 swooped 8 rule 9 obey 10 gentle 11 stranger 12 outlaw 13 damage 14 hairy 15 grip 16 burst 17 wriggle 18 crumpled 19 attack 20 discover 21 gingerly 22 snug 23 ocean 24 whisper 25 tadpole 26 surface 27 disappear(ed) 28 pond 29 peering 30 scooped 31 frogspawn figure-3. stella oral vocabulary measure record example from the current study 3.5. data collection and analysis at both sites in mainland china and taiwan, the curriculum-based vocabulary measure was administered by the teachers before and after the intervention. an initial meeting was held prior to the testing so that the teachers could be trained to administer the assessment. at the mainland china site, the intervention was delivered in the fall semester in the 2013-14 school year with the post-test completed in the end of january of 2014. at the taiwan site, the intervention was conducted in the fall semester in the 2013-14 school year with the post-test completed by the end of may of 2014. to determine if there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test, a paired sample t-test was conducted on the students' scores at each site, respectively. 4. results and discussion the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of stella on the english oral proficiency of the students in efl settings in asia. to achieve this purpose, a 6-week intervention of stella was implemented among elementary students in two public schools in china and taiwan, in which english is not the major communicative language in the society. a curriculum-based vocabulary fluency measure was used before and after the intervention to examine students’ growth in english oral proficiency. the research question for this study was: is students’ english oral proficiency significantly improved after the intervention at both sites? descriptive statistics of the stella oral vocabulary measure are presented in table 1. as indicated to compare the pretest and posttest of the same group, we conducted a paired sample t-test for each site, respectively. the analysis yielded a statistically significant difference from pretest to posttest with a large effect size in the form of cohen’s d, on students' english oral performance as indicated in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2016, 2(1): 23-33 31 table-1. descriptive and inferential statistics of stella oral vocabulary measure pretest posttest site mean std. deviation mean std. deviation p cohen’s d mainland china .0509 .36955 1.5963 1.47642 < .001 .9 taiwan .0620 .41081 1.2935 1.52342 <.001 .8 in response to the research question, the results showed that there was a significant effect on efl students' oral proficiency after the 6-week intervention at both sites, suggesting that the strategies applied in stella, including storytelling, guided reading, students’ retelling, interactive discussion and structured higher-order thinking questions, not only enhance the english oral performance of ells in the english-speaking environment (irby et al., 2004; quiros, 2008; tong et al., 2008; quiros et al., 2012) but also are effective for efl students’ oral proficiency in nonenglish-speaking asian environments as well. the findings were consistent with other studies regarding the english oral language proficiency of ells in english-speaking environments. for example, irby et al. (2004) reported that story reading can help ells acquire new vocabulary and facilitate concept development, comprehensions and narrative ability. with repeated story reading by the teacher, students can have the exposure of the language structure, fluency, prosody and listening strategies (irby et al., 2004). students who are exposed to repeated vocabulary reinforcement will have rapid recognition of the words and better comprehension of the text (calderón et al., 2005). during this process, vocabulary can also be applied and discussed in an interactive way among peers and teachers which makes learning more meaningful. repeated reading also offers students opportunities for meaningful discussion, listening and reading practice and knowledge of first and second language acquisition (hickman et al., 2004). story retelling, one of the crucial elements in stella, has been be considered as a form of curriculum based measurement to assess the comprehension of ells because it can increase the recall of discourse comprehension (gambrell et al., 1985). for the students to retell, they must acquire enough vocabulary and construct basic story structure and along with the teacher’s scaffolding, students can further acquire sophisticated language rules and oral fluency (bauer and arazi, 2011). therefore, storytelling and retelling provide ells positive vocabulary development, higher comprehension and lower anxiety toward l2 (uchiyama, 2011). it was evidenced that the ells in china and taiwan benefited from the stella intervention which incorporated direct vocabulary instruction, modeling reading, leveled questioning strategy, and story retelling skills based on a meaningful learning context-through storytelling and retelling. therefore, we conclude, based on the findings of this study, that stella, which is accompanied by on-going teacher training, can facilitate english oral language development among elementary ells in a non-english speaking environment. in summary, although stella has been found to be an effective intervention to promote oral proficiency and literacy skills for ells when learning the second language in an english-speaking country, it had not been implemented and tested in non-english speaking areas. this pilot study is the first attempt with efl students to test the effectiveness of stella. based on this study, we provide a promising, innovative instructional alternative for efl teachers in asia to improve their students’ english language proficiency, and we recommend future studies be conducted to evaluate stella at other grade levels and areas in asia efl settings, and for a longer duration, as well as the sustainability, together with classroom observation to further understand the teaching practice in these classrooms. references anderson, v. and m. roit, 1998. reading as a gateway to language proficiency for language minority students in the elementary grades. in r. m. gersten & r.t. jimenez (eds). promoting learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students: classroom applications from contemporary research. new york: wadsworth. pp: 42-54. august, d., 2003. supporting the development of english literacy in english language learners: key issues and promising practices (reportsdescriptive no. 61). baltimore, md: center for research on the education of students placed at risk. baker, c., 2006. foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. 4th edn., cleveland: multilingual matters. bauer, e. and j. arazi, 2011. promoting literacy development for beginning english learners. reading teacher, 64(5): 383-386. calderón, m., d. august, r. slavin, d. duran, n. madden and a. gheung, 2005. bringing words to life in classrooms with english-language learners. in e. h. hiebert & m. l. kamil. 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(order no. 3399912, texas a&m university). proquest dissertations and theses, 279-n/a. available from http://libezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/305117825?accountid=7082.(305117825. zhang, w., 2012. a brief introduction to foreign languages education policy in china: online submission. available from http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ericservlet?accno=ed530281. bibliography farrell, c.h. and d.d. nessell, 1982. the effects of storytelling: an ancient art for modern classrooms (report no. isbn-0-936434-04-x). san francisco, ca. hu, g., 2005. english language education in china: policies, progress, and problems. language policy, 4(1): 5-24. kame'enui, e., m. adams and r. lyon, 1996. learning to read/reading to learn. washington, d.c: us department of education. lara-alecio, r., b.j. irby and g.p. mathes, 2003. english language and literacy acquisition (project ella). washington, d.c: u.s. department of education. schellenberg, r. and t. grothaus, 2009. promoting cultural responsiveness and closing the achievement gap with standards blending. professional school counseling, 12(6): 440-449. tong, f., 2006. oral english development and its impact on emergent reading achievement: a comparative study of transitional bilingual and structured english immersion models order no. 3296556. proquest dissertations & theses global. 304930019. available from http://lib-ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/304930019?accountid=7082. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://libezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/305117825?accountid=7082.(305117825 http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ericservlet?accno=ed530281 http://lib-ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/304930019?accountid=7082 416 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 416-421, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.416.421 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group turkish adaptation of generalized expectancy for success scale: reliability and validity studies nilay çelik ercoşkun1 ceyhun ozan2 remzi y kincal3 ( corresponding author) 1,2atatürk university, kazim karabekir faculty of education, erzurum, turkey. 3canakkale onsekiz mart university, faculty of education, canakkale, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to adapt the generalized expectancy for success scale, which was developed by fibel and hale (1978) and revised by hale et al. (1992) into turkish in terms of adaptation, reliability and adaptation. this study modelled by survey is a scale adaptation study. the scale was adapted into turkish culture in terms of language equivalence, reliability and validity. the population of the study consisted of the students of the kazim karabekir faculty of education, faculty of literature, faculty of science and faculty of theology of atatürk university. all students in the faculty of education, the faculty of literature, the faculty of science and the faculty of theology and the 4th grade students who are subject to the pedagogical formation program were tried to be reached and as a result, the research was conducted with 1450 students. the results have shown that the scale had language validity and translation period was implemented successfully. according to exploratory factor analysis’s results, the structure was consisted of three factors21 items, which explained 46, 6% of variance. according to study results, it is determined that the adapted version of the scale is used as a reliable and valid instrument to assess the generalized expectancy for success of turkish university students. the scale is also used to determine sub-dimensions e.g. individual expectancy, social interaction and failure as well as the generalized expectancy for success. keywords: generalized expectancy for success, scale adaptation, university students, individual expectancy, social interaction, failure. citation | nilay çelik ercoşkun; ceyhun ozan; remzi y kincal (2019). turkish adaptation of generalized expectancy for success scale: reliability and validity studies. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 416-421. history: received: 15 april 2019 revised: 22 may 2019 accepted: 1 july 2019 published: 28 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: this study held in mugla, turkey on 26-28 october 2017 were presented as oral presentations at the 5th international curriculum and instruction congress. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 417 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 417 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 418 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 420 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 420 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.416.421&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/958 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8051-0585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1415-7258 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6258-393x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/958 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8051-0585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1415-7258 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6258-393x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/958 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8051-0585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1415-7258 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6258-393x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/958 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8051-0585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1415-7258 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6258-393x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/958 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8051-0585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1415-7258 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6258-393x asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 416-421 417 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by adapting the generalized expectancy for success scale, which was developed by fibel and hale (1978) and revised by hale et al. (1992) into turkish. 1. introduction expectancy for success is defined as beliefs about how people will be good at their future positions (ecclesparsons et al., 1983; eccles and wigfield, 1995). another definition is that expectancy for success is a belief that people success their aims, solve the problems and be loyal to long-term career goals (nevid and rathus, 2007). wigfield and eccles (2000) said that these expectancy beliefs would be expectancies for success rather than expectancy for results. students’ expectancies for success are affected by both their success choices and academic participations e.g. struggle and persistence (wigfield and eccles, 2000). it reflects people’s optimistic guesses about their personal futures. optimistic opinions like these have positive effect upon physical and psychological goodness because it increases their self-confidences and values (rathus and nevid, 1995; nevid and rathus, 2007). wigfield (1994) stated that the relationship between expectancy for success and success performance was more in favour of the students who were talented in first years of school and thought to develop their talents via increasing struggle. when students have positive expectancies and values, they cope with changes and ambiguities in better and more active way (wigfield and gladstone, 2019). students having high expectancies for success tend to internal focalization, and they show better academic performances and talents of pleasure adjournment than students having low expectancies for success. students, who are goal and success focused, think as that they are in command of their academic and social destinies, and they show high desires and expectancies for success. they relate their successes and failures to their struggles reflecting their self-confidences and strong sense of self (yong, 2010). the results of study have stated that students’ expectancies for mathematics success predict their mathematics grades in a strong way, and their perceived mathematics values predict their mathematics choices more and advanced mathematic courses enrollment in high school in a strong way (parsons et al., 1984; meece et al., 1990; ethington, 1991; simpkins et al., 2006). many research implementing in other countries show that expectancies for success of students predict their success outputs (midkiff et al., 1986; nagengast et al., 2011; bong et al., 2012; musu-gillette et al., 2015). according to the research analyzing the relationship among expectancy for success and other variables, the relationship among expectancy for success and internal motivation (story et al., 2009) selfsupport (shepherd, 2014) and hope (snyder et al., 2002) is significantly positive. nonetheless, students having low expectancies for success tend to their successes or failures due to outer factors e.g. destiny, luck or their ethnic origin. low expectancy for success is related to low academic success, and students feeling weak because of their successes connect their failures to external factors like favoritism, social injustice and others (yong, 2010). according to pintrich and schunk (1996) expectancy for success is supported with realistic and specialized for the course, struggling missions, positive communication and minimum social comparison. there is no any scale about evaluating university students’ expectancies for success in turkey according to the related literature. it is thought to be significant for turkish adaptation of the scale expectancy for success, which is an important indicator for success tendencies of students. the aim of this study is to adapt the generalized expectancy for success scale, which was developed by fibel and hale (1978) and revised by hale et al. (1992) into turkish in terms of adaptation, reliability and adaptation. 2. method 2.1. research design this study modelled by survey is a scale adaptation study. the scale was adapted into turkish culture in terms of language equivalence, reliability and validity. 2.2. population and sample the population of the study consisted of the students of the kazim karabekir faculty of education, faculty of literature, faculty of science and faculty of theology of ataturk university. criterion sampling method, which is one of the purposive sampling methods, was used in the study. in line with this, in parallel with the teaching areas in the faculty of education and based on volunteerism, all students in the faculty of education, the faculty of literature, the faculty of science and the faculty of theology and the 4th grade students who are subject to the pedagogical formation program were tried to be reached and as a result, the research was conducted with 1450 students. 2.3. data collection tool the generalized expectancy for success scale, developed by fibel and hale (1978) and revised by hale et al. (1992) was developed to measure the general success expectations of university students. in order to implement the adaptation study, the researchers who developed the scale were contacted by electronic mail and permission was obtained. the revised scale was applied to 199 university students and examined the relationship among the rosenberg self-esteem scale, the life orientation test, and rotter's internal-external locus of control scale. the scale is a 5-point likert-type (1= highly improbable and 5= highly probable) measurement tool and comprises of 25 items with correlations of .45 or higher with the total score and split half reliability coefficient of .92. the scale is scored cumulatively with high scores indicating high expectancy for success. 2.4. data analysis adaptation of the scale to turkish covers the language validity, construct validity and reliability studies. before performing the necessary procedures for adaptation to the data obtained from the scale, the necessary data asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 416-421 418 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group for the missing data, extreme value, normality and homogeneity were made, and the data set was made ready for the analyzes. in order to determine the construct validity of the scale, the exploratory factor analysis was carried out and the confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the accuracy of the structure obtained. after the validity study, reliability of the scale was performed by internal consistency method. in the scope of exploratory factor analysis, kmo test was applied to test the suitability of the sample size to be factorized. bartlett test was used to determine whether the data obtained from the multivariate normal distribution in order to determine the factor structure of the scale, varimax was chosen as the principal component analysis as the factorization method and the orthogonal rotation method as the rotation method. the variance explained by the scale study was at least 40% (kline, 1994) it has been paid attention that the load values of the items in the scale are at least .45, that the difference between the load values of the same items that gives load to different dimensions is at least .10, and that the eigenvalues of the dimensions are at least 1 and the item-total correlation is at least .30 (tabachnick and fidell, 2007; cokluk et al., 2012). in confirmatory factor analysis, chi square goodness, rmsea (root mean square error of approximation), rmr (root mean square residual), nfi (normed fit index), nnfi (non-normed fit index), cfi (relative fit index), rfi (relative fit index), gfi (goodness of fit index) and agfi (adjusted goodness of fit index) fit indices were used. if the x2/df ratio in the fit indices is below 3, the perfect fit; it was taken as a criterion from 0 to 5 (kline, 2005) because it was below 5, indicating moderate compliance. rmsea, rmr and srmr values are good if ≤ .08 (brown, 2006) the acceptable value for the nfi, nnfi, cfi, ifi, rfi, gfi, agfi fit indices was used as the criterion because it was considered to be .90 and the perfect fit value as .95 (simsek, 2007). cronbach’s alpha internal consistency was used for the reliability of the scale. if the reliability coefficient is between .60 and .80, the scale is very reliable, and if it is between .80 and 1.00, the scale is interpreted as highly reliable (kalayci, 2010). spss 22.0 and lisrel 8.80 programs were used to analyze the data. 3. findings 3.1. language validation for the language validity studies of the scale, firstly the opinions of the experts in the field of english and turkish were consulted. two experts in the field of english language teaching first translated the scale into turkish, and then two other experts in the field of english language teaching translated the turkish version into english. comparisons were made between the two forms and it was determined that the language validity of the scale was good. 3.2. exploratory factor analysis because of the exploratory factor analysis conducted to reveal the structure of the generalized expectancy for success scale kmo value was found to be.78 and the data structure was found to be suitable for factor analysis. when the bartlett test results are analyzed, it is seen that the chi-square value obtained is significant (x2 (1423)= 5502.337; p=.00). the related values for the generalized expectancy for success scale are given in table 1. table-1. results of generalized expectancy for success scale exploratory factor analysis. items first factor (individual expectation) second factor (social interaction) third factor (failure) item-total correlation i1 .610 .447 i3 .548 .349 i4 .673 .482 i7 .666 .501 i10 .657 .478 i12 .511 .345 i13 .673 .465 i15 .559 .345 i17 .503 .357 i18 .617 .483 i20 .576 .394 i2 .476 .390 i5 .547 .426 i6 .708 .543 i9 .669 .565 i21 .697 .560 i8 .589 .351 i11 .750 .596 i14 .600 .531 i16 .717 .596 i19 .746 .591 variance % 31.100 % 9.848 % 5.698 total variance % 46.646 source: obtained from primary data. as a result of the exploratory factor analysis, a 3-factor structure was obtained explaining 46.646% of the variance. the first factor, which includes the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 17th, 18th and 20th items of these factors, explained 31.100% of the variance and the factor loadings of the items range from .511 to .673. the second factor, which includes the 2nd, 5th, 6th, 9th and 21th items, explains 9.848% of the variance and the factor loadings of the items vary between .476 and .708. the third factor, which includes the 8th, 11th, 14th, 16th and 19th items that need to be scored as negative because of the negative items, explains 5.698% of the variance and the factor loads of the items vary between .589 and .550. for the first factor, the factor total correlations ranged from .345 to asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 416-421 419 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group .501; for the second factor, ranging from .390 to .565; and for the third factor, it ranged from .351 to .596. as a result, it can be said that the variance explained by the scale with 3-factor structure and the factor loadings in the scale are at a good level. the first factor was named as “individual expectation”, the second factor was “social interaction” and the third factor was named as “failure”. correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between the factors of the generalized expectancy for success scale. table 2 shows the correlation analysis showing the relationship between the factors of the generalized expectancy for success scale. table-2. correlation between factors of the generalized expectancy for success scale. factors individual expectation social interaction failure general individual expectation 1 .67* .32* .89* social interaction 1 .25* .77* failure 1 .66* general 1 *p<.01 (2-tailed). when table 2 is examined, it is seen that there are significant relationships between factors and there is no multicollinearity. 3.3. confirmatory factor analysis figure-1. confirmatory factor analysis for generalized expectancy for success scale. source: obtained from primary data. when figure 1 is examined, it is seen that the fit indexes of the generalized expectancy for success scale consisting of 21 items and 3 factors are significant (x2=734.90, df=186, p=.000, x2/df=3.95). as a result of cfa, the x2/df ratio indicates moderate fit (kline, 2005) rmsea is 047 and this value indicates perfect fit (joreskog and sorbom, 1996; brown, 2006). other fit indices were rmr=.026, srmr=.038, nfi=.97, nnfi=.97, cfi=.98, ifi=.98, rfi=.97, gfi=.95, agfi=.94. as a result of cfa, the fit indexes were found to be at a good level. the construct validity of the scale was found to be good according to the results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. 3.4. reliability analysis table-3. cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of generalized expectancy for success scale. factors cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient individual expectation .86 social interaction .78 failure .71 general .87 source: obtained from primary data. when table 3 is analyzed, it is seen that cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient of generalized expectancy for success scale is .86 for the first factor, .78 for the second factor, .71 for the third factor, and .87 for the whole of the scale. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 416-421 420 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. conclusion and discussion the adaptation of the generalized expectancy for success scale, which was developed by fibel and hale (1978) and revised by hale et al. (1992) aiming at assessing university students’ generalized expectancy for success, was done for turkish university students in terms of language equivalence, reliability and validity. therefore, language validity was done firstly by using rejection translation method for turkish language and its original language. the results have shown that the scale had language validity and translation period was implemented successfully. according to exploratory factor analysis’s results, the structure was consisted of three factors21 items, which explained 46, 6% of variance. the first factor was called as “individual expectancy”, and it consisted of 11 items while the second factor called as “social i̇nteraction” consisted of 5 items. the third factor was called as “failure” and consisted of 5 items. the first dimension, individual expectancy, is related to being successful, fulfilling its responsibilities, promoting, career goals, controlling yourself, achieving economic goals, managing personal life and expectancies for success at work. the second dimension –interpersonal interactionis related to the expectancies e.g. having students listen themselves, interacting personally, first gaze, positive effect and connecting friendly. the dimension of “failure” is about negative features e.g. students’ fear of failure, hopelessness, studying oneself, non-achieving goals and planning badly. it has been resulted in the study that the model was fit in terms of fit index criteria for confirmatory factor analysis. according to reliability studies, it has been determined internal consistency of the scale was high and total item correlation was adequate. according to correlation analysis results, the relationship among dimensions of the scale was significant and it was resulted that there was no any multicollinearity problem. according to study results, it is determined that the adapted version of the scale is used as a reliable and valid instrument to assess the generalized expectancy for success of turkish university students. the scale is also used to determine sub-dimensions e.g. individual expectancy, social interaction and failure as well as the generalized expectancy for success. it could be said that the usefulness of scale is high as implementing the scale and interpreting the results of it are easy because the scale is short. nevertheless, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was done upon the same sample. moreover, internal consistency data was analyzed for reliability studies of the scale, and reliability analysis was not done in terms of stability. however, the scale was not analyzed with comparing the similar another scale in terms of criteria validity. these limitations should be taken into consideration while using the generalized expectancy for success. it is thought that the scale should be implemented upon another sample in university, and the reliability of it should be analyzed in terms of test-retest method. moreover, it is 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change: theory, research, and implications for practice. emerald publishing limited. pp: 15-32. yong, f.l., 2010. a study on the self-efficacy and expectancy for success of pre-university students. european journal of social sciences, 13(4): 514-524. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 287 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 287-291, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.287.291 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an analysis on problem solving skills of students studying in balikesir university school of physical education and sports nahit özdayi1 1balıkesir university, department of coaching education balıkesir, turkey abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze the problem solving skills of the students in balıkesir university school of physical education and sports by the variables of age, sex, sports branch, department and grade and to reveal the differences. this is a descriptive research. the research population of this descriptive survey modeled study is composed of 1063 students approximately studying in different departments of balıkesir university school of physical education and sports while the sample consists of randomly selected 304 students. a questionnaire was used to determine the descriptive characteristics of the students in data collection and “problem solving inventory (psi)” developed by heppner and petersen (1982) and adapted into turkish by sahin et al. (1993) was used in the study. in data analysis, percentage and frequency values were used while one way anova, man whitney u and kruskal wallis test were utilized in comparison of data and these data were addressed at the significance level of p<0.05. all analyses were performed with spss v17.0 (spss science, chicago, il, usa). when comparing the problem solving skills of students studying in balıkesir university school of physical education and sports by the variable of age, the problem solving skill of 30+ age group was found high. problem solving perception of the students studying in sports management department by the variable of department was found high. it has been established that problem solving skills don’t differ significantly by the variables of sports branch, sex and grade. keywords: problem solving, sports, physical education, sports management. citation | nahit özdayi (2019). an analysis on problem solving skills of students studying in balikesir university school of physical education and sports. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 287-291. history: received: 10 january 2019 revised: 13 february 2019 accepted: 7 march 2019 published: 27 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 288 2. demographic statistics ................................................................................................................................................................ 289 3. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 290 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 291 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 291 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/417 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.287.291&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5534-3153 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 287-291 288 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction 1.1. problem solving skill when the literature concerning the concept of the problem is examined, it is seen that there are many different definitions. d'zurilla and goldfried (1971) define problem as a situation in which individual has the difficulty in responding to internal and external tasks while (bingham, 1998) defines problem as an obstacle for a person's existing strengths to achieve the desired goal and according to morgan (1999) problem is a state of conflict where individual meets with an obstacle in reaching to the target. 1.2. problem solving concept d'zurilla and goldfried (1971) defines problem solving as a cognitive and behavioral process that provides selecting the most effective option among many alternatives in order to overcome an unpleasant situation confronted by the individual. according to bingham (1998) problem solving skill is a learnable concept that can be developed through experience. thus, it contains intelligence, emotion, will and activity. the individuals who are inadequate in problem solving are more anxious than individuals who have this ability, they experience problems in their relations with other individuals and they suffer from emotional weakness. it has been observed that the individuals in this situation have various compliance problems psychologically (heppner and baker, 1997). according to jerath et al. (1993) confirming that stress, intelligence, extroversion are important elements in effective problem solving, another important element in learning how to solve a problem effectively is anxiety. people with more worries delay in focusing on the solution of the problem. every time they cannot solve the problem, their worries increase more and their focus on problem solving is eliminated. 1.3. problem solving steps when we encounter a problem, it is very important to analyze and decide first. on the other hand, individuals use their own personal methods to solve their problems with the knowledge they have acquired at school together with their personality and the way they were raised (arnold, 1992). however, it should be noted that problem solving skill is a learned skill. for this reason, the first thing to know is that problem solving process can be learnt. attitudes that are necessary in the problem solving process vary by the type of problem and from person to person. however, there are certain basic steps in solution process. the models directed to general steps determined within the process of problem solving are the slightly modified version of the john dewey’s model which has been in use since 1910. in the method of problem solving, there are such stages as understanding and determining, theoretically design of solution and continuing to try until the solution is reached in a positive sense (oğuzkan, 1993). this process requires the skill of creative and scientific thinking. stevens (1998) sorts the problem solving stages as follows; understanding the problem, collection of required information, getting to the bottom of problem, revealing the solution suggestions, selecting the best solution and solution of problem. 1.4. problem solving skills the obstacle in front of the strengths that the person has gathered in order to reach the desired target is called the problem (yıldırım and özkahraman, 2011). problem solving is defined as the way to choose and use tools and behaviors that are effective and useful to achieve the desired goal (vural, 2004). from the perspective of human history, we follow the struggle of human beings with the problems they face in every period. as we get closer to today’s world, the qualities and difficulty levels of problems have become even more intricate and difficult to overcome, which brings the problem solving skill to a highly important position in human life (alagözlü, 2006). although there are a number of ways of problem solving that everyone develops based on their knowledge, skills and experiences, many philosophers have some evaluations related to the topic. the steps in problem solving are composed of the following periods; a preparation period in which the individual collects the information about the problem, the incubation period in which the individual gives up seeking a solution for some time, the enlightenment period in which the individual forms completely new ideas suddenly and lastly the evaluation period in which the individual tests whether the ideas created in the enlightenment period suddenly work (morgan, 1999). 1.5. research population and sample the research population of the study is composed of 1063 students approximately studying in balıkesir university school of physical education and sports while the sample consists of randomly selected 304 students. 1.6. data collection tool problem solving inventory: problem solving inventory (psi) was developed by heppner and petersen (1982) and adapted into turkish by sahin et al. (1993). the problem solving inventory is a self-assessment scale that measures self-perception of the individual regarding problem solving skills. the inventory is composed of 35 items and 6-point likert scale. the answers given are rated from 1 to 6. the items of 9, 22 and 29 were excluded in rating. the rating is applied over 32 items. the items of 1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 21, 25, 26, 30 and 34 are rated reversely. the score range to be obtained from the inventory is 32-192. the high level of total scores obtained from the scale indicate that the individual perceives herself/himself as inadequate in problem solving skills (savaşır and şahin, 1997). the overall reliability of the problem solving skills inventory was found to be high with a rate of 0.817. the value of p<0.05 was taken into account while calculating the inter-group statistical differences. anova test, independent samples t-test, kruskal wallis test and man whitney u test were used in data analysis. all analyses were performed with spss v17.0 (spss science, chicago, il, usa). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 287-291 289 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. demographic statistics table-1. demographic statistics of students. variables n % age 18-21 104 34% 22-25 148 49% 26-29 37 12% 30+ 15 5% sex male 171 56% female 133 44% sports branch team sports 170 56% individual sports 134 44% department coaching training 118 39% physical education and sports teaching 84 28% sports management 102 34% grade 1 68 22% 2 64 21% 3 84 28% 4 88 29% source: obtained from primary data. the majority of the participants are male (56%). 49% of the participants are in 22-25 age group, 34% of them are in 18-21 age group. 56% of the participants are engaged in team sports. those studying in coaching training department constitute 39% of the sample, those in sports management constitute 34% of the sample. also, 4th grade students rank first with a rate of 29%, 3rd grade students rank 2nd with a rate of 28%. table 1. table-2. one way anova table showing change in ps levels of the participants by the variable of age. problem solving inventory sum of squares df meansquare f sig. between groups 134.04 3 44.34 15.94 .000 within groups 846.74 301 28.29 total 981.78 304 source: obtained from primary data. table-3. averages of ps levels of participants by the variable of age. variable problem solving inventory mean age 18-21 96.42 22-25 103.08 26-29 95.45 30+ 73.27 source: obtained from primary data. anova test will be applied to understand whether problem solving inventory differs by age. the main hypothesis of the analysis expresses that there is no difference between ages. the main hypothesis is rejected since the probability value calculated after the test (sig) is below 0.05 and this indicates that there is a statistically significant difference between ages. 22-25 age group has the lowest level of problem solving skills while 30+ age group has the highest level of problem solving skills table 2, 3. table-4. independent samples t-test results of the ps levels of participants by the variable of sex. test values problem solving inventory equal variance assumed equal variances not assumed levene's test for equality of variances f .022 sig. .882 t-test for equality of means t 1.381 1.386 df 303 289.456 sig. (2-tailed) .168 .167 mean difference 2.858 2.858 std. error difference 2.069 2.062 95% confidence interval of the difference lower -1.214 -1.201 upper 6.930 6.917 source: obtained from primary data. independent samples t-test will be applied to understand whether problem solving inventory differs by sex. the main hypothesis of the analysis expresses that there is no difference between sexes. the main hypothesis is accepted since the probability value calculated after the test (sig) is above 0.05 and this indicates that there isn’t a statistically significant difference between sexes table 4. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 287-291 290 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. mann whitney u test results by the variable of sports branch. test values problem solving inventory mann-whitney u 99.50 wilcoxon w 18.50 z -1.94 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .052 source: obtained from primary data. mann whitney u test will be applied to understand whether problem solving inventory differs by sports branch. the main hypothesis of the analysis expresses that there is no difference between sports branches. the main hypothesis is accepted since the probability value calculated after the test (sig) is above 0.05 and this indicates that there isn’t a statistically significant difference between branches table 5. table-6. one way anova table showing change in ps levels of the participants by the variable of department. problem solving inventory test values sum of squares df meansquare f sig. between groups 301.22 2 150.113 4.78 .009 within groups 951.56 302 314.936 total 981.78 304 source: obtained from primary data. table-7. averages of ps levels of participants by the variable of department. test values problem solving inventory mean department coaching training 97.18 physical education and sports teaching 103.39 sports management 95.71 source: obtained from primary data. anova test will be applied to understand whether problem solving inventory differs by department. the main hypothesis of the analysis expresses that there is no difference between departments. the main hypothesis is rejected since the probability value calculated after the test (sig) is below 0.05 and this indicates that there is a statistically significant difference between departments. physical education and sports teaching has the lowest level of problem solving skills while sports management has the highest level of problem solving skills table 6, 7. table-8. kruskal wallis test results of ps levels of participants by the variable of grade. test values problem solving inventory chi-square 2.990 df 3 asymp. sig. .393 source: obtained from primary data. kruskal wallis test will be applied to understand whether problem solving inventory differs by grades. the main hypothesis of the analysis expresses that there is no difference between grades. the main hypothesis is accepted since the probability value calculated after the test (sig) is above 0.05 and this indicates that there isn’t a statistically significant difference between branches table 8. 3. discussion the findings obtained from this study which aims to determine whether the problem solving skills of students studying in balıkesir university school of physical education and sports differ by the variables of age, sex, sports branch, department and grade are discussed below in the light of relevant literature. as a result of comparing the problem solving levels of the participant students by the variable of age, it has been observed that the athletes in 22-25 age group has the lowest level of problem solving skills while 30+ age group has the highest level of problem solving skills. high level of scores that can be obtained from the problem solving inventory indicates that problem solving perception of the individual is low. thus, the problem solving perception of the athletes in 30+ age group is at the highest level. looking at the studies that investigate the relationship between problem solving and age in athletes, it is stated that individual gains practicality in problem solving due to the increased knowledge and experience together with the age and the person exhibits higher level of problem solving success (eroğlu and eroğlu, 2016; con et al., 2017; demir, 2018). our findings are supported with the relevant literature. no significant difference has been found between the problem solving skills of the participant students by the variable of sex. in the related literature, significant difference is established between the problem solving skills and the sex variable in some studies while no difference has been found in others. these differences in the literature can be related to the age range of the sample group (cilingir, 2006; dündar, 2009). the smaller the age range of the sample group is, the closer the problem solving skills will be. the fact that there is no significant difference in terms of sex in our study can be caused by the concentration of our sample group in 18-21 and 22-25 age group. no significant difference has been found between the problem solving skills of the participant students by the variable of branch. this result may arise from the fact that the sports lives of the students constituting the sample group of our study are at amateur or professional level. the study analyzing the problem solving skills of elite university athletes in different branches supports our findings (pulu et al., 2012). in the study of demđrtaş and dönmez (2008) analyzing the problem solving skills of teachers, a significant relation hasn’t been found between the branch variable and problem solving skill. the results of the study investigating the relation between assertiveness and problem solving skills of female and male athletes in different branches also support our findings (atan et al., 2018). in the study of cağlayan (2007) no significant relation has been ascertained between the branch variable and problem solving skill. a significant difference has been found between the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 287-291 291 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group problem solving skills of the participant students by the variable of department studied. the students of sports management department are observed to have higher problem solving skills compared to the students of other departments. it is thought that the differences between the departments can be caused by the contents of the courses the students have taken. a sports manager must be successful in problem solving. therefore, the students of sports management department exhibit more positive and quicker behaviors while solving the problem since this department aims to provide problem solving skills to students. a sports manager must be successful in problem solving since s/he will undertake the leader position in the institution served. thus, due to the fact that the curriculum of the sports manager department aims to bring students in problem solving skills, the students of this department display more positive and rapid behaviors in problem solving. our findings are supported with the literature (saracaloçlu et al., 2001). likewise, the students of sports management department become entitled to enter into university through their central placement scores, the students of other departments are subject to special talent tests. for this reason, it can be stated that the students of sports management department are more successful in academic terms. this has ensured a positive improvement in their problem solving skills. in the study investigating the relation between emotional intelligence, problem solving and academic success of prospective teachers, a positive relation has been ascertained between problem solving and academic success (arlı et al., 2011). no significant difference has been found between the problem solving skills of the participant students by the variable of grade. the results obtained from the study of altunçekiç et al. (2005) investigating the problem solving skills of prospective teachers and the study of tasgin (2011) analyzing the problem solving skills of the students in physical education and sports department by some variables support our findings. 4. conclusion in the study, the problem solving skills of 30+ age group were found to be high in the comparison of problem solving skills of the students studying in the school of physical education and sports by the variable of age. problem solving perception of the students in sports management department by the variable of department was found high. it has also been concluded that problem solving skills don’t differ significantly by the variables of sports branch, sex and grade. references alagözlü, s., 2006. evaluation of problem solving and decision-making skills of hospital administrators: an application in hacettepe university hospitals. institute of health sciences department of health management. master’s thesis. ankara: hacettepe university. altunçekiç, a., s. yaman and ö. koray, 2005. a research on self-efficacy belief levels and problem solving skills of pre-service teachers (kastamonu province case). kastamonu education journal, 13(1): 93-102. arlı, d., e. altunay and m. yalçınkaya, 2011. the relationship between emotional intelligence, problem solving and academic achievement. academic review magazine, 25: 1-23. arnold, j.d., 1992. the complete problem solver. canada: john wiley & sonsinc. atan, t., s. göçer and ş. ünver, 2018. relation between assertiveness and problem solving skills of male and female athletes in different branches. the journal of international social research, 60(11): 1359-1366. bingham, a., 1998. development of the problem. (translated by a. ferhan oğuzhan). istanbul: national education press. cağlayan, h.s., 2007. analysis on the relation between learning ways and problem solving skills of the students in physical education and sports school. gazi university, phd thesis, ankara. cilingir, a., 2006. comparison of social skills and problem solving skills of the students in science and general high school . master’s thesis, atatürk university, institute of social sciences. con, m., k. acar and s. cankaya, 2017. problem-solving skills of futsal players with regard to some socio-demographic variables. turkish journal of sport and exercise, 19(2): 182-189.available at: https://doi.org/10.15314/tsed.313347. d'zurilla, t.j. and m.r. goldfried, 1971. problem solving and behavior modification. journal of abnormal psychology, 78(1): 107126.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0031360. demđrtaş, h. and b. dönmez, 2008. secondary school teachers’ perceptions about their problem solving abilities. journal of the faculty of education, 9(16): 177-198. demir, m., 2018. analysis on the relation between decision-making styles, personality traits, creativity and problem solving skills of football referees. institute of health sciences, department of physical education and sports, phd thesis, kayseri: erciyes university. dündar, s., 2009. analysis on personality traits and problem. journal of faculty of economics and administrative sciences, 24(2): 139-150. eroğlu, b. and a.k. eroğlu, 2016. research on problem solving skills of orienteering athletes in terms of some variables. shs web conf. erpa international congresses on education. heppner, p.p. and c.e. baker, 1997. application of problem solving inventory. measurement and evaluation in counseling and development, 29: 129-143. heppner, p.p. and c.h. petersen, 1982. the development and implications of a personal problem-solving inventory. journal of counseling psychology, 29(1): 66-75.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-0167.29.1.66. jerath, j., s. hasija and d. malhotra, 1993. a study of state anxiety scores in a problem solving situation. studia psychologica, 35(2): 143. morgan, c.t., 1999. introduction to psychology. (translated by h.arıcı et al.). ankara: meteksan. oğuzkan, a.f., 1993. dictionary of educational terms. ankara: emel matbaacılık. pulu, a., e.o. karabulut and k. hürmüz, 2012. investigation of problem solving skills of top-level athletes in different branches. journal of physical education and sport sciences, 10(1): 1-6.available at: https://doi.org/10.1501/sporm_0000000213. sahin, n., n.h. sahin and p.p. heppner, 1993. psychometric properties of the problem solving inventory in a group of turkish university students. cognitive therapy and research, 17(4): 379-396.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01177661. saracaloçlu, a.s., o. serin and n. bozkurt, 2001. the relationship between students' problem solving skills and their achievement. journal of educational sciences, 14(14): 121-134. savaşır, i. and n. şahin, 1997. evaluation of cognitive and behaviorist therapies: frequently used scales. ankara: turkish psychological association publications. stevens, m., 1998. problem solving. (translated by ali çimen). istanbul: timas publications. tasgin, o., 2011. examining problem solving skills of physical education and sport students from several factors. collegium antropologicum, 35(2): 325-328. vural, b., 2004. student-oriented education and multiple intelligence. istanbul: life publishing. yıldırım, b. and ş. özkahraman, 2011. decision-making in nursing. electronic journal of vocational colleges: 165-173. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 454 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 454-458, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.454.458 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluation of body composition and quality of life of university students suleyman sahin1 senay sahin2 duygu yildirim3 izzet kirkaya4 ( corresponding author) 1,2bursa uludag university, faculty of sport sciences, bursa, turkey. 3,4bursa technical university, department of common courses, bursa, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to evaluate the physical activity levels and the quality of life of the university students. in this purpose, the sf-36 life quality scale was used to examine the quality of life of the participants and physical activity levels were also determined through ipaq. one-way anova was used to compare the quality of life based on the physical activity levels of the participants. moreover, the bonferroni correction were used to determine which physical activity level causes the difference by keeping the type i error rate fixed at 0.05. statistically significant results were observed between social function and physical activity levels for the female group. in addition, statistically significant results were found between vitality and physical activity levels for the male group. the results show that there is a significant relationship between physical activity and quality of life. the individuals who feel more fit and social tend to have an active life. given that it is crucial to intensify the studies on this topic for university students to encourage them for taking up regular physical activity as a part of life style. keywords: physical activity, quality of life, mets, international physical activity questionnaire, sedentary life, health. citation | suleyman sahin; senay sahin; duygu yildirim; izzet kirkaya (2019). evaluation of body composition and quality of life of university students. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 454-458. history: received: 17 june 2019 revised: 24 july 2019 accepted: 29 august 2019 published: 8 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 455 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 455 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 455 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 457 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 458 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.454.458&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1045 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4702-5518 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9221-0616 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5460-8546 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1045 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4702-5518 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9221-0616 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5460-8546 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1045 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4702-5518 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9221-0616 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5460-8546 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1045 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4702-5518 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9221-0616 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5460-8546 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1045 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4702-5518 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9221-0616 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5460-8546 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1045 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4702-5518 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9221-0616 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5460-8546 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 454-458 455 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature: this study contributes to existing literature by understanding terms that influence accurate assessment of physical activity of university students. 1. introduction measuring the health status and concordantly determining the quality of life of individuals are the most important issues of many disciplines. in this context, it is very important to be healthy for having a quality life (cihan et al., 2018). health does not only mean the absence of disease but also complete physical, mental, and social well-being. quality of life is defined as the perception of the individual's position in life with respect to his / her goals, expectations, standards, and concerns within the culture and value systems experienced by an individual. quality of life is a comprehensive concept that is influenced complex way by one's physical health, psychological state, personal beliefs, social and environmental relations (world health organization, 2019). nowadays, it has become to be identified as the idea of improving the quality of life and leading a long life (akyol et al., 2008). therefore, in general, neither having a sedentary life style nor being physically active can be considered as an important factor in improving health and quality of life (fitz and boland, 2018). sedentary behavior is characterized by energy consumption of 1.0 to 1.5 mets (metabolic equivalent) when the body is sitting, lying in short resting (pate et al., 2008; tremblay et al., 2017; castro et al., 2018). changes in physical, social and economic conditions have made sedentary status more common (castro et al., 2018). sedentary or inactive lifestyle adversely affects healthy and quality of life and leads to risk of some diseases. therefore, public health campaigns are organized all over the world in order to motivate people to be physically active (can, 2019). public health recommendation is doing 150min / week moderate to vigorous physical activity (mvpa) for a healthy life. this can be explained as a moderate and high intensity exercise for 5 days a week, 30 minutes a day (creasy et al., 2018). in addition to leading an active life, it will be more beneficial for individuals to adapt that as a lifestyle. a physically active individual who embrace it a part of life style could maintain lifelong wellness and could have good health parameters (ertop et al., 2012). college years are considered as a significant period in constituting healthy lifestyle behaviors and carrying them to adulthood (seo et al., 2018). today, however, most of the students stay inactive at school and even at home while studying, devoting their leisure time to the things immobilizing them, such as television, computers, cell phones, and internet, which canalize them to adapt a sedentary lifestyle (fennell et al., 2019). in line with this information, our study aims to evaluate the physical activity levels and quality of life of the students at bursa technical university, turkey. 2. method participants were selected from students who are currently studying in various departments of bursa technical university. total of 193 (man: n= 108, woman: n= 85) university students voluntarily attended to the research as given in table 1. according to the descriptive information of the participants, the bmi values were calculated. the sf-36 life quality scale (cronbach alfa value .88) study conducted by kocyigit (1999); kokandi et al. (2019) was used to evaluate the quality of life of the participants (kocyigit, 1999). the scale consists of 36 items and these items enable the measurement of 8 sub-dimensions. sub-dimensions, which evaluates the health between 0 and 100 that 0, shows the worst health status and 100 gives the best result. this scale consists of 8 sub dimensions which are; physical function, role-physical, body pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role emotional, and mental health (torrance et al., 2009). sf-36 items are identical to the items described in ware and sherbourne (1992). furthermore, short version of international physical activity quastionnaire (ipaq) was applied to all participants in order to gather comparable estimates of physical activity (cerin et al., 2016). the validity and reliability of the study in turkish society was carried out by öztuk (2005). physical activity levels were determined by ipaq and divided into 3 different groups. to calculate the energy consumption for physical activities, the weekly duration (minutes) of each activity and the met energy values generated for the international physical activity survey were multiplied. moreover, to calculate met minutes in a week multiplies the met value given (remember walking = 3.3, moderate activity = 4, vigorous activity = 8) by the minutes the activity was carried out and again by the number of days that that activity was undertaken. for example, if the student exposed to walking of 30 minutes for 5 days in a week then the total met minutes for that activity were calculated using the formula given by forde 3.3 x30 x 5=495 (forde, 2005). met minutes per week met-minutes/week values were obtained from participants to be low, medium and high physical activity groups. total physical activity, which is under the 600 met-minutes/week, was categorized as low, 600-3000 metminutes/week was categorized as moderate and above 3000 met-minutes/week was categorized as high level physical activity group (craig et al., 2003). statistical analyses were performed by using the spss version 20.0. one way anova was used to compare the quality of life based on the students’ physical activity level. the bonferroni correction were also used to find out which physical activity level causes to a difference keeping constant the type i error rate at 0.05 (two-tailed). 3. findings table-1. descriptive characteristics of participants. group n bmi age male 108 22,95±3,10 21,33±3,02 female 85 21,43±2,85 21,10±2,04 source: obtained from participants descriptive data. after calculation of the bmi values, the findings show that body mass index data of the participants are in healthy weight category (who, 2019). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 454-458 456 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. quality of life scores of the participants according to 8 sub-dimensions. group physical function rolephysical body pain general health vitality social functioning role emotional mental health male 66,01±13,53 68,10±32,11 33,98±22,16 49,76±9,67 45,50±10,18 47,06±14,21 46,46±35,19 40,42±16,88 female 64,29±12,17 68,70±25,68 33,11±19,72 49,58±9,94 44,64±10,28 45,64±13,19 32,54±32,31 40,32±17,42 source: obtained from primal data. when the table 2 containing the quality of life scores of the participants is examined, it can be seen that physical function (man: 66,01±13,53, woman: 64,29±12,17) and physical role (man: 68,10±32,11, woman: 68,70±25,68) have higher scores than the others. table-3. physical activity scores of participants from international physical activity questionnaire (ipaq). physical activity level male female below 600 mets 33 22 601 – 3000 mets 43 45 above 3000 mets 32 18 total 108 85 source: calculated from participants ipaq data. as seen in table 3 it was also determined that 55 of the participants (man: 33, woman: 22) have low (< 600 mets), 88 of them (man: 43, woman: 45) have moderate (601-3000 mets) and 50 of them (man: 32, woman: 18) have high physical activity level (3001 < ). table-4. comparison of the quality of life of male participants according to physical activity level. variables physical activity level n sd f p bonferroni mets low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 33 43 32 322,39 1897,60 5568,68 290,76 605,60 1942,62 49,15 0,000 p=0,009; between 1-2 p=0,000; between 1-3 physical function low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 33 43 32 66,81 65,47 65,90 2,15 1,90 2,82 0,091 0,913 p>0,05 role-physical low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 33 43 32 68,48 71,42 63,48 5,34 4,76 6,14 0,564 0,571 p>0,05 body pain low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 33 43 32 36,06 34,40 31,36 3,89 3,50 3,77 0,378 0,686 p>0,05 general health low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 33 43 32 51,36 50,35 47,42 1,29 1,32 2,16 1,509 0,226 p>0,05 vitality low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 32 43 33 41,66 46,19 48,48 2,07 1,40 1,49 4,073 0,020 p=0,018 between 1-3 social functioning low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 33 43 32 47,60 46,35 47,78 2,16 2,05 3,01 0,112 0,894 p>0,05 role emotional low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 33 43 32 45,18 50,38 42,78 5,78 5,15 6,91 0,457 0,635 p>0,05 mental health low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 33 43 32 41,54 41,09 38,45 2,78 2,33 3,469 0,327 0,722 p>0,05 source: obtained from primal data. the analysis of the male students shows in table 4 that there is a statistically difference (p<0.00) on mets. post hoc analysis with bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons indicates that individuals with moderate physical activity levels (2) have more met scores (1897,60) than low physical activity levels (322,39) (p=0,009) and individuals with high physical activity levels (3) have more met scores (5568,68) than individuals with low physical activity levels (322,39) (p=0,000). another statistically significant difference (p<0,020) was also observed on vitality, which is one of the sub-dimensions of quality of life. the reason for this difference is that individuals with high physical activity levels have higher vitality (high=48,48; low=41,66; p=0,018) values than individuals exposed to low physical activity levels. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 454-458 457 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. comparison of the quality of life of female participants according to physical activity level. variables physical activity level n sd f p bonferroni mets low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 419,13 1687,38 5466,27 302,10 671,30 1257,63 103,44 0,000 p=0,000; between 1-2 p=0,000; between 1-3 physical function low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 64,54 63,88 65,00 9,74 13,07 13,28 0,058 0,943 p>0,05 role-physical low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 74,31 66,77 66,66 21,17 26,73 28,32 0,704 0,498 p>0,05 body pain low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 29,31 34,22 35,00 22,42 18,91 18,78 0,554 0,577 p>0,05 general health low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 49,09 51,44 45,55 6,29 9,97 12,47 2,365 0,100 p>0,05 vitality low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 44,77 45,55 42,22 6,98 10,61 12,74 0,672 0,514 p>0,05 social functioning low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 47,45 39,11 47,55 8,96 16,26 13,07 3,303 0,050 p=0,050; between 2-3 role emotional low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 31,90 36,00 34,16 27,67 34,04 34,88 0,117 0,890 p>0,05 mental health low (1) moderate (2) high (3) 22 45 18 40,81 42,06 35,38 16,28 17,54 18,458 0,955 0,389 p>0,05 source: obtained from primal data. the analysis of the female students shows in table 5 that there is a statistically difference (p<0.00) on mets. post hoc analysis with bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons indicates that individuals with moderate physical activity levels (2) have more met scores (1687,38) than low physical activity levels (419,13) (p=0,009) and individuals with high physical activity levels (3) have more met scores (5466,27) than individuals with low physical activity levels (419,13) (p=0,000). one more statistically significant difference (p<0,020) was observed on vitality, which is one of the sub-dimensions of quality of life. the reason for this difference could be that individuals with high physical activity levels have higher social functioning (moderate=36,00; high=47,55; p=0,050) values than individuals with moderate social functioning levels. 4. discussion and conclusion the aim of this study is to investigate the quality of life of university students considering their physical activity levels. when the results obtained from male students were examined, only statistically significant differences were observed on vitality of sub-dimensions of the quality of life scale. according to the results obtained from the data of female students, a statistically significant difference was found in the social function of sub-dimension of the quality of life scale. therefore, it can be said that male students with high physical activity level feel more energetic than other students who have low or moderate physical activity levels. additionally, female students with high physical activity level feel more social than other students, who have low physical activity levels. when the studies parallel to our study were examined, daskapan et al. (2005) observed that there was a positive relationship between habitual physical activity level and health-related quality of life. they also found some significant differences between the activity groups examined according to the weekly energy expenditure. in addition, more active students (1500 calories / week) had higher scores for the most of the 8 subscales of sf-36 (daskapan et al., 2005). in another similar study published by çiçek et al it was reported that level of physical activity is related to quality of life (çiçek, 2018). ruseski et al observed that there is a strong relation among the physical activity, wellbeing and happiness.(ruseski et al., 2014; wicker et al., 2014). ertop et al. (2012) realized that the students exercising regularly are more successful in presenting healthy lifestyle behaviors than those who do not exercise regularly (ertop et al., 2012). among the participants in the sample groups, 10.18% of the male group and 15.29% of the female group were in the overweight class according to bmi classification. in the study of çiçek (2018) this rate was found to be approximately 17%. in the study of avşar et al. (2013) this rate was 16.5%. this is because of that the group of participants in our study is less than these studies might be the reason of this percentage difference. in the study of kokandi et al. (2019), more than 50% of the participants had low activity level, only 13% were high and 30% were moderate physical activity. in our study, these rates were 30.55% for male with low physical activity and 25.88% for female. moderate physical activity is 39.81% for males and 52.94% for females. it clearly shows that health-related quality of life is significantly correlated with physical activity levels. although the percentage of people having low physical activity is lower in our study than the similar study, the sub-dimensions of the quality of life scale was obtained less than the expected. it can be concluded that the main reason of this case might be the participants who know the importance of physical activity but not apply it in their daily life routines. university years are an important time for personal development and are ideal environments for implementing health education and health management programs. this lifetime affects the health status after graduation. using asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 454-458 458 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the existing facilities and resources of the university such as fitness and health centers would be cost effective and convenient for many students (seo et al., 2018). healthy life and exercise routines provided by the students in the university could be checked with longitudinal studies during their education period and even after their education life. references akyol, a., b. bilgic and g. ersoy, 2008. physical activity, nutrition and healthy life. 1st edn., ankara: klasmat printing. avşar, p., e.e. kazan and g. pınar, 2013. investigation of nutritional habits of university students and risk factors related to obesity and chronic disease. yildirim beyazit university nursing e-journal, 1(1): 38-46. can, s., 2019. sedentary behavior, number of steps and health. spor hekimligi dergisi/turkish journal of sports medicine, 54(1): 7182.available at: https://doi.org/10.5152/tjsm.2019.118. castro, o., j. bennie, i. vergeer, g. bosselut and s.j. biddle, 2018. correlates of sedentary behaviour in university students: a systematic review. preventive medicine, 116: 194-202.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2018.09.016. cerin, e., k.l. cain, a.l. oyeyemi, n. owen, t.l. conway, t. cochrane, d. van dyck, j. schipperijn, j. mitáš and m. toftager, 2016. correlates of agreement between accelerometry and self-reported physical activity. medicine and science in sports and exercise, 48(6): 1075 1084.available at: https://doi.org/10.1249/mss.0000000000000870. çiçek, g., 2018. quality of life and physical activity among university students. universal journal of educational research, 6(6): 11411148.available at: https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2018.060602. cihan, b.b., b. bozdağ and l. var, 2018. examination of physical activity and life quality levels of university students in terms of related factors. journal of education and learning, 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1992. the mos 36-item shortform health survey (sf-36). i. conceptual framework and item selection. medical care, 30(6): 473–483. who, 2019. whoqol: measuring quality of life. available from https://www.who.int/healthinfo/survey/whoqol-qualityoflife/en. wicker, p., d. coates and c. breuer, 2014. the effect of a four-week fitness program on satisfaction with health and life. international journal of public health, 60(1): 41-47.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-014-0601-7. world health organization, 2019. world health organization. available from https://www.who.int/gho/ncd/risk_factors/bmi_text/en. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 44 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 44-49, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.44.49 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the effects of aesthetic education program on aesthetic judgment development of five-year-old children esra ünlüer1 rengin zembat2 ( corresponding author) 1department of preschool education, kocaeli university, kocaeli, turkey 2department of preschool education, maltepe university, i̇stanbul, turkey abstract this study aims to identify the effectiveness of the aesthetic education program on aesthetic judgment development of the five year old children. the pre-test and post-test control group experimental design was applied throughout the study. the group matching technique was employed in constitution of the study groups. participants of the study consist of 36 five-year-old children attending at the kocaeli university application kindergarden at the 2016-2017 academic year. participants were assigned to experimental and control groups equally. experimental group was taught through aesthetic education program in twice a week for 10 weeks together with their curriculum. participants in the control group thought through national early childhood curriculum. in the study thpc aesthetic judgment scale which was developed by taylor and helmstadter (1971) adapted turkish culture and validated by acer (2006) validity and reliability. the validity and reliability of thpc aesthetic judgment scale for five years olds children were by researcher. in statistical data analysis, mann whitney u-test and wilcoxon signed rank test were used. the results indicated that aesthetic education program effects positively five-years old children’s aesthetic judgment development. keywords: aesthetic, aesthetic judgment, aesthetic education program, aesthetic experience, preschool education, art citation | esra ünlüer; rengin zembat (2019). examining the effects of aesthetic education program on aesthetic judgment development of five-year-old children. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 44-49. history: received: 28 september 2018 revised: 26 october 2018 accepted: 30 november 2018 published: 21 december 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: this paper was written from the first author’s complete doctoral dissertation under supervision of professor rengin zembat at marmara university, turkey funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 45 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 45 3. findings/results .............................................................................................................................................................................. 47 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 47 5. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 48 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 48 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.44.49&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/377 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4964-095x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2377-8910 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/377 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4964-095x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2377-8910 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/377 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4964-095x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2377-8910 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/377 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4964-095x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2377-8910 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 44-49 45 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction the term aesthetics was first used by german philosopher alexander baumgarten in 1744, in the sense of beauty science. the word aesthetics comes from the word aesthetikos, which is associated with the greek perception of sense (crawford, 1991). although there is no definition to fully meet the concept of aesthetics, it is basic form of a person's reaction such as the art, movement, music and trying to find the best in life and love, being aware of the natural beauty in the nature and around us, and knowing the value of them, to see and enjoy the beauty, affective and cognitive sensation and feeling. aesthetics is at the center of our daily life, because the colours, flavours and sensations in our environment contribute to the development of our aesthetic awareness (fox and schirrmacher, 2014). the aesthetic experience begins with birth and is gradually shaped by culture. the early stages of aesthetic development are universal (parsons, 1987). cottrell (1987) states that the artistic sense in children is composed of five developmental stages. first stage (from kindergarten to 3rd grade): children perceive and discover aesthetic features. perceptual discovery of aesthetic features involves the development of children's perceptual skills and they become aware of cultural traditions with the help of the world of art. second stage (4th-6th grade): includes the development of perceptual skills. third stage (7th-9th grade): the sense of art history develops. fourth stage (10th-11th grade): child develops sample evaluation criteria. final stage (grade 12): child performs critical analysis (wee, 2009). education of aesthetics, such as art, music, cannot be considered as a discipline in itself, but in fact, education of aesthetics covers all fields of art. education of aesthetics involves all aesthetic phenomena. this phenomenon includes aesthetic experiences, the production process of aesthetic products (object and situation) and the historical and cultural traditions created (madeja, 1976). an educational program should support the development of aesthetics with all its aspects. in order to provide this support, it is important that the training program consists of integrated activities. when it comes to supporting the development of aesthetics in children, only art-related activities such as painting or music in the education program come to mind. in fact, it should be known that aesthetic elements can be included in the training process in all activities. arrangement of the learning environment in such a way as to improve the aesthetic sense of children shall also contribute to the integration of aesthetic education (feeney and moravcik, 1986). the preschool education program, which was put into practice in turkey in 2013, has two achievements and six indicators related to aesthetic development. all activities can be used to promote the development of aesthetics in pre-school education program (turkish ministry of education, 2013). through education of aesthetics, the child tends to see the details, to pay attention to the views that he has not noticed before. education of aesthetics is generally seen as the descriptor of art if it is taken into the art branch. it allows the children to indulge in through their characteristics such as the colors, lines, shapes, formations, proportion, harmony and symmetry in the work of art, and it reveals the spiritual forces inherent in children (gültekin, 2011). some art experts think that young children do not have the maturity to perform aesthetic reactions. therefore, they think that aesthetics is not a suitable subject at an early age. however, early childhood educators know that children love the beautiful, the nature, and they like to create, look and talk about art (feeney and moravcik, 1986). taking all these into consideration, it is emphasized that any activity daily planned in 2013 the turkey preschool education program should be of the quality to promote the creativity and aesthetic skills. however, it is thought that the activities supporting the aesthetic skills are insufficient in both the examples of the activities of the teachers and the resource books that the teachers benefit from. as a result of the literature review, it has been observed that the studies related to this subject are insufficient. 1.1. purpose the aim of this study is to reveal the effects of aesthetic education program applied on five-year-old children on the development of their aesthetic judgement. in accordance with this main objective, it is aimed to make a difference with an application to be carried out without disrupting the current program flow the aesthetic education program to be prepared by the researcher. based on this purpose, this research study aims to find out answer the questions below; 1. in terms of the effect of the aesthetic education program on the aesthetic judgement scores of the experimental and control groups; 1.1. is there a significant difference between the experimental group aesthetic judgement pre-test and post-test scores? 1.2. is there a significant difference between the control group aesthetic judgement pre-test and post-test scores? 1.3. is there a significant difference between the post-test scores of the experimental and control groups? 2. method 2.1. study model in the research, experimental patterns with pretest-posttest control group was used. the experimental pattern is the model in which the data to be observed are produced and certainly compared with the aim of trying to determine cause-effect relationships (karasar, 2003). the pretest-posttest control group pattern requires the measurement of the participants in relation to the dependent variable before and after the experimental procedure (büyüköztürk, 2010). in the pretest-posttest control group model, there are two groups formed by random method. one of these is called experimental and the other one is called control group. measurements are performed on both groups before and after the experiment (karasar, 2003). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 44-49 46 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. experimental research design pretest program posttest experimental group taylor-helmstadter pair comparison scale of aesthetic judgment aesthetic education program taylor-helmstadter pair comparison scale of aesthetic judgment control group instruction based on current curriculum experimental group was taught through aesthetic education program in twice a week for 10 weeks together with their curriculum. the control group continued to study their preschool curriculum. aesthetic education program was presented below. tablo-2. aesthetic education program weeks activities 1. “children's games” pieter bruegel shared book reading 2. “shoes” review shared book reading 3. “happy children” photo taken by ara güler museum visit 4. light table activities “forest trip” nature review 5. “the weeping woman” pablo picasso museum visit 6. “the starry night” vincent van gogh shadow puppet 7. “cups” review “clouds” nature review 8. museum visit shadows 9. optical illusion painting exhibition visit 10. installation art virtual museum visit aesthetic education program developed by authors and other tables have statistical data 2.2. sampling the study group of this study consisted of five-year-old children attending kocaeli university kocaeli university application kindergarden in 2016-2017 school year. in this study, group matching technique method was used to create study groups the reason why kocaeli university application kindergarden was chosen for the study is that the variables of children (physical conditions of the school, socio-cultural level of the family) are similar, and there are two classes in five-age group and maximum 20 children in each class, and it was permitted to carry out the study, which would take 1-3 hours on two days of the week, a vehicle could be provided for planned trips, and the school administration and teachers have a positive approach and willingness for the study. tablo-3. the results of the pre-test scores of thpc aesthetic judgment scale for experimental and control group scale group n mean rank sum of ranks u z p aesthetic judgement scale experimental 18 321.50 17.86 150.50 -3.73 .709 control 18 344.50 19.14 36 as shown in table 3, results of the mann whitney-u test reveals that there is not any significant difference between the thpc aesthetic judgment scale pretest scores of experimental and control groups. according to this result, it can be said that the aesthetic judgement levels of the two groups are equal before the application. 2.3. data collection tools 2.3.1. taylor-helmstadter pair comparison scale of aesthetic judgment (thpc) the thpc aesthetic judgement scale is an assessment tool developed by taylor and helmstadter (1971) in order to measure aesthetic judgement in children aged four and over based on the gestalt theory. the scale consists of 38 pairs of images among which various images with or without artistic value like furniture design; sculpture, painting and home appliances are contained. the applied instrument one-to-one takes 15-20 minutes. it was adapted by acer (2006) to turkish culture for 6-year-old children. as a result of the validity studies conducted by acer (2006) pairs of images were reduced to 16 pairs. the reliability and validity study was conducted for 5 years old children by the researcher. according to the results of this study, the scale was found to be valid (cvi of 0.86 and cvi ≥cvo) and reliable (cronbah’s alpha of 0.66) (unluer and zembat, 2017). 2.4. analyzing of data in order to determine the tests to be used in the analysis of the data, it has been tested whether the data is normally distributed or not. as a result of hypothesis testing, it was found that the data did not meet the normality hypothesis. therefore, nonparametic tests were performed. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 44-49 47 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. the results of the hypothesis test showing that thpc aesthetic judgement data is not distributed normally aesthetic judgement scale kolmogorov-smirnov shapiro wilk w statistic df p statistic df p .173 36 .008 .935 36 .037 the data obtained from the study were evaluated by using "spss 18.0" statistical package program. in this context, the following statistical techniques were implemented. the frequency and percentage values of the demographic characteristics of the study group were determined. mann whitney u-test (mwu) was used to compare the pretest-posttest scores of the experimental and control groups. the wilcoxon signed ranks test was used to compare the pre and post-tests of the experimental and control groups. 3. findings/results findings of this study were presented below. table-5. the results of the pre-test and post-test scores of thpc aesthetic judgment scale for experimental group scale group n mean rank sum of ranks z p aesthetic judgement scale negative ranks 0 .00 .00 -3.65* .00 ** pozitif ranks 17 9.0 153.00 ties 1 total 18 *based on negative rank ** p<.01 as shown in table 5, results of the wilcoxon signed ranks test reveals that there is significant difference between the thpc aesthetic judgment scale pretest and posttest scores of experimental group (z=3.65; p<.01).taking mean rank and sums of the difference scores into consideration, it is given that the observed difference is in favour of the positive ranks, in other words, the post-tests. these findings, it can be concluded that the aesthetic education program effected positively the development of aesthetic judgement of the five-year old children. table-6. the results of the pre-test and post-test scores of thpc aesthetic judgment scale for control group scale group n mean rank sum of ranks z p aesthetic judgement scale negative ranks 0 .00 .00 -1.732 * .08** pozitif ranks 3 2.00 6.00 ties 15 total 18 *based on negative rank ** p<.05 as shown in table 6, results of the wilcoxon signed ranks test reveals that there is not any significant difference between the thpc aesthetic judgment scale pretest and posttest scores of control group (z=1.732; p>.05). according to this result, it can be said that meb 2013 pre-school education program did not contribute to the development of aesthetic judgement skills of children. table-7. the results of the post-test scores of thpc aesthetic judgment scale for experimental and control group scale group n mean rank sum of ranks u z p aesthetic judgement scale experimental 18 453.50 25.19 41.50 -3.89 .00* control 18 212.50 11.81 36 *p<.01 as shown in table 7., as a result of the mann whitneyu test reveals that there is statistically significant difference between the scores (u=41.50; p<.01) of thpc aesthetic judgment scale in terms of the experimental and control group post-tests. considering their mean ranks, it can be seen that the difference is in favour of the experimental group. according to the results, the aesthetic judgement skills of the children in the experimental group participating in the aesthetic education program are higher than that of the children in the control group who did not participate in the training. this findings show that the program has a positive effect on children's aesthetic judgement skills. 4. discussion and conclusion when the thpc aesthetic judgment scale post-test scores of the experimental and control groups were compared, there was a significant difference in favour of the experimental group. this result shows that the children in the experimental group have higher aesthetic judgement level than the children in the control group and that the applied aesthetic education program effects significantly the development of the aesthetic judgement levels of children. accordingly, the aesthetic judgement levels of the children in the experimental group participating in the aesthetic education program were higher than the children in the control group who did not participate in the training. the fact that the aesthetic judgement levels of the children attending the aesthetic education program are higher than the ones attending the preschool education program of tme (2013) and not participating in this program is considered to stem from the fundamental principles which constitute the aesthetic education program. the reason why the program has shown the expected development is related with the fundamental principles of the program such as drawing attention of the children by means of activities, organising asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 44-49 48 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the class atmosphere within the framework of aesthetic principles, giving feedbacks to children and suggesting different educational atmosphere. when the results of the study related to the aesthetic judgement level are examined, it can be seen that similar results have been reached with various studies conducted in turkey and abroad (taylor, 1971; eckhoff, 2006; davun, 2009; özalp, 2012; kocamanoğlu and acer, 2015). in the study conducted by taylor (1971) one of the researchers who developed the scale, the effect of the aesthetic education given with artistic products on the perception development and aesthetic judgement levels of the 4-5-year-old children who were attending pre-school education were examined. thpc aesthetic judgment scale, which he developed with helmstadler, was applied and it was determined whether the environment and education had an effect on aesthetic preference and aesthetic development. according to the results of the study, it was determined that the aesthetic preferences of the students in the experimental group were higher than the other group. the findings of this study coincide with the findings of our study. eckhoff (2006) studied the effect of museum education on the aesthetic appreciation of children. in his study, he worked with 63 children between the ages of four and eleven, and he found that the children who were actively experienced art could assess the artworks. this result is consistent with the results of our study. in both programs, there are stages such as examination, interpretation and recreation of artworks by children, which enables them to actively participate in the aesthetic process from the very first stage and develop their aesthetic judgment skills. results of this study show similarities in terms of developing children’s aesthetic skills since museum visits were included in the both aesthetic education program. results of both studies imply the importance and contribution of museums on aesthetic skills of children. according to the definition of postmodern art, story book covers, which are part of a visual and popular culture, are accepted as an artwork (freedman, 2003). illustrated books offer excellent opportunities for aesthetic experiences (nodelman, 1988). the aesthetic experiences of children were tried to be increased with the illustrated story books included in the prepared aesthetic education program. (chou and cheng, 2015) showed that reading aesthetic books by sharing with their families improved their aesthetic skills. in addition, justice et al. (2009) found that books read in the classroom increased the aesthetic experience of children. these studies are in parallel with the findings of our research. acer and ömeroðlu (2008) conducted a similar experimental study with 6 year old children by implementing a different aesthetic education program. however, the aforementioned study found out that aesthetic education program did not show any important effect on the development of children’s aesthetic judgment. the reason for the discrepancy between the results of this study and their might be age of the participants and the difference of the applied programs. 5. recommendations the aesthetic education program can be compared with the findings obtained by applying it in different economic, social and cultural environments. • a larger-scale study including children of different ages can be achieved, and the results can be broadened to a wider audience. • the assessment of the impacts of the aesthetic education program can be strengthened to a certain extent through feedback from children, as well as feedback from families and teachers and from an independent observer. at the same time, the effectiveness of the program can be measured using different measurement tools. • the study group is limited to 36 children. in the future, research may be repeated with larger study groups and the ones which vary in terms of socio-economic levels. references acer, d., 2006. examining the effect of aesthetic education on aesthetic judgment development of 6 year old children attending kindergarten. unpublished doctoral dissertation. gazi university, institute of educational sciences, department of child development and education. acer, d. and e. ömeroðlu, 2008. a study on the effect of aesthetic education on the development of aesthetic judgment of six-year-old children. early childhood education journal, 35(4): 335-342. available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-007-0193-4. büyüköztürk, ş., 2010. manual of data analysis for social sciences. ankara: pegem academy. chou, m.-j. and j.-c. cheng, 2015. parent-child aesthetic shared reading with young children. universal journal of educational research, 3(11): 871-876. available at: https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2015.031113. cottrell, j., 1987. creative drama in the classroom, grades 4-6: teacher's resource book for theatre arts. lincolnwood, il: national textbook company. crawford, d.w., 1991. the questions of aesthetics (s, 18-30). r.a.smith ve a. simpson (ed.), aesthetic and art education urbana ve chicago. usa: university of illinois press. pp: 18-31. davun, b., 2009. the effect of arts education supported by activities in pre-school period on the aesthetic taste levels of children (social services child protection agency example). unpublished phd thesis. gazi university institute of educational sciences, ankara. eckhoff, a., 2006. influences on children's aesthetic responses: the role of prior knowledge, contexts, and social experiences during interactions with the visual arts. doctoral dissertation. university of colorado, boulder. feeney, s. and e. moravcik, 1986. a thing of beauty: aesthetic development in young children. young children, 42(6): 6-15. fox, j.e. and r. schirrmacher, 2014. aesthetic. translated by m. can yasar n, aral and gokhan duman (translated ed.) development of art and creativity in children. ankara: nobel publishing. freedman, k., 2003. teaching visual culture: curriculum, aesthetics, and the social life of art. new york and london: teachers college press, columbia university. gültekin, t., 2011. children and communication in the process of development of aesthetic values in art education. academic review journal(24): 32-39. justice, l.m., j.n. kaderavek, x. fan, a. sofka and a. hunt, 2009. accelerating preschoolers' early literacy development through classroombased teacher–child storybook reading and explicit print referencing. language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 40(1): 67-85. available at: https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2008/07-0098. karasar, n., 2003. scientific research method: concepts, principles, methods. ankara: nobel publication distribution. kocamanoğlu, d.ö. and d. acer, 2015. examining children’s art products and determining their aesthetic judgment in a preschool classroom where learning centers were used. journal of education(7): 1-16. madeja, s.s., 1976. the cemrel aesthetic education program: a report. urbana chicago: university of illinois press. national association for young children, september. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 44-49 49 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group nodelman, p., 1988. words about pictures: the narrative art of children’s picture books. athens, ga: university of georgia press. özalp, h.k., 2012. case study based on the application of the art in the 5-6 year old art activities. idil magazine, 1(5): 132-147. parsons, m.j., 1987. how we understand art. new york: cambridge university. taylor, a.b. and g.c. helmstadter, 1971. a preliminary pair comparison test for measuring aesthetic judgment in young children. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new york, ny. pp: 4–7. taylor, a.p., 1971. the effects of selected stimuli on the art products, concept formation and aesthetic judgmental decisions of four and five year old children. doctoral dissertation, arizona state university, usa. turkish ministry of education, 2013. pre-school education program (for 36-72 months old children). ankara: turkish ministry of education. unluer, e. and r. zembat, 2017. taylor-helmstadter double comparative aesthetics scale (thpc) validity and reliability study. electronic turkish studies, 12(18): 687-696. wee, s.j., 2009. drama education curriculum by drama specialist in early childhood education. doctoral dissertation, urbana: illinois university. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training vol. 3, no. 2, 92-96, 2017 issn (e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2017.32.92.96 92 building research ethos from the ground up using mckinsey 7-s framework: the case of the modern college of business and science rene y paquibut1 1modern college of business and science sulanate of oman abstract the aim of this paper is to document the experience of the modern college of business and science (mcbs) in building its research ethos as a quality management case study. the new strategic plan of mcbs gives focus on research and consultancy as one of its five strategic perspectives. motivated by its aspiration to contribute to the growth and sharing of knowledge, the college embarked on the task of developing a systemic and systematic approach to build the hard and soft elements of institutional research using the mckinsey 7-s framework. on one hand, the hard elements of strategy, structure, and system were designed through a series of dialogue within the college’s academic community. on the other hand, the alignment of the soft elements of shared values, skills, style, and staff to the hard elements was emphasized in a series of workshops. the outcomes include: 1) policies and guidelines; 2) research agenda; and 3) mechanisms for results. keywords: institutional research, mckinsey 7-s framework, quality assurance, quality management, institutional accreditation. citation | rene y paquibut (2017). building research ethos from the ground up using mckinsey 7-s framework: the case of the modern college of business and science. asian journal of education and training, 3(2): 92-96. history: received: 25 september 2017 revised: 30 october 2017 accepted: 1 november 2017 published: 7 november 2017 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 93 2. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 93 3. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 95 4. recommendation ............................................................................................................................................................................. 96 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 96 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rene y paquibut https://orcid.org/orcid-search/quick-search?searchquery=rene y paquibut asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 92-96 93 1. introduction the experience of preparing for accreditation took about two years for the modern college of business and science (mcbs). going through accreditation for the first time was not an easy fete for mcbs especially when the oman academic accreditation authority (oaaa) only released the final institutional standards and indicators at the end of the first quarter of 2016 (although draft versions were previously made available), about two months before the submission of the self-study report and supporting materials, and about four months before the accreditation visit in september 2016. while waiting for the verdict from oaaa (which would come out end of january 2017 at the soonest), mcbs is taking the initiative to take stock of the experience and share the same for the benefit of other higher education institutions in the sultanate of oman. 1.1. objective the aim of this paper is to document mcbs’s experience in building its research ethos as it prepared for institutional accreditation with special reference to the compliance of oaaa’s institutional standard 4: staff research and consultancy. more specifically, this paper documents the use of mckinsey 7-s framework in determining the gap between what are required by the standard and what are already in place; and identifying measures to address the gap. 1.2. method bryan (2008) explained that the mckinsey 7-s framework (introduced in the late 1970’s and continues to be relevant to this day) was developed by mckinsey consultants to map the interrelated factors that influence the ability of an organization to change. this classic tool paves the way to a better understanding of the complexity of organizations and highlights the critical role of coordination in working towards organizational effectiveness. jurevicius (2013) suggested that among other common uses of the framework are to facilitate organizational change and help implement new strategy. the 7-s framework is the interrelatedness of style, skills, systems, structure, staff, strategy, and shared values. according to bryan (2008) style refers to the culture of the organization (including leadership style) and answers the question: how do we do things around here?; skills include institutional and individual skills; systems are the processes in answer to the question: how work is done?; structure focuses on authority relationships; staff highlights diversity and talents; strategy is the move to gain competitive advantage; and shared values are the superordinate goals in answer to the question: what does the organization tries to achieve?. figure 1 below shows the interrelatedness of the seven elements. figure-1. 7-s framework (www.mckinsey.com) mindtools (n.d) categorized the seven interdependent elements into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ elements. shared values, skills, style, and staff are ‘soft’ elements and they are less tangible and more influenced by culture. strategy, structure, and systems are ‘hard’ elements and they are easier to be identified and are influenced by management. the following steps are to be followed in using this tool: 1) gather information on the seven elements; 2) determine the consistency of shared values with strategy, systems, and structure; 3) determine how well the hard elements support each other; 4) find out how well the soft elements support the hard elements; and 5) continuously adjust for alignment. the steps were accomplished with inputs from the academic community of mcbs through workshops. 2. results and discussion 2.1. oaaa institutional standard on staff research and consultancy asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 92-96 94 as provided in oman academic accreditation authority (2016) institutional standard 4: staff research and consultancy establishes that strategic objectives are achieved through well planned and managed research activities and outputs that are ethical, used in teaching-learning, and reflective of the higher education institution’s (hei) classification. the standard contains nine criteria: research planning and management; research performance; research funding scheme; consultancy activities; ethics and biosafety; intellectual property; professional development for research; research commercialization; and research-teaching nexus the criteria research planning and management requires a strategic approach to planning and management that aligns with the hei’s classification and mission and guide its activities which are formally approved, adequately resourced and monitored to produce good quality outcomes. in the 7-s framework, what the criteria requires is the deliberate (style) alignment of strategy (approach) to shared values (mission and institutional classification), systems (resource allocation and monitoring), and structure (formal approval). the criteria on research performance requires monitoring and reporting of performance against targets (systems and structure) and its alignment to institutional classification (shared values) and strategic objectives (strategy). research funding schemes emphasize the allocation and management of funds for research (systems) which are aligned to the strategic objective (strategy) and institutional classification (shared values) and distributed equitably (structure) to research-active staff (staff and skills). consultancy activities (staff and skills) are aligned to strategic objectives (strategy) and are well managed (system) and supported (structure). ethics and biosafety ensures that ethical considerations of research activities (staff and skills) are well managed (system) and controlled (structure). ownership of intellectual property is clearly identified (system) and well managed (structure). professional development opportunities (staff and skills) are provided (system and structure). research commercialization is aligned to strategic objectives (strategy) and is well managed (system and structure). and finally, there is the research-teaching nexus which refers to a systematic approach (strategy and system) to ensure activities and outputs have a positive impact on teaching and student learning. embedded in all of these criteria is the style of leadership and organizational culture. 2.2. the 7-s framework at mcbs the task of preparing for accreditation involves the conduct of an institutional self-evaluation against the standards established by oaaa. self-evaluation is challenging and can be all guess-work without an integrating framework. the 7-s framework provided a way of looking at the whole as an interconnection of many parts. the first step in the use of the 7-s framework is to gather information on the seven elements. style is discussed here as the first element which refer to leadership style and organizational culture. on one hand, leadership style is linked to management style which shapes the hard elements of strategy, system, and structure. on the other hand, organizational culture influences the soft elements of shared values, style, staff, and skills. this makes style a powerful element in the framework because it affects both the hard and soft elements. according to mack (n.d) total quality management requires excellent leadership that is defined by the following characteristics: clear goal setting, communicative, aggressive, deeply committed to change, and personally involved. at mcbs, the drive to acquire accreditation started from the owner who is also the executive chairman. this was communicated to the dean of the college as a clear goal. the dean in turn communicated the same to the management of the college and down the line. compliance of the institutional standards required major changes, which could only be achieved through a deep commitment to improvement and this was pursued vigorously and aggressively. ad hoc committees were created to work on the self-evaluation. transforming committees into effective teams was not easy but a necessary success factor. in the whole process, everyone from the top-down was involved. haijan (1992) (as cited by al-bourini et al. (2013) defined organizational culture as the values of the organization’s leaders which influence concrete aspects of the organization. this binds style to shared values more closely. tharp (2009) described four types of organizational culture: collaborative (clan), create (adhocracy), control (hierarchy), and compete (market). a clan culture is an open and friendly place to work, likened to an extended family. adhocacy culture is characterized as dynamic and creative, where risk-taking is encouraged. hierarchy culture is described as highly structured and formal. and the market culture is results-driven and competitive. according to the study of gimenez-espin et al. (2013) the ‘mixed culture’ or the ‘culture of quality’ which is between the adhocratic and clan cultures would be the most appropriate for a total quality management system. at mcbs, the process of building institutional research in compliance with the oaaa standards on staff research and consultancy has been facilitated collegially and with a creative license. both the executive chairman and the dean constantly reminded management and staff to consider the organization as a family and welcomed innovation. the elements of strategy and shared values are also closely intertwined. mcbs uses the five-year strategic planning cycle. its current strategic plan covers the period ay 2015-2016 to ay 2019-2020. the planning process begins with the articulation of the college’s mission, vision, and values. this connects the strategy with shared values. mcbs takes off from five strategic perspectives, one of which is the perspective on research and consultancy. cognizance of its identity (mcbs is not a research institute but aspires to be a university), and aligned to its mission of facilitating growth in knowledge and innovation, the college’s perspective on research and consultancy sees itself contributing to the growth and sharing of knowledge. strategic objectives were formulated to clarify this perspective and key performance indicators were agreed to specify the desired results. the strategic plan was further articulated into an operational plan to develop systems and responsibilities were assigned to jobs and committees to provide structure. this links strategy to systems and structure. the elements of skills and staff necessitated an evaluation of the research capacity of the faculty and it was found that there are two groups of staff in the college: the group that is already productive and the other group that needs to be engaged. research productivity requires the right skills. the strategic objective on research productivity can be achieved through people (staff) engaging in research. this links strategy to skills and staff. the research productivity of the first group is evident in their publications and presentation in conferences. however, there is the second group that has the potential for contributing to research productivity. this classification of staff allowed for a more focused identification of needs for capacity building in addition to harnessing and supporting the talents asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 92-96 95 that are available. a capacity building program was designed based on a needs analysis. a research agenda was formulated based on interest and expertise. and a mentorship program was initiated to encourage senior researchers to help younger researchers. motivation to do research was also recognized as an important component of productivity. thus, research productivity is included in the performance appraisal system of teaching staff and is considered in the ranking and promotion system of the college. this links skills and staff to system. at mcbs, there is a connection between the quality of staff and recruitment and selection and a bias for research has already influenced the process. at mcbs, the strategy had to be supported by the right systems or processes and structure. according to sachdeva (n.d) good documentation of processes is an essential part of and an expected practice in quality assurance. this was the biggest challenge faced by the college as many of the processes at the onset were found undocumented. furthermore, the standards criteria required processes that were not yet in place. therefore, the challenge was two-pronged: whereas existing processes had to be documented, new processes had to be developed and documented as well. admittedly, this was found as an area of weakness. to address this, efforts were doubled on documenting policies and procedures and developing new ones in compliance with the standards criteria i.e. research and consultancy policy, guidelines for internally funded research, guidelines for externally funded research, and guidelines for the use of intellectual property. having the documented policies and processes officially approved and accessible facilitated their institutionalization (application of policies across the board) and standardization (carrying out the processes as provided to improve suitability (verwilghen, 1995)). system creates responsibilities and accountabilities which can be provided by structure. this makes system closely linked to structure. at mcbs, the policy manual is accompanied by a management structure and job descriptions and the committee structure and terms of reference. 2.3. consistency of shared values with the hard elements the mission of mcbs focuses on facilitating growth in knowledge and innovation. among its core values is freedom of expression and academic enquiry. the mission and values are further articulated in its strategic plan as a strategic perspective on research and consultancy. policies and procedures are documented, approved and made accessible to guide the conduct of research and consultancy in the college. and ownership of responsibilities and accountabilities are established in the management structure (including job descriptions) and committee structure (including terms of reference) to guide individuals in the performance of their roles. 2.4. effectiveness of the elements in supporting each other the question on the effectiveness of the hard elements in supporting each other and the soft elements supporting the hard elements can be a discussion in another paper. it will require some time, at least a year, before the effectiveness of the support between and among elements can be determined. with the use of the 7-s framework, mcbs was able to design the contents of the elements as intervention or measure to fill gaps. these require full implementation before an evaluation of their effectiveness can be made. in addition, appropriate tools for measuring effectiveness will be needed. thus, a full research will be necessary to carry out this task. 2.5. continuous adjustment as mentioned earlier in this paper, the 7-s framework highlights the critical role of coordination in achieving organizational effectiveness. coordination is necessary for adjustment and it requires the continuous monitoring and evaluation of processes and results. there is therefore a need to embed a system of monitoring (documenting results) and evaluation (measuring performance against targets) and communicating (feedback) these to trigger appropriate response. figure 2 summarizes the attempt of mcbs in using the 7-s framework. figure-2. the 7-s framework at mcbs 3. conclusion the mckinsey 7-s framework was used to make more sense of oaaa’s standard on staff research and consultancy and made the preparation for accreditation relatively more manageable for mcbs. by documenting asian journal of education and training, 2017, 3(2): 92-96 96 the seven elements, the college was able to identify gaps and develop measures to address these gaps. the result is a cohesive framework where the alignment of the hard elements and the soft elements can be better appreciated. the use of the framework also facilitates a better understanding of the importance of the role of coordination among the elements for organizational effectiveness. indeed, the 7-s framework allowed a more comprehensive view of the whole organization as it attempted to build institutional research from the ground up. 4. recommendation the scope of this paper is limited to the experience of mcbs and the analysis used is qualitative. it may be a worthwhile project in the future to use a quantitative approach to determine the effectiveness of the elements in the framework as applied in the college. in addition, the scope of research can be extended to include other hei’s experiences to formulate policy recommendations. references al-bourini, f.a., a.a.m. ghaith and a.m.a. azzam, 2013. organizational culture and total quality management (tqm). international journal of business and management, 8(24): 95-106. view at publisher bryan, l., 2008. enduring ideas: the 7-s framework. mckinsey quarterly, 1: 112-112. reteieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/businessfunctions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-7-s-framework. gimenez-espin, j.a., j.j. daniel and m.c. micaela, 2013. organizational culture for total quality management. total quality management and business excellence, 24(5-6): 678-692. view at google scholar | view at publisher jurevicius, o., 2013. mckinsey 7s model. strategic management insight. reteieved from https://www.strategicmanagementinsight.com/tools/mckinsey-7s-model-framework.html. mack, s., n.d. key characteristics of excellent leadership for total quality management. reteieved from http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/key-characteristics-excellent-leadership-total-quality-management-25329.html. mindtools, n.d. the mckinsey 7-s framework: ensuring that all parts of your organization works in harmony. reteieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newstr_91.htm. oman academic accreditation authority, 2016. institutional standards assessment manual. reteieved from http://www.oaaa.gov.om/institutepdf/isam%20book%20final.pdf. sachdeva, v., n.d. good documentation and quality management principles. word health organization. reteieved from http://apps.who.int/prequal/trainingresources/pq_pres/stakeholders_2011/presentations/day_2/good_documentation_practices. pdf. tharp, b., 2009. four organizational culture types. reteieved from http://faculty.mu.edu.sa/public/uploads/1360757023.3588organizational%20cult98.pdf. verwilghen, r.l., 1995. the role of standardization in quality assurance. annali dell'istituto superiore di sanita, 31(1): 15-19. view at google scholar asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v8n24p95 http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-7-s-framework http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-7-s-framework https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=organizational%20culture%20for%20total%20quality%20management http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2012.707409 http://www.strategicmanagementinsight.com/tools/mckinsey-7s-model-framework.html http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/key-characteristics-excellent-leadership-total-quality-management-25329.html http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newstr_91.htm http://www.oaaa.gov.om/institutepdf/isam%20book%20final.pdf http://apps.who.int/prequal/trainingresources/pq_pres/stakeholders_2011/presentations/day_2/good_documentation_practices.pdf http://apps.who.int/prequal/trainingresources/pq_pres/stakeholders_2011/presentations/day_2/good_documentation_practices.pdf http://faculty.mu.edu.sa/public/uploads/1360757023.3588organizational%20cult98.pdf https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20role%20of%20standardization%20in%20quality%20assurance https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=the%20role%20of%20standardization%20in%20quality%20assurance 501 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 501-509, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.501.509 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group perceptions of fashion interns: roles, responsibilities, expectations and experiences japjee kaur kohli associate professor, fashion design dept., national institute of fashion technology, gandhinagar, india. abstract fashion design education has grown by leaps and bounds across world in recent years. it aims to prepare students with knowledge, skills and attitudes (ksa) to work in fashion industry and be employable. to empower students with much needed ksa, fashion design programs have industrial internship as a mandatory requirement that enables students to receive experiential training within the industry for a specific period. industry internship is an opportunity to gain firsthand experience about various activities and operations conducted in an organization to manufacture products. this research investigates the perceptions of fashion design students regarding their expectations and experiences from an industrial internship using a mixed method approach. structured questionnaires and semi structured interview schedule is used to gather data. sample size for questionnaire was 66 and later in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 students. the findings of this research provide rich insight on internship expectations and experiences that can help educational institutions and fashion industry to work collaboratively in order to strengthen the internship program and maximize the benefits. keywords: fashion design education, industrial internship, skill, experiential learning, curriculum, ksa. citation | japjee kaur kohli (2019). perceptions of fashion interns: roles, responsibilities, expectations and experiences. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 501-509. history: received: 3 july 2019 revised: 9 august 2019 accepted: 20 september 2019 published: 16 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 502 2. review of literature ...................................................................................................................................................................... 502 3. objectives of the study ................................................................................................................................................................. 503 4. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................. 503 5. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 503 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 508 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 509 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.501.509&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1066 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5548-5779 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1066 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5548-5779 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1066 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5548-5779 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 501-509 502 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the perceptions of fashion design interns using structured questionnaire and interview schedule. the in-depth analysis throws light on the roles, responsibilities, expectations and experiences of interns in indian fashion industry. not much literature is available in context of indian fashion industry. 1. introduction industrial internship forms an integral part of an academic curriculum for developing competencies in any vocational discipline. it is an opportunity for students to experience real world professional environment. several studies and reports indicate skill gap among student trainees across varied sectors. skill gap suggest that student trainees lack knowledge, skill and attitude (ksa) to work in actual work environment, thus, pointing towards negative aspect of job market readiness. an internship program is designed in higher learning institutions with the aim to allow trainees to work in industrial environment and apply academic learning to real world experiences in order to make informed decisions besides developing general as well as job specific skills that make them employable. this paper attempts to study the perceptions of fashion design students towards their expectations and experiences from industrial internship program. further, suggestions to make internship program more fruitful and valuable are discussed. 2. review of literature experiential learning experiences such as internship have been a significant factor in the active learning process by influencing the knowledge and enhancing the skills of students. internship is defined by various authors as a ‘supervised work experience’ (mcmahon and quinn, 1995; renganathan et al., 2012) as an opportunity to fill gap between learning and real world of work (d'abate et al., 2009) as a means to transform student knowledge (fox, 2001; gavigan, 2010) as learning by doing (o’neill, 2010) and, as a form of experiential learning or field experience (pauzé et al., 1989). numerous studies have been conducted that discuss various dimensions of internship such as experiences, benefits to stakeholders, project based approach, career oriented curriculum, and expectations in different sectors like hospitality and tourism, leisure management, business management, accounting, nursing, design, lis, it etc. 11 dimensions of internship program were identified while elaborating on the potential benefits and costs of internships to interns, employers, faculty and schools (maertz et al., 2014). opportunity to learn, realistic knowledge about industry working, experiential learning and probability of job offer from employer were identified as potential benefits to the intern. selfinitiative, academic preparedness and positive attitude were identified as strongest individual factors determining internship effectiveness by phoebe (2010). internship experiences and their impact on practical skill development among student trainees were explored by edonkumoh et al. (2015). researchers found that internship training exposed trainees to modern icts being used in libraries thus, enhancing ict skills. kardash (2000) evaluated a set of 14 research skills and found that the basic scientific skills were enhanced due to internship. highest ratings were found in: observing and collecting data, understanding importance of controls, interpreting data, orally communicating the results of research project and thinking independently. he further argued that undergraduate research experiences enhance interns’ abilities to engage in ‘real work’ as it provides an authentic learning experience. karunaratne and perera (2015) explored the effectiveness of industrial internship experienced by undergraduates from the department of textiles, who had interned with leading apparel manufacturers in sri lanka. findings revealed positive learning experiences, building professional relationship, collaborative learning, deeper understanding of work culture, skill development like problem solving, increase in selfconfidence, better inter-personal skills, and increased interest in future education and career. the findings also highlighted negative side indicating lesser opportunities to develop creative skills, managerial abilities, team work abilities, project and research skills, lack of knowledge about functioning and exposure to other departments of the company. mercan et al. (2015) found that undergraduate students were satisfied with their internships and they considered internship as an important opportunity to learn job, create better professional relationship, and higher probability of converting into full time job in the same company. internship increased selfconfidence, developed positive thoughts about the industry and profession, enhanced communication skills. students appreciated learning benefits achieved from internship. internships helped to build and refine specific research skills such as survey design or qualitative data analysis, learn professional skills that can be applied in future careers, develop professional connections, find employment, and bring a positive change for organizations/ society (hynie et al., 2011). improvements like longer duration of internship and increased mentorship were also suggested by students for making internships more effective. bye and labat (2005) stated that integrated studio approach incorporating active learning methods such as experimentation enabled students to develop creative, technical, and problem solving skills besides functional skills like working in teams, change adaptability, interpersonal skills, decision making and professional skills. kozar and hiller (2015) noted high satisfaction level among students from internship as it enhanced learning, developed skills and abilities besides increasing their confidence, helping to identify their professional goals, career aspirations and talents. the researcher reported that internship was highly effective in strengthening the foundational knowledge through real life work situations. knouse and fontenot (2008) found that internships enhanced employability. researcher further stated that challenging projects, continuous feedback, exposure to varied fields and higher learning satisfaction offered greater success during internship. clarity about task, open and participative work environment and respectful treatment are motivating factors that generate interest among internees. the literature indicates that little research has been conducted w.r.t fashion design course and fashion design internships in indian context. there is a need to understand the internship requirements, expectations, experiences, and effectiveness in a fashion design program in indian scenario as indian fashion/apparel industry is second largest employment generator. according to ministry of textiles (2018) by 2025, education wise human asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 501-509 503 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group resource requirement in garmenting sector would be 0.23 million (vocational/ diplomas), 0.56 million (graduates) and 0.10 million post graduates. job roles for these educational levels would include line supervisors, designers, sampling and production merchandisers, production managers and quality controllers. it is evident that there is huge employment potential and therefore, emphasis should be on career oriented curriculum where internships add value to the students’ learning experience. 3. objectives of the study the following objectives were established to be studied: 1. to understand the internship requirements in a fashion design program. 2. to find out the expectations of fashion design students while looking for internship. 3. to explore the experiences gained during internship. 4. to suggest improvements to make internship program more effective. it is anticipated that the findings will be helpful to curriculum planners, industry and future students. 4. research methodology the study investigated the perceptions of 66 fashion design students of nift, gandhinagar from two batches (2018 and 2019 internship track). internship is scheduled at the completion of 3rd year and before commencement of 4th year of study for a period of 8 weeks. data pertaining to expectations was collected before joining internship in may 2018 and 2019. data related to experiences during internship were gathered once the students were back from internship program in the month of august 2018 and 2019. since population size is small, the entire populations (both batches) were used for survey. only 66 completely filled questionnaires have been used for the study. students who completed their internship in 2018 have graduated and students who underwent internship in 2019 are pursuing their 4th year of fashion design degree. mixed method approach, comprising of survey and interview was adopted to collect the information. based on objectives and curriculum requirements, a structured questionnaire was developed for survey. it was validated by two experts from fashion design department. the final instrument was directly administered by the researcher to the respondent students and immediately collected upon completion. the survey data was collected at two phases: preinternship and post internship. the response rate was 93% for pre-internship and 87.5% in post internship survey. post survey, in-depth interviews using semi structured interview schedule were conducted. it provides scope for crossquestioning and reframing of questions to obtain relevant and in-depth information about their roles, responsibilities, expectations and experiences. the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. 4.1. data collection surveys: all students gathered in lecture room and survey questionnaire was distributed among them. the researcher briefed the students about the purpose of collecting data. questionnaire was divided into two parts: demographics and psychographics. demographics, comprised of 7 questions that dealt with respondent attributes such as age, gender, type of organization, preference of organization, department assigned during internship period, product category, stipend and other benefits paid. psychographics section comprised of 4 dichotomous questions, 8 open ended questions, and 2 questions based on 3point rating scale. dichotomous questions asked respondents whether their expectations were met, difficulty faced in arranging internships, duration of internship period. the open ended questions allowed respondents to provide information on their roles and responsibilities, expectations from internship, positive and negative experiences, types of projects handled, work environment, any changes observed in their ksa, job possibilities and progress possibilities in professional capacity. interviews: purposive sampling was used for interview. only 16 students from entire population were selected for in-depth interview. names have been coded to protect the identity of the respondent. interview was conducted by the researcher in campus and was hand recorded. care was taken that sample represented all 3 types of organizations falling under fashion industry. interview schedule had 5 semi-structured questions. these questions pertained to their good as well as bad experiences, specific job role, and difficulties faced by them during internship. table 1 provides details of the sample used in the present study. 45 and 21 students participated in the survey from 2018 and 2019 batch respectively. for interview schedule, 10 students from 45 participants of 2018 batch and 6 students from 21 participants of 2019 batch were selected. table-1. sample size of the present study. number of respondents year survey interview 2018 internship 45 10 2019 internship 21 6 total respondents 66 16 5. results and discussion results of survey and interview are analyzed to answer the research objectives. 5.1. internship requirements nift offers 2 months (8 weeks) internship program to students who have completed their 3rd year of study. by the completion of 3rd year, students are well versed with various courses, have gained knowledge and developed skills such as pattern making, garment construction, ideation and sketching, history of fashion, surface design, draping, merchandising, and production systems. first 2 weeks of internship program allow students to get an exposure to various departments, overall functioning of the company and then student is assigned a particular department, preferably design or merchandising department. for the remaining six weeks, students work on different projects that are assigned by company mentors besides developing a range on the basis of the design brief asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 501-509 504 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group given by the company. post completion of internship, student has to present the work in front of jury panel for evaluation of the same. qualitative feedback is provided by industry mentor to the fashion design department. 5.2. survey & interview findings a total of 66 students participated in survey. demographic details of respondents are presented in table 2. table-2. demographic details of respondents. demographic details of respondents frequency %age age (in years) 20-21 38 57.5 22-23 18 27.3 24-25 10 15.2 gender male 6 9.1 female 60 90.9 type of organization design house 14 21.2 export house 22 33.3 domestic manufacturing unit/ brand 29 44.0 any other 1 1.51 category womenswear 44 66.6 menswear 5 7.57 kids wear 5 7.57 both womenswear and menswear 8 12.1 both womenswear and kidswear 3 4.54 all three categories 1 1.51 stipend paid 15 22.7 not paid 51 77.2 other benefits yes 6 9.1 no 60 90.9 difficulty in arranging internship yes 14 21.2 no 52 78.7 fashion design is an under graduate 4 year degree program. the eligibility to join program is successful completion of xii standard. it is apparent from table 2 that 57.5 % respondents were in the age group of 20-21 years. data revealed that 90.9 % respondents were females. it was evident that 21.2% student respondents interned in a design house, 33.3% in export units, 44% in domestic manufacturing/ brand and remaining 1.51% in other types of organizations engaged in retail or e-commerce. it was also observed that maximum students (66.6%) worked in womenswear category. data pertaining to stipend and other benefits revealed that most companies in apparel/ fashion sector do not provide any kind of benefits or financial support to the interns. only 22.7% received stipend and the companies that paid stipend were brands like madura fashion & lifestyle, arvind fashion ltd., craftsroots, three clothing, ridhi majithia, vedic apparels, a little fable, raymond, code 61. regarding benefits, only 9.1% students were offered benefits such as reimbursement of travel cost of company sent them to processing unit, lunch, attending an event to get exposure, and transport in company bus. 21.2% students faced difficulty in arranging their internships. the reasons described included late response from companies despite regular follow-up mails; internee seats were already full in that company, no response from design house and had to opt for brand manufacturer, and location limitation. 5.3. expectations from internship finding an internship opportunity as per ones expectations builds pressure on any student as it impacts their career aims and future goals. 6 students (9.09%) mentioned that their expectations were not met. reasons for disappointment as stated includedless design related opportunity; little exposure to overall functioning; no inputs regarding costing, pricing and sourcing; samples not developed in their presence; assigned merchandising department instead of design; industry mentor was quite rude to her, little inputs in design as she was asked to work in merchandising department, bad work space for internee, time wastage due to slow decision making process at management’s end, lack of mentoring, little feedback, and no learning as she ran on errands and was given tasks that did not offer much responsibility or learning. remaining 90.9% were satisfied with their internship as their expectations related to learning and industry exposure got fulfilled. three areas emerged from survey findings with respect to expectations of the students. first theme emerged focused upon improvement in knowledge, skills and attitude (ksa) to perform in apparel/ fashion companies. students considered internship as an important step in achieving their career goals as it would enhance their abilities to work in industrial setting, develop abilities to interact, communicate and handle situations at work place, provide opportunity to work individually as well as in teams, develop survey and research skills. our findings are supported by schambach and dirks (2002) study who found that internship experience helped students achieve the following: confidence in skills and capabilities, increased awareness of much needed skills at workplace, enhanced interpersonal and technical skills. knouse and fontenot (2008) also found that internships enable students to develop desired skills through practical experience. phoebe (2010) found selfinitiative, academic preparedness and positive attitude as success factors for achieving internship satisfaction. summary of survey w.r.t. ksa is as follows: skills developedhandling workers, how to lowering cost of production, design process, presentation skills, communication, work while maintaining deadlines, market research, cad skills, research and analysis, designing embroidery designs for various markets, managerial skills, handling orders, technical drawing, developing samples. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 501-509 505 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group knowledge enhanceddocumentation, business aspect of design, different types of embroideries and layouts, fabrics understanding, creating tech-packs, khakha development, mitering in garments, social media marketing, knowledge of denim washes, industry systems and functioning. attitude gainedtime management, work ethics, taking responsibility, team work, punctuality, sincerity, quick learner, enthusiasm. second theme emerged described their interest in experiential learning. as a part of curriculum, students had visited companies under various courses such as fabric fundamentals, surface design, apparel production, merchandising systems, quality systems. such visits provided an over view of the topic under study. 100% students were quite excited w.r.t. their internship. they considered it as an opportunity to learn the functioning of a garment manufacturing in a unit, infrastructural and human resource set up required, departments involved and their roles, various job roles, functioning of design team, accomplishing orders within stipulated times, sourcing, planning activities apart from gaining marketable job experience,. most importantly, students were highly interested to learn about the design process followed in these companies based on client briefs. studies strengthen our findings that experiential learning allows better clarity of classroom concepts when applied practically (schambach and dirks, 2002) improvement in knowledge about company and work habits, valuable real world experience, greater understanding of potential employers, better understanding of job roles and career prospects (maertz et al., 2014) as ‘live workforce training’ (burns, 2013). findings cited by faerm (2014) project internships as helpful, realistic professional experience that provides greater exposure to professional environment and develops an understanding of working under another designer. third theme revealed that students expected greater inputs and opportunities in design field. being a student of fashion design program, students expected that they would be involved in design department. as an active learning ‘real world’ experience, students expected greater inputs on design process, execution of a range for the designer, learn to handle clients, designing garments for the company and interaction with buyer. students who were working in a design house got ample opportunities to design. these projects included developing tech-packs, creating social media profiles, embroidery and motif development, creating range, handle sampling, pattern and khakha development, new design development with left over fabrics. 5.4. internship experience since internship is a mandatory credit course, it was necessary to know up to what extent students were able to relate institutional learning with industrial experiential learning. this required an analysis of relationship between their job roles and courses studied by them. table 3 illustrates percentage and mean score of respondents who mentioned ‘to great extent’ on a three point scale that questioned the level of application of educational learning to their job roles. table-3. application of educational learning to their job role. item % to great extent mean score draping 15.1 2.43 pattern making 54.5 1.56 garment construction 77.2 1.31 surface ornamentation 63.6 1.45 design process 93.9 1.06 fabric knowledge 81.8 1.25 sketching & illustration 74.2 1.34 use of it skills for documentation 53.0 1.65 use of design software for digital design development 46.9 1.74 merchandising process and documentation 40.9 1.77 manufacturing process 77.2 1.30 responses in table 3 demonstrated that ‘design process’ was the most useful academic learning that was widely used in the industry and they could work on projects without much difficulty. they could easily relate and work comfortably. 94% students agreed that design process is ‘used to great extent’ in the industry irrespective of garment category or type of organization. in fact, they have refined their skills in design process and are more comfortable to present their research and findings on identifying trends, silhouette, defining client profile, season, range design, and presenting these boards to clients or management during meetings. 82% responses showed near unanimous agreement that ‘fabric knowledge’ is extremely important in fashion/ apparel industry. designer or merchandiser has to work with fabrics and therefore, possessing good knowledge about fabric behavior, characteristics, uses, sourcing destinations is a must. ‘garment construction’ and ‘knowledge of manufacturing process’ scored third highest. 77.2% agreed that working in fashion industry requires sound knowledge of garment construction and manufacturing systems. to execute a design, a designer should be well aware of garment construction methods that include varieties of seams, hand and machine finishes, steps in construction, material requirement. student’s responses indicated that they were comfortable in getting the designs or range executed as they had already learnt skills during academic learning. it was easier for them to guide tailors and work with pattern masters while getting design executed. this was followed by sketching and illustration (74.2%), surface ornamentation (63.6%). table demonstrated that draping had least utility in the industry. 15% stated draping technique as ‘to a great extent’ whereas 59% mentioned as ‘very little’. thorough investigation of responses revealed that students who were working in a design house mentioned that draping was used ‘to a great extent’ as each design is unique and is developed using draping technique or a combination of draping and pattern making. the responses of students who were in export house or brand manufacturing units stated that draping technique was least or not at all used in their companies. every student had her/his own share of good and bad experiences during internship. table 4 illustrates some of the experiences mentioned by internees in their questionnaire. based on these responses, students were selected for conducting interviews in second phase. interviews conducted elaborated in detail about the experiences. most asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 501-509 506 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students stated to have positive experience, 27% did mention about bad experiences. it was evident from findings that internship was a valuable experience for students. it helped them relate classroom learning with real life experience making the learning more authentic. internships yield greater benefits to students by enhancing their skills, better employment opportunities, greater understanding of concepts, increased knowledge, working pattern of companies, besides developing capabilities that cannot be developed in a classroom setting such as: work delegation, leadership, teamwork, work ethics, dealing with people, inter-personal skills, and workplace hazards. table-4. experiences gained during internship. good experiences bad experiences  friendly and healthy environment  gained production knowledge specially denim washes  all 40 designs made were approved and sent for mass production  met designers and opportunity to attend trade show ss’19  freedom to explore resources and design  time management and getting work done from others  learnt initiative taking, sincerity and behaviourial skills  full guidance and cooperation from designer  learnt how a startup works and its teething problems  learnt handling social media for a brand  learnt people handling such as tailors or working with master  learnt problem solving and time management  networking and made connections  exposure to realities of making garments  increased confidence in professional skills  improved vocational skills  enhanced communication skills  increased ability to deal with different people at various levels  some level of autonomy in responsibilities  travelling in local buses  no helper was provided, had to remove big and heavy rolls by myself  asked to do packaging with employees for a shipment  rude behavior of mentor  not sufficient design inputs as expected  worked as runner most of the times  many times no work due to offseason  made to do their work and also over time  felt underutilized and some days i was bored to gain an understanding of various aspects related to experiential learning during internship program, students were asked to rate each of the 11 parameters on a three point rating scale (satisfactory-1, good-2, very good-3). figure 1 illustrates the experience regarding each item. figure-1. students’ perceptions on various parameters of internship. it is evident from the figure 1 that responses were inclined towards ‘good experience’ in all items. highest mean score (2.37) was found in ‘daily tasks assigned’. respondents found daily tasks as meaningful and valuable to their learning process. these tasks added to their personal growth (mean score= 2.28). the internship program was considered as an ultimate learning experience (mean score= 2.15) that added new dimensions to their thought process and academic learning. all respondents had good (86.3%) to very good (13.7%) experience with their mentors. respondents were quite satisfied with their industry mentors for quality of mentoring and timely guidance. this has helped them to value time, apply their learning in an effective manner, and grasp better understanding of working systems and practices besides completing projects on time. 72.6% and 65.1% reported knowledge enhancement and skill development respectively. quality of projects was marked as ‘good’ by 65.1% of students. duration of internship was one aspect that showed ‘satisfactory’ results. 56% students felt that the 2 months duration is too less to get hands on experience at the industry. students were of the opinion that internship duration should be increased to 4 months. this will provide them ample opportunity to adjust in work asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 501-509 507 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group environment, get exposure to all departments, more number of tasks or projects to work upon, better development of skills and knowledge, more exposure to company’s activities. survey findings showed that internship helped build skills, knowledge and attitude among respondents, provided a rich opportunity to experience real world of work, responsibly work on the job role provided during internship and be able to relate and apply their academic learning while working on tasks assigned. further, interviews were conducted with selected sample to gainer deeper insight on the perceptions of students regarding expectations and experiences from an internship program and the findings are presented in verbatim quotations. this allowed richness in the data collected. the interview focused on the following aspects:  roles, responsibilities and projects handled.  expectations.  experiences.  perceptions. roles, responsibilities & projects handled: s1: i interned in a brand house and created collection of menswear shirt incorporating prints, silhouette, trims besides developing a trend direction book and product shoots. s2: i look into the entire design process for the brand, creating tech-packs, follow-ups, independently handling sampling unit and market survey. i worked on 4 design projects based on crafts. s3: i interned in a design house. my role required me to handle social media for the companyinstagram and facebook; designing garments for upcoming fashion week; provide ideas for packaging; and suggest ideas for utilization of left over fabrics. s4: i interned with a renowned fashion designer. i was asked to research on ready to wear line along with couture, create art installation ideas for their upcoming store based on their brand identity, developed presentation boards for invites and digital media and fdci presentation for upcoming event. i was lucky to experience and work for india couture week collection. shared ideas and developed artworks for the collection, selected artworks were sent for sampling where i worked on khakha making, creative surface development, provided colour and material options, finishing and fittings for the show, packing garments and sending to the show venue. on the day of fashion show, i worked back stage and looked after immediate alterations, lineups, immediate changes required. s5: my interest was to work in an export house and i worked for a us brand in woven category. i was responsible for developing surfaces using different embellishment materials and colours. i was also looking after placement of orders for computerized embroidery, trims, and fabrics. buyer’s brief was handed over to me to work accordingly. s6: my role in the export house required me to conduct research on trend directions, get the samples made, and look after sourcing of various materials and development of surfaces and embroidery designs as per buyer requirement. the findings revealed that although students worked in design department in the organization, their roles and responsibilities differed depending upon the kind of organization. ones working under a designer/ design house received greater inputs in designing collections, exposure to fashion week activities, design development process. they worked on single piece and achieving highest level of quality and craftsmanship in making that one piece. on the other hand, students who worked in a brand house or export house were exposed to the process and operations related to mass manufacture of garments based on buyer’s brief. the focus was on following buyer brief, sourcing materials, sample development and approvals and finally production. most students reported that the role and tasks fulfilled the aim of internship program as the tasks offered were valuable, interesting, allowed them to use their skills and knowledge and focused on learning (johari and bradshaw, 2008). expectations: s2: i expected to learn the overall working of a brand manufacturer, wanted to learn about techpack, fabrics, colour combinations and embroideries for mass market’. i learnt more than what i had expected. i was involved in meetings with buyers, allowed to handle sampling unit independently. i gained knowledge about different types of software. s6: i wanted to learn how a company works, specifically design department, in an organized sector. i was assigned to design and sampling department where my projects related to designing garments and sample development allowed me to understand the systems and processes followed in an export house. s7: though i worked in a brand house of my choice, my expectations were not met. i had high hopes from internship. i was engaged in making excel sheets and tags besides assisting my mentor in sample development. i looked forward to greater inputs in design. s8: my experience at brand house was quite disappointing. i was engaged as assistant designer in the company. i expected to learn about different processes involved in production. no exposure was given on pricing of products and sourcing. s9: before joining my internship, i expected to learn and develop understanding of how a designer labels works. i was more than happy when i was selected by a design house as an intern. i developed designs, embroideries for their upcoming collection and looked after design development to sampling to production of final garments. i never expected such detailed exposure. s12: i expected greater design inputs and relevant tasks. it was disappointing when many times i was asked to lift and shift heavy boxes or do tasks that did not relate to my learning expectations. the interview responses indicated that internship expectations were partially met for some of the students due to unfavorable experiences. though students had joined their preferred organizations, the tasks and exposure provided did not match their expectations. experiences: s8: i got opportunity to visit various factories and interact with vendors. the negative aspect was long working hours and 6 days/ week. s2: received appreciation and earned respect for my work. i have been asked to join post completion of my degree programme. i did not have any negative experience. s10: at the brand house, i had the freedom of exploring the resources to develop collection. but during internship, while getting my samples stitched, sample master left the job and i had to request him endlessly to develop my samples. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 501-509 508 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group this caused enormous mental stress and developed negativity in me. i was frustrated but somehow, i was able to manage before completion of my internship. s11: i was able to experience botha design house and an export house working as my designer also had export division. on the negative, i was frustrated as initially i was assigned to home department. secondly hr teams were mismanaged and sometimes rude to me. s12: it was a 360 degree experience at the export house where i learnt about design, sampling, quality, getting orders approved corrections and overall functioning. looking at negative side of my experience, i can say it was bad. lots of physical activity with no breaks or relaxing time in between. they just wanted work. we were treated as workers sometimes. s13: i was appreciated by my mentor for my managerial skills and getting work done on time. in my initial days, i misplaced one pattern of a garment which was to be developed urgently for buyer meet. my mentor yelled at me. i really felt insulted in front of others. s14: the internship has helped me utilize my institutional learning, brought greater clarity to my career goals and preparedness. involvement in variety of tasks gave me greater confidence about my strengths and abilities. s15: the experience cannot be attained merely by reading books in closed settings of an institution. i learnt presentation skills, understanding buyer requirement, work under pressure, maintain time lines, and overcome challenges. working in sampling department required me to interact with different people thus, enhancing my interpersonnel skills and people management skills. in fact, i considered myself more refined now. s16: internship is an opportunity to learn those aspects of garment industry functioning that cannot be learnt through text books. the professional environment is all-together different from theoretical lectures. it is full of challenges that are tackled on daily basis. it was really tough time for me when i joined internship as i was not able to cope up with time lines, did mistakes as well. my mentor was always rude and rarely appreciated my work. the views indicate that internship experience has been a mix of positive and negative experiences. through educational learning, students are only able to get some idea of how industry functions and they develop high expectations. the gap between their expectations and experiences can affect their interest in learning, motivation, self-initiative and may develop a laid back attitude among students. 5.5. suggested improvements for a successful internship study found that respondents considered 2 month duration as a short period for experiential learning. it is suggested that the internship duration should be increased to 4 -6 months. internship should be structured and designed using a cooperative approach between academia and industry. mentors should avoid giving mundane tasks. in fact, depending upon the strengths and weaknesses of the student intern, exciting and challenging tasks should be designed (blumenfeld et al., 1991). valuable and detailed feedback will help student to bring better understanding and clarity. respectful treatment and appreciation will motivate student intern to take initiative, generate interest, act responsibly, become loyal and be enthusiastic. continuous support from academic and industry mentors will foster clarity of thought since the learning process is constantly monitored. the mentors should act as facilitators (johari and bradshaw, 2008). academic mentors should brief and prepare the students for internship. lack of understanding about company and kind of work expected from students acts as a hurdle in their performance. academia should work in close connection with industry to identify and incorporate latest as well as future skills in their curricula and internship objectives. an internship cell needs to be incorporated that solely works in tandem with industry by keeping a track of changing job roles, skill and knowledge requirements, internship openings, changes happening in fashion industry, negotiates with companies for motivational stipend scheme, create a repository of local, national and global companies with their internship requirements, conduct ‘fashion industry requirement awareness seminars’ for students, develop formats that are mailed to students to find their preferences, mapping of student preferences with industry requirements, conduct skill and knowledge test to find best studentcompany internship match. these suggestions can definitely bring about a drastic change in students perceptions and expectations enabling them to have better internship experiences. 6. conclusion the findings portrayed that perceptions of students varied as far as their expectations from internship program at fashion companies was concerned. each student had their own thought process while approaching and selecting the company. three themes emerged: improvement in ksa, interest in experiential learning, and greater exposure in design field. our findings are supported by lee and woo (2016) who also found that students considered internships as ‘an opportunity for hands on experience, qualification for employment, and new beginning’. as an important outcome, the study found that internship experience proved to be a highly valuable experience for fashion design students as growth was observed in knowledge, skill and attitude, clarity of job roles and responsibilities, types of operations conducted in various departments and actual functioning of the organization, enhanced employment opportunities, networking with potential employers (petrillose and montgomery, 1997; ju et al., 1998; schutte, 2007). fashion industry is one that demands long working hours, high level of commitment, motivated and selfdriven work force. internships foster overall development of students through experiential learning and develop ability to correlate their institutional learning with real world working, increased awareness of job roles, responsibilities, processes, and career prospects (kozar and hiller, 2015). negative experiences during internship can be a loss to fashion industry as such experiences may discourage students from building a career in the industry (callan, 1997). disappointments arise due to mundane tasks, irrelevant tasks, simple and nonchallenging tasks (lee and woo, 2016). contrary to this, literature also shows that positive experiences during internships strengthen the desire to work in industry (ju et al., 1998). students should take their internship opportunity quite seriously depending upon their competencies. they should select internship position that enables them to develop maximum competencies (walo, 2001). the possibility of student asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 501-509 509 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group getting absorbed in same company after graduation implies a successful internship. it’s a window for future career prospects (collins, 2002). study found that design process, fabric knowledge followed by pattern making and garment construction were the academic inputs that had maximum utilization in their job roles. they also specified knowledge gained, skills enhanced and attitude developed during 2 month internship program. maintaining a journal of daily tasks helped them identify and track the progress of their tasks, flexible learning environment allowed experimentation (stanforth, 2009). it was also found that students rated internship experience as ‘good to very good’. students were satisfied with the daily tasks given to them and their learning experience. study showed positive influence on students’ perceptions. references blumenfeld, p.c., e. soloway, r.w. marx, j.s. krajcik, m. guzdial and a. palincsar, 1991. motivating project-based learning: sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. educational psychologist, 26(3-4): 369-398.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1991.9653139. burns, m., 2013. undergraduate internship expectations: strategic encouragement of student involvement. inquiries journal/ student pulse, 5(12). bye, e. and k.l. labat, 2005. an integrated strategy for an apparel design curriculum. journal of family and consumer sciences, 97(4): 6065. callan, r., 1997. supervised work experience in europe: a profile of uk undergraduate perceptions. international journal of contemporary hospitality management, 9(1): 35-39. collins, a.b., 2002. gateway to the real 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destination: a study of experiential education, reflection and cognitive development. journal of cooperative education and internships, 41(1): 118-128. stanforth, n., 2009. fashion merchandising internships for the millennial generation. international journal of fashion design, technology and education, 2(2-3): 91-99.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17543260903348991. walo, m., 2001. assessing the contribution of internship in developing australian tourism and hospitality students’ management competencies. asia-pacific journal of cooperative education, 2(2): 12-28. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 86 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 86-92, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.86.92 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teacher retention: a review of policies for motivating rural basic school teachers in ghana phinihas acheampong1 juliana fosua gyasi2 ( corresponding author) 1,2phd student, faculty of education, school of educational technology, beijing normal university, china abstract the study primarily explored the challenges of teaching in rural basic schools in ghana. qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews and document analyses were used as data collection instruments. the participants for the study included six educational field workers which constituted a district education officer (circuit supervisor), two head teachers and three classroom teachers. priority of the findings was highlighted on the provision of accommodation with adequate installation of lighting facility, potable drinking water, and transport facilities such as a vehicle, motorbike and bicycle to ease the living constraints of teachers who serve in underprivileged learning communities. again, professional development programs were found relevant to encourage and promote teachers working in remote areas. results of the study shown that rural basic school teachers do not see why they should receive equivalent conditions of service as their peers who teach in urban schools. it is therefore recommended that, about one-third of teachers‟ salary should be apportioned as additional incentive to motivate teachers who serve in rural basic schools. again, special student-trainees recruitment strategies should be adopted to recruit potential teachers from underprivileged communities to receive training and serve their people. this can effectively be implemented when the district sponsorship scheme project is restored to enhance better deployment of teachers in underserved schools. keywords: teacher retention, motivation, supervision, rural teachers. jel classification: education and research institutions (government policy128) citation | phinihas acheampong; juliana fosua gyasi (2019). teacher retention: a review of policies for motivating rural basic school teachers in ghana. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 86-92. history: received: 22 october 2018 revised: 26 november 2018 accepted: 2 january 2019 published: 21 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 87 2. teacher retention and attrition .................................................................................................................................................. 87 3. methods ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 88 4. discussion and findings ................................................................................................................................................................. 89 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 91 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 92 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.86.92&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/385 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2817-3600 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/385 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2817-3600 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/385 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2817-3600 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 86-92 87 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction teacher attrition in basic schools is a global phenomenon which affects the quality of education in africa. stakeholders of education have expressed concerns on the rapid rate at which some teachers vacate from the profession and the consistent absenteeism in rural schools. there have been instances where teacher retention policies were quite substantive in sustaining and improving the teaching workforce. it seems that such policies have not fully been implemented to overcome the canker. though the problem is found country wide, the most alarming cases are seemingly prevalent in the rural areas. the impression is that about 66% of rural dwellers are partially deprived from having quality education (world bank, 2014) a situation that is fervently criticized by international organizations‟ such as world bank, undp (united nations development program), unesco (united nations education for scientific and cultural organization) and fao (food and agricultural organization). the national education for all (efa) review report in (2014), cites insufficient financial and material resources, poor road networks linking deprived areas, inadequate trained teachers especially in remote and underserved villages, poor credibility of reliable data in schools, frequent intruders of outsiders in educational issues, inadequate school infrastructure and facilities, and indifference in political will power as the major challenging factors of teacher retention in ghana (unesco, 2014). with respect for attaining the efa and millennium development goals (mdgs) in ghana, teacher education programs were intensified to nurture qualified teachers and maintained a well-balanced distribution of teachers in all parts of the country. again, programs such as school feeding, capitation grant (ministry of education, 2013; adam et al., 2016) distribution of free uniforms and exercise books were implemented to enforce the achievement of strategic development plan in 2015. it must be emphasized that, remarkable improvement has been seen in basic school enrolment, which could be attributed to the implementation of the said policies. in the (education sector performance report, 2015) the statistical analysis of the net enrolment rate (ner) of the three levels of ghanaian basic school indicates 82.7% in kindergarten, 91% in primary and 49% in junior high school. comparatively, there has been 27% increase ner in kg from 2010/2015, 7.4% in primary education and a steady growth of 1.5% in jhs (espr, 2015). in order to secure enrolment with meaningful learning, the quality of the teaching workforce should correspond with the enrolment outcome. however, in ghana, the plight of curriculum implementers who teach in disadvantaged areas are not taken into proper consideration. as a result, such schools are more likely to suffer the consequences of teacher instability, which affects the academic performance of most pupils. moreover, the very few teachers who accept postings in such dilapidated areas do not utilize the full instructional hours creating vacant classes and underutilized contact hours. although there is an outstanding teacher retention challenges in basic schools in the whole country, this research seeks to focus on teacher retention problems in rural areas. the study is meaningful in promoting teacher retention in ghana. it seeks to bring to light the devastating effect of teacher attrition rate in rural communities. in addition to this, the study endeavors to revive existing policies, which will motivate teacher sustainability. through the findings of the study, the community and other teacher associations such as gnat (ghana national association of teachers), nagrat (national association of graduate teachers), non-governmental organizations (unesco, 2015) parent teacher associations (pta) and other private business cohorts will see the need to support the government in managing education. it must be noted that all these can be achieved effectively when educational providers and beneficiaries of education recognize the usefulness of knowledge as the bedrock for developing every country. 2. teacher retention and attrition retention has extensively been used in different ways by a diverse school of thought. from the dictionary of merriam-webster, it is described “as the act or ability to keep or retain something or someone”. in the context of teacher education, it refers to the ability of an educational institution to sustain the teaching workforce from the point of recruitment until retirement. these mean educational institutions are not only responsible for recruiting, training and deploying but ensuring the stability of the teaching workforce. for the purpose of the study, teacher stability refers to avoidance of rampant job vacation and unnecessary transfer of teachers from rural to urban schools or from teaching field to another employment. a review on teacher attrition by international task force on teachers for efa (2010) defines attrition as “all permanent losses of teachers from the teaching profession, for whatever reason”. the paper highlighted voluntary resignation and retirement as the two major driving forces for teacher attrition in many countries, which was described as unpredictable and predicable departure. the impact of teacher attrition is prevalent on high cost of recruiting, training, hiring and professional development, which adversely affect the financial stability of the country. in a broader example, developed countries, such as the united states, spends billions of dollars only to fight the menace of teacher attrition. for instance, the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) reported that an amount of three billion dollars was estimated to have been spent on teacher attrition in the united states (as cited in karsenti and collin (2013)). in a similar scenario, the ministry of education science and sports (2008) disclosed that an amount of $100,000,000 was budgeted to cater for the cost of teacher absenteeism problems alone in ghana. 2.1. challenges of teaching in rural schools according to fao et al. (2003) rural areas are defined by certain specific features. the document emphasizes that rural areas have low human settlement, which has a population of about 5-10,000 people with the main occupation being agriculture. moreover, rural areas are detached from urban areas with long distances and most errands are embarked with high transactional cost. these features of rural areas do not differ from rural areas in ghana, but most typical rural areas are scattered villages separated from one another. ghana has about 26.76 million populations in which 66% are dwellers of remote areas. schools in such areas are built within the center of the scattered villages to allow equal accessibility. pupils cover distances more than 45minutes by foot to enable them reach some schools to acquire knowledge. the problem is that it is sometimes difficult to reach school going children living in remote areas for educational purposes (wb, 2008). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 86-92 88 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group basic necessities of life such as water, food and shelter are difficult to attain in remote dwelling schools. occupants of rural areas build their houses most often with the aim of providing shelter for their families. migrant workers like teachers and nurses find accommodation challenging in such places. few workers are known to reside in government or state houses such as the social security and national insurance trust (ssnit) apartment in urban areas. however, in the rural areas, government has made little effort to provide accommodation for workers especially teachers. this makes teachers find it difficult to get standard lodging apartment. the very few available houses for rent are mostly unconducive for teachers‟ habitation, coupled with lacking facilities such as electricity. in addition to this phenomenon, road networks to most rural areas are very deplorable making teachers who want to attend school from distant towns impossible (espr, 2015). world bank report in 2008 confirms that issues of this nature have proven government effort futile in deploying and sustaining teachers in remote areas. it is clear that such poor working environment in rural areas creates huge setbacks for teacher retention. novice teachers who accept postings in rural areas find their way out within a couple of one or two years. taylor and mulhall (2001) contend that remote areas create limited prospects for job development. teachers become more isolated and are detached from workshops and trainings that improve their professional development. in order to improve the quality of education, there is the need for adequate teacher preparation program, which should focus on both teaching pedagogy and content (mulkeen et al., 2007). the paper further asserts that workshops and orientation programs such as in-service program enable upgrading of untrained teacher‟s qualifications, provides short-term courses on contents and, teaching skills and provide masters‟ degree courses for qualified teachers. however, the significance of in-service programs to motivate teachers to remain in the teaching profession should also consider the trade-offs and implications of teacher supply and finances (unesco & iicba, 2016). for example, in-service program opportunities for teachers resonate with promotions (salary adjustment) and migration of teaching positions. further, research in this field has shown that, a greater percentage of teachers has shown preference for teaching in urban schools which are more effective in teaching and learning practices than in rural schools. this is due to the fact that life and job satisfaction in urban schools are far better than rural areas (akyeampong and lewin, 2002). loeb et al. (2012) revealed four key findings of the relationship between school effectiveness through recruitment, assignment, development and retention of teachers. the paper contends that schools that are effective attract and hire quality teachers, receive equitable distribution of teachers, improve job professional development (hedges, 2000) and retain quality teachers. based on the assertions of loeb et al. (2012) it is clear that rural schools in ghana do not have certain characteristics which attract potential teachers. however, teachers in rural schools become less and less effective due to the absence of in-service training and subsequent workshops, which enhance professional development. 3. methods the study employed semi-structured interview as a qualitative research designed for data collection. the researcher prepared an interview guide, which served as an outline or framework for adequate questioning and response. the interview process was made flexible to solicit in-depth response from the participants (bryman, 2008). though the researcher adopted semi-structured interview, questions were not strictly followed as structured in the outline. bryman recommends that, researchers who pick on responses of their interviewee receive detailed description of both anticipated and unanticipated responses. this paved way for thorough retrieval of information, which was relevant for the study as participants unfolds their story. because the concept of teacher retention is an absolute phenomenological study, the researcher guided participants to describe in rich detail the context of the challenges rural teachers encounters in remote areas. this revealed the particularity and complexity of human experiences in the context of teacher retention in ghana (lecompte and preissle, 1993). according to some renowned scholars in the field of qualitative research, purposefully selecting participant for data collection is regarded as the best sampling approach (lecompte and preissle, 1993; patton, 2002). patton (2015) also suggests that purposeful sampling provide the means of “selecting information-rich cases to study, cases that by their nature and substance will illuminate the inquiry question being investigated” (pp. 264). this sampling approach was adopted by the researcher to gain detailed insights and understanding of selected participants in the study. having this in mind, the researcher selected 6 participants from one (1) deprived district out of the seventy-five (75) underprivileged districts in ghana. the participants for the study consisted of males and females who were field practitioners as teachers and educational administrators. they included two rural basic head teachers from different schools, one district education officer (circuit supervisor) and three classroom teachers who have served for more than three years in rural basic school. this was done to gain the general perception and experience of the challenges of teaching in remote schools and the possible strategies that can enhance teachers‟ sustainability in such places. in all, participants were interviewed through face-to-face interaction. each interview session lasted for at least 45 minutes. to enhance confidentiality and anonymity, names of participant were pseudonym with alphabets starting from „a‟ to „f‟. again, a review of the document was done to serve as secondary source of data, which enhanced analysis of policies under the ministry of education in teacher recruitment, training, deployment and retention. this document includes national and international publications (unesco, ges, oecd, moe etc.) reports on education projects and teacher development. for the purpose of data analysis, the researcher gathered responses from participant through field notes, tape recordings and jottings. a complete reading and listening of the text and audio was done which enhanced easy coding of the text. the data was categorized through mind-maps by which respective themes were derived for further interpretation (hycner, 1985). participants were given the scripts to read through after the coding to verify if they had not been misinterpreted. this was done to ensure that responses provided by the participant were valid and the data gathered were reliable respectively (patton, 2015). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 86-92 89 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion and findings three main themes were developed from the interview and document analysis conducted during the study. these themes are: categories of basic school teachers in ghana, challenges of rural teachers and strategies for mitigating teacher attrition in rural basic schools. 4.1. category of basic school teachers according to the document analysis, ghana has undertaken several teacher education reforms to improve the quality of education in the country. the category of teaching force which has been built over the years include 4year certificate „a‟ teacher, certificate „b‟ teacher, 2-year post-secondary certificate „a‟ teacher, 3-year post secondary certificate „a‟ teacher, 2-year specialist/3-year diploma teacher, the graduate teacher, national service personnel and the pupil teacher (agbeko, 2007). it must be clarified that in ghana, there are two main categories of basic school teachers which form the workforce for the education service. the trained teachers have received formal training in colleges of education, distance or sandwich programs while the untrained teachers normally referred as pupil teachers are those who have been recruited from high school, polytechnics and universities to teach but do not have any formal teaching training. again, trained teachers employed by government of ghana are permanent professional teachers while the untrained teachers are recruited as temporal workers whose contract are renewable annually based on job satisfaction, efficiency and existing vacancies in the service. participant „a‟ confirmed that; my school has 14 teaching staff with 7 trained teachers while the rest are untrained. the untrained teachers were recruited with high school certificate while the trained teachers were posted to the school directly after completing teacher training college. in ghana, the current recommended minimum qualification for teaching in basic school is diploma certificate. this is as a result of the upgraded teacher training colleges into diploma awarding institutions since 2000. this has immensely attracted and increased the teacher supply in the country. again, further policies were implemented to enable cert „a‟ and untrained teachers to upgrade their qualification to diploma level. programs such as sandwich courses, untrained teachers diploma in basic education (utdbe) and other distance educational programs aimed at improving teacher reputation, status and retention especially in rural areas (asare-danso, 2014). participant „a‟ who heads one of the rural schools confirmed that; pupil teachers in my staff are hastily pursuing further studies to upgrade their professional status to at least diploma level. this was as a result of the government intervention to withdraw untrained teachers who had not been formally nurtured on teaching pedagogy. i must confess it is a good initiative to improve the quality of education. the problem is that most pupil teachers who successfully complete their program are unwilling to work in the rural areas. the rural schools end up losing their few teachers to the semi and urban area schools. 4.2. indicators for public basic schools in ghana, by levels the table below depicts teacher indicators in public basic schools, by levels. results from the three levels show that, percentage of trained teachers has improved significantly over time from 32% in 2009/10 to 61.7% as stipulated in the espr (2015). in the espr (2013) 95% of teacher retention were estimated to be achieved nationwide. it can be inferred from the statistics that about one third of teacher‟s projection has not yet been accomplished. this might be due to factors such as the withdrawal of trainees‟ allowance, lack of incentivized schemes for rural teachers and poor remuneration. again, statistics on teacher deployment in basic education sector indicated that kindergarten schools suffer high attrition rate of trained teachers (47%) than primary (56%) and jhs (78%). table-1. teacher indicators for public basic schools in ghana by levels national deprived districts kg 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 ptr 37 34 35 54 52 52 pttr 72 62 56 159 138 112 %trained teachers 52 55 61.7 34 37 47 primary 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 ptr 33 32 34 39 38 40 pttr 48 46 45 78 77 72 % trained teachers 69 70 75 50 50 56 jhs 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 ptr 16 15 16 20 19 20 pttr 19 18 18 27 27 26 % trained teachers 84 84 87.8 7 72 78 source: adapted from espr (2015). 4.3. challenges of rural teachers the deplorable nature of rural environment makes rural teaching unsatisfactory. the interview conducted revealed accommodation, electricity, market, health care facility, network (internet), potable drinking water and feeling of isolation as major factors of teacher attrition in rural areas. participant „b‟ commented that, the major challenge of my school is accommodation. we have teachers’ quarters (bungalow) which has five single bedrooms that is supposed to house 14 teaching staff. due to inadequacy of lodging places most of the teachers reside in towns which are more than 5km away from the school. some of the rural schools do not have accommodation for teachers at all. this leads to excessive absenteeism and loss of contact hours, which eventually affect the quality of education in the country. the case becomes exacerbated as a result of the deplorable nature of the road. participant d confirmed, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 86-92 90 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group most drivers do not want to ply their vehicles on such roads. it therefore becomes difficult for us to attend school regularly and punctually. the situation looks ‘okay’ for those who use motorbikes as a means for transportation to school. on the other hand, the cost is unbearable due to high cost of maintenance and exorbitant fuel prices. comparatively, most health care facilities built in rural areas have quarters (bungalows) attached to the facility, which provides shelter for health practitioners. why is the case different from teacher education? when will basic school teachers in ghana be considered for such labor incentives? until now, state housing project for public servants in the country has not been expanded to cover workers in urban areas not to talk of public rural servants. the very few housing projects initiated with the „tax payers‟ money have been abandoned uncompleted under the mercy of sun and rain (example, the affordable housing project initiated under the auspices of ex-president john agyekum kuffour in 2004). some rural teachers were asked if their financial contribution towards teachers fund in respective teacher associations is sufficient for securing accommodation. participant „f‟ responded that; the ghana national association of teachers (gnat) and coalitions of concern teachers association are the two main teacher associations in ghana for basic education. efforts have been made by gnat for example to support teachers with housing facilities since the establishment of teachers’ fund in 1998. however, these proposals have not provided the teacher with viable financing options to enable them to participate. the findings of the study are consistent with efa report which cited insufficient financial and material resources, poor road networks linking deprived areas, inadequate trained teachers especially in remote and underserved villages, poor credibility of reliable data in schools, inadequate school infrastructure and facilities, and indifference in political will power as the major challenging factors of teacher retention in ghana (unesco, 2014). 4.4. challenges of rural head teachers findings from the study indicated that rural basic school principals face uncountable obstacles in the process of discharging their duties. administratively, heads of rural basic schools complain bitterly of high absenteeism and lateness on the part of both students and teachers. according to the response of participant „f‟, rural teachers‟ use of flimsy excuses such as attending to hospital, withdrawing money from the bank, going for lectures, inability to get transport (car) to school as an excuse to absent themselves. education sector performance report in 2013 gives statistical overview of teacher attendances in 41 deprived districts. table 2 teacher attendances at the district level (41 deprived districts) kg (%) primary (%) jhs (%) overall attendance rate 78 79 82 average district attendance rate 78 79 81 highest district attendance rate 90 90 91 lowest district attendance rate 65 66 58 source: espr (2013) the figure above illustrates the attendance rate of 41 deprived districts in ghana. it can be deduced that the average attendance rate of teachers increased in relation to increasing levels of education. teachers‟ attendance rate in kg (78%), primary (79%) and jhs (82%) has a rough average of 20% absenteeism over time. this confirms the response given by headmaster „b‟ which stipulates that: high absenteeism occurs in my school usually during the beginning and ending of the week, mondays and friday’s to be precise. at least in every week, three to four teachers of my staff absent themselves from school. due to this rampant absenteeism, scheme of work is inefficiently completed. perhaps, it affects the academic performance of the school. it is clear from this point that the lowest deprived district attendance rate of 58% in junior high school (jhs) is a transparent indication of high absenteeism rate in rural basic schools in ghana which adversely affect the academic performance of students. what is unbeknown to educational stakeholders is that such negative behaviors have greater influence on the overall performance of basic education certificate examination (bece). table 3. bece „above average‟ rates by deprived and non-deprived districts, 2014 district type subjects english (%) mathematics (%) science (%) social studies (%) deprived districts 8.3 13 10.3 9.4 non-deprived districts 26.3 26.3 25.4 24.9 national 23 23 22 23 source: espr (2015) figure 1.2 indicates the „above average‟ rates of bece statistics of deprived and non-deprived districts in ghana. from the analysis, it can be construed that non-deprived districts with adequate and qualified teachers perform better than deprived districts. this might be due to various factors such as high retention rate in the urban schools. perhaps, the working environment is conducive with facilities such as stable electricity supply, availability of internet, accommodation, and portable drinking water. loeb et al. (2012) confirms that schools with favorable working conditions are capable of attracting quality teachers. this affects the quality of education in non-deprived districts as exhibited on the table. 3.5. salary and other incentives several packages attract and retain teachers to teach in rural basic schools. distribution of solar lamps, bicycles and motorbikes motivate teachers to accept postings and transfers to rural areas (moe, 2015). again, in 2001 the government of ghana instituted district sponsorship scheme, which was meant to support (fund) teacher trainees to attract and retain them to rural areas. this policy committed novice teachers to accept postings to serve their respective sponsored district for a minimum period of three years (itft, 2010). however, sponsored teachers were made to refund the sponsorship when they decline postings. in effect, the policy promoted balanced distribution of asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 86-92 91 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teachers in both rural and urban schools. the policy has failed in recent years due to the financial constraint of the country. as confirmed by participant „c‟ (education officer): since the cancellation of district sponsorship scheme, deployment of rural teachers hasn’t been flexible. novice teachers feel uncommitted under any binding laws to serve in a rural school. as a district education office, one of our policies is to post teachers who are fresh from college to serve in remote areas for the first three years. contrary, due to lack of motivating packages, teachers are unwilling to accept postings. the worst of it all is the recent withdrawal of trainee allowances in 2015. most of them complain motivationally cheated for sponsoring their own education while compelled to serve in an underserving environment. a report released by gnat/tewu (gnat/tewu of ghana trade union congress, 2009) on policy recommendations for achieving efa emphatically state that, rural teachers should be given additional 40% monetary incentives as a motivation. it is intriguing to note that the policy has not been considered for implementation since 2009. however, there are successful stories of sister african countries like botswana, uganda, lesotho, zambia, and gambia where their governments pay additional allowance to teachers in „hardship schools‟ to improve teacher‟s retention (itft, 2010). 3.6. challenges of educational officers: influence of opinion leaders furthermore, district education office also faces the problem of interference from the opinion leaders in the society. favoritism and nepotism practices have become a norm in our society today. teacher trainees who are sent to deprived areas are able to lobby their way out through some educational officers, chiefs, and other dignitaries to change their undesired posting. a district circuit supervisor (cs) commented: at the moment, i have a case where one teacher posted to a remote area in my circuit has been reposted to a town (urban area) through the influence of an opinion leader in the community. lots of such cases occur at the district level in the process of deploying teachers. this causes interruption of teacher stability and perhaps demeans the work of human resource personal in charge of postings. also, there are sometimes internal manipulations such as acceptance of bribes from trainees in order to be posted in urban schools. 3.7. poor supervision findings from the study indicated that there are poor monitoring and supervision by the district education officers. trekking officers find it cumbersome to visit schools for supervisory purposes due to lack of a mobility facility. a district education officer said: since three years ago (2013), trekking officers in my district have not received supervisory allowance. we use our scanty salary for transportation to supervise teachers in rural areas. honestly, due to lack of financial support the rate at which supervision should be embarked is very low compared with some years ago. teachers are therefore not well monitored in their school attendance and delivery of lessons. i believe this go a long way to affect the academic success of the students living in such places. again, it was realized from the study that, supervisors should visit schools within their district for not less than 12 times in a term. but due to mobility challenges, supervision occurs twice in a term, which usually takes place at the beginning and ending of the term especially in the rural basic schools. 3.8. teacher retention: the way forward scrapped allowances of trainees should be restored to attract prospective students to attend teacher training colleges. though, teacher trainees are self-funded momentarily, but the issue of endangering future enrolment has fully not been considered. for instance, prospective students are more likely to value attaining university degree than college diploma. the reason is that students who are eligible to enroll in teacher colleges similarly qualify for four-year university degree program. it presumably makes no sense to spend their scanty resources on the former which has a low prestige in terms of value of certificate and job opportunities. again, the district education office should improve on induction and mentoring programs for novice teachers. mentoring programs, for example, help fresh teachers to adapt easily to their new environment especially in rural areas. the in-service educational training (inset) programs should be reinforced to help develop teachers‟ professional competencies. if teachers in rural schools achieve job satisfaction with respect to their professional development which is equivalent to their counterpart in urban areas, they will be more likely to retain in rural schools. moreover, district sponsorship schemes should be revisited to commit sponsored teachers to serve for at least three to five years in their first postings before transfers can be granted. allowances due for supervision should be paid on time to enhance frequent monitoring of rural teachers‟ attitude towards work by district supervisors. education officers should refrain from bribery and corruption attitude, which impedes effective deployment of teachers. rural teachers should be given special recognition such as awards and promotion to motivate their service in deprived schools. education officers should make sure that study leave is granted to deserving teachers who merit it. 4. conclusion several efforts have been done to sustain and improve teacher retention in ghanaian basic schools but other factors impede teachers‟ interest to retain in the profession. there is high attrition and absenteeism rate due to dissatisfaction of teachers especially those serving in underserved villages. this goes a long way to affect the lives of innocent children who reside in dilapidated learning environment. to promote teachers job efficiency in rural areas, the government has to consider making the teaching service attractive by providing accommodation, transport for teachers and supervisors, incentives (salary), restoration of district sponsorship schemes and teacher trainees‟ allowances. these policies when implemented fully will re-enforce the achievement of education 2030 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 86-92 92 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group agenda which seeks to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all” (world education forum, 2015). references adam, s., d. adom and a.b. bediako, 2016. the major factors that influence basic school dropout in rural ghana: the case of asunafo south district in the brong ahafo region of ghana. journal of education and practice, 7(28): 1-8. agbeko, j.k., 2007. pre service teacher training and its challenges: the current situation in ghana. nue journal of international 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publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.moe.gov.gh/assets/medi/docs/finaleducationsectorreport-2013.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001329/132994e.pdf http://www.teachersforefa.unesco.org/v2/phocadownload/teacher_attrition.pdf http://www.unesco.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/world-education-forum-korea.pdf http://www.unesco.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/world-education-forum-korea.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002437/243724e.pdf 397 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 397-402, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.397.402 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimistic on creativity in team and individual sports activities of trabzon university students elif aydin faculty of physical education and sport sciences, gumuhshaneh university, turkey. abstract the main purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimistic on creativity of team and individual athletes of trabzon university. in order to measure the spiritual intelligence, the optimism and the creativity variable, the standard questionnaires (amram and dryer, 2008), (webber and smokowski, 2018) and (torrance, 2000) were used respectively. the reliability of the questionnaires was also evaluated by cronbach's alpha test, respectively. the cronbach's alpha coefficient for the spiritual intelligence, optimism and creativity questionnaires were 0.75, 0.83, and 0.81 respectively. the questionnaires were comprised of a sample of 148 students from trabzon university: 74 of team athletes such as soccer, volleyball, basketball and handball as well as 74 individual athletes such as tennis, badminton, track and field, swimming, etc.. the findings showed that: spiritual intelligence and optimism has a significant effect on creativity of all team and individual athletes. spiritual intelligence and optimism has a significant effect on creativity of individual athletes. team and individual athletes have a significant difference in optimism and creativity variables. so the observed significant difference was due to more creativity of team sportsmen. keywords: spiritual intelligence, optimism, creativity, team sports, individual sports. citation | elif aydin (2019). the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimistic on creativity in team and individual sports activities of trabzon university students. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 397-402. history: received: 5 april 2019 revised: 10 may 2019 accepted: 19 june 2019 published: 15 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 398 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 399 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 399 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 401 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 401 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.397.402&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/923 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6769-6036 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/923 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6769-6036 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/923 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6769-6036 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 397-402 398 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimistic on creativity of team and individual athletes of trabzon university. 1. introduction creativity in its special meaning as the supreme mental characteristic of its productive man reflects the balanced and transcendent growth of personality (almajali, 2009) and responds to the ever-increasing need of man to break down the impasse and go beyond (brink, 2004). psychologists believe that creativity is one of the constituents of the performance or the function of the mind (kalischuk and thorpe, 2002) although it is difficult to measure and possibly impossible (luftig, 2000). in the contemporary world, having creative thoughts is a factor in individual and social development (macdonald and bigelow, 2010) and the education of those who are able to face and solve problems based on creative thinking and are always creative in their activities is the ultimate goal of developing societies (matthews, 2011). sports activities, like all other activities, require creativity to progress and achieve better results and achieve desired goals. if athletes and physical education students can not be creative enough in their sporting and educational activities, and if they are faced with problems and problems or in their activities based on existing stereotypes, they will not be able to make stairs and progress is well done. problems in any field can be solved by existing methods and methods, if they were not resolved, or could be solved over time, so that their creativity in applying methods could be used to transpose them and make success available (sindane, 2011). psychological variables such as human intelligence or their psychological characteristics can also affect creativity in their sports activities. therefore, it is necessary to find effective psychological variables in this field by scientific studies and research. spiritual intelligence as well as optimism in individuals and among students are among these variables that seem to have the ability to influence the creativity of physical education students. meaningful, purposeful and satisfying is one of the attributes that can be achieved for people with a lot of spiritual intelligence and by creating spirituality in activities (rostami and hayedeh, 2014). in fact, spirituality in activities describes the experiences of people whose work satisfying, meaningful and purposeful. the experience of spirituality is also accompanied by increased creativity, honesty, trust, and commitment in activities (upadhyay and upadhyay, 2016). in recent years, there has been a lot of evidence and intelligence on the existence of intelligence called spiritual intelligence. according to recent findings, this intelligence is the ultimate in human intelligence and a turning point in this field (silingienė and škėrienė, 2015). today, one of the subjects in the field of individual, social and even occupational activities is the subject of ethics and spiritual capital, we must be able to prove that we are not human beings who think only money, but we are beings that have a certain meaning and meaning in our lives and we seek to find meaning and purpose for our lives (matthews, 2011) spiritual intelligence is the ability to give us the power to see dreams and effort to achieve those dreams. this intelligence is all that we believe in, and the role of beliefs, beliefs and values in the activities we undertake. the intelligence by which we ask questions about fundamental issues in our lives, and with this help, transformation and transformation into life (yang and mao, 2007) the intelligence that we are capable of through actions and methods our functions are broader, richer, more generous and meaningful. it also helps to understand the meaning of our actions and find out which of our actions and behaviors are worth more, and which paths in our lives are worthwhile and worthwhile (kalantarkousheh et al., 2014). also, optimism is also a combination of optimistic attitudes about oneself, people, things, events, and in general the world (matthews, 2011) based on which expectations of good and promising results, based on their abilities, are in the good ones with the health and the root of this optimistic attitude in the style of explanation of individuals (kelberer et al., 2018) if ordinary human perceptions come with a positive self-concept and personal control and an optimistic view of the future, not only in the tidal management of daily life, but also in the face of extreme stressful and life-threatening events, to individuals helps (gabriel et al., 2018). if physical education students have the necessary optimism in their sports activities, appear to have less hurdles by relying on optimistic variable components to employ optimistic methods to solve existing problems or to exercise sports activities (hilary et al., 2016). because they are optimistic about using innovative methods and solutions and their outcomes, and the desire to use these methods is easier for them (shepperd et al., 2017). creativity in sporting activities and their success is a very important factor that can not be neglected in the success of sports victories. there are steps in performing or sports competitions that if a person does not have the creativity and does not have problems and procedures using the innovative method, he can not guarantee progress in exercise, because the use the stereotyped and former methods will have the same results as the previous ones and will be incapable of dealing with new issues. several factors can have a particular impact on creativity in general and athletic creativity, among which psychological variables can not be neglected. types of intelligence, including cultural intelligence, as well as having different personal morals, such as optimism or pessimism in one context, can be important. spiritually intelligent individuals are often mentally restrained and self-restrained, and have a good mental and emotional readiness for creativity, and individuals with more optimism will be more comfortable applying creative approaches to issues. all of these can have different consequences for individual and team sports. in team sports, spiritual intelligence and optimism may have a direct relationship to his creativity, but in team sports, the spiritual intelligence of individuals and their optimism for teamwork and teamwork, or team decisions, will have a dialectical relationship. spiritual intelligence of individuals and their spirituality in the conduct of their activities as well as their optimism may, in addition to their activities affect others, or affect them. hence, team and individual sports will be important in this regard. therefore, in this research, in addition to studying the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimism on creativity in team and individual sports activities of trabzon university students, the possibility of significant difference in spiritual intelligence, optimism and creativity of physical education students in sports team members (football, volleyball, basketball, handball, etc.) and individual (tennis, badminton, diving, swimming, etc.) have been addressed. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 397-402 399 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. materials and methods the present research is applied in terms of the purpose of the research, in terms of method, descriptive and correlation. therefore, in terms of data collection method, the research method is a survey strategy. the statistical population of this research is all physical education students active in team and individual sports of trabzon university, in number of 250, and a sample size of 148 was determined using the morgan table. the statistical sample was stratified random sampling (74 students from the active students in team sports such as football, volleyball, basketball and handball and 74 students in active classes of individual sports such as tennis, badminton, diving, swimming, etc.) are selected among members of the statistical community. in order to measure the spiritual intelligence variable, the standard questionnaire (amram and dryer, 2008) was used to measure the optimism variables by standard questionnaire (webber and smokowski, 2018) and also for measuring the creativity variable in exercise activities standard questionnaire (torrance, 2000). cronbach's alpha coefficient for the spiritual intelligence questionnaire was 0.75, 0.83 for the optimism questionnaire and 0.81 for the creativity questionnaire. for statistical analysis of the research data, spss 20 software and multivariate regression test as well as tindependent groups have been used. 3. findings table-1. the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimism on creativity in individual and team sport activities of trabzon university students. model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) -.437 .321 -1.363 .175 spiritual intelligence .481 .093 .379 5.191 .000 optimism .477 .107 .326 4.471 .000 a. dependent variable: creativity. according to the results of table 1 (considering the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which for both variables "spiritual intelligence" and "optimism" is less than 0.05), and considering the beta coefficients, we can say that the maximum power the prediction with the beta coefficient of 0.379 is related to the spiritual intelligence variable, followed by the "optimism" variable with a beta score of 0.326, which predicts creativity in individual team and individual sports activities of trabzon university students. it can be concluded that the variable "spiritual intelligence" affects and improves slightly more than the "optimism" variable on creativity in team and individual sports activities (all students). table-2. the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimism on creativity in trabzon university students' sports activities. model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) -.864 .379 -2.280 .026 spiritual intelligence .501 .102 .436 4.924 .000 optimism .660 .135 .434 4.895 .000 a. dependent variable: creativity. according to the results of table 2 (considering the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which for both variables "spiritual intelligence" and "optimism" is less than 0.05), and considering the beta coefficients, we can say that the maximum power the prediction with the 0.436 beta coefficient is related to the spiritual intelligence variable, followed by the "optimism" variable with a beta coefficient of 0.434, which predicts creativity in team activities at trabzon university students. it can be concluded that the variable "spiritual intelligence" affects and improves the "optimism" variable on creativity in team sports activities of students. table-3. the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimism on creativity in individual sports activities of trabzon university students. model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) -.328 .514 -.639 .525 spiritual intelligence .452 .153 .328 2.958 .004 optimism .427 .162 .292 2.630 .010 a. dependent variable: creativity. according to the results of table 3 (considering the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which for both variables "spiritual intelligence" and "optimism" is less than 0.05), and considering the beta coefficients, we can say that the maximum power the prediction with the coefficient of 0.328 is related to the spiritual intelligence variable, followed by the "optimism" variable with a beta coefficient of 0.292 that predicts creativity in individual sports activities of trabzon university students. it can be concluded that the variable "spiritual intelligence" affects and improves the "optimism" variable on creativity in solitary sports activities of students. according to the results of table 4, according to the significance level [sig. (2-tailed) or p] which is greater than 0.05, it can be concluded that there is no significant difference between the students of team and individual sports of trabzon university in the spiritual intelligence variable. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 397-402 400 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. study the difference between teacher and individual students of trabzon university in spiritual spirit. independent samples test leven's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2-tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper s p ir it u al . in te ll ig en ce equal variances assumed .021 .885 .736 146 .463 .09009 .12245 -.15192 .33210 equal variances not assumed .736 145.929 .463 .09009 .12245 -.15192 .33210 table-5. studying the difference between the team of trained team and individual sports students of trabzon university in the optimistic variable. independent samples test leven's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper s p ir it u al . in te ll ig en ce equal variances assumed 1.286 .259 2.196 146 .030 .22973 .10463 .02294 .43652 equal variances not assumed 2.196 138.141 .030 .22973 .10463 .02284 .43662 according to the results of the above table 5, according to the significance level [sig. (2-tailed) or p], which is less than 0.05, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference between the students of team and individual sports of trabzon university in the optimistic variable. regarding the average optimism for the group of sports, which was 2.68 and 2.91 for individual sports, it can be concluded that the observed significant difference was due to greater optimism in the group of sports students individually. table-6. studying the difference between trained team and individual sports students of trabzon university in creativity variable in sport activity. independent samples test leven's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean difference std. error 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper s p ir it u al . in te ll ig en ce equal variances assumed .261 .610 -2.347 146 .020 -.43243 .18423 -.79652 -.06834 equal variances not assumed -2.347 143.101 .020 -.43243 .18423 -.79659 -.06828 according to the results of table 6, according to the significance level [sig. (2-tailed) or p], which is less than 0.05, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference between the students of team and individual sports of trabzon university in the creative variable in sports activities. regarding the average of creativity in sports activities for the group of sports, which was 2.67 and for the individual sports group, which was 2.24, it can be concluded that the significant difference observed from the higher level of creativity in sports activities in the case of students, he has been a group of sports. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 397-402 401 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. results in this research, the effect of spiritual intelligence and optimism on creativity in team trained and individual sports activities of trabzon university students was investigated. the results showed that, due to the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which for both variables "spiritual intelligence" and "optimism" was less than 0.05; spiritual intelligence and optimism on creativity had a significant positive effect on teamwork and individual sport activities of trabzon university students (all students). also, the beta coefficient showed that the highest predictive power with the coefficient of 0.379 is related to the spiritual intelligence variable, followed by the "optimism" variable with a beta coefficient of 0.326, which is creativity in teamwork and individual sport activities of students trabzon university is predicting. it could be concluded that the variable "spiritual intelligence" affects and improves slightly more than the "optimism" variable on creativity in teamwork and solitary sports activities (all students). that is, if people have high spiritual intelligence and have a spiritual feel for sporting activities and they have meaning, purpose and satisfaction, and they are optimistic and hopeful about their activities, in relation to sports activities and problems, obstacles and issues will be more creative, and will choose more innovative and innovative ways. in terms of team sports, if people have a high spiritual intelligence and spiritual experience in sporting activities, and they have meaning, goal and satisfaction, as well as the optimism of a team career, and hope to be more creative and more creative and innovative, with sporting activities and problems, obstacles and issues. the results of this section were aligned with almajali (2009); rostami and hayedeh (2014) and baumgartner et al. (2018). also, the results showed that, due to the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which for both variables "spiritual intelligence" and "optimism" was less than 0.05; spiritual intelligence and optimism on creativity had a significant positive effect on the team sports activities of trabzon university students. also, beta coefficient showed that the highest predictive power with the coefficient of 0.436 relates to the variable "spiritual intelligence" and then the "optimism" variable with a coefficient of 0.434 is beta that creativity in team sports activities of university students trabzon is predicted. also, in relation to solitary sports, if people have a high spiritual intelligence and spiritual sensation in their sporting activities, and they have meaning, purpose and satisfaction, as well as optimistic individual activities and hope that they will act more creatively with sporting activities and problems, barriers and issues, and will choose more innovative and innovative ways. it can be concluded that the variable "spiritual intelligence" affects and improves the "optimism" variable on creativity in team sports activities of students. the results of this section were consistent with macdonald and bigelow (2010); kalantarkousheh et al. (2014) and hilary et al. (2016). in the case of individual sports, the results also showed that, due to the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which for both variables "spiritual intelligence" and "optimism" was less than 0.05; the highest predictive power with a coefficient of 0.328 corresponds to the variable "spiritual intelligence" and then the "optimism" variable with beta coefficient 0.292, which predicts creativity in individual sports activities at trabzon university students. it can be concluded that the variable "spiritual intelligence" affects and improves the "optimism" variable on creativity in solitary sports activities of students. the results of this section were consistent with the research by matthews (2011); kalantarkousheh et al. (2014) and yang and mao (2007). the results of the study showed that there was no significant difference between the students of team trained and individual sports of trabzon university in the spiritual intelligence variable in studying the difference between the students of team and individual sports of trabzon university in the spiritual intelligence variable. given the significant level [sig. (2-tailed) or p], which was less than 0.05, said that there was a significant difference between the students of team and individual sports of trabzon university in the optimistic variable, so that the observed significant difference was due to the higher likelihood the nose was for the students of the individual sports band. given the significant level [sig. (2-tailed) or p], which was less than 0.05; there were also significant differences between sport and team students at trabzon university in creating creativity in sports. as a result, there was a significant difference between the more creativity in the sports activities of the students in the team of team sports. references almajali, h.k., 2009. the influence of family upbringing style and locus of control on the creative thinking of preparatory school learners in the united arab emirates. unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of south africa. amram, y. and c. dryer, 2008. the integrated spiritual intelligence scale (isis): development and preliminary validation. 116th annual conference of the american psychological association. boston, ma. available from: http://www.yosiamram.net/papers. baumgartner, j.n., t.r. schneider and a. capiola, 2018. investigating the relationship between optimism and stress responses: a biopsychosocial perspective. personality and individual differences, 129: 114-118.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.03.021. brink, n.h., 2004. locus of control and creativity in late middle childhood. potchefstroom: north-west university. gabriel, c.l., r. vilar, p. hanel, r.p. monteiro, m.g. ribeiro and v.v. gouveia, 2018. optimism scale: evidence of psychometric validity in two countries and correlations with personality. personality and individual differences, 134: 245-251. hilary, g., c. hsu, b. segal and r. wang, 2016. the bright side of managerial over-optimism. journal of accounting and economics, 62(1): 46-64.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacceco.2016.04.001. kalantarkousheh, s.m., n. sharghi, m. soleimani and s. ramezani, 2014. the role of spiritual intelligence on organizational commitment in employees of universities in tehran province, iran. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 140: 499-505.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.460. kalischuk, r.g. and k. thorpe, 2002. thinking creatively: from nursing education to practice. the journal of continuing education in nursing, 33(4): 155-163.available at: https://doi.org/10.3928/0022-0124-20020701-06. kelberer, l.j., m.a. kraines and t.t. wells, 2018. optimism, hope, and attention for emotional stimuli. personality and individual differences, 124: 84-90.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.12.003. luftig, r.l., 2000. an investigation of an arts infusion program on creative thinking, academic achievement, affective functioning, and arts appreciation of children at three grade levels. available from www.eric.ed.gov. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 397-402 402 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group macdonald, n.m. and s. bigelow, 2010. teaching for creativity through fashion design. journal of family and consumer sciences, 102(2): 48-53. matthews, m.l., 2011. connecting creativity and critical thinking to the campaign planning process. journal of communication teacher, 25(1): 61-67.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17404622.2010.527299. rostami, a.m. and c.g. hayedeh, 2014. prediction of marital satisfaction based on spiritual intelligence. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 116(21): 2573-2577.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.613. shepperd, j.a., g. pogge and j.l. howell, 2017. assessing the consequences of unrealistic optimism: challenges and recommendations. consciousness and cognition, 50: 69-78.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2016.07.004. silingienė, v. and s. škėrienė, 2015. expression of leaders’ spiritual intelligence in a context of service organizations: a gender approach. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 213: 758-763.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.467. sindane, l.m., 2011. the relationship between happiness, creativity, personality and locus of control in ireland for those who are employed and unemployed. irland: dublin business school. torrance, e.p., 2000. research review for the torrance tests of creative thinking fig-uraland verbalforms a and b. bensenville, il: scholastic testing services. upadhyay, s. and n. upadhyay, 2016. a multi-criteria decision framework to measure spiritual intelligence of university teachers. procedia computer science, 91: 591-598.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2016.07.150. webber, k.c. and p.r. smokowski, 2018. assessment of adolescent optimism: measurement invariance across gender and race/ethnicity. journal of adolescence, 68: 78-86.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2018.06.014. yang, k.-p. and x.-y. mao, 2007. a study of nurses’ spiritual intelligence: a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. international journal of nursing studies, 44(6): 999-1010.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2006.03.004. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 335 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 335-342, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.335.342 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group study on relationship between cultural intelligence level and academic selfefficacy of undergrads mustafa vural1  alper tunga peker2 ( corresponding author) 1,2ağrıi̇brahim çecen university, school of physical education and sports, ağrı, turkey. abstract aim of this study is to determine the relationship between cultural intelligence and academic selfefficacy of undergrads, in terms of different variables. a total of 169 people, (101 male/68 female) participated in the research. "cultural intelligence scale" and "academic self-efficacy scale" were used in the research. mann-whitney u test was used for paired comparisons and kruskal wallis h test was used for multiple comparisons in the statistical analysis. spearman correlation test was utilized to determine relationship between the scales. as a result of the research, it was determined that there were significant differences according to department of education and year of education variable and there were not significant differences according to other variables that are gender, place of accommodation and status of being interested in sports. when the relationship between academic self-efficacy and cultural intelligence was examined, it was concluded that there was a significant and positive relationship below the medium level. keywords: cultural intelligence, academic, self-efficacy, student, sports, undergrads, training and education. citation | mustafa vural; alper tunga peker (2019). study on relationship between cultural intelligence level and academic self-efficacy of undergrads. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 335-342. history: received: 4 february 2019 revised: 15 march 2019 accepted: 22 april 2019 published: 11 june 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 336 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 336 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 338 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 340 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 342 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.335.342&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/424 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-6240 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8669-6330 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/424 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-6240 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8669-6330 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/424 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-6240 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8669-6330 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/424 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-6240 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8669-6330 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 335-342 336 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction it is thought that different opinions and cultures affect success and changes in societies in changing and developing world. individuals with different cultures are also affected by each other and communicate differently. intercultural communication and interaction will help societies to progress successfully. behavior acquired and passed from generation to generation is defined as culture. culture is a sum of beliefs, values, behaviors that are learned and shared and their characteristics and symbols. in society, individuals may behave similarly. learning, integrity and sharing subjects are important in terms of making culture clearer (aman, 2012). factors constituting culture may consist of material and moral elements. all kinds of materials and methods that meet basic needs of individuals in the society and in their harmony and struggle with life and nature, form material part of the culture (eroğlu, 2007). those that are visible such as dressing styles, architectures, roads, tools and equipment, constitute material elements. while material culture sums in societies indicate economic and technological development, it is also used for comparing countries. moral part of culture is important in terms of perceiving social environment in the society. it is related to issues about how life has been organized from past to present and gives importance to transferring values such as traditions, marriages, relationships with relatives, religion and art to the next generations as well as politics, laws, education and economic systems (wu, 2012). cultural differences began to gain importance and became popular in international area after 1960s (ng and earley, 2006).from this point of view, after cultural values came into prominence, "cultural intelligence" concept that highlights being aware of differences between culturally different individuals, accepting differences and giving importance to differences, emerged (yeşil, 2009) and it became strategically important to manage cultural differences. cultural intelligence is defined as "being skilled and flexible about understanding cultures better, being in touch with people from other cultures, learning more about it and at the same time, understanding views and thoughts of individuals with different cultures, changing our negative thoughts about them in time” (thomas and inkson, 2004). cultural intelligence is a skill and ability that creates an environment allowing a person from another country and from another society to interpret actions by gestures that are unfamiliar to such person (gibson and dibble, 2008). in another definition, cultural intelligence is defined as an individual's ability to understand, evaluate and interpret the moves, behaviors, voice, mimics, manners and emphasis of people from different cultures as people from the same culture (earley and mosakowski, 2004). according to another definition, cultural intelligence is defined as ability to reveal and adopt abstract concepts in societies in a correct and understandable way and ability to solve problems (ang et al., 2007). in addition to this, it has been seen that there are many factors affecting formation of cultural intelligence. it is emphasized that among those, social intelligence and emotional intelligence concepts are important in development of cultural intelligence. interaction of people with different cultures has given self-efficacy and self-confidence issues prominence. when erasmus activities in the universities are considered, it is seen that there is interaction with different countries and societies. it can be asserted that this interaction provides a change in students' academic success and affects success. from this point of view, academic success is an important issue for individuals to be more successful in their work life and examinations to be held later. self-efficacy, it is known that self-efficacy theory that has been started to be used in different fields in recent years, has important effects on human behavior. it is seen that self-efficacy concept is frequently used in relation to learning related to education and academic performance or it is used with other situations of the student. selfefficacy is known as self-persuasion of people about their abilities and it indicates a willingness that increases motivation and enables people to cope with new and difficult tasks. negatively, it can be said that it causes a person to leave work incomplete or decrease in a person's interest in the work (jerusalem, 2002). self-efficacy is a concept that underlies self-awareness and social learning theories. it is the ability of a person to act willingly in the face of a situation that will occur by comparing what should do be done. these are the ways in which an individual can be successful in difficult situations. in other words, it is ability of a person to know and understand himself (korkmaz, 2004).self-efficacy is generally used for a special situation. for example, while a student who continues to study in first grade has a high self-efficacy to solve simple word problems, the same student may have a lower self-efficacy perception towards more difficult mathematical processes (uzel, 2009). perceived academic self-efficiency is the belief that students have for leading themselves to academic success and creating a job-related career environment (solberg et al., 1993; zimmerman, 1995). after bandura introduced self-efficacy concept, studies conducted have shown that self-efficacy is effective in academic life at all levels of educational process. researchers have carried out many studies that reveal importance of high academic selfefficacy. in addition to this, many studies about the fact that self-efficacy belief increases academic success, have also been revealed (schunk, 1981;1982; bandura, 1997; pajares, 1997). in their study they conducted in in netherlands on undergraduate students with high-intelligence levels, vrugt et al. (1997) revealed that self-efficacy had a significant effect on students' examination performances.in their research, lent et al. (1984) state that students with high academic success levels have high examination scores. therefore, academic self-efficacy is one of the important variables for predicting students' successes (wood and locke, 1987; house, 1992; elias and loomis, 2002). from this point of view, it was aimed to analyze cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy of university students in terms of different demographic variables, and it was also tried to determine relationship between the two variables and academic self-efficacy perceptions of the students according to their cultural intelligence levels. 2. method 2.1. research model in the research, screening model which aims to describe attitudes, tendencies and opinions numerically or quantitatively by performing studies on a sample group chosen from a population, has been used (creswell, 2013). this method can be identified as describing a situation in the past or present as it is. what is important in this method is to be able to define an event, individual or object as it is in its conditions and to observe it without asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 335-342 337 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group changing the current situation (karasar, 2012). in the research, survey technique which is frequently utilized in screening studies, has been used as data collection technique (erkus, 2013). 2.2. population and sample population of the study consists of university students who continue their education in different departments of school of physical education and sports. sample group in the research was determined by selecting students in the school coincidentally, i.e. randomly at the time when education continued. sample group of the research consists of a total of 169 voluntary students, of whom 101 are male and 68 are female. 2.3. data collection tools 2.3.1. cultural intelligence scale it was prepared by kzö ang et al. (2007) to reveal cultural intelligence of individuals. there are 20 items in 7 point likert type scale. scale consists of 4 sub-dimensions called metacognition, cognition, motivation and behavior. there are 4 items in the metacognition sub-dimension reflecting mental processes that they use to understand cultural knowledge they have and whether individuals have control over the cultural information they have. example item: "i am aware of my cultural knowledge that i use in intercultural interactions." there are 6 items in cognition sub-dimension reflecting individuals' knowledge about different cultures. example item: “i know religious beliefs and cultural values of other cultures.” there are 5 items in motivation sub-dimension reflecting interest of individuals in interacting with people from different cultures and their self-efficacy belief about this subject. example item: “i enjoy interacting with people from different cultures.” there are 5 items in behavior subdimension reflecting individuals' ability to exhibit appropriate verbal or non-verbal behaviors when they meet people having different cultural backgrounds. example item: “i can change my speaking speed depending on requirements of intercultural interaction.” exploratory factor analysis (efa) and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) were performed by ang et al. (2007) in order to reveal construct validity of kzö. efa was performed on data obtained from 576 students with a form consisting of 40 items. as a result of efa, 20 items with low factor load were removed from the scale. after this process, 20 items with factor load value varying between .52 and .80 and structure with 4 factors corresponding to theoretical basis, were obtained. it was found that correlations varied between .21 and .45. as a result of the item analysis, it was determined that corrected item total correlations of the items in the scale were between .47 and .71. cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients were founded as follows; .72 for metacognition sub-dimension, .86 for cognition sub-dimension, .76 for motivation sub-dimension and .83 for behavior sub-dimension. 2.3.2. academic self-efficacy scale original scale which was developed by jerusalem and schwarzer (1981) and which includes one dimension, consists of 7 items which demonstrates a meaningful structure for academic self-efficacy. items in the scale are in the form of, "4 point likert type scale" (completely agree, agree, slightly agree, completely disagree). original scale was developed by applying to 68 medical faculty students and the cronbach alpha value of the scale was found as .87. researchers tested validity of the scale by looking at its correlation with content, logic and physiologically-based variables. correlations of academic self-efficacy scale with self esteem scale and performance scale fear were determined as .37 and -.49 respectively. researchers stated that content of the scale was in compliance with the subject and other psychological features tested gave information for validity of the scale (jerusalem and schwarzer, 1981). academic self-efficacy scale was translated into turkish, applied to 672 university students and its validity and reliability were determined. according to the analysis results, the number of items in the original scale which was 7, was preserved in turkish scale. according to factor analysis results, it was determined that turkish scale was one dimensional like the original scale. in the study carried out by schwarzer and jerusalem, it was determined that correlation of the scale with self-esteem scale was .370 in validity analysis of the scale; it was .435 for the scale adapted to turkish and that it supported the information about validity of the scale. cronbach alpha reliability value of the original scale was determined as .87. cronbach alpha reliability value of the turkish scale was also determined as .79 (yılmaz et al., 2007). 2.4. statistical analysis spss 22.0 windows program was used to analyze data obtained. while cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients related to the sub-dimensions of cultural intelligence scale were found as metacognition (,815), cognition (,788), motivation (,850), behavior (,813) and (,908) for total scale respectively, it was found as (,764) for academic self-efficacy scale. data obtained from the scales did not distribute normally and therefore, nonparametric analysis methods were used. while mann whitney u test was used to compare scale scores of the participants according to their gender, kruskal wallis h test was used to compare scale scores of them according to age group, department of education and year of education, place of accommodation and status of being interested in sports. spearman correlation analysis was used to examine relationship between cultural intelligence scale scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 335-342 338 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. findings table-1.frequency and percentage distributions regarding demographic information of participants. variables sub-variables f % age group 19-20 years 33 19,5 21-22 years 75 44,4 23-24 years 40 23,7 24+ years 21 12,4 gender female 68 40,2 male 101 59,8 department physical education and sports teaching 91 53,8 coaching education 44 26,0 sports management 34 20,1 year 1st year 58 34,3 2nd year 27 16,0 3rd year 57 33,7 4th year 27 16,0 place of accommodation dormitory 69 40,8 with family 54 32,0 student house 46 27,2 level of being interested in sports amateur 105 62,1 professional 44 26,0 referee 20 11,8 as shown in table 1, 19,5% of the participants are in age group 19-20, 44,4% are in age group 21-22, 23,7% are in age group 23-24 and 12,4% are in age group 24+, and 40,2% of them are female, 59,8% are male. 53,8% of the participants study in department of physical education and sports teaching, 26% of them study in department of coaching education and 20,1% of them study in department of sports management, 34,3% of them are in their 1st year, 16% are in 2nd year, 33,7% are in 3rd year and 16% are in 4th year. while 40,8% of the participants accommodate in dormitory, 32% of them accommodate in their families' houses and 27,2% accommodate in student house. while 62,1% of the participants are interested in sports as an amateur, 26% are interested in sports professionally and 11,8% of them are interested in sports as a referee. table-2.descriptive statistics related to cultural intelligence scale and academic self-efficacy scale scores of the participants. sub-dimensions n x ss metacognition 169 15,54 3,514 cognition 169 18,91 4,782 motivation 169 19,01 4,636 behavior 169 18,08 4,244 cultural intelligence total 169 71,54 13,690 academic self-efficacy 169 21,41 4,086 as shown in table 2, when table is examined, it is seen that participants get high scores in metacognition dimension of cultural intelligence scale, they get score above medium level, close to high level in motivation and behavior sub-dimensions, they get medium level score in cognition dimension, they get score above medium level in whole scale and they get medium level score in academic self-efficacy scale. table-3.comparison of cultural intelligence scale sub-dimension scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores of the participants according to age groups. sub-dimension age group n x ss mean rank x2 p difference between groups metacognition 19-20 years 33 15,18 3,618 81,21 2,952 ,399 21-22 years 75 16,15 3,135 92,05 23-24 years 40 14,80 4,033 77,59 24+ years 21 15,38 3,457 79,88 cognition 19-20 years 33 17,61 3,937 70,59 6,381 ,094 21-22 years 75 19,73 4,774 93,57 23-24 years 40 19,00 5,064 86,78 24+ years 21 17,86 5,141 73,64 motivation 19-20 years 33 18,39 4,730 77,91 2,104 ,551 21-22 years 75 19.49 4,323 89,62 23-24 years 40 18,53 4,701 79,53 24+ years 21 19,14 5,525 90,07 behavior 19-20 years 33 17,36 4,014 77,00 8,828 ,032 1<2, 2>3 21-22 years 75 18,99 4,203 97,41 23-24 years 40 17,35 4,123 74,31 24+ years 21 17,33 4,630 73,60 cultural intelligence 19-20 years 33 68,55 12,867 72,30 7,269 ,064 21-22 years 75 74,36 13,452 96,09 23-24 years 40 69,68 14,571 78,80 24+ years 21 69,71 13,062 77,14 academic selfefficacy 19-20 years 33 21,36 3,790 83,44 3,541 ,315 21-22 years 75 21,23 4,105 81,66 23-24 years 40 21,03 4,353 82,76 24+ years 21 22,90 3,897 103,64 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 335-342 339 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as shown in table 3, when table is examined, it is seen that there is no statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s metacognition, cognition, motivation levels and total cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy levels of the participants according to their age groups (p> 0,05) and there is statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s behavior levels of them according to their age groups (p <0,05). in cultural intelligence scale's behavior level, behavior level of the participants in age group 21-22 is significantly higher than behavior level of the participants in age group 19-20 and age group 23-24 (p<0,05). table-4.comparison of cultural intelligence scale sub-dimension scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores of the participants according to gender. sub-dimension gender n x ss mean rank rank sum u p metacognition female 68 15,31 3,872 83,71 5692,5 3346,5 ,777 male 101 15,70 3,261 85,87 8672,5 cognition female 68 18,76 4,726 83,09 5650,0 3304,0 ,676 male 101 19,01 4,840 86,29 8715,0 motivation female 68 18,88 4,736 84,37 5737,0 3391,0 ,890 male 101 19,09 4,589 85,43 8628,0 behavior female 68 18,15 4,402 86,46 5879,5 3334,5 ,749 male 101 18,03 4,156 84,01 8485,5 cultural intelligence female 68 71,10 14,994 84,82 5767,5 3421,5 ,968 male 101 71,83 12,806 85,12 8597,5 academic selfefficacy female 68 20,93 3,861 78,93 5367,5 3021,5 ,184 male 101 21,74 4,218 89,08 8997,5 as shown in table 4, when table is examined, it is seen that there is no statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s metacognition, cognition, motivation, behavior levels and total cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy levels of the participants according to their gender (p> 0,05). table-5.comparison of cultural intelligence scale sub-dimension scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores of the participants according to department of education. sub-dimension department n x ss mean rank x2 p difference between groups metacognition physical education and sports teaching 91 15,73 3,873 90,81 8,412 ,015 1>2, 2<3 coaching education 44 14,68 3,018 66,81 sports management 34 16,18 2,928 93,00 cognition physical education and sports teaching 91 19,05 5,201 88,17 ,980 ,613 coaching education 44 18,50 3,974 79,43 sports management 34 19,06 4,664 83,72 motivation physical education and sports teaching 91 18,98 4,604 84,26 2,768 ,251 coaching education 44 18,25 4,895 77,85 sports management 34 20,06 4,299 96.22 behavior physical education and sports teaching 91 18,37 4,451 89,36 2,533 ,282 coaching education 44 17,36 3,852 75,17 sports management 34 18,21 4,169 86,06 cultural intelligence physical education and sports teaching 91 72,13 14,904 88,14 3,899 ,142 coaching education 44 68,80 11,820 72,78 sports management 34 73,50 12,297 92,40 academic selfefficacy physical education and sports teaching 91 21,48 3,863 85,31 5,447 ,066 coaching education 44 20,32 4,371 73,32 sports management 34 22,65 4,029 99,28 as shown in table 5, when table is examined, it is seen that there is no statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s cognition, motivation, behavior levels and total cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy levels of participants according to their department of education (p> 0,05) and there is statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s metacognition levels of them according to their department of education (p <0,05). in cultural intelligence scale's metacognition level, metacognition level of the participants studying in department of physical education and sports teaching and department of sports management is significantly higher than metacognition level of the participants studying in department of coaching education (p<0,05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 335-342 340 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. comparison of cultural intelligence scale sub-dimension scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores of the participants according to year of education. sub-dimension year n x ss mean rank x2 p difference between groups metacognition 1st year 58 16,07 3,665 95,70 4,594 ,204 2nd year 27 15,07 3,647 78,17 3rd year 57 15,23 3,480 77,89 4th year 27 15,56 3,142 83,87 cognition 1st year 58 18,40 4,870 78,13 1,891 ,595 2nd year 27 19,11 5,679 87,78 3rd year 57 18,98 4,565 87,53 4th year 27 19,67 4,169 91,65 motivation 1st year 58 19,47 5,175 93,33 3,626 ,305 2nd year 27 18,93 3,772 81,24 3rd year 57 18,33 4,703 76,72 4th year 27 19,52 4,070 88,35 behavior 1st year 58 17,52 4,943 81,44 1,150 ,765 2nd year 27 17,93 3,842 84,22 3rd year 57 18,63 3,890 90,48 4th year 27 18,26 3,748 81,85 cultural intelligence 1st year 58 71,45 15,838 87,85 ,708 ,871 2nd year 27 71,04 13,435 83,61 3rd year 57 71,18 12,482 81,13 4th year 27 73,00 11,923 88.43 academic self-efficacy 1st year 58 22,69 4,398 101,14 10,857 ,013 1>3 2nd year 27 21,30 3,930 81,52 3rd year 57 20,23 4,022 71,68 4th year 27 21,30 2,906 81,94 as shown in table 6, when table is examined, it is seen that there is no statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s metacognition, cognition, motivation, behavior levels and total cultural intelligence levels of participants according to their year of education (p> 0,05) and there is statistically significant difference between academic self-efficacy levels of them according to their year of education (p<0,05). academic self-efficacy level of the participants studying in 1st year is significantly higher than the participants studying in 3rd year (p<0,05). table-7. study on relationship between cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy of the participants. variables cultural intelligence scale sub-dimensions metacognition cognition motivation behavior cultural intelligence academic self-efficacy r ,256 ,140 ,318 ,236 ,324 p ,001 ,070 ,000 ,002 ,000 n 169 169 169 169 ,169 as shown in table 7, when table is examined, it is seen that there is a statistically significant and positive relationship below medium level between academic self-efficacy and cultural intelligence metacognition, motivation, behavior levels and total cultural intelligence levels of the participants (p <0,05) and there is no statistically significant relationship between cultural intelligence cognition levels and academic self-efficacy levels (p>0,05). 4. discussion and conclusion following results have been obtained in the study conducted in order to examine cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy of university students according to different variables and to reveal relationship between them; it has been seen that participants are in age group 19 and 24+ and ratio of females and males is almost fiftyfifty. 53,8% of the participants study in department of physical education and sports teaching, 26% of them study in department of coaching education and 20,1% of them study in department of sports management, 34,3% of them are in their 1st year, 16% are in 2nd year, 33,7% are in 3rd year and 16% are in 4th year. while 40,8% of the participants accommodate in dormitory, 32% of them accommodate in their families' houses and 27,2% accommodate in student house. it has been concluded that 62,1% of the participants are interested in sports as an amateur while 26% are interested in sports professionally and 11,8% of them are engaged in sports as a referee. it has been determined that participants get high scores in metacognition dimension of cultural intelligence scale subdimensions, they get score above medium level, close to high level in motivation and behavior sub-dimensions, they get medium level score in cognition dimension, they get score above medium level in whole scale and they get medium level score in academic self-efficacy scale. when comparison of cultural intelligence scale sub-dimension scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores of participants according to age groups has been examined, it has been determined that there is no statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s metacognition, cognition, motivation levels and total cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy levels of participants and there is statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s behavior levels of them according to their age groups. in cultural intelligence scale's behavior level, it has been determined that behavior level of the participants in age group 21-22 is significantly higher than behavior level of the participants in age group 19-20 and age group 23-24 table 3. when relevant literature was examined, demir (2015) found in his study on relationship between cultural intelligence and burnout that there was no relationship between cultural intelligence levels of the employees asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 335-342 341 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to age variable. in his study named “effect of cultural intelligence on acculturation of foreign students", konate (2018) determined that cultural intelligence levels of the students did not differ significantly according to age. in academic self-efficacy, topçuoğlu (2018) determined in his study named "examination of life quality and academic self-efficacy levels of students studying in department of physical education and sports teaching" that academic self-efficacy of the participants did not differ according to gender variable. it has been seen that there are findings that are not similar with our study findings. it is thought that these differences are caused by different age categories of study groups. at the same time, it is possible to say that geography where they live, affects cultural intelligence and academic self-efficacy levels. when comparison of cultural intelligence scale sub-dimension scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores of participants according to gender is examined, it is seen that there is no statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s metacognition, cognition, motivation, behavior levels and total cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy levels of participants table 4. demir (2015) found in his study on relationship between cultural intelligence and burnout that there was no relationship between cultural intelligence levels of the employees according to gender variable. topçuoğlu (2018) determined in his study named "examination of life quality and academic self-efficacy levels of students studying in department of physical education and sports teaching" that academic self-efficacy of the participants did not differ according to gender variable. in his study named “effect of cultural intelligence on acculturation of foreign students", konate (2018) determined that cognitive cultural intelligence in cultural intelligence levels of the students differed significantly according to gender. according to his findings, he found that males' cognitive intelligence scores were higher when compared to female students. when comparison of cultural intelligence scale sub-dimension scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores of participants according to their department of education is examined, it is seen that there is no statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s cognition, motivation, behavior levels and total cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy levels of participants and there is statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s metacognition levels of them according to their department of education. in cultural intelligence scale's metacognition level, it has been found that metacognition level of the participants studying in department of physical education and sports teaching and department of sports management is significantly higher than metacognition level of the participants studying in department of coaching education table 5. metacognition dimension of cultural intelligence is focused on ability to process information (earley and ang, 2003) and it is about awareness of cultural knowledge that an individual uses during intercultural interaction and whether he/she has control over this knowledge (ang and dyne, 2008). therefore, from this point of view, it is possible to say that physical education and sports teaching students and sports management students are more skilled than coaching education students in terms of information processing and use of this information by being aware of cultural knowledge and at the same time, having better control over this information, their communication with different cultures, planning and adaptation. regarding academic self-efficacy, we can say that departments of students do not affect their academic self-efficacy. when comparison of cultural intelligence scale sub-dimension scores and academic self-efficacy scale scores of participants according to their year of education is examined, it is seen that there is no statistically significant difference between cultural intelligence scale’s metacognition, cognition, motivation, behavior levels and total cultural intelligence levels of participants and there is statistically significant difference between academic selfefficacy levels of them according to their year of education. academic self-efficacy level of the participants studying in 1st year is significantly higher than the participants studying in 3rd year table 6. as a result of his research about students, eryenen (2008) determined that academic self-efficacy of students differed according to their year of education. in another study, topçuoğlu (2018) determined in his study named "examination of life quality and academic self-efficacy levels of students studying in department of physical education and sports teaching" that academic self-efficacy of the participants differed significantly according to year of education variable. according to study findings; it was concluded that academic self-efficacy of students in 1st year was significantly higher than students in 2nd year. therefore, this is similar with our study findings. it was seen that study conducted by küçük and öncü (2013) did not differ significantly in terms of year of education variable. in other words, when year of education differences were examined, it was seen that participants' academic self-efficacy decreased as their year of education increased. it is thought that this situation is due to the fact that students give importance to the lessons more in 1st year and they are more concerned about examinations. in addition, it is possible to say that academic self-efficacy of students who are in upper classes decreases because of their concerns for the future or graduation excitement. when relationship between cultural intelligence levels and academic self-efficacy of participants was examined, it was concluded that there was a statistically significant and positive relationship below medium level between academic self-efficacy and cultural intelligence metacognition, motivation, behavior levels and total cultural intelligence levels and there was no statistically significant relationship between cultural intelligence cognition levels and academic self-efficacy levels table 7. when characteristics of sub-dimensions of cultural intelligence scale are considered, it is thought that cultural intelligence metacognition (awareness of cultural knowledge that an individual uses during intercultural interaction and situations whether he/she has control over this knowledge) affect the participants' perceptions of academic self-efficacy positively. motivation dimension of cultural intelligence (is about an individual's willingness to interact with people from different cultures and to learn something about intercultural situations) (ang et al., 2004; ang et al., 2006; ng and earley, 2006; ang and dyne, 2008; ng et al., 2009) it is seen that students with such characteristics have high academic self-efficacy perception. characteristics of another dimension of cultural intelligence which is behavior dimension (individuals' ability to exhibit appropriate verbal or non-verbal behaviors when they meet people having different cultural backgrounds), reveal relevant situation about academic self-efficacy. it was seen that characteristics of cognition dimension of cultural intelligence (it includes knowledge about other cultures which is acquired by an individual with the help of daily experiences or formal education) was not related to academic selfefficacy. asian 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in changing societies. new york: cambridge university press. pp: 202-231. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 280 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 280-286, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.280.286 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of relationship between communication in academic environment and quality of work life among academic staff özden tepeköylü öztürk1 mümine soytürk2 hüseyin gökçe3 ( corresponding author) 1,3pamukkale university faculty of sport sciences, denizli, turkey 2celal bayar university faculty of sport sciences, manisai, turkey abstract in this study, it is aimed to identify the relationship between the communication in academic environment and quality of work life of the academic staff who work in the field of sports sciences. moreover, the administrational functions of each variable are studied considering the academic titles. the research is a quantitative-correlational study. the sample of the study is formed by 51 women and 114 men out of 165 academic staff who work in the field of sports sciences at various universities in turkey. in the study, as data collection tools, „‟quality of work life scale‟‟ and „‟communication analysis inventory in academic environment‟‟ are used. data are assessed using pearson correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis and t-test. it is noted with the findings that communication in academic environment (cae) and quality of work life (qwl) have moderate and negative relations and sub-dimensions of both variables have weak, low and moderate negative relations. also, it is indicated that cae is a significant predictor of qwl. it‟s stated that while academic staff who have administrative position perceives the cae and its subdimensions positively (except for the insufficient share of scientific knowledge and sub-dimensions of faculty atmosphere), qwl gets higher scores only in sub-dimensions about relations with colleagues,work satisfaction and taking responsibility in the office. according to academic title (except for sub-dimension of individuality), there has been found no significant difference in qwl and its sub-dimensions. keywords: communication in academic environment, quality of life, interpersonal communication, organizational communication. citation | özden tepeköylü öztürk; mümine soytürk; hüseyin gökçe (2019). investigation of relationship between communication in academic environment and quality of work life among academic staff. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 280-286. history: received: 8 january 2019 revised: 11 february 2019 accepted: 6 march 2019 published: 20 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 281 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 282 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 282 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 283 5. conclusion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................. 285 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 285 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.280.286&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/416 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3511-6279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9560-5915 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9250-0317 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/416 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3511-6279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9560-5915 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9250-0317 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/416 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3511-6279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9560-5915 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9250-0317 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/416 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3511-6279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9560-5915 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9250-0317 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/416 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3511-6279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9560-5915 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9250-0317 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 280-286 281 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction universities, known as the last degree of education by the society and providing knowledge and skills as to market needs, are complex organizations (afşar-taşdemir, 2015). both complex structure of them and the necessity of the accurate and quick flow of information convey the organizational communication to a significant point. no matter how the structure in organization or decentralisation is obviously clear, proper running of these mechanisms and success in coordination is possible by means of intra-organizational communication (ölçer and koçer, 2015). organizational communication is a constant interaction with individuals and external environment to provide running of the organization and perform the organizational aims (ada et al., 2008). a successful and sustainable structure is not possible for organizations experiencing problems in communication paths that convey the transmission of messages from one unit to another (yanık, 2015). effective communication might affect many factors such as the current structure of organization, its culture, run of authority (vural, 2003). when analyzed in terms of characteristics of structural communication, it can be mentioned about formal communication which hints the authority and control on employee and informal communication which is spontaneous and less structural according to formal communication. according to message direction, it is faced with vertical, horizontal and diagonal communication features (arslan and arslan, 2007).while formal communication carries out basic management processes especially in coordination, informal communication serves purposes such as making things easier in organizations, constituting consensus, sharpening differences and being target-oriented. in addition to these aspects, it provides a vast number of benefits to the institutions due to being fast and fluent (güllüoğlu, 2012). when organizations are generally examined, it is seen that the direction of message is vertical and horizontal. horizontal communication, which is a coordination provider, accompanies to this structure which can be a sample of chain of command. especially during crisis, diagonal communication, which is more complicated, is also used in comparison with these two structures (genç, 2004). when considered from universities point of view, it is difficult to build and pursue an effective communication environment because of administration at universities, structuring of organization and characteristics of personnel. accordingly, determining process quality of communication in academic environment (cae), following periodically and explanation the relationship with different variables are regarded significant. quality of work life (qwl), being a variable that is related to human resources in organizations, can also be regarded as a concept which could be examined together with the process of organizational communication. qwl, which is occurred with the contemporary management approaches, states personnel‟s degree of satisfying needs, work satisfaction and motivation (cicek, 2005). these factors ranging in a positive way is possible with keeping obvious the communication channels at all levels and using them effectively and efficiently. when viewed in a detailed perspective, quality of work life is defined as a concept which includes weak and strong aspects such as satisfaction with officers, working conditions, productivity, communication in organization, method of management (martel and dupuis, 2006). ozaslan (2010) states that quality of work life is not merely related to work satisfaction, it is also a concept that is used to explain the relations with life out of work, individual and internal happiness. therefore, quality of work life is affected by both experiences related to work and various factor which affects these experiences (easton and laar, 2013) in addition to the positive factors about work, it affects the factors such as stress, alienation and burnout positively (newstrom and davis, 1997). when quality of work life literature is researched, as one of the first occupations that comes to mind, health staff is regarded a subject which is studied more on when examined in terms of working conditions, risks it contains and performances of professionals. johnsrud (2002) divides the studies into three main groups which he researches about quality of work life in his scientific journal. the ones in the first group are studies defining and explaining studies, in the second group factors that affect quality of work life and in the last group explaining the behavioural results. studies are found examining the concept of quality of work life in terms of education sector. in a study that is carried out by putt and springer (1980) who lecture in the field of public administration to define the personnel‟s work satisfaction, detached from many factors that affect the work satisfaction, it is stated that decision-making process is the most significant factor on satisfaction and at this point, it is referred to professional life satisfaction which is a parameter that is related to quality of work life. soytürk and tepeköylü-öztürk (2017) analyze the quality of work life of physical education teachers according to various personal and occupational features. they sign that teachers who are happy with their jobs have higher quality of work life. in the study that is carried out by erdem (2008) the predictive degree of the quality of work life, their loyalty to schools and organizational dependence of quality of work life of the teachers who work both for public or private schools is examined. as a result of the study, it is indicated that the teachers who work for public schools have lower quality of work life than the ones who work for private schools in many dimensions. ozaslan (2010) analyses the professional life qualities of the research assistants. he comes to a conclusion that research assistants generally do not take part in the decisions made at universities. according to the result of the study conducted by afşartaşdemir (2015) to determine the quality of work life of researchers, it is proved that participants‟ quality of work life differs in terms of academic title, salary, their way of employment, job security and total number of working years at universities. when literature is researched in terms of cae, gizir (1999) has conducted a study on the most common communication problems of academic staff they face in their own department, other departments in the same faculty and other departments of the university and in order to analyse solution recommendations, and it is found that individuality, insufficient share of scientific knowledge, lack of motivation, alignment, managerial problems ,lack of common purpose, criticism, introspective features of department and communication of department atmosphere are factors that affect in a negative way. it is tried to determine by argon and kösterelioğlu (2009) whether researchers‟ perception of communication changes as to some variables or not. as a result, it is found that the academic staff‟s academic communication level varies considering gender, title, age, working period of time at the faculty and department variables. based on these statements in this study, in addition to complicated university structure, it is aimed to determine predictive relationship between academic staff‟s cae and qwl who are a part of universities with multidisciplinary structure of sports and who work in the field of sports sciences. also, each variable‟s differences are analysed according to administrative mission situation and academic title variables. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 280-286 282 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. materials and methods 2.1. research design and study group this research is a correlational and comparative study. quantitative research techniques have been used. the study group of the research consists of 51 women and 114 men in total 165 academic staff (age = 43.06 ± 10.04 years), who work in the field of sports sciences at many universities in turkey. academic staff is included in the research considering voluntariness. 165 academic staff takes part in the research despite being reached to 1565 academic staff. 2.2. data collection tools in the study as data collection tools, “quality of work life scale” (qwls) developed by mcdonald (2001) and adapted into turkish by akin-kösterelioğlu (2011) “communication analysis inventory in academic environment” (caiae) developed by gizir and gizir (2005) and „‟personal information form‟‟ that is developed by the researchers have been used. quality of work life scale (qwls): the scale of quality of work life is a 5-point likert type scale consisting of 40 items. it consists of seven dimensions (administrative support, non-work-related stress, income, relationships with colleagues, communication, degree of job satisfaction, use of skills and autonomy, responsibility and duty at work). the high score in the scale that opposite terms are involved indicate that the quality of work life is in good level. in the end of the analysis into structural validity of akin-kösterelioğlu (2011). it is determined that sub-item total correlations change from 0.32 to 0.58.the cronbach‟s alpha internal consistency coefficient of all scale is 0.94 while ) who adapted the scale into turkish, the qwl scale could account for 46.30% of the total variance and each dimension‟s self-value is seen over 1% changes from 0.77 to . 0.90. within the scope of this study, the internal consistency coefficient of the total scale is determined as 0.87. communication analysis inventory in academic environment (caiae): it is a 5-point likert type scale used to determine academic personnel‟s perceptions of communication processes in academic environment. it consists of 36 items. it has 10 sub-dimensions including negative factors for communication processes in academic environment (lack of communication, individuality, insufficient share of scientific knowledge, lack of motivation, alignment, managerial problems, lack of common purpose, criticism, introspective features and atmosphere of department). the high score of items-also including reciprocal ones has shown that the communication in academic environment is also negative. in the construct validity analysis, it is seen that the factor loadings of the items in the inventory range from 0.44 to 0.90.according to the results of reliability studies, the alpha coefficient in the cronbach‟s alpha internal consistency evaluation changes from 0.67 to 0.88 (gizir and gizir, 2005). within the scope of this study, the internal consistency coefficient of the total scale is determined as 0.95. personal information form (pif): the information on the personal information of the research group and the independent variables of the research is determined by the personal information form created by researchers. in this form, there are questions about the age, gender, titles of participants and whether they are in the administrative position or not. 2.3. data collection the data has been collected via e-mail. firstly, a list of universities containing the faculty and high school of sports science, or related to sports science departments is formed. the websites of these universities are visited, the addresses of the lecturers in sports sciences are recorded one by one, and another list is formed. the online scales are electronically sent to 1565 faculty members whose e-mail addresses can be reached 2 times in 2 weeks apart. we get feedback from 169 people, but 165 of them filled in accordance with measurement tools are evaluated. 2.4. statistical analysis data data are evaluated by using frequency, arithmetic mean, standard deviation; pearson correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis (backward model) and t-test statistical testing techniques. pearson correlation analysis has been used to determine the relationship between the sub-dimensions and total scores of communication in academic environment (cae) and quality of work life (qwl); and multiple linear regression analysis (backward model) has been used to decide if cae predicts qwl or not. differences in dependent variables according to the administrative task status and titles of faculty members are examined with t-test. whether the data meet the prerequisites of parametric tests are decided by examining the skewness and kurtosis (normal distribution of data) values and levene (equality of variances) tests. the mahalonobis distance of the data is calculated and multivariate normal distribution is also evaluated. the skewness and kurtosis values of data change from -916 ± .376 to -.568 ± .189. in the correlation and regression analyzes, whether the relationship between the variables is linear or not has been decided by examining the dispersion diagram. in order to determine the reliability of the scales used in the study, cronbach‟s alpha internal consistency coefficients have been calculated. type 1 error is accepted as 5%. 3. results table-1. descriptive statistics of communication in academic environment of academic staff and their quality of work life related to total score factor n min. max. x std. error communication in academic environment 165 1.08 4.81 2.83 .74 quality of work life 165 2.25 4.43 3.27 .45 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 280-286 283 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when the table 1 is analyzed, it is seen that academicians‟-who work in the field of sports sciences communication in academic environment is at a good level above the average (the scale is evaluated in reverse) and the quality of work life is at the middle level. table-2. pearson correlation analysis to determine the relationship between communication in academic environment and quality of work life. n=165 qwl1a qwl2b qwl3b qwl4d qwl5e qwl6f qwl7g totalqwl cae11 -.476** -.382** -.051 -.677** -.355** -.265** -.502** -.620** cae22 -.439** -.297** -.008 -.510** -.323** -.161** -.543** -.506** cae33 -.421** -.272** -.021 -.512** -.381** -.151 -.399** -.489** cae44 -.360** -.216** -.073 -.195* -.253** -.188* -.393** -.401** cae55 -.119 -.264** .031 -.280** -.061 -.031 -.305** -.243** cae66 -.604** -.294** -.024 -.430** -.376** -.108 -.535** -.572** cae77 -.527** -.306** .047 -.445** -.441** -.145 -.510** -.538** cae88 -.476** -.331** .058 .452** -.296** -.130 -.406** -.486** cae99 -.315** -.276** .005 -.312** -.252** -.150 -.284** -.373** cae99 -.564** -.362** -.023 -.640** -.358** -.287** -.338** -.606** total cae -.597** -.401** -.013 -.611** -.419** -.222** -.557** -.661** **p<0.01 (2-tailed); *p<0.05 (2-tailed). -1poor communication, 2individualism, 3inadequate sharing of scientific knowledge, 4lack of motivation, 5alignment, 6administrative problems, 7lack of common goals, 8criticism, 9inward-looking character of the department, 10departmental atmosphere -aadministrative support, bnon-work-related stress, cincome, drelationships with colleagues, ecommunication, fjob satisfaction and encourage, gresponsibility and duty at work when table 2 is analyzed, it is seen that in general there is a strong, medium and weak significant relationship in a negative way between the total score and sub-dimensions of cae and the total score and sub-dimensions of qwl while there is no relationship between the income sub-dimension of qwl and cae. accordingly, it can be said that as the level of the negative components in the communication processes in the academic environment increases, qwl is decreasing. when the relationship levels are analyzed, while the strongest relationship is found between the poor communication sub-dimension of cae and relationships with colleagues sub-dimension of qwl; the lowest relationship is found between lack of motivation sub-dimension of cae and non-work-related stressed sub-dimension of qwl. table-3. results of the multiple linear regression analysis for predicting the quality of work life related to the sub-dimensions of communication in academic environment. variable b standard error b β t p constant 176.900 3.899 -.307 45.369 .000 poor communication -1.206 .301 -4.000 .000 lack of motivation -.995 .371 -.163 -2.684 .008 administrative problems -.521 .250 -.160 -2.086 .039 departmental atmosphere -1.038 .286 -.271 -3.623 .000 r = .715; r2 = .512; corrected r2 = .499 f(4, 164)=41.893; p=.000. when the regression analysis is examined table 3, it is seen that poor communication, administrative problems and departmental atmosphere sub-dimensions of cae is a significant predictor of qwl (r=.715; r2=.512; f(4, 164)=41.893; p=.000).the stated variables explain 51% of the total variance in quality of work life. according to the standardized regression coefficient (β) and t values, the relative order of predictive variables on the quality of work life is respectively lack of motivation, poor communication, departmental atmosphere, administrative problems. when table 4 is analyzed, it is seen that there are significant differences between total score of cae scale and its sub-dimensions -except for alignment according to administrative mission statusand relationships with colleagues, level of job satisfaction and encouragement, usage of skills and autonomy, and taking in responsibility and duty at work sub-dimensions. according to this, academic staff who has an administrative role perceives communication in academic environment more positively; similarly, they perceive quality of work life more positively from specified sub-dimensions of the qwl scale. when table 5 is analyzed, it is seen that there is a significant difference in individuality-the sub-dimension of caeaccording to the title variable. according to this, it can be said that non-lecturer academic staff feels more individual in communication in academic environment. according to the title, there is no significant difference in cae total score and its sub-dimensions; and qwl total score and its sub-dimensions. 4. discussion according to the findings of the study, the communication of the academicians in academic environments almost good-level near the mid-level while their quality of work life is in the mid-level. according to winter et al. (2000), universities are suffering from chaos in their mission and responsibilities. the universities that are trying to centralization by keeping their organisational respect through cost efficiency should, meanwhile, offer service in different sectors and so they are obliged to get away from centralization by enlarging their income spectrum. this situation may also cause different missions, responsibilities, extra work-load, stress and chaos in the communication process for each personnel within the university, especially the academicians. for this reason, the mid-level quality of work life and academic environment communication is considered an expected finding. when the relations between the two variables are studied, it is observed that the communication in the academic environment is closely related to quality of work life and it explains the 51% of the variation in qwl. in other words, as the negative factors affecting the communication in the academic environment rises, the quality of work life declines. declares that communication invariably affects attitudes, the feeling of satisfaction and work satisfaction in the workplace. in the research conducted by muchinsky (1977) organizational communication is asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 280-286 284 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group considered highly related to the interpersonal environment, responsibility, administration and the organizational climate pointing to the emotional state. similarly, in the studies of erogluer (2011) and muchinsky (1977) organizational communication is referred as highly related to the work-satisfaction regarding administrators, workmates, the qualification of the work, wage and additional income. table-4. t-test results of the comparison of cae and qwl scores according to the administrative mission of the instructors. variable administrative mission n x sd df t p poor communication no 117 13.05 4.54 163 3.308 .001* yes 48 10.52 4.31 individualism no 117 12.70 3.52 163 3.920 .000* yes 48 10.22 4.06 inadequate sharing of scientific knowledge no 117 6.26 2.04 163 2.289 .023* yes 48 5.45 2.07 lack of motivation no 117 9.06 3.02 163 2.245 .026 yes 48 7.93 2.71 alignment no 117 8.73 2.63 163 1.906 .058 yes 48 7.87 2.62 administrative problems no 117 18.35 5.30 163 3.390 .001* yes 48 15.22 5.59 lack of common goals no 117 9.31 3.11 163 3.342 .001* yes 48 7.52 3.18 criticism no 117 9.64 2.90 163 3.072 .002* yes 48 8.08 3.13 inward-looking character of the department no 117 6.70 2.06 163 2.786 .006* yes 48 5.68 2.30 departmental atmosphere no 117 13.44 4.74 163 3.600 .000* yes 48 10.62 4.09 totalcae no 117 107.31 25.20 163 4.134 .000* yes 48 89.16 26.58 administrative support no 117 24.07 6.98 163 -.551 .582 yes 48 24.72 6.70 non-work-related stress no 117 32.59 6.22 163 -.327 .744 yes 48 32.93 5.57 income no 117 14.12 5.00 163 1.303 .194 yes 48 13.02 4.82 relationships with colleagues no 117 14.00 2.94 163 -2.923 .004* yes 48 15.45 2.76 communication no 117 9.34 1.83 163 -1.849 .066 yes 48 9.97 2.38 job satisfaction and encourage no 117 21.94 3.57 163 -.3651 .000* yes 48 24.00 2.38 responsibility and duty at work no 117 13.51 3.31 163 -2.133 0.34 yes 48 14.79 3.92 total no 117 129.94 18.27 163 -1.758 .088 yes 48 134.91 17.30 *p<.05 the academic staff having administrational responsibilities regards their relations in the academic environment as more positive than the academicians who do not have. concerning the quality of work life, they stated that their relations with their colleagues are better as well as higher work-satisfaction and they get more responsibilities. in the study sarros et al. (1998) state that deans regard the maintenance of effective communication between departments as one of their most important responsibilities and moreover they have too many missions/responsibilities. the academic staffs who also have administrational positions are supposed to develop regular or irregular communication forms with the academicians in each level for the maintenance of the organizational aims. it is also assumed that the correct perception in missions and responsibilities, the maintenance of coordination among the staff and efficient inspection over the staff are closely related to the qualification of the administrator‟s communication. in addition, in the literary studies and in our study a good level communication is underlined to affect positively the parameters regarding the quality of work life. therefore, the communication of the academic staff that have administrational positions may highly perceive the relations with collegues and work satisfaction. when it is considered in terms of those who do not have administrational positions,the researches indicate that the administrators in the faculties are lacking and their communicative relations are weak and they are not glad with the working conditions and the institutions (boyer, altbach, and whitelaw, 1994; in cited from: johnsrud (2002)). when the findings of the research are interpreted according to the titles, it is indicated that both academic staff and other lecturers perceive the quality of work life and communication in academic environment similarly. however, instructors who are not academic members perceive more individuality in communication in academic environment. gizir and simsek (2005) the individuality results from the feelings of being dominant and having more knowledge and this case causes insufficient knowledge sharing within the organization. in their study, winter et al. (2000) detected that the other academic staff than the academicians cannot be involved enough in the decision process and they are mostly informed very late of the decisions taken within the institution. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 280-286 285 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. t-test results for comparison of cae and qwl scores according to the title of academic staff. variable title n x sd df t p poor communication 1academic staff 95 11.77 4.57 148.676 -1.770 .079 2other 70 13.05 4.58 individualism academic staff 95 11.37 4.03 163 -2.401 .017 other 70 12.81 3.44 inadequate sharing of scientific knowledge academic staff 95 5.93 2.12 163 -.671 .503 other 70 6.15 2.02 lack of motivation academic staff 95 8.69 2.90 143.381 -.222 .825 other 70 8.80 3.09 alignment academic staff. 95 8.17 2.70 163 -1.735 .085 other 70 8.90 2.54 administrative problems academic staff 95 16.85 5.85 163 -1.613 .109 other 70 18.25 5.05 lack of common goals academic staff 95 8.58 3.29 163 -.947 ,345 other 70 9.07 3.14 criticism academic staff 95 9.03 3.10 163 -.796 .427 other 70 9.41 2.98 inward-looking character of the department academic staff 95 6.15 2.19 163 -1.753 .081 other 70 6.75 2.12 departmental atmosphere academic staff 95 12.34 4.93 163 -.875 .383 other 70 13.00 4.44 totalcae academic staff 95 98.94 27.57 163 -1.733 .085 other 70 106.22 25.40 administrative support academic staff 95 23.54 6.74 145.585 -1.560 .121 other 70 25.24 7.01 non-work-related stress academic staff 95 32.73 6.06 163 .099 .921 other 70 32.64 6.01 income academic staff 95 13.71 5.05 163 -.271 .787 other 70 13.92 4.88 relationships with colleagues academic staff 95 14.62 3.03 163 .964 .336 other 70 14.17 2.85 communication academic staff 95 9.55 2.33 163 .226 .822 other 70 9.48 1.52 job satisfaction, encouragement academic staff 95 22.68 3.55 163 .610 .543 other 70 22.35 3.19 responsibility and duty at work academic staff 95 14.13 3.79 163 1.067 .288 other 70 13.54 3.14 total academic staff 95 131.00 18.44 163 -.130 .897 other 70 131.37 17.78 5. conclusion and recommendations in this study, it is concluded that the communication of academicians in the sports science field is in the midlevel. besides, this communication process invariably affects their quality of work life to a large extent. concerning a general overview, the academic personnel whose ranks are lower do not see the organizational communication process as efficient enough and they define the process as individual. that‟s why, it is concluded that the academicians, especially the ones who are also in administration position, should care more about sharing of the knowledge and they should be more involved in the decision process. judging from the assumption that each academicians who are also in the administration position are not equal to each other in terms of their administrational knowledge and skill, the prospective administrators should be given 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among public administration professors. international journal of public administration, 2(2): 225-246.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01900698008524381. sarros, j.c., w.h. gmelch and g.a. tanewski, 1998. the academic dean: a position in need of a compass and clock. higher education research & development, 17(1): 65-88.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0729436980170104. soytürk, m. and ö. tepeköylü-öztürk, 2017. the examination of work life quality of physical education teachers. celal bayar university journal of physical education and sport sciences, 12(2): 12-23. vural, a.b., 2003. corporate culture. 1st edn., istanbul, turkey: communication publications. winter, r., t. taylor and j. sarros, 2000. trouble at mill: quality of academic worklife issues within a comprehensive australian university. studies in higher education, 25(3): 279-294.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/713696158. yanık, m., 2015. the effect of sports type and some other variables on the communication skill levels of physical education and sports college students. journal of human sciences, 12(2): 1366-1376. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 595 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 595-602, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.595.602 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an examination of preservice teachers’ 21st century learner and teacher skills based on different variables siddik bakir atatürk university, faculty of education, department of social sciences and turkish language education, turkish language education, erzurum, turkey. abstract this study examined the levels of preservice teachers’ 21st century learner and teacher skills and the relationship between these two types of skills in terms of different variables. this study was a correlational survey. the data were collected using three instruments: the ―21st century learner skills use scale‖ and the ―21st century teacher skills use scale‖ developed by orhan (2016) and a ―personal information form‖ prepared by the researcher. the population of the study consisted of preservice teachers studying at a state university located in the eastern anatolia region of turkey in the spring semester of the academic year of 2018–2019. the sample consisted of 445 preservice teachers determined by using the simple random sampling method from among the departments determined based on the cluster sampling method. based on the results of the study, the use of the learner and teacher skills of the preservice teachers differed significantly depending on different variables such as gender, grade level and department, and there was a positive significant correlation between their uses of learner and teacher skills. it is hoped that the study will contribute to preservice teachers and the literature in terms of teacher competencies and education. keywords: 21st century learner skills, 21st century teacher skills, preservice teachers, teacher education, teacher competencies, turkish education. citation | siddik bakir (2019). an examination of preservice teachers’ 21st century learner and teacher skills based on different variables. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 595-602. history: received: 16 september 2019 revised: 18 october 2019 accepted: 25 november 2019 published: 23 december 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 596 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 597 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 598 4. discussion, conclusions and recommendations ..................................................................................................................... 600 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 601 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.595.602&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1183 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1183 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 595-602 596 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes important to reveal the 21st century learner and teacher skill levels of pre-service teachers and what the relationship between these skills is. 1. introduction in an era of change at an unprecedented pace, advancements in science and technology have led to a rapid increase in knowledge, as well as making many pieces of existing knowledge become obsolete in a short period of time as three to five years. this necessitates versatile changes in many areas of social life. it is seen that, in today’s world — where societies or people who can access information interpret the information they have, add new information to what they have and spread this information are considered powerful — the individual profile needed by societies has also changed and differentiated. globalization and advances in science and technology have been the main factors specifying the profile of human resources necessitated by today’s societies. in other words, societies now seek people who improve themselves, adapt to the era and have critical, creative and reflective thinking skills. the fact that the focus is now on the process of teaching to learn in 21st century teacher competencies, and teaching is not limited to educational institutions has led people and societies to re-question their necessities (soran et al., 2006). today’s people are now expected to have the skills needed to adapt to rapid changes and developments, use the information they acquire in their lives, and thus, be able to participate in the society, make the right decisions, be productive and pursue their lives in the society (belet boyacı and güner, 2019). teacher roles and competencies may also change pursuant to the conditions of the era so that the rapidly changing society may adapt to the realities of the world, enhance labor efficiency and plan education economically and politically. the changes brought about by the new century have necessitated the society’s capacity to adapt to these changes and created the need to educate more competent teachers in accordance with the needs of the era (kazu and yenen, 2014). teacher education and the profession of teaching— which have emerged in the ottoman reform period dating from 1848 in the contemporary sense in turkey and have been shaped by going through different processes to date (akyüz, 2006) — have undergone many changes in the face of the needs such as taking advantage of the competitive environment that has emerged with the developing world and educating more competent people. considering that education is the way to give people the qualities that have to be acquired within the scope of these needs, how globally important teacher education is may be understood better (akdemı r (2013). the changing and evolving conditions of the world have undoubtedly caused transformations in learning environments just like in other areas. learning-teaching processes have also been affected by this. while this transformation is addressed in a wide array of issues from the technological infrastructures of schools to teacher competencies, it may also be stated that learners and teachers are the most important actors of such a transformation (dağhan et al., 2017). all these changes and transformations have changed the needs of societies, learner characteristics and therefore the characteristics of teachers who educate learners in the 21st century. in order for people to have a share of the employment of the 21st century, school diplomas that are acquired through basic knowledge and skills are insufficient. people need to have a set of skills that we may call 21st century skills which are beyond the basic skills that they have. while having sole knowledge has been valuable and valid in the past centuries, today, bare knowledge and acquiring knowledge alone are not sufficient. in order for the people of the 21st century to be successful in both educational life and business life, they have to be individuals who can think creatively and critically, collaborate with others, are problem solvers, have outstanding communication skills, know how to access the information they need, use technology to access information, are open to new ideas, are flexible and compliant, are self-directed and proactive, have advanced social and cultural skills, are productive and have leadership skills (eryılmaz and uluyol, 2015). it has been highlighted in various studies in the literature that teachers should consider the needs of the 21st century while shaping their educational processes, and 21st century learners should have new knowledge and skills (burns and sinfield, 2004; minton, 2005; tennant et al., 2009). while the significance of 21st century skills have been emphasized in several studies (lai and viering, 2012; eryılmaz and uluyol, 2015; orhan göksün and kurt, 2017), there are varying views in the literature on what 21st century skills are (kylonen, 2012; lai and viering, 2012; dicerbo, 2014). therefore, it is considered that it is important to present what 21st century skills are and provide an acceptable classification of these skills. rating scales, situational judgment tests, performance assessments and computer simulations, histories of skills and abilities, portfolios and instruments that include different types of items (multiple choice, computer supported and open-ended items) may be used for measuring such skills (kylonen, 2012; soland et al., 2013)(as cited in yalcin (2018)). the concept of skill, which may be defined as ―being capable, mastery, ingenuity or the ability to accomplish a job and to fulfill a procedure properly depending on one’s predisposition and education, dexterity‖ in lexical terms, is discussed with its different forms and dimensions in different fields. the skills required for individuals to meet the expectations of the century they live in are today called 21st century skills. the 21st century skills that refer to higher-order skills and learning tendencies that need to be improved in order to succeed in the information age are abilities that include both knowledge and skills and consist of a blending of these two concepts (dede, 2010). such skills, which aim for learning processes within schools to be maintained throughout life, are also considered to be essential for the learning-teaching process. in this context, educational curricula and practices that have been continuously changing and evolving since the initial republican period have also been demonstrated to tend to get closer to daily life skills by various studies (bayburtlu, 2015; alver and sancak, 2016; aydın, 2017; bal, 2018). learning and innovation skills consist of four skills (4c): 1) critical thinking and problem-solving, 2) communication, 3) collaboration and 4) creativity (partnership for 21st century learning (p21), 2007; trilling and fadel, 2009; kylonen, 2012). these skills are regarded as the key to lifelong learning and creative thinking (trilling and fadel, 2009 as cited in yalcin (2018)). it may be stated that 21st century skills correspond to the characteristics of this century’s information society that help individuals become good citizens and competent employees (ananiadou and claro, 2009). however, the key skills that are used refer to development of a form of asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 595-602 597 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group cognitive, behavioral or emotional mastery not only in school life but also beyond school. skills are not only technically addressed. they may be general, but they also cover some complex forms of expertise. this comprehensive definition of skills allows one to consider the diversity of tendencies, knowledge and abilities a student should have to exhibit a particular form of mastery (lamb, maire, and doecke, 2017 as cited in cansoy (2018)). this study was conducted to raise awareness about 21st century learner and teacher skills and offer various recommendations for helping people gain these skills, by examining the extent to which preservice teachers who would be educators of the future use these skills in terms of different variables. 2. materials and methods 2.1. research model this study was a correlational survey carried out to examine the relationship between preservice teachers’ use of 21st century learner and teacher skills. 2.2. population and sample the population consisted of preservice teachers studying at a state university located in the eastern anatolia region of turkey in the spring semester of the academic year of 2018–2019. the sample consisted of 445 preservice teachers determined by using the simple random sampling method from among the departments determined based on the cluster sampling method. table 1 presents information on the demographic characteristics of the sample. table-1. information on the demographic characteristics of the sample. variables characteristics f % gender female 302 67.9 male 143 32.1 total 445 100.0 grade freshmen 154 34.6 sophomore 117 26.3 junior 102 22.9 senior 72 16.2 total 445 100.0 maternal educational status illiterate 255 57.3 elementary school 90 20.2 secondary school 52 11.7 high school 48 10.8 total 445 100.0 paternal educational status illiterate 144 32.4 elementary school 105 23.6 secondary school 118 26.5 high school 74 16.6 university 4 .9 total 445 100.0 department turkish language education 258 58.0 early childhood education 95 21.3 physical education teacher education 92 20.7 total 445 100.0 2.3. data collection instruments two data collection instruments were used to collect data during the study. 2.3.1. 21st century learner skills use scale the ―21st century learning skills use scale‖ developed by orhan (2016) was used in this study. the scale consists of 31 items and four factors, which was cognitive skills, autonomous skills, collaboration and flexibility skills and innovation skills. the cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient calculated for the whole scale was .915 in this study. 2.3.2. 21st century teacher skills use scale the ―21st century teacher skills use scale‖ developed by orhan (2016) was used as the second data collection instrument in this study. this scale consisting of 27 items was prepared as a 5-point likert-type scale and has 5 factors. the scale has the following dimensions: ―managerial skills‖ (12 items), ―techno-pedagogical skills‖ (8 items), ―affirmation skills‖ (3 items), ―flexible teacher skills‖ (2 items) and ―production skills‖ (2 items). the cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was calculated as .885 in this study. 2.4. data analysis before data analysis, it was checked to see if the data were distributed normally. in cases where the data were normally distributed, independent-samples t-tests were carried out to compare pairs of groups, and one-way analyses of variance were carried out to compare more than two groups. non-parametric tests were preferred in the analysis of some of the variables due to the small number of people corresponding to the variables in the data set. pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficients were used to determine the relationships between pairs of continuous variables. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 595-602 598 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. results table 2 presents the data obtained as a result of the analyses of the independent-samples t-tests to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of gender. table-2. results of the independent-samples t-tests regarding whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of gender. variable group n mean sd df t p learner skills female 302 3.90 4.94 443 -1.138 256 male 143 3.84 4.90 teacher skills female 302 4.17 4.21 443 -4.522 .000 male 143 3.98 4.44 table 2 shows that, according to the independent-samples t-test results, there was no significant difference in the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner skills depending on the variable of gender, whereas there was a significant difference in their mean scores on 21st century teacher skills [t21st century learner skills (443) = – 1.138, p > .05; t21st century teacher skills (443) = –4.522, p < .05]. it was understood that the significant difference in the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century teacher skills was in favor of the female participants (mfemale = 4.17; mmale = 3.98) a one-way anova test was carried out to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of class year. table 3 shows the descriptive statistics. table-3. descriptive statistical data on the scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use by the variable of class year. skills class year n mean sd learner skills freshmen 154 3.71 .43 sophomore 117 3.88 .50 junior 102 3.97 .45 senior 72 4.13 .53 total 445 3.88 .49 teacher skills freshmen 157 4.03 .43 sophomore 117 4.14 .47 junior 102 4.15 .37 senior 72 4.18 .46 total 445 4.11 .44 table 3 shows the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use depending on the variable of class year. table 4 shows the results of the one-way anova carried out to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of class year. table-4. results of one-way anova on whether there was a difference in the mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use depending on the variable of class year. skills variance origin sum of squares df mean squares f p significant difference learner skills between groups 9.604 3 3.201 14.376 .000 4 > 1.2 3 > 1 2 > 1 within groups 98.203 441 .223 total 107.807 444 teacher skills between groups 1.720 3 .573 3.029 .029 4 > 1 within groups 83.502 441 .189 total 85.222 444 table 4 shows that the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed significantly depending on the variable of class year (flearner skills (3, 441) = 14.376, p < .05; fteacher skills (3, 441) = 3.029, p < .05). tukey’s multiple comparison test results showed that the significant differences in the 21st century learner skills use scale were between the senior students (m = 4.13) and the freshmen students (m = 3.71) and between the senior students (m = 4.13) and the sophomore students (m = 3.88) in favor of the senior students; between the junior students (m = 3.97) and the freshmen students (m = 3.71) in favor of the junior students, and between the sophomore students (m = 3.88) and the freshmen students (m = 3.71) in favor of the sophomore students. these results may be interpreted as that the use of 21st century learner skills of the participants increased as their class years increased. it was seen that the significant difference in the 21st century teacher skills use scale was between the senior students (m = 4.18) and the freshmen students (m = 4.03) in favor of the senior students. this result may be interpreted as that the senior students used 21st century teacher skills more frequently than the freshmen students. a one-way anova test was carried out to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of maternal educational status. table 5 shows the descriptive statistics. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 595-602 599 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. descriptive statistical data on the scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use by the variable of maternal educational status. skills education status n mean sd learner skills illiterate 255 3.88 .51 elementary school 90 3.91 .48 secondary school 52 3.94 .45 high school 48 3.76 .48 total 445 3.88 .49 teacher skills illiterate 255 4.10 .42 elementary school 90 4.14 .42 secondary school 52 4.13 .45 high school 48 4.10 .54 total 445 4.11 .44 table 5 shows the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use depending on the variable of maternal educational status. table 6 shows the results of the one-way anova carried out to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of maternal educational status. table-6. results of one-way anova on whether there was a difference in the mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use depending on maternal educational status. skills variance origin sum of squares df mean squares f p learner skills between groups 1.017 3 .339 1.400 .242 within groups 106.790 441 .242 total 107.807 444 teacher skills between groups .163 3 .054 .282 .839 within groups 85.059 441 .193 total 85,222 444 table 6 shows that the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use did not differ significantly depending on the variable of maternal educational status (flearner skills (3, 441) = 1.400, p > .05; fteacher skills (3, 441) = 0.282, p > .05). table 7 shows the results of the kruskal wallis test carried out to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of paternal educational status. table-7. results of kruskal wallis test on whether there was a difference in the mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use depending on paternal educational status. skills education status n mean rank df chi-square p learner skills illiterate 144 211.39 4 2.723 .605 elementary school 105 219.92 secondary school 118 231.88 high school 74 233.51 university 4 265.25 total 445 teacher skills illiterate 144 204.53 4 7.847 .097 elementary school 105 217.54 secondary school 118 230.97 high school 74 253.74 university 4 227.13 total 445 table-8. descriptive statistical data on the scores on the 21st century learner and teacher skills use by the variable of department. skills departments n mean sd learner skills turkish language education 258 3.91 .52 early childhood education 95 4.02 .45 physical education teacher education 92 3.67 .39 total 445 3.88 .49 teacher skills turkish language education 258 4.13 .48 early childhood education 95 4.15 .39 physical education teacher education 92 4.01 .36 total 258 4.11 .44 table 7, which shows the results of the kruskal wallis test carried out to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of paternal educational status, showed that neither learner skills nor teacher skills use differed depending on paternal educational status [ learner skills (4) = 2.723, p > .05; teacher skills (4) = 7.847, p > .05]. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 595-602 600 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a one-way anova test was carried out to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of department. table 8 shows the descriptive statistics. table 8 shows the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use depending on the variable of department. table 9 shows the results of the one-way anova carried out to determine whether the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed depending on the variable of department. table-9. results of one-way anova on whether there was a difference in the mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use depending on the variable of department. skills variance origin sum of squares sd mean squares f p significant difference learner skills between groups 5.976 2 2.988 12.970 .000 turkish language education > physical education early childhood education > physical education within groups 101.831 442 .230 total 107.807 444 teacher skills between groups 1.199 2 .599 3.153 .054 within groups 84.023 442 .190 total 85.222 444 table 9 shows that the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed significantly depending on the variable of department in terms of learner skills use (flearner skills (2, 442) = 12.970, p < .05), but they did not differ in terms of teacher skills use (fteacher skills (2, 442) = 3.153, p > .05). tukey’s multiple comparison test results showed that the significant differences in the 21st century learner skills use scale were between the turkish language education students (m = 3.91) and the physical education teacher education students (m = 3.67), in favor of the turkish language education students, and between the early childhood education students (m = 4.02) and physical education teacher education students (m = 3.67), in favor of the early childhood education students. the data on the pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficients to determine the correlation between the preservice teachers’ uses of 21st century learner and teacher skills are presented in table 10. table-10. the correlation between the uses of 21st century learner and teacher skills. skills test learner skills teacher skills learner skills pearson’s correlation .645** p .000 teacher skills pearson’s correlation .645** p .000 table 10 shows that there was a positive significant correlation between the use of 21st century learner skills and the use of 21st century teacher skills [r = .645, n = 445, p < .01]. 4. discussion, conclusions and recommendations rapid developments in science and technology and reflection of these developments on social life force today’s societies to improve themselves in this direction. in the 21st century, which has been a transition from the industrial age to the information age, it is expected that people have the ability to transform, question and implement information by going beyond just knowing. what is considered as the most important factor in the success of societies to achieve their goals of the future is to meet their need for qualified human resources provided by people who are equipped to meet the needs of the era, have strength in communication, knowledge and skills, can take responsibility, can evaluate themselves, those around them and time, can generate solutions not problems and are in good agreement with their environment. in this regard, it is important to raise awareness about 21st century learner and teacher skills to make plans and programs for their acquisition and to integrate them with the fields of science and education. this study was conducted to examine preservice teachers’ 21st century learner and teacher skills and showed that the participants frequently used 21st century learner and teacher skills, and their uses of learner and teacher skills were significantly and positively correlated. a review of the literature showed that this result was similar to the results of the studies conducted by günüç et al. (2013), bozkurt and cakır (2016) and onür and kozikoğlu (2019). researchers studying preservice teachers and elementary/secondary school students have demonstrated that students generally perceive 21st century learning skills to a great extent, and they are highly competent in skills such as creativity, active learning, problem-solving, learning to learn, collaboration, digital citizenship, communication and similar skills, which are considered as 21st century learner and teacher skills, and they are moderately competent in some others. it is very important and promising that preservice teachers, who are the educators of the future, are familiar with and using a significant amount of these skills. this study was carried out on 445 preservice teachers: 302 females, 143 males; 154 freshmen, 117 sophomores, 102 juniors and 72 seniors; and 258 in turkish language education, 95 in early childhood education and 92 in physical education teacher education. when the variables were examined, it was seen that there was no significant difference based on the maternal/paternal educational status variables. although the results of kan’an (2018) study paralleled this result of this study, it was concluded based on the literature review that the students whose parents were highly educated were using their 21st-century learning skills to a greater extent than those whose parents had lower levels of education, in terms of 21st century learning skills overall and in terms of the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 595-602 601 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group dimensions of these skills. eskicumalı and eroğlu (2001), ciftçi and bal (2015), canakçı and ozdemir (2015) and onür and kozikoğlu (2019) found that the higher the level of education of parents, the higher the problem-solving skills and course achievements of students, and such parents can contribute more to their children’s educational lives. in terms of the variable of class year, a positive correlation was identified between the class years in favor of the senior students in all departments. this result may be interpreted as that the use of 21st century learner skills of the students increased as their class years increased. in terms of the 21st century teacher skills use scale, it was understood that the significant difference was in favor of the senior students. this result may be interpreted as that the senior students used 21st century teacher skills more frequently than the freshmen students. however, according to basturk (2011) and bozkurt and cakır (2016), the extent to which these skills are used decreases similarly in female and male students as the class years increase. especially senior students appear to prefer shorter and more practical methods in order to be successful in the high school entrance exams in the current system. they interpret this as a tendency of students to perform imitative reasoning without thinking, understanding or evaluating a problem or subject they encounter. there was no significant difference in the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner skills use depending on the gender variable, whereas there was a significant difference in their mean scores on 21st century teacher skills use in favor of the female participants. many studies have been conducted on the relationship between gender and learner/teacher skills, and in the majority of such studies, female students have been found to be more proficient and successful than male students in many areas, whereas the results have been in favor of male students in certain areas (ozkal and cetingöz, 2006; bozkurt and cakır, 2016; kan’an, 2018; onür and kozikoğlu, 2019). it was found that the female students scored better than the male students on the 21st century learner skills use scale overall and on all its dimensions, and the female students were able to use their 21st century learner and teacher skills more effectively than the male students and were more open to collaboration. contrary to these results, mercan (2011) found that male students’ skills for learning to learn were better than those of female students, and ozbulak et al. (2011) determined that the problem-solving skills of 9th-grade students did not differ significantly based on gender. although different results may be found in the literature with regard to the use of 21st century learner/teacher skills based on gender, it may be stated that female students are more capable in terms of such skills than male students in general. in this case, it is also possible to say that female students are more capable in skills such as being active in the teaching-learning process, knowing ways to access information and self-directed learning in comparison to male students (onür and kozikoğlu, 2019). the preservice teachers’ mean scores on 21st century learner and teacher skills use differed significantly depending on the department variable in terms of their learner skills use, in favor of the turkish language education, early childhood education and physical education preservice teachers, in the order given, but did not differ in terms of 21st century teacher skills use. this study is limited to preservice teachers studying at the turkish language education, early childhood education and physical education departments of the kazım karabekir faculty of education at atatürk university in the province of erzurum in turkey. considering the scarcity of studies available on the topic in the literature, it is recommended to carry out studies in different provinces, districts, schools and on different samples (elementary school, secondary school, high school students, teachers, administrators, and so forth). it is obvious that more work is needed in terms of quality and quantity, in terms of addressing the learner and teacher skills of the 21st century. consequently, versatile studies on this subject, which may be utilized to structure and implement educational curricula, should be carried out on different experiment and control groups and to resolve sub-problems. it will also be useful to investigate the factors influencing students’ 21st century 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 374-380, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.374.380 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group analysis of secondary school students’ digital game addiction and sportsmanship behavior levels according to various variables kürşat hazar1 zekihan hazar2 ( corresponding author) 1rectorate, department of physical education and sports, nigde omer halisdemir universty, turkey. 2school of physical education and sports, nigde omer halisdemir universty, turkey. abstract the purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between digital game addiction and fair play-sportsmanship behavior exhibited in physical education and sports lesson and to reveal the relationship between these two concepts. the research was designed according to the quantitative research model and correlational scanning method was used. sample: in this research, “typical case” method, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used. in this context, 500 students (240 females, 260 males) who played digital games every day at least 30 min. and agreed to participate voluntarily in the research were interviewed using face-to-face interviews. data collection personal information form, sportspersonship behavior scale in physical education course (sbspec), digital game addiction scale for children (dgasc) there was used. the data were evaluated in spss 24 package program and subjected to independent groups t-test, anova and pearson correlation analyzes. according to the results of the analysis, it was found that there were significant differences in the variables of gender, age, athlete's license and game type. however, there was a positive correlation between the scale scores. although there is no similar research on the subject when the literature is examined, the findings of the research on the variables discussed in the scope of the research will contribute significantly to the literature in terms of revealing the differences and relationships between the variables. keywords: addiction, digital game, digital game addiction, physical education, sportsperson ship, sport citation | kürşat hazar; zekihan hazar (2019). analysis of secondary school students’ digital game addiction and sportsmanship behavior levels according to various variables. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 374-380. history: received: 22 march 2019 revised: 29 april 2019 accepted: 4 june 2019 published: 8 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 375 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 375 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 376 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 378 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 379 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.374.380&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/903 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9305-4010 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/903 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9305-4010 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/903 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9305-4010 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/903 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9305-4010 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 374-380 375 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the relationship between digital game addiction and fair play-sportsmanship behavior exhibited in physical education and sports lesson and to reveal the relationship between these two concepts. 1. introduction in today's world, digital games have become one of the activities that children preferred most. in making use of children's leisure time, playing digital games has become more preferable to play sports, read books, go to theater or cinema or spend time communicating directly with other people. in fact, in the long run, the results go back to digital game addiction, which is an important sub-dimension of behavioral addiction. eryılmaz and çukurluöz (2018) state that the number of digital addicts increases day by day and that this type of addiction is among the fastest spreading addictions worldwide. when the literature is examined, it is stated that digital games can have many negative effects on children in terms of cognitive, affective, behavioral and social aspects. when it is examined in terms of psycho-social aspect, digital games fictionalized for the purpose of “winning at all costs”, in the long run, may cause to negative feeling and acts such as decrease in sensations, feel lonely, dispatching to fear, decrease in establishing and maintaining relationship among people lying to near abroad about playing games behavior, exhibit obsessive-aggressive behaviors, increase in hostile acts (horzum et al., 2008; griffiths and meredith, 2009; karayağız-muslu and bolışık, 2009; lieberman et al., 2009; dolu et al., 2010; hazar et al., 2017; demir and hazar, 2018; yiğit and yalman, 2018; demir and cicioğlu, 2019). on the other hand, in the real games where interpersonal communication is at the forefront, it can be said that cooperation, helping each other, sharing, compassion, respect and tolerance to the opponent, empathy, acting honestly, fair play-sportsmanship, in short, is at the forefront. today, the most important areas where real games involving physical mobility come to life are schools, naturally, physical education and sports lessons. the aim of physical education and sports lesson is to provide healthy development of children in cognitive, affective, behavioral and social aspects. for example; among the aims of turkish national education basic law and turkish national education, the aims of physical education and sports lesson are listed as “appreciating the winner and accepting to lose, being able to take a stand against cheating and injustice (cited from mone, harmandar (2004))”. this aim shows that physical education and sports lesson also aims to create fair play-sportsmanship understanding in children. according to yapan (2007) includes self-control, obeying rules, respect for others, rights, kindness, honor, and generosity; it rejects behaviors that are not accepted by the society such as deceit, disobeying rules and lies. “fair-play”, known and used in the world with its english name, comprises “sportsmanship in sports”. it expresses the ability of individuals to sacrifice themselves by exceeding their egoism and their ability to make concessions and directly favors in sports competitions (arıpınar and donuk cited in güllü (2018)). fair-play, shows itself in efforts of athletes during the competition, even under difficult conditions, obeying the rules patiently, consistently and consciously; not accepting unfair advantages in order not to disrupt equality of opportunity; failing to take advantage of the opponent's unfair disadvantages; seeing the opponent not as an enemy but an individual or a partner who actualizes the game and value themselves (yıldıran, 2004). pehlivan (2004) states that the concept of fair-play emerges as an expression of respect for human dignity in the first place and that it is a moral reflection of fair and honest play in every stage and every kind of sport. based on these definitions; when the goals of physical education and sports courses in which real games are used as basic tools and negative results of digital games are taken into consideration; it can be said that there is a significant contrast on the basis of “fair-play-sportsmanship”. when the literature is examined, it can be said that digital games have important effects on interiorizing fair play-unsportsmanlike acts in children. for example, while lieberman et al. (2009) stated that children who play digital games with violent content become aggressive behaviors in time; gentile and anderson (2006) who expressed similar results pointed out that such digital games can lead to negative psychological and social consequences such as the idea of aggression, feeling of aggression, aggressive behavior and decrease in social behavior in the short and long term. nevertheless, hazar et al. (2017) found a positive and high-level relationship between digital game addiction and violence in their research. the purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between digital game addiction and fair playsportsmanship behavior exhibited in physical education and sports lesson and to reveal the relationship between these two concepts. when the literature is examined; the fact that there is no direct study on the relationship between digital game addiction and fair play-sportsmanship behavior reveals the importance of this research in terms of contribution to the literature. 2. material and method the research was designed according to the quantitative research model and correlational scanning method was used. correlational research is the study where the relationship between two or more variables is examined without intervening in any way (buyukozturk et al., 2016). 2.1. populatıon depending on the purpose of the research, the group of all individuals (units) that can be researched or generalized is called the population (erkuş, 2013). in this context; the population of this study consists of 1200 students in the 10-14 age group in niğde provincial directorate of national education 5 february secondary school in the 2018-2019 academic year. 2.2. sample in this research, “typical case” method, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used. typical sampling method; it requires the identification of a situation typical of a large number of situations in the population related to the research problem and the collection of information on this sample (buyukozturk et al., 2016). in this context, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 374-380 376 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 500 students (240 females, 260 males) who played digital games every day at least 30 min. and agreed to participate voluntarily in the research were interviewed using face-to-face interviews. 17 of the obtained scales were not included in the analyzes on the grounds that they would not contribute to the research. 2.3. data collection tools personal information form: as a result of the literature review conducted by the personal information form developed by the researchers, variables such as gender, age, presence of sportsmen license, presence of sports fields close to the place of residence and the type of digital game played were included. sportspersonship behavior scale in physical education course (sbspec): the physical education course sport behavior scale developed by yakup (2013) for secondary school students is a 5-point likert type scale. the original scale included 11 items eme exhibiting positive behaviors (epb) factor (items 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 19 and 21) and 11 items reversely scored as “avoiding negative behaviors” (ndc). factor (items 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20 and 22); a total of 22 items. the pearson moments multiplication correlation values of the factors included in the scale were .80 for factor 1 and .78 for factor 2. the scale is designed to measure the frequency of the behaviors in the items were listed as “(5) always, (4) too often, (3) sometimes (2) rarely and (1) never”. the lowest score that can be obtained from the scale is 22 (average 1) and the highest score is 110 (average 5). the scores that can be obtained separately from factor 1 and factor 2 are the lowest 11 (average 1) and the highest 55 (average 5). it is understood that the higher the scores obtained from the scale, the better the level of sportsmanship of the students. digital game addiction scale for children (dgasc): it was developed by hazar and hazar in 2017 with the participation of 10-14 age group students in order to determine the level of digital game addiction of children. the developed scale has four sub-factors and consists of 24 items. the 5-point likert-type scale was used to evaluate the expressions in the scale (1 = strongly disagree,…, 5 = strongly agree). the lowest score that can be obtained from the scale is “24” and the highest score is “120. in the grading of the scale scoring; “1-24: normal group, 25-48: low-risk group, 49-72 risk group, 73-96 dependent group, and 97-120 are considered as a highly dependent group. scale sub-factors and reliability values for this study are as follows; excessive focus and conflict for digital game playing (.85), tolerance development in game time and value given to game (.80), postponement of individual and social tasks / homework (.82), psychological-physiological reflection of poverty and plunge into game (.88), and scale item total is (93). 2.4. data analysis in the obtained data set, 17 scales were found to be unsuitable for the validity and reliability of the study and were excluded from the data set. the data were evaluated in spss 24 package program and subjected to independent groups t-test, anova and pearson correlation analyzes. 3. results table-1. dgasc total score of the participants according to gender variable and t-test analysis of sub-factor scores. scale scores gender n mean std. d. t p dgasc total female 231 43,88 19,38 -8,151 ,00 male 252 59,68 22,88 dgasc 1. sub-factor female 231 12,26 6,14 -7,049 ,00 male 253 16,56 7,15 dgasc 2. sub-factor female 231 12,76 6,25 -7,414 ,00 male 252 17,48 7,61 dgasc 3. sub-factor female 231 9,87 5,27 -6,220 ,00 male 253 13,37 6,90 dgasc 4. sub-factor female 231 7,22 3,29 -5,273 ,00 male 253 9,27 5,02 *p<0,05. when table 1 is examined, it is seen that male participants have higher scores than females in all score types, and this difference is statistically significant. table-2. the t-test analysis of gender variable of sbspec scores. scale scores gender n mean std. d. t p sbspec total female 231 86,19 15,25 4,816 ,00 male 253 79,30 16,13 sbspec 1. sub-factor female 231 40,92 10,09 1,656 ,09 male 253 39,29 11,38 sbspec 2. sub-factor female 231 45,27 8,25 6,212 ,00 male 253 40,00 10,18 *p<0,05. when table 2 is examined, it is seen that female participants have higher scores than male participants but this difference is seen to be statistically significant in scale total score and 2. sub-factor scores. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 374-380 377 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. dgasc total score of the participants according to variable of participants’ being licenced and t-test analysis of sub-factor scores. ölçek puanları athletes’ licence n mean std. d. t p dgasc total yes 186 50,43 21,78 -1,305 ,19 no 297 53,19 23,19 dgasc 1. sub-factor yes 187 13,93 6,49 -1,435 ,15 no 297 14,87 7,31 dgasc 2. sub-factor yes 186 14,39 6,58 -1,974 ,04 no 297 15,75 7,80 dgasc 3. sub-factor yes 187 11,48 7,07 -,592 ,55 no 297 11,84 5,98 dgasc 4. sub-factor yes 187 8,27 5,18 -,090 ,92 no 297 8,30 3,83 *p<0,05. when table 3 is examined, it is seen that participants score averages significantly differ only in 2. sub-factor and this difference are seen to be in favor of the participants who do not have a licence. table-4. sbspec total scores of the participants according to the variable of participants’ being licensed and t-test analysis of subfactor scores. scale scores athletes’ licence n mean std. d. t p sbspec total yes 187 81,99 15,47 -,649 ,51 no 297 82,96 16,46 sbspec 1. sub-factor yes 187 39,71 9,58 -,574 ,56 no 297 40,29 11,52 sbspec 2. sub-factor yes 187 42,27 9,27 -,438 ,66 no 297 42,67 9,92 *p<0,05. when table 4 is examined, it is seen that there is a significant difference in sbspec total scores of the participants. table-5. dgasc total score of the participants according to the type of the games the participants play and t-test analysis of sub-factor scores. scale scores game type n mean std. d. t p dgasc total violence 237 59,52 22,18 7,415 ,00 competition 246 45,00 20,82 dgasc 1. sub-factor violence 238 16,60 7,04 6,725 ,00 competition 246 12,49 6,38 dgasc 2. sub-factor violence 237 17,96 7,66 8,588 ,00 competition 246 12,58 6,02 dgasc 3 sub-factor violence 238 13,10 5,93 4,812 ,00 competition 246 10,35 6,59 dgasc 4. sub-factor violence 238 9,01 3,81 3,568 ,00 competition 246 7,60 4,80 *p<0,05. when table 5 is examined, it is seen that the scores obtained from dgasc are in favor of the participants who play violent games according to the game types that the participants play, and this difference is statistically significant. table-6. sbspec total score according to the type of games played by the participants and t-test analysis of sub-factors. scale scores game type n mean std. d. t p sbspec total violence 238 80,71 15,88 -2,537 ,01 competition 246 84,40 16,08 sbspec 1. sub-factor violence 238 39,69 11,09 -,750 ,45 competition 246 40,43 10,53 sbspec 2. sub-factor violence 238 41,02 10,14 -3,393 ,00 competition 246 43,97 8,97 *p<0,05. when table 6 is examined, it is seen that sbspec total scores and 2. sub-factor scores are in favor of the ones who play “competition games” according to the game types played by the participants, and this difference is seen to be statistically significant. table-7. anova results of dgasc total scores of the participants according to the participants’ age variable. scale age n mean std. d. f p significant difference dgasc total 10,00 37 51,69 25,09 3,135 ,01 14*-11 11,00 103 47,41 23,06 12,00 166 50,67 21,08 13,00 101 54,71 22,32 14,00 77 58,38 23,51 *p<0,05. groups in favor of score difference are indicated by (*). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 374-380 378 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 7 is examined it is seen that participants in 14 age group have higher scale total scores than 11 age group, and this difference is seen to be statistically significant. it is stated that there is no statistically significant difference among other age groups. table-8. anova results on sportsmanship total scores of the participants according to age variable. scale age n mean std. d. f p significant difference sbspec total 10,00 37 85,47 17,62 4,851 ,00 10*,11*,12*-14 11,00 103 84,64 16,72 12,00 166 84,75 16,29 13,00 101 80,61 14,23 14,00 77 76,40 14,60 *p<0,05. groups in favor of score difference are indicated by (*). when table 8 is examined, it is found that the participants in 10,11,12 age groups have higher scale total scores than the ones in 14 age group, and this difference is seen to be statistically significant. table-9. pearson correlation analyses of the participants’ dgasc total scores, sbspec total score, and age variable. variables dgasc total sbspec total age p dgasc total 1 -,312** ,138** ,00 sbspec total 1 -,175** ,00 age 1 *p<0,05. when table 9 is examined, it is seen that there is a negative but statistically high correlation between the participants’ dgasc total scores and sbspec scale total scores; and there is a positive and statistically high correlation between dgasc total score and age variable. it is found that there is a negative but statistically high correlation between sbspec scale total score and age variable of the participants. 4. discussion and conclusion in this part of the research; the results of the statistical analyses will be discussed in light of the literature. in the study, first of all, comparisons were made regarding the scores obtained from the dgasc according to the gender variable of the participants. when the analyses result in table-1 are examined; the scale mean score of the male participants are seen to be higher in all score types than the female participants and this difference is statistically significant. although digital games can now be played with a smartphone or derivative devices easily accessible to men and women; the fact that more male-dominated areas such as digital gaming halls that take this a step further may be an important factor in explaining this situation. when the literature is examined, it is seen that there are similar results in many studies on the subject and the researchers try to explain the main reason of this situation on the grounds that digital games are mostly male-dominated game types (horzum, 2011; gökçearslan and durakoğlu, 2014; hazar et al., 2017; kocaman et al., 2017; bülbül et al., 2018). when the analyses of the participants' sportsmanship behavior scores according to the gender variable in table-2 are examined; it is seen that the mean scores of female participants were higher in all score types than male participants, but this difference is statistically significant in the scale total score and the 2nd sub-factor scores. these results show that female participants have more sportsmanship-fair play behaviors than men. among the main reasons for this situation, because of the structural characteristics of women (hormonal characteristics, temperament, personality), it can be shown that they have more fair play behavior characteristics than men. when the literature is examined, there are many studies showing that women tend to exhibit less aggressive behaviors than men because of their structural characteristics. for example; güllü (2018) in the research on the trainerathlete relationship of the athletes and sportsmanship tendencies; it was found that female participants had higher sporting tendencies than male participants. giles and heyman (2005) according to the results of the study in which adolescents examined the relationship between gender and aggression; the level of aggression of male participants was higher than female participants. tiryaki (1996) stated that male individuals were more destructive aggressive than female individuals in the dimension of destructive aggression. when the results of the analysis of the participants' scores obtained from the dgasc are analyzed according to whether or not they have athletes license in table-3; it was found that the mean scores of the participants were in favor of the participants with athlete license in all score types, but this difference was found to be statistically significant only in the second sub-factor. although the difference between the scores of the participants was not statistically significant; the lower dependency scores of the participants with an athlete license is an important finding. sport, which is one of the most important alternative activities especially for children, is one of the important tools for dealing with digital game addiction for children. when the literature is examined; it is stated that sport may have an important role in the fight against addiction problems such as digital game addiction (davis, 2001; griffiths, 2009; hazar, 2016). for example; aksel (2018) in his study, “investigation the relationship between secondary school students' digital game addiction and self-control and social tendencies” determined that the level of digital game addiction of the participants doing sports was lower than those who do not, and this difference was statistically significant. when the results of the analysis of the participants' sportsmanship behavior scores are examined according to whether or not they have athletes license in table-4; there was no statistically significant difference in the total scores of participants. the main reasons for this are; the participation of all students in sports activities, especially physical education and sports lessons and club activities in schools, and the efforts to gain fair play behavior and understanding especially in these activities may explain this result. however, when the literature is examined; it is seen that there are studies which have reached results in the opposite direction. for example, karafil et al. (2017) in their study on “investigation of the effect of participation in sports on physical education course sportsmanship asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 374-380 379 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group behaviors”, found that the sportsmanship behaviors of the participants with sports license were higher than those who did not have sports license. when table-5 is examined; according to the type of games played by the participants, all the scores obtained from the dgasc were in favor of the participants who played violent games and this difference was statistically significant. these results show that violent games are more effective than digital games in children’s digital game addiction levels. research shows that digital games, especially the violent ones, lead to virtual-reality confusion in children and play an important role in the long-term detachment of children from real life and thus addiction to digital games (sakin, 2007; kim et al., 2013; arslan et al., 2014; irmak and erdogan, 2016). since the evaluation of the results obtained for another research problem in connection with this research problem would be a more holistic evaluation; it would be appropriate to discuss them together. when table-6 is examined; it is seen that the total score of the sportsmanship scale and the 2nd sub-factor scores are in favor of the participants who play “competition type game according to the type of game played by the participants and this difference is statistically significant. one of the main reasons for this may be that violence in digital games is perceived as normal behavior for children. the fact that there is research in the literature to support these results is an important situation. for example; yiğit and yalman (2018) state that the elements of violence frequently used in games lead to tendencies such as turning towards violence or seeing violence as normal in children. they also state that messages are sent through digital games that direct child to racism. kim et al. (2013) state that children face many negative consequences such as social isolation, paranoia, physical weakness, violence and confusion between reality and fantasy due to digital game addiction. aydoğdu-karaaslan (2015) in a study about “digital games and digital violence awareness: a comparative analysis on parents and children”, states that children internalize violence in games and adopt the idea that this can be a way to solve problems in real life. therefore, in general; it can be said that violent digital games increase the level of digital game addiction and cause children to become more prone to violence and cause them to adopt non-sporting behaviors more. when table-7 is examined; it was seen that the mean total score of the participants in the 14-year-old group was higher than that of the 11-year-old group and this difference was statistically significant. there was no statistically significant difference between the other age groups. one of the main reasons for this result may be that children have become acquainted with digital games at an early age as well as increasing the playing time and thus the level of addiction. another main reason for this result is the desire of children to become more independent by moving away from their parents during adolescence, and also tend to show similar-common behaviors towards groups of friends, and playing digital games or conversations about digital games take an important place among these behaviors. kale and erşen (2003) state that children begin to move away from their families during adolescence, form strong ties with friends and build these ties on a number of values. when the literature is examined, it is seen that there are many studies supporting these research results. for example; müller et al. (2015) in their study on “regular game behavior and internet game disorder among young people in europe” found that there is a linear relationship between addiction level and age variable. donati et al. (2015) in a study on “diversity and addiction in games: the relationship between video game diversity and addiction in male adolescents”, it was observed that there was a high positive correlation between the video game addiction level of the participants and the diversity of the game and the duration of the gameplay. if this situation is discussed in conjunction with a research problem, when table 8 is examined; it is seen that the total score average of the participants in the 10,11,12 age group is higher than the participants in the 14 age group, and this difference is statistically significant. among the main reasons for this research result, it can be said that adaptation to the social environment may be effective with some hormonal changes that occur with transition to adolescence. when the results of these two problem situations are evaluated together, the increase in the digital game addiction scores of individuals with age and the decrease in sportsmanship scores is an important finding that draws attention to the relationship between these two variables. when the literature is examined, it is seen that there are studies that are similar to the results of the research. türkmen and varol (2015) in their study on “determining the effect of physical education and sports course on forming sports behavior on secondary school students”, they determined that the level of sportsmanship of 6th-grade students was higher than 7th grade and 8th-grade students. yurttaş (2016) in his research; in the physical aggression, anger, hostility and verbal aggression sub-dimensions, the mean scores of individuals between the ages of 21-24 were found to be higher than the mean scores of individuals aged 20 years and younger. when table 9 is examined; it was observed that there was a negative and statistically significant correlation between dgasc total score of the participants and the total score of sportsmanship scale, and there was a positive and statistically significant correlation between the dgasc total score and age of the participants. it is seen that there is a negative and statistically significant correlation between the total score of sportsmanship scale and age variable of the participants. according to the results of this research; it can be said that increasing the digital game addiction levels of the participants is an important factor that negatively affects sportsmanship behaviors. however, the increase in digital game addiction levels in relation to age reveals that the time spent playing games is an important factor in addiction. on the other hand, the negative relationship between age variable and sportsmanship scores of the participants reveals that with increasing age, sportsmanship behavior levels decrease. as a result; although there is no similar research on the subject when the literature is examined, the findings of the research on the variables discussed in the scope of the research will contribute significantly to the literature in terms of revealing the differences and relationships between the variables. in similar researches; in particular, by using the “observation” method, which is an important study design of the qualitative research model, it is possible to confirm the results of the research by observing the sportsmanship behaviors of children with high digital game addiction in physical education and sports lessons. references aksel, n., 2018. analyzing the relationship between the digital game addiction of secondary school students and their both self-control and socıal tendency. master’s thesis. ordu university institute of social sciences department of educational sciences. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 374-380 380 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group arslan, e., p. bütün, m. doğan, h. dağ, c. serdarzade and v. arıca, 2014. personal computer and internet usage in childhood. izmir behcet uz children's hospital journal, 4(3): 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unıversty journal of faculty of communication, 29: 163 – 118. yıldıran, i., 2004. fair play: concept, view in turkey and improving perspectives. gazi journal of physical education and sports science, 9(4): 3-16. yurttaş, h., 2016. investigation of aggression levels of university students who do sports and do not do sports. master thesis. institute of educational sciences. department of physical education and sports teaching. atatürk universty. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 403 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 403-407, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.403.407 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the factor analysis of knowledge management process for public university lecturers in bangkok chomsupak cruthaka ramkhamhaeng university, bangkok, thailand. abstract the objective of this research was to study the factor analysis of the knowledge management process for public university lecturers in bangkok. the sample was 650 lecturers working in government universities in bangkok. the instrument used for data collection was 5 rating scales questionnaire eliciting data concerning knowledge management process of these university lecturers. the reliability of the instrument, calculated by cronbach alpha coefficient is 0.95. the data analysis by using exploratory factor analysis by orthogonal rotation with the varimax method was used to extract factors. findings: there was the knowledge management process of university lecturers ten components, described by 85 items. loading factors ranged from .40 to .77 and they accounted for 68.77 percent of the total variance. the factors name were: (1) tacit knowledge acquisition; (2) discovery knowledge; (3) capture knowledge; (4) knowledge creating; (5) knowledge creation from research; (6) management knowledge storage; (7) knowledge storage and access; (8) knowledge sharing; (9) knowledge transfer and dissemination; and (10) learning. keywords: factor analysis, knowledge management, the elements of knowledge management, knowledge management process, university lecturers, public university in bangkok. citation | chomsupak cruthaka (2019). the factor analysis of knowledge management process for public university lecturers in bangkok. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 403-407. history: received: 9 april 2019 revised: 15 may 2019 accepted: 21 june 2019 published: 19 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 404 2. research objectives ...................................................................................................................................................................... 404 3. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................. 404 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 404 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 405 6. conclusion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................. 406 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 407 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.403.407&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/927 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-5102 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/927 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-5102 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/927 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-5102 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 403-407 404 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by performing the factor analysis of the knowledge management process for public university lecturers in bangkok. 1. introduction due to the sudden changes in the advancement of technology and education innovation and from globalization, thus affecting the demand for technology to support education. knowledge management is a tool in managing an organization towards becoming a learning organization. the organizations will have the ability to adapt to the changing environment effectively, deliver quality outcomes, and recognize as a high-performance organization (yaemsuda, 2018). the government policy has focused on knowledge management in order to improve personals quality of learning. it has been enacted in a royal decree of the governance rules and procedures in 2003, section 11 to apply the information technology as a tool for learning and exchanging the knowledge effectively (onkaeo et al., 2012). the university lecturers ought to supported and encouraged by universities to the end of enhancing their knowledge such that they will have the capabilities required for efficiently carrying out their duties (the ministry of education, 2017). in a study, the problems of knowledge management of public university lecturers found that (1) lecturers have heavy teaching loads. some lecturers spend time compiling textbooks and so they do not have time for information searching. (2) developing new knowledge takes time. and in order to appropriate knowledge management model for public university lecturers found that consisted of five aspects: (1) acquisition; (2) creation; (3) storage and access; (4) sharing; and (5) learning (cruthaka, 2019). the researcher is therefore interested a study knowledge management process for public university lecturers in order to factor analysis of knowledge management facilitate knowledge acquisition, knowledge creation, knowledge storing and retrieving, knowledge sharing, and learning. to be a guideline and option for university lecturers to manage, create new knowledge to be in line with roles, duties and responsibilities and to open educational opportunities and increase educational capacity of educational institutions in thai society. 2. research objectives the purpose of this research was to study the factor analysis of knowledge management process for public university lecturers in bangkok. 3. research methodology in this research, population descriptive research consisted of 12 university lecturers using stratified sampling methods to find the population according to the proportion of 12 universities. sample size was determined based on factor analysis using size. the sample is about five times the number of variables or more (sisathitnarakun, 2004). the required sample population consisted of 490 subjects. however, 650 subjects were used in this research investigation in order to decrease variances resulting from the sample size. the information on the personal characteristics of university lecturers consisted of 372 women (57.20%) and 278 men (42.80%). 95 lecturers (14.62%) are in the age group of 2535, 300 lecturers (46.15%) are in the age group of 36-45, 211 lecturers (32.46%) are in the age group of 46-55, and 44 lecturers (6.77%) are in the age group of 56-69. the research instrument is a bilateral questionnaire about the knowledge management process of university lecturers. the first part of the questionnaire was brought out as information about the demographic characteristics of the respondents using open-ended questionnaires and checklists. in the second part of the questionnaire, the researcher uses the data obtained from the questionnaire about the knowledge management process of the university lecturers. the accuracy of the content is determined by the consistency index (ioc) for questions about the objectives or definitions of variables used by five experts. the questions were prepared in a format that the answers were prepared in a five-level assessment with 98 items when using the cronbach's α (alpha) coefficient. the reliability of the questionnaire was 0.95. as for the data collection, the researcher started the collection process by sending a letter from the faculty of human resources development, ramkhamhaeng university to the president of 12 universities in bangkok. after obtaining permission from the rector, the researcher sent a copy of the questionnaire to these universities with a prestamped envelope showing the name and address of the researcher. the researcher coordinated with the secretary at the office of the president, the head of the secretariat and the personnel in the faculty who provided cooperation to return the completed questionnaire. the researcher returned 650 questionnaires (100% return rate). in the analysis of demographic characteristics, the researcher used the percentage as a technique of descriptive statistics. in analyzing the composition of the university's knowledge management process, the researcher used a factor extraction method and principal component analysis to ensure that at least three elements were kept apart from using the orthogonal varimax method. in determining the composition, the researcher uses the following criteria. the component must have an eigenvalue greater than or equal to 1 (≥1) with a variable or list describing elements that have more than three variables. each variable must have a load factor greater than or equal to 0.40 (≥0.40). when analyzing the elements, then interpret and strive to be an element that controls the knowledge management process of university lecturers in bangkok. 4. results the analysis of the elements of the important factors that used orthogonal rotation using the varimax method found that the list of knowledge management processes is consistent with the elements of the same factor. the remaining 85 variables were once again rotated and ten components were found which did not bear relationships with one another and were accordingly mutually independent. these variables had loading factors greater than or equal to 0.40 (≥0.40) and asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 403-407 405 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group eigenvalues greater than or equal to 1 (≥1). variables were explanatory of components with more than three variables. the knowledge management process for 85 items was explanatory of variance at 68.77 percent as shown in table 1. table-1. eigenvalue, percentage of variance and accumulated percentage of variance, number of items, number of variables, and loading factors. component eigenvalue percentage of variance accumulated percentage of variance number of items loading factors 1 39.98 46.49 46.49 16 .436-.758 2 3.90 4.53 51.03 19 .400-.729 3 3.10 3.60 54.63 9 .474-.603 4 2.27 2.64 57.26 6 .444-.664 5 1.86 2.16 59.42 9 .410-.673 6 1.57 1.83 61.25 5 .637-.770 7 1.51 1.75 62.99 5 .432-.657 8 1.42 1.65 64.65 5 .587-.729 9 1.26 1.46 66.11 6 .515-.670 10 1.21 1.41 67.51 5 .502-.633 11 1.08 1.26 68.77 the analysis of the ten elements of the knowledge management process is as follows: (1) learning can be explained by 16 variables with load factors ranging from 0.436 to 0.758; (2) storage and access to knowledge can be explained by 19 variables with the load factor between 0.400 and 0.729; (3) knowledge sharing can be described as 9 variables with load factors between 0.474 and 0.603; (4) knowledge transfer and dissemination can be described by 6 variables with load factors between 0.444 and 0.664; (5) knowledge creation can be explained by 9 variables with loading factors between 0.410 and 0.673; (6) knowledge discovery can be explained by 5 variables with the load factors being between 0.637 and 0.770; (7) capturing knowledge can be explained by 5 variables with load factors ranging from 0.432 to 0.657; (8) knowledge creation from research can be explained by 5 variables with loading factors between 0.587 and 0.729; (9) tacit knowledge acquisition by default can be explained by 6 variables with load factors ranging from 0.515 to 0.670; and (10) management knowledge storage can be described in 5 variables with loading factors between 0.502 and 0.633. 5. discussion the results of the study of the elements of the knowledge management process of university lecturers in bangkok found that 10 elements that can be described as follows: component 1: learning can be described in 16 variables with load factors between 0.436 to 0.758. variables with the highest load factor were the summarized new knowledge and utilize and used as best practices. university lecturers need to learn and use to integrate best practices in teaching. this corresponds to the concept of ahmed and shepherd (2010) concerning work conducted on experience can be captured knowledgebase can subsequently be re-used by individuals and teams to create yet more insight and learning. this conclusion is consistent with the research conducted by arthur (2013) which found that in 2000, the british construction company taylor woodrow began a knowledge management initiative focused on technical knowledge managed by a team at the technology center in leighton buzzard, united kingdom knowledge management (km) initiatives are intended to collect and use best practices to improve project performance. component 2: knowledge storage and access can be described in 19 variables with load factors between 0.400 to 0.729. variables with the highest load factor were computer keyword creation and knowledge database management. lecturers should create an index which helps to find full-text records. this finding is consistent with jashapara (2011) which confirms that retrieving important goals is creating an index that helps position the structure of text and documents. text data can be loaded into the system and routed through conversions such as general word deletions. this finding is consistent with the research examined by petcharat and jiamprachanarakorn (2015) who found that the universities should continually improve knowledge management by giving importance to knowledge in other fields and knowledge management should be accessible by different channels. component 3: knowledge sharing can be described in 9 variables with load factors between 0.474 to 0.603. variables with the highest load factor was group discussions in field studies and self-knowledge sharing. were is according to a research investigation conducted by arthur (2013) who found incentives for km in higher education institutions funded by the government, with seven academic departments and more than 500 faculty in malaysia. trying to upgrade the group won the award from the existing faculty as part of the campus-wide drive to the elearning. the concept was setting up a community of practice, which had been approved and the official launch is to promote knowledge sharing and distribution of instructional design for e-learning between teachers in different departments. this finding is consistent with cruthaka (2019) who found that the conditions of knowledge management represented by public university professors are shared and exchanged knowledge through training, meeting, conferences and academic seminars at the national level and international. component 4: knowledge transfer and dissemination can be described in 6 variables with load factors between 0.444 to 0.664. variables with the highest load factor was academic counseling, coaching and counseling. this is because the principles of counseling are coaching and consulting with teaching and selling ideas from managers and experts. lecturers need training and coaching by senior advisors and teachers. this corresponds to the thananan (2010) which confirms that the introduction of the use of coaching and counseling in order to convey the tacit knowledge for proposals to introduce apply new knowledge in a variety of contexts. this is consistent with abbass (2017) who found that the importance of knowledge management in higher education institutions can be applied to the community of practitioners in solving everyday problems, transferring best practices, encouraging cooperation among to specialize in developing new knowledge work in your own field deeply with a large group of experts and learn about the topics of interest. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 403-407 406 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group component 5: knowledge creation can be described in 9 variables with load factors between 0.410 to 0.673. variables with the highest load factor were creating knowledge that can be adapted and used in teaching and research. this corresponds to the framework of ichijo and nonaka (2007) that says that new knowledge is developed when individuals in the organization see the intellectual relationship between their actions and the consequences. this conclusion is consistent with the research conducted by cruthaka (2019) which found that the experts aspects were the search for knowledge through having conversations with colleagues who were deeply experienced in research and instruction; continuously creating knowledge through research; and creating innovations whereby knowledge could be stored by developing a manual for collecting knowledge while providing information concerning good practices. component 6: knowledge discovery can be described in 5 variables with load factors between 0.637 to 0.770. variables with the highest load factor were knowledge discovery in databases online, internet networking such as google scholar. this is because the university lecturers use technological capacities as a tool for knowledge management involving applications and internet networking with computers and advanced mobile technology with high-speed internet signals. those can be used for retrieving a body of knowledge systematically stored in databases from various worldwide resources. this corresponds to the conceptual framework of fernandez et al. (2004) who describe that knowledge discovery as the development of new tacit or explicit knowledge from data and information or from the synthesis of prior knowledge. this is in accordance with earmsiriwong (2011) who said that germane software programs had to be installed in computers and software programs worked on the web as well. many companies have prepared online applications such as google docs and office web apps from microsoft that help access and share work and documents on browsers so that documents can be accessed anywhere through computers or other mobile equipment with the ability to connect with the internet. component 7: capture knowledge can be described in 5 variables with load factors between 0.432 to 0.657. variables with the highest load factor aspect were knowledge capture from cooperation networking between the public, state enterprises and partnership. this is because lecturers acquired knowledge that is good practice from those organizations to apply knowledge for achievement in job performance. this corresponds to the conceptual framework of awad and ghaziri (2004) who said that knowledge capture using the interpretation to build the rules that represent the expert’s thought processes or solution. this finding also accords with ahmed and shepherd (2010) who describe that the organization needs to manage the external interface of knowledge management from outside sources and implanting and leveraging it inside the organization. there is essentially two way to achieve this. one is to source knowledge through purchase or collaboration. the second is to transfer knowledge by developing mechanism and process to absorb and assimilate knowledge. component 8: knowledge creation from research can be described in 5 variables with load factors between 0.587 to 0.729. variables with the highest load factor are knowledge creation from routine to research. because research is one of the important missions of university professors. therefore, professors recognize the benefits of data research for teaching and curriculum development and create knowledge in publicizing research. this corresponds to the conceptual framework of ichijo and nonaka (2007) which explains that basic research aims to create new knowledge for their own benefit. applied research is useful and beneficial to the goal. according to the examination of the research conducted by cruthaka (2019) on the condition of knowledge management displayed by public university lecturers. the research found that knowledge was created by synthesizing knowledge on the basis of conducting research related to their own interests or from problems related to problems arising from funding sources and writing research articles. component 9: tacit knowledge acquisition can be described in 6 variables with loading factors between 0.515 to 0.670. the variables with the highest load factor aspect were knowledge acquisition from an expert. these aspects were the search for knowledge through having conversations with colleagues who were deeply experienced. this is in accordance with ichijo and nonaka (2007) who describe that conversation is the most natural and commonplace of human activities; at the same time, it is one of the best means for sharing and creating knowledge. good conversations are the cradle of social knowledge in any organization. this conclusion is consistent with the research conducted by petcharat and jiamprachanarakorn (2015) who found that the university should motive its personnel to share knowledge in the organization, focusing on learning from people, both inside and outside the university, who have direct experience in knowledge management. component 10: management knowledge storage can be described as 5 variables with the load factors in between 0.502 to 0.633. variable with the highest load factor was the storage of practitioners, the knowledge that collects data and information from any source, adding value to with collecting and storing knowledge. university lecturers conduct studies and research to enhance academic positions for academic and professional development. lectures must extract information from both inside and outside the country from reliable sources in the digital library on campus to be able to use information to support research and disseminate research through e-journals. a corresponds to the awad and ghaziri (2004) that explains that knowledge workers are people who change business and personal experience into knowledge through capturing, evaluating, applying, sharing and dissemination within the organization to solve specific problems or create value. in the organization, there is a chief information officer to take advantage of the reams of information stored on various systems. 6. conclusion and recommendations the results suggest that the knowledge management ten components as appropriate for creating and management knowledge for public university lecturers in bangkok. the recommendations are that: 1. the use and application of knowledge management processes for public university lecturers should be considered in each component by technology and nontechnology because some faculty members of the faculty are not experts in technology and have insufficient technology experience forget knowledge creation, collection and access to knowledge, knowledge sharing and transmission and dissemination of knowledge. 2. in this study of components, the knowledge management process of public university lecturers showed ten components. the use and application of knowledge management process as step by step following: (1) tacit knowledge acquisition (2) discovery knowledge (3) capture knowledge (4) knowledge creating (5) knowledge creation from research (6) management knowledge storage (7) knowledge storage and access (8) knowledge sharing (9) knowledge transfer and asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 403-407 407 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group dissemination and (10) learning. the public university used data obtained from the study to construct a knowledge management model for developing knowledge of university lecturers. references abbass, n.s., 2017. importance of knowledge management at mauritius institution of education. international journal of educational administration and policy studies, 9(10): 134-145.available at: https://doi.org/10.5897/ijeaps2017.0533. ahmed, p.k. and c.d. shepherd, 2010. innovation management. england: pearson education limited. arthur, e.n.l., 2013. knowledge management initiatives and implementation: a qualitative meta-analysis of public and private organizations. thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master of philosophy (information and knowledge management) in the faculty of arts and social sciences at stellenbosch university. awad, e.m. and h.m. ghaziri, 2004. knowledge management. new jersey: pearson education. cruthaka, c., 2019. the development of an appropriate knowledge management model for public university lecturers. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 236-242.available at: https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.236.242. earmsiriwong, o., 2011. management information system bangkok: se-education public company limited. fernandez, i.b., a. gonzales and r. sabherwal, 2004. knowledge management: challenges, solution, and technologies. new jersey: pearson education. ichijo, k. and i. nonaka, 2007. knowledge creation and management: new challenges for managers. new york: oxford university. jashapara, a., 2011. knowledge management an integrated approach. england: pearson education limited. onkaeo, s., s. soottitantawat, s. cortong, s. toopgrajanh and s. suvansook, 2012. the development of information system for knowledge management of thai public organizations according to the public sector management quality award (pmqa). naresuan university journal, 20(3): 7-17. petcharat, c. and s. jiamprachanarakorn, 2015. knowledge management for driving suan dusit rajabhat university through learing organization. sdu resaerch journal humanities and social sciences, 11(1): 145-162. sisathitnarakun, b., 2004. the methodology in nursing research. 3rd edn., bangkok: u & i intermedia limited. thananan, s., 2010. human resource development. 3rd edn., bangkok: t.p.n. press. the ministry of education, 2017. the national education plan 2017-2026. bangkok: prigwhan graphic. yaemsuda, t., 2018. knowledge management : tool for driving the learning organization and high performance organization. royal thai navy medical journal, 45(1): 170-181. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 146 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 146-150, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.146.150 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an analysis of social media usage levels among students at school of physical education and sport in some variables nevzat dinçer1 zühal kilinç2 ( corresponding author) 1, 2school of physical education and sports, batman university, turkey abstract the purpose of the research was to analyze the social media usage levels of the students at school of physical education and sport in batman university in terms of some variables. the research group consisted of total 262 students including 164 female students and 98 male students who have studied at school of physical education and sport in batman university during the spring term of the academic year 2017-2018 and participated in the research voluntarily. the research data were collected with “the scale of social media usage level” developed by toraman (2013). the scale is a five-point likert scale with 19 statements and one dimension. in estimation of total points from the social media usage level scale, the values were registered as “19-44” elementary level, “45-70” medium level, and “71-95” advanced level presented by toraman (2013). as a result of the research, it was clear that the social media usage levels of the students at school of physical education and sport were at medium levels, there were not significant differences between the students’ gender, social media usage reasons and social media usage levels, there were significant differences between the students’ social media usage duration, social media subscription and social media usage levels. keywords: social media, physical education, sport, education, student. citation | nevzat dinçer; zühal kilinç (2019). an analysis of social media usage levels among students at school of physical education and sport in some variables. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 146-150. history: received: 12 november 2018 revised: 7 december 2018 accepted: 16 january 2019 published: 2 february 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 147 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 148 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 148 4. discussion, results and suggestions ......................................................................................................................................... 149 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 150 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.146.150&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/397 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/397 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 146-150 147 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction nowadays internet usage has been common both in our country and all over the world, and enlargement has become much more due to innovations by internet day by day (çelebioğlu, 2013). developments in information technology and history of internet have caused lots of changes in individuals’ daily lives as well. when these types of changes have become more widespread, new social media instruments have appeared each passing day (akyazı and tutgun ünal, 2013). social media sites are generally described as types of communities which make individuals communicate with each other for general purposes or share opinions in online environments (mahajan, 2009). social media sites enable their users to share photos, pictures, videos, contents, etc. and interact with each other (özkan and mckenzie, 2008). according to the definition by the cambridge dictionary (2016) social media is a website or computer programme which allows people to share information on the internet and communicate with each other by using a computer or a mobile phone. in another words, social media instruments “are websites where individuals create their profiles open to public or half of them open to public in a registered system and share any link, other users show their own lists and relation lists of the persons involved in the system are seen, people share their likes, activities in online communities, they send messages, e-mails, videos and files, make discussions with groups and live chats via network. one of the users’ purposes for social sharing sites is to include persons whom they see face to face less or they haven’t seen for a long time, in their social media instruments (kobak and bicer, 2008). in accordance with data in the report “digital in 2018” published by we are social, there are 2.800 billions of active social media users, this is a significant statistic. in the published report, some of data related with turkey were summarized in figure 1.1. figure-1.1. mostly used social platforms in turkey in 2018 resource: https://dijilopedi.com/2018-turkiye-internet-kullanim-ve-sosyal-medya-istatistikleri mostly used social media sites in turkey were given at figure 1.1. information was given about some of mostly used social media instruments as follows: youtube: is a video-hosting website. pursuant to the usage requirements of youtube, users can upload videos if they take copyright permission (bostancı, 2010). 55% of the social media users in turkey have used youtube. facebook: is one of most popular current social media instruments where people share by creating a field subject to themselves, communicate with each other (koç, 2017). 53% of the social media users in turkey have used facebook. whatsapp: is a smartphone messaging application used in whatsapp messenger android and in other smart phones. whatsapp involves features such as texting on the internet, sending a video or sound recording, sharing a photo, creating a group and adding the relevant ones to the group. there is an immediate chat opportunity for your friends in your own telephone list in the relevant application, if your internet connection is not open, your messages are stored, if internet connection is possible, you are aware of them with feedbacks (seviniş, 2017). 50% of the social media users in turkey have used whatsapp. instagram: is a social media application which allows photo and video shares, this one appeared at the end of the year 2010. users can share their photos in social media networks such as twitter, facebook, foursquare, and tumblr via instagram application. thus, it can be said to have connectivity feature (ünal, 2015). 46% of the social media users in turkey have used instagram. lots of people involved in different age groups have become members of social media instruments, users’ actual time has highly increased in period from the occurrence of social media instruments to today (gülbahar et al., 2010). a research explained why the university students used social media sites, three factors were mentioned as “use for social interaction-communication”, “use for identification and familiarity” and “use for education” (karal and kokoç, 2010). https://dijilopedi.com/2018-turkiye-internet-kullanim-ve-sosyal-medya-istatistikleri asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 146-150 148 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group due to social media sites commonly used in current terms, people have tended to share where they go, who they hang out with, what they eat, what they do, what they become satisfied with and complain about. the favour of updated situations and shared photos, and the continuous request of confirmation have taken an important place in daily life. researches have showed that social sharing sites affect people’s psychology in negative ways in fact. in addition to addiction-leading items such as smoking, alcohol and drug we know very well, social sharing sites can be added into these addiction items. as a consequence of these relevant researches, when people give up addictionleading items such as alcohol, smoking and drug, etc., they observe reactions in their bodies. also, when people are far away from internet, they show similar reactions. for example, aggressiveness, depression, lack of communication, etc. (ögel, 2012). as a result of needs for communication and sharing, social media instruments have been made available and so they represent new issues for researches. the purpose of this research was to determine the effects of the social media usage levels on academic success among the students studying at school of physical education and sport. 2. material and method the social media usage levels of the students who have been studying at school of physical education and sport in batman university were analyzed in some variables within this research. it was designed with a descriptive screening model. the research group consisted of total 262 students including 164 female students and 98 male students who have been receiving education at school of physical education and sport in batman university during the spring term of the academic year 2017-2018. and they took part in the research voluntarily. the research data were collected by “the scale of social media usage level” developed by toraman (2013). the scale is a-five point likert type (1:never, 2: rarely, 3: sometimes, 4:often, 5:always) with 19 statements and one dimension. in estimation of total points from the scale of social media usage level, the values were registered as “19-44” elementary level, “45-70” medium level and “71-95” advanced level presented by toraman (2013). the estimated cronbach alfa coefficient of internal consistency was ,86. in analysis of data, the normality test was applied at first, as a result of the test (z(ksv)=0,040;p>0,05), the data showed a normal distribution. in addition to the descriptive statistical techniques in analyses, in comparison of pair groups, t-test, in comparison of more than pair groups, anova analysis were benefited from. in estimation of the relevant findings, the significance level was registered as p<0,05. 3. findings table-1. distribution of participants’ demographical features gender n % female 164 62,6 male 98 37,4 age n % aged 18-20 92 35,11 aged 21-22 80 30,53 aged 23-25 42 16,04 aged 26-28 33 12,59 aged 29 and over 15 5,73 social media subscription yes 111 42,4 no 151 57,6 having social media instruments n % yes 231 88,2 no 31 11,8 daily time for social media usage n % less than 1 hour 48 18,3 1-3 hours 75 28,6 4-6 hours 74 28,2 7-9 hours 53 20,2 10 hours and over 12 4,6 reason of social media usage n % communicating with friends 127 48,5 having social environments 79 30,2 making new friends 20 7,6 sharing information 21 8,0 sharing video-sound 15 5,7 total 262 100,0 source: there is no source for demographic information at table 1, the participants’ demographical features were given. 164 of the participant students (62,6%) were females, 98 of them (37,4%) were males. while 111 of the students (42,4%) were subscribed to any social media, 151 of them (57,6%) were not subscribed to any social media. daily social media instruments were used by 48 of the students (18,3%) for less than 1 hour, by 75 of them (28,6%) for 1-3 hours, by 74 of them (28,2%) for 4-6 hours, by 53 of them (20,2%) for 7-9 hours and by 12 of them (4,6%) for 10 hours and over. the question of reasons for social media usage was replied as communicating with friends by 127 of the relevant participants (48,5%), as having social environments by 79 of them (30,2%), as making new friends by 20 of them (7,6%), as sharing information by 21 of them (8%) and sharing video and sound by 15 of them (5,7%). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 146-150 149 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. descriptive statistical results of participants’ social media usage levels social media usage level mean s.s min. max. 49,40 12,21 19,00 95,00 (1:never, 2: rarely, 3: sometimes, 4:often, 5:always) according to table 2, the participants’ social media usage levels were (49,40±12,21) on average, toraman (2013) suggested that the participants were social media users at medium levels. table-3. t-test results of relation between participants’ gender variable and social media usage levels gender n mean s.s. t p female 164 49,66 12,72 0,451 0,65 male 98 48,95 11.37 p<0,05 according to table 3, any significant relation was not found between the participants’ gender variable and social media usage levels (t=0,451; p>0,05). table-4. t-test results of relation between participants’ social media subscription variable and social media usage levels social media subscription n mean s.s. t p yes 111 47,69 13,06 -1,949 0,05 no 151 50,65 11,43 p<0,05 according to table 4, a significant relation was found in favour of the ones not subscribed to social media instruments between the participants’ social media subscription variable and social media usage levels (t=-1,949; p<0,05). table-5. anova results of relation between participants’ daily social media usage duration variable and social media usage levels k.t. df k.o. f p inter-groups 1527,48 4 381,872 145,694 2,621 0,03 in-groups 37443,43 257 total 38970,92 261 p<0,05 according to table 5, a significant relation was observed between the participants’ daily social media usage duration variable and social media usage levels (f=2,621; p<0,05). in order to determine which groups the significant difference resulted from, the tukey hsd test was done, the relevant test indicated that the significant difference was in favour of the ones using social media instruments more (10 hours and over). table-6. anova results of relation between participants’ social media usage reasons variable and social media usage levels k.t. df k.o. f p inter-groups 770,34 4 192,586 148,640 1,296 0,27 in-groups 38200,57 257 total 38970,92 261 p<0.05 at table 6, there was not a significant relation between the participants social media usage reasons and social media usage levels (f=1,296; p>0,05). 4. discussion, results and suggestions social media which has created great changes in our social life, has been commonly used by the university students. vural and bat (2010) showed that approximately three-fourths of the students were aware of social media, more than three-fourths of them used social media instruments, more than half of them benefited from social media instruments each day, and that there was a significant relation between the frequency of internet usage and the usage of social media. current researches indicated that social media was positioned at an important place in internet usage, that even most of the students who have been using internet, preferred it only for connecting to social media networks. within the scope of this research, social media usage levels were analyzed in some variables. the participants’ social media usage levels were (49,40±12,21) on average, they were social media users at medium levels. when examinations were done about another research by toraman (2013) the students’ social media usage levels were found to be at medium levels (the points between 45-70) in accordance with the scale of social media usage level. considering the participants as social media users at medium levels, these findings support our research. any significant relation was not observed between the participants’ gender variable and the levels of social media usage (t=0,451; p>0,05). aküzüm and saraçoğlu (2017) found that the university students’ attitudes to social media did not vary in their gender. otrar and argın (2014) researched on the adolescents, focused on determining whether their attitudes to social media differed in the gender variable and concluded that there was not a significant difference between the female students and the male ones. these results are parallel with our research findings. arıkan et al. (2012) determined that 90,5% of the candidate teachers were members of social media sites. most of the candidate teachers were users of social media sites, this showed that teaching activities in universities were performed in social media instruments and social media instruments were integrated into education process as environments supporting interactive cooperation. also, while assessing most frequently used activities by the candidates in social media sites, they were often considered to follow education-focused communities and activities. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 146-150 150 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group this research suggested that a significant relation was observed in favour of the ones not subscribed to social media instruments between the participants’ social media subscription variables and the levels of social media usage (t=-1,949; p<0,05). a significant relation was found between the participants’ daily social media usage time variable and the levels of social media usage (f=2,621; p<0,05). in order to determine from which groups the significant difference resulted, the relevant tukey hsd test showed that there was a significant difference in favor of the ones using social media instruments more (10 hours and over). toraman (2013) suggested that the ones using computer for more than four hours highly increased the levels of social media usage, that the students using computer for 4 hours and over in a day had similar usage levels. these findings were supported by the arithmetical averages. the mentioned research results were parallel with our research findings. a significant difference was not seen between the participants’ social media usage reasons and the levels of social media usage (f=1,296; p>0,05). according to göral and karaküçük (2015) even though there was a meaningful relation between the university students’ free time in front of the computer and their happiness levels, there was a meaningful relation between their usage conditions of social sharing sites on net and their happiness levels, evaluation of free time in front of the computer directly affected the university students’ happiness levels. as a result of the research, the levels of social media usage were at medium levels among the students at school of physical education and sport, there were not significant differences between the students’ gender, social media usage reasons and social media usage levels, there were significant differences between the students’ social media usage duration, subscription variables to social media instruments and social media usage levels. in this research, the relation between some variables and social media levels was evaluated among the students at school of physical education and sport. the following suggestions were presented towards the relevant findings.  this research was carried out with the students studying at school of physical education and sport in batman university, in this way similar studies can be done with a larger scope and sample. in this regard, the results of the research can be generalized more.  if academicians provide interesting activities to the students at school of physical education and sport by using social media sites, their situations for using social media sites can be developed in direct ways.  in addition to this research which focused on the quantitative method, both quantitative and qualitative researches can be done by having one by one interviews with students, following complex methods.  when such researches are done in larger frameworks and their effects are evaluated in different faculties and schools, more detailed results can be obtained. references aküzüm, c. and m. saraçoğlu, 2017. analysis of university students’ attitudes to social media. dicle university, journal of ziya gökalp faculty of education, 32: 803-817. akyazı, e. and a. tutgun ünal, 2013. social media usage within the context of relations of objectives, adaptation, loneliness level among students at faculty of communication. global media journal tr, 3(6): 1-24. arıkan, y.d., ö. şimşek and a. kaya, 2012. the candidate teachers’ situations for using social media sites and internet addiction levels. 3rd international conference on new trends in education and their implications, antalya. pp: 26-28. bostancı, m., 2010. social media development and social media usage habits of students at faculty of communication. erciyes university, institute of social sciences. master thesis, kayseri. çelebioğlu, s., 2013. turkey internet report was taken from the website. available from http://www.bik.gov.tr/turkiye-nininternet-raporusasirtmadi-haberi-31480/ [accessed 12/10/2018]. göral, ş. and s. karaküçük, 2015. analysis of relation between free time spent on internet by university students and happiness levels. international arbitration journal of psychiatry and psychology researches, 2(2): 47-56. gülbahar, y., f. kalelioğlu and o. madran, 2010. inet-tr 2010 internet conference in turkey. i̇stanbul: i̇stanbul technical university. karal, h. and m. kokoç, 2010. research for developing a scale to determine university students’ usage purposes for social med ia sites. turkish journal of computer and mathematics education, 1(3): 251-263. kobak, k. and s. bicer, 2008. usage reasons of social sharing site facebook. in 8th international education technology conference. pp: 568. koç, a., 2017. a research on the effects of social media usage on academic success: facebook usage in science and english classes at 6th and 7th grades. atatürk university, institute of social sciences. master thesis, erzurum. mahajan, p., 2009. use of social media in linguistically and culturally-rich india. the international information & library review, 41: 129136. ögel, k., 2012. internet addiction, understanding psychology of internet and overcoming with addiction. i̇stanbul: turkey business bank culture publications. otrar, m. and f.s. argın, 2014. multi-dimension analysis of adolescents’ attitudes to social media. journal of educational and human sciences, 5(10): 3-22. özkan, b. and b. mckenzie, 2008. social media instruments for teacher education. in k. mcferrin et al. (eds.), proceedings of society for information technology & teacher education international conference 2008. pp: 2772-2776. seviniş, s., 2017. relation of social media usage with five-factor personality characteristics in adults. çukurova university, faculty of social sciences. master thesis, adana. toraman, m., 2013. analysis of relations between internet addiction, social media usage levels and academic successes among high school students. fırat university, institute of educational sciences. master thesis, elazig. ünal, t.a., 2015. social media addiction: a research on university students. marmara university. doctorate thesis, i̇stanbul. vural, z.b.a. and m. bat, 2010. social media as a new communication environment: a research on faculty of communication in ege university. journal of yaşar university, 20(5): 3348-3382. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.bik.gov.tr/turkiye-nininternet-raporu-sasirtmadi-haberi-31480/ http://www.bik.gov.tr/turkiye-nininternet-raporu-sasirtmadi-haberi-31480/ 134 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 134-139, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi:10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.134.139 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between daily lifestyle and anthropometric parameters in secondary school student esin güllü1 abdullah güllü2 ( corresponding author) 1hitit university, faculty of sports science, department of physical education and sports education, turkey 2hitit university, faculty of sports science, coaching training department, turkey abstract the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between daily lifestyle and anthropometric parameters in secondary school boys, aged 10-12 years. the study included 128 male students in secondary school, healthy and voluntarily. anthropometric and metabolic parameters of the participants were measured before the study. the daily step counts (step) were measured by sensewear® armband for 6-day without physical education classes. to determine whether the students had active or inactive daily lifestyle habits, step values were assigned to three different levels according to the classification of craig et al. (2013): passive group (pg), normal group (ng), and active group (ag). one-way anova, multiple comparison, and pearson correlation coefficient tests were used. p<0.05 was considered significant in all tests. in multiple comparison tests, some anthropometric parameters and step averages were significant in favor of ag (p<0.05). there were moderate (r=-0.60) or high (r=0.81) linear relationships between step averages and mean values of the anthropometric features (p<0.01). it was concluded that the anthropometric parameters and daily step count of male secondary school students have a significant effect on daily lifestyle habits. keywords:lifestyle, anthropometry, metabolic parameter, step, secondary school boy. citation | esingüllü; abdullah güllü (2019). the relationship between daily lifestyle and anthropometric parameters in secondary school student. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 134-139. history: received: 5 november 2018 revised: 18 december 2018 accepted: 10 january 2019 published: 2 february 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors are very grateful to all participating students and their parents for their time-consuming efforts and decisive participations. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 135 2. methods ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 135 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 136 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 137 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 138 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.134.139&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/395 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/395 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 134-139 135 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction physical activity habits and physical fitness levels are defined as children's lifestyle (arnaoutis et al., 2018). whether it is a child or an adolescent, the evidence indicates that physical activity has a significant impact on a healthy lifestyle and disease prevention, thus promoting the development of effective interventions that promote a physically active lifestyle in children and adolescents (hills et al., 2007). therefore, it has been emphasized that there are important responsibilities of public health and school management to improve physical fitness levels of children and increase their daily physical activities (janz et al., 2000). although obesity is considered a complex multi-factorial condition, physical inactivity is defined as an important factor in the development of obesity (morrison et al., 2018). because today's children's physical activity levels are far below the levels in previous generation children, and the sedentary lifestyle automatically causes obesity (hills et al., 2007). obesity and its metabolic results represent one of the five global risks that lead to hyperglycemia, high blood pressure, cardiovascular morbidity, and mortality, as well as tobacco use and physical inactivity (hofsø et al., 2010). in the last decade, it is estimated that this generation will be the first generation to live shorter than their parents in human history because of the upward trend in obesity is more than expected (freira et al., 2018). in addition, obesity is considered a public health problem that can cause many emotional and social effects, such as difficulties in relationship, depression and low self-esteem, as well as difficulties in health problems (barbosa et al., 2018). today's environment offers an inactive lifestyle that can contribute to obesity in childhood (hills et al., 2007). because of the rapid progress of technological activities such as computer and internet habits to reach addiction level especially among children and adolescents, their staying duration at home increases as well (barbosa et al., 2018). for this reason, children and adolescents are forced to physically lead to inactive behavior and to a sedentary lifestyle (bulut, 2013). as a result, the number of overweight children is increasing rapidly in many countries (seghers and martien, 2009; riso et al., 2016) and according to the world health organization (who), in 2010, 81% of the students aged 11 to 17 were sedentary (world health organization (who), 2010). turkey physical activity guide data states that sedentary lifestyle leads to decreased functional capacity, increased mortality and morbidity associated with chronic diseases (t. c. ministry of health public health agency of turkey (tcmh), 2014). obesity is associated with adverse health outcomes in both children and adults, and approximately 80% of overweight children become overweight adults (burdette et al., 2004). however, it has been widely demonstrated that adequate physical activity during childhood has beneficial effects on both shortand long-term health outcomes, and decreases risk factors for several chronic diseases (riso et al., 2016). for this reason, experts have recommended that for long-term health, prevention of obesity and an active lifestyle should begin in preschool or school-aged children (pate et al., 2004). because, participation in regular physical activity has many health benefits for adolescents (beets et al., 2015) and young people are advised to exercise moderate to vigorous physical exercise every day for one hour (who, 2010a). anthropometric properties are closely related to health development (pavlovic et al., 2018) and the relationship between physical activity and body fat levels in adolescents is insufficient (sevarsson et al., 2018). some researchers have reported a relationship between increased levels of physical activity and low body fat levels (must and tybor, 2005) and however, some others have defended the opposite (basterfield et al., 2012). in addition to the importance of a high level of physical fitness in childhood, the lack of studies evaluating the relationship between anthropometric traits and lifestyle in adolescence is also emphasized (arnaoutis et al., 2018). considering all these explanations; in this study, in order to determine whether the 10to 12-year-old secondary school boys had active or inactive lifestyles, daily step counts (step) were measured by sensewear® armband during 24 hours for 6 days without physical education classes. to determine the volunteers' daily lifestyle levels, step values were assigned to three different levels according to the classification of craig et al. (2013a). accordingly, the purpose of this study was (1) differences between lifestyles of three groups, (2) anthropometric characteristics of the groups according to their lifestyles, and (3) to examine the relationships between the lifestyle and anthropometric parameters of the groups. 2. methods 2.1. intervention group the study included 128 healthy and voluntary secondary school male students aged 10-12 years. to determine the participants' daily lifestyle levels, step values were assigned to three different levels according to the classification of craig et al. (2013). according to this, respectively; first lifestyle level: step>12.000 steps/day was assigned to passive level group (pg; n: 39; age: 11.11±0.78 years; height: 149.78±8.71 cm; weight: 56.10±14.01 kg). second lifestyle level: step=12.000-15.000 steps/day were assigned to the normal level group (ng; n: 44; age: 11.43±0.76 years; height: 150.64±10.14 cm; weight: 47.49±9.69 kg). third lifestyle level: step>15,000 steps/day were assigned to the active level group (ag; n: 45; age: 11.13±0.92 years; height: 149.07±5.55 cm; weight: 39.57±4.54 kg). in the selection of the students in the intervention group, apart from the physical education classes, the criteria of not participating in any sports branch or physical activity, no chronic disease and no regular use of medication were taken into consideration. the informed voluntary parental consent and acceptance forms prepared according to the helsinki declaration were read and signed by each parents. thus, necessary permissions were obtained by their families before starting this study. 2.2. anthropometric and metabolic measurements the anthropometric measurements of the students were taken as shorts, t-shirts and bare feet. a height gauge (harpendenstadiometer, holtain ltd., uk) with a precision of ±1 mm was used for height measurements. body weight, body mass index (bmi), basal metabolism rate (bmr), body fat percentage (bf%), lean body mass percentage (lbm%) and body muscle mass percentage (bmm%) values were measured by body analysis device (tanita bc418 ma professional, japan). for metabolic measurements, systolic blood pressure (sbp) and diastolic blood pressure (dbp) were measured with a sphygmomanometer (erka switch stethoscope, germany). pulse pressure (pp) was obtained with sbp and dbp difference (gunay et al., 2018). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 134-139 136 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. measuring the daily lifestyle to determine whether the students had active or inactive lifestyle, step was measured by sensewear® armband (swa, body media, inc., pittsburg, usa) monitor during 24 hours for 6 days without physical education classes. swa has been reported to provide more accurate predictions than other monitors during mild to moderate activities (calabró et al., 2014) and is frequently used in children of all ages (calabro et al., 2009). the swa was worn on the triceps muscle of the dominant arm (in the middle of the distance between the acromion and the olecranon). before swa was worn on the arm, some demographic information such as gender, age, height, body weight, cigarette use and the dominant hand were uploaded from the computer to the device with the help of the swa software (innerview 5.1. body media, inc., pittsburg, pa), and the data in the swa, which was removed after 6 days, was transferred back to the computer. the intervention group was asked to continue their normal activities as they were on other days, and to remove this device only when they were in aquatic activities, not to remove it from their arms at all other times. otherwise, it was stated that this study could be adversely affected. 2.4. statistical analysis mean and standard deviations (x±sd) of the results and percentage distribution of the intervention group (%) were presented in the text. shapiro-wilk test was used for normality of all variables, and levene statistics was used for the homogeneity of variances. since all the data showed normal distribution (p>0.05), parametric tests were performed. the data obtained from the study were compared with the one-way anova test, and the tukey multiple comparison (post-hoc) tests were used for the differences between the groups. the linear relations between daily lifestyle and anthropometric variables were determined by pearson correlation coefficient (r). the statistical calculations of the study were done with ibm spss 25.0 package program, and p<0.05 level was accepted as significant in all tests. 3. results the anthropometric, metabolic and step values obtained from the intervention group were given between tables 1 and 2 as below. table-1.descriptive, anova and multiple comparison values of the intervention group %95 ci post-hoc test variable group n % x±sd lb ub f p age (yrs.) pg 39 23.7 11.11±0.78 10.51 11.71 0.60 0.56 pg≤ag≤ng ng 44 36.8 11.43±0.76 10.99 11.87 ag 45 39.5 11.13±0.92 10.63 11.64 total 128 100.0 11.24±0.82 10.97 11.51 height (cm) pg 39 23.7 149.78±8.71 143.08 156.48 0.13 0.88 ag≤pg≤ng ng 44 36.8 150.64±10.14 144.79 156.5 ag 45 39.5 149.07±5.55 145.99 152.14 total 128 100.0 149.82±8.04 147.17 152.46 wight (kg) pg 39 23.7 56.10±14.01 45.33 66.87 8.88 0.00* ag≤ng<pg ng 44 36.8 47.49±9.69 41.9 53.09 ag 45 39.5 39.57±4.54 37.06 42.09 total 128 100.0 46.41±11.20 42.72 50.09 bmi (kg/m2) pg 39 23.7 24.69±3.96 21.65 27.73 25.46 0.00* ag<ng<pg ng 44 36.8 20.73±1.81 19.68 21.77 ag 45 39.5 17.77±1.14 17.13 18.4 total 128 100.0 20.50±3.51 19.34 21.65 bmr (kcal) pg 39 23.7 1611.4±218.4 1443.6 1779.3 6.96 0.00* ng≤pg<ag ng 44 36.8 1472.2±182.5 1366.9 1577.6 ag 45 39.5 1356.1±91.7 1305.3 1406.9 total 128 100.0 1459.3±187.6 1397.7 1521.0 fm (%) pg 39 23.7 30.20±5.90 25.67 34.73 18.61 0.00* ag<ng<pg ng 44 36.8 23.69±5.99 20.24 27.15 ag 45 39.5 17.17±3.54 15.21 19.13 total 128 100.0 22.66±7.16 20.31 25.01 lbm (%) pg 39 23.7 69.80±5.90 65.27 74.33 18.60 0.00* pg<ng<ag ng 44 36.8 76.31±5.99 72.86 79.77 ag 45 39.5 82.83±3.54 80.87 84.79 total 128 100.0 77.34±7.16 74.99 79.7 bmm (%) pg 39 23.7 52.94±5.83 48.46 57.43 33.73 0.00* pg<ng<ag ng 44 36.8 60.57±5.70 57.28 63.86 ag 45 39.5 70.55±4.33 68.16 72.95 total 128 100.0 62.71±8.70 59.84 65.57 sbp (mmhg) pg 39 23.7 132.00±9.85 124.43 139.57 3.01 0.06 ng≤ ag≤pg ng 44 36.8 123.50±7.59 119.12 127.88 ag 45 39.5 126.40±7.50 122.25 130.55 total 128 100.0 126.66±8.56 123.84 129.47 dbp (mmhg) pg 39 23.7 78.56±8.40 72.1 85.01 0.12 0.89 ng≤pg≤ag ng 44 36.8 77.64±4.09 75.28 80 ag 45 39.5 78.60±5.41 75.6 81.6 total 128 100.0 78.24±5.69 76.37 80.11 pp (mmhg) pg 39 23.7 48.22±4.58 44.7 51.74 0.78 0.47 ng≤ag≤pg ng 44 36.8 45.93±6.23 42.33 49.53 ag 45 39.5 48.13±4.82 45.46 50.8 total 128 100.0 47.34±5.31 45.6 49.09 step (step/day) pg 39 23.7 11066±761 10481 11650 117.25 0.00* pg<ng<ag ng 44 36.8 13337±830 12858 13816 ag 45 39.5 16701±1040 16125 17277 total 128 100.0 14127±2445 13323 14930 *p<0.05; %: distribution of the intervention group; ci: confidence interval for mean; lb: lower bound; ub: upper bound <: significant difference in favor; ≤: insignificant difference in favor; pg: passive level group; ng: normal level group; ag: active level group; bmi: body mass index; bmr: basal metabolism rate; fm: fat mass; lbm: lean body mass; bmm: body muscle mass; sbp: systolic blood pressure; dbp: diastolic blood pressure; pp: pulse pressure; step: daily step count asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 134-139 137 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the step values of the study group were assigned into three different levels, and the daily lifestyle levels of the groups were determined. there was a significant difference between the groups in terms of weight, bmi, bmr, bf% , lbm%, bmm% and step averages (p<0.05). in the post-hoc tests of the groups; the weight (f=8.88; ag<ng<pg), bmi (f=25.46; ag<ng<pg) and bf% (f=18.61; ag<ng<pg) averages were difference in favor of pg. on the other hand bmr (f=6.96; ng≤pg<ag), lbm% (f=18.60; pg<ng<ag), bmm% (f=33.73; pg<ng<ag) and step (f=117.25; pg<ng<ag) averages were significant in favor of ag (p<0.05; table 1). table-2.the relationships between anthropometric and metabolic parameters with step age height wight bmi bmr fm% lbm% bmm% sbp dbp pp height 0.66** 1 wight 0.44** 0.71** 1 bmi 0.19 0.32* 0.90** 1 bmr 0.46** 0.73** 0.95** 0.82** 1 fm% 0.03 0.14 0.73** 0.89** 0.64** 1 lbm% -0.03 -0.14 -0.73** -0.89** -0.64** -1.0** 1 bmm% -0.21 -0.33* -0.84** -0.93** -0.77** -0.91** 0.91** 1 sbp 0.06 -0.20 0.05 0.22 0.07 0.11 -0.11 -0.18 1 dbp -0.08 -0.12 -0.15 -0.11 -0.05 -0.10 0.10 0.03 0.53** 1 pp 0.07 -0.22 -0.12 -0.02 -0.17 -0.06 0.06 0.04 0.66** -0.08 1 step -0.03 -0.05 -0.60** -0.79** -0.53** -0.76** 0.76** 0.81** -0.12 0.05 0.10 *p<0.05; **p<0.01; bmi: body mass index; bmr: basal metabolism rate; fm: fat mass; lbm: lean body mass; bmm: body muscle mass; sbp: systolic blood pressure; dbp: diastolic blood pressure; pp: pulse pressure; step: daily step count generally, when the relationships between the averages of step and anthropometric parameters were examined, there were between moderate (r=-0.60) or high (r=0.81) level of linear relationships were observed (p<0.01; table 2). 4. discussion and conclusion in this study, in order to determine whether the 10to 12-year-old secondary school boys had active or inactive lifestyles, they were measured by swa during 24 hours for 6-day without physical education classes. also, in order to determine the physical activity levels of adolescents living in our country, the daily step counts should be identified by appropriate calculations (güllü, 2018). therefore, the step values of the students were assigned at three different levels, and then the daily lifestyle levels of the groups (pg, ng and ag) were determined. body weight is known to be effective on daily lifestyle behaviors (koning et al., 2018). in addition, these differences in weight status are frequently observed in adolescence (morrison et al., 2018). therefore, rapid developments in the body limbs (arms and legs) called "growth spurts" are observed during adolescence (akçan et al., 1999) and in addition, the fact that the height increase and growth rates are at the highest level (lopes et al., 2018) suggested that the weights between the groups may be different. the extra body weight in childhood and adolescence is associated with life-long negative health outcomes (pavlovic et al., 2018) and adolescents with high weight and body fat, regardless of gender, are also known to have lower motor performance (barbosa et al., 2018). that was why, it could be said that the student with excessive body weight were disadvantaged in activities requiring body mass transport (arnaoutis et al., 2018) and therefore, it could be said that the student with high body weight in this study were not active enough to be at the ag level, so they were at the pg level. these cases may explain the weight average of the group devoted into three different lifestyles was significantly in favor of pg (ag≤ng<pg; p<0.05; table 1). the bmi is an indicator of the state of weight ranging from extreme weakness to obesity, and also it is a concept that is easily understood by the public (lopes et al., 2018). at the same time, it is assumed that boys with high bmi will have lower performance in physical fitness tests than children with weak and normal bmi (lopes et al., 2018). because nowadays, children are experiencing a sedentary lifestyle and risk of obesity more than ever because of increased television viewing time, lack of sports facilities, and many other reasons such as the widespread use of computer or video games (arnaoutis et al., 2018). moreover, it has also been proposed that bmi can be used as an appropriate cutoff level for the definition of international finesse in children and adolescents (cole et al., 2007). as a result of these observations, when the mean bmi values of our intervention group are examined, it is seen that pg is overweight, ng is in normal weight and ag is in weak category. for this reason, it can be said that the weight variable was in favor of pg, and it also allowed direct bmi values to be in favor of pg (ag<ng<pg; p<0.05; table 1). thus, it can be thought that pg, which is overweight according to bmi classification, has a significant effect on taking place at the first lifestyle level (<12.000 steps), and also, the findings of the physical features obtained in this study were consistent with the literature findings (neyzi et al., 2008). in physical activities, the need for energy increases because of the usage of motion sensors (koning et al., 2018). children's and adolescents' regular participation in more physical activity allows them to develop a lifestyle (seghers and martien, 2009) and as a result they need higher calories (riso et al., 2016; sevarsson et al., 2018). in addition, this lifestyle is known to reduce adiposity, as it benefits children's physical and mental health, and is associated with improved physical fitness, bone health and beneficial cardio-metabolic biomarkers (sevarsson et al., 2018). on the other hand, it is reported that inactivity-related conditions, such as obesity, may cause health problems and contribute to energy imbalance (hormazábal-peralta et al., 2018). over the last decade, it has been observed that it has a more pronounced effect on metabolic complications because of the increasing tendency in obesity (freira et al., 2018). these explanations may lead to be in favor of ag, depending on increased energy usage for daily physical activity (ng≤pg<ag; p<0.05; table 1). for this reason, it can be considered that the ag had a significant effect in taking place at the third lifestyle level (>15.000 steps). although the anthropometric characteristics and lifestyle habits in childhood suggest that it is closely related to physical fitness, it is stated that other parameters may indirectly affect lifestyle habits (arnaoutis et al., 2018). in asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 134-139 138 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group order to determine the health status of children and adolescents, the importance of using fat mass and fat percentage which are evaluated by bioelectrical impedance analysis instead of bmi are emphasized (vantieghem et al., 2018). therefore, anthropometric parameters (pavlovic et al., 2018) such as body weight, lean body mass, fat mass and muscle mass are very closely related to health development in adolescence (lopes et al., 2018). because body composition parameters related to physical health should be well defined, and being physically active is one of the healthiest behaviors (vantieghem et al., 2018). therefore, adolescents are advised to perform moderate to vigorous physical activity for at least 60 minutes per day (who, 2010a). compliance with these recommendations results in appropriate body weight, increased insulin sensitivity and reduced blood pressure (vantieghem et al., 2018). it has also been reported to be associated with a high level of physical fitness, a favorable body composition, and protection against hypertension (arnaoutis et al., 2018). the sedentary and inactive lifestyle in children was found to be associated with bf%, lbm% (riso et al., 2016) and higher levels of fats (morrison et al., 2018). this explanations suggests that bf% was in favor of pg with a passive lifestyle level, (ag<ng<pg). this may also explain the role of pg in the first lifestyle level (<12.000 steps). on the other hand, it was shown that children with daily physical activity lifestyle had a greater impact on bmm% component and were strongly associated with low fat indexes because they tend to gain less weight over time (riso et al., 2016). as a result of these explanations, lbm% and bmm% variables could be provided in favor of ag. therefore, it can be considered that the ag had made a significant contribution to taking place in the third lifestyle level (>15.000 steps) compared to other groups (pg<ng<ag; p<0.05; table 1). in order to determine the physical activity levels of adolescents living in our country, the daily step counts should be identified by appropriate calculations (güllü, 2018). therefore, the step values of the students were assigned at pg, ng and ag levels. a significant difference was observed between the groups in the 95% confidence interval (p<0.05, table 1). students who go to school by walking or cycling have the potential to significantly increase their daily steps as well as their physical activity level (bassett et al., 2013). in addition, with the increase of family participation and awareness, children reported a two-fold increase in walking and cycling to school (craig et al., 2013a). in the present study, although the intervention group could not be assessed how went and came to school, the differences between the step averages were significant in favor of ag (f=117.25; p<0.05; pg<ng<ag; table 1). also, in a similar study performed according to the number of daily steps in 6-12 age group children (tudor-locke et al., 2004) it was found that the ag was gold, ng was silver, and pg was bronze category, respectively. moreover, children with low weight were observed to have higher daily activity (step) levels (morrison et al., 2018)than overweight children. the cause of sedentary life in children and adolescents is often attributed to environmental factors, in particular to inactive lifestyle habits (arnaoutis et al., 2018). for this reason, a passive lifestyle may adversely affect the psychological perspective of children, their participation in physical activity, and leisure sports in leisure time (morrison et al., 2018) both in the present and in the future. as a result of these observations, in the 99% confidence interval, the relationship between step averages and anthropometric feature averages can explain the linear relationships between the moderate (r=0.60) or high (r=0.81) level, (p<0.01; table 2). the potential innovation of this study was the determination of the daily step number intervals of the male secondary school students in the 10-12-age group by appropriate lifestyle levels. in addition, it was concluded that the parameters such as anthropometric, basal metabolism and the number of steps per day of secondary school boys had a significant effect on daily lifestyle habits. on the other hand, it was concluded that today's environment forces 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10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.1.7 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders to their schools’ organizational change m. cevat yildirim1  ahmet kaya2 ( corresponding author) 1college of education, van yüzüncü yıl university, van, turkey 2college of education, harran university, şanlıurfa, turkey abstract the purpose of this paper is to determine the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders in their schools‘ according to teachers‘ opinions. this study is qualitative research based on a phenomenological model. researchers collected data through the semi-structured interview method. the study group was determined by a maximum variation sampling and composed of 13 teachers working in the province of şanlıurfa, turkey. researchers analyzed the data using the content analysis method. the research found that school principals as constructivist leaders contributed to their schools‘ organizational change. these contributions are collected under six categories: learning and teaching, sharing leadership, communication and interaction, a safe school environment, encouragement, and strategic planning. this paper makes two contributions to extant literature on this topic. firstly, this paper facilitates the understanding of constructive leadership roles among principals. secondly, this paper helps us determine the contributions of school principals as constructive leaders to the organizational change in their school, thus contributing to a better understanding of school leadership. keywords: constructivist leadership, constructivist learning approach, organizational change, principal, school improvement, sharing leadership. citation | m. cevat yildirim; ahmet kaya (2019). the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders to their schools‘ organizational change. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 1-7. history: received: 21 august 2018 revised: 24 september 2018 accepted: 26 october 2018 published: 29 november 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. method .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3 3. findings ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 4. conclusion and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................ 5 5. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................... 6 references ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.1.7&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/371 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0062-7826 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8899-9178 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/371 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0062-7826 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8899-9178 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/371 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0062-7826 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8899-9178 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/371 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0062-7826 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8899-9178 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/371 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0062-7826 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8899-9178 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 1-7 2 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction schools are dynamic institutions affected by changes in education and try to comply with these changes. one of the most important factors affecting the schools is the constructivist learning approach. this approach and other developments in education led to changes in school management applications (yıldırım, 2012). constructivism is a learning approach that puts an active emphasis on the learner‘s taking responsibility during the learning process and on the construction of information by the learner himself or herself (brooks and brooks, 1999; perkins, 1999; özden, 2005; yıldırım and dönmez, 2008). first applied in the field of education in england in 1989 (pon, 2001) constructivism is now used in more than thirty countries (güneş, 2007). some of the countries who use this approach are australia, canada, new zealand, spain, the uk, the u.s. (matthews, 2000) and turkey (yıldırım, 2012). this approach has also influenced many schools‘ management and leadership philosophies. with the advent of the constructivist learning approach, constructivist management and leadership ideas came to the fore (brooks and brooks, 1999; lambert et al., 2002; shapiro, 2002;2003). some researchers studied constructivist management and leadership (shapiro, 2002;2003; lambert, 2003; isaacson, 2004; yıldırım, 2012;2014). these studies were generally discussed from teachers‘ and students‘ perspectives, however. there have not been any studies in the literature that discuss the constructivist leadership from school principals‘ perspective and the contributions this leadership makes to effect organizational change in schools. actually, dealing with this issue as principals implement it is extremely important. according to fullan (2007) principals have a key role in the improvement of a school. school principals are one of the most important actors in accomplishing new applications. for this reason, the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders to their schools‘ organizational change is worthy of being examined. the purpose of this study is to determine the contributions of principals‘ leadership to their schools‘ organizational change to constructivism from the teachers‘ perspective. 1.1. constructivist leadership ―leadership‖ is a complex term—and an elusive one. diverse definitions exist, some of them similar, others not. (sisman, 2002; lambert, 2003; hoy and miskel, 2008). in common parlance, leadership means ―moving an organization‘s members towards determined goals (hodgkinson, 2008). in management, thought leaders have developed various theories and practices in leadership, such as distributed leadership, moral leadership, transformational leadership, and instructional leadership (celik, 2000; celep, 2004; harris, 2008; hoy and miskel, 2008; gorton and alston, 2009; glickman et al., 2010). constructivism has required management theorists to re-examine the notion of leadership and create a new school of thought, constructivist leadership. as it related to the teaching profession, constructivist leadership consists of both reciprocal processes and spiritual concepts. thus, it leads to a shared purpose in learning through enabling related participants to construct meanings and embrace reciprocity, equity, meaning, learning, responsibility, and community. it is based on constructivist learning principles (lambert, 2002a), such as active participation, encouragement, facilitation, and shared responsibility (brooks and brooks, 1999; lambert et al., 2002; fosnot, 2005). accordingly, constructivist leadership also requires reciprocal processes that involve active participation, shared purposes and values, sharing responsibility, encouragement, and facilitation. constructivist leadership overlaps or matches with distributed leadership, transformational leadership, and moral leadership in some respects, but it is a different leadership style since it rests on a foundation of constructivism. with this overlap, it is often difficult to draw sharp lines to define various leadership styles. 1.2. organizational change and principals as constructivist leaders constructivist leadership is a key ingredient in successful constructive classes and schools. especially, it is extremely important for school principals to carry out their leadership roles in a constructionist manner. these leaders perform constructivism‘s requirements in general terms and those of constructivist leadership as they perform specific tasks. constructivist leaders are flexible and open to change. they welcome diverse opinions (bauch, 2001). as constructivist leaders, principals become powerful initiators of change (lambert and walker, 2002) becoming agents of change themselves. they also operate as organizational troubleshooters (shapiro, 2002). the real keys for change are for these principals to reconsider cultural norms and values (lambert and walker, 2002; schlechty, 2005). school leaders try to find ways to encourage school stakeholders as partners for change throughout the process (lambert and walker, 2002) through paying attention to flexibility, diversity (bauch, 2001; lambert, 2002a) partnership with parents, and evolution of thought (lambert, 2002a). thus, they encourage all to take responsibility as a requirement of their school‘s cultural norm (thompson et al., 2004). leaders in constructive organizations that take on the role of a pioneering organization for change value sharing leadership and distributing authority among employees, regarding these as normal behaviors (lambert and gardner, 2002; szabo and lambert, 2002; schlechty, 2005). constructive leaders realize effective decision-making with the active participation of their partners in a democratic, righteous way (lambert and gardner, 2002; shapiro, 2002). participation in the decision-making process leads others to internalize decisions and thus develops a shared feeling for their collective responsibilities (devries and zan, 2005). they encourage the school‘s stakeholders and give incentives to establish a school culture that fosters shared meaning since, after all, constructivism—by its nature--includes dialogue, conversation, inquiry, and action (lambert and walker, 2002). schools establish their visions and missions through conversations (bauch, 2001). as constructivist leaders, their principals consider conversation as an important component of constructive leadership (cooper, 2002; lambert, 2002) accepting it as a key component in constructive change (lambert, 2002). constructivist leaders see vision and values as the guiding compass of change (lambert and walker, 2002). so, constructivist leaders cooperate with society and school stakeholders to determine unifying goals, a strong vision, mission statements, and shared values (lambert and walker, 2002). in a school with constructivist leadership, all school partners get respect and acceptance. the school‘s leaders have clear communication with the school‘s stakeholders, valuing asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 1-7 3 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group different perspectives and giving opportunities for all of the partners to express their opinions (shapiro, 2002;2003). therefore, principals have an essential role in the success of their schools (thompson et al., 2004). constructive leaders contribute to the establishment of a safe learning environment where partners and employees are motivated, fostered, and encouraged to take risks; and where their social and psychological needs are meet (shapiro, 2003). they fulfill their role as facilitators and encourage school stakeholders and partners so that managerial and educational activities happen according to a constructivist paradigm. 2. method phenomenology, a qualitative research design, was used in this study. phenomenological design is a research model that aims to study the cases or facts about which researchers are not well informed or do not have a detailed understanding (yildirim and simsek, 2005). 2.1. study group the study group consists of 13 teachers in various schools in turkey‘s şanlıurfa province. the teachers in the study group were determined through a maximum variation sampling method. teachers in the study group include three teachers in primary school, six teachers in middle school, and four teachers in high school. seven of these teachers are male and the remaining six teachers are female (table-1). table-1. information of the teachers in the study group variables f place of duty village 3 town center 2 city center 8 gender male 7 female 6 school type primary school 3 middle school 6 high school 4 source: authors‘ field work 2.2. data collection instruments data were collected through the semi-structured interview method. semi-structured interviews ranging from 30 to 60 minutes in length were conducted in the first term of the 2012-2013 academic year. an audio recording device was not used in the interviews since teachers in the study group might have felt uncomfortable with audio recordings. instead, note-taking was the preferred method to collect data. these semi-structured interviews were based on this question: what are the contributions of principals as constructive leaders in a school‘ organizational change? 2.3. data analysis the data were analyzed through the content analysis technique. themes were determined by taking the stages of content analysis into account. also, quotations taken from teachers‘ views were given in the content analysis. code numbers such as t1, t2…..t13 were given to each teacher in the study group and related explanations were made. 2.4. validity and reliability some of the transactions the study conducted to increase the validity and reliability of this research are as follows: (i) four related experts‘ opinions were taken concerning the interview questions. (ii) before the actual interviews, a preliminary practice of a semi-structured interview was conducted with one of the teachers. (iii) the member checking technique was employed. (iv) researchers coded each of the notes independently. (v) the reliability of the study‘s coding was calculated by a formula: [reliability = number of agreements / total number of agreements + disagreements] which was suggested by miles and huberman (1994). in the coding of semistructured interview data, there was found 75 percent or more correspondence between the two coders. the correspondence percentages calculated for six themes of the study between two coders are as follows, respectively: 100%, 75%, 100%, 83%, 80%, and 100%. 3. findings the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders in the organizational change in their schools are categorized into six categories (table-2). according to these findings, the teachers that participated in the interviews think that school principals as constructive leaders contribute to their schools‘ organizational change in the following categories: learning, teaching, sharing leadership, communication, interaction, a safe school environment, encouragement, and strategic planning. 3.1. learning and teaching the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders in learning and teaching can be listed under three items. the contribution with one of the highest frequencies was ‗‘promoting teachers for their professional development.‘‘ ‗‘supporting constructive learning applications and establishing a constructive learning environment‘‘ also appeared with high frequency. some of the teachers‘ views concerning this theme are as follows: ‗‘constructivist leaders support teachers so that they can realize their learning activities in accordance with a constructivist approach. thus, they contribute to the organizational change of their schools with regards to learning activities‘‘ (t10). ‗‘constructivist school principals help teachers in creating constructive environments‘‘ asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 1-7 4 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (t11). ‗‘constructivist principals encourage teachers to develop themselves professionally in their jobs. they believe teachers need to develop themselves in their professions to keep up with the change‘‘ (t3). table-2. teacher opinions about the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders in their schools‘ organizational change. category name coded teacher opinions f learning and teaching promoting teachers for their professional development 13 supporting constructivist learning applications 12 establishing a constructivist learning environment 11 sharing leadership active participation of partners or stakeholders in making decisions 13 transfer or distribution of authority 9 sharing responsibility 7 building a sense of responsibility 7 communication and interaction establishing clear communication 13 giving place to dialog and discussion 13 building interaction 12 a safe school environment establishing trust in stakeholders or partners 13 building a safe school environment 9 acceptance of stakeholders or partners 8 respecting stakeholders 8 establishing an environment based on justice 8 accepting the differences 6 encouragement pioneering change 10 accepting change 10 depending on flexibility 9 motivating the stakeholders 9 realizing a role as a facilitator 9 strategic planning building shared goals 10 building a shared vision and mission 8 building shared values and beliefs 5 source: obtained from primary data. 3.2. sharing leadership the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders in sharing leadership are listed under four items. the item with the highest frequency is ‗‘active participation of partners or stakeholders in decision making.‘‘ also, it ―transfer or distribution of authority:‖ also occurred frequently. some of the teachers‘ views concerning this theme were the following: ―constructivist school leaders pass on their authorities to others when required, by which they prepare their subordinates for leadership‘‘ (t2). ―constructivist principals encourage all people in school to take part in the decision-making process and thus contribute to the establishment of a positive school environment‖ (t1). ―constructivist principals give importance to a school culture in which responsibility is shared and a sense of responsibility is developed‖ (t12). 3.3. communication and interaction school principals as constructive leaders contribute to organizational change through their communication and interaction. all the teachers participating in the interviews think that giving place to dialog and discussion, and sharing authority are the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders to the organizational change in their schools. here are given some views concerning this theme: ―constructivist leaders establish strong and clear communication among school employees‖ (t5). ―constructive principals take the lead in building an environment where interaction is fostered among all the school‘s stakeholders‖ (t8). ―building an environment of interaction, dialog, and discussion is one of the most important factors to affect success in a school‖ (t13). 3.4. a safe school environment the contributions of school principals as constructive leaders in creating a safe school environment are seen listed under six items. all the teachers participating in the interviews think establishing trust in stakeholders or partners is important for a school‘s organizational change. some of the teachers‘ opinions about this theme can be listed as follows: ―constructivist school principals pay attention to building a safe school environment and do not allow gossip and rumors: an environment where employees trust each other and have confidentiality is fostered‘‘ (t5). ―school principals show tolerance for different beliefs, thinking, and opinions‘‘ (t4). ―constructive leaders strive for building an environment that will help both teachers and students express their emotion and opinions easily.‖ (t9). ―constructivist school leaders let all others feel that they treat all the stakeholders and partners equally and fairly in the same manner‖ (t7). ―a constructive leader tries to make all the personnel feel valuable‖ (t8). 3.5. encouragement teachers think that school principals as constructivist leaders contribute to organizational change in five ways through encouragement. one of the items with the highest frequency is ‗‘pioneering change‘‘ and the other one is ‗‘accepting change.‘‘ other related views include the following: ―constructivist leaders are open to change‖ (t6). ―they encourage stakeholders to adapt to change and pioneer that change.‘‘ (t10). ―constructivist principals are flexible and realize their role as a facilitator. they do not make things difficult‘‘ (t1). ―one of the foremost tenets of constructive leadership is to motivate the school‘s stakeholders‘‘ (t13). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 1-7 5 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.6. strategic planning the contributions of school principals as constructive leaders in their schools‘ organizational change through strategic planning are listed under three items. the response with the highest frequency is ‗‘building shared goals.‘‘ other teachers‘ views include the following: ―constructivist leaders give importance to shared values accepted by all stakeholders‘‘ (t2). ‗‘shared vision, mission, and values positively affect employees‘ commitment to the school and their sense of belonging‘‘ (t12). ―constructive school leaders pay attention to building shared goals that are key ingredients in both strategic planning and increasing the school‘s success‘‘ (t3). 4. conclusion and discussion the results of this study show school principals as constructivist leaders contribute to organizational change in their schools. the results reveal that constructive leaders have an important role in facilitating organizational change in their schools. the contributions of school principals as constructivist leaders into schools‘ organizational change fall under six categories. 4.1. learning and teaching school principals as constructivist leaders contribute to a school‘s organizational change by promoting teachers‘ professional development, supporting constructive learning applications, and establishing a constructive learning environment. one of the basic tenets of constructive schools is to promote the professional development of all school employees and teachers, construct related policies, and apply these principles throughout their schools (lambert and gardner, 2002). teachers‘ professional development also has a vital role to play in schools (yıldırım, 2012a). encouraging teachers to undergo professional development as a part of their job is also an important issue (thompson et al., 2004). therefore, constructive leaders support both continuous development of a school‘s employees and building a constructive learning environment (lambert et al., 2002). 4.2. sharing leadership another result of the study is that school principals as constructivist leaders contribute to their schools‘ organizational change by enabling all stakeholders to participate actively in the decision-making process--sharing authority and responsibility during the process. active participation in decision-making and sharing leadership affects teachers positively in their commitment to the organization (hulpia et al., 2009). constructivist leaders that share their power and allow their employees to take part in decision-making develop a sense of shared responsibility (lambert et al., 2002; devries and zan, 2005). this situation affects a school‘s organizational change positively. according to szabo and lambert (2002) constructive leaders contribute to positive change in both individuals‘ and organizations. leadership also affects an organization‘s success. therefore, every organization should include at least some opportunities for shared leadership (kocolowski, 2010). 4.3. communication and interaction according to another result of the study, school principals as constructivist leaders contribute to organizational change in their schools by establishing open communication, building interaction, and promoting dialog and discussion. one of the most important tenets of constructivism is inquiry—the ability to question (brooks and brooks, 1999; lambert and walker, 2002; gould, 2005). for that reason, constructive leaders give importance to an environment that creates opportunities for dialog and turns communication into interaction (brooks and brooks, 1999; güneş, 2007; yıldırım, 2012). dialog and conversation form the base of both constructive leadership and constructive change (lambert, 2002). research shows that there is a direct relationship between principals‘ communication skills and their school‘s culture (simsek, 2003). establishing conversation and interaction according to constructivist principles help principals guide their schools‘ culture to undergo positive change. 4.4. a safe school environment school principals as constructivist leaders contribute to organizational change through establishing a safe school climate, respecting stakeholders or partners, valuing differences, and embracing justice as a base value. according to shapiro, an environment where all partners are encouraged to take risks and create an environment in which personal secrets can be shared is a safe school. constructive leaders must realize their role as a facilitator role as they strive to build such an environment. to do so, they must show respect, value different opinions, treat all stakeholders equally, and believe in the importance of stakeholders‘ contributions (shapiro, 2003). a healthy school climate is related to a safe school environment. the prerequisite of a safe school environment is to take the school climate in a more positive direction (calık et al., 2011). therefore, the struggles of a constructive leader to create a safe school environment contribute to the school‘s change in a positive way. 4.5. encouragement another result of the study shows that school principals as constructivist leaders pioneer change, accept change, become more flexible, motivate the stakeholders, and realize their role as a facilitator, thus contributing to the school‘s organizational change. a school‘s principal is one of the most important factors in that effect change in a school culture (celik, 2000a; fullan, 2007). constructive leaders that want to realize organizational change must be flexible (bauch, 2001; ozden, 2002), pioneer change (lambert and walker, 2002) and be open to change (celik, 2000a; bauch, 2001). therefore, it is crucial for school leaders to embrace change, encourage people as they undergo change (erdoğan, 2002), and realize their facilitative and inclusive role (shapiro, 2003; fullan, 2007) so that change can be accomplished. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 1-7 6 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.6. strategic planning another result of the study is that school principals as constructivist leaders contribute to their schools‘ organizational change by establishing shared goals, visions, missions, values, and beliefs. shared visions, missions, goals (demirel and karadal, 2007) beliefs, and values are essential parts of an organization‘s culture (demirel and karadal, 2007; sisman, 2007). these constituents form the base of strategic planning (şahin and aslan, 2008). school leaders must change their school‘s culture to realize organizational change (celik, 2000a; schlechty, 2005). shared beliefs and values have an important function in organizational change (schlechty, 2005). shared visions affect the changing relationship between an organization and its employees, the increase in organizational commitment, and the establishment of a shared identity in a positive way (senge, 2002). for that reason, constructive leaders consider shared visions, missions, goals, and values as indispensable parts of organizational change (lambert and walker, 2002; lambert and gardner, 2002). 5. recommendations constructive leadership has been at the top of many schools‘ agendas in recent years. there have been some studies conducted concerning teachers‘ constructivist leadership. however, similar studies should be done for school principals regarding their roles in constructivist leadership. this study used the qualitative research method to arrive at its conclusion and recommendations. there is a need for both quantitative and qualitative research related to this topic. in-service training or educational activities that promote constructive leadership and build constructive leaders must occur for both teachers and principals to facilitate positive organizational change. references bauch, p.a., 2001. school-community partnerships in rural schools: leadership, renewal, and a sense of place. peabody journal of education, 76(2): 204-221. available at: 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 46-50, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.46.50 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of the relationship between mood and achievement goal orientations of the students studying at faculty of sports sciences barbaros serdar erdogan1 nazmi baykose2 ( corresponding author) 1faculty of sport sciences, mehmet akif ersoy university, burdur, turkey. 2faculty of sport sciences, akdeniz university, antalya, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between affect and achievement-goal orientations of sports science faculty students. participants forming the research group are studying at the faculty of sports sciences at mehmet akif ersoy university, and in terms of gender, the research group consists of a total of 487 students, 272 males and 215 females (x̄age = 23.08 + 3.271). the first of the measurement tools used in line with the research purpose; it is the achievement goal orientations scale, which was developed by midgley et al. (1998) and gained literature by adaptation to turkish culture by akın (2006) secondly, the positive and negative affectivity scale, which was originally developed by watson, clarck, and tellegen (1988) under the name of "positive and negative affectivity schedule" and adapted to turkish culture by gençöz (2000) was used. pearson correlation test, anova test and independent samples t test were used in the solution and interpretation of the data. as a result, it was observed that there was a relationship between the achievement-goal orientations of the sports faculty students and their mood (positive and negative). keywords: mood, goal orientations, student, sports, sport science, achievement goal. citation | barbaros serdar erdogan; nazmi baykose (2021). examination of the relationship between mood and achievement goal orientations of the students studying at faculty of sports sciences. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 46-50. history: received: 20 november 2020 revised: 22 december 2020 accepted: 7 january 2021 published: 25 january 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 47 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 47 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 48 4. discussions ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 49 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 50 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.46.50&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2585 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7275-8724 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6941-8390 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 46-50 47 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the relationship between affect and achievement-goal orientations of sports science faculty students. 1. introduction it is a well-known fact that technology developing in the 21st century facilitates access to information. in addition to the objectively relation between access to information and technological development, attempts continue to determine educational environments and the needs of students, who are the main subjects of the education system. it is possible for students to obtain information not only in the classroom but also through the internet, which is an advantage of the developing age. of course, the most prominent feature that emerges at this point is the willingness of students to learn. taking advantage of the 21st century is shaped in parallel with individuals' willingness and motivation to learn. in the age we live in, this willingness and motivation is one of the most basic elements that will guide the lives of students. moods are at the top of the elements that direct people's lives. if we need to classify these feelings of people, these feelings can be divided into two opposite categories as positive and negative moods. it is also possible that this distinction can be divided into useful or unhelpful from a utilitarian point of view. in this case, the emotion classification commonly used in the relevant literature is positive and negative mood (weiss & cropanzano, 1996). while it can be said that a positive mood (affection) leaves a good and pleasant impression on the individual, it would not be wrong to say that a negative moods (affection) leaves a bad and unpleasant impression. for example happiness, hope, frugal passion, etc. while concepts are included in the positive mood classification, worry, anger, hate, etc. concepts are included in the negative mood classification. as stated by yalnız (2014) if an individual's level of positive mood is low, he may have a hopeless, pessimistic view of life as well as not being able to enjoy his life. in the relevant literature, it is known that positive and negative mood are associated with many concepts that are thought to be related (karairmak & siviş-çetinkaya, 2011). in the study conducted by martin-krumm, sarrazin, peterson, and famose (2003) it can be said that athletes with high levels of optimism are less stressed, anxious, or having a high level of self-confidence provides a more successful performance indicator than athletes with high levels of pessimism. positive mood is among the factors that have an effective role on thought and behavior. the increase in positive mood has a positive effect on the to cope with stressful situations, as well as the skill to recover psychologically after a stressful situation. at the same time, it is known that positive mood has an effect on motivation (fredrickson, 2001). learning and teaching processes, achievement goals and learning process results are among the related concepts of positive mood in the relevant literature in terms of motivation (menderes, 2009). the subject of what motivates students, who are the main subjects of educational environments, is perhaps one of the most fundamental questions from the past to the present. if the students have a successful learning process, increase their current level of success and gain pedagogical knowledge, they will be better prepared for the future. the results of the research conducted in the relevant literature in the context of motivation for success show that there is not only one answer to this question (weiner, 1990; zweig & webster, 2004). accordingly, it is stated that the main thing that should be emphasized regarding achievement-goal orientations is “individuals' adaptation and adoption”(pintrich, 2000). in this context, the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the mood of sports sciences students and their achievement-goal orientations. 2. method 2.1. participants participants forming the research group are studying at mehmet akif ersoy university's faculty of sports sciences and in terms of gender, the research group consists of a total of 487 students, 272 males and 215 females (age = 23.08 + 3.271). 2.2. data collection tools 2.2.1. demographic information form the variables for research purposes were included in the demographic information form created by the researchers. these variables are age, gender, class variables. 2.2.2. positive and negative affect schedule the positive and negative affect schedule (panas), originally developed by watson et al. (1988), was used in order to measure the positive and negative mood of the individuals participating in the study. the scale is a 7-point likert scale and consists of 20 items in total. while 10 of these 20 items are used to measure positive affect, the other 10 are used to measure negative affect. as can be understood from this information, the scale is structurally a two-sub-dimension scale. the sample of university students was used both in the development of the scale and in its adaptation to turkish culture. while the internal consistency coefficient of the original scale was .88 for the positive affect sub-dimension, it was calculated as .87 for the negative affect sub-dimension. in addition, it has been reported that there is a negative relationship between scale sub-dimensions (watson et al., 1988). while the internal consistency coefficient of the positive affect sub-dimension of the turkish version of the scale, which was adapted to turkish culture by gençöz (2000), was .83, the internal consistency coefficient of the negative affect sub-dimension was calculated and reported as .86. 2.2.3. achievement goal orientation scale developed as three sub-dimensions by midgley et al. (1998) to measure individuals' achievement-goal orientation / orientation, the measurement tool measures in attitudinal and behavioral contexts. the scale, whose validity and reliability was tested by akın (2006) within the scope of adaptation study on the turkish population, asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 46-50 48 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group consists of 18 items. learning goal orientation, the first of the three basic sub-dimensions, focuses on the developmental level of the individual, while the second sub-dimension, performance approach, focuses on individual development by prioritizing the satisfaction of other individuals. the last sub-dimension focuses on the feeling of being talented in society. in the original study in which the scale was developed, it was stated that the internal consistency coefficients for the reliability of the scale were between .62 and .84, and the reliability results on the turkish population were reported to vary between .77 and .79. 2.3. data analysis pearson correlation test, anova test and independent samples t test were used in the solution and interpretation of the data. within the scope of the study, the significance level was interpreted as p <0.05 and p <0.01. spss (statistical package for social sciences) package program was used for the evaluation and calculation of the data. 3. results table-1. comparison of variables according to the gender variable. n x ̄ s.d t p positive affect w 215 31,38 7,01 -1,567 0,119 m 272 32,86 7,03 negative affect w 215 26,64 6,93 -0,750 0,454 m 272 27,34 6,90 objective orientation w 215 19,67 5,46 -1,771 0,078 m 272 20,94 5,23 performance-approach goals w 215 19,46 5,35 0,196 0,845 m 272 19,32 5,55 performance-avoidance goals w 215 13,81 4,70 -0,867 0,387 m 272 14,38 5,18 note: p<0.05; w: women, m: men. when table 1 is examined, it is seen that the sub-dimensions of achievement-goal orientation and positivenegative affect mean scores are seen. according to the gender variable, no significant difference was found in the means of the sub-dimensions of achievement-goal orientation and the averages of the mood sub-dimensions. table-2. comparison of variables according to the class variable. s.s df m.s f p turkey objective orientation between groups 1200,755 3 400,252 16,975 ,000 1-4 2-4 3-4 within groups 5210,827 221 23,578 total 6411,582 224 performance-approach goals between groups 345,166 3 115,055 4,043 ,008 1-4 2-4 3-4 within groups 6345,486 223 28,455 total 6690,652 226 performance-avoidance goals between groups 357,799 3 119,266 5,055 ,002 1-4 2-4 3-4 within groups 5261,170 223 23,593 total 5618,969 226 note: * 1: class 1, 2: 2 class 3: 3rd class, 4: 4th class. when table 2 was examined, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the goal orientation sub-dimension, one of the sub-dimensions of the achievement-goal orientations scale, in terms of class variable (p <0.05). when this observed difference is examined, 4th class students (mean: 16.10). it was observed that the mean scores were significantly lower than the students in the lower classs (1st class: 21.29, 2. class: 21.59, 3. class: 22.04). when table 2 was examined, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the sub-dimensions of the achievement-goal orientations scale in terms of class variable (p <0.05). when this observed difference is examined, 4th class students (mean: 17.16). it was observed that the mean scores were significantly lower than the students in the lower classes (1st class: 20.06, 2nd class: 20.39, 3. class: 19.50). when table 2 was examined, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the sub-dimensions of the achievement-goal orientations scale in terms of the class variable (p <0.05). when this observed difference is examined, 4th class students (mean: 18.11). it was observed that the mean scores were significantly lower than the students in the lower classes (1st class: 21.04, 2nd class: 21.45, 3. class: 22.30). table-3. comparison of variables according to the class variable. s.s df m.s f p turkey positive affect between groups 1160,732 3 386,911 8,600 ,000 1-4 2-4 3-4 within groups 9988,188 222 44,992 total 11148,920 225 negative affect between groups 448,407 3 149,469 3,240 ,023 3-1 3-2 3-4 within groups 10241,434 222 46,133 total 10689,841 225 note: * 1: class 1, 2: 2 class 3: 3rd class, 4: 4th class. when table 3 was examined, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the positive affect sub-dimension, which is one of the sub-dimensions of the positive-negative affect asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 46-50 49 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group schedule, in terms of the class variable (p <0.05). when this observed difference is examined, 4th class students (mean: 29.20). it was observed that the mean scores were significantly lower than the students in the lower classes (1st class: 32.64, 2nd class: 31.24, 3. class: 35.55). when table 3 was examined, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the negative affect sub-dimension, one of the sub-dimensions of the positive-negative affect schedule, in terms of the class variable (p <0.05). when this observed difference is examined, the mean score of 3rd class students (mean: 24.7857) is significantly lower than the students in other classs (1st class: 27.64, 2nd class: 27.13, 4th class: 28.73) it has been observed. table-4. correlation between positive and negative affect and goal orientation sub-dimensions. objective orientation performance-approach goals performanceavoidance goals performance-approach goals r ,388** p ,000 n 224 performance-avoidance goals r -,208** ,235** p ,002 ,000 n 224 224 positive affect r ,461** ,234** -,157* p ,000 ,000 ,018 n 224 224 224 negative affect r -,194** -,041 ,386** p ,004 ,545 ,000 n 224 224 224 note: ** p<0.01, *p< 0.05. when we examine table 4, we see a positive correlation between positive affect and achievement goal orientation sub-dimensions, learning goal orientation (r = 0.461) and performance approach (r = 0.234), and a negative correlation between performance avoidance (r = -0.157). there is a negative correlation between negative affect and learning goal orientation (r = -0.194) and performance approach (r = -0.041) sub-dimensions, and a positive correlation between performance avoidance (r = 0.386). in addition, a correlation is observed between learning goal orientation sub-dimensions. 4. discussions according to the gender variable, no significant difference was found in the sub-dimensions of positive and negative moods and achievement-goal orientation. we can say that the mood of university students and their achievement-goal orientations do not vary according to gender. when the relevant literature is examined, roebken (2007) advocating that there is no significant difference in terms of achievement-goal orientation in terms of gender variable in his study with university students supports our study. in another study conducted by lın (1997) with a sample of 240 students, it examined whether the students' achievement-goal orientations changed according to their gender and could not find any difference between genders. menderes (2009) also supports our study by stating that there is no significant difference in the sub-dimensions of achievement-goal orientation according to the gender variable. some studies have found that there is a significant difference according to the gender variable, contrary to our study. roeser, midgley, and urdan (1996) stated that male students are more prone to be performance oriented than girls. ablard and lipschultz (1998) stated that female students are more likely to adopt learning goals. therefore, we can say that there is a difference in achievement goal orientation according to the gender variable. in terms of class variable, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the sub-dimensions of achievement-goal orientations scale, goal, performance approach and performanceavoidance orientation sub-dimensions. it can be said that 4th class students have lower mean scores than other class students in all of these sub-dimensions. when the studies in the literature regarding the change of achievement-goal orientations preferred by students according to the class level are examined, it is seen that some studies contradict our research findings. however, it is clear that studies based on longitudinal research designs are needed to make clearer comments on this issue. as reported by toğluk (2009) regarding the change in the students' preferred achievement-goal orientations according to the class level, the achievement-goal orientations of the students participating in the study were examined in terms of the class variable and it was stated that there was no statistical difference. there are studies in the relevant literature that support the findings we obtained as a result of our research (eryenen, 2008; küçükoğlu, kaya, & turan, 2010; menderes, 2009). of course, apart from the descriptive findings of this research, a longitudinal research design on this subject is thought to make it possible for us to make a clearer explanation on this subject. in terms of the class variable, a statistical difference was observed between the mean scores of the positive and negative affect sub-dimensions of the positive negative affect scale. when this observed difference was examined, it was observed that the mean scores of 4th class students were significantly lower than those of lower classs. at the same time, when the level of negative affect is examined, it can be said that 3rd class students have a lower average score than other class. in our study, it was determined that there is a correlation between the sub-dimensions of achievement-goal orientation and positive and negative moods. when we examine the results, there is a positive correlation between positive affect and achievement-goal orientation sub-dimensions, learning goal orientation and performance approach, while a negative correlation is observed between the performance avoidance sub-dimension. in negative affect, on the contrary, there is a negative correlation between learning goal orientation and performance approach sub-dimension, and a positive correlation between performance avoidance sub-dimension. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 46-50 50 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group we can say that students with high positive affect adopt learning goal orientation and performance approach and are challenging, students with high negative affect adopt performance avoidance and avoid learning and performance approach and do not adopt struggle. when the relevant literature is examined, bartels (2007) supports our study by arguing that while the performance-avoidance orientation from the success-goal orientations changes according to the negative affect, the performance-approach orientation changes according to the positive affect. in the study conducted by menderes (2009) with 506 university students, it supports our study by finding that there is a positive relationship with positive affect and learning goal orientation and performance approach sub-dimension and that there is a positive relationship with negative affect and performance avoidance subdimension. another result we obtained in our study is the correlation between success-goal orientation sub-dimensions. when we look at the results, it is seen that there is a negative correlation between the performance avoidance subdimension and the learning goal orientation, and a positive correlation between the performance approach subdimension and the learning goal orientation. akın (2006) supports our study by finding a negative correlation between the performance avoidance sub-dimension and the learning goal orientation sub-dimension, and a positive correlation between the performance approach and learning goal orientation in his study. references ablard, k., & lipschultz, r. 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(2004). validation of a multidimensional measure of goal orientation. canadian journal of behavioural science, 36(3), 232-243. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 39 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 39-43, 2019 issn: (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.39.43 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of the correlation between dynamic balance and leg strength of 11 and 12-year-old children who have fencing training meryem gülaç1 1dulmupınar university, school of physical education and sports, kutahya, turkey abstract in this study, it is aimed to examine the relationship between leg strength and dynamic balance of children who have fencing training. 59 epee athletes who are 11 and 12 years old (33 11-year-old, 26 12-year-old) participated in research groups. star excursion balance test was used to determine balance performances and baseline brand leg-dynamometer used to determine the leg strength of athletes who had fencing training. first, the shapiro-wilk test was used to determine if the data obtained during the study had a normal distribution. pearson correlation test was performed for all data displaying a normal distribution. significance levels were taken as p<0,05 according to the research findings it was determined that there is a meaningful relationship between leg strength and balance test of athletes who have fencing training. as a result, it was seen that balance test values increase as the leg strength increases. keywords: leg strength, dynamic balance, star excursion balance test, epee, children, sports citation | meryem gülaç (2019). examination of the correlation between dynamic balance and leg strength of 11 and 12-year-old children who have fencing training. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 39-43. history: received: 27 september 2018 revised: 24 october 2018 accepted: 29 november 2018 published: 21 december 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 40 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 40 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 41 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 42 5. limitations and suggestions ......................................................................................................................................................... 42 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 42 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.39.43&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0261-3332 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/376 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/376 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 39-43 40 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction balance is an important factor in preserving the body composition which is necessary for successful performance in sports. therefore, it is the basis for dynamic sports which include sudden changes in the pattern of motion especially. all sports contain a certain level of balance (eler, 1996). electronic systems (force platforms, stabilimeters, etc.) via which the movements of the body center of gravity projection are examined (tsigilis et al., 2001; geldhof et al., 2006) and functional dynamic balance tests such as y balance test (plisky et al., 2009) star excursion balance test (filipa et al., 2010) are used in balance assessment. since the use of new system measuring equipment is limited in reflecting the balance performance encountered during sports movements, using the functional balance tests in the measurements is also worthful. star excursion balance test is a test that is commonly used in the literature for dynamic balance and postural control and that has a high fundamental reliability (hertel et al., 2000; gribble et al., 2013). leg strength is important in fencing branch. for a successful score, factors such as a balanced en garde position, flexibility and leg length are effective rather than lengthening to the opponent with a weapon only (lavoie et al., 1985). a fencer who finishes his/her attack needs to reach maximum speed at the moment to make his/her move and needs to reach the target with his/her weapon as soon as possible. for this reason, having a good strength is also very important for fencers as well as other features (gioux et al., 1984). the fatigue that may occur late in the running battle during a fencing game may obstruct to maintain balance especially. leg strength is a subject that has been studied frequently in fencing sport (ntai et al., 2017). within the scope of studies with leg strength, studies towards the effect of applied training programs, dominant and non-dominant leg strength comparison, differences between elite and non-elite fencers have been carried out (tsolakis et al., 2010; tsolakis et al., 2010; tsolakis and vagenas, 2010; tsolakis et al., 2011). several studies have also been conducted to examine the relationship between lower extremity muscle strength and balance performance. these studies have been applied to different branches (soyuer and mirza, 2006; mohammadi et al., 2012; celenk et al., 2015; siriphorn and chamonchant, 2015; aktuğ, 2016). within the scope of studies related to fencing, anthropometric characteristics, variables such as age, sports age have been examined more. we carried out our study to investigate if there is a relationship between balance and leg strength, the two characteristics that are important for fencers. 2. method 2.1. participants measurements have been taken from 59 11 and 12-year-old epee athletes (33 11-year-old, 26 12-year-old) who have joined the turkey super juniors and juniors championships held in the province of eskisehir in 2017. the athletes, who have been receiving fencing training at least for 1 year and working out at least 3 days a week, have participated in this study in line with the information obtained from their coaches. after initially contacting the federation, permissions have been taken from eskişehir provincial representative, who made the organization, and coaches of the participants and then the athletes have joined the measurements voluntarily. during the measurement, the hand of a participant that he/she actively uses has been preferred. 2.2. measurement tool dynamic balance measurement; star excursion balance test, which interests lower extremity and measures the dynamic balance of participants, has been used in this study. the test is carried out in eight directions. the test can be used to measure clockwise and anti-clockwise or both sides (reiman and manske, 2009). the outmost point that an athlete maintains his/her position for three seconds is recorded in centimeters (lockie et al., 2013). measurement of leg strength: the measurement was made using baseline brand leg-dynamometer. following five minutes of warm-up, after placing their feet on the dynamometer table with their knees bent, the subjects have hove the dynamometer bar, which they have grabbed with their hands, vertically at a maximum using their legs while their arms were stiff, backs were straight and torsos were leaned forward slightly. this heaving has been repeated three times and the best value has been recorded for every subject. 2.3. application athletes have been summoned one by one and taken to the private area prepared for measurement. first, their demographic information was recorded. following that, star excursion balance test (with both feet) and strength measurement have been carried out respectively. for the star excursion balance test, the athletes have waited unshod in the starting position at the exact center of the star which had been previously fixed to the ground. they have reached out to the outmost point they could with the 45-degree angle for the 8 points which were predetermined. the proper trial has been regarded as the participant touching the outmost point with a reach out move without unbalancing and coming back to the starting point without unbalancing again. the participant's getting support from the ground during touching or touching a different point with loss of his/her balance has not been considered as a proper trial and the trial has been repeated. for the assessment of one participant, a total of 16 scores, both right and left scores for 8 points, have been recorded considering the average of 3 tries for each direction. 2.4. analysis statistical analysis was performed via spss 22 program. shapiro-wilk test has been used to determine if the data had a normal distribution. the relationship between leg strength and balance performance values has been analyzed using pearson for the data that is deemed to have a normal distribution in the test result. significance level has been taken as p<0,05 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 39-43 41 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. findings table-1. descriptive statistics descriptive statistics mean std. deviation s t a r e x c u r s i̇o n b a l a n c e t e s t r ig h t antrerior 26,56 16,375 anterolateral 52,41 20,383 lateral 44,98 15,206 posterolateral 51,93 16,211 posterior 121,37 24,681 postermedial 65,81 11,751 anteromedial 66,17 18,640 medial 59,37 22,995 l e f t antrerior 15,25 15,360 anteromedial 67,66 13,811 medial 68,05 20,077 postermedial 71,66 17,670 posterior 123,58 24,146 posterolateral 54,83 18,302 lateral 50,83 12,248 anterolateral 46,14 15,964 the leg power 52,43 18,793 source: author's field work table-2. the relationship between star excursion balance test and leg strength leg strength right leg star excurision balance pearson correlation sig. (2-tailed) antrerior ,290 ,026 anterolateral ,409 ,001 lateral ,369 ,004 posterolateral ,353 ,006 posterior ,428 ,001 postermedial ,683 ,000 anteromedial ,484 ,000 medial ,518 ,000 left leg star excurision balance antrerior -,023 ,863 anteromedial ,599 ,000 medial ,649 ,000 postermedial ,626 ,000 posterior ,482 ,000 posterolateral ,454 ,000 lateral ,636 ,000 anterolateral ,423 ,001 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05 according to the leg strength and star excursion balance test results, despite the non-existence of a significant relationship in the direction of anterior left foot, it has been founded that there is a significant relationship between star excursion balance test and leg strength in all other parts. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 39-43 42 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion a sudden and severe forward move is the most characteristical leg move for a fencer. because each attack develops on the basis of this movement. a forward move made fast and timely is regarded as the core principle of being a successful fencer and this sport (weineck, 1998). fencing is a sport which also improves balance by the nature of posture and footwork. fencers move like they are walking on a thin line and they have to maintain their balances either at high speed or sudden deflections not to be eliminated from the game (gökmen et al., 1995). within the scope of our study, it has been noted that there is a positive correlation between balance and leg strength characteristics and balance values increase as the leg strength increases. studies in different branches seem to support our work. soyuer and mirza (2006) have found in their study that there is a relationship between balance and lower extremity muscle strength. siriphorn and chamonchant (2015) have stated in their study (2015) that, as a result of the wii balance exercise that they had applied to the weight-lifters, the balance skill has been improved and the strength of lower extremity muscles has been increased. mohammadi et al. (2012) have found in their study on young male athletes that the leg strength has increased and improvements on dynamic and static balance have occurred following a 6-week strength training toward leg muscles. soyuer and mirza (2006) have revealed in their study on subjects with multiple sclerosis that a relationship between balance and lower extremity muscle strength is existent. bressel et al. have mentioned the existence of a relationship between dynamic balance and performance in their study, which was carried out in 2007 (bressel et al., 2007). muscles transmit strength with the strength they produce by reaching out to adjacent body parts. these functions of muscles and joints are the basic mechanism that allows the emergence of the movement. a good posture and stability require the coordination of joint positions and movements. different joints and different muscles, correspondingly, are used to maintain the balance and posture required for the work done (kunduracıoğlu, 1999). celenk et al. (2015). they have stated that there is a positive correlation between quadriceps muscle strength and balance performance. mohammadi et al. (2012) have stated that a 6-week strength program has increased leg strength in young athletes, this situation has generated improvements on dynamic and static balance performance. young et al. (2010) have stated that the relationship between lower extremity muscle strength and balance performance might be arising from the emergence of muscle coordination and the increase in motor unit contraction speed. again, liman (2008) has explained the positive correlation between strength and balance with the development of inner-muscle and intramuscles coordination by the increase in muscle strength and this situation increasing synergist and antagonist working capacities of extensor and flexor muscles. in some of the studies, a meaningful relationship has not been found. in kurt's study (2015) that was performed with 30 male freestyle wrestlers, who are selected to the national team, a statistically significant difference between leg strengths of weights has been determined where a statistically significant difference between balance results has not been determined in the scope of freestyle wrestling. kapşigay et al. (2013) couldn't have detected a statistically significant difference between dominant and non-dominant lower extremity body balance in their study that they have performed on footballers. as a result, in our study, which was conducted with fencers, it was found that there is a positive correlation between leg strength and balance. it has been revealed that the balance characteristic also improves as the leg strength increases. looking at the results of studies, that have been conducted on different disciplines, it has been seen that there is a necessity of strength exercises to be included in training programs (manolopoulos et al., 2004; asadi et al., 2016). under the circumstances, the inclusion of specific strength exercises in training programs along with technical tactical practices is recommended to be a good fencer. 5. limitations and suggestions it is thought that there are not enough studies on fencing branch and that the studies related to this field should be increased. the number of samples can be increased. references aktuğ, z.b., 2016. investigating the relationship between isokinetic leg strength and balance performance leg volume and leg mass in professional football players. erciyes university, health sciences institute, department of physical education and sports, phd thesis, kayseri. asadi, a., h. arazi, w.b. young and e.s. de villarreal, 2016. the effects of plyometric training on change-of-direction ability: a metaanalysis. international journal of sports physiology and performance, 11(5): 563-573. available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2015-0694. bressel, e., j. yonker, j. kras and e. heath, 2007. comparison of static and dynamic balance in female collegiate soccer, basketball, and gymnastics athletes. journal of athletic training, 42(1): 42-46. celenk, ç., i̇. marangoz, z.b. aktuğ, e. top and m. akıl, 2015. the effect of quadriceps femoris and hamstring muscular force on static and dynamic balance performance. international journal of physical education sports and health, 2(2): 323-325. eler, s., 1996. the examınatıon of some motorıc and physıologıcal parameters of elıte class handball players throughout one season traınıng perıod. gazi university, health sciences institute, department of physical education and sports, master thesis, ankara. filipa, a., r. byrnes, m.v. paterno, g.d. myer and t.e. hewett, 2010. neuromuscular training improves performance on the star excursion balance test in young female athletes. journal of orthopaedic & sports physical therapy, 40(9): 551-558. available at: https://doi.org/10.2519/jospt.2010.3325. geldhof, e., g. cardon, i. de bourdeaudhuij, l. danneels, p. coorevits, g. vanderstraeten and d. de clercq, 2006. static and dynamic standing balance: test-retest reliability and reference values in 9 to 10 year old children. european journal of pediatrics, 165(11): 779-786. available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00431-006-0173-5. gioux, m., p. ame and m.v.a. dogui, 1984. biomechanical and electrotnyographycal characteristics of the human quadriceps in relation with sport performance. proceedings of the world congress of sports medicine, urban and schwarzenherg. pp: 699-705. gökmen, h., t. karagül and f.h. aşçı, 1995. psychomotor development. ankara: general directorate of youth and sports publications, 14. gribble, p.a., s.e. kelly, k.m. refshauge and c.e. hiller, 2013. interrater reliability of the star excursion balance test . journal of athletic training, 48(5): 621-626. available at: https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-48.3.03. hertel, j., s.j. miller and c.r. denegar, 2000. intratester and intertester reliability during the star excursion balance tests. journal of sport rehabilitation, 9(2): 104-116. available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/jsr.9.2.104. kapşigay, b., b. özgül, z. sarı and m.g. polat, 2013. investigation of the effect of the dominant and non-dominant lower limb on body balance in football players. 7th congress of national sports physiotherapists, 7-9 november, ankara. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 39-43 43 © 2018 by the authors; 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 609-615, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.609.615 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group comparative study on attitudes of students studying in different types of high schools towards physical education and sports lesson ridvan dagdemir1 serkan tevabil aka2 ( corresponding author) 1,2agrı ibrahim cecen university, institute of social sciences, department of physical education and sports, agri, turkey. abstract the main purpose of this study was to examine attitudes of students studying in different types of high schools towards physical education and sports lesson in terms of various variables. in this research, comparative survey model has been adopted. population of the research consisted of students studying in different types of high schools and different grades in erzurum province in 2016-2017 and its sample group consisted of total 1560 high school students selected by using stratified random sampling. personal information form and physical education lesson attitude scale developed by demirhan and altay were used in order to measure students' attitudes towards physical education and sports lesson. according to the findings, there are significant difference between participant students' gender, grade, school type, mother educational level variables and levels of their attitudes towards physical education lesson according to p<,05 significance level, but there is no significant difference according to father educational level and residence place variables. as a result, all students studying in different types of high schools in erzurum have positive attitudes towards physical education and sports lesson. according to high school type, attitudes of anatolian i̇mam hatip high school students towards physical education and sports lesson are at the most positive attitude level when compared to other high school types. keywords: physical education and sports lesson, high school type, attitude. citation | ridvan dagdemir; serkan tevabil aka (2019). comparative study on attitudes of students studying in different types of high schools towards physical education and sports lesson. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 609-615. history: received: 23 september 2019 revised: 25 october 2019 accepted: 29 november 2019 published: 2 january 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 610 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 610 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 611 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 614 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 615 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1195 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.609.615&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 609-615 610 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining attitudes of students studying in different types of high schools towards physical education and sports lesson in terms of various variables. 1. introduction physical education covers all of the activities that are done in order to reach the yield strength required by people's physical, cognitive, affective development and genetic capacity appropriate to their age (bal, 2010). it is very important to implement physical education systematically starting from the first years of the educational period and to ensure development of the programs in terms of the continuity and integrity of education (ünlü and aydos, 2007). physical education is an indispensable part of general education (aracı, 1998). it is an ideal area where cooperation, appropriate level of competition, personal and social responsibilities are taught (petithor, 1999). within the scope of general education, physical education and sports, physical and mental discipline of the individual, obeying the rules, having an understanding of contemporary and modern education, becoming an individual, self-realization, comprehending responsibility and being shaped with these values are compatible with general education and physical education. in developed countries, physical education lesson load has an important place in general education programs. in the understanding of contemporary education, general education is supported by physical education and sports. again, it is observed that sports education gained in schools in these societies continues in individuals' later lives (i̇rez, 2012). it can be thought that one of the most important characteristics which should be provided to individual by physical education and sports activities which are considered as an integral part of educational activities, is development of positive attitudes towards sports (balyan et al., 2012). according to ekici et al. (2011) “attitude is a continuous organization of motivation, excitement, cognition and learning processes of an individual with one aspect of individual's own perception world. attitude refers to approaching certain objects, concepts and situations or moving away from them while being prepared to showing specific behavior towards them. attitude is evaluation of an object by an individual as positive or negative. negative attitudes may manifest themselves by having negative beliefs about objects or ideas, rejecting or disliking them and acting against them. positive attitudes may also manifest themselves by having positive beliefs about objects or ideas, adopting or liking them.” according to özdemir and yalın (2000) “it includes behaviors such as continuity, punctuality, desire, vitality and optimism required for individuals to succeed in their duties.” according to akandere et al. (2010) “it is a predisposition of a mental, emotional and behavioral reaction that individuals organize against themselves or any other object, social issue or event around them based on their experience, motivation and knowledge.” according to hünük (2006) “attitudes are affective factors that shape people's behaviors. education is defined as process of culturalization socially and one of the main objectives of education is to reveal hidden strengths and abilities of the students and to move abilities and skills of the students up (uluışık, 2016). in general, aim of education is to create a healthy society with an individual and universal culture, to make individuals a harmonious member of the society in which they live, to equip individuals with the knowledge and skills required by the era. special aims in education are characteristics that are aimed to be gained by students and aims prepared for a specific field (celikten et al., 2005). there are parallel connection between profession that students want to choose and type of high school they want to go to. there are many types of high schools in turkish education system. these types of high schools are known as secondary education institutions that prepare them for both university and profession (http://www.turkpdristanbul.com/lise-turleri-ve-meslek-secimi-rehberi/). anatolian high school, anatolian i̇mam hatip high school, multi-program anatolian high school, science high school, fine arts high school, anatolian girls' high school, anatolian girls' i̇mam hatip high school, girls' vocational and technical anatolian high school, vocational and technical anatolian high school, sports high school, special education vocational high school , vocational high school of health and social sciences high school are important high school types in turkey. physical education and sports lessons are given with similar programs in these high schools. aim of this study is to measure attitudes of students studying in different types of high schools towards physical education and sports lesson and to examine whether there is a difference in student attitudes towards physical education and sports lesson according to types of high school. 2. method in the research, comparative survey model which is one of the general survey models and which is frequently used in scientific researches and studies in the field of education has been adopted. survey models are research approaches aiming at defining the situation in the past or present as it is koçak (2016). it is frequently used in researches with survey model conducted with likert type scale and in the field of education (can, 2014). population of the research consists of students studying in different types of high schools and different grades in erzurum province in 2016-2017 academic year (anatolian high school, anatolian i̇mam hatip high school, multi-program anatolian high school, science high school, fine arts high school, anatolian girls' high school, anatolian girls' i̇mam hatip high school, girls' vocational and technical anatolian high school, vocational and technical anatolian high school, sports high school, special education vocational high school , vocational high school of health and social sciences high school) and its sample group consists of total 1560 high school students studying in different types of high schools and different grades and selected by using stratified random sampling method which is one of the probability sampling methods. as data collection tool, personal information form prepared by the researchers has been used in order to determine demographic variables of students participating in the research; “physical education lesson attitude scale" developed by demirhan and altay has been use in order to measure students' attitudes towards physical education and sports lesson. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 609-615 611 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group personal information form consists of 6 questions aiming to determine demographic characteristics of the students (grade, gender, school type, mother educational level, father educational level, residence place). physical education attitude scale developed by demirhan and altay (2001) consists of 24 items, of which 12 are positive and 12 are negative expressions (1-5, 8, 11, 13, 19, 20, 22 and 24). while 120 is the highest score that can be obtained from the scale for which alpha coefficient was found as 0,93, the lowest score is 24. 1-24 score range shows the most negative attitude, 25-48 score range shows negative attitude, 49-72 score range shows neutral attitude, 73-94 score range shows positive attitude, 95-120 score range shows the most positive attitude (demirhan and altay, 2001). data was collected through application of questionnaire and scale by doing face-to-face interviews with the students studying in relevant high school types. in the analysis of data, frequency distribution has been applied to determe demographic characteristics, independent samples t test to examine relationship between two independent variables and physical education lesson attitude level, one-way anova analysis tests to examine relationship between more than two variables and physical education lesson attitude level. lsd test has been used to determine which group caused the differences. all these tests have been analyzed in spss 21 package program and significance level has been taken as p<0,05. 3. findings table-1. descriptive statistics of students. physical education lesson attitude level n (total) 1560 mean 89,3417 median 89,0000 mode 120,00 std. deviation 19,48817 skewness -,302 std. error of skewness ,062 kurtosis -,512 std. error of kurtosis ,124 minimum 30,00 maximum 120,00 as it is found in table 1, physical education lesson attitude level (-,302) values are within +1,96 and -1,96 standard deviation range from 95% average. these statistical results show that data shows normal distribution and parametric tests should be applied. table-2. gender distribution of students participating in the research. gender number (n) percentage (%) male 733 47,0 female 827 53,0 total 1560 100,0 as it is found in table 2, 733 (47,0%) are male and 827 (53,0%) are female. table-3. distribution of grade in which research participant students. class level number (n) percentage (%) 9th grade 390 25,0 10th grade 393 25,2 11th grade 388 24,9 12th grade 389 24,9 total 1560 100,0 as it is found in table 3, 390 (25,0%) of students participating in the research are in 9th grade, 393 (25,2%) are in 10th grade, 388 (24,9%) are 11th grade and 389 (24,9%) are in 12th grade. table-4. distribution of school types where research participant students. school type number (n) percentage (%) anatolian high school 123 7,9 science high school 121 7,8 vocational high school of health 118 7,6 vocational and technical anatolian high school 121 7,8 private high school 119 7,6 anatolian i̇mam hatip high school 119 7,6 fine arts high school 118 7,6 sports high school 120 7,7 multi-program anatolian high school 120 7,7 anatolian girls’ high school 122 7,8 social sciences high school 120 7,7 anatolian girls' i̇mam hatip high school 120 7,7 girls' vocational and technical anatolian high school 119 7,6 total 1560 100,0 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 609-615 612 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as it is found in table 4, 7,0% distribution of all school types on average at the rate of 13 different and similar school types. table-5. distribution of mother educational levels of research participant students. mother educational level number (n) percentage (%) primary school 622 39,9 secondary school 466 29,9 high school 282 18,1 university 163 10,4 postgraduate (master’s degree-doctorate) 27 1,7 total 1560 100,0 as it is found in table 5, 622 (39,9%) mothers graduated from primary school and educational level of 27 (1,7%) mothers was postgraduate at the lowest rate. table-6. distribution of father educational levels of research participant students. father educational level number (n) percentage (%) primary school 298 19,1 secondary school 386 24,7 high school 501 32,1 university 294 18,8 postgraduate (master’s degree-doctorate) 81 5,2 total 1560 100,0 as it is found in table 6, 501 (32,1%) fathers graduated from high school and educational level of 81 (5,2%) fathers was postgraduate at the lowest rate. table-7. distribution of residence unit of research participant students. residence number (n) percentage (%) village 234 15,0 town 18 1,2 district 230 14,7 province 1078 69,1 total 1560 100,0 as it is found in table 7, 1078 (32,1%) students lived in province and 18 (1,2%) students lived in town at the lowest rate. table-8. relationship between gender of students participating in the research and their attitudes towards physical education lesson gender n x ss t p difference male (1) 733 94,22 18,13 9,635 ,000 1>2 female (2) 827 85,01 19,63 as it is found in table 8, there is a significant difference. it is observed that total scores obtained by male students from the attitude scale related to physical education lesson are higher than total score of female students. it has been determined that attitude levels of male students towards physical education lesson are higher than levels of female students. since total scores of the students in both groups are in the range of 73-94, and that they show positive attitude towards physical education lesson. table-9. relationship between grades of students participating in the research and their attitudes towards physical education lesson. class level n x ss f p difference 9th grade (1) 390 92,16 18,39 10,101 ,000 4<1,2,3 10th grade (2) 393 91,02 18,57 11th grade (3) 388 89,06 19,92 12th grade (4) 389 85,08 20,32 total 1560 89,34 19,48 as it is found in table 9, there is a significant difference. it is observed that total scores obtained by students who are in 12th grade from the attitude scale related to physical education lesson are lower than total score of students in 9th, 10th and 11th grades. it has been determined attitude levels of students who are in 12th grade are lower than levels of students in 9th, 10th and 11th grades. it has been observed that attitude levels of students towards physical education lesson decrease as grade increases. since total scores of the students studying in different grades are in the range of 73-94, and that they show positive attitude towards physical education lesson. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 609-615 613 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-10. relationship between school types of students participating in the research and their attitudes towards physical education lesson school type n x ss f p difference anatolian high school (1) 123 87,40 24,10 3,556 ,000 ,038 6>1,4,9,10,12,13 8>9 science high school (2) 121 89,39 20,02 vocational high school of health (3) 118 90,64 18,73 vocational and technical anatolian high school (4) 121 86,69 15,97 private high school (5) 119 89,76 17,88 anatolian i̇mam hatip high school (6) 119 96,60 18,51 fine arts high school (7) 118 91,88 18,19 sports high school (8) 120 93,82 17,58 multi-program anatolian high school (9) 120 85,33 16,04 anatolian girls’ high school (10) 122 87,27 20,67 social sciences high school (11) 120 90,38 22,32 anatolian girls’ i̇mam hatip high school (12) 120 86,32 18,74 girls’ vocational and technical anatolian high school (13) 119 86,11 20,23 total 1560 89,34 19,48 as it is found in table 10, total scores of anatolian i̇mam hatip high school from are higher than anatolian high school, vocational and technical anatolian high school, multi-program anatolian high school, anatolian girls’ i̇mam hatip high school, girls’ vocational and technical anatolian high school. it is observed that total scores of students of sports high school are higher than multi-program anatolian high school. it has been determined that attitude levels of anatolian i̇mam hatip high school towards physical education lesson are higher than anatolian high school, vocational and technical anatolian high school, multi-program anatolian high school, anatolian girls' i̇mam hatip high school and girls' vocational and technical anatolian high school and attitude levels of sports high school are higher than multi-program anatolian high school. since total scores of different school types are in the range of 73-94, it is observed that they show positive attitude towards physical education lesson. since total scores of anatolian i̇mam hatip high school are in the range of 95120, and this school type show the most positive attitude towards physical education lesson. table-11. relationship between educational level of mothers of students participating in the research and their attitudes towards physical education lesson. mother’s education n x ss f p difference primary school (1) 622 90,48 20,04 2,542 ,028 1>4 secondary school (2) 466 89,92 19,77 high school (3) 282 88,25 18,33 university (4) 163 85,47 18,77 postgraduate (master’s degree doctorate) (5) 27 87,48 14,35 total 1560 89,34 19,48 as it is found in table 11, there is a significant difference. it is observed that total scores of those mothers’ educational level in primary school is higher than mothers’ educational university level. it has been determined that attitude levels of students whose mothers’ educational level is primary school towards physical education lesson are higher than levels of students whose mothers’ educational level is university. since total scores of the students whose mothers’ educational levels are different are in the range of 73-94, and they show positive attitude towards physical education lesson. table-12. relationship between educational level of fathers of students participating in the research and their attitudes towards physical education lesson. father’s education n x ss f p difference primary school (1) 298 90,10 19,84 ,159 ,959 ----- secondary school (2) 386 88,93 18,91 high school (3) 501 89,25 20,07 university (4) 294 89,22 19,26 postgraduate (master’s degreedoctorate) (5) 81 89,41 18,34 total 1560 89,34 19,48 as it is found in table 12, there is no significant difference. since total scores of the students whose fathers’ educational levels are different are in the range of 73-94, and they show positive attitude towards physical education lesson. table-13.relationship between residence unit of students participating in the research and their attitudes towards physical education lesson. residence n x ss f p difference village 234 90,36 17,91 ,999 ,392 ----- town 18 85,88 19,59 district 230 90,73 18,43 province 1078 88,87 20,02 total 1560 89,34 19,48 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 609-615 614 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as it is found in table 13, there is no significant difference. since total scores of the students residing in different residential units are in the range of 73-94, and they show positive attitude towards physical education lesson. 4. discussion and conclusion in this research, attitudes of students studying in different types of high schools towards physical education and sports lesson have been examined comparatively in terms of different variables. in the light of findings obtained, results of the study are presented below. analysis results of independent-samples t test which was conducted in order to determine attitudes and levels of participants for physical education lesson in relation to their gender, were analyzed according to p.0,05 significance level. one-way anova lsd test was applied to examine attitudes and levels for physical education lesson related to grade, school type, mother educational level, father educational level, residence unit. a significant difference has been found between individuals’ gender and means of scores obtained from scale of attitudes and levels related to physical education lesson. it has been determined that score means of males (x=94,22) are higher than score means of females (x=85,01). uluışık (2016) determined in their interviews with 1657 students studying in three different secondary schools in 2014-2015 academic year that there was no significant difference in terms of gender and the scores of the participants in 6th grade were higher than the scores of the participants in the 7th and 8th grades, mean scores of participants taking physical education lesson from female physical education teachers were higher than mean scores of participants taking physical education lesson from male physical education teachers and they determined in their study conducted with 212 high school students selected with random sample method that attitudes of students towards physical education lesson did not show significant difference according to gender. ekici et al. (2011) evaluated physical education attitudes of 387 high school students in muğla city center. consequently, significant difference was found according to gender in the items " i do not enjoy attending physical education lesson, i become happy on the day of physical education lesson, my whole day is disarranged on the day of physical education lesson, physical education lesson increases my selfconfidence, i do not recommend my friends to attend physical education lesson, i become happier without a physical education lesson, i think physical education lesson taught me gentlemanship and tolerance, i love physical education lesson, i want physical education lesson to end as soon as possible and i become happier without a physical education lesson". a significant difference has been found between individuals’ grades and means of scores obtained from scale of attitudes and levels related to physical education lesson. it has been determined that means of scores obtained by students who are in 12th grade from the attitude scale related to physical education lesson (x=85,08) are lower than total scores of students in 9th grade (x=92,16), 10th grade (x=91,02) and 11th grade (x=89,06). as a result of evaluation of attitudes of 387 high school students towards physical education lesson in muğla city center by ekici et al. (2011) significant difference was found according to grades in the items "i want hours of physical education lesson to be increased, i want physical education lesson to be given everyday, my cooperation feeling develops in physical education lesson, i want physical education lesson to end as soon as possible, i love physical education lesson, i hide myself from tasks given related to physical education lesson, my whole day is disarranged on the day of physical education lesson". when uluışık (2016) examined 150 high school students studying in uso anatolian high school in burdur city center according to grade variable in 2015-2016 academic year, it is seen that attitude scores of students in 9th and 10th grades physical education lesson are higher than scores of students in 11th and 12th grades. however, it has been determined that their attitudes towards physical education lesson do not show significant differences according to their grade and gender. as a result of research on relationship between attitudes of 299 students studying in 9th, 10th and 11th grades in anatolian high school in konya towards physical education lesson and their academic motivation by akandere et al. (2010) it has been stated that attitudes of students towards physical education lesson differentiate according to gender, grade, age groups, status of doing exercise in free time. a significant difference has been found between individuals’ school type and means of scores obtained from scale of attitudes and levels related to physical education lesson. it is observed that total scores obtained by students who are in anatolian i̇mam hatip high school(x=96,60) from the attitude scale related to physical education lesson are higher than total score of students in anatolian high school(x=87,40), vocational and technical anatolian high school(x=86,69), multi-program anatolian high school(x=85,33), anatolian girls’ i̇mam hatip high school(x=86,32), girls’ vocational and technical anatolian high school(x=86,11). with these results obtained, it is observed that total scores of students studying in sports high school(x=93,82) are higher scores of students studying in multi-program anatolian high school(x=85,33). a significant difference has been found between individuals’ mothers’ educational level and means of scores obtained from scale of attitudes and levels related to physical education lesson. it is observed that total scores obtained by students whose mothers’ educational level is primary school(x=90,48) from the attitude scale related to physical education lesson are higher than total score of students whose mothers’ educational level is university(x=85,47). no significant difference has been found between individuals’ fathers’ educational level and means of scores obtained from scale of attitudes and levels related to physical education lesson. in their study conducted on students in elementary school's secondary stage, koçak and hurmeric (2006) determined that their attitudes towards physical education did not differentiate according to their families' educational levels after evaluations made accordingly. it has been concluded that there is no significant difference between residence units of students participating in the research and their attitudes towards physical education lesson. in general, it is seen that all students studying in different types of high schools in erzurum have positive attitudes towards physical education and sports lesson. according to high school type, it is seen that attitudes of anatolian i̇mam hatip high school students towards physical education and sports lesson are at the most positive attitude level when compared to other high school types. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 609-615 615 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group some suggestions have been made based on the results obtained from the study and other researches; in this kind of researches, comparisons can be made by applying attitude scale on different age groups and students living in different provinces. detection of attitudes developed by students towards physical education lesson can be a guide for educators and program development specialists in the stages of revision of physical education syllabuses, evaluation of the methods used by contributing them. references akandere, m., n.t. ozyalvac and s. duman, 2010. attitudes of secondary school students towards physical education course and academic success motivation (example of konya anatolian high school). selcuk university journal of social sciences institute, 6(2): 361372. aracı, h., 1998. physical education in schools. ankara: assistant offset. bal, e., 2010. the role of managers and teachers in eliminating the deficiencies encountered in physical education course in primary schools. master's thesis. yeditepe uni the role of managers and teachers in eliminating the inadequacies encountered in physical education course in primary schools. master's thesis. yeditepe university institute of social sciences, istanbul. balyan, m., y.b. balyan and o. ve kiremitçi, 2012. effects of different sport activities on attitude, social skills and self-efficacy levels of physical education course of elementary school students. selçuk university journal of physical education and sports science, 14(2): 196-201. can, a., 2014. quantitative data analysis in the scientific research process with spss. 2nd edn., ankara: pegem academy publishing. celikten, m., m. şanal and y. yeni, 2005. teaching profession and features. journal of the institute of social sciences, 19(2): 207-237. demirhan, g. and f.g. altay, 2001. attitude scale of physical education and sport of high school freshman students ii. journal of sport sciences, 12(2): 575-584. ekici, s., b. hacıcaferoğlu and a. bayrakdar, 2011. evaluation of physical education course attitudes of high school students. journal of human sciences, 8(1): 829-839. hünük, d., 2006. a comparison of the attitudes of primary school second grade students towards physical education course in central districts of ankara in terms of class level, student gender, teacher gender and active participation in sports. master thesis hacettepe university institute of social sciences, ankara. i̇rez, s.g., 2012. the effect of physical activity cards application on physical activity levels course contents and teacher behaviors of primary school students in physical education courses. gazi university institute of health sciences ph.d. koçak, f., 2016. cycling in turkey: reasons and benefits of cycling. journal of human sciences, 13(3): 5760-5771.available at: https://doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v13i3.4190. koçak, s. and i. hurmeric, 2006. attitudes toward physical education classes of primary school students in turkey. perceptual and motor skills, 103(1): 296-300.available at: https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.103.5.296-300. özdemir, s. and h. yalın, 2000. introduction to teaching profession. ankara: nobel publication. petithor, b., 1999. physical education methods for classroom teachers. human kinetics. uluışık, v., 2016. investigation of secondary school students' attitudes towards physical education course according to class and gender variables. international journal of multi-disciplinary academic research, 2(3): 45-53. ünlü, h. and l. aydos, 2007. according to teacher views; teaching methods preferred by teachers and students in physical education courses. ahi evran university kırşehir faculty of education journal, 8(2): 71-81. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 140 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 140-145, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.140.145 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an analysis of conflict styles in terms of various variables among athletes participated in turkey inter-unıversities wushu championship zühal kılınç1 nevzat dinçer2 ( corresponding author) 1,2batman university, batman, turkey abstract in this paper, the conflict styles of 288 athletes participated in turkey inter-universities wushu championship in antalya in the academic year 2017-2018 were evaluated. the research presents the significance for revealing the athletes’ conflict styles with their families, trainers and teammates and creating solutions. the questionnaire was used as a data collection tool in the research. this scale was adapted from the measurement used in the undergraduate students by önder (2008). the athletes’ conflict styles were determined with their responses to the questions as (2,02±1,07) in the vertical conflict on average. in the horizontal conflict and vertical conflict sub-dimensions, the athletes were seen to experience less conflicts (1,90±,985). the significant differences were found between the vertical conflict and horizontal conflict sub-dimensions in the variables of age, educational back ground, undergraduate year and domicile. in accordance with the gender variable, a significant difference was found in the horizontal conflict sub-dimension. the female athletes were considered to experience horizontal conflicts less than the male ones among themselves. this paper has great importance since it keeps light on the managers and the athletes. in conclusion, the athletes participated in the vertical and horizontal conflict subdimensions less. this means that the athletes have positive approaches to conflicts, and that they are well-intentioned in conflict management. it is possible to say that conlicts are experienced less by them since sportive performance makes positive effects. keywords: conflict, athlete, struggle athlete, university, education, coach citation | zühal kılınç; nevzat dinçer (2019). an analysis of conflict styles in terms of various variables among athletes participated in turkey inter-unıversities wushu championship. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 140-145. history: received: 7 november 2018 revised: 20 december 2018 accepted: 14 january 2019 published: 2 february 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 141 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 141 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 142 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 144 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 145 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.140.145&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/396 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/396 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 140-145 141 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction in literature, scientists who have been working in the field of conflicts, have presented different definitions for conflicts. conflicts are defined as “events which result from working problems in individuals or groups coming together and cause normal activities take a pause or let ones become involved in complexity” (eren, 2012). wilmot and hocker describe conflicts in such a way: persons sometimes determine inconsistent aims and insufficient resources to achieve their goals, struggles between two parties dependent on each other resulting from others’ interventions are called as conflicts (hocker and wilmot, 2001). according to rahim (2002) conlicts are defined as a process with lack of harmony, incompatibility, discordance between people. it is inevitable to have conflicts in environments people gather, it is necessary to think these ones as ordinary issues. because each person’s personal features, habits, life satisfaction levels and expectations vary from each other. conflicts have positive results in working environments at a certain level. however, when conflicts are intensive and frequent, they damage to organizations and workers in a long term (güllü, 2018). when the reasons, intensity and relevant units of conflicts are determined to have an effective and efficient conflict management process in enterprises, they will make contributions to the effective management of the relevant conflict process (topaloğlu and avcı, 2008). when the relevant process is manipulated in an organization well, conflicts are inclined to increase the organizational success. in this regard, undesirable interactions for conflicts or any organization may be reasons of the organizational amendments. if there is not any organizational conflict, the structural stability occurs. reductions in the organizational movement of an enterprise may cause slowness in the development of managers’ capabilities, the absence of creativity in time. but conflicts must be kept under the control and planned for being used as a management instrument. similarly, conflicts can be in controlled ways, as well as out of the control (karip, 1999). conflicts are divided in an organization into three groups including horizontal conflicts, vertical conflicts and a chain of command-staff conflicts (koçel, 2001). horizontal conflict is a type of conflicts between the persons at the same grade or at the same departments (e.g. production and sales departments). this type of conflicts results from incompatible purposes, insufficient resources and relation problems between the persons (solmuş, 2001). workers in each department affect each other to fulfill common objectives. this interaction may cause conflicts by revealing the competition between the departments. if this competition helps to achieve goals, conflicts show their positive effects, if it obstructs or delays achieving goals, conflicts show their negative effects as well (erdoğan, 1999). vertical conflict is described as a disagreement situation between the individuals at different grades in an organization. this type of conflicts is seen among the subordinate ones and the superordinate ones. moreover, when the superordinate ones domineer, force, despise and reprimand the subordinate ones, the subordinate ones resist to these situations, conflicts occur (şimşek and kıngır, 2006). when an individual thinks about getting a raw deal, it may let the one have hostile attitudes to the superordinate ones in the system of hierarchy. if the superordinate management is hard to have a higher position in wage and prestige levels for the subordinate ones, relations may cause tension and then turn into conflicts, in this way conflicts are urgent (tosun, 1981). a chain of command-staff conflicts is regarded as conflicts between the managers and the staff since they have different personalities, different attitudes and values. in some situations, the managers think that their staff weaken their own authorities, so they can intervene in their staff’s fields. such situations sometimes arise conflicts between two parties (erdoğan, 1999). 2. method 2.1. scope and sample the scope of the research consisted of 385 athletes from 35 universities participated in the turkey interuniversities wushu championship in antalya in the academic year 2017-2018. the sample of the research also consisted of 288 athletes voluntarily participated here. 2.2. data collection tool as a data collection tool, the questionnaire was used in the research. the questionnaire form consisted of two parts. the first part involved the demographical questions to determine their personal information. the second part also involved the scale of conflict styles to determine the conflict styles with their teammates and trainers. this scale was adapted from a scale which was used in the undergraduate students by önder (2008). this scale consisted of 17 items, was adjusted as a 5 point likert scale. while the positive questions were given points as disagree (1), less agree (2), sometimes agree (3), mostly agree (4), always agree (5), the negative questions were given points vice versa. 17 questions were asked about determining the students’ conflict types and the questions were given at random. 11 questions in this part (1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17) represented the vertical conflict type, 6 of them (2, 5, 7, 10, 12, 15) represented the horizontal conflict type as well. it was made up of two sub-dimensions. the reliability of data was tested with the cronbach alpha coefficient. the internal consistency reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was estimated as 0,82. 2.3. data collection this research was based on the turkey inter-universities wushu championship in antalya in the academic year 2017-18. 385 athletes from 35 universities took part in the championship. 288 athletes were available there. the questionnaire was applied to the athletes by the researcher. incomplete, torn and incorrect questionnaires were excluded from the research. 288 questionnaires were included in assessment in total. 2.4. data analysis the statistical analyses were done using the spss for windows 16,0 package program me. to determine the differences between the relevant points from the research, within the comparison of the quantitative data for two groups, independent samples t test for the independent samples in inter-groups comparisons and one way anova asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 140-145 142 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group test for ones more than two groups were utilized. “tukey” test was used to find out from which groups the difference between the groups resulted. the results were analyzed based on the significance level p<0,05. 3. findings table-1. the distribution of participants’ personal features gender n % male 185 64,4 female 103 35,6 age n % aged 18-20 88 30,4 aged 21-23 67 23,2 aged 24-26 86 29,8 aged 27-29 23 8,0 aged 30 and over 24 8,3 which grade n % grade 1 116 40,1 grade 2 78 27,0 grade 3 53 18,3 grade 4 41 14,2 undergraduate year n % 1-2 79 27,3 3-4 91 31,5 5-6 42 14,5 7 and over 76 26,3 who live with you n % family 46 15,9 club members 35 12,1 housemate 189 65,4 alone 18 6,2 one interested in family n % yes 103 35,6 no 185 64,4 total 288 %100 according to table 1, 185 (64,4%) of the participants were females, 103 (35,6%) of the participants were males. the participants were aged 18-20 in 88 persons (30,4%), 21-23 in 67 persons (23,2%), 24-26 in 86 persons (29,8%), 17-29 in 23 persons (8,0%), 30 and over in 24 persons (8,3%) on the age variable. in accordance with the participants’ grade variable, 116 persons (40,1%) from the grade 1, 78 persons (27,0%) from the grade 2, 53 persons (18,3%) from the grade 3, 41 persons (14,2%) from the grade 4 participated, when their undergraduate years were analyzed, 79 persons (27,3%) were the participants with 1-2 years of undergraduate, 91 persons (31,5%) were the participants with 3-4 years of undergraduate, 42 persons (14,5%) were the participants with 5-6 years of undergraduate, 76 ones (26,3%) were the participants with 7 years and over of undergraduate. about who live with you, the athletes living with their families were of 46 persons (15,9%), the participants staying at club facilities were of 35 persons (12,1%), the ones staying with their housemates were of 189 persons (65,4%) and the participants staying alone were of 18 persons (6,2%), the family members of the participants interested in sport were of 103 persons (35,6%), the family members of the participants not interested in sport were of 185 persons (64,4%). table-2. the descriptive statistical results of participants’ conflict style levels items v e rt ic a l c o n fl ic t mean ss 1. my trainer values my opinions. 1,55 ,686 3. my trainer benefits from the one’s authority to domineer me. 1,77 1,02 4. my trainer respects to me as an individual. 1,69 ,837 6. my trainer always supports me to develop myself. 2,07 1,10 8. my trainer’s expectations conflict with with my expectations. 2,22 1,20 9. my trainer gives importance to my desires. 2,07 1,17 11. my trainer is aware of the one’s responsibilities. 1,79 ,997 13. i have a healthy relationship with my trainer. 2,05 1,05 14. my trainer is professional and the one treats me professionally and neutrally in case of any event. 1,92 ,992 16. i have opinions different from my trainer. 2,37 1,26 17. my trainer is unconcerned with my problems. 2,72 1,50 total 2,02 1,07 2. my teammates make effort to find a common way even if they have different opinions. h o ri zo n ta l c o n fl ic t 1,65 ,815 5. my teammates share their own information to succeed in lessons. 1,62 ,693 7. my teammates’ priorities differ from my priorities. 1,94 1,11 10. my teammates respect to me as an individual. 2,09 ,996 12. my teammates are respectful to different opinions. 1,94 1,16 15. i have a healthy relationship with my teammates. 2,16 1,14 total 1,90 ,985 in accordance with table 2, the general average of the athletes’ responses to the questions about the conflict styles was estimated as (2,02±1,07) in the vertical conflict. the athletes took part in the vertical conflict subasian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 140-145 143 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group dimension too little. when examined about the items, the highest average was observed as (2,72±1,50) within the item “my trainer is unconcerned with my problems”. the lowest average was determined as (1,55±,686) within the item “my trainer values my opinions”. within the horizontal conflict sub-dimension, the athletes took part in conflicts too little (1,90±,985). when the athletes’ responses were analyzed, the highest average was (2,16±1,14) within the item “i have a healthy relationship with my teammates”, the lowest average was (1,65±,815) within the item “my teammates share their own information to succeed in lessons” table-3. the anova results of participants’ relations in accordance with age variable sub-dimensions age s.t. df s.o. f p difference vertical conflict inter-groups 5,06 4 1,26 4,71 *0,00 1-5 3-5 in-group 76,05 284 ,26 total 81,12 288 horizontal conflict inter-groups 3,93 4 ,98 2,90 *0,02 1-4 2-4 in-group 95,88 284 ,33 total 99,81 288 *p<0.05 1: aged 18-20, 2: aged 21-23, 3: aged 24-26 4: aged 27-29, 5: aged 30 and over at table 3, the anova results were given about the athletes’ age variable. when the age variable was examined, a significant difference was observed in the vertical conflict sub-dimension. when looked at the difference, there were significant differences between the athletes aged 30 and over and the athletes aged 18-20 and 24-26. the participant athletes aged 30 and over were considered to experience the vertical conflict more rather than the athletes aged 18-20 and 24-26. when the horizontal conflict sub-dimension was analyzed, a significant difference was found in the age variable. when looked at the difference, the athletes aged 27-29 were considered to experience the horizontal conflict with the athletes aged 18-20 and 21-23. when the athletes get older, they are deemed to have problems with the athletes involved in the middle age group. table-4. the anova results of participants in accordance with grade variable sub-dimensions educational background s.t. df s.o. f p difference vertical conflict inter-groups 5,36 4 1,78 6,70 *0,00 1-3 2-3 in-group 75,75 284 ,26 horizontal conflict total 81,12 288 inter-groups 96,28 4 1,17 3,47 *0,01 1-3 2-3 in-group 99,81 284 ,33 total 96,28 288 *p<0.05 1: grade 1, 2: grade 2, 3: grade 3, 4: grade 4. at table 4, the anova results were given in accordance with the participants’ grade variable. when the athletes’ grade variables was analyzed, the significant differences were found between the vertical conflict and the horizontal conflict as both sub-dimensions. when the differences were examined, the vertical conflict and the horizontal conflict sub-dimensions were experienced between the athletes studying at grade 3 and the athletes studying at grade 1 and grade 2. this means that when the participants’ grades go ahead, they are deemed to have problems with both the ones in their own environment and their friends at upper grades and lower grades. table-5. the anova results of participants in accordance with undergraduate year .sub-dimensions undergraduate year s.t. df s.o. f p difference vertical conflict inter-groups 2,73 4 0,91 3,30 *0,02 1-3 1-4 in-group 78,38 284 0,27 total 81,12 288 horizontal conflict inter-groups 4,57 4 1,52 4,54 *0,00 1-3 in-group 95,23 284 0,33 total 99,81 288 *p<0.05 1: 1-2 years 2: 3-4 years, 3: 5-6 years,4: 7 years and over at table 5, the participants’ anova results were given about the variable of undergraduate year. when the athletes’ undergraduate year was examined, there were significant differences both in the vertical and horizontal sub-dimensions. when the differences were analyzed, there were significant differences between the athletes having 1-2 years of undergraduate and the athletes having 5-6 years of undergraduate, in both dimensions. there was a significant difference in the vertical conflict sub-dimension between the participants having 1-2 years of undergraduate and the athletes having 7 years of undergraduate and over. when the participant athletes had more experiences in their own sport branches, they had the vertical conflict more with the athletes who started sport in recent times, they had the horizontal conflict less with the athletes in their undergraduate group. at table 6, the anova results were given about the participants’ domicile situations. in accordance with the athletes’ domicile situations, there were significant differences between the vertical conflict and horizontal conflict sub-dimensions. looking at the differences, there were significant differences in the vertical sub-dimension between the participants living with their families, the ones living with their housemates and the ones staying at home alone, the athletes staying at club facilities, the ones staying with their housemates and the athletes staying at home alone. the athletes living with their families and staying at club facilities were considered to have conflicts with other persons staying at home alone or the ones living with their friends. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 140-145 144 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. the anova results of participants in accordance with domicile situations sub-dimensions residence status s.t. df s.o. f p difference vertical conflict inter-groups 6,82 4 2,27 8,69 *0,00 1-3 1-4 2-3 2-4 in-group 74,29 284 0,26 horizontal conflict total 81,12 288 inter-groups 2,76 4 0,92 2,70 *0,04 3-4 in-group 97,04 284 0,34 total 99,81 288 *p<0.05 1: with my family, 2:at club facilities, 3:with housemates, 4: alone. when examined the horizontal conflict, there was a significant difference between the ones staying with their housemates and the ones staying at home alone. looking at the difference, the participant athletes living with their house mates experience problems at home or at school. table-7. the t-test results of participants in accordance with gender variable gender n ort ss t p vertical conflict male 185 2,03 ,517 0,85 0,39 female 103 1,98 ,556 horizontal conflict male 185 1,96 ,565 2,61 *0,00 female 103 1,77 ,614 *p<0.05 according to table 7, there was not a significant difference in the vertical conflict sub-dimension among the conflict styles in accordance with the participants’ gender variable (t=0,85; p>0,05). in the horizontal conflict subdimension, there was a significant difference in the gender variable (t=2,61; p<0,05). looking at the difference, the female athletes experience the horizontal conflict less than the male ones among themselves. table-8. the t-test results of participants in accordance with family members interested in sport variable family members interested in sport n ort ss t p vertical conflict yes 90 2,05 ,523 0,79 0,42 no 198 2,00 ,534 horizontal conflict yes 90 1,90 ,591 0,08 0,93 no 198 1,89 ,589 *p<0.05 at table 8, the t-test results from the participants were given in accordance with the variable of family members interested in sport. there was not a significant difference in the vertical conflict sub-dimension among the conflict styles (t=0,79; p>0,05). there was not a significant difference in the horizontal conflict sub-dimension in accordance with the gender variable (t=0,08; p>0,05). 4. discussion and conclusion this research was done to reveal the conflict styles of the athletes participated in the turkey inter-universities wushu championship. the athletes were considered to experience conflicts due to some variables. the athletes slightly participated in the vertical and horizontal conflict sub-dimensions. a significant difference was seen in the vertical conflict sub-dimension among the athletes aged 30 and over, living with their families and having 7 years of undergraduate and over. the athletes who became older, developed themselves in sport and lived with their families, were suggested to have more conlicts with their trainers or their managers. in a study by sahin et al. (2014) especially the disabled athletes having professional experience of 1-5 and 11-15 years were emphasized to have the vertical conflicts among themselves. this study supports our findings. when examined the horizontal conflict sub-dimension, there was a significant difference in the age variable. when examined about the difference, the athletes aged 27-29, the athletes aged 18-20 and 21-23 were experienced the horizontal conflicts. when the athletes became older, they could have problems with the athletes included in the middle age group. when the participant athletes got older in their sport branch, they were mentioned to experience the horizontal conflicts with the athletes in their undergraduate group less. a study by sahin et al. (2014) showed that there was a very significant difference between the disabled athletes having 1-5 years of professional experience and the disabled athletes having 11-15 years of professional experience in the horizontal conflict sub-dimension resulting from the analysis of the professional experience variable. the disabled athletes having 11-15 years of professional experience had more conflicts with their teammates rather than the disabled athletes having professional experience less. this research shows parallelism with our research findings. when the grade variable of the athletes was assessed, significant differences were seen in both sub-dimensions including the vertical conflict and the horizontal conflict. when the differences were examined, the vertical and horizontal conflicts were observed in the athletes studying at the grade 3 with the athletes studying at the grade 1 and grade 2. this means that the participants have problems with both the ones in class environments and their friends in lower grades and upper grades when the participants’ grades were proceeded. when the difference was investigated, the female athletes experienced less conflicts among them seves rather than the male ones. other researches indicated that relation was distinguished in the conflict styles on gender. sevim (2005) determined that the female students were more positive than the male ones, they had constructive solution skills for conflicts. önder (2008) also suggested that the male students used more domineering styles rather than the female students in his research about the gender variable and the conflict styles. uğurlu (2001) found that there were significant differences in all of conflict management styles used in accordance with the teachers’ gender by principals. there were not significant differences in the gender variable, so this clarifies that asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 140-145 145 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sport makes positive contributions to conflicts. many researches mentioned about the positive effects of sport. kılınç et al. (2015) studied on the conflict management styles among the athletes with hearing loss and physical disabilities living in the southeast anatolian region and found no relation between the gender and the conflict styles. based on the assumption that the athletes involved in the turkey inter-universities wushu championship experienced the conflicts, this research was done to determine their own conflict styles. as a result, the athletes took part in the vertical and horizontal conflict sub-dimensions too little. this means that the athletes positively approach conflicts and they are well-intentioned to manage conflicts. since sportive performance creates positive effects, it is possible to have less conflict. in summary, positive or negative attitudes acquired by individuals affect relations between persons. that’s why, it will be useful for making necessary arrangements in educational programs at universities, giving student’s education about conflicts and its management in order to have positive attitudes about conflicts and conflict management for students. making orientation programs for students by management units at universities to have healthy relations with their friends and universities will contribute to have conflicts less. references erdoğan, i̇., 1999. organizational behaviour in business management. faculty of management publications i̇stanbul university no: 266. i̇stanbul: business economics institute edition, 2(158). eren, e., 2012. organizational behavior and management psychology. 16th edn., i̇stanbul: beta edition. güllü, s., 2018. mediating role of organizational health about effects of leader-member interaction on working life quality and antiproductivity work behaviours: a sample of sport enterprises. i̇stanbul university institute of health sciences, department of sport management sciences. doctorate thesis. i̇stanbul. hocker, j.l. and w.w. wilmot, 2001. interpersonal conflict. benchmark boston, ma: mcgraw-hill. karip, e., 1999. conflict management. ankara: pegem press. kılınç, z., b. gürer, h.m. şahin and u. gülnar, 2015. evaluation of conflict management styles used by hearing impaired and physically handicapped athletes (sample of southeastern anatolia region). kastamonu university journal of faculty of economics and administrative sciences, 6(6): 52-60. koçel, t., 2001. business administration, management and organization, organizational behaviours, classical-modern-contemporary and current approaches. i̇stanbul: beta publications, 8. önder, e., 2008. conflicts experienced by undergraduate students and conflict management styles (sample of süleyman demirel university). süleyman demirel university institute of social sciences, department of education management supervision planning and economy, master's thesis isparta. rahim, a.m., 2002. toward a theory of managing organizational conflict. international journal of conflict management, 13(3): 206-235. available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/eb022874. sahin, h.m., z. kılınç, b. gürer and o. hacıoğlu, 2014. investigation of some types of conflict experienced by the disabled and the physically disabled athletes in terms of some demographic variables. kastamonu university journal of faculty of economics and administrative sciences, 5(2): 27-36. sevim, s.a., 2005. approach styles of university students for conflicts. eurasian journal of educational research, 21(5): 223-233. şimşek, m.ş. and s. kıngır, 2006. chosen contemporary management instruments. ankara: nobel press. solmuş, t., 2001. interpersonal and intergroup conflicts and conflict management in organizations. turkish psychology newsletter, 20: 4049. topaloğlu, c. and u. avcı, 2008. conflict, reasons and management: evaluation of a manager’s viewpoints in hotel enterprises. süleyman demirel university iibf journal, 13(2): 75-92. tosun, m., 1981. organizational efficiency. ankara: turkey and middle-east public administration press. uğurlu, f., 2001. conflict management styles of primary and secondary school directors. dokuz eylül university. institute of education sciences, unpublished master's thesis, i̇zmir. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 278 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 278-283, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.278.283 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the investigation of the self-efficacy levels of camp leaders working in the youth şakir tüfekçi̇1 serkan düz2 ( corresponding author) 1,2inonu university, faculty of sports science, malatya, turkey. abstract this study was conducted to investigate the self-efficacy (se) levels of camp leaders working in the youth camps under the ministry of youth and sports. while the population of this descriptive type cross-sectional study was constituted by 1217 active camp leaders working in the youth camps, the sample was constituted by 400 active camp leaders. the personal information and the questionnaire form which composed of se scale adapted into turkish by gözüm and aksayan (1999) were used as data collection tools. pearson’s chi-square, independent-samples t-test and one-way anova were used in the analysis of the data. of the youth camp leaders 57.8% were over the age of 24, 64.0% were male, 47.3% of their parents graduated from regular high school, 85.3% had social security, 68.5% came from core family structure, and income of 53.8% of the camp leaders was equal to their expenses. the mothers of 52.8% and fathers of 42.5% of the camp leaders graduated from primary school. 75.3% of camp leaders have been working in youth camps for 0-4 years. it was determined that se levels of the camp leaders were higher than the mean score and age, marital status, education level of the parents, income level of the family, duration of duty in the youth camp and status of doing sports were also the efficient factor. as a conclusion, it is advisable to organize activities and training programs to improve the se levels of camp leaders. keywords: self-efficiency, self-efficacy, level of self-efficacy, youth camps, camp leader, ministry of youth and sports. citation | şakir tüfekçi̇; serkan düz (2020). the investigation of the self-efficacy levels of camp leaders working in the youth. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 278-283. history: received: 4 february 2020 revised: 6 march 2020 accepted: 8 april 2020 published: 21 may 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 279 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 279 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 280 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 281 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 282 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.278.283&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1650 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7815-5710 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1650 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7815-5710 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1650 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7815-5710 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1650 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7815-5710 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 278-283 279 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the self-efficacy levels of camp leaders working in the youth camps under the ministry of youth and sports. 1. introduction today, countries organize leisure time activities for the development of young people. the youth camps which organized by ministry of youth and sports are also among those activities in turkey. the activities in the youth camps which organized by the leadership of the ministry of youth and sports have aimed to contribute to the overall development of the individuals participating in the camps and have undertaken as a mission to respond to the social, sporting, cultural and personal needs of these young people and to spread these activities throughout the country (ministry of youth and sports, 2016b). today, these camps stand out as facilities established to enable young people to evaluate their leisure time with various social, cultural and sportive activities. the purpose of the youth camp organized in turkey are: to evaluate the time of the youth outside of the study and study areas, to provide relaxation, to contribute to their upbringing as individuals who are creative, productive, responsible, citizenship conscious, adopting and absorbing the principles and reforms of atatürk (ministry of youth and sports, 2005). the camp leaders have a critical importance in the preparation and execution of the activities organized in the camps, in controlling the attendance of the participants, in the provision of security and discipline, in the organization and order of the activity. camp leaders provide guidance and consultancy to youths with their knowledge and experience as well as assisting programmers. moreover, camp leaders both play an important role in educating young people through socio-cultural activities and on moral values and also helping young people to avoid bad habits by creating role models (ministry of youth and sports, 2016a). self efficacy (se) is the individual's perception or judgment of successfully performing a certain action and controlling events or is the jurisdiction of the individual’s capacity to achieve a certain level of performance (gözüm & aksayan, 1999). if an individual's perception of self-efficacy is low, the individual will make less effort in a particular situation or to fulfill a responsibility (harrison, rainer, hochwarter, & thompson, 1997). therefore, it is thought that there is a significant interaction between leadership and level of se. it is envisaged that the se, which is defined as the belief that you will be successful in combating the difficulties encountered in different situations, is one of the most important determinants of leadership (manojlovich, 2005). at the same time, camp leaders, whose task is to help and support young people attending in youth camps, need to be aware of their abilities and better show their potential. therefore, it is important to know and develop the se levels of camp leaders who working in youth camps that provide services to ensure the positive development of young people. the aim of this study was to investigate the se levels of camp leaders who play an important role in youth camps and who have a critical importance in terms of the benefits they provide to young people. 2. method in this part of the study, the sample of the study, data collection tools and analysis of the data are presented. 2.1. research model this study has descriptive type cross-sectional design and general screening model was used in the study. the general screening model is a research approach that aims to describe a situation that exists in the past or still as it exists (karasar, 2005). 2.2. sample of the study the population of study consisted of 1217 active leaders who working in the youth camps. the formula nt²pq/d²(n-1)+t²pq (sümbüloğlu & sümbüloğlu, 2009) was used to determine the sample size that will represent the population. with a 95% confidence interval and 5% sampling error, the sample size of the study was calculated to be at least 383 participants and accordingly, 400 camp leaders were included in the study. youth camp leaders are selected from people who have the skills and knowledge to work with a group of young people selected from physical education teachers, music teachers, other branch teachers, instructors experienced in theater, drama, folk dances, crafts and performing arts. those who succeed in the courses and seminars opened by the general directorate of youth services and sports can serve as youth leaders (ministry of youth and sports, 2005). 2.3. data collection tools the data were collected from youth camp leaders in the in-service training of the ministry of youth and sports in april 2016. the questionnaire used in the study consists of two parts. in the first part, there are 23 questions including their personal information and the second part the se scale which was developed by sherer et al. (1982) and was adapted into turkish by gözüm and aksayan (1999) were used. the se was consisted of 23 items and four subscales such as initiating behavior, maintaining behavior, completing behavior and combating obstacles. each item in the scale is scored on the 5-point likert scale ranging from ―it doesn’t describe me at all (1)‖ to ―it describes me very well (5)‖. minimum 23, maximum 115 points can be obtained from the scale. the total score of se was assessed as low for between 23 and 53 points, as middle for between 54 and 84 points, and as high for between 85 and 115 points. if the total score obtained from the scale was high, this means that the individual’s perception of se was at a good level. the cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient and the test-retest reliability of the turkish version of the scale were found as 0.81 and 0.92, respectively. in this study, the cronbach alpha value was found as 0.86. 2.4. data analysis the data were analyzed by using pasw (spss version 18.0, chicago, spss inc.) statistics for windows. as a result of the kolmogorov-smirnov normality test, pearson chi-square, independent-samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance (anova) with post-hoc correction was used to examine the differences between the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 278-283 280 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group independent variables and se levels. significance level was set as p<.05. 3. findings the findings of the study are explained in detail in the tables below. table-1. descriptive characteristics of the camp leaders. variables f % age (years) between 19 and 23 169 42.2 between 24 and 28 173 43.3 29 and above 58 14.5 gender female 144 36.0 male 256 64.0 marital status married 49 12.2 single 351 87.8 education regular high school 189 47.3 anatolian high school 99 24.8 vocational high school 67 16.8 teacher high school 13 3.3 sports high school 8 2.0 other 24 6.0 income level income > expenditure 83 20.8 income = expenditure 215 53.8 income < expenditure 102 25.5 note: f: frequency, %: percentage. table 1 showed the age, gender, marital status, education and income level of the camp leaders. it was seen that 58% of the camp leaders were over 24 years old, 64.0% of them were male, 87.8% were single, 47.3% were graduated from regular high school and 53.8 % of the camp leaders’ income was able to meet their expenses. table-2. family characteristics of the camp leaders. variables f % education level of mother illiterate 37 9.3 literate 46 11.5 elementary education 211 52.8 high school 86 21.5 university 20 5.0 education level of father illiterate 10 2.5 literate 30 7.5 elementary education 170 42.5 high school 112 28.0 university 78 19.5 mother’s occupation working 44 11.0 not working 356 89.0 mother’s occupation working 223 55.8 not working 177 44.3 note: f: frequency, %: percentage. it was found that 52.8% of the mothers and 42.5% of fathers of the leaders graduated from the elementary school. while 89.0% of the mothers do not work, 55.8% of the fathers work table 2. table-3. relationship between total se score and gender, marital status and social security of the camp leaders n x ±sd t p gender female 144 82.6 ± 13.5 .684 .494 male 256 83.5 ± 13.9 marital status single 351 83.9 ± 13.6 -2.521 .012* married 49 78.6 ± 14.7 social security yes 341 82.7 ± 14.1 -1.783 .075 no 59 86.1 ± 11.6 note: *p<.05. in table 3, it is observed that gender and social security was not an effective factor on se (p>.05), but the marital status was effective (p<.05). it was found that the se scores of the single camp leaders were higher than those of married (p<.05). table-4. relationship between total se scores and working status of parents of camp leaders. n x ±sd t p mother working 44 80.8 ± 13.3 1.225 .221 not working 356 83.5 ± 13.9 father working 223 81.9 ± 13.3 2.142 .033* not working 177 84.8 ± 14.3 note: *p<.05. according to table 4, only se scores of camp leaders whose fathers are not working were higher than the those of father was working (p<.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 278-283 281 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. relationship between total se scores and duty periods in the youth camp and status of doing sports n x ±sd t p duty periods in the youth camp 04 years 301 85.4 ± 13.2 5.686 .000* 5 years and above 99 76.6 ± 13.6 status of doing sports yes 238 85.0 ± 13.5 -3.676 .000* no 133 79.6 ± 13.4 note: *p<.05. it was found that the se score of the camp leaders working in the youth camp for 0-4 years was higher than those of working for 5 years and ebove, and the se score of the camp leaders who do sports was higher than those who do not table 5. table-6. relationship between total se scores and the age and income of family of camp leaders. n x ±sd f p post-hoc age 1) 1923 years old 169 85.6 ± 13.2 .001* 1>2,3 2) 2428 years old 173 82.2 ± 13.8 7.215 3) 29 years and above 58 78.5 ± 14.0 income level 1) income > expenditure 102 84.0 ± 14.1 .002* 3>1,2 2) income = expenditure 215 84.9 ± 13.3 6.324 3) income < expenditure 83 79.1 ± 14.0 note: *p<.05. as seen in table 6, total se scores of the camp leaders between the ages of 19-23 were significantly higher than the others (p<.05). the se scores of the camp leaders whose income of family were less than the expenditure were found to be significantly lower than the others (p<.05). table-7. relationship between total se scores and education level of the parents. n x ±sd f p post-hoc education level of mother 1) illiterate 37 83.3 ± 11.3 3.078 .016* 2) literate 46 84.5 ± 14.6 3) elementary school 211 84.8 ± 13.7 4<1,2,3,5 4) high school 86 78.8 ± 14.2 5) university 20 82.5 ± 12.5 education level of father 1) illiterate 10 86.6 ± 9.9 5.020 .001* 2) literate 30 84.6 ± 13.6 3) elementary school 170 85.8 ± 13.5 4<1,2,3,5 4) high school 112 78.6 ± 14.3 5) university 78 83.0 ± 12.8 note: *p<.05. when the total se scores of the camp leaders were examined according to the education level of the parents, it was seen that se scores of the camp leaders whose parents graduated from high school were lower than those of other leaders’ parents table 7 (p<.05). 4. discussion the purpose of this study was to investigate the se levels of camp leaders who play an important role in youth camps and who have a critical importance in terms of the benefits they provide to young people. at the end of the study age, marital status, education level of the parents, income level of the family, duty period in the youth camps and the status of doing sports were found to be effective factors on the se level of the camp leaders. when the findings analyzed, 42.2% of the camp leaders who participated in the study were 1923 years old, 43.3% of them were 2428 years old and 14.5% of them were 29 years old and above table 1. similarly, in the study of coban and coşkuner (2010) 36.7% of the leaders in youth camps were between 18-24 years old, 34.0% of them were between the ages of 18-24, 34.0% between the ages of 25-29, and 29.3% were 30 years old and above. according to the findings of the study, age was found as an effective factor on the se score and se score of the camp leaders aged 1923 years old were found higher than the older age groups. when the literature is examined, it is seen that there are different findings. gözüm and aksayan (1999) has stated that a person gained more experience with the progress of the age and this constitute an important source of increase in se score. similarly, keskin and orgun (2006) and uz and kitiş (2017) has reported that se scores of the physical education students changed positively as the age increased. sari, yenigün, altıncı, and oztürk (2011) stated that se score of the youths aged between 1820 years was higher than those of older age groups, but the difference between them is not statistically significant. in the study of yigitbas and yetkin (2003) and uğur (2010) while the age was not found to be an effective factor on se, taş and akın (2018) showed that se score has decreased significantly as the age progressed. in this study, 64.0% of the camp leaders were male and 36.0% were female. in line with our findings, coban and coşkuner (2010) reported that 61.3% of the leaders were male and 38.7% were female. in the study of kartal, 56.3% of the program managers in the youth camp were male and 43.7% were female (kartal & temel, 2016). according to the results of this study, gender was not found to be an effective factor on the se level. the findings of yigitbas and yetkin (2003); keskin and orgun (2006); karadağ, aksoy, and ucuzal (2011); akgül and güngör (2016); ozpulat (2016) and taş and akın (2018) support our findings. unlike our findings, the se score of female students was found statistically higher than those of male students in the study of otacıoğlu (2008); sari et al. (2011) and kızılcı, mert, küçükgüçlü, and yardımcı (2015). these results can be interpreted as the number of people who asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 278-283 282 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group believe that they should have equal responsibility for both sexes nowadays. marital status was determined as an effective factor on the se score. it was found that the se score of single camp leaders were higher than those of the married ones. the study of taş and akın (2018) was similar to our findings. however, in the study of akgül and güngör (2016) although the se score of single leaders were higher than those of the married ones, there were no statistically significant difference. similarly, kulakçı, ayyıldız, emiroğlu, and köroğlu (2012) found that the se level of married individuals were higher than those of the singles. there was no statistically significant difference between social security status and the se scores of camp leaders who participated in the study. when the working status of the parents was examined, there was no statistically significant difference found between the se scores of the camp leaders whose mother were working or not. however, se scores of the camp leaders whose father was not working were higher than the ones whose father was working (p<.05). in this study, when the se level was examined it was found that total se score of the camp leaders whose parents graduated from high school were lower than those of other leaders’ parents (p<.05). it is known that as the level of education increases, the level of knowledge and sensitivity of the individual increases. therefore, the individual can recognize the activating stimuli and the level of se increase. however, it seems that our findings do not interestingly support this information. in the study of taş and akın (2018) study, unlike our findings, the parents of students with the highest se scores were reported to be university graduates. similarly, uğur (2010) found that the se scores of the parents of students with a university degree had significantly higher than others. as a different finding, ozkahraman and yıldırım (2012) reported no significant difference between the education level of the parents and the se scores. when the se scores of the camp leaders and the family income were compared, it is found that the se scores of the camp leaders whose family income is less than the expenditure are significantly lower than the others (p<.05). based on these findings, it can be said that the reason of the low se score of the individuals whose income is less than the expenditure is due to lack of self-confidence and abstaining behaviors. taş and akın (2018) also supports our findings. however, akgül and güngör (2016) and ozpulat (2016) reported that the level of family income was not an effective factor on the se scores. in the study, 75.3% of the camp leaders who participated in the study stated that they have worked in youth camps for 0-4 years and 24.8% of them have worked for 5 years and above. coban and coşkuner (2010) reported that 66.7% of the leaders worked in youth camps for 1-3 years and 33.3% of them worked for 4 years and above. it has been determined that camp leaders who have worked in the youth camps for 0-4 years had a higher se score than those of worked for 5 years and above. this result may be due to the fact that camp leaders are young, are new to the task, are excited and are more idealistic. the reason for the decrease of se scores as the duration of the camp leaders increases, may be attributed to the low motivation due to the different expectations of the leaders or not meeting their expectations regarding the camp conditions. however, there are studies indicating that se scores increase with the increase in the term of duty (akgül & güngör, 2016; uz & kitiş, 2017). se scores of the camp leaders who do sports found higher than those who did not in this study. sports not only helps people feel better and keep fit via movement, but also helps develop qualities they can use in life, such as struggling with difficulties (ozkahraman & yıldırım, 2012). ryckman, robbins, thornton, gold, and kuehnel (1985) also stated that if the individual is physically fit and healthy, the individual’s perception affected the se scores positively (ozen, olçücü, ozen, & demirel, 2014). it was seen that people who had high se score attended regular and continuous exercise programs to achieve a certain purpose. similarly, sezer, işgör, ozpolat, and sezer (2006). reported that the people who do not exercise or who do not have the opportunity to do exercise had a low se level (sezer et al., 2006). as a result, age, marital status, education level of the parents, income level of the family, duty period in the youth camps and the status of doing sports were found to be effective factors on the se level of the camp leaders. therefore, in order to keep the motivations of the camp leaders working in youth camps alive and continue their duties, it may be recommended to follow their wishes and expectations regularly and increase their wages. as a conclusion, it is advisable to organize activities and training programs to improve the se levels of camp leaders. references akgül, g. n., & güngör, g. (2016). healthy lifestyle behaviors and self-efficacy levels of health care professionals working at primary health care institutions. journal of research and development in nursing, 18(1), 14-27. coban, b., & coşkuner, z. (2010). analysis of national education ministry youth camps’ participant satisfaction. e-journal of new world sciences academy, 5(1), 16-27. gözüm, s., & aksayan, s. (1999). the reliabillty and valldity of turkish form of the self-efficacy scale. ataturk university journal of nursing school, 2(1), 21-34. harrison, a. w., rainer, j. r. k., hochwarter, w. a., & thompson, k. r. (1997). testing the self-efficacy—performance linkage of social— cognitive theory. the journal of social psychology, 137(1), 79-87.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00224549709595415. karadağ, e., aksoy, d., & ucuzal, m. (2011). the self-efficacy-sufficiency levels of a health college student. maltepe university nursing science and art e-journal, 4(1), 13–20. karasar, n. (2005). scientific research method. ankara: nobel publishing. kartal, m., & temel, c. (2016). examining the communication and problemsolving skills of the youth camp program supervisors. european journal of physical education and sport science, 2(2), 39-49. keskin, g., & orgun, f. (2006). studying the strategies of students' coping with the levels of self-efficacy-sufficiency. anatolian journal of psychiatry, 7(2), 92-99. kızılcı, s., mert, h., küçükgüçlü, ö., & yardımcı, t. (2015). examination of self-efficacy levels of nursing faculty students in terms of gender. dokuz eylul university faculty of nursing electronics journal, 8(2), 95-100. kulakçı, h., ayyıldız, t., emiroğlu, o., & köroğlu, e. (2012). evaluation of the self-efficacy perceptions and healthy lifestyle behaviors of elderly people living in nursing home. dokuz eylul university faculty of nursing electronics journal, 5(2), 53-64. manojlovich, m. (2005). promoting nurses' self-efficacy: a leadership strategy to improve practice. jona: the journal of nursing administration, 35(5), 271-278.available at: https://doi.org/10.1097/00005110-200505000-00011. ministry of youth and sports. (2016b). youth camps unit. retrieved from: https://genclikkamplari.gsb.gov.tr. ministry of youth and sports. (2005). gsgm youth camps leaders guide. ankara: youth services department. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 278-283 283 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ministry of youth and sports.. (2016a). youth camps program officers orientation meeting study note. ankara: youth services general directorate. otacıoğlu, s. (2008). a research concerning the level of self efficacy-sufficiency of the apprentices in music teaching who took a part in the test of school experience i. cumhuriyet university journal of social sciences, 32(1), 163-170. ozen, g., olçücü, b., ozen, ş., & demirel, n. (2014). the effect of mountain climbing training and summit climbing on the perception of selfefficacy. international journal of turkish education sciences, 2(3), 131-136. ozkahraman, ş., & yıldırım, b. (2012). determination of nursing and midwifery students’ core comptencies. journal of research and development in nursing, 14(3), 53–65. ozpulat, f. (2016). the relationship between self-efficacy level and gender perception of university students: beyşehir example. journal of human sciences, 13(1), 1222–1232.available at: https://doi.org/10.14687/ijhs.v13i1.3570. ryckman, r. m., robbins, m. a., thornton, b., gold, j. a., & kuehnel, r. h. (1985). physical self-efficacy and actualization. journal of research in personality, 19(3), 288-298. sari, i., yenigün, o., altıncı, e., & oztürk, a. (2011). effect of satisfaction of the basic psychological needs on general self-efficacy and trait anxiety (example of sakarya university department of sport management). spormeter journal of physical education and sports sciences, 9(4), 149-156. sezer, f., işgör, i., ozpolat, a., & sezer, m. (2006). investigation of high school students' self-efficacy levels in terms of some variables. journal of kazım karabekir education faculty, 13(1), 129-137. sherer, m., james, e. m., blaise, m., steven, p.-d., beth, j., & ronald, w. r. (1982). the self-efficacy scale: construction and validation. psychological reseach, 51(2), 663-671.available at: https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1982.51.2.663. sümbüloğlu, k., & sümbüloğlu, v. (2009). biostatistics. ankara: hatipoğlu publishing. taş, f., & akın, b. (2018). the association of health promotion life -style and self-efficacy sufficiency with socio-economic status. health and society, 28(2), 24-18. uğur, e. (2010). nurse managers’ coaching skills and self efficacy believes. master thesis. marmara university, istanbul. uz, d., & kitiş, y. (2017). determination of healthy life style behaviors and self-efficacy of nurses working in a hospital. gazi university journal of health sciences, 2(3), 27-39. yigitbas, c., & yetkin, a. (2003). evaluating of selfefficacy-sufficiency levels of students in the health college. cumhuriyet university nursing journal, 7(1), 6-13. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 473 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 473-481, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.473.481 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of parents’ attention on the technology usage of children between the ages of four and six kazim biber1 ayşe nur kayiş2 mehriye kopuk3 şeyma dağdeviren4 ( corresponding author) 1balikesir university, faculty of education, department of elementary education, the head of preschool education division, turkey. 2,3,4balikesir university, institute of social sciences, department of elementary education, turkey. abstract the aim of the study was to determine the technology usage characteristics of children between the ages of 4-6 and to determine whether these characteristics differ according to parental attention. this research is a relational screening model. the study group of the research consists of 117 children and their parents aged 4-6 years who attend independent kindergartens and kindergartens at elementary schools in karesi and altıeylül districts of balıkesir province in 20182019 academic year. as data collection tool, “personal information form” that includes demographics of children and their parents prepared by researchers, “technology use questionnaire of preschool children of 4-6 years” prepared by researchers, and “parental attention for children scale” that was developed by campbell et al. (1986) and adapted by sucuoglu et al. (2015) in order to determine parental attention for children were used. descriptive analyses were performed, scale reliability was calculated, distribution of data was examined, and difference tests were applied depending on the distribution. in addition, one-way analysis of variance (anova) post-hoc tests and independent samples t-test were used. in the parental attention for children scale, while there was a linear relationship between the mother and father forms and its sub-dimensions; there was a linear relationship between the level of “attention for control”, a the sub-dimension of father form, and survey questions. despite the high interest in control, it was observed that children's use of technology was high. keywords: technology usage, parental attention, preschool, child, relational screening model, kindergarten. citation | kazım biber; ayşe nur kayiş; mehriye kopuk; şeyma dağdeviren (2019). the effect of parents’ attention on the technology usage of children between the ages of four and six. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 473-481. history: received: 24 june 2019 revised: 31 july 2019 accepted: 6 september 2019 published: 9 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 474 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 475 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 477 4. discussion, conclusion and suggestions .................................................................................................................................. 479 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 480 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.473.481&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8706-4733 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0269-8724 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3912-4468 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4836-3463 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1051 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1051 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 473-481 474 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by determining the technology usage characteristics of children between the ages of 4-6 and to determine whether these characteristics differ according to parental attention. 1. introduction it is impossible to deny the fact that we live in a world dominated by technology. today, children are born in a world where technology is deeply integrated into the fabric of everyday life. with every new technological idea, the world becomes a better place, information is reached faster, and new experiences are gained faster. using technology in appropriate conditions and with appropriate software contributes positively to children's language, cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development (akkoyunlu and tugrul, 2002). “the common sense census” report, prepared in the united states to demonstrate the use of children's media and technology in the 0-8 age range, was re-prepared in 2017 combining data from the 2011 and 2013 reports (rasmussen, 2017). the report describes how media use of children aged 0-8 develops over time, and how technology can be used to support children's learning, plays, and games. another striking part of this report is the answers to the question “how much time do children spend on screens?”  american children between 0 and 8 years of age use an average of 2 hours and 19 minutes of screen per day.  children under the age of 2 spend about 42 minutes, children between the ages of 2 and 4 spend about 2 hours and 40 minutes, and children between the ages of 5 and 8 spend about 3 hours (2:58) on the screen during the day.  in 2011, children spent 4 percent of their screen time on one mobile device and this ratio increased to 35 percent in 2017.  nearly all children (98 percent) between the ages of 0 and 8 have a mobile device equal to tv in the house they live in. based on these statistics, the american academy of pediatrics recommends that children under 18 months do not use any screen media other than video chat and that children up to the age of 5 should be limited to one hour per day. in the common sense census, it was concluded that american children spend more time with more screen media than recommended, and that most of this time is due to the fact that children can easily access mobile devices. today, technology is used in schools to support learning and increase motivation. in the research conducted by steinhoff (2016) on how teachers use technology in pre-school education, it was found that 90% of teachers have access to technology in school and use them regularly, and 88% use technical devices at least once a week. in addition, the majority of teachers stated that they include computer or interactive whiteboards in their classes to improve the learning environment and to help them build stronger relationships with children on issues discussed in the classroom. technology can give teachers the ability to design unique learning environments for children. teachers can bring new resources to the classroom using technical devices and provide children with a much more interactive experience using online applications or exams. however, teachers need to have sufficient knowledge, skills, and equipment to use technology. in this period, where modern technologies are widely used for children both at home and in school, children are defined as active individuals called e-society based on digital connections. parental attention plays a critical role in entire school life. parental attention can be defined as different behaviors and activities that involve the aims, aspirations, expectations, attitudes and beliefs of families regarding the education of the child at home or at school (epstein, 1990; hong and ho, 2005; georgiou and tourva, 2007; green and hoover-dempsey, 2007; jeynes, 2007; berthelsen and walker, 2008; smith et al., 2011; shiffman, 2013). these behaviors and activities can be illustrated as reading books, magazines and so on; limiting watching television on school evenings; talking to the teacher about the child's development and behavior; attending schoolrelated activities (e.g., attending school-family reunions, conferences, trips); helping with homework assignments; and managing the child's time at home and away from home etc. (green and hoover-dempsey, 2007; berthelsen and walker, 2008; smith et al., 2011; shiffman, 2013). greenwood and hickman (1991) in their study on parental attention and student variable at primary school level, indicated that parental attention had positive effects in many areas such as student's academic achievement, student's welfare feeling, responsibility for homework, and positive attitude in the classroom. however, the benefits of parenting and school involvement are not specific to primary school. researchers have shown that parental attention in child and adolescent education contributes to children's learning and school achievement (hoover-dempsey and sandler, 1997). parents are the first educators of children, especially in the pre-school period where development is the fastest, and they support educational achievement and influence on learning (henderson and berla, 1994; anderson and minke, 2007; berthelsen and walker, 2008; jeynes, 2011). the emotional traits, interests, and tendencies of the parents who are the first educators and role models of children affect their children directly or indirectly. for example, parents’ reading habits are known to influence children’s reading habits; also their interest and tendency in sports and the arts influence children’s preferences. similarly, the opportunities provided by families regarding the use of technology may also be effective in increasing children’s awareness and tendency in this area from early ages (akkoyunlu and tugrul, 2002). in the studies conducted, it was determined that mother attention starting from preschool was directly related to the educational success of the child in the future, and father attention had a long-term effect on the success of the child (flouri and buchanan, 2004; berthelsen and walker, 2008). however, it is not clear which components of parental attention and how much this component affect academic achievement (fan, 2001; smith et al., 2011). today, when technology is rapidly spreading and consumed, parents and children spend most of their time using electronic media such as tablets, smartphones, computers, and television. while technology provides opportunities for parents and children to support education, entertainment, and development; it is also known there might be harmful effects of tablets, smartphones, computers, and the internet that children have started to use in preschool period and widely used in adolescence in terms of physical and mental development of children. it is thought that asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 473-481 475 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as a result of the frequent use of technological devices such as mobile phones and tablets by children and parents, family communication and parent’s attention toward child will be affected. based on the data from the european evidence database in the science and policy report of the joint research center of the european union, it was emphasized that studies on the technology usage of children in europe mostly covered the ages of 14 and 15 (close to 1000 studies), whereas less studies were conducted on 0-6 age groups (close to 200); and the role of parents in children’s using new technologies did not receive much attention (chaudron et al., 2015). from this point of view, it is the purpose of this study to determine whether the technology usage of children in today when the technology is widely used is differentiated according to the parents’ attention toward their children. 2. method 2.1. research design this study, which aims to determine the technology usage of children between the ages of 4 and 6 in preschool period and compare them with the parents’ attention toward their children, used the relational screening model (büyüköztürk et al., 2012). descriptive studies such as screening model aim to describe the present and past situations as they are. this model tries to define the subject of the research as it is and does not try to change it karasar (2005). 2.2. research sample the study group of the research consists of 117 children and their parents aged 4-6 years who attend independent kindergartens and kindergartens at elementary schools in karesi and altıeylül districts of balıkesir province in 2018-2019 academic year. the demographics of the study group are given in table 1, table 2, table 3, and table 4. table-1. demographics of the study group. frequency (f) percentage (%) gender female 63 54.0 male 54 46.0 birth year 2012 12 10.25 2013 98 83.77 2014 7 5.98 number of siblings 0 13 11.12 1 57 48.71 2 34 29.05 3 13 11.12 private room yes 75 64.1 no 42 35.9 health issue yes 7 5.98 no 110 94.02 table-2. mothers’ demographics of the study group. frequency (f) percentage (%) mother alive 117 100.0 mother own mother 117 100.0 mother together 116 99.14 separated 1 .86 education status not educated 3 2.58 literate 1 .86 primary school 34 29.05 middle school 23 19.65 high school 37 31.62 college 7 5.98 university 10 8.54 masters and above 2 1.72 job housewife 84 71.79 officer 10 8.54 worker 9 7.7 others 14 11.97 disabled status yes 3 2.58 no 114 97.42 socioeconomic level lower 18 15.38 average 99 84.62 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 473-481 476 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as can be seen in table 1, 54% of preschool children in the ages of 4-6 were females and 46% were males. children born in 2013 constituted approximately 84% of the study group. while 48.71% of the children had 1 sibling, 11.12% had no siblings. 75 children had their own rooms and 42 children did not have their own rooms. 5.98% of children had a health issue of unknown type. all mothers of the children in the study group were alive and children’s own mothers. only 1 of the children had separate parents. approximately 30% of mothers were primary school graduates, while 2.58% were illiterate. 84 mothers were housewives, 10 mothers were officers, and 9 mothers were workers. 97.42% of the mothers were not disabled. while 18 mothers perceive themselves at lower socioeconomic level, 99 mothers regard themselves at average socioeconomic level. table-3. fathers’ demographics of the study group. frequency (f) percentage (%) father alive 117 100.0 baba own father 117 100.0 father together 116 99.14 separate 1 .86 education status not educated 1 .86 literate 1 .86 primary school 20 17.08 middle school 26 22.22 high school 39 33.32 college 13 11.12 university 15 12.82 masters and above 2 1.72 job officer 23 19.66 worker 44 37.6 unemployed 2 1.72 others 48 41.02 disabled status yes 4 3.3 no 113 96.7 socioeconomic level lower 13 11.12 average 103 88.02 upper 1 .86 all fathers of the children in the study group were alive and children’s own fathers. one of the children had separate parents. 22.22% of the fathers were middle school, 33.32% were high school, 12.82% were university, and 1.72% were masters and above graduates. while 23 fathers were officers, 44 fathers were workers, 48 fathers worked in other occupational groups. 96.7% of the fathers were not disabled. 13 (11,12%) fathers saw themselves at lower socioeconomic level, 103 (88,02%) fathers at average socioeconomic level, and 1 (0.86%) father at upper socioeconomic level. table-4. other demographics of the study group. frequency (f) percentage (%) house rental 51 43.59 not rental 66 56.41 other people in the house yes 5 4.27 no 112 95.73 number of students in the house 1 46 39.32 2 64 54.7 3 7 5.98 as shown in table 4, 51 (43.59%) families live in rental houses. while 5 (4.27%) of the children in the study group shared their homes with individuals outside the family, 112 (95.73%) lived only with family members. 39.32% of the families had 1 child, 54.7% had 2 children, and 5.98% had 3 children who continue their education. 2.3. data collection tools in the first part of the study, personal information form that includes demographics of children and their parents was used as data collection tool. in the second part, the questionnaire form prepared by the researchers was used to determine the duration of technology usage of children, whether children use technological tools while eating, and finally to determine the reaction of children when using technological tools is not allowed. in order to determine the parental attention for children, parental attention scale for children scale that was developed by campbell et al. (1986) and adapted by sucuoglu et al. (2015) was used. the maternal attention scale consists a total of 34 items and 4 factors including “attention for control” (13 items), “attention for behavior development” (11 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 473-481 477 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group items), “attention for school” (7 items), and “attention for improving interest” (3 items). the paternal attention scale consists a total of 40 items and 3 factors including “attention for control” (11 items), “attention for behavior development” (16 items), and “attention for school” (13 items). likert-type grading was used as “1 = never”, “2 = rarely”, “3 = sometimes”, “4 = frequently” and “5 = very frequently”. the reliability coefficients of the parental attention for children scale are given in table 5. table-5. factors and cronbach’s α coefficients of the parental attention for children scale. α value factors overall scale mothers attention for control .77 .89 attention for behavior development .84 attention for school .80 attention for improving interest .81 fathers attention for control .93 .96 attention for behavior development .94 attention for school .89 as shown in table 5, the reliability coefficients of the scale and its sub-dimensions were calculated. internal consistency coefficients of maternal attention scale were .77 for attention for control, .84 for attention for behavior development, .80 for attention for school, .81 for attention for improving interest, and .89 for the whole scale. in the father attention scale, internal consistency coefficients were .93 for attention for control, .94 for attention for behavior development, .89 for attention for school, and .96 for the whole scale. it was concluded that the questionnaires were reliable because the α coefficients of the scale validity were above .70 (büyüköztürk, 2006). 2.4. data analysis mean, mode, median, skewness and kurtosis values of the study variables were calculated. if the mean, mode and median values are equal in a frequency distribution of a data set, we can say that the data is distributed symmetrically around the central tendency measures. in cases where these values are not equal to each other, it can be judged by looking at the skewness and kurtosis values. the fact that skewness and kurtosis coefficients are within the range of (+1 and -1) shows that the data exhibits normal distribution (büyüköztürk, 2006). the normality tests of the parental attention for children scale are given in table 6. table-6. normality tests of the parental attention for children scale. mean mod median skewness kurtosis mothers attention for control 3.51 3.85 3.54 -.388 -.916 attention for behavior development 3.44 4.00 3.55 -.769 .193 attention for school 2.46 2.43 2.43 -.070 -.722 attention for improving interest 2.64 2.67 2.67 -.636 .423 fathers attention for control 2.92 2.75 3.00 -.425 -.208 attention for behavior development 3.08 3.36 3.18 -.490 -.325 attention for school 1.61 2.00 1.62 .306 -.214 3. findings in this part of the research, the findings of the analysis are presented. table 7 shows the results of one-way analysis of variance test conducted to determine whether the level of attention of parents for their children varies according to the duration of technology usage. as can be seen in table 7, the attention levels of the parents do not vary according to the duration of technology usage based on the one-way analysis of variance test conducted to determine whether the level of attention of parents for their children varies according to the duration of technology usage. when the table 8 was examined, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of fathers’ attention for behavior development and attention for control at the p< .05 level based on the independent samples t test to determine whether the parents’ attention levels differ according to whether their children use technological tools while eating. when the average scores are considered, it is observed that this difference is in favor of children who do not use technological tools. it can be said that the effect of this variable on this differentiation is moderate. according to the results of the independent group t test to determine whether the participants 'level of interest differs according to the reaction of their children when the use of technological tools is not allowed, the mean scores of fathers' interest in behavior development, interest in control, and interest in school are significant table 9. there was a statistically significant difference. when the average scores are examined, it is observed that this difference is in favor of the fathers of the children who show positive behavior. it can be said that the effect of this variable on this differentiation is moderate table 11. mothers’ level of attention for control was linearly related to mothers’ other attention levels, fathers’ level of attention for behavior development, and fathers’ level of attention for control; and was inversely related to s3 (behavior score and duration of use; table 10). mothers’ level of attention for behavior development was linearly related to mothers and fathers’ other attention levels; and was inversely related to s3. the mothers’ level of attention for school and their level of attention for improving interest were linearly related to mothers and fathers’ other attention levels. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 473-481 478 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. results of one-way analysis of variance test. factors anova results group n ̅ sd source of var. ss df ms f p effect size mafc < 1 hour 17 3.63 .31 between groups 0.765 3 0.255 2.18 0.094 1-2 hour 55 3.52 .36 within groups 13.212 113 0.117 2-3 hour 30 3.50 .32 total 13.977 116 3-4 hour 15 3.33 .33 total 117 3.51 .35 mafbd < 1 hour 17 3.58 .34 between groups 1.195 3 0.398 2.077 0.107 1-2 hour 55 3.48 .41 within groups 21.669 113 0.192 2-3 hour 30 3.38 .41 total 22.863 116 3-4 hour 15 3.22 .65 total 117 3.44 .44 mafs < 1 hour 17 2.66 .70 between groups 2.596 3 0.865 1.42 0.241 1-2 hour 55 2.51 .83 within groups 68.878 113 0.61 2-3 hour 30 2.43 .72 total 71.474 116 3-4 hour 15 2.11 .81 total 117 2.46 .78 mafii < 1 hour 17 2.94 .77 between groups 1.887 3 0.629 0.769 0.514 1-2 hour 55 2.59 .99 within groups 92.463 113 0.818 2-3 hour 30 2.61 .92 total 94.349 116 3-4 hour 15 2.53 .61 total 117 2.64 .90 fafbd < 1 hour 17 2.94 .85 between groups 0.011 3 0.004 0.007 0.999 1-2 hour 55 2.91 .77 within groups 57.398 113 0.508 2-3 hour 30 2.92 .50 total 57.408 116 3-4 hour 15 2.92 .68 total 117 2.92 .70 fafc < 1 hour 17 3.06 .75 between groups 0.084 3 0.028 0.068 0.977 1-2 hour 55 3.07 .72 within groups 46.874 113 0.415 2-3 hour 30 3.13 .46 total 46.958 116 3-4 hour 15 3.06 .53 total 117 3.08 .64 fafs < 1 hour 17 1.75 .98 between groups 0.451 3 0.15 0.234 0.872 1-2 hour 55 1.60 .83 within groups 72.519 113 0.642 2-3 hour 30 1.59 .69 total 72.97 116 3-4 hour 15 1.52 .66 total 117 1.61 .79 table-8. results of independent samples t test to determine whether the parents’ attention levels differed according to whether their children use technological tools while eating. factors groups n ̅ ss t test difference effect size (cohen’s d) t sd p mafc yes 17 3.53 0.29 .07 0.396 25.353 0.696 no 100 3.50 0.36 .04 mafbd yes 17 3.41 0.36 .09 -0.249 115 0.804 no 100 3.44 0.46 .05 mafs yes 17 2.28 0.59 .14 -1.04 115 0.300 no 100 2.49 0.81 .08 mafii yes 17 2.86 0.89 .22 1.112 115 0.269 no 100 2.60 0.90 .09 fafbd yes 17 2.59 0.53 .13 -2.103 115 0.038 h > e .59 no 100 2.97 0.72 .07 fafc yes 17 2.75 0.64 .16 -2.346 115 0.021 h > e .61 no 100 3.14 0.62 .06 fafs yes 17 1.33 0.78 .19 -1.598 115 0.113 no 100 1.66 0.79 .08 table-9. results of independent samples t test to determine whether the parents’ attention levels differed according to reactions of their children when they are not allowed to use technological tools. factors groups n ̅ ss t test difference effect size (cohen’s d) t sd p mafc positive 60 3.54 0.32 0.04 1.195 115 0.235 negative 57 3.47 0.37 0.05 mafbd positive 60 3.50 0.42 0.05 1.632 115 0.105 negative 57 3.37 0.46 0.06 mafs positive 60 2.54 0.80 0.10 1.135 115 0.259 negative 57 2.38 0.77 0.10 mafii positive 60 2.76 0.83 0.11 1.521 115 0.131 negative 57 2.51 0.96 0.13 fafbd positive 60 3.08 0.67 0.09 2.627 115 0.010 positive > negative .48 negative 57 2.75 0.70 0.09 fafc positive 60 3.26 0.57 0.07 3.173 115 0.002 positive > negative .58 negative 57 2.90 0.65 0.09 fafs positive 60 1.76 0.75 0.10 2.2 115 0.030 positive > negative .39 negative 57 1.45 0.81 0.11 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 473-481 479 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-10. results of correlation analysis between attentions and independent variables. factors 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 s3 s5 s8 1-mafc 1.00 .672** .379** .430** .300** .381** 0.14 -.217* -.031 -.111 2-mafbd 1 .405** .350** .369** .403** .300** -.226* .023 -.150 3-mafs 1 .212* .188* .232* .292** -.180 .097 -.105 4-mafii 1 .209* .301** .248** -.098 -.103 -.140 5-fafbd 1 .814** .652** -.002 .192* -.238** 6-fafc 1 .634** .017 .214* -.284** 7-fafs 1 -.068 .147 -.201* s3 1 -.158 .020 s5 1 -.229* s8 1 fathers’ level of attention for behavior development and fathers’ level of attention for control were linearly related to mothers and fathers’ other attention levels and s5 (behavior score and no option); and were inversely related to s8. the fathers’ attention for school was linearly related to all mothers’ attention levels, except for the mothers’ attention for control, and fathers’ other attention levels; and was inversely related to s8 (behavior score and negative optionas score increases, negative behavior decreases). there was an inverse relationship between s5 and s8 (as no increases, negative behavior decreases). table-11. effect size reference range. effect size d reference very small 0.01 sawilowsky (2009) small 0.20 cohen (1988) medium 0.50 cohen (1988) large 0.80 cohen (1988) very large 1.20 sawilowsky (2009) huge 2.0 sawilowsky (2009) 4. discussion, conclusion and suggestions the study was carried out with the participation of 117 children and their parents in order to determine the technology usage of children between the ages of 4-6 and to compare the parents’ attention for their children. in line with the findings of the research, the following conclusions were reached. while the parents’ attention for control of the child was high, their attention for behavior development was low and their attention for school was even lower. while under the attention for control, there are characteristics such as the child’s readiness to school, controlling his homework, attention to the child's appearance; under the attention for behavior development, the recognition and support of the child’s abilities and competences take place. the attention for school refers to the school cooperation and parents involvement. this result of the study can be interpreted as parents are insufficient in recognizing and encouraging their children, cooperating with the school, and showing participation, despite the fact that they show attention for mostly controlling their children. parents’ beliefs about their children’s behaviors shape discipline practices, to what extent autonomy is supported, and their expectations based on children’s age. school support and family participation are indisputably important and necessary in the realization of parents’ expectations about their children (rogoff, 1993; harris and goodall, 2006). the reason why parents’ attention for school is low may be due to many variables that determine the relationship between school and family. in his study, georgiou (1996) examined the variables that affect academic achievement and concluded that there is no relationship between the academic achievements of children coming from the high control families and parents’ high control; and that these families are insufficient in terms of participation and cooperation with school. this result shows that attention for control does not affect academic achievement positively. in this study, despite the high attention for control, it was found that technology usage of children was high. from this point of view, it can be said that parents’ attention for control does not have a positive effect on the duration of technology usage of children as well as academic success. as for the attention for behavior development, epstein states that if parents inform their children, encourage them, become aware of what they are doing, and take care of them; children at all levels will be better in their academic studies, their attitudes towards school will be more positive, they will have higher expectations, and they will exhibit positive behaviors (georgiou and tourva, 2007). as a result of the present study, it was found that the parents’ level of attention for their children differed according to whether children use technological tools while eating. it is known that the support of the father in the care, protection and education process of the child in early childhood has positive effects on the development of the child (yogman and garfield, 2016). pancsofar and vernon-feagans (2006) emphasized that father-child communication is an important and unique predictor for advanced language development of children, and that while the mothers’ adapt to the vocabulary that the child knows during communication with the child, fathers’ use of new words positively affects the language development of the child. it is an expected result of the study that fathers of children who do not use technological tools while eating show high attention for behavior development and control. this can be interpreted as the fact that fathers are aware of the possible harm of using technological tools while eating; therefore, they keep their attention high for behavior development and control. in studies supporting the results of this research, it has been reported that watching television, one of the use of technological tools, causes disruption of the satiety mechanism in the brain with the effect of various distracting mechanisms and as a result of this, the individual's food consumption increases (chaput et al., 2011; pearson and biddle, 2011). in addition, 99% of the fathers in the research group are employed. the fact that these fathers are working reduces the number of meals they are having with the children, and the fact that the fathers having fewer meals with their children may be the reason for the fathers’ effective use of their asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 473-481 480 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group attention for behavior development and control. the fact that 72% of the mothers in the study group did not work supports this interpretation. parents’ level of attention for their children was found to differ according to the reaction of children when using technological tools was not allowed. this can be interpreted as fathers’ attention for behavior development, control, and school increases; children give positive responses. in addition, it can be said that children are more willing to follow the instructions given by their fathers because almost all of the fathers in the research group spend less time with their children during the day due to their work. today, as children begin to use media and technology at an early age, parents are expected to consider and mediate the value of media and technology for the development of their children (american academy of pediatrics council on communications and media, 2001;2011). parental mediation or guidance varies according to the child's age and technological opportunities. parents become more controlling and restrictive as the age of the child grows in the guidance process for 0-8 years old children (nikken and jansz, 2013). many studies show that the use of technology in preschool education positively affects children's learning and increases their motivation (huffstetter et al., 2010; wolgemuth et al., 2011; cakıroğlu and taşkın, 2016; kocamankaroglu, 2016). on the other hand, the use of computer and television in preschool children will be beneficial and appropriate as long as they are under the supervision of parents, but it shows that interaction with technology adversely affects the developmental characteristics of the child and learns negative attitudes and behaviors outside the parental control (güngör, 2014). when the other research results are examined, it is emphasized that parental supervision and control is very important in order to increase the positive effects of smart devices on the parentchild relationship (livingstone and helsper, 2008; rosen et al., 2008). based on the results of the research, the following 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pediatrics, 138(1): 1-17. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 527 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 527-535, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.527.535 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of psycho-social variables affecting the professional life of persons after the coaching education seckin doganer1 halil erdem akoglu2 1ankara university, sports sciences faculty, department of sports management, ankara, turkey. ( corresponding author) abstract the aim of this research is to examine the effects of the coaches’ emotional labor behavior on emotional burnout and turnover intention. the research group consists of 201 coaches actively working in various sports centers in ankara province. personal information form consisting of demographic questions, “emotional labor scale”, “burnout scale” and “turnover intention scale” were used as data collection tools. in the research, after the normality test; spearman correlation and multiple regression analysis were performed on the data. the demographic information of the group participating in the study is given as a percentage table. according to the findings, as the knowledge and skill of the coach increases, emotional burnout, surface acting and turnover intention show decrease. at the same time, the increase of professional success of the coaches causes emotional burnout, desensitization, surface acting and the turnover intention. it has been observed that the role of coaches, whose professional achievements have increased, has increased natural acting levels, but it has been determined that the role of deep acting has no effect on the turnover intention. as a conclusion, it was observed that burnout and turnover intention may decrease as the level of knowledge and skill increases in coaches. in addition, it was determined that surface acting behavior was not preferred by experienced coaches and mostly natural emotions were used. keywords: emotional labor, burnout, turnover intention, coach, emotion, behavior. citation | seckin doganer; halil erdem akoglu (2020). investigation of psycho-social variables affecting the professional life of persons after the coaching education. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 527-535. history: received: 3 june 2020 revised: 6 july 2020 accepted: 10 august 2020 published: 1 september 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 528 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 529 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 530 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 531 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 533 6. suggestions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 533 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 533 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.527.535&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2077 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 527-535 528 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the effects of the coaches’ emotional labor behavior on emotional burnout and turnover intention. 1. introduction today, the emotions of the employees and the management of these emotions play a key role for the enterprises in all sectors in the business world. for this reason, employee emotion management has become the focus of researchers especially in the last decade (lee & chelladurai, 2018). when the literature on the subject in analyzed, it is seen that although the researches in sports management are mostly evaluated in terms of customers, recent researches also focus on issues such as employee performance, behavior and burnout (fletcher & scott, 2010; lee & chelladurai, 2018). along with globalization, one of the most important factors that bring success in the service environment, especially with the increase in the number of enterprises, is that the employees act in a way that meets their current goals and meets the expected performance. in this sense, the most important distinguishing feature is; that employees show superior performance characteristics, that is, they have a “contextual performance” perception (yürür & ünlü, 2011). at this point, although the behavior of the employees towards the customers is very important for the customer and the enterprise, when viewed from the perspective of the employee, it is seen as a situation that may have to exhibit undesirable behaviors and as a result may lead to burnout. 1.1. emotional labor concept the concept of emotional labor was first expressed in hochschild’s book "the managed heart", and in the following years, various researchers related to emotional labor introduced new approaches. these approaches are ashforth & humphrey, hochschild, morris & feldman and as a last grandey (balcı, erdeveciler, & altınsoy, 2019). emotional labor concept (hochschild, 1983) which is defined as managing and changing internal emotions during the fulfillment of duties for the employee, can create unwanted emotions and stress factors in the staff (lee, chelladurai, & kim, 2015). hochschild (1983) defined the concept of emotional labor as “managing emotions for a certain wage”. later, ashforth and humphrey (1993) explained the concept of emotional labor as “displaying the right emotions”. morris and feldman (1996) on the other hand, stated that “effort, planning and control required to express the desired emotion organizationally during interpersonal relations”. finally, grandey (2000) defined it as both regulating and managing emotions in order to be effective in the business environment. these definitions include organizational expectations of employees’ interactions with customers and the state of internal tension or conflict that arises when employees need to display false emotions known as emotional dissonance (jeung, kim, & chang, 2018). emotional labor occurs in a variety of professions that require both directly face-to-face contact and a state of emotion (for example, anger or kindness) to those with whom they are in contact (hochschild, 1983). grandey and gabriel (2015) one of the researchers interested in this subject; they have developed a comprehensive emotional labor model consisting of premises, results and moderators. grandey and gabriel (2015) stated that emotional labor emerged as a function of the emotional needs of current situation, the individual’s inner emotion regulation process and its observable emotional performance when individuals recognize appropriate emotions (i.e. emotional needs), they perform internal emotional regulation strategies to change (i.e. emotional regulation) and then to express those emotions (i.e. emotional performance) (lee & chelladurai, 2018). it can be said that these three components are intertwined to formulate the dynamic and mutual process of emotional labor (grandey, 2000). organizations define “codes of conduct” that contain standards that enable employees to reflect the right feeling to their customers (yürür & ünlü, 2011). these behavioral rules are the rules for keeping negative behaviors while waiting for employees to display positive behaviors to suit their business objectives (augustine & joseph, 2008). hochschild (1983) considered emotional labor in a two-dimensional structure as surface acting and deep acting behavior, but ashforth and humphrey (1993) also added natural behavior to these dimensions. in subsequent research, researchers dealt with emotional labor with a structure inherent in natural behavior (ashforth & humphrey, 1993; diefendorff, croyle, & gosserand, 2005; grandey, 2000; hochschild, 1983). surface acting is the process of changing the expressions (for example smiling) that the employee encountering a customer or consumer reflects to the customer without changing their inner feelings. in the surface acting behavior, the false emotions occur by suppressing the real emotions of the employee and dictating the business rules (chu & murrmann, 2009; lee & chelladurai, 2018). it is stated that, by applying the model of fletcher and scott (2010) a coach who could not enter the cognitive assessment stages while encountering stress exhibits a role-playing behavior on the surface. in the role of deep acting, the employee is trying to transform his personal feelings into the desired emotions, that is, he should act. behavior in this context arises in the effort of the employee to experience the emotion specified according to the situation. for example, after a defeat, coaches perform deep acting when they try to calm their nerves by reassessing the situation as a challenge rather than threats or harm (lee & chelladurai, 2018). therefore, surface acting behavior is related to observable expressions, and deep acting behavior is related to changes in internal emotions to meet institutional expectations (grandey, 2000). according to rafaeli and sutton (1989) the situation in deep acting behavior is a benign act, while the situation in surface acting behavior is a malicious approach. because the surface acting behavior characterizes the observer as an act of deception for the interests of the institution in case of exhibiting the behavior. diefendorff et al. (2005) defined the third category of emotional labor (natural behavior) as the process of experiencing one's spontaneous emotions without effort. for example, it has been seen that coaches who naturally feel and display enthusiasm during the practice show natural behaviors (lee & chelladurai, 2018).while the studies in the literature on the subject suggest that emotional labor will have negative results, some also state that it may have positive results. researchers who are concerned with the negative consequences of emotional labor often relate to burnout and job dissatisfaction (abraham, 1998; aziz, widis, & wuensch, 2018; baker, chu, & murrmann, 2012; grandey, 2000; hochschild, 1983; kim, 2008; lee & chelladurai, 2018; lee, 2019; morris & feldman, 1996; noh, 2017; wharton, 1993). emotional labor can form an important psychological structure within sports organizations. this structure has the potential to shed light on establishing asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 527-535 529 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an effective coping strategy that allows them to improve individual outcomes (e.g. stress and health) and organizational outcomes (e.g. athletes and team performance) (lee & chelladurai, 2016). in the context of sports, some professions require employees to interact directly with other individuals. for example, personal coaches must use emotional labor to interact with customers in fitness centers (lee et al., 2015). it is known that the coaches in the service sectors of the sports field consciously display emotions suitable for the business purpose when they encounter emotionally different events in their interactions with customers and followers for a fee. contrary to this is likely to be considered as a reason for businesses to dismiss them (ashforth & humphrey, 1993). when the literature is examined, studies involving emotion management for individual well-being are included in sports organizations (wagstaff, fletcher, & hanton, 2012; wagstaff., fletcher, & hanton, 2012) especially in recent years, research involving the emotional behavior of coaches has been focused on fletcher and arnold (2015); lee et al. (2015); lee and chelladurai (2016); lee and chelladurai (2018). 1.2. emotional labor and burnout maslach, jackson, and leiter (1996) defined burnout as “emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment”. coaches who are exposed to high demands related to work for a certain period of time appear to be emotionally exhausted, and this may cause the coach to become insensitive and personal accomplishment (i.e. a decrease in one's sense of ability and productivity) (lee & chelladurai, 2018). such experiences have been found to have significant effects on team performance and coaches’ health and well-being (mcneill, durand-bush, & lemyre, 2017). many studies have consistently shown that different aspects of emotional labor affect individuals' burnout differently (aziz et al., 2018; larner, wagstaff, thelwell, & corbett, 2017; lee & chelladurai, 2018; lee & ji, 2018; lee, 2019; tolukan, 2019). the surface acting, which includes the process of suppressing unpleasant and unwanted emotions and displaying different emotions, creates emotional mismatch in the person and reveals the feeling of originality. there is no emotional incoherence in the deep acting, since the inner feelings are changed before they appear. finally, natural emotions are negatively associated with coach burnout, because the process does not need to produce any emotional dissonance and psychological effort (grandey & gabriel, 2015). in line with this information, the following hypotheses have been developed: h1: there is a positive relationship between coaches' feelings of surface acting and emotions of burnout. h2: there is a negative relationship between coaches' deep acting emotions and emotions of burnout. h3: there is a negative relationship between coaches' natural emotions and emotions of burnout. 1.3. emotional labor and turnover intention rusbult, farrell, rogers, and mainous iii (1988) see their turnover intention as disruptive and active actions that employees take if they are not satisfied with their job conditions. the theoretical background of the relationship between emotional labor and turnover intention is emotional dissonance theory and research (chu & murrmann, 2009; cote & morgan, 2002). according to the emotional dissonance theory, the difference between the emotional representation that the organization expects from the employees and the emotional representation that the employees show as they come from causes an emotional dissonance and affects the employee (kruml & geddes, 2000; morris & feldman, 1996). it is considered that the increase in this difference may have negative consequences such as dissatisfaction in the employee, creating dissatisfaction within the organization and among colleagues, low performance of work and the intention to quit (grandey, 2003). based on this point, the following hypotheses have been developed by making use of previous researches and theories related to the subject: h4: there is a positive relationship between coaches' surface acting emotions and turnover intention. h5: there is a negative relationship between coaches' deep acting emotions and turnover intention. h6: there is a negative relationship between coaches' the natural emotions and turnover intention. 1.4. burnout and turnover intention as mentioned in many studies, a negative result of burnout is the increased risk of leaving work (kilo & hassmén, 2016; kubayi, 2018). many coaches who graduated from sports science departments in our country can find themselves in a limited number of work areas. for this reason, it is important to find out the factors that may reduce the intention of the coaches to quit. among a number of factors leading to the turnover intention, coach burnout has been found to play an important role (kilo & hassmén, 2016; raedeke, 2004). in this context, the following hypothesis has been developed: h7: there is a positive relationship between coaches' burnout and turnover intention. 2. method in this study, in which the quantitative research model was adopted, the correlational survey model was used. the purpose of screening research is to make a description by taking a picture of the current situation related to the research subject (büyüköztürk, kılıç çakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2017). 2.1. research group while creating the group, convenience sampling method, which is non-random sampling methods, is used. convenience sampling method is a non-random sampling method in which the sample segment chosen from the main mass is determined by the researcher's judgments. in convenience sampling, the data are collected from the main mass in the easiest, fastest and most economical way (etikan, alkassim, & abubakar, 2016). the study group of the study consisted of 201 (n = 104 men and n = 97 women) working in private sports centers in ankara. the findings related to descriptive statistics are given in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 527-535 530 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. percentage distribution of participants' demographic information. variable group f % total �̅� s min. max. gender women men 97 104 48,3 51,7 201 education level high school university graduate 9 175 17 4,5 87,1 8,5 201 working hours satisfaction yes no 145 56 72,1 27,9 201 age 201 25,34 5,14 18.00 56.00 service year in the profession (month) 201 54,37 53,37 2 384 average monthly income 201 2377,47 1331,54 250 7000 coaching knowledge-skill level 201 7,24 1,66 1,00 10,00 success in profession 201 7,48 1,52 3,00 10,00 note: frequency (f). 2.2. data collection tool as a data collection tool, first of all, the personal information form containing the demographic information of the participants was applied to the participants, and secondly, “emotional labor scale”, “maslach burnout inventory” and “the turnover intention scale” were used. the collected data were analyzed with spss 24 program. personal information form: this section contains 9 items related to the personal information of the participants. these variables are; age, gender, education level, year of service, branch, working hours satisfaction, coaching knowledge skills and success in the profession. emotional labor scale: the "emotional labor scale", which was developed to determine the emotional labor behavior of the employees, was created by adapting and developing some items of emotional labor scales by grandey (2003) and kruml and geddes (2000). the scale, consisting of 13 items in total, includes three dimensions: surface acting, deep acting and natural emotions. the participants evaluated the scale items with the help of the five likert scale (1 = never, 5 = always). maslach burnout inventory: maslach burnout inventory was developed by maslach and jackson (1981) and turkish adaptation studies were done by ergin (1992). the scale, consisting of a total of 22 items, evaluates burnout in three sub-dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment. the turnover intention scale: the 3-item turnover intention scale developed by cammann (1983) and included in the study by mimaroğlu (2008) was used to measure the turnover intention. collection of data: the scale questions were applied in the form of one-on-one questions and answers, during the data collection phase. the individuals who participated in the study were informed by the researcher about the importance of the study and their importance for this study, and in this context, it was stated that the fact that they gave correct and reflecting answers to the current situation would affect the reality of the research. for this reason, it was assumed that the individuals participating in the research responded realistically to the scale applied.215 of 450 distributed questionnaires were collected. 14 of these surveys, which were analyzed, were not evaluated because they were filled in incorrectly or incompletely by the surveyors. as a result, 201 questionnaires were accepted as valid and evaluated. 2.3. data analysis in order to test whether the obtained data shows normal distribution, skewness and kurtosis analyzes were applied and it was understood that the data showed normal distribution as a result of these tests. in the normality distribution measurements, when skewness values are between -2 and +2 and kurtosis values are between -2 and +2, then the data is identified as normally distributed (george & mallery, 2010). spearman correlation and multiple regression analysis were applied on the normally distributed data. the normality data and cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients of the scale were investigated and given in table 2. table-2. skewness kurtosis values and internal consistency coefficients of the scales. scales sub dimensions items skewness kurtosis α burnout emotional exhaustion 9 ,175 -,358 ,87 desensitization 5 ,291 -,309 ,75 personal accomplishment 8 -,603 ,602 ,80 emotional labor surface acting 6 ,187 -,754 ,90 deep acting 4 -,452 ,085 ,81 natural emotions 3 -,470 -,299 ,80 turnover intention turnover intention 3 ,511 -,943 ,93 note: skewness is acceptable for -2/+2, kurtosis is acceptable for -2 /+2. 3. results in table 3, the correlation analysis results of the scales were given. according to the findings, there is a statistically low negative correlation between the coaches’ knowledge and skill level and emotional burnout, surface acting and turnover intention. as the coaches’ knowledge and skills increase, his emotional burnout and surface acting and turnover intention decrease. there is a statistically negative, low and medium level relationship between the professional success of the coach and emotional burnout, desensitization, surface acting and turnover intention. as the professional success of the coaches increases, their emotional burnout, depersonalization, surface acting and turnover intention decrease. there was a statistically low level of positive correlation between asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 527-535 531 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group professional success, personal accomplishment and natural acting sub-dimensions. as the professional achievements of the coaches increase, personal accomplishment and their natural acting also increase. table-3. correlation analysis results related to the scales. sub dimensions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1-cks 1 2-cps 0,794** 1 3-sa -0,190** -0,189** 1 4-da -0,101 -0,046 0,210** 1 5-ne 0,100 0,150* -0,368** 0,168* 1 6-ee -0,219** -0,226** 0,560** 0,081 -0,296** 1 7-d -0,071 -0,205** 0,410** 0,027 -0,300** 0,668** 1 8-pa 0,102 0,185** -0,109 0,240** 0,389** -0,183** -0,387** 1 9-ti -0,358** -0,405** 0,401** 0,0708 -0,369** 0,567** 0,275** -0,161* 1 note: *p<0.05; **p<0.01; cks: coach knowledge-skill; cps: coach professional success; sa: surface acting; da: deep acting; ne: natural emotions; ee: emotional exhaustion; d: depersonalization; pa: personal accomplishment; ti: turnover intention. there is a statistically positive moderate relationship between the emotional exhaustion levels of the coaches’ and their depersonalization, surface acting and turnover intention. as the coaches’ emotional exhaustion increases, their depersonalization, surface acting and turnover intentions also increase. there is a statistically low negative correlation between emotional exhaustion and personal success and natural emotions. as emotional exhaustion increases, personal sense of accomplishment and natural emotions decrease in the coach. table-4. the effect of emotional labor and burnout perception on the turnover intention. dependent variable independent variable non-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t level of significance b std. error beta turnover intention (constant) surface acting deep acting natural emotions 2,528 0,345 0,091 -0,356 0,472 0,085 0,094 0,91 0,286 0,065 -0,275 5,361 4,039 0,967 -3,910 0,000 0,000 0,335 0,000 r= 0,470 r2= 0,209 f= 18,639 p= 0,000 turnover intention (constant) emotional exhaustion desensitization personal accomplishment 1,407 1,073 -0,154 -0,230 0,526 0,117 0,051 0,112 0,710 -0,249 -0,128 2,674 9,190 -3,023 -2,051 0,008 0,000 0,003 0,042 r= 0,596 r2= 0,346 f= 36,193 p= 0,000 note: p<0.000. in table 4, in order to evaluate the power of the emotional labor scale and burnout inventory subdimensions, the turnover intention was taken as dependent variable and multiple linear regression analysis was performed. when the table is examined; it was determined that the vo sub-dimensions significantly predicted the turnover intention variable (p = 0,000) and that the independent variables explained the turnover intention at the rate of 18.6% (r2 = 0.209). of the independent variables, it was determined that only the deep acting had no significant predictive effect on the dependent variable. again, the turnover intention as a dependent variable; as a result of the analysis conducted to evaluate the predictive power of the burnout scale sub-dimensions as an independent variable, it is seen that the bs subdimensions explained the intention to quit from work by 36% (r2 = 0.346). all of the independent variables have a significant predictive effect on turnover intention. 4. discussion according to the results of the research, a statistically negative and low-level relation was found between the knowledge and skill level of the coach and the emotional burnout, surface acting and turnover intention. this shows that while the h1 hypothesis is not confirmed, the h4 hypothesis is not. as the knowledge and skill of the coaches increases, emotional burnout, surface acting and turnover intention decrease. when examining the various emotional states that arise in the business environment, it is necessary to divide the occupational groups into two as occupational groups that require physical labor and emotional labor. in occupational groups that require emotional labor, such as the coaching profession, it is important that employees have control over their emotions because employees in this group must frequently interact with people around them grandey and sayre (2019). considering that the concept of burnout leads the person to three different negative behaviors such as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal success reduction, it is known that it can direct employees not only to coaches but also to employees to leave their jobs (brotheridge & grandey, 2002). burnout, on the other hand, can increase the turnover intention by creating low performance in coaches. a study showing that the professional burnout of coaches is related to the sense of job satisfaction, emphasizing that the emotional commitment to the profession in coaches can have positive results for the athlete and the team, suggesting that trainings can be given in different strategies especially for these occupational groups that require emotional labor(lee et al., 2015). these trainings can help coaches express themselves more comfortably within the team, as well as create positive effects such as reduced sense of burnout and strengthened professional commitment. as a matter of fact, according to a study examining the professional burnout status of coaches, more burnout is observed in coaches taking part in prestigious matches (hjalm, kentta, hassmenan, & gustafsson, 2007). however, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 527-535 532 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it is possible to see different results when the literature is examined. for example, in a study examining the burnout levels of football coaches, unlike the previous result, it was found that coaches’ burnout levels were low, but it was suggested that training-related activities should be carried out to avoid problems such as keeping the motivation of the coaches high and role conflict (tolukan, 2019).these results are similar to our results regarding emotional burnout, surface acting and turnover intention, with the increased knowledge and skill of coaches. in the research, it was determined that as the professional success of the coaches increased, their emotional burnout, depersonalization, surface acting and turnover intention were reduced. considering the relationship of coaches with athletes, it is known that common areas and face-to-face communication are quite intense, both in encounters and training hours. although it is known that this situation may increase the perception of burnout, it can be thought that the professional experience factor has a preventive effect on this negative effect (brotheridge & grandey, 2002). the coaching profession, which is seen as a highly dynamic and socially relational activity, is known as a profession group that requires skills and experience in many fields including competition, entertainment, social activity, self-esteem development, physical empowerment and education. therefore, it would not be correct to think that the person who is positioned as a coach only works on improving sports performance (morgan & bush, 2016). in this case, it can be thought that the coaching profession, when combined with the factors in question, has different effects on exhaustion and leaving work. as a matter of fact, in a study examining the relationship between emotional exhaustion between the professional years of the coaches, it was found that more emotional exhaustion was observed in the coaches working between 9-12 years, but in the same research, it was found that this effect started to decrease and the sense of desensitization decreased in the coaches with 17 years or more (biber, ersoy, acet, & küçük, 2010). in a study where demographic factors have not been tested, but the relationship of coaches' professional burnout levels with co-workers has been determined, it has been determined that the sense of burnout may decrease over time and there are strong relationships in the perception of burnout for coaches, athletes and other employees (myhre & moen, 2017). in a different study using qualitative method, it was found that coaches who experienced high burnout showed symptoms of fatigue, sleep problems, drowsiness and similar as the season progressed, while coaches who experienced low burnout felt more active in this process with their feelings of being more energetic and cheerful. the research emphasizes that this situation may be related to motivation and experience (bentzen, lemyre, & kenttä, 2017). these results can be seen as the effects of the professional experience factor and are similar to our research results. it is also important in terms of showing that the motivation phenomenon has direct effects on burnout and turnover intention. according to the results of the research, as the professional achievements of the coaches increase, personal accomplishment and natural emotions also increase. in a master's thesis research examining the burnout levels of coaches working in private gyms; it was observed that coaches working 11 hours or more experienced more emotional exhaustion than the other group, similar to the research results in the literature. according to the results of the research, it was determined that the personal success feeling levels of the coaches in the group giving private lessons were higher than the coaches in the other group, but there was no significant difference in the sense of burnout (akı, 2014). the profession of coaching can be seen as a working environment in which sociological perspective will increase as personal success increases and professional success will increase. however, this situation, of course, brings more stress factors. therefore, coaches may tend to quit their profession, thinking that they may not always maintain their personal sense of accomplishment. therefore, the desire to move away from an environment that requires high performance constantly suggests to coaches to step back from this tiring environment that requires continuous success (olusoga & kenttä, 2017). it is observed that the stress factor imposes a significant burden on the employees in the institutions where the personal and professional sense of success is desired to be at the top, and they are pressured to protect this performance by their superiors. this situation creates negative situations especially in the form of distress, fatigue and burnout among employees and leads them to behaviors that can lead to quitting the profession (grant, 2017). in another study on stress factors, emotional labor and burnout, this situation was supported and it was found that the frequency of organizational stress factors increased the sense of burnout for sports activities. the research emphasized the importance of the emotional labor factor between the frequency of organizational stress and burnout based on the results obtained (larner et al., 2017). frequent and chronic work stress can provide social support gains in difficult situations within the organization and as a result, it may be thought to have a positive aspect in terms of managing job demands, but this situation cannot prevent burnout (jeung et al., 2018). these results confirm the h3 and h6 hypotheses, but suggest that the personal accomplishment in coaches may put them into burnout in the future, even if it is considered as a positive process at the beginning. when the results of the research were examined, it was determined that the role of deep acting in the turnover intention does not make a significant difference on the dependent variable, and the h2 and h5 hypotheses were confirmed. when the literature is examined, it is seen that this situation is similar to the result of a research conducted in different occupational groups. according to the research result in question, deeply acting behavior does not have a significant effect on job stress (celik & yıldız, 2016). in a study examining the emotional labor and coach competencies of football coaches in connection with the subject, a positive relationship was found between deep acting behavior and coach competence, and this result was explained as the intention of the coaches to show sincere feelings by emphasizing that it was related to the motivation and character structure of the coaches (güllü & donuk, 2019). since the concept of emotional labor is known to be a publicly observable face and physical image behavior (hochschild, 1983) it can be seen that the use of such behaviors by employees is actually positive aspects. indeed, in a similar study, it was found that the deep acting did not create statistically significant differences on exhaustion or depersonalization and showed positive relationships on job performance and job satisfaction (humphrey, ashforth, & diefendorff, 2015). these results in the literature confirm the h7 hypothesis and are similar to our research results, but the existence of many factors related to emotional labor and role-playing behavior and the existence of many emotional labor-related factors (hings, wagstaff, anderson, gilmore, & thelwell, 2018) are considered important for the investigation of such relationships in future research. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 527-535 533 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. conclusion as a result, it was found that, as the knowledge and skill levels of the coaches increased, they were more resistant to negative emotional states such as burnout. surface acting behavior, which is seen as an artificial phenomenon, decreases with experience and reduces the emotional burnout feeling of the coaches. the duration of coaches' duty is seen as an effect on burnout and leaving the profession. as a matter of fact, as the duration of the profession increases, even if there is a sense of burnout, the effect may decrease with the experience factor. this can be considered important in that it emphasizes the importance of experience in the coaching profession. professional and personal success can strengthen the emotional state of the coaches and increase their motivation. however, as this situation continues, it has been determined that coaches may experience performance anxiety and as a result they may tend to turnover intention due to this concern. emotional labor and deep acting behavior can be considered as a natural process for coaches. because the coaching profession is an emotional labor-intensive profession by nature, such behaviors suggest that coaches behave naturally in terms of their profession and successfully fulfill the requirements of the profession. the fact that coaches, who interact with many athletes and sportsmen, especially because of large sports organizations, try to overcome such situations successfully, shows that they act as internally as possible while showing emotional labor. these results are important for determining that coaches are experienced in job stress. it has been observed that coaches use emotional labor behavior very effectively in their professional life and they provide this situation in the balance of motivation and performance. disruption of this type of balance should be seen as a factor that will increase the intention of leaving the job. 6. suggestions coaches try to manage a very crowded social environment consisting of athletes, followers and other sports members. this situation causes coaches who are at the center of all successes and defeats to show a lot of emotional labor. emotional labor behavior leads coaches to negative situations such as burnout and turnover, when professional difficulties are not managed well. in this case, the working time and performances of the coaches must be reviewed. coach, who is in constant expectation of success, may experience burnout earlier and turn to profession behavior. this situation should be taken under control with the sports organization managers. since it is seen that coaches are more successful when their motivation is high, it can be suggested that managers should empathize in the process and try to manage the workload in a balanced way. increasing the knowledge and skills of coaches is another issue that can decrease the intention to quit. for this reason, increasing the activities in which they can gain training and skills can be positive for coaches. since the situation in question will increase the sense of personal success, it is thought that it can naturally reduce undesirable conditions such as burnout. the research was carried out with 201 coaches belonging to private sports centers actively working in ankara. in future research, this number can be increased and coaches from different provinces can be included in the research. quantitative method was used in the study and various scales measuring the emotional state of the coaches were analyzed. in future researches, qualitative method can be used and emotional labor and burnout situations can be examined together with coaches of different branches. with this method, since the personal opinions of the coaches can be reached, broader conclusions can be made about the intention to quit and emotional labor. references abraham, r. 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(2011). emotional labor, emotional exhaustion and the intention to leave work. isguc the journal of industrial relations and human resources, 13(2), 83-103. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 343 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 343-348, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.343.348 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the investigation of risk-taking behavior in adolescents in terms of attachment styles and social problem-solving melike yilmaz1 zeliha traş2 ( corresponding author) 1psychological counselor, ali rıza celeboğlu secondary school, beyşehir, konya, turkey 2assoc. prof. dr., necmettin erbakan university, ahmet keleşoğlu faculty of education, department of guidance and psychological counseling, meram, konya, turkey abstract the aim of this study is to examine the risk-taking behavior of adolescents in terms of attachment styles and social problem-solving. the study group consists of 637 students from 9th, 10th and 11th grade, as 276 female (43.2%) and 361 male (56.7%). in order to collect data in the study, the delinquent behavior scale, the relationship scale, the social problem-solving scale and personal information form are used. pearson product-moment correlation technique and multidimensional hierarchical regression analysis are used to analyze the data. a positive correlation is found between delinquent behaviors of adolescents and preoccupied style, which is a sub-dimension of attachment styles. while there is a positive and significant relationship between adolescents' delinquent behaviors and negative problem orientation, which is a sub-dimension of social problem-solving, impulsive/careless style and avoidance style; there is a significant negative correlation between delinquent behaviors and rational problem-solving sub-dimension. research results reveal that preoccupied style, rational problem-solving and avoidance style subdimensions are predictors of risk-taking behaviors. keywords: risk-taking behavior, attachment styles, social problem-solving, preoccupied style, rational problem-solving, avoidance style, adolescents. citation | melike yilmaz; zeliha traş (2019). the investigation of risk-taking behavior in adolescents in terms of attachment styles and social problem-solving. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 343-348. history: received: 6 february 2019 revised: 18 march 2019 accepted: 26 april 2019 published: 24 july 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 344 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 344 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 345 4. discussion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................. 347 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 347 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/871 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.343.348&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5485-1332 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2670-0868 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 343-348 344 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the risk-taking behavior of adolescents in terms of attachment styles and social problem-solving. 1. introduction each individual goes through certain periods in life. one of these is the period of adolescence which includes transition from childhood to adulthood (kulaksızoğlu, 2006). in this period, adolescents are able to perform much more risky behaviors with the effect of adolescent self-centeredness (elkind, 1967). risk-taking is a behavior that is likely to endanger health, to cause illness or death (alexander et al., 1990). adolescents are able to head for risky behaviors as proof of their identity’s approval and maturation; in order to control their life, to resist to adult authority and society; to cope with anxiety, frustration, inability and failure and to be accepted in the peer group (kloep et al., 2009). risk-taking behavior further increases at the end of adolescence and with transition to adulthood. risky behaviors among adolescents include crime, violence, smoking, alcohol or substance use, risky (drunk driving, without seat belt, fast, without driving license) driving, theft, early sexual activity, self-harm behavior, skipping school or eloping, dropping out, indifference to courses, lack of professional or social skills, unhealthy eating behaviors and sedentary life (aras et al., 2007). the reasons of risk-taking behavior in adolescents are to join peer groups, to oppose family repression and traditional social structure, to control one’s own life, to wait for approval of identity, and failure to cope with feelings such as failure, anxiety, and inability (karahan et al., 2006). it is reported that resistance to restraint, coping skills, personality traits such as self-control and insight, ties with family, school and other social groups keep adolescents away from risky behaviors. adolescents may be more prone to their peers who have risky behaviors because they think that they will not reach their desires by working or obeying rules, they cannot find closeness in their family, and they have weak ties in their family (yılmaz, 2000). one of the notions that are thought to affect the risk-taking behavior is attachment styles. bowlby (1973) describes attachment as strong emotional bonds that people develop for those they consider important to them. attachment is a system that shapes the person's pattern of forming a relationship with other people around her/him, which is thought to be shaped in infancy and continue in later periods of life. it is the first link between baby and mother or caregiver and constitutes the basic trust feeling (budak, 2005). therefore, the person who gives care to the baby has a significant role (soysal et al., 2005). attachment style is the behavior of the person who makes generalizations in relation to her/his relationship with the people in the past (özer, 2009). attachment styles determine the behaviors of a person in social relations and have a direct effect on mental health (terzi and cihangir-çankaya, 2009). while the children of the families who are sensitive to the needs of the child have a secure attachment style, the children of the families who do not meet the needs of the child have an insecure attachment style (arslan et al., 2011). another problem which is thought to affect adolescents' risk-taking behaviors is social problemsolving. social problem-solving is defined by d' zurilla and nezu (1982) as the person-oriented cognitive-behavioral processes in the face of the problems encountered in daily life (d' zurilla and nezu, 1982). according to this, social problemsolving is a conscious, realistic, demanding, goal-oriented coping process that actually enhances the ability of the person to cope effectively with many stressful situations (d'zurilla and chang, 1995). the social problem-solving model consists of two main dimensions: problem orientation and problem-solving skills (d’ zurilla et al., 2004). the orientation to the problem involves individual's realization of the problem, the causal burdens and expectations about the problem situations, and the motivation in the problem-solving process. it consists of two dimensions: positive problem orientation and negative problem orientation. positive problem orientation is the evaluation of the problem as an opportunity to be utilized, believing that the problems can be solved, trusting in the problem solving competences and constructive cognitive structures related to problem-solving. the negative problem orientation is a non-functional cognitive sequence that includes the problem as perceiving it as a threat to happiness, not relying on problem-solving competencies, easily irritating and grieving when faced with problems (d'zurilla and chang, 1995). problem-solving skills are rational problem-solving, impulsive-careless style and avoidance style. rational problemsolving is defined as the systematic application of rational, clear and effective problem solving skills. impulsive-careless style is defined as non-functional problem-solving style, which uses problem-solving techniques actively. the avoidance style is the non-functional problem-solving style defined by procrastination, passivity and dependence (d’ zurilla et al., 2004). the above studies have drawn attention to the relationship between adolescents' attachment styles and social problem-solving skills. in this study, it is aimed to determine the predictive relationships between adolescents' risktaking behavior, attachment styles and social problem-solving. 2. method 2.1. research model the research was conducted with relational screening model in order to explain the relationship between risktaking behavior and attachment styles and social problem-solving of adolescents. being a type of screening models, the relational scanning is a research model aiming to determine the presence and/or degree of coexistence between two or more variables (karasar, 1994). 2.2. study group the study group included 637 high school students in total from 9th, 10th and 11th grade students, -276 (43.3%) female, and 361 (56.7%) malefrom different secondary schools in aksaray. 2.3. data collection tools delinquent behavior scale: the delinquent behavior scale, was developed by kaner (2009) in order to determine behaviors among adolescents that would not be reflected to official institutions, but if they had been asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 343-348 345 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group caught, that would be considered as crimes and get the adolescents on the wrong side of the laws. the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the test was 0.93 and the test reliability coefficient was 0.89. the scale consists of 9 sub-scales and 38 items. the subscales of the delinquent behavior scale are: 1) status offense and violating school rules (7 items), 2) theft (6 items), 3) inability to control anger and fighting (6 items), 4) petty larceny (4 items) , 5) remarkable vandalizing (3 items), 6) status offense and deceiving others (5 items), 7) drugs and crime of violence (3 items), 8) damaging buildings (2 items), 9) cheating in exams (2) article (kaner, 2001). the delinquent behavior scale is answered according to four options regarding the frequency of the behaviors mentioned above in the last 6 months. these options; “never” (1 point), “one or two times” (2 points), “three or four times” (3 points), “five or more times” (4 points) (yılmaz, 2011). in addition, within the scope of this research, cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficients were calculated to examine the internal consistency of the delinquent behavior scale. accordingly, cronbach's alpha value was found to be .92 for the total score. relationship scale: it was developed by griffin and bartholomew (1994) and adapted to turkish by sümer and güngör (1999). the scale consists of 30 items and aims to measure four attachment styles as secure, preoccupied, dismissing and fearful. participants have marked on a 7-stage scale, in which each item defines their general attitude in themselves and their close relations (1= does not define me at all; 7 = defines me entirely) (sümer and güngör, 1999). the validity and reliability studies of the scale were conducted by sümer and güngör (1999). test-retest reliability and internal consistency coefficient were between 0.54 and 0.78, and 0.27 to 0.61 alpha values, respectively. the subscales of the relationship scale are: 1) fearful style, 2) dismissing style, 3) secure style and 4) preoccupied style (altundağ, 2011). in addition, cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficients were calculated to examine the internal consistency of the relationship scale. accordingly, cronbach's alpha value was found to be .75 for the total score. social problem-solving scale: the social problem-solving scale was developed by d'zurilla and nezu (1990) and adapted to turkish by dora (2003). the social problem-solving scale consists of 52 items and 5 subscales (positive problem orientation, negative problem orientation, rational problem-solving and impulsive/careless style and avoidance style). the cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.81 for the scale, 0.62 for the positive orientation subscale, 0.83 for the negative orientation subscale, 0.91 for the rational problem-solving subscale, 0.62 for the impulsive-careless style subscale, and 0.76 for the avoidance style subscale. the subscales of social problem-solving scale are: 1) positive problem orientation (ppo), 2) negative problem orientation (npo), 3) impulsive/careless style (ics), 4) rational problem-solving (rps) and 5) avoidance style (as). in addition, cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficients were calculated to examine the internal consistency of the social problem-solving scale. accordingly, cronbach's alpha value was .87 for the total score. personal information form: the personal information form prepared by the researchers was used to determine the demographic information of the participants such as gender, class level, education status of mother and father. 2.4. data collection in order to collect the data, the administrators and guidance counselors of the high schools in the central district of aksaray were selected. “delinquent behavior scale”, “relationship scale”, “social problem-solving scale” and “personal information form” were applied to the study group. during the implementation, the principle of volunteerism was mentioned, then the students were informed about the purpose of the application and the instructions of scales were read. the implementation lasted for approximately 35-40 minutes. 2.5. data analysis the scale was applied to 700 students; 63 of them were excluded from the analysis because there were unanswered items in their papers. a total of 637 scales data were analyzed. spss 20.0 package program was used for data analysis. the statistical analysis of the data was discussed in a way to reveal the effects of independent variables on the dependent variable. pearson product-moment correlation technique was used to determine the relationship between adolescents' delinquent behavior scale scores, attachment styles and social problem-solving scores. multidimensional hierarchical regression analysis was used to determine whether adolescents' risk-taking behavior score averages were predicted in terms of attachment styles and social problem-solving. 3. findings table 1 presents the correlation results for delinquent behavior, attachment styles and social problemsolving. when table 1 was examined, it was observed that there was a significant relationship between the mean scores of the adolescents on the scale of delinquent behavior and the mean scores of fearful style sub-dimension (r= .057, p= .148, p> .01), and the mean scores obtained from dismissing style sub-dimension (r=. 063, p= .111, p> .01) and the secure style sub-dimension mean scores (r= .068, p= .087, p> .01). the mean scores of the adolescents on the delinquent behavior scale and the mean scores of the preoccupied style subscale (r= .102, p= .010, p< .01) were found to be significantly low. there was no significant relationship between the mean scores of the adolescents on the delinquent behavior scale and the mean scores of the positive orientation sub-dimension (r= -.063, p= .114, p> .01). it was found that there was a low and significant relationship between the mean scores of the adolescents on the delinquent behavior scale and the mean scores of the negative orientation sub-dimension (r= .110, p= .005, p< .01). while there was a low and significant relationship between the mean scores of the adolescents on the scale of delinquent behavior and the mean scores of the sub-dimension of the impulsive/careless style (r= .102, p= .010, p< .01), a low and significant relationship was found between the mean scores of the of the delinquent behavior scale and the mean scores they obtained from the rational problem-solving sub-dimension (r= -.151, p= .000, p< .01). the mean scores of the adolescents from the delinquent behavior scale and the mean scores of the avoidance style (r= .201, p= .000, p< .01) were found to be low and significant. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 343-348 346 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. correlation results for delinquent behavior, attachment styles and social problem-solving in adolescents. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1.delinquent behavior pearson correlation p n 637 2.fearful style pearson correlation .057 p .148 n 637 637 3.dismissing style pearson correlation .063 .469** p .111 .000 n 637 637 637 4.secure style pearson correlation .068 .483** .339** p .087 .000 .000 n 637 637 637 637 5.preoccupied style pearson correlation .102** .329** .450** .377** p .010 .000 .000 .000 n 637 637 637 637 637 6.positive problem orientation pearson correlation -.063 .166** .179** .054 .092* p .114 .000 .000 .173 .020 n 637 637 637 637 637 637 7.negative problem orientation pearson correlation .110** .244** .335** .262** .222** .011 p .005 .000 .000 .000 .000 .784 n 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 8.impulsive/ careless style pearson correlation .102** .159** .206** .220** .152** .068 .445** p .010 .000 .000 .000 .000 .085 .000 n 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 9.rational problem solving pearson correlation .151** .158** .221** .105** .121** .561** .225** .098* p .000 .000 .000 .008 .002 .000 .000 .013 n 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 10. avoidance style pearson correlation .201** .136** .065 .190** .148** -.107** .533** .378** -.027 p .000 .001 .101 .000 .000 .007 .000 .000 .504 n 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 637 *p< .05 **p< .01. 3.1. findings for predicting the risk-taking behavior table-2. regression analysis results for prediction of delinquent behavior of adolescents by sub-dimensions of attachment styles. factors b se β t p constant 1.157 .056 20.725 .000 preoccupied style .207 .101 .086 2.046 .041 r= .283 r2= .080 f= 6.086 *p< .05. when table 2 was examined, according to the multiple regression results for adolescents’ predictive strength dimensions, it was seen that the variables of attachment styles explain 8% of the adolescents’ delinquent behavior dimensions (r= .283, r2= .080, f= 6.086). it was seen that the total score (β= .086, p< .05) obtained from the preoccupied style sub-dimension significantly predicted the delinquent behavior scale dimensions. table-3. regression analysis results for the prediction of delinquent behavior of adolescents by social problemsolving sub-dimensions. factors b se β t p constant 1.316 .045 29.236 .000 rational problemsolving .064 .017 .146 -3.794 .000 avoidance style .077 .015 .197 5.130 .000 r= .249 r2= .062 f= 20.886 **p< .01. when table 3 was examined, according to the multiple regression results for adolescents' predictive behavior dimensions, it was seen that the variables of social problem-solving explain 6% of adolescents’ delinquent behavior (r= .249, r2 = .062, f= 20.886). it was seen that the total score obtained from the rational problem-solving subdimension (β= -.146, p< .01) and the total score (β= .197, p< .01) obtained from the avoidance style sub-dimension significantly predicted the dimensions of the delinquent behavior scale. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 343-348 347 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion and recommendations according to the findings of the research, it was observed that there was no significant relationship between the delinquent behaviors of adolescents, fearful style, dismissing style and secure style sub-dimensions. according to the findings, there was a positive, low and significant relationship between the delinquent behavior of adolescents and the preoccupied style sub-dimension. according to the findings, it was observed that the attachment styles and social problem-solving significantly predicted the risk-taking behavior. when the literature is examined, it is seen that there is a significant relationship between the sub-dimensions of the risk-taking behavior and the attachment styles in a similar way to the results of this research (demulder et al., 2000; i̇mamoglu, 2003; çelik, 2007; gilbert et al., 2007; akmaz, 2009; gökmen, 2009; morsünbül, 2009; uluman, 2011; kaplan and aksel, 2013; tanış, 2014; arslan, 2015; kahraman, 2015; körük, 2016; usta, 2018). casas et al. (2006) in their study examining the relationship between attachment styles and physical aggression, found a linear and significant relationship between insecure attachment styles and physical aggression. in another research, it was found that there was a significant relationship between insecure attachment styles and severity of violence in a study, which examined the relationship between violence to children and attachment (mayda, 2019). the results of all these studies show us that adolescents with risktaking behavior have insecure attachment styles. according to another finding of the research, it was found that there was no significant relationship between the delinquent behaviors of adolescents and the positive orientation sub-dimension of social problem-solving. according to the findings, a positive and significant relationship was found between the delinquent behaviors of adolescents and the negative problem orientation, impulsive-careless style and avoidance style. according to the findings, a negative and significant relationship was found between the delinquent behaviors of adolescents and the rational problem-solving sub-dimension of social problem-solving. for this reason, adolescents' taking support from their social environment will positively affect the positive orientation to social problem-solving and rational problem-solving style and delinquent behaviors of the adolescents (traş, 2013). in addition, according to the findings, total score obtained from rational problem-solving and avoidance style sub-dimensions was found to predict the dimensions of delinquent behavior significantly. when the literature is examined, it is seen that there is a significant relationship between social problemsolving and sub-dimensions of risk-taking behavior in a similar way to the results of this research (keltikangasjärvinen, 2002; arslan et al., 2010; öztürk, 2013; kaygusuz, 2018). d'zurilla et al. (2003) in their study examining self-esteem and social problem-solving as a determinant of aggression in university students, found that those with positive approach to the problem and those with rational problem-solving skills have low aggression tendencies. in another study, the relationship between aggressive behaviors in adolescence and anger and social problem-solving skills were examined and it was found that there was a negative correlation between social problem-solving and aggression (albayrak sargın, 2008). the results of all these studies show us that adolescents with risk-taking behavior are insufficient in social problemsolving. risk-taking behavior can be more clearly demonstrated in future studies by working with different samples and variables. longitudinal studies examining the differences in risk-taking behaviors during adolescence can be done. preventive guidance programs can be developed and applied to adolescents with risk-taking behavior. preventive guidance studies, individual recognition techniques and positive problem-solving techniques can be used especially in the students in the risk group. in addition, skills training programs such as improving friendships, social problem-solving skills, communication skills, “saying no” skills, and healthy coping skills can be organized for adolescents who display risk-taking behavior. references akmaz, n., 2009. a review on the relationship between attachment styles of education managers and trait anger and expression styles of anger. master thesis, yeditepe university, institute of social sciences, i̇stanbul. albayrak sargın, y., 2008. a review on the relationship between adolescent students' aggressive behavior and anger and social problemsolving skills. master thesis, karadeniz technical university, institute of social sciences, trabzon. alexander, c.s., y.j. kim, m. ensminger, k.e. johnson, b.j. smith and l.j. dolan, 1990. a measure of risk taking for young adolescents: reliability and validity assessments. journal of youth and adolescence, 19(6): 559-569.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01537176. altundağ, g., 2011. attachment styles, coping attitudes and stress detection levels in university students. master thesis, haliç university, institute of social sciences, i̇stanbul. aras, s., t. günay, s. özan and e. orcin, 2007. risky behaviors of high school students in izmir. anatolian journal of psychiatry, 8(3): 186196. arslan, c., e. hamarta, e. arslan and y. saygın, 2010. an investigation of aggression and interpersonal problem solving in adolescents. elementary education online, 9(1): 379-388. arslan, e., r. arı and c. arslan, 2011. an analysis of anger management in terms of attachment styles. african journal of bus iness management, 5(2): 546-551. arslan, y., 2015. the relationship between substance use, attachment styles and early noncompliant schemes. master thesis, üsküdar university institute of social sciences, i̇stanbul. bowlby, j., 1973. attachment and loss: separation: anxiety and anger. new york: basic books, 2. budak, s., 2005. psychology dictionary. 3rd edn., ankara: sanat publications. casas, j.f., s.m. weigel, n.r. crick, j.m. ostrov, k.e. woods, e.a.j. yeh and c.a. huddleston-casas, 2006. early parenting and children's relational and physical aggression in the preschool and home contexts. journal of applied developmental psychology, 27(3): 209227.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2006.02.003. çelik, g., 2007. characteristics of adolescents admitted to child and adolescent psychiatry clinic. dissertation, çukurova university, faculty of medicine, department of child mental health and diseases, adana. d' zurilla, t.n. and a. nezu, 1982. social problemsolving in adults, in p. c. kendall (ed.). advances in cognitivebehavioral research and therapy. new york: academic press. d'zurilla, t.j. and e.c. chang, 1995. the relations between social problem solving and coping. cognitive therapy and research, 19(5): 547562.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02230513. d'zurilla, t.j., e.c. chang and l.j. sanna, 2003. self-esteem and social problem solving as predictors of aggression in college students. journal of social and clinical psychology, 22(4): 424-440.available at: https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.22.4.424.22897. d'zurilla, t.j. and a.m. nezu, 1990. development and preliminary evaluation of the social problem-solving inventory. psychological assessment: a journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 2(2): 156-163.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037//10403590.2.2.156. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 343-348 348 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group d’ zurilla, t.j., a.m. nezu and a. maydeuolivares, 2004. social problem solving: theory and assessment. 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(2015) adapted to turkish by eskiler et al. (2016) and “multiple intelligence” scale developed by gardner (1990) adapted to turkish by demirtas and duran (2007) were used as a data collection tool. in order to test the hypotheses of the study, t-test (mann-whitney u test) and analysis of variance in multiple comparisons (kruskal wallis-h test) were performed in addition to descriptive statistics such as arithmetic mean, standard deviation, frequency/percentage, normal distribution test, (kolmogorov-smirnov test). as a result of the study, it was found that there was a significant difference between the participants' cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence levels in relation to gender, income status and sporting variables. keywords: multiple intelligence level, cognitive physical and behavioral level, physical education and sport, university students. citation | mahmut gülle (2019). investigation of the effect of cognitive behavioral and physical development levels on the multiple intelligence of university students. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 510-517. history: received: 5 july 2019 revised: 12 august 2019 accepted: 23 september 2019 published: 31 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 511 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 511 3. results and interpretation ........................................................................................................................................................... 512 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 515 5. suggestions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 516 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 516 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.510.517&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1085 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9967-0703 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1085 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9967-0703 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1085 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9967-0703 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 510-517 511 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study aims to assess the concurrent validity of a new, self-report measure of gardner‟s multiple intelligences by relating scores on this test to measures of personality, approaches to learning as well as crystallized intelligence and self-estimated scores of those „intelligences‟. 1. introduction according to matlin (2008) the mind-related areas cover philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. accordingly, cognition, that is believed to be the product of an individual's acquisitions with innate endowments, seems to be understood as a fact by sensation, perception, intelligence, memory, emotions, and spirit, biological and cultural contexts. in this regard, lektorsky (1998) who criticized piaget's known cognition theory as “generalization of empirical, psychological and history of science data”, asks if “could be cognitive theory?” to point out the difficulty in definition of cognition. intelligence is a period that continues a person's life and offers people choices in their lives. within this period; gardner stated that individuals do not have the same way of thinking, but as a result of taking individual differences seriously with education, differences can be created in all individuals. if individuals can identify different components of intelligence, they may be considered to be more successful in solving problems they will face (gardner and hatch, 1990). gardner carried away his research to a very serious level by observing people with mental differences such as talented, genius, mentally handicapped, brain damaged etc. within the zero project at harvard university. in the extent of the research, he pointed out the wrongness of the traditional approach to intelligence and the need for a renewal in this regard (armstrong, 2003). today, many researchers, quite independent of each other, believe that there is a large number of intelligence and their own strengths and limitations; that the mind is not boundless from birth; that the inner strengths of intelligence has natural lines (smith, 2002). after 1990s, it was seen that there were serious researches (hoerr, 1996; campbell and campbell, 1999; armstrong, 2000; silver et al., 2000; demirel, 2006; almeida et al., 2010; ahmad et al., 2015) done on multiple intelligence theory. it is realized that serious problems have been experienced in revealing the level of intelligence differences of the students as a result of the technological developments which have increased the importance of the studies carried out especially for the young generation of today. while using intelligence levels, students show the level of intelligence in which they are most powerful, while keeping pace with group dynamics. it has been observed that the practices based on this theory have a positive effect on student achievement and that the active participation and motivation of the students increased in the courses designed according to multiple intelligence theory (campbell et al., 1992). in the light of the developments in the education system, it is seen that new curricula are prepared based on multiple intelligence theory. learning-teaching process is formed on the basis of multiple intelligence theory and lesson plans are prepared accordingly (erdem and demirel, 2005). in this context, teachers have to organize different teaching activities in the teaching process in order to reach the determined goals. teachers also need to have some skills in organizing teaching activities (green, 2005). gardner (1997) emphasizes that if the activities that are not compatible with the students' mental fields, the traditional development belong to only language and mathematics will continue or only those who are interested in these fields will benefit from this. however, he argues that the aim of the school is to reach out to more students and that the learning styles of the students need to be known. within this framework, besides examining the multiple intelligence levels of students completing university education, it is thought that the study of mental, affective and physical development levels of students will increase the importance of the research. it is possible to talk about various studies on psychological, environmental, behavioral and social factors which are affecting the status of participation in physical activities and based on different theoretical foundations about participation of individuals in physical activities (plotnikoff et al., 2013; schembre et al., 2015). schembre et al. (2015) stating the measurement tools used in these studies, which are shaped by different theoretical approaches, contain various differences and similarities, argue that a new measurement tool is needed in which the strengths of each theory are evaluated. individuals succeed as long as they struggle not only physically but also mentally and emotionally perform positively in their field. 2. materials and methods in the research, a method for descriptive survey and relational survey was used to reveal the current situation. descriptive survey models are research approaches aiming at defining a past or present situation as it exists. as for relational screening models, these research models aim to determine the presence and / or degree of covariance between two and more variables (karasar, 2014). 2.1. population and sample of research the population of the study consists of undergraduate students of faculty of education, faculty of sport sciences, faculty of arts and sciences, faculty of economics and administrative sciences, faculty of medicine and veterinary faculty of hatay mustafa kemal university in 2018-2019 academic year. the sample of the study involved 1142 students, 539 female and 603 male, using convenient sampling method from different departments of hatay mustafa kemal university. 2.2. scales used in research 2.2.1. cognitive behavioral physical activity scale the scale, which was developed by schembre et al. (2015) and adapted to turkish by eskiler et al. (2016) consist of 3 sub-dimensions: outcome expectation, self-regulation, personal barriers and a total of 15 items. all expressions in the scale are scored with a 5-point likert-type rating such as = 1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree”. rate of the total variance explained by the scale is 54.12%. the internal consistency coefficient of the scale asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 510-517 512 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group was α = .84, and the scores for the sub-dimensions were expected result = .85, self-regulation = .79 and personal barriers = .64. 2.2.2. self-assessment scale in multiple intelligences this data collection tool was developed by demirtas and duran (2007) to measure eight different intelligences using gardner (1990). the reliability test and factor analysis of this scale were conducted by demirtas and duran (2007). for this purpose, the scale was applied to 76 students. the data obtained were analyzed in spss package program. as a result of this analysis, cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient of the measurement tool was calculated as 0.884. at the same time, factor analysis was applied to the questionnaire, and items with scores less than 0.40 were excluded from the survey. in the self-assessment scale of multiple intelligences applied to reveal the dominant intelligence of the students, 5 questions were applied to each of the 8 different intelligence areas and a total of 40 questions were applied to the students. in order to determine the degree of participation of students in each item. they have selected one of 5 options as follow: 5 “completely a”, 4 "agree”, 3 “partially agree”, 2 "i disagree” and 1 “i strongly disagree”. 2.3. data analysis in order to test the hypotheses of the study, t-test (mann-whitney u test) and analysis of variance in multiple comparisons (kruskal wallis-h test) were performed in addition to descriptive statistics such as arithmetic mean, standard deviation, frequency/percentage, normal distribution test, (kolmogorov-smirnov test). after the analysis of variance, the bonferroni correction method was used to prevent type i and type ii errors that might arise from binary comparisons to determine which groups had significant differences (significance level for income level variable (0.05) was divided into the amount of mann-whitney u test and significance level was determined as 0.017). 3. results and interpretation the results of the analysis belong to the data obtained within the scope of the research are reported in this section. the results of the analysis of the demographic variables are presented in table 1. table-1. statistical distribution of participants according to demographic characteristics. variables n % variables n % gender income level 1. men 603 52.8 1. low 129 42.5 2. women 539 47.2 2. middle 936 30.0 total 1142 100.0 3. high 77 27.5 sports status total 1142 100.0 1. participating 669 58.6 2. not participating 473 41.4 total 1142 100.0 when examined table 1, it was seen that 52.8% of the participants were male and 47.2% were female according to the gender variable of the participants. according to the results of the participants' sporting status variable, it was found that 58.6% did sports and 41.4% did not do sports. according to the income level variable, the income level of the participants is in the low-income group with 42.5%, in the middle-income group with 30.0%, and in the high income group with 27.5%. table-2. comparison of participants' cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence levels according to gender variable. dependent variables gender n mean rank rank total u p result expectation 1. men 603 583.19 351665.50 155457.500 .204 2. women 539 558.42 300987.50 self-regulation 1. men 603 614.78 370709.50 136413.500 .003 2. women 539 523.09 281943.50 personal barriers 1. men 603 560.03 337699.50 155593.500 .212 2. women 539 584.33 314953.50 naturalist intelligence 1. men 603 596.13 359466.00 147657.500 .007 2. women 539 543.95 293187.00 personal inner intelligence 1. men 603 558.51 336781.00 154675.000 .157 2. women 539 586.03 315872.00 visual spatial intelligence 1. men 603 527.51 318090.00 135984.000 .002 2. women 539 620.71 334563.00 interpersonal social intelligence 1. men 603 574.10 346180.50 160942.500 .777 2. women 539 568.59 306472.50 logical mathematical intelligence 1. men 603 612.36 369253.00 137870.000 .009 2. women 539 525.79 283400.00 physical kinesthetic intelligence 1. men 603 599.68 361609.00 145514.000 .002 2. women 539 539.97 291044.00 verbal linguistic intelligence 1. erkek 603 538.82 324906.00 142800.000 .003 2. women 539 608.06 327747.00 musical rhythmic intelligence 1. men 603 561.62 338656.50 156550.500 .283 2. women 539 582.55 313996.50 *p<0,05; n (1142). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 510-517 513 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the results of the t-test to find out the significant difference between gender and dependent variables are presented in table 2. as a result of the mann-whitney u test conducted to test whether there is a significant difference between participants' cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence categories according to gender, while among self-regulation (u = 136413.500, p <0.05), naturalistic intelligence (u = 147657.500, p <0.05) visual spatial intelligence (u = 135984.000, p <0.05), logical mathematical intelligence (u = 137870.000, p <0.05) ), physical kinesthetic intelligence (u = 145514.000, p <0.05) and verbal linguistic intelligence (u = 142800.000, p <0.05) levels were found to have significant differences, the results expectation (u = 155457.500, p> 0.05), personal barriers (u = 155593.500, p> 0.05), personal inner intelligence (u = 154675.000, p> 0.05), interpersonal social intelligence (u = 160942.500, p> 0.05) and musical rhythmic intelligence (u = 156550.500, p> 0.05) levels were statistically not significant. table-3. comparison of participants' cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence levels according to the sporting status variable. dependent variables sports status n mean rank rank total u p result expectation 1. participating 669 639.41 427768.00 112784.000 .001 2. not participating 473 475.44 224885.00 self-regulation 1. participating 669 676.50 452581.50 87970.500 .001 2. not participating 473 422.98 200071.50 personal barriers 1. participating 669 518.28 346726.50 122611.000 .007 2. not participating 473 648.78 305927.50 naturalist intelligence 1. participating 669 594.12 397467.50 143084.500 .006 2. not participating 473 539.50 255185.50 personal inner intelligence 1. participating 669 564.22 377461.00 153346.000 .373 2. not participating 473 581.80 275192.00 visual spatial intelligence 1. participating 669 564.31 377523.50 153408.500 .379 2. not participating 473 581.67 275129.50 interpersonal social intelligence 1. participating 669 580.15 388123.50 152428.500 .289 2. not participating 473 559.26 264529.50 logical mathematical intelligence 1. participating 669 583.72 390510.50 150041.500 .135 2. not participating 473 554.21 262142.50 physical kinesthetic intelligence 1. participating 669 647.07 432893.00 107659.000 .002 2. not participating 473 464.61 219760.00 verbal linguistic intelligence 1. participating 669 583.63 390450.50 150101.500 .138 2. not participating 473 554.34 262202.50 musical rhythmic intelligence 1. participating 669 600.36 401641.00 138911.000 .004 2. not participating 473 530.68 251012.00 *p<0,05; n (1142). the t-test results for determining the significant difference between the sporting state variable and dependent variables are presented in table 3. according to the mann-whitney u test conducted to test whether there is a significant difference between participants' cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence categories according to the status of doing sports, between the participants who do sports and those who do not do sports, results expectation (u = 112784.000, p <0.05), self-regulation (u = 87970.500, p <0.05), personal barriers (u = 122611.000, p <0.05), naturalistic intelligence (u = 143084.500, p <0.05), physical kinesthetic intelligence (u = 107659.000, p <0.05) and musical rhythmic intelligence (u = 138911.000, p <0.05) levels were found to have statistically significant difference, however, personal inner intelligence (u = 153346.000, p> 0.05), visual spatial intelligence (u = 153408.500, p> 0.05), interpersonal social intelligence (u = 152428.500, p> 0.05), logical mathematical intelligence (u = 150041.500, p> 0.05) and verbal linguistic intelligence (150101.500, p> 0.05) levels did not show any statistically significant difference. the results of the analysis of variance to determine the significant difference between the income level variable and dependent variables are presented in table 4. as a result of kruskal wallis h test, which was conducted to test whether there was a significant difference between participants' cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence categories according to income level variable, while result expectation χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 0.95, p> 0.05), personal barriers χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 2.325, p> 0.05), interpersonal social intelligence χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 0.912, p> 0.05) and musical rhythmic intelligence χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 0.532, p> 0.05) variables did not show any statistically significant difference, self-regulation χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 26.669, p <0.05), naturalist intelligence χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 11.920, p <0.05), personal inner intelligence χ2 (sd) = 2, n = 1142) = 33.647, p <0.05), visual spatial intelligence χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 21.371, p <0.05), logical mathematical intelligence χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 21.598, p <0.05), physical kinesthetic intelligence χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 17.703, p <0.05) and verbal linguistic intelligence χ2 (sd = 2, n = 1142) = 9.197, p <0.05) variables showed statistically significant difference. mann whitney u tests were applied to determine which income level cause the significant difference between the dependent variables. as a result of the tests, it was found that the statistically significant difference in the selfregulation variable was between high income participants and low (u = 3753.000, p <0.017) and medium (u = 23795.500, p <0.017) income level participants. similarly, there were significant differences between; high income level participants and low income level (u = 2567.500, p <0.017) and middle income (u = 29577.000, p <0.017) level participants in the naturalistic intelligence variable; high spatial intelligence variable and low (u = 3104.000, p <0.017) and medium (u = 25133.500, p <0.017) income participants in the visual spatial intelligence variable; high-income level participants and low (u = 3022.000, p <0.017) and medium (u = 26139.000, p <0.017) income participants in the logical mathematical intelligence variable; high income level participants and low (u = 3446.500, p <0.017) and moderate (u = 25847.500, p <0.017) income participants in the physical kinesthetic asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 510-517 514 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group intelligence variable; high income level participants and those with low (u = 3830.500, p <0.017) and moderate (u = 28744.500, p <0.017) income participants in the verbal linguistic variable. table-4. variance analysis results of participants' cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence levels according to income level variable. dependent variables income n mean rank sd χ2 p (i-j) result expectation 1. low 129 563.70 2 0.95 .953 2. middle 936 572.15 3. high 77 576.68 self-regulation 1. low 129 608.78 2 26.669 .002 2. middle 936 551.99 1-3, 2-3 3. high 77 746.53 personal barriers 1. low 129 610.93 2 2.325 .313 2. middle 936 565.05 3. high 77 583.90 naturalist intelligence 1. low 129 510.27 2 11.920 .003 2. middle 936 571.54 1-3, 2-3 3. high 77 673.55 personal inner intelligence 1. low 129 437.74 2 33.647 .004 2. middle 936 579.40 1-2, 1-3, 2-3 3. high 77 699.55 visual spatial intelligence 1. low 129 536.67 2 21.371 .001 2. middle 936 562.66 1-3, 2-3 3. high 77 737.28 interpersonal social intelligence 1. low 129 562.06 2 0.912 .634 2. middle 936 570.07 3. high 77 604.79 logical mathematical intelligence 1. low 129 509.27 2 21.598 .002 2. middle 936 567.43 1-3, 2-3 3. high 77 725.29 physical kinesthetic intelligence 1. low 129 556.96 2 17.703 .001 2. middle 936 561.00 1-3, 2-3 verbal linguistic intelligence 3. high 77 723.56 1. low 129 557.85 2 9.197 .010 2. middle 936 569.36 1-3, 2-3 3. high 77 597.81 1. low 129 571.36 2 0.532 .766 musical rhythmic intelligence 2. middle 936 569.36 3. high 77 597.81 *p<0,05; ** p<0,017, n (1142). a statistically significant difference was found between the participants with high income level and the participants with low (u = 2723.000, p <0.017) and moderate (u = 28419.500, p <0.017) income level in the personal inner intelligence variable as well as between the participants with low income and those with moderate (u = 45360.500, p <0.017) income level. table-5. correlation test results between participants' cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence levels. dependent variables re sr pb ni pii vsi isi lmi pki vli sr .388** pb -.089** -.172** ni .183** .149** -.004 pii .135** .098** .058 .312** vsi .151** .022 .068* .291** .223** isi .151** .027 .016 .137** .093** .233** lmi .153** .029 .034 .284** .244** .148** .221** pki .242** .255** -.115** .293** .176** .274** .291** .271** vli .074* .205** .018 .083** .178** .185** .049 .006 .071* mrz .202** .092** .072* .218** .181** .320** .267** .129** .269** .205** *p<0,05; **p<0,01; n (1142). table 5 shows the correlation test results for the determination of the relationship between the cognitive behavioral physical activity and multiple intelligence levels of the participants. as a result of the spearman correlation test which was used to test whether there was a significant relationship between the dependent variables, there were moderately positive correlation between the participants' result expectation variable and self-regulation variable (r = .388; p <0.01) and a significant positive correlation between the result expectation variable and natural intelligence (r = .183; p <0.01), personal inner intelligence (r = .135; p <0.01), visual spatial intelligence (r = .151; p <0.01), interpersonal social intelligence (r = .151; p <0.01), logical mathematical intelligence (r = .153; p <0.01), physical kinesthetic intelligence (r = .242; p <0.01), verbal linguistic intelligence (r = .074; p <0.05) and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .202 ; p <0.01), a negative correlation between the expectation variable and personal barriers (r = -.089; p <0.01). there was low level negative correlation between self-regulation variable and personal barriers (r = -.172; p <0.01) variables and a low level positive correlation between the self-regulation variable with natural intelligence (r = .149; p <0.01), personal inner intelligence (r = .098; p <0.01), physical kinesthetic intelligence (r = .255; p asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 510-517 515 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group <0.01), verbal linguistic intelligence (r = .205; p <0.01) and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .092; p <0.01) variables of participants. moreover, a low level positive correlation were found between the variables of personal barriers and visual spatial intelligence (r = .068; p <0.05) and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .072; p <0.01) of the participants, a low level significant negative correlation between personal barriers variable and physical kinesthetic intelligence (r = -.115; p <0.01) variable, moderately positive correlation between naturalistic intelligence variable and personal inner intelligence (r = .312; p <0.01), a low-level positive significant correlation between naturalistic intelligence variable and visual spatial intelligence (r = .291; p <0.01), interpersonal social intelligence (r =. 137; p <0.01), logical mathematical intelligence (r = .284; p <0.01), physical kinesthetic intelligence (r = .293; p <0.01), verbal linguistic intelligence (r = .083; p <0.01) and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .218; p <0.01) variables. in addition, a low-level significant positive correlation was found between visual spatial intelligence (r = .223; p <0.01), interpersonal social intelligence (r = .093; p <0.01), logical mathematical intelligence (r = .244; p <0.01), physical kinesthetic intelligence (r = .176; p <0.01), verbal linguistic intelligence (r = .178; p <0.01) and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .181; p <0.01) variables with personal inner intelligence variables of participants. a lowlevel significant positive correlation was found between visual spatial intelligence and interpersonal social intelligence (r = .233; p <0.01), logical mathematical intelligence (r = .148; p <0.01), physical kinesthetic intelligence (r = .274; p <0.01) and verbal linguistic intelligence (r = .185; p <0.01) variables, and a moderate positive correlation between visual spatial intelligence and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .320; p <0.01) variables of participants. participants' interpersonal social intelligence variable and logical mathematical intelligence (r = .221; p <0.01), physical kinesthetic intelligence (r = .291; p <0.01) and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .267; p <0.01) variables showed a low-level positive significant correlation. also, a low-level significant positive correlation was found between the participants' logical mathematical intelligence variables and physical kinesthetic intelligence (r = .271; p <0.01) and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .129; p <0.01) variables. similarly, low positive correlation was detected between the participants 'physical kinesthetic intelligence and verbal linguistic intelligence (r = .071; p <0.05) and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .269; p <0.01) variables, and the participants' verbal linguistic intelligence variable and musical rhythmic intelligence (r = .205; p <0.01). 4. discussion and conclusion when the mean rank values of the gender variable are analyzed, it was seen that male participants 'selfregulation naturalistic, logical mathematical intelligence and physical kinesthetic intelligence mean rank values were higher than the mean rank of female participants' self-regulation, naturalistic intelligence, logical mathematical intelligence and physical kinesthetic intelligence. on the other hand, it was found that the mean rank of visual spatial and verbal linguistic intelligence rankings of female participants were higher than the mean rank of visual spatial and verbal linguistic intelligence of male participants. according to the research conducted by kuzgun and deryakulu (2004) it was concluded that gender is not important in terms of physical intelligence score and social intelligence score (kuzgun and deryakulu, 2004). in the study conducted by cinkılıç and soyer (2013) on the multiple intelligence levels of physical education teacher candidates, they concluded that gender does not constitute significance. these results create an opposite situation with our study. furnham et al. (2002) conducted a study with british, american and japanese participants aimed at identifying intelligence types. as a result of this study, no significant difference was found between men and women in the field of verbal linguistic intelligence. it was parallel with the study done by david (2003). in this study, there was no significant difference between the fields of naturalistic intelligence according to gender. however, in a study conducted by dogan and alkis (2007) the results of the university students' use of multiple intelligence fields in the classes are parallel with our study. loori (2005) found out that the participants were examined separately as men and women in the logical-mathematical intelligence type, and it was found out that the difference was in favor of men according to the averages in the field of logicalmathematical intelligence. when the mean rank values of the sporting status variable are examined, the mean rank of the result expectation, self-regulation, natural intelligence, physical kinesthetic intelligence and musical rhythmic intelligence of the participants doing sports were higher than means rank of the result expectation, self-regulation natural intelligence, physical kinesthetic intelligence and musical rhythmic intelligence of the participants who do not do sports. on the other hand, the personal barriers mean rank of the participants who do not do sports was higher than the personal barriers mean rank of the participants doing sports. tekin (2009) compared the levels of male and female athletes in different types of intelligence in individual and team sports, and as a result of the study, it was found that male students had higher logical-mathematical intelligence and physical kinesthetic intelligence areas than female students. in this study, it was found that the athletes engaged in individual sports had higher social and inner intelligence areas than the athletes engaged in team sports. according to the class variable; in the 9th grade students who do sports, verbal linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, inner intelligence, musical rhythmic intelligence and visual spatial intelligence were higher than 11th grade students. erturan et al. (2005) showed that the physical intelligence fields of the students who do sports and those who do not do sports are different from each other. in the studies done by katz et al. (2002); bayrak et al. (2005) and tekin (2008) based on multiple intelligence theory, it was revealed that social intelligence creates significance in terms of sportive activity. besides, it was revealed that the musical intelligence fields of the students who do sports and those who do not do sports are very close to each other (bümen, 2004). in the studies conducted by hoşgörür and katrancı (2007). tekin (2008) and cengiz (2008) it was found that the naturalistic intelligence levels of individuals engaged in sports were high. in the studies conducted by hoşgörür and katrancı (2007) and tekin (2008) it was revealed that the level of inner intelligence was positive in favor of the ones doing sports. it was also found that the logical intelligence fields of the students who do sports and those who do not do sports are very close to each other. individuals with a field of logical intelligence are very sensitive and susceptive to logic rules, cause-and-effect relationships, making and asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 510-517 516 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group questioning assumptions and similar abstract processes (campbell, 1990; saban, 2005). tekin and taşğın (2008) examined the relationship between creativity and multiple intelligence areas of secondary school students, who are doing sports and not doing sports. according to the results of the study, male students engaged in sports in secondary education had higher logical-mathematical intelligence and physical-kinesthetic intelligence areas than female students. when the mean rank values of the income level variable are analyzed, it was seen that the mean rank values of self-regulation, natural intelligence, personal inner intelligence, visual spatial intelligence, logical mathematical intelligence physical kinesthetic intelligence and verbal linguistic intelligence of participants with high income level were higher than the mean rank values of self-regulation natural intelligence, personal intrinsic intelligence, visual spatial intelligence, logical mathematical intelligence, physical kinesthetic intelligence and verbal linguistic intelligence of low income level participants. similarly, when the mean rank values of the income level variable were examined, it was observed that the mean rank values of self-regulated, naturalistic intelligence, personal inner intelligence, visual spatial intelligence, logical mathematical intelligence, physical kinesthetic intelligence and verbal linguistic intelligence of participants with high income levels were higher than mean rank values of the natural intelligence, personal inner intelligence, visual spatial intelligence, logical mathematical intelligence, physical kinesthetic intelligence and verbal linguistic intelligence of participants with middle income level. when the mean rank values of personal inner intelligence of the lowand middle-income participants was examined, it was seen that the mean rank values of middle income participants were higher than the mean rank of the low income participants. in a study conducted by altınok (2008) the kinesthetic intelligence of those with low income was found to be high. in the study of karademir et al. (2010) they found no relationship between family income and intelligence levels in the study conducted on the candidates who took the physical education and sport exam. abaci and baran (2007) reported that there was no significant difference in the intelligence scores according to the income level variable of university students. in terms of musical intelligence, there was a significant difference in the field of musical intelligence, and candidates with poor economic status had higher scores than those with good and moderate economic intelligence. there is no other type of intelligence other than musical intelligence that was found to be significant (cinkılıç and soyer, 2013). according to the economic situation, the highest results were obtained in the field of social and physical intelligence. although there was no statistical difference in these two sub-dimensions, the averages indicated highly developed intelligence level. this showed that those who are economically poor have good social and physical intelligence. in other words, it would not be wrong to say that economic insufficiency has no negative effect on social and physical intelligence. in a study, a significant difference was found in physical-kinesthetic intelligence and nature intelligence of multiple intelligence types in terms of economic status variable (altınok, 2008). again, altınok (2008) did not find statistically any significant difference in the comparison of the scores related to logical-mathematical intelligence, verbal intelligence and musicalrhythmic intelligence of the sub-dimensions of multiple intelligence theory in terms of economic status. a statistically significant difference was found in the comparison of scores of physical-kinesthetic intelligence and natural intelligence in terms of economic status variable. although this study shows some similar results with our study, a significant difference was found only in naturalistic intelligence in our study (altınok, 2008). according to gardner (2004) multiple intelligence theory, it was seen that individuals studying in physical education and sports departments had one or more intelligence areas and had differences between individuals according to gender, class, department, type of sports, income status and place of residence. it is thought that these areas of intelligence are affected by social, environmental, economic, etc. situations. 5. suggestions it can be thought that multiple intelligence tests may be better for younger individuals in terms of age category and revealing individual differences. when talent selection is to be done, before the selection process of individuals, intelligence tests can be considered to help in the selection of branches and categories of athletes. experimental studies to reveal the physical, cognitive and affective processes will contribute to the literature. references abaci, r. and a. baran, 2007. the relationship between multiple intelligence levels of university students and 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journal of physical education and sports sciences, 2(3): 206-214. visser, b.a., m.c. ashton and p.a. vernon, 2006. beyond g: putting multiple intelligences theory to the test. intelligence, 34(5): 487502.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.02.004. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 117 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 117-121, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.117.121 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an analysis on digital literacy level of faculty of sports science students mehmet haluk sivrikaya atatürk university, faculty of sport sciences, turkey. abstract the study aims to examine the digital literacy levels of students in the faculty of sports sciences. in the study group; there are 394 students (105 female and 289 male) studying in the departments of physical education and sports teaching, sports management, coaching and recreation of the faculty of sport sciences at atatürk university in the 2018-2019 academic year. “digital literacy scale (dls) is a scale, which was developed by ng (2012) and translated into turkish by hamutoğlu, güngören, uyanık, and erdoğan (2017) and it is composed of 17 items and 4 factors (attitude, technique, cognitive and social). nonparametric tests (kruskal wallis, mann-whitney u) were used to analyse the data of the study. according to the findings; digital literacy levels of the participating students differ significantly in social sub-dimension in respect of gender variation. in the social sub-dimension of digital literacy scale, digital literacy levels of male students were higher than female students. keywords: digital age, digital literacy, sports science students. citation | mehmet haluk sivrikaya (2020). an analysis on digital literacy level of faculty of sports science students. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 117-121. history: received: 27 november 2019 revised: 17 january 2020 accepted: 19 february 2020 published: 12 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 118 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 119 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 119 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 120 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 121 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.117.121&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1398 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8268-3391 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1398 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8268-3391 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1398 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8268-3391 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 117-121 118 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the digital literacy levels of students in the faculty of sports sciences. in the study group; there are 394 students (105 female and 289 male) studying in the departments of physical education and sports teaching, sports management, coaching and recreation of the faculty of sport sciences at atatürk university in the 2018-2019 academic year. 1. introduction rapid developments in the 21st century have started to convert the way of technology that affects human lifestyle. in today's society, there has been a rapid transition from electronic media to digital media. the methods of obtaining and processing information in this process have also varied considerably (gilster & glister, 1997). the way to obtain information requires using multiple media so people need to use digital media correctly and effectively in order to achieve this. when it is considered that every digitalized media requires human being again, the virtual environment cannot exist without people, similarly people cannot be outside these environments. technology is shaped by humans and the way how it should be used is the area where will be determined by the knowledge and equipment of the individual. in this period of consumption, media consumption is increasing day by day and the society is closely monitored by the media (ala, 2000; koltay, 2011; martin & madigan, 2006). the media has expanded its traditionally known area with the new media and it has become a network community consisting of a versatile, interactive and active audience/spectator, not just a one-way passive audience process. however, traditional and multi-media messages deeply affect the thinking, behaviour and beliefs of societies. media consumption also changes because of the usability of the communication and digital tools created by the user (koltay, 2011). in the new digital age, where digital tools are common, interest in information and communication technologies has increased. considering the given importance on information in society and in human life, individuals' means of transportation and access have also started to change. it has created a new type of literacy that is different when we know how to get accurate and reliable information from digital tools and use these technologies correctly. according to wu and wang (2011) the experts in this field have classified this literacy process into three groups, considering it in its historical development:  classic literacy (literacy understanding).  audio-visual literacy (mostly related to electronic media).  digital literacy (digital communication technologies). lanham (1995) claims that "literacy" extends its semantic access from "the ability to read and write" the expression of understanding now, to "the ability to understand the information presented." it emphasizes the multilingual nature of digital information. he argues that being digital literate involves “gaining the ability to solve syntactic subtleties of words as well as complex images and sounds”. he defines this literacy as digitally literate people running as they move from one type of environment to another, and to master [knowledge] in an environment where [the] audience will find it easier to understand, what kind of expressions are appropriate. digital literacy enables us to comply with the type of information we provide and the audience we offer. according to paul gilster, who made the definition of digital literacy for the first time, he defines it as "the ability to understand and use information from multiple sources in multiple formats when presented via computer" and especially on the internet. he emphasizes what he sees as the natural differences between digital information media and traditional media. digital literacy involves adapting our skills to a new and impressive new environment. however, these qualifications are not just "operational" or "technical" qualifications. digital literacy is “having ideas, not typing the keys”. gilster identifies four basic digital literacy competencies: gathering information, evaluating information content, searching the internet, and browsing in hypertext. 1.1. fundemental components of digital literacy it is a decisive fact that the communication and computer technologies are becoming widespread and changing every dimension from education to work; therefore, it is necessary to answer the extraordinary technological inventions of the time in the best way. therefore, it is necessary to start digital literacy education from an early age. while there are many definitions about digital literacy with the same meanings, there is a standard conceptualization of digital literacy. the main features of digital literacy are:  digital literacy involves performing successful digital actions embedded in business, learning, leisure and other aspects daily life.  digital literacy therefore improves for the individual as his or her private life situation develops as well as an ongoing lifelong process.  digital literacy is wider than ict literacy and will include elements.  many related “digital literacy”.  digital literacy involves acquiring and using information and techniques. it will include attitudes and personal qualities and planning ability. application and evaluation of digital actions in solving tasks in life.  it also includes self-knowledge as a digital literate person and the ability to reflect on one's own digital literacy development. digital literacy is the awareness, attitude and ability of individuals to use digital tools and facilities appropriately to identify, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, analyse and synthesize digital resources and create new information. communicate and influence media statements and others in the context of specific life situations to enable constructive social action. at the same time, three elements must be present in the individual in order to have digital literacy. these elements are: digital competence, digital use, digital transformation (lankshear & knobel, 2008). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 117-121 119 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method in this part of the study, the sample group of the study, the data collection tools used in the research, explanatory information about the data collection and detailed information about the analysis of the collected data are given. 2.1. research group the study group of the study was 394 students (105 female, 289 male) who studied at atatürk university faculty of sport sciences, physical education and sports teaching, sports management, coaching education and recreation departments in the 2018-2019 academic year and were included in the study by random method. 2.2. data collection tools as a data collection tool in the research; "digital literacy scale" and "personal information form" were used. digital literacy scale, developed by ng (2012) translated into turkish by hamutoğlu et al. (2017) is a scale consisting of 17 items and 4 factors (attitude, technique, cognitive and social). a 5-point likert-type rating was used on the scale where the item scored in reverse order as “i strongly agree (5)” and “i strongly disagree (1).” the increase in the scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of dls and the scale generally indicates high digital literacy. cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale was calculated as “0,870” within the scope of this study. depending on the alpha coefficient, the reliability of the scale is interpreted as follows: if 0.00≤alfa≤0.40, the scale is not reliable, if 0.40≤alfa≤0.60, the scale is low, if 0.60≤alfa≤0.80, the scale is very reliable, and 0.80≤alfa≤1.00, the scale is highly reliable (kalaycı, 2009). according to this result (0,870), the reliability of the study can be said to be quite high. 2.3. data analysis data obtained from the research; descriptive statistical methods were analysed using mann whitney-u and kruskal wallis h-test. whether the data met the prerequisites for parametric tests was determined by reviewing skewness and flatness (normal distribution state) values and levene (equality of variance) test results (-1.5, + 1.5, tabachnick and fidell (2013). analysis has shown that the data do not meet the parametric test assumptions. cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients were calculated to determine the reliability of the scales. 3. findings in this part of the study, the findings obtained as a result of our research are included. findings are explained in detail with descriptive information under the tables and tables. table-1. demographic features of the participants. variable n % gender female 105 26,6 male 289 73,4 bölüm department of education 83 21,1 sports management 84 21,3 coaching 104 26,4 recreation 123 31,2 sınıf class 1 127 32,2 class 2 135 34,3 class 3 65 16,5 class 4 67 17,0 total 394 100,0 table 1 provides information about students' demographic information. accordingly, 26.6% of the students (105 sunjects) are female; 73.4% (289 subjects) are male. looking at the distribution of students regarding their departments; department of education of 21.1% (83); it was determined that 21.3% (84) studied sports management, 26.4% (104) were coaching and 31.2% (123) were studying in the recreation department. regarding the class variable: 32.2% (127) are 1st grade, 34.3% (135) are 2nd grade, 16.5% (65) are 3rd grade and 17%, it was determined that 0 (67) studied in the 4th grade. table-2. scale point distribution. scales n min max mean sd skewness kurtosis dls 395 1,00 5,00 3,71-, ,766 -1,531 2,176 table-3. mann whitney-u test results for digital literacy levels according to participants' gender variable. variable groups n x order u z p attitude female 105 191,29 14520,00 -,655 ,513 male 289 199,76 technique female 105 186,01 13966,00 -1,211 ,226 male 289 201,67 cognitive female 105 192,43 14640,50 -,541 ,589 male 289 199,34 social female 105 176,47 12964,00 -2,240 ,025 male 289 205,14 dls female 105 180,92 13432,00 -1,742 ,082 male 289 203,52 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 117-121 120 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group within the scope of the research, the arithmetic mean of the scores that the students got from the scale of dls answered was 3.71-, 787. when the skewness (-1,531) and kurtosis (2,176) coefficients are examined, it is seen that the data collected from the participants do not have a normal distribution and non-parametric tests should be applied table 2. in table 3, according to the results of the mann-whitney u test, the digital literacy levels of the participant students differ significantly in their social sub-dimensions according to the gender variable. in the social subdimension of the digital literacy scale of male students (x) = 205.14), digital literacy levels were statistically significantly higher than female students (x) = 176.47) (p =, 025, p <0.05). table-4. kruskal wallis h-test results for participants' digital literacy levels according to department variable. variable groups n x order x2 sd p attitude department of education 83 195,11 2,260 3 ,520 sports management 84 207,01 coaching 104 204,93 recreation 123 186,33 technique department of education 83 192,71 ,704 3 ,872 sports management 84 198,75 coaching 104 204,68 recreation 123 193,80 cognitive department of education 83 188,51 5,496 3 ,139 sports management 84 187,44 coaching 104 219,43 recreation 123 191,90 social department of education 83 188,34 2,360 3 ,501 sports management 84 187,65 coaching 104 208,81 recreation 123 200,85 dls department of education 83 189,18 2,679 3 ,444 sports management 84 191,41 coaching 104 212,88 recreation 123 194,27 i̇n table 4, according to the kruskal-wallis test results, the digital literacy levels of the participant students do not differ significantly according to the department variable (χ2 = 2.679 and p> 0.05). table-5. kruskal wallis h-test results regarding the level of digital literacy according to the class variable of the participants. variable groups n x order x2 sd p significant difference attitude class 1 127 210,10 3,547 3 ,315 class 2 135 184,07 class 3 65 196,46 class 4 67 201,68 technique class 1 127 206,12 2,043 3 ,563 class 2 135 186,70 class 3 65 199,17 class 4 67 201,31 cognitive class 1 127 203,91 5,835 3 ,120 class 2 135 182,86 class 3 65 191,28 class 4 67 220,90 social class 1 127 217,64 7,470 3 ,048* 1>4 class 2 135 192,70 class 3 65 192,42 class 4 67 173,35 dls class 1 127 215,62 6,441 3 ,092 class 2 135 182,74 class 3 65 185,59 class 4 67 204,44 in table 5, when the kruskal-wallis test results are analysed, it is seen that the digital literacy levels of the participant students differ significantly according to the class variable [χ2 (3) = 7,470; p <, 05]. according to the results of the mann-whitney u test, this difference was found to be between the students studying in the 1st grade and the students in the 4th grade. according to the rank averages of the groups, digital literacy levels decrease as the grade level of students progresses from the 1st grade to the 4th grade in the social sub-dimension. 4. discussion according to the findings we have obtained; there was no significant difference between the digital literacy levels of male and female students participating in the study in terms of attitude, technical, cognitive and total digital literacy sub-dimensions. in the social sub-dimension, there is a meaningful difference between the digital literacy scores. it is concluded that this difference is in favour of male students, and the scores of male students in all dimensions are higher than female students. studies supporting the findings we obtained in the literature review (cetin, 2016; göldağ & kanat, 2018; korkmaz & mahiroğlu, 2009) were found. however, there are studies showing that there is no relationship between gender and digital literacy (kazu & erten, 2014). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 117-121 121 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group no significant difference was found between the levels of digital literacy according to the department variable of the participants. when looking at the general averages; it was determined that the students in the technical, cognitive and social sub-dimensions had the highest averages in the department of coaching and in the subdimension of the sports management. among the digital literacy total scores, it is seen that the students studying in the department of coaching have the highest average. there was a significant difference between the digital literacy levels of the students participating in the study according to the classes they studied, but there was no significant difference in the attitude, technical and cognitive sub-dimensions. in the social sub-dimension, there is a meaningful difference between the students studying in the first grade and fourth grade, and this difference is in favour of the students studying in the first grade. in his study on prospective teachers, yontar (2019) could not detect a significant difference in the class variable of digital literacy levels. in their study, ozerbaş and kuralbayev (2018) concluded that there is no significant difference in the comparison of digital literacy levels of pre-service teachers according to their class levels, except for contextual use. in the digital age we live in, there are digital literacy studies on students studying in the field of sports sciences, as well as literacy studies such as information literacy, media literacy, sports literacy (biricik, 2019; demir, tosun, yüksel, & konak, 2019; yıldırım, 2019). according to results of our study, the following suggestions can be made.  to improve the digital literacy levels of students studying in the faculty of sport sciences; elective courses can be included in the curriculum in the context of digital literacy.  awareness can be created for students studying in this section by organizing various panels, seminars, conferences related to the importance of the digital age.  it is considered important to give importance to these studies in the field of sports sciences and to increase the number of research. references ala. 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(2019). employability and information literacy skills of students: hacettepe university example. ph.d. thesis, hacettepe university institute of social sciences department of information and document management, ankara. yontar, a. (2019). digital literacy levels of prospective teachers. journal of mother tongue education, 7(4), 815-824. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.9761/jasss7736 260 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 260-268, 2019 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.260.268 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group effect of stem-based activities conducted in science classes on various variables barış çaycı1 gizem tabaru örnek2 ( corresponding author) 1assoc. prof dr., department of primary education, university of omer halisdemir, turkey 2research assistant, department of primary education, university of karamanoglu mehmetbey, turkey abstract the aim of this study was to examine the effect of stem-based activities conducted in fourth-grade primary school science classes on students’ scientific process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success. the study used the experimental model and was carried out according to the pretest-posttest experimental design with a control group. the study group of the research was made up of fourth-grade students at a primary school in the centre of karaman province. the “basic skills scale”, “problem-solving skills scale” and “test of academic success” were used as data collection tools. another finding of the study was that the posttest academic success test scores of the students in the experimental group were significantly higher than those of the students in the control group. this finding reveals that the implementation of a stem-based activity on the subject of simple electrical circuits was effective on academic success (u=109.000 p<.01). following the instruction carried out on the experimental and control groups, there was no significant difference in the mean posttest basic skills scale scores of students in the experimental group on which the stem-based activities were applied. moreover, it was determined that the mean posttest problemsolving skills scores of students in the experimental and control groups participating in the study did not show a significant difference (u=201.500 p>.05). this finding reveals that the stem-based activities did not have a significant effect on basic process skills or problem-solving skills. keywords: science lessons, stem, scientific process skills, problem solving skills, academic success. citation | barış çaycı; gizem tabaru örnek (2019). effect of stembased activities conducted in science classes on various variables. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 260-268. history: received: 2 january 2019 revised: 4 february 2019 accepted: 7 march 2019 published: 15 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: this study was generated out of gizem tabaru örnek’s master’s thesis conducted under the supervision of assoc. prof. dr. barış çayci and was presented as an oral statement at the 17th international classroom teaching education symposium (11th-14th april 2018, gazi university, ankara). funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 261 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 262 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 264 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 266 5. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 267 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 267 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.260.268&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/413 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3466-7033 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4152-4324 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/413 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3466-7033 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4152-4324 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/413 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3466-7033 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4152-4324 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/413 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3466-7033 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4152-4324 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 260-268 261 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction in parallel with the advances in science and technology, the changes that occur in branches of science also have a deep impact on every area of human life. the acceleration in this race for development in the world has made it necessary for countries to make changes to their education policies. nations have made different plans for improving the quality of their education and have revised and reintroduced their education programmes. in the modern age, when scientific knowledge is growing and developing, technological innovations are rapidly advancing, and science and technology affect every area of our lives, the importance given to the sciences for societies to attain better futures is increasing (ministry of education, 2013). in parallel with the innovations in education in the world, the education programmes in our country are being revised and renewed. the aims of the 2018 science lesson teaching programme are to bring solutions to problems encountered in everyday life, and to use scientific process skills and life skills for the discovery of nature and for better understanding of the humanenvironment relationship (moe, 2018). padilla (1990) defined scientific process skills as skills suited to several scientific disciplines that reflect the behaviours of scientists and can generally be transferred from one to another. ostlund (1992) defined scientific process skills as the most powerful tool used for obtaining information related to everything in an individual’s environment and for organising this gathered information. cepni et al. (1997) defined skills that facilitate the learning of science, that bring about ways and methods of doing research, that activate, that increase responsibility for one’s own learning and that enable retention of learning as scientific process skills. in the most general definition, scientific process skills are thinking skills that aim at thinking about problems, creating knowledge and, by combining these, reaching a conclusion. these skills are a basic step taken to access information, and scientists also use these skills in their research (caycı and kılıç, 2017). the basic aim of education is to raise individuals who can remain standing in the face of life. daily life is full of complex problems. when considered from this perspective, education is in fact the entire problem-solving process (serin, 2004). every person encounters various problems in daily life. while making individuals’ lives easier on the one hand, rapidly developing and changing technology also makes problems encountered in daily life more difficult on the other. the relationship between the skills that individuals possess for solving problems and their life quality reveals how important problem-solving skills are. individuals who possess problem-solving skills adapt more easily to their environment (senemoğlu, 2009). in the eu’s 2007 report named ―science education now: a renewed pedagogy for the future of europe‖, it was emphasised that all over europe, the importance of science and technology education had increased and that young people in particular needed to be directed towards the subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. in the report, frequent reference was made to the use of an inquiry-based science approach in the science education process, and to 21st-century skills aimed at increasing students’ interest in science such as creativity, critical thinking, collaborative study and problem solving (rocard et al., 2007). the important place occupied by the sciences in nations’ scientific and technological development has also made stem education important. in a world in which science and technology are advancing at an unstoppable rate, the aim of stem education is to enable the search for information needed by individuals, access of information by using scientific research methods and the acquisition of skills for using the accessed information in everyday life (yıldırım, 2016). by integrating the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics into the teaching-learning process all together, stem education, which goes by the name of fetemm in turkey, gives students the opportunity to perceive knowledge related to the world they live in as a whole, rather than learning them separately (cepni et al., 2016) cited from dugger, 2010). according to corlu (2012) stem education is the set of knowledge, skills and beliefs occurring with the intersection of more than one stem discipline, and each stem discipline has different individual characteristics. although stem is regarded only as mathematics and science disciplines by individuals, the products of technology and engineering also have very great effects on facilitating daily life (bybee, 2010). in points where two or more stem subjects intersect, stem education includes information, skills and beliefs created by cooperation (corlu et al., 2014). although stem is defined in different ways in turkey and in the world, the common feature of all is its application to a problem in daily life by the integration of concepts and skills in different disciplines. stem education supports countries’ social and economic development and increases their competitive power (cakmakçı, 2016). the main aim of stem education is to create an integrated, interdisciplinary approach by forming connections between the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (smith, 2000). in our rapidly developing and changing world, transformations occurring in every field also affect the characteristics of the qualified labour force. to raise individuals equipped with 21st-century skills, it is also necessary to prepare teaching programmes that meet the needs of the age. it is not possible to enable the acquisition of these qualities only with science education that includes basic concepts. while students are acquiring these skills, it will be more beneficial to adopt an educational understanding in which four fields are combined, that is, the basic principles of the sciences, the numbers and calculations of mathematics, the use of technology as a tool and the solutions and products revealed by engineering. in this context, the basic aim of the present study is to examine the effect of stem-based activities implemented in fourth-grade primary science classes on students’ scientific process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success. in line with this aim, answers were sought to the following questions: i. is there a significant difference in pretest scores for basic process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success between students in the experimental and control groups? ii. is there a significant difference between pretest and posttest scores for basic process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success in students in the experimental group? iii. is there a significant difference between pretest and posttest scores for basic process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success in students in the control group? iv. is there a significant difference in posttest scores for basic process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success between students in the experimental and control groups? asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 260-268 262 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method 2.1. research model the research uses the experimental model. the experimental model is a research model in which the data one wishes to observe are generated under the direct control of the researcher with the aim of determining cause-andeffect relationships. whereas in the scanning model, the existing situation is observed, in the experimental model, the data one wishes to observe are developed by the researcher. in a study in the experimental model, the aims are generally stated in the form of a hypothesis. therefore, the events are tested with their causes (karasar, 2015). in this study, in which it was aimed to measure the effect of stem-based activities, applied in the subject of ―simple electrical circuits‖ to fourth-grade primary students in their science lessons, on their scientific process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success, the pretest-posttest with control group model of experimental design was taken as the basis. in the pretest-posttest with control group model, the groups are created with the random method. one of these groups is assigned as the experimental group, while the other is appointed as the control group. measurements are taken for both groups prior to and following the implementation. in this model, the existence of a pretest is important for determining the equivalences of the groups prior to the measurement and for comparing the posttest results with these (karasar, 2015). the symbolic view of the model is summarised in table 1. table-1. symbolic view of experimental design of study. group pretest operation posttest experimental group r t1-t2-t3 x t1-t2-t3 control group r t1-t2-t3 y t1-t2-t3 r: neutrality in creation of groups. t1: basic skills scale. t2: problem-solving skills scale. t3: test of academic success. x: operation carried out (stem-based activities). y: activities suited to 2013 science curriculum. 2.2. study group the study was conducted during the spring term of the 2016-2017 academic year in a primary school in the centre of karaman province, with permission obtained from karaman provincial directorate for national education. based on the willingness of the school principal and teachers from among three different specified schools to participate voluntarily in the research, the study group of the research was chosen. to determine the experimental and control groups of the research, with the aim of choosing the experimental and control groups equally from among the five fourth-grade classes at the primary school where the research was to be conducted, the ―attitude scale for the science and technology course‖ developed by nuhoğlu (2008) and the ―test of academic success in science‖ prepared by the researcher, and consisting of the units, ―let’s solve the mystery of our bodies‖, ―the effects of force‖ and ―let’s learn about matter‖, studied by students up to 21.04.17, were applied. following these implementations, the gathered data were analysed, and to test the position of the students’ mean scores in the test of academic success in science and the attitude scale for science and technology lessons according to the classes, the kruskal-wallis h test was performed. the differences in students’ mean scores in the ―test of success in science‖ (x2=35.623; sd=4; p<.05) and in the ―attitudes towards science and technology lessons‖ (x2=10.694; sd=4; p<.05) and ―attitudes towards activities in science and technology lessons‖ subdimensions of the ―attitude scale for the science and technology course‖ were found to be statistically significant according to the class that they studied in (p<.05). to determine between which groups there were significant differences, the mann-whitney u test was performed. when the scores obtained from the test of academic success in science and the attitude scale for science and technology lessons were compared, it was determined that d-f, d-e and c-f classes were equal. these findings support the first subproblem of the research. from these three equal pairs of classes, it was decided to randomly select classes d and f as the study group of the research. it was determined that academic success in science and attitudes towards science of students in these classes chosen for the study group were at the same levels. moreover, when the total number of students in the other classes and the number of boys and girls in each class were compared, it was found that the total number of students and the distribution of boys and girls in classes d and f chosen for the study group of the research were close to each other. following these studies, one of the two classes chosen was assigned as the experimental group, while the other class was designated as the control group by the random method. in the experimental and control groups of the study, lessons suited to the determined teaching method were given over a period of three weeks for a total of 12 lesson periods. the lessons for the experimental group were conducted by the researcher with the implementation of stem-based activities, while the students in the control group were taught by their classroom teachers with teaching methods prepared according to the 2013 science curriculum. 2.3. preparation of teaching materials and teaching process the unit for which the implementation was to be carried out was determined as the ―simple electrical circuits‖ unit of the fourth-grade science course. this unit was chosen because the stem-based activities to be implemented were more suited to the selected unit. in the implementation process, the science lessons were applied by the researcher to the experimental group with stem-based activities and the 7e model. the 7e model was used in the lessons with the experimental group and at the end of every week, an outcome was determined. the 7e model has several positive effects on students, such as correcting misconceptions, enabling retention of learning, relying more on experimental activities, encouraging individuals to do research, active use of scientific process skills and developing problem-solving skills. moreover, since the 7e model conforms to the basic structure of the stem approach, it was used in the implementation as the teaching method. the teaching of the same subject to the control group was undertaken by the class teacher based on the 2013 curriculum for the science course. the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 260-268 263 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group relevant unit is comprised of three learning outcomes and was carried out over a period of 12 lesson periods, as stated in the curriculum. the activities for the experimental and control groups over the five-week implementation period are included in table 2. table-2. implementation process of study. week experimental group activities control group activities 1st week pretest (bss, psss, tas) and introduction pretest (bss, psss, tas) and introduction 2nd week i can set up an electrical circuit activities conforming to 2013 science curriculum 3rd week vibrating robot activities conforming to 2013 science curriculum 4th week i can make a car activities conforming to 2013 science curriculum 5th week posttest (bss, psss, tas) and final meeting posttest (bss, psss, tas) and final meeting bss=basic skills scale; psss=problem-solving skills scale; tas=test of academic success. 2.4. data collection tools in this study, a total of three measurement tools, namely the ―basic skills scale‖, ―problem-solving skills scale‖ and ―test of academic success‖, were used as data collection tools. 2.4.1. basic skills scale in the study, in order to measure the fourth-grade primary students’ skills in the basic scientific process, the basic skills scale developed by padilla et al. (1985) adapted into turkish by aydoğdu and karakuş (2015) was used. permission to use the basic skills scale was obtained via email. this test is in the form of a multiple choice test consisting of 31 items. the basic skills scale measures 6 basic process skills, namely observation, classification, inference, prediction, measurement and communication, and the validity and reliability study was repeated by the researcher and conducted with 103 students in a school independent of the school where the implementation was to be carried out. for the validity study of the basic skills scale, expert opinion was sought and the lawshe method was used. according to lawshe (1975) content validity ratios are obtained by gathering the views of experts for each item. the content validity ratio (cvr) is obtained by subtracting 1 from the ratio of the number of experts who consider an item ―essential‖ to half the total number of experts who express an opinion regarding that item. the cvr was obtained for every item in the basic skills scale. when the opinions of a total of six experts were assessed, the cvr was found to be within acceptable limits (cvr=0.99). the content validity of the scale was thus statistically established. for the construct validity and reliability of the basic skills scale, the data were analysed with iteman analysis software. while deciding whether to remove an item in the 31-item basic skills scale from the test or to leave it in, both the strength values and the discrimination values were assessed by examining them together (tan, 2011). the reliability coefficient of the basic skills scale was found as .72, while total discrimination and total strength were determined as .51 and .72 respectively. following the analyses conducted, 6 items having unacceptable item strength and discrimination values were removed from the 31-item test. the basic skills scale took its final shape with 25 questions and was ready for implementation. 2.4.2. problem-solving skills scale to measure the problem-solving skills of the fourth-grade primary students in the study, the ―problem-solving skills scale‖ developed by ge (2001) and adapted into turkish by coşkun (2000) was used. permission to implement the scale was obtained via email. the problem-solving skills scale consists of four problem steps and five sentences are included as possible answers to each question. the scale therefore contains a total of 20 sentences in the four problem steps and is a 5-point likert-type scale. the validity and reliability study of the problem-solving skills scale was conducted with 103 students in a school independent of the school where the implementation was to be carried out. for the validity study of the scale, expert opinion was sought and the lawshe method was used. according to lawshe (1975) content validity ratios are obtained by gathering the views of experts for each item. the content validity ratio (cvr) is obtained by subtracting 1 from the ratio of the number of experts who consider an item ―essential‖ to half the total number of experts who express an opinion regarding that item. the cvr was obtained for every item in the problem-solving skills scale. when the opinions of a total of six experts were assessed, the cvr was found to be within acceptable limits (cvr=0.99). the content validity of the scale was thus statistically established. the construct validity of the problem-solving skills scale was examined using factor analysis. to test the suitability for factor analysis, bartlett’s test and the kaiser-mayer-olkin (kmo) measure were used. bartlett’s test reveals the relationships among the data. the bartlett test statistic was calculated as 898.390; p=.000. the kaiser-mayer-olkin (kmo) test examines the suitability of the sample size for factor analysis. the kmo value was calculated as .831. in social science studies, a kmo value of over .60 generally indicates that the sample size is adequate (büyüköztürk, 2014). according to the statistical results, it was determined that the data were suitable for a factor analysis study. following the factor analysis performed on the scale, five factors of the scale with eigenvalues greater than 1.00 were determined. to decide on the number of factors in the scale, the scree plot indicating the change in eigenvalues was examined. in the graph, it was seen that after the first factor there were very small changes in the line and that their contributions to the variance were close to each other. according to lord (1980) if the items in the first factor have high loading values, and if, while the eigenvalue and explained variance of the first factor are high, these values are lower in the second factor, and if, however, there is closeness between the eigenvalue of the second factor and that of the next factor, this indicates unidimensionality. accordingly, the number of factors according to the eigenvalue criterion was determined to be one (cited from cokluk et al. (2016)). as in the original form of the scale, it was determined that the 20 items in the problem-solving skills scale were grouped into one single factor. the ratio of one factor in explaining variance related to the scale was 32.50%. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 260-268 264 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group considering that an acceptable ratio is regarded as 30% (cokluk et al., 2016) the obtained results reveal that the scale has one factor. for this reason, no items were removed from the scale, and the scale was determined to consist of 20 items and one factor. 2.4.3. test of academic success the test of academic success consists of 20 questions with four choices for each, and was used to measure the academic success of students in the fourth-grade simple electrical circuits unit. three learning outcomes are included in the subject of simple electrical circuits and five questions were prepared for each outcome. furthermore, five questions related to the use and safety of electrical tools in everyday life were prepared and added to the test. the validity and reliability study of the test of academic success consisting of the prepared questions was conducted with 103 students in a school independent of the school where the implementation was to be carried out. for the content validity of the academic success test, expert opinion was sought. for the construct validity and reliability of the basic skills scale, the data were analysed with iteman analysis software. to ensure the content validity of the academic skills test and to test whether it was suitable for the population to be assessed and met characteristics like understandability of the items, expert opinion was sought and the lawshe method was used. according to lawshe (1975) content validity ratios are obtained by gathering the views of experts for each item. the content validity ratio (cvr) is obtained by subtracting 1 from the ratio of the number of experts who consider an item ―essential‖ to half the total number of experts who express an opinion regarding that item. the cvr was obtained for every question in the academic skills test. when the opinions of a total of six experts were assessed, the cvr was found to be within acceptable limits (cvr=0.99). the content validity of the scale was thus statistically established. to ensure the reliability of the test, the item strength and item discrimination values were calculated. the strength value of an item closely affects other characteristics of that item like its discrimination value. therefore, while deciding whether to remove an item from the test or to leave it in, both the strength value and the discrimination value of the item must be assessed by examining them together (tan, 2011). following the analyses performed, one item that did not conform to the item discrimination and strength values was removed from the test made up of 20 questions and item analysis was performed again. the reliability (kr-20) of the developed test of academic skills was calculated as .75, while total discrimination and total strength were calculated as .55 and .57 respectively. consequently, following the validity and reliability studies performed on the 20-question test of academic success prepared by the researcher on the subject of simple electrical circuits, the test took its final shape with 19 questions and was ready for implementation. 2.5. analysis of the data the data gathered in the study were analysed using the spss (statistical package for social sciences) 15 statistical software package. when the number of observations in groups is over 30, statistically stronger results can be obtained. however, when the hypotheses are confirmed, the number of observations can also be applied in cases where it is lower. if population distributions are not normal and the number of observations is less than 30, it will be more suitable to apply nonparametric tests (alpar, 2014). the shapiro-wilk test was used to determine whether the data were normally distributed or not, and the results are given below in table 3. table-3. shapiro-wilk test results for distribution of data obtained from experimental and control groups in pretests. group shapiro-wilk statistic n p basic skills scale pretest experimental .870 21 .009* control .929 22 .117 problem-solving skills scale pretest experimental .964 21 .602 control .959 22 .470 test of academic success pretest experimental .837 21 .003* control .847 22 .003* p<.05* in table 3 related to the distribution of pretest data for students in the experimental and control groups, the results of the shapiro-wilk test performed reveal that the pretest for the experimental group in the basic skills test, and the pretestt for the experimental and control group in the test of academic success did not show normal distribution. moreover, since the number of observations in the groups were less than 30 (alpar, 2014; baykul and güzeller, 2014) nonparametric tests were conducted. accordingly, for the first and fourth subproblems of the study, the mann-whitney u test was performed, while for the second and third subproblems, the wilcoxon signed ranks test was applied. 3. findings 3.1. findings related to the first subproblem the first subproblem of the study was defined as ―is there a significant difference in pretest scores for basic process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success between students in the experimental and control groups?‖ the values obtained from the analyses of the data related to this problem are explained below. according to the results of the mann-whitney u test performed to test the equivalence of the mean pretest scores of the students in the experimental and control groups, no significant difference was found in pretest mean scores in the basic skills scale (u=228.00, p>.05), problem-solving skills scale (u=220.000, p>.05) or test of academic success (u=183.00, p>.05). accordingly, it was determined that there were no significant differences in basic skill levels, problem-solving skills or academic success between students between the experimental and control groups, and that the levels of asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 260-268 265 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group basic skills, problem-solving skills and academic success in students in the experimental and control groups were therefore equal. 3.2. findings related to the second subproblem the second subproblem of the study was defined as ―is there a significant difference between pretest and posttest scores for basic process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success in students in the experimental group?‖ the results of the wilcoxon signed ranks test performed on the mean pretest and posttest scores of the students in the experimental group for the basic skills scale, problem-solving skills scale and test of academic success are presented below in table 4. table-4. wilcoxon signed ranks test results for mean pretest and posttest scores of experimental group for basic skills scale, problemsolving skills scale and test of academic success. pretestposttest n mean rank rank total z p basic skills scale negative rank 0 .00 .00 3.95 000*** positive rank 20 10.50 210.00 equal 1 problem-solving skills scale negative rank 8 11.00 88.00 .64 .525 positive rank 12 10.17 122.00 equal 1 test of academic success negative rank 0 .00 .00 4.035 .000*** positive rank 21 11.00 231.00 equal 0 a: based on negative ranks *** p<.001 p>.05. examining table 4, it is seen that a significant difference was found between mean pretest and posttest scores for the ―basic skills scale‖ of students in the experimental group (z= -3.951, p<.001). considering the mean ranks and rank totals of the difference scores, it is seen that this observed difference is in favour of the posttest scores. accordingly, it was determined that the mean posttest scores in the basic skills scale of 20 of the students in the experimental group increased significantly in relation to their mean pretest scores, while there was no difference between the pretest and posttest mean scores of 1 student. examining the results obtained, it is seen that the stem-based activity programme had a positive effect on the students’ basic skill levels. no significant difference was found between the mean pretest and posttest scores of the students in the experimental group for the ―problem-solving skills scale‖ (z=.636, p>.05). accordingly, it was determined that the mean posttest scores in the problem-solving skills scale of 8 of the students in the experimental group decreased significantly in relation to their mean pretest scores, that the mean posttest scores of 12 students increased significantly in relation to their mean pretest scores, and that there was no difference between the mean pretest and posttest scores of 1 student. examining the results obtained, it is seen that the stem-based activity programme had no effect on the students’ problem-solving skill levels. examining table 4, it is seen that a significant difference was found between mean scores for the ―test of academic success‖ obtained by the students in the experimental group prior to and following the implementation (z= -4.035, p<.001). considering the mean ranks and rank totals of the difference scores, it is seen that this observed difference is in favour of the posttest scores. accordingly, it was determined that the mean posttest scores of all the students in the experimental group in the test of academic success, which tested their knowledge levels related to simple electrical circuits, increased significantly in relation to their mean pretest scores. examining the results obtained, it is seen that the stem-based activity programme had a positive effect on the students’ knowledge levels related to simple electrical circuits. 3.3. findings related to the third subproblem the third subproblem of the study was defined as ―is there a significant difference between pretest and posttest scores for basic process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success in students in the control group?‖ the results of the wilcoxon signed ranks test performed on the mean pretest and posttest scores of the students in the control group for the basic skills scale, problem-solving skills scale and test of academic success are presented below in table 5. table-5. wilcoxon signed ranks test results for mean pretest and posttest scores of control group for basic skills scale, problem-solving skills scale and test of academic success. pretestposttest n mean rank rank total z p basic skills scale negative rank 0 .00 .00 3.77 .000*** positive rank 18 9.50 171.00 equal 4 problem-solving skills scale negative rank 7 11.79 82.50 .50 .614 positive rank 12 8.96 107.50 equal 3 test of academic success negative rank 3 7.67 23.00 2.15 .032* positive rank 12 8.08 97.00 equal 7 a: based on negative ranks ***p<.001 p>.05 *p<.05 examining table 5, a significant difference was found between the mean scores for the ―basic skills scale‖ obtained by students in the control group prior to and following the implementation (z= -3.768, p<.001). considering the mean ranks and rank totals of the difference scores, it is seen that this observed difference is in favour of the posttest scores. accordingly, it was determined that the mean posttest scores in the basic skills scale asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 260-268 266 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of 18 of the students in the control group increased significantly in relation to their mean pretest scores, while there was no difference between the pretest and posttest mean scores of 4 students. no significant difference was found between the mean scores obtained by the students in the control group for the ―problem-solving skills scale‖ prior to and following the implementation (z=.50, p>.05). accordingly, it was determined that the mean posttest scores in the problem-solving skills scale of 7 of the students in the experimental group decreased significantly in relation to their mean pretest scores, that the mean posttest scores of 12 students increased significantly in relation to their mean pretest scores, and that there was no difference between the mean pretest and posttest scores of 3 students. a significant difference was found between mean scores for the ―test of academic success‖ obtained by the students in the control group before and after the implementation (z=-2.15, p<.05). considering the mean ranks and rank totals of the difference scores, it is seen that this observed difference is in favour of the posttest scores. accordingly, it was determined that the mean posttest scores of 3 of the students in the control group decreased significantly in relation to their pretest scores for the test of academic success, which tested their knowledge levels related to simple electrical circuits, that the mean posttest scores of 12 of the students increased significantly in relation to their pretest scores, and that there was no difference between the pretest and posttest scores of 7 of the students. 3.4. findings related to the fourth subproblem the fourth subproblem of the study was defined as ―is there a significant difference in posttest scores for basic process skills, problem-solving skills and academic success between students in the experimental and control groups?‖ the results of the mann-whitney u test performed on the mean posttest scores of the students in the experimental and control groups of the study for the basic skills scale, problem-solving skills scale and test of academic success are presented below in table 6. table-6. mann-whitney u test results related to mean posttest scores of students in experimental and control groups in basic skills scale, problem-solving skills scale and test of academic success. group n mean rank rank total u p basic skills scale experimental 21 23.31 489.50 203.500 .500 control 22 20.75 456.50 problem-solving skills scale experimental 21 23.40 491.50 201.500 .473 control 22 20.66 454.50 test of academic success experimental 21 27.81 584.00 109.00 .002* control 22 16.45 362.00 p>.05 *p<.01. examining table 6, no significant difference was found between mean posttest scores of students in the experimental and control groups participating in the study with regard to the ―basic skills scale‖ (u=203.500 p>.05). while the posttest mean rank score for the basic skills scale of the students in the experimental group was 23.31, the posttest mean rank score of the students in the control group was 20.75. accordingly, it was determined that the basic skill levels of the students in the experimental and control groups did not differ. no significant difference was found between mean posttest scores of students in the experimental and control groups participating in the study with regard to the ―problem-solving skills scale‖ (u=201.500 p>.05). according to table 6, while the posttest mean rank score for the problem-solving skills scale of the students in the experimental group was 23.40, the posttest mean rank score of the students in the control group was 20.66. it was determined that the problem-solving skill levels of the students in the experimental and control groups did not differ. a significant difference was found between the mean posttest scores of students in the experimental and control groups of the study for the test of academic success (u=109.000 p<.01). examining table 6, while the posttest mean rank score for the test of academic success of the students in the experimental group was 27.81, the posttest mean rank score of the students in the control group was 16.45. accordingly, the academic success of students in the experimental group with regard to simple electrical circuits was significantly greater than that of students in the control group. this result reveals that the stem-based activity programme had a positive effect on the students’ academic success in the subject of simple electrical circuits. 4. discussion and conclusion the findings obtained for the first subproblem of the study reveal that when the mean scores of the students in the experimental and control groups are compared, no significant difference was found between mean scores of the groups for basic process skills, problem-solving skills or academic success. in other words, the levels of basic skills, problem-solving skills and academic success in students in the experimental and control groups forming the study group were equal. the findings obtained for the second subproblem of the study reveal that there was a significant difference between the mean pretest and posttest scores of students in the experimental group for basic process skills and academic success. based on this finding, it can be said that the stem-based activities were effective in increasing the students’ basic process skills and academic success. it was reported in a number of studies, such as those of ceylan (2014); olivarez (2012); yıldırım and altun (2015) and yıldırım (2016) that stem-based activities are effective in increasing students’ academic success. another finding of the study is that the stem-based activities had a positive effect on students’ basic process skills. this finding corresponds to the findings of a number of studies, such as those of bozkurt (2014); koç şenol and büyük (2015); strong (2013); sullivan (2008) and yamak et al. (2014). on the other hand, it was determined that there was no difference between the mean pretest and posttest scores of students in the experimental group in the problem-solving skills scale. based on this finding, it was concluded that the stem-based activities had no effect on the students’ problem-solving skills. this finding may asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 260-268 267 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group be explained by the limited nature of the implementation process for the stem-based activities carried out. in the literature, studies that support this finding can be found (kim and choi, 2012; nağaç, 2018) whereas studies can also be found that conclude that stem-based activities are effective in raising the level of problem-solving skills (childress, 1996; elliott et al., 2001; ceylan, 2014). the findings obtained for the third subproblem of the study reveal that the teaching method conducted with the control group also significantly increased the students’ scores in basic process skills and academic success. however, when the students’ mean pretest and posttest scores for basic process skills and academic success are examined, it is seen that the increase in scores between the pretest and posttest was greater in the experimental group than in the control group. in this case, it can be said the stem-based activities were more effective in improving basic process skills and academic success than were the teaching methods suited to the 2013 science lesson teaching programme. the fact that the success of students in the control group with regard to simple electrical circuits was significantly greater in favour of the posttest may be explained by the fact that the science lesson teaching programme is based on a structured approach and that the activities in the programme are aimed towards this. on the other hand, it was determined that there was no difference between mean pretest and posttest scores of students in the control group for the problem-solving skills scale. the findings obtained for the fourth subproblem of the study reveal that there was no difference between the mean posttest scores of the students in the experimental and control groups with regard to the basic skills scale or the problem-solving scale. however, it was concluded that the mean scores of students in the experimental group for the basic skills scale were higher than the mean scores of students in the control group. this finding may be explained by the fact that the stem-based activities applied were limited to 12 lesson periods and that for students to acquire process skills, longer and more active periods are required. following the three weeks of instruction carried out with the experimental and control groups, it was found that the posttest academic success scores of students in the experimental group were significantly higher than those of students in the control group. this finding corresponds to those in studies in the related literature (cosentino, 2008; riskowski et al., 2009; olivarez, 2012; ceylan, 2014; tank, 2014; yıldırım and altun, 2015; yıldırım, 2016). therefore, it can be said that the stem-based activity method produces more successful results for academic success in the subject of simple electrical circuits than the teaching method conducted according to the 2013 science lesson teaching programme. 5. recommendations in line with the findings obtained in the study, the following recommendations may be made for researchers studying the subject of stem: i. in the study, the subject of simple electrical circuits chosen in line with outcomes suitable for stem-based activities was limited to a three-week period and to fourth-grade primary students. since the period of this implementation was limited, an application over a longer period may reveal more beneficial results. ii. when preparing stem-based activities, inclusion of ways of solving problems that students encounter in daily life or tools that they use in daily life may lead to more meaningful learning outcomes. iii. in future studies that are made, examining the effect of stem applications on different variables (such as creative thinking skills and critical thinking skills) may contribute to the related literature. iv. in this study, the stem implementations that consist of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines were carried out in science lessons. in future studies that are conducted, stem implementations can also be conducted in fields like mathematics, computers and technology. references alpar, r., 2014. practical statistics and validity-reliability with examples from sports, health and educational sciences. ankara: detay. aydoğdu, b. and f. karakuş, 2015. adaptation of basic skills scale for primary school students to turkish. mehmet akif ersoy university faculty of education journal, 34(1): 105-131. baykul, y. and c.o. güzeller, 2014. statistics for 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physics teaching. ankara: higher education council. ceylan, s., 2014. science, technology, engineering and mathematics (fetemm) approach to the preparation of instructional design for the acids and bases in the secondary school science course. master thesis, uludag university, institute of educational sciences, bursa. childress, v.w., 1996. does integration technology, science, and mathematics improve technological problem solving: a quasi-experiment. journal of technology education, 8(1): 16–26.available at: https://doi.org/10.21061/jte.v8i1.a.2. cokluk, ö., g. şekercioğlu and ş. büyüköztürk, 2016. multivariate statistics spsss and lisrel applications for social sciences. ankara: pegema. corlu, m.s., 2012. a pathway to stem education: investigating pre-service mathematics and science teachers at turkish universities in terms of their understanding of mathematics used in science. doctoral dissertation, texas aandm university, college station. corlu, m.s., r.m. capraro and m.m. capraro, 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https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.20238. tan, ş., 2011. measurement and evaluation in teaching. ankara: pegema. tank, k.m., 2014. examining the effects of integrated science, engineering, and nonfiction literature on student learning in elementary classrooms. doctoral dissertation, university of minnesota, mankato. yamak, h., n. bulut and s. dündar, 2014. the effect of fetemm activities on students' attitudes towards science with scientif ic process skills. gefad, 34(2): 249-265. yıldırım, b., 2016. science, technology, engineering mathematics (stem) applications integrated in 7th grade science course and the effects of full learning. ph.d thesis, gazi university, institute of science and technology, ankara. yıldırım, b. and y. altun, 2015. examination of the effects of stem education and engineering applications on science course laboratory course. el-cezeri journal of science and engineering, 2(2): 28-40. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://ec.europa.eu/research/sciencesociety/document_library/pdf_06/report-rocard-onscience 255 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 255-259, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.255.259 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the personality traits and empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department kazım kaya1 çağrı hamdi erdoğan2 ziya bahadir3 ( corresponding author) 1kırşehir ahi evran university, college of physical education and sports, kırşehir, turkey 2ministry of education, çömlekçi middle school, kayseri, turkey 3erciyes university, faculty of sport sciences, kayseri, turkey abstract the objective of this study is to determine the personality traits and empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department. in addition to that, the empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department were compared according to some characteristics. the research was conducted as a survey model. 347 students participated in the research group, who were studying at erciyes university department of coaching education, faculty of sport sciences in the 2018-2019 academic year. in the study, personal information form, ten-item personality inventory and empathetic tendency scale were used as the data collection tools. spss program was used for the analysis of the data. according to the results of the study, the "compatible" personality trait of students of the coaching education department came to the fore and their empathetic tendency levels were determined at "medium level". moreover, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department concerning age, gender, academic grade, doing active sports, gpa, and sports branch. keywords: coaching education, personality, empathic tendency, student, individuality, sociability. citation | kazım kaya; çağrı hamdi erdoğan; ziya bahadir (2019). examining the personality traits and empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 255-259. history: received: 31 december 2018 revised: 23 january 2019 accepted: 20 february 2019 published: 15 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 256 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 256 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 257 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 258 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 258 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.255.259&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/412 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0246-2738 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/412 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0246-2738 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/412 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0246-2738 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/412 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0246-2738 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/412 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0246-2738 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 255-259 256 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction empathy is putting oneself into someone's shoes and thus, understanding his/her feelings and opinions (dökmen, 2009). empathy is to see with someone else's eyes, to hear with someone else's ears, and to feel with someone else's heart (adler, 1993). the empathy potential of an individual is explained through empathetic tendency concept. it is necessary to have the empathetic sensitivity for an individual to develop empathy (akkoyun, 1987). personality is the reflection of the structure, which emerges as a result of the combination of certain innate biological and psychological features and interest, skill and talents of a person, upon behaviors and attitudes of an individual (i̇lal, 2001). feelings, opinion, and patterns of behavior of individuals are determinants of their personality (yavuzer, 2010). an individual is called as coach who completes successfully his/her education programs in the relevant sport branch, gains necessary documents from the general directorates proving his/her level, and trains athletes or sports teams for competitions (gsgm, 2018). coaching is accepted as a profession in our day; in this regard, "coaching education" departments are established in the universities, and courses and seminars are organized by relevant institutions, organizations and federations about coaching. coaches are sports trainers, who become a model for the athletes through their professional knowledge and personality traits, and it is expected that their behaviors should be displayed in accordance with the universally admitted and embraced values (dolaşır, 2006). it is stated that coaches have a quite efficient role in the management of the game and the athletes (ikizler, 2000). it is considered critical that the coach candidates, who will work in different sports branches as a coach, have a good personality to be a model for the athletes and should display empathy towards their athletes. in this study, it was aimed to examine the personality traits and empathetic tendency levels of coaching education department students, in other words, the coach candidates. 2. method 2.1. research model this is a survey model research aiming at examining the personality traits and empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department. survey model research studies are defined as the kind of studies, in which information is gathered from a large mass through multiple choice answers determined by the researcher (fraenkel and wallen, 2006). 2.2. research group the research group was consisted of 347 students, who studied at the department of coaching education in faculty of sport sciences, erciyes university during the 2018-2019 academic year, and they were selected through random sampling. 171 of the participant students were female (49.3%), whereas 176 of them were male (50.7%). 2.3. data collection tools as the data collection tools, a personal information form that was developed by the researchers was used for collecting demographic characteristics of the students, a ten-item personality inventory was used for determining the personality traits of the students, and the empathetic tendency scale was used for determining the empathetic tendency levels of the students. ten-item personality inventory was developed by gosling et al. (2003) this scale is comprised of 10 articles and five factors as "being open to experience", "responsibility", "being extravert", "compatibility", and "emotional balance". a seven point likert type, this scale has two articles for each sub-dimension. each article includes two descriptors separated with a comma. the "being extravert" dimension in the scale involves some features such as being sociable, talkative, and social, the "compatibility " dimension involves being amiable, the "responsibility" dimension means being disciplined and task-oriented, the "emotional balance" dimension involves features such as having less anxiety and worry and being secure, while the "being open to experience" dimension involves features such as to have a liking for change and new experiences. the internal reliability coefficients of the sub-dimensions of the scale vary between 0.40 and 0.73 (factor 1: 0.68, factor 2: 0.40, factor 3: 0.50, factor 4: 0.73, factor 5: 0.45). empathetic tendency scale was developed by dökmen (1988) in order to measure the skills of individuals to develop empathy in the daily life. it is a five point likert type scale and it is comprised of 20 articles. the 3rd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 15th articles of the scale are scored reversely. the lowest score in the empathetic tendency scale is 20 points and the highest score is 100 points. if the score obtained from this one-dimensional scale is high it is concluded that the empathetic tendency is high as well, and if the score is low the tendency is low. the testretest reliability coefficient of the scale is .82. 2.4. statistical analyses statistical analyses were conducted via spss program. in order to determine the personality traits and empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department, arithmetic averages ( ) and standard deviation (sd) were used among the descriptive statistics. in the analyses, it was investigated through kolmogorov-smirnov test whether the data followed a normal distribution. as a result, it was found that empathetic tendency levels did not follow normal distribution (p=.000). because of that, mann-whitney u test was employed for paired comparisons and kruskal wallis test for multiple comparisons. the accepted level of significance for all analyses was p<0.05. x asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 255-259 257 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. results table-1. distribution of demographic characteristics of the students in the research group. gender n % academic grade n % male 176 50.7 1st grade 96 27.6 female 171 49.3 2nd grade 105 30.3 age n % 3rd grade 85 24.5 18-20 years old 123 35.4 4th grade 61 17.6 21-23 years old 172 49.6 sport branch n % 24 years old or over 52 15 team sports 162 46.7 gpa n % individual sports 185 53.3 between 1.50-1.99 31 8.9 doing active sport n % between 2.00-2.49 99 28.5 yes 252 72.6 between 2.50-2.99 142 40.9 no 95 27.4 between 3.00-3.49 75 21.7 total n: 347 source: personal information forms with spss analyze according to the data obtained from the personal information forms, and as is seen on the table 1, among the students in the research group, 176 (50.7%) are male, 171 (49.3%) are female; 123 (35.4%) are 18-20 years old, 172 (49.6%) are 21-23 years old, and 52 (15%) are 24 years old or over. of the students, 252 (72.6%) are actively doing sports, 95 (27.4%) don't do it actively; 31 (8.9%) have gpas between 1.50-1.99, 99 (28.5%) have gpas between 2.00-2.49, and the gpas of 142 (40.9%) are in between 2.50-2.99, while 75 (21.7%) of them have gpas between 3.00-3.49. among the students, 96 (27.6%) are 1st grades, 105 (30.3%) 2nd grades, 85 (24.5%) 3rd grades, and 61 (17.6%) 4th grades; 162 of them (46.7%) are doing team sports, while 185 (53.3%) deals with individual sports. table-2. the averages that the students in the research group obtained from the ten-item personality inventory sub-dimensions and empathetic tendency scale in general. personality and empathetic tendency n sd being extravert 347 3.98 1.532 compatibility 347 4.71 1.252 responsibility 347 4.62 1.506 emotional balance 347 4.20 1.084 being open to experience 347 4.47 1.301 empathetic tendency 347 65.4 .382 source: ten-item personality inventory and empathetic tendency scale with spss analyze. the results revealed from the data obtained from the ten-item personality inventory sub-dimensions and empathetic tendency scale are shown in table 2. as is seen in the table 2, the students in the research group obtained the following averages from the ten-item personality inventory sub-dimensions: being extravert =3.98, compatibility =4.71, responsibility =4.62, emotional balance =4.20 and being open to experience =4.47. according to these results, it can be mentioned that the "compatible" personality trait of students came to the fore among other traits with an average of =4.71. moreover, it is observed that the students gained the average =65.4 from the empathetic tendency scale in general. according to this result, the empathetic tendency levels of the students in the research group can be interpreted as "medium level". table-3. comparison of the empathetic tendency levels of the students in the research group concerning gender, sport branch, and doing active sport. characteristic n mean rank sum of ranks u p gender male 176 167.59 29496.50 13920.500 .227 female 171 180.59 30881.50 sport branch team sport 162 172.48 27942.50 14739.500 .792 individual sport 185 175.33 32435.50 doing active sport yes 252 175.59 44248.50 11569.500 .630 no 95 169.78 16129.50 source: empathetic tendency scale and personal information forms with spss analyze. table-4. comparisons of the empathetic tendency levels of the research group students with regards to age, academic grade, and gpa. characteristic n mean rank df χ² p age 18-20 years old 123 164.44 2 2.559 .278 21-23 years old 172 182.59 24 years old or over 52 168.19 academic grade 1st grade 96 162.68 3 7.611 .055 2nd grade 105 194.93 3rd grade 85 173.29 4th grade 61 156.77 gpa between 1.50-1.99 31 165.87 3 2.299 .513 between 2.00-2.49 99 164.66 between 2.50-2.99 142 175.60 between 3.00-3.49 75 186.67 source: empathetic tendency scale and personal information forms with spss analyze. x x x x x x x x asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 255-259 258 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the results of mann-whitney u test, which was conducted for the paired comparisons of the abnormally distributed empathetic tendency levels of the research group students, are shown in table 3. as is seen in table 3, empathetic tendency levels of the research group students were compared with regards to gender, sport branch, and doing active sports; however, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference. the results of the kruskal wallis h test, which was conducted for multiple comparisons of the abnormally distributed empathetic tendency levels of the students in the research group, are shown in table 4. as is seen in table 4, the empathetic tendency levels of the students in the research group were compared concerning age, academic grade, and gpa, and it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference. 4. discussion and conclusion in this research study, the personality traits and empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department were determined. additionally, the empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department were examined concerning some characteristics. according to the results of the study, the "compatible" personality trait of students of the coaching education department came to the fore and their empathetic tendency levels were determined at "medium level". moreover, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department concerning age, gender, academic grade, doing active sports, gpa, and sports branch. in studies conducted by kıvanç sudak (2011); tarhan (2012) and ozer (2013) it was determined that the highest level personality trait in the participants was "compatible" personality trait. these mentioned studies are in parallel with this study. akbulut and sağlam (2010); rehber and atıcı (2009) determined that there was statistically significant difference in the empathetic tendency levels of the participants concerning gender. the results of abovementioned studies contradict to this study. bulut and düşmez (2014); mutlu et al. (2015); yaşar and erol (2016) determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the empathetic tendency levels of the participants concerning gender. the results of these studies are in parallel with this research study. in different studies conducted by günaydın (1999); pınar (2004); celik (2008); mutlu et al. (2015); yaşar and erol (2016); elik (2017) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the empathetic tendency levels of the participants concerning age. the results of these studies are in parallel with this study. in other studies conducted by genç and kalafat (2008); yılmaz and akyel (2008); tekin and güllü (2010); yaşar and erol (2016) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the empathetic tendency levels of the participants concerning academic grade. the results of these studies are in parallel with this study. according to the findings of this study, it can be evaluated as a positive result that the "compatible" personality traits of students of the coaching education department came to the fore among others. considering the future professions of students of the coaching education department, it can be thought that this result is more important than it seems. increasing the participation of students of the coaching education department in social activities that enhance their positive personality traits might be useful for them. for further studies, examining the personality traits of students of the coaching education department on different research groups and with more participants can contribute to the literature. according to the findings of this research study, it can be evaluated as a negative result that the empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department were at "medium level". a development in the empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department can be achieved through trainings provided by field experts. for further studies, examining the empathetic tendency levels of students of the coaching education department through qualitative research methods can make important contributions to the literature. references adler, a., 1993. psychological activity (translate in turkish: belkıs çorakçı). i̇stanbul: say publications. akbulut, e. and h.i̇. sağlam, 2010. an investigation on levels of the emphatic tendencies of classroom teachers. journal of human sciences, 7(2): 1068-1083. akkoyun, f., 1987. empathic tendency and moral judgment. journal of psychology, 6(21): 91-92. bulut, h. and i̇. düşmez, 2014. comparison of teachers' empathic tendency skills in terms of demographic and professional variables. iğdır university journal of social sciences, 5: 105-115.available at: iğdır university journal of social sciences. celik, e., 2008. investigation in terms of some variables of their empathy aptitude of preschool education teachers. master’s thesis, selçuk university, institute of social sciences. dökmen, ü., 1988. measure empathy based on a new model and develop with psychodrama. ankara university faculty of educational sciences journal, 21(1-2): 155-190. dökmen, ü., 2009. communication conflicts in art and daily life, and empathy. 5th edn., i̇stanbul: remzi publications. dolaşır, s., 2006. ethics and principles of coaching. ankara: gazi publications. elik, t., 2017. sportsmen who play football as an amateur their sportsmensip trends and empathic tendencies in the southeast anatolia region. master's thesis, i̇stanbul gelişim university, health sciences institute. fraenkel, j.r. and n.e. wallen, 2006. how to desing and evaluate research in education. new york: mcgaw-hill international edition. genç, s.z. and t. kalafat, 2008. the evaluation of teacher candidates’ democratic attitudes and emphatic skills. journal of social sciences, 19(4): 54-66. gosling, s.d., p.j. rentfrow and j.w.b. swann, 2003. a very brief measure of the big-five personality domains. journal of research in personality, 37(6): 504-528.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0092-6566(03)00046-1. gsgm, 2018. republic of turkey, general directorate of sports, coaches education regulation, internet. available from http://sporegitim.sgm.gov.tr/sayfalar/2873/2859/yonetmelikler.aspx [accessed 11.12.2018]. günaydın, m., 1999. a study at the sight of same variation of the teachers who work in middle training association levels of empathic and conflictional tendency. master’s thesis, ondokuz mayıs university, institute of social sciences. ikizler, h.c., 2000. social sciences in sports. i̇stanbul: alfa publications. i̇lal, g.k., 2001. behavioral sciences medical psychology. i̇stanbul: nobel medicine publications. kıvanç sudak, m., 2011. a research on relationship between personality types emotional intelligence job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviour. doctoral dissertation, gebze technical university, institute of social sciences. mutlu, o., e. şentürk and e. zorba, 2015. empathic tendency of university students in tennis and communication skills. international journal of science culture and sport, 2(1): 129-137. ozer, e., 2013. an investigation of universty students' resilience level on the view of trait emotional eq and the five factor personality traits. doctoral dissertation, necmettin erbakan university, institute of educational sciences. http://sporegitim.sgm.gov.tr/sayfalar/2873/2859/yonetmelikler.aspx asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 255-259 259 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group pınar, g., 2004. investigation of empathy levels of midwives/nurses working in delivery halls. master’s thesis, ege university, health sciences institute. rehber, u. and y. atıcı, 2009. examining the conflict resolution behaviors of students at the second stage of primary school according to their empathetic tendency levels. çukurova university journal of the institute of social sciences, 18(1): 323-342. tarhan, s., 2012. the prediction of hope from self efficacy perceived social support and personality traits. doctoral dissertation, gazi university, institute of educational sciences. tekin, m. and m. güllü, 2010. analysis of empathic artifice level of teacher candidates who study in the school of physical education and sport. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 2(2): 1987-1992.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.269. yaşar, m. and a. erol, 2016. determination of relationship between the empathic tendency levels and thinking styles of preschool teacher candidates. international journal of assessment tools in education, 2(2): 38-65. yavuzer, h., 2010. school of marriage. i̇stanbul: remzi publications. yılmaz, i̇. and y. akyel, 2008. examination of empatic tendency levels of physical education candidates teacher in terms of different variables. journal of kırşehir education faculty, 9(3): 27-33. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 219 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 219-225, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.219.225 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of agility and speed training of futsal players attending school of physical education and sports on aerobic endurance levent tanyeri1 sercan öncen2 ( corresponding author) 1physical education and sports department, kafkas university, kars, turkey. 2physical education and sports department, tekirdağ namık kemal university, tekirdağ, turkey. abstract futsal is ateam game with hibg phsical demands players. agility, aerobic and anaerobic power outputs of the players support the success in the game. 24 male players attending the kafkas university having played futsal in the school team for at least one year participated in the study. the players were separated into two groups, the experimental group (g1) performed sprints and circuits (agility training) of 10 m and 20 m integrated into a 30 minute training program after typical futsal training with their coach two days per week (tuesdays and thursdays) for six weeks. additionally, on thursdays, they participated in collective running at various paces, interval starts, and rank run exercises for aerobic endurance after typical futsal training. the control group (g2) performed their typical futsal training with their coach. the training sessions were planned so that there was at least a period of 36 hours between the two practice days. in order to determine the players’ speed capacity, 10 m-20 m speed tests, a reactive agility tests, and aerobic endurance measurement yo-yo tests were implemented. descriptive statistics were used in the data analysis, the mann-whitney u test was used in comparative analysis of the groups, and the significance was taken to be p<0.05. at the end of the study, it was revealed that the agility training of futsal players attending university for six weeks had an effect on their aerobic endurance. keywords: futsal, futsal player, agility, speed, agility training, speed training, aerobic endurance. citation | levent tanyeri; sercan öncen (2020). the effect of agility and speed training of futsal players attending school of physical education and sports on aerobic endurance. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 219-225. history: received: 6 january 2020 revised: 17 february 2020 accepted: 20 march 2020 published: 9 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 220 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 221 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 222 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 225 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 225 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.219.225&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4356-5832 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6147-2966 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4356-5832 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6147-2966 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4356-5832 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6147-2966 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1489 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4356-5832 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6147-2966 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 219-225 220 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the effect of agility and speed training on aerobic endurance is resources that will help us better understand in futsal players. 1. introduction futsal is a type of football played in a confined space and indoors. since there are fewer players than in football and the playing field is narrower, futsal is a more dynamic and technique game. actions such as take-off, sprints at different distances, deflections, an dribbling come to the forefront during futsal matches (açak, karademir, taşmektepligil, & çalışkan, 2012). thus, speed and agility are very important in futsal. since play in futsal is very fast, unlimited player substitutions are allowed during matches and matches are limited to two periods of 20 minutes each (katis & kellis, 2009). because futsal is a fast-moving game that includes many different movements, aerobic and anaerobic endurance is important (alvurdu, köse, & cinemre, 2016). particularly, the intensive and maximal loading that exists in futsal causes aerobic endurance to be important. thus, the effect of agility and speed training in the scope of aerobic endurance is significant. in this respect, the effect of agility and speed trainings on aerobic endurance on futsal on was emphasized in this study. 1.1. the structure of the game in futsal futsal is field game played with five players on a side, goalkeepers included, in a field similar to a basketball court, structurally confined with specific lines. although it is similar to football with respect to quality and gameplay, a futsal match is played at higher velocity than football because it is played within a more confined field. in addition, since the field is more confined, players are supposed to change their positions continuously as a whole team during defensive and offensive play (barbero-alvarez, soto, barbero-alvarez, & granda-vera, 2008; moura et al., 2011). players who have a higher technical capacity can be more successful in futsal because of confined space (clemente, couceiro, martins, & mendes, 2012). it has been observed that one of the important factors that increases the efficiency of the game is the amount of time that the players have to take action (nicoletti & borghi, 2007). players touch the ball a great deal in a limited time, which helps players improve their capacity for decision-making and technique. additionally, since the game is dynamic and includes rapid transitions, players are more involved in the game. all these conditions necessitate a high level of aerobic and anaerobic performance, and, as evidenced by previous studies that have aerobic performance has a very significant role in determining the level of performance of the player (mohr, krustrup, & bangsbo, 2003; weston, castagna, impellizzeri, rampinini, & abt, 2007). in futsal, each player needs to be very involved in the game because of the confined game space and limited number of players. in this respect, playing a game in a confined space necessitates creating more open space, running more, and being more active. moreover, skill in playing one-to-one is required. reducing space in defensive play, changing position rapidly, and completing actions that require agility are within the basic characteristics of this game (katis & kellis, 2009; ocak & buğdaycı, 2012). with respect to futsal field size, the width is 15 m minimum and 25 m. maximum; the length is 25 m minimum and 42 m. maximum. these sizes change in international matches in which the width is 18 m minimum and 25 m. maximum, and the length is 38 m minimum and 42 m. maximum. the aforementioned sizes include the sidelines; the two short sidelines are called goal lines, and the two long sidelines are called throw-in lines. all lines are 8 cm wide. the diameter of the mid-court circle is 3 m. the number of players is five on each team, goalkeeper included. a match may not start if there are fewer than three players on either team. the number of substitute players in international matches is a maximum of five, and there are no limitations on player substitutions during gameplay (ocak & buğdaycı, 2012). the futsal match consists of two periods of 20 minutes each. the duration of the game can be extended because of fouls and penalties (sert, 2015) 1.2. speed and agility speed has been expressed as a player’s quality of moving at high speed from one place to another, taking actions as fast as possible, and moving within the shortest period of time (günay, tamer, & cicioğlu, 2010). when speed is structurally and physiologically assessed, it expresses a motional ability depending on the functioning of the nervous and muscular system (muratlı, kalyoncu, & şahin, 2007). according to another definition, speed expresses a physical value that begins with a stimulus directed to external resistance and occurs in a minority of instances in terms of completing a specific action and covering a specific distance. the speed ability of the object taking the action increases when the aforementioned value approaches zero (dündar, 2003). speed is not a feature structurally connected to just one factor. thus, factors such as technique and application cause a change in speed. this results in classifying speed in different forms (karavelioğlu, 2008) like general and special speed as well as physiological speed and speed in terms of training. while general speed means that it does not belong to any particular classification and can refer to the speed of any movement, special speed means that movements that belong to a specific classification are performed at adequate speed (bompa & buzzichelli, 2018). the types of physiological speed are perception speed, reaction speed, and action speed (acceleration speed, average speed, maximum speed) (dündar, 2003; unver, 2011). the types of speed in terms of training are the speed of the individual action, the frequency of the action, sprint speed, and speed durability (baktaal, 2008; dündar, 2003). the concept of agility and the concept of speed are structurally intermingled. agility expresses the ability to do the most work within a unit of time. the ability to reach the maximum speed of action and reaction and to change the direction or speed of all body movements as a response to a stimulus can be expressed as agility (sönmez, 2014). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 219-225 221 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1.3. aerobic endurance since the respiratory system has a particular capacity, when the necessity for oxygen reaches the highest level within the process, the amount of oxygen spent per minute remains the same even if the action increases. this quality, which differs between individuals, is expressed as maximal aerobic capacity. for individuals doing exercise, after a four-minute submaximal training, the pulse rate balances at around 160 beats/min. the level at which the amount of oxygen used is balanced is called the steady state; during exercise, this level is beside the point because a little oxygen difference occurs. however, it is possible to ameliorate this situation by taking breaks during training (fox, bowers, foss, & mathews, 2011). aerobic endurance appears as a type of durability that comes out in scope of energy production of the organism. especially for the exercises carried out without interruption for more than 10 minutes, aerobic endurance has been observed to be improved with the increased time. there is a balance between the work done and the energy spent within the scope of aerobic endurance. it is a type of endurance in which the organism does not experience an oxygen difference; in other words, the durability comes out in the environment with enough oxygen. in this type of durability, energy is produced from oxygen by using energy sources with oxidation (weineck, 2011). the aim of our study was to examine the effects that high intensity interval exercises and endurance exercises integrated into circuit training implemented for futsal players’ produce in terms of speed, agility, and aerobic capacity. 2. method 24 male players attending the kafkas university sarıkamış school of physical education and sports and having played futsal on the school team for at least one year participated in the study. the players were separated into two groups. the experimental group (g1) participated in sprints and circuits (agility training) of 10 m and 20 m integrated into a 30 minutes training program after their typical futsal training with their coach two days a week (tuesday and thursday) for six weeks. additionally, on thursday they participated in collective running at various paces, interval starts, and stage run exercises for aerobic endurance after typical futsal training. the control group (g2) performed their typical futsal training with their coach. the training was planned so that there was a period of at least 36 hours between the two practice days. in order to determine the players’ speed capacities, a 10 m-20 m speed test, a reactive agility test, and an aerobic endurance measurements yo-yo test were implemented. descriptive statistics were used in the data analysis, the mann whitney-u test was used in a comparative analysis of the groups, and the significance has been taken as p<0,05. 2.1. experimental exercise program 2.1.1.circuit training plan the circuit-training plan consisted of three high intensity sets implemented on tuesdays during all six weeks. there were five-minute active resting periods between sets. each bouts period was 30 sec. and included a 30 sec recovery period. each bout included exercises such as sit-ups, half squats, double hands medicine ball throwing, bench press, rope jumping, reverse sit-ups, and box jumps. the target heart rates of the research group were determined by the karvonen method, and endurance exercises were carried out on thursdays in the first, third, and fifth weeks. table-1. six-week exercise program. day exercise exercise time exercise intensity exercise frequency 1. week tuesday circuit exercise (30 sec bouts x 30 sec recovery) x 3 set sit-up, half squat, medicine ball douple hand throw, bench press, skipping, back curl, box jump thursday enduranc e exercise 20 min % 50 1 day in a week 2. week tuesday circuit exercise (30 sec bouts x 30 sec recovery) x 3 set sit-up, half squat, medicine ball douple hand throw, bench press, skipping, back curl, box jump thursday i̇nterval exercise 400 m x 70 sec % 85 90 1 day in a week 3. week tuesday circuit exercise (30 sec bouts x 30 sec recovery) x 3 set sit-up, half squat, medicine ball douple hand throw, bench press, skipping, back curl, box jump thursday enduranc e exercise 30 min % 50 1 day in a week 4. week tuesday circuit exercise (30 sec bouts x 30 sec recovery) x 3 set sit-up, half squat, medicine ball douple hand throw, bench press, skipping, back curl, box jump thursday i̇nterval exercise 650 m x 140 sec %80 85 1 day in a week 5. week tuesday circuit exercise (30 sec bouts x 30 sec recovery) x 3 set sit-up, half squat, medicine ball douple hand throw, bench press, skipping, back curl, box jump thursday enduranc e exercise 30 min % 60 1 day in a week 6. week tuesday circuit exercise (30 sec bouts x 30 sec recovery) x 3 set sit-up, half squat, medicine ball douple hand throw, bench press, skipping, back curl, box jump thursday i̇nterval exercise 900 m x 200 sec %75 80 1 day in a week asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 219-225 222 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.1.2. high intensity interval exercise plan a high intensity interval training program was carried out on thursdays in the second, fourth, and sixth weeks. interval exercises included races of 400 m, 650 m and 900 m. active recreation was implemented between loads until the heart rate decreased to 120-130 beats/min. an interval training program was carried out with one bouts in the first week and two bouts in the second and third weeks for the purpose of adapting the of members of the experimental group to the training. the participants who took part in the experimental training performed warm-up exercises for 5-10 minutes before the beginning of the exercise and cooling exercises for 5-10 minutes after the end of the training period. 2.2. experimental study measurement tools 2.2.1. speed measurements the 10 m and 20 m sprinting distances were measured by an electronic stopwatch (microgate witty) system with 0.01 sec. precision. the participants started a sprint at high speed from 50 cm behind the starting line. the best performance from both trials was recorded and taken under review. 2.2.2. agility measurements the agility of the participants was measured by a reactive agility test. in test, the participants moved to the first gate at maximum speed. then, they changed direction and moved towards the second gate, and, after the second gate, they passed through the heightened gate in order to determine reactive agility. measurements were carried out by smart speed equipment, a system of reactive training testing. 2.2.3. anaerobic endurance measurements yo-yo intermittent recovery test one was implemented. the test was terminated when the person arrived at the point of exhaustion or if he missed the signal sound twice in a row (bangsbo, iaia, & krustrup, 2008). 3. results table-2. age, height, body weight and bmi values of the participants. variable group n average standard deviation age (years) futsal (g1) 12 20,75 2,25 futsal (g2) 12 21,25 2,15 height (cm) futsal (g1) 12 173,20 5,92 futsal (g2) 12 174.40 5,25 weight (kg) futsal (g1) 12 63,02 8,71 futsal (g2) 12 65,42 5,32 bmi futsal (g1) 12 21,04 2,87 futsal (g2) 12 21,46 2,43 24 participations were included in the study. in table 2 it was divided into two groups futsal g1 n: 12 (age 20.75 ± 2.25 years; height 173.20 ± 5.92 cm; body weight 63.02 ± 8.71 kg; bmi 21.04 ± 2.87) and futsal g2 n: 12 (age 21.25 ± 2.15 years; height 174.4 ± 5.25 cm; body weight 65.42 ± 5.32 kg; bmi 21.46 ± 2.43). 3.1. comparison of pre-test and post-test of futsal experimental group comparison of pre-test and post-test of futsal experimental group has been carried out at this stage of the study. table-3. comparison of pre-test and post-test of anthropometric measurements of futsal experimental group. variable tests average standard deviation z p height (cm) pre test 173,20 5,926 1,687 0,104 post test 173,50 5,939 weight (kg) pre test 63,02 8,718 3,927 0,000 post test 62,39 8,516 the results (in table 3) of the pre-test and post-test of the anthropometric measurements of the experimental group were compared. according to the test results, there was a difference between the pretest and post-test in weight measurements (p<0.05). the post-test data in weight measurements (63.39 ± 8.516) were lower than the pre-test data (63.02 ± 8.718). table-4. comparison of pre-test and post-test of speed measurements of futsal experimental group. variable tests average standard deviation z p 10m speed test (sec) pre test 1,75 0,084 3,245 0,000 post test 1,69 0,085 20m speed test (sec) pre test 3,46 0,164 3,489 0,000 post test 3,39 0,162 in table 4 the results of the pre-test and post-test speed measurements of the experimental group were compared. according to the results of the test, there was a difference between the pretest and post-test in the 10 m speed test and the 20 m speed test measurements (p<0.05). in the 10 m speed measurements, the post-test data asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 219-225 223 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (1.69 ± 0.085) was more favorable than the pre-test data (1.75 ± 0.084). in the 20 m speed measurements, the posttest data (3.39 ± 0.162) was more favorable than the pre-test data (3.46 ± 0.164). table-5. comparison of pre-test and post-test of agility measurements of futsal experimental group. variable tests average standard deviation z p right pre test 4.01 0,100 3,699 0,000 post test 3,85 0,145 left pre test 4,05 0,098 3,671 0,000 post test 3,87 0,121 in table 5 the results of the pre-test and the post-test of for agility in the experimental group were compared. according to the results, there was a difference between the pre-test and post-test in the right and left measurements (p<0.05). in the right measurements, the post-test data (3.85 ± 0.145) was more favorable than the pre-test data (4.01 ± 0.100). in the left measurements, the post-test data (3.87 ± 0.121) was more favorable than the pre-test data (4.05 ± 0.098). table-6. comparison of pre-test and post-test of aerobic endurance measurements of futsal experimental group. variable tests average standard deviation z p yo-yo pre test 1098,95 120,273 3,847 0,000 post test 1178,00 124,292 the results of the pre-test and post-test for endurance in the experimental group were compared (table 6). according to the results of the test, there was a difference between the pre-test and post-test in the yo-yo measurements (p<0.05). in the yo-yo measurements, the post-test data (1178.00 ± 124.292) were more favorable than the pre-test data (1098.95 ± 120.273). 3.2. comparison of pre-test and post-test of futsal control group has been carried out at this stage of the study. table-7. comparison of pre-test and post-test of anthropometric measurements of futsal control group. variable tests average standard deviation z p height (cm) pre test 175,45 5,781 1,651 0,112 post test 176,00 5,912 weight (kg) pre test 64,34 6,169 3,932 0,000 post test 63,70 6,143 the results of the pre-test and post-test for the anthropometric measurements of the control group were compared (table 7). according to the test results, there was a difference between the pre-test and the post-test for weight measurements (p<0.05). the weight measurements in the post-test data (63,70 ± 6,143) were lower than in the pre-test data (63.34 ± 6.169). table-8. comparison of pre-test and post-test of speed measurements of futsal control group. variable tests average standard deviation z p 10m speed test (sec) pre test 1,74 0,060 2,421 0,015 post test 1,73 0,064 20m speed test (sec) pre test 3,47 0,135 3,205 0,001 post test 3,44 0,139 the results of the pre-test and the post-test speed measurements of the control group were compared (table 8). according to the results, there was a difference between the pre-test and the post-test in the 10 m speed test and the 20 m speed test (p<0.05). in the 10 m speed measurements, the post-test data (1.73 ± 0.064) were more favorable than the pre-test data (1.74 ± 0.060). in the 20 m speed measurements, the post-test data (3.44 ± 0.139) were more favorable than the pre-test data (3.47 ± 0.135). table-9. comparison of pre-test and post-test of agility measurements of futsal control group. variable tests average standard deviation z p right pre test 3,96 0,112 2,768 0,006 post test 3,93 0,103 left pre test 4,02 0,115 2,076 0,038 post test 3,99 0,138 the results of the pre-test and the post-test for agility for the control group were compared (table 9). according to the results of the tests, there was a difference between the pre-test and the post-test in the right and left measurements (p<0.05). in right measurements, the post-test data (3.93 ± 0.103) was more favorable than the pre-test data (3.96 ± 0.112). in the left measurements, the post-test data (3.99 ± 0.138) were more favorable than the pre-test data (4.02 ± 0.115). table-10. comparison of pre-test and post-test of aerobic endurance measurements of futsal control group. variable tests average standard deviation z p yo-yo pre test 1127,00 82,660 3,070 0,002 post test 1164,00 80,420 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 219-225 224 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in table 10 the results of the pre-test and the post-test for endurance in the control group were compared. according to the results, there was a difference between the pre-test and post-test in the yo-yo measurements (p<0.05). in the yo-yo measurements, the post-test data (1164.00 ± 80.420) was more favorable than the pre-test data (1127.00 ± 82.660). 3.3. comparison of pre-test and post-test of futsal experimental and control group table-11. comparison of pre-test and post-test of anthropometric measurements of experimental and control group. variable tests group average standard deviation z p height (cm) pre-test futsal (g1) 173,20 5,926 1,342 0,183 futsal (g2) 175,45 5,781 post-test futsal (g1) 173,70 5,939 1,372 0,170 futsal (g2) 176,00 5,912 weight (kg) pre-test futsal (g1) 63,02 8,718 1,177 0,242 futsal (g2) 64,34 6,169 post-test futsal (g1) 62,39 8,516 1,150 0,253 futsal (g2) 63,70 6,143 at this stage of the study, a comparison of the pre-tests and the post-tests for the experimental and control group was conducted. in terms of the anthropometric measurements of the experimental and the control groups, there was no difference between the pre-tests and post-tests for the height and weight measurements (table 11). table-12. comparison of pre-test and post-test of speed measurements of experimental and control group. variable tests group average standard deviation z p 10m speed test (sec) pre-test futsal (g1) 1,75 0,084 0,421 0,674 futsal (g2) 1,74 0,060 post-test futsal (g1) 1,69 0,085 4,521 0,000 futsal (g2) 1,73 0,064 20m speed test (sec) pre-test futsal (g1) 3,46 0,164 0,122 0,903 futsal (g2) 3,47 0,135 post-test futsal (g1) 3,39 0,162 3,694 0,000 futsal (g2) 3,44 0,139 in terms of the speed measurements between the pre-tests and post-tests for the experimental and control groups, it was determined that there was a significand difference. while there was no difference between the experimental group and the control group in terms of the pre-test results for the 10 m speed test (p>0,05), there was a difference in the post-test results (p<0.05). the 10 m speed measurements of the experimental group (1.69 ± 0.085) developed more positively than the control group (1.73 ± 0.064). while there was no difference between the experimental group and the control group in terms of the pre-test results for the 20 m speed test (p>0.05), there was a difference in the post-test results (p<0.05). the 20 m speed measurements for the experimental group (3.39 ± 0.162) developed more positively than the control group (3.44 ± 0.139). table-13. comparison of pre-test and post-test of agility measurements of experimental and control group. variable tests group average standard deviation z p right pre test futsal (g1) 4,01 0,100 1,341 0,180 futsal (g2) 3,96 0,112 post test futsal (g1) 3,85 0,145 3,842 0,000 futsal (g2) 3,93 0,103 left pre test futsal (g1) 4,05 0,098 0,813 0,416 futsal(g2) 4,02 0,115 post test futsal (g1) 3,87 0,121 3,618 0,000 futsal (g2) 3,99 0,138 when the results of the pre-test and post-test of agility measurements for the experimental and control group was compared (table 13), it was found that while there was no difference between the experimental group and the control group in terms of the pre-test results of the right measurements (p>0.05), there was a difference in the post-test results (p<0.05). the right measurements for the experimental group (3.85 ± 0.145) developed more positively than the control group (3.93 ± 0.103). while there was no difference between the experimental group and control group in terms of the pre-test results for the left measurements (p>0.05), there was a difference in the post-test results (p<0.05). the left measurements of the experimental group (3.87 ± 0.121) developed more positively than the control group (3.99 ± 0.138). table-14. comparison of pre-test and post-test of aerobic endurance measurements of experimental and control group. variable tests group average standard deviation z p yo-yo pre-test futsal (g1) 1098,95 120,273 0,635 0,531 futsal(g2) 1127,00 82,660 post-test futsal (g1) 1188,00 124,292 3,481 0,000 futsal (g2) 1164,00 80,420 when the results of pre-test and post-test for aerobic endurance measurements of experimental and control group were examined (table 14), while there was no difference between the experimental group and the control group in terms of the pre-test results of the yo-yo measurements (p>0,05), there was a difference in the post-test asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 219-225 225 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group results (p<0.05). the yo-yo measurements of the experimental group (1188.00 ± 124.292) developed more positively than the control group (1164.00 ± 80.420). 4. conclusion speed, agility, and endurance become recognized as important for players’ high performance and success. an increase in the players’ speed, agility, and endurance positively affects their performance. training programs for players are significant in increasing the players’ speed, agility, and endurance. determining the appropriate training program is important for the development of players and for improving their skills. the effect of the futsal training programs on the players’ speed, agility, and endurance was examined in this study. at the end of the study, it was concluded that the agility training of futsal players attending university for six weeks had an effect on aerobic endurance. similarly, balcıoğlu, 2018 implemented a six-week futsal training program for 12-14 year old boys in his study and pointed out that the agility skills of the children developed positively. alvurdu, 2016 implemented an eight-week futsal training program for 16 futsal players on the team under 14. at the end of the study, it was determined that the agility skills of the players had developed positively. since futsal is a game based on agility and speed and the players are involved in the game dynamically, futsal training programs have become important. futsal players have to be speedy and durable and demonstrate high performance in harmony with the dynamic gameplay in order to be successful. for this reason, the effectiveness of the futsal training becomes significant. this study was limited with 24 male players playing in the school futsal team and a six-week training program references açak, m., karademir, t., taşmektepligil, y., & çalışkan, e. (2012). comparison of agility and visual reaction time of hearing-impaired futsal athletes. selcuk university journal of physical education and sports sciences, 14(2), 283-289. alvurdu, s., köse, m. g., & cinemre, s. a. (2016). evaluation of the relationship between anaerobic power and repetitive ability to change direction in futsal players. gazi journal of physical education and sports sciences, 21(1-4), 29-37. baktaal, d. g. (2008). the research about plyometrics training models on vertical jump ın 16-22 age female volleyball players. master thesis university of çukurova, adana. bangsbo, j., iaia, f. m., & krustrup, p. (2008). the yo-yo intermittent recovery test. sports medicine, 38(1), 37-51.available at: https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200838010-00004. barbero-alvarez, j., soto, v., barbero-alvarez, v., & granda-vera, j. (2008). match analysis and heart rate of futsal players during competition. journal of sports sciences, 26(1), 63-73.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02640410701287289. bompa, t. o., & buzzichelli, c. (2018). periodization-: theory and methodology of training (pp. 114-144): human kinetics. clemente, f., couceiro, m., martins, f. m., & mendes, r. (2012). team's performance on fifa u17 world cup 2011: study based on notational analysis. journal of physical education and sport, 12(1), 13-17. dündar, u. (2003). training theory. ankara: nobel publishing. fox, e. l., bowers, r. w., foss, m. l., & mathews, d. k. (2011). the physiological basis of physical education, translation and compilation: mesut cerit. ankara: spor publishing house and bookstore. günay, m., tamer, k., & cicioğlu, i. (2010). sports physiology and performance measurement. ankara: gazi bookstore. karavelioğlu, m. b. 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[motor control. initalian.]. bologna: ii mulino. ocak, y., & buğdaycı, s. (2012). futsal. istanbul: bedray publishing. sert, r. (2015). investigation of some factors affecting percentage of shots in indoor soccer. master thesis university of afyon kocatepe, afyon. sönmez, m. (2014). the effects of agılıty and sustaıned speed practıce on performance in karate. master thesis university of haliç, health sciences institute, i̇stanbul. unver, r. (2011). comparison of anaerobic power, force measurements and body composition parameters in elite young wrestlers. master thesis university of kırıkkale, kırıkkale. weineck, j. (2011). condition training in football. (t. bağirgan trans.). ankara: sports publishing and book house. weston, m., castagna, c., impellizzeri, f. m., rampinini, e., & abt, g. (2007). analysis of physical match performance in english premier league soccer referees with particular reference to first half and player workrates. journal science med sport, 10, 390–397.available at: 10.1016/j.jsams.2006.09.001. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 482 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 482-487, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.482.487 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluation of the effects of core-quick strength and core-plyometric studies on balance, agility and strength traits of volleyball players uğur devri̇m1 kâmil erdem2 ( corresponding author) 1,2marmara university, faculty of sports sciences, i̇stanbul, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to investigate the effects and differences of two different strength training models on balance, agility and strength traits of volleyball players. 45 female athletes aged 12.08 ± 0.82 who played volleyball in a private club participated in the study. the athletes who participated in the study were divided into three groups as core-plyometric (krp) (n=15), corequick strength (krc) (n=15) and control (knl) (n=15) groups. within the scope of the study, krp group performed plyometric training after core training and krc group performed quick strength training after core training. the knl group continued their volleyball training the trainings were conducted 2 days a week for 8 weeks. height, weight, bmi, t-test, standing long jump test, flamingo balance test and throw-in test were applied to all three groups before and after the study. the data obtained in the pre and post test were evaluated with a statistics package program and the significance level was determined as p<0.05. the one-way anova test and paired-samples t-test were used for statistical analysis. as a result, a significant difference was found in the standing long jump test in all three groups (p <0.05). throw-in and flamingo balance tests showed a significant difference in the krp and krc groups (p<0,01), but not in the knl group (p>0,05). t-test showed significant difference in krp and krc groups (p<0.05), but no significant difference was found in knl group (p>0,05). when the differences between the groups were examined,no significant differences were found between the averages as a result of height, standing long jump, throw-in and flamingo balance tests (p>0.05),and the krc group showed significantly more improvement than the knl group in the t-test. keywords: plyometric, balance, agility, core, strength, volleyball. citation | uğur devri̇m; kâmil erdem (2019). evaluation of the effects of core-quick strength and core-plyometric studies on balance, agility and strength traits of volleyball players. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 482-487. history: received: 26 june 2019 revised: 1 august 2019 accepted: 9 september 2019 published: 11 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 483 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 483 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 484 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 485 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 486 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.482.487&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1059 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4211-0967 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9930-7691 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1059 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4211-0967 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9930-7691 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1059 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4211-0967 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9930-7691 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1059 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4211-0967 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9930-7691 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 482-487 483 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the effects and differences of two different strength training models on balance, agility and strength traits of volleyball players. 1. introduction volleyball involves movements consisted of technical and tactical skills of different intensity performed in an aerobic environment in terms of playing time (gabbett et al., 2007; busko et al., 2013). biomotor traits such as high aerobic and anaerobic endurance, strength, flexibility, speed, agility, balance, reaction are also effective in game performance (gonzález et al., 2011; bazyler et al., 2018; sopa and pomohaci, 2018). sudden changes in direction, jumping in different positions and agility trait involving speed changes affect performance in volleyball (sheppard et al., 2008). agility is body control and the ability to change direction suddenly (barnes et al., 2007). in another definition, it is described as a locomotor skill that enables the body to change its direction as fast, smooth, easy and controlled as possible while moving between two points (turner, 2011). the static and dynamic balance adequacy of core area muscle groups which provide connection between body, legs and arms also affects agility (makhlouf et al., 2018). in addition, the strength development of the core area has a positive effect on the balance system of the body and provides support to the movement economy and positively affects the power output (herrington and davies, 2005; carpes et al., 2008; mcgill, 2010). the balance feature, which is one of the important parameters of physical movements (hrysomallis, 2011) is known to play an important role in successful exhibition of many sports skills, in changing direction, stopping, moving an object, maintaining certain position of the body and preventing injury (oliver and di brezzo, 2009; shubert et al., 2010). in almost all sports branches, the most successful athletes have superior control over the center of gravity and therefore their balance traits are at the highest level (roetert, 2001). in order to develop the explosive force which is another effective physical feature in volleyball, the force and speed relationship should be at the highest level. in this context, plyometric training is one of the most used methods (haghighi et al., 2012). plyometric study is a kind of neuromuscular studpaly that leads to the development of explosive force to use maximum force at minimum time (nikseresht et al., 2014). in-game jumping skills should be developed sufficiently for players to practice spike and block techniques well. in a study they conducted, reeser and bahr (2017) reported that volleyball players jump between 30,000 and 40,000 times in a year. therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the parameters that affect the ability to jump in all kinds of training practices aimed at increasing the sporting performance of volleyball players. another training method which can be implemented on the ability to jump in volleyball is the quick strength training. the quick strength training is an important type of training used in the development of agility, strength and jump (rodríguez et al., 2017). the movements used in volleyball should be quick and the techniques should be proper. therefore, the training practices that combine strength trainings with speed should be consistent with the volleyball technique (bompa and carrera, 2003). within the framework of this approach, the aim of this study is to investigate the effects and differences of two different strength training models on balance, agility and strength traits of volleyball players. 2. materials and methods 45 licensed female athletes playing volleyball were included in this study. at the beginning of the training sessions, the athletes were homogeneously distributed to 3 groups according to the pre-test results by using the pairing method. there was no significant difference between the averages of the groups and the one-way anova test results. the athletes were divided into 3 groups as core-plyometric (krp) (n=15, age: 12,0±0,83 years, weight: 55,6±6,2 kg, height: 168,7±4,33), core-quick force (krc) (n=15, age: 12,1±0,79 years, weight: 40,7±3,74 kg, height: 165,7±4,39 cm) and control group (knl) (n=15, age: 12,2±0,86 years, weight: 56,5±8,03 kg, height: 167,9±7,63 cm). the krp group participated in plyometric training after core training and the krc group participated in quick strength training. the knl group continued traditional volleyball training. a total of 16 sessions were conducted for 8 weeks, 2 days a week. in the training days, the sessions consisted of 4 phases. these were; the warm-up phase, core-plyometric and core-quick force training practices, volleyball-specific technicaltactical training of the coach and finishing phase. in order to avoid differences in the study, predefined standard warm-up drills were implemented in all three groups. preliminary and final tests were performed in the study. height and weight measurements were taken as the anthropometric measurements, throw-ins and standing long jumps were used as the strength test the flamingo balance test and t-test were also implemented. care was taken to ensure that the coaches performing the tests were the same during both test periods. the participants were asked to rest completely before testing. height and body weight: length measurements were taken with a wall-mounted wall scale. all heights were taken while the heels were in contact with the platform perpendicular to the hip and scapula and the subjects were in an upright position (weiner and lourie, 1969). body weight measurements were taken using a digital display scale with a sensitivity of 0.01 kg. during the measurements, the heavy equipment of the subjects other than the shorts and t-shirts were removed (weiner and lourie, 1969). body mass index (bmi): the ratio of body weight to height was calculated by using this formula: weight (kg)/height (m)2. agility measurements: t-test was used (semenick, 1990). 4 cones, tape measure and photocell were used. the athletes were asked to run a total distance of 36.57 meters in as short a time as possible. the time was recorded in seconds. balance measurements: the flamingo static balance test was applied (sipal, 1989). the aim is to determine how many seconds the static balance of the subject is within one minute. the shortest execution time was discarded and the best of the two execution times was taken and recorded as the test score. strength tests: throw-in and standing long jump tests were implemented. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 482-487 484 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group throw-in test: measures the circumference of the shoulder-chest muscles and the strength of the flexor muscles. the subjects threw the medicine ball forward with both hands, from a fixed distance with both arms above their head and their feet lined up. the shot was repeated 3 times and the best result was recorded in cm (kamar, 2008). standing long jump test: subjects jumped forward with both legs without stepping on the start line and the measurements were taken at the heel of each athlete's leg behind. each subject repeated the jump 3 times and the best value was recorded as the measurement (ratamess, 2012). data analysis: at the beginning of the study, the level of significance for the whole procedure was determined as p<0.05 and the statistical procedures were performed using the program spss 23.0 for windows. the data obtained in the pre and post tests were evaluated with the statistical package program and the significance level was determined as p<0.05. the shapiro-wilk test was used to determine the distribution of the parameters used in the study. the one-way anova test was used to analyze the differences between the groups, and the pairedsamples t-test was used for statistical analysis of the differences within the groups. 3. findings table-1. descriptive statistics of krp, krc and knl groups. parameters krp krc knl p avg±sd avg±sd avg±sd age (years) 12,06±0,83 12,1±0,79 12,2±0,86 0,80 height (cm) 168,7±4,33 165,7±4,39 167,9±7,63 0,61 weight (kg) 55,6±6,2 50,7±3,74 56,5±8,03 0,32 bmi (kg/m²) 19,5±1,85 18,2±1,15 19,9±1,72 0,01 p<0,5 bmi: body mass index. in table 1, as a result of the statistical analysis, it was concluded that there was a significant difference only in the bmi values of the participants in terms of demographic data and there was no significant difference between the other traits (p>0.05). table-2. the one-way anova test results: preliminary test for biomotor traits between krp, krc and knl groups. parameters krp krc knl p avg.±sd avg±sd avg±sd t-test (sec) 10,5±0,39 10,3±0,32 10,6±0,45 0,06 throw-in (cm) 665,3±97,2 647±96,3 725,6±104,2 0,18 flamingo (sec) 6,7±1,1 6,2±0,8 6,2±0,9 0,29 horizontal jump (cm) 164,0 ±17,1 176,0±14,3 172,2±12,8 0,12 in table 2, there was no statistically significant difference between the krp, krc and knl groups in any of the pretest values (p>0,05). table-3. the averages of differences in biomotor traits related to physical fitness of the krp group, standard deviation values, percentages of variation and paired t-test values. parameters n avg±sd % p t-test (sec) 15 0,13±0,24 1,00 0,04 throw-in (cm) 15 25,3±26,9 3,8 0,03 flamingo (sec) 15 1,8±1,3 26,9 0,00 horizontal jump (cm) 15 4,0±5,75 2,9 0,01 **p<0,01; *p<0,05: t-test, throw-in, flamingo, horizontal jump. in table 3, according to the paired t-test results, there was a statistically significant difference in the preand post-test values of the t-test, throw-in and horizontal jump tests of the krp group (p<0.05). there was a statistically significant difference in preand post-test values of the flamingo test (p<0,01). table-4. the averages of differences in biomotor traits related to physical fitness of the krc group, standard deviation values, variation percentages and the paired t-test values. parameters n avg±sd % p t-test (sec) 15 0,15±0,24 1,9 0,04 throw-in (cm) 15 56,2±60,3 8,9 0,003 flamingo (sec) 15 1,6±1,6 25,8 0,002 horizontal jump (cm) 15 6,7±10,4 3,9 0,02 **p<0,01; *p<0,05: t-test, throw-in, flamingo, horizontal jump. table-5. averages of differences of biomotor traits related to physical fitness of knl group, standard deviation values, percentages of variation and paired t-test values. parameters n avg±sd % p t-test (sec) 15 0,02±0,39 0,2 0,80 throw-in (cm) 15 8,5±12,6 1,2 0,02 flamingo (sec) 15 0,6±1,3 11 0,08 horizontal jump (cm) 15 1,5±3,04 0,8 0,07 *p<0,05: throw-in. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 482-487 485 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in table 4, when the pre and post tests of the krc group were evaluated, a significant difference was found in t-test and horizontal jump tests (p<0.05), and a significant difference was found in throw-in and flamingo tests (p<0.01). in table 5, when the pre and post tests of the control group knl were evaluated, a significant difference was found only in the throw-in test (p<0.05). no significant difference was found in other biomotor traits (p>0,05). table-6. the biomotor traits between the krp, krc and knl groups and the last one-way anova test results. parameters krp krc knl p avg±sd avg±sd avg±sd t-test (sec) 10,4±0,51 10,1±0,32 10,6±0,37 0,01 throw-in (cm) 690,6±96,1 703,2±106,7 734,2±106,2 0,55 flamingo (sec) 4,9±1,7 4,6±1,6 5,5±1,6 0,27 horizontal jump (cm) 168,8±17,4 182,8±17,2 173,7±12,3 0,06 *p<0,05: t-test. in table 6, ın the post-test values of the krp, krc and knl groups, only the t-test results showed that the krc group was significantly more developed than the knl group (p <0.05). there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of other biomotor traits in post-test values (p>0,05). table-7. correlation table of the development rates between parameters. parameters throw-in flamingo t-test horizontal jump throw-ins 1 -0,171 0,051 -0,011 flamingo 1 0,101 0,182 t-test 1 0,101 horizontal jump 1 n=45, *p<0,05. when table 7 is examined, the difference between pre-tests and post-tests, i.e. developmental values, does not show a significant relationship when looking at the relationship between each other. no relationship was found between the developing and non-developing dimensions according to the analysis. 4. results the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of two different strength training models on balance, agility and strength traits as well as the differences of volleyball players. in volleyball, motoric traits such as strength, quickness, agility, balance directly affect performance. in order to have an effective performance during the game, it is necessary to make proper training programming in accordance with the development of these traits which are the requirements of volleyball. volleyball is a sport where high jumps, falls and movements involving sudden changes of direction are quite present. having the body at the most balanced position during the execution of these movements is very important for the achievement of these skills. in this context, it is known that balance skill, which forms the basis of performance and which is at the center of conditional abilities, plays an important role in successful performance of many technical skills and in maintaining certain positions of the body (agostini et al., 2013; erdoğan et al., 2017; sarto et al., 2019). with core training, the body control and balance are improved, strength of many large and small muscle groups is increased, the risk of injury is reduced and efficiency in or between movements is increased due to increased balance (mcgill, 2006; willardson, 2007). this study is in parallel with the presented study. in another study, the improvement in balance performance was not significant after a nine-week core training program applied to volleyball players (sharma et al., 2012). this study differs from our study, as core training is used as the single training method. in the present study, it was found that plyometric and quick force studies combined with core applications both had an effect on balance. the relationship between force and speed plays an important role in the performance of volleyball. agility development can be achieved by plyometric and strength training applications. agility performance shows the greatest change between the ages of 12-13 and with the plateau reached, is known to develop less until the age of 15-16 (vescovi et al., 2011). this was taken into account in the age preference of the working groups. research shows that plyometric and strength training practices are linked to agility development (bozdoğan and kızılet, 2017; can et al., 2017; furqoni and sudijandoko, 2019). in another study, pamuk and ozkaya (2017) concluded that resistant plyometric training was effective in the development of agility. schultz et al. (2015) concluded that there is an important relationship between strength and agility. there are studies with different opinions that are not similar to the studies that show parallelism in the correlations with the literature results related to the presented study. bozdoğan and kızılet (2017) examined the effect of coordination and plyometric studies on agility, jump and endurance traits and found no significant difference in agility traits in the plyometric training group. volleyball is a sport in which the vertical and horizontal jumps are very frequent. volleyball player's ability to jump is an important factor in the success of the team in terms of performance (bompa and carrera, 2003). it is necessary to have the necessary muscle strength in order to perform explosive skills or defensive movement correctly. muscle strength required in sports branches can be achieved by plyometric and strength training (neagu et al., 2018). therefore, strength and plyometric trainings are used to increase the jumping skills (harmandeep et al., 2015). research on the subject has shown that plyometric training is effective in jumping and agility skills (fathi et al., 2018; voisin and scohier, 2019). in a study conducted with volleyball players, it was reported that plyometric training significantly improved leap and agility values (hale et al., 2019). in another study, abade et al. (2019) concluded that horizontal and vertical strength training they implemented had a positive effect on the jump performance. in a similar study, fathi et al. (2018) applied plyometric training to adolescent volleyball players. as a asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 482-487 486 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group result of the study, it was concluded that strength development was changed positively with plyometric training. in another study examining upper and lower extremity strength, ateş and ateşoğlu (2007) concluded that plyometric training had a positive effect on both upper and lower extremity strength. in the presented study, the practice groups, similar to the literature, shown improvement in the horizontal jump and throw-in values. in this respect, it can be said that core, strength and plyometric trainings have positive effects on jump, balance and strength. in the presented study, the effects of plyometric and quick strength training, when combined with the core training, on agility, strength and balance traits were investigated. plyometric and quick strength training combined 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the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 159 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 159-165, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.159.165 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group analysis on loneliness levels of students in summer school of physical education and sports school nahit ozdayi1 ali serdar yücel2 mehmet burak demir3 ( corresponding author) 1balıkesir university, department of coaching education balıkesir, turkey 2fırat university, faculty of sports sciences, elazığ, turkey 3directorate of national education, physical education teacher, elazığ, turkey abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze the loneliness levels of students studying in 2017-2018 summer school of balıkesir university school of physical education and sports by some demographic characteristics. this is a descriptive study. the research population is composed of 865 students studying in 2017-2018 summer school of balıkesir university school of physical education and sports and the sample is composed of randomly selected 348 students. “ucla loneliness scale” adapted into turkish by demir (1989) was applied in the study. the overall reliability of the loneliness scale was found to be α = 0.74. kolmogorov smirnov test was evaluated for the conformity of ucla loneliness scale to the normal distribution in data analysis. since all data were observed not to be normally distributed, mann whitney u and kruskal wallis tests ranked among the non-parametric tests were performed to compare the loneliness levels. all analyses were performed with spss v17.0 (spss science, chicago, il, usa). in conclusion, it has been determined that the loneliness levels of the participants are high (51.07%), there is no statistically significant difference by the variables of sex, age, adequate leisure time, recreation and the place of residence while significant differences have been observed by the variables of department, branch and grade. keywords: loneliness, student, summer school, sports, physical education, psychology citation | nahit ozdayi; ali serdar yücel; mehmet burak demir (2019). analysis on loneliness levels of students in summer school of physical education and sports school. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 159-165. history: received: 16 november 2018 revised: 12 december 2018 accepted: 23 january 2019 published: 21 february 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 160 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 160 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 161 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 164 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 164 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 164 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/399 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.159.165&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4543-4123 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 159-165 160 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction a sport is a very important communication tool that creates an opportunity to establish close relationships. those who do sports express that they don’t experience the phenomenon of loneliness by acquiring a social environment, thus gaining new friendships. a sport is considered as a social behavior that addresses our body and soul. sport is effective in ensuring the social harmony of the individuals and securing their mental and physical health (balcıoğlu, 2003). rogers (2003) states that loneliness is the state that occurs as a result of the inability of an individual to socialize and establish relationships with others. social relations are of great importance in people’s lives. in recent years, people are said to be unable to make meaningful relationships with other people due to technological developments and rapid industrialization (saraçoğlu, 2000; özçelik et al., 2014). buluş (1996) states that the most important complaints of people are “being alone”, “being isolated” and “losing the personality”. social mobility, the remodeling of sexual roles, mass media and popular trends have led to the emergence of a new and more conscious attitude in many people towards their own bodies. however, the reasons that prompt most people to do sports are not limited to the movement and body. the need to establish a relationship, the fear of being alone, the need to be a social being are as effective as the desire to be athletic and healthy (baumann, 1994). when we look at the psychological needs that direct the individual to sports, the socially-attributed motives being among the secondary motives (features such as getting a place in society, being recognized and being a popular person with her/his absence felt among friends) (kuru, 2000). loneliness can be a short-term situational feeling every individual can feel while some people experience this feeling more frequently and this can become a part of her/his personality over time (imamoglu, 2008). the concepts of loneliness and being alone seem to be different from each other although they bear similarities. while loneliness is generally a condition that disturbs the individual, being alone can be a desired situation (geçtan, 2004). 1.1. types of loneliness a feeling of loneliness basically carries specific characteristics in each individual. each loneliness experience has its own psychological and human aspect, a specific temporal expansion (borgna, 2015). nevertheless, the experiences of loneliness were examined by researchers after classifying them in terms of their qualities and dimensions. loneliness was addressed by mcwhirter (1990) with the dimensions of interpersonal loneliness, psychological loneliness, social loneliness, cultural loneliness and cosmic loneliness: yahyaoglu (2011) analyzed loneliness as deep loneliness, social status loneliness, emotional loneliness, secret loneliness and triad loneliness: in light of these explanations, the purpose of our study is to analyze the loneliness levels of students studying in school of physical education and sports summer school by some demographic characteristics. the loneliness levels of students were analyzed in terms of the variables of sex, age, grade, adequate leisure time, sports branch and department. 2. material and method 2.1. research population and sample in this study, data were obtained by reaching 348 participants among 865 students studying in 2017-2018 summer school of balıkesir university physical education and sports school. 2.2. data collection 2.2.1. ucla loneliness scale in order to determine the loneliness level of individuals, russel, peplau and cotrana have revised ucla scale (university of california los angeles loneliness scale) in such a way that half of the items are composed of positive statements while the other half contains negative statements (demir, 1989). ucla loneliness scale is composed of 20 items with straight-coded 10 items and reverse-coded 10 items. the purpose here is to determine how often the participants experience these situations by presenting emotions and/or thoughts about the social relations of the individual with the items of the scale. this is a 4-point likert scale. the items with positive statements (1,4,5,6,9,10,15,16,19,20) in the scale are scored as “i never feel this way (4)”, “i rarely feel this way (3)”, “i sometimes feel this way (2)”, “i often feel this way (1)”. the items with negative statements (2,3,7,8,11,12,13,14,17,18) are scored as “i never feel this way (1)”, “i rarely feel this way (2)”, “i sometimes feel this way (3)”, “i often feel this way (4)”. the highest score that can be obtained from the scale is 80 and the lowest score is 20. the higher the score is, the higher the loneliness level becomes. the validity of the scale was found as .50 following its analysis based on “beck depression scale”. demir (1989) found the internal consistency coefficient as .96 in the validity and reliability study. test retest reliability coefficient of the scale was calculated as .94. in the study of yıldırım (2000) performed on the group of 545 high school students, the reliability coefficient of the scale was .92. when the analyses related to ucla loneliness scale have been evaluated, it is seen that ucla loneliness scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool. 2.3. data analysis kolmogorov smirnov test was evaluated for the conformity of ucla loneliness scale to the normal distribution in data analysis. since all data were observed not to be normally distributed, mann whitney u and kruskal wallis tests were performed to compare the loneliness levels. all analyses were performed with spss asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 159-165 161 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group v17.0 (spss science, chicago, il, usa). the value of p<0.05 was taken into account while calculating the intergroup statistical differences. 3. findings table-1. one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov normal distribution test results ucla loneliness scale n 348 normal parametersa,b mean 51.0747 std. deviation 6.37901 most extreme differences absolute .131 positive .131 negative -.047 kolmogorov-smirnov z 2.446 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .000 source: obtained from primary data the conformity of ucla loneliness scale to the normal distribution was evaluated with kolmogorov smirnov test. it is observed that data don’t distribute normally (kolmogorov-smirnov z = 2.446, sig=.000, p<0.05). table-2. man whitney u test statistics – sex results ucla loneliness scale mann-whitney u 14332.000 wilcoxon w 28528.000 z -.842 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .400 source: obtained from primary data table-3. ucla loneliness scale mean scores by sex mean ucla loneliness scale female male 51.06 51.10 source: obtained from primary data hypothesis: loneliness level of participants do not differ by the variable of sex mann whitney u test will be applied to understand whether ucla loneliness scale differs by sex. man whitney u test result will be used to see if there is any difference between two sexes in terms of responses given to loneliness scale. the main hypothesis of the analysis states that there is no difference between sexes. the probability value (asympsig) calculated following the test was found to be higher than 0.05. the main hypothesis can’t be rejected. therefore, there is no statistical difference between the results of the responses given by women and men to the ucla loneliness scale. table-4. kruskal wallis test statistics – age results ucla loneliness scale chi-square 2.619 df 2 asymp. sig. .270 source: obtained from primary data table-5. ucla loneliness scale mean scores by age mean ucla loneliness scale 17-20 21-25 26-30 51.61 51.40 49.78 source: obtained from primary data hypothesis: loneliness level of participants do not differ by the variable of age kruskal wallis test will be applied to understand whether ucla loneliness scale differs by age. kruskal wallis test result will be used to see if there is any difference between ages in terms of responses given to loneliness scale. the main hypothesis of the analysis states that there is no difference between ages. the probability value (asympsig) calculated following the test was found to be higher than 0.05. the main hypothesis can’t be rejected. therefore, there is no statistical difference between age groups regarding the responses given to the ucla loneliness scale. table-6. mann whitney u test statistics – branch results ucla loneliness scale mann-whitney u 11514.500 wilcoxon w 26220.500 z -3.865 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .000 source: obtained from primary data asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 159-165 162 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. ucla loneliness scale mean scores by branches mean ucla loneliness scale team sports individual results 52.50 49.60 source: obtained from primary data hypothesis: loneliness level of participants do not differ by the variable of branch mann whitney u test will be applied to understand whether ucla loneliness scale differs by branches. mann whitney u test result will be used to see if there is any difference between branches in terms of responses given to loneliness scale. the main hypothesis of the analysis states that there is no difference between branches. the probability value (asympsig) calculated following the test was found to be lower than 0.05. the main hypothesis will be rejected. therefore, there is a statistical difference between branches regarding the responses given to the ucla loneliness scale. the mean score of answers given by the group engaged in team sports to ucla loneliness scale was found higher while the score of those engaged in individual sports was found lower. table-8. adequate leisure time and recreation results count column n % adequate leisure time absolutely inadequate 33 9.5% inadequate 77 22.1% normally adequate 208 59.8% absolutely adequate 30 8.6% recreation always 32 9.2% sometimes 242 69.5% never 74 21.3% source: obtained from primary data the responses of participants on the adequacy of the weekly leisure time have been evaluated. 9.5% of the participants state that it is absolutely inadequate, 22.1% thinks it is inadequate, 59.8% considers it as normally adequate, 8.6% expresses that it is absolutely adequate. as to the question of how often you have difficulty in recreation, 9.2% of the participants says always, 69.5% says sometimes and 21.3% says never. table-9. kruskal wallis test statistics – adequate leisure time results ucla loneliness scale chi-square 2.052 df 3 asymp. sig. .562 source: obtained from primary data table-10. ucla loneliness scale mean scores by adequate leisure time responses mean ucla loneliness scale absolutely inadequate inadequate normally adequate absolutely adequate 51.76 50.49 51.00 52.33 source: obtained from primary data hypothesis: loneliness level of participants do not differ by the variable of adequate leisure time kruskal wallis test result will be used to understand whether there are differences between responses given to loneliness scale and responses given to the question of adequate leisure time. the main hypothesis of the analysis states that there is no difference between answers given to the question of adequate leisure time. the probability value (asympsig) calculated following the test was found to be higher than 0.05. the main hypothesis can’t be rejected. therefore, there is no statistical difference between responses given to ucla loneliness scale and responses given to the question of adequate leisure time. table-11. kruskal wallis test statistics – recreation results ucla loneliness scale chi-square 1.411 df 2 asymp. sig. .494 source: obtained from primary data table-12. ucla loneliness scale mean scores by recreation mean ucla loneliness scale always sometimes never 51.69 50.92 51.32 source: obtained from primary data hypothesis: loneliness level of participants do not differ by the variable of recreation kruskal wallis test will be applied to understand whether ucla loneliness scale differs by the answers on recreation. kruskal wallis test result will be used to understand whether there are differences between responses given to loneliness scale and responses given to the question of recreation. the main hypothesis of the analysis states that there is no difference between answers given to the question of recreation. the probability value (asympsig) calculated following the test was found to be higher than 0.05. the main hypothesis can’t be rejected. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 159-165 163 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group therefore, there is no statistical difference between responses given to ucla loneliness scale and responses given to the question of recreation. table-13. kruskal wallis test statistics – department results ucla loneliness scale chi-square 8.473 df 2 asymp. sig. .014 source: obtained from primary data table-14. ucla loneliness scale mean scores by departments mean ucla loneliness scale physical education and sports teaching sports management coaching education 50,26 52,14 50,57 source: obtained from primary data hypothesis: loneliness level of participants do not differ by the variable of department kruskal wallis test will be applied to understand whether ucla loneliness scale differs by departments. kruskal wallis test result will be used to understand whether there are differences between departments in terms of answers given to the loneliness scale. the main hypothesis of the analysis states that there is no difference between departments. the probability value (asympsig) calculated following the test was found to be lower than 0.05. the main hypothesis will be rejected. therefore, there is a statistical difference between departments in terms of responses given to ucla loneliness scale. while the mean scores of responses given by the participants studying in sports management to the ucla loneliness scale are higher, the mean scores of the participants studying in physical education and sports teaching department are the lowest. table-15. kruskal wallis test statistics – grade results ucla loneliness scale chi-square 17.163 df 3 asymp. sig. .001 source: obtained from primary data table-16. ucla loneliness scale mean scores by grades mean ucla loneliness scale 1 2 3 4 46.00 47.50 50.49 51.91 source: obtained from primary data hypothesis: loneliness level of participants do not differ by the variable of grade kruskal wallis test will be applied to understand whether ucla loneliness scale differs by grades. kruskal wallis test result will be used to understand whether there are differences between grades in terms of answers given to the loneliness scale. the main hypothesis of the analysis states that there is no difference between grades. the probability value (asympsig) calculated following the test was found to be lower than 0.05. the main hypothesis will be rejected. therefore, there is a statistical difference between grades in terms of responses given to ucla loneliness scale. the mean score of answers given by the fourth grade participants to the ucla loneliness scale is higher while the mean scores of first grade students are the lowest. table 17. kruskal wallis test statistics – place of residence results ucla loneliness scale chi-square 1.247 df 2 asymp. sig. .536 source: obtained from primary data table-18. ucla loneliness scale mean scores by place of residence mean ucla loneliness scale dormitory with family student house 51.06 51.04 51.10 source: obtained from primary data hypothesis: loneliness level of participants do not differ by the variable of place of residence kruskal wallis test will be applied to understand whether ucla loneliness scale differs by place of residence. kruskal wallis test result will be used to understand whether there are differences between places of residence in terms of answers given to the loneliness scale. the main hypothesis of the analysis states that there is no difference between places of residence. the probability value (asympsig) calculated following the test was found to be higher than 0.05. the main hypothesis can’t be rejected. therefore, there is no statistical difference between places of residence in terms of responses given to ucla loneliness scale. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 159-165 164 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion in this study aiming to analyze the loneliness levels of students studying in 2017-2018 summer school of balıkesir university school of physical education and sports by some demographic characteristics, no statistically significant difference has been found between the loneliness levels of students by the variable of sex (p>0.05). in the study of ceçen (2008) examining “loneliness and social support levels of university students by their sex and attitude perception of parents”, it has been expressed that loneliness levels don’t differ by the main effect of sex, female and male students have similar loneliness perceptions. looking at loneliness scale scores by the variable of age, it is highest in the students of 17-20 age group (mean 51.61). they are followed by people in 21-25 age group (mean 51.40) and in 26-30 age group (mean 49.78). we can say that there is an inverse relationship between age increase and loneliness level. in a study analyzing the effect of age on loneliness level, koçak (2008) has quoted that loneliness is most common in adolescence. in a research conducted by steptoe et al. (2004) on working women and men at the age of 47-59, they haven’t established a relation between loneliness and age. when the ucla loneliness scale results are compared in terms of the branches, the scores of the team sports group are higher than those engaged in individual sports. in other words, the loneliness perception of those engaged in team sports is higher. this result hasn’t been supported with the relevant literature. in the book of kuru (2000) compiling the researches conducted regarding personality traits and sports branches, the athletes of team sports have been stated to be more extrovert, outgoing and socially compatible individuals. the athletes of individual sports are expressed to be more introvert and closed with an emphasis on the sense of belonging and on the pleasure provided by self-realization and proving that they have succeeded this on their own. in the study of morgan (1999) the athletes of individual sports have more positive personality traits; however, there is no difference between their loneliness levels. in another similar study performed by sheykh et al. (2006) loneliness levels of 100 athletes of individuals sports and 100 basketball players have been compared and no significant difference has been observed. considering the responses of the participants about the adequacy of weekly leisure time, 8.6% of the participants (mean: 52.33) have stated that it is absolutely adequate. the loneliness scale mean scores of the group stating that leisure time is absolutely adequate have been found to be higher than other participants. namely, the students with adequate leisure time are more alone. analyzing the ucla loneliness scale scores by the variable of department, a statistically significant difference has been observed between them. while the mean responses given by the participants studying in sports management to the ucla loneliness scale are higher, the mean scores of the participants studying in physical education and sports teaching are the lowest. low loneliness scores of students studying in physical education and sports department indicate that these students are self-confident, friendly and social individuals who act in accordance with the environment in social situations, can empathize and interpret the feelings of others accurately and fully, have the skills of initiating and directing conversations in any subject as defined in the study of avşar (2004) titled determining the social skill levels of physical education and sports students. there is a statistical difference between ucla loneliness scale scores by the variable of grade. the mean score of answers given by the fourth grade students to the ucla loneliness scale is higher while the mean scores of first grade students are the lowest. in other words, the loneliness perception of fourth grade students is higher. the fact that the fourth grade students are about to graduate and the stress they feel about employment may be the reason they feel alone. 5. conclusion in conclusion, it has been determined that loneliness levels of the participants (51.07%) are high and no statistically significant difference exists by the variables of sex, age, adequate leisure time, recreation and place of residence. 59.8% of the participants state that their leisure time is adequate while 69.5% have stated to have problems in making use of their leisure time from time to time. looking at the mean scores of answers given to ucla scale, it has been determined that the highest scores belong to those studying in sports management by the variable of department, to the participants engaged in team sports by the variable of branch and to the fourth grade students by the variable of grade. references avşar, z., 2004. determination of social skills levels of physical education and sport teachers. journal of faculty of education, 17(2): 111130. balcıoğlu, i̇., 2003. sociology and psychology of sport. istanbul: bilge publications. baumann, s., 1994. applied sports psychology. 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(translated by meryem mine çilingiroğlu). istanbul: yapı kredi publications. buluş, e.m., 1996. the relationship between locus of control and loneliness level. dokuz eylul university, izmir, unpublished master uns thesis. ceçen, a.r., 2008. examination of loneliness and social support levels of students according to their gender and parental attitudes. turkish journal of educational sciences, 6(3): 415-431. demir, a., 1989. in validity and reliability of ucla loneliness scale. journal of psychology, 7(23): 14-18. geçtan, e., 2004. being human. istanbul: metis publications. imamoglu, s., 2008. an investigation of interpersonal relations in terms of gender, gender roles and loneliness perception in young adulthood. unpublished phd thesis. istanbul: marmara university institute of educational sciences. pp: 9. koçak, e., 2008. self-esteem and trait anger and expression of anger expression as a predictor of loneliness in adolescents. unpublished master socials thesis, cukurova university institute of social sciences, adana. pp: 3. kuru, e., 2000. psychology in sport. ankara: gazi university faculty of communication publishing. mcwhirter, b.t., 1990. loneliness: a review of current literature, with implications for counseling and research. journal of counseling & development, 68(4): 417-422. available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1990.tb02521.x. morgan, w.p., 1999. psychological outcomes of physical activity. basic and applied sciences for sport medicine, 24: 273-279. özçelik, y.i., o. imamoglu, r. çekin and b.s. gölünük, 2014. the effect of sports on the university students’ level of loneliness. journal of sports and performance researches, 6(1): 12-18. available at: 10.17155/spd.18840. rogers, c., 2003. interaction groups. 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exam anxiety and social support. journal of hacettepe university faculty of education, 18: 167-176. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 292 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 292-298, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.292.298 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group impact of teaching experience on teachers attitude towards the use of instructional television (itv) in bayelsa state nigeria nemine, ebi-bulami bridget1 akinbowale olakunle akintunde2 ( corresponding author) 1department of social science education, faculty of education, niger delta university. wilberforce island amassoma bayelsa state, nigeria 2vocational and technical education, faculty of education, university of benin, nigeria abstract the main thrust of this study is to find out the teachers‟ attitude generally toward instruction television (itv), also to find out the impact of length of work experience on its use. this survey study was carried out in selected secondary in ekeremor lga of bayelsa state. the mannwhitney u test was used in the analysis because it is based on ordinal scale intervals. on the general attitude of teachers towards the use of instructional television, the smaller u (47) is higher than the critical u is (2.3) the null hypothesis was rejected and retained the alternate hypothesis of there is no significant difference in attitude and secondary school teacher towards the use of (itv). also, the use of itv based and the length of teaching experience, the computed u value (32) and the smaller u is (3.0), the null hypothesis was rejected and retained the alternate hypothesis of there is no significant difference in attitude among secondary teachers with different length of teaching experience towards the use of instruction television in ekeremor l.g.a of bayelsa state nigeria. the study portrayed that they have a favorable disposition towards the use of itv and it was recommended that some television stations should broadcast well tutored and design suitable lesson to learners. keywords: attitude, teaching experience, instructional television (itv), instructional designers, education, tv programs. citation | nemine, ebi-bulami bridget; akinbowale olakunle akintunde (2019). impact of teaching experience on teachers attitude towards the use of instructional television (itv) in bayelsa state nigeria. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 292-298. history: received: 15 january 2019 revised: 18 february 2019 accepted: 20 march 2019 published: 12 april 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 293 2. purpose of the study ..................................................................................................................................................................... 293 3. data analysis technique .............................................................................................................................................................. 294 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 296 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 297 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 297 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 297 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.292.298&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/418 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1949-7945 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1732-3602 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/418 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1949-7945 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1732-3602 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/418 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1949-7945 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1732-3602 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/418 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1949-7945 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1732-3602 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 292-298 293 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction many developing nations are witnessing tremendous increase in the number of school age children in the past ten years according to a united nations reports, (a phenomenon sometimes regarded as population outburst in these nations) the educational system in most of these nations is stretched beyond the perimeter most schools could accommodate. many classrooms lack subject/class teachers, yet children go to school and they are taught. these nations including the country nigeria are looking out for alternative teaching strategies that are as effective as a live teacher. these as given birth to many online and offline distance education programs. instructional television set (itv) is one of the offline strategies adopted. however, it has been observed that it is common knowledge that for any alternative teaching/learning strategy to be productive, that approach, must be acceptable to both teachers and students in the schools, even in different location. in the mid 1990‟s the use of television set entered into its fifth decade as a mass medium and bloomed from an isolated, expensive, kind of restricted business to what some as referred to as the television set of abundance. television set is now one of the most easily accessible for use in education not only via over-the-air but by cable tv systems, all of which may be linked by satellite relays (reddi, 1987). most vast libraries of programs are now made available as audio and video tapes. portable video recorders enables instructors and their students to create their own materials. with this development, the television set now represents many things and is a rich resource for instruction and training. all this has led to the birth of the term instructional television set or itv. itv refers to any planned use of broadcast television or video programs to meet specific instructional goals regardless of the source of the programs or setting in which they are been used. this includes commercial broadcasts, business and industry training programs. aluko (2004) noted that ict application includes video conferencing, tele-working, distance learning, management information system (mis), stock taking/counting, technologies which can be said to include a broad array of technologies ranging from the “old” ones such as radio and television to “new” ones such as cellular and mobile innovations. itv is a veritable tool for educational broadcasting. ajiyeleye (2017) described it as any instructional materials which emanated from a teacher situated in a remote location (life or recorded) in a studio. the recording is fed to a transmitter which in turn sends the information (through the air wave) to the receiver at another location. through that, the instruction gets to the learner for whom the broadcast was intended. ajiyeleye (2017) further explained that the radio and the television are referred to as the traditional media which the teacher uses to interact and interface. abimbade (2016) in ajiyeleye (2017) enumerate the objectives of educational broad casting. they are as follows:  to strengthen the nations education enterprise by minimizing in balances and maximizing educational opportunities in the rural schools handicapped by lack/shortage of qualified staffs and equipment‟s.  to increase the quality of learning (education) through the use of sound teaching methods and supplementary audio – visual materials.  to assist in teaching subjects where trained school subject teachers are in short supply.  to improve attendance rates at all levels by motivating pupils by means of interesting programs materials, audio-visual techniques and increased personal attention in large classes.  to assist in curriculum reforms through swift and effective delivery.  to promote civic cognizance and national unity via civic programs both at the primary and secondary levels through the phased introduction and use of indigenous or national language  to disseminate information‟s of interest, to promote and keep teachers up to date on curricular innovations and practices.  to assist/participate in teacher training programs, at both pre-services and in-services through employment of new media techniques. ogunlade (1987) as cited in nemine (2000) stated that studies and experiments carried out by many schools and researchers particularly in the westernized countries show television as one of the many techniques utilized in the understanding of the instructions given to pupils particularly in the field of science. he went further to say that available evidence from empirical literature shows that pupils learn fast and very effectively when they are taught through television.  television pictures short circuit mental process by appealing directly to the senses and they become a substitute to the physical sensation of an actual experience.  television teaching is tremendously real and immediate. its two-fold engagement of the eye and the ear bring students into contact with the events in an exciting and clarifying way. television is a means by which teachers and students share a common experience.  it is been discovered that the television is capable not only of breaking through time and space but also bridging the educational gap between the urban and the rural areas, especially in low income countries people see places they have not visited or may not have opportunity to reach through television. 2. purpose of the study  the average family in ekeremor community in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state has a television set and a video player with which they watch and a video player with which they watch home videos as there is a giant electric power generating plant installed by the government.  the irony of this is that the researcher has observed with dismay that though teachers are aware of the importance of the instructional television (itv), they hardly make use of it for instructional purposes even when and where the resources are made available. what is their attitude towards the use of the instructional television set is what this research work seeks to answer. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 292-298 294 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.1. research hypothesis 1. there is a significant agreement in attitude among school teachers towards the use of instructional television set (itv) as an ict tool in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state. 2. the attitude of school teachers towards the use of instructional television as an ict tool in ekeremor local government area will be affected as a result of difference in length of teaching experience. 2.2. methodology this is a survey type of research and the main thrust of this findings is to find out the attitude of teachers towards the use of offline technologies like the instructional television (itv). 2.3. population the population for the study was made up of teachers drawn from the eleven (11) schools in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state. 2.4. sample/sampling technique the subject for the study was taken from eleven (11) schools among the twenty-two (22) communities that make up ekeremor local government area. these schools were used because they are all in rural setting which is an interest to the researcher. the simple random sampling techniques was used to select the sample size. 2.5. instrumentation and questionnaire design a questionnaire tagged teacher attitude towards with focus on instructional television (taitv)) was use to gather desired information. it was flexibly designed to elicit required information from the respondent. the questionnaire was divided in two parts comprising section a (demographic data) and section b contain fifteen items. section a was designed to get some basic demographic information from the respondents. these information include name of school, teaching subject, qualification, years of teaching experience, gender whether male or female. the demographic questionnaire was also designed to compare and ascertain whether there are significant differences in attitude of teachers towards the utilization of the television as an instructional tool, as regards difference in educational qualification either the nigeria certificate in education nce, bachelor of education (b.ed.) degree, post graduate diploma in education (pgde), masters in education m.ed. and equivalents. the researcher also want to use the demographic data that will be gathered from the questionnaire to find out if the differences in years of working experiences, gender and areas of teaching subjects (arts or science) has anything to do or make any differences in the attitude of teacher towards the use of the instructional television. section two of the instrument is made of a five point likert scale questionnaire. it was made up of fifteen (15) questions with five point alternative opinion on attitude of teachers for the respondents to choose from. it was designed to find out opinions on given statements as per the use of the itv. 2.6. data collection the questionnaire was administered to one hundred and ten (110) teachers in the eleven schools for the research work. 2.7. validity and reliability of the instruments the instruments was peer reviewed to ensure that items answered the research questions and measures what it is supposed to measure to ensure validly. a reliability index of 0.68 was obtained which guaranteed the reliability of the instrument for this study. 2.8. method of data analysis the items in the questionnaire were grouped in relation to the research questions. the data obtained in the process of the investigation were pooled together and analyzed according to the demands of the research questions. for each research question, the responses were collected, marked and reduced to simple percentages and table constructed for the purpose of analysis. the mann-whitney u test was used in the analysis because the data is based on ordinal scale intervals. 3. data analysis technique in this study the statistical tools used in the analysis of the data collected are the mann-whitney u-test and the spearman rank order correlation coefficient. the mann-whitney u-test was used for the first hypothesis. this was adopted based on the questionnaire design and the fact that the questions of the testing of hypothesis were based on ordinal scale interval. the spearman rank-order correlation coefficient was used to test hypothesis two. formula: for mann-whitney u – test u = n, n2 + n, ( n – 1 ) – r or u = n, n2 + n, ( n2 + 1) 2 2 where: r, = the sum of ranks assigned to the sample with size n2 the volumes for u can be obtained by using the above two formula formula: for spearman rank – order correlation coefficient rs = 1 – 6 ∑d2 n3 – n asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 292-298 295 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group where ∑d2 = sum of squared difference in the ranking of the subject on the two variables n = number of subject being marked 3.1. testing of hypothesis one h0: there is no significant agreement in attitude among secondary school teacher towards the use of instructional television set in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state. h1: there is a significant agreement in attitude among secondary school teachers towards the use of instructional television set in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state. teacher attitude which agree with the use instructional television, the sum of the rank, r, 113 and the sum of the rank of teachers which disagree with instructional television r2 is 97 table 1. therefore, the u statistical can now be computed thus: u = n, n2 + n, ( n – 1 ) – r or u = n, n2 + n, ( n2 + 1) 2 2 where r, = the sum of ranks assigned to the sample with size n, r2 = the sum of ranks assigned to the sampled with size n2 the volumes for u can be obtained by using the above two formula 1st formula u = 11 (9) + 11 (11 + 1 ) – 113 2 u = 11 (9) + 11 x 6 – 113 u = 99 + 66 – 113 u = 53 2nd formula = u – 11 (9) + 9 (9 + 1) – 97 2 u = 11(9) + 9 x 5 = 97 u = 99 + 45 – 97 u = 4.7 in testing the null hypothesis we use 4.7 if 4.7 is equal to or less than the tabulated u value accept null hypothesis otherwise reject null hypothesis with a significant level of 0.5, using a critical u value having n, = 11 and corresponding to n2 = 9 u is 2.3. since the smaller u (4.7) is higher than the critical u 2.3, we therefore reject null hypothesis and accept alternate hypothesis that there is no significant difference in attitude among secondary school teachers towards the use of instructional television (itv) in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state. table-1. this table below shows the response to question 6 and 13 from the respondents. s/n teachers number of occasion in use response in attitude rank agreed rank disagreed 1. 1 1 2. 2 1 3. 3 2 4 4. 4 2 4 5. 5 2 4 6. 6 3 7 7. 7 3 7 8. 8 3 7 9. 9 4 9.5 10. 10 4 9.5 11. 11 5 11 12. 12 6 12.5 13. 13 6 12.5 14. 14 7 14.5 15. 15 7 14.5 16. 16 8 16 17. 17 9 17 18. 18 10 18.5 19. 19 10 18.5 20. 20 12 20 ∑r = 113 ∑r2 = 97 source: field work (2019). 3.2. hypothesis two h0: there is no significant difference in attitude among secondary school teacher with different length of teaching experience towards the use of instructional television in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state. h1i: there is significant difference in attitude among secondary school teachers with different length of teaching experience towards the use of instructional television in ekeremor local government of bayelsa state. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 292-298 296 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. this table below shows the responses to question 14 and 15 form the respondents. s/n teachers length of teaching experience response in attitude rank agreed rank disagreed 1. 1 2 20 2. 2 2 2 3. 3 2 2 4. 4 3 4 5. 5 4 6. 6 4 7. 7 5 7.5 8. 8 5 7.5 9. 9 6 9.5 10. 10 6 9.5 11. 11 7 11 12. 12 8 12 13. 13 9 13 14. 14 10 14 15. 15 11 15 16. 16 13 16 17. 17 15 17.5 18. 18 15 17.5 19. 19 18 19 20 20. 20 20 ∑r1 = 77 ∑r2 = 133 source: field work (2019). teacher attitude which agree with instructional television, based on length of teaching experience, the sum of the rank, r, is 77 and the sum of the rank of teachers which disagree with instructional television based on teaching experience is r2 is 133 table 2. therefore, the u statistical test can now be computed, thus: u – n, n2 + n, (n, + n, ) r1 2 or u = n, n2 + n, ( n1 + 1 ) r2 2 where r1 = the sum of ranks assigned to the sample with size n1 r2 = the sum of ranks assigned to the sample with size n2 the value for u can be obtained by using the above two formulas. 1st formula u = 9 (11) + 11 (11+1) – 77 2 u = 9 (11) + 9 x 5 – 77 u = 99 + 45 – 77 u = 67 2nd formula = u = 9(11) + 11(11+1) – 33 2 u = 9 (11) + 11 x 6 – 133 u = 99 + 66 – 133 u = 32 in testing the null hypothesis we use 32 which is the lesser of the two computed values 4. findings the study is based on the assumption that an assessment of teacher attitude towards the use of the instructional television set would eventually provide great support in high lighting factors impeding its use so as to enable concerned bodies. that is, media technologist to develop a more suitable format for use (yusuf and balogun, 2011). the findings is also designed to examine factors responsible or factors that must have result to a negative or positive attitude in teachers in post primary schools on the use of itv set. thus the discussion is based on the findings predicated on the earlier stated hypothesis. it‟s worth noting that there is no significant difference in teacher‟s attitude, negatively or positively towards the use of instructional television set. it is proven from teachers‟ response that there are no neutral or passive towards the use of itv set. they have a favorable disposition towards its use. this means they have a positive attitude toward the use of instructional television set. from the items in the structured questionnaire, they identified the use of television set as instructional, result driven and motivational, time saving and also stimulate discussion class etc. it also revealed that they preferred to use the video recorder as against other devices of itv. this finding implies that they want itv set equipment that will suit formal school time i.e. presented within their school. their responses also show that educational programs broad casted from television set stations were general, fast in presentation and may not serve meaningful instructional purposes. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 292-298 297 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group they are also aware of the problems involved and what is needed to make the use of the different devices of the itv more effective. this include production defects such as poor quality of picture and sound, in adequate equipment‟s, poor funding, good instructional design within comprehension of learners taking in cognizance the environment i.e. water terrain and educational background of recipients thus one can emphatically say that, if the materials are provided and considered by the government or any other agency teachers will not see itv as a threat to their jobs but welcome and effectively use this timely innovation in the teaching and learning process. there is no significant difference between the length of teaching experience and teachers‟ attitude towards the use of instructional television set. both teachers‟ with long and short experiences in the teaching field from their responses showed favourable disposition to the use of itv. it is also mentioning that no teacher responded has come in contact with close circuit television (cctv) for instructional purposes. this portray that the frequency of utilization of any given instructional medium depends largely on the availability of that medium and not the length of years in the teaching profession. in other words teachers can only use media found at their disposal or resort to the former teacher centered form of taking lecture or talk –chalk method (achuonye and ajoku, 2013). from the responses one can see that both teachers who graduated long ago when the television was not recognized as an instructional tool for formal education have the same positive attitude towards its use. the modern day teachers and their older counterparts who are sometimes referred to as „colonial‟ or „old‟ teachers because they passed through the basic rudiments of teaching in the teachers training colleges all recognize the usefulness or the television for instruction. this may be attributed to the quest for higher level of educational qualification as a result of the government decision to make the nigerian certificate of education (n.c.e) the lowest qualification for teachers in the country (national policy on education, 2010). 5. conclusion the following conclusions were made on this findings and discussion of the study. 1. since findings shows that teachers have a positive attitude towards the use of the instructional television set (itv), it shows that if adequate facilities are made available and the quality of programming is improved, the instructional method would be utilized more effectively (yusuf and balogun, 2011). 2. good operative educational materials and equipment‟s that will achieve the aims and objectives of the use of itv set be sent to schools. 3. in service courses, seminars and workshops, should be organized in updating the skill and knowledge on the use and many advantage of the itv and proper funding should be carried out by the government, philanthropist, oil companies, well-meaning bodies. for example parents teachers association (pta) stakeholders etc. 4. according to mohoanty (1992) the television is a new and sophisticated technology. to prove useful, it has to be properly integrated within the educational system, which is old, traditional, closed, well-guarded and very slow to accept innovations. 5. it is worth mentioning that in spite of the above comment, the television set has gained great acceptance and therefore the government and other well-meaning bodies should provide necessary fund and adequate facilities to see its proper utilization in secondary schools especially in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state in nigeria. 6. recommendations 1. television set stations should be made to broadcast well tutored and designed instructional lesson suitable to the learner‟s level of education and their environment. 2. teachers should be given pre-transmission information, so as to enable them prepare learners before broadcast 3. educational programs should be broadcasted in the afternoons so as to be useful during formal school time. 4. speed of presentation and language use should be designed to suit learners 5. video cassettes and compact disc on different topics on different subject areas should be properly designed for school use. 6. each school should have resource centers with necessary gadgets were every classroom teacher can go and prepare video lesson etc. for individual class use i.e. cctv (closed circuit television within a school. 7. bayelsa state government should make it a primary concern to have television stations were they can air instructions on different subjects on television for students to benefit at home as was obtainable in the rivers state in the late 80‟s 8. in service courses seminars, workshops etc. be organized on regular basis for all categories of teachers to keep them abreast with, new innovations in education especially pertaining to instructional design. 9. regular needs analysis and evaluation should be carried out to remove obsolete instructional television programs and new ones introduced by professionals in such areas references abimbade, o., 2016. influence of mobile learning training on pre-service social studies teachers' technology and mobile phone self-efficacies. journal of education and practice, 7(2): 74-79. achuonye, k.a. and l.i. ajoku, 2013. foundations of curriculum development and implementation. delta state, nigeria: port hacourt pearl publishers ajiyeleye, m.a., 2017. beyound the theories of educational technology. abuja, nigeria: abuja mat-sunshine prints. aluko, m.e., 2004. some issues on ict for nigeria development. available from www98tm [accessed 6th october 2017]. mohoanty, p.c., 1992. mass media and education. new delhi ashish publishing house. national policy on education, 2010. nigeria. pp: 23-24. nemine, e.b., 2000. teachers attitudes towards the use of instructional television in schools in ekeremor local government area of bayelsa state (master thesis) published. ogunlade, s., 1987. scope and common education factors in the rural area by rural women in selected villages of kwara state, nigeria. international journal of science, 12: 126-129. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 292-298 298 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group reddi, n., 1987. formal education and television. journal of educational television abinagon carfax publishing company, 8(1): 11-20. yusuf, m.o. and m.r. balogun, 2011. student-teachers' competence and attitude towards information and communication technology: a case study in a nigerian university. contemporary educational technology, 2(1): 18-36. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 166 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 166-175, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.166.175 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an investigation into the logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic curriculum ekrem ziya duman1 gamze aslan2 ( corresponding author) 1gazi faculty of education, gazi university, ankara, turkey 2gazi educational institute, gazi university, ankara, turkey abstract textbooks have attained an essential position with the student-centered approach. accordingly, curricula are developed based largely on constructivist approach. since textbooks are prepared in accordance with the curriculum, they are therefore constructivist approach-oriented. as a result, textbooks are the reflection of the curriculum. the mistakes in textbooks can directly affect learning in a negative manner. additionally, the visuals, reading texts, preparation and evaluation questions in textbooks should be on a par with the outcomes in the curriculum in regard to level and structure. in this study, three of the textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum were examined in terms of physical features, distribution by units, their congruence to the curriculum, language and expression, scientific content, print-typesettingorthography, reading texts, preparation and evaluation questions, and bibliography. from this aspect, this study is qualitative. document review method was adopted in this study. it was discovered that the evaluation questions in the textbooks framed to measure the outcomes were under the outcome levels. to exemplify, the questions taxonomically at the evaluation level were found to be corresponding to the knowledge and comprehension levels, it was further explored that most errors were detected in the elements of print-typesetting-orthography. keywords: textbooks, logic, curriculum, logic instruction, scientific content, preparation questions, evaluation questions. citation | ekrem ziya duman; gamze aslan (2019). an investigation into the logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic curriculum. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 166-175. history: received: 20 november 2018 revised: 17 december 2018 accepted: 25 january 2019 published: 21 february 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 167 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 167 3. findings and remarks ................................................................................................................................................................... 167 4. findings and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................... 174 5. suggestions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 174 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 175 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.166.175&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/400 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1965-1378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8057-5522 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/400 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1965-1378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8057-5522 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/400 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1965-1378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8057-5522 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/400 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1965-1378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8057-5522 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 167 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction teaching activities aim at effective student learning. textbooks, in this sense, are extremely important. the preparation questions, activities, unit evaluation questions and examples play a vital role in effective teaching. by taking into account the problems from practice in program development, the research results are used which will provide changes in the direction of research, development and student behaviors. for this reason, the identification of drawbacks in logic textbooks written in accordance with the curricula and thus making observations and suggestions are extremely significant. this can also provide assistance with the writing of new textbooks and development of new curricula (duman, 2014). textbooks are primary instruments that facilitate education/training activities and enable the regular and systematic implementation of education and training. textbooks also serve as a bridge in conveying the fundamental values aimed to be acquired by students (duman, 2014). textbooks are complementary materials for the achievement of learning objectives. they are resources of learning experiences for both teachers and students. in addition, they contribute to students‟ cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills (duman, 2014). 1.1. purpose of the study the education of philosophy group comprises disciplines of philosophy, sociology, and logic. these disciplines address questions about the existence, knowledge, and value of human and universe (dombayci and kiziltan, 2017). the purpose of logic course is to raise individuals who can transfer true thinking methods into daily life. it further aims to raise individuals who can think independently by noticing contradictions, provide solutions to the encountered problems, and ground their ideas (bicer, 2013). the main purpose of the study is to examine the logic textbooks written by elci, karaveliogullari and topakkaya developed in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum. from this perspective, the textbooks were examined to find out whether they are congruent to the criteria determined from physical, contextual, scientific, etc. aspects. 1.2. significance of the study the errors in textbooks might result in wrong or inadequate learning to a certain extent. textbook examinations are therefore salient. the workshops organized by the ministry of education to identify the errors in textbooks and the studies of error correction support this view hence increase the importance of scholarly work. for these reasons, it is significant to examine the logic textbooks prepared in accordance with the current logic course curriculum for high schools from several aspects (contextual, scientific, language and expression, etc.). 1.3. limitations this research deals with the textbooks by elci, karaveliogullari and topakkaya; therefore is limited to three textbooks. 2. method within the framework of survey model, a review of literature about the subject was conducted in this research. from this aspect, this is a descriptive research. by scrutinizing the examined logic textbooks pursuant to various criteria, evaluations were made. according to sonmez and alacapinar (2017) it is important in qualitative research to evaluate the documents according to the structure of the culture and the meanings attributed to it. the document review used in the study includes analysis of written materials with information on the concept or concepts targeted to be investigated (yildirim and simsek, 2016). the materials to be used as data in document review are closely related to the research problem. for example, the documents to be used as data in a study related to education are textbooks, program (curriculum) instructions, intramural and extramural correspondence, course and unit plans, and etc. resources (yildirim and simsek, 2016). in this study, logic course curriculum and logic textbooks are included. the research is based on document review with this aspect. 3. findings and remarks 3.1. 2009 logic course curriculum the program includes the general objectives of the turkish national education. the vision of the program is explained as educating individuals who can transfer true thinking to daily life, think coherently, perceive contradictions, think independently, produce solutions to the problems they face and can base their thoughts on. (meb, 2009). provided two hours a week, the logic course curriculum was prepared by planning seventy-two hours course time in an academic year. logic course curriculum includes general objectives, units, outcomes and examples of activities. the general objectives of the logic course are explained as follows (meb, 2009): the students who complete the logic course will be able to; 1) reach the knowledge that logic is related to reasoning which is a form of thinking, 2) recognize their own ways of thinking, 3) transfer ways of true thinking to daily life, 4) have the ability to be consistent when thinking, 5) control the consistency of thoughts, 6) express everyday language with logic language, 7) use the language correctly and carefully when transferring their opinions, 8) develop awareness against conflicting thoughts, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 168 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 9) justify the accuracy of information, 10) develop characteristics of being systematic and careful. 3.2. the imprints of logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum table-1. the imprints of logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum title page author editionvolume publishing date publishing house date of acceptance issue dimension logic 160 textbook for secondary schools elci 2017 cem 2014 106 19,5x27,5 logic 159 textbook karaveliogullari 2013 semih 2012 46 19,5x27,5 logic 160 textbook topakkaya 2nd ed. 2012 meb 2010 237 19,5x27,5 source: elci (2017), karaveliogullari (2013) and topakkaya (2012) according to the criteria set by the ministry (of education), high school logic textbooks should be in the range of 8-10. a form corresponds to 16 pages. considering that the authors are allowed to have the front pages of the book in half form, in this context, the logic textbook can be up to 168 pages. it is seen that the criteria determined in this respect are observed in the books reviewed. in addition, the dimensions of the books are in accordance with the determined criteria. 3.3. unit distributions of the logic textbooks written in accordance with 2009 the logic course curriculum in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum, the logic course is structured under four units. table-2. the units and durations of the logic course curriculum number of unıt outcomes title of unit the percentage of unit in the program course distribution/hour number of in the program unit i introduction to logic %20 14 hr 7 outcomes unit ii classic logic %30 22 hr 19 outcomes unit iii logic and language %20 14 hr 7 outcomes unit iv symbolic logic %30 22 hr 20 outcomes total %100 72 hr 53 outcomes source: meb (2009). the units that should be included in the textbooks and the percentage ratios to be allocated to these units are given in the logic course curriculum. therefore, the ratio of units in books should be compared with the ratios in the program. whether the units are sufficiently placed in the books or there is any excessive or missing parts can thus be determined (duman, 2014). 3.3.1. unit title: introduction to logic the percentile determined by the ministry is: 20% table-3. the number of pages and percentages for introduction to logic unit in the logic textbooks author percentile edition dimension total page number calculated total calculated page number page number allocated for the unit percentile in the total page elci 18,57 2017 19,5x27,5 160 140 26 16,25 karaveliogullari 17,60 2013 19,5x27,5 160 142 25 15,62 topakkaya 20,42 2012 19,5x27,5 160 142 29 18,12 source: elci (2017), karaveliogullari (2013) and topakkaya (2012) when the data obtained are analyzed, the logic textbooks by elci and karaveliogullari are found to be closer to each other in both the percentage of the total page and the percentages calculated. however, the logic book by topakkaya varies between 2% and 3%. when the percentile determined by the ministry is taken into consideration, it has been determined that the books other than the topakkaya book are in accordance with the percentile. 3.3.2. unit title: classic logic the percentile determined by the ministry is: 30% table-4. the number of pages and percentages for classic logic unit in the logic textbooks author percentile edition dimension total page number calculated total calculated page number page number allocated for the unit percentile in the total page elci 30 2017 19,5x27,5 160 140 42 26,25 karaveliogullari 28,87 2013 19,5x27,5 160 142 41 25,62 topakkaya 28,16 2012 19,5x27,5 160 142 40 25 source: elci (2017), karaveliogullari (2013) and topakkaya (2012) asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 169 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when the percentages of the classic logic unit on the total page are examined, it is observed that the rates of each of the three books are close to each other. besides, when the percentages calculated are examined, it is observed that classic logic is given a 1% 0.50% emphasis in elci's logic textbook. however, all three books are compatible with the percentile of the ministry. 3.3.3. unit title: logic and language the percentile determined by the ministry is: 20% table-5.the number of pages and percentages for logic and language unit in the logic textbooks author percentile edition dimension total page number calculated total calculated page number page number allocated for the unit percentile in the total page elci 18,57 2017 19,5x27,5 160 140 26 16,25 karaveliogullari 18,30 2013 19,5x27,5 160 142 26 16,25 topakkaya 20,42 2012 19,5x27,5 160 142 29 18,12 source: elci (2017), karaveliogullari (2013) and topakkaya (2012) when the calculated percentile results and the percentile results on the total page are examined, it is seen that the logic textbooks by elci and karaveliogullari are closer to each other. in addition, the book by topakkaya was found to be 2% higher in both measurements. considering the percentile determined by the ministry, the book by topakkaya includes 0.42% more of this unit while the other two books do not exceed the determined percentile. 3.3.4. unit title: symbolic logic the percentile determined by the ministry is: 30% table-6. the number of pages and percentages for symbolic logic unit in the logic textbooks author percentile edition dimension total page number calculated total calculated page number page number allocated for the unit percentile in the total page elci 32,85 2017 19,5x27,5 160 140 46 28,75 karaveliogullari 35,21 2013 19,5x27,5 160 142 50 31,25 topakkaya 30,98 2012 19,5x27,5 160 142 44 27,50 source: elci (2017), karaveliogullari (2013) and topakkaya (2012) when the total page percentiles of the “symbolic logic” unit are examined, it can be seen that the books by elci and topakkaya are close to each other while karaveliogullari‟s book exceeds the determined percentile by 34%. on the other hand, when the percentages calculated are examined, it is seen that the rate of excess is observed in the logic textbook of karaveliogullari. in addition, when the books are analyzed according to the percentile of the ministry, it is seen that the percentile calculated in all three books is more than the specified percentile. according to duman and arslan (2017) when the unit and course duration distributions in the curriculum are examined, the units are not distributed equally within the curriculum such that 14 hours are allocated for seven outcomes in the “introduction to logic” unit while 22 hours are allocated for 20 outcomes in the “symbolic logic” unit which should have more practice activities. this disproportion is also reflected on the textbooks. 3.4. the congruence of the logic textbooks to the 2009 logic course curriculum the following topics should be included according to the 2009 logic course curriculum (meb, 2009): the first unit is introduction to logic. in this unit, what is accurate thinking, basic concepts, principles of reasoning, areas of application of logic, logic and practical life, logic and technique, logic and science, logic and philosophy are included. the second unit, classic logic, includes concept and terms, whatness-reality-identity, intenseion-extension, types of concepts, five universals, concepts‟ relationship to one another, description, what is proposition, types of propositions, what is inference, direct inference, counterfactual inference, conversion, indirect inference, what is comparison, rules of comparison, logical necessity and probability in comparison, and types of comparison. the third unit, logic and language, encompasses different functions of language, information transfer and language, factors that hinder information transfer, polysemy, uncertainty, factual and verbal arguments, comprehension and identification. the fourth unit, symbolic logic, covers introduction to logic, propositional logic, proposition and its structure, simple and compound propositions, propositional connectives, inference, symbolization, interpretation, truth table, analytic table (tree method), consistency-validity-equivalence, logic of quantization (predicate logic), symbolization, basic concepts, basic rules, multi-valued logic, three-valued logic, and fuzzy logic. the logic textbooks by elci and karaveliogullari encompass all the headings in the curriculum. the logic textbook by topakkaya cover such subheadings as identity, non-contradiction, the impossibility of the third state and the principle of sufficient reason under the heading of “the principles of the mind” in the first unit. additionally, the second unit covers the heading of “aristoteles and logic” which is not included in the curriculum. also, the fourth unit covers the headings such as consistency, validity, and equivalence. apart from these differences, the contents of the book are in align with those determined in the curriculum. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 170 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.5. language and expression in the logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum all three books can be claimed to be appropriate for students‟ levels in terms of language and expression such that in elci (2017) book the equivalents of some words used in the same sense were written in brackets such as akil yurutme (comparison), tumevarim (enduction), tumdengelim (deduction), benzesim (analogy). the dates of birth and death of individuals are provided within brackets next to them such as gottfried leibnitz (laypniz) (16461716), with the pronunciation of foreign names transcribed in the native language such as sophocles (sofokles) and jan lukasiewicz (yan lukasiyeviç). in karaveliogullari (2013) book, the equivalents of some words used in the same sense were written in brackets such as akil yurutme (inference), onerme (axiom). the dates of birth and death of individuals are provided within brackets. also, the pronunciation of foreign names transcribed in the native language such as mevlana (1207-1273), porphyrios (porfiryus, m.s. 233-304). in topakkaya (2012) book, the meanings of some words are given in brackets. additionally, the pronunciation of foreign names transcribed in the native language are provided for some names while it is not for others. also, the dates of birth and death of individuals are not given such as bacon (beykın), descartes (dekart), and de morgan (dö morgın). in addition, examples for certain concepts along with descriptions are provided in brackets such as sense (color, smell.etc.), emotion (love, romance, etc.), and superior genus (a genus without any other above it). the meanings of some words are provided within brackets such as “principia mathematica” (matematigin prensipleri). 3.6. the scientific content of the logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum 3.6.1. elci (2017) “reasoning is the result of at least two propositions (p. 18).” this is misinformation because for reasoning there must be a proposition in the form of proving (premise) and a result in the form of proved (conclusion), not at least two propositions. therefore, reasoning requires at least two propositions. however, it would be enough to have one of them as a premise and the other as a conclusion. for instance, there exists reasoning between “all people are smart” and “therefore, some people are smart” (ozlem, 1991). “tumdengelim (deduction): starting from a general principle, it is a kind of reasoning that necessarily enters into objects and events (p. 27).” the term deduction is not a full equivalent of the phrase tumdengelim. that is, deduction is not a reasoning that goes from one element to the next, from a general principle to individual events. in the inference of “all a‟s are b‟s”, “all b‟s are c‟s”, “therefore; all a‟s are c‟s”, there is a relationship between from the whole to the whole not from the whole to the part (ozlem, 1991). therefore, the definition provided in the book is deficient. the proposition of “ali knows how to read” is symbolized with a capital p in the practice part on page 115 in the book. however, capitalized letters should be used for the propositions in symbolic logic. at the very bottom of page 116 in the book, the expression “(p ∧ q) → (p ∧ q) ∴ r” given in a rectangular box is not the symbolized version of the verbal inference. the verbalization of the given inference is wrong. the correct form should be “(p ∧ q) → r, (p ∧ q) ∴ r”. in the last example of the topic “the control of propositional validity” on page 123 in the book, it was asked whether the proposition “(p ∧ q) ∨ (p ↔ q)” is valid. however, the validity of the proposition “(p ∧ q) ∨ (p → q)” was controlled in the table. also, the third line of the proposition “(p → q)” given in the table should have received “d” value while it was analyzed using “y”. this causes a scientific error. on page 124 in the book, the statement that “in order for an inference to be valid, the premise and the conclusion must take at least the value „d‟ together in at least one line.” in the topic “the control of inference validity” is false because inference validity in the truth function table is possible in the same line if there is no case where the premise d is the conclusion y. so an inference can be valid even if all of the premises are wrong. on page 127 in the book, the expression whose analysis was given as “~~q” in the analytical table at the bottom should have been “~~p”. on page 128 in the book, the expression that should have been given as “~ (p ∨ ~q)” in the second step in the analytical table was given as “~ (p ∨ q)” and thus a fallacious analysis. on page 133 in the book, there are significant scientific errors in the example provided within the topic of “the control of propositional validity”. in the “~[(p → q) ∧ (p ∧ ~q)]” proposition, the “∧” connective in the middle converts into “∨” when the negation connective out of the brackets is dispersed within. at the same time, the premises take “~” connective before. the negation connective was not brought before the first premise but before the “p” proposition of the first premise in the analytical table in the book. this is a scientific error. an analysis was also made before the negation connective which should be before the second premise was given, which also points out a scientific error. the “(~p → q)” expression should replace “~ (p → q)”and the “(p ∧ ~q)” expression should replace“~ (p ∧ ~q)”. on page 135 of the book, the question is wrong because the “-“ expression was given instead of the propositional connective that should have been between the first premise of the question in the upper right of the second question. symbolization in quantification was misrepresented on page 138 in the book. it was stated that the proposition that “all beings are mortal” was symbolized by “∀xfx” while the proposition that “some people are students” was symbolized by “∃xfx”. however, the first symbolic form of the proposition should have been as “∀x(fx→öx), with the second as “∃x(fx∧öx)” because the equivalent of the proposition given in the book could be “everybody is mortal” and “some are mortal” in daily life. that is, subject terms are also symbolized in propositions if any and to differentiate between the subject and predicate terms, “→” connective is placed in between in the “∀” quantifier while it was “∧” connective “∃” quantifier. if there are no subject terms, these expressions are not written in symbolization. bearing this in mind, the expressions in the examples at the end of the page provided for the topic asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 171 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group to be understood well were also symbolized wrongly. the symbolization of the four proposed forms of the so-called aristotle frame, as well as information on the false symbolization and how it should be true, confirms the symbolized form. ∃x (fa → fb) given as the symbolic equivalent to the proposition that “some people are hardworking” given in the fourth question in the practice part on page 139 in the book also supports and justifies the aforementioned argument. this shows us the lack of internal consistency in lectures in the book. 3.6.2. karaveliogullari (2013) “reasoning is the result of at least two propositions (p. 15).” this is false information because for reasoning there must be a proposition in the form of proving (premise) and a result in the form of proved (conclusion), not at least two propositions. on page 126 in the book, whether the (p → q), (pvq) ∴ q inference is valid was tested with table. in the testing, the third line received “d” in place of “y” in the testing of the [(p → q)∧(pvq)] →p expression. while lecturing on the symbols used in the quantification logic on page 138 in the book, “a” was used instead of “∀” as a symbol for universal quantification. similarly, “e” was used instead of “∃” as a symbol for particle quantification. these expressions create scientific errors. 3.6.3. topakkaya (2012) “tumdengelim (deduction): a method of reasoning in the form of from the general to the particular or from the whole to the part. example: all developed communities have a high level of education. japan is a developed community. therefore, the level of education in japan is also high.”(p. 29). the term deduction falls short of satisfying the meaning of the term tumdengelim such that deduction is not an execution that goes from the whole to the part, reaching only the individual events from a general principle. it also signifies the transition from the whole to the whole. that‟s why, the description in the book is fallacious. the symbol for “if and only” was displayed as “→” while lecturing the symbols used in propositional connectives on page 115 in the book. however, “if and only” proposition is expressed by “↔”. this false illustration creates a scientific error. the “if and only” proposition on page 117 is again displayed by “→” symbol, creating a scientific error. similar errors were committed on pages 121 and 124. the expression that “he had worked if and only become rich” was symbolized wrongly as p→q on page116. the correct form of the expression should have been p↔q. in the testing of the equivalences of “~ (p∧q), (~p v~q)” propositions through a truth table on page 118, the expression in the third line was shown as “~q” in place of “~p”. 3.7. printing-typesetting-orthography in the logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum one of the questions in the preparation questions section on page 16 of elci‟s logic textbook lacks a question mark. on page 42, the expression which should have been written as “aristoteles logic” was written as “aristoteles logic”. on the same page, the word “aristotelesci” was misspelled as “aristotelestci”. on page 44, the word “beslemeye” was misspelled as “beslemeye”. on page 48, the word “eksiltili” was misspelled as eksiktili”. on page 56, “bir seyin” was misspelled as “bir seyi”. on page 57, the initial letter in the word “ornegin” at the beginning of a sentence was written with a capitalized letter. on page 68, there was no space left between the phrase “karsit onerme”. on page 77, “nelik kavramini” was misspelled as “nelik kavrami”. on the same page, the fourth question was not finalized with a question mark. on page 123, “onermelerin gecerliliginin denetlenmesi” was misspelled as “onermelerin geçerliliginin denetlenme”. on page 138, “filozoftur” was misspelt as “filozftur”. on page 156, while citing a reference, the word “kitabevi” was written as “kitavevi”. on the same page, “cücen” was misspelled as “cücen”. in karaveliogullari‟s logic textbook, “dunya‟nin” was misspelled as “dunyanin” on page 14. on page 29, the word “ucak” was misspelled as “ucuk”. on page 74, the initial letter of the word “gunes” was capitalized. on page 157, “cücen” was misspelled as “cücen” in the references. in topakkaya‟s textbook, the word “bildirme” was misspelled as “bildirisme” on page 82. 3.8. preparation questions in the logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum preparation questions should arouse interest about students‟ immediate vicinity and daily lives. they should arouse students‟ interests and willingness to learn the subject. in addition, they should be congruent to student‟s knowledge and skills. they should further encourage observations, experiments, examinations, and investigations suitable to students‟ levels (duman, 2014). 3.8.1. elci (2017) prior to all lectures in all units of the book, preparation questions are provided. there are five preparation questions in the first unit titled introduction to logic, with eight preparation questions in the second unit classic logic, four in the third unit logic and language, and ten in the fourth unit symbolic logic. when these questions are examined, it can be seen that students are expected to possess knowledge by providing tips despite the lack of lectures. although inferences are not lectured on page 63, the first preparation question asks students make inferences about universal, universal negative, and partial negative propositions with the proposition that “some animals are reptiles”. the second preparation question asks students to replace the underlined words in the given propositions and make new ones. these questions are supposed to be practical. therefore, such questions should be used to support what students have learned after the lectures. since they are not preparatory for the topic in nature, such questions should not be included in the preparation questions section. on page 115, the preparation questions are not preparatory but practical in nature since they are provided before asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 172 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the lecture. such questions should be excluded in the preparation questions section since they cannot be answered by students as they do not know about the topic. these questions may therefore cause students to develop prejudice towards the topic. 3.8.2. karaveliogullari (2013) the preparation questions in this book are given under the name of “let‟s prepare”. in the first unit, introduction to logic, there are five preparation questions, with eight in the second unit classic logic, three in the third unit logic and language, and 11 in the fourth unit symbolic logic. on page 61 in the book, students are asked to write the negative, universal and universal negative of the proposition that “some people are students” without being taught the topic “inferences”. it is wrong to have such questions as a preparation without lectures since these questions are practical in nature. on page 66, are as well practical in nature. the third and fourth preparation questions on page 94 include questions like “which of the above would you agree in a discussion? why? should we be looking at phenomena or just using our logic in the arguments above? explain.” however, there is no statement given above such that there are statements supposed to refer to when answering the first and second. the questions on page 107 are also for practical purposes. 3.8.3. topakkaya (2012) the preparation questions in this book are given under the name of “let‟s prepare”. in introduction to logic unit, there are eight preparation questions, with 14 in classic logic unit, five in logic and language unit, and 11 in symbolic logic unit. while formulating the preparation questions, visuals, tables, and caricatures are utilized. some questions are prepared based on these tables, visuals and caricatures. the preparation questions include yes-no questions along with those that require knowledge and comprehension. students are asked to present and discuss some of the preliminary preparations in the class, which might possibly be to arouse students‟ interests towards the course. however, being many in number, these questions might cause troubles in the course of lectures along with the fact that they are not utilized all the time because of unfavorable class hours. on the other hand, not all preparation questions suffice in terms of their association with daily life, arousing interests towards the topic, and acquiring preliminary knowledge. in symbolic logic unit, some of the preparation questions require students to apply about the topic without being taught the topic. this might lead to problems since students have not yet learned the topic. students might sweat since they have no previous knowledge. in this case, they might develop prejudice towards the topic and think they will never understand the topic or make it. therefore, such exercises should be provided following the lecture so that students who have learnt the topic can reinforce what they have learnt by doing these exercises. 3.9. evaluation questions in the logic textbooks written in accordance with the 2009 logic course curriculum the evaluation questions in the textbooks reinforce the learnt topics and help identify the unlearnt topics. therefore, the conscious, purposeful, and planned formulation of evaluation questions is important (duman, 2014). evaluation questions are a means to demonstrate to what extent the outcomes are acquired by students. in this regard, the questions should be parallel with the outcomes. the outcomes in the logic curriculum and the evaluation questions in the textbooks should be in harmony. it was stated that assessment should aim evaluating students‟ high level skills. however, the outcomes in the higher cognitive knowledge level were scarcely included. this indicates that the assessment objectives do not befit the outcomes in the 2009 logic course curriculum (duman and arslan, 2017). the outcomes in introduction to logic unit in logic course curriculum are in analysis and evaluation categories. the outcomes in classic logic unit belong to the comprehension, analysis, and evaluation categories while those in logic and language unit are in comprehension, analysis, and evaluation levels. the unit titled symbolic logic includes outcomes at the comprehension, analysis, and evaluation levels. 3.9.1. elci (2017) in introduction to logic unit, there are five open-ended, ten true/false, and six multiple choice questions. the open-ended question bases were in the form of “state the difference”, “affect in a positive way, why”, briefly write”, “what, explain”, and “exemplify”. “state the difference” is at the analysis level while the other are at the knowledge and comprehension levels. the true/false questions consist of questions at the knowledge level. the open-ended question bases are in the form of “to which it is an example”, “which one is wrong”, “which one should be brought”, “to which does it congrue” and “which identity principle does it exemplify” and are mostly at comprehension level. the question bases in the first unit of the book introduction to logic are in the form of “what is it”, “describe”, and “explain”. such question bases do not befit the questions at the evaluation level in the outcomes. the classic logic unit has five open-ended, ten true/false, and six multiple choice questions. the open-ended question bases are in the form of “exemplify”, “briefly write”, “how many relations are there, exemplify”, and “what does it mean, what are its conditions, write”. the questions are often at the comprehension level. the true/false questions consist of questions at the knowledge level. the multiple choice question bases are “which of these”, “what kind of proposition is it”, “which one should be brought”, “which of these should be included in the fish term intention”, and “which option is listed in the correct order”. when the questions in the book are examined, it can be seen that they are mostly at the comprehension level. this does not match the curriculum. in logic and language unit, there are five open-ended, ten true/false, and six multiple choice questions. the open-ended question bases are “provide an example”, “write the preventive factors”, “what does it mean, explain and exemplify”, and “describe”. the questions are at the knowledge and comprehension levels. in true/false questions, ten propositions are provided. from this aspect, the questions are at the comprehension level. the multiple choice question bases are “to which does it relate”, “which uncertainty does it exemplify”, “which does it exemplify”, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 173 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group “which of these”, “which”, and “which one should be brought” therefore, the questions are at the knowledge and comprehension levels. when the questions in the book are examined, it can be seen that they do not befit the curriculum since there are questions at the knowledge and comprehension levels. in symbolic logic unit, five open-ended, ten true/false and six multiple choice questions are included. the question bases are “what”, “why, explain”, “what does it mean, exemplify”, write the negation and double negation propositions”, “by describing, state these constants” these questions along with true/false ones are at the levels of knowledge and comprehension. the multiple choice question bases are “which of these”, “what is it called”, “on which does it depend”, “in which is it included”, “which”, and “which should be brought”, all of which are at knowledge and comprehension levels. the questions are generally at the application level. on the other hand, it can be seen that there are questions at the knowledge and comprehension levels other than application level when the questions are examined. 3.9.2. karaveliogullari (2013) in introduction to logic unit, there are eight multiple choice, eight gap-filling, and seven open-ended questions whose bases are “which are not”, “which is wrong”, “which has it”, “which is it”, and “which cannot be inferred” the open-ended question bases are “exemplify”, “explain”, and “what is it” the multiple choice questions along with open-ended and gap-filling are at knowledge and comprehension levels. the introduction to logic unit includes questions at the knowledge and comprehension levels, which does not befit the curriculum. the classic logic unit includes 11 multiple choice, nine gap-filling, and four open-ended questions. the multiple choice question bases are “which”, “how”, “which is not”, “which contradicts”, “which one is not followed” while the open-ended question bases are “find”, “state” and “describe” and are at knowledge and comprehension levels. when the questions are examined, it can be seen that there does not exist questions at the analysis and evaluation levels and therefore does not befit the curriculum. in logic and language unit, there are seven multiple choice, eight gap-filling, and seven open-ended questions. the multiple choice question bases are “which is not”, “which is more preferred”, “which” while the open-ended question bases are “explain with examples”, and “what does it mean”, “explain its reasons” and are at the knowledge and comprehension levels. in addition, there are questions at the evaluation level with bases including “explain by comparison”, “discuss”, “comment” and “state”. the questions in the book consist of knowledge, comprehension and evaluation categories. for this reason, it does not completely befit the curriculum. in symbolic logic unit, there are eight multiple choice, 11 gap-filling, and seven open-ended questions. the multiple-choice question bases are “which are”, “in which is it included”, “which is not equivalent”, “which cannot be qualified”, and “on which does it depend”. the open-ended question bases are “state”, “exemplify”, “what is, state”, “which conditions are necessary, state”, and “which propositional connectives is it used, state” and are at the comprehension level. the expressions that should complete the gaps in fill-in the-gaps questions are given in a mixed order. when the questions are examined, it can be seen that there are questions at both application and comprehension levels. 3.9.3. topakkaya (2012) in introduction to logic unit, there are six gap-filling, six multiple choice, five true/false, and four open-ended questions. additionally, five extra open-ended questions are also included with a prompt. the expressions/phrases that should complete the gaps are not provided in the gap-filling questions. the multiple choice question bases are “what is it called”, “which one is it”, “which fails to befit”, and “which does not belong” and are at the knowledge level. the true/false questions are at the knowledge and comprehension levels. the first open-ended question base is in the form of “state the difference” and is a question at the analysis level while the third question base is in the form of “compare” and is a question at the evaluation level. the other open-ended question bases are “state” and “what is” and are at the knowledge levels. the questions with prompts are in the form of “is it appropriate, why”, “demonstrate”, and “state” and are mostly at the knowledge and comprehension levels. there are questions at the evaluation level in the evaluation questions in the book. additionally, there are questions at the knowledge and comprehension levels. in classic logic unit, there are five multiple choice, six true/false, five gap-filling, and five open-ended questions. the multiple choice question bases are “which” and “which of these are related” and are at the knowledge level. the true/false questions consist of six propositions and are at the knowledge and comprehension levels. the gap-filling questions are missing the expressions that should complete the gaps and are at the comprehension level. the open-ended question bases are “explain the difference”, “what does it imply, write”, “what kind of relationship is there, state”, “what is the nature of relationship” and “write an example of comparison” and are at the comprehension level. the evaluation questions comprise questions at the comprehension level. for this reason, they do not match with the curriculum. in logic and language unit, there are five multiple choice, seven true/false, five gap-filling, and four openended questions. the multiple choice bases are “which is not” and “which is” and are at the comprehension level. the true/false questions are at the knowledge level. the concepts that should complete the gaps are not given. the gap-filling questions are at the knowledge and comprehension levels. the first open-ended question base is “write the difference in approach” and is a question at the analysis level. the fourth question base is “evaluate the role” and is a question at the evaluation level. the other question bases are “what is, write” and are at the knowledge level. when the questions are examined, it can be observed that they are evaluation questions at the analysis level. additionally, there are questions at the knowledge, comprehension, and evaluation levels. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 174 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in symbolic logic unit, there are six multiple choice, three practice, seven true/false, five gap-filling, and four open-ended questions. the multiple choice question bases are “what” and “which” and are at the knowledge level. the three practice questions deal with the consistency and validity of propositions and their testing through the table. these questions help reinforce the topic learnt. the true/false questions are the knowledge and comprehension level. in this unit, the concepts that should complete the gaps in gap-filling questions are scrambled. the gap-filling questions are as well at the knowledge level. the open-ended question bases are “which, how, state”, “why, state”, “write the negation proposition”, and “symbolize” and are at the comprehension level. when the evaluation questions in the book are examined, it can be observed that they are at the comprehension and application levels. 4. findings and discussion logic course aims to provide students with skills such as critical thinking and multi-dimensional thinking. curriculum and textbooks are prepared in order to achieve these objectives. the textbooks prepared in line with the outcomes in the curriculums are the first source in the learning process of the students. activities in the textbooks, preparation questions, and evaluation questions are extremely important in learning the subject. therefore, missing or inaccurate information in textbooks, printing errors, etc. directly affect students' learning. scientific errors in the textbooks may cause students to misunderstand subjects. this has a dangerous side. as a result of incorrect learning, students can solve the logic questions incorrectly they encounter in the university entrance exam. this situation may cause the students not to reach their goals and even cause trauma. it is also difficult to change wrong learning because the first learning is more permanent in mind. in fact, it is difficult to predict, in this respect, whether students are aware of what they have learned wrong or when they will realize it. textbooks have an important place in every kind of school system due to the bridge they assume between teacher and student. curriculum, textbook, school building, equipment of classrooms, learning environment and the supporting staff in this environment are the second elements that determine the quality of auxiliary materials and environmental education. among these, the task loaded on textbooks, in case of teacher absence, is to direct students‟ studies by informing them (altun et al., 2004). gülersoy (2013) stated that there is a serious preliminary phase in the preparation of an ideal textbook. in addition, a large bibliographic survey, contact with relevant people and institutions and the execution of this process by competent people are needed. the deficiencies and incorrect information in textbooks directly affect learning in a negative way. therefore, the preparation of the textbooks should be carried out with a very careful study. in this research, three books prepared according to the 2009 logic course curriculum are discussed. these books are examined in various aspects such as physical characteristics, suitability to curriculum and scientific content. the data obtained as a result of the examination are mentioned. the most important elements of the curriculum are objectives, outcomes and content. these elements are consistent with each other in a qualified curriculum. in the most general sense, objectives, outcomes and content must be integrated with each other in the curriculum (durakoglu, 2017). in the textbooks, errors such as misspellings in language and expression, and printing errors negatively affect students. this is even more important in logic textbooks. in particular, the incorrect or incomplete writing of the symbols in the symbolic logic unit directly affects the student's learning. the preparation questions in textbooks should consist of questions that prepare students for the topic such that they should be formulated in a manner that they can reveal students‟ background information about the topic. at the same time, reading texts and caricatures should also be directly related to the topic. thus, more effective student learning can be achieved. one of the important sections in the textbooks is the evaluation questions at the end of the unit. it is extremely important that these questions are related to the outcomes in the curriculum. in fact, it is appropriate for questions to be at the same level as taxonomic gains. in this context, it was noted that the books examined were unsuitable questions in terms of the level of outcomes in the evaluation problems which is against assessment because it is not appropriate to ask a question in the knowledge or comprehension level to measure whether an outcome in the evaluation level has been achieved. 5. suggestions 1. scientific errors in textbooks should be corrected and thus prevent any wrong learning. 2. it should first be teachers who should be aware of the scientific errors in textbooks and correct them while lecturing. from this aspect, teachers are assumed important responsibilities. 3. the number of examples should be increased in order to increase the comprehensibility of the subject and to provide consolidation of the subject in “symbolic logic” units. 4. the fact that textbooks contain this many errors, despite its review by the author, publishing house, and the commission formed by the board of education and discipline, is thought-provoking in how healthily these procedures function. therefore, all these procedures should be revised more, writers and publishing houses should be more careful, and commissions of book reviews should be more sensitive to this issue. 5. the field competences and work performances of those who partake in commissions of book review should be revised considering the scientific and printing-typesetting-language errors. 6. in this sense, to what extent the individuals in the commissions of book reviews work harmoniously and cooperatively should be checked. 7. the textbooks written by those who work as teachers in administrative positions in the ministry should not be included in the evaluation process since it is not an ethical approach. 8. special publishing houses should know the areas of expertise of the people who will print a textbook and make sure that they are sufficient or not and then make them write a textbook. 9. textbooks should be reviewed on the basis of constructivist approach in terms of preparation questions. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 166-175 175 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 10. if there are significant errors in the textbooks accepted for reading by the ministry, these textbooks should be withdrawn regardless of the duration of the book. once the errors in the books have been corrected, they must be approved again because students may experience great problems in the university entrance exams in this regard. 11. in order to write the textbooks at the desired levels with minimum errors, the curriculum should be made more clear and understandable, and in this sense, clear statements should be given in the curriculum. 12. textbook writing regulations should be turned into clear, understandable and detailed texts because if the people reading the articles in the regulations differ from each other, then the unity in the textbooks may be disrupted. references altun, m., c. arslan and y. yazgan, 2004. a study into how high school mathematics textbooks are used and the frequency of using them, uludağ university. journal of eğitim fakültesi, 17(2): 131-147. bicer, b., 2013. the comparative analysis of philosophy group courses (psychology, sociology, logic) and the questions of lys (university placement test). cumhuriyet internatıonal journal of educatıon, 2(3): 1-14. dombayci, m.a. and o. kiziltan, 2017. a comparison of philosophy group teaching programs. turkish studies, 12(25): 265-288. available at: https://doi.org/10.7827/turkishstudies.12247. duman, e.z., 2014. an investigation into the logic courses of secondary education in the period of republic. doctorate thesis, gazi university, institute of educational sciences, secondary education social sciences department, division of philosophy group teaching ankara. duman, e.z. and a. arslan, 2017. an evaluation of the outcomes of 2009 teaching program for the course of logic in terms of the renewed taxonomy of bloom. journal of education and teaching research, 6(1): 11-18. durakoglu, a., 2017. a comparison of turkish and italian philosophy teaching programs for secondary education. dpu jounhay of institute of educational sciences / ebder, 1(1): 1-15. elci, y., 2017. secondary education logic textbook. ankara: cem veb ofset publishing. gülersoy, a.e., 2013. an investigation into social sciences textbooks in terms of some characteristics in searching for ideal textbook. ijtase, 2(1): 8-26. karaveliogullari, n., 2013. secondary education logic textbook. ankara: semih ofset sek publishing. meb, 2009. logic course curriculum. ankara: milli egitim bakanligi publishing. ozlem, d., 1991. logic. i̇stanbul: ara publishing. sonmez, v. and f. alacapinar, 2017. examplified scientific research methods, extended. 5th edn., ankara: anı publishing. topakkaya, a., 2012. secondary education logic textbook. 2th edn. ankara: milli egitim bakanligi publishing. yildirim, a. and h. simsek, 2016. research methods in social sciences, extended. 10th edn., ankara: seçkin publishing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 467 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 467-472, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.467.472 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining teaching styles of academicians employed in faculties of sports sciences sevinç namli1 anil türkeli̇2 ( corresponding author) 1erzurum technical university, faculty of sports, department of physical training and sports, turkey. 2erzincan binali yıldırım university, department of physical education and sports, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to determine teaching styles of faculty members employed in several universities in turkey. to that end, 105 faculty members employed in erzincan binali yıldırım university, atatürk university, erzurum technical university, bartın university, sakarya university, adıyaman university, karamanoğlu mehmet bey university and gazi university participated in the study. in this study, grasha’s teaching styles inventory was used as the data collection tool. in the analysis of data, t-test, one-way anova and correlation analysis were utilized as well as mean and standard deviation values. results of the study revealed that teaching styles of the faculty members did not differ by gender. in the analyses conducted with respect to academic title, a statistically significant difference was found between those with title of lecturer and associate professor and those with title of professor in terms of expert style and personal style sub-dimensions. considering teaching styles, expert, authoritarian and personal styles were found to be high; facilitator and delegator styles were found to be moderate among faculty members. keywords: academician, teaching style, sports sciences, grasha, physical education, sport. citation | sevinç namli; anil türkeli̇ (2019). examining teaching styles of academicians employed in faculties of sports sciences. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 467-472. history: received: 21 june 2019 revised: 29 july 2019 accepted: 4 september 2019 published: 8 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 468 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 469 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 470 4. result and recommendations ..................................................................................................................................................... 471 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 472 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.467.472&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1047 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0958-6792 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3961-7759 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1047 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0958-6792 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3961-7759 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1047 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0958-6792 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3961-7759 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1047 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0958-6792 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3961-7759 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 467-472 468 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by determining teaching styles of academicians in universities and to the development of teaching methods and techniques. 1. introduction people can make out of any event, situation, subject or object. the experiences of people and the things they have seen, heard or interacted with are the primary driving force to make out different meanings towards an object, situation or event. in addition, personal traits, age, race, intelligence, and gender have an impact on this case. the protagonists of the learning process are those who teach and learn. these two fundamental characters have inevitably individual differences. recognizing that individual characteristics and learning styles differ in the learning process means that different teaching styles should be recognized in the teaching process. considering such differences of learners, a teacher shapes the learning process by including his/her own individual characteristics. physical characteristics of a learning environment inevitably have a place in the learning process, but physical conditions have never been sufficient alone. however, in parallel with technological improvements, the settings of teaching process have improved considerably. however, the order of importance of physical conditions among other factors is still lacking in the upper ranks. academic optimism, including the concepts of academic emphasis, common self-efficacy and trust and referring to teachers' beliefs that their students can achieve success, facilitates the development of scientific knowledge and helps students and their families overcome challenging situations that they can confront through collaboration (hoy et al., 2006). the characteristics that a good teacher should have are its way of presenting the subject, guiding students, emotional and social bond established during the learning process, and individual characteristics (özabacı and acat, 2005). grasha (2002) states that teachers' continuous and consistent behaviors in their interaction with students in the learning process constitute the basics of teaching style (grasha, 1996). teaching style emerges as presenting the course, advising the students, guiding the process, and taking individual characteristics into account. there are many complementary definitions of teaching style literature. in these definitions, dunn and dunn (1979) drew attention to method, teaching environment, and materials used; fischer and fischer (1979) and conti (1985) emphasized consistent and continuous behavior; cross (1981) focused on collection, organization, transfer of information and making it meaningful; heimlich and norland (2002) emphasized the importance of beliefs and values. teaching style, which is associated with learning styles that differ according to individual characteristics, leads teachers to adopt different schools. teachers should try to be effective with additional methods, recognizing that a single style may not be suitable for all learners (dunn and dunn, 1979). heimlich and norland considered their evaluation of their own teaching styles as a starting point. accordingly, any teaching style cannot be bad, but the teacher may have misused the methods of the style or in-class practices remain weak (heimlich and norland, 2002). teaching style is a reflection tool of teacher's personality traits and value judgments about teaching. it also includes feelings, motivations, values and beliefs of the teacher about the subject matter. thus, teachers' academic knowledge and skills, as well as their perceptions, form their behaviors within a specific teaching style (üredi and üredi, 2007). although there are many different classifications regarding teaching styles, the model based on teacher behaviors has revealed that there are five categories of teaching styles: expert, authoritarian, personal, facilitator and delegator (grasha, 1994). expert model: teachers in this model have the required level of knowledge and professional field expertise. they usually apply the traditional style of teaching practices, namely the teacher-centered teaching process. providing detailed information to their students, they encourage students to develop themselves. in some cases, excessive information may discourage students who have no knowledge of the subject. authoritarian model: teachers in this model are rule-oriented. they explain the rules that must be obeyed by students and guide them by expressing the expected behaviors. personal model: in this model, teachers' task is to be a role model for students. they provide guidance for students to determine their behaviors and to follow the behavioral patterns they exhibit. they think that the teaching process is merely personal. therefore, they emphasize that it is important to observe and follow a model. facilitator model: teachers in this model are sensitive to individual needs of their students. they construct teaching styles in accordance with characteristics of their students. they work with students and guide, support and facilitate their learning. they have a flexible style according to the aims of students. delegator model: teachers within this model aim to enable students to act freely and to work on their own will and thus, to increase their capacity. in this model, it is important that students take responsibility and have an entrepreneurial spirit (bilgin and bahar, 2008). 1.1. aim of the study every stage of a good education, which is an indicator of a developed society, must be carefully prepared and implemented. among these stages, university education constitutes a separate place among the other levels as it prepares students for their potential professions. education mediates preparation of students to a profession and thus, to life. the role of university instructors in the training of individuals who will be a driving force to the economy is considerable. it is among the duties of academicians to educate students with the necessary knowledge and to prepare them fully for the profession and therefore, for life. considering all these issues, teaching style and approach adopted by academicians as well as learning styles have an effect on students' learning. in this study, it was aimed to examine teaching styles of academicians employed in faculties of sports sciences by different variables. while variables were being identified, it was observed academicians in faculties of sports sciences in turkey are generally alumni of four departments and attend classes in such departments. titles of asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 467-472 469 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group academicians who are entitled to lecture are teaching assistant, research assistant phd, assistant professor, associate professor and professor. the variables were determined according to such criteria by reviewing the relevant literature. the number of research assistants, phd reached was too low to include them in the study. therefore, research questions of the study are following: do teaching styles of academicians differ by gender? 1. do teaching styles of academicians differ according to their major? 2. do teaching styles of academicians differ by seniority? 3. do teaching styles of academicians differ by their titles? 2. method 2.1. design of the study this study adopted the survey method within descriptive research models. it is a method that examines the existing situation and describes the situations of the events, assets, groups and institutions and presents them with all their features. by means of this method, it is tried to describe and present the current conditions and situations through a sample taken from the universe or the whole universe to reach a general result in large groups (cohen et al., 1997; karasar, 2009). 2.2. limitations of the study the limitations of the study are summarized in four items: 1. the data collected about the study is limited to teaching style and teaching approaches scales. 2. the data were collected from eight universities in convenience sampling method. 3. only survey technique was used as the data collection tool in the study. 4. the results of the study are limited to the size and characteristics of the sample. 2.3. study group the study group is composed of academicians employed in faculties of sports sciences of erzincan binali yıldırım university, atatürk university, erzurum teknik university, bartın university, sakarya university, adıyaman university, karamanoğlu mehmet bey university and gazi university. the study was limited to academicians who are entitled to work and to lecture in faculties of sports sciences. because of the small number of research assistants, phd, they were not included in the analyses. table-1. demographic characteristics of participants. demographic characteristic n (%) gender female 36 34,3 male 69 65,7 graduation physical edu. teaching 50 38,2 coaching training 21 2,7 sports management 11 38,2 recreation 23 20,9 academic title lecturer 36 34,3 assistant professor 35 33,3 associate professor 23 21,9 professor 11 10,5 seniority 1-5 years 23 21,9 6-10 years 43 41,0 11-15 years 13 12,3 16-20 years 11 10,5 21 years and over 15 14,3 total 105 100 table 1 indicates that a total of 105 academicians, 36 (%34.3) females and 69 (%65.7) males, participated in the study. the participants are alumni of the departments of physical education teaching (n=50, %38.2), coaching training (n=21, %2.7), sports management (n=11, %38.2), and recreation (n=23, %20.9). 2.4. data collection tools in the study, grasha’s teaching style inventory (tsi) which was adapted into turkish by sarıtaş and süral (2010) was used as the data collection tool. the scale consists of five sub-dimensions and consists of 40 items. the sub-dimensions of the scale were “expert”, “authoritarian”, “personal”, “facilitator” and “delegator” teaching styles. in the adaptation study for the turkish version of the tsi, the author found the reliability coefficient of the scale as .875. the internal consistency coefficient of the scale was found to be .78. scoring was determined as “low”, "moderate" and "high" for each sub-dimension of the scale. rating information is given in table 2. table-2. scoring of sub-dimensions of the tsi. teaching styles degrees of teaching styles low moderate high expert [1.0-2.8] [2.9-3.8] [3.9-5.0] authoritarian [1.0-1.8] [1.9-3.0] [3.1-5.0] personal [1.0 -2.8] [2.9-3.4] [3.5-5.0] facilitator [1.0-2.9] [3.0-4.0] [4.1-5.0] delegator [1.0-1.8] [1.9-2.8] [2.9-5.0] source: http://www.iats.com/publications/glsi.html asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 467-472 470 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.5. data analysis normality was examined once before the analysis of the data. accordingly, it was determined that the data distributed normally. therefore, it was decided to use parametric tests. in addition to descriptive statistics, independent group t-test, one-way anova and pearson correlation techniques were used for data analysis. significance value was taken as 0.05. 3. findings this section contains the results of the relevant analyses. the results of the analysis for grasha’s tsi by the gender variable are shown in table 3. table-3. analysis results for the tsi by the gender variable. teaching styles gender n x ss sd t p expert female 36 31.9722 5.29952 103 1.13 .261 male 69 30.9275 4.01951 authoritarian female 34 31.1176 5.67165 103 0.178 .588 male 69 30.9275 4.78760 personal female 36 32.6667 4.83440 103 0.675 .501 male 69 32.0145 4.62885 facilitator female 36 34.0833 5.38981 103 0.94 .94 male 69 32.3913 4.58969 delegator female 36 29.9167 4.36463 103 1.155 .251 male 69 28.9710 3.77286 *p < 0.05. in table 3, no statistically significant difference was found in each sub-dimension of the tsi by the gender variable. it is observed that female participants have higher mean scores than male participants in all teaching style dimensions. the findings related to the tsi by the major variable are given below. table-4. analysis results for the tsi by the major variable. teaching styles major n x ss sd f p difference expert teaching 50 31.9400 2.68336 101 2.693 .05 teaching and recreation coaching 21 32.0952 4.45987 management 11 31.5455 5.27946 recreation 23 29.0000 6.47372 authoritarian teaching 50 31.9800 3.32271 101 1.156 .33 coaching 21 30.4762 4.96608 management 11 31.3636 5.31550 recreation 23 29.7391 7.71785 personal teaching 50 32.4600 2.77165 101 .34 .796 coaching 21 32.3333 4.96320 management 11 32.8182 5.75879 recreation 23 31.3913 6.94615 facilitator teaching 50 33.7400 2.85579 101 .829 .481 coaching 21 32.1429 6.38189 management 11 32.8182 6.06330 recreation 23 32.1304 6.30515 delegator teaching 50 29.7400 2.84863 101 1.357 .26 coaching 21 29.5714 5.05541 management 11 29.8182 5.32575 recreation 23 27.8261 4.26030 *p<0.05. in table 4, a statistically significant difference was found between the alumni of teaching and recreation departments in the expert style sub-dimension in favor of the alumni of teaching departments (f(3.101): 2.693; p<0.05). there was no significant difference in authoritarian (f(3.101): 1.156; p>0.05), personal (f(3.101): .34; p>0.05), facilitator (f(3.101): .829; p>0.05) and delegator (f(3.101): 1.357; p>0.05) styles sub-dimensions by the major variable. the findings related to the tsi by the seniority variable are given below. table-5. analysis results for the tsi by the seniority variable. variable analyzes expert authoritarian personal facilitator delegator seniority correlation -.208* -.094 -.165 -.045 -.068 p .033* .347 .092 .652 -.490 n 105 105 105 105 105 *p<0.05. in table 5, a statistically significant negative correlation was found between the expert style sub-dimension of the tsi and the seniority variable. no significant relationship was found between the other sub-dimensions of the scale. the findings related to the tsi by the academic title variable are given below. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 467-472 471 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. analysis results for the tsi by the academic title variable. teaching styles academic title n x ss sd f p difference expert lecturer 36 32.8889 2.954 101 4.073 .009 lecturer and assoc. prof., professor assist. prof. 35 31.5429 3.837 assoc. prof. 23 29.4783 5.451 professor 11 29.0000 6.48 authoritarian lecturer 36 32.1389 3.015 101 2.087 .107 assist. prof. 35 31.4857 3.98 assoc. prof. 23 30.4783 6.947 professor 11 28.0000 8.00 personal lecturer 36 34.1111 3.087 101 5.983 .001 lecturer and assoc. prof., professor assist. prof. 35 32.6000 3.574 assoc. prof. 23 30.4783 5.203 professor 11 28.6364 7.593 facilitator lecturer 36 34.2778 3.203 101 2.168 .096 assist. prof. 35 33.1143 4.027 assoc. prof. 23 31.8261 5.466 professor 11 30.6364 8.924 delegator lecturer 36 30.3333 3.224 101 1.442 .235 assist. prof. 35 29.0286 3.501 assoc. prof. 23 28.6957 4.16 professor 11 28.0000 6.526 *p<0.05. in table 6, there was a statistically significant difference between those with titles of "lecturer", "associate professor" and those with title of "professor" in the expert style sub-dimension in favor of lecturers (f(3.101): 4.073; p<0.05). moreover, a statistically significant difference was found between those with titles of "lecturer", "associate professor" and those with title of "professor" in the personal style sub-dimension in favor of lecturers (f(3.101): 5.983; p<0.05). there was no significant difference in authoritarian (f(3.101): 2.087; p>0.05), facilitator (f(3.101): 2.168; p>0.05) and delegator (f(3.101): 1.442; p>0.05) styles sub-dimensions by the academic title variable (f(3.101): 2.087; p>0.05). 4. result and recommendations today, parallel to the research on learning styles of students, studies being conducted on teaching styles of teachers are becoming more and more important. it is, therefore, critical to determine teaching styles of academicians as teachers. the study, which aimed to determine which teaching style of the academicians employed in the faculties of sports sciences according to grasha’s tsi, was participated by a total of 105 academicians, 36 females and 69 males, voluntarily. in the study, no statistically significant difference was found in each sub-dimension of the scale by the gender variable. female participants have higher mean scores than male participants in all teaching styles. in his study conducted in 2002 to determine teaching styles of faculty members, grasha found that female and male faculty members differed on the basis of teaching styles. he found that females had lower scores in expert, authoritarian and personal styles sub-dimensions but, higher scores in facilitator and delegator sub-dimensions than male participants. in their study to determine teaching styles of female and male teachers, saracaloğlu (2011). reported that the choice of teaching style did not differ by the gender variable except facilitator teaching style. the faculties of sports sciences, which we included in the study group, consist of four departments. these include physical education and sports teaching, coaching, sports management and recreation. only students of physical education and sports teaching department can attend formation courses. for this reason, it was examined whether there was a difference between the academicians who are alumni of these departments in terms of teaching styles. results revealed a statistically significant difference between the alumni of teaching and recreation departments in the expert style sub-dimension by the major variable in favor of the alumni of teaching departments. such difference is thought to be due to the effect of formation courses taken by the alumni of teaching departments. for another sub-problem of the study, results revealed a statistically significant negative correlation between the expert style sub-dimension and the seniority variable. it can be said that having less term of office puts the expert style sub-dimension forward. no significant relationship was found between other sub-dimensions of the scale related to seniority. maden (2012), kılıç and dilbaz (2013) did not find any difference between seniority and teaching style dimensions in their studies. arpaci (2013), saracaloglu et al. (2017) stated that there was only a difference between seniority and expert teaching style. there was a statistically significant difference between those with titles of "lecturer", "associate professor" and those with title of "professor" in the expert and personal styles sub-dimensions in favor of lecturers. we believe that weekly attendance period of the lecturers is the primary reason for such a result. overall, in terms of teaching styles or the academicians in the study, it was observed that the expert, authoritarian and personal teaching styles were found to be high and facilitator and delegator styles were found to be moderate. 4.1. recommendations this study was limited to 105 academicians from eight universities. it is recommended by researchers to study larger study groups for more generalizable results and to conduct studies that measure students' learning styles, too. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 467-472 472 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group there are different scales in the literature on teaching styles. it is also among the recommendations of the researchers to contribute to the literature by administering a few of these scales to the same study group. references arpaci, m., 2013. teaching styles of religious culture and moral teachers example of diyarbakir. atatürk university journal of theology, 40: 251-270. bilgin, i̇. and m. bahar, 2008. investigation of the relationship between teaching and learning styles of classroom teachers. gazi university journal of the faculty of education, 28(1): 19-38. cohen, l., l. manion and k. morrison, 1997. methodology of educational research. athens: ekfrasi. conti, g.j., 1985. the relationship between teaching style and adult student learning. adult education quarterly, 35(4): 220-228.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0001848185035004004. cross, k.p., 1981. adults as learners. san francisco: jossey bass. dunn, r.s. and k.j. dunn, 1979. learning styles/teaching styles: should they... can they... be matched? educational leadership, 36(4): 238244. fischer, b.b. and l. fischer, 1979. styles in teaching and learning. educational leadership, 36(4): 245-254. grasha, a.f., 1994. a matter of style: the teacher as expert, formal authority, personal model, facilitator, and delegator. college teaching, 42(4): 142-149.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.1994.9926845. grasha, a.f., 1996. teaching with style: a practical guide to enhancing learning by understanding teaching and learning styles. san bernardino, ca: alliance publishers. grasha, a.f., 2002. teaching with style. san bernadino: alliance publishers. heimlich, j.e. and e. norland, 2002. teaching style: where are we now? new directions for adult and continuing education, 93: 1726.available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.46. hoy, w.k., c.j. tarter and a.w. hoy, 2006. academic optimism of schools: a force for student achievement. american aducational research journal, 43(3): 425-446.available at: https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312043003425. karasar, n., 2009. research method. ankara: nobel yayıncılık. kılıç, f. and a.g. dilbaz, 2013. examination of the teaching styles of science high school teachers in terms of various variables. the journal of academic social science studies, 6(6): 715-738.available at: https://doi.org/10.9761/jasss1628. maden, s., 2012. teaching styles of turkish teachers. international turkish literature culture education magazine, 1(1): 178-200.available at: https://doi.org/10.7884/teke.20. özabacı, n. and m.b. acat, 2005. comparison of pre-service teachers' perceptions of their own characteristics and ideal teacher characteristics. educational administration in theory and practice, 42(42): 211-236. saracaloglu, a.s., ç.a. karademir, b. dincer and n.c. dedebali, 2017. determination of teachers' teaching styles, self-efficacy and job satisfaction. education sciences, 12(1): 58-85. saracaloğlu, s., 2011. investigation of teaching styles of class, science and technology and turkish teachers abstract. e-journal of new world sciences academy, 6(3): 2314-2327. sarıtaş, e. and s. süral, 2010. grasha-reichmann learning and teaching style of the scale study turkish adaptation. e-journal of new world sciences academy, 5(4): 2162-2177. üredi, l. and i. üredi, 2007. primary school teachers' perceptions of teaching profession as predictors of their preferred teaching styles. mersin university journal of the faculty of education, 3(2): 133-144. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 459 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 459-466, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.459.466 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group humility in turkish university student athletes and non-athletes emre ozan tingaz1 burcu güvendi2 ( corresponding author) 1gazi university, sport sciences faculty, ankara, turkey and çağ university, institute of social sciences, department of psychology, mersin, turkey. 2i̇stanbul university, cerrahpaşa sport sciences faculty, i̇stanbul, turkey. abstract the main purpose of the current research is to examine the humility of university student athletes and non-athletes. in addition, it has been another focus of whether the humility differ according to gender, age, department and monthly expenditure. furthermore, the humility of the athlete students according to their sports type, sports years and the best athletic scores was investigated. in the present study, two different public universities from istanbul and ankara, aged between 18, 23 (mage = 20.49 years sd = 1.35), 54.3% (n = 222) were female and 45.7% (n = 187) were male, a total of four hundred nine athlete and non-athlete students were included through convenience sampling. the instrument selected for the study was the humility scale which has been developed by elliott (2010) and adapted to turkish by sarıçam et al. (2012). the total score and subdimensions of humility in the present study did not differ significantly by gender, age, monthly expenditure, athletic status (athletes or non-athletes), sport type (team or individual sports) and sport year. on the other hand, in the sub-dimension of focus on others, it was found that the students in the primary teaching department had significantly higher scores than the physical education and sports teacher students. in modest self-assessment sub-scale, the average score of athletes who have the best athletic score in a turkey competition higher than athletes who have the best athletic score in a regional competition. keywords: humility, humble, university student, student athlete, university student athlete, university department. citation | emre ozan tingaz; burcu güvendi (2019). humility in turkish university student athletes and non-athletes. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 459-466. history: received: 19 june 2019 revised: 26 july 2019 accepted: 2 september 2019 published: 8 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 460 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 460 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 461 4. discussion and result ................................................................................................................................................................... 464 5. limitations and future directions ............................................................................................................................................. 465 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 466 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.459.466&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1046 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7048-2055 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6170-9107 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1046 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7048-2055 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6170-9107 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1046 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7048-2055 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6170-9107 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1046 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7048-2055 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6170-9107 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 459-466 460 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the humility of university student athletes and non-athletes. 1. introduction humility is not about being arrogant, self-centered or jealous, but about being respectful and open-minded (peters et al., 2011). in other words, humility is a desirable personal trait that reflects the desire to understand self, expressed as identity, strengths, and boundaries, and is linked to the perspective of the self in relation to others (nielsen et al., 2010). hökelekli (2007) remarks that humility is something very different in the case of failure or negative personality stuck into a sense of self. it means not to consider itself superior in a deep perspective and to have a moderate self-perception. he additionally explain that the authority, wealth, talent, fame, bodily strength and beauty, success, such as to come to give more importance to temporary things, to see them as a means of service and help to the development and maturation of himself and others. seligman (2002) points out that humility is an important pattern in controlling self-control and negative desires of the self, preventing self-justification according to the wishes of the self, and contributing to the ability to conduct beneficial behaviors towards others. a humble personality, thanks to his/her deep inner world, loves and cares for other people, sees them as superior as he/she deserves and values them very much. according to topçu (2012) the humble individual who acts regardless of earthly values belonging to others, avoids affectation and unpretentious behaviors, acts according to reality, and does not get false pride and grandiosity about himself. the greatest motivation that drives him to engage in such words and behaviors is his mature personality. humble individuals see their mistakes as a part of human life and are therefore very open to the offer of assistance directed at correcting their mistakes (elliott, 2010). when the field literature is examined, it is seen that the researches on humility are limited in the field of sports (mcnamee, 2002; brymer and oades, 2009; austin, 2014; foster, 2019). on the other hand, when examined in other studies conducted with sports, sevde and tuncel (2012) concluded that tolerance is an indispensable necessity in preventing negativities such as disrespect, insight, fighting and violence in sports. çağlayan et al. (2017) advocate the view that the level of forgiveness of the students doing sports was higher than those who did not. türkçapar and karademir (2016) examined the modesty levels of individuals who took formation education and reported that the moderation level of the formation group students who participated in the study was above average. while there was no difference in humility among students according to income level and age variables, it was determined that women's scores were significantly higher than men's. aksoy et al. (2017) in the study in which the university students examined the levels of happiness and humility; it was determined that gender, age, number of siblings, place of birth, place of residence during the university education, class level and parental education level did not make a significant difference in the humility level of the students, and that the place where the majority of life was spent caused a significant difference. they further point out that there was no significant relationship between students' happiness and humility levels. gediksiz (2013) concluded that there is no significant relationship between humility and psychological well-being. he additionally noted that humility levels of university students did not show significant differences in terms of gender, perceived income level, parental attitudes. 2. method 2.1. participants in the present study, two different public universities from istanbul and ankara, aged between 18-23 (mage = 20.49 years sd = 1.35), 54.3% (n = 222) were female and 45.7% (n = 187) were male, a total of four hundred nine athlete and non-athlete students were included through convenience sampling. 2.2. instruments the instrument selected for the study was the humility scale which has been developed by elliott (2010) and adapted to turkish by sarıçam et al. (2012). the scale has 13 items and four factors called as openness, selfforgetfulness, modest self-assessment and focus on others. the items were rated on a 5-point scale (1 = completely disagree, 5 = completely agree). 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. items are reverse scored. the lowest score that can be obtained from the scale is 13 and the highest score is 60. the high score obtained from the scale is related to high humility. internal consistency coefficient stated as .63 for openness sub-dimension, .67 for self-forgetfulness sub-dimension, .72 for modest self-assessment sub-dimension, .79 for focus on others sub dimension and .81 for whole scale. 2.3. statistics the statistical analyses were carried out using spss 23. initially it was determined whether there were missing and mistaken data. total scores of the participants' humility scale were calculated and outlier analysis was performed. then, skewness and kurtosis coefficients were calculated for the purpose of normality analysis. the kurtosis and skewness coefficients were found to be within ± 1 range for both scale total score and subscales. parametric tests were preferred because histogram and q-q plot graphs did not deviate from normal distribution. independent sample t test was carried out to determine whether the total and subscale scores of the humility scale showed a significant difference according to gender, whether or not to do sports, and sports types. one way anova was carried out to determine whether the total and subscale scores of the humility scale showed a significant difference according to the participants' department, monthly expenditure, sports year and athletic scores. bonferroni test from post-hoc tests was carried out for significant differences. probabilities below p=0.05 were regarded as significant. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 459-466 461 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. findings table-1. demographic characteristics of participants. variable n % age 18,00 27 7,5 19,00 62 17,2 20,00 89 24,7 21,00 97 26,9 22,00 59 16,3 23,00 27 7,5 department physical education and sport teaching 87 22.3 trainer education 37 9.5 sport management 25 6.4 recreation 56 14.3 special education teaching 23 5.9 primary school teaching 163 41.7 monthly expenditure 0-500 tl (0-75 €) 149 36.4 501-1000 (75-150 €) 156 38.1 1001-1500 (150-225 €) 76 18.6 1501+ (225+ €) 28 6.8 athletic status athletes 181 44.3 non-athletes 228 55.7 sport type team sports 99 57.9 individual sports 72 42.1 sports year 0-1 year 19 10.5 2-4 years 56 30.9 5-7 years 48 26.5 8-10 years 31 17.1 10+ years 27 14.9 the best athletic scores no 53 32.7 province competition 30 18.5 region competition 34 21.0 turkey competition 45 27.8 as shown in table 1; 21.3% (n = 87) of physical education and sports teaching, 9% (n = 37) of trainer education, 6.1% (n = 25) of sports management, 13.7% (n = 56) of recreation, 5.6% (n = 23) of them are in special education teaching and 39.9% (n = 163) are in primary school teaching department. when the monthly expenditures are examined; 36.4% (n = 149) 0-500 tl (0-75 €), 38.1% (n = 156) 501-1000 tl (75-150 €), 18.6% (n = 76) of 1001 -1500 tl (75-225 €), 6.8% (n = 28) of which 1500+ tl (225+ €) is spent. the amount of expenditure is categorized as national scholarship (500 tl-75 €). while 44.3% (n = 181) of the students were athletes, 55.7% (n = 228) were not athletes. while 57.9% (n = 99) of the athletes do football, basketball, volleyball and handball team sports, 42.1% (n = 72) do individual sports such as athletics, judo, swimming, taekwondo, karate and wrestling. the distribution of the number of people in the branches was categorized as individual and team sports due to the imbalance. when the sports years are examined; 10.5% (n = 19) 0-1 years, 30.9% (n = 56) 2-4 years, 26.5% (n = 48) 5-7 years, 17.1% (n = 31) 8-10 years. 14.9% (n = 27) stated that they had been doing sports for more than 10 years. when the best top three athletic scores are examined, 32.7% (n=53) does not have a place in top three, 18.5% (n=30) has top three in a province competition, 21% (n=34) has top three in a region competition and 27.8% (n=45) has top three in a turkey competition. table-2. t-test result of total and sub-scales of humility by gender. humility gender n m sd t p total female 222 41.08 3.98 .170 .865 male 187 41.01 3.70 openness female 222 9.21 1.93 .179 .858 male 187 9.17 2.04 self-forgetfulness female 222 11.27 2.39 1.149 .248 male 187 11.01 2.19 modest self-assessment female 222 9.30 2.33 1.471 .142 male 187 9.65 2.41 focus on others female 222 11.28 2.26 .499 .618 male 187 11.17 2.28 when table 2 was examined, it can be said that the total score of humility (t= .170, p> .05) and subscales of openness (t= .179, p> .05), self-forgetfulness (t= 1.149, p> .05), modest self-assessment (t= 1.471, p> .05) and focus on others (t= .499, p> .05) did not differ significantly by gender. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 459-466 462 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. one way anova results of total and sub-scales of humility by age. humility n m sd f p total 18.00 27 42.25 3.49 2.132 .061 19.00 62 41.64 4.19 20.00 89 40.62 3.83 21.00 97 40.55 3.74 22.00 59 41.23 3.96 23.00 27 42.51 3.42 total 361 41.14 3.87 openness 18.00 27 9.22 1.88 .460 .806 19.00 62 9.46 1.98 20.00 89 9.06 1.94 21.00 97 9.14 1.76 22.00 59 9.35 2.14 23.00 27 9.44 2.04 total 361 9.24 1.93 self-forgetfulness 18.00 27 11.48 2.31 1.391 .227 19.00 62 11.09 2.38 20.00 89 10.79 2.22 21.00 97 11.09 2.26 22.00 59 11.22 2.62 23.00 27 12.07 2.12 total 361 11.14 2.33 modest self-assessment 18.00 27 9.77 2.45 .580 .715 19.00 62 9.69 2.44 20.00 89 9.37 2.46 21.00 97 9.24 2.15 22.00 59 9.67 2.38 23.00 27 9.18 2.23 total 361 9.45 2.34 focus on others 18.00 27 11.77 2.02 .983 .428 19.00 62 11.38 2.26 20.00 89 11.39 2.37 21.00 97 11.07 2.33 22.00 59 10.98 2.24 23.00 27 11.81 2.09 total 361 11.29 2.27 as can be seen in table 3, it was found that the total score and the subscales of the humility did not differ significantly by age (p> .05). table-4. one way anova results of total and sub-scales of humility by department. humility n m sd f p bonferroni total pe and sport teaching 87 40.80 3.53 1.131 .344 trainer education 37 41.32 3.88 sport management 25 42.08 5.01 recreation 56 40.35 3.73 special education teaching 23 42.04 4.26 primary school teaching 163 41.00 3.80 openness pe and sport teaching 87 9.40 2.11 .711 .615 trainer education 37 9.40 1.99 sport management 25 9.04 2.09 recreation 56 8.83 2.27 special education teaching 23 9.26 2.24 primary school teaching 163 9.09 1.79 self-forgetfulness pe and sport teaching 87 11.21 2.15 .923 .466 trainer education 37 11.54 2.11 sport management 25 10.56 2.45 recreation 56 11.10 2.48 special education teaching 23 11.65 2.62 primary school teaching 163 10.98 2.32 modest selfassessment pe and sport teaching 87 9.58 2.35 1.679 .139 trainer education 37 8.81 1.89 sport management 25 10.52 2.32 recreation 56 9.35 2.60 special education teaching 23 9.69 2.09 primary school teaching 163 9.42 2.42 focus on others pe and sport teaching (a) 87 10.59 2.34 2.632 .023* f>a trainer education (b) 37 11.56 1.96 sport management (c) 25 11.96 2.18 recreation (d) 56 11.05 2.46 special education teaching (e) 23 11.43 2.65 primary school teaching (f) 163 11.50 2.12 pe=physical education; *p < .05. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 459-466 463 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 4 is examined, it is observed that the f value is not significant of the total score of humility (f(5385)=.1.131; p>.05), openness (f(5-385)=.711; p>.05), self-forgetfulness (f(5-385)= .923; p>.05), modest self-assessment (f(5-385)=.1.679; p>.05). however the f value is significant for the subscale of focus on others (f(5-385)=.2.632; p<.05). the homogeneity of the variances was tested to determine which groups belong to the difference (p = .400, p> .05). bonferroni test was carried out because of does not require equal sample number, exhibit the differences between groups consistency and avoided i and ii type errors (miller, 1969). it can be seen that the difference between the mean scores of the sub-dimension of the primary school students' focus on others (m = 11.50, sd = 2.12) and the mean score of the students of physical education and sports teachers (m = 10.59, sd = 2.34) were significant (p <.05). however, there is no significant difference between trainer education (m=11.56, sd=1.96), sport management (m= 11.96, sd=2.18), recreation (m=11.05, sd=2.46) and special education teaching (m=11.43, sd=2.65). table-5. one way anova results of total and sub-scales of humility by monthly expenditure. humility n m sd f p total 0-500 tl (0-75 €) 149 41.30 3.78 .547 .651 501-1000 (75-150 €) 156 41.03 3.78 1001-1500 (150-225 €) 76 40.81 4.22 1501+ (225+ €) 28 40.42 3.62 openness 0-500 tl (0-75 €) 149 9.06 1.81 .985 .400 501-1000 (75-150 €) 156 9.41 2.05 1001-1500 (150-225 €) 76 9.05 2.26 1501+ (225+ €) 28 9.07 1.58 self-forgetfulness 0-500 tl (0-75 €) 149 11.50 2.34 2.467 .062 501-1000 (75-150 €) 156 10.79 2.25 1001-1500 (150-225 €) 76 11.25 2.37 1501+ (225+ €) 28 11.10 2.04 modest self-assessment 0-500 tl (0-75 €) 149 9.57 2.43 1.772 .152 501-1000 (75-150 €) 156 9.64 2.33 1001-1500 (150-225 €) 76 9.18 2.45 1501+ (225+ €) 28 8.67 1.90 focus on others 0-500 tl (0-75 €) 149 11.16 2.14 .317 .813 501-1000 (75-150 €) 156 11.19 2.34 1001-1500 (150-225 €) 76 11.32 2.21 1501+ (225+ €) 28 11.57 2.74 as can be seen in table 5, total score and subscales of the humility scale did not change according to monthly expenditure (p> .05). table-6. t-test result of total and sub-scales of humility by athletic status. humility athletic status n m sd t p total athlete 181 41.19 3.69 .663 .507 non-athlete 228 40.93 3.98 openness athlete 181 9.29 2.04 .883 .378 non-athlete 228 9.11 1.93 self-forgetfulness athlete 181 11.39 2.19 1.826 .069 non-athlete 228 10.97 2.38 modest self-assessment athlete 181 9.25 2.41 1.558 .120 non-athlete 228 9.62 2.33 focus on others athlete 181 11.24 2.33 .129 .897 non-athlete 228 11.21 2.23 when table 6 examined it can be seen that there is no significant difference total score of humility scale (t= .663, p> .05), openness (t= .883, p> .05), self-forgetfulness (t= 1.826, p> .05), modest self-assessment t= 1.558, p> .05) and focus on others subscales (t= .129, p> .05). table-7. t-test result of total and sub-scales of humility by athletic status by type of sports. humility type of sports n m sd t p total team sports 99 41.39 3.99 1.136 .258 individual sports 72 40.76 3.25 openness team sports 99 9.41 2.10 .861 .391 individual sports 72 9.13 2.00 self-forgetfulness team sports 99 11.34 2.22 .134 .894 individual sports 72 11.38 2.14 modest self-assessment team sports 99 9.25 2.34 .192 .848 individual sports 72 9.18 2.50 focus on others team sports 99 11.38 2.47 .903 .368 individual sports 72 11.05 2.15 when table 7 examined it can be seen that there is no significant difference total score of humility scale (t= 1.136, p> .05), openness (t= .861, p> .05), self-forgetfulness (t= .134, p> .05), modest self-assessment (t= .192, p> .05) and focus on others subscales (t= .903, p> .05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 459-466 464 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. one way anova results of total and sub-scales of humility by sports year. humility n m sd f p total 0-1 year 19 40.10 3.79 1.149 .335 2-4 years 56 41.55 3.66 5-7 years 48 40.66 3.53 8-10 years 31 41.16 3.52 10+ years 27 42.03 4.04 openness 0-1 year 19 9.31 2.21 1.101 .358 2-4 years 56 9.66 1.90 5-7 years 48 8.97 1.90 8-10 years 31 8.90 2.24 10+ years 27 9.51 2.20 self-forgetfulness 0-1 year 19 11.00 2.51 1.805 .130 2-4 years 56 11.51 2.09 5-7 years 48 10.93 1.89 8-10 years 31 11.38 2.45 10+ years 27 12.25 2.17 modest self-assessment 0-1 year 19 9.15 2.21 1.662 .161 2-4 years 56 8.82 2.36 5-7 years 48 9.35 2.46 8-10 years 31 10.12 2.77 10+ years 27 8.92 1.81 focus on others 0-1 year 19 10.63 2.19 .996 .411 2-4 years 56 11.55 2.41 5-7 years 48 11.39 2.33 8-10 years 31 10.74 2.40 10+ years 27 11.33 2.13 as can be seen in table 8, it was found that the total score and the subscales of the humility did not differ significantly according to the sport year (p> .05). table-9. one way anova results of total and sub-scales of humility by the best athletic scores. humility n m sd f p bonferroni total no 53 41.56 3.44 .348 .791 province competition 30 40.86 4.03 region competition 34 41.35 3.79 turkey competition 45 40.93 3.73 openness no 53 9.60 1.81 1.218 .305 province competition 30 8.80 2.09 region competition 34 9.55 1.94 turkey competition 45 9.15 2.38 self-forgetfulness no 53 11.71 1.98 .868 .459 province competition 30 11.33 2.32 region competition 34 11.55 2.32 turkey competition 45 11.02 2.28 modest self-assessment no (a) 53 8.96 2.10 3.542 .016* d>c province competition (b) 30 9.90 2.68 region competition (c) 34 8.38 2.11 turkey competition (d) 45 9.84 2.54 focus on others no 53 11.28 2.33 1.433 .235 province competition 30 10.83 2.35 region competition 34 11.85 2.46 turkey competition 45 10.91 2.06 p<.05. when table 9 examined, it can be seen that there is a not significant f value total score of humility (f(3158)=.348; p>.05), openness (f(3-158)=1.218; p>.05), self-forgetfulness (f(3-158)= .868; p>.05) and focus on others (f(3158)= 1.433; p>.05). however there is significant f value self-assessment subscale (f(3-158)=3.542; p<.05). the homogeneity of the variances was tested to determine which groups belong to the difference (p = .379, p> .05) and bonferroni test was carried out. mean scores of self-assessment subscale of athletes who has the best score in a turkey competition (m= 9.84, sd=2.54) significantly higher than has the best score in a regional competition (m = 8.38, sd = 2.11). there is no significant diffrence between the athletes who does not have any top three score mean (m= 8.96, sd=2.10) and athletes who has the best score in a province competition (m=9.90, sd=2.68). 4. discussion and result the main purpose of the current research is to examine the humility of university student athletes and nonathletes. in addition, it has been another focus of whether the humility differ according to gender, age, department and monthly expenditure. furthermore, the humility of the athlete students according to their sports type, sports years and the best athletic scores was investigated. while interpreting the findings, both studies on humility and studies on narcissism were evaluated. in the light of the findings, the total score and sub-dimensions of humility in the present study did not differ significantly by gender. similarly, in another study with university students, it was reported that the total score of humility did not differ according to gender (aksoy et al., 2017). guven (2019) also stated in his doctoral asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 459-466 465 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group dissertation with 2557 adult sample group that the total score of humility did not differ significantly according to gender. exline and geyer (2004) also found that there was no significant relationship between gender and humility. similarly, vural (2016) and gediksiz (2013) stated that total score of humility did not change according to gender in their master thesis. elliott (2010) the original owner of the scale used in this study, also reported that there was no significant difference between gender and humility. however, in another study, a significant difference was found in the self-assessment sub-dimension of university students in favor of male and in favor of female in the sub-dimensions of focus on others, but it was reported that general humility did not differ significantly according to gender (karademir, 2019). türkçapar and karademir (2016) indicated that the sub-dimensions did not differ significantly by gender, but that the total score of humility was significantly higher than that of females. the majority of the studies examined were not interested in the sub-dimensions that were processed with the total score of humility. in this respect, it can be considered that there is no significant difference in the total score of humility in terms of gender and it is similar to the findings in our present study. another independent variable of the study was age that there was no significant difference between the total score of humility and its subscales. guven (2019) in his doctoral dissertation with 18-65 participants, found that the total score of humility by age did not change significantly. however, many studies have reported that humility does not differ significantly by age (elliott, 2010; türkçapar and karademir, 2016; vural, 2016; aksoy et al., 2017). according to the departments included in the study, it was examined whether the humility differed or not. in the sub-dimension of focus on others, it was found that the students in the primary teaching department had significantly higher scores than the physical education and sports teacher students. it was also found that the mean score of total humility did not differ significantly in the other sub-dimensions. when the items of the subdimension of focus on others are examined, it can be thought that the individual expresses humility through others. it was found that the focus on others sub-dimension had a positive correlation with empathy (elliott, 2010). accordingly, ekinci and aybek (2010) compared the empathic tendencies of university students in different departments and found that the empathic tendencies of primary school students were higher than those of philosophy teachers. however, it can also be considered that empathy skills may be more developed since classroom teacher students are interested in the younger age group. they may be considered to have a higher score than the sub-dimension of focusing on others, as they may be more empathic. it was found that the total score of humility and the total score obtained from the sub-dimensions did not differ significantly according to the monthly expenditure situation. vural (2016) stated that humility does not differ significantly according to income status, which may be due to the high number of middle income participants in the study. gediksiz (2013) also found that the total score of humility did not change according to the income level in his master's thesis. türkçapar and karademir (2016) also found that neither humility total score nor its subdimensions differed significantly according to family income level. the findings are similar to the current results. the total scores of the students' humility and sub-dimensions did not differ significantly according to whether they are athletes or non-athletes. however, considering that there is a negative relationship between humility and narcissism (guven, 2019) it is among the findings that total narcissism scores of athletes are higher than nonathletes (tazegül and güven, 2015). demirel et al. (2018) found that exhibitionism, which is the sub-dimension of narcissism, was significantly higher in athletes than non-athletes. however, there was no significant difference in other sub-dimensions. vaughan et al. (2019) were also stated that expert athletes scored higher than non-athletes on narcissism in their research. the humility total scores of the students who are athletes and the scores of the sub-dimensions do not differ significantly according to the sports types. cavusoglu et al. (2017) also found that the level of narcissism did not differ significantly according to the sports branch. however, vaughan et al. (2019) were stated that individual athletes scored higher than team athletes on narcissism. it can be the different culture may be the reason. the humility total scores of the students who are athletes and the scores of the sub-dimensions do not differ significantly according to the sports year. whether the sport year is 1 year or more than 10 years, humility does not differ significantly. the reason for this is that, based on the findings of scores, it can be thought that the scores in this process are more effective in humility than in the sports year. the humility total scores of the students who are athletes, the openness, self-forgetfulness and focus on the others do not differ significantly according to athletic scores. but in modest self-assessment sub-scale, the average score of athletes who have the best athletic score in a turkey competition higher than athletes who have the best athletic score in a regional competition. in fact, this finding seems to be proof of a turkish proverb, “empty spike stands upright”. in this metaphor, the spike is likened to a human being, and it is expressed that it can stand upright when it is empty and its head will bend forward when it is full. considering that humility can also be highly influenced by cultural characteristics, the humility of athletes with a higher athletic score may also be higher. on the other hand, the superiority complex versus the inferiority complex that adler (2004) mentions in the theory of individual psychology may be another reason. according to adler, more or less inferiority lies beneath the superiority complex. accordingly, athletes with a lower athletic score may be considered less humble due to the superiority complex. in summary, the total score and sub-dimensions of humility in the present study did not differ significantly by gender, age, monthly expenditure, athletic status (athletes or non-athletes), sport type and sport year. however, in the sub-dimension of focus on others, it was found that the students in the primary teaching department had significantly higher scores than the physical education and sports teacher students. in modest self-assessment subscale, the average score of athletes who have the best athletic score in a turkey competition higher than athletes who have the best athletic score in a regional competition. 5. limitations and future directions the current study is characterized by a number of limitations. the study relied on the turkish sample and the study group relatively small. related to this issue, it can be considered different culture and large study groups for the future studies. different variables that can predict to humility for university student athletes or elite athletes can be take into account for the future studies. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 459-466 466 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references adler, a., 2004. the meaning and purpose of life. istanbul: say. aksoy, a.b., a. güngör aytar and n. kaytez, 2017. investigation of happiness and humility levels of university students according to some variables. kastamonu education magazine, 25(3): 1119-1132. austin, m.w., 2014. is humility a virtue in the context of sport? journal of applied philosophy, 31(2): 203-214.available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12049. brymer, e. and l.g. oades, 2009. extreme sports: a positive transformation in courage and humility. journal of humanistic psychology, 49(1): 114-126.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167808326199. çağlayan, h.s., m. akandere and ö. gül, 2017. the effect of physical activities on the level of forgiveness of university students. international journal of educational sciences, 11: 314-322. cavusoglu, g., a.k. yılmaz, m. kabadayı, s.h. abacı and m.y. tasmekteplıgıl, 2017. comparison of narcissism levels of students in the faculty of sports sciences in terms of some demographic variables. turkish journal of sport and exercise, 19(2): 150-156.available at: https://doi.org/10.15314/tsed.296702. demirel, h., m. altın, y.g. yalçın and h. demir, 2018. comparison of narcissism levels of university students who do sports and do not do sports. turkish journal of sport sciences, 1(2): 72-77. ekinci, ö. and b. aybek, 2010. examination of prospective teachers' empathic and critical thinking dispositions. elementary school online, 9(2): 3-14.available at: https://doi.org/10.17522/nefefmed.57817. elliott, j.c., 2010. humility: development and analysis of a scale (doctoral dissertation). available from https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1887&context=utk_graddiss. exline, j.j. and a.l. geyer, 2004. perceptions of humility: a preliminary study. self and identity, 3(2): 95-114.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13576500342000077. foster, c., 2019. sport science: progress, hubris, and humility. international journal of sports physiology and performance, 14(2): 141143.available at: 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humility, piety and psychological well-being in adults. unpublished master’s thesis. marmara university, institute of social sciences, istanbul. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 536 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 536-540, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.536.540 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group efficiency predictive factors for professional ability of ramkhamhaeng university lecturers for asean socio-cultural community chomsupak cruthaka1 duangduen chancharoen2 taviga tungprapa3 apinya ingard4 pornkul suksod5 ( corresponding author) 1,2ramkhamhaeng university, bangkok, thailand. 3srinakharinwirot university, bangkok, thailand. 4silpakorn university, bangkok, thailand. 5suan sunandha rajabhat university, bangkok, thailand. abstract this study aims to investigate the relationship between the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability; intercultural learning ability; english ability and interpersonal ability with professional ability of ramkhamhaeng university (ru) lecturers for asean socio-cultural community (ascc); and study the efficiency predictive factors of professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. the sample population consisting of 295 ru lecturers. the instrument of research was a five-rating scale questionnaire eliciting data concerning the predictive factors of professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. the questionnaires were tested for content validity index and the reliability by cronbach’s alpha coefficient were .91, .95, .85 ,.95 and .96 respectively. data were analyzed by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, person product moment correlation and stepwise multiple regression analysis. findings: 1. interpersonal ability; english ability; intercultural learning ability; and the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability were a positive moderate correlation and the professional ability with statistical significance at the level of .01. (r=338, .415, .449 and .444) 2. the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability (x1); intercultural learning ability (x2) and english ability (x3 ) were to predicted professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc account to 52.70 percent (adjusted r2 =.527). the predicted in row score equation as follows: y’ = 1.068 + .332(x1) + .244(x2) + .194(x3) the predicted in standardized equation as follows: zy’ = .359(zx1) + .279(zx2) + .244(zx3). keywords: predictive factors, professional standards, ramkhamhaeng university lecturers, asean socio-cultural community. citation | chomsupak cruthaka; duangduen chancharoen; taviga tungprapa; apinya ingard; pornkul suksod (2020). efficiency predictive factors for professional ability of ramkhamhaeng university lecturers for asean socio-cultural community. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 536-540. history: received: 5 june 2020 revised: 8 july 2020 accepted: 12 august 2020 published: 1 september 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 537 2. research objectives ...................................................................................................................................................................... 537 3. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................. 537 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 537 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 538 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 539 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 540 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.536.540&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2078 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 536-540 537 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the relationship between the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability; intercultural learning ability; english ability and interpersonal ability with professional ability of ramkhamhaeng university (ru) lecturers for asean socio-cultural community (ascc); and study the efficiency predictive factors of professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. 1. introduction the core of future is to create mutual identity across asean member countries, or asean identity. due to the need for joint development and the existence of diversity in terms of geographical areas, languages, ethnic groups, and ecological surroundings, this notion will support the diverse nature of asean identity while promoting the sense of caring and sharing (srisoothikerdporn, 2012). hence, all universities should cooperate in building this mutual identity. this is because the emergence of asean economic community (aec) will stimulate the mobility of scholars and professionals of other fields across member countries, so as to establish a research and development institute to serve as an excellent center, out of which products and innovations will arise from constructive development from asean member countries. however, even in this globalized era, the education system in thailand is still offering a teacher-oriented learning format, hence restricting the students’ knowledge acquisition. this incident stems basically from the teacher’s limited capability as an individual to pursue and process the availability of overabundant information, as well as the student’s own ability to search for information by him/herself. hence, the inability to retrieve existing information and filter out incoming information, together with the inability to build and apply the acquired knowledge, will eventually hinder the instructional processes and outcomes to keep track with rapidly-changing technologies (bureau of international cooperation strategy the office of the higher education commission, 2010). at present, the instruction process has been shifted to be learner-oriented, in which the course syllabus clearly displayed the notion of knowledge self-acquisition. in other words, in-class content provision has been reduced due to the availability of contents in online systems, but to be replaced by the focus on cultivating the systematic thinking, together with critical and analytical thinking, so as to implant the students with creativity, courage to experiment unconventional practices, and willingness to listen to others. moreover, the current educational process also includes the evaluation of other elements beyond subject-specific contents. the content itself is posted on e-learning website to facilitate easy access among the learners. the classroom will focus primarily on the knowledge acquisition process via discussion, arguments, critiques, analytical evaluation, and synthesis of related concepts. these activities are expected to light up challenging issues and get thailand prepared for stepping in the society of creative economy (wattanasirichaikool, 2009). ru is administered in a ‘knowledge market’ type, in which instructional advancement has been marked up as its core value. to keep track with fast changes in the globalized era, the university has been offering a number of modern programs of both in-class and distance systems to both local and international students at the bachelor’s, the master’s, and the doctoral levels, with new programs constantly offered. all programs have also been standardized and verifiable under the quality assurance management (ramkhamhaeng university, 2020). therefore, with regard to asean socio-cultural community, as well as the diversity of races, religions, and traditions across asean member countries, the lecturers of ru are required to conduct self-development to achieve professional standards, acquire proficiency in english language, adept in asean culture, and be able to use information technology as well as develop interpersonal ability (cruthaka, 2011). 2. research objectives the purpose of this research was to study of relationship between the use of information technology for retrieval and communication; intercultural learning; english ability and interpersonal ability with professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. and study the efficiency predictive factors of professional ability of ru for ascc. 3. research methodology the researcher conducted a survey of opinions regarding factors of professional ability of ru for ascc under study. using the method of proportional stratified random sampling as applied to the ten faculties at which the lecturers were employed, the researcher thereby constituted a sample population consisting of 295 ru lecturers. the information on personal characteristics of ru lecturers consisted of 178 men (60.30%) and 117 women (39.70%). 72 lecturers (24.40%) are in the age group of 2535, 83 lecturers (28.14%) are in the age group of 36-45, 60 lecturers (20.34%) are in the age group of 46-55, and 80 lecturers (27.12%) are in the age group of 56 years old or over. 204 lecturers (69.20%) have education master degree and 91lecturers (30.80%) have education doctor degree. the instrument of research was a five-rating scale questionnaire eliciting data concerning factors of professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. the first part of the questionnaire was brought out as information about the demographic characteristics of the respondents using checklists. in the second part of the questionnaire, the researcher uses the data obtained from the questionnaire about interpersonal ability; english ability; intercultural learning ability; the use of information technology for retrieval and communication and professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. testing for quality, the researchers found that the instruments evinced reliability at the levels of .91., .95, .85, .95, and .96 respectively. using techniques of descriptive statistics, the researchers analyzed the data collected in terms of frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. in addition, person product moment correlation and stepwise multiple regression analysis. 4. results the results of the study of the predictive factors for professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc as following: asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 536-540 538 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. means and standard deviation and the level of opinions to the predict factors of professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. variable sd opinions level interpersonal ability 3.79 .65 high english ability 3.90 .67 high intercultural learning ability 3.81 .61 high the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability 4.11 .57 high professional ability 4.12 .53 high total 3.95 .49 high table 1 show that these ru lecturers exhibited levels of opinions regarding the predictive factors of professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc in an overall picture and in all aspects at a high level. table-2. relationship between interpersonal ability; english ability; intercultural learning ability; the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability with professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. variable professional ability r p-value interpersonal ability .338** .000 english ability .415** .000 intercultural learning ability .449** .000 the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability .444** .000 note: ** p < .01. table 2 show that interpersonal ability; english ability; intercultural learning ability; and the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability were a positively and moderately correlation to the professional ability at the 0.01 significant level (r=338, .415, .449 and .444). while the aspect relation to intercultural learning ability had a highest, the next were the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability; english ability; and interpersonal ability respectively. table-3. regression coefficients of independent variables in the ru lecturers’ professional ability for ascc model. independent variable b seb beta t p-value the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability (x1) .332 .048 .359 6.897 .000 intercultural learning ability (x2) .244 .045 .279 5.398 .000 english ability(x3) .194 .037 .244 5.203 .000 constant 1.068 .170 6.298 .000 r=.729 r2=.532 adjusted r2=.527 seest =.36478 f=110.327 p-value=.000 note: * p < .05 table 3 show that constant = 1.068, regression coefficient (b) for predictive professional ability (y) of the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability (x1) =.332; intercultural learning ability (x2) = .244; and english ability(x3) =.194. (show that equation 1) a part of regression standardized coefficient (beta) for predictive professional ability (zy) of the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability (zx1) =.359; intercultural learning ability(zx 2) = .279; and english ability(zx3) =.244. . (show that equation 2). the aspect regression coefficient of the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability (x1) had a highest in predictive professional ability (y) of ru lecturers for ascc, the next were intercultural learning ability (x2), and english ability(x3) respectively. the result of regression analysis for constructed prediction equation of professional ability of ru lecturers for ascc. the predicted in row score equation as follows: y’ = 1.068 + .332(x1) + .244(x2) + .194(x3) 1 the predicted in standardized equation as follows: zy’ = .359(zx1) + .279(zx2) + .244(zx3) 2 the efficiency of predictive equation: the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability (x1), intercultural learning ability (x2), english ability (x3) predicted professional ability of ru for ascc to account for 52.70 percent (adjusted r2 =.527). 5. discussion the discussion to answer the two research objectives are as follows: 1. interpersonal ability; english ability; intercultural learning ability; and the use of information technology for retrieval and communication ability were a positively and moderately correlation to the professional ability at the 0.01 significant level. the related discussions are as following: 1.1 interpersonal ability was found to correlate positively in a moderate level with professional ability at the 0.01 significant level (r=.338). this finding may stem from the fact that the lecturers usually use interpersonal ability, be it writing, speaking, and expressing non-verbal postures, to convey meanings of transmitted information to individuals who engaged in interactions in instructional process management in ascc, hence yielding a positive relationship with professional ability among the university lecturers. the said findings also coincided with selvi (2010) study that an individual’s social and cultural ability, emotional ability, and communication ability not only exerted an influence on values, behaviors, communication, and performance goals in school, but also supported professional development.  asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 536-540 539 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1.2 english ability was found to correlate positively in a moderate level with professional ability at the 0.01 significant level (r=.415). this finding may stem from the fact that english is a necessary tool for ru lecturers to be used in retrieving information and examining research concepts relating to instructional improvement and exchanges of academic knowledge and professional experiences. the finding agreed with youxing (2010) study on evaluation of a shortterm exchange program of language and culture between dali university, shina university, and burapha university, in which life experiences, learning experiences, english communication, culture, and participation in the program, jointly functioned to develop understanding about internalization. the research findings also stated that chinese students possessed expertise with regards to the use of english in communication. the above finding also coincided with kamaruddin and ibrahim (2010) research on improving competency of teaching methods of malaysian lecturers using a career-development program. they concluded that the malaysian lecturers need to improve their english ability in listening, speaking, and writing skills. 1.3 intercultural learning ability was found to correlate positively in a moderate level with professional ability at the 0.01 significant level (r=.449). this may stem basically from the necessity of ru lecturers to be equipped with knowledge relating to cultural and traditions to be applied in their international-oriented teaching and professional development in the asean context. the aforesaid findings are also in congruence with toatong (2011) paper on the integration of cross-cultural learning through the tourism academic program in aec, focusing particularly on thailand’s case. the study reported that the said integration could be achieved through mutual cooperation among related academic institutes with regards to holding exchange programs of culture, and lecturers & students, and joint research or co-production of textbooks across universities. the study of selvi (2010) also supported this notion by stating that social and cultural ability exerted an influence on values, behaviors, communication, and performance goals in school. 1.4the ability to use information technology for retrieval and communication was found to correlate positively in a moderate level with professional ability at the 0.01 significant level (r=.444). this may stem basically from the role of technology deemed necessary among ru lecturers in rendering attractive learning via electronic instructional materials, web teaching, and social media. the quality of instructions is expected to be uplifted due to easy access to knowledge without time and place restrictions. the findings also agreed with cruthaka (2018) who stated that technological competency enables lecturers to achieve knowledge access and retrieval, as well as learning exchanges, knowledge application in instructions and related material development, and all-time learning supports both in the synchronized (interaction between teachers and learners) and asynchronized (self-learning as desired by learners) dimensions. therefore, the ability to use information technology for retrieval and communication was found to correlate positively with professional ability of ru lecturers. 2. the ability to use information technology for retrieval and communication, intercultural learning ability, and english ability, were found to create a model to predict 52.70 percent of professional ability among ru lecturers in ascc. the related discussions are as following: 2.1 the ability to use information technology for retrieval and communication could predict professional ability ru lecturers in ascc. this finding may be explained that the ability to use of information technology for retrieval and communication is a critical factor for ru lecturers to use those technologies in handling instructions via networks, long distance, or via websites, together with the invention of development of e-materials, and retrieval of related research to create academic outputs in ascc. the findings also coincided with youxing (2010) who stated that the application of technology as a basis for learning could be done by using web-based learning, teleconferencing, tv, internet, intranet, computer-based training, and virtual reality. in this aspect, the provision of learning-support equipment and learning-constructive environments should be made available through the production of learning-facilitating modules and multimedia, hence reinforcing the lecturers’ technological potentials in knowledge gathering and disseminating, as well as knowledge retrieval. the above finding is also in congruence with cruthaka and pinngern (2016) study in that the university lecturers are able to handle their instructions via website and network systems, crate multimedia to be used in lecturing and assisted instructions, and use technology in speedy retrieval of research papers. 2.2 intercultural learning ability could predict professional ability ru lecturers in ascc. this finding may be explained by the fact that, in asean socio-cultural community, the lecturers need to acquire knowledge about arts & culture, as well as differences in races, languages, religions and traditions of asean member countries, so that understanding and clear communication could be facilitated. the finding was in congruence with wichasin (2011) study on the integration of cross-cultural learning through tourism academic programs among the aec member countries, focusing particularly on lao pdr and malaysia. the findings revealed that lao pdr had well promoted, among its students, knowledge in and understanding of its own culture, thereby creating open-minded attitudes among the students regarding the awareness and respect of different cultures. 2.3 english ability could predict professional ability ru lecturers in ascc. this finding may be explained by the fact that ru lecturers considered english as an important tool in communication, be it speaking, writing, or database retrieving in ascc. moreover, english is normally used as a second language across asean member countries, while being stated in the asean charter as a formal language of asean (the department of asean affairs ministry of foreign affairs, 2013). as a result, english ability could account for 4.30 percent of variances in professional ability among ru lecturers. 6. recommendations 1. the university should support faculty development to achieve professional ability at the international standards. this outcome could be attained by using a development plan to improving english ability, together with the ability to use information technology for retrieval and communication, and continual learning of traditions and cultures across countries. 2. the factor relating to information technology for retrieval and communication ability could predict at the highest level the professional ability among ramkhamhaeng university lecturers in asean socio-cultural community. therefore, ramkhamhaeng university should update its database on a regular basis, together with asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 536-540 540 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group forming a learning network with other universities in asean. this action will definitely uplift the faculty members’ professional ability to the international standards. references bureau of international cooperation strategy the office of the higher education commission. (2010). thailand higher education strategy to readiness towards asean community 2015. bangkok: bangkok blog. cruthaka, c. (2011). identification of human resource development need in asean community. the journal of faculty of applied arts, 4(2), 63-70. cruthaka, c. (2018). the technological competencies of university lecturers: applications to instructional management in asean socio-cultural community. paper presented at the asean on the path of community conference proceeding. december 11, 2018, ramkhamhaeng university. cruthaka, c., & pinngern, o. (2016). development of a training program for enhancement of technology competencies of university lecturers. international journal of educational administration and policy studies, 8(6), 57-65.available at: https://doi.org/10.5897/ijeaps2016.0465. kamaruddin, w. n., & ibrahim, m. s. (2010). enhancing malaysian polytechnic technical lecturers’ competency through the identification of professional development programs. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 7, 446-454.available at: https://doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.10.061. ramkhamhaeng university. (2020). introductiom ramkhamhaeng university. retrieved from http://www.oasc.ru.ac.th/. [accessed october 15, 2007]. selvi, k. (2010). teachers’ competencies. cultura international journal of philosophy of culture and axiology, 7(1), 167-175. srisoothikerdporn, p. (2012). asean community 2015. bangkok: panyachon distributor. the department of asean affairs ministry of foreign affairs. (2013). 58 answers to the asean community 2018 (2nd ed.). bangkok: ministry of foreign affairs. toatong, c. (2011). learning each other through asean tourism education: the case of thailand. a research copyrighted by the association of thai tourism academic. (project code: tri/asean/0003, support by the thailand research fund). wattanasirichaikool, s. (2009). national strategic plan for development of thailand before entering the asean economic community in 2015. a research copyrighted by office of the election commission. wichasin, p. (2011). learning each other through asean tourism education: the case of lao’ people democratic republic and federation of malaysia. a research copyrighted by suan dusit university. (project code: tri/asean/0006, support by the thailand research fund). youxing, x. (2010). evaluation of the short-term international language and culture exchange program: a qualitative approach. human resource development journal, 1(1), 69-77. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.oasc.ru.ac.th/ http://www.oasc.ru.ac.th/ 121 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 121-133, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.121.133 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the rights and responsibilities of parents according to the views of teachers bilgen kiral1 1faculty of education, educational administration department, aydin adnan menderes university, aydin, turkey abstract the research was carried out to determine the rights and responsibilities of parents, whether they were treated accordingly, the reasons of not complying the responsibilities, and whether they were treated accordingly in the event that there was a specific legal text regarding the rights and responsibilities. the research was conducted in a primary school in 2018-2019 academic year in efeler in aydin where the children of the parents with high socio-economic status studied. 8 voluntary classroom teachers participated in the study. phenomenology approach, one of the qualitative research designs, was used in the research. the data of the research was collected by face-to-face interviews with a semi-structured interview form. the most frequently repeated rights were; meeting the classroom teacher and the parents, receiving information about the achievement of their children, transferring them to another school and enrolling them in the school. the most frequently repeated responsibilities of parents regarding their children were; nutrition, dressing, providing their clothes and school uniforms, following their homework/lessons, helping their homework at home, directing them to social activities and acquiring self-care skills. the teachers thought that all the parents in their school already knew and claimed their rights. however, half of the parents regularly fulfilled their responsibilities. the reasons for not fulfilling their responsibilities were divided into two categories as parental characteristics and educational reasons. at the end of the research, such suggestions were made as preparing a specific legal text with sanction power that included the rights and responsibilities of parents. keywords: primary school, classroom teacher, parent, right, responsibility, children. citation | bilgen kiral (2019). the rights and responsibilities of parents according to the views of teachers. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 121-133. history: received: 31 october 2018 revised: 7 december 2018 accepted: 9 january 2019 published: 2 february 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 122 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 124 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 126 4. conclusion, discussion and suggestions .................................................................................................................................. 130 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 132 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.121.133&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/392 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5352-8552 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/392 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5352-8552 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/392 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5352-8552 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/392 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5352-8552 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 122 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction the most important force behind the child development is, without any doubt, the parents. the role of mothers and fathers in the education of the child turns into the role of the parent with the start of school. the parent is the person who is the mother, father or the person who takes the responsibility of the child. the parents have a number of rights and responsibilities. the fulfillment of these rights and responsibilities can lead to improve the quality of education. besides, uninterrupted rights and responsibilities of especially the families regarding the activities within the school can also lead the school activities to achieve the desired standards. according to aydin (2006) taking part in educational and administrative services within the school is among the most basic rights of families. the more parents stake a claim on these rights and fulfill their responsibilities regarding the school, the better the educational efficiency of the school will be. parents have extremely important roles to perform in the education of their children. dulger (2015) lists the rights of parents regarding school as; (1) being informed about the education of their children, (2) being treated with fairness and respect, (3) being provided quality resources and opportunities for their children as well as quality education, (4) receiving information about the school periodically, (5) participating in the school’s administrative activities, (6) and being informed about the progress of the child at certain times. in ministry of national education the student-school-parent contract in turkey (2015) of the rights of parents are given as; being informed about all the matters related to the education of their child, receiving fair and respectful treatment when they go to school, knowing that the child is given the opportunity to receive education in the school with quality resources, informing the child about the functioning of the school at regular intervals, helping the school administration via parent-teacher association (2012) being informed about the development process of the child at school periodically, benefiting from the educational activities organized at school for the parents, and benefiting from all social and cultural activities presented by the school. as can be seen, claiming these mentioned rights by the parents can lead to better service of education providers. therefore, teachers and school administrators who offer educational services will be able to perform better because of the parents who claim their rights. they will try to fill in the missing parts in education. the rights of parents can be expressed as the authorities that parents can use in the education of their children. the responsibilities of parents include everything; raising, developing, maintaining, securing, the environment they live in, the school they will have education in, taking care of their lessons etc. (moyo, 2014). these responsibilities are given automatically to families with the birth of the child and increases with schooling (hall, 1999; lowe, 2005). henricson (2008) states the responsibilities of parents as; (1) ensuring the child to have proper education: ensuring that the child receives an education appropriate to his or her needs, attends the school or alternatively receives education at home as an acceptable way with educational executives, that homework is monitored and school learning activities are supported; (2) ensuring that the child is physically secured, adequately protected against danger, and prevented from being harmed: providing adequate supervision and a safe environment for the child, (3) meeting the child’s physical needs: providing the child adequate nutrition, shelter, clean and appropriate clothes, adequate personal hygiene, appropriate medical care, opportunities for physical exercise, and an environment that facilitates the physical development of the child, (4) meeting the child’s emotional needs: providing a consistent emotional warmth by ensuring that the child keeps in touch with the family members and other people, promoting the strengthening of emotional trust bonds for the child. (5) promoting the child’s social behaviors and performing this task in a humane and non-abusive way: parenting positively including limitations and supervision in accordance with age, and helping the child in the event of behavioral problems; (6) respecting the individuality of the child and giving him or her the right to participate in decisions: asking the child’s ideas in accordance with his or her age and development, regarding the child as a separate individual and therefore, respecting him or her within family. families have extremely important roles to fulfill in the education of their children (aydin, 2006). burns (1993) classified the roles of the family. when these roles are examined, it seems that they coincide with the responsibilities of parents. these are; the official role of the family, the teacher role at home and the role of supporting school programs. official role includes the basic responsibilities such as the participation of the family in the meetings and programs held at school, filling in the required documents regarding their children. the teacher role at home includes helping their children with their homework, supporting their home learning activities, and helping them to improve their study habits. the role of supporting school programs includes the participation of families in school trips, assisting end-of-year programs, taking part in the activities that will provide income to school and doing voluntary work for the school. it is also the responsibility of the family to take part in the activities related to school. it is effective in integrating the child in the society and increasing his or her academic achievement. for this reason, communication channels with parents should always be open. these communication channels include one-to-one interviews between parents and teachers, parent-teacher meetings, phone calls, e-mails, whatsapp messages, letters, absence letters, and home visits. with these, parents can also be reminded their rights and responsibilities by continuously transferring information about their children (kiral, 2017a). another classification was made by henricson (2008). this classification is given in figure 1. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 123 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. parents responsibilities source: henricson (2008) as seen in figure 1, according to henricson (2008) the responsibilities that should be fulfilled by the family are; the responsibilities regarding the developmental needs of the child (health, education, the emotional and behavioral development of the child, acquiring identity, developing social relations and the relations within family, introducing the child to the circle around, developing self-care skills); the responsibilities regarding the proficiency of the parents (providing the basic care of the child, ensuring their safety, integrating with the child emotionally, encouraging the child in the tasks he or she will perform, guiding the child, teaching the child the boundaries, what to do and what not to do, being consistent and decisive in attitude and behavior towards the child); and the responsibilities regarding the family and family circle (creating a family consciousness by telling about the history of the family, keeping in touch with the other members of the family and providing a home for the child to be able to be an extended family, having a job so as to meet the needs of the child, adjusting the income status, acting with the society, using the social resources for the sake of the child). hence, when the trivet comes together, the educational activities of the child can become more qualified. 1.1. legal bases of parents’ rights and responsibilities in turkish education system when the legal texts in turkish education system are examined, it is seen that there is no specific legal text which includes only the rights and responsibilities of parents. when the legal texts are examined, it is found that there are various articles regarding parents directly or indirectly. these items are related to parental rights and responsibilities. parents’ rights and what they should do can be found in the legislations. the following are the articles regarding parents’ rights and responsibilities in the legal texts. in the united nations universal declaration of human rights (1948) the issue of education right of children is addressed and the initiative to determine the type of education intended to be given to children is given to parents. in compliance with the relevant decrees of primary education law (1961) numbered 222, parents have the responsibility to ensure the attendance of their children to school and the right to be informed about the absence of them. it is stated in the convention on the rights of the child (1989) that parents have certain rights and responsibilities together and that by expressing that the sake of the child is the fundamental concern, the parents or the guardian of the child should watch out for them throughout the process. in the turkish civil code (2001) it is stated that the parents of the child have the right to name the child and determine the child’s religious education, and by taking into account the sake of the child regarding the education and care, the parents have the right to make decisions and implement, and educate the child according to the opportunities they have. in parent-teacher association (2012) aren’t is defined; accordingly, parent refers to the student’s mother, father or the person of legal responsibility in formal and non-formal educational institutions. therefore, parents have the right to be a member of the parent-teacher association with the other stakeholders, take part in the general committee, the board of directors and the board of supervisors, be the head of the parentteacher association and perform other duties in this association. according to regulation on secondary education institutions (2013) parents have the right to attend school activities and be informed about school activities. students have to attend school. parents are obliged to ensure that their students attend school. parents have the right to be informed about the absence of their students by mail, email and/or informatics tools. declaration of apology or written declaration of the parent regarding the absence of the student is given to the school administration by the parent within 5 working days following the day of absence. it is the responsibility of the parent. the parent has the right to ask for the transfer of the child to another school. the data of the student is obtained over the e-school system. the parent may object to the results of projects, performance studies and exams to school administration within 5 working days following the announcement of the results. the parents of the students who are absent are informed. this is the right of the parent. according to regulation on pre-school and primary school institutions (2014) the children who are between 60 and 66 months of age are considered to be ready for primary school in terms of development and from these children, those whose parents request in writing are enrolled in the first grade of primary school. the parent has the right to enroll the child in the school early. school administrations can direct the children who are 66, 67 and 68 months of age to pre-school education with the petition of the parent and they can either direct those who are 69, 70 and 71 months of age to pre-school education or put off their registration for a year with the medical report declaring that they are not ready to begin primary school. parents have the right to put off their children’s education with a written document. the situation of the student who attends the first lesson but does not attend the second or more lessons without permission in normal and double shift education schools is notified to the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 124 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group parent by the school administration immediately and the child’s absence is considered as a half-day. the situation of the student who cannot attend the exams done by the teachers without excuse or who cannot deliver the project on time is notified to the parent by the school administration in written form, by e-mail or via mobile information service of the ministry. in short, the parent has the right to receive information about the child. the parent has the responsibility to notify the reason why the child was unable to take the exam or deliver the project on time to the school administration in writing within five working days at the latest. in line with the written request of the parent and the decision of the individualized education program development unit, the inclusive students in primary school may be made to repeat the grade for once only. of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade students, those who are considered to be above the grade level in terms of their knowledge and skills take the class level-up exam within the first month of the school year with the written request of the parent and the suggestion of the classroom teacher. those who are successful are taken to a class that is one grade up. in case of negative behaviors of the student, the teacher invites the parent to school. parents have the right to learn the negative behaviors of their children. in primary schools, students’ attendance is compulsory and parents are responsible for their children’s attendance at school. in the ministry of national education the regulation on social activities of educational institutions (2017) parents have the right to take part in the committee of school’s social activities. parents also have the right to participate in the students’ social activities, community service works, etc. in the regulation on awards and discipline regarding secondary school institutions, parents have the right to attend the ceremony where the student will be given the award and be informed about the ceremony. before the student is given a punishment, the parent has the right to present opinions and object to the punishments given. within the scope of the regulation on ministry of national education the regulation on guidance and psychological counseling services (2017) school guidance services carry out various activities regarding students with the parents and in cooperation with the school. among these are educational, professional and personal guidance services, which are among the rights of the parents. according to the ministry of national education the regulation on special education services (2018) during the period of early childhood education, parents have the right to demand home schooling, education at the hospital or terminating education process, and to request the extension of pre-school education period for their children with special educational needs parents have the right to take part in and be informed about special education schools, the transfers among them, the status and individual developments of the students, and their educational evaluations and diagnosis processes. in accordance with the written request of the parent who has a student in special education, the parent has the right to request a grade repetition for once only. apart from this, the parent has the right to object to the educational evaluation and diagnosis or placement decisions within 30 days from the date of notification. when the rights and responsibilities of parents are evaluated, it can be said that they are created in order to protect the rights of the children and secure them. parents are required to know their rights and comply with their responsibilities for the sake of children because the behaviors of parents towards their children shape the children’s quality of life, their future, characters and world perspectives. for this reason, the fact that parents know their rights and responsibilities on their children can at first benefit the child and then the education system. it can be seen that parental rights have not been defined separately and clearly with a legal document in turkish education system, yet. considering the fact that there are not sufficient studies in turkey on this topic when the researches conducted are examined, it was aimed in this study to investigate the rights and responsibilities of parents regarding their children. in order to achieve this aim, the following questions were tried to be answered. according to the views of classroom teachers; 1. what are the rights and responsibilities of parents regarding their children? 2. what is the parents’ status of knowing their rights and fulfilling their responsibilities? 3. what should be done in order for the parents to learn their rights and fulfill their responsibilities? 2. method in the research, phenomenological approach, which is one of qualitative research designs, was used in order to study in depth, with few people and in detail (patton, 2014). phenomenological studies are based on the individuals’ own life and daily experiences (merriam, 2013; ersoy, 2016). in these studies, such fundamentals as interpreting the individuals regarding the events in their circle, understanding according to their discourse and trying to evaluate them according to their feelings and thoughts are taken into consideration (dey, 1993). 2.1. research school: summer primary school the school in this research was given a code name that never existed in the city. this code name was summer primary school. criterion sampling and convenient sampling methods, which are of purposeful sampling methods, were used in the selection of the school that participated in the research. the criterion for determining the school was that it was a primary school in which the children of high socio-economic level studied. the reason why the school with parents of high socio-economic level was preferred was the consideration that more views could be obtained from the teachers as the parents at this school were more aware of their rights and responsibilities. first of all, the list of primary schools was requested from aydin provincial directorate of national education and one of the schools with high socio-economic level was selected. the reason for choosing this school was that the children of the researcher studied in summer primary school. the researcher observed that the parents of the children in the class of her children and those in other classes in summer primary school were aware of their rights and responsibilities. in order to avoid prejudiced behaviors in the research, the teachers of the researcher’s children and the teachers who were known before were not included in the research process. another reason was that the school was available and convenient for the researcher. for this reason, convenient sampling method, which is another purposeful sampling method, was used. summer primary school where the children of the families with high socio-economic level studied was located in the city center. the mothers of the students were housewives, teachers, nurses, and officers while their fathers were civil servants and officers like teacher, police and military personnel. the families had high education levels. generally, the fathers were university graduates and the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 125 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group mothers were high school or university graduates. there were no parents who did not know how to read or write. the income level of the families was high. their average income level was above 4000 turkish liras. in the school, there were more than 1200 students, 62 teachers (3 english teachers, 1 religious culture and moral knowledge teacher, 5 guidance teachers and 11 pre-school teachers), 1 principal and 3 vice principals. there were 41 classes in this school including 30 primary and 11 pre-school classes. 2.2. participants the study was carried out with volunteer classroom teachers working in a primary school in efeler district of aydin province in the first semester of 2018-2019 academic year. the teachers were preferred to have similar characteristics in terms of age, seniority and seniority at this school because it was assumed that experienced teachers who analyzed the region well would provide more information in the research. after all, in the essence of phenomenological research, it is fundamental that the participants are experienced regarding the phenomenon and that they are voluntary to participate (moustakas, 1994). in phenomenological approach, there are some views about the participants in the research. creswell (2016) states that the number of participants should be composed of a heterogeneous group that varies between 3-4 people and 10-15 people as the experiences of the individuals are of great importance; while polkinghorne (1989) states that 5 to 25 participants experiencing the event will be adequate in phenomenological researches. taking all these into consideration, 8 participants who experienced the phenomenon were included in the research. information about the teachers are in table 1. table-1. information about the teachers s u m m er p ri m ar y s ch o o l teachers’ code names gender age seniority (year) seniority in the same school (year) class level interview time (minute) interview (page) 1. ali m 58 33 16 3 24 1 2. duygu f 55 34 7 3 20 3 3. can m 47 23 3 2 8 2 4. hulya f 50 31 8 4 18 3 5. emine f 55 32 13 2 10 1 6. berrin f 41 18 6 1 13 2 7. aysun f 49 27 7 1 9 2 8. tulay f 43 23 5 4 10 2 source: author's field work when the table 1 is examined, 2 male and 6 female classroom teachers participated in the research in summer primary school. the youngest of the teachers was 41 and the oldest was 58 years old. it was revealed that the seniority of the teachers varied between 18 and 34 years. in the school, there were no teachers younger than 41 years and having less than 18 years of seniority. when the teachers’ seniority in the same school was analyzed, it was found that they in the same school for 3 years at least and 16 years at most. 2 volunteer teachers from each class level participated in the research. 2.3. the role of the researcher for the research, first of all, “official written permission” was received from aydin provincial directorate of national education and then, the interviews were made. in the beginning of the research, the questions were asked in a completely neutral manner, and prejudices and individual opinions were not included in the study. in order to avoid prejudiced behaviors in the research, the teachers of the researcher’s children and the teachers who were known before were not included in the research process. considering the ethical factors in the research, the questions that would reveal the identities of the participants were avoided and such statements were not included in the study. the study was also strengthened with direct quotations without distorting what the participants said. 2.4. data collection and analysis before the beginning of the research process, the literature was reviewed and a semi-structured interview form was prepared after the literature review. while preparing the form, the views of a classroom teacher and an academician were obtained, a pre-application was performed with a teacher, and then the final draft of the form was created. the questions in the interview form were: ―what are the rights and responsibilities of parents regarding their children?”, “what is the parents’ status of knowing their rights?”, “what is the parents’ status of fulfilling their responsibilities?”, “is there a specific legal text in turkish education system that includes the parents’ rights and responsibilities?”, “do you think a specific legal text should be prepared in turkish education system that includes the parents’ rights and responsibilities?”, “do you think that parents will comply with this legal text?”, what are your suggestions on what should be done in order for the parents to learn their rights and fulfill their responsibilities?‖. in the research, the interviews with the teachers were conducted in the teachers’ room and in the room of the administrator in summer primary school. the interviews lasted for a total of 111 minutes; the longest interview was 24 minutes, the shortest interview was 8 minutes, with an average of 13.8 minutes. the interviews were conducted face-to-face by the researcher himself and recorded by means of a voice recorder with the permission of the participants. the voice recordings transcripted in the computer were about 16 pages. following the interviews that were transcripted, the analysis process of the research was started. content analysis was used in the research and the categorization of the data was performed by the researcher (yildirim and simsek, 2005). for internal validity, participant confirmation and direct citations were used (merriam, 2013; patton, 2014; creswell, 2016). direct quotations mean that the views of the participants in the research are given just as they are without being exposed to any changes. in this study, the views of the participants were given just as they were so as to provide validity. for participant confirmation, the accuracy of the participant’s statement was aimed to be confirmed and it was tried to be sure of what was said. furthermore, at the end of the research, the research was finalized after the researcher made the participants listen to their voice recordings and asking the participants to verify them and asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 126 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group whether they wanted to add anything. for external validity, purposeful sampling method was used, the literature was reviewed and coding was performed by another researcher. for objectivity in the research, the method of reducing the prejudices of the researcher was used (guba, 1981; lincoln and guba, 1986). in order to provide the reliability in the research, miles and huberman (1994) formula was used. after the data was coded by a different researcher, the ratio was 90%, which indicated that the research was reliable. each participant was given a code name in the research. the codes used were selected from the names such as ali, duygu, can, hulya, emine, berrin, aysun and tulay, which were not present in summer primary school. 3. findings the findings obtained based on the sub-problems of the research are given below. 3.1. the rights of the parents as a result of the responses of the teachers who participated in the research, the rights of the parents regarding their children were divided into four categories. these were the rights of communication, being informed, benefiting and discipline. in table 2, the rights of the parents are given in detail. table-2. the rights of the parents category the rights of the parents codes of the teachers’ names a li d u y g u c a n h u ly a e m in e b e rr in a y su n t u la y communication right communicate with the class teacher x x x communicate with the administrators x communicate with the guidance teachers x have conversations with teachers within reasonable time of the day (by the phone) x get information right meet their children’s friends x know the children’ problems with their friends x x be informed about the relationship between the children and the teacher x x get information about the children’s achievement/development x x x x x see children’s exam papers x x learn children’s exam scores x benefit right benefit from school (computer, garden, etc.) x x receive education x x be transferred their children to another school x x x be enrolled in the school x x x choose the school they want x discipline and safety right give punisment to their children x ask the school for the safety of their children x x source: author's field work as could be seen in table 2, according to the responses of the teachers, parents had, within the scope of the right of parents to communicate, the right to meet the classroom teacher, administrators, guidance teachers and have conversations with them within reasonable time of the day. within the scope of the right of parents to get information regarding their children, parents had the right to meet their children’s friends and know the problems with their friends, be informed about the relationship between the children and the teacher, get information about the children’s achievement/development, learn the relationships of the children at school, see their exam papers and learn their exam scores. the other right of parents was the right to benefit. they had the right to benefit from school (computer, garden, etc.), receive education, be transferred to another school, be enrolled in the school and choose the school they want. the rights of parents in the last group were the right of discipline and security. within this context, parents had the right to give punisment and ask the school for the safety of their children. some of the views of the teachers regarding these categories are given below.  parents have the right to see their children’s exam papers. it is their right to know the problems their children have had with their friends within the classroom. it is our right as parents all. being informed about the children’s relationship with their teacher, and if there is a problem, seeking a solution together with guidance (aysun).  it is the right of parents to meet and talk easily with the teacher and administration when they come to school, no one can say anything about it. they have the right to benefit from school. it can be the school’s computers or garden (ali). as can be seen above, the most frequently stated rights regarding the rights of parents were those within the scope of the right of being informed. this may be due to the fact that parents have more interviews with their children’s classroom teachers on the topics like the scores of the children, their achievement status, development and etc. 3.2. the responsibilities of the parents in table 3, the responsibilities of the parents are given in detail. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 127 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. the responsibilities of the parents category the responsibilities of the parents codes of the teachers’ names a li d u y g u c a n h u ly a e m in e b e rr in a y su n t u la y the children’s physical necessities adopting the children the habits of cleaning and tidiness x x x ensuring their neatness x x x x providing their nutrition x x x x x x buying them clothes and school uniforms x x x x making them benefit from health services x the children’s emotional necessities relationships with the mother and father x dealing with the children’s feelings, chatting x x x taking time with them, spending quality time with children x x caring x x loving x sharing their problems x the children’s educational necessities following their lessons and homework x x x x x x x being sure of the children’s attendance to school x x asking them what they did at school x being in constant communication with the teacher x x helping the children at home for their lessons x x x x x x x cooperating with the teacher and school x buying and providing the children’s course materials x speech of the child with his surroundings (bad words etc.) x x attending the meetings at school x the children’s entertainment and social life necessities socializing the children x x leading them to acquire responsibilities x directing them to social activities (sports, intelligence games, etc.) x x x participating in their activities x source: author's field work as could be seen in table 3 the responsibilities of parents regarding their children were divided into four categories as the responsibilities regarding the children’s physical, emotional, educational, entertainment and social life necessities. the responsibilities of parents regarding meeting the physical necessities of the children were determined as adopting the children the habits of cleaning and tidiness, ensuring their neatness, providing their nutrition and proper dressing, buying them clothes and school uniforms, and making them benefit from health services. the responsibilities of parents regarding meeting the emotional necessities of the children were determined as having relationships with the mother and father, dealing with the children’s feelings, chatting, taking time with them, caring, loving, spending quality time with them, and sharing their problems. the responsibilities of parents regarding meeting the educational necessities of the children were determined as following their lessons and homework, being sure of the children’s attendance to school, asking them what they did at school, being in constant communication with the teacher, helping the children at home for their lessons, cooperating with the teacher and school, buying and providing the children’s course materials and attending the meetings at school. the responsibilities of parents regarding meeting the entertainment and social life necessities of the children were determined as socializing the children, leading them to acquire responsibilities, directing them to social activities (sports, intelligence games, etc.) and participating in their activities. some of the views of the participants regarding these areas of responsibility are given below.  parents should, first of all, take care of their children emotionally, talk to them about their feelings and know about their responsibilities. they should be able to measure what amount the children got what they have got to. how much of the homework has or has not been done? they should know. well, what else? clothing, neatness. they should perform the children’s self-care skills, which is usually good in our schools. and they should deal with the emotional states of the children (tulay).  the should follow the children’s nutrition and education because it is important to have a regular life within the family, they should have a certain and consistent parental relationship. these are the responsibilities. nutrition needs, dressing needs are the general and social needs of children. if there have opportunities, they may meet the children’s social needs, direct them to social activities. maybe, sports or intelligence games (can).  they should spend good, quality time with their children. it’s definitely their most important responsibility. a quality 15 minutes with their children will let them acquire a great deal of things. besides, they should also give their children responsibility. if they don’t give responsibility to their children, there are, for example, some events i currently experience in my class. there is 7-year-old boy in my class whose mother is still washing his hands. this kid is giving his hand to his mother in the sink and the mother is washing his hand there (hulya). teachers expressed their views regarding the children’s educational responsibilities at most and the responsibilities related to the children’s entertainment and social life necessities at the least. the main reason for expressing such views may be due to the fact that parents spend a lot of time with their children in terms of their education but less time with them in terms of entertainment and social life because of their work lives. 3.3. the parents’ status of knowing their rights and fulfilling their responsibilities it was stated by the teachers that all of the parents in summer primary school knew the rights mentioned above. when they were asked whether they fulfilled the responsibilities mentioned above, it was stated that half of asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 128 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the parents generally fulfilled their responsibilities while the other half did not fulfill their responsibilities regularly. it is seen in figure 2. figure-2. the reasons for not fulfilling the responsibilities source: author's field work as could be seen figure 2, the reasons for not fulfilling the responsibilities were divided into two categories. the first of these was the characteristics of the parent and the second was educational reasons. in line with the views of the teachers regarding the characteristics of parents who did not fulfill their responsibilities in the schools and classes, these characteristics were revealed as; exaggeration, child-focused lifestyle, cultural difference, being fond of self-comfort, not valuing their children, not giving any responsibilities to their children, the economic status of the parent, working parents, not having been able to live their childhood adequately, the thought that the child shouldn’t be tired, parents’ selfish behaviors, and the health problems of the parent. in the category of educational reasons, it was stated that there was lack of education, lack of understanding the homework, lack of knowledge, lack of being aware of their responsibilities and the thought that the activities at school were unnecessary. the views of the participants are given below.  they say they can’t help concerning about their children so they do everything by themselves and don’t give any responsibilities to their children and they give negative reactions to what we say because i called one of them two or three times to meet the guidance service but he didn’t come. he should come and see the guidance so that we can help the child. the child won’t be able to learn to read and write, he does nothing in class. if you wash the hands of this 7-year-old kid and feed him with your hands, he can do nothing, he does nothing (hulya).  for example, they do not know what score the child took in the exam, they don’t control the assignments given by the teacher or don’t know whether they have homework. the child, for example, is preparing his bag but they do not check whether they have the right materials or not, there is no control. neatness, for example, they can send their children in dirty clothes (emine).  as they don’t understand because of the lack of culture or education, for example, or maybe because of the lack of knowledge, they can’t help the child with homework (berrin). when the issue of preparing a specific legal text for the rights and responsibilities of parents was addressed to the participants, all the teachers stated that the preparation of such a legal text would be appropriate and necessary. it is shown in figure 3. figure-3. necessity to prepare legal text source: author's field work characteristics of the parent • exaggeration, • child-focused lifestyle, • cultural difference, • being fond of self-comfort, • not valuing their children, • not giving any responsibilities to their children, • the economic status of the parent, working parents, • not having been able to live their childhood adequately, • the thought that the child shouldn’t be tired, • parents’ selfish behaviors, and t • he health problems of the parent ignorance and unconsciousness • lack of education, • lack of understanding • the homework, • lack of knowledge, • lack of being aware of their responsibilities and • the thought that the activities at school were unnecessary not fulfilling the responsibilities asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 129 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as could be seen figure 3, it was stated by the participants that such a legal text should be prepared in order for the school to have an order, call parents to account for, have accountability, so as to make parents learn the rules of themselves and school, protect the rights of parents, teachers and administrators, and limit the behaviors of parents and especially make them learn their rights and responsibilities. some examples of the views of the participants are given below.  of course, there should be. if everybody knows their line of right and responsibility areas, they behave accordingly, give account accordingly and are called to account for accordingly. a text that has sanction power should be prepared (berrin).  if there is a fixed thing determined by such a law, well, then, if we say this, maybe it is perceived just as it was our idea but if there was a law on this, if the law said so, we could say that it was decided by law so i think it would be more serious, it would be binding at least.  there must be a legal text and everybody must act accordingly. i witness that the parent comes out of the class and listens to another class in front of the class door. it is incredible, the parents do not have such a right, they can’t do that. this is wrong. somebody should stop these parents (duygu). the teachers were asked whether the parents would comply with the legal text if such a specific legal text including the rights and responsibilities of parents was prepared; half of the teachers who participated in the research stated that the parents in the school or in their class would not comply with the legal text if there was one, while one fourth of the rest expressed that the parents would comply with such a legal text, and the rest stated that the parents would comply with such a legal test on the condition that there was a sanction. it is shown in figure 4. figure-4. reasons why parents do not comply with the legal text source: author's field work as could be seen figure 4, it was expressed that half of the parents would not comply with this legal text because of irresponsibility, negligence and lack of sanction if such a specific legal text including the rights and responsibilities of parents was prepared. some examples of the related views are given below.  no, i don’t think they will comply with this legal text because we’re continuously having meetings with the parents and tell about the rules they need to follow. we explain how their approach to children should be but what we tell them only stays there. let me tell you this! in our society, if you only gave fines to parents, there would be a sanction so i don’t think that any punishments will be a deterrent to them (hulya).  i don’t think they’re going to follow it completely but i think mostly those who care about their children and know their responsibilities will comply with such a legal text. the others may not follow it, irresponsible parents are the same everywhere, in any case (emine). in short, it could be said that the teachers expressed these views because of such reasons as the fact that the parents ignored their responsibilities even though they knew their responsibilities, that they did not fulfill what were told them by the teachers in the meetings and act in accordance with the other rules in the society, that there were no sanctions, and that the teachers did not trust in the parents. 3.4. things to be done in order for the parents to learn their rights and fulfill their responsibilities the things to be done in order for the parents to know their rights and responsibilities were divided into two categories as; the things to be done by the ministry of national education and the things to be done by the administrators and teachers. it is shown in figure 5. reasons why parents do not comply with the legal text irresponsibility negligence lack of sanction asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 130 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-5. the things to be done in order for the parents to know their rights and responsibilities source: author's field work as could be seen figure 5, the things to be done by the ministry of national education were; to prepare a specific legal text containing the rights and responsibilities of parents, to impose sanctions on those not complying with the responsibilities of the state, to give training to parents by cooperating with different institutions, to create public spots, and to give parental courses before being a parent. the things that the administrators and teachers should do were; to increase teacher-child-parent communication, to increase the number of parent’s seminars and parent’s meetings, to make the parents feel that the teachers were following the children, and to prepare a written chart by the school administrators regarding the rights and responsibilities of parents and give it to them. some examples of the views of the participants are given below.  parent’s seminars should be organized. even once a week, not once a month. even compulsory. meetings are organized about parents, we send papers to them to inform the date and time of the seminar. nobody comes. there must be such a sanction power that the parents feel obliged to. just as the student has to come to school, the parent must be obliged to attend the seminar so that we can educate the parents before the children. if we educate them, it will be easier for us to educate the children they raise (duygu).  public spots should be created describing the responsibilities of parents. the school administration can provide a paper including the responsibilities that the parent must fulfill. it can be said that the rules must be followed. like what can happen if you don’t comply with these or your child may not receive adequate education. there may be different ways to do it, it may be constructive (can).  teacher and parent’s meetings can be increased. these meetings are held twice, one in the first term and one in the second term. the teachers do this outside, extra but what i say is that this can be increased. if done frequently with parents, the problems don’t pile up, both for the child and for the parent (aysun). the most notable suggestion of the teachers was the preparation of a law including the rights and responsibilities of parents while the other was the demand to impose sanctions by the state on the parents who did not fulfill their responsibilities. another remarkable suggestion was the creation of public spots or social media advertisements regarding the rights and responsibilities of parents. it was stated by the teachers that this would be useful because the parents spent a lot of time watching television and following social media. 4. conclusion, discussion and suggestions in the research, it was aimed to determine the rights and responsibilities of parents according to the views of the teachers. accordingly, the rights of parents were examined in four categories as; communication, being informed, benefiting, and discipline and security. the most frequently repeated rights were the meeting of the parent with the classroom teacher, receiving information about the achievement/development of their children, transferring them to another school, and enrolling the child in the school. the responsibilities that parents should fulfill regarding their children were the responsibilities in terms of meeting their children’s physical, emotional, educational, entertainment and social life necessities. the most frequently repeated of these responsibilities were nutrition, providing the children’s neatness, dressing, providing their clothes and school uniforms, following their homework/lessons, helping their homework at home, directing them to social activities and acquiring self-care skills. in the research conducted by kiral (2017b) it was determined that parents had responsibilities in terms of education, raising, discipline, entertainment and meeting the emotional necessities of their children. it was determined that parents did not regularly fulfill their emotional and raising responsibilities. it is important for families to fulfill their responsibilities regarding their children’s physical care (honig, 2002) and their safety and health in terms of their development (tinsley et al., 2002). apart from this, families have responsibilities related to school and education. hornby (2000) listed the responsibilities that teachers wanted parents to fulfill. these are; making an effort to the individual necessities and health problems of their children, helping their lessons and homework at home, participating in school activities, reading the reports and letters sent to them and getting in touch with the teacher, encouraging their children to participate in school activities, participating in the parent’s meetings and communicating with the teacher when necessary both at school and out ministry of national education • prepare a specific legal text containing the rights and responsibilities of parents, • impose sanctions on those not complying with the responsibilities of the state, • give training to parents by cooperating with different institutions, • create public spots, and • give parental courses before being a parent the administrators and teachers • increase teacher-child-parent communication, • increase the number of parent’s seminars and parent’s meetings, • make the parents feel that the teachers were following the children, and • prepare a written chart by the school administrators regarding the rights and responsibilities of parents and give it to them. things to be done asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 131 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of school, and giving the teacher their home and work addresses and telephone numbers. these are the responsibilities that parents must fulfill regarding the school and education. when parents fulfill their educational responsibilities, the academic achievement of their children child increases. hence, in the study conducted by celenk (2003) similar results were obtained. it was determined that the parents who took good care of their children had a positive effect on their achievement levels (epstein and connors, 1995; epstein and sanders, 2006; quiocho and daoud, 2006). furthermore, it was also determined by the researchers that taking good care of the children by the parents affected the children’s academic motivation for the sake of them (grolnick and farkas, 2002). the children of the parents who spend time with them, play with them (tamis-lemonda et al., 2002) who participate in the activities together with them easily socialize, develop good friendships and human relations (grusec, 2002; ladd and pettit, 2002) and thus, the children’s cognitive and affective skills improve (williams and sternberg, 2002). in the research conducted, the teachers stated that all the parents in their school and class knew their rights and strongly claimed their rights. according to the teachers, the parents in their school and class knew their responsibilities but while half of the parents fulfilled their responsibilities, the other half did not fulfill their responsibilities regularly. parent-based reasons for not fulfilling their responsibilities were determined as; childfocused lifestyle, cultural difference, being fond of self-comfort, not valuing their children, not giving any responsibilities to their children, the economic status of the parent, working parents, not having been able to live their childhood adequately, the thought that the child shouldn’t be tired, parents’ selfish behaviors, and the health problems of the parent. education-based reasons were; lack of education, lack of understanding the homework, lack of knowledge, lack of being aware of their responsibilities and the thought that the activities at school were unnecessary. kaya (2012) stated that parents were unable to fulfill their responsibilities regarding their children due to such reasons as the fact that educational and cultural level of the family was low, the family had a negative attitude towards cooperating with the teacher and supporting their children, the parents lacked adequate educational level, and they were unable to allocate time for the school activities because of work life. unemployment or intensive work programs of parents may cause parents to fail to follow school activities and fulfill their responsibilities to attend school meetings and activities (hornby, 2000; hornby and lafaele, 2011). parents’ race, being immigrants, having a different ethnic background or being of a minority group also plays a passive role in their responsibilities of attending school activities and thus, they exhibit low participation to school (fan and chen, 2001; kaya, 2012). according to another result of the research, it was stated by the participants that “a specific legal text‖ should be prepared in order for the school to have an order, call parents to account for, have accountability, so as to make parents learn the rules of themselves and school, protect the rights of parents, teachers and administrators, and limit the behaviors of parents and especially make them learn their rights and responsibilities. the teachers were asked whether the parents would comply with the legal text if such a specific legal text including the rights and responsibilities of parents was prepared; half of the teachers who participated in the research stated that the parents in the school or in their class would not comply with the legal text if there was one, while one fourth of the rest expressed that the parents would comply with such a legal text, and the rest stated that the parents would comply with such a legal test on the condition that there was a sanction. the teachers had the opinion that half of the parents would not comply with this legal text if such a specific legal text including the rights and responsibilities of parents was prepared because of irresponsibility and negligence, because they did not completely comply with the other laws and rules, and though the teachers told them their rights and responsibilities, they did not act accordingly. although there are no specific legal texts in turkey, it can be seen that there are legal texts in finland, scotland and the united states of america including the rights and responsibilities of parents. in finland, this legal text aims to ensure that the children grow up in a better and well-balanced way according to their necessities and desires; they have close relationships with their parents and affectionate relationships with others; parents provide good care and upbringing for them; they provide the children with appropriate supervision and protection in accordance with their age and development; they provide a safe and encouraging environment for them; they provide an education appropriate for their desires, tendencies and abilities; they bring them together with a spirit of understanding, security and love; the children are not suppressed; and they are not punished economically or humiliated in any way. encouraging and supporting the children in terms of being independent, taking responsibilities and growing up through adulthood can be considered among the other responsibilities. in order to achieve these goals, the responsibilities of parents give them the authority to care, bring up, reside and make decisions about other matters related to them. supporting the development and happiness of children in line with their age and individual necessities can be considered as other responsibilities that parents need to fulfill (henricson, 2008). the responsibilities of parents in scotland can be listed as protecting the children’s health, development and well-being, directing their behaviors until the age of 16, and guiding them, communicating with them and acting as their legal representatives until the age of 18 (henricson, 2008). in the united states of america, parents have such rights as participating in class observations, having meetings with the school principal and teachers, being informed about the exams, deciding the school of their children, demanding a safe school environment, being aware of the materials used at school and in class, having information about their academic development, and knowing the records of their children at school (records of attendance/absence, exam results, scores, discipline records, counseling records, psychological records, the records kept at school regarding health and vaccination, the records kept by their teachers and advisors and records of behavior). apart from these, they have the right to know the school standards and rules, be members of school councils and committees, participate in meetings, ask for their approval before the video and audio recordings of their children, receive information about special education, demanding to be exempted from some classes temporarily or permanently, complain in case of the violation of the rights, and demand the confidentiality of the children’s personal, academic achievement, health, special education, identity information. they have also responsibilities such as taking good care of the children, their development and education (aydin, 2006). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 121-133 132 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the results obtained from the research, the things to be done in order for parents to know their rights and responsibilities were divided into two categories as the things to be done directly by the ministry of national education and the things to be done by the administrators and teachers. the things to be done by the ministry of national education could be listed as; imposing sanctions to those who did not comply with their responsibilities by the state, giving parental training by collaborating with the ministry of health, ministry of family and social policies and directorate of religious affairs, creating public spots on television during commercials, during the commercials of tv series and in social media, and giving courses on being good parents before having children. the things to be done by the administrators and teachers could be listed as; enhancing the efforts for increasing teacher-child-parent communication, organizing parent’s seminars, increasing the number of parent’s meetings, making the parents feel that the teacher was following their children, and preparing written charts regarding the rights and responsibilities of parents and giving these charts to them. at the end of this research, what was especially expressed by teachers was, in order to call parents to account for and give them an account, and in order for parents to learn their rights and responsibilities, the creation of a specific legal text in which the rights and responsibilities of parents are expressed in detail. this text should be a binding text with sanction power aiming to draw the boundaries of behavior. just as people in the traffic are trying to comply with the speed limit in order not to be fined, parents may begin to behave in accordance with such a legal text with sanction power in time so as to avoid being punished. in order for parents to fulfill their responsibilities, baloglu (2017) stated that it is necessary to run two-way communication with parents, continuously try and improve collaborative problem solving practices. according to epstein (1995) the school has to use its role to help parents. parents can be supported with seminars, videos, computerized communication and phone messages in terms of the principles of raising children at every age and every educational level. by organizing family support programs via parents and family education, various courses or training programs for families, assistance can be provided in terms of health, nutrition and other issues. home visits can be made at pre-school, primary school, secondary school and high school levels. this can be taken into consideration especially in the transition periods between schools. in education, it is essential to communicate with the family about students and school programs. a two-way communication channel should be run between the school and the family. weekly and monthly brochures regarding the studies of student should be sent home, the student’s situation should be reviewed and interpreted. the reports should be filled in according to the student’s level by considering the student’s development level. the charts, memories, telephone records, newsletters and other communication patterns with useful notifications should be regularly processed in the system. the activities, programs, courses etc. performed within the school should be transparent (epstein, 1995;2013). for this reason, kiral (2017a) stated that keeping all communication channels between the parents and the school open and using them were important for the best benefit of the child. the fact that families have healthy communication with the school, participate in school activities and support their children are effective on the achievement of children. the duty of families is to support their children and make them feel that they are there for them by participating in social, cultural and educational activities in the school (ictin, 2013). families and schools are the institutions that have the greatest impact on the development of children (sanders, 2001). together with what is mentioned above, the suggestion developed for the researchers is, by conducting the same research on students, to determine whether parents comply with their responsibilities. a comprehensive research on the rights and responsibilities of parents can be carried out throughout the country by using quantitative research methods. therefore, the results can be generalized and necessary measures can be taken. the same research can be conducted in two schools, one with low socio-economic level and the other with high socioeconomic level, and the results 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 421-425, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.421.425 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of self-esteem levels of the candidates participated in special talent exam ilker ozmutlu1 erhan kara2 ( corresponding author) 1,2tekirdağ namık kemal university, school of physical education and sports, tekirdağ, turkey. abstract the purpose of study is to investigate the self-esteem levels of the candidates who participated in the special talent exam (ste) through various variables. the study group consists of 129 female and 649 male, 778 participants in total attending ste conducted by tekirdağ namik kemal university school of physical education and sport in 2018. in the research conducted with the relational screening model method, personal information form developed by the researcher and “rosenberg self-esteem scale” developed by rosenberg (1965) whose turkish adaptation studies were carried out by cuhadaroğlu (1986) have been used in order to determinate self-esteem levels of the participants in ste. the scale consists of 10 items in 4 point likert type. cronbach alpha coefficient for reliability is .81. at the end of the study; it was found that there was no significant relationship between the self-esteem levels of the candidates and gender variable, tyt (basic proficiency test) score, geographical region of residence and the high school type of graduation. a positive and low level of relationship was found between the self-esteem levels of the candidates and the sports branch variable. keywords: self-esteem, special talent exam, candidate, physical education, sport, self-respect. citation | ilker ozmutlu; erhan kara (2020). investigation of selfesteem levels of the candidates participated in special talent exam. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 421-425. history: received: 7 april 2020 revised: 12 may 2020 accepted: 15 june 2020 published: 22 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 422 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 422 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 422 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 424 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 425 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.421.425&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1746 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8287-4275 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0727-5755 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1746 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8287-4275 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0727-5755 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1746 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8287-4275 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0727-5755 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1746 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8287-4275 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0727-5755 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 421-425 422 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study was researched because the number of studies investigating the relationship between the self-esteem levels of the candidates who participated in the special talent exam was insufficient. so, this issue is thought to be better understood and it is estimated to be useful for future studies. 1. introduction self-esteem is the judgement that the individual passes on and the attitude that he/she develops about himself as a result of evaluating himself as an object. this attitude, expressed in terms such as self-respect, self-esteem, selfworth, can be considered as a top concept, which is depicted with or includes concepts such as self-esteem, selfacceptance (kuzgun, 2000). self-esteem expresses one's self-confidence and satisfaction with himself; is how one thinks and feels about himself (aslan, 2006). although there are different points of view about self-esteem, selfesteem is defined as “an individual’s feeling of self-worth, seeing himself as an adequate person, feelings about selfacceptance or self-respect” (coopersmith, 1967; crocker & major, 1989; rosenberg, 1965). as it has been seen in the definitions of self-esteem, the individual's self-perception, emotion, trust, self-evaluation criteria, and relationships with the environment constitute the self-esteem of the individual. the individual's attitudes that confirm or do not approve of selfness and whether the individual finds himself skilled, important, successful and valuable determine the level of self-esteem. when the individual acts in harmony with his selfness, he feels safe, sufficient and valuable (ciğdemoğlu, 2006). it has been stated in the literature that self-esteem is an important factor that affects the psychosocial status and social lives of individuals (salmivalli, kaukiainen, kaistaniemi, & lagerspetz, 1999). self-esteem affects social, emotional, cognitive and academic lives of the individuals. self-esteem which is a prerequisite for a healthy personality plays an important role in making the person an active and participatory member of society. effective participation in society also brings personal success and happiness (güloğlu & aydın, 2001). the individual having high self-esteem evaluates himself positively, avoids aggressive attitudes and feels good. he also discovers his weaknesses and tries to overcome them. an individual having low self-esteem is weak in self-confidence. these people are addicted to other individuals and become embarrassed (reisoğlu, gedik, & göktaş, 2013). in accordance with this information, the aim of this study is to examine self-esteem levels of the candidates participating in the special talent exam through various variables. 2. material and method 2.1. research method the study has been conducted through relational screening model. screening models are appropriate for researches aiming to describe a situation in the past or at present as so (karasar, 2005). relational screening models, on the other hand, are considered appropriate for this research since they are used for research models aiming to determine the presence of co-exchange between two and more variables. 2.2. research group the study group consists of 129 female and 649 male, 778 participants in total participating voluntarily among 1100 candidates attending ste conducted by tekirdağ namık kemal university school of physical education and sport in 2018. 2.3. data collection tool rosenberg self-esteem scale was used to determine the self-esteem levels of the candidates who participated in the special talent exam. the scale was developed by rosenberg (1965). the turkish adaptation studies of the scale were carried out by cuhadaroğlu (1986). the 4-point likert type consists of 10 items. total scores obtained from all items range from 0-40. high scores indicate that individuals have a high level of self-esteem (ko, yen, chen, chen, & yen, 2005). cronbach alpha coefficient for reliability is .81. cronbach alpha coefficient in our study is .85. 2.4. data analysis when one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test, which shows the self-esteem levels of the candidates who participated in the special talent exam, was examined, it was found that the data were not suitable for normal distribution. therefore, mann-whitney u test and kruskal-wallis tests were used in accordance with the analysis obtained from non-parametric tests and the level of significance was taken as (p <0.05). 3. findings table-1. the results of the mann-whitney u test showing self-esteem levels according to the gender variable of the research group. variables n mean rank rank sum u p cohen’s d male 129 400,56 51672,50 40433,500 ,537* 0,000489 female 649 387,30 251358,50 note: *p >0,05. considering table 1, it has been found that there is no significant difference between the gender variable and self-esteem levels of the research group (u = 40433,500 p = 0,537). when we look at cohen's d effect size, it has been concluded that the gender variable of the research group has a low impact on the self-esteem levels of individuals. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 421-425 423 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. the results of the kruskal-wallis tests showing self-esteem levels according to the tyt (basic proficiency test) score variable of the research group. variables n mean rank sd x2 p cohen’s d 180-200 points 375 393,26 4 4,289 0,368* 0,00551 201-220 points 224 383,65 221-240 points 123 385,93 241-260 points 27 334,20 261 points 29 452,69 note: *p >0,05. according to the table 2, no significant difference has been found between the tyt score variable and selfesteem levels of the research group (x2 = 4.289 p = 0.368). when we look at the effect size of cohen's d, it has been concluded that the tyt score variable of the research group has a low impact on the self-esteem levels of individuals. table-3. the results of the kruskal-wallis tests showing self-esteem levels according to the place of residence variable of the research group. variables n mean rank sd x2 p cohen’s d village town 57 435,81 3 3,024 0,388* 0,00389 district 211 381,52 city 122 396,50 metropolis 388 384,84 note: *p >0,05. in the table 3, no significant difference has been found between the place of residence variable and self-esteem levels of the research group (x2 = 3.024 p = 0.388). when we look at the effect size of cohen's d, it has been revealed that the place of residence variable of the candidates participating in the special talent exam has a low impact on the self-esteem levels of individuals. table-4. the results of the kruskal-wallis tests showing self-esteem levels according to the high school type of graduation variable of the research group. variables n mean rank sd x2 p cohen’s d general high school 43 363,13 5 7,483 0,187* 0,00963 vocational high school 234 408,72 anatolian high school 338 381,21 science high school 1 39,00 sports high school 59 353,97 other high schools 103 407,79 note: *p >0,05. considering the table 4, no significant difference has been found between the high school type of graduation variable and self-esteem levels of the research group (x2 = 7,483 p = 0,187). when we look at the effect size of cohen's d, it has been revealed that the high school type of graduation variable of the candidates participating in the special talent exam has a low impact on the self-esteem levels of individuals. table-5. the results of the kruskal-wallis tests showing self-esteem levels according to the branch variable of the research group. variables n mean rank sd x2 p significant difference cohen’s d team sports 369 370,25 2 13,496 0,001* 1-3 2-3 0,0173 individual sports 215 376,80 no branch 194 440,19 note: *p <0,05. in the table 5, a significant difference has been found between self-esteem levels and the branch variable of the research group (x2 = 7,483 p = 0,001). considering the mean ranks, self-esteem levels of the candidates with no branch have been higher than those doing team sports and individual sports. when we look at the effect size of cohen's d, it has been revealed that the branch variable of the candidates participating in the special talent exam has a moderate impact on the self-esteem levels of the individuals. table-6. the results of correlation analysis tests between self-esteem levels of the research group and gender, tyt scores, place of residence variable, high school type of graduation and sport branch. variable gender tyt score place of residence high school type of graduation sport branch self-esteem r -,022 -,010 -,027 -,021 ,113 p ,537 ,780 ,450 ,567 ,002* n 778 778 778 778 778 note: *p <0,05. in the table 6, considering the correlation analysis test results between selfesteem levels of the research group and gender, tyt scores, place of residence variable, high school type of graduation and sport branch, it has been found that there is no significant relationship between self-esteem levels and gender variable, tyt (basic proficiency test) score variable, geographical region of residence variable and high school type of graduation variable. a positive low level significant relationship has been found between self-esteem levels of the candidates and sport branch variable. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 421-425 424 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion and conclusion a significant difference has not been found between the gender variable of the research group and their selfesteem levels. in these premises, it can be stated that gender variable of the research group has no impact on selfesteem levels. when similar studies are examined, the results of the study conducted by karakaya, coşkun, and ağaoğlu (2006) and the results of the study conducted by reisoğlu et al. (2013) show similarity with our findings. on the other hand, some similar studies have revealed different results. the results of the studies conducted by ko et al. (2005) and leung (2004) have revealed that self-esteem levels of the female participants are significantly higher than the male participants. on the contrary, güçray (2001) has determined in his study that self-esteem levels of the male participants are higher than the female participants. in the studies carried out on self-esteem level, it has been seen that study results differ in terms of gender variable. as a reason for these differences it can be said that it is caused by many factors such as diversity of measurement tools, characteristics of research groups, cultural differences and scope of research. as a result of the research, it can be thought that the reason that no difference has been seen between male and female participants is due to some reasons such as the fact that both women and men benefit from equal opportunities in all areas, gender is not at the forefront in gaining status and dignity in society. as a matter of fact, (twenge & campbell, 2002) have stated that the woman started to be active in every field of life especially after having entered the business life, operates in the same lines of business as men, nevertheless, the male's status has not changed and even has lost his role; as a result, self-esteem of women has improved. no significant difference was found between the tyt score variable and self-esteem levels of the research group. according to this result, it can be said that there is no relationship between the academic achievement of the candidates who take the talent exam and their self-esteem levels. the results of some similar studies do not coincide with our findings. it is seen in general that the candidates with high academic success have also high selfesteem levels. according to o'malley and bachman (1983) have observed that a positive relationship between the child's self-esteem and academic ability and school success continues until the end of high school and then there is also a positive relationship between self-esteem and professional position. as a result of the study conducted by (arseven, 1986) a high level of positive correlation was found in the research on the relationship between students' academic achievement and self-confidence. yenidünya. (2005); inanç (1997) have reached similar conclusions in the study results and reached the conclusion that academic success has a direct relationship with self-esteem. in other words, if the student's self-confidence is insufficient, his academic success is also insufficient (soner, 1995). the reason why our research result differs from similar studies in the literature is that as special talent exams are a system aiming to feature personal skills and abilities prior to academic success, it can be said that academic success keeps in the background or has less effect in special talent exams considering that the candidates participating in these exams have high self-esteem levels and are self-confident individuals. no significant difference was found between the place of residence variable of the research group and the levels of self-esteem. according to this result, it can be said that the settlement of the participants do not have an impact on self-esteem levels. when the results of similar studies are analyzed, our study differs with the findings of the study conducted by yılmaz (2000) while it shows similarity with the findings of the study conducted by cengil (2009); altunbaş (2006); baybek and yavuz (2005). in these findings, individuals living in metropolitan cities were found to have higher self-esteem than those living in villages and towns. in our study results, it is thought that the concepts such as the place of residence variable’s having no impact on the participants' self-esteem levels, psychological and socio-economic factors in developing self-esteem, human relations, and the status of the community can be more important. moreover, the diversity of transportation facilities today and the fact that people are constantly on the move for reasons such as work, education and travel can bring about this result. no significant relationship was found between the self-esteem levels of the research group and the high school type of graduation variable. according to this result, it can be said that the high school type that the participants graduated does not have an effect on their self-esteem levels. when similar studies are examined, the results of the research conducted by demir, gürsoy, and ada (2011); görgen, deniz, and kiriş (2011) and karaca., akyol, l., and can (2016) support our findings. the fact that the high school type of the students appeals to their goals and expectations, the schools contribute positively to the personal development of the participants, and also the candidates participating in special talent exam are aware of their talents can be said to be the reason why the participants' self-esteem levels did not differ according to the type of school. according to the relationship between self-esteem levels and sport branch variable, it has been observed that self-esteem levels of the candidates with no branch are higher than those doing team sports and individual sports. according to this result, it can be said that doing sports has no effect on the level of self-esteem and even candidates who do not do sports have higher self-esteem. in the literature review, no studies similar to our findings were found when studies similar to our research were examined. however, bingöl and alpkaya (2016); tozoğlu, bayraktar, aka., and tatlısu (2014); gacar and yanlıç (2012); karakaya et al. (2006); salokun (1990) concluded in their research findings that self-esteem levels of individuals who do sports have higher scores than those who do not do sports. uçan and cağlayan (2012); mekolichick (2001) on the other hand, did not find any significant difference between the self-esteem of individuals who do and do not do sports. accordingly, self-esteem levels can be expected to be higher than those who do not do sports considering the fact that sports enable individuals to get to know themselves and to realize their potential and their self-esteem increases as they achieve success. it can be thought that the reason for the opposite result with our finding with this result is due to the characteristic of the sample group. in conclusion, it has been found that there is no significant relationship between self-esteem levels of the candidates participated in special talent exam and gender variable, tyt (basic proficiency test) score variable, geographical region of residence variable and high school type of graduation variable. however, a positive low level significant relationship has been found between self-esteem levels of the candidates and sport branch variable. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 421-425 425 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references altunbaş, c. 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(2000). the relationship between self-esteem and assertiveness level of nursing school students. unpublished master thesis, atatürk university, institute of health sciences, erzurum. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 63 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 63-69, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.63.69 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group psychological resilience and positivity as predictors of self-efficacy tuğba yılmaz bingöl1  meryem vural batık2 rumeysa hoşoğlu3 aynur fırıncı kodaz4 ( corresponding author) 1fatih sultan mehmet vakıf üniversitesi, faculty of education, i̇stanbul, türkiye 2ondokuz mayıs üniversitesi, faculty of education, samsun, türkiye 3kapadokya üniversitesi, school of health sciences, nevşehir, türkiye 4hatice gani erverdi middle school, nilüfer, bursa, türkiye abstract the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between self-efficacy, a concept that has an important role in human life, and different demographic variables and the predictive roles of psychological resilience and positivity on selfefficacy. the research was carried out with 844 students studying at four different universities in provinces of istanbul, samsun, bursa and ankara in turkey. participants completed the questionnaire packet including the general selfefficacy scale, the brief psychological resilience scale, the positivity scale and a personal information form. the analyses of the data were carried out via spss 20. the results showed that the female subjects tended to report lower self-efficacy than the males and participants living in cities and high income participants reported higher self-efficacy than the participants living in villages or small towns and the low income participants. additionally, it may be stated that the participants who perceived their parents as democratic, negligent and protective reported higher levels of self-efficacy than those who perceived their parents as authoritarian. the results also indicated a moderate positive relationship between psychological resilience and self-efficacy, and a low positive correlation between self-efficacy and positivity. psychological resilience and positivity were found to be important predictors of self-efficacy. keywords: self-efficacy, psychological resilience, positivity, positive psychology, predictors, parental attitudes. jel classification: i29 citation | tuğba yılmaz bingöl; meryem vural batık; rumeysa hoşoğlu; aynur fırıncı kodaz (2019). psychological resilience and positivity as predictors of self-efficacy. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 63-69. history: received: 8 october 2018 revised: 15 november 2018 accepted: 21 december 2018 published: 3 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 64 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 64 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 65 4. discussion, conclusion and implications.................................................................................................................................... 67 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 68 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.63.69&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/380 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1104-2244 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7836-7289 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3033-2965 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6911-3818 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/380 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1104-2244 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7836-7289 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3033-2965 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6911-3818 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/380 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1104-2244 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7836-7289 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3033-2965 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6911-3818 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/380 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1104-2244 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7836-7289 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3033-2965 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6911-3818 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/380 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1104-2244 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7836-7289 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3033-2965 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6911-3818 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/380 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1104-2244 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7836-7289 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3033-2965 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6911-3818 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 63-69 64 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction college life is a challenging period for individuals. students have to cope effectively with stressful situations that they meet during this challenging period. motivational orientation, which encourages people in the face of difficulties that they encounter and helps them achieve self-regulation, is called self-efficacy (bandura, 2001). selfefficacy may be defined as the level of confidence that people have on their ability to perform certain types of action or achieve desired outcomes (bandura, 1982;1997). it is a future-oriented belief related to individuals own ability which is expected to shown in a necessary situation (bandura, 1997). in other words, self-efficacy controls one's life (bandura, 1986). empirical studies have generated a several number of results that indicated the effect of self-efficacy on human functioning and behaviors (schwarzer and renner, 2000; bandura, 2001). some researchers such as farsides and woodfield (2003) and duckworth et al. (2007) propounded that self-efficacy is a significant predictor of individual performance and motivation in different situations and environments. self-efficacy is an important part of dealing with unavoidable changes in life (bandura, 1995; larson and daniels, 1998). wäschle et al. (2014) noted a vicious circle relationship between procrastination and self-efficacy. bandura (1986) emphasized that self-efficacy strongly influences people's choices and efforts that they make while dealing with challenges. therefore self-efficacy beliefs have an impact on task choice, effort, perseverance and success (britner and pajares, 2006). according to bandura (1997) self-efficacy beliefs may change based on some factors such as evaluation of existing abilities, perceived difficulty of action, how much effort is required, how much external support is required, past achievements, temporary patterns of success or failure and forms of reorganization of experiences. self-efficacy is also a multidimensional construct that varies depending on domain of demands (zimmerman, 2000) and therefore this construct must be evaluated on a level that is specific to the outcomes (bandura, 1986; pajares, 1996). bandura (1997) defined the characteristics of self-efficacy as understanding, predicting, and ability to regulate the environment, the person and others. self-efficacy beliefs differ based on the emotions, thoughts and feelings of individuals. negative emotional experiences like stress and anxiety may have a negative impact on self-efficacy (kelleher, 2016). people with high self-efficacy choose to perform more challenging tasks. on the other hand, low self-efficacy increases vulnerability toward depressive symptoms, anxiety and helplessness. highly self-efficacious people believe in their capacity to achieve specific tasks, invest more effort and have greater willingness to face challenges and solve problems rather than avoiding them (graham, 2011). moreover, they can set goals for themselves and spend sufficient effort to attain those goals. they are also more likely to feel confident when they face obstacles because of their belief in their ability (pajares and urdan, 2006). on the other hand people with low self-efficacy usually approach difficult tasks diffidently. moreover, low self-efficacy creates a vicious cycle. people who believe they lack the skills needed to carry out a task avoid taking action which may increase self-doubt. people with low self-efficacy who are suspicious of their own abilities tend to be more easily stressed and more depressed (rodebaugh, 2006; luszczynska et al., 2011) and exhibit significantly more frequent risk-taking behavior (uysal and yilmaz-bingol, 2014) than those with a higher self-efficacy levels. sanna (1997) stated that people with high self-efficacy can find more alternative solutions and have more experience in performing tasks successfully than those with low self-efficacy. individuals with high self-efficacy have positive beliefs in their capabilities to cope with stressful situations and these beliefs have significant relationship with positive emotional states that enhance resilience such as subjective well-being and life satisfaction (salvador and mayoral, 2011). as mentioned above several studies demonstrated that self-efficacy is associated with adaptive psychological characteristics. despite the plethora of research on self-efficacy and its relationship with different variables, no research has examined the relationships among self-efficacy, psychological resilience and positivity. additionally, this study was structured to examine the predictive roles of psychological resilience and positivity on self-efficacy. 2. method 2.1. research design this current study examined the predictive roles of psychological resilience and positivity on self-efficacy. it used the general survey model. 2.2. study group this study was conducted with a total of 844 university students enrolled at yıldız technical university (n = 202), ondokuz mayıs university (n = 226), ankara university (n = 197) and uludağ university (n = 219). the ages of the participants were between 18 and 26 years m= 20.99, sd= 1.16). of the participants, 480 (56.9%) were female and 364 (43.1%) were male. table 1 presents detailed information about the participants. it is seen in table 1 that 56.9% of the university students participating in the research were women. 35.4% lived in the big city. 73.1% stated their income level as moderate, and 54.1% emphasized growing up with a protective family style. 2.3. measures personal information form: the personal information form was prepared by the researchers to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 63-69 65 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. demographic characteristics of the participants n % university yıldız technical university 202 23.9 ondokuz mayıs university 226 26.8 ankara university 197 23.3 uludağ university 219 25.9 faculty faculty of education 226 26.8 faculty of art and science 218 25.9 faculty of theology 158 18.7 faculty of engineering 59 7.0 vocational high school 183 21.7 grade first-year students 123 14.6 second-year students 278 32.9 third-year students 223 26.4 fourth-year students 220 26.1 gender female 480 56.9 male 364 43.1 residence village-small town 96 11.4 district 223 26.4 province 226 26.8 metropolis 299 35.4 income level low 51 6.0 average 617 73.1 high 176 20.9 parental attitude negligent 31 3.7 democratic 273 32.3 authoritarian 83 9.8 protective 457 54.1 total 844 100 source: obtained from author’s field work. general self-efficacy scale (gses): gses was developed by schwarzer and jerusalem (1995) to determine individuals’ perceptions regarding their abilities to cope with difficulties, consists of 10 items and each item is scored based on a 4-point likert-type scale (1: completely wrong, 4: completely right). the scale’s turkish validity and reliability study was carried out by aypay (2010). the internal consistency coefficient was calculated as 0.83 for the scale. the test-retest reliability of the scale was 0.80 brief resilience scale (brs): brs was developed by smith et al. (2008) and focuses on the level of individual resilience. the scale consists of six items which were created in five-point likert-type scoring format (1: strongly disagree to 5: strongly agree). the sum of all scores yields a total score that ranges from 6 to 30; a higher level of score indicates a higher psychological resilience. dogan (2015) developed a turkish adaptation of the questionnaire and reported the internal consistency coefficient of the scale as 0.83 positivity scale (ps): the positivity scale was developed by caprara et al. (2012) in order to measure the positivity levels of individuals. the scale consists of eight items where item 6 is scored in reverse. it is a 5-point likert-type scale (1 = not at all appropriate, 5 = very appropriate). the turkish adaptation study of pss had was conducted by çıkrıkçı et al. (2015). the reliability coefficient of the positivity scale was found to be 0.73. scores on this scale could range from 8 to 40. 2.4. data collection the sample was determined by convenience sampling. after taking the necessary permissions from the related heads of the departments for the application of the measures, the data collection tools were applied in one session in the academic year of 2016–2017. all the participants were informed about the objectives and the process of the study by the researchers, and they participated voluntarily. it took approximately 20 minutes to complete the data collection process. 2.5. data analysis descriptive statistics were used to determine the self-efficacy, psychological stability and positivity levels of participants. finally, regression analysis was used to examine the predictive roles of psychological resilience and positivity on self-efficacy. all tests had a significance level of p less than 0.05. 3. findings this section presents the findings and interpretations obtained as a result of statistical analysis of the data gathered in the direction of the aims covered in the research. basic descriptive statistics for all variables of interest (self-efficacy, psychological resilience and positivity) are presented in table 2. table-2. descriptive statistics for study variables variables n mean sd self-efficacy 844 32.46 4.574 psychological resilience 844 19.28 4.506 positivity 844 30.36 4.924 source: obtained from primary data. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 63-69 66 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the mean scores demonstrated that the sample tended to display high levels of self-efficacy (m = 32.46, sd = 4.574) and positivity (m = 30.36, sd = 4.924). besides, it may be stated that the mean scores of the sample exhibited a moderate level psychological resilience (m = 19.28, sd = 4.506). ttest was used for analyzing the differences between the self-efficacy scores of the male and female participants, and the results are presented in table 3. table-3. results of ttest: differences between self-efficacy scores in terms of gender gender n mean s sd t p selfefficacy female 480 31,98 4,570 ,209 3,54 ,000* male 364 33,10 4,508 ,236 p<.01 table 3 shows that the general self-efficacy levels of the male participants were significantly higher than the women (t = 3,54, p <.01). the results of the one-way anova test to determine whether the general self-efficacy levels of participants differ according to their place of residence are given in table 4. table-4. results of one way anova test: differences between self-efficacy scores in terms of residence sum of squares df mean square f p between groups 341,766 3 113,922 5,532 ,001 within groups 17298,168 840 20,593 total 17639,934 843 p< .05 according to the results summarized in table 4, the self-efficacy levels of the participants were significantly different [f(3-840) =5.53, p< 0.05]. in terms of their place of residence. the difference between the means was determined by bonferroni test, and it was found that the participants living in metropoles reported higher selfefficacy levels than the participants living in villages and districts. the one-way anova test results for determining whether the general self-efficacy levels of participants differed according to their levels of income are given in table 5. table-5. results of one-way anovatest: differences between self-efficacy scores in terms of level of income sum of squares df mean square f p between groups 175,689 2 87,845 4,230 ,015 within groups 17464,244 841 20,766 total 17639,934 843 p< .05 according to the results summarized in table 5, the self-efficacy levels of the participants differ significantly [f(2-841) =4.23, p< 0.05] according to their level of income. the difference between the means was determined by dunnet test, and it was found that the participants with high income levels reported higher self-efficacy levels than the participants with average and low income levels. the results of the one-way anova test to determine whether the general self-efficacy levels of participants differed according to the parental attitudes they reported are given in table 6. table-6. results of the one-way anova test: differences between self-efficacy scores in terms of parental attitudes sum of squares df mean square f p between groups 342,637 3 114,212 5,546 ,0011 within groups 17297,296 840 20,592 total 17639,934 843 p< .05 according to the results summarized in table 6, the self-efficacy levels of the participants differed significantly [f(3-840) =5.55, p< 0.05] according to their perceived parental attitudes. the difference between the means was determined by bonferroni test and it was found that the participants who perceived their parents as authoritarian reported lower self-efficacy levels than the participants who perceived their parents as negligent, protective or democratic. multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictive roles of psychological resilience, positivity and self-efficacy. the results are presented in table 7. table-7. multiple regression analyses results for self-efficacy dependent variable independent variables st. error r r2 f binary r partial r t self-efficacy psych. resilience 0.030 0.577 0.333 210.087 0,493 0,425 13.613* 10.640* positivity 0.027 0,432 0,344 source: obtained from analysis of data. according to the results of the multiple regression analysis, it was found that self-efficacy was positively correlated with psychological resilience (r= 0.49) and positivity (r= 0.29). when psychological resilience and positivity were entered into the regression equation together, they were significantly related to self-efficacy(r = 0.577, r2 = 0.333, p <0.05). psychological resilience and positivity together explained 33% of the total variance in self-efficacy. based on results of the t-test related to the significance of regression coefficients, both variables had significant predictive roles on self-efficacy. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 63-69 67 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it may be stated that the scattering diagram generated for the standardized value defined a linear relationship and the points tended to converge around an axis. it may be argued that the histogram and normal distribution curves generated for the standardized values showed a normal distribution. on the other hand, the scatter diagrams based on the partial relationship of the independent variables with the dependent variables showed linear and positive relationships. 4. discussion, conclusion and implications self-efficacy, which is an important concept that may have an impact in different life domains, such as task choices, efforts to accomplish tasks, can be defined as people's perceptions about their capabilities to meet designated levels of performance that employ influence over events (bandura, 1994). enhancing self-efficacy may be helpful to solve the problems confronted by the individual because of the crucial impact of self-efficacy on performance (yılmaz-bingöl, 2015). researchers and professionals can use different ways to enhance self-efficacy. one of them is to examine the relationships of different variables to self-efficacy. the results of this study indicated that the participants reported high self-efficacy and positivity levels but moderate levels of psychological resilience. it was also found that the female participants had lower self-efficacy than the male participants and participants from a metropoles and provinces noted higher levels of self-efficacy those who are from villages or small towns. regarding the income levels, self-efficacy scores were higher among the high-income participants in comparison to those with average and low income. perceived parental attitudes also had an effect on the self-efficacy levels. the participants who perceived their parents as negligent, democratic and protective had higher self-efficacy than the participants who considered thinks their parents as authoritarian. additionally, the results demonstrated that there were positive relationships between self-efficacy, psychological resilience and positivity. the results also revealed that psychological resilience and positivity were important predictors of self-efficacy. although some previous studies have suggested that there is link between self-efficacy levels and gender (tiller, 1995; ünal-keskin and orgun, 2006) in a study conducted by fallan and opstad (2016) it was aimed to examine how gender and temperament-type interactions separately affect self-efficacy. they propounded that gender is an important determinant of self-efficacy and female students have significantly lower self-efficacy levels than male students. they also showed the effect of gender-temperament interactions. tsai and huang (2018) research showed that self-efficacy differs based on gender. moreover aydıner (2011) and cetin (2007) found that the self-efficacy levels of males were significantly higher than females. thus, it may be stated that the results of the this study were consistent with the findings of previous studies. our findings were congruent with those of the research conducted by siahpush et al. (2006) who suggested that a high-level income is related to strong self-efficacy in male participants. in their study which aimed to examine prospective teacher’s levels of self-efficacy and family functions, ikiz and yörük (2013) reported that prospective teachers who had high levels of general self-efficacy had healthier family functions. in a study conducted with 73 male and 115 female students, tang and sun (2018) found that the general self-efficacy levels of male students were higher than female students. they also found that gender, residence and families income levels have effects on the family functions of prospective teachers. thus, the findings here were in parallel with the previous studies. in the study by dordi et al. (2011) males were often required to have higher self-confidence and self-affirmation; therefore, in a large social environment, they were given more responsibilities and studies, and then male college students constantly strived to meet the social requirements for men, which also potentially affects self-efficacy. thus, male college students had significantly higher self-efficacy levels than female college students. studies (siahpush et al., 2006) showing that low-income individuals have low self-efficacy and high-income ones have high self-efficacy support our findings. ikiz and yörük (2013) examined the relationship between general selfefficacy levels and family functions of prospective teachers with various variables. as a result, high-self-efficacy prospective teachers had healthier family functions, and it was affected by gender, place where most of life was spent. these results support our findings. researchers have suggested that self-efficacy is positively related to adaptive variables that promote psychological resilience such as self-esteem and subjective happiness (cha, 2003; lyubomirsky et al., 2006). tong and shanggui (2004) emphasized that there is a positive relationship between general self-efficacy beliefs and psychological well-being. benight, harding-taylor, midboe and durham (2004, cited in, akpınar (2011)) found that self-efficacy is positively related to an adaptive coping style, optimism and psychological well-being, and in contrast, negatively related to trauma-related stress and negative mood. feldhaus et al. (2015) focused on investigating the interrelationships among the effects of loneliness, stress and self-efficacy on the life satisfaction of people with autism spectrum disorders (asd) and their peers. they determined significant differences between the two groups and found that people with asd reported higher loneliness, lower self-efficacy and thus lower life satisfaction, and the relationship between self-efficacy and life satisfaction was found to be stronger for individuals with asd than for people without asd. self-efficacy beliefs had also a direct effect on health (o'leary, 1992) and life satisfaction that is closely related to resilience and positivity (çakar, 2012). people with high self-efficacy have the ability to overcome stressful situations, because these people are reported to have the attitude “i can do this” (azar, vasudeva, and abdollahi 2006, cited in, telef (2011)) thus they can be more resilient. moreover, studies indicated that as the self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents became stronger, their risk-taking behaviors decreased (uysal and yilmaz-bingol, 2014). magaletta and oliver (1999) emphasized that self-efficacy and psychological well-being had a positive relationship. fu et al. (2018) conducted research with 307 chinese nurses. as a result, they found a positive relationship between self-efficacy and psychological well-being and they also expressed some elements of psychological well-being as social inclusion and self-efficacy. tommasi et al. (2018) conducted a study with 179 italian adolescents, and their results showed that extraversion, neuroticism, and self-efficacy beliefs in emotion regulation were correlated with psychological well-being. barbaranelli et al. (2018) examined in two studies whether the effect of positivity on performance is mediated by self-efficacy beliefs. the first study investigated the role of task and empathic self-efficacy in mediating the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 63-69 68 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group relationship of positivity with respect to in-role and extra-role behaviors in a sample of 829 italian adult employees. the second on examined the role of academic self-efficacy in mediating the relationship of positivity with respect to academic grades and academic citizenship behavior in a sample of 223 italian university students. the results of the structural equation models revealed that: (1) the relationship between positivity and both in-role and extra-role behaviors was substantially mediated by self-efficacy beliefs; (2) the relationship between positivity and both school grades and citizenship behaviors was completely mediated by self-efficacy beliefs. bandura (1994) stated that selfefficacy may act as a protective factor against depression. individuals with high self-efficacy are able to manage potential threats; otherwise they cannot control their anxiety which is a risk factor for mental health problems. lin (2003) also found that emotional processes and self-efficacy have a relationship that allow maintaining one's goals. similarly, marat (2003) showed that positive emotional states may enhance self-efficacy levels. byrne (2002) stated that individuals with low levels of self-efficacy reported more depression, anxiety, and helplessness. these findings are congruent with our findings. this study has some limitations. the data used here on self-efficacy, psychological resilience, positivity and demographic information based on self-reports. thus, future research may gather data using different methods like interviews with parents or teachers and peer reports may be useful. additionally, all the participants were university students from turkey in this study. similar studies should be conducted on other student populations. in conclusion, this study showed that psychological resilience and positivity affect self-efficacy directly, and demographic variables powerfully influence self-efficacy beliefs. these current findings increase our understanding of the relationships between self-efficacy and related variables. moreover, the data reported here were gathered from four different cities in turkey. so, the results are important because of the comprehensive participation. additionally, professionals working with university students may develop programs to enhance resilience and positivity and to increase levels of self-efficacy, which is a significant construct for setting goals and achieving them. these programs also contribute to the literature on self-efficacy. efforts to develop self-efficacy beliefs, a fundamental concept in determining and attaining individual life goals, will primarily contribute to a 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.09.005. yılmaz-bingöl, t., 2015. the effect of solution focused brief approach based group guidance programme on self efficacy beliefs. unpublished doctorate dissertation, sakarya university, sakarya. zimmerman, b.j., 2000. self-efficacy: an essential motive to learn. contemporary educational psychology, 25(1): 82–91. available at: https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1016. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014616729723600 http://www.psych.mwsc.edu/research/psy302/fall95/tiller.html 248 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 248-254, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.248.254 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group awareness level and self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service primary school teachers regarding syrian students’ education in turkey sevda kubilay1 remzi kılıç2 ( corresponding author) 1nigde omer halisdemir university, vocational school of social sciences, turkey 2nigde omer halisdemir university, faculty of education, turkey abstract the aim of this study is to reveal awareness level and self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service primary school teachers about the education of syrian students in turkey. in the research, 20 participants were determined on a voluntary basis among the senior students attending education faculty of a state university. the research was conducted with the focus group interview. findings indicate that the participants are not aware of the current statistics and educational policies about syrian students. however, they are aware of the problems that may be encountered in multicultural classrooms. as for the attitudes of participants towards syrian students, it is revealed that some participants have positive attitudes towards syrian students and emphasize the concepts of empathy and tolerance but some have negative attitudes. the vast majority of the participants do not feel themselves capable of carrying out educational activities in a multicultural environment. similarly, they think that the faculties of education do not prepare teacher candidates in this respect. consequently, it is important for pre-service teachers to have positive attitudes towards syrian students. it is necessary to provide pre-service teachers with necessary pedagogical background to make them feel professionally competent in multicultural settings. keywords: multicultural education, self-efficacy beliefs, pre-service teachers, syrian students in turkey, pedagogical education, attitudes toward syrian students. citation | sevda kubilay; remzi kılıç (2019). awareness level and self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service primary school teachers regarding syrian students’ education in turkey. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 248-254. history: received: 24 december 2018 revised: 28 january 2019 accepted: 22 february 2019 published: 14 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 249 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 250 3. findings and comments ............................................................................................................................................................... 250 4. conclusion, discussion and suggestion .................................................................................................................................... 252 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 253 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.248.254&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/411 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2786-0177 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7806-3552 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/411 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2786-0177 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7806-3552 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/411 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2786-0177 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7806-3552 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/411 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2786-0177 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7806-3552 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 248-254 249 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction migration, which is as old as the history of humanity, has taken place due to various motives such as searching for better life conditions, escaping from the threat elements or challenging natural conditions and seeking security. together with the twentieth century, international migration has come to the fore with the effect of globalization. civil wars, violations of rights, political instability, ethnic conflicts, economic problems, hard geographical conditions and security threat are the reasons lie behind these migrations (deniz, 2014). it is not appropriate to consider migration just as a population movement, but this movement has many impacts on social, economic, cultural and political fields (levent and çayak, 2017). nowadays, migrations which create global effects have continued to occur more often. similarly, beginning with the civil war in syria, masses of people have emigrated to lebanon, jordan and turkey. together with the mass migrations, a lot of regulations were needed in these countries. the continuation of the war environment in syria necessitated the development of long-term policies in the migrated countries (kızıl and dönmez, 2017). as a result of the intense migration movement that started in 2011 with the crisis environment in syria, the number of syrian individuals in our country outreached 3.5 million in 2018 according to the data provided by general directorate of migration management. turkey took syrian refugees under protection with the status of “temporary protection” that is well accepted in international law (turkish grand national assembly (tbmm) human rights review commission, 2012). with the act of mass immigration, syrians' needs for health, housing, employment and education have come to the fore. however, the fact that the turmoil in syria did not end in the short term, has caused frequent updates of the policies pursued especially in the field of education. at the beginning, the training services were provided in the camps established in the border regions of turkey and in the temporary education center, after that, considering the presence of the population outside the camps, the opportunity was provided for syrian students to continue their education in public schools. however, problems are faced in many aspects such as the registration process of syrian students in public schools, the transfer of the curricula carried out in the school, in-school communication and school-family relations. it is seen that parents are reluctant to enroll their children in schools. similarly, another important problem is that teachers do not have sufficient qualifications to combat discriminatory attitudes and behaviors in the school environment. the lack of awareness of the school administrations and teachers about the opportunities offered by the state to the syrian individuals causes the problems to become more complex (child studies (çoça), 2015). in studies on refugees, it has been revealed that a significant number of children witnessed the death of their loved ones or they are worried about their own safety (bean et al., 2007). such bitter experiences have a negative impact on students' psychology and socialization. the refugee students differ in their mother tongue and culture from local students so they have difficulties in expressing themselves. also their education ceased during migration, which has a follow-up adverse effect on the educational environment in the host country and on other students and educators (erdem, 2017). migration not only affects children who have migrated, but it can also cause problems in schools of host country. for example, with the increasing number of students, the classes get more and more crowded, the school staff experiences hardship to meet the needs, there may be in-school or in-classroom problems (karakuş, 2006). in the handbook for teachers having foreign students in their classrooms published by the turkish ministry of national education general directorate of teacher training and development (2017) the plan of the ministry for the educational needs of foreign students is stated as follows: “a future planning has been made by the ministry to meet the educational needs of foreign students. this plan includes primarily language teaching, integration of students into school, school construction and dealing with teacher competencies.” in the continuation of the statement, the concept of inclusive education is addressed and the emphasis is placed on the teachers’ development of knowledge and skills based on multicultural education principles. the young population among migrants is noteworthy. according to the 2018 statistics of general directorate of migration management, the number of syrians between the ages of 0-14 is 1.352.894. the most crowded mass in this number is the ones between 0-4 years (492 000) and 5-9 years (481 000) (turkish ministry of interior directorate general of migration management statistics, 2018). according to the 2017 year-end data obtained by ministry of national education general directorate of lifelong learning, the highest schooling rate among syrian students is in the primary school level with the rate of %98 (turkish ministry of national education general directorate of lifelong learning, 2017). as it is seen, the number of syrian children who are at age of compulsory education is quite astonishing. in the same way, the highest schooling rate is in the primary education level. taking this ratio into consideration, it is obvious that turkey will need to provide educational opportunities for more school aged syrian students in the future. as the data show, the mass that should have access to education is mostly in the primary school age. as a matter of fact, the importance of education is indisputable to ensure a healthy integration and adaptation to the host country. thus the number of regulations is getting increased day by day in our country to deal with this troubled situation. considering the number of syrian students who are included now and will be included in the future in our education system, it is important to train our educators about the needs of syrian students. for this reason, candidates of primary school teachers are included in the study because they are the most probable group who will have syrian students in the future. the study aims to determine the awareness level and self-efficacy beliefs of teacher candidates about the education of syrian students. for this purpose, the following questions are directed to the candidates:  are you aware of the educational policies and current statistics about syrian students?  what would you think and how would you feel if you had syrian students in your classroom ?  what kind of difficulties can be experienced in a class including syrian students? how can be dealt with these challenges?  do you feel competent to manage the teaching process in the classes involving syrian students? asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 248-254 250 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group  do you think that the pedagogical courses you have received in the education faculty prepare teacher candidates for multicultural educational environments? 2. methodology 2.1. research design the research is a descriptive qualitative study which is based on phenomenology pattern. the purpose of the phenomenological study is to understand and describe a specific phenomenon through how it is perceived by the actors. phenomenological research focuses on the facts that we are aware of but do not have in-depth and detailed understanding, in other words it is applied to investigate the facts that we cannot fully grasp (yıldırım and şimşek, 2005). 2.2. participants in order to determine the participants, convenience sampling was applied. data were obtained from university students attending education faculty of a public university in the 2017-2018 academic year. participants were 20 pre-service classroom teachers who were volunteers to participate in the research. gender equality was taken into consideration in determining the participants. 2.3. gathering data to gather the data focus group interviews were done with pre-service teachers. before the interview, a literature review was carried out to have an in-depth grasp of the subject and then interview questions were developed in the light of it. to get the final version of the interview form, views of two academicians were taken into account. 2.4. data analysis interview questions are arranged in a semi-structured manner. the research conducted with a focus group interview and the interview was recorded after getting permission of the participants. descriptive analysis method was used to analyze the obtained data. in the descriptive analysis, direct quotations are frequently included. in the study, the opinions of the participants were expressed with codes as k1, k2, k3 etc. in order to keep the names of the participants anonymous. 3. findings and comments in this study the level of awareness and self-efficacy beliefs of teacher candidates about the education of syrian students were examined and the responses of the participants were discussed under the following sub-titles within the framework of the research problems. 3.1. education policies and current statistics about syrian students candidates were asked whether they are familiar with the number of syrian individuals and students who were given temporary protection status in our country. although participants generally have heard some news about syrian individuals from the media, it is clear that they have no idea about the number of students who continue their education in turkey. participants were asked to tell what they know about the education policies and practices regulated for syrian students. 40% of the respondents stated that they did not know anything about the education policies and practices; one of the participants explained their reason as they could not follow the agenda due to the exams they had to get prepared. approximately half of the participants stated that they were aware that turkish literacy courses were organized for these students. they also stated that they were more familiar with some practices at higher education level rather than the arrangements for younger students. they think that syrian university students granted privileges such as having opportunity to enroll in state universities without taking exams_ which is not exactly true for every syrian student. some of the participants' opinions are as follows: “there are practices related to teaching turkish to syrian students. i think they are useful. after all, if they live in our country and share common values with us, they have to learn our language” (k3). “i know the university-level practices but i feel uncomfortable about the privileges given to them” (k7). “of course, every child has a right to get education and syrian children have passed through very hard times. however, i think a balanced policy should be pursued without attracting the reaction of our own non-refugee students” (k1). responses indicate that the pre-service teachers cannot follow the agenda due to the fact that they are getting prepared for the exams. however, when they step into their profession, they are likely to meet syrian students in their classrooms or in schools they work. in this context, it is important to be aware of the education policies and practices carried out for syrian students. the information, which doesn’t reflect the reality, acquired by the candidates through the media pushes them to be biased. likewise, as seen in the statement of one of the participants, “our own non-refugee students” phrase implies a discriminatory approach. 3.2. feelings and thoughts about multicultural learning environments teacher candidates were asked what they would think and how they would feel if they had syrian students in their classes. with this question, it was aimed to determine attitudes of teacher candidates towards students from different cultures. 30% of the participants stated their opinions with negative expressions. some of these statements are as follows: “i care more about my own students”(k2). “it bothers me if i have refugee students when i start my profession” (k11). “first of all, nationalism and independence are so important for my nation that we never fall into such a situation like syrian people, of which i am proud. i help these students succeed at school but i don’t think i will make an extra effort for them” (k8). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 248-254 251 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in contrast to these statements, 50% of the participants reflected a positive attitude. participants who expressed positive views emphasized the concepts of empathy, tolerance and compassion. the majority of the participants who expressed positive opinions were female candidates. here are some replies: “i become more merciful towards them” (k4). “firstly i remind myself the fact that they are also human beings and children. i don’t behave in an accusive and offensive way” (k17). “we could have been in their shoes. thus i become tolerant towards them, i don’t allow discimination in my class” (k20). “i prevent them from being offended in the classroom and i prevent other students have negative feelings towards them” (k9). the other participants stated that the differences would enrich the learning environment: “differences add color to life. it should be seen as a sign of wealth” (k5). “we have an opportunity to meet people from different geographies, which broadens our world knowledge ” (k6). “we have an opportunity to observe different student attitudes and behaviors stemming from their ethnic origin” (k10). as the current situation of turkey is considered, it is important for the candidates who have negative attitudes to gain a more positive viewpoint in terms of their professional and personal development. a viewpoint like “my own students” will inadvertently lead to the alienation of students from other cultures. perceiving differences as richness is a point of view that should be gained by all teacher candidates. 3.3. possible challenges and ways of struggle candidates in the study were asked what would be the possible challenges of being a teacher in a classroom where syrian students involved. they also discussed how they could find solutions to the problems identified. some of the candidates stated that they had a chance to observe multicultural classrooms during their internship period and identified problems as follows:  communication problems  problems arise from cultural differences  social exclusion  adaptation and discipline problems the most frequently encountered problem was the inability of the students to express themselves in turkish and the lack of language skills. in this sense, the candidates emphasized the necessity of turkish literacy courses. it was stated that the level of readiness of the students is important when enrolling in schools and the teacher may experience difficulties in terms of communication. “communication problems may occur, that is possible. in such a situation i would try to overcome these problems with supportive courses and activities” (k12.) “communication is very important, of course. how can i teach a student who does not understand me? language courses could be given at extracurricular times” (k15). participants also mentioned that there may be problems arising from different cultural backgrounds of the students and they stated the importance of promoting respect and tolerance among students. however, some participants added that they, as teachers, may have difficulty in the classes of cultural diversity. “both students and i could have difficulties in regard to language and cultural diversity. frankly, if i have a choice, i don’t want to work as a teacher in such a class” (k3). “teachers should teach students to respect each other. i think if the atmosphere of tolerance is provided and the teacher becomes a model to students, the difficulties will be overcome” (k19). another problem raised by the participants is the exclusion of syrian students by their peers. communication problems and having a different cultural background can also have a negative effect on syrian students’ relations with other students. the attitude of pre-service teachers in dealing with such a situation is very crucial. to prevent exclusion, the participants expressed the creation of an atmosphere of tolerance and empathy. “syrian students can be excluded. in such a situation, i would warn other students not to do that again and then i would tell them the difficulties syrian peers experienced to arouse empathy. i’d try to be a role model for students” (k20). “we are, as teachers, responsible to eliminate negativities. as long as we teach the importance of love and respect, we can hinder negative behaviors and attitudes like marginalization, fighting and dispute” (k4). there may also be problems in adapting to school, obeying rules and exhibiting expected behaviors. it is possible that the students whose education life was disrupted in the civil war environment may experience trauma after the war, have difficulties in adapting to a new environment and cause disciplinary problems. on the other hand, there may be students who have never started their education in an environment dominated by chaos. it may take some time for these students to adapt to their educational life, or they may need support during the adaptation process. in order to facilitate the adaptation process and to avoid problems, participants' recommendations are as follows; to increase the integration between students via social activities, to organize orientation programs for students and parents during school enrollment period, to prevent grouping among foreign students and to increase their interaction with other students. however, there are also participants who think that spending more time and making an effort for foreign students can be unfair to other students. the majority of participants agree that foreign students will cause disciplinary problems. participants think that these students may exhibit negative behaviors due to being new in the environment and coming from a war environment. “i organize orientation programs to ensure syrian students adapt to the school. i involve them in various club activities and social events” (k13). “syrian students can cause disciplinary problems in the classroom and may corrupt our culture. i prevent the grouping of syrian students in the classroom” (k7). “syrian students may need more attention and care, but that’d be unfair for other students. my priority is to serve to citizens of my country” (k19). 3.4. managing teaching process effectively the participants were asked whether they feel competent enough to manage the teaching process effectively in the classrooms involving syrian students and were asked to explain the reasons for their answers. at this point, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 248-254 252 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group those who feel competent constitute 40% of the participants; 60% of them think that they cannot manage the teaching process effectively. reasons of those who think they can carry out the teaching process effectively are listed below: “i’d prepare teaching activities considering them as if they were mainstreamed students” (k14). “i’d prepare speaking activities for syrian students. i’d spend extra time with them until they have a good command of grammar” (k16). “i’d prepare activities appropriate to students' levels and act as if i was teaching in a classroom with mainstreamed students” (k12). reasons of those who think they cannot carry out the teaching process effectively are listed as follows: “because i don't think i've had the necessary training for this” (k8). “there would always be communication problems; i think i would have difficulty in teaching because students’ readiness level would be unsatisfactory” (k2). “how is the assessment and evaluation process carried out? obviously i think it's challenging” (k7). “they should be able to learn how to read and write in turkish and communicate in a short time. otherwise there would be chaos in the classroom. as a teacher, i could experience confusion about what to teach and how to teach” (k1). the reasons of the participants who think that they cannot manage the teaching process effectively are the inadequacy of their education at this point, the concern about the students' readiness level, the language and communication problems and the problems related to assessment and evaluation. considering this situation in the process of teacher training, it will be appropriate to include courses and practices that will increase the competencies of the candidates. it is highly probable that prospective teachers will encounter multicultural classroom settings especially in the regions and provinces where syrian individuals live heavily. it is important for the candidates to gain competence in order to cope with foreseen problems. 3.5. multiculturalism in the content of pedagogical education the participants were asked whether the education they have received at the faculty of education prepared them to work in environments including students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. only 20% of the participants think that education faculty prepares them for multicultural educational environments; 80% of the participants think the opposite. the positive views of the participants: “i think we learned things within the scope of pedagogical formation. however, i believe that i will understand this better during the implementation process” (k5). “our lecturers share their experiences with us and hearing such experiences prepares us to real life environments”(k9). “we witness such environments during our internship period and we discuss how teaching and learning should be in such classrooms, in this respect i believe the education we have received prepares us for multicultural learning environments” (k16).the participants stated that they developed their skills through sharing experiences and teaching practices. on the other hand, negative views were also stated: “courses that introduce different cultures should be included. first of all, we must recognize different cultures so that we can be effective during the teaching process” (k1). “we have received training about individual differences, but multiculturalism is something else. there can be lessons on how to behave to students from different cultures” (k8). “we receive theoretical knowledge in general. but we don't know what awaits us when we are in the profession, so i don't think it's adequate. in this sense, instead of theoretical lessons, we can cultivate ourselves by teaching practices in multicultural educational environments or by observing good practices” (k11). the candidates, who think that the education they’ve received at the faculty of education isn’t satisfactory, emphasized the importance of recognizing different cultures and learning how to approach appropriately towards students from different cultures. some participants expressed that there should be courses to train themselves in this sense, while some of the participants stated that it would be appropriate to include more teaching practices. 4. conclusion, discussion and suggestion the conflict in syria deeply affected the people of syria and the millions of syrians had to flee to turkey in search of security. individuals, who came to turkey with the hope of having a new life, quickly entered the harmonization process. firstly, the basic needs of syrian individuals were met and then a series of arrangements were made by the turkish ministry of national education to ensure their access to education (büyükikiz and cangal, 2016). however, there are many and complex risks for the development of syrian children. because most of them witnessed armed conflict, political violence and experienced displacement from home and financial, economic deprivation. these negativities affect people of all ages, especially children. children are in need of protection of their parents, families and other institutions because they cannot take critical decisions, so they should be at the center of our concerns (sirin and lawrence, 2018). indeed, half of the syrian population consists of children and youth in turkey. the highest number of syrian students is at age of primary education and it is likely that this number will increase further in the future. for this reason, in this study candidates of primary school teachers were included and it was aimed to determine how much knowledge the candidates have about the policies carried out for syrian students and how competent they feel in the educational environments where different cultures involved. the findings of the research displayed that the pre-service teachers were not sufficiently aware of the current statistics and educational policies. however, it is highly probable that most prospective teachers will have syrian students when they start professional life. similarly, in the study of aykırı (2017) which was conducted in the province of mardin and with 18 classroom teachers and titled as “classroom teachers' views on the educational status of syrian students in their classrooms”, it was found out that most of the teachers didn’t have any idea about syrians. the findings revealed that teachers lack of necessary knowledge and skills to teach in multicultural classrooms. in this regard, it is necessary to raise awareness of teacher candidates about responsibilities they’ll have to take in the future. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 248-254 253 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the study it was found out that the candidates who participated in the study developed negative attitudes towards multicultural education environments and especially for syrian students. this situation becomes more evident especially at the level of higher education because of the privileges granted to syrian students. however, information pollution in media and social media platforms may have an impact on the development of negative attitudes. candidates' lack of self-efficacy may also affect their attitudes. in this context, a study conducted by sural and arı (2017) revealed that teacher competencies affect their attitudes. sural and arı (2017) in their research to determine the attitudes of the teachers who give turkish education to the immigrant children towards the inservice training they took within the scope of “supporting the integration of syrian children to the turkish education system (pictes)” revealed that teachers generally exhibit negative attitudes because they have insufficient skills in teaching turkish to foreigners. the lecturers who carried out the training stated that the participants were quite ignorant and inexperienced in teaching turkish to foreigners. those who develop negative attitudes should be informed that today's children will be adults of tomorrow and that teachers play an important role in the healthy integration of these students. in the process of teacher training, activities that will break the prejudices of the candidates and prevent them to develop negative attitudes and provide awareness about the education policies can be included. in the context of the research, pre-service teachers were asked about the probable difficulties they may face and the methods to combat these challenges. the challenges candidates stated include; problems of communication, problems arising from cultural differences, social exclusion, adaptation and discipline problems. these findings are consistent with the findings of sarıtaş et al. (2016) which address the problems experienced by teachers and administrators with foreign students. in this study, it has been determined that foreign students exhibit tendency towards violent and aggressive behaviors, they have problems in terms of obeying the rules and have a tendency to become a gang. to struggle against these problems participants made suggestions such as creating an educational atmosphere dominated by tolerance, empathy and understanding, organizing social activities that will facilitate the adaptation process, and opening training courses for the development of language skills. participants were asked whether they had the competence to teach in a multicultural environment and 60% of them stated that they did not feel competent at this point. this is a considerable ratio. similarly, in the study conducted by er and bayındır (2015) pedagogical approaches of primary school teachers towards refugee students attending primary school were examined and 182 classroom teachers participated in the research. the majority of the participants stated that they did not undergo any in-service training that would foster their professional development regarding the education of foreign students, and nearly 85% of them said that they did not believe that refugee children could carry out their education without any problems. these results reveal that teachers do not feel themselves professionally competent in this context. considering the current situation in teacher training, future educators should be provided with implementations that will enhance their competencies in this field. finally, the participants were asked whether the education they have received at the faculties of education prepared them to work and conduct educational activities in multicultural environments. 80% of the participants think that it doesn’t prepare. therefore, education faculties foster pre-service teachers’ professional development in instructional strategies, alternative measurement and evaluation methods that can be applied in multicultural classes. they should be prepared for real-life conditions. in order to adapt to changing conditions and developments, pre-service teachers should be offered opportunities to increase their experience as well as their knowledge and skills (gökulu, 2017). because it is observed that children and adolescents with migration background have adaptation problems and this bitter experience also adversely affects their educational experiences (kaştan, 2015). attitudes of teachers and school administrators are of great importance in the inclusion of these foreign students into the education system. the burden of the teachers who work in multicultural classrooms and face with the problems of traumatized children is quite severe because at this point, teachers who aren’t qualified for such situations feel insecure and worried (ozer et al., 2016). in this context, research findings may be guiding in terms of the needs of candidates in the process of teacher training. everyone in the society has responsibility to ease the adaptation process of syrian individuals. to provide syrian children with access to education, equal opportunities and facilities, especially educators, local authorities, national education directorates, universities and non-governmental organizations should cooperate and act within a common plan (topsakal et al., 2013). in this way, a healthy integration process can be achieved. references aykırı, k., 2017. classroom teachers' views on the educational status of syrian students in their classrooms. turkish journal of primary education, 2(1): 44-56. bean, t., i. derluyn, e. eurelings-bontekoe, e. broekaert and p. spinhoven, 2007. comparing psychological distress, traumatic stress reactions, and experiences of unaccompanied refugee minors with experiences of adolescents accompanied by parents. the journal of nervous and mental disease, 195(4): 288-297.available at: https://doi.org/10.1097/01.nmd.0000243751.49499.93. büyükikiz, k.k. and ö. cangal, 2016. anyone reading a book. international turkish literature journal of culture education, 5(3): 14141430. child studies (çoça), 2015. the conditions for syrian children in turkish state schools: proposals for policy and implementation. istanbul: bilgi university child studies unit. deniz, t., 2014. turkey from the perspective of international migration problem. turkish journal of social research, 18(1): 175-204. er, a. and n. bayındır, 2015. pedagogical approaches of elementary teachers for primary refugee children. international journal of social and educational sciences, 2(4): 175-185.available at: https://doi.org/10.20860/ijoses.08223. erdem, c., 2017. instructional problems experienced by primary school teachers who have refugee students in their classes and their solutions for problems. medeniyet journal of educational researches, 1(1): 26-42. gökulu, a., 2017. opinions about candidates for teaching prospective teachers' educational process in turkey. international journal of social sciences and education research, 3(1): 111-123. karakuş, e., 2006. migration phenomenon and its negative effects on education (the case of sultanbeyli). sakarya university social sciences institute, unpublished dissertation of master degree, sakarya. kaştan, y., 2015. the problems faced in the education process of children experienced migration in turkey. international journal of social and educational sciences, 2(4): 216-229. kızıl, ö. and c. dönmez, 2017. education services provided by turkey to syrian asylum seekers and evaluation of some problems in the context of social studies education. international journal of education technology and scientific researches, 2(4): 207-239. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 248-254 254 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group levent, f. and s. çayak, 2017. school administrators’ views on syrian students’ education in turkey. the journal of hasan ali yücel education faculty, 14(27): 21-46. ozer, y.y., a. komşuoğlu and z.ö. ateşok, 2016. education of syrian children in turkey: problems and suggestions. the journal of academic social science, 4(37): 76-110. sarıtaş, e., ü. şahin and g. çatalbaş, 2016. problems faced with foreign students in primary schools. pamukkale university journal of social sciences institute, 50(1): 208-229.available at: https://doi.org/10.5505/pausbed.2016.81557. sirin, s.r. and a.j. lawrence, 2018. increasing understanding for syrian refugee children with empirical evidence. vulnerable children and youth studies, 13(1): 1-6.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17450128.2017.1409446. sural, ü.ç. and t.g. arı, 2017. the evaluation of in-service training of the instructors teaching turkish for immigrant children. international journal of languages’ education and teaching, 5(4): 996-1009. topsakal, c., z. merey and m. keç, 2013. a qualitative study on education rights and problems of immigrant families’ children . the journal of international social research, 6(27): 546-560. turkish grand national assembly (tbmm) human rights review commission, 2012. an investigation on the tent cities of syrian citizens who take shelter in our country. available from https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/komisyon/insanhaklari/docs/2012/raporlar/28_02_2012_1.pdf [accessed 01.08.2018]. turkish ministry of interior directorate general of migration management statistics, 2018. syrians under temporary protection according to years. available from http://www.goc.gov.tr/icerik6/gecici-koruma_363_378_4713_icerik [accessed 01.08.2018]. turkish ministry of national education general directorate of lifelong learning, 2017. educational services for students under temporary protection. available from https://hbogm.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2018_07/16101622_13-07 2018__ynternet_bylteni.pdf [accessed 01.08.2018]. turkish ministry of national education general directorate of teacher training and development, 2017. handbook for teachers with foreign students in their classes (ed. semih aktekin). ankara: ministry of national education. yıldırım, a. and h. şimşek, 2005. qualitative research methods in social sciences. 5th edn., ankara: distinguished publishing. ministry of interior general directorate of migration management http://www.goc.gov.tr meb sayfa bulunamadı https://hbogm.meb.gov.tr asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/komisyon/insanhaklari/docs/2012/raporlar/28_02_2012_1.pdf http://www.goc.gov.tr/icerik6/gecici-koruma_363_378_4713_icerik 105 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 105-109, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.105.109 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a study on the job satisfaction of physical education teachers according to different variables deniz ozge yuceloglu keskin1 levent bayram2 ( corresponding author) 1,2ondokuz mayıs university yasar dogu, faculty of sport sciences, turkey. abstract the purpose of the study is to determine the job satisfaction levels of physical education teachers according to the variables of gender, seniority, marital status, grade and status of education. the study was conducted on a total of 103 physical education and sports teachers, 40 females and 63 males, with an average age of 40.01±6.65, working at schools in different cities (samsun, ordu, adana and istanbul) in turkey in 2019-2020 academic year. the data of the study were collected using demographic information form containing personal information and minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire. t-test and mann whitney u test were used during the evaluation of the data and one-way variance analysis (anova) and kruskal wallis test were performed on items where variables were examined in multiple groups. it was concluded that the teachers participated in the study had high job satisfaction levels; no statistically significant difference was observed in terms of gender, seniority, marital status, grade of education and job status variables (p>0.05). that they share the common feelings and excitement intensely in the competitions attended by the students they have prepared as athletes and that the successful results obtained in these activities are appreciated and congratulated can be interpreted as factors increasing their commitment to work and the pleasure they receive from work. keywords: job satisfaction, physical education teacher, school. citation | deniz ozge yuceloglu keskin; levent bayram (2020). a study on the job satisfaction of physical education teachers according to different variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 105-109. history: received: 22 november 2019 revised: 7 january 2019 accepted: 10 february 2020 published: 2 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 106 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 107 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 107 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 108 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 109 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.105.109&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1365 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-9548 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6000-229x https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1365 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-9548 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6000-229x https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1365 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-9548 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6000-229x https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1365 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-9548 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6000-229x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 105-109 106 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by determining the job satisfaction levels of physical education teachers according to the variables of gender, seniority, marital status, grade and status of education. 1. introduction the active life of today is full of effects that are challenging for individuals in many respects, that make them feel under pressure and make it difficult for them to live their lives in a balanced way. working and having a job have an important place in human life. a job enables individuals to maintain their lives by creating an opportunity for them to meet their social, financial and psychological needs. individuals create economic value in the jobs, generate an income in return and meet the needs of them and their families. in addition, a job has social functions such as determining the social status of individuals, creating a sense of being beneficial to the society, enabling meeting with other people and establishing new relationships; and psychological functions such as the pride of having a job and being able to produce, the excitement of starting a job, the feeling of being successful, loving one’s job and doing a meaningful act (çakır, 2001). besides providing work-related experiences to the employees, work life also causes accumulation of various emotions faced in each working day. as a result of these experiences, the mental and emotional attitude of the person towards the job is formed. in the event that there are negative accumulations towards the job, unhappy employees who are not satisfied with their job and workplace appear. what is desired and aimed in reality, on the other hand, is that the employees are satisfied with the job they do and the conditions related to the job, and eventually reach a job-related satisfaction (eğinli, 2009). job satisfaction or dissatisfaction expresses the internal evaluations of the employees as an outcome of their feelings, thoughts and behaviors towards their jobs, workplaces or colleagues; a general attitude towards their jobs (solmuş, 2004). there are different factors affecting job satisfaction. it is stated that individual factors such as age, gender, education level, status in the workplace, duration of service and personality structure; and organizational factors such as job and its nature, payment, opportunities of development and promotion, and the physical conditions of the workplace affect the level of satisfaction (aksoy & polat, 2013). job dissatisfaction has significant consequences for both employees and organizations. employees with high job satisfaction endeavor to fulfill their duties in the best way beyond the jobs required by their position at work. however, the decreases in job satisfaction are generally seen to be associated with subjective emotions such as uneasiness, tension, anger, anxiety, depression, and fatigue, and physiological problems such as increase in colds, allergic reactions, gastrointestinal diseases, and substance use when combined with negative life events, daily troubles and personality traits of the individuals. the reflection of these problems on professional life is revealed as psychological withdrawal (dreaming of various things during working hours, etc.), physical withdrawal (going out without permission, shirking from duties, leaving work early-arriving late, taking sick leaves frequently, or long tea breaks, etc.), decrease in efficiency, decrease in concentration, increase in the number of mistakes, decrease in tolerance, insensitivity, conflicts in interpersonal relations, and even behaviors such as aggression (batıgün & şahin, 2006). it is generally accepted that teachers experience more than the average stress experienced by people working in other professions. because there are problems in education and training services such as student-teacher, schoolfamily conflicts; disciplinary problems of the students; overcrowded classes and poor physical conditions; too many bureaucratic works; low salaries; difficulties in promotion; criticism of the society; low support from the society; pressures of social and political forces on educational institutions; inadequate rewarding and participation in the decision processes in institutions, and so on. these problems lead to emergence of stress, anxiety and burnout; and are reflected in the educational environment, students, families and the whole society by causing results such as low work performance, desire to quit the job, and even deterioration of physical and mental health (celep, 2003). the main factor contributing to the job satisfaction of the teachers is that they work with children. that the teachers develop warm, sincere and personal relationships with students, that teaching is an intellectual and challenging job, and that the teaching profession provides autonomy and independence contribute to satisfaction (shann, 1998). other sources of job satisfaction for teachers include; relationships with students, relationships with teachers, relationships with senior managers, the opportunity to implement their own ideas, holidays, financial security, salary payments, working conditions, realizing personal interests, working hours, the nature of the job, the possibility of promotion, supervision, organization and management, occupational safety, personality and appreciation (vural, 2004). according to the results of researches conducted on job satisfaction of teachers, pressure and stress are felt by the teachers who interact with students all day and who try to meet the learning needs of students; their motivation decreases due to the factors such as not being able to improve themselves in terms of knowledge, skills and professional competence, and not meeting their professional requirements; and as a result of these job dissatisfaction occurs (akçamete, kamer, & sucuoğlu, 2001). in this context, it is aimed to determine the job satisfaction levels of physical education teachers working in schools according to different variables. answers to the following questions are sought in line with this general purpose: 1. do the job satisfaction and subscales of the physical education and sports teachers differ significantly according to gender variable? 2. do the job satisfaction and subscales of the physical education and sports teachers differ significantly according to marital status variable? 3. do the job satisfaction and subscales of the physical education and sports teachers differ significantly according to seniority variable? 4. do the job satisfaction and subscales of the physical education and sports teachers differ significantly according to job status variable? asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 105-109 107 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. do the job satisfaction and subscales of the physical education and sports teachers differ significantly according to the school type variable? 2. method 2.1. sample and procedure the study was applied on a total of 103 physical education and sports teachers – 40 females and 63 males – working at schools in different cities in turkey (samsun, ordu, adana and istanbul) in 2019-2020 academic year, whose average age was 40.01±6.65. the study was conducted with the quantitative method, and screening and correlational screening models were used. the data of the study were collected by use of demographic information form containing personal information and minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire. 2.2. measures minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire (msq) the first scale used in the study is the minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire consisting of twenty questions that was developed by weiss, dawis, england, and lofquist (1967) in order to measure job satisfaction. it was adapted to turkish by baycan in 1985 and its validity and reliability studies were conducted. minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire is a five-point likert type scale scored between 1–5. in the questionnaire the points are evaluated as: very dissatisfied; 1 point, dissatisfied; 2 points, undecided; 3 points, satisfied; 4 points, and very satisfied; 5 points. there is no reverse question in the questionnaire. the highest score that can be obtained from the questionnaire is 100, the lowest score is 20, and 60 points corresponding to the middle point represent neutral satisfaction. when the scores approach to 20, it indicates that the level of satisfaction decreases, and when they approach to 100, it means the increase of satisfaction. minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire consists of 20 items and 3 subscales with features determining the level of intrinsic, extrinsic and general satisfaction. 2.3. data analysis the data of the study were obtained by using “spss 22.0” software. in the evaluation of demographic information about physical education teachers, frequency (f) and percentage (%) were calculated and given in tables. during the evaluation of the data, the t-test and mann whitney u test were used for independent variables in paired groups, and one-way variance analysis (anova) and kruskal wallis test were performed on items where variables were examined in multiple groups to determine whether a significant difference existed between the groups or not. the level of significance was accepted to be (p < .05) for the study. 3. findings table-1. t-test results related to the job satisfaction perceptions of the teachers according to gender variable. subscales gender n aver. sd. median min. max. p intrinsic satisfaction female 40 48.38 6.72 48 25 59 .977 male 63 48.41 6.25 48 29 60 extrinsic satisfaction female 40 28.40 4.42 28 19 38 .148 male 63 26.90 5.96 28 13 39 general satisfaction female 40 76.77 10.35 78 44 97 .514 male 63 75.31 11.38 76 42 99 note: p>0.05. when table 1 is analyzed, no significant difference is seen in the job satisfaction perceptions of the teachers according to their genders in the subscales of intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction and in the general job satisfaction (p>0.05). table-2. t-test results related to the job satisfaction perceptions of the teachers according to marital status variable. subscales marital status n aver. sd. median min. max. p intrinsic satisfaction single 14 48,07 8,38 49,5 25 59 .529 married 84 48,64 5,99 48 29 60 divorced 5 45.20 7.60 45 36 55 extrinsic satisfaction single 14 28,86 5,80 28 19 38 .581 married 84 27.34 5,48 28 13 39 divorced 5 26 3,46 28 20 28 job satisfaction (total) single 14 76.93 13.09 74,50 44 97 .597 married 84 75.99 10,69 78 42 99 divorced 5 71.20 10.33 71 56 83 note: p>0.05. in table 2, there is no statistically significant difference in the intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction subscales and general job satisfaction according to the marital status of the teachers (p>0.05). when the results of the t-test related to the job satisfaction perceptions of the teachers according to seniority variable in table 3 are evaluated, no statistically significant difference is determined in the intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction subscales and general job satisfaction (p>0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 105-109 108 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3.t-test results related to the job satisfaction perceptions of the teachers according to seniority variable. subscales seniority n aver. sd. median min. max. p intrinsic satisfaction 1-5 years 11 45,091 9,481 45 25 60 .354 6-10 years 23 48,13 8,019 49 29 60 11-15 years 24 49.96 4,658 50 42 60 16-20 years 19 48,32 5,355 48 36 60 20 and over 26 48,65 5,623 48 16 36 extrinsic satisfaction 1-5 years 11 27,73 7,143 28 16 39 .547 6-10 years 23 26,57 5,534 27 13 34 11-15 years 24 28.67 4,659 29 19 39 16-20 years 19 28,32 5,012 30 17 36 20 and over 26 26.50 5,623 27 16 36 job satisfaction (total) 1-5 years 11 72,82 15,432 72 44 99 .594 6-10 years 23 74,70 13,275 74 42 94 11-15 years 24 78,63 8,287 79 61 99 16-20 years 19 76,63 9,209 76 53 90 20 and over 26 75,15 10.110 77 53 92 note: p>0.05. table-4. t-test results related to the job satisfaction perceptions of the teachers according to job status variable. subscales job status n aver. sd. median min. max. p intrinsic satisfaction public 90 48,77 5.71 48 29 60 .267 private 13 45.85 5,72 46 25 60 extrinsic satisfaction public 90 27.42 5.15 28 13 39 .687 private 13 27.92 7.39 28 16 38 job satisfaction (total) public 90 76.19 10.011 77.5 42 99 .615 private 13 73,77 16,53 74 44 97 note: p>0.05. when the results of the t-test for the job satisfaction perceptions of the teachers according to job status variable in table 4 are examined, no statistically significant difference is observed in the intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction subscales and general job satisfaction (p>0.05). table-5. t-test results related to the job satisfaction perceptions of the teachers according to grade of education variable. subscales grade of education n aver. sd. median min. max. p intrinsic satisfaction secondary school 66 48.51 7.04 48 25 60 0.486 high school 37 48.19 5,16 48 37 60 extrinsic satisfaction secondary school 66 27.62 5.86 28 13 39 0.737 high school 37 27.24 4.66 28 16 38 job satisfaction (total) secondary school 66 76.13 12.09 78 42 99 0.756 high school 37 75.43 8.74 76 57 97 note: p>0.05. no statistically significant difference is found according to the grade of education where the teachers participated into the study work in table 5, in the total of job satisfaction scale (p>0.05) and in the subscales of intrinsic job satisfaction (p>0.05) and extrinsic satisfaction (p>0.05). 4. discussion this study was conducted on a total of 103 physical education and sports teachers, 40 females and 63 males, with an average age of 40.01±6.65, working at schools in different cities of turkey. the purpose of the study was to determine the job satisfaction levels according to the variables of gender, seniority, marital status, grade of education, and job status. in the study, it was concluded that there was no significant difference in terms of general job satisfaction and subscales between genders for physical education teachers. there are other researchers in the literature who concluded that job satisfaction levels of the teachers did not change according to gender (tasdan & tiryaki, 2008; yılmaz, 2012). on the other hand, there are also results revealing that male teachers had higher job satisfaction in some studies and in some others female teachers were found to have higher job satisfaction levels. in the study conducted by sahin (1999) it was determined that the job satisfaction levels of female teachers in primary education were higher than the job satisfaction level of male teachers. in the study carried out by kınalı (2000) the job satisfaction levels of male advisory teachers working in public and private schools were found to be higher than the job satisfaction levels of female advisory teachers. in this study it was concluded that there was no significant difference in terms of general job satisfaction and subscales according to marital status variable among physical education teachers. in parallel with this study, sahin. and dursun (2009) did not observe a statistically significant difference among the job satisfaction levels of preschool teachers according to their marital status (p>0.05). no significant difference was determined in the study in terms of working in public or private school in the general job satisfaction and subscales for physical education teachers. in parallel with the results of this study, dilsiz (2006) concluded that there was no significant difference between school types in terms of job satisfaction. however, in the study by tasdan and tiryaki (2008) on the contrary to this study, the job satisfaction level of private primary school teachers was found to be higher than that of public school teachers in the entire questionnaire and subscales. in this study, no significant difference was found among the physical education teachers working at secondary or high school grades regarding the general job satisfaction and any of the subscales (p>0.05). in parallel with this asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 105-109 109 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group study, according to the research conducted by bilgili (2019) there was no significant difference between the job satisfaction levels of physical education teachers working at secondary schools and high schools (bilgili, 2019). it was understood, in this study, that there was no significant difference in the general job satisfaction and subscales among physical education teachers according to the seniority variable. unlike the findings in this study, in the study carried out by güner (2007) a positive correlation was found between the time of working and job satisfaction (p<0.05). mete (2006) analyzed the job satisfaction levels of classroom teachers and branch teachers working in primary schools and determined that there was a significant difference between job satisfaction levels and seniority of the teachers. it was found out that the job satisfaction of teachers working for 16 years or more were higher. in the event that scores obtained from the questionnaire in the study are closer to 20, the satisfaction level decreases, and if the scores are closer to 100, it means that the level of satisfaction increases. in light of this information, it can be concluded that the job satisfaction levels of the teachers participated in the study are high. as a result, another factor distinguishing physical education teachers from other teachers in schools is that they interact more with the students. that they share the common feelings and excitement intensely in the competitions attended by the students they have prepared as athletes and that the successful results obtained in these activities are appreciated and congratulated can be interpreted as factors increasing their commitment to work and the pleasure they receive from their job. references akçamete, g., kamer, s., & sucuoğlu, b. (2001). burnout, job satisfaction and personality in teachers. ankara: nobel publishing distribution. aksoy, n., & polat, c. (2013). job satisfaction and affecting factors of surgical unit nurses of three different hospitals in a province in mediterranean region. the koç university journal of education and research in nursing, 10(2), 45-53. batıgün, a. d., & şahin, n. h. (2006). two scales for work stress and health psychology research: a-type personality and job satisfaction. turkish journal of psychiatry, 17(1), 32-25. bilgili, c. (2019). examination of job satisfaction and professional burnout levels of physical education teachers (case of van province). master thesis. van yüzüncü yıl university. education sciences institute, physical education and sport department, van. turkey. çakır, ö. (2001). the phenomenon of loyalty and affecting factors (vol. 29). ankara: seçkin publishing. celep, c. (2003). professional burnout of teachers in secondary education. paper presented at the contemporary approaches to high school education in 2000s symposium, istanbul kültür university. istanbul. dilsiz, b. (2006). multivariate statistical analysis of the evaluation of burnout and job satisfaction levels of teachers working in secondary schools in konya by region. ph.d. thesis, selcuk university institute of science. eğinli, a. t. (2009). job satisfaction in employees: a research on job satisfaction of public and private sector employees. atatürk university journal of economics and administrative sciences, 23(3), 35-52. güner, a. r. (2007). modeling the relationships between organizational commitment, job commitment and job satisfaction in health care services. master thesis. akdeniz university, social sciences institute, antalya. turkey. kınalı, g. (2000). job satisfaction of counselors in public and private schools. master thesis. istanbul university. social sciences institute. istanbul. turkey. mete, c. (2006). investigation of the relationship between personality traits and job satisfaction levels of teachers working in primary schools. master thesis, yeditepe university, social sciences institute. istanbul. turkey. sahin, i̇. (1999). job satisfaction levels of teachers in primary schools. master thesis, dokuz eylül university, education sciences institute. izmir. turkey. sahin., h., & dursun, a. (2009). job satisfaction of preschool teachers: the case of burdur. mehmet akif ersoy university journal of education faculty, 18, 160-174. shann, m. h. (1998). professional commitment and satisfaction among teachers in urban middle schools. the journal of educational research, 92(2), 67-73. solmuş, t. (2004). emotions and interpersonal relations in business life, human resources management through psychology window. istanbul: beta broadcasts. tasdan, m., & tiryaki, e. (2008). comparison of the level of job satisfaction between at private and state primary school teachers. education and science, 33(147), 54-70. vural, b. (2004). yetkin-ideal-vizyoner ogretmen. istanbul: hayat publications. weiss, d. j., dawis, r. v., england, g. w., & lofquist, l. h. (1967). manual for the minnesota satisfaction questionnaire. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota industrial relations center. yılmaz, k. (2012). the relationship between primary school teachers’ job satisfaction levels and organizational citizenship behaviors. anadolu journal of educational sciences international, 2(2), 1-15. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. asian journal of education and training 447 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 447-453, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.447.453 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group reasons for choosing the profession of teacher sayime erben keçici department of educational sciences, faculty of education, necmettin erbakan university, turkey. abstract the teaching profession is an attractive career prospect for many prospective students, and the number of first-year students is rising continuously. therefore, the aim of this qualitative work was to highlight the reasons for the choice of studies for first semester teacher students of the necmettin erbakan üniversitat ahmet keleşoğlu faculty of education with the help of the problematic interview. three male and three female teaching students were interviewed. no subjects were given, as the main motive for the work was to determine the reasons for the choice of the teacher training course. the interest in job security or civil servant status is the strongest motive for students to begin teacher training, followed by the desire to educate and work with children and young people. furthermore, it emerged from the interviews that the desire to impart knowledge is not so much scientific and technical knowledge as the imparting of values and ideals. keywords: career choice, student teachers, teaching profession. citation | sayime erben keçici (2019). reasons for choosing the profession of teacher. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 447-453. history: received: 14 june 2019 revised: 22 july 2019 accepted: 27 august 2019 published: 3 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 448 2. methodical approach .................................................................................................................................................................... 449 3. presentation of the results .......................................................................................................................................................... 449 4. conclusion and perspectives ....................................................................................................................................................... 451 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 452 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1039 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.447.453&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1897-2022 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 447-453 448 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the aim of this qualitative work was to highlight the reasons for the choice of studies for first semester teacher students of the necmettin erbakan üniversitat ahmet keleşoğlu faculty of education with the help of the problematic interview. 1. introduction 1.1. research background and questioning the choice of a profession is a complicated decision-making process in which individual goals and interests, subjective assessment of one's own abilities, previous professional experience, requirements, costs and job opportunities are important (schutz et al., 2001). the teaching profession is an attractive career prospect for many prospective students, and the number of first-year students is rising continuously. the first-year students are aware that they have chosen the career path of a teacher when they began their studies in teaching (at least with the aim of passing the state examination). the reasons why a teacher training course is taken up were examined in many ways. most of the studies show that contact with children and young people, professional interest and social contribution are the main motives for choosing a teaching profession. pohlmann and möller (2010); steltmann (1980) and ulich (1998) cite extrinsic motives, which are frequently portrayed in public opinion, such as the length of school holidays, civil servant status, salary or the lesser difficulty of studying, as being of secondary importance. only the desire to reconcile family and career and a definitely greater interest in leisure time (lipowsky, 2003) are determining extrinsic reasons for the decision to study or to become a teacher among students. individual criteria (e.g. interests and inclinations) as well as training and institution-specific reasons (e.g. duration of studies) therefore interlock (denzler and wolter, 2005). however, it must be stated that the research situation on the career choice motives of prospective teachers is not as clear as it appears at first glance (rothland and terhart, 2010). motives for study or career choice in the international arena are mainly collected through questionnaires with closed response formats, whereby rarely tried and tested and evaluated instruments are used. rather, specially constructed instruments with different numbers of items are used (bastick, 2000; watt and richardson, 2007; rinke, 2008). in this procedure it seems to be particularly problematic that different motives are put up for choice and consequently other, potential motives cannot become visible (terhart et al., 1994). in addition, these guidelines may force obvious distortions due to the phenomenon of social desirability (rothland and terhart, 2010). studies with open interviews (baus et al., 1977; hirsch, 1990; ulich, 2004) are rarely and/or for the most part no longer up-to-date. there are isolated indications that the motives to be assessed in questionnaires were explored in qualitative preliminary studies (steltmann, 1980; oesterreich, 1987; brühwiler and spychiger, 1997) or that the closed questions were supplemented by individual open questions (kiel et al., 2004). the authors are not aware of any comparative studies that explicitly weigh open and closed survey methods against each other. in turkishspeaking countries, however, there are neither questionnaires, investigations nor open surveys. there is a large research gap. the following research question, which is relevant for this work, essentially results from the above explanations:  which study motives can be identified for teacher training students in turkey? an essential focus of the work was the question of why students in turkey have chosen the teaching profession. it should be noted that this work does not close the gap described above. rather, an explorative approach was deliberately chosen as a first step. 1.2. theoretical references and empirical findings in order to do justice to the initial questions, it is now necessary on the one hand to differentiate what constitutes the decision for the choice of the teaching position in general (what are the motives behind the decision to study teaching?). one of the central hypotheses that can be derived from approaches to the choice of studies and careers is the class-specificity of the choice of studies. in terms of human capital theory, a class-specific study choice can be explained by factors such as study duration, direct entry into the labour market, labour market opportunities and costs (direct education and living costs) of studying. the expected returns of a certain education are compared with the costs. the individual demand for education thus depends on the individual assessment of the costs and benefits, which vary according to socioeconomic position, school abilities, disciplinary orientation and personal preferences (freeman, 1986; helberger and palamidis, 1989; becker, 1993). the effect of these factors is reinforced by differences in time preference among the different strata. students from lower socioeconomic class generally have a higher present preference, which leads them to attach greater importance to economic factors in their choice of studies. if one compares the different types of higher education institutions and study programs in turkey, it can be assumed, at least based on average and direct professional qualifications, that people who opt for teacher training tend to come from lower socioeconomic class. the choice of studies for a particular class is not only explained by economic factors. educational decisions are made in a complex interplay of individual (school skills), social (family resources, family decision-making behavior) and institutional factors (selection mechanisms of the education system). sociological approaches justify social selectivity in the choice of studies by the fact that different courses of study and occupations are associated with different social status or power. higher socioeconomic classes try to avoid losing the social status of their descendants by ensuring that their children's school and study careers are adequate in terms of status (e.g. boudon (1984)). however, the teaching profession and training at a teacher training college probably do not have the same social prestige as professions based on medical or legal studies. consequently, it can be assumed that especially prospective students from academic homes will decide less frequently for teacher training simply for reasons of maintaining their status. first-year students from academic families study more frequently at universities, choose medicine or law more frequently and less frequently a teacher training course (schnabel and gruehn, 2000; becker, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 447-453 449 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2000a;2000b; watermann and maaz, 2004; georg, 2005; maaz, 2006). similar findings are available from a spanish study (de dios jiménez and salas-velasco, 2000). these results suggest that teachers continue to be recruited from lower social classes. the cost-benefit considerations described are made against the background of personal interests, inclinations and abilities. motives and preferences, subjective importance, intrinsic value and expected benefit of education as well as the anticipated probability of success are factors that must be considered when making educational decisions (lent et al., 1994; eccles, 2005). estimates of benefits vary by discipline (smits et al., 2002; wolter and weber, 2003) and by origin (becker, 2000a). it can therefore be assumed that prospective teachers systematically differ from other students in these aspects as well. if the expected probability of success for a university course of study is low or if its cognitive costs are estimated to be too high, the tendency to undertake teacher training at a teacher training college is likely to increase. furthermore, matching theories can be presumed accordingly (holland, 1995;1997) or based on economic models of social identity (akerlof and kranton, 2000) that those interested in the teaching profession are primarily socially oriented, communicatively and charitably inclined persons. various studies on the careers of teachers, for example, highlight positive experiences with activities in the field of youth work as a decisive factor for career choice (ulich, 2003). finally, the local supply of university courses is likely to influence the choice of course for both economic and social reasons. the distance to the nearest university has direct cost consequences for the individuals concerned (frenette, 2006). for people living outside the catchment area of a university, the choice of a university means higher costs in the form of higher living costs due to living abroad, but also non-monetary costs such as the loss of social networks. it is known from future teachers that they are often integrated into social networks in their place of residence which they would lose if they moved. 2. methodical approach in the present report, an attempt was made to gain insights into the reasons for choosing a teaching degree. the qualitative interview method of the problem-censored interview was chosen in order to find out the motives for the choice of studies and profession of teacher training students. the problem-oriented interview is based on a structured guideline that enables relative comparability of the interviews. this can be defined as a survey method that allows the interviewee to speak as freely as possible in order to come close to an open conversation. however, it is centred on a specific problem which the interviewer introduces and to which he repeatedly returns (mayring, 2002). 2.1. data collection the guidelines for the interviews were developed after studying the literature appropriate to the question. the questions were focused on the reasons for choosing the teaching profession. in the guidelines, the question "why did you decide to study teaching and thus to become a teacher" was first asked in a general sense. the search for interview partners was carried out via personal enquiries to students of the pedagogical faculty of necmettin erbakan university. the purpose and aim of the study was explained in regular lecture hours. since the participation of the students was voluntary, only six students agreed to participate. these are three male and three female teacher training students, aged between 18 and 21, with an average age of 19.66 years. all of the interviewed students attend the faculty of education at necmettin erbakan university and are in their first semester. the subjects are not given because the main motive of the work was to determine the reasons for the choice of the teacher training course. the names of the interviewed students were anonymized for data protection reasons. of the interviews conducted between the beginning of january and the end of february 2019, those were conducted in the premises of the faculty of education with the consent of the students. each interview lasted about 40 minutes. at the beginning, the interview partners were assured that their anonymity would be preserved in order to prevent social pressure or individual vulnerability regarding personal information on the basis of confidentiality and anonymity. it was also explained that they had the possibility to stop the interview at any time. subsequently, interviewers repeatedly reaffirmed that the interviewees as interlocutors were the actors of the event and could therefore speak freely and uninfluenced for as long as they wished. during the interview, care was taken to ensure that the interviewee was not interrupted by questions and could always finish speaking. due to the large amount of material, it was decided to write it down in summary minutes. the summary minutes were written immediately after the interviews so that the contents of the discussions were still present and the significance of the statements was not lost. in these summarizing minutes, the meaning of the sentences is partly changed and filler words, which are not relevant for the question, are omitted in favour of comprehensibility. 2.2. evaluation after the step of data preparation through complete transcription of the interviews, the transcribed interviews were evaluated after the structured content analysis, i.e. certain categories were filtered out of the material. "the category system compiled from the structuring dimensions is precisely defined so that a clear assignment of text material to the categories is always possible". for better traceability the evaluation was supported by the computer program maxqda. 3. presentation of the results a compilation of the interview results follows. the subjective views of the interviewees are presented. an open answer format was chosen in order to allow as many free memories and as little social desirability as possible. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 447-453 450 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.1. general motives for choosing studies and careers in the interviews, the reasons for choosing a teacher training course were asked in an all-encompassing sense. the general question of the interview guide is: "why did you decide to study teaching and thus to become a teacher? this question generally aims at the motives for the choice of studies and profession. in particular, the students surveyed stated in the first place the professional and financial security: "yes... what can i say, it's a safe job, so in teaching it's simply safer not to sit on the street after graduating". (mehmet, 19 years old). caner says in this respect: "nowadays it is very difficult, even if you have studied, to find a job at all, but in teaching you quickly find something... if it doesn't work out in the state at least in the private sector you always find something as a teacher. i simply know that i will have a job after my studies" (caner, 19 years old). the professional and financial security associated with the profession is of great importance. filiz mentions the civil servant status in this context: "teaching enables me to be a civil servant, which is not possible in other areas... the civil servant status is very important for me, because i find my future secured" (filiz, 18 years old). this could mean that the students would not have started their studies if the chances of being hired at the end of their studies had been low. there is also strong support for the area of reconciling family and career, especially among the female students surveyed: "because the teaching profession also has many advantages, such as family planning. as a woman, it is very important to be able to carry a career and family with you" (derya, 20 years old). "besides, if you have a child, you don't have to worry about losing your job. you can go back to work at any time or with a child it is not so difficult now, because the working hours are also very good" (filiz, 18 years). "well, i really want to start a family, and with a teaching position, i can do that. i can work and start my family at the same time without necessarily having to choose one of the two. that's why i only consider teaching" (mehtap, 21 years). it can be seen that the motive of family compatibility among female student teachers can be regarded as central to the teaching profession. the female students surveyed attach overall importance to this motive. with regard to the possibility of part-time work, it can also be regarded as central to the apprenticeship profession: "the teaching profession is now also ideal for me, because you can also do something on the side, because you don't work every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. now" (mehmet, 19 years). "well, i'm actually interested in a lot of things. so as a teacher it's no problem to be interested in other things, because you don't spend the whole day in school" (caner, 19 years). "as a teacher one has a good planning of the working day with more spare time, than with other occupations" (filiz, 18 years). furthermore, the students interviewed described their work with people and, in particular, their interaction with children and young people as decisive for their choice of studies: "i also find social contact very decisive. there is always a special attraction... new people new challenge. i find it will never be boring in the teaching profession, because you are constantly faced with new challenges with people, which attracts me personally, because i find contact with people very important. it is interesting to get to know new people or new children... i mean, you always get new impressions of how people live and in what kind of life situation they are" (filiz, 18 years old). "just being with kids or teenagers... well, i'm very confident about dealing with kids or teenagers. that's why i want to work with them, because i simply know what i have to convey, not just technical, certain moral demands" (cihan, 21 years old). "i give private lessons to some children and teenagers, so where i help them with their homework and so on and that is fun for me and i talk to them about problems, so now not always the subject matter... you give such an educational help and i simply notice that i can help them and that i like to be with children" (derya, 20 years). it can be seen that working with children and young people is attractive and motivating for the students surveyed, and their own abilities are highly valued in this sense. motives such as establishing a relationship with children and adolescents, participating in their upbringing and being contact persons for them are in the foreground and consequently also show less interest in the subject. it is also noticeable that the students interviewed cite the future relevance of the later teaching activity for children and society and the associated responsibility as well as the possibility of conveying and realizing important values and ideals as decisive for the choice of the course of studies: "as a teacher, i later have the opportunity to develop children in their lives and prepare them for a better life through education, i.e. to have the opportunity to give them a reasonable start on their way" (mehtap, 21 years). "i am also concerned with passing on social values and norms to children. as a teacher you have this opportunity to pass on the important social values, which is not the case with other professions" (mehmet, 19 years old). the teaching of knowledge to pupils also plays an important role: "it is such a happy experience for me when i see that the children to whom i give tutoring have learned something or when i have taught them something that they could not do before, makes me incredibly happy" (derya, 20 years). regarding the teaching of knowledge, cihan states: "as we say that whoever teaches me a letter, i will be his slave for forty years... so, it's to recognize how important it is to teach. it is also a confirmation for yourself if you have taught something" (cihan, 21 years). also, the interviewed students mention an inner certainty about their professional suitability as reasons for their choice of studies: "it's also like this... hmm.... i think that i can explain things very well, i.e. such abstract things above all, i can explain very well with examples, because without concrete examples it simply gets stuck... this is confirmed to me again and again and it's also like this, i also like to explain and as a teacher you should also be able to explain well" (cihan, 21 years old). "and to explain something, so i have no problem with that. and i always do this in such a way that i explain depending on the person, because everyone is different when learning" (mehtap, 21 years). also, the students interviewed cited exemplary teachers in particular as further reasons for choosing a teacher training course: "well, i would say that my primary school teacher, unconscious of her now, actually taught me the desire to become a teacher. yes, she was just such a role model, the first motivation" (derya, 20 years). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 447-453 451 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group "i also had a teacher who, so for me it was really the best, the best teacher i got to know and thought... yes there must be more such teachers and yeah therefore i want to become a teacher" (caner, 19 years). "of course, we had some good teachers, who were now personally also human role models for me and still are today" (mehtap, 21 years). it seems to be characteristic that the experiences of one's own school days have "shaped" one's career aspirations. the positive school experiences as well as teachers from one's own school years who act as role models have a clear influence on the career decision. influences of third parties on the decision are not relevant here. so good own teachers work as strong role models, whereas the advice of family members is partly present, but partly rejected: "my parents have already granted the studies, but it was then still my own decision" (filiz, 18 years). "it is still a decision that came from me... i mean i was not so directly influenced now; i mean i was already supported now by the parents, but it was yet my own decision" (derya, 20 years). "i chose it myself" (mehmet, 19 years old). "it now came from myself to study teaching" (cihan, 21 years). when asked about forms of support that would have made it easier to decide to study as a teacher, the students interviewed described the offers they would like: "i would like it if you could get concepts for teaching, e.g. how to behave in extreme situations. i don't know how to behave in front of forty people. what am i allowed to do?"(derya, 20 years old). the wish is also expressed for more information on the bureaucratic process at universities as well as specific information on the course of studies: "you don't get enough answers. you had to go from a to z when enrolling... you had to do this and had do that, but you didn't get such real answers" (mehmet, 19 years old). "we have a wonderful study plan, but i don't know what it should be for. more advisors would be good" (caner, 19 years old). gathering one's own experience and testing one's own skills in an internship is also desirable: "this practical relevance is simply missing. more practical training would be good... go to the faculty for a month and do practical training at schools for a month, because we learn a lot here, but i think if i don't practice it, you forget half of it" (mehtap, 21 years). „"such research projects in the field of educational science would be advantageous, i.e. one would go to school with the theory and be shown how to apply these theories in practice now" (filiz, 18 years old). the answers given indicate that there is a need for action: improved university advice and increased cooperation with schools to ensure that students can make decisions at the university appear affordable. finally, the students were asked about their expectations of their studies. the students interviewed expect to acquire didactic knowledge and prepare for lessons in general: "i have high hopes for the coming years. i hope that much will be given to me on the way, because it should not come too briefly. i hope that in the course of the years... like me later with the pupils something works on, like i lead them on the correct way, thus the things to learn "(derya, 20 years). "especially the didactics, of course. i would like to know how i can teach children something, that is, that i can learn how best to prepare the school subject matter and how it can be presented vividly" (mehtap, 21 years old). "hopefully we will learn how to prepare a lesson and so on" (filiz, 18 years old). in addition, the students expect preparation for dealing with everyday problems and also mention aspects of good teaching: "i want to learn how to deal with problems in everyday school life, that i learn to deal with pupils at puberty age... so that social and psychological skills are improved" (cihan, 21 years old). "i would like an active involvement of the students now and also that learning contents are well conveyed" (mehmet, 19 years old). "so a pleasant learning atmosphere, so common working and learning, cooperation" (filiz, 18 years old). it is striking that the students questioned answered the question about their expectations regarding their studies in a double literal sense. desires and demands of the students were described and also ideas of the actual contents of the study were mentioned. a professional as well as practice-oriented education is in the foreground of the expectations. 4. conclusion and perspectives although the results of this work are not representative, fundamental motivational structures of student teachers in the first semester at necmettin erbakan university in konya could be shown. in order to find out why the students chose the teaching profession; they were generally asked about the reasons for their decision to study. the most common reasons given by the students for choosing the teaching profession and the appeal of the profession are as follows:  job security/official status.  desire to raise children.  desire to work with children/young people.  compatibility of family and career.  the desire to convey knowledge (less scientific or technical knowledge, more values and ideals).  exemplary own teachers. although all the students surveyed mainly mention job security, which is understood as a pure step towards the desired secure occupational position, working with children and young people is also attractive and motivating for them. however, for them the intellectual challenge is not at the forefront, i.e. imparting knowledge is by no means of central importance, intellectual curiosity is not the main motive and is not the focus of attention. in terms of the scientific nature of the studies and the intellectual level of the knowledge to be imparted, a certain lack of ambition has indeed been observed, while educational work and contact with children and young people as well as job security are the central attractions of studying and working. this is expressed in formulations such as "preparing children for life", "giving children something for life, conveying values" and the like. the question here is whether this disconnectedness can be lifted at least a little at the end of the course of study. since the surveyed students are at the beginning of their studies, a longitudinal study must show how this asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 447-453 452 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group development will continue. standardized surveys could be used, which are increasingly being used to review and improve university teaching. furthermore, the answers of the students surveyed show that organizational problems as well as problems with supervision and counseling are most frequently addressed. this point to the general need for improvement in these areas. increased information can be given before the study in order to achieve a realistic expectation of the study reality. this would avoid or reduce disappointments regarding the expectations of content preparation for concrete curriculum content. in addition, the students surveyed expect to acquire didactic knowledge, in particular practice-relevant content, which will be useful to them in everyday school life. in this sense, it would be useful to complete several internships, which would enable them to test the contents and skills acquired during their studies. this would give the program a stronger and, if necessary, earlier practical orientation. in order to further deepen the knowledge about motives and motivational structures of teacher training students, analyses of freshmen are recommended, which study orientation measures, such as orientation internships, are the most promising and how these can be classified and reflected. for this purpose, special attention should be paid in further work to the fundamental personality and motivational characteristics of student teachers. references akerlof, g.a. and r.e. kranton, 2000. economics and identity. the quarterly journal of economics, 115(3): 715-753. bastick, t., 2000. why teacher trainees choose the teaching profession: comparing trainees in metropolitan and developing countries. international review of education, 46(3): 343-349. baus, m., k. jacoby and e. uhl, 1977. study and career choice motives of teacher students at the current low employment chances. journal of empirical pedagogy, 4(2): 26-46. becker, g.s., 1993. human capital. a theoretical and empirical analysis with special reference to education. 3rd edn., chicago and london, england. pp: 220-239. becker, r., 2000a. determinants of study readiness in east germany. notices from the labor market and professional research, 33(2): 261276. becker, r., 2000b. study readiness and choice of engineering subjects. an empirical study of saxon high school graduates of the graduating classes 1996, 1998 and 2000. discussion paper, dresden university of technology. boudon, r., 1984. unequal opportunities. social mobility in industrial societies. 3rd edn., paris: hachette. brühwiler, c. and m. spychiger, 1997. subjective justification for choosing the teaching profession. contributions to teacher training, 15(1): 49-58. de dios jiménez, j. and m. salas-velasco, 2000. modeling educational choices. a binomial logit model applied to the demand for higher education. higher education, 40(3): 293-311. denzler, s. and s.c. wolter, 2005. et scribae mittere cras. or is the study of life at the same time the study of the determinants of sensible objects in the bernese high school students. review of education, 8(4): 576-594. eccles, j.s., 2005. subjective task value and the eccles et al. model of achievementrelated choices. in: elliot and dweck (eds.): new york: handbook of competence and motivation. pp: 105–121. freeman, r.b., 1986. demand for education. in o. c. ashenfelter & r. layard: amsterdam: handbook of labor economics. pp: 357–386. frenette, m., 2006. too far to go on? distance to school and university participation. education economics, 14(1): 31-58.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09645290500481865. georg, w., 2005. subject: social reproduction or cultural decision. za-information / central archive for empirical social research, 57(3): 61-82. helberger, c. and h. palamidis, 1989. the contribution of human capital theory to the explanation of demand for education. in: döring, peter a; 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(ed.): paths to university entrance qualification in baden-württemberg. tosca a study at general and vocational high schools. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 447-453 453 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group watt, h.m. and p.w. richardson, 2007. motivational factors influencing teaching as a career choice: development and validation of the fit-choice scale. the journal of experimental education, 75(3): 167-202.available at: https://doi.org/10.3200/jexe.75.3.167-202. wolter, s.c. and b.a. weber, 2003. what wages and educational returns do students expect at swiss universities? in: backes-gellner & schmidtke (eds.): university economics analyzes of internal control problems and macroeconomic effects. opladen: leske budrich. pp: 403-450. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 309 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 309-315, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.309.315 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between academic motivation and academic achievement of the students ahmet haktan sivrikaya1 1balikesir university, school of physical education and sports, balikesir, turkey abstract the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between academic motivation level and academic achievement of physical education and sports students. the population of the study was composed of all students (n = 500) studying at balikesir university. the sample consisted of a total of 120 students who were educated in physical education and sports education. in the collection of data; vallerand et al. (1992) developed the academic motivation scale (ams) developed in canada and a questionnaire that included the descriptive characteristics of the students developed by the researchers. the scale consists of 28 items. three intrinsic motivations, three extrinsic motivations and one amotivational dimension, each of which consists of four subdimensions, each with four items. as the subscales are evaluated separately, the result is that 28 of the values obtained for each subscale are higher in individuals. the data were analyzed with nonparametric analyzes (mann whitney-u and spearman correlation) because they did not show normal distribution. type i error level was accepted as p <0.05. in the study, it was determined that the students' academic motivation scores were above the middle. according to gender, there was no significant difference in terms of academic motivation scale scores and sub-dimensions. the academic average score of women was higher than the score of men. men's academic motivation average score was higher than in women. when the academic achievement of the students in physical education and sports school increases, the self-test scores of the extrinsic motivation also increase. keywords: motivation, academic motivation, academic achievement, physical education, sports. citation | ahmet haktan sivrikaya (2019). the relationship between academic motivation and academic achievement of the students. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 309-315. history: received: 23 january 2019 revised: 28 february 2019 accepted: 2 april 2019 published: 10 may 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 310 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 310 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 313 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 314 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 314 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.309.315&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/420 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3452-6855 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/420 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3452-6855 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/420 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3452-6855 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 309-315 310 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction the main purpose of the education systems is to educate the qualified manpower of that country and to give citizenship education to its citizens. in order to achieve this, every educational system determines the human model it will be educated in the light of its educational philosophy and manpower policy, and organizes its educational activities according to this purpose. education, which is one of the basic social institutions, is one of the main problems of all societies. the main subject of this basic problem is undoubtedly the teachers (çelikten et al., 2005). in many countries, the teaching profession, the way in which teachers are raised and their quality are questioned, and most teacher training programs aim to develop prospective teachers' beliefs about education (capa and çil, 2000; çakıroğlu and işıksal, 2009). in terms of evaluating the degree to which these programs have reached their goals, on the prospective teachers; besides the concepts such as selfness (pehlivan, 2010) attitude (bozdoğan et al., 2007) learning strategies (şahin and çakar, 2011) academic motivation (abootorabi, 2011; eymur and geban, 2011; şahin and çakar, 2011) and academic the concepts of self-efficacy (usher and pajares, 2006; aslan, 2010; durdukoca, 2010; vasile et al., 2011) have been investigated. academic motivation is an important concept in education because it produces motivational outputs. according to researchers, the concept of motivation has a larger degree of multi-faceted, non-cognitive psychosocial structure, whereas academic motivation is a more specific concept, which is creative thinking skills and learning skills, students' satisfaction from school and reasons for school attendance and doing homework. their performance is related to cognitive, behavioral, and affective training factors (vallerand et al., 1992; deci and ryan, 2000b; vallerand et al., 2008). the concept of motivation is defined as “a process in which direct target activity is started and maintained” (pintrich and schunk, 2002) or “creating a situation or a situation of all factors determining the degree of willingness to participate in an activity”. the concept of motivation is defined as “the production of energy required for academic works” (bozanoğlu, 2004). motivation is defined as “a general concept that includes requests, desires, needs, impulses and interests” (cüceloglu, 2005). motivation is the starting point for learning a lesson, mobilizes the student and contributes to the student to perform what he / she should do during the school years (peklaj and levpušček, 2006). motivation is about how people are treated and how they feel about the work they do. as a partner of the learning process, students want to play an active role in the classroom. it is a behavior that should be achieved by the teacher. the learning needs of the students in the classroom should be well known. the negative behavior and failure of the student is closely related to the negativity of the learning environment created for him. if the instructional needs of the student are known, a more positive learning environment can be created (akbaba, 2006). tucker et al. (2002) describe motivation as “a mental, emotional and behavioral determinants of student investment in education and commitment”. motivation is also carried out as academic participation, which is the most influential in student performance among all other factors (francis et al., 2004) even in some definitions, motivation takes place within the definition of successful students. a successful student is a socially adequate, goaloriented and internally motivated student who can effectively balance the social and academic aspect of the school (pintrich and de groot, 1990; renchler, 1992; ellis and worthington, 1994; scheuermann, 2000). amrai et al. (2011) reported a positive and significant relationship between academic motivation and academic achievement in their study. pintrich (2003) stated that motivation is the most important factor affecting the academic success or failure of an individual in the learning process. the concept of motivation is a concept that is important for both teachers and students in perceiving the cause of success or failure in education (uyulgan and akkuzu, 2014). the student believes that he / she can achieve the teaching activities and goals to be realized with a certain effort and difficulty. it can negatively affect the student's motivation in events as easy as very difficult events. if a learning activity will provide a benefit for the student, the student sees this activity as valuable and makes efforts (okutan, 2012). particularly with respect to students, motivation for academic achievement is of great importance. by such motivation people are stimulated to successfully complete an assignment, achieving a goal or a degree of qualification in their professions (mohamadi, 2006). the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of academic motivation levels of the students who are studying in balikesir university physical education and sports college in 2016-2017 academic year. 2. materials and methods this descriptive study was conducted by face to face to the students studying at school of physical education and sports, balikesir university between 1st november 2016 and 15th january 2017. 2.1. study group balikesir university, located in the north-west coast of turkey, is in balikesir province. the population of the study was composed of all students (n = 500) studying at balikesir university physical education and sports college in 2016-2017 academic year. the sample of the study consisted of 120 students who were educated in physical education and sports teaching department, who were permitted, reported, not attendable and agreed to participate in the study. 2.2. dependent and independent variables independent variables of the study; gender, age, class, place of life, type of family, income level, mother education, father education, reading department, dependent variable is the status of evaluation of academic motivation levels. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 309-315 311 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. procedures socio demographic characteristics form and academic motivation scale (ams) were used for data collection. socio-demographic characteristics form; gender, age, class, place of life, type of family, income level, mother education, father education, the section is composed of questions about the socio demographic characteristics. academic motivation scale (ams) the validity and reliability study of turkish, which was developed by vallerand et al. in canada in 1992, was used in 2012 by karagüven's academic motivation scale (ams). the scale consists of 28 items. it consists of a total of seven different dimensions, each with four items, with three intrinsic motivations, three extrinsic motivations and one amotivational dimension. these are respectively; intrinsic motivation to know (im-to know), intrinsic motivation toward accomplishments (im-to accomplish), intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation (imto experience stimulation), extrinsic motivation identified (emidentified), extrinsic motivation introjected (em-introjected), extrinsic motivation external regulation (em external regulation) and amotivation dimensions. the scores from the subtests range from 4 to 28. as the subscales are evaluated separately, the result is that 28 of the values obtained for each subscale are higher in individuals. the cronbach alpha value of the scale was 0.83 (karagüven, 2012). in this study, cronbach's alpha value of the scale was 0.86. 2.4. statistical analysis the data were analyzed in spss 20.0 program. number-percentage distributions of the findings about the students' introductory characteristics were made and the min-max values of the academic motivation scale mean scores were taken. the comparisons between some demographic characteristics of the students and the mean scores of the academic motivation scale were examined by non-parametric analyzes (mann whitney-u and spearman correlation) because the data were not normally distributed. type i error level was accepted as p <0.05 in the study (aksayan et al., 2002). 2.5. ethic approval in order to carry out the study, written permission was obtained from the directorate of physical education and sports school and verbal consent was obtained from the students. 3. results 3.1. personal characteristics of the research group the data and comments on the demographic characteristics of the students are given below. table-1. descriptive characteristics of the students included in the study (n = 120). variables n % gender female male 50 70 41.7 58.3 age 18-20 21-23 24 and over 58 52 10 43.3 43.3 8.3 grade 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 26 41 31 22 21.7 34.2 25.8 18.3 living place village country city 8 24 88 6.7 20.0 73.3 family type elementary extended fragmented 89 27 4 74.2 22.5 3.3 level of income low medium high very high 10 94 14 2 8.3 78.3 11.7 1.7 mother education illiterate primary school high school university 21 62 30 7 17.5 51.7 25.0 5.8 father education illiterate primary school high school university 16 49 38 17 13.3 40.8 31.7 14.2 department satisfaction well satisfied satisfied not satisfied not all satisfied 61 55 2 2 50.8 45.8 1.7 1.7 when table 1 is examined, 41.7% of the students were female, 58.3% were male, 43.3% were 18-20 years old, 43.3% were 21-23 years old and 8.3% were 24 years and older. 21.7% were first grade, 34.2% were second grade, 25.8% were third grade and 18.3% were in fourth grade; 6.7% in the village; 20% of the county, 73.3% live in the city; 74.2% of the nuclear family, 22.5% of the extended family, 3.3% of whom were in the fragmented family; 8.3% had low level of income, 78.3% had medium, 11.7% had high, 1.7% had very high level; 17.5% of the mothers were illiterate, 51.7% of them were primary school graduates, 25% of them were high school graduates and 5.8% of them were university graduates; the father of 13.3% was not literate, 40.8% were primary school graduates, 31.7% were asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 309-315 312 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group high school graduates and 14.2% were university graduates; 50.8% were very satisfied with the department, 45.8% were very satisfied, 1.7% were not satisfied, and 1.7% were not satisfied at all. table-2. mean scores students' academic motivation scale sub-dimensions (n = 120). ams sub-dimensions min. max. x± sd im-to know 6 28 20.66±5.49 im-to accomplish 5 28 16.77±5.36 imto experience stimulation 5 28 16.88±5.42 em-identified 8 28 21.71±6.67 em-introjected 4 28 15.92±5.37 emexternal regulation 7 28 19.82±5.00 amotivation 4 28 10.29±5.87 source: this table is result of participants’ min. and max. points. when the points taken from the scale subscale scores of the students who participated in the study, the highest mean value was found in the external motivational identified dimension (21,71 ± 6,67), and the lowest mean value in the amotivation dimension (10,29 ± 5,87) they are seen table 2. table-3. the students' academic mean scores according to their gender n = 120). n x±ss min max academic average female 50 2.87±0.38 1.80 3.61 male 70 2.78±0.42 1.80 3.77 total 120 2.82±0.41 1.80 3.77 scale total female 50 121.32±26,25 68 178 male 70 122.62±24.52 55 163 total 120 122.08±25.15 55 178 source: this table is result of participants’ min. and max. points. when the students' academic average scores were examined according to their genders, the mean score of women (2.87 ± 0.38) was; the mean score of men (2.78 ± 0.42) is observed table 3. it was found that women's academic achievement scores were higher than men. academic motivation scale scores were found in women (121,32 ± 26,25); men (122.62 ± 24.52). it was found that male academic motivation average score was higher than female. table-4. according to students' working status mann whitney-u scores (n = 120). ams sub-dimensions yes x±ss no x±ss test u p im-to know 20.64±4.31 20.59±5.66 819.00 .715 im-to accomplish 14.23±5.75 17.19±5.22 560.50 .020 imto experience stim. 14.47±6.10 17.26±5.25 614.50 .055 em-identified 21.70±3.80 21.65±7.06 861.00 .964 em-introjected 14.00±5.62 16.24±5.31 654.50 .106 emexternal regulation 21.29±4.23 19.55±5.11 718.50 .258 amotivation 6.64±3.12 10.96±5.99 505.00 .006 total 113.00±23.55 123.48±25.31 621.50 .062 source: this table is about the result of participants’ mean scores. in table 4 the highest mean value of the students who answered the study according to their working status in terms of scale sub-dimensions was found in the sub-dimension of external motivation identified (21,70 ± 3,80), while the lowest mean value was in the sub-dimension of amotivation (6, 64 ± 3,12). again, according to the study status, the highest average value of the students who gave the answer to the scores of the subscales in the scale of external motivation identified size (21.65 ± 7.06), the lowest average value of the amotivation size (10.96 ± 5.99). in addition, it was found that the arithmetic average of the students who did not work anywhere in the scale of intrinsic motivation toward accomplishments dimension and amotivation dimension was a high and significant value (p˂0.05). table-5. mean scores of academic motivation scale according to academic average of students (n = 120) ams sub-dimensions x±ss test r p academic average 02.82±0.41 0.88 .169 im-to know 20.66±5.49 .092 .158 im-to accomplish 16.77±5.36 .095 .150 imto experience stim. 16.88±5.42 .023 .403 em-identified 21.71±6.67 .023 .401 em-introjected 15.92±5.37 .151 .050 emexternal reg. 19.82±5.00 .076 .206 amotivation 10.29±5.87 .045 .311 total 122.08±25,15 .088 .169 source: this table is about the result of participants’ academic scores. when the points taken from the academic motivation scale sub-dimensions according to the academic average of the students who participated in the study, the highest score was found in the sub-scale extrinsic motivation asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 309-315 313 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group identified sub-dimension (21.71 ± 6.67) and the lowest score was in the sub-dimension of amotivation (10.29 ± 5.87). in addition, it was determined that the students' academic average scores (02.82 ± 0.41). in table 5, a statistically significant value was obtained in the sub-dimension of extrinsic motivation introjected according to the academic average of physical education and sports teacher (p˂0.05). table-6. correlation relationship between academic averaging and internal extrinsic motivation. academic achievement (em-introjected) academic success r 1 .151* p .050 n .120 120 (em-introjected) r .151 1 p .050 n 120 120 *p<.05. in the data in table 6, the correlation coefficient between the academic achievement scores and the extrinsic motivation introjected scores was found to be r = 0,151 and the significance level was p = 0,05. here it is p˂0.05 and since the correlation coefficient is much greater than 0, it can be mentioned that there is a positive and meaningful relationship between academic achievement score and extrinsic motivation introjected score. it can be said that this relationship has a low level and when the academic achievement of physical education and sports school students increases, the scores of extrinsic motivation introjected increase. when the determination coefficient is examined (r2 = 0.023), it can be said that 23% of the sub-dimension extrinsic motivation introjected that is reflected in it is caused by academic achievement. 4. discussion in the study, it was determined that the students' academic motivation scores were above the middle. academic motivation levels of students were found to be higher than the students in the study which was related to academic motivation and school climate relationship (çelik et al., 2017). this result supports our study. in the study, the students obtained the highest mean score in extrinsic motivation identified dimension and the lowest mean score in the scale of amotivation. the high degree of extrinsic motivation identified indicates that students are more inclined to engage in behavior for individual benefit and personal attention (deci et al., 1991; vallerand et al., 1992; deci and ryan, 2000b). in a study conducted on pre-service teachers, it was concluded that there was a high level of extrinsic motivation identified scores and a low level of amotivation scores (gömleksiz and serhatlıoğlu, 2013). research findings support our study. in addition to the studies, the expectation of graduation as a successful professional is another factor that increases academic motivation in students (domene et al., 2011). at the same time, it has been determined that optimistic expectations for the future have a positive effect on all types of motivation (vallerand et al., 1993). according to gender, the mean score of women was higher than the average score of men. in a study titled features athletes, it was stated that individual characteristics are related to academic achievement. they also showed that non-cognitive characteristics such as academic motivation, academic self-concept, mental health and education goals are also related to academic performance. in addition, race, gender, competition level and all the individual characteristics of the athlete were found to be related to academic achievement. as a result, it was found that female athletes performed better academic performance than their male peers, similar to their non-athletes (comeaux and harrison, 2011). in our study, it was determined that the average score of academic motivation of men was higher than women. in a study examining the views of prospective teachers about their academic motivation levels, it was found that the academic motivation levels of male pre-service teachers were higher than female teacher candidates (gömleksiz and serhatlıoğlu, 2013). as a different result, it was found that chemistry teacher candidates had higher scores than males in the study of the relationship between motivation and academic achievement (eymur and geban, 2011). in the research, when the scores of the students who answered yes or no according to their status in the study in terms of scale sub-dimensions, the highest mean value was found in the extrinsic motivation identified subdimension and the lowest mean value was in the sub-dimension of amotivation. in addition, the arithmetic mean of the students who did not work in any place in the intrinsic motivation toward accomplishments dimension with the scale of amotivation dimension which is one of the sub-dimensions of the scale, was found to be high and it was found to be a significant value (p˂0.05). in other words, this result shows that students who do not work in any job have high intrinsic motivation toward accomplishments and high level of amotivation. motivation is not the intention to act. that is the lack of motivation. motivation is not to benefit from an activity and not to feel the ability to do the activity (deci and ryan, 2000b). intrinsic motivation toward accomplishments refers to the success of completing a task with success and being happy to produce something new. in this case, we can say that the students have no desire to deal with any extracurricular activities and this does not negatively affect their willingness to succeed. the mean academic score of the students (02.82 ± 0.41) was found to be significant (p ˂0.05) according to the academic means, a significant value was found in the extrinsic motivation introjected (emi) sub-dimension (p˂0.05). external motivation occurs in activities to achieve results. external motivation is focused on the benefits of activity rather than enjoyment from activity rather than intrinsic motivation (gömleksiz and serhatlıoğlu, 2013). as the study group is an athlete, it is our findings that they have a high level of extrinsic motivation resources, and that they create a result by expressing themselves through sports. in our study, eymur and geban (2011) found a significant relationship between academic achievement and only two intrinsic motivations (intrinsic motivation to know and intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation) in the study of chemistry teacher candidates' relationship between motivation and academic achievement. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 309-315 314 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the correlation analysis, there is a positive and meaningful relationship between academic achievement score and extrinsic motivation introjected score. this relationship can be said to be low. in other words, when the academic achievement of the students of physical education and sports school increases, the points of extrinsic motivation introjected are increasing. although there are no exact ranges on the interpretation of the correlation coefficient in terms of size, there is no correlation between the correlation coefficients. despite no fully agreeing intervals on interpretation of the correlation coefficient in terms of size, on interpretation of the correlation, it can be said that there is a high relationship low level between 0,00-0,30, mid level between 0,300,70, high level between 0,70-1,00 (büyüköztürk, 2002). in the study which examined the relationship between academic motivations and academic concerns and school achievements of health management students, it was seen that only motivation dimensions of internal motivation were correlated with school success (akçakanat and antalyalı, 2016). in addition, past researches reported that extrinsic motivation was generally negatively related to chronology (harter and connell, 1984; pintrich and garcia, 1991; mitchell, 1992). academic achievement of preservice teachers. 5. conclusion in the study, it was determined that the students' academic motivation scores were above the middle. the students have the highest mean score in the extrinsic motivation identified dimension and the lowest mean score in the amotivation dimension. there was no significant difference in terms of academic motivation scale scores and sub-dimensions according to the gender of the students of physical education and sports teaching department. according to gender, the academic average score of women was higher than the academic average score of men. however, the mean score of academic motivation for men was higher than women. the arithmetic average of the amotivated dimension and intrinsic motivation toward accomplishments dimension of the students who do not work in any place is high and meaningful. the mean academic score of the students was (02.82 ± 0.41) and a meaningful value was obtained in the sub-dimension of extrinsic motivation introjected according to their academic average. there is a low positive and significant correlation between academic achievement score and extrinsic motivation introjected point. references abootorabi, r., 2011. how i could improve academic motivation of my students in an industrial high school? procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 15: 571-575.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.03.143. akbaba, s., 2006. motivation in education. journal of kazım karabekir education faculty, 13: 343-361. akçakanat, t. and ö.l. antalyalı, 2016. do students need academic motivation and academic anxiety for success? eurasian academy of sciences social sciences journal, 1: 27-38. aksayan, s., z. bahar, a. bayık and a. emiroğlu, 2002. statistical methods for analyzing data. research principles, processes and methods in nursing. i. erefe. 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 224-228, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.224.228 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group mental toughness of students: levels of hockey players mental toughness of the athletes nas kazim1 temel veysel2  ( corresponding author) 1,2karamanoğlu mehmetbey university, school of physical education and sports, karaman, turkey abstract this study was carried out to determine the mental toughness levels of the female student athletes who participated in the hockey super league competitions held in konya. the study group consisted of a total of 122 female student athletes (age = 18.39 ± 2.88) who participated in hockey super league competitions. to determine the mental toughness levels of athletes, the mental toughness inventory at sports developed by sheard et al. (2009) was used. histogram technique was used to test whether the data showed normal distribution. and at the end of this, all subdimensions of mental resilience scale were found to have normal distribution. according to this, t test and one-way anova tests were used to determine the main differences and tukey test was used to find the difference between the two sets of variables. as a result; the athletes participating in the study were found to be strong and durable. it was concluded that there was a meaningful relationship between mental toughness levels and age and also difficulty in leisure time variables. keywords: mental toughness, sports, hockey, female, athlete, student. citation | nas kazim; temel veysel (2019). mental toughness of students: levels of hockey players mental toughness of the athletes. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 224-228. history: received: 11 december 2018 revised: 15 january 2019 accepted: 18 february 2019 published: 12 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 225 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 225 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 226 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 227 5. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 227 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 227 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/407 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.224.228&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8771-9568 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4575-2885 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 224-228 225 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction in recent years, with the increase in the competition at sports, athletes are trying to strengthen themselves psychologically and physically. in this case, it is seen that not only the physical strength is sufficient but also the psychological factors (moralı and tiryaki, 1990). as the number of researches examining the relationship between athletes' psychological competence and performance increased, sporting activities gained a different dimension and in all sporting activities, it was determined that there were psychological elements such as intelligence, memory, judgment, attention, comparison, interpretation, will, and anxiety under mental activities and played an important role (erbaş, 2005). many successful athletes experienced problems such as not being confident in their performance, lack of confidence and concentration, or stress and competition anxiety. it may be normal for such problems to be short-lived and too few to affect the athlete's performance, but long-term problems can adversely affect the athlete's performance (ercan, 2013). performance in sport is defined as the physiological, motoric, biomechanical and psychological efficiency of the athlete during exercise. for a superior performance, both the physiological and psychological characteristics of the athlete must be developed and should be increased to the upper levels (konter, 2003). improvements and differences in physical skills and abilities can have a positive or negative impact on competition results. however, in most competitions, the winners' win or loss depends on their performance. in case of equality of physical skills and abilities of athletes, athletes with higher mental skills are generally more successful than others (weinberg and gould, 2015). human is a biological, psychological, and social entity. human beings are all with the way of cognitive, affective, physical and social aspects. the sporting skills and abilities put forward by the people can be brought to a certain level with the combination of these essential elements and the planning, implementation and implementation of the needed works (erdoğan and kocaekşi, 2015). for this reason, it can be said that psychological and mental phenomena are important factors that reveal the difference between athletes with physiological, motoric, technical and tactical characteristics. during the season, the athlete's mental performance may play an influential role on his or her team's success in the field. the decrease in the performances of the athletes in the field as a result of the competition intensity of the teams, reveals that the need for the psychological competence of the athletes is gradually increasing. athletes are adversely affected physically and psychologically due to high training, displacement journeys and intensive match programs, and therefore their performance declines. recently, sports psychologists have been working intensively to increase the performance of athletes. some coaches, trainers and athletes have not been able to fulfill the requirements of sports psychology and have been left behind by their competitors (altintas and akalan, 2008). one of the most frequently used but least understood topics in sports psychology is mental resilience (graham et al., 2002). mental toughness is generally defined as a natural or developed psychological factor that allows athletes to cope with their rivals in situations such as training and competition, in the light of their mental competences (jones et al., 2007). according to another definition, mental toughnesss; a negative situation such as failure, conflict and intensive responsibility is expressed as a positive psychological capacity that can be developed in order to achieve motivation and old performance (luthans, 2002). according to loehr (1982) mentally resistant athletes perform various behaviors that make them emotionally comfortable, calm and strong. there are two important features that improve these behaviors. first, it is the ability to use energy positively in crisis and difficult situations, and the other is a strong thinking ability for problems, oppression, mistakes and correct behavior in a competitive environment. in this context, the aim of this study is to investigate the mental stamina of hockey athletes according to their age, sport year, marital status, income status, settlement, leisure time evaluation and reveal the relationship between them. 2. methodology 2.1. research model this study is a descriptive method aimed to investigate the various variables of sustainability of student hockey athletes. descriptive method is a research method aiming to define existing event / phenomenon without intervention of researcher (karasar, 1995). descriptive studies aim to define typical characteristics of a particular group and to make conclusions about how people in a particular group will behave in response to certain situations (borg and gall, 1989). 2.2. research group research group; there were 122 student female athletes who participated in hockey super league competitions in konya province on 15-28 april 2018 (age = 18,39 ± 2,88). the research scale was voluntarily applied on students face to face by being interviewed where they learned. 2.3. data collection tools the data collection tools required to reach the determined objectives related to the research are given below: 2.4. personal information form in order to collect information about the personal characteristics of the participants and to establish the independent variables of the research, an information form consisting of 6 variables (age, marital status, income status, place of residence, sport year and difficulty in leisure time) were prepared by the researcher. 2.5. sport mental toughness questionnaire (smtq) in order to determine the level of mental toughness in the sports, sport mental toughness questionnaire smtq-14 developed by sheard et al. consists of 14 items. in addition to the general mental toughness, the scale consists of three sub-dimensions (confidence, control and constancy) with the 4-point likert type (1 = false; 4 = fully true). the cronbach alpha values for the subscales of the original scale were 0.81 for the confidence subscale; 0.74 for constancy sub-dimension; the control subscale was 0.71 (sheard et al., 2009). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 224-228 226 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as a result of the analyzes conducted on 509 athletes participating in the inventory with a mean age of 20, the fitness index values; good compliance index as (gci) = 0.95, corrected goodness of fit index as (cgfi) = 0.93, the mean error square root mean as (mesr) is 0.05, the residual compliance index as (rci) = 0.05, the comparative compliance index (cci) = 0.92, the incremental compliance index (ici) 0.93 were found (sheard et al., 2009). the description of the three sub-dimensions in the mental toughness inventory in sport is presented below (sheard, 2013). the internal consistency (cronbach alpha) reliability coefficients of this study were found as .75 for total mental toughness, .82 for confidence in mental toughness subscales, .71 for constancy and .73 for control. 2.6. data collection firstly, the available information on the purpose of the research was given in a systematic way by searching the literature. hence, a theoretical framework has been established. secondly, " sport mental toughness questionnaire-smtq " developed by sheard et al. (2009) and information form to gather the participants' personal information were used. 2.7. data analysis during the analysis and evaluation of the data; the data were analyzed using the spss 25.0 for windows package program. percentage and frequency methods were used to determine the distribution of the personal information of the participants. in order to test whether the sub-dimensions of both scales show normal distribution, histograms were examined, and finally, mental resilience and all sub-dimensions were found to have normal distribution. accordingly, one way anova and t-test analysis were performed to determine the main differences. 3. results 3.1. personal characteristics of the research group the data and comments on the demographic characteristics of the students are given below. table-1. distribution of demographic characteristics of the sample group participated in the study. n % age 18-19 yaş 94 77,0 20-21 yaş 28 23,0 marital status bekar 80 65,6 evli 42 34,4 income statue 0-1500 tl 64 52,5 1501 tl-3000 tl 58 47,5 settlement büyükşehir 34 27,9 i̇l 38 31,1 i̇lçe 50 41,0 sports year 3-5 yıl 67 54,9 6-8 yıl 32 26,2 9 yıl + 23 18,9 difficulty in leisure time her zaman 30 24,6 bazen 47 38,5 hiçbirzaman 45 36,9 source: this table is result of our studies. according to table 1, 77% of the participants are between 18-19 and 23% are between 20-21. according to the marital status, 65.6% are single and 34.4% are married. according to the income situation, 52.5% of the total income is between 0-1500 tl and 47.5% is between 1501-3000tl. according to the place of residence, 27.9% metropolitan, 31.1% of the province and 41.0% of the districts. according to sports year of the athletes, %54,9 of the athletes is between 3-5 years, %26,2 between 6-8 years and %18,9 between 9 and over years. according to the difficulty in evaluating leisure time 24.6% of the time, 38.5% of all times, and 36.9% of the time they never have difficulty in evaluating their leisure time. table-2. results of the participants' mental toughness on total score and sub-dimension levels. n x ss min max total mental toughness 122 39,43 5,624 26,00 54,00 mental confidence 122 17,72 3,168 10,00 24,00 mental control 122 10,70 2,334 5,00 16,00 mental contancy 122 11,01 1,887 7,00 16,00 source: this table is result of participants’ min. and max. points. in table 2, point averages of total points and sub-dimensions of the participants were examined. as a result of this review; it can be said that the participants’ level total mental toughness was almost mid-level with 39.4, mid confidence level with 17.7 from mental toughness subscales, almost mid constancy level with 11.0 and above mid control level with 10.7. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 224-228 227 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. independent group t test results for determining whether mental strength scale sub-size scores differ according to age variable. n mean ss sd t p-value mental confidence 18-19 age 94 17,39 3,112 120 -2,123 ,036* 20-21 age 28 18,82 3,162 mental control 18-19 age 94 10,63 2,248 120 -0,668 ,505 20-21 age 28 10,96 2,631 mental constancy 18-19 age 94 11,00 1,866 120 -0,088 ,930 20-21 age 28 11,04 1,990 total mental toughness 18-19 age 94 39,02 5,534 120 -1,494 ,138 20-21 age 28 40,82 5,806 *p<.05. according to table 3, independent group t test was used to determine whether there was a significant difference in mental confidence subdimension of the mental toughness of the athletes according to age variable (t=2,123; p<.05). table-4. independent group f test results to determine if mental touhness scale sub-size scores differ according to difficulty in leisure of athletes. n mean ss sd f p dif. mental confidence always 30 16,40 3,558 230 6,189 ,003* 1-3 sometimes 47 17,47 3,070 never 45 18,87 2,607 mental control always 30 10,40 2,237 230 ,393 ,676 sometimes 47 10,72 2,626 never 45 10,89 2,091 mental constancy always 30 11,30 2,215 230 ,573 ,565 sometimes 47 11,00 1,681 never 45 10,82 1,874 total mental toughness always 30 38,10 6,645 230 1,843 ,163 sometimes 47 39,19 5,747 never 45 40,58 4,555 *p<.05. according to table 4, the independent group f test was done whether there is a significant difference between the mental toughness and sub-dimensions and difficulty in leisure time of the athletes. so statistically significant meaningful difference was found between mental confidence sub-dimension of the mental toughness and difficulty in leisure time (f=6,189; p<.05). 4. discussion and conclusion the individual is a biological entity with a unique cultural, mental and psychological structure (ridley, 2010). therefore, the mental and emotional conditions of the athletes are directly related to the performance of the athlete. today, performance in sport is defined as the physiological, biomechanical and psychological efficiency of the athlete during the competition. therefore, it depends on the development of both psychological and physiological abilities of the athletes to achieve high and efficient performance and to increase them to a certain level in a suitable way (konter, 2003). according to the findings of the study, it can be said that the players are at a midlevel mental toughness. in addition that, mental confidence and mental control levels of sub-dimensions of the mental toughness are slightly higher than the mid-level, but the mental constancy score is slightly below the mid-level. kazım and temel (2018) was found high mental confidence and mental control level as their work done to the students studying physical education and sports high school. so it parallels with this study. according to the work done to the american footballers of yardımcı et al. (2017) they found that they had a high level mental toughness and sub dimensions of the menatl toughness. so it doesn’t support this study. while there is no statistically significant difference between the variables of mental toughness, marital status, income status, place of residence and sports year, there is a significant difference between both sports year and difficulty in leisure time variables. according to this, athletes between the ages of 18 and 19 have lower levels of mental confidence than those aged 20 to 21 years. the reason for this can be explained as the experience of maturity and experience and experience gained from life. according to the study of kayhan et al. (2018) and over age group of athletes in the individual and team sport groups have more mental toughness level than the other age groups. so it supports this work. and the study of connaughton et al. (2008) supports this study, too. however, kalkavan et al. (2017) showed that the studies did not make a significant difference in the mental strength scores of the ages. hence it doesn’t support the study. as a result, it can be concluded that the leisure time of the athletes is always less mentally trustworthy than those who have difficulty in evaluating their free time. the reason for this can be explained as having the and physical comfort of the person evaluating the leisure time. 5. recommendations more studies are needed to examine the relationship between variables in this area. because the lack of empirical studies in the related literature has made it difficult to interpret the findings. references altintas, a. and c. akalan, 2008. mental training and high performance. spormetre journal of physical education and sport sciences, 6(1): 39-43. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 224-228 228 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group borg, w.r. and m. gall, 1989. educational research: an introduction. new york: longmen. pp: 939. connaughton, d., r. wadey, s. hanton and g. jones, 2008. the development and maintenance of mental toughness: perceptions of elite performers. journal of sports sciences, 26(1): 83-95.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02640410701310958. erbaş, m.k., 2005. state anxiety level and performance relationship in senior basketball players. dumlupınar university, institute of social sciences, master thesis, kütahya. ercan, h.y., 2013. sport and exercise psychology. ankara: nobel publishing house. erdoğan, n. and s. kocaekşi, 2015. psychological characteristics of elite athletes. turkey clinical journal of sports sciences, 7(2): 57-64. graham, j., s. hanton and d. connaughton, 2002. what is this thing called mental toughness? an i̇nvestigation of elite sport performers. journal applied sport psychology, 14(3): 205-218.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200290103509. jones, g., s. hanton and d. connaughton, 2007. a framework of mental toughness in the world’s best performers. the sport psychologist, 21(2): 243-264. kalkavan, a., a. mehmet and g. cakır, 2017. investigation of the mental endurance levels of the athletes participating in the table tennis championship of universities in turkey. international journal of science culture and sport, 5(4): 356-363.available at: https://doi.org/10.14486/intjscs699. karasar, n., 1995. scientific research method. ankara: 3a research training consultancy, 292. kayhan, f.r., s. hacıceferoğlu, h. aydoğan and i̇. erdemir, 2018. analysis of mental endurance situations of athletes interested in team and individual sports. journal of sports and educational sciences, 5(2): 55-64. kazım, n. and v. temel, 2018. mental toughness on athletes: the interaction of the sports type, gender and age. the journal of international anatolia sport science, 3(2): 305-311.available at: https://doi.org/10.5505/jiasscience.2018.25733. konter, e., 2003. ports psychology practices. izmir: dokuz eylül publications. loehr, j.e., 1982. athletic excellence: mental toughness training for sport. new york: plume. luthans, f., 2002. positive organizational behavior: developing and managing psychological strengths. academy of management perspectives, 16(1): 57-72.available at: https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.2002.6640181. moralı, s. and s. tiryaki, 1990. investigation of performance concerns and coping behaviors in young athletes. hacettepe university 1. national symposium on sport sciences, ankara. ridley, m.g., 2010. twenty-three-part autobiography of a species. 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 226-230, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.226.230 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the effect of 8-week reformer pilates exercise on flexibility, heart rate and glucose levels in sedentary women gürhan suna1 kenan işildak2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of coaching education, süleyman demirel university, isparta, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to investigate the effects of reformer pilates exercises on flexibility, heart rate and glucose levels of sedentary women for 8 weeks. 30 sedentary women between 30-36 years old were joined to the study. participated in the research sedentary women’ ages’ mean was 32,20±1,78 year, lenghts’ mean was 166,76±3,93 cm. it is announced to the participants that personal information and findings obtained during and after the research will be kept strictly confidential and also “informed voluntary consent form” was filled up. reformer pilates exercise was performed regularly for 8 weeks, %40-60 loading intensity, 3 days a week, 60 minutes per day. measurements were obtained as pre-test and post-test. spss programme was used. “paired t test” was used to determine the difference before and after exercise. the results were evaluated at p<0,05 significance level. the comparison of body weight, resting-maximum heart rate, flexibility and glucose 1. day and 8. week postexercise measurements were statistically significant (p<0,05). but there were no significant different in glucose 1. day and 8. week preexercise measurements (p>0,05). as a result of our study based on the data obtained, it was determined that regular reformer pilates exercises accelerated weight loss on sedentary women. in addition, it had positive effects on flexibility, heart rate and glucose measurements. keywords: reformer pilates, exercise, sedentary women, heart rate, glucose, flexibility. citation | gürhan suna; kenan işıldak (2020). investigation of the effect of 8-week reformer pilates exercise on flexibility, heart rate and glucose levels in sedentary women. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 226-230. history: received: 8 january 2020 revised: 19 february 2020 accepted: 23 march 2020 published: 13 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 227 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 227 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 228 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 228 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 229 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.226.230&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1496 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2125-9105 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7164-3500 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1496 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2125-9105 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7164-3500 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1496 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2125-9105 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7164-3500 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1496 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2125-9105 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7164-3500 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 226-230 227 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the literature in terms of monitoring the progress both by themselves and their trainers and improving the quality of life by seeing the physical and physiological changes of the reformer pilates, which has become a popular, exercise recently, in sedentary women. 1. introduction the idea of the design of the reformer was laid by joseph pilates in an attempt to self-treat the beds of soldiers wounded during the first world war. it can be said that joseph pilates's treatment of patients with springs attached to beds and walls in the hospital is in fact the first days of the foundation of modern reformer tools. the main purpose of exercising on the reformer is to strengthen the body as well as to give the body the right flexibility within the framework of its current potential, to correct posture disorders and to keep proper breathing control during all these practices and to stick to the principles of smooth movement at an appropriate pace (bullo et al., 2015; rodrigues, cader, torres, de oliveira, & dantas, 2009; sekendiz, altun, korkusuz, & akın, 2006; tamer, 1995). another reason why reformer pilates exercises have been popular for years is that they work against the springs, not against gravity. in a study, it was emphasized that gravity provides a constant external resistance to the angle of movement in exercise, while the springs provide an increased external resistance while the muscles extend (siler, 2000). in pilates, the anatomical structure and muscles of the participant, structurally considered as a whole. in addition to reducing the risk of injury, pilates increases endurance and metabolic rate of participants (kılıç, uğurlu, & dikdağ, 2018).with the help of equipment used in pilates exercises, it is necessary to create posture correcting and balancing positions and movements in order to improve the participant's whole body. pilates exercise, from the initial stage to the mastery stage, is a wide range of various exercises can be performed by using some devices and apparatus. stretchs with different resistance levels, pulleys, and gravity-driven equipment, affect the muscle structure of the participants from various angles. it helps to focus especially on the internal muscular system. by working the deep layers of the muscles, the correct position, posture and optimum movement capacity is tried to be obtained (isacowıtz & clippinger, 2001). although pilates is a less severe exercise than other aerobic and dance exercises, it is a very important type of exercise for a healthy body with concentration, control, centering, flowing movement rhythm, precision of movement and breathing technique during the exercise. some studies have shown that pilates exercises reduce the risk of heart disease, prevent osteoporosis, shape the body, improve balance, flexibility and strength (robinson & hunter, 2003; schroeder, crussemeyer, & newton, 2002; segal, hein, & basford, 2004). with pilates exercises, muscle flexibility is increased (otto et al., 2004; kv. rogers & gibson, 2006; schroeder et al., 2002; segal et al., 2004) compression forces on articular and pelvic tilt are reduced, spine stability and posture disorders corrected (mcmillan, proteau, & lèbe, 1998). furthermore, it is stated that body awareness is improved with these exercises, there are decreases in low back pain (anderson & spector, 2009) and increases in bone density (betz, 2005). in addition to the mentioned benefit, the positive effects of pilates exercises on strength, posture, flexibility, basal metabolism, lean mass and general body values have been examined and proven in many studies (bernardo, 2007; cakmakçi, 2011; de souza & vieira, 2006). the aim of this study is to investigate the effects of reformer pilates exercises on flexibility, heart rate and glucose of sedentary women for 8 weeks. 2. material and method 2.1. participants thirty sedentary women, between 30-36 years old participated in the study. it is announced to the participants that personal information and findings obtained during and after the research will be kept strictly confidential and also “informed voluntary consent form” was filled up. according to the information given, the research group was asked not to engage in any strenuous physical activity before the tests. reformer pilates exercise with instruments was performed regularly for 8 weeks, 3 days a week, 60 minutes per day. 2.2. measures 2.2.1. measurement of height the height of the athletes was measured by using a seca brand height scale having an accuracy of 0.01 mm sensitivity. the values were recorded as “cm”. 2.2.2. measurement of body weight the body weight of the athletes was measured by using a seca brand weight scale having an accuracy of 0.001 kg sensitivity. the values were recorded as “kg”. 2.2.3. measurement of heart rate heart rate with nimo brand pulse meter, before and after exercise measurements were taken. 2.2.4. measurement of blood glucose okmeter optima ok-10h (taiwan) glucose meter was used in the measurement of blood glucose values of the research group. glucose measurement was recorded before and after the test. 2.2.5. measurement of flexibility the flexibility of the athletes was measured by a sit and lie test on the flexibility table. the athletes were taken to this test after warming up for five minutes. stretching distance was recorded as the athletes, with their naked soles, sitting on the floor, leaning forward on the test stand, reaching forward without bending their knees, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 226-230 228 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group pushing the ruler on the stand forward, and stretching for 2 seconds at the furthest point on which they lie. the athletes repeated the test three times, and the maximum value that they took was recorded in cm. 2.2.6. exercise program reformer pilates exercise program was used for all muscle groups. reformer exercises include kneeling arms, double leg press plantar flexed, standing series, chest fly, feet in starps, single leg press series, squat spinning movements. exercises, the movement is made to be fluent in the transition. each movement was performed %40-60 of maximal heart rate in loading intensity, 3 sets, with 12 repetitions and yielding rest. before and after the exercises, stretching movements were performed for 15-20 minutes for the purpose of warmingcooling. 2.2.7. data analysis in the study, the data were analyzed by using statistical package program. descriptive statistics were used for mean and standard deviation values, “shapiro-wilk” test was used to determine whether the data showed normal distribution or not and determining whether there is a difference before and after exercise, “paired t test” was analyzed. the results were evaluated according to “p<0,05” significance level. 3. findings table-1. physical information of training groups participating to research. parameters n minimum maximum mean±sd age (year) 30 30,00 36,00 32,20±1,78 height (cm) 160,00 175,00 166,76±3,93 note: *p<0,05. as shown in table 1, the mean age of the participants was 32,20 ± 1,78 years and the mean height was 166,76 ± 3,93 years. table-2. comparison of body weight pre and post-test measurements of participants. note: *p<0,05. according to the table 2, a significant decrease was found in body weight values of women who participated in the study as a result of comparison of pre-test and post-test averages (p <0,05). table-3. comparison of heart rate pre and post-test measurements of participants note: *p<0,05. as shown in table 3, statistically significant difference was found between the rest and maximum pulse values of the participants before and after exercise (p<0,05). table-4. comparison of glucose pre and post-test measurements of participants. parameters tests mean ±sd t p glucose (mg/dl) 1. day preexercise 92,36±14,23 -,151 ,881 8. week preexercise 92,50±12,65 1. day postexercise 92,10±11,89 2,942 ,006* 8. week postexercise 90,76±11,90 note: *p<0,05. when examined in table 4, there was no statistically significant difference between the 1. day and 8. weeks before exercise (p>0,05); it was found to be significant after 1. day and 8. weeks after exercise (p<0,05). table-5. comparison of flexibility pre and post-test measurements of participants. note: *p<0,05. according to the table 5, a statistically significant difference was found between the flexibility measurement values of the participants before and after exercise (p<0,05). 4. conclusion as a result of the 8-week reformer pilates exercises applied to sedentary women, it was determined that reformer pilates exercise positively caused physical and physiological differences. in our study, the comparison of body weight, resting-maximum heart rate, flexibility and glucose 1. day and 8. week postexercise measurements parameters tests mean ±sd t p body weight (kg) 1. day pre-exercise 63,43±7,46 4,147 ,000* 8. week postexercise 61,8±7,01 parameters tests mean ±sd t p resting heart rate (beat/min) 1. day preexercise 86,53±8,40 2,43 ,021* 8. week preexercise 85,50±8,32 maximum heart rate (beat/min) 1. day postexercise 112,70±12,83 2,79 ,009* 8. week postexercise 109,50±12,86 parameters tests mean ±sd t p flexibility (cm) 1. day preexercise 24,70±7,96 -7,045 ,000* 8. week postexercise 26,50±8,36 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 226-230 229 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group were statistically significant (p<0,05). but there were no significant different in glucose 1. day and 8. week pre exercise measurements (p>0,05). we think that the reason for the development of is the effect of the reformer pilates exercises. kurşun, suna, and alp (2016) examined the effect of 12-week regular step aerobic exercises on body fat values in adult sedentary women found that although there was a decrease in body weight values, it did not cause a statistically significant change. this study is similar to our study in terms of reduction in body weight. in a similar survey conducted with 47 adult individuals, it is presented that, when the pilates exercises applied regularly (at least 1 hour per week), it improved the flexibility values (2nd month: 3.4cm (1.3-5.7cm), 4th month: 3.3 cm (0.37.8 cm) and 6th month: 4.3cm (1.5-7.6 cm). when these studies were compared, it was found that flexibility values are increased (segal et al., 2004). while the arithmetic mean of the pre-exercise flexibility values of the experimental group was 31.30 ± 7.18, this value was found to be 35.90 ± 5.74 after the exercise (kılıç et al., 2018). 4.60 cm increase between preand post-exercise values was found to be statistically significant (p<0,01). turna and alp (2020) also reported in their study that trainings had positive effects on flexibility of participants. altıntaç (2006) after exercising pilates with women over the age of 30, he looked at the flexibility values in flexibility measurements. as a result of these measurements, statistically significant differences were found. kate rogers and gibson (2009) reported that regular pilates studies in middle-aged sedentary women have significant effects on muscle endurance, body composition and flexibility. otto et al. (2004) also supported the positive effects of pilates exercise method on flexibility values. in this reformer study, it was reported that the flexibility values of the group performing the reformer exercises were significantly different from the group performing the resistance exercises. babayiğit (2009) study showed that the 12-week, 3-day per week, and 1-hour per day pilates exercise program increased the flexibility values of the women participating in the study. this development shows that pilates exercises have significant effects on improving flexibility values. cağlav (2005) on the other hand, found significant differences in flexibility measurements after pilates exercise performed by women aged 40-45 years. this study is in line with the studies in literature. we can say that the increase in flexibility values of women is beneficial on flexibility feature of doing pilates exercise. in a study conducted by rico-sanz, zehnder, buchli, dambach, and boutellier (1990) blood glucose levels were 87 ± 2.7 mg / dl at before and 42 ± 2.5 mg / dl at after. when exercise is severe and prolonged, it is seen that blood glucose also falls below normal resting levels due to decreased liver glycogen. in a study by cox et al. (2001) on sedentary women aged 40-65 years, the effect of exercise on blood pressure was examined. at the end of 60 exercises of 18 months, systolic and diastolic blood pressures of the subjects were decreased. colakoğlu and senel (2003) examined the effect of 8-week aerobic exercise program on some physical parameters in middle-aged women and found a significant decrease in resting pulses of 9.2 beats / min between experimental subjects. erbas (2007) examined the effect of aerobic exercise program on physical and physiological parameters in middle-aged sedentary women. he took three measurements, before, in the middle and at the end of the exercise, and found a significant reduction in resting pulse rates. velasques and wilmore (1991) investigated changes in body composition and cardiorespiratory fitness after a 12-week step study in women aged 18-33 years. at the end of the study, it was observed that the resting heart rate decreased. when the results in the literature are examined, we believe that the data in our study support the results. çolakoğlu and karacan (2006) applied aerobic exercises in their research and they observed reductions in the number of resting heart rate after exercise. the results of this study support our results. as a result, based on the data obtained from our study, we can say that there are positive changes in physical and physiological characteristics of regular reformer pilates exercises performed on sedentary women. for the continuation of these changes and for an ideal body structure and health, we can say that these and similar exercises should be done regularly. in addition, we think that these kinds of exercises can overcome many health problems that may arise in the elderly ages. in addition to exercises done for health and physical fitness, people may also be advised to check their nutritional habits before and after exercise and also they may be advised to exercise with the help of an experts. references altıntaç, d. (2006). effects of pilates exercises on physical fitness. marmara university institute of health sciences physical education and sports department master thesis. istanbul: marmara university. anderson, b. d., & spector, a. (2009). introduction to pilates-based rehabilitation. orthopaedic physical therapy clinics of north america, 9(3), 395-410. babayiğit, i. g. (2009). pilates exercise positively affects balance, reaction time, muscle strength, falling number and psychological parameters in older women over 65 years of age. middle east technical university institute of social sciences physical education and sports department, ph.d. thesis, ankara: metu. bernardo, l. m. (2007). the effectiveness of pilates training in healthy adults: an appraisal of the research literature. journal of bodywork and movement therapies, 11(2), 106-110.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbmt.2006.08.006. betz, s. (2005). modifying pilates for clients with osteoporosis. idea fitness journall, 2(4), 46-55. bullo, v., bergamin, m., gobbo, s., sieverdes, j., zaccaria, m., neunhaeuserer, d., & ermolao, a. (2015). the effects of pilates exercise training on physical fitness and wellbeing in the elderly: a systematic review for future exercise prescription. preventive medicine, 75, 1-11.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2015.03.002. cağlav, f. (2005). effects of 8-week pilates study on flexibility and balance in women between the ages of 40-45. mugla university institute of social sciences physical education and sports department master thesis, mugla: mugla university. cakmakçi, o. (2011). the effect of 8 week plates exercise on body composition in obese women. collegium antropologicum, 35(4), 1045-1050. colakoğlu, f., & senel, ö. (2003). effects of the eight-week aerobic exercise program on the body composition and blood lipids of sedentary middle-aged women. spormeter 1(1), 57-61. çolakoğlu, f. f., & karacan, s. (2006). the effect of aerobic exercise on some physiological parameters in young women and middle-aged women. kastamonu education journal, 14(1), 277-284. cox, k. l., burke, v., morton, a. r., gillam, h. f., beilin, l. j., & puddey, i. b. (2001). long-term effects of exercise on blood pressure and lipids in healthy women aged 40–65 years: the sedentary women exercise adherence trial (sweat). journal of hypertension, 19(10), 1733-1743.available at: https://doi.org/10.1097/00004872-200110000-00006. de souza, m. v. s., & vieira, c. b. 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(2020). the effects of functional training on some biomotor abilities and physiological characteristics in elite soccer players. journal of education and learning, 9(1), 164-171. velasques, k., & wilmore, j. (1991). changes in cardiorespiratory fitnes and body composition after a 12 week bench step training program. medicine and science in sports and exercise, 24(5 supplement), 78. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 110 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 110-116, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.110.116 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the examination of teacher candidates' selfishness levels regarding sportive activity and different variables erdogan tozoglu1 murat ozan2 ( corresponding author) 1assoc. dr., ataturk university, department of physical education and sports, turkey. 2research assistant ataturk university, department of physical education and sports, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to the examination of teacher candidates' selfishness levels regarding sportive activity and different variables the study was conducted on 295 teacher candidates, 109 female and 186 male, who were educated in erzurum ataturk university, kazim karabekir faculty of education, in 2018-2019 academic year and voluntarily participated in the research. in the study, “the selfishness questionnaire: egocentric, adaptive, and pathological forms of selfishness " was used which was developed by adrian and uh (2018) adapted to turkish and analyzed for reliability and validity by yılmaz (2018). frequency analysis was used to determine demographic characteristics, and t test was used to examine the relationship between two independent variables and selfishness, analysis of variance was used to examine the relationship between more than two variables and selfishness. when the findings of the study were evaluated, it was seen that the pathological selfishness levels of female students were lower than male students. as a result of the findings, it is noticeable that the level of selfishness increases in parallel as the age level increases. the remarkable result here is, the level of selfishness increases in parallel as the time to do sportive activity increases. it is thought that, for students, sporting activity in their daily lives makes possible to increase their interaction with other students and therefore to focus on team or group goals rather than personal goals. keywords: physical education, teacher candidates, spotive activity, selfishness. citation | erdogan tozoglu; murat ozan (2020). the examination of teacher candidates' selfishness levels regarding sportive activity and different variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 110-116 history: received: 25 november 2019 revised: 15 january 2020 accepted: 13 february 2020 published: 9 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 111 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 111 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 112 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 115 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 115 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.110.116&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1385 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7547-249x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3818-4637 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1385 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7547-249x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3818-4637 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1385 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7547-249x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3818-4637 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1385 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7547-249x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3818-4637 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 110-116 111 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining of teacher candidates' selfishness levels regarding sportive activity and different variables. 1. introduction the totality of physical activities, which aim at the balanced development of human organism without disrupting its integrity, support the individual's physical, spiritual and intellectual development and aim at raising the individual as a person who is beneficial to the society s/he lives in and him/herself is defined as "physical education" (açak, 2006). according to kirchner and fishburne (1995) physical education is the process of gaining positive behaviors in physical, mental and social terms through muscle activities (kirchner and fishburne, 1995). sports is a "competitive, solidarist and cultural term, that is socializing and that improves the soul and physics, which the individual performs while transforming his/her natural environment into human environment, within the framework of some rules that improve the abilities she gained, either with or without a vehicle, individually or with a group, in his/her free time or in a way that takes all his/her time." (aracı, 2006). according to another definition, sports is a group of activities that has specific goals and rules, that is associated with technical methods, that meets the needs of pleasure and enthusiasm of the audience as well as those who play, binding viewers and athletes together (dogan, 2005). the general aim of physical education and sports is to help increase the mobility of each student by providing the education of children with physical activities. it also aims to contribute to children's physical, mental, social and emotional development. in this context, it can be said that physical education is a lifestyle that aims to contribute to the participants' development, knowledge levels, attitudes, movement and motor skills through physical activities and requires continuity in physical context (demirhan and altay, 2001). selfishness can be defined as acting by considering only one's own wishes and needs, without consideration or care of others and sometimes by disregarding consequences that might be harmful to others (ronald, 2016). selfishness is too complex to be explained with a single approach; it is a property that is related to biological features, personality, cognitive and emotional processes, socialization experience, culture and social contexts (lam, 2012). insecure bonds created by selfishness, lack of empathy, and reduced self-sacrifice greatly harm the social structure (gilbert, 2018). a selfishness characteristic that dominates the individual's life is seen by some researchers as a sign of the path that leads to psychopathy and antisocial behavior disorder (rustin, 2015). there are other authors who relate the source of the socio-economic problems we experience in the world to the increase of our selfishness (handy, 2002). those with this viewpoint relate the reason behind the increase in the conflict between countries, hunger and poverty to the increase of selfish personalities (mintzberg et al., 2002). there are also researchers who think that selfishness is an important epidemic that may even bring an end to the world, because it is not sufficiently emphasized, researched and discussed (cunningham, 2015). one of the most studied topics on this subject is the studies that seek the relationship between sports and selfish personality (bayrak et al., 2015; parlakkılıc and tazegül, 2016). despite both its individual and social importance, little research has been done on the personality traits of selfishness, partly due to the absence of an assessment tool (adrian and uh, 2018). 2. method 2.1. research model descriptive survey model was used in this research. the descriptive survey model is a research model that aims to determine the presence or degree of two or more variables together. it would not be correct to interpret the relationships detected by scanning as a true cause-effect relationship; however, if the situation in one variable is known by providing some clues in that direction, it can yield to useful results in predicting the other (karasar, 1991). 2.2. study group the study group consisted of 295 students, 109 of which were females and 186 males who were studying at the kazım karabekir education faculty in erzurum ataturk university in the 2018-2019 academic year. the frequency and percentage distributions regarding students' demographic characteristics and their state of performing sports activities are shown in table 1 and table 2. table-1. the distribution of the demographic characteristics of individuals participating in the research. variable n % gender female 109 36.9 male 186 63.1 age under the age of 20 112 38.0 between 21-23 years old 143 48.5 above the age of 24 40 13.6 family structure nuclear family 200 67.8 extended family 80 27.1 broken family 15 5.1 total 295 100.0 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 110-116 112 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. the sports activity status of individuals participating in the research. variable n % do you do sports activities? yes 262 88.8 no 33 11.2 what kind of sports activity do you do? individual 119 40.3 team sport 115 39.0 both of them 28 9.5 i do not. 33 11.2 how many years have you been doing sports? 2 years and below 47 15.9 between 3-4 years 116 39.3 5 years and above 99 33.6 i do not. 33 11.2 what is your aim of doing sports activities? social activity 150 50.8 occupation 31 10.5 health 53 18.0 economic 28 9.5 i do not. 33 11.2 total 295 100.0 2.3. data collection tools in the study, a form with two sections was used as data collection tool. the first part consists of the personal information form developed in order to determine the gender, age, family structures, state of performing sports activities, types, duration and objectives of the of sports activities performed by students. in the second part, there is the selfishness scale, which is adapted to turkish by yılmaz (2018) and the validity and reliability analyses of which are made, is developed by adrian and uh (2018) and consists of three sub-dimensions being "adaptive, egocentric and pathological selfishness". 2.4. data collection the students were given detailed information about the purpose and filling of the data collection tool before the data collection tool was distributed. the research was conducted in a classroom environment and the data collection tool was distributed only to those who want to fill in the questionnaire based on the principle of voluntary participation. 2.5. data analysis spss 25 packaged software was used in data analysis. before proceeding to the analysis of the data obtained within the scope of the research, it was determined whether the data showed a normal distribution by examining the skewness and kurtosis coefficients. when the skewness and kurtosis coefficients are analyzed, it is seen that the data set within the limits (-1.5 and +1.5) specified by tabachnick and fidell (2015) has a normal distribution table 3. in the analysis of the data, frequency distribution was used in determining demographic characteristics, t test (independent sample t test) was used in order to examine the differentiation between two independent variables and the variable of selfishness and anova variance analysis tests were used in order to examine the differentiation between more than two variables and the variable of selfishness. the difference between the variables was interpreted on the basis of p.0.05 significance level. table-3. normality distribution test results. variable adaptive selfishness egocentric selfishness pathological selfishness selfishness level n 295 295 295 295 mean 9.93 9.78 8,09 27.80 median 10.00 9.00 8.00 26.00 mode 8.00 8.00 7.00 20.00 std. deviation 2.80 2.94 2,34 7.19 variance 7.82 8.62 5,48 51.70 skewness .420 .683 .602 .614 std. error of skewness .142 .142 .142 .142 kurtosis -.840 -.369 -.473 -.569 std. error of kurtosis .283 .283 .283 .283 range 11.00 12.00 10.00 29.00 minimum 6.00 6.00 5.00 17.00 maximum 17.00 18.00 15.00 46.00 3. findings in this section, this study statistically analyzes and comments of the data obtained as a result of the application of the data collection tool (selfishness scale). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 110-116 113 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. the results of the independent group t test conducted to determine whether the scores of selfishness sub-dimensions differ according to the gender variable of the students. selfishness scale sub-dimensions gender n x s t p adaptive selfishness female 109 9.60 2.85 -1.567 .118 male 186 10.12 2.75 egocentric selfishness female 109 9.53 3.08 -1.150 .251 male 186 9.93 2.84 pathological selfishness female 109 7.68 2.29 -2.315 .021 male 186 8.33 2.35 i̇n table 4, after the t test analysis between students' gender and selfishness scale sub-dimension scores. it was determined that there was a significant difference in the pathological sub-dimension at p <.050 level.(t = -2.315. p>. 021). in the pathological sub-dimension. it is observed that the female students' pathological selfishness levels are lower than that of male students. in other sub-dimensions. no significant difference was found in terms of the gender variable. table-5. the results of the one-way variance analysis (anova) test conducted to determine whether the scores of the selfishness scale subdimensions differ according to the age variable of the students. selfishness scale sub-dimensions age n x s f p adaptive selfishness under the age of 20 112 9.77 2.81 2.404 .092 between 21-23 143 9.80 2.82 above the age of 24 40 10.83 2.54 total 295 9.93 2.80 egocentric selfishness under the age of 20 112 9.87 2.97 .673 .511 between 21-23 143 9.60 2.85 above the age of 24 40 10.18 3.19 total 295 9.78 2.93 pathological selfishness under the age of 20 112 7.84 2.29 2.376 .095 between 21-23 143 8.01 2.22 above the age of 24 40 8.78 2.80 total 295 8.09 2.34 i̇n table 5, after the one-way analysis of variance (anova / tukey) test conducted to compare the selfishness sub-dimension levels of students at different age levels. it was determined that there was no difference in p <.050 level. table-6. the results of the one-way variance analysis (anova) test conducted to determine whether the scores of the selfishness scale subdimensions differ according to the family structure variable of the students. selfishness scale sub-dimensions family structure n x s f p difference adaptive selfishness nuclear family (1) 200 9.69 2.81 4.72 .010 1 < 3 extended family (2) 80 10.16 2.66 broken family (3) 15 11.87 2.67 total 295 9.93 2.80 egocentric selfishness nuclear family (1) 200 9.45 2.86 3.99 .039 1 < 3 extended family (2) 80 10.40 3.01 broken family (3) 15 10.80 2.93 total 295 9.78 2.94 pathological selfishness nuclear family (1) 200 7.92 2.30 1.60 .202 …. extended family (2) 80 8.44 2.42 broken family (3) 15 8.47 2.39 total 295 8.08 2.34 i̇n table 6, after the one-way analysis of variance (anova / tukey) test conducted to compare the selfishness sub-dimension levels of students with different family structures. it was determined that there was a difference in the sub-dimensions of adaptive selfishness and egocentric selfishness at the level of p <050. it is observed that the selfishness levels of the students in the nuclear family structure in these dimensions with significant differences are lower than the students in the fragmented family structure. table-7. the results of the independent group t test conducted to determine whether the scores of selfishness sub-dimensions differ according to the gender variable of the students' performing sports activity. selfishness scale sub-dimensions do you do sports activities? n x s t p adaptive selfishness yes 262 9.90 2.77 -.353 .725 no 33 10.01 3.03 egocentric selfishness yes 262 9.69 2.86 -1.530 .127 no 33 10.52 3.43 pathological selfishness yes 262 8.11 2.33 .544 .587 no 33 7.88 2.42 it was determined that there was no significant difference in p <. 050 level after the t test analysis conducted between the students' state of doing sports activities and the selfishness scale sub-dimension scores. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 110-116 114 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. the results of the one-way variance analysis (anova) test conducted to determine whether the scores of the selfishness scale subdimensions differ according to the variable of the type of the sports activity that the students have been performing. selfishness scale sub-dimensions sports activity type n x s f p difference adaptive selfishness individual (1) 119 9.71 2.86 3.585 .025 .040 3>1 3>2 team sport (2) 115 9.80 2.63 both of them (3) 28 11.21 2.70 total 262 9.91 2.77 egocentric selfishness individual (1) 119 9.75 3.03 1.155 .317 …. team sport (2) 115 9.46 2.76 both of them (3) 28 10.36 2.50 total 262 9.69 2.86 pathological selfishness individual (1) 119 8.14 2.50 2.480 .086 …. team sport (2) 115 7.88 1.97 both of them (3) 28 8.96 2.82 total 262 8.11 2.33 i̇n table 8, after the one-way analysis of variance (anova / tukey) test conducted to compare the sports activity type that the students have been performing and their selfishness sub-dimension levels. a significant difference was found at p <.050 level. in the adaptive selfishness sub-dimension. it is observed that the adaptive selfishness level of the students who do both sports together is higher than that of students who do only individual and team sports. in other sub-dimensions. no significant difference was found in terms of the sports activity type variable. table-9. the results of the one-way variance analysis (anova) test conducted to determine whether the scores of the selfishness scale subdimensions differ according to the variable of the duration of the sports activity that the students have been performing. selfishness scale subdimensions sports activity duration n x s f p difference adaptive selfishness 2 years and below (1) 47 8.85 2.57 6.844 .001 1 < 3 between 3-4 years (2) 116 9.76 2.75 5 years and above (3) 99 10.59 2.73 total 262 9.90 2.77 egocentric selfishness 2 years and below (1) 47 8.89 1.98 4.407 .015 1 < 3 between 3-4 years (2) 116 9.49 2.85 5 years and above (3) 99 10.29 3.12 total 262 9.69 2.86 pathological selfishness 2 years and below (1) 47 7.04 1.77 7.151 .001 1 < 3 between 3-4 years (2) 116 8.16 2.16 5 years and above (3) 99 8.57 2.60 total 262 8.11 2.33 i̇n table 9, after the one-way analysis of variance (anova / tukey) test conducted to compare students' duration of doing sports activities and selfishness sub-dimension levels. it was determined that there was a difference in all dimensions at p <. 050 level. it is observed that the selfishness levels of students who performed sports activities for 5 years or more are higher than those who performed sports activities for 2 years or less. another remarkable result is the observation of the result that the level of selfishness increases in parallel with the duration of doing sports activities. table-10. the results of the one-way variance analysis (anova) test conducted to determine whether the scores of the selfishness scale subdimensions differ according to the variable of the goal of the sports activity that the students have been performing. selfishness scale subdimensions goal of the sports activity n x s f p difference adaptive selfishness social activity (1) 150 9.65 2.77 2.096 .101 …. occupation (2) 31 9.58 2.51 health (3) 53 10.69 2.93 economic (4) 28 10.14 2.59 total 262 9.91 2.77 egocentric selfishness social activity (1) 150 9.41 2.89 3.446 .015 1 < 3 occupation (2) 31 9.16 2.46 health (3) 53 10.77 2.68 economic (4) 28 9.68 3.06 total 262 9.68 2.86 pathological selfishness social activity (1) 150 8.03 2.29 1.255 .290 …. occupation (2) 31 7.58 2.01 health (3) 53 8.41 2.46 economic (4) 28 8.57 2.62 total 262 8.11 2.33 i̇n table 10, after the one-way analysis of variance (anova / tukey) test conducted to compare students' goal of doing sports activities and selfishness sub-dimension levels. it was determined that there was a difference at the egocentric sub-dimension at p <. 050 level. in the egocentric sub-dimension, it is observed that the selfishness level asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 110-116 115 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of the students who do sports activities for social activity purposes is lower than that of those who do sports activities for health purposes. in other sub-dimensions, no significant difference was found in terms of the sports activity goal variable. 4. conclusion when the findings of the study were evaluated, it was determined that there was a significant difference in the gender and pathological sub-dimension of the students and female students' pathological selfishness levels were found to be lower than that of male students. in the literature, in the study conducted by seguino et al. (1996) to investigate students' tendency to benefit from public goods without paying a fee (free rider), it was concluded that gender may affect the tendency to be selfish. in the study conducted by duda (1989) on university and high school athletes performing individual and team sports, it was stated that men are more ego oriented than women. unlike the results of the study, it was stated that gender did not have any effect on selfishness in the study conducted by arınç (2019) on university students. it was determined that there was a significant difference between the family structures of the students participating in the study and the total scores of adaptive selfishness, egocentric selfishness and selfishness. the selfishness levels of the students in the nuclear family structure in these dimensions with significant differences were found to be lower than the students in the broken family structure. in the family, which is the first social unit where people share their griefs and joys, the parties cannot use their time, labor and interests only for themselves. with this aspect, it is an institution that socializes the person and steers him/her away from being selfish (erkal, 1993). when the status of performing sports activities is analyzed, it is observed that the selfishness level of the students who perform a low level of sports activity is lower than that of the students who do not perform sports activities. again, it is observed that there is a significant difference in the type of the sports activity that the students have been performing and the sub-dimension of adaptive selfishness, and that the adaptive selfishness levels of students who perform both sports are only higher than that of those who perform only individual or team sports. in the literature, in the study conducted by porcerelli and sandler (1995) it was found that self-indulgence levels of weightlifting and bodybuilding athletes using steroids were higher than those who did not use steroids. the fact that the athlete has high life satisfaction may reveal his desire to maintain his skill and to be superior to other athletes. therefore, high satisfaction with life brings along being a star athlete and recognition (papaioannou, 1994; toros and yetim, 2000). this situation can be explained by the fact that the selfishness levels of the individuals who do both sports are higher than that of the students who perform only individual or team sports. when the questionnaire results are analyzed, considering students' duration of performing sports activities in all dimensions, it is observed that the selfishness levels of students who have performed sports activities for 5 years or more are higher than that of students who have performed sports activities for 2 years or less. another remarkable result is the observation of the result that the level of selfishness increases in parallel with the duration of doing sports activities. as a matter of fact, in many studies, it has been found that self-interested individuals attach importance to their appearance (emmons, 1984; jackson et al., 1992; davis et al., 2001). also in a study conducted by davis (1992) it was stated that narcissistic individuals focused on their body appearance and used exercise as a tool for their visuality. that students who have been performing sports for 5 years or more have a proportionate and well-developed physique may be seen as one of the biggest factors behind their excessively developed selfishness levels. when physical education and sports are considered as activities performed both individually and as a team and accordingly, in the light of the fact that it positively affects the social and spiritual development of the person or people, it is thought that if students perform sports activities and start seeing it as a part of their lives, they will be less affected by different forms of selfishness. atar (2017) emphasized the importance of the relationship between the benefits of physical education lesson to the student and the weekly number and duration of the applications. this view supports the conclusion that students who perform low levels of sports activity have lower selfishness levels than students who do not perform sports activities. however, according to the findings obtained at the end of the study, the conclusion that the level of selfishness increases in parallel with the duration of doing sports activity, contradicts this view. that physical education and sports are performed voluntarily and tastefully is one of the important points in achieving the goals of physical education and sports. when the findings obtained in the study are interpreted, that individuals who work to succeed and are focused on their goal in physical education and sports are individualized and have higher selfishness levels for the sake of achieving their goals can be considered as a natural result. based on the conclusion that the selfishness level of the students performing sports activities for the purpose of social activity is lower than that of the students performing sports activities for health purposes, that students perform physical activities in their social environments is considered important in terms of enabling an increase in the interaction between them and accordingly their serving team interests rather than personal interests. references açak, m., 2006. handbook of physical education teacher. istanbul: morpa culture publications. adrian, r. and s. uh, 2018. the selfishness questionnaire: egocentric, adaptive, and pathological forms of selfishness. journal of personality assessment: 1-12. aracı, h., 2006. physical education in schools. 6th edn., ankara: nobel publishing. arınç, m., 2019. modernity and selfishness. unpublished master's thesis. the university of selçuk, institute of social sciences: konya. atar, ö., 2017. comparison of narcissism levels of students who do sports and who do not do sports. european journal of education studies, 3(12): 413-420. bayrak, e., a. gaçar, e. nacar and k.y. aytaç, 2015. investigation of narcissistic personality traits of education and sports school students from me. academic journal of social research, 3(14): 249-261. cunningham, d., 2015. living in the age of selfishness with. cbr.com. available from https://www.cbr.com/living-in-the-age-ofselfishness-with-darryl-cunningham/ [accessed 20.03.2018]. http://www.cbr.com/living-in-the-age-of-selfishness-with-darryl-cunningham/ http://www.cbr.com/living-in-the-age-of-selfishness-with-darryl-cunningham/ asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 110-116 116 © 2020 by the authors; 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 207-212, 2019 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.207.212 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the teachers’ restraint and satisfaction perceptions in their free times engin yönet1 fehmi çalık2 fikret soyer3 ezgi samar4 cuma ece5 meliha seviç6 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3,4,5,6sakarya university of applied disciplines, school of physical education and sports, turkey abstract in this study it was intended to investigate the boredom and satisfaction perceptions of the teachers who participate / do not participate in recreational activities during their leisure time in konya. the screening model was used in the study. 330 questionnaire forms were distributed to the participants. as the result of the review, 300 of the questionnaires were found to be worth for analyzing after excluding those which were invalid due to the following reasons marking the same options or leaving the questionnaire incomplete. the information of 300 participants (46,7% male n=140, 53,3% female n=160) were taken into consideration. the leisure boredom scale whose turkish adaptation was made by kara, gürbüz and öncü was used as data collection tool in the research. the boredom and satisfaction perceptions of the participants in their leisure time were evaluated in terms of the age, gender, income level and the frequency of participation. in the study significant difference was observed at the significance level in the leisure boredom perception according to variables age, gender and the frequency of participation. in terms of these variables significant difference was not observed in the satisfaction perceptions. on the contrary, in terms of the income level variable while significant difference wasn‟t observed in the leisure boredom perception, in the satisfaction perception significant difference was observed. at the participation point of the educational administrators and teachers in leisure time activities contribution can be ensured to the satisfaction perception against the boredom with the necessary planning and implementing possibilities. keywords: teacher, leisure time, boredom and satisfaction perceptions. citation | engin yönet; fehmi çalık; fikret soyer; ezgi samar; cuma ece; meliha seviç (2019). investigation of the teachers‟ restraint and satisfaction perceptions in their free times. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 207-212. history: received: 4 december 2018 revised: 8 january 2019 accepted: 6 february 2019 published: 12 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 208 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 209 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 209 4. discussion and results ................................................................................................................................................................. 210 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 211 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.207.212&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/405 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9376-9307 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/405 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9376-9307 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/405 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9376-9307 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 207-212 208 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction all the behaviours in a society are carried out in the institutions which make up that society. people fulfil their roles and relationships through these institutions and learn from them. these are the institutions which have the feature to be the most important to the welfare of the individual and society; family, education, economy, politics, religion and the leisure time evaluation (fichter, 1996). when considering from this point of view, the institution of the leisure time evaluation which is one of the six basic institutions is universal, compulsory and important (aydın, 1997). the concept of time should be addressed in the studies conducted on the issue of leisure time or leisure time evaluation. time has a great importance since the creation of the mankind and the share of the time understanding is great in the human development. it was the same for the societies also. the societies who arrange their working lives social relations, recreation and entertainment habits on this issue of time in this way are more advanced and shaped compared to the other societies (mutlu, 2008). so, the planning and using of time is a considerable issue, and we should be aware of planning and consuming this resource in a way that it can be contribute to the individual and social development (sağlam, 2008). frank cheley wrote in the “investing leisure time” that the education of leisure increases the personal happiness therefore the personal effectiveness drastically. planning and training the leisure time is the way to fight with the greatest threat to the civilization. it should be known that each minute needs to be used in order to serve a good purpose and a good investment (currell, 2005). time which has vital importance both for the individual and for the society is the life itself. it is impossible to compensate or replace the time which has been lost already. wasted time means wasted life (baltaş and baltaş, 2000). in summary, in the human life time is sometimes short and sometimes long, it is impossible to repeat it, its beginning and end is certain and it can be measured in hours. there are several types of time. these are the followings; times about being, livelihood related time and leisure time (tezcan, 1993). according to the general consensus, leisure is the time when the people are free from work, obligations and responsibilities and can use this time according to its own free will (kılbas, 1994). thus is can be used for responsibility –free activities (such as sport), media activities (such as watching tv, listening to music, playing computer games and reading), performance activities (such as music, dance and drama) and for community services (voluntary work and religious groups) (byrne et al., 2006). in fact, it can be defined clearer if we say that it is the opposite idea of working. according to de grazia it is when a person is performing an activity for its own benefit (tükenmez, 2009). it also involves a process that starts with free will and volunteerism. volunteering is to undertake leisure activities without being under pressure in a pleasant and satisfying way by using the abilities and opportunities (stebbins, 2013). free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores and education. it also excludes time spent on necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. the terms of leisure time, free time and spare time are often confused due to the fact that they are interchangeable. spare time is the time which remains outside the time spent to sustain life. spare time includes the leisure time to meet the individual needs such as eating, sleeping and child care. the sense of obligation is the least in this need and it depends on the own will of the person. according to it, the spare time is the period of time remained from the working time which can be used freely. in fact there is not a significant difference between free and leisure time. leisure time or free time is the time spent out of working, searching for job, domestic work and education. while free time refers to direction lessness, leisure time has a potential open for willpower (köybaşı, 2006). similarly, leisure time as a complex phenomenon is used by some authors as the synonymous of free time while some others insists on stating that there are qualitative differences between them. the authors, who use leisure time in the sense of free time, say that people are connected to their own judgements and choices as enjoyment or as the remaining time approaches, most of the researchers used leisure time as free time. however, in terms of the features that determine the leisure time it can be seen that they unite at one point; it must be out of obligation or work and can be used according to the wish of the individual. another thing which should be noted about leisure time is that the evaluating form of the leisure time is added to the factor determining the statue (such as consumer behaviour, education level and profession) (erkal, 1987). it can be observed that the speed of the scientific and technological developments in our age causes reduction in the working hours and increase in the leisure time by facilitating the human life. in the daily life the fact that the working and off working activities turned into repetitive activity by becoming boring made the leisure time evaluating applications important (ozșaker, 2012). leisure satisfactions are not observable structures, they are positive emotions and perceptions that occur due to the attractive results of the leisure time activities and preferences (place and beggs, 2012). the leisure time satisfaction is known to have positive impact on life satisfaction /quality as much as the age and income variables are known to have. considering that each act done by the individual has an aim and there is a result revealed by this aim than the activities occurred due to the leisure time activities express the formation of positive or negative leisure satisfaction. the leisure time that emerges along with the working life suggests that the person is engaged in certain activity and as a result of this activity he will feel satisfaction or dissatisfaction. this naturally raises the concept of satisfaction in leisure time (demir and demir, 2014). while satisfaction demonstrates the feeling of satisfaction, dissatisfaction expresses the low and unsatisfactory state of arousal and the long exposure to monotonous arousal and boredom. the leisure time boredom perception is a negative mood and reflect a mismatch among the expressions available for the individuals with optimal experience (yang and guo, 2011). the leisure time boredom perception emerges along with the leisure time satisfaction as the meaninglessness of an activity or situation. clearly, the boredom perception does not emerge from not doing anything in the leisure time. on the contrary, it emerges from activities which are not interesting of provocative (stebbins, 2003). while the aim of this research was to determine the teachers‟ perceptions of leisure time boredom and satisfaction according to different variables but it was also intended to find answers to the following sub-problems along with the teachers‟ participation levels in the leisure time activities. 1. do the teachers‟ leisure time boredom-satisfaction perceptions show significant difference according to the age? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/job_hunting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/housekeeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sleep asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 207-212 209 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. do the teachers‟ leisure time boredom-satisfaction perceptions show significant difference according to the gender? 3. do the teachers‟ leisure time boredom-satisfaction perceptions show significant difference according to the level of income? 4. do the teachers‟ leisure time boredom-satisfaction perceptions show significant difference according to the frequency of participation? 2. method 2.1. the research model the general screening model which is one of the descriptive research methods was used in this study. it is defined by arseven (1993) as a research form which is based on the data obtained from a sample selected from the society universe in order to determine the actual state of the event and case within a certain time and under dependant conditions. 2.2. working group the sample group of the study consisted of teachers working in the province of konya. 2.3. data collection tools the personal information form prepared by the researchers and the leisure boredom perception scale were applied to the participants of the study. personal information form: this form was prepared to collect the teachers‟ demographic information. it consisted of four questions in order to learn about the participants‟ age, gender. leisure time boredom perception: the original of this scale was developed by iso-ahola and weissinger (1990). the original scale was one-dimensional and consisted of 16 items. the validity and reliability test of its turkish version was made by kara et al. (2014). the 10 questions in the scale are applied by using the five point likert type scale whose scoring varies from (1) i definitely disagree to (5) i totally agree. the 1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th and 10th questions in the scale express the boredom perception while the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th and 9th questions represent the satisfaction perception. the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was found to be .72 for the boredom perception and .77 for the satisfaction perception. data analysis: the scales were applied to the volunteer teachers after information was provided by the researchers. the statistical analysis was carried out by transferring the raw data to the spss 20.00 statistical software package. 3. findings the demographic features related to the analyses conducted according to the aim of the research were given in table 1 while the findings were given in table 2, table 3, table 4 and table 5. table-1. the demographic features of the participants. gender n % average monthly income n % male 140 46,7 below 2800 76 25,3 female 160 53,3 between 2801-3100 115 38,3 more than 3101 109 36,3 age n % participation in activities n % under 29 95 31,7 sometimes 165 55,0 between 30 and 39 115 38,3 once per week 72 24,0 gender n % average monthly income n % source: monthly income and participation frequency. when examining table 1, it can be seen that 46,7% of the participants were men while 53.3% of them were women, 38.3% of the participants were between the age of 30 and 39, 38.3 % of them had an average income between of 2801 and 3100 tl, the average income of the participants‟ 36.3% was more than 3101 tl and in terms of the participation the rare participation appeared to be 55%. table-2. the t –test results related to the leisure time boredom and satisfaction levels according to the gender variable. feeling gender n average ss. t p boredom male 140 11,821 3,70158 2,103 ,036 female 160 10,906 3,80962 satisfaction male 140 18,714 3,74221 ,056 ,956 female 160 18,687 4,57940 *p≤0,05; ** p≤0,01. when examining table 2, a significant difference was observed in the 0,05 significant level of the participants‟ leisure time boredom perception in terms of the gender variable. in other words the boredom perceptions of the participants differed on the basis of the leisure time assessments. it was observed that the male participants appeared to have more boredom perceptions than the female participants. significant difference was not detected in the participants‟ leisure time satisfaction perceptions in terms of the gender variable. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 207-212 210 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. the result of the one –way anova test related to the leisure time boredom and satisfaction levels according to the age variable. feeling sum of square sd mean square f p significant difference boredom between the groups 174,630 2 87,315 6,325 ,002** 1-2 within the groups 4100,036 297 13,805 total 4274,667 299 satisfaction between the groups 42,541 2 21,271 1,206 ,301 within the groups 5238,459 297 17,638 total 5281,000 299 age:1= under 29; 2= between 30-39; 3= above 40. *p≤0,05; ** p≤0,01. when examining table 3, significant difference (f(2-297)=6.325, p<0.01) was observed in the 0,01 significance level of the participants‟ leisure time boredom perceptions in terms of the gender variable. in other words, the boredom perception of the participants differed under the age of 40 in terms of the age variable. significant difference was not detected in the participants‟ leisure time satisfaction perceptions in terms of the age variable. table-4. the result of the one –way anova test related to the leisure time boredom and satisfaction levels according to the income level variable. feeling square of the sums sd mean square f p significant difference boredom between the groups 78,402 2 39,201 2,775 ,064 within the groups 4196,265 297 14,129 total 4274,667 299 satisfaction between the groups 167,160 2 83,580 4,854 ,008** 1-2 within the groups 5113,840 297 17,218 total 5281,000 299 average monthly income:1= under 2800 tl 2= between 2801-3100 tl ; 3=more than 3101 tl *p≤0,05; ** p≤0,01. when examining table 4, significant difference (f(2-297)=2.775, p>0.05) was not detected in the participants‟ leisure time boredom perceptions in terms of the income level variable. significant difference (f(2-297=4.854, p<0.01) was observed in the participants‟ leisure time satisfaction perceptions in terms of the income level variable. in other words, the leisure time satisfaction levels of the participants whose average monthly income were less than 3100 tl differed in terms of the income level. table-5.the result of the one –way anova test related to the leisure time boredom and satisfaction levels according to the frequency of participation in the activities. feeling square of the sums sd square of the means f p significant difference boredom between the groups 161,895 2 80,947 5,996 ,003** 1-3 within the groups 3969,223 294 13,501 total 4131,118 296 satisfaction between the groups 93,011 2 46,505 2,667 ,071 within the groups 5127,319 294 17,440 total 5220,330 296 the state of the participation in the activities: 1=sometimes; 2=once in a week; 3=more than two in a week. *p≤0,05; ** p≤0,01. when examining table 5, significant difference (f(2-294)=5.996, p<0.01) was observed at the 0,01 significance level of the participants‟ leisure time boredom perceptions in terms of the frequency of the participation in the activities. in other words, the leisure time boredom perception of the participants differed in terms of the participation variable. beside this, significant differences were not detected in relation with the teachers‟ leisure time satisfaction levels in terms of the participation variable. 4. discussion and results the aim of the study was to evaluate the leisure boredom and satisfaction perceptions of the teachers working in the city of konya in terms of age, gender, income and the frequency of the participation in recreational activities. when looking at the gender status of the participants it was observed that 53,3% of the participants were women while 46,7% of them were men table1. the fact that in the study of tunçel which was conducted on the teachers in izmir, 57.9% of the participants were women while 38,3% of them were men and in the research made by karaküçük on the issue of teachers 51% of the participants were women and 49% of them were men supported the results of our research (karaküçük, 1995; tunçel, 1999). in this context, it was understood that the profession of teaching was preferred generally by women. in this research while the leisure time boredom scores of the male participants were higher than the same scores of the female participant, difference was not observed between the satisfaction perceptions in terms of gender. in the studies of riddick (1986); dibona (2000) differences were not observed in relation with the gender (sönmezoğlu et al., 2014). in the majority of the studies conducted on the free time satisfaction levels differences were not observed in terms of the gender (ardahan and yerlisu, 2010). in this regard our study is in line with the literature. in contrast to this, in the studies made by emir et al. (2012) the boredom points of the female participants were observed to be higher than the points of the male participants (kara and özdedeoğlu, 2015). the findings of these studies do not comply with the findings of our research. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 207-212 211 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group while in terms of the age variable significant differences were detected in the leisure time boredom subdimension, difference was not observed in the sub-dimension of satisfaction. especially the leisure boredom perception scores of the participants under the age of 39 were detected to be higher than the same scores of the participants who were older than 40. in the literature, in the study conducted by kara and gücal on the same issue, in the sub-dimension of boredom the scores of the participants at the age group of 20-20 were higher than the scores of the participants who were between 40 and 49 (kara and gücal, 2015). in this context, although the findings of this study were parallel with the literature it could be understood that the younger individuals adopted the passive life. in addition, in a research conducted by öcalan on the issue of the leisure time activities and sport places of the newly appointed young teachers working in the eastern city centres it was identified that the teacher who have relatively the most free time in our society sought for passive activities with less recreational features and participated very less in sporting activities (ocalan, 1996). in the study of the in various sub-dimensions of the leisure time satisfaction score on those who participated in individual recreational sports was found to be higher in the age group under 40. therefore, studies which do not comply with our research are also available in the literature. in this research significant differences were not observed among the leisure time boredom perceptions of the participants in terms of the income level variable, but a certain level of income increase led to differences in the leisure time satisfaction perceptions ( except for those with the highest income level). in the literature, in the research conducted by gümüş and karakullukçu (2015) it was suggested that along with the increase in the income level of the individuals the amount of the satisfaction received from the leisure time activities also increased. in a study which supported the findings of our study up to a certain degree obtained a moderate correlation between the income and the leisure satisfaction in his study conducted on the relationship between the life satisfaction and social competence acquired in the leisure time participation for the middle aged or older adults (gökçe, 2008). it can be stated that this relationship was the nearest study to our research findings. indeed, differences were detected in the leisure time satisfaction perceptions of the participants who were in the lower –income and middle-income category. researches which do not support the results of our study are also available in the literature. for example, significant difference was not detected between the income and leisure satisfaction in a study conducted by brown and frankel (1993) on the relationship between the leisure time satisfaction and the demographic variables. the participation in activities did not have important impact on the sub-dimension of satisfaction however significant difference was detected in the sub-dimension of boredom. in terms of the frequency of the participation in activities, it was observed that the boredom perception was increased by the rare participation and the frequent participation while the weekly one participation did not cause any difference. in brown and frankel‟s study called „activity through the years; leisure, leisure satisfaction and life satisfaction‟ a small but significant correlations was detected between the participation in physical activities and the leisure satisfaction (brown and frankel, 1993). in the study of kara and özdedeoğlu (2015) which intended to investigate the relationship between leisure boredom perception and the obstacles of leisure time it was stated that the participation in the leisure activities did not have fundamental impact on the sub-factors of the leisure boredom perception scale. in the study of ağduman (2014) it was determined that the leisure satisfaction of those who participated in more leisure time activities was higher than of those who participated in fewer activities. these studies are not intended to support the findings of our research. according to the study conducted by andrew and withey the vast majority of the people were satisfied in the leisure activities (47%) while a very small part of them were not (8,3%), whereas the different leisure activities provide satisfaction at different levels. according to lu and argyle (1994) the serious, stable and constructive activities provide more satisfaction and happiness (lu and hu, 2005). the researchers revealed that the participation in leisure activities and the satisfaction obtained as the result of this participation improved the character and personality of the individuals. however the different leisure activities provide benefits and satisfaction in different sizes. for example the serious leisure activities provide more satisfaction due to the fact that they are more stressful, gripping and require more struggle and control. but it should be also known that nonserious leisure activities provided less benefit even they led to boredom by achieving less satisfaction (akyildiz, 2013). according to the universal judgement the satisfaction effect of the active participation is weakening through the passive participation. according to kara and gücal (2015) the participation in leisure activities affect the leisure satisfaction while it can be stated that the leisure satisfaction will affect the intention to participate in the future leisure activities (sevil, 2015). therefore it is possible to say that there is a reflexive relationship between the participation in the leisure applications and the leisure satisfaction. undoubtedly, using the leisure time actively will enhance the personal life of the individual and along with the leisure satisfaction also the life satisfaction will be ensured. it will help to socialize and to adopt the social rules during the socialization process by making the person feel dynamic, healthy and relaxed. in this way it has become the matter of curiosity in what degree the recreation used widely by the teacher educating the children and the young people can be applied. it was observed the generally the teachers chose passive activities such as reading books and newspapers, watching tv and listening to music as leisure time assessing activities (erken, 2008). when considering the teachers‟ educational identities and roles, they can both take precautions against the occupational exhaustion as well as they can contribute to the function of being a social example by participating actively in the leisure time. the followings can be suggested within the scope of this study; 1. establishing and disseminating a recreation team within the school 2. the teachers should include into the education the evaluation of the leisure time activities 3. facilitating the participation of the teachers in the leisure time activities held in the province where they are working. references ağduman, f., 2014. the analysis of leisure motivation and satisfaction of university students. master thesis, erzurum: atatürk university, institute of social sciences. akyildiz, m., 2013. the relation between personality traits of serious and unregistered participants and the time satisfaction. phd thesis, eskişehir: anadolu university, institute of health sciences. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 207-212 212 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing 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free time. iii. recreation research congress. pp: 494-499. karaküçük, s., 1995. recreation leisure time regulation. 2nd edn., ankara: seren ofset. kılbas, s., 1994. youth and leisure evaluation. ankara: ministry of youth and sports publication no: 30. köybaşı, n., 2006. comparative sociological analysis of indigenous tourists participating in tourism and leisure tourism as a tool for evaluating leisure sociology and leisure. master thesis, eskisehir: anadolu university, institute of social sciences. lu, l. and m. argyle, 1994. leisure satisfaction and happiness as a function of leisure activity. the kaohsiung journal of medical sciences, 10(2): 89-96. lu, l. and c.h. hu, 2005. personality, leisure experiences and happiness. journal of happiness studies, 6(3): 325-342.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-005-8628-3. mutlu, i̇., 2008. a study on the attitudes of the exercising persons towards their leisure (kayseri province case). thesis, niğde: niğde university, institute of 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14(1): 2-12. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 562 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 562-568, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.562.568 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group knowledge and attitudes of preschool teachers about speech and language disorders in turkey ayşe aydin uysal1 ayşe hicret güdük2 gülşah tura3 1,2,3faculty of education, kocaeli university, turkey. ( corresponding author) abstract the number of people with speech and language disorders is increasing every day (mcleod and mckinnon, 2007). preschool teachers play a key role in diagnosing and treatment of these disorders since children acquire speech and language abilities rapidly in the preschool period. speech and language therapy is a new discipline in turkey. therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the knowledge levels of preschool teachers in turkey about children with speech and language disorders. the sample consisted of 153 preschool teachers from kocaeli, turkey and a self-administered teacher knowledge of speech/language impairment questionnaire was completed by the participants. results revealed that knowledge and awareness levels of preschool teachers about children with speech/language impairment are limited. while 46% of the participants report that they have little or no experience with speech/language impaired children and do not feel themselves adequate in teaching children with severe language problems. workshops designed for preschool teachers about speech and language disorders may offer opportunities to learn about the resources and classroom strategies that are proven successful in teaching students with speech and language disorders in turkey. keywords: speech, language, preschool teachers, attitudes, disorders, early childhood. citation | ayşe aydin uysal; ayşe hicret güdük; gülşah tura (2019). knowledge and attitudes of preschool teachers about speech and language disorders in turkey. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 562-568. history: received: 12 august 2019 revised: 16 september 2019 accepted: 18 october 2019 published: 9 december 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study was funded by the university of kocaeli university faculty of education institutional review board (99332089/605.01/20020317). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 563 2. methods ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 563 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 564 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 566 5. limitations ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 567 6. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 567 7. implications for school health ................................................................................................................................................... 567 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 567 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.562.568&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1144 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-7628 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8951-0725 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0611-7993 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1144 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-7628 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8951-0725 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0611-7993 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1144 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-7628 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8951-0725 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0611-7993 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1144 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-7628 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8951-0725 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0611-7993 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1144 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-7628 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8951-0725 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0611-7993 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 562-568 563 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by determining the knowledge levels of preschool teachers in turkey about children with speech and language disorders. 1. introduction in the preschool years, children acquire speech and language abilities which allow them to engage in exchanges that lead to the acquisition of knowledge, development of thinking ability, improving interpersonal relationships and a sense of self (committee on the evaluation of the supplemental security income (ssi) disability program for children with speech disorders and language disorders, 2016). preschool age is the period in which vocabulary, syntax, morphology and pragmatic abilities develop and grow rapidly. in the first year, the child is expected to acquire his/her first words. in the second and third years, vocabulary increase very fast and use of different syntactic constructions and grammatical forms increase as well. in the fifth years, speech develops phonetically and grammatically in its basics and the child becomes able to communicate freely with the people (conti-ramsden and durkin, 2012). speech and language disorders are among the most common developmental disorders in the preschool period (with a prevalence of 6%). more than half of the children who have language delays between the age of 2 and 3, recover spontaneously but the ones who have persistent speech and language delay may have problems in cognitive and social development, if they are not diagnosed and treated early (asha, 2018). children with persistent speech and language disorders are reported to have difficulties in literacy and academic achievement throughout their school years (felsenfeld et al., 1994). speech and language disorders which have not been treated are also linked to the reading difficulties, catts (1994); lindsay and dockrell (2000); schuele (2004) educational underachievement (snowling et al., 2001) and behavioral difficulties (botting and conti-ramsden, 2000). researchers also confirm that early detection of speech and language disorders and treatment in the critical period lead to better overall outcomes (law et al., 2000; boyle et al., 2010). preschool teachers play a key role in detecting children with speech and language disorders. early detection of speech and language difficulties by preschool teachers, influence children’s cognitive and psychosocial development and their academic achievement. also, in therapy process, preschool teachers are one of the team members who should continuously be in contact with the speech and language therapists about the generalization of the learned abilities in the therapy settings and to prevent drop-outs (blackorby and wagner, 1996). speech-language pathology is a new area in turkey. although the number of graduate students in this area increases, there is still a need for preschool teachers to learn about this new profession and the distinctive role of slt among the other professions in the treatment of speech and language disorders (topbas, 2006). the number of studies related to the knowledge levels of preschool teachers about speech and language disorders in turkey is limited. mavis et al. (2005) have conducted a study with 61 participants consisting of preschool and primary school teachers. in the study, more than half of the teachers state that speech and language disorders are byproducts of mental retardation, genetic problems or psychopathological problems. moreover, most of them also add that these children can go to school but may have higher risks of learning disability. when their opinions about speech and language therapy are asked, they expressed that they believe in the helpful effects of speech and language therapy but they need to be informed about speech and language disorders. one of the possible reasons of this situation is not having lectures about these disorders in their educational background. in a study conducted by aydın and tura (2018) candidate teachers’ knowledge levels about speech and language disorders are investigated and the findings reveal that candidate teachers received no or little lecture on speech and language disorders. so, when the critical role of preschool teachers before, during or after the therapy is taken into consideration, it is prominent to investigate the knowledge levels of preschool teachers about speech and language disorders. therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the knowledge levels of preschool teachers in turkey about children with speech and language disorders. 2. methods this study is conducted with the intention of determining preschool teachers’ knowledge and attitudes about children with speech and language disorders. in the study, descriptive survey model is used. while karasar (2010) describes descriptive survey model as a study that aims to reveal a situation that exists at the present or at past, buyukozturk et al. (2009) describes it as the studies that find out the participants’ opinions, interests, talents, attitudes, etc. related to a situation or an event. 2.1. participants the population of the study consists of preschool teachers who work in preschool education institutions in kocaeli province, i̇zmit district. simple random sampling is used while determining the sample. in this sampling type, every item has the equal selection chance.17 accordingly, the sampling of this study consists of 153 preschool teachers who work in private and public preschool education institutions in kocaeli province, i̇zmit district. data is acquired from the volunteer teachers that work in 20 different schools. 2.2. instrumentation “teacher knowledge of speech/language impairment questionnaire” that is developed by sadler (2005) is used in the study. sadler applies this questionnaire to 89 teachers who participate in a project work that continues three years in the northeast of england. the questionnaire’s clarity rate is tested by applying it to five teachers before it is used in the study. the questionnaire, whose items are accepted as comprehensible by the teachers, is standardized for the main study. while some of the questions are closed ended, some of them consist of open-ended questions. in the questionnaire, there are items about teachers’ knowledge levels of speech/language impairment, their education related to the topic, their preferred sources to increase and to update their knowledge and their asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 562-568 564 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group attitudes towards the children with speech/language impairment in their classes, along with the teachers’ personal information. 2.3. procedure after obtaining the required work permit from the kocaeli provincial directorate of national education, information related to the study is given by visiting the identified schools and by meeting with the headmasters. questionnaires are given to the headmasters and they are received back after volunteer teachers fill them out. 2.4. data analysis for the purpose of obtaining knowledge and attitudes related to children’s speech language impairment from teachers who are working in preschool education institutions, frequency and percentage (%) calculation is made with the spss 22 for windows statistical package software. within this scope, data is tabularized by making frequency and percentage calculation and interpreted later on. 3. results this part consists of information about the preschool teachers’ educational background and their opinions about speech and language impairment. almost all of the participant teachers are female (98.04%). more than half of them have a bachelor’s degree (58,82%). according to their field of education, more than half of them are preschool teachers (58.17%). their total teaching experiences are between 5-10 years (31.37%) and 10-15 years (23.53%). their experiences with speech language impaired children are rare (35.95%) and little (43.15%) table 1. table-1. teacher’s educational background and teaching experience. teachers (n=153) f % gender male 3 1.96 female 150 98.04 educational background high school graduate 24 15.69 associate degree 28 18.3 bachelor’s degree 90 58.82 master’s degree 11 7.19 field of education preschool teaching 89 58.17 child development and education 52 33.99 special education 2 1.31 other 10 6.53 experience 1-3 years 26 16.99 3-5 years 17 11.11 5-10 years 48 31.37 10-15 years 36 23.53 15-20 years 15 9.81 20 years and above 11 7.19 experience with children with s/li never 16 10.45 rare 55 35.95 little 66 43.15 a great deal 16 10.45 participant teachers in this study with regard to their existing knowledge about speech and language impaired students are also limited (63.40%). similarly, more than half of them find themselves partially sufficient (58.17%) in meeting educational needs of speech language impaired students in their classes table 2. table-2. teacher’s level of knowledge and confidence. teachers (n=153) f % knowledge level of s/li very limited 15 9.80 limited 97 63.40 adequate 39 25.49 a great deal 2 1.31 confidence level of meeting educational needs of students with s/li not at all confident 16 10.46 not very confident 89 58.17 reasonably confident 43 28.10 very confident 5 3.27 as it is seen in table 3 while 50.98% of the participant teachers indicate that they received education on speech language disorders at the beginning of their teacher training, 40.02% of them indicate that they have not received any courses on this topic. while 52.57% of the teachers expressed to have an adequate training meeting their needs, 47.43% of them regard it as inadequate. 31.61 of participant teachers indicate that they increased their knowledge level on speech and language disorders with meeting these children in their class. they also state that asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 562-568 565 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group they increased their knowledge levels by reading books about speech and language disorders (24.40%) and via tv/media (19.94%). table-3. sources of teacher knowledge on speech/language impairment. teachers (n=153) f % during initial teacher training yes 78 50.98 no 75 49.02 don’t remember 0 0 evaluation of sl/i input adequate 25 32.05 inadequate 37 47.43 good 16 20.52 post initial teacher training (nr=291) certificate programs 14 4.81 in service training programs 32 10.99 certificate programs by the professional associations 5 1.72 field related books 71 24.4 tv/media 58 19.94 experience in person 92 31.61 other 19 6.53 the great majority of the participant teachers (61.59%) state that between the advantages of being in the same class with their peers at mainstream schools, speech language impaired children’s speech is supported by the interaction with their friends table 4. table-4. teachers’ statements about the advantages of speech/language impaired children’s inclusion in the mainstream schools. teacher statements (nr=138) f % their speech is supported by the interaction with their friends. 85 61.59 their vocabulary increases and they learn different words. 7 5.07 they feel themselves as a part of the society because of not being isolated from the society. 12 8.70 take their peers as role model in speaking. 26 18.84 they make an effort by regarding speaking as a need. 8 5.80 participant teachers indicate that if speech language impaired children be together with their peers in the same class at mainstream schools, they may feel themselves incompetent and become introverted (36.36%), they may be alienated from their peers and they may be offended (28.93%), they may not be able to find an opportunity to express themselves (4.13%), they may feel anger because they cannot express themselves (10.74%) and teachers may not take enough care of them (17.36%). distinctly, 2.48% of teachers state that speech language impaired students may be a negative model for the ones who have no speech language impairment problem table 5. table-5. teachers’ statements about the disadvantages of speech/language impaired children’s inclusion in the mainstream schools. teacher statements (nr=121) f % they may feel themselves incompetent and become introverted. 44 36.36 they may be alienated from their peers and they may be offended. 35 28.93 they may not be able to find an opportunity to express themselves. 5 4.13 they may feel anger because they cannot express themselves. 13 10.74 teachers may not take enough care of them. 21 17.36 they may be a negative model for the other students who have no speech language impairment problem. 3 2.48 information about the special conditions of speech language impaired students that they have in their classes is presented to the 67.32% of the participant teachers. but 64.08% of the teachers regard this information as inadequate. while 45.20% of teachers state that they receive this information from the parents of the students, 17.81% of them receive it from the special education teacher and 12.33% of them receive it from the counsellor table 6. also, 76.87% of them state that it has more advantages than the disadvantages, when is asked to the participant teachers that whether advantages are more than the disadvantages of speech language impaired students’ inclusion in mainstream classrooms or not. when table 7 is examined, participant teachers state that speech language impaired students may be as successful as their peers in their future education lives (44.76% possible, 29.37% quite possible) and they may start slow but they may be able to catch up with their peers (47.22% possible, 33.33% quite possible). the great majority of the participant teachers state that these students may always have academic disadvantage (65.48%). also, while more than half of the participant teachers state that students with sli may have difficulty in reading (43.36% possible, 14.69% quite possible), a great majority of them state that they may learn topics that do not require speaking more easily (39.17% possible, 42.65% quite possible). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 562-568 566 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. sources and adequacy of the information about the students with speech/language impairment. teacher statements (n=153) f % information about the students with sli before they join the class 103 67.32 no 50 32.68 evaluation of sl/i input considerably adequate 1 0.97 adequate 36 34.95 inadequate 66 64.08 source of information (nr=73) special education teacher 13 17.81 doctor 6 8.22 counsellor 9 12.33 school management 4 5.48 counselling and research center 2 2.74 family 33 45.2 psychologist 3 4.11 speech therapist 3 4.11 table-7. teacher predictions about the future education performances of the speech language impaired students in this case study. teacher predictions no response not possible probable possible quite possible they may be as successful as other students 10 0% 25.87% 44.76% 29.37% they may always have academic disadvantage 14 14.38% 65.48% 17.27% 2.87% they may start slow but they may be able to catch up with their peers 9 0.69% 18.76% 47.22% 33.33% they may have difficulty in reading and writing 10 2.09% 39.86% 43.36% 14.69% they may learn topics that do not require speaking more easily 10 3.49% 14.69% 39.17% 42.65% 4. discussion the findings of the study reveal that knowledge and awareness levels of preschool teachers about children with speech / language impairment is limited. 46% of the participants report that they have little or no experience with speech/language impaired children and do not feel themselves adequate in teaching children with severe language problems. nearly half of the teachers (49%) indicate that they have not received any lectures about this group of children in their education life. teachers’ most frequently used sources of information to improve their knowledge levels about speech and language disorders are reported as media (19.93%) and related books (24.40%). this result may be related to newness of speech and language therapy field in turkey and the low average education years and ages of the participant teachers. although speech language therapy is a new field in turkey, the number of people who are diagnosed with speech and language disorders are high. so, conducting workshops including evidence-based practice, teaching and learning about children with speech and language disorders may be fruitful to improve the knowledge and skills of teachers in turkey. these workshops may offer opportunities to the participants to learn about the resources and classroom strategies that are proven successful in teaching students with speech and language disorders. another interesting finding of the study is that 32.68% of the teachers in this study are not informed by parents, special education teachers or school counselor, about the specific needs of the children with speech and language disorders. the collaboration has many advantages like to transfer and share knowledge and skills that are learned in the therapy settings to the school environment in which children spend most of their time and to have consistency in the approaches that meet the demands of both curriculum and therapy (tollerfield, 2003; wright and kersner, 2004). although routine collaboration between health and education professions is a “must” for the treatment of these disorders, most of the time, this unity is difficult to achieve due to different attitudes of the sectors to practicing, staff training or to the methods that are used to determine the effectiveness of services (mccartney, 2002). studies show that although both teachers and slts know the importance of collaboration (wright and kersner, 1999; lindsay and dockrell, 2000; antoniazzi et al., 2010) both groups recognize the difficulties in doing so (law et al., 2000) because of the factors like lack of communication and lack of time to engage in collaborative discussions or the different priorities of the two professional groups (wright and kersner, 1999; hartas, 2004; wright and kersner, 2004) duties of the school counsellors like sharing information between the families and teachers that support the development of the students with special education needs, are laid down by the laws (turkish republic official gazzette, 2018). ideally, an approach in which health professionals understand and learn about the curriculum being taught by teachers in schools and combining the skills of teachers, speech/language therapists and parents, may be the best way to help the children with speech and language disorders. to achieve this, informative handouts may be prepared for the both groups about the roles of the other professions in the intervention team of speech and language disorders. 85.60% of the teachers think that it is possible or quite possible that children with speech and language disorders may always have academic disadvantage. a vast majority of the participants (97.9%) also think that it is possible or quite possible that they may have difficulty in reading and writing. this result is in line with the results of the recent studies which show that speech and language disorders in early period may result in reading disability or language disorders (lyytinen et al., 2005; puolakanaho et al., 2008; rescorla, 2009). in this regard, preschool teachers’ knowledge levels on this subject may be a good starting point for future workshops. by this way, most of the children who are at risk of these disorders may be diagnosed as early as possible and may have the advantage of early intervention. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 562-568 567 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. limitations there are some limitations in this study. this study is limited to the teachers working in kindergarten in i̇zmit. the research findings were collected in the fall semester of 2018-2019 academic year. future studies examining teachers’ knowledge and awareness levels in specific disorders like stuttering or articulation disorders with larger number of participants may also be fruitful to identify and determine the specific needs of the teachers. 6. conclusions knowledge of the preschool teachers about speech and language disorders is essential and the first step for ensuring the best academic, social and psychological well-being of this growing population of children. learning about training methods for naturalistic strategies that can be used in classroom settings and integrating these strategies throughout the school day is thought to be one of the key elements for effective classroom intervention. because of the young age of the speech and language therapy profession in turkey, specific workshops or informative videos prepared for preschool teachers about speech and language disorders may offer opportunities to learn about the resources and classroom strategies that are proven successful in teaching students with speech and language disorders in turkey. 7. implications for school health preschool teachers play a key role in identifying and supporting children with speech and language disorders in the classroom. identifying signs of these disorders in the classroom and consulting and collaborating with a speech and language therapists can prevent labeling and long term academic and psychosocial problems. speech and language therapy is a new and developing area in turkey. so, most of the teachers do not have opportunity to learn about speech and language disorders and the role and responsibilities of the speech and language therapist in these disorders. we need to train teachers about these disorders and the profession via different channels to promote collaboration and effective interventions. most of the teachers do not receive any course about this group in the university courses. speech and language disorders should also be recognized by the public and policy makers and included as part of the national preschool teacher training curriculum. specific workshops conducted for preschool teachers about this group can also be an alternative to access related knowledge. references antoniazzi, d., p. snow and v. dickson-swift, 2010. teacher identification of children at risk for language impairment in the first year of school. international journal of speech-language pathology, 12(3): 244-252.available at: https://doi.org/10.3109/17549500903104447. asha, 2018. spoken language disorders incidence and prevalence. available from https://www.asha.org/prpspecifictopic.aspx?folderid=8589935327&section=incidence_and_prevalence. aydın, a.u. and g. tura, 2018. evaluation of teacher candidates' attitudes and knowledge about language and speech disorders in children. kocaeli university journal of education, 1(1): 13-22.available at: https://doi.org/10.33400/kuje.425174. blackorby, j. and m. wagner, 1996. longitudinal postschool outcomes of youth with disabilities: findings from the national longitudinal transition study. exceptional children, 62(5): 399-413.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14015430500342384. botting, n. and g. conti-ramsden, 2000. social and behavioural difficulties in children with language impairment. child language teaching and therapy, 16: 105–120.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/026565900001600201. boyle, j., e. mccartney, a. o’hare and j. law, 2010. intervention for mixed receptive–expressive language impairment: a review. developmental medicine & child neurology, 52(11): 994-999.available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2010.03750.x. buyukozturk, s., e.k. kilic, o. akgun, s. karadeniz and f. demirel, 2009. scientific research methods. 4th edn., ankara: pegem a publishing. catts, h.w., 1994. the early identification of language-based reading disabilities. language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 28(1): 86-89.available at: https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461.2801.86. committee on the evaluation of the supplemental security income (ssi) disability program for children with speech disorders and language disorders, 2016. board on the health of select populations; 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 362-368, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.362.368 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group study on high school teachers’ self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles yaşar çoruh1 mustafa vural2 ( corresponding author) 1,2ağrıi̇brahim çecen university, school of physical education and sports, ağrı, turkey. abstract this research was carried out in order to investigate self-esteem of high school teachers in erzurum while making decision and their decision making styles in terms of some variables. in the research, descriptive survey method which aimed to reveal current situation, was used. a total of 160 teachers -of whom 37 are female and 123 are maleworking in high schools in erzurum in 2018-2019 spring semester, participated in the research. in the research, “melbourne decision making questionnaire” developed by mann et al. (1998) and adapted to turkish by deniz (2004) and “personal information form” developed by researchers were used as data collection tool. independent samples t-test was used in paired comparisons and one-way anova test was used in multiple comparisons. in multiple comparisons, tukey-test was used in order to determine between which groups difference existed. margin of error was considered as 0.05 in this study. as a result of the research, when demographic variables were examined, it was seen that postponer decision making style which is sub-dimension of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles differentiated according to gender variable of the participants. it was seen that carefully decision making dimension which is sub-dimension of decision making styles scale differentiated significantly according to administrative function variable; and also in age variable, avoidant decision making and panic decision making sub-dimensions which are sub-dimensions of decision making styles scale differentiated significantly. in professional seniority variable, it was determined that avoidant decision making sub-dimension which is sub-dimension of decision making styles scale differentiated significantly. keywords: decision making, decision making styles, self-confidence, education, self-esteem, education. citation | yaşar çoruh; mustafa vural (2019). study on high school teachers’ self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 362368. history: received: 14 february 2019 revised: 28 march 2019 accepted: 2 may 2019 published: 24 july 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 363 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 363 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 364 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 366 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 367 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.362.368&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/873 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2569-1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-6240 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/873 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2569-1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-6240 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/873 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2569-1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-6240 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/873 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2569-1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-6240 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 362-368 363 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by investigating self-esteem of high school teachers in erzurum while making decision and their decision making styles in terms of some variables. 1. introduction people have to make decisions continually during time from birth to death. humans who start to perceive their environment create their knowledge and judgments in line with their perceptions, shape their mental patterns that they will use to regulate future behaviors, give direction to the knowledge that they will use in line with environmental changes and developments. human is a social being who lives in a certain group and makes decisions in almost every stage of his/her life since he/she is not a being who automatically adapts himself/herself to the environment with instinctive reactions (koçel, 2001). importance degree of decisions that are made emerges as a result of changes and developments showed by individual in future periods. these decisions vary according to environmental factors and characteristics of situations that have to be decided. decision is selecting the most appropriate possibility for achieving a goal and the most appropriate one of various action situations that may occur in existing conditions. decision making is a process of selection and choice as a result of cognitive and behavioral efforts (kuzgun, 1992). the most commonly used definition of decision making in the literature is the process of choosing one of the various ways that is thought to enable an individual to reach the goal he/she tries to achieve (kuzgun, 1992). decision making which is a learned behavior during developmental periods, is exhibited by going through phases such as recognizing the situation that needs to be decided and defining the situation, determining options by collecting information about the situation, reviewing and evaluating options, choosing and implementing the option that will cause the most positive and effective results for individual’s life, choosing again by evaluating results if necessary and getting feedback from social environment about the choice made (marco et al., 2003).decision making is known as a stressful process because it is a difficult task. it is a difficult process to look for alternatives, to investigate and find them and to compare harms and benefits of each of them (eren, 2003). different characteristics of people affect their decision making behaviors. situations that are complex and that have many choices, make decision making difficult. this process can become a stress factor for the individual. at the same time, this decision complexity affects decision making situation of an individual negatively (shiloh et al., 2001). from this point of view, self-confident individuals are more successful while making decisions and are more successful in dealing with this situation. individuals with high level of self-esteem are generally self-confident, willing to succeed, optimistic, undeterred, open to new ideas and experiences and researcher, relaxed and compassionate in human relations, responsible and entrepreneur (mağden and küçük, 1993). in other words, it is thought that individuals with high self-esteem are successful in making decisions and evaluating the results of their decisions and do not live to regret. from this point of view, when it is thought that decision making is a fundamental step in the process of making plans for the future and shaping the lives of individuals, it is important for high school students. from this point of view, schools are organizations that form important cornerstones of education systems. all of the studies conducted related to education are generally made to improve quality of the education in schools and to improve the existing system. in schools where education is organized, high schools are in an important position and are among the cornerstones of the steps taken for making dreams of students related to university where their future goals are shaped come true. it is teachers' and school personnel's job to increase quality of education in schools. in this process, guiding students in schools in the best way, providing guidance for students in the future periods represent a valuable process for teachers. it is an inevitable situation where teachers enter decision making process while carrying out this whole process. opinion of controlling this situation efficiently and realizing it successfully fall to also teachers' share. it was seen that teachers also got involved in the decision process from the point of students in decision process and it was tried to reveal which self-esteem and decision making styles were used by teachers while making decision in terms of some demographic variables. 2. method 2.1. research model in the research, screening model which aims to describe attitudes, tendencies and opinions numerically or quantitatively by performing studies on a sample group chosen from a population, has been used (creswell, 2013). this method can be identified as describing a situation in the past or present as it is. what is important in this method is to be able to define an event, individual or object as it is in its conditions and to observe it without changing the current situation (karasar, 2012). in the research, survey technique which is frequently utilized in screening studies, has been used as data collection technique (erkuş, 2013). 2.2. population and sample population of the study consists of teachers working in high schools continuing educational activities in erzurum. sample group of the research was determined by filling scales randomly while they were continuing their duties during spring term of 2018-2019 academic year. sample group of the research consists of a total of 160 voluntary teachers, of whom 123 are male and 37 are female. 2.3. data collection tools  melbourne decision making questionnaire (mdmq i-ii) it was developed by mann et al. (1998) (melbourne decision making questionnaire) to compare self-esteem and decision making styles of university students while making decision in an intercultural research involving six countries. it is a scale consisting of two parts. this scale was adapted to turkish by deniz (2004) in order to determine decision making styles of turkish university students and to make comparative studies with other country students (deniz, 2004). melbourne decision making questionnaire consists of two parts. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 362-368 364 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group first part: it aims to determine self-esteem (self-confidence) in decision making. it consists of 6 articles and one sub-factor. second part is a scale consisting of 22 articles and four sub-factors aiming to determine decision-making styles. these are; 1.carefully decision making style: it is an individual’s situation of searching for necessary information carefully before making a decision and making choice after evaluating alternatives carefully. 2.avoidant decision making style: it is an individual's situation of avoiding making decisions, tending to leave decisions to others and trying to avoid making decisions by transferring responsibility to another person. 3. postponer decision making style: it is an individual's situation of postponing, delaying and procrastinating the decision continuously without a valid reason. 4. panic decision making style: it is an individual’s situation of trying to reach solution quickly and impatiently by feeling under the pressure of time when he/she is faced with a decision situation (deniz, 2004). both parts consist of 3 point likert type (true, slightly true, not true) answering options. validity and reliability studies of melbourne decision making questionnaire i-ii (mdmq) were conducted on second-year students of computer systems teaching and automotive teaching departments of faculty of technical education in selçuk university in 2002-2003 academic year and data were collected from 154 students (deniz, 2004). 2.4. data analysis spss 23.00 package program was used to analyze data. normality of data was tested and it was determined that data distributed normally. independent samples t-test was used in paired comparisons and one-way anova test was used in multiple comparisons. in multiple comparisons, tukey-test was used in order to determine between which groups difference existed. margin of error was considered as 0.05 in this study. 3. findings percentage and frequency values of the participants' demographic characteristics and findings of self-esteem and decision making styles scale were used. table-1. percentage and frequency table related to research participants. gender frequency percentage male 123 76,9 female 37 23,1 total 160 100.0 administrative function frequency percentage yes 24 15,0 no 136 85,0 total 160 100,0 professional seniority frequency percentage 1 -5 years 62 38,8 6 -10 years 64 40,0 11 years and more 34 21,2 total 160 100,0 age frequency percentage 30 years and younger 38 23,8 31-35 years 75 46,9 36-40 years 21 13,1 41 years and older 26 16,2 total 160 100,0 when table 1 is examined, it is seen that 76.9% of the participants are male, 23.1% are female teachers, 15% have administrative function and 85% do not have administrative function. when seniority is considered, rate of those who have professional seniority between 1-5 years is 38,8%, rate of those who have seniority between 6-10 years is 40% and rate of teachers who have 11 years of seniority or more is 21,2%. when ages of the participants are examined, it is seen that rate of those in age group 30 and younger is 23,8%, rate of those in age group 31-35 is 46,9%, rate of those in age group 36-40 is 13,1% and rate of those in age group 41 and older is 16,2%. table-2. results of t-test showing comparison of sub-dimension scores of participants' scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles in terms of gender. decision-making styles scale gender n mean standard deviation t p self-esteem in decision making male 123 2,0136 ,20199 -2,714 ,007* female 37 2,1216 ,24422 carefully decision making male 123 1,2940 ,32579 ,478 ,633 female 37 1,2658 ,27627 avoidant decision making male 123 2,4268 ,41497 -1.121 ,264 female 37 2,5090 ,29644 postponer decision making male 123 2,2992 ,40681 -2.551 ,012* female 37 2,4865 ,33513 panic decision making male 123 2,3642 ,39425 -,261 ,795 female 37 2.3838 ,42000 p=0,05. when table 2 is examined, it is seen that postponer decision making dimension which is sub-dimension of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles differentiates significantly according to gender variable of the participants (p<0.05); other sub-dimensions of the decision making scale do not differentiate asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 362-368 365 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group significantly according to gender (p> 0.05). it is seen that difference in self-esteem in decision making and postponer decision making sub-dimension is found to be high in favor of women. table-3. results of t-test showing comparison of sub-dimension scores of participants' scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles in terms of having administrative function. decision-making styles scale administrative function n mean standard deviation t p self-esteem in decision making yes 24 2,0903 ,21411 1.272 ,205 no 136 2,0294 ,21648 carefully decision making yes 24 1,4236 ,33326 2.332 ,021* no 136 1,2635 ,30601 avoidant decision making yes 24 2,3889 ,37644 -,772 ,441 no 136 2,4559 ,39453 postponer decision making yes 24 2,2417 ,35864 -1.348 ,179 no 136 2,3603 ,40355 panic decision making yes 24 2,3417 ,27333 -,360 ,720 no 136 2,3735 ,41797 p=0,05. when table 3 is examined, it is seen that avoidant, panic and postponer decision making dimensions which are sub-dimensions of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles do not differentiate significantly according to participants’ variable of having administrative function (p>0.05). it is also seen that carefully decision making dimension which is sub-dimension of scale of decision making styles differentiates significantly (p<0.05). it is seen that participants who have administrative function have higher scores in using carefully decision making styles than those who do not have administrative function. table-4. results of one-way anova test showing comparison of sub-dimension scores of participants’ scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles in terms of age. decision-making styles scale age n mean standard deviation f p significant difference self-esteem in decision making 30 years and younger 38 1,9912 ,19738 2.238 0.086 31-35 years 75 2,0267 ,21407 36-40 years 21 2,1349 ,22742 41 years and older 26 2,0641 ,22646 carefully decision making 30 years and younger 38 1,3465 ,36839 2.587 0,055 31-35 years 75 1,2156 ,24777 36-40 years 21 1,3730 ,33294 41 years and older 26 1,3397 ,35740 avoidant decision making 30 years and younger 38 2,5570 ,33842 3,074 0,029* a-d 31-35 years 75 2,4444 ,40486 36-40 years 21 2,4762 ,34675 41 years and older 26 2,2628 ,41143 postponer decision making 30 years and younger 38 2,3895 ,40523 0,410 0,746 31-35 years 75 2,3440 ,37425 36-40 years 21 2,3333 ,33066 41 years and older 26 2,2769 ,50621 panic decision making 30 years and younger 38 2,5684 ,30678 4,713 0,004* a-b, c and d 31-35 years 75 2,3307 ,36241 36-40 years 21 2,2571 ,51437 41 years and older 26 2,2769 ,43479 p=0,05 a= 30 years and younger b= 31-35 years c= 36-40 years d= 41 years and older. when table 4 is examined, it is seen that carefully decision making, postponer decision making subdimensions which are sub-dimensions of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles do not differentiate significantly according to age variable of the participants (p>0.05). it is also seen that avoidant decision making and panic decision making sub-dimensions which are sub-dimensions of scale of decision making styles differentiate significantly (p<0.05). according to this, it is seen that participants in age group 30 and younger use avoidant decision making styles more than participants in age group 41 and older and also participants in age group 30 and younger use panic decision making styles more than other participants. when table 5 is examined, it is seen that carefully decision making, postponer decision making and panic decision making sub-dimensions which are sub-dimensions of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles do not differentiate significantly according to professional seniority variable of the participants (p>0.05). it is also seen that avoidant decision making sub-dimension which is sub-dimensions of scale of decision making styles differentiates significantly (p<0.05). according to this, it is seen that participants who have 1-5 years of professional seniority use avoidant decision making styles more than participants who have 11 years of professional seniority and more. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 362-368 366 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5.results of one-way anova test showing comparison of sub-dimension scores of participants’ scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles in terms of professional seniority. decision-making styles scale professional seniority n mean standard deviation f p significant difference self-esteem in decision making 1 -5 years 62 2,0188 ,20491 1,412 ,247 6 -10 years 64 2,0286 ,21934 11 and more 34 2,0931 ,22915 carefully decision making 1 -5 years 62 1,2688 ,27881 1,603 ,205 6 -10 years 64 1,2604 ,32648 11 and more 34 1,3725 ,34587 avoidant decision making 1 -5 years 62 2,5484 ,30833 4.994 ,008 * a-c 6 -10 years 64 2,4271 ,40703 11 and more 34 2,2941 ,44958 postponer decision making 1 -5 years 62 2,3548 ,36650 ,068 ,934 6 -10 years 64 2,3406 ,40580 11 and more 34 2,3235 ,44861 panic decision making 1 -5 years 62 2,4516 ,37274 2,673 ,072 6 -10 years 64 2,3437 ,38292 11 and more 34 2,2647 ,45319 p=0,05= a= 1-5 years b= 6-10 years c= 11 years and more. 4. discussion and conclusion in the study carried out in order to determine self-esteem in decision making and decision-making styles of physical education teachers working in high schools according to some demographic variables, following conclusions were obtained: when percentage frequency values of the participants are examined, it is seen that 76.9% of the participants are male, 23.1% are female teachers, 15% have administrative function and 85% do not have administrative function. when seniority is considered, rate of those who have professional seniority between 1-5 years is 38,8%, rate of those who have seniority between 6-10 years is 40% and rate of teachers who have 11 years of seniority or more is 21,2%. when ages of the participants are examined, it is determined that rate of those in age group 30 and younger is 23,8%, rate of those in age group 31-35 is 46,9%, rate of those in age group 36-40 is 13,1% and rate of those in age group 41 and older is 16,2%. when results related to demographic variables of the study are examined, it is concluded that postponer decision making dimension which is sub-dimension of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles differentiates significantly according to gender variable of the participants and other sub-dimensions of the decision making scale do not differentiate significantly according to gender. it is seen that difference in self-esteem in decision making and postponer decision making sub-dimension is found to be high in favor of women. in other words, it is possible to say that female participants use self-esteem in decision making and postponer decision making style more. in other words, women respect themselves more in their decisions and it is understood from the research results that they show a postponing attitude while making these decisions table 2. when relevant literature is examined, there are many studies determining level of using decision making styles according to gender variable. in a study conducted by temur (2012) it was revealed that there were no significant differences in the other sub-dimensions except for averages of avoidant decision making scores in the examination of subdimensions of decision making styles according to gender variable. in a study conducted in netherlands, tuinstra et al. (2000) found that self-confidence in decision making was higher in favor of males and sub-dimensions of panic decision making, avoidant decision making and making decision without thinking were higher in favor of females. there are also studies that can't find significant difference in self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles according to gender variable. among these, vural (2013) determined that self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles did not differ significantly in terms of gender as a result of study that he conducted on employees working at provincial directorate of youth services and sports. it is thought that these differences result from working groups and cultural differences. in any case, mau (2000), mann et al. (1998) who conducted studies on this subject, have shown that intercultural differences are an important element in decision making. it is determined that avoidant, panic and postponer decision making dimensions which are sub-dimensions of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles do not differentiate significantly according to participants’ variable of having administrative function. it is also seen that carefully decision making dimension which is sub-dimension of scale of decision making styles differentiates significantly. it is concluded that participants who have administrative function use carefully decision making styles at a higher level than those who do not have administrative function table 3. it is possible to explain this as follows; those who have administrative function are more careful while carrying out their duties and making decisions related to the future. in his study that he conducted on primary and secondary school teachers, ercan (2014) revealed that decision making skills did not differentiate according to the type of performing duty. however, when he examined averages of the scores, he found that participants who were in the position of principal had higher scores in decision making skills such as perception, identification and solution suggestions than vice principals. vural (2016) revealed similar results with our results in his study conducted on employees working at provincial directorate of youth services and sports. as a result of the study, he determined that participants who had administrative function used carefully decision making styles at a higher level than those who did not have administrative function. in other words, it is possible to say that those who have administrative function are more careful and consider alternative situations while making decisions. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 362-368 367 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it is concluded that carefully decision making, postponer decision making sub-dimensions which are subdimensions of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles do not differentiate significantly according to age variable of participant teachers and avoidant decision making and panic decision making subdimensions differentiate significantly table 4. according to this, it is seen that participants in age group 30 and younger use avoidant decision making styles more than participants in age group 41 and older and also participants in age group 30 and younger use panic decision making styles more than other participants. it is seen in the relevant literature that there are studies that find self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles significant according to age variable. among these, ölçüm (2015) found that there were significant differences in instant decision making, dependent decision making and rational decision making styles according to ages in the study conducted on school administrators. ilmez (2010) found directors’ avoidance decision making styles perceptions high in the study conducted on directors and employees of air forces command and emphasized that age affected avoidance decision making style. again, baron et al. (1993) and temur (2012) found that participants' decision making styles were significantly different according to age variable. there are also studies that found that self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles did not differ according to age. çorapçı (2015) determined in the study conducted on classroom teachers that self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles did not differ significantly according to age variable. in the study conducted to examine decision making styles of school administrators, kurban (2015) determined that subdimensions of decision making styles did not differ significantly according to age. in another study conducted related to employees of sports federation, vural (2016) determined that self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles did not differ according to age variable. it is thought that all these differences result from diversity of working groups or institutions. it is concluded that participant teachers' carefully decision making, postponer decision making and panic decision making sub-dimensions which are sub-dimensions of scale of self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles do not differentiate significantly according to professional seniority variable and avoidant decision making sub-dimension differentiates significantly table 5. according to this, it is seen that participants who have 1-5 years of professional seniority use avoidant decision making styles more than participants who have 11 years of professional seniority and more. when relevant literature was examined, in his study conducted related to teachers, temur (2012) revealed from studies conducted that postponer and panic decision making styles that were decisionmaking styles sub-dimensions did not differentiate significantly according to seniority variable of teachers; however, their carefully and avoidant decision making styles differentiated significantly. again, in a study conducted according to seniority variable, ölçüm (2015) revealed that there were significant differences between professional seniority of school administrators and teachers and decision making styles of them apart from intuitional decision making style. when studies are examined according to professional seniority year or period variables, üngüren (2011) revealed in his study conducted on department managers in hotel businesses that there was a significant difference in intuitional, avoidant and spontaneous decision making styles according to managers’ professional working time. when literature researches are examined, it is thought that differences result from working groups when selfesteem in decision making and decision making styles are examined. consequently, it is determined in the research that teachers’ self-esteem in decision making and decision making styles differentiate according to demographic variables. references baron, j., l. granato, m. spranca and e. teubal, 1993. exploration study of youth early from bias decision making in children. merrillpalmer quarterly, 39: 23–47. çorapçı, a., 2015. determining classroom teachers' decision making styles and job satisfaction master thesis. karamanoğlu mehmet bey university institute of social sciences. creswell, j.w., 2013. research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed approaches. (translated by selçuk beşir demir). ankara: educating book. deniz, m.e., 2004. a research on investigation of the relationship between self-esteem decision making styles and problem solving skills of university students in decision making. journal of educational research, 15: 23-35. ercan, g., 2014. baca selengkapnya investigation of relationship between personality characteristics and decision making skills of secondary school administrators. master thesis. okan university institute of social sciences. eren, e., 2003. management and organization (contemporary and global approaches). istanbul: beta printing and publishing. erkuş, a., 2013. scientific research process for behavioral sciences. ankara: seçkin publication. ilmez, m., 2010. determining the relationship between leadership styles and decision making styles of executives and employees in a public institution. master's thesis. ufuk university institute of social sciences. karasar, n., 2012. scientific research method. ankara: nobel academic publishing. koçel, t., 2001. business management. istanbul: beta printing. kurban, c., 2015. decision making styles of school administrators according to individual perceptions. master thesis. pamukkale university institute of educational sciences. kuzgun, y., 1992. decision strategies scale: development and standardization. vii. national psychology congress scientific studies, ankara. pp: s161-170. mağden, d. and a.a. küçük, 1993. investigation of the relationship between locus of control and self-esteem. 9. seminar on pre-school education and dissemination, ankara. mann, l., m. radford, p. burnett, s. ford, m. bond, k. leung, h. nakamura, g. vaughan and k.s. yang, 1998. cross-cultural differences in self-reported decision-making style and confidence. international journal of psychology, 33(5): 325-335.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/002075998400213. marco, c.d., p.j. hartung, i. newman and p. parr, 2003. validity of the decisional process inventory. journal of vocational behavior, 63(1): 1-19.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0001-8791(02)00018-0. mau, w.c., 2000. cultural differences in career decision-making styles and self efficacy. journal of vocational behavior, 57(3): 365378.available at: https://doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.1999.1745. ölçüm, d., 2015. the effect of school administrators 'decision making styles on teachers' job satisfaction. master thesis, sakarya university, institute of educational sciences. shiloh, s., s. koren and d. zakay, 2001. individual differences in compensatory decision-making style and need for closure as correlates of subjective decision complexity and difficulty. personality and individual differences, 30(4): 699-710.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0191-8869(00)00073-8. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 362-368 368 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group temur, ö.f., 2012. the effect of managers 'decision making styles on teachers' organizational commitment according to teacher perceptions. master thesis, recep tayyip erdoğan university institute of social sciences. tuinstra, j., f. van sonderen, j. groothoff, w. van den heuvel and d. post, 2000. reliability, validity and structure of the adolescent decision making questionnaire among adolescents in the netherlands. personality and individual differences, 28(2): 273-285. üngüren, e., 2011. personality characteristics, decision making styles and their reflections on organizational consequences on the axis of psychobiological personality theory. doctor thesis. mediterranean uiversiversi institutes of social sciences. antalya. vural, m., 2013. investigation of the decision making and thinking styles of sports managers working in central and provincial organization of sports general directorate. master thesis. selcuk university institute of health sciences. vural, m., 2016. investigation of organizational justice perceptions and decision making and organizational commitment of sports federation staff. doctor thesis. sakarya uiversiversi institute of educational sciences. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 229 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 229-235, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.229.235 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the relationship between leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction of university students fikret soyer1 ersan tolukan2  abdullah dugenci3 ( corresponding author) 1,3department of physical education and sport teaching, faculty of sports sciences, sakarya university, sakarya, turkey 2department of sports sciences, faculty of health sciences, yildirim beyazit university, ankara, turkey abstract the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between leisure satisfaction levels and smartphone addictions of university students and to determine if these parameters differ in terms of various variables. the leisure satisfaction scale, developed by beard and ragheb (1980) and adapted into turkish by gökçe and orhan (2011) and the smartphone addiction scale developed by kwon et al. (2013) and adapted into turkish by noyan et al. (2015) were used in the study. convenience sampling method for sample selection and face-to-face survey method for data collection were used. in the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, anova and pearson correlation analysis were used through spss package program. a total of 1636 volunteers, 766 males (46.8%) and 870 females (53.2%), participated in the study. according to the research findings, it was determined that the leisure satisfaction levels of male participants were higher than female participants and the levels of smartphone addiction of female participants were higher than male participants. it was concluded that the leisure satisfaction levels of those aged between 24-26 was higher than the other age groups and that the levels of smartphone addiction of those aged 20 or below were higher than the other age groups. as a result, although leisure satisfaction changed according to various variables, no significant relationship between leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction was determined. keywords: leisure, leisure satisfaction, smartphone, addiction, smartphone addiction, university students. jel classification: i29. citation | fikret soyer; ersan tolukan; abdullah dugenci (2019). investigation of the relationship between leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction of university students. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 229-235. history: received: 13 december 2018 revised: 17 january 2019 accepted: 6 february 2019 published: 12 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 230 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 230 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 231 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 234 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 234 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.229.235&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/408 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3608-4715 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/408 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3608-4715 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/408 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3608-4715 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/408 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3608-4715 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/408 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9910-8198 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3608-4715 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 229-235 230 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction today, the role of time in society has been extremely important in line with the rapidly evolving technology and the constantly changing living standards (henderson, 2010). because of these changing standards, the lives of individuals have become more immobile. the emergence of a need for a special time period in people's inactive lives reveals the importance of the leisure concept (ceyhun, 2008). leisure is defined as the period of time that can be used freely, gives a feeling of satisfaction and increase personal satisfaction (ozdemir et al., 2006). it is also a time period that remained from other compulsory activities (mull et al., 1997) and that can be spend for personal choices (sabbağ and aksoy, 2011) and that has a positive effect on the individuals' lives (tolukan, 2010.; ayhan et al., 2017; soyer et al., 2017). leisure activities play an important role in decreasing the stress and tension caused by an intensive workload and it is crucial for social development (mahoney and stattin, 2000) development of quality of life (işık et al., 2015; gumus and isik, 2018) mental and physical wellbeing of the individuals (coleman and isoahola, 1993; ayhan et al., 2017). although the aim of participation in leisure activities may vary, individuals participate to such activities generally to get pleasure and consequently to be satisfied (celik, 2011). satisfaction is defined as fulfilling the emotional situations such as motivation, expectations and needs. the difference between the expectations of individuals and the things they obtained is a condition that affects the level of satisfaction, and thus the lower the difference is, the higher the satisfaction level will be kovacs (2007). leisure satisfaction is defined as positive emotions of individuals obtained as a result of their participation in leisure activities (beard and ragheb, 1980) satisfaction levels in leisure (kovacs, 2007) and meeting the demands, interests and needs from these kinds of activities (mannell and kleiber, 1997; ayhan et al., 2018). reaching the desires and measuring the levels of happiness through the leisure activities is important for expanding the activity range (karlı et al., 2008). leisure activities, had a crucial role in the development of the sense of satisfaction, are thought to have an important effect on smartphone addiction. the rapid advance of science also causes rapid developments in the field of technology. together with the technological developments television, computers, internet, mobile phones and now smartphones have become very important in our lives. smartphones have become devices that make people's jobs easier and can be constantly needed. smartphones, which are used by almost every person today, offer more communication possibilities than older phones. the new generation of mobile phones has enabled many features, from connecting to the internet to sharing information. therefore, mobile phones have become indispensable to our time. the person connects to a computer by using a smartphone has a chance to communicate with the user at any time (i̇lhan, 2008). mobile phones, which have offered only communication until recently, have now been replaced by smartphones. although smartphones offer many conveniences to our daily lives, it is a fact that they have physically and spiritually negative effects on individuals. also it effects the human relations negatively. the use of smartphones more than necessary makes us think of the concept of addiction. now it is possible to see people around us who live with their smartphones at any moment and who feel themselves incomplete without phone (park and lee, 2012). people can communicate with others whenever and wherever they want, by using the possibility of mobile phones. this situation can cause people to feel that they cannot do without a mobile phone (ling, 2004). making this sense in the person and the possibility to use it everywhere will lead people to adapt it as a habit. there is a close relationship between addiction and habit. the habit is the unconscious behavior (larose and eastin, 2004). habits are shaped by repetitive behaviors in certain situations. smartphones are a continuously accessible device with applications that offer continuous use. continuous use of these devices may cause problematic behavior in people (oulasvirta et al., 2012). therefore, individuals who are constantly interested in smartphones are likely to make this a habit. as the habit continues, the problematic behaviors experienced in the individual may increase and this situation may turn into an addiction. it is thought that addiction can be decreased by individuals who are satisfied in their leisure through re-participation in activities. in this context, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction. 2. method 2.1. research model the research was carried out on the basis of quantitative research design. in the population consisting of a large number of member, a general screening model was applied to the whole population or a sample taken from it in order to make a general judgment about the population (karasar, 2012). 2.2. research model a total of 1636 volunteers selected by convenience sampling method, 766 male (46.8%), 870 female (53.2%), studying in various universities and departments in turkey, participated in the study. within the scope of the research, it was aimed to reach a certain part of the university students so, 2200 questionnaires sent to the participants and 1680 questionnaires returned. when the incorrect and incomplete ones were discarded, 1636 correct questionnaires were obtained. 2.3. data collection tools in order to determine the leisure satisfaction level of participants, "leisure satisfaction scale" developed by beard and ragheb (1980) and adapted to turkish by gökçe and orhan (2011) was used. the scale consists of 6 sub-dimensions and 24 items. the scale was 5-point likert type and all expressions included in the scale were scored between 1 and 5 as "almost never right", “…………..”, "almost always right". in addition, the smartphone addiction scale, which was developed by kwon et al. (2013) and adapted into turkish by noyan et al. (2015) was used in order to determine the smartphone addictions. 2.4. data analysis spss package program was used to analyze the data obtained from the study. for descriptive statistics, the frequency (f) and percentage (%) distributions of the variables were calculated. skewness and kurtosis values were asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 229-235 231 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group checked to determine whether the data were in normal distribution. these values were checked and evaluated between +2 and -2 (george and mallery, 2003). as a result of this evaluation, it was determined that the data had a normal distribution. in this direction, independent sample t-test, anova and post-hoc test, pearson correlation analysis, and regression analysis were applied. 3. results table-1. according to gender the analysis results of leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction. variables gender n  s.d t p psychological male 766 3,81 ,81 6,390 ,001 female 870 3,54 ,88 educational male 766 3,94 ,85 7,847 ,001 female 870 3,59 ,94 social male 766 3,84 ,81 8,134 ,001 female 870 3,49 ,93 physical male 766 4,04 ,80 5,492 ,001 female 870 3,81 ,92 relaxation male 766 3,78 ,77 8,084 ,001 female 870 3,47 ,81 aesthetic male 766 3,65 ,88 5,314 ,001 female 870 3,41 ,92 smartphone addiction male 766 31,87 12,02 -,137 ,891 female 870 31,95 11,86 p<0,05. when the results of the analysis were examined, it was concluded that there was no statistically significant difference in the smartphone addiction according to gender (p> 0.05). on the other hand, statistically significant difference was determined in all sub-dimensions of leisure satisfaction (p<0.05). table-2. analysis results of leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction according to age. variables age n  s.d. f p difference psychological 20 and below 491 3,69 ,86 1,180 ,316 21-23 882 3,64 ,89 24-26 209 3,75 ,79 27 and above 54 3,61 ,58 total 1636 3,67 ,86 educational 20 and belowa 491 3,79 ,91 2,721 ,043 b-c 21-23b 882 3,71 ,95 24-26c 209 3,89 ,79 27 and aboved 54 3,68 ,72 total 1636 3,76 ,91 social 20 and belowa 491 3,66 ,91 4,125 ,006 b-c 21-23b 882 3,62 ,90 24-26c 209 3,84 ,81 27 and aboved 54 3,51 ,81 total 1636 3,66 ,89 physical 20 and below 491 3,93 ,89 1,222 ,300 21-23 882 3,89 ,89 24-26 209 4,01 ,76 27 and above 54 3,90 ,81 total 1636 3,92 ,87 relaxation 20 and belowa 491 3,60 ,81 6,162 ,000 a-c; b-c; c-d 21-23b 882 3,59 ,82 24-26c 209 3,81 ,74 27 and aboved 54 3,38 ,72 total 1636 3,61 ,81 aesthetic 20 and below 491 3,52 ,88 2,063 ,103 21-23 882 3,49 ,94 24-26 209 3,66 ,86 27 and above 54 3,47 ,80 total 1636 3,52 ,91 smartphone addiction 20 and below 491 32,23 11,31 1,007 ,389 21-23 882 31,90 12,03 24-26 209 31,91 12,84 27 and above 54 29,26 12,22 total 1636 31,91 11,93 p<0,05. when the analysis results were examined, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in the smartphone addiction and psychological, physical and aesthetic sub-dimensions of leisure satisfaction according to age (p> 0.05). on the other hand, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in educational, social and relaxation sub-dimensions of leisure satisfaction according to age (p<0.05). according to table 3 it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in leisure satisfaction sub-dimensions and smartphone addiction variable according to the grade average (p>0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 229-235 232 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. analysis results of leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction according to grade average. variables grade avarage n  sd f p psychological 2.00 and below 290 3,65 ,84 ,389 ,816 2.01-2.50 418 3,65 ,89 2.51-3.00 563 3,70 ,83 3.01-3.50 311 3,67 ,89 3.51-4.00 54 3,60 ,88 total 1636 3,67 ,86 educational 2.00 and below 290 3,72 ,87 1,512 ,196 2.01-2.50 418 3,77 ,95 2.51-3.00 563 3,78 ,88 3.01-3.50 311 3,78 ,94 3.51-4.00 54 3,48 1,03 total 1636 3,76 ,91 social 2.00 and below 290 3,57 ,82 2,368 ,051 2.01-2.50 418 3,68 ,87 2.51-3.00 563 3,71 ,90 3.01-3.50 311 3,64 ,92 3.51-4.00 54 3,41 1,04 total 1636 3,66 ,89 physical 2.00 and below 290 3,88 ,84 1,350 ,249 2.01-2.50 418 3,92 ,89 2.51-3.00 563 3,95 ,86 3.01-3.50 311 3,92 ,87 3.51-4.00 54 3,68 ,96 total 1636 3,92 ,87 relaxation 2.00 and below 290 3,58 ,76 ,290 ,884 2.01-2.50 418 3,64 ,80 2.51-3.00 563 3,60 ,82 3.01-3.50 311 3,64 ,83 3.51-4.00 54 3,59 ,87 total 1636 3,61 ,81 aesthetic 2.00 and below 290 3,47 ,83 ,950 ,434 2.01-2.50 418 3,57 ,90 2.51-3.00 563 3,52 ,94 3.01-3.50 311 3,55 ,93 3.51-4.00 54 3,37 ,84 total 1636 3,52 ,91 smartphone addiction 2.00 and below 290 31,98 11,47 ,958 ,429 2.01-2.50 418 32,06 12,08 2.51-3.00 563 32,42 12,03 3.01-3.50 311 30,82 11,57 3.51-4.00 54 31,37 14,13 total 1636 31,91 11,93 p<0,05. table-4. analysis results of leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction according to the time spent on smartphone. variables time n  s.d f p difference psychological less than a hour 102 3,66 ,87 ,757 ,518 1-2 hours 471 3,72 ,85 3-4 hours 642 3,65 ,86 5 hours and more 421 3,65 ,87 total 1636 3,67 ,86 educational less than a hour 102 3,77 ,88 1,251 ,290 1-2 hours 471 3,81 ,91 3-4 hours 642 3,76 ,92 5 hours and more 421 3,69 ,92 total 1636 3,76 ,91 social less than a hour 102 3,63 ,96 ,072 ,975 1-2 hours 471 3,67 ,88 3-4 hours 642 3,65 ,88 5 hours and more 421 3,66 ,90 total 1636 3,66 ,89 physical less than a hour 102 3,97 ,92 ,152 ,929 1-2 hours 471 3,92 ,90 3-4 hours 642 3,91 ,84 5 hours and more 421 3,91 ,87 total 1636 3,92 ,87 relaxation less than a hour 102 3,61 ,87 ,811 ,488 1-2 hours 471 3,66 ,83 3-4 hours 642 3,59 ,78 5 hours and more 421 3,59 ,81 total 1636 3,61 ,81 aesthetic less than a hour 102 3,53 ,92 1,413 ,237 1-2 hours 471 3,56 ,92 3-4 hours 642 3,47 ,90 5 hours and more 421 3,57 ,90 total 1636 3,52 ,91 smartphone addiction less than a houra 102 26,19 12,29 72,984 ,000 a-c; a-d; b-c; b-d; c-d; 1-2 hoursb 471 27,52 11,26 3-4 hoursc 642 32,11 10,97 5 hours and mored 421 37,90 11,25 total 1636 31,91 11,93 p<0,05. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 229-235 233 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to table 4 it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in all subdimensions of the leisure satisfaction according to the time spent on the smartphone (p> 0.05). on the other hand, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in smartphone addiction according to the time spent on the smartphone (p<0.05). table-5. analysis results of leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction according to income perception of participants. variables perception n  ss f p difference psychological very bad 47 3,73 ,85 1,962 ,098 bad 151 3,71 ,81 moderate 834 3,70 ,85 good 523 3,58 ,89 very good 81 3,74 ,81 total 1636 3,67 ,86 educational very bad 47 3,79 ,86 1,480 ,206 bad 151 3,82 ,78 moderate 834 3,79 ,90 good 523 3,69 ,96 very good 81 3,66 ,98 total 1636 3,76 ,91 social very bad 47 3,69 ,87 ,830 ,506 bad 151 3,60 ,85 moderate 834 3,69 ,87 good 523 3,62 ,91 very good 81 3,61 ,96 total 1636 3,66 ,89 physical very bad 47 3,84 ,82 ,776 ,541 bad 151 3,96 ,73 moderate 834 3,94 ,86 good 523 3,88 ,91 very good 81 3,86 ,99 total 1636 3,92 ,87 relaxation very bada 47 3,57 ,79 3,233 ,012 d-e badb 151 3,65 ,83 moderatec 834 3,63 ,78 goodd 523 3,55 ,83 very goode 81 3,88 ,84 total 1636 3,61 ,81 aesthetic very bad 47 3,52 ,89 1,384 ,237 bad 151 3,61 ,87 moderate 834 3,50 ,90 good 523 3,50 ,92 very good 81 3,71 ,92 total 1636 3,52 ,91 smartphone addiction very bad 47 32,81 11,27 2,112 ,077 bad 151 33,85 11,10 moderate 834 31,54 11,89 good 523 31,52 11,97 very good 81 34,12 13,54 total 1636 31,91 11,93 p<0,05. when the analysis results were analyzed, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in both the psychological, educational, social, physical and aesthetic sub-dimensions of leisure satisfaction and smartphone dependence variable according to income perception (p> 0.05). on the other hand, according to the income perception, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in the relaxation sıbdimension of leisure satisfaction (p>0.05). table-6. analysis on leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction. variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 psychological1 r 1 p educational2 r ,703** 1 p ,000 social3 r ,620** ,727** 1 p ,000 ,000 physical4 r ,688** ,683** ,672** 1 p ,000 ,000 ,000 relaxation5 r ,582** ,597** ,609** ,648** 1 p ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 aesthetic6 r ,459** ,544** ,610** ,536** ,590** 1 p ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 smartphone addiction7 r -,046 -,037 ,009 -,040 ,044 ,012 1 p ,063 ,132 ,730 ,105 ,076 ,624 p<0,01**. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 229-235 234 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the results of analysis, there was no statistically significant relationship between leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction (p>0, 05). 4. discussion and conclusion in this study, the relationship between leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction in university students and whether these parameters differ according to various variables were investigated. gender is an important part of the social impact limiting the participation of individuals in recreational activities (culp, 1998) and plays an important role in participation to the leisure activities (moccia, 2000). according to the results of the analysis, it was determined that there was a significant difference in all subdimensions of leisure satisfaction according to gender. it was determined that leisure satisfaction levels of male participants were higher than female participants. in the related literature, there are studies that support this study (gökçe, 2008; hribernik and mussap, 2010; ayhan et al., 2018). gender is an important factor in participation to the leisure activities. therefore, it was thought that females were more likely to meet with obstacles in participating in the leisure activities than males. not enough supports from families to girls for their participation in recreational activities, excessive pressure on society for girls and not be given the opportunity to participate freely in activities can be thought to cause this situation (raymore et al., 1994; ayhan et al., 2017). on the other hand, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in the smartphone addiction according to gender. when the mean score of smartphone addiction was examined, females and males have a close addiction levels. it was thought that this situation may be due to the sample group. in the related literature, there are studies that support this result (perry and lee, 2007; tatli, 2015; kuyucu, 2017). it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in educational, social and relaxation subdimensions of leisure satisfaction according to age. the studies carried out by ayyıldız (2015); serdar and mungan (2016) support this study. it was thought that the reason for this situation may be due to the fact that the elderly students use their leisure more consciously and efficiently as their sense of responsibility increases. on the other hand, there are studies in the literature that do not support the same results as this study (ekinci et al., 2019). this is due to the fact that the sample groups are different. according to the grade average, there was no significant difference in all sub-dimensions of leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction levels. eccles et al. (2003) stated that leisure activities programmed at school or out of school would positively affect the frequency of school attendance, school achievement and other developmental characteristics. the result of this study may be due to the fact that the age of university students who were the sample group of the research was close to each other and they had the same level of leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction. there was a statistically significant difference in smartphone addiction variable according to the time spend on smartphone. the reason for this situation may be the usage habits brought with the excess of the applications that promote the use of smartphones were in direct proportion to the addiction. according to the income perception, there was a statistically significant difference in the relaxation sub-dimension of leisure satisfaction. individuals with high income were likely to be satisfied in terms of relaxation in leisure. according to the main findings of the study, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between leisure satisfaction and smartphone addiction levels. the reason for this result was that the individuals with high addiction spend more time on smartphones and did not spend enough time in leisure activities. as a result, it was determined that gender and grade averages of university students were not a significant variable on smartphone addiction. in addition, it was determined that there was no significant relationship between smartphone addiction and leisure satisfaction. increasing the number of indoor and outdoor facilities in order to increase the participation in leisure activities by public institutions and organizations is considered to be important in terms of reducing the smartphone addiction. in this respect, by giving recreation training by educational institutions on the importance of the concept of leisure starting from the primary education can contribute to the decrease in 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group developing a test to measure drawing a shape-schema and making a table skills of prospective teachers ibrahim yuksel1 muhammed ali savas2 ( corresponding author) 1gazi university, gazi faculty of education ankara, turkey 2akcamescit secondary school, centrum, bartin, turkey abstract in this research, it is aimed to develop a valid and reliable test to determine the drawing a shape-schema and making a table levels of prospective teachers at mathematics and science education, turkish and social sciences education and basic education departments. in this process, a comprehensive item pool has been prepared with the table of specifications regarding the gains to be measured and the highest possible number of substances has been produced for each gain. the items were prepared according to the characteristics of the target group. a pool of 18 items consisting of drawing a shape-schema and making a table subdimensions was formed from the methods used in problem solving in this study. expert opinions were taken to ensure the validity of the test. two experts in the field of science, two in the field of classroom teaching and two in the field of social sciences were interviewed. in the field of language and expression, two experts were consulted. based on the opinions of the experts, 6 items were excluded from the test. the 12-item test was applied to 13 prospective teachers who were educated at a public university, which has an important place in the field of education, and who were willing to participate voluntarily and randomly selected. arrangements have been made for a more comprehensible expression of items after the pilot implementation. after the pilot test, the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the 10-item test was, 73. the duration of completion of the test questions was 60 minutes for 12 items. then, when two items were excluded from the test, the mean time was determined as 54 minutes. keywords: developing a test, drawing a shape-schema, making a table, prospective teachers. citation | ibrahim yuksel; muhammed ali savas (2019). developing a test to measure drawing a shape-schema and making a table skills of prospective teachers. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 176-182. history: received: 23 november 2018 revised: 21 december 2018 accepted: 28 january 2019 published: 5 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.176.182&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/401 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5686-9344 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9689-3768 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/401 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5686-9344 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9689-3768 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/401 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5686-9344 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9689-3768 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/401 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5686-9344 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9689-3768 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 176-182 177 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 177 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 178 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 180 4. conclusion, discussion and suggestions .................................................................................................................................. 181 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 182 1. introduction in today's information age, rapid changes in science and technology affect the expectations and needs of the society. this situation requires constant change and development of individuals. in light of this, the main objective of the countries is to raise individuals who are physically, mentally, emotionally and socially healthy, self-confident and who have problem-solving skills (aksut, 2015). many problem solving strategies are mentioned in sources (tertemiz and cakmak, 2001; sulak, 2005). as a result of scanning, the seven most common problem solving strategies were found: 1-) making a systematic list 2-) drawing a shape-schema 3-) making a table 4) writing a mathematical sentence 5-) reasoning 6-) regression 7-) prediction-control (kilic, 2009). in this research, we used drawing a shape-schema and making a table strategy and we can explain these strategies as follows. 1. drawing a shape-schema: a figure, diagram or graphic that is appropriate to the problem, is also an important step in solving the problem; because this behavior provides great convenience to see the relationship between the given and the desired; therefore, it is the first stage for the student to develop a strategy for solution. in this strategy, real events, objects, people and situations are represented by simple figures, symbols (x, o), dots and so on (baykul, 2009). 2. making a table: sometimes when the numbers of the problem are digitized, the order of these numbers shows a certain rule. when these numbers are tabulated, the rule becomes more easily visible (tertemiz and cakmak, 2003). in this strategy, it is important to find the right title in the line and column headings of the table. using the table strategy may be reading or completing a given table, interpreting the table with questions, collecting information and organizing them in the table (sulak, 2005). it's necessary to use problem solving skills well against problems encountered in daily life. in this sense, activities can be done in many areas related to drawing a shape-schema and making a table. in this study, we used the science concepts in daily life. geometric-mechanical games and verbal games from mind games have an important role in the development of our problem solving skills. one of the tools that can be used for educational purposes and which can influence the thinking skills of the learners such as problem solving (ott and pozzi, 2012) and general school success (bottino et al., 2013) is the mind games. mind games require individuals to use some strategies and logical problem solving skills in solving problems (alessi and trollip, 2001). with the development of problem solving skills, the individual will be able to develop solutions, gain self-confidence and time management. to recognize and develop the intelligence potential, to develop different and original strategies in the face of the problem, to make fast and accurate decisions, to develop a systematic thinking structure, to learn individual and team work and to improve the skills to work in the competitive environment are purposed with geometric-mechanical games and verbal games (board of education and discipline (boead), 2013). however, these developments are faster in primary and secondary school years. therefore, the opinions of prospective teachers in primary and secondary schools are important. to measure science teaching and classroom teaching prospective teachers' levels between drawing a shape-schema and making a table in geometric-mechanical games and verbal games in terms of the science subjects used in daily life is important for the development of the students who will be educated in the future. in geometric-mechanical games and verbal games, it is necessary to choose cascading curriculum due to the difference of students' level of development. cascading curriculum is a program showing a progressive relationship from simple to complex, from easy to difficult, from concrete to abstract, from known to unknown, from close to far. these steps follow a path from the understanding of basic knowledge and skills to the acquisition of high-level thinking skills (boead, 2013). the cascading curriculum includes three basic steps: 1st step-beginning level: it includes learning the rules of the games, to gain basic knowledge and skills, to play beginner games and to solve puzzles. 2nd step-intermediate level: it involves making logical inferences, starting from the right place in the puzzles, applying basic strategies in strategy games, playing mid-level games and solving puzzles. 3rd step-advanced level: it involves high level knowledge and skills such as analyzing, putting forward original strategies, evaluating, generalizing. playing advanced games, solving puzzles and benefiting from the experiences of others are in this stage (boead, 2013). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 176-182 178 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. units in the program were designed for different game types. level/games beginning level intermediate level advanced level geometric – mechanical games 1. games that are nonsystematic and can be solved with few trial and error. 1. games that can be solved with few and systematic or intuitive trial and error. 2. games that can be solved by finding a single key idea. 1. games that can be solved with numerous and systematic or intuitive trial and error. 2. games that can be solved by using more than one key ideas. verbal games 1. games in which progress is made by listing all possibilities. 1. games in which words appropriate to the rule are derived by using vocabulary. 2. games that game-specific basic strategies are used. 1. games in which researches based on intelligent predictions to reach a solution are made. 2. games that the player developed and used game-specific strategy. source: boead (2013). the focus of the program is on developing students' problem solving, communication and reasoning, selfregulation and psychomotor skills and affective characteristics. the following objectives should be considered in the implementation of games for the development of problem solving skills: 1. developing the ability to question the nature of the problem to fully understand the problems, 2. developing various problem solving methods and strategies by using different mind games, 3. developing students' self-confidence through experience in problem solving, 4. developing fast and effective decision-making skills, 5. developing a questioning and skeptical approach to solve problems, 6. helping to recognize their individual strengths and weaknesses (boead, 2013). problem statement: the general problem statement of this research can be expressed as “development of a test to determine the drawing a shape-schema and making a table levels of prospective teachers at mathematics and science education, turkish and social sciences education and basic education departments”. purpose of the study: in this research, it is aimed to develop a valid and reliable test to determine the drawing a shape-schema and making a table levels of prospective teachers at mathematics and science education, turkish and social sciences education and basic education departments. considering that the people who will teach drawing a shape-schema and making a table skills to the students are the teachers, it is necessary that prospective teachers should have these skills firstly. however, there has not been a sufficient study on the drawing a shape-schema and making a table skills of prospective teachers in our country. in this context, in this research it is aimed to determine the levels of prospective teachers studying in different departments. 2. method this research was carried out with 111 randomly selected and volunteer prospective teachers studying at the faculty of education of a state university, which has an important place in the education in turkey. there is not enough study to measure the drawing a shape-schema and making a table skills of prospective teachers in mathematics and science education, turkish and social sciences education and basic education departments. "success test development stages rubric" prepared by the researchers was used to obtain the data. while preparing this rubric, literature review was made and success test development stages were determined as follows. objective determination and literature review: while preparing a test of achievement, at first the purpose of the test was determined and a literature review of the test was conducted. table of specifications: table of specifications provides guidance in ensuring the scope validity of the measuring instrument. in order to show clearly which cognitive areas the questions in the item pool are, a table of specifications has been formed. item pool (question generation): the process of creating a draft success test has started after the literature review. the most important stage of the success test preparation process is generating questions. in this process, a comprehensive item pool has been prepared with the table of specifications regarding the gains to be measured and the highest possible numbers of substances have been produced for each gain. the items were prepared according to the characteristics of the target group. in order to measure these skills, a pool of 18 items consisting of drawing a shape/schema and making a table sub-dimensions was formed from the methods used in problem solving in this study. after the items were created, the test was submitted to expert opinions for the studies of the scope validity (alpar, 2012). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 176-182 179 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group expert opinions and studies of the scope validity: after the preparation of the item pool, it was reviewed by the experts in terms of its scope, scientific, language and expression and the technical characteristics of the items. for this purpose, there were 6 field experts, 2 language experts and 1 measurement and evaluation expert among the experts (metin, 2014). after the item pool the content validity of the written items was determined. one of the ways of demonstrating the scope validity, which is an indication that the items in the test can reveal the purposed features, is to get expert opinion (buyukozturk, 2010). expert opinions were taken to ensure the validity of the test. two experts in the field of science, two in the field of classroom teaching and two in the field of social sciences were interviewed. in the field of language and expression, two experts were consulted. according to the opinions of the experts, changes were made by the researchers in some items. drawing a shape-schema (square and t tangram) making a table (anagram and word hunt) test (dsmtt) was prepared for pilot application. pilot application: the scope validity studies carried out after the expert opinions will be completed by the extraction or correction of some items and addition of new items. after this point, the draft success test should be applied to a group with similar characteristics to the main group (gorard, 2010). there are different opinions regarding the number of groups to be selected for the pilot application in the literature. according to these views, it changes 5 or 10 times the number of items. based on the opinions of the experts, 6 items were excluded from the test. the 12-item test was applied to 13 prospective teachers who were educated at a public university, which has an important place in the field of education, and who were willing to participate voluntarily and who were randomly selected. arrangements have been made for a more comprehensible expression of items after the pilot implementation. item analyzes: the item discrimination and item difficulty indexes of each item were calculated and reported within the scope of item analyzes. the fact that the item discrimination and item difficulty indexes of each item are between the values in the literature indicates that the test is a valid test. the item discrimination index shows the power of separating individuals who know and don't know the answer of the item. statistically, it is a correlation between the total test scores and item scores, and the index ranges from -1 to +1. the negativity of this value is a proof that the item is discriminating the individuals reversely and negative items cannot be included in the test (fan and sun, 2013). in the literature, it is stated that this value should be 0.30 and above (hinkle et al., 2003). the item difficulty index is the ratio of the number of correct respondents for an item to total number of people participating in the test. in the achievement tests, it is recommended that the difficulty value of the item be homogeneous between 0.20 and 0.80 (christensen et al., 2015). reliability analysis: the reliability must be tested after completing the validity of the achievement test. salkind (2015) defined reliability as a measure of how consistent the measurements of a test or any tool used to make a measurement. there are many ways to calculate the reliability value that we can call internal consistency of the test. these are calculated with cronbach alpha coefficient (salkind, 2015). the dsmtt was controlled by scoring rubrics as indicated in tables 2, 3, 4 and 5. table-2. square tangram scoring rubric. scores scoring criteria 4 drawings in which 7 parts are shown and the drawing is complete and the relationship between the parts is proportionally correct 3 drawings in which 5 or 6 parts are shown and the whole drawing is incomplete because of the missing parts and the relationship between parts is proportionally correct 2 drawings in which 4 or less parts are shown and the whole drawing is incomplete because of the missing parts and the relationship between the parts is proportionally correct 1 drawings in which the drawing is made as a whole without any parts attached to the outer frame 0 no drawings or holistic drawings unsuitable for the outer frame table-3. t tangram scoring rubric. scores scoring criteria 4 drawings in which 4 parts are shown and the whole drawing is complete and the relationship between the parts is proportionally correct 3 drawings in which 3 parts are shown and the whole drawing is incomplete because of the missing parts and the relationship between the parts is proportionally correct 2 drawings in which 2 or less parts are shown and the whole drawing is incomplete because of the missing parts and the relationship between the parts is proportionally correct 1 drawings in which the drawing is made as a whole without any parts attached to the outer frame 0 no drawings or holistic drawings unsuitable for the outer frame asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 176-182 180 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. word hunt scoring rubric. scores scoring criteria 4 tables in which all given words are complete and the password sentence is correct 3 tables in which all given words are complete and the password sentence is incorrect tables in which at least half of all given words are correct and password sentence is correct 2 tables in which at least half of all given words are correct and password sentence is incorrect 1 tables in which at least a quarter of all given words are correct and password sentence is incorrect 0 no tables tables in which nearly a quarter of all given words are correct and password sentence is incorrect table-5. anagram scoring rubric. scores scoring criteria 4 tables in which all given words are complete or the password sentence is correct 3 tables in which all given words are complete and the password sentence is incorrect 2 tables in which at least half of all given words are correct and password sentence is incorrect 1 tables in which at least a quarter of all given words are correct and password sentence is incorrect 0 no tables tables in which nearly a quarter of all given words are correct and password sentence is incorrect the cut-off points for the dsmtt were arranged by the researchers in table 6 according to the opinions of the experts. table-6. the cut-off points for the dsmtt. items cut-off points items cut-off points 1 4 points successful; 3 points and less failed 7 4 points successful; 3 points and less failed 2 4 points successful; 3 points and less failed 8 1 point and more successful 3 1 point and more successful 9 1 point and more successful 4 4 points successful; 3 points and less failed 10 3 points successful; 2 points and less failed 5 1 point and more successful 11 3 points successful; 2 points and less failed 6 1 point and more successful 12 1 point and more successful the research with 12-item dsmtt was conducted with 111 randomly selected prospective teachers who wish to participate as a volunteer and was studying at the education faculty of a state university in turkey which has an important place in education. the distribution of 111 prospective teachers by gender is given in table 7. table-7. distribution of prospective teachers in the study group by gender. departments woman man total f % f % f % mathematics and science education 55 49,5 10 9 65 58,5 turkish and social sciences education 23 20,7 5 4,5 28 25,2 basic education 17 15,3 1 0,9 18 14,4 2.1. data analysis spss 22.0 statistical program was used to analyze the data. the extent to which a measuring instrument can accurately measure the feature it intends to measure without mixing it in any other features is defined as validity (basol, 2013). “the extent to which the scale can accurately measure an abstract concept (factor) in the context of desired behavior” is defined as construct validity (buyukozturk, 2010). in this study, the construct validity of the dmstt test was provided by expert opinions. 3. findings 3.1. item difficulty index the findings of item difficulty index are given in table 8. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 176-182 181 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. item difficulty index. items p items p items p 1 ,79 5 ,57 9 ,51 2 ,31 6 ,56 10 ,76 3 ,56 7 ,92 11 ,66 4 ,65 8 ,77 12 ,47 as a result of the item difficulty indexes, item 2 was difficult in terms of item difficulties, items 3, 5, 6, 9 and 12 were in medium difficulty, items 1, 4, 8, 10 and 11 were easy and item 7 was very easy. 3.2. item discrimination index item discrimination index gives information about the quality of the item. it gives the degree to which the item can distinguish the low and high scores of the test alone. the correlation between item scores and test scores is obtained by calculating the correlation coefficient. it's the level of a test item and distractings to distinguish between the correct respondents and incorrect respondents. that is, the criterion used to determine whether an item distinguishes students with high levels of achievement in the group from the ones with low levels of achievements. the questions in a test are expected to have high discriminative powers. items with very low discriminative power must be removed from the test. it's also indicated that relatively easy and difficult items should be included in the tests. item discrimination shows the extent to which the item distinguishes the individuals with regard to the measured feature (buyukozturk et al., 2014). the findings of the dsmtt test item discrimination index are given in table 9. table-9. item discrimination index. items rjx items rjx items rjx 1 ,33 5 ,87 9 ,63 2 ,40 6 ,87 10 ,40 3 ,83 7 ,17 11 ,53 4 ,70 8 ,57 12 ,17 when table 9 was examined, it was determined that the discriminant values of items 7 and 12 in the test were low. for this reason, items 7 and 12 were excluded from the test. the validity and reliability calculations of the test were made by an expert. the cronbach alpha coefficient was used to estimate the reliability of the test (buyukozturk, 2010). cronbach's alpha coefficients of the test, the items of which shows high correlations with each other, will be high (tezbasaran, 2008). the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the 10-item test after the pilot test was ,73. the duration of completion of the test questions was 60 minutes for 12 items. then, when two items were excluded from the test, the mean time was determined as 54 minutes. 4. conclusion, discussion and suggestions there may be a single α value determined for each item or an average α value for all items in the scale. the α value obtained for all items indicates the total reliability of the test and the overall acceptance is that this value should be 0,7 and above. cronbach alpha coefficient values between 0,7 and 0,9 are interpreted to be good and are included in the literature (george and mallery, 2003). as a result of the item difficulty indexes, item 2 was difficult in terms of item difficulties, items 3, 5, 6, 9 and 12 were in medium difficulty, items 1, 4, 8, 10 and 11 were easy and item 7 was very easy. when the test was examined, it was determined that the discriminative values of items 7 and 12 in the test were low. for this reason, items 7 and 12 were excluded from the test. the duration of completion of the test questions was determined as 60 minutes for 12 items. a valid and reliable measurement tool has been developed with expert opinions and statistical results. then, when two items were excluded from the test, the mean time was 54 minutes. genç and kalafat (2007) determined that prospective teachers' problem solving skills differed significantly according to the classes and departments they studied. in this study, a reliable and valid measurement tool has been developed to measure the drawing a shape/schema drawing and making a table skills of prospective teachers in mathematics and science education, turkish and social sciences education and basic education departments. in brief, it is seen in the studies and teaching programs that the importance of drawing a shape/schema and making a table in educational activities, teaching activities and daily life increases day by day. for this reason, it is accepted that drawing a shape/schema and making a table is important in problem solving for both asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 176-182 182 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group instructors and teacher candidates. as a result of the findings of the study, the following suggestions can be made to the researchers who wish to work in this field in the future; by selecting a larger sample group, shape/schema and making a table skills of prospective teachers in all departments of education faculties can be examined in terms of different variables. experimental studies including teaching methods and activities that will improve prospective teachers' drawing a shape/schema and making a table skills can be done. when prospective teachers are trained, information about drawing a shape/schema and making a table can be given by adding to the course curriculum. in-service training can be given to teachers on drawing a shape/schema and making a table skills. references aksut, p., 2015. investigation of the effects of activity based science teaching practices on problem solving skills of 5 -6 year old preschool children. phd thesis. abant i̇zzet baysal university / institute of educational sciences. alessi, s.m. and s.r. trollip, 2001. multimedia for learning. 3rd edn., boston, ma: allyn and bacon. alpar, r., 2012. applied statistics and validity-reliability. ankara: detay publishing. basol, g., 2013. measurement and evaluation in education. ankara: pegem academy publishing. baykul, y., 2009. teaching mathematics in primary education (grades 6-8). ankara: pegem academy. board of education and discipline (boead), 2013. secondary school and imam hatip secondary school mind games. available from http://teyd.org.tr/pdf/zekaoyunlari.pdf. boead, 2013. secondary school and imam hatip secondary school mind games. available from http://teyd.org.tr/pdf/zekaoyunlari.pdf. bottino, r.m., m. ott and m. tavella, 2013. children’s performance with digital mind games and evidence for learning behaviour. information systems, e-learning, and knowledge management research. berlin heidelberg: springer. pp: 235-243. buyukozturk, s., 2010. manual of data analysis for social sciences. ankara: pegem academy publishing. buyukozturk, s., e.k. cakmak, o.e. akgun, s. karadeniz and f. demirel, 2014. scientific research methods. ankara: pegem academy. christensen, l.b., r.b. johnson and l.a. turner, 2015. research methods pattern and analysis. a. aypay (translation ed.). ankara: anı publishing. fan, x. and s. sun, 2013. item response theory. t. teo (edt.), in handbook of quantitative methods for educational research. the netherlands: sense publishers. genç, s. and t. kalafat, 2007. the research on evaluation of prospective teachers’ democratic attitudes and problem solving skills according as different variables. pamukkale university education faculty journal, 2(22): 10-22. george, d. and p. mallery, 2003. spss for windows step by step: a simple guide and reference. 11.0 update (4th edn). boston: allyn & bacon. gorard, s., 2010. quantitative methods in educational research: the role of numbers made easy. london: bloomsbury publishing. hinkle, d.e., w. wiersma and s.g. jurs, 2003. applied statistic for the behavioral sciences. boston: houghton mifflin company. kilic, c., 2009. the solutions used by the fifth grade students in the solution of mathematical problems. anadolu university, institute of educational sciences, elementary education department, ph.d. thesis, eskişehir. metin, m., 2014. quantitative data collection tools. m. metin (edt.) from theory to practice in scientific research methods in education. ankara: pegem academy. ott, m. and f. pozzi, 2012. digital games as creativity enablers for children. behaviour & information technology, 31(10): 10111019.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2010.526148. salkind, n.j., 2015. statistics for those who hate statistics. a. çuhadaroğlu (trans. edt.). ankara: anı publishing. sulak, s., 2005. the effect of problem solving strategies on problem solving success in primary mathematics lesson. selcuk university, institute of social sciences, department of primary education, master thesis, konya. tertemiz, n. and m. cakmak, 2001. teachers' views on the problem solving method in elementary mathematics i. research presentation, x. national congress of educational sciences abant i̇zzet baysal university, faculty of education. june 7-8. bolu. tertemiz, n. and m. cakmak, 2003. problem solving, elementary 1st level math lesson examples. ankara: gunduz education and publishing. tezbasaran, a.a., 2008. likert type scale preparation guide (third version). mersin. available from http://www.academia.edu/1288035/likert_tipi_strength_preparation_guide [accessed may 3, 2017]. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://teyd.org.tr/pdf/zekaoyunlari.pdf http://teyd.org.tr/pdf/zekaoyunlari.pdf http://www.academia.edu/1288035/likert_tipi_strength_preparation_guide 474 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 474-478, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.474.478 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the effects of sports education on university students' stress coping strategies erol dogan ondokuz mayis university, faculty of sports science, samsun, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of sports education on university students' strategies to cope with stress. 150 sports sciences and 150 education faculty students participated in the study. “ways of coping inventory” scale was used as data collection tool in the study. mann whitney u test was performed in statistical processes. in terms of the faculty variable, the scores of the sports science faculty students who received social sports education in the subdimension of “self-confident approach” and “optimistic approach” were found higher than the students who did not receive sports education (p <0.05).in addition, it was determined that the students of the education faculty who did not receive sports education had high scores from the sports science students who received sports education under the sub-dimension of “self-confident approach” and “social support seeking approach” (p <0.05). according to gender, it was determined that the scores that men got from the self-confident and optimistic approach subdimensions were statistically higher than those of women (p <0.01). result: it is concluded that sports education at university level has a positive effect on students' strategies to cope with stress. it can be said that taking sports education is effective in increasing self-confident and optimistic approach and accordingly developing self-confidence. it is recommended that feelings of selfconfidence of faculty students who do not have sports education should be raised by giving courses and seminars on sports. keywords: university student, sports education, stress, success, social sports, positive effect. citation | erol dogan (2020). investigation of the effects of sports education on university students' stress coping strategies. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 474-478. history: received: 27 april 2020 revised: 7 june 2020 accepted: 3 july 2020 published: 15 july 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 475 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 475 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 476 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 477 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 477 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.474.478&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1889 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9986-0366 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1889 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9986-0366 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1889 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9986-0366 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 474-478 475 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature with the end of their education life, students may encounter a situation where they can be uncertain for their future. this can affect students' stress and anxiety levels. therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the effects of sports education on university students' strategies to cope with stress. the emergence of a positive impact on university students' strategies to cope with stress by sports education can lead students who do not receive sports education to do sports. 1. introduction sport is defined as a competitive solidarity, and cultural phenomenon that develops the capabilities acquired while transforming the natural environment of the individual into the human environment, with or without tools under certain rules, integrates with the socializing society that he / she does by personally or collectively within the scope of his leisure activity or by taking his full time (erdal, 1982; inal, 2003). considering the increasing importance of the sport due to its diversity and functions, the science of psychology has been used to increase efficiency, and through the emerging sport psychology, all positive or negative psychological processes that may affect the performance of the athlete have been approached. although the harmful effects of stress are well known, stress levels are high in the general population (klaperski, von dawans, heinrichs, & ve fuchs, 2014). current stimuli are defined as a process that turns stress into objective perceptions based on cognitive evaluations of individuals, regardless of whether they are actually stressors / stressful factors. in this sense, when individuals consider stimuli from the outside world as compelling for themselves, they attempt to cope with them. these attempts include cognitive or behavioral efforts to reduce or control the effect of the internal and external compulsion of the stimuli faced by the individual (erdal, arslan, saygın, & ozyeşil, 2009). the positive effect of sports in reducing stress level has been revealed in researches (imamoğlu, tutkun, & sen, 2018). according to some sources, the effort that the individual spends beyond her physical and psychological limits due to the negative conditions coming from the physical and social environment is called stress (cuceloğlu, 1996). the stress that everybody talks about today is a fact of life. researches show that everyone's definition of stress is according to him (deniz & yimaz, 2006; sahin, 1998). individuals face many economic and environmental stress situations caused by the family in their daily lives. individuals experience many economic, family-related and environmental stress situations in their daily lives. university students also have issues to deal with, such as adaptation issues, housing, academic issues, and friendship relationships. students can take steps towards the solution of these problems or choose the way to escape from these problems (deniz & yimaz, 2006). stress, unrealistic and high levels of expectations of families and coaches in the environment of young athletes cause athletes' stress to rise to high levels. in addition, the fact that young people are below the level of sports they do and their high levels of performance impairment are causing problems for young athletes to understand and cope with internal stress (akandere, 2003; turkay & sökmen, 2014). today, people are under constant pressure and stress. especially young people's need to be more active, innovation and change causes various troubles and problems (uzun, imamoğlu, yamaner, deryahanoğlu, & yamaner, 2017). stress damages the physical energies of the athletes, their gains and victories, their pleasure and fun. stress can harm athletes' self-confidence by making them think they are not skilled. psychological stress can hurt athletes to demonstrate the skills they have achieved by working for years and prevent athletes from having flow experience. stress can lead to injury to athletes and lead them to early retirement. stress is a latent and insidious disease. this may reflect itself in overtraining (mental, emotional, social and physical burnout) (altungül & devecioğlu, 2006; turkay & sökmen, 2014). coping with stress is “the conscious effort of the individual to manage the intensity and demands of the event that is perceived as stressful. it is also the development of the individual’s resources, self-control and self-confidence to manage and reduce the perceived stress intensity” (lazarus, 1999). time management is often a recommended method to deal with stress. if the person manages his work time well, he can save himself from daily pressures. generally, aerobic exercises are more effective in decreasing the stress level (akyol & imamoğlu, 2018). in the last years, a lot of research has been done to control and manage the feeling of people (goodman, kashdan, & i̇mamoğlu, 2020). in a study by yamaner, cplak, and imamoğlu (2020) found sports education has a positive effect on university students' optimal performance. with the end of their education life, students may encounter a situation where they can be uncertain for their future. this can affect students' stress and anxiety levels. therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the effects of sports education on university students' strategies to cope with stress. 2. method 2.1. participants 300 students participated in the study, including 150 education faculty (age; 22.02 ± 1.64 years) and 150 yaşar doğu sports sciences faculty (22.47 ± 1.56 years) students studying at ondokuz mayıs university. 2.2. data collection tools descriptive characteristics form: the descriptive property form is composed of questions about gender, age and type of education in all the participants. stress coping strategies scale (scss): adaptation study of the scale used in this study and originally developed by folkman and lazarus with the original name of “ways of coping inventory “to turkish society was made by sahin and durak. the scores of likert type “scss” are obtained between 0-3 (0 = 0%, 1 = 30%, 2 = 70%, and 3 = 100%) and separate scores are obtained from the subscales. in scoring the scale, items 1 and 9 are scored reversely. şahin and durak determined that five factors were formed in the reliability studies of the scale of “pbl” and that the cronbach alpha coefficients of these factors ranged between 0.47 and 0.80. the researchers determined that the scale's validity and reliability were sufficient and it could be used to measure strategies to cope with stress as a result of studies in which the relations of the scale were determined with psychological symptoms, various personality dimensions, situational variables and contrast group comparisons were made. in our study, the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 474-478 476 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group cronbach alpha coefficient was found to be 0.73. scale factors and explanations about the factors are as follows (sahin & durak, 1995): 1. self-confident approach (sca): to evaluate the importance of the problem and solution options, to be cautious and planned in the solution, to make active, logical and conscious efforts to change the situation (8, 10, 14, 16, 20, 23, and 26). 2. lack of self confidence approach (losca): in the face of events or problems, most of the energy is not to solve the problem, but to blame himself, find himself weak, and direct himself to see himself as the source of the problem (3, 7, 11, 19, 22, 25, 27, and 28). 3. optimistic approach (oa): it is a more tolerant and optimistic approach to events and a more calm and realistic assessment of problems (2, 4, 6, 12, 18). 4. submissive / helpless approach (s/ha): it means feeling helpless with a fatalistic approach and looking for a solution in supernatural forces (5, 13, 15, 17, 21, and 24). 5. social support seeking approach (sssa): sharing their problems with someone else is expressed as seeking help from others for solution (1, 9, 29, and 30). 2.3. statistical analysis the statistical analysis of the data obtained in the research was made using the spss 23.00 package program. the kolmogorov smirnov test was used to check whether the data showed normal distribution. comparison between the two groups was made by mann whitney u since it was determined that the data did not show normal distribution. 3. findings the ages of the students participated in this study were determined as 22.47 years for the faculty of sports sciences and 22.02 years for the students of the faculty of education. table-1. comparison of scss sub-dimension scores by faculties (sports education n=150, education faculty (non-sports education) n=150). parameter status mean std d. median min max z self-confident approach (sca) non-sports education 13.89 3.53 14 5 21 -2,107* sports education 14,69 3,61 15 6 21 lack of self confidence approach (losca) non-sports education 10,71 4,31 10 1 22 -3,971** sports education 8,62 4,20 9 0 20 optimistic approach (oa) non-sports education 8,69 2,74 9 2 15 -2,016* sports education 9,26 2,54 9 1 15 submissive / helpless approach (s/ha): non-sports education 6,15 3,04 6 0 15 -0,627 sports education 6,39 2,96 6 0 14 social support seeking approach (sssa) non-sports education 7,75 2,18 8 0 12 -2,423* sports education 7,17 2,00 7 0 11 note: *p<0.05 and p<0.001. in table 1, the differences obtained from the sub-dimensions of the scss scale are given in terms of the faculty variable. in terms of the faculty variable, significant differences were found in the sub-dimensions of the scale's selfconfident and lack of self-confidence approaches, optimistic approach and social support seeking approach (p <0.001). table-2. comparison of scss sub-dimension scores by gender. parameter gender n mean std d. med. min. max. z self-confident approach (sca) male 121 15,29 3,55 15 6 21 -3,993** female 179 13,61 3,46 14 5 21 lack of self confidence approach (losca) male 121 8,50 4,21 9 0 20 -3,504** female 179 10,42 4,32 10 1 22 optimistic approach (oa) male 121 9,53 2,66 10 1 15 -3,269** female 179 8,60 2,59 9 2 15 submissive / helpless approach (s/ha): male 121 6,41 3,05 6 0 14 -0,701 female 179 6,18 2,97 6 0 15 social support seeking approach (sssa) male 121 7,09 2,14 7 0 11 -2,374* female 179 7,70 2,05 8 1 12 note: *p<0.05 and p<0.001. in table 2, the differences obtained from the subscales of the scss scale are given in terms of gender variable. it was determined that the scores of men in the sca and oa sub-dimensions were statistically higher than women (p <0.01). when the losca scores were analyzed, it was seen that women had higher scores than men (p <0.01). when the sssa sub-dimension was examined, it was found that women had higher scores than men (p <0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 474-478 477 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion in our study, the scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of the scss scale were examined according to the faculty variable in which the education was conducted. in the four sub-dimensions of the scale, significant differences were found between the students of the sports science faculty (ssf) who received sports education and the students of the faculty of education (ef) who did not receive sports education. it has been determined that the students who are studying in the ssf have higher scores from the sca sub-dimension and the oa sub-dimension than the students who are studying in ef. it was determined that the scores of students studying in ef from the losca subscale were statistically significantly higher than ssf students (p <0.01). when sssa subscale scores were compared between two faculties, ef students had higher scores than ssf students (p <0.05). it can be thought that there may be a growing awareness depending on the sports science students doing sports. in addition, athletes' generating strategies to win during the match may likewise affect the occurrence of difference. ciçek, imamoğlu, yamaner, and türk (2017) stated that 3-month exercise decreases depression level in women. turkay and sökmen (2014) stated in the study where they investigated students' level of coping with stress that the scores of athletes in the school of physical education and sports were higher than the middle level. this situation, which occurs in athletes, is explained by the ability to actively fight stress sources. in another study, it was stated that the satisfaction of people with their external appearance may cause them to think positively (yamak, imamoğlu, islamoğlu, & cebi, 2018). it is claimed that people who do sports are much more friendly, extroverted , enough to work harder, more patient, better in establishing social relations, better adapting to a new position and more psychologically balanced personality than non-sports individuals (yamak & imamoğlu, 2019). the outlook of the students who have received sports training is probably better than those who have not received sports training. in another study, it was accepted that the students who do sports have good leadership qualities (cetinkaya & i̇mamoğlu, 2018). in this study, it was determined that the students who are studying in ef have higher scores from the losca sub-dimension than ssf students. it is understood that ef students are more inclined not to solve the problem in the face of events or problems, but to blame themselves, find themselves weak, and see themselves as the source of the problem than ssf students. with the end of the education life, in this process that will start business life, it is thought that graduation fields of people will affect their employment. it can be said that the situations related to job opportunities of the education faculty students make up this difference. from this result, it is understood that ssf students evaluate the importance and solution options of more problems and are more cautious and planned in the solution and they make active, logical and conscious efforts to change the situation compared to ef students. in addition, the fact that ssf students get higher scores in oa dimension compared to ef students shows that ssf students are more tolerant and optimistic about the events and evaluate the problems more calmly and realistically. arslan, gullu, and tual (2011) stated that they did not find a significant difference between depression scores of female students who do sports and female students who do not do sports. however, they stated that female students who do not do sports have higher depression scores. sports education can make positive changes in personality traits (koca, imamoğlu, & imamoğlu, 2018). it has also been reported that stress levels decrease in individuals who do sports (deryahanoğlu, i̇mamoğlu, yamaner, & uzun, 2016). exercise has been found to improve the quality of life of university students (imamoğlu., 2020). people develop feelings and attitudes about their bodies according to the ideal measures offered to them. failure to take the desired measures may cause negativity in the self-assessment of individuals (yamak, imamoğlu, & cebi, 2016). in this study, when sssa subscale scores were compared between two faculties, it was seen that ef students had higher scores than ssf students. this result shows that students studying at ef share their problems with someone else more than ssf students and they want more help from others for solution. yamaç (2009) stated that the social support levels that female students receive from family, friends and private individuals are significantly higher than male students. it can be said that this difference may affect the difference between genders. durna (2006) and uluruh (2008) stated that there is no definitive finding that girls and boys show completely different styles of coping with stress. in this study, it was determined that men’s sca and oa scores were higher than women by gender. from this finding, it is understood that men make more active and conscious efforts to evaluate the importance of the problem and solution options and to change the situation compared to women, the fact that men's oa scores are higher than women shows that men evaluate events more tolerantly, calmly and realistically than women. again in this study, it was determined that women had higher losca score than men. this result can be interpreted as that women blame themselves more for problems than men and use their energy less in solving the problem. again, the fact that women had higher sssa scores than men; brings to mind that women share their problems with someone else and ask for help. it is concluded that sports education at university level has a positive effect on students' strategies to cope with stress. it can be said that taking sports education is effective in increasing self-confidence and optimistic approach and accordingly developing self-reliance. it is concluded that self-confidence and lack of self-confidence, optimistic approach and social support seeking approach change among university seniors among men and women by gender. it is recommended that faculty students who do not have sports education should be raised their feelings of selfconfidence by giving courses and seminars on sports. references akandere, m. 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(2020). investigation of optimal performance emotional status in sports students. turkish studies, 15(2), 1515-1522. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000750 41 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 41-46, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.41.46 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group challenges in transforming assessments for 21st century skills development: lecturers’ perspective thiruchelvi k murugiah sunway college ipoh, school of business, sunway college, malaysia. abstract the primary purpose of an assessment in pedagogy is to provide data and revise planned instructions. as the producers of skilled labour for the private sector, private higher education institutions (pheis), need to facilitate the transformation of assessments focused on developing 21st century skills competencies in students. in preparing for industry 4.0, the private sector in malaysia is concerned about fresh graduates not being adequately skilled for the workplace. the gap can lead to unemployment and a shortage in skilled labour. this research is designed to understand the challenges in transforming assessments to address the 21st century skills gap. based on an epistemological belief through a social constructivist interpretive framework, a case study approach is used to co-construct the reality shaped by the course lecturers’ experiences. based on purposeful sampling, two (2) business lecturers with over five (5) years of teaching experience, and familiar with the diploma standards were selected from the school of business. data was collected using semi-structured interviews, document reviews and audiovisual materials. a data analysis strategy of reducing codes to themes and identifying patterned regularities was used to produce a written report. the findings reveal the challenges faced by lecturers in transforming assessments to develop 21st century skills. the recommendation is for assessments to be transformed based on private sector skill needs to keep up with the changing work skills demands of industry 4.0. continuous initiatives in shared value partnerships with the private sector will ensure that the development of 21cs remains relevant. keywords: pre-university business lecturers, 21st century skills, private sector partnership, transforming assessments. citation | thiruchelvi k murugiah (2020). challenges in transforming assessments for 21st century skills development: lecturers’ perspective. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 41-46. history: received: 30 october 2019 revised: 5 december 2019 accepted: 9 january 2020 published: 4 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 42 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 42 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 44 4. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 44 5. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 45 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 46 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.41.46&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1281 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6015-4234 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1281 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6015-4234 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1281 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6015-4234 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 41-46 42 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the primary purpose of an assessment in pedagogy is to provide data and revise planned instructions. 1. introduction in the global transformation towards sustainable development goals 2030 (sdg 2030) sustainable development goal 4.7 in education is to ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development. the shift required in education for sustainable development is to achieve the need for 21st century skills (21cs) competencies in problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking and communication. a recent study showed that assessments designed to develop 21cs are in its early stages of transformation and that most assessments are summative (care et al., 2019). despite an increase in the visibility of assessment concepts and objectives across the world, overall assessment systems have remained summative for the purpose of certification, education progress and accountability (care et al., 2019). founder, director and author of professional teacher development “teachthought”, terry (2019) stated that transforming assessments will require instructors to be mindful in designing assessments to reflect the real world. terry (2019) also stated that assessments should not be overvalued in terms of measuring human potential, but instead inform the learning process from curriculum mapping, instructional and assessment design, to measure learning for future work needs in industry 4.0. 2. literature review 2.1. instructor competencies in transforming assessments competent instructors are known to be resourceful with the ability to help students think. the purpose of learning is reflected in the education theories of freud, lewin and tolman, where instructors know how to intervene where students are more concern about avoiding failure than achieving success (atkinson, 1964). an exploratory study by a lecturer on transforming assessments claimed that to provide quality continuous assessments figure 1, depended on the attributes of the instructor (sharma, 2017). figure-1. first term assessment -continuous assessment (sharma, 2017). in advancing the development of transforming assessments, education psychologists john dewey (1986 1952), carl rogers (1902 1987) and david kolb (1939 present) established learning theories focused on “learning through experience” that emphasize on learning by doing. these learning theories are also relevant in the design of continuous assessments specifically in the development of 21cs. the theories provide that learning is a process to create knowledge resulting from the transformation of experience where students who are engaged will develop self-regulated learning. kolb’s experiential learning model (elm) figure 2, describes the learning spiral based on concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. the learning theories continue to be useful for instructors to apply in transforming assessments for 21cs development. instructors are also reminded of the classical theory of achievement motivation, in that students’ interpret achievement to learning and career readiness based on grades and performance as a lack or an abundance of failure (atkinson, 1964). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 41-46 43 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-2. kolb's learning styles model and experiential learning theory. source: experiential learning: experiences as the source of learning and development (1984). 2.2. conceptual framework: creating value in transforming assessments abdul (2017) observed that the education reformation initiatives in malaysia did not address the possibility that the knowledge learned can become obsolete by the time students graduate. in addressing a solution, parameswaran and suresh (2015) concluded that the phei education system as a whole will need to be inclusive by inviting private sector participation as the demand for 21cs competencies become more industry specific. for learning to remain relevant it necessitates conceptualising the value chain in education figure 3. the value chain is a business management concept in identifying the activities to be carried out to create value for its customers (porter et al., 2012). the goal of a value chain is to create competitive advantage for the businesses by delivering the most value for the least cost (carla, 2019). creating the value chain is necessary to develop mutually beneficial objectives between the pheis and the private sector. partnerships reflective of the value chain will enable the teaching and learning to meet the changing 21cs needs in industry 4.0. shared value partnerships will ensure continuous development in transforming assessments, aligned to the changing work skill needs of the private sector. in recognising the teachers’ role as change catalysts, the ministry of education (moe) has called on teachers to embrace these challenges, with a reminder that transformation begins in the classroom. in the malaysian education blue print (2015 – 2025) the theme “higher education 4.0: knowledge, industry, humanity” addresses industry 4.0 impact on jobs, industry and humanity (rajaendram, 2018). the call was for stakeholders to prepare to evolve and adapt to the demands of industry 4.0 by offering authentic learning experiences that simulate realworld challenges. new learning approaches in heutagogy, cybergogy and paragogy along with alternative forms of assessments are needed in the transformation (rajaendram, 2018). figure-3. conceptual framework: value chain for transforming assessments. 2.3. challenges in transforming assessments it is important to prepare for industry 4.0, and to address the concern by the private sector in malaysia that fresh graduates are not skilled for the workplace. the gap can lead to unemployment and a shortage in skilled labour in the future. an article on 21cs development challenges suggested that due to the absence of clarity there was inconsistency and tension in the assessment practice (care et al., 2019). in another article on the future work asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 41-46 44 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group skills, the observation was that the malaysian government faced strong challenges to change the mindset of malaysians who prioritised examination and rote learning (oxford business group, 2018). the “malaysian mandate for higher learning (he 4.0): knowledge, industry and humanity” encourages the adoption of new learning and teaching technologies that break away from traditional class lectures. planning for the transformation of assessments is crucial and the implementation needs to begin in continuous assessments involving multiple formative and summative assessments throughout the duration of a course. the transformation calls for a re-evaluation of assessments with less focus on examinations. in suggesting a solution, maizatul (2018) claimed that the objective is to encourage academia and industry to work as education partners in ensuring that the nation produces the needed skilled workforce for industry 4.0. this will require stakeholders to evolve and adapt to a fluid and organic curriculum to facilitate redesigning the learning outcomes to changes in the skills need within the industries. rajaendram (2018) suggestion was for alternative types of assessments such as real-time assessments and authentic assessments to measure proficiency more than knowledge, to be introduced. to be actively engaged in the education process, the stakeholders’ will have to recognise and value the use alternative forms of assessments to gauge students’ capability. the shift will require the stakeholders’ commitment to establish a measurable criterion in improving the shared value partnership. 3. methodology this methodology is selected to assess the fit between purpose and method in deciding to use a qualitative approach determined by the research question and purpose (yin, 2009; richards and morse, 2012; maxwell, 2013). a case study protocol was used for the study design and content (yin, 2009; creswell and poth, 2018). based on an epistemological belief through a social constructivist interpretive framework, a case study approach was used to coconstruct the reality shaped by the course lecturers’ challenges experienced in transforming assessments. using purposeful sampling, two (2) business lecturers with over five (5) years of teaching experience and familiar with the diploma standards were selected from a phei. their continuous assessments required students to be involved in business and community activities. a direct interpretation approach was used for the data analysis which involved establishing patterns and relationships by pattern matching the theoretical realm and observational realm (wolcott, 1994b; yin, 2009; creswell and poth, 2018). to identify the patterned regularities and to count the frequency of code, the qualitative data analysis software (qdas) nvivo 12 was used. 3.1. instrumentation the instrumentation includes semi-structured interview, document reviews and audiovisual materials. the semi-structured interview was used because qualitative interview data provides indepth insights on participant attitudes, thoughts, and actions (creswell and poth, 2018). the interview questions were vetted by an external expert to ensure reliability. documents reviews include the lecturers’ course files, course outline, mapping of course objectives to programme outcomes, mapping of assessment tasks to learning domains and soft skills, assignment briefs and rubrics. audiovisual materials include online visuals and students’ peer-to-peer interactions online using padlet, kahoot and quizlet (web 2.0 technology) and the blackboard (lms) in teaching and learning. 4. findings table-1. reduction of interview transcript to themes. participants academic competency challenges in transforming assessments lecturer 1 pedagogy industry 4.0 21cs experiential & blended learning # notes specific for assessments # english literacy # reflective thinking # critical thinking # group think # marks lecturer 2 pedagogy industry 4.0 21cs experiential & blended learning # limited world view # lack curiosity # one-off collaborations # resources constrains # peer pressure # communication source: semi-structured lecturer interviews. the observational realm. the results show the challenges faced by the two (2) lecturers in transforming assessments in developing 21cs. both lecturers had worked their assessments separately for different classes and present the experiences and challenges faced in transforming the assessments in table 1. the theoretical realm. in content analysis, information is reduced to identify patterned regularities and to count frequency of codes (wolcott, 1994b; yin, 2009; creswell and poth, 2018). the outcome of the auto code pattern results identify patterned regularities figure 4 based on coding multiple sources to a case note (wolcott, 1994b). the patterned regularity between challenges and transforming assessments is the highest and lowest between 21cs development and education provider figure 4. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 41-46 45 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-4. auto code pattern results for multiple sources to a case node. based on the pattern matching between the theoretical realm and observational realm the challenges to transforming assessments for 21cs development include: 1. stakeholders’ reliance on academic results to perceive students’ 21cs competencies. 2. stakeholders are more likely to work in short-term partnerships to avoid conflicts. 3. shared value partnerships in 21cs development is not new but it lacks mutual objectives. 4. readiness to transform assessments from measuring knowledge attained to measuring applied proficiency to develop 21cs is constrained by the lack of awareness and know-how. 5. students’ rely on lecturers as knowledge providers. 6. resources constrain can delay new technology adoption in pheis. the challenges faced by the lecturers reflect that the skills gap perceived are a result of a general lack of recognition and value to developing 21cs. this is due to unclear stakeholder expectations which can be resolved by establishing mutually agreed upon objectives. further research is recommended as these findings are limited to the extend of generalisation based on a single case analysis from the perspectives of lecturers (creswell and poth, 2018). 5. discussion and conclusion the study shows that while there is effort within the phei to develop 21cs, the view is not shared by the private sector. the recommendation is to address the challenges in transforming assessments for 21cs development through strategic shared value partnerships between the phei and the private sector to ensure that the development of 21cs remain relevant. stakeholders must be willing to evolve and adapt through mutually beneficial objectives to address the future workforce skills mismatch. hays global skills index (2018) revealed that malaysia was experiencing a shortage of skilled talents despite the strong job market in all sectors. the report also stated that the degree of skills mismatch was unable due to data unavailability. this indicates that shared value partnerships based on the principle of mutual exchange linked to sustainable social and business issues and results is new in malaysia. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 41-46 46 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-5. integrated shared value strategy and measurement. lecturers as catalysts play an integral role in activating the assessments transformation to improve the development of 21cs to realise the mandate, “higher education 4.0: knowledge, industry and humanity” (ministry of higher education, 2018). to measure shared value figure 5 is to unlock the values that are linked to the social and business results (porter et al., 2012). the recommendation is for assessments to be transformed based on the demands from the private sector, to keep up with the changing skills need for businesses to increase profits and competitive advantage in industry 4.0. further studies on shared value partnership initiatives between pheis and the private sector will ensure that the development of 21cs are to the purpose of sdg 2030 in developing the digital economy. references abdul, w.j., 2017. rethinking our education. new straits times. available from https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2017/05/235683/rethinking-our-education. atkinson, j.w., 1964. an introduction to motivation. the university series in psychology. princeton, n.j.: van nostrand publishing. care, e., a. vista, h. kim and k. anderson, 2019. education system alignment for 21st century skills: focus on assessment. research gate article. available from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330740772_education_system_alignment_for_21st_century_skills_focus_on_assessm ent. carla, t., 2019. value chain. investopedia. available from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valuechain.asp. creswell, j.w. and c.n. poth, 2018. qualitative inquiry & research design: choosing among five approaches. 4th edn., thousand oaks, ca: sage. hays global skills index, 2018. in partnership with oxford economics copyright hays plc 2018. available from https://www.haysindex.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/hays-global-skills-index-2018-report.pdf. maizatul, r., 2018. 2018 mandate: embracing industry 4.0. higher education 4.0: knowledge, industry and humanity. higher education today. available from news.mohe.gov.my. malaysian education blue print, 2015 – 2025. for higher education. the ministry of education malaysia. available from http://www.kooperation-international.de/uploads/media/3._malaysia_education_blueprint_20152025__higher_education__.pdf. maxwell, j.a., 2013. qualitative research design. 3rd edn., thousand oaks, ca: sage. ministry of higher education, 2018. the 2018 minister of education mandate. available from http://www.mohe.gov.my/muatturun/awam/teks-ucapan-dan-slide/2018/amanat-2018/437-amanat-menteri-pendidikan-tinggi-2018. oxford business group, 2018. malaysia education reforms result in more opportunities for private sector participation. available from oxfordbusinessgroup.com/overview/working-together-widespread-reforms-result-more-opportunities-private-sectorparticipation. parameswaran, a. and e.s.m. suresh, 2015. a roadmap to effective industry-institute collaboration. research gate article. available from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294087340_a_roadmap_to_effective_industryinstitute_collaboration. porter, m.e., g. hills, m. pfitzer, s. patscheke and e. hawkins, 2012. fsg: assessing shared value: how to unlock value by linking social and business results. available from https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/publication%20files/assessing_shared_value_57032487 9e5c-46a1-9bd8-90bd7f1f9cef.pdf. rajaendram, r., 2018. prepare to evolve, adapt to needs. retrieved from star online. available from https://www.thestar.com.my/news/education/2018/04/08/prepare-to-evolve-adapt-to-needs. richards, l. and j. morse, 2012. readme first for a user’s guide to qualitative methods. 3rd edn., thousand oaks, ca: sage. sharma, v., 2017. report card analysis on assessment [blog post]. available from https://pse03417402116.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/report-card-analysis/. terry, h., 2019. 18 inconvenient truths about assessments [podcast newsletter]. available from https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/the-inconvenient-truths-about-assessment/. wolcott, h.f., 1994b. transforming qualitative data: description, analysis, and interpretation. thousand oaks, ca: sage. yin, r.k., 2009. case study research: design and methods. 4th edn., thousand oaks: sage. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 548 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 548-554, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.548.554 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group trends that shaping education in bangladesh sevinç tunali phd., c0-founder at pedudi information technologies inc., turkey. abstract bangladesh has a highly complicated education system with a wide variety of institutions in both primary and secondary levels. the total number of students in primary and secondary level is higher than 25 million. this huge system need to forecast the future for the sake of all stakeholders' students, parents, teachers alike. this study aims to inquire trends that shaping the future of education in bangladesh. for this aim trends analysis was used. trend analysis is a technique to scan drivers of change and supports as a baseline to create new ideas or policymaking for the future. this s a qualitative study therefore, natural observations (n=3) and interviews (n=16) are major tools for data gathering. as a result, this study provides information for major trends that shaping the future of primary and secondary schools in bangladesh. according to the results of the study, there are two main trends. these are (1) poverty and (2) knowledgeintensive economy. poverty theme has three subthemes: (1.1) population, (1.2) urban poverty and (1.3) child poverty, respectively. lastly, skills for the future of work is subtheme of knowledgeintensive economy. keywords: trend analysis, qualitative study, schools of the future, schools in bangladesh, poverty, knowledge-intensive economy, future of work. citation | sevinç tunali (2019). trends that shaping education in bangladesh. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 548-554. history: received: 2 august 2019 revised: 6 september 2019 accepted: 8 october 2019 published: 25 november 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 549 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 549 3. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 550 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 553 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 554 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.548.554&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1116 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9736-5716 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1116 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9736-5716 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1116 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9736-5716 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 548-554 549 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by inquiring trends that shaping the future of education in bangladesh. 1. introduction european colonization was the most important influencer of the history of south asia. for many centuries, this region lived under the control of other nations. the power struggle of the europeans had reigned until wwii. after the war, british india becomes five independent states: india, pakistan (east and west), dominion of ceylon, union of burma and kingdom of sikkim. in 1971, the bangladesh war of independence, east pakistan had become peoples republic of bangladesh. in light of the above-mentioned very short history of the region can give perspective on the socio-politic structure of bangladesh. on the one hand, this land newly liberated and strive to develop and on the other hand bangladeshi want to protect their cultural (language, way of living, customs, etc.) and religious values. in this aggravated circumstances education system is also receiving its share (chowdhury and kabir, 2014). the structure of education system in bangladesh consists of 5 years of primary education (grades 1– 5), 3 years of junior (or lower) secondary education (grades 6–8), 2 years of secondary education (grades 9–10), and 2 years of senior or higher secondary education (grades 11–12). the ministry of primary and mass education (mopme) is responsible for primary education, non-formal education, and mass literacy. meanwhile, the ministry of education (moe) is responsible for secondary education (asia development bank (adb), 2018). for primary education bangladesh bureau of educational information and statistics (bangladesh bureau of educational information and statistics, 2018) stated that there are 25 types of schools including various types of government, community, nongovernment, and nongovernment organization (ngo) schools and religious schools (madrasahs) (adb, 2018). in terms of the curriculum, schools in bangladesh divides to two main bodies: general education and madrasah education. in general education, there are private schools and public schools. most of the private schools’ medium of instruction is english (sommers, 2011; chowdhury and kabir, 2014; rahman et al., 2019). english medium schools are accredited by neasc, cois, igcse, edexcel and cie, and mostly located in big cities (97,96% in total 147 schools). in dhaka number of schools are 131, in chittagong #9 and sylhet #7 respectively. total 80,511 students were enrolled to these schools in 2017 (banbeis, 2018). additionally, madrasah education has two main ecole: aliya madrasahs and quomi madrasahs. madrasah education divides to five levels and their gross enrolment rates are: (1) ebtedayee for 6-10 age students (11.50%), (2) dakhil for 11-15 ages students (10.27%), (3) alim for 16-17 ages students (3.35%), (4) fazil for university level students and (5) kamil for master’s degree students (banbeis, 2018). in aliya madrasahs, religious (qur’an, hadith and tafsir) and academic subjects (mathematics, science, social sciences, geography, economy, etc.) study together and there are some english medium madrasahs established as well. there are some public aliya madrasahs (attached ebtedayee, total #9098) but most of them of are private and semi-private (independent ebtedayee, total #3670/ government supported but privately run) (banbeis, 2018). on the other hand, quomi madrasahs (total #13.902) are privately run institutions and they are not under control of the ministry of education in bangladesh in terms of funds and curriculum. in bangladesh total 2.453.364 students were enrolled to madrasah education in 2017 (ali, 2007; banbeis, 2018). most of the quomi (or quomy) madrasahs’ medium of instruction is arabic and bengali (recently replaced with urdu), and main objective of curriculum is qur’an. there is no accreditation for primary, middle and high school level of quomi madrasah but university level they have accreditation. education system not only related to the organization of institutions but also there is an intimate connection with economic and socio-demographic features of the country. bangladesh has one of the most density of population in such a small land and many of the people live under extreme poverty. as we all know, education is the most influential tool against poverty but a high proportion of illiterate rates, continuous migration and shortage of teachers making this situation even harder. 2. method 2.1. design of the study this research designed as a trend analysis. trend analysis is a method for studies about the future and qualitative methods (observation and interview) were used to gather data on trends shaping education in bangladesh. it is often used to project future events by using past or current data. in other words, this technique aims to provide an opinion of how the natural power for shifting has timely progressed and how much its likelihood of occurrence is (organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2006; tunalı and kiraz, 2017a; mateu et al., 2018; tunalı, 2019). this study attempts to provide answer to the following research question: what are the perceptions of experts in terms of trends shaping education in bangladesh? the results of this question have significance to illuminate the ongoing situation of education in bangladesh and provide a vision for future opportunities. this trend analysis study also depicts social, political and educational treats and opportunities that may support desirable futures and avoid undesirable. finally, yet importantly, this study is evidence of long-term policymaking for the future in the field of education in bangladesh. to provide answers for the research question natural observations were conducted in three different kinds of schools in dhaka (a public school (sch1), a semi-private school (sch2) and a private school (sch3)). variety in observed school types provides valuable information according to different implications in education. there are also many other school types like madrasah and slum schools in bangladesh but this research is limited with schools in the city center of dhaka and serves for general education (primary and secondary level) to middle and high socio-economic class children. sch1 is located in the dhaka university area and teaches primary and middle school level students. this school follows the standard curriculum provided by the national curriculum and textbook board (nctb) by double shifting. in the morning shift, the bangla version and the afternoon shift english version of the curriculum are implementing. sch2 is also located in the dhaka university area. this is a semi-private school that parents are supporting school annually in addition to government funds. this school is implementing the curriculum provided by nctb too. it has both bangla and asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 548-554 550 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group english version curriculum classes. sch3 is a private school that follows the cambridge university curriculum and the medium of instruction is completely in english. finally, interviews were used to reveal the perceptions of experts about trends shaping education in bangladesh. interviews were conducted in dhaka and istanbul. the researcher started interviews in istanbul by using snowball-sampling method to reach participants. these participants (n= 4) were citizens of bangladesh who temporarily study or work in istanbul table 1. interviews in dhaka were scheduled with the help of genocide studies center, dhaka university and this institution provided one bangladeshi researcher for counseling purposes during interviews and observations. maximum variation sampling method to reach information-rich people (n=12) who were knowledgeable both in sociology, education and economics to obtain detailed information and make connections between social context and schools see table 1. all interviews in istanbul and dhaka were conducted in english. interviewees elaborated on the themes driven from document analysis and further discussed the relevant trends in bangladesh context. first, the researcher conducted and recorded all interviews. snowball sampling procedure was used and all participants have phd. in their area of specialization. table-1. trends interview participants. no of participants title gender major location of interview int 1 professor male rector dhaka int 2 professor female curriculum and instruction (education) dhaka int3 professor male economy dhaka int4 professor male sociology dhaka int5 professor female international relations dhaka int6 ceo of a ngo female education dhaka int7 school manager male education dhaka int8 professor female sociology dhaka int9 school manager female education dhaka int10 school manager, phd. female education dhaka int11 consulate, phd. male international relations i̇stanbul int12 visiting scholar male economy i̇stanbul int13 visiting scholar male economy i̇stanbul int14 visiting scholar male economy i̇stanbul int15 researcher male sociology dhaka int16 professor islamic science and arabic dhaka semi-structured interviewing method was used to gather data from participants. the interview schedule consisted of five fundamental questions which were developed based on the data driven from document review (desk research) (tunalı and kiraz, 2017a; tunalı, 2019). question (1), "which trends are relevant to bangladesh context?" was asked to the interviewees to find out the most relevant trends in bangladesh. question (2) was "are there other trends to take into account?". the researcher derived main trends from the international literature as there can be other local trends to be considered. question (3) was "which trends demonstrate critical importance for bangladesh education?". all trends are highly important but this trend analysis aimed to determine the most crucial ones. question (4), "what will the impact of these crucial trends be on bangladesh education in the future?" was the seminal part of the trends interviews. after that point, the participants gave a massive amount of data related to their previous responses. with question (5), "how can we deal with these trends in the future? can we influence or react to them?", the researcher gathered data regarding suggestions by the participants on the mentioned trends shaping education. 2.2. data analysis the transcribed interviews were analyzed through content analysis. content analysis involves conceptualizing data, and then organizing them according to those concepts and determining themes (bogdan and biklen, 1992). analysis procedure for trend interviews were basically characterized as an inductive approach (post-defined). 2.3. trustworthiness according to shenton (2004) in many studies in which qualitative methods are applied, the researchers choose a specific terminology to stay away from the positivism. these qualitative researchers ought to take into consideration the four criteria that guba (1981) based on: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. in this study, the procedures followed by the researcher were prolonged engagement, persistent observation, peer debriefing, triangulation of data sources (participants from different backgrounds) and methods (document analysis and interviews) for the credibility of this study. transferability of the study was supported by following a thick description technique to describe the context in detail. to address the dependability, study processes were reported in detail and an inquiry audit procedure was followed. last but not least, for the sake of confirmability, the peer review process was used. at all stages of the research, the code for ethics (american educational research association (aera), 2011) was followed. 3. results and discussion this study aims to provide information for major trends that shaping the future of primary and secondary schools in bangladesh. according to the results of the study, there are two main trends. these are (1) poverty and (2) knowledge-intensive economy. 3.1. poverty poverty is one of the oldest enemies of humankind since the beginning of the history. for 200 years, the income gap between developed and developing countries has been widening rapidly. despite all the progress made asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 548-554 551 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group by middle-income countries, the gap between the richer and poorer regions is not decreasing (oecd, 2016; tunalı and kiraz, 2017b). economic history of bangladesh started shortly after independence in 1971. for the last decade, economic development is around 7% per year (int3). although this is one of the highest rates in the world according to oecd more than 80% of the population live with less than $2 a day. bangladesh has great potential but almost 50% of the population living in asia/ pacific countries and economies is poor, and 1/5 is extremely poor (oecd, 2011). before the independence of bangladesh india and pakistan was dominated the economy and all there is no industry in this region. economy was mostly based on agriculture (jute, rice, cereal, vegetables, and fruit) more than 70% of the population is directly or indirectly employed in the sector (adb, 2018).. last two decades leather, processed fish and textile industries’ contributions are higher than other fields. poverty has a considerable impact on children’s schooling, in terms of enrollment, participation, attendance, and success (sommers, 2011). additionally the lack of health condition of children and malnutrition is highly related with poverty and important indicators for academic success as well. world bank (2011b) cites the depth of this problem: “chronic malnutrition pervades all socioeconomic strata in bangladesh, affecting 56 percent of children among the poorest and 32% among the wealthiest quintiles” (p. 1). according to the studies of hossain and zeitlyn (2010) (create’s bangladesh wide school survey (comss)) there is a significant relationship between poverty, poor health, lack of school materials and exclusion from education. pridmore (2007) states that poorer children were more likely to be in the category of children with health problems (p<.01). in addition to that children with poor health have low achievement and high repetition compared to children with good health (p<.01) (pridmore, 2007). 3.2. population one of the reasons of the population is developments in health sector. improvements in medicine and medical technologies provide us many ways to survive longer. according to the estimates of the united nations’ (un) studies, the present population of the world is 6.9 billion and population will become more than 9 billion by 2050 (oecd, 2010; tunalı and kiraz, 2017b). birth rates in oecd countries dropped dramatically after the 1960s. the average number of children per woman was 3.2 until 1960 and this rate declined to 1.7 around the 2000s. despite this dramatically falling birth rate in other countries, birth rates in bangladesh are still one of the highest among south asia (oecd, 2011). early age marriage is one of the most important indicator for birth rates. one participant highlighted that ―although enrolment rates of boys and girls are equal, dropout rates are turn against to girls. early age marriage of girls increasing the dropout rates” (int8). population is a very important indicator in education because there is a reciprocal relationship between population and education. education not only shapes dispositions and attitudes underpinning these demographic features but also is shaped by them, especially in terms of the availability and access of resources for educational purposes (oecd, 2010). 3.3. urban poverty as a natural result of urbanization, the number of people living in cities is increasing. this trend towards urbanization is happening in both developed and undeveloped countries. especially in less developed countries, this trend often creates problems like a shortage of infrastructure in the cities. on the other hand, employment and education opportunities are still the main "pull" factors for many who decide to migrate to urban areas. there are also some other local "push" factors that bangladeshi are exposed in the rural area. such as, bangladesh have been exposed to many natural disasters until today. tornadoes, floods, landslides, riverbank erosion are very common during monsoon rain season that usually damages the lands and residential areas. many people migrate to urban areas from rural areas for better living conditions in bangladesh. dhaka is one of the most crowded cities in the world that have a total population of around 19 million with a population growth of 4.2% annually (world population review, 2018). public schools average student to teacher ratio improved 50:1 in 2007 to about 40:1 in 2016 but in some districts of dhaka, this rate is 1:120. people who live in slums of dhaka are the people that suffers urban poverty most (teach for bangladesh, 2016; adb, 2018). in secondary level schools average student to teacher ratio in public schools is 1:42 (banbeis, 2018). the level of poverty has decreased, and household income has increased considerably, during the period 2005-10, in urban as well as rural areas. urban poverty rates decreased to 21.3% from 28.4 between 2005 to 2010 (banbeis, 2018). 3.4. child poverty despite growing affluence in the world, trends in inequality display the widening gap between rich and poor regions. when we go deeper into this data, there is another striking result, child poverty. children's chances in life depend on the conditions under which they are born and grow up. while it is possible to measure overall poverty in a society, the number of children living in poverty can also be identified. this number considerably varies among oecd countries. although intergenerational transmission of educational disadvantage has declined in general, the rates in bangladesh are still rising (oecd, 2011). bangladesh’s combat against poverty have been continuing in every front. one need to keep in mind before making an inference about education because bangladesh is a relatively young republic and after independence the huge amount (%90) of citizens were illiterate (int3). in the year of independence of bangladesh (1971) the adult literacy rate was 17.6 % and during the early 1990s, only 35% of the country’s adult population was literate (bbs, 1981 as stated in ahmad (2007); adb (2008). for this reason, improving rates of schooling have been given priority in the past. nowadays, people have great expectations from schools when compared with a century ago. people are also aware of not quantity but quality (int3). for this reason, focusing on school empowerment can be very helpful to break the vicious cycle of poverty and low quality education. one of the interviewees who spent more than four decades teaching at different universities in bangladesh stated that quality of education decreasing every day. as a result, number of coaching centers and private tutoring increased. these institutions become more important than regular schools. effect of rote learning its effects also higher education. there are not familiar with reasoning they just memorize (int8). sommers (2011) also mentioned her report for perception among parents that children at government schools and community schools must attend private tutoring in order to learn well (p.22) (nath, 2007). claims that nearly 38% of primary-aged students pay for private tutoring, with percentages climbing from roughly asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 548-554 552 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 25% of students in 1st grade to over 50% of students in 5th grade with boys much more likely to receive this support than girls (44% versus 31%) (p.28). the competitive structure of the education system is the reason for coaching centers. the data according to banbeis (2018) indicated that for ebtedayee education completion examination (eece) between 2010 and 2016, pass rates were increased from 82.01% to 96.08%. primary education completion examination (pece) between 2010 and 2016, pass rates were also increased from 88.84 to 98.51 (amin and greenwood, 2018). however, participants stated that quality of these exams are questionable (int1, int2, int12, int3, int14, and int15). global education monitoring report (2017) stated that lack of capacity to monitor centers in bangladesh, for example, has undermined government attempts to cap tutoring. this opinion is highly remarkable because on the one hand, data from banbeis claim that every year more student be successful in national student assessments on the other hand according to the national student assessments’, students’ performance has declined since 2011. in 2015, only 65% and 41% of grade 3 students performed at their levels or above on bangla and mathematics, down from 68% and 50% in 2011, and 75% and 57% in 2013. the performance is even lower for grade 5. only 23% and 10% of grade 5 students performed at their levels on bangla and mathematics in 2015, down from 25% and 32% in 2011, and 25% in 2013 (adb, 2018). moreover, nearly all public schools are running double shifts and the teacher–student interaction time is almost 50% lower than the international standard of hours (900–1,000) per year (adb, 2018). one participant mentioned that “if you compare the results of public and private schools according to results of school certificate. private schools do better.” (int3). on the other hand, dropout rates are another crucial issue in the secondary level of education. the data indicated from banbeis (2018) pointed that gross enrolment rate at the secondary level is 60.45% and completion rate is 62.79% (sultana, 2018). in last decade satellite schools established for children who are homeless or immigrate. in addition to that for the reason of bangladesh consist of wetlands that hardening to reach rural side of the country brac (building resources across communities) a non-governmental organization, provide boat school option to serve unprivileged children. this model has positive impact on socio-economic changes (ahmed et al., 2017). moreover, some participants mentioned that many poor families who live in extreme poverty tend to enroll their children to quomi madrasahs for facilities that they provide (int5, int4, int12, int13, int14, and int16). “despite the fact, quomi madrasahs’ curriculum is not relevant to job market; parents take the advantage of free education. moreover, until supreme level of quomi madrasahs, none of the students’ has a chance to change school because there is no accreditation (int16). as sommers (2011) stated many rural quomi madrassas are also orphanages, they are seen as an option for families who cannot send their children to school. the aforementioned situation is the basic example of ‘reproduction in education’ concept (bourdeu and passeron, 1990) children started school in an early age and such a decision would shape rest of his life. after graduation from quomi madrasah alumni have very limited job opportunities. 3.5. knowledge intensive economy knowledge plays an essential role in both societies and economies. in fact, they are characterized with a great deal of information with easy access available for citizens and firms, improving educational qualifications, and the significance of knowledge in daily life including work environment (tunalı and kiraz, 2017b). results indicated that there is a huge confusion in education of bangladesh in terms of connection of economy and education. as mentioned under the population heading, especially youth population is very high in bangladesh. in addition to that, unemployment rates are dramatically high too. there is a huge mismatch among the population, job market and education (gutierrez et al., 2019). some participant mentioned the importance of vocational schools. increasing the number of vocational and technical schools can support to be more skillful (int1, int2, int3, and int5). one participant mentioned that "in the 7th five-year plan vocational education become one important issue. but there is a need for a big investment for training and development of industry to implement this plan."(int3). on the other hand, a participant mentioned that the mindset of people is another barrier to productivity. “everybody likes to be a member of the gentlemanly class in bangladesh society. there is a historical background for the mindset of bangladeshi people towards the job market” (int5, female). we can speculate that there is a social stigma against vocational and technical education. social recognition of vocational education is not positive so, parents usually expecting their children continue to higher education without consideration of academic achievement and ability. additionally, there is a lack of carrier guidance for technical occupations in bangladesh and abroad as well. this high demand for higher education is one of the main reasons for the increasing number of private universities (int1, int2, int3, int5, and int8). finally yet importantly, one participant used the analogy of "inferior goods" to explain the situation of madrasah education and vocational education. although bangladesh still have arable lands, global warming is an important threat. many of the productive farms have left underwater until today. especially textile industry has a very important contribution but there are not many endeavors to support the service industry like tourism. in addition to that, big chunks of people are going to malaysia and middle east (saudi arabia, united arab emirates, qatar, etc.) to attain service industry related works like housekeeping, construction or technic. int4 stated that every year more than one million people are going abroad to work by the support of government. bangladeshi who are educated in international standards usually prefer to work in england, europe, and australia but none of the interviewees stated about brain drain as a problem. one professor from sociology mentioned that "after the independence war of bangladesh very well educated bangladeshi immigrate to different countries because of the instability of the country but nowadays brain drain is not a case" (int8). although brain drain is a real problem in the world, participants mentioned that for bangladeshi this is not a case. the population of youth in bangladesh is the highest in the world. one can speculate that the engagement of youth working abroad seems considerable. "we cannot only focus on national-level recruitment. there is also a need to be aware of global needs. recently, world bank organized a seminar related to "gig economy". this means you need skills to hire. (int3). some participants mentioned that there are so many debates have been going on in related to religious and cultural identities of bangladeshi but there is not any debate on socio-economic goals. the conflicts between fundamentalist and secular groups in policy causing instability and economic growth are not possible in this kind of asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 548-554 553 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ecosystem (int5, int4). ―policymaking in bangladesh could be proactive neither in south asia nor global area. policies are more reactive rather than proactive in every sector” (int5). 3.6. skills for the future of work knowledge is seen as a requirement for economic development and prosperity, as a result of which education has gained more importance in political agendas. a lot of debate on how successful education systems are in meeting the demands of an economy based on knowledge has been going on oecd (2010). one participant mentioned that in bangladesh the most important thing is ―there is no information about the demand estimation of economy.”(int3). to put a plan in action this information is very crucial. the fact that economies are getting more integrated and influences strategies employed for national competitiveness, innovation, employment and skills. it can also have an impact on the way attitudes and expertise enhancing international trade and collaboration are shaped. as for education, the global integration of economies may bring about a need and opportunity to develop various new skills. these interconnections crossing borders have shaped agendas, skill estimates and occupations. in the field of education, subjects covered in basic and higher education are directly affected by primary skills to be developed; for instance, giving priority to science and mathematics, or harmonizing creativity with arts to encourage innovation (oecd, 2013; rahman et al., 2019) . trade and r&d among nations along with a knowledge-intensive economy have resulted in the 21st-century skills that must be possessed by the youth. on the other hand, the increase in lifespan and drop in birth rate make lifelong learning necessary for everyone. according to the interview results, six participants mentioned about the skills for the future of work (int1, int2, int6, int7, int9, and int10). participants stated that especially schools which medium of instruction is in english mostly focus on 21st-century skills and their instructional foci is the global job market. on the other hand, many schools in bangladesh don't have any awareness in terms of skills for the future of work. "we are giving priority to global citizenship and global work life. however, many bangladeshi schools are not aware of the importance of 21st-century skills. there is a huge skill mismatch between bangladeshi schools and work-life" (int7, male). in the vision statement for 2021 of government, ict skills considered as the core but in implementation, there are many limitations. school infrastructure and teacher shortage are the main barriers for ict education (int2, int3, int7, int9, and int10). some participants mentioned that the nation of bengal is oppressed for many centuries due to colonization (int3, int4, and int7). in his distinguished book "pedagogy of the oppressed" paul freire discussed the mindset of oppressed people and its reflection on education in the case of brazil. the main problem of his case is: how to create an education system with oppressed people, for oppressed people, that will help them become more free. in bangladesh case, bangladeshi tend to protect their native language (bangla). maybe most of the people are not aware of bangla but nearly 200 million people are talking this language as mother tongue. fear of assimilation concerning social and cultural issues was also a barrier to consider global needs in schools. however, in the last decade the number of schools that medium of instruction in english has rapidly increased. there are also some public primary schools, which implement the english curriculum developed by national curriculum and textbook board (nctb) of bangladesh. this english curriculum is the same as the curriculum in bangla (int2, int6, int7, int9, int10, int12, and int13). this is very hard to keep a balance between global and local needs at the same time even for developed countries but learning a foreign language is a very important competency in today's world. 4. conclusion economic development and poverty reduction, together with human resources development, has been key strategic priorities of the government of bangladesh’s medium-term, national development plans (third plan [1985–1990]; fifth plan [1997–2002]; seventh plan [2016-2020]). the plan identifies improving education quality and emphasizes: (1) curriculum reform; (2) elimination of discrepancies among schools with respect to school infrastructure, facilities, number of teachers, and training opportunities; (3) reduction in dropouts; (4) provision of special interventions for marginalized indigenous children, physically retarded, street children, and other ultra-deprived children; and (5) improvement of the school milieu (adb, 2018). this was consistent with the government of bangladesh’s initiative on education for all (efa) started in 1992, and adopted as a national action plan in 2003. along with economic growth and governance, human development is one of the three pillars of the government of bangladesh’s current, long-term national poverty reduction strategy (nprs; 2006–2015). the national poverty reduction strategy i, based on millennium development goals (mdgs), as it aims to reduce poverty too (adb, 2018). in the light of afore mentioned we can say that various initiations of the state is based on internationally recognized strategies. on the other hand, in implication of strategies is not effective as expected. according to the adb (2018) report the decline in national student assessments results is related to the expansion of school samples between 2011-2015. schools have wide variety in many factors: teacher profiles (qualification and training), student’s background (socioeconomic conditions), and physical school facilities (learning environment) (adb, 2018). this results are proof how child poverty influential on academic achievement. teacher shortage and teacher quality are some of the other barrier for improving skills in students. the ministry of education in bangladesh declared that %40 percent of public primary school teachers haven’t got university degree. they started to teach after graduate from secondary or higher secondary level (ministry of primary and mass education of government of bangladesh, 2015). in addition to that, less than 50% of the primary teachers are proficient in teaching. on average, 27% of the positions of head teacher (primary school principal, who often also teaches) and 7% of assistant teacher positions were vacant throughout 2016 (adb, 2018). in sum, considering education and economy go hand in hand there is a need for a macro plan. because today world is considering digitalization and artificial intelligence in business and if this skill mismatch will continue to grow in the future uneducated and unskilled masses will be more problematic than ever. educational institutions and policymakers must be aware of the future of the job market and work to improve the productivity of the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 548-554 554 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group economy. as a result, robust and sustainable educational policies are highly important to ensure quality education for all bangladeshi. bangladesh is a developing country acceleration in the economy is remarkable and great emphasis on education can help to handle some of the causes of inequality by equipping poor individuals with necessary cognitive and social skills in the modern world. references adb, 2008. education sector in bangladesh: what worked well and why under the sector-wide approach? reference number: sap: ban 2008-82 sector assistance program evaluation report. ahmad, q.k., 2007. education watch 2006: financing primary and secondary education in bangladesh. bangladesh: campaign for popular education (campe). ahmed, j.u., n. ashikuzzaman and a.s.m. mahmud, 2017. social innovation in education: brac boat schools in bangladesh. journal of global entrepreneurship research, 1(7): 1-14.available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40497-017-0077-z. ali, a.k.m.y., 2007. arabic and persian studies under bengal 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 495-500, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.495.500 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group comparison of the reaction time period of individuals in sport, fine arts and classroom education h. bayram temur1 rezan baytar2 ( corresponding author) 1assistant professor, physical education and sports high school, yüzüncü yıl university, van, turkey. 2physical education and sports teacher, ministry of education, batman, turkey. abstract in this study, it was aimed to compare the reaction times of individuals who are generally trained as sports teachers, fine arts teachers and class teachers, and in particular the reaction times of individuals according to the branches they receive education. for this purpose, 132 individuals from different branches and classroom teachers at the school of physical education and sports and faculty of fine arts were included in the study. reaction time measurements were performed with newtest 1000 instrument. data analysis one-way anova and independent t test and descriptives program were used in spss program. as a result of the analysis, it was found that the visual and auditory mixed reaction times of both hands were different between the groups at p <0.01. it was found that there was a difference in right hand mixed reaction time between groups at p <0.05 level. in addition, it was found that there was a difference between right hand visual and right and left hand mixed reaction time values at the level of p <0.01 between those who had badminton training and those who had picture training. it was determined that left hand visual and right hand auditory reaction time values were significantly shorter (p <0.01) in football training subjects when compared to those who had picture training. as a result, it can be said that being a sports instructor positively affects visual, auditory and mixed reaction time and also the branches involved in the study affect the reaction time at different levels. keywords: reaction time, sedentary, painting, music, football, badminton, volleyball, handball, basketball. citation | h. bayram temur; rezan baytar (2019). comparison of the reaction time period of individuals in sport, fine arts and classroom education. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 495-500. history: received: 1 july 2019 revised: 7 august 2019 accepted: 18 september 2019 published: 16 october 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 496 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 496 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 496 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 496 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 499 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.495.500&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1065 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5124-2523 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5220-5508 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1065 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5124-2523 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5220-5508 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1065 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5124-2523 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5220-5508 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1065 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5124-2523 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5220-5508 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 495-500 496 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature different studies have been done on this subject before. however, there are almost no studies comparing the reaction times of individuals who paint or play any instrument, who deal with different branches of sport and who receive more training in writing. this study is thought to be a stepping stone for further studies. 1. introduction reaction time occurs in many areas of daily life. one of our features is necessary for the continuation of life. the fact that reaction time is short in many occupations from driving to traffic in daily life to kitchen works, healthcare, disaster management plays an important role in preventing many accidents and even saving lives. in addition, reaction time is one of the factors affecting the performance of athletes in competitions. according to schmidt et al. (1991) the reaction time is " interval from the start of the response to the unexpected stimulus ". according to bompa (1998) it is the first muscular reaction or an inherited trait that determines the time between the realization of movement. visual reaction: the reaction time is between 0.15 0.20 seconds. auditory reaction: the reaction time is between 0.12 0.27 seconds. tactile reaction: the reaction time is between 0.09 0.18 seconds (sevim, 1997). in this context, reaction time is a factor in determining the outcome of the various sports and it can be shortened by physical exercise (çolakoğlu et al., 1993). reaction time incorporates a number of elements in most sport branches. since athletes are required to respond to various stimuli in different environments, reaction time is one of the determinants of a successful performance and the athletes with the same condition and technical capacities who have shorter reaction times and are more successful. therefore, its importance varies from sport branch to sport branch. in terms of our perceptions, particularly in terms of stimuli, the shortness of reaction time is also important in enabling us to act before our competitors in sports. for instance, badminton, table tennis, athletics are sport braches in which it is more important. in order to win in sports, the athlete must demonstrate a high level of skill in terms of physiological and motoric properties. one of the variables that can accomplish this is reaction time. the athletes with high performance will have better reaction time. sometimes the concentration of the athletes in the competition / competition is of great importance given that one or two points difference or one or two split-second championship is achieved or not (fox et al., 1999). in this study, it was aimed to compare the reaction times of the individuals who were trained as sports teachers in van yüzüncü yıl university school of physical education and sports, fine arts teachers in the faculty of fine arts and classroom teachers in faculty of education. 2. methodology in the study, participants aged between 18 and 27 years were included on a voluntary basis. the sample of the study is consisted of 51 women and 81 men students, a total of 132, from van yüzüncü yıl university school of physical education and sports and faculty of fine arts and faculty of education. eighty two of these individuals receive sports education in different branches (volleyball: 16, football: 18, badminton: 11,, handball: 17, basketball: 20) in the school of physical education and sports. thirty two of them are educated in music teaching (n: 18) and painting teaching (n: 16) departments of faculty of fine arts. sixteen students having sedentary lifestyle were randomly chosen from the department of primary school teaching. in this selection, the participants who had no chronic disease, not using a continuous medication, not having sedentary lifestyle (control group) and athletes having at least one year experience were among the criteria applied. body weight values of the participants were measured with remiar pws 725 digital scale. their lengths were measured with tape measure. reaction times were measured with newtest 1000 instrument by sitting at opposite tables in a quiet environment and the subject was positioned in such a way that the tester could not see the instrument. the best results were obtained among 5 trials. analysis the data were used in spss program through one-way anova and independent t test and descriptives program. 3. findings when table 1 was examined in terms of right and left hand visual reaction time, right and left hand auditory reaction time and right and left hand mixed reaction time values, it was found that these reaction time values differed between the groups at p <0.01 level. a striking point in this table is that the reaction time of the participants who received sports training was lower in all reaction time measurement types except the right hand auditory reaction time. when the table 2 is examined, the art of playing, playing any instrument, playing basketball, badminton, football, volleyball, handball, and the right and left hand visual reaction time of the sedentary, right and left hand auditory reaction time and right and left hand mixed reaction time values p <0.01 difference was found between the groups. it is also noteworthy that in all of the reaction time types measured, the participants who received painting training had longer reaction time than the other groups. 4. discussion as the reaction time of the participants was examined on the basis of faculties, the mean visual reaction time of the right hand was 418.41 ± 82.64 ms in the participants of fine arts education, 380.87 ± 57.52 ms in the sports participants and 405.69 ± 60.43 ms in sedentary participants. when these mean values were examined, it was identified that the right hand reaction times of the participants who received sports training were lower than the sedentary and participants who received fine arts education. through the statistical comparison of these values, it was seen that there was a significant (p <0.01) difference between the students who received sports education and those who received fine arts education. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 495-500 497 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. reaction time mean values and significance levels in sports, fine arts and primary school education. variables groups n average standard deviation f p right hand visual reaction time (ms) subjects receiving fine arts education 34 418.41** 82.64 4.304 0.01 subjects receiving sports training 82 380.87** 57.52 faculty of education 16 405.69 60.43 total 132 393.55 66.79 left hand visual reaction time (ms) subjects receiving fine arts education 34 427.41** 85.55 4.713 0.01 subjects receiving sports training 82 385.90** 66.94 faculty of education 16 423.81 77.32 total 132 401.19 75.41 right hand auditory reaction time (ms) subjects receiving fine arts education 34 386.82** 70.78 7.735 0.01 subjects receiving sports training 82 340.83** 53.37 faculty of education 16 339.69** 59.74 total 132 352.54 61.96 left hand auditory reaction time (ms) subjects receiving fine arts education 34 390.21** 86.19 7.537 0.01 subjects receiving sports training 82 338.12** 54.42 faculty of education 16 354.94** 69.81 total 132 353.58 68.98 confused right hand (audio /visual) reaction time (ms) subjects receiving fine arts education 34 428.18* 74.44 3.571 0.03 subjects receiving sports training 82 396.24* 51.31 faculty of education 16 416.13 71.62 total 132 406.88 61.58 confused left hand (audio /visual) reaction time (ms) subjects receiving fine arts education 34 437.06** 85.47 4.101 0.01 subjects receiving sports training 82 402.27** 56.41 faculty of education 16 434.38 65.91 total 132 415.12 67.64 *p<0,05; **p<0,01. when the left-hand visual reaction time averages of the participants are taken into account, 427.41 ± 85.55 ms in fine arts education, 385,90 ± 66.94 ms in sports participants, this average value is 423.81 ± 77.32 ms in sedentary participants. in the study, the lowest left hand visual reaction time was identified to have those who have sports training between the groups. in the study, according to the mean right hand auditory reaction times of the participants included, 386.82 ± 70.78 ms of the participants of fine arts education, 340.83 ± 53.37 ms of the participants of sports education and 339.69 ± 59 of sedentary participants were found to have an average of 74 ms. the participants with the lowest right hand auditory reaction time were identified to be significantly lower (p <0.01). when the average of left hand auditory reaction time between the groups were studied, the average of the participants who received fine arts education was 390.21 ± 86.19 ms, the average of the people who received sports training was 338,12 ± 54.42 ms, while the average of sedentary participants 354.94 ± 69, 81 ms. as these mean values were statistically compared, it was found that the students who received fine arts education were significantly higher (p <0.01) than those who had sports education and sedentaries. the average right hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time of the participants who received fine arts education was 428.18 ± 74.44 ms, 396.24 ± 51.31 ms for sports participants and 416.13 ± 71.62 ms for sedentary participants. despite those who having sport training was lower than the average of the two groups, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference (p <0.01) in comparison with those who having fine arts education. in addition, when the average of left hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time of the participants was studied in line with the groups and 437,06 ± 85,47 ms of the participants receiving fine arts education, 402,27 ± 56,41 ms of the participants receiving sports training and 434,38 ms of the sedentary ± 65.91 ms were found to have an average. it was found that sports training subjects having the shortest left hand mixed reaction time according to these averages, were statistically significantly lower (p <0.01) than those receiving arts education. ghuntla et al. (2012) compared basketball players to healthy adult control group and found that the former group had significantly shorter rz data. the study on the students of the air force academy by kamuk (2006) showed that simple reaction time (brz) was not effective in the olympic sports branches but that the first grades provide shorter rz in comparison with the fourth grades. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 495-500 498 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. distribution of right and left hand audiovisual and mixed reaction time average values by participants' branches. variables branch n average standard deviation f p right hand visual reaction time (ms) picture 16 453,62* 81,31 3,219 ,004 basketball 20 399,8 54,64 badminton 11 356,54* 39,54 football 18 385,28 51,5 volleyball 16 379,87 55,36 music 18 387,11 72,16 sedentary 16 405,69 60,44 handball 17 370,59 74,48 total 132 393,54 66,8 left hand visual reaction time (ms) picture 16 459,87* 81,53 2,916 ,003 basketball 20 394,15 67,5 badminton 11 370,54 77,67 football 18 364,24* 65,4 volleyball 16 384,87 60,55 music 18 398,55 80,44 sedentary 16 423,81 77,3 handball 17 410,29 64,08 total 132 401,19 75,41 right hand auditory reaction time (ms) picture 16 408,87** 62,66 3,447 0,00 basketball 20 352,5 48,42 badminton 11 324,18 39,39 football 18 329,11** 56,47 volleyball 16 333,87 39,68 music 18 367,22 73,47 sedentary 16 339,69 59,74 handball 17 356,82 70,23 total 132 352,54 61,96 left hand auditory reaction time (ms) picture 16 411,12** 92,47 3,776 0,00 basketball 20 347,6 62,6 badminton 11 311,64** 30,02 football 18 313,12** 35,07 volleyball 16 346,37 66,38 music 18 370,67 78,58 sedentary 16 352,87 68,67 handball 17 360,35 49,53 total 132 352,86 68,97 confused right hand (audio /visual) reaction time (ms) picture 16 454,5** 74,13 2,581 0,01 basketball 20 397,8 53,55 badminton 11 364,9** 33,91 football 18 389 59,7 volleyball 16 408,37 39,71 music 18 406,89 71,62 sedentary 16 415,12 72,1 handball 17 408,35 51,82 total 132 406,71 62,09 confused left hand (audio /visual) reaction time (ms) picture 16 478,75** 80,05 3,53 0,00 basketball 20 415 60,25 badminton 11 379,64** 48,08 football 18 396 62,1 volleyball 16 401,69 61,5 music 18 398,33 73,04 sedentary 16 433,25 64,79 handball 17 408,18 45,94 total 132 414,64 67,52 *p<0,05 ; **p<0,01. this difference results from the concentration level. the effects of physical exercise on the 11 players engaging in team sports are studied by davranche et al. (2006) the study states that as performing physical exercise with 90% performance, both mean variance and accuracy of selective rz results were higher than participants' results in resting state, and this might be due to central noradrenergic activation. nakamoto and mori (2008) reported that university students keen on basketball and baseball had better rz values than those who did not do sports. the study by kaur et al. (2006) on athletes, healthy individuals and diabetics; found that athletes had better selective reaction times (rz) than non-athletes and healthy individuals had better than diabetic patients. speed in technical applications is a very important feature in achieving accomplishment in sports activities. in this context, coaches give importance to the application of a technique as fast as the accuracy. they plan trainings to improve this. these trainings contribute to the development of visual and auditory reactions. in fine arts, generally, slower and more careful applications give better results. it is thought asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 495-500 499 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group that these training sessions may be effective in lowering the reaction time of the participants who received sports training from those who received fine arts education and sedentaries. when the right-hand visual reaction time values of the participants included in the study are studied according to their branches, the average right-hand visual reaction time of the photographers is 453.62 ± 81.31 ms, the average right-hand visual reaction time of badminton players is 356.54 ± 39.54 ms, the right-hand visual reaction of footballers, the mean time of the right hand visual reaction of the sedentary participants was 385.28 ± 51.50 ms and 405.69 ± 60.44 ms. as a result of statistical comparison of these values, there was a significant difference between the groups (p <0.01). olçücü et al. (2011) performed 12-week movement training to girls in the tennis branch. at the end of the study, there was a significant difference in sound and light reaction times, and the movement training applied with the ball improved the skills related to the skills such as reaction time better, they stated that it would have a positive effect on the sporting performance of children. arslan (2014) positive visual and auditory reaction rates of exercise (senel et al., 1997) in their study of the right hand visual reaction time of turkish national cyclists (0.17 ± 0.03) found. the literature data support the findings of the study. when the left-hand visual reaction time values are analyzed according to the branches of the participants, the average left-hand visual reaction time of the photographers is 459.87 ± 81.53 ms, the left-hand visual reaction time of badminton players is 370.54 ± 77.67 ms, the average left-hand visual reaction time of footballers is 364, the mean visual reaction time of the left hand of the sedentary participants was 423.81 ± 77.30 ms. as a result of statistical comparison of these values, a significant difference was found between the groups (p <0.01). when the right hand auditory reaction time values of all participants were studied by branches, the average visual reaction time of the right hand of the photographers was 408.87 ± 62.66 ms, the average of the right auditory reaction time of badminton players was 324.18 ± 39.39 ms, the right hand auditory reaction time of basketball players was 352,50 ± 48.42 ms and right hand auditory response time of sedentary participants was 339.69 ± 59.74 ms. as a result of statistical comparison of these values, there was a significant difference between the groups (p <0.01). keskin (2008) found that regular physical exercises had a positive effect on auditory response time. the literature findings support the study findings. when the left hand auditory reaction time values are studied by branches of the participants, the average of the left hand auditory reaction time of the photographers is 411,12 ± 92,47 ms, the average of the left hand auditory reaction time of badminton players is 311,64 ± 30,02 ms, the average of the left hand auditory reaction time of volleyball players is 346. the mean time of left hand auditory reaction of sedentary participants was 352.87 ± 68.67 ms, whereas it was found that there was a significant (p <0.01) difference between the groups. polat (2009) stated that badminton training program is important for improving the motoric functions of children aged 9-12 and in terms of improving their reaction time. the findings of the study support the literature. when the right-hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time values of all subjects are considered by branches of the participants, the average right-hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time of the photographers is 454,50 ± 74,13 ms, the right-hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time of the badminton players mean 364,90 ± 33,91 ms, right handed (visual / auditory) reaction time of the players is 389,00 ± 59,70 ms, while the right hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time of sedentary participants is 415,12 ± 72,10 ms. as a result of statistical comparison of these values, a significant difference was found between the groups (p <0.05). orhan (2013) reports that despite the rope training program does not affect the visual and auditory reaction time, anaerobic properties affect heart rate. however, as in our studies and in the literature, it shows that sports and physical activities improve the reaction rates of individuals. imamoglu and kilicgil (2007) '' the reaction time in the tiny footballers in turkey, vital capacity values and lateralization distribution of left-handedness problem '' in his research of the players on the position for technical tactics being useful in the training of the players' skills, as well as reaction time stated in the workout might develop. çankaya et al. (2014) state that their training program improves their reaction rates in order to improve balance. orhan (2001) the reaction time of athletes with high anaerobic power is better expressed. the result of the research supports the literature. the left hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time values of the subjects were taken into account of the branches of participants. the average left hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time of the photographers was 478,75 ± 80,05 ms, the average of the left hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time of the badminton players 379,64 ± 48,08 ms, handball players left hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time average of 408.18 ± 45.94 ms, while the left hand mixed (visual / auditory) reaction time average of 433.25 ± 64 , 79 ms. as a result of statistical comparison of these values, there was a significant difference (p <0.01) between the groups. yıldırım et al. (2011) 810 years old girls playing tennis sport, right-left hand visual and auditory reaction time applied to the 3-month training stated that the positive development. trombly (2004) reported that progress can be achieved through exercise at the time of reaction. the findings of the study are in line with the literature. although there are studies on the comparison of reaction rates between sports branches in the literature, there are limited number of studies comparing the reaction rates of individual sports and team sports. studies on this subject can be done. as a result, it could be said that being educated on sports is more effective on reaction time than the education of fine arts and classroom teachers included in the study. in addition, having the lowest reaction time among badminton trainees and having the highest reaction time for painting education shows the importance of these exercises beyond the dominant hand. sevim (2002) this situation "reaction time, as a result of regular training can be improved up to 0.12 second. this change can be achieved by maintaining the current reaction speed, by improving the technical skill level and by making the movement more economical, not by the development of the stimulus going to the brain and the speed of arriving from the brain to organs ". references arslan, e., 2014. the effect of exercise program on the visual and auditory reaction times of healthy children aged 8-11 years. yyu journal of education faculty, 11(1): 169-182. bompa, t., 1998. training theory and method. ankara: bağırgan publishing. pp: 443. çankaya, s., b. gökmen, ç. m. and m.y. taşmektepligil, 2014. effects of balance enhancing special training practices on reaction time and body mass index of 11 years old young men. journal of sport and performance research, 5(2): 59-67. çolakoğlu, m., s. tiryaki and s. moralı, 1993. effect of concentration studies on reaction time. journal of sport sciences, 4(4): 32 – 45. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 495-500 500 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group davranche, k., m. audiffren and a. denjean, 2006. a distributional analysis of the effect of physical exercise on a choice reaction time task. journal of sports sciences, 24(3): 323-329.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02640410500132165. fox, e.l., r.w. bowers and m.l. foss, 1999. physiological foundations of physical education and sports. translation cerit. m., ankara: bağırgan publications. pp: 346-363. ghuntla, t., h. mehta, p. gokhale and c. shah, 2012. a comparative study of visual reaction time in basketball players and healthy controls. national journal of integrated research in medicine, 3(1): 49-51. imamoglu, o. and e. kilicgil, 2007. reaction time in little talent in turkey, vital capacity values and the problem of distribution of lefthandedness lateralization. spormetre journal of physical education and sports sciences, 5(3): 95-100.available at: https://doi.org/10.1501/sporm_0000000084. kamuk, y.u., 2006. combat pilot candidates studying at the air force academy simple reaction. measurement and evaluation of selective reaction and differential reaction times method study, master thesis, marmara university institute of educational sciences, istanbul. kaur, p., m. paul and j.s. sandhu, 2006. auditory and visual reaction time in athletes, healthy controls, and patients of type 1 diabetes mellitus: a comparative study. international journal of diabetes in developing countries, 26(3): 112-115.available at: https://doi.org/10.4103/0973-3930.32170. keskin, s., 2008. comparison of auditory and simple reaction times of visually impaired individuals between 18-30 years of age and staff of the general directorate of youth and sports between 18-30 years of age. gazi university institute of health sciences: master's thesis. nakamoto, h. and s. mori, 2008. sport-specific decision-making in a go/nogo reaction task: difference among nonathletes and baseball and basketball players. perceptual and motor skills, 106(1): 163-170.available at: https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.106.1.163-170. olçücü, b., a. cenikli, m. kaldırımcı and ö. bostancı, 2011. the effects of movement training with and without ball on physical fitness of tennis playing children. journal of sport and performance research, 2(1): 32-40. orhan, s., 2001. comparison of reaction time, vertical jump and anaerobic power values of active athletes and sedentary students. gazi university, institute of health sciences: master's thesis. orhan, s., 2013. the effects of rope training on heart rate, anaerobic power and reaction time of the basketball players. life science journal, 10(4s): 266-271. polat, g., 2009. the effects of 12-week basic badminton training exercises on motor functions and reaction times in children aged 9–12 years. cukurova university institute of health sciences: master's thesis. schmidt, e., w.j. loesche, b.a. smith, e.c. morrison, r. caffesse and p.p. hujoel, 1991. effects of metronidazole on periodontal treatment needs. journal of periodontology, 62(4): 247-257.available at: https://doi.org/10.1902/jop.1991.62.4.247. senel, o., n.a. atalay and f. colakoglu, 1997. physical and physiological profiles of turkish national cyclists. journal of sport sciences, 8(1): 43-49. sevim, y., 1997. training knowledge. ankara: nobel publication distribution. sevim, y., 2002. training information, 1st edition, ankara: nobel publication distribution. pp: 78-79. trombly, c.a., 2004. trombly, ca'n randomski, m.v. occupational therapy for physical dysfunction. 4th edn., williams and wilkins. yıldırım, i., ş. karagöz and o. y., 2011. the effects of 12 weeks of tennis training on visual and auditory reaction time in 8-10 year old girls university of nigde. journal of physical education and sport sciences, 5(3): 257-265. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 347 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 347-355, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.347.355 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a recommendation for new diction rhymes to be used in turkish diction education studies ismail coban artvin çoruh university, faculty of education, turkish language teaching department turkey. abstract acquisition of the ability to speak correctly and effectively is one of the main purposes of elocution. one of the conditions required to achieve this is to have a good diction. although the students speak standard turkish language at schools, they have poor diction due to being under the influence of local dialects in the family and outside the school. this affects the process of making the students acquire the ability of speaking, one of the main objectives of turkish teaching. the aim of the study addressed with case study method is to determine how the diction rhymes should be to be prepared by the prospective turkish teachers in order to correct and improve the diction of the students. the study group constituted 46 first-grade prospective turkish teachers studying in the department of turkish language education, in ataturk university between 2017-2018 academic year. prospective turkish teachers were asked to create a diction rhyme for 10 sounds “b, p, d, t, g, k, e, o, u, ü”. 434 diction rhymes were obtained as a result of the research. rhymes were examined in terms of length, including the number of the target sound, entertainment, creativity, and availability in diction training. as a result of the examination, 149 of the recommended rhymes were determined to have the capability to be used in diction training. keywords: diction, sentence, rhyme, availability, length, creativity, entertaining, prospective turkish teachers. citation | ismail coban (2020). a recommendation for new diction rhymes to be used in turkish diction education studies. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 347-355. history: received: 6 march 2020 revised: 10 april 2020 accepted: 14 may 2020 published: 8 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 348 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 349 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 350 4. conclusion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................. 355 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 355 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.347.355&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1712 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3952-9350 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1712 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3952-9350 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1712 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3952-9350 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 347-355 348 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by recommending new diction rhymes to be used in turkish diction education studies and also determines prospective turkish teachers’ skills of creating diction rhymes. 1. introduction considering the contribution of socialization to success, it is significant to obtain effective and efficient use of verbal communication skills. “language acquisition begins as a result of the interaction of the child with her family and close circle before school” (alyılmaz, 2010). it is one of the main purposes to make the students gain verbal communication skills in a world where the benefits of communication are increasing. “anything we do with other people must involve communication” (hartley, 2010). the major provider / tool of the communication is speech. speech is a psychophysical process formed by sound-light-waves arising from the movement of one's muscles in order to influence an individual/individuals (taşer, 2009). the individual must have some characteristics in order to be successful in this process. one of them is to have a good diction. diction is the art of using the sound correctly to express feelings and thoughts in accordance with the style of speech while speaking. for this purpose, it is the application of the harmony of the sound, the pronunciation, the length of the word syllables in proper positions. the articulation points of the sounds, intonation, emphasis, liaison, stops and harmony of the rhythm with the words bring the success of diction. in addition, it is necessary to focus on the importance of body language supported by gestures appropriate to the word (temizyürek, erdem, & temizkan, 2013). a good diction is up to the ability to make sounds according to their articulation characteristics. articulation means that the sound path taking specific positions while making sounds. if these positions are performed correctly and in-position according to the structure of the language and the rules of speech, the sounds will be complete and correct and thus the speech will gain harmony. this is why articulation is considered the basis of diction (gündüz & şimşek, 2014). an important issue in beautiful and effective speech is the perfect output of the sound. the perfect output of the sound requires a successful harmony between the output of the sound and the use of breath (vural, 2007). considering that language is a means of communication, pronunciation has priority in language learning, and learning pronunciation is of great importance for excellent verbal communication (aydin & akyüz, 2017). environmental conditions, characteristics of individuals, customs and traditions sometimes cause the failure of pronunciation practices and not to be realized. “one of the possible reasons why some teachers do not prioritize pronunciations in their course curricula is that they think pronunciation is not a fundamental component of language teaching” (cox, henrichsen, tanner, & mcmurry, 2019). “studies can be carried out to pronounce vowels and consonants primarily in order to pronounce sounds and words correctly and to improve speech training. rhymes can be used for such purposes” (gündüz & şimşek, 2014). rhymes are phrases composed of alliterations to be used in articulation training. in rhyme training, it is necessary to get rid of the misunderstanding that they should be said very quickly. rhymes must have simple or complex meanings or they should not have any meaning. thus the semantic shift in the mind is prevented (erdem, 2013). these rhymes, also known as fallacies, are particularly effective in children's language development due to the difficult utterances. when these rhymes formed by a combination of long and difficult words and letters mixed together according to their place of formation are tried to be said quickly or accurately. funny situations can be experienced accordingly. children who enjoy these funny situations will be willing to learn and use these rhymes (dedeoğlu, 2009). rhymes have an important place in pronunciations by the “tongue” in a certain position of the mouth increasing the movement function of the lower jaw, palate and tongue while the rhymes are said at various speeds (toker, sevinç, & önder, 2018). in fallacies, there are traps that cause misunderstandings when the rhyme is read quickly and repeatedly, and these traps leave the speaker in a difficult position. the ineptitude of the trapped, or the strangeness of what the speaker says without even realizing it, amuses the ones listening. some fallacies are in the form of poetry, while some are formed by the use of hard-to-say proverbs. fallacies, which help children to speak beautifully and accurately, have the features of sleight of mouth (yardımcı, 2004). one of the most important practices that will improve the students' education about sound, emphasis and intonation is the repetition of rhymes. rhymes to be used by the teachers after identifying the diction inadequacies of their students are essential materials for beautiful speaking. the teacher can make the students sing rhymes when the time and place is right. the practice of repeating a rhyme until the best one is said by the students can be performed. the ones succeeded in this practice can be rewarded. for these training, students may use rhymes either previously learned or to be heard in the class for the first time (temizyürek, 2007). rhymes are also used to the correct the diction disorders. teaching the physical pronunciation of sound is important to get rid of the lisps. the contact point of the tongue should be shifted to the lower gingiva in order to get rid of the lisp pronunciation of the s and z sound that occurs when the tongue contacts between the teeth and pronunciation should be performed in the right position. lisps should be tried to be eliminated by trying to pronounce rhymes related to these sounds and words (erdem, 2013). there are different uses according to the regions of a country where a language is spoken. these differences considered within the scope of local dialects cause individuals to make negative transfers from them while they speak the common language. a good verbal communication requires clear sounds, correct pronunciation of words and their transfer to the sentence level. correct pronunciation of sounds is successful with diction practices. one of the methods often used in diction improvement practice is the use of rhymes / exercise sentences. these sentences can be used in diction practice as well as in the training of correcting the individual's own diction. the length of these sentences should be well adjusted, involve the sufficient number of the sound to be improved, and be fun. according to tanrıkulu (2017) turkish teachers find it “positive to include diction and rhymes” in the evaluation of the contents in ein (education informatics network). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 347-355 349 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group çifci (2006) suggests that “teachers must be provided with adequate diction training in their undergraduate education so that they can give diction training to their students and become the right model”. er and demir (2013) drew attention to the results of local dialect, inadequacy, fatigue, question-answer, boring expression and monotonous language use for a lively and fluent style among the negative views on the pattern and texture expressed by turkish teachers at schools where the prospective turkish teachers work as trainees. türk (2017) also highlighted this situation and stated that rhymes could be used in such cases. it is important for turkish teachers to pronounce the words correctly. pronunciation errors are seen as the inability to speak according to some experts. inability to speak can be minimized by practices such as rhyme exercises, breathing exercises, training of speech muscles, drama, pantomime, theatre and oral reading. performing exercises expressed to completely eliminate mispronunciations can be a beneficial process for the use of correct pronunciations (türk, 2017). senyiğit and okur (2019) state that rhymes can be used in pronunciation training for teaching turkish to foreigners. erdem, şengül, gün, and büyükaslan (2015) also highlighted the use of a similar case for teaching turkish to foreigners. it has become possible to find rhymes in renewed educational and training settings. especially the websites having educational content come to the forefront for this issue. “the rhymes given under the titles 'diction rhymes' which is the second category on the righthand side of the site and 'twists-fallacies' which can be found in the eighth category are intended to improve children's language skills and so that they can pronounce words correctly. these rhymes consisting of words that are difficult to say phonetically, outnumber the others. and there are registered 117 rhymes under the title 'diction rhymes' and 340 in the category 'twists-fallacies'. considering the diction rhyme 'bir berber bir berbere bre berber beri gel diye bar bar bağırmış. bizde bize biz derler, sizde bize ne derler?' and twists-fallacies 'kırk kırık küp, kırkının da kulpu kırık kara küp', it is possible to say that the rhyme texts in the site are composed largely of rhyme texts generally expressed in the oral tradition” (büyükokutan, 2017). the aim of education and training of turkish language is to provide students with the ability to use verbal language skills effectively as well. this study was conducted to determine the skills of prospective turkish teachers (ptt) to create diction rhymes to be used in order to improve the pronunciation when they have students having bad pronunciation in their professional lives. in the study, the answer to the question “what is the diction rhyme development skills of prospective turkish teachers?” was sought. the answers for the following questions were also sought to answer the above mention question: 1. how is the length of diction rhymes prepared by prospective turkish teachers? 2. how much does the diction rhymes prepared by the prospective turkish teachers contain the sound intended to be developed? 3. is the entertainment factor taken into account in the prepared rhymes? 4. what is the level of creativity of rhymes? 5. what is the availability of rhymes in diction improvement practice? 2. method case study method from qualitative research methods was used in the study. case study is “an in-depth depiction and analysis of a limited system” (merriam, 2013). “it is the examination of a complex, special and interesting phenomenon and situation within their own circumstances” (sönmez & alacapınar, 2014). 2.1. research group during the determination of the research group of the study, easily accessible case sampling method, one of the intended sampling methods, was used. “this sampling method accelerates the study and provides practicality because the researcher selects a case that is close and easy to access with this method” (yıldırım & şimşek, 2013). the research group constitutes 46 first-grade prospective turkish teachers studying in the department of turkish language education, in atatürk university between 2017-2018 academic year. 2.2. collection and analysis of data after 46 first-grade prospective turkish teachers studying in atatürk university, department of turkish language teaching were informed in the verbal lecture class about the features diction rhymes must have, they were asked to create diction rhymes for b, p, d, t, g, k, e, o, u, ü sounds to determine what kind of sentences they can prepare to improve the poor diction of students when they become teachers. 434 diction rhymes were obtained due to rhymes that could not be created for some sounds. the data obtained were analyzed with the content analysis method. “(b), (p), (ü)” was added to the rhyme formed by each prospective turkish teacher with abbreviations such as ptt1, ptt2, ptt3, indicating which sound the rhyme was created for. when giving rhymes, an alphabetical order was preferred from being available to being unavailable. rhymes have been analyzed in terms of their length, how much they contain the sound to be developed, being entertaining and creative, and their availability. when evaluating how much the sentences contain the desired sound, 1-5 interval was determined to be less; 6-10 interval was determined to be medium; 11 and more were determined to be sufficient. while analyzing the sentences, 1 dr. and 1 prof. working in the department of turkish language were the score-givers. a consensus has been reached where different ideas were found. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 347-355 350 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. results table-1. length status of diction rhymes. f % length short 152 35 normal 245 56,5 long 37 8,5 when table 1 is examined, it can be seen that 152 (35%) of the suggested rhymes are short, 245 (56.5%) are normal and 37 (8.5%) are long. the suggested rhymes appear to consist mainly sentences of normal length. table-2. sound hosting status of diction rhymes. f % sound hosting less 98 22,6 medium 235 54,1 sufficient 101 23,3 according to table 2 analysis related how much place was given to the sound desired to be improved, it was determined that 98 (22,6%) rhymes had less target sound, 235 (54,1%) rhymes had medium and 101 (23,3%) rhymes had sufficient level. it has been determined that the suggested rhymes had a positive impression in terms of giving the target sound a sufficient number of places. table-3. entertaining status of diction rhymes. f % entertaining low 144 33,2 moderate 172 39,6 sufficiently 118 27,2 according to the information given in table 3, it is shown that 144 (33.2%) rhymes contain a low rate in terms of entertainment. it has been found that a moderate level of entertainment was in 172 (39.6%) rhyme. it can be seen that 118 (27.2%) sentences seemed to have the sufficiently entertaining qualification. it can be noted that the criteria for being entertaining in rhymes are adequately provided. table-4. creativity status of diction rhymes. f % creativity insufficient 161 37,1 average 152 35 sufficient 121 27,9 when table 4 is examined it was found that 161 (37.1%) rhymes were insufficient in terms of creativity. rhymes widely used and known by everyone were also evaluated under this title. 152 of the recommended rhymes (35%) were found to be average in terms of creativity. 121 of the rhymes (27.9%) have a sufficient level of creativity. it is noted that rhymes are found to be above-average in terms of creativity. table-5. availability of diction rhymes. f % availability unavailable 155 35,7 partly available 130 30 available 149 34,3 as can be seen in table 5, 155 (35.7%) of the recommended rhymes to be used in diction practices were found to be below the level of availability for diction practices. 130 of the rhymes (30%) were found to be partially usable in diction exercises. 149 rhymes (34.3%) were found to be suitable for diction exercises. the rhymes already used for diction exercises and suggested by the participants were also evaluated under this title. it was found that 64.3% of the recommended diction rhymes can be used in diction exercises. it is possible to draw attention to the rhymes determined to be useful in diction practices from the suggested rhymes as follows: table-6. available diction rhymes created by prospective turkish teachers. diction rhymes length sound hosting entertaining creativity a be ben sana beni bu kadar absürt beyle bir araya getirme diye bir bağ balıkla biraz da baklava vermedim mi? ptt38 (b) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient a be kuru dayı ne kuru sarı darı bu darı a be kuru dayı. ptt38 (d) normal less sufficiently insufficient al bu takatukaları takatukacıya götür. takatukacı takatukaları takatukalamazsa takatukaları takatukalatmadan getir. ptt14 (t) long sufficient sufficiently insufficient al bu takatukaları takatukacıya götür. takatukacı long sufficient sufficiently insufficient asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 347-355 351 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group takatukaları takatukalamazsa bana geri getir. ptt22 (t) al bu takatukaları takatukacıya götür. takatukacı takatukaları takatukalamazsa geri bana getir. ptt23 (t) long sufficient sufficiently insufficient al bu takatukaları takatukacıya götür. takatukacı takatukaları takatukalamazsa bana geri getir. ptt39 (t) long sufficient sufficiently insufficient babamın babama babasından kalan bartın’daki evine babamla birlikte gittik. ptt23 (b) normal medium moderate average bak bak bal gibi bol bol bal. ptt24 (b) short medium sufficiently sufficient bara gelen berber ile bardan gelen berber beraber pirelendi. ptt36 (b) normal medium moderate sufficient beli belendi yedi balandı yattı belendi kalktı balandı. ptt33 (b) normal less moderate sufficient ben bana baka baka biber biberi bala batıra batıra kandırmış. ptt4 (b) normal medium sufficiently sufficient ben benden bene bütün benceleri benlerle bombalayıp büblettim. ptt41 (b) normal medium moderate average ben beni bilirim ben beni, ben beni bilirim ben beni bilirim, ben beni bilmezsem patlatırlar ensemi. ptt21 (b) normal sufficient sufficiently insufficient berber berbere “bre berber barbar berber batılı berber” der. ptt35 (b) normal sufficient moderate sufficient bir berber bir berbere bre berber gel beraber bir berber dükkânı açalım demiş. ptt31 (b) normal sufficient moderate insufficient bir berber bir berbere gel beraber berberistan’da bir berber dükkânı açalım demiş. ptt45 (b) normal sufficient moderate insufficient bir berber bir berbere gel beraber bir berberci dükkânı açalım demiş. ptt22 (b) normal sufficient low insufficient bir berber bir berbere gel beraber bir berberci dükkânı açalım demiş. ptt39 (b) normal sufficient moderate insufficient bir berber bir berbere gel bir berber dükkânı açalım demiş. ptt2 (b) normal medium moderate insufficient bir berber bir berbere gel bir berber dükkânı açalım demiş. ptt34 (b) normal medium moderate insufficient bitli bacı, bitli bakkal bilal ile bitlenince nasıl bitli bitlerinden kurtulacaklarını aramaya başlardılar. ptt15 (b) normal medium sufficiently sufficient bitli bebek büyük biberonla bitsiz sütü bitiledi. ptt37 (b) normal medium moderate sufficient boş yere bırbır oluşturmayı bırak da bırbırlarını başka bırbırcıya sat. ptt42 (b) normal medium moderate sufficient buradan bursa’ya başlayan bu tur bursa’dan burdur’u bulana dek son bulamadı. ptt7 (b) normal medium moderate sufficient dal sarkar kartal kalkar, kartal kalkar dal sarkar. ptt45 (d) normal medium sufficiently insufficient daldan dala daldan dala dal kırıldı, daldan yere çakıldı. ptt39 (d) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient daldan dala dallanan dalları budamaya, dal ile dallanan dalları görmeye dalından kopan çiçeğin dalından sallanan dalın, dalını dalından kesmeye gidiyormuş. ptt5 (d) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient dededen denemeden de derin derelere düştü. ptt16 (d) short medium moderate sufficient değirmene girdi köpek değirmenden çaldı kepek hem dayak yedi köpek hem kepek yedi köpek. ptt45 (d) normal medium sufficiently insufficient deli danyal deli deli bakarken birden delirmeye başladı. ptt14 (d) normal medium sufficiently sufficient delik deşik durdu duvar dedem tepindi dam dam. ptt37 (d) normal medium sufficiently sufficient demirci demirleri darbelerle dolayıversin demirletmeden de darbelesin. ptt35 (d) normal medium moderate sufficient dım dım diyip dımdımlandırılıp dıp dıp diyip dipdiplendirilmeden dimdik durdurulup don don dondurulmalı dondurmayı. ptt41 (d) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient dondurma doldursak da mı dondursak dondurmasak da mı doldursak. ptt33 (d) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient döndü’nün dünyası düğünde döne döne döner dilimlemektir. ptt3 (d) normal medium sufficiently sufficient dura dura dul kalan durmuş dayı durduğu yerde durmaya doyamadan durmadan yürüyüp durakta durmuş. ptt6 (d) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient dün derya ile deniz dünyaya dalınca dedeleri dündar, “dünyaya dalmayın, dünyalık dünyada kalır” demiş. long sufficient moderate average asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 347-355 352 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ptt13 (d) ebe gümeci ebe gümeleri ebe gümeleyenleri eliyle elletti. ptt2 (e) normal sufficient moderate sufficient edirneli ellilik emin emmi elmalarını elli beş liraya edindi. ptt31 (e) normal medium sufficiently sufficient el eder söz eder erdem oğlan çok sever gelinin entarisini el öper. ptt45 (e) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient el ele verilir, eşek yükü un elenir. ptt37 (e) short medium sufficiently sufficient el ele vermezsen benimle el ele verirsin el ile. ptt13 (e) normal sufficient moderate sufficient ela emre’ye evden eleği, eteği, eldiveni getirmesini emretti. ptt25 (e) normal sufficient moderate sufficient elalem bir ev alıp evlendi de biz daha bir ev alıp evlenemedik. ptt15 (e) normal sufficient moderate insufficient elalem ele gözlü esma’nın ellerini es es eledi de esti. ptt12 (e) normal sufficient moderate average elalem elinde elma, ey ehlin endamı selma. ptt26 (e) normal medium sufficiently sufficient eledim eledim ununu, eyledim ettim senin sonunu. ptt27 (e) normal medium sufficiently sufficient elindeki elli liranın elli kuruşlarından elli tane elli kuruş alıp ellere dağıt. ptt42 (e) normal medium sufficiently sufficient elli elle ellediğin eller ile elli elle ellenmek ister. ptt36 (e) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient emel emellerine ulaşmak için erken erken evden kaçıp evlendi. ptt43 (e) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient eren evine en erken enikler el ele verdiği zaman dönebilir. ptt30 (e) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient esen’in elindeki eski etek, ersin’in köpeği çaldı kepek. ptt28 (e) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient eski evlerin içinde var bir elek, eleğin içinde bir etek, etek emziğe sarılmış ezelinden beri orada durur. ptt38 (e) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient eskişehirli edepsiz edip edebinden edepsizlik edemezdi. ptt9 (e) normal sufficient moderate average eşek eşeğe eş diye eş bulamadan eşsiz eşeğe eş demiş. ptt7 (e) normal sufficient moderate average eye büze süse küse süs püs süsletti. ptt5 (e) short medium moderate sufficient gel gidelim gene güne geceye gaglayıp gıglamadan gösterelim gangam gardırobun gözünü. ptt41 (g) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient gel gümüşhane’de gülcü gülşen’in gününe gidelim günümüzü gün edelim. ptt14 (g) normal medium sufficiently sufficient gele gele göze geldi göremeyecesiceler. ptt39 (g) short less sufficiently sufficient gelen geleni gele gele giden gideni gide gide güdermiş. ptt4 (g) normal medium sufficiently sufficient gelibolu’dan gele gele gelibolulu gelin geldi. ptt36 (g) short medium sufficiently sufficient gelin gider gavura, gavur söver karıya, gün görmeyen gelin girer gavurun kanına. ptt45 (g) long medium sufficiently sufficient geri geri giden gazanfer gerideki gazlı bezi almaya gitmiş. ptt43 (g) normal medium sufficiently sufficient gırgırlamayı kes gırıl gırıl gerçekçi gibi gırıl gırıl gurulda. ptt42 (g) normal medium sufficiently sufficient gizli gizli gel git, git gel de götürttürtme. ptt5 (g) short medium sufficiently sufficient gözlerim gözlerinin gözlediği gözleri gözleseydi gözlerimle gözlerin göz göze gelirdi. ptt12 (g) normal medium sufficiently sufficient gurbet guguk kuşunu gugukturdu, guguktan gurbet gukturdu. ptt18 (g) normal medium sufficiently sufficient güzel gelinlikli güzel gelin gana’daki düğüne koşup gelin. ptt28 (g) normal medium sufficiently sufficient i̇t iti itti bit biti itti it gitti bit gitti itti bitti gitti. ptt8 (t) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient kalın kemikle kalın olmayan kemik karşılaşmış kalın olanı kalın olmayana “neden sen de kalın değilsin?” demiş. ptt31 (k) long medium sufficiently sufficient kalpsiz katırcı koluyla kaldık da kalpsiz katırcı donakaldı. ptt35 (k) normal medium sufficiently sufficient kara kedinin kırmızı kurdelesi kıtır kıtır kıttırıldı. ptt13 (k) normal medium sufficiently sufficient kara kemal kara kömür ile karalandı, karısını da kara su ile karaladı. ptt15 (k) normal medium sufficiently sufficient kartal kalkar dal sarkar, dal sarkar kartal kalkar. ptt37 (k) normal medium sufficiently insufficient kartal kalkar, dal sarkar, dal sarkar, kartal kalkar. ptt22 (k) normal medium sufficiently insufficient kaz kazanı kazayla kızardı, kız kızanı kazı görüp kızardı. ptt36 (k) normal medium sufficiently sufficient kekeme kekelemede kelimelere denemeden deneme edemez. normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 347-355 353 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ptt17 (k) kel bakıp tabakta kabak keser, tabak kırılıp kelin elini keser. ptt46 (k) normal medium sufficiently sufficient kel kâhya kâzım, koşarak kurstan kaçarken kuşları korkutunca kapılmış kuşların korkusuna da hevesi kursağında kalmış. ptt14 (k) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient kır kara bir kedi karayazı’da kara köşede koşuşturuyor. ptt34 (k) normal medium sufficiently sufficient kırk küp kırkının da kulpu kırık küp. ptt3 (k) short medium sufficiently insufficient kırk küp, kırkının da kulpu kırık, kırık küp. ptt8 (k) short sufficient sufficiently insufficient kim kem kümleşti kim kem kümleşemeden kemleşti. ptt33 (k) normal medium sufficiently sufficient kitabın kapağını kapatan kabanlı kadın kitabın kapağındaki kabanlı kadına kendini kaptırınca kararan havayı fark edemedi. ptt7 (k) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient köyde oldu kepek, ketek çaldı köpek, kötek aldı köpek. ptt26 (k) normal sufficient sufficiently insufficient kurttan kurtulan küçük kurt kurttan kurtuldu da kurt kendini kürk olup kürksüz kımıldamaktan kurtulamadı. ptt41 (k) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient okuyan tren garında okumayanlar okudukça okudukları akıllarına okur demiş. ptt20 (o) normal less moderate sufficient oluk oluk olur olur’un oltasının orkinosu. ptt36 (o) short medium moderate sufficient onca olan olaydan sonra olanları ona onaylatmamı onadı. ptt25 (o) normal medium moderate average onun oğluna oya doya doya oya yapmamış mı? ptt46 (o) normal medium sufficiently sufficient oradan oraya otlayan ot obur ortadan otlarken otlamaya gelen ot oburları otlatmadan ortadan kayboldu. ptt7 (o) long sufficient moderate sufficient osman oğlu osmaniyeli orhan ormanda oyun oynarken otlağın ortasında oturuvermiş de ormancı orada yok muymuş. ptt14 (o) long sufficient moderate sufficient osman’ın o’suyla, orhan’ın o’su o gün orada olmuştu. ptt28 (o) normal medium sufficiently sufficient osman’ın oğlu onur oturup oğlakları otlatmaya koyuldu, osman oturan oğlu onur’u oturup oyalandığını sanıp oturtmaktan alıkoydu oturtmalıklı onur’u. ptt41 (o) long sufficient moderate average palavracı pala ferit, palasıyla piton parçaladığı palavrasını herkese duyurdu. ptt22 (p) normal medium sufficiently sufficient paramparça pırasaların pırasa değerleri parıl parıl parlarken paparazzilerin pırasaları şipşaklamasıydı. ptt42 (p) long sufficient moderate average parayı peşin alan pazarcı parayı bozamadan pırasayı parça parça paralayıp parayı pul diye paralamış. ptt7 (p) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient parisli patavatsız pınar pırasaları parça parça edip patavatsızlığını posterledi. ptt9 (p) normal medium moderate average pasajdan pasaklı paspas parasına, parlattığı paltosunu pat küt kaldıran paspasa pasajdan paldır palas bakan kız. ptt6 (p) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient pasaklı pasajcı verdi pası, pis paspasçı sildi pası. ptt36 (p) normal medium sufficiently sufficient patır patır gelen pireler, pıtır pıtır gittiler. ptt15 (p) short less sufficiently sufficient pazar pazar pazara pastırmaya palazlananlar pazar parasını palazlana palazlana paralanırlar. ptt4 (p) long medium sufficiently sufficient pazardaki pülümürlü pekmezci peyker’in pekmezi paklaşmış mıdır, paklaşmamış mıdır? ptt14 (p) normal medium sufficiently sufficient peçete paketini parala, paranı peçete paketiyle pakla. ptt44 (p) normal medium moderate sufficient pısırık pırasaları patır patır pırtlayarak aldı. ptt5 (p) short less moderate average pir gelip bir gelen pelin pırasa pırasa saçlarını partlattı. ptt43 (p) normal medium moderate average piresiz panda pireli pandaya pek de pireli bir pandasın demiş. ptt20 (p) normal medium sufficiently sufficient tak tek takalayıp tukalayıp tüt tut tat tittitretik takla tuttur. ptt41 (t) normal sufficient sufficiently average takılarız tezgâha taşı da takı, toka takılmasın topuğuma. ptt11 (t) normal medium sufficiently sufficient taksideki tuzlalı tatlı kız tuzlu tarçınlı tatlı tattı. ptt28 (t) short medium sufficiently sufficient tamirci turan trabzon ve tekirdağ’da tamı tamına dört yüz dört tır tamiri yaptı. ptt31 (t) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient tap tip top kim geliyor trap trip trop. ptt2 (t) short medium sufficiently sufficient asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 347-355 354 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group tatlı sudaki tatlı balık tatlılıktan taralandı. ptt35 (t) short medium sufficiently sufficient tatlıyı temiz temiz taslara tabaklara koy da tarlada tahteravallinin üstündeki torbalara taşı. ptt38 (t) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient tedarikli davranan talebeler test kâğıtlarını tek tek teslim etti. ptt40 (t) normal medium moderate average tepeden tepinerek inen tavşan tepine tepine indiği tepeden tepinemeden tepeye geri tepindi. ptt7 (t) normal medium sufficiently sufficient tersinden tepesinden tepilen tilki, tepilmiş ağaca tepelenmeden tepenir. ptt6 (t) normal medium sufficiently sufficient tısır tısır tıslayarak trenle tıkır tıkır geldi. ptt5 (t) short medium sufficiently sufficient tokatlıyı tokatlayan tekin ve tek olmayan tekir dostlarını topladı. ptt43 (t) normal medium sufficiently sufficient tükkanda tost tostturulmadı, tost tostturan tukkan taradık aradık. ptt18 (t) normal sufficient moderate sufficient tümendeki tüfekçi tütüncüyle tütün tüttürdü. ptt45 (t) short medium sufficiently sufficient ufuk, ufkunu, umutlarını un ufak edip unut. ptt24 (u) short sufficient sufficiently sufficient ulu umut usturayla uflaya uflaya uladı. ptt12 (u) short medium sufficiently sufficient uluyan ulu kurt ile ulumayan ulu kurt el ele ulumuşlar. ptt31 (u) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient umarsız umut unuttuğunu unutunca uçak uçtu. ptt19 (u) short sufficient sufficiently sufficient umduğunu bulamayan umacağını umduğu umuduyla umudunu ummayı ümit ederken umduğunu bulamayıp umulanı umar. ptt6 (u) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient umutsuz umut, ulu orta uğursuz uğursuz uzaklardan bir şeyler umdu. ptt43 (u) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient urmiye dereleri uçak bucak uçladı remzi paşa uçuğumu purtlattı. ptt2 (u) normal medium sufficiently sufficient uyumak uyumaya uysaydı uykucu umut uykudan uyandığında umutlarını uykudaki umut’un umuduna bırakmayıp umup uyumaya uyurdu. ptt41 (u) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient uzak uzak diyarlardan uyarılar bize ulaşırken, ulu uzun boylu budalalar bunlarla uzaktan yakından uyarılara uymadılar. ptt38 (u) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient uzaktan uzağa uluyan kurtlar ufak ufak tufak kufak uluştular. ptt13 (u) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient uzaya uzaya giden uzak yol uzadıkça uzayınca uzun adam uzayıp giden uzak yola uzun uzun baktı. ptt7 (u) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient uzun uzayan uzayın uzaklığı uzun uzamayan uzayın uzaklığını uzattı. ptt33 (u) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient uzun uzun ulumaları kuru ve duru kuzuları durdurdu. ptt17 (u) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient üç üçüz üçü de üçüz anası üçüz. ptt35 (ü) short medium sufficiently sufficient üf püf üfüleyip tüttürmeli ütüyü, ünü, bünü büsbütün tüttürmeli. ptt40 (ü) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient üflemeden üflemeye başlayan üfürükçü üflediği üfürüğe bakıp yine de üflerken üfürttüğü üfürüğe bir üfürdü. ptt6 (ü) long sufficient sufficiently sufficient ümbül gümbül sümbüller üretimi süpürürler. ptt2 (ü) short medium sufficiently sufficient üstüne üstelik ütücünün ütüyü ütülenmek için ütülettiği üfürüldü. ptt33 (ü) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient üzdü ümran’ı üzüm, üleştirdi ümit’e üç üzüm. ptt36 (ü) short medium sufficiently sufficient üzgün üvey üç çocuk üç üzüm için üzülmüş, süzülmüş. ptt26 (ü) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient üzgünce sevgilisi ümit’i, ümit eden ümmü ümidini kaybetmedi. ptt30 (ü) normal medium sufficiently sufficient üzüldüğüne üzülen adam üzülürken üzüntüden üzüldüğünü unutmuş. ptt7 (ü) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient üzüm üstüne üzdürüldü, üzdürülür mü üstüne üzüm? ptt18 (ü) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient üzüm üzüm üzülen üzüm, üzülen mürdüm eriğine üzülmemesini söyledi. ptt29 (ü) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient üzüm yaprağı yiyen üzüm gözlü kız üzüm yaprağı yiyince pek üzülmüş. ptt20 (ü) normal medium moderate average üzümün üzülmesi üzümü üzmezmiş de üzüm üzümü üzermiş. ptt4 (ü) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient yaban ellerde elle eleği eleye dursun, elek de eller de elensin dursun. ptt35 (e) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient ye demekle emek derilmez emek yemek demek de emekçiyi emeklilikten etmez. ptt41 (e) normal sufficient sufficiently sufficient asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 347-355 355 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 6 is examined, it is seen that 149 diction rhymes are suitable for use in diction education studies. in terms of length, 23 of these diction rhymes are short (15.4%), 98 are normal (65.8%) and 28 are long (18.8%). the sound targeted to improve the pronunciation is less (4%) in 6, medium (49.7%) in 74 and sufficient (46.3%) in 69 of diction rhymes. in terms of entertainment, it was determined that 1 of the diction rhyme is not entertaining. 38 of the diction rhymes have moderate (25.5%) and 110 of them have enough (73.8%) level of entertainment. regarding the creativity levels of diction rhymes, it is seen that prospective turkish teachers are sometimes under the influence of the diction rhymes used before. of the diction rhymes, 20 have insufficient (13.4%) and 15 have average (10.1%) creativity levels. it is seen that 114 (76.5%) diction rhymes have a sufficient level of creativity. 4. conclusion and recommendations in this study where how the diction rhyme preparation skills of prospective turkish teachers is determined, it can be seen that even though the prepared rhymes' sentence lengths are very short in some sentences, they generally have normal sentence lengths. giving enough place to the target sound desired to be corrected in the rhyme is found to be a positive result. the fact that rhyme sentences have a fun aspect makes it easier to use them in diction exercises. thus, they become interesting. this feature has been found to be adequately provided in prepared rhymes. in terms of carrying the characteristics of creativity, it has been observed that rhymes are sometimes written in the same way as they were previously known or put forward with minor changes. authenticity has been obtained in most of the rhymes though. although the prospective turkish teachers were studying at first grade, they were able to provide the 64.3% rate of the prepared rhymes in terms of their use in diction exercises. this is an indication that they have sufficient skills in this regard. it is believed that moving turkish teachers from their passive listener and the exercise implementer roles to the active creator roles will have positive contributions in speaking education and diction practices in terms of teaching turkish. references alyılmaz, c. (2010). problems of turkish teaching. turkish studies, 5(3), 728-749.available at: https://doi.org/10.7827/turkishstudies.1629. aydin, s., & akyüz, s. (2017). a brief comparison of the current approaches in teaching pronunciation. online submission, 8, 12-15. büyükokutan, t. a. (2017). a new environment in the formation and transfer of rhymes: rhyme sites. turkish studies, 12(22), 883-898. çifci, m. (2006). turkish teaching problems. (ed. gürer gülsevin and erdoğan boz). contemporary problems of turkish (pp. 77-135). ankara: gazi. cox, j. l., henrichsen, l. e., tanner, m. w., & mcmurry, b. l. (2019). the needs analysis, design, development, and evaluation of the english pronunciation guide: an esl teachers’ guide to pronunciation teaching using online resources. the electronic journal for english as a second language, 22(4), 1-24. dedeoğlu, o. b. (2009). the effect of nursery rhyme on turkish speaking skills in elementary school 3rd grade students. unpublished master’s thesis. i̇zmir: dokuz eylül university educational sciences institute. er, o., & demir, ö. (2013). examination of the opinions of turkish teacher candidates regarding the usability of speaking skill by turkish teachers. turkish studies, 8(1), 1417-1436. erdem, i̇. (2013). speech disorders encountered during speech training and ways to correct them. adıyaman university journal of social sciences institute special issue of teaching turkish education, 6(11), 415-452. erdem, i̇. (2013). speaking education: theory, practice, measurement and evaluation. turkish teaching handbook. (ed. abdurrahman güzel and halit karatay). ankara: pegem academy. erdem, m. d., şengül, m., gün, m., & büyükaslan, a. (2015). effect of rhyme exercises based on rhyme exercises on speaking skills of syrian arabs who learn turkish as a foreign language. route educational and social science journal, 2(2), 1-11. gündüz, o., & şimşek, t. (2014). narration techniques 2 hands-on speech training manual. ankara: graphic designer. hartley, p. (2010). interpersonal communication. ankara: image. merriam, s. b. (2013). a guide to qualitative research pattern and practice. (translation: selahattin turan). ankara: nobel. senyiğit, y., & okur, a. (2019). speaking skills and pronunciation training in teaching turkish to foreigners. mehmet akif ersoy university journal of education faculty, 52, 519-549. sönmez, v., & alacapınar, f. g. (2014). sampled scientific research methods. ankara: anı. tanrıkulu, f. (2017). teachers' views on the competence of eba to meet turkish lesson learning areas. journal of mother tongue education, 5(3), 395-416. taşer, s. (2009). speaking education. istanbul: pegasus. temizyürek, f. (2007). improving speaking skill in primary education. journal of ankara university faculty of educational sciences, 40(2), 113131. temizyürek, f., erdem, i̇., & temizkan, m. (2013). speaking education verbal expression. ankara: pegem academy. toker, s., sevinç, s., & önder, y. v. b. (2018). the effect of rhymes on articulation in vocal education. international journal of civilization studies, 3(1), 321-336. türk, o. (2017). a study on turkish teachers' interest in speech and the language of speech they use in class. turkish studies, 12(6), 783-798. vural, b. (2007). accurate and good speech phonetic-diction-articulation with practice and examples. istanbul: life. yardımcı, m. (2004). turkish folk poetry from the beginning to the present. ankara: product. yıldırım, a., & şimşek, h. (2013). qualitative research methods in the social sciences (9th ed.). ankara: seçkin. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 183 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 183-192, 2019 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.183.192 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of place-based education integrated project studies on students’ problem-solving and social skills yavuz akbaş1 safiye çakmak 2 ( corresponding author) 1 trabzon university, department of turkish and social sciences education, trabzon, turkey 2 social studies teacher, kutahya, turkey abstract the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of place-based education integrated project studies on students’ problem solving and social skills. the participants were 18 (10 females and 8 males) 7th grade students located in a northeastern city of turkey in the 2017 fall semester. students conducted project studies about local history, cultural, and socio-economic structure of their environments within the context of place-based education approach. to collect data, social skills scale to measure social skill levels of students and perception scale for problem solving skills to measure students’ problem solving skills were used as preand post-tests. since the study was conducted with only experimental group, simple experimental design was utilized. to analyze data, spss package program was used. wilcoxon signed tests were used to determine whether there was a significant difference between the preand post-tests mean scores of the students' problem solving and social skills. the results of the wilcoxon signed tests revealed that students' problem solving and social skills post-test scores were significantly higher than their problem solving and social skills pre-test scores. therefore, it can be suggested that project studies within the context of place-based education approach should be included in the teaching of different skills, values, and knowledge within the scope of social studies. for future research, it can be recommended to conduct research studies investigating the effects of project-based learning integrated project studies or activities on students’ skills including communication, social inclusion, observation, and inquiry skills in social studies. keywords: place-based education, project studies, social studies, problem solving skills, social skills, simple experimental design. citation | yavuz akbaş; safiye çakmak (2019). the effect of placebased education integrated project studies on students’ problemsolving and social skills. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 183-192. history: received: 26 november 2018 revised: 24 december 2018 accepted: 31 january 2019 published: 5 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 184 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 185 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 188 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 190 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 191 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.183.192&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/402 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3500-4701 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2726-8889 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/402 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3500-4701 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2726-8889 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/402 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3500-4701 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2726-8889 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/402 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3500-4701 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2726-8889 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 183-192 184 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction place-based education has been expressed in different ways. russell-ciardi (2006) described this approach as an educational approach that uses a local environment for teaching and learning. in this approach, the history of society and environment, folk culture, social problems, economy, and aesthetics are on the agenda (sobel, 2004). this approach focuses on learning experiences that give students the opportunity to do valuable work, and integrate local problems and knowledge into the curriculum (smith and sobel, 2011). in the literature, different names such as “outdoor education,” “environmental education,” “awareness of the place,” “ecological education,” and “the pedagogy of the place” have been used for this approach (woodhouse and knapp, 2000). the names and definitions used for this approach emphasize the coexistence of place, environment, local history, culture, and activities of education. some of the features in the literature about place-based education include that this approach (a) gives students different meanings about their place, (b) takes its source from the characteristics/dynamics of a place (e.g., geographical, political, and sociological), (c) encourages students to develop knowledge instead of using the knowledge, (d) increases the permeability of boundaries between schools and society, (e) is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary although the concept of the place originates from the geography discipline (woodhouse and knapp, 2000; smith, 2002; sobel, 2004). within the context of place-based education, educators have developed different materials and applications for the subjects, concepts, and skills to be taught in the inside and outside of the classroom. the learning process in place-based education (a) takes place in the schoolyard, local culture and the environment, (b) focuses on local themes, systems and content, (c) is personally related to the students, and (d) takes care to contribute to the power and environmental quality of the community as a result of experiences. in addition, project-based learning is supported by strong local organizations and various partnerships such as nongovernmental organizations, government agencies, and business enterprises. project-based learning helps people develop their love for the place they live in and support understanding and solving the regional and global problems (barnett, 2009). the objectives and practices of place-based education can be linked to experimental learning, contextual learning, problem-based learning, constructivism, outdoor education, environment and ecological education, biological education, democratic education, multicultural education, community-based education, and critical education (gruenewald, 2003). many of the issues related to this approach are covered in the social studies courses. social studies course is an interdisciplinary course and main objectives of this course contain enabling students to have the basic knowledge, skills, and values that allow students to adapt to the environment and society they live in. therefore, attention should also be paid to the use of out-of-school environments in the teaching of this course. these teachings can be focused on schools’ immediate surroundings (e.g., schoolyard), local market places, official offices, factories, exhibitions, archaeological excavations, workshops, museums and historical sites (e.g., historical buildings, monuments, museum-cities, battlefields, and virtual museum trips). in addition, oral history and local history studies should be done in appropriate subjects (milli eğitim bakanlığı (meb), 2018). in this context, the common points of the place-based education approach and social studies course are to offer a multidisciplinary perspective, and to help students understand different natural environments and social structures from the nearby environment they live into the global scale. thus, it can be said that social studies education and place-based education complement each other (resor, 2010; akkaya, 2014) because “place-based education is the process of using the local community and environment as a starting point to teach concepts in social studies and other subjects across the curriculum. emphasizing hands-on, real-life learning experiences, this approach increases academic achievement, helps students develop stronger ties to the community, enhances students’ appreciation for the natural world, and creates an improved commitment to serving as active, contributing citizens” sobel (2004) cited in shannon and galle (2017). additionally, project-based education practices play a crucial role in identifying the problems that students are aware of where they live. students choice a problem as the main focus, examine its characteristics, develop possible solutions, and then try to solve the problem in an organized way (smith, 2002). especially in social studies courses, it is seen that students are more sensitive to the problems of the society they live in and they are more active in the society when place-based education approach is used. drawing the attention of the students to the problems of the environment they are in, analyzing these problems, asking them to find the causes of these problems, asking them to produce solutions to these problems, not only will develop the sense of responsibility in the students, will also improve their problem solving skills (evans and kılınç, 2013). one of the important skills that students should gain is problem-solving in social studies course. by taking advantage of the events inside and outside of the school, students often should be faced with real-life problems and conflicting situations, and they should be reflective about the social problems they face (meb, 2018). a community that is (a) well aware of the problem-solving mechanism, (b) ready to unite their energies for the sake of solving society's problems, and (c) determined to leverage mobilizing situations to cultivate well-developed individuals, meaning that the community is doing a purposeful preparation to meet the needs of a continually changing and evolving civilization. the main purpose of teaching the problem solving method is to let students gain the ability to cope with the problems in real life (aksoy, 2003). as problem solving skills, social skills are another skill that should be gained by students who try to be socialized in social studies courses. people as members of the community should also have some skills to establish good relationships with the society in which they live. the skills used to establish good relationships with the society are called social skills. the more people establish good relationships, the more they feel belonging to the community (ozsarı, 2015). according to elliott and gresham (1993) social skills “are a socially acceptable behavior that makes possible for an individual to interact with others in a way that will help her/him to create positive reactions and avoid from negative reactions (cited in tuncel (2006)). our society needs rational and qualified individuals to compete with modern societies. educators in education have critical responsibilities in the preparation of these individuals. to do so, there is a need to change traditional teacher-centered education methods. it is expected that students learn the information in the process of education with the abilities they acquire from their environment and their innate abilities through social interactions (unal and celikkaya, 2009). in this sense, place-based education approach in social studies can provide students opportunities to learn about their asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 183-192 185 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group close environments better and create a perspective that can offer easier solutions to the problems they face. in this approach, students can be more sensitive to the problems of their society. in a national research study on place-based education, köşker (2012) conducted a qualitative study in which the researcher interviewed geography teachers about place-based education to identify geography teachers’ thoughts about the place-based education approach. in another study, akkaya (2014) measured students' academic achievements with project-based education practices. evans and kılınç (2013) conducted a study on the development and scope of place-based education approach in social studies. in another study by mentiş and ozkaral (2015), they explored place-based education approach in 4th and 5th grade social studies books. additionally, yildiz and mentis (2015) examined place-based education approach in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade life science programs. in international literature, there are more research studies in place-based education comparing to the national literature. in some of these studies, researchers carried out studies about students’ feeling of place and how to improve students’ feeling of place (cook, 2009; tanzer, 2011; goldfinopoulos, 2012; metzger, 2013). some researchers examined the content, application areas, developmental stages and examples of place-based education programs (tatistcheff, 2009; resor, 2010; sloan, 2014; sugg, 2015; albracht, 2016; deringer, 2016; madden, 2016). some researchers conducted studies on the development of environmental awareness and environmental sustainability through a place-based education approach (litz, 2010; zandvliet, 2012; zimmerman and land, 2014). in addition, bartholomaeus (2006) examined how place-based education used in some rural schools in australia. in his study, hankins (2015) investigated the roles of the school principals in place-based education practices. preston (2015) compared a place-based education approach and geography education. nolan (2015) explored the effects of place-based education on new ways of thinking. ontong and grange (2015) studied the sense of place in the south african countryside. when literature on place-based education is examined, it can be seen that studies examining the effectiveness of the place-based education approach in social studies education is limited. our literature review revealed that currently there is no study about the effect of place-based education integrated project studies on students' problem solving and social skills. to address gaps in the literature, in this study, the effect of place-based education integrated project studies on 7th grade students’ problem solving and social skills were investigated. 2. method 2.1. research design in this study, simple experimental design was used. in recent years, some studies have been utilized simple experimental design without a control group. such studies follow the development of the subject or sample in terms of various variables (cepni, 2010). the simple experimental design measures the dependent variable in a group (cohen and manion, 1994). in this design, participants receive a pre-test measure before the treatment and post-test measure after the treatment (cavlazoglu and stuessy, 2018) and the effect of the treatment is measured based on the differences between preand post-tests (yılar, 2015). since the study was conducted with only an experimental group, the simple experimental design was utilized. 2.2. participants the participants in this study were 18 (10 females and 8 males) middle school 7th grade students located in a northeastern city of turkey in the 2017 fall semester. the participants were chosen by purposeful sampling method since this method provides a depth examination of the situations and/or participants. this sampling method can be useful in explaining many phenomena and cases (yıldırım and şimşek, 2013). the participants (i.e., students) selected in this study were considered to be at the level of the grade that could carry out project studies related to the targeted teaching approach in this study. 2.3. data collection tools in this study, social skills scale (sss) developed by tuncel (2006) to measure social skill levels of students, and perception scale for problem solving skills (pspss) developed by ekici and balim (2013) to measure students’ problem solving skills were used as preand post-tests. the sss is consisted of 31 items and includes four factors. the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the sss was found to be 0.86 (tuncel, 2006). for this study, 57 students of the 7th grade took the sss and the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 31 items was found to be 0.91. the pspss is consisted of 22 items and includes two factors. in this scale, 15 items were collected under perception for problem solving skills factor while seven items were collected under the willingness and stability for problem solving skills factor. the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the pspss was found to be 0.88 (ekici and balim, 2013). for this study, 57 students of the 7th grade took the pspss and the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 22 items was found to be 0.87. to analyze data collected in preand post-test spss package program was used. wilcoxon signed ranks test was used to test whether the difference between the averages of the preand post-tests were statistically significant. as indicated in the relevant literature, non-parametric tests should be used when the number of sample size is below to 30 (yilmaz and yilmaz, 2005). 2.4. implementation process of place-based education integrated project studies this research study was conducted in a middle school in a northeastern city in turkey. first, detailed information about the research and purpose of the research study was shared with the school administration and the school's social studies teacher. then, necessary approvals and permissions were obtained from the authorities and students’ parents to begin the research process. project studies took approximately 12 weeks to complete. detailed information about the project process is explained below. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 183-192 186 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group informing students and preliminary testing (1st and 2nd week): the study process was started by giving information to the students about the study and explaining how to complete the pspss and sss instruments. next, students were asked to complete the pspss and sss instruments. figure-1. a picture of students while they were completing pre-tests. formation of student groups and determination of project topics (2nd week): students were informed about the place-based education approach and the project works that they were going to carry out. students were divided into project groups on a voluntary basis. the project groups received some project topics integrated with the placebased education approach and discussed the project topics. student groups selected the projects they wanted to work on. the general characteristics of the place-based education approach were taken into account as it was aimed to establish a link with the place-based education approach in the selection of the student project topics. the project topics were (a) historical ortamahalle houses, (b) public market, (c) fishing, (d) local culture, and (e) oral history. after the topic selection process, projects groups received project guideline and each step of the project guideline was explained. students' site visits for projects (3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th week): the students received 6 weeks time frame to complete all processes of site visits. each group did at least two site visits. researchers of this study guided the student groups during their site visits. before going to the site visits, the students prepared site visit interview questions for their interviews with the community members as indicated in the project guideline and the questions were reviewed by the researchers to make sure that the interview questions were in the line with the place-based education approach. students did their site interviews with community members using the final form of the interview questions. in groups, each member of groups received specific responsibilities to make sure that all group work was assigned and all group members received active roles in the projects. for example, while a student asked interview questions, one student took notes, and another student took photographs and did video recording as a part of their responsibilities in a group. in this way, while students were learning how to work with a group they found opportunities to develop social skills. in addition, most of the site visits were scheduled on the weekends to make sure that students did not miss their regular classroom meetings for other subjects. more information about some of the site visits can be found below. figure-2. a picture of students visiting historical ortamahalle houses. students in the historical ortamahalle houses project group visited the place, historical ortamahalle houses neighborhood, two times for the purpose of the project. the project group students did careful observations of the historical area, interviewed residents in the historical ortamahalle house neighborhood, took pictures, recorded videos, and took side notes. during their visits, the students also talked with ortamahalle folks association members about the history of the neighborhood and its cultural characteristics. as mentioned before, the group members divided the group work by assigning different responsibilities to each group member. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 183-192 187 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group public market project group students visited a local public market in their neighborhood and an agriculturally active village for the purpose of the project. during their local public market visit, the project group students had opportunities to learn about different grown products in their region, interviewed local sellers including women sellers in the local public market, had a chance to learn about how the sellers, especially women sellers, made contributions to their home and district economy. the group students did interviews with sellers on different subjects such as the type of products available for sale in the market, prices of products, and agricultural activities in the local public market. the students also took pictures, recorded videos, and took side notes about the local public market. after the local public market visit in their neighborhood, the students visited a village, kuru cam village, to see and examine the agricultural activities in their region. during their village visit, the students did careful observations of the agricultural area of the village, interviewed some residents in the village, took pictures, recorded videos, and took side notes. the students found opportunities to learn about the agricultural products grown in the village including kiwi and persimmon, which are some of the indigenous plants in their region. figure-3. pictures of students visiting the local public market and kiwi garden in the village. fishing group project students visited a fishing shelter and a fishing market in their district for the purpose of the project. during these visits, the project group students interviewed about issues of fisheries, problems of fishermen, fish species, economic benefits of fishing, and contributions of fishing to the region. in their fishing market visit, the students had opportunities to make observations about different fish species that were available in their region. in addition, students did an interview with the president of akcaabat fishermen association to get more information including fishing in akcaabat region, problems of fishermen, available sea products in their region, the function of akcaabat fishermen association, and economic/cultural aspects of the fishing sector. the visits allowed students to become more knowledgeable about fishing in their region. students in the local culture project visited a local sewing studio where traditional cloths of the region, akcaabat, were made. in order to learn about the culture of traditional akcaabat clothes, the students conducted an interview with the studio owner and asked about various topics such as characteristics of traditional akcaabat clothes and folklore dressings, features of sewing styles, and economics of sewing in their region. additionally, the students received a basic level training about traditional sewing in which they did basic fabric cuttings, made various designs of sewing patterns, and tried to use sewing machines. in this way, the students tried to gain new skills under the guidance of community members with the application of the place-based education approach. another site visit of the local culture student group was a horon trainer. horon is a traditional folk dance type in the akcaabat region and has been considered one of the most important cultural elements for the region. during their horon trainer visit, students learned various information about the horon folk dance including the history of the horon in the akcaabat region and cultural foundations of horon folk dance. thus, this visit provided an opportunity to know the horon folk dance better. oral history group project students visited a village museum, a hydroelectric power station, and a local writer living in a nursing home. in their village museum visit, the students interviewed the owner of the village museum by asking various questions about the museum including the history of the museum. students also did a museum tour with a professional guide. the students had opportunities to see various exhibitions in the museum. during their museum visit, the students took notes and pictures to be used in their project presentations. after visiting the village museum, the students visited a historical hydroelectric power station. this hydroelectric power station was country's the first hydroelectric power station which was still operating to produce electrical energy for the local region. the students learned information about hydroelectric power station from the guide in the station. the information included the history of the hydroelectric power station, general characteristics of the station, and the necessary steps for electricity production. next, the oral history group went to a nursing home to meet with a local book writer who wrote several books about the culture of town where students were living. with the local book writer, the students talked about various topics such as culture, social characteristics, and economy of the region. preparation of students' project presentations and doing presentations (9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th week): students in the project groups were asked to prepare a presentation with the data they collected during their site visits. the source of data consisted of pictures, videos, trip notes, and audio records of interviews. students prepared their project presentations with their group members and used pictures, videos, trip notes, voice records of interviews, and even some songs related to their projects. each group of students presented their project works to their classmates, social studies teacher, and researchers of this study. after presentations, researchers asked students to complete the pspss and sss instruments as post-tests and the data collection process was completed. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 183-192 188 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-4. a picture of students presenting their group project. 3. results in this section, the results obtained from preand post-test of pspss and sss instruments to report the effect of place-based education integrated project studies on students' problem solving and social skills are provided. in order to determine the effect of place-based education integrated project studies on students' problem solving skills, pspss was used as preand post-tests. table 1 shows descriptive statistics of preand post-test of students' problem solving skills scores. table-1. descriptive statistics of preand post-test of students' problem solving skills scores. group n mean sd min max pre-test 18 92.22 14.67 42.00 107.00 post-test 18 101.61 10.52 71.00 110.00 source: calculated from primary data. descriptive statistics showed that the average score of students’ problem solving skills was 92.22 in the pretest and 101.61 in the post-test. these results suggest that the average score of students’ problem solving skills scores increased after the project study implementation. wilcoxon signed test was used to determine whether there was a significant difference between the preand post-test mean scores of the students' problem solving skills. the results of the wilcoxon signed test revealed that students' post-test scores of problem solving skills were significantly higher than their pre-test scores of problem solving skills (see table 2). when ranks are taken into consideration, positive ranks were higher than negative ranks indicating that most of the post-test scores were greater than pre-test scores. these results suggest that the place-based education integrated project studies increased students' problem solving skills. table-2. results of wilcoxon signed test between students' problem solving skills scores before and after the project. preand post-test scores n mean rank sum of ranks z p negative ranks 4 7.25 29.00 -2.46 .014 pozitive ranks 14 10.14 142.00 ties 0 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. as mentioned previously, the pspss instrument is consisted of two factors, (a) perception for problem solving skills and (b) willingness and stability for problem solving skills. wilcoxon signed test was utilized to show whether there was a significant difference between the preand post-test mean scores of each factor of pspss instrument. table-3. results of wilcoxon signed test between preand post-test mean scores of pspss instrument’s each factor. factor name (corresponding item numbers) measurement n mean rank sum of ranks z p perception for problem solving skills (items: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22) post test-pre test negative ranks positive ranks ties 3 15 0 5.90 10.88 29.50 141.50 -2.444 .015 willingness and stability for problem solving skills (items: 4, 6, 9, 13, 15, 18, 21) post test-pre test negative ranks positive ranks ties 3 14 1 12.67 8.21 38.00 115.00 -1.828 .068 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. the results of the wilcoxon signed test for perception for problem solving skills factor showed that students' post-test scores were significantly higher than their pre-test scores (see table 3). however, for willingness and stability for problem solving skills factor, there was no statistically significant difference between preand posttest scores. mann-whitney u test was used to determine whether there was a significant difference between females and males in the preand post-test mean scores of problem solving skills. the results of the mann-whitney u test asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 183-192 189 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between females and males in both preand post-tests mean scores of problem solving skills (see table 4). table-4. results of mann-whitney u test between females and males in preand post-tests of problem solving skills scores. measures gender n mean rank sum of ranks u p pre-test female 10 10.40 104.00 31.00 .423 male 8 8.38 67.00 post-test female 10 7.80 78.00 23.00 .128 male 8 11.63 93.00 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. the mean rank of females (10.40) was higher than the mean rank of males (8.38) in the pre-test while the mean rank of males (11.63) was higher than the mean rank of females (7.80) in the post-test. additionally, the average score of problem solving skills for females was 96.10 and 87.35 for males in the pre-test while the average score of problem solving skills for females was 98.20 and 106.25 for males in the post-test. these results suggest that the place-based education integrated project studies did not differ between females and males in developing problem solving perceptions. in order to document the effect of place-based education integrated project studies on students' social skills, sss was used as preand post-tests. table 5 illustrates descriptive statistics of preand post-tests of students' social skills scores. table-5. descriptive statistics of preand post-tests of students' social skills scores. group n mean sd min max pre-test 18 128.16 13.56 101.00 148.00 post-test 18 137.11 14.01 112.00 155.00 source: calculated from primary data. descriptive statistics indicated that the average score of students’ social skills was 128.16 in the pre-test and 137.11 in the post-test. these results documents that the average score of students’ social skills scores increased after the project implementation. in order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the preand post-test mean scores of the students' social skills, wilcoxon signed test was used. the results of the wilcoxon signed test detected that students' post-test scores of social skills were significantly higher than their pre-test scores of social skills (see table 6). in addition, positive ranks were higher than negative ranks representing that most of the post-test scores were higher than pre-test scores. from the results, it can be noted that the place-based education integrated project studies increased students' social skills. table-6. results of wilcoxon signed test between students' social skills scores before and after the project. preand post-test scores n mean rank sum of ranks z p negative ranks 4 6.00 24.00 -2.68 .007 positive ranks 14 10.50 147.00 ties 0 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. the sss instrument is consisted of four factors including (a) helping-sharing, (b) collaborative working, (c) independent working, and (d) listening-encouragement. wilcoxon signed test was utilized to show whether there was a significant difference between the preand post-test mean scores of each factor of the sss instrument. table-7. results of wilcoxon signed test between preand post-test mean scores of sss instrument’s each factor. factor name (corresponding item numbers) measurement n mean rank sum of ranks z p helping-sharing (items: 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 13, 22) posttest-pre test negative ranks positive ranks ties 3 13 2 10.17 8.12 30.50 105.50 -1.948 .051 collaborative working (items: 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 17, 19, 21, 24) posttest-pre test negative ranks positive ranks ties 4 14 0 8.38 9.82 38,00 115.00 -2.276 .023 independent working (items: 4, 14, 16, 23, 25, 28, 31) posttest-pre test negative ranks positive ranks ties 3 14 1 4.33 10.00 13.00 140.00 -3.018 .003 listening-encouragement (items: 15, 18, 20, 26, 27, 29, 30) posttest-pre test negative ranks positive ranks ties 3 11 4 6.50 7.77 19.50 85.50 -2.102 .036 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. as seen in table 7, the results of the wilcoxon signed test for collaborative working, independent working, listening-encouragement factors revealed that students' post-test scores were significantly higher than their corresponding pre-test scores. however, for helping-sharing factor, there was no statistically significant difference between preand post-test scores. mann-whitney u test was performed to detect whether there was a statistically significant difference between females and males in the preand post-test mean scores of social skills. the results of the mann-whitney u test noted that while there was no statistically significant difference between females and males in the pre-test mean scores of social skills, males’ post-test mean score of social skills was statistically higher than females’ post-test mean score of social skills (see table 8). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 183-192 190 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. results of mann-whitney u test between females and males in preand post-tests of social skills scores. measures gender n mean rank sum of ranks u p pre-test female 10 8.20 82.00 71.00 .248 male 8 11.33 89.00 post-test female 10 7.10 78.00 100.00 .033* male 8 12.50 93.00 the mean rank of males (11.33) was higher than the mean rank of females (8.20) in the pre-test and the mean rank of males (12.50) was higher than mean rank of females (7.10) in the post-test. in addition, the average score of social skills for males was 133.12 and 124.10 for females in the pre-test. the average score of social skills for males was 144.50 and 131.20 for females in the post-test. these results suggest that place-based education integrated project studies could be more effective for males than females in developing social skills. 4. discussion and conclusion in this study, researchers examined the effect of place-based education integrated project studies on students' problem solving and social skills. results on students’ problem solving skills showed that the mean score of students’ problem solving skills was 92.22 in the pre-test while the mean score was 101.61 in the post-test. the results also revealed that as a result of the project study implementation the level of students’ problem solving skills improved significantly. the researchers of this study believe that identification of project study topics from students’ close environments within the place-based education approach context and challenging students to find solutions for problems they faced during their project studies had positive impacts in cultivating their problem solving skills. as stated in the related literature on problem solving skills, facing students with interesting real life problems, letting them collect information about problems and asking them to find solutions for the problems improve their problem solving skills. students usually want to learn the subjects when they find subjects interesting for them (baysal, 2005). in addition, the place-based education approach integrated project studies in teaching problemsolving skills found to be useful in providing long-term learning to students, connecting students to their places, recognizing problems in their environment and bringing solutions to the problems, encouraging students to learn by doing. in a problem based-learning research study, erdem (2006) stated that since students learn by doing, living, making sense of the information with their individual efforts, they could make real life connections, and become long-term learners in problem based-learning environments. in another research study, smith (2007) noted that place-based education practices allow students to closely observe the place in which they live while offering problem-solving skills and experiences that can deepen their commitment to their immediate surroundings. smith (2002) documented that place-based education approach helps students to define problems, focus on the problems, examine the dynamics of the problems, and make efforts to solve and find potential solutions to the problems. regarding place-based education approach projects, smith and sobel (2011) reported that students who were trained in placed-based education projects were more capable in problem-solving and strategic thinking than their peers who were trained in traditional education approach. the results of kurak (2009) research study are consistent with the results of this study indicating that students develop better problem solving, decision making, creative and critical thinking skills in project studies. in the studies conducted within the scope of the place-based education approach, students realized problems in their immediate surroundings during their researches and offered solutions to these problems. with the placebased education approach, students developed better problem solving skills while preparing interview questions, doing interviews, interacting with the community members, facing with some problems about the trips, and trying to find solutions from their points of view in the group. in this study, results on students’ social skills indicated that the mean score of students’ sss was 128.16 in the pre-test while the mean score was 137.11 in the post-test. the results also showed that as a result of the project study implementation the level of students’ social skills enhanced significantly. these results suggest that the place-based education integrated project studies significantly increased students' social skills. in the place-based education integrated project studies, asking students to create a study group, letting them work with their peers in groups, giving active responsibilities, asking them to communicate with group members, asking to find solutions to problems, letting them encourage each other in groups, and asking them collaborate in groups may improve students’ social skills. in addition, group studies can be effective in developing self-confidence for students when they have the opportunity to work with groups. in a related study, yılar (2015) indicated that when projects studies were conducted in groups, they positively affect students' social skills since students were in constant cooperation and communication with their group members in the process. in another study, conway and gow (1988) stated that collaborative teaching techniques with group studies were effective for inactive students with low social skills in integrating them into active learning in the class and improved students’ social skills of (cited in arısoy (2011)). tuncel (2006) identified that working in groups motivated students each other, created a team spirit, encouraged each other, increased students’ social skills as similarly found in the project group studies of this study. parallel with the findings of this study, yıldız et al. (2017) showed that students’ collaborative works, sharing ideas, helping each other in groups enhanced their friendly relations and increased their social skills. in project studies within the context of place-based education, students’ collaborative works in groups, making decisions with group members, participating in trips, collecting data as teams, and trying to find solutions to problems together in groups may positively affect the motivation of students. in addition, interactions of introvert and shy students with group members and successful completion of group projects can improve their social and collaboration skills. in this study, it was found that the average scores of male students’ social skills were higher than female students. this result suggests that male students improved their social skill better as a result of placebased education implementation in project studies. this result differs from the results of memiş and memiş (2013) study in which researchers examined the effect of academic achievement and age on 4th and 5th grade students’ social skill levels. memiş and memiş (2013) found a significant difference in social skill levels with higher social asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 183-192 191 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group skill levels in female students. in another research study by keskin (2007) it was concluded that the social skill levels of 7th grade students did not differ based on gender. in this study, working mostly outside of the school, communicating with different segments of society during the site visits, and having extrovert personalities as a result of cultural factors could support male students’ development of social skills better. therefore, male students could improve their social skills greater than female students. in conclusion, the researchers of this study found that the place-based education integrated project studies were effective in enhancing students’ problem solving and social skills in social studies. thus, it can be suggested that projects studies within the context of the place-based education approach should be included in the teaching of different skills, values, and knowledge within the scope of social studies. for future research, it can be recommended to conduct research studies investigating the effects of project-based learning integrated project studies or activities on students’ skills including communication, social inclusion, observation, and inquiry skills in social studies. references akkaya, m., 2014. place based teaching approach in social studies. unpublished master's thesis. gazi university, institute of educational sciences, ankara. aksoy, b., 2003. application of problem solving method in environmental education. pamukkale university faculty of education journal, 2(14): 83-98. albracht, c.a., 2016. wilderness restoration: a case study of two place based education programs. unpublished doctoral dissertation. the graduate collage of the university, nebraska. retrieved from proquest dissertations & theses global (umi no. 10143322). arısoy, b., 2011. the effect of cooperative learning on the achievement, retention and social skill levels of 6th grade students in the mathematics course of statistics and probability. university, institute of social sciences, adana, turkey. 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queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 106 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 106-111, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.106.111 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the physical education and sport teacher candidates’ attitudes towards teaching practice course fatih murathan1 1school of physical education and sports, adiyaman, turkey abstract it is known that the aims and achievements of the higher education institution in the teacher education guidelines of our country will enable the teacher candidates to develop a positive attitude from the professional point of view with the help of teaching practice course. in this context, teaching practice course is a transformation of the theoretical knowledge acquired during the undergraduate course into practice. in the light of this information, it is aimed to examine and evaluate the professional attitudes of the last grade teacher candidates who are studying at the school of physical education and sport in relation to the teaching practice course. a total of 128 female and 141 male candidate teachers who were educated in the 4th grade participated in the study as volunteers during the 2017-2018 academic year spring semester in the department of physical education and sport teaching. as a data collection tool " school experience lessons scale of attitude (oddtö)’’ developed by kılınç and salman (2007) was used in the research. the cronbach alpha reliability co-efficient of scale is 0.94. as a result of the research, there was a statistically significant difference between the attitudes of the teacher candidates regarding the gender status, the university where they studied, and their attitudes towards teaching practice course. as a result, teaching practice courses are seen as very useful and important for teacher candidates. it can also be concluded that teaching practice is useful and necessary for professional experience by teacher candidates and this practice is seen as a necessary complementary factor to the profession. keywords: physical education teacher candidate, teaching practice, attitude. jel classification: 129 education: other citation | fatih murathan (2019). investigation of the physical education and sport teacher candidates’ attitudes towards teaching practice course. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 106-111. history: received: 26 october 2018 revised: 29 november 2018 accepted: 4 january 2019 published: 25 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 107 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 108 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 108 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 109 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 110 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 110 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.106.111&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/390 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8887-4463 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/390 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8887-4463 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/390 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8887-4463 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 106-111 107 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction one of the most important steps of the country rankings is their education applications. in this point of view, education is a platform where a significant amount of resource transfer materialized for increasing production, gaining respect and level of development of a country towards others. the main organizations, which provide most of the educational needs of people, are schools and their elements. education of person, who will lead to the society, can only possible if the teachers are capable. because of this all societies attach high importance to educational activities and the teachers are the focal point of these activities (alakus et al., 2005). leader has emphasized, the importance of having knowledge at the information production stages of our time, in 2005. it is very clear that by the science and technology develops, a society needs schools which can improve the knowledge level and skills of the society more (mclaughlin and talbert, 2006). this study presents the role of teacher on increasing the quality of education in schools. for example, goodson and hargreaves (2005) characterizes the teaching profession as one of the basic jobs by means of taking the responsibility of improving the human source which has been required by information society. teaching profession and way and quality of educating teachers being questioned in many countries, and also it has been considered as one of the important problem areas of almost all education systems. for being successful at teaching profession which requires patience, sacrifice and continuous operation, one should work willingly and need to believe that he or she has the required theoretical information (capa and cil, 2000). educating teachers, is a comprehensive and multidimensional topic. teacher education is a process which includes candidate selection, pre-service education, practice and evaluation of practice steps (celikten et al., 2005). school experience and teaching practice course has been planned to provide a better training for teaching profession. this course aims to provide qualifications to teacher candidates to apply their liberal education, special field education, knowledge, skills and attitudes, which are about teaching profession, in a real education environment (oyegm, 2008). teacher is one of the basic factors of education who has the most influence on generations while they are adopting to different life conditions and growing to be a successful citizen. teacher is a person who is selfenhancing, transferring the knowledge in the best way, educating the students by considering the properties of culture and requirements of our time. a teacher is not only a person who is responsible from the transfer of knowledge but also a model for students by means of attitudes, emotional reactions and various habits (zembat, 2014). when the applications, which has been carried out to educate qualified teachers, have been taken into account in our country, many institutions have been created which aims to educate teachers and met the needs of our time (yök, 2007). however only ministry of education was responsible to educate teachers until 1982, related institutions and faculties in universities contributed to this mission (yök, 2007). in 1982 some of the teacher education institutions have been transferred to universities and some of them have lost their functions after the decision, which suggests to transfer the institutions to universities, of 10th national education congress in 23-26 june 1981 and the revision in the higher education law (law no: 2547). after this decision the universities have been responsible to educate qualified teachers (yök, 2007). the teacher educating faculties and institutions have focused on liberal education, pedagogical formation and specific field courses and the curriculum has been updated several times until today. the main targets of the teacher education guidelines of higher education institution (yök) are increasing the professional knowledge level of teacher candidate, teaching how to learn together and how to teach (sisman, 2000). according to these main targets the period of educating qualified teachers includes various levels. field selection process of candidate, undergraduate education, internship in selected practice schools and evaluation of internship process are these levels (kavcar, 2002). there are very important and mostly theoretical courses (introduction to educational science, education psychology, assessment and evaluation, special teaching methods, principle, methods and techniques of education) and also practical courses (school experience and teaching practice) in the curriculum. to detect that which mechanisms or processes are effective on the academic success of students is very important for a teacher by means of teaching profession (caprara et al., 2006). but there are many variables which effect the goal orientation and level of educational effort of teachers. for example, some scientists (rimm-kaufman and sawyer, 2004) reported that priorities and attitudes of teachers closely related with their classroom applications and behaviors. because attitudes effect not only social perceptions but also behaviors (kağıtçıbaşı, 2010). attitude, which is an important precursor, has been characterized as a psychological variable which has been considered as an important analyzer of behavior by means of cognition, emotionality and behaviorism. attitude includes a tendency, againstness or a favor to an attitude object (cakır et al., 2006). the professional attitude (positive or negative) of teacher candidate is an outstanding factor which directly effects the education of teachers and generations because it is an acquired, developing and changeable element like all composed objects in organism (can, 1987). the teacher education organizations aim to provide more effective behaviors in professional life by bringing knowledge, emotions and skills to students. one of the conditions for teacher candidates to apply the teacher profession better is having positive attitudes towards the profession. it is essential to detect and transform the attitudes of teacher candidates towards teaching profession to positive if it is negative (semerci and semerci, 2004). additionally, teacher educating applications and working conditions of teachers change frequently. because of this, it is very important to make actual studies to detect the attitudes of teacher candidates towards teaching profession (üstüner, 2006). when it has been considered the fact that attitudes form a basis for thoughts and behaviors, the necessity for the individual to develop a positive attitude in being oriented to success draws the attention (çepni et al., 2006). it has been concluded that the knowledge, skills and attitudes which exist in teacher education courses, can be applied in professional field by teaching practice courses. teaching practice is an important activity where the theoretical knowledge transforms to practice. teacher candidates should be familiar with professional field before they start to work (küçükahmet, 1993; gökalp, 2007). the target of these practical courses is to provide experience asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 106-111 108 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group to teacher candidates in professional field (harmandar et al., 2000). alakus et al. (2005) have been concluded that school experience and teaching practice contribute to teacher candidate in several ways as follows; support the teacher candidates’ decisions and actions about profession, develop preparations for profession, help candidates to prepare themselves for professional development activities while gaining experience, help to learn law, regulations and instructions of profession, gain technical and theoretical skills about field, improving, responsibility and judgement (alakus et al., 2005). the applications, for educating qualified teachers, are an old problem which have been discussed and theoretically transformed in educational history of our country. the discussions were focused on the applicability and compatibility of the education programs with the reality of our country (yüksel, 2011). some of the very important studies were evaluated which are about the education of teachers and increasing the quality of educated teachers (santoro, 1997; oğuz, 2004; elmore, 2007; kabakci et al., 2009). after the efforts on educating qualified teachers for a long time in turkey, yök and world bank collaborated for a project named “the national education developing project” to increase the quality of teacher education in 1994. it has been discussed in this project that how a better teacher profile can be created. at the end of the discussions, it has been concluded that the turkish teachers are capable by means of theoretically but there is a lack at the practical skills (harmandar et al., 2000). the investigation of attitudes of teacher candidates towards the profession and evaluation of attitudes by means of various variables were aimed in this study. 2. method 2.1. population and sample the population consists of students who are at the last year of physical education and sports education course of universities. 128 female and 141 male students, who are at the last year of their education at the 20172018 education semesters, have attended to the study as volunteer from 5 different universities which have similar student number. the average of the ages of samples was detected as 22.12±1.02. 2.2. data collecting tools “school experience lessons scale of attitude”, which has been generated by kılınç and salman (2007) has been used to collect data. the cronbach alpha reliability co-efficient of scale is 0.94. the scale includes totally 20 items (14 positive and 6 negative). minimum score is 20 and maximum score is 100 for this scale which has been prepared as 5-point likert scale type. so, if the total score of a sample would be divided to item number, the average score of a sample can be obtained which may provide information about the attitudes of related sample towards school practice course. if sample gets more than 3, it means a positive attitude and if the score is below 3 it means a negative attitude. (5= totally agree, 1= totally disagree) (kılınç and salman, 2007). table-1. item-test correlations, factor burdens and score averages of attitude scale items towards school experience and teaching practice lesson item no item-test correlation factor burden value average 1. 0.53 0.43 4.16 2. 0.59 0.35 3.22 3. 0.72 0.58 3.41 4. 0.58 0.44 3.47 5. 0.62 0.46 4.1 6. 0.64 0.65 3.7 7. 0.57 0.32 3.53 8. 0.69 0.64 3.22 9. 0.69 0.52 3.51 10. 0.78 0.65 3.22 11. 0.69 0.46 3.26 12. 0.71 0.68 3.71 13. 0.75 0.69 3.59 14. 0.65 0.72 3.92 15. 0.59 0.62 3.74 16. 0.71 0.62 3.50 17. 0.64 0.67 3.22 18. 0.46 0.53 4.39 19. 0.63 0.73 4.00 20. 0.66 0.51 3.26 source: kılınç and salman (2007) 2.3. statistical analysis spss (statistical packet for social sciences) 22.00 software was used for statistical analysis of data which calculated by two level scale form, which created at the variable dependence stage. descriptive statistical methods, frequency (f), percentage (%) and arithmetic average (x ), have been applied on the data and t-test and anova tests were used to detect the differences between the dependent variables. levene test has been used to detect that which groups have the difference, which has been calculated by anova tests. 3. results inclusive statistical evaluations have been reported in this section within the scope of the aim and the methodology. accordingly; asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 106-111 109 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. descriptive properties of students (n=269) variable gender n (269) % female 128 47.58 male 141 52.42 general academic score average 2.00 and lower 73 27.13 between 2.01-3.00 144 53.53 3.01 and higher 52 19.34 monthly income level 750 tl and lower 105 39.03 751 tl – 1500 tl 118 43.86 1501 tl and higher 46 17.10 mostly lived in village/town 61 22.69 district center 72 26.76 city/metropolitan 136 50.55 university a 59 21.93 b 61 22.67 c 55 20.44 d 52 19.33 e 42 15.62 descriptive statistics of samples were reported on table 2. according to this, it has been calculated that the 47.58 % of samples are female and 52.42 % of samples are male. and academic score average of 27.13% of samples is ≤ 2.00, 53.53% of samples between is 2.01-3.00 and 19.34% of samples is ≥ 3.01. the university variable has been encoded as a, b, c, d, e on table 2. table-3. test results of attitude scale towards teaching practice lesson for teacher candidates by means of gender gender n x sd. f p teaching practice attitude scale male 141 3.18 0.66 1.33 0.00* female 128 3.86 0.87 * p<0.05 as it can be seen from table 3, the average score for female attitudes is 3.86±087 and 3.18±0.66 for males. a statistically significant difference has been detected between the attitude score of males and females (p>0.05). according to obtained results the attitude score of females are higher than the males. table-4. the anova test results of general academic score average and attitude scale average towards teaching practice lesson for teacher candidates variance source sum of squares d average of squares f p teaching practise attitude scale between groups 24.544 4 11.601 .86 .002* in group 3955.327 265 2451.1878 total 3979.871 269 * p<0.05 according to the results on table 4 a statistically significant difference has been detected between the average of academic scores and attitude scores towards teaching practice. according to the obtained results, the scores of students who have average academic score ≤ 2.00 are lower than students who have average academic score ≥ 3.00. according to the results of öutö levente test, which has been carried out to detect which groups are the source of difference, a relation direction has been detected between the students who have average academic score below 2.00 and over 3.00. table-5. test results of teaching practice attitude scale scores of teacher candidates according to university variable university n x sd. f p teaching practise attitude scale a 59 3.49 0.28 2.6254 0.04* b 61 2.88 0.69 c 55 3.02 1.12 d 52 3.28 0.80 e 42 3.78 1.49 * p<0.05 statistically significant differences detected between the universities and teaching practice attitude scale score average of teacher candidates (table 5). it can be concluded that different social and economic standards of cities where the universities are located, different educational policies may be reasons for this difference. 4. discussion the attitudes of physical education teacher candidates, towards teaching practice course, have been evaluated by means of different variables in this study. obtained results by attitude scale can be summarized as; the number of female candidates is 128 and their average attitude score is 3.86+0.87, number of male candidates is 141 and their average attitude score is 3.18+0.66. a statistically significant difference has been obtained between the average attitude scores of male and females (p<0,05). according to this result the attitudes of female teacher candidates are higher that the male teacher candidates. in a related field study, the attitudes of asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 106-111 110 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group primary school teacher candidates have been evaluated by interview and no significant difference obtained by means of student opinions (rıza and hamurcu, 2000). aydın et al. (2007) reported in 2007 that, students determined that the school experience course is useful and teaching practice contributed to the learning period a lot. therefore, the results which have been obtained from our study by gender variable are not in harmony with literature. but the results are compatible with the study of aydın et al. (2007) which determines the teaching practice as useful. it has been concluded that the teacher candidates should spend more time in practice schools and this is one of the sub problems of the field (hawley, 1993). the courses, which the candidates can practice, are activities that the candidates can contact with student one to one, transfers the experience, organize new development exercises and find educationally productive areas. it has also been concluded that to give more time to candidates in practice schools is not recommended by means of learning strategy and professional attitude. as a result, when the effect of these experiences to the future professional life of candidates considered, to provide chance to the teacher candidates in practice schools to develop their professional experience matters. it has been evaluated that the attitudes of teacher candidates towards teaching practice course depends of the university variable and there is a significant relation between this difference and teaching practice attitude scale score average. according to statistical test of this data, the teacher candidates of university e have the highest average score (x=3.78) between the attitude scale and university variable. and the lowest average belongs to (x =2,88university b. the results of this study about the university variable are compatible with literature. the reasons for why university matters can be summarized as; unsatisfying number of practice schools, lack of sport facilities, lack or weakness of branch teachers on field. it can be concluded that these factors are important on the status of attitudes of teacher candidates towards teaching practice. average age of samples is 22.12±1.02. most of the volunteers (37%) are between 22-23. results have stated that there is not any meaningful relation between the ages and the attitudes of teacher candidates. a similar result has been reported by murathan and özdemir (2017). when the last words of teacher candidates, which has been added to the end of the survey if they want to add anything, examined, it has been evaluated that there is a lack of communication between the supervisor in practice school and responsible academician at university. this result is compatible with the reports of gökçe and demirhan (2005) which has been carried out in 80 public schools with 341 teacher candidates. it has been concluded in reports which are the structure of the problem that teacher candidates want to meet with wise, positively attituded and sympathetic supervisors in practice schools (leask, 1995; adey, 1997; maynard, 2000; zanting et al., 2001; azar, 2003). 5. conclusion it has been evaluated that the teacher candidates have positive attitudes scores towards teaching practice course and they think that these practical courses are useful. therefore, it can be concluded that to increase the number of courses, which are similar to teaching practice course, in curriculum is essential. according to the obtained results the attitudes of teacher candidates are positive but the instructions and guides of universities which are prepared for teaching practice and internship are not easily understandable. candidates were not informed enough about paperwork stages of teaching practice and because of this they slog on writing the final results. according to the results of the study the suggestions can be summarized as;  the studies on attitude can be evaluated by applying to large populations.  the effects of different variables can be considered towards attitudes on teaching practice.  new investigations, which are oriented for teaching practice partners (student, teacher, school managers, academicians), can be planned to contribute to the solution of problems. new studies, which evaluate the efficiency of investigation by considering the socioeconomic environment and structure of society, can be carried out. references adey, w.r., 1997. bioeffects of mobile communications fields: possible mechanisms for cumulative dose. in mobile communications safety. boston, ma: springer. pp: 95-131. alakus, a.o., b. oral and l. mercin, 2005. perceptions of prospective teachers in school of fine arts education ii. national education journal, 168. aydın, s., a. selçuk and m. yeşilyurt, 2007. the effect of “school experience ii” on pre-service elementary teachers (yuzuncu yil unıversıty sample. yüzüncü yıl university, education faculty journal, 4(ii): 75-90. azar, a., 2003. reflections of views on school experience and teaching practice courses. national education journal, 159(04.04): 18. cakır, ö., a. kan and ö. sünbül, 2006. evaluation of teaching profession and non-thesis master programs in terms of attitude and selfefficacy. mersin university faculty of education journal, 2(1): 36-47. can, g., 1987. evaluation of the attitudes of teacher candidates’ towards teaching certificate courses and their learning modalities. anadolu university education faculty journal, 1(2): 159–170. capa, y. and n. cil, 2000. investigation of teacher candidates' attitudes towards teaching profession from different variables. journal of hacettepe university faculty of education, 18(18): 123. caprara, g.v., c. barbaranelli, p. steca and p.s. malone, 2006. teachers' self-efficacy beliefs as determinants of job satisfaction and students' academic achievement: a study at the school level. journal of school psychology, 44(6): 473-490. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2006.09.001. celikten, m., m. sanal and y. yeni, 2005. teaching profession and features. erciyes university journal of the institute of social sciences, 19(2): 207-237. çepni, s., ö. çakır, a. kan and ö. sünbül, 2006. evaluation of teaching profession and non-thesis master programs in terms of attitude and self-efficacy. mersin university education faculty journal, 2(1): 36–47. elmore, r.f., 2007. school reform from the inside out: policy, practice, and performance. cambridge, ma: harvard education press. gökalp, m., 2007. levels of school students' perception of school experience in. university. d. ziya gökalp faculty of education journal, 9: 56-63. gökçe, e. and c. demirhan, 2005. teacher candidates and supervising teachers’ opinions about activities of teaching practice in elementary schools. ankara university, journal of educational sciences, 1: 43-71. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 106-111 111 © 2019 by the authors; 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(ed. a. oktay), introduction to education science. 7th edn., ankara: pegem academy. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.yok.gov.tr/documents/10279/49665/yok_ogretmen_kitabi 369 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 369-373, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.369.373 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effects of pilates, step and zumba exercises on self-esteem, happiness and communication skill levels serhat özdenk1 mehmet i̇mamoğlu2 ( corresponding author) 1,2sinop university faculty of sport sciences department of sport management, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to examine the self-esteem, happiness and communication skills of women who participated in pilates, step and zumba exercise programs. a total of 54 women participated in the study. pilates, step and zumba exercise program was applied three days a week for a total of 12 weeks. as a data col lection tool in research; personal information form, rosenberg self-esteem scale consisting of 10 items, which was adapted to turkish by cuhadaroğlu (1986) the scale of communication skills created by korkut-owen and bugay (2014) consisting of 25 items, and the scale of happiness created by demirci (2017) composed of 6 items. when the self-esteem, happiness level and communication skills scale scores of the participants in the pilates exercise program are examined, there is a statistically significant difference between the pre-posttest values (p<0.05). when the self-esteem scale scores of the participants in step and zumba exercise program were examined, there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-posttest values (p>0.05). when the happiness level and communication skills scale scores of the participants in step and zumba exercise program were examined, statistically significant difference was observed between the pre-posttest (p<0.05). pilates exercise program positively affects selfesteem, happiness and communication skills. step and zumba exercise programs have no effect on self-esteem. step and zumba exercise program positively affect the level of happiness and communication skills. it is recommended that women participate in exercise programs such as pilates, step and zumba. keywords: exercise program, physical activity, pilates, sport, zumba, women. citation | serhat özdenk; mehmet i̇mamoğlu (2019). the effects of pilates, step and zumba exercises on self-esteem, happiness and communication skill levels. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 369-373. history: received: 19 march 2019 revised: 24 april 2019 accepted: 30 may 2019 published: 5 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 370 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 370 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 370 4. discussion and conclusion........................................................................................................................................................... 372 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 373 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.369.373&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/894 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4376-7434 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9820-106x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/894 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4376-7434 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9820-106x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/894 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4376-7434 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9820-106x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/894 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4376-7434 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9820-106x asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 369-373 370 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the self-esteem, happiness and communication skills of women who participated in pilates, step and zumba exercise programs. 1. introduction people are increasingly aware of the benefits of various policies and regular exercise and physical activity programs as a result of actions and campaigns aimed at developing a more active and healthier lifestyle. physical activity is fundamental to maintaining life functions and is an essential part of having a healthy lifestyle because it has been proven in many studies to have a protective role against cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, skeletal disorders and even mental development (vendramin et al., 2016). in the psychological well-being category, we can frame perceptions, thoughts and emotions related to body image, health status, self-esteem, etc., which can be improved by most physical activities (pop, 2017). in recent years, as an alternative to traditional physical activities, new types of organized physical activity have been developed that direct large segments of the population to physical activities. it is thought that these physical activities are easier to become widespread because of the lack of specific or complex rules and the use of entertaining music. another important detail in these physical activities is the enjoyment of the participants during the activity is an important factor in the participation of individuals in this activity. this type of new structured physical activity (pilates, step, zumba, etc.) is more attractive compared to classical sports activities, the number of participants increases each year due to intensive marketing activities and these new physical activity activities appeal to the wider population (national institutes of health national heart lung and blood institute north american association for the study of obesity, 2000). the diversity of technical elements that are permanently combined in numerous dynamic structures and various choreographies often develops with a dynamic musical background (pop, 2017). it can assume the studies that reveal the potential of music as a new research approach in which people are considered holistically. music can provide a resource for improving well-being, understood as a positive development of identity, regardless of “objective” health status (macdonald et al., 2013). recently, it has been observed that these new physical activities can provide health benefits. in a systematic study examining the health benefits of zumba fitness training, it was found to have a positive but lighter effect on improving muscle strength and flexibility in addition to developing social, psychological and aerobic capacity (vendramin et al., 2016). in addition to depression, the physical decline of the elderly negatively affects their personal autonomy and quality of life. physical activity is a way to slow down this decline and to preserve and even improve personal autonomy and quality of life (pernambuco et al., 2012). the pilates method can provide a significant improvement in personal autonomy, static balance and quality of life (rodrigues et al., 2010). pilates, step and zumba activities are among the most important physical activities in which the popularity and number of participants have increased in recent years (neagu, 2015). 2. method this study is an experimental study that focuses on self-esteem, happiness and communication skills of women who participate in pilates, step and zumba exercises voluntarily. there is no criterion for participation in the study. a total of 54 women aged 19 to 58 participated in the study. pilates, step and zumba exercise program was applied three days a week for a total of 12 weeks. 2.1. exercise program three days of pilates exercise program includes aerobics for two days and fitness exercises for one day. it includes 40 minutes of floor exercises at low tempo, two minutes of rest and 20 minutes of aerobic movements. each pilates exercise program consumes an average of 400 calories of energy. the step program includes two step and one day fitness exercises. 20 minutes aerobics, 20 minutes step and 30 minutes cushion movements. there are three minutes of rest between aerobic movements and two minutes when moving from step to floor exercises. each step exercise program consumes an average of 450 calories of energy. the zumba exercise program, which is applied for three days, includes two days of zumba and one day of fitness exercises. movements that last for 10-13 songs take about 55 minutes. after each song, a break of 20 seconds is given. the program is completed with cool down exercises 10 minutes. each zumba exercise program consumes an average of 800 calories of energy. personal information form and 3 scales were used as data collection tool. these scales are; rosenberg selfesteem scale adapted by cuhadaroğlu (1986) into turkish, communication skills scale created by korkut-owen and bugay (2014) happiness scale developed by demirci (2017). 2.2. statistics and data analysis ibm spss 21.0 software was used in the calculation and evaluation of the data, statistical significance level was determined as p<0.05, normality level was measured by kolmogorov-smirnov test. the data does not show normal distribution. mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum and rank mean values were taken into consideration in the analysis of the data. the wilcoxon signed rank test was used to compare the pre-posttest measurements for those who participated in pilates, step and zumba exercises in terms of scale scores. kruskal-wallis and mannwhitney u test was used. 3. findings the age, height and weight values of the pilates, step and zumba groups are given in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 369-373 371 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. age, height and weight values. groups count age (year) height (cm) weight (kg) mean ± std. min. max. mean ± std. min. max. mean ± std. min. max. pilates 36 47±8 24 58 160±5 150 172 75.41±11.47 56.9 101.5 step 10 39±10 23 51 160±3 154 164 67.43±10.21 57.4 92.4 zumba 8 39±10 19 50 161±6 150 169 68.01±7.48 59 81.1 the average age of 36 women participating pilates exercises was 47±8 years, average height was 160±5 and weight average was 75.41±11.47. the mean age of the 10 women participating in step exercises was 39±10, average height was 160±3 and weight average was 67.43±10.21. the mean age of the 8 women who participated in the zumba exercises was 39±10, average height was 161±6 and weight average was 68.01±7.48. table-2. the relationship between self-esteem, happiness and communication skills scale scores of the pilates exercise program. scales pilates n mean rank sum of ranks z p self esteem post-pretest negative ranks 6 12.08 72.5 -3.249 0.00* positive ranks 23 15.76 362.5 ties 7 total 36 happiness scale post-pretest negative ranks 0 0 0 -4.631 0.00* positive ranks 28 14.5 406 ties 8 total 36 communication skills post-pretest negative ranks 0 0 0 -5.234 0.00* positive ranks 36 18.5 666 ties 0 total 36 *p<0.05. the statistical relationship between the self-esteem, happiness and communication skills scale scores of the participants in the pilates exercise program is given in table 2. when the self-esteem, happiness and communication skills scale scores of the participants of pilates exercise program were examined, a statistically significant difference was observed between pre-posttest (p<0.05). selfesteem scale score decreased in 6 of 36 women who participated in pilates exercises, self-esteem scale score increased in 23, and there was no change in self-esteem scale score of 7 women. pilates exercise program positively affects self-esteem. after the exercise program, the happiness scale score of the 28 women who participated pilates exercises increased and happiness scale score of 8 did not change. pilates exercise program positively affects the level of happiness. after the pilates exercise program, communication skills were increased in all 36 women. pilates exercise program positively affects communication skills. the statistical relationship between the self-esteem, happiness level and communication skills scale scores of the participants who participated in the step exercise program is given in table 3. table-3. post-pretest relationship of self-esteem, happiness and communication skills scale scores of step participants. scales step n mean rank sum of ranks z p self esteem post-pretest negative ranks 5 3.9 19.5 -0.36 0.71 positive ranks 4 6.38 25.5 ties 1 total 10 happiness scale post-pretest negative ranks 1 3 3 -2.502 0.01* positive ranks 9 5.78 52 ties 0 total 10 communication skills post-pretest negative ranks 1 2 2 -2.446 0.01* positive ranks 8 5.38 43 ties 1 total 10 *p<0.05. when the self-esteem scale score of the participants in the step exercise program was examined, there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-posttest values (p> 0.05). when the happiness level and communication skills scale scores of the participants in step exercise program were examined, a statistically significant difference was observed between pre-posttest (p<0.05). 10 women who participated in step exercises, 5 had decreased self-esteem scale score, 4 had increased self-esteem scale score, and 1 had no change in self-esteem scale score. step exercise program has no effect on self-esteem. happiness scale score decreased in one woman who participated in step exercises and happiness scale score of 9 increased. step exercise program positively affects the level of happiness. after the exercise program, 1 of 10 women who participated in step exercises decreased their communication scale score, 8 of them increased their communication scale score and 1 of them did not change their communication scale score. step exercise program positively affects communication skills. the statistical relationship between the self-esteem, happiness and communication skills scale scores of the participants in the zumba exercise program is given in table 4. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 369-373 372 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. post-pretest relationship of self-esteem, happiness and communication skills scale scores of participants in zumba exercise program. scales zumba n mean rank sum of ranks z p self esteem post-pretest negative ranks 3 3.5 10.5 0.000 1 positive ranks 3 3.5 10.5 ties 2 total 8 happiness scale post-pretest negative ranks 0 0 0 -2.585 0.01* positive ranks 8 4.5 36 ties 0 total 8 communication skills post-pretest negative ranks 0 0 0 -2.527 0.01* positive ranks 8 4.5 36 ties 0 total 8 *p<0.05. when the self-esteem scale score of the participants in the zumba exercise program was examined, there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-posttest values (p> 0.05). when the happiness level and communication skills scale scores of the participants in zumba exercise program were examined, a statistically significant difference was observed between pre-posttest (p<0.05). 8 women who participated in zumba exercises, 3 had decreased self-esteem scale score, 3 had increased self-esteem scale score, and 2 had no change in self-esteem scale score. the zumba exercise program has no effect on self-esteem. happiness and communication skills scale scores of 8 women who participated in zumba exercises increased after the exercise program. zumba exercise program positively affects the level of happiness and communication skills. the statistical relationship between the self-esteem, happiness scale and communication skills scale scores between the pilates, step and zumba groups was given in table 5. table-5. relationship between self-esteem, happiness scale and communication skills scale scores between groups. scales groups n pretest posttest mean rank x2 p diff. mean rank x2 p diff. self esteem pilates 36 27.78 .259 .879 none 29.83 4.072 .131 none step 10 28.50 27.00 zumba 8 25.00 17.63 happiness scale pilates 36 29.29 4.641 .098 none 29.82 4.464 .107 none step 10 18.00 18.95 zumba 8 31.31 27.75 communication skills pilates 36 24.13 6.070 .048* step >pilates 29.46 2.940 .230 none step 10 37.70 27.20 zumba 8 29.94 19.06 *p<0.05. there was a statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of initial test communication skills (p<0.05). mean test scores of the pretest communication skills differed significantly between step and pilates group (p<0.05). step group communication skills rank average score is higher than pilates group communication skills rank average score. there was no statistically significant difference in the pretest self-esteem and happiness scale scores (p>0.05). posttest self-esteem, happiness scale and communication skills score values did not differ between the groups (p>0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion in the study, it was seen that pilates exercise program positively affected women's self-esteem, happiness and communication skill levels. step exercise program has no effect on self-esteem. step exercise program positively affects the level of happiness. step exercise program positively affects communication skills. the zumba exercise program has no effect on self-esteem. zumba exercise program positively affects the level of happiness and communication skills. when the groups participating in pilates, step and zumba exercises were evaluated among themselves, there was no difference in terms of self-esteem, happiness and communication skill levels both in the pre-posttests. studies have shown that physical exercise training improves depressive disorders and anxiety in the elderly (zanuso et al., 2012). pilates exercise is efficient in decreasing the depression level of elderly women (mokhtari et al., 2013). pilates exercise program for 12 weeks has a positive impact on reducing the depression degree, improving both heart and blood pressure rates, muscle strength, muscular endurance and flexibility for battered women research sample (hassan and amin, 2011). psychologists have seen self-esteem as an important psychological predictor for health and quality of life. a significant number of studies have linked the concept of self-esteem to a wide range of subjects, from violence and aggression to baumeister et al. (1996) and to life satisfaction arranged by age, gender, or ethnic origin (zhang and leung, 2002). when the self-esteem scale scores of the participants who participated in the step exercise program were examined according to the pre-posttest examinations of the participants, there was no statistically significant difference between pre-posttest (p>0.05). when the happiness level and communication skills scale scores of the participants in step exercise program were examined, statistically significant difference was observed between preposttest (p<0.05). in the study, it was seen that step exercise program had no effect on self-esteem and happiness and communication skill levels were positively affected. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 369-373 373 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when the self-esteem scale score of the participants who participated in the zumba exercise program was examined according to the pre-posttest examinations of the participants, there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-posttest values (p> 0.05). when the happiness level and communication skills scale scores of the participants in the zumba exercise program were examined, a statistically significant difference was observed between pre-posttest (p<0.05). in the study, it was seen that zumba exercise program had no effect on self-esteem of women and had a positive effect on happiness and communication skill levels. in adolescence, girls are more concerned about body shape and self-image than boys. body image is negatively experienced by the majority of women (grogan, 2008). in adulthood, weakness is also more common in women than in men (ali and lindström, 2005). 4.1. suggestions as a result; pilates, step and zumba exercises can be considered as a type of physical activity that increases the communication skill levels and self-esteem scores of the participants and makes them happy. one-hour pilates, step and zumba exercises for 12 weeks and 3 days a week will positively effect on the participants' psychological wellbeing. it will be socially beneficial for women who have a sedentary lifestyle and who are not actively engaged in sports to be guided to such exercises with music and in groups. there is no need to be a professional athlete to participate in exercises such as pilates, step and zumba. pilates, step and zumba do not require expensive equipment and a high budget. there is no need for specially designed areas for exercises like pilates, step and zumba. it would be beneficial for public health units, schools and social community organizations to direct individuals to such exercise programs. it is recommended that women participate in exercise programs such as pilates, step and zumba. references ali, s.m. and m. lindström, 2005. socioeconomic, psychosocial, behavioural, and psychological determinants of bmi among young women: differing patterns for underweight and overweight/obesity. european journal of public health, 16(3): 324-330.available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/cki187. baumeister, r.f., l. smart and j.m. boden, 1996. relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: the dark side of high selfesteem. psychological review, 103(1): 5-33.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037//0033-295x.103.1.5. cuhadaroğlu, f., 1986. self-esteem in adolescents. unpublished master's thesis. ankara / hacettepe university. demirci, i̇., 2017. the investigation of peaceful and happy life in the context of values and character strengths by using the mixed method. unpublished master's thesis. i̇stanbul / marmara university. grogan, s., 2008. body image: understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women, and children. london: routledge. hassan, e.a.-h. and m.a. amin, 2011. pilates exercises influence on the serotonin hormone, some physical variables and the depression degree in battered women. world journal of sport sciences, 5(2): 89-100. korkut-owen, f. and a. bugay, 2014. developing a communication skills scale: validity and reliability studies. mersin university journal of the faculty of education, 10(2): 51-64. macdonald, r.a., g. kreutz and l. mitchell, 2013. music, health, and wellbeing. oxford: oxford university press. mokhtari, m., m. nezakatalhossaini and f. esfarjani, 2013. the effect of 12-week pilates exercises on depression and balance associated with falling in the elderly. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 70: 1714-1723.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.01.246. national institutes of health national heart lung and blood institute north american association for the study of obesity, 2000. the practical guide: identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity in adults. nhlbi obesity education initiative,bethesda, md, nih publication no. 00-4084. neagu, a., 2015. body image: a theoretical framework. proceedings of the romanian academy, 17(1): 29-38. pernambuco, c.s., b.m. rodrigues, j.c. bezerra, a. carrielo, a.d. fernandes, r.g. vale and e.h. dantas, 2012. quality of life , elderly and physical activity. health, 4(2): 88-93.available at: 10.4236/health.2012.42014. pop, c.l., 2017. physical activity, body image, and subjective well-being. in well-being and quality of life. medical perspective, chapter: 1. 1st edn., london: publisher: intech. pp:1-19. available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.68333. rodrigues, d.s.b.g., s.a. cader, n.v.o.b. torres, e.m. de oliveira and e.h.m. dantas, 2010. pilates method in personal autonomy, static balance and quality of life of elderly females. journal of bodywork and movement therapies, 14(2): 195-202.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbmt.2009.12.005. vendramin, b., m. bergamin, s. gobbo, l. cugusi, f. duregon, v. bullo, m. zaccaria, d. neunhaeuserer and a. ermolao, 2016. health benefits of zumba fitness training: a systematic review. pm&r, 8(12): 1181-1200.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmrj.2016.06.010. zanuso, s., j. sieverdes, n. smith, a. carraro and m. bergamin, 2012. the effect of a strength training program on affect, mood, anxiety, and strength performance in older individuals. international journal of sport psychology, 43(1): 53-66. zhang, l. and j.p. leung, 2002. moderating effects of gender and age on the relationship between self-esteem and life satisfaction in mainland chinese. international journal of psychology, 37(2): 83-91.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207560143000252. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.68333 569 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 569-574, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.569.574 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group effects of recreational activity on leisure barriers between students yener aksoy1 oguzhan arslan2 ( corresponding author) 1yasar dogu sport sciences faculty, samsun, turkey. 2selcuk university health sciences institute, konya, turkey. abstract recreation, which means relaxing and pleasant activities that people do voluntarily in their free time, is a concept that provides the physical and psychological renewal of individuals. the study was conducted on a total of 497 students, 248 men participating in recreational sports activities and 249 men who did not participate in any recreational activities. for this purpose “leisure constraints scale”, which was developed by alexandris and carroll (1997) and was conducted in the study of the validity and reliability for turkish society by karaküçük and gürbüz (2007) was used. statistical analysis of the study was performed by using spss 22,0 package program. the normality hypothesis of the data was analyzed by kolmogorov-smirnov test. since all variables showed normal distribution, parametric tests were applied to the independent variables related to the sub-problems and the leisure time scale subscales. independent t test was used for paired comparisons and pearson correlation was used for the relationship between variables. statistical results were evaluated at 95% confidence interval and p <0.05 significance level. as a result, statistically significant differences were found between the students participating in sportive recreation activity in the field and those who did not participate in any recreational activity in terms of leisure time barriers in terms of individual psychology, social environment, service and transportation, time, lack of friends and lack of interest. (p<0, 05). keywords: recreation, sport, leisure activities, recreational activities, leisure barriers. citation | yener aksoy; oguzhan arslan (2019). effects of recreational activity on leisure barriers between students. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 569-574. history: received: 3 september 2019 revised: 7 october 2019 accepted: 11 november 2019 published: 13 december 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 570 2. material method ............................................................................................................................................................................ 571 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 571 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 572 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 574 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.569.574&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1156 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1899-4096 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1156 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1899-4096 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1156 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1899-4096 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 569-574 570 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature in this study it is aimed to compare the attitudes and behaviors of the students who do sports for recreative purposes on carpet pitches in ankara and the others who don’t participate in recreational activities, chosen randomly, towards free time barriers. 1. introduction sport has been not only an important part of the development of societies since the early ages, but also it has been an activity in which many people from around the world participate in their free time. physical activity and sport activities are very important for modern societies. nowadays, sport has become a part of human life and it is impossible to think doing sports only as a physical gain for individuals. we need to consider the physical, psychological and social benefits of sports to individuals as a whole (yarımkaya et al., 2014). while physical activity has been a condition for human beings to continue their lives and transmit their genes to the next generations for centuries, nowadays, due to technological development, the importance of physical activities in both working life and transportation and leisure activities has diminished. this situation makes our lives easier in one way and it affects the other side quite negatively. therefore, using technological advances until the human loses his mobility can have a direct negative impact on human health (alpözgen and ozdinçer, 2016). so exercise for a healthy life should be part of people’s daily life and lifestyle. exercise and physical activity help to achieve better physical and mental health, improve quality of life, and also this prolongs lives. people are now intensely involved in many sports and leisure activities. this interest in sports and entertainment has increased and continues to increase in the importance they attach to their health, emotional, physical and psychological moods by the influence of a growing trend in the early 20th century (horner and swarbrooke, 2005). people have physical and emotional needs as well as social needs. nowadays, in order to meet these needs, it is necessary to direct people to sports, to help them to develop their skills through sports and to enable them to do sports in order to stay healthy (hacıcaferoğlu et al., 2012). getting people used to sports, helping them to develop their skills and the necessity of doing sports in order to remain healthy are now known by all segments of society. in order to get away from the economic problems and complex city life they live in today's living conditions and to relieve themselves from mental and physical fatigue people tend to a number of sportive, social and artistic recreational activities that will relax them. recreation is an activity that attracts a wide range of sports activities and attracts a wide audience. however, in order to be seen as a recreational phenomenon, participation in sport activities must be realized in leisure time with the purposes of entertainment, physical activity and play. (sevil et al., 2012). according to these explanations, it is seen that the sport is used as a recreational phenomenon when it is carried out in order to relax, have fun, socialize and improve physical health alongside the amateur spirit. recreational activities have been an important part of life. recreational activities are seen as organizations that increase the quality of life and give meaning to life. in this sense, people all over the world participate in recreational activities due to their physical, spiritual and social benefits (sevil et al., 2012). these recreational activities can reduce the stress that may be caused by adverse environmental conditions and also make a positive contribution to the mental and physical health of the individual and the development of his social life (ozer and cavuşoğlu, 2014). recreational activities that people participate in their spare time seem to be very beneficial for their health ( both mental and physical). variables depending on the socio-economic structure of individuals are an important factor affecting recreational tendencies and demands. it is known that knowing what factors affect people's attitudes, perception and preferences is an important condition for ensuring the quality of recreation. (dorwart et al., 2004). the leisure activities are very different depending on the scope of the activities and the areas in which they are performed. which of these activities will be preferred depends on the structure of the individual, the education, the gender, the possibilities and of course the characteristics (pulur, 2003). in many studies conducted in different fields, it has been observed that recreational activities add a lot of positive effects to social health. despite these positive contributions of participation in recreational activities, it has been observed that individuals do not participate in such activities which are very important for them due to various reasons or they cannot participate due to various obstacles. the term “obstacle” refers to the reasons in the leisure literature that prevent or restrict an individual's participation in recreational activities in his spare time (karaküçük and gürbüz, 2007). studies also reveal that people do not engage in such activities that are important for them for various reasons or that they are prevented for various reasons (alexandris and carroll, 1997; kyle and mowen, 2003). there is a connection between the two, if we consider people and leisure time. therefore, reasons such as insufficient housing and estrangement from nature may constitute some obstacles to participation in leisure activities, as well as the pace of city life and technology, crowd, etc. are just a few of the reasons that may impede the participation in recreational activities (leighfield, 2001). these types of obstacles cause people not to throw in excess energy and reveal various abilities. in this environment, one feels himself under constant pressure and stress, especially among the young; the need for further action, innovation and change leads to various hardship and problems (karaküçük, 2005). today, football is the most popular branch of sports. the interest of this sport, in which men especially show great interest, has also increased in women recently. in addition to football’s power improving the physical and physiological qualifications, it is also important in terms of socialization. in particular, men who are interested in football but cannot devote time for themselves due to daytime work rush go to play football on the carpet pitch in asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 569-574 571 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group order to do sports and spend efficient time with their friends. the aim is to participate in a sporting event and have fun. the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the attitudes towards leisure time activities and the factors preventing leisure activities between the participants who are active in recreation activities and participate in this sport and who do not participate in any sport activity in their free time. 2. material method 2.1. leisure barriers scale the study was conducted on a total of 497 (331 man who was in university and 166 man who was in high school students), 248 men participating in recreational sports activities and 249 men who did not participate in any recreational recreational activities. the “leisure barriers” scale was used to compare the attitudes and behaviors of the two different groups in relation to leisure time barriers. the data collection tool used in the study consists of two parts. in the first part, the democratic information of the participants was used and in the second part, “leisure barriers” scale consisting of 6 sub-dimensions and 27 items developed by alexandris and carroll (1997) was used. the validity and reliability study of the scale for the turkish community was conducted by karaküçük and gürbüz (2007). cronbach‟s alpha internal consistency value is 0.864. 2.2. analysis of data statistical analysis of the study was performed by using spss 22.0 package program. the normality assumption of the data was examined by kolmogorov-smirnov test. since all variables showed normal distribution, parametric tests were applied to the independent variables related to the sub-problems and the leisure time scale subscales. independent t test was used for paired comparisons and pearson correlation was used for the relationship between variables. statistical results were evaluated at 95% confidence interval and p <0.05 significance level. 3. results in this part of the study, the data obtained from the researches are presented in tables by making comparisons between the groups. table-1. comparison of parameters that prevent participation in sportive recreational activities by sporting status for all data. sub dimensions sportive background n mean sd p individual psychology active inactive 248 249 9.10±3.22 8.04±3.31 <0.001 social environment active inactive 248 249 12.24±3.79 10.96±4.35 <0.001 service and transportation active inactive 248 249 19.70±5.48 17.87±6.35 <0.001 lack of friends active inactive 248 249 7.02±2.17 6.36±2.59 .002 time active inactive 248 249 9.89±2.90 9.22±3.51 .020 lack of interest active inactive 248 249 7.16±2.30 6.22±2.72 <0.001 *p<0,05; n (497). according to the table 1, when we examine the values of individual psychology, social environment, service and transportation, lack of friends, lack of interest and time sub-dimensions regarding active and inactive groups, a statistically significant difference was found between them. (p<0.05). table-2. comparison of parameters for preventing participation in sportive recreational activities regarding educational status for all data. sub dimensions educational status n mean sd p individual psychology university hıgh school 331 166 9.43±3.21 6.86±2.81 <0.001 social environment university hıgh school 331 166 12.56±3.71 9.68±4.26 <0.001 service and transportation university hıgh school 331 166 20.39±5.31 15.58±6.01 <0.001 lack of friends university hıgh school 331 166 7.22±2.31 5.64±2.26 <0.001 time university hıgh school 331 166 10.34±2.82 7.98±3.43 <0.001 lack of interest university hıgh school 331 166 7.32±2.50 5.42±2.19 <0.001 *p<0,05; n (497). according to table 2, when the values of the individual psychology, social environment, service and transportation, lack of friends, lack of time and interest sub-dimensions are examined, it is seen that there is a statistically significant difference between the educational levels. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 569-574 572 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3.comparison of parameters that preventi participation in sportive recreational activities regarding occupational status for all data. sub dimensions occupation n mean sd p individual psychology unemployed employed 356 141 8.90±3.44 7.60±2.67 <0.001 social environment unemployed employed 356 141 11.95±3.99 10.70±4.31 .002 service and transportation unemployed employed 356 141 19.28±5.88 17.53±6.23 .004 lack of friends unemployed employed 356 141 6.97±2.42 6.04±2.29 <0.001 time unemployed employed 356 141 9.86±3.14 8.71±3.34 <0.001 lack of interest unemployed employed 356 141 6.85±2.57 6.29±2.47 .030 *p<0,05; n (497). according to table 3; when we examine the values of individual psychology, social environment, service and transportation, lack of friends, lack of interest and time sub-dimensions related to occupations, a statistically significant difference was found between unemployed and employed. (p<0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion leisure time is the time helps individuals to integrate, interact and cooperate in cultural, social, psychological and professional life with other people that they willingly use for resting, having fun and social and personal success in the remaining time of work and other duties. in another aspect, it is an education that helps the individual to express himself / herself creatively and to gain ideas for the leisure activity that improves his / her personality (karakullukçu, 2009). leisure time is free time. nowadays, what people engage in their spare time is as important as the profession or education they have, and at the same time it is expected to be parallel with the ones that they have. people save themselves from the wheels and systematic of the mechanized world and try to breath and cope with the difficulties of working life thanks to free time. although it has been determined that participation in recreational activities has a very important place in human life, it shows that many students do not participate in recreational physical activity either at all or at a sufficient level. in our study, what kind of difficulties are faced by the students who are doing sports on the carpet pitch and who do not do any sport while evaluating the leisure time, or the factors that prevent them from using the leisure time efficiently were revealed by our research. in the study conducted to investigate the leisure time barriers of students who do sports and who do not do sports in the carpet field in ankara province, 249 sportive volunteer and 248 non-sportive volunteer students participated in our study. leisure barriers according to the demographic variables of the participants were discussed with statistical findings. descriptive statistics regarding the importance level of the parameters that prevent students from participating in sportive recreational activities according to the state of doing sports in the carpet field and not doing any sport are as follows. the mean level of leisure time barriers of the “individual psychology” subscale was found to be x = 9.10 ± 3.22 in the sports participants and x = 8.04 ± 3.31 in the non-sports participants. according to crawford et al. (1991), individual's participation in leisure activities is hindered by individual (psychological attitudes, etc.), interpersonal (spouses, friends, etc.) and structural (transportation, facilities, etc.). it is obvious that sport contributes to physical and physiological development as well as psychological development. this difference may be caused by students inclination to engage in sports in order to stay away from the stress of work and the hustle and bustle of life. the average of the level of importance of leisure barriers related to the social environment”sub-dimension was x = 12.24 ± 3.79 for those who do sports, and for those who do not do sports x = 10.96 ± 4.35 and it was found that there was a statistically significant difference between the values. sport is one of the important facts that socialize people. many people are aware of how strong the social aspect of sport is. in our study, the students who did football activity in the field were compared with those who did not do any sports. since football is a team sport, it plays a role in the socialization of people. in particular, the most important recreational activity in which men participate with friends is carpet football. therefore, since it is a popular activity with the group, it can be seen that there is a significant difference between those who do this sport and those who do not. it is seen that the mean value of leisure time barriers of the “service and transportation” sub-dimension is x = 19.70 ± 5.48 for the sportsmen and x = 17.87 ± 6.35 for the non-sportsmen. as it is known, carpet field is a private enterprise and service fee is paid for the activity. establishing and operating a carpet field is a financially burdensome business and requires a license. this also has certain conditions by the municipalities. one of these is to make these facilities to the places that are far from the living areas rather than the city center, which will not disturb the lives of the students. for these reasons, those who want to do sports in the carpet field, both service and transportation costs have to pay. therefore, it is natural that there is such a difference between those who do sports in the carpet field and those who do not. the mean level of leisure barriers for the “lack of friends” subscale was found to be x = 7.02 ± 2.17 in sportsmen and x = 6.36 ± 2.59 in sportsmen, and statistically significant differences were found between them. as we mentioned above, football is a team sport and participating in this activity on the carpet pitch is a friend activity. this activity requires 6-7 people in a team. people need a companion to accompany their leisure time. this difference may be due to the fact that students who do not have any sports do not have enough friends or do not have enough friends who are interested in football. the mean of the leisure time barriers of the “time” subscale was found to be x = 9.89 ± 2.90 for those who do sports, and x = 9.22 ± 3.51 for those who do not perform sports. one of the most important problems of our time is shortness of time. the increasing importance of time has demonstrated the importance and effective use of time outside work, that is, leisure time. every person has time for sports. if you don't have time to play, it means you're really busy. such a difference may have occurred asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 569-574 573 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group since there is no time for people to work out from their busy working tempo, wasted time in traffic, resting at home or wanting to spend at home with their family. moreover, the fact that the participants spent their free time with different activities and social activities instead of sports might have made this difference meaningful. the mean of the level of importance of leisure barriers of the “lack of interest” subscale was found to be x = 7.16 ± 2.30 in the sportsmen and x = 9.22 ± 3.51 in the non-sportsmen, and statistically significant differences were found between them. people are social creatures and everyone has to deal with, love, do, watch and so has an activity of interest to him. our study is on a special event on the carpet field. although football is the most popular sport in the world, the variety of interests, the students who participated in our study may have spent their free time in different areas of interest, lack of skills or interest in sports may be effective in making a significant difference between those who do sports and those who do not. differences were determined in terms of the importance of leisure time barriers in terms of human psychology, lack of knowledge and lack of partners. these differences are due to the fact that the importance of participation of recreational sports teachers in recreational activities is lower than the level of importance of teachers who do not do sports and occasionally and regularly do sports (ozsoy, 2018). in his study, sabancı stated that the average scores of the academicians' leisure time scale, individual psychology, lack of information, transportation problem and facility insufficiency did not differ significantly according to whether they were active in sports; the mean scores of the lack of time and interest and lack of friends subscales differ significantly in favor of academicians who did not actively engage in sports (sabancı, 2016). in a study conducted by daminianidis (2007) on secondary and high school students in order to identify the perceived barriers to participation in extracurricular activities, it was found that the students who participated in sports activities had higher scores (daminianidis, 2007). it supports our study in the studies in the literature. when the literature is examined, it is seen that individuals who engage in sports are more likely to experience leisure time barriers than those who do not. some researchers have emphasized that leisure education should be the main purpose of education. they equated leisure education with education for life. therefore, the gains that education provides to the individual both in terms of level and theoretically have undoubtedly an effect on the evaluation of an individual's free time. in this respect, it is important to examine the effect of education awareness and level on individuals' leisure time (karakullukçu, 2009). descriptive statistics related to the importance level of the parameters preventing the participation of students to sportive recreational activities according to their educational level (university graduate: 331, high school graduate: 166) are as follows. the average level of the importance of leisure time barriers of the “individual psychology” sub-dimension was found to be x = 9.43 ± 3.21 in university graduates and x = 6.86 ± 2.81 in high school graduates. the average level of the importance of leisure barriers of the “social environment” subdimension was found to be x = 12.56 ± 3.71 in university graduates and x = 9.68 ± 4.26 in high school graduates. the average level of leisure barriers for the service and transportation ”sub-dimension was found to be x = 20.39 ± 5.31 for university graduates and x = 15.58 ± 6.01 for high school graduates. the average level of leisure barriers for the “lack of friends” subscale was found to be x = 7.22 ± 2.31 for university graduates and x = 5.64 ± 2.26 for high school graduates. when the related values were examined, a statistically significant difference was found. it is seen that the mean of the leisure time barriers of the “time” sub-dimension is x = 10.34 ± 2.82 for university graduates and x = 7.98 ± 3.43 for high school graduates, and a statistically significant difference was found between the values. the mean level of leisure barriers for the lack of interest ”subscale was found to be x = 7.32 ± 2.50 for university graduates and x = 5.42 ± 2.19 for high school graduates, and statistically significant differences were found between them. temir and gürbüz conducted a study titled examining the barriers to participation in recreational activities conducted in 2012 and found a significant difference between leisure time participation in recreational activities and education levels. it is seen in a survey öztürk made in 2013 that as the education levels of the employees in the industrial sector increased, participation in the recreational activities are more preferred and attended. according to the results of the one-way analysis of variance about who participated in leisure activities, there was a significant difference between the scores of participants with high school degree and associate / undergraduate and master / doctorate educational background (karakullukçu, 2009). karaküçük (2005) found that 46.4% of the teachers did not have any difficulty in evaluating their free time and 33.8% sometimes had difficulties. according to this result, it can be said that there is a relationship between the difficulty in evaluating leisure time and the education level of the individual (karaküçük, 2005). güngörmüş (2007) stated that as the education level increases, individuals gain awareness of healthy life (güngörmüş, 2007). education is of great importance for people to improve themselves in all areas of life. educated people understand the importance and benefits of sports more easily and participate in physical activities in order to enjoy life and spend a healthy and peaceful life. people with adequate education are more aware of this situation than those with inadequate education. when the literature studies mentioned above are examined, it is in parallel with our research. that is to say, conscious individuals may have the possibility of facing such barriers as they are more aware of their leisure time and also have more participation in recreational activities thanks to their planning of leisure activities. descriptive statistics regarding the importance level of the parameters preventing the participation of students in sportive recreational activities according to their occupations (unemployed: 356, employed: 141) are as follows. the average of the level of importance of leisure time barriers of the “individual psychology” subscale was found to be x = 8.90 ± 3.44 in unemployed and x = 7.60 ± 2.67 in the employed. it is seen that the average level of importance of leisure time barriers related to the social environment sub-dimension is x = 11.95 ± 3.99 in unemployed and x = 10.70 ± 4.31 in employed and when the related values are examined, a statistically significant difference is found between them. the average level of the importance of leisure barriers for the “service and transportation” sub-dimension was found to be x = 19.28 ± 5.88 in the unemployed and x = 17.53 ± 6.23 in the employed. the average level of leisure barriers for the “lack of friends” subscale was found to be x = 6.97 ± 2.42 in asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 569-574 574 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the unemployed and x = 6.04 ± 2.29 in the employed, and a statistically significant difference was found between them. the average of leisure time barriers subscale was found to be x = 9.86 ± 3.14 for the unemployed and x = 8.71 ± 3.34 for the employed, and a statistically significant difference was found between them. the average level of importance of leisure barriers related to the lack of interest subscale was found to be x = 6.85 ± 2.57 in the unemployed and x = 6.29 ± 2.47 in the employed and statistically significant differences were found between them. barros and nahas (2001) stated that the rate of physical inactivity of industrial workers in southern brazil is high. although the working hours of the unemployed are more precise (morning and evening working hours), the working time of the employed is not clear. the more regular working hours of unemployed may allow for planned participation in physical activity. as a result, it was seen that students who did not participate in any recreational activities had less difficulty in evaluating their free time than those who participated in a recreational activity. in other words, students who do not do any sport do not encounter the obstacles faced by students doing sport. in addition, it was concluded that the factors that prevented the study group from evaluating their free time differed according to some demographic variables. according to the results of the research, the following suggestions are given in the light of this information:  carrying out activities to increase the knowledge of recreational activities in the community.  increasing the number of recreational areas and improving the conditions of use.  implementing educational-oriented projects that can lead individuals to recreational activities.  making plans for the evaluation of free time by the institutions aiming to increase the productivity of working individuals. 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recreation 2004, 39(5): 24-31. güngörmüş, h.a., 2007. factors driving individuals receiving services from private health sports centers to recreational exercise gazi university institute of health sciences department department of physical education and sports, phd thesis ankara. hacıcaferoğlu, s., c. gündoğdu and b. hacıcaferoğlu, 2012. evaluation of university students' thought against sports facilities and their organizations (i̇nönü university). journal of sport and performance research, 3(1): 42-51. horner, s. and j. swarbrooke, 2005. leisure marketing: a global perspective (paperback). 1st edn., oxford: elsevier butterworthheinemann. karaküçük, s., 2005. recreation, concept, scope and a research. 5th edn., ankara: gazi bookstore. karaküçük, s. and b. gürbüz, 2007. rekreational and urbanization. ankara: gazi bookstore. karakullukçu, ö.f., 2009. recreational habits of ministry of justice employees according to their educational levels. master thesis, ankara. kyle, g. and a. mowen, 2003. an examination of the relationship between leisure constraints, involvement and commitment. proceedings of the 2003 northeastern recreation research symposium. leighfield, m., 2001. information for leisure community (translated by demiray u). monthly tourism and culture art magazine, 1: 7-10. ozer, e.z. and f. cavuşoğlu, 2014. the impact of local activities on rural tourism as a recreational activity. international journal of science culture and sport, 1(6): 191-191.available at: https://doi.org/10.14486/ijscs191. ozsoy, o., 2018. investigation of leisure barriers of teachers in physical education, music and visual arts (the case of sincan-ankara). master thesis, bartın. pulur, a., 2003. investigation of sporting tendencies of academic staff and administrative staff in the university (the case of kırıkkale). congress of social areas in physical education and sports. ankara. pp: 10-11. sabancı, g., 2016. determination of factors preeventing teachers participation in recreational activities. selçuk university institute of health sciences department of physical education and sports, phd thesis konya. sevil, t., k.y. şimşek, h. katırcı, o. çelik, m.a. çeliksoy and s. kocaekşi, 2012. leisure and recreation management. 1st edn.: anadolu university. pp: 6-8. yarımkaya, e., m. akandere and g. baştuğ, 2014. effect of self-confıdence levels of 1214 years old students on their serving aiılity in volleyball. niğde university journal of physical education and sport sciences, 8(2): 242-250. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 392 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 392-396, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.392.396 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the practical technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students elif aydin faculty of physical education and sport sciences, gumuhshaneh university, turkey. abstract the purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the practical technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students. in order to measure the cultural intelligence, creative thinking and technical capabilities in sport, the standard questionnaires of early and ang (2003), torrance (2000) and behringer et al. (2011) were used respectively. cronbach's alpha coefficient for the cultural intelligence, creative thinking and technical capability questionnaires were 0.79, 0.8, and 0.85, respectively. questionnaires were distributed to 120 students, (40 for football, 40 for volleyball and 40 for badminton classes). the findings showed that cultural intelligence and creative thinking have a significant positive effect on the technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students in all three football lessons (foot technical capability), volleyball and badminton (hand technical capability). also, cultural intelligence and creative thinking have a significant positive effect on the technical capabilities of football classes (foot technical capability). cultural intelligence and creative thinking have a significant positive effect on the technical capabilities of students in volleyball classes (hand technical abilities). cultural intelligence and creative thinking have a significant positive effect on the technical capabilities of badminton classes (hand technical ability). finally, it can be said that cultural intelligence and creative thinking have a significant positive effect on the practical technical capabilities of physical education students of trabzon university participating in practical lessons (football, volleyball and badminton) both simultaneously and separately in each classroom. keywords: cultural intelligence, creative thinking, technical capacity. citation | elif aydin (2019). the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the practical technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 392-396. history: received: 2 april 2019 revised: 8 may 2019 accepted: 17 june 2019 published: 15 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 393 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 393 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 394 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 395 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 395 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.392.396&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/922 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6769-6036 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/922 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6769-6036 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/922 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6769-6036 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 392-396 393 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the practical technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students. 1. introduction practical technical abilities in sport are not stable features and are reinforced by training and exercises (dolores et al., 2018). however, the presence of psychological and personality components can affect the practical technical capabilities in sport (charbonneau et al., 2001). practical technical abilities in sport are one of the most important factors affecting the performance of individuals, especially physical education students (gede and hubbard, 2014). the presence of athletes or students with high technical abilities in the use of hands in sports such as volleyball and badminton, as well as high technical abilities in the use of foot in sports such as football, has dramatically increased the performance of individuals as well as their sporting and educational achievements. practical technical capabilities in sport are the potential or actual power of an individual to perform a sporting activity. technical abilities of sports are knowledge and the ability to perform certain actions in a physical exercise that requires full mastery of the use of special techniques and tools and practical competence in those actions. in technical abilities, the athlete is on a daily basis gaining experience, learning, learning, and at the same time experiencing and moving towards excellence (charbonneau et al., 2001). technical abilities in sports, and in particular, the skill in using hands and feet in various sports, are the underlying foundations of the growth and success of learning the principles of physical education and or the success of professional sport (wang et al., 2005). therefore, it is important to address the factors that influence these capabilities and find them. in addition to correct training, exercise, and physical conditions and characteristics of individuals, the presence of psychological and personality components can affect the capabilities mentioned and enhance and enhance it (gede and hubbard, 2014). among these factors are cultural intelligence and creative thinking in individuals and especially students. cultural intelligence is an exuberant of intelligence that has a great deal to do with a diverse cultural environment. cultural intelligence can be defined as the ability to apply skills and abilities in different environments (dolores et al., 2018). statistics show that many failures of people in various social, educational and even occupational contexts occur when people do not understand the different cultures ruling different groups (andrea et al., 2018). there are a variety of cultures and even subcultures within a national culture of a wide range of emotions and emotions (imran and murad, 2018). in such a way that differences in language, ethnicity, politics, and many other characteristics, including differences in the various media settings, including the cultural environment of universities for physical education students and their differences with other social and sports spaces, can emerge as potential sources of conflict, and in the absence of a proper understanding, the development of appropriate relationships would be difficult (hu et al., 2018). creative thinking is also one of the skills that promotes the growth of individuals and the whole society (almajali, 2009). as human societies have so far been hijacked by those who have been able to discover the inventions and discoveries that have made it easier for them to make life easier (macdonald and bigelow, 2010). cultural intelligence, the ability of individuals to grow their own lives through the continuity of learning, better understanding of customs, and different values and effective behavior with people with cultural backgrounds and perceptions. cultural intelligence is a new domain of intelligence that has a lot to do with diverse work environments (imran and murad, 2018). some aspects of culture can be easily seen. the obvious factors such as art, music, and behavioral styles are the following. but most of the challenging sections of culture are hidden. opinions, values, expectations, attitudes and assumptions are elements of culture that are not seen but affect the behavior of individuals. cultural intelligence allows people to recognize how others think and how they respond to behavioral patterns, thereby reducing intercultural communication barriers and empowering individuals to manage cultural diversity (dolores et al., 2018). the use of creative thinking, even in everyday life, including sporting and educational activities, can provide innovative and innovative methods and solutions for solving existing problems and stereotyping issues (sindane, 2011) and strengthening people's capacities for better performance (matthews, 2011). because students have creative thinking, innovative ways to enhance the ability and ability to use hand and foot in sporting activities in different disciplines will have a sport (brink, 2004). on the other hand, creative thinking is a skill that a person has from combining problem-solving skills and decision-making from new thoughts or relationships, and finds the power to discover and select new solutions. in other words, the art of breaking daily routines is called creative thinking. creativity can be considered as the highest capacity for the final thought and thought of man (sindane, 2011). therefore, this research seeks to investigate the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the technical capabilities of physical education students at trabzon university, including the potential of using hands and feet in sports and volleyball, badminton and football. 2. materials and methods the present research is applied in terms of the purpose of the research, in terms of method, descriptive and correlation. therefore, in terms of data collection method, the research method is a survey strategy. the statistical population of this study is trabzon university of physical education students who are attending practical sports lessons including volleyball lessons, badminton, and soccer. therefore, 40 students (out of a total of 120 students) from each class were selected as the statistical sample for this research. in order to measure the cultural intelligence variable, the standard questionnaire (early and ang, 2003) standard questionnaire (torrance, 2000) for measuring the variables of creative thinking, and also for measuring the variables of technical capabilities in sport, were used by standard questionnaire (behringer et al., 2011). cronbach's alpha coefficient for the cqi was 0.79, for creative thinking questionnaire equal to 0.8, and also for the practical technical capability questionnaire in sport was 0.85. for statistical analysis of the research data, spss 20 software and the "multivariate regression" test have been used. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 392-396 394 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. findings table-1. study of the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on practical technical capabilities (for all three football, volleyball and badminton lessons) trabzon university physical education students. coefficientsa model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) -.564 .285 -1.978 .050 cultural intelligence .594 .087 .478 6.831 .000 creative thinking .522 .095 .384 5.480 .000 a. dependent variable: practical technical capability. according to the results of table 1 (considering the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which is less than 0.05 for both "cultural intelligence" and "creative thinking" variables), and considering the beta coefficients, the highest power the prediction with the coefficient of 0.478 is related to the "cultural intelligence" variable, and then the "creative thinking" variable with a beta coefficient of 0.384 is located, which has the technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students in all three football lessons technical foot exercises), volleyball and badminton (technical capability of hand use). it can be concluded that the "cultural intelligence" variable affects and improves the "creative thinking" variable on the practical technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students. table-2. investigating the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the practical technical capabilities of foot use (for football lessons) trabzon university physical education students. coefficientsa model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) .171 .466 .368 .715 cultural intelligence .539 .132 .508 4.069 .000 creative thinking .369 .134 .343 2.745 .009 a. dependent variable: practical technical capability. according to the results of table 2 (considering the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which is less than 0.05 for both "cultural intelligence" and "creative thinking" variables), and considering the beta coefficients, the highest power the prediction with the coefficient of 0.508 is related to the "cultural intelligence" variable, followed by the "creative thinking" variable with a beta coefficient of 0.343, which incorporates the practical technical capabilities of foot use in trabzon's student physical education students at the lesson football forecast. it can be concluded that the "cultural intelligence" variable affects and improves the "cultural intelligence" variable slightly more than the "creative thinking" variable on the practical technical capabilities of foot use in physical education students participating in the practical course of the university of trabzon university. so that if cultural intelligence and creative thinking are increased in trabzon's physical education students, their practical technical capabilities in using sports footwear will improve in sporting activities. table-3. study of the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the practical technical abilities of hand use (for volleyball lessons) of trabzon university physical education students. coefficientsa model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) -.980 .583 -1.679 .102 cultural intelligence .613 .164 .464 3.743 .001 creative thinking .564 .175 .399 3.220 .003 . a. dependent variable: practical technical capability according to the results of table 3 (considering the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which is less than 0.05 for both "cultural intelligence" and "creative thinking" variables), and considering the beta coefficients, the highest power the prediction with the coefficient of 0.464 is related to the variable "cultural intelligence" and then the "creative thinking" variable with the beta coefficient of 0.399 is located, which utilizes the practical technical capabilities of hand use in trabzon's student physical education students in the lesson volleyball predict. it can be concluded that the "cultural intelligence" variable affects and improves the "cultural intelligence" variable slightly more than the "creative thinking" variable on the practical capabilities of hands-on use in physical education students participating in the volunteer practice course of trabzon university. so that if cultural intelligence and creative thinking increase in trabzon students' physical education, their practical technical abilities will improve on volleyball. table-4. investigating the impact of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the practical handle-handle technical abilities (for badminton lessons) trabzon university physical education students. coefficientsa model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) -.298 .419 -.711 .482 cultural intelligence .515 .157 .457 3.272 .002 creative thinking .564 .197 .400 2.866 .007 a. dependent variable: practical technical capability. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 392-396 395 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the results of table 4 (considering the significant level of test error, sig. or p, which is less than 0.05 for both "cultural intelligence" and "creative thinking" variables), and considering the beta coefficients, the highest power the prediction with the coefficient of 0.457 is related to the "cultural intelligence" variable, and then the "creative thinking" variable with a beta coefficient of 0.4 lies with the technical capabilities of hands-on use in trabzon's student physical education students in the lesson badminton predict it can be concluded that the variable "cultural intelligence" affects and improves on the "creative thinking" variable on the practical skills of using hands in physical education students participating in the practical course of the badminton university of trabzon. so that if cultural intelligence and creative thinking increase in trabzon's physical education students, their practical technical abilities in using hand in badminton sports will improve. 4. results in this research, the effect of cultural intelligence and creative thinking on the practical technical abilities of trabzon university students was studied.  the results showed that cultural intelligence and creative thinking have a significant positive effect on technical abilities of physical education students of trabzon university (meaningful level of test error, sig. or p for both variables "cultural intelligence" and "creative thinking" less). from 0.05) considering the beta coefficients, it can be said that the highest predictive power with the coefficient of 0.478 relates to the variable "cultural intelligence" and then the variable "creative thinking" with a beta coefficient of 0.384, which has practical technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students simultaneously predict at the same time in all three football lessons (foot wear technical capability), volleyball and badminton (technical use of hand). it could be concluded that the variable "cultural intelligence" affects and improves the "creative thinking" variable on the practical technical capabilities of trabzon university physical education students. the results of this section were consistent with the research by andrea et al. (2018) and sindane (2011).  in the case of physical education students participating in a practical football lesson, the results showed that the highest predictive power with a coefficient of 0.508 is related to the cultural intelligence variable, followed by the variable "creative thinking" with a beta coefficient of 0.343 which predicts the practical technical possibilities of using foot in trabzon university physical education students in a football lesson (meaningful level of test error, sig. or p for both variables cultural intelligence and creative thinking less than 0.05 it was concluded that the "cultural intelligence" variable affects and improves the "cultural intelligence" variable slightly more than the "creative thinking" variable on the practical technical capabilities of using foot in the physical education students participating in the practical education of the university of trabzon university. the results of this section were aligned with christian et al. (2017); imran and murad (2018) and brink (2004).  in the case of physical education students participating in volleyball practical training, the results showed that the highest predictive power with the 0.464 beta coefficient is related to the cultural intelligence variable, followed by the variable "creative thinking" with a beta coefficient of 0.399 which predicts the practical skills of using hand in trabzon university physical education students in volleyball lessons (the significance level of test error, sig. or p for both variables cultural intelligence and creative thinking is less than 0.05. it can be concluded that the "cultural intelligence" variable affects and improves the "cultural intelligence" variable slightly more than the "creative thinking" variable on the practical capabilities of hands-on use in physical education students participating in the volunteer practice course of trabzon university. the results of this section were consistent with wang et al. (2005) and christian et al. (2017). also, in the case of physical education students participating in the practical lesson of badminton, the results showed that the highest predictive power with the coefficient of 0.457 is related to the variable "cultural intelligence" and then the variable "creative thinking" with a beta coefficient of 0.4 which predicts practical handheld technical abilities in trabzon university physical education students in badminton lessons. finally, it can be said that cultural intelligence and creative thinking had a significant positive effect on the technical and practical capabilities of physical education students of trabzon university participating in the practical lessons (football, volleyball and badminton) and also separately among the participating students. all three practical lessons included cultural intelligence and creative thinking had a significant positive effect on students' technical skills. references almajali, h.k., 2009. the influence of family upbringing style and locus of control on the creative thinking of preparatory school learners in the united arab emirates. unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of south africa. andrea, c., o.b. ayoko and n. amoo, 2018. the moderating role of cultural intelligence in the relationship between cultural orientations and conflict management styles. journal of business research, 89: 10-20.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.03.042. behringer, m., a. vom heede, m. matthews and j. mester, 2011. effects of strength training on motor performance skills in chi ldren and adolescents: a meta-analysis. pediatric exercise science, 23(2): 186-206.available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/pes.23.2.186. brink, n.h., 2004. locus of control and creativity in late middle childhood. potchefstroom: north-west university. charbonneau, d., j. barling and e.k. kelloway, 2001. transformational leadership and sports performance: the mediating role of intrinsic motivation. journal of applied social psychology, 31(7): 1521-1534.available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15591816.2001.tb02686.x. christian, s., l. crust and s.a. vella, 2017. new directions in the psychology of optimal performance in sport: flow and clutch states. current opinion in psychology, 16: 48-53. dolores, f.-j.m., c.m. sabiote-ortiz, j.d. martín-santana and a. beerli-palacio, 2018. antecedents and consequences of cultural intelligence in tourism. journal of destination marketing & management, 8: 350-358.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2017.07.006. early, p.c. and s. ang, 2003. cultural intelligence, individual interaction across culture. england: stanford business books. gede, g. and m. hubbard, 2014. a bioenergetic model for simulating athletic performance of intermediate duration. journal of biomechanics, 47(14): 3448-3453.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiomech.2014.09.017. hu, s., h. liu and j. gu, 2018. what role does self-efficacy play in developing cultural intelligence from social media usage? electronic commerce research and applications, 28: 172-180.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.elerap.2018.01.009. imran, a. and a. murad, 2018. the role of knowledge spillovers and cultural intelligence in enhancing expatriate employees' individual and team creativity. journal of business research, 101: 561-573. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 392-396 396 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group macdonald, n.m. and s. bigelow, 2010. teaching for creativity through fashion design. journal of family and consumer sciences, 102(2): 48-53. matthews, m.l., 2011. connecting creativity and critical thinking to the campaign planning process. communication teacher, 25(1): 6167.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17404622.2010.527299. sindane, l.m., 2011. the relationship between happiness, creativity, personality and locus of control in ireland for those who are employed and unemployed. irland: publisher: dublin business school. torrance, e.p., 2000. research review for the torrance tests of creative thinking fig-uraland verbalforms a and b. bensenville, il: scholastic testing services. wang, c., w. liu, s.j. biddle and c.m. spray, 2005. cross-cultural validation of the conceptions of the nature of athletic ability questionnaire version 2. personality and individual differences, 38(6): 1245-1256.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2004.08.007. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 531 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 531-537, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.531.537 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of teacher candidates’ competence perception and attitude towards teaching erdi kaya akdeniz university, faculty of sport sciences, turkey. abstract in this research, it was aimed to investigate the self-competence perception and attitudes towards teaching profession of teacher candidates’ who study in different universities in terms of universities. it was observed that the level of self-competence perception of the students participating in the study did not differ statistically significantly (p>0,05), and the attitude levels related to teaching profession differed statistically significantly based on the universities they studied (p<0,05). the data collected within the research were analyzed using spss 22 software. mann whitney u test was used to compare scale scores of university students participating in the study according to gender, academic success level and sports activities while kruskal wallis h test was used to compare scale scores according to their age groups, universities, departments and income status. according to the results of the study, it was observed that the attitudes of university students participating in the study towards teaching profession and their competence perception levels related to themselves did not differ statistically significantly according to their sports habits. upon examination of it is observed that the level of self-competence perception of the university students participating in the study did not differ statistically significantly, and their attitude levels related to teaching profession differed statistically significantly based on their income levels. in the attitude towards teaching profession, the attitude level of students with average income levels are statistically significantly higher than the attitude level of students with higher income levels. keywords: prospective teachers, sports, approach, competence, attitude, university citation | erdi kaya (2019). investigation of teacher candidates’ competence perception and attitude towards teaching. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 531-537. history: received: 16 july 2019 revised: 22 august 2019 accepted: 1 october 2019 published: 12 november 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 532 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 533 3. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 534 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 535 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.531.537&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1100 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2042-4674 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1100 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2042-4674 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1100 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2042-4674 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 531-537 532 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributed to the literature by investigating the self-competence perception and attitudes towards teaching profession of teacher candidates’, who study in different universities in terms of universities. 1. introduction one of the fundamental rights of human beings is education. education is a development in which humans are within throughout their lives (atmaca, 2015). in an education system, there are many conditions that affect students’ achievement such as student, teacher, curriculum, directors, education experts, educational technology and physical resources (sişman, 2004). teachers have the largest share in education and teaching. contributing to permanence, continuity and development of education depends on the education provided by teachers. thus, investments made to the share of education in our country should gain importance (duymaz, 2007). in line with needs of the country, qualified and multidirectional teachers with sufficient levels are needed together with education in order to educate new generations (küçükahmet, 2003). the teacher being competent in terms of quality and quantity has a direct effect on other individuals educated. regardless of the field, the teachers working by adding feelings, lovingly and willingly will ensure success in the near future (sağlam, 2008). teacher is the person who will help development of the society by processing, interpreting and thus improving knowledge and providing most benefit to students in education by integrating them into the society (şahin, 2007). behaviors of the teacher in the classroom is closely related to the attitudes they have. therefore, attitudes affect behaviors and social perceptions (kağıtçıbaşı, 2010). as is known, teaching is a profession that requires cognitive domain gains such as knowledge and skills as well as affective domain gains such as attitude and behavior. teacher candidates’ values and attitude competencies related to their profession are at least as necessary as knowledge” (cetin, 2006). for this reason, the professional attitude of the teacher has an important role in education as well as the professional knowledge (koyuncu, 2015). attitude; can be discussed as a set of emotions that include also some complex situations that a person feels for any object, person, event or case. on the other hand, the professional attitude is related to whether or not persons takes responsibility for their professions and they fulfill the requirements of their profession and it also include some affective features (koyuncu, 2015). one of the requirements for the persons, who will practise the teaching profession, to be able to fulfill the requirements and competencies of this profession more effectively is that they have positive attitudes towards the profession (demirtaş et al., 2011). attitudes affect the person's emotions, thoughts and behaviors. for this reason, regardless of the branch distinction, teachers' attitudes towards their professions have an important place, although it causes them to perform the teaching profession more willingly and wantingly and to be more successful (celiköz and cetin, 2004). in the same time, teachers' attitudes towards the profession are reflected in their behaviors and classroom environment and it has a significant role in the personality development of the students, the feature of teacher-student relations and the realization of learning (semerci and semerci, 2004). continuous self-development as well as disciplined and devoted work are important factors in teaching. in order to achieve success in this field, it is essential to love teaching. success of students in education is not only related to curriculum or materials-equipment. it is also important to have knowledgeable, experienced and wellequipped teachers (başal and taner, 2004). primary duties of the individual in the teaching profession are to work willingly, to have patience, effort and work (aşkar and erden, 1987). here, the attitudes of the students who study for being teachers towards teaching become very important. as a matter of fact, if this profession is done with love and will, new generations will respect and protect the teaching profession. “as stated by our great leader, in line with the general purpose and basic principles of turkish national education system, the most important task in bringing up students who are curious, innovative and capable of team work and in implementation of developed teaching programs in an active and effective way belongs to teachers” (ministry of national education, 2008). today, it would positively contribute to their development thanks to practice teachers who conduct their duties, perform their job correctly and can be role models in selection of competent candidate teachers and assignment of them to classrooms (çevik and alat, 2012). at the same time, it is known that candidate teachers contribute to one in-service development of practice teachers. candidate teachers benefiting from this experience and knowledge also take the opportunity to ensure improvement in their own professional competence (kiraz, 2001). education is one of the important factors for the development of societies and individuals and the teachers working in this field are also as important as education. in addition, teachers have become an indispensable part of the education system as those who make the behaviors of the students, and ensure to develop and change these behaviors. therefore, the success in the education system cannot be separated from the success of the teacher. undoubtfully, this success also will depend on teachers being adequate in their fields (ipek, 2015). in this sense, teacher’s self-efficacy affects the success state in teaching profession, which indirectly affects the success in the success level in the provided education. today, teachers must leave the old system behind and emphasize the new and innovation. there are certain expectations for these innovations such as working hard, using knowledge well, having teaching skills and providing the skill to interpret with different points of view (erişen and celiköz, 2003). in these terms, teachers must have sufficient knowledge and experience in their fields. despite all of these competences are available, our country has not trained sufficient number of competent teachers yet (demir, 1997). in order to train sufficient number of competent teachers, it is of great importance that planning of our education system is conducted by experts who are sufficiently well-equipped in this field. increase of society’s expectations towards education and teachers has also made the teachers’ tasks increase. rapidly developing technology also changes the running of the curriculum in the system. it must be the national policy to train skillful and unique teachers who are ready for this change and development (temizkan, 2008). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 531-537 533 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method the data collected within the research were analyzed using spss 22 software. before analyzing the data, reliability and normality tests were conducted for both scales. as a result of the analyzes conducted, it was found that the reliability level of the attitude scale was, 924, the perception scale was ,969, and both scales did not show normal distribution. therefore, non-parametric analyzes were applied. mann whitney u test was used to compare scale scores of university students participating in the study according to gender, academic success level and sports activities while kruskal wallis h test was used to compare scale scores according to their age groups, universities, departments and income status. spearman correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between students’ self-competence perception and their attitudes towards teaching profession. table-1. averages of university students’ in relation to their attitude towards teaching profession and their self-competence perceptions. scale n x sd approach 299 3,98 ,760 perception 299 4,11 ,675 dependent variable: self-efficacy upon examination of the table, it is observed that averages of university students participating in the study in relation to their attitude towards teaching profession and their self-competence perceptions are over average level and close to high. table-2. comparison of university students’ in relation to their attitude towards teaching profession and their self-competence perceptions based on their universities. scale university n x sd mean rank x2 p approach çukurova 39 4,25 ,671 179,85 6,735 ,034 mustafa kemal 226 3,92 ,774 143,08 sütçü i̇mam 34 4,09 ,701 161,79 perception çukurova 39 4,10 ,685 151,42 ,437 ,804 mustafa kemal 226 4,09 ,702 148,43 sütçü i̇mam 34 4,24 ,447 158,79 dependent variable: self-efficacy upon examination of the table, it is observed that the level of self-competence perception of the university students participating in the study did not differ statistically significantly (p>0,05), and their attitude levels related to teaching profession differed statistically significantly based on the universities they studied (p<0,05). in the attitude towards teaching profession, the attitude level of students studying at çukurova university is statistically significantly higher than the attitude level of students studying at mustafa kemal university (p<0,05). table-3. comparison of university students’ in relation to their attitude towards teaching profession and their self-competence perceptions based on their academic success levels. scale academic success n x sd mean rank total rank u p attitude average 199 3,96 ,747 146,80 29214,0 9314,0 ,367 high 100 4,03 ,787 156,36 15636,0 perception average 199 4,03 ,659 136,58 27179,5 7279,5 ,000 high 100 4,26 ,684 176,71 17670,5 dependent variable: self-efficacy upon examination of the table, it is observed that attitude levels related to teaching profession of the university students participating in the study did not differ statistically significantly (p>0,05), and their level of selfcompetence perception differed statistically significantly based on the their academic success levels (p<0,05). selfcompetence perceptions of students who have higher academic success levels are higher compared to students with lower academic success levels. table-4. comparison of university students’ in relation to their attitude towards teaching profession and their self-competence perceptions based on their sports habits. scale sports habits n x sd mean rank total rank u p attitude yes 231 3,97 ,783 149,48 34529,0 7733,0 ,847 no 68 4,02 ,683 151,78 10321,0 perception yes 231 4,07 ,708 146,06 33740,5 6944,5 ,147 no 68 4,25 ,530 163,38 11109,5 dependent variable: self-efficacy table-5. comparison of university students’ in relation to their attitude towards teaching profession and their self-competence perceptions based on their income levels. scale income level n x sd mean rank x2 p attitude low 38 3,82 ,786 132,12 12,101 ,007 average 223 4,06 ,729 158,98 high 26 3,53 ,837 102,06 very high 12 3,96 ,759 143,58 perception low 38 4,10 ,683 149,61 1,243 ,743 average 223 4,13 ,667 151,63 high 26 4,09 ,706 149,04 very high 12 3,90 ,778 123,13 dependent variable: self-efficacy asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 531-537 534 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group upon examination of the table, it is observed that attitude levels related to teaching profession of the university students participating in the study and their level of self-competence perception did not differ statistically significantly based on their sports habits (p>0,05). upon examination of the table, it is observed that the level of self-competence perception of the university students participating in the study did not differ statistically significantly (p>0,05), and their attitude levels related to teaching profession differed statistically significantly based on their income levels (p<0,05). in the attitude towards teaching profession, the attitude level of students with average income levels are statistically significantly higher than the attitude level of students with higher income levels (p<0,05). 3. discussion and conclusion upon examination of table 1 it is observed that attitude levels related to teaching profession of the university students participating in the study and their level of self-competence perception are above average level and close to high. upon examination of table 2 it observed that the level of self-competence perception of the university students participating in the study did not differ statistically significantly, and their attitude levels related to teaching profession differed statistically significantly based on the universities they. in the attitude towards teaching profession, the attitude level of students studying at çukurova university is statistically significantly higher than the attitude level of students studying at mustafa kemal university. this condition can be interpreted that that different schools of university students affect their attitude towards teaching profession while it does not effect their self-competence perception levels. in this context, when we examine the attitudes related to teaching profession, it is seen that as a result of the study of semerci and semerci (2004) who obtained results contrary to our study that there is no statistically significant difference based on universities in terms of attitude towards teaching profession in their study conducted with candidate teachers studying in physical education and sports teaching bachelor’s degree programs in different universities. in another study, koçak macun et al. (2019) did not find any significant difference between teacher candidates’ self-efficacy levels and their readiness level for business life according to the department they have studied. in the study of güleçen et al. (2008) who obtained similar results, it was observed that there is no statistically significant difference in students’ attitude towards teaching profession based on their universities while it was found that professional attitudes did not differ based on the graduation faculty variable in the study of yılmaz (2009) conducted with preschool candidate teachers and in the study of orhan (2013) where they examined professional attitudes and job satisfaction levels of candidate teachers. when we examine the self-competence perception results of university students participating in the study, (ozdemir, 2008) obtained results in the same direction with ours as it found no statistically significant difference in self-competence perceptions of candidate teachers in relation to certain dimensions of teaching process based on the university variable while gençtürk (2008) and türk (2008) who obtained similar results in their studies conducted with teachers found no statistically significant difference in self-competence perceptions of teachers based on the schools they graduated. in yıldırım (2011) study conducted with form teachers, it was observed that there was no statistically significant difference in terms of current university variable. as a matter of fact, akbaş and celikkaleli (2006) who obtained results different from our study found in their study conduced in order to determine selfcompetence perceptions of form teacher candidates in terms of science teaching that self-competence perceptions and result expectations of form teacher candidates differed based on their universities while zararsız (2012) found in their study conducted in order to determine self-competence perceptions of teachers working at elementary schools in sultanbeyli district of istanbul that there was a statistically significant difference in terms of faculty graduated variable. in his study, köksoy (2017) also argued that the school environment and teachers are present in the development of self-efficacy. upon examination of table 3 it is observed that attitude levels related to teaching profession of the university students participating in the study did not differ statistically significantly, their level of self-competence perception differed statistically significantly based on the their academic success levels, and that self-competence perceptions of students who have higher academic success levels are higher compared to students with lower academic success levels. in other words, it can be interpreted that self-competence perception levels of successful university students in relation to teaching profession is higher. upon relevant literature review, it was found that akbaba (2013) in their study similar to ours as conducted with office management teacher candidates determined that self-competence perception levels of teacher candidates statistically significantly differed based on general academic success level while alabay (2006), calışkan et al. (2010), derman (2007), yenilmez and kakmacı (2008) revealed that self-competence perceptions of candidate teachers significantly differed based on academic success variable. self-competence is a concept related to the confidence of teacher candidates towards their cognitive skills of learning or achieving an academic task. therefore, this sense of confidence directly affects the learners’ activity preferences, efforts and success status. there are findings that there is a positive relation between academic self-competence and success (schunk, 1995; pajares, 1996; bandura, 1997). schunk and pajares (2002) stated that there is a relation between academic self-competence and self-regulation capacity and effective learning strategies, and that academic self-competence predicts academic success with these variables. in many researches conducted, it was found that self-competence perception is a significant predictor of academic success (uredi and uredi, 2006). however, it is seen in studies of demirel and akkoyunlu (2010) and oğuz (2009) that general academic success did not affect self-competence perceptions of teachers while yağcı and aksoy (2015) revealed in their studies that there is no significant relation between academic gpas and teachers’ self-competence perceptions. yıldırım (2011), bayrakdar et al. (2016) and soysal (2014) studies towards teacher candidates where they obtained similar results shown that self-competence perceptions of teacher candidates did not significantly differ based on academic success levels. karabulut et al. (2019) concluded that academic success did not affect teacher candiates’ perceptions for themselves. when we examine the levels of attitude towards teaching profession, it was seen in ciğdem (2010) study titled examination of attitudes of form teacher candidates towards learning styles and teaching profession in terms of various variables where contrary findings were obtained that statistically significant difference was found based on academic success level while similarly (sandıkçı, 2011) in their study examining the attitude and self-competence perceptions of physical education teacher candidates and other teacher candidates towards teaching profession shown statistical asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 531-537 535 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group difference based on academic success variables. upon examination of table 4 it is observed that attitude levels related to teaching profession of the university students participating in the study and their level of selfcompetence perception did not differ statistically significantly based on their sports habits. on the other hands, it can be said that sports habits of university students do not affect their attitude towards teaching profession and their self-competence perception levels. in another study made, the attitudes of altuntaş (2016) research group towards teaching profession did not reach a meaningful difference according to sporting status. considering the attitudes of university students participating in the study towards teaching profession, eroğlu (2011) obtained results in a different direction and found in their study conducted with physical education teacher candidates that their professional attitudes differed based on their sports habits while kafkas et al. (2010) in their study found that it statistically differed in favor of teacher candidates answering yes based on licensed sports habits variable. in the study of unlü (2008) who obtained similar results, there were significant differences in “program and content knowledge”, “learning and teaching process”, “knowing the student”, “school-family and society relations”, “personal and professional development” competence fields based on regular sports habits variable of physical education teachers while it was found that competence scores of physical education teachers who regularly exercise sports are higher than the ones who do not. in addition, it was stated that physical education teachers who were former licensed athletes considered themselves more competent. as a matter of fact, (küçük kılıç, 2014) who obtained results similar to our study stated as a result of their research that professional attitude of teacher candidates did not statistically significantly differ based on active sports variable. when selfcompetence perceptions of university students are reviewed, unlü (2008) found significant differences in competence fields except monitoring and assessment of learning when competence perceptions towards teaching profession is considered based on regular sports habit of physical education teachers. research results of denham and michael (1981) related to sports performances and competencies of physical education teachers supported the results of this research. according to denham and michael (1981) it was seen that teachers who have high levels of competence perception attributed their own successful performances to the activities they perform. zülkadiroğlu et al. (2007) stated that positive effects of various factors towards selfcompetence perceptions of individuals can be observed indirectly, however absolute effects of sports and physical activities on self-competence can be observed clearly. researches emphasize that participation in sports and physical activities have positive effects on individuals’ self-competence perceptions. upon examination of table 5 it is observed that the level of self-competence perception of the university students participating in the study did not differ statistically significantly, and their attitude levels related to teaching profession differed statistically significantly based on their income levels. in the attitude towards teaching profession, the attitude level of students with average income levels are statistically significantly higher than the attitude level of students with higher income levels. this condition can be interpreted that while the income levels of university students participating in the study do not serve for self-competence perceptions, it is also seen that it has a positive effect on their attitude levels towards the profession. when we conduct a relevant field review in the light of these findings, it was found that celiköz (2010) who obtained results contained to our study found in their study examining attitudes of clothing teacher candidates towards teaching profession in terms of certain variables that the attitude towards teaching profession did not differ based on monthly income variable. eş (2010) who obtained similar results with çeliköz, stated in their study conduced with form teacher candidates that monthly income status did not differ while in the study conducted by ekici (2005) it was found that there was no difference in terms of income levels of families which is a different variable. as a matter of fact, akbaş (2008) stated in their study conducted with teachers working at vocational high schools stated that there is no significant difference 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2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group yıldırım, a., 2011. investigation of the relationship between self-efficacy perceptions and professional concern levels of elementary school teachers' marmara university institute of educational sciences, master’s thesis, istanbul. yılmaz, s.ş., 2009. investigation of the relationship between professional attitudes and personal values of preschool teacher candidates. abant i̇zzet baysal university institute of social sciences. master’s thesis, bolu. zararsız, n., 2012. investigation of self-efficacy perceptions of teachers working in elementary schools. abant izzet baysal university institute of educational sciences, master’s thesis, bolu. zülkadiroğlu, z.f., d. bostan budak and e. kozanoğlu, 2007. importance of competence expectation in sport and physical activity. spormetre-the journal of physical education and sport sciences, 5(1): 915. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 349 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 349-361, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.349.361 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group which country is more effective in science teaching? evidence from pisa 2015 as a secondary school assessment tool gökhan ilgaz1 menekşe eskici2 levent vural3 ( corresponding author 1,3faculty of education, educational sciences department, dr. trakya university, turkey 2faculty of science and art, educational sciences department, dr. kırklareli university, turkey abstract the aim of this study is to determine how effectively different countries use educational inputs in the process of science education. the study is in the descriptive model and the data is derived from the pisa 2015 data set, which provides information to countries on secondary education programs. data from 70 countries, including turkey, were used in the study. the effectiveness of turkey in the process of science teaching in secondary education has been compared with other countries and suggestions have been made to increase the effectiveness of secondary education science teaching. the data for this study are grouped into training inputs and training outputs. ―student behaviour hindering learning”, “teacher behaviour hindering learning”, “shortage of educational material”, “shortage of educational staff”, “professional development”, “teachers participation”, “curricular development”, “total number of science teachers at school”, “index science-specific resources (sum)” were defined as the educational inputs. the science achievements of students have been taken into account in determining which countries have more effective management of educational inputs accepted in this study. secondary scholl level education inputs while nearby countries respectively to use effectively slovakia (97.30%), slovenia (91.16%), brazil (90.50%), turkey (89.75%), finland (84.65%), greece (83.31%), denmark ( 83.25%), and czech republic (80.61%). education outcomes in turkey is ranked as 20th in science teaching secrets to use it effectively. keywords: secondary school, curriculums, effective science teaching, pisa 2015, data envelopment, training inputs and training outputs. citation | gökhan ilgaz; menekşe eskici; levent vural (2019). which country is more effective in science teaching? evidence from pisa 2015 as a secondary school assessment tool. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 349-361. history: received: 12 february 2019 revised: 20 march 2019 accepted: 29 april 2019 published: 24 july 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 350 2. purpose of the study ..................................................................................................................................................................... 350 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 351 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 353 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 358 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 360 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.349.361&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/872 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8988-5279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6217-3853 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9302-6143 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/872 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8988-5279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6217-3853 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9302-6143 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/872 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8988-5279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6217-3853 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9302-6143 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/872 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8988-5279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6217-3853 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9302-6143 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/872 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8988-5279 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6217-3853 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9302-6143 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 350 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by determining how effectively different countries use educational inputs in the process of science education. 1. introduction science is more than merely a part of daily life; it is daily life itself. subjects such as stirring sugar in tea to make it dissolve faster, the need to take plugs out of sockets during lightning storms, how natural events such as rain and snow occur, and the harm caused to the body by not drinking enough water, all fall under the scope of science. considered from this point of view, not only is it true that for humans, who lead their lives as part of nature, it is impossible to live apart from science, it is also a fact that if they are not sufficiently equipped with regard to science, their lives will be made equally difficult. the importance of science stems from the fact that it encompasses not only the most basic activities in daily life, but also much more complex subjects such as the production of technology, increasing efficiency in the use of natural resources, and discovering the keys to a longer life. developments in the field of science and reflecting them into daily life are the most significant indicators of the establishment of modern life in society and of the progress of nations. therefore, the teaching of science plays a key role in an individual‘s personal development as well as in the advancement of nations. scientific knowledge is a lesson that is so much a part of life that davis et al. (2006) stress that a science education that focuses on real challenges is the main reason for success. it can be said that science and technology lessons carried out in a social context change attitudes towards science in a positive way and support the creation of the basis for a solid scientific understanding. the best way to increase students‘ interest in science is to associate the lesson subjects to daily life, since it is possible for students to perceive the benefits of science when they see its reflection in daily life (bennett et al., 2007; maltese et al., 2014; sheldrake et al., 2017). if attitudes towards science become negative and if students‘ concerns about the subject of science affect their career choices and lead them in other directions, this will be a worrying situation for developments in the field of science. therefore, endearing students to science builds the mainframe for their future achievements related to science (osborne et al., 2003). it would not be wrong to say that attitudes towards science form the source of skills related to scientific knowledge, technological developments and science. the problem here is that although science is so important, attitudes towards science are low. conducted studies have shown that attitudes towards science are low because of negative experiences occurring in science lessons (mulholland and wallace, 1996; palmer, 2001). based on this, it can be said that the science education process needs to be organised in such a way as to affect students‘ attitudes towards science in a positive way. it is argued that the approach to science education should be regarded as ―education through science‖ rather than ―science through education‖ (holbrook and rannikmae, 2007). the real sine qua non of science education is that students should learn science by experiencing it and not by rote. the place of the laboratory environment in science education is indisputable. the opportunity for students to learn by doing and experiencing is a great chance for those students‘ science learning (hodson, 1988; kirschner et al., 2006). in addition to these, the design of a science education learning environment that includes activities focusing on skills like experimentation and reasoning, that is supported by visuals, and in which primary sources or models are used, is recommended (evagorou et al., 2015). the need to consider the problem of how science education should be taught, rather than what should be taught, is pointed out. science education is possible not merely by learning basic knowledge, but with the application of that knowledge. baeten et al. (2010) state that education conducted with a student-centred approach supports deep learning. success in science education is related to experiencing scientific knowledge by doing research (clermont et al., 1994; bybee, 2014; osborne, 2014). moreover, there are indicators regarding the fact that conducting science education in a collaborative way will contribute to students‘ cognitive development as a result of their mutual interaction and sharing of ideas (koretsky et al., 2019). it is emphasised that learning and teaching science lessons in a more collaborative way will be beneficial (huppert et al., 2002). controversial findings related to the factors influencing success in science are found in the literature. in a study made by stohr‐hunt (1996) it was found that success in science classes of students who had more experience was greater than that of students with less experience. in a study conducted by cairns and areepattamannil (2019) it was determined that based on the pisa data, inquiry-based science education was significantly negatively correlated with science success, whereas inquiry-based science education was significantly positively correlated with dispositions towards science such as interest in and enjoyment of learning science, instrumental and futureoriented motivation for science, and science self-esteem. using the timss 2015 data for norway, teig et al. (2018) concluded in their study that inquiry-based science teaching on a large scale had a negative effect on science achievement, a fact which supports the findings made by cairns and areepattamannil (2019). undoubtedly, there are various factors affecting academic success. the basic factors that affect students‘ academic success are considered to be teacher competencies (rockoff, 2004; aaronson et al., 2007; rothstein, 2010; harris and sass, 2011) undesirable student behaviours (durán-narucki, 2008; maxwell, 2016) school facilities (gislason, 2010; rivera and lopez, 2019) and the school‘s relationship with parents (hill and taylor, 2004; jeynes, 2007). the same factors can be listed as determinants of success in the subject of science. in the pisa 2015 report, the educational inputs affecting science achievement were defined as “student behaviours preventing learning”, “teacher behaviours preventing learning”, “lack of educational materials”, “lack of teaching staff”, “professional development”, “teacher participation”, “curriculum development”, “total number of science teachers in school‖ and ―science-specific resource index (total)‖. 2. purpose of the study in an age in which development in science technology is taken as the basis as the most important indicator of countries‘ development, the process of scientific knowledge production in universities has also gained importance. the education of individuals who can produce scientific knowledge is also of equal importance. when considering asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 351 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group that the most determining factor for success in the education process is readiness, it can be regarded as an undisputable fact that possessing competence in science in the secondary education period has an impact on educating individuals who will be able to produce scientific knowledge in higher education. based on this, it can be concluded that the effectiveness of science teaching carried out during the secondary education process is very important for the development of nations. the more successfully science education is conducted during the secondary education process and the higher the level of readiness of students sent into higher education, the more the levels of countries‘ scientific knowledge production and of their technological development will increase. therefore, it is considered important to determine the effect on success of the educational inputs that will determine the effectiveness of science teaching in secondary school curricula. the aim of this study is to determine how efficiently different countries use educational inputs in the science teaching process. 3. method 3.1. research model with the aim of evaluating the relative efficiency of the inputs or efforts put in by countries, using these countries‘ pisa 2015 science scores as outputs, this study was designed according to the survey model. 3.2. study group the study was conducted with data obtained from schools in 70 countries/regions that participated in the pisa 2015 study. for the analysis, in order to remove negative numbers and to facilitate interpretation, the data were converted into z scores. since there were outliers in the input scores for tunisia and china (beijing-shanghaijiangsu-guangdong), these were removed. it was seen that there were no outliers in the z scores obtained for the remaining 68 countries. in the correlation analysis conducted, it was determined whether or not there was multicollinearity, and the study was carried out with 68 countries. the distributions of the countries included in the study are shown in table 1. table-1. countries and numbers of schools included in the study. countries frequency % countries frequency % albania 230 1.32 latvia 250 1.43 algeria 161 0.92 lithuania 311 1.78 australia 758 4.34 luxembourg 44 0.25 austria 269 1.54 china (macao) 45 0.26 belgium 288 1.65 malta 59 0.34 brazil 841 4.81 mexico 275 1.57 bulgaria 180 1.03 moldova 229 1.31 canada 759 4.34 montenegro 64 0.37 chile 227 1.30 netherlands 187 1.07 chinese-taipei (taiwan) 214 1.22 new zealand 183 1.05 colombia 372 2.13 norway 229 1.31 costa rica 205 1.17 peru 281 1.61 croatia 160 0.92 poland 169 0.97 czech republic 344 1.97 portugal 246 1.41 denmark 333 1.91 qatar 167 0.96 dominican republic 194 1.11 romania 182 1.04 estonia 206 1.18 russian federation 210 1.20 finland 168 0.96 singapore 177 1.01 france 252 1.44 slovakia 290 1.66 georgia 262 1.50 vietnam 188 1.08 germany 256 1.46 slovenia 333 1.91 greece 211 1.21 spain 201 1.15 china (hong kong) 138 0.79 sweden 202 1.16 hungary 245 1.40 switzerland 227 1.30 iceland 124 0.71 thailand 273 1.56 indonesia 236 1.35 trinidad and tobago 149 0.85 republic of ireland 167 0.96 united arab emirates 473 2.71 israel 173 0.99 turkey 187 1.07 italy 474 2.71 macedonia 106 0.61 japan 198 1.13 united kingdom 550 3.15 jordan 250 1.43 united states 177 1.01 korea 168 0.96 uruguay 220 1.26 kosovo 224 1.28 spain (regions) 976 5.59 lebanon 270 1.55 argentina (buenos aires) 58 0.33 source: obtained from primary data. 3.3. data collection tools the data for the schools taken as the study sample were utilized by utilizing the pisa 2015 database. these data were scaled in ready form. within this scope, the means of these scales were used as inputs, while the countries‘ pisa 2015 science success scores were used as outputs. these inputs and the questions with which they were obtained are presented in table 2. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 352 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. the inputs and its questions. inputs the name of inputs questions of inputs questions input1 student behaviour hindering learning (wle) sc061q01ta student truancy sc061q02ta students skipping classes sc061q03ta students lacking respect for teachers sc061q04ta student use of alcohol or illegal drugs sc061q05ta students intimidating or bullying other students input2 teacher behaviour hindering learning (wle) sc061q06ta teachers not meeting individual students‘ needs sc061q07ta teacher absenteeism sc061q08ta staff resisting change sc061q09ta teachers being too strict with students sc061q010ta teachers not being well prepared for classes input3 shortage of educational material (wle) sc017q05na a lack of educational material (e.g. textbooks, it equipment, library or laboratory material). sc017q06na inadequate or poor quality educational material (e.g. textbooks, it equipment, library or laboratory material). sc017q07na a lack of physical infrastructure (e.g. building, grounds, heating/cooling, lighting and acoustic systems). sc017q08na inadequate or poor quality physical infrastructure (e.g. building, grounds, heating/cooling, lighting and acoustic systems) input4 shortage of educational staff (wle) sc017q01na a lack of teaching staff sc017q02na inadequate or poorly qualified teaching staff sc017q03na a lack of assisting staff. sc017q04na inadequate or poorly qualified assisting staff input5 professional development (wle) sc009q06ta when a teacher has problems in his/her classroom, i take the initiative to discuss matters. sc009q08ta i pay attention to disruptive behaviour in classrooms sc009q12ta when a teacher brings up a classroom problem, we solve the problem together. sc009q06ta when a teacher has problems in his/her classroom, i take the initiative to discuss matters. input6 teachers participation (wle) sc009q09ta i provide staff with opportunities to participate in school decision-making sc009q010ta i engage teachers to help build a school culture of continuous improvement sc009q011ta i ask teachers to participate in reviewing management practices. input7 curricular development (wle) sc009q01ta i use student performance results to develop the school‘s educational goals. sc009q02ta i make sure that the professional development activities of teachers are in accordance with the teaching goals of the school. sc009q03ta i ensure that teachers work according to the school‘s educational goals input8 total number of science teachers at school input9 index science specific resources (sum) sc059q01na compared to other departments, our school's science department is well equipped. sc059q02na if we ever have some extra funding, a big share goes into improvement of our science teaching. sc059q03na science teachers are among our best educated staff members. sc059q04na compared to similar schools, we have a well-equipped laboratory. sc059q05na the material for hands-on activities in science is in good shape. sc059q06na we have enough laboratory material that all courses can regularly use. sc059q07na we have extra laboratory staff who help support science teaching. sc059q08na our school spends extra money on up-to-date science equipment. source: obtained from primary data. 3.4. data analysis the aim of this study was to investigate whether or not the inputs or efforts considered to affect the pisa 2015 science success scores were used efficiently by the countries. with this aim, to determine the relative efficiency, data envelopment analysis was used. the analysis was performed in line with the views of lorcu (2008): 1. firstly, the decision making units (dmu) were determined. according to dyson et al. (2001)) form inputs and s outputs, the number of decision making units should be 2 mxs. in this study, 70 countries (68 were taken for analysis; the reason for this is presented below) were sufficient as dmus for the 9 inputs and 1 output. 2. according to cooper et al. (2001) form inputs and s outputs, there should be an n number of dmus, where n≥{m x s; 3 x (m + s). accordingly, since 70 (68) ≥{9 x 1; 3 x (9 + 1)}=70(68) ≥{9; 30}, the number of dmus was sufficient. 3. z distribution should be controlled. in the first z distribution in the study, since there were outliers in the input scores for tunisia and china (beijing-shanghai-jiangsu-guangdong), these were removed. it was seen that there were no outliers in the z scores recalculated for the remaining 68 countries. both z distributions are shown in table 3. to facilitate interpretation of the scores and to remove negative values, conversion to t scores was performed. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 353 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. distribution of inputs for 68 countries. inputs n minimum maximum n minimum maximum student behaviour hindering learning (wle) 70 -1,87272 2,06593 68 -1,85571 2,05420 teacher behaviour hindering learning (wle) 70 -2,07622 2,43954 68 -2,07918 2,52854 shortage of educational material (wle) 70 -1,96928 2,12009 68 -1,96773 2,21297 shortage of educational staff (wle) 70 -2,12386 3,58366 68 -2,26788 2,37804 professional development (wle) 70 -2,35916 2,90058 68 -2,47614 2,14454 teachers participation (wle) 70 -2,09584 2,42160 68 -2,06065 2,40872 curricular development (wle) 70 -2,30067 2,18401 68 -2,45245 2,21827 total number of science teachers at school 70 -2,95748 1,84587 68 -3,08392 1,85672 index science specific resources (sum) 70 -1,13323 5,53576 68 -1,43348 2,86126 source: obtained from primary data. 4. correlation control was performed for the 68 countries. no high correlation was determined. the correlation results are presented in table 4. table-4. correlations between inputs. no inputs input 2 input 3 input 4 input 5 input 6 input 7 input 8 input 9 pisa score input1 student behaviour hindering learning (wle) -,107 ,171 -,43** -,038 -,013 -,113 ,104 ,415** ,331** input2 teacher behaviour hindering learning (wle) ,475** ,163 ,227 ,011 ,079 -,021 -,190 ,086 input3 shortage of educational material (wle) ,058 ,495** -,099 -,154 -,107 ,025 ,187 input4 shortage of educational staff (wle) ,534** ,168 ,120 -,004 -,189 -,403** input5 professional development (wle) -,058 -,067 -,201 ,032 ,004 input6 teachers participation (wle) ,633** ,654** ,033 -,592** input7 curricular development (wle) ,671** -,224 -,491** input8 total number of science teachers at school ,038 -,481** input9 index science specific resources (sum) ,268* source: obtained from primary data. **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). 5. starting with the hypothesis that as decision-makers, we would have an effect on the inputs, analysis of the inputs was made. moreover, under the hypotheses of constant returns and returns to scale used in approaches of this type, an attempt was made to obtain the countries‘ total, technical and scale efficiency values. total efficiency was calculated with the input-based ccr model developed by charnes et al. (1978) while technical efficiency was calculated with banker et al. (1984) bcc model and scale efficiency was calculated with the ratio of these. furthermore, returns to scale situations were also calculated. 4. findings in the study, the research results for total efficiency calculated with the ccr model, technical efficiency with the bcc model, scale efficiency with the ccr/bcc ratio, and returns to scale with total lambdas of the selected countries are presented in table 5. according to the analyses made, a total of 15 countries/regions (canada, switzerland, estonia, finland, hong kong (china), hungary, iceland, japan, korea, lithuania, macao (china), poland, singapore, slovenia and vietnam) out of the 68 countries/regions were totally efficient. of the countries that were totally efficient, the top three countries shown as references were japan (37), poland (35) and estonia (34). vietnam, which was a totally efficient country, was not shown as a reference for any other country. on the other hand, the totally efficient slovenia was shown as a reference for latvia and sweden. latvia‘s reference coefficient was extremely low, and, due to rounding down, was evaluated as zero. when the general distribution of totally efficient countries is examined, it is seen that they mostly consist of continental european and asia-pacific countries. 12 of the countries (which countries) that were above the oecd average in the pisa 2015 science scores listing were also totally efficient. it was determined that the five countries that were closest to total efficiency (taiwan (china), the netherlands, austria, denmark and france) were also among the countries above the oecd average. the analysis revealed that 53 countries were inefficient. the five countries furthest from total efficiency were jordan, kosovo, trinidad and tobago, algeria and the dominican republic. again, it is seen that these countries occupied the last places in the pisa 2015 science success listing, and that in fact, the dominican republic was in last place for both total efficiency and academic success. in other words, these countries‘ efforts were not sufficient. examining the countries‘ returns to scale situations, it is seen that apart from new zealand, all countries had increasing returns to scale. that is to say, an input of 1 unit in their inputs resulted in an output greater than 1 in their outputs. examining the recommendations made for countries that were not totally efficient in order for them to become efficient, it was determined that there was no reference indicator in regional terms. in most reference indicators, there was a mixture of europe and asia-pacific. it was determined that especially canada and totally efficient countries in europe were mostly references for their neighbours. turkey was one of the countries that were not totally efficient. turkey‘s total efficiency ratio was 71.92%. with this score, turkey was in 51st place in the list of 68 countries. estonia and japan were references for turkey. that is, for turkey to be totally efficient, it needed to use its inputs with the input ratios of those countries. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 354 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. ccr results. no dmu ccr country1 λ1 country2 λ2 country 3 λ3 country4 λ4 country 5 λ5 country 6 λ6 total λ returns to scale 1 albania 0,8635 hungary 0,37 japan 0,08 korea 0,08 singapore 0,19 0,72 increasing 2 united arab emirates 0,7140 japan 0,15 korea 0,12 singapore 0,4 0,67 increasing 3 australia 0,9040 canada 0,24 estonia 0,24 iceland 0,01 poland 0,12 singapore 0,31 0,92 increasing 4 austria 0,9666 switzerland 0,21 estonia 0,29 finland 0,32 japan 0,01 singapore 0,07 0,9 increasing 5 belgium 0,8640 switzerland 0,16 japan 0,2 china (macao) 0,11 poland 0,49 0,96 increasing 6 bulgaria 0,8621 japan 0,04 poland 0,76 0,8 increasing 7 brazil 0,6502 estonia 0,03 finland 0,21 japan 0,3 poland 0,04 0,58 increasing 8 canada 1,0000 canada 1 1 9 switzerland 1,0000 switzerland 1 1 10 chile 0,8566 canada 0,11 iceland 0,59 poland 0,08 singapore 0,06 0,84 increasing 11 colombia 0,5974 estonia 0,59 japan 0,03 0,62 increasing 12 costa rica 0,6396 estonia 0,46 japan 0,17 0,63 increasing 13 czech republic 0,9004 estonia 0,34 finland 0,16 japan 0,02 poland 0,39 0,91 increasing 14 germany 0,8775 switzerland 0,15 estonia 0,17 finland 0,38 japan 0,1 singapore 0,13 0,93 increasing 15 denmark 0,9596 switzerland 0,14 estonia 0,26 finland 0,01 japan 0,02 poland 0,5 singapore 0,04 0,97 increasing 16 dominican republic 0,3872 estonia 0,27 japan 0,04 poland 0,05 0,36 increasing 17 algeria 0,5164 estonia 0,49 0,49 increasing 18 spain 0,8661 estonia 0,18 hungary 0,1 japan 0,18 korea 0,14 poland 0,19 singapore 0,12 0,91 increasing 19 estonia 1,0000 estonia 1 1 20 finland 1,0000 finland 1 1 21 france 0,9446 switzerland 0,56 japan 0,01 china (macao) 0,36 0,93 increasing 22 united kingdom 0,9280 china (hong kong) 0,46 japan 0,03 korea 0,17 poland 0,21 singapore 0,08 0,95 increasing 23 georgia 0,7821 estonia 0,04 hungary 0,18 korea 0,33 lithuania 0,03 poland 0,08 0,66 increasing 24 greece 0,8704 estonia 0,16 japan 0,03 korea 0,59 0,78 increasing 25 china (hong kong) 1,0000 china (hong kong) 1 1 26 croatia 0,7852 japan 0,49 poland 0,35 0,84 increasing 27 hungary 1,0000 hungary 1 1 increasing 28 indonesia 0,8515 hungary 0,05 korea 0,35 singapore 0,21 0,61 increasing 29 republic of ireland 0,8509 estonia 0,63 japan 0,13 poland 0,14 0,9 increasing 30 iceland 1,0000 iceland 1 1 31 israel 0,7019 estonia 0,39 china (hong kong) 0,08 japan 0,19 korea 0,01 poland 0,11 0,78 increasing 32 italy 0,7210 estonia 0,17 finland 0,08 japan 0,28 poland 0,07 singapore 0,21 0,81 increasing 33 jordan 0,5733 estonia 0,58 japan 0,01 0,59 increasing 34 japan 1,0000 japan 1 1 35 korea 1,0000 korea 1 1 36 kosovo 0,5411 japan 0,37 poland 0,15 0,52 increasing 37 lebanon 0,5872 japan 0,13 korea 0,09 singapore 0,29 0,51 increasing 38 lithuania 1,0000 lithuania 1 1 39 luxembourg 0,9271 switzerland 0,44 japan 0,17 china (macao) 0,27 0,88 increasing 40 latvia 0,9270 estonia 0,32 poland 0,6 slovenia 0 0,92 increasing asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 355 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 41 china (macao) 1,0000 china (macao) 1 42 moldova 0,6850 estonia 0,46 poland 0,23 0,69 increasing 43 mexico 0,6251 estonia 0,09 japan 0,39 poland 0,15 0,63 increasing 44 macedonia 0,6588 estonia 0,04 hungary 0,13 poland 0,41 0,58 increasing 45 malta 0,8411 china (hong kong) 0,63 korea 0,15 poland 0,01 singapore 0,02 0,81 increasing 46 montenegro 0,7586 japan 0,22 poland 0,43 0,65 increasing 47 netherlands 0,9765 switzerland 0,28 estonia 0,25 china (hong kong) 0,41 japan 0,03 0,97 increasing 48 norway 0,8980 estonia 0,27 finland 0,24 japan 0,15 poland 0,09 singapore 0,13 0,88 increasing 49 new zealand 0,8794 estonia 0,05 china (hong kong) 0,29 poland 0,66 singapore 0,02 1,02 decreasing 50 peru 0,5846 estonia 0,16 japan 0,4 0,56 increasing 51 poland 1,0000 poland 1 1 52 portugal 0,7663 switzerland 0,14 estonia 0,31 japan 0,09 poland 0,3 singapore 0,1 0,94 increasing 53 argentina (buenos aires) 0,6985 estonia 0,08 japan 0,15 poland 0,22 singapore 0,36 0,81 increasing 54 qatar 0,8148 korea 0,22 poland 0,02 singapore 0,37 0,61 increasing 55 spain (regions) 0,8800 hungary 0,19 japan 0,19 korea 0,04 poland 0,41 singapore 0,11 0,94 increasing 56 romania 0,8624 lithuania 0,57 poland 0,24 0,81 increasing 57 russian federation 0,7899 estonia 0,41 japan 0,29 poland 0,16 0,86 increasing 58 singapore 1,0000 singapore 0 59 slovakia 0,8867 estonia 0,18 hungary 0,16 poland 0,51 0,85 increasing 60 slovenia 1,0000 slovenia 0 61 sweden 0,9194 canada 0,06 estonia 0,53 singapore 0,2 slovenia 0,06 0,85 increasing 62 chinese-taipei (taiwan) 0,9959 japan 0,33 singapore 0,62 0,95 increasing 63 thailand 0,7457 hungary 0,25 korea 0,23 lithuania 0,12 poland 0,13 0,73 increasing 64 trinidad and tobago 0,5390 estonia 0,57 japan 0,05 poland 0,04 0,66 increasing 65 turkey 0,7192 estonia 0,21 japan 0,44 0,65 increasing 66 uruguay 0,6042 estonia 0,46 china (hong kong) 0,18 japan 0,04 poland 0,01 0,69 increasing 67 united states 0,8614 canada 0,23 estonia 0,25 poland 0,15 singapore 0,26 0,89 increasing 68 vietnam 1,0000 vietnam 1 source: obtained from primary data. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 356 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. total, technical and scale efficiencies of countries and their returns to scale. no countries ccr bcc scale efficient returns to scale 8 canada 1 1 1 9 switzerland 1 1 1 19 estonia 1 1 1 20 finland 1 1 1 25 china (hong kong) 1 1 1 27 hungary 1 1 1 30 iceland 1 1 1 34 japan 1 1 1 35 korea 1 1 1 38 lithuania 1 1 1 41 china (macao) 1 1 1 51 poland 1 1 1 58 singapore 1 1 1 60 slovenia 1 1 1 68 vietnam 1 1 1 62 chinese-taipei (taiwan) 0,9959 1 0,9959 increasing 47 netherlands 0,9765 1 0,9765 increasing 4 austria 0,9666 1 0,9666 increasing 21 france 0,9446 1 0,9446 increasing 39 luxembourg 0,9271 1 0,9271 increasing 1 albania 0,8635 1 0,8635 increasing 56 romania 0,8624 1 0,8624 increasing 6 bulgaria 0,8621 1 0,8621 increasing 10 chile 0,8566 1 0,8566 increasing 28 indonesia 0,8515 1 0,8515 increasing 54 qatar 0,8148 1 0,8148 increasing 23 georgia 0,7821 1 0,7821 increasing 46 montenegro 0,7586 1 0,7586 increasing 65 turkey 0,7192 1 0,7192 increasing 44 macedonia 0,6588 1 0,6588 increasing 7 brazil 0,6502 1 0,6502 increasing 37 lebanon 0,5872 1 0,5872 increasing 50 peru 0,5846 1 0,5846 increasing 59 slovakia 0,8867 0,9954 0,8908 increasing 24 greece 0,8704 0,9886 0,8804 increasing 36 kosovo 0,5411 0,981 0,5516 increasing 40 latvia 0,927 0,9802 0,9457 increasing 17 algeria 0,5164 0,9794 0,5273 increasing 45 malta 0,8411 0,9777 0,8603 increasing 16 dominican republic 0,3872 0,9688 0,3997 increasing 15 denmark 0,9596 0,9641 0,9953 increasing 61 sweden 0,9194 0,9535 0,9642 increasing 63 thailand 0,7457 0,9519 0,7834 increasing 13 czech republic 0,9004 0,9421 0,9557 increasing 22 united kingdom 0,928 0,9387 0,9886 increasing 42 moldova 0,685 0,9342 0,7332 increasing 12 costa rica 0,6396 0,9255 0,6911 increasing 48 norway 0,898 0,9219 0,9741 increasing 43 mexico 0,6251 0,919 0,6802 increasing 3 australia 0,904 0,9182 0,9845 increasing 55 spain (regions) 0,88 0,9134 0,9634 increasing 2 united arab emirates 0,714 0,9107 0,784 increasing 18 spain 0,8661 0,9022 0,96 increasing 67 united states 0,8614 0,8986 0,9586 increasing 5 belgium 0,864 0,8977 0,9625 increasing 11 colombia 0,5974 0,8942 0,6681 increasing 29 republic of ireland 0,8509 0,8933 0,9525 increasing 14 germany 0,8775 0,8901 0,9858 increasing 26 croatia 0,7852 0,8828 0,8894 increasing 49 new zealand 0,8794 0,8796 0,9998 decreasing 57 russian federation 0,7899 0,8772 0,9005 increasing 33 jordan 0,5733 0,8626 0,6646 increasing 31 israel 0,7019 0,8317 0,8439 increasing 53 argentina (buenos aires) 0,6985 0,8303 0,8413 increasing 32 italy 0,721 0,8065 0,894 increasing 52 portugal 0,7663 0,7824 0,9794 increasing 64 trinidad and tobago 0,539 0,7692 0,7007 increasing 66 uruguay 0,6042 0,7688 0,7859 increasing source: obtained from primary data. as shown the table 6, when technical efficiency was evaluated, it was determined that 33 countries were technically efficient, while 35 countries were not technically efficient. this proportion is almost fifty fifty. 18 of the countries (taiwan (china), the netherlands, austria, france, luxembourg, albania, romania, bulgaria, chile, indonesia, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 357 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group qatar, georgia, montenegro, turkey, macedonia, brazil, lebanon and peru) that were not totally efficient appeared as technically efficient. another type of efficiency examined in the study was that of scale efficiency. the results of the analysis reveal that only 15 of the totally efficient countries (canada, switzerland, estonia, finland, hong kong (china), hungary, iceland, japan, korea, lithuania, macao (china), poland, singapore, slovenia and vietnam) appeared as scale efficient. none of the 18 countries that were technically efficient (taiwan (china), the netherlands, austria, france, luxembourg, albania, romania, bulgaria, chile, indonesia, qatar, georgia, montenegro, turkey, macedonia, brazil, lebanon and peru) appeared as scale efficient. a total of 35 countries (slovakia, greece, kosovo, latvia, algeria, malta, the dominican republic, denmark, sweden, thailand, the czech republic, great britain, moldova, costa rica, norway, mexico, australia, spain (regions), the united arab emirates, spain, the united states, belgium, colombia, the republic of ireland, germany, croatia, new zealand, russia, jordan, israel, buenos aires (argentina), italy, portugal, trinidad and tobago and uruguay) were neither technically nor scale efficient. these countries could not produce on a suitable scale and used their resources incorrectly, leading to waste (lorcu, 2008). the analysis results revealed that turkey was not scale efficient. with a ratio of 71.92%, turkey was in 56th place in the list of countries. the countries below turkey were middle eastern (jordan, lebanon and algeria), balkan (kosovo and macedonia), and especially latin american (trinidad and tobago, costa rica, mexico, colombia, brazil, peru and the dominican republic) countries. turkey and the other countries need to reorganize their inputs in order to become totally efficient. this situation is expressed as hypothetical input. for these inputs, the percentage reduction rates for the inputs of these countries are presented in table 7. table-7. percentage reduction rates for countries‘ hypothetical inputs. no dmu input1 input2 input3 input4 input5 input6 input7 input8 input9 62 chinesetaipei (taiwan) 0,41 0,41 1,179666 13,7512 19,3463 6,1131 18,7791 18,1933 8,6619 47 netherlands 2,35 34,3886 31,68467 2,3500 11,9847 2,3500 4,1952 27,0037 2,3500 4 australia 3,34 17,21739 11,32106 3,3400 20,6639 3,3400 3,3400 3,3400 12,6728 15 denmark 4,04 4,04 18,85167 4,0400 4,0400 27,9978 27,6577 4,0400 4,0400 21 france 5,54 16,34248 16,20656 5,5400 17,1621 31,7544 5,5400 28,0071 17,9762 22 united kingdom 7,2 7,2 7,2 9,7808 7,2000 37,2942 26,9896 41,0381 7,2000 39 luxembourg 31,120877 20,99233 7,29 7,2900 24,1121 38,5281 7,2900 36,5538 24,9321 40 latvia 23,622925 13,14401 7,3 7,3000 31,0314 24,0729 22,0382 23,2473 7,3000 61 sweden 8,06 21,56784 18,4718 8,0600 28,7500 8,0600 23,3917 11,0841 8,0600 3 australia 21,029468 9,6 23,64318 9,6000 9,6000 9,6000 25,6593 27,4727 9,6000 13 czech republic 9,96 15,23478 9,96 9,9600 9,9600 17,4456 10,0054 23,8044 26,0640 48 norway 10,2 10,2 31,56588 10,2000 10,2000 16,0262 21,6251 32,7815 10,2000 59 slovakia 11,33 22,87238 11,33 21,5541 11,3300 33,7618 28,8305 43,0068 18,9558 55 spain (regions) 12 12 12 12,0000 30,1987 26,7861 22,7905 12,0000 12,3412 49 new zealand 12,06 17,3037 22,60662 12,0600 22,2703 12,0600 24,7238 37,4955 12,0600 14 germany 12,25 12,79305 20,84747 12,2500 26,2408 12,2500 12,2500 12,2500 21,6741 24 greece 16,51095 12,96 12,96 23,4581 34,2359 30,0037 29,4406 25,6073 12,9600 18 spain 13,39 13,39 13,39 13,3900 23,4020 28,3511 18,7795 13,3900 13,3900 5 belgium 13,6 18,96346 28,59455 13,6000 32,0794 32,2257 13,6000 24,6390 13,6000 1 albania 13,65 13,65 13,65 43,8646 27,0993 56,0900 49,6056 44,2956 13,6500 56 romania 34,344399 24,94393 13,76 13,7600 28,3417 33,8643 44,5774 40,9121 46,3502 6 bulgaria 13,79 22,57853 23,63463 22,0770 13,7900 52,0827 48,0497 54,5018 21,8415 67 united states 13,86 25,50405 20,2285 13,8600 13,8600 33,8979 34,4570 37,5156 13,8600 10 chile 24,697078 14,34 34,68483 14,3400 14,3400 14,8210 20,8200 34,3366 14,3400 28 indonesia 14,85 14,85 14,85 58,7276 37,2498 45,6712 48,2556 43,9182 18,5493 29 republic of ireland 36,729693 14,91 22,19725 15,4192 14,9100 24,5992 29,7712 15,2819 14,9100 45 malta 25,562443 15,89 15,89 20,7528 15,8900 61,7133 36,0633 29,7510 15,8900 54 qatar 43,972102 18,52 18,52 30,2472 18,5200 52,2928 42,7348 52,7342 49,5123 57 russian federation 37,134488 41,40629 26,24585 21,0100 21,2443 39,1383 21,0100 44,8810 21,0100 26 croatia 21,48 51,59208 30,13419 34,9890 21,4800 42,3832 50,2355 57,3564 29,1336 23 georgia 21,79 21,79 21,79 34,9955 21,7900 56,4775 51,4114 45,0387 21,7900 52 portugal 23,37 23,37 23,37 23,3700 43,9348 38,4243 33,0523 23,3700 41,5322 46 montenegro 24,14 46,49518 37,35317 43,5811 24,1400 63,1785 62,7513 68,1030 44,1156 63 thailand 25,43 25,43 25,43 25,4300 38,4761 35,5938 48,9402 40,7981 37,6314 32 italy 27,9 31,54264 29,13209 27,9000 27,9000 34,2268 27,9000 27,9000 38,3123 65 turkey 28,08 52,33819 34,74174 28,0800 41,4593 64,3816 69,6966 67,3763 37,6027 2 united arab emirates 46,31994 28,6 28,6 39,2833 42,5411 45,6664 47,7577 51,8846 28,6000 31 israel 39,215089 29,81 29,81 31,3629 29,8100 45,6293 29,8319 41,3017 29,8100 53 argentina (buenos aires) 30,15 33,06685 31,08413 30,1500 30,1500 32,6883 30,1500 34,9841 31,0367 42 moldova 34,810714 40,1603 37,51735 42,6619 31,5000 52,3699 47,1707 50,7961 31,5000 44 macedonia 34,12 34,49138 34,12 42,2547 34,1200 62,2931 64,6883 61,5516 55,9165 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 358 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 7 brazil 34,98 57,70405 45,2428 34,9800 34,9800 71,8150 62,6351 76,6881 34,9800 12 costa rica 36,04 55,87323 48,22179 54,5544 51,1341 50,2251 46,0711 49,6859 36,0400 43 mexico 37,49 51,12929 37,49 40,3785 37,4900 56,8647 60,7133 71,5741 37,9340 66 uruguay 45,460843 39,58 46,42855 39,5800 39,5800 55,2151 46,1444 47,0768 39,5800 11 colombia 43,833594 40,26 43,6059 48,8245 43,7563 50,9612 50,1059 44,2320 40,2600 37 lebanon 51,632562 41,28 41,28 53,3953 47,9188 62,6416 48,3802 60,0132 41,2800 50 peru 41,54 44,93124 46,2811 43,7699 43,9571 49,1171 59,1633 69,6916 41,5400 33 jordan 57,27877 42,67 54,89973 56,4964 55,9529 64,2589 53,8926 53,6599 42,6700 36 kosovo 45,89 55,39768 47,9673 54,1936 45,8900 73,1962 73,1858 79,7636 55,9755 64 trinidad and tobago 46,256612 53,31624 58,46661 53,2495 46,1000 58,7632 53,4892 46,1000 46,1000 17 algeria 60,995029 51,69957 63,98131 54,9547 57,1371 62,8556 49,7818 49,2289 48,3600 16 dominican republic 61,28 62,53561 65,5459 65,8370 61,2800 78,9322 78,4211 78,3243 61,2800 mean 26,341275 28,34484 27,78411 27,5067 28,8968 40,0066 37,12907 40,36946 26,92325 standard division 15,801207 16,03278 15,04331 17,38627 13,73561 19,49362 18,68829 18,98823 15,199 minimum 0,4100 0,4100 1,1797 2,3500 4,0400 2,3500 3,3400 3,3400 2,3500 maximum 61,28 62,53561 65,5459 65,83699 61,28 78,9322 78,42111 79,7636 61,28 source: obtained from primary data. for hypothetical input 1, the lowest percentage was recommended for taiwan (china), which was the country closest to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the dominican republic, which was in last place for success and total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 26.341275% was recommended for all countries. a slightly above average reduction of 28.08% was recommended for turkey. for hypothetical input 2, the lowest percentage was recommended for taiwan (china), which was the country closest to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the dominican republic, which was in last place for success and total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 28.34484% was recommended for all countries. a reduction of 52.33819%, which was almost twice the average, was recommended for turkey. for hypothetical input 3, the lowest percentage was recommended for taiwan (china), which was the country closest to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the dominican republic, which was in last place for success and total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 27.78411% was recommended for all countries. an above average reduction of 34.74174% was recommended for turkey. for hypothetical input 4, the lowest percentage was recommended for the netherlands, which was the second closest country to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the dominican republic, which was in last place for success and total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 27.5067% was recommended for all countries. a slightly above average reduction of 28.08% was recommended for turkey. for hypothetical input 5, the lowest percentage was recommended for denmark, which was the fourth closest country to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the dominican republic, which was in last place for success and total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 28.8968% was recommended for all countries. an above average reduction of 41.4593% was recommended for turkey. for hypothetical input 6, the lowest percentage was recommended for the netherlands, which was the second closest country to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the dominican republic, which was in last place for success and total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 40.0066% was recommended for all countries. a well above average reduction of 64.3816% was recommended for turkey. for hypothetical input 7, the lowest percentage was recommended for austria, which was the third closest country to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the dominican republic, which was in last place for success and total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 37.12907% was recommended for all countries. a well above average reduction of 69.6966% was recommended for turkey. for hypothetical input 8, the lowest percentage was recommended for austria, which was the third closest country to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the kosovo, which was in fourth from last place for total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 40.36946% was recommended for all countries. a well above average reduction of 67.3763% was recommended for turkey. for hypothetical input 9, the lowest percentage was recommended for the netherlands, which was the second closest country to total efficiency, while the highest percentage was recommended for the dominican republic, which was in last place for success and total efficiency. for this input, a mean percentage reduction of 26.92325% was recommended for all countries. an above average reduction of 37.6027% was recommended for turkey. 5. discussion in this study, based on the data of the pisa 2015 report, the science achievement of students in 68 countries was evaluated with reference to educational inputs, which are considered to affect their success. 15 of the countries included in the study (canada, switzerland, estonia, finland, hong kong (china), hungary, iceland, japan, korea, lithuania, macao (china), poland, singapore, slovenia and vietnam) were totally efficient. based on this, it can be said that these countries used their inputs and efforts efficiently and conducted their activities on a suitable scale (lorcu, 2008). they were able to successfully manage the factors regarded as educational inputs in the pisa 2015 report, namely ―student behaviours preventing learning‖, ―teacher behaviours preventing learning‖, ―lack of educational materials‖, ―lack of teaching staff‖, ―professional development‖, ―teacher participation‖, ―curriculum development‖, ―total number of science teachers in school‖ and ―science-specific resource index (total)‖. in this way, they increased achievement in science. examining the literature, studies have been conducted that support this finding. in a study conducted by lavonen and laaksonen (2009) based on the pisa 2006 data, it was concluded that the source of finnish students‘ success in science lessons was practical work in class and the students‘ deductions. a knowledge-based society, development of educational equality and decisive power on a local level, asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 359 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group and teacher education were regarded as the most important education policy issues underlying students‘ high performance in science lessons in the pisa 2006 report. similarly, in a study conducted by mcconney et al. (2014) based on the pisa 2006 data, it was stated that science achievement of students in australia, canada and new zealand was related to how much they experienced inquiry-based teaching and learning. in tang (2015) study, the results of the analyses made based on the pisa 2006 data for 5,995 students in the usa and taiwan revealed that with their science teaching-learning activities, students in the usa had more opportunities to learn science than students in taiwan. it was revealed that in the usa, students who had a higher socioeconomic level had more opportunities with regard to reform-based science learning activities. moreover, it was determined that students‘ higher socioeconomic level bore no relation to reform-based science learning in taiwan. the data in the pisa 2015 report were also evaluated for different countries according to science teachers‘ perceptions school principals‘ perceptions and implementation of the teaching programme. in their study, chi et al. (2018) used the science performance of students in beijing, shanghai, jiangsu and guangdong, and background research data for pisa 2015, and the results revealed that rather than teacher support, disciplinary climate had a positive effect on the relationship between inquiry-based science activities and students‘ science achievement for both genders. in oztürk (2018) study based on the pisa 2015 data, it was determined that for different socioeconomic levels there were significant relationships between scientific literacy and environmental awareness, and between scientific literacy and environmental optimism. in a study by susongko and afrizal (2018) using the pisa 2015 data for indonesian students, it was concluded that environmental awareness was related to the students‘ enjoyment of learning science, their self-efficacy in science, their instrumental motivation, inquiry-based instruction in science learning, and their science proficiency and epistemic beliefs. in lau and lam (2017) study, according to the pisa 2015 data, adaptive instruction, teacher-directed instruction and interactive application were positively correlated with science performance in all regions. the regions apart from japan and korea tended to have a high frequency of teacher-directed instruction facilitated by more or less authoritative discussion in class. it was seen that of the countries having total efficiency, the three countries mostly shown as references were japan, poland and estonia. in lewis (1995) study, it is argued that japanese schools support their students‘ academic success because they meet the students‘ needs, thereby supporting strong, positive emotional ties between students and their school, and this supports the finding obtained in this study that japan was one of the country‘s most often taken as an example. zawistowska (2014) considers that the greatest impact on the increase in poland‘s pisa scores was the educational reform made in 1999. in this reform, it is considered that the most important change affecting pisa data was the introduction of assessments other than multiple choice. it may be considered that these changes in the education system in poland are a reason why poland was shown as a reference for countries that were not totally efficient. it was revealed that the countries furthest from being totally efficient were jordan, kosovo, trinidad and tobago, algeria and the dominican republic. in a study conducted by al-amoush et al. (2011) it was concluded that science teachers and preservice science teachers in jordan tended to use traditional teaching methods, based on which, it can be said that the fact that the country was among the most unsuccessful in the pisa data may be related to procedures in the teaching process. in a study made by al-amoush et al. (2014) teaching-learning beliefs of german, turkish and jordanian preservice teachers were determined and compared. these findings correspond to the research findings made by al-amoush et al. (2011). the preference of the jordanian teacher candidates was the general educational approach, which was the teacher-centred approach. the preference of the german teacher candidates was the modern educational approach. the situation of the turkish preservice teachers was between these two extremes. although they had an approach close to the traditional educational approach, they had more modern educational beliefs than those of the jordanian teacher candidates. it was concluded that apart from new zealand, all countries had increasing returns to scale. in other words, an input of 1 unit in the inputs resulted in an output greater than 1 in the outputs. fernandez et al. (2008) emphasised that new zealand needed to update its physics curriculum. the justification for this was shown to be the lack of communication between teachers and curriculum designers. in support of the study findings, criticisms were made by buabeng (2015) to the effect that physics teachers in new zealand were not trained to be adequately equipped, and that they were not sufficiently qualified to be able to use investigative teaching methods or techniques, or to make correct assessments, in their lessons. in this study, the results also revealed that there was no relationship between being a totally effective country and geographic proximity. in a study by taht and must (2010) the pisa data of five neighbouring countries, namely russia, latvia, estonia, sweden and finland were evaluated. differences were determined among scores. it was considered that these differences may be due to differences in cultural influences on personality or to national educational and social policies. similarly, in a study carried out by herbst and wojciuk (2017) it was stressed that the neighbouring countries of the czech republic, hungary, poland and slovakia had institutional differences in their education systems and that differences between national approaches towards educational reforms were reflected especially in education centralisation, school autonomy, accountability and financial mechanisms. it was seen that turkey lagged behind many countries in terms of total efficiency. this situation shows that there are problems related to the use of educational inputs. in a study by anil (2011) in which the 2006 pisa data were used, ―time‖ was the variable that best predicted science success and the factor most clearly determining success. the other factors that predicted science achievement were ―environment‖, ―education‖ and ―attitudes‖, respectively. bakir et al. (2015) determined that success rates in pisa data were related to countries‘ socioeconomic statuses. it was stated that turkey‘s low achievement levels were due to the fact that national income is also low. in a study by kahraman and celik (2017) an attempt was made to determine turkish students‘ success and sources in the pisa 2012 data. it was found that attendance at nursery school, school starting age, mother‘s employment status, parents‘ educational level and numbers of computers and books at home affected student success. having a working mother and high school starting age had a negative effect on student success. on the other hand, attendance at nursery school, parents with a high educational level and a high number of books and computers in the home had a asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 349-361 360 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group positive impact on students‘ achievement. moreover, it was determined that the sociocultural and environmental locations of the students affected their success. based on these findings, it can be recommended that in order for countries whose science success was determined as low in the pisa report to increase their success, they should manage their educational inputs and take reference countries that are suitable for themselves as examples. it can be recommended that when organising and implementing their education programmes, they should take their educational inputs and successful countries into consideration. it can also be recommended to researchers that they undertake similar studies using the pisa data, and that they examine the reasons for the findings of this study with different methods. references aaronson, d., l. barrow and w. sander, 2007. teachers and student achievement in the chicago public high schools. journal of labor economics, 25(1): 95-135.available at: https://doi.org/10.1086/508733. al-amoush, s., s. markic, m. usak, m. erdogan and i. 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licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of the levels of digital game dependency of the students of the faculty of sports m. fatih karahuseyinoglu1 oguzhan altungul2 eyyup nacar3 omer faruk tutar4 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3faculty of physical education and sport sciences, firat university, turkey. 4institute of health sciences, firat university, turkey. abstract the aim of our study was to examine the digital game addiction levels of the students of the faculty of sports sciences in terms of some variables. the research group of our study consists of 397 randomly selected undergraduate students studying at firat university faculty of sports sciences and inonu university faculty of sports sciences in 2019. frequency of variables (f) and percentage (%) distributions were calculated and two-way variance analysis (anova) was used in multiple group variables and t-test was used for the significance of the difference between the two independent groups. tukey test was used to determine which groups it was among in the analysis in which significant differences were detected. according to the findings of our study, undergraduate students studying in the departments of firat university faculty of sports sciences and inonu university faculty of sports sciences; it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in the level of digital game dependency of the undergraduate students depending on the department, class, gender and age variables in which they studied. there was a statistically significant difference between digital game dependency levels based on the state of playing the digital game and the daily playing time variables. in line with the study findings, digital game addiction with an average of 2.29 on the digital game addiction scores of undergraduate students studying at firat university faculty of sports sciences and inonu university faculty of sports sciences levels were below average. keywords: sports, digital gaming, addiction, e-sport. citation | m. fatih karahuseyinoglu; oguzhan altungul; eyyup nacar; omer faruk tutar (2020). examination of the levels of digital game dependency of the students of the faculty of sports. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 18-22. history: received: 7 october 2019 revised: 11 november 2019 accepted: 16 december 2019 published: 14 january 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 2. materials and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 19 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 19 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 21 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 22 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.18.22&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1227 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2572-7324 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-6329 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1227 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2572-7324 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-6329 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1227 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2572-7324 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-6329 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1227 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2572-7324 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-6329 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1227 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2572-7324 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-6329 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1227 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2572-7324 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-6329 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 18-22 19 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the digital game addiction levels of the students of the faculty of sports sciences in terms of some variables. 1. introduction the development of technology also leads to various changes in our lives. technology provides convenience in many subjects in our lives with the development of it. when looking at the early periods when technology began to develop, it is seen that computers the size of a room were built. however, with the development of technology, this situation has become very small inventions and has developed a lot today. the development of technology has started to have a great impact on people not only by producing devices, but also with the development of applications and games that are installed in the memory of these devices. these applications, which we call digital games, have become people's free time appraisal activities. a new formation has begun in the sports community with the development of the games every day. this formation is called e-sports (electronic sports). e-sports are defined as organizations organized by internationally recognized games anywhere in the world, via a console or computer, over the internet or by coming together with platforms anywhere in the world. there is competition in these tournaments (argan et al., 2007). although the beginning of e-sports was based on the emergence of the first computer games, its popularity has increased for about 9-10 years. the atmosphere of the games created by young people in the game center arcades established in 1970 constitutes the culture of e-sports. the game consoles that developed afterwards resulted in the mutual struggles of the two people. this is the beginning of the creation of a competitive environment in the history of e-sports. in the following periods, with the establishment of internet cafes, many computers came side by side and some games were played together in the same playground as the servers and individuals at the computer. in the following times, people started to compete in games online without coming together with the developing technology, and as a result, competitions were organized by putting different prizes. in europe, the 1997 "red annihilation" tournament was the beginning of the award for competitions (kocadağ, 2017). the prize money, which was as low as $1,500-2000 during those periods, was worth $20,770,460 in the prize pool for the international in 2016, and the first-place team in the competition won $9,139,000 (font and mahlmann, 2019). this situation is inevitably becoming an industry in individuals. it increases interest in digital games and causes people to become addicted and not leave game consoles and computers for days. undoubtedly, this situation affects people in terms of health as well as disconnected from the outside world and makes them anti-social. people are unable to communicate correctly with the people around them, and this condition, which starts at an early age, affects children's futures from levels of assertiveness to self-esteem. it will cause health problems as a result of inactivity. it is important for parents to be careful when it is considered that this type of play dependency of children and young people will cause problems for children in both health and social terms in the future. for this reason, our study aimed to examine the digital game dependency levels of students studying at the faculty of sports science. 2. materials and method the research universe consists of undergraduate students studying at firat university faculty of sports sciences and inonu university faculty of sports sciences in 2019. the sample of the study consisted of 397 randomly selected undergraduate students from the specified departments; firat university sports sciences and inonu university faculty of sports sciences, department of physical education teaching, sports management department, department of coaching education, department of exercise and sports education for the disabled. "personal information form" (department, digital gaming status and daily playing time, age, gender, class) was used to determine the demographic information of the subjects involved in the study and the "dobö-7" which is a 7-point scale was used that developed by lemmens and his colleagues. the likert type of the scale developed is a 5degree, single-factor structure. the total number of points to be collected between the scale 1 and 5 points is between 7 and 35 points. monothetic and polythetic diagnosis were used to say that a young person is addicted to digital games according to the scale. according to the monothetic diagnosis, if a person scores three (sometimes) points and more on seven of the seven items; according to the polythetic diagnosis, if it gives scores of three(sometimes) points and more to at least four of the seven items, it is defined as a digital game addict. dobö7’s validity and reliability values were found to be 0.92 cfi=0.904, rmsea=0.053 (90% ci=0.049 and 0.056) for cronbach alpha and have been shown to be available in adolescents. 2.1. analysıs of data the analysis of the data in the research and the calculation of the results found were created by statistical programs in computer environment. frequency of variables (f) and percentage (%) distributions have been calculated. it was checked by skewness and kurtosis tests to determine whether the data were distributed normally. as a result of these tests and controls, the data of the research were determined to be parametric. tukey test results were used to determine which groups the difference was among the results with significant differences. the error level in the study was taken as p<0,05. 3. findings findings on the variables of the study are given in this section. the findings showing the distribution of undergraduate students studying in firat university and inonu university faculties of sports sciences according to their individual status as of 2019 were examined and interpreted. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 18-22 20 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. demographic characteristics distribution table. variable information form n % department coaching 124 31,2 teaching 137 34,5 exercise and sports training for disabilities 57 14,4 management 79 19,9 total 397 100,0 age 17-19 years 65 16,4 20-22 years 200 50,4 23 years and above 132 33,2 total 397 100,0 class 1st class 99 24,9 2nd class 89 22,4 3rd class 128 32,2 4th class 81 20,4 total 397 100,0 gender male 226 56,9 female 171 43,1 total 397 100,0 digital game computer 179 45,1 platform phone 218 54,9 total 397 100,0 how many hours a day do you play? 1-2 hours 182 182 45,9 3-4 hours151 151 38,1 5 hours and more64 64 16,0 total 397 100.0 source: n: 397. 3.1. percentage distribution of the subjects. when the demographic distribution table of the students is examined in table 1; among the age groups, the highest participation was between 50.4% and 20-22 years, while the lowest participation was between 16.4% and 17-19 years. when the subjects who participated in the study were examined, it was observed that the physical education and sports teaching department provided the highest participation with 34.5%, and the department of exercise and sports education for the disabled with 14.4%. when we look at the distribution of the classes they are studying, it is seen that 3rd grade students constitute 32.2%, 1st grade 24.9%, 2nd grade, 22,4% and 4th grade 20.4% subject group, respectively. when the gender of the participants was examined, 56.9% of the subject group was male and 43.1% were female. when the demographic distribution table was examined, they said that 54.9% of them were playing digital games when checked answers of the question ‘do you play digital games’? it has been observed that the majority of students (84%) devote time to digital play for no less than 4 hours per day. table-2. anova test table of digital game addiction averages by department at university. department n x ss f p coaching 124 2,35 ,980 1,972 0,118 digital game teaching 137 2,18 ,931 addiction disabilitie management 57 79 2,17 2,46 ,877 ,955 total 397 2,29 ,948 note: one way anova, p<0.05. when table 2 was examined, it was determined that the difference between the participants' levels of digital game dependence and the department variable in which they were studying was not statistically significant (p>0.05). table-3. anova test table of digital game addiction averages by university classes. class n x ss f p 1st class 99 2,29 ,906 2,233 0,84 digital game 2nd class 89 2,22 ,965 addiction 3rd class 4th class 128 81 2,44 2,10 1,007 ,855 total 397 2,29 ,948 note: one way anova, p<0.05. when table 3 was examined, the difference between participants' digital game dependency levels and class levels variables was not statistically significant (p>0.05). table-4. anova test table on digital gaming addiction averages by age of students at university. age n x ss f p 17-19 65 2,10 ,937 1,607 0,202 digital game addiction 20-22 23 years and above 200 132 2,35 2,28 ,930 ,975 total 397 2,29 ,948 note: one way anova, p<0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 18-22 21 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 4 was examined, the difference between participants' digital game dependency levels and age variables was not statistically significant (p>0.05). table-5. t test table of digital game addiction averages by gender of students at university. gender n x ss t p digital game addiction male 226 2,34 ,966 1,348 0,179 female 171 2,21 ,920 note: independent sample t-test, p<0.05. when table 5 was examined, the difference between participants' digital game dependency levels and gender variables was not statistically significant (p>0.05). table-6. t test table of digital game addiction averages based on university students' participation in digital game. digital game platform n x ss t p digital game computer 179 1,71 ,698 -13,041 ,000 addiction phone 218 2,76 ,863 note: independent sample t-test, p<0.05. the participants’ digital game dependency levels and the digital game platform question variable were examined in table 6, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between those who played the game on a computer and those who played the game with the phone (p<0.05). table-7. digital game dependencies averages t test results by time to participate in digital game. playing period n x ss f p tukey 1-2 hoursa 182 2,28 ,780 54,704 0,00 a-b,c digital game 3-4 hoursb 151 2,95 ,615 addiction 5 hours and morec 64 3,66 ,684 total 397 2,76 ,863 note: one way anova (tukey), p<0.05. when table 7 was examined, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the group playing 1-2 hours and the participants who played 3-4 hours and played 5 hours or more when the participants' digital game dependency levels and game time variable levels were examined (p<0,05). 4. discussion and conclusion in this part of our study, the undergraduate students studying at firat university faculty of sports sciences and inonu university faculty of sports sciences who participated in the study, have a variety of variables in terms of the level of digital game dependency. based on the hypothesis that it differs, the data of the study will be discussed in this section. the 50.4% of students are studying between the ages of 20 and 22, 34.5% in physical education and sports teaching department, and 14.4% in the newly opened department of exercise and sports education for the newly opened disabled people in turkey. when we look at the distribution of the classes they are studying, it is seen that 3rd grade students constitute 32.2%, 1st grade 24.9%, 2nd grade, 22,4% and 4th grade 20.4% subject group, respectively. when the gender of the participants was examined, 56.9% of the subject group was male and 43.1% were female. when the demographic distribution table was examined, they said that 54.9% of them were playing digital games when checked answers of the question ‘do you play digital games? when the anova test results were examined according to the variables of the departments in which the subjects participated in the study, the difference between the participants' levels of digital game dependence and the department variable in which they were studied was considered statistically not significant. looking at the average score, it is seen that the students of the management department have the highest score. however, it is observed that all departments remain below the average of dependency points. when the anova test results were examined according to the class groups’ variable of the subjects who participated in the study, the difference between the participants' digital game dependency levels and the class group variables was not statistically significant. when the class groups of the participants were examined, it was seen that the average scores of the students studying in 3rd grade were higher than in other class groups. however, it is observed that the average points are not at the level of dependency according to our scale. in a study similar to our study (tanrıverdi, 2012) they found that there was no statistically significant difference between the level of game addiction according to the class groups variable of the participants in their studies on game addiction. when the anova test results were examined according to the age group variable of the subjects who participated in the study, the difference between the participants' digital game dependency levels and the age variable was not statistically significant. looking at the average scores, it was found that students between the ages of 20 and 22 had higher digital game addiction scores than other age groups, but they remained below the level of digital gaming dependency. in a study (aydoğdu, 2018) that did not parallel with our study, he found that there was a statistically significant difference in age groups variable in the study of examining the digital game dependencies of children playing digital games in terms of various variables. according to the results of the aydoğdu (2018) children between the ages of 11 and 12 have higher levels of digital gaming addiction than children between the ages of 13 and 14. in this study which is not similar to our study, it can be said that the participants were in childhood and that our study was due to the fact that we examined the levels of digital game addiction of the participants at the university level. when the t test results were examined according to the gender variable of the subjects who participated in the study, the difference between the participants' digital game dependency levels and the gender variable was not statistically significant. male participants were found to have higher digital game addiction points averages than asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 18-22 22 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group female participants. in a study similar to our study (inal and cağıltay, 2005; cakır et al., 2011; horzum, 2011; sahin and tugrul, 2012; li and wang, 2013) the average game addiction scores were higher in boys than girls. when the t-test results were examined according to the variables of the digital game playing platforms of the subjects participating in the study, when the participants' digital game dependency levels and the platform question variable in which they played the digital game were examined, it was determined that the difference between those who played the game on the phone and those playing on the computer was statistically significant. looking at the average points of the answers given to the question of digital game playing platforms, it was found that the participants who played the game on the phone were higher in proportion to the participants who played the game on the computer. we can say that this is because mobile phones are in our lives all the time and we also carry them with us all the time and can be used in any environment in free time. when the results of the anova test were examined according to the game time variable of the subjects participating in the study, the group playing 1-2 hours between the participants' digital game dependency levels and the game play time variable and playing for 3-4 hours and 5 hours or more the difference between the group playing was statistically significant. when the group scores are examined, it is seen that the group playing games in the range of 3-4 hours per day is close to the average of dependency points, but not at the level of digital game dependency. it has been found that the group that plays games 5 hours or more has higher levels of dependence on digital gaming dependency, which is based on the digital game dependency averages. undergraduate students studying in the departments of firat university faculty of sports sciences and inonu university faculty of sports sciences; depending on the department, class, gender and age variables in which they studied, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in the level of digital game dependency of the undergraduate students. there was a statistically significant difference between digital game dependency levels based on the state of playing the digital game and the daily playing time variables. in line with the study findings, digital game addiction with an average of 2.29 on the digital game addiction scores of undergraduate students studying at firat university faculty of sports sciences and inonu university faculty of sports sciences levels were below average. mobile phones, game consoles, and computers are used as leisure assessment tools. the dependence of individuals on such devices is inevitable to reveal various health problems and the state of anti-social status. individuals will contribute to their health in terms of sports requiring physical action in leisure activities. it is thought that the unconscious construction of e-sports, which is called a sport and has a federation in our country, will create significant health problems in the coming years. digital games banned or restricted in most countries, those games can be played in our country without any obstacles. it is very important that our goverment and families inform our children and young people about this issue and those such games are restricted. for these reasons, it was deemed necessary to examine the digital game addiction levels of the students in the study group and as a result of the available research; it is thought to contribute to sports scientists, psychologists, and academicians working on this subject. since there were no desired levels of study in the literature on the subject in this section of our research, not many sources could be reached. in this aspect of the research, it can be said that it will contribute to field writing. references argan, m., h.k. suher, a. ozer, e.v. akin and t. a.m., 2007. game quality: astudy on turkish game players. sarajevo, bosnia herzegovina: 2nd international symposium of new technologies in sport. aydoğdu, f., 2018. analyzing digital gaming dependencies of children playing digital games in terms of various variables. ulakbilge, 6(31): 1-18. cakır, ö., t. ayas and m.b. horzum, 2011. an investigation of university students’ internet and game addiction with respect to several variables. ankara university, journal of faculty of educational sciences, 44(2): 95-117.available at: https://doi.org/10.1501/egifak_0000001226. font, j.m. and t. mahlmann, 2019. dota 2 bot competition. in ieee transactions on games, 11(3): 285-289. horzum, m.b., 2011. examining the computer game dependency levels of primary school students according to various variables. education and science, 36(159): 56-68. inal, y. and k. cağıltay, 2005. factors affecting the computer game playing habits and game preferences of elementary school students. new directions in educationii. game in education symposium. ankara, 14: 114-115. kocadağ, m., 2017. electronic sports career and education. journal of trends in eastern anatolia social sciences, 1(2): 49-63. li, h. and s. wang, 2013. the role of cognitive distortion in online game addiction among chinese adolescents. children and youth services review, 35(9): 1468-1475.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.05.021. sahin, c. and v.m. tugrul, 2012. examining computer game addiction levels of elementary school students. journal of the world of turks / journal of world of turks, 4(3): 115-130. tanrıverdi, s., 2012. examining the relationship between internet addiction and perceived social support in secondary school students. unpublished master's thesis. the university of yüzüncüyıl, institute of educational sciences: van. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 236 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 236-242, 2019 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.236.242 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the development of an appropriate knowledge management model for public university lecturers chomsupak cruthaka ramkhamhaeng university, bangkok, thailand abstract in this research objective is to construct and develop an appropriate knowledge management model for public university lecturers. the model was developed on the basis of the delphi method in which experts evaluated the model in three rounds. experts also evaluated the model for appropriateness prior to experimentally testing the model with 30 ramkhamhaeng university (ru) lecturers. four categories of necessary knowledge engaging 25 types of knowledge were evaluated prior to the commencement and after the completion of the experiment. satisfaction of the participants in the experiment was determined by means of the website. it was found that knowledge scores after the completion of the experiment were higher than prior to its commencement at the statistically significant level of .05 and that the level of satisfaction was evinced at a high level. this means that the knowledge management model was appropriate for creating knowledge. keywords: conditions of knowledge management, problems of knowledge management, knowledge management model, necessary of knowledge, satisfaction, public university lecturers. citation | chomsupak cruthaka (2019). the development of an appropriate knowledge management model for public university lecturers. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 236-242. history: received: 19 december 2018 revised: 21 january 2019 accepted: 15 february 2019 published: 12 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: this research was accomplished with great assistance from asst. prof. boonchan thongprayoon, vice president for academic affairs and research; asst. prof. pronchi wongwasana director of research and development institute ramkhamhaeng university for the support and encouragement. funding: this research is funded by ramkhamhaeng university. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 237 2. review of literature ...................................................................................................................................................................... 237 3. research objectives ...................................................................................................................................................................... 237 4. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................. 237 5. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 238 6. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 239 7. conclusion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................. 241 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 241 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.236.242&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/409 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/409 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 236-242 237 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction the challenge to human beings nowadays is the rapid change brought about by globalization and scientific and technological advance. what we have now is a transition from an information-based society to a knowledge-based society. in respect to reforming the thai educational system, these changes have led to a focus on holistic development with “humans as a center of development.” the government focuses on thais having quality life-long learning. the ministry of education (moe) accordingly pays heed to student centeredness as an integral component of educational reform. therefore, thai educational institutions must develop modes of education and training as important instruments for developing the thai people and nation. the role of teachers and lecturers then becomes one in which the task is to foster knowledge and life-long learning (khammanee, 2012). furthermore, changes in asean make it necessary for the moe to use technology as a tool in reforming thai education. the moe’s policy and planning framework for the development of information and communication technology (ict) are integrated for the sake of facilitating efficient educational practices at present and in the future. universities must create learning systems whereby university lecturers take on the task of self-development. ict capabilities must be honed and employed so as to enhance self-learning and to create a necessary knowledge management system for university lecturers (ministry of education office of the education council, 2011). in thai society, public sector policy has seriously engaged knowledge management. from the vantage point of business, the private sector heeds the need to promote and encourage the continuous creation and development of knowledge. this brings about innovations in work and organizational development, which in turn prove advantageous in business competition. at present, knowledge management focuses on building networks for the development of knowledge at vocational learning communities. mobilizing this idea is the support lent to vocational learning. this allows educators to cooperate in work and share good practices, as well as integrating 21st century skills and thence applying them to classroom practice. this will lead to vocational learning communities in which teachers and lecturers participate. it also stimulates educators to support and share operational knowledge between communities using face-to-face communication and visual communication or both (dufour and dufour, 2013). therefore, the researcher, a university lecturer, is interested in developing an appropriate knowledge management model for public university lecturers in bangkok metropolis (bm). the context of education in bm is more or less the same in the use of ict in facilitating education and learning. lecturers can access knowledge and share knowledge speedily and conveniently. the appropriate knowledge management model in such a context will result in enhancing the capabilities of university lecturers in applying a necessary body of knowledge to instruction and study, research, and provision of services to communities and administrators, as well as for knowledge development. this, however, presupposes that university lecturers efficiently develop themselves academically and professionally in accordance with their mission. 2. review of literature knowledge management means a relationship between humans and information through processing, synthesizing, and classifying information. this leads to interpretation and understanding of initially received information until the refined product has become knowledge. this knowledge covers not only latent knowledge in the cognitive apparatuses of personnel, but also explicitly manifests intra-organizational knowledge as appears in documents, records, or reports. these two types of knowledge are systemized by means of creating new knowledge, knowledge sharing, and knowledge transfer for continuously developing organizations (namprasertchai, 2015; cruthaka, 2017). this analysis of the knowledge management process on the basis of the results offered by both thai and foreign academics allows the drawing of the following conclusions: an appropriate knowledge management process for public university lecturers consists of the following: (1) identification of a necessary body of knowledge; (2) knowledge acquisition; (3) knowledge creation; (4) knowledge storage and retrieval; (5) knowledge sharing; and (6) learning. technological capabilities are used as an instrument for knowledge management whenever they are applied to the making of websites and blogs for creating, storing, and disseminating knowledge to the public. (marquardt, 2011; cruthaka and pinngern, 2016; abbass, 2017). 3. research objectives the objectives of this study were: (1) the conditions of knowledge management problems and the necessary body of knowledge required for public university lecturers. the researcher describes and analyzes (2) a knowledge management model (kmm) constructed so as to be suitable for these lecturers. finally, furthermore, the researchers evaluates (3) this kmm. 4. research methodology the research was developed using a research and development (r&d) approach. this was done using the following steps: in step one, the researcher studied the opinions of 26 experts concerning the conditions of knowledge management problems and the necessary body of knowledge required for public university lecturers. utilizing the method of structured interviews, the researcher collected germane data from the opinions of the experts concerning the components of the knowledge management process and the necessary body of knowledge required for public university lecturers. these data were subsequently analyzed through content analysis and the frequency of occurrence was recorded. finally, the results were summarized. in step two, in an application of the delphi method, the researcher examined the opinions of 20 experts vis-àvis a kmm suitable for public university lecturers. their opinions were solicited in three rounds. in round one, an asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 236-242 238 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group open-ended questionnaire was used as an instrument of research. a five-rating scale questionnaire was used as an instrument of research for collecting data in round two and round three. these data were subsequently analyzed by means of computing their median (mdn) and the interquartile range (ira) within which they fell. in step three, the kmm constructed by the researcher was evaluated. the draft kmm was presented alongside four componential groups of knowledge constituting the necessary body of knowledge required for public university lecturers. these four groups were instruction and study; research; academic and vocational; and modern information communication technology (ict). the kmm was designed on the basis of the ramkhamhaeng university (ru) website. the results were examined by seven experts in respect to whether it was appropriate to implement the kmm. the kmm was accordingly recommended for approval prior to its implementation with 30 ru lecturers. the instruments of research accompanying implementation were a questionnaire used to evaluate the body of knowledge required for public university lecturers and a questionnaire eliciting data revealing the levels of satisfaction evinced by the lecturers vis-àvis their satisfaction with the kmm. the quality of the instruments was verified and they were found to be reliable at the levels of 0.98 and 0.97, respectively. utilizing techniques of descriptive statistics, the data collected were analyzed in terms of mean (m) and standard deviation (sd). in addition, the researcher employed a t test technique as a technique of inferential statistics. 5. results 1. the conditions of knowledge management of public university lecturers based on the components of knowledge management in five aspects contained a total of 57 items. the items with the highest level of frequency for each aspect were as follows: (1) searching for knowledge through training, seminars, or academic meetings; (2) constructing knowledge through carrying out research or from dealing with problems stemming from issues involving funding sources and by means of writing research articles; (3) storing knowledge in a database or knowledge treasure trove in order to be able to access stored knowledge from faculty and university websites; (4) sharing and exchanging knowledge gained from training, meetings, and academic seminars whether held domestically or abroad; and (5) learning from the applications of knowledge to planning instruction and study, developing instructional techniques for each subject, and developing curriculums. 2. concerning the problems of knowledge management of public university lecturers based on the components of knowledge management in five aspects of 54 items, the highest level of frequency for each aspect was as follows: (1) lecturers have heavy teaching loads. some lecturers spend time compiling textbooks and so they do not have time for information searching. (2) developing new knowledge takes time. textbook compiling and conducting research take time. however, heavy teaching loads and various activities hinder developing a new body of knowledge. (3) knowledge storage is minimal. knowledge is not categorized and filtered. knowledge is not kept up-to-date. there are no public relations activities applied to accessing knowledge. problems are also generated because knowledge is lost. (4) lecturers do not pay much attention to the need to share and exchange knowledge. (5) learning is instilled in individuals and used in instruction and study and research in specific fields. knowledge is not widely used and lecturers do not find the time to bring their knowledge up-to-date. 3. the necessary body of knowledge for public university lecturers in bangkok metropolis (bm) comprises 30 items divided into four aspects. these are nine items in the aspect of instruction and study; nine items in the aspect of research; ten items in the academic and vocational aspect; and two items in the aspect of information and communication technology (ict). 4. the kmm found suitable for public university lecturers consisted of five aspects: (1) knowledge acquisition; (2) knowledge creation; (3) knowledge storage and access; (4) knowledge sharing; and (5) learning. out of 88 items, 46 items were determined to be appropriate at the highest level. forty-two items were found to be appropriate at a high level. the mdn was found to range from 3.61-4.73. the iqr was established as lying between 0.04-1.00. 5. in evaluating the appropriateness of the components of the draft kmm as based on the opinions of experts, it was found that the kmm was deemed appropriate overall at the highest level. moreover, also deemed appropriate at the highest level were the aspects of a body of knowledge; the knowledge management process; and the website. the opinions of the experts were overall at a high level in respect to the materials designed to accompany lectures on the kmm constructed by the researcher. this is shown in picture 1. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 236-242 239 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. knowledge management model for public university lecturers. source: authors’ field work. 6. the m scores for the body of knowledge required of university lecturers overall and in all the aspects of instruction and study, research, academic and vocational, and modern ict showed the following: after the kmm was used, the m scores were higher than prior to the commencement of its use at the statistically significant level of .05. as shown in the table 1. table-1. comparison of body of knowledge of university lecturers before and after used to kmm. body of knowledge before after t p sd sd 1. instruction and study 3.29 0.52 4.33 0.39 -9.698* .000 2. research 3.32 0.56 4.39 0.33 -9.355* .000 3. academic and vocational 3.46 0.56 4.38 0.44 -6.745* .000 4. modern ict 3.37 0.54 4.36 0.52 -6.505* .000 total 3.35 0.44 4.37 0.35 -9.858* .000 * p < .05. 7. the m scores for the levels of satisfaction evinced by the lecturers with the use of the kmm overall and in the aspects of the body of knowledge required, the website, and the website manual were found to be at a high level. the aspect of the knowledge management process was found to be at the highest level. as shown in the table 2. table-2. means and standard deviation and the level of satisfaction to the use of the kmm of university lecturers. the kmm dimension sd satisfaction level 1. body of knowledge 4.39 0.46 high 2. knowledge management process 4.50 0.46 highest 3. the website 4.43 0.41 high 4. the website manual 4.39 0.49 high total 4.33 0.40 high source: this table is result of my study. 6. discussion 1. the results of studying the conditions of knowledge management expressed by public university lecturers are as follows: the opinions carrying the highest frequency for each aspect of the knowledge management process are specified accordingly. searching for knowledge in the course of training, seminars, or academic conferences, vocational conferences, and research conducted in the kingdom of thailand (thailand) or abroad is a means of creating knowledge. knowledge is also created through synthesizing knowledge on the basis of conducting research appertaining to one’s own interests or from issues involving problems stemming from sources of funding and writing research articles. moreover, knowledge is stored in the form of knowledge databases or knowledge troves so as to be accessible through knowledge databases on websites of faculty members and the university. knowledge is shared and exchanged through training, meetings, and academic seminars at the national and international levels. learning results from applying knowledge to planning and developing teaching methods, organizing instruction and study, and curriculum development. the conditions of the work performance of lecturers at present involve using technology in various forms in teaching, conducting research, and providing academic services. lecturers must develop themselves so as to manifest    asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 236-242 240 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group well-rounded academic personae at all times. they must search for knowledge from various sources by retrieving knowledge from sources around the world. they must create an academic cooperation network in order to develop their profession. academic activities are organized for knowledge exchange in conferences, academic seminars for the development of instruction and study, as well as for research purposes. this finding is in consonance with the research findings of jarasri (2014) who found that knowledge acquisition by teachers at ramkhamhaeng university demonstration school (ruds) was generated through various kinds of training. the teachers retrieved information from documents and engaged in intranet and internet searching at their organization. they stored knowledge in textbooks, documents, and manuals in the form of information files. this finding was also consistent with the research findings of rerkaroonthong and kulchartdilok (2014) who found that learning at institutions of higher education was brought about by assigning lecturers to use knowledge gathered through various channels. university lecturers, therefore, must strive to write articles and textbooks in order to create new knowledge obtained from research and teaching in order to improve academic content by keeping their knowledge up to date at all times. 2. in studying the knowledge management problems of public university lecturers, it was found that lecturers had large teaching loads. some spend time compiling textbooks, developing instructional materials, and conducting research. so they have less time for searching for new knowledge. creating new knowledge takes time and, as such, the body of new knowledge is insufficient. the storing of knowledge does not involve filtering. public relations geared to accessing knowledge are largely absent. the knowledge management webpage presents difficulties to those who wish to log-in. the knowledge is not up to date. knowledge is not categorized. the application of knowledge to specific fields is not widely done. this is because the lecturers have different levels of knowledge and capabilities. knowledge acquisition and creation must depend on experience with a widespread network of university lecturers for speedy retrieval of knowledge or for participation in academic activities. this finding accords with the research of maneetham (2004) who found that organizations did not systematically use writing and transference practices. all organizational members did not participate in the search for new knowledge. only some groups participated. knowledge was searched for from various sources when necessary but not in a systematic manner. each member did his or her own searching without keeping written records. this finding also accords with the research of chaitha (2012) who found that knowledge acquisition and creation as well as knowledge transfer by civil servants were problematic because they were overburdened with work. 3. in studying the necessary body of knowledge for public university lecturers, the researcher found that there were 30 items appertaining to a necessary body of knowledge. this knowledge can be categorized in terms of four aspects: instruction and study; research; academic and vocational; and ict. the major mission of university lecturers is to provide instruction and study and to conduct research. these are requirements for professional development while fostering professional advancement. lecturers must have capabilities in modern technology. social networking has also played a role in instruction and study and information retrieval. university lecturers must be flexible in searching for knowledge and making use of online learning. as seen above, technological capabilities can be used in the development of instruction and study through using web and online instruction. this finding is lent support by the research of cruthaka and pinngern (2016) who claimed that the technological capabilities of lecturers in instruction and study and curriculum development could transform instruction and study media and transfer knowledge through electronic media in the form of e-books. lecturers could thus provide instruction and study materials via websites and network systems by providing televised instruction and teaching on websites. this result squares with the research of rerkaroonthong and kulchartdilok (2014) who argue that higher education institutions should designate knowledge topics that reflect the mission and strategic issues of their universities as an important knowledge requirement for research. 4. in constructing an appropriate knowledge management model for public university lecturers, the researcher relied on the opinions of experts. the delphi technique was employed for purposes of content analysis. the model was constructed such that a necessary body of knowledge could be used in constructing a database comprised of four categories of knowledge. the design accordingly requires users to log-in with a user name and password in order to gain access. a webpage, a webboard and an online forum have been developed and thence provided such that users can express opinions and exchange knowledge via this website. the researcher and her assistant monitored the system and filtered knowledge so as to determine whether postings were appropriate to the model. the issues to be discussed consisted of whether the model developed by the researcher was an appropriate knowledge management model. the experts were of the same opinion in holding that in all aspects the model was acceptable at the highest level. these aspects were the search for knowledge through having conversations with colleagues who were deeply experienced in research and instruction; continuously creating knowledge through research; and creating innovations whereby knowledge could be stored by developing a manual for collecting knowledge while providing information concerning good practices. a question and answer (q&a) database was constructed for the website. academic talks were organized in order to share experience and to create a new body of knowledge that could be adapted and put to use in instruction and study and for developing instructional media. it is necessary for university lecturers to develop themselves and their profession. they must pay heed to knowledge acquisition with the knowledge acquired taking on the form of deeply ingrained knowledge. they require coaching by mentors and senior lecturers. the research they carry out should solve problems in work performance and address organizational and community problems. cooperation in the provision of academic services and professional services integrated with research is needed so as to create a new body of knowledge. community practitioners following various vocations should be grouped together in order to solve problems so as to assist in maintaining continuous and sustainable development. in addition, the university encourages the use of modern technology in knowledge retrieval, knowledge storage, knowledge accessibility, and knowledge transfer in various forms using the university website and social networking. this is in accordance with the ideas of marquardt (2011) who asserted that the transfer of knowledge to individuals, groups of individuals, or the needy using ict methods would make the dissemination and transfer of knowledge appropriate, speedy, convenient, and easy to retrieve. this conclusion is the same as the conclusion (namprasertchai, 2015) who said that the application of ict was to be used as a support tool, as, e.g., in providing frequently asked questions (faqs) sections to assist in responding to questions or solving problems the solutions asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 236-242 241 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group to which have already been stored. this is also in accordance with the ideas of the office of the public sector development commission (2008) that learning will take place when learning takes place on the job and is grounded in learning systems in which knowledge is implemented in new experiences. it also accords with the research of rerkaroonthong and kulchartdilok (2014) who found that institutions of higher education open opportunities to lecturers and personnel to search and gather knowledge inside and outside of the university from the internet. moreover, abbass (2017) found that the importance of knowledge management in institutions of higher education could be applied to communities of practitioners in solving everyday problems, transferring best practices, stimulating cooperation between experts, developing new knowledge, fostering speedy learning, working in one’s field in depth with a large group of experts, and sharing knowledge and learning about matters of interest. 5. in comparing the differences between the body of knowledge commanded by university lecturers prior to the commencement and after the use of the model constructed by the researcher, findings were as follows: the mean (m) scores on the body of knowledge commanded by the university lecturers overall and in all aspects—viz., instruction and study; research; academic and professional knowledge, and ict—after the use of the model were higher than prior to its use at the statistically significant level of .05. the model clearly delineated the knowledge management process. lecturers could access knowledge easily and download knowledge to use in accordance with their needs, thereby fulfilling the mission of university lecturers to develop knowledge. this result is in consonance with the research of jarasri (2014) as presented in a study entitled “an online knowledge management model for teachers at demonstration schools under the jurisdiction of the office of the higher education commission.” the findings additionally showed that self-assessment concerning the body of knowledge commanded by the university lecturers after completion of the experiment was higher than prior to its commencement at the statistically significant level of .05. 6. concerning the lecturers’ satisfaction with the model, it was found that the m scores for satisfaction with the model were overall exhibited at a high level. when considered in each aspect, the aspect of the knowledge management process was found to be at the highest level. at a high level in descending order were the aspects of website, body of knowledge presented, and the website use manual. the design of the knowledge management system via a website governing knowledge management procedures commenced with identifying a necessary body of knowledge and categorizing knowledge such that it would be accessible in addition to developing a webboard and a webblog so as to easily and conveniently create knowledge, store knowledge, and share knowledge. as seen above, a manual for website use was also constructed for knowledge management. this accords with the research investigation of chaitha (2012) under the title “the construction of online knowledge management for civil servants as support for the 9th infantry brigade.” moreover, findings showed that overall satisfaction with the model was at a high level. 7. conclusion and recommendations the results suggest that the knowledge management model was appropriate for creating knowledge, enhancing academic advancement, and furthering vocational advancement. it can thus be used to create a learning organization in the future. the recommendations are that: 1. the model constructed by the researcher has the following components: knowledge identification, knowledge acquisition, knowledge creation, knowledge storage and accessibility, knowledge sharing, and learning. if other universities use this model, they may increase or reduce steps as they deem appropriate to the context of their organizations in order to ensure efficient knowledge management. 2. universities using this model should study documents accompanying its use so as to ensure understanding. meetings should be called to explain to university administrators and institutes how to support the use of the model. the use of this model should be connected with quality assurance (qa) as well. 3. the management of a knowledge system qua a body of knowledge is divided into four categories. these categories are instruction and study; research; academic and professional development; and ict. all of these categories were obtained on the basis of an inquiry into what constituted a necessary body of knowledge. if a university has the need for more than four groups of knowledge—e.g., adding qa, or arts and culture maintenance—more groups of knowledge can be added. if there is a need for knowledge beyond this, other groups can be added as is appropriate. 4. there should be a follow-up system vis-à-vis the use of knowledge. teamwork procedures should be set up geared to conducting follow-ups and to create motivation to strive for success in implementing knowledge in the work performance of lecturers, such as awarding certificates or monetary rewards. references abbass, n., 2017. importance of knowledge management at mauritius institution of education. international journal of educational administration and policy studies, 9(10): 134-145.available at: https://doi.org/10.5897/ijeaps2017.0533. chaitha, s., 2012. construction of an online knowledge management model for civil officials of the support group, 9th infantry division. a dissertation of faculty of human resource development, ramkhamhaeng university. cruthaka, c., 2017. principles of knowledge management. bangkok: ramkhamhaeng university public company. cruthaka, c. and o. pinngern, 2016. development of a training program for enhancement of technology competencies of university lecturers. international journal of educational administration and policy studies, 8(6): 57-65.available at: https://doi.org/10.5897/ijeaps2016.0465. dufour, r. and r. dufour, 2013. professional learning community role: advance of 21st century skills. 21st century skills rethinking how students learn. (bellanca j and brandt r. editors, thai langue translation). bangkok: openworlds publishing house. jarasri, u., 2014. an online knowledge management model for demonstration school teaching under the jurisdiction of the office of the higher education commission. a dissertation of faculty of human resource development, ramkhamhaeng university. khammanee, t., 2012. teaching science. 15th edn., bangkok: chulalongkorn university printing house. maneetham, t., 2004. a study of problems and solution knowledge management of center for information technology and communication services university of phayao. granted by university of phayao. marquardt, m.j., 2011. building the learning organization: achieving strategic advantage through a commitment to learning. united states of america: nicholas brealey publishing. ministry of education office of the education council, 2011. stepping to asean community. bangkok: pimdeekarnpim. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 236-242 242 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group namprasertchai, s., 2015. knowledge management. bangkok: se-education public company. rerkaroonthong, s. and k. kulchartdilok, 2014. a study of knowledge management process model in institutions of higher education. a research presented to rajamangala university of technology rattanakosin. the office of the public sector development commission, 2008. manual for technique the organization improvement and development. 2nd edn., bangkok: government printing office. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 299 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 299-308, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.299.308 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluation of academic self efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates in terms of classroom management remzi yıldırım1  hamit özen2 ( corresponding author) 1faculty of education, manisa celal bayar university, demirci, turkey 2faculty of education, eskisehir osman gazi university, eskisehir, turkey abstract in this study, academic self-efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates have been examined and the findings have been evaluated in terms of classroom management. the population consists 2409 teacher candidates from the faculty of education in eskisehir osman gazi university in the fall semester of 2018. descriptive statistics were used while evaluating their perceptions and attitudes. non-parametric tests were applied in the analysis since the data distribution was not normal. mann whitney u analysis was used to determine whether there was a significant difference in their academic self-efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes by gender, while kruskal wallis analysis was used to determine whether there was a significant difference by departments. spearman’s rank correlation analysis was used to determine whether there is a relationship between their academic self-efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes. according to the findings, it has been seen that the academic self-efficacy perceptions of teacher candidates are at a normal level and instructional dissent attitudes are at a low level. the total scores of teacher candidates calculated for the whole academic self-efficacy perceptions and coping subdimension were significantly different in favor of female candidates. there was no significant difference by departments. there was no significant difference in instructional dissent by gender and departments. it has been found out that there is a low-level relationship between the total scores of academic self-efficacy perception levels and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates. keywords: academic self – efficacy, instructional dissent, classroom management, classroom environment, teacher candidates, teacher training. citation | remzi yıldırım; hamit özen (2019). evaluation of academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates in terms of classroom management. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 299308. history: received: 21 january 2019 revised: 25 february 2019 accepted: 27 march 2019 published: 12 april 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 300 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 301 3. findings and comments ............................................................................................................................................................... 302 4. discussion, conclusion and recommendation ........................................................................................................................ 305 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 307 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.299.308&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/419 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6918-5416 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7604-5967 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/419 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6918-5416 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7604-5967 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/419 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6918-5416 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7604-5967 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/419 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6918-5416 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7604-5967 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 300 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction it can be said that the knowledge has become one of the most important power sources in the present day, considering the knowledge level of humanity that increases continually and the advantages provided to individuals and societies with increasing knowledge level. today's societies have been trying to build education systems in the most correct way to develop and convey the information they have, in order to survive and continue their development. education systems should be within the required structure in terms of both quantity and quality, and this situation should be reflected in the classroom environment. the effect of classroom management is inevitable for achieving the target success in classroom environments. raising independent, critical thinker, responsible individuals with democratic values (sişman et al., 2010) will affect this situation positively and contribute to the development of learning environment with the classroom management strategies followed. the studies conducted show that learning environments are affected by social and cultural factors (aldridge and fraser, 2000). in this sense, it can be said that one of the important expectations from educational environments is to encourage academic study in a way that will contribute to students’ development and to support critical thinking in a democratic structure. just like in almost every field, in academic studies as well it can be a determining factor in achieving goals that the individuals find themselves sufficient in that field. this situation, which is referred to as academic self – efficacy in literature, as terzi and celik (2018) stated, is an individual's perception of being able to perform an academic task at the target success level and it has a positive relationship with academic motivation. as bandura (1997) puts forth, self – efficacy, which is the belief of the individual in organizing and performing an action, can be said to make an important contribution to the student motivation and success within the educational process. the self – efficacy theory developed by bandura has an important role on individual behaviors and it increases the academic performance of students (aktaş, 2017). self – efficacy perception has some effects on four major psychological processes which are cognitive, motivational, affective and selection processes (bandura, 1994) and it is the belief or confidence in the competences of achieving academic goals (drago et al., 2016). in this sense, it can be said that the self – efficacy belief that the individual perceives makes him / her feel confident in achieving his / her goals. in order for systems of education to make both individuals and societies achieve their goals, educational process should be quality. according to akpınar et al. (2006) there should be a harmony between students, teachers and the program for a qualified education system. the attitudes and behaviors of the teachers in the classroom management process will facilitate the harmony between students and the program and affect the success of students. in the classroom management process, it is important for the teacher to give students the sense of confidence and for students to be confident in achievement of the program. one of the factors to reinforce this trust is students’ self – efficacy belief and teachers should lead this situation through practices. kandemir (2010) revealed the dimensions of coping with academic problems, academic effort and academic planning about academic self – efficacy. it can be said that the teacher has a positive effect on the dimensions related to the classroom management processes. in today's world, the ability of individuals and societies to maintain their lives at the desired point is closely related to their competitive power. free and critical thinking needs to be supported considering the importance of the ability to make an innovation in providing competition. it is possible to develop free and critical thinking by assimilating democracy within the educational processes that prepare individuals and societies for life. however, it can be said that the negative attitudes of the teachers will negatively affect the democracy in the classroom and provide a basis for students’ attitudes called instructional dissent. martin et al. (2015) stated that negative teacher behaviors play a role in the emergence of instructional dissent. instructional dissent can be regarded as expressive dissent, rhetorical dissent and vengeful dissent (goodboy, 2011). while negative teacher behaviors are determinant in the emergence of expressive and vengeful dissent, it can be said that the low self – efficacy belief is determinant when the rhetorical dissent remains lower than others (martin et al., 2015). dağlı et al. (2017) stated that students express their feelings clearly by expressive dissent, they try to persuade the teacher to correct an existing mistake by rhetorical dissent, and they try to harm teacher's reputation by vengeful dissent. in this sense, it can be said that negative teacher behaviors and low self – efficacy beliefs play a role in leading students to exhibit instructional dissent attitudes. in addition, it is possible to make positive contributions to the classroom management processes with the teachers getting closer with their students within certain limits, opening themselves to the students as a source of inspiration and avoiding negative behaviors (goodboy et al., 2014). in this context, the purpose of this study is to determine the academic self – efficacy and instructional dissent levels of teacher candidates, to examine the relationship between their academic self – efficacy and instructional dissent levels and to evaluate the findings obtained in terms of the classroom management. for this purpose, the problem status created as “what is the level of teacher candidates’ academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes?” has been handled within the scope of below sub – problems: 1. what are the descriptive statistics on the academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates? 2. do teacher candidates’ academic self – efficacy perceptions differ significantly by their gender and department? 3. do teacher candidates’ instructional dissent attitudes differ significantly by their gender and departments? 4. is there a relationship between academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates? it is expected to contribute to the field of classroom management and consequently to the operation of the educational process through the results obtained as a result of the findings obtained within the framework of the problem indicated in the study. the results of the study are limited to the population of the study and to the data collected from the population of the study. moreover, self – efficacy and instructional dissent levels of the teacher candidates investigated in the study are limited to the measurement tools used in the study and to sub – dimensions of the related measurement tools. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 301 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. methodology in this study, which was carried out according to quantitative research methods known as a positive opinion, the investigated subject was observed independently and objectively, measured and analyzed as indicated by büyüköztürk et al. (2013) according to simsek (2012) the subject of the study can be conducted over the whole population or the sample representing the population (karasar, 2012) within the general survey models that reveal the reality as is. the general survey model was used in this study. 2.1. population and sampling in the study, eskisehir osman gazi university, faculty of education was determined as the population of the study. it was determined that 2409 teacher candidates received education in the related faculty in the fall semester of 2018 and it was aimed to reach 332 teacher candidates for sampling by taking into consideration the 95% confidence level and 5% error margin calculation of sahin (2012). in this meaning the data was collected from 336 teacher candidates. when selecting samples, the number of stratified samples was determined by taking the gender of the teacher candidates and the departments they studied into consideration and then the participants were included in the sample by simple random sampling method. the population and sampling status as gender and department are given in table 1. table-1. population and sampling status of the study. department female(n) female(n) male(n) male(n) n n comp. and instr. tech. teaching 79 11 137 19 216 30 science teaching 226 31 57 9 283 40 english teaching 165 23 78 10 243 33 primary mathematics teaching 231 32 64 10 295 42 preschool teaching 210 29 31 4 241 33 special education teaching 106 15 101 13 207 28 psychological counseling and guidance 433 61 187 27 620 88 primary school teaching 236 33 68 9 304 42 total 1686 235 723 101 2409 336 source: sampling of the study according to 95% confidence level and 5% error margin. 2.2. data collection tools in the study, “academic self – efficacy scale “developed by kandemir (2010) and “instructional dissent scale” developed by goodboy (2011) and adapted to turkish by dağlı et al. (2017) were used. the first scale belongs to kandemir (2010) and the second one belongs to dağlı et al. (2017). while “academic self – efficacy scale” developed to determine academic self – efficacy perceptions of students were prepared by kandemir (2010) firstly the relevant literature was reviewed and an item pool of 29 items was created. subsequently, the items indicated were sent out to 6 experts in order to get their opinion within the scope of the validity of the scale and 2 items were eliminated and the number of items was decreased to 27. then, the pre – application was carried out with 468 university students. the data showed that the kaiser mayer olkin (kmo) coefficient (.93) and bartlett test result (χ ² = 3810.52, p <0.001) were significant. in order to determine the factor structure of the scale, principle components analysis (pca) and varimax rotation were performed. with this analysis, it has been determined that the scale has a 3 – factor structure. the variance explained by the first factor is 27.739; the second factor’s variance is 14.529 and the third factor’s variance is 13.622. the total variance explained by the three – factor structure has been found to be 55.891. factors were named as coping with academic problems, academic effort and academic planning, respectively. then, confirmatory factor analysis was performed. the chi – square value (χ²) was found to be 557.76 and the degree of freedom was 149. it was decided that the 3 – factor structure had good fit values as a result of the fact that the division of chi square by its degree of freedom (χ²/sd.) was found to less than 5 in the 3.74 format. in addition to the confirmatory factor analysis, cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients which is calculated based on item analysis was checked to evaluate the reliability of the scores obtained. these coefficients were found to be .90 for the first factor, .78 for the second factor, .77 for the third factor, and .92 for the whole scale. the total item correlations for each dimension ranged from .36 to .67 and then the scale was finalized. the instructional dissent scale is a measuring tool developed by goodboy (2011) in order to determine student attitudes towards teacher – driven negative behaviors and unfair decisions within the classroom. some teacher – driven negative behaviors triggering instructional dissent have been determined as; unfair exams, unjustified scoring, inefficient teaching style, violation of classroom principles and curricula, improper behaviors and non – feedback. the instructional dissent attitudes that arise against these problems have been determined as 3 dimensions which are expressive, rhetorical and vengeful dissent. the instructional dissent scale was adapted to turkish by dağlı et al. (2017). the scale was first translated from english to turkish by 6 experts. then, it was checked by 4 experts who are competent in the fields of content, measurement and evaluation and some changes were made upon the received suggestions. then this version of the scale was again translated into english by the back – translation method by 2 independent experts working in the field of education management and who have a good command of english and some semantic shifts were corrected. thus, consistency has been provided in terms of language between the original scale and its turkish translation. in addition, 30 university students studying in english department were firstly applied the english version of the scale, after one week they were applied the turkish version of the scale within the scope of language equivalence. the correlation between two practices’ scores was checked by pearson moments correlation coefficient and a high – level relationship was found as r =.70 (p =.01). then 424 high school students were applied the scale and exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were applied within the scope of structure validity. as a result of exploratory factor analysis, kaiser meyer olkin (kmo) coefficient (.85) and bartlett sphericity test result (χ²=2898.38, p<0.001) were found to be significant. as a result of the exploratory factor analysis conducted through principal components and direct asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 302 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group rotation, it was determined that there were 3 factors overlapping with the items of the original scale. the exploratory scores of the factors were found to be 12.80 for expressive dissent, 14.46 for rhetorical dissent, 18.85 for vengeful dissent, and 46.10 for the whole scale. it was seen that item factor loads ranged between .63 and .83 within a 22 item – scale. then, confirmatory factor analysis was performed, and structure validity was ensured with the fit indices obtained. in order to test the reliability of the scale, the internal consistency (cronbach alpha) coefficient (.80) and spearman – brown coefficients (between 0.71 and 0,85) were reached through the split – half method, and the scale was decided to be reliable. 2.3. analysis of data the data obtained within the scope of the study was analyzed by spss 23 program and significance level was taken as .05. when evaluating the descriptive statistics on the first sub – problem of the study which is academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes, minimum, maximum, arithmetic mean and standard deviation values were used. before analyzing other sub – problems, it was checked by kolmogorov smirnov test whether the data set is distributed normally. it has been found out that the significance level results for subdimensions of each scale and the whole of the scale does not show a normal distribution (p=.00) according to the results obtained, it was decided to use the test groups known as nonparametric tests in the analysis of the data. for the second sub – problem of the study; mann whitney u analysis was used when checking whether there exists any significant difference in academic self – efficacy perceptions by gender, kruskal wallis analysis was used when checking whether there exists any significant difference by departments. for the third sub – problem of the study; mann whitney u analysis was used when checking if there exists any significant difference in instructional dissent attitudes by gender, kruskal wallis analysis was used when checking is there exists any significant difference by departments. for the fourth sub – problem of the study; spearman’s rank correlation coefficient analysis was used to determine whether there exists any relationship between academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes. 3. findings and comments in this chapter, the findings and comments obtained within the framework of the sub problems related to the evaluation of academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates are indicated. 3.1. findings and comments on the first sub – problem the findings and comments obtained related to the first sub – problem “what are the descriptive statistics on the academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates?” are given in table 2 and table 3. table-2. descriptive statistics on academic self – efficacy perception levels of teacher candidates. dimensions n minimum maximum x sd self-efficacy / coping 336 13,00 55,00 37,6310 7,31105 self-efficacy / effort 336 4,00 20,00 14,9167 2,90428 self-efficacy / planning 336 5,00 20,00 13,3899 2,91979 self-efficacy / whole 336 27,00 95,00 65,9375 11,89753 source: descriptive statistics obtained from primary data. the arithmetic means of teacher candidates’ total academic self – efficacy perception score has been found 65,93 (frequently). the averages for the sub – dimensions are; 37.63 (frequently) for coping, 14.91 (frequently) for effort, 13.38 (frequently) for planning, respectively. the lowest total academic self – efficacy perception scores have been found 27 (rarely) and highest score is 95 (always). considering minimum values, it has been determined that the effort sub – dimension has the lowest level with 4 points (never). in the light of the findings, it has been observed that teacher candidates’ academic self – efficacy perceptions and sub – dimensions have been at a moderate level as a whole. similar findings have also been found in the study where saracaloğlu et al. (2017) measure academic self – efficacy perceptions of classroom teacher candidates. this can be interpreted as the fact that teacher candidates consider themselves to be at a low level in terms of academic self – efficacy and they get weak in terms of making effort. in the dimension of coping, the item of “my academic skills have been remarkable for other students” received the lowest score with an arithmetic mean of 2,17 (rarely). in the coping dimension, the item of “if i have a problem with my courses, i can usually think about ways to overcome the problem” received the highest score with an arithmetic mean of 3,83 (frequently). the item with the lowest score in the dimension of effort is “i believe that i have different skills than others in preparation or presentation of homework or projects” with an arithmetic mean of 3.22 (sometimes). the item with the highest score in the dimension of effort is “i can overcome the problems related to my lessons with my personal effort” with and arithmetic mean of 4.01 (frequently). within the dimension of planning, the item called “i think i am planned while studying my lessons” received the lowest score with an arithmetic mean of 3.12 (sometimes). in the dimension of planning, the item of “i can use many methods to solve the problems i encounter in my studies (preparing homework / projects, getting prepared for exams, etc.)” received the highest score with an arithmetic mean of 3,57 (frequently). coban and sanalan (2002) has pointed out that science teacher candidates' self – efficacy perceptions increase when they design an original experiment. in this study, considering the items with the lowest score average from the dimensions of coping and effort, it can be said that teacher candidates cannot place themselves in a different asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 303 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group point than their other friends within the scope of academic self – efficacy or they cannot qualify themselves as original. this situation can be considered as one of the reasons that decrease the academic self – efficacy perception. on the other hand, considering the items with the highest score average from each dimension, it can be said that teacher candidates feel themselves perseverance to overcome the difficulties they encounter. in their study conducted with teacher candidates, celik et al. (2018) found a positive relationship between self – efficacy and perseverance. in this sense, it can be said that individuals without self – efficacy in works that require perseverance, have difficulty in performing their duties (bandura, 1989, cited from kotaman (2008)). table-3. descriptive statistics on instructional dissent attitude levels of teacher candidates. dimensions n minimum maximum x sd instructional dissent / expressive 336 10,00 50,00 24,8185 7,49964 instructional dissent / rhetorical 336 6,00 30,00 17,3363 5,52849 instructional dissent / vengeful 336 6,00 30,00 7,3036 2,96700 instructional dissent / whole 336 22,00 110,00 49,4583 11,85175 source: descriptive statistics obtained from primary data. the arithmetic mean of the total score of teacher candidates’ instructional dissent attitudes is 49.45 (sometimes). the averages for the sub – dimensions are; 24,81 (sometimes) for the expressive dissent, 17.33 (sometimes) for the rhetorical dissent, and 7.30 (rarely) for the vengeful dissent, respectively. it was observed that the lowest total instructional dissent attitude score is 22 (never) and highest score is 110 (always). when the minimum values are considered, it has been determined that the subdimensions of rhetorical dissent and vengeful dissent remained at the lowest level with an average score of 6 (never). according to the findings obtained, it can be said that teacher candidates do not exhibit instructional dissent attitudes much. considering that goodboy (2011) pointed out negative teacher behaviors predominantly affect the emergence of instructional dissent, and that johnson and labelle (2014) suggest a positive learning environment is created when teachers approach to their students temperately, it can be commented that obtaining these findings is an expected situation. it can be said that this point of view is very effective in the emergence vengeful dissent attitudes. it can be said that teacher candidates can betray their emotions through expressive dissent and teachers can get persuaded through rhetorical dissent. the item called “i complain my teacher to relieve my anger” received the lowest score with and arithmetic mean of 1.45 (never) within the dimension of expressive dissent. in the expressive dissent dimension, the item called “i am relieved to share my disappointment of the courses with others” received the highest score with an arithmetic mean of 3.16 (sometimes). in the dimension of rhetorical dissent, the item called “i share my concerns with my teacher to get the best grade” received the lowest score with an arithmetic mean of 2,43 (rarely). in the dimension of rhetorical dissent, the item called “i tell the points where i don't agree with my teacher to understand the lesson better” received the highest score with and arithmetic mean of 3.06 (sometimes). within the dimension of vengeful dissent, the item called “i try to avenge upon my teacher by causing trouble” received the lowest score with an arithmetic mean of 1.11 (never). in the dimension of vengeful dissent, the item called “i try to discredit my teacher by telling his poor practices to others” received the highest score with an arithmetic mean of 1.31 (never). according to the findings, the items having received the lowest score average show that the ways to harm the teacher in the solution of the problems encountered in the educational process are almost never preferred by the teacher candidates. as indicated by martin et al. (1998) this situation can be attributed to the fact that the low self – efficacy beliefs is determinant in low rhetorical dissent attitudes. considering the items with the highest score average is examined, it can be said that the approaches such as sharing problems with friends and self – disclosure to teacher are seen in solution of problems; and the reactions to harm teacher are at such a low level that it might never be seen. as indicated by goodboy and frisby (2014) a learning – oriented point of view might be the reason of rhetorical dissent. this situation can be interpreted as the existence of self – efficacy and self – development as a result. 3.2. findings and comments on the second sub – problem the findings and comments made related to the second sub – problem “do teacher candidates’ academic self – efficacy perceptions differ significantly by their gender and department?” are given in table 4 and table 5. table-4. mann whitney u analysis about academic self – efficacy perceptions according to gender. dimensions gender n mean rank rank sum u p self-efficacy coping female 235 175,67 41283,00 10182,00 .039 male 101 151,81 15333,00 self-efficacy effort female 235 174,75 41066,00 10399,00 .070 male 101 153,96 15550,00 self-efficacy planning female 235 175,20 41173,00 10292,00 .052 male 101 152,90 15443,00 self-efficacy total female 235 175,95 41347,50 10117,50 .032 male 101 151,17 15268,50 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. when the findings shown in table 4 are examined, the total scores of the teacher candidates regarding all their academic self – efficacy perceptions and the dimension of coping vary significantly by gender, in favor of female candidates (p <.05). no significant difference by gender has been detected in other subdimensions of effort and planning (p> .05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 304 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the findings show that the perception of female candidates on academic self – efficacy is higher. this situation is similar to the study carried out by donmuş et al. (2017) and ekici (2006). it can be said that female teacher candidates are more in the forefront especially in terms of academic self – efficacy. keskin and orgun (2006) point out that women behave more emotionally in the use of coping methods their study on self – efficacy, level of competence and coping strategies and they state that there might be gender differences in this sense. table-5. kruskal wallis analysis about academic self – efficacy perceptions according to departments. departments n mean rank x2 df p computer and instr. tech. teaching 30 156,82 8,571 7 .285 science teaching 40 143,60 english teaching 33 203,73 primary school mathematics teaching 42 158,57 preschool teaching 33 171,92 special education teaching 28 159,75 psychological counseling and guidance 88 174,89 primary school teaching 42 172,57 total 336 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. when the findings given in table 5 were examined, no significant difference by departments was found between the total scores of teacher candidates taken for all their self – efficacy perceptions (x2=8,571, df=7, p=.285). considering the findings obtained, similarly in the study of tabancalı and çelik (2013) there is no significant difference by departments between teacher candidates’ academic self – efficacy perceptions. however, uzun (2016) observed that students' academic self – efficacy perceptions differ by departments. in some departments, he explained the low level of academic self – efficacy in some departments with the difficulty of course contents and he indicated that academic self – efficacy of the students studying in these departments are lower than the others. 3.3. findings and comments on the third sub – problem the findings and comments made related to the third sub-problem “do teacher candidates’ instructional dissent attitudes differ significantly by their gender and departments?” are given in table 6 and table 7. table-6. mann whitney u analysis about instructional dissent attitudes according to gender. dimensions gender n mean rank rank sum u p instructional dissent expressive female 235 171,25 40244,50 11220,50 .428 male 101 162,09 16371,50 instructional dissent rhetorical female 235 165,98 39004,50 11274,50 .467 male 101 174,37 17611,50 instructional dissent vengeful female 235 165,50 38892,50 11162,50 .290 male 101 175,48 17723,50 instructional dissent total female 235 169,72 39885,00 11580,00 .725 male 101 165,65 16731,00 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. when the findings given in table 6 were examined, no significant difference by gender was found between the total scores of teacher candidates taken for all their instructional dissent attitudes and its subdimensions (p>.05). however, considering the mean ranks by gender within the scope of subdimensions, it is seen that female teacher candidates are at the forefront in their expressive dissent attitudes, while male teacher candidates are at the forefront in their rhetorical and vengeful dissent attitudes. as indicated by goodboy (2012) who reached similar findings; this situation can be explained by the fact that women tend to explain themselves more against the problems encountered, while men are more direct and aggressive in communication. table-7. kruskal wallis analysis about instructional dissent attitudes according to departments. departments n mean rank x2 df p computer and instr. tech. teaching 30 162,90 7,193 7 .409 science teaching 40 145,11 english teaching 33 185,65 primary school mathematics teaching 42 146,40 preschool teaching 33 175,52 special education teaching 28 166,61 psychological counseling and guidance 88 177,34 primary school teaching 42 180,63 total 336 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. when the findings given in table 7 were examined, no significant difference by departments was found between the total scores of teacher candidates taken for all their instructional dissent attitudes (x2=7,193, df=7, p=.409). the fact that no significant difference has been found by departments can be considered as an expected situation. in the study of özdemir et al. (2018) on the relationship between critical thinking tendencies and asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 305 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group leadership orientations of teacher candidates which can be compared to a certain degree to instructional dissent attitudes, critical thinking tendencies of teacher candidates did not show any significant difference by departments. considering that mostly teachers’ approaches and teacher candidates’ academic self – efficacy believes are effective in emergence of instructional dissent attitudes, as also discussed within the scope of this research, it can be said that such attitudes emerge independently of the department studied. 3.4. findings and comments on the fourth sub – problem the findings and comments obtained related to the fourth sub – problem “is there a relationship between academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of teacher candidates?” are given in table 8. table-8. spearman’s rank correlation analysis showing the relationship between the total scores of teacher candidates’ academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitude level. variable n rs p academic self-efficacy – instructional dissent expressive 336 .046 .398 academic self-efficacy – instructional dissent rhetorical 336 .380 .000 academic self-efficacy – instructional dissent vengeful 336 -.013 .810 academic self-efficacy – instructional dissent whole 336 .218 .000 source: calculated from primary data *level of significance at p<0.05. according to table 8, there is a low level of relationship between the total scores of teacher candidates’ academic self – efficacy perception levels and instructional dissent attitude levels. (rs=.21, p=.00). this situation shows that academic self – efficacy perceptions have a certain extent of effect on the instructional dissent attitudes displayed by teacher candidates. it is seen that there is a stronger relationship between academic self – efficacy perception and the rhetorical dissent dimension of the instructional dissent (rs=.38, p=.00). the researchers' belief that negative teacher behaviors cannot be the only factor that started the instructional dissent has played an important role in conducting this study. the fact that a certain extent of relationship has been found between academic self – efficacy and instructional dissent has validated this belief. according to the findings obtained in this sense, one of the factors triggering instructional dissent attitude can be seen as academic self – efficacy perception. according to martin et al. (2015) low self – efficacy perception adversely affects the emergence of rhetorical dissent attitudes. considering the findings obtained within the scope of the study, the fact that there is a stronger relationship between academic self – efficacy and rhetorical dissent compared to the whole can be said to support this situation. 4. discussion, conclusion and recommendation in this chapter, academic self – efficacy perceptions and instructional dissent attitudes of the teacher candidates have been evaluated in terms of classroom management within the scope of discussion, conclusions and suggestions. teacher candidates have described their academic self – efficacy perception level as intermediate. they have stated that there have some deficiencies particularly at the point of effort. considering the items related to the dimension of making effort, it can be said that the main reason for teacher candidates to feel weak in this field is that they cannot produce solutions by themselves regarding “what and how to do”. waters et al. (2003) stated that the instructional strategies applied by teachers, classroom management methods and their curriculum design are effective on students’ success. it is important that teachers run the course they are responsible for and provide various clues to solve the problems that may be encountered within the scope of the course. it will increase efficiency of teachers to get to know students and try to make students reach the information rather than just transferring the knowledge (sahin, 2011). according to the results of the study conducted by the australian capital region council, nine recommendations were made regarding an influential school and one of them is in “effective student assistance center” (karadağ et al., 2006). implementation of such a proposal will make it possible for students to see solutions to the problems they encounter and to start to make efforts accordingly. considering the findings about instructional dissent attitudes, it can be said that teacher candidates do not exhibit too much behavior accordingly. however, within the scope of the study, there have been traces of expressive dissent and rhetorical dissent. it is important to recognize that dissenting attitudes should not be perceived as a disciplinary problem, but rather as an opportunity for development, and that such attitudes can emerge more clearly in democratic environments. within the context of classroom management, teachers’ behaviors are expected to support democracy within the classroom. as summarized by martin et al. (1998) the concepts of classroom management and discipline do not have the same meaning. discipline is the structures and rules defining the behaviors expected from students and it can be seen as efforts to ensure that the students follow these rules. classroom management can be interpreted as a broader and superior concept as the whole of the efforts of teachers to control learning, social interaction and student behavior. in order to get positive results from these efforts, as stated by ciftçi (2015) the importance of the effect of teachers' democratic attitudes on students can be emphasized. at present, it can be considered important to develop and maintain democracy in the classroom in order to support rhetorical dissent attitudes which have a positive relationship with academic self – efficacy perception. democratic classroom environments will also contribute positively to the expressive dissent, which will also help to reveal some problems suppressed. according to academic self – efficacy perception, some findings that are in favor of female teacher candidates by gender were obtained. it can be mentioned that female teacher candidates qualify themselves as more competent for the whole of coping dimension and academic self – efficacy. ekici (2012) stated that there is a relationship between academic self – efficacy perception and gender based on related research. özaydın et al. (2017) pointed out that there are studies showing that there is a difference in favor of women by gender in terms of academic self – efficacy perception and there are also some other studies that have not found out any difference by gender. they explained this situation on the basis of different socio – cultural structures of the samples of studies and different scales used asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 306 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the research. however, in the event that academic self – efficacy perception is high, it is possible to discover one's abilities and try to cope with problems by self – confidence (öncü, 2012). teachers are trying to unearth their students’ talents and this way to increase student effort towards learning (bilir, 2014). it is possible for teachers to achieve their learning goals and to follow an effective classroom management process by being a leader and a friend when required, within the framework of student needs (terzi, 2002). it is possible to discover students’ talents in a way that it will help academic self – efficacy increase, to reveal the points where students have difficulty thanks to a student – centered classroom management process, and to produce more specific solutions accordingly. in a student – centered classroom management process, students can be active, and teachers can guide students more effectively by reaching realistic feedbacks. it has been seen that there is no significant difference in academic self – efficacy perception by departments. however, in some departments which may be considered difficult according to student perceptions, academic self – efficacy perception may be low. in such cases, student entry qualifications can be effective. particularly in the follow – up courses, it will be useful if teachers give place to measuring the subjects that need to be known as pre – condition according to their teaching plan prepared within the classroom management process and include practices to complete the deficiencies related to these subjects. in this way, it can be said that academic self – efficacy perception and student effort can be improved. considering the findings of the study on instructional dissent attitudes, it has been found out that there is no significant difference by gender; however female teacher candidates are more prominent in the expressive dissent. when the approaches towards teachers' classroom management processes are evaluated in general, it can be said that much of a democratic structure is available. in their study, erdem and saritaş (2006) mentioned the contributions of teachers' democratic approaches to classroom management processes and made various suggestions for improvement of this situation. one of the suggestions with this regard is putting emphasis on extracurricular problems as well. when the effects of extracurricular self – directed orientation of students are taken into consideration in the perception of academic self – efficacy, the problems with this regard will be detected much more easily with effective communication skills. furthermore, dikbaş and hasırcı (2008) stated that learning strategies increase success of students. in this sense, it can be said that it would be beneficial for teachers to help students express themselves in the classroom management processes and to carry out studies to gain some learning strategies. not evaluating student attitudes accordingly in a negative framework will contribute to the improvement of in – class democracy and to achieve the learning objectives. when instructional dissent attitudes were evaluated on the basis of departments, it was observed that there was no significant difference. therefore, in the light of these findings, the emergence of instructional dissent attitudes is much more related to teacher approaches and student temperaments, rather than the departments. goodboy and martin (2014) emphasized that the student neuroticism, being expressionist and acceptability play a determining role in expressive dissent; being expressionist and acceptability in rhetorical dissent and outspokenness, acceptability and inner conscience in vengeful dissent. considering the impact of teacher approaches in the emergence of all these situations, the importance of maintaining classroom management processes in a democratic environment can be mentioned once more. in formation of this study, the need to determine the relationship between academic self – efficacy perception and instructional dissent has been effective. when developing the instructional dissent scale, goodboy (2011) main point of view was to determine the reactive behaviors of students that emerge as a result of negative teacher attitudes. in this study, the relationship between academic self – efficacy perception and instructional dissent has been examined. the fourth sub – problem of the study was created to determine the relationship between academic self – efficacy perception and instructional dissent and a relationship was found with this regard. particularly, the rhetorical dissent attitudes to emerge as a result of academic competencies, have become more prominent. when the items related to the rhetorical dissent are examined, the effect of students’ academic knowledge can be seen. in addition, incorrect practices applied in classroom management processes may also affect this situation from time to time. kearney et al. (1991) indicated that incorrect teacher practices emerge when teachers are incompetence, offensiveness, and indolence. when teachers are incompetent, they may apply confusing course contents, give unfair grade and hold unsuitable exams; when they are offensiveness, they may humiliate students openly, abuse students physically and verbally; when teachers are indolence, they can come to classroom late, apply ineffective course process and drift away from the curriculum. the co – existence of such situations with academic self – efficacy can particularly intensify the rhetorical dissent. as a result, inappropriate teacher behaviors are determinant in the emergence of instructional dissent attitudes, and academic self – efficacy perception also has a certain extent of effect in emergence of these attitudes. implementing the classroom management process effectively and conducting an effective teaching process will increase the academic self – efficacy of the students. frisby et al. (2015) stated that there is a negative relationship between effective classroom management and expressive dissent and a positive relationship between rhetorical dissent and effective teaching strategies and stated that vengeful dissent does not have a relationship with efficiency of the education. with the efficiency of classroom management, the need for expressive dissent attitudes can decrease. with the effectiveness of the instructional strategy, the academic learning process and critical thinking can develop. naturally rhetorical dissent attitudes can increase. important goals of education in the changing and developing world is to improve the students’ skills like controlling learning process, actively taking part in the processes and thinking, questioning, taking responsibility, making decisions, etc. bozpolat (2016). students' confidence in their own competencies makes a positive contribution to their tasks, and makes them more durable, perseverance and determined to negative situations encountered (arslan, 2017). in this context, it can be said that teachers are expected to support students’ academic development, to make self – evaluation and to approach critical sayings professionally rather than emotionally within the framework of effective classroom management processes. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 307 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references akpınar, e., e. yıldız and ö. ergin, 2006. attitudes of science teacher candidates towards teaching profession. the journal of buca faculty of education, 19: 56 – 62. aktaş, h., 2017. the relationship between academic motivation and academic self-efficacy: an empirical research on the faculty of theology. journal of the human and social science researches, 6(3): 1376 – 1398. aldridge, j. and b. fraser, 2000. a cross-cultural study of classroom learning environments in australia and taiwan. learning environments research, 3(2): 101-134. arslan, a., 2017. investigation of listening anxiety and academic self-efficacy beliefs of secondary school students in terms of various variables. international e-journal of educational studies, 1(1): 12-31. bandura, a., 1994. self-efficacy. in encyclopedia of human behavior (ed. ramachaudran, v., s.). new york: academic press, 4: 71 – 81. bandura, a., 1997. self – efficacy: the exercise of control. new york: freeman. bilir, a., 2014. the tool of success in class management: the precautionary model. folklore / literature, 20(78): 203 214. bozpolat, e., 2016. investigation of the self – regulated learning strategies of students from the faculty of education using ordinal logistic regression analysis. educational sciences: theory & practice, 16(1): 301 – 318.available at: https://doi.org/10.12738/estp.2016.1.0281. büyüköztürk, ş., e.k. çakmak, ö.e. akgün, ş. karadeniz and f. demirel, 2013. scientific research methods. 14th edn., ankara: pegem academic publishing. celik, i̇., h. sarıçam and s. sönmez, 2018. strengths self-efficacy, psychological resilience and perseverance between the relationship [selfefficacy, resilience, and grit]. international congress on science and education 2018 (icse2018) abstract proceedings, 591. ciftçi, a.s., 2015. the relationship between primary school teachers' views on classroom management styles and democratic values. 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(editor.), research methods in social sciences (1st edn.,). eskisehir: anadolu university publishing. pp: 80 107. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 299-308 308 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sişman, m., h. güleş and a. dönmez, 2010. qualifications framework for a democratic school culture. uşak university journal of social sciences, 3(1): 167 – 182. tabancalı, e. and k. çelik, 2013. the relationship between academic self-efficacy and self-efficacy levels of teacher candidates [the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and teacher self-efficacy]. journal of human sciences, 10(1): 1167-1184. terzi, a.r., 2002. effective teacher behavior in terms of classroom management. national education journal, 155-156: 162-169. terzi, a.r. and h. celik, 2018. the relationship between academic motivation and academic self-efficacy [the relationship of academic motivation and academic self – efficacy of senior students in necatibey faculty of education]. 6th. international congress of social sciences from china to the adriatic full text book, ankara: institute for economic development and social research. pp: 84 – 89. uzun, k., 2016. predictors of academic self-efficacy: intolerance to uncertainty, positive belief about anxiety and academic locus of control [predictors of academic self efficacy: intolerance of uncertainty, positive beliefs about worry and academic locus of control] (published master’s thesis). burdur: mehmet akif ersoy university, institute of educational sciences. waters, t., r.j. marzano and b. mcnulty, 2003. balanced leadership: what 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement. denver, colorado: mcrel international. available from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed481972.pdf. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 47 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 47-56, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.47.56 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teaching-learning process self-efficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs) for academic staff: a scale development study mutlu uygur1 tuğba yanpar yelken2 ( corresponding author) 1the ministry of education, mersin, turkey. 2mersin university, education faculty, department of curriculum and instruction, turkey. abstract a valid and reliable measurement tool has been developed to measure the teaching-learning process self-efficacy of instructors in higher education institutions. during the scale development stage, the scale form was e-mailed to 305 instructors, who were selected through purposive sampling method, working at the faculties of health, social, science, fine arts and engineering of the randomly determined universities in 7 regions of turkey. as a result of the explanatory factor analysis, the 8 items were excluded from the scale and the single-factor scale with remaining 40 items explained 58,309% of the total variance. the internal consistency coefficient (cronbach’s alpha) of the scale was found to be .98 for the whole scale. it was concluded according to these findings that the scale developed in this study is a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used to measure the teaching-learning process self-efficacy of the instructors working in higher education institutions. keywords: academic staff, higher education, scale development, self-efficacy beliefs, instructor, teaching-learning processes. citation | mutlu uygur; tuğba yanpar yelken (2020). teachinglearning process self-efficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs) for academic staff: a scale development study. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 47-56. history: received: 1 november 2019 revised: 10 december 2019 accepted: 14 january 2020 published: 12 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 48 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 49 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 50 4. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 54 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 54 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.47.56&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1310 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7756-2576 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0800-4802 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1310 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7756-2576 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0800-4802 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1310 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7756-2576 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0800-4802 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1310 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7756-2576 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0800-4802 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 5(1): 47-56 48 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature in this study, it is aimed to develop a measurement tool that can be used to measure the competencies of academic staff towards student-centered teaching-learning processes. accordingly, the self-efficacy scale developed in the study will contribute to the field. 1. introduction teaching-learning processes, also called educational situations, are the areas where the instructors focus most in terms of influencing and determining educational outcomes. the activity which we call learning in the classroom consists of three main areas: the subject to be learned, the process in which the subject will be learned (teachinglearning process) and the conditions that affect the student's learning (alkan, 1987). teaching-learning processes refer to employing the learning experiences by enabling the students to acquire the desired characteristics by organizing necessary stimulants (demirel, 2005; sonmez, 2005). according to demirel (2002) the teachinglearning processes mean the learning experiences for the students, and the planning and employment of the teaching experiences for the teachers. huitt (2003) defines the teaching/learning process as a four-step operational framework called “context, input, classroom processes and output”. the teaching-learning process has a central importance in the function of the education system, in other words, the formation of valid learning (senemoglu, 1987). teaching and learning process is actually aspects of the same process from different angles. regarding teachers’ perspectives, this process refers to the teaching since the students are provided with the behaviours of which objectives are predetermined, while it is the learning from the point of view of the student because of the change in behaviour. therefore, the process of teaching and learning is also called “teaching” (oztürk, 2007). the teaching-learning process is the development of student behaviours that the curriculum aims to achieve. program planning sets out the objectives for this task and proposes teaching processes to achieve these objectives. in the teaching-learning process, it is expected to make the necessary regulations for this plan to be implemented (oliver, 1977). with the emergence of educational technology as a discipline in the 1960s, it was aimed to innovate the teaching-learning processes and make learning easy and qualified for all people (fidan, 1986). the understanding of modern education, which has been developing since the 1960s, has directed the students towards “learning to learn” activities rather than directly conveying information to them, transformed the role of the teacher in the classroom from only conveying the information to the students and equipping them with pure knowledge to finding the necessary information in the solution of the problems, synthesizing and, more clearly, teaching the student's self-learning (edeer, 2005; gecer and ozel, 2012). teaching-learning processes can be engendered by the factors such as teacher-student profiles, applied methods, techniques, strategy and educational environment. the effect of each factor in this process has a specific value; yet, it can be said that teacher and student profiles have a power that can affect all factors (demir and akınoglu, 2010). “teaching and learning process” is considered as a qualification title in the general qualifications guide of the teaching profession prepared by the ministry of national education (2006). it is stated under this title that “the teacher plans, implements and manages the teaching and learning processes and ensures the effective participation of the students in the learning process”. in this regard, teachers or instructors are expected to have the efficacy in strategy method and technical dimension, material design dimension and especially technology use dimension of teaching-learning process. it is necessary for the quality of education that teachers and instructors have high beliefs of efficacy for teaching-learning processes. because the individual's judgment about his own efficacy determines whether he will start an activity and how successful he will be in the activity. teachers' values and beliefs, knowledge, thinking and communication skills, performance skills and personality involve teacher characteristics (huitt, 2003). according to ashton (1984) the most important teacher trait is the teacher's values and belief, or more specifically, teacher self-efficacy. this variable is a measure of the belief that the teacher can teach and that the students can learn. bandura (1977a; 1977b) described the self-efficacy as the individual's judgment of his own competence. the concept of self-efficacy is based on bandura (1977a) self-efficacy theory and forms the basis of the concept of teacher efficacy (aktag and walter, 2005). bandura (1977a) self-efficacy belief theory can be used to determine the level of beliefs that teachers can meet the competencies required by the teaching profession which can be used to explain human behaviours, and to predict their behaviours of teaching tasks and responsibilities. when it comes to the competencies required by the teaching profession, it is seen that one of the important concepts related to this subject is self-efficacy. it has been revealed in a great number of studies that teachers' self-efficacy belief is considered as an important variable affecting teaching-learning processes (woolfolk and hoy, 1990; tschannenmoran et al., 1998; henson et al., 2001; tschannen-moran and hoy, 2001; shaughnessy, 2004). it is seen in the literature that teachers’ beliefs of self-efficacy related to teaching-learning processes were mostly studied (guskey, 1988; pajares, 1992; cetinkaya, 2007; ozerkan, 2007; klassen and chiu, 2010; benzer, 2011; deniz, 2013; ekinci, 2015; sahan and zöğ, 2017; schipper et al., 2018); on the other hand, there are a small number of studies that investigate the teaching-learning process self-efficacy beliefs of instructors in higher education institutions (busch et al., 1998; bailey, 1999; zhao et al., 2008; evans and tress, 2009). in this respect, it was found that the majority of the measurement tools developed to measure the self-efficacy beliefs for teaching and learning processes were developed to determine the self-efficacy beliefs of teachers and prospective teachers (gibson and dembo, 1984; guskey and passaro, 1994; tschannen-moran and hoy, 2001; senemoglu et al., 2006; ozdemir, 2008) while a limited number of measurement tools have been developed to determine self-efficacy beliefs of instructors for teaching and learning processes (busch et al., 1998; schoen and wıncour, 1998). it was found that there was no measurement tool to measure the self-efficacy beliefs of the instructors in higher education for the teaching-learning processes which involve student-centered approaches and effectively employ information communication technologies (mobile learning, e-learning, augmented reality, virtual reality, web2 tools, etc.). accordingly, the scale developed in this study was prepared to be used in the determining self-efficacy beliefs of instructors for teaching-learning processes in today's higher education. the absence of such a scale in the literature contributes to the importance of this study. the scale is expected to make a significant contribution to the educational sciences and higher education in turkish and international literature. the measurement of selfasian journal of education and training, 2020, 5(1): 47-56 49 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group efficacy beliefs of instructors for teaching-learning processes can be used as an indicator in creating the content and structure of trainer training programs that will be held to ensure the academic and professional development of the instructors. in addition, the scale is a measurement tool that can also be used to test the effectiveness of trainer training programs. 2. method 2.1. scale development the purpose of the study is to develop a measurement tool that can measure the teaching-learning process selfefficacy beliefs of instructors (professors, associate professors, assistant professors, lecturers, research assistants, etc.) in higher education institutions. therefore, the study was conducted in accordance with the principles of scale development. scale development is a process of developing a reliable and valid measure of a construct in order to assess an attribute of interest. industrial-organizational research involves the measurement of organizational and psychological constructs, which present unique challenges because they are generally unobservable (e.g. work attitudes, beliefs, personality traits) (tay and jebb, 2017). 2.2. participants the data for the scale were collected from 305 instructors who work at the faculties of health, social, science, fine arts and engineering of the randomly determined universities in 7 regions of turkey and responded to scale forms that were e-mailed to them. with regard to the sample size, 50 samples are considered very weak, 100 samples are poor, 200 samples are sufficient and 300 samples are good. as a general rule, 300 observations are considered sufficient for factor analysis (tabachnick and fidell, 2001). in this study, 305 instructors were reached. accordingly, this number is agreed to be a sufficient number of observations for factor analysis. scale forms prepared by “google document’s” were emailed to 7519 instructors working in the related departments of the predetermined universities. about 5% of the 7519 scales were responded. in this respect, non-random sampling method was employed as sampling method. non-random sampling is the sampling method in which the units to be sampled are determined regardless of the principle of non-randomness (buyukozturk, 2012). non-random sampling methods are classified in three methods as systematic sampling, purposive sampling and convenience sampling (buyukozturk et al., 2008). in this study, it was decided to use “purposive sampling” of these methods. the basis of this sampling is to take one or more sub-sections of a universe as a sample instead of taking a representative sample for the purposes of the research. in other words, purposive sampling refers to observing the most appropriate part of the universe for the problem (sencer, 1989). purposive sampling is the selection of information-rich situations for the purpose of the study in order to conduct an in-depth research. there are 6 purposeful sampling techniques: deviant case, maximum variation, homogeneous, typical case, stratified purposive and criterion purposive. “typical case sampling technique” was used in this study. the typical case sampling technique is that the sample is constructed with one typical of a large number of situations in the universe related to the research problem. it is the selection of an average, typical situation that is not unusual, such as choosing several schools in the city centre that can reflect relatively the general (buyukozturk, 2012). in this study, one or several universities from each region were included in the sample group instead of taking the universe of all universities. moreover, the instructors in five different faculties (science, social sciences, engineering, health and fine arts) of these universities were included in the sample group. for this reason, since we selected some typical ones of the many cases in the universe related to the research problem, the typical case sampling technique, which is one of the purposive sampling methods, was used. 2.3. instrument in the first stage of the development of the scale, the variables that affect the expected competencies and selfefficacy beliefs in teaching-learning processes from the instructors working in higher education institutions were examined. for this purpose, a focus group interview was conducted with 6 lecturers who are experts in the field of educational sciences working in curriculum and instruction department and relevant literature was searched. using the findings obtained from the focus group interview and the data in the relevant literature, a draft scale form of 55 items which was considered to be an indicator of factors was created. in the second stage, the draft scale form was presented to the opinions of the instructors who had previously done academic studies in the field of teaching-learning processes. for this purpose, the opinions of 6 instructors in the department of curriculum and instruction, 1 instructor in the department of classroom education and 1 instructor in the department of test and assessment in education were obtained in relation to the items. upon taking the expert opinions, it was determined how many experts voted for each item. lawshe technique developed by lawshe (1975) was used to calculate the content validity. in this technique, the opinions of experts about an item are added up each other and content validity rates are obtained. the value that is 1 below the ratio of the number of experts evaluating the item as “necessary (valid)” to the half of the total number of experts responding to the item gives the content validity rates. according to veneziano and hooper (1997) the minimum validity limit for the 8 expert opinions is 0.78. since 8 experts were consulted for expert opinion in our study, the minimum value of content validity was 0.78. in the last stage, the items planned to be included in the draft form of the scale were examined separately and 7 items whose content validity value was below 0.78 were removed from the form. thus, a 48-item form was prepared for the factor analysis using a 5-point likert-type scale (5:the most,……, 1:the least) through which the participants could indicate how much each statement reflects their self-efficacy. 2.4. data analysis in order to ensure the construct validity of teaching-learning process self-efficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs), pilot study of the scale form was completed with 84 instructors of university. the results obtained at the end of this pilot study were similar to the results obtained from 305 instructors who afterwards responded to scale. cronbach-alpha internal consistency coefficient was found to be “.96” at the end of the pilot study. in addition, the kmo value, which indicates the sampling adequacy of the scale, was calculated as “.85”. kmo value is seen to be asian journal of education and training, 2020, 5(1): 47-56 50 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group between 0 and 1. according to the literature, a value between 0.8 and 0.9 is considered to be very good (field, 2009; alpar, 2012). this result shows that the data are quite suitable for factor analysis. 2.5. testing the hypotheses for construct validity the measurement tool is tested to ensure that each structure in the structural model is measured with a valid and reliable measuring tool (nunnally, 1967). there are a number of methods to test the validity and reliability of the measurement tool that is employed or prepared. explanatory factor analysis has an important place especially for validity tests. in the explanatory factor analysis, it is aimed to find a small number of conceptually significant new factors based on the relationships between the variables by bringing together the interrelated p number of variables (buyukozturk, 2010). in this study, in determining the validity and reliability of the scale items, explanatory factor analysis was used in the calculation of the factorability and preparation of the form containing the final items. the following analyzes were performed in order to prove validity and reliability on the data obtained (tezbasaran, 2008). cronbach α internal consistency coefficients were examined for reliability. the sampling adequacy test (kmo-kaiser-meyer-olkin) was used to find out the suitability of the data for principal component analysis, in other words, whether the data set was suitable for factor analysis, and the barlett sphericity test (bartlett's test of sphericity) to determine whether there is a relationship between the variables. factor analysis was conducted to provide evidence of the construct validity and the control of the structure was ensured in another group to prove that the scale could provide the same structure in similar groups. the 48-item draft scale form was applied to 305 people. this number is sufficient for sample size, which is one of the basic assumptions of explanatory factor analysis. according to tabachnick and fidell (2001) the sample size is at least 5 times the number of items or 300 samples are sufficient for factor analysis. according to kline (1994) the number of observations should be at least 2 times the number of items, while it should be at least 5 times the number of items according to buyukozturk (2010). firstly, analysis was performed on the responses of 305 instructors after the incomplete scales which were not suitable for the validity and reliability studies of the scale were removed. before the analysis, missing data analysis, outlier analysis and linearity test, which are of the basic assumptions of multivariate statistics, were performed. it was found as a result of the missing data analysis that the data set did not have a missing data problem and that the missing data for each cell was quite below 5%. after that, item distributions were examined for normality, and kurtosis and skewness values were calculated. z values and mahalanobis distances were examined for univariate and multivariate normality respectively. no outlier was found when the univariate outliers were examined. in order to determine multivariate outliers, z and mahalonobis distance values were compared to x² (chi square) value (x²48, 0,05=67.51) at 0.05 level, and accordingly, a total of total 43 data higher than x² value (demirutku et al., 2005) were deleted. coefficient of multiple determination, correlations between variables, tolerance values or variance inflation factors (vif) can be used to determine multicollinearity. in this study, variance inflation factors (vif) and tolerance values were applied. the vif value is expected to be less than 10 and the tolerance value to be between .20 and 1 (tabachnick and fidell, 2001; alpar, 2003; field, 2009; buyukozturk, 2010; alpar, 2012). as a result of the analysis, all vif values were found to be less than 10 (between 2.00 and 7.56) and tolerance values were greater than 0.20 (between 0.20 and 0.50). durbin-watson statistics were used to determine the independence of the errors in the study. the durbin-watson statistic value between 0 and 4 and the result close to 2 shows that the errors are independent (tabachnick and fidell, 2001). table 1 below shows the values for durbin-watson statistics. table-1. durbin-watson values. model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate durbin-watson 1 ,452(a) ,204 ,025 87,35443 1,852 durbin-watson statistics examined for independence of errors in this study were found in the expected range (1,85). the fact that the result was close to 2 is considered as an indication that the errors were independent. kmo (the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy) test was used to determine the suitability of the data for factor analysis and barlett's sphericity test to examine the suitability of this matrix. the data for the tests are given in table 2. table-2. kmo and bartlett's test results. kaiser-meyer-olkin sampling adequacy test ,970 barlett’ s sphericity test x² 12020,436 sd 1128 p ,000 according to table 2 kmo test was found out as 0.970 and, as a result of barlett’s-test, the x² statistic calculated at p=0.05 was significant (x²=12020,436, p<0.05, sd=1128). the fact that the chi-square test statistics obtained as a result of this test is significant indicates that the data show a multivariate normal distribution (alpar, 2012). kmo value in this study was found to be 0.97. the kmo value that is greater than 0.60 indicates the suitability of the structure for factor analysis (kaya, 2005; simşek, 2007). it was decided based on these results that the data set was suitable for explanatory factor analysis. 3. results 3.1. exploratory factor analysis eigenvalue statistics and scree plot diagrams were used to determine the number of factors. the factor loads of 48 items were examined with explanatory factor analysis. the relationships between the factors that were found with factor analysis were not significant at p<.01 level. varimax vertical rotation technique was used as a rotation asian journal of education and training, 2020, 5(1): 47-56 51 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group technique as a result of factor analysis of the scale to determine whether the items were separated into significant independent factors (tabachnick and fidell, 2001; field, 2009). as a result of the analysis, a 5-factor structure with an eigenvalue of 1 or more was revealed. it was taken into consideration in the explanatory factor analysis that the eigenvalues of the items should be 1 or more, the items' load value should be at least 0.30, the items should be included in a single factor and there would be at least 0.10 of difference between the factors in the two factors (buyukozturk, 2005). factors with an eigenvalue higher than 1 and their variances are given in table 3. table-3. results of first factor analysis of the scale. factor eigenvalue explained variance (%) total explained variance (%) 1 26,956 56,158 56,158 2 2,138 4,454 60,612 3 1,563 3,256 63,867 4 1,235 2,573 66,440 5 1,035 2,157 68,597 according to table 3 the scale is seen to have a 5-factor structure. that is because the eigenvalues of the 5 components in the scale are greater than 1. the total variance of these 5 components to explain the scale was found as 68.59%. however, the contribution of each sub-factor to the scale needs to be evaluated. as seen in table 3 the contribution of the first factor to the variance in the scale is far above of other factors. factor 1 contributes 56.15% to the scale alone. the contribution of other factors appears to decrease gradually. this structure is an indicator that the scale can be formed under one factor. a high percentage of explained variance in a single factor can be considered as an important indicator that this structure is a single factor (kuzucu, 2008). in order to form a single factor structure, it is emphasized that the first factor needs to explain at least 30% of the variance and also the eigenvalue of the first factor must be at least 3–3.5 times greater than the second factor (buyukozturk, 2005; kaya, 2005; gokkus et al., 2016). according to the findings of the study, 56.158% of the variance is explained by the first factor while 4,454% by the 2nd factor, 3,256% by the 3rd factor, 2,573% by the 4th factor and 2,157% by the 5th factor. these findings show that the variance value of factor 1 is more than 12 times the variance value of factor 2. moreover, the fact that the second factor and the subsequent factor variance values were close to each other refers to a single factor structure. since the scale was suitable for a single factor structure, no rotation technique was needed to be applied in factor analysis (gokkus et al., 2016). table 4 below depicts that the covariance values of the 48 items in the scale range between 0.496 and 0.821. it was observed that the variance values of the items in the scale were found generally as 0.60 and above. this can be accepted as an indicator that scale items are pretty good to measure the structure to be measured. factor load value is defined as a coefficient explaining the relationship between items and factors. it is expected in the studies that the load values of the factors which contain the items are high. according to buyukozturk (2010); regardless of positive or negative, the load value of 0.60 and above is generally described as high while the load value between 0.30-0.59 is defined as moderate, which is taken into account in excluding variable. if there is a group of items that provide a high level of relationship with a factor, it means that these items together measure a concept-structure-factor well enough. as it was aimed in the study to develop a measurement tool that would enable the structure to be measured with high adequacy, the factor load value limit was determined as “.60”. a total of 6 items such as item 1 (.570), item 4 (.496), item 7 (.597), item 10 (.590), item 15 (.580) and item 20 (.548), of which factor load values are below .60, were excluded from the scale. the results of the factor loads obtained from the analysis of the scale data are given in table 4. table-4. item factor loads (first analysis). item no component matrix item no component matrix 1 .570* 25 .610 2 .600 26 .796 3 .767 27 .804 4 .496* 28 .612 5 .744 29 .671 6 .714 30 .623 7 .597* 31 .654 8 .706 32 .760 9 .635 33 .795 10 .590* 34 .691 11 .694 35 .792 12 .726 36 .703 13 .615 37 .749 14 .724 38 .757 15 .580* 39 .785 16 .650 40 .658 17 .794 41 .679 18 .724 42 .821 19 .610 43 .672 20 .548* 44 .676 21 .768 45 .651 22 .609 46 .653 23 .697 47 .691 24 .711 48 .752 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 5(1): 47-56 52 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the items with the (*) mark are the ones that give a value below .60 before the single factor structure of the scale was examined. after excluding the items, the scale was re-examined as a single factor structure with 42 items. the scree plot diagram of the single factor structure is shown in figure 1. figure-1. teaching-learning process self-efficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs) scree plot diagram. as can be seen in the scree plot diagram above, the scale shows a single factor structure. in line with the premises of explanatory factor analysis, kmo (the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy) test was used to determine whether the data related to the single factor structure was suitable for factor analysis, and barlett’s test of sphericity to test the suitability of this matrix. in addition, the variance explained by the 42-item scale, the load values of the items and the common item variance results were also examined. table-5. kmo and bartlett's test results on single factor structure of the scale. kaiser-meyer-olkin sampling adequacy test ,973 barlett’ s sphericity test x² 10695,348 sd 861 p ,000 according to table 5 above, kmo test was found out as 0.973 and, as a result of barlett’s-test, the x² (chisquare) statistic calculated at p=0.05 was significant (x²=10695,348, p<0.05, sd=861). the fact that the chi-square test statistics obtained as a result of this test is significant indicates that the data show a multivariate normal distribution (alpar, 2012). kmo value in this study was found to be “.973”. the kmo value that is greater than 0.60 indicates the suitability of the structure for factor analysis (kaya, 2005; simşek, 2007; buyukozturk, 2010). it was decided based on these results that the data set was suitable for factor analysis. eigenvalue statistics and scree plot diagrams were used to determine the number of factors. the factor loads of 42 items were examined with explanatory factor analysis. the relationships between the factors that were found with factor analysis were not significant at p<.05 level. table 6 below shows the eigenvalue and variance percentage values that were found by the second analysis. table-6. variance table explained in single factor structure. component initial eigenvalues sum of load squares total variance % total variance % total variance % 1 24,490 58,309 58,309 24,490 58,309 58,309 2 1,729 4,116 62,426 3 1,495 3,559 65,984 4 1,222 2,910 68,894 5 ,955 2,273 71,167 6 ,836 1,990 73,157 7 ,711 1,693 74,850 8 ,686 1,634 76,485 9 ,643 1,532 78,017 10 ,572 1,362 79,378 11 ,555 1,321 80,700 12 ,525 1,251 81,951 13 ,505 1,201 83,152 14 ,454 1,080 84,232 15 ,428 1,020 85,252 16 ,423 1,008 86,260 17 ,402 ,956 87,217 18 ,380 ,905 88,121 19 ,365 ,869 88,991 20 ,351 ,836 89,826 21 ,311 ,741 90,567 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 5(1): 47-56 53 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 22 ,296 ,705 91,272 23 ,291 ,693 91,966 24 ,276 ,658 92,624 25 ,266 ,634 93,257 26 ,250 ,596 93,853 27 ,241 ,573 94,427 28 ,223 ,530 94,957 29 ,220 ,524 95,480 30 ,208 ,496 95,976 31 ,199 ,474 96,450 32 ,186 ,442 96,892 33 ,172 ,410 97,302 34 ,165 ,392 97,694 35 ,150 ,357 98,051 36 ,144 ,343 98,394 37 ,130 ,310 98,705 38 ,129 ,307 99,012 39 ,119 ,283 99,295 40 ,111 ,265 99,560 41 ,103 ,244 99,805 42 ,082 ,195 100,000 the number of factors with eigenvalues above 1 is 4 according to table 6. however, the explained total variance and scree plot diagram were examined together and the number of factors was determined as the single factor with regard to the theoretical structure. it is evident from the findings that the variance explained in the single factor structure is 58,309%. according to tavsancil (2010) the fact that explained variance is 30% or more is sufficient to explain the structure. in the study, the explained variance of the scale in the single factor structure was found to be 58,309%, which is taken as an indicator that the scale is well enough to measure the to-be-measured structure in a single factor. it was concluded based on these results that the data set had a perfect fit for factor analysis. as a result of the explanatory factor analysis which was examined according to the single factor structure, the factor load values and explained covariance values for the items of the scale are given in table 7. table-7. factor loads and covariance values. item no factor load covariance item no factor load covariance 1 .672 .451 21 .744 .553 2 .686 .471 22 .733 .537 3 .773 .598 23 .754 .568 4 .742 .550 24 .797 .635 5 .758 .575 25 .803 .645 6 .773 .598 26 .825 .681 7 .825 .681 27 .866 .750 8 .645 .417 28 .810 .656 9 .820 .672 29 .845 .715 10 .789 .622 30 .718 .516 11 .726 .527 31 .867 .752 12 .601 .361 32 .776 .602 13 .822 .675 33 .779 .606 14 .767 .588 34 .883 .780 15 .710 .504 35 .778 .605 16 .837 .700 36 .708 .501 17 .723 .522 37 .711 .506 18 .873 .762 38 .745 .555 19 .870 .758 39 .699 .488 20 .689 .475 40 .803 .645 as can be seen in table 7 the factor load values of the items of the scale were high between “.601” and “.883”. as the factor load values get higher, so does the variance ratio explained by the scale (buyukozturk, 2010; tavsancil, 2010). accordingly, the percentages of variance explained by our single-factor scale were also high. according to the results of the explanatory factor analysis, 2 items (item 3, item 17) whose factor load value was less than .60 in the single factor structure were excluded from the form. the “teaching-learning process selfefficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs)” was finalized as a single-factor structure with 40 items. 3.2. reliability table 8 below shows the results of the reliability analysis of the scale. table-8. reliability statistics. cronbach's alpha n (number of items) .982 40 regarding the reliability of the scale, cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient was found to be 0.982. internal consistency coefficient of 0.70 and above is considered sufficient for the reliability of test scores (buyukozturk, 2010). the fit indices show that the model is compatible with the data. it was concluded that the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 5(1): 47-56 54 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teaching-learning process self-efficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs) developed in this study is a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used in educational sciences. 4. conclusion and discussion the aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used to measure the selfefficacy beliefs of the instructors in higher education institutions. the stages of the scale development process were followed in the study in order to achieve this aim (devellis, 2003; erkus, 2012; karakoc and donmez, 2014). the format was determined for the measurement method and accordingly, an item/question repository was created. expert opinions were resorted to determine the necessity, comprehensibility and specificity of the items that were developed. layout, content and validity were evaluated by expert comment. after taking expert opinion, a 48-item scale form was applied to a sample group of 305 people representing the target population. a number of analyzes were performed in order to prove validity and reliability on the data (tezbasaran, 2008). cronbach α internal consistency coefficients were calculated to provide evidence of reliability. the sampling adequacy test (kmokaiser-meyer-olkin) was employed to assess the suitability of the data set for factor analysis, and the bartlett's test of sphericity was used to determine whether there was a relationship between variables. explanatory factor analysis was applied on the data set in order to prove construct validity. the scale was tested on a different group to see whether it could give the same structure in similar groups, and similar results were obtained. it was seen as a result of the analyses that the scale had a single factor structure with 40 items and can be used to measure the teaching-learning processes self-efficacy beliefs of the instructors. internal consistency and test-retest reliability were calculated for the reliability of the scale. in this study, the internal consistency coefficient of the scale was found to be 0.982. according to these values, it was accepted that the reliability coefficients of the scale were within admissible ranges. as a result, when the findings obtained from the analyses were taken into consideration, it was seen that the teaching-learning process self-efficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs) is a valid and reliable measurement tool. it was observed in the literature that there are various scale development studies conducted to measure the self-efficacy beliefs of the instructors parallel to the problem of this study (busch et al., 1998; schoen and wıncour, 1998). the findings of this study showed that the belief of self-efficacy for teaching-learning processes is an important variable enabling effective and efficient teaching-learning processes. the results of several studies in the literature support the results obtained in this study (henson et al., 2001; tschannen-moran and hoy, 2001; shaughnessy, 2004; xu, 2012; pisciottani et al., 2019). to conclude, the teaching-learning process self-efficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs) is expected to contribute to the studies to be carried out to determine the self-efficacy beliefs of the instructors in higher education. this scale is also thought to meet an important need and contribute to the field of educational sciences in that it can be used to test the effectiveness of the trainer training programs to be organized for improving the competencies of the instructors. 4.1. limitations scale forms were sent to 7519 instructors by e-mail, 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zhao, j., j. mccormick and k. hoekman, 2008. idiocentrism-allocentrism and academics self-efficacy for research in beijing universities. international journal of educational management, 22(2): 168-183.available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/09513540810853567. appendix teaching-learning process self-efficacy beliefs scale (tlpsebs) items 1. i can use supplementary (alternative) evaluation methods. 2. i can design appropriate assessment and evaluation types for student features. 3. i can determine appropriate teaching activities for the learning outcomes. http://www.academia.edu/1288035/likert_tipi_ölçek_hazırlama_kılavuzu asian journal of education and training, 2020, 5(1): 47-56 56 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. i can edit content according to student interests and needs. 5. i can prepare a student-centered lesson plan. 6. i can make evaluation in accordance with the course objectives. 7. i can determine student-centered learning outcomes. 8. i can create the timetable of the course. 9. i can use student-centered teaching techniques. 10. i can select and use teaching approaches appropriate to the learning outcomes. 11. i can identify the necessary techniques to develop a student-centered assessment tool. 12. my knowledge of pedagogy is sufficient to organize an effective teaching-learning process. 13. i can organize student-centered teaching activities. 14. i can choose supplementary resources to be used in teaching activities. 15. i can give feedback to students as a result of assessment. 16. i can use the most appropriate teaching strategy for the course outcomes. 17. i can ensure the active participation of students in the teaching-learning process. 18. i can determine the student-centered teaching technique (or techniques) appropriate to the course outcomes. 19. i can use student-centered teaching methods. 20. i can include activities enabling social development of students. 21. i can help students learn by researching. 22. i can determine the academic competences of students. 23. i can create the environment for students to learn by doing and experience. 24. i can determine the method of assessment and evaluation. 25. i can design specific assessment and evaluation types for the subject. 26. i can choose materials to be used in teaching activities. 27. i can determine the student-centered teaching strategy appropriate for the course outcomes. 28. i can include activities to ensure the professional development of students. 29. i can prepare student-centered educational environments. 30. i can organize an effective teaching-learning process through my knowledge of technology. 31. i can create student-centered teaching-learning processes. 32. i can apply teaching methods and techniques specific to my field in my courses. 33. i can organize effective teaching-learning processes by integrating my knowledge of technology, pedagogy and field. 34. i can determine the student-centered teaching method(s) appropriate to the course outcomes. 35. i can evaluate student development during the course. 36. i can determine the cognitive-affective-psychomotor outcomes of the course. 37. i can help students make self-evaluation. 38. i can develop measurement tools appropriate to students' learning levels. 39. i can update the content based on the latest changes. 40. i can guide students in achieving the learning outcomes. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 316 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 2, 316-323, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.316.323 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group predicting social anxiety and subjective well-being preservice teachers through doing sports ezgi samar1 fehmi çalık2 emin yaşar3 cuma ece4 murat şen5 betül şen6 mihrab bilir7 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3,4,5,6,7sakarya university of applied disciplines, school of physical education and sports, turkey. abstract in the study, it is aimed to research the social anxiety and subjective well-being of preservice teachers through doing sports. a total of 450 pre-service teachers majoring in various teaching areas including science turkish, english, elementary mathematics and primary school teaching at a state university in the southeastern anatolia region participated in the study. the data were collected via a personal information form, social anxiety scale, and subjective well-being scale. t-test and analysis of variance (anova) were used when compared the independent groups, tukey's test was used for comparison of differences. the pearson correlation test was tested for the relation between continuous data. when based on gender, the scores of female participants of social anxiety and value lessness are significantly different. when based on age, subjective wellbeing scores of 23 years and older participants are significantly high. generally, subjective wellbeing scores of pre-service teachers who do sports are significantly high while their value lessness scores are significantly low. in the comparison of participants at the age of 23 and younger with reference to doing sports, subjective well-being scores of participants doing sports was significantly higher than those of the ones not doing sports. however, it was detected that their scores of social anxiety, social aversion and being criticized did not differ significantly with reference to doing sports. it was detected that there was no significant difference in comparison of scores subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, value lessness and being criticized belonging to participants at the age of 24 and older with reference to doing sports. in this study, found that subjective well-being scores of those who did not do sports were lower than those who did sports. in addition, it has been determined that the total points of social avoidance, worthlessness and social anxiety do not differ among those who do sports and do not. keywords: social anxiety, subjective well-being, pre-service teachers, doing sports, sports, social aversion. citation | ezgi samar; fehmi çalık; emin yaşar; cuma ece; murat şen; betül şen; mihrab bilir (2019). predicting social anxiety and subjective well-being preservice teachers through doing sports. asian journal of education and training, 5(2): 316-323. history: received: 25 january 2019 revised: 4 march 2019 accepted: 12 april 2019 published: 20 may 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 317 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 317 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 318 4. discussion and results ................................................................................................................................................................. 321 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 322 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.316.323&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.52.316.323&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1807 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9221-8194 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 316-323 317 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction it is an undeniable fact that the importance of sport is gradually increasing in terms of emotional and social harmony at the present time as well as its physical benefits. in this context, sport can be defined as a process which integrally wraps human life, organizes and makes it easier and appeals to emotions such as excitement and overcoming (ozturk, 2007). sport describes a concept helping the individual to socialize since it gives a feeling of personal and social identity and group affiliation as well as it is a complement of a number of physical activities (kucuk and koc, 2004). when the mentioned complement is taken into account, sports science is related to lots of sciences concerning human. sport, a multidisciplinary science, is closely associated with psychology. thanks to developments in sports psychology, one of the most studied subjects in recent years have become sport and identity (room, 2014). in this period when we experience the era of communication, social anxiety interestingly confronts us as a big problem. anxiety is simply defined as sadness, perturbational thought, and sorrow. in psychology, it is defined as mope or uneasiness shaped by fear or expectation of danger or mischance which is thought to befall (budak, 2013). anxiety can be generally defined as a state of uneasiness or irrational fear which springs in human as a reflection of any fear of danger (manav, 2011). recently, the rate of non-adaptation to society has spiked up regardless of educational level. social anxiety is a social interaction problem affecting daily life, academic activities largely and coming together with worries of personality assessment and criticism (ceylan, 2011). the ministry of health defines social anxiety as a mental disease because of which people have an extreme atychiphobia in society, abstain from many social behaviors because of worries of being disgraced or have to do overanxiously and adaptation of human in society is destroyed to the highest degree (ministry of health, 2008). if people experience social anxiety, they are in the tendency to relationship breakdown with other people (oztürk et al., 2005). this compliance problem creates a problem in himself/ herself and leads to unhappiness. sport is all important in terms of both physical development and mental and social health of the individual (güclü, 2000). teaching is defined as a special profession of expertness that undertakes government's duties concerning education and training in the 43rd article of basic law of national education with number 1739. in addition to being a special profession of expertness, it has changed into a grueling profession via the effect of the education system. nowadays, teachers have to cope with attitudes and behaviors of parent-student-society apart from the worry of guiding to teaching and learning. this present situation where students and parents are strong has increased social anxiety of teachers and pre-service teachers and affected their social lives. there are also some other qualities about a good life and mental health but the domain of subjective well-being concentrates on the individual's selfassessment in relation to his/her life (tuzgöl-dost, 2007). according to türkdoğan and duru (2012) it is seen that everybody's sense of happiness springs in an idiocratic way when it is thought that the concept of subjective well-being is based on a self-assessment. in parallel with a variety about what will enable human to experience subjective well-being at a higher level, it has grown difficult to expect a variety of approaches suggested about what experiential resources of subjective well-being are to moot systematic and extensive ideas. when it is thought that preservice teachers will raise next generations, their subjective well-being has importance with regard to not only themselves but also the whole society. a member of a profession whose subjective well-being is high and basic needs are met experiences positive feelings frequently and negative feelings rarely. such a teacher is happier, more competent and has qualities that will set a model for his/her students (gundogdu and yavuzer, 2012). well, what are the effects of sport on anxiety and behaviors in the context of subjective well-being? sports activities not only have an important function in an individual's development healthily but also contribute in terms of social and emotional development. these activities make abilities such as creativeness and leadership functional and develop personality characteristics such as being contentious, determined, agreeable, productive, strongminded, respectful and insightful toward others, obeying the rules, collaborating, behaving independently, selfdisciplining and being hardworking and assiduous (terzi, 2011). factors affecting attitudes are specified as the ones related with culture (gender, idols, different interests), the ones related with society ( family, sport experiences, level of ability, relations with peers, previous experiences about physical education and perceptions about sport) and the ones related with school (effect of teacher) (kangalgil et al., 2006). the study conducted to evaluate the social anxiety and subjective well-being of preservice teachers who will lay the foundations of society and its results were viewed. 2. method 2.1. the research model since quantitative research anticipate that results related to semantic richness provided by numbers will be shared, quantitative data which have been obtained during the research provides acceptable and reliable consequences, and besides, it enables that the research can safely be shared (cohen et al., 2000). in this research, quantitative data which is about the contribution made by social anxiety and subjective well-being to the professional life have been acquired and interpreted owing to the fact that quantitative research is a scientific approach which based existence of knowledge on deduction. in the study is a descriptive study in the survey model. besides survey method is defined as a type of research based on data acquired from a sample chosen among society population in order to determine the reality of events and facts in related circumstances within a fixed time (arseven, 1993). 2.2. population a total of 450 pre-service teachers majoring in various teaching areas including science turkish, english, elementary mathematics and primary school teaching at a state university in southeastern anatolia region participated in the study. %42 of the participants is female and %58 of them is male. the data were collected in october 2016. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 316-323 318 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. data collection tools in the study, it is used the personal information form that the researcher prepares to define some personal characteristics of the participants. in addition, it’s used social anxiety scale and subjective well-being scale to define the levels of their social anxiety and subjective well-being. 2.4. personal information form: there are 4 questions to pre-service teachers; the 1st question for gender, the 2nd question to age, the 3rd question to departments of education at university and 4th question to do sports. 2.5. social anxiety scale: it is used the social anxiety scale which is developed by palancı and ozbay (2001). it’s used the 5 related scales of scl-90, rathus assertiveness inventory and social introversion and subtest of mmpi for the validity of criterion. the matters are formed with three factors at the result of analysis to construct validity. the factor analysis was carried out via spss factor (spss 10.0/windows). in the factor analysis carried out, factorability was examined by different methods. for reliability calculations, the cronbach alpha value calculated within-test consistency method is 89. the test likert type has a five-point rating in the range 0-4. the increase in the scores shows that the sk level has increased (palancı, 2004). 2.6. subjective well-being scale the scale of subjective well-being with 46 items is developed by tuzgol-dost (2005). the scale tests subjective well-being levels by determining the frequency and intensity of positive and negative feelings. the subjective wellbeing scale is composed of statements of positive and negative feelings and judgments regarding living quarters. cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient .93; test-retest reliability coefficient was found to be r: .86 (tuzgol-dost, 2005). 2.7. scoring of subjective well-being scale the answering system is in the form of five points likert scale organized for each statement as “completely suitable (5)”, “mostly suitable (4)”, “partly suitable (3)”, “slightly suitable (2)” and “not suitable at all (1)” . the score of each item varies between 5 and 1. 26 of scale items are negative statements. they are 2nd, 4th, 6th, 10th, 13th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 21st, 24th, 26th, 28th, 30th, 32nd, 35th, 37th, 38th, 40th, 43rd, and 45th items. the negative statements are scored reversibly. while the lowest score is 46 in the scale, the highest score is 230 and a high score means that subjective well-being level is high (tuzgol-dost, 2005). 2.8. gathering the data (process) after obtaining permissions, the implementation of gathering data equipment for the research is completed by the help of particular instructors and implemented by researchers just before the beginning of the lesson. necessary directions about the aim of research and the filling of material are given before the implementation. gathering data material is filled by the voluntary students. after checking the incomplete and incorrect ones, valid and acceptable 450 survey forms were coded to the computer software for evolution. the filling of the scales by the students lasts approximately 30-40 minutes. 2.9. data analysis spss 10.0 statistical packaged software was used for data assessment and finding computed values. for comparison of obtained data, independent samples t-test and variance analysis (anova) were used. also, tukey's test, one of multiple comparison tests, was used to determine from which group the variance stemmed. the detection of relation among continuous data was tested via the pearson correlation test. error performance was determined as p<0,05 in this study. 3. findings the findings regarding analyses made in accordance with the purpose of the research were stated below. table-1. the comparison of participants’ scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, valuelessness and being criticized on the basis of gender. variables gender n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being female 190 147,61 22,561 1,417 0,126 male 260 153,02 19,912 social anxiety (total) female 190 17,335 20,113 2,282 0,049* male 260 23,658 19,191 social aversion female 190 15,58 9,112 1,894 0,053 male 260 14,42 8,563 valuelessness female 190 15,12 8,547 2,338 0,045* male 260 15,03 8,452 being criticized female 190 14,89 8,435 1,239 0,255 male 260 15,69 7,619 note: * p<.05. when table 1 is reviewed, in comparison of participants’ scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized on the basis of gender, there is a significant difference in items of social anxiety and valuelessness whereas a significant difference is not ascertained in the other items. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 316-323 319 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning female participants in regard to doing sports. variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 50 157,61 23,561 1,518 0,052 non-doer 140 153,02 20,911 social anxiety (total) doer 50 35,76 22,143 1,582 0,095 non-doer 140 38,97 20,791 social aversion doer 50 15,18 9,761 0,894 0,063 non-doer 140 14,64 8,785 valuelessness doer 50 10,21 7,552 1,837 0,053 non-doer 140 9,03 7,374 being criticized doer 50 13,73 7,435 1,739 0,072 non-doer 140 14,78 7,879 note: * p<.05. when table 2 is reviewed, in comparison of female participants’ scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized in regard to doing sports, a significant difference is not determined in any items. table-3. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning male participants in regard to doing sports. variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 70 167,98 20,391 2,498 0,042* non-doer 190 163,56 21,211 social anxiety (total) doer 70 36,26 20,176 -1,338 0,089 non-doer 190 38,94 19,463 social aversion doer 70 14,98 9,885 -1,783 0,073 non-doer 190 13,55 8,129 valuelessness doer 70 9,12 6,578 2,548 0,043* non-doer 190 7,03 7,381 being criticized doer 70 13,73 7,874 -1,476 0,062 non-doer 190 12,87 7,811 note: * p<.05. when table 3 is reviewed, in comparison of male participants’ scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized in regard to doing sports, there is a significant difference in the items of subjective well-being and valuelessness whereas there is no significant difference in the other items. table-4. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning participants at the age of 23 and below in regard to doing sports. variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 95 177,66 20,507 1,418 0,047* non-doer 280 173,52 19,211 social anxiety (total) doer 95 39,92 19,236 -1,306 0,105 non-doer 280 39,99 19,463 social aversion doer 95 13,99 8,112 -1,083 0,773 non-doer 280 14,55 8,791 valuelessness doer 95 9,18 7,578 -1.561 0,079 non-doer 280 9,73 7,388 being criticized doer 95 14,73 6,874 -1,49 0,102 non-doer 280 12,94 7,036 note: * p<.05. when table 4 is reviewed, in comparison of 23-year-old and younger participants’ scores of subjective wellbeing, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized in regard to doing sports, there is no significant difference in the other items whereas there is only a significant difference in the item of subjective wellbeing. table-5. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning participants at the age of 24 and older in regard to doing sports. variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 25 157,89 23,578 1,774 0,053 non-doer 50 161,52 18,902 social anxiety (total) doer 25 31,56 19,292 0,315 0,705 non-doer 50 34,28 20,482 social aversion doer 25 13,06 8,601 0,209 0,744 non-doer 50 12,84 7,883 valuelessness doer 25 8,18 6,137 0,806 0,337 non-doer 50 9,44 7,888 being criticized doer 25 11,78 6,224 -1,49 0,343 non-doer 50 12,39 6,772 note: * p<.05. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 316-323 320 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 5 is reviewed, in comparison of 24-year-old and older participants' scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized in regard to doing sports, there is no significant difference in any items. table-6. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning participants who are preservice teachers at the department of turkish teaching in regard to doing sports. variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 31 167,83 13,369 0,946 0,453 non-doer 82 161,88 19,662 social anxiety (total) doer 31 30,56 19,741 -0,399 0,717 non-doer 82 32,38 23,487 social aversion doer 31 12,47 8,722 0,905 0,746 non-doer 82 12,22 10,333 valuelessness doer 31 8,55 7,017 0,346 0,538 non-doer 82 11,19 7,559 being criticized doer 31 13,78 6,174 -0,963 0,442 non-doer 82 12,86 12,773 note: * p<.05. when table 6 is reviewed, in comparison of scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized belonging to participants who are preservice teachers at the department of turkish teaching in regard to doing sports, there is no significant difference in any items. table-7. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning participants who are preservice teachers at the department of english teaching in regard to doing sports variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 25 167,13 15,364 1,946 0,044* non-doer 56 163,44 19,604 social anxiety (total) doer 25 30,16 20,845 -0,694 0,617 non-doer 56 31,29 19,583 social aversion doer 25 11,47 8,501 0,905 0,546 non-doer 56 12,63 9,728 valuelessness doer 25 7,42 7,442 -0,346 0,699 non-doer 56 5,19 6,187 being criticized doer 25 13,17 9,803 -0,764 0,661 non-doer 56 13,86 8,744 note: * p<.05. when table 7 is reviewed, in comparison of scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized belonging to participants who are preservice teachers at the department of english teaching in regard to doing sports, there is a significant difference in the item of subjective well-being whereas there is no significant difference in the other items. table-8. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning participants who are preservice teachers at the department of elementary mathematics teaching in regard to doing sports. variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 28 157,06 16,781 -0,846 0,056 non-doer 55 143,12 17,552 social anxiety (total) doer 28 38,16 20,488 -0,794 0,534 non-doer 55 43,29 19,176 social aversion doer 28 14,33 8,655 0,327 0,862 non-doer 55 15,61 10,728 valuelessness doer 28 10,47 7,442 -1,402 0,375 non-doer 55 7,84 6,187 being criticized doer 28 15,17 8,447 -1,782 0,461 non-doer 55 13,87 8,903 note: * p<.05. when table 8 is reviewed, in comparison of scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized belonging to participants who are preservice teachers at the department of elementary mathematics teaching in regard to doing sports, there is no significant difference in any items. table-9. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning participants who are preservice teachers at the department of primary school teaching in regard to doing sports. variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 59 163,06 19,653 -0,146 0,554 non-doer 114 157,87 19,552 social anxiety (total) doer 59 39,76 21,348 1,794 0,103 non-doer 114 42,39 19,703 social aversion doer 59 13,11 8,131 -2,049 0,027* non-doer 114 15,42 8,402 valuelessness doer 59 9,42 5,339 -0,492 0,677 non-doer 114 7,96 6,306 being criticized doer 59 15,88 7,184 1,208 0,581 non-doer 114 17,13 6,222 note: * p<.05. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 316-323 321 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 9 is reviewed, in comparison of scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized belonging to participants who are preservice teachers at the department of primary school teaching in regard to doing sports, there is a significant difference in the item of social aversion whereas there is no significant difference in the other items. table-10. the comparison of items of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized concerning all the participants in regard to doing sports. variables doing sports n mean standard deviation t p subjective well-being doer 120 161,33 20,447 2,625 0,025* non-doer 330 156,92 21,518 social anxiety (total) doer 120 39,26 20,322 -1,873 0,061 non-doer 330 36,73 18,837 social aversion doer 120 13,32 8,384 1,049 0,604 non-doer 330 15,68 9,433 valuelessness doer 120 9,21 5,701 -2,692 0,008* non-doer 330 9,96 6,574 being criticized doer 120 15,71 7,365 -1,723 0,281 non-doer 330 16,13 6,142 note: * p<.05. when table 10 is reviewed, in comparison of all the participants' scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, valuelessness and being criticized in regard to doing sports, there is a significant difference in the items of subjective well-being and valuelessness whereas there is no significant difference in the other items. 4. discussion and results it is seen that some findings are supported whereas some are not when we discuss the findings obtained in this research on literature level. although it was concluded in researches made by gumus (2002) that social anxiety did not vary by gender, a significant difference was determined in terms of social anxiety (total) in this study. in a study conducted on university students by izgiç et al. (2000) it was stated that the prevalence of social anxiety was %8,9 in females and % 7,1 in males. as well as studies presenting that social anxiety is seen more in females than males (demir, 1997; erözkan, 2007) there are also some studies presenting the opposite (palancı, 2004; kalkan, 2008). in parallel with social anxiety, scores of females were higher than those of males in terms of value lessness, and a significant difference was determined between them. it was detected in the research that female participants’ scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, value lessness and being criticized did not differ significantly with reference to doing sports. among the reasons of this situation, it can be thought that the families in our society are more concerned about the male, to educate them more comfortably, to enable them to obtain what they want more easily and to place them in a more valuable position than female. in this study, it was determined that the scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social avoidance, worthlessness and criterion of the female participants did not show a significant difference according to the sporting situation. however, cenkseven and akbas (2007) observed that the subjective well-being of male and female differed as a result of their study on university students. at the same time, subjective well-being and worthlessness scores of the male who did sports were significantly higher than those who did not. compared to female, males are able to obtain what they want more easily. considering this situation, it is expected that the subjective well-being of male will be higher than female. in the study conducted, scores of subjective well-being and value lessness belonging to males doing sports was determined as significantly higher than those of the ones not doing sports. it is a very surprising result that a score of value lessness is so high. to research, this result may constitute the subject of another research. also, it was detected that scores of social anxiety, social aversion and being criticized belonging to male participants did not differ significantly with reference to doing sports. in another study conducted by dilmac and bozgeyikli (2009) subjective well-being and decision-making styles were examined in terms of different variables by revealing the relationship between the subjective well-being and decision-making styles of teacher preservice, and as a result, there were significant differences in subjective well-being of teachers in the term of gender variables. in the comparison of participants at the age of 23 and younger with reference to doing sports, subjective wellbeing scores of participants doing sports was significantly higher than those of the ones not doing sports. however, it was detected that their scores of social anxiety, social aversion and being criticized did not differ significantly with reference to doing sports. similarly to our study, in the study conducted by eryılmaz and ercan (2011) it was concluded that there was a difference between the age variable and subjective well-being levels of the participants. in our study, subjective well-being levels of 14-17 year-olds and 26-45 years-old participants were found to be higher than the subjective well-being of participants aged 19-25. in addition, according to the study conducted by caglayan–tunc (2015) it was detected that there is no significant difference between the ages of 18-20 and 21-23 according to the age variable, when the social avoidance, to be criticized, worthlessness, total social anxiety and subjective well-being scores of the participants were compared according to their sports status (caglayan–tunc, 2015). it was detected that there was no significant difference in comparison of scores subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, value lessness and being criticized belonging to participants at the age of 24 and older with reference to doing sports. in his study on 312 university students, sahin (2011) found similar results to our study and found that the levels of subjective well-being of the students do not differ according to the age variable. in parallel with the result of our research, the research by diener et al. (1999) examined factors of age and subjective well-being in the study conducted in the country. as a result of the study, positive effect decreased with increasing age while middling increases occurred in satisfaction with life with increasing age. in a study conducted on american, west european, east european, asian and latin american adults by blanchflower and oswald (2004) they found that subjective well-being bottomed out at middle ages and subjective well-being level of adolescents asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 316-323 322 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group and old aged adults was higher than those of middle-aged adults. for example, it has been found that the subjective well-being of the individuals in the 25to 25-year age group significantly explains the personality traits of extraversion and emotional imbalance (ilhan and bacanlı, 2007). the reason for this is that young adults in this period are in an effort to be able to successfully overcome their developmental tasks in each area and to be able to overcome these tasks successfully and at the same time to be challenging and heavy. in the comparison of scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, value lessness and being criticized belonging to participants who are preservice teachers at the department of turkish teaching in regard to doing sports, it was detected that there was no significant difference. in the comparison of participants who are preservice teachers at the department of english teaching in regard to doing sports, subjective well-being scores of participants doing sports was determined significantly higher than those of the ones not doing sports. however, it was detected that there was no significant difference in scores of social anxiety, social aversion, value lessness and being criticized in regard to doing sports. in comparison of scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, social aversion, value lessness and being criticized belonging to participants who are preservice teachers at the department of elementary mathematics teaching in regard to doing sports, it was detected there was no significant difference like the results of participants who are preservice teachers at the department of turkish teaching. in the comparison of participants who are preservice teachers at the department of primary school teaching in regard to doing sports, social aversion scores of participants doing sports were determined as significantly higher than those of participants not doing sports. however, it was detected that there was no significant difference in their scores of subjective well-being, social anxiety, value lessness and being criticized in regard to doing sports. in a study conducted by yıldırım et al. (2011) there were no significant differences in social anxiety levels among teacher candidates studying in different departments. in addition, cetinkaya and honca (2017) did not find any significant difference in the sub-dimensions of social anxiety measurements according to the participants' sections. the scores of being criticized belonging to participants who did not do sports were determined as significantly higher than value lessness scores of the ones doing sports. subjective well-being scores of the ones doing sports were determined as significantly higher than those of not doing sports. besides, there was no difference in scores of social anxiety, social aversion and being criticized for the ones doing or not doing sports. when the results are evaluated, it may be told that the intrinsic satisfaction of the participants doing sports is higher than those of the ones not doing sports. it is seen that sports influences the level of social anxiety and subjective well-being positively. when it is thought that the participants raise the whole future of society, the importance of matter has increased a lot when not only participants but also the population that will be affected by them are taken into account. in his study, caglayan–tunc (2015). in his study, found that subjective well-being scores of those who did not do sports were lower than those who did sports. in addition, it has been determined that the total points of social avoidance, worthlessness and social anxiety do not differ among those who do sports and do not. suggestions according to research findings; the number and quality of sports complexes in universities should be increased, 1sports awareness should be raised to all the university students and especially students in faculties of education 2sports activities should be prioritized and they should be turned into an inseparable part of life, 3assignment anxiety of preservice teachers should be minimized and it should be enabled them to spare some time to sport, 4the number of sports educators who work in universities should be increased, 5sports classes should be made necessary particularly in faculties of education, 6all the sports activities provided in universities should be free of charge. references arseven, a.d., 1993. field research method. ankara: gül publishing house blanchflower, d.g. and a.j. oswald, 2004. well-being over time in britain and the usa. journal of public economics, 88(7-8): 13591386.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0047-2727(02)00168-8. budak, s., 2013. dictionary of psychology. ankara, i̇zmir: science and art publications of social sciences. caglayan–tunc, a., 2015. the effect of sport to the levels of subjective well being and social anxiety. (master thesis). selçuk university, konya. cenkseven, f. and t. akbas, 2007. investigation of the predictors of subjective and psychological well-being in university students. turkish journal of psychological counseling and guidance, 3(27): 43-65. cetinkaya, t. and a.a. honca, 2017. an investigation of social anxiety levels of physical education and sports college students in terms of different variables, inonu university. journal of physical education and sports sciences, 4(2): 13-19. ceylan, h., 2011. prediction of social anxiety levels of university students. (master thesis). ege university institute. cohen, l., l. manıon and k. marrıson, 2000. research methods in education. british journal of educational studies, 48(4): 446-446.available at: 10.1111/1467-8527.t01-1-00157. demir, t., 1997. social phobia in children and adolescents: an epistemological study. (unpublished phd thesis). istanbul university, istanbul medical faculty, istanbul. diener, e., e.m. suh, r.e. lucas and h.l. smith, 1999. subjective wellbeing: three decades of progress. psychological bulletin, 125(2): 276302.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037//0033-2909.125.2.276. dilmac, b. and h. bozgeyikli, 2009. examining the subjective well-being and decision-making styles of teacher candidates. journal of erzincan faculty of education, 11(1): 171-187. erözkan, a., 2007. university students' rejection sensitivity and social anxiety levels according to some variables. selcuk university social sciences institute journal, 17(1): 225-240. eryılmaz, a. and l. ercan, 2011. examination of subjective well-being in terms of gender, age groups and personality characteristics. turkish journal of psychological counseling and guidance, 4(36): 139-151. güclü, m., 2000. determining the problems and expectations of the university students in active sports (example of ankara province). (phd thesis). gazi university institute of health sciences, ankara. gumus, e., 2002. the effect of social anxiety coping program on social anxiety levels of university students. (unpublished phd thesis). ankara university educational sciences institute, ankara. gundogdu, r. and y. yavuzer, 2012. investigation of subjective well-being and psychological needs of the faculty of education according to demographic variables. mehmet akif ersoy university faculty of education journal, 12(23): 115-131. ilhan, t. and h. bacanlı, 2007. humor styles, personality properties and subjective well-being: a model experiment. educational sciences and practice journal, 11(1): 35-52. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(2): 316-323 323 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group izgiç, f., g. akyüz, o. doğan and n. kuğu, 2000. the prevalence of social phobia in university students. journal of anatolian psychiatry, 1(4): 207-214. kalkan, n., 2008. the relationship between cognitive structures and social anxiety in adolescents cognitiv behavioural approach in terms of interpretation. (unpublished master thesis). marmara university,istanbul. kangalgil, m., d. hünük and g. demirhan, 2006. comparison of primary, high school and university students' attitudes towards physical education and sports. journal of sport sciences, 17(2): 48-57. kucuk, v. and h. koc, 2004. the relationship between human and sport in psycho-social development process. dumlupınar university journal of social sciences, 10(1): 131-141. manav, f., 2011. concept of anxiety. journal of social sciences, 5(9): 201-211. ministry of health, t.c., 2008. educational guide for educators: mental health modules. ankara: t.c. ministry of health general directorate of health education. oztürk, a., h. anılan, p. girmen and i. senturk, 2005. social anxiety levels of traffic cops (eskişehir province case). osmangazi university journal, 507(1): 3. ozturk, a.s., 2007. the effect of sports on the socialization of orthopedic disabilities. (master thesis). gazi university, institute of health sciences, department of physical education, ankara. palancı, m., 2004. a model study on social anxiety problems of university students. national congress of educational sciences , malatya, turkey. palancı, m. and y. ozbay, 2001. social anxiety scale: validity and reliability study. vi. national psychological counseling and guidance congress, ankara, turkey. room, b., 2014. investigation of optimism and aggression levels of students who do not and do not do sports in the 11-13 age group. (master thesis). ondokuz mayis university, institute of health sciences, samsun. sahin, g.n., 2011. the comparison of the levels of social supports, the subjective well being and selfdisclosure of the students of university. (unpublished phd thesis). dokuz eylul university institute of educational sciences, izmir. terzi, g., 2011. the comparison of self-acceptance levels of visually impaired students with and without active sports between the ages of 13-18. (master thesis thesis) .gazi university institute of educational sciences, ankara. türkdoğan, t. and e. duru, 2012. the role of meeting basic needs in predicting subjective well-being in university students. educational sciences in theory and practice, 12(4): 2429-2446. tuzgol-dost, m., 2005. development of subjective well-being scale: validity and reliability study. turkish psychological counseling and guidance journal, 3(23): 103-110. tuzgöl-dost, m., 2007. examining life satisfaction of university students according to some variables. pamukkale university faculty of education journal, 22(22): 132-143. yıldırım, t., y. cırak and n. konan, 2011. social anxiety in teacher candidates. journal of i̇nönü university faculty of education, 12(1): 85100. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 479 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 479-484, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.479.484 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of leisure time attitude of university students according to some parameters (example of northern cyprus) mehmet sukru rona1 ali emre erol2 ( corresponding author) 1department of sport management, school of physical education and sport, cyprus international university, nicosia, cyprus. 2department of trainer education, school of physical education and sport, cyprus international university, nicosia, cyprus. abstract the attitude of leisure can be defined as all the emotions, thoughts, attitudes and behaviors shown for the leisure concept. the aim of this study is to examine the leisure attitudes of the students of the cyprus university according to various parameters such as gender, age, class, faculty and whether to do recreational sports. a total of 265 students participated in the study. leisure attitude scale was used to evaluate student’s leisure attitudes. independent sample t test was used for analyzing gender and recreational sports variables, and the one-way anova test was used for analysis of age, class and faculty variables. according to the results obtained, there was a significant difference in the cognitive, affective and behavioral dimensions of the three subdimensions of the scale for the variable of doing recreational sports. in addition, differentiation was observed in the cognitive sub-dimension for the age variable and the behavioral subdimension for the class variable. keywords: leisure, leisure time attitude, sports, recreative sports, cognitive, affective, behavioral citation | mehmet sukru rona; ali emre erol (2020). investigation of leisure time attitude of university students according to some parameters (example of northern cyprus). asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 479-483. history: received: 29 april 2020 revised: 10 june 2020 accepted: 6 july 2020 published: 20 july 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 480 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 480 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 481 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 483 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 484 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.479.484&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1900 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8137-7608 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1900 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8137-7608 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1900 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8137-7608 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 479-484 480 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the aim of the research is to add innovation to the literature regarding leisure time attitudes. in the selected sample, it is thought that it has contributed to the literature since no research has been done on this subject before. it is thought that it will help to work on leisure time habits. 1. introduction leisure time is defined as after meeting the basic needs of individuals and when they are interested in an activity they want (andersen, schnohr, schroll, & hein, 2000). people can rest at this time as they wish, have fun, take time to develop themselves or spend time with their loved ones. many factors are effective in creating personal leisure time. these may be economic, social or psychological factors (lee et al., 2014) personal development, fun and rest are leisure functions (kim, newton, sachs, giacobbi, & glutting, 2011). leisure attitude has a different definition from the concept of leisure and contains all the individual's feelings, thoughts and attitudes towards leisure and recreation activities (teaff, 1975). individuals shape their attitudes to leisure through watching, witnessing and learning. as a result, positive or negative patterns in leisure grow (marshall, 1999). it has a dynamic structure, that is, they change constantly. these attitudes appear to be parallel to changing individual characteristics (sheriff & sheriff, 1996). leisure attitudes can be listed as cognitive, affective and behavioral (ragheb & beard, 1982). there is a lot of research in the literature on university students ' attitudes to leisure. for example, sindik, andrijasevic, and curkovic (2009). she performed a study at the university of zagreb in 2009 exploring the relationship between leisure behaviors that 109 students attended and recreational sports activities. another example of a research is what molina-garcia et al did to the spanish university students in 2009. in this research, he explored the relationship between recreational behaviors, physical activity, and plans to come. according to the findings of this research, they concluded that individuals who have more positive attitudes and pursue physical activity in their future plans are more positive. examples of the types of leisure attitudes survey conducted with university students in turkey are binbaşıoğlu and tuna 's work with vocational college students in the eastern anatolia region during 2014. according to the findings of this research, it is seen that there is a significant difference between women in terms of leisure time attitude and sub-dimensions. many research (berg, warner, & das, 2015; hagger, chatzisarantis, culverhouse, & biddle, 2003; momenan, delshad, mirmiran, ghanbarian, & azizi, 2011; rovio et al., 2005) have shown that playing sports actively influences attitudes toward leisure (ali selman ozdemir, 2020; ozdemir & ayyıldız durhan, 2020). in the literature, successful acting is called leisure activities. recreative activities are a variable that affects academic success (maeda & randall, 2003) awareness (ruffault, bernier, juge, & fournier, 2016) and personal development (rodgers & gauvin, 1998). in addition, it protects the mental and physical balance of individuals while having an effect on (ozdemir, 2020a). within the reach of the study, in line with all this information; examine the leisure time attitudes of students at cyprus international university by gender, class, faculty, age and whether they are doing recreational sports. 2. method 2.1. study group in the research, it was examined whether the attitudes of cyprus international university students with regard to their leisure time differed by gender, age, class, recreational sports and the faculty. 265 volunteers were included in the study, which were chosen by the sampling method. these students are between the ages of 19-21, 22-24 and 25+. the data was taken from a total of 6 faculties. these faculties can be listed as faculty of education, school of physical education and sports, faculty of arts and sciences, faculty of health sciences, faculty of social sciences and faculty of engineering. these students are 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade and 4th grade students. in addition, each participant was informed about whether he was actively involved in sports. detailed information about the demographic information of the participants is given in table 1 below. table-1. information on participants' demographic features. n=(265) variable f % sex male 154 58,11 female 111 41,89 age 19-21 84 31,7 22-24 128 48,3 25+ 53 20,0 recreational sporting activity status yes 116 43,77 no 149 56,23 department faculty of education 34 12,83 physical education and sports 65 24,53 faculty of art and science 30 11,32 faculty of health sciences 48 18,11 faculty of social sciences 45 16,98 faculty of engineering 43 16,23 grade 1. 52 19,62 2. 54 20,38 3. 56 21,13 4. 103 38,87 note: frequency (f). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 479-484 481 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.2. data collection tools for the analysis the demographic form of information generated by the researcher was used. for this type information was obtained on the gender, age, class, faculty of the participants and whether they are doing sports. at the same time, leisure attitude scale (las) was used. measuring tool; it was developed by ragheb and beard (1982) and adapted to turkish by akgül and gürbüz (2011). the scale consists of three sub-dimensions: cognitive, affective and behavioral. total internal consistency coefficient (cronbach alfa) of the scale was found as .92. the internal consistency coefficients of the cognitive, affective and behavioral subscales were .81, .92 and .95. the scale consists of 36 questions and has a 5-point likert structure. 2.3. data analysis in order to evaluate the attitudes of the participants about their leisure time, the leisure attitude scale was applied online to the participants due to the covid-19 pandemic. the spss 21.0 program was used to find statistical analysis. within the framework of the study, the relationship and differences between the measuring instruments and their sub-dimensions and other variables have been attempted to be identified. the findings portion includes major variations extracted from the findings about the analyzes. it has been observed that the data set within the limits specified by george and mallery (2010) (-1.5 and +1.5; -2.0 and +2.0) has a normal distribution. therefore, parametric tests were used in the research. statistics on normality distribution are shown in table 2. for the variables of gender and whether to do recreational sports, disconnected samples t-test was applied, while one-way anova test was used for other independent variables. table-2. normality distribution table. n=265 mean median sd distortion kurtosis cognitive 47,09 50,00 12,13 -1,39 1,20 affective 45,43 48,00 12,74 -1,20 0,70 behavioral 42,34 45,00 12,75 0,73 -0,22 note: -1.5 <p< 1.5 3. results table3. t-test findings between leisure attitude scale and gender variable. leisure attitude and sex sex n ss t p leisure attitude (total) female 111 136,70 31,80 0, 73 0,467 male 154 133,53 38,95 cognitive female 111 47,83 10,81 0,84 0,401 male 154 46,56 13,00 affective female 111 46,16 11,17 0,83 0,410 male 154 44,90 13,76 behavioral female 111 42,71 11,26 0,41 0,681 male 154 42,08 13,76 note: p>0.05. above are the results on the scale of the leisure attitude and statistical comparisons between certain variables. according to table 3 independent sample t test results, the difference between the attitude score averages of the participants was not statistically significant in terms of gender (p> 0.05). table-4. t-test findings between leisure attitude scale and recreational sports. leisure attitude and recreational sports recreational sports n ss t p leisure attitude (total) yes 116 145,87 33,89 4,54 0,000* no 149 126,29 35,53 cognitive yes 116 50,16 11,04 3,78 0,000* no 149 44,70 12,43 affective yes 116 48,59 12,21 3,66 0,000* no 149 42,96 12,63 behavioral yes 116 47,11 12,04 5,68 0,000* no 149 38,63 12,07 note: p>0.05. according to table 4, the relationship between university students ' attitude towards leisure and the variable of doing or not doing recreational sports and the mean attitude score of two groups doing sports and not doing sports is contrasted with independent samples t testing. the findings indicate that sports performance has a positive impact on attitudes towards leisure. the relationship between the cognitive sub-dimension of university students' leisure time scale and the variable of doing or not doing recreational sports was explored in the study. the t value obtained shows a considerable difference between the averages. results show that doing sports has a positive effect on the leisure-attitude scale cognitive subdimension. in the analysis the relationship was examined between the affective sub-dimension of the scale of the leisure time attitude of university students and whether or not to do recreational sports. the t value obtained suggests that there is a large difference between the averages; it has been found that the size of the impact measured is small (π2 = .05). the findings show that playing sports has a positive impact on the size of the leisure attitude impacting the affective subscale. in another analysis, it explores the relationship between the behavioral sub-dimension of the scale of the leisure attitude of university students and whether or not they are doing asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 479-484 482 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group recreational sports. the obtained t value indicates that there is a large difference between the averages; it was found that the measured effect size is moderate (π2 = .10). the results show that doing sports has a positive effect on the behavioral sub-dimension of the leisure attitude scale. table-5. anova test findings between leisure attitude scale and age variable. leisure attitude and age age n mean sd f p leisure attitude (total) 19-21 84 132,04 3,73 1,44 0,238 22-24 128 133,06 3,38 cognitive 25+ 53 142,25 4,59 19-21 84 46,17 11,59 3,07 0,048 affective 22-24 128 46,18 13,00 25+ 53 50,75 10,13 behavioral 19-21 84 44,75 11,88 0,31 0,735 22-24 128 45,42 13,52 25+ 53 46,51 12,25 19-21 84 41,12 12,12 1,56 0,212 22-24 128 42,05 13,08 25+ 53 44,98 12,78 note: p>0.05. according to table 5 the difference between the attitudes score averages of the participants was not statistically significant in terms of age (p> 0.05). cognitive sub-dimension showed a significant difference between three different age groups. the calculated effect size is low. (η2 = .02). according to the lsd test results applied to test which age groups differ from each other, the cognitive dimension point averages of the 25-27 age group (mean = 50.75, ss = 10.13) for the 19-21 and 22-24 age group (respectively; ort, = 46.17, ss = 11.59, avg. = 46.18, ss = 13) is significantly higher (p = .031, p = .021, respectively). no significant difference was found between the 19-21 age group and 22-24 age group. table-6. anova test findings between leisure attitude scale and faculty variable. leisure attitude and faculty faculty n mean sd f p leisure attitude (total) faculty of education 34 135,38 35,50 1,21 0,303 school of physical education and sports 65 136,78 41,50 faculty of arts and sciences 30 120,80 44,05 faculty of health sciences 48 133,10 33,59 faculty of social sciences 45 138,24 23,60 faculty of engineering 43 139,77 34,65 1,36 0,241 cognitive faculty of education 34 47,62 11,05 school of physical education and sports 65 47,72 14,26 faculty of arts and sciences 30 41,93 14,37 faculty of health sciences 48 46,69 12,72 faculty of social sciences 45 48,42 7,44 faculty of engineering 43 48,37 10,64 affective faculty of education 34 45,59 12,35 0,84 0,523 school of physical education and sports 65 45,49 14,32 faculty of arts and sciences 30 41,50 16,36 faculty of health sciences 48 44,96 11,81 faculty of social sciences 45 46,51 9,33 faculty of engineering 43 47,33 11,79 behavioral faculty of education 34 42,18 2,37 1,30 0,265 school of physical education and sports 65 43,57 1,74 faculty of arts and sciences 30 37,37 2,64 faculty of health sciences 48 41,46 1,58 faculty of social sciences 45 43,31 1,33 faculty of engineering 43 44,07 2,07 note: p>0.05. according to table 6 the disparity between the mean attitude scores of the participants with respect to leisure time was not considered statistically relevant in the sense of the faculty variable, according to the one-way anova test results (p > 0.05). according to table 7, the difference between the attitude score averages of the participants was not statistically significant in the context of the class variable (p> 0.05). although no difference was observed between any sub-dimension, the behavioral sub-dimension was found to be very close to a significant differentiation f (3,261) = 2.63, p = .051. according to the results of the lsd test applied to test which class groups differ from each other, the behavioral dimension mean scores of the first class (mean = 45.21, ss = 11.28) according to the behavioral dimension mean scores of the 2nd grade and 4th grade (respectively; mean . = 40.20, ss = 12.12, avg. = 40.73, ss = 13.87) are significantly higher (p = .042, p = .038, respectively). no significant difference was found among other class groups. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 479-484 483 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. anova test findings between free time attitude scale and class variable. leisure attitude and grade grade n mean sd f p leisure attitude (total) 1. 52 142,90 30,45 2,24 0,084 2. 54 129,91 35,20 3. 56 140,55 33,41 4. 103 130,30 39,72 cognitive 1. 52 49,67 10,16 1,92 0,127 2. 54 45,57 11,72 3. 56 48,77 11,44 4. 103 45,67 13,37 affective 1. 52 48,02 10,50 1,72 0,163 2. 54 44,13 12,80 3. 56 47,07 11,46 4. 103 43,90 14,16 behavioral 1. 52 45,21 11,28 2,63 0,051 2. 54 40,20 12,12 3. 56 44,71 11,89 4. 103 40,73 13,87 note: p>0.05. as a result, the recreational sports component is found to be important on all leisure attitude scale subdimensions. the sub-dimension with the greatest effect was defined as the sub-dimension of behaviour. moreover, it has been shown that variables of gender, age, class, and faculty have no major impact on the scale of the leisure attitude. in addition, the effect of the behavioral sub-dimension of the class variable and the cognitive subdimension of the age variable, even if not on the entire scale, was revealed. figure-1. bar graph display of sub-dimensions according to recreative sports. note: percentage (%). in figure 1, leisure time attitude depending on whether or not to do recreative sports. the scale shows how the sub-dimensions differ. the graphs show that each sub-dimension varies for the vector of recreational sports in parallel with the results obtained. 4. conclusion in this study, the perception of leisure attitudes of the students of cyprus university was examined. different results were obtained according to various demographic variables in the study. accordingly, when the leisure attitudes of study participants were measured according to their age and classes, there was no statistically significant difference between the categories, while in both dimensions there was a discrepancy between the sub dimensions. whereas in the cognitive sub dimension the age variable differentiated, the class variable differentiated in the sub-dimension of the actions. in addition, the recreational attitudes of the participants differed in all subdimensions, depending on the aspect of recreational sports. there was no statistically significant difference between the groups when the leisure attitude and sub-dimensions were evaluated according to gender and faculty component. he explored the attitudes of young people towards their free time in his research by videnović, pešić, and plut (2010). a significant difference was found between leisure time attitudes and sub-dimensions between the sexes. similar findings were found in the study of azevedo et al. (2007) leisure attitudes differed significantly between genders. at the same time, according to the analysis findings of akyuz (2015); kaya (2011) and mccullough (1993) there is a significant difference in terms of gender for leisure attitudes and sub-dimensions in terms of gender. on the other hand, research stating that there is no statistically significant difference between gender and leisure time attitude takes place in the literature. one of them; the leisure attitudes of the individuals who participated in pala, biner, oncen, and kargün (2015) research have been mentioned. in 2015, which examined football tennis athletes' attitudes towards leisure activities, they did not differ by gender and did not make any difference in the attitude's 3 sub-dimensions. also, in the study conducted by gökyürek (2016) it was stated that there was no statistically significant difference between the leisure time attitude levels and sub-dimensions of the subjects participating in the study and their gender. in another study, akgül (2011) evaluated the attitudes of individuals from different cultures to leisure activities, while there was no difference between leisure time and gender variable of individuals living in london, while men participating in the research between leisure time and gender variable of individuals living in ankara, there was a difference in terms of higher leisure attitudes than women. the divulgation of significant variations is found by examining the analyzes between age and leisure time. unlike the findings obtained during deng, walker, and swinnerton (2005) study. no major differences in the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 479-484 484 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group cognitive and affective sub-dimensions in terms of age levels were recorded during 2005. similar findings were obtained by gökyürek (2016) demonstrating that there was no significant difference between the age variable and leisure attitudes. in the study conducted by celik (2014) it was observed that there was a cognitively and affectively significant difference in the age of students and leisure attitude sub-dimensions of the police college students who participated in the study, but there was no statistically significant difference in the behavioral dimension. as a result, it was determined that certain factors expose relationships and differences with the leisure attitude, while at the same time engaging in leisure activities is an efficient means of recreation. it was observed that the attitude levels of the sample group in the study were high, and that certain variables differentiated that amount. the study can be tested on various sample groups and findings can be extended on the attitude of leisure time. references akgül, b. m. (2011). evaluation of attitudes of individuals from different cultures towards leisure activities: ankara-london example. gazi university institute of health sciences, ph.d. thesis, ankara. akgül, b. m., & gürbüz, b. (2011). leisure attitude scale: validity and reliability study. gazi journal of physical education and sports sciences, 16(1), 37-43. akyuz, h. (2015). examining the attitudes of university students towards leisure activities the case of bartın university. bartın university institute of educational sciences master thesis, bartin. andersen, l. b., schnohr, p., schroll, m., & hein, h. o. (2000). all-cause mortality associated with physical activity during leisure time, work, sports, and cycling to work. archives of internal medicine, 160(11), 1621-1628.available at: https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.160.11.1621. azevedo, m., araújo, c., reichert, f., siqueira, f., silva, m., & hallal, p. (2007). gender differences in leisure-time physical activity. international journal of public health, 52(1), 8-15. berg, b. k., warner, s., & das, b. m. (2015). what about sport? a public health perspective on leisure-time physical activity. sport management review, 18(1), 20-31. celik, z. (2014). investigation of ankara police college students' attitudes towards leisure activities. gazi university health sciences institute, master thesis, ankara. deng, j., walker, g. j., & swinnerton, g. (2005). leisure attitudes: a comparison between chinese in canada and anglo-canadians. leisure, 29(2), 239-273. george, d., & mallery, p. (2010). spss for windows step by step: a simple guide and reference 17.0 update (10th ed.). boston: pearson. gökyürek, b. (2016). an analysis of leisure attitudes of the individuals participating in dance activities and the relationship between leisure attitude and life satisfaction. international journal of environmental and science education, 11(10), 3285-3296. hagger, m. s., chatzisarantis, n. l., culverhouse, t., & biddle, s. j. (2003). the processes by which perceived autonomy support in physical education promotes leisure-time physical activity intentions and behavior: a trans-contextual model. journal of educational psychology, 95(4), 784-795.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/e547922012-136. kaya, a. m. (2011). investigation of university students' attitudes towards recreational activities and leisure motivations in terms of some variables. master's thesis, sivas cumhuriyet university / institute of health sciences, sivas. kim, b. h., newton, r. a., sachs, m. l., giacobbi, p. r., & glutting, j. j. (2011). the effect of guided relaxation and exercise imagery on selfreported leisure-time exercise behaviors in older adults. journal of aging and physical activity, 19(2), 137-146.available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/japa.19.2.137. lee, d.-c., pate, r. r., lavie, c. j., sui, x., church, t. s., & blair, s. n. (2014). leisure-time running reduces all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risk. journal of the american college of cardiology, 64(5), 472-481.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2014.04.058. maeda, j. k., & randall, l. m. (2003). can academic success come from five minutes of physical activity? brock education: a journal of educational research and practice, 13(1).available at: https://doi.org/10.26522/brocked.v13i1.40. marshall, g. (1999). dictionary of sociology. akınhay o, kömürcü d (çev) (1st ed.). ankara: science and art publications. mccullough, j. (1993). women, men, and time: gender differences in paidwork, housework, and leisure. the journal of consumer affairs, 27(2), 430 433. momenan, a., delshad, m., mirmiran, p., ghanbarian, a., & azizi, f. (2011). leisure time physical activity and its determinants among adults in tehran: tehran lipid and glucose study. international journal of preventive medicine, 2(4), 243-251. ozdemir, a. s. (2020). serious leisure perspectives in sports: professional athletes' career progress via serious leisure. asian journal of education and training, 6(2), 186-195.available at: https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.186.195. ozdemir, a. s., & ayyıldız durhan, t. (2020). understanding flow experiences in professional athletes. european journal of education studies, 7(2), 155-171. ozdemir, a. s. (2020a). exploring intrinsic leisure motivations of university students. online submission, 7(1), 52-65. pala, a., biner, m., oncen, s., & kargün, m. (2015). examination of football tennis athletes' attitudes towards leisure activities. international journal of sports, exercise and training science, 1(2), 77-82. ragheb, m. g., & beard, j. g. (1982). measuring leisure attitude. journal of leisure research, 14(2), 155-167.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00222216.1982.11969512. rodgers, w. m., & gauvin, l. (1998). heterogeneity of incentives for physical activity and self-efficacy in highly active and moderately active women exercisers. journal of applied social psychology, 28(11), 1016-1029.available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15591816.1998.tb01665.x. rovio, s., kåreholt, i., helkala, e. l., viitanen, m., winblad, b., tuomilehto, j., & kivipelto, m. (2005). leisure-time physicalactivity at midlifeandthe risk of dementiaand alzheimer'sdisease. the lancet neurology, 4(11), 705-711. ruffault, a., bernier, m., juge, n., & fournier, j. f. (2016). mindfulness may moderate the relationship between intrinsic motivation and physical activity: a cross-sectional study. mindfulness, 7(2), 445-452.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-015-0467-7. sheriff, m., & sheriff, c. (1996). introduction to social psychology ii. atakay m, yavuz a trans (1st ed.). istanbul: social publications. sindik, j., andrijasevic, m., & curkovic, s. (2009). relation of student attitude toward leisure time activities and their preferences toward sport recreation activities. acta kinesiologica, 3(1), 54-58. teaff, j. (1975). an elderly leisure attitude schedule. paper presented at the 28th annual meeting of the gerontologicalsociety. oct 26-30. louısville, kentucky. videnović, m., pešić, j., & plut, d. (2010). young people's leisure time: gender differences. psychology, 43(2), 199-214. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 243 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 243-247, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.243.247 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the relationship between social connectedness level and just world beliefs of prospective teachers yakup akyel1 ersan tolukan2  ( corresponding author) 1department of basic education, faculty of education, ahi evran university, kirsehir, turkey 2department of sports sciences, faculty of health sciences, yildirim beyazit university, ankara, turkey abstract this study aims to determine the relationship between social connectedness level and just world belief of prospective teachers in terms of various variables. this study adopted a correlational survey model. 318 volunteer prospective teachers from department of visual arts and music education at faculty of fine arts, and department of physical education at faculty of education of ankara and gazi universities participated in this study. the general just world belief scale developed by dalbert (1999) and adapted to turkish by göregenli (2003) and the social connectedness scale developed by lee and robbins and adapted to turkish by duru (2007) were used as a data collection tool. as a result of the research, it was determined that the general just world beliefs of the prospective teachers were at a moderate level and their social connectedness was low. in addition, the general just world beliefs and social connectedness levels of the participants in the 1st and 2nd grades were significantly higher than those in the 3rd and 4th grades. there was no significant relationship between general just world beliefs and social connectedness levels of prospective teachers. keywords: social connectedness, just world beliefs, university students, prospective teacher, education, sports sciences. jel classification: i29. citation | yakup akyel; ersan tolukan (2019). investigation of the relationship between social connectedness level and just world beliefs of prospective teachers. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 243-247. history: received: 20 december 2018 revised: 23 january 2019 accepted: 19 february 2019 published: 12 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 244 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 244 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 245 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 246 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 247 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.243.247&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/410 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3013-2939 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/410 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3013-2939 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/410 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3013-2939 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/410 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3013-2939 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9580 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 243-247 244 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction it is important to determine the individuals’ perceptions related to the general sense of equity belonging to the world as they will participate in active life as a young workforce in the future. the way that the individuals, who will take place in the production phase, perceive the world just can lead to determine where they locate themselves in the system. at the same time, especially in and after the adolescence period, identifying individuals' immediate circle, friends, institutions, and their devotion to their country may also shed light on activities that can be done before starting to work. as only the people who are improved not only cognitively but also affectively can bring desired benefits to society. 1.1. belief in a just world justice is defined by the turkish language association as “ensuring that all rights granted by the law are used by all” or “giving everyone what their rights are; truth” (türk dil kurumu (tdk), 2018). every word that can be produced like fair, just, unfair, unjust and so on is very important for the people in society. in fact, these words have a great importance in the processes of perception, evaluation and judgment of situations and conditions which people themselves and the others are in topuz et al. (2017). belief in a just world emerged as a result of realizing the tendency of people to legitimize the injustice in the events they observed. it was firstly conceptualized as a consequence of lerner’s experimental studies and stated as “a fundamental illusion” regarding the world is fair (kilinç and torun, 2011; sapancı and bahtiyar, 2018). the concept of belief in a just world is the belief of individuals concerning that there is a fair system and an individual deserves what s/he faces as either positive or negative (furnham, 2003). according to this theory, people tend to believe that everyone gets what they deserve in life. people want to believe that good things in life find good people, bad things find bad ones (lerner, 1980). this belief allows people to perceive their physical and social environments as static and regular. in this way, people protect themselves from the tension that is created by an uncertain future by making long-term plans (kilinç and torun, 2011). from the perspective of social psychology, if people have a desire for justice, it shapes their beliefs and attitudes about the world. as the issue is related to justice, the theory of just world belief basically made it necessary to work together with many different concepts in the psychology literature and it contributes greatly to the literature in this respect (topuz et al., 2017). 1.2. social connectedness social connectedness can be defined as the individual’s awareness concerning that he is part of the social world and connected with others. therefore, individuals with high social connectedness tend to feel closer to other people, see people friendly and participate in social groups (lee and robbins, 1995). in other words, according to moore (2006) social connectedness is defined as the ability to turn the individual's social lives, relational networks, peer relationships and family experiences into meaningful relationships that will allow him to feel belonging to a social environment and to consider himself as a part of social life (kurtyılmaz, 2011). on the other hand, social connectedness is defined as the integration of the satisfaction that the individual receives from his/her social environment and social networks (timpone, 1998). thus, social connectedness may help individuals to adapt to their environment, feel safe in social environments, establish easy interactions, and communication (satıcı, 2016). 2. method the model of the research, the universe and sampling, data collection tools and data analysis are included in this section. 2.1. research model in this study carried out by correlational survey model, it is aimed to investigate the relationship between general just world beliefs and social connectedness levels of prospective teachers, and to determine whether the social connectedness and just world beliefs show a significant difference based on the demographic characteristics of the students. 2.2. universe and sampling the universe of the research is composed of students studying at faculty of fine arts, visual arts and music education department, faculty of education and sport sciences, and department of physical education at ankara university and gazi university in 2017-2018 education terms. maximum diversity sampling method was used while selecting samples from the universe. the maximum diversity sampling method is the inclusion of different groups that are homogenous in their relation to the research problem (büyüköztürk et al., 2014). in this respect, students were included in the study on the basis of volunteerism from each department within the faculty. the study was carried out with 318 students in total. 27 % of the students (n = 86) were in fine arts education, including art education and music education; 37,7% (n = 120) of them in foreign languages education department of faculty of education; 35,2% (n = 112) of them in the faculty of sport sciences. 57.5% (n = 183) of the students were female and 42.5% (n = 135) were male. 7.5% (n = 24) of the students were in the first year, 34.9% (n = 111) were in the second year, 10.1% (n = 32) in the third grade, and 47.5% (n = 151) of them were in the fourth grade. 15,4% (n = 49) of the students were 17-19 years old, 69,8% (n = 222) were 20-22 years old and 14,8% (n = 47) were over 22 years of age. 2.3. data collection tools the data of the study were collected through personal information form, general just world scale and social connectedness scale. general just world belief scale developed by dalbert (1999) consists of 6 items. all items in the scale show a positive expression and the items are rated in 5-point likert type. the lowest score for each item is 1 and the highest score is 5. the total lowest score is 6 and the total highest score is 30. low scores from the scale show that the general just world belief is low and the high scores show that the general just world belief is asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 243-247 245 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group high. dalbert (1999) found cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient to be 0,78, which was calculated to determine the reliability of the responses to the scale items. in the study of adaptation of the scale to turkish, göregenli (2003) found the reliability of the responses to the scale items as 0.69. the social connectedness scale was developed by lee and robbins (1995). the scale consisting of eight items is used to determine the subjective perception of how close people feel themselves to other people. the higher the scores from the scale, the higher the sense of belonging is. there are 8 items that are rated in the 5-point likert-type scale. the lowest score from each item is 1; the highest score is 5. the total lowest score to be obtained from the overall scale is 8; the total highest one is 40. the low scores on the scale indicate that students have low social connectedness while high scores show high social connectedness. in the development process of the scale, the cronbach alpha coefficient of the social connectedness scale was 0.91; test-retest reliability coefficient was calculated as 0.96. the turkish adaptation of the scale was made by duru (2007) and its internal consistency was found as α = .90 and test-retest reliability was 0.90. in the adaptation study of ergün-başak and can (2018) it was observed that 8-item and one-dimensional model related to social connectedness scale provided a good fit (χ2/sd = 5,00, rmsea= 0,090, srmr= 0,031; gfi = 0,95, agfi= 0,91, cfi= 0,99, nnfi=0,98). the internal consistency coefficient of the social connectedness scale was found as 0.92 by ergün-başak and can (2018). 2.4. data analysis in the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics were firstly calculated, and then homogeneity of the data distribution variance was examined. independent t test and one way anova were calculated in the comparisons. the relationship between the scales was examined by pearson correlation analysis. 3. results table-1. descriptive statistics of the scores obtained by university students from general just world belief and social connectedness scale. scale item n lowest highest ̅ ss general just world belief 6 318 8,00 28,00 18,45 3,92 social connectedness 8 318 8,00 40,00 18,36 6,85 p<0,05*. as a result of the study, it was found out that the general just world belief scores of university students ranged between 8,00 and 28,00, and the average was calculated as 18,45 (± 3,92). on the other hand, the scores of the students on the social connectedness scale vary between 8,00 and 40,00. it was found that the average was calculated as 18,35 (± 6,85). in this direction, it is seen that general just world beliefs of students are slightly above average level and their social connectedness level is low. table-2. results of one-way analysis of variance calculated based on the students' departments. scales department n ̅ sd f p general just world belief fine arts education 86 17,78 3,70 5,246 0,006* education sciences 120 18,06 4,08 sports sciences 11.2 19,39 3,75 social connectedness fine arts education 86 19,03 7,25 1,252 0,284 education sciences 120 17,60 6,96 sports sciences 112 18,64 6,39 p<0,05*. it was found that the social connectedness levels of the students participating in the study did not show a significant difference with reference to the departments they study (f (2,317) = 1,252; p> 0,05). nevertheless, their general just world belief showed a significant difference regarding their departments (f(2,317)=5,246; p<0,05). after the calculated tukey post hoc test, it was determined that the general just world beliefs of the students studying in the departments of the faculty of sport sciences were significantly higher than the general just world beliefs of the students studying in the departments of fine arts education and educational sciences. table-3. t test results in unrelated measurements with regard to the gender of the students. scale gender n ̅ sd t p general just world belief female 183 18,27 3,76 0,952 0,342 male 135 18,70 4,13 social connectedness female 183 17,86 6,77 1,493 0,136 male 135 19,02 6,94 p<0,05*. regarding the gender of the students, it was revealed that both general just world beliefs (t (316) = 0,952; p> 0,05) and social connectedness (t (316) = 1,493; p> 0,05) did not show a significant difference. table-4. results of one-way analysis of variance calculated based on the grades (year) of the students. scales grade level n ̅ sd f p general just world belief 1 24 19,00 3,69 4,021 0,008* 2 111 19,28 3,86 3 32 16,91 3,76 4 151 18,09 3,91 social connectedness 1 24 20,46 7,85 3,554 0,015* 2 111 19,59 6,62 3 32 16,63 6,79 4 151 17,48 6,70 p<0,05*. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 243-247 246 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group general just world beliefs (f (3,317) = 4,021; p <0,05) and social connectedness levels (f (3,317) = 3,554; p <0,05) of the students differed significantly regarding the grade they are in. as a result of the calculated tukey post hoc test; it was found that general just world beliefs of the third graders were lower than those of first and second grade students. similarly, it was found that the social connectedness levels of the students in the third and fourth year were lower than those of the first and second year students. table-5. the relationship between general just world beliefs and social connectedness levels of students. scale values social connectedness general just world belief r -0,061 p 0,278 n 318 p<0,05*. there was no significant relationship between general just world beliefs and social connectedness levels of university students (n = 318; r = -0,061; p> 0.05). the relations were also examined on the basis of department, and similarly it was observed that general just world belief level and social connectedness level of the students at fine arts education (n = 86; r = 0,053; p> 0,05), educational sciences (n = 120; r = -0,135; p> 0,05) and faculty of sport sciences (n = 112; r = -0,078; p> 0.05) showed no significant change. 4. discussion and conclusion it was determined that the general just world beliefs of the prospective teachers who participated in the research were at a moderate level. according to otto and dalbert (2005) individuals with a high just world belief are more hopeful and positive about the future, more confident in achieving their goals. however, the bad events experienced over time in achieving their goals undermine these basic assumptions regarding the just world (gökler and berberoğlu, 2016). when the research result is evaluated in this respect, that the sample group is composed of university students may have played a role in having a moderate just world belief. as the belief in a just world can be explained by the experience and the difficulties encountered in life, the increase in unfair experiences witnessed by the individuals can cause to decrease their beliefs in a just world (giray, 2009). in fact, the belief in a just world may not directly reflect the current situation in society. lerner (1980) states that the world is not a fair place in reality and the belief in a just world is a fundamental illusion by expressing that people want to believe it instinctively as so. the fact that just world beliefs of the participants were intermediate in general in the studies that were carried out with different participants group in turkey is parallel with the results of the current study (giray, 2009; yıldırım and akgün, 2013; kurt and keser, 2017). as a result of the study, it was found that the social connectedness of the participants was low table 1. this result is quite thought-provoking, especially when it is considered together with the fact that the sense of social connectedness in adolescence and early adulthood has an important place in the individual’s life. in fact, experiences related to the development of social connectedness during childhood, adolescence and early youth provide the development of self-sense in individuals. thus, when individuals with high levels of social connectedness are excluded from the group or experience a loss, their levels of social connectedness do not decrease significantly (lee et al., 2002). social connectedness, however, is a psychosocial structure that is influenced by various factors and that affects various factors. negative interpersonal relationships, unsafe attachment status, traumatic experiences, negative parent, teacher and peer attitudes, rejection, exclusion and distrust adversely affect the development of social connectedness. in the relevant literature, internet addiction is considered to be the most important factor preventing the development of social connectedness (savcı, 2017). therefore, many factors may have played a role in that the results occur in this way. while the social connectedness levels of prospective teachers participating in the study did not show a significant difference on the basis of their departments, the general just world beliefs of those studying in the department of physical education were significantly higher than the participants in the other departments table 2. according to these results, with relation to the population of the study, it can be said that prospective physical education teachers have a higher belief in legitimizing positive or negative situations compared to the other departments and they are safer and more positive about the future. in terms of gender variables, it was found that general just world beliefs and social connectedness levels of prospective teachers were similar table 3. in other words, gender had no effect in this study. although it is supposed that women, who frequently face injustices in society, have a lower belief of just world than men do, the results of this study are parallel with the studies which revealed that general just world belief (o'connor et al., 1996; berry et al., 2001; cevikbaş, 2018) and social connectedness (atak, 2018) did not differ in terms of gender. it was determined that both general just world beliefs and social connectedness levels of prospective teachers showed a significant difference with regard to the grades in which they study table 4. as grade level of the participants increased, their just world beliefs and social connectedness decreased significantly. university education can be considered as an important beginning of professional life. therefore, the fact that prospective teachers' social anxieties and fair world beliefs decreased significantly in the third and fourth grades indicates that prospective teachers, who will raise future generations, cannot manage their needs and emotions effectively. they are also at risk of having low self-respect, being more prone to be anxious and depressed (traş and güngör, 2011; cetinkaya, 2018) and being more hopeless about the future (gökler and berberoğlu, 2016). according to the correlation results of the data obtained from the research, it was determined that there was no significant relationship between general just world beliefs and social connectedness levels of prospective teachers. in other words, it was determined that two variables did not affect each other table 5. this is a result contradicting with the paradigms -at the beginning of the studythat there is a relationship between general just world beliefs and social connectedness. the idea that the increase of just world belief of an asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 243-247 247 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group individual may affect the legitimacy of positive or negative situations in the social life and the increase of the social connectedness differs with the results of the research. according to struble (2010) individuals with high sense of social connectedness believe that the social system operates in a hierarchy to protect the rights of all. according to these individuals, the legal and traditional structure in society constitutes a guarantee for every individual in need (ergün-başak and can, 2018). in their research, oldmeadow and fiske (2007) stated that individuals with just world beliefs see social inequalities as more just and legitimate. heaven et al. (2000) found that social dominance tendencies were high for groups with high world beliefs. the low social connectedness levels of the sample group may have played a role in that the correlation results between two variables occurred differently from expected. references atak, b., 2018. examining the relationship between social commitment and social anxiety levels of universty students. master’s thesis (unpublished), gazi university, institute of health sciences, ankara. berry, j., e. worthington, l. parrott, l. o’connor and n. wade, 2001. dispositional forgiveness: development and construct validity of the transgression narrative test of forgiveness (tntf). personality and social psychology bulletin, 27(10): 1277-1290.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672012710004. büyüköztürk, ş., e.k. çakmak, ö.e. akgün, ş. karadeniz and f. demirel, 2014. scientific research method. ankara: pegem academy. cetinkaya, t., 2018. academic research in sports sciences. ankara: gece library. cevikbaş, p.e., 2018. developmental investigation of elementary and high school students' beliefs in a just world in terms of locus of control and parental attitudes. doctoral dissertation, hacettepe university, institute of health sciences, ankara. dalbert, c., 1999. the world is more just for me than generally: about the personal belief in a just world scale's validity. social justice research, 12(2): 79-98. duru, e., 2007. an adaptation study of social connectedness scale in turkish culture. eurasian journal of educational research, 7(26): 85-94. ergün-başak, b. and g. can, 2018. the relationships between self-compassion, social-connectedness, optimism and psychological resilience among low-income university students. elementary education online, 17(2): 768-785. furnham, a., 2003. belief in a just world: research progress over the past decade. personality and individual differences, 34(5): 795817.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0191-8869(02)00072-7. giray, f.s., 2009. 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article. http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_gts&arama=gts&guid=tdk.gts.5c76788408ff14.92231619 555 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 555-561, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.555.561 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group metacognitive awareness skill level of athletes and sedentary turkish university students in both genders sebiha gölünük başpinar1 mehmet akif ziyagil2 ( corresponding author) 1afyon kocatepe university, school of physical education and sports, afyonkarahisar, turkey. 2mersin university, faculty of sports sciences, mersin, turkey. abstract due to limited numbers of published studies regarding the relationship between sports and cognitive functions in adolescents. so, this study compares the metacognitive awareness skill (mas) levels between athletes and sedentary turkish university students. data were collected from 434 voluntary male and 493 female university students by mas inventory including sub-dimensions of knowledge about cognition and the regulation of cognition. mann whitney u tests were used for comparison between two groups. also, spearman rank order correlations were performed to analyze the relations between participating sports activities and sub-dimensions of mas. this study showed that there was no significant difference in the favor of athlete participants in all sub-dimensions in male and female group. in females, sedentary participants had significantly higher values than athlete counterparts in all sub-dimensions of mas. in sedentary group, females had significantly higher values than males in the sub-dimensions of declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge and evaluation while males had significantly higher values than females in all sub-dimensions except debugging strategies in athlete group. also, there were negative significant relationships between participation sport activities and all sub-dimensions of masi scores in females while observing no significant relations among variables in males.: it can be concluded that females in the sedentary group and male in the athlete group had significantly higher mas values. participation in sport activities had no positive effect on mas scores in both genders. keywords: metacognitive awareness skills, participation sport, gender, knowledge about cognition, the regulation of cognition. citation | sebiha gölünük başpinar; mehmet akif ziyagil (2019). metacognitive awareness skill level of athletes and sedentary turkish university students in both genders. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 555-561 history: received: 5 august 2019 revised: 9 september 2019 accepted: 11 october 2019 published: 25 november 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 556 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 556 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 558 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 559 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 560 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.555.561&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1117 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6342-2265 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0984-0607 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1117 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6342-2265 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0984-0607 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1117 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6342-2265 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0984-0607 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1117 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6342-2265 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0984-0607 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 555-561 556 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating gender and sportive activity related differences to the metacognitive awareness skill level in both athletes and sedentary groups. 1. introduction the ability of the individual to control, regulate and guide the cognitive processes at the highest level is defined as metacognition (flavell, 1979). executions of efficient technical and tactical skills in sportive activities depend partly on consciously arranging decision-making process as part of perceptual-cognitive function. integration of technical and tactical skills into related sport context needs intellectual processes including perceptual motor skills, knowledge and decision making. these components constitute successful sport performance (mitchell et al., 1994). erickson et al. (2019) stated that physical activity improves cognitive and brain functions, but there are different views on the consistency and magnitude of the effect. they concluded that there are supportive views ranging from moderate to strong that physical activity benefits cognitive functioning in early and late life and in some populations characterized by cognitive deficits erickson et al. (2019). two components constitute metacognitive awareness skills inventory. first component of mas inventory is the knowledge about cognition with including sub-dimensions of declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge. second component of mas inventory is the regulation of cognition with including subdimensions of planning, information management strategies, comprehension monitoring, debugging strategies and evaluation (schraw and moshman, 1995). in most individual and team sports, metacognitive awareness skills make possible the optimal performance related to open or closed skills with the integration of technical and tactical skills into match and game context. research findings on the relationship between lack of physical activity and mental health variables are increasing. it has been reported that overweight sedentary individuals are more prone to risky behaviors such as the habit of using alcohol and drugs and suicide attempts (kubesch, 2002; lipowski et al., 2016). cognitive functions include memory, attention, visual-spatial and as cognitive control and supervisory attentional system, while complex cognitive processes relate to abstraction, cause-effect, creative thinking and thinking functions, including planning and speech. although the relationship between regular participation in sporting activities and cognitive functioning is known (ellemberg and st-louis-deschênes, 2010) partially incorrect designed studies have reported conflicting results on the effect of sport on cognitive functions. some of these studies report positive effects, while other studies do not confirm the positive effect of sportive activity on cognitive functions (ahamed et al., 2007; fels et al., 2015; lambrick et al., 2016). in other side, studies showed inconsistent results regarding differences in metacognitive skills levels between male and female students. some studies have reported that metacognitive skills of boys and girls differ, while other studies do not show significant differences (niemivirta, 1997; bidjerano, 2005; virtanen and nevgi, 2010). these findings demonstrate that both girls and boys use their metacognitive skills during learning (niemivirta, 1997; bidjerano, 2005; virtanen and nevgi, 2010). the findings of the research conducted by liliana and lavinia (2011) demonstrated that both girls and boys used metacognitive skills during learning. in this study, as a result of the motivation and effort of a student there were significant differences between boys and girls in the sub-dimensions of performance perception, perceptions of teachers about learning expectations, use of previous knowledge in problems, solving their own intellectual strengths and weaknesses, planning, accumulation of knowledge, using various learning strategies and monitoring of learning process. such information may be useful in developing educational programs for young university students to develop their cognitive functions that are important to a particular sport discipline. thus, it seems possible that these results of studies can be used in educational applications including teaching and learning in sport context. there are limited number of studies in the literature showing that there are differences in metacognitive skills between male and female university students in the integrity of gender and participation in sports activities. our study aims to investigate the potential gender and sport participation related differences in metacognitive awareness skills of male and female university students. thus, this study compares the metacognitive awareness skill levels between athletes and sedentary in turkish university male and female students. 2. material and method this descriptive study aims to compare the metacognitive skills levels between athletes and sedentary male and female university students in autumn semester of 2018-20198 at afyon kocatepe university. 2.1. participants data were collected from 434 voluntary male and 493 female university students. male participants consisted of 347 sedentary and 87 athletes while female participants were composed of 290 sedentary and 203 athletes. the athlete participants were students from coaching and recreation departments of the faculty of sport sciences, while the sedentary participants were students from the faculty of education and the faculty of economics and administrative sciences. the study was approved by the ethics committee of the afyon kocatepe university. 2.2. data collection instrument metacognitive awareness skills (mas) inventory was used for comparison of the metacognitive awareness skill levels between sedentary and athletes university students in male and females. this inventory was developed by schraw and dennison (1994) and translated into turkish by akın et al. (2007). masi is self-report inventory and consisted of two components. first component is the knowledge about cognition while second is the regulation of cognition. first component of mas contains 17 questions and three sub-dimensions including declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge. in second component of masi, there are asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 555-561 557 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 35 questions and 5 sub-dimensions including planning, information management strategies, comprehension monitoring, debugging strategies and evaluation. the lowest score is 52 points while highest score is 260 points in masi with 5 points likert type scale. this instrument ranges from 1 (always false) to 5 (always true). low scores demonstrate weak metacognitive awareness while high scores indicate strong metacognitive awareness. there is no reverse coding in masi. in the reliability study of the inventory, the cronbach alpha coefficient and test retest reliability were 0.95 and , 0.95, respectively (akın et al., 2007). table-1. comparison of metacognitive skill levels between athletes and sedentary participants in turkish male university students. subdimensions variables groups n m sd min. max. mwu z-value sig age (years) sedentary 347 20,86 2,80 17,00 42,00 13496,0 -1,551 ,121 athlete 87 21,38 2,84 18,00 29,00 total 434 20,97 2,82 17,00 42,00 knowledge about cognition declarative knowledge (8-40 points) sedentary 347 26,74 6,41 9,00 40,00 14173,5 -,882 ,378 athlete 87 27,41 5,78 14,00 38,00 total 434 26,87 6,29 9,00 40,00 procedural knowledge (4-20 points) sedentary 347 13,39 3,32 4,00 20,00 14194,0 -,865 ,387 athlete 87 13,71 3,64 6,00 20,00 total 434 13,45 3,38 4,00 20,00 conditional knowledge (5-25 points) sedentary 347 16,62 4,03 7,00 25,00 14722,5 -,357 ,721 athlete 87 16,75 3,81 4,00 25,00 total 434 16,65 3,98 4,00 25,00 regulation of cognition planning (7-35 points) sedentary 347 23,46 5,37 9,00 35,00 15048,0 -,045 ,964 athlete 87 23,48 5,00 8,00 33,00 total 434 23,46 5,29 8,00 35,00 information management strategies (9-45 points) sedentary 347 31,63 5,80 16,00 65,00 14523,0 -,547 ,584 athlete 87 31,72 5,35 15,00 45,00 total 434 31,65 5,71 15,00 65,00 comprehension monitoring (8-40 points) sedentary 347 26,99 5,35 14,00 40,00 14952,0 -,136 ,891 athlete 87 27,06 5,22 15,00 38,00 total 434 27,01 5,31 14,00 40,00 debugging strategies (5-25 points) sedentary 347 17,94 3,55 7,00 25,00 14845,5 -,239 ,811 athlete 87 17,78 3,68 5,00 25,00 total 434 17,91 3,57 5,00 25,00 evaluation (6-30 points) sedentary 347 20,55 4,15 8,00 30,00 14959,0 -,130 ,897 athlete 87 20,55 3,77 12,00 30,00 total 434 20,55 4,07 8,00 30,00 **there was significant difference between two groups at p<0.01 level. table-2. comparison of metacognitive skill levels between athletes and sedentary participants in turkish female university students. subdimensions variables groups n m sd min. max. mwu z-value sig age (years) sedentary 290 20,91 2,12 17,00 33,00 29357,0 -,051 ,959 athlete 203 20,81 1,76 17,00 26,00 total 493 20,87 1,97 17,00 33,00 knowledge about cognition declarative knowledge (8-40 points) sedentary 290 28,15 6,21 11,00 51,00 20851,5 -5,521 ,000** athlete 203 24,66 6,99 10,00 40,00 total 493 26,71 6,76 10,00 51,00 procedural knowledge (4-20 points) sedentary 290 13,96 3,23 5,00 20,00 22760,5 -4,306 ,000** athlete 203 12,50 3,60 5,00 20,00 total 493 13,36 3,46 5,00 20,00 conditional knowledge (5-25 points) sedentary 290 17,58 3,84 4,00 28,00 21509,5 -5,109 ,000** athlete 203 15,50 4,36 6,00 25,00 total 493 16,72 4,19 4,00 28,00 regulation of cognition planning (7-35 points) sedentary 290 23,96 5,04 8,00 35,00 22287,5 -4,600 ,000** athlete 203 21,52 6,07 7,00 35,00 total 493 22,96 5,61 7,00 35,00 information management strategies (9-45 points) sedentary 290 32,01 5,73 14,00 45,00 24391,0 -3,245 ,001** athlete 203 30,32 6,64 14,00 63,00 total 493 31,31 6,17 14,00 63,00 comprehension monitoring (8-40 points) sedentary 290 27,52 5,33 14,00 40,00 23458,0 -3,845 ,000** athlete 203 25,33 6,23 11,00 40,00 total 493 26,62 5,81 11,00 40,00 debugging strategies (5-25 points) sedentary 290 18,16 3,33 5,00 25,00 25105,0 -2,794 ,005** athlete 203 17,20 3,63 8,00 25,00 total 493 17,76 3,48 5,00 25,00 evaluation (6-30 points) sedentary 290 21,21 4,04 10,00 30,00 21903,5 -4,852 ,000** athlete 203 19,20 4,46 9,00 30,00 total 493 20,38 4,33 9,00 30,00 **there was significant difference between two groups at p<0.01 level. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 555-561 558 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. data analysis in absence of normal data distribution, nonparametric mann whitney u tests were performed for comparisons between athlete and sedentary participants. in addition, spearman rank order correlations were used to test relations between metacognitive skills level and sport participation in both genders. 3. results this study compares the metacognitive awareness skill levels between athletes and sedentary turkish male and female university students. in this context, comparison of metacognitive skill levels between athletes and sedentary participants in turkish male university students. was demonstrated in table 1. also, comparison of metacognitive skill levels between athletes and sedentary participants in turkish female university students was shown in table 2. in addition, comparison of metacognitive skill levels between males and females participants in sedentary group was presented in table 3 while comparison of metacognitive skill levels between males and females participants in athlete group was demonstrated in table 4. also, spearman rank order correlation coefficients among sport participation and metacognitive variables in turkish male and female university students was presented in table 5. table-3. comparison of metacognitive awareness skill levels between males and females participants in sedentary group. subdimensions variables groups n m sd min. max. mwu z-value sig age (years) males 347 20,86 2,80 17,00 42,00 46597,0 -1,631 ,103 females 290 20,91 2,12 17,00 33,00 total 637 20,88 2,51 17,00 42,00 knowledge about cognition declarative knowledge (8-40 points) males 347 26,74 6,41 9,00 40,00 43907,5 -2,774 ,006** females 290 28,15 6,21 11,00 51,00 total 637 27,38 6,35 9,00 51,00 procedural knowledge (4-20 points) males 347 13,39 3,32 4,00 20,00 45540,0 -2,073 ,038* females 290 13,96 3,23 5,00 20,00 total 637 13,65 3,29 4,00 20,00 conditional knowledge (5-25 points) males 347 16,62 4,03 7,00 25,00 43549,5 -2,935 ,003** females 290 17,58 3,84 4,00 28,00 total 637 17,06 3,97 4,00 28,00 regulation of cognition planning (7-35 points) males 347 23,46 5,37 9,00 35,00 47628,5 -1,163 ,245 females 290 23,96 5,04 8,00 35,00 total 637 23,69 5,22 8,00 35,00 information management strategies (9-45 points) males 347 31,63 5,80 16,00 65,00 48154,5 -,936 ,349 females 290 32,01 5,73 14,00 45,00 total 637 31,80 5,77 14,00 65,00 comprehension monitoring (8-40 points) males 347 26,99 5,35 14,00 40,00 47558,5 -1,194 ,233 females 290 27,52 5,33 14,00 40,00 total 637 27,23 5,34 14,00 40,00 debugging strategies (5-25 points) males 347 17,94 3,55 7,00 25,00 48877,5 -,624 ,533 females 290 18,16 3,33 5,00 25,00 total 637 18,04 3,45 5,00 25,00 evaluation (6-30 points) males 347 20,55 4,15 8,00 30,00 45736,5 -1,985 ,047* females 290 21,21 4,04 10,00 30,00 total 637 20,85 4,11 8,00 30,00 * there was significant difference between two groups at p<0.05 level. **there was significant difference between two groups at p<0.01 level. table-4. comparison of metacognitive awareness skill levels between males and females participants in athlete group. sub-dimensions variables groups n m sd min. max. mwu z-value sig age (years) males 87 21,38 2,84 18,00 29,00 8446,5 -,594 ,552 females 203 20,81 1,76 17,00 26,00 total 290 20,98 2,15 17,00 29,00 knowledge about cognition declarative knowledge (8-40 points) males 87 27,41 5,78 14,00 38,00 6681,5 -3,289 ,001** females 203 24,66 6,99 10,00 40,00 total 290 25,48 6,76 10,00 40,00 procedural knowledge (4-20 points) males 87 13,71 3,64 6,00 20,00 7131,0 -2,608 ,009** females 203 12,50 3,60 5,00 20,00 total 290 12,86 3,65 5,00 20,00 conditional knowledge (5-25 points) males 87 16,75 3,81 4,00 25,00 7332,0 -2,298 ,022* females 203 15,50 4,36 6,00 25,00 total 290 15,87 4,24 4,00 25,00 regulation of cognition planning (7-35 points) males 87 23,48 5,00 8,00 33,00 7087,0 -2,670 ,008** females 203 21,52 6,07 7,00 35,00 total 290 22,11 5,83 7,00 35,00 information management strategies (9-45 points) males 87 31,72 5,35 15,00 45,00 7404,0 -2,185 ,029* females 203 30,32 6,64 14,00 63,00 total 290 30,74 6,30 14,00 63,00 comprehension monitoring (8-40 points) males 87 27,06 5,22 15,00 38,00 7379,0 -2,222 ,026* females 203 25,33 6,23 11,00 40,00 total 290 25,85 5,99 11,00 40,00 debugging strategies (5-25 points) males 87 17,78 3,68 5,00 25,00 7933,5 -1,377 ,169 females 203 17,20 3,63 8,00 25,00 total 290 17,38 3,65 5,00 25,00 evaluation (6-30 points) males 87 20,55 3,77 12,00 30,00 7165,0 -2,554 ,011* females 203 19,20 4,46 9,00 30,00 total 290 19,61 4,30 9,00 30,00 * there was significant difference between two groups at p<0.05 level. **there was significant difference between two groups at p<0.01 level. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 555-561 559 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. spearman rank order correlation coefficients among sport participation and metacognitive variables in turkish male and female university students. **there was significant relationship between two variables at 0.01 significant levels. 4. discussion metacognitive awareness skill consisted of two components including knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition. knowledge about cognition includes the sub-dimensions of declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge. regulation of cognition is related the sub-dimensions of planning, information management strategies, comprehension monitoring, debugging strategies and evaluation (schraw and moshman, 1995). declarative knowledge refers to knowledge about the self and about the personal strategies, procedural knowledge indicates to knowledge about how to use these strategies, on the other hand, conditional knowledge implies to knowledge about when and why to use strategies. regulation of cognition refers to activities that are aimed at regulating or controlling learning such as planning, information management strategies, comprehension monitoring, debugging strategies and evaluation of the learning process (brown, 1987; baker, 1989; artz and armour-thomas, 1992). it is well known that an athlete's planning, monitoring and evaluation of his or her learning processes can contribute greatly to them to develop their athletic performance. many developing athletes can not reflect their own level of understanding of metacognitive strategies and cannot think of their skill levels correctly. therefore, carefully expressed encouragements and planned interactions during practice can help athletes identify their own mistakes and at the same time raise awareness of their level of performance. the important thing to know is that metacognition is not only thinking, but also thinking about a person's own thinking process. monitor and reflection of behavior to develop mature and successful athletes is a long-term task. the findings of an investigation indicate that metacognitive processes may be fundamental to effective cognitive control during the athletic development stages (dail, 2014). in a study aiming to compare the metacognitive skill levels between successful and unsuccessful teams in the turkish men's second volleyball league, no significant difference was found with respect to metacognitive skills between successful and unsuccessful teams’ mean values except debugging strategies. the mean of debugging strategies in top three ranking team was 10.58 % lower than unsuccessful teams. this means that top three rankings teams made fewer mistakes than unsuccessful teams experienced more errors with higher mean of debugging strategies. execution volleyball skills without errors are critical factor for high performance (sevimli, 2018). the present study highlights the relationship between engaging in sports and cognitive functions in adolescents. so, this study compares the metacognitive awareness skill levels between athletes and sedentary turkish male and female university students. it has been reported that physical and sportive activities can improve children's health and cognitive and academic performance. on the other hand, excessive sedentary lifestyle has been shown to have negative effects on cognitive functions and academic achievement in children and adolescents (syväoja, 2014). results of this study showed that there was no significant difference between sedentary and athlete participants in all sub-dimensions in male group. in female group, sedentary participants had significantly higher values than athlete counterparts in all sub-dimensions of mas. our study showed that cognitive awareness skills did not differ depending on participation in sports activities. also, there were negative significant relationships between participation sport activities and all sub-dimensions of mas scores in female while observing no significant relations among variables in males. the relationship between regular participation in sporting activities and cognitive functioning is well known (ellemberg and st-louis-deschênes, 2010). the male and female athletes in our study were students from coaching and recreation departments of the faculty of sport sciences, while the sedentary participants were students from the faculty of education and the faculty of economics and administrative sciences. matriculation exam scores of sedentary participants are generally higher than athletes. also their curriculum contains the topics related to metacognitive skills. this may be an advantage for sedentary participants. since participation level in sport activities reported by athletes may be overestimated, there are insignificant differences between two athlete and sedentary groups in the physical fitness components. we have used selfreported measures of sportive activity and sedentary behavior in this study. physical activity seems to have a potential that is not well understood and underused value to support learning. in addition, evidence of the positive effects of physical activity in healthy children and adolescents and the negative effects of sedentary behavior on cognitive functions and academic achievement are still based on inconsistent and limited research data. in generally, many studies reported conflicting results on the effect of sport on cognitive functions due to their limitations of designed study. some of these studies report positive effects, while other studies do not confirm the positive effect of sportive activity on cognitive functions (ahamed et al., 2007; syväoja, 2014; fels et al., 2015; lambrick et al., 2016). in sedentary group in our study, females had significantly higher values than males in the sub-dimensions of declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge and evaluation while males had significantly sport participation metacognitive variables males females knowledge about cognition declarative knowledge ,042 -,249** procedural knowledge ,042 -,194** conditional knowledge ,017 -,230** regulation of cognition planning ,002 -,207** i̇nformation management ,007 -,173** comprehension monitoring ,006 -,219** debugging strategies -,011 -,126** evaluation ,026 -,146** asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 555-561 560 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group higher values than females in all sub-dimensions except debugging strategies in athlete group. similar to our results, several studies showed inconsistent results regarding differences in metacognitive skills levels between male and female students. some studies have reported that metacognitive skills of boys and girls differ, while other studies do not show significant differences (niemivirta, 1997; bidjerano, 2005; virtanen and nevgi, 2010). these findings demonstrate that both girls and boys use their metacognitive skills during learning (niemivirta, 1997; bidjerano, 2005; virtanen and nevgi, 2010). the findings of the research conducted by liliana and lavinia (2011) demonstrate that both girls and boys use metacognitive skills during learning. in this study, as a result of the motivation, effort and matriculation exam scores of a student, there were significant differences between boys and girls in the sub-dimensions of mas. similarly, liliana and lavinia (2011) reported that there were significant differences between boys and girls solely on the following dimensions: the performance perception, perceptions of teachers about learning expectations, use of previous knowledge in problems, solving their own intellectual strengths and weaknesses, planning, accumulation of knowledge, using various learning strategies and monitoring of learning process. such information may be useful in developing educational programs for young university students to develop their cognitive functions that are important to a particular sport discipline. thus, it seems possible that these results of studies can be used in educational applications including teaching and learning in sport context. it can be concluded that females in the sedentary group and male in the athlete group had significantly higher mas values. participation in sport activities had no positive effect on mas scores in both genders due to selfreported measures of sportive activity. superiority of sedentary females in mas compare to athlete females may be attributed to their higher matriculation exam scores. in addition, it can be considered that there is no effective physical and sportive activity in females to make a difference in cognitive functions. moreover, it can be estimated that the level of sports participation and quality of female athletes are very low. although physical activity has emerged as one of the most favorable methods for positively influencing cognitive function (torres et al., 2018), the results of this study showed that male athletes had mathematically higher mean values in the metacognitive awareness skill levels than sedentary counterparts. males also had higher means of mas than females in both athletes and sedentary groups. inefficacy of sportive activity on mas level of female athletes may be partly due to their overrated physical activity level and lower matriculation exam scores compare to sedentary counterparts. further research is required to test the relationship between being athlete and metacognitive awareness skills in male and female university students. this study should be repeated on a well-designed larger scale and may confirm that raising metacognitive awareness levels between athlete sedentary students is desirable. increasing metacognitive awareness due to participating sport activities may enhance the development of cognitive functions during their long term development stages. references ahamed, y., h. macdonald, k. reed, p.-j. naylor, t. liu-ambrose and h. mckay, 2007. school-based physical activity does not compromise children's academic performance. medicine and science in sports and exercise, 39(2): 371-376.available at: https://doi.org/10.1249/01.mss.0000241654.45500.8e. akın, a., r. abacı and b. cetin, 2007. the validity and reliability study of the turkish version of the metacognitive awareness inventory. educational science: theory & practice, 7(2): 655680. artz, a.f. and e. armour-thomas, 1992. development of a cognitive-metacognitive framework for 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training, 2019, 5(4): 555-561 561 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group syväoja, h., 2014. physical activity and sedentary behaviour in association with academic performance and cognitive functions in schoolaged children. university of jyväskylä faculty of social sciences department of psychology , likes–research reports on sport and health 292, 20, 24 finland. torres, a., b. tennant, i. ribeiro-lucas, a. vaux-bjerke, k. piercy and b. bloodgood, 2018. umbrella and systematic review methodology to support the 2018 physical activity guidelines advisory committee. journal of physical activity and health, 15(11): 805810.available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/jpah.2018-0372. virtanen, p. and a. nevgi, 2010. disciplinary and gender differences among higher education students in self-regulated learning strategies. educational psychology, 30(3): 323-347.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01443411003606391. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 198 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 198-206, 2019 issn (e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.198.206 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group strategies for developing the 21st century skills of school principals under loei primary educational service area office kongnaren phonsa1 somkid sroinam2 phongnimit phongphinyo3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3department of educational administration, udon thani rajabhat university, udon thani, thailand. abstract in the 21st century, school leaders are expected to make school administration go smoothly including develop teaching and learning. school administrators must have a feature and skills that are outstanding and different from the previous school administrators. the purposes of this research were to study the 21st century skills of the principals, construct the development strategies, and evaluate the development strategies of the 21st century skills of the principals under loei primary educational service area office, thailand. the participants consisted of 9 experts and 203 school administrators. the 5-rating scale questionnaire, structured interviews and experts meeting were employed for data collecting. the quantity data were analyzed by using swot analysis, pnimodified technique, and descriptive statistics and the qualitative data was analyzed by using content analysis. the results led to understand the characteristics of strategies for developing the 21st century skills of the school principals in primary schools and the research application was discussed. keywords: 21st century skills, strategy, principals, primary schools, need assessment, school administration. citation | kongnaren phonsa; somkid sroinam; phongnimit phongphinyo (2019). strategies for developing the 21st century skills of school principals under loei primary educational service area office. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 198-206. history: received: 30 november 2018 revised: 3 january 2019 accepted: 7 february 2019 published: 5 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this research article was supported by a research scholarship from research and development institute, udon thani rajabhat university in academic year 2018. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 199 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 199 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 200 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 203 5. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 205 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 205 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.198.206&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6501-0926 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6796-933x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2937-325x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6501-0926 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6796-933x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2937-325x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6501-0926 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6796-933x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2937-325x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6501-0926 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6796-933x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2937-325x http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6501-0926 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6796-933x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2937-325x asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 198-206 199 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction in the 21st century, school leaders are expected to follow the organization's orders to smooth the administration of schools. the principals must work to ensure that he has acted as a leader for student learning because learning cannot occur without leadership. school leadership means leaders who have an understanding of academic content, evaluation and teaching techniques, working to enhance skills with teachers, collecting, analyzing and using information to make decisions. leaders are expected to work with teachers, students, parents, community members and various agencies to ensure that every student's learning needs are responded. some skills are very important for the leaders in the 21st century such as team building skills, conflict management skills to ensure that universal learning environments occur in every classroom where the leader of the school cannot achieve this many work missions alone (sararatana, 2013). the qualifications that school administrators need to have in order to success in the management effectively consist at least 3 things as 1) technical skill 2) human skill and 3) conceptual skill. in short, executives must be good at work in order to be able to teach or recommend subordinate teachers in their regular work and manage them to the right jobs. in addition, the administrators will be able to improve weaknesses, develop strengths, motivate teachers, and coordinate with others who are relevant as well (katz, 2005). in the past, thai education management aimed to produce some skillful people to work in factories and business units in the industrial capitalist system. that action is too obsolete because the world has changed dramatically in science, technology, economic and social management. the 21st century world economy focuses on the use of workers with knowledge, skills, concepts, problem solving ability, analyzes as well as imagination and learning new experiences. education management must be undergoing a major change to develop a smart responsible citizen for more economic competition. as a result, thailand need to reform the entire educational management structure in a systematic way to understand the problems, goals, guidelines for economic development with fairness for the benefit of most people (chiangkun, 2016). improvement of organization to achieve the specific objectives need to use appropriate strategies so the strategies are therefore a process of defining a plan to achieve success by expertise of planning (hongkrailert, 2007) including expertise in determining activities, techniques and guidelines that have competitive advantages (wattanasuphachoke, 2005). strategy is important and necessary for the organization because the organization uses strategies to work for organization goals. the strategies of each organization are determined according to the nature of the organizations so determining strategies has to know the status or condition of the organization first (hutanuwat and hutanuwat, 2002). success or failure in operations depends on the strategies that the executives use appropriately and in accordance with the situation including the characteristics of the executive, development and increasing management skills to be a modern continuously. if any organizations lack executives who are rich of knowledge, ability and skills in administration the organizations will lack anchor and lack of significant driving force. this brings the organizations to be weak and eventually lead to collapse (asavabhum, 2006). however, the thai educational conditions for the year of 2013-2014, the government's education budget is higher both the amount and proportion of the national budget and gross domestic product while the number of students, graduates began to decline due to the population in school age decreased. the proportion of public school students is rather more than private schools at the level of 80:20 (chiangkun, 2016). when considering the basic education level students achievement score of ordinary national educational test (o-net) in 2015, it found that the average score was below 50 percent furthermore. the results of programme for international student assessment (pisa) score was also lower than many other countries with similar development levels (national economic and social development plan no. 12, 2017). international institute for management development stated that the overall academic competency of the year 2016 in thailand has been ranked at 52 from 61 countries in the competition of education decreasing from 2015 (office of the education council, 2017). not only the problems of learner quality in basic education level, in terms of students quality in vocational and higher education are also have problems in the amount, knowledge, ability and various competencies as well. the education of loei province which has both public and private sessions with the basic and higher education levels, the results of quality assessment of educational management is congruent with the national level. the learning achievement, knowledge, ability and competency in various areas are lower than the standard criteria (loei province education office, 2016). in fact school administrations in both small and large sized schools perform the same role that considering the academic work as the main task because it is related to the learner quality. a lot of research results both in thailand and abroad pointed out that school administrators who adhere to academic work and academic leadership will lead the school to success. in contrast, the school administrators who do not aware the importance of academic work due to lack of knowledge, skills and academic experience are unable to lead the school to achieve the goals (sanguannam, 2010). in the digital age, school administrators must have a feature and skills that are outstanding and different from the previous school administrators. they are required to develop characteristics and skills in order to cope and design appropriate learning management, challenging and inspiring teachers and learners to create cooperation in learning, inventing, creating and developing knowledge for new knowledge or innovation (chamchoy, 2017). the current of changes in the world in the information age of the 21st century executives must have the right skills that will lead the organization be able to support the changing trend of social conditions including the progress of communication and technology which are important factors in the digital society era. therefore, school administrators as leaders of the organizations must be a person with skills for managing the changing situation. as a result, the purposes of this research were to study the 21st century skills of the principals, construct the development strategies, and evaluate the development strategies of the 21st century skills of the principals under loei primary educational service area office, thailand because the development of strategies for improving school effectiveness is the key for school success in the 21st century. 2. method 2.1. participants the participants in this research consisted of 9 experts and 203 school administrators under loei primary educational service area office, thailand. the sample size of school administrators was employed by krejcie and asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 198-206 200 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group morgan table that calculated the sample by proportion of administrators in each school. then, stratified random sampling and simple random sampling were applied for 203 school administrators. then, the 9 experts were selected by purposive sampling. 2.2. measures the instrument used in this study was used for both quantitative and qualitative data collecting. 2.2.1. instrument for collecting the quantitative data the instrument for collecting the quantitative data was a questionnaire comprised 2 parts consisted of background data of the participants and the current state and guidelines of the 21st century skills for principals. part 1 was the list to inquire general data of the participants that consisted of work position, school size and work experience. part 2 composed of the 5-rating scale questions of the current state and guidelines of the 21st century skills for principals. 2.2.2. instrument for collecting the qualitative data the instrument for collecting the qualitative data was structured interviews and experts meeting. the structured interviews was used to study the 21st century skills of the principals, construct the development strategies, and evaluate the development strategies of the 21st century skills of the principals under loei primary educational service area office, thailand. the experts meeting were used to construct the development strategies, and evaluate the development strategies of the 21st century skills of the principals. 2.3. procedure and design this research aimed to develop strategies for developing the school administrators' skills in the 21st century of schools under loei primary education area office using mixed methodology for data collecting. a four-phase research design was employed for this study. 2.3.1. phase 1 this phase studied the components of school administrators' skills in the 21st century that is divided into 2 steps comprising of document analysis and structured interviews with 9 experts. 2.3.2. phase 2 phase 2 studied the current and desirable conditions of school administrators' skills in the 21st century using the 5-rating scale questionnaire with the 203 school administrators under loei primary educational service area office, thailand. then, ordered priority the needs of school administrators' skills in the 21st century by pnimodified technique (wongwanich, 2015). 2.3.3. phase 3 this phase was the construction of strategies for development of school administrator’s skills in the 21st century of schools under loei primary educational service area office. there were 4 steps as 1) matrix analysis 2) needs grouping by considering pnimodified 3) making tows matrix and 4) examining strategies by 9 experts. 2.3.4. phase 4 finally, the strategies for developing the school administrators' skills in the 21st century were evaluated. this phase consisted of 3 parts as 1) evaluating the main strategies by the 203 school administrators 2) assessing the minor strategies, guidelines, methods and activities by the 25 policy level executives and 3) assessing the utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy by 9 experts. 2.4. statistical analysis the data was analyzed by using statistical package for the social sciences: spss. the descriptive statistics was applied for frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation. the pnimodified was applied to order priority the needs of school administrators' skills in the 21st century. then, swot analysis and tows matrix were employed for creating the strategies. moreover, content analysis was used for qualitative data. 3. results 3.1. the 21st century skills of the school principals the document analysis and experts interview indicated that there were 5 main components of the 21st century skills of school principals in thai context that consisted of management skill, technology and communication skill, thinking skill, participation and teamwork skill and self-development and others development skill. in addition, the research result also displayed 11 sub-factors of the 21st century skills of the school principals as follow;  management skill composed of 2 minor components that were new organization management skill and strategic planning skill.  technology and communication skill comprised of the use of information technology skill and communication skill.  thinking skill comprised of 2 sub components that were creative thinking skill and conceptual thinking skill.  participation and teamwork skill consisted of 3 minor factors that were the collaboration and participation skill, team building skill, team working skill. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 198-206 201 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group  self-development and others development skill composed of, self-development skill and human resources development skill. table-1. needs assessment analysis of the 21st century skills of school administrators under loei primary educational service area office. the 21st century skills of the school principals degree of success (d) importance (i) pnimodified priority mean s.d. mean s.d. .1 management skill 3.88 0.54 4.56 0.46 8118 2 2. technology and communication skill 3.85 0.69 4.57 0.50 8119 1 3. thinking skill 3186 8165 4154 8152 8117 3 4. participation and teamwork skill 4182 8161 4161 8168 8115 4 5. self-development and others development skill 4.03 0.68 4.62 8158 8114 5 overall 39.3 89.4 79.0 table-2. the first strategies for developing the 21st century skills of school principals under loei primary educational service area office. tows matrix main strategies minor strategies guidelines, methods and activities st 1. development of use and creation of information and communication technologies. 1. strengthen information technology skills in public relations by adhering universal principles 1.1 site visit to promote news dissemination for creating wonderful image of organization. 1.2 organize a workshop to enhance the ability to create a news database for promoting school education 1.3 focus on public relations seminars through various communication channels and present information in a positive way that is the strength or advantages of school. 1.4 do a workshop of unique and outstanding public relations, explain and provide information to create a better understanding for teachers, parents and relevant organizations st 2. enhance skills in using social media networks that are modern and creative media. 2.1 strengthen the school administrators to have knowledge in terms of the use of online social networks, elements of use and create personnel networks including the development between networks. 2.2 support the creation of a network of school board, parent network to communicate and manage the school. 2.3 do the principals training for using modern media creatively, choosing the right media, presenting through modern media, simple media production by oneself. wt 3. accelerate skills development, database creation for being a modern learning resource. 3.1 develop the process of creating online learning resources. 3.2 train the principals for creating and designing online learning resources. 3.3 collect data that needs to be used to create a learning resource. 3.4 develop learning resources oneself for use in school administration. wt 4. accelerate the development of social media building skills to assist in education management. 4.1 seminar for school administrators on the development of social media building skills to assist in educational management. 4.2 invite experts to provide practical training in the application of social media for teaching. 4.3 develop social media programs for teaching and self-study. 4.4 cooperate with experts for workshops on designing and producing social media in teaching and learning to encourage teachers and students. wt 5. develop information and communication technology systems to improve educational quality. 5.1 train the school administrators to develop the basic knowledge and understanding of information and communication technology for education. 5.2 provide knowledge about information and communication technology systems for basic education and ministry of education policy. 5.3 seminars and workshops to develop the use of information technology in educational management. 5.4 invite experts for workshop. 5.5 school administrators change the policy on information and communication technology of school to support the national strategy. 5.6 allocate budget to support the development of information and communication technology systems. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 198-206 202 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. the second strategies for developing the 21st century skills of school principals under loei primary educational service area office. tows matrix main strategies minor strategies guidelines, methods and activities so 2. development of organizational management skills for the 21st century 1. promote organizational management for future success 1.1 promote the knowledge and competence of school administrators for the organization management according to international standards. 1.2 design activities to promote and educate the best practices of international leading organizations. 1.3 maintain quality in order to create works for the organization in the long term. 2. promote information management to support modern organization management 2.1 promote knowledge and understanding of information to increase the efficiency of organization management. 2.2 train for management of information systems to use in organizations. 2.3 enhance using information skills of school administrators for modern organization management. 2.4 invite experts for workshop on using as a tool for information and technology converter. st 3 .enhance innovation ability to become an organizational culture. 3.1 strengthen the school administrators in school development to become an innovative organization. 3.2 invite experts for workshop on innovative organization. 3.3 site visits to strengthen the principal in stimulating and motivating personnel to be committed to work continuously. 3.4 study more the innovative organization by oneself. st 4 .strengthen and develop educational innovation 4.1 strengthen educational innovation process for school administrators. 4.2 do workshop for educational innovation creating. 4.3 create educational innovations that are used in school administration to increase efficiency. wo 5 .develop internal supervision systems 5.1 organize management processes to promote internal supervision systems. 5.2 do workshop for internal supervision. 5.3 monitor, evaluate and improve the management process to promote the internal supervision system. wt 6. accelerate the development of innovative processes in supervision and monitoring. 6.1 formulate policies to promote the development of innovation processes in supervision and monitoring 6.2 develop skills in innovation creating of supervision and monitoring. 6.3 educate for innovation. wo 7. develop quality assurance system in school. 7.1 develop a management system to enhance the quality assurance within school. 7.2 do workshop for quality assurance. 7.3 establish a policy for positive supervision in the development of internal quality assurance systems. 3.2. the result of needs assessment analysis the current condition and the desirable condition of school administrators' skills in the 21st century considered by the pnimodified index of the needs assessment analysis of school administrators under loei primary educational service area office were at the high level with the overall pnimodified of 0.17. the priority of the needs indicted that the information and communication technology skills was the most important with the pnimodified of 0.19. the organizational management skills also showed the importance with the pnimodified of 0.18. the third importance was cognitive skills revealed pnimodified of 0.17. then, the skills in participation and teamwork indicated pnimodified of 0.15. the final component was self-development and others development skills demonstrated pnimodified of 0.14 as table 1. 3.3. the strategies for developing the 21st century skills of school principals the strategies to develop the 21st century skills of principals consisted of 5 main strategies, 24 sub strategies and 73 guidelines. the 5 main strategies composed of skills in development of use and creation of information and communication technologies, development of organizational management skills for the 21st century, enhancing the 21st century thinking skills, promoting collaborative and participatory skills and the last strategy was promoting self-development and others development skills portrayed as table 2. 3.4. the result of strategies evaluation the result of strategies evaluation all of 5 strategies with 4 aspects consisted of utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy. the school administrators and the experts were strongly agree with all aspects in utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy of the strategies. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 198-206 203 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. the thirdfifth strategies for developing the 21st century skills of school principals under loei primary educational service area office. tows matrix main strategies minor strategies guidelines, methods and activities so 3. enhancing the 21st century thinking skills. 1. promote systematic thinking skills for administration. 1.1 promote systematic thinking processes for school administrators to operational goals. 1.2 do workshop for systematic thinking skills development. so 2. promote data analysis for administration and assignment. 2.1 do workshop for data collecting and analyzing. 2.2 do workshop for assigning controlling and monitoring. 2.3 practice for data collecting and analyzing wo 3. develop innovative thinking ability. 3.1 develop innovative thinking processes in school management. 3.2 train for change attitude of innovative thinking. 3.3 stimulate innovative thinking and applying, innovative presentation and creative problem solving. so 4. promoting collaborative and participatory skills. 1. encourage participatory management processes. 1.1 promote the participation in school. 1.2 encourage principals, teachers, and communities to meet, discuss, acknowledge problems, share ideas and make solutions. so 2. promote team leadership. 2.1 increase the potential in team leading of school administrators. 2.2 develop the role of the new team leader. st 3. enhance working skills with other people or other organizations. 3.1 strengthen the ability of school administrators to work effectively with others. 3.2 organize activities to develop the special characteristics of "team leaders" and "followers" to balance the team. wo 4. develop motivation building skills for teamwork. 4.1 develop strategies to create a team of excellence. 4.2 create and develop the team to the goal. st 5. develop effective team work. 5.1 develop the potential of school administrators to work as a team. 5.2 achieve organizational goals with effective team. so 5. promoting selfdevelopment and others development skills 1 .strengthen professional administrators 1.1 promote the process of becoming a professional executive of school administrators. 1.2 seminars to develop the characteristics of being a professional executive in the 21st century. 1.3 organize activities to promote professional administrators according to the standard of operation. st 2. strengthen the organization to professional learning community 2.1 strengthen the ability of school administrators in developing school to professional learning community. 2.2 study the model of success in becoming a professional learning community. 2.3 organized activities to develop professional learning community. wo 3. develop research capabilities of school administrators and teachers. 3.1 seminar for developing the ability of school administrators in solving problems with research methodology. 3.2 support research to solve problems within the school. 3.3 do research onself. wt 4. accelerate the capacity building in accordance with the national strategy to enhance schools. 4.1 develop a strategic leader to meet the country's policy. 4.2 provide policies on organization-level strategies to be consistent with national strategies. 4. discussion and conclusion 4.1. the 21st century skills of the school principals the 5 components of the 21st century skills of school principals in thai context that consisted of management skill, technology and communication skill, thinking skill, participation and teamwork skill and self-development and others development skill. in addition, the research result also displayed 11 sub-factors of the 21st century skills of the school principals as follow;  management skill composed of 2 minor components that were new organization management skill and strategic planning skill. the new organization management skill is consistent with hoyle et al. (2005) stated that skills that make the success of school administrators in the 21st century are organizational management skills. moreover, strategic planning skill is the important skill of school administrators (williams, 2007).  technology and communication skill comprised of the use of information technology skill and communication skill. the use of information technology skill is in accordance with wilson's concept. he explained that new society needs new leadership. the administrators must have many skills but one of the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 198-206 204 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group necessary skills is that the skills to use ict technology widely (wilson, 2013). the communication skills is congruent with the concept of viriyaphan (2007). she said that executives not only being a good person, but also having communication skills. that is important to every human enabling people with the ability to communicate effectively.  thinking skill comprised of 2 sub components that were creative thinking skill and conceptual thinking skill. creative thinking skill is consistent with robinson (2012) who wrote the online article of “crawling out-of-the-box: 5 new skills for 21st century school leaders”1 he stated that in order to become a school leader in the 21st century, administrators should have creative thinking skill. furthermore, conceptual thinking skill is the definitions, meaning or concepts that represent knowledge and understanding of the common characteristics of objects or events. therefore, people with skills to create ideas can create words which is abstract to concrete. skillful people can make clearly and easily to understand (laoreandee, 2011).  participation and teamwork skill consisted of 3 minor factors that were the collaboration and participation skill, team building skill, team working skill. the collaboration and participation skill is also congruent with hoyle et al. (2005) indicated that in any works executives must focus on the participation of personnel in the organization and community as a basis for development and decision-making for various policies. for the team building skill, phongwarin (2009) said that difficult work can be achieved easily by unity. collaboration of people by building trust and encouraging unity and good relationship each other affect members commit to work for achieving the objectives or goals together. team working skill is consistent with national association of secondary school principals (nassp) (2013) concluded that core skills in the 21st century include teamwork skills, seeking and supporting participation of team members.  self-development and others development skill composed of, self-development skill and human resources development skill. self-development skill is congruent with bournon's concept. he discussed about the leaders in the 21st century that if they want to be bound by others, they must develop themselves for the others benefit (brunson, 2008). moreover, the office of the civil service (2010) explained the human resources development skill that effective leaders must have caring and developing others. this means to promote learning or development in the long term focusing on the intent to develop others and the consequences rather than just acting. 4.2. the result of needs assessment analysis the current condition and the desirable condition of school administrators' skills in the 21st century considered by the pnimodified index of the needs assessment analysis of school administrators under loei primary educational service area office were at the high level with the overall pnimodified of 0.17. the priority of the needs indicted that the information and communication technology skills was the most important with the pnimodified of 0.19. the organizational management skills also showed the importance with the pnimodified of 0.18. the third importance was cognitive skills revealed pnimodified of 0.17. then, the skills in participation and teamwork indicated pnimodified of 0.15. the final component was self-development and others development skills demonstrated pnimodified of 0.14. current conditions of school administrators' skills in the 21st century of schools under loei primary educational service area office was at a high level overall. this may be because school administrators nowadays follow the mission assigned by the agency. there is communication for understanding. the principals able to analyze the environment and use to determine the strategies and missions of schools which are consistent with the policy of the agency and the context of schools. in addition, the principals can establish an effective action plan that can lead to practical work in the school effectively1 there is supervision and monitoring the teachers’ performance in school to be in accordance with the action plan to achieve both short and long term goals. this is consistent with phongsriwat (2005) who said that executives need to use administrative skills to perform the role to achieve the expected goals. however, the performance skills priority depends on situations. desirable condition of the 21st century school administrators' skills in schools under loei primary educational service area office was at a high level overall. this is probably because lpeo (2016) established loei province educational development plan of 2017 2021 with clear objectives that are congruent with amdonkloy (2013) concluded that executives must know change so that they able to develop oneself and think about new change strategies. 4.3. the strategies for developing the 21st century skills of school principals the strategies to develop the 21st century skills of principals consisted of 5 main strategies, 24 sub strategies and 73 guidelines. the 5 main strategies composed of skills in development of use and creation of information and communication technologies, development of organizational management skills for the 21st century, enhancing the 21st century thinking skills, promoting collaborative and participatory skills and the last strategy was promoting self-development and others development skills.  development of use and creation of information and communication technologies consisted of 5 minor strategies as 1) strengthen information technology skills in public relations by adhering universal principles 2) enhance skills in using social media networks that are modern and creative media. 3) accelerate skills development, database creation for being a modern learning resource. 4) accelerate the development of social media building skills to assist in education management. 5) develop information and communication technology systems to improve educational quality. this congruence with the ministry of education (2017) specified the national education plan 2017 2036 has set guidelines for the development of digital technology systems for education of all age’s people1 the first was to develop digital technology systems for education, teaching and learning for lifelong learning which is flexible and accessible. the second was to develop the quality and standard of distance learning management in various systems such as dlit, dltv and etv. the third was to establish the institute for educational technology and educational technology development fund. then, promote and support the establishment of television stations and production of educational programs including the development of infrastructure for digital asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 198-206 205 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group technology systems for education. finally, expand the high-speed internet service network covering all areas that is enough for learners.  development of organizational management skills for the 21st century consisted of 7 minor strategies as 1) promote organizational management for future success. 2) promote information management to support modern organization management 3) enhance innovation ability to become an organizational culture. 4) strengthen and develop educational innovation 5) develop internal supervision systems. 6) accelerate the development of innovative processes in supervision and monitoring. 7) develop quality assurance system in school. this is similar to juito (2009) said that organization management strategies to develop executive skills must have a variety of strategies. in addition, every strategies must manage the organization to be flexible and responsive to customer needs quickly.  enhancing the 21st century thinking skills consisted of 3 minor strategies as 1) promote systematic thinking skills for administration. 2 promote data analysis for administration and assignment. 3) develop innovative thinking ability. this is consistent with chamchoi (2560) discussed the modeling or innovation modeling skills that they are the combination of imagination and real ability of school administrators to analyze, integrate, synthesize, hypothesize in working and try to design or simulate ideas or draft innovations. for school administrators, that means ability to analyze, synthesize and integrate creatively in order to find a management approach or action method to a clear image. then, use administration capabilities to manage personnel development and integrate various technologies to facilitate work for achieving the school goals.  promoting collaborative and participatory skills consisted of 5 minor strategies as 1) encourage participatory management processes. 2) promote team leadership. 3) enhance working skills with other people or other organizations. 4) develop motivation building skills for teamwork. 5) develop effective team work. this is rather the same as marshall and oliva (2010) said that the skills and attributes for the 21st century, school leaders need to have is collaboration. effective leaders will attract all stakeholders to create a caring community. people can talk and have positive social interaction. the most important is they can work in a multi-cultural environment.  promoting self-development and others development skills consisted of 4 minor strategies as 1) strengthen professional administrators 2) strengthen the organization to professional learning community 3) develop research capabilities of school administrators and teachers 4) accelerate the capacity building in accordance with the national strategy to enhance schools. this is similar to center for creative leadership (2005 cited in phromsri (2014)) proposed that the use of power appropriately help subordinates to develop themselves effectively and efficiently. this way means the administrators can manage employees and assign them effectively. moreover, the administrators should allow employees to have opportunity for growing their career, develop their potential, and focus on providing low-level employee participating in the decision. furthermore, the administrators should suggest each employees how to achieve organizational expectations, explain and answer questions. finally, the administrators have to listen carefully to matters related to work, interact with employees and motivate them like to develop their skills continuously. 4.4. the result of strategies evaluation the result of strategies evaluation all of 5 strategies with 4 aspects consisted of utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy. the school administrators and the experts were strongly agree with all aspects in utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy of the strategies. this probably because moe (2017) has defined the roles of various levels of agencies in the fourth strategies at the regional level. the agencies compose of the regional education office, provincial education office, educational service area office and other relevant departments. the significant duties consist of 5 items. 1) promoting the management of education and learning in the appropriate format to create opportunities and improve the quality of life for all target learners. 2) developing information systems for school, regional, and central management level. 3) encouraging agencies and schools in the area to use computer programs through digital technology systems to record and organize information for schools. 4) promoting and supporting the development of relevant personnel to access accurate and up-to-date information and utilize for management and educational development. 5) performing other associated tasks. 5. recommendations the administrators of the educational service area office should study the strategies from this research as a guideline for determining strategies for developing the skills of the school administrators to have appropriate skills and to develop schools effectively. in addition, school administrators and agencies that develop new school administrators should study the strategies from this research to be an alternatives for defining self-development plans and developing new executives to manage the schools for the 21st century. the further research should study the strategies for development of school administrators skills in the 21st century at the regional or national level due to the skills of school administrators in the 21st century, derived from this research, is a synthesis of skills from various sources not only specific areas. references amdonkloy, s., 2013. the role of school administrators in the 21st century. journal of graduate studies, 7(1): 1-7. asavabhum, s., 2006. modern education administration. ubon ratchathani: ubonkij of vet. brunson, j., 2008. 21st century leadership skills. available from https://buildingconfidentleaders.com/21st-century-leadership-skills/ [accessed may 17, 2017]. chamchoy, s., 2017. school administration in the digital age. phitsanulok: naresuan university press. chiangkun, w., 2016. thai educational conditions in 2014-2015: how to reform thai education to catch up the world in the 21st century? , bangkok: dee dee. hongkrailert, p., 2007. personality and leadership. bangkok: management siam university. hoyle, r., w. english and e. steffy, 2005. skill for successful 21st century school leader. lanham, md: the rowman & littlefield publishing group, inc. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 198-206 206 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group hutanuwat, n. and n. hutanuwat, 2002. swot: community business strategy planning. 6th edn., ubon ratchathani: office of academic resources, ubon ratchathani university. juito, s., 2009. vision and strategy of modern leaders. nonthaburi: sukhothai thammathirat open university press. katz, r.l., 2005. skills of an effective administrators. harvard: business review, 30(6): 45-61. laoreandee, w., 2011. model and learning management strategy to develop thinking skills. 7th edn., nakhon pathom: silpakorn university. loei province education office, 2016. loei provincial 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out-of-the-box: 5 new skills for 21st century school leaders. available from http://the21stcenturyprincipal.blogspot.com/2012/12/crawling-out-of-box-5-new-skills-for.html [accessed september 20, 2016]. sanguannam, c., 2010. theories and practices in educational administration. 3rd edn., nonthaburi: bookpoint. sararatana, w., 2013. a new paradigm of education in the case of the 21st century education. bangkok: thippawisut. viriyaphan, t., 2007. executive skills. bangkok: gp cyber print. wattanasuphachoke, t., 2005. strategic and competitive management. bangkok: chulalongkorn university. williams, c., 2007. management. 4th edn., mason oh: thomson south-western. wilson, e.j., 2013. leadership in the digital age. available from http:// http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.454.1745&rep=rep1&type=pdf [accessed december 24, 2016]. wongwanich, s., 2015. needs assessment. bangkok: chulalongkorn university publishing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://the21stcenturyprincipal.blogspot.com/2012/12/crawling-out-of-box-5-new-skills-for.html 592 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 592-601, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.592.601 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group problems and needs in english language teaching from the viewpoints of preservice english teachers in thailand nutcha oeamoum1 chuanpit sriwichai2  ( corresponding author) 1,2school of liberal arts, university of phayao, thailand. abstract this study aimed to explore the problems and needs in english language teaching (elt) of preservice english teachers in thailand related to three aspects 1) curriculum and content, 2) instructional materials, and 3) teaching methods. the participants were thirty fourth-year preservice english teachers from five universities located in northern, central, northeastern, and eastern thailand. the findings from questionnaire and semi-structure interview revealed that the problems and needs in elt related to curriculum and content were insufficient number of study hours of each english course, inadequate courses for specific english skills, outdated curriculum, and inapplicable content to the real life. therefore, the participants needed the curriculum focusing on real-world context and communication skills (e.g. speaking and listening skills). the main problems related to instructional materials were non-diverse, insufficient, and ineffective teaching aids, so the participants required teachers to use diverse instructional materials and integrated web-based technology in english classes. finally, the major problems and needs related to teaching methods included lack of specialists in teaching specific courses and uninteresting teaching technique focusing on lecturing grammar rules and reading rather than practicing communication skills; hence, the pre-service english teachers mainly expressed the needs to learn using games, role play, and oral presentation as these methods were interesting and could increase opportunities to produce target language. keywords: problems in elt, needs in elt, pre-service english teachers, english curriculum and content, english instructional materials, english teaching methods. citation | nutcha oeamoum; chuanpit sriwichai (2020). problems and needs in english language teaching from the viewpoints of pre-service english teachers in thailand. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 592-601. history: received: 13 july 2020 revised: 19 august 2020 accepted: 23 september 2020 published: 2 october 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 593 2. research questions ........................................................................................................................................................................ 593 3. research objectives ....................................................................................................................................................................... 593 4. literature review ........................................................................................................................................................................... 593 5. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 594 6. the findings .................................................................................................................................................................................... 596 7. discussion and recommendations .............................................................................................................................................. 599 8. conclusions ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 600 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 601 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.592.601&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2202 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3965-8646 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-8385 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 593 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by exploring the problems and needs in english language teaching (elt) of pre-service english teachers in thailand related to three aspects 1) curriculum and content, 2) instructional materials, and 3) teaching methods. 1. introduction in this globalization era, it is undeniable that english is significant as it is used as international language by people all over the world. similarly, thai people use english to communicate with others from different countries with different cultural backgrounds. even though thai is used as official language in thailand, english is regarded as the first foreign language that thai people should learn and practice. english is essential for meaningful interactions in various situation (kongkerd, 2013). the significance of english could be obviously seen when thailand joined the asean economic community (aec). pinyonatthagarn (2016) stated that english proficiency of thai people has become one of the most important concerns because english has been used as the working language among asean countries. therefore, english has played influential roles in thailand. realizing the significance of english ministry of education has placed english as a compulsory subject for all levels of education in thailand. english curriculum of thailand aims to enhance students’ interest in language learning, create positive attitude toward english, promote english communication ability (ministry of education, 2001). to achieve the ultimate goal of english curriculum, one important movement to produce qualified english teacher is to develop five-year pre-service teacher programs. these programs have been undertaken in thai universities in order to prepare english teachers who can be effective agent of change in the future (vibulphol, 2015). the development of english teacher educational program shows an attempt to improve thai learners’ english proficiency. in thailand, klaichim (2009) revealed that the main problems of english teaching and learning for pre-service english teachers included the language skills, learning behaviors, english curriculum and course content, teaching materials, teaching methods, teacher’s performance, and institutes support. while noom-ura (2013) found that preservice teachers mentioned the problems related to curriculum and textbooks, assessment and other factors supporting teaching success. moreover, they mentioned that the lack of perseverance in practicing or seeking more opportunities to use english contributed to their lack of confidence in using the language for communication. they were aware of continuing professional developments and availability of professional development programs that are relevant to all areas contributing to their career success: their english competencies, and pedagogical strategies for teaching and assessing productive skills, such as listening-speaking, and writing skills. additionally, hill (2014) stated it is important that pre-service teachers obtain appropriate training on how to work well with english language learners. they should be prepared proper education program which better train them with teaching methods and activities. to find the solutions of the problems, satisfy the pre-service english teacher’s needs, and provide them suitable program, the systematic study should be conducted to elicit essential information. the results of the study can be used to develop and improve english curriculum and instruction for thai pre-service english teachers in order to achieve efficacious goals of english teaching and learning in school context. the study will provide understanding of the problems in elt that pre-service english teachers are facing, and it can be a guideline for policymakers and course designers for designing appropriate english courses and curriculum to prepare productive pre-service english teachers in the future. 2. research questions 1. what are the problems in english language teaching from the viewpoints of pre-service english teachers in thailand? 2. what are the needs in english language teaching from the viewpoints of pre-service english teachers in thailand? 3. research objectives 1. to explore the problems in english language teaching from the viewpoints of pre-service english teachers in thailand. 2. to explore the needs in english language teaching from the viewpoints of pre-service english teachers in thailand. 4. literature review 4.1. pre-service teacher program according to kukari (2003) and jamjuree (2017) pre-service teacher program is teacher education schemes to prepare student teachers before they become in-service teachers. these pre-service teachers perceived teaching as the transmission of prescribed knowledge from the teacher to students, learning was viewed as the absorption and the memorization of prescribed knowledge, and a teacher’s main role was to transmit prescribed knowledge to students. it was perceived that teacher should possess knowledge which is helpful for personal and society’s growth. these preconceptions of teaching and learning are often not recognized, confirmation or fully understood by both asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 594 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the pre-service teachers who hold them and their students at the beginning of the teacher education program and in the process of learning and teaching. the impact of these preconceptions on the system of learning to teach may not be seen or clearly understood by the pre-service teachers and the lecturers who teach them in their teacher education program. as mentioned above, pre-service teachers are crucial part of education, so it is important that they receive appropriate training on how to work with students. in thailand, one way to provide proper preparation for pre-service teachers is to extend the length of their education program. in 2002, the program was expanded from four to five years. in five-year program, the prospective teachers have to spend four years in university for doing course work and another one year in school for practicing teaching (jamjuree, 2017; vibulphol, 2015). the curricula of this program aim to produce good teachers in compliance with the standard of thailand qualifications framework for five-year bachelors of education programs and teacher’s council of thailand (tct) program accreditation standards. these two sets of standards require teacher students to gain at least 160 credit hours of four major categories of courses including general education, pedagogical courses, main study courses, and free elective courses. also, they need to gain firsthand experience in classroom during taking course work, obtain 240 hours of teaching practice in school for one academic year and conduct classroom research during this practicum period, and participate in teachership enhancement activities during five years of study. when pre-service education program meets assessment criteria, the teachers’ council of thailand will accredit them, and the graduates can obtain a professional license automatically (tct, 2014 cited in vibulphol (2015)). 4.2. problems and needs in english language teaching in thailand in terms of pre-service english teachers in thailand, klaichim (2009) explored the problems and needs in english language teaching and learning at the institutes of physical education. the participants were 368 students from 7 fields of study and all 33 english teachers of all the 17 institutes. student and teacher questionnaires were administered to inquire about the degree of seriousness of problems obstructing english teaching and learning and their needs in english teaching and learning. the results revealed that the very serious problems concerned the students' language skills. in addition, the students and the teachers considered these following problems as moderately serious: students learning behaviors, students’ language skills, english curriculum, course content, teaching materials, teaching methods, teacher’s performance, and institutes support. both groups identified the needs in the student’s preparatory english course, the student’s language skills practice, the language activities, the increase of study hours and number of english courses, the provision of teaching aids, the course assessment techniques, and the teacher-training. furthermore, noom-ura (2013) investigated english-teaching problems in thailand and thai teacher's professional development needs. this research aimed to explore english-teaching problems related to teachers, students, assessment, curriculum and textbooks, and other factors and also to investigate the needs for the professional development of english language teachers from 77 secondary schools in central thailand. the result showed that the participating teachers viewed the problems at the moderate level as involving themselves, curriculum and textbooks, assessment and other factors supporting teaching success. the participants reported a high level of problems resulting from students’ lack of experience in english and inadequate language background. the students lack of perseverance in practicing or seeking more opportunities to use english also contributed to their lack of confidence in using the language for communication. although the teachers need of professional development and professional development funds were at a moderate level, they were aware of continuing professional developments and availability of professional development programs. they showed a high level of interest and value to all areas contributing to their career success: their english competencies, and pedagogical strategies for teaching and assessing productive skills, such as listening-speaking, and writing skills. 5. methodology 5.1. research design this study utilized quantitative and qualitative approaches. the questionnaires were administered to collecting quantitative data, then the semi-structured interviews were undertaken to elicit the qualitative data. 5.2. participants the participants of the study were 30 fourth-year pre-service english teachers from five universities located in northern, central, northeastern, and eastern regions of thailand. they were selected by using snowball technique. at first, the researcher identified potential participants who were pre-service english teachers of the university of phayao and knew pre-service english teachers from other universities. next, those participants were asked to recruit other pre-service english teachers from other universities to participate in the study. 5.3. research instruments there were 2 research instruments that used in this study: 1. questionnaire asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 595 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the questionnaire was adapted from the study of klaichim (2009). it was divided into 3 parts. part one was about demographic data of the participants. in part two, five-point rating scale was employed (1= strongly disagree, 5= strongly agree) to elicit participants’ problems in english teaching and learning in three aspects: curriculum and content, instructional materials, and teaching methods. for part three, ranking scales were used to require the participants to express their needs in four dimensions: english curriculum and content, instructional materials, teaching methods, and assessment techniques. 2. semi-structure interview questions the semi-structured interview was employed to collect qualitative data from the participants. the interview consisted of three parts. part one was about demographic data of the participants. part two was used to ask about the problems in english teaching and learning in three aspects, and part three asked about their needs in english teaching and learning in four aspects. the investigated dimensions in the interview were in congruence with those in the questionnaire. 5.4. research instrument validity and reliability 5.4.1. the questionnaire the questionnaire was evaluated by 3 experts using index of item objective congruence (ioc), and the ioc score was at 1.00. then it was tried out with 10 thai pre-service english teachers from the university of phayao to calculate reliability using cronbach’s alpha coefficient, and the scores was at 0.71. according to tavakol and dennick (2011) acceptable values of alpha range from 0.70 to 0.95. the cronbach’s alpha coefficient value of the questionnaire, hence, was appropriate. 5.4.2. the semi-structure interview questions the interview questions were evaluated by 3 experts using index of item objective congruence (ioc), and they gained the score at 1.00. 5.5. data collection the data were collected during the 2nd semester of academic year 2019. the researcher contacted fourth-year pre-service english teachers of five universities located in northern, central, northeastern, and eastern thailand and asked for help in distributing and collecting the questionnaires. then, the researcher interviewed the interviewees who voluntarily participated from five universities by using web-based application and face-to-face interview. 5.6. data analysis the participants’ demographic data from part one of the questionnaire were analyzed using percentage. the data of problems in english teaching and learning from part two of the questionnaire were studied using mean and standard deviation. the interpretation of mean score of the participants’ problems was as follows (prachanant, 2012): 4.50 5.00 means the highest problem 3.50 4.49 means high problem 2.50 3.49 means moderate problem 1.50 2.49 means low problem 1.00 1.49 means the lowest problem for the data of the participants’ needs from part three, mean and standard deviation was used to analyzed, the criteria for interpretation was as follows (prachanant, 2012): 4.50 5.00 means the highest need 3.50 4.49 means high need 2.50 3.49 means moderate need 1.50 2.49 means low need 1.00 1.49 means the lowest need the data obtained from the interviews were analyzed by content analysis following this procedure: the researcher read all of the answers, coded them by the keywords found in the answers, and finally figured out the frequencies of each category. 5.7. ethical approval the researchers contacted the participants one-by-one three weeks prior to the distribution of the questionnaire to introduce themselves, inform the objectives, provide any information required by the participants. also, the participants were asked for the permission of the data collection and interview. an appointment was made beforehand with the participants who were able to attend the interview. the questionnaire data and the transcripts asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 596 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of the interview data were kept securely for a period of three years in the cabinet and on the computer requiring password to login. 6. the findings 6.1. demographic data of the participants the participants’ demographic information was presented in the following table: table-1. demographic data of the participants. background number percent gender male 8 26.7% female 22 73.3% total 30 100% university university of phayao 13 43.3% phranakhon rajabhat university 5 16.6% thepsatri rajabhat university 4 13.3% nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university 4 13.3% nakhonsawan rajabhat university 2 6.6% rambhai barni rajabhat university 2 6.6% total 30 100% based on table 1, the demographic data of 30 participants were classified by gender and university. in term of genders, 22 respondents (73.3 %) were female and eight respondents (26.7%) were male. regarding their universities, 13 students (43.3 %) were studying at the university of phayao. five of them (16.6 %) were phranakhon rajabhat university’s students. four students (13.3 %) were from thepsatri rajabhat university while four students (13.3 %) were studying at nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university. other four students were from nakhonsawan rajabhat university (6.6 %) and rambhai barni rajabhat university (6.6 %). 6.2. problems in english language teaching of pre-service english teachers this section reported the findings of the questionnaire and the interview analysis of problems in learning english of pre-service english teachers in three aspects; english curriculum and content, instructional materials, and teaching methods. 6.2.1. the data of problems in english language teaching of pre-service english teachers from the questionnaire 6.2.1.1. problems in english language teaching related to english curriculum and content the results of the problems of english curriculum and content based on the questionnaire were presented as follows: table-2. the problems related to english curriculum and content. no problem 𝒙 sd meaning 1 courses for pre-service english teachers are not interesting. 3.56 1.13 high problem 2 the number of compulsory english courses for pre-service english teachers is insufficient. 3.46 1.14 moderate problem 3 the number of hours for each english course for pre-service english teachers is insufficient. 3.66 1.06 high problem 4 contents in the textbook used cannot be applied in real life. 3.60 1.19 high problem 5 there are not enough specific english courses for each skill (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) for pre-service english teachers. 3.63 1.27 high problem 6 there are not enough elective courses that suit pre-service english teachers’ interest. 3.30 1.05 moderate problem table 2 showed the problems in english teaching and learning related to curriculum and content. according to the table , it can be seen that the insufficient number of hours for each english course was the highest problem for pre-service english teachers (�̅� = 3.66), followed by not enough specific english courses for each skill (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) (�̅� = 3.63), inapplicable contents in the textbook (�̅� = 3.60), uninteresting courses (�̅� = 3.56), not enough compulsory english courses (�̅� = 3.46). there are not enough elective courses that suit pre-service english teachers’ interest (item 6) was rated at the lowest mean (�̅� = 3.30). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 597 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6.2.1.2. problems in english language teaching related to instructional materials the results of the problems of instructional materials based on the questionnaire were presented below: table-3. the problems analysis of instructional materials. no problem 𝒙 sd meaning 1 english textbooks and learning materials are insufficient. 3.30 0.99 moderate problem 2 visual aids (e.g. tv, computers, audio clips, projectors and screens) are insufficient. 3.33 1.06 moderate problem 3 visual aids (e.g. tv, computers, audio clips, projectors and screens) are not effective. 3.27 0.98 moderate problem 4 there are not enough opportunities to use the language laboratory. 3.30 1.19 moderate problem 5 language laboratories are insufficient. 3.20 1.17 moderate problem 6 instructional materials are not diverse. 3.47 0.90 moderate problem table 3 demonstrated problems of instructional materials. all items were at moderate level. the results from the questionnaires showed that item 6 “instructional materials are not diverse” was rated highest (�̅� = 3.47). the second highest mean was item 2 “visual aids (e.g. tv, computers, audio clips, projectors and screens) are insufficient (�̅� = 3.33)”. the lowest mean was item 5 “language laboratories are insufficient” (�̅� = 3.20), and the second lowest mean was item 3 “visual aids (e.g. tv, computers, audio clips, projectors and screens) are not effective” (�̅� = 3.27). 6.2.1.3. problems in english language teaching related to teaching methods the results of the problems related to teaching methods based on the questionnaire were presented below: table-4. the problems analysis of teaching methods. no problem �̅� sd meaning 1 there are not enough specialists in teaching english courses. 4.03 1.13 high problem 2 teaching aids (pictures, authentic materials, cds, etc.) for teaching pre-service english teachers are not interesting. 3.63 1.07 high problem 3 teaching techniques for pre-service english teachers are not interesting. 3.67 1.06 high problem 4 teaching techniques for pre-service english teachers are not diverse. 3.60 1.07 high problem 5 there are not enough techniques for teaching pre-service english teacher in each skill (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) 3.63 1.19 high problem 6 there is more emphasis on books than practice. 3.50 1.20 high problem as seen in table 4, the all items of problems in the aspect of teaching method gained high mean scores. the highest mean was item 1 “there are not enough specialists in teaching english courses” (�̅� = 4.03). item 3 “teaching techniques for pre-service english teachers are not interesting” obtained the second highest mean (�̅� = 3.67). the lowest mean score was item 6 “there is more emphasis on books than practice” (�̅� = 3.50). 6.2.2. the data of problems in english language teaching of pre-service english teachers from the interviews this part was elicited from 5 interviewees who were 4th years pre-service english teachers of five universities located in northern, central, northeastern, and eastern thailand. the data were classified into 3 sections corresponding to 3 aspects in the questionnaire and described as follows: 6.2.2.1. problems in english language teaching related to english curriculum and content the findings from the interviews revealed that english curriculum and content for teaching pre-service english teachers were difficult, incomprehensive, and out of date. apart from that the number of hours for each english course for pre-service english teachers was not sufficient. it was noted: “the english curriculum is not up to date. also, vocabulary and grammar structures in some units are too difficult.” “the content is incomprehensive and difficult for students” “the number of hours for each english course for pre-service english teachers is not enough” 6.2.2.2. problems in english language teaching related to instructional materials the students mentioned about ineffective and insufficient instructional materials. one of them mentioned: “problems of instructional materials is that teaching aids are not available and insufficient. it makes learning more difficult to learn” there are not enough teaching aids, and some existing aids broke down, so teaching is not interesting.” asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 598 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6.2.2.3. problems in learning english related to teaching methods the participants stated in the interview that class instruction focused on lecturing content rather than practicing language skills, so they had problems in communication, especially listening and speaking. they also reported that teachers lacked some english skill. they reported: “teachers teach the rules of grammar rather than let us practice english skills.” “teaching frequently focuses on reading and writing not speaking and listening, so i can’t speak and listen english well when i meet foreigners in real life” “teachers use old-fashioned teaching methods that focus on lectures, not speaking and listening, so i cannot speak english in my daily life.” “sometimes, teachers mispronounce some words. this makes students misunderstand the meanings, so teacher should be specialized in english language.” 6.3. the needs in english language teaching of pre-service english teachers this section reported findings from the questionnaire and interviews of the needs in learning english of preservice english teachers in four aspects including english curriculum and content, instructional materials teaching methods, and assessment technique. 6.3.1. the findings of the needs in english language teaching of pre-service english teachers from the questionnaire 6.3.1.1. the needs in english language teaching related to english curriculum and content the results of the needs of english curriculum and content based on the questionnaire were as follows: table-5. the need analysis of english curriculum and content. no need �̅� sd meaning 1 listening 3.10 1.52 moderate need 2 speaking 3.17 1.49 moderate need 3 reading 2.93 1.11 moderate need 4 writing 2.67 1.37 moderate need 5 translation 2.67 1.47 moderate need table 5 showed that the needs related to english curriculum and content for teaching five kinds of english skills namely listening, speaking, reading, writing, and, translation were at moderate scale. the participants rated the need of curriculum and content for speaking skill most (�̅� = 3.17), followed by listening (�̅� = 3.10), reading (�̅� = 2.93), writing (�̅� = 2.67) and translation skills (�̅� = 2.67). 6.3.1.2. the needs in english language teaching related to instructional materials the results of the needs of instructional materials based on the questionnaire were presented as follows: table-6. the need analysis of instructional materials. need �̅� sd meaning audio-visual aids (tv, dvd players, cds) 2.90 1.27 moderate need fully-equipped language laboratory 3.03 1.33 moderate need prescribed textbooks for specific disciplines 2.77 1.25 moderate need cable tv 2.93 1.26 moderate need web based application (online learning platform, facebook, youtube, google) 3.30 1.44 moderate need according to table 6, the needs of pre-service english teachers concerning the instructional materials were at a moderate level. it can be seen that web based application was the highest need for the participants (�̅� = 3.30), followed by fully-equipped language laboratory (�̅� = 3.03), cable tv (�̅� = 2.93), audio-visual aids (�̅� = 2.90) and prescribed textbooks for specific disciplines (�̅� = 2.77) respectively. 6.3.1.3. the needs in english language teaching related to teaching methods the results of the needs of teaching methods based on the questionnaire were presented below: based on table 7, the needs of language games, role-playing, oral presentation, and group discussion were at highest level. however, the needs of using debate, making bulletin boards of english, producing english newsletters, broadcasting in english within the university, english signing contest, and english skills competitions were at high scale. the needs of using role-playing as a teaching method were the highest (�̅� = 4.77). the second and third highest teaching method needed were group discussion (�̅� = 4.67) and oral presentation (�̅� = 4.63), respectively. the needs of broadcasting in english within the university was rated lowest (�̅� = 3.87). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 599 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. the need analysis of teaching methods. no need 𝒙 sd meaning 1 language games 4.53 3.36 the highest need 2 role-playing 4.77 3.44 the highest need 3 oral presentation 4.63 2.72 the highest need 4 group discussion 4.67 2.69 the highest need 5 debate 4.40 2.68 high need 6 making bulletin boards of english 3.90 2.63 high need 7 producing english newsletters 4.00 2.49 high need 8 broadcasting in english within the university 3.87 2.33 high need 9 english singing contest 3.93 2.45 high need 10 english skills competitions 4.47 2.97 high need 6.3.2. the findings of the needs in english language teaching of pre-service english teachers from the interviews the data from the interview were classified into three sections corresponding to three aspects in the questionnaire and described as follows: 6.3.2.1. the needs in english language teaching related to english curriculum and content the findings of the interview showed that pre-service english teacher needed curriculum and content for learning speaking, listening and vocabulary. it was noted: “the curriculum should have more courses for listening and speaking skills to train students for communication in real life.” “the vocabulary used in daily communication should be added to the content of english subjects.” “i want to learn more vocabulary.” 6.3.2.2. the needs in english language teaching related to instructional materials the interviewees mentioned that they wanted to learn through various and modern teaching materials. it was revealed: “the teachers should use various teaching materials to make the class more interesting and effective learning, such as videos, worksheets, word cards, picture cards, and internet-based technology.” “i want to learn by using authentic materials such as newspaper, posters, vdo clip, simulations, modern technology.” 6.3.2.3. the needs in english language teaching related to teaching methods the participants mentioned about role-play, games and interviewing activity. it was noted: “i want teaching activities that promote interaction and speaking skills such as role playing, games and interview.” “i think role-play and games are the interesting teaching methods, but actually every activity has both advantages and disadvantages. it is based on the course and how the teacher will apply it.” “i like interviewing activity because i think it is necessary in real life” 7. discussion and recommendations 7.1. problems and needs in english language teaching of pre-service english teachers related to english curriculum and content the findings disclosed the problems in teaching and learning english of pre-service english teachers related to english curriculum and content were at a high level. the participants rated the insufficient number of hours for each english course was the highest problem for pre-service english teachers, followed by inadequacy of specific english courses for each skill (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), and the content in course book could not be applied to real-world context. these findings were similar to those of the interviews. it was mentioned that the number of learning hours in each english course is not sufficient. moreover, the interviewees stated the curriculum was out of date, some parts of content were too difficult. the problems agreed with the needs related to english curriculum and content. the results of the questionnaire for need analysis showed that pre-service english teachers wanted the curriculum focusing on speaking and listening skills most. in the same way, the interview findings indicated that the interviewees needed curriculum providing them more opportunities to practice using english in speaking and listening. also, they requested learning vocabulary used in real life. it could be seen that pre-service english teachers put emphasis on learning and practicing communication skills rather than grammar structures and reading. although they are going to be the teachers who is knowledge agent of english in the future, they did not need to be expert in grammar rules and vocabulary only, but they also needed to be skillful in producing and listening target language. the findings were in congruence with the study of noom-ura (2013). the previous study found that english teachers of primary schools in central thailand needed to improve their communication skills, and they were not asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 600 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group satisfied to their abilities to speak and listen to english. teachers realized the importance of teaching listening and speaking as productive skills, and english teachers had a desire to take training courses the promote their english proficiency. furthermore, klaichim (2009) revealed students and teachers at institution of physical education needed more learning hours for compulsory english subjects. they believed that the students would gain more knowledge. also, they requested english courses for enhancing particular english skills. 7.2. problems and needs english language teaching of pre-service english teachers related to english instructional materials regarding problems in english language teaching related to instructional materials, the highest problem identified in the questionnaire was the lack of diversity of instructional materials and insufficient visual aids. likewise, the interviewees mentioned existing instructional materials were ineffective and insufficient. when looked at need analysis, web-based application was the highest need for the questionnaire respondents, and the interviewees told that they wanted the teachers to use diverse and modern teaching aids such as educational websites and platforms. this indicated that the pre-service english teachers had a desire to learn by using internetbased technology in english classes. incorporating information communication technology into english classroom is inevitable feature of teaching and learning in 21st century, because technology can help improve learners’ language skills. according to jacqui (2015) technology enables learners to be independent in learning, and it deepens learning because resources that learners are interested in are utilized. adipat, thumvichit, petchprasert, and iamsirirak (2019) found that the pre-service and in-service english teachers needed learning through technology as it was an essential tool for language learning. 7.3. problems and needs in english language teaching of pre-service english teachers related to teaching methods in terms of problems in english language teaching related to teaching methods, all items in this category were at a high level. the item with the problems of insufficiency of specialists in teaching english was responded highest, followed by the item with problem of employing uninteresting teaching techniques. the results of the questionnaire were supported by the findings of the interview. the participants unveiled the instructors emphasized on grammar rules, reading, and writing skills and mostly carried out class by lecturing rather than having students to practice communicative skills. all of these led to inability of english communication of real life. the needs related to teaching methods were in line with the problems they were confronting. based on the questionnaire, the pre-service english teachers needed to learn through game, role play, oral presentation, and discussion most. similarly, it was mentioned in the interview that teaching methods that the participants wanted were role-play and games because these methods were interesting. the findings were in consistence with the study of adipat et al. (2019). in the previous study, pre-service english teachers told that their english classes focused on teaching grammar structures and vocabulary. they were not given chances to produce and use english in real-world contexts, and it was stated that they needed skillful and knowledgeable english instructors. furthermore, klaichim (2009) found that english teachers should be specialized in teaching specific english skills. moreover, rayan (2016) suggested that the students needed role-plays, games, songs, multimedia, and information technology in class because these teaching techniques, especially role-plays, games, and songs were fun and easily attracted student’s attention. these teaching methods could promote communication in a natural way because role-plays require interaction and commutainment (communication through entertainment) activities among characters. this study surveyed the problems and needs in teaching and learning english of pre-service english teachers from thirty respondents of the questionnaire and five interviewees. the further study should extend the scale of the study by recruiting more participants in order to deepen understanding about problems and real needs of preservice english teachers in thailand. in addition, the presents study identified the problems and needs of the preservice english teachers. the further study should investigate the existing curriculum, teaching aids and materials to find the gaps between the learners’ needs and current situation. with the findings of that research, the policy makers, curriculum designers, and educators will be able to design the curriculum that appropriately and effectively satisfy the learners’ needs and meet the requirement of the real-world market. 8. conclusions the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data disclosed the problems and needs in elt related to curriculum and content were insufficient study hours of each english course, inadequate courses for specific english skills, out-of-date curriculum, and inapplicable content to the real-world communication. thus, the curriculum focusing on real life context and communication skills were needed. the main problems related to instructional materials were non-diverse, insufficient, and ineffective teaching materials, so the use of diverse instructional materials and integrated web-based technology in english classes was requested. the major problems and needs related to teaching methods included the shortage of experts in teaching specific courses and uninteresting teaching technique focusing on lecturing grammar structures and reading rather than practicing communication skills. therefore, the needs to learn using games, role play, and oral presentation were mentioned because these methods were interesting and could increase opportunities to produce target language. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 592-601 601 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references adipat, s., thumvichit, a., petchprasert, a., & iamsirirak, e. (2019). needs and expectations for an elt master’s program in thailand: voices from preand in-service teachers. kasetsart educational review, 34(1), 10-20. hill, a. (2014). preparing pre-service teachers to work with english language learners. honors theses. retrieved from https://ecommons.udayton.edu/uhp_theses/. jacqui, m. (2015). 13 reasons for using technology in the classroom. retrieved from: https://jacquimurray.net/2014/02/19/13-reasons-forand-3-against-technology-in-the-classroom/. jamjuree, d. (2017). teacher training and development in thailand. journal of research and curriculum development, 7(2), 7-19. klaichim, s. (2009). problems and needs in english language teaching and learning at the institutes of physical education. unpublished master's thesis. prince of songkla university, songkla, thailand. kongkerd, w. (2013). teaching english in the era of english used as a lingua franca in thailand. executive journal, 33(4), 3-12. kukari, j. a. (2003). preconceptions of teaching and learning of three secondary school pre service teachers in papua new guinea papua new guinea. journal of education, 5(1), 43-55. ministry of education. (2001). the basic education curriculum b.e. 2544 (a.d. 2001). bangkok: the express transportation organization of thailand (eto). noom-ura, s. (2013). english teaching problems in thailand and thai teachers professional development needs. english language teaching, 6(11), 139-147. available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n11p139. pinyonatthagarn, d. (2016). asean community and thailand’s need for english proficiency for better job opportunities. paper presented at the 4th rajabhat university national and international research and academic conference, burirum, thailand. prachanant, n. (2012). needs analysis on english language use in tourism industry. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 66, 117-125. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.253. rayan, a. (2016). what are their characteristics of a successful teacher of english? retrieved from: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/albertrayan/characteristics-highly-effective-teachers-english. tavakol, m., & dennick, r. (2011). making sense of cronbach’s alpha. international journal of medical education, 2011(2), 53-55. vibulphol, j. (2015). thai teacher education for the future: opportunities and challenges. journal of education studies, 43(3), 50-64. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n11p139 http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n11p139 http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/albertrayan/characteristics-highly-effective-teachers-english http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/albertrayan/characteristics-highly-effective-teachers-english 93 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5 no. 1, 93-96, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.93.96 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between positivity and fear of happiness in people applying to graduate programs in physical education and sports department osman tolga togo1 çağdaş caz2  ( corresponding author) 1university of harran, school of physical education and sports, şanlıurfa, turkey 2university of yozgat bozok, school of physical education and sports, yozgat, turkey abstract positivity is a positive concept for both students and teachers and academics. this people' perspectives are influencing many factors. for this reason, a positive point of view is also an important factor. this perspective affects many negative situations. one of these situations is fear of happiness. the aim of the study with this thought is to examine the relationship between positivity and fear of happiness in people applying to the graduate programs of physical education and sports department. study sample consists of 38 women and 83 men who applied to the graduate programs of the department of physical education and sports of marmara university in the spring semester of 2016-2017 academic year. data were collected using the 'positivity scale' developed by caprara et al. (2012) and adapted to the turkish language by çıkrıkçı et al. (2015). data were descriptively analyzed using t-test, one-way analysis of variance (anova) and pearson correlation test for independent groups. participants’ positivity and fear of happiness levels do not significantly differ by gender and age. however, there is a moderate negative correlation between their positivity and fear of happiness levels. keywords: fear of happiness, positivity, physical education and sports, graduate program. citation | osman tolga togo; çağdaş caz (2019). the relationship between positivity and fear of happiness in people applying to graduate programs in physical education and sports department. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 93-96. history: received: 19 june 2018 revised: 1 august 2018 accepted: 5 september 2018 published: 23 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 94 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 94 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 94 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 95 5. discussion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................... 95 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 96 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.93.96&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/388 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0471-4436 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0262-6114 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/388 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0471-4436 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0262-6114 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/388 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0471-4436 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0262-6114 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/388 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0471-4436 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0262-6114 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 93-96 94 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction happiness is an important concept in human life and has attracted the attention of researchers for many years. everyone is supposed to seek and achieve happiness (eid and diener, 2001). everyone regardless of nationality and age wants to be happy and strives to achieve happiness (braun, 2000). however, joshanloo argues that the perception of happiness varies widely across cultures (joshanloo, 2013). having examined various theoretical findings, joshanloo et al. (2014) suggest that some people may have a negative attitude towards happiness and develop a fear of happiness. fear of happiness mainly refers to the belief that happiness is a harbinger of bad things to come. some argue that fear of happiness is more prevalent especially in eastern cultures (bryant and veroff, 2007; joshanloo, 2013). since the 1980s, research has addressed happiness (güllü, 2018; myers and diener, 1995; lyubomirsky and lepper, 1999; abdel-khalek, 2006; uğurlu and şakar, 2015) and related concepts such as job satisfaction (çınar, 2008; eğinli, 2009; başer and özel, 2013) quality of life (yıldırım and bayrak, 2017; ekinci, 2006; uğurlu and şakar, 2015) positivity (çıkrıkçı et al., 2015) and burn-out gümüşdağ et al. (2018). the concept of positivity, in general, focuses on the development of strengths and assumes the role of inhibition in people. positive psychological interventions, including components such as gratitude, awareness and use of potentials, improve the mood of patients with depression (grossman et al., 2007). positivity can be thought of as a tendency for people to evaluate their own lives in all aspects and in a good way. the current study is thought to be important for higher education and academics, teachers and students. because it is the source for similar studies. in particular, it is important to determine the positivity of students and to determine the fear of happiness. having been an integral part of life since the dawn of mankind, sports play an important role in developing positive attitudes and overcoming the fear of happiness. sports have not only physical, spiritual and mental benefits but also communal and social benefits. people who are capable of instilling these benefits in society are those who are engaged in sports. in this context, the aim of the study is to examine the relationship between positivity and fear of happiness in people who apply to the graduate programs of physical education and sports department. the questions to which this study sought answers are as follows: 1) what is the level of positivity and fear of happiness among students? 2) do positivity and fear of happiness differ by gender? 3) do positivity and fear of happiness differ by graduate status? 4) do positivity and fear of happiness differ by age? 5) do positivity and fear of happiness differ by material and emotional support received after graduation? 6) is there a correlation between positivity and fear of happiness? 2. method 2.1. participants the study sample consisted of 38 women and 83 men who applied to graduate programs of the department of physical education and sports of marmara university in the spring semester of 2016-2017 academic year. 2.2. data collection and data collection tolls data were collected using the 'positivity scale' developed by caprara et al. (2012) and adapted to the turkish language by çıkrıkçı et al. (2015) the “fear of happiness scale” developed by joshanloo (2013) and adapted to the turkish language by demirci et al. (2016) and a personal information form developed by the researchers. the positivity scale consists of 8 items (one of which is reverse scored) rated on a 5-point likert-type scale (ranging from "strongly disagree = 1" to "strongly agree = 5"). the fear of happiness scale (fhs) consists of 5 items rated on a 7-point likert-type scale (ranging from "strongly disagree = 1" to "strongly agree = 7"). the higher the score the higher the fear of happiness. the personal information form consists of items pertaining to participants’ demographic characteristics such as gender, age, graduate status, material and emotional support from family. study population consisted of those who applied to graduate programs of the department of physical education and sports of marmara university, and visited the department on the day of professional orientation and interview for admission to the graduate programs. they were informed of the data collection procedure, and informed consent was obtained from them prior to participating in the study. data were collected from those who agreed to participate in the study. the survey forms (130) were checked after data collection, and those that were not filled out properly (9) were excluded from the study. 2.3. data analysis all parametric assumptions were met (skewness, kurtosis/table 1). t test and one-way analysis of variance (anova) were used for independent groups. tukey multiple comparison test and pearson correlation test were used to determine between which groups the statistical difference existed. 3. findings table-1. distribution of scale scores scale n mean sd skewness kurtosis min. max. positivity 121 2.38 0.929 .758 .109 8.00 40.00 fear of happiness 121 2.31 1.357 1.066 .576 5.00 35.00 skewness and kurtosis +/(3)(10) (kline, 2005). the data were normally distributed (positivity skewness = .758; positivity kurtosis = .109; fear of happiness skewness = 1.066; fear of happiness kurtosis = .576). participants have a moderate level of positivity (mean: 2.38) and low level of fear of happiness (mean: 2.31). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 93-96 95 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. distribution of scale scores by gender scale women (n=38) mean ± sd men (n=83) mean ± sd t p positivity 2.26± 0.87 2.43±0.95 -.939 .350 fear of happiness 2.10± 1.28 2.42± 1.38 -1.190 .236 p<0.05 there was no statistically significant difference in positivity (p= .350 > 0. 05) and fear of happiness (p = .236> 0.05) scores between male and female participants. table-3. distribution of scale scores by graduate status scale within area (n=75) mean ± sd non-area (n=46) mean ± sd t p positivity 2.36 ± 0.96 2.40± 0.87 -.228 .820 fear of happiness 2.22 ± 1.25 2.44 ± 1.51 -.858 .392 p<0.05 there was no statistically significant difference in positivity (p=.820 > 0. 05) and fear of happiness (p =.392 > 0.05) scores between participants who had a bachelor's degree in physical education and sports and those who had a bachelor's degree in other areas. table-4. distribution of scale scores by age scale 20 to 23 years of age (n=25) mean ± sd 24 to 27 years of age (n=59) mean ± sd ≥ 28 years of age (n=37) mean ± sd f p positivity 2.29±0.85 2.45± 0.99 2.31± 0.88 .420 .658 fear of happiness 2.20± 1.33 2.41± 1.37 2.21±1.36 .338 .714 p<0.05 participants’ positivity (p= .658> 0. 05) and fear of happiness (p = .714> 0.05) scores did not significantly differ by age. table-5. distribution of scale scores by material and emotional support from family scale support (n=41) mean ± sd no support (n=44) mean ± sd partial support (n=36) mean ± sd f p positivity 2.24 ± 0.88 2.43 ± 0.92 2.46 ± 0.98 .704 .496 fear of happiness 2.29± 1.45 2.35 ± 1.39 2.27 ± 1.23 .044 .957 p<0.05 participants were divided into three groups; 1) those receiving support from their families 2) those receiving no support from their families and 3) those receiving partial support from their families. however, there was no statistically significant difference in positivity (p=.496> 0. 05) and fear of happiness (p =.957> 0.05) scores among the three groups. table-6. result of correlation analysis between positivity and fear of happiness positivity n r p fear of happiness 121 -.341 .000 p<0.05 the results showed that there was a moderate negative correlation between participants’ positivity and fear of happiness scores (r = -.341, p<0.05) (table 6). 4. conclusion the data were analyzed and found to be normally distributed. the results showed that participants had a moderate level of positivity and low level of fear of happiness. there was no statistically significant difference in positivity and fear of happiness levels between male and female participants, indicating that they have a similar tendency in terms of both positivity and fear of happiness. there was no statistically significant difference in positivity and fear of happiness levels between participants who had a bachelor's degree in physical education and sports and those who had a bachelor's degree in other areas. participants’ positivity and fear of happiness levels did not significantly differ by age either, indicating that age has no effect on positivity and fear of happiness. participants’ positivity and fear of happiness levels did not significantly differ by material and emotional support that they receive from their families. the correlation results showed that there was a moderate negative correlation between participants’ positivity and fear of happiness levels, indicating that the higher the positivity the lower the fear of happiness, and vice versa. 5. discussion and recommendations there was no statistically significant difference in positivity and fear of happiness levels between male and female participants. telef (2016) reported a statistically significant difference in positivity and fear of happiness levels between male and female participants. participants’ positivity and fear of happiness levels did not asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 93-96 96 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group significantly differ by age either. ünüvar et al. (2015) compared the positivity and fear of happiness levels of students from different universities. the correlation results showed that there was a moderate negative correlation between participants’ positivity and fear of happiness levels. yellow and cakir (2016) found a significant relationship between the subjectivity of fear of happiness and psychological well-being. according to akyüz et al. (2017) fear of negative evaluation has an effect on neither impulse buying nor horizontal individuality, however, fear of negative evaluation has a positive effect on normative compatibility, which also has a positive effect on impulse buying. demirci et al. (2016) found that fear of happiness is negatively correlated with life satisfaction and subjective happiness. türk et al. (2017) reported a significant correlation between fear of happiness and life satisfaction. the sample of this study consisted of only people who applied to graduate programs in physical education and sports department of marmara university in istanbul. further studies should, therefore, include participants who apply to graduate programs of different departments of universities in other cities. references abdel-khalek, a.m., 2006. measuring happiness with a single-item scale. social behavior and personality: an international journal, 34(2): 139-150.available at: https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2006.34.2.139. akyüz, a.m., h. ayyıldız and f. yetim, 2017. an investigation on the possible effects of horizontal individuality and/or normative compatibility in the relationship between fear of negative evaluation and impulsive-compulsive buying behavior. karadeniz technical university social sciences institute social sciences journal, 7(14): 261-274. başer, m.u. and a. özel, 2013. job satisfaction levels of primary school teachers. einternational journal of educational research, 4(1): 4762. braun, s., 2000. the science of happiness: unlocking the my steries of mood. new york: wiley. bryant, f.b. and j. veroff, 2007. savoring: a new model of positive experience. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. caprara, g.v., g. alessandri, n. eisenberg, a. kupfer, p. steca, m.g. caprara, s. yamaguchi, a. fukuzawa and j. abela, 2012. the positivity scale. psychological assessment, 24(3): 701-712. çıkrıkçı, ö., m. çiftçi and b. gençdoğan, 2015. the psychometric properties of the turkish form of the positivity scale. the journal of happiness & well-being, 3(1): 57-76. çınar, l., 2008. marriage satisfaction: gender roles and help search attitude. ankara: master's thesis, gazi university. demirci, i̇., h. ekşi, s. kardaş and d. dinçer, 2016. the validity and reliability of turkish version of fear of happiness scale. kastamonu education journal, 24(4): 2057-2072. eğinli, a.t., 2009. job satisfaction in employees: for job satisfaction of public and private sector employees on a research. ataturk university journal of economics and administrative sciences, 23(3): 35-52. eid, m. and e. diener, 2001. norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures: inter-and intranational differences. journal of personality and social psychology, 81(5): 869-885.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.81.5.869. ekinci, y., 2006. teachers' jobs according to social skill levels of elementary school administrators comparison of satisfaction and work stress. gaziantep: master's thesis, gaziantep university. grossman, p., u. tiefenthaler-gilmer, a. raysz and u. kesper, 2007. mindfulness training as an intervention for fibromyalgia: evidence of postintervention and 3-year follow-up benefits in well-being. psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 76(4): 226-233.available at: https://doi.org/10.1159/000101501. güllü, s., 2018. employee happiness in sports businesses. international journal of social sciences and education research, 4(3): 547-559. gümüşdağ, h., b.b. cihan and a. kartal, 2018. burnout in professional soccer. iv. international exercise and sport psychology congress. 13-15 april 2018, i̇stanbul. joshanloo, m., 2013. the influence of fear of happiness beliefs on responses to the satisfaction with life scale. personality and individual differences, 54(5): 647-651.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.11.011. joshanloo, m., z.k. lepshokova, t. panyusheva, a. natalia, w.-c. poon, v.w.-l. yeung, s. sundaram, m. achoui, r. asano and t. igarashi, 2014. cross-cultural validation of fear of happiness scale across 14 national groups. journal of cross-cultural psychology, 45(2): 246-264.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022113505357. kline, r.b., 2005. principles and practice of structural equation modeling: methodology in the social sciences. new york: guilford press. lyubomirsky, s. and h.s. lepper, 1999. a measure of subjective happiness: preliminary reliability and construct validation. social indicators research, 46(2): 137-155. myers, d.g. and e. diener, 1995. who is happy? psychological science, 6(1): 10-19. telef, b.b., 2016. validity and reliability study of validity and reliability of positive experiences scale in school. journal of human sciences, 13(2): 2475-2487.available at: https://doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v13i2.3562. türk, t., a. malkoç and o.o. kocabıyık, 2017. psychometric properties of fear of happiness scale turkish form. current approaches in psychiatry, 9(1): 1-12. uğurlu, f.m. and m. şakar, 2015. comparison of emotional intelligence and happiness levels of university students who are exercising and sedentary. akademik sosyal araştırmalar dergisi, 3(17): 461-469. ünüvar, p., f. çalışandemir, ö. tagay and f. amini, 2015. preschool children's perception of happiness (turkey and afghanistan sample). mehmet akif ersoy university faculty of education journal, 1(34): 31-22. yellow, t. and s.g. cakir, 2016. the relationships being. journal of education and teaching research, 5(25): 222-229. yıldırım, m. and bayrak, c, 2017. the participation of university students in physical activities based on sport and the effect of the students’quality of life on academic achievement and socialisation (sample of eskisehir osmangazi university). hacettepe university. journal of education, doi: 10.16986/huje.2017032928. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 80 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 80-92, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.80.92 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group reflections of mathematical and mathematics educational values on pedagogical formation students' teaching preferences seher mandaci şahin1 ilknur özpinar2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of mathematics education, faculty of education, nigde omer halisdemir university, nigde, turkey. abstract as in all fields, values are an important component of classroom‟s affective environment in mathematics course, too, and have a significant impact on students‟ mathematical efforts. as it would directly affect classroom practices and learning, it is deemed important to determine preservice teachers‟ value profiles. this research aimed to address mathematical and mathematics educational values of mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation in terms of constructivist and positivist approaches and examine these values along with their opinions on the use of different teaching strategies, methods and techniques (smts) in courses. the participants were 288 mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation at two public universities. as data collection instruments, mathematical and mathematics educational values scale and a written interview form were used to associate their values with their teaching preferences. the study concluded a significant difference in favor of constructivist values when comparing participants‟ levels of having positivist values with their levels of constructivist values. the findings achieved from the interview forms indicated that majority of participants preferred student-centered teaching strategies, methods and techniques; in other words, they regarded themselves rather as constructivists. keywords: mathematical values, mathematics educational values, constructivist and positivist approaches, teaching preferences, pedagogical formation certificate program, teacher candidates. citation | seher mandaci şahin; ilknur özpinar (2020). reflections of mathematical and mathematics educational values on pedagogical formation students' teaching preferences. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 80-92. history: received: 15 november 2019 revised: 23 december 2019 accepted: 29 january 2020 published: 24 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 81 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 82 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 83 4. discussion and results ................................................................................................................................................................... 90 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 91 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.80.92&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1354 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9815-3878 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1354 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9815-3878 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1354 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9815-3878 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1354 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9815-3878 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-0991 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 81 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the „mathematical and mathematics educational values‟ is a topic need to be stressed out in mathematics education as they would directly affect classroom practices and learning. in this research, mathematical and mathematics educational values of mathematics students addressed in terms of constructivist and positivist approaches and examined these values along with their opinions on the use of different teaching strategies, methods and techniques (smts) in courses. hereby, it is believed that educators will reach important clues to make self-check on this subject. 1. introduction one of the most important elements in the educational system is teachers beyond any doubt. teacher training has been conducted within the responsibility of faculties of education for long years but different practices have been resorted to for satisfying the increasing need for qualified personnel in certain periods and alternative programs have been applied in teacher training. one of these practices is pedagogical formation training which allows individuals who graduated from different faculties to receive a certificate if the required conditions are met and to teach as a profession (kartal and afacan, 2012; tepeli and caner, 2014). introduced as a result of the thought that teachers trained in faculties of education especially in the us had insufficient content knowledge by 1950s, pedagogical formation training is a certificate program that gives individuals who graduated from different faculties the chance to become teachers (yenice and ozden, 2017). however, this practice brought about the problem of training qualified teachers. content knowledge is an important attribute that preservice teachers should possess; however, there are other competencies that teachers need to have. if teachers trained do not have the required competencies, the desired outcome in education-instruction will cannot be achieved (arslan and ozpınar, 2008). hence, success of educational system depends on qualified teachers who have content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. yet, teaching is a profession that requires affective content competencies as well as cognitive content competencies (kartal et al., 2012). teachers of future need to have sufficient knowledge in topics such as content knowledge, methodological knowledge and instructional techniques and to get an idea of when and how to apply what they know in teachinglearning environments. in this century, teachers are expected to be equipped with knowledge on instructional technologies, computer-aided teaching and pedagogical content knowledge as well as content knowledge. it is aimed with the knowledge acquired in teaching formation that preservice teachers learn how to use this knowledge in case of issues encountered in the practice and in problem solving and that special teaching methods used in the domain in regard to this training are learned (mustang, 2002). today, it is stated that curricula should be prepared in a conceptual approach (meb, 2013). this brings along the adoption of contemporary learning approaches such as multiple intelligence theory and instruction sensitive to individual differences as well as activity, student-centricity and thematic approach (gömleksiz and kan, 2007). thus, curricula aim the transformation of mathematics classrooms into active learning environments where mathematics is not presented but performed, and accordingly, they assign the role of a guide beyond being an explainer to teachers and the role of an inquirer beyond being a listener to students (meb, 2013). some of the important factors by which teachers are influenced when playing this role are their philosophies and ideals (mustang, 2002). reflections of these philosophies and ideals in learning environment appear to be the values possessed by teachers. values have a key role within factors affecting the teaching-learning process. indeed, mathematical values are available in the vision and general objectives of the mathematics curriculum although they are not directly mentioned in it dede (2006a); kus (2009). opinions on values in education differ by their philosophical and moral sources and the nature of the related domain. no agreement on the term “value” is observed in the literature (lim and ernest, 1997). it is therefore quite difficult to define value (swanader and soedjadi, 1988). given the definitions made in the literature, it is possible to say that values, as one of the cognitive domain factors, refer to concepts or ideas that an individual create about the importance of something or that they are abstractions which will help explore the importance of something (swanader and soedjadi, 1988; dede, 2006a). based on this definition, values can be considered as our judgements about what is good and bad (swanader and soedjadi, 1988). values play an important role in defining personal and social identities and are about the idea that a phenomenon is important or not (dede, 2006a; pathania, 2011). as in all domains, values are an important component of classroom‟s affective environment in mathematics course, too, and therefore, have a significant impact on students‟ mathematical efforts (fitzsimons et al., 2001). bishop et al. (1999) addressed values about mathematics teaching in three main headings: general educational values, mathematical values and mathematics educational values. general educational values include moral values such as integrity, helpfulness, courtesy, responsibility, and humility. mathematical values refer to values that reflect the nature of mathematical knowledge such as rationality-objectivism, control-progress, and openness-mystery. some of the mathematics educational values corresponding to these values include accuracy, openness, estimation, consistency, creativity, effective organization, liking, flexibility, open-mindedness, continuity, and systematical study (bishop et al., 1999; seah et al., 2001). durmus et al. (2008) mentioned that these said values represent the values based on objectivist (positivist-behavioral and cognitive approaches) and subjective (constructivist approach) foundations and classified values of control, privacy, accuracy as objective values and values of rationality, progress, creativity, entertainment, flexibility and open-mindedness values as subjective values, and they included the openness value in both groups. since values are about the perception of world, there are differences in line with the philosophical perspective. hence, approaches in education include their own values. behavioral and cognitive approaches assume that knowledge is independent of individual, which results in the transfer of information to learner. learners happen to acquire the information which exists regardless of them in the way that their teachers present it using certain methods, and behaviors desired in learners should be particularly highlighted by teachers (baki, 2008; temizöz and ozgün-koca, 2008). such practices are called traditional approaches in the literature (castronova, 2002). on the other hand, according to the constructivist approach, information is not independent of individual and cannot be asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 82 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group directly transferred from one to another. when such perspective is taken for the nature of knowledge, the authority in the construction or acquisition of information is learner themselves (baki, 2008; temizöz and ozgün-koca, 2008). although it is about values in education, its investigation in mathematics education is somewhat a new domain, and the pioneering studies started by bishop, clarkson and their colleagues with values in mathematics project (vamp) in australia (bishop et al., 1999). in the literature, there are several studies on values in mathematics education. some of these studies address the measurement of mathematics educational values (durmus and bıçak, 2006; dede, 2009; luttrell et al., 2010; liman et al., 2013; pa and tapsir, 2013) the examination of mathematical values in mathematics course books (cao et al., 2006; dede, 2006a;2006b) and similarities and differences between the values of mathematics and science teachers (bishop et al., 2006; bishop, 2008). studies on mathematical and mathematics educational values in turkey are in limited number and their samples consist of preservice teachers attending the faculties of education or in-service teachers (durmus and bıçak, 2006; durmus et al., 2008; dede, 2009; durmus, 2011). durmus et al. (2008) classified values in two main categories (positivist-objective, constructivist-subjective) and aimed to explore the values of primary education teachers. they concluded that the participants regarded themselves rather as objectivists (constructivists) in regard to mathematical and mathematics educational values. in the study examining the mathematics teaching values of preservice primary and secondary education teachers, dede (2009) found that the participants had higher levels of accepting the constructivist values than the levels of accepting positivist levels. durmus (2011) examined the value profiles of preservice teachers studying in the final year of the department of mathematics teaching and concluded a significant difference in favor of constructivist values in the comparison between levels of having positivist values and constructivist values. given the studies performed with preservice teachers receiving pedagogical formation training, it is observed that their opinions on teaching practice have been received (tepeli and caner, 2014; biber and tuna, 2015) their attitudes toward teaching profession have been examined (eraslan and cakıci, 2011; kartal and afacan, 2012; ozkan, 2012; polat, 2013) it has been aimed to identify their metaphors (dündar and karaca, 2013; nartgün and gökçer, 2014) and their professional competencies have been investigated (adıgüzel, 2013; süral and sarıtas, 2015). most of the studies conducted to date on teachers‟ thoughts on mathematics teaching and their classroom behaviors in the literature showed that there was a similarity between the thoughts and classroom practices of teachers (temizöz and ozgün-koca, 2008). however, many mathematics teachers do not consider that they reflect some of their values during their instruction. changing this perception comes across as one of the greatest obstacles to be overcome (bishop, 2001). values reflected by teachers in mathematics classrooms are also associated with their pedagogical identities (chin et al., 2001) and directly affect the practices in the classroom setting. for instance, teachers who regard mathematics as being open to everyone, esthetical and logical would expect their students to structure mathematical knowledge in their own ways (durmus et al., 2008). values are a topic to be stressed out in mathematics education as they would directly affect classroom practices and learning (bishop, 2001; durmus et al., 2008). furthermore, importance of approaches utilized by teachers in their instructions and the effect of their opinions on the use of different teaching approaches on teaching practices cannot be ignored (temizöz and ozgün-koca, 2008). since teachers relay values to their students either implicitly or explicitly during the teachinglearning process with such importance of values having come into the open (bishop et al., 1999; bishop, 2001) it is deemed important to determine value profiles of pedagogical formation students as well as preservice teachers who will graduate from faculties of education and to examine these values along with their opinions on practices of the teaching-learning process. to this end, this research addressed mathematical and mathematics educational values of mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation in terms of constructivist and positivist approaches and examined these values along with their opinions on the use of different teaching strategies, methods and techniques (smts) in courses. in line with this aim, the main research problem is “are mathematical and mathematics educational values of mathematics students who receive pedagogical formation training effective on teaching smts they prefer to use?” the sub problems to be investigated in the context of this main problem include: i) what approaches do mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation training have in regard to mathematical and mathematics educational values? ii) are genders of mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation training effective on their mathematical and mathematics educational values? iii) are mathematical and mathematics educational values of mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation training associated with their previous learning experiences? iv) do mathematical and mathematics educational values of mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation training affect their preferences of teaching smts and their designs of learning environment? 2. method 2.1. study group in this study aiming to address mathematical and mathematics educational values of mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation training in regard to constructivist and positivist approaches and to examine them along with their opinions on the use of different teaching smts in courses, the participants were 288 students attending the department of mathematics in faculty of arts and sciences at two public universities in central anatolian region (126) and black sea region (162). the study was performed during the special teaching methods course in the pedagogical formation training program. special teaching methods course cover general objectives of pedagogical content knowledge; methods, strategies, instruments and materials; detailed examination of curriculum of the related field; main field-specific concepts, relationship between these concepts and pedagogical content knowledge, and classroom practices. during the classroom practices, the students were informed of teaching and learning smts based on group work, problem solving, learning by exploring, expository teaching, demonstration, trip-observation, roleplaying (drama), case study, definitions, experimental activities, games and computer-aided teaching (alkan and altun, 1998; altun, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 83 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2004; baki, 2008; altun, 2014). next, it was ensured that the students designed learning-teaching processes and conducted micro applications in the mathematics classrooms. 2.2. data collection instruments in this study, the “mathematical and mathematics educational values scale” developed by durmus and bıçak (2006) was applied to the participants in the first place. the 5-point likert scale consisting of 2 factors and 34 items (14 items for positivist values, 20 items for constructivist values) have a cronbach‟s alpha internal consistency coefficient of 0.73 while other internal consistency coefficients are 0.64 for positivist items and 0.74 for constructivist items. the scale items were evaluated in accordance with the criteria in table 1. cronbach‟s alpha internal consistency coefficient calculated for the data that were collected in this study was found to be 0.86. the ranges accepted for the scale items are given in table 1. table-1. item ranges for mathematical and mathematics educational values. option strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree weight 1 2 3 4 5 limits 1.00-1.79 1.80-2.59 2.60-3.39 3.40-4.19 4.20-5.00 source: durmus and bıçak (2006). other than this scale, the participants were asked to answer the four-question interview form prepared to associate their values and teaching methods. the questions asked to the participants are as follows: 1) considering the teaching methods presented to you in your educational life and the special teaching methods you have learned in this course, which methods do you think are more effective and efficient? explain with your reasons. 2) discuss the efficacy of special teaching methods. 3) which methods do you think are difficult to apply in mathematics education and why? 4) which teaching smts would you prefer mainly in the teaching process? explain with reasons. draw an image of the classroom environment in which you plan to use the said teaching strategy, method and technique. 2.3. data analysis in accordance with the aim of study, two data collection instruments were utilized: mathematical and mathematics educational values scale and written interview form for exploring the effect of participants‟ values on their preferred teaching smts. the quantitative data achieved were analyzed on spss software package. the qualitative data were subjected to a content analysis. first, smts experienced by the participants in their previous educational lives were grouped to create percentage-frequency tables. next, the answers about teaching smts which they thought were effective and efficient, were difficult to use and they would prefer to use in the future, and their percentages and frequencies were calculated. lastly, the quantitative data were interpreted with the qualitative data achieved from drawings and explanations and presented in findings. this allowed for the explanation of the justifications for the quantitative data. the participants were coded as s1, s2, s3... in the data analysis. 3. findings this section addresses the values of the participants and presents the findings achieved from participant opinions. 3.1. analysis of data achieved in mathematical and mathematics educational values scale mathematical and mathematics educational values of the participants receiving pedagogical formation training were examined by whether being constructivist or positivist and are given in table 2. despite being from different universities, all participants were gathered in a single group, and a dependent t test was performed as it was aimed to examine two different values with a single scale which was applied to all of them. table-2. dependent t test results concerning the participants‟ values. values n x s sd t p constructivist 288 3.65 0.38 287 20.59 .000* positivist 288 3.06 0.47 note: *p<.05 significance level. table 2 shows that mean values of participants‟ constructivist values were on the level of “i agree” ( x =3.65) while mean values of participants‟ positivist values were on the level of “neutral” ( x =3.06). according to the table, there was a significant difference in favor of constructivist values when comparing participants‟ levels of having positivist values with their levels of constructivist values (p<.05). the analysis results concerning whether gender that was mentioned among the sub problems of the research had any effect on their values are given in table 3. since 3 of the participants left the gender area blank in the scale form, analyses were conducted with the remaining 285 participants. table-3. independent t test results concerning the participants‟ values by gender. values gender n s sd t p constructivist male 105 3.56 0.39 283 3,142 0.002 female 180 3.7 0.36 positivist male 105 3.16 0.45 283 0,789 0.431 female 180 3.11 0.45 note: *p<.05 significance level. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 84 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to table 3, female ( x =3.56) and male ( x =3.70) participants had constructivist values on the level of “i agree”. by gender, a significant difference was found in favor of female participants between male and female participants with constructivist values. it is also seen in table 3 that both male ( x =3.16) and female ( x =3.11) participants had positivist values on the level of “neutral” and there was no significant difference between the participants with positivist values by gender. 3.2. opinions of the mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation training on teaching smts used in mathematics course to explore the effect of participants‟ values on their preferred teaching smts, a written interview form composed of four open-ended questions were applied to them. firstly, the participants were asked to explain which teaching smts are more efficient in teaching with its reasons in consideration of the teaching smts presented to them in their previous educational lives and the special teaching methods they had learned in the pedagogical formation training. smts experienced by the participants in their previous educational lives are presented in frequency (f) and percentage (%) in table 4. table-4. frequencies and percentages of smts experienced by the participants in their previous educational lives. method f % expository teaching 269 93.40 learning by exploring 16 5.55 group work 3 1.04 computer-aided teaching (cat) 2 0.69 teaching by scenario 1 0.35 note: percentages may exceed 100% because the answers of some of the participants were placed under multiple codes. it is seen in table 4 that majority of the participants had been mostly taught with expository teaching in their educational lives. the following are brief citations from the participant opinions on this matter: “we’ve been taught with expository teaching all the time. we’ve done no experiments in science course or no games, explorations and practices in mathematics course.” (s47) “i’ve always been taught with expository teaching in my educational life. let alone mathematics, they used to teach biology without making experiments in laboratories. it was the same with other courses; i’ve been taught with a teacher-centered instructional approach”. (s109) “only the expository teaching would be used back in my time. we used to go to the laboratory in physics or chemistry courses and would not use the materials in case they would be broken. no other method than expository teaching has been used in mathematics course. none of my teachers have used it properly anyway”. (s112) “in my educational life, mathematics used to be thought with direct instruction all the time. that’s why mathematics has never been beyond a difficult course for me”. (s127) “including university, they haven’t applied special teaching to us not only in mathematics but also in other courses. we’ve received a teacher-oriented education... by memorizing everything without even understanding it.” (s141) “expository teaching has been used in general. i don’t think it is useful. it doesn’t have a long-lasting impact.” (s146) s37 and s215 stated that they had teachers who used other methods along with expository teaching, and s37 provided the following statements: “in our biology course, computer-aided teaching, and expository teaching and exploration methods were used. these would also be supported with materials. our teacher used to include us in the course actively all the time. these were the most productive course and teaching methods that i couldn’t forget all my life.” s215 summarized their educational life as follows: “...it was expository instruction method in general. there would be learning by exploring in some courses. question and answer and discussion methods would be used in the courses.” frequency and percentage values of the participant opinions on which smts would be more effective and efficient to use in mathematics teaching are presented in table 5. table-5. frequency and percentage values of smts found more effective and efficient in mathematics teaching by the participants. method f % learning by exploring 122 42.36 expository teaching 57 19.80 demonstration 15 5.21 group work 11 3.82 problem solving 11 3.82 teaching by scenario 9 3.12 teaching by games 7 2.43 computer-aided teaching (cat) 6 2.08 case 1 0.35 teaching by analysis 1 0.35 note: percentages may exceed 100% because the answers of some of the participants were placed under multiple codes. table 5 indicates that majority of the participants found learning by exploring more effective and efficient in mathematics teaching. this method was followed by expository teaching (19.80%, 57 students), demonstration method (5.21%, 15 students), teaching by group work (3.82%, 11 students), teaching by problem solving (3.82%, 11 students), teaching by scenario (3.12%, 9 students), teaching by games (2.43%i 7 students), computer-aided teaching (2.08%, 6 students), case study method (0.35%, 1 student), and teaching by analysis (0.35%, 1 students). moreover, 19.80% (57) of the participants highlighted the use of student-centered teaching methods. it is remarkable that 11.11% (32) of the participants stated that additional use of materials supports comprehension and can be used with appropriate methods. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 85 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group among the reasons why learning by exploring is effective and efficient, the participants mentioned that students make their own research and make logical deductions, applied courses are more retentive and effective, and learning by doing-living is important. differently from others, four participants mentioned group work and stated that student should actively participate in the course while two participants would prefer discussion and brainstorming methods along with this method. about cat, two of the participants provided the following statements: “i think it is helpful to use technology efficiently in concretization of mathematics as it is composed of abstract concepts.” (s165) and “i think smartboards play a key role in visualization on the condition of proper use.” (s140). furthermore, some of the participants did not adopt the use of a single method and suggested that methods should be chosen by topic. two of these students explained their opinions as follows: “i’m not a fan of using a single method in learning. teaching method should be used according to what is required by the course. for instance, a zoo visit should be performed in biology.” (s146) “the most effective method should be chosen according to topic; not every topic can be taught with one method.” (s153) regarding participants‟ experiences before the formation training and their later thoughts about methods to be used in mathematics teaching, a small part of them stated that different methods can be used along with expository teaching as they saw it from their branch teachers in their previous educational lives but they did not have any idea about their application in mathematics course because they had never seen them used in mathematics courses. it was found that majority did not think other methods than expository teaching can be used in mathematics teaching. however, 73.96% (213) of the participants agreed that special teaching methods can be effective in mathematics teaching alongside expository teaching after they had learned these methods. participants expressed their relevant thoughts as follows: “i used to think that mathematics can be completely taught by expository teaching. we’ve always been told so; we’ve learned mathematics by expository teaching, even at the university. now we’ve seen here in the formation training that special teaching methods are more retentive and effective. when different teaching methods appropriate for the topics are chosen, retention is achieved in teaching.” (s14) “the special teaching methods course showed me how to teach more entertainingly and retentively. honestly, i saw the steep difference with the teaching i’ve been performing before receiving formation...” (s16) “you said at the beginning that how a person is educated determines how they teach. it is true, our knowledge didn’t use to be very retentive. i’ve never thought how to teach in other ways than expository teaching that we’ve seen all the time... as special teaching methods are based on problem solving, thought-provoking and provide active participation for student, they are more long-lasting in their memories. (s89) “there has been expository teaching to date. but in this formation training, i think it contributed to my 8-year experience a lot. i think i will teach in communication with my students and by making them active...” (s97) “among special teaching methods, expository teaching will not be effective if used alone. but course will become more effective and retentive if it is used with learning by exploring.” (s115) “these methods were effective enough to make me notice that i was a rote learning-oriented teacher.” (s270) “i think learning by exploring is retentive and helpful, and expository teaching is ineffective alone.” (s286) a remarkable finding of the study is that 13.88% (40) of the participants did not find the use of special teaching methods appropriate for several reasons (educational system, class size, etc.). relevant participant opinions are given below: “student-centered teaching is very difficult in the current system. class size should be 25 on average. it is 60 here. it’s very difficult to apply methods under these circumstances...” (s12) “we’ve seen with formation training that not only expository teaching but also other methods are more effective and can achieve retentive learning. but activities take time. it’s not possible in private sector. it takes much time to prepare materials.” (s15) “i think the method we’ve been accustomed to for years is more effective.” (s52) “expository teaching is more effective. information should be given directly for students to be able to learn.” (s80) “we completed our educational life with expository teaching methods. although we’ve tried to be more efficient, we’ve been taught without asking questions due to the fear of teachers, even at university... under these circumstances, expository teaching is more effective as it’s not possible to change it although there is criticism.” (s107) “special teaching methods have a great place in mathematics education. expository teaching alone will cause indifference to the course among students. but i think other teachers and i don’t prefer it due to lack of time, place and instrument to apply special teaching methods and as it’s not fully compatible with the current exam system”. (s113) “the course is effective, but i don’t think every method can be used in classroom.” (s141) “learning by exploring is effective, but expository teaching not only saves time but also prevents confusion in some topics.” (s159) “the methods we’ve seen are nice but it’s difficult to apply them at school.” (s191) “they are ways to make students active, but their application isn’t possible due to limited class hours and the effort to teach topics on time today.” (s201) “as classrooms are crowded, these cannot be used effectively. limited time has a negative impact, too.” (s219). “i’ve begun to think how efficient the course has been for us after seeing that the methods we’ve learned aren’t applied at schools.” (s248) “the methods we’ve learned aren’t suitable for our educational system. information given at university and practices to be performed when teaching don’t coincide.” (s276) “we mostly present information with expository teaching. because time is limited, and in this way, we can reach many students at the same time.” (s285) findings concerning the smts found by the participants difficult to use in mathematics teaching are presented in table 6. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 86 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. frequency and percentage values of smts found by the participants difficult to use in mathematics teaching. method f % learning by exploring 82 28.47 group work 58 20.14 teaching by scenario 37 12.85 expository teaching 31 10.76 drama 24 8.33 computer-aided teaching (cat) 21 7.29 project-based teaching 17 5.90 problem solving 17 5.90 teaching by analysis 2 0.69 case study 2 0.69 teaching by games 2 0.69 demonstration 1 0.35 trip-observation 1 0.35 teaching by experimental experiences 1 0.35 note: percentages may exceed 100% because the answers of some of the participants were placed under multiple codes. table 6 shows that the participants found learning by exploring and group work to be the most difficult smts to apply in mathematics teaching. according to the participants, the reason why these methods are difficult to use is that classrooms are mostly crowded, which would make classroom management difficult, and preparation and implementation should be well-planned and would take much time. the participants provided relevant statements as follows: “group work, considering the public schools, is a teaching method hard to apply because classrooms are crowded.” (s37) “group work. because you need to prepare individual activities, materials, etc. for each topic. that will take so much time. it’s also difficult to control the class in group works.” (s61) “i find learning by exploring difficult to apply in mathematics teaching as it takes time and one can have challenges when making preparations. and i think when it’s used in a crowded classroom, not all of the students can be reached as desired.” (s111) “learning by exploring cannot be used all the time. it would difficult to activate student and keep the classroom under control.” (s132) “one may have difficulty with learning by exploring. because we can lose control of the classroom while making the student active.” (s275) it’s difficult with learning by exploring because time is limited, classrooms are crowded and there isn’t enough time.” (s170 and s288) the participants who found learning by exploring difficult argued that providing information theoretically and direct instruction of topics would make mathematics teaching inefficient. the following are participants‟ relevant opinions: “direct instruction of topics without associating them with daily life and how students don’t use the power of thinking make mathematics teaching difficult.” (s127) “i think direct instruction is difficult. because mathematics is a course about visuals.” (s187) “expository teaching alone is boring and means direct instruction.” (s211) other methods that participants found difficult to use were drama and cat. as the reasons, participants stated that it is difficult to organize the classroom and achieve activity of each student and that drama would be more effective in verbal-content courses and with smaller groups. three of the participants (s68, s77 and s124) mentioned about the difficulty with the combination of group work and learning by exploring in mathematics teaching. s68 provided the following statements on the matter: “...for example, in learning by exploring and group work methods, teacher is expected to prepare appropriate activities beforehand and apply them with students. most of the time, it’s expected to use both together. this not only causes waste of time but also makes classroom management difficult...” differently from other participants, s40 and s98 stated that the difficulty with these methods is because teachers prefer teacher-centered teaching as it is easier and do not want to quit the expository teaching method. s105 stated that these methods are not suitable for the structure of exams in our educational system and it is necessary but difficult to use learning by exploring. it is seen in table 6 that part of the participants receiving pedagogical formation addressed teaching by scenario and expository teaching other than learning by exploring and group work. participants stated that teaching by scenario is difficult to use because mathematics is an abstract course and it is very hard to prepare a scenario for it. participants who found expository teaching difficult thought that they would have difficulty keeping students‟ attention alive as they are passive in this method and have trouble with enabling them to comprehend the topic. 13 participants stated that every method is applicable as long as there is enough time. one of the remarkable findings in regard to the topic is that 35 participants thought of material usage as a method. participants who wrote down concrete material usage as a teaching method stated that material usage is a waste of time in the current exam-oriented system, concretization cannot be suitable for every subject except for geometry as mathematical concepts are abstract, and concretization is not possible at schools other than the use of smartboards. frequencies and percentages of the findings in regard to smts that would be mainly preferred by the participants in their teaching are given in table 7. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 87 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. frequencies and percentages of smts that would be preferred by the participants in mathematics teaching. note: percentages may exceed 100% because the answers of some of the participants were placed under multiple codes. method f % learning by exploring 141 48.96 expository teaching 118 40.97 group work 49 17.01 problem solving 9 3.12 computer-aided teaching 7 2.43 teaching by scenario 5 1.77 demonstration 3 1.04 teaching by games 2 0.69 teaching by analysis 1 0.35 case study 1 0.35 according to table 7, learning by exploring, expository teaching, and group work are primary smts that would be preferred by the participants in mathematics teaching. opinions on this topic are given below: “i’m planning to use exploring method mainly in my teaching. because it will help me teach more entertainingly and enjoyably and the student will find it themselves, an efficient learning will occur.” (s4 and s286) “i think learning by exploration is more effective. because then students will remember concepts they explored more easily and will become more active.” (s160 and s161) “i think group work method is effective. it’s a method in which communication among students is dominant; it can be preferred to allow them to share their ideas.” (s44) “learning with group can be effective. it can be a good method as students will be communication when studying in a group.” (s232) “i prefer group work. because sharing their ideas about the topic will make a social contribution and create a good environment.” (s213) “schedule is busy and i’m teaching at a high school. i prefer expository teaching to teach more subjects in a shorter time.” (s126) “as i’m working at a private teaching institution, i have to do it in a teacher-centered way. as it is based on exam, i do and will teach by expository teaching all the time.” (s147) “expository teaching in general. although it doesn’t coincide with today’s teaching, i use it due to physical conditions.” (s177) 21 of the participants stated that they would use expository and learning by exploring together as follows: “i’ll use expository teaching in general. but i’m thinking to utilize learning by exploring in geometry and analytics.” (s59) “i would prefer learning by exploring. maybe partially expository teaching, too. learning by exploring enables student to be effective. expository teaching can be preferred by grade level and subject.” (s185) “i would prefer expository and learning by exploring. it’ll be easy because there will be real learning in learning by exploring. expository teaching is a suitable method for giving outlines of a subject.” (s222) it is understood from table 7 that a small part of the participants mentioned about teaching by problem solving, computer-aided teaching, teaching by scenario, demonstration, teaching by games, teaching by analysis and case study method. in the next step, the participants were asked to draw the images of classroom environment using the smts of their preference. participants‟ drawings of learning environment and their explanations were examined with four field experts and classified in 5 groups by smts of their preference. these groups are summarized in table 8 and percentages and frequencies for smts of their preference and drawings of classroom environment are given in the table. table-8. percentages and frequencies for smts preferred by participants in mathematics teaching and drawings of classroom environments. note: c: student-centered smt of preference, p: teacher-centered smt of preference. according to table 8, majority (65.27%) of the participants preferred student-centered teaching, that is, regarded themselves as constructivists. however, considering participants‟ student-centered teaching drawings, 104 participants designed a student-centered learning environment, 27 design a teacher-centered learning environment, 57 designed a teacher-centered learning environment but with u-shape seating order which blocks student-student interaction. hence, rate of participants who preferred student-centered teaching in practice was 36% which means a decrease compared to what they stated in previous questions. exemplary drawings of participants who preferred student-centered teaching methods are given below. f % s tu d e n tc e n te re d s m t o f p re fe re n c e (c o n st ru ct iv is t) c1: student-centered smt of preference drawing of a student-centered learning environment 104 36.11 c2: student-centered smt of preference drawing of a teacher-centered learning environment 27 9.38 c3: student-centered smt of preference drawing of a teacher-centered learning environment with u-shape seating order which blocks student-student interaction 57 19.79 t e a c h e rc e n te re d s m t o f p re fe re n c e (p o si ti v is t ) p1: teacher-centered smt of preference drawing of a student-centered learning environment 43 14.93 p2: teacher-centered smt of preference drawing of a teacher-centered learning environment 57 19.79 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 88 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. exemplary drawings of student-centered learning environment and smts of preference. figure 1 presents explanations and drawings of s19 and s17 who reported that they mainly preferred to use student-centered smts. their explanations are given below: “s19: instead of expository teaching, different expression methods should be chosen to make the student more active. materials should be used at all times, because both visuality and the students’ individual effort will make it "easier for them to learn.” “s17: i choose using exploring method in my teaching life. i would like to teach a lecture with a student-oriented course, by enabling them to understand them without fear, by always communicating with the students. some topics can be demonstrated with drama by the students and they can be understand more easily by the students, i would like to teach the lessons by making them have fun to increase their interest in the lesson.” according to the learning environment designed by and explanations made by s19, it seems that they attached importance to group work, technology (smartboard and computer), and interaction with materials. it is understood from the drawings and explanations by s17 that they similarly highlighted group work, and use of technology (smartboard) and material (mathematics material storage, mathematics newspaper panel). whereas s19 stated in their explanations that they preferred the use of student-centered smts for allowing students to learn on their own, s17 put emphasis on learning by exploring and teaching by scenario. to account for this emphasis, the participant stated that student-centered teaching increases student‟s attention in courses, they are in communication all the time, and therefore, can learn something from their peers. figure-2. exemplary drawings of teacher-centered learning environment with student-centered smts of preference. explanations and drawings by s4 and s9 are presented in figure 2. their explanations about the drawings are given below: “s4: i think of using the exploring method in teaching. in this way, the student becomes more active in learning, because he / she will discover it himself.” “s9: i prefer student-centered teaching. because we have many students who are introvert and we have to win them.” while s4 and s9 stated that they preferred student-centered teaching, they did not include any additional teaching method in their drawings and used a seating order as in a traditional classroom environment. figure-3. exemplary drawings of teacher-centered learning environment with student-centered smts of preference but with u-shape seating order which blocks student-student interaction. source: scanned images of student drawings and explanations. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 89 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 3 presents teacher-centered learning environments which were designed with student-centered smts but in a u-shape seating order and were supported by material and equipped with computer, therefore putting computer in the center, in which student-student interaction was blocked, along with relevant exemplary explanations. their explanations about the drawings are given below: “s67: i think every student will be successful in mathematics when taking training accurately and stable. therefore, i choose using different teaching methods, materials and activities.” “s69: i definitely think of using all the special methods in my teaching, but i usually prefer computer-aided teaching. in addition, i think of using material in every lecture. i prepare my materials in environments where students can see and apply.” both s67 and s69 stated that they would use special teaching methods they had learned in mathematics teaching when appropriate and emphasized that they would use materials. in the learning environment designed by s67, student was placed in the center, additional teaching materials were used but seating order was in u shape, which means that student-student interaction was blocked as students sit on their desks in a single file. as for s69‟s drawing, although computer-aided teaching was preferred, how students were sitting in a single file and in u-shape sitting order makes the classroom computer-centered despite being equipped with computer. it is understood from table 8 that a part (34.72%) of the participants preferred teacher-centered teaching smts and therefore regarded themselves as positivists. as for the drawings by participants who preferred teachercentered teaching, 43 participants designed a student-centered environment while 57 participants designed a teacher-centered environment. exemplary drawings of participants who preferred teacher-centered teaching are given below. figure-4. exemplary drawings of student-centered learning environment with teacher-centered smts of preference. figure 4 shows the drawings and explanations by s80 and s121 who preferred teacher-centered teaching. their explanations about the drawings are given below: “s80: expository teaching is more effective. because, in order to make a discovery, students’ readiness must be provided. exploring method is effective to use when appropriate environment and conditions are provided. but since the conditions, especially educational conditions, in each school are not the same, information must be given directly.” “s121: i choose expository teaching method. this method is also suitable for being based on teachıng method based on test solving techniques.” s80 stated that information should be given directly as not every student has the same level of readiness, and therefore, they preferred expository teaching. regarding the learning environment designed by the participant, however, how they attached importance to group work, association of subjects with daily life and the use of technology could be understood from the task sharing among the students (current topic corner for exponentials, science corner for exponentials and technology corner for exponentials). similarly, s121 emphasized group work in their designed learning environment although they stated that they preferred expository teaching since testing has a key role in our educational system. figure-5. exemplary drawings of teacher-centered learning environment and smts of preference. figure 5 presents the exemplary drawings of student-centered learning environment and smts of preference s100 and s10 stated that they preferred expository teaching. their explanations about the drawings are given below: “s100: i choose expository teaching method. but after the presentations, i solve the problems i prepared before. the student lacks a lot of information. the teacher presents, explains and explains them. then (s)he asks the student to do it and waits. the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 90 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teacher dominates the class, retains control like a manager (ready for class). the teacher is like a coach, tells and shows tactics and techniques. the student is like a football player and applies what (s)he has learned on the field.” “s10: i use the most expository teaching method. because the time we are in is limited. i do not use any other methods, as too many topics are narrated in a short time.” the participants explained that teacher has the control like a manager in this way. s100 likened a teacher to a football coach and students to football players. they showed in their drawing that the football couch tells about and shows tactics while football players apply what they learned on the pitch. the remarkable point in this participant‟s drawing is that seating order of the classroom was in such a way that all students could see the teacher differently from the traditional order. s10 mentioned that they preferred expository teaching due to limited time and intense subjects. it is seen that their learning environment was in the traditional seating order and did not utilize any additional teaching materials or technologies. 4. discussion and results it was aimed with this study to address mathematical and mathematics educational values of mathematics students receiving pedagogical formation in regard to constructivist and positivist approaches and examine the effect of their values on their preferred smts. firstly, it was examined whether there were differences among students‟ values, and a significance difference was found between their positivist and constructivist values in favor of the latter. students‟ constructivist values might have been because the study was conducted at the end of the term. indeed, majority of the students stated that they had not had teachers who taught by student-centered alternative methods in their previous educational lives and they had seen these concepts for the first time in the formation training. the secondary education mathematics curriculum (meb, 2013) states that an approach placing the student in the center is adopted and emphasize the importance that teacher plan well-structured activities (structure educational materials and mathematical learning environments/activities in which materials will be used) to achieve active participation in the course beforehand. within the scope of the course, students examined the said curriculum, and the applications were performed in line with the specified contents. in this sense, one can say that it was an expected outcome that the students became knowledgeable of the curriculum and the different and new teaching methods in more detail, and therefore, they were sympathetic towards the values dominated by constructivist approaches. this result coincides with the results of other studies in turkey (durmus and bıçak, 2006; durmus et al., 2008; dede, 2009). when compared by gender, a significant difference was found in favor of female participants in regard to constructivist values while there was no significant difference between female and male participants who had positivist values. in their study examining science and technology, mathematics, and classroom teachers in terms of constructivist and positivist values, durmus et al. (2008) found a significant difference in favor of constructivist values. similarly, durmus (2011) concluded in the study investigating preservice mathematics teachers‟ value profiles and opinions on modelling that there was a significant difference between levels of having positivist and constructivist values in favor of the latter. according to another result of the said study, when comparing the participants with positivist values by gender, there was a significant difference in favor of male participants but no significant difference was found between female and male participants with constructivist values. this result is in line with the result of the present study. dede (2009) examined the values of preservice primary and secondary education mathematics teachers by gender and department and concluded that preservice teachers tended to adopt constructivist values rather than positivist values in mathematics teaching. the same study concluded no statistically significant difference between values by gender. in this study, majority of the participants stated that the most frequent method in their educational lives had been expository teaching. most of them reported that they had been taught only with expository teaching in mathematics courses and had not performed any experiments in science courses. in parallel with this result, temizöz and ozgün-koca (2009) investigated the teaching methods used by mathematics teachers and concluded that most of them were sympathetic towards expository teaching and used it in their courses. according to the timss-1999 national report of turkey (meb, 2013) teachers spare 41% of their time for teaching by expository teaching and 12% for experiments-demonstrations; in the light of this finding, the result that turkey is one of the countries which use expository teaching the most and perform experiments the least in science courses (bağcı-kılıc, 2002) coincides with this finding. several studies in the literature have concluded that learning by exploring is more effective in increasing the achievement than traditional methods (pesen et al., 2000; akar, 2006; balım, 2009; akın and pesen, 2010). in the present study, too, learning by exploring was the smt found to be the most effective by participants in mathematics teaching. the fact that learning by exploring was deemed much more effective than traditional methods in the study (castronova, 2002) coincides with the results of studies in the literature given that a main objective of teaching is to increase student achievement. moreover, how participants found learning by exploring more effective and efficient supports the idea that they had constructivist values. learning by exploring, group work and teaching by scenario were the most emphasized smts among the ones found difficult to use in mathematics teaching by the participants. for the reason why these methods were difficult, they stated that class sizes were great, good planning was required, and applications would take time. this result is in line with the results in the literature (seferoğlu, 2004; temizöz and ozgün-koca, 2008; soylu, 2009). in the study aiming to examine on what level fourth-grade students of classroom teaching can use methods and techniques in mathematics teaching, soylu (2009) concluded that majority of the students found themselves competent or partially competent in direct instruction, definitions, rules and question and answer methods and techniques while they regarded themselves incompetent in exploring, cooperation, demonstration, games, case study and problem posing and solving. seferoğlu (2004) subjected fourth-year students of computer education and instructional technologies (ceit) to a 4-point liker scale of 35 items about teaching to determine on what level preservice teachers have the competencies expected by the ministry of national education. considering the distribution of answers to the related items, the answers were on a “good” level on average, the “teaching by question-answer method” item had the highest mean and the “teaching by roleplaying” had the lowest mean. in the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 80-92 91 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group study by temizöz and ozgün-koca (2008) majority of mathematics teachers stated that they thought instructional plans prepared according to teaching by exploring would take so much time and would not be suitable for crowded classrooms although they liked the plans. similarly, castronova (2002) stated that preparation and learning stages of teaching by exploring require so much time and classrooms are too small or big to use this method. learning by exploring, expository teaching, and group work were the primary smts to be most frequently preferred by participants in their own teaching. this result is in line with the finding that learning by exploring was the smt found by the participants effective in mathematics teaching and supports the opinion that these participants had constructivist values. mathematics students attending the pedagogical formation program were asked to draw about smts of their preference and a classroom environment utilizing these smts, and their drawings were classified in five groups. majority (65.27%) of the participants were found to prefer student-centered teaching methods while less than half (34.72%) of them preferred teacher-centered methods. this result can be interpreted as the indicator that majority of participants had constructivist values. majority of participants who preferred student-centered teaching and made student-centered drawings put emphasis on group work and teaching by scenario and stated that they chose these methods because they allow for students‟ self-learning and retentive learning, increase interest in the course, improve students‟ communication skill and support peer learning. it is similarly stated in the literature that a more retentive and functional learning is achieved with these methods as they help students associate information with daily life rather than memorizing it and allow them to explore information, therefore making information more meaningful and that these methods increase individual‟s confidence and interest in the course and have positive impacts on academic achievement (altun, 2002; akar, 2006; baki, 2008). majority of participants who preferred teacher-centered teaching and made teacher-centered drawings showed that teacher had the control in the classroom and they did not utilize any additional teaching materials or technologies in their drawings. similarly, doğan (2004) concluded that the methods and techniques most preferred and used by classroom teachers were direct instruction and question-answer. temizöz and ozgün-koca (2008) found that majority of secondary school mathematics teachers used question-answer technique and direct instruction method. in mathematics teaching, one should attach importance not only to the cognitive aspect but also the affective aspect of mathematics like values (dede, 2007). hence, this matter should be addressed in preservice and in-service trainings provided for teachers, and applied studies should also be conducted. in this study, students‟ value profiles and methods/approaches they thought they would use in teaching process were examined and found to be coherent in general. nevertheless, it is also deemed important to investigate the relationship between value profiles of teachers and their practices during teaching to test the accuracy of this result. references adıgüzel, a., 2013. competence levels of teachers of the field based on pedagogical formation related to the teaching-learning process. sakarya university journal of educational sciences institute, 3(2): 48-64. akar, f., 2006. the effect of discovery learning on the academic achievement of students in the second grade mathematics lesson. unpublished master thesis, cukurova university institute of social 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the prospective biology teachers who participated in the pedagogical formation certificate program regarding the teaching profession. duzce university journal of social sciences institute, 7(2): 89-105. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 193 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 193-197, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.193.197 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of body mass index on physical activity level in children between 1011 years of age gökmen kilincarslan1 1bingol university, school of physical education and sports, bingol, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of body mass index on physical activity (pa) level in children between 10-11 years of age. this research is an experimental study. while the universe of the research is composed of children studying in primary schools in ankara province in 2017-2018 education and academic year, the sample is composed of students studying and teaching in gazi primary school in yenimahalle district. the study included 271 students between the ages of 10 and 11 who voluntarily participated. the necessary permissions were obtained from school principals and student parents before the investigation. this research were taken weight (kg), height (m), pa level (pedometer) and bmi (kg/height2) measurements. spss 23 package program was used in the analysis of the obtained data. the mean age of children was 10,57±0,49, mean height was 1,42±8,45 and body weight was 38,33±10,91. bmi was 17.64±3.07 in 10 age group and 19.43±3.94 in 11 age group. the level of pa was determined as 12288±1687 for 10 years and 11328±1721 for 11 years. there was a significant difference between the two groups (p<0.001). there was found to be negatively correlation with pa (r=-0,269) p<0.001, whereas a significant correlation was found between bmi level (r=0,240) p<0,001. a significant correlation was found between bmi and pa level (r-0.817) p<0.001. as a result, it can be said that the body mass indexes of children between 10-11 years of age are in good level and their pa levels are generally active. keywords: bmi, physical activity, sedantery, pedometer, fitness, children. citation | gökmen kilincarslan (2019). the effect of body mass index on physical activity level in children between 10-11 years of age. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 193-197. history: received: 28 november 2018 revised: 31 december 2018 accepted: 1 february 2019 published: 5 march 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 194 2. methods ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 194 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 195 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 195 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 196 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.193.197&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/403 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5176-6477 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/403 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5176-6477 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/403 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5176-6477 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 193-197 194 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction pa is associated with numerous immediate and long-lasting health benefits in children (loprinzi et al., 2012) and an increased amount of physical activity generally increases the benefits (klakk et al., 2013). pa is energy expenditure as a result of the body's movement through the skeletal muscles. any pa requires energy expenditure. pa can be varied in different ways according to the characteristics of the training (aerobic, anaerobic or static, dynamic, etc.) pa is perceived synonymous with the word “sport” in the majority of society. however, physical activity is defined as activities that take place in daily life using muscles and joints with energy expenditure, increase heart and respiratory rate and result in fatigue at different intensity. in this context, as well as sports activities, exercise, games and various activities during the day are considered physical activity (kutlu and civi, 2013). current recommendations on physical activity for children endorsed by the european commission and the world health organization are for a minimum 60 minutes of daily moderate to vigorous physical activity (world health organization, 2010; demirtas et al., 2017). the reported proportion of children actually achieving the recommendation varies across studies, partly due to dissimilar definitions of moderate to vigorous physical activity (guinhouya et al., 2013). childhood is a period in which growth and development is fast. in this period, the intake of nutritional elements increasing the need is an important factor in preventing chronic diseases during adulthood. healthy eating and lifestyle habits are shaped during childhood and become permanent. these habits are necessary for the protection and development of health. being physically inactive, consuming “fast food” type foods frequently, spending a long time on television and computer, and consuming high calorie foods during these periods are the most important factors that affect being overweight and fat in children. regular and balanced eating habits and regular physical activity are the most important factors for maintaining and improving health. shaping healthy life habits in childhood can be achieved by education starting with childhood (kutlu and civi, 2013). differences in neighbourhood characteristics could be another reason for the variety of physical activity levels in children. positive effects of environmental factors in the neighbourhood, for example recreational facilities and parks, have been indicated for both physical activity levels and general health among children (roemmich et al., 2006). a recent review concluded significant positive associations between access, density and proximity to parks and objectively measured physical activity among children in four out of eight studies included, whereas no significant associations were seen in the other four studies (ding et al., 2011). a lifestyle that includes physical activity plays an important role in disability and mortality in daily life. the fact that regular physical activity can prevent or delay different chronic diseases is well understood today (pitta et al., 2006). socioeconomic factors have been associated with physical activity among children, albeit with conflicting results (singh et al., 2008) probably partly due to dissimilarities in the factors measured (e.g. income or education). also seasonal factors may explain some of the differences (rich et al., 2012). this factor could be especially important in a scandinavian context with large seasonal variations in weather conditions, temperature and hours of daylight (hjorth et al., 2013). characteristics of the neighbourhood environment of children are likely to differ between countries and contexts. a majority of previous research that has found a relation between neighbourhood resources and physical activity in children has been performed in north america, while studies reflecting north european contexts are scarce (davison and lawson, 2006). in addition, lack of physical activity leads to obesity (simşek, 2005). obesity is a disorder of energy metabolism resulting from excessive fat storage in the body, which can cause physical and mental problems. taking more energy than consumed is the most important cause of obesity (donohoue, 2004). the regulation of adipose tissues in the body and the etiology of obesity are multi-factor and are influenced by genetic structure, environmental warnings and developmental phenomena (popkin, 2001). changes in eating and activity habits cause obesity to be seen more frequently. especially in genetically predisposed children, obesity is known to be caused by environmental factors (donohoue, 2004). it is shown in a variety of studies in which the child's nutritional intake is shaped by the eating habits during the infancy period, the parents ' nutritional properties and the family environment may cause obesity (birch and fisher, 1998). on the other hand, obesity and being overweight are closely related to sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical activity (martinezgonzalez et al., 2001). the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of body mass index on physical activity level in children. 2. methods 2.1. participants this research is an experimental study. while the universe of the research is composed of children studying in primary schools in ankara province in 2017-2018 education and academic year, the sample is composed of students studying and teaching in gazi primary school in yenimahalle district. the study included 271 students between the ages of 10 and 11 who voluntarily participated. the necessary permissions were obtained from school principals and student parents before the investigation. 2.2. height (cm) and weight (kg) measurements height was measured to the nearest 0.1 cm by using a stadiometer. weight was measured to the nearest 0,1 kg on an electronic scale (seca corp, birmingham, united kingdom). 2.3. measurement of physical activity level physical activity levels were measured on 5 weekdays and 2 weekend day using kenz lifecorder pedometer. pedometers were placed on the hip and they were checked against any problems by taking a few steps before the measurements. they were made to wear these pedometers after getting up and kept them until going to bed. daily step standards graphics were developed for youth by tudor-locke et al. (2008). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 193-197 195 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. physical activity levels classification. sedentary lifestyle low active somewhat active active very active <5000 5000-7499 7500-9999 10000-12499 >12500 source: tudor-locke et al. (2008). 2.4. bmi (body mass index) bmi was calculated as body mass in kilograms divided by height in meters squared (kg/m2). body composition was evaluated by using body mass index criteria which were designed by welk et al. (2000). table-2. body mass index classification. gender too low borderline good fitness overweight obesity male 12 or less 13-16 17-25 26-30 30+ bmi (weight/height2) famale 12 or less 13-16 17-25 26-30 30+ source: welk et al. (2000). 2.5. statistical analysis spss 23 package program was used in the analysis of the obtained data. the mean and standard deviation values of the subjects ' age, height and body weight were calculated. independent t test was applied according to age variables. also a correlation analysis was performed to determine the relationship between physical activity and bmi. 3. findings table-3. mean age, height and body weight of children. variables n mean standard deviation age 271 10,57 ,496 height 271 142,30 8,454 weight 271 38,33 10,913 according to table 3, mean age of children was 10,57±0,49, mean height was 1,42±8,45 and body weight was 38,33±10,91. table-4. comparison of bmi and physical activity level by age. variables age n mean standard deviation t p bmi 10 116 17,64 3,07 -4,046 <0,00 11 155 19,43 3,94 physical activity level 10 116 12288,05 1687,77 4,578 <0,00 11 155 11328,44 1721,98 p<0,01***. in table 4, bmi was 17.64±3.07 in 10 age group and 19.43±3.94 in 11 age group. the level of physical activity was determined as 12288±1687 for 10 years and 11328±1721 for 11 years. there was a significant difference between the two groups (p<0.01). table-5. relationship between age, bmi and physical activity levels of children. variables methods age physical activity level physical activity level pearson correlation -,269** sig. (2-tailed) ,000 bmi pearson correlation ,240** -,817** sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,000 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). according to table 5,there was found to be negatively correlation with physical activity (r=-0,269) p<0.01, whereas a significant correlation was found between bmi level (r=0,240) p<0,001. a significant correlation was found between bmi and physical activity level (r-0.817) p<0.01. 4. conclusion and discussion in our study, a significant difference was found at the level of p <0.001 in physical activity level and bmi values according to age. according to our research, as the level of physical activity increases, bmi is decreasing. as the age increases, the level of physical activity decreases and the bmi increases. in our study, the mean age of the children was 10.57 ± 0.49, the mean height was 1.42 ± 8.45 and the body weight was 38.33 ± 10.91. in our study, bmi was determined as 17.64 ± 3.07 for children aged 10 years and 19.43 ± 3.94 for 11 years. physical activity level was determined as 12288 ± 1687 for 10 years and 11328 ± 1721 for 11 years. a significant difference was found between the bmi and physical activity level at the level of p <0.01 according to age variable. a negatively significant correlation was found between age and physical activity (r = -0,269) at a p <0.01 level while positively significant correlation with bmi (r=0,240) p<0,01. a negatively significant correlation was found between bmi and physical activity level (r-0,817) p <0,01. belton et al. (2010) has been determined that the height values of children between 6-9 years of age are 1.31 m., body weight 29.2 kg and bmi 17 kg/ m². as duncan et al. (2007) the height values of children between 8-11 years asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 193-197 196 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of age are 1.39 m., body weight 33,3 kg and bmi 17,5 kg/ m². as kolle et al. (2009) the height values of children in 9 years of age are 1.39 m., body weight 33,9 kg and bmi 17,2 kg/ m². as deforche et al. (2009) bmi of children between 6-10 years of age are 15,7 kg/ m². as gorely et al. (2009) bmi of children between 7-11 years of age are 17,5 kg/ m². as ridgers et al. (2007) the height values of children’s years of age are 1.33 m., body weight 31,9 kg and bmi 17,8 kg/ m². according to stein et al. (2007) the height, body weight and bmi values of children between 10-12 years old have increased with the age. in the study of komata (2002) conducted to 10 years old children with 6 months intervals it is indicated that the height and the body weight of boys have increased in terms of the age. le-masurier et al. (2003) indicated that there was a negative correlation between bmi and body weight and physical activity levels, and that physical activity steps and levels from childhood to old age showed a steady decline. according to belton et al. (2010) the physical activity levels of 6-9 boys were defined as 16821 steps, duncan et al. (2007) stated the physical activity levels of 8-11 year-olds as 12263 steps. duncan et al. (2006) children have a level of 14124 daily steps. gorely stated the physical activity level steps of children as 9789 per day. raustorp and ludvigsson (2007) indicated that children had a daily step level of 15991-16273. cox et al. (2006) stated the average daily step levels of men as 15606, craig et al. (2010) as 12259 steps. deforche et al. (2009) indicated the physical activity levels of boys between 6-10 years of age as gold. tudor-locke and bassett (2004) indicated in the study named “how many steps are enough?” that 5000 steps and below sedentary, 5000-7459 steps are low active group, 7500-9999 steps are a little active, 10000-12499 steps are active, and 12500 steps and above are high active. locke stated that children taking physical activity steps between 12000-15000 daily have a healthier and more positive bmi level, as well as children have an average of 8000-12000 steps, and men have an average of 13000 daily steps. in the study of tudor-locke and bassett (2004) they indicated that 5000 steps and below have really bad life quality, between 5000 and 7499 have sedentary, between 7500 and 9999 have low life quality, 1000 steps and above have good life quality. according to our research; for the protection or enhancement of physical activity; it is recommended to make physical activity more fun and to create activities appropriate for age groups. the duration of use of television, computer and smartphone should be reduced, and regular sleep times should be encouraged. foods sold in school canteens should be inspected and banned food such as cola and chips should be encouraged. increasing the number of physical activity areas in playgrounds in schools and after school will play an important role in children's physical activity habits. as a result, it can be said that the body mass indexes of children between 10-11 years of age are in good level and their physical activity levels are generally active. references belton, s., p. brady, s. meegan and c. woods, 2010. pedometer step count and bmi of irish primary school children aged 6–9 years. preventive medicine, 50(4): 189-192.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2010.01.009. birch, l.l. and j.o. fisher, 1998. development of eating behaviors among children and adolescents. pediatrics, 101(supplement 2): 539-549. cox, m., g. schofield, 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publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 8 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 8-17, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.8.17 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluating the student-teacher relationship in elementary schools: “my teacher & i-child” aysegul sukran oz1  sevda dolapçıoğlu2 ( corresponding author) 1mustafa kemal university, department of special education, turkey 2mustafa kemal university, department of educational sciences, turkey abstract empirical evidence from national and international studies suggests that the teacher-student relationship has a great impact on students’ academic success, and social and psychological wellbeing. realizing the importance of this impact, the present study has two main purposes: firstly, to investigate the perceptions of 6–11 year old students in elementary schools in terms of the informational support, emotional support and closeness they receive based on grade level and the demographic characteristics of teachers and students; and secondly, to conduct an adaptation, validity and reliability study of an instrument which can be used in turkey to investigate str from the children’s perspective of perceived social support. the data was obtained from 338 students. cfa, one-way anova, independent samples t-tests and chi-square tests were employed for the data analysis. according to the results, overall there is no significant difference in students’ perceptions based on the grade levels and students’ or teachers’ gender; however, there are differences among grades on the bases of some scale items in emotional support, informational support and closeness sub-dimensions. additionally, the cfa revealed that the adapted my teacher and i-child scale’s χ2/df, rmsea, rmr, srmr, gfi, and agfi values are perfectly consistent. keywords: student-teacher relationship, scale adaptation, elementary education, informational support, emotional support and closeness, elementary education. jel classification: i20: genereal education, 131 general welfare, well-being. citation | aysegul sukran oz; sevda dolapçıoğlu (2019). evaluating the student-teacher relationship in elementary schools: “my teacher & i-child”. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 8-17. history: received: 30 august 2018 revised: 3 october 2018 accepted: 8 november 2018 published: 4 december 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: the authors would like to thank the hatay provincial directorate for national education, participating school administrations, teachers and students. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 8. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 14 5. limitations ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 16 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 16 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.8.17&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/372 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0746-3385 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2707-1744 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/372 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0746-3385 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2707-1744 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/372 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0746-3385 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2707-1744 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/372 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0746-3385 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2707-1744 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 8-17 9 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction 1.1. student-teacher relationship (str) a well-functioning school is built on three relational building blocks. according to riley (2010) these three building blocks are the relationship between the students and teachers from their own perspectives, and the school administration's attitudes toward the formation and preservation of these relationships. the organizational culture in the school has a direct effect on the student-teacher relationship (str). it has been revealed that in a school where a supportive culture dominates, the students perceive the relationships with the teachers more democratically (i̇pek, 1999). scientific studies since the 1980s have demonstrated that the str plays a key role in better understanding the behavior of teachers and students in the class, and that the educational process directly affects student outcomes (roorda et al., 2011; wubbels et al., 2012). despite this fund of knowledge, teachers today are exposed to pressure to increase the academic achievement of children rather than focusing on relationships. for this reason, some very important issues such as teachers working on building strong relationships between teachers and students, and among students themselves, and facilitating children’s social and moral development do not attract the attention they deserve in everyday practice (watson and ecken, 2003). whereas, school environments that support only competition for high academic qualifications and grades reduce the motivation for learning in many children, even if they may be positive for some children (meece et al., 2006). some studies revealed that a strong str also has a protective effect on children who have developmental, behavioral and academic risks (baker, 2006; decker et al., 2007; searle et al., 2013). for example, a recent study has shown that reducing hyperactivity and attentional behavior problems increases children's participation in school activities. the main factor in preventing these behavior problems is the warm and supportive relationships established with the child, which promote the child's self-perception (searle et al., 2013). reddy et al. (2003) found that levels of depression and self-esteem in 6–8th grade students do not influence their perception level of their relationship with their teachers, but rather that the teacher support they perceive affects their levels of depression and self-esteem. adolescents who think that their teachers are positive about them and are supportive of them are also found to have higher levels of internal motivation to learn (ivančič and levpušček, 2016). children express that they want to be educated in environments where their teachers care and support them cognitively and emotionally (daniels and perry, 2003; knoell, 2012). when international literature is reviewed, it can be seen that researchers evaluate str by employing semistructured interviews conducted with teachers (aultman et al., 2009) and likert-type scales reflecting only teachers’ (ang, 2005) only students’ (mantzicopoulos and neuharth-pritchett, 2003) or both teachers’ and students’ points of view (furman et al., 1989). aultman et al. (2009) in their qualitative study, examined the str from a teacher's perspective and tried to explain how teachers describe and form the boundaries within this relationship. as a result of this research it has been shown that it is important for teachers to maintain a balance between healthy classroom control and building a caring and respectful relationship with their students. ang (2005) developed a 14-item teacher-student relationship inventory (tsri) to assess the str from the teacher's perspective. this scale includes satisfaction, instrumental help and conflict sub-dimensions. when the studies in this area are reviewed, it can be seen that instruments grounded on attachment theory and adapted from scales and forms originally developed for parent-child relationships were utilized in the majority of earlier studies. (fraire et al., 2013). while some of them use observation tools that monitor educational interaction to collect data, most of them use assessment tools that include teacher notifications. the most common of these tools appears to be the student-teacher relationship scale (strs), which is based on attachment theory, prepared by pianta (2001). this scale is also adapted to the italian, spanish, greek and dutch cultures (tsigilis and gregoriadis, 2008; koomen et al., 2012; fraire et al., 2013). pianta’s 28-item strs includes the dimensions of conflict, closeness, and dependency (beyazkurk and kesner, 2005). since the adult-child relationship is influenced by the cultural context, it is important to adapt the tools to be used in the str analysis to different languages and cultures. although they are very few, there are studies that examine younger children’s (5–7 years old) perceptions of str. in these studies, different relational dimensions were examined with different test formats. the 14-item young children's appraisals of teacher support (y-cats), a measure developed by mantzicopoulos and neuharth-pritchett (2003) examines the str based on the dimensions of warmth, conflict, and autonomy. in this scale, children are asked to answer questions about their relationship with their teachers by placing their cards in mailbox (true) and trashcan (untrue). as a result of the research, it was revealed that boys' relationships with their teachers are more conflicting compared to those of girls. there was found to be a correlation between children's ycats answers, their academic achievement, and teacher-reported social skills and behavior problems. murray et al. (2008) used my family and friends-child (mff-c) form as a scale, which was originally developed by reid et al. (1989) for use in interviews with children. the findings demonstrated that the subjective perceptions of children between the ages of 6 and 12 on social support offered to them can be measured in a valid and reliable way and that children perceive and appreciate this support (reid et al., 1989). when the turkish literature on str is reviewed, it can be observed that str in the early childhood period (demirkaya, 2013) and str in primary, secondary and higher education levels were investigated (i̇pek and terzi, 2010; williams, 2012; yılmaz and tosun, 2013). in addition to this research, studies on the adaptation of the str scales for our country are also present (beyazkürk, 2005; sahin, 2014). an instrument entitled “student teacher relationship scale” (strs) (pianta, 2001) which is used extensively in international str literature, was adapted to turkish by zorbaz et al. (2016) and sahin (2014) and an evaluation of its validity and reliability was presented. similar to international literature, studies that examine the teacher-student relationship of children between the ages of 6 and 12 in turkey are generally based on the teacher's view (i̇pek and terzi, 2010; demirkaya, 2013; yılmaz and tosun, 2013; zorbaz et al., 2016). yet, the relationships are twofold and the viewpoints of the learners are important. however, it was not possible to find a study which is based on the student's perception of the teacher-student relationship at early asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 8-17 10 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group childhood and elementary education levels. when it comes to the middle school level, only one study that reflects the perspective of the student could be found (williams, 2012). 1.2. importance and purpose of the study almost all of the studies summarized above report on the data obtained from teachers’ notifications as regards the student-child relationship (birch and ladd, 1997; howes et al., 2000). these studies have created a very valuable basis for educational researchers to better understand the child-teacher relationship today and to be able to produce new studies, while, on the other hand, it creates some limitations in our interpretation of this relationship (murray et al., 2008; spilt et al., 2010). for example, because the perceptions of teachers regarding children and their behavior are affected by the demographic characteristics of the students, such as ethnicity and gender, the answers given may not reflect the actual quality of the relationship or school adaptation (pigott and cowen, 2000; saft and pianta, 2001; taylor et al., 2001; ho et al., 2012). another example can be given in relation to the academic outcomes of the teacher-student relationship. hamre and pianta (2001) who studied the relationship between teacher perspective, the teacher-child relationship and academic achievement, have stated that this relationship explains the variance of students' academic outcomes. however, in another study, when a different assessment method such as exam marks or standard test scores was selected instead of academic performance assessed by the teacher, the teacher’s perception of the str did not explain the variance in academic performance (decker et al., 2007). it is very difficult to collect valid and reliable self-reporting data from children (fraire et al., 2013). therefore, many studies at international and national level, which assess children's relationships with their family or teachers, are based on the interpretations made by parents and teachers based on the child's behavior (especially in early and middle childhood). it is important to keep in mind that there may be a difference between the results of selfreporting measures and concrete results from observations of actual behavior. although there are limitations in the studies that use children’s own assessments as the only source of data (woolley et al., 2004) this does not indicate that understanding children's internal assessments is insignificant (olson, 1977). on the contrary, the ways in which children perceive relationships and the mental representations they make in relation to these relationships play a decisive role in their psycho-social development (lynch and cicchetti, 1997). there are also studies that show significant concurrence between the ways children perceive relationships and the way parents and siblings perceive relationships (furman et al., 1989). the child-adult relationship is a co-built dyadic structure that is influenced by the characteristics of both the child and the adult (henk, 2006). for this reason, it is critical to examine the child’s perspective of their relationship with their teacher in order to better understand the teacher-student relationship (spilt et al., 2010). even if the teacher or parent reports are rich sources of information, they should not be a substitute for the child's own views (varni et al., 2007; spilt et al., 2010). however, studies that cover the first years of the educational period and examine the str in this timeframe from the child's perspective are scarce (lynch and cicchetti, 1997; baker, 2006). although there are only a few studies that have examined this relationship based on the students’ points of view in international literature (murray et al., 2008; spilt et al., 2010) no turkish scale to examine the str from a child's perspective could be found in the national literature review. realizing this gap, the present study has two main purposes: 1) to investigate elementary school students’ perceptions of informational support, emotional support and closeness based on grade level and demographic characteristics of teachers and students; and 2) to conduct an adaptation, validity and reliability study of an instrument which can be used in turkey to investigate str from the children’s perspective of perceived social support. 2. method 2.1. study group the present study included two separate groups of student participants. first group was recruited for the scale adaptation purposes. for the scale adaptation study, data was collected from 300 children (138 female and 162 male) who were selected from primary school students at different grade levels by using a typical group sampling method. a sample over 200is considered as a large sample and the error rate is lower in the small sample than the large sample. for scales with a small number of items, it is recommended that 20 times the amount of items be taken (kline, 2005). simple sizes can be evaluated in this category and it can be said that the study groups are large enough for validity-reliability analyses. the descriptive dimension of the study conducted on a separate group of children selected by using a typical group sampling method among primary school students at different grade levels. this method of sampling requires the collection of information from a sample through the determination of a typical situation from a large number of situations related to the research question (büyüköztürk, 2010). to collect data, a total of 338 elementary school students, 152 girls and 186 boys (x = 7.4, ss = 1.01), were selected. the age range of the elementary school students in the study group was between 6 and 11. 2.2. data collection tool my teacher and i-child (mti-c) scale. my family and friends-child (mff-c) scale, which was originally developed as a my family and friends interview form by reid et al. in 1989, was transformed into a scale by murray et al. (2008) by modifying the related items based on the student-teacher relationship (str). since the turkish version of the scale focuses only on the str, the name was changed to my teacher and i-child (mti-c). the scale contains a two-stage structure for each item. the first stage of each question requires the student to answer in the form of “yes” or “no.” this first section assesses whether the child has received a certain type of support from his teacher. if the children say “no,” a "0" score is given. if the children give a “yes” answer, they move on to the second stage. the second stage requires students to state their ratings for the perceived level of support. these support types are listed as four different factors on the scale. these factors are informational support, emotional support, closeness and conflict. the children need to answer the second part of the question with a feeling barometer that contains four levels (i feel no happiness; i don’t feel very happy, i feel a little happy, i asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 8-17 11 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group feel very happy). the informational support factor of the original scale contains three items and accounts for 24.9% of the total variance (α = .65). the emotional support factor contains four items and accounts for 11.4% of the total variance (α = .51). the closeness factor contains three items and accounts for 10.9% of the total variance (α = .46). the conflict factor contains one item and accounts for 9.6% of the total variance (α = 0.67). 2.3. data analysis and processes in order to achieve a reliable and valid adapted scale which is equivalent to the original version, there were several procedures to follow (beaton et al., 2000) and different approaches to employ (hançer, 2003) in scale adaptations from one culture to another. in the present study, adaptation procedures were begun by requesting permission via e-mail from murray et al. (2008) who converted the my family and friends interview form to the my friends and family-child scale and who conducted the first validity and reliability study on the scale. after securing their approval, work on adapting the scale to the turkish context started. in order to ensure the validity of the language, the first step in adaptation was the translation from english, the source language, to turkish, the target language, which was conducted independently by two language specialists and two field specialists. the two language specialists did not have a background in education or related fields and were not informed about the research topic. their translations were intended to reflect the language used in society colloquially. field specialists were selected from the departments of elementary education and special education. their translations were used to achieve a better equivalency from an educational perspective and evaluation standpoint. as a second step, the four translators and the researchers conducted a meeting to synthesize the translations. scale items in the original and the translated forms were evaluated in order to achieve perfect concordance in terms of meaning and content, and some words were replaced with their synonyms. in this way, a first draft of the turkish scale was obtained. the third stage was a blind translation of the draft back into english by two native speakers; this was to ensure the items, directions, and explanations in the turkish version reflected the same meaning and content as in the original document and to prevent any conceptual errors. in the fourth stage, field experts and researchers reviewed the final draft version of the scale in terms of semantic, idiomatic, experiential and conceptual equivalency. the scale title has been changed from my family and friends-child (mff-c) to my teacher and i-child (mti-c) to achieve better congruity with its new use and culture with respect to item content. after the processes of linguistic adaptation were completed, a pilot study was conducted. in this pilot study, comprehension and cognitive equivalence of the final draft mti-c were examined through interviews with 35 elementary education students aged between 6 and 11. findings demonstrated that the total t value of each item was higher than 1.96 (p < .05) and the internal consistency coefficient was .59. missing data, extreme value, normality, linearity and multicollinearity analyses were performed on the raw data in the process of adapting the scale. in scale adaptation studies, explanatory factor analysis (efa) and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) are generally used. efa is used when there is no prior knowledge of how the variables included in the analysis would be related to each other, whereas cfa is utilized for the verification of the scale adaptation to other cultures or groups when the sub-dimensions of the scale are previously determined and the relationships between measured variable and latent variables are known (tabachnick and fidell, 2001; kline, 2005; byrne, 2010; çokluk et al., 2010). since the relationship between the variables in the mti-c scale was specified previously, cfa was selected in the present study. multiple compliance indices (rmr, remsea, srmr, and cfi) are used in cfa. the following measurements were considered: in cfa >.90 is the acceptable limit for cfi and >.95 is the excellent compliance limit (tabachnick and fidell, 2001; ullman, 2001; kline, 2005); for rmsea, srmr and rmr, <.08 is the acceptable boundary and <.50 the excellent matching limit and lisrel 8.7 was used for cfa and spss 20 was used for one-way-anova and chi-square analysis. 3. findings 3.1. construct validity confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). confirmatory factor analysis is a type of analysis conducted to test the validity of a measurement tool developed in a different culture or sample in a new sample or culture (seçer, 2015); (tabachnick and fidell, 2001). an adaptation of the mti-c scales model in turkish culture was examined with first level cfa. cfa results were assessed using model fit indexes. for the first level cfa result, which was conducted to determine mti-c scale’s model consistency, it was found that the chi-square consistency value of the factor structure consisting of ten items and three factors was significant (χ2 = 64.12, sd = 32, p = .000 and the χ2/df value about the model consistency was 2.00. fit index values were found to be rmsa: .033, rmr: .011, srmr: .050, cfi: .90. the findings of the first-level cfa examination into the model consistency of the threefactor structure of my teacher and the i-child scale (mti-c) are given in table 1. table-1. findings related to the first level confirmatory factor analysis index excellent criteria for consistency acceptable criteria for consistency research finding result χ2/df 0–2 2–3 2.00 perfect fit rmsea .05 ≤.08 .033 perfect fit rmr ≤.05 ≤.08 .011 perfect fit srmr ≤.05 ≤.08 .050 perfect fit cfi ≥.95 ≥.90 .91 acceptable fit ifi ≥.95 ≥.90 .91 acceptable fit gfi ≥.90 ≥.85 .96 perfect fit agfi ≥.90 ≥.85 .94 perfect fit asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 8-17 12 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group considering the fit index values presented in table 1, while χ2 /df, rmsea, rmr, srmr, gfi and agfi values are found to be at a perfect level of fit, the fit indexes of model related to cfi, ifi values are at an acceptable level (tabachnick and fidell, 2001; ullman, 2001; kline, 2005). the flow chart for the first level cfa related to mti-c scale is given in figure 1. figure-1. cfa result on mti-c scale (a = informational support, b = emotional support, c= closeness) table 2. shows the information on the standardized loads, t-values and regression coefficients ( ) belonging to the indicators in the model. table-2. standardized loads, t-values and regression coefficients ( ) belonging to the indicators in the model load (λ) t r2 m1 (item 1) .49 6.46 .17 m2 (item 2) .46 4.03 .09 m3 (item 3) .66 6.86 .21 m4 (item 4) .16 2.76 .04 m5 (item 5) .72 7.18 .03 m6 (item 6) .47 4.20 .08 m7 (item 7) .77 5.23 .22 m9 (item 9) .97 7.54 .33 m10 (item10) .68 5.93 .16 m11 (item 11) .40 3.48 .06 table 2 demonstrates that the factor loads of the items vary from .40 to .97 except in item four, where the factor load is .16 and the variance explained in the model is .04. it was intended that this item be removed from the measurement in these circumstances, but given that the value of t was 2.76 (p <.05), it was decided that it should remain on the scale. also, item 8 included in the “closeness” factor of the scale was removed from the scale when its t value was found to be below 1.96, and the values were re-examined. in the analysis made for the reliability study of the scale, the internal consistency cronbach value was .59. murray et al. (2008) reported a crombach alpha value of .67 for the entire scale. values between .40 and .60 are considered as weak but reliable (özdamar, 1999). additionally, the low number of items of scale may have reduced the reliability score. therefore, we decided to examine the construct validity. the structural reliability of the mtic scale and the test repeatability was found to be .64 and .67 respectively. highest and lowest possible scores on the scale are 40 and 0 respectively. as a conclusion, the three-factor structure of the “mti-c scale” was found to be usable in turkey with the name “my teacher and i-child (mti-c)” for children between the ages of six and eleven. 3.2. teacher-student relationship based on the grade level table-3. one-way analysis of variance of elementary education students’ student-teacher relationship scores based on grade levels source of variance total of squares sd average of squares f p inter-groups 67.722 3 7.439 .484 .694 intra-groups 15592.683 334 13.88 total 15660.404 337 according to the results of the analysis, the teacher-student relationship does not differ with respect to the total scores according to the grade level attended (f (3,334) = .484, p > .05). however, when examined in terms of subscale total scores, it was found that there were significant differences between some of the items in the factor dimensions according to grade level attended. the results of the chi-square for teacher-student relationship level according to the grade level attended for these items are presented in table 4. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 8-17 13 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4.chi-square results on the informational support factor in str based on the grade attended items r a ti n g s grades chi-square 1 2 3 4 sd p % f % f % f % f 2a. when you need help with doing your school work, like learning the alphabet, do you ask (teachers' name) for help? y n 2b. if you go to your teacher for help with school work, how helpful is he/she? 0 (no) 32 21 30 27 11 12 21 15 47.42 15 .000* 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 8 5 12 10 2,7 3 2,7 2 3 15 10 27 24 32 35 11 8 4 45 30 30 37 55 60 66 48 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 4a. when you want someone to help you learn how things work, like how to build something, do you ask (teacher' name) to tell you? 4b. how much do you learn about how things work from your teacher? 0 33 22 24 21 27 30 32 23 8,39 12 .672 1 1,5 1 1,1 1 0 0 0 0 2 4,5 3 4,5 4 5,5 6 2,7 2 3 14 9 24 21 20 22 26 19 4 47 31 47 42 47 52 40 29 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 7a. when you need help putting on your shoes or coat, do you go to your teacher for help? 7b. if you go to your teacher for help putting on your shoes or coat, how helpful is he/she? 0 12 8 27 24 27 30 30 22 26,28 12 .010* 1 0 0 1 1 2 2 1,4 1 2 12 8 1 1 5,5 6 6,8 5 3 26 17 11 10 14 15 25 18 4 50 33 60 53 52 57 37 27 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 table 4 demonstrates a significant difference between the answers to the “informational support” factor of the students who attend different academic grades. while the first graders gave the answer “no” (32%) mostly to questions such as “when you need help with doing your school work, like learning the alphabet, do you ask (teacher’s name) for help?,” in the second part of the same item, “the class that thought the teacher was most helpful” was the fourth grade (66%). in other words, there is a significant difference between students’ responses based on grade level in terms of asking for help from their teacher in tasks related to school (sd = 15, n = 338) = 47.42,p ≤ .05. in the example of wearing coat and shoes, 88% of the first graders stated that they asked for help, while the fourth graders (37%) reported that they had received the least amount of help when they asked for help. in other words, asking for help in self-help tasks is significantly different between grade level (sd = 12, n = 338) = 26.28, p ≤ .05. table-5. chi-square results on the "emotional support” factor in str based on the grade attended items r a ti n g s grades chi-square 1 2 3 4 sd p % f % f % f % f 1a. when you want to share your feelings, for example when you feel happy or sad, do you share them with your [teacher's name] teacher? 1b. how much better do you feel when you share your feelings with your teacher? 0 (no) 15 10 23 20 26 28 36 26 26.57 15 .000* 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 1 1 4,5 4 9 10 1,4 1 3 20 13 15 13 22 24 21 15 4 64 42 58 52 43 47 43 31 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 8a. if you want to be with someone who makes you happy, would you go to your teacher? 8b. how happy do you feel if you are with your teacher? 0 29 19 28 25 22 24 29 21 17.85 12 .120 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 1 4 4 6 4 3 9 6 12 11 13 14 17 13 4 62 41 59 52 62 68 48 35 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 10a. do you want help from your teacher when there is something you do not know much about? 10b. if you go to your teacher for help, how much do you learn from him/her? 0 18 12 16 14 13 14 26 19 24,08 15 .640 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1,4 1 2 8 5 8 7 6 8 1,4 1 3 15 10 22 20 21 23 33 24 4 59 39 54 48 58 64 38 28 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 table 5 demonstrates a significant difference between the answers to the “emotional support” factor of the students who attend different academic grades. in response to “when you want to share your feelings, for example when you feel happy or sad, do you share them with your [teacher's name] teacher?,” while the fourth graders gave the answer “no” (36%) the most, in the second part of the same item, “the class that felt best when they shared their feelings” emerged as the first grade (64%). in other words, the levels at which students share their feelings with the teacher is significantly different according to the class level, (sd = 1, n = 338) = 47.42, p ≤ .05. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 8-17 14 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. chi-square results on the “closeness” factor in str based on the grade attended items r a ti n g s grades chi-square 1 2 3 4 sd p % f % f % f % f 17,26 12 .140 3a. does your teacher say things that make you feel good about yourself? 3b. how good does (teacher’s name) make you feel about yourself? 0 (no) 6 4 6 5 1,8 2 1,4 1 1 0 0 0 0 1,8 2 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 2,7 3 0 0 3 4 6 12,4 11 14 15 14 10 4 89 58 82 73 80 88 85 62 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 5a. do you get upset or angry with your teacher, even if you don't show it to him/her? 5b. how angry or upset do you get with your teacher, even if you don't show it? 0 64 42 30 27 28 31 18 13 56,67 12 .000* 1 9 6 6,7 6 15 16 4 3 2 14 9 11 10 20 22 27 20 3 1,5 1 21 19 12 13 21 15 4 12 8 30 27 25 28 30 22 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 6a. when you do something good at school that makes you feel really happy, like making a beautiful picture, do you tell (teacher’s name)? 6b. if you tell your teacher about these good things, how happy does it make you feel? 0 3 2 5 4 8 9 12 9 23.76 12 .022* 1 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 2 3 3 4 3 3 5 3 10 9 8 9 21 15 4 90 60 82 73 81 89 63 46 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 9a. do you ever feel like (teacher’s name) really understands you or really knows you? 9b. how much does your teacher really understand or know you? 0 32 21 28 25 40 44 34 25 24.24 12 .019 1 0 0 0 0 4 4 1,4 1 2 6 4 8 7 10 11 4,1 3 3 18 12 34 30 29 32 32 23 4 44 29 30 27 17 19 29 21 t 100 66 100 89 100 110 100 73 when table 6 is examined, a significant difference can be seen in the responses given to items 5 and 6 in the “closeness” factor by students at different grades. the biggest difference can be observed between the first and fourth grades. among the four grade levels, the percentages of children who do not feel angry toward their teachers is highest in the first grade (64%), while it is lowest in the fourth grade (18%). in other words, there is a significant difference between the grade levels in terms of feeling angry toward the teacher: (sd = 12,n = 338) = 56.67, p ≤ .05. the results demonstrate that first graders share with their teachers most frequently (90%) when they do something good at school and feel the most happiness as a result of this sharing. the student group which expresses that the teacher understands and recognizes them most is also the first graders (44%). when we examine all of the grade levels who participated in the study, about 30% of the students stated that the teachers do not know and understand them. teacher-student relationship and demographic characteristics. the students' views on the teacher relationship were not significantly different when analyzed based on the students' gender, t (336) = .207, p ≥ .05. according to the results of the chi-square analysis of total scores for this item, the percentages of female students (64.8%) feeling happy when they are with their teachers are higher than male students (51.4%). likewise, when they are informed by the teacher, girls feel better at a higher level (87.3%). teachers’ gender did not have any significant difference on the teacher-student relationship, t (336) = 1.174, p ≥ .05. when evaluating teachers' seniority and student views, there is a significant difference in the “emotional support factor” according to teachers’ seniority status. results related to the subject are presented in table 7. table-7.one way anova results for the "emotional support” factor in str based on the teacher seniority level source of variance total of squares sd average of squares f p inter-groups 51.405 1 51.405 4.65 .032 intra-groups 3718.145 336 11,066 total 3769.550 337 according to the results of the analysis, the teacher-student relationship emotional support dimension differs based on the teachers’ levels of seniority (f (1,336) = 4.65, p .05. teachers with seniority of 15 years or more offer emotional support to their students more than teachers with lower levels of seniority. informational support and closeness factors do not differ according to the seniority level, p ≥ .05. 4. discussion and conclusion one of the most important factors affecting the quality of str, which is bilateral in nature, henk (2006) is the cultural context in which the child and the teacher live (hofstede, 1986; pianta et al., 2002; crosnoe et al., 2004). along with the increase in multinational and multicultural scientific research, the need to adapt assessment and measurement tools to different languages and cultures has also increased (beaton et al., 2000). this study focuses on the adaptation and validation of the mff-c scale developed in the united states to the context of turkey. perceived levels of str by children is important in terms of their academic achievement, academic self-esteem, behavioral, social and emotional adjustment (reddy et al., 2003; murray and malmgren, 2005; hughes et al., 2012; knoell, 2012; sakiz, 2017). despite the importance of the matter, when the relevant national and international literature is reviewed, the lack of information on the nature and the developmental course of strs during the primary education level, especially covering the mid-childhood years, is striking (baker, 2006). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 8-17 15 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the driving force for this research was the need for a tool which would save the researchers from the limitations of methods based merely on teachers’ (or adults’) opinions, and which can be used in education, psychology and other related fields in order to reveal the children’s perception toward str at elementary school level in turkey. the my family and friends-child (mff-c) form prepared by reid et al. (1989) was converted to a scale with an identical name by murray et al. (2008). when adapting the scale into turkish, the name of the scale was changed to my teacher and i-child (mti-i), since the focus of the instrument was on the relationship between students and teachers. in the process of adapting the scale to turkish culture, the focus was first on ensuring linguistic validity, and expert opinions were sought for this purpose. after piloting the study and making the necessary adjustments, the scale was finalized (beaton et al., 2000; hançer, 2003; cha et al., 2007). factor loadings of the items range from .40 to .97, except for item 4. it was observed that, while the factor load for item 4 was .16, the variance explained by this item in the model was .04. at first, this item was going to be excluded from the measurement based on the values mentioned above; however, when its t value was found to be 2.76 (p <.05), item 4 was kept in the scale. item 8 included in the “closeness” factor of the scale was removed from the scale when its t value was found to be below 1.96, and the values were re-examined. for item 5, the li̇srel program gave an error since it was the sole item included in the “conflict” factor in the original scale and the program suggested that it should be included in the “closeness” factor. factor analysis is a statistical method aimed at finding and exploring a small number of unrelated and conceptually meaningful new variables (factors) by combining p number of variables (büyüköztürk, 2010). as a result of these analyses, after dropping the “conflict factor,” the final version of the adapted scale included three sub-dimensions. the original mff_c scale containing four factors (closeness, conflict, emotional and informational support) and 11 items murray et al. (2008) was transformed into its turkish version containing three factors (closeness, emotional and informational support) and 10 items [by removing item 8 (t = 1.55; p > .05)]. the model fit of the three-factor structure of the scale was tested with first level cfa. as a result of first level cfa, the threefactor structure of the mti-c form was found to be perfectly consistent in terms of the model fit indices (rmsa:0.33, rmr: .011, srmr: .050 and cfi: .91) and it was concluded that the scale had model fit. in the analyses made for the reliability study of the scale, the internal consistency cronbach value was .59. murray et al. (2008) reported a cronbach alpha value of .67 for the entire scale. values between .40 and .60 are regarded as weak but reliable (özdamar, 1999) and a low number of items on the scale can reduce the reliability scores (mti-c form contains 11 items). for this reason, it was decided to examine the structural reliability of the scale. the structural reliability value of the mti-c scale was found to be .64 and test-retest reliability was found to be .67. in the study conducted in 1989, the test-retest reliability of the mff scale was calculated as .69 using interclass correlation coefficient value .69 (reid et al., 1989). as a result, it is concluded that a three-factor structure of "mti-c scale” can be used in turkey for children aged between 6 and 11. in the current study, the internal consistency of the mti-c scale cronbach alpha value was calculated as .59. this value is similar to the findings of reid et al. (1989) who used the first version of this scale. reid et al. (1989) reported the internal consistency coefficient (cronbach's alpha) of the scale as α = .61 for non-family members. the internal validity for the entire mff scale was .72. the emotional support dimension emerged as the subdimension with the highest internal validity. in this subscale, the internal validity of emotional support from teachers was reported as .78. wolchik et al. (1989) reported that the internal consistency coefficient for the mff scale ranged from .28 to .97 and the median test-retest coefficient was .70. in addition to the cfa, it has also been investigated whether the str varies according to class level, gender and teachers’ professional experience. for this sample, when the whole scale is assessed, the perceptions of the str do not differ according to the academic grade level. this finding contradicts the results of lynch and cicchetti (1997) who worked with older age groups. 2nd–5th grade students describe their relationships with their teachers as more reliable than 6–8th grade students. this is thought to be the effect of adolescence during which children shift from adult-centered to peer-centered relationships (lynch and cicchetti, 1997). however, the differences according to the grade level in some items that were included in the factors of the mti-c scale attract attention. when the items in the informational support sub-dimension are examined in table 4, it is seen that the 1st graders stated that they cannot ask their teacher for support while they are doing their school related tasks (item 2); however, they can get support from their teachers for wearing their coat and shoes (item 7). for the 4th graders, the situation is the opposite for these two items. in the first years of elementary education in our country, children have an intense relationship with a single teacher. this period is also the period when children are relatively dependent on their teachers in many skills such as self-care. similar to our child participants, turkish teachers report significantly more dependency in their relationships with students as compared to their counterparts in the us (beyazkürk, 2005). as the grades advance, however, the weight of academic duties increases, the number of teacher-student interactions decreases, and the student becomes more independent from the teacher, and in addition, new teachers enter the child's life. the findings related to the 4 th graders can be explained by the inconsistencies occurring in children’s lives due to the changes addressed above, and by the onset of children building mostly functional relationships with their teachers as required by school life (lynch and cicchetti, 1997). similarly, there is a significant difference between grades 1 and 4 in item 1 in the emotional support factor and items 5 and 6 in the closeness factor. first graders are those who like to share their emotions with their teachers and who think the teacher is well acquainted with them the most; the fourth graders are those who are most upset or angry at what the teacher does. the fact that 30% of all participants think that their teachers do not know them is a remarkable finding. teachers have to act within boundaries, such as emotional, personal, institutional, curriculum, and relationship boundaries, when dealing with their students. many find themselves in a dilemma where they wish to establish close relationships with their students, and at the same time they also have to provide classroom control (aultman et al., 2009). the study results revealed that the gender of the teacher did not make a significant difference on the children’s perceptions with respect to the str. however, female participants of the present study reported that they feel happier than boys when they are with their teachers. ivančič and levpušček (2016) study, working with a higher asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 8-17 16 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group age group, found that boys perceive their interaction with class teachers more negatively than their female classmates. there are studies evaluating the effect of the gender variable on the str at various educational levels. girls at high school level view their relationships with their teachers more positively, especially when they first start school (lynch and cicchetti, 1997; reddy et al., 2003). differences regarding gender are expressed in studies based on the teachers’ opinions. teachers describe their relationship with female students as closer and less conflicting compared to male students (hamre and pianta, 2001; baker, 2006). according to the students who participated in the study, teachers who have 15 years and more professional experience provide more emotional support compared to less experienced teachers. on the other hand, informational support and closeness factors do not differ according to seniority level. in conclusion, the results of the present study demonstrate that the mti-c scale, the turkish version of mffc, is a reliable and valid tool for evaluating the teacher-student relationship in turkey for children from grades 1 to 4. this finding has important implications for teacher educators, policy makers and researchers especially in the fields of education and psychology. 5. limitations this study contributed a valid and reliable scale to be used in turkey for developing a better understanding of str from the child’s perspective. through this study a valid and reliable scale has been contributed to the literature on this topic. however, it should be kept in mind that the scale would only reflect the students’ subjective points of view. therefore, using other data collection methods such as interviews and in-class observations would strengthen research projects investigating strs. references ang, r.p., 2005. development and validation of the teacher-student relationship inventory using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. the journal of experimental education, 74(1): 55-74. available at: https://doi.org/10.3200/jexe.74.1.55-74. aultman, l.p., m.r. williams-johnson and p.a. schutz, 2009. boundary dilemmas in teacher–student relationships: struggling with “the line”. teaching and teacher education, 25(5): 636-646. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.10.002. baker, j.a., 2006. contributions of teacher–child 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 12-17, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.12.17 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between exercise addiction and satisfaction with life in physical education and sport department students kürşat hazar1 kubilay şenbakar2 ( corresponding author) 1physical education and sports osmaniye korkut ata university, turkey. 2rectorate unit, firat university, turkey. abstract this study, conducted to analyze the relationship between exercise dependency and satisfaction with life in physical education and sport department students, is designed in a quantitive research model and a scanning pattern is used. the students of physical education and sports teaching department, coaching education department, sports management department and recreation department in the faculty of sports sciences of fırat university voluntarily participated in the study. personal information form, exercise addiction scale, and life satisfaction scale are used as data collection instruments. the obtained data have been evaluated in spss 24 packet program and paired and multiple comparisons have been made according to the determined independent variables (independent groups t-test, anova), and pearson correlation analysis has been performed to examine the relationship between the variables. according to the findings, there is a significant difference between the participants' sports year variable and life satisfaction (p<0.05). in addition, while there is a significant difference (p<0.05) in favor of recreation students regarding the department variable; it is found that the difference between the participants' exercise addiction scale (eas) and total number of days of doing sports, and years of sports and the average of academic scores are statistically significant (p<0.05). as a result; it has been concluded that as the year and duration of sports increase in physical education and sports department students, exercise dependence and life satisfaction levels increase, this increase positively affects the life satisfaction of the recreation department students and negatively affects the academic achievement of students. keywords: physical education, sports, exercise, addiction, student, life satisfaction. citation | kürşat hazar; kubilay şenbakar (2020). the relationship between exercise addiction and satisfaction with life in physical education and sport department students. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 12-17. history: received: 2 october 2019 revised: 4 november 2019 accepted: 12 december 2019 published: 10 january 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 14 4. discussion and result ..................................................................................................................................................................... 16 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 16 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.12.17&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1213 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3645-3090 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1213 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3645-3090 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1213 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3645-3090 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1213 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3645-3090 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 12-17 13 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by analyzing the relationship between exercise dependency and satisfaction with life in physical education and sport department students. 1. introduction exercise is all of the physical activities that are repeated at regular intervals at a certain severity aiming to maintain and improve one or more factors (endurance, flexibility, muscular fitness) of the individual's physical fitness (yildirim et al., 2017) individuals can be more productive and effective in their work lives by exercising. also, exercise is of great importance especially in the treatment of inactivity and many diseases associated with it, and this importance is increasing day by day (koruç and nihan, 2009; koçyiğit et al., 2011). it is also known that long-term exercises have positive effects on body composition (hazar and akyol, 2019). although it is a worldwide fact that exercise is healthy behavior, it can sometimes turn into a harmful activity that has the potential to become addictive for a small minority (szabo and griffiths, 2007). in this context, exercise has positive effects as well as negative ones. the most common concept used to express the negative consequences of exercise is the concept of exercise addiction. this concept was first described and used by ogden veale in 1987. veale reported that the concept of exercise addiction was initially started for recreational purposes but later turned into an uncontrollable impulse and resulted in uncontrollable exercise addiction behavior. the dependency criterion, which was limited to alcohol and drugs in the past, has gained a different dimension today. in recent scientific studies, it has been concluded that some behaviors such as gambling, exercise, eating, sleeping, sex, and digital games are addictive (fidan et al., 2016). aidman and woollard (2003); gürbüz and aşçı (2006) defined the best and most obvious symptom of exercise dependence as the need at increasing dosages. in addition to this symptom, the inability to spend time with family and friends due to the exercise of the people around them can be considered as rearranging one's daily life according to the exercise program (adams and kirkby, 2002). according to some studies conducted abroad, personality traits, physiological factors, type of exercise, gender and year of participation in exercise dependence are related to the formation of exercise addiction (bavlı et al., 2015). life satisfaction is a basic element that people should have to be happy in their lives. at the same time, life satisfaction is an issue that has become the focus of attention for hundreds of years. “life satisfaction includes a cognitive component of subjective well-being and cognitive judgments about one's life (diener, 1984)”. in the psychology literature, subjective well-being is expressed as happiness (diener, 2000). subjective well-being consists of separate components, positive and negative emotions, and life satisfaction. life satisfaction constitutes the dimension of subjective well-being (diener et al., 1985). people's life satisfaction can be affected by many different things. these sometimes can be happiness from daily life, meaning attributed to life, harmony in achieving one's goals, positive individual identity, physical well-being of the individual, security, economic and social relations (schermellehengel et al., 2003; yilmaz and aslan, 2013). the main factors affecting life satisfaction are being open-minded, democracy, freedom, being active, keeping their own life under control, being able to be physically and physically sound, doing sports, living in a reliable region, and individual positive identity are the prominent ones, respectively (ozdevecioğlu and aktaş, 2007). for this reason, in this study conducted to examine the relationship between exercise addiction levels and life satisfaction of university students studying in physical education and sports departments; it is seen as important to determine whether there is a relationship between exercise addiction levels and life satisfaction of the students and to take necessary precautions. 2. method in this part of the study, information about the working group and the analysis of the data are included. 2.1. research model the research was designed in a quantitative research model and a scanning design was used. scanning research is a type of research aiming to describe a situation in the past or present, where the characteristics of the participants are determined and related to a subject or event (karasar, 2004). 2.2. research population the population of the research consists of students of physical education and sports teaching department, coaching education department, sports management department and recreation department in the faculty of sports sciences of fırat university in 2019-2010 academic year. 2.3. sample in this research “typical case” method, one of the purposive sampling methods was used. typical sampling method requires the identification of a situation typical of a large number of situations in the population related to the research problem and the collection of information on this sample (sönmez and ilgün, 2018). in this context, the sample of the study consisted of 79 women and 186 men, a total of 265. 2.4. data collection tools personal information form: as a result of the literature review conducted by the personal information form developed by the researchers, variables such as gender, branch, sports history-sports year, number of days of sports performed weekly, department of study and academic grade point average were included. exercise addiction scale was developed by demir et al. (2017) to measure exercise addiction. this scale, which examines exercise dependence in three dimensions, consists of a total of 17 items and 3 dimensions. the first dimension is extreme focus and emotional change (items: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). the second dimension is of postponement and conflict of individual-social needs (articles: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13). the third one is tolerance development and asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 12-17 14 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group passion (items: 14, 15, 16, 17). the scale was developed as a 5-point likert type and individuals were asked to evaluate how appropriate the expressions were to their characters from "i strongly disagree" to "i totally agree". life satisfaction scale: it was developed by diener et al. (1985) and adapted to turkish by dağlı and baysal in 2016. the scale consists of 5 items under a single factor structure. the scale was developed as a 5-point likert type and individuals were asked to evaluate how appropriate the expressions were to their characters from “i strongly disagree” to “i totally agree”. 2.5. data analysis the obtained data were evaluated in spss 24 packet program and paired and multiple comparisons were made according to the determined independent variables (independent groups' t-test, anova), and pearson correlation analysis was performed to examine the relationship between the variables. 3. findings table-1. t-test analysis on participants’ scores from exercise addiction scale (eas) and life satisfaction scale according to gender variable. scale scores gender n mean std. d. t p eas total score female 79 58,26 12,99 ,302 ,76 male 186 57,72 13,46 eas 1. sub-factor female 79 27,59 7,87 1,639 ,10 male 186 26,06 6,49 eas 2. sub-factor female 79 17,44 5,07 -1,293 ,19 male 186 18,54 6,79 eas 3. sub-factor female 79 9,81 2,92 ,165 ,86 male 186 9,74 3,13 satisfaction with life total score female 79 15,74 4,06 -,118 ,90 male 186 15,81 4,58 note: *p > 0,05. when table 1 is examined, it is seen that there is no significant difference between scale total score averages and sub-factor score averages of the participants. table-2. t-test analysis on participants’ scores from exercise addiction scale (eas) and life satisfaction scale according to branch variable. scale scores branch n mean std. d. t p eas total score individual 147 58,78 12,83 1,233 ,21 team 118 56,76 13,84 eas 1. sub-factor individual 147 27,26 5,41 1,946 ,06 team 118 25,60 8,42 eas 2. sub-factor individual 147 18,29 6,96 ,221 ,82 team 118 18,11 5,50 eas 3. sub-factor individual 147 9,80 2,94 ,239 ,81 team 118 9,71 3,23 satisfaction with life total score individual 147 15,68 4,63 -,475 ,63 team 118 15,94 4,17 note: *p<0,05. when table 2 is examined, it is understood that there is no significant difference between scale total score averages and sub-factors score averages of the participants. table-3. t-test analysis on participants’ scores from exercise addiction scale (eas) and life satisfaction scale according to sports year variable. scale scores year n average std. d. t p eas total score 1-4years 113 55,00 14,21 -3,084 ,00 4+ 152 60,02 12,20 eas 1. sub-factor 1-4years 113 25,63 8,37 -1,799 ,07 4+ 152 27,18 5,61 eas 2. sub-factor 1-4years 113 16,93 5,17 -2,864 ,00 4+ 152 19,16 6,95 eas 3. sub-factor 1-4years 113 9,25 3,20 -2,330 ,02 4+ 152 10,13 2,92 satisfaction with life total score 1-4years 113 15,44 4,56 -1,121 ,02 4+ 152 16,05 4,32 note: *p<0,05. when table 3 is examined, it is seen that there is a statistically significant difference between the total scale average scores and the sub-factor average scores of the participants, and this difference is in favor of the participants who have more than 4 years of sports. on the other hand, it is seen that the average subscale score of the second sub-factor is not statistically significant. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 12-17 15 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. t-test analysis on participants’ scores from exercise addiction scale (eas) and life satisfaction scale according to number of the days of sports performed weekly variable. scale scores day in a week n mean std. d. t p eas total score 1-3days 157 56,29 13,84 -2,372 ,01 3+ 108 60,20 12,17 eas 1. sub-factor 1-3days 108 15,95 4,30 -2,643 ,00 3+ 157 25,59 7,73 eas 2. sub-factor 1-3days 108 27,87 5,37 -1,358 ,17 3+ 157 17,77 5,54 eas 3. sub-factor 1-3days 108 18,85 7,32 -1,127 ,26 3+ 157 9,58 3,01 satisfaction with life total score 1-3days 157 15,68 4,52 -,479 ,63 3+ 108 15,95 4,30 note: *p<0,05. when table 4 is examined, it is seen that the average total score of the participants and the second subscale scores of the participants are in favor of the participants who have played more than 3 days a week and this difference is statistically significant. in the other score types, the difference is not seen as statistically significant. table-5. anova analysis on participants’ scores from exercise addiction scale (eas) on department variable. scale scores departments n mean std. d. f p significant difference eas total score 1-teaching 56 56,57 12,28 3,356 ,01 3-4* 2-coaching 46 57,95 13,98 3-sports management 94 55,62 12,29 4-recreation 69 61,98 14,27 1teaching 56 26,85 5,54 eas 1. sub-factor 2coaching 46 25,43 7,87 1,566 ,19 3sports management 94 25,87 6,10 4recreation 69 27,86 8,21 1teaching 56 16,94 5,79 eas 2. sub-factor 2coaching 46 19,34 5,04 3,303 ,02 1-4* 3-sports management 94 17,29 5,31 4recreation 69 19,73 8,23 1teaching 56 9,48 3,63 eas 3. sub-factor 2coaching 46 10,02 2,74 3,322 ,02 3-4* 3sports management 94 9,17 2,99 4recreation 69 10,62 2,70 note: the groups that differ in favor are indicated with (*).*p<0,05. when the table 5 is analyzed, it is seen that the eas total score of the participants, eas 2. sub-factor total scores of the participants, and eas 3. sub-factor total scores of the participants are found to be in favor of the participants studying in the recreation department. it is seen that there is no significant difference in eas 1. subfactor scores. table-6. anova analysis on participants’ scores from life satisfaction scale on department variable. scale scores departments n avg. std. d. f p significant difference life satisfaction total score 1-teaching 56 15,76 4,59 4,030 ,00 3-4* 2-coaching 46 15,80 3,40 3-sports management 94 14,78 4,54 4-recreation 69 17,18 4,44 note: *p<0,05. when table 6 is analyzed, it is understood that participants’ “life satisfaction scale” total scores show the difference and this difference is among the students of the “sports management and recreation department”, and it is statistically significant in favor of “recreation department”. table-7. correlation analysis of participants' exercise addiction, life satisfaction, number of weekly sports days, sports year and academic grades. eas total variables eas total life satisfaction total day year grade average pearson correlation 1 ,103 ,163** ,145* -,325** sig. (2-tailed) ,09 ,00 ,01 ,00 n 265 265 265 265 265 note: **. correlation is significant at the 0.01. *. correlation is significant at the 0.05. when table 7 is examined, it is seen that there is a positive relationship between the eas total score of the participants and the weekly sports days and sports year history, and this relationship is found to be statistically significant. it is seen that the relationship between the eas total scores of the participants and the “academic grades” is seen to be negative and this relationship is found to be statistically significant. the relationship between the eas total scores of the participants and the “satisfaction with life total scores” is not statistically significant. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 12-17 16 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion and result in line with the findings of this study, which was conducted to investigate the relationship between exercise addiction levels and life satisfaction of university students studying in physical education and sports departments; it was stated that there was no statistically significant difference between scale total scores that the participants achieved from the eas and life satisfaction and sub-factor score averages on participants’ gender and branch variables. vardar (2012) conducted similar studies and reported that there was no significant difference in exercise addiction levels in terms of gender. yildirim et al. (2017) concluded that exercise addiction level did not differ according to gender. in another study supporting this situation, it was reported that both men and women carry the risk of exercise addiction and no statistically significant difference was found between the genders (gun and agirbas, 2019). the findings obtained from this study are in parallel with the literature findings. it was seen that there was a statistically significant difference between the average scores of the eas total score and the sub-factor scores of the participants and this difference were in favor of the participants who had more than 4 years of sports. the average subscale score was not found to be statistically significant. similarly, in the score averages that they get from the number of the days performed weekly and eas, and life satisfaction scales, eas total score and eas 2. sub-factor averages were in favor of the people who exercise more than 3 days a week, and this difference was seen to be statistically different. in the other score types, the difference was not statistically significant. when the age of exercise increases in individuals, exercise patterns and habits formed over time can turn into addiction (sadeq, 2018). in a study on kickbox, taekwondo and muaythai athletes (namli et al., 2018) it was concluded that regular exercise is effective for exercise addiction. in a similar study (costa et al., 2012) it was concluded that the frequency, duration, and sports year of the exercise may be effective in the emergence of exercise addiction. exercise dependence inevitably occurs as a result of the inability to control the frequency and duration of exercise (masters and lambert, 1989). the highest score that can be obtained from the eas scale is 85. the average score of the scale is 51. the average total score of the participants included in the study was found to be as 55.00 for those with 1-4 years of sports year and 66.02 for those with +4 years of the sports year. in the literature, there are studies in which high eas total scores are found (hausenblas and downs, 2002; bavlı et al., 2011; vardar et al., 2012). in this case, it is understood that as the exercise year and duration of the participants' increases, the scores of eas and life satisfaction increased significantly in favor of the participants. it is seen that eas total score, the eas 2. sub-factor total score, and eas 3. sub-factor total score averages of the participants according to department variable, it is seen that there is a difference in favor of the students in the “recreation department” and this difference is statistically significant. likewise, the total scores of the participants on the life satisfaction scale according to the department variable were found to be different and this difference was statistically significant in favor of the students of the department of recreation among the students of the department of sports management and recreation, there are no studies on exercise addiction and life satisfaction among recreation students in the literature. therefore, the fact that the curriculum of the students studying in the recreation department is more theoretical than the other departments and that they do not devote enough time to exercise can be effective in the orientation of the students to exercise, and this situation can be said to have a positive effect on the perception of life satisfaction in the students. in the correlation analysis of the participants 'exercise addiction, life satisfaction, number of sports days per week, sports year and academic grade average, it was found that there was a positive correlation between participants’ eas total score and “number of weekly sports day and sports year history”, and this relationship was statistically significant. it was seen that the relationship between the eas total scores of the participants and the “academic grade averages” was negative and this relationship was statistically significant. it was stated that the relationship between the participants' eas total scores and the “satisfaction with life total scores” was not statistically significant. in the definition of negative exercise addiction, morgan defined the need to exercise to cope with daily events and to believe that he/she could not live without exercise every day, to continue exercise regardless of quitting symptoms (occupational, social, health, safety problems) when she was deprived of exercise (allegre et al., 2006). in exercise addiction, despite the over-willingness to physical exercise and excessive effects of the exercise; for example, exercising even in the event of disability and feeling bad if this situation is prevented, the person may hinder his other duties and responsibilities. the findings obtained from this study indicate that as the attitude towards exercise is dominant in students’ tendency and they do not spend enough time on academic activities. as a result; it has been concluded that exercise addiction and life satisfaction levels increase as the year and duration of sports increase in physical education and sports department students, and this increase affects the life satisfaction of the recreation department students positively and their academic success in a negative way. references adams, j. and r.j. kirkby, 2002. excessive exercise as an addiction: a review. addiction research & theory, 10(5): 415-437.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1606635021000032366. aidman, e.v. and s. woollard, 2003. the influence of self-reported exercise addiction on acute emotional and physiological responses to brief exercise deprivation. psychology of sport and exercise, 4(3): 225-236.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s14690292(02)00003-1. allegre, b., m. souville, p. therme and m. griffiths, 2006. definitions and measures of exercise dependence. addiction research & theory, 14(6): 631-646.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/16066350600903302. bavlı, o., s. işık, o. canpolat, a. aksoy, b. günar, b., k. gültekin, h. katra, m. uzun and m. ödemiş, 2015. original article 120. international journal of sport, exercise and training science of exercise addiction symptoms in dancers, 1(2): 120-124. bavlı, ö., m. kozanoğlu and a. doğanay, 2011. the effect of regular exercise participation on exercise addiction. selçuk university journal of physical education and sports sciences, 13(2): 150-153. costa, s., f. cuzzocrea, h.a. hausenblas, r. larcan and p. oliva, 2012. psychometric examination and factorial validity of the exercise dependence scale-revised in italian exercisers. journal of behavioral addictions, 1(4): 186-190.available at: https://doi.org/10.1556/jba.1.2012.009. demir, g.t., a. türkeli, h.i̇. cicioğlu, z. hazar and s. namli, 2017. examination of the empathy tendency levels of pedagogical formation students in physical education and sports. acta medica marisiensis, 63. diener, e., 1984. subjective well-being. psychological bulletin, 95(3): 542–575. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 12-17 17 © 2020 by the authors; 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 582-588, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.582.588 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group comparison of gross motor skills of 8-10 years old students active in different sport branches ebru aydin1 meryem gulac2 ( corresponding author) 1phd student, institute of social sciences, department of physical education and sports, dumlupınar university, turkey. 2kütahya dumlupınar university, school of physical education and sports, kütahya, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was to investigate the basic motor skill levels of 8-10 years old children active in different sports branches according to tgmd-iii test depending on the levels of gender and sports branches. the study encompassed 239 athletes of 8-10 age groups on a voluntary basis who had been doing sports for at least one year. the data required to achieve the objectives determined in the research were obtained using tgmd-iii test protocol. kurtosis-skewness and kolmagorov-smirnov analyses were performed for normality test of data and it was found that the data were not distributed normally and so nonparametric tests were used. mann whitney u test was used for paired groups and kruskal wallis analysis was used for comparison of the others. in tgmd-iii gender comparison of the athletes, a significant difference was found in total locomotor tests, total object control and total tgmd-iii (p<0.01). there are significant differences in the comparison of tgmd-iii sports branch of the athletes in locomotor tests total, object control tests total and tgmd-iii overall total (p<0.01). as a result, the gross motor skills of the footballers were found to be significantly better compared to the other branches. it is thought that the difference between the branches resulted from the motoric and physiological characteristics required by the structures of the branches. in addition, sports age and training styles of the athletes are thought to have affected the measurement results. keywords: psychomotor development, tgmd-iii, locomotor skills, object control, sports branches, football. citation | ebru aydin; meryem gulac (2019). comparison of gross motor skills of 8-10 years old students active in different sport branches. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 582-588. history: received: 10 september 2019 revised: 11 october 2019 accepted: 18 november 2019 published: 16 december 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 583 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 583 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 584 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 586 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 587 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.582.588&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1167 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-6501 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0261-3332 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1167 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-6501 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0261-3332 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1167 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-6501 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0261-3332 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1167 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-6501 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0261-3332 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 582-588 583 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study will contribute to the literature about gross motor development of 8-10 years old children, who do sports in basketball, football, volleyball, gymnastics and taekwondo branches, according to tgmd-iii test. 1. introduction today, sport is considered as a part of a healthy and balanced life and one of the most beneficial social activities (kürkçü and gökhan, 2011). for all sports branches, as well as the ability and skill, the importance of physiological and physical fitness is increasing day by day (bilgiç et al., 2016). every healthy person has the ability to move. however, the extent to which this ability can be improved is different. in addition to the structural quality that determines the extent of development, supporting this feature with education from a very early age, the quality of the training and the characteristic of the sports branch form the basis of the increasing success of sports (dündar, 1995). timmons et al. (2007) state that physical activity and sports provide motor development in children and form the basis of health. today, interest in sports is increasing day by day. along with the interest in sports, important studies are being made on motor development. we know that none of our skills and talents will ever evolve without any work. especially if we want to make changes and improvements in motor skills in children at developmental ages, it is absolutely necessary to prepare suitable training programs for them and to train them with a conscious coach. of course, the level of development and individual differences between children should be taken into consideration while conducting these programs (koç, 2005). in this respect, in our study, it was aimed to examine the gross motor skills of the athletes in different sports branches. 2. method 2.1. population the population of the study was comprised of 8-10 age group students who were actively involved in basketball, football, volleyball, gymnastics and taekwondo in izmir metropolitan municipality ord. professor dr. ekrem akurgal multi-purpose gymnasium. 2.2. research group the research group was comprised of 8-10 age group male and female athletes in basketball (51), football (48), volleyball (52), gymnastics (37) and taekwondo (51) in ord. professor dr. ekrem akurgal multi-purpose gymnasium. the measurements were taken on a total of 239 athletes participating voluntarily. 2.3. research technıque and protocol 239 athletes, who had been doing sports in izmir metropolitan municipality youth and sports club ord. professor dr. ekrem akurgal gymnasium for at least one year, participated in the study on a voluntary basis. firstly, permission was sought from the official of izmir metropolitan municipality youth and sports club ord. professor dr. ekrem akurgal multi-purpose gymnasium to perform the tests. in addition, parents' consent form was taken from each student's parent before taking the measurement for the tests. after obtaining these permissions, the implementation started. the data required to achieve the objectives determined in the study were obtained by applying (webster and ulrich, 2017) tgmd-iii test protocol. motor tests in the tgmd-iii test were applied in the gym where students were doing sports. the necessary equipment for the test was prepared before the students came to the gym where the test will be performed. after the students gathered in the gym, the names were read from the list prepared before and attendance was checked. after the attendance check, short information was given about the skills to be examined. after the explanation, the subjects were taken one by one and the test was shown and explained in a simple way and the student was asked to practice. the skills were first started with object control skills and continued with locomotor skills. if the drill was done perfectly according to the criteria in the test, 1 was not entered and if not, 0 was entered to the data form immediately. there is no half credit allocated for this evaluation. 2.4. data collectıon tool tgmd-iii was started to develop by dale ulrich in 2013 and completed in 2015. kip webster also helped develop tgmd-iii test. it was designed to test the motor behaviours of children aged 3 to 10 years. tgmd-iii assesses 13 basic motor skills divided into two sub-groups. these are locomotor and object control skills. locomotor subtest measures running, skipping, horizontal jumping, hopping, galloping and sliding skills. the object control subtest measures two hand strike, one hand forehand, dribbling, two hand catch, kickingmasa te, overhand throw and underhand throw. the tgmd-iii test is a direct observation and process-oriented skill assessment, reflecting the most mature form of movement, looking at 3-5 performance criteria per skill. in accordance with performance criteria, 1 point is given for smooth and correct movements and 0 point is given for wrong and uneven movements. at the end of the test, the total score of each action performed twice is added to form the score of that skill. a total of 46 points can be obtained in the locomotor subtest and 54 points can be obtained in the object control subtest, giving 100 full points in total. the average duration of each test to a child is 15-20 minutes. the child must repeat each movement twice. the validity and reliability studies of the tgmd-iii test were performed and the reliability of the test was determined as 0.97 for locomotor tests and 0.95 for object control tests. total tgmd-iii was reported as 0.97. also, it was determined that tgmd-iii showed acceptable construct validity (webster and ulrich, 2017). 2.5. data analysis kurtosis-skewness and kolmagorov-smirnov analyses were performed for the normality test of the data and it was found that the data were not distributed normally. for the data sets that did not show normal distribution, kurtosis and skewness values were examined and nonparametric test was used since the values were not between asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 582-588 584 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group +2/-2 (george and mallery, 2010). mann whitney u was used for gender and kruskal wallis test was used for comparison of the branches in comparison of the data. as a second level test, tamhane's t2 post hoc test was used to compare the branches. significance level was taken as 0.05. 3. findings table-1. normality test. total sport branch kolmogorov-smirnova statistics df p locomotor total basketball .336 51 .000* volleyball .192 52 .000* gymnastics .169 37 .009* taekwondo .380 51 .000* football .532 48 .000* manipulative total basketball .231 51 .000* volleyball .146 52 .007** gymnastics .152 37 .031** taekwondo .140 51 .013** football .239 48 .000* tgmd-iii total basketball .270 51 .000* volleyball .144 52 .009** gymnastics .180 37 .004* taekwondo .176 51 .000* football .208 48 .000* p= difference. *= (p<0.01).**=(p>0.05). since the total and number of branches were above n=30 in the normality test, according to the kolmogrovsmirnov test table 1, it is seen that the data did not show normal distribution at p<0.05 significance level. based on these data, skewness and kurtosis tests were found conducted. table-2. skewness and kurtosis values. total n min. max. mean. std. dev. skewness kurtosis statistics statistics std. err. statistics std. err. locomotor total 239 13.00 23.00 21.61 1.93 -1.745 .157 3.376 .314 manipulative total 239 15.00 27.00 24.39 2.44 -1.319 .157 2.522 .314 tgmd-iii total 239 28.00 50.00 46.00 4.02 -1.839 .157 4.467 .314 n=number of participants. min.= minimum value. max. = maximum value. mean.= average. std. dev.=standard deviation. std.err.= standard error. kurtosis-skewness values table 2 were examined for data sets that do not show normal distribution and since the values were not between +2/-2, it was determined that the data did not show normal distribution (george and mallery, 2010). table-3. tgmd-iii gender comparison of the participants. tgdm3 gender n minimum maximum mean standard deviation p locomotor tests female 105 13.00 23.00 20.95 2.12 .000* male 134 15.00 23.00 22.12 1.59 total 239 13.00 23.00 21.61 1.93 object control tests female 105 15.00 27.00 23.70 2.65 .000* male 134 15.00 27.00 24.93 2.11 total 239 15.00 27.00 24.39 2.44 tgmd-iii overall total female 105 28.00 50.00 44.65 4.42 .000* male 134 30.00 50.00 47.05 3.32 total 239 28.00 50.00 46.00 4.02 n= number of participants. p= difference. *=(p<0.01). in the tgmd-iii gender comparison of the athletes table 3, the mean of female participants was (20.95±2.12) and the mean of male participants was (22.12±1.59) in locomotor tests. the mean of female participants was (23.70±2.65) and the mean of male participants was (24.93±2.11) in total object control tests. (24.93±2.11). the mean of female participants was (44.65±4.42), while the mean of male participants (47.05±3.32) in the tgmd-iii overall total. there were statistically significant differences in total locomotor tests, object control total and tgmd-iii total (p<0.01). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 582-588 585 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. tgmd-iii sports branch comparison of the participants. tgmd-iii sport branch n minimum maximum mean standard deviation p locomotor tests basketball 51 15.00 23.00 21.72 2.11 .000* volleyball 52 13.00 23.00 20.03 2.30 gymnastics 37 18.00 23.00 21.37 1.29 taekwondo 51 18.00 23.00 22.13 1.38 football 48 20.00 23.00 22.81 0.64 total 239 13.00 23.00 21.61 1.93 object control tests basketball 51 15.00 27.00 24.98 2.74 .000* volleyball 52 15.00 27.00 23.05 2.96 gymnastics 37 20.00 27.00 23.08 1.83 taekwondo 51 22.00 27.00 24.74 1.54 football 48 22.00 27.00 25.85 1.23 total 239 15.00 27.00 24.39 2.44 tgmd-iii overall total basketball 51 30.00 50.00 46.70 4.64 .000* volleyball 52 28.00 50.00 43.09 5.02 gymnastics 37 39.00 50.00 44.45 2.51 taekwondo 51 41.00 50.00 46.88 2.06 football 48 45.00 50.00 48.66 1.50 total 239 28.00 50.00 46.00 4.02 n= number of participants. p= difference. *=(p<0.01). in the tgmd-iii sports branch of the athletes table 4, the average of the basketball players in the locomotor tests was (21.72±2.11), their average in the object control tests was (24.98±2.74) and their average in tgmd-iii overall total was (46.70±4.64). the average of the volleyball players in total locomotor tests was (20.03±2.30), their average in object control tests total was (23.05±2.96) and their average in tgmd-iii overall total was (43.09±5.02). the average of the gymnasts in the locomotor tests was (21.37±1.29), their average in the total object control tests was (23.08±1.83) and their average in tgmd-iii overall total was (46.45±2.51). the average of those in taekwondo in the total locomotor tests was (22.13±1.38), their average in the total object control tests was (24.74±1.54) and their average in tgmd-iii overall total was (46.88±2.06). the average of the footballers in the total locomotor tests was (22.81±0.64), their average in the total object control tests was (25.85±1.23) and their average in tgmd-iii overall total was (48.66±1.50). there are statistically significant differences in total locomotor tests, total object control tests and tgmd-iii overall total (p<0.01). table-5. comparison of the sport branches according to tgmd-iii overall total. (1) sport branch (2) sport branch mean difference (1-2) std. err. p % 95 confidence range limit inferior limit superior basketball volleyball 3.60973* .95374 .003* .8798 6.3397 gymnastics 2.24642* .77092 .045** .0272 4.4657 taekwondo -.17647 .71232 1.000 -2.2365 1.8836 football -1.96078 .68632 .057 -3.9543 .0327 volleyball basketball -3.60973* .95374 .003* -6.3397 -.8798 gymnastics -1.36331 .81020 .637 -3.6965 .9699 taekwondo -3.78620* .75466 .000* -5.9697 -1.6027 football -5.57051* .73017 .000* -7.6916 -3.4494 gymnastics basketball -2.24642* .77092 .045** -4.4657 -.0272 volleyball 1.36331 .81020 .637 -.9699 3.6965 taekwondo -2.42289* .50419 .000* -3.8816 -.9642 football -4.20721* .46674 .000* -5.5679 -2.8465 taekwondo basketball .17647 .71232 1.000 -1.8836 2.2365 volleyball 3.78620* .75466 .000* 1.6027 5.9697 gymnastics 2.42289* .50419 .000* .9642 3.8816 football -1.78431* .36184 .000* -2.8224 -.7463 football basketball 1.96078 .68632 .057 -.0327 3.9543 volleyball 5.57051* .73017 .000* 3.4494 7.6916 gymnastics 4.20721* .46674 .000* 2.8465 5.5679 taekwondo 1.78431* .36184 .000* .7463 2.8224 std. err= standard error. p= difference. *=(p<0.01). **=(p<0.05). there was a statistically significant difference between basketball branch and volleyball in comparison of sports branches based on tgmd-iii overall total (p<0.01) table 5. there was a statistically significant difference between basketball and gymnastics (p<0.05). there was no statistically significant difference between basketball and other branches (p>0.05). there was a statistically significant difference between volleyball branch and basketball, taekwondo and football (p<0.01). there was no statistically significant difference between volleyball asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 582-588 586 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group and gymnastics (p>0.05). there was a statistically significant difference between gymnastics and taekwondo and football (p<0.01). there was a statistically significant difference between taekwondo branch and volleyball, gymnastics and football (p<0.01). there was no statistically significant difference between taekwondo and basketball (p>0.05). there was a statistically significant difference between football branch and volleyball, gymnastics and taekwondo (p<0.01). there was no statistically significant difference between football and basketball (p>0.05). 4. discussion there was a significant difference in the tgmd-iii gender comparison of the athletes in total locomotor tests, total object control and total tgmd-iii (p<0.00). in tgmd-iii locomotor skills, aydin (2009) investigated the motor development levels of the 10-age group students, who participated indoor sports events in the city of kütahya, according to tgmd-ii test. this study was conducted with similar measurement methods and a statistically significant difference was found according to gender in locomotor skill levels which is one of the sub-dimensions of tgmd-ii test (p<0.05). spessato et al. (2013) showed in their study with 3-10 aged children that there was a significant difference in locomotor total scores of boys in locomotor skills compared to girls in 7-8 and 9-10 age group and boys were found to be better than girls. this study is similar to our study. again in 2011, yıldırım investigated the psychomotor development levels of 7-8 age group girls and boys according to tgmd-ii test depending on gender variable, and the difference between tgmd-ii test locomotor skill scores of girls and boys was found insignificant. however, locomotor skill total test score of boys was determined to be higher than that of girls. kelly et al. (2019) in their study with 414 irish children between 6 and 12 years of age, did not find a significant difference between girls and boys according to tgmd-iii locomotor test results depending on gender variable. burns et al. (2017a) analysed the relationship between gross motor skills and cardio-metabolic risk in children in 2017. in their study with 224 children (mean age 9 years) in the united states, they used the tgmd-iii test to assess gross motor skills of the children. as a result of the data obtained in the study, they could not find a significant difference between locomotor skill levels of male and female students. similarly, in 2017, burns et al. (2017b) examined multivariate relationships between health-related fitness, physical activity, and tgmd-iii test items in children of low-income families. 1460 school-age children (4-8 years) of low-income families, 730 female and 730 male, participated in the study. in the study, no significant difference was found between locomotor skills in score and it was stated that locomotor skills of girls and boys were in the same condition. again, webster and ulrich evaluated the psychometric properties of the tgmd-iii test in 2017. 424 men were included in the study involving a total of 807 children (3-6 years), 383 girls and 424 boys. at the end of the study, similar scores were found in locomotor skills between boys and girls. in 2018, aye et al. (2018). examined the gross motor skills development in 5 years old kindergarten children in japan. in the study, a total of 60 healthy children, 34 boys and 26 girls, were examined using tgmd-ii. they found that the locomotor skill scores of the girls were significantly higher than the boys. the locomotor raw score of the girls was (41.0±3.36) and the locomotor raw score of the boys was found to be (36.6±6.40). in the tgmd-iii object control test results, aye et al. (2018). studied gross motor skills development of 60 (34 boys and 26 girls) healthy 5 years old kindergarten children in japan in 2018. subjects were measured using tgmd-ii. as a result of the study, they found that the boys' basic object control skill scores were better than the girls. the object control skill raw score of the girls was (34.5±6.62) and the object control skill raw score of the boys was found to be (37.8±6.24). in 2017, allen et al. (2017) performed the validity and reliability of gross motor development test-3 (tgmd-iii) in children with autism spectrum disorder using visual support. a total of 14 children between the ages of 4-10 years participated in the study. at the end of the study, they could not find any difference between the object control skills of autistic boys and girls. it was seen that the boys' object control skill scores were higher than the girls. in their study, burns et al. (2017a) analysed the relationship between gross motor skills and cardio-metabolic risk in children in 2017 and used tgmd-iii test to evaluate the gross motor skills of the children. as a result of the data obtained in the study, it was found that the object control skill levels of the male students were significantly better than the girls (p<0.01). burns et al. (2017b) also examined multivariate relationships between health-related fitness, physical activity, and tgmd-iii test items in children of low-income families in the usa in 2017. 1460 school-age children (4-8 years), 730 female and 730 male, participated in the study. in their study, they determined that object control skills of the boys were statistically significantly better than the girls (p<0.01). likewise, zeybek's study comparing the basic motoric characteristics of 9-year-old children at primary school in beypazarı district of ankara could not find a significant difference between the mean object control skills of the male and female students. however, it was seen that the boys' object control skill scores were better than the girls. in terms of the tgmd-iii total test scores, there are studies in the literature that are in parallel with our study. for example, burns et al. (2017a). analysed the relationship between gross motor skills and cardio-metabolic risk in children in 2017. in their study with 224 children (mean age 9 years) in the united states, they used the tgmd-iii test to assess gross motor skills of the children. as a result of the data obtained from the study, a statistically significant difference was found between tgmd-iii test scores of male and female students (p <0.05). it was found that the boys' tgmd-iii test scores were higher than the girls. webster and ulrich also evaluated the psychometric properties of the tgmd-iii test in 2017. a total of 807 children (3-6 years), 424 boys and 383 girls, participated in the study. as a result of the study, when tgmd-iii test scores were examined, it was seen that tgmd-iii total test scores of boys were higher than those of the girls. in 2011, yıldırım investigated the psychomotor development levels of girls and boys in the age group of seven and eight in terms of gender variable according to the tgmd-ii test and the difference between tgmd-ii test total scores of the boys and girls was found to be statistically insignificant. however, the tgmd-ii test total score of boys was found to be higher than that of the girls. it is thought that the difference in the measurement results in terms of gender in the studies was due to different age groups. there are also many other factors like physical activity levels and socio-economic levels of the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 582-588 587 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group participants. however, in the light of the information given in psychomotor development, it is stated that there are not very significant differences between the motor skills development of children until adolescence on gender basis. it has been stated that some motor features come into prominence from time to time during the developmental periods. however, the general opinion is that the motor development of girls and boys is very close to each other until adolescence. in comparison of tgmd-iii test results and sports branches, there is a statistically significant difference in total locomotor tests, object control tests total and tgmd-iii overall total (p<0.01). aydin (2009) investigated the motor development levels of the 10-age group students, who participated indoor sports events in the city of kütahya, according to tgmd-ii test and showed that the difference between tgmdii test locomotor skill levels was significant depending on sports branch (p<0.05). bastik (2011) investigated the basic motor characteristics of 10-year-old athletes participating in competitions in individual, dual and team sports according to tgmd-ii test. in that study, taekwondo and swimming were included under the name of individual sports while table tennis and tennis were included under the name of dual sports, and football and handball were included under the name of team sports. tgmd-ii locomotor test results showed that the difference between the children's tgmd-ii locomotor subtest scores was significant in terms of sports branch (p<0.01). aydin (2009) investigated the motor development levels of the 10-age group students, who participated indoor sports events in the city of kütahya, according to tgmd-ii test and showed that the difference between tgmd ii test object control skill levels was significant depending on sports branch (p<0.05). bastik (2011) investigated the basic motor characteristics of 10-year-old athletes participating in competitions in individual, dual and team sports according to tgmd-ii test. in that study, taekwondo and swimming were included under the name of individual sports while table tennis and tennis were included under the name of dual sports, and football and handball were included under the name of team sports. tgmd-ii locomotor test results showed that the difference between the children's tgmd-ii locomotor subtest scores was significant in terms of sports branch (p<0.01). akin et al. (2016) in their study comparing the basic motor skills levels of the 10-11 age group athletes participating in the inter-school competitions in 2016 and non-sports children, conducted “bidirectional coordination, balance, running speed and agility and power” tests. in that study, they compared basketball, badminton branches and a non-sports group. as a result, they revealed that the gross motor skills of basketball players and badminton players were statistically better than those who did not do sports. while they didn’t mention about a statistical significance between basketball players and badminton players, they stated that the measurement data of the basketball players in the gross motor skill tests were better than badminton players. aydin (2009) investigated the motor development levels of the 10-age group students, who participated indoor sports events in the city of kütahya, according to tgmd-ii test and showed that the difference between tgmd ii test total skill levels was significant depending on the sports branch. the results of our study and similar and related studies in the literature were examined. branch evaluations were made in the literature and in our study. in the studies, it was observed that the measured characteristics of athletes interested in team sports were generally higher. it is thought that this resulted from the need for highly developed motor skills in the mentioned sports branches (football, basketball) due to their popularity and competitive environment. besides, differences in participants, individual characteristics of athletes, environmental factors and variables such as training and sport age may have caused these results. similar results have been observed in the related studies in the literature (aydin, 2009; akin et al., 2016). the results of these studies support our study. however, due to the insufficiency of studies in the literature, there are limited resources to evaluate and no samples were found for our variables. 5. conclusion according to the data obtained, it was found that boys' gross motor skills were better than girls' gross motor skills. the general belief in the literature for the reason for this difference between boys and girls is socio-cultural reasons and the developmental parameters in favour of boys with age. another parameter evaluated in the study was the branches. statistically significant differences were observed between branches and gross motor skills. based on the data obtained, it was determined that football players had significantly better gross motor skills, which was followed by basketball and taekwondo respectively. gross motor skills of the athletes in gymnastics and volleyball branches were seen to be lower than the other branches. as a result, it was seen that gross motor skills of football players were significantly better in comparison with other branches. locomotor, object control and total tgmd-iii test scores of male athletes were found to be better than girls. in the football branch, it is thought that 48 athletes were all male and this may have led to high football scores. in the volleyball and gymnastics branches, low locomotor, object control and total tgmd-iii test scores are thought to be due to high number of girls and low number of boys. in addition, it is thought that the difference between the branches resulted from the motoric and physiological characteristics required by the structures of the branches. besides, sports age and training styles of the athletes are thought to affect the measurement results. references akin, s., a. kalkavan and m. gülaç, 2016. comparison of 10-11 years old athletes participating in interscholastic competitions and nonathletes children’s fundamental motor skills. sportive sight: journal of sport and education, 3(1): 21-32. allen, k., b. bredero, t. van damme, d. ulrich and j. simons, 2017. test of gross motor development-3 (tgmd-3) with the use of visual supports for children with autism spectrum disorder: validity and reliability. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 47(3): 813-833.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-016-3005-0. aydin, s., 2009. invistigate the motor development levels of the first stage primary school 10 age-group students who participate indoor sports in kütahya city. master thesis, dumlupınar university. aye, t., t. kuramoto-ahuja, t. sato, k. sadakiyo, m. watanabe and h. maruyama, 2018. gross motor skill development of kindergarten children in japan. journal of physical therapy science, 30(5): 711-715.available at: https://doi.org/10.1589/jpts.30.711. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 582-588 588 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group bastik, c., 2011. the investigation of basic motor characteristics according to tgmd-ii test to ten age group athletes participating competitions in individual, dual and team sports. master thesis, dumlupınar university. bilgiç, m., m. biçer and m. özdal, 2016. investigation of relation 2d: 4d finger ratio and sportive performance of 11-13 aged children participated in different sports. gaziantep university journal of sport sciences, 1(1): 48-56. burns, r., t. brusseau, y. fu and j. hannon, 2017a. gross motor skills and cardiometabolic risk in children: a mediation analysis. medicine and science in sports and exercise, 49(4): 746-751. burns, r., t. brusseau and j. hannon, 2017b. multivariate associations among health-related fitness, physical activity and tgmd-iii test items in disadvantaged children from low-income families. perceptual and motor skills, 124(1): 86-104. dündar, u., 1995. training theory, 2. print, ankara: pp: 16-95. george, d. and p. mallery, 2010. spss for windows step by step: a simple guide and reference. 17.0 update. 10th edn., boston: pearson. kelly, l., s. o’connor, a.j. harrison and n.j. ní chéilleachair, 2019. does fundamental movement skill proficiency vary by sex, class group or weight status? evidence from an irish primary school setting. journal of sports sciences, 37(9): 1055-1063.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2018.1543833. koç, s., 2005. skill development in physical education and sports. istanbul: morpa kültür publications. kürkçü, r. and i. gökhan, 2011. the effects of handball training on the some respiration and circulatory parameters of school boys aged 1013 years. journal of human sciences, 8(1): 135-143. spessato, b.c., c. gabbard, n. valentini and m. rudisill, 2013. gender differences in brazilian children's fundamental movement skill performance. early child development and care, 183(7): 916-923.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2012.689761. timmons, b., p.-j. naylor and k.a. pfeiffer, 2007. physical activity for preschool children—how much and how? c j public health, 98(s2e): 122-134. webster, e.k. and d.a. ulrich, 2017. evaluation of the psychometric properties of the test of gross motor development. journal of motor learning and development, 5(1): 45-58.available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/jmld.2016-0003. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 274 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 274-277, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.274.277 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of exercise addiction levels of physical education teacher candidates according to some variables ozan esmer asist. prof., school of physical education and sports, mardin artuklu university, mardin, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to examine the levels of exercise addiction of students studying in physical education teaching program according to gender and academic success variable. the research group consists of 50 students studying in the first class of mardin artuklu university, school of physical education and sports, physical education teaching program in the 2019-2020 academic year. “exercise addiction scale” was used as a data collection tool. the academic success levels of the students are taken from the university's automation system. it was determined that more than half of the participants (%52,0) were addicted to exercise. the addiction scores of male students were higher than female students. a low negative correlation was found between gender and exercise addiction scores. a low level of positive correlation was found between academic success and exercise addiction. as a result; a positive, albeit low, relationship was found between academic success and exercise addiction. keywords: physical education teaching, sports, exercise, addiction, gender, university students, academic success. citation | ozan esmer (2020). examination of exercise addiction levels of physical education teacher candidates according to some variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 274-277. history: received: 29 january 2020 revised: 13 march 2020 accepted: 20 april 2020 published: 14 may 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 275 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 275 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 276 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 276 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 276 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.274.277&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1632 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5062-4995 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1632 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5062-4995 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1632 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5062-4995 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 274-277 275 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the levels of exercise addiction of students studying in physical education and sports teaching program and the effect of this addiction on academic success. 1. introduction as with every subject, overdoing in sports and exercise causes some negative situations. the desire to do extreme sports is described as “exercise addiction”. nonfunctional exercise habits can lead physical and psychological harm, for instance in the form of overuse injuries and withdrawal symptoms when incapacitate of exercise (hausenblas & symons, 2002a; landolfi, 2013). dependency or addiction (berczik et al., 2012) is expressed as an unavoidable desire for a person, being or object, although it harms the individual psychologically or physically. the addiction, which is examined by dividing it into different categories for a long time, is considered as a whole today and evaluated together with its physical, spiritual and physiological aspects. in addition to behaviors such as playing computer games, sexual activities, food, internet use and gambling, it is possible for exercise to become addictive over time (de coverley, 1987). regular physical activities have many benefits on physiological, physical and mental health. exercise is important in many aspects of psychological and sociological issues such as improving work performance, selfesteem, positive thinking, a more energetic mood and increased self-confidence (uz, 2015). in addition, excessive and uncontrollable physical activity is referred to as “exercise addiction” (yıldırım & yıldırım, 2016). however, increasing every exercise intensity and frequency should not be interpreted as exercise addiction (freimuth, moniz, & kim, 2011). in the spare time of the individual, the desire to exercise with a strong feeling is considered as exercise addiction (fox & boutcher, 2004). exercise addiction is considered as increasing violence, frequency and duration in physical activity by ignoring the individual's schedule repeatedly (vardar, vardar, & tokso z, 2012). researchers evaluate exercise addiction in two groups as negative and positive addiction. negative addiction is when people who exercise too much can not exercise, such as depression, anxiety, insomnia and irritability; positive addiction, on the other hand, is expressed as an excessive amount of exercise in order to overcome the difficulties people face in their lives (adams & kirkby, 2002; bavlı, kozanoğlu, & doğanay, 2011). it is stated that this addiction level decreases with advancing age and individuals adopt a more orderly life style (sussman, arpawong, sun, tsai, & rohrbach, 2011). physical education and sports teaching program is the primary source of educating of sports teachers who will teach at every level schools in all countries. future teacher candidates are expected to be well-equipped, self fulfilling and self-confident. in many studies, it has been revealed that students studying in physical education and sports departments are more adequate in many social fields than students in other departments of the university (altun, 2019; ozgül, kangalgil, & yıldız, 2019). the definition of the term exercise addiction, the data obtained from the studies and their evaluation show that the subject is still open to debate. therefore, more studies need to be carried out in different populations and groups for the causes, treatment and prevention of exercise addiction (chapman & de castro, 1990). this study was carried out in mardin artuklu university, school of physical education and sports. the aim of the study is to examine the levels of exercise addiction of students studying in physical education and sports teaching program in terms of gender and academic success variables. 2. method 2.1. participants the participants of the study consist of 50 students who are studying in the first year and actively attending school in mardin artuklu university, school of physical education and sports, physical education and sports teaching in the 2019-2020 academic year. actually, there are 58 students in that program but 8 are absent and don’t attend to school. 2.2. collection of data the first-semester grade point average (for academic success variable) of 2019-20 academic year and the gender distributions of students studying in the physical education and sports teaching program were taken from the university's automation system. as a data collection tool, “exercise addiction scale” consisting of 17 items developed by tekkursun and colleagues was used (tekkurşun, hazar, & cicioğlu, 2018). researchers found the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale as 0,90. table 1 shows the exercise addiction score ranges (tekkurşun et al., 2018). table-1. exercise addiction scale evaluation chart. options points score range scale evaluation i strongly disagree 1 117 normal group partly disagree 2 1834 low risk group i agree moderately 3 3551 risk group i agree 4 5269 addicted group i strongly agree 5 7085 high level addicted group 2.3. data analysis one sample "kolmogorov-smirnov" test was used to find out whether the data had a normal distribution or not. as a result of this test, it was understood that the data had normal distribution. parametric test methods (independent ttest and pearson correlation test) were used in spss 24.0 package program for windows for analyzing. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 274-277 276 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. findings exercise addiction levels of the participants are given in the table below. table 2. exercise addiction scores of students frequency valid percent cumulative percent exercise addiction level 18-34 2 4,0 4,0 35-51 19 38,0 42,0 52-69 26 52,0 94,0 70-85 3 6,0 100,0 total 50 100,0 there is no one in the normal group (117) among the participants. %4 of the participants were in the low-risk group, %38 were in the risk group, %52 were in the addicted group and %3 were in the highly addicted group. table-3. t test for exercise addiction levels according to gender. gender n sd t p exercise addiction level male 28 54,2500 9,04567 0,550 0,585 female 22 52,7273 10,51612 0,540 0,592 in table 3, exercise addiction scores of the students of physical education and sports teaching program according to their gender were examined with the independent t test. as a result of the analysis, the mean score of exercise dependency of male students was found as 54.25 and the mean score of female students was found as 52.72. although = 54.25> = 52.72, no statistical significance was found between them in terms of score averages (p <0.05). table-4. pearson moment correlation test for exercise addiction according to gender and academic success. variable relationship/ significance exercise addiction level gender r -0,079 p 0,585 academic success r 0,093 p 0,520 n 50 in table 4, there is a pearson moment correlation test performed to determine the relationship between the participants' gender and academic success and exercise addiction total score. as a result of the analysis, it was determined that there is a low negative relationship between the gender variable (r = -,079; p> 0.05) and the level of exercise addiction, but this relationship is not statistically significant. it was found that there was a low level of positive correlation between academic success variable (r =, 093; p> 0.05) and exercise addiction level, but this relationship was not statistically significant (p <0.05). 4. discussion students studying in the schools and faculties providing education in the field of sports are composed of individuals with a certain sports culture and exercise habits. most of these students appear as people who are actively involved in sports, competing in any sports leagues and grown with sports. exercise habits of individuals who will be physical education and sports teachers in the future is a subject that should be examined completely in every sense. in the light of the findings obtained in this study conducted with 50 students studying in mardin artuklu university school of physical education and sports, physical education and sports teaching program. it was observed that %52 of the participants, that is more than half, were addicted to exercise. this is a very high rate. on the other hand, %38 of the participants are in the risk group. in a study, it was found that individuals who regularly exercise and sports activities have an exercise addiction level of %56.1 (costa, cuzzocrea, hausenblas, larcan, & oliva, 2012). the result which is obtained by costa et al. (2012) supports this study. in another study, 305 students studying at the school of physical education and sports were researched, some of them were found to have exercise addiction, and the physical activity levels of this group were high (gün, 2018). in the study, it was found that exercise addiction scores of male students were higher than female students, but this difference was not significant. in a study by hamer and karageorghis (2007) the same findings were reached and it was found that men score more than women (hamer & karageorghis, 2007). in this study, the researchers obtained a statistically significant difference between the scores of male students and female students. in this aspect, it partially supports this study. when exercise addiction scores are evaluated according to academic success and gender; as a result of the correlation analysis, a low level of negative correlation was found between the gender variable and exercise addiction. a low level of positive correlation was found between academic success and exercise addiction scores. although the result does not make a statistical meaning, there is a positive correlation between academic success and exercise addiction. it is thought that more significant differences can be obtained in a study with more participants. references adams, j., & kirkby, r. (2002). excessive exercise as an addiction: a review addiction research and theory, 10(5), 415-437. altun, m. (2019). examination of general self-efficacy of sudents studying in physical education and sports college and students studying in other faculties. social sciences institute, department of physical education and sports, master’s thesis, 34, bartin, turkiye. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 274-277 277 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group bavlı, o., kozanoğlu, m., & doğanay, a. (2011). the effect of regular exercise participation on exercise addiction [investigation the effects of participation regular exercise on exercise dependence. selcuk university journal of physical education and sports sciences 13, 150-153. berczik, k., szabó, a., griffiths, m., kurimay, t., kun, b., urbán, r., & demetrovics, z. (2012). exercise addiction: symptoms, diagnosis, epidemiology, and etiology. substance use & misuse, 47, 403-417.available at: 10.3109/10826084.2011.639120. chapman, c., & de castro, j. (1990). running addiction: measurement. journal sports medicine and physical fitness, 30, 283-290. costa, s., cuzzocrea, f., hausenblas, h., larcan, r., & oliva, p. (2012). psychometric examination and factorial validity of the exercise dependence scale-revised in italian exercisers. journal behav addict, 1(4), 186-190. de coverley, v. d. (1987). exercise dependence. british journal of addiction, 82(7), 735-740. fox, k., & boutcher, s. (2004). physical activity and psychological well-being (pp. 130-153). london: routledge. freimuth, m., moniz, s., & kim, s. (2011). clarifying exercise addiction: differential diagnosis, cooccurring disorders, and phases of addiction. international journal environ reserch public health, 21(8), 4069–4081.available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8104069. gün, a. (2018). comparison of physical activity and body mass indexes of physical education and sports school students according to exercise addiction status. erzincan binali yıldırım university health sciences institute, department of physical education and sports, m.sc. thesis. erzincan. hamer, m., & karageorghis, c. (2007). psychobiological mechanisms of exercise dependence. sports medicine, 37(6), 477-484.available at: https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200737060-00002. hausenblas, h. a., & symons, d. d. (2002a). exercise dependence: a systematic review. psychology of sport and exercise, 3(2), 89123.available at: 10.1016/s1469-0292(00)00015-7. landolfi, e. (2013). exercise addiction. sports medicine, 43(2), 111-119.available at: 10.1007/s40279-012-0013-x. ozgül, f., kangalgil, m., & yıldız, r. (2019). comparison of the academic support perceptions of the physical education and sport teacher candidates with other teacher candidates. turkish studies, 14(3), 16491659.available at: 10.29228/turkishstudies.22557. sussman, s., arpawong, t., sun, p., tsai, j., & rohrbach, l. (2011). prevalence and co-occurrence of addictive behaviors among former alternative high school youth. behaviour addictive, 3(1), 33-40.available at: https://doi.org/10.1556/jba.3.2014.005. tekkurşun, g., hazar, z., & cicioğlu, h. (2018). exercise addiction scale (eas): a study of validity and reliability. kastamonu education journal, 26(3), 865874.available at: 10.24106/kefdergi.413383. uz, i. (2015). investigation of exercise addiction in individuals attending fitness centers regularly. canakkale onsekiz mart university institute of health sciences, master thesis. vardar, e., vardar, s., & tokso z, i. (2012). exercise dependence and evaluations of psychopathological features. du su nen adam the journal of psychiatry and neurological sciences, 25(1), 51–57.available at: 10.5350/dajpn2012250106. yıldırım, y., & yıldırım, i. (2016). egzersiz bag ımlılıg ı depresyon ilis kisi [relationship between exercise addiction and depression]. in: zenginbas m. paper presented at the proceedings book of the 2nd international conference on the changing world and social research (icwsr’2016). october 14–16, barcelona, spain. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 25 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 25-30, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.25.30 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effects of recreative activities on adjustment levels of young people kenan sivrikaya u i̇stanbul aydın üniversity, faculty of sport science, i̇stanbul, turkey abstract this study was planned to determine the effect of a series of 8-week recreational activities on the personal, social and general adjustment levels and academic success of high school students (between 14-16 years). the data was collected from a total of 36 students, made up two groups each containing 18 members. they were all recruited voluntarily from students in the first year class of the mugla mimar sinan high school. the data collected were analyzed using the spss 21 software and complemented by the mann whitney u and kruskal-wallis variance analysis techniques. significant differences (0.01) were found between the pre-test and post-test scores for anti-social inclinations in the experimental group. significant differences (0.01) also were found between the post-test scores for anti-social inclinations in the experimental and the control groups. significant differences (0.05) were found between the pre-test and post-test scores for emotional determinants in the experimental group and the pre-test and post-test scores for social adjustment in the experimental group. no significant difference was found between other parameters among the groups. it was concluded at the end of the study that recreation was effective on the adjustment level of the adolescents and that this effect was also noted to positively affect the academic success of the subjects. keywords: adjustment, recreation, adolescent, tendencies, leisure, emotion. jel classification: l83. citation | kenan sivrikaya (2019). the effects of recreative activities on adjustment levels of young people. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 25-30. history: received: 7 september 2018 revised: 12 october 2018 accepted: 5 november 2018 published: 11 december 2018 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 2. materials & method ........................................................................................................................................................................ 26 3. findings and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 26 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 29 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 30 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.25.30&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/374 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0010-6633 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/374 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0010-6633 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/374 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0010-6633 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 25-30 26 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction the individual has a social, psychological, mental, emotional and biological life in which he / she interacts continuously, and all these components complement each other. these components form the life of the individual. the individual needs to understand, know and accept the social, psychological, emotional, mental and biological changes that are within his / her own structure and to behave in accordance with these changes (kocaturk, 2005). due to the complexity of a rapidly changing society and the environment of overheating competition in school education, students may experience physical and emotional weaknesses and serious social problems as a result of imbalances in physical and mental powers. in particular, the primary school period is critical. physical, emotional, mental and behavioral development is made in this period. all values and emotions acquired in this period have the power to affect individuals throughout life. the concept of adjustment in the terms of the education terms dictionary is considered under the title of individual adaptation and is defined as “meeting the demands of the environment in which it is physically spiritual and social in accordance with its own needs and capabilities” (güneş, 2015). adjustment is that the individual perceives the changes and innovations in his environment and exhibits appropriate behaviors. for this reason, harmonious people realize the changes they encounter in their environment, new relationships, develop behaviors that are appropriate to these changes. social cohesion responds to the needs and challenges in social settings according to the standards or norms set in social settings, and psychological adjustment is largely related to coping with stress and emotional disturbances caused by individual reactions and environmental barriers to meeting internal needs. a well-adjusted individual is the person who demonstrates social and psychological responses to situations and demands (vandenbos, 2015). the most important social problem of our day is an active evaluation of leisure time, a basic problem that developed countries have been thinking about for years. the main problem of many people is that they cannot reach a leisure activity for their own personalities, and even if they do, they cannot be fully connected to this activity. their communication with their environment, their social status, their total free time affects their decision to be a leisure participant. periodically, the activity type chosen in the free time period makes this activity to become a professional job over time. at this point, the intensity of loyalty that individuals have connected to the activity they have done and the activity they have shown against activity has gained importance (işık, 2014). considering the benefits of leisure activities, the fact that each individual has at least one free time activity and adheres to this activity ensures that he is both spiritually good and transforms him into a more effective person within the society. leisure activities are the areas where human behavior is restricted to a minimum, where a person chooses his own free will and finds himself. therefore, it is inevitable that individuals prefer leisure activities appropriate to their personality traits. many studies have shown that the participation of leisure time makes a significant contribution to the person (koo and lee, 2015). according to the world leisure commission on education, leisure activities improve the creativity and exploration skills of individuals, provide renewal and contribute to the development and maintenance of interpersonal communication. leisure activities also teach a person to protect himself from a stressful environment. it contributes to adaptation in the event of an unwanted change in our lives by strengthening one's self-perceptions and life values. it provides emotional protection by avoiding the sensitization of our emotions (world leisure commission on education, 2000). 2. materials & method in this research, it is aimed to examine the positive effect of recreational activities on the level of personal, social and general adjustment and the adjustment level on academic successes. individuals for the study and control groups in this study were selected from volunteering students in the first year of the muğla mimar sinan high school. a total of 36 girl-students, 18 in the study group and 18 in the control were enrolled. in the determination of the study and control groups students were briefed as to the nature of the study and later their parents were served with written statements with in-depth information on the study and their permissions obtained. with the aim of collecting the data, the özgüven (1992) revised version of the hacettepe personality inventory (hpi). experiment and control groups were consisted of the children of the families that have the similar socioeconomic and cultural structure. the data obtained after loading into the excel (microsoft corporation) program was transferred to the spss 21 program kit and definitive statistical analysis performed using the mann whitney u and kruskal-wallis variance analysis. significance was set as p< 0,05. the recreational activities were programmed to take place for 2 hours a day, for two days per week, with natural walks and picnics lasting for 9 hours. every week the petanga game was organized on regular basis. apart from this, they were allowed to play various entertaining games of their choices in the remaining times. the choices were determined by their inclinations and the new activities organized according common sense. entertaining, athletism and ice skating were also given the chance. 3. findings and discussion the findings of this study are summarized below. the social adjustment scale consists of family relations, social relations, social norms and sub-groups of self-realization. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 25-30 27 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1a. definitive statistical values for the study and control groups parameters group n x sd mın. max. s o c i a l a d j u s t m e n t family relationships study, pre. test 18 15,053,88 3,0 19,0 study, post test 18 13,164,52 6,0 20,0 control pre test 18 15,003,56 4,0 18,0 control post test 18 15,052,89 8,0 19,0 social relationships study pre. test 18 15,601,85 13,0 18,0 study post test 18 14,501,65 10,0 18,0 control pre test 18 14,103,17 4,0 17,0 control post test 18 14,773,75 8,0 20,0 social norms study pre. test 18 13,773,59 7,0 19,0 study post test 18 14,052,70 8,0 18,0 control pre test 18 14,202,80 10,0 20,0 control post test 18 14,552,90 8,0 19,0 self realization study pre. test 18 15,052,02 12,0 18,0 study post test 18 14,272,60 11,0 19,0 control pre test 18 14,902,30 10,0 19,0 control post test 18 14,053,20 8,0 19,0 source: this table is result of our studies. in the family relations sub-dimension, the pre-test group was 15.05 points, the post-experimental group was 13.16 points, the pre-control group was 15.0 points and the post-control group was 15.05. in the social relations sub-dimension, the pre-test group was 15,06 points, the post-experimental group was 14,5 points, the pre-control group was 14,1 points and the post-control group 14,77 points. in the social norms sub-dimension, pre-test group was 13.77 points, post-experimental group 14.05 points; pre-control group 14.2 points and post-control group 14.55 points. in the sub-dimension of self-realization, pre-test group was 15.05 points, post-experimental group 14.27 points, pre-control group 14.9 points and post-control group 14.05 points. the social adjustment scale consists of emotional stability, neurotic inclinations, psychotic signs and subgroups of anti-social tendencies. in the emotional stability sub-dimension, the pre-test group was 7,3 points, the post-experimental group was 9,38 points, the pre-control group was 8,1 points and the post-control group was 8,5. in the neurotic inclinations sub-dimension, the pre-test group was 9,6 points, the post-experimental group was 10,27 points, the pre-control group was 11,3 points and the post-control group 9,7 points. in the psychotic signs sub-dimension, pre-test group was 8,2 points, post-experimental group 10.05 points, pre-control group 10.5 points and post-control group 8,8 points. in the sub-dimension of anti-social tendencies, pre-test group was 10.05 points, post-experimental group 6,8 points, pre-control group 10,6 points and post-control group 11 points. table-1b. definitive statistical values for the study and control groups parameters group n x sd min. max. p e r s o n a l i t y a d j u s t m e n t emotional stability study pre. test 18 7,32,16 5,0 13,0 study post test 18 9,383,7 2,0 16,0 control pre test 18 8,12,6 5,0 14,0 control post test 18 8,53,1 1,0 14,0 neurotic inclinations study pre. test 18 9,62,68 5,0 15,0 study post test 18 10,273,1 5,0 17,0 control pre test 18 11,33,77 5,0 18,0 control post test 18 9,773,29 4,0 16,0 psychotic signs study pre. test 18 8,23,01 4,0 14,0 study post test 18 10,052,96 4,0 15,0 control pre test 18 10,52,99 6,0 15,0 control post test 18 8,82,39 5,0 14,0 anti-social tendencies study pre. test 18 10,052,77 6,0 15,0 study post test 18 6,81,65 3,0 10,0 control pre test 18 10,62,68 6,0 15,0 control post test 18 112,5 7,0 15,0 source: this table is result of our studies. as seen in table 2-a, there were statistically significant differences between the antisocial inclination score of the study group’s pre and post test (p=0.01) results and between the pre and post test values in the emotional stability scores of the study and control groups (p=0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 25-30 28 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2a. results of the mann-whitney u test in the study and control groups parameter group f calculation p antisocial inclination study (pre*post) 0,2 po>0,05 control (pre*post) 0,7 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,81 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,2 po>0,05 anti social tendencies study (pre*post) 0,001 po<0,01* control (pre*post) 0,6 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,79 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,001 po<0,01* emotinal stability study (pre*post) 0,04 po<0,05* control (pre*post) 0,7 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,29 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,2 po>0,05 general adjustment study (pre*post) 0,56 po>0,05 control (pre*post) 0,8 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,65 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,67 po>0,05 self realization study (pre*post) 0,3 po>0,05 control l (pre*post) 0,5 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,9 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,96 po>0,05 personal adjustment study (pre*post) 0,2 po>0,05 control (pre*post) 0,4 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,2 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,27 po>0,05 source: this table is result of our studies. *p<0.05 table-2b. results of the mann-whitney u test in the study and control groups group f calculation p study (pre*post) 0,69 po>0,05 control (pre*post) 0,2 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,19 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,6 po>0,05 study (pre*post) 0,05 po>0,05 control (pre*post) 0,1 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,03 p0<0,05 post (study*control) 0,1 po>0,05 study (pre*post) 0,1 po>0,05 control (pre*post) 0,46 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,1 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,46 po>0,05 study (pre*post) 0,86 po>0,05 control (pre*post) 0,65 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,8 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,58 po>0,05 study (pre*post) 0,04 p0<0,05 control l (pre*post) 0,56 po>0,05 pre test (study*control) 0,6 po>0,05 post (study*control) 0,04 p0<0,05 source: this table is result of our studies. *p<0.05 during the entire study period the students were seen to be making active effort to adjust to the condition and were observed to be successful. in the educational games they played they were observed to be making efforts to abide by the rules of play and their capability of achieving a solution in the event of disputes was seen to also improve with the passing weeks. the children were observed to behave more sensitively in situations of dispute during times of examinations despite their full observation of the program and participation in other activities. an import characteristic observed was the caesura of the arguments during the play period as the weeks passed. in activities conducted on group basis, despite the continued quarrels between them in the spirit of completion, a reflection of this conduct was not observed in their interactions with each other. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 25-30 29 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the age distribution in the study group was as follows; 5.6% 14 year-olds, 83.3% 15 year-olds, and 11.1% 16 year-olds. in the control group the corresponding ratios was 5.6%, 77.16% and 11.1% with those of 17 year-olds being 5.6%. yavuzer (1997) taking a critical look at the stages within this developmental period, experts have agreed on the fact that most of the children in the 12-15 years group have negative tendencies expressed by contrasting and instability while those in the 16-21 years group have been generally considered a period of positivity expressing consistent and pronounced behaviors. education of such adolescents with such a dynamism and intense emotional power definitely requires special knowledge a skills. çulha and arıgil (1997) in their study involving 450 students’ girls in i̇stanbul, concluded that the students faced personality problems, failed to develop self confidence and were also faced with indecision and guilty consciousness in their relationships within the society. these investigators who also examined the students according to their age groups found no significant difference between the intensity of the problem areas within the 16 years and above age groups (koç, 2000). kurç (1989) who examined the relationship between the class and the adjustment areas and methods found both to be related to the class in general, with the adjustment areas and methods tending to be positive as the class rose. glendinning et al. (1995) in their study on 15-16 year-old group adolescent scottish children, found adjustment to the school, family and peers to be dependent on their health status, personality and standard of judgement (cengiz, 1999). students can find their schools boring, conservative, and authoritative and the like, and hence may harbor a negative attitude towards learning by the age of 15 years. however, with advancing age a rise in adjustment to school has been observed (cengiz, 1999). feldman and scheibe (1972) sought to determine whether any change in the oppositional behavior to standard norms existed between the age groups. for this objective a total of 538 children of ages between 9 and 16 years were studied. the children from the 15-16 year group were observed to have the highest level of adjustment. it was concluded in the study that adjustment to the norms was high in the adolescent period with further increases still occurring towards its end (cengiz, 1999). on the issue of sports, the ratio of those involved in sporting activities was 33.3% and that of those not involved in sports was 66.7% in the study group while the corresponding values for the control group was 44.4% and 55.6%. in a study in which the effect of participation in sports on self-esteem in high school students involved in sports the demographic properties of 222 sporting and 471 non-sporting high school students were compared. no significant difference was observed between the two categories. also, considering the number of years of involvement in sports, no significant difference could be found between the various sporting ages and that of nonsporting individuals (tiryaki and moralı (1992). in another study the adjustment levels of licensed sporting students and those participating in physical education programs at leisure for only two hours per week were compared in 246 students. according to the findings of the study no difference in adjustment level was found between the two groups when the age, gender, and the nature of participation and frequency of the sporting activities were considered (gültekin, 1991). below are values on the socioeconomic structure for the study and control groups. in the study group, the ratio of those living in their own houses was 66.7% while those living in rented houses were 33.3%. in the control group the ratio of those living their own houses was 94.4% while those living in rented houses were 5.6%. in another study by kurç (1989) in which the effect of low, middle and upper socioeconomic status on the adjustment areas and methods was examined on a total of 972 high school students drawn from class 1 through 3, it was observed that as the class level rose the adjustment areas and methods of adjustment (except the adjustment in behavior) was positively influenced. according to kurç, on the grounds of social relations, excitement level, emotional condition, realistic adjustment and leadership behavior, children from the top socio-economic level performed better than those from the lower socio-economic class. in a study involving randomly selected 597 (293 girls, 304 boys) school children from the coeducational high schools affiliated to the ministry of education in the sivas province in which the effect of social and personal adjustment on some qualities of the students were examined, it was shown that despite the fact that the monthly incomes of the parents also directly affected their levels of personality adjustment no effect was observed in social adjustment (akay, 1990). at the end of the studies it was concluded that the personality and social adjustments of those adolescents from high socio-economic levels was higher than those from lower groups. in our study, it was concluded that the adjustment levels of adolescents from the lowest socio-economic group increased after the recreational activities. children who succeeded academically had higher levels of social and personality adjustment with their peers readily accepting them (saygılı, 2000). in the scores for anti-social tendencies a difference of significance level of 0.01 was observed between the pre and post test values in the study group as well as between the pre and post test values of the study group and those of the control group. emotional stability scores showed a difference with significance of 0.05 between the pre and post test values in the study group. scores for psychological signs demonstrated a statically significant difference between the pre and post test values in both the study and control groups (p<0.05). there was social adjustment scores significant differences between the pre and post test values in the study group and between the pre and post test values of the study and control groups (p<0.05), with no significant differences observed in the other parameters. because there was no experimental material available in the literature, we could only make our evaluations based on descriptive studies. 4. conclusion it was concluded at the end of the study that recreation was effective on the adjustment level of the adolescents and that this effect was also noted to positively affect the academic success of the subjects. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 25-30 30 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the course of life, in addition to the effort made by individuals to cope and adjust to conditions and environments that they are exposed to, the negative emotional stress that this new environs and conditions can subject the individual are known to occur. to reduce these negative effects or eliminate them entirely the development of capabilities to combat these negative emotions by the individual is important, because it serves as the individuals’ determinants of the individual’s personal goals as well as his quality of life. in this study the activities rich in stimuli served to improve the possible negative emotions of the individual and as a result were concluded to affect the individual positively in achieving both sound adjustment to the environment as well as giving direction to one’s goals. references akay, n., 1990. the effect of some qualifications of high school students on the level of social personal adjustment. unpublished master thesis, university of hacettepe, ankara. cengiz, e., 1999. the examination of physclogical needs and social and personel adjustment level of students of anatolian high school, science high school and super high schools. unpublished master thesis, university of i̇nönü, malatya. çulha, ü. and g. arıgil, 1997. 450 researching and evaluating the problems of girls in various fields. national psychiatry and neurological sciences congress study, ankara. pp: 263-278. feldman, r.s. and k.e. scheibe, 1972. determinants of dissent in a psychological experiment. journal of personality, 40(2): 331-348. available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1972.tb01007.x. glendinning, a., l. hendry and j. shucksmith, 1995. lifestyle, health and social class in adolescence. social science & medicine, 41(2): 235248. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(94)00316-l. gültekin, h., 1991. the comparison of the success and adjustment levels of high school students taking and not takingphysical exercise. master thesis, university of ankara, ankara. güneş, a., 2015. examining the attitudes and self-efficacy of classroom teachers on gifted education. journal of gifted education and creativity, 2(1): 12-16. işık, u., 2014. investigation of personality characteristics of serious leisure time attending the school of physical education and sports ılar. dumlupınar university, institute of health sciences, m.sc. thesis, kütahya. pp: 3. koç, a., 2000. the examination of some variations affecting the social adjustment of adults. university of atatürk, master thesis, erzurum. kocaturk, s., 2005. the effect of regular participation to folk dance on university students' depression and adaptation levels. muğla university institute of social sciences unpublished master thesis, muğla. koo, j. and g. lee, 2015. an effect of physical activity-based recreation programs on children's optimism, humor styles, and school life adjustment. journal of exercise rehabilitation, 11(3): 169-174. available at: https://doi.org/10.12965/jer.150210. kurç, g., 1989. the effects of some personel, socio-economis and cultural variations of high school students on their adjustment fields and adjustment methods. unpublished phd thesis, university of hacettepe, ankara. özgüven, e., 1992. hacetepe personal envantry handbook. 2nd edn., ankara. saygılı, h., 2000. the examination of the relation between problem solving skill and social and personal adjustment. masterthesis, erzurum: university of atatürk. tiryaki, m.ş. and s. moralı, 1992. the effect of sportive participation on self-respect, sports science magazine. ankara: university of hacettepe. vandenbos, g.r., 2015. the apa dictionary of psychology. washington, dc: american psychological association. world leisure commission on education, 2000. world leisure international position statement on educating for serious leisure. prepared by robert a. stebbins. available from www.worldleisure.org [accessed 20.06.2008]. yavuzer, h., 1997. child physiology. 14th edn., i̇stanbul: remzi publication. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.worldleisure.org/ 23 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 23-34, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.23.34 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students’ readiness and problems in learning english through blended learning environment chuanpit sriwichai the school of liberal arts, the university of phayao, thailand. abstract in academic year 2018, the university of phayao commenced the application of blended learning approach which combines face-to-face class and online learning mode to teaching and learning english as a general education course for the first and second-year students. this study aims to explore students’ readiness for learning english course through blended learning environment and investigate problems and challenges that the students faced in their learning. drawing upon 364 questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions along with focus group interviews with 20 interviewees, the findings revealed that students’ readiness for learning english through blended learning was at slightly high level. they tended to be able to learn english through the combination of two different learning modes. they believed that learning english in face-to-face classroom and online learning mode motivated them to be more self-disciplined and responsible for their own learning, and encouraged them to set up their own english learning plans and learning goals. however, the major problems and challenges the students confronted in learning included losing focus on learning in classroom due to considerable class size, limited access of online lessons caused by learning management system (lms) severe crash, difficulty of online interaction with teachers and classmates, lack of experience and skills for digital tools, and time management for two learning modes. keywords: students’ readiness, problems in english learning, challenges in english learning, blended learning environment, learning english in blended learning environment, general education english course. citation | chuanpit sriwichai (2020). students’ readiness and problems in learning english through blended learning environment. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 23-34. history: received: 23 october 2019 revised: 26 november 2019 accepted: 30 december 2019 published: 3 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: the author would like to express his sincere gratitude and appreciation to the school of liberal arts, the university of phayao for the scholarship. also, author thankful to all participants of my study for their kind cooperation and attention, and to the lecturers in english department for their assistance and supports. funding: this article was granted by the school of liberal arts and the university of phayao. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................. 25 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 4. findings .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 27 5. discussion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................... 32 6. conclusions ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 33 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 34 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.23.34&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1275 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-8385 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1275 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-8385 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1275 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-8385 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 24 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by exploring students’ readiness for learning english course through blended learning environment and investigates problems and challenges that the students faced in their learning. 1 .introduction an advancement of information technology has a considerable impact on significant fields such as education and economy. this rapid growth makes a global community become a digital world. due to this phenomenon, many countries have created schemes to prepare their citizens for today’s modern world, likewise in thailand. the recent thai government established a new policy which is called thailand 4.0 to drive the country toward the digital age. this policy requires educational institutions to reform education system by changing teaching paradigm, curriculum, and teaching methods in order to prepare thai citizens for digital economy (royal thai embassy, 2015). to follow the policy of the government and to make undergraduate students get ready for a labor market, the university of phayao launched the project new seed graduates (4.0) in academic year 2018. in this project, teaching and learning activities in the general education courses for first and second-year students are adjusted. one of the general education courses is ‚ready english‛ which aims to teach students english skills along with developing essential life and career skills such as technology literacy, problem-solving, and collaboration. since the academic year 2018, the contents and learning activities of ‚ready english‛ course have been delivered through the university’ s learning management system (lms) and classroom instruction. the students attend in class learning for six times (4 hours each time), so they meet a teacher in face-to-face classroom for 24 out of 60 hours or 40 %, and learn on their own pace for 36 out of 60 hours or 60%. according to allen and seaman (2013) and kim (2007) the course that combines face-to-face classroom and online learning modes with the ratio of combination ranging from 30% to 80% is considered blended learning course. blended learning is a combination of face-to-face classroom instruction and e-learning, or a support of tradition teaching by using internet-based technology such as chat rooms, discussion groups, podcasts, and self-assessment tools (allan, 2007; sharma and barrett, 2007). banados (2006, cited in tomlinson and whittaker (2013) explained that in higher education, blended learning refers to a mix of technology and classroom instruction through a flexible approach that takes advantage from the benefits of online training and assessment and other modes of learning. the purposes of mixing are to make the training program complete and improve learning outcomes and/or reduce costs. allen and seaman (2013) also stated that a blended learning course makes use of online and face-to-face delivery modes. substantial parts of the content can be accessed online, and online discussion is used. making use of two learning modes is for decreasing the number of face-to-face classroom meetings. in blended learning environment, the students need to take part in learning both inside and outside the classroom. moreover, learners in blended learning system are changed from passive learners to be active ones. they become researchers, practitioners, and collaborators because a dynamic and adoptive process of blended learning makes them interact with other learning subsystems including instructor, institution, learning support, content, and technology (wang et al., 2015). tang and chaw (2013) therefore, suggested that students’ readiness to learn is a prerequisite for productive implementation of this approach. in general, readiness for learning refers to the readiness to perform learning activities and the students’ existing capacities which related to a specific instructional purpose. learning goals can be achieved when students’ learning is supported by their readiness to handle. students’ readiness can help them to adjust themselves better under difficult circumstances. it is easier for them to understand problems and find solutions. the students’ learning readiness correlated with their learning outcomes. the students having more readiness had the greater results of learning, and those who were not ready to do learning tasks faced difficulties in learning or felt frustrated (winarso, 2016). in the context of the university of phayao, the academic year 2019 is the second year when the blended learning approach has been applied to the instruction of general education english (gee) courses with the firstyear students who may not be familiar with this learning setting. hence, realizing the students’ readiness for teaching and learning through blended learning environment is significant; yet it is unknown. the present study aims to explore students’ readiness through their perspectives on learning english course namely ‚ready english‛ as general education subject through blended learning approach. also, the problems and challenges students faced in the learning this course were investigated. the findings of the study contribute to raising teachers and course designers’ awareness in designing content and learning activities for blended learning environment which are appropriate for students. also, policy makers will be given the guideline for what should be focused on in order to promote students’ readiness for blended learning setting and improve students’ performance in learning english in such environment with the large class size. the objectives of the study were as follows: 1. to explore students’ readiness for learning english as general education course through blended learning environment through their self-assessments. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 25 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. to investigate students’ problems and challenges of learning english as general education course through blended learning environment. 2. literature review blended learning is a combination of face-to-face instruction in classroom and technology-mediated learning, or a support of traditional teaching by using internet-based technology such as chat rooms, discussion groups, podcasts, and self-assessment tools (allan, 2007; sharma and barrett, 2007). during the technology-mediated learning mode of this learning environment, students are not required to physically gather in the same classroom, but they can connect digitally through online network. in blended learning course, students could involve in a class taught or directed by a teacher in a face-to-face classroom setting and complete online learning component of the course independently, outside of the classroom through online platform. online learning experiences may replace classroom instruction and can include interaction with others or learning alone using an independent study. the different learning experiences are complementing each other, and managed to process in parallel (cleveland-innes and wilton, 2018). in short, there are two main delivery modes of learning in the blended learning approach: face-toface classroom learning and online-based learning experience. hence, blended learning can refer to an incorporation of online learning tools and activities into face-to-face classroom instruction. wang et al. (2015) posited that blended learning system consist of six interconnected components. they are teacher, learner, institution, content, technology and learning support. each of them is independent, but interdependent at the same time. the teacher act as facilitators, moderators, advisors, and learning guides, not just knowledge source while the students become researchers, practitioners, and collaborators. the institution should provide strategies, policy supports, and necessary infrastructures to facilitate teaching and learning in blended setting. the content for blended learning should promote both collaborative and individual learning. the complexity of technology and challenges caused by it should be realized. in addition, the learning support including academic support and technical supports should assist students to develop effective learning strategies such as collaborative work and time management skills. the supports should satisfy students’ needs, created by the teacher’s knowledge and skills, and advocated by the institution. from abovementioned, when employing blended learning approach, the policy makers should consider all possible factors having impact on students’ learning. learning readiness is considered the preparation for performing learning activities. besides, learning readiness is the level of students’ exiting capacities related to teaching purposes. students’ readiness is crucial for successful learning in any conditions. the students’ learning readiness is correlated with their learning outcomes. the students having more readiness had the greater results of learning, and those who were not ready to do learning tasks faced difficulties in learning or felt frustrated (winarso, 2016). in blended learning environment, tang and chaw (2013) suggested that students’ readiness can be investigated through their viewpoints on six aspects of learning including classroom learning, online learning, online interaction, technology, learning flexibility, and study management. first, classroom learning can create real and meaningful interaction between students and teachers which online learning mode cannot offer. second, online learning mode, students can spend more time thinking about responses and expressing their ideas or opinions better. this aspect can satisfy introverted learners who may feel uncomfortable with expressing their thoughts in class. the next dimension is online interaction. blended learning setting should provide opportunities for interaction and discussion which are essential for learning process. asynchronous web-based tools such as online discussion board can be used to carry out online interaction. another aspect is concerning technology used in blended learning setting. information technology is a key element of this approach. high accessibility of and great familiarity with digital tools among students are inevitable for fruitful implementation of blended learning. for learning flexibility, blended learning makes students’ learning become flexible and convenient in terms of place and time. they should be able to access course materials on online platforms every time and everywhere when they need. finally, study management is seen as a process of self-regulated learning in which students put efforts into planning, managing, and directing learning activities, and sharing responsibility with their teachers. the study management is important because it leads to stronger motivation and better time management for learning online. in blended learning environment, students need to be self-disciplined and self-motivated. moreover, according to osman and hamzah (2017) readiness in adopting blended learning is related to capability to learn on one own, self-reliance in completing given task, feeling comfortable in utilizing technology in learning, and skills for applying e-learning. besides, readiness for blended learning correlates to good attitudes toward face-to-face and e-learning, interest in following blended learning, and readiness to encounter challenges of such learning experience. based on previous studies, the students with positive opinions on the aspects of online learning, study management, online interaction, and learning flexibility tended to be more ready for blended learning approach whereas the students who had strong desires for face-to-face instruction were less ready for blended learning setting. nonetheless, using technology in learning was not barrier for students (tang and chaw, 2013). furthermore, osman and hamzah (2017) found that the level of students’ readiness was high for both face-to-face and online learning. on the other hand, the lowest mean score on the statement of self-learning indicated that the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 26 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students might not be ready to learn on their own paces because they still relied on teachers’ guidance. additionally, suwannasom and catane (2016) disclosed that the participants had positive attitudes and motivation in learning english through online activities. they perceived blended language learning was convenient and able to promote self-directed learning. online learning mode enabled students to take more control and responsibility in learning and practicing language skills. when they confronted problems in learning, they used internet-based resources to self-study the most, and the second most source for consulting was textbook. therefore, it was suggested that sufficient materials and availability of online resources were vital for blended learning implementation. however, the students needed the teacher’s help to enhance their quality of learning and guide them in new learning settings. 3. methodology 3.1. population and samples the population of the study was 3,911 students who were first year undergraduates enrolled in the ready english course which is one of general education english courses of the university of phayao in the first semester, academic year 2019. the sample size was calculated using yamane’s formula with a confident level 95% and an error 5% (p = 0.05). the formula was shown below. based on the above formula, this study obtained 364 samples. after the sample size was determined, the samples were classified into cluster based on their schools and subject areas. 3.2. instruments the six dimensions of readiness for learning stated by tang and chaw (2013) and the concept of readiness for adopting blended learning proposed by osman and hamzah (2017) were used as a framework to develop the questionnaire. the statements in the instrument were adapted from their studies and categorized into 7 parts: classroom learning, online learning, online interaction, technology, learning flexibility, learning management, and readiness for blended learning. the instrument utilized 4-likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, and 4 = strongly agree) to avoid central tendency bias (kostoulas, 2013). to provide the participants a better understanding of the questionnaire contents, the items were in thai. also, an open-ended question (i.e. what problems did you face in learning english in this course both face-to-face classroom and online learning modes?) was applied to elicit qualitative information of students’ problems and challenges in learning english through a blended learning approach. this question was also used in the focus group interview to provide deep insight of the students’ problems. 3.3. validity and reliability of the instruments the questionnaire was evaluated by 3 experts using the index of item objective congruence (ioc). the ioc value was .88. then, the questionnaire was tried out with 30 students to verify reliability, and cronbach’s alpha value was .82. 3.4. data collection the data were collected in ‚ready english‛ course in the 1st semester, academic year 2019 at the university of phayao. the data were collected only once after the ethical approval. the questionnaires were distributed at the beginning of the class, and the data collection lasted about 20-30 minutes. after that, the focus group interviews were undertaken with 20 students (5 students in each group). 3.5. ethical approval prior to conducting the study, the researcher applied for ethical considerations involved in research on human subjects to university of phayao human ethics committee, and the certificate number of approval is 2/033/62. before collecting data, the population was informed the research objectives and asked for their voluntary participation. after that, the samples who voluntarily took part in the study signed their signatures in the consent form. the questionnaires were kept in a safe place, and the data were recorded in a computer which the password to login was necessary. the data will be kept for 3 years. the hard copy of the data will be eliminated using document shredder, and the soft files of the data will be deleted. 3.6. data analysis frequency and percentage were used to figure out the students’ demographic data from part one of the questionnaire. mean and standard deviation were employed to examine students’ readiness in 7 aspects. the criteria used to interpret mean values (srisa-ard, 2010) were as follows: 3.76 – 4.00 = students have high level of readiness 2.76 – 3.75 = students have slightly high level of readiness asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 27 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1.76 – 2.75 = students have slightly low level of readiness 1.00 – 1.75 = students have low level of readiness the qualitative data of students’ learning problems and challenges from open-ended question and the focus group interviews were examined using thematic analysis and coding method. the participants’ responses were translated from thai to english and coded line-by-line. then the emergent codes were categorized to 7 key themes based on the main parts in the questionnaire. 4. findings 4.1. demographic information of the samples the samples’ demographic data of schools and subject areas were presented in the following table. table-1. samples’demographic data classified by schools and subject areas. no. schools subject areas number percentage 1. agriculture and natural resources 28 7.60 animal sciences 7 1.90 agriculture 7 1.90 food safety 4 1.10 fisheries 4 1.10 food science and technology 6 1.60 2. allied health sciences 16 4.30 medical technology 10 2.70 physical therapy 6 1.60 3. education 34 9.40 education – english 9 2.50 education – thai 20 5.50 education –social development 5 1.40 4. engineering 20 5.40 civil engineering 9 2.50 electrical engineering 2 0.50 industrial engineering 3 0.80 mechanical engineering 6 1.60 5. information and communication technology 42 11.4 business computer 7 1.90 computer engineering 7 1.90 computer graphics 11 3.00 computer science 6 1.60 engineering software 4 1.10 geographic information science 2 0.50 information technology 4 1.10 information technology – english 1 0.30 6. law 21 5.80 law 5 1.40 law – information technology 6 1.60 law – accounting 5 1.40 law – english 5 1.40 7. liberal arts 41 11.30 chinese 5 1.40 english 10 2.70 french 5 1.40 japanese 5 1.40 thai 5 1.40 chinese – english 5 1.40 french – english 6 1.60 8. medicine 16 4.4 community health 7 1.90 environmental health 5 1.40 occupational health and safety 4 1.10 9. medical sciences 28 7.7 biochemistry 7 1.90 microbiology 9 2.50 nutrition 12 3.30 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 28 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group no. schools subject areas number percentage 10. management and information sciences 52 14.3 accountancy 24 6.60 communication management 7 1.90 economics 5 1.40 new media communication 5 1.40 tourism 11 3.00 11. nursing 10 2.70 nursing science 10 2.70 12. pharmaceutical sciences 10 2.70 pharmaceutical sciences 10 2.70 13. science 28 7.70 biology 3 0.80 chemical industry and materials technology 1 0.30 chemistry 9 2.50 physics 3 0.80 science and technology in sports 9 2.50 statistics 3 0.80 14. energy and environment 1 0.30 environmental engineering 1 0.30 15. political and social sciences 17 4.60 political science 10 2.70 public administration 3 0.80 public innovation management 1 0.30 social development 3 0.80 total 364 100.00 table 1 demonstrated the demographic information of schools and subject areas of the samples. there were 364 participants from 15 schools consisting of 58 subject areas. most participants were from the school of management and information sciences (52 students = 47.6 (% including five subject areas. the second most was the students from the school of information and communication technology with eight subject areas (42 students = 44.7 (% , followed by the school of liberal arts comprising seven subject areas (41 students = 44.6 (% , and the college of education with three subject areas (34 students = 9.7 .(% the participants were from the school of energy and environment the least (1 student = . 63 .(% the second least was the samples from the school of nursing and the school of pharmaceutical sciences (10 students = 5.7 .(% 4.2. students’ readiness for learning english as general education course through blended learning environment through their self-assessment the results of the students’ readiness in 7 aspects based on the questionnaire were presented as follows: table-2. classroom learning. no. items ̅ sd meaning classroom learning 1 face-to-face english classroom activities help prepare me to learn on my own pace through online learning. 3.13 .50 slightly high 2 face-to-face english classroom activities help me to generate ideas to do course assignment. 3.00 .51 slightly high 3 in face-to-face english classroom, i have a chance to get supports or feedbacks from my teacher and peers immediately. 2.98 .59 slightly high 4 i learn english better through teacher-directed classroom-based activities. 2.95 .61 slightly high 5 i learn english better when i collaborate with others in face-to-face classroom. 2.98 .64 slightly high 6 i believe face-to-face english classroom learning is more effective than english online learning. 3.12 .68 slightly high 7 i am bored when learning english in this course in face-to-face classroom. 2.61 .70 slightly low 2.94 .31 slightly high table 2 presented students’ readiness for classroom activities. the overall mean scores were in slightly high level ( ̅ = 2.94, sd = .31). six out of seven items gained slightly high mean scores and only one item was rated in slightly low mean. the highest mean score was no. 1 ‘face-to-face english classroom activities help prepare me to learn on my own pace through online learning’ ( ̅ = 3.13, sd = .50), followed by no. 6 ‘i believe face-to-face english asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 29 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group classroom learning is more effective than english online learning’ ( ̅ = 3.12, sd = .68). the lowest mean score was found in no. 7 ‘i am bored when learning english in this course in face-to-face classroom’ ( ̅ = 2.61, sd = .70). table-3. online learning. no. items ̅ sd meaning online learning 1 learning english online in this course is interesting and convenient. 3.02 .55 slightly high 2 i feel comfortable with self-directed learning when i learn english online in this course. 2.94 .59 slightly high 3 i like learning english online in this course because it enables me to access instructional content easier. 2.88 .67 slightly high 4 i would like learning time in the classroom of this english course to be reduced. 2.83 .76 slightly high 5 i would like to have online class for this english course rather than in the classroom. 2.65 .76 slightly low 6 i am bored when learning english online. 2.60 .79 slightly low 2.79 .39 slightly high table 3 demonstrated readiness of the students for online learning. the total mean score was slightly high ( ̅ = 2.79, sd = .39). there were four items obtained slightly high mean while two items had slightly low mean. the item having the highest mean was no.1 ‘learning english online in this course is interesting and convenient’ ( ̅ = 3.02, sd = .55) whereas no. 6 ‘i am bored when learning english online’ gained the lowest mean ( ̅ = 2.60, sd = .79). table-4. online interaction. no. items ̅ sd meaning online interaction 1 i feel isolated when i learn english online. 2.60 .81 slightly low 5 i would like to interact with my teacher when i learn english online. 2.97 .60 slightly high 3 i would like to interact with my classmates when i learn english online. 2.99 .61 slightly high 4 when i learn english online, i can communicate with teacher or classmates online easily. 2.82 .68 slightly high 5 i can collaborate well with my team in doing assignments of this english course. 2.99 .62 slightly high 2.83 .42 slightly high table 4 showed the mean rating of students’ self-assessments on online interaction in english blended learning setting. all items were in slightly high scales, except no. 1 that was rated on a slightly low level. overall mean score of this part was in slightly high level at 2.83 (sd =.42). the items that got the greatest mean were no. 3 ‘i would like to interact with my classmates when i learn english online’ ( ̅ =2.99, sd =.61) and no. 5 ‘i can collaborate well with my team in doing assignments of this english course’ ( ̅ =2.99, sd =.62). the lowest mean rating was item 1 ‘i feel isolated when i learn english online’ ( ̅ =2.60, sd =.81). table-5.technology. no. items ̅ sd meaning technology 1 i think online learning platform (www.lms.up.ac.th) used in english teaching and learning of this course is easy to use. 3.04 .59 slightly high 2 i believe online learning platform (www.lms.up.ac.th) used in teaching and learning of this course is useful for my english learning. 3.12 .53 slightly high 3 i think this online learning platform should be used in teaching and learning other english courses. 3.04 .55 slightly high 3.07 .39 slightly high according to table 5 the mean score of the students’ perception on online-based technology used in this course was in a slightly high level ( ̅ =3.07, sd =.39). item 2 ‘i believe online learning platform (www.lms.up.ac.th) used in teaching and learning of this course is useful for my english learning’ ( ̅ =3.12, sd =.53) was rated highest whereas item 1 ‘i think online learning platform (www.lms.up.ac.th) used in english teaching and learning of this course is easy to use’ ( ̅ =3.04, sd =.59) and item 3 ‘i think this online learning platform should be used in teaching and learning other english courses’ ( ̅ =3.04, sd =.55) obtained lower means. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 30 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. learning flexibility. no. items ̅ sd meaning learning flexibility 1 i would like to access the teaching materials and the english lessons without limits of time and place. 3.32 .60 slightly high 2 i would like to decide where and when i want to study the english lessons. 3.10 .67 slightly high 3 i like to study english lessons of this course at my own pace. 2.81 .70 slightly high 3.08 .49 slightly high table 6 described the students’ self-assessment in term of learning flexibility. all three items were rated slightly high, and the overall mean was 3.08 (sd = .49). the highest-rated item was no. 1 ‘i would like to access the teaching materials and the english lessons without limits of time and place’ ( ̅ =3.32, sd =.60), and the lowest-rated one was no. 3 ‘i like to study english lessons of this course at my own pace’ ( ̅ =2.81, sd =.70). table-7. learning management. no. items ̅ sd meaning learning management 1 learning english in both face-to-face classroom and online learning mode motivate me to be more self-disciplined and responsible for my learning english. 3.12 .53 slightly high 2 learning english in both face-to-face classroom and online learning mode encourage me to set up my own english learning plans and goals. 3.13 .52 slightly high 3 i can organize my time efficiently in learning english. 2.96 .59 slightly high 4 when i have problems in learning, i can find the ways to solve them (e.g. asking for assistance from others, or finding information from the internet. 3.21 .52 slightly high 3.11 .40 slightly high based on table 7 the mean rating of learning management was in slightly high level at 3.11 (sd = .40). item 4 ‘when i have problems in learning, i can find the ways to solve them (e.g. asking for assistance from others, or finding information from the internet’ ( ̅ = 3.21, sd =.52) was rated highest while item 3 ‘i can organize my time efficiently in learning english’ ( ̅ = 2.96, sd =.59) was rated lowest. table-8. readiness for blended learning. no. items ̅ sd meaning readiness for blended learning 1 i want to learn english in blended learning environment which combines face-to-face and online learning rather than learning in faceto-face classroom only. 3.19 .68 slightly high 2 i want to learn english in blended learning environment which combines face-to-face and online learning rather than learning online fully. 3.14 .65 slightly high 3 i am ready to face challenges in learning english in blended learning environment (combining face-to-face classroom and online learning). 3.07 .65 slightly high 4 if i have an opportunity, i want to register in an english course that adopt blended learning approach (combining face-to-face classroom and online learning). 2.99 .63 slightly high 3.10 .52 slightly high table 8 exhibited the results of students’ readiness for blended learning analysis. all four items of this dimension got slightly high mean score, and total mean was ( ̅ = 3.10, sd = .52). while item 1 ‘i want to learn english in blended learning environment which combines face-to-face and online learning rather than learning in face-to-face classroom only’ was rated highest ( ̅ = 3.19, sd = .68), item 4 ‘if i have an opportunity, i want to register in an english course that adopt blended learning approach (combining face-to-face classroom and online learning’ was rated lowest ( ̅ = 2.99, sd = .63). 4.3. students’ problems and challenges in learning english as general education course through blended learning environment the findings of students’ problems and challenges in learning english as general education course through blended learning environment were elicited from 107 responses of the open-ended question in the questionnaire and 20 interviewees of the focus group interviews. the data were classified into seven main themes corresponding to seven aspects of students’ readiness in the questionnaire and described as follows: asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 31 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.3.1. problems and challenges related to classroom learning the main challenge of classroom learning was the class size. it was stated that the large number of students in one class was their obstacle to focus on the study because high noise level from students’ chatting distracted their attention, and it was difficult for them to interact with the teacher when they have questions or need explanation. it was noted: ‚there are too many students, and they talk loudly while the teacher is teaching, so i cannot focus on learning.‛ ‚the class is very large. it is inconvenient for me to ask the teacher or teacher assistants when i have questions, so i cannot understand contents clearly.‛ this was also found in the interview data. the interviewees said that the considerable class size caused problems for their learning. one of them reported: ‚there are more than 200 students in my class. it is difficult to communicate with teacher and teacher assistant. when the teacher teaches or give information about course assignments i cannot hear because my classmates talk loudly.‛ 4.3.2. problems and challenges related to online learning regarding the second main theme, the samples thought learning online was more complicated than learning in classroom and online materials was not sufficient and was difficult to understand. it was exposed: ‚the online content are not enough, and online lessons are not interesting for me. the lessons should be more attractive and the content should be added‛ ‚online learning is much more complicated than classroom learning.‛ in addition, it was reported in the interview that online learning is boring because the students do not understand online content. it was disclosed: ‚i cannot understand the lesson clearly when i learn online, and i cannot ask the teacher, so it is not interesting for me.‛ 4.3.3. problems and challenges related to online interaction for main theme three, the respondents noted in the questionnaire that they could not contact or interact with the teachers, teacher assistants, or their classmates instantly while they were studying online. they stated: ‚when i do not understand online learning contents, i cannot ask teacher for more explanation immediately.‛ ‚i do not understand online learning content and i cannot ask for helps from others.‛ likewise, the data from the interview revealed that it was difficult for the students to communicate with the teachers. some teachers allowed them to contact him or her by using e-mail; however, the reply was somewhat late. it was reported: ‚when i have questions about the lessons, i have sent my teacher e-mail, but i take a few days for reply. sometimes i need urgent help.‛ 4.3.4. problems and challenges related to using technology lack of experience and skills for learning english through online-based technology used in blended learning contributed to the students’ challenges. some respondents mentioned: ‚i have not studied online before, so the steps to access online learning platform is confusing and complicated for me‛ ‚i do not have enough skills for using online learning platform, so i feel discouraged to learn online.‛ 4.3.5.. problems and challenges related to learning flexibility both questionnaire respondents and interviewees mentioned a limited access to online materials due to slow internet connection was one problem of their learning. they were unable to access online lesson and material based on their own desire. they revealed: ‚online material is unable to access when i want, even before an exam‛ ‚the university lms often goes down, so i cannot access the lesson when i want.‛ 4.3.6. problems and challenges related to students’ learning management time management for learning in two different modes of blended learning was perceived as the challenge english learning for the students. some of them mentioned that they did not learn online and preview textbook before attending face-to-face classroom. it was disclosed: ‚i have problems in managing my time for both in-class and online learning‛ ‚i sometimes did not study online content and do exercise before coming to the class, so i do not understand the contents clearly. i think some students are not self-disciplined for learning online‛ asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 32 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group similarly, the interviewees had problem in allocating time for learning english in two modes of learning because they had to be responsible for tasks and activities of other courses. one interviewee said: ‚i rarely go online for learning english because i have to do homework and assignments of other subjects.‛ 4.3.7. problems and challenges related to readiness for blended learning some students revealed that they lacked motivation to learn english in blended learning condition. they felt it was difficult for them to learn inside and outside classroom. also, inadequate essential knowledge of english vocabulary and grammar structures was mentioned as one of the challenges to learn on their own through online learning mode. it was noted: ‚sometimes i feel lazy to learn online and wake up early to attend the class.‛ ‚i have limited range of vocabulary and knowledge of grammar, so i cannot understand content clearly.‛ furthermore, it was found from the focus group interview that classroom learning was considered more attractive and productive for them. the students believed face-to-face class meeting was a great chance for building good relationship between teacher and students, and they could gain more knowledge in classroom. one of them said: ‚i think in classroom, the teacher and students can know each other and have good relationship. i like learning english in classroom because i pay attention to the teacher’s instruction, so i gain more knowledge.‛ 5. discussion and recommendations the overall mean score of classroom learning mode was higher than online learning. according to the slightly high means of the items in classroom learning part, the possibility that the respondents believed face-to-face classroom learning was more effective than english online learning, and they could learn english better through in-class learning. this meant students still perceived face-to-face learning essential for them, and they want to learn through the setting in which there were teachers and peers with them. however, the main problem mentioned by both the questionnaire respondents and the interviewees was the considerable class size. because of a large number of students in the class, the high level of noise was inevitable. this contributed to the lack of students’ focus on study. students also perceived that in the large class, it was not easy for interacting with teacher when they need help. regarding these factors, the students could not completely comprehend learning contents and enjoy their classes. these findings were supported by bahanshal (2013) who found that the enormous number of students in one class was responsible for some problems that affected both teachers and the students. some commonly problems included no communication, lack of individual attention, uncontrollable class, and ineffectiveness of learning activities. second, the total mean of the online learning part was the lowest. the slightly low mean of item 5 of online learning aspect reflected that if students were required to choose one of learning modes between learning in classroom and online learning, they would prefer the former to the latter. it could be assumed that the respondents might not feel comfortable and not be ready for a full online course in which they are required to perform learning process by themselves. this echoed by osman and hamzah (2017) who stated that the lowest mean score of the item on self-learning could reflect students’ low readiness to learn on their own since they still relied on the teacher. on the other hand, the qualitative data analysis unveiled that online lessons were uninteresting for some students because the lessons were not engaging. for certain students, this part was not interesting because of the difficulty of communication with the teachers and the complexity of online platform access. the results of the online learning part were in line with those of the online interaction section that the mean score was the second lowest. three highest-rated items (no. 2, 3, and 5) of the online interaction dimension showed that the students desired to interact with their teachers and classmates, and collaboratively work with their teams when they learned online. nevertheless, the questionnaire’s respondents and the interviewees reported that they could not contact with the teachers or peers when they needed immediate supports or helps in learning english online, so they could not comprehend the lessons and felt bored. it could be seen from this notable finding the interaction and discussion were necessary and inevitable for blended learning process. it was in alignment with the previous study that suggested the novice of blended learning may get lost in the learning process in which they were required to be more independent through language learning using technology. they, hence, needed teachers’ guidance and peers’ advocacy when they learned digital lessons (suwannasom and catane, 2016). blended learning environment should offer students a plenty of chances to interact and discuss with facilitators and classmates using web-based tools such as discussion board (tang and chaw, 2013). the university’s lms used in this blended english course offered the discussion forum and dashboard for communication among teachers and class members, yet it has been unfamiliar to the users. from the questionnaire analysis, the students expressed great attitudes toward technology or learning management system (lms) used in this blended english course. they seemed to realize that the digital tool was useful for their english learning. however, the qualitative data online platform access seemed to be complex for asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 33 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group some students. this may be because the students were not familiar with learning english through online platform because they were first-year students, and they needed more training for access and use of the platform in their learning. this could be seen from responses stating that some students had no experience in learning through online mode. kenney and newcombe (2011) explained that for many students it might be their first time for involving in blended learning setting, so it was important to have them get familiar with the online learning tools, online materials available and class schedule. furthermore, students should be provided technical and learning support in order to ensure they feel comfortable in making use online learning tools such as using discussion forum to discuss their problems or questions related to learning contents and activities. moreover, tang and chaw (2013) suggested that for productive implementation of blended learning, it is necessary to provide students high level of familiarity with and accessibility of online learning tools because using technology was the main characteristic of blended learning. in learning flexibility section, the highest mean score of item 1 may reflect that students needed to learn without time limitation. tang and chaw (2013) posited that when the learners showed positive attitudes towards learning flexibility, they tended to be adaptable to blended learning. however, the responses of the open-ended question and the interview revealed that online lessons were not flexible for students. they could not access knowledge through online platform when they desired to learn because the server of the platform always crashed. the total mean of the learning management dimension was the second highest of all. based on the highest-rated items (no.1, 2, and 4), the students believed that learning english in both face-to-face classroom and online learning mode motivated them to be more self-disciplined and responsible for their own learning, and encouraged them to set up their own english learning plans and learning goals. these findings are promising because students were assumed to have willingness to take responsibility for their own learning, and be adept at planning learning time to accomplish their learning goals which is necessary for achieving learning goals. on the other hand, it was stated that the big challenge for students was management of time. it seemed to be difficult for them to allocate time for learning online along with preparing themselves for learning in classroom. according to raadt and dekeyser (2009) time management was a significant element contributing to success in blended learning in tertiary educational level. however, many undergraduate students encountered the difficulty in managing time in blended learning setting in which they were required to learn online along with face-to-face learning (vaughan, 2007). finally, the overall mean of the readiness for blended learning part was the highest of all aspects. also, the mean scores of the items 1 and 2 of this part concerning face-to-face learning and online learning mentioned that they want to learn english in blended learning environment which combines face-to-face and online learning rather than learning in only face-to-face or online learning. based on these findings, the students were likely to be ready to learn english as general education course through blended learning setting. however, certain respondents and interviewees recounted that they lacked motivation to learn in two different modes of learning. also, insufficient prior knowledge of english vocabulary and grammar could be the barrier for students’ self-study in online learning mode. to prepare students for independently learning on their own through online learning part, face-to-face classroom instruction should give the students essential knowledge they can apply to web-based learning. the findings of the present study did not only reflect the students’ readiness for learning english as general education course through blended learning environment, but also reflected the readiness of teachers, learning management policy, and supportive learning system provided by the university. it was found that an achievement of successful implementation of blended learning is related to various elements. prior to implementing blended learning, the teachers should be trained about the concept of this method together with how to incorporate online learning mode to face-to-face classroom. also, they should be trained to handle with the large class size. similarly, students should be trained how to learn online, and manage their time for both learning modes, provided supports when they face problems in learning. the interaction between teacher and students during the implementation of blended learning approach is very important, so online and offline communication tools should be provided, especially when the class size is very large. in case digital discussion tools have been provided, teachers and students should be informed and demonstrated how to use them to give and seek advice or help. also, technologymediated activities such as live online tutoring and discussion should be incorporated in order to enhance students learning engagement. for further research, the readiness of other sectors in blended learning system such as the readiness of teacher, institution, or technology and learning supports should be investigated in order to provide well-rounded understanding of blended learning implementation. 6. conclusions the results of the quantitative data analysis showed that the total mean score of each aspect in the questionnaire was in a slightly high level. it meant students were somewhat ready for blended learning. however, the responses from the open-ended question and the focus group interviews disclosed some problems and challenges of the students that needed to be taken into consideration when implementing blended learning setting. these included losing attention to learning in classroom due to large class size, limited accessibility of online lessons because of lms severe crash, difficulty of online interaction with teachers and peers, lack of experience and skills for using lms, and time management for two learning modes. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 23-34 34 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references allan, b., 2007. blended learning: tools for teaching and training. london: facet publishing. allen, e. and j. seaman, 2013. changing course: ten years of tracking online education in the united states. available from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed541571.pdf. bahanshal, d.a., 2013. the effect of large classes on english teaching and learning in saudi secondary schools. english language teaching, 6(11): 49-59. cleveland-innes, m. and d. wilton, 2018. guide to blended learning. canada: common wealth of learning. kenney, j. and e. newcombe, 2011. adopting a blended learning approach: challenges encountered and lessons learned in an action research study. journal of asynchronous learning networks, 15(1): 45-57.available at: https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v15i1.182. kim, w., 2007. toward a definition and methodology for blended learning. in j. fong and f. l. wang (eds.), the proceedings of workshop on blended learning 2007: 1-8. available from https://www.academia.edu/1357530/ blended_learning_towards_ a_mix_for _smes-stakeholders_ and_ their_priorities. kostoulas, a., 5346. four things you probably didn’t know about likert scales. available from https://achilleaskostoulas.com/2013/09/09/four-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-likertscales/. osman, n. and m.i. hamzah, 2017. student readiness in learning arabic language based on blended learning. international journal of applied linguistics and english literature, 6(5): 83-89.available at: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.5p.83. raadt, m. and s. dekeyser, 2009. a simple time-management tool for students’ online learning activities. in same places, different spaces: proceedings ascilite auckland 2009. royal thai embassy, 2015. agenda 1: prepare thais 4.0 for thailand becoming a first world nation. available from http://thaiembdc.org/agenda-1-prepare-thais-4-0-for-thailand-becoming-a-first-world-nation/. sharma, p. and b. barrett, 2007. blended learning: using technology in and beyond the language classroom. new york: macmillan. srisa-ard, b., 2010. introduction to researching. 8th edn., bangkok: suweeriyasarn. suwannasom, t. and n.g. catane, 5346. exploring university students’ attitudes and strategies in a blended english language learning environment. kku international journal of humanities and social sciences, 6(1): 10-31. tang, c. and l. chaw, 2013. readiness for blended learning: understanding attitude of university students. international journal of cyber society and education, 6(2): 79-100.available at: https://doi.org/10.7903/ijcse.1086. tomlinson, b. and c. whittaker, 2013. blended learning english language teaching: course design and implementation. london: british council. vaughan, n., 2007. perspectives on blended learning in higher education. international journal on e-learning, 6(1): 81-94. wang, y., x. han and j. yang, 2015. revisiting the blended learning literature: using a complex adaptive systems framework. journal of educational technology & society, 18(2): 380-393. winarso, w., 2016. assessing the readiness of student learning activity and learning outcome. journal pencerahan, 10(2): 81-94. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.academia.edu/1357530/ http://thaiembdc.org/agenda-1-prepare-thais-4-0-for-thailand-becoming-a-first-world-nation/ 422 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 422-428, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.422.428 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group cognitive structure determination of prospective science teacher via word association test ecir yilmaz necmettin erbakan university, ahmet keleşoğlu education faculty, chemistry department, konya, turkey. abstract this present study aims to determine the prospective science teachers’ cognitive structure about the domain of buffer solution with word-association test. the research was conducted in the spring semester of the academic year of 2018-2019 with a sample of 71 prospective science teachers in the department of science teaching program at a state university in central anatolian region in turkey. to be able map the structures, response frequencies were used. nine of the 71 prospective science teachers are male and the rests are female. this is a qualitative descriptive study. the word-association test contains eight stimulus words to collect data about prospective science teachers’ cognitive structure for the domain of buffer solution. the opinions of four instructors who has already taught chemistry iii (analytical chemistry in content) course to the prospective science teachers were obtained for the appropriateness of the stimulus words used in the present study. the gained data was analyzed by using response frequency map method. the obtained findings have been discussed on the base of the related studies and some suggestions have been made. keywords: cognitive structure, word-association test, buffer solution, prospective science teacher, frequency mapping, chemistry teaching. citation | ecir yilmaz (2019). cognitive structure determination of prospective science teacher via word association test. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 422-428. history: received: 3 june 2019 revised: 5 july 2019 accepted: 8 august 2019 published: 18 september 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: the authors would like to acknowledge the technical guidance (guiding about the drawing the cognitive structure map in computer) provided by assoc.prof.dr. ayşegül derman. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 423 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 423 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 424 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 427 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 428 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.422.428&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1006 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1228-0209 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1006 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1228-0209 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1006 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1228-0209 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 422-428 423 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by determining the prospective science teachers’ cognitive structure about the domain of buffer solution with word-association test. 1. introduction carrying the knowledge to a person’s mind and how a person structure this knowledge is one of the main issues that is interest of many education researchers. constructing the knowledge actively via association of this knowledge with pre-existing knowledge and former experiences is the approach of constructive learning (bodner, 1986; anderson, 1992). learning is a crucial thing for everyone because through learning one can understand and master something and thus can improve his/her ability. the increase in the ability of a person can be seen from the development of knowledge and activeness of the person in forming the knowledge. learning is the process of the interaction between the existing knowledge in student’s mind and what is taught to the student (posner et al., 1982). chemistry cannot be learned only through a process of memorization and remembering soundly but students should be able to connect the concepts in chemistry teaching and learning process eventually not to lead to any misconceptions. misconceptions generally occur due to the lack of student’s pre-knowledge of the concept being studied. the lack of students’ knowledge might be due to the cognitive structure that students have not well developed. according to garner (2007) the cognitive structure compares the data sets to process knowledge in understanding the concepts. students whose cognitive structure has not been well-developed well feel that learning is a burden and an unpleasant activity. one of the most important topics in chemistry is the buffer solution. to establish a sound and well-developed cognitive structure, students should not only learn about how to calculate buffer ph but also understand the nature of buffer solution concepts and the importance of buffer conditions in real life. the low learning outcomes of the students are associated with the inability of students in processing knowledge during the learning process or cognitive process of students who have not developed well. many teachers may assume that the cognitive structure works automatically so that teachers do not directly identify the cause of learning difficulties experienced by the students, and thus, the students’ learning outcomes are low because of the cognitive structure of the vain students (garner, 2007). teachers should conduct a cognitive structure analysis because the cognitive structure could affect the student’s learning process. the cognitive structure can be analyzed using different techniques. techniques such as multiple choice test, wat, drawing-writing, concept map, diagnostic tree, conceptual change text and analogy. based on the above description, the present study tries to determine the cognitive structure of the prospective science teachers by using wat in teaching buffer solution which is the part of chemistry iii course in the fall semester of science teaching program. not only in the content of chemistry iii, but also the subject of buffer takes part in general chemistry ii course and its experimental applications. this general chemistry ii course is offered in the spring term of the first year. to have knowledge about the students’ cognitive structure related to the buffer solution provides some advantages to teachers in terms of instruction (nakiboglu, 2008; derman and eilks, 2016). analysis of student cognitive structure can be used to know the description of the students’ understanding and knowledge about buffer solution. if there is an incorrect or insufficient student understanding of buffer solution then the teacher can find the right solution to overcome the problem. the learning process of the students on buffer solution can provide a learning experience to these students to develop a better cognitive structure. based on the background that has been described above, the research question of the present study can be identified as follow: how is the cognitive structure of prospective science teachers based on wat method about buffer solution? 2. method johnson (1967) originally proposed the word association test. since then, it has been used by many researchers and became a widespread tool in science education studies (shavelson, 1972; nakiboglu, 2008; schizas et al., 2013; derman and eilks, 2016). the word association test is a data collection tool used to determine and map the concepts, interrelationships, conceptual structures of cognitive structures related to a phenomenon or subject area in science education researches and has been used by many researchers (shavelson, 1972; gunstone, 1980; bahar and hansell, 2000; uzuntiryaki and geban, 2005; nakiboglu, 2008; aydın and taşar, 2010; koseoglu and bayir, 2011; schizas et al., 2013; kurt and ekici, 2013;2013a). the wat can help us to understand the number of the concepts, the direction and the power of the associations between the concepts in the cognitive structure of learners. the purpose of this study is to analyze the cognitive structure of prospective science teachers by using wat technique about buffer solution. the research was conducted with a sample of 71 science teaching program students in the spring term at a state university. 2.1. data collection in the present study, we collected the data by using wat technique. a booklet of having eight stimulus words was prepared. these stimulus words are: the solution, buffer solution, acid, buffer capacity, equilibrium concentration, base, analytical concentration and salt. the assurance of the content validity was provided whether the curriculum of the science education program covers the concepts about the topic of buffer solution. furthermore, the opinions of four instructors who has already taught chemistry iii (analytical chemistry in content) course to the prospective science teachers in science teaching program, were obtained for the appropriateness of the stimulus words used in the present study. the wat booklets were prepared in a way that participants can only see one stimulus word on two pages. one stimulus word is given in one page and the next page is left blank so the students are not influenced by seeing the relevant stimulus words. the participants then were asked to write as many terms as they can for a given period of time (90 seconds). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 422-428 424 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.2. data analysis the total response words were counted and tabulated in table 2 for each stimulus word. the author used the response frequency map suggested by nakiboglu (2008). the frequency table and the frequency map were prepared. the direction and the thickness of the arrows were determined according to the frequency table. thicker the arrow or rectangular box the more frequent the word is. two types of arrows are designated to show the association. the first one is a continuous and originated from the stimulus words to the response words. the numbers at the right side of these arrows represent the thickness of the arrows. the second type of arrow is a dotted line. these arrows are used to represent the association of the same response word with different stimulus words. these arrows are also originated from the stimulus words to the response word. the thicknesses of the arrows are represented by the italic number at the right side of the arrows in order to prevent the confusion. the validation of the response words were checked with the content of chemistry iii course which is given to the sophomore student in the fall semester. in the context of chemistry knowledge or especially the topic of buffer solution, the unrelated response words were omitted. if the frequency value of the response words was four or less, it is not included in the frequency table. since the obtained response words are enormous data in number, a sample of the most repeated ones is given in the frequency table see table 2. for each stimulus word, participants were allowed ninety seconds to write the words in their mind. it took about 12 (90 seconds for each stimulus word) minutes to complete wat booklets. as a tool wat is used to collect the data about the cognitive structure of the prospective science teachers on the topic of buffer solution. the wat is a reliable technique used as a procedure for measuring numbers of the concepts, directions and strengths of the association between the concepts (mervis and rosch, 1981; novak and govin, 1984). 2.3. educational background and sample in turkey, science teaching is a four-year college program. the program mainly consists of biology, chemistry and physics courses. in the first year of the program, prospective science teachers (psts) are given general chemistry i and its applications in the fall semester and general chemistry ii and its application in the spring term. general chemistry ii course covers the chapter of acids and bases which composed of ph and poh calculation of aqueous solutions, acid-base reactions, titrations, hydrolyses and buffer solutions. in the fall term of the second year, chemistry iii course is taught to the psts which cover the all aspects of buffer solutions. according to the outline of the textbook, the topics covered in this course are: a review of elementary concepts of analytical chemistry, gravimetric analysis, titrimetric methods of analysis, solution chemistry, theory of neutralization titration for simple systems, titration curves, buffer solutions, ph calculations, preparation of buffer solution and buffer capacity. the textbook followed in this course is the analytical chemistry i by skoog, west and holler. data were collected from 71 psts in science teaching program at a state university in the spring term of 2018/2019 academic year. the demographic feature of the psts is given in table 1. all psts were expected to know “what is the buffer solution. how it is prepared, how ph and poh values are calculated, what is the buffer capacity and what are the equilibrium and analytical concentration.” table-1. demographic feature of the participants. gender f % female 62 87.3 male 9 12.7 average age 20.52 total 71 100 3. results data obtained from the wat were analyzed using techniques of number of words and number of responses (atasoy, 2004; derman and eilks, 2016). unrelated response words such as data, flour, suspension, qi, nusret, kdd, kc, boiling point, air, gas, gas mixture, iodic, silver-mercury, frequency acid, inhibition, energy, electric current, addition, transformation, fullness, subtraction, soup, white, range, anode and amalgams etc. are not included in the analysis. more than 120 response words were omitted. the result of wat about buffer solution is encoding. the encoding follows the following format: (f1), (m2). the letters f stands for female and m for male prospective science teachers. the numbers 1and 2 represent the first and the second student respectively. this representation was used up to the 71st student. the frequencies of response words for the stimulus word are presented in table 2. the correlation between the stimulus and response words was shown using frequency map. seven different frequency range categories were obtained from the survey and this is given in figure 1-3. in the frequency map the arrows are originated from the stimulus words and directed to the response words. each stimulus word was put in a rectangular box. the thickness of the rectangular box is also associated with the number of frequency of that word presented in the box. the thickness of the used arrow was set as the number frequency. the numbers next to the arrows represent the number of frequency of response words. for instance, the thickest arrow is represented as 62 in which word “base” (a response word) which is associated with the stimulus word “salt” was repeated 62 times accordingly, it is placed in the first category. furthermore the thickness of the rectangular boxes was set as the number highest frequency. for example, the thickness of rectangular box of stimulus word “base” is 53. the same thickness was used for the stimulus word “base” throughout the frequency map. same applies for the other stimulus words. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 422-428 425 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. a sample frequency table from wat data. stimulus words response words solution buffer solution acid buffer capacity equilibrium concentration base analytical concentration salt base 31 47 26 25 15 -13 62 acid 33 50 -26 16 27 13 53 ph 12 33 46 22 6 28 -15 water 26 28 8 7 -12 -37 salt 10 31 17 9 5 20 -- solution -8 7 19 16 7 8 10 solute 41 11 -5 7 -6 - solvent 42 12 --6 --- reaction -10 8 -16 7 5 20 litmus paper --38 --30 -- mixture 42 8 ------ sour --44 ----- neutral --9 --9 -22 oh ion -----36 -- h ion --27 ----- weak base -22 -7 ---- products ----21 --- equilibrium -8 -5 3 -5 - reactants - --20 --- strong acid -12 6 5 ---- weak acid --7 5 7 --- moreover, the stimulus words are also presented in a rectangular box. the thickness of the box for each of the stimulus words is different. the frequency obtained in the survey was classified into three different levels. the first one is high, the second one is moderate and the last one is weak level. the dotted-line arrows are also used to show the association of different stimulus words with the same response word about the buffer solution. at the highest level in figure 1, the response word base associated with the stimulus word salt is repeated 62 times. at the 61≤ f ≥70 level, salt was associated only with one word, “base”. the other stimulus words are not associated at this level. at the second level, salt and base are associated 53 times. the word salt is associated with acid and the word base with “hot.” at the third level only the words buffer solution, acid and solution are associated. the word buffer solution is associated with two response words, acid and base, the word acid is associated with response word ph and “sour” and the word solution is associated with four response words, homogeneous, mixture, solvent and solute. at the fourth level (the moderate level), the words salt, base, acid, solution and buffer solution are associated. the stimulus word salt is associated 37 times with the word water. the stimulus word base is associated with 7-14 numbers and ohion 36 times on both. the stimulus word acid is associated with the response word litmus paper and 0-7 numbers. at this level, the response words acid, heterogeneous and base are associated with the stimulus word solution. figure-1. cognitive structure with association at high level. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 422-428 426 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the last stimulus word buffer solution is associated with the ph and salt. at the fifth, sixth and seventh level, all the stimulus words are associated with the response words. in this study, the data obtained through wat was applied to find out the learning difficulties that the students experience when learning the subject of buffer solution. figure-2. cognitive structure with association at moderate level. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 422-428 427 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-3. cognitive structure with association at weak level. 4. discussion and conclusion the solution chemistry should be well understood since it is prerequisite of concept of buffer solution. the stimulus words salt has the highest number association (62) with the response word base. at the high level of the frequency map only the stimulus words salt, base, buffer solution, acid and solution appeared to be associated with the response words base, acid, ph, sour, hot, homogeneous, mixture solvent and solute. this strong connection shows that cognitive structure of the participants about the concept of solution is well developed. according to constructive learning approach because of the associations with former experiences, the existing mental structure affects the individuals’ perception of new information and the cognitive structure that they will build (anderson, 1992). from this survey, it is expected that the same development do exist on the concept of buffer solution. for the stimulus word “buffer solution”, the expected response words at the highest level of frequency are weak and conjugated acid and base, maintain ph, analytical concentration. only weak base response word is associated 22 times with the stimulus word buffer solution at the moderate level of frequency. at the low level of frequency, the response words conjugated acid and base, are associated 19 and 15 times with the same stimulus word respectively. in the 61≤ f ≥70 frequency range only the stimulus word “salt” is associated with the response word base. this may show a powerful relation or well developed structure about the acid-base chemistry which is also related but not directly about the buffer solution chemistry. in the 51≤ f ≥60 frequency range only two stimulus words salt and base have association. both the stimulus words salt and base are associated with the response words acid and hot 53 times. having repeated of these words at this frequency level also supports the idea of strong relation or well developed structure about acid-base chemistry. however the response word hot is not in the scientific definition of the science education curriculum. this relation most likely comes from the given example during learning process in science or chemistry courses at the middle and high school level. science or chemistry teachers generally exemplify the acid as sour and base as hot in order to facilitate the acid-base concepts and make connection with the real life. in the 41≤ f ≥50 frequency range, only three stimulus words are present. these words are buffer solution, acid and solution the stimulus word buffer solution is associated with acid 50 times and with base 47 times. the stimulus word acid is associated with ph 46 times and with sour 44 times. the high association of the response word sour with acid also supports the idea of exemplifying the word acid as a sour at the former classes. the stimulus word solution is associated with the response words homogeneous 44 times, mixture 42 times, solvent 42 times and solute 41 times. this high frequency implies that foreknowledge of the solution chemistry is well structured in the students' minds. up to this frequency level less interactive connections came into view. at the moderate level, five stimulus words (salt, base, acid, solution and buffer solution) appears in the 31≤f≥40 frequency range. at this level no response words are interconnected with any of these five stimulus words and thus, we can conclude there is no interconnection on the base of buffer solution at this level. the result of having asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 422-428 428 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group difficulties in networking the individual’s knowledge can be deduced from this view. as the response frequency decreases the number of emerged stimulus words increases. within the 21≤ f ≥30, 11≤ f ≥20 and 5≤ f ≥10 frequency range all the stimulus words appeared. although we observed that the weakest frequency range exist within these level, cognitive networking is well-developed when compared to the higher frequency level. at the undergraduate level, science students are expected to have structural characteristic of association about the topic of buffer solution. for well-developed cognitive structure, it is important to have a dynamic and multiple ways of connections. however; the multiple ways of connections of the stimulus word should be with the right response word. at this academic level, students are expected to have a well-developed cognitive structure to understand the topic of buffer solution soundly. from this survey, although, a dynamic, multiple ways of connections within the 11≤ f ≥20 and 5≤ f ≥10 frequency range, exist, little meaningful association appears with the proper response words. related with the topic of buffer solution, the cognitive structure of psts is weak and one directional at the higher level of frequency. at this level, the strength of the association is quite high (62). as we go down the lower level frequency, the association networking becomes high and multi-directional. however; the strength of the association appears to be very low. the author can suggest at this point, the chemistry and science teachers at the former level of the college can provide a sound concept definition and right examples with the right response words during the process of teaching of buffer solution as a topic. in addition to this, the chemistry textbook writers can use a well-designed materials and activities (experiments, pictures including macroscopic, microscopic and multi-particle modelling) in their textbooks (adadan, 2014). since meaningful chemistry education should structure the coordinated manner of macro, micro and symbolic level of chemistry knowledge (talanquer, 2011). thus, students are able to have a well-developed cognitive structure, multi-directional and a high strength of connections in their minds. references adadan, e., 2014. investigating the influence of pre-service chemistry teachers' understanding of the particle nature of matter on their conceptual understanding of solution chemistry. chemistry education research and practice, 15(2): 219-238.available at: https://doi.org/10.1039/c4rp00002a. anderson, o.r., 1992. some interrelationships between constructivist models of learning and current neurobiological theory, with implications for science education. journal of research in science teaching, 29(10): 1037-1058.available at: 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https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.3730660207. schizas, d., e. katrana and g. stamou, 2013. introducing network analysis into science education: methodological research examining secondary school students' understanding of" decomposition. international journal of environmental and science education, 8(1): 175-198. shavelson, r.j., 1972. some aspects of the correspondence between content structure and cognitive structure in physics instruction. journal of educational psychology, 63(3): 225-234.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0032652. talanquer, v., 2011. macro, submicro, and symbolic: the many faces of the chemistry “triplet. international journal of science education, 33(2): 179-195.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690903386435. uzuntiryaki, e. and ö. geban, 2005. effect of conceptual change approach accompanied with concept mapping on understanding of solution concepts. instructional science, 33(4): 311-339.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-005-2812-z. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 1 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 1-11, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.1.11 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the investigation of social studies teacher candidates cognitive flexibility levels and metacogniyive learning strategies in terms of different variables melek körükcü niğde ömer halisdemir university, turkey. abstract the purpose of this research; social studies is to examine the relationship between the cognitive flexibility skills of teacher candidates and the learning strategies of supernatural (metacognitive learning strategies) in terms of various variables. the working (study) group of the research, who participated in the study on voluntary basis, is composed of a total of 150 social science teacher candidates; 94 female and 56 male ones who continue their education in the department of social sciences education at the faculty of education at a state university in central anatolia. and participate in volunteer work. "cognitive flexibility scale" and "bilingual metacognitive learning strategies identification scale" were used as data collection tools in the research. relational search screening model was used in the study. the data were analysed using the spss 20 program. according to the findings; it was determined found that the levels of cognitive flexibility levels of the social science teacher candidates were are moderate (in part agreeing partly agree) while metacognitive learning strategies identification levels were high.to determine the supra-learning strategies. it is concluded that the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of female teacher candidates determination of supra-learning strategies are higher than those of male teacher candidates. on the other hand, it has been determined that there is no relationship between cognitive flexibility levels of social science teacher candidates and sex change gender. keywords: cognitive flexibility, metacognitive learning, social studies teacher candidate, social studies education, learning, cognitive. citation | melek körükcü (2020). the investigation of social studies teacher candidates cognitive flexibility levels and metacogniyive learning strategies in terms of different variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 1-11. history: received: 30 september 2019 revised: 28 october 2019 accepted: 6 december 2019 published: 8 january 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. method .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 2 3. findings ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 4. conclusıon ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 9 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.1.11&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1210 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7824-3497 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1210 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7824-3497 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1210 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7824-3497 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 2 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the relationship between the cognitive flexibility skills of teacher candidates and the learning strategies of supernatural (metacognitive learning strategies) in terms of various variables. 1. introduction the effort to understand how an individual‟s mind works has still been on the agenda of human beings since the antiquity. in today‟s world, in which we experience the information age, there exists a fast and constant change which has never been experienced throughout history. with these changes, the expectations and qualifications required from the individuals by society have also changed. modern educational approaches often underline the necessity for students to be active in learning process and put the emphasis on how knowledge should be learned rather than memorizing it. in this case, it‟s no doubt that teachers have the most important role. it can be considered a prerequisite that teachers should be highly-qualified for such changes. cognition is defined as the process of referring to previous knowledge, experience, etc. during knowledge acquisition. in fact, the processes of getting information about the world, understanding the world with that information and problem solving are all related to the cognitive process of an individual (budak, 2009). according to the behaviouristic approach, cognition comprises of all the intrinsic activities between the stimulant and the behaviour and performs three functions, which are stated as ordering the information and adjustment, identifying and defining the objects, and attributing meaning and value. the first research on metacognitions was conducted by john flavell, who first introduced the term. flavell (1979) claimed that the term metacognition is related to an individual‟s knowledge on cognitive processes. metacognition can also be explained as thinking about thinking. in other words, metacognition is the individuals‟ being aware of intellectual processes, observing and identification how they learn and developing suitable strategies accordingly (bakircioglu, 2012). metacognition enables individuals to acquire, comprehend, keep and recall the knowledge. it increases the effectiveness of learning and effects the critical thinking and problem solving skills, thus enabling individuals to regulate their learning processes by themselves (hartman, 1998). briefly, metacognition helps individuals realize „what they know‟ and „what they do not know‟ (dirkes, 1985). flavell (1979) has discussed the metacognitive strategies by which cognitive processes can be controlled and led in three groups and searched for answers to the following questions:  planning: “how will i learn?”  observation: “how can i correct my deficiencies and mistakes?”  evaluation: “how did i learn this subject?” flexibility is the ability of individuals to use the acquired knowledge in different conditions. cognitive flexibility, which is defined as the ability to pass from one thought to another to accommodate oneself to the changing stimulants in the environment (dennis and vander, 2010) is the ability to arrange information processing strategies under new and unexpected situations. it enables individuals to use the most effective learning strategies about the subjects they are trying to learn and to determine the stages of solving a problem they have faced with. it is a process including multiple dimensions such as producing and processing multiple thoughts at once, being flexible in adapting to new situations, recognizing alternative ways and choices, being competent, making use of alternatives, changing the objectives in accordance with the situation and adaptation to the environment (martin and rubin, 1995; martin and anderson, 1998). cognitive flexibility can be acquired through new experiences. individuals with cognitive flexibility do not avoid communication abstain from encountering unfamiliar situations. they are able to try new methods, use various information processing strategies together, adapt to new and unexpected environmental changes easily and produce alternative ideas. however, the individuals who lack this skill support dysfunctional thoughts and beliefs and are rigid in their ideas (martin and anderson, 1998). one of the basic objectives of education is to enable students to learn problem solving strategies. at this stage, it is important for teachers to observe their students about where and when to use the most effective strategies to solve the problems and to direct them accordingly (demirsöz, 2014). therefore, teachers are supposed to provide their students with cognitive strategies, help them learn how to use those strategies in learning process, guide them and give them feedback on where and when those strategies are useful (demirsöz, 2014) cited from santrock (2004)). the role and importance of cognitive flexibility and metacognitive learning strategies in teaching the subjects in social studies coursebook is an incontrovertible fact. social studies is a content area instructional program in which basic social sciences attainments are transferred to students considering their ages, physical conditions and states of mind (yazici, 2006). current social studies curriculum is designed within seven learning areas and it requires students to use metacognitive skills in learning process effectively (social studies curriculum, 2018). with this study, the researcher aims to investigate the relation between the cognitive flexibility skills and metacognitive learning strategies of social studies teacher candidates in terms of different variables. 2. method 2.1. the model of the research educational researches generally aim to determine the attitudes, beliefs and opinions of a specific group on a specific subject. this research is designed in relational screening model within general survey model. relational screening models are research models whose purpose is to determine the existence and degree of covariance between two or more variables (karasar, 2004). 2.2. study group the study group of this research consists of 150 social studies teacher candidates (94 females and 56 males) who have contributed to the research on voluntary basis and study in the department of social studies education at a state university in the central anatolia region. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 3 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. data collection tools the data were collected with a „personal profile form‟ prepared by the researcher, „cognitive flexibility scale‟ developed by martin and rubin (1995) and adapted to turkish by celikkaleli (2014), and „metacognitive learning strategies identification scale” developed by cöğenli and güven (2014). the internal consistency coefficient of the cognitive flexibility scale was .67 when it included the second item. however, when the second item was excluded from the scale, the internal consistency coefficient was .73. the internal consistency coefficient was calculated as .74 in the study conducted by celikkaleli (2014). after the metacognitive learning strategies identification scale was applied, the cronbach alpha values were found as; planning strategies .89, observing strategies .91, evaluation strategies .78 and emotional strategies .83. the reliability coefficient of the planning, observing, evaluation and emotional strategies in the study conducted by cöğenli and güven (2014) were found as .76, .68, .58 and .53 respectively. according to these values, both scales were found reliable. 2.4. data analysis the arithmetic mean scores of the social studies teacher candidates‟ replies to the questions in the cognitive flexibility were calculated on the basis of the following frequencies: strongly disagree (1.00< ≤1.84), disagree (1.85<≤2.67), partly disagree (2.68<≤3.50), partly agree (3.51<≤4.33), agree (4.34< ≤5.16), strongly agree (5.17<≤6.00). the arithmetic mean scores of the social studies teacher candidates‟ replies to the questions in the metacognitive learning strategies identification scale were calculated on the basis of the following frequencies: strongly disagree (1.00<≤1.80), disagree (1.81< ≤2.60), undecided (2.61< ≤3.40), agree (3.41<≤4.20) and strongly agree (4.21< ≤5.00). whether the scores of the participants they got from the cognitive flexibility and metacognitive learning strategies identification scale differed significantly in terms of gender and ownership of a pc was analysed through independent samples t-test. 3. findings 3.1. the cognitive flexibility levels of the teacher candidates table-1. the findings as to the question “what are the cognitive flexibility levels of social studies teacher candidates?” item no item n ̅ level 1 i can express an opinion/idea in many ways. 150 4.78 i agree 2 i avoid new and unusual situations. 150 3.49 partly disagree 3 i feel as if i will never manage to make a decision on anything (about future, while shopping, about the opposite sex, etc.) 150 3.40 partly disagree 4 i can behave in accordance with any situation. 150 4.55 i agree 5 i can find practical/useful solutions to seemingly unsovable problems. 150 4.46 i agree 6 i cannot develop different perspectives while i decide how to behave. 150 3.96 partly agree 7 i would like to find creative solutions to the problems. 150 4.80 i agree 8 my behaviour is the result of my conscious decisions. 150 4.55 i agree 9 i can behave in many ways under any situation. 150 4.33 partly agree 10 in real life, i have difficulty in using my knowledge on a specific field. 150 3.21 partly disagree 11 i’d prefer to listen to and evaluate alternative solutions to overcome a problem. 150 4.82 i agree 12 i have the self-confidence necessary to do a work in various ways. 150 4.58 i agree general average 150 4.25 partly agree the arithmetic mean scores of the social studies teacher candidates‟ replies to the questions in the cognitive flexibility scale were calculated on the basis of the following frequencies: strongly disagree (1.00< ≤1.84), disagree (1.85<≤2.67), partly disagree (2.68<≤3.50), partly agree (3.51< ≤4.33), agree (4.34< ≤5.16), strongly agree (5.17<≤6.00). the results of the analysis in table 1 show that the lowest cognitive flexibility point average (=3.21) of the teacher candidates are in item 10; “in real life, i have difficulty in using my knowledge on a specific field”. however, the item with the highest cognitive flexibility point average ( =4.82) is item 11; “i’d prefer to listen to and evaluate alternative solutions to overcome a problem”. it can be seen that the social studies teacher candidates‟ cognitive flexibility point averages in general are at “partly agree” level (3.51< ≤4.33). the arithmetic mean scores of the social studies teacher candidates‟ replies to the questions in the metacognitive learning strategies identification scale were calculated on the basis of the following frequencies: strongly disagree (1.00<≤1.80), disagree (1.81<≤2.60), undecided (2.61< ≤3.40), agree (3.41< ≤4.20) and strongly agree (4.21<≤5.00). the results of the analysis in table 2 show that the lowest point average ( =3.33) of the teacher candidates in the metacognitive learning strategies identification scale are in item 19; “i can overcome such negative issues as stress, worry and too much anxiety while studying”. however, the item with the highest metacognitive learning strategies identification point average (=3.90) is item 11; “i prefer to study in a silent environment”. the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of teacher candidates are high (i agree) (3.41<≤4.20) in 27 items and medium (undecided) (2.61<≤3.40) in 1 item. it can be inferred from the findings that the metacognitive learning strategies identification point averages of social studies teacher candidates are high level (i agree) (3.41<≤4.20). thus, it can be stated that the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of social studies teacher candidates are high. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 4 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of teacher candidates table-2. the findings as to the question “what are the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of social studies teacher candidates?” item no item n ̅ level 1 i think over why the subject i will learn is necessary for me. 150 3.69 i agree 2 i determine what strategies to use before i start to study. 150 3.55 i agree 3 i think over how the methods and approaches that help me reach my goals will serve me in my next study. 150 3.68 i agree 4 i place more emphasis on the points that take my attention while studying. 150 3.81 i agree 5 i try to develop a positive attitude to the subject on which i study. 150 3.73 i agree 6 i determine my objective as to the subject i will learn. 150 3.61 i agree 7 i notice my faults and correct them. 150 3.66 i agree 8 i make use of resources for the points i feel incompetent. 150 3.75 i agree 9 before i start to study, i think over what i need as to the subject i will learn. 150 3.79 i agree 10 if i‟m not efficient while studying, i think over what kinds of changes i must make. 150 3.69 i agree 11 i prefer to study in a silent environment. 150 3.90 i agree 12 while i learn something new, i think over how i can learn better. 150 3.89 i agree 13 i organize the published resources i need during learning process. 150 3.67 i agree 14 i think over how i can make use of the newly acquired knowledge in other learning conditions. 150 3.65 i agree 15 i think that motivation is important in my studying efficiently. 150 3.72 i agree 16 i replace the learning strategies that do not serve my learning. 150 3.77 i agree 17 i think over whether there are other methods with which i can understand the subject better. 150 3.63 i agree 18 i choose the materials i need for the subject i will learn. 150 3.70 i agree 19 i can overcome such negative issues as stress, worry and too much anxiety while studying. 150 3.33 undecided 20 i ask myself questions about the subject i study on. 150 3.71 i agree 21 i take a break when i‟m distracted while studying. 150 3.88 i agree 22 i make plans in accordance with my learning objectives. 150 3.71 i agree 23 i check whether i have achieved my objective. 150 3.73 i agree 24 i make positive self-talks such as “i can understand the text if i read it once more.” or i can manage this project.” in order to minimize my anxiety. 150 3.71 i agree 25 i observe my comprehension level according to my study plan. 150 3.69 i agree 26 before i start to study, i determine what kind of information i need. 150 3.75 i agree 27 in order to keep my motivation, i think that i will be successful in the subject i study on. 150 3.71 i agree 28 i plan the time i will allocate for studying. 150 3.67 i agree general average 150 3.71 i agree 3.3. the findings as to the 1st sub-problem table-3. the independent t-test results of the scale averages on social studies teacher candidates‟ cognitive flexibility levels in terms of gender. gender n ̅ ss sd t p female 94 50.37 6.10 148 1.22 .224* male 56 51.89 9.13 note: *p> .05. table 3 indicates that there is no significant difference between the cognitive flexibility levels and genders of the social studies teacher candidates [t(148)=1.22; p>.05]. it can be concluded from this finding that there exists no relation between the cognitive flexibility levels and genders of the social studies teacher candidates. table-4. the independent t-test results of the scale averages on social studies teacher candidates‟ metacognitive learning strategies identification levels in terms of gender. factors gender n  ss sd t p planning strategies female 94 34.13 6.05 148 2.308 .022* male 56 31.50 7.78 observing strategies female 94 31.00 5.61 148 2.593 .010* male 56 28.29 7.08 evaluation strategies female 94 15.05 2.78 148 1.498 .136 male 56 14.27 3.60 emotional strategies female 94 26.41 4.89 148 1.523 .130 male 56 25.05 5.91 total female 94 106.60 18.30 148 2.183 .031* male 56 99.11 23.35 note: *p< .05. table 4 shows that there is a significant difference between the metacognitive learning strategies levels of social studies teacher candidates in planning strategies (t(148)=2.308; p<.05), observing strategies (t(148)=2.593; p<.05) sub-factors and the total scale point (t(148)=2.183; p<.05) in terms of gender. however, no such significant difference is found in evaluation strategies (t(148)=1.498; p>.05) and emotional strategies (t(148)=1.523; p>.05) subasian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 5 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group factors. according to the findings, it is concluded that the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of female social studies teacher candidates are higher than those of male teacher candidates in planning strategies and observing strategies sub-factors and the scale as a whole. 3.4. the findings as to the 2nd sub-problem table-5. one-way anova results as to social studies teacher candidates‟ cognitive flexibility levels in terms of grade variable. grade n  ss vk kt sd ko f p source of difference (scheffe) 1st grade 49 51.39 7.47 between groups 484.389 3 161.463 3.081 .029* 3 – 4 2nd grade 50 50.10 7.02 within groups 7650.071 146 52.398 3rd grade 30 53.77 5.82 total 8134.460 149 4th grade 21 47.86 8.87 total 150 50.94 7.39 note: *p< .05. table 5 indicates that there is a significant difference between the social studies teacher candidates‟ cognitive flexibility levels in terms of grade variable [f(3-146)=3.081, p<.05]. it is concluded from the findings that the cognitive flexibility levels of social studies teacher candidates studying at the 3rd grade are higher than those of the teacher candidates studying at the 4th grade. table-6. one-way anova results as to social studies teacher candidates‟ metacognitive learning strategies identification levels in terms of grade variable. f a c to r grade n  ss vk kt sd ko f p source of difference (scheffe) p la n n in g s tr at eg ie s 1st grade 49 33.10 6.67 between groups 355.274 3 118.425 2.611 .054 2nd grade 50 32.70 7.54 within groups 6621.499 146 45.353 3rd grade 30 35.77 5.46 total 6976.773 149 4th grade 21 30.57 6.46 total 150 33.15 6.84 o b se rv in g s tr at eg ie s 1st grade 49 29.80 6.24 between groups 294.729 3 98.243 2.536 .059 2nd grade 50 29.18 6.92 within groups 5655.244 146 38.735 3rd grade 30 32.67 4.66 total 5949.973 149 4th grade 21 28.52 6.38 total 150 29.99 6.32 e v al u at io n s tr at eg ie s 1st grade 49 14.82 3.00 between groups 90.488 3 30.163 3.241 .024* 3-4 2nd grade 50 14.46 3.36 within groups 1358.872 146 9.307 3rd grade 30 16.07 2.83 total 1449.36 149 4th grade 21 13.48 2.66 total 150 14.76 3.12 e m o ti o n al s tr at eg ie s 1st grade 49 25.82 4.88 between groups 355.393 3 118.464 4.484 .005* 3-2 3-4 2nd grade 50 24.76 5.92 within groups 3857.300 146 26.420 3rd grade 30 28.83 3.90 total 4212.693 149 4th grade 21 24.67 5.29 total 150 25.91 5.32 t o ta l 1st grade 49 103.53 19.70 between groups 3 3 1332.94 0 3.293 .022* 3-1 3-2 3-4 2nd grade 50 101.10 22.92 within groups 146 146 404.816 3rd grade 30 113.33 15.34 total 149 149 4th grade 21 97.24 19.88 total 150 103.80 12.54 note: *p< .05. table 6 shows that there exists no significant difference between the social studies teacher candidates‟ grades and metacognitive learning strategies in terms of planning strategies (f(3-146)=2.611, p>.05) and observing strategies (f(3-146)=2.536, p>.05) factors. however, a significant difference has been found in evaluation strategies (f(3-146)=3.241, p<.05), emotional strategies (f(3-146)=4.484, p<.05) and the whole scale in terms of grade variable. the findings reveal that social studies teacher candidates studying at 3rd grade have higher scores in evaluation strategies factor than do those studying at the 4th grade. those who study at the 3rd grade also have higher scores than the ones who study at the 2nd and 4th grades in terms of emotional strategies factor. as to the whole scale, it can be stated that the metacognitive learning strategies levels of the social studies teacher candidates studying at the 3rd grade are higher than those of the ones at the 1st, 2nd and 4th grade students. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 6 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.5. the findings as to the 3rd sub-problem table-7. one-way anova results of the scale averages of social studies teacher candidates‟ cognitive flexibility levels in terms of general academic achievement. academic standing n  ss vk kt sd ko f p failed 8 50.00 8.60 between groups 297.534 3 99.178 1.848 .141* average 86 50.13 7.32 within groups 7836.926 146 53.678 successful 54 52.61 6.36 total 8134.460 149 very successful 2 44.50 24.75 total 150 50.94 7.39 note: *p> .05. table 7 shows that there is no significant difference between the grades and cognitive flexibility levels of social studies teacher candidates [f(3-146)=1.848, p>.05]. the findings reveal that there is no correlation between the cognitive flexibility levels and general academic achievements of social studies teacher candidates. table-8. one-way anova results of the scale averages as to the social studies teacher candidates‟ levels of metacognitive learning strategies in terms of general academic achievement. f a c to r academic standing n  ss vk kt sd ko f p source of difference (scheffe) p la n n in g s tr at eg ie s 1-failed 8 29.50 8.07 between groups 301.894 3 100.631 2.201 .090 2-average 86 32.52 6.65 within groups 6674.879 146 45.718 3successful 54 34.46 6.80 total 6976.773 149 4-very successful 2 39.00 2.83 total 150 33.15 6.84 o b se rv in g s tr at eg ie s 1-failed 8 24.75 8.24 between groups 479.814 3 159.938 4.269 .006* 4-1 2-average 86 29.64 5.82 within groups 5470.159 146 37.467 3successful 54 30.94 6.31 total 5949.973 149 4-very successful 2 40.00 0.00 total 150 29.99 6.32 e v al u at io n s tr at eg ie s 1-failed 8 12.75 3.77 between groups 56.720 3 18.907 1.982 .119 2-average 86 14.64 3.00 within groups 1392.640 146 9.539 3successful 54 15.15 3.14 total 1449.360 149 4-very successful 2 17.50 2.12 total 150 14.76 3.12 e m o ti o n al s tr at ee g ie s 1-failed 8 22.38 6.82 between groups 229.225 3 76.408 2.800 .042* 3-1 3-2 2-average 86 25.37 5.14 within groups 3983.468 146 27.284 3successful 54 27.17 5.16 total 4212.693 149 4-very successful 2 29.00 0.00 total 150 25.91 5.32 t o ta l 1-failed 8 89.38 25.50 between groups 3664.408 3 1221.469 3.000 .033* 3-1 4-1 2-average 86 102.17 19.64 within groups 59437.59 2 146 407.107 3successful 54 107.72 20.40 total 63102.00 0 149 4-very successful 2 125.50 4.95 total 150 103.80 20.58 note: *p< .05. according to table 8 there is no significant difference between the general academic achievements and metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of social studies teacher candidates in planning strategies (f(3-146)=2.201, p>.05) and evaluation strategies (f(3-146)=1.982, p>.05). however, it is seen that there is a significant difference between the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels and general academic achievement levels in terms of observing strategies (f(3-146)=4.269, p<.05), emotional strategies (f(3-146)=2.800, p<.05), and the whole scale (f(3-146)=3.000, p<.05).the findings reveal that very successful teacher candidates have asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 7 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group higher observing strategies identification levels than do the unsuccessful ones. similarly, the scores of successful teachers in emotional strategies sub-dimension are higher than those of unsuccessful and average teacher candidates. when it comes to the whole scale, it can be stated that the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of successful and very successful teacher candidates are higher than those of the unsuccessful ones. 3.6 the findings as to the 4th sub-problem table-9. one-way anova results of the scale averages as to the social studies teacher candidates‟ levels of cognitive flexibility levels in terms of father‟s educational attainment variable. educational attainment n  ss vk kt sd ko f p primary school 57 50.58 7.27 between groups 475.994 4 118.999 2.253 .066* secondary school 37 48.51 7.64 within groups 7658.466 145 52.817 high school 34 52.47 6.92 total 8134.460 149 associate degree 7 54.86 3.02 bachelor‟s degree 15 53.00 8.29 total 150 50.94 7.39 note: *p> .05. table 9 shows that there is no significant difference between the father‟s educational attainment variable and cognitive flexibility levels of social studies teacher candidates [f(4-145)=2.253, p>.05], which is thought to imply that there is no relation between the father‟s educational attainment and cognitive flexibility levels of social studies teacher candidates. table-10. one-way anova results of the scale averages as to the social studies teacher candidates‟ levels of metacognitive learning strategies identification levels in terms of father‟s educational attainment variable. f a c to r educational attainment n  ss vk kt sd ko f p p la n n in g s tr at eg ie s primary school 57 32.54 7.07 between groups 164.158 4 41.040 .873 .482* secondary school 37 34.49 5.71 within groups 6812.615 145 46.984 high school 34 33.32 7.24 total 6976.773 149 associate degree 7 29.86 8.15 bachelor‟s degree 15 33.27 7.15 total 150 33.15 6.84 o b se rv in g s tr at eg ie s primary school 57 29.28 7.25 between groups 227.600 4 56.900 1.442 .223* secondary school 37 32.05 4.97 within groups 5722.373 145 39.465 high school 34 29.56 6.02 total 5949.973 149 associate degree 7 27.86 5.98 bachelor‟s degree 15 29.53 5.82 total 150 29.99 6.32 e v al u at io n s tr at eg ie s primary school 57 14.58 3.02 between groups 26.697 4 6.674 .680 .607* secondary school 37 15.38 2.54 within groups 1422.663 145 9.811 high school 34 14.74 3.57 total 1449.360 149 associate degree 7 13.57 3.64 bachelor‟s degree 15 14.53 3.56 total 150 14.76 3.12 e m o ti o n al s tr at eg ie s primary school 57 25.42 5.64 between groups 85.383 4 21.346 .750 .560* secondary school 37 26.92 4.93 within groups 4127.310 145 28.464 high school 34 25.71 5.05 total 4212.693 149 associate degree 7 24.00 5.29 bachelor‟s degree 15 26.60 5.73 total 150 25.91 5.32 t o ta l primary school 57 101.82 22.00 between groups 1676.924 4 419.231 .990 .415* secondary school 37 108.84 17.02 within groups 61425.076 145 423.621 high school 34 103.32 21.21 total 63102.000 149 associate degree 7 95.29 22.16 bachelor‟s degree 15 103.93 20.89 total 150 103.80 20.58 note: *p> .05. according to table 10, there are not any significant differences between the social studies teacher candidates‟ fathers‟ educational attainment levels in terms of planning strategies (f(4-145)= .873, p>.05), observing strategies (f(4-145)=1.442, p>.05), evaluation strategies (f(4-145)=.680, p>.05), emotional strategies (f(4-145)=.750, p>.05) and the whole scale (f(4-145)=.990, p>.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 8 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.7. the findings as to the 5th sub-problem table-11. one-way anova results of the scale averages as to the social studies teacher candidates‟ levels of cognitive flexibility levels in terms of mother‟s educational attainment variable. educational attainment n  ss vk kt sd ko f p illiterate 12 49.08 8.74 between groups 475.994 4 68.735 1.268 .285* primary school 81 50.91 6.92 within groups 7658.466 145 54.204 secondary school 29 49.69 7.31 total 8134.460 149 high school 25 53.60 8.37 bachelor‟s degree 3 49.00 2.65 total 150 50.94 7.39 note: *p> .05. table 11 shows that there is no significant difference between mother educational attainment levels and cognitive flexibility levels of social studies teacher candidates [f(4-145)=1.268, p>.05], which indicates that there is not a relation between the cognitive flexibility levels and mother‟s educational attainment. table-12. one-way anova results of the scale averages as to the social studies teacher candidates‟ levels of metacognitive learning strategies identification levels in terms of mother‟s educational attainment variable. f a c to r educational attainment n  ss vk kt sd ko f p p la n n in g s tr at eg ie s illiterate 12 33.83 7.32 between groups 138.352 4 34.588 .733 .571* primary school 81 32.33 6.92 within groups 6838.422 145 47.162 secondary school 29 34.14 6.12 total 6976.773 149 high school 25 33.88 7.55 bachelor‟s degree 3 36.67 2.08 total 150 33.15 6.84 o b se rv in g s tr at eg ie s illiterate 12 30.75 7.77 between groups 137.045 4 34.261 .855 .493* primary school 81 29.20 6.50 within groups 5812.929 145 40.089 secondary school 29 31.45 5.76 total 5949.973 149 high school 25 30.20 5.93 bachelor‟s degree 3 32.33 0.58 total 150 29.99 6.32 e v al u at io n s tr at eg ie s illiterate 12 15.00 2.98 between groups 17.481 4 4.370 .443 .778* primary school 81 14.49 3.06 within groups 1431.879 145 9.875 secondary school 29 15.03 3.32 total 1449.360 149 high school 25 15.00 3.38 bachelor‟s degree 3 16.33 0.58 total 150 14.76 3.12 e m o ti o n al s tr at eg ie s illiterate 12 26.5833 6.11 between groups 79.427 4 19.857 .697 .595* primary school 81 25.2593 5.52 within groups 4133.267 145 28.505 secondary school 29 26.5862 4.79 total 4212.693 149 high school 25 26.6400 5.10 bachelor‟s degree 3 28.0000 2.65 total 150 25.9067 5.32 t o ta l illiterate 12 106.17 23.40 between groups 1281.399 4 320.350 .751 .559* primary school 81 101.28 20.91 within groups 61820.601 145 426.349 secondary school 29 107.21 19.04 total 63102.000 149 high school 25 105.72 21.04 bachelor‟s degree 3 113.33 4.62 total 150 103.80 20.58 note: *p> .05. it can be understood from the data in table 12 that there is no significant difference between social studies teacher candidates‟ mother educational attainment levels and planning strategies (f(4-145)= .733, p>.05), observing asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 9 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group strategies (f(4-145)=.855, p>.05), evaluation strategies (f(4-145)=.443, p>.05), emotional strategies (f(4-145)=.697, p>.05) and the whole scale (f(4-145)=.751, p>.05). 3.8. the findings as to the 6th sub-problem table-13. one-way anova results of the scale averages as to the social studies teacher candidates‟ levels of cognitive flexibility levels in terms of the longest resided settlement variable. settlement n  ss vk kt sd ko f p city 76 50.99 8.07 between groups 65.719 2 32.859 .599* .551* town 42 50.07 7.43 within groups 8068.741 147 54.889 village 32 51.97 5.46 total 8134.460 149 total 150 50.94 7.39 note: *p> .05. it is seen in table 13 that there is no significant difference between social studies teacher candidates‟ longest resided settlements and cognitive flexibility levels [f(2-147)=.599, p>.05]. as a result, it can be claimed that there is not a relation between the longest resided settlement variable and cognitive flexibility level. table-14. one-way anova results of the scale averages as to the social studies teacher candidates‟ levels of metacognitive learning strategies identification levels in terms of the longest resided settlement variable. f a c to r settlement n  ss vk kt sd ko f p p la n n in g s tr at eg ie s city 76 33.49 6.02 between groups 20.163 2 10.081 .213 .808* town 42 32.95 7.32 within groups 6956.610 147 47.324 village 32 32.59 8.12 total 6976.773 149 total 150 33.15 6.84 o b se rv in g s tr at eg ie s city 76 30.71 5.57 between groups 81.980 2 40.990 1.027 .361* town 42 29.36 6.96 within groups 5867.993 147 39.918 village 32 29.09 7.08 total 5949.973 149 total 150 29.99 6.32 e v al u at io n s tr at eg ie s city 76 15.16 2.92 between groups 24.560 2 12.280 1.267 .285* town 42 14.31 3.18 within groups 1424.800 147 9.693 village 32 14.41 3.46 total 1449.360 149 total 150 14.76 3.12 e m o ti o n al s tr at eg ie s city 76 26.47 4.46 between groups 55.460 2 27.730 .981 .378* town 42 25.57 5.43 within groups 4157.233 147 28.280 village 32 25.00 6.84 total 4212.693 149 total 150 25.91 5.32 t o ta l city 76 105.83 17.83 between groups 656.029 2 328.014 .772 .464* town 42 102.19 22.05 within groups 62445.971 147 424.803 village 32 101.09 24.54 total 63102.000 149 total 150 103.80 20.58 note: *p> .05. according to table 14 there is not a significant difference between social studies teachers candidates‟ longest resided settlement levels and planning strategies (f(2-147)= .213, p>.05), observing strategies (f(2-147)=1.027, p>.05), evaluation strategies (f(2-147)=1.267, p>.05), emotional strategies (f(2-147)=.981, p>.05) factors and the whole scale (f(2-147)=.772, p>.05). table 15 shows that there is a negative, low and insignificant relation between social studies teacher candidates‟ cognitive flexibility levels and metacognitive learning strategies identification levels [r=.898; p>0.01]. table-15. pearson product-moment correlation coefficient results for the relation between the cognitive flexibility and metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of social studies teacher candidates. cognitive flexibility metacognitive learning strategies identification cognitive flexibility 1 -.011** metacognitive learning strategies identification -.011** 1 note: ** p> .01. 4. conclusıon in this study, the relation between the cognitive flexibility levels and metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of social studies teacher candidates is investigated. the study also tries to find out whether http://tureng.com/tr/turkce-ingilizce/pearson%20product-moment%20correlation%20coefficient asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 10 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group these variables differ significantly in terms of gender, age, grade, parents‟ educational attainment and the mostly resided settlement. the findings indicate that the cognitive flexibility levels of social studies teacher candidates are at medium (partly agree) level. cognitive awareness is at the centre of recognizing the learning to learn skills (duman, 2011). teaching profession is directly related to human. teachers meet many individuals with different personality, mood and behaviours during their careers. a good education requires teaching students how to learn, remember, motivate, and control and direct their own learning (weinstein and mayer, 1986). teacher candidates are supposed to have high cognitive flexibility for an effective teaching, which makes it necessary to investigate the factors that affect the cognitive flexibility levels of teacher candidates. activities to improve cognitive flexibility skills of students should be increased as it is essential for teachers to adapt themselves to unexpected situations. no significant was found between social studies teacher candidates‟ cognitive flexibility levels and gender variable, which corresponds to the findings of the studies by diril (2011) and celikkaleli (2014). however, altunkol (2011) and sapmaz and doğan (2013) found that the cognitive flexibility scores of the male are higher than those of the female. getting different findings from the same variable is in the nature of social sciences. cognitive flexibility is one‟s belief that the results of their behaviours will be positive and successful (martin and anderson, 1998). the findings of the study show that the social, academic and cultural cognitive lives of teacher candidates are similar. it is concluded that neither cognitive flexibility levels nor metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of social studies teacher candidates differ significantly in terms of father‟s and mother‟s educational attainment level and mostly resided settlement variables. however, bilgin (2009) found that cognitive flexibility is related with father and mother‟s authoritative attitudes. similarly, melby et al. (1993) concluded that authoritative and strict mother attitude weakens cognitive flexibility. parents‟ attitudes are important in the formation of cognitive flexibility as from childhood and some cognitive structures are formed as a result of relations established with the family. the findings reveal that the metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of female teacher candidates are higher than those of male ones in planning strategies, observing strategies and the whole scale. however, the results of the studies by memnun and akkaya (2009); ozsoy et al. (2010); aydın and coşkun (2011); ozsoy and günindi (2011) and dilci and seda (2012) show that gender does not affect metacognitive learning strategies use. baykara (2011) found a result that is in favour of female teacher candidates in organization strategies. tunca and alkın-sahin (2014) obtained the same result in planning, organization and supervising strategies. there are no scientific studies in literature claiming that metacognitive skills differ in terms of gender. in fact, the differences in the metacognitive awareness skills of individuals result from life style and are biological rather than gender since this skill develops as from 5th-7th ages and continues to improve throughout education life. teaching is more effective than maturing in the acquisition of metacognitive skills (subaşı, 1999)(cited from gage and berliner). a significant difference was found between the grades and cognitive flexibility levels of social studies teacher candidates. according to the findings, the cognitive flexibility levels of the teacher candidates at the 3rd grade are higher than those studying at the 4th grade. in addition, it can be concluded from the findings that there is no relation between the cognitive flexibility levels and general academic achievements of teacher candidates. the results of the study indicate that metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of social studies teacher candidates are high in general. metacognitive learning strategies identification levels of successful and very successful teacher candidates are found higher than those of the unsuccessful ones. similarly, some studies have found that there is a positive relation between metacognitive learning strategies and academic achievement (caliskan and sunbul, 2011; doğanay and demir, 2011; kaya, 2012; demir, 2013; kartal et al., 2013; küçük kılıç and oncü, 2014; ay and uğurlu, 2016). on the other hand, belet and guven (2011) couldn‟t find a significant relation between the use of metacognitive learning strategies and academic achievements of teacher candidates. teachers and teacher candidates must themselves be lifelong learners so that they can raise lifelong learners. they must follow and adapt to the latest developments and practice them in lessons (açıkgöz, 2003). it would be useful and guiding to conduct similar studies on different study groups with different variables. references açıkgöz, ü.k., 2003. active learning. izmir: educational world publications. altunkol, f., 2011. examining the relationship between cognitive flexibility and perceived stress levels of university students. master's thesis, cukurova university, adana, turkey. ay, e. and n.b. uğurlu, 2016. examination of metacognitive learning strategies of social studies teacher candidates according to various variables. turkish studies international periodical for the languages, 11(3): 327-344. aydın, f. and m. coşkun, 2011. geography teacher candidates‟ metacognitive awareness levels: a case study from turkey. archives of applied science research, 3(2): 551-557. bakircioglu, r., 2012. dictionary of encyclopedic education and psychology. ankara: anı publishing. baykara, k., 2011. a study on teacher candidates' perceptions of metacognitive learning strategies and teacher competence. hacettepe university journal of education, 40(40): 80-92. belet, s.d. and m. guven, 2011. meta-cognitive strategy usage and epistemological beliefs of primary school teacher trainees. educational sciences: theory and practice, 11(1): 51-57. bilgin, m., 2009. some variables that predict cognitive flexibility. journal of cukurova university faculty of education, 3(36): 142-157. budak, s., 2009. dictionary of psychology. ankara: bilim pulishing. caliskan, m. and a.m. sunbul, 2011. the effects of learning strategies instruction on metacognitive knowledge, using metacognitive skills and academic achievement (primary education sixth grade turkish course sample). educational sciences: theory and practice, 11(1): 148-153. celikkaleli, ö., 2014. the relationship between cognitive flexibility and academic, social and emotional competence beliefs in adolescents. education and science, 36(176): 347-354. cöğenli, a.g. and m. güven, 2014. validity and reliability of the metacognitive learning strategies scale. dicle university journal of ziya gökalp education faculty, 22: 283-297. demir, o., 2013. examining the levels of cognitive awareness of teacher candidates during the course of study: a qualitative study. hacettepe university journal of education, 44(44): 133-148. demirsöz, e.s., 2014. metacognitive awareness and development. trakya university journal of education faculty, 4(2): 112-123. dennis, j.p. and w.j.s. vander, 2010. the cognitive flexibility inventory: instrument development and estimates of reliability and validity. cognitive therapy and research, 34(3): 241-253.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-009-9276-4. dilci, t. and k. seda, 2012. examination of metacognitive awareness levels of 4th and 5th grade classroom teachers in terms of various variables. süleyman demirel university faculty of arts and sciences journal of social sciences, 2012(27): 247-267. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 1-11 11 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group diril, a., 2011. to investigate the cognitive flexibility of high school students in terms of the relationship between sociodemographic variables and anger level and anger expression styles. master's thesis, cukurova university, adana, turkey. dirkes, m.a., 1985. metacognition: students in charge of their thinking. roeper review, 8(2): 96-100.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02783198509552944. doğanay, a. and o. demir, 2011. comparison of the levels of low and high academic prospective teachers' using cognitive awareness skills during the course of study. educational sciences in theory and practice, 11(4): 2021-2043. duman, b., 2011. teaching principles and methods. ankara: anı publishing. flavell, j.h., 1979. metacognition and cognitive monitoring: a new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. american psychologist, 34(10): 906-911.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066x.34.10.906. hartman, h.j., 1998. metacognition in teaching and learning: an introduction. instructional science, 26(1-2): 1-3. karasar, n., 2004. scientific research method. ankara: nobel publication distribution. kartal, t., k. kayacan and m. selvi, 2013. examination of teacher candidates' level of awareness about scientific attitudes and metacognitive learning strategies in terms of multiple variables. international journal of social science, 6(1): 913-939. kaya, s., 2012. the effect of cognitive and metacognitive strategy activities on the prospective teachers' instructional design achievement and their use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. phd thesis, gazi university, ankara, turkey. küçük kılıç, s. and e. oncü, 2014. metacognitive learning strategies and academic self-efficacy of physical education and sports students. journal of sport and performance research, 5(2): 13-22. martin, m.m. and c.m. anderson, 1998. the cognitive flexibility scale: three validity studies. communication reports, 11(1): 1-9.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/08934219809367680. martin, m.m. and r.b. rubin, 1995. a new measure of cognitive flexibility. psychological reports, 76(2): 623-626.available at: https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1995.76.2.623. melby, j.n., r.d. conger, k.j. conger and f.o. lorenz, 1993. effects of parental behavior on tobacco use by young male adolescents. journal of marriage and family, 55(2): 439-454.available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/352814. memnun, d.s. and r. akkaya, 2009. the levels of metacognitive awareness of primary teacher trainees. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 1(1): 1919-1923.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.337. ozsoy, g., a. cakiroglu and g.h. kuruyer, 2010. examination of metacognitive awareness levels of prospective classroom teachers in terms of some variables. 9th grade teacher education symposium, 9(1): 489-492. ozsoy, g. and y. günindi, 2011. metacognitive awareness levels of preschool teacher candidates. elementary school online, 10(2): 430-440. santrock, j.w., 2004. educational psychology. new york: mcgraw-hill higher educatıon. sapmaz, f. and t. doğan, 2013. assessment of cognitive flexibility: validity and reliability studies of the turkish version of the cognitive flexibility inventory. ankara university journal of the faculty of educational sciences, 46(1): 143-161.available at: https://doi.org/10.1501/egifak_0000001278. social studies curriculum, 2018. available from http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/201812103847686sosyal%20b%c4%b0lg%c4%b0ler%20%c3%96%c4%9eret%c4%b0m%20programi%20.pdf. subaşı, g., 1999. cognitive learning approach, information processing theory. journal of vocational education, 1(2): 27-36. tunca, n. and s. alkın-sahin, 2014. the relationship between teacher candidates' metacognitive learning strategies and academic selfefficacy beliefs. anadolu journal of educational sciences international, 4(1): 47-56.available at: https://doi.org/10.18039/ajesi.89592. weinstein, c.e. and r.e. mayer, 1986. the teaching of learning strategies, wittock, m.c. (ed.), handbook of research on teaching. new york: maccmillan company. pp: 315-327. yazici, k., 2006. social studies and reading skills. gazi university journal of the faculty of education, 26(1): 273-283. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 671 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 671-682 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.671.682 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group perceived roles of skills in growth and transformation of ready made garments and pharmaceutical industries in bangladesh: results from an industry survey md. abul kalam1 sheikh shahana shimu2 ( corresponding author) 1research fellow, brac ied, brac university, bangladesh. 2senior research associate, brac ied, brac university, bangladesh. abstract this article examines the contribution of technical and vocational education and training (tvet) programs to growth and transformation in the ready made garments (rmg) and pharmaceutical industries in bangladesh as perceived by the industries through a company survey with 100 rmg and 61 pharmaceuticals. it identifies a missing link between skill development through tvet and the needs of industry in bangladesh. results show that, with the exception of pre-employment tvet for technicians and higher management, on average less than 20% of the companies had workers with preand in-employment tvet across all occupational levels. this indicates that tvet providers better fulfil the needs of industry for a smaller number of employees at midand higher management level compared to tvet for large numbers of employees at lower levels of general workers, operators and supervisors. it concludes that establishing strong collaboration and partnerships between government, industry and tvet institutions is necessary to harness human resources for employment and development through the world of work. keywords: tvet, growth, transformation, rmg, pharmaceutical, contribution. citation | md. abul kalam; sheikh shahana shimu (2020). perceived roles of skills in growth and transformation of ready made garments and pharmaceutical industries in bangladesh: results from an industry survey. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 671-682. history: received: 29 october 2020 revised: 18 november 2020 accepted: 2 december 2020 published: 21 december 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: the data for this article stems from “skills-for-industry”, a research for development project, https://phzh.ch/en/research/skills-forindustry/, financed by the swiss agency for development and cooperation (sdc) and the swiss national science foundation (snsf). as part of “skillsfor-industry”, a large-scale company survey was implemented in six countries. authors’ sincere appreciation goes to markus maurer, joe gazeley, andrea marks, hannes teutoburg-weiss and dr. atonu rabbani for support and comments, feedback on and reviewing the manuscript at different stages in developing this article. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 672 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 674 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 675 4. analysis ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 680 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 681 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 681 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.671.682&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2469 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 672 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining extent of the contribution of tvet to the growth and transformation in industries with reference to two sectors of industries in bangladesh. 1. introduction this research examines the contribution of technical and vocational education and training (tvet) programs to the growth and transformation of the ready made garments (rmg) and pharmaceutical industries in bangladesh as perceived through industry surveys. it is recognized in the academic literature that economic development requires extensive industrialization, particularly in the asian context. at the national level bangladesh is no exception and has gradually shifted its focus away from the agricultural sector and emphasized industrial development in order to achieve economic development. this requires a skilled labour force which in turn suggests that industry would focus resources on tvet, to accelerate the productivity increase of the labour force needed achieve economic development. however, our results show that, aside from technicians and managers, on average less than 20% of the companies surveyed had workers with preand in-employment tvet training. tvet programs for midand higher-level occupations (technician and higher management) did contribute to filling the skills needs of these companies, however, only pre-employment tvet contributed significantly. there has been a moderate or very weak relationship between the extent of the contribution of tvet programs and the extent of growth and transformation. this research sheds light on the challenges facing tvet programs in bangladesh and seeks to identify potential reasons for the lack of alignment between tvet and industries in bangladesh, identified by skills shortages, a skills-gap, and a skills mismatch. there has been a significant structural economic shift, away from traditional agriculture towards exportoriented manufacturing and the services sector. this has increased demand for skilled workers, particularly in export-oriented manufacturing industries. education has been identified as an important determinant of economic growth. higher levels of educational attainment lead to a more skilled and productive workforce, producing more efficiently a higher standard of goods and services, which in turn forms the basis for faster economic growth and rising living standards. to benefit from this as well as from demographic dividend, productivity increase of the labour force needs to be accelerated with an emphasis on soft skills and market-responsive tvet. the overall objective of the study was to examine the relationship between tvet programs and the growth and transformation of the rmg and pharmaceutical industries in bangladesh as perceived by managers in the industry. the specific objectives were: • to assess growth in industries from 2012 to 2017 in terms of sales, employment and income (workers’ salary). • to examine transformation of industries from 2012 to 2017 in terms of changes in technology, product and work organization. • to identify workers’ skills gaps/needs due to the above changes. • to assess the contribution of tvet programs to meeting the skills demands/needs at different occupational levels perceived by the industries. 1.1. bangladesh context for bangladesh to attain the status of middle-income country by 2024, special emphasis must be given to the rapid expansion of the industrial sector as well as the creation of skilled manpower. the policy framework for this is the vision 2021 plan which envisages that by 2021, bangladesh will achieve high-performing growth supported by advanced and innovative technology with prices of commodities stabilized, income and human poverty brought to a minimum, health and education for all secured and capacity building combined with creativity enhanced, social justice established, interpersonal and regional income disparity reduced, all forms of discrimination eliminated, participatory democracy firmly rooted, and a capacity to tackle the adverse effects of climate change achieved. information and communication technology will, by that time, also take the country to new heights of excellence, bringing a new ‘digital bangladesh’ identity (government of bangladesh, 2010a). since independence, the country has gone through a structural transformation by moving from dependence on agriculture to reliance on industry and service sectors. according to figures from raihan and khan (2020) the share of agriculture dropped from about half of total gdp during the 1970s to about one-third during the 1980s. they outline that this further declined from approximately 30% in 1990 to 13% in 2017. on the other hand, the industrial sector’s share in growth has been increasing over the years. immediately after independence, the contribution of the industrial sector was insignificant. again, according to raihan and khan (2020) this rose from 20% in the 1980s to 28% in 2017. in bangladesh the dominant economic sector in terms of output is ‘services’ which accounted for 55% of gdp in 2018 (raihan & khan, 2020). two industries, rmg and pharmaceuticals, were selected for this study because they are priority industries in the national industrial policy of bangladesh (government of bangladesh, 2016a). the growth of the industrial sector has been heavily driven by the growth of the rmg sector which is now the largest within the industrial sector in bangladesh and plays a major role in generating foreign currency and generating employment (world bank, 2018). rmg started its journey in bangladesh in the late 1970s (mostafa & klepper, 2017) with establishment of a new indigenous enterprise called desh ltd. in 1979, following partnership with daewoo corporation of south korea which was suffering severely from the quota system. daewoo took the advantage of bangladesh’s advantageous status under the multi-fiber agreement (mfa) (mottaleb & sonobe, 2011). although the government hardly recognized the potential of the garment industry in its early days, in 1982, the government of bangladesh began to provide various incentives to the rmg industry including duty free import of machinery, bonded warehouse facilities and cash incentives (mottaleb & sonobe, 2011). rmg is the highest performing export sector in bangladesh and accounted for 81% of the total export earnings in the country, earning around $2812 billion in 2016-2017 fiscal year (export promotion bureau, 2017). the export oriented rmg sector transformed the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 673 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group economy of bangladesh with the help of entrepreneurs, domestic fiscal and financial policy support and global market opportunities (bhattacharya, raman, & raihan, 2002). the bangladeshi garment industry has experienced a rapid growth in the past 30 years from 40,000 people employed in 1983 in 46 production units to 4 million in 4,500 units in the year 2013 with an average yearly growth rate of 17 percent. heath and mobarak (2015). providentially, bangladesh got the quota facilities for the least developed countries (ldcs) in exporting its garment products to developed countries that outsourced their ready-made garment production needs. rmg factories are increasingly moving from semiautomatic to more automatic industry using sophisticated machines, technologies and software to facilitate the fast and vast growth of rmg and textile industry. low liquor dyeing machine, ozone washing machines, auto trimming, jacquard machine, sap, and erp like technologies have already become popular. most new generation factories are equipped with sophisticated technologies and able to handle top quality products of diverse styles allowing further competitiveness by keeping unit cost low (bgmea, undated). the pharmaceutical industry is one of the fastest growing and developed manufacturing industries in bangladesh.this infant industry got protection through the national drug policy enacted in 1982 to help pharmaceuticals flourish as a strong domestic industry. this policy articulated a vision of self-reliance and priority provision of basic national needs and an attitude of proud defiance against the multinationals a stance of economic nationalism. the policy succeeded in promoting domestic production and in promoting essential drugs production within bangladesh (reich, 1994). the drug policy, which was again revised in 2005, limits import of pharmaceuticals where local products are sufficient which ensured domestic industry access to the large domestic market for pharmaceutical products and safeguarded intellectual property rights on some domestic generic products. internal demand for better healthcare is increasing due to growing awareness of healthcare options, higher incomes in the country and increasing government expenditure on the health sector. the pharmaceutical industry meets 97% of demand for medication in the country and the sector employs 115,000 workers (hossain & shoaib, 2014; sultana, 2016). there are currently 300 active allopathic manufacturing firms working in bangladesh and the number was around 250 in 2012 (tazin, 2016). these companies together have 5,300 registered brands which have 8,300 different forms of dosages and strengths (bhuiyan, hakim, & alam, 2015). the growth rate of the pharmaceutical industry steadily increased from 10.18% in 2002 to 21.5% in 2012 (hossain & shoaib, 2014). the yearly export performance of this industry is increasing day by day and in 2017 the total exports in this sector stood at 82.11 million dollars to around 100 countries in the world (export promotion bureau, 2017). the pharmaceutical industry also contributes greatly to global value chains by importing 90 percent of its raw materials from around the globe. the pharmaceutical industry is considered a hi-tech industry in bangladesh. foreign direct investment stood at 135.4 million usd in 2010 for this industry and it had very high domestic market capitalization capacity (16.49 percent). the pharmaceutical industry is also an 8th priority manufacturing industry sector of bangladesh according to the 2016 industry policy paper (government of bangladesh, 2016b). 1.2. tvet literature and industrial growth mankiw, romer, and weil (1992) explain that the accumulation of human, as well as physical capital, provides an excellent description of economic growth. however, the importance of tvet for economic growth is only gradually receiving attention in government priorities and global debates for education and national development plans (lee, har, & lee, 2020). the united nation’s 2015 sustainable development goals (sdgs) explicitly includes space for tvet (un, 2015). goal 4 of the sdgs aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (un, 2015). it shows the prominence of human development and the necessity to contemplate more seriously skills for life and work. mcgrath and powell (2016) highlight the relationship between skills development and sustainable development. they argue that human development and sustainable development must be seen as inseparable by planning and evaluating tvet for its contribution to sustainable development. tvet could contribute to reducing the problems of poverty, injustice and inequality. they conclude that tvet is important to transform skills, work and the world to ensure sustainable development and protect the interests of the individuals that will populate the earth in the future. jabarullah and hussain (2019) support that tvet encourages training in essential real-world skillsets namely problem solving, critical thinking, lifelong learning and communication to enhance the skills of the graduates to be well aligned with the dynamic expectations of today’s job market. paton, fluck, and scanlan (2018) further explain that tvet usually have no, or low-level entry requirements, compared to the universities which require an academic achievement score that meets the intellectual demands of each course and the completion of twelve years. hence, tvet is a better alternative than higher education to prepare the graduates equipped with suitable skills in meeting the demands of employers and may help reduce youth unemployment (asadullah & ullah, 2018). tvet is even more important due to the impact of technological development on the skills required from labour. the third industrial revolution began to develop at the beginning of the 21st century (petrillo, de felice, cioffi, & zomparelli, 2018) and is characterized by machine automation through the use of electronics and the application of it in production processes (brettel, friederichsen, keller, & rosenberg, 2014). globalization, international business, trade and integration with global value chains push businesses/industries, to transform their technology, the products and services they produce and to adapt to ensure their survival. some pessimists believe that technological advances will be disruptive for employment and jobs while others take the more optimistic view that this will also create new job tasks and occupations. consequently, estimates for the number of jobs at risk of automation range from arntz, gregory, and zierahn (2016) low estimate of 9% in the united states to much higher figures of 43% in the us (frey & osborne, 2013), 57% for oecd countries and 85% in ethiopia (frey & rahbari, 2016; sungsup, shrestha, khatiwada, yoon, & kwon, 2019). challenging the higher end estimates, mitra and sharma (2020) argue that the dampening effect of new technology on absolute employment seems to be rather exaggerated, although the concern may be justified in relative terms or for unskilled labour (mitra & sharma, 2020). this indicates that tvet is increasingly important for low-skilled workers’ future job security. melaiye, amuchie, and glory (2019) argue that education, especially technical and vocational education, has been central to the national development of fast developing countries such as the “asian tigers”. generally, education has become the basis for economic growth, political stability and social harmony. lee et al. (2020) asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 674 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group propose that this is through improvements in efficiency, productivity and competitiveness which vocational training can provide. tvet also has potential benefits for individuals in terms of self-actualisation and labour market access (melaiye et al., 2019). bangladesh’s economic future largely depends on adopting training strategies that will ensure the creation of adequate technically skilled, and self-actualised, workers. 1.3. tvet in bangladesh the main purpose of tvet in bangladesh is transforming the large youthful population into a skilled workforce that will contribute to industrial growth and productivity (government of bangladesh, 2011). formal tvet programs are mostly regulated by government although some rely on traditional approachesinformal apprenticeships which are accepted in informal businesses but not certified. tvet in bangladesh is delivered at three levels of skills development programs: basic, certificate, and diploma, and managed by about 24 ministries and 22 agencies of bangladesh government. however, the directorate of technical education, a body of the ministry of education, and the bureau of manpower, employment and training, a body of the ministry of expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment, play an instrumental role in delivering and organizing tvet (khan, 2019). the directorate of textiles, which is under the ministry of textiles and jute, plays a vital role in organizing vocational training and technical education especially in the field of textiles in bangladesh. the bangladesh technical education board (bteb), an organisation of the ministry of education, has authority for the certification of secondary school certificate, vocational (ssc, voc), higher secondary certificate, vocational (hsc, voc) and diploma courses. vocational education and training programs in bangladesh offer a variety of tvet courses starting from secondary level (class ix) to the diploma level. technical training centres (ttcs), technical schools and colleges (tscs), polytechnic institutes, agricultural training institutes, textile institutes, marine technology institutes offer tvet courses in bangladesh. in addition, besides the tvet institutions managed by the government, there are about 6000 tvet institutions managed by private initiatives across bangladesh which are involved in organizing a wide range of vocational training courses including the ssc (voc) and diploma (bangladesh bureau of educational information and statistics [banbeis], 2019; khan (2019); siddiky and uh (2020). the tvet sector is governed by the national skills development policy 2011 (government of bangladesh, 2011), national education policy 2010 (government of bangladesh, 2010b); nsda act 2018; bteb act 2018 (government of bangladesh, 2018b), and nfe act 2014 (government of bangladesh, 2014). national strategic plans such as the 7th five year plan (government of bangladesh, 2010a, 2015a) and other acts and policies such as the bangladesh labour act 2006 (government of bangladesh, 2015b) the skills and training enhancement project (step) (government of bangladesh, 2010c) and skills for employment investment program (seip) (government of bangladesh, 2015c), national technical and vocational qualifications framework (ntvqf) (government of bangladesh, 2009) are being run across the country to provide training both at workerand management-levels and equip them with necessary skills. besides, rmg and textile industrial skills council (rtisc) and the centre of excellence for the bangladesh apparel industries (cebai) have been established to facilitate skills development in the country and the 2016 expatriates welfare and overseas employment policy (government of bangladesh, 2016b) are also supportive of the development of the tvet sector including the employment of tvet graduates. proper implementation of these policies and acts including the required institutional capacities of the relevant agencies are the key challenges. there are also challenges related to quality, access and equity, and governance (khan, 2019). the tvet system in bangladesh is also facing challenges in responding to the demand for skills from different sectors, especially in the industrial and manufacturing sectors. according to siddiky and uh (2020), the tvet sector in bangladesh is yet to be prioritized and has been facing a number of impediments, including skills shortages, skills-gaps, and a skills mismatch, that is, the mismatch between the supply of skills and the demand for skills (asian development bank, 2011, 2015, 2016; bangladesh institute of development studies, 2017; dewan & sarker, 2017; hossain, 2018; khan, 2019; mia & karim, 2015; raihan, lemma, khondokar, & ferdous, 2017; world bank, 2018). there are three dimensions to this mismatch between the outputs of the tvet system and the needs of industry: first, the trades or technologies being offered through training programs are not relevant to employment; second, the competencies acquired in relation to the requirements of industries or self-employment opportunities are insufficient; and third, a lack of practical experience (mia & karim, 2015). hence, there is a missing link between skill development and employment, that is, a lack of alignment between tvet and industries in bangladesh (siddiky & uh, 2020). 2. methodology 2.1. overall study design the study was conducted using a survey method technique, gathering data from different companies of two industrial sectors in bangladesh. due to their importance, the rmg and pharmaceutical industries in bangladesh were selected for analysis. the samples were selected from the listed industries of bangladesh garments manufacturers and exporters association (bgmea) and bangladesh association of pharmaceutical industries (bapi). table-1. the sample distribution by rmg and pharmaceutical industries. industries population sample size survey of companies total sample rmg 3,445 400 100 100 pharmaceutical 149 149 61 61 both 3,594 549 161 161 2.2. sampling and sample size companies were selected through simple random sampling from an updated member list on the bgmea and bapi website. companies which did not fulfil the following requirements of the study were dropped at this stage: asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 675 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group at least 50 employees (deviations possible depending on industry size/structure), manufacturing companies (excluding trading companies), accessibility (focus on two or three manufacturing hub regions). sampling groups were then generated based on region, size and, if relevant, sub industry and the sample size calculated so that the sample and population had the same characteristics. we selected 400 rmgs randomly, of which 100 were surveyed, and of the 149 pharmaceuticals which met the criteria, 61 were surveyed (table 1). after selecting the companies, each company was given a unique identification number to pseudonymize them. 2.3. survey tool the survey tool contained 42 items and explored the trends in four themes over the last five years (2012 to 2017). the themes are as follows: • industrial growth and transformation: establishment, change in production, technology and organization, sales, export and fdi. • requirement of skill: finding employees, including effects on production, growth and transformation. • training: pre-job and on-the-job training for the different level of employees and its effects on company skills need. • employment: number of employees (male, female), including salary of different levels of staff. 2.4. data collection bangladesh association of pharmaceutical industries (bapi) and bangladesh garment manufacturers and exporters association (bgmea) provided approval to conduct the study. all respondents/companies were informed about the study objectives and chose to participate. to maintain confidentiality, the respondents were given a unique identification number and the data set was preserved in a protected electronic format with a password. the survey was conducted on the company premises. if the first company sampled from the list would not participate in the survey then the enumerator/s communicated with the next company from the selected extended sample company list, for rmg and pharmaceuticals it was 101/400 and 62/149 respectively. data collection took place between december 15, 2018-january 23, 2019 and may 18, 2019-june 20, 2019. in total 15 enumerators (11 male; 4 female) were recruited. they received five days of training on industrial survey tools by a researcher from brac institute of educational development, brac university. enumerators used tablet devices to collect data using kobotoolbox, and they uploaded the data each day. after all data had been uploaded, data were then downloaded from the kobotoolbox website, and the principal researcher cleaned and prepared the datasets for analysis and report writing. 2.5. data analysis in this study, univariate and bivariate analysis were applied for descriptive analysis to find the percentage of companies which had undertaken or arranged tvet programs and to find the companies’ overall growth and transformation. 3. results 3.1. growth and transformation most companies showed a positive trend in all growth and transformation indicators over the five years examined (2012-2017). around 87% of companies (93% pharmaceutical and 83% rmg) reported that their number of employees had increased. over the same period, 84% of companies (90% pharmaceutical and 80% rmg) reported that the volume of their sales had increased more than 33%. these two growth indicators show that on average companies in the pharmaceutical sector performed slightly better figure 1. changes in technology, products and work organization were found in almost all companies. this could hint, especially for rmg, at specific upgrading strategies of companies in a competitive global market. figure-1. percentage of companies showing positive trends in growth and transformation. we also found 94% of companies (87% pharmaceutical and 98% rmg) had integrated more advanced technology into their production processes and manufactured more sophisticated products. as part of this transformation, 93% of companies (overall) also went through organizational changes (87% pharmaceutical and 97% rmg). these three indicators show that transformation is mostly on par between both industries. http://www.bapi-bd.com/ http://www.bapi-bd.com/ asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 676 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. growth, transformation and size of the industries when it comes to company size, 27% of companies in the survey (62% in pharmaceuticals and 5% in rmg) could not classify due to missing data. of the companies for which data was available, 21% (28% in pharmaceutical and 17% in rmg) were medium-sized, meaning above 50 employees, and 52% (8% in pharmaceutical and 78% in rmg) were large (above 250 employees). figure-2. percentage of companies’ showing positive trends in growth and transformation by size. in the pharmaceutical industry, large companies performed significantly better, both in terms of growth and transformation indicators, than those of medium size. however, the situation is different for rmg companies: company size does not seem to make a large difference here figure 2. 3.3. skills needs and shortage table 2 depicts workers skills needed as a consequence of transformation by the type of industry. it was observed that slightly more than half of companies (48% in rmg and 57.1% in pharmaceuticals) needed workers with significantly more skills while more than two-fifths of the companies surveyed (46% in rmg and 37.5% in pharmaceuticals) needed workers with somewhat more skills, indicating that a negligible proportion of industries needed either workers with the same skills as before or less skills. this implies that a skills gap exists for the industries surveyed, potentially caused by the growth and transformation occurring there. table-2. proportion of companies by workers skills needs level and type of industry. type of industry workers skills needs level total significantly less workers skills somewhat less workers skills same workers skills as before somewhat more workers skills significantly more workers skills rmg (n = 100) 1.0% 0.0% 5.0% 46.0% 48.0% 100% pharma (n = 61) 0.0% 1.8% 3.6% 37.5% 57.1% 100% all (n = 161) 0.6% 0.6% 4.5% 42.9% 51.3% 100% 3.4. skills shortage against skills needs on average 80 % of companies (82% in rmg and 76% in pharmaceuticals) reported that they did not face any difficulties in finding employees for all occupational levels combined. however, when focussing on individual levels, companies acknowledged difficulties in filling technical positions at the operator, technician and to some extent higher management level. particularly, pharmaceutical companies found it harder than rmg to find adequate employees. our data shows that 27% of companies (44% pharmaceutical and 17% rmg) reported that they faced difficulties in finding skilled technicians, and 33% of companies (29% pharmaceutical and 36% rmg) claimed the same for the operator level. companies were also facing some difficulties in getting management-level employees. 17% of the surveyed companies (25% pharmaceutical and 12% rmg) encountered challenges in finding these toplevel employees. another 10% of companies faced difficulty finding skilled personnel for supervisor positions. on the upside, more than 90% of companies reported that they had no difficulties hiring general workers for easy tasks figure 3. the data indicated a skills shortage at the important occupational levels of technician, operator, supervisor and higher management in the industries surveyed which affected their business operations and growth. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 677 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-3. percentage of companies facing difficulties in finding employees. 3.5. perceived effects of skills shortage on the business operations, growth and expansion of companies the development of a company depends partly on the company's organization of the production process, and skilled employees play a big role here. the survey data can support the claim that the lack of skilled employees directly impacts the operations and ultimately hinders the growth of the company. our data shows that 75% of the companies which encountered difficulties in hiring skilled personnel had the perception that a lack of skilled workers negatively impacted their operations and growth. in the rmg industry, more than 80% of companies reported that they faced difficulties in operating their business due to the shortage of skilled general workers, operators and managers and around 70% of companies thought that their growth was hampered at the same time. in the pharmaceutical industry, fewer companies (60%) assumed that skills shortages (especially at technician, supervisor and general worker levels) affected their operations and growth figure 4. figure-4. effects of skills shortages on company operations and growth. 3.6. skills development programs and contribution to meeting skills demand/needs our data indicates that more than three-fourths of the companies surveyed had workers in lower level positions, who constitute the largest share of employees in these industries, with no experience of any tvet programs. on average less than 20% of companies had some workers with some experience of pre-employment and in-employment tvet programs in all occupational levels. this is with the exception of pre-employment tvet programs for technicians and higher management levels where the proportions were higher figure 5. figure-5. percentage of companies reporting that their employees received vsd training. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 678 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group based on company evaluations of the tvet programs which aimed to meet the skills requirements, tvet programs for lower levels of employees such as general workers, operators and supervisors, did not contribute significantly to the skills needs of the companies, and the level of contribution between pre-employment and inemployment tvet programs differed table 3. our data indicated the pre-employment tvet programs’ contribution for all occupational positions as a ‘significant distribution’ (198) higher than ‘somewhat distribution’ (146). this difference is much higher for pharmaceutical (83 as opposed to 47) industries than that of rmg (115 as opposed to 99) indicating comparatively less contribution of tvet programs to the skills needs in rmg. if we examine this at different occupational levels, tvet programs’ contribution were significant for midand higherlevel employees such as technicians and higher management. these likely represent diploma graduates of the polytechnic institutes, implying that other tvet programs, for the vast majority of employees at lower occupational levels in these industries, are not contributing significantly. this indicates a mismatch between tvet programs and the skills needs of these industries. table-3. the skills programs’ contribution to meet the skills needs of companies. sector/position pre-employment skills programs’ contribution to meeting skills need in-employment skills programs’ contribution to meeting skills need no somewhat significantly no somewhat significantly rmg general worker 16 11 operator 24 4 10 3 supervisor 16 2 12 2 technician 1 32 78 12 12 higher management 11 31 6 15 all positions rmg 1 99 115 51 32 pharmaceuticals general worker 5 operator 7 13 4 7 supervisor 6 3 technician 2 21 23 5 9 higher management 1 19 41 2 7 all positions pharmaceuticals 3 47 83 11 31 total 4 146 198 62 63 overall, pre-employment tvet programs are considered to be better than in-employment tvet programs, however, while rmg industries found pre-employment tvet better, pharmaceutical industries had a better perception of in-employment tvet programs. the following figures (6 & 7) show perceptions of the companies which reported having some employees with tvet training, about how useful they found such programs, on average. considering the mean of the contribution of tvet programs with a maximum value of 2, in both the cases of rmg and pharmaceutical industries (figure 6), pre-employment tvet programs were found to be more beneficial for higher occupational levels (technician and higher management for rmg, and supervisor, technician and higher management for pharmaceuticals). like pre-employment tvet programs, rmg industries found in-employment tvet programs more beneficial for higher occupational levels (technician and higher management), while in-employment tvet programs were found to be beneficial for all occupational levels in pharmaceutical industries, and better than in rmg industries (figure 7). if we consider the number of tvet programs and their contribution level, the graphs show tvet programs’ contribution was found to be significant for upper occupational levels, while significantly not meeting the skills need of the industries surveyed for lower level employees, indicating a mismatch between tvet programs for the vast majority of workers and the actual skills needs of these industries. figure-6. mean of the contribution of pre-employment tvet programs in meeting skill needs by type of industry and occupational levels. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 679 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-7. mean of the contribution of in-employment tvet programs in meeting skill needs by type of industry and occupational levels. 3.7. relation between tvet programs’ contribution and growth and transformation returning to the company perspective, table 4 shows that a higher proportion of those companies which found tvet significantly useful (84.7%) achieved growth compared to companies in the sample which found tvet somewhat useful (56.7%) (p<.001, chi square = 11.999, df = 1). however, the strength of this relationship between usefulness of tvet and industrial growth was found to be moderate (phi = .271). table-4. proportion of companies (rmg and pharmaceutical) by extent of growth and tvet program contribution. extent of tvet contribution proportion of companies by extent of growth total companies have grown companies have not grown companies found tvet significantly useful 84.7% 15.3% 100% companies found tvet somewhat useful 56.7% 43.3% 100% total 79.5% 20.5% 100% note: p<0.001, chi square = 11.999, df = 1, phi = 0.271. almost the same proportions of companies which found tvet significantly useful and somewhat useful experienced transformation through having become more complex table 5 indicating evidence of no or insignificant difference hence no significant relationship between the usefulness of tvet and industrial transformation. table-5. proportion of companies (rgm and pharmaceutical) by extent of transformation and tvet program contribution. extent of tvet contribution proportion of companies by extent of transformation total companies have become more complex companies have not become more complex companies found tvet significantly useful 93.9% 6.1% 100% companies found tvet somewhat useful 93.3% 6.7% 100% total 93.8% 6.2% 100% note: p<0.909, chi square = 0.013, df = 1, phi = 0.009. a higher proportion table 6 of rmg companies of those which found tvet significantly useful (81.6%) achieved growth compared to those rmg companies in the sample which found tvet somewhat useful (50.0%) shows a relationship (p<.002, chi square = 9.454, df = 1). however, the strength of this relationship between usefulness of tvet and industrial growth in rmg companies was found to be moderate (phi = .307). table-6. proportion of rmg companies by extent of growth and tvet program contribution. extent of tvet contribution proportion of rmg companies by extent of growth total companies have grown companies have not grown companies found tvet significantly useful 81.6% 18.4% 100% companies found tvet somewhat useful 50.0% 50.0% 100% total 74.0% 26.0% 100% note: p<0.002, chi square = 9.454, df = 1, phi = 0.307). a small difference in the proportions of rmg companies which found tvet significantly useful (98.7%) and those who found it somewhat useful (95.8%) experienced transformation having become more complex table 7 indicating an insignificant relationship between usefulness of tvet and industrial transformation with very small effect size (phi = .087). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 680 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. proportion of rmg companies by extent of transformation and tvet program contribution. extent of tvet contribution proportion of rmg companies by extent of transformation total companies have become more complex companies have not become more complex companies found tvet significantly useful 98.7% 1.3% 100% companies found tvet somewhat useful 95.8% 4.2% 100% total 98.0% 2.0% 100% note: p<0.384, chi square = 0.756, df = 1, phi = 0.087. although there are small differences in the proportions of pharmaceutical companies those which found tvet significantly useful and somewhat useful experienced growth and transformation having become more complex table 8 & 9 indicating an insignificant relationship between usefulness of tvet and industrial growth and transformation with very small effect size (phi = .054 & .035). table-8. proportion of pharmaceutical companies by extent of growth and tvet program contribution. extent of tvet contribution proportion of pharmaceutical companies by extent of growth total companies have grown companies have not grown companies found tvet significantly useful 89.1% 10.9% 100% companies found tvet somewhat useful 83.3% 16.7% 100% total 88.5% 11.5% 100% note: p<0.674, chi square = 0.177, df = 1, phi = 0.054. table-9. proportion of pharmaceutical companies by extent of transformation and tvet program contribution. extent of tvet contribution proportion of pharmaceutical companies by extent of transformation total companies have become more complex companies have not become more complex companies found tvet significantly useful 87.3% 12.7% 100% companies found tvet somewhat useful 83.3% 16.7% 100% total 86.9% 13.1% 100% note: p<0.786, chi square = 0.074, df = 1, phi = 0.035. 4. analysis most of the companies surveyed showed a positive trend in all growth and transformation indicators. more than three-fourths of these companies reported that their number of employees, salaries and the volume of their sales increased over the last 5 years. changes in technology, products and work organization were found in almost all companies. this could hint, especially for rmg, at specific upgrading strategies of companies to survive in a competitive global market. in the pharmaceutical industry large companies performed significantly better, both in terms of growth and transformation indicators, than those of medium size. however, the situation is different for rmg companies; company size does not seem to make large difference here. this suggests that future research is needed to understand why this might be. changes in technology, products and work organization created demand for workers with more skills than they had before. these industries faced difficulties finding low-level and mid-level employees. finding technically skilled people proved especially difficult, and this affected their company’s operations and growth somewhat negatively. this might indicate a lack of available tvet programs for preparing workers for these occupational levels or that these companies were sceptical of the quality of graduates from tvet programs at these levels. the proportion of non-technical employees (general workers, operators, lowerand midlevel supervisors with low skills or low tvet training) is much higher than technical and higher-level employees. this clearly indicated that a skills gap and skills shortage exist in these industries. most of the companies reported that a shortage of skilled employees at all levels affected the operations and growth of the companies and the growth of the companies’ productivity. as okorafor, uduanochie, and achukwu (2014) observed, in the context of global competition, countries with poor technical capacity cannot survive in an increasingly competitive world. integration into the global economy requires skilled workers to meet the demands of local and international markets. technological education plays a vital role in today’s labour market as technological innovation and economic growth fuel demand for skilled workers. current economic and technological changes demand highly skilled technologists for improved quality products and services. on average less than 20% of the companies surveyed had workers with preand in-employment tvet training at all occupational levels, excepting pre-employment tvet programs for technicians and higher management levels, indicating that industries might not find adequately skilled persons for different occupational levels from the tvet institutes. tvet programs did contribute to filling the skills needs of these companies, however, they contributed significantly only for midand higher-level occupations (technician and higher management) in the case of pre-employment tvet programs. the fact in this case might be that these preemployment programs were diploma programs from the polytechnic institutes and other engineering courses, indicating that industries were perhaps devaluing other tvet programs offered by many other institutions. these lower-status tvet programs are very much required for lower levels of workers who constitute more than threefourths of the total employees in industry. this sheds light on the mismatch between tvet programs for the majority of workers and the actual skills needs of the industries surveyed. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 671-682 681 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group almost all technicians and higher managers have some form of pre-job tvet training/ educational degree and most of the companies did not arrange/provide on-the-job tvet training for them. industry follows the ‘learning by doing’ approach and they argue that this is on-the-job training. sometimes companies arrange in-house needsbased training for employees with the introduction of new machinery/technology but this is mainly for higher skilled workers and provided by the company that they procure the new technology from. during this training these higher skilled employees perform and practice these new tasks in order to be fully habituated in what could be compared with what acemoglu and restrepo (2018) describe as the standardization of new tasks created as a consequence of changes in technology. then these experienced workers train the other low-skilled or unskilled workers to perform these tasks. however, the delay inherent to this process might hamper companies’ productivity for some time. within the companies surveyed, of those whose employees received tvet training, the perception of the contribution of these tvet programs to meeting skills needs showed that there was a significant but a moderate relationship between level of contribution and company growth while the relationship between the level of contribution and company transformation was not significant and very weak. this indicates a mismatch between tvet programs and the skills needs of the industries surveyed. this might be due to lack of collaboration and communication between tvet providers and industry in bangladesh. 5. conclusion the challenges facing tvet programs in bangladesh have been highlighted in a number of studies (ahmed, 2016; asian development bank, 2011, 2015, 2016; bangladesh institute of development studies, 2017; dewan & sarker, 2017; hossain, 2018; khan, 2019; mia & karim, 2015; raihan et al., 2017; world bank, 2018). this research has contributed to this existing literature by demonstrating that there has been a moderate relationship between the level of contribution of tvet programs in the rmg and pharmaceutical industries and level of growth in industries, and this moderate contribution was mainly from the tvet programs for mid-and higherlevel employees. this further points to the majority of workers’ lack of the workplace skills needed by the surveyed industries. the tvet sector in bangladesh is yet to be prioritized and has faced a number of impediments, including skills shortages, a skills-gap, and a skills mismatch, that is, the mismatch between the supply of skills and the demand for skills the mismatch between the outputs of the tvet system and the needs of the employment sectors involve three dimensions: first, the trades or technologies being offered through training programs are not relevant to the world of employment; second, the competencies acquired in relation to the requirements of industries or self-employment opportunities are not sufficient; and third, a lack of opportunity for the learners to acquire practical experience and skills. hence, there is a missing link between skill development and employment, that is, a lack of alignment between tvet and industries in bangladesh. to remedy this lack of alignment requires stronger collaboration and partnership between industry and tvet institutions in the quest of harnessing human resources for employment and the world of work. the government must also firmly commit to implementing existing policies in this area. close collaboration and partnership from government, tvet providers and industry is required so that they may understand the requirements of industry when designing tvet programs. this study suggests further research is required on the causes and consequences of skills shortages, the skills-gap, and a skills mismatch. references acemoglu, d., & restrepo, p. 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(2018). bangladesh development update: building on resilience. dhaka: the world bank office. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.72304 http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.72304 429 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 429-439, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.429.439 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group high school mathematics’ teachers’ knowledge, opinions, and preferences about types of problems (an example from turkey) seval deniz kiliç mugla sitki kocman university, education faculty, elementary mathematics education, muğla, turkey. abstract problem solving is the building block of mathematics. different approaches have been exhibited throughout the history to solve the problems that are as old as the history of humanity. as a result of developments in mathematics education, the problems are divided into different types according to the solution methods. determining the types of these problems and their solution methods is a very important gain for students studying mathematics education. thus, the approaches of teachers to this subject, as a guide, will lead the way for their students. the purpose of this study is to determine mathematics teachers’ knowledge, opinions, and preferences about the types of problems. the participants of the study were chosen among the mathematics teachers working in high schools located in a city in turkey. the data sources of the study which adopted qualitative research methods are the interviews with the teachers, written exam questions, and lesson observations. for the data analysis, thematic content analysis and frequency and percentages were used. considering the results obtained, the teachers do not recognize the non-routine problems and they do not use them in their exams and lessons. however, they find such problems meaningful and they want to use them in their courses if the necessary conditions are provided. keywords: problems, problems types, non-routine problem, mathematics teachers. citation | seval deniz kiliç (2019). high school mathematics’ teachers’ knowledge, opinions, and preferences about types of problems (an example from turkey). asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 429-439. history: received: 7 june 2019 revised: 10 july 2019 accepted: 13 august 2019 published: 25 september 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study is produced from a scientific research project supported by the republic of turkey mugla sıtkı kocman university. no: 15/186. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 430 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 431 3. data analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................. 433 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 433 5. results and recommendations ................................................................................................................................................... 437 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 437 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.429.439&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1020 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8855-4179 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1020 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8855-4179 http://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1020 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8855-4179 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 429-439 430 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the high school mathematics ’teachers’ knowledge, opinions, and preferences about types of problems. 1. introduction problem solving is the best expression of mathematical competence. according to pólya (1945) the concept of problem is the foundation of mathematics, but for hembree (1992) it is one of the controversial subjects in mathematics education. what can be considered as a problem changes from person to person (zhu and fan, 2006) day to day (selden et al., 1999) and there are different definitions of problem in literature. a problem situation may not be a problem for another person (marchis, 2013) or a situation which you consider a problem today may not be one for you tomorrow (kilpatrick, 1985). sometimes it is difficult to decide if the structure is a problem or an exercise because it changes from student to student (zhu and fan, 2006); a problem for a student may be an exercise for the other one (marchis, 2013). the important thing is that the problem has a solution different from the common ways and methods because the ―problems‖ that are solved via common ways and methods are not real problems (fong, 1996). in addition to this, it is known that ―real problems‖ have not always been used in mathematics classes. for example, teachers sometimes use problems which are usually believed to be known by the person who solves them, contain numerical questions, and arrive at an answer as a result of mathematical operations by using the data in the text (lester, 1987; selden et al., 1989; özmen et al., 2012). the reason for this is that such problems hold many facilities both for the teachers and students (verschaffel, 2002). such problems which are also called as word problems and supposed to look familiar to the person who solves them contain numerical data and arrive at an answer as a result of mathematical operations by using the data in the text (greer et al., 2002). word problems may provide experiences for real-world situations, motivate students to understand the realworld problems, and help students develop creative and critical thinking and problem-solving skills (chapman, 2006). however, because this situation enables to get to a result directly by using the data, it is far from the realproblem structure as stated by lester (1987). although the word problems whose traces were encountered similarly in different cultures in history, their purposes are not exactly known and they have reached today without being questioned much (greer et al., 2002). in addition to ―real‖ and ―word‖ problems, some sources divide the problems into two types: problems that could be solved easily (verschaffel, 2002) or problems that need more thought process. the first one is called ―routine‖ problems and the second one is called ―non-routine‖ problems (mahlios, 1988; arslan and altun, 2007; marchis, 2013). but the classifications for the problems are not only limited to these. charles and lester (1982) classified the problems as standard and non-standard types and real-life and puzzle types. lianghuo and yan (2000)also classified problems in their comprehensive research:  routine and non-routine problems.  traditional and non-traditional problems.  non-traditional problems. i) problem posing problem. ii) puzzle problem. iii) project problem. iv) journal task.  open-ended and closed-ended.  application and non-application.  application problems. i) fictitiously application problems. ii) authentic application problems.  single step problems, multiple countable step problems, and multiple uncountable step problems.  problems with just sufficient information, problems with extra information, and problems with insufficient information.  problems in pure mathematical form, problems in verbal form, problems in visual form, and problems in a combined forms. in addition to this, there are studies which include open-ended problems (problems that have multiple ways of solutions) in the non-routine problems (krulik and rudnick, 1993; london, 1993; foong, 2002). since the 80s, an understanding of education which focuses on learning process more than the subject taught (chacko, 2004) and individual differences more than the strict education system (saravanan, 2005) has started to be implemented. with the impacts of this education reforms, problems which students were engaged in open-ended, practical, and investigative tasks have been in demand by the end of the 1980s (chan, 2007). the open-ended problem tasks are usually thought of tasks which is likely to have more than a single correct solution and they offer students multiple approaches to the problem by putting little constraints on their methods of solution (hancock, 1995). according to foong (2002) open-ended problems are ―ill-structured‖ because they comprise missing data or assumptions with no fixed procedures that guarantee a correct solution. van (1996) in his study which used open ended problems stated that when students were given incomplete data, making their own assumptions would be beneficial. in addition to this, hembree (1992) found that unnecessary information made the problem more difficult at each grade level. because open-ended problems foster high-order thinking skills, it is considered that when students learn via problems, memorization will be hindered (hiebert et al., 1996). non-routine problems are used to benefit from the open-ended problems which allow multiple solutions and get rid of the disadvantages of the ―ill-structured‖ open-ended problems (hembree, 1992) because non-routine problems are situations which are challenging for an individual to solve and there is not a direct method or an algorithm to use for the solution (blum and niss, 1991). many factors as well as mathematical reasoning are mentioned for the development of problem-solving skill. comprehension and proof skills are required for asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 429-439 431 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group mathematical reasoning (hembree, 1992; niss, 2011). this is only possible with an understanding of education which aims at development of problem-solving skills. as cited in liljedahl (2008) from dan kleitman, non-routine problems are problems for which there is no predictable approach or pathway for solution. you must be unsuccessful with your attempts and you must solve either with a sudden inspiration or instinct. as it is seen, there are different definitions for non-routine problems. however, the common point is that nonroutine problems are suitable for developing mathematical skills, revealing individual differences, and drawing student attention. non-routine problems in this study will mean mathematical problems which do not have only one solution and strategy and require higher-order thinking skills. such problems can be associated with a specific mathematics topic or with daily life. there are a lot of studies in literature which state that the use of non-routine problems foster students’ problem-solving skills (hembree, 1992; guven et al., 2016). thus, it is important to use non-routine problems in mathematics courses. therefore, it is primarily important to identify what types of problems teachers benefit from. 1.1. types of problems mathematics teachers use in their classes there are different studies about what types of problems mathematics teachers benefit from in their classes. according to this research, teachers mostly examine their students’ operational skills in routine problems and whether or not they make calculations (lester, 1987). foong and koay (1997) stated that different mathematical operations and calculations were performed in schools and problems similar to the previous ones were encouraged to be used; however, this situation caused students to be detached from the real life and to use cliché opinions. guven et al. (2016) found that teachers mostly used the routine problems included in the curriculum. moreover, they benefited from the stereotyped questions in their exams (bekdemir and baş, 2017). in addition to this, it was stated that when teachers are guided properly, they would include non-routine problems in their courses (ho and hedberg, 2005). 1.2. the aim of the research the aim of this research is to investigate high school mathematics teachers’ knowledge, opinions, and preferences related to the types of problems. there are different studies in literature which focus on the problems or questions and the strategies (arslan and altun, 2007; swanson et al., 2014) teachers used in their courses (özmen et al., 2012; guven et al., 2016) and exams (bekdemir and baş, 2017) however, there are not any studies with broad sampling in literature which investigate teachers’ knowledge, opinions, and preferences related to the different types of problems . based on the need that schools are the preview of real life, it is important that studies must be carried out with students studying in primary and secondary schools to develop their problem-solving skills so that they will become ready for the real life. thus, the knowledge, opinions, preferences, and attitudes of teachers who also play the role of a guide in such studies related to problem-solving are meaningful as they will affect the educational process of the students who they are going to train (verschaffel et al., 1997; chen et al., 2011) because it is known that the teachers who have knowledge and positive attitudes intended for the nature of nonroutine problems prefer such problems in their classes (ho and hedberg, 2005). due to all these reasons, this research aimed at determining high school mathematics teachers’ knowledge, opinions, and preferences related to the non-routine problems. the research sought to answer the following questions: 1. do teachers know non-routine problems? 2. do they find such problems meaningful and beneficial? 3. do they include such problems in their lessons and exams? 2. method case study, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in this study. considering the principles of the case study (hitchcock and hughes, 1995) as it is concerned with a rich and vivid description of events relevant to the case, variety of data sources were used to investigate the high school mathematics teachers’ knowledge, opinions, and preferences related to the non-routine problems. data sources contain open-ended interview forms, exam questions, and lesson observation figure 1. the purpose here is to seek answers for the research problems correctly by using the different data sources (turner et al., 2015). figure-1. data sources of research. source: turner et al. (2015) data sources of research. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 429-439 432 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.1. participants the participants of the study are the mathematics teachers working in state high schools located in a city in turkey in 2015-2016 education year. the school lists were obtained from the provincial directorate of national education to determine the particular schools. all schools located in the city centre were involved in the study. two mathematics teachers were chosen from each high school as a sampling. while choosing the teachers, convenience sampling was used and they were chosen on voluntary basis. however, because there is only one teacher in some schools, one teacher could participate in the study to represent that school. considering this, 25 teachers from a total of 15 schools, 1 science school (ss), 5 anatolian high schools (as), 6 vocational high schools (vs), 1 religious vocational high school (rs), 1 fine arts high school (fas), 1 social sciences high school (sss) were involved in the study. table 1 presents the distribution of the participant teachers in the study according to the types of schools they work, gender, faculties they graduated from and the length of service (high schools except for science and anatolian high schools were evaluated within the context of vocational high schools). table-1. participant and school type information. frequency (n=25) percentage (%) school type ss 2 8 as 8 32 vs 15 60 sex female 12 48 male 13 52 graduated education 13 52 faculty science 12 48 seniority 0-4 1 4 5-10 5 20 11-14 7 28 15-20 12 48 source: data from the turkey ministry of national education. 2.2. data collection a semi-structured interview form, written exam papers, and the notes taken during the lesson observation were used as data collection tools. semi-structured interview form: the questions included in the semi-structured interview form were asked as open-ended in order to reveal teachers’ thought processes (lofland, 1971). 12 different problems were presented in the interview form and the teachers were asked to examine these problems. these problems are routine (word), noun-routine, and open-ended types of problems. some of these problems were taken from the literature and some of them were selected from different course books and theses with an educator from the field. an example representing routine, non-routine, and open-ended problems used in the study were presented in table 2. table-2. sample problems in interview form. type problem routine problem (word problem) an item is sold for 13.65 tl at a discount rate of 35%. what is the real price of this item before the discount? (altun, 2004). nonroutine problem the base of an isosceles triangle is the diameter of the circum circle. compare the area of this triangle inscribed in a circle with the area of the circle (kılıç, 2011). open-ended problem a construction company wants to hire workers for a project. this project must be completed in five days and it allows hiring maximum 14 workers in a day. suppose that you are the director of this company and hire workers from different companies. what do you do to keep the cost low? suppose that each worker produces the same amount of daily work activity. below is given the number of workers in the companies from which the workers will be hired. when a company is chosen, all of the workers will work on that day. not every company has to be chosen but a company can be chosen only once (chan, 2007). source: the problems retrieved from works of altun (2004), kılıç (2011), chan (2007). then, the teachers were asked four semi-structured questions. the following are the questions: 1. if you can group these problems on your own, how and in what ways can you group them? if you are to name them, what will you call each group? why? please explain. 2. if you think the problems with their solutions, which problem group is the most meaningful, beneficial, and practical among the groups in your opinion? why? 3. which group of problems do you prefer to use? are there any types of problems you have encountered for the first time? do you think of using problems belonging to different groups? if your answer is negative, can you please explain your reasons? 4. what types of problems do you prefer to use in your courses and exams? are the problems you use similar to these ones? please explain. the written answers were collected and there was not a limitation on the response time. written exam papers: the second data collection tool is the teachers’ exam questions. exam papers belonging to different types of schools were obtained in order to represent each one of the different schools. these papers were analysed via documents analysis. document analysis is the review of written documents and visual materials asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 429-439 433 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group containing information about the target phenomena or phenomenon (yıldırım and şimşek, 2006). while examining the questions, whether or not they involved characteristics of three different types of problems was paid attention. lesson observation: the third data source is the observation of an example lesson. although an observation of a single course does not allow to make generalization for that teacher (kane and staiger, 2012) it will give some ideas about how much it is appropriate to the standards of the desired lesson (charalambous and praetorius, 2018). here, as lesson standards, the focus was on to what extent the examples belonging to these three different types of problems were involved. 3. data analysis the data obtained from the interview form were performed in three stages. the researcher read the data obtained from the interview form a few times. then, thematic content analysis was used for the analysis of the data obtained from the interview form. this analysis is used to describe the experiences or characteristics of a group by obtaining themes and different codes within data (neuendorf, 2002). the codes belonging to a set of data related to the topic was generated and discrete themes were obtained to determine the relationship between the codes obtained in this research. in this process, the stages defined by braun and clarke (2006) were followed. according to this, first of all, the data obtained were analyzed and then they were examined in depth. the purpose here is to internalize the data and control the data group. then, in line with the research questions, draft coding was made and possible models were tried to be found. for this, associated words and expressions were highlighted with the same colour pen and separated from the others. in this stage, an attempt was made to behave objectively. in the second stage, analyses were re-read and re-coded to prevent any kind of error. after that, the appropriate codes were combined and sub-themes and themes were developed. after this operation, whether or not the themes represented all the data obtained were discussed with the second researcher. the data were revised for the themes with which there was not a settlement with and necessary corrections were made. in the last stage, the themes and codes were represented in tables and they were supported with the direct quotes obtained from the participants. every stage in the data collection tools and analysis process were explained in detail to provide validity (braun and clarke, 2006). in addition to this, frequencies and percentages belonging to the findings were given. for the analysis of exam papers and lesson observation, the characteristics of routine and non-routine problems were particularly used as a framework (charalambous and praetorius, 2018). the questions prepared according to this were included in the ―exam question analysis‖ and ―lesson observation‖ forms were given below: 1. does the problem have multiple solution methods? 2. does the problem form a basis for making a detailed reasoning and discussion of different solutions? 3. does the problem have a structure that allows the individual who solves the problems to change the illstructured problem? 4. findings 4.1. findings related to the teachers’ knowledge of non-routine problems to begin with, whether or not the teachers were familiar with the non-routine problems were questioned. thus, they were asked to group the problems and give names to each group. the codes and themes obtained as a result of the content analysis were presented in table 3. considering table 3, it is found that teachers classified the problems according to the ―topic‖, ―method‖, and ―structure‖. when table 3 is examined, it is observed that the problems were mostly discussed structurally (%47). in this group, it is understood that the teachers named the problems on their own. the point that draws attention here is that the teachers tried to categorize the problem without considering the solution of the problem. routine and non-routine problems were discussed in the group of solution methods. only two teachers noticed the difference (8%). one of these teachers stated that she attended an in-service training about problem-solving skills before (religious vocational high school, female). in addition to this, relatively little reference was made for the classification according to the ―solution method‖ (%27,5). on the other hand, when the teachers were asked whether or not they encountered such problems, only three teachers stated that they were the types of problems they had never met before. their direct quotations were cited as follows. ―it is the first time i have ever encountered a question type as the 7th question‖ (male, vocational high school). ―question 12 is different. i don’t think of using it. i don’t believe that it works a lot‖ (female, anatolian high school). ―i used similar questions like these ones, but i can say that i have seen questions 8 and 12 for the first time (male, social sciences high school)‖. among the problems mentioned, problems 7 and 8 are non-routine problems but the 8th problem is related to the real-life. the other teachers stated that they were familiar with all of the problem types. the distribution of the themes related to the types of problems obtained from the teachers’ views according to the schools was presented in table 4. when table 4 is examined, it is found that among the types of schools, the vocational high schools focused mostly on the methods of solution whereas science and social sciences schools paid the least attention on methods of solution. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 429-439 434 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. distribution of codes and themes from content analysis. themes code frequency % problem’s theme percent, geometric, ratio-proportion, geometric sequence, arithmetic mean, pattern, geometric shape, geometry experience question, number problems, percentage calculation, sets, induction, number sequences, ratio and proportion, obeb-okek, interpretation of probability, name, according to the subject type, ygs and lys questions, basic math problems, number problems, profitloss problems, function problems, series problems, set. 25 25,5 solution method trial and error, induction, deduction problems, trial-anderror problems, trial-and-error group, routinely solved, solved outside of the routine, according to the information required to solve the problem, according to the solution methods, according to the feature desired to be developed in the solution, using modeling and variable question types type of question, type of question, type of question which can be solved by visual aid, question style that can be solved by stepping step by step, questioning reasoning, drawing a figure, interpreting, using information, interpreting information, revealing truth, questionable question, comprehending and applying knowledge, according to strategy choice , judgment, ability, logic, knowledge. 27 27.5 structure of problem daily life problems, mathematics in daily life, tasteful math problems, process problems, scientific problems, analysis problems, inductive problems, researchexamination problems, logic and reasoning, abstract thinking, basic concepts, logic and reasoning, logic questions, process questions, open problems, modeling problems, logic execution, everyday life, three dimensional thinking, geometric thinking, attention question, abstract process question, question of algebra, question of mathematics of self-confidence, question of knowledge level, question of industrial accounting, digital logic question, contradiction question, think, imagine, comment, find in mind question, routine problem, nonroutine problem, open-ended question of analysissynthesis, grouping by question types, if there is a scan or exam situation, according to the degree of difficulty, suggesting question, canonical question, known routine math problems, ask our knowledge guiding questions, suggestive, canonical, comparative problems, closed type, open-ended problems, mathematical theoretical problems, mathematical, logical, problems associated with daily life, problems of straight logic. 46 47 source: codes and themes retrieved from interviews with teachers. table-4. distribution of themes by school types. frequency problem types (%) ss as vs rs sss fas sum frequency percentage problem’s theme 1 3 9 1 11 25 25,5 solution method 4 19 3 1 27 27,5 structure of problem 8 13 16 5 4 46 47 source: themes retrieved from interviews with teachers. 4.2. findings related to the teachers’ opinions about non-routine problems in this section, the teachers were asked to determine the most meaningful, useful, and practical problem groups out of the groups they formed when they thought with their solutions. as stated in the previous section, the teachers are not expected to know the names of the types of problems. considering the teachers’ preferences of problems, the types of these problems were determined. for example, it is understood that the teachers who thought that the problems 1 and 8 were meaningful found non-routine problems meaningful or the teachers stated their views directly. for example, ―i find the problems meaningful in everyday life‖. in this case, the teacher’s statement was accepted without matching the problems. in addition to this, there were teachers who referred to the problems in different categories at the same time. but, the dominant ones from their category preferences were prioritized. according to the findings, the distribution of the most meaningful problem structures by the teachers were presented in table 5. when table 5 is examined, it is found that the teachers found the non-routine problems meaningful at a dominant rate (%36). in addition to this, the teachers considered real life (%20) and reasoning (%16) problems as meaningful. when an investigation was made considering the types of schools, it was observed that science high school teachers preferred real life (%50) and logical reasoning(%50) problems, anatolian high school teachers preferred predominantly non-routine (%37,5) and real life problems (%37,5), vocational high school teachers found mostly non-routine problems useful (%40). similarly, all religious vocational high school teachers stated that non-routine problems were beneficial (%100). moreover, all the teachers who preferred purposive problems are vocational high asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 429-439 435 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group school teachers. on the other hand, the only teacher who found routine problems meaningful is a vocational high school teacher, too. table-5. distribution of the most meaningful problem structures by the teachers. frequency problem types ss as vs rs sss fas sum frequency percentage (%) non routine 3 4 2 9 36 real life 1 3 1 5 20 reasoning 1 1 1 1 4 16 purposive 3 3 12 open-ended 1 1 4 number 1 1 4 for university exams 1 1 4 routine 1 1 4 source: codes and themes retrieved from interviews with teachers. 4.3. findings related to the teachers’ preferences of non-routine problems this section explored whether or not teachers included non-routine problems in their lessons. for this purpose, the responses obtained from the questions asked to the teachers and the questions teachers used in their lessons and exams were examined. the data obtained from the teachers’ responses were presented in table 6. table-6. distribution of the questions teachers used in their lessons and exams. frequency problem types ss as vs rs sss fas sum frequency percentage (%) university exam 1 1 4 interpretation and process 1 1 4 mathematical thinking and acquisition 1 1 4 knowledge based 1 1 4 operational questions 2 4 6 24 real life and interpretation 1 1 4 logic, process, and curriculum-based 1 1 4 routine, curriculum-based 1 1 4 routine 3 2 2 7 28 non routine 2 1 3 12 curriculum-based 1 1 2 8 source: codes and themes retrieved from interviews with teachers. when table 6 is examined, it is revealed that teachers mostly preferred operational questions (%24) and routine problems (%28). the percentages given for the problem types were obtained from the teachers’ statements as it was in the previous section. some teachers referred to problems in the interview form whereas some of them told the name of the problem type. according to this, some of the problem types obtained show similarities with the other type. for example, with the operational questions (%24), non-routine problem structure may have been implied. in this case, taking both parts together, the usage of problems containing routine operations could be considered 52%. this means that 52% of the teachers prefer routine problems. on the other hand, the teachers who use non-routine problems are 12%. in addition to this, the curriculum based problem types were explained in three categories: reasoning, operation, and curriculum based (%4), routine and curriculum-based (%4), and curriculum based (8%). thus, it can be stated that 16% of the teachers use the problems involved in the curriculum. an anatolian high school teacher who stated that he used very few non-routine problems said: “we use problems or ordinary types in the lessons and exams. the problems we use are similar to them. but not all of them. we use problems with direct result. personally, i spare my course time once a week for special questions. in these lessons, i use contradictory problems. this is a section which involves questions that encourage thinking. however, i never use these problems in the exams.”(anatolian high school, male). the explanation of the teacher who does not use non-routine problems can be given as an example: “i use routine problems in my lessons and exams. unfortunately, the students who do not know its use with four operation skills and problems are not successful in the solution of non-routine problems. i use much more simplified versions of the first 6 problems” (religious vocational school, female). the teacher who used curriculum based and problems based on operations stated: ―my practices consist of the simplest version of the knowledge. i ask questions at an operational level. the curriculumcourse book and passing grade exam system implemented make it difficult for us to teach in project, research and interpretation format. even, i encounter the answer “there is no internet” with the simplest research-data collection homework assigned as project work” (vocational high school, male). three exam papers belonging to three types of schools were analyzed in order to support teachers’ views. 4.4. written exam papers an example of an exam paper which exemplifies the questions used in vocational high school exams is given in figure 2. when figure 2 is examined, it is seen that the questions are types of questions that require routine operations. on the other hand, when the written exam paper belonging to an anatolian high school is examined, it is found that the questions used were similar to the questions involved in the university exam preparation books. the examples of standard questions which do not need any discussion or interpretation are given in figure 3. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 429-439 436 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ... vocational and technical anatolian high school 2015/2016 academic year 12th grade mathematics lesson 2nd semester 2nd written exam questions. 1if the sum of half, 1/4 and 1/5 of a number is 38, what is this number? 2which number is 40% 160? 3a father is 35 years old and his son is 9 years old. how many years later would the father's age be three times the age of his son? 4how much is a product costing 120 tl for 40% loss? figure-2. sample vocational high school written exam paper. source: the data were taken from a local school in turkey under the ministry of national education. ... anatolian high school 2015/2016 academic year 10th grade mathematics lesson 2nd semester 1st written exam questions. 1what is the ordinate of the closest point of the parabola ( ) to the line ? 3 find the equation of the geometric location of the peaks of the parabola. 2 the two parabola in the figure intersect at point a. accordingly, what is m? 4( ) if the roots of the equation are sort the numbers 1, 1, . figure-3. sample anatolian high school written exam paper. source: the data were taken from a local school in turkey under the ministry of national education. however, when the questions used by the science high school teachers are examined figure 4 it is revealed that the questions are similar to the questions frequently encountered in the university exam preparation books. science high school 2015/2016 academic year 9th grade mathematics course 2nd semester 1st written exam questions 1since x and y are real numbers, -3<x<4 -2<y<5 what is the smallest value of x + y? a)-5 b)-4 c) -2 d) 8 e) 9 2 √ √ √ √ what is the result of the operation? a)3 b)2√ c) 2 d) √ e) 1 3if , what is the rate ? a) 5 b) c) d) e) figure-4. sample science high school written exam paper. source: data from the turkey ministry of national education. supporting figure 4, the teacher’s opinion who says that the questions are similar to the university exam questions can be given: ―because the examination system dominantly measures technical knowledge, our questions are usually parallel to the university entrance examination” (male, science high school).after examining the exam papers, the lesson in the 9th grade level in a science high school was observed. 4.5. lesson observation a teacher’s 2 hour course in a science high school was observed by making an appointment before. the reason for the selection of the science high school is the expectation that the problems that need different thinking skills could be used by such schools which admit students with high points. when the teacher began the lesson, he solved a non –routine problem on the board. the problem solved in the classroom is like that: “mostly 3 steaks could be put in a frying pan used for frying steak and a piece of steak could be cooked in 30 minutes. so, how many minutes at least are needed to cook 13 pieces of steak?” when the problem is examined carefully, it is viewed that the solution could be reached by using different ways of solutions. when the teacher asked the question to the class, the first way of solution offered by the students was like that:“the pieces are put in the pan in threes and in 30 minutes, the first three pieces are cooked. just like this, it is repeated three times, that is, totally 30 multiplied by 4 is equal to 120 minute, so 12 steaks are cooked. the remaining one steak is put in the pan and it is cooked for another 30 minutes. therefore, the time spent will be 120 plus 30 is equal to 150 minutes”. the teacher was not satisfied with this answer and asked the class if they could find a different way of solution. after thinking sometime, students came up with a different answer: “because it says at least, we must think in this way: let’s put the steaks in threes and in three times, 9 steaks are cooked and that is 3 multiplied by 30 equals to 90 minutes. there are 4 steaks remaining. take 3 of them and put them in the pan. that means there will be one piece of steak outside. we can cook one side of the 3 steaks in the pan in 15 minutes. then, let’s take out one of the steaks and put the remaining steak in place of it. turn down the other two steaks to cook the other sides. the two steaks will be cooked completely 15 minutes later and the last steak’s only one side is cooked. and totally it takes 120 minutes. there are two steaks, whose one sides are cooked and other asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 429-439 437 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sides are not cooked. we can cook the uncooked sides of these 2 steaks in 15 minutes. thus, the total time is 120 plus 15 equals to 135 minutes”. the teacher found this answer more useful and he appreciated the student who approached the problem differently. considering the structure of the problem solved in the lesson, the problem seems to be an example of nonroutine structure. the teacher was satisfied with the discussion environment in the classroom and supported students’ contributions. the teacher continued the topic in his other course and used the routine questions he always used. at the end of the lesson, similar to the anatolian highs school teacher whose opinion was taken, he stated that he used such problems rarely in his lessons and he definitely did not use them in his exams. two teachers in science high schools which admit students with higher points were asked why they did not frequently use such problems. the first teacher stated the following: “we do not use problems in every lesson because it is difficult to find problems about each topic. moreover, it takes a lot of time. it is more reasonable to study problems in the 9th grade in “problems” subject.” the other science high school teacher answered the question in that way: “we can’t ask difficult or open-ended questions in the exams because our students and parents’ are highly anxious about the grades. it is difficult to grade the multiple ways of solutions. thus, we ask questions which are based on simple operations and do not need a lot of reasoning”. 5. results and recommendations when the teachers were asked to classify the routine, non-routine, and open-ended questions in interview form, the themes revealed indicate the ways of solution at a low level. considering this, teachers classified the 27,5% of the problems according to the methods of solutions. the teachers categorized the 72,5% of the problems on the basis of structured (enjoyable mathematical problems, operational problems and etc.,) and topic (profit and loss problems, function problems and etc.). this case may not reflect the core of the ―real‖ problems because nonroutine problems are the problems which cannot be solved by using the known algorithms, formula, or methods (blum and niss, 1991; fong, 1996) but provide opportunities for different ways of solutions (fong, 1996; chan, 2007). thus, it can be expected that the statements which reflect the problem best are the expressions which refer to the problem’s such characteristics. however, it is understood from nearly 73% of the teacher explanations that they do not focus on the problem’s method of solution and results. however, the most important characteristic of non-routine problems is that they have a structure which allows multiple solutions and reveal individual differences (fong, 1996; chan, 2007). out of 25 teachers participating in the study, 22 of them stated that they saw all the types of problems before, but only two teachers used the expression of ―non-routine problem‖. this case reveals that 92% of the teachers do not have adequate knowledge about the non-routine problems and cannot identify such problems. the teachers’ opinions and attitudes about problem solving are significant in terms of impacts on the educational process of the students whom they are going to teach (verschaffel et al., 1997; chen et al., 2011). due to these reasons, teachers must be enlightened about non-routine problems and their purposes. thus, in-service training can be organized. teachers were asked what type of problems they found meaningful and useful to answer the second research question. non-routine problems are identified as the most meaningful problems (%36). this case reveals that teachers shared the opinion that these problems would be beneficial. this result is compatible with the previous studies (asman and markovits, 2009). the third result obtained in the study exhibits what types of problems teachers benefit from in their lessons and exams. similar to the previous studies (foong and koay, 1997; özmen et al., 2012) 52% of the teachers prefer routine problems. only 12 of the teachers prefer non-routine problems. this case reveals that the teachers have a tendency to use ―non-routine‖ problems rarely in their lessons. this finding obtained refers to a very interesting case. although teachers think that non-routine problems are meaningful and useful, they do not prefer to use them. considering the drawbacks of using only routine problems in the lessons (özdogan and kula, 2007) it seems meaningful to explore the teachers’ reasons for not using non-routine problems. there are a few reasons for these according to the findings obtained. one of the reasons is that teachers think that the level of readiness of the students is not adequate. most students pass into the next grade level without acquiring the knowledge and concepts which they had to gain in the previous grade levels. the teachers state that these students lack basic knowledge and they will not be able to solve non-routine problems. because they have not met non-routine problem structures before, it becomes challenging even for the most successful students during the solution process. however, the studies carried out reveal that such problems will develop students’ problem-solving skills (ishida, 2002; chan, 2007). the other reason stated by the teachers is that solving such problems is time – consuming and they have a curriculum which they have to catch up with. in addition to this, the problems properly involved in the curriculum can be used. according to the research results, some of the teachers think that problems must be studied only in the ―problems‖ topic and mention the difficulties of finding such problems. however, today it is possible to reach international books which include non-routine problems belonging to the different subjects of mathematics (lianghuo, 2011). the importance of problem solving was emphasized in the new turkish secondary education curriculum (m.e.b) (2018). thus, it is required that an understanding of education which prioritizes the importance of problem solving should be developed within the teachers. in addition to the courses, it is revealed that the teachers do not use non-routine problems in their exams. asman and markovits (2009) reached the similar results. the reasons why teachers do not use non-routine problems in their exams is that students and parents are anxious about the grades because they determine that there are very few students who can solve the non-routine problems. moreover, it is stated that because such problems are not asked in university examination, these 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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-006-9036-9. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 35 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 35-40, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.35.40 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the multiple intelligence types based on academic success, age, gender and job experience of physical education teachers in state schools in turkey levent bayram1 deniz özge yüceloğlu keskin2 ( corresponding author) 1,2ondokuz mayıs üniversity yaşar doğu, faculty of sport sciences, turkey. abstract the current approach to education has highly changed compared to the past approach where individual differences and potentials were overlooked. today, there is an education system that reveals the potentials of individuals, shapes the strong sides and supports the weak sides. this approach is based on the multiple intelligence theory. the aim of this study is to examine the profiles of educators based on the multiple intelligence theory. this is a scan model descriptive research. it was carried out in 2017 in four cities in turkey (istanbul, ankara, samsun, gaziantep) with the participation of 110 physical education teachers (46 female, 64 male) whose ages were 2242 (an average age of 31,98). to collect data, the reliability index was determined as .81, and the “multiple intelligences inventory”, translated into turkish by oral (2001) was used. the significance level was considered as (p<0.05). to compare the multiple intelligence type points based on the gender and age variables, the t test and mann whitney u test were used for paired comparisons while the kruskal wallis and oneway anova test was used for multiple comparisons. the significance level was considered as (p<0.05). as a result of the study, a statistically significant difference was not detected in multiple intelligence point averages based on gender, job experience and academic achievement variables while a positively significant difference was found in the social intelligence type based on the age variable. keywords: multiple intelligence theory, intelligence types, education system, sports, teaching physical education, academic achievement. citation | levent bayram; deniz özge yüceloğlu keskin (2020). examining the multiple intelligence types based on academic success, age, gender and job experience of physical education teachers in state schools in turkey. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 35-40. history: received: 28 october 2019 revised: 2 december 2019 accepted: 7 january 2020 published: 3 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 36 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 37 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 37 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 37 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 40 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.35.40&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1276 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6000-229x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-9548 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1276 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6000-229x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-9548 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1276 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6000-229x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-9548 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1276 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6000-229x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2191-9548 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 35-40 36 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the multiple intelligence types of physical education teachers working in state schools in turkey and examining how these intelligence types are affected by the academic success, age, gender and job experience variables. 1. introduction education is an important term for the development of individuals, society and the world. the rapid change that is taking place in the world today deeply affects individuals and society. in order to keep up with this change, it is necessary to be equipped in many different ways. indeed, it is not enough for individuals to be equipped only cognitively. this will only cause the individual to be crushed under enormous amounts of information. thus, it is necessary for individuals to be satisfied and equipped both cognitively and affectively. education is the determinant of the future, so more attention should be given to its affective aspect. this can be done by focusing a little more on the affective aspect of the functionality of educational activities that are mainly directed towards cognitive goals (gömleksiz and kan, 2012). modern education considers the individual as a whole with all aspects such as physical, mental, emotional and social. in this sense, what is expected from education is to reveal the hidden power in individuals and help to improve it to the best extent. thus, it is possible to integrate productive and physically and mentally happy individuals into society (yenal et al., 1999). fast technological developments are raising the importance of physical education and sports in human life. due to this, it is the only discipline that can help gain most of matters that make up the aims of education because physical education and sports is a field that improves an individual physically, emotionally and socially. every function and action that is required for human life is formed in the body of an individual. there is a close connection between physical development and human behavior. disorders, instabilities and declining in physical development affect behavior (başaran, 1991). movement, on the other hand, is the best way to improve as a whole and adapt to society. humans use their senses to activate perceptions and thoughts, and they use these thoughts to control their bodies. in this system, muscles are affected by thoughts and feelings. in other words, muscles are affected by psychology while psychology is affected by muscles. this interaction and communication continues throughout life. therefore, developing the ability to move to do sports is the biggest contribution to the overall development of a child (camlıyer and camlıyer, 1997). besides playing an important role in child development, physical education and sports activities contribute to the social and emotional development of the child. these activities functionalize abilities such as creativity and leadership, and they develop certain personality traits like being competent, determined, compatible, productive, hardworking, respectful and understanding, following rules, cooperating, and being independent and self-disciplined. the teacher is one of the main components of the teaching-learning process. they are people who constantly interact with students, apply the education program and instruct it, and evaluate both students and teachers. the qualifications of the teacher affect the quality of these processes to a great extent. a teacher should be an individual who can make use of certain conditions in the best way in order to meet the constantly-changing needs of society and educational institutions, works for perfection, uses creativity and flexibility, and does not have ideological obsessions that can harm the main principles of the society. being open to cooperation and sharing are among the characteristic traits of a modern teacher. as teachers are people who educate students with different intelligence and personality types from different socio-culture backgrounds, and encourage and support them to learn, creativity is perhaps one of the most important traits of a modern teacher (yetim and göktaş, 2004). howard gardner brought a new aspect to the discussion about intelligence with this multiple intelligence theory in 1983. according to gardner, intelligence is the ability to create a product that is valued within one or more cultural settings, to find effective solutions to real life problems, and to discover new or complex problems that need to be solved (saban, 2001). in the multiple intelligence theory, which states that intelligence differs based on biological and cultural effects, there are 8 different intelligences: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial-visual, musical-rhythmic, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal-social, intrapersonal and naturalist (gardner, 1993). besides being different in terms of producing information, adapting to the environment, reasoning and thinking, these intelligences can show difference in problem-solving (kiremitci and canpolat, 2014). according to the multiple intelligence theory, a healthy individual possess all of these intelligences but not at the same level. when the individual encounters a problem, they use the dominant intelligence type to solve the problem. however, the intelligences work in cooperation with one another (temiz, 2007). if the educator does not consider personal traits while preparing educational activities, it is not possible to serve all intelligence types. due to this, not all students will be able to comprehend, and this will prevent the interest and abilities of individuals to be revealed. in this situation where individual abilities and intelligences do not have the chance to improve, there will not be equality in education. thus, students will have jobs which are not convenient for themselves, and this will eventually cause unfavorable issues in the future (güleryüz, 2002). since physical education and sportive activities in school highly support student development in many ways, the significance of the physical education teacher, who plans, applies, instructs and evaluates the lessons and activities, can be seen more clearly. due to the fact that they are responsible for the physical development young students who have different abilities, personalities, interests, social and cultural backgrounds, mental and emotional structures, and also experience social conflict and dilemma, the physical education teacher has a significant role. being able to apply forms of education based on different kinds of personal interests, needs and learning styles, and knowing how to communicate effectively and solve problems based on personal traits in situations of conflict shows the synthesis of the intelligence and creativity of an educator. physical education teachers can help students benefit from lessons and activities by using their own multiple intelligence potentials in their teaching and problemsolving methods. this study aims to examine the multiple intelligences of physical education teachers in state schools based on academic success and certain demographic features. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 35-40 37 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method 2.1. sample and procedure this research was conducted in 2017 in four cities of turkey (istanbul, ankara, samsun, gaziantep) with a total of 110 physical education teachers (46 female, 64 male) in state schools whose ages range between 22-42, with an age average of 31.98. this research is a descriptive study. 2.2. measures to collect data, the “multiple intelligences inventory”, which was translated into turkish by oral (2001) was used along with descriptive questions to the participants such as age, gender, job experience, education of mother and father, and bachelor’s degree gpa in order to determine academic success. 2.3. multiple intelligences survey the reliability of multiple intelligences inventory (mii) was calculated as .79 by oral (2001). this coefficient shows that mii has high reliability. the reliability of the mii applied in this research was found as .81. mii is a 5point likert-scale that is made up of 80 items. it consists of statements based on the eight intelligences introduced by gardner. the total point received by the marked items of a single intelligence type shows the sufficiency of an individual in that area. the participating teachers read certain statements based on intelligence types and marked the option which best described them. each intelligence type is represented by 10 statements. the point range that can be received from one of the eight intelligence types is 10-50, and the point range that can be received from the entire inventory is 80-400 (aşçı, 2003). 2.4. data analysis the data was analyzed with the spss 22 packet program. the kolmogorow test was used to determine whether the data showed a regular range or not. the t test and mann whitney u test were used for paired comparison while the kruskal wallis and oneway anova test was used for multiple comparisons to compare the multiple intelligences points of the physical education teachers based the gender and age variables. then the descriptive statistics of the variables (average, standard deviation, median, minimum and maximum values) were made. the level of significance was accepted as (p<0.05). 3. findings table-1. comparison of the score averages of multiple intelligence types according to gender variable. intelligences area gender n mean sd median min max p verbal – linguistic female 46 33,65 4,691 34,00 22 42 ,819 male 64 33,88 5,245 33,00 22 46 logical – mathematical female 46 34,61 4,982 36,00 23 44 ,159 male 64 35,92 4,651 36,50 24 48 visual – spatial female 46 35,87 4,534 37,00 27 46 ,444 male 64 35,16 4,983 35,00 21 45 musical – rhythmic female 46 33,50 6,221 35,00 20 43 ,876 male 64 33,30 7,019 34,00 16 44 naturalistic female 46 35,74 3,672 36,00 28 42 ,161 male 64 36,66 3,123 37,00 28 42 interpersonal female 46 34,63 4,814 35,00 21 44 ,098 male 64 36,20 4,909 36,00 20 45 bodily – kinesthetic female 46 37,48 4,510 38,00 28 47 ,651 male 64 37,86 4,231 39,00 30 46 intrapersonal female 46 35,35 4,223 36,00 27 48 ,442 male 64 35,91 3,360 36,00 27 44 note: p>0.05. according to table 1 there is not a statistically significant difference between the intelligence type point average of male and female teachers. (p>0.05). according to table 2 a statistically significant difference was found in the interpersonal intelligence point average of the participants based on age (p<0.05). the interpersonal intelligence point average in teachers aged 3442 was found to be higher when compared to the younger group. table 3 shows the comparison of intelligence type and job experience. based on this, there is not a statistically significant difference between job experience and intelligence type point averages (p>0.05). according to table 4, a statistically significant difference was not found in the intelligence type point average of the participants based on their graduation academic average (p>0.05). 4. discussion as it can be seen in the table that shows the multiple intelligence types of the physical education teachers based on gender, there is not a significant difference between genders based on intelligence type. on the other hand, it can be seen that the social intelligence points of male physical education teachers are higher when compared to their female colleagues. among researches that compare genders based on intelligence types, there are studies that show both similar and opposite results compared to our study. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 35-40 38 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. comparison of the score averages of multiple intelligence types with regard to age group variable. intelligences area age n mean sd median min max p verbal – linguistic 22-28 age 35 34,00 6,005 34,00 22 46 ,615 29-33 age 31 33,03 3,665 33,00 24 42 34-42 age 44 34,14 4,991 34,00 24 45 logical – mathematical 22-28 age 35 34,00 5,325 35,00 23 44 ,109 29-33 age 31 35,68 4,908 36,00 24 48 34-42 age 44 36,25 4,138 37,00 28 44 visual – spatial 22-28 age 35 34,51 5,933 34,00 21 46 ,170 29-33 age 31 35,06 4,211 36,00 24 42 34-42 age 44 36,48 4,014 37,00 27 44 musical – rhythmic 22-28 age 35 34,43 6,951 36,00 16 44 ,232 29-33 age 31 33,77 5,881 35,00 18 44 34-42 age 44 32,27 6,936 33,00 18 44 naturalistic 22-28 age 35 35,89 3,332 37,00 28 40 ,280 29-33 age 31 35,81 3,459 36,00 30 42 34-42 age 44 36,91 3,333 37,50 28 42 interpersonal 22-28 age 35 35,91 4,901 36,00 27 45 ,045 29-33 age 31 33,74 5,680 34,00 20 42 34-42 age 44 36,52 4,020 36,00 26 44 bodily – kinesthetic 22-28 age 35 38,67 4,690 38,00 28 47 ,454 29-33 age 31 37,42 4,015 39,00 30 45 34-42 age 44 38,41 4,250 38,00 29 46 intrapersonal 22-28 age 35 34,97 3,815 36,00 27 44 ,381 29-33 age 31 35,81 3,280 36,00 27 42 34-42 age 44 36,14 3,968 36,00 28 48 note: p>0.05. table-3. comparison of the score averages of multiple intelligence types with regard to job experience variable. intelligences area vocational time n mean sd median min max p verbal – linguistic 1-4 years 53 33,40 5,436 33,00 22 46 ,536 5-9 years 28 33,57 4,606 34,00 24 41 10-14 years 14 33,79 3,556 34,00 28 40 15+ years 15 35,53 5,317 36,00 27 45 logical – mathematical 1-4 years 53 34,55 5,483 36,00 23 48 ,355 5-9 years 28 36,45 3,825 36,50 29 42 10-14 years 14 35,71 4,159 36,50 28 42 15+ years 15 35,93 4,367 36,00 30 44 visual – spatial 1-4 years 53 34,53 5,507 34,00 21 46 ,214 5-9 years 28 36,50 3,854 37,00 30 44 10-14 years 14 35,43 4,201 35,50 27 42 15+ years 15 36,80 3,707 37,00 30 42 musical – rhythmic 1-4 years 53 34,04 6,796 35,00 16 44 ,275 5-9 years 28 33,46 5,607 34,50 20 44 10-14 years 14 30,43 7,643 29,00 19 43 15+ years 15 33,67 7,017 36,00 18 43 naturalistic 1-4 years 53 36,19 3,229 37,00 28 42 ,348 5-9 years 28 35,68 3,732 36,00 30 42 10-14 years 14 37,71 2,335 38,00 34 42 15+ years 15 36,33 3,922 37,00 28 42 interpersonal 1-4 years 53 34,89 5,567 35,00 20 45 ,081 5-9 years 28 34,96 4,757 35,50 24 44 10-14 years 14 38,50 3,276 39,00 34 44 15+ years 15 36,20 2,731 36,00 31 42 bodily – kinesthetic 1-4 years 53 37,17 4,318 38,00 28 47 ,599 5-9 years 28 37,82 4,555 39,00 29 46 10-14 years 14 39,14 3,939 38,00 34 45 15+ years 15 38 4,392 37,00 31 44 intrapersonal 1-4 years 53 35,32 3,694 36,00 27 44 ,100 5-9 years 28 34,93 2,567 35,50 30 40 10-14 years 14 36,43 3,817 37,00 28 42 15+ years 15 37,60 5,068 39,00 30 48 note: p>0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 35-40 39 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. comparison of the score averages of multiple intelligence types with regard to their graduation academic average variable. intelligences area graduation academic average n mean sd median min max p verbal – linguistic 2.50 – 2.99 36 33,72 5,086 33,50 22 44 ,326 3.00 – 3.49 46 33,13 5,036 32,00 22 46 3.50 – 4.00 28 34,93 4,799 35,00 24 45 logical – mathematical 2.50 – 2.99 36 35,31 4,653 36,00 24 44 ,972 3.00 – 3.49 46 35,50 5,328 36,00 23 48 3.50 – 4.00 28 35,25 4,257 35,00 28 44 visual – spatial 2.50 – 2.99 36 35,72 5,568 37,00 21 45 ,592 3.00 – 3.49 46 34,91 4,613 34,50 27 46 3.50 – 4.00 28 36,00 4,018 36,50 26 42 musical – rhythmic 2.50 – 2.99 36 34,64 6,015 35,00 19 44 ,431 3.00 – 3.49 46 33,43 6,807 34,50 16 44 3.50 – 4.00 28 31,68 7,087 33,00 18 43 naturalistic 2.50 – 2.99 36 36,25 3,451 37,00 28 42 ,883 3.00 – 3.49 46 36,13 3,250 37,00 30 42 3.50 – 4.00 28 36,54 3,595 37,00 28 42 interpersonal 2.50 – 2.99 36 35,61 4,871 35,50 21 45 ,973 3.00 – 3.49 46 35,61 5,331 36,00 20 44 3.50 – 4.00 28 35,36 4,373 36,00 24 42 bodily – kinesthetic 2.50 – 2.99 36 37,78 4,065 39,00 31 47 ,431 3.00 – 3.49 46 37,15 4,331 37,00 28 44 3.50 – 4.00 28 38,50 4,686 39,50 29 45 intrapersonal 2.50 – 2.99 36 35,50 2,793 35,50 31 44 ,103 3.00 – 3.49 46 35,04 4,351 36,00 27 48 3.50 – 4.00 28 36,93 3,516 38,00 30 44 note: p>0.05. in the research conducted by tekin (2007) significant differences were not found in terms of verbal-linguistic intelligence, spatial intelligence, social intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence and naturalist intelligence while a significant difference was found in terms of musical-rhythmic intelligence and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. in this study, the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence of females was found to be higher. there is a similarity between this study and ours in terms of verbal-linguistic intelligence, spatial intelligence, social intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence and naturalist intelligence. however, there is no similarity between the two studies in terms of musical-rhythmic intelligence and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. in the study conducted by loori (2005) male and female participants were examined separately according to the logical-mathematical intelligence type. based on the averages, it was found that this intelligence type was higher in male participants. the result is not parallel to our findings. kocabaş (2003) carried out a research with 46 preschool teacher candidates and did not find a significant difference between genders based on musical-rhythmic intelligence. hamurcu et al. (2002) conducted a study to determine the profiles of 362 senior students studying science teaching and elementary school teaching based on the multiple intelligence theory. this study did not find a significant difference between genders based on verballinguistic intelligence. in the research done by david (2003) a significant difference was not found between genders in terms of naturalist intelligence. these results are similar to our findings. when intelligence types are examined according to age groups table 2 we can see a statistically significant difference among age groups in terms of social intelligence points (p<0.05). the social intelligence points of teachers aged 34-42, which is the oldest age group, are higher compared to younger groups. it was also found that the social intelligence points of teachers aged 22-28, which is the youngest group, is higher than the points of teachers in the 22-33 age group. gracious and shyla (2012) carried out a study with prospective teachers and found that the verbal-linguistic intelligence and naturalist intelligence points of the participants aged 22 and above were higher. a difference was not found in the points other intelligence types in terms of age. these results are similar to our findings. it was found that students mainly took teachers aged 22-28 as role models and preferred to communicate more with this age group compared to older teachers. it can be considered that the teachers in this group are not responsible for a family due to their age and have more time to spend with their peers. this anticipated situation may cause social intelligence to be more dominant in that period of life. the reason why the 34-42 age group has higher social intelligence compared to younger groups can be due to the fact that they have more experience in social interaction, they can effectively convey their life experience, they play a role as a guide and counselor, and they are at an age where they are consulted, and their thoughts are valued. based on table 3, which examines intelligence type points based on job experience, there is no significant difference in this area. despite this, it can be seen that the social intelligence points of teachers with 10-14 years of experience are higher. it can be said that the amount of time given to the job, increasing experience and communication skills tend to boost social intelligence, and this will begin to happen after the tenth year of teaching. table 4 compares the intelligence type points of teachers based on graduation academic average success. it can be seen in this table that there is not a statistically significant difference among intelligence types based on different academic success levels. people who have been successful enough to become a physical education teacher in turkey already had a sports-based life style before they began studying in the field at university. many of them previously studied in a sports high school before university, or they were athletes who were a part of various sports clubs when they entered university with a special talent exam based on their athletics background and sportive asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 35-40 40 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group talents. with the education they receive in the faculty of sports sciences, they can ground the sportive abilities they already possess on scientific bases and specialize in sportive teaching methods. they come from a sports-based background and continue living according to this lifestyle through their studies in university. in fact, the academic success they achieve during their education is highly affected by their athletics background. as a result of this study, it was found that there is not a significant difference among the levels of intelligence types based on the academic success levels of physical education teachers. references aşçı, z., 2003. the effects of multiple intelligences based instruction on ninth graders' ecology achievement, attitudes toward ecology and multiple intelligences. master thesis, middle east technic university-metu., mathematics and science education, ankara, turkey. başaran, i.e., 1991. educational psychology. ankara: kadıoğlu printing house. camlıyer, h. and h.u. camlıyer, 1997. movement education and sports. izmir: can ofset. david, c.w., 2003. multiple intelligences and perceived self-efficacy among chinese secondary school teachers in hong kong. educational psychology, 23(5): 521-533.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144341032000123778. gardner, h., 1993. multiple intelligences: the theory in practice. new york: a division of harper collins publishers. gömleksiz, m.n. and a.u. kan, 2012. international periodical for the languages. literature and history of turkish or turkic, 7(1): 11591177. gracious, f.a. and f.j.a. shyla, 2012. multiple intelligence and digital learning awareness of prospective b. ed teachers. turkish online journal of distance education, 13(2): 112-118. güleryüz, h., 2002. primary education program. ankara: pegem publishing. hamurcu, h., y. günay and g. özyılmaz, 2002. multiple intelligence profiles of students who educated in buca faculty of education in science teacher education department and primary teacher education department. middle east technic university, v. national science and mathematics education congress, 16-18 septemper 2002. ankara. available from http://old.fedu.metu.edu.tr/ufbmek5/b_kitabi/pdf/fen/bildiri/t334.pdf. kiremitci, o. and m. canpolat, 2014. determining the role of physical education and sports school students’ multiple intelligences areas on metacognitive awareness and problem solving skills. hacettepe university journal of sports sciences, 25(3): 118-126. kocabaş, a., 2003. comparison of learning strategies in music and multiple intelligence of early childhood teacher trainers. omep 2003 world council and conference, proceedings. 3, 30–45. loori, a.a., 2005. multiple intelligences: a comparative study between the preferences of males and females. social behavior and personality: an international journal, 33(1): 77-88.available at: https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2005.33.1.77. oral, b., 2001. an investigation of university students' intelligence as categories according to their fields of study. education and science, 26(122): 19-31. saban, a., 2001. multiple intelligence theory and education. 1st edn., ankara: nobel publishing house. tekin, m., 2007. investigation of multiple intelligence areas of teacher candidates studying in physical education and sports schools according to various variables, 5th physical education and sports teaching symposium, adana. temiz, n., 2007. multiple intelligence theory in school and classroom. ankara: nobel publishing. yenal, t., h. camlıyer and a. saraçoğlu, 1999. eden the effect of physical education and sport activities on motor skills and abilities in secondary secondary school children. second gu besbd, 4(3): 15-24. yetim, a. and z. göktaş, 2004. teacher’s occupational and personal qualifications. kastamonu university kastamonu education journal, 12(2): 541-550. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 74 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 74-79, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.74.79 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of students of the sport management department ramazan topuz1 ziya bahadir2 çağrı hamdi erdoğan3 ( corresponding author) 1selçuk university, faculty of sport sciences, konya, turkey 2erciyes university, faculty of sport sciences, kayseri, turkey 3ministry of education, çömlekçi middle school, kayseri, turkey abstract the aim of this research study is to investigate the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of sports management department students concerning some variables. 328 students participated in research group, who were studying at erciyes university department of sports management, faculty of sport sciences in the 2018-2019 academic year. the research was conducted with the survey model. in order to determine participant students’ social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels, social appearance anxiety scale and rosenberg's self-esteem scale were used as data collection tools. in the analysis of the data spss program was used. according to the results of the research, it was determined that the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of sports management department students are in the medium range. also a statistically significant negative correlation was determined between the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of the students. there were statistically significant differences in the social appearance anxiety levels of the sport management students concerning the gender, age, and the academic grade. however, there was statistically no significant difference concerning the sport branch, doing regular exercises, doing active sport, and average grades. as per the self-esteem levels of the sport management students; there was statistically no significant difference concerning the gender, age, sport branch, average grades, academic grades, doing active sport, and doing regular exercises. keywords: sports management, social appearance anxiety, self-esteem, individuality, sociability, student. citation | ramazan topuz; ziya bahadir; çağrı hamdi erdoğan (2019). examining the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of students of the sport management department. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 74-79. history: received: 12 october 2018 revised: 19 november 2018 accepted: 26 december 2018 published: 8 january 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 75 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 75 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 76 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 77 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 78 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.74.79&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/382 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/382 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/382 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/382 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/382 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/382 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-7791 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 74-79 75 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction social appearance anxiety is a sense of anxiety experienced and felt while evaluating the physical appearances of individuals in their own perspectives and from others' aspects. this physical appearance is comprised of the elements such as weight, height, and body structure. however, the social appearance anxiety additionally involves more detailed and comprehensive elements such as face, skin etc. (hart et al., 2008). individuals struggle to seem more attractive and leave more influential impressions on others (yousefi et al., 2009). an individual, who thinks that he/she cannot leave a good impression on other individuals, experiences anxiety (leary et al., 1988). "self" concept of an individual is the impression about oneself, and the identities that he/she thinks he/she bears. improving by time and causing the individuals to develop cognitive perceptions and attitudes about themselves, this concept ensures individuals to define and evaluate themselves. it is a dynamic and lifelong development process, which is very important in puberty and early maturity period. besides many other things, the development of "self" is a process of being able to make distinctions (yörükoğlu, 2007). a negative or positive evaluation perceived by an individual about his/her "self" or a judgment that an individual makes about his/her "self" shapes the self-esteem of an individual. actually, self-esteem is the emotional dimension of the "self". one of the most important facts that influences the lifestyle and interpersonal relationship process of an individual is the self-esteem. individuals with higher levels of self-esteem have higher expectations about their own capacities. their respect in themselves increases. they display assertive and eager attitudes. on the other hand, the sense of respect in oneself decreases in the individuals with lower levels of self-esteem. thinking that their opinions will not be approved, they behave more passively and more timidly (sarıçam, 2011). how a person feels about his/her appearance, in other words, his/her physical respect is the most important element influencing the whole self-esteem. the meaning attributed to the appearance and evaluations about the appearance may vary according to the time and the culture that a person is a part of harter (1983). the body structure that is defined as "ideal" by the influence of fashion and culture, and the individual, who is influenced with this ideal structure, realizes an ideal appearance image. if a person cannot accept or has a negative opinion about his/her opinion in case of a discrepancy between the ideal and the existing appearance of himself/herself, it can be explained by a low level of self-esteem of the individual (kılıç, 2015). the body of an individual is the obvious side of the "self" and it is an important part of the visual perceptions concerning the "self". therefore, an important determinant of the perceptions of an individual concerning his/her appearance is the self-esteem. in other words, negative or positive emotions concerning the "self" influence the sense concerning the social appearance. particularly if the feedbacks from the environment support the existing perception, having a low level of social appearance anxiety or having high level of self-esteem affect this to a large extent (gümüģ, 2000). it is reported that the expectations and attitudes of individuals with high levels of self-esteem, lead them to more independency and creativeness, and ensure them to display more assertive, more success-expecting, and more zealous social behaviors (tufan and yildiz, 1993). considering that the individuals, who are pleased with their social appearance, will have more positive social development, the importance of this research study is better understood. in this study, it was aimed to examine the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of sports management department students concerning some variables. it is considered important that the sport manager candidates, who will actively take office at sport sector and expected to be social in all aspects, have a positive sense of social appearance and have high levels of self-esteem. 2. method 2.1. research model this was a research that was designed in the descriptive survey model. survey model is a research approach that aims to describe a situation either as was before or as is now (karasar, 2008). 2.2. research group the research group was consisted of 328 students, who studied at the department of sports management in faculty of sport sciences of erciyes university during the 2018-2019 academic year, and they were selected with random sampling. 163 of the participant students were female (49.7%), whereas 165 of them were male (50.3%). 81 of the students attended 1st grade, 53 students 2nd grade, 40 students 3rd grade, and 154 students 4th grade. average age of the students was 21.04 years. 2.3. data collection tools as the data collection tools, a personal information form that was developed by the researchers was used for collecting demographic characteristics of the students, rosenberg's self-esteem scale was used for determining the self-esteem levels of the students, and social appearance anxiety scale was used for determining the social appearance anxiety levels of the students. rosenberg's self-esteem scale was developed by rosenberg (1965) and adapted to turkish by çuhadaroğlu (1986). it is comprised of 12 sections in total. including 63 articles, the scale measures the self-esteem with the first 10 questions in its 1st section. sub-scales including these 10 questions were used in this study. 5 of the questions are positive, and 5 of them are negative. the scale is able to be implemented on both male and female adolescents, matures, and elderly. there are four choices in the scale as "i definitely don't agree", "i don't agree", "i agree", and "i definitely agree", and the scoring is made as 0,1,2,3. there is a 0-30 points score range in the self-esteem subtest. it is accepted that the participants, who gain a score between 0 and 15 have a low level of self-esteem, between 15-25 points have a mid-level of self-esteem, and between 25-30 points they have a high level of self-esteem. in the analyses conducted by balat and akman (2004) the validity coefficient of the scale was determined as .71 and reliability coefficient as .75. social appearance anxiety scale was developed by hart et al. (2008) and adapted to turkish by dogan (2010). the scale is comprised of 16 articles. it has a five point likert answering key such as (1) definitely not suitable, (5) asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 74-79 76 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group definitely suitable. the first article of the scale is coded reversely. high scores obtained from the scale indicate that the social appearance anxiety levels are high. the cronbach alpha internal consistence coefficient was determined as .93, test-retest reliability coefficient .85, and reliability coefficient was determined as .88, which was determined via test split-half method. 2.4. statistical analyses statistical analyses were conducted using spss program. in order to examine self-esteem and social appearance anxiety levels of the students; descriptive statistics elements were used such as arithmetic averages ( ) and standard deviation (sd). as per the comparisons; t test method was used for paired comparisons for independent groups, and one way analysis of variance method (one way anova) was used for multiple comparisons. the significance level was admitted as p<0.05. besides, the pearson correlation analysis technique was used in order to understand whether there is a correlation between self-esteem and social appearance anxiety levels or not. 3. results table-1. distribution of demographic characteristics of the participant students in the sports management department gender n % academic grade n % male 165 50.3 1st grade 81 24.7 female 163 49.7 2nd grade 53 16.2 age n % 3rd grade 40 12.2 18-20 years old 77 23.5 4th grade 154 47.0 21-23 years old 169 51.5 sport branch n % 24 years old or over 82 25.0 team sport 155 47.3 doing regular exercises n % individual sport 173 52.7 yes 186 56.7 doing active sport n % no 142 43.3 yes 175 53.4 average grades n % no 153 46.6 between 2.00-2.49 87 26.5 total (n): 328 between 2.50-2.99 156 47.6 between 3.00-3.49 85 25.9 as is seen on the table 1, among the students in the research group, 165 (%50.3) are male, 163 (%49.7) are female; 77 (%23.5) are 18-20 years old, 169 (%51.5) are 21-23 years old and 82 (%25) are 24 years old or over. of the students, 186 (%56.7) are regularly doing sports, 142 (%53.3) don't do it regularly; 87 (%26.5) have average grades between 2.00-2.49, and the averages of 156 (%47.6) are in between 2.50-2.99, while 85 (%25.9) of them have average grade between 3.00-3.49. among the students, 81 (%24.7) are 1st grades, 53 (%16.2) 2nd grades, 40 (%47.6) 3rd grades, and 154 (%47) 4th grades; 155 of them (%47.3) are doing team sport, while 173 (%52.7) deals with individual sport; 175 of the students (%53.4) are actively doing sport and 153 (%46.6) don't. table-2. the averages and correlation coefficients of social appearance anxiety levels and self-esteem levels of the students in the sport management department n sd r p social appearance anxiety 328 37.76 14.954 -.510** .000 self-esteem 328 17.60 3.933 ** p<0.01 table-3. comparison of the social appearance anxiety levels of the students at the sport management department concerning some variables gender n sd t p difference male 165 39.73 14.882 2.395 .017* no female 163 35.79 14.810 sport branch n sd t p difference team sport 155 38.18 14.745 .488 .626 no individual sport 173 37.37 15.171 doing regular exercises n sd t p difference yes 186 37.84 15.219 .114 .909 no no 142 37.65 14.652 doing active sport n sd t p difference yes 175 38.21 15.562 .583 .560 no no 153 37.24 14.259 age n sd f p difference 18-20 years old 77 33.01 12.635 9.872 .000* 24 > 18-20 24 > 21-23 21-23 years old 169 37.30 15.214 24 years old or over 82 43.22 14.874 academic grade n sd f p difference 1st grade 81 31.96 12.824 8.638 .000* 3 > 1,2 4 > 1,2 2nd grade 53 34.66 13.189 3rd grade 40 42.85 14.943 4th grade 154 40.53 15.500 average grade n sd f p difference 2.00-2.49 87 36.98 14.144 .528 .590 no 2.50-2.99 156 37.41 14.934 3.00-3.49 85 39.16 15.845 total 328 37.76 14.954 *p<0.05 x x x x x x x x x asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 74-79 77 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as is seen on the table 2, the students obtained averages as =37.76 through the social appearance anxiety scale, and =17.60 via the self-esteem respect scale. according to these averages, it can be evaluated that the social appearance anxiety levels of the students are in the "mid-level". moreover, it was determined that there was a statistically significant negative (r=-.510) relation at p<0.01 level between the social appearance anxiety levels and the self-esteem levels of the students. as is seen on table 3, there was statistically significant difference in the social appearance anxiety concerning the gender, age, and academic grade; however there was statistically no significant difference concerning the sport branch, doing regular exercises, doing active sport, and average grades. table-4. comparison of the self-esteem levels of the students at the sport management department concerning some variables gender n sd t p difference male 165 17.33 3.668 -1.253 .211 no female 163 17.88 4.178 sport branch n sd t p difference team sport 155 17.34 3.457 -1.140 .255 no individual sport 173 17.84 4.312 doing regular exercises n sd t p difference yes 186 17.67 4.100 .328 .743 no no 142 17.52 3.716 doing active sport n sd t p difference yes 175 17.70 4.001 .458 .647 no no 153 17.50 3.864 age n sd f p difference 18-20 years old 77 17.84 4.170 2.927 .055 no 21-23 years old 169 17.94 3.936 24 years old or over 82 16.70 3.591 academic grade n sd f p difference 1st grade 81 17.46 3.889 1.606 .188 no 2nd grade 53 18.58 4.456 3rd grade 40 17.92 4.165 4th grade 154 17.26 3.674 average grade n sd f p difference 2.00-2.49 87 17.34 3.863 .383 .682 no 2.50-2.99 156 17.61 3.704 3.00-3.49 85 17.87 4.415 total 328 37.76 14.954 *p<0.05 as is observed on table 4, self-esteem levels of the students at the sport management department were compared in terms of variables such as gender, age, sport branch, average grade, academic grade, doing active sport, and doing regular sport; it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference. 4. discussion and conclusion in this research study, the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of the students from the department of sport management were examined. according to the results of the research, the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of the students were determined as "mid-level". moreover, it was determined that there was a statistically significant negative difference between the social appearance anxiety and self-esteem levels of the students. it was determined that there was statistically significant difference in the social appearance anxiety levels concerning the gender, age, and academic grade; however there was statistically no significant difference concerning the sport branch, doing regular exercises, doing active sport, and average grades of the sport management department students. self-esteem levels of the students at the sport management department were compared in terms of variables such as gender, age, sport branch, average grade, academic grade, doing active sport, and doing regular sport; it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference. in a study conducted by ismail (2018) it was determined that the social appearance anxiety levels of the participants were in "mid-level". the results of the mentioned study comply with this research study. in another study conducted by tekeli (2017) it was determined that the social appearance anxiety levels of the participants were lower than mid-level. the results of the mentioned study contradict to those of this research study. in other studies conducted by kuru and baģtuğ (2008); bilbek and yılmaz (2014); yaģartürk et al. (2014) and alemdağ and öncü (2015) it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference concerning the gender variable for the social appearance anxiety levels of the participants. those mentioned studies comply with the results of this research study. different studies conducted by çepikkurt and çoģkun (2010); koparan et al. (2010); kalemoğlu et al. (2014); telli and ünal (2016); tekeli (2017); ismail (2018) and göksel et al. (2018) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference concerning the gender variable for the social appearance anxiety levels of the participants. those mentioned studies contradict to the results of this research study. in other studies conducted by telli and ünal (2016) and ismail (2018) it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference concerning the age variable for the social appearance anxiety levels of the participants. the abovementioned studies comply with the results of this research study. korkmaz et al. (2003); koparan et al. (2010); tekeli (2017) and göksel et al. (2018) determined that there was statistically no significant difference concerning the age variable for the social appearance anxiety levels of the participants. those mentioned studies contradict to results of this research study. tekeli (2017) determined that there was statistically no significant difference concerning the x x x x x x x x x asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 74-79 78 © 2018 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group academic grade levels for the social appearance anxiety levels of the participants. the mentioned study contradicts to results of this research study. tekeli (2017) determined that there was statistically no significant difference concerning academic success for the social appearance anxiety levels of the participants. the mentioned study demonstrates similarity to the results of this study. in a study conducted by erģan et al. (2009) it was determined that the self-esteem levels of the participants were at high levels. the mentioned study contradicts to the results of this study. in other studies conducted by saygın (2008); çevik and atıcı (2009); eriģ and ġkiz (2013); ünver et al. (2014); yüzgeç (2014) and atan et al. (2018) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference concerning the gender variable for the selfesteem levels of the participants. these mentioned studies comply with the results of this study. in different studies conducted by hamarta (2004); çetinkaya et al. (2006); ceviz (2009); esen (2012) and karataģ (2012) it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference concerning the gender variable for the self-esteem levels of the participants. these mentioned studies contradict to the results of this study. erģan et al. (2009) determined that there was a statistically significant difference concerning the age variable for the self-esteem levels of the participants. the mentioned study contradicts to the results of this study. in a study conducted by saygın (2008) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference concerning the academic grade levels for the self-esteem levels of the participants. the mentioned study complies with the results of this study. erģan et al. (2009) and karataģ (2012) determined that there was a statistically significant difference concerning the academic grade levels for the self-esteem levels of the participants. the mentioned study contradicts to the results of this study. eriģ and ġkiz (2013) determined that there was a statistically significant difference concerning the perceived school success for the self-esteem levels of the participants. the mentioned study contradicts to the results of this study. erģan et al. (2009) and atan et al. (2018) determined that there was a statistically significant difference concerning the sport branch for the self-esteem levels of the participants. the mentioned study contradicts to the results of this study. it can be evaluated as a positive situation that the sport management department students have high levels of social appearance anxiety; however, it can be considered as an undesirable situation that their self-esteem levels are high. it can be seen as an expected determination that the social appearance anxiety levels of the students will decrease as their self-esteem levels increase. that the gender variable has not influence over the self-esteem and social appearance anxiety levels of the students can be a subject of more detailed further studies. considering the positive impacts of doing regular sport and doing active sport, it can be observed as an unexpected negative situation that they do not have any influence over the self-esteem and social appearance anxiety levels of the students. considering the maturity of the life experience, it can be accepted as an undesirable situation that the students with higher levels of age and academic grades have higher levels of social appearance anxiety. it can be investigated in further studies that age and academic grade have no influence over the self-esteem levels of the students. it can be accepted as an unexpected situation that the average grade variable does not create a difference on the self-esteem and social appearance anxiety levels of the students. references alemdağ, s. and e. öncü, 2015. the investigation of participation physical activity and social appearance anxiety at the preservice teachers. international journal of science culture and sport, 3(3): 287-300. atan, t., ġ. ünver and e. allahverdi, 2018. comparison of self-esteem levels of athletes and sedentary individuals who studied at universities. cbu journal of physical education and sport sciences, 13(1): 125-135. balat, u. and b. akman, 2004. 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anxiety scale (spas-7) among university students in iran. world journal of sport sciences, 2(3): 201-204. yüzgeç, s., 2014. a research on the relation between self esteem and mystic experience. master’s thesis, marmara university institute of social sciences. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 589 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 589-594, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.589.594 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the attitudes of academicians towards sports m. fatih karahuseyinoglu faculty of physical education and sport sciences, firat university, turkey. abstract the purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes of academicians towards sports at firat university, 191 academicians participated in the investigation as part of our study. "attitude scale towards sports" was used to determine the attitudes of the academicians participating in the study towards sports. the scale is designed in likert type 5 grading, consisting of 22 substances and "psychosocial, physical and mental development" consisting of 3 sub-dimensions. in line with the study findings, academicians at firat university have a general score of 1 to 5 scale scoring is x = 3.93, "mental development" sub-dimension size is x = 3.53, "psycho-social development" subdimension size is x = 3.98, and "physical development" sub-dimension size with an average of x = 4.08 was observed to have high attitude levels towards sports. there was a statistically significant difference in terms of attitude levels towards sports and age, participation in sports, title and working year variables for academicians at firat university. according to the gender variable, it was not found that the attitudes of academicians towards sports were not statistically significant. academicians’ attitudes towards sports are very important. students often see their instructors as their cult figure. academicians' attitudes towards sports are thought to make them feel good about themselves in terms of health and will be a positive example for students who consider themselves cult figures. keywords: sports, attitude, academician, university. citation | m. fatih karahuseyinoglu (2019). investigation of the attitudes of academicians towards sports. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 589-594. history: received: 12 september 2019 revised: 15 october 2019 accepted: 21 november 2019 published: 19 december 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 590 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 590 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 590 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 593 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 594 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.589.594&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1170 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1170 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1170 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-9263 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 589-594 590 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by investigating the attitudes of academicians towards sports at firat university, 191 academicians participated in the investigation as part of our study. 1. introduction although the word "sport" comes from english, it originated not from england, actually comes from latin. it is also derived from the words disportare, which means to separate or bring them together in latin. it was originally pronounced as desport and disport, while in the 17th century it was pronounced desport. it has become what it is today with the disposal of its first syllable due to its wide use after the 19th century (karahuseyinoglu, 2012). sports, which have been in our lives since the existence of humanity, have started to gain meanings such as struggle, competition, comparison, winning and losing as it was once used as a struggle for survival. it is stated that the sport has many physiological, psychological, educational and social benefits to individuals (atalı et al., 2018). he said that being psychologically and physically healthy would be at peace with oneself and give positive energy to his environment. it will enable people to act in friendship as a result of their approach and behavior to the people around them as a result of living healthy lives (türkel, 2010). attitude is a behavioral or situational prejudice against the object or individual in front of the person (türkmen et al., 2016). for this reason, attitudes can take a rating as a positive attitude or negative attitude. negative attitudes can be demonstrated by reluctance, dislike, disbelief and dissent towards an individual or object. positive attitudes are; can be shown with feelings of desire, love and willingness (demirhan and altay, 2001). attitudes come to the fore front with the culture of the region and the sense of imitation. our attitudes, which start at a young age, may vary in later years (kağıtçıbaşı, 2013). as the importance of time management grows in achieving personal success and goals of people today, individuals will prioritize their time planning as they change in the conditions in the future while day-to-day and instant planning is made in the first place. and create a time of recreational activity with concepts such as the ranking of values. recent research has shown that individuals involved in social activity are more optimistic and successful than their peers, while in some studies the risk of death seen of individuals involved in physical activity decreases (singh et al., 2001). the two most important functions of higher education are to produce science and to train high qualified manpower. setting off from this fact, higher education is in general defined as the universities and all other institutions affiliated to these universities which maintain, develop and disseminate scientific knowledge, and for this purpose, carry out scientific research (akyol et al., 2018). academicians at universities who are among the basic dynamics of society are also expected to contribute to the change and transformation of individuals in the society. determining the sports habits of academicians who are expected to be a model for university students is important for the participation of the community in sports. in the light of all this information, since it is thought that there is a free time activity and healthy lifestyle in sports, it is aimed in this study to examine and investigate the attitudes of academicians towards sports. 2. materials and methods academicians' attitudes towards sports are different, the reflections and contributions of the study, based on the basic hypothesis, to various segments of society through university students are important. academicians' attitudes towards sports will also be effective in shaping the sports habits of university students. in this context, determining the attitudes of academicians towards sports will contribute to eliminating deficiencies and disruptions in this field and making plans to be developed. the sampling of this study comprised of 191 randomly selected academicians at firat university in the 20182019 academic year. personal information form (gender, age, title, academic year and sports status) and attitude scale for sports (koçak, 2014) were used to determine the attitudes of the academicians participating in the study towards sports. the scale developed consists of 22 items and 3 sub-dimensions. there are 12 substances in the subdimension of psychosocial development, 6 in the physical development sub-dimension and 4 in the mental development sub-dimension. scale likert type is designed in the type of 5 grading and "(1) i don't agree at all, (2) i agree less, (3) moderately agree, (4) i agree, and (5) i agree fully". in reliability analyses, it was determined that the whole and all sub-dimensions of the scale were reliable. statistical computer package program was used in calculating the data. frequency of variables (f) and percentage (%) distributions have been calculated. it was checked by skewness and kurtosis tests to determine whether the data was distributed normally. as a result of these tests and controls, the data of the study were found to be parametric. for this reason, t test and variance analysis (anova) test was used. tukey test results were used to determine which groups the difference was among the results with significant differences. the error level in the study was taken as p<0.05. 3. findings in this section, the findings of the variables of the study are given. the findings showing the distribution of academicians in our research according to their qualifications were examined and interpreted. when the age groups of academicians were examined; the largest participation was between 26-35 years (38.7%), the minimum participation was 55 years old and above (11%). the 69.1% of academicians are male (132) and 30.9% are women. the proportion of employees as research assistants and lecturers is 23.0% which is higher than other titleholders. professors showed the lowest participation with 11.5%. it was observed that 53.9% of academicians participated in a regular sports activity, but 46.1% did not participate regularly in any sports activity. when the academic year of academicians is examined, it is observed that 39.8% have academic careers between 010 years, 27.7% between 10-20 years, 21.5% between 21-30 years and 11% have academic careers of 31 years and more. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 589-594 591 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. distribution table of demographic characteristics. age n % 26-35 years 36-45 years 46-55 years 55 years and older total 74 51 45 21 191 38.7 26.7 23.6 11.0 100 gender n % female male total 59 132 191 30.9 69.1 100 title n % research assistant lecturer phd academic member associate professor professor total 44 44 38 43 22 191 23.0 23.0 19.9 22.5 11.5 100 sports situation n % no yes total 88 103 191 46.1 53.9 100 academic study year n % up to 10 years 10-20 years 21-30 years 31 years and above total 76 53 41 21 191 39.8 27.7 21.5 11.0 100 source: independent variable; n (191). table-2. general average table of the attitude scale for sport. attitude for sport n x general avarage 191 3.93 sub-dimensions n x psychosocial development 191 3.98 physical development 191 4.08 mental development 191 3.53 source: dependent variable: attitude for sport. in the investigation of table 2 within the scale of 1 to 5, x = 3.86, mental development sub-dimension, x =3.53, psychosocial development sub-dimension x = 3.98 and physical development sub-size with an average of x =4.08, academicians' attitude levels towards sports (5) were close to five. table-3.gender-based comparison of attitude scale general and sub-dimensions scores. attitude for sport gender n x ss t p general avarage female 59 3.91 .426 -.244 .807 male 132 3.93 .588 -.275 .783 sub-dimensions gender n x ss t p psychosocial development female 59 4.00 .492 .182 .856 male 132 3.98 .610 physical development female 59 4.12 .565 .698 .486 male 132 4.06 .609 mental development female 59 3.35 .796 -1.860 .064 male 132 3.61 .939 source: independent variable: attitude for sport. table-4. comparison of attitude scale sub-dimensions by age groups. sub-dimensions age n x ss f p turkey psychosocial development 26-35 years 74 4.01 .619 .075 .974 36-45 years 51 3.96 .596 46-55 years 45 3.98 .539 55 years and above 21 3.99 .460 total 191 3.98 .575 physical development 26-35 years 74 4.10 .602 .944 .421 36-45 years 51 4.04 .666 46-55 years 45 4.16 .517 55 years and above 21 3.91 .541 total 191 4.08 .595 mental development 26-35 yearsa 74 3.26 .962 3.859 .010 36-45 yearsb 51 3.72 .852 a-b 46-55 years 45 3.68 .783 55 years and above 21 3.72 .869 total 191 3.53 .903 source: independent variable: attitude for sport. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 589-594 592 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the investigation of table 3; although the average attitude of men towards sports (x = 3.93) was higher than that of women, the difference was not statistically significant. the difference between the participants' psychosocial development, physical development and mental development sub-dimensions and gender variable was not considered statistically significant (p>0.05). in table 4, the attitudes of the academicians in the study towards sports are between their lower dimensions and the age level variable, those between the age of 26-35 in the subdimension of mental development and those between the ages of 36-45 the difference is significant (p<0.05). difference in other sub-dimensions was not considered statistically significant. table-5. comparison of the sub-dimensions of the attitude scale towards sports with a sports participation axis. sub-dimensions status of regularly exercise n x ss t p psychosocial development no 88 3.85 .470 -3.004 .003 yes 103 4.10 .632 physical development no 88 4.11 .562 .758 .449 yes 103 4.05 .623 mental development no 88 3.36 .819 -2.395 .018 yes 103 3.67 .949 source: dependent variable: attitude for sport. in table 5 was examined, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the participants' psychosocial development and mental development sub-dimensions and the exercise status variable (p<0.05). the difference in the physical development sub-dimension was not considered statistically significant. table-6. comparison of the sub-dimensions of the attitude scale towards sports with a title axis. sub-dimensions title n x ss f p tukey psychosocial development research asistantb 44 4.13 .613 4.237 .003 lecturera 44 3.69 .545 phd academic memberc 38 4.03 .463 a-b,c,d,e associate professord 43 4.03 .566 professore 22 4.12 .587 total 191 3.98 .575 physical development research asistantb b 44 4.20 .558 4.563 .002 lecturera 44 3.83 .613 phd academic member 38 3.93 .720 a-b,c associate professorc 43 4.25 .469 professor 22 4.22 .403 total 191 4.08 .595 mental development research asistantb 44 3.51 .864 7.291 .000 lecturera 38 2.99 .902 phd academic memberc 43 3.61 .833 a-b,c,d,e associate professord 22 3.81 .831 professore 191 3.98 .761 total 44 3.53 .903 source: independent variable: attitude for sport. in table 6 when the attitudes of the academicians participating in the study were examined in the subdimensions and title level variable, those who were lecturers of the title of psychosocial development and the title research assistant, phd academic member, there was a statistically significant difference between associate professors and professors. there has been a statistically significant difference between those who are lecturers of the title of physical development sub-dimension and those whose title is research assistant and associate professor. there has been a statistically significant difference between those who are lecturers of the title in the subdimension of mental development and those who are research assistants, phd academic member, associate professors and professors (p<0.05). table-7. comparison of the sub-dimensions of the attitude scale towards sports on the axis of the working year. sub-dimensions academic study year n x ss f p tukey psychosocial development up to 10 years 152 3.95 .611 1.089 .355 10-20 years 106 3.91 .525 21-30 years 82 4.11 .594 31 years and above 42 4.04 .518 total 382 3.98 .575 physical development up to 10 years 152 4.08 .584 1.803 .148 10-20 years 106 3.98 .673 21-30 years 82 4.25 .507 31 years and above 42 3.99 .551 total 382 4.08 .595 mental development up to 10 years a 152 3.25 .873 5.653 .001 10-20 years 106 3.57 .838 21-30 yearsb 82 3.82 1.008 a-b,c 31 years and abovec 42 3.92 .623 total 382 3.53 .903 independent variable: attitude for sport. https://tureng.com/tr/turkce-ingilizce/academic%20member https://tureng.com/tr/turkce-ingilizce/associate%20professor asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 589-594 593 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in table 7 when the attitudes of the academicians participating in the study were examined in the subdimensions of their attitudes towards sports and the variable of academic seniority, those with seniority levels up to 10 years in the mental development sub-dimension and those who had seniority of 21-30 years and 31 years there was a statistically significant difference between. the difference in other sub-dimensions was not considered statistically significant (p>0.05). 4. results 191 academicians participated in the study who works at firat university, which aims to determine the attitudes of academicians towards sports. more than half of academicians are men. as with other areas of business, the majority of men in the academic community is expected. the proportion of researchers and lecturers (23.0%) is higher than other title holders. those who hold the title of professor are represented at the lowest rate at 11.5%. when the academic year of academicians is examined, it is observed that 39.8% of them have work years between 0-10 years, 27.7% have work years between 10-20 years, 21.5% have 21-30 years and 11% have 31 years or more. it was determined that 53.9% of academicians participated regularly in one activity and 46.1% did not participate regularly in any sports activity. according to köksalan and tel (2008) study on faculty members, it was stated that 64.1% of the participants were always, frequently, occasionally actively involved in sports. similarly, in a different study that 200 academicians joined; 66% of academicians regularly participate in sports (atasever and çolak, 2019). in a different study, which investigated the regular participation of academicians in sports, 51.9% stated that they participated in sporting activities on a regular basis (uluoz et al., 2017). academicians' participation in sports is not expected in tukey, but the rate is not low. it was observed that the attitudes of academicians towards sports were as high as x = 3.93 in 1 to 5 scala. more than half of academicians regularly participate in sporting activity is related to the high attitude value. it should be noted that attitudes are shaped as a result of various activities transformed into habits. atalı and his colleagues in 2018, different faculty students' total attitude points averages for the sport has been determined x = 4.14 (atalı et al., 2018). attitudes towards sports were observed to not differ much in the sub-dimensions of the situation. it was observed that participation in regular sporting activity had a greater effect on physical development sub-dimension scores because the highest point average among the sub-dimension was in physical development (x =4.08). in comparing the gender-based sub-dimensions of the attitude scale of the academicians participating in the study; the difference between the participants' psychosocial development, physical development and mental development sub-dimensions and gender variable was not considered statistically significant. (keskin, 2015), bostancı et al. (2005), efek et al. (2018), balyan et al. (2012) which was in parallel with our study, stated that there is no statistically significant difference between gender variable and attitude towards sports in their studies. in addition, atalay (2016) have conducted studies on university students that gender variance is not a decisive factor in attitude towards sports (atalay, 2016). however, chung and phillips (2002) said that female students' attitudes towards sports were higher than male students in their work on students' attitudes towards physical education. similarly, in the studies conducted by türkmen et al. (2016) on university students, it is stated that gender is a decisive factor in attitude towards sports (türkmen et al., 2016). the study of university students stated that gender is decisive in attitude towards sports and in favor of men (efek, 2019). when the average scores of the academicians participating in the study from the sub-dimensions of attitude scale towards sports were examined according to age groups; there was a statistically significant difference those between the age of 26-35 and those between the age of 36-45 years of age in the lower dimension of mental development. difference in other sub-dimensions was not considered statistically significant. academicians between the ages of 36-45 have higher attitude scores for sports than academics between the ages of 26 and 35. it is observed that the attitudes of younger academicians towards sports are lower in proportion to academicians whose score averages are higher than those who are older in all sub-dimensions. in a study that contrasted with our study, türkmen et al. (2016) found no significant difference between students' attitudes towards sports and age in the study of sports attitudes for university students. turkmen and friends’ study on university students, it can be said that the students differ with our work due to the lack of their own economic freedom and the lack of age range. when the comparison of the sub-dimensions of the attitude scale of the academicians participating in the study on the axis of the state of sports is examined; there was a statistically significant difference between the participants' psychosocial development and mental development sub-dimensions and the exercise status variable. the difference in the physical development sub-dimension was not considered statistically significant. however, atalı and his friends in their work; university students who play sports and do not play sports have stated that there is no significant difference between their attitude sub-dimensions (atalı et al., 2018). it is observed that academicians who do exercise have higher attitude scores towards sports than academics who do not exercise. in a study similar to our study, singh and devi (2013) examined students' attitudes towards sports. as a result of the study, they found that students who played sports had a high attitude score than students who did not play sports. as a result of the study, they found that students who do exercises had a high attitude score than students who did not do exercises. we can also say that the reason for this is that the individuals who do exercises are aware of the mental, physical and psychological contributions of sports and that the individuals who do not do exercises are not in this consciousness. when the academicians participating in the study were examined according to the comparison of the lower dimensions of the attitude scale towards sports with a title axis; there was a statistically significant difference between those who were lecturers of the sub-dimension of psychosocial development and those whose title was research assistant, phd faculty member, associate professor and professor. there has been a statistically significant difference between those who are lecturers of the title of physical development sub-dimension and those whose title is research assistant and associate professor. there has been a statistically significant difference between those who are faculty lecturers of the title in the sub-dimension of mental development and those who are research assistants, phd faculty members, associate professors and professors. when the attitude scores for sports are examined, it is seen that the attitude scores of the lecturers have lower scores in all the sub-dimensions compared to other titles. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 589-594 594 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the reason for this is that the majority of the lecturers in our surveys are non-sports and the situation of doing exercise directly affects attitude scores towards sports, so the lecturers can be told that attitude scores are low. when the academicians participating in the study were examined according to the comparison of the attitude scale of the academics on the axis of the academic study year; there was a statistically significant difference between those with seniority levels up to 10 years in the sub-dimension of mental development and those with seniority of 21-30 years and 31 years above. the difference in other sub-dimensions was not considered statistically significant. when attitude scores for sports in the sub-dimension of mental development are examined, the attitude scores of academicians who have not completed 10 years in academic working years are lower than those of academics with more academic year scores. the reason for this is that being new in the profession is due to their ability to learn and develop the profession, and at the same time because academicians who are just starting the profession are constantly trying to rise up in academic titles, they are not able to devote time to sports. it can also be said that it is. academicians working in firat university faculties and colleges; it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in attitudes towards sports depending on age, title, sports status and academic study year variable. according to the gender variable, when we look at the attitudes of academicians towards sports, it is observed that there is no statistically significant difference. in line with the study findings, the attitude scores of academicians working in firat university faculties and colleges towards sports with an average of x = 3.98 in the sub-dimension of psychosocial development and x = 4.08 in the physical development sub-dimension levels were observed to be high. in the sub-dimension of mental development, it was observed that the attitude levels towards sports were above average with an average of x = 3.53. young people who are educated by academicians working in universities will form the professional groups of our future. sports are an indispensable element of society. academicians’ attitudes towards sports are very important. instructors are among the people who need to be looked up to for students. academicians' attitudes towards sports benefit them physically and mentally, students will also be indirectly affected by this contribution. when studies that are similar to our study are examined, the sample of the studies is generally based on the students and since there are no studies in terms of the attitudes of academicians towards sports, the academicians have been implemented. for this reason, it is thought that our study on academicians will contribute to sports psychologists, academicians, sports experts and sports science. references akyol, b., k. yılmaz, b. çavuş and v. aksoy, 2018. the problems of higher education ın turkey according to the views of academician administrators. turkish studies educational sciences, 13(11): 111-131.available at: 10.7827/turkishstudies. atalay, a., 2016. the analysis on sport attitudes of students at high school education in turkey. educational research and reviews, 11(5): 194-203.available at: https://doi.org/10.5897/err2015.2613. atalı, l., m. uzuner, e. çolak and b. bayazıt, 2018. examination of the attitudes of the students who are related to sports from different faculties towards sport kocaeli university example. journal of social and humanities sciences research, 5(30): 4428-4434. atasever, t. and e. çolak, 2019. the investigatıon of expectations and opinions about recreations and sporty habits of the academic staff at university of kocaeli. journal of sport and recreation researches, 1(1): 21-34. balyan, m., b.k. yerlikaya and o. kiremitçi, 2012. attitude towards the physical education course of primary 2nd grade students of different sporting activities. effects on social skills and self-sufficiency levels. selçuk university journal of physical education and sport science, 14(2): 196–201. bostancı, h., g. demirhan and y. bulca, 2005. in: comparison of primary school students’ attitude toward physical education lesson. the 46’th ichper*sd anniversary world congress, november, istanbul no.186187. chung, m. and d.a. phillips, 2002. the relationship between attitude toward physical education and leisure-time exercise in high school students. physical educator, 59(3): 126-138. demirhan, g. and f. altay, 2001. 2. attitude scale of 1st grade high school students on physical education and sports. journal of sports science, 12(2): 9-20. efek, e., 2019. examining the relationship between the moral development levels of duzce university students who study in different faculties and sports and their attitudes towards sports. journal of social and humanities sciences research, 6(43): 2967-2975. efek, e., ö. sivirikaya and r. sadık, 2018. investigation of the students relations between moral levels and sports attitudes in university of sports science. journal of social and humanities sciences research, 5(30): 4428-4434. kağıtçıbaşı, ç., 2013. nowadays human and human beings: introduction to social psychology. istanbul: evrim yayınevi. karahuseyinoglu, m.f., 2012. turkish sports on a global axis. kum saati yayınları. pp: 43, istanbul. keskin, ö., 2015. examining the attitudes of middle school students to physical education courses according to some variables: sample of the sakarya province. the thesis of the master. university of sakarya. koçak, f., 2014. undergraduate students’s attitudes towards sport: a scale development study. spormetre journal of physical education and sports sciences, 12(1): 59-69. köksalan, b. and m. tel, 2008. sociological examination of sports activities of faculty members sample of eastern anatolia. ph.d. thesis fırat university. elazığ. singh, n.p., g.e. fraser, s.f. knutsen, k.d. lindsted and h.w. bennett, 2001. validity of a physical activity questionnaire among africanamerican seventh-day adventists. journal of medicine and science in sport and exercise, 33(3): 468-475.available at: https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-200103000-00021. singh, r.c. and k.s. devi, 2013. attitude of higher secondary level student towards games and sports. international journal of physical education, fitness and sports, 2(4): 80-85.available at: https://doi.org/10.26524/13421. türkel, h., 2010. examining the relationship between the level of participation of primary school students in sportive activity and social cohesion and communication skills. unpublished ph.d. thesis erciyes university. kayseri. türkmen, m., y. abdurahimoğlu, s. varol and m. gökdağ, 2016. the attitudes of the students attending to faculty of islamic sciences towards sports [the sample of bartın university]. international journal of contemporary educational studies, 2(1): 48-59. uluoz, e., c.y. yılmaz and z.f. dinç, 2017. examination of the participation status of academicians working in different faculties in physical activity. international journal of cultural and social research, 3(special issue 2): 326-336. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 664 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 664-670, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.664.670 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the reading aloud speeds of the secondary school students gulsah mete assistant professor, department of turkish education, educational sciences institute, karamanoglu mehmetbey university, turkey. abstract having a critical role in both academic and social lives, reading fast and comprehension are necessary skills for today’s individuals. the factors affecting these skills of adolescent learners are needed to examine. with an intention to provide significant results to the literature, this study aimed to examine if there is a difference between the secondary school students’ reading aloud speeds and the variations as the type of the text, their gender, and their classroom levels. 40 students, of whom were 20 girls and 20 boys, from a secondary school attended to the study. they varied across the classroom levels as well. accordingly, 10 of those students were 5th, 10 of them were 6th, 10 of them were 7th, and 10 of them were 8th graders. in order to collect data, a narrative text (a story) and an informative text (an essay) were utilized to test the students’ reading aloud speeds. the findings were obtained through the standard deviation calculations. accordingly, the study revealed that the reading speeds of the secondary school students change according to the text type, their gender and classroom levels. key words: reading, reading fast, reading aloud speed, factors affecting reading speed, story, essay. citation | gulsah mete (2020). examining the reading aloud speeds of the secondary school students. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 664-670. history: received: 26 october 2020 revised: 16 november 2020 accepted: 27 november 2020 published: 10 december 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 665 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 666 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 667 4. discussion and results ................................................................................................................................................................. 669 5. implications..................................................................................................................................................................................... 669 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 669 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.664.670&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2427 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0979-1630 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 664-670 665 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining if there is a difference between the secondary school students’ reading aloud speeds and the variations as the type of the text, their gender, and their classroom levels. 1. introduction reading is an action carried out to be able to gain knowledge. reading which is a language skill utilized by physical and mental components has been defined differently: while according to ozdemir (1990) reading skill is a mental activity ensuring the comprehension and interpretation of the printed words, it is the vocalization of the written and printed symbols compliance with certain rules according to rozan (1982) and sever (2004). whereas (harris & sipay, 1990) have defined reading skill as the interpretation of the written language in a meaningful way, smith and dechant (1961) have pointed out that reading is the process embodying the recognition and perception of the cognitive interpretation process. to sum up, reading skill is a physical and a mental process comprising the perception, understanding, comprehension and interpretation. reading skill enabling the comprehension skills of human beings has been acquired at the start of primary school. in the primary school years, reading strategies such as reading aloud, reading silently, timed reading are applied to increase the speed of reading skill. on the other hand, it is known that the process of gaining knowledge through reading has been intensified since 4th grade, and consequently more efficient reading and comprehension practices are common in use. also, improving reading skill practices are proceeded in secondary school. in the 5th grade, reading aloud must be followed at one-third in ratio and this ratio should be decreased in the following grades (aytaş, 2005). both reading fast and comprehending what has been read are necessary skills today’s individuals should have, which is an essential factor enabling students’ achievement in not only social but also academic lives. students, who read fast, comprehend correctly, interpret and use the language efficiently as well as with a rich variety of vocabulary, learn more easily in every field and achieve at steady and highest levels. reading aloud can be defined as the vocalization of perceived and comprehended words or phrases according to their semantic and phonetic features through speaking organs as well as reading a written material to the audience within a hearing tone (aktas & gündüz, 2002; oz, 2011). reading aloud which is pronouncing the vocabulary aloud while reading a text has a pivotal role in one’s both daily and academic lives. reading aloud is known as an important reading strategy in the acquisition of reading with fluency skills (okur, 2013; yılmaz, 2018). particularly it underpins the first reading and writing practices during the primary school years. reading aloud practices are implemented for the reasons which are to determine students’ reading improvements, to ensure students acquire a standard speaking skill, to build a foundation for reading silently and to develop students’ interpersonal skills. in reading aloud, it is essential to maintain students pronounce correctly and read with fluency. it also contributes to the improvement of students’ speaking skills. reading with accuracy compliance with pronunciation rules have great contributions to speaking with accuracy and proficiency as well (cifci, 2000; ozbay, 2009). it is vital to read the material compliance with the characteristics of language as well as with accuracy in reading aloud. how great attention is given to speaking, reading needs that much attention also. in reading aloud, listeners are also motivated and enjoy. some complex ideas and feelings can be understood easily through engagement with reading aloud also. at the same time, the language of the text read, its easiness to understand and fluency give enjoyment to listeners, which contributes to students’ listening skill improvement and helps them become a good listener (kavcar, 1995). according to güneş (2007), reading aloud generates the functions of the brain’s several parts. therefore, it has many effects on the improvement of students’ language skills and their mental activities. the studies indicate that students should engage in reading a text aloud once a day at least. reading aloud has several benefits: the student who reads aloud gives attention to reading, concentrates on reading, comprehends better and interprets, which eventually increases the student’s confidence and builds selfcontrol over his/her reading and comprehension as well as self-guidance. besides, some activities about the text read aloud help students comprehend the text better and improve their speaking skills. some activities such as pointing out the feelings and ideas of the text differently, acting the text out, dramatizing it, using facial expressions and gestures in reading can be done. students at all school levels (primary, secondary and even high school) should be encouraged to read aloud frequently. since both eyes and ears are active in reading aloud, it increases the comprehension and assists learning besides memorization to occur swiftly (aktas & gündüz, 2002; beyreli, çetindağ, & celepoğlu, 2010; lane & wright, 2007). there are some concerns needed to be taken in reading aloud: after the education of literacy, students should not be allowed to use their body language such as hand, arm, and head movements inappropriately. students should be encouraged not to use their local dialects in reading and speaking. teacher should introduce the correct and appropriate intonation in reading aloud, and also s/he should use turkish language efficiently while reading aloud as a model. the texts to be read should not include unknown vocabulary as much as possible. before reading aloud, adequate time should be given to students so that they can comprehend the text easily and they should be allowed to read it silently at first. teacher reading aloud not only becomes a role-model but also helps them focus on the text, and consequently enables them to enjoy the text, which has been read effectively. teacher should present the ideas and feelings in the text by dramatizing it and motivating students. by doing this, student recognizes and comprehends the ideas and feelings in the text easily. the needed feedback on student’s reading should be given after s/he finishes reading. moreover, students’ vocabulary should be enriched through reading aloud strategy (celik, 2006; yılmaz, 2018). according to maviş (2005) reading speed is a specific unit of time which is the between the start of read a text with comprehension and finishing it. the common technique to test reading speed is the number of the word per minute read with comprehension. reading fast, which is reading more words with comprehension in a specific unit of time, is needed because of the reasons such as accommodating ourselves to the world, catching up with the improvements, and having achievements etc. reading fast can be influenced by the factors such as the type of the text, the purpose of reading, language and mental developments or physical environment etc. (akyol, 2013; kurudayıoğlu & soysal, 2015; ozbay, 2009).the typical reading rate is 150 words per minute (korkmaz, 2008). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 664-670 666 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group additionally, according to gray (1975), student increases his/her rate in the first three years after acquiring literacy. this rate can rise from 60 wpm to 160 wpm. however, reading aloud rate might decrease in the following years. as stated by baştuğ and akyol (2012), the reading rate is obtained through the following steps: the total number of words per minute read by a student is calculated and the number of mispronounced words is subtracted from the total number. consequently, the number of words read correctly by students is detected. reading fast is as important as reading with accuracy, which is a prerequisite for reading with fluency and reading comprehension. on the other hand, akçamete (1999) points out that it is not so effective to detect only the number of letters or words per minute for reading rate. to test the reading rate, the followings below should be regarded: • the time of the start is noted down before reading aloud. • the text is read. • the time of finishing the text is also written down. the duration is indicated by seconds. • the number of words in the text is divided by the duration of reading, and the reading rate is calculated. the result is multiplied by 60. • the result of the multiplication is the number of words per minute. the factors affecting the reading rate can be listed as follows (ruşen, 2016): • the easiness or sophistication of the text to be read, • the reader’s vocabulary knowledge, • the readiness and cultural level of the reader, • the reader’s reading comprehension skills, • the reader’s eye health and his/her education for improving eye movements. however, the factors affecting the reading rate negatively can be arrayed as follows (dilligil, 2004; imrak, 2006; kondu, 2008): • reading with a high-pitched tone and subvocalization, • reading the words one by one or reading with syllabification, • focusing on details and regression, • reading passively, • the anxiety of not comprehending the text when read fast. • lack of education on eye movements, • cultural background, lack of grammar or vocabulary education, • concentration problems. according to baran (2008) those students who are able to read fast have the qualifications below: • they have the habit of reading. • the students with a habit of reading have a rich vocabulary knowledge, express themselves efficiently, and interact with effective communication. • they have adequate time for not only their assignments but also other activities as they read fast. • since they read fast and comprehend, they solve more problems not only for the preparation of the exams but also in the exams, which increases their self-confidence. • the students with reading fast skills live achievements consistently in their both academic and social lives. in order to increase students’ reading speeds, first of all, it is required that students should gain a habit of reading. teaching how to use their eye movements, they can expand their focal range. they are supported with the practices and the materials such as books, texts etc. regarding the reading purpose. 2. method 2.1. research design the study adopted the case study from qualitative methods. the case study is a design in which an in-depth analysis of a case or an event in its natural setting is developed and the data is collected in a systematic way (davey, 2009; yıldırım & simşek, 2013). the results obtained through the case study indicate the reasons why that case or event has occurred in that way as well as the considerations to be taken in further studies. 2.2. the aim of the study this study has aimed to understand if there is a significant difference between the secondary school students’ reading speeds and the variations as the type of the text, their gender, and their classroom levels. in order to address this aim, the followings have been intended to reach in the study: • to determine the 5th, 6th , 7th and 8th graders’ number of words per minute in reading texts in the forms of story and essay. • to determine if the secondary school students’ reading aloud speeds change according to. • the text in the form of a story. • the text in the form of an essay. • the students’ gender. • the students’ classroom levels. 2.3. data collection the participants of the study were 40 students from mehmet akpınar secondary school during the fall of the 2018-2019 academic years, of whom were 20 girls and 20 boys. they varied across the classroom levels as well. so, 10 of those students were 5th, 10 of them were 6th, 10 of them were 7th, and 10 of them were 8th graders. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 664-670 667 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.4. the instruments the narrative and informative texts utilized in the study were selected from the texts used in the secondary school course books regarding the average word numbers they included. the texts in the turkish course books were reviewed in order to determine the texts to be implemented in the study. an informative text and a narrative one, which are used in all the classroom levels, were selected, and then, it was consulted to two turkish teachers for their expert opinions. by regarding the expert opinions, these texts were decided to use in the study. accordingly, the narrative text in the form of a story named as “emine teyze’nin çilek reçeli” and the informative text in the form of an essay named as “güler yüz” were utilized in the study. the data of the study were gathered in the turkish courses by the researcher, in which each student read aloud the texts one by one. the researcher used a timer for a minute, and she recorded the student’s reading. after that, the researcher examined the recordings, and she measured the number of words per minute read correctly by each student. 2.5. data analysis the findings on the changes between the reading aloud rate of the participants and the variations as the type of the text, gender and classroom levels were obtained by measuring the standard deviations. after obtaining the students’ wpm scores, the researcher displayed them in the tables by considering the type of the text, gender and classroom levels. then, interpretation and discussions on these tables have been presented. 3. findings 3.1. the wpm scores of the girls and boys in the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades in the story and essay. table-1. the wpm scores of the girls and boys in the 5th grade in the story and essay. 5 th grade the wpm scores in the story the wpm scores in the essay girls 1. 103 118 2. 140 148 3. 120 121 4. 108 145 5. 108 108 boys 1. 138 134 2. 136 142 3. 99 91 4. 122 122 5. 94 79 according to the table 1, the highest wpm score of the girls in the 5th grade is 140 in the story while the lowest score is 103. regarding the essay, the girls’ highest wpm score is 148 and the lowest score is 108. the girls in 5th grade have scored the highest wpm in the essay compared to the story. the boys’ highest wpm score is 138 in the story, and the lowest wpm score is 94. on the other hand, in the essay, the highest wpm score is 142 and the lowest wpm is 79. hence, the boys in the 5th grade have read more words correctly in the essay compared to the ones in the story. these findings indicate that both the girls and boys in the 5th grade have read more words correctly in the essay. table-2. the wpm scores of the girls and boys in the 6th grade in the story and essay. 6thgrade the wpm scores in the story the wpm scores in the essay girls 1. 104 137 2. 130 140 3. 106 114 4. 135 161 5. 109 134 boys 1. 109 134 2. 138 161 3. 113 121 4. 111 108 5. 130 131 as seen in the table 2, in the story, the highest wpm score of the girls in the 6th grade is 135 and the lowest score is 104. in the essay, the highest score is 161 and the lowest wpm is 114. the girls in the 6th grade have read more words correctly in the essay compared to the story. the boys in the 6th grades have scored the highest as 138 wpm while the lowest as 109 wpm in the story. in the essay, the highest wpm score is 161 and 108 is the lowest wpm. as similar to the girls, they have read more words correctly in the essay compared to the story. according to these findings, the girls and boys at the 6th grade have read more words in the essay. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 664-670 668 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. the wpm scores of the girls and boys in the 7th grade in the texts in story and essay. 7th grades the wpm scores in the story the wpm scores in the essay girls 1. 172 182 2. 154 175 3. 157 161 4. 177 169 5. 170 154 boys 1. 140 96 2. 101 102 3. 156 183 4. 115 114 5. 119 95 according the table 3, in the story, the highest wpm score of the girls in the 7th grade is 177 and the lowest score is 154. in the essay, the highest score is 182 and the lowest wpm is 154. the girls in the 7th grade have read more words correctly in the essay compared to the story. the boys have scored the highest as 156 wpm while the lowest as 101 wpm in the story. in the essay, the highest wpm score is 183 and 96 is the lowest wpm. as similar to the girls, the boys in the 7th grade have read more words correctly in the essay compared to the story. according to these findings, the girls and the boys in the 7th grade have read more words in the essay. table-4. the wpm scores of the girls and boys in the 8th grade in the story and essay. 8th grades the wpm scores in the story the wpm scores in the essay girls 1. 111 122 2. 138 158 3. 145 141 4. 120 133 5. 113 133 boys 1. 157 159 2. 107 108 3. 142 127 4. 157 154 5. 143 139 according the table 4, in the story, the highest wpm score of the girls in the 8th grade is 145 and the lowest score is 113. in the essay, the highest wpm is 158 and the lowest wpm is 122. the girls in the 8th grade have read more words correctly in the essay compared to the story. the boys have scored the highest as 157 wpm while the lowest as 107 wpm in the story. in the essay, the highest wpm score is 159 and 108 is the lowest wpm. as similar to the girls, the boys in the 8th grade have read more words correctly in the essay compared to the story. according to these findings, the girls and boys in the 8th grade have read more words correctly in the essay. 3.2. the average wpm scores of the secondary school students according to the type of the text and their gender. table-5. the average wpm scores of the secondary school students according to the type of the text and their gender. girls (the average wpm score) boys (the average wpm score) story essay story essay 5. 115.8 128 117.8 113.6 6. 116.8 137.2 120.2 131 7. 166 168.2 126.2 118 8. 125.4 137.4 141.2 137 according to the table 5, in the story, the average wpm scores of the girls in the 5th, 6th and 7th grades tend to rise, there is a fall in the 8th grade compared to the wpm scores in the 7th grade. on the other hand, in the essay, the girls’ average wpm scores appear to be rising from 5th to 8thgrade. there seems to be a difference between the average wpm scores of the girls and the type of the text, and the tendency of rising in the essay has not been detected in the story. as seen in the table 5, while reading the story, a rising in the average wpm scores of the boys from 5th to 8 grades has been detected. in the essay, the average wpm scores have risen in 5th, 6th and 8th grades, however, there is a fall in the 7th grade. there appears to be a difference between the average wpm scores of the boys and the type of the text, and the rising in the average wpm score in the story has not been detected in the essay. shortly, the table 5 displays the difference between the average wpm scores and the types of the text. the rise in the girls’ average wpm scores while reading the essay have not been detected in reading the story, which is quite opposite considering the boys’ average wpm scores. the boys’ average wpm scores have risen in the story, however, any rise has not been observed in the essay. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 664-670 669 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.3. the average wpm scores of the secondary school students according to their classroom levels. table-6. the average wpm scores of the secondary school students according to their classroom levels. classroom levels the average wpm scores in the story the average wpm scores in the essay 5. 116.8 120.8 6. 118.5 134.1 7. 146.1 143.1 8. 133.3 137.2 according to the table 6, the average wpm scores of the secondary school students appear to be rising in the 5th, 6th and 7th grades considering both of two text types. however, there seems to be a fall in the 8th grader’s average wpm scores. 4. discussion and results this study has aimed to investigate if there is a difference between the secondary school students’ reading speeds and the type of the text, their gender, and their classroom levels. in order to address this aim, the study was conducted and the following results have been obtained: both the girls and boys in the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades have read more words correctly in the essay. the girls’ wpm scores have indicated a difference considering the type of the text and the rising tendency in the essay has not been detected in the story. on the other hand, by indicating a difference between the boys’ wpm scores and the type of the text, the rise in the story has not been detected in the essay. consequently, there is a difference between the secondary school students’ reading speeds and the type of the text. the girls’ average wpm scores have risen in the essay, but any rise has not been observed in the story, which is quite opposite regarding the boys’ average wpm scores. the boys’ average wpm scores have risen in the story however, any rise has not been detected in the essay. considering the classroom levels, a rising in the wpm scores of 5th, 6th, and 7th graders has been seen in the both of the text types, but 8th graders’ wpm scores have fallen compared to the previous class level. whereas 5th graders’ highest wpm score is 116 in the essay, and 120 in the story, the 8th graders have scored 137 in the essay and 133 in the story. by regarding these findings, the reading speed appears to be changing according to the classroom levels, which agrees with the results of the study named “determination of reading comprehension levels of fourth grade students in terms of some variable” by değirmenci gündoğmuş (2018). according to this study, it was found out that 4th graders read the informative texts in a shorter time than the narrative texts. moreover, in the study by blommers and lindquist (1954),there is a significant difference between the type of the text and the reading speed, and reading comprehension level. the reading speed has a tendency of fall in the informative texts, which disagrees with the result of this study. while the reading speed has increased depending on the classroom levels, it has decreased in the 8th grade by considering 7th grade. in their study on the reading speed, stanovich, nathan, and zolman (1988) state that the reading speed has a tendency in rising with the chronological age and particularly in the 5th grade, this occurs faster. on the other hand, carver (1989) points out that each individual has his/her own reading level however, the wpm increases about 10-20 words with the chronological age after acquiring the literacy. in this study, the average wpm scores have increased in the 5th, 6th and 7th grades. although this finding seems to have an agreement with the studies mentioned earlier, there is a fall in the wpm scores of the 8th graders, and this result disagrees with the studies. the boys’ average wpm scores in the informative and narrative texts have indicated a change considering the classroom levels in contrast with the girls. the girls’ wpm scores in the informative text are higher than the boys’. similarly, armut and türkyılmaz. (2017) have revealed that the variation as the gender has an impact on the students’ reading with fluency. another study by armut (2017) has indicated that the girls outperform the boys in reading with fluency. these studies support the result of the study. nevertheless, not only (sahin, 2011) but also keskin (2012) have reached that the gender does not have any impact on the reading speed and reading with accuracy. this study’s result disagrees with these studies indicating the variation of the gender’s no an impact role. as a conclusion, the study has concluded that there is a difference between the secondary school students’ reading speeds and the type of the text, their gender and their classroom levels. 5. implications this study might be conducted with different students at primary, high school and university by using different kinds of texts. the further studies on the reasons of the decrease in the 8th graders’ wpm scores might be examined. the activities to increase the students’ wpm scores can be done. in order to encourage students to achieve reading aloud effectively, more example reading activities by the classroom and turkish can be suggested. additionally, listening as well as reading aloud activities on literal texts can be done. references akçamete, g. (1999). effective and speed reading: “how can we improve reading? ankara: aydoğdu offset. aktas, s., & gündüz, o. (2002). written and verbal expression. ankara: akçağ publications. akyol, h. (2013). turkish teaching methods (3rd ed.). ankara: pegema publishing. armut, m. (2017). investigation of secondary school students' fluent reading skills in terms of various variables (yozgat city example). master's thesis, ahi evran university / institute of social sciences, kırşehir. armut, m., & türkyılmaz., m. (2017). examining fluent reading skills of secondary school students in terms of various variables. ahi evran university kırşehir faculty of education journal, 18(3), 348-375. aytaş, g. (2005). reading education. turkish journal of educational sciences, 3(4), 461-470. baran, z. (2008). speed-reading. izmir: bilgivizyon publications. baştuğ, m., & akyol, h. (2012). fluent reading skills predict reading comprehension. journal of theoretical educational science, 5(4), 394-411. beyreli, l., çetindağ, z., & celepoğlu, a. (2010). written and verbal expression. ankara: pegem academy publishing. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 664-670 670 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group blommers, p. j., & lindquist, e. f. (1954). rate of comprehension of reading: its measurement and its relationship to comprehension. the journal of educational psychology, 35(8), 449-473. carver, r. p. (1989). silent reading rates in grade equivalents. journal reading bhovior, 21(2), 155-166. celik, c. e. (2006). a comparison between reading aloud and silent reading and reading through it. d.ü. ziya gökalp faculty of education journal, 7(july), 18-30. cifci, m. (2000). reading out loud. bilge magazine, 24, 178-183. davey, l. (2009). the application of case study evaluations. (translator: tuba gökçek). elementary educatıon online, 8(2), 1-3. değirmenci gündoğmuş, h. (2018). determining the reading comprehension levels of primary school fourth grade students according to various variables. social sciences studies journal, 4(15), 738-743. dilligil, i̇. r. (2004). fast reading and comprehension techniques with its methods (2nd ed.). ankara: piramit publishing. gray, v. s. (1975). teaching reading and writing. ankara: meb publications. güneş, f. (2007). turkish teaching and mental structuring. ankara: nobel yayın distribution. harris, a. j., & sipay, e. r. (1990). how to increase reading ability (9th ed.). new york: longman. imrak, m. (2006). reading habits of famous people. istanbul: cıra publications. kavcar, c. (1995). turkish teaching. ankara: rekmay printing house. keskin, h. k. (2012). the effect of fluent reading methods on reading skills. unpublished doctoral thesis, gazi university / institute of educational sciences, ankara. kondu, c. 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(2018). teaching turkish in the light of new developments (2nd ed.). ankara: pegem a publishing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 426 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 426-432, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.426.432 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an examination of the athletic identities of high school students anil turkeli faculty of education erzincan binali yıldırım university, department of physical education and sports, erzincan, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to determine the athletic identities of elite student athletes engaging in individual and team sports in high schools. the study group consisted of 1034 elite student athletes, 302 female and 732 male. the mean age of the student athletes is 16.85 ± 1.87. descriptive scanning model was used in the study. personal information form and athletic identity questionnaire (aiq) were used to collect the data. in the analysis, first of all, the data were examined with spss22 to observe whether they showed normal distribution. afterwards, of the parametric tests, independent samples t-test, one way anova test and correlation analysis were used in the analysis of the collected data. in terms of individual and team sports student athletes, a significant difference was found in favor of individual student athletes in terms of total score of athletic identity and all sub-dimensions. as a result of the analysis, it was found that women student athletes, the ones who have athletic history in their families and national student athletes have a stronger athletic identity, and that the age of student athletes increases, the level of encouragement of the family decreases, in addition to this, it was concluded that student athletes doing individual sports, give more importance to their physical appearance, and the activity they do and feel more adequate when doing physical activities than team student athletes. keywords: high school, student athlete, individual, team, sport, athletic identity. citation | anil turkeli (2020). an examination of the athletic identities of high school students. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 426-432. history: received: 10 april 2020 revised: 14 may 2020 accepted: 17 june 2020 published: 23 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: this research was carried out in a whole season. a large number of student athletes engaged in individual and team sports participated in the research. the fact that sampling is strong and there are few studies about athletic identity in the literature increases the importance of this study. i would like to thank all our student athletes who contributed to this study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 427 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 427 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 428 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 431 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 432 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.426.432&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1747 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3961-7759 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1747 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3961-7759 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1747 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3961-7759 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 426-432 427 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature a large number of student athletes engaged in individual and team sports participated in the research. the fact that sampling is strong and there are few studies about athletic identity in the literature increases the importance of this study. 1. introduction sport has an important place in the formation of people's identities and the integration process of the individual with the society. a person adapts to the society through sports and guarantees his / her material and spiritual development through sports. identity is the fact of being who a person is and identifying oneself. identity, which covers all aspects of an individual, is related to how one sees oneself and how he is seen by the society. in daily life, individuals are recognized by themselves and others by their identities. in other words, the features that distinguish a person from other people are tried to be revealed by identity. since the social life of a person is understood by understanding who others are and who he is jenkins (2014). therefore, student athletes who adopt the sport as a lifestyle and do it at the top level form their athletic identity (horton & mack, 2000). athletic identity is defined as how much an individual cares about and considers himself as a student athlete and it is an element of individual's perception of sport-specific self aşçı, cetinkalp, and altıntaş (2014). in other words, the athletic identity, determined by the student athlete and affected by the environment, is an individual trait that is given importance and value by the individual (regular training, regular diet). the perception of sport identity is related to the extent to which the student athlete identifies himself with the sport. in addition, this perception is an important concept that affects the ways in which the student athlete copes with difficulties, action and decision-making processes (horton & mack, 2000). according to danish, a strong athletic identity is essential for success and high level performance in sport. it is stated that individuals with strong athletic identity are more willing to participate in sports and exercise activities than individuals with weak athletic identity and perceive themselves more positively in the field of sports (brewer, van raalte, & linder, 1993; lamont-mills & christensen, 2006). a strong athletic identity contributes to the development of skills, sporting performance, confidence, selfperception, body image, health, physical fitness and social communication (tasiemski, kennedy, gardner, & blaikley, 2004). while brewer, van raalte and linder considered sport identity as a competitor, sport-specific psychological structure, anderson considered athletic identity as a psychological structure specific to participation in exercise and physical activity as well as competition sports. recent research has shown that a strong athletic identity has even more important place in individuals' lives (watt & moore, 2001). student athletes with a strong athletic identity spend more time with their team mates and coaches and therefore they strengthen this identity much more (horton & mack, 2000). families, friends, coaches, teachers and the media can all support this identity. as a result, being a student athlete is of great psychological importance for a student athlete to gain an athletic identity (brewer et al., 1993). 2. method 2.1. research model in this study, descriptive scanning model is used in which the individual or object that is the subject of the research is tried to be defined within its own conditions and as it exists. in the research, questionnaire technique was used as data collection technique. the questionnaire, which is a systematic data collection technique, is applied in the form of asking questions to people who form a study group on a specific subject and collecting the necessary information from them (karasar, 2012). 2.2. research group the research group of the study consisted of 1034 elite student athletes in high schools, 302 female, 732 male, who engaged in individual and team sports in 2018-2019 season, were selected for easy individual sampling. the mean age of the student athletes was 16.85 ± 1.87. 2.3. data collection tools personal information form: the personal information form which was developed by the researcher consists of questions about the independent variables such as gender, educational status, age, age of being a licensed student athlete, national student athlete status, family income level and the status of having athletic background in family in order to gather information about the student athletes involved in the research. athletic identity questionnaire (aiq): aiq is a measurement tool which was developed by anderson, masse, and hergenroeder (2007) in order to evaluate the general sport identity of individuals in exercise, sports and physical activity environment and adapted to turkish by aşçı, cetinkalp, and altıntaş (2014). the scale consists of 40 items in which the judgments are made according to the 5-point evaluation step (1 = strongly disagree-5 = strongly agree) and includes four sub-dimensions: appearance (5 items; for example, i look fit as a person exercising; my body looks in shape), competence (6 items; e.g., i rely on my sporting skills), importance commitment (8 items; for example, i love exercise), and encouragement (21 items; for example, they encourage me to be physically active or to do exercise). the fourth sub-dimensions, “encouragement”, is evaluated as family support (7 items), friend support (7 items) and the support of teachers/other adults (7 items) in itself. 2.4. data collection process the data collection tools used in the study were applied to elite student athletes engaged in individual and team sports in 2018 and 2019 during the resting periods after obtaining the necessary permissions. participation in the study was based on the principle of volunteering. in addition, the purpose of the survey was explained to the participants before the survey and the necessary warnings were made by specifying the points to be considered. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 426-432 428 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the questionnaires collected were checked and incomplete or incorrectly filled questionnaires were not included in the study. 2.5. data analysis in the analysis of the data collected in the study, first of all, the data was examined to observe whether it showed normal distribution. afterwards, of the parametric tests, independent samples t-test, one way anova test and correlation analysis were used in the analysis of the collected data. significance level was taken as 0.05 in the study. 3. findings table-1. total scores and sub-dimensions results of aiq according to gender variable. gender n mean sd df t p appearance female 302 18,8576 4,25159 1032 ,866 ,387 male 732 19,1202 4,50921 competence female 302 24,8278 5,09545 1032 1,797 ,073 male 732 24,1503 5,67586 importance female 302 33,0430 6,77411 1032 2,005 ,045 male 732 32,0505 7,42211 encouragement from family female 302 27,3477 5,96237 1032 2,340 ,019 male 732 26,3251 6,55573 encouragement from best friends female 302 27,6523 6,40144 1032 ,860 ,390 male 732 27,2623 6,72843 encouragement from teachers/other adults female 302 29,2815 5,52406 1032 3,270 ,001 male 732 27,9358 6,20820 total female 302 161,0099 26,92891 1032 2,082 ,038 male 732 156,8443 30,15623 note: *p < 0,05. in table 1, no significant difference was found according to gender in sub-dimension of appearance (t(1032):,866; p>0,05). no significant difference was found according to gender in the sub-dimension of competence (t(1032):1,797; p>0,05).a significant difference was found in favor of female student athletes according to gender in the subdimension of importance (t(1032):2,005; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of female student athletes according to gender in the sub-dimension of encouragement from family (t(1032):2,340; p<0,05). no significant difference was found according to gender in the sub-dimension of encouragement from best friends (t(1032):,860; p>0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of female student athletes according to gender in the sub-dimension of encouragement from teachers/other adults (t(1032):3,270; p<0,05). no significant difference was found in the total score according to gender (t(1032):2,082; p>0,05). table-2. anova results according to education status variable. sum of squares df mean of squares f p appearance between groups 103,771 3 34,590 1,762 ,153 within groups 20215,271 1030 19,626 total 20319,042 1033 competence between groups 71,916 3 23,972 ,787 ,501 within groups 31390,745 1030 30,476 total 31462,662 1033 importance between groups 379,510 3 126,503 2,417 ,065 within groups 53912,660 1030 52,342 total 54292,170 1033 encouragement from family between groups 301,050 3 100,350 2,459 ,061 within groups 42039,604 1030 40,815 total 42340,655 1033 encouragement from best friends between groups 208,095 3 69,365 1,579 ,193 within groups 45252,559 1030 43,935 total 45460,655 1033 encouragement from teachers/other adults between groups 117,329 3 39,110 1,071 ,361 within groups 37628,872 1030 36,533 total 37746,201 1033 total between groups 1899,904 3 633,301 ,737 ,530 within groups 884855,257 1030 859,083 total 886755,162 1033 note: *p < 0,05. in table 2, no significant difference was found according to the education status in the sub-dimension of appearance (f(3,1030): 1,762; p>0,05). no significant difference was found according to the education status in the sub-dimension of competence (f(3,1030): ,787; p>0,05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 426-432 429 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group no significant difference was found according to education status in the sub-dimension of importance (f(3,1030):2,417; p>0,05). no significant difference was found according to educational status in the sub-dimension of encouragement from family (f(3,1030):2,459; p>0,05). no significant difference was found according to educational status in the sub-dimension of encouragement from best friends (f(3,1030): 1,579; p>0,05). no significant difference was found and other adults according to educational status in the sub-dimension of encouragement from teachers/other adults (f(3,1030): 1,071; p>0,05). no significant difference was found in the total score of the athletic identity according to the education status of the participants in anova analysis (f(3,1030): ,737; p>0,05). table-3. correlation results according to age variable. age appearance competence importance encouragement from family encouragement from best friends encouragement from teachers/other adults total age correlation 1 ,005 -,007 -,04 -,063* ,054 -,021 ,017 p ,868 ,830 ,149 ,042 ,081 ,505 ,576 n 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 in table 3, a significant negative correlation was found between age and encouragement from family at low level. table-4. sub-dimensions and total score results of aiq according to age of licensed student athlete variable. appearance competence importance encouragement from family encouragement from best friends encouragement from teachers/other adults total age of licensed student athlete pearson correlation ,115** ,073* ,057 ,064* ,069* ,033 ,082** sig. (2-tailed) ,000 ,019 ,069 ,038 ,027 ,291 ,009 n 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 in table 4, a significant positive correlation was found between age of being licensed student athlete and appearance, competence, encouragement from family, encouragement from best friends and total score at low level. table-5. sub-dimensions and total score results of aiq according to the status of being a national student athlete variable. status of being a national student athlete n mean sd df t p appearance yes 195 20,7538 3,73765 1031 6,091 ,000 no 838 18,6420 4,49274 competence yes 195 25,7641 4,65797 1031 4,010 ,000 no 838 24,0167 5,65514 importance yes 195 34,4103 5,89127 1031 4,476 ,000 no 838 31,8532 7,45380 encouragement from family yes 195 28,4974 5,50386 1031 4,588 ,000 no 838 26,1838 6,52224 encouragement from best friends yes 195 28,7436 5,51716 1031 3,215 ,001 no 838 27,0549 6,83458 encouragement from teachers/other adults yes 195 29,4769 5,67262 1031 2,964 ,003 no 838 28,0573 6,10259 total yes 195 167,6462 24,94763 1031 5,143 ,000 no 838 155,8079 29,80390 note: *p < 0,05. in table 5, a significant difference was found in favor of national student athletes according to the status of being a national student athlete in the sub-dimension of appearance (t(1031):,000; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of national student athletes according to the status of being a national student athlete in the sub-dimension of competence (t(1031):,000; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of national student athletes according to the status of being a national student athlete in the sub-dimension of importance (t(1031):,000; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of national student athletes according to the status of being a national student athlete in the sub-dimension of encouragement from family (t(1031):,000; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of national student athletes according to the status of being a national student athlete in the sub-dimension of encouragement from best friends (t(1031):,000; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of national student athletes according to the status of being a national student athlete in the sub-dimension of encouragement from teachers/other adults (t(1031):,000; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of national student athletes according to the status of being a national student athlete on the basis of total score t(1031):,000; p<0,05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 426-432 430 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. sub-dimensions and total score results of aiq according to family income level variable. appearance competence importance encouragement from family encouragement from best friends encouragement from teachers/other adults total family income level pearson correlation ,203** ,131** ,136** ,203** ,149** ,136** ,196** sig. (2tailed) ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 n 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 1034 in table 6, a low of level positive meaningful relation was found between the family income level and the subdimensions scores of appearance, competence, importance, encouragement from family, encouragement from best friends, encouragement from teachers/other adults and total score. table-7. sub-dimensions and total score results of aiq according to having an athletic background in family variable. having an athletic background in family n mean sd df t p appearance yes 409 19,9291 3,72556 1031 5,300 ,000 no 624 18,4535 4,75443 competence yes 409 25,6577 4,51579 1031 6,310 ,000 no 624 23,4824 5,93596 importance yes 409 33,9120 5,99363 1031 5,751 ,000 no 624 31,2997 7,80017 encouragement from family yes 409 28,5012 5,60336 1031 7,868 ,000 no 624 25,3862 6,59709 encouragement from best friends yes 409 28,5281 6,27786 1031 4,570 ,000 no 624 26,6170 6,76022 encouragement from teachers/other adults yes 409 29,4914 5,19196 1031 5,093 ,000 no 624 27,5561 6,43252 total yes 409 166,0196 23,42258 1031 7,271 ,000 no 624 152,7949 31,51477 note: *p < 0,05. in table 7, a significant difference was found in favor of those with athletic background in family in of appearance (t(1031):5,300; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of those with athletic background in family in sub-dimension of competence (t(1031):6,310; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of those with athletic background in family in sub-dimension of importance (t(1031):5,751; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of those with athletic background in family in sub-dimension of encouragement from family (t(1031):7,868; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of those with athletic background in family in sub-dimension of encouragement from best friends (t(1031):4,570; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of those with athletic background in family in sub-dimension of encouragement from teachers/other adults (t(1031):5,093; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of those with athletic background in family according to total score of athletic identity (t(1031): 7,271; p<0,05). table-8. sub-dimensions and total score results of aiq according to doing individual and team sports variable. n mean sd df t p appearance individual sports 311 19,6720 4,05707 1032 3,000 ,003 team sports 723 18,7732 4,56422 competence individual sports 311 26,1833 4,68303 1032 7,182 ,000 team sports 723 23,5588 5,66447 importance individual sports 311 34,4084 6,11269 1032 6,121 ,000 team sports 723 31,4509 7,51794 encouragement from family individual sports 311 27,2219 6,09645 1032 1,973 ,049 team sports 723 26,3665 6,51653 encouragement from best friends individual sports 311 28,4502 7,15338 1032 3,432 ,001 team sports 723 26,9142 6,34693 encouragement from teachers/other adults individual sports 311 29,1576 6,21166 1032 2,902 ,004 team sports 723 27,9723 5,94055 total individual sports 311 165,0932 25,39890 1032 5,123 ,000 team sports 723 155,0360 30,34376 note: *p < 0,05. in table 8, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 426-432 431 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a significant difference was found in favor of individual student athletes in terms of individual and team sports in the sub-dimension of appearance (t(1032): 3,000; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of individual student athletes in terms of individual and team sports in sub-dimension of competence (t(1032): 7,182; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of individual student athletes in terms of individual and team sports in the sub-dimension of importance (t(1032): 6,121; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of individual student athletes in terms of individual and team sports in the sub-dimension of encouragement from family (t(1032): 1,973; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of individual student athletes in terms of individual and team sports in the sub-dimension of encouragement from best friends (t(1032): 3,432; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of individual student athletes in terms of individual and team sports in the sub-dimension of encouragement from teachers/other adults (t(1032): 2,902; p<0,05). a significant difference was found in favor of individual student athletes in terms of individual and team sports according to total score of athletic identity (t(1032): 5,123; p<0,05). 4. conclusion and discussion as a result, no significant difference was found in the total score of athletic identity according to gender and education status. however, it has been determined that in the sub-dimensions of importance, encouragement from family and encouragement from teachers/other adults, there is a significant difference in favor of female student athletes. this result can be said that female student athletes do their job in a more serious and self-sacrificing way, taking into account the discourse of the people they care about in their immediate environment. when the related literature is examined, it is observed that the scores of the athletic identity do not differ according to the gender variable; in other words, being female or male is not a determinant in determining the level of athletic identity is in parallel with the results of the studies conducted by can and kaçay (2016); cetinkaya (2015); lantz and schroeder (1999); martin, adams-mushett, and smith (1995); murphy, petitpas, and brewer (1996); saraç and toprak (2017); senger (2017); yanar, kırandı, and yusuf (2017). in contrast to the results of many studies in the literature, in the study conducted by tasiemski et al. (2004) it was found that athletic identity scores differ significantly in favor of men. in the study results conducted by anderson., mâsse, zhang, coleman, and chang (2011) on children and adolescents results similar to the findings of our study were reached and found that the variables of gender and educational status do not have an impact on the identity of student athletes. while there was no significant relationship between the age of the participants and the total score of sport identity, a negative relationship was found in the sub-dimensions of encouragement from family at low level. it can be said that as the age of the student athletes increases, the level of encouragement from family decreases. that the result of athletic identity scores do not differ according to the age variable in the study of karakaş. (2017) on the student athletes between the ages of 16-28 and in the study of wiechman and williams (1997) on high school student athletes is consistent with the findings of this study. according to the age of being a licensed student athlete, a significant positive correlation was found in the total score and sub-dimensions of athletic identity at low level. as the age of individual and team student athletes’ being licensed student athletes increases, their athletic identities increase. when the literature examined, in the study of oregon (2010) any significant difference between the duration of schooling and the identity of student athletes during school years couldn’t be found. adler and adler (1991) on the other hand, indicate that with the advancement of student and sports experience, athletic identity will be strengthened. a significant relationship was determined in favor of national student athletes in total score and subdimensions of athletic identity. according to this result, national sportsmen have a higher level of athletic identity than non-national sportsmen. cetinkaya (2015) in his study on student athletes engaged in team sport, states that participants who are national team student athletes have lower identity levels than those who are not national team student athletes, but the difference is not significant. sellers and kuperminc (1997) stated that young student athletes take elite student athletes who play in the national team as role models in their study. the researchers concluded that this situation will contribute positively to the identity of the student athlete. we can consider this situation as a motivating factor for strengthening the identity of student athletes for young student athletes. a significant positive correlation was found in the total score and sub-dimensions of athletic identity at the level of family income at low level. as the family income level of the student athletes increases, so does their athletic identity. in the total score and sub-dimensions of the athletic identity, a significant relationship was found in favor of those with athletic background in family. the student athletes who have athletic background in their families have a strong athletic identity. student athletes with a strong athletic identity contribute to the development of skills, sporting performance, confidence, self-perception, body image, health, physical fitness and social communication. a significant difference was found in favor of individual sports in terms of total and subdimensions according to individual and team sports. it was concluded that student athletes doing individual sports, give more importance to their physical appearance, and the activity they do and feel more adequate when doing physical activities than team student athletes. there are not many studies on athletic identity and sports branches in the related literature. in the study conducted by cetinkaya. (2010) on student athletes-students, which is thought to be related to the results of this study, it was found that the athletic identities of the team student athletes were higher than the student athletes who do individual sports. this situation can be interpreted as the friendship environment and the social sharing in team sports support the identity much more. it can be argued that the prediction that the human being, as a social being, will tend to the values of the group she interacts with in the field of sports as in other fields. the prediction that the human, as a social being, will tend to the values of the group s/he interacts with in the field of sports as in other fields can be advocated. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 426-432 432 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references adler, p. a., & adler, p. (1991). backboards & blackboards: college athletics and role engulfment: columbia university press. anderson, c. b., masse, l. c., & hergenroeder, a. c. (2007). factorial and construct validity of the athletic identity questionnaire for adolescents. medicine and science in sports and exercise, 39(1), 59-69.available at: https://doi.org/10.1249/01.mss.0000241640.97972.71. anderson., c. b., mâsse, l. c., zhang, h., coleman, k. j., & chang, s. (2011). ethnic, gender, and bmi differences in athletic identity in children and adolescents. journal of physical activity and health, 8(2), 200-209.available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/jpah.8.2.200. aşçı, f. h., cetinkalp, z. k., & altıntaş, a. (2014). examining properties of the psychometric scale of the sportive identity scale. clinical journal of sports sciences in turkey, 6(2), 39-45. brewer, b. w., van raalte, j. l., & linder, d. e. 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(2017). determining the athlete identity and continuous sporting self confidence of university students engaging in basketball sports. turan-sam, 9(36), 757-767. tasiemski, t., kennedy, p., gardner, b. p., & blaikley, r. a. (2004). athletic identity and sports participation in people with spinal cord injury. adapted physical activity quarterly, 21(4), 364-378.available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/apaq.21.4.364. watt, s. k., & moore, i. j. l. (2001). who are student athletes? new directions for student services, 93, 7-18.available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.1. wiechman, s., & williams, j. (1997). relation of athletic identity to injury and mood disturbance. journal of sport behavior, 20(2), 199-210. yanar, s., kırandı, ö., & yusuf, c. (2017). examining the differences between tennis and badminton athletes' perception of athletes identity and success motivation levels. journal of sports education, 1(1), 51-58. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 51 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 51-59, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.51.59 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group determination of physical education and sports teachers' nutrition habits and physical activity levels in the global epidemic (covid-19) process ramazan erdogan1 metin yilmaz2 isa aydemir3 ( corresponding author) 1bitlis eren university school of physical education and sport, bitlis, turkey. 2,3fırat university faculty of sport sciences, elazig, turkey. abstract this research was conducted to determine physical education and sports teachers' nutritional habits and physical activity levels during the global epidemic (covid-19) process. 156 (121 male, 35 female) volunteer physical education and sports teachers working in elazig province participated in the study. in order to determine the demographic information of participants, the personal information form; to determine the nutritional habits and physical activity levels, the "investigation of nutrition habits and nutrition knowledge levels" developed by yücel (2015) and to determine the physical activity levels, the short form of the "international physical activity questionnaire" were applied to participants. the spss package program was used in the analysis of the data and the significance level was accepted as p<0.05. according to the research results, it was determined that 89.1% of physical education and sports teachers did not receive nutrition education, 62.2% had a chronic disease, 27.6% were in the age range 43 and above, 67.3% were married, 59% were between 171-180 cm, 38.5% were between 71-80 kg, 27.6% had a seniority between 6-10 years and 42,9% had income between 4001-5000 tl. 47.4% of the teachers stated the effect of the state's "stay at home" project on physical activity as no, 37.2% yes, 15.4% partially and most of them stated that body weight increased during the pandemic period. it was observed that the mean scores of the participants' nutritional habits before the pandemic were lower than their mean scores during the pandemic period and a statistically significant difference was determined (p <0.05). in addition, before the pandemic, it was seen that the physical activity score averages of the participants were higher than the physical activity score averages during the pandemic period, and statistically significance was determined (p<0.05). as a result, it was observed that the eating habits of the physical education and sports teachers participating in the study were negatively affected during the pandemic period, and their physical activity levels decreased. in this context, we believe that the promotion of regular physical activities as well as adequate and balanced nutrition during the epidemic period will contribute to the individuals to overcome the epidemic with minimum damage. keywords: physical education sports teacher, coronavirus, healthy lifestyle, nutrition habits, physical activity. citation | ramazan erdogan; metin yilmaz; isa aydemir (2021). determination of physical education and sports teachers' nutrition habits and physical activity levels in the global epidemic (covid-19) process. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 51-59. history: received: 24 november 2020 revised: 28 december 2020 accepted: 10 january 2021 published: 2 february 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 52 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 52 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 53 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 57 5. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 58 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 58 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.51.59&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2622 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5337-942x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8191-7264 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2156-6236 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 51-59 52 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by determining physical education and sports teachers' nutritional habits and physical activity levels during the global epidemic (covid-19) process. 1. introduction the corona virus (covid-19) appeared in wuhan, china in december 2019, and despite all the measures taken by the chinese government to stop this epidemiological phenomenon, it could not prevent the spread of the infection to the world. in this context, a number of difficulties have arisen in the world that have changed the usual life due to the covid-19 epidemic (world health organization, 2020). many countries have adapted to the new situation, especially social distance, mask, hygiene and home isolation have now become part of everyday life (merriam-webster, 2020; miller, 2020). with the measures taken to prevent and control the spread of the covid-19 epidemic, a number of changes have occurred in eating habits, physical activity levels, consumer behavior, education and training methods and daily life. in order to prevent these negative changes in the life of societies, continuation of physical activity, sleep patterns, adequate and balanced nutrition are of great importance. especially in the restrictions that exist with the quarantine period, regular physical activities as well as adequate and balanced nutrition are important in protecting the health of individuals. by encouraging all these factors (physical activity, adequate and balanced diet, social distance, etc.), it will be the most effective treatment method in protecting individuals and communities against the virus (imboden et al., 2019; lavie, ozemek, carbone, katzmarzyk, & blair, 2019; ozemek et al., 2018). nutrition is expressed as individuals' taking adequate amounts of nutrients and using them in the body in order to continue their lives in a more vigorous and productive way as well as growth and development. and adequate and balanced nutrition is defined as taking enough and needed amount of food to continue their lives in a healthy way and use it in the body. it is important to protect people from diseases together with the protection of physical fitness level of people with adequate and balanced nutrition (bozkurt & erdoğan, 2019). physical activity is expressed as making a movement in the body as a result of people's energy expenditure (cengiz & delen, 2019). regular physical activities not only reduce stress and anxiety, but also affect the immune system positively (nieman & wentz, 2019). professional institutions and persons in the field stated that exercises for150-300 minutes of moderate intensity activities or half of these times for high intensity per week, and balance and strength exercises involving large muscle groups 2 days a week would positively contribute to individuals' physical fitness levels as well as maintaining their health (demirel & kayıhan, 2014; piepoli et al., 2016; piercy, troiano, & ballard, 2018). they stated that people who regularly engaged in physical activity could reduce the risk of acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is an important cause of death in patients with corona virus (covid19, 2020). in addition to the sedentary lifestyle that emerged as a result of the epidemic period, inadequate and unbalanced nutrition also increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, obesity and covid-19. the covid-19 epidemic affects the way of life of societies, as well as making it difficult by negatively affecting the lifestyles of physical education and sports teachers, who previously had a more active lifestyle. the responsibility of individuals to support the immune system during the epidemic period has been stated as adopting a healthy lifestyle, eating adequate and balanced nutrition, paying attention to sleep patterns and maintaining regular physical activities (naja & hamadeh, 2020). in addition, individuals are recommended to avoid smoking and alcohol and to minimize stress (harvard medical school, 2020). it is stated that individuals who cannot isolate themselves and do not regularly implement a physical activity program are at risk during the epidemic period (centers for disease control and prevention, 2020). in this context, for physical education and sports teachers to continue their lives in a healthy way during the global epidemic process depends on regular physical activity as well as adequate and balanced nutrition during the quarantine process. this research was conducted to determine the nutritional habits and physical activity levels of physical education and sports teachers in the covid-19 process. 2. materials and methods participants: the population of the study consisted of physical education and sports teachers working in elazığ province, and the sample group consisted of 156 (121 male, 35 female) physical education and sports teachers who voluntarily participated in the study. data collection tools: questionnaire method, one of the data collection techniques, was used in the study. in obtaining the data: a "personal information form" consisting of 7 questions to determine the demographic information of the participants was applied. to determine the nutritional habits, a questionnaire consisting of 25 questions by yücel (2015) aiming to examine the nutrition habits and nutrition knowledge levels of healthcare professionals was applied. and the short form of the "international physical activity questionnaire" was adapted according to the purpose of the study and applied to the participants in the process of obtaining the data. 2.1. met (metabolic equivalence) calculation 1 met = 3.5 ml / kg / min. oxygen consumption metx3.5x weight (kg) / 200 =… kcal / min. according to the physical activity score, the physical activity levels of the participants are classified as "low, medium and high" (devran & saka, 2019): • < 3 met mild severe activity. • 3–6 met moderate severe activity. • > 6 met high intensity activity. statistical analysis: in the analysis of the data, spss package program was used and the data determined to show normal distribution by looking at the normality test analysis of "kolmogorov-smirnov" values, were applied asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 51-59 53 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group independent samples t and one-way anova test for in-group comparisons. significance level was accepted as p <0.05. 3. findings table-1. demographic information of physical education teachers. frequency percent (%) gender male 121 77.6 female 35 22.4 age 23-27 19 12.2 28-32 25 16 33-37 37 23.7 38-42 32 20.5 43 and over 43 27.6 marital status married 46 29.5 single 105 67.3 divorced 5 3.2 size 150-160 6 3.8 161-170 35 22.4 171-180 92 59 181-190 23 14.7 weight 51-60 13 8.3 61-70 27 17.3 71-80 60 38.5 81-90 36 23.1 91 and over 20 12.8 professional seniority 1-5 38 24.4 6-10 43 27.6 11-15 27 17.3 16-20 22 14.1 21 and over 26 16.7 income status 3000-4000 32 20.5 4001-5000 67 42.9 5001-6000 37 23.7 6001-7000 9 5.8 7001 and over 11 7.1 nutrition education yes 17 10.9 no 139 89.1 chronic disease yes 97 62.2 no 59 37.8 3.1. physical education and sports teachers' pre-pandemic nutritional habits and physical activity levels frequency analysis table 2. physical education teachers' nutritional knowledge levels. frequency percent (%) number of main meals per day 1 meal 2 meals 83 53.2 3 meals 73 46.8 more skipping meals during the day breakfast 15 9.6 lunch 81 51.9 dinner 6 3.8 no skip 54 34.6 reasons for skipping meals changes in eating habits 22 14.1 for not wanting to 31 19.9 gaining weight 12 7.7 stress 17 10.9 changes in sleeping habit 14 9 being busy 60 38.5 the most common types of food / drink consumed between meals carbonated / acid drinks 12 7.7 juice etc. 23 14.7 cake / cookie / biscuit 33 21.2 candy / chocolate etc. 16 10.3 fruit / dried fruit etc 72 46.2 daily water consumption 1 liter and less 30 19.2 1.5 liters 52 33.3 2 liters 29 18.6 2.5 liters 19 12.2 3 liters and more 26 16.7 when table 1 is examined, it is seen that the physical education and sports teachers; gender, age, marital status, height, weight, professional seniority and income status respectively determined as follows: asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 51-59 54 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 77.6% are men, 22.4% are women, 43 people are 43 years old and over, 37 people are 33-37 years old, 32 people are 38-42 years old, 25 people are 28-32 years old and 19 people are 23-27 years old 67.3% are married, 29.5% are single, 3.2% are divorced, 92 persons are between 171-180 cm, 35 persons are between 161-170 cm, 23 persons are between 181-190 cm, 6 persons are between 150-160 cm, 60 persons are between 71-80 kg, 36 persons are between 81-90 kg, 27 persons are between 61-70 kg, 20 persons are 90 kg and above, 13 persons are between 51-60 kg, 43 persons have seniority between 6-10 years, 38 persons 1-5 years, 27 persons 11-15 years, 26 persons 21 years and above, 22 persons 16-20 years, 67 persons have an income level of between 4001-5000 tl, 37 persons 5001-6000 tl, 32 persons 3000-4000 tl, 11 persons 7001 tl and above, and 9 people had an income level of 6001-7000 tl. in addition, 89.1% of the participants were found not to receive nutrition training and 62.2% of them had a chronic disease. according to table 2 it has been determined that 46.8% of the physical education and sports teachers participating in the study consume three main meals a day, 51.9% do not regularly eat lunch, 38.5% skip meals due to workload, 46.2% mostly have fruit / dried fruit etc. in snacks, and 33.3% consume 2 liters of water. table-3. physical education teachers' physical activity levels. frequency percent (%) yes 60 38.5 do you do physical activity regularly? no 30 19.2 not totally 66 42.3 none 15 9.6 how many days do you exercise in a week? 1 day 16 10.3 2 days 32 20.5 3 days 55 35.3 3 days or more 38 24.4 where do you do your physical activities? at home 47 30.1 jogging / walking areas 53 34 sports areas of the municipality 35 22.4 sports halls 21 13.5 how many hours / minutes do you exercise per week? minute / average 240. 22 when table 3 was examined it was found that physical education and sports teachers who participated in the study; 42.3% of them partially participated in a physical activity program, 35.3% did physical activity three days a week and 30.1% did physical activity at home. 3.2. physical education and sports teachers' nutritional habits and physical activity levels frequency analysis during pandemic period table-4. physical education teachers' nutritional knowledge levels. frequency percent (%) has there been any change in the nutrition habits during the pandemic period? yes 67 42.9 no 46 29.5 partly 43 27.6 number of main meals per day 1 meal 69 44.2 2 meals 70 44.9 3 meals 17 10.9 skipping meals during the day breakfast 15 9.6 lunch 80 51.3 dinner 48 30.8 no skip 13 8.3 has there been any change in the type of food / beverage for the snack you consume during the pandemic? yes 47 30.1 no 63 40.4 partially 46 29.5 reasons for skipping meals changes in eating habits 22 14.1 for not wanting to 19 12.2 gaining weight 13 8.3 stress 65 41.7 changes in sleeping habit 28 17.9 being busy 9 5.8 has there been a change in the number of daily main meals during the pandemic process? yes 69 44.2 no 87 55.8 has there been a change in daily fluid consumption? increased 53 34 decreased 33 21.2 unchanged 70 44.9 the most common types of food / drink consumed between meals carbonated / acid drinks 15 9.6 juice etc. 19 12.2 cake / cookie / biscuit 38 24.4 candy / chocolate etc. 19 12.2 fruit / dried fruit etc. 52 33.3 carbonated / acid drinks 13 8.3 daily water consumption 1 liter and less 31 19.9 1.5 liters 39 25 2 liters 33 21.2 2.5 liters 21 13.5 3 liters and more 32 20.5 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 51-59 55 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 4 is examined, it is observed that 42.9% of the physical education and sports teachers participating in the study have changes in their eating habits, 44.9% consume two main meals a day and the most skipped main meal is lunch with 51.3% and 41% 7 of them skip meals due to stress. table-5. physical education teachers' physical activity levels. frequency percent (%) do you do physical activity regularly? yes 58 37.2 no 49 31.4 partially 49 31.4 how many days do you exercise a week? 1 day 21 13.5 2 days 54 34.6 3 days 49 31.4 3 days or more 32 20.5 has there been a negative change in your physical activity status? yes 67 42.9 no 19 12.2 partially 70 44.9 where do you do your physical activities? at home 103 66 jogging / walking areas 23 14.7 sports areas of the municipality 12 7.7 sports halls 18 11.5 do you believe home exercises are helpful? yes 85 54.5 no 20 12.8 partially 51 32.7 has the state's stay home project affected your exercise? yes 58 37.2 no 74 47.4 partially 24 15.4 has your body weight changed? increased 84 53.8 decreased 32 20.5 unchanged 40 25.6 how many hours / minutes do you exercise per week? minute / average 132.24 looking table 5, it was determined that the majority of physical education and sports teachers participating in the study did not participate in a physical activity program regularly, 34.6% did physical activity two days a week, 53.8% had an increase in their body weight and 66% did physical activity at home. in addition, 47.4% of respondents expressed no, 37.2% yes and 15.4% partially on the item “was "stay at home" project of the state effective in your physical activity?” 3.3. physical education and sports teachers' pre-pandemic nutrition habits and physical activity levels t and variance analysis table-6. physical education and sports teachers' analysis of nutritional habits and nutritional knowledge levels t test according to their demographic information. nutrition t p physical activity t p sd sd. gender female 13.57 5.04 56.831 0.00 7.01 2.26 -65.077 0.00 male 22.28 1.27 12.00 0.00 nutrition education yes 6.64 0.70 77.473 0.00 5.29 2.05 -3.822 0.05 no 16.61 5.15 8.48 2.78 chronic disease yes 11.68 3.67 44.055 0.00 6.49 2.23 15.435 0.12 no 21.84 1.21 10.83 1.44 note: p<.05. looking at the tables 6 and 7, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of physical education and sports teachers participating in the study from their nutritional habits and physical activity levels according to gender, marital status, educational status, profession, age, height, weight, nutritional education and income, while no statistically significant difference was found according to the chronic disease status. 3.4. physical education and sports teachers' nutritional habits and physical activity levels t and variance analysis during pandemic period when tables 8 and 9 are evaluated, it has been determined that there is a statistical difference between the mean scores of dietary habits and physical activity levels of physical education and sports teachers participating in the study according to their gender, marital status, educational status, profession, age, height, weight, nutritional education, chronic disease status and income. 3.5. physical activity levels t test analyzes of physical education and sports teachers in and before the pandemic period when table 10 is examined, it has been determined that there is a statistically significant difference between the physical activity levels of physical education and sports teachers participating in the study during and before the pandemic period. x x asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 51-59 56 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. variance analysis of physical education teachers' eating habits and physical activity levels according to demographic information. nutrition f sig physical activity f sig sd sd. age 23-27 6.78 0.78 740.47 0.00 5.26 1.93 228.74 0.00 28-32 9.96 1.17 5.00 0.00 33-37 12.67 1.31 6.32 0.74 38-42 19.34 1.69 9.84 1.13 43 or over 22.23 1.15 11.51 1.05 height 150-160 cm 6.00 0.00 94.58 0.00 6.33 1.63 67.956 0.00 161-170 cm 8.82 1.65 4.91 1.24 171-180 cm 17.00 4.27 8.51 2.30 181-190 cm 22.30 1.55 12.00 0.00 weight 51-60 kg 6.38 0.50 265.46 0.00 4.84 2.07 75.040 0.00 61-70 kg 9.29 1.38 5.25 0.94 71-80 kg 14.31 2.96 7.53 2.18 81-90 kg 21.80 0.78 10.33 1.45 91 kg or over 22.20 1.64 12.00 0.00 marital status married 18.31 4.32 110.02 0.00 5.13 1.30 71.751 0.00 single 8.69 1.90 9.26 2.37 divorced 19.80 1.78 12.00 0.00 professional seniority 1-5 years 8.21 1.74 595.465 0.00 5.13 1.43 226.091 0.00 6-10 years 12.44 1.35 6.13 0.83 11-15 years 18.96 1.55 10.00 1.17 16-20 years 21.86 0.35 10.36 1.43 21 years or over 22.38 1.47 12.00 0.00 income status 3001-4000 7.68 1.35 248.966 0.00 5.06 1.54 67.150 0.00 4001-5000 13.83 2.91 7.25 2.18 5001-6000 21.75 0.83 10.29 1.45 6001-7000 23.00 0.00 12.00 0.00 7001 or over 21.54 2.01 12.00 0.00 note: p<.05. table-8. physical education and sports teachers' nutritional habits and physical activity levels t test analyzes according to the demographic information. nutrition t p physical activity t p sd sd. gender female 18.45 6.84 -11.131 0.00 6.22 2.40 -6.281 0.00 male 31.54 2.16 8.85 1.08 nutrition education yes 9.23 0.66 -7.552 0.00 4.00 0.00 -5.488 0.00 no 22.87 7.42 7.15 2.36 chronic disease yes 16.14 5.58 -17.959 0.00 6.05 2.48 -5.446 0.00 no 30.01 2.55 8.06 1.76 note: p<.05. table-9. physical education teachers' nutrition habits and physical activity levels variance analysis according to demographic information. nutrition f sig physical activity f sig sd sd age 23-27 9.42 0.83 521.459 0.00 4.00 0.00 53.741 0.00 28-32 12.40 0.86 4.36 0.48 33-37 18.48 3.25 8.18 2.54 38-42 25.87 1.71 6.21 1.73 43 or over 31.06 2.18 8.74 1.07 height 150-160 cm 9.00 0.00 155.360 0.00 4.00 0.00 45.458 0.00 161-170 cm 11.22 1.47 4.17 0.38 171-180 cm 23.19 5.18 7.46 2.23 181-190 cm 32.86 1.35 8.95 1.10 weight 51-60 kg 9.00 0.00 280.095 0.00 4.00 0.00 32.233 0.00 61-70 kg 11.74 1.05 4.18 0.39 71-80 kg 20.21 4.38 7.28 2.45 81-90 kg 28.52 1.15 7.91 1.82 91 kg or over 33.15 1.22 8.80 1.10 marital status married 25.23 5.54 162.316 0.00 7.84 2.14 68.664 0.00 single 11.23 1.77 4.23 0.43 divorced 34.00 0.00 34.00 0.00 professional seniority 1-5 years 10.73 1.51 481.558 0.00 4.10 0.31 51.118 0.00 6-10 years 17.79 3.48 7.72 2.63 11-15 years 25.55 1.67 5.70 1.29 16-20 years 28.68 0.64 8.77 0.92 21 years or over 32.42 1.79 8.76 1.17 income status 3001-4000 10.37 1.36 210.333 0.00 4.12 0.33 23.776 0.00 4001-5000 19.22 4.71 6.94 2.52 5001-6000 28.48 1.16 7.83 1.86 6001-7000 32.11 1.16 9.44 0.88 7001 or over 34.00 0.00 8.27 1.00 note: p<.05. x x x x x x asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 51-59 57 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-10. physical activity levels t test analyzes of physical education teachers in and before the pandemic period. t p sd physical activity before pandemic 7.53 2.49 24.604 0.00 pandemic period 6.81 2.44 nutrition before pandemic 15.52 5.77 -3.503 0.01 pandemic period 21.39 8.20 note: p<.05. 4. discussion when the eating habits of physical education and sports teachers before and during the pandemic are examined in the study; before the pandemic, 53.2% of the teachers stated that the number of main meals per day was two, 51.9% stated that the most skipped main meal during the day was lunch, 38.5% of them said that the reason for skipping meals was work intensity, 46.2% of them stated that they consume fruit / dried fruit etc. between meals and 33.3% of them stated that they consume 1.5 liters of water per day. during the pandemic period, 44.2% of the teachers stated that the number of their main meals per day was two, 51.3% stated that the most skipped main meal during the day was lunch, 41.7% stated that the reason for skipping meals was stress, 33% of them stated that they consume fruit/dried fruit etc between meals and 25% of them stated that they consume 1.5 liters of water a day. it was observed that most of the physical education and sports teachers participating in the study had a chronic illness and had not received any nutrition training before. in addition, it was also determined that the participants ' eating habits during and before the pandemic were not adequate and regular. in line with these results, it is seen that there are changes in the nutritional habits of physical education and sports teachers with the pandemic. ti ̇ryaki ̇, pehli̇van, and baba (2020) found that 14.7% of the participants were exercising at home and 54% ate two meals a day in the study, in which they examined the determination of the basic psychological needs of sports sciences students staying at home during the pandemic period. mattioli, sciomer, cocchi, maffei, and gallina (2020) stated in their study that by encouraging activities such as healthy eating and regular physical activity during the pandemic period, people's risk of getting sick would decrease and the epidemic period would be overcome with minimum damage. akyol and celik (2020) found in their study that the nutritional habits of university students were negatively affected during the covid-19 process. khoramipour et al. (2020) in their study on physical activity and nutritional guidelines to help combat covid-19, stated that a regular physical activity program and adequate and balanced nutrition will strengthen the immune system and have positive effects during the epidemic period. mor, acar, and arslanoğlu (2020) stated in their compilation study that adequate and balanced nutrition would minimize the risk of developing diseases by strengthening the immune system. garipoğlu and bozar (2020) investigated the eating habits of individuals in social isolation in the covid-19 epidemic and found that the participants' eating habits were irregular and their physical activity levels were low. tek and koçak (2020) stated in their research on the role of nutrition in supporting the immune system in the fight against coronavirus, that adequate and balanced nutrition will positively affect the immune system and help both the quality of life and the prevention of the epidemic. dilber and dilber (2020) found that the participants' eating habits were negatively affected during the epidemic period in the study in which they examined the effect of corona virus outbreak on individuals' eating habits. ammar et al. (2020) in their study examining the effects of home isolation on nutrition and physical activity during the covid-19 period, stated that the pandemic period had a negative effect on physical activity and eating habits. when the physical activity levels before and during the pandemic of the physical education and sports teachers participating in the study were evaluated, before the pandemic, 42.3% of teachers stated that they partly did a physical activity, 35.3% exercised three days a week and 34% did their physical activities in the running/walking areas. during the pandemic, 37.2% of teachers stated that they regularly did physical activity, 34.6% exercised two days a week and 66% said they did their physical activity at home. in addition, it was observed that the physical activity levels of the participants were insufficient during and before the pandemic. tural (2020) in his study investigating the effect of physical activity on quality of life during pandemic period home quarantine, determined that the physical activity levels of the participants were low. ercan and kekli ̇cek (2020) stated that the physical activity levels of the participants were low in the research in which they examined the physical activity levels of university students due to the covid-19 pandemic. ozemek et al. (2018) stated in their study on covid-19 and physical inactivity that physical activity would help prevent both covid-19 and cardiovascular disorders that might occur in the organism. cheval et al. (2020) stated in their study that doing enough physical activity and reducing the sedentary life span would help in coping with the covid-19 epidemic. pündük (2020) stated in his review study that regular exercises affect the immune system positively as well as protection against the virus and exercise can be recommended as a prescription. woods et al. (2020) stated in their study that lower intensity and progressive exercises would strengthen the body's immune system and overcome the epidemic period with minimal damage, as high-intensity resistance exercises to be applied during the epidemic period would weaken the immune system. arslan and ercan (2020) studied the importance of exercise during the covid-19 pandemic and social isolation process, stated that to overcome the pandemic process with minimal damage not only being active at home but also organizing exercise programs considering the physical characteristics of individuals would positively affect the health of individuals. it was determined that there is a statistically significant difference in nutrition and physical activity levels of physical education and sports teachers participating in the study during and before the pandemic period (p <0.05). while the average score of physical activity levels of physical education sports teachers before the pandemic is higher than the pandemic period, the average score of nutritional habits before the pandemic is lower than the pandemic period. it was observed that the participants paid more attention to their eating habits during the pandemic period. in addition, it was determined that the participants did not pay attention to their physical activity levels during the pandemic period. this may be due to home isolation and restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the virus as a result of the pandemic. reyes-olavarría et al. (2020) in the study examining the nutrition x asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 51-59 58 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group and physical activity levels of individuals during the covid-19 epidemic, stated that the chilean people had changes in their eating habits, increase body weight and decrease in physical activity levels compared to the pre-epidemic period. simşek, koç, ozsoy, and karakuş (2020) found in their study that there was a statistical difference between physical activity levels before and after the pandemic. sánchez-sánchez et al. (2020) in their study, they examined the eating habits and physical activity levels of the spaniards during and before the epidemic period. they stated that there were changes in their eating habits and they adopted an unhealthy eating habits such as alcoholic beverages, snacks and desserts, and their physical activity levels decreased compared to the pre-epidemic period. 5. conclusion as a result; during the pandemic period, it was determined that physical education and sports teachers' nutritional habits and physical activity levels were negatively affected. we believe that it will be beneficial to do physical activity regularly, as well as adequate and balanced nutrition, in order to overcome this new epidemic, which the whole world is struggling with today, with minimal damage. during the covid-19 outbreak, activities such as information, programs, etc. can be arranged that will protect people's health, strengthen their immune systems, regulate their eating habits and increase their level of physical activity. references akyol, p., & celik, a. 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(2015). examining the nutritional habits and nutritional knowledge levels of healthcare professionals. master's thesis, başkent university institute of health sciences. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 http://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 433 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 433-442, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.433.442 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group needs analysis for esp course development: thai civil engineering students’ perspectives benjaporn thepseenu school of liberal arts, university of phayao, thailand. abstract this study aimed to investigate civil engineering students’ english language learning needs and perceptions of their english for specific purposes (esp) course based on the past students’ perspectives (brown, 2016). the study sample comprised 85 third-year thai students, majoring in civil engineering at university of phayao, thailand in the academic year 2018. a mixed-methods research design was employed. a questionnaire on civil engineering students’ needs for esp course was used to investigate the students’ perceived needs on their esp course. subsequently, a focus group interview was conducted to explore the students’ overall perceptions of the esp course they had finished. data from the questionnaire were analyzed by means of frequency, mean, and standard deviation. interview data were analyzed using content analysis. the findings revealed students’ high demand of communicative topics particularly speaking and listening in work-related situations. a combination of pair and group work for in-class activities and out-ofclass assignments was preferred over working individually. a mixture of thai and english as a language of instruction was also needed. pedagogical implications for esp course designers and teachers of other fields of engineering are put forward to highlight the crucial role of needs analysis in esp course development. keywords: needs analysis, english for specific purposes (esp), civil engineering students’ perspectives, classroom-learning analysis, english language needs, esp course development. citation | benjaporn thepseenu (2020). needs analysis for esp course development: thai civil engineering students’ perspectives. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 433442. history: received: 13 april 2020 revised: 18 may 2020 accepted: 19 june 2020 published: 25 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: the research was supported by school of liberal arts, university of phayao, thailand. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 434 2. methods ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 436 3. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 438 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 441 5. implications of the study ............................................................................................................................................................. 441 6. limitations of the study and suggestion for future research ............................................................................................ 441 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 442 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.433.442&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1748 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5421-1805 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1748 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5421-1805 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1748 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5421-1805 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 434 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by exploring civil engineering students’ needs for their english for specific purposes course in terms of course content, specific language skills in work-related situations as well as learning and teaching activities. 1. introduction in the field of teaching english for specific purposes (esp), the notion of analyzing learners’ needs or needs analysis (na) has been perceived as an important component of course design (brown, 2016). na is regarded as an essential step in curriculum development with the main aim of identifying “what learners will be required to do with the foreign language in the target situation and how learners might best master the target language during the period of training” west (1994) cited in kim (2013). flowerdew (2013) notes that na was first introduced into esp field in the 1970s and has been “evolving and refining itself” since then (p. 326). she also points out that na “is the first stage in esp course development, followed by curriculum design, material selection, methodology, assessment, and evaluation” (p. 325). according to hyland (2006) cited in flowerdew (2013), na can be broadly defined as follows: needs analysis refers to the techniques for collecting and assessing information relevant to course design; it is the means of establishing the how and what of a course. it is a continuous process, since we modify our teaching as we come to learn more about our students, and in this way it is actually shades into evaluation– the means of establishing effectiveness of a course. needs is actually an umbrella term that embraces many aspects, incorporating learners’ goals and backgrounds, their language proficiencies, their reasons for taking the course, their teaching and learning preferences, and the situation they will need to communicate in. needs can include what learners know, don’t know or want to know, and can be collected and analyzed in a variety of ways. (p. 324) exploring learners’ reasons for taking an english language class and their learning preferences can help teachers improve their teaching (scrivener, 2005). therefore, conducting na before designing syllabus can provide useful information for teachers to make decision about what should be included in the course based on learners’ specific needs instead of teachers’ intuitions or preferences only (gözüyeşil, 2014). 1.1. defining english for specific purposes and needs analysis byram and hu (2017) define esp as: the term ‘english for specific purposes’ (esp) is used to refer to the teaching and learning of english for work or study-related purposes. esp courses are based on an analysis of learners’ needs in relation to the learners’ target discipline, workplace or profession. they aim to help learners enter or progress in their chosen disciplines and fields. as esp course focus on languages and skills of direct relevance to the learners’ real-world needs, they function as efficient means by which learners can reach their language learning goal. (p. 223) byram and hu (2017) describe a vital role of na for esp course development that: “[a]ssessing needs and describing language use in the specific field are two important elements in esp course development. the assessment of needs indicates what should be included as course content. description of language use provide information about communication in the target work area or discipline and provide language content for the course” (pp. 223-224). they also added that “[n]eeds analysis is critical to the planning of an esp course. needs analyses are conducted before a course begins to help course developers select course content, decide the level of proficiency at which to pitch the course and required exit levels. needs analyses are also conducted during a course for the purpose of find-tuning the course content” (p.224). this suggests that na is essential to be conducted in esp courses in order to identify learners’ specific needs and select language contents that meet their needs. in addressing teaching esp, a teacher is a key person who is expected to develop an english language course that best suits learners’ needs which is highlighted in the above definition. needs of the prospective learners is, therefore, closely linked to a way an esp course will be designed to serve specific learning goals for students in a specific discipline based on a dictionary, esp is defined as “the role of english in a language course or programme of instruction in which the content and aims of the course are fixed by the specific needs if a particular group of learners” (richards & schmidt, 2010, as cited in brown (2016)). looking at this definition, brown (2016) concludes that “if there is no needs analysis, there is no esp” and suggested that “na and esp are intricably intertwined” (p. 5). this indicate that na should not be neglected in esp course development. according to brown. (1995), na refers to “the systemic collection and analysis of all subjective and objective information necessary to define and validate defensible curriculum purposes that satisfy the language learning requirements of students within the context of particular institutions that influence the language learning and teaching situation” (brown. (1995), as cited in brown (2016)). thus, na can inform people involved about required aspects in the process of course development. brown (2016) further explains that such definition relates to three concepts of stakeholder, a defensible curriculum, and necessary information. hence, in order to conduct an na, people in charge of assessing learners’ needs referred asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 435 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group to as “the needs analyst(s)” should consider the aforementioned elements of na as much as possible to ensure a successful esp course (brown, 2016). in addition, the need analyst(s) should have a clear understanding of how they are going assess needs at the initial stage of course development as there are different views which are: “(a) the democratic view: whatever the most people want, (b) discrepancy view: whatever is missing, (c) analytic view: whatever logically comes next, and (d) diagnostic view: whatever will do most harm if missing” (brown, 2016). in the context of the present study, a democratic view of needs or “whatever the most people want” (brown, 2016) was taken and classroom-learning analyses which “investigate what the classroom learning situation is or should be” (brown, 2016) was used to explore needs on the part of learners. learners in the present study had already taken an esp course and it was expected that their perspectives on classroom-learning experience would be beneficial in other esp course development. 1.2. methods for collecting esp na data na information can be gathered with different stakeholder groups using different methods of data collections. according to long (2005) as cited in lung (2014) na methods include the followings. surveys may be conducted, interviews engaged in and non-expert intuitions as well as expert intuitions brought into play. at the same time, language audits, participant and non-participant observations, diaries, journals and logs may also be formulated. finally, content analysis, register analysis, computer-aided corpus analysis and triangulation analysis all share in arriving at a needs analysis. brown (2016) suggests the use of mixed-methods research or “mmr” in na. in terms of gathering data, brown (2016) also suggests the use of interviews with teachers and learners, classroom observation, questionnaires, and written esp corpus. 1.3. studies on esp na needs analysis in esp has been extensively studied. the common goal of such studies is to gain insights into needs, wants, and expectations of stakeholders in order to design an esp syllabus or to adjust teaching and learning activities according to the reported needs. data for needs analyses can be obtained through various sources as suggested by long (2005) cited in flowerdew (2013): “published and unpublished literature, learners, teachers and applied linguists, domain experts, and triangulated sources.” in terms of methods, long (2005) suggested to use “expert intuitions, participant and non-participant observation, … unstructured interviews, … surveys and questionnaires, structured interviews, and less commonly, criterion-referenced performance tests” (cited in flowerdew (2013)). examples of research investigating needs in esp carried out in different fields of study including engineering are as follows. dehnad, bagherzadeh, bigdeli, hatami, and hosseini (2014) investigated reading and writing needs of 56 postgraduate students at the school of health management and information sciences of iran university of medical sciences, 5 esp teachers, 5 heads of departments and 1 executive manager at the ministry of health in iran through questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. the results revealed that students needed reading and writing skills for their study and work. reading technical texts was perceived by 68.5% of them as an important reading skill they needed for their study, and reading technical journals was needed by the majority of them in their work time. as for writing skills, the majority of students viewed that electronic letter writing in english was needed in both study and work settings. however, a mismatch among students’ needs and other stakeholders was found. thus, the researchers called for needs analysis with all groups of stakeholders for designing a new esp syllabus for postgraduate students in this university. other researchers, such as aliakbari and boghayeri (2014) investigated english language needs of 49 architecture students and 72 architecture graduates at ilam university in iran by using questionnaires. the study reported what the participants expected from the esp course provided by the university. it was found that both groups of participants considered reading as the most important skill, followed by writing, speaking, and listening respectively. a need for revising the existing esp course for architecture students was suggested as the overall findings showed that the course did not meet students’ actual needs. with regard to engineering fields, kim (2013) used survey questionnaire to examine needs of 99 engineering students and 30 engineering teachers in a korean university as compared to 43 korean engineering major industry workers. the findings could provide information for course planners about specific english skills and contents perceived as the most important by different groups of participants. there were both agreements and discrepancies among students’ perceptions, their professors and industry workers. for instance, students thought english for daily conversations was the most important content for them, whereas engineering teachers and industry workers chose engineering contents and general business english, respectively. however, engineering teachers and industry workers shared the same view that speaking ability of their students and staff was the least satisfactory among other skills, and english language course for engineering was required. hence, it was suggested that esp teachers should include “ample portion on speaking” (kim, 2013). in addition, students should recognize which english skills their teachers and industry workers expect them to master in order to prepare themselves to meet the requirements of the job market. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 436 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group another study was reported by gözüyeşil (2014). she carried out a needs analysis at nigde university in turkey with 133 engineering students, 246 prep class students, and 11 academics working at engineering faculty of this university to examine which english skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening was needed most for the engineering departments of the university. two different questionnaires were used with different groups of students and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the academics to collect data. the results showed that reading was perceived as the most important skill which suggests that the language teachers at the prep school should focus more on developing reading skill. she concluded that “[t]he prep program used as a bridge by students in order to pass to the content area courses can be strengthened only by considering the requirements of departments and by reorganizing the curriculum according to the specific needs of departments” (gözüyeşil, 2014). with regard to na studies in thai context, kaewpet (2009) qualitative study entitled “communication needs of thai civil engineering students” provides insights into communication needs of twenty-five stakeholders including civil engineering students and lecturers, employers, engineers, ex-civil engineering students of a technical english course, and esp teachers. through semi-structured interview with those people involved, four communicative events they thought to be necessarily included in an esp course are “talking about daily tasks and duties, reading textbooks, reading manuals, and writing periodic/progress reports” (p. 266). this study also identified a list of communicative events that civil engineers are likely to encounter in their real workplace. thus, the findings can guide esp course developers for to make decision on course content and materials in the local and wider contexts another study was conducted in thai context by changpueng and pattanapichet (2015). though questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, they examined the needs for english writing skills in workplace of 110 managerial and operational engineers, 31 esp teachers, and 354 engineering students from different departments (electrical, civil, mechanic, industrial, chemical, and productive). the results provided information on specific aspects of english writing skills required by managerial and operational engineers. although a mismatch among the participants’ points of view was found in some aspects, the analysis showed that all groups of participants had similar view on the types of genres that are important for engineers in the work environment such as enquiry e-mails and reports. suggestions for using results from the analysis were offered for course designers and teachers to design effective esp course for engineers in conclusion, needs analyses have been investigated by many researchers around the world. results from many studies highlight the important role of needs analysis in the process of course development. regarding the context of university of phayao, esp courses are offered for all fields of engineering including civil engineering. undergraduate civil engineering students are required to take this course in the second semester of their third year of study. however, an na has not been systematically carried out with civil engineering students to discover their english language needs. therefore, it is the purpose of this study to conduct an na with these students in order to develop effective esp syllabus that best meets students’ needs in the period of taking the course. findings from the study would lead esp teachers to develop appropriate teaching materials and select teaching approaches that meet students’ wishes, knowledge, and language proficiencies. it is also hoped that when a language course is designed in accordance with what learners consider meaningful and appropriate for them, they would see its values and be more motivated to learn. this study aimed to investigate civil engineering students’ english language learning needs and perceptions of the course 146200 english for specific purposes. research questions were generated as follows: 1. what english language skills and topics do the students perceive as necessary for an esp course for civil engineering students? 2. what features of learning and teaching activities do the students prefer for an esp course? 3. what are the students’ perceptions of the esp course they had taken? the study focused on english language needs of the aforementioned participants in university of phayao for the development of esp course for civil engineering students who enrolled in 146200 english for specific purposes which is offered in the second semester in the third year of their study in a four-year degree program. thus, aspects concerning students’ perceptions of desired content, materials, language skills, and learning activities were investigated based on the perspectives of students who had taken such course which can be referred to as “the past students’ perspectives” using classroom-learning analyses strategy suggested by brown (2016). 2. methods 2.1. research design in order to analyze students’ needs, a mixed-methods research design was employed. the quantitative component is predominant, with additional qualitative measures. the quantitative component of this study involves methods of collecting numerical data using an esp na questionnaire for civil engineering students. as for the qualitative method, a focus group interview was carried out to gain insights into students’ perceptions of their experiences and needs in learning english for civil engineering purpose. 2.2. participants the participants of this study comprised 58 third-year undergraduate civil engineering students, school of engineering, university of phayao, thailand. at the time of data collection, the students were in the second asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 437 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group semester of the academic year 7102. they were l0 thai learners of english as a foreign language. they enrolled in the course 002711 english for specific purposes in that semester as a compulsory course for their degree program. the group of participants consisted of 00 females and 20 males. their ages ranged from 70 to 72 years. the average age was 70.0 years (mean = 70.01). 2.3. research instruments 2.3.1. a civil engineering students’ needs for esp course questionnaire a civil engineering students’ needs for esp course questionnaire consisting of 2 parts with 27 items, was designed by the researcher and used to gather demographic information about the students and their english language needs for an esp course for civil engineering students. part 0 of the questionnaire was designed to obtain students’ information about their ages and genders. it also included items about students’ self-rated english proficiency in particular skills, namely, listening, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar. in addition, questions were designed to discover the students’ opinions about the most needed skills for improving their english, their views on the importance of having ability in english for professional practice in civil engineering field, and potential purposes of using english in the future. this information would be useful for analyzing students’ perceptions of these aspects which might explain their needs in learning an esp course. part 7 of the questionnaire was aimed at gathering information about students’ perceived needs for the contents that should be incorporated into the course. this part contained 71 items, representing topics students wanted to learn in an esp course for civil engineering students. most of the topics were both adopted and adapted from kaewpet (2009) list of communicative events which “thai civil engineers and/or thai civil engineering students are likely to perform” (p. 725) in her interview schedules. students were asked to rate the degree to which they needed to learn those listed topics on a five-point likert-scale ranged from 1 (least) through 5 (most). part 2 of the questionnaire was created to gain students’ views on patterns of classroom learning and teaching activities which include 2 statements: 0) classroom activities should be done in pairs or groups; 7) classroom activities should be done individually; 2) out-of-class assignments be done in pairs or groups; 0) out-of-class assignments be done individually only; 8) teachers should use only english for instruction; and 2) teachers should use both thai and english for instruction. students were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with those listed statements on a five-point likert-scale ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) through 5 (strongly agree). students were also encouraged to write down additional topics they thought should be incorporated into the course and other features of learning and teaching activities that were not listed in the questionnaire. they were not timed while completing the questionnaire. 2.3.2. focus group interview guide a focus group interview was employed in order to explore students’ needs in more depth at one time as pointed out by dörnyei (2007) that “[t]his obviously an economical way to gather a relatively large amount of qualitative data” (p. 000). the interview data could complement data on students’ needs obtained from the questionnaire. thus, an interview guided with a list of questions was prepared. there was a list of interview questions which were either taken directly or slightly adapted from brown (2016) suggested questions for meeting with students (p. 012). for example:  do you think you will use english for your work in the future? for what?  what do you think about your experience in learning the esp course this semester?  and what are the topics that should be included in the course? why do you think so?  what improvement can be made to the esp course? 2.4. data collection data collection took place in may 7105 after the end of the course 002711 english for specific purposes. the researcher, who had a role of a need analyst, course developer and instructor of the course, had a meeting with participants in their esp classroom in order to ask 40 students to participate in the research project. the researcher informed them of the purposes and significance of the study and obtained their written consent to participate in the study, prior to collecting data. a total of 58 students agreed to participate in the study. next, the researcher administered the questionnaire to 58 students. they completed the questionnaire within 08 minutes. one hour after administering the questionnaire, the researcher conducted a focus group interview with 2 students who volunteered to participate. in order to protect the students’ identities, they were referred to as ‘s’ followed by a number. henceforth, they were designated as s0, s7, s2, s0, s8, s2, and s2. the group consisted of 2 females and 0 males. the interview was conducted in thai in a quiet office room and audio-recorded. the interview took 01 minutes. finally, data gained from the questionnaire and the interview were then analyzed and presented to identify the students’ needs for esp course. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 438 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.5. data analysis responses to the civil engineering students’ needs for esp course questionnaire were scored as follows. in part 7 of the questionnaire, responses were scored as: least = 0; less = 7; moderate = 2; much = 0; and most = 8. thus, high scores indicated a high degree of needs for particular topics. the mean scores were interpreted as follows. 0.80-8.11 = most 2.80-0.81 = much 7.80-2.81 = moderate 0.80-7.81 = less 0.11-0.81 = least in part 2 of the questionnaire, responses were scored as: strongly disagree = 0; disagree = 7; moderately agree = 2; agree = 0; strongly agree = 8. thus, high scores indicated a strong agreement with the statements. interpretation of range of mean scores was as follows. 0.80-8.11 = strongly agree 2.80-0.81 = agree 7.80-2.81 = moderately agree 0.80-7.81 = disagree 0.11-0.81 = strongly disagree descriptive analysis was conducted using spss version 71. descriptive statistics were generated in order to report students’ degree of needs for course contents and agreements with the patterns of learning and teaching activities. participants’ interview data was transcribed verbatim in thai language. the transcripts were then coded and content-analyzed in order to find evidence of students’ needs for esp course, their opinions towards their experiences of learning english for civil engineering purpose and improvement of the future course. the researcher was also open to finding other related themes that emerged from the data and could be added to the existing themes to gain new insights. 3. results and discussion 3.1. results from the questionnaire with regard to participants’ perceptions of their proficiency in specific english language skills, namely, listening, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar, most of the participants rated their proficiency in each skill as fair (49.4%, 58.5%, 41.2%, 37.6%, 47.1%, and 47.4% respectively). this suggests that the majority tended to assess their overall ability in english in a relatively low level. when asked about an english language skill and knowledge they wanted to improve the most, the majority (64.7%) reported that they needed to improve their speaking skill the most, followed by listening skill (20%), reading skill (5.9%), vocabulary knowledge (4.7%), grammar knowledge (3.5%), and writing skill (1.2%) respectively. thus, it is evident that the students seemed to share the same needs in improving their speaking ability. in terms of their opinions on the importance of english for their future profession, 72.9% of the students reported that english is very important and the rest of them (27.1%) thought that english is important. hence, it is clear that all students showed a positive attitude towards the importance of english for their career paths. as for participants’ views on purposes of using english, figure 1 shows percentages of students who reported their purposes of using english in specific situations as follows. figure-1. percentage of students reporting purposes for using english in specific situations. it can be seen that most of the students (76.5%) viewed that they would use english for communicating with their future colleagues, followed by for job application (45.9%). therefore, the purpose of using english for these students were for work-related reasons, whereas using english for pursuing a higher degree came last (32.9%). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 439 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in conclusion, the majority of students evaluated their english proficiency in specific skills as fair. they also expressed their desire to improve their speaking skill the most, and considered english as important for their careers. in addition, most of them envisaged an opportunity to use english for communication at workplace with foreign friends and colleagues. it indicates that they are well aware of their current english language ability and the areas of language they wished to improve for english are viewed as important factor for their future use in both professional and personal life. the following section reports findings on students’ perceptions of course content and language skills which provides answer to research question 1: rq1: what english language skills and topics do the students perceive as necessary for an esp course for civil engineering students? table-1. means of degree of students’ perceived needs for language skills and topics (n = 85). items m sd degree of needs 1. reading suggestions/instructions to perform certain things 3.80 0.75 much 2. reading english textbooks 3.52 0.85 much 3. reading research abstracts/proposals 3.39 1.00 moderate 4. reading manuals 3.55 0.76 much 5. reading office documents 3.64 0.90 much 6. reading proposals/details of construction projects 4.27 0.75 much 7. reading safety signs 4.07 0.81 much 8. reading research reports 3.62 0.94 much 9. writing reports/filling forms about using equipment 3.95 0.79 much 10. writing work-related emails 3.95 0.89 much 11. writing daily work reports 3.89 0.91 much 12. writing cover letters and resumes 4.02 0.84 much 13. writing abstracts of project works 3.52 0.96 much 14. delivering oral presentations on project designs 4.13 0.84 much 15. speaking in daily life situations 3.89 0.85 much 16. speaking in professional conversations, e.g. describing your jobs, coordinating and communicating with colleagues and clients 4.25 0.86 much 17. speaking in a seminar, conference, or a meeting situation 4.07 0.99 much 18. speaking in a job interview situation 4.28 0.72 much 19. listening to english-speaking boss’s instruction 4.24 0.67 much 20. listening to presentations and discussions in a meeting, seminar or conference 4.14 0.80 much total 3.91 0.56 much as seen in table 1, the overall mean of students’ needs for language skills and topics listed in the questionnaire was 3.91 suggesting that those skills and topics were much needed by the students and were necessary for an esp course for civil engineering students. the top five most preferred language skills and topics are speaking in a job interview situation followed by reading proposals/details of construction projects, speaking in professional conversations, listening to english-speaking boss’s instruction, listening to presentations and discussions in a meeting, seminar or conference, respectively. this finding is consistent with kaewpet (2009) study in that most of the top five skills, except listening to presentations and discussions in a meeting, co-occurred with communicative events that were recommended to be included in the course for civil engineering students. however, overall skills and topics that students in the present study perceived to be necessary for their esp course were related to both study and work situations. thus, the students required the content of the course for academic and professional purposes. the following section reports findings on students’ perceptions of learning and teaching activities which provide answer to research question 2: rq2: what features of learning and teaching activities do the students prefer for an esp course? table-2. means of degree of students’ perceptions of their preferred learning and teaching activities (n = 58). statements m sd degree of agreement 1. classroom activities should be done in pairs or groups. 4.01 0.73 agree 2. classroom activities should be done individually. 3.29 0.94 moderately agree 3. out-of-class assignments be done in pairs or groups. 3.93 0.78 agree 4. out-of-class assignments be done individually only. 2.95 1.07 moderately agree 5. teachers should use only english for instruction. 3.16 1.02 moderately agree 6. teachers should use both thai and english for instruction. 4.19 0.81 agree total 3.59 0.48 agree asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 440 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as seen in table 2, the overall mean of students’ perceptions (3.59) indicated that they generally agree with features of language learning and teaching activities listed in the questionnaire. however, they moderately agreed with the ideas of performing activities in class and outside class individually and using only english for instruction. thus, it can be assumed that the students tended to feel more comfortable with doing classroom activities and outof-class assignments in pairs and group rather than individually. they also seemed to prefer teachers using both thai and english for instruction. 3.2. results from the focus group interview this section provides an account of students’ perceptions on different aspects of the esp course they had finished which were elicited by means of a focus group interview with 7 students. the findings provide answer to research question 3: what are the students’ perceptions of the esp course they had taken? the results are presented according to the following themes. 3.3. students’ english language learning experience with regard to students’ english language learning experience, they reported that they have learned english since they were in a kindergarten level. however, they reflected that they did not like learning english partly because of their bad experience with teachers’ styles of teaching, and they had not seen any improvement in teaching approaches. this can be seen from one student’s comment: “the content is still the same as before and the way of teaching is still the same, so i don’t really understand the lessons” (s2). s3 also stated that she preferred learning english at a tutoring school as she could learn the language through games and had more opportunities to use vocabulary in real situations, but in her classroom she did not have such opportunities due to a large class size. s6 also added that in high school, there was too much emphasis on writing skills which he did not enjoy much. however, they all agreed that their english learning experience at university is much better and more useful, especially the esp course which they hope to use it at their potential workplace. 3.4. the use of english outside the classroom generally, the students used english in daily life for pleasure such as playing online games, listening to music and watching english movies. s2 said that he used english to communicate with other game players online. they also used english knowledge to read textbooks for their study. however, they did not have much experience to communicate with foreigners in their everyday life. this information might explain why most of the 85 students rated their english proficiency in every skill as fair because they lack ample exposures to the real-world situations of using english. 3.5. importance of english for future job all students considered english as very important for their future careers because they were well aware that english ability is required for their job application. they had been informed by the ex-civil engineering students and their lecturers that they could gain higher salary if they have a good command of english. for example, s4 said that “the graduates and my lecturers told me that english is very important for work. but right now i haven’t finished the degree yet, so i don’t have any clear ideas of how english will be used.” however, she believed that she can use at her working sites. this awareness is consistent with students’ responses to the questionnaire. 3.6. students’ preferred course content, language skills, and learning and teaching activities as for students’ preferred content and language skills, the students suggested that the course should provide a topic of writing resumes and filling application forms which were not taught in the previous term. english for job interview was also mentioned as “a must” for the esp course. writing work-related emails to communicate with suppliers and subcontractors as well as writing daily reports also mentioned by the students which is consistent with the questionnaire results that students reported to include these topics at a high degree of needs. however, the 7 students stated that they were not quite sure about how writing abstracts of project works and reading research abstracts would be useful for them. this suggests that their perceptions reported in the interview were in line with students’ responses to the questionnaire in which these two topics were ranked at the bottom. in addition, they wanted to read short texts or newspaper articles about new technology for construction or up-to-date innovations in civil engineering in order to gain new knowledge and vocabulary. they also wanted to have a list of useful basic vocabulary for civil engineering which are not too technical. this topic was not included in the questionnaire, so it is very useful information for esp course developer to consider to include this topic the future. this shows that the students not only wanted to develop english language skills but also wanted to gain new vocabulary and up-to-date knowledge about their civil engineering world. as for listening and speaking skills, the responses from the interview were similar to the questionnaire results in that the 7 students would like the course to focus on listening and speaking for receiving their boss’ instructions and talking with co-workers and clients in both informal and formal contexts. listening and speaking for attending workshops, seminars, and company meetings were also needed. in terms of learning and teaching activities, the interview results also revealed similar findings to the questionnaire’s results. that is, the interviewed students thought that pair and group work were still necessary as asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 441 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group most of the time they had to converse with other students. however, they suggested not to have too much group work assignments as not all students really co-operated and participated. as for individual work, they thought that they could perform a task like giving presentation individually, but they were not sure whether less proficient students would be comfortable with this. for this group of interviewees, they would like more challenging speaking task in groups as they have been familiar with working in team. regarding language of instruction, they reported similar views as the seen in the questionnaire results that they preferred teacher to use both english and thai. 3.7. students’ recommendations for course development the students suggested that listening and speaking skills should be the main focus of the course with additional basic grammar review. they also recommended having a foreign teacher as a visiting teacher so that they could have a chance to practice english in a real situation. 4. conclusion the overall findings suggest that 85 students demonstrated a high degree of needs to include language skills and topics listed in the questionnaire especially speaking in a job interview situation followed by reading proposals/details of construction projects, speaking in professional-related conversations, listening to englishspeaking boss’s instruction, listening to presentations and discussions in a meeting, seminar or conference. besides, the students generally agreed that a combination of pair and group work for in-class activities and out-ofclass assignments were preferred rather than working individually. a mixture of thai and english as language of instruction was also needed. students’ perceptions reported in the questionnaire seemed to relate to findings from the interview in many aspects. that is, they were well aware of their current english ability and considered english as essential for their future performance at their potential workplace. their needs for more listening and speaking practices was also mentioned as in the questionnaire. moreover, their reflections in the interview revealed that they would like to read more texts related to advancement and new innovations in their field in order to gain more vocabulary and knowledge of the content area in civil engineering. this suggests that the students expected the course to provide both english language skills related to the real-world work situation as well as vocabulary and specific knowledge of up-to-date information in their field of study. therefore, it seemed that these students perceived an esp course as a preparatory course to equip them with knowledge and english language skills necessary to perform communicative tasks in their professional life when they graduate. 5. implications of the study based on the past civil engineering students’ perspectives, results reported in this study provides useful information for course developers to design an esp course for civil engineering students in the upcoming academic year that corresponds to students’ expectations and needs. descriptions of desired content and specific language skills helps course developers to select appropriate topics and prioritize the sequence of those topics based on what students perceived as necessary as much as possible. students’ reflections on what is missing from the course or lacks can yield useful information for improving the course. the results can also be used as guidelines for designing a course book or supplementary materials that are deemed suitable for students in this particular context as students in different contexts may differ in their language learning needs, english language proficiency, learning styles as well as the knowledge of the world. it is recommended that esp teachers of other fields of engineering pay more attention to identifying learners’ language learning needs to fulfill students’ goals in learning the course as well as to meet expected learning outcomes that their school of engineering have identified in their curriculum. once thai students’ needs are addressed, students might see learning english as a meaningful and purposeful endeavor and be more motivated to improve their professional english. 6. limitations of the study and suggestion for future research firstly, given the small sample size of the third-year 85 civil engineering major students, the findings must be treated with caution as they might not be transferable to other wider contexts or might not represent perceptions of all students in other years of study. therefore, further research should be carried out with a larger number of participants including students from all years of study in this major. this would provide a better understanding of the students’ expectations of their esp course. secondly, na results of this study were based on the past students’ perspectives using classroom-learning analyses strategy suggested by brown (2016) which may not fully represent needs of other stakeholder such as esp teachers, civil engineering lecturers, civil engineers, or professionals in civil engineering industry. therefore, future research should collect na data from those stakeholders to determine needs from different perspectives. finally, it is recommended that future research should collect more qualitative data by conducting more interviews with different groups of learners or other stakeholders to gain more in depth data which might better compliment data from questionnaires. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 433-442 442 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references aliakbari, m., & boghayeri, m. (2014). a needs analysis approach to esp design in iranian context. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 98, 175-181.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.404. brown, j. d. (2016). introducing needs analysis and english for specific purposes. london: routledge. brown., j. d. (1995). the elements of language curriculum: a systemic approach to program development. boston: heinle and heinle. byram, m., & hu, a. (2017). routledge encyclopedia of language teaching and learning. london: routledge. changpueng, p., & pattanapichet, f. (2015). an analysis of english in the workplace: the needs of engineers in writing in english. silpakorn university journal of social sciences, humanities, and arts, 15(3), 151-176. dehnad, a., bagherzadeh, r., bigdeli, s., hatami, k., & hosseini, a. f. (2014). post graduate esp curriculum: reading and writing needs. acta medica iranica, 52(5), 406-410. dörnyei, z. (2007). research methods in applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. flowerdew, l. (2013). needs analysis and curriculum development. in paltridge, b. & starfield, s. (eds.), the handbook of english for specific purposes (pp. 325-346). oxford: balckwell. gözüyeşil, e. (2014). an analysis of engineering students’ english language needs. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 116, 41824186.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.913. hyland, k. (2006). english for specific purposes. london: routledge. kaewpet, c. (2009). communication needs of thai civil engineering students. english for specific purposes, 28(4), 266-278.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2009.05.002. kim, h. h. (2013). needs analysis for english for specific purpose course development for engineering students in korea. international journal of multimedia and ubiquitous engineering, 8(6), 279-288.available at: https://doi.org/10.14257/ijmue.2013.8.6.28. long, m. (2005). methodological issues in learner needs analysis. in m. long (ed.), second language needs analysis (pp. 19-76). cambridge: cambridge university press. lung, j. (2014). a blended needs analysis: critical genre analysis and needs analysis of language and communication for professional purposes. in vijay, b. & stephen, b. (eds.), the routledge handbook of language and professional communication (pp. 257-273). london: routledge. scrivener, j. (2005). learning teaching (2nd ed.). oxford, uk: macmillan education. west, r. (1994). needs analysis in language teaching. language teaching, 27(1), 1-19. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 575 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 4, 575-581, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.575.581 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group analysis of the levels of organizational culture of academicians in terms of some variables eyyup nacar faculty of physical education and sport sciences, firat university, turkey. abstract the main purpose of this research is to examine the level of organizational culture of academicians in terms of some variables. the research universe is formed by academicians at fırat university in the 2018-2019 academic year. the sample of the study is 96 randomly selected academicians from fırat university faculty of education, faculty of humanities and social sciences and faculty of sports sciences in the 2018-2019 academic year. the personal information form was used in order to determine the demographic information of the subjects participating in the study, in addition, "organizational culture scale" was used that prepared by ogbonna and harris (2000) and translated into turkish by karadeniz (2010) and developed in the master's study. the data of the research were determined to be parametric. therefore, t test and variance analysis (anova) test was used. tukey test and lsd test results were used to determine which groups the difference was among the results with significant differences. the error level in the study was taken as p<0.05. as a result of the research, academicians' organizational culture scale is based on the findings; it was found that there was no statistically significant difference in all subdimensions of the title and gender variable. there was a statistically significant difference in faculty, age group and academic study year variables. keywords: organization, culture, academician, education, community culture, bureaucratic culture. citation | eyyup nacar (2019). analysis of the levels of organizational culture of academicians in terms of some variables. asian journal of education and training, 5(4): 575-581. history: received: 5 september 2019 revised: 9 october 2019 accepted: 13 november 2019 published: 16 december 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 576 2. materials and method ................................................................................................................................................................... 577 3. results and interpretation ........................................................................................................................................................... 577 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 579 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 581 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.54.575.581&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1159 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1159 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1159 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3325 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 575-581 576 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributed to the literature, as it was thought that the organizational culture levels of academicians would add material and spiritual value to organizations by examining their levels in terms of some variables. it is thought that our research will shed light on the research estimating the organizational culture to be carried out in the future and will support science as literature in the studies on this subject. 1. introduction nowadays, organizations are always looking for new management techniques in order to adapt to and maintain their existence as a result of technological developments and social changes. although the technologies that succeed in organizations are quickly acquired by the organization's competitors; the strong culture of the organization creates a competitive advantage for itself. in decisions about what is right or wrong in organizations or what is important or insignificant, the opinions expressed by the leading managers are effective for the members of the organization to decide what is right or wrong within the organization. this creates a control mechanism in the whole organization that determines how and how to behave in different units within the organization (celiktas, 2019). the organization is called social entities with a specific purpose, which are considered before they were established and have a specific structure, whose area of activity has been determined and linked to the outside (daft, 2004). the organization is a structure that includes people with different social, cultural, psychological and academic characteristics. each of these people may have different backgrounds, habits, hobbies, behavior, beliefs and values. these people may be contributing to or benefiting from the organization they are as leaders, members or stakeholders of the organization. in spite of all these differences, the organization is the structure that keeps these people together for a specific purpose or purposes, often interacting with each other and achieving the objectives of the organization that has been determined (keyton, 2005). in order to understand how the organization does this, sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists have examined the structure of the organization from different angles in recent years, they have created conceptual frameworks and models that are different from each other or have common allocations. culture has been associated with the organization by researchers and the concept of organizational culture has been uncovered, thus analyzing the organizational culture by examining the norms, shared values and fundamental of organizations, inferences have been made in areas where development, change, and management is needed. when culture is called, people often think of all the rules, values and material and spiritual beings that are collected from the past to the present. looking at the origin word of the culture; in latin, it appears to be derived from the words "colere" or "cultura", which means to look and grow (sisman, 2014). it can be said that there is no universal consensus on the definition of culture. many different researchers and writers have defined the concept of culture in different scopes and angles. in the differentiation of these definitions, it can be stated that the concept of culture is very broad and contains many intangible and tangible elements has a significant impact. according to another definition; the whole of the material and spiritual things that people create to meet their needs (güney, 2015). according to the güney, the culture of the organization is the most likely to be used in the culture of the is a collection of common beliefs, thoughts and values that regulate the social and economic relations of individuals in the organization and solve the problems they face (güney, 2015). in another important definition, deal and kennedy defined organizational culture as a way to do and execute the work (ozkalp and kırel, 2018). peters and waterman described the organization's culture as follows: "the values shared by all members and dominant within the organization are a structure of stories, rumors, slogans and narratives in the organization, which is conveyed to employees through symbols"(ozkalp and kırel, 2018). looking at all these definitions, it is seen that common characteristics are perceived as a system of thought and a series of values that bring people together and unite around common thoughts and values. just as in the concept of social culture, organizational culture is similarly composed of elements such as beliefs, values, norms, symbols and technology. although there may be differences between them; it can be said that the culture of the organization has a kind of micro-scale reflection and a subsystem of social culture and that there are strong relations between them (bankacı, 2019). organizational culture; the purpose of the research, sometimes in the alignment and performance of the employees of the organization, sometimes in determining the changes required for the efficiency of the organization, and sometimes in the environment in which the organization is located, worked by researchers to provide benefits in areas of interest to the organization, such as identifying measures to support the organization (bolman and deal, 2017). among the challenges of defining and understanding the organization’s culture are the difficulties in evaluating the concept, as well as the identification and understanding of the concept requires a high level of language skills. because people often become obsessed with cursory and lame terms that lose the true meaning of the concept and tend to impose false meanings on the concept. even if the distinction is made well, imagination and creativity must be employed in order to understand the concept (alvesson and sveningsson, 2016). a strong culture is the main determinant of the organization's success. cultural formation in the organization; it includes several factors such as workforce, leadership, size and past. the organizational culture authorizes the manager and the workforce to use resources. an organization's culture motivates the workforce that affects the organization’s performance. a strong organizational culture of open and inclusive shared values and beliefs improves communication and efficiency by providing a good working environment and coordination between employee behavior (manyas, 2018). when the factors that make up the culture of the organization are examined, factors such as cultural values, leaders and heroes, ceremonies and symbols, legends related to the lived organization, language, customs and norms come to the forefront. the role of these factors in the organizational culture affects the level of sophistication and awareness of that organization. today, there are many ngos. the leaders of these ngos are respected in society according to the organization's history and lived legends. the demand for people's asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 575-581 577 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group participation in such organizations is also high. it has been proven by research that a newly established ngo and ngos with high history and awareness do not have the same cultural origin. the purpose of our study; with the increasing importance of the human factor in organizations today, human emotions, thoughts, culture affecting life and behavior is also of great importance for organizations. among the most important elements of modern societies are organizations. since it is thought that the culture of the organization will add material and spiritual value to the organizations in the light of all these information, it is aimed to examine and investigate the levels of organizational culture of academicians. 2. materials and method the research universe is formed by academicians at fırat university in the 2018-2019 academic year. the sample of the study is 96 randomly selected academicians from fırat university faculty of education, faculty of humanities and social sciences and faculty of sports sciences in the 2018-2019 academic year. the personal information form (name of the faculty, title, age, gender and academic working year) was used in order to determine the demographic information of the subjects participating in the study, in addition, "organizational culture scale" was used that prepared by ogbonna and harris (2000) and translated into turkish by karadeniz (2010) and developed in the master's study. our scale consists of 16 questions and 4 sub-dimensions. when the sub-dimensions of our scale are examined, the first 4 questions refer to the innovative culture sub-size, 4 of the competing culture sub-size, 4 the bureaucratic culture sub-size, and 4 the sub-dimension of community culture. our scale is a quintuple likert type. in the reliability analysis conducted by the karadeniz (2010) the "innovative culture" sub-size was 0.84, "competitive culture" sub-size 0.61, "bureaucratic culture" sub-size for 0.83, "community culture" sub-size for 0.76 and "organizational culture scale" for the whole the coefficient of 0.90 was obtained. 2.1. data analysis spss 22.0 statistical program was used to analyze the data in the study and calculate the results found. frequency of variables (f) and percentage (%) distributions have been calculated. it was checked by skewness and kurtosis tests to determine if the data was distributed normally. as a result of these tests and controls, the data of the research were determined to be parametric. therefore, t test and variance analysis (anova) test was used. tukey test and lsd test results were used to determine which groups the difference was among the results with significant differences. the error level in the study was taken as p<0.05. 3. results and interpretation in this section, the findings of the variables of the study are given. the findings showing the distribution of academicians in fırat university faculty of educational sciences, humanities and social sciences and sports sciences according to their personality qualities were examined and interpreted. table-1. distribution table of demographic characteristics. variable information form n % faculty of educational sciences 30 31,3 faculty faculty of humanities and social sciences 51 53,1 faculty of sports sciences 15 15,6 total 96 100,0 research assistant 21 21,9 phd academic member 25 26,0 title associate professor 31 32,3 professor 19 19,8 total 96 100,0 26-35 years 20 20,8 36-45 years 40 41,7 age 46-55 years 22 22,9 55 years and older 14 14,6 total 96 100,0 woman 23 24,0 gender man 73 76,0 total 96 100,0 up to 10 years 30 31,3 10-20 years 40 41,7 academic study 21-30 years 14 14,6 year 31 years and above 12 12,5 total 96 100,0 percentage distribution of the subjects. when the distribution of the demographic information of academicians in table 1 is examined, it is seen that the highest participation is from the faculty of humanities and social sciences with 53.1%, and the lowest participation is from the faculty of sports sciences with 15.6%. looking at the title information of the academicians participating in our research, when we look at the faculties of academicians participating in our research. it was determined that 32.3% of the participants in our study were associate professors, 26% were phd academic member, 21.9% were research assistants and 19.8% were professors. when we look at the age groups of the academicians participating in our study, we see that the most intensive participation is between 36-45 years with 41.7% and the lowest turnout is academicians aged 55 and over with 14.6%. according to gender distribution, 76% of academicians are male and 24% are female academicians. when we look at the academicians who participated in our study, we see that 41.7% of the academicians worked at the university for 10-20 years. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 575-581 578 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. faculty-oriented comparison of organizational culture scale sub-dimensions. sub-dimensions faculty n x ss f p tukey innovative culture educational sciencesb 30 15,63 2,658 16,294 ,000 humanities and social sciencesa 51 12,17 3,514 a-b,c sports sciencec 15 16,26 2,763 total 96 13,89 3,634 competitive culture educational sciencesb 30 14,70 2,614 22,825 ,000 humanities and social sciencesa 51 11,35 2,944 a-b,c sports sciencesc 15 15,80 2,144 total 96 13,09 3,305 bureaucratic culture educational sciencesb 30 15,40 2,190 12,132 ,000 humanities and social sciencesa 51 12,86 2,898 a-b,c sports sciencesc 15 15,60 2,131 total 96 14,08 2,875 community culture educational sciencesb 30 16,16 2,960 19,028 ,000 humanities and social sciencesa 51 12,19 4,074 a-b,c sports sciencesc 15 17,33 2,058 total 96 14,23 4,118 one way anova (tukey), p<0.05 in table 2 when the faculty variable in which academicians work with the sub-dimensions of the scale of the organization culture is examined, the faculty of humanities and social sciences in the sub-dimensions of innovative culture, competitive culture, bureaucratic culture and community culture there was a statistically significant difference between academicians and academicians working in the faculty of educational sciences and the faculty of sports sciences (p<0.05). table-3. title-axis comparison of sub-dimensions of organizational culture scale. sub-dimensions title n x ss f p innovative culture research assistant 21 12,80 4,445 1,637 ,186 phd academic member 25 13,92 3,463 associate professor 31 14,93 2,976 professor 19 13,36 3,669 total 96 13,89 3,634 competitive culture research assistant 21 12,80 3,203 ,485 ,694 phd academic member 25 12,72 3,155 associate professor 31 13,67 3,636 professor 19 12,94 3,170 total 96 13,09 3,305 bureaucratic culture research assistant 21 13,19 2,731 1,208 ,311 phd academic member 25 14,28 2,746 associate professor 31 14,67 2,761 professor 19 13,84 3,304 total 96 14,08 2,875 community culture research assistant 21 14,33 5,247 ,551 ,649 phd academic member 25 13,60 3,851 associate professor 31 14,93 3,520 professor 19 13,84 4,113 total 96 14,23 4,118 one way anova (tukey), p<0.05 when the sub-dimensions of the organizational culture scale and the academic title variable were examined in table 3 it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in the sub-dimensions of innovative culture, competitive culture, bureaucratic culture and community culture. (p>0.05). table-4. age-oriented comparison of organizational culture scale sub-dimensions. sub-dimensions age n x ss f p tukey innovative culture 26-35 years 20 12,80 4,514 5,531 ,002 36-45 yearsb 40 15,02 3,430 46-55 yearsc 22 14,59 2,538 a-b,c 55 years and abovea 14 11,14 2,507 total 96 13,89 3,634 competitive culture 26-35 years 20 13,15 3,030 3,073 ,032 36-45 yearsb 40 13,87 3,494 46-55 years 22 13,04 3,015 a-b 55 years and abovea 14 10,85 2,797 total 96 13,09 3,305 bureaucratic culture 26-35 years 20 13,40 2,542 3,075 ,032 36-45 yearsb 40 14,90 2,771 46-55 years 22 14,22 2,202 a-b 55 years and abovea 14 12,50 3,817 total 96 14,08 2,875 community culture 26-35 years 20 14,35 4,987 4,198 ,008 36-45 yearsb 40 15,05 3,869 46-55 yearsc 22 14,81 3,080 a-b,c 55 years and abovea 14 10,85 3,526 total 96 14,23 4,118 one way anova (tukey), p<0.05 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 575-581 579 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4 also examines the age group variable of academicians working with the sub-dimensions of the organizational culture scale; when examined at the sub-dimensions of innovative culture and community culture, there was a statistically significant difference between academicians over 55 years with academicians between the ages of 36-45 and those between the ages of 46-55 (p<0.05). when the sub-dimensions of competitive culture and community culture were examined, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between those aged 55 and over and those between 36 and 45 years of age(p<0.05). table-5. gender-based comparison of organizational culture scale sub-dimensions. sub-dimensions gender n x ss t p innovative culture woman 23 14,13 3,634 ,353 ,725 man 73 13,82 3,656 competitive culture woman 23 13,21 3,437 ,205 ,838 man 73 13,05 3,286 bureaucratic culture woman 23 13,56 2,676 -,991 ,324 man 73 14,24 2,933 community culture woman 23 13,43 4,388 -1,076 ,285 man 73 14,49 4,028 independent sample t-test, p<0.05 when we examined the sub-dimensions of the organizational culture scale and gender variable of academicians in table 5 it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in the sub-dimensions of innovative culture, competitive culture, bureaucratic culture and community culture (p>0,05). table-6. comparison of organizational culture scale sub-dimensions with axis of academic study year. sub-dimensions academic study year n x ss f p lsd innovative culture up to 10 yearb 30 12,96 4,303 2,839 0,42 a-b,c 10-20 yearsa 40 15,02 2,759 21-30 years 14 14,00 3,234 31 years and above c 12 12,33 4,030 total 96 13,89 3,634 competitive culture up to 10 years 30 12,86 3,082 ,338 ,798 10-20 years 40 13,40 3,326 21-30 years 14 13,28 3,911 31 years and above 12 12,41 3,315 total 96 13,09 3,305 bureaucratic culture up to 10 years 30 13,73 2,625 ,417 ,742 10-20 years 40 14,32 2,739 21-30 years 14 14,50 2,564 31 years and over 12 13,66 4,228 total 96 14,08 2,875 community culture up to 10 years 30 14,20 4,901 1,928 ,131 10-20 years 40 14,67 3,444 21-30 years 14 15,21 3,285 31 years and above 12 11,75 4,433 total 96 14,23 4,118 one way anova (tukey), p<0.05 table 6 examined the sub-dimensions of academicians' organizational culture scale and the academic study year variable, and statistically between employees of 10-20 years in the innovative culture sub-dimension and those working up to 10 years and those over 31 years have been found to be significantly different (p<0.05). it was found that there was no statistically significant difference in other sub-dimensions (p>0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion in this chapter, the findings of the academicians at fırat university who participated in the study were discussed and interpreted as to whether the levels of organizational culture differed according to some variables. when the distribution of the demographic information of academicians in table 1 is examined, looking at the faculties of academicians participating in our research, the highest attendance is 53.1% from the faculty of humanities and social sciences, and the lowest participation is % with 15.6, it appears to be from the faculty of sports sciences. looking at the title information of the academicians participating in our research, it was determined that 32.3% of the participants in our study were associate professors, 26% were ph.d. academic members, 21.9% were research assistants and 19.8% were professors. when we look at the age groups of the academicians participating in our study, we see that the most intensive participation is 36-45 years of age with 41.7% and the lowest participation is academicians aged 55 and above with 14.6%. according to gender distribution, 76% of academicians are male and 24% are female academicians. when we look at the academicians who participated in our study, we see that 41.7% of the academicians who participated in our study worked at the university for 10-20 years. when the academicians participating in the study were examined, the faculty variable in which they worked with the sub-dimensions of the organization's culture scale; there was a statistically significant difference between faculty of humanities and social sciences with academicians working in the faculty of educational sciences and sports sciences in terms of innovative culture, competitive culture, bureaucratic culture, and community culture sub-dimensions. oran (2016) according to the unit in charge, the average scores obtained from the level of employees adopting the organizational culture differ in a statistically significant way. these differences are due to the fact that asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 575-581 580 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group employees working in education units have a higher attitude score than those working in administrative units (oran, 2016). in his study köse (2017) said that research on the differentiation of organizational culture according to educational areas, that organizational culture in medical schools has lower values, especially innovative team culture and hierarchical culture medical schools differ edifying them to a significant extent from other faculties. the areas of education where the organization's culture is strongest are the education faculties and engineering faculties whose general organizational culture values are very close to each other. in addition, competitive culture in engineering faculties and innovative team culture in education faculties are more dominant. however, when a general assessment is made in terms of education areas, it seems difficult to talk about a general field culture such as "education faculty culture" or "engineering faculty culture" (köse, 2017). the main dimensions of the organization are; aims, structures, processes and organizational culture/climate. organizational structure and processes of the institution and organizational culture should basically serve the purpose of the existence of the institution (ozdemir, 2013). accordingly, the development of universities as an organization; structure, process and organizational culture will depend on the harmony of the university objectives. universities are complex organizations formed by individuals from different subcultures of society, and these organizations, consisting of faculty members, students, and university management have their own culture (kara, 2009). in our research, when the sub-dimensions of the organizational culture scale of academicians and the academic title variable were examined, there was no statistically significant difference in the sub-dimensions of innovative culture, competitive culture, bureaucratic culture, and community culture. cevik (2016) stated that in his study, perceptions of the participants in organizational culture did not change depending on the level of education (cevik, 2016). in the same way, iplikci and topsakal (2014) did not find any significant difference in organizational culture and educational status in their study with university staff. organizational culture is a system that shapes the modes of action and interaction within the organization and shows how things are done and helps to coexist different beliefs, values, attitudes, thoughts and morals within the organization (simşek et al., 2008). organizational culture is used in order to survive in a competitive environment and to respond appropriately to changing environmental conditions. organizational culture is important in that it directs all employees to think and act collectively (ira and sahin, 2011). in our study, when the age group variable of academicians working with the sub-dimensions of the organizational culture scale and the age group variable of academicians; there has been a statistically significant difference between academics over 55 with academics aged 36-45 and 46-55 years of age in the sub-dimensions of innovative culture and community culture (p<0.05). when the sub-dimensions of competing culture and community culture are examined; there was a statistically significant difference between the age range 55 and over and those between 36 and 45 years of age. kılıç and güdük (2017) concluded that the cultural perceptions of participants in the higher age group were higher and more meaningful than those of participants in the lower age group than their cultural perceptions. it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in the sub-dimensions of innovative culture, competitive culture, bureaucratic culture and community culture in our research when the sub-dimensions of the organizational culture scale and gender variable were examined (kılıç and güdük, 2017). bağdatlı (2015) he found that teachers' perceptions of organizational culture in their schools were equal for all types of culture, and that according to the perceptions of teachers, any type of culture in their school was not dominant compared to other types of culture. in his same study, there was no significant difference between gender, marital status, affiliated institution, age, educational status, seniority in the profession, working time at the school where they were employed, and the variables of the school type and perceptions of organizational culture (bağdatlı, 2015). when the sub-dimensions of the organizational culture scale of academicians and the academic year variable are examined, in the sub-dimension of innovative culture, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference between employees between 10-20 years with employees up to 10 years and employees over 31 years. it was found that there was no statistically significant difference in other sub-dimensions. looking at the different studies done with the organizational culture; (bankacı, 2019) it has been found that time orientation and avoidance of uncertainty have a significant effect on the tendency to postpone academics from the lower dimensions of organizational culture. when we looked at the significant differences in demographic factors, there was a significant difference between researchers and associate professors and professors in terms of academic title, and in terms of gender, men were more they tend to postpone (bankacı, 2019). ozdemir (2018) in the study of how the organization's culture is influenced by the structural variables of the organization, the structural elements such as coordination, standardization, specialization, hierarchical structure, control mechanisms and the working environment are examined it was concluded that there were significant repercussions on the culture of the organization (ozdemir, 2018). altinısık found that the perceptions of organizational culture of secondary school teachers did not differ significantly in the size of power culture and role culture according to the economic situation variable; the culture of success, support culture, sub-dimensions and general culture shows a significant difference in his study (altinısık, 2017). universities' best way to carry out education, training and scientific research can be achieved by having a strong and good organizational culture (köse, 2017). as a result of the research, academicians' organizational culture; in all sub-dimensions of the title and gender variable and in the year of study, the sub-dimensions of the competing culture and community culture were found to be not statistically significant. in the age group and variable, the competing culture and community culture subsizes and age ranges between those aged 55 and over and those between 36 and 45 years old, those working between 10-20 years in the innovative culture sub-size, and those who work for up to 10 years and those who are over 31 years there was a statistically significant difference between employees. from this point of view, it may be suggested to carry out studies to provide in-depth data on the reflections of different characteristics of higher education institutions on the culture of the organization. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(4): 575-581 581 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references altinısık, a., 2017. the relationship between the organizational silence behavior of secondary school teachers and the culture of the organization. adnan menderes university institute of social sciences department of educational sciences master's thesis. alvesson, m. and s. sveningsson, 2016. changing organizational culture. 2nd edn., new york: routledge. bağdatlı, f., 2015. relationship between the organizational culture and conflict management styles of schooladministrators istanbul sabahattin zaim university institute of social sciences education sciences master’s thesis. bankacı, u., 2019. the impact of organizational culture on academicians' tendencies to postpone. i̇stanbul university institute of social sciences department of business administration master's thesis. bolman, l.g. and t.e. deal, 2017. reframing organizations: artistry, choice and leadership. 6th edn., new jersey: jossey-bass. celiktas, z., 2019. organizational culture and organizational commitment: beykent university institute of social sciences. department of business management organization science, master's thesis. cevik, m.s., 2016. the impact of organizational culture on alienation. siirt university, institute of social sciences. master's thesis. daft, r.l., 2004. organization theory and design. ohio: south western. güney, s., 2015. organizational behavior. ankara: nobel academic publishing education consulting trade. ltd. co. iplikci, f.n. and y. topsakal, 2014. dimensions that determine and influence organizational culture in universities: it's an empirical study c.u. journal of the institute of social sciences, 23(2): 47-60. ira, n. and s. sahin, 2011. current and reliability study of organizational culture scale, celal bayar university. journal of social sciences of the institute of social sciences, 9(1): 1-14. kara, d., 2009. the factors causing stress in education life and the study of students attitudes in coping with stress according to their families features. selçuk university journal of the institute of social sciences, 22(1): 255-263. karadeniz, d., 2010. an examination of the organizational culture in terms of organizational commitment and intention to remain in the organization. abant i̇zzet baysal university, institute of social sciences, department of public administration, master's thesis. keyton, j., 2005. communication & organizational culture: a key to understanding work experiences. los angeles: sage. kılıç, c.h. and ö. güdük, 2017. evaluation of outsourcing in health care in the context of corporate culture: it's a hospital sample. journal of health scholars, 4(2): 81-89.available at: https://doi.org/10.5455/sad.13-1490969429. köse, m.f., 2017. the relationship between organizational culture and academic performance in universities. gazi university institute of educational sciences department of educational sciences ph.d. thesis. manyas, s., 2018. the relationship between organizational culture and organizational commitment: a study on istanbul university employees. istanbul gelisim university institute of social sciences department of business administration, master's thesis. ogbonna, e. and l.c. harris, 2000. leadership style, organizational culture and performance: empirical evidence from uk companies. international journal of human resource management, 11(4): 766-788.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585190050075114. oran, a., 2016. examining organizational culture in higher education institutions in terms of organizational commitment and job satisfaction levels of employees. aksaray university institute of social sciences department of business administration. master's thesis. ozdemir, e., 2018. examination of organizational culture in terms of structural variables in a higher education institution. eskisehir osmangazi university institute of educational sciences department of higher education management and policy higher education management master's thesis. ozdemir, s., 2013. turkish education system and school management. ankara: pegem. ozkalp, e. and ç. kırel, 2018. organizational behavior. bursa: ekin printing publication distribution, 8. simşek, m.s., t. akgemci and a. celik, 2008. introduction to behavioral sciences and behavior in organizations. 6th edn., print, ankara: gazi bookstore. sisman, m., 2014. organizations and cultures. istanbul: pegem academy, 4. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 1 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 1-6, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.1.6 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the learning disciplines for support personnel to build a learning organization of ramkhamhaeng university duangduen chancharoen1 chomsupak cruthaka2 ( corresponding author) 1,2ramkhamhaeng university, bangkok, thailand. abstract this research aimed primarily at exploring the learning disciplines of support personnel to build a learning organization of ramkhamhaeng university (ru) and comparing their learning disciplines as categorized by their gender, age, education level, and work experiences. the sample consisted of 334 support personnel of ru. the research tool was a 5-rating scale questionnaire with the reliability coefficient of 0.97. statistics used to analyze the data included frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, and one-way analysis of variance. the findings revealed the high levels of learning disciplines to build a learning organization (lo) among the support personnel both in the overall aspect and in each of the five dimensions. in addition, the support personnel with different gender and age indicated no significant difference in the overall aspect and in each of the five dimensions regarding their learning disciplines to build a lo. however, the aforesaid difference at 0.05 significant level was found among the support personnel with different education level. moreover, the support personnel with different work experiences indicated their non-significant differences in terms of the overall, and in the aspects of shared vision and team learning, but reported a significant difference regarding personal mastery, mental models, and systems thinking. keywords: learning disciplines, build a learning organization, support personnel, ramkhamhaeng university. citation | duangduen chancharoen; chomsupak cruthaka (2021). the learning disciplines for support personnel to build a learning organization of ramkhamhaeng university. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 1-6. history: received: 2 november 2020 revised: 27 november 2020 accepted: 17 december 2020 published: 5 january 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. research objectives ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2 3. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................... 2 4. research methodology ...................................................................................................................................................................... 3 5. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 6. discussion ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 7. conclusion and implementation ...................................................................................................................................................... 5 references ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2540 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.1.6&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5956-364x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-5102 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 1-6 2 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research aimed primarily at exploring the learning disciplines of support personnel to build a learning organization of ramkhamhaeng university (ru) and comparing their learning disciplines as categorized by their gender, age, education level, and work experiences. 1. introduction the concept of lo has long been a major key for an organization to keep abreast of changes in the globalized era marked with competitiveness and rapid technological advancement. this concept has later been adopted by government agencies so as to bring forth not only organization development but also human resource development with respect to personnel’s knowledge, competency, skills, attitudes, etc. hence, organizational management using the concept of lo will enable employees to cultivate self-learning and knowledge sharing throughout the workplace. this will definitely lead an organization to achieve work development efficiency and eventually success in this globalized society. according to senge (1990) a lo is a workplace where an individual can continuously build up and extend their creative competency as desired. this type of organization incessantly motivates its employees to be creative and to create unrestricted mutual learning. ru is administered in a ‘knowledge market’ type, in which students can obtain their education as deemed appropriate to their own resources. the learning methods are available as either in-class, long distance, or selflearning for students residing in thailand or overseas. in terms of internal administration, ru is composed of lecturers and support personnel. while the former is in charge of academic tasks, the latter mainly functions to support the former, while simultaneously attempting for self-development to be part of learning organization. besides being determined by the university’s quality assurance criteria, policy, rules, and regulations, the support personnel are also required to work in cooperation with lecturers, students, and employees of both internal and external offices. therefore, they need to be a self-learner, rapidly exposed to accurate learning and information, and keep track of any occurring changes both within and outside the university. as a result, the development of lo is a requisite pathway through which the university’s support personnel have to wade. the researcher, therefore, is interested in exploring the development nature of learning organization of ru, aiming particularly to bring forth among the support personnel their individual potentials, work efficiency, as well as constant alert in self-development and self-learning. the research findings will serve as a database for the university executives to formulate efficient policy and strategies in human resource development, so that holistically functions would be conducted to push the whole university to achieve the goal of an effective lo. 2. research objectives the objectives of this research are as following: 1. to explore the learning disciplines of support personnel to build a learning organization of ru. 2. to compare the learning disciplines of support personnel to build a learning organization of ru, as categorized by their gender, age, education level, and work experiences. 3. literature review sengé (2006) defined a learning organization as a workplace in which learning is motivated to continually increase personnel competency in the individual, team, and organizational levels, so that the personnel will reach their desirable differing goals. in other words, a lo enhances innovative patterns of thinking, and shares them to all members to create mutual inspiration for mutual and incessant learning throughout the organization. 3.1. elements of learning organization to be a lo, a number of factors are to be developed to promote both internal and external learning, so that the personnel can adjust themselves to the incurring changes. according to senge (1990) the core elements to build a learning organization consist of five disciplines (the fifth discipline )as following. (1) personal mastery: individual learning is the starting point and a baseline to be a lo. hence, an individual has to force him/herself to be a constant learner as per their personal needs and visions, so as to extend their capability to create efficient work outcomes. moreover, as suggested by reece (2004) a mastery person exhibits self-control to attain a high level of learning and self-reflection through constructive criticism and intention to assimilate with the whole organization. (2) mental models: this element concerns an individual’s holistic perception and understanding of his/her work, together with the ability to build up an interconnectedness across the jobs in the organization. as a result, a positive mental pattern and belief will follow through to generate a constructive mental model in congruence with global visions and realities. in this aspect, garvin, edmondson, and gino (2008) stated that mental models basically involve an individual’s continual scrutinizing of thinking and perception development, coupled with his/her challenges against both ambiguous and vivid existing assumptions about the organization and work environments. in this case, adoption of changes will occur when the organization members develop constructive mental models and consider the organization as part of their learning. (3) shared visions: the personnel should be encouraged to build shared visions about the organization’s future, and that will reflect their individual’s vision. afterward, thorough communication to pass through the organizations’ visions and goals to members from top to bottom levels should be conducted to inflict them into each individual’s thinking. in this aspect, shared visions concern members’ determination to establish shared goals and implementation to reach these goals. hence, besides promoting individual and organizational capabilities, the organization itself should facilitate the construction of shared visions among the members of all levels (chang & sun, 2007). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 1-6 3 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (4) team learning: the members should exchange knowledge to build up team learning, and hence team capabilities. knowledge should be transmitted to create best practices as a work model for other work units. innovative creativity and invention will also follow suit to generate shared practices. this supports the notion that lo is a place where each member can conduct his/her self-learning. according to dyer, dyer, and dyer (2013) the context management of highly-efficient team can be achieved by: building team’s work goals that are interesting and clearly measurable; making the members confident and understand that efficient team working is a key to achieve those goals; creating a reward system based on team’s, not individual’s, performances; eliminating obstacles in team working by focusing on formal organizational structures; establishing the organizational culture which supports team work and team behavior; building the information technology system to provide data and information to teams for their decision making; and forming the human resource development system to handle teamwork training, as well as other tasks to support team work, e.g. process of selecting team members. (5) systems thinking: this element is the core mechanism of a lo. it supports the notion of learning and sustainable development of human resources in an organization. systems thinking concerns the continual linkage between acquired knowledge and individual expertise. in this aspect, an individual’s holistic ideas will lead to systematic perception of work functions and performances. it also involves logical thinking expressed through thinking pattern and language, and this outcome will definitely and effectively change an organization’s work system to coincide with real situations of a lo. 4. research methodology the population of this study consisted of 2,929 support personnel of ru in the 2017 fiscal year. the sample size of 353 support personnel was determined by using taro yamane’s table with 95% confidence and 0.05 error. the research distributed the questionnaire to the selected sample and got the responses from 334 persons, equaling 94.60% response rate. the research tool is a questionnaire invented to explore the learning disciplines of support personnel to build a learning organization of ru. the questionnaire consisted of 2 sections. the first section included five check-list questions asking the sample’s personal information, including their gender, age, education level, and work experience. the second section comprised a five-rating scale with items asking about the support personnel’s learning disciplines to build a learning organization of ru. the acquired reliability coefficient is 0.97, signifying that this section is of high reliability, the collected data were analyzed using frequency and percentage to identify the sample’s personal information of gender, age, educational level, and work experiences. mean and standard deviation were later used to calculate the sample’s learning disciplines to build a learning organization of ru. to compare their learning disciplines to build a learning organization of ru across different gender, age, education level, and work experiences, t-test and one-way anoava were conducted. the lsd ( least significant differences) would be conducted when the anova yielded a significant result. 5. results 1. the descriptive analysis revealed that half of the support personnel of ru were females (59.30%, n=198), with the highest number of those in 31-40 age group (36.20%, n=121), holding a bachelor’s degree (44.9%, n=150), with 6-10 years of work experiences (35.50%, n=112). 2. the results of learning discipline for support personnel to build a learning organization of ru as shown in table 1. 3.the inferential analysis was also conducted to compare the learning disciplines of support personnel to build a learning organization of ru, as categorized by their gender, age, education level, and work experiences as shown in table 2, table 3. table-1. mean standard deviation and learning discipline levels for ru support personnel in order to build a learning organization in each aspect. learning organization disciplines  sd learning discipline levels 1. personal mastery 3.93 .56 high 2. mental models 3.90 .54 high 3. shared visions 3.83 .57 high 4. team learning 3.84 .58 high 5. systems thinking 3.92 .59 high total 3.89 .48 high table 1 the analysis of the learning disciplines of support personnel to build a learning organization of ru, revealed the high levels of learning disciplines to build a learning organization both in the overall aspect and in each of the five dimensions of personal mastery, systems thinking, mental models, team learning, and shared visions, respectively. table-2. the comparison of learning discipline for ru support personnel to build a learning organization classified by gender. learning organization disciplines male female t  sd  sd 1. personal mastery 3.88 .55 3.97 .57 1.419 2. mental models 3.85 .57 3.94 .51 1.425 3. shared visions 3.77 .61 3.86 .55 1.356 4. team learning 3.80 .58 3.87 .59 1.129 5. systems thinking 3.85 .60 3.97 .57 1.718 total 3.83 .48 3.92 .47 1.693 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 1-6 4 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 2 showed that the overall aspect of learning disciplines to build a lo, the support personnel with different gender indicated no significant difference, while those with different education levels stated a difference at 0.05 significant level. table-3. the comparison of learning discipline for ru support personnel to build a learning organization classified by age, education levels and work experiences. source of variance ss df ms f age between groups .594 3 .198 .878 within groups 74.469 330 .226 total 75.063 333 education levels between groups 3.330 2 1.665 7.682* within groups 71.735 331 .217 total 75.063 333 work experiences between groups 2.067 4 .517 2.329 within groups 72.996 3.29 .222 total 75.063 333 table 3 showed the overall aspect of learning disciplines to build a lo, the support personnel with different age indicated no significant difference, while those with different education levels stated a difference at 0.05 significant level. with regards to the five dimensions (personal mastery, mental model, shared visions, team learning, and systems thinking) of learning disciplines to build a lo, the support personnel with different education levels indicated differences at 0.05 significance level, while those with different age indicated no significant differences. lastly, the support personnel with different work experiences indicated their non-significant differences in terms of the overall aspect of learning disciplines, and in the aspects of shared visions and team learning, but reported a significant difference regarding personal mastery, mental models, and systems thinking. 6. discussion the findings revealed the high levels of learning disciplines to build a lo among the support personnel in the overall aspect. the discussions of the said findings in each of the five dimensions of personal mastery, mental models, shared visions, team learning, and systems thinking are as following. regarding personal mastery, the research results indicated the support personnel’s high level of learning disciplines, with highest mean scores in using new techniques to develop their work, ability of self-learning from various types of media (i.e. books, academic articles, and internet), and continual participating in trainings provided by the university. the above findings may stem from the fact that the support personnel of ru are required to use their knowledge and ability to achieve successful work performances. hence, they are well aware of the necessity of selfdevelopment and acquire a body of knowledge from various media types, as well as to apply the available technologies to manage the university’s information (rules & regulations, announcements) via the online system. in addition, efficient organizing of existing knowledge is a key to their effective work performance. hence, they have to increase their potentials in an incessant manner by participating in a number of training for selfdevelopment and successful application of acquired knowledge to improve their work performances. the aforesaid findings also coincided with senge (1990) who considered individual learning as a starting point for an organization to be a learning organization. hence, an individual should be self-motivated to be a constant learner in accordance with their personal needs. in this aspect, self-control is deemed important for a mastery person to attain a high level of learning (reece, 2004). with regards to mental models, the research results indicated the support personnel’s high level of learning disciplines, with highest mean scores in linking their thinking to actual performances, having a diversity of perceived thinking and readily in applying it to their work, and being able to efficiently make decision and solve problems in a pressured situations. this findings may stem from the fact that the support personnel of ru have been striving hard to develop their learning and skills in securing causes and solutions of problems, leading thus to the formation of mental models in preventing the reoccurrence of those problems. they are also able to apply the lessons learned to generate satisfactory performances as perceived by their supervisors, subordinates, and service-recipients who are composed of students, outsiders, and the university personnel. the above findings also agreed with garvin et al. (2008) concept regarding the development of mental models from an individual’s continual scrutinizing of thinking and perceptions. in addition, wen (2014) research on “the nature, characteristics and ten strategies of lo” clearly indicated the nature of learning strategies in an organization, and proposed 10 efficient strategies in building up organizational learning in china. with regards to shared visions, the research results indicated the support personnel’s high level of learning disciplines, with highest mean scores in loosing ties with traditional work procedures and opening up for learning innovative work format, considering their work not as an obstacles but an opportunity for work improvement, and using organizational visions as a basis for their works. the above findings may basically stem from the fact that the support personnel of ru have to mutually take charge in planning and implementing their works in accordance with their unit’s policy, iso 9001: 2000 quality standard system, and academic quality assurance. as a result, they engage in exchanging visions to snatch out better performances, cutting loose their ties with traditional work formats and procedures, leading thus to more efficient work changes. in addition, the executives also regularly hold formal meetings 2-3 times a month to inform the support personnel about the university’s policy. in each work unit, both formal and informal meetings are held in the forms of small talks, discussions, and seminars, to exchange opinions and share visions among colleagues. the support personnel, therefore, are asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 1-6 5 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group able to link shared visions to their work planning and to meet the success goals as determined by their work unit and the university. the aforementioned findings also coincided with chang and sun (2007) conclusion that shared visions concern members’ dedication to establish common goals and their use of individual capabilities to reach these goals. in this aspect, haight (2017) paper on “what do chief learning officers do? an exploratory study of how chief learning officers build learning organizations” reported that shared visions of learning organization among employees were constructed via strategic development and implementation. in terms of team learning, the research results indicated the support personnel’s high level of learning disciplines, with highest mean scores in having co-learning with colleagues to exchange knowledge and work procedures, willing to coaching and exchange learning with others, and having freedom in expressing their thinking and learning with their colleagues. this finding may stem from the situation in which team learning is basically prevalent in their work units, with an opportunity for the support personnel to express their thinking and ideas in the contexts deemed appropriate. moreover, cooperation in both routine and non-routine jobs is enhanced in the forms of listening to each other’s ideas, discussing, and proposing differing angles to tackle occurring problems. the team learning has basically been enabled particularly under time pressure. the above findings basically agreed with willborn and cheng (1994) who proposed that the strategies to build up a learning organization should start from basic structured and procedures to meet the staff’s needs. hence, the development of team learning activities should be held in the forms of job redesign and work cooperation. in this aspect, morgan (2017) study on “influence of six organizational dimensions in an it organization: a quantitative study” indicated numerous factors leading to the development of a lo, starting from using individual knowledge and abilities, the staff’s need to learn, and constructive organizational climate that focuses on team working as well as formal and informal co-learning. regarding systems thinking, the research results indicated the support personnel’s high level of learning disciplines, with highest mean scores in using past mistakes and success to solve current problems, attempting to plan their own work in agreement with the unit’s goals, and exercising systems thinking to create work efficiency. the above findings may stem from the fact that the support personnel have to perform in accordance with the iso 9001: 2000 quality standards and academic quality assurance. hence, they need to exchange visions, discover innovative changes through systems thinking, and exchange information in a systematic manner through their self-created job networks using supportive communication systems via effective technologies. the findings also agreed with sengé (2006) idea that supported the significance of systems thinking in the fastchanging and competitive managerial environments. hence, all executives need to possess intellectual capitals of constructive systems thinking in the form of (1) systematic thinking, with clearly identified goals, diverse means, and visions, and (2) timely thinking about existing realities with no delay in implementation. the findings also supported luepong (2011) study on development of learning organization in specialised financial institutions (sfis), that found systems thinking as one of the five disciplines of lo. the comparative findings revealed the learning disciplines to build a lo among the support personnel as categorized by gender, age, education level, and work experiences as following. firstly, the support personnel with different gender and age indicated no significant difference in the overall aspect and in each of the five dimensions regarding their learning disciplines to build a learning organization. this finding failed to support the stated hypothesis. this may stem from the fact that the support personnel of ru of both genders and age levels are required to work jointly while sharing their abilities. they also need to perform in accordance with the university policy and job descriptions stated in their routines and non-routines jobs, leading thus to their non-different needs in learning. furthermore, it was also found that the support personnel with different education level indicated significant differences in the overall aspect and in each of the five dimensions regarding their learning disciplines to build a lo, hence supporting the stated hypothesis. the said finding may stem from that fact that higher-educated personnel are basically more capable of self-development and opening up for acquiring further knowledge and experiences to be used in their work more efficiently. moreover, the support personnel with different work experiences indicated their non-significant differences in terms of the overall aspect of learning disciplines, and in the aspects of shared vision and team learning, but reported a significant difference regarding personal mastery, mental models, and systems thinking. this finding also failed to support the stated hypothesis, and it may stem from the role of an individual’s experiences in enabling perception about the university’s future pictures. hence, the said difference may arise out of that particular perception and the encouragement for colleagues to create shared visions and teamwork. 7. conclusion and implementation the findings generated from this study, together with relevant academic literature, may serve as a tool to develop learning potentials in individual level, task-related level, and organizational structure level. moreover, interested parties may apply the said findings to stimulate employees throughout an organization to develop a true learning organization. hence, related suggestions for further implications are as follows: 1. personal mastery: the university executives should encourage the support personnel to pursue a higher education level. in addition, they should provide them study trips to open up their new vision. a training institute should also be founded to offer trainings in new knowledge, skills, attitudes, and potentials, so that the support personnel will be a valuable human capital of ru. 2. mental models: the university executives should support the notion of knowledge management in the organization, particularly the regular exchange of knowledge acquired through participation in trainings, academic conferences, and problem solutions using real case study. this will enable the support personnel to apply their knowledge in a systematic manner. 3. shared visions: the university executives should empower the support personnel by providing them a challenging job. this deed will definitely uplift their knowledge, capabilities, skills, and job-related expertise to be applied in their work efficiently, with more experts definitely being created in the organization. besides, the recognition of learning as a key element for a learning organization should also be enhanced via building up asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 1-6 6 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group constructive learning environments on the regularly basis in executive and operational meetings. these activities are expected to generate new knowledge through mutual knowledge exchange, innovative knowledge introduction, arguments, and discussion in complex issues. 4. team learning: the university executives should support constant team learning via dialogues of small talks and discussions, so as to generate mutual exchanges of knowledge, skills, and expertise. these activities will also redirect the support personnel’s attitudes to accept the significance of creative team learning and hence reduce internal conflicts. in addition, all work units should be encouraged to use advanced technology in working, coordinating, transmitting of information, and learning via the e-learning system. the expected outcomes are efficient information search and retrieval to support incessant learning and thus accelerate job success. 5. systems thinking: the university executives should encourage the support personnel to participate in job-related trainings and systematic thinking. the process may start from planning, executing, auditing & monitoring, problem solving, and securing advanced technologies to facilitate new knowledge retrieval. the expected outcomes will be effective skills in conceptualization, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and appropriate adaptation. as a result, the support personnel will develop their thinking and build up their own new knowledge to efficiently achieve job success. references chang, d.-s., & sun, k.-l. (2007). exploring the correspondence between total quality management and peter senge's disciplines of a learning organization: a taiwan perspective. total quality management & business excellence, 18(7), 807-822.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14783360701349914. dyer, w. g. j., dyer, j. h., & dyer, w. g. (2013). team building (5th ed.). san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. garvin, d. a., edmondson, a. c., & gino, f. (2008). is yours a learning organization? harvard business review, 86(3), 109-116. haight, v. d. (2017). what do chief learning officers do? an exploratory study of how chief learning officers build learning organizations (order no. 10258744). proquest dissertations & theses global. (1875588351). luepong, p. (2011). the development of a learning organization model for specialized financial institutions. dissertations, doctor of philosophy, ramkhamhaeng university. morgan, m. a. (2017). influence of six organizational dimensions in an it organization: a quantitative study (order no. 10254271). proquest dissertations and theses global. (1875238764). reece, p. d. (2004). universities as learning organizations: how can australian universities become learning organization. unpublished phd. thesis murdoch university, australia. sengé, p. m. (2006). the fifth discipline: the art & practice of the learning organization. new york: doubleday. senge, p. m. (1990). the fifth discipline: the art & practice of the learning organization. london: mackays of chutham plc, chutham, kent. wen, h. (2014). the nature, characteristics and ten strategies of learning organization. the international journal of educational management, 28(3), 289-298. willborn, w., & cheng, t. (1994). global management of quality assurance system. new york: mcgraw-hill. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 341 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 341-346, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.341.346 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the acute effects of pre-conditioning activities with a weighted vest on subsequent linear sprint and change of direction performance in physical education students celil kaçoğlu1 izzet kirkaya2 ( corresponding author) 1eskişehir technical university, sport sciences faculty, department of coaching education, eskişehir, turkey. 2yozgat bozok university, school of physical education and sports, yozgat, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was to determine the effects of a post activation potential application response in sprinting and change of direction performance. fifteen physically active, healthy men (age 23.5±2.0 years, height 175.0±7.6 cm, body weight 72.2±8.5 kg, body fat 15.7±2.9 %) voluntarily participated in this study. cross sectional research design with a single group (n=15) and repeated tests was used and applicants participated in sprint and pro-agility tests 8 minutes after the pre-conditioning (pc) with weight wests that corresponded 5% and 10% of their body weights in different days without pre-conditioning. for pc, 8 minutes before for each 30m sprint and pro-agility tests, they did a resisted running with a weight vest corresponding 5% and 10% of their body weights. analysis shows that, sprint after pc activity as resistance running with %5 and %10 of body weight (p<0.05) and agility (p<0.05) data showed statistically significant difference. according to the results of bonferroni post-hoc correction, 30m sprint test times, which were performed 8 minutes after the pc which includes a 30m sprint with weight vests corresponding to 5% of their body weight, showed an increase from control test times, 4.34±0.23 seconds to 4.40±0.24 seconds respectively. this 0.07 second increase is statistically significant (p<0.05). in our study, pap effect being observed as negative, might be related with the lower body weight percentages of resisted running exercise which was selected for pap. keywords: pre-conditioning contraction, post activation potentiation, weighted vest, sprint, change of direction, agility. citation | celil kaçoğlu; i̇zzet kirkaya (2020). the acute effects of pre-conditioning activities with a weighted vest on subsequent linear sprint and change of direction performance in physical education students. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 341-346. history: received: 28 february 2020 revised: 7 april 2020 accepted: 12 may 2020 published: 4 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: authors would like to thank their student volunteers from eskişehir technical university and student rıdvan uzar, for a valuable contribution and dedication to the current study. funding: this research article is funded by eskisehir technical university. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 342 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 342 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 344 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 344 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 345 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.341.346&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1702 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1817-5234 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1702 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1817-5234 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1702 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1817-5234 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1702 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1817-5234 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0468-8434 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 341-346 342 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research aims to reveal post activation potential (pap). a wide variety of methods are seen in the literature to mediate the performance effects of preconditioning activities. it is thought that the preconditioning effects of resistance applications such as weight vest will contribute positively to the literature. it constitutes a resource for athletes, coaches and sports experts on pap phenomenon. 1. introduction acute practices that will improve performance for all sports branches are seen here. especially branches which include anaerobic performances, sprint and force give more attention to this approach (yilmaz, 2019). a number of training and recovery strategies are used to enable athletes to perform optimally on the day of training or competition. performance can be greatly enhanced by some specific pre-conditioning (pc) methods. some of these performance enhancement strategies are; post activation potential (pap), ischemic pre-conditioning, warmup protocol, passive heat application, morning exercise session or hormonal preparation (kilduff, finn, baker, cook, & west, 2013). among these approaches, especially pap application maximizes the acute strength increase of athletes (lorenz, 2011). pap application affects muscle strength rate increase and strength development rate (rfd) positively, thanks to previously performed muscle activation. stimulation of nervous system under load, increases contraction functions more (judge, 2009; mitchell & sale, 2011). applicability of pap is mostly concentrated on exercises which use strength. because pap, which occurs after maximum exercise, could maintain the acute pc stimulus which increases muscle strength output for a few minutes (seitz & haff, 2016). the phenomenon caused by pc activities performed maximally or close maximally during next exercise is called force-power potentiation complex as well (stone, sands, pierce, ramsey, & haff, 2008). muscle performance that will occur after pc is directly related to the balance between fatigue and potentiation (rassier & macintosh, 2000). increased muscle performance depends on fatigue dropping, while potentiation is peaking. if the level between the two conditions is the same of fatigue level is higher, an increase in performance will not be observed. again, the balance between these two conditions depends on the force-power potentiation complex and individual characteristics (tillin & bishop, 2009). in studies studying the characteristics of individuals, it has been seen that potentization levels of strong individuals are higher than those of weak individuals (ruben et al., 2010; seitz, de villarreal, & haff, 2014). in addition, after intensive pc, strong individuals exhibited the pap affect much faster than their weak counterparts (jo, judelson, brown, coburn, & dabbs, 2010; seitz et al., 2014). therefore this study aims to try to increase the potential impact of pap, as a pc strategy, to increase strength generation rate of volunteering participants with training experience. 1.1. research method fifteen physically active, healthy physical education students (age 23.5±2.0 years, height 175.0±7.6 cm, body weight 72.2±8.5 kg, body fat percentage 15.7±2.9 %) with training experience in sprint and change direction, voluntarily participated in this study. the purpose of this study was explained to the participant in detail, and it was stated that they need to use maximum effort in all the tests and applications they participated during this research and they were also encouraged verbally during the tests. details of the research were explained to all participants and they were told they were free to leave the research at any stage. during the research helsinki declaration was followed and this study was approved by eskişehir osmangazi university clinical research ethics committee (date: 14 february 22019; decision no: 25; document verification address:https://ebysnetm.ogu.edu.tr/home/dogrulama/71ff8503-2717-401c-829a-db81fa48a8a9). in this study, a cross sectional research design with a single group (n=15) and repetitive tests was used and applicants participated in sprint and pro agility tests 8 minutes after the pc with weight wests that corresponded 5% and 10% of their body weights in different days without pc. 2. method all participants joined the test and practices one on one for trial and adaptation. approximately 10 days after trial evaluations, all volunteers came for sprint and agility tests, one pre-test and two experimental evaluations (resistance running with a weight vest that corresponds 5% and 10% of their body weight), on 5 different days. height, weight and body fat percentage measurements of the participants were taken as they came to the laboratory for the trial and adaptation sessions. on the pre-test day, 30 m sprint test was performed, and after an at least 15 minute passive resting break, agility test was started. evaluations were on the tartan track of eskişehir technical university, faculty of sport sciences, indoor athletics track. before all tests and evaluations, approximately 10 minutes of mid-tempo (self-selected) flat race, followed by submaximal stretches and standard warm-up with dynamic contractions (concentric, plyometric calisthenics and various jumps) were performed. the process of the test is shown in figure 1. 2.1. practice of pre-conditioning activity before the pre-test, participants were given a certain amount of time for standard warm-up practices and a reasonable time was provided for stretching after the warm-up period. and after the warm-up period, pc was started. for pc, 8 minutes before for each 30 meter sprint and pro agility tests, they did a resistance running with weight vests corresponding 5% and 10% of their body weights once. since the optimal resting time is 8 to 12 minutes for optimal potentiation after pc, (bevan, owen, cunningham, kingsley, & kilduff, 2009; gouvêa, fernandes, césar, silva, & gomes, 2013) after this 1 repeat maximal resistance running and agility, they were given an 8 minute passive resting time and then again started on 1 repeat 30 meter sprint and agility tests. a minimum of 48 hours resting period was provided between the sprint rest day and the agility tests. with that, they were participated in evaluations 5 times in total, once for the pre-test, and twice for each agility and sprint tests asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 341-346 343 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group which were performed after the pc, executed with mentioned %5 and 10% body weight corresponding weight vests and as resistance running figure 1. figure-1. experimental research process design. 2.2. performance measurements 2.2.1. 30m sprint test sprint acceleration performances of participants were evaluated with 30m sprint run tests. a photocell and its reflectors, which were approximately 2 meters apart from the starting line and the 30th meter, were placed mutually figure 2. sprint tests were tested on an indoor athletic track (smartspeed, fusion sport, australia), with an electronic stopwatch system which started the time as the participant ran through the first sensor and recorded the participants’ run time between the 0 and 30 meter sensors with an accuracy of 0.01s. sprint run started at the moment determined by the participant within the area determined by a line which was 1m behind the starting point and at the moment when the participant hit the photocell on the starting line with a forward movement without a backwards move and completed when they hit the 30m line sensor. the participants were given the necessary information that they needed to run mentioned 30m distance as quickly as possible and at a maximum speed before each test. before the sprint tests, the participants did a standard 10 minute warm-up with low-intensity acceleration runs and various incremental running exercises (woolford, polglaze, rowsell, & spencer, 2013). a maximal 30m run was executed 8 minutes after the pcs performed with %5 and %10 body weight corresponding weight vests and as resistance running and recorded for level analysis. figure-2. graphic representation of 30m sprint running test. 2.3. pro-agility agility test directional running performances of the participants were evaluated with the pro-agility agility test. participants started this tests from a stationary position in between a photocell chronometer located in between two parallel lines with ten yards between them and its reflector (smartspeed, fusion sport, australia) at the time and direction of their choosing. after starting the test, participants first ran until the first line for 5 yards then after touching the line, rotating for 180 degrees, they ran 10 yards to touch the other line, then again with a 1800 rotation, they ran 5 yards and passed the photocell and completed the test by running a total of 20 yards figure 3. if a participant returned without touching the line, their run time was not recorded and their result was obtained by repeating the evaluation after a break of at least one day (karacabey, 2013; lockie, jeffriess, schultz, & callaghan, 2012). figure-3. graphic representation of pro-agility agility test (in this example, right side is shown as the first preference of direction). source: re-illustrated from lockie et al. (2012). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 341-346 344 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.4. statistical analysis data are given as average and standard deviation. in the normality analysis of the data, with shapiro-wilk test (p>0,05) data distributed normally and q-q plot distribution showed that there were no extreme values in the test data. to determine whether there was a difference between sprint and agility performances that were performed after pc with weight vests that correspond to %5 and %10 body weight and the pre-test values of these performances, one-way variance analysis was used in repeated evaluations. the significance level was determined as p<0.05 in all statistical tests. if the f value of the analysis turns out to be significant, post-hoc comparison was used to determine which values differ. mauchly’s sphericity test assumption was proved for sprint values χ2(2) = 0.149, p = 0.928 but not for agility χ2(2) = 6.140, p = 0.046. therefore, greenhouse-gaisser correction was used for the analysis of agility tests (ε=0.989). spss packaged software was used for data analysis (version 20.0; spss inc., chicago, il). 3. results according to the analysis results, sprint after pc activity as resistance running with %5 and %10 of body weight [f(2, 28) = 20.616, p = 0.000, partial η2 = 0.596] and agility [f(1.453, 20.342) = 4.539, p = 0.033, influence quantity η2 = 0.245] data showed statistically significant difference. according to the results of bonferroni post-hoc correction, 30m sprint test times, which were performed 8 minutes after the pc which includes a 30m sprint with weight vests corresponding to 5% of their body weight, showed an increase from control test times, 4.34±0.23 seconds to 4.40±0.24 seconds respectively. this 0.07 second increase is statistically significant (%95 ic, -0.14, 0.01, p<0.05). 30m sprint test times, which were performed 8 minutes after the pc which includes weight vests corresponding to 10% of their body weight, showed an increase from 30m sprint test times, which were performed 8 minutes after the pc which includes weight vests corresponding to 5% of their body weight, from 4.40±0.24 seconds to 4.50±0.29 seconds respectively. this 0.10 second increase is statistically significant (%95 ic, -0.18, 0.14, p<0.05). 30m sprint test times, which were performed 8 minutes after the pc which includes a 30m sprint with weight vests corresponding to 10% of their body weight, showed an increase from control test times, 4.34±0.23 seconds to 4.50±0.29 seconds respectively. this 0.17 second increase is statistically significant (%95 ic, -0.24, 0.01, p<0.05). according to the results of bonferroni post-hoc correction, the pro-agility agility performance times which were performed 8 minutes after the pc which includes a pro-agility agility test with weight vests corresponding to 5% of their body weight, showed an increase from control test times, 5.18±0.25 seconds to 5.18±0.36 seconds respectively. this 0.01 second increase is not statistically significant (%95 ic, -0.21, 0.21, p>0.05). pro-agility agility test performance times, which were performed 8 minutes after the pro-agility based pc which includes weight vests corresponding to 10% of their body weight, showed an increase from the pro-agility test performance times, which were performed 8 minutes after the pc which includes weight vests corresponding to 5% of their body weight, from 5.18±0.36 seconds to 5.35±0.27 seconds respectively. this 0.17 second increase is not statistically significant (%95 ic, -0.37, 0.30, p>0.05). the pro-agility agility performance times which were performed 8 minutes after the pro-agility based pc which includes weight vests corresponding to 10% of their body weight, showed an increase from control test times, 5.18±0.25 seconds to 5.35±0.27 seconds respectively. this 0.07 second increase is statistically significant (%95 ic, -0.28, -0.61, p<0.05) figure 4. figure-4. 30m sprint and pro-agility agility performance averages of participants (* p<0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion dominant view in literature says, if the pap effect is desired to be seen for sprint, activities biomechanically similar to sprint should be performed (crewther et al., 2011; whelan, o'regan, & harrison, 2014). in this part of the study, we will evaluate the effects of pap methods created to improve sprint times in literature. dello iacono and seitz (2018) used barbell hip thrust to create pap effect in their study. in the study which they performed using 85% of 1rm, they wished to observe the performance for sprint distances of 5, 10 and 20 meters. 5 and 10 m sprints performed 15s after pap, showed deteriorations in performance, while sprints performed after 4 and 8 minutes after pap, showed improved performances. compared with our research, we can say that barbell hip thrust exercise gives relatively more effective results in creating pap. mcbride, nimphius, and erickson (2005) stated that the weighted counter movement jump exercise with 30% of 1rm, has a positive pap effect on the 40m sprint performance. in another study examining the pap effects after a resistance running performed by using 10%, 20% and 30% of their body weights, achieved an approximate 1.2% improvement in a 35m sprint performance after pap in which a 10% of body weight resistance was used (smith et al., 2014). also, there asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 341-346 345 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group was no change in 10 and 20m sprints performed 15s after a plyometric pap using 10% of body weight. however, an improvement was observed in 10 and 20m sprints performed after 4 and 8 minutes (turner, bellhouse, kilduff, & russell, 2015). this result shows conflictions with our research figure 4. winwood, posthumus, cronin, and keogh (2016) tried to observe the effects of pap after performing resistance sprint using 75% of body weight at 7.5m and 150% of body weight at 15m. fifteen-meter sprint times performed after 4, 8 and 12 minutes were negatively affected. in another study involving resistance running, no changes were seen in 5 and 10m sprint times performed after 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 minutes and with 25-30% resistance in 10m with 3 repetitions (whelan et al., 2014). in studies examining the pap effect on resistance running so far, various different methods have been used. naturally, due to this, different methods have been tried and studies were not evaluated within the same pool. pap studies aiming to improve sprint times, mostly focused on back squat, power clean, plyometric exercises and resistance running. however, despite 4 different pap approaches emerging, a clear result is yet to be acquired (healy & comyns, 2017). in a study with young male soccer players, 1rm-%80x5 repetitive back squat formula was used for the pap effect and they obtained positive results in t-drill agility tests which were performed after 8 minutes (petisco et al., 2019). okuno et al. (2013) performed pap with back half squat exercise with 50% of 1rm in 5, 70% of 1rm in 3 and 90% of 1rm in 5*1 repetitions. they performed an agility test after 5 minutes and obtained a -1,37% time change. sole, moir, davis, and witmer (2013) used back squat exercise for pap effect in their studies. 4, 8 and 12 minutes after back squat performed repeatedly with 50% of 1rm 5, 60% of 1rm 3 and 90% of 1rm 3 times, they performed a 10m shuttle run. and they achieved a better result of -2,27% in the shuttle run which was performed 12 minutes after. comparing the agility results with the research results, we can see that the obtained results are not similar. one of the important factors in direction change runs is to produce vertical and horizontal forces in the stopping phase. an effective deceleration could be achieved by this. an exercise performed with weights, such as back squat, may be providing the needed vertical strength during 180 degree turns. being able to manipulate these forces in stopping phase, may provide rapid direction changes (lockie, lazar, davis, & moreno, 2018). okuno et al. (2013) on the other hand, stated that technique also has great influence in direction changing agility runs as much as speed. they also mentioned that bilateral pc activities such as back squat, will have a positive effect on direction changing agility runs. if we reconsider the pap studies targeting performance improvements in sprint and direction change agility running once again, we can say that an increase in performance is generally observed when the running is performed after 4 to 12 minutes. and it is considered appropriate to perform pap exercises within the range of 3-6 sets and 5-6 repetitions instead of 1 rep and 1 set (duthie, young, & aitken, 2002). another study states that it is appropriate to perform sprint runs after approximately 4 to 8 minutes of recovery to see the pap effects of exercises such as back squat and power clean performed with 90% intensity (healy & comyns, 2017). in our study, pap effect being observed as negative, might be related the low % intensity of resistance running exercise which was selected for pap. references bevan, h. r., owen, n. j., cunningham, d. j., kingsley, m. i., & kilduff, l. p. 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(2019). the acute effect of combined preconditioning strategies on anaerobic performance and physiological parameters in amateur soccer players. acta medica mediterranea, 35(3), 1251-1255.available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.19193/03936384_2019_3_191. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 231 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 231-236, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.231.236 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group learning style preferences of prospective teachers of physical education and sport özgür bostanci yasar dogu sports sciences faculty, ondokuz mayıs university, samsun, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to find out the vark learning styles of students receiving sport sciences education and to investigate their relationship with different variables. 169 undergraduate students studying at ondokuz mayıs university yaşar doğu sport sciences faculty participated in this cross-sectional study voluntarily. vark learning style questionnaire, which was developed by fleeming (2009) and which was adapted into turkish by kalkan (2008) was used to find out learning preferences. in data analysis, descriptive statistics and chi-square test were used. according to the average scores obtained, it was found that the students preferred kinesthetic learning style the most (7.08±2.74). in addition, it was found that 142 (84%) students preferred unimodality learning model, while 27 (16%) students preferred multimodality learning model. when learning style model preferences were analyzed according to all variables, no statistically significant difference was found (p>0.05); however, it was found that multimodality learning style was preferred more intensely in all variables. as a result, it was found that dominant learning style of the faculty of sport sciences students was kinesthetic learning style and that multimodality learning style was preferred more in all variables. it is thought that the emergence of this result is due to students’ sport background and their applied lessons. it is predicted that as a result of determining the learning styles of sport sciences students and conducting studies related to these, academic quality and achievement can be increased. keywords: learning styles, vark, physical education, sport, dominant learning style, students. citation | özgür bostanci (2020). learning style preferences of prospective teachers of physical education and sport. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 231-236. history: received: 10 january 2020 revised: 25 february 2020 accepted: 27 march 2020 published: 14 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 232 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 232 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 233 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 235 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 236 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.231.236&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1509 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7952-1014 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1509 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7952-1014 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1509 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7952-1014 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 231-236 232 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the aim of this study is to find out the vark learning styles of students receiving sport sciences education. 1. introduction updates in educational subjects with the developing technology becoming an important part of daily life have caused individual differences in terms of students’ absorbing and using knowledge (cavusoglu, yılmaz, kabadayı, abacı, & tasmekteplıgıl, 2017; weng, ho, yang, & weng, 2018). accordingly, for a quality education, learning and teaching processes should be monitored, how students learn information should be clarified and individual differences should be taken into consideration (miyake & friedman, 2012). the process of education can be successful only when we are sensitive to these individual differences. students’ success will increase when teaching activities are planned by taking individual differences into consideration because thinking that all students have similar characteristics prevents their ability and success from appearing (doğan, yılmaz, kabadayı, & mayda, 2018; karataş, sır, & celiköz, 2015). the fact that each student has subjective thoughts and different experiences shows that their learning process is also different. for this reason, each individual has a specific learning style in the education process (bilgin & bahar, 2008). learning styles that are customized for each individual are defined in different ways in literature. while kolb defined learning styles as a personally preferred process in absorbing and using knowledge(kolb, 1984) dunn evaluated learning style as a situation that occurs in different environments as opposed to mental and intellectual processes (dunn & dunn, 1993). gregorc defined learning styles as subjective and observable behaviours which give information about students’ abilities, their thoughts about the world and how they learn (gregorc, 1979). riding and rayner stated that learning styles were individuals’ unchanging or slightly changing characteristics (riding & rayner, 2013). when studies conducted on learning styles are examined (dunn & dunn, 1992; fleming, 2001; kırmacı et al., 2019; leite, svinicki, & shi, 2010) it can be seen that learning style preferences are different. while some individuals prefer to use a single learning style, others prefer to use more than one learning style because these preferences contribute to creating a more effective learning environment. in the light of this information, it is a matter of curiosity which styles sport sciences students, who have intense applied lessons, use. significance of the study; the study will examine the learning styles of sport sciences faculty students and contribute to more effective implementation of education programs and shaping education programs according to the interests and abilities of students. the aim of this study, which will make a significant contribution to literature, is to find out the learning styles of sport sciences faculty students and to examine how some variables affect their learning styles. 2. material and method 2.1. sample and procedure the population of the study consists of undergraduate students of sport sciences faculty, while the sample group consists of 169 undergraduate students studying at ondokuz mayıs university yaşar doğu faculty of sport sciences during the academic year 2018-2019 table 1. random sampling method was used in this cross-sectional study and the participants were chosen on a voluntary basis. the data were then collected, entered into the computer,and collated. each student’s results were calculated to identify their learning style preference. table-1. descriptive data and vark learning style models. variables group f % gender male 119 70.40 female 50 29.60 age 19-20 47 27.80 21-22 70 41.40 23 and older 52 30.80 state of doing sport active-licensed 53 31.40 previously licensed 99 58.60 no license 17 10.10 monthly level of income 0 – 1000 tl 12 7.10 1001 – 1500 tl 49 29.00 1501 – 2000 tl 46 27.20 2001 – 2500 tl 19 11.20 2501 – 3000 tl 19 11.20 3000 tl and more 24 14.20 place of residence provincial centre 95 56.20 town centre 55 32.50 village 19 11.20 vark unimodal learning 51 30.20 bi-modal learning 23 13.60 tri-modal learning 23 13.60 quad-modal learning 72 42.60 total 169 100 note: f: frequency, %: percentage. 2.2. vark learning style version 7.1 vark learning style questionnaire, which was developed by fleming (fleeming, 2009) and which was adapted into turkish by kalkan (2008) was used to find out learning preferences. vark questionnaire, which consists of 16 questions, seeks answers to what students can do by creating different scenarios. the questionnaire in which more asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 231-236 233 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group than one option can be chosen consists of visual, aural, read/write and kinesthetic sensory categories. the participants can choose more than one learning style and this result shows that the participant is more prone to multiple learning styles. to determine the percentage of students for each vark modality and for all possible combinations of modalities, the number of students who preferred each learning style modality was divided by the total number of students. 2.3. data analysis the sample size calculation showed that to have 5% error and a 90% confidence level the total sample size would need to be at least 150 students. the spss 22.0 (spss inc., chicago, il, usa) version was used for statistical analyses. the data were expressed in terms of mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, percentage, and frequency. the kolmogorov-smirnov test was used to check normality of the data. chi-square was used in group comparisons of qualitative data. significance was defined as p ≤ 0.05. 3. results descriptive data and vark learning style models distribution of the subjects are given in table 1 above. table-2. mean scores of the sub-dimensions of vark learning style questionnaire. vark min. max. mean s.d. visual 0.00 15.00 4.10 2.71 aural 1.00 16.00 6.44 2.76 read-write 0.00 14.00 4.89 2.48 kinesthetic 1.00 15.00 7.08 2.74 note: min: minimum max: maximum s.d: standart deviation. when the average scores were examined, it was found that the learning style most preferred by the students was kinesthetic (7.08 ± 2.74) table 2. table-3. percentage and frequency distribution of dominant learning styles. learning styles f % uni-modal visual (v) 4 2.40 aural (a) 45 26.60 read/write (r/w) 19 11.20 kinesthetic (k) 74 43.80 142 % 84 multi-modal bi-modal learning styles 26 15.50 aural-kinesthetic (ak) 11 6.50 auralread/write (ar) 3 1.80 read/write kinesthetic (rk) 5 3.00 visual aural (va) 5 3.00 visual kinesthetic (vk) 2 1.20 quad-modal learning styles 1 0.60 visual aural kinesthetic read/write (vark) 1 0.60 27 % 16 total 169 100 note: f: frequency %: percentage. when the results of learning styles were examined, it was found that 142 (84%) of the students used unimodality learning style, while 27 (16%) used multimodality learning style table 3. table-4. analysis of vark learning style model preferences in terms of gender. variables male female total unimodal 32 19 51 x 2 = 3 .1 0 7 d .f . = 3 p = 0 .3 7 5 learning style % 62.7 37.3 100.0 gender % 26.9 38.0 30.2 bi-modal 17 6 23 learning style % 73.9 26.1 100.0 gender % 14.3 12.0 13.6 tri-modal 15 8 23 learning style % 65.2 34.8 100.0 gender % 12.6 16.0 13.6 quad-modal 55 17 72 learning style % 76.4 23.6 100.0 gender % 46.2 34.0 42.6 total 119 50 169 learning style % 70.4 29.6 100.0 gender % 100.0 100.0 100.0 note: x2: chi-square d.f: degrees of freedom p>0.05. when the gender variable was examined, no significant difference was found between the preferences of the participants (p>0.05). when the distributions were examined, it was found that while male students were mostly inclined to ml style, female students were mostly inclined to sl style table 4. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 231-236 234 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. analysis of vark learning style model preferences in terms of age. variables 19-20 years of age 21-22 years of age 23 and older total unimodal 15 20 16 51 x 2 = 2 .0 8 9 d .f . = 6 p = 0 .9 1 1 learning style % 29.4 39.2 31.4 100.0 age % 31.9 28.6 30.8 30.2 bi-modal 4 12 7 23 learning style % 17.4 52.2 30.4 100.0 age % 8.5 17.1 13.5 13.6 tri-modal 7 10 6 23 learning style % 30.4 43.5 26.1 100.0 age % 14.9 14.3 11.5 13.6 quad-modal 21 28 23 72 learning style % 29.2 38.9 31.9 100.0 age % 44.7 40.0 44.2 42.6 total 47 70 52 169 learning style % 27.8 41.4 30.8 100.0 age % 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 note: x2: chi-square d.f: degrees of freedom p>0.05. no difference was found as a result of the analysis conducted in terms of age groups (p>0.05). however, ml was more preferred in all age groups and the highest distribution was found in the 21-22 age group table 5. table-6. analysis of vark learning style model preferences in terms of the state of doing sport. variables active licensed previously licensed no licence total unimodal 20 25 6 51 x 2 = 1 0 .6 2 5 d .f . = 6 p = 0 .1 0 1 learning style % 39.2 49.0 11.8 100.0 sport % 37.7 25.3 35.3 30.2 bi-modal 5 18 0 23 learning style % 21.7 78.3 0.0 100.0 sport % 9.4 18.2 0.0 13.6 tri-modal 3 17 3 23 learning style % 13.0 73.9 13.0 100.0 sport % 5.7 17.2 17.6 13.6 quad-modal 25 39 8 72 learning style % 34.7 54.2 11.1 100.0 sport % 47.2 39.4 47.1 42.6 total 53 99 17 169 learning style % 31.4 58.6 10.1 100.0 sport % 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 note: x2: chi-square d.f: degrees of freedom p>0.05. although there were no statistical differences in the results in terms of the state of doing sport (p>0.05), it was found that there were more students who were previously licensed and that they used ml. in addition, it was found that none of the students with no license used two learning styles table 6. table-7. analysis of vark learning style model preferences in terms of the state of monthly income level. variables less 1000 1001-1500 15012000 20012500 25013000 3000 and more total unimodal 3 12 12 6 7 11 51 x 2 = 1 0 .7 3 7 d .f . = 1 5 p = 0 .7 7 1 learning style % 5.9 23.5 23.5 11.8 13.7 21.6 100.0 income (tl) % 25.0 24.5 26.1 31.6 36.8 45.8 30.2 bi-modal 1 8 7 4 2 1 23 learning style % 4.3 34.8 30.4 17.4 8.7 4.3 100.0 income (tl) % 8.3 16.3 15.2 21.1 10.5 4.2 13.6 tri-modal 1 8 7 2 4 1 23 learning style % 4.3 34.8 30.4 8.7 17.4 4.3 100.0 income (tl) % 8.3 16.3 15.2 10.5 21.1 4.2 13.6 quad-modal 7 21 20 7 6 11 72 learning style % 9.7 29.2 27.8 9.7 8.3 15.3 100.0 income (tl) % 58.3 42.9 43.5 36.8 31.6 45.8 42.6 total 12 49 46 19 19 24 169 learning style % 7.1 29.0 27.2 11.2 11.2 14.2 100.0 income (tl) % 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 note: tl: turkish lira x2: chi-square d.f: degrees of freedom p>0.05. learning styles distributions are similar in terms of the levels of monthly income (p>0.05). while 1500 tl is the group with the highest distribution, ml is the most preferred learning style table 7. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 231-236 235 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. analysis of vark learning style model preferences in terms of place of residence. variables provincial centre town centre village total unimodal 31 16 4 51 x 2 = 5 .5 5 8 d .f . = 6 p = 0 .4 7 4 learning style % 60.8 31.4 7.8 100.0 place of residence % 32.6 29.1 21.1 30.2 bi-modal 12 6 5 23 learning style % 52.2 26.1 21.7 100.0 place of residence % 12.6 10.9 26.3 13.6 tri-modal 13 6 4 23 learning style % 56.5 26.1 17.4 100.0 place of residence % 13.7 10.9 21.1 13.6 quad-modal 39 27 6 72 learning style % 54.2 37.5 8.3 100.0 place of residence % 41.1 49.1 31.6 42.6 total 95 55 19 169 learning style % 56.2 32.5 11.2 100.0 place of residence % 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 note: x2: chi-square d.f: degrees of freedom p>0.05. no significant difference was found in learning styles analysis of the participants in terms of place of residence (p>0.05). it was found that the participants who lived in provincial centres, which had the highest number of participants, were inclined to ml the most table 8. 4. discussion and conclusion the present study investigated the learning styles of sport sciences faculty students determined with a random sampling method and examined whether the variables of gender, age, state of doing state, level of monthly income and place of residence caused a significant difference in learning styles. three main results were found: a) according to the results, kinesthetic learning is the most dominant learning style of sport sciences students. b) few sport sciences students use visual learning. c) in all variables, multiple learning style was proffered more. these results are important for the literature. although a great number of studies have been conducted about learning styles in different areas (fleming, 2001; katsioloudis & fantz, 2012; leite et al., 2010) limited number of studies have been conducted about sport sciences students (braakhuis, williams, fusco, hueglin, & popple, 2015; türker, 2017). in addition, the present study is the first one on sport sciences students which included the variables of monthly level of income and place of residence. when the average scores of the sub-dimensions of vark learning styles questionnaire were examined, it was found that kinesthetic was the most preferred learning style (7.08±2.74), while visual was the least preferred (4.10±2.71) table 2. similar results were found in some of the previously conducted studies (alkhasawneh, 2013; braakhuis et al., 2015; türker, 2017). although learning styles differed in terms of the faculties the students were studying in, their dominant learning styles were found to be aural and kinesthetic learning styles in general (cetin & erel, 2018; powers, 2016; wong, siow, kumarasamy, & suhaimi, 2017). according to the percentage and frequency distributions of dominant learning styles, few students in the study (f=4, 2,40%) were found to prefer visual learning style. in addition, 142 (84%) of the students stated that they used unimodality learning style, while 27 (16%) stated that they used multimodality learning style table 3. in a study conducted on sport sciences faculty students in 2017, türker (2017) found that 664 (81%) of the participants used unimodality learning style, while 156 (19%) used multimodality learning style. no significant difference was found between the preferences of the participants in terms of the variable of gender (p>0.05). in some of the studies conducted, the variable of gender was found to cause a significant difference on learning styles (braakhuis et al., 2015; park, nielsen, & woodruff, 2014) while in others it was not found to cause a significant difference (dobson, 2010; güneş & erkan, 2017). no difference was found between the results of age groups (p>0.05). the most frequently preferred learning styles were ml and sl. similar results were found in baykan and naçar’s study (baykan & naçar, 2004). no statistically significant difference was found when the results of the state of doing sport were examined (p>0.05). in their study on elite team athletes, braakhuis et al. (2015) also found similar results. it is thought that the state of having license did not affect the results since the students of the faculty of sport sciences are engaged in sport all the time. learning style preferences were found to be similar in terms of the level of monthly income and place of residence (p>0.05). in both variables, ml was the most preferred learning style. the highest numbers of students were within the 1001-1500 tl income level group. the highest number of students lived in provincial centre in terms of place of residence. no studies have been conducted on sport sciences students with these two variables; thus, it is thought that the study will make significant contribution to national and international literature. as a conclusion, although sport sciences students had kinesthetic learning style as the dominant learning style, they also have the characteristics of the other learning preferences since they are intertwined with sports. the result that multiple learning style was preferred more in all variables can be explained with this. in addition, it is thought that knowing about the learning styles of sport sciences students will be an important resource for sport educators in increasing quality. it is recommended that similar studies should be conducted on academic achievement and learning styles of undergraduate students and graduate students. in addition, it is predicted that academic achievement can be increased through more quality education by monitoring the learning styles of students starting from their first year. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 231-236 236 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references alkhasawneh, e. 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(2017). interdisciplinary and interinstitutional differences in learning preferences among malaysian medical and health sciences students. journal of advances in medical education & professionalism, 5(4), 164-168. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 112 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 1, 112-120, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.51.112.120 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of social support perception and self-esteem as predictors of psychological resilience of parents who have children with special educational needs erkan karaman1 erkan efilti2 ( corresponding author) 1ministry of education special education teacher, osmaniye, turkey 2necmettin erbakan university, ahmet keleşoğlu education faculty, special education department, konya, turkey abstract this study was conducted to examine the perceived social support and self-esteem as predictors of the psychological resilience of the parents who have children with special educational needs. this study aimed to reveal the relationship between the psychological resilience of the parents who had children with special educational needs and the level of social support they perceived and their self-esteem levels. this research is a correlation study in relational screening model. 235 parents (205 females and 30 males) participated in this study. personal information form, resilience scale for adults, arıcak self-esteem scale and revised parental social support scale were used as data collection instruments. in the evaluation of the data number, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used as descriptive statistical methods. the t-test was used to compare quantitative continuous data between two independent groups, and one way anova test was used to compare quantitative continuous data between more than two independent groups. scheffe test was used as a complementary post-hoc analysis to determine the differences after the anova test. according to the research results, there is a significant relationship between psychological resilience, perceived social support and self-esteem. perceived social support and self-esteem variables predicted the psychological resilience. the results of the research were discussed in the relevant literature. keywords: psychological resilience, perceived social support, self-esteem, special education, parent perception, disabled children. citation | erkan karaman; erkan efilti (2019). investigation of social support perception and self-esteem as predictors of psychological resilience of parents who have children with special educational needs. asian journal of education and training, 5(1): 112-120. history: received: 29 october 2018 revised: 6 december 2018 accepted: 8 january 2019 published: 2 february 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group contribution/acknowledgement: this study was prepared by erkan karaman under the supervision of dr. erkan efilti as a master's thesis in the department of special education at educational sciences institute of konya necmettin erbakan university funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 113 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 114 3. findings and comments ............................................................................................................................................................... 115 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 117 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 119 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=journal.522.2019.51.112.120&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/391 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7949-1460 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1158-5764 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/391 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7949-1460 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1158-5764 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/391 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7949-1460 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1158-5764 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/391 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7949-1460 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1158-5764 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 112-120 113 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. introduction psychological resilience is defined as an active process that enables a stronger emergence, development in the case of crisis and durability when faced with a unfavorable situation (walsh, 2006; as cited in kaner et al. (2011)). according to garmezy (1993) a leading researcher in psychological resilience studies, psychological resilience is hidden in the strength of recovery and it is the ability of the individual to return to the existing abilities and behaviors that existed before the stressful event (bayraklı, 2010). in another definition, fraser et al. (1999) describe psychological resilience as “the ability to gain positive and unexpected success under difficult conditions and adapt to unusual conditions and situations” (gizir, 2007). psychological resilience includes adaptation to the change in the individual's life, when faced with an unfavorable situation, in the process resulting from the interaction of risk factors and protective factors (karaırmak, 2006). the components of psychological resilience encountered in many definitions are grouped under three headings: risk factors, protective factors and positive outcomes (coleman and hagell, 2007). masten (2001) in his research stated that individuals must be exposed to an explainable risk to talk about psychological resilience. risk factors are discussed in three groups as individual related risk factors related, family related risk factors and social risk factors (rutter, 2006). children who live in conditions where there is no significant risk situation can be considered as “adequate” or “competent”, “compliant” or just “normal”, but this cannot be mentioned in terms of “psychological resilience” for children or adolescents (masten and reed, 2002). risk factors are segmented as individual related risk factors, family related risk factors and social risk factors. risk factors related to the person are as follows; low intelligence, anxious temperament, health problems, low self-esteem, low self-esteem, inability to use effective coping mechanisms, low self-control ability, inability to express themselves effectively, aggressive personality structure and incompatible behaviors. family related risk factors include familial diseases, divorcing of parents, having one parent, lack of healthy relationships between parents and child, hard or inconsistent discipline, negative relationships among siblings, domestic violence, family neglect and abuse. social risk factors include low socioeconomic level, inadequacy of home, school or other services, lack of social positive role models, substance use, social incidents such as immigration and unemployment and presence of violence in the environment (ülker, 2012). protective factors may include individual characteristics, familial and environmental factors, or conditions resulting from the interaction of these dimensions. it is important to determine how protective factors reduce, stop or even prevent the risk, regardless of the extent to which these dimensions exist. therefore, the examination of individual, familial and environmental characteristics of protective individuals in psychological resilience research has a great importance in terms of explaining why some individuals at risk have more healthy and successful adaptations than others (greene and conrad, 2002; as cited in gizir (2007)). other individual factors determined to be associated with psychological resilience are intelligence, easy temperament, internal locus of control, high self-esteem, and self-efficacy, self-awareness, autonomy, problemsolving ability, optimism and hope, and social competence (gizir, 2007). familial protective factors include the high level income of the family, the ability of parents to exhibit good parental characteristics, the close relationship between the parents and the strong family ties. factors such as positive and intimate relationship with a non-family adult, having good education in schools and having a social environment are protective environmental factors (masten and coasworth, 1998; as cited in bildirici (2014)). compliance or positive results, which are another dimension of psychological resilience, imply that the individual turns back to the old psychological well-being and adjusts to the new situation. masten and reed (2002) stated that these positive results were the fulfillment of their developmental tasks, academic success, positive social relations/social competence, avoiding criminal behavior, psychological health, lack of emotional problems or symptoms, happiness, school attendance, age-appropriate sports, social assistance activities participation, taking part in extracurricular activities, conducting behaviors according to the rules, making friends and being close friendship, lack of psychopathology, being a psychosocial harmony compound, accepting itself and being compatible, life satisfaction and well being (as cited in ülker (2012)). social support can be considered as providing services through individuals and/or institutions that can reduce the negative consequences of the stressing situation in general and improve adaptive competence (kaner, 2010). according to lambert et al. (1989) social support protects the individual from the stressful effects of the variables in his/her life and increases his/her belief that the individual is loved and accepted by the society. another definition related to social support is satisfying the needs of the individual such as belonging, love, appreciation, self-realization as a result of the interaction with other individuals (cattık, 2015). according to guralnick et al. (2008) social support can be provided by the society in which the individual is living, his/her friends, wife and extended family. social support has an important place in terms of ensuring the satisfaction of the need for each individual in terms of life, as well as strengthening, preserving and sustaining the bio-psychosocial well-being (özkan, 2002; as cited in sivrikaya (2012)). it is known that social support has an impact on the occurrence, course and duration of many physical or mental illnesses. it is known that social support can prevent the formation of stress, and change the way the event is perceived when stress is present, it helps him/her in situations where the person is forced, and affects ways of coping (sorias, 1992; as cited in aslan (2010)). house (1981) gathered the social support in four classes: emotional and social support, instrumental support, information support and evaluation support (cattık, 2015). rosenberg defined self-respect as a positive and negative attitude towards the individual. according to him, self-esteem is the result of self-evaluation of the individual. the individual's judgment as a result of his/her selfassessment is decisive for the level of self-esteem. self-esteem is an individual's assessment of his or her worth related self-concept (saban, 2010). according to yörükoğlu (1987) self-esteem is a state of appreciation which emerges approving the self-concept as a result of individual’s assessment. chrzanowski (1981) argues that self-esteem is a positive image of the person, based on a good evaluation of his/her competences and powers in the broadest sense. some aspects of self-esteem develop on the natural characteristics of the person, such as intelligence, appearance and body structure (chzanowski, 1980; as cited in satılmış and seber, 1989; as cited in demir (2010)). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 112-120 114 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group having a child with special educational needs is a risk factor for the psychological health of parents. the factors affecting the psychological resilience of the parents who need to have special education are important for the parents and children who need special education. when the literature is examined, it is seen that the research has originality in terms of the lack of any research in which whether the perception of social support and the selfesteem predict the psychological resilience of the parents who need special education. 1.1. purpose of the study the purpose of the study is to examine whether the perceived social support and self-esteem levels predict the psychological resilience levels of parents who have children with special educational needs. 1.2. sub purposes in the study, the answers were sought to the following questions: 1. is there a relationship between the psychological resilience, perceived social support and self-esteem levels of the parents who have children with special educational needs? 2. do the perceived social support levels of parents who have children with special educational needs predict their psychological resilience levels? 3. do the self-esteem levels of parents who have children with special educational needs predict their psychological resilience levels? 4. do the perceived social support and self-esteem levels of parents who have children with special educational needs predict their psychological resilience levels? 2. method in this study, it was aimed to examine social support perception and self-esteem as the predictors of psychological resilience of the parents who had children with special educational needs. this research is a correlation study in the relational survey model. 2.1. population and sample the population of the research is all parents who have children with special educational needs. the sample of this study consisted of randomly selected 235 participants (205 mothers and 30 fathers) from four different private special education and rehabilitation centers serving in osmaniye. 2.2. data collection instruments personal information form, resilience scale for adults, arıcak self-esteem scale and revised parental social support scale were used as data collection instruments. 2.2.1. personal information form the personal information form was created to record the personal information of mothers or fathers who participated in the research. 2.2.2. resilience scale for adults the resilience scale for adults developed by friborg et al. (2003) is consisted five sub-dimensions: structured style, family cohesion, personal power, social competence and social resources. the later study (friborg et al., 2005) shows that the six-dimensional structure of the scale explains the psychological resilience model better. friborg et al. (2005) divided the “personal power” dimension into two as “self-perception” and “planned future”, and a total six-dimensional structure emerged (basim and cetin, 2011). the sub-dimensions and items of the scale were determined as follows: structured style (3,9,15,21), planned future (2,8,14,20), family cohesion (5,11,17,23,26,32), self-perception (1,7,13,19,28,31), social competence (4,10,16,22,25,29), and social resources (6,12,18,24,27,30,33). 2.2.3. revised parental social support scale the revised parental social support scale, family social support scale-fsss (kaner, 2003) was created by reexamining the qualitative dimension of social support, according to the related literature. as a result of the studies conducted to determine the validity of the revised parent social support scale, a scale consisting of four factors and 28 items was obtained. 2.2.4. arıcak self-esteem scale the self-esteem scale developed by aricak (1999) is a five-point likert-type attitude scale. studies of various theorists and scientists were examined in the preparation of the scale. later on, a pool of substances consisting of positive and negative expressions about self-esteem was created with the studies carried out with the students of the primary school teaching department. these statements were presented to the evaluation of the experts who work in psychology and psychological counseling. reliability and validity studies were carried out with the items obtained, modified and added in the light of the opinions of the experts and as a result a scale consisting of 32 items was obtained. 2.3. data analysis the data obtained from the study were analyzed by using spss (statistical package for social sciences) for windows 22.0 program. number, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used as descriptive statistical methods in the evaluation of the data. the t-test was used to compare quantitative continuous data between two independent groups, and one way anova test was used to compare quantitative continuous data between more than two independent groups. scheffe asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 112-120 115 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group test was used as a complementary post-hoc analysis to determine the differences after the anova test. pearson correlation and regression analysis were applied to the continuous variables of the study. the findings were evaluated at 95% confidence interval and 5% significance level. in this study, the reliability of the resilience scale for adults was found to be cronbach's alpha=0,889. the reliability of the parental social support scale was found to be cronbach's alpha=0,892. the reliability of the selfesteem scale was found to be cronbach's alpha=0,854. 3. findings and comments in this section, the findings of the analysis of the data collected by the parents who participated in the research for the solution of the research problem are included. explanations and comments were made based on the findings. 3.1. findings on the relationship between perceived social support, self-esteem and psychological resilience levels of parents who have children with special educational needs the study aimed to answer the question “is there a relationship between the psychological resilience, perceived social support, and self-esteem levels of the parents who have children with special educational needs? the findings related to the question were presented in table 1. table-1. correlation relationship between perceived social support, self-esteem and psychological resilience levels of parents who have children with special educational needs s e lf p e rc e p ti o n p la n n e d f u tu re s tr u ct u re d s ty le s o ci a l c o m p e te n ce f a m il y c o h e si o n s o ci a l r e so u rc e s p sy ch o lo g ic a l r e si li e n ce g e n e ra l social cohesion support r 0,417** 0,472** 0,335** 0,228** 0,437** 0,269** 0,477** p 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 information support r 0,347** 0,413** 0,236** 0,143* 0,407** 0,194** 0,404** p 0 0 0 0,028 0 0,003 0 emotional support r 0,338** 0,437** 0,271** 0,158* 0,405** 0,226** 0,415** p 0 0 0 0,015 0 0 0 care support r 0,268** 0,341** 0,162* 0,048 0,372** 0,1 0,299** p 0 0 0,013 0,463 0 0,125 0 parental social support total r 0,374** 0,450** 0,283** 0,172** 0,431** 0,226** 0,437** p 0 0 0 0,008 0 0 0 self-esteem r 0,553** 0,549** 0,417** 0,449** 0,410** 0,430** 0,633** p 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 source: obtained from analysis of data. *p<0,05 when table 1 is examined, it is seen that there are significant relationships between psychological resilience general scores and psychological resilience subscale scores, social support level total scores, perceived social support subscale scores, and self-esteem scores of parents who have children with special educational needs. there is a weak and positive correlation between the psychological resilience overall scores and perceived social support scores of the parents who have children with special educational needs. there is a positive and significant correlation between the psychological resilience overall scores and the self-esteem scores of the parents who have children with special educational needs. there is a weak and positive correlation between the perceived social support total scores and self-esteem scores of the parents who have children with special educational needs. 3.2. findings on the perceived social support level as a predictor of psychological resilience level of parents who have children with special educational needs as the second sub-objective of the research, table 2 shows whether the social support perception scores of the parents who have children with special educational needs are predictive of their psychological resilience levels. in order to determine whether the perceived social support scores of the parents who have children with special educational needs were predictive of the psychological resilience scores, general and sub-dimension regression analyzes were performed in table 2. as a result of the regression analysis, the perceived social support total scores were found to be significant but weak in predicting the general levels of psychological resilience. (r2=0,188). as a result of regression analysis, statistically significant differences were found between the sub-dimensions of psychological resilience (self-perception, planned future, structured style, social competence, family cohesion and social resources) and sub-dimensions of parental social support (social cohesion support, information support, emotional support and care support). while the predictive power between the sub-dimensions of self-perception, structured style, social competence, family cohesion and social resources and sub-dimensions of social cohesion support, information support, emotional support and care support was found to be weak, a strong predictive power was found between the sub-dimension of planned future and sub-dimensions of social cohesion support, information support, emotional support and care support (r2=0,222). asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 112-120 116 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. findings on the perceived social support level as s predictor level of psychological resilience level of parents who have children with special educational needs dependent variable ß t p f model (p) r2 psychological resilience general 2,435 14,447 0,000 55,058 0 0,188 psst 0,015 psst 7,420 psst 0,000 self-perception 2,367 10,193 0,000 13,48 0 0,176 scs 0,075 scs 4,222 scs 0,000 is 0,016 is 0,396 is 0,692 es -0,017 es -0,596 es 0,552 cs -0,063 cs -1,673 cs 0,096 planned future 1,335 5,083 0,000 17,703 0 0,222 scs 0,070 scs 3,460 scs 0,001 is -0,023 is -0,523 is 0,601 es 0,044 es 1,353 es 0,178 cs -0,063 cs -1,495 cs 0,136 structured style 2,579 10,234 0,000 10,644 0 0,142 scs 0,082 scs 4,244 scs 0,000 is -0,060 is -1,400 is 0,163 es 0,036 es 1,155 es 0,249 cs -0,097 cs -2,375 cs 0,184 social competence 3,113 12,775 0,000 7,002 0 0,093 scs 0,070 scs 3,756 scs 0,000 is -0,016 is -0,397 is 0,691 es 0,009 es 0,298 es 0,766 cs -0,122 cs -3,107 cs 0,213 family cohesion 2,091 8,713 0,000 13,666 0 0,178 scs 0,045 scs 2,458 scs 0,015 is 0,009 is 0,211 is 0,833 es 0,005 es 0,156 es 0,876 cs 0,007 cs 0,186 cs 0,853 social resources 3,534 21,582 0,000 7,914 0 0,106 scs 0,041 scs 3,250 scs 0,001 is 0,021 is -0,765 is 0,445 es 0,027 es 1,315 es 0,190 cs -0,079 cs -3,002 cs 0,298 source: obtained from analysis of data. *p<0,05 abbreviations in table 2: psst-parents social support total, scs-social cohesion support, isinformation support, esemotional support, cscare support social cohesion support increase the levels of self-perception, planned future, structured style, social competence, family cohesion and social resources; information support emotional support and care support do not affect them. 3.3. findings on the self-esteem level as a predictor of psychological resilience level of parents who have children with special educational needs table 3 shows whether the self-esteem scores of the parents who have children with special educational needs are predictive of their psychological resilience levels. as a result of regression analysis to determine the causal relationship between self-esteem and psychological resilience, the difference was statistically significant (f=155,989; p=0,000<0.05). table-3. findings on the self-esteem level as a predictor of psychological resilience level of parents who have children with special educational needs dependent variable independent variable ß t p f model (p) r2 psychological resilience-general invariant 0,365 1,378 0,17 155,989 0,000 0,398 self-esteem 0,029 12,49 0,000 self-perception invariant -0,205 -0,533 0,595 102,595 0,000 0,303 self-esteem 0,034 10,129 0,000 planned future invariant -1,257 -2,804 0,005 100,486 0,000 0,298 self-esteem 0,039 10,024 0,000 structured style invariant 0,498 1,118 0,265 48,903 0,000 0,17 self-esteem 0,027 6,993 0,000 social competence invariant 0,479 1,163 0,246 58,709 0,000 0,198 self-esteem 0,027 7,662 0,000 family cohesion invariant 0,767 1,763 0,079 46,989 0,000 0,164 self-esteem 0,026 6,855 0,000 social resources invariant 1,99 7,068 0,000 52,829 0,000 0,181 self-esteem 0,018 7,268 0,000 source: obtained from analysis of data. *p<0,05 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 112-120 117 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between self-esteem variables as a determinant of the general level of psychological resilience (explanatory power) was found to be strong (r2=0,398). the level of self-esteem of parents increases the overall level of psychological resilience (ß=0,029). regression analysis to determine the cause-effect relationship between self-esteem and self-esteem was statistically significant (f=102,595; p=0,000<0.05). the relationship between self-esteem variables as a determinant of self-perception was found to be strong (r2=0,303). the level of self-esteem of the parents increases the level of self-perception (ß=0,034). regression analysis to determine the cause-effect relationship between self-esteem and structural style was statistically significant (f=48,903; p=0,000<0.05). as a determinant of the structured style, its relationship with self-esteem variables (weakness of expression) was found to be weak (r2=0,170). the level of parents' self-esteem increases the level of structural style (ß=0,027). regression analysis to determine the cause-effect relationship between self-esteem and social competence was found to be statistically significant (f=58,709; p=0,000<0.05). the relationship between self-esteem variables as a determinant of the level of social competence (explanatory power) was found to be weak (r2=0,198). the level of self-esteem of the parents increases the level of social competence (ß=0,027). regression analysis to determine the cause-effect relationship between self-esteem and family harmony was found statistically significant (f=46,989; p=0,000<0.05). the relationship between self-esteem variables as a determinant of the level of family harmony (explanatory power) was found to be weak (r2=0,164). the level of parents' self-esteem increases the level of family harmony (ß=0,026). regression analysis to determine cause-effect relationship between self-esteem and social resources was found to be statistically significant (f=52,829; p=0,000<0.05). as a determinant of the level of social resources, the relationship between self-esteem variables (explanatory power) was found to be weak (r2=0,182). the level of selfesteem of the parents increases the level of social resources (ß=0,018). 3.4. findings on the self-esteem and perceived social support levels as predictors of psychological resilience levels of parents who have children with special educational needs table 4 shows whether the perceived social support and self-esteem scores of the parents who have children with special educational needs are predictive of their psychological resilience levels. table-4. hierarchical effect of social support and self-esteem of parents who have children with special educational needs on their psychological resilience dependent variable independent variable ß t p f model (p) r2 psychological resilience general (model 1) invariant 2,435 14,447 0,000 55,058 0,000 0,188 parental social supporttotal 0,015 7,42 0,000 psychological resilience general (model 2) invariant 0,193 0,746 0,456 92,933 0,000 0,44 parental social supporttotal 0,008 4,277 0,000 self-esteem 0,025 10,295 0,000 source: obtained from analysis of data. *p<0,05 when table 4 is examined, the regression analysis to determine the cause-effect relationship between the total of parental social support and the overall psychological resilience was found statistically significant in model 1 (f=55,058; p=0,000<0.05). as a determinant of the general level of psychological resilience, the relationship between the total variables of parental and social support (explanatory predictive power) was found to be weak (r2=0.188). the total level of parental social support increases the overall level of psychological endurance (ß=0,015). in model 2, self-esteem was added to the effect of parental social support on psychological resilience. in model 2, the regression analysis was performed to determine the cause-effect relationship between the total of social support, self-esteem and psychological resilience overall (f=92,933; p=0,000<0.05). as a determinant of the general level of psychological resilience, the relationship between the total of parental social support and selfesteem variables (explanatory power) was found to be very strong (r2=0,440). the total level of parental social support increases the overall level of psychological resilience (ß=0,008). the level of self-esteem increases the overall level of psychological resilience (ß=0,025). as a result of the hierarchical regression analysis, the addition of self-esteem to the model increased the rate of r2 from 18.8% to 44%. it was found that parental social support and self-esteem increased their explanatory power among the determinants of psychological resilience. 4. results and discussion 4.1. results and discussion on the relationship between perceived social support, self-esteem and psychological resilience levels of parents who have children with special educational needs in the study, there were positive relationships between the psychological resilience, perceived social support and self-esteem levels of the parents who had children with special educational needs. there is a moderate positive correlation between the general level of psychological resilience and self-esteem. there is a weak positive relationship between self-esteem and parental social support scores. the findings of studies in the literature support the results of this study. çakar-savi and karatas (2012) found that there was a positive correlation between self-esteem and perceived social support. karatas and cakar (2011) found that there was a positive correlation between self-esteem and psychological resilience. güloğlu and karaırmak (2010) found a positive correlation between self-esteem and psychological resilience. karaırmak (2006) referring to the study of werner (1989) stated that the existence of social support network at school or in society was among the protective factors affecting psychological resilience. gizir (2007) listed the high self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-esteem among other individual factors identified to be associated with psychological resilience. chen (2017) investigated the relationship among emotional intelligence, perceived social asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 112-120 118 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group support and psychological resilience. as a result of the study, the highest level of psychological resilience among the research groups of the individuals with high level of friend social support and emotional intelligence was determined as the group. as a result of interviews with mothers who had children with mental deficiency, gardner and harmon (2002) listed the features that enable mothers to be psychologically resistant individuals. they expressed the benefit of social support among these features, bayraklı (2010). altom (2010) examined the effect of perceived social support on the relationship between depression and selfesteem. a strong relationship was found between self-esteem and perceived social support. however, high selfesteem was associated with a high level of perceived social support. the findings of studies in the literature are in the opposite direction of the results of this study. saget-menager (2010) investigated the impact of racial socialization and psychological resilience on self-esteem levels and selfesteem among different black groups in the united states. as a result of the research, it was concluded that there was a significant relationship between self-esteem and psychological resilience. when the studies in the literature are examined, it is seen that many research results support the results of present study: there is a positive and significant relationship between perceived social support and psychological resilience. while some studies mention a strong relationship between perceived social support and psychological resilience, some studies have identified perceived social support as a source of psychological resilience. when the studies in the literature are examined, it is seen that many research results support the results of present study: there is a positive and significant relationship between self-esteem and psychological resilience. the results of the research show that the level of self-esteem is affected by perceived social support level. although there is a lot of research supporting a positive and meaningful relationship between self-esteem and psychological resilience, in a study no significant relationship was found between self-esteem and psychological resilience. in this study, when the relationship between psychological resilience sub-dimensions, perceived social support sub-dimensions and self-esteem were examined, a very weak positive relationship was found between the structured style, social competence, social resources which were sub-dimensions of psychological resilience and information support which was sub-dimension of perceived social support. this result reveals that parents' (who have children with special educational needs) perception of information support and their prioritization of information support should be considered. within the scope of the findings of the research, a significant positive correlation was found between the subdimensions of psychological resilience which were social resources and social competence, and sub-dimensions of perceived social support which were information support and emotional support. a significant very weak positive correlation was found between social competence and social cohesion support which was one of the sub-dimensions of perceived social support. according to these results, it is necessary to discuss the perception level of information support of the parents who have children with special educational needs, the sufficiency and meaning of the information support, and whether the parents have sufficient knowledge and belief in their relations with people. in the light of these results, another issue that needs to be addressed is the need to investigate how parents who have children with special educational needs position themselves in the community. is the relationship between social competence, information support, and emotional support so poor as parents who have children with special educational needs isolate themselves from society? that is a question to consider. when the relationship between self-esteem and psychological resilience sub-dimensions were examined, a moderate correlation was found between self-esteem and self-perception and planned future, and a weak correlation was found between self-esteem and structured style, social competence, family cohesion and social resources. this situation led to the consideration of self-esteem levels in the studies on the thoughts and self-perceptions of the parents who had children with special educational needs. there was a weak relationship between self-esteem and information support, social cohesion support, care support and emotional support which were the sub-dimensions of social support perception. this situation raises the question of whether the relationship between the external factors is less than the internal factors in the emergence of self-esteem. 4.2. results and discussion on the perceived social support level as a predictor of psychological resilience level of parents who have children with special educational needs as a predictor of the general level of psychological resilience, the relationship with the total variable of parental social support (explanatory power) was found to be weak. as the total level of parental social support of parent increases, the overall level of psychological resilience is increasing. when the literature was examined, it was seen that the researches of bayraklı (2010); carter (2014) and zomerlei (2015) supported the results of the present study, but the research of nguyen (2012) did not support. bayraklı (2010) in his research concluded that the quantity and quality of social support had a low and positive effect on psychological resilience. carter (2014) stated that psychological resilience was an important predictor of social support and social support was an important predictor of psychological resilience. the related research supports the relationship between psychological resilience and perceived social support. nguyen (2012) aimed to improve the existing knowledge on psychological resilience in literature, examine the level of psychological resilience of the resilience scale for adults, and investigate the effects of perceived social support on psychological resilience in a long dimension of life. the related research indicates that the effect of social support from spouses on psychological resilience has little or no effect. in the research findings, it was found that there was an increasing effect of social cohesion support which was one of the sub-dimensions of social support perception in predicting self-perception, planned future, structured style, social competence, social resources and family cohesion which were the sub-dimensions psychological resilience, and there were no significant results in other sub-dimensions of social support perception. the emergence of social cohesion support as a predictor of all sub-dimensions of the psychological resilience of the parents who had special educational needs revealed the necessity to discuss some questions. why information support, emotional support and care support do not predict the psychological resilience sub-dimensions of the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(1): 112-120 119 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group parents who have children with special educational needs? why does social cohesion support predict the all subdimensions? this situation that causes us to ask these questions leads to this question: do parents (who have children with special educational needs) firstly need people to share their experiences? if the psychological resilience of the parents who have children with special educational needs depends on the persons to whom take social cohesion support, it is an important issue to discuss how the characteristics of people should be. 4.3. results and discussion on the self-esteem level as a predictor of psychological resilience level of parents who have children with special educational needs as a predictor of the general level of psychological resilience, its relationship with self-esteem variable was found to be strong. as the level of self-esteem of the parents increases, the general level of psychological resilience is increasing. in the literature, there are two researches that examined the effect of self-esteem as a predictor of psychological resilience, although there is no study on whether parents’ self-esteem level predicts the psychological resilience of parents who have children with special educational needs. there are researches that support the results of present study (karaırmak, 2007) and do not support (bumpus, 2014). karaırmak (2007) in his research indirectly revealed the relationship between self-esteem and psychological resilience. the related research revealed that self-esteem influenced the variables affecting psychological resilience and indirectly self-esteem predicted psychological resilience. bumpus (2014) compared the racial belonging, psychological resilience, and self-esteem levels of adopted african-american individuals in another study that revealed data on the predictive power of self-esteem. in this research, a significant negative relationship was found between psychological resilience and self-esteem. the relevant research does not support the results of this study. the self-esteem levels of the parents who have children with special educational needs strongly predict their levels of self-perception and planned future which are the sub-dimensions of psychological resilience. the selfesteem levels of the parents who have children with special educational needs weakly predict their structured style, social competence, family cohesion and social resources levels which are the sub-dimensions of psychological resilience. this reveals the importance of self-esteem and self-esteem in shaping the self-perceptions and planned future of the parents who have children with special educational needs. 4.4. results and discussion on the self-esteem and perceived social support levels as predictors of psychological resilience levels of parents who have children with special educational needs the levels of perceived social support and self-esteem levels of the parents were found to predict psychological resilience as a result of the regression analysis. as a result of the analyzes, it was revealed that predictive total levels of perceived social support and self-esteem levels on psychological resilience were higher than predictive individual levels of perceived social support and self-esteem levels on psychological resilience. the fact that selfesteem and perceived social support together create strong conditions in explaining psychological resilience necessitates consideration of other variables in explaining psychological resilience. references altom, m.w., 2010. moderating effects of social support in the relationship between self-esteem and depression. a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy university of washington. aricak, o.t., 1999. development of self and vocational self-esteem through group counseling. unpublished phd thesis. 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journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 546-555, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.546.555 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an experimental study intended for musical listening training zuluf oztutgan osmaniye korkut ata university, faculty of architecture, design and fine arts, department of music, osmaniye, turkey. abstract this study aims to provide the correct behaviors towards listening to music and inform students about this topic attending primary and middle schools. for this purpose, 15 schools in the giresun school district were determined through a random selection method and the students who were studying in these schools received training on listening to music. the educational curriculum is developed by expert opinions, which includes the following subjects: the difference between hearing and listening, the definition of music, concert and recital, the importance of going to a concert, the ways to be informed about concerts, rules to follow in a concert, and basic information regarding concert halls. the trainings were completed within 2 class hours in each school and supported by audiovisual materials within the school facilities. this study used a single group pretest-posttest experimental design, and a 15-question test was implemented to measure the achievement of students. the students answered this test before and after participating in the training process, and the results were analyzed using quantitative analysis methods. the dependent sample t-test was used for the significance of the difference between the pre and posttest scores. the results indicated that there was a significant difference in all schools between the pretest and posttest scores in favor of posttest. based on this finding, it can be concluded that the listening education that was given to students was effective and had attained its intended purpose. keywords: music, education, music education, audience training, basic music education, measurement and evaluation. citation | zuluf oztutgan (2020). an experimental study intended for musical listening training. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 546-555. history: received: 18 june 2020 revised: 21 july 2020 accepted: 23 august 2020 published: 3 september 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 547 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 548 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 548 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 555 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 555 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.546.555&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2080 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6402-6232 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 547 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study aims to provide the correct behaviors towards listening to music and inform students about this topic attending primary and middle schools. 1. introduction music is one of life’s indispensable elements, whereby people first encounter music at a very young age, sometimes even in their mother's womb. it is possible to say that the music that enters human life at such an early period and persists its life-long existence has a significant impact on an individual’s development and education. (dinçer, 1992) stated that music has a significant influence on the development of the music rhythm sensation, sound and ear training, developing music taste, attention development, gaining knowledge, concept development, language development, learning good habits, acquiring national emotions, and revealing interests and skills. when thinking of these effects of music on human development; the importance and necessity of music education can therefore be better understood. music education is a process in which a person acquires specific musical behaviors through their own experiences, changes in their musical behavior for their own purposes, or makes specific changes in their musical behavior through their own experiences or changing musical behavior of the individual through their own experiences (uçan, 2005). according to this definition, it is possible to say that every effort to change and develop musical behaviors in the human life is part of music education. however, in educational programs that revolve around improving music education, this situation is classified under certain main headings. according to uçan (2005) these titles include musical education (ear training), sound education, instrument training, musical motion and rhythm education, music knowledge education, creativity education, appreciation education, musical personality education, musical sensitivity education, musical communication and interaction education, and the usage of music and beneficence. music education is often associated with instrument training and voice training, although it can be categorized under many settings. even in the simplest forms of music, there are three important factors. these are the performer, the instrument, and the audience. if one of these factors is missing, it will not be wrong to say that the musical concert will not be able to reach its intended goal. therefore, it is possible to assert that musical education is instrument education, voice education as well as audience education. there are numerous institutions and organizations in our country where performance training, which is one of the dimensions of stage performance, is provided. these include fine arts courses in high schools that provide vocational music education, conservatories, music education departments of education faculties, and similar institutions, private homes, and private music courses that provide instrumental training for private individuals. in the same way, the training for the instrument, which is another basic factor of music listening, is given in the instrument developing departments. educations for audience are given under general music education and limited scope, which are offered to students from their early ages at schools. sun and seyrek (1993) maintained that music listening subject is one of the most important topics of music education, which is defined as "the act of listening of a music piece" and that has three types; "unintentional listening", "listening by motion", and "solely listening". therefore, it is necessary to make special studies on this subject to contribute to the establishment of the audience through theoretical and practical applications and to create an educated audience from a young age. 1.1. research question this research investigated the effectiveness of musical listening education given to primary and middle school students. 1.2. secondary questions 1. is there a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores based on the responses provided by students? 2. how is the distribution of the students’ answers to pre-test items in different schools? 3. how is the distribution of student answers to post-test items in different schools? 1.3. goal this study was supported by the giresun education health and scientific research foundation, and it was aimed to contribute to the formation of a more conscious audience in this country by developing the behaviors and improving the knowledge of primary and middle school students. 1.4. limitations this study was limited to; 1. 1039 primary and middle school students in 15 schools in the giresun school district. 2. 2 class hours. 3. test prepared by the researchers. 4. support of giresun education health and scientific research foundation (gesbav). 5. subjects determined by researchers. 1.5. assumptions the study assumed that; 1. the test is appropriate to its goals. 2. the subjects determined by the researchers are appropriate for the students’ level and for the purpose of the research. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 548 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1.6. significance it is thought that this study will contribute to the development of quality-conscious audiences and increases the students' interests to music in turkey, particularly in the district of giresun. it is also possible to say that such activities are carried out in schools rather than in a limited capacity of multipurpose halls, which is important and a first for the giresun province. 2. method this research was carried out within the scope of the project "turn classes into stages, fill schools with music" supported by the giresun educational health and scientific research foundation. in the study, 15 schools in the giresun school district were identified and students of these schools were given music listening education within a curriculum. in order to measure student success, pre and post-tests were implemented for the subjects in the curriculum and the data obtained from these tests were analyzed through quantitative analysis methods. 2.1. curriculum development in the curriculum development process, opinions from seven experts, including music educators and child development specialists, were gathered. the content, duration, and training materials of the education in the light of the opinions received were determined. accordingly, it has been decided that education should be provided within two class hours and supported by audiovisual materials within the limits of school facilities. the content of education included following subjects; the definition of music, differences between hearing and listening, the definition of concert, the definition of recital, the importance of going to a concert, the ways to be informed about concerts, the rules to follow during a concert, the institutions that provide music education, and the definition of a lobby and stage. 2.2. determining the schools the schools were determined by the random sampling method among the primary and middle schools in the giresun school district. 2.3. determining the dates of activities when determining the dates, a number of matters were taken into consideration such as the views of the administrators of chosen schools, the geographical conditions of school regions, the examination periods, the official holidays, and the academic studies of the researchers. 2.4. permissions since the study was conducted by faculty members and carried out in primary and middle schools, official permissions had been obtained from the relevant institutions and organizations. 2.5. test development during the test preparation process, 7 experts were consulted in order to ensure the validity of the item pool. the test items were determined by taking into consideration the taking students’ readiness level. 2.6. data collection and analyses in this study, the data were collected by a 2-choice test with 15 items prepared by the researchers. the collected data was interpreted using quantitative analysis methods. a dependent sample t-test was used to determine the significance of the difference between pre and post-test scores of the students. the percentage and frequency values were used in interpreting the responses provided by students. 3. findings 3.1. findings and interpretations on the significance of the difference between pre and post-test scores the effect of the audience training on students is the primary aim of this research. therefore, it could be asserted that the success of the training is dependent on the number of correct answers. in this section, students' pre-test / post-test scores were compared, and student responses to the test items were interpreted based on the percentage and frequency values. table-1. significance of the difference between pre-test and post-test scores. school number pre-test mean post-test mean sig. 1 56,8133 91,1913 ,000 2 56,5533 91,1733 ,000 3 56,9667 93,7000 ,000 4 56,9667 91,5800 ,000 5 56,5867 93,2000 ,000 6 58,2333 91,8400 ,000 7 56,4333 90,1067 ,000 8 57,2867 95,1600 ,000 9 56,8400 94,4867 ,000 10 57,2667 90,4233 ,000 11 57,3733 91,7667 ,000 12 58,0600 92,5333 ,000 13 58,1133 93,2200 ,000 14 56,5467 91,4467 ,000 15 56,5933 92,0667 ,000 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 549 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1 presents the dependent sample t-test data on the significance of the difference between pre-test / posttest scores of 15 schools. according to the table, there is a meaningful difference in favor of posttest scores in all of the schools. it is possible to conclude that the audience training contributes to the attitudes and knowledge of the students towards music. it can be said that the audience training served its’ intended purpose. 3.2. students responses to test items the responses given to the pre and post-test items are the indication of students' readiness level and betterperceived subjects. in this section, student responses to pre-test and post-test items were presented as tables to represent percentage and frequency values. this section also includes an analysis and discussion of those tables. table-2. students' responses to 1 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 2 39 15 44,3 48,4 49 16 55,7 51,6 77 27 87,5 87,1 11 4 12,5 12,9 43,2 38,7 88 31 3 38 42,2 52 57,8 86 95,6 4 4,4 53,4 90 4 32 44,4 40 56,6 66 91,7 6 8,3 47,3 72 5 18 40,0 27 60,0 39 86,7 6 13,3 46,7 45 6 23 46,9 26 53,1 42 85,7 7 14,3 38,8 49 7 23 41,1 33 58,9 54 96,4 2 3,6 55,3 56 8 37 45,7 44 54,3 80 98,8 1 1,2 53,1 81 9 36 47,4 40 52,6 70 92,1 6 7,9 44,7 76 10 44 46,3 51 53,7 83 87,4 12 12,6 41,1 95 11 28 45,9 33 54,1 54 88,5 7 11,5 42,6 61 12 37 46,3 43 53,8 75 93,8 5 6,3 47,5 80 13 33 46,5 38 53,5 65 91,5 6 8,5 45,0 71 14 26 43,3 34 56,7 54 90,0 6 10,0 46,7 60 15 38 45,2 46 54,8 78 92,9 6 7,1 47,7 84 table 2, presents data on students' answers to the following proposition; "hearing is perceiving sound waves by ears and sending them to the brain without any effort". according to flexer (1999) anyone with healthy senses can hear voices without any effort. therefore, the correct answer to the above proposal should be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it can be seen that the 40% 48.4% of the students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 38.7% 55.3% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposal. table-3. students' responses to 2 item of the test school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 32 36,6 56 63,6 85 96,6 3 3,4 60 88 2 12 38,7 19 61,3 28 90,3 3 9,7 52,5 31 3 32 35,6 58 64,4 84 93,3 6 6,7 57,7 90 4 24 33,3 48 66,7 60 83,3 12 16,7 50 72 5 17 37,8 28 62,2 42 93,3 3 6,7 55,5 45 6 21 42,9 28 57,1 40 81,6 9 18,4 38,7 49 7 21 37,5 35 62,5 56 100 62,5 56 8 31 38,3 50 61,7 81 100 61,7 81 9 26 34,2 50 65,8 69 90,8 7 9,2 56,6 76 10 30 31,6 65 68,4 92 96,8 3 3,2 65,2 95 11 28 45,9 33 54,1 56 91,8 5 8,2 45,9 61 12 31 38,8 49 61,3 76 95,0 4 5,0 56,2 80 13 29 40,8 42 59,2 63 88,7 8 11,3 47,9 71 14 22 36,7 38 63,3 55 91,7 5 8,3 55 60 15 32 38,1 52 61,9 77 91,7 7 8,3 53,6 84 table 3 shows the data on students' answers to the following proposition; "listening is the act of attentive hearing and analyzing voices in the brain". ergin and birol (2000) described listening as a process that requires attention and a process of giving meaning to sounds. based on this definition, the correct answer to the above proposition should be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 31,6% 45,9% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 38,7% 65,2% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposition. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 550 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. students' responses to 3 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 49 55,7 39 44,3 70 79,5 18 20,5 23,8 88 2 16 51,6 15 48,4 28 90,3 3 9,7 38,7 31 3 57 63,3 33 36,7 87 96,7 3 3,3 33,4 90 4 43 59,7 29 40,3 67 93,1 5 6,9 33,4 72 5 33 73,3 12 26,7 43 95,6 2 4,4 22,3 45 6 34 69,4 15 30,6 46 93,9 3 6,1 24,5 49 7 36 64,3 20 35,7 54 96,4 2 3,6 32,1 56 8 59 72,8 22 27,2 78 96,3 3 3,7 23,5 81 9 53 69,7 23 30,3 69 90,8 7 9,2 21,1 76 10 67 70,5 28 29,5 87 91,6 8 8,4 21,1 95 11 45 73,8, 16 26,2 60 98,4 1 1,6 24,6 61 12 58 72,5 22 27,5 76 95,0 4 5,0 22,5 80 13 49 69,0 22 31,0 68 95,8 3 4,2 26,8 71 14 41 68,3 19 31,7 56 93,3 4 6,7 25 60 15 55 65,5 29 34,5 84 100 34,5 84 table 4 contains data on the student answer to the following proposition; "concert is music interpretation done in front of the audience". sözer (2012) stated that the music interpretation made in front of the audience is called a concert. therefore, the correct answer to the above proposal must be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 51,6% 73,8% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a %21,1 %38,7 increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposal. table-5. students' responses to 4 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 83 94,3 5 5,7 11 12,5 77 87,5 81,8 88 2 28 90,3 3 9,7 4 12,9 27 87,1 77,4 31 3 86 95,6 4 4,4 9 10,0 81 90,0 85,6 90 4 67 93,1 5 6,9 7 9,7 65 90,3 83,4 72 5 36 80,0 9 20,0 6 13,3 39 86,7 66,7 45 6 48 98,0 1 2,0 2 4,1 47 95,9 93,9 49 7 47 83,9 9 16,1 6 10,7 50 89,3 73,2 56 8 80 98,8 1 1,2 5 6,2 76 93,8 92,6 81 9 71 93,4 5 6,6 8 10,5 68 89,5 82,9 76 10 90 94,7 5 5,3 15 15,8 80 84,2 78,9 95 11 55 90,2 6 9,8 9 14,8 52 85,2 75,4 61 12 77 96,3 3 3,8 6 7,5 74 92,5 88,7 80 13 68 95,8 3 4,2 4 5,6 67 94,4 90,2 71 14 52 86,7 8 13,3 5 8,3 55 91,7 74,8 60 15 77 91,7 7 8,3 9 10,7 75 89,3 81 84 table-6. students' responses to 5 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 58 65,9 30 34,1 81 92,0 7 8,0 26,1 88 2 19 61,3 12 38,7 26 83,9 5 16,1 22,6 31 3 51 56,7 39 43,3 85 94,4 5 5,6 37,7 90 4 48 66,7 24 33,3 65 90,3 7 9,7 23,6 72 5 28 62,2 17 37,8 43 95,6 2 4,4 33,4 45 6 32 65,3 17 34,7 45 91,8 4 8,2 26,5 49 7 34 60,7 22 39,3 54 96,4 2 3,6 35,7 56 8 52 64,2 29 35,8 78 96,3 3 3,7 32,1 81 9 47 61,8 29 38,2 69 90,8 7 9,2 29,0 76 10 59 62,1 36 37,9 83 87,4 12 12,6 25,3 95 11 40 65,6 21 34,4 55 90,2 6 9,8 24,6 61 12 50 62,5 30 37,5 67 83,8 13 16,3 21,2 80 13 47 66,2 24 33,8 68 95,8 3 4,2 29,6 71 14 38 63,3 22 36,7 59 98,3 1 1,7 35,0 60 15 54 64,3 30 35,7 76 90,5 8 9,5 26,2 84 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 551 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 5 shows the data on student answers to following proposition; "music performances made by a single artist are called concerts". uluc (2002) stated that music performances made by a single artist are called recital. therefore, the correct answer to the above proposal should be no. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 1,2% 20% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 66,7% 93,9% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposition. table 6 presents data on students' responses to the following proposition; "we can listen to, observe, and share the emotions in concert halls in live concerts." oztutgan and oztutgan (2016) stated that the people participating in concert events can listen to live performances, observe them and share emotions in concert halls. hence, the correct answer to the above proposal should be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 56,7% 66,7% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a %21,2 %37,7 increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposal. table-7. students' responses to 6 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 64 72,7 24 27,3 80 90,9 8 9,1 18,2 88 2 22 71,0 9 29,0 31 100 29,0 31 3 61 67,8 29 32,2 83 92,2 7 7,8 24,4 90 4 53 73,6 19 26,4 67 93,1 5 6,9 19,5 72 5 32 71,1 13 28,9 42 93,3 3 6,7 22,2 45 6 33 67,3 16 32,7 47 95,9 2 4,1 28,6 49 7 40 71,4 16 28,6 47 83,9 9 16,1 12,5 56 8 54 66,7 27 33,3 80 98,8 1 1,2 32,1 81 9 50 65,8 26 34,2 74 97,4 2 2,6 31,6 76 10 59 63,2 35 36,8 77 81,1 18 18,9 17,9 95 11 41 67,2 20 32,8 59 96,7 2 3,3 29,5 61 12 55 68,8 25 31,3 75 93,8 5 6,3 25,0 80 13 49 69,0 22 31,0 66 93,0 5 7,0 24,0 71 14 39 65,0 21 35,0 52 86,7 8 13,3 21,7 60 15 59 70,2 25 29,8 81 96,4 3 3,6 26,2 84 table 7 contains data on the students’ responses to the following proposition; "going to a concert supports art". it is well known that going to the concert supports art both financially and morally. therefore, the correct answer to the above proposal should be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 63,2% 73,6% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 12,5% 32,1% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposition. table-8. students' responses to 7 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 41 46,6 47 53,4 6 6,8 82 93,2 39,8 88 2 15 48,4 16 51,6 2 6,5 29 93,5 41,9 31 3 43 47,8 47 52,2 11 12,2 79 87,8 35,6 90 4 35 48,6 37 51,4 5 6,9 67 93,1 41,7 72 5 21 46,7 24 53,3 2 4,4 43 95,6 42,3 45 6 24 49,0 25 51,0 4 8,2 45 91,8 40,8 49 7 26 46,4 30 53,6 56 100 46,4 56 8 41 50,6 40 49,4 6 7,4 75 92,6 43,2 81 9 36 47,4 40 52,6 3 3,9 73 96,1 43,5 76 10 46 48,4 49 51,6 5 5,3 90 94,7 43,1 95 11 29 47,5 32 52,5 1 1,6 60 98,4 45,9 61 12 43 53,8 37 46,3 4 5,0 76 95,0 48,7 80 13 34 47,9 37 52,1 5 7,0 66 93,0 40,9 71 14 29 48,3 31 51,7 13 21,7 47 78,3 26,6 60 15 41 48,8 43 51,2 11 13,1 73 86,9 35,7 84 in table 8, the data on student responses to the following proposition; "we can sit anywhere we want in a concert hall" are presented. since most concerts require tickets, we need to sit according to the seat numbers on the tickets. therefore, the correct answer to the above proposal should be no. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 46,3% 53,6% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 26,6% 48,7% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposition. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 552 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-9. students' responses to 8 item of the test school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 29 33,0 59 67,0 10 11,4 78 88,6 21,6 88 2 11 35,5 20 64,5 31 100 35,5 31 3 26 28,9 64 71,1 2 2,2 88 97,8 26,7 90 4 23 31,9 49 68,1 3 4,2 69 95,8 27,7 72 5 18 40,0 27 60,0 1 2,2 44 97,8 37,8 45 6 15 30,6 34 69,4 2 4,1 47 95,9 26,5 49 7 20 35,7 36 64,3 56 100 35,7 56 8 26 32,1 55 67,9 4 4,9 77 95,1 27,2 81 9 23 30,3 53 69,7 2 2,6 74 97,4 27,7 76 10 35 36,8 60 63,2 9 9,5 86 90,5 27,3 95 11 21 34,4 40 65,6 2 3,3 59 96,7 31,1 61 12 26 32,5 54 67,5 5 6,3 75 93,8 26,3 80 13 23 32,4 48 67,6 1 1,4 70 98,6 31,0 71 14 19 31,7 41 68,3 2 3,3 58 96,7 28,4 60 15 29 34,5 55 65,5 8 9,5 76 90,5 25,0 84 table 9 shows data on student responses to the following proposition; "we would be welcomed if we go to a concert with slippers and shorts." according to tunca (2009) it is advisable to dress appropriately for events at concerts. for this reason, the audience will not be welcomed if they were to wearslippers and shorts in a concert where the artists wear a tuxedo. therefore, the correct answer to the above proposal should be no. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 60% 71,1% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 21,6% 37,8% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposition. table-10. students' responses to 9 item of the test school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 40 45,5 48 54,5 2 2,3 86 97,7 43,2 88 2 14 45,2 17 54,8 3 9,7 28 90,3 35,5 31 3 43 47,8 47 52,2 4 4,4 86 95,6 43,4 90 4 33 45,8 39 54,2 5 6,9 67 93,1 38,9 72 5 22 48,9 23 51,1 2 4,4 43 95,6 44,5 45 6 23 46,9 26 53,1 1 2,0 48 98,0 44,9 49 7 27 48,2 29 51,8 2 3,6 54 96,4 44,6 56 8 36 44,4 45 55,6 4 4,9 77 95,1 39,5 81 9 36 47,4 40 52,6 1 1,3 75 98,7 46,1 76 10 43 45,3 52 54,7 5 5,3 90 94,7 40,0 95 11 28 45,9 33 54,1 11 18,0 50 82,0 27,9 61 12 36 45,0 44 55,0 3 3,8 77 96,3 41,3 80 13 32 45,1 39 54,9 6 8,5 65 91,5 36,6 71 14 28 46,7 32 53,3 1 1,7 59 98,3 45,0 60 15 39 46,4 45 53,6 7 8,3 77 91,7 38,1 84 table-11. students' responses to 10 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 67 76,1 21 23,9 87 98,9 1 1,1 22,8 88 2 24 77,4 7 22,6 31 100 22,6 31 3 65 72,2 25 27,8 84 93,3 6 6,7 21,1 90 4 55 76,4 17 23,6 70 97,2 2 2,8 20,8 72 5 35 77,8 10 22,2 42 93,3 3 6,7 15,5 45 6 37 75,5 12 24,5 49 100 24,5 49 7 45 80,4 11 19,6 54 96,4 2 3,6 16,0 56 8 62 76,5 19 23,5 79 97,5 2 2,5 21,0 81 9 58 76,3 18 23,7 76 100 23,7 76 10 76 80,0 19 20,0 86 90,5 9 9,5 10,5 95 11 47 77,0 14 23,0 60 98,4 1 1,6 21,4 61 12 59 73,8 21 26,3 73 91,3 7 8,8 17,5 80 13 55 77,5 16 22,5 67 94,4 4 5,6 16,9 71 14 42 70,0 18 30,0 54 90,0 6 10,0 20,0 60 15 61 72,6 23 27,4 79 94,0 5 6,0 21,4 84 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 553 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 10 presents data on the students’ responses to the following proposition; "we can enter the concert hall whenever we want even though we are late". oztutgan and oztutgan (2016) states that when we are late for a concert, we should ask the attendant for help, if the attendant is not available, we should enter the hall during the applause, in order to not disturb the concert. therefore, the correct answer to the above proposal should be no. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 51,1% 55,6% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 27,9% 46,1% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposition. table 11 contains data on the students’ responses to the following statement "we are informed via brochures, posters and internet from concerts". it is possible to be informed through brochures, posters and internet from concerts in today's world. therefore, the correct answer to the above statement should be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that 70% 80,4% of the students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 10,5% 24,5% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposal. table-12. students' responses to 11 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no yes f % f % f % f % % 1 63 76,1 25 28,4 83 94,3 5 5,7 18,2 88 2 23 74,2 8 25,8 29 93,5 2 6,5 19,3 31 3 66 73,3 24 26,7 89 98,9 1 1,1 25,6 90 4 51 70,8 21 29,2 71 98,6 1 1,4 27,8 72 5 34 75,6 11 24,4 43 95,6 2 4,4 20,0 45 6 36 73,5 13 26,5 44 89,8 5 10,2 16,3 49 7 39 69,6 17 30,4 55 98,2 1 1,8 28,6 56 8 57 70,4 24 29,6 80 98,8 1 1,2 28,4 81 9 55 72,4 21 27,6 72 94,7 4 5,3 22,3 76 10 68 71,6 27 28,4 91 95,8 4 4,2 24,2 95 11 44 72,1 17 27,9 60 98,4 1 1,6 26,3 61 12 60 75,0 20 25,0 76 95,0 4 5,0 20,0 80 13 52 73,2 19 26,8 68 95,8 3 4,2 22,6 71 14 43 71,7 17 28,3 59 98,3 1 1,7 26,6 60 15 60 71,4 24 28,6 84 100 28,6 84 table 12 presents data on student responses to the following proposal; "we applause artists when they finish their performance" according to nacakçı and canbay (2013) the applause that positively motivates the artists must be done at the end of a performance. therefore, the correct answer to the above statement should be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 60% 80,4% of the students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 16,3% 28,6% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposal. table-13. students' responses to 12 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 40 45,5 48 54,5 80 90,9 8 9,1 45,4 88 2 13 41,9 18 58,1 26 83,9 5 16,1 42,0 31 3 43 47,8 47 52,2 82 91,1 8 8,9 43,3 90 4 30 41,7 42 58,3 58 80,6 14 19,4 38,9 72 5 22 48,9 23 51,1 42 93,3 3 6,7 44,4 45 6 24 49,0 25 51,0 41 83,7 8 16,3 34,7 49 7 27 48,2 29 51,8 48 85,7 8 14,3 37,5 56 8 37 45,7 44 54,3 74 91,4 7 8,6 45,7 81 9 36 47,4 40 52,6 75 98,7 1 1,3 51,3 76 10 46 48,4 49 51,6 79 83,2 16 16,8 34,8 95 11 29 47,5 32 52,5 54 88,5 7 11,5 41,0 61 12 39 48,8 41 51,2 69 86,3 11 13,8 37,5 80 13 30 42,3 41 57,7 65 91,5 6 8,5 49,2 71 14 26 43,3 34 56,7 53 88,3 7 11,7 45,0 60 15 36 42,9 48 57,1 79 94,0 5 6,0 51,1 84 table 13 contains data on student responses to the following proposal; "we can take photos without flash in a concert". oztutgan and oztutgan (2016) stated that the audience need to turn off the lights of their devices when taking photos or recording videos during a concert. hence, the correct answer to the above statement should be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 41,7% 49% of the students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 34,7% 51,3% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the proposal. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 554 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-14. students' responses to 13 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 25 28,4 63 71,6 8 9,1 80 90,9 19,3 88 2 10 32,3 21 67,7 1 3,2 30 96,8 29,1 31 3 28 31,1 62 68,9 5 5,6 85 94,4 25,5 90 4 22 30,6 50 69,4 2 2,8 70 97,2 27,8 72 5 17 37,8 28 62,2 2 4,4 43 95,6 33,4 45 6 15 30,6 34 69,4 1 2,0 48 98,0 28,6 49 7 16 28,6 40 71,4 2 3,6 54 96,4 25,0 56 8 26 32,1 55 67,9 10 12,3 71 87,7 19,8 81 9 21 27,6 55 72,4 1 1,3 75 98,7 26,3 76 10 26 27,4 69 72,6 7 7,4 88 92,6 20,0 95 11 21 34,4 40 65,6 9 14,8 52 85,2 19,6 61 12 22 27,5 58 72,5 6 7,5 74 92,5 20,0 80 13 22 31,0 49 69,0 8 11,3 63 88,7 19,7 71 14 19 31,7 41 68,3 5 8,3 55 91,7 23,4 60 15 28 33,3 56 66,7 2 2,4 82 97,6 30,9 84 table 14 contains data on student responses to the following proposal; "we would be welcomed to chat with our friends during a concert". according to nacakçı and canbay (2013) music is always listened to quietly if there is no specific purpose. therefore, the correct answer to the above statement should be no. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 62,2% 72,6% of the students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 19,3% 33,4% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the statement. table-15. students' responses to 14 item of the test. school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 61 69,3 27 30,7 83 94,3 5 5,7 25,0 88 2 20 64,5 11 35,5 28 90,3 3 9,7 24,8 31 3 59 65,6 31 34,4 87 96,7 3 3,3 31,1 90 4 51 70,8 21 29,2 69 95,8 3 4,2 25,0 72 5 32 71,1 13 28,9 42 93,3 3 6,7 22,2 45 6 36 73,5 13 26,5 48 98,0 1 2,0 24,5 49 7 38 67,9 18 32,1 56 100 32,1 56 8 59 72,8 22 27,2 79 97,5 2 2,5 24,7 81 9 52 68,4 24 31,6 71 93,4 5 6,6 25,0 76 10 68 71,6 27 28,4 89 93,7 6 6,3 22,1 95 11 44 72,1 17 27,9 55 90,2 6 9,8 18,1 61 12 55 68,8 25 31,3 77 96,3 3 3,8 27,5 80 13 50 70,4 21 29,6 70 98,6 1 1,4 28,2 71 14 42 70,0 18 30,0 52 86,7 8 13,3 16,7 60 15 57 67,9 27 32,1 77 91,7 7 8,3 23,8 84 table-16. students' responses to 15 item of the test school pre-test post-test difference n yes no yes no f % f % f % f % % 1 52 59,1 36 40,9 11 12,5 77 87,5 46,6 88 2 16 51,6 15 48,4 6 19,4 25 80,6 32,2 31 3 49 54,4 41 45,6 11 12,2 79 87,8 42,2 90 4 43 59,7 29 40,3 8 11,1 64 88,9 48,6 72 5 25 55,6 20 44,4 2 4,4 43 95,6 51,2 45 6 31 63,3 18 36,7 11 22,4 38 77,6 40,9 49 7 35 62,5 21 37,5 14 25,0 42 75,0 37,5 56 8 55 67,9 26 32,1 10 12,3 71 87,7 55,6 81 9 46 60,5 30 39,5 9 11,8 67 88,2 48,7 76 10 56 58,9 39 41,1 7 7,4 88 92,6 51,5 95 11 26 42,6 35 57,4 1 1,6 60 98,4 41,0 61 12 52 65,0 28 35,0 5 6,3 75 93,8 58,8 80 13 42 59,2 29 40,8 2 2,8 69 97,2 56,4 71 14 37 61,7 23 38,3 5 8,3 55 91,7 53,4 60 15 49 58,3 35 41,7 10 11,9 74 88,1 46,4 84 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 546-555 555 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 15 contains data on the students’ response to the following proposal; "take the phones in silent or closed position before entering the concert hall". according to nacakçı and canbay (2013) mobile phones and alarm clocks must be turned off in the concert hall. therefore, the correct answer to the above statement should be yes. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 64,5% 73,5% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 16,7% 32,1% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the statement. table 16 shows the student responses to the following proposal; "in the concert halls, the section that is above the ground level that artists perform their arts in is called the backstage ". according to the turkish language institution (tdk, 2018) the backstage is defined as a section that is usually behind and besides of the stage, and a stage is defined as a section that is constructed above the ground level for the audience to easily watch the shows. therefore, the correct answer to the above statement should be no. when the pre-test data was evaluated, it is seen that the 32,1% 57,4% of students correctly answered the above proposition. when the students' posttest scores were evaluated, it is seen that there is a 32,2% 58,8% increase in the number of students that correctly answered the statement. 4. discussion and conclusion in the context of this research, when evaluating the students before presenting the audience training sessions, it could be asserted that the students had some information about test items number 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11, 13, and 14. this situation is seen as a result of music courses offered in schools and basic manners provided by education at home and at school. as a result of this study, it is possible to say that the number of students responding to the test items has considerably increased in spite of the fact that the students had basic knowledge in some subjects. since the increase was detected in all the schools and for every test item, it is not just a random improvement. therefore, it is possible to say that the education provided to students has positively influenced the students and that the students gained a sufficient understanding of the subjects. we can conclude that since having a conscious audience for musical activities is expected to contribute to art and artists, such educational activities should become more widespread and offered more often to students. it is believed that the curriculum for audience education developed within the scope of this research will be useful for students who live in urban areas, and especially in schools where music teachers do not exist. references dinçer, i. (1992). a musical handbook for those interested in child development. istanbul: ya-pa publications. ergin, a., & birol, c. (2000). communication in education. ankara: anı publishing. flexer, c. (1999). facilitating hearing and listening in young children. san diego: singular publishing group, inc. nacakçı, z., & canbay, a. (2013). music culture. orchestra and chamber music (pp. 125-169). ankara: pegem akademi publishing. oztutgan, z., & oztutgan, k. (2016). classical music listening guide for beginners. journal of mediterranean opera and ballet club association (akob), 36(1), 40-43. sözer, v. (2012). dictionary of music terms. istanbul: remzi publishing house. sun, m., & seyrek, h. (1993). music education in preschool. izmir: mey music publications. tdk. (2018). current turkish dictionary. tunca, o. (2009). 60 minutes music at home, in the car, anywhere. istanbul: dimension publications. uçan, a. (2005). music education-basic concepts and principles-approaches situation in turkey. ankara: universal music house. uluc, o. m. (2002). dictionary of music. ankara: yurtrenkleri publishing house. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 408 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 5, no. 3, 408-415, 2019 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.408.415 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the use of literature circle technique in teachers’ professional development süleyman avci1 mustafa özgenel2 ( corresponding author) 1marmara university, atatürk faculty of education, istanbul, turkey. 2istanbul sabahattin zaim university, faculty of education, istanbul, turkey. abstract supporting teachers for their professional development is important. literature circle technique has a potential to create and support professional learning communities. the purpose of this research was to examine how the literature circle can be used between teachers in order to enhance their professional development. in this qualitative study the action research approach was employed. the participants of the study were seven teachers working in a vocational high school in i̇stanbul. the duration of the study was one year. the teachers of different subject areas read nine books using the literature circle technique. they decided which books they were going to read together, read the same book and parts, organized 2-hour discussions weekly and attended the discussions after they had delivered the technical tasks. the research data was collected with focus group interviews, questionnaire form and field notes. the research findings showed that literature circle is suitable for teachers and can be used in professional learning communities. the teachers liked it very much as it provided retentive learning, allowed for learning from each other and made literature more effective. the teachers emphasized that they noticed the individual differences among the students and started to use suitable methods thanks to the technique. the literature circle technique provided teachers with an opportunity to better know each other, share experiences and opinions about day to day teaching practices. keywords: literature circle, professional learning, reading habit, in-service training. citation | süleyman avci; mustafa özgenel (2019). the use of literature circle technique in teachers’ professional development. asian journal of education and training, 5(3): 408-415. history: received: 11 april 2019 revised: 17 may 2019 accepted: 24 june 2019 published: 28 august 2019 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 409 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 410 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 410 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 413 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 414 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2019.53.408.415&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/957 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3185-3914 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7276-4865 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/957 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3185-3914 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7276-4865 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/957 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3185-3914 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7276-4865 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/957 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3185-3914 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7276-4865 asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 408-415 409 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining how the literature circle can be used between teachers in order to enhance their professional development. 1. introduction teachers need to improve themselves in order to adapt to the changing environment in teaching practices, teaching philosophies, subject-matter, student profile and technology during their professional careers. the speed of developments today has started to compel teachers to change rapidly. accordingly, there have been very rapid and important developments and changes in education even in the last 15 years. for instance, constructivism, active learning, multiple-intelligence and student-centered education have affected educational systems through principles, instructional practices and assessment methods, causing radical changes. social media and changing forms of communication have become an inseparable part of life. people have started to access all kinds of free sources when they want to learn anything. in line with these developments, roles attributed to students and teachers have changed. teachers now need to prepare themselves cognitively, affectively and operationally for all current developments. they can also improve themselves through methods based on group interaction as well as through individual efforts. some of the individual learning methods include participation in seminars and courses, online videos, source reading, research, experimentation, and action research. mutual sharing and discussion of experiences and attainments gained in such ways refer to group learning. professional learning community (plc) investigated in this study is a model developed to ensure that teachers learn from each other in groups. mullen (2009) defines plc as a school organization model developed to ensure cooperation and learning among teachers for improving the learning of all students. general purpose of plc is that teachers act as a collective group to improve each other’s and students’ learning mutually (hefner, 2011). the point is to ensure the school achievement as a whole (dufour, 2004). this approach is an effective way of ensuring students’ learning and academic achievements (murphy and lick, 2005; mullen and hutinger, 2008; mullen, 2009) and enhancing teacher leadership and increasing cooperation among employees (mullen, 2009). within the scope of plc, teachers and school administrators hold meetings together or in small groups (hord, 1997). group members exchange opinions and cooperate in areas on which they reach a consensus to try to achieve their goals (moyer et al., 2006). no matter which activity is performed plcs have certain common characteristics: teachers and school administrators participating in plc share the mission and vision of the school and act in accordance with a mutual purpose. participants mainly aim to increase student achievement. they cooperate in all applications. they provide observation, coaching, etc. for improving each other professionally. in the end, they put information and attainments they acquired into practice (kruse et al., 1994; louis et al., 1995; newmann, 1996; louis and marks, 1998; dufour, 2004; hord, 2004; stoll et al., 2006). hord (2004) emphasizes that supportive roles should be attributed to school administrators for plc. shared points in studies on defining plc include improvement of education (mullen, 2009) ensuring the student learning (hord, 1997; burnette, 2002; bolam et al., 2005; stoll et al., 2006; mullen, 2009) professional development of teachers (hord, 1997; bolam et al., 2005; dufour et al., 2006; stoll et al., 2006; hord et al., 2009) and cooperation (dufour et al., 2006). professional learning communities focus on learning rather than teaching (dufour, 2004). using active learning methods such as discussion, sharing and application is a crucial factor that facilitates teacher participation in the process and increases the success of application (desimone et al., 2002). plc is actually a version of constructivism applied to teacher professional development and involves activities of efficient participation, cooperation, reflective thinking, interview, feedback, and application (hord and sommers, 2008; tobia and hord, 2012; knowles et al., 2014). with this characteristic of plc, teachers who take part in plc transit from teachercentered to student-centered practices more easily (vescio et al., 2008; sai and siraj, 2015). if plc is used efficiently, student learning is primarily enhanced which is the main purpose (hord and rutherford, 1998; bryk et al., 1999; reyes et al., 1999; dufour et al., 2004). additionally, participants’ motivation, knowledge level and teaching skills is improved (marks and printy, 2003; shellard, 2003). teachers participating in plc perform more authentic and challenging practices in their classes to ensure students’ retentive learning (louis and marks, 1998). professional learning communities have numerous styles of application. caine and caine (2010) defines five techniques: study groups, action research teams, communities of practice, discussion groups, and learning cycles. cordingley et al. (2004) states that plc includes peer coaching, mutual preparation of materials, mutual development of plans, and professional discussion groups. cochran-smith and lytle (1999) argue that teachers can discuss course contents, materials, teaching methods and colleague observations. the researchers also suggest that teachers should conduct and publish scientific research on the instructional process. in addition to these techniques, literature cycle is a teaching technique that can be used within the scope of professional learning community (church and swain, 2009). although the technique was initially developed for and have been applied to students, it is also suitable for adult education (furr, 2003). literature circle is a teaching method in which participants read a book they have chosen in parts and by organizing weekly discussions (daniels, 2002). this method helps achieve quite successful results for instilling reading habit to the students, making them enjoy reading book and improving their reading comprehension skills (mizerka, 1999; chiang and huang, 2005; olsen, 2007; stabile, 2009; avcı and yüksel, 2011). literature circle is based on the constructivist theory just like plc (avcı and yüksel, 2014). in discussion, how individuals can express what they have learned from the book, learning different perspectives, doing research on a given part of the book (tracey and morrow, 2006) and actualization of social learning (hsu, 2004) can be provided as evidence that literature circle is about constructivist learning. literature circle is composed of the combination of individual learning and cooperative learning methods (hsu, 2004; tracey and morrow, 2006). as can be seen above, cooperation, utilizing past experience, featuring not teaching but learning, and theoretical foundations based on constructivism are among common characteristics of plc and literature circle. all these similarities can be presented as evidence that literature circle can be used in plc. only study on the use of literature circle in plc or that it can be used in plc was performed by monroebaillargeon and shema (2010). that research is also the only study regarding the use of literature circle by asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 408-415 410 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teachers as a technique. as mentioned above, although literature circle is deemed theoretically suitable for application in plc, there are no sufficient data on its practical suitability, experienced problems and gained benefits. this study will provide benefit to fill the current gap in the field and offer essential information on the use of literature circle among practicing teachers. in order to address the research problem following research questions were addressed: 1. in what ways the literature circle technique supports teachers’ professional development? 2. can literature circle be used as a teaching technique in professional learning communities? 2. methodology 2.1. research model this research utilized the action research technique which is a qualitative research model. action research is performed by teachers and with the support of universities as occasion requires to improve their teaching and their schools as a whole (johnson, 2012). in this study, the literature circle method was implemented by the researcherteacher who is a co-author in accordance with action research. as action research is among qualitative research (johnson, 2012) principles of qualitative research model were utilized in the design, sample selection, development of data collection instruments, data collection and data analysis. 2.2. research group the research was conducted in a vocational high school in an area with low socioeconomic level in istanbul. the study started with eight teachers in the spring term of 2016-2017 academic year. two of them left the group as they were assigned to another school in summer. one teacher replaced them in the academic year of 2017-2018. subject-matter areas of the teachers were health information, office management, food technology (2), textile, history, and graphic and design. all the teachers are women and had teaching experience of 5-to-27 years. the teachers participated in the study voluntarily. 2.3. application process the application process started with the researcher-teacher introducing the method to other teachers and searching for volunteered participants. the volunteered 8-individual group decided to read “beş şehir” (“five cities”) for starters. for book reading, a five-week period was determined to read one city each week. a 2-hour meeting was planned for discussion one day a week. in accordance with the literature circle technique, tasks were assigned to the teachers and the tasks were changed weekly. these tasks specified in this research were: investigator, part expert, correlator, artist, summarizer, researcher, word hunter, and character master (avcı and yüksel, 2014). all participants had read and delivered their tasks before attending the meetings. on the days of meeting, discussions were made on the part which had been read. project preparation and presentation tasks which were done when the book was completed were not the only tasks within the scope of literature circle. the teachers also read the following book during the research: five cities (ahmet hamdi tanpınar), peace (ahmet hamdi tanpınar), yusuf from kuyucak (sabahattin ali), madonna in a fur coat (sabahattin ali), mind of the dervish (doğan cüceloğlu), letter from an unknown woman (stefan zweig), schools without failure (william glasser), restlessness (zülfü livaneli), and ishmael (daniel quinn). the books were decided with the mutual decision of the group. the books took one to five weeks to read depending on their styles and lengths. 2.4. data collection process the research data was collected by a focus group interview (patton, 2014) questionnaire form (kıncal, 2010) and field notes (johnson, 2012) techniques in accordance with the qualitative research model. the teachers were asked similar question in the focus group interview and questionnaire form. the purpose for using multiple data collection approach was to achieve triangulation of data in order to increase the reliability of the research. with the field note technique, observations made on points such as what participants go through during the literature circle, reflection of application in the school, and changes in teachers. the focus group interview and the questionnaire form were applied by the researchers in december 2017. a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers was used in the focus group interview. field notes were taken by the researcher-teacher during the entire process. 2.5. data analysis data collected with three data collection methods was analyzed with content analysis. content analysis enables the researcher for creating new and original themes that emerge from the data (miles et al., 2014). first, subthemes and concepts were extracted from the data, and then, these subthemes were combined to construct the main themes. 3. findings the findings of the data analysis is presented in two categories that correspond to the research questions: literature circle’s suitability for teachers and evaluation of literature circle within the scope of professional learning communities. 3.1. evaluation of literature circle method for suitability for teachers the first research question is whether literature circle technique is suitable for teachers’ professional development. the best indicator of the effectiveness of the technique was after participating in the literature circle for about a year, teachers were willing to continue the practice in coming years. indeed, the teachers decided three books they would read next during the data collection process. they also reflected about and mentioned how much they like reading book with literature circle in the interviews and the questionnaire books. shortly, it is possible to asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 408-415 411 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group say that literature circle is a teaching method that can be easily used for teachers’ self-learning. teacher opinions supporting this finding were addressed in three themes. 3.2. literature circle attitude although the teachers were not asked whether they liked the literature circle, it can be understood from their written and spoken statements that they enjoyed the technique and were pleased with reading book with this technique. especially the statement “i have become a happy reader and researcher” is a striking and summative example of this pleasure. the researcher-teacher reported in the field notes that all the teacher participated in the application voluntarily and willingly. indeed, the researcher-teacher emphasized that other teachers urged him/her to continue when he/she felt unwilling to participate due to administrative duty from time to time. based on the fact that an adult individual will not take part in any activity when he/she does not want to knowles et al. (2014) all participants liked the intervention. furthermore, almost all of the school teachers told the researcher-teacher about their willingness to join the literature circle, but they could not for the reasons such as lack of time, failing to come together, and lack of a suitable place. the statements supporting these findings are shown in table 1. table-1. teachers’ attitudes toward literature circle method. data type statements frequency q an enjoyable application. 1 q i have become a happy reader and researcher. 1 q i started reading books again. 1 i it makes reading enjoyable. 1 i it makes you like reading. 1 *i=interview q=questionnaire. 3.3. importance of literature circle method to book reading habit it is understood from the teacher statements that literature circle has several benefits in fostering the reading habit. the first benefit of literature circle for the teachers is the skill of productive book reading. the statement of a teacher “i learned how to read book” sums up the attainments of the technique. the participants stated that they primarily acquired the skills of thinking the time, space and people in the book multi-dimensionally, doing research on what is unknown during the reading, and taking notes when reading book. moreover, they performed in-depth reading, noticed all the details in the book and gained retentive attainments from the book. another important attainment was that the teachers noticed their shortcomings in individual book reading thanks to literature circle. the statements supporting these findings are shown in table 2. table-2. benefits of literature circle method in terms of book reading habit. data type statements frequency i it made me notice my shortcomings in terms of reading technique. 3 i it provided me with habit of doing research about the book. 1 i it provided me with habit of thinking about the time and people in the book multidimensionally. 1 i i noticed how much a thought could expand. 1 i my reading style has improved: i am paying attention the characters; date place of the case and layers of the construct. 1 i it provided me with habit of taking notes when reading book. 1 i it makes reading book easier. 1 q it gives the chance to read deeply. 2 q i achieved retentive learning. 2 q detailed discussion of the book was useful. 1 q i am now reading the book without missing any detail. 1 q my multi-dimensional book reading ability has improved. 1 q i am reading the book by thinking in detail. 1 q i learned how to read book. 1 *i=interview q=questionnaire. 3.4. benefits of practices in literature circle method in literature circle, weekly discussions are organized; everyone has delivered the task of their assigned roles before coming to the discussion and does research within the scope of their roles (avcı and yüksel, 2014). this section of the study addresses the teacher opinions on the abovementioned characteristics of literature circle. the teachers provided intensive feedbacks especially on discussion. in the discussion stage of the technique, participants express their opinions on the subject they are reading with the help of the “investigator” who manages the discussion. the investigator prepares critical questions for the discussion beforehand, which makes the discussion productive. participants express themselves and hear others’ opinions in the discussion setting (avcı and yüksel, 2014). according to the research data, the teachers think that it was useful to see different perspectives during the discussion. noticing the differences improved their skills of multi-dimensional thinking and seeing things from different perspectives. discussion also ensured that they comprehended the incoherent points and noticed the unnoticed details in the book. hence, the teachers learned from each other. in the literature circle, all group members had roles such as investigator, correlator, artist which they exchanged every week. for instance, artists express the emotion, which certain part aroused in them through artistic elements like pictures and poems (avcı and yüksel, 2014). the researcher-teacher reported that numerous poems were written during the book reading process. two of the teachers stated that they just noticed their ability to write poem. these teachers particularly asked for the artist role even though the roles were exchanged and provided quite beautiful poems. one of the teachers accordingly said, “my ability to produce about book improved. poems, pictures...” in addition to the asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 408-415 412 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group abovementioned, the teachers acquired the skills of teamwork and giving feedback to each other. they also stated that they acquired a lot of knowledge about different aspects of the culture and liberal arts. the statements supporting these findings are given in table 3. table-3. opinions on the practices of literature circle method. data type statements frequency opinions on discussion q it is useful to see different perspectives. 2 q multi-dimensional thinking occurred. 1 q i am learning unnoticed details from others when reading. 1 q different perspectives helped me improve myself. 1 q it taught me to address and interpret things from different perspectives. 1 q it was useful to express my opinion on the matter. 1 i it helps me see different perspectives of cases. 1 i seeing different perspectives of cases opens up my horizon and expands my perspective. 1 i i can notice details which cannot be noticed when alone. 1 i it is easier to understand incoherent points. 1 opinions on roles q reading with literature circle means examining, discussion and researching as well as reading. 1 q i learned so much other than the book itself when reading. 1 q i expressed myself in diverse ways through roles. 1 q my ability to produce about book improved. poems, pictures... 1 other attainments q it taught to meet in a common ground. 1 q my skill of working with team harmoniously improved. 1 q my skill of feed backing improved. 1 i my culture of history and literature improved. 1 i now i know more matters that i can share with others. 1 i i used conversation-opening effect of the book i read in communication. 1 i my children started reading book. 1 *i=interview q=questionnaire. 3.5. evaluation of literature circle technique in the scope of professional learning communities whether reading circle is a technique suitable for professional learning communities was addressed in two themes. 3.6. literature circle on student and teacher achievements professional learning communities have an indirect rather than direct impact on students’ academic achievements. teachers improve their own teaching skills, make more effective plans, and develop teaching materials, therefore improving students’ academic achievements. in this study, effect of literature circle on students’ academic achievements was not assessed; however, there were developments in teachers’ teaching skills, which would affect student achievements. one of these developments was that three of the teachers in the group started to use the literature circle technique in their classes and that the remaining four teachers would start to use it soon. literature circle is a practice of which effectiveness has been proven in areas such as enhancing students’ reading attitudes, improving their reading comprehension and enhancing the communication (mizerka, 1999; blum et al., 2002; chiang and huang, 2005; avcı and yüksel, 2011; avcı et al., 2013). therefore, comparable results can be anticipated in the classrooms where the application is performed. especially increasing the reading comprehension skill is a factor directly enhancing the academic achievement (kutlu et al., 2011; bayat et al., 2014). according to the teacher statements, there were several changes in their teaching practices. one of these changes is that they noticed differences among their students with the literature circle technique. two of the teachers stated that they opened up themselves for students’ different perspectives and started to use different instructional methods. one of the teachers reported that her skills of using the q&a method increased while another one stated that she uses what she learned from the books as examples in the class. one of the teachers who use literature circle in her class said that she also uses opportunity training for the technique. the statements supporting these findings are shown in table 4. table-4. participants’ responses to the questions about the literature circle on their achievements. data type statements frequency q it made me understood student differences. 2 q noticing different perspectives. 1 q being open to alternative comments. 1 q applying different methods. 1 q my skill of using the q&a method improved. 1 q i can recommend the books i read more comfortably. 1 q i use what i learn from books and researches in the class as examples. 1 q i use the technique as a tool of opportunity training. 1 *i=interview q=questionnaire. 3.7. literature circle on teacher cooperation literature circle and professional learning communities are theoretically based on constructivism (hord and sommers, 2008; avcı and yüksel, 2014). in constructivism, prior knowledge of individuals is regarded as richness and the best learning is achieved by benefiting from each other’s knowledge and experiences through social asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 408-415 413 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group interaction. thus, each difference is considered an element of richness (glasersfeld, 2013). in literature circle, participants share what they understand from a book with each other in discussions. according to the readerresponse theory, individuals make sense of a book by their own experiences, and everyone focuses on different points and gains different things. therefore, each participant attends discussion with different attainments although they have read the same book (avcı and yüksel, 2014). multitude of part experiences among adults ensures that differences are put forth more distinctively. the most emphasized matter specified by the participant teachers was that they noticed their colleagues’ perspectives of cases and recognized their characteristics, which make them different. all of the participants provided different statements on the matter in the interview and the questionnaire form. on the other hand, two teachers reported that they utilized others’ opinions in terms of learning. according to the field notes of the researcher-teacher, the fact that seven teachers gathered once a week even without being encouraged and they urged the researcher-teacher to organize meetings for about a year can be shown as the evidence of cooperation. the statements supporting these findings are shown in table 5. table-5. contribution of literature circle to teacher cooperation. data type statements frequency q i recognized different characteristics of my colleagues. 3 q i saw my colleagues’ perspectives of cases. 2 q i have to know my colleagues closely. 2 q i benefited from others’ ideas. 2 q my communication with my colleagues improved. 2 i i learned about how the group members see the life. 5 i i have to know the friends at the school better. 3 *i=interview q=questionnaire. 4. discussion the discussion of the findings of this action research is organized around two themes. 4.1. literature circle technique supports teachers’ professional development literature circle is a technique successfully used in all educational levels starting from the primary school third grade (knowles and smith, 2003) to the adult education (furr, 2003). the fact that it has been successfully applied to adults in language education (furr, 2003) indicates teachers can make use of and benefit from titerature circle technique. moreover, in the research conducted by monroe-baillargeon and shema (2010) literature circle was applied to teachers effectively. along with the applications in the literature, this study show that teachers can easily use the literature circle and achieve similar accomplishments reported in findings of this study . the participant teachers found book reading enjoyable with this technique and reported that they learned how to read books more effectively. how the teachers continued the application not with any encouragement and external motivation but by their own will or with internal motivation for about a year is the evidence that they liked reading book with the technique. the most important reason why the teachers liked literature circle so much may be that it is compatible with the principles of adult education. adults want to share their experience in the education setting; they want to learn from each other in an interaction rather than from a teacher, they only participate in learning through internal motivation, they want the outcome of learning to be useful for them, they want the learning setting to be compatible with their life, and they expected the education setting to be designed to tolerate their individual differences (tennant, 2006; knowles et al., 2014). all adults’ learning characteristics are found in literature circle. the reason why the participants provided positive opinions especially on the discussion process may be that they expressed their experiences freely. there is not any teacher in the application that they joined willingly, but each group member benefits from others’ experiences. this way, they share their own experience as well as enhancing their knowledge. literature circle being a reading activity itself makes it a natural part of life. literature circle is one of the most effective and efficient ways of book reading. in this implementation, the teachers stated that they liked literature circle very much as “it provided them with ways of proper reading, retentive learning and taught them to read in detail”. these findings indicate that the literature circle technique provided the anticipated benefit among the teachers. 4.2. the final evaluation of literature circle technique in supporting professional learning communities the point with professional learning communities is to improve teachers’ learning from each other and student learning (hefner, 2011). professional learning communities involve supporting each other’s learning (dufour, 2004; stoll et al., 2006) employee cooperation (mullen, 2009) working towards a common goal, moyer et al. (2006) working in small groups (moyer et al., 2006) and support of school administration (hord, 2004). the findings achieved in the research were discussed regarding to what extent literature circle was suitable for the characteristics of professional learning community. the first characteristic addressed in this scope was whether literature circle contributes to teacher and student learning. it can be said according to the findings that literature circle provided the teachers with several attainments so that they can practice their profession more effectively. this is preliminary to “how the teachers start to notice individual differences and apply the student-centered education” thanks to literature circle. subject-centered education is based on the idea that all students have similar interests and needs. on the contrary, student-centered education is based on the idea that students are individuals and have different interests and needs (jonassen and easter, 2012). student-centered education increases students’ academic achievement and learning motivation and help them to develop positive attitude towards course and teacher. the participant teachers started to approach different opinions expressed by the students more positively. helping students put forth their opinions rather than silencing them would contribute to the development of their personalities. supporting these findings, sai and siraj (2015) and vescio et al. (2008) emphasized that plc facilitates transition to student-centered education. asian journal of education and training, 2019, 5(3): 408-415 414 © 2019 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group another case that can be considered a contribution to academic achievement is that three of the teachers started to apply the literature circle technique in their classes and the remaining four teachers were planning to do so. this indicates that the teachers learned the literature circle technique. the important thing is the attainment of students who started to read book with literature circle. according to the research on the matter, students who read book with literature circle have increased reading comprehension levels (mizerka, 1999; blum et al., 2002; avcı et al., 2013) increased reading attitudes (blum et al., 2002; chiang and huang, 2005; stabile, 2009; avcı and yüksel, 2011) improved reading habits (chiang and huang, 2005; avcı and yüksel, 2011). furthermore, several social skills such as expressing oneself, communicating, speaking before a group, expression one’s emotions and group work are improved (alwood, 2000; culli, 2002; stabile, 2009). as a consequence of this application, it can be anticipated that the students who participate in the literature circle application would acquire the before mentioned skills after a certain time. literature circle is theoretically an applicable technique in professional learning communities as it is based on constructivism. this study achieved evidence of the theoretical relationship between literature circle and plc. the most important evidence in this sense is that group members learn from each other and see each other’s perspective of life. constructivism has the principle that learning is a social phenomenon in its essence (glasersfeld, 2013). an environment where individuals share their experiences by discussion in a social and free setting reflects the implementation style of professional learning communities. how teachers decide the reading books, for how many weeks they would be read, what roles will be played, the date, time and duration of discussions together indicates that they are in cooperation with each other. making an effort together for improving themselves to contribute to students proves that they have a common purpose. each teacher committed himself or herself to relay their attainments to their students during the research. the fact that all the teachers wanted to implement the literature circle in their classes refers to another common purpose. literature circle, after all, is a guiding technique to make book reading more enjoyable and productive, therefore making book reading popular. the participant teachers want to bring the book reading habit to all teachers and students and increase the reading frequency. the research findings also show that the teachers influenced their colleagues and students and were planning to continue doing so. the literature 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 161-168, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.161.168 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of sport on life skills in high school students serkan düz1  tahir volkan aslan2 ( corresponding author) 1inonu university, faculty of sports science, malatya, turkey. 2mersin university, erdemli vocational school department of travel, tourism and entertainment services, mersin, turkey. abstract sport has many psychological and social benefits beyond developing physical skills. it can be used to teach young people important life skills such as teamwork, goal setting, problem solving, decision making, leadership, time management, cognitive, emotional, communication and social skills. therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of sports on life skills in high school students. the sample of the study consists of 500 high schools students. turkish version of the life skills scale for sports (lsss) developed by açak and düz (2018) was used to data collection. the mann whitney u and kruskal wallis h tests were used for single and multiple comparisons. the level of significance was accepted as p<.05. 61% of the sample was boys and 39% of them was girls. there was significant mean score differences in the subscales of emotional and social skills according to gender variable; in the subscales of leadership and goal-setting according to age variable; in the subscales of leadership, goal setting, emotional and social skills according to type of school variable; in the subscales of time management, leadership, teamwork and goal setting according to club license variable; in the subscales of time management and goalsetting according to the sport-year variable; in the subscales of time management, leadership, emotional skills and goal setting according to the number of training variable. as a conclusion, it was observed that life skills improved through sport in high school students. keywords: life skills, sports, skill development, secondary education, social skills, personal development. citation | serkan düz; tahir volkan aslan (2020). the effect of sport on life skills in high school students. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 161-168. history: received: 11 december 2019 revised: 21 january 2020 accepted: 25 february 2020 published: 23 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 162 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 162 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 163 4. discussion and results ................................................................................................................................................................. 166 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 167 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.161.168&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1438 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5839-1927 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1438 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5839-1927 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1438 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5839-1927 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1438 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5839-1927 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 161-168 162 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the effect of sport on life skills in high school students. 1. introduction sport is defined as regular physical activities for different purposes and it is a concept, which is aimed at satisfying the subconscious emotions of human beings, such as integrating set of physical, psychological and mental efforts, and socializing (eime et al., 2013; aydemir, 2014). nowadays, sport is gradually increasing its effect on human life and it is becoming even more important in the society. people now do sports for their personal development as well as their physical and mental abilities. because there is a strong effect of sport on socializing and strengthening the social ties between individuals in the society. moreover, it is the most effective form of activity that enables people to prepare for life psychologically and with this aspect contributes to the psychosocial and personal balance (ghildiyal, 2015). skill is expressed as physical, cognitive and behavioral competencies that we need in every field of life and it can be learned, developed and corrected as individually or group (cronin. and allen, 2015). life skills discussed as in the literature are also necessary to cope with the demands and difficulties of daily life (hodge and danish, 1999) and “enable individuals to be successful in different environments in which they live such as school, home or neighborhood” (danish et al., 2004). it is also expressed as the necessary competencies for individuals to maintain their existence effectively in the process of change and development (kolburan and tosun, 2011). in every society, schools play a proactive role in the development of life skills. because, life skills enable young people to manage their lives successfully and adapt to different life conditions. acquisition of life skills in school age can be gathered under many factors such as, ethical behavior, fun, learning to learn, goal setting, self-recognition and self-help, emotion management, career planning, responsibility, accurate perception of time and space, participation, collaboration and teamwork, leadership and respect for differences (gazda and brooks jr, 1985; who, 1997; goldsmith, 2000). therefore, it is an inevitable necessity for young people to have different types of life skills in order to be able to adapt and succeed in the competitive and constantly changing life conditions. in the last decade, life skills learning through sports has drawn much attention (gould and carson, 2008; holt et al., 2017) and the studies have established links between life skills learning and participation in sports such as leadership, goal setting, communication, and emotional control (jones and lavallee, 2009; johnston et al., 2013). at the same time, it was seen crucial contributions of sportive activities that improved the personality, enhanced the physical and mental health, and developed positive behaviors of the individual (caterino and polak, 1999; kohl and cook, 2013; nagaraju, 2016). there had been evidences that most of the skills needed to succeed in sports such as problem solving, time management, goal setting, coping with success and failure, and performing under pressure could be transferred to other living environments (catalano et al., 2004; danish et al., 2004). as the role of social representatives in the transfer of life skills is examined, most studies in the sports psychology literature have focused on coaches and which strategies they use to encourage this transfer (gould et al., 2007; camiré and kendellen, 2016; whitley et al., 2016). it was also known that the interactions of young people with the key social role models such as coaches, parents and peers in the sport played an important role in life skills learning (gould and carson, 2008; holt et al., 2017). at this point, perspective of parents and the attitude of the teachers who spend the most time with the students, who know them, who know their needs and who are responsible for developing their life skills is also very important. social skills, which are defined as the adapting to the social environment and dealing with conflicts that may occur by using appropriate communication ways (matson et al., 2007) have a major impact on the healthy interpersonal communication, school and family life of individuals (hejazi et al., 2017). moreover, social skills which include behaviors of a child towards other children, such as being able to establish good relationships, respect for the rights and feelings of others, and taking into consideration group norms for convenient social behavior (cetin et al., 2003) are indicated as a stress protective factor for prevention of drop-out and other problematic behaviors (korkut, 2004). the way to reach qualitative manpower is to be healthy. physical education and sports make human will strong, and also play an active role in self-confidence and character formation. moreover, it facilitates group work and helps people to develop solidarity (kumar, 2017). during secondary education, in the period when the search for belonging to a social group and finding identity were intense, guiding these needs of the youth in a beneficial and healthy way via physical education and sports will contribute to the process of creating a healthy society and raising generations be attached to national values (inal, 2003). basic subjects of life skills comprise the belief of the individual in his/her self-abilities and socialization skills in the society that can demonstrate positive reflections. the acquiring life skills during childhood and youth through sports make this issue even more important because it will prepare them for adulthood. therefore, the aim of the study was to investigate the effect of sports on the life skills of high school students in terms of various variables. 2. method in this part of the study, information about the participants and the analysis of the data are presented. 2.1. research model simple random sampling model was used in sample selection. random sampling is a part of the sampling technique in which each sample has an equal probability of being chosen. 2.2. population the population of study was formed by approximately 53621 students studying at four different high schools from each district of mersin in the 2018-2019 academic year. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 161-168 163 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. sample the formula nt²pq/d²(n-1)+t²pq (sümbüloğlu and sümbüloğlu, 2009) was used to determine the sample size that will represent the population. with a 95% confidence interval and 5% sampling error, the sample size of the study was calculated to be at least 383 students, and accordingly, a questionnaire was applied to a group of 550 high school students. since 26 of the collected questionnaires contain incomplete and 14 of them include conflicting information, they were excluded from the study. as a result, the total of 500 students was included in the study and formed the sample. the characteristics of the participants are given in table 1. table-1. descriptive characteristics of subjects. variables parameters n % age 15 111 22.2 16 190 38 17 129 25.8 18 70 14 total 500 100 gender male 305 61 female 195 39 school type anatolian high school 134 26.8 business high school 131 26.2 sports high school 171 34.2 science high school 64 12.8 sports year 0-2 160 32.0 3-5 185 37.0 6-7 81 16.2 ≥8 74 14.8 number of weekly training 2 73 14.6 3 209 41.8 4 108 21.6 ≥5 110 22.0 sports branch individual sports 153 30.6 team sports 347 69.4 club license yes 233 46.6 no 267 53.4 note: number and percent values of 500 participants. when table 1 was examined, it was seen that 61% of the participants were male and 39% were female and their ages ranged between 15 and 18. 22.2% of the participants were 15 years old, 38% were 16 years old, 25.8% were 17 years old and 14% were 18 years old and 134 of them studied at anatolian high school, 131 were vocational high school, 171 were sports high school and 64 of them are science high school students. while 46% of the participants have a club license, 93.8% of them continue their sports activities in the school team. 2.4. data collection tool ethics committee approval was obtained from the local university after the necessary permissions were obtained from the provincial directorate of national education. then, informed consent forms were obtained from the parents before the students participated in the study. in order to evaluate the life skills obtained through the sports, life skills scale for sport (lsss) which is developed by cronin and allen (2017) and adapted to turkish by açak and düz (2018) was used. the scale used consists of 30 items and 7 subscales such as team work, goal setting, time management, emotional skills, communication, social skills and leadership. each item in the scale is scored on the 5-point likert scale ranging from “i strongly disagree (1)” to “i totally agree (5)”. the scale can be applied from secondary school to university students, takes 5-10 minutes to complete and there are no reverse scored questions in the scale. 2.5. data analysis the data obtained in the study were evaluated using the ibm statistics (spss version 25.0, armonk, ny, usa) windows package program. the normality of the data was tested by kolmogorov-smirnov, skewness and kurtosis tests. in groups that did not show normal distribution, while mann-whitney u test was used for paired comparisons, kruskal-wallis h test was used for multiple comparisons. moreover, post-hoc test was used to find the source of the difference in multiple comparisons. the results were evaluated in the 95% confidence interval and the level of significance was considered as p<.05. 3. findings it is seen that mean scores of social and emotional skills subscale of lsss of female students are significantly higher than that of male students table 2. there are significant differences in leadership and goal setting subscales of lsss of the students who participated in the study table 3. it was seen that the leadership and goal setting mean scores of the 18-year-old students doing sports were lower than those of 15, 16 and 17-years-old students. it was seen that there were significant differences in the subscales of leadership, social skills, emotional skills and goal setting in table 4. mean scores of the anatolian and science high school students were higher than those of business high school students in the leadership subscale, and anatolian and business high school students were higher than those of sports high school students in the social skills subscale. however, mean scores of the anatolian and business high school students were lower than those of sport high school students in the emotional asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 161-168 164 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group skills subscale. finally, mean scores of the anatolian, sport and science high school students were lower than those of business high school students in the goal setting subscale. table-2. relationships between the gender and lsse subscales. subscales gender n ±sd z p time management male 305 3.83±.66 -.298 .766 female 195 3.82±.66 communication male 305 3.80±.71 -1.609 .108 female 195 3.89±.76 leadership male 305 3.70±.63 -1.449 .147 female 195 3.77±.70 teamwork male 305 3.89±.68 -.255 .799 female 195 3.88±.73 social skills male 305 3.81±.67 -2.429 .015* female 195 3.93±.74 emotional skills male 305 3.58±.76 -2.301 .021* female 195 3.74±.79 goal-setting male 305 3.96±.72 -.149 .881 female 195 3.95±.81 note: *p<.05. table-3. relationships between the age and lsse subscales. subscales age n ±sd χ2 p post-hoc time management 15 111 3.84±.62 .488 .922 16 190 3.83±.68 17 129 3.82±.66 18 70 3.81±.69 communication 15 111 3.81±.66 1.465 .690 16 190 3.80±.81 17 129 3.91±.68 18 70 3.81±.73 leadership 15a 111 3.80±.68 8.807 .032* d<a,b,c 16b 190 3.73±.69 17c 129 3.77±.57 18d 70 3.50±.67 teamwork 15 111 3.98±.71 7.643 .054 16 190 3.88±.70 17 129 3.92±.62 18 70 3.68±.78 social skills 15 111 3.86±.71 2.500 .475 16 190 3.84±.72 17 129 3.93±.67 18 70 3.78±.71 emotional skills 15 111 3.73±.72 3.174 .366 16 190 3.64±.82 17 129 3.62±.74 18 70 3.53±.80 goal-setting 15a 111 4.10±.69 19.240 .000* d<a.b,c 16b 190 4.03±.78 17c 129 3.91±.73 18d 70 3.63±.79 note: *p<.05. table-4. relationships between the school type and lsse subscales. subscales school type n ±sd χ2 p post-hoc time management 1.anatolian high school 134 3.87±.62 1.489 .685 2.business high school 131 3.77±.71 3.sport high school 171 3.81±.71 4.science high school 64 3.89±.47 communication 1.anatolian high school 134 3.85±.71 5.985 .112 2.business high school 131 3.78±.72 3.sport high school 171 3.79±.77 4.science high school 64 4.01±.69 leadership 1.anatolian high school 134 3.80±.65 14.358 .002* 2<1,4 2.business high school 131 3.59±.65 3.sport high school 171 3.71±.72 4.science high school 64 3.88±.44 teamwork 1.anatolian high school 134 3.93±.63 3.828 .281 2.business high school 131 3.79±.76 3.sport high school 171 3.87±.75 4.science high school 64 4.04±.52 social skills 1.anatolian high school 134 3.89±.72 11.534 .009* 3<1,2 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 161-168 165 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.business high school 131 3.89±.70 3.sport high school 171 3.74±.71 4.science high school 64 4.05±.61 emotional skills 1.anatolian high school 134 3.57±.76 8.614 .035* 4>1,2 2.business high school 131 3.57±.68 3.sport high school 171 3.69±.84 4.science high school 64 3.80±.78 goal-setting 1.anatolian high school 134 4.03±.70 14.681 .002* 2<1,3,4 2.business high school 131 3.74±.79 3.sport high school 171 4.04±.77 4.science high school 64 4.04±.72 note: *p<.05. table-5. relationships between the club license and lsse subscales. subscales club license n ±sd z p time management yes 233 3.94±.63 3.811 .000* no 267 3.73±.67 communication yes 233 3.89±.74 1.679 .093 no 267 3.78±.72 leadership yes 233 3.80±.64 2.451 .014* no 267 3.66±.67 teamwork yes 233 3.96±.71 2.595 .009* no 267 3.82±.68 social skills yes 233 3.89±.68 1.107 .268 no 267 3.83±.72 emotional skills yes 233 3.67±.76 1.071 .284 no 267 3.61±.79 goal-setting yes 233 4.05±.76 .284 .004* no 267 3.88±.75 note: *p<.05. it was seen that mean scores of students who have club license were significantly higher than those of students who have not in time management, leadership, teamwork and goal setting subscales table 5. table-6. relationships between the sport year and lsse subscales. subscale sport year n ±sd χ2 p post-hoc time management 0-2a 160 3.74±.67 10.426 .015* d>a,b 3-5b 185 3.82±.69 6-7c 81 3.83±.61 ≥8d 74 4.01±.61 communication 0-2 160 3.82±.74 2.206 .531 3-5 185 3.80±.72 6-7 81 3.83±.76 ≥8 74 3.95±.71 leadership 0-2 160 3.67±.69 6.941 .074 3-5 185 3.75±.66 6-7 81 3.65±.69 ≥8 74 3.87±.54 teamwork 0-2 160 3.81±.70 3.712 .294 3-5 185 3.92±.63 6-7 81 3.88±.80 ≥8 74 3.96±.72 social skills 0-2 160 3.84±.72 2.622 .454 3-5 185 3.88±.66 6-7 81 3.79±.69 ≥8 74 3.92±.76 emotional skills 0-2 160 3.58±.75 4.235 .237 3-5 185 3.71±.74 6-7 81 3.53±.84 ≥8 74 3.70±.82 goal-setting 0-2a 160 3.84±.77 9.141 .027* d>a 3-5b 185 4.01±.71 6-7c 81 3.94±.85 ≥8d 74 4.12±.73 note: *p<.05. there were significant mean differences in time management and goal setting subscales in terms of sport year according to table 6. in the time management subscale, mean scores of the students who were doing sports for between 0-2 and 3-5 years were significantly lower than those of students who were doing sports for 8 years and more. moreover, in the goal setting subscale mean score of the students who were doing sports for 8 years and more were significantly higher than those of students who were doing sports for 0-2 years. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 161-168 166 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. relationships between number of weekly training and lsse subscales. subscales number of weekly training n ±sd χ2 p post-hoc time management 2a 73 3.67±.63 18.205 .000* d>a,b 3b 209 3.75±.67 4c 108 3.90±.65 ≥5d 110 4.01±.62 communication 2 73 3.72±.82 2.796 .424 3 209 3.81±.70 4 108 3.88±.72 ≥5 110 3.90±.74 leadership 2a 73 3.51±.74 7.899 .048* a<c,d 3b 209 3.71±.68 4c 108 3.80±.61 ≥5d 110 3.81±.58 teamwork 2 73 3.75±.64 6.760 .080 3 209 3.87±.71 4 108 3.97±.70 ≥5 110 3.92±.70 social skills 2 73 3.77±.80 2.721 .437 3 209 3.85±.66 4 108 3.87±.71 ≥5 110 3.92±.71 emotional skills 2a 73 3.39±.80 10.522 .015* a<b,c,d 3b 209 3.63±.76 4c 108 3.76±.74 ≥5d 110 3.70±.78 goal-setting 2a 73 3.63±.84 18.765 .000* a<b,c,d 3b 209 3.94±.72 4c 108 4.09±.70 ≥5d 110 4.07±.77 note: *p<.05. it is found that there were significant mean differences in time management, leadership, emotional skills and goal setting subscales in terms of number of weekly training in table 7. in the time management subscale, mean score of students who train 5 times or more in a week were higher than those of the students who train 2 and 3 times a week. in the leadership subscale, mean score of students who train 5 times or more in a week were higher than those of the students who train 2 and 3 times a week. but, mean score of students who train 3, 4 and 5 times or more in a week were higher than those of the students who train 2 times a week in emotional and goal setting subscales. 4. discussion and results this study was conducted to examine the effect of sports on the life skills of high school students in terms of various variables. the results of the study exhibited a significant relationship between the age and subscales of leadership and goal setting at lsss. it was observed that as the age of students increased, the development of sports life skills decreased. these results suggest that functional age as well as chronological age may be effective in goal setting and leadership power in sports. according to gender variable, the emotional and social skills mean score of females who were engaged in sports were higher than those of males, and it demonstrated that sport positively affected their life skills. in the literature, in many studies which are supporting the findings of this study (avşar and kuter, 2007; kabakçı and fidan, 2008; seven, 2008). they were found that females have more social and communication skills than those of males. according to the school variable, it has been determined that goal setting and leadership mean scores of science and anatolian high school students were higher than others. cansoy (2015) which is supporting the findings of this study was conducted on 1123 students in secondary school education showed that students with high academic achievement and who read more books were found to have higher mean scores of leaderships. as the sport year considered, students who were doing sport for a long-term, i.e. eight and over, used their time more efficiently and developed well goal settings than others. moreover, there was a significant relationship between club license and time management, goal setting, group work and leadership subscale of lsss. it is concluded that being licensed in a team and having regular sports activities positively affect many life skills such as work together, ability to reach the goal, time management and leadership characteristics (rothschild-checroune et al., 2012). according to the number of weekly training variable, the higher the number of weekly training, the better control of time and emotions of students, and goal setting and leadership characteristics were also positively affected. results of reynolds et al. (1990) supports our study. they stated that regular physical activity affected quality of life and other psychological variables positively, and showed that exercise had a positive effect on expectation of social competence, stress and social factors. ryan and dzewaltowski (2002) found that self-confidence of 6th and 7th grade students increased with physical activity, they overcame obstacles with physical activity, encouraging other friends to be active, discovering and creating environment, and being more enterprising. in this study, there was no significant relationship found between life skills and sports branches of the students. sport may have an effect on the life skills, but whether participating individual or team sport do not make difference. doing sports with an amateur spirit causes students to increase their life skills. because participating in sports activities on behalf of a club causes students to be disciplined and more motivated. moreover, as the number asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 161-168 167 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of weekly training and sport age increased, development of life skills increased. these results demonstrated the importance of directing and encouraging young people to do sport since sport has positive contributions not only to physical features but also to personal characteristics that shape our daily lives. in contrast to the expectations, sport experience, level of skill and chronological age can be taken into consideration to provide more detailed information while examining the relationship between the age and goal setting and leadership perceptions. if the level of goal setting and leadership characteristics are determined, defined and evaluated comprehensively, continuity can be ensured in developing and maintaining these characteristics (kress, 2006). as a conclusion, it is possible to meet the needs of young people in terms of both mentally and physically 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qualitative research in sport, exercise and health, 8(2): 194-212.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676x.2015.1121913. who, 1997. life skills education for children and adolescents in schools: introduction and guidelines to facilitate the development and implementation of life skills programmes. geneva, switzerland: who programme on mental health. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 207 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 207-212, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.207.212 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group serious leisure inventory and measurement (short form): validity and reliability analysis ali selman özdemir1 tebessüm ayyildiz durhan2 beyza merve akgül3 ( corresponding author) 1department of recreation, school of physical education and sport, cyprus international university, nicosia, cyprus. 2,3department of recreation, faculty of sports sciences, gazi university, ankara, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to provide the validity and reliability analysis of the „‟serious leisure inventory and measurement (short form)‟‟ slim and introduce it to the literature. the data obtained from 285 university students and the kmo-barlett test was performed and the sample size was tested (.89; 2506.309, p<0,001). a three subdimensions of structure was obtained by exploratory factor analysis. according to the exploratory factor analysis, the cut-off value was determined as .40, a total of 18 items were converted into a 12-item form by subtracting the loadbearing substances from the measuring instrument, and factor loads of three sub-dimensions were obtained between .55 and .83. in addition to the factor analysis results, 65% of the total variance was obtained, internal consistency coefficients were taken, respectively .83, .84 and .75 were found for each sub-dimension. the total internal reliability coefficient was found to be .88. confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the validity and accuracy of the structure obtained after the exploratory factor analysis with 350 students. it is observed that the cfa performed after the test retest constitutes evidence for the structure validity (rmsea .069, srmr 0.60, nfi 0.94, cfi 0.96, gfi 0.94, x2/df 2.42). as a result, a valid and reliable measurement tool for serious leisure has been introduced. keywords: leisure, serious leisure, scale development. citation | ali selman özdemir; tebessüm ayyildiz durhan; beyza merve akgül (2020). serious leisure inventory and measurement (short form): validity and reliability analysis. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 207-212. history: received: 30 december 2019 revised: 10 february 2020 accepted: 16 march 2020 published: 6 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 208 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 208 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 209 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 210 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 212 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.207.212&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1472 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1736-7602 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1472 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1736-7602 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1472 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1736-7602 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 207-212 208 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study is one of the very few studies which have investigated serious leisure measurement in turkey and it contributes to the existing literature as the short form of the previous serious leisure inventory and measurement tool published in turkey before by the authors. 1. introduction serious leisure can be defined as a theoretical framework that synthesizes the three main forms of leisure activities by simultaneously exhibiting their distinctive features, similarities and mutual relationships, and expressing them by acquiring a combination of special talent, knowledge and experience, one of the two varieties of serious engagements. it is a systematic search for an amateur, hobbyist or a volunteer career, as important, interesting and satisfying for him. the adjective “serious” here includes traits such as sincerity and attention rather than seriousness, distress or anxiety (stebbins, 2016). serious leisure; it has brought a new dimension to today's world, where leisure activities will no longer be considered only leisure activities. it enabled us to elaborate leisure activities (göklemen, 2019; işık, 2014). the definition of "serious leisure" being used in the studies may be; the development of skills and knowledge, the amassing of experience and the exertion of effort in a leisure activity, pursued for the aspirations of improvement and achievement of self-actualization, social belonging and / or lasting physical benefits (geoffrey & currie, 1998). serious leisure envisions leisure; as „not fun‟ allows leisure to escape the conceptual burdens of enjoyment, freedom and celebrations of choice (rojek, 1995). perseverance and persistence, effort, leisure career, permanent acquisitions, specific norms and identification with occupation are among the distinguishing features of serious leisure participation (gould, moore, mcguire, & stebbins, 2008; işık, 2014; stebbins., 1982; stebbins.. 1992; stebbins... 2001). considering the main activities of a serious leisure participant, learning the bronze, silver and gold level figures about salsa, participating in workshops on partner-work and shine steps, costume, cd, dvd etc. it should include activities such as shopping about dance materials and music, participating in various competitions and certificate programs, making a significant effort to progress, and being in a social group of dancer profiles (akyıldız, 2013). the distinctive features of serious leisure participants are intertwined. the participant ensured the continuity of participation in the activity he chose thanks to the social environment, and this continuity returned to him as a personal and social benefit. in order to increase this benefit even more; by making a personal effort, he tended to have a broader knowledge of the activity. the activity he has chosen has now become a part of his life, and his appointments and life have started to be adjusted according to the time he did not do this activity (işık, 2014). when determining the dimension of perseverance, which is one of the distinguishing features of serious leisure participation, is the persistence of leisure activity. while leisure participants often get happy memories and pleasant memories from the activity they participate in, they may be exposed to tensions such as stage excitement and fear, sense of shame, freezing cold weather, anxiety and anxiety, fatigue and disability, and so on. for this reason, adhering to an activity is about gaining positive emotions and dealing with the difficulties of that activity and persevere. going over the danger, supporting a losing team, persevering to cope with the difficulties of an activity or a problem faced are an important feature of serious leisure. in the personal efforts sub-dimension, it is to develop knowledge, experience, training level or skill about the activity involved and make a considerable personal effort for this. continuous personal efforts in acquiring manual skills, scientific knowledge, speaking skills, good experience, performing art, athletic power, or the like distinguish serious leisure participants from beginner or other leisure participants (akyıldız, 2013). looking at the success of his leisure career by making progress in the activity he participated in; as a result of effort and struggle, it is to get a career in activity efforts and struggles are about reaching milestones by enduring the difficulties arising from the nature of the activity, achieving a career by gradually achieving success (akyıldız, 2013). leisure activities such as participation in extracurricular activities, participation in social gatherings, chances of physical exercise, participation in amateur sports organizations, participation in volunteering practices, participation in non-governmental organizations, professional experience, part-time or summer vacation employment can be used for serious leisure activities, are important mediators of the leisure career (loughead, 1989). the individual gain arises as a result of each individual's interest in a particular pursuit, unlike the broadly qualified global order hidden in the content of the gains. personal enrichment is an accumulation of loving and valued experiences that arise as a result of serious participation with the increase of one's spiritual resources. full utilization of one's capacity, talents and potential is defined as self-realization. this means that the person develops and applies his unique talents, skills and knowledge in serious pursuits. participants not only apply their talents, skills and knowledge, but also express them. the expression of these skills is complementary to the acquisition of self-expression; another complement is related to the way the person expresses his individuality (göklemen, 2019). through the distinctive features of serious leisure participation, a general belief is formed regarding the serious leisure situations of individuals. determining serious leisure perspectives gained importance at this point by means of effective and efficient measurement tools. in measuring the area and property to be measured; it is aimed to clarify the serious leisure which has an important place in the field by starting from the necessity of creating a questionnaire forms with a suitable solution containing a sufficient number of items. in this direction, a short form of leisure assessment was created based on the best functioning items in the serious leisure scale and validity and reliability analyzes were included in the research. 2. method the data were obtained through voluntary participation of 593 participants studying at gazi university, cyprus international university, ankara university and bülent ecevit university during 2019-2020 academic year. the data were collected by using test-retest method. in the first phrase, the final form was created after exploratory factor analysis was performed in the light of the data obtained from 285 participants and the retest was asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 207-212 209 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group applied to 305 participants through the final version of the form. confirmatory factor analysis was performed with the data obtained. the data were evaluated in the spss 23 package program and the sample group (.88, p <0.001) is sufficient in size according to the results of kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) and barlett tests performed to test whether the size of the sample group is sufficient or not. the factor loading of the data and the variance values were identified by using exploratory factor analysis, as well as the internal reliability coefficients were calculated for each factor. the phase of the confirmatory factor analysis was initiated through the lisrel 8.7 package program to confirm the final version of the form. the findings on the analysis are given below. 3. results table-1. kmo and barlett‟s test results. kmo and bartlett's test kaiser-meyer-olkin sample group size 0,893 barlett sphericity test x2 2506,309 sd 153 p 0,000 when the table 1 is examined, the test results for the adequacy of the kaiser meyer olkin sample group and the barlett‟s test of sphericity results show that the sample group is sufficient to analyze (.89; 2506.309, p <0.001). table-2. exploratory factor analysis of slim (short form). items i. ii. iii. cronbach alpha explained variance identification with pursuit and social outcomes i enjoy interacting with other ……………… enthusiasts. 14 0.691 %25.96 i feel important when i am a part of my ……………… group‟s accomplishments. 15 0.809 0.83 it is important that i perform duties which unify my ……………… group. 16 0.837 i share many of my ……………… group‟s ideals. 17 0.777 others that know me understand that ……………… is a part of who i am. 18 0.550 perseverance and leisure career i overcome difficulties in ……………… by being persistent. 1 0.821 0.84 %22.46 i try hard to become more competent in ………………. 2 0.790 i feel that i have made progress in ………………. 3 0.775 there are defining moments within ……………… that have significantly shaped my involvement in it. 4 0.627 individual outcomes ……………… has added richness to my life. 5 0.656 0.75 %18.32 ……………… for me is an expression of myself. 8 0.830 ……………… has improved how i think about myself. 9 0.798 total 0.88 %65.76 in line with the exploratory factor analysis in table 2, the cutoff value was determined as .40 and moreover, a pool of questions consisting of 18 items in total has been reduced to 12 items by removing some of them from the scale as the 13th item was in negative value, the 6th and the 7th items imposed burden to other items, and the 10th, the 11th and 12th items compromised of the sub-items less than 3. the items with factor load between .55 and .83 were collected in 3 sub-dimensions. internal consistency coefficients were determined as .83 for the first factor, .84 for the second factor, and .75 for the third factor, and .88 for the entire scale. the proportion of explained variance is 65% in the total variance and 24.96% for the first factor, 22.46% for the second factor and 18.32% for the third factor. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 207-212 210 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. confirmatory factor analysis‟ diagram. in figure 1, confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the validity and the accuracy of the tool created after the exploratory factor analysis. it is thought that dfa performed after test-retest provides evidence of the validity for the tool (rmsea .069, srmr 0.60, nfi 0.94, cfi 0.96, gfi 0.94, x2 / df 2.42). table-3. fit indices and model fit for limit values. fit index ideal fit values acceptable values incompatible values obtained rmsea 0-0.05 0.05-0.09 > 0.10 0.69 cfi 1 0.90-0.99 <0.90 0.96 gfi 1 0.90-0.99 <0.90 0.94 x2/df <=2 2-5 5+ 2.42 note: erkorkmaz, etikan, demir, özdamar, and sanisaoğlu (2013). table 3 provides information about fit indices and model fit for limit values as ideal fit values, acceptable values, incompatible and obtained values. according to the results, the obtained values are fit for the model. 4. discussion and conclusion within the scope of the study, a short form of serious leisure inventory and measure was created and its validity was ensured through the validity and the reliability analysis. the original form of serious leisure inventory and measure (slim), the basis of which was formed in james gould‟s phd dissertation, was developed by james gould, dewayne moore, francis mcguire and robert stebbins in 2008. the inventory is a 9-point likert type, which consists of 72 items and 18 dimensions. the short form of the inventory is a 9-point likert type, which consists of 54 items and 18 dimensions. at first, the inventory was designed with 72 items and analyzed in 6 sub-dimensions in terms of perseverance, leisure career, significant effort, durable outcomes, individual outcomes and identity with pursuit similar to kim (2015). then, through this inventory, the data was collected from 415 students at southeastern university. later, the data from 485 participants who participated in certain serious leisure activities were collected again to perform normality analysis and outliers were excluded from the analysis. in the study, the findings of the short form of the tool with 54 items were also included. it was observed that the short form was valid and reliable. fit indices for the form with 72 items (x2 / df = 1.53; srmr = 0.06; rmsea = 0.04; nnfi = 0.91; cfi = 0.91) and fit indices for the short form with 54 items (x2 / df = 1.45; srmr = 0.05; rmsea = 0.04; nnfi = 0.94; cfi = 0.95) were determined as fit values (gould et al., 2008). the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were at the level showing that both forms were validated similar to the short form of the serious leisure. serious leisure represents commitment and participation to leisure time activities to acquire and to express the required skills in order to perform the activities. accordingly, another study conducted to analyze the psychometric properties and the construct validity of it in order to validate the serious leisure inventory and measurement tool (slim). for this analysis, 54-item version of slim was applied to 232 amateur athletes. theoretical models proposed by gould et al. (2011) were tested through confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) for the construct validity. the measurement model presented a very suitable fit index (χ² / df = 3.29; gfi = .97; cfi = .98; srmr = .04, rmsea = .05; and internal reliability coefficients were between 71 and 86. the model revealed a new three-factor structure that explained serious leisure gains sufficiently similar to our study findings (χ² / df = 2.86; gfi = 0.92, cfi = 0.93, srmr = 0.06, rmsea = 0.078). the results of the study reveal adequate psychometric properties of asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 207-212 211 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group slim and the possibility of its use as an indicator of serious leisure in sports (romero, iraurgi, & madariaga, 2017). another study to validate the serious leisure inventory aimed at testing 54-item measurement tool by applying it to 348 chess gamers and it was determined that the measurement tool named slim revealed acceptable fit value and value of validity. afa findings, in which one third of the variance was explained, was evaluated by choosing 18 items with the highest item factor loads and functioning the best, and confirmatory factor analysis supported the findings with 18 items (x2 / df = 1.68, srmr = 0.05, rmsea = 0.04, nnfi = .90 and cfi =. 91). similar to the short form of slim in the study, the form with the best-functioning items was revealed, and 18 items functioning the best were found and the analysis provided evidence that the structure was validated (gould et al., 2011). akgül, ozdemir, erturan oğüt, and karak küçük (2016) put into practice turkish adaptation of serious leisure inventory and measurement tool. it was carried out on 3 separate study groups of 474 students studying in various departments. during the adaptation process, the language equivalence of the slim was first examined and after it was found that it had language equivalence, validity and reliability analysis were performed. the construct validity of the adapted measurement tool was analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis and it was observed that it complied with the original form. as a result of the reliability analysis, the internal consistency coefficient of the scale was calculated as .97 and the test-re-reliability coefficient as .93. as a result of the item analysis, it was specified that total correlations of the corrected item of the sub-dimensions varied between .42 and .73. these results show that the form is a valid and reliable measurement tool to measure serious leisure perspective. it is thought that the psychometric properties of the measurement tool brought into the turkish literature within the scope of the study are validated and the introduction of the short form to measure the serious leisure measurement phenomenon will make an important contribution to the field as it is a commonly used measurement tool in the field. personality congruence, perseverance / effort and durable outcomes sub-dimensions in the short form of the serious leisure inventory were extracted from the sub-dimensions in the original turkish version of the measurement tool. 18 items were included in the short form, which was revealed as the best functioning items, but as a result of the analysis, the items imposed burden to each other were excluded and it was transformed into a 12item form, which consists of three sub-dimensions with the factor loads varying from .55 to .83. the analysis showed that the form was validated. in the other study, it was aimed at searching whether the different characteristics of serious leisure in turkey are present or not and developing a valid and reliable serious leisure inventory for serious leisure participants. as a result of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the 9-factor form consisting of 42 items displayed acceptable validity and reliability results. in addition to the six sub-dimensions, two new dimensions emerged: personality congruence and sense of competence. in addition, the dimension of durable outcomes, which is one of the serious leisure features, is composed of two sub-dimensions as therapeutic outcomes and psycho-social outcomes. the item cutoff value was determined to be .32 in the study, which was lower than the value of .40. similarly, the data obtained from the short form of the serious leisure inventory and measurement tool was tested in terms of the sample size (.89; 2506.309, p <0.001) and it showed that the sample size was sufficient for the factor analysis (.94, p <0.001). unlike the findings of the study, it was observed that there were 9 components with an eigenvalue above 1. it was observed that 66% of the total variance was explained similar to the percentage of the total variance (65%) explained in 3 sub-dimensions in the short form of the tool. moreover, the lowest factor load was .44, which demonstrates that it is valid considering the threshold as .32. cronbach's alpha reliability is .95 for the entire tool. the sub-dimensions in the created form were categorized as leisure career, self competence, psychosocial outcomes, therapeutic outcomes, unique ethos, identity, personality congruence, effort and individual outcomes. the confirmatory factor analysis validated the tool according to the specified criteria (rmsea = 0.51; cfi = 0.98; nfi = 0.98; nnfi = 0.98; srmr = 0.56; agfi = 0.88; gfi = 0 , 89). it seems that serious and casual leisure measure (sclm) is a valid and reliable tool to measure the level of participation to leisure as serious and casual leisure (akyıldız munusturlar & argan, 2016). another study which is present in the literature aimed at making adaptation and cultural adaptation of serious leisure inventory and measure (slim) and investigating the evidence related to construct validity of the tool. confirmatory factor analysis was applied with 361 university students, which showed the 18-factor model was sufficient and the fit indices close to those of the original article (χ2 / df = 1.95; cfi = 0.90; rmsea = 0.05; srmr = 0.05). the internal reliability coefficients for the factors obtained varied between 0.73 and 0.94. slim brazil was identified that it had satisfactory validity evidence. it is important to study with other age groups in terms of serious leisure through portuguese version of the tool (doll et al., 2018). it is also important to define the serious leisure perspective of different age groups and samples through the short form of serious leisure inventory expected to be an effective and efficient tool for turkish population. accordingly, a pool with 33 items, 16 of which was for serious leisure and 17 of which was for casual leisure, created to analyze the factors of serious and casual leisure in tourism. two different samples were selected as in the short form of serious leisure inventory and it demonstrated that the serious leisure participation of the tourists was categorized into five factors according to the results of exploratory factor analysis. in this study, the measurement of the sufficiency of sample through kaiser meyer-olkin (kmo) resulted in 0.80, which is lower than the study results. 64.20% of the total factor variance was explained similar to those of the findings of the study. confirmatory factor analysis was performed by retesting and serious leisure participation provided an acceptable fit for the second data determined (χ2 / df = 3.02, srmr = 0.067, rmsea = 0.073, nfi = 0.96, nnfi = 0.97, ifi = 0.98 and cfi = 0.98) (tsaur & huang, 2018). besides, the concept of serious leisure measurement has great importance in the literature, it is still required to study on serious leisure measurement for different sample groups. for this reason, a short form of serious leisure measurement was created and it was validated through validity and reliability analysis. in the scope of the study, the first data were obtained from 285 graduate students by using 18 items functioning the best in turkish adaptation of the form. the sample size was determined as sufficient and a 3 dimensional structure were obtained through exploratory factor analysis. moreover, cutoff value was determined as .40. as a result of extracting the items imposing burden each other, 12-item form was created from the measurement tool with 18 items in total. the factor loads of the new form consisting of the sub-dimensions such as identity with pursuit, perseverance and asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 207-212 212 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group durable outcomes varied between .55 to .83. the internal consistency coefficients for each sub-dimension are respectively .83, .84 and .75 besides the total variance explained as 65%. the internal reliability coefficient for the total serious leisure measurement tool is .88. confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the validity of the structure after the exploratory factor analysis and the retest data obtained from 350 students. as dfa fit indices were determined to be at an acceptable level after the test-retest, it seems to provide evidence of construct validity (rmsea .069, srmr 0.60, nfi 0.94, cfi 0.96, gfi 0.94, x2 / df 2.42). as a result, it is concluded that the short form of serious leisure inventory is a valid and reliable measurement tool. it is recommended to carry out studies on measurement of serious leisure in different sample groups, fields, organizations and culture to lead practitioners. references akgül, b. m., ozdemir, a. s., erturan oğüt, e. e., & karak küçük, s. (2016). serious leisure inventory and measurement: validity and reliability study. journal of human sciences, 13(2), 2820-2838. akyıldız, m. (2013). a "serious" view of leisure: serious leisure theory in leisure research. pamukkale journal of sport sciences, 4(3), 46-59. akyıldız munusturlar, m., & argan, m. (2016). development of the serious and casual leisure measure. world leisure journal, 58(2), 124141.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/16078055.2015.1126759. doll, j., stigger, m. p., de oliveira, s. n., de souza, l. k., pacheco, a. c., anater, l. d. s. t., & sbicigo, j. b. (2018). serious leisure inventory: cross-cultural adaptation and evidence of validity from the serious leisure inventory and measure (slim). movimento (esefid/ufrgs), 24(4), 1139-1154. erkorkmaz, ü., etikan, i̇., demir, o., özdamar, k., & sanisaoğlu, s. y. (2013). confirmatory factor analysis and fit indices: review. türkiye klinikleri journal of medical sciences, 33(1), 210–223. geoffrey, h. d., & currie, r. r. (1998). cognitive dissonance: a consequence of serious leisure. world leisure & recreation, 40(3), 3641.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10261133.1998.9674118. göklemen, t. y. (2019). investigation of individuals participating in archery sport in terms of serious leisure time. akdeniz university institute of social sciences, sports management department, master's thesis, antalya. gould, j., moore, d., karlin, n. j., gaede, d. b., walker, j., & dotterweich, a. r. (2011). measuring serious leisure in chess: model confirmation and method bias. leisure sciences, 33(4), 332-340.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2011.583165. gould, j., moore, d., mcguire, f., & stebbins, r. (2008). development of the serious leisure inventory and measure. journal of leisure research, 40(1), 47-68.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00222216.2008.11950132. işık, u. (2014). investigation of personality traits of serious leisure participants studying at school of physical education and sports. dumlupınar university institute of health sciences, physical education and sports department, master's thesis, kütahya. kim, m. l. (2015). reinventory of the sls: development of slsii. the korean journal of physical education, 54(2), 313-322. loughead, t. a. (1989). the use of leisure in career development. journal of career development, 15(3), 154-163.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/089484538901500302. rojek, c. (1995). decentring leisure: rethinking leisure theory. london: sage. romero, s., iraurgi, i., & madariaga, a. (2017). psychometric assessment of the spanish version of the slim (serious leisure inventory and measure) in sports contexts. sports psychology magazine, 26(2), 63-70. stebbins, r. a. (2016). free time idea: basic principles: mehmet demirel, nurullah emir ekinci. stebbins., r. a. (1982). serious leisure: a conceptual statement. the pacific sociological review, 25(2), 251-272. stebbins.., r. (1992). amateurs, professionals, and serious leisure. montreal: mcgill-queen's university press. stebbins..., r. (2001). new directions in the theory and research of serious leisure. lewiston, ny: edwin mellen press. tsaur, s.-h., & huang, c.-c. (2018). serious tourists or casual tourists? development and validation of a scale to measure tourists‟ serious/casual participation. current issues in tourism, 2(23), 217-232. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 74 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 74-81, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.74.81 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of traditional games on the language development of pre-school children in pre-school education dilan kenanoğlu1 munise duran2 ( corresponding author) 1national education directorate, kalkan primary school, turkey. 2inonu university, education faculty, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to analyze the effect of traditional game education program (tgep) on language development of pre-school children. dependent and independent variables were determined as the children’s language development scores and "traditional game education program", respectively. the study group was determined with “typical case sampling”, one of the purposive sampling methods, and it consists of a total of 72 children attending four nursery classes depending on diyarbakır eğil district directorate of national education, 36 of whom are experiment group and 36 of whom are control group. peabody picture vocabulary test (ppvt) prepared by l. loyd and m. dunn in the usa was used as data collection tool. while analyzing the data, independent and dependent groups t-tests were used. it was found at the end of the study that ppvt post-test scores of the children in experiment and control groups were statistically different. post-test average scores of the children in the experiment group were higher than the ones in the control group. accordingly, it was determined “traditional game education program” increased the children’s language development in a positive way. keywords: early childhood education, preschool education, language development, language activities in pre-school education, traditional game, peabody picture vocabulary test. citation | dilan kenanoğlu; munise duran (2021). the effect of traditional games on the language development of pre-school children in pre-school education. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 74-81. history: received: 6 january 2021 revised: 25 january 2021 accepted: 8 february 2021 published: 17 february 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. this article is derived from the study of master's thesis. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 75 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 76 3. findings and interpretation ........................................................................................................................................................... 78 4. results and suggestions ................................................................................................................................................................. 80 reference................................................................................................................................................................................................ 81 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.74.81&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2664 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9635-8522 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8912-2669 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 74-81 75 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature it is thought that traditional games positively affect the language development of preschool children. traditional games, which are among the factors that affect language development, will contribute to the preschool education literature. 1. introduction language is defined as a means of effective communication to convey emotions, thoughts, events and situations. the fact that the person who is responsible for the child’s development plays games with him, talks about everything and chats with him lays the foundation of language development. as from birth, the children play with language by screaming, shouting and spelling, and this improves their language development and communication skills (ağyar, 2016). language develops very rapidly in early childhood. at the stage of language development, before the baby starts to speak, he begins to understand the language. what kind of sounds the children should learn is understood through social interaction. the interaction of the child with his peer groups, and the individuals like his parents who form his environment helps him learn the sounds. the babies beginning to perceive the sounds use their first words until they are one and acquire the basic structures of language until the end of babyhood period. similar stages are seen for language acquisition as the other development stages and have parallels with these stages (cognitive, motor, etc.). while the children acquire language, they experience similar stages and show the same characteristics (aram, fine, & ziv, 2013; arslan, 2012). language development in early childhood influences other development areas, has a critical importance and also supports academic development areas. moreover, the language development of the children having a normal development during early childhood supports the child to express his opinions freely, not to have problems while communicating and have a place in his social environment. it is highly important to support the child’s language development and make him use it actively. when viewed from this aspect, the children with retardation in terms of language development encounter a lot of problems. in fact, these children also have similar structural characteristics as normal children. however, they could have retardation or pauses in reaching the stages that normal children go through. these could lead them to slow speech development, poor memory, difficulty in learning concepts, in adaptation to social environment and to recent developing situations and in conveying emotions and thoughts freely (doğan, 1979; tümkaya, 2012). there are some factors affecting language development. learning and maturation, socio-economic status, incentive to speak, gender, family relations, bilingualism, being twinborn, health, intelligence and games could be given as examples. generally, learning and maturation play an important role in language development. to use a language fluently, it is expected to have the required levels of maturation and learning. according to various studies, it was concluded that language development of the children in a family with a good socio-economic level was better and higher than the ones with a low socio-economic level. it was found that the children who were stimulated and encouraged to speak make more rapid progress than the ones ridiculed. according to some studies, it was suggested that girls use more words and form longer sentences than boys. considering the support to language development in terms of family relations, it was inferred that the children who live in a caring family, with their families and in an extended family have an advanced level of language development when compared to ones who live in an uncaring family, a nuclear family or in nurseries. besides, it is asserted that the children who grow up bilingually have delays in speaking. as regards being twinborn, it is seen that twin children lag behind in language development as they understand each other with few words. it is known language development is directly proportional to health and intelligence (tümkaya, 2012). different methods could be used to support and improve the children’s language development. using language precisely and correctly while talking to the children, encouraging them to speak and ask questions and not leaving these questions unanswered, listening to their questions and having conversation patiently, doing activities together with the child (listening to music, watching tv, going for a walk, painting, reading stories, playing games, etc.) could be given as examples to these methods. in addition, observing the environment, doing research about the environment and having discussions at the end with the child and being a role model as an adult to the child could also be cited (barry, 2006). playing games together has a great importance among the activities supporting the children in pre-school period in terms of language development. game, on the other hand, has a basic function in making the child adapt to the world. the child acknowledges and understands the real world by playing games. he acquires the developments in language, concepts, etc. by associating them through games. he could express himself more easily, fit in and make contact with the environment through games. traditional children’s games are one of the game genres which are considered to contribute to language development and one of the activities of playing games. it is known that a few generations ago, the children invented active plays, tongue twisters, counting-out rhymes etc. in accordance with their environment and socio-economic levels. while the children play or invent traditional games, they have opportunity to realize their thoughts freely without any limitations. the effect of these activities carried out without any limitations by the children with such a rich imaginary world on all their development areas, especially on language development, is quite important (başal, 2017). pre-school education program and activities done in classrooms should have the quality supporting language development. these activities should have the qualities like comprehension, listening, conversation, asking questions, participation in the activities, helping friends as well as improving creativity and imagination. among the activities considered to influence language development in pre-school education program at most, could tongue twisters, counting-out rhymes, dramas, pantomimes, finger games, riddles and story completions be given as examples. besides, education program and activities carried out for pre-school children should ensure the transfer, conservation and continuity of cultural heritage (the ministry of national education, 2013). education given by means of traditional games contributes to the child’s language development, gets him to learn customs and traditions of the society he lives in, transfers almost forgotten traditional games from generation to generation and brings them to light (başal, 2017; sağlam, 2016). therefore, in order to establish a suitable ground to make the children learn language, an education program was prepared based on traditional games, asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 74-81 76 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group because “games” is the best method they know. the effect of the prepared “traditional game education program” on language development was tested by being applied to the children. 2. method in this part, research model, the implementation environment, the population and sample, the study group, traditional game education program, the role of the researcher, data collection tool, data collection and analysis are introduced. 2.1. research model the model of this study prepared to analyse the effect of traditional game education program on language development levels of pre-school children is quasi-experiment design that is one of the quantitative research methods. in this design, a popular approach to quasi experiment, the experimental group a and the control group b are selected without random assignment. both groups take a pre-test and post-test. only experimental group receives the treatment (creswell, 2009). in table 1, non-equivalent pre-test-post-test control-group design used in the study is shown with symbols. table-1. non-equivalent (pre-test-post-test) controlgroup design. pre-test implementation post-test ga o1 x (tgep) o3 gb o2 o4 source: creswell (2009) ga is experiment group, gb is control group, o1 and o3 are pre-test-post-test measurements of the experiment group, tgep is the implementation of traditional game education program, o2 and o4 are pre-test-post-test measurements of the control group, x is the independent variable applied to the experiment group (tgep). 2.2. the implementation environment implementation was carried out in a total of four schools in eğil district in diyarbakır, two of which are experiment groups and other two are control groups. because of the rapid decline in the number of the students attending school (face-to-face) due to pandemic (covid-19) process, all the schools available in eğil district were called and the number of the children attending pre-school education was learned. then, four schools having the highest attendance of the children and a large garden to play games in were determined. the schools determined as experiment group are kalkan and selman primary schools; the schools determined as control group dere neighborhood primary school and çalıbulan primary school. in pre-school classrooms of the experiment group, 30 activity plans including traditional games as 3 sessions a week for 10 weeks were prepared; however, as the decision was made to suspend face-to-face education because of covid-19 pandemic, ‘‘traditional game education program” could only be applied for 9 weeks (27 activity plans). implementations were carried out under the control of the teacher outdoor by paying attention to social distance as 3 sessions a week during activity hours of the children in the experiment group. any intervention was not made to the activity plan of the children in the control group; these children continued their education throughout the implementation period within the frame of pre-school education program scheduled by the ministry of national education. 2.3. the population and sample the population of the study consists of 27 nursery classes within the body of 27 primary schools in eğil district in diyarbakır in 2020-2021 school year. while sampling, “typical case sampling” which is one of the purposive sampling methods was used. this sampling method requires gathering information over the sample by determining a typical case among many cases in the population related to the research problem. the important thing here is to choose a usual average typical case (büyüköztürk, kılıç çakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2013). the sample of the study consists of a total of 4 pre-school education classrooms dependent on the ministry of national education in eğil district in diyarbakır in 2020-2021 school year, two of which are experiment groups and other two are control groups. attention was paid to have an equal distribution in experiment and control groups in the sample group in terms of gender and age. 2.4. problem sentence the problem sentence of the study was determined as “do traditional games in pre-school education affect preschool children’s language development?” 2.5. the purpose and sub-purposes of the problem the purpose of the study is to search for an answer to the question “do traditional games in pre-school education affect pre-school children’s language development?” therefore, answers were looked for the questions below; 1. do peabody picture vocabulary test (ppvt) total pre-test average scores of the children participating in traditional game education program (tgep) (experiment group) and the ones who did not take part in this program (control group) differ significantly? 2. do ppvt total pre-test – post-test average scores of the children in the experiment group differ significantly? 3. do ppvt total pre-test – post-test average scores of the children in the control group differ significantly? 4. do ppvt total post-test average scores of the children in the experiment and control group differ significantly? asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 74-81 77 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.6. the study group permission was taken from district governorship on august 31, 2020 for the study. after taking the required research ethics committee approval from inonu university ethics committee department on september 17, the headmasters and pre-school teachers in the schools including the control and experiment groups were interviewed and they were informed about the purpose, content and the scheme of the study on september 18. the parents of the children who are going to take part in experiment and control groups were interviewed along with inonu university social sciences ethics committee informed consent form on september 21-22, 2020 21 and they were asked to sign the form after explaining the content and purpose of the study and indicating the necessity for their permission. the parents stated that they generally wanted their children participate in such a study. the pre-school teachers in the schools where the study would be carried out were interviewed previously and an appropriate date for them and the children was determined, and between september 22 and 25, 2020, the children in the experiment and control groups were interviewed by doing pre-test. after pre-tests were finished, information about traditional game education program was given to the children in the experiment group. as it was required to be more sensitive due to pandemic process, measures were taken and these measures were conveyed to the children by taking their developmental characteristics into account. there were 20 girls and 16 boys in the experiment group and the control group consisted of 19 girls and 17 boys. the youngest among the children in the experiment group of the sample was 3 years and a month years old and the oldest is 5 years and 9 months old. the youngest child in the control group was 3 years and 4 months old and the oldest was 5 years and 11 months old. the ages of the children in the sample group were grouped as 3.3 and below, 3.4 and 4.2, 4.3 and 5.5, and 5.6 and 7.5. the distribution of age groups was shown in the graphic in figure 1. figure-1. age group distribution. note: child age 3.3.and 5.11 according to the graphic in figure 1 among the children in the experiment group, one was in the age range of 3.3 and below, 12 were aged between 3.4 and 4.2, 19 were in the age range of 4.3 and 5.5 and 4 of them were in the age range of 5.6 and 7.5. 6, 20 and 10 of the children in the control group were in the age range of 3.4 and 4.2, 4.3 and 5.5, 5.6 and 7.5, respectively. in addition, there are no children aged 3.3 and below in the control group. (while defining age groups, the number before the point is for the year and the one after the point represents the month. for instance, 3.3 means 3 years and 3 months old.) 2.7. the program of traditional game education traditional game education program includes a total of 30 sessions. this program consists of traditional children games, drama, pantomime, warm-up plays, relaxing plays, active and main plays. while choosing the games in the program, plays, dramas and pantomimes that would have influence on language development were preferred. during forming the daily flow of the program, warm-up, main and relaxing plays were arranged and daily routine flow and activity plans of traditional game education program were submitted to such academicians who are experts in their fields as assoc. prof. serpil pekdogan, assoc. prof. mehmet saglam, asst. prof. merve unal and asst. prof. munise duran, and necessary arrangements were made in accordance with their opinions and suggestions and activity plan was finalized. 2.8. data collection tool peabody picture vocabulary test was used as data collection tool in the study. this test the origin of which is english and was developed in the usa by dunn (1959) and was adapted to turkish by katz, önen, demir, uzunkaya, and uludağ (1974) is the test measuring the language development of the children aged between 2 and 12. there is no time limitation for this test applied individually, but the test takes 10 to 15 minutes on average. the implementation of ppvt does not require any preparation or training except practicing in order to recognize test material and test tool in advance. the most important point that the implementer should pay attention is to know how each word is correctly pronounced (oner, 1997). so, turkish dictionary of turkish language association could be applied as a source. occupational groups to implement the test are psychologists, teachers, doctors, speech therapists, social service specialists and advisory teachers. testing set consists of 100 test cards, 3 sample cards, a handbook and an individual registration form. the pictures are sorted from the easiest to the most difficult one. there are such pictures as nature, animals or objects on the cards in ppvt. for the scoring of ppvt, first the child’s chronological age is calculated as year and month. if the days of the child’s chronological age exceed 15, it is added to the month; when the months are 12, it is added to the year. each correctly given answer is one point. during the implementation of ppvt, when 6 of 8 successive questions are wrong, the test is finished. the raw score is equal to the number of correct answers. the words answered after the test is over are accepted wrong. the score is calculated by counting the wrong words among the ones in the test and subtracting it from the number of the words at the end of the test. the lowest score is 0 and the highest is accepted as 100 (oner, 1997). at the stage of developing the main form of ppvt, words were chosen from webster new collegiate dictionary and the words known by the most of the children in each age group were sorted from the easiest to the most difficult and included in the test. a and b forms of the test were applied to 4012 children aged between 2-6 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 74-81 78 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group and 0-18. the reliability coefficients of these forms were found to be between .64 and .84. standard error of the measurement calculated on an individual basis for each age group was presented as 6.00-8.61 intelligence quotient score. criterion validity of ppvt was tested by stanford binet test and wechsler intelligence scale for children. the correlative relationship between ppvt and stanford-binet test was .82 and .86; the correlative relationship between ppvt and wechsler intelligence scale for children was found to be between .41 and .74 (oner, 1997). 2.9. data collection and analysis the data were collected with peabody picture vocabulary test and form. for implementation, “traditional game education program” was developed and before implementing the program, pre-test was applied through ppvt form to the children in the experiment and control groups. after the implementation of traditional game education program, these children were applied post-tests; and data collection process was completed by thanking the pre-school teachers participating the study, headmasters of the schools in which the implementations were done, the children in the experiment and control groups and their parents. to analyse the data obtained from the study, spss (statistical package for social sciences) packaged software was used. before data analysis, the normality in the distribution of the data was tested. the values related to the normality of distribution is presented in table 2. table-2. descriptive statistics. ppvt posttest pre test n 72 72 average 54,7917 36,7361 median 52,5000 34,5000 mode 30,00a 26,00 standard deviation 19,32811 13,53659 variance 373,576 183,239 skewness ,267* ,252* kurtosis -1,244** -,971** range 68,00 53,00 minimum 21,00 12,00 maximum 89,00 65,00 total 3945,00 2645,00 note: skewness kurtosis, between -2,+2. when descriptive statistics in table 2 were reviewed, while skewness was (.267) and kurtosis was (-1.244) within the scope of post-test done, it was seen that skewness (.252) and kurtosis (-.971) values were within the boundaries ensuring normal distribution within the context of pre-test. according to george and mallery (2010) for normality assumption, the values of variables, skewness and kurtosis, should be between -2 and +2. accordingly, it was accepted that the data were normally distributed. in addition, the result of kr-20 reliability analysis carried out to measure the internal consistency for true-false questions was .98 for post-test and .96 for pre-test. in this context, it could be said that the test used in the study is highly reliable. the statistical processes below were applied to test the problem and sub-problems in the study in line with these results; • for the first sub-problem; “independent groups t-test” that is one of the tests presenting normal distribution was used so as to test whether or not pre-test average scores of the children in the experiment and control groups differ significantly. • for the second sub-problem; “dependent groups t-test” was used in order to test whether ppvt total pretest – post-test average scores of the children in the experiment group differ significantly. • for the third sub-problem; “dependent groups t-test” was used to test whether or not ppvt total pre-test – post-test average scores of the children in the control group differ significantly. • for the fourth sub-problem; “independent groups t-test” was used in order to test whether ppvt total posttest average scores of the children in the experiment and control groups differ significantly. 3. findings and interpretation 3.1. findings and interpretation regarding the first sub-problem the first sub-problem of the study was defined as “do peabody picture vocabulary test (ppvt) total pre-test average scores of the children participating in traditional game education program (tgep) (experiment group) and the ones who did not take part in this program (control group) differ significantly?” in accordance with this purpose, independent groups t-test was carried out. the results are given in table 3. table-3. t-test results of the children’s ppvt pre-test scores in relation to the variable of being in the experiment or control group. group n x̄ ss sd t p eta-square(η2) ppvt experiment 36 40.16 13.50 70 2.208 .030* ,01 control 36 33.30 12.84 note:*p<0.05 before implementing “traditional game education program” in the experiment group in this study, it was analysed on what level there is a difference between the experiment and control group. regarding the values in table 3, it is seen that there is a statistically significant difference between the children’s ppvt scores according to the variance of their being in the experiment or control group (t=2.208, p<.05). it is clear that average scores of the children in the experiment group (x̄=40.16) were higher than the average scores of the ones in the control group (x̄=33.30). the difference between the scores of the experiment and control group was found to be 6.86 and the asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 74-81 79 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group effect size calculated at the end of the test (η2 =.01) showed there is a small difference; in other words, although there was a statistically significant difference at the beginning of the study, average scores of the experiment and control groups were found to be close. in this context, it was concluded that there is not a significant score difference between the scores of the children in the experiment and control groups. 3.2. findings and interpretation regarding the second sub-problem the second sub-problem of the study was defined as “do ppvt total pre-test – post-test average scores of the children in the experiment group differ significantly?” in accordance with this purpose, dependent groups t-test was carried out. the results are given in table 4. table-4. dependent group t-test results of the children in the experiment group in relation to their ppvt pre-test and post-test scores. measurement n x̄ ss sd t p experiment group pretest 36 40.17 13.51 35 -16.547 .000* posttest 36 68.81 14.84 note: *p<0.05 as regards the values in table 4, it is seen that there is a statistically significant difference between ppvt pretest and post-test scores of the children in the experiment group (t=-16.547; p<.05). while ppvt pre-test scores of these children were 40.17, it became 68.81 at the end of the experiment according to the results. the difference between pre-test and post-test ppvt average scores of these children was found to be 28.64. the effect of “traditional game education program” on language development could be the reason why the difference in scores is high and significant. the qualities of the activities included in the program could be the reason why the education program developed was so effective. these activities consist of tongue twisters, counting-out rhymes, pantomimes and finger games as well as traditional games. it is known that pre-school children like harmonious and rhythmic words. the harmonious tongue twisters and counting-out rhymes support pre-school children’s language, cognitive and social development. while telling these rhythmic tongue twisters and counting-out rhymes, they acquire awareness of words and sounds. the fact that these rhymed words also have amusing elements could be supportive as an enjoyable language activity well-accepted by the children (akbayır & sahin, 2005; rolton, 2002; roskos, tabors, & lenhart, 2009). finger games can be described as the movement of the body in harmony with the rhythmic words (eliason & jenkins, 2003) and drama could be defined as supportive for all development areas while learning through experience, gaining awareness and learning while playing games (ozyürek, 2013). the children, through finger games, recognize the rhymes at the end of the words/sentences and thus they could keep in mind or remember the words more easily. the children, in dramas, animate while pretending (eliason & jenkins, 2003; ozyürek, 2013), use new words and try to keep in mind what they should say while pretending. pantomime is a way of expression of opinions without sentences or words. in pantomime, an event, a story, a situation, etc. is animated nonverbally. the child perceives what is conveyed by the narrator, interprets and presents it omeroğlu (1992). based on these explanations, it could be mentioned that tongue twisters, counting-out rhymes, pantomimes, finger games and dramas included in traditional games contribute to language development. in this regard, these activities were given place in traditional game education program and it was observed the children were supported in terms of language development while having fun and a good time. 3.3. findings and interpretation regarding the third sub-problem the third sub-problem of the study was defined as “do peabody picture vocabulary test (ppvt) total pre-test – post-test average scores of the children in the control group differ significantly?” in accordance with this purpose, dependent group t-test was carried out. the results are given in table 5. table-5. dependent group t-test results of the children in the control group in relation to their ppvt pre-test and post-test scores. measurement n x̄ ss sd t p control group pre-test 36 33.31 12.85 35 -6.783 .000* post-test 36 40.78 11.56 note:*p<0.05 according to the values in table 5, it is seen that there is a significant difference between ppvt pre-test and post-test scores of the children in the control group (t=-6.783; p<.05). regarding the results, while ppvt pre-test scores of these children were 33.31, this turned out to be 40.78 after the experiment. it was concluded the difference between ppvt pre-test and post-test average scores of these children was 7.47. although there is a significant difference, this is a slight difference in scores. according to analysis result, the fact that while the experiment group was applied traditional game education program, any interventions were not made to the control group and the children in this group continued their education throughout the term within the frame of pre-school education program scheduled by the ministry of national education could be the reason of such a significant difference. pre-school education program is a developmental program since it aims at supporting the children’s all development areas (meb, 2013). in this context, it is possible to state that the education the children get contributes to their language development. 3.4. findings and interpretation regarding the fourth sub-problem the fourth sub-problem of the study was defined as “do ppvt total post-test average scores of the children in the experiment and control group differ significantly?” in accordance with this purpose, independent group t-test was carried out. the results are given in table 6. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 74-81 80 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. t-test results of the children’s ppvt post-test scores in relation to the variable of being in the experiment or control group. group n x̄ ss sd t p ppvt experiment 36 68.81 14.84 66.03 8.940 .000* control 36 40.78 11.56 note:*p<0.05. when the values in table 6 were analysed, it is seen that there is a statistically significant difference between ppvt post-test scores of the children according to the variance of their being in the experiment or control group (t=2.208, p<.05). it was found that average scores of the children in the experiment group (x̄=68.81) were higher than the average scores of the ones in the control group (x̄=40.78). when the table above is examined, it is concluded that there is a score difference of 28.03 between post-test average scores of the experiment and control group in peabody picture vocabulary test. considering this result, the effect of 9-week traditional game education program on language development is obvious. even if the education the children in the control group get contributes to their language development, the contribution of traditional game education program to language development is greater. it is thought that, the existence of such traditional games as tongue twisters, finger games and counting-out rhymes increased the linguistic skills of the children in the experiment group much more when compared to the control group though the control group includes all kinds of activities. in this context, while developing daily educational flow, the acquisitions should be realized by being planned as traditional game activities. the studies in the literature were analysed and the positive effects of games on language development were presented by the researchers. bergen (2002) compiled the studies analysing the effect of games played mimetically on cognitive, social and academic development and concluded that these games of imitation support the children’s language development, mental development and academic success. kaçar (2016) examined the effect of the games preferably played by the 5 or 6-year-old children having normal development during pre-school period on problem solving abilities and language development and stated that the kind of the games played is effective on problem solving and language development. lim (1994) presented the relationship between games and language patterns in his study he carried out with 56 singaporean pre-school students. bluiett (2009) reviewed the effect of sociodramatic games played by 21 pre-school children who are 43-73 months old on language development; ahioğlu (1999) examined the influence of symbolic games on language acquisition and presented the effect of games on language development. as a result of this study, it is clear that there is an effect of traditional games on language development according to post-test data. 4. results and suggestions 4.1. results in this part, the results regarding the first, second, third and fourth problem are included. the results regarding the first problem; it is seen that the scores the children got from ppvt differ according to the variable of being in the experiment or control group. when average scores are reviewed, average scores of the children in the experiment group (x̄=40.16) are higher than the scores of the ones in the control group (x̄=33.30). the results with regard to the second problem; it is seen that ppvt pre-test and post-test scores of the children in the experiment group differ significantly. according to the results, while ppvt pre-test scores of these children were 40.17, this value turned out to be 68.81 after the experiment. the results related to the third problem; it is seen that ppvt pre-test and post-test scores of the children in the control group differ significantly. according to the results, while ppvt pre-test scores of these children were 33.31, this value became 40.78 after the experiment. the results in regard to the fourth problem; there was a statistically significant difference among total post-test average scores of the children in the experiment or control group. when average scores were examined, it was found out that average scores of the children in the experiment group (x̄=68.81) were higher than the scores of the ones in the control group (x̄=40.78). 4.2. suggestions in this study that analysed the effect of traditional game education program on the children’s language development, it was determined that game method had a positive effect on the children both during and at the end of the implementation. it was observed that the children participated the implementations actively and voluntarily during education process and they also had fun during the implementations. it is considered this method by which they both learn and have fun could be used in any kinds of activities because the children watch for an opportunity to play games under all conditions. in this context, the power of games in pre-school education should be utilized. 4.2. a. suggestions for educationists traditional game education program (tgep) was implemented to pre-school period by the educationist in this study. the educationists could apply the program to classes on different levels (primary school, secondary school, etc.) by taking the program’s effect on language development into account. the effect traditional games on language development was examined in this study. the educationist could support different development areas by using traditional games. the supportive activities for language development in traditional game education program such as pantomime, nursery rhymes, counting-out rhymes, dramas, finger games, warm-up – active – relaxing plays were included in this study. the educationist could give support to language development with different activities by enriching the existing ones. the implementation takes 9 weeks. the educationist could apply traditional game education program throughout the whole school year. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 74-81 81 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.2. b. suggestions for researchers the implementation was carried out with pre-school children; therefore, the researcher could repeat his study with a larger group of different age groups or ranges in further studies. the implementation period of this study was 9 weeks. the researcher could extend this period and measure its effect on language development in further studies. the researcher could get permission from the parents to record videos or take photos during the implementation in further studies and could take observation notes with the support of an expert. in this study, implementation was carried out with a total of 72 students, 36 of whom were experiment and 36 were control group. it is suggested to realize the further studies with the participation of many more students. this study was carried out without equalizing the ppvt average scores of experiment and control groups. it is recommended to study with groups having equalized ppvt average scores when such a study is conducted in the future. this is a quantitative study and in further studies it could be carried out as a mixed study (qualitative and quantitative). traditional game education program in pre-school education was developed and implemented in this study. further studies could analyse the effect of different methods on language development and/or the effect of traditional game education program on other development areas could be measured. 4.2. c. suggestions for families regarding the results of the study, the families could be ensured to get seminars/education about traditional games when the effect of 9-week traditional games education given on language development was taken into account. considering the effect of traditional games, they could be also used in daily life so as to contribute to the children’s development. the implementation was carried out with pre-school children. parents could use traditional games to support the development of their children who are in different age groups. in this study, the effect of traditional games on language development was analysed. parents could benefit from the effect of traditional games on the children’s other development areas. reference ağyar, e. (2016). the effect of the game on development areas and various examples. h. g. ogelman (ed.), play in the first years of life: in a multifaceted view of play (pp. 124-125). ankara: pegem academy. ahioğlu, e. n. (1999). the effect of symbolic game on 4 year old children's language acquisition. unpublished master thesis, ankara university institute of social sciences, ankara. akbayır, s., & sahin, ş. (2005). children's literature by age groups. hece aylık edebiyat dergisi. children's literature special issue, 9(1104-105), 190-204. aram, d., fine, y., & ziv, m. (2013). enhancing parent-child shared book reading interactions: promoting references to the book's plot and socio-cognitive themes. early childhood research quarterly, 28(1), 111-122. arslan, u. (2012). basic skills and social behaviors in preschool education. in g. haktanır (ed.), introduction to pre-school education (6th ed.). ankara: anı publishing. barry, e. s. 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(1959). manual for the peabody picture vocabulary test minneapolis: american guidance service. eliason, c., & jenkins, l. (2003). a practical guide to early childhood curriculum (7th ed.). new jersey: merrill prentice hall. george, d., & mallery, p. (2010). spss for windows step by step: a simple guide and reference, 17.0 update (10th ed.). boston: allyn &amp; bacon. kaçar, s. (2016). investigation of the effects of the game types preferred by 5-6 age group children with normal development on language development and problem solving skills. master thesis, maltepe university institute of social sciences, istanbul. katz, j., önen, f., demir, n., uzunkaya, a., & uludağ, p. (1974). a turkish peabody picture-vocabulary test. hacettepe journal of social and human sciences, 6(12), 129-140. lim, a. s. e. (1994). relationship of play and language patterns among singaporean pre-school children in homes and classrooms. international journal of early years education, 2(2), 65-91.available at: 10.1080/0966976940020106. meb. (2013). preschool education program. web: retrieved from: https://tegm.meb.gov.tr/dosya/okuloncesi/ooproram.pdf. omeroğlu, e. (1992). use of creative drama education in inclusion of pre-school hearing impaired children. special education journal, 1(3), 3133. oner, n. (1997). psychological tests used in turkey. istanbul: boğaziçi university press. ozyürek, a. (2013). dramatic activities and basic concepts of drama. e. ömeroğlu (ed.), from dramatic activities in preschool education to drama from theory to practice (3rd ed., pp. 1-8). ankara: educational book. rolton, g. (2002). read to me: a practical guide to sharing books with your child in the vital preschool years. melbourne: australian council for educational research ltd. roskos, k., tabors, p. t., & lenhart, l. a. (2009). oral language and early literacy in preschool: talking, reading and writing (2nd ed.). u.s.a: international readingassociation inc. sağlam, m. (2016). play in early childhood. a.ulutaş (ed.), in play in pre-school education. ankara: educational book. the ministry of national education. (2013). preschool education program. retrieved from: https://tegm.meb.gov.tr/dosya/okuloncesi/ooproram.pdf. tümkaya, s. (2012). language development. m. e. deniz, (ed.), in development in early childhood (4th ed.). ankara: maya academy. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 267 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 267-273, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.267.273 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the compassion levels of faculty of sports sciences students yahya doğar1 serkan düz2  ( corresponding author) 1,2inonu university, faculty of sports science, malatya, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was to examine the compassion levels of faculty of sports sciences students who study at inonu university. the sample of the study consisted of 508 students, 191 women and 317 men who voluntarily participated in the study. compassion scale (cs) consisting of 24 items and five-point likert type with six subscales developed by pommier (2010) and adapted to turkish by akdeniz and deniz (2016) was used to determine the levels of compassion of the students in the study. independent sample t-test and one-way anova test was used to examine the difference between independent variables and levels of cs. it was found that compassion levels of students were medium. at the end of the study significant differences were found in the indifference and withdrawal subscales according to gender; kindness, indifference, common humanity, separation and disengagement subscales according to the department and kindness, indifference, separation and disengagement subscales according to the income level of families and the exercise habits of the students. there was no significant difference between level of compassion and variable of age and place where the families of students live. as a conclusion, it is useful to examine compassion in various aspects with regard to sports, which is one of the common languages of humanity, with broader and different samples. thus, it is clear that people who do sports with compassion feelings and thoughts will have positive contributions in reducing violence in sports environments. keywords: compassion, compassionate, compassion scale, altruism, sports, university students. citation | yahya doğar; serkan düz (2020). investigation of the compassion levels of faculty of sports sciences students. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 267-273. history: received: 27 january 2020 revised: 9 march 2020 accepted: 16 april 2020 published: 14 may 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 268 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 268 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 269 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 272 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 273 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.267.273&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1068-2266 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1068-2266 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1068-2266 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1068-2266 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1631 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1068-2266 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 267-273 268 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the compassion levels of the faculty of sports sciences students. 1. introduction there are values that make people social and live together. all these values, regardless of their content and quality, are human products and continue their existence along with the history of humanity, are subject to many disciplines and are discussed in many fields. however, it seems that his current situation is not very good (yıldırım, 2016). since all of the behaviors will be associated with values, it deals with all branches of science from education to economy, from sports to psychology. one of these values is compassion (deniz & karagöl, 2018). although compassion is mixed with concepts such as empathy, sympathy, and altruism, its distinctive feature is that it includes a cognitive and behavioral process to relieve pain (tozoğlu, dursun, & güler, 2019). compassion is a feeling of sympathy for people or living creatures who are suffering or in a bad condition (compassion, 2020). while buddhism defines compassion as an openness to suffering in order to alleviate the suffering of others (gilbert., mcewan, matos, & rivis, 2011), islam emphasizes the importance of compassion by using the expression “in the name of allah, the compassionate, the merciful” (akın, 2018). generally, compassion is an inner feeling that occurs in the individual and can be developed. the sense of compassion occurs when the pain and distress of others are noticed. for this reason, compassion is a benevolent attitude towards all humanity and living things, not only those with whom you are intimately (avşaroğlu, 2019). compassion is the behavior of people who believe that good values and opportunities will increase as they are shared (goetz, keltner, & simon-thomas, 2010). therefore, compassion is actually the desire and attitude of someone else to eliminate the pain. however, the attitude left in feelings and thoughts is not compassion (avşaroğlu, 2019). because compassion is an emotion that emerges when witnessing the suffering of others and motivates the desire to help later (goetz et al., 2010). therefore, the sense of compassion that increases the value of man and humanity means literally suffering (stosny, 2004). ignoring the pain of others causes people to diverge. this is an indication that compassion performs an important unifying function in strengthening the bond between people (leget & olthuis, 2007). compassion is in the foundation of all religious thoughts and traditions (gilbert, 2019). being compassionate is treating people without prejudice (avşaroğlu, 2019). in other words, compassion, which includes feelings such as pity, captivity, protection, forgiveness, and showing love and kindness, is the emotion that prompts people to caress an orphan's head, give water to a thirsty dog and leave food to nature so that wild animals do not die in the winter. as a result of these explanations, it is possible to summarize the compassion as recognizing the pain, understanding the universality of pain in the human experience, feeling empathy for the person suffering and connecting with them, i.e. emotional resonance, ignoring the disturbing behaviors or feelings of the suffering person and accepting them as they are and taking action to alleviate the suffering (strauss et al., 2016). it is really difficult for some people to act or talk compassionately. however, it is known that compassionate individuals are more likely to have positive interactions and establish closer relationships with others (neff, 2003). because, compassion is a positive and healthy response that involves getting rid of arrogance, anger and revenge that can harm people (coklar & dönmez, 2014). it also protects people against the negative effects of their failures (akın. & akın, 2015). because compassionate people tend to accept the mistakes of others as they accept that they can also make the mistake (neff. & beretvas, 2013). researches mention various positive effects of compassionate behavior. mongrain, chin, and shapira (2011) showed that individuals who act compassionately have higher level of self-esteem, well-being, happiness and low level of depression than those who do not. moreover, it has been reported that treating patients with compassion, speeding up your recovery process, as well as increasing patient satisfaction (epstein et al., 2005). leary, tate, adams, batts allen, and hancock (2007) found that university students with high levels of compassion exhibit more positive and accepting thoughts and behaviors in fulfilling their responsibilities, and show high resistance to problems. allen and leary (2010) stated that compassionate people have low levels of aggression and depression, whereas life satisfaction, social connectedness and subjective well-being are high. all these cause individuals to feel emotionally calm and increase their level of welfare (ryan & deci, 2001). when the literature is analyzed, it is seen that compassion contributes to people's failures in social support, social relations, finding their own personality and extraversion. it can be said that compassionate individuals approach themselves and their environment more positively and display positive behaviors in their social relationships. this is also true in sports settings. therefore, it would not be wrong to say that the negative social events occurring especially in sports environments in recent years are due to insufficient understanding of values such as compassion. since sports require individuals to compete with each other and to show respect, acceptance and fair play behaviors towards each other, the feeling of compassion is very important. this situation is more important for students who have been studying at sports departments in universities and whose main purpose is to direct people to do sports. therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the compassion levels of sports science students. 2. method in this part of the study, the sample of the study, data collection tools and analysis of the data are presented. 2.1. research model general screening method was applied in the cross-sectional research design. in the screening method, it is aimed to describe the situation as it exists in the past or currently (karasar, 2005). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 267-273 269 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.2. sample of the study easy sampling method was used to determine the sample. easy sampling is a non-random sampling method determined by the researcher's judgments of the sample section chosen from the main group (hasiloglu, baran, & aydin, 2015). although the sample size of the research was calculated as at least 383 according to the formula of nt²pq/d²(n-1)+t²pq (sümbüloğlu & sümbüloğlu, 2009) with 95% confidence interval and 5% sampling error. a total of 632 university students, 191 women and 317 men, voluntarily participated in the research from inonu university faculty of sports sciences. all participants were included in the study in accordance with the principles in the helsinki declaration after signing their written informed consent forms. moreover, ethics committee approval was received from the local university to address ethical concerns. 2.3. data collection tools compassion scale (cs) consisting of 24 items five-point likert type with six subscales developed by pommier (2010) and adapted to the turkish by akdeniz and deniz (2016) was used to determine the levels of compassion of the students in the study. cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the original scale was determined as 0.85 (akdeniz & deniz, 2016). the scale consists of six sub-dimensions such as kindness, indifference, common humanity, separation, mindfulness and disengagement. factor loads of items belonging to sub-dimensions vary between .61 and .74 for kindness, .56 and .69 for indifference, .54 and .83 for common humanity, .51 and .73 for separation, .55 and .72 for mindfulness and .58 and .68 for disengagement. the fit indices of the scale were found as cfi = .97; nnfi = .96; srmr = .05 and rmsea = .06. when the internal consistency reliability coefficient is calculated for the sub-dimensions, it is founded as .73 for kindness, .64 for indifference, .66 for common humanity, .67 for separation, .70 for mindfulness, and .60 for disengagement. the scores of each item vary between “1 and 5”. in the scale, each subscale consists of four items and minimum four and maximum 20 points can be obtained from each subscale. accordingly, the cs is evaluated between 24 and 120 points. as the score rises, the level of compassion increases. it was calculated that cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of this study was 0.74 for the whole scale and ranged between .57 and .77 for the subscales. 2.4. data analysis the data were evaluated using the ibm statistics (spss version 25.0, armonk, ny, usa) windows package program. as a result of the kolmogorov-smirnov normality test and skewness and kurtosis values, the data showed normal distribution. descriptive statistics were used to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants, independent sample t-test and one-way anova with lsd post-hoc correction were used to examine the differences between the independent variables and cs levels. statistically significance level was set as p<.05. 3. findings the findings of the study are explained in detail in the table 1. table-1. descriptive characteristics of the participants. variable parameters f % gender female 191 37.6 male 317 62.4 age (years) 17-20 150 29.5 21-24 314 61.8 25-40 44 8.7 department physical education and sports teaching 131 25.8 coaching education 140 27.6 sports management 124 24.4 exercise and sports training for the disabled 113 22.2 family residence village 71 14.0 district 149 29.3 city 288 56.7 monthly income 1-2325 tl (minimum wage) 160 31.5 2326-4650 tl 242 47.6 >4651tl 106 20.9 status of doing sports no 136 26.8 individual 241 47.4 team sports 131 25.8 note: f: frequency, %: percentage. table-2. relationships between the gender and cs subscales. subscales gender n x ±sd t-test p kindness female 191 15.88±3.73 1.262 .207 male 317 15.47±3.49 indifference female 191 8.91±3.70 -2.411 .016* male 317 9.71±3.57 common humanity female 191 14.96±3.51 0.096 .924 male 317 14.93±3.29 separation female 191 9.24±3.90 -1.827 .068 male 317 9.85±3.49 mindfulness female 191 14.93±3.56 0.957 .339 male 317 14.63±3.39 disengagement female 191 8.48±3.68 -2.392 .017* male 317 9.28±3.62 note: *p<.05, x ±sd: mean± standard deviation. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 267-273 270 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to table 1, 62.4% of the participants were male, 37.6% were female and 61.8% of students were between 21 and 24 years old. it was seen that 56.7% of students' families live in the cities, 31.5% have minimum wage or less, 47.6% have middle and 20.9% have high income level. while the rate of students who do not do sports is 26.8%, the rate of those who do individual sports is 47.4% and that of team sports is 25.8%. in table 2, the difference between male and female students was found to be significant according to the indifference and disengagement subscales. it is seen that the difference in indifference and disengagement subscales is in favor of men. table-3. relationships between the age of participants and cs subscales subscales age n x ±sd f p kindness 17-20 150 15.96±3.35 .922 .398 21-24 314 15.48±3.69 25-40 44 15.50±3.62 indifference 17-20 150 9.40±3.67 .091 .913 21-24 314 9.45±3.66 25-40 44 9.20±3.45 common humanity 17-20 150 15.43±3.18 2.249 .107 21-24 314 14.73±3.45 25-40 44 14.82±3.41 separation 17-20 150 9.64±3.47 1.557 .212 21-24 314 9.74±3.74 25-40 44 8.70±3.63 mindfulness 17-20 150 14.93±3.22 .854 .426 21-24 314 14.74±3.44 25-40 44 14.16±4.26 disengagement 17-20 150 9.03±3.81 .347 .707 21-24 314 9.03±3.63 25-40 44 8.55±3.54 note: *p<.05, x ±sd: mean± standard deviation. when table 3 was examined, it was seen that there was no statistically significant difference between the ages of participants and cs subscales. table-4. relationships between the departments of participants and cs subscales. subscales department n x ±sd f p group p kindness 1) physical education teaching (pe) 131 15.98±3.58 2.949 .032* 1>4 3>2 3>4 .042* .035* .014* 2) coaching education (ce) 140 15.26±3.87 3) sports management (sm) 124 16.19±3.58 4) exercise and sport education in disabled (esed) 113 15.04±3.13 indifference 1) physical education teaching (pe) 131 8.96±3.42 9.412 .000* 4>1 2>3 4>2 4>3 .000* .035* .020* .000* 2) coaching education (ce) 140 9.70±4.05 3) sports management (sm) 124 8.396±3.22 4) exercise and sport education in disabled (esed) 113 10.71±3.37 common humanity 1) physical education teaching (pe) 131 15.49±3.26 4.262 .005* 1>2 1>4 3>2 3>4 .014* .006* .020* .021* 2) coaching education (ce) 140 14.49±3.63 3) sports management (sm) 124 15.45±3.18 4) exercise and sport education in disabled (esed) 113 14.33±3.26 separation 1) physical education teaching (pe) 131 9.35±3.40 10.537 .000* 4>1 2>3 4>2 4>3 .000* .012* .013* .011* 2) coaching education (ce) 140 9.64±3.76 3) sports management (sm) 124 8.54±3.47 4) exercise and sport education in disabled (esed) 113 11.10±3.58 mindfulness 1) physical education teaching (pe) 131 14.73±3.24 2.199 .087 2) coaching education (ce) 140 14.52±3.50 3) sports management (sm) 124 15.40±3.65 4) exercise and sport education in disabled (esed) 113 14.34±3.36 disengagement 1) physical education teaching (pe) 131 8.73±3.49 7.172 .000* 4>1 2>3 4>2 4>3 .002* .022* .040* .000* 2) coaching education (ce) 140 9.08±3.90 3) sports management (sm) 124 8.06±3.35 4) exercise and sport education in disabled (esed) 113 10.19±3.62 note: *p<.05, x ±sd: mean± standard deviation. when the subscales of cs and the departments of the participants were compared, there was a significant difference in subscales of kindness, indifference, common humanity, separation and disconnection (p<.05) except for the mindfulness table 4. in the kindness subscale, it is seen that the students of pe and sm get higher scores than the students of esed, and sm students get higher scores than ce students. in the indifference, separation and disengagement subscales, it is seen that esed students get higher scores than pe and sm students and ce students get higher scores than sm students. in the subscale of common humanity, pe students get higher scores than ce and esed students, and sm students received higher scores than ce and esed students. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 267-273 271 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. relationships between the place where participants grow up and cs subscales. subscale place n x ±sd f p kindness village 71 15.55±3.71 .118 .889 town 149 15.75±3.59 city 288 15.58±3.57 indifference village 71 8.72±3.74 1.518 .220 town 149 9.52±3.84 city 288 9.53±3.50 common humanity village 71 15.30±3.56 .952 .387 town 149 15.11±3.37 city 288 14.77±3.34 separation village 71 8.85±.3.68 2.098 .124 town 149 9.58±3.59 city 288 9.83±3.67 mindfulness village 71 14.97±3.39 .187 .829 town 149 14.75±3.56 city 288 14.69±3.43 disengagement village 71 8.93±3.63 .357 .700 town 149 8.79±3.79 city 288 9.10±3.62 note: *p<.05, x ±sd: mean± standard deviation. according to table 5, no statistically significant difference was found between the place where the participants grew up and the subscales of cs. table-6. relationships between the monthly income of the participants’ family and cs subscales. subscales monthly income n x ±sd f p group p kindness 1) 1-2325 tl (low) 160 15.64±3.97 4.774 .009* 1>3 2>3 .040* .002* 2) 2326-4650 tl (middle) 242 16.00±2.95 3) 4651 tl and above (high) 106 14.73±4.15 indifference 1) 1-2325 tl (low) 160 8.58±3.16 10.292 .000* 2>1 2>3 .000* .006 2) 2326-4650 tl (middle) 242 10.15±3.85 3) 4651 tl and above (high) 106 9.00±3.52 common humanity 1) 1-2325 tl (low) 160 15.00±3.53 1.430 .240 2) 2326-4650 tl (middle) 242 15.12±3.15 3) 4651 tl and above (high) 106 14.46±3.61 separation 1) 1-2325 tl (low) 160 8.71±3.17 7.521 .001* 2>1 1>3 .000* .009* 2) 2326-4650 tl (middle) 242 10.10±3.79 3) 4651 tl and above (high) 106 9.90±3.82 mindfulness 1) 1-2325 tl (low) 160 14.66±3.61 0.095 .910 2) 2326-4650 tl (middle) 242 14.81±3.23 3) 4651 tl and above (high) 106 14.73±3.73 disengagement 1) 1-2325 tl (low) 160 8.08±3.24 10.194 .000* 2>1 2>3 .000* .018* 2) 2326-4650 tl (middle) 242 9.71±3.90 3) 4651 tl and above (high) 106 8.71±3.43 note: *p<.05, x ±sd: mean± standard deviation. when the relationship between the monthly income level of the participants’ families and the subscales of cs was analyzed, significant differences were found in the subscales of kindness, indifference, separation and disengagement. according to the results of post-hoc analysis, the mean score of families with middle income level in kindness, indifference and disengagement subscale was higher than those of lowand high-income levels (table 6). table-7. relationships between the status of doing sports and cs subscales. subscales status of doing sports n x ±sd f p group p kindness 1) no 136 16.07±3.09 1.874 0.155 2) individual 241 15.34±3.94 3) team 131 15.69±3.35 indifference 1) no 136 8.80±3.31 6.480 0.002* 1>3 2>3 0.001* 0.006* 2) individual 241 9.26±3.75 3) team 131 10.34±3.60 common humanity 1) no 136 15.40±3.29 1.837 0.160 2) individual 241 14.84±3.55 3) team 131 14.66±3.12 separation 1) no 136 8.93±3.51 10.405 0.000* 3>1 3>2 0.000* 0.000* 2) individual 241 9.37±3.53 3) team 131 10.82±3.79 mindfulness 1) no 136 15.35±3.16 2.949 0.053 2) individual 241 14.46±3.66 3) team 131 14.66±3.31 disengagement 1) no 136 8.29±3.43 5.654 0.004* 3>1 3>2 0.001* 0.033* 2) individual 241 8.94±3.72 3) team 131 9.79±3.68 note: *p<.05, x ±sd: mean± standard deviation. in table 7, statistically significant differences were found between the participants' status of doing sports and indifference, separation and disengagement subscales. according to the results of post-hoc analysis, it was observed that those who do not do sports and do individual sports get higher score than those who do sports in the subscale asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 267-273 272 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of indifference. moreover, those who do team sports in separation and disengagement subscales get higher score than those do not do sports and do individual sports. 4. discussion the aim of this study was to determine the compassion level of faculty of sport science students in terms of various variables. at the end of the study, it was found that the mean compassion scores of the participants were at a medium level. although it is not directly related to the study, there are studies related to the level of compassion. when the literature is analyzed, it is seen that the concept of compassion is not sufficiently included in the book contents or course curricula, therefore, students are not sufficiently informed about compassion (yiğittir & ocal, 2010). it is emphasized that especially teachers do not gain the sense of compassion enough and that the feeling of compassion in children and young people gradually decreases or does not remain (kıral & başdağ, 2017). on the other hand, those who care about social and cultural values such as truthfulness, helpfulness and self-sacrifice are found to be higher than those who do not (hacıkeleşoğlu & kartopu, 2017). this situation may have resulted from both the environmental conditions offered by the university and individual differences related to the individual's willingness to improve himself. crocker and canevello (2008) state that compassionate people feel close to others and act supportive, which increases their likelihood of receiving social support from others. so, it would not be wrong to say that compassion improves socialization among people and improves relationships positively. therefore, people should be able to give up their own right and be humble when necessary. because personal values can be an obstacle to compassionate life and people. when the results of the study were examined, it was seen that males scored higher than females only in the indifference and disengagement subscales table 2. in the literature, there are similar and different studies with the results of this study. beutel and marini (1995) reported that women scored higher than men in expressing their concerns and responsibilities about the welfare of others, and lower than men in accepting competition. in a study in which the compassion levels of the faculty of education were examined in terms of sports and different variables, it was found that female students get higher scores than males in common humanity and mindfulness subscales, whereas females get lower scores than males in the subscale of indifference (tozoğlu et al., 2019). in another study, it was seen that male students got higher scores than female students in the subscales of kindness, common humanity and mindfulness (gülaçtı & ciftçi, 2018). hacıkeleşoğlu and kartopu (2017) found that women have higher levels of compassion than men. başer and tekin (2019) reached the conclusion that kindness, mindfulness and total score of compassion were higher in women, but indifference, separation and disengagement scores were higher in men. the reason for the different results in the studies may be due to the gender of women and their career preferences. it may also have been influenced by the limiting roles of social rules on compassion over men and women. no statistically significant difference was found in all subscales of cs in terms of age variable table 3. hacıkeleşoğlu and kartopu (2017) stated that the tendency to compassion increases with age, while avşaroğlu. and güleş (2019) stated that self-compassion of the individuals increases with age. another study found that the beneficial effects of helping others become evident only among older adults with high social and economic levels (krause & shaw, 2000). the reason for the absence of a significant difference between the level of compassion and the age variable of the students in the study may be due to students not being mature enough to change their compassionate behavior. when the department variable and the cs subscales were compared, it was found that there was a significant difference in all subscales except the mindfulness subscale (table 4). in the kindness subscale, pe students got higher scores than esed students and sm students got higher scores than ce and esed students. it was observed that esed students got higher scores than pe and sm students, and ce students got higher scores than sm students in indifference, separation and disengagement subscales. in the common humanity subscale, it was determined that pe students got higher scores than ce and esed students and sm students got higher scores than ce and esed students. tozoğlu et al. (2019) found that the cs scores of the pe students were lower than those of pre-school education students in the subscales of kindness, common humanity and mindfulness, whereas pe students got higher scores in the indifference and separation subscales. however, there was no significant difference in the disengagement subscale. hacıkeleşoğlu and kartopu (2017) also found that there was a significant difference between cs scores and department variable in university students, whereas gülaçtı and ciftçi (2018) found no significant difference. therefore, characteristics of the program in departments and that students attend these departments with love and willingly can be effective at the level of compassion of the students. there was no significant difference in all subscales of cs according to the places where the families of students live table 5. especially since the mid-20th century, people's migration to cities, widespread transportation and communication networks, and minimizing cultural differences in rural and urban life can be a factor in the emergence of such a result. a significant difference was found between income of the students’ families and kindness, indifference, separation and disengagement subscales table 6. it was determined that the students with families with middle income level had higher compassion scores than the students with lowand high-income levels in kindness, indifference and disengagement subscales. it is not possible to compare our findings in the literature, since there is no study examining the effect of families' income level on compassion level. there was a significant difference found between the students' status of doing sports and the mean scores of indifference and separation subscale table 7. in the subscale of indifference, it was found that the students who do not do sports got higher scores than those who do team sports and those who do individual sports got higher scores than those who do team sports. in the subscales of separation and disengagement, the scores of the students doing team sports were higher than those who do not do sports and do individual sports. tozoğlu et al. (2019) reported that students who do sports got higher scores in the indifference subscale than those who do not do sports, while students who do not do sports in mindfulness subscale got higher score than those who do sports. it was observed that the students who do individual sports in the separation subscale have higher scores than those of students who do team sports, and there is no significant difference in the kindness, indifference, common humanity, mindfulness and disengagement subscales. the importance of the fair play concept in sports has been understood better in recent years. the understanding of compassion that covers the concept of fair play makes it important in asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 267-273 273 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group any sports environment. because concepts such as respect, appreciation and acceptance to the opponent in the fundamental philosophy of sports can be developed with compassion education. therefore, it is important not to ignore the issue of compassion in all sports institutions and organizations and to add it to routine training programs. as a conclusion, it is useful to examine compassion in various aspects with regard to sports, which is one of the common languages of humanity, with broader and different samples. thus, it is clear that people who do sports with compassion feelings and thoughts will have positive contributions in reducing violence in sports environments. references akdeniz, s., & deniz, m. 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(2016). the importance of values education lesson for gifted children. current research in education, 2(2), 99-120. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 181 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 181-185, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.181.185 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group analysis of internet addiction levels of university students in terms of the state of doing sport menderes kabadayi yasar dogu sports sciences faculty, ondokuz mayıs university, samsun, turkey. abstract the aim of the present study is to examine the internet addiction levels of university students in terms of the state of doing sport and different variables. a total of 300 students, 132 male and 168, studying in samsun ondokuz mayıs university participated in the study. internet addiction scale which was developed by günüç and kayri (2010) and which had four sub-dimensions (withdrawal, controlling difficulty, disorder in functionality and social isolation) was used. spss 22.0 program was used for the statistical analysis. significance was found in the sub-dimensions of withdrawal and social isolation in terms of the variable of gender (p<0.05) and in the sub-dimension of social isolation in terms of the variables of faculty and the state of doing sport regularly (p<0.05). it can be seen that internet addiction levels were similar in all sub-dimensions except for social isolation, while they were found to be different in the sub-dimension of withdrawal in terms of the variable of gender. this result is thought to be associated with the fact that students who do sport regularly and those attending sport sciences faculty are not exposed to social isolation due to sport and that they lead more social lives when compared with the students of other faculties. in terms of the variable of gender, it is thought that the reason why female students had higher withdrawal levels can be due to the fact that men can act more comfortably in social life. keywords: internet addiction, university student, sport. citation | menderes kabadayi (2020). analysis of internet addiction levels of university students in terms of the state of doing sport. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 181185. history: received: 20 december 2019 revised: 2 february 2020 accepted: 9 march 2020 published: 30 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 182 2. material and method..................................................................................................................................................................... 182 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 183 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 184 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 184 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.181.185&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1458 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4472-7485 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1458 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4472-7485 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1458 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4472-7485 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 181-185 182 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the internet addiction levels of university students in terms of the state of doing sport and different variables. 1. introduction one of the factors that have influenced the lives of people in terms of information technology with the advancements in technology is the widespread use of the internet (balci & gülnar, 2009). since the beginning of 1990s, the use of internet has become such that people have been unable to keep themselves from using this mass media and connecting the internet (wang, 2001). the internet, which was originally thought to be designed to facilitate receiving information, interpersonal communication and a great number of commercial and institutional businesses, has become a mass media tool with which people can easily handle almost all of their businesses. today, internet use has reached huge dimensions. according to the data of internet world stats, while there were around 300 million internet users in the world in 2000, the number reached 1,5 billion in 2009 and according to mid 2014 data, the number of internet users in the world exceeded 3 billion. nalwa and anand (2003) reported that with the significance of internet use and this great increase in the amount of online use, internet addiction has begun to be seen more frequently in the society. the fact that the internet has entered our lives so much has also caused it to enter the education and psychology literature with the effects it causes on the individual. it was suggested in a study by goldberg (1995) that internet can cause addiction, and the first work-related definition of addiction was made by young (1996). in addition, a great number of the studies conducted showed that most of the addicts prioritize social relationships and choose services such as chatting, meeting, role-playing, forum, mail, etc., which include interaction (davis, 2001; song, larose, eastin, & lin, 2004; young., 1997). in addition, it was also found that individuals with internet addiction frequently addressed the variable of loneliness and thus their addiction increased (kraut et al., 1998; subrahmanyam & lin, 2007). researchers have reported that internet use and addiction is very common especially in high school and university students and that this situation has a negative effect on their psychological and physical development and social relationships and causes a decrease in their academic achievement (cengizhan, 2005). in addition to students’ academic achievement, it is reported that the source of internet addiction can emerge as a result of one or more characteristics of internet use which includes processes such as writing, communication medium, lack of face to face communication, internet content or online social activities (instant messaging, online games) and that this situation can also cause problems such as communication and social skills and also some physical problems depending on the immobility during internet use (leung, 2004; ozgen & bavlı, 2017). sport is among the most basic physical activities of our day. ten thousands of people doing sport in various parts of the world every day are interested in sportive activities. even though we are not aware of it, sport activities have always been intertwined with vital activities and social life in almost every period of human history. thus, it is not very possible to take sport out of social life (cavusoglu., yılmaz, kabadayı, abacı, & tasmekteplıgıl, 2017; dever, 2010; dogan., yilmaz, kabadayi, & mayda, 2018; kabadayı., yılmaz, & mayda, 2018; tekeli., 2017). when these significant effects of sport on social life are considered, the thought that individuals who do sport regularly can get away from all factors that can cause addiction and that they can be healthier both physically and psychologically when compared with individuals who do not do sports comes to the forefront. based on all this information, the aim of the present study is to analyze the internet addiction levels of university students from different faculties who are doing sport regularly and those who are not. the hypothesis of our study is that the students who do sport regularly will have lower internet addiction when compared with the students who do not. 2. material and method 2.1. study design a total of 300 students, 132 male and 168 female, studying in different departments of samsun ondokuz mayıs university participated in the study. in the study, the profile of internet dependency and internet addiction scale which was developed by günüç and kayri (2010) and which had four sub-dimensions (withdrawal, controlling difficulty, disorder in functionality and social isolation) was used. the subjects in the study filled in voluntary participation form and it was emphasized that it was important for them to read the questions and fill in the questionnaire form carefully for the reliability and validity of the study. the subjects’ states of doing regular sport and some of their demographic information were found with the personal information form prepared by the author. 2.2. internet addiction scale in the study, the profile of internet dependency and internet addiction scale which was developed by günüç and kayri (2010) and which had 35 items and four sub-dimensions (withdrawal, controlling difficulty, disorder in functionality and social isolation) was used. according to the analysis results conducted to test the reliability level of the scale used in the study, cronbach alpha coefficients were found as 0.78 (withdrawal), 0.81 (controlling difficulty) 0.73 (disorder in functionality) and 0.83 (social isolation). in addition, total internal coefficient of the scale was found as 0.78. these results show that the results of the scale are acceptable. 2.3. data analysis statistical analyses were conducted with spss version 22.0 software. shapiro-wilk test was used to analyze normality assumption. in case of variables which were not normally distributed, groups of two were analyzed with mann whitney u test, while groups of more than two were analyzed with kruskall wallis and chi-square tests. a p value of less than 0.05 was assessed as statistically significant. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 181-185 183 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. results table-1. descriptive statistics of the participants. gender n % male 132 44.0 female 168 56.0 age frequency % 17-20 113 37.7 21-24 172 57.3 25 and older 15 5.0 faculty frequency % sport sciences 134 44.7 other faculties 166 55.3 state of doing sport regularly frequency % yes 149 49.7 no 151 50.3 total 300 100.0 note: n:number of students, %: percentage distribution of participants. table-2. comparison of internet addiction levels of the participants in terms of gender. sub-dimensions gender mean std median std. test sta. p withdrawal male 35.6515 8.9758 163.22 -2.254 0.024 female 33.5952 9.1868 140.50 controlling difficulty male 37.9015 8.0645 159.75 -1.639 0.101 female 36.3988 8.4387 143.23 disorder in functionality male 27.4470 6.3502 146.19 0.767 0.443 female 28.0060 6.2660 153.89 social isolation male 28.2273 6.5436 137.39 2.333 0.020* female 29.7917 5.9998 160.80 note: *p<0.05. according to the mann-whitney u test results, significant difference was found between genders in the subdimensions of withdrawal and social isolation (p<0.05). no difference was found in the sub-dimensions of controlling difficulty and disorder in functionality (p>0.05) table 2. table-3. comparison of internet addiction levels of the participants in terms of age groups. sub-dimensions age groups mean std median chi square p withdrawal 17-20 33.8053 8.7616 141.50 2.268 0.322 21-24 34.8198 9.4632 154.90 25 + 36.0667 8.1981 167.93 controlling difficulty 17-20 37.4248 7.9774 152.79 0.324 0.851 21-24 36.7733 8.5348 148.28 25+ 37.6000 8.2876 158.63 disorder in functionality 17-20 27.8496 6.4201 152.66 0.601 0.741 21-24 27.6453 6.1821 147.89 25 + 24.4000 7.0791 164.13 social isolation 17-20 29.2035 6.6549 156.16 1.008 0.604 21-24 29.0174 5.9799 146.19 25 + 29.3333 7.1879 157.27 note: *p>0.05. no statistically significant difference was found between the internet addiction levels of the participants in terms of age groups (p>0.05) table 3. table-4. comparison of internet addiction levels of the participants in terms of faculties. sub-dimensions faculty mean standard deviation mean rank std. test sta. p withdrawal sport sciences 34.3731 10.1742 150.13 -0.082 0.934 other faculties 34.6024 8.2351 150.96 controlling difficulty sport sciences 36.1194 9.4758 154.76 0.947 0.344 other faculties 37.8193 7.1446 145.23 disorder in functionality sport sciences 26.7910 6.9445 158.79 1.849 0.065 other faculties 28.5422 5.6253 140.24 social isolation sport sciences 27.4701 7.1574 166.03 3.470 0.001* other faculties 30.4217 5.1301 131.26 note: *p<0.05. according to mann-whitney u test results, statistically significant difference was found in social isolation subdimension of the participants in terms of the participants’ faculties (p<0.05). no significance was found in other sub-dimensions (p>0.05) table 4. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 181-185 184 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. comparison of internet addiction levels of the participants in terms of the state of doing sport regularly. sub-dimensions state of doing sport regularly mean standard deviation mean rank std. test sta. p withdrawal yes 34.3624 9.6781 150.12 0.075 0.941 no 34.6358 8.8996 150.87 controlling difficulty yes 36.7517 9.1259 151.44 -0.186 0.853 no 37.3642 7.4049 149.58 disorder in functionality yes 27.4832 6.7530 149.11 0.277 0.782 no 28.0331 5.8257 151.87 social isolation yes 28.2550 6.7465 139.72 2.149 0.032* no 29.9404 5.6876 161.13 note: *p<0.05. mann-whitney u test results showed statistically significant difference in social isolation sub-dimension in terms of the state of doing sport regularly (p<0.05). no statistical significance was found in other sub-dimensions (p>0.05) table 5. 4. discussion and conclusion when the major results of the present study were analyzed, significance was found in withdrawal and social isolation sub-dimensions in terms of the variable of gender (p<0.05) and in only social isolation sub-dimension in terms of the variables of faculty and the state of doing regular sport (p<0.05). no significance was found in any of the sub-dimensions in terms of the variable of age (p>0.05). when it is considered that a great number of individuals from all age groups are either addicted to the internet or inclined to addiction, a great number of researchers conducting studies especially in the areas of psychology and education have started to carry out researches on internet addiction (chou & hsiao, 2000; chou., condron, & belland, 2005; lin & tsai, 2002; morahan-martin & schumacher, 2000). studies conducted especially on university students have shown that students have an excessive desire to stay online and that this situation causes problems in their relationships (can & tozoğlu, 2009). studies conducted have shown that when compared with female students, male students have high scores almost in all sub-dimensions of internet addiction (jiang, 2014; kır & sulak, 2014; soydan, 2015; willoughby, 2008). the first study conducted on internet addiction in university students was by scherer (1997) and the results of this study showed that male students were more addicted than female students, while there were no differences between the students in the non-addicted group in terms of the use of internet. when this result is considered, it can be seen that especially male students are inclined to internet addiction. however, in terms of social isolation, the results of the present study showed that when compared with male students, female students were exposed to social isolation as their dependence increased and it was thought that their tendency for alienation towards the social environment would increase consequently. young. (1998) stated that just like other addictions, internet addiction also caused familial, personal and professional problems. it is a known fact that the most important symptoms of internet addicts are complaints such as fatigue, disturbed sleep and not being able to socialize. in addition, it was reported that internet addicts generally used communication function oriented internet, while individuals who were not addicts used the internet for purposes of getting informed and work related purposes (balci & gülnar, 2009). yuen and lavin (2004) stated that one of the most important reasons for expulsion from school was internet addiction in university students. when the positive effects of sport for various addictions and its contribution to the socialization of individuals are considered, the results of the present study also showed that the students who were doing sport regularly had lower addiction levels when compared with students who were not doing sport regularly. although there are limited numbers of studies conducted on the internet addiction of individuals who do sport regularly, similar to the results of the present study, these studies also show that individuals not doing sport regularly have higher addiction scores (can & tozoğlu, 2009; özdemir, 2016). these results show that sport has positive effects on the internet addiction of individuals and especially university students and for this reason, it can be clearly seen that students should be encouraged to do sports in order to save them from this addiction and to increase their beneficial internet use. encouraging students to do sport through communities and clubs in universities and other institutions will be an important factor in preventing the addiction and it is thought that this way students will become healthier individuals both physically and mentally. references balci, ş., & gülnar, b. 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(2001). internet dependency and psychosocial maturity among college students. international journal of human-computer studies, 55(6), 919-938.available at: https://doi.org/10.1006/ijhc.2001.0510. willoughby, t. (2008). a short-term longitudinal study of internet and computer game use by adolescent boys and girls: prevalence, frequency of use, and psychosocial predictors. developmental psychology, 44(1), 195-204.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/00121649.44.1.195. young, k. s. (1996). psychology of computer use: xl. addictive use of the internet: a case that breaks the stereotype. psychological reports, 79(3), 899-902.available at: https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1996.79.3.899. young., k. s. (1997). what makes the internet addictive: potential explanations for pathological internet use. paper presented at the paper presented at the 105th annual conference of the american psychological association. young., k. s. (1998). internet addiction: the emergence of a new clinical disorder. cyber psychology & behavior, 1(3), 237-244. yuen, c. n., & lavin, m. j. (2004). internet dependence in the collegiate population: the role of shyness. cyberpsychology & behavior, 7(4), 379-383.available at: https://doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2004.7.379. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 237 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 237-245, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.237.245 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigating measurement invariance under different missing value reduction methods hüseyin selvi1 devrim alıcı2 nezaket bilge uzun3 ( corresponding author) 1medical education department, mersin university, mersin, turkey. 2,3measurement and evaluation department, mersin university, mersin, turkey. abstract this study aims to comparatively examine the resultant findings by testing the measurement invariance with structural equation modeling in cases where the missing data is handled using the expectation-maximization (em), regression imputation, and mean substitution methods in the complete data matrix and the 5% missing data matrix that is randomly obtained from the same matrix. the data were collected from 2822 students. of these students, who participated in the study, 1338 (49.2%) were females while 1434 (50.8%) were males. the data were collected using the “school attitude scale” developed by alıcı (2013). in this study, the measurement invariance was tested with structural equation modeling in the complete data matrix and in cases of handling the missing data it was tested using em, regression-based imputation, and mean substitution methods. in the present study the measurement invariance decisions taken for the complete data matrix coincide with the mean substitution method in all sub-factors, with regression imputation from the other suggested methods in two sub-factors, and with expectation-maximization in one sub-factor. it was concluded that different data imputation methods change measurement invariance decisions, considering all the factors. the three techniques provided consistent results only in one sub-dimension. the ways of dealing with the missing data change the results; thereby, increasing fundamental studies in this regard is necessary. with reference to these results, it would be worthwhile to study different missing data structures and different proportions of missing data in terms of invariance decisions. keywords: missing values, missing data, measurement invariance, expectation maximization, regression imputation, mean substitution, missing data handling methods. citation | hüseyin selvi; devrim alıcı; nezaket bilge uzun (2012). investigating measurement invariance under different missing value reduction methods. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 237-245. history: received: 13 january 2020 revised: 28 february 2020 accepted: 30 march 2020 published: 15 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 238 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 239 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 240 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 243 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 243 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.237.245&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1512 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1512 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 237-245 238 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study aims to comparatively examine the resultant findings by testing the measurement invariance with structural equation modeling in cases where the missing data is handled using the expectationmaximization (em), regression imputation, and mean substitution methods in the complete data matrix and the 5% missing data matrix that is randomly obtained from the same matrix. 1. introduction in the sciences that study human behaviors and characteristics, the data collection and the analysis of the collected data are the most important stages of the research procedure. data collection requires the development of suitable measurement tools according to the principles and methods of measurement and evaluation science and/or using the existing tools, whereas the data analysis requires the use of statistical methods according to the principles and methods of statistics that suit the purpose of the study and the structure of data. the validity of a scientific research depends upon the quality of the measurement tools used in data collection and the suitability of statistical analyses applied in the analysis of the collected data. the primary purpose of data collection is to collect valid and reliable information by means of specific measurement tools from a group of participants representing the purpose of study to answer the research questions. a variety of factors are encountered in academic research that may negatively affect this process. two main factors that may affect the data collection process are the missing data and measurement invariance, which is also the subject of this study to investigate. missing data is a critical problem that is confronted in data collection process, especially in academic studies conducted in behavioral sciences. missing data can occur for many different reasons. the most common reasons attributed to are participants negligently skipping an item unanswered; leaving the item unfilled to think about the response a little more and then forget to return to that item or refrain from responding; leaving the item unfilled because of insufficiency of time; avoiding to respond the item thinking that information required by the item is too personal; the inability of the machine to detect the response provided to the relevant item when using an optical reader; missing data in the whole measurement tool due to the missing sample in longitudinal studies or simultaneous utilization of more than one measurement tool, boredom, exhaustion, time waste, and the like are the factors causing the measurement tools not to be responded (banks, 2015; de luca & peracchi, 2007; field, 2005; goegebeur, de boeck, & molenberghs, 2010; heerwegh, 2005; schafer & graham, 2002; widaman, 2006). rubin (1976) discussed the missing data under the name of “missing data mechanisms”, as a process of dealing with the probability that each set of data is observed or missing. the missing data mechanisms are defined in three categories: missing completely at random (mcar), missing at random (mar), and missing at non-random (mnar). when the missing data is completely at random (mcar), the missing data does not exhibit a particular pattern in relation to any variable. in this case, occurrence of missing data is attributed to randomness. random missing data (mar) indicates the probability of missing data that arises is systematically related to the observed data. put differently, in addition to the presence of a pattern in missing data this pattern does not have any effect on the primary dependent variable; probability of leaving the item unfilled is dependent on the performance of individuals. in case that missing data is nonrandom (mnar), it means that there is a pattern in the missing data and this pattern influences the primary dependent variable. in other words, the probability of missing data that may occur in the item is related to the situation caused by the item itself, such as inaccuracy of the item and the bias it contains (peng & zhu, 2008). the type of missing data mechanism illustrates the suitability of different analysis methods (molenberghs, fitzmaurice, kenward, tsiatis, & verbeke, 2015). allison (2002) states that the missing data with mcar or mar structures are ignorable while the missing data with a mnar structure is nonignorable and by mentioning „ignorable‟ she emphasizes that there is no need for the missing data to be modeled for the analyses yet to be done. depending on the pattern of missing data (mar, mcar, or mnar), two basic approaches are used to deal with the missing data. the first one is the “deletion” approach, which means removing all the data from the matrix in a row or column that contains missing data. in the second approach, the imputation of a representing value is in focus, where a representative value is added to each missing value preserving the multivariate structure of relationships between the variables in the dataset (widaman, 2006). to apply deletion and simple imputation methods, the structure of missing data should exhibit an mcar structure (allison, 2002; alpar, 2011). since the deletion methods cause a significant decrease in the number of observations, the calculated statistics can be biased as well as the reliability and generalizability of the study can be compromised. however, simple imputation methods are reported to result in biased parameter estimation and bias, erroneous hypothesis test results, substitution of the missing data with a value that does not meet the score range, and so forth (allison, 2002; alpar, 2011; banks. & walker, 2006; lord, 1974). in addition to the deletion and simple imputation methods in the literature, the missing data problem can be often compensated through maximum likelihood and expectationmaximization methods (allison, 2002; alpar, 2011; demir, 2013; little & rubin, 1987). compared to the deletion and simple imputation methods, the most important advantage of these methods is that they can be used even if the missing data has a mar structure (allison, 2002; alpar, 2011). however, generally, the proportion of missing data should not exceed a certain value for the missing data reduction to be applied. schafer (1999) stated that this proportion should be less than 5%, bennett (2001)10%, and peng., harwell, liou, and ehman (2006) less than 20%. if not, they stated, the resultant findings of the study are probably biased. buuren (2012) argues that we ignore the causes of missing data while applying the missing data reduction methods and criticizes this as a major problem. the primary measure to take, according to the researcher, is to identify factors that may cause the emergence of missing data and look for how to prevent them. thus, measures that can be taken during the data collection phase are: to encourage responding, to determine the data collection method (face-to-face, online, etc.) according to the sample structure, to complete the missing data from other sources for the non-responders where possible, to minimize the intensity of the study in experimental studies, to prepare a good leaflet that explains the purpose and benefit of the study, to perform a pilot study for identifying possible problems in advance, to economize the total number of variables, to collect information that is only asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 237-245 239 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group necessary for the study, to use short measurement tools where possible, to avoid item blocks that force staying to a certain page for a longer time, to use computer-based tests where possible, to respect item skip, and to create unanswered forms that provides an understanding of why they do not respond or why do they skip; which could be considered as seeking expert opinions (buuren, 2012). however, missing data still arises, especially in the studies conducted in social sciences, and the presence of missing data is a problem for statistical analyses. the main reason behind this is that most of the statistics software and, particularly, multivariate statistical analyses work over the complete data matrix. besides, the presence of many missing values in the data matrix is a major problem that threatens the validity and reliability of the results and if this proportion increases, it entails to an increase in type i error in statistical methods/techniques used, decrease in power of the test, erroneous estimation of standard error, inability to well-estimate the latent characteristics, and the like (bernhard et al., 1998; molenberghs & kenward, 2007; woodward, smith, & tunstall-pedoe, 1991). tsiatis (2006) states that “when some of the data are missing, it may be that, depending on how and why they are missing, our ability to make an accurate inference may be compromised”. meanwhile, the missing data arise as a significant factor affecting the psychometric properties of measurement tools. there is a large number of studies in the existing literature that indicate items and test parameters are affected by missing data and missing data reduction methods (akbas & tavşancıl, 2015; akın & soysal, 2018; cokluk & kayri, 2011; cüm, demir, gelbal, & kışla, 2018; cüm & gelbal, 2015; demir, 2013; enders, 2004; sahin kürşad & nartgün, 2015; sayın, yandı, & oyar, 2017; zhang & yuan, 2016). in case of the missing data, one of the issues that must be addressed regarding the measurement tool is the measurement invariance. measurement invariance refers to a psychometric characteristic that is not affected when individuals are placed in different sub-groups according to whatsoever characteristics, that is, the measurement tool can measure the desired characteristic independently afar from the influence of measurement done on different sub-groups. when the missing data cannot be prevented, attempts are made to overcome this problem by means of different missing data reduction methods under different missing data mechanisms and proportions. differences in the proportion of missing data and missing data reduction methods are expected to have an impact on the invariance of measurement outcomes. measurement invariance studies in the literature are often conducted by using multi-group factor analysis techniques in structural equation modeling and differential test functioning through differential item functioning methods (raju, laffitte, & byrne, 2002; schmitt & kuljanin, 2008; stark, chernyshenko, & drasgow, 2006; vandenberg & lance, 2000; xu & tracey, 2017). measurement invariance studies conducted with multi-group confirmatory factor analysis comprise of four steps that need to be tested: (1) configural invariance, (2) metric invariance, (3) scalar invariance, and (4) strict invariance (meredith, 1993). in configural invariance, the factor structure of measurement tool; in metric invariance, the factor loadings related to the items forming the measurement tool; in scalar invariance, the regression constants created for the items forming the measurement tool, and in strict invariance, the estimated parameters concerning the suggested model, are all tested for the invariance concerning the measurements obtained from the sub-groups (başusta & gelbal, 2015; uzun & öğretmen, 2010). the hierarchy in the tests performed means securing the condition to the preceding invariance for each invariance test. in other words, when the condition for the preceding invariance is not met the subsequent invariance test cannot be performed. however, a partial invariance is assumed when the configural, the metric, or the scalar invariance is satisfied (byrne, shavelson, & muthén, 1989; byrne., 2006; kline, 2011; meredith, 1993). only two studies were found in the literature that addressed how the measurement invariance is affected in case of applying different missing data structures and/or different missing data reduction methods. in the first study, tsai and yang (2012) proposed the learning vector quantization estimated stratum weight (lvq-esw) method for determining measurement invariance in stratified sampling to deal with the missing group membership and complete the stratum weights, drawing on the effect of sample studies upon the statistical analyses. the study employed a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (mg-cfa) and simulations to examine the accuracy and consistency of measurement invariance detection. results from computer simulations demonstrated that the proposed method outstripped the conventional methods, such as case deletion, which accurately and consistently defines the measurement invariance. however, in another study, işıkoğlu (2017) handled the missing data by applying the case deletion, series mean substitution, regression imputation, expectation-maximization, and the multi-group methods by forming different sample sizes and different proportions of missing data based on the data from 5496 students who participated in pisa 2015 and then examined the inter-gender measurement invariance by applying multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (mgcfa) method on the collected data. the findings revealed that the expectation-maximization method produced more consistent results at different sample sizes and missing data proportions than did the other methods. since there are a limited number of studies investigating the effects of missing data reduction methods on measurement invariance, it bears the necessity to conduct new studies in this regard. this study aims to comparatively examine the resultant findings by testing the measurement invariance with structural equation modeling in cases where the missing data is handled using the expectation-maximization (em), regression imputation, and mean substitution methods in the complete data matrix and the 5% missing data matrix that is randomly obtained from the same matrix. the present study is assumed to make a significant contribution to the field in determining methods of handling missing data that could be more effective in examining the measurement invariance in different missing data structures. 2. method in this study, the findings of measurement invariance in a complete dataset, obtained by employing a scale, were mutually examined with the findings of measurement invariance obtained when the 5% missing data generated from the same dataset were handled using different methods. as fundamental research, it includes a methodical comparison, as it aims to investigate the effect of different methods of missing data reduction on measurement invariance and to offer new methodical knowledge to the literature. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 237-245 240 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.1. participants the data were collected from 2822 students studying at different high schools. of these students, who participated in the study, 1338 (49.2%) were females while 1434 (50.8%) were males. 2.2. data collection tool the data were collected using the “school attitude scale” developed by alıcı (2013). the scale consists of 20 items of a 5-point likert type for determining the attitudes of high school students towards the school. of scale items, 12 were positive and 8 were negative. the negative items were scored in reverse. an increase in the scores acquired from the scale is considered to be an indicator of a positive attitude towards school but negative in case of a decrease. both the findings of exploratory factor analysis performed using promax rotation and the findings of confirmatory factor analysis performed on a different sample revealed that the scale was of a one-factor structure comprising of three components. the components have been labeled as “school as a barrier to personal growth”, “school as a supporter to personal growth”, and “school as a missed entity” respectively. the cronbach alpha reliability for the entire scale was reported as 0.907 and for the sub-components as 0.871, 0.813, and 0.789 respectively. 2.3. data analysis the inter-gender invariance of the model constructed under the explained construct of school attitude scale was investigated using a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (mgcfa) method of structural equation modeling methods. four different datasets, one of which was a complete data matrix, were utilized for this investigation. a dataset containing 5% missing data was created from the complete dataset in a completely random manner. when creating the missing data matrix, primarily all the items were added one after another to form a single column and as such a single column matrix consisting of 56440 rows in total was formed. after that, using the medcalc software, 2822 rows corresponding to 5% of 56440 rows were randomly deleted and a matrix containing missing data was created by moving the items back to their original locations. a test of little mcar was performed to examine the resultant missing data structure and the missing data was observed to demonstrate an mcar structure (chi-square = 7058.109, df = 7006, sig. = 0.328). the 5% missing data were handled by expectation-maximization (em), regression assignment (ra), and mean substitution methods and measurement invariance studies were performed on both the complete data matrix and the matrices formed via three different methods. lisrel 8.7 software was utilized to analyze the data and so the multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (mgcfa) was performed. the mgcfa, a method which is commonly employed in group comparisons where there is more than one group, ensures that the means of latent factor are compared having the group parameters remain equal. the analysis performed on the means of latent factors in mgcfa is a sensitive technique compared to the traditional mean comparison and more accurately reveals the variation in different sub-groups (thompson, 2004). measurement invariance investigations are carried out in a hierarchical form with increased limitations. in this study, and as widely used and proposed, four different hypotheses were tested with configural invariance, metric invariance, scalar invariance, and strict invariance respectively. instead of the chi-square statistics that produce more erroneous results due to statistical weaknesses arising from the sample size when comparing the goodness-of-fit in decision studies on measurement invariance, the difference values between the values of comparative fit indices (cfi) were used (brown, 2006; cheung & rensvold, 2002; wu, zhen, & zumbo, 2007). the differences between the cfi values for the hierarchically investigated invariance steps were examined in terms of “0.01>δcfi>-0.01”to ensure if the invariance conditions are met or not. in addition, cfi, χ2, df, and root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) indexes were reported at the end of each test of invariance to learn about the fit indices. when the rmsea values are less than 0.05 and the cfi values are higher than 0.90, they indicate a good fitting model (cokluk, sekercioğlu, & büyüköztürk, 2010). 3. results the results of the measurement invariance for the complete data matrix are given below. the measurement invariance operations were separately examined for each component in the structural measurement model of the school attitude scale. the findings obtained for this table are elaborated in detail in terms of measurement invariance. however, since the main purpose of this study was to ensure if the decisions regarding the measurement invariance are accepted when different missing data imputation methods are applied, the findings related to other datasets were reported within the scope of the decision taken and the summary decision table were discussed in conjunction with other datasets in table 1. in the subgroups examined by gender in table 1 the resultant fit indices of χ2 /sd, rmsea, nfi, cfi for the invariance conditions were within the acceptable ranges for the three subcomponents (meredith, 1993). according to the results of measurement invariance for the subcomponents given in the table, the configural and metric invariance were achieved for the “school as a missed entity” component in the scale but the scalar invariance condition was “0.01<δcfi”, that is, the scalar invariance condition was rejected due to the „difference of regression constant for the groups‟. put differently, the measured factorial construct is similar in subgroups. the results indicate that the items making up the construct provide similar loadings to different subgroups. however, the relationship between the observed variables and the latent construct is not similar in different subgroups. the scores of the individuals with the same latent construct differ from the scores they obtain in relation to the observed constructs according to groups. since the evidence for the scalar invariance was not secured, the strict invariance step, in which the error variances are also fixed for the groups, were not tested. simply put, the studies of measurement invariance require conducting a hierarchic test of the most basic level of configural invariance and the comparison of the more restrictive model by developing hypotheses (steenkamp & baumgartner, 1998; wu et al., 2007). therefore, in these tests, which require hierarchy, it is not possible to pass to another step leaving the preceding step undone. it was concluded that, for the “school as a supporter to personal growth” component, the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 237-245 241 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group conceptual construct is invariant only for gender. in other words, for the “school as a supporter to personal growth” component in the scale for gender, it can be said that conceptual construct is the same and the items under the components measure the same psychological construct (horn & mcardle, 1992). other invariance steps did not pass the invariance test except that; the metric, scalar, and strict invariance conditions did not satisfy this sub-factor. it could be concluded that there is a bias for this component in terms of the subgroups. moreover, the configural and metric invariance were accepted for the “school a barrier to personal growth” component as was for the “school as a missed entity” but not for the scalar and strict invariance, being rejected in invariance tests with respect to the constraints in these steps. table-1.the results of measurement invariance studied for the complete data matrix. c o m p le te d at a s ch o o l as a m is se d e n ti ty χ2 df rmsea nfi cfi ∆cfi model a (configural invariance) 11.96 4 0.075 0.99 0.99 model b (metric invariance) 17.72 8 0.058 0.99 0.99 0.00 model c (scalar invariance) 28.47 12 0.059 0.98 0.98 0.01 s ch o o l as a s u p p o rt er to p er so n a l g ro w th model a (configural invariance) 371.68 40 0.12 0.95 0.96 model b (metric invariance) 390.21 48 0.11 0.95 0.95 0.01 s ch o o l as a b ar ri er to p er so n al g ro w th model a (configural invariance) 180.76 40 0.077 0.98 0.98 model b (metric invariance) 200.14 48 0.073 0.98 0.98 0.00 model c (scalar invariance) 267.55 56 0.078 0.97 0.97 0.01 after generating the missing data, the invariance test steps investigated for the datasets obtained by different methods of missing data imputation are presented together in table 2. table-2.measurement invariance results for the datasets obtained by different methods of missing data imputation. χ2 df rmsea nfi cfi ∆cfi school as a missed entity model a (configural invariance) 20.2 4 0.091 0.99 0.99 model b (metric invariance) 26.64 8 0.07 0.98 0.99 0 model c (scalar invariance) 37.28 12 0.067 0.98 0.98 0.01 school as a supporter to personal growth model a (configural invariance) 401.04 40 0.13 0.95 0.95 model b (metric invariance) 420.46 48 0.12 0.95 0.95 0 model c (scalar invariance) 476.22 56 0.11 0.94 0.95 0 model d (strict invariance) 540.74 71 0.11 0.93 0.94 0.01 model a (configural invariance) 220.65 40 0.083 0.98 0.98 model b (metric invariance) 271.31 48 0.086 0.97 0.97 0.01 r e g r e s s io n school as a missed entity model a (configural invariance) 16.97 4 0.086 0.99 0.99 model b (metric invariance) 23.49 8 0.067 0.98 0.99 0 model c (scalar invariance) 31.89 12 0.063 0.98 0.98 0.01 school as a supporter to personal growth model a (configural invariance) 418.26 40 0.12 0.96 0.96 model b (metric invariance) 440.8 48 0.11 0.95 0.96 0 model c (scalar invariance) 509.98 56 0.11 0.95 0.95 0.01 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 237-245 242 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group model a (configural invariance) 147.6 40 0.074 0.98 0.98 school as a barrier to personal growth model b (metric invariance) 166.16 48 0.07 0.98 0.98 0 model c (scalar invariance) 227.13 56 0.074 0.97 0.97 0.01 m e a n school as a missed entity model a (configural invariance) 26.44 4 0.084 0.99 0.99 model b (metric invariance) 33.1 8 0.066 0.98 0.99 0,00 model c (scalar invariance) 46.93 12 0.064 0.98 0.98 0.01 school as a supporter to personal growth model a (configural invariance) 378.41 40 0.11 0.96 0.96 model b (metric invariance) 402.55 48 0.1 0.96 0.95 0.01 school as a barrier to personal growth model a (configural invariance) 131.06 40 0.068 0.98 0.98 model b (metric invariance) 152.24 48 0.066 0.98 0.98 0 model c (scalar invariance) 219.56 56 0.072 0.97 0.97 0.01 as in table 2 the measurement invariance hypotheses were tested for the data created by means of expectationmaximization (em), regression-based imputation, and mean substitution methods respectively. the configural and metric invariance condition were met for the “school as a missed entity” component in the dataset created through the em, but the scalar and strict invariance constraints were not and, thus, for these steps the hypotheses that the regression constant and error variances are the same in gender subgroups were rejected respectively. moreover, the configural, metric, and scalar invariance were satisfied for the “school as a supporter to personal growth” sub-factor but not for the strict invariance. with this finding, it was concluded that factor structure of the support factor in school attitude scale, the factor loadings, and regression constants are invariant and the error variances are different in gender subgroups. further, for the “school as a barrier to personal growth” component the hypothesis was only accepted in the most basic level of configural invariance step. however, since the metric invariance conditions were not satisfied and since the measurement invariance operations are tested hierarchically, the other invariance steps were rejected. table-3.the comparative decisions of invariance steps. factor invariance hypotheses complete data expectation maximization regression mean f ee li n g o f m is si n g configural invariance accepted accepted accepted accepted metric invariance accpeted accpeted accpeted accpeted scalar invariance rejected rejected rejected rejected strict invariance rejected rejected rejected rejected s u p p o rt configural invariance accpeted accpeted accpeted accpeted metric invariance rejected accpeted accpeted rejected scalar invariance rejected accpeted rejected rejected strict invariance rejected rejected rejected rejected b ar ri er configural invariance accpeted accpeted accpeted accpeted metric invariance accpeted rejected accpeted accpeted scalar invariance rejected rejected rejected rejected strict invariance rejected rejected rejected rejected when the fit indices of difference values between the configural and other invariance steps (δcfi), which is known as the basic level for all three components, were examined, it was concluded that the configural and metric invariance conditions were satisfied by regression-based imputation according to the missing data imputation asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 237-245 243 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group methods. therefore, the hypotheses were accepted in that both the conceptual construct and the items had similar meanings to these groups in gender subgroups for all three components. for the mean substitution, however, the hypothesis related to the configural and metric invariance conditions were accepted for the “school as a missed entity” and “school as a barrier to personal growth” components. besides, the configural invariance conditions were accepted for the “school as a supporter to personal growth” component in the gender subgroup, where only the conceptual substructure of the factor was the same. the decisions concerning the tested invariance steps for the complete data and missing data imputation methods are summarized in table 3. as indicated in table 3 the same results were obtained for all three components in the complete dataset only by “imputing missing data with mean substitution” method. based on the components, the invariance decisions concerning the whole datasets for the “school as a missed entity” component match up with the results produced by the complete data matrix, while there is variability in decisions on different steps of invariance for the supportand barrier factors. the missing data imputation method, which indicated similarity with the decisions achieved for the complete data in “school as a supporter to personal growth” component, is the mean substitution method; however, for the “school as a barrier to personal growth” component the methods are “the mean substitution and regression-based imputation”. 4. discussion in this study, the measurement invariance was tested with structural equation modeling in the complete data matrix and in cases of handling the missing data it was tested using em, regression-based imputation, and mean substitution methods. to conclude, only in the first subscale it was determined that utilization of both the complete data matrix and the three different missing data handling methods yielded similar results and only the configural and metric invariance were satisfied. in case of handling the missing data with the expectation-maximization method in the “school as a supporter to personal growth” component, it was observed that the scalar invariance was also satisfied; however, in cases of handling missing data with the mean substitution methods in the complete data matrix, only the configural invariance was satisfied. as such, the configural and metric invariance were satisfied when the missing data were handled with the regression method. further, in the “school as a barrier to personal growth” component, it was suggested that handling the missing data both with the regression-based imputation and the mean substitution methods may satisfy the configural and metric invariance but dealing with the missing data with the expectation-maximization method may only satisfy the configural invariance. the findings show some similarities and differences when compared to işıkoğlu (2017) study. using different sample sizes, different missing data proportions that exhibit mcar structure, and different methods of handling missing data in his study, işıkoğlu (2017) revealed that determining the sample size as 2000 and the missing data as 5% ensures the inter-gender measurement invariance in all the methods of regression imputation, expectationmaximization, multiple imputation, case deletion, and series mean and, besides, the resultant fit indices from the regression imputation, expectation-maximization, and multiple imputation methods provide closer results to reference values. the researchers have suggested that datasets containing around 5% of missing data in large sample sizes can be completed by regression imputation, expectation-maximization, and multiple imputation methods. in the present study, however, the measurement invariance decisions taken for the complete data matrix coincide with the mean substitution method in all sub-factors, with regression imputation from the other suggested methods in two sub-factors, and with expectation-maximization in one sub-factor. it was concluded that different data imputation methods change measurement invariance decisions, considering all the factors. the three techniques provided consistent results only in one sub-dimension. the ways of dealing with the missing data change the results; thereby, increasing fundamental studies in this regard is necessary. with reference to these results, it would be worthwhile to study different missing data structures and different proportions of missing data in terms of invariance decisions. this study was carried out only by randomly generating 5% missing data based on a real dataset and by using three different methods of handling missing data in the “school as a supporter to personal growth” component. even the dissimilarities of methods used in resolving the missing data problem may lead to different findings from the analyses (harrington, 2009). therefore, a similar study could be conducted using different proportions of missing data and/or different methods of handling missing data at different sample sizes. the structural equation modeling and item response theory are the two approaches that are frequently used in measurement invariance studies. in this study, the measurement invariance was performed based on structural equation modeling by means of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. a study, in which both the item response theory and the structural equation modeling are used together, could make significant contributions to the comparison of results. references akbas, u., & tavşancıl, e. 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(2016). robust coefficients alpha and omega and confidence intervals with outlying observations and missing data: methods and software. educational and psychological measurement, 76(3), 387-411.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164415594658. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 608 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 608-615, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.608.615 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of self-confidence and metacognition levels of high school students case of karabuk province huseyin aslan1 musa sahin2 ( corresponding author) ¹selçuk university, sport sciences faculty, konya, turkey. ²karabük üniversity, school of physical education and sports, karabük, turkey. abstract the aim of the study is to determine the relationship between self-confidence and metacognition of high school students and to contribute to the development of students. the study conducted in accordance with this purpose is correlational research. 420 students from different high schools participated in the study. 48.1% (202) of the students are female and 51.9% (218) are male. it consists of 7 different high schools where the students participated in the study and studied in the province of karabük. the research findings were expressed as n, (%), mean and standard deviation, and were considered significant at p <0.05 significance level. all statistical calculations were made in spss 22.0 v. statistics package program. considering all the findings and related researches obtained, it is seen that metacognitive skill plays an important role in students' success. in addition to this, it was observed that the success levels of students who developed the metacognitive strategy increased. in modeling, teachers can draw the attention of students to this area by presenting slices from their own lives and enable them to learn their skills in this area. based on this, education that will improve students' metacognitive skills should be provided in all educational processes. keywords: self-confidence, metacognition, high school students, education levels, status, gender variable. citation | huseyin aslan; musa sahin (2020). examination of selfconfidence and metacognition levels of high school students case of karabuk province. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 608-615. history: received: 17 september 2020 revised: 2 october 2020 accepted: 13 october 2020 published: 27 october 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 609 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 609 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 610 4. discussion conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................. 614 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 614 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.608.615&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2278 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 608-615 609 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the importance of metacognitive skills in students' success was stated. in addition, it was observed that the success levels of students who developed the metacognitive strategy increased. in modeling, teachers can draw the attention of students to this area by presenting sections from their own lives and enable them to learn their skills in this area. 1. introduction self-confidence consists of two parts: internal and external confidence. internal confidence is the individual's self-satisfaction, the feelings, and ideas that are tolerated and embraced by himself. factors that reveal internal confidence are positive thinking and obvious goals such as self-esteem, self-love, self-awareness. external confidence, on the other hand, is the individual's attitudes and behaviors showed to his environment by him regarding he is satisfied and contented with himself. the factors that create external confidence are the ability to control their communication and feelings (akagündüz, 2006). self-confidence is the general feeling of the skill or competence of the individual to be successful (michael & benjamin, 2004). being in professions such as sports, music, painting, or speaking in front of the public requires a certain level of self-confidence (bicer, 1997). individuals with low self-confidence see themselves as unsuccessful and worthless, no matter how successful they are according to objective evaluations (wylie, 1961). these individuals believe that they lack the power to deal with their own issues in their daily lives and they are constantly worried about despair (rogers & dymond, 1954). individuals who consider themselves worthless are afraid to engage in love exchanges with the fear that their own inadequacies in intimate and open relationships will reveal and they will be rejected (from, 1947). because they do not believe in their own values and judgments, they exhibit a life that is quickly affected, tends to change their beliefs and behaviors, and is dependent on others (coopersmġth, 1967). with their characters which tend to all kinds of dependency, perversion, and committing crimes, they are dangerous for the society, besides obstructing their own development (fitts, 1965). high self-confidence is a necessary condition for attitudes that are considered harmonious, healthy, and normal according to the cultural context in which they live (scott, 1968). individuals that have high self-confidence, generally, have a characteristic feature that is open to new ideas/experiences and investigative (mcguire, 1968), open to new experiences and affectionate (from, 1947), and entrepreneurial and takes any responsibility (fitch, 1970). when individuals adopt an attitude in line with their self-concept, they feel safe and sufficient. when their attitudes are different from their self-evaluations and roles that they give for themselves, and they have difficulty adopting an attitude that is more different than they want, their self-confidence gets harmed (kulaksızoğlu, 1999). self-confidence can be defined as ''boldness, courage'' (hambly, 1997). training efforts of conscious people in education continue to progress rapidly in a more meaningful way with the emergence of the concept of metacognition and studies on this subject. metacognition, in its most detailed definition, is defined as being aware of and controlling mental activities involved in the individual's perception, remembering, and thinking (huitt, 1997). the individual's knowledge of cognitive processes and products, and his awareness on this issue is called metacognition (selcuk, 2000). metacognition is defined as follows: the ability to control and direct one's own cognitive processes according to reeve and brown (1985) a high degree of a managerial process using planning, monitoring, and evaluation to solve problems according to sternberg (1988); understanding and controlling cognitive activity according to shanahan (1992) understanding some factors that affect cognition, and monitoring and controlling cognition with small models according to butterbield, albertson, and johnston (1995). as doğanay and unal (2006) stated, individuals think by their nature. thinking, metacognition, and learning are a constant state of transformation as different aspects of the same event. at this point, metacognition becomes an integral part of the thinking process. metacognition is both at the base of thinking and includes the whole of thinking skills. the abilities of a person to decide on the moves to apply while doing a job, to develop an attitude about that subject, to plan the job or subject in the mind, to control his plan continuously, to organize the wrong places in a continuous manner are included in the concept of metacognition. in this process, individuals gain better control over thinking and feeling by reflecting and evaluating their own thinking processes (marzano et al., 1995). flavell was the first person to reveal the metacognition. to briefly explain the metacognition, it means that the individual is aware of his thinking processes and keeps these processes under control. metacognition has been mostly studied by researchers working in the field of educational psychology after 1970. flavell first explained the concept of metacognition in 1971 with the concept of "metamemory" for the purpose of storing, researching, perceiving, executing, and observing the content point of his memory. metacognition has been defined as what is intentional, done consciously, foreseeing, what are done to achieve their goals. the concept of "cognition" was first used in this article by defining metacognition as monitoring and organization in the article published by flavell (1976). 2. method 2.1. model of the study the aim of the study is to determine the relationship between self-confidence and metacognition of high school students and to contribute to the development of students. the study conducted in accordance with this purpose is correlational research. correlated research methods allow explaining the connection and relationship between variables or to predict the results (fraenkel, wallen, & hyun, 2012). 2.2. participants 420 students from different high schools participated in the study. 48.1% (202) of the students are female and 51.9% (218) are male. the high schools in which the students participated in the study and studied in karabük province are 7 different high schools which are karabük demir celik ahs (anatolian high school), cumhuriyet asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 608-615 610 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ahs, kıymet mustafa ahs, karabuk 75. yıl ahs, zübeyde hanım ahs, yahya kemal beyatlı ahs, karabük industrial vocational high school. 2.2.1. data gathering tools in the study, "self-confidence scale" and "metacognition scale" were used as data gathering tools. information is given below according to data gathering tools: 2.2.2. self-confidence scale the self-confidence scale used to measure the self-confidence levels of students was developed by akın (2007). the total number of items in the self-confidence scale is 33. the highest score that can be obtained from this 5grade likert type scale is 165 and the lowest score is 33. a high score from the scale which does not have negative items indicates a high level of self-confidence. below 2.5 points on the self-confidence scale indicates low, 2.5 to 3.5 indicates medium, and 3.5 and above indicates high self-confidence. other items were named as 2, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33; they are related to the self-confidence of individuals towards their external environment and social life, and they include features such as the ability of individuals to communicate easily, to express themselves in a healthy way, to control their emotions and to take risks. 2.2.3. metacognition scale metacognition questionnaire-30 was used to determine the metacognitive levels of the students in the study. the original name of the scale developed by cartwright-hatton and wells (1997) is the "meta-cognitions questionnaire (mcq)". translation of the scale into turkish, validity, and reliability studies were carried out by tosun and irak (2008). each item in the mcq-30 is answered on a 4-unit likert-type grading scale, with "(1) strongly disagree" and "(4) strongly agree" ends. the scores that can be obtained from the scale range from 30 to 120 and a higher score indicates an increase in pathological metacognitive activity. 2.4. statistical analysis of data shapiro-wilk normality test was applied to check whether the error terms showed normal distribution before the selection of the tests to be applied to the data obtained in the study (p> 0.05). independent-samples test, oneway analysis of variance (one-way anova) and tukey hsd multiple comparison test were used for the total scores obtained from each scale and sub-dimensions of the scale. relationships between self-confidence and the metacognitive scale and the total scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of the scale were analyzed with the pearson correlation coefficient. the research findings were expressed as n, (%), mean and standard deviation, and were considered significant at p <0.05 significance level. all statistical calculations were made in spss 22.0 v. statistics package program. the repetitive cronbach alpa of the self-confidence scale was found to be 0.91, and the metacognitive scale to be 0.76. 3. results table-1. demographic characteristics of participants. variables variables n % gender female 202 48.1 male 218 51.9 total 420 100.0 high school where the participant is educated karabük demir çelik ahs 60 14.3 cumhuriyet ahs 60 14.3 kıymet mustafa ahs 60 14.3 karabuk 75. yıl ahs 60 14.3 zübeyde hanım ahs 60 14.3 yahya kemal beyatlı ahs 60 14.3 karabük industrial vocational high school 60 14.3 total 420 100.0 grade 11th grade 210 50.0 12th grade 210 50.0 total 420 100.0 mother's educational status elementary school 152 36.2 secondary school 125 29.8 high school 96 22.9 associate degree 24 5.7 undergraduate 17 4.0 graduate 6 1.4 total 420 100.0 father's educational status elementary school 76 18.1 secondary school 127 30.2 high school 145 34.5 associate degree 31 7.4 undergraduate 31 7.4 graduate 10 2.4 total 420 100.0 place where the participant grew up metropolitan 34 8.1 province 297 70.7 district 66 15.7 village-town 23 5.5 total 420 100.0 note: *p<0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 608-615 611 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. self-confidence levels of the participants according to gender variable. sub-dimensions gender n mean s.d. t p-value internal self-confidence male 202 58.82 10.36 0.746 0.456 female 217 58.07 10.15 external self-confidence male 202 59.50 10.10 0.967 0.334 female 217 58.55 10.05 note: *p>0.05. in the study, according to table 2, the self-confidence scale, and total scores of the sub-dimensions of the scale do not show a statistically significant difference (p> 0.05). table-3. self-confidence levels of the participants according to the variable of high school where they are educated. subdimensions high school where the participant is educated n mean s.d. f p-value difference internal selfconfidence 1karabük demir çelik ahs 60 59.95 12.92 2.147 0.047 1-6 2-6 4-6 5-6 7-6 2cumhuriyet ahs 60 59.75 4.42 3kıymet mustafa ahs 60 57.53 9.62 4karabuk 75. yıl ahs 60 59.57 8.13 5-zübeyde hanım ahs 60 58.35 12.57 6yahya kemal beyatlı ahs 60 54.53 11.43 7karabük industrial vocational high school 60 59.36 9.45 external selfconfidence 1karabük demir çelik ahs 60 61.81 11.42 3.734 0.001 1-6 2-6 4-6 7-6 2cumhuriyet ahs 60 60.13 4.54 3kıymet mustafa ahs 60 57.53 9.45 4karabuk 75. yıl ahs 60 60.22 9.67 5-zübeyde hanım ahs 60 58.05 12.53 6yahya kemal beyatlı ahs 60 54.58 10.93 7karabük industrial vocational high school 60 60.80 8.52 note: *p<0.05. when table 3 is examined, statistical significances were found in the self-confidence scale and sub-dimensions of the scale according to the high schools where the participants were educated (p<0.05). yahya kemal beyatlı high school students' self-confidence levels scores are lower than other high schools. table-4. self-confidence levels of the participants according to mother's educational status. sub-dimensions mother's educational status n mean s.d. f p-value difference internal self-confidence 1elementary school 152 57.50 8.87 1.683 0.137 2secondary school 124 59.43 9.90 3high school 96 57.56 12.29 4associate degree 24 62.75 11.19 5undergraduate 17 59.65 8.78 6graduate 6 54.83 11.72 external self-confidence 1elementary school 152 57.39 9.03 3.530 0.004 1-4 2-4 3-4 2secondary school 124 59.15 9.27 3high school 96 58.99 12.15 4associate degree 24 65.88 10.00 5undergraduate 17 62.24 6.33 6graduate 6 61.33 13.05 note: *p<0.05. when table 4 is examined in the study, the "external confidence", which is a sub-dimension of the selfconfidence scale, differs statistically (p <0.05). the mean score of the participants whose mother educational status is associate degree was found to be higher than primary school, middle school, and high school. no statistical significance was found in the internal self-confidence which is the other sub-dimension of the self-confidence scale (p> 0.05). table -5. self-confidence levels of the participants according to father's educational status sub-dimensions father's educational status n mean s.d. f p-value difference internal selfconfidence 1elementary school 76 56.24 11.31 1.079 0.371 2secondary school 126 58.29 9.63 3high school 145 59.23 10.59 4associate degree 31 60.23 10.02 5undergraduate 31 58.68 8.97 6graduate 10 59.00 8.38 external selfconfidence 1elementary school 76 56.43 10.59 2.287 0.045 1-3 1-4 2secondary school 126 58.10 9.92 3high school 145 60.17 10.25 4associate degree 31 61.90 7.76 5undergraduate 31 60.13 9.73 6graduate 10 61.10 9.46 note: *p>0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 608-615 612 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 5 is examined, a statistical difference was found in the "external confidence" which is a subdimension of the self-confidence scale (p<0.05). according to the data obtained, the mean scores of external selfconfidence of the participants whose father's educational status was the associate degree was found to be higher than their other educational status. no statistical significance was found in the internal confidence sub-dimension (p> 0.05). table-6. self-confidence levels according to the variable of place where the participant grew up. sub-dimensions place where the participants grew up n mean s.d. f p-value internal self-confidence metropolitan 34 60.12 8.15 0.406 0.749 province 296 58.16 10.45 district 66 58.82 8.81 village-town 23 58.39 14.07 external self-confidence metropolitan 34 61.38 7.11 0.833 0.476 province 296 58.64 10.59 district 66 59.20 8.37 village-town 23 59.91 11.37 note: *p>0.05. when table 6 was examined in our study, no statistical significance was found between the self-confidence scale and sub-dimension scores of the scale according to the variable of place where the participants grew up (p> 0.05). table-7. metacognitive levels of the participants according to gender variable. sub-dimensions gender n mean s.d. t p-value positive meta-worries male 202 13.43 4.26 0.260 0.795 female 218 13.33 3.63 negative meta-worries male 202 16.08 3.50 0.144 0.886 female 218 16.13 3.48 superstitions male 202 16.12 3.27 0.672 0.502 female 218 15.91 3.16 cognitive monitoring male 202 17.21 3.47 0.008 0.994 female 218 17.22 3.93 note: *p>0.05. when table 7 is examined, no statistical significance was determined in the mean scores of the participants' metacognitive levels and sub-dimensions (p> 0.05). table-8. metacognitive levels of the participants according to variable of high school where they are educated. sub-dimensions high school where the participant is educated n mean s.d. f p-value difference positive metaworries 1karabük demir çelik ahs 60 13.12 4.62 2.310 0.033 1-3 2cumhuriyet ahs 60 13.05 3.37 3kıymet mustafa ahs 60 14.53 3.56 4karabuk 75. yıl ahs 60 12.27 3.85 5-zübeyde hanım ahs 60 13.67 4.79 6yahya kemal beyatlı ahs 60 12.92 3.51 7karabük industrial vocational high school 60 14.07 3.32 negative metaworries 1karabük demir çelik ahs 60 16.92 4.57 1.908 0.078 2cumhuriyet ahs 60 16.00 1.83 3kıymet mustafa ahs 60 16.07 2.80 4karabuk 75. yıl ahs 60 16.50 4.17 5-zübeyde hanım ahs 60 15.98 3.74 6yahya kemal beyatlı ahs 60 14.93 3.06 7karabük industrial vocational high school 60 16.37 3.30 superstitions 1karabük demir çelik ahs 60 16.13 4.34 0.427 0.861 2cumhuriyet ahs 60 15.83 1.62 3kıymet mustafa ahs 60 16.23 3.16 4karabuk 75. yıl ahs 60 15.83 3.16 5-zübeyde hanım ahs 60 15.90 3.67 6yahya kemal beyatlı ahs 60 15.70 3.00 7karabük industrial vocational high school 60 16.47 2.99 cognitive monitoring 1karabük demir çelik ahs 60 17.42 4.37 2.249 0.038 1-2 2cumhuriyet ahs 60 16.07 1.62 3kıymet mustafa ahs 60 16.87 3.22 4karabuk 75. yıl ahs 60 17.58 3.34 5-zübeyde hanım ahs 60 17.63 4.25 6yahya kemal beyatlı ahs 60 16.72 2.40 7karabük industrial vocational high school 60 18.22 5.26 note: *p<0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 608-615 613 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 8 is examined in our study, according to the high school variable of the participants, "positive meta-worries and cognitive monitoring" sub-dimensions from the metacognitive scale and the sub-dimensions of the scale, show statistical significance (p <0.05). no statistical difference was found in the negative meta-worries and superstitions sub-dimensions (p> 0.05). table-9. metacognitive levels of the participants according to the variable of mother's educational status. sub-dimensions mother's educational status n mean s.d. f p-value positive meta-worries 1elementary school 152 13.42 3.81 1.449 0.206 2secondary school 125 13.07 3.83 3high school 96 13.49 4.33 4associate degree 24 14.58 4.10 5undergraduate 17 12.00 3.06 6graduate 6 15.67 3.14 negative meta-worries 1elementary school 152 15.75 3.43 0.938 0.456 2secondary school 125 16.07 3.77 3high school 96 16.43 3.10 4associate degree 24 16.42 3.59 5undergraduate 17 16.76 3.65 6graduate 6 17.83 3.43 superstitions 1elementary school 152 15.81 2.99 0.801 0.550 2secondary school 125 16.13 3.26 3high school 96 16.11 3.55 4associate degree 24 16.96 3.33 5undergraduate 17 15.24 2.68 6graduate 6 15.67 3.20 cognitive monitoring 1elementary school 152 16.99 4.15 0.810 0.543 2secondary school 125 17.37 3.43 3high school 96 17.34 3.30 4associate degree 24 18.21 3.49 5undergraduate 17 16.41 3.68 6graduate 6 16.00 5.06 note: *p>0.05. when table 9 is examined in the study, the sub-dimensions of the metacognitive scale of the mother's educational level variable do not differ statistically (p> 0.05). table -10. metacognitive levels of the participants according to fathers' educational level. sub-dimensions mother's educational status n mean s.d. f p-value positive meta-worries 1elementary school 76 14.13 3.76 1.805 0.111 2secondary school 127 13.39 3.85 3high school 145 12.73 3.98 4associate degree 31 14.29 4.63 5undergraduate 31 13.26 3.57 6graduate 10 14.30 3.74 negative meta-worries 1elementary school 76 16.28 3.30 0.508 0.770 2secondary school 127 15.90 3.43 3high school 145 15.95 3.73 4associate degree 31 16.71 3.23 5undergraduate 31 16.58 3.18 6graduate 10 16.50 3.84 superstitions 1elementary school 76 15.96 3.34 0.500 0.776 2secondary school 127 15.91 3.04 3high school 145 16.18 3.31 4associate degree 31 16.52 3.24 5undergraduate 31 15.58 3.44 6graduate 10 15.20 2.44 cognitive monitoring 1elementary school 76 16.89 5.05 0.696 0.626 2secondary school 127 17.28 3.20 3high school 145 16.99 3.55 4associate degree 31 17.84 3.25 5undergraduate 31 17.81 3.12 6graduate 10 18.20 3.39 note: *p>0.05. when table 10 is examined, the sub-dimensions of the metacognitive scale of father's educational status variable do not show statistical significance (p> 0.05). when table 11 was examined, no statistically difference was found in the sub-dimensions of the metacognitive scale of the variable of the place where the participants grew up (p> 0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 608-615 614 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table -11. metacognitive levels of the participants according to the variable of the place where they grew up. sub-dimensions mother's educational status n mean s.d. f p-value positive meta-worries 1metropolitan 34 13.09 3.55 0.093 0.093 2province 297 13.43 3.91 3district 66 13.30 4.17 4village-town 23 13.26 4.35 negative meta-worries 1metropolitan 34 15.53 4.04 0.490 0.690 2province 297 16.22 3.38 3district 66 15.91 3.27 4village-town 23 16.09 4.51 superstitions 1metropolitan 34 15.82 3.61 0.149 0.930 2province 297 16.01 3.12 3district 66 16.21 3.09 4village-town 23 15.83 4.22 cognitive monitoring 1metropolitan 34 16.88 3.71 0.241 0.867 2province 297 17.24 3.82 3district 66 17.11 3.08 4village-town 23 17.70 4.06 note: *p>0.05. table -12. the relationship between the self-confidence scale and metacognitive scale scores of the participants sub-dimensions values positive meta-worries negative metaworries superstitions cognitive monitoring internal self-confidence r -.082 -.069 -.044 ,125* p-value ,093 ,159 ,368 ,010 external self-confidence r -.054 -.074 -.036 ,104* p-value ,272 ,132 ,459 ,033 note: *p<0.05. as can be understood from table 11 a statistically positive significant relationship was found between the internal self-confidence and external self-confidence scores, which are the sub-dimensions of the self-confidence scale, and the cognitive monitoring sub-dimension, which is one of the sub-dimensions of the metacognitive scale (p <0.05). 4. discussion conclusion as a result of the analysis, according to table 2, the self-confidence levels of the participants according to the gender variable do not show a statistically significant difference. in a study conducted by bostancı, ozen, yıldız, and uzüm (2016) in the self-confidence levels of students were examined and found results that support our study. it was emphasized that students' gender variables did not make any difference in terms of self-confidence perception scores. when the metacognitive levels of the participants according to the gender variable are examined in table 7, no statistical significance could be determined. in a study conducted by spence, yore, and williams (1999) it was emphasized that there was not statistically difference between the metacognitive levels of male and female students. this study also supports our study. in the studies conducted, it was observed that female students' metacognitive levels had statistically higher scores than male students and a significant difference was observed. when table 8 is examined in our study, according to the high school variable of the participants, "positive meta-worries and cognitive monitoring" sub-dimensions from the metacognitive scale and the sub-dimensions of the scale, show statistical significance. considering this result, the analysis results of the 2nd and 3rd study questions in the study conducted by akalin (2008) showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the average scores of male and female students on the metacognitive efficiency scale according to their grades in favor of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades for both girls and boys. in the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th questions of the study, it was not revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the average scores of male and female students at the same level from the metacognitive activity scale. when table 9 is examined in the study, the sub-dimensions of the metacognitive scale of the mother's educational status variable do not differ statistically. in the study conducted by demir and ozmen (2011) when the education levels and professions of the mothers are taken into account, a significant difference is observed in the total uncontrollability and danger, cognitive awareness and metacognition; according to the mother's educational level; according to the mother's profession, there is a significant difference in the sub-dimension of need for thought control. it is observed that students whose mothers were university graduates revealed a significant difference in both uncontrollability and danger, cognitive awareness total scores, and metacognition total scores. considering all the findings and related researches obtained, it is seen that metacognitive skill plays an important role in students' success. in addition to this, it was observed that the success levels of students who developed the metacognitive strategy increased. in modeling, teachers can draw the attention of students to this area by presenting slices from their own lives and enable them to learn their skills in this area. based on this, education that will improve students' metacognitive skills should be provided in all educational processes. having students' self-confidence positively affects their beliefs that they will do any activity more successfully. it should not be forgotten that individuals with high self-confidence have high levels of success and they are at peace with themselves. references akagündüz, n. 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(1999). the effects of explicit science reading instruction on selected grade 7 students' metacognition and comprehension of specific science text. journal of elementary science education, 11(2), 15-30. available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03173836. sternberg, r. j. (1988). intelligence applied. orlando, fl: harcourt brace jovanovich. tosun, a., & irak, m. (2008). turkish adaptation, validity, reliability, anxiety and its relationship with obsessive-compulsive symptoms of metacognition scale-30. turkish journal of psychiatry, 19(1), 67-80. wylie, r. (1961). the self concept. lincoln: university of nebraska press. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 583 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 583-591, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.583.591 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group comparison of the socialization levels of secondary school students in terms of some variables alp eren aydin1 nuri topsakal2 nurper ozbar 3 ( corresponding author) 1duzce university, institute of health sciences, department of physical education and sports, duzce, turkey. 2,3duzce university, faculty of sport sciences, duzce, turkey. abstract this study was carried out to compare the socialization levels of secondary school students in terms of some variables. data were obtained from secondary school students (n=565) studying in a province in western turkey. “socialization scale” and “socialization in sports scale” developed by sahan (2007) were used as data collection tools. the reliability coefficient of the socialization scale was 0.77, and the reliability coefficient of the socialization in sports scale was 0.84. descriptive statistics, kolmogorov smirnov test, mann whitney u test, and kruskal wallis test were used to analyze the data. as a result of the analysis, there were no differences in the socialization levels of the students in terms of age, licensed sports year, and sports branch variables (p>0.05), while a significant difference was found in the gender variable (p<0.05). significant differences were observed in the socialization level of the students in terms of the class variable (p<0.05) and the father’s educational status variable (p<0.01). a significant difference was found at the level of p<0.01 in the socialization, and the level of socialization in sports at the p<0.05 level of the students in terms of the mother’s educational status variable. in terms of the frequency of doing sports, a significant difference was observed at the p<0.05 level in the socialization of students in sports. keywords: education, socialization, sports, sports background secondary school, student. citation | alp eren aydin; nuri topsakal; nurper ozbar (2020). comparison of the socialization levels of secondary school students in terms of some variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 583-591. history: received: 10 july 2020 revised: 17 august 2020 accepted: 21 september 2020 published: 1 october 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 584 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 584 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 585 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 588 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 590 6. limitations ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 590 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 591 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.583.591&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2200 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 583-591 584 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature sport helps social values, which are of great importance in society, to be formed and sustained on individuals, provides a space for individuals to socialize, and also contributes to their psycho-social development. considering these positive contributions of sports, our study aimed to contribute to the literature by comparing the socialization levels of middle school students in terms of some variables. 1. introduction sport is one of the key elements in today’s modern societies that enable people to develop mentally, emotionally, and physically, facilitate teamwork, and ensure cooperation and solidarity. in addition to providing various physical activities, sport is a phenomenon that provides people with personal and social status, adds a sense of belonging to a group, and also helps the socialization process of the individual. sport helps social values, which are of great importance in society, to be formed and sustained on individuals, provides a space for individuals to socialize, and also contributes to their psycho-social development. socialization ensures that culture is passed down from generation to generation and that people comply with social norms determined in social life. in this context, socialization can be expressed as one of the main elements that constitute the individual's personality and self (kucuk & koc, 2013). people grow up with physical activities and games that reflect the cultural values of their society since childhood. playing and physical activities provide individuals with an awareness of their role, rules, and norms, and contribute to the development of a person’s skills, emotional structure, and personality traits. in addition, the person has the ability to communicate and cooperate with the environment and other people. especially organized sports make a significant contribution to the social and personal development of individuals. considering all these, sports can be considered as one of the effective activities in the socialization process (bulgu & akcan, 2003). the socialization process starts from the birth of the person and continues throughout life. adolescence and childhood are the years of first and long-term socialization. socialization reveals cultural phenomena and values, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to the models that a person will take place in society (berber, 2011). in order for a person to socialize in a positive way, some functions must occur together. these can be considered as knowledge, repetition, social support, and reactions of others (ozkalp, 2005). sport is a socialization tool that has entered the social life in various ways, directly or indirectly connected to people, and has managed to attract the attention of society. sports, which makes people dependent on themselves by meeting the indispensable pleasures, demands, and needs of the society, has become an important socialization tool in today’s modern societies (caha, 1999). when socialization is considered as a means of developing behavior in accordance with the values of the society in which the individual lives, sports are seen as an indispensable element for the individual to shape himself. especially the use of sports in education at schools is very important in terms of ensuring the development of students. sports contribute a lot to the shaping and development of students’ personality (inel, 1996). one of the most important functions of sports is to create a feeling of belonging to a group in individuals. the feeling of belonging is one of the important values for a person in the socialization process. sport has an important place in creating a sense of belonging to the nation, family, and team, in achieving a certain status in the society, and in the formation of the role that the individual takes. success in the field of sports will contribute to the increase of the feelings mentioned and the socialization of individuals (ozdinç, 2005). based on the above information, this study aimed to compare the socialization levels of secondary school students in terms of some variables. in this context, answers to the following research questions were sought: rq 1. are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the age variable? rq 2. are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the gender variable? rq 3. are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the class variable? rq 4. are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the mother’s educational status variable? rq 5. are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the father’s educational status variable? rq 6. are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the licensed sports year variable? rq 7. are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the sports branch variable? rq 8. are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the frequency of doing sports variable? 2. method 2.1. research purpose the purpose of this study is to compare the socialization levels of licensed secondary school students in sports according to variables such as age, gender, class, mother’s educational status, father’s educational status, licensed sports year, sports branch, and frequency of doing sports. 2.2. sample size the sample of this study consists of licensed students who study at four secondary schools in the central district of duzce province, turkey. a simple random sampling method was used in the study, and 565 students who volunteered to participate for the study were reached. the characteristics of the sample group according to some variables are shown in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 583-591 585 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. frequency and percentage distributions of students according to some variables. variables categories f % age 11 165 29.2 12 122 21.6 13 117 20.7 14 161 28.5 total 565 100 gender female 225 39.8 male 340 60.2 total 565 100 class 5 151 26.7 6 145 25.7 7 114 20.2 8 155 27.4 total 565 100 mother’s educational status no education 9 1.6 primary/secondary 248 43.9 lycee 207 36.7 university 101 17.8 total 565 100 father’s educational status no education 6 1.1 primary/secondary 160 28.3 lycee 255 45.1 university 144 25.5 total 565 100 licensed sports year 1-2 367 64.9 3-4 151 26.8 5-6 42 7.4 more than 7 5 0.9 total 565 100 sports branch team sports 361 63.8 individual sports 204 36.2 total 565 100 frequency of doing sports every weekday 140 24.8 three days a week 184 32.5 only weekends 69 12.2 sometimes 96 17.1 others 76 13.4 total 565 100 note: f= frequency; %= percentage. table 1 shows the distribution of 565 licensed sports students in terms of various variables. 2.3. measurement instrument as data collection tools, the “socialization scale” and “socialization in sports scale” developed by sahan (2007) were used to determine the socialization levels of students in sports. the first part of the scale form consists of personal and demographic information, the second part is a 34-item socialization scale, and the third part is a 35-item socialization in sports scale. original reliability values of the scale reflect 0.77 for socialization scale and 0.84 for socialization in sports scale. more than 0.70 is considered reliable in terms of social sciences. 2.4. statistical analysis frequency and percentage were used in the descriptive statistics of the data. normality tests of the scales were performed using the kolmogorov smirnov test. since the data are not normally distributed, nonparametric tests were applied. mann whitney u test was used to compare two groups, and the kruskal wallis test was applied to compare three or more groups. mann whitney u test was used to make pairwise comparisons in groups with differences. the level of significance in the statistical results of the data was accepted as 0.05. 3. findings in this section, there are findings related to group differences in the socialization levels of students within variables such as age, gender, class, mother’s educational status, father’s educational status, licensed sports year, sports branch, and frequency of doing sports. problem questions (rq) are given below and the results of the tests applied to determine whether there is a significant difference between the variables are presented. rq1: are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the age variable? the results of the kruskal wallis test conducted to find an answer to the question are shown in table 2. in terms of socialization, no difference was found between the groups according to the kruskal wallis test results of the age variable (x²=6.790; sd=3; p>0.05). similarly, no difference also was found between the groups regarding socialization in sports (father²=2.376; sd=3; p>0.05), table 2. rq2: are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the gender variable? the results of the mann whitney u test conducted to find an answer to the question are shown in table 3. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 583-591 586 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. comparison of socialization levels of students according to the age variable. scales age n mean rank sd x² p socialization 11 165 268.72 3 6.790 0.079 12 122 266.36 13 117 313.57 14 161 288.03 total 565 socialization in sports 11 165 279.97 3 2.376 0.498 12 122 269.59 13 117 301.45 14 161 282.85 total 565 note: *p>0.05. table-3. comparison of socialization levels of students according to the gender variable. scales gender n mean rank sum of ranks u p socialization female 225 300.67 67650.00 34275.000 0.036* male 340 271.31 92245.00 total 565 socialization in sports female 225 300.47 67606.00 34319.000 0.038* male 340 271.44 92289.00 total 565 note: *p<0.05. table 3 shows that there are significant differences between the groups in the gender variable in terms of socialization according to the results of the mann whitney u test (u=34275.000; p<0.05). similarly, there are significant differences between the groups in terms of socialization in sports in the gender variable (u=34319.000; p<0.05). rq3: are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the class variable? the results of the kruskal wallis test and mann whitney u test conducted to find an answer to the question are shown in table 4. table-4. comparison of socialization levels of students according to the class variable. scales class n mean rank sd x² p significant difference socialization 5th 151 263.39 3 9.893 0.019* 5th-7th class 6th-7th class 6th 145 265.60 7th 114 319.25 8th 155 291.72 total 565 socialization in sports 5 151 268.37 3 5.233 0.156 6 145 272.79 7 114 311.17 8 155 286.09 total 565 note: *p<0.01. table 4 indicates that there are significant differences between the groups in the kruskal wallis test results of the class variable in terms of socialization (x²=9.893; sd=3; p<0.05). mann whitney u test was applied to determine among which classes the socialization scores were significant. according to the test results, there was no significant difference between 5th and 6th grades (u=10848.500; p>0.05), 5th and 8th grades (u=10569.500; p>0.05), 6th and 8th grades (u=10166.500; p>0.05), and 7th and 8th grades (u=7982.500; p>0.05). however, there were significant differences between the 5th and 7th grades (u=6878.000; p<0.05) and 6th and 7th grades (u=6714.500; p<0.05). on the other hand, there are no significant differences between the groups in the kruskal wallis test results of the class variable in terms of socialization in sports (x²=5.233; sd=3; p>0.05). rq4: are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the mother’s educational status variable? the results of the kruskal wallis test and mann whitney u test conducted to find an answer to the question are shown in table 5. table-5. comparison of socialization levels of students according to the mother’s educational status variable. scales mother’s educational status n mean rank sd x² p significant difference socialization no education 9 214.22 3 22.188 0.000* no–uni p/s–uni hs–uni primary/secondary (p/s) 248 260.36 high school (hs) 207 281.62 university (uni) 101 347.55 total 565 socialization in sports no education 9 213.00 3 8.414 0.038** primary/secondary (p/s) 248 271.62 p/s–uni high school (hs) 207 281.05 hs–uni university (uni) 101 321.17 total 565 note: *p<0.01; **p<0.05. table 5 indicates that there are significant differences between the groups in the kruskal wallis test results of the mother’s educational status variable in terms of socialization (x²=22.188; sd=3; p<0.01). mann whitney u test asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 583-591 587 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group was applied to determine among which the educational status the socialization scores were significant. according to the test results, there was no significant difference between “no education” and “primary/secondary education” levels (u=912.000; p>0.05). similarly, there was no significant difference between “no education” and “high school education” levels (u=706.500; p>0.05). there was a significant difference between “no education” and “university” levels (u=264.500; p<0.05). there was no significant difference between “primary/secondary education” and “high school education” levels (u=23700.000; p>0.05). there was a significant difference between “primary/secondary education” and “university” levels (u=8672.500; p<0.05). there was a significant difference between “high school education” and “university” levels (u=7975.500; p<0.05). table 5 also shows that there are significant differences between the groups in the kruskal wallis test results of the mother’s educational status variable in terms of socialization in sports (x²=8.414; sd=3; p<0.05). mann whitney u test was applied to determine among which the educational status the socialization in sports scores were significant. according to the test results, there was no significant difference between “no education” and “primary/secondary education” levels (u=884.500; p>0.05). there was no significant difference between “no education” and “high school education” levels (u=707.000; p>0.05). there was no significant difference between “no education” and “university” levels (u=280.500; p>0.05). there was no significant difference between “primary/secondary education” and “high school education” levels (u=23700.000; p>0.05). there was a significant difference between “primary/secondary education” and “university” levels (u=10336.500; p<0.05). there was a significant difference between “high school education” and “university” levels (u=8960.000; p<0.05). rq5: are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the father’s educational status variable? the results of the kruskal wallis test and mann whitney u test conducted to find an answer to the question are shown in table 6. table-6. comparison of socialization levels of students according to the father’s educational status variable. scales father’s educational status n mean rank sd x² p significant difference socialization no education 8 161.25 primary/secondary (p/s) 160 255.30 no–uni high school (hs) 254 283.61 3 13.210 0.004* p/s–uni university (uni) 143 314.08 total 565 socialization in sports no education 8 226.42 primary/secondary (p/s) 160 267.80 high school (hs) 255 280.60 3 4.274 0.233 university (uni) 142 302.86 total 565 note: *p<0.01. table 6 indicates that there are significant differences between the groups in the kruskal wallis test results of the father’s educational status variable in terms of socialization (x²=13.210; sd=3; p<0.01). mann whitney u test was applied to determine among which the educational status the socialization scores were significant. according to the test results, there was no significant difference between “no education” and “primary/secondary education” levels (u=330.000; p>0.05). similarly, there was no significant difference between “no education” and “high school education” levels (u=414.500; p>0.05). there was a significant difference between “no education” and “university” levels (u=202.500; p<0.05). there was no significant difference between “primary/secondary education” and “high school education” levels (u=18214.500; p>0.05). there was a significant difference between “primary/secondary education” and “university” levels (u=9123.000; p<0.05). there was no significant difference between “high school education” and “university” levels (u=16118.000; p>0.05). table 6, on the other hand, indicates that there is no significant difference between the groups in the kruskal wallis test results of the father’s educational status variable in terms of socialization in sports (x²=4.274; sd=3; p<0.01). rq6: are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the licensed sports year variable? the results of the kruskal wallis test conducted to find an answer to the question are shown in table 7. table-7. comparison of socialization levels of students according to the licensed sports year variable. scales licensed sports year n mean rank sd x² p socialization 1-2 367 278.26 3 1.687 0.640 3-4 151 294.83 5-6 41 281.78 more than 7 5 227.40 total 564 socialization in sports 1-2 367 278.42 3 2.518 0.472 3-4 151 296.89 5-6 41 275.00 more than 7 5 208.80 total 564 note: p>0.05. in terms of socialization, no difference was found between the groups according to the kruskal wallis test results of the licensed sports year variable (x²=1.687; sd=3; p>0.05). similarly, no difference also was found between the groups regarding socialization in sports (x²=2.518; sd=3; p>0.05), table 7. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 583-591 588 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group rq7: are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the sports branch variable? the results of the kruskal wallis test conducted to find an answer to the question are shown in table 8. table-8. comparison of socialization levels of students according to the sports branch variable. scales sports branch n mean rank sd x² p socialization football 169 263.36 6 8.322 0.215 basketball 55 263.29 volleyball 128 310.47 handball 9 268.06 gymnastics 15 264.97 athletics 37 264.84 other 151 294.15 total 564 socialization in sports football 169 269.72 6 4.737 0.537 basketball 55 291.71 volleyball 128 296.50 handball 9 233.06 gymnastics 15 300.47 athletics 37 312.73 other 151 275.34 total 564 note: p>0.05 in terms of socialization, no difference was found between the groups according to the kruskal wallis test results of the sports branch variable (x²=8.322; sd=6; p>0.05). similarly, no difference also was found between the groups regarding socialization in sports (x²=4.737; sd=6; p>0.05), table 8. rq8: are there significant differences in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the frequency of doing sports variable? the results of the kruskal wallis test and mann whitney u test conducted to find an answer to the question are shown in table 9. table-9. comparison of socialization levels of students according to the frequency of doing sports variable. scales frequency of doing sports n mean rank sd x² p significant difference socialization every weekday 140 295.64 4 7.458 0.114 three days a week 184 275.28 only weekends 69 243.31 sometimes 95 280.79 others 75 310.15 total 563 socialization in sports every weekday 140 310.65 4 11.033 0.026* a-b a-c b-d d-c three days a week 184 264.17 only weekends 69 266.17 sometimes 95 262.53 others 75 311.47 total 563 note: **p<0.05; a=every weekday; b=three days a week; c=sometimes; d=other table 9 indicates that there is no significant difference between the groups in the kruskal wallis test results of the frequency of doing sports variable in terms of socialization (x²=7.458; sd=4; p>0.05). however, there are significant differences between the groups in the kruskal wallis test results of the frequency of doing sports variable in terms of socialization in sports (x²=11.033; sd=4; p<0.05). mann whitney u test was applied to determine among which frequency of time level the socialization scores were significant. according to the test results, there was significant difference between “every weekday” and “three days a week” levels (u=10767.000; p<0.05). there was no significant difference between “every weekday” and “only weekends” levels (u=4082.000; p>0.05). there was significant difference between “every weekday” and “sometimes” levels (u=5488.500; p<0.05). there was no significant difference between “every weekday” and “others” levels (u=5239.000; p>0.05). there was no significant difference between “three days a week” and “only weekends” levels (u=6286.000; p>0.05). there was no significant difference between “three days a week” and “sometimes” levels (u=8684.000; p>0.05). there was significant difference between “three days a week” and “others” levels (u=5739.000; p<0.05). there was no significant difference between “only weekends” and “sometimes” levels (u=3272.500; p>0.05). there was no significant difference between “only weekends” and “others” levels (u=2176.500; p>0.05). there was significant difference between “others” and “sometimes” levels (u=2935.500; p<0.05). 4. discussion this study was carried out to compare the socialization levels of secondary school students in terms of some variables such as age, gender, class, mother’s educational status, father’s educational status, licensed sports year, sports branch, and frequency of doing sports. according to the findings of the age variable in our study, there was no significant difference between the groups in the levels of “socialization” and “socialization in sports”. according to this result, it can be said that the age variable does not have a determining effect on the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students who do sports. the fact that the age groups of the students participating in the study are close to each other may have been effective in the emergence of such a result. in the literature, there are researches that support the findings asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 583-591 589 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in our study (karaca, 2012; merter, 2013) as well as researches that do not (erdoğdu, 2018; gök, 2016; yıldız, 2015). when the researches in the literature are examined, merter (2013) which had one of the similar studies, did not find any statistically significant difference between the group averages of social-emotional learning skills of secondary school students. 206 students participated in the study of (karaca, 2012) titled “examining the personal adaptation and socialization levels of athletes in middle education institutions”. according to the results of the study, no significant difference was observed between age levels. researches that differ from the result of our study are as follows. erdoğdu (2018) in his study, found that the communication skills of the youth in the 17-20, 21-24, and 25-28 age groups according to the age variable were higher than the young people in the 13-16 age group. gök (2016) in his study involving students aged 16-17-18, observed that socialization levels increased as the age of the participants increased. yıldız (2015) in his study, found that the socialization levels of students under the age of 19 were lower than those of 20-22 and 23-25. the author also observed that the socialization levels of students over 26 were lower than those of other age groups. further, it has been observed that as the age increases, students’ ability to do sports and their frequency of doing sports increases, thus contributing significantly to the socialization levels of the students. the levels of “socialization” and “socializing in sports” of the female students participating in our study were found to be significantly higher than the male students. according to this result, it can be said that the gender variable has a significant effect on the socialization and sports socialization levels of the students who participated in the study. this difference seen in our study is thought to be due to the developmental characteristics of female students and the fact that girls are more present in social environments than male students. gender differences are directly related to early adolescence, maturing, and developing relations with the environment in this period, affecting the socialization levels as a result of communication, these periods when children are in question. it is more common for children to interact more with their environment during this period and to be less affected by this change through sports and mood swings. there are other studies in the literature that support this finding obtained in our study (altınköprü, 2001; dodson, 2007; duran, celiköz, & topaloğlu, 2013; ocal & kamerkaya, 2014; ozcan & yıldırım, 2011; sahan, 2007). in this context, when the studies are examined, dodson (2007) argues that females have faster social development compared to males, mature earlier, and are more compatible than males. altınköprü (2001) found in his study that females have a higher level of cooperation and socialization tendency compared to males. in addition, the author observed that males tend to be lonelier than females, and, at a 50-minute observation period, on average, females chose 20 minutes of loneliness and males chose 33 minutes of loneliness. duran et al. (2013) observed in their studies on middle school students that females have higher socialization levels than males. sahan (2007) in his study to find the role of sports activities in the socialization process of university students, reported that the socialization level of females was higher than males. ocal and kamerkaya (2014) in their study on secondary school students staying in orphanages, reported that female students had higher social skill levels than male students. similarly, kandir and orçan (2011) observed that girls perform better than boys in social skills in all age groups. ozcan and yıldırım (2011) found in their studies to compare the social skill levels of secondary school students, they found a significant difference in favor of female students between those who are licensed team sports and individual sports and those who do not do sports. in addition, chaplin, cole, and zahnwaxler (2005) found that females are more obedient and exhibit less maladaptive behaviors than males. our study indicated that the grade level variable had a significant effect on students' socialization levels, but not on socialization in sports. the findings of our study showed that the socialization level of seventh-grade students was higher than the fifth and sixth-grade students. accordingly, it can be said that the higher the class level, the higher the socialization level. however, it was determined that there was no significant difference between the socialization levels of the seventh and eighth-grade students, and the average of the seventh-grade students was higher. according to this result, it can be said that the lgs exam negatively affects the socialization levels of eighth-grade students. it can be said that the reasons such as the students in the eighth grade focusing on the success of the exam for the education at the next level, increasing their studying hours, and having anxiety of failure in the exam have a decreasing effect on their level of socialization. in the literature review on the subject, we came across the research of duran et al. (2013) related to determining the social skill levels of middle school students, including 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students. in this study, as the grade level increased, the socialization level of the students decreased, but this result is not consistent with our study. this may be due to differences in variables such as physical and psychological environment, socio-economic level, environmental factors, and parents’ education levels of the secondary schools. erdimez (2016) in his study on physical education and sports students in a university, found that there was no statistically significant difference between sports and socialization levels according to the class variable. according to the results of this research, the class variable does not affect the level of sports and socialization and therefore does not coincide with the results of our study. this result may be due to the difference between the age levels of the students in both studies and the fact that the students in the other study received training on sports at their school. aytan (2010) in his study, examined the socialization status of the students attending the first and upper classes in secondary education and found that there was no difference between them. considering that the age of the students will increase as the class levels increase, it can be said that the age difference in secondary education does not affect socialization. therefore, this study does not coincide with our study. the findings of our study showed that the levels of students’ “socialization” and “socialization in sports” differ significantly according to the education level of the mother. accordingly, as mothers’ educational status increase, students’ levels of “socialization” and “socialization in sports” also increases. the socialization levels of students whose mothers are university graduates are higher than those whose mothers are illiterate and graduated from primary/secondary and high school. in addition, students whose mothers are university graduates have higher levels of socialization in sports than those whose mothers are primary/secondary and high school graduates. among the reasons for this situation, because mothers are more cultured and more conscious, directing their children to social environments, encouraging their children to be in such environments, and directing their children to sports. there are different studies in the literature that support this finding we obtained in our study. in one of these studies, sahan (2007) found in his study to determine the role of sports activities in the socialization process of university students, that the education level of parents directly affects socialization in sports. sunay and saracaloğlu (2003) determined in their study that there is a relationship between family support and participation in sports. in a study conducted in 15 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 583-591 590 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sports branches and 551 athletes, the family variable ranked first in the order of the factors that encourage sports. it has also been found that the family plays a very important role in encouraging children to do sports (donuk, balcıoğlu, senduran, & ulker, 2003). in the study, the socialization levels of students in socialization and sports differ significantly according to the father’s education variable. sahan (2007) in his study to find out the role of sports activities in the socialization process of university students, found that the education level of parents directly affects socialization in sports. according to the results of our study, the reason why there was a significant difference in terms of the educational level of the father is that as the education level of the father increases, the socialization of children in sports increases to a higher level. as a result, in families with a high level of education, children are more consciously encouraged to do sports, so they socialize in a shorter time. the results of our study showed that the variable of years of doing sports with a license does not have a significant effect on the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students. in this study, because the age groups are at the secondary school level, there is little difference between the licensed years of the students. for this reason, there may not have been a significant difference in the “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels of the students in terms of the variable of doing sports with a license. ozcan and yıldırım (2011) found a significant difference between the groups in terms of licensed year variable in their studies, so this result supports our study. our study indicated that the sports branches of the students with license did not cause a significant difference in their “socialization” and “socialization in sports” levels. the results of car (2018) study covering the secondary school level are not similar to our study. when p <0.05 values of wrestling, athletics, and football branches are considered, it is seen that they are less than alpha value. in other words, students who are interested in wrestling, athletics, and football have higher socialization levels. it was observed that there was a significant difference in the opinion scores of the students for socialization according to the branches. the reasons why the results of this study do not overlap with our study may be due to factors such as secondary school, environmental conditions, differences in educators, and family. our study showed that the frequency of students doing sports does not affect their “socialization” levels and does not create significant differences in their “socialization in sports” levels. students who do sports every day during the week have a higher level of “socializing in sports” compared to other students. according to this result, it can be said that being more in sports environments and therefore interacting with people such as coaches, athletes, teammates (cooperating, communicating verbally and non-verbally, determining common goals, etc.) causes higher rates of socialization in students. this result of the study is similar to the study by konca, ermiş, erilli, kaplan, and berk (2018). konca et al. (2018) concluded that as the duration of students’ doing sports increases, individuals become more social and do not have difficulty in relating to their environment. 5. conclusion in summary, as a result, no significant difference was observed in the socialization levels of students in socialization and sports in terms of the age variable. in the gender variable, significant differences were found both in the “socialization” levels and “socialization in sports” levels of students. in the class variable, only significant differences were observed in the socialization levels of the students. in the mother’s educational status variable, significant differences were observed in both the “socialization” levels and the “socialization in sports” levels of the students. in the father’s educational status variable, a significant difference was found only in the socialization levels of the students. according to the licensed sports year variable, there was no significant difference in the “socialization” levels and “socialization in sports” levels of the students. similarly, in the sports branch variable, there was no significant difference in the “socialization” levels and “socialization in sports” levels of the students. finally, in the frequency of doing sports variable, only a significant difference was observed in the “socialization in sports” levels of students. 5.1. suggestions based on the findings of our study, the following suggestions can be given: • our study indicated that students who were licensed in sports had a high level of socialization in sports. therefore, sports competitions between classes can be organized within the school to increase the level of socialization of students who do not do sports with a license. in addition, students can be encouraged to do sports in inter-school competitions as licensed. • our study showed that as the education level of parents increased, “socialization” levels and “socialization in sports” levels of the students also increased. therefore, in order to raise the awareness of parents, various seminars can be organized by experts to inform about the benefits of sports and socialization at school, and students can be encouraged to do sports. • guidance services can be provided to eighth-grade students, especially by experts. thus, it can be aimed to reduce the exam anxiety of the students and increase their level of socialization by directing them to sports. • students should be directed to sports branches according to their interests and skills. for this, students can be guided through personality inventories and test applications specific to various sports branches. • various social environments can be created to increase the socialization level of male students at least as much as female students. by providing team spirit among students, their collaboration and solidarity can be increased. 6. limitations this study is limited to the students’ answers to the scale questions applied in the study and the students studying in state secondary schools in the fall semester of the 2018/2019 academic year in duzce, turkey. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 583-591 591 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references altınköprü, t. (2001). young girl psychology and sexuality. istanbul: hayat yayıncılık. aytan, g. k. (2010). effects of sports on secondary school students' socialization. gazi university, institute of educational sciences, doctorate thesis, ankara. berber, r. (2011). the effect of sports on the socialization of the hearing impaired. dumlupınar university, institute of health sciences, master thesis, kütahya. bulgu, n., & akcan, f. (2003). sports and socialization, physical education and social fields congress in sports ankara: gazi university sports high school publications. caha, o. (1999). taking a breath by leaning on sports. ankara: beta publishing. car, h. (2018). investigation of the effects of physical education lesson on socialization of middle school and imam-hatip middle school students. gazi university, master thesis, ankara. chaplin, t. m., cole, p. m., & zahn-waxler, c. (2005). parental socialization of emotion expression: gender differences and relations to child adjustment. emotion, 5(1), 80-88. available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.5.1.80. dodson, f. (2007). children's education handbook. istanbul: ravza publications. donuk, b., balcıoğlu, i̇., senduran, f., & ulker, i. (2003). psychosocial and demographic characteristics of 14-16 age group young basketball athletes living in istanbul. paper presented at the 10th i̇chber-sd european congress and sbd 8th international sports sciences congress , 17-20 november, antalya. duran, g., celiköz, n., & topaloğlu, a. (2013). determining the social skill levels of secondary school students. i̇nönü university, journal of education faculty, 14(2), 121-137. erdimez, a. (2016). examination of physical education and sports college students' socialization levels with sports according to different variables. sütçü i̇mam university, master thesis, kahramanmaras. erdoğdu, m. (2018). examining the socialization levels and communication skills of young people who benefit from leisure time organizations necmettin erbakan university, institute of health sciences, master's thesis. gök, m. (2016). examining the socialization levels of students who do active sports and do not do sports in secondary education. gazi university, master thesis, ankara. inel, m. (1996). how central is sport in identity formation? , mersin university, institute of social sciences, physical education and sports department, master thesis, mersin. kandir, a., & orçan, m. (2011). a comparative analysis of early learning skills and social adaptation and skills of 5-6 year old children. ilkogretim online, 10 (1), 40-50. karaca, y. (2012). examining the personal adaptation and socialization levels of sports students in secondary education institutions. gazi university, master thesis, ankara. konca, e., ermiş, e., erilli, n., kaplan, a., & berk, y. 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(2005). çukurova university students 'views on the relationship between sports and participation in sports with socialization. spormetre physical education and sports sciences journal, 3(2), 77-84. ozkalp, e. (2005). introduction to behavioral sciences (pp. 77-115-117). eskisehir: anadolu university open education publications. sahan, h. (2007). the role of sports activities in the socialization process of university students. selçuk university, institute of social sciences, phd thesis, konya. sunay, h., & saracaloğlu, a. s. (2003). the expectations of turkish athletes from sports and the elements that direct them to sports. spormetre physical education and sports sciences journal, 1(1), 43-48. yıldız, y. (2015). examining the socialization and happiness levels of university students who do sports and not do sports. muğla sıtkı kocaman university, institute of health sciences, master thesis, muğla. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 169 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 169-175, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.169.175 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of internet addiction levels of physical education teachers çağrı hamdi erdoğan1 ramazan topuz2 ( corresponding author) 1ministry of education, şehit ahmet cihan kilci middle school, kayseri, turkey. 2selçuk university, faculty of sport sciences, konya, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to examine the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers. in the study, the descriptive survey method was used, which aimed at revealing the existing situation. the research group was comprised of 356 physical education teachers actively working at the public schools of kayseri province in the 2019-2020 education year. in the study, personal information form and internet addiction scale were used as the data collection tools. spss program was used for the analysis of the data. according to the research results, internet addiction levels of physical education teachers was determined as “displaying no symptoms”, and according to this result, the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers was interpreted as “low level”. additionally, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers concerning age, marital status, professional experience, monthly income perception, school type, and school location; however, there was statistically no significant difference concerning the gender and sports branch. keywords: physical education, sports, psychology, teacher, internet, addiction. citation | çağrı hamdi erdoğan; ramazan topuz (2020). investigation of internet addiction levels of physical education teachers. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 169-175. history: received: 16 december 2019 revised: 27 january 2020 accepted: 2 march 2020 published: 23 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 170 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 171 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 172 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 173 5. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 174 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 174 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.169.175&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1439 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1439 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1439 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1439 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 169-175 170 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers. 1. introduction internet is a network that connects one or more technological tools such as phones, computers and tablets, enabling the communication (oztoprak, 2001). with the rapidly developing technology in today's world, the use of internet has become an indispensable part of our lives (arisoy, 2009). its active use in school, business and community life has rendered it a mandatory need in each passing day. the use of the internet has become an obligation for the daily activities in all areas ranging from official transactions to providing services for the entire nation. additionally, the internet has become irreplaceable in terms of its funny and enjoyable use (günüç, 2009). in each passing day, owing to its conveniences and opportunities, internet technology has become an indispensable part of our lives just like the television and computer. the factors underlying this phenomenon are the ease of access, variety of services and opportunities offered by the internet and similar tools, having a flexible technology, powerful visuals, and being open to interaction (esen, 2010). with the internet, users have met a new channel where they can easily access all kinds of information, long distances do not matter and quick communication with others is possible. the internet allows individuals to easily perform all kinds of activities in accordance with their tastes and desires without having too much control (aydoğdu, 2003). globalizing the world and eliminating borders, the internet provides an opportunity for people living in numerous different cities, countries, and even continents to communicate quickly and economically (kaya., 2011). eliminating the borders in global and local terms, the internet opens up new ways of communication and interaction, and by becoming a medium, where more ordinary transactions are completed in each passing day, it draws the boundaries of the daily life. on the other hand, although it offers opportunities to explore the social life, the internet threatens to damage the fundamental values of interpersonal relationships and society (denizci, 2009). internet use is seen as a way of dealing with some kind of stress. people, who are intensely distressed, anxious, and excited, spend time on the computer and provide distraction for themselves through internet, thus, they can decrease their internal problems or the severity of these problems (ogel, 2010). internet users, especially young people, are influenced by all kinds of information and value, which are rapidly spreading through this virtual world. with its anonymous and interactivebasics, the internet becomes an element of everyday life and quickly engulfs people (derin, 2013; kır, 2008). the effects of the internet in the community structure and individual lives of people are increasing in proportion to the developmental speed of the internet. while many experiences and individuals living in crowds were unnoticed or hidden in a mess, today any point or individual has become accessible in the world through the internet (arisoy, 2009; tamam, 2009). the internet is a multidimensional concept that has different meanings for everyone, without a fixed function. the internet can be seen as an electronic library for some, a newspaper for some, and as a political propaganda medium for others. in other words, the function of the internet is completely shaped depending on the user. examining the previous studies, it can be stated that internet use is predominantly social and the internet is seen as a means of communication. in this context, the internet offers much more participation compared to other mass media (bayraktutan, 2005). having access to the internet, people create a field of dominance of their own and can design and control this field according to their own wishes. in this world, which they create for themselves, they can even forget the problems that are difficult to overcome and evade from the troubles of daily life through this means. an individual, who lives alone in his/her own world and daily life, can relieve his/her loneliness with the internet. additionally, thanks to the internet, he/she can completely differentiate his/her identity and gain approvals by pretending to be someone else. individuals search for environments in which they can be approved and appreciated under any circumstances. while this quest for approval and appreciation is a result of intensive and fast life in large cities, it can emerge from the lack of sufficient satisfaction in social life in smaller cities. in fact, the virtual world offers us the opportunity to bring together the impossible imaginary and the existing truth (dikme, 2014). a person's inability to stop using an item or behavior is defined as addiction. in each passing day, certain changes occur in one's daily activities and routines due to addiction, with a gradual deterioration in the functionality of life. certain symptoms of addition are seen as being overly engaged with a substance or behavior, being unable to control oneself about the use of this behavior or substance, worrying other people about oneself as losing control, and continuing to use despite its harmful consequences (egger & rauterberg, 1996). while becoming addicted, both fomentation and ambition provides a pleasure and a sense of fun at the same time. this condition remains a memory in the prefrontal lobe of the brain. this situation turns into a need after a while, resulting in overuse and addiction. besides its effects on the brain structure, genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors are also effective in the process of becoming addicted, which is a chronic problem (uğurlu, sengül, & sengül, 2012). in the initial definitions, addiction was evaluated only as the drug addiction. however, with the development of technology, some behavioral changes have also started to be mentioned in the concept of addiction (cengizhan, 2005). examining the literature on addiction, it is seen that addiction is studied in two main topics as behavioral addiction and drug addiction. in drug addiction, certain issues are addressed such as heroin, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, etc., while in behavioral addiction it is discussed whether a certain behavior is displayed in an abnormal frequency, addressing the problems that the individual encounters in one's personal and social life (karaman & kurtoğlu, 2009). addiction is a situation that occurs when a substance is taken with repeated doses and continuously increasing amounts, without eliminating the symptoms of an organic disorder; it is an unavoidable and severe situation of desire that creates some mental and physical disorders in the person in case of discontinuation of substance use (turnalar, 2008; ziyalar, 1999). addiction is an irresistible request to repeat a constant action, although it harms one’s own mental and physical health or social life (kırık, arslan, karaman, & çetinkaya, 2015). addiction has emerged as an important asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 169-175 171 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group biopsychosocial problem since people realized that certain substances changed their mental state and made them feel different, though temporarily (beyazyürek & satır, 2000). in our age, which can be called as the technology era, the use of computers and internet networks has taken its place among the indispensables of the human life. although the main purpose of the internet is to reach information easily, cheaply, quickly and securely and facilitate communication, since it increasingly becomes widespread with an unpredictable speed and due to the ease of access, it started to result in a pathological overuse, which can be called as a new type of addiction (arisoy, 2009). the internet addiction, which was added into the literature as a type of behavioral addictions, was resulted from certain facts of internet such as shifting from the technical or academic area to the actual area, becoming a source, where every single person can have an access to, and widening the horizons in communication. internet addiction is a type of addiction that can be seen at all ages and genders (oztürk, odabaşıoğlu, eraslan, genç, & kalyoncu, 2007). internet addiction is defined as the inability to prevent the tendency to use the internet, considering the time spent without internet as insignificant and worthless, observing excessive anger, temper, and aggression on an individual when he/she has no access to internet, and influencing the family, professional, and social life of an individual (young, 2004). in general terms, internet addiction is expressed as the use of internet too intensively to control, which, in turn, results in the inability to fulfill one’s responsibilities and having problems in one’s social relations (zorbaz, 2013). considering its structure and the services it offers, the internet has the ability to be used widely in education field, since it is the most valuable learning environment for the people of the internet information societies (kaya, 2006). the information share is also employed through the internet. it is a huge network that is growing in line with the demands of individuals from all of the world to store, share and access information. the internet has become a virtual library where everyone can have an access to unlimited information from anywhere (yılmaz & horzum, 2005). in this context, it is important for the teachers to use the internet efficiently in education. in order to encourage the teachers to use the internet efficiently, it is of significance to examine their internet addiction levels, which will contribute to the field. this study aimed to examine the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers. in addition, the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers were compared based on certain characteristics. 2. method 2.1. research model this was a research that was designed in the descriptive survey model. survey model research studies are defined as the kind of studies, in which information is gathered from a large mass through multiple choice answers determined by the researcher (fraenkel & wallen, 2006). 2.2. research group the research group was comprised of 356 physical education teachers who were actively working in the 20192020 education year in public schools in kayseri province, turkey, and were randomly selected. of the physical education teachers in the research group, 124 (34.8%) were female and 232 (65.2%) were male; 192 (53.9%) were married and 164 (46.1%) were single. 2.3. data collection tools in this study, which was conducted to determine the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers and compare them through certain characteristics, the personal information form and young internet addiction scale were used as the data collection tools. the personal information form was developed by the researchers in order to determine the demographic characteristics of the physical education teachers in the research group. the likert-type internet addiction scale, which was developed by young. (1996) included 20 questions. bayraktar (2001) translated the scale into turkish, employing its validity and reliability tests. the reliability of the scale, which was translated into turkish, was calculated as 0.91 in terms of the alpha coefficient, and 0.87 in terms of the spearman-brown value. the results demonstrated that the scale was reliable. internet addiction scale, which was translated into turkish and included 20 questions, is implemented in a likert-type rating. in the scale, the participants are asked to choose one of these multiple choices “never”, “rarely”, “sometimes”, “often”, and “always”. these choices are rated as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 points. in the evaluation of the scale, scoring 80 points and over indicates that the participant is “internet addicted”, scoring between 50-79 means the participant “has limited symptoms”, and scoring 50 and below indicates that the participant “displays no symptoms” (cakır & horzum, 2008). 2.4. statistical analyses in the research, spss program was used for data analysis. the frequency, percentage, and descriptive statistics of the data obtained from the scale are given in tables. in order to determine the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers in the research group, certain data such as arithmetic means ( ), standard deviation (sd), and significance (p) were obtained. it was determined, through the kolmogorov-smirnov test, that the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers in the research group demonstrated a normal distribution (p>0.05). as per the comparisons; t test method was used for paired comparisons for independent groups, and one-way analysis of variance method (anova) was used for multiple comparisons. the significance level was admitted as p<0.05. x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 169-175 172 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. findings table-1. distribution of demographic characteristics of the physical education teachers in the research group. gender n % marital status n % female 124 34,8 married 192 53,9 male 232 65,2 single 164 46,1 age n % professional experience n % 20-29 years old 122 34,3 0-9 years 144 40,4 30-39 years old 154 43,3 10-19 years 160 44,9 40-49 years old 80 22,5 20-29 years 52 14,6 school type n % school location n % secondary school 168 47,2 rural 48 13,5 high school 188 52,8 urban 308 86,5 monthly income perception n % sport branch n % low 56 15,7 individual sport 166 46,6 medium 264 74,2 team sport 190 53,4 high 36 10,1 the demographic characteristics of physical education teachers in the research group are presented in table 1. it was determined that 124 (34.8%) physical education teachers in the research group were female, 232 (65.2%) were male; 192 (53.9%) were married, 164 (46.1%) were single; 122 (34.3%) were in the 20-29 age group, 154 (43.3%) were in the 30-39 age group, and 80 (22.5%) were in the 40-49 age group. additionally, 144 (40.4%) physical education teachers in the research group had a professional experience of 0-9 years, 160 (44.9%) had 10-19 years, and 52 (14.6%) had 20-29 years; 168 (47.2%) of them worked in secondary schools and188 (52.8%) were working in high schools; 48 (13.5%) of them were working in rural area, while 308 (86.5%) were working in urban areas; the branch of 166 (46.6%) of the physical education teachers was individual sport, while it was team sport for 190 (53.4%) of them; the monthly income perceptions of 56 (15.7%) physical education teachers was low, it was medium for 264 (74.2%) and high for 36 (10.1%). table-2. the mean score of the physical education teachers in the research group obtained from the overall internet addiction scale. scale n sd internet addiction scale 356 31.00 17.965 the results concerning the overall internet addiction scale scores of the physical education teachers in the research group are presented in table 2. as a result of the analysis, physical education teachers in the research group gained =31.00 mean score from the overall internet addiction scale. according to this result, internet addiction of the physical education teachers in the research group was determined as “displaying no symptoms”. according to this result, internet addiction of the physical education teachers in the research group can be interpreted as “low level”. table-3. comparison of the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers in the research group concerning their gender, marital status, school type, school location, and sport branch. gender n sd t p difference female 124 33.45 19.320 1.889 .060 no male 232 29.68 17.096 marital status n sd t p difference married 192 27.19 16.381 -4.433 .000 yes single 164 35.45 18.748 school type n sd t p difference secondary school 168 33.36 17.462 2.367 .018 yes high school 188 28.88 18.189 school location n sd t p difference rural 48 37.04 20.668 2.524 .012 yes urban 308 30.05 17.355 sport branch n sd t p difference individual sport 166 32.25 19.245 1.231 .219 no team sport 190 29.90 16.742 total 356 31.00 17.965 the results concerning the comparisons of internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers in the research group in terms of gender, marital status, school type, school location, and sport branch are given in table 3. according to the results of the analysis, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers concerning marital status, school type, and school location; however, there was statistically no significant difference concerning the gender and sport branch. it was determined that the internet addiction levels of the married physical education teachers in the research group were statistically significantly lower compared to those of the single ones. similarly, it was determined that the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers in the research group working in high schools were statistically significantly lower compared to those working in secondary schools. additionally, it was determined that the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers working in the schools located in urban areas were statistically significantly lower compared to those working in the schools located in rural areas. x x x x x x x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 169-175 173 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. the comparison of the physical education teachers in the research group about their internet addiction levels in terms of age, professional experience, and monthly income perceptions. age n sd f p difference 20-29 years old (a) 122 35.85 16.544 7.366 .001 b<a c<a 30-39 years old (b) 154 29.16 18.403 40-49 years old (c) 80 27.12 17.806 professional experience n sd f p difference 0-9 years (x) 144 34.22 16.751 3.962 .020 y<x 10-19 years (y) 160 28.72 18.437 20-29 years (z) 52 29.07 18.723 monthly income perception n sd f p difference low (j) 56 31.25 15.493 5.320 .005 k<m medium (k) 264 29.71 17.639 high (m) 36 40.00 21.506 total 356 31.00 17.965 the results concerning the comparisons of internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers in the research group in terms of age, professional experience, and monthly income perceptions are given in table 4. according to the results of the analysis, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers concerning the age, professional experience, and monthly income perceptions. it was determined that the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers in the 30-39 age group and in the 40-49 age group were statistically significantly lower compared to those of the 20-29 age group. similarly, it was determined that the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers with 10-19 year of professional experience were statistically significantly lower compared to those with 0-9 years of professional experience. in the research group, the physical education teachers with a medium level of monthly income perception were determined to have lower levels of internet addiction compared to those with higher monthly income perception. 4. discussion and conclusion in this study, the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers were examined. according to the research results, internet addiction levels of physical education teachers was determined as “displaying no symptoms”, and according to this result, the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers was interpreted as “low level”. additionally, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of physical education teachers concerning age, marital status, professional experience, monthly income perception, school type, and school location; however, there was statistically no significant difference concerning the gender and sport branch. the internet addiction level of the physical education teachers was determined as “displaying no symptoms”, and accordingly, the addiction level of the physical education teachers was interpreted as “low level”. in previous studies conducted by kutlu, turgut, and sinem (2017); yılmaz., çinar, and özyazıcıoğlu (2017); günay, öztürk, and arslantaş (2018) and yaraşır (2018) it was determined that the internet addiction level of the participants was “low level”. this research is in parallel with these previous research concerning the internet addiction level. in other studies conducted by kılınç and gündüz (2017) and sipahi et al. (2019) it was determined that the internet addiction of the participants was at a “high level”. the results of this research contradict those of the abovementioned studies. it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers concerning the gender variable. in previous studies conducted by brenner (1997); fu, chan, wong, and yip (2010); balcı and gülnar (2013) and anlayışlı and bulut (2019) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the internet addiction levels of the participants concerning the gender variable. the results of this research are in parallel with the above mentioned studies concerning the gender variable. in some other previous research conducted by sherer (1997); morahan-martin and schumacher (2000); poodineh, barati, moghadam, ghanbarzehi, and balouchi (2016); karasu (2017); kutlu et al. (2017); anlı (2018); günay et al. (2018) and yaraşır (2018) it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the participants concerning the gender variable. the results of this study contradict those of the abovementioned research studies concerning the gender variable. it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers concerning the age variable. it was determined that the internet addiction level of the 30-39 age group and 40-49 age group were significantly lower compared to that of the 20-29 age group. in studies conducted by günay et al. (2018) and hekim et al. (2019) it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the participants concerning the age variable. this study is in parallel with the mentioned studies concerning the findings about the age variable. in some other studies conducted by ergin, uzun, and bozkurt (2013) and kutlu et al. (2017) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the internet addiction levels of the participants concerning the age variable. this study contradicts abovementioned studies concerning the findings about the age variable. it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers concerning the marital status variable. it was determined that the internet addiction levels of the married physical education teachers were significantly lower compared to those of the single physical education teachers. in studies conducted by ilhan et al. (2014) and aslan and yazıcı (2016) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the internet addiction levels of the participants concerning the marital status variable. this study contradicts the mentioned studies concerning the findings about the marital status. x x x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 169-175 174 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers concerning the monthly income perception variable. it was determined that the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers with medium level of monthly income perception were significantly lower compared to those of physical education teachers with low level of monthly income perception. in a study conducted by yaraşır (2018) it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the participants concerning the monthly income perception variable. in some other studies, anlı (2018) determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the internet addiction levels concerning the perceived income, and kısa (2018) concluded the same finding concerning the monthly income. this study contradicts the mentioned studies concerning the findings about the monthly income. it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers concerning the sport branch variable. in a previous study conducted by can and tozoğlu (2019) it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the internet addiction levels of the participants concerning the sport branch variable. this study contradicts the abovementioned research study concerning the findings about sport branch. according to the results of the research, determining the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers as “displaying no symptoms” and interpreting it as “low level” can be considered as a positive case. internet addiction, which is also defined as problematic internet use, is described as a harmful behavior for the educators. that the physical education teachers do not display internet addiction behavior can be evaluated as an important determination for the education. that younger physical education teachers have higher internet addiction levels compared to the old physical education teachers can be considered as an expected result. this result might have been emerged from the fact that individuals born in the 90s are engaged in the internet more compared to those born in the 80s and 70s. that the single physical education teachers have higher internet addiction levels compared to those of married physical education teachers might be emerging from the fact that they have no marriage responsibility and they are more free in social terms. that the physical education teachers with lower professional experience partially have higher internet addiction levels can also be attributed to their younger age. that the physical education teachers with higher monthly income perception have higher internet addiction levels can be resulted from the possibility that they budget higher figures for the information technology expenditure. that the physical education teachers working in secondary schools have higher internet addiction levels might have resulted from that they cannot communicate sufficiently with their students. that the physical education teachers working in the rural areas have higher internet addiction levels can be resulted from that they have less opportunity for socialization. as per the sport branch and gender variables, they had no impact on the internet addiction levels of the physical education teachers. 5. recommendations in order to improve the use of internet, conferences and seminars can be organized by the experts for the physical education teachers. the motives behind the internet addiction of teachers regardless of their levels can be investigated through different studies. similar research studies can be conducted with different research groups to contribute to the literature. it is considered useful that the internet addiction of the physical education teachers be investigated through qualitative research studies. references anlayışlı, c., & bulut, s. n. 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(2013). analysis of problematic internet use of high school students in terms of social anxiety and peer relations. hacettepe university, institute of social sciences, master’s thesis. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 256 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 256-260, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.256.260 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group comparison of attention levels in primary school students in terms of gender and physical activity meliha uzun dönmez1 osman i̇mamoğlu2 ( corresponding author) 1sirnak university, school of pyhsical education and sports, şırnak, turkey. 2yasar dogu faculty of sports sciences, ondokuz mayıs university, samsun, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was to compare attention levels of primary school students in terms of gender, school and physical activity. the study included a total of 301 primary school students, of whom 144 were female and 157 were male. data were collected with physical activity questionnaire and d2 test of attention. pair-wise categorical comparisons were made with t test. there was a significant difference in scores for d2 test of attention and its subscales psychomotor speed and selective attention between genders (p<0.05), while the difference in special learning difficulty, concentration performance and physical activity was insignificant (p>0.05). attention levels did not significantly differ between the students in state primary schools and those in private primary schools, either (p>0.05). the students were similar in physical activity and attention performance scores. to conclude, gender was found to play a significant role in psychomotor speed, selective attention level and total performance in d2 test of attention. all the students had moderate physical activity, which did not significantly differ between the students. in addition, attention levels were not different between state schools and private schools. however, the students with high physical activity were found to have higher attention performance. therefore, primary school students should be enabled to have more physical activity to improve their attention. keywords: physical activity, d2 test of attention, student, psychomotor speed, concentration, selective attention level. citation | meliha uzun dönmez; osman i̇mamoğlu (2020). comparison of attention levels in primary school students in terms of gender and physical activity. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 256-260. history: received: 21 january 2020 revised: 3 march 2020 accepted: 6 april 2020 published: 23 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 257 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 257 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 258 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 259 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 259 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.256.260&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1535 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1691-3504 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1535 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1691-3504 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1535 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1691-3504 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1535 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1691-3504 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 256-260 257 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by comparing attention levels of primary school students in terms of gender, school and physical activity. 1. introduction attention is defined as an activity of the nervous system which enables showing interest in only the stimuli related to instant needs and goals (banich, 1997; kolb & winshaw, 1996; parasuraman, 2000). focusing, concentration and consciousness are the basis of attention. it is considered as an action of selecting and identifying any one of the sensorial stimuli based on some goals. it is the action of consciously focusing on stimuli. consciousness reveals decreased capacity in focusing, and other stimuli are eliminated before they reach the conscious because information to be transferred from sensorial memory to short-term memory for advanced processing is recognized through attention (gözalan, 2013; oztürk & kısaç, 2010). attention refers to some part of a response shaped by the physical and social environments and initiation of learning (ruff & rothbart, 2001). sports has a positive effect on physical and mental development of students. a good body posture or posture development is required in the performance development of students. it is a known fact that sport plays a role in the development of people physically and mentally (atan, tural, imamoğlu, ciçek, & tural, 2012; yamak, imamoğlu, islamoğlu, & m., 2018). behavioral development of attention and neural development of attention accompany each other. attention depends on almost all regions of the brain. first, the brainstem controls the general level of a stimulation in the cortex. visual and tactile or sensorial perceptions should be developed in early childhood. children perceive information filtered from stimuli through senses. the information filtered through sensorial organs stimulate nerves. these stimuli are recorded by senses for a second. certain points access the short-term memory and others disappear (arslan, 2008). selective attention is direction of perception to one or two stimuli at a time and exclusion of other stimuli (asan, 2011; kılıç, 2002). in the absence of focusing on a certain target, attention is meaningless. processes in selectiveness are mostly necessary for the management ability of stimuli and information (ruff & rothbart, 2001). during selective attention, the body selects the most important features for itself (gözalan, 2013; tunç, 2013). d2 test of attention is considered as an indicator of selective attention and ability to think. physical activity causes contractions of the skeletal muscles, which requires spending energy more than the basal metabolism (caspersen, powell, & christenson, 1985). physical activity during childhood and adolescence not only allows having the highest performance in sports but also contributes to improvement and protection of health (bailey & martin, 1994). to understand the psychological and physical processes that may contribute to the quality of performance, investigating the psychological and physical structures associated with optimal performance has been the focus of researchers (akyol & imamoğlu, 2019). in the last 30 years, a lot of research has been done to control and manage the emotions of people (goodman, kashdan, & i̇mamoğlu, 2020). attention is affected by emotional state. most of the primary schools in turkey are state schools. in addition, there are private primary schools. the latter group of schools attempt to make money and want to have a high rate of success by recruiting successful students, which may not be always achieved. there has been an interest in whether students in state primary schools and those in private primary schools differ in terms of attention levels. therefore, the present study was directed towards comparing attention levels of primary school students in terms gender, type of school and physical activity. 2. material and method 2.1. study group the study included state and private primary schools. data were collected by using d2 test of attention and physical activity questionnaire. a total of 301 students fulfilling the data collection tools completely, of whom 144 were female and 157 were male, were included into the study sample. 2.2. data collection tools physical activity questionnaire: physical activity questionnaire for primary school students was adapted to turkish by sert and temel (2014). it is used to measure physical activity of children aged 4-14 years in the previous seven days. it can be administered in class and offers information about general physical activities. the scores five and one for the questionnaire indicate the highest physical activity and the lowest or poorest physical activity respectively. the mean total score for the questionnaire is used to evaluate physical activity. based on their scores, children are classified into inactive, moderately active and active. d2 test of attention: the test was adapted to turkish culture by toker (1988). its validity and reliability were tested on turkish sportsmen by cağlar and koruç (2006) and on children aged 9-13 years by yaycı (2013). it was found to be acceptable to use in children aged 11-14 years. d2 test of attention is used to measure selective attention and focusing attention. in the test, there is a line for trial and a section where personal features and performance results of test takers can be recorded. on the test page, there are 14 lines, each of which contains 47 letters, composed of 16 different small p and d letters depending on the place and number of marks. there is one, two, three or four marks above or below these letters. test takers have to find all d letters with two marks in all lines and ignore the other letters. they are given 20 seconds for each line. scores for psychomotor speed, selective attention level, special learning difficulty, test performance and concentration performance are taken into account to evaluate the results of the test. the test performance scores of 50%-60%, 60%-70%, 70%-85% and 85% and higher are considered as poor, average (somewhat better than poor), normal and good respectively (cağlar & koruç, 2006). psychomotor speed refers to the number of marked figures. in other words, it is the numerical value of performance related to all relevant or irrelevant figures marked. selective attention level refers to the number of letters or figures unmarked but supposed to be marked. in other words, it is the number of correct letters unmarked. a high number of these letters indicates low selective attention and an insufficient quality of asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 256-260 258 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group performance. special learning difficulty refers to the number of wrong letters marked. a high number of wrong letters marked shows special learning difficulty, difficulty in adapting to the instruction, carelessness and deficiencies in discriminating what is seen. percentage of mistakes is used to evaluate the qualitative aspect of performance and is the rate of mistakes in all markings. as the rate of mistakes individuals make decreases, their ability to make accurate decisions, the quality of their decisions and attention levels increase. the total itemsmistakes (ti–m) refers to subtraction of the number of mistakes from the total number of letters marked. it is considered as the total performance score or test performance. ti–m has a normal distribution and is even very reliable. therefore, it means the value of the relation between accuracy of performance and speed of performance. however, ti–m underlines the quantitative aspect of performance more than its qualitative aspect. in unusual conditions, extremely high quantitative and qualitative scores (total score and percentage of mistakes) may cause overestimation of total performance. to avoid such overestimations, the score for mistakes or concentration performance is taken into account. concentration performance is obtained by subtracting the number of wrong figures marked from the number of correct figures marked. in contrast to ti–m, concentration performance is not affected by marking all letters without distinguishing them or randomly skipping test sections. it is considered as the best index for accuracy of performance and coordination of speed (cağlar & koruç, 2006). 2.3. data analysis data were analyzed with spss 22.00. kolmogorov-smirnov and shapiro-wilk tests were used to determine whether data about variables were normally distributed. pair-wise categorical comparisons were made with t test. 3. results table-1. comparison of attention and physical activity between genders. variables female (n=144) male (n=157) t-test p mean sd mean sd psychomotor speed 400.48 91.82 374.1 97.54 2.47 0.036* selective attention level 55.87 51.20 43.59 45.19 2.44 0.045* special learning difficulty 21.14 31.03 27.28 24.53 -1.77 0.190 test performance 361.97 82.51 338.66 79.56 2.67 0.038* concentration performance 90.83 45.23 85.61 46.32 1.44 0.280 physical activity levels 3.01 1.01 3.27 1.07 1.07 0.196 note: *p<0.05. the comparison of attention performance showed a significant difference in psychomotor speed, selective attention levels and total performance in d2 test of attention between genders (p<0.05), table 1. table-2. comparison of attention levels in terms of types of schools. gender variables state primary schools private primary schools t-test mean sd mean sd female psychomotor speed 397.57 90.92 403.38 99.47 -0.33 selective attention level 52.78 50.26 58.95 50.45 -0.85 special learning difficulty 21.62 30.12 20.66 20.12 0.34 test performance 360.37 85.13 363.57 86.17 -0.31 concentration performance 90.52 44.50 91.14 43.13 -0.09 male psychomotor speed 363.87 98.24 384.33 93.90 1.42 psychomotor speed 42.43 42.17 44.75 45.22 0.33 special learning difficulty 27.47 25.59 27.09 32.90 -0.08 test performance 328.92 88.10 348.41 87.90 1.36 concentration performance 82.92 48.38 88.30 45.32 0.66 note: p>0.05. no significant difference in attention levels in both female and male students between the state primary schools and private primary schools (p>0.05), table 2. table-3. distribution of percentages of physical activity and ti-m according to genders. genders ti-m level (performance score) physical activity level low moderate high total n % n % n % n % female (n=144) poor (50-60%) 25 56.82 25 28.09 1 9.10 51 35.42 average (61-70%) 16 36.36 23 25.84 2 18.18 41 28.47 normal (71-85%) 2 4.55 21 23.60 3 27.27 26 18.06 good (86% and higher) 1 2.27 20 22.47 5 45.45 26 18.06 total 44 100 89 100 11 100 144 100.00 male (n=157) poor (50-60%) 33 47.14 20 27.78 1 6.67 54 34.39 average (61-70%) 23 32.86 19 26.39 3 20.00 45 28.66 normal (71-85%) 12 17.14 18 25.00 4 26.67 34 21.66 good (86% and higher) 2 2.86 15 20.83 7 46.67 24 15.29 total 70 100 72 100 15 100 157 100 note: f: frequency %: percentage. the students were similar in terms of physical activity levels and attention performance scores. a high rate of both girls and boys with poor attention performance scores had low physical activity levels table 3. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 256-260 259 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion and conclusion several studies on attention have shown that girls are better at focusing their attention than boys (bektaş, 2019; borchert, 1998; toker, 1988). however, cağlar and koruç (2006) did not find a significant difference in scores for d2 test of attention between females and males. in the present study, the comparison of attention performance showed a significant difference in psychomotor speed, selective attention levels and total performance in d2 test of attention between genders (p<0,05), but revealed no significant difference in special learning difficulty and concentration scores and physical activity levels (p>0,05), table 1. in a study by orhan (2018) both boys and girls were found to have moderate physical activity. in addition, no significant difference was detected between physical activity levels and attention levels of the children. renk (2019) also found similar physical activity levels between girls and boys in the experimental and control groups. the current study also revealed that the students did not differ in terms of physical activity and had moderate levels of physical activity. keskin, çubuk, alpkaya, and öztürk (2017) reported that male students got higher mean scores of physical activity. several other studies also revealed higher physical activity levels in favor of males, though the difference was not significant (aksoydan & çakır, 2011; kaymaz & irez, 2016; kudaş, ülkar, erdoğan, & cırçı, 2005; sanlıer, 2005; tunç. & işler, 2007). consistent with the literature, the present study showed that physical activity did not significantly differ between genders. in toker (1988) state secondary school students were found to have lower attention levels than private secondary school students. however, this study revealed no significant difference in attention levels in both female and male students between the state primary schools and private primary schools (p>0.05), table 2. moran (2004) offered a ten-week psychological skills training to athletes and observed a significant increase in their selective attention and concentration scores. urfa and aşçı also reported that selective attention and concentration levels of athletes rose urfa and aşçı (2018). göktepe, akalın, and ve göktepe (2016) in their comparative study found that skiing children had better attention than children not skiing göktepe et al. (2016). in addition, tunç (2013) reported a significant rise in attention in children aged 14-15 years after playing golf for eight weeks. gelişli and yazıcı found that an education game involving physical activity had a positive effect on attention in children aged 5-6 years (gelli & yazici, 2016). furthermore, ibiş and aktuğ (2018) compared attention between children doing sports and those not doing sports and reported high attention levels in the children doing sports. in orhan (2018) most of both male and female children were shown to have high attention levels. in renk (2019) the rate of female students having good physical activity in the pretest was 42,34%, which increased to 59,46% in the posttest, and the rate of male students having good physical activity in the pretest was 44,04%, which increased to 54,13% in the post test. in studies by orhan (2018) and renk (2019) the students were found to have moderate levels of physical activity and there was no significant relation between physical activity levels and attention levels. in the present study, the students were similar in terms of physical activity levels and attention performance scores. a high rate of both girls and boys with poor attention performance scores had low physical activity levels. the highest rate of both girls and boys with the worst or average attention performance scores had moderate physical activity. the highest rate of the students with high attention performance scores had high physical activity table 3. it can be suggested that students with high physical activity have high attention performance scores. therefore, physical activity of students should be increased to improve their attention performance. in the current study, psychomotor speed, selective attention and total d2 test performance significantly differed between genders. the students had moderate physical activity without a significant difference. in addition, attention levels were not significantly different between the students from state primary schools and those from private primary schools. furthermore, the students with high physical activity had attention performance scores. it can be recommended that primary school students should be enabled to have higher physical activity to enhance their attention performance. references aksoydan, e., & çakır, n. 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(2013). validity and reliability study of d2 attention test. kalem journal of education and human sciences, 3(1), 43-80. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 658 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 658-663, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.658.663 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the impact of online teaching during the coronavirus pandemic on the lives of teachers and parents kashaf aqeel zaidi1 afreenish gul2 farah ahmad3 1lecturer, community health sciences, ziauddin university, pakistan. 2graduate, ziauddin university, pakistan. 3professor, community health sciences, ziauddin university, pakistan. ( corresponding author) abstract to assess the degree of stress among teachers and parents of children taking online classes during the coronavirus pandemic. this was a cross-sectional study conducted in october 2020. an online questionnaire developed on google forms was circulated using convenience sampling technique with a sample size of 384. the target population included teachers and parents of children taking online classes. an informed consent was taken prior to the survey. the perceived stress scale was used to evaluate the stress related to online teaching. chi square test was applied to identify associations and a p-value of less than 0.05 was taken as significant. our sample included 414 participants with n=359 (86.7%) females and n=55 (13.3%) males. n=156 (37.7%) participants were parents and n=258 (62.3%) were teachers. majority of the participants had moderate perceived stress with n=193 (74.8%) teachers and n=127 (81.4%) parents. teachers felt more comfortable going back to school right now n=176 (80.7%), whereas, only n=42 (19.3%) parents felt comfortable sending their children back to school. (p-value=0.000) after the pandemic resolves, parents preferred classroom learning n=111 (44.6%) while n=113 (75.3%) teachers preferred a hybrid system with both online and classroom learning. (p-value=0.001). majority of the teachers and parents were found to be in moderate perceived stress. an increase in working hours for teachers and increase in the required supervision time for parents were among the most common causes. keywords: online learning, coronavirus pandemic, virtual classrooms, stressful teaching, e-learning, citation | kashaf aqeel zaidi; afreenish gul; farah ahmad (2020). the impact of online teaching during the coronavirus pandemic on the lives of teachers and parents. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 658-663. history: received: 30 october 2020 revised: 12 november 2020 accepted: 24 november 2020 published: 9 december 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: authors would like to acknowledge ziauddin university for granting us the permission to conduct this study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 659 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 659 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 659 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 661 5. conclusion............................................................................................................................................................... 662 references ................................................................................................................................................................... 662 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.658.663&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2416 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8421-2809 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2128-2399 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6140-0214 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 658-663 659 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by assessing the degree of stress among teachers and parents of children taking online classes during the coronavirus pandemic. 1. introduction the closure of educational institutions in an effort to maintain social distancing as a preventive and precautionary measure against covid-19, have all changed the mode of teaching from a conventional standard system to a virtual and online framework (moawad, 2020). online learning systems are web-based software for distributing, tracking, and managing courses over the internet (keis, grab, schneider, & öchsner, 2017). temporary solutions being devised for remote education range from online classroom tools like google classroom, to zoom and podcasts by teachers. the primary objective is to dispense knowledge to students and enable them to learn at their own pace and convenience (wadhwa & khatak, 2020). the interaction between facilitator, learner and study material along with emotional and social support are essential ingredients for effective learning (bernard, e, abrami, ca, & rm, 2009).therefore, educational units are struggling to find options to deal with this challenging situation (dhawan, 2020).while parents are adjusting to this new scenario, during this time it’s also important to help kids stay focused on learning and avoid overuse of games, social media, and videos (pietra, 2020).this has understandably resulted in great stress on students. however, teachers and parents also appear to be worried by this paradigm shift in the educational system. recommendations reflect that decorum can be maintained by thorough supervision of students, setting ground rules for online interaction, counseling and disciplinary actions (stewart, 2008). according to students and previous studies, the attention span during online learning is shorter than face to face sessions (bradbury, 2016). due to lack of immediate feedback, teachers were unable to assess students’ understanding during online lecturing (mukhtar, javed, arooj, & sethi, 2020). some teachers also mentioned that during online study, students misbehaved and tried to access online resources during assessments (mukhtar et al., 2020). studies have shown a direct positive correlation between parent involvement and student success. thus, various studies have shown that virtual schools work better when parents take an active role in their child’s learning (jain, 2020). a majority of parents found homeschooling "stressful and challenging" during the pandemic. parents of children with special educational needs (sen) were most likely to experience difficulties in homeschooling (bones, bates, finlay, roulston, & taggart, 2020). some parents complained that schools expected too much work to be completed while, for others, their children's school appeared less engaged after an initial period of support (bones et al., 2020). many studies have been conducted to determine the stress amongst teachers or parents with school-based learning. however, since coronavirus pandemic is a novel concern, not much research has been conducted in this regard particularly related to parental stress. therefore, our study aims to determine the stress associated with challenges related to the new normal, based on virtual learning, in teachers and parents alike. moreover, we aim to determine the possible long-term consequences due to the change in teaching systems so measures can be taken to minimize distress and disadvantage for everyone including children, parents and teachers. furthermore, our study will help establish the need for preparations to cope with future pandemics. 2. materials and methods this was a cross-sectional study, data was collected in october 2020 in karachi, pakistan. the sample size calculated was n=384 which was calculated based on a proportion of 50%, bound of error was 5% and confidence level was taken as 95%. an online questionnaire developed on google forms was circulated via school and parent focus groups, social media, various websites and social forums through convenience sampling technique. the target population included teachers and parents of children taking online classes. an informed consent was taken at the beginning of the survey and those who did not wish to continue were allowed to leave the survey. the questionnaire was developed through literature review and researches conducted on similar topics. (12,13) demographic profile variables included age, gender, and level of education. a validated questionnaire, the perceived stress scale (pss) was used to evaluate the stress related to online teaching. (14) the questions acquired opinions of parents and teachers along with the challenges faced by them during the pandemic. data entry was done on microsoft excel via google forms which was imported to spss version 20. descriptive analysis for numerical data was done through mean and standard deviation and for categorical data through frequencies and percentages. chi square test was applied to identify associations between demographic factors and opinion about online teaching. a p-value of less than 0.05 was taken as significant. institutional ethical approval was taken from the institute prior to the initiation of the study. 3. results our sample included n=414 participants inclusive of teachers taking online classes and parents of children taking online classes during the coronavirus pandemic with n=359 (86.7%) females and n=55 (13.3%) males. the mean age of participants was 38 ± 9 years with 16 ± 2.5 years of education. amongst all the participants, n=156 (37.7%) were parents and n=258 (62.3%) were teachers. table 1 reflects on the major associations with the degree of stress among teachers and parents due to the online teaching system. out of the teachers feeling stressed, n=156 (37.7%) said they felt it occasionally, n=55 (13.3%) felt stressed all the time and n=36 (8.7%) only felt stressed around the time of assessments. while recording lectures, taking online lectures or facing technical issues were also listed as stressful times. a significant proportion of the people stated that they felt stressed initially but overtime they have become comfortable so the stress has reduced. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 658-663 660 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. perceived stress scale and its associations. perceived stress scale risk factors for stress low stress moderate stress high stress p-value n % n % n % parent or teacher? teachers 50 19.4 193 74.8 15 5.8 0.03 parents 16 10.3 127 81.4 13 8.3 gender females 51 14.2 282 78.6 26 7.2 0.03 males 15 27.3 38 69.1 02 3.6 marital status married 53 17.2 239 77.6 16 5.2 0.06 separated/divorced 01 5.0 16 80.0 03 15.0 single 10 13.5 58 78.4 06 8.1 widowed 02 16.7 07 58.3 03 25.0 do you feel stressed due to online classes? yes 19 7.9 197 82.4 23 9.6 0.000 no 47 27.0 122 70.1 05 2.9 did you find it difficult to adapt to technology? yes 12 8.3 125 86.8 07 4.9 0.003 no 54 20.0 195 72.2 21 7.8 grade of teaching/studying? primary 31 14.7 166 78.7 14 6.6 0.01 secondary 06 7.1 70 83.3 08 9.5 high school 15 19.5 58 75.3 04 5.2 undergraduate 14 35.9 23 59.0 02 5.1 postgraduate 00 0.0 03 100 00 0.0 table-2. parental and teacher perspective. parental and teacher perspective risk factors for stress parents teachers p-value n % n % gender females 139 38.7 220 61.3 0.266 males 17 30.9 38 69.1 did you find it difficult to adapt to technology? yes 55 38.2 89 61.8 0.875 no 101 37.4 169 62.6 do you experience disruption due to internet connectivity issues? yes 107 31.4 234 68.6 0.000 no 49 67.1 24 32.9 do you experience disruption due to electricity issues? yes 82 28.3 208 71.7 0.000 no 74 59.7 50 40.3 do you feel comfortable going/sending your child to school right now? yes 42 19.3 176 80.7 0.000 no 74 47.4 82 52.6 not sure 39 100 0 0.0 which form of learning would you prefer after the pandemic? classroom learning 111 44.6 138 55.4 0.001 online and classroom 37 24.7 113 75.3 no preference 04 57.1 03 42.9 do you feel stressed about online classes? yes 94 39.3 145 60.7 0.295 no 61 35.1 113 64.9 has social media played a role in your perception of the coronavirus? yes 121 36.3 212 63.7 0.348 no 35 43.2 46 56.7 do you think this change in teaching system will have any long-term effects? yes 99 36.8 170 63.2 0.400 no 56 38.9 88 61.1 how important is it to prepare for future pandemics? extremely important 115 38.0 188 62.0 0.313 important 35 34.7 66 65.3 not important 05 62.5 03 37.5 table 2 lists the major differences between parental and teachers’ perspective regarding online teaching system during the pandemic. amongst those experiencing internet connectivity issues, n=120 (29%) suffered once a week, n=85 (20.5%) once in two weeks and n=60 (14.5%) once a month whereas, n=38 (9.2%) were having internet issues every day. a significant proportion of the participants n=104 (25.1%) were experiencing electricity disruptions once a week, n=69 (16.7%) once in two weeks, n=51 (12.3%) once a month while n=45 (10.9%) were experiencing problems every day. however, most of the participants mentioned having alternate arrangements during absence of electricity including generators and others. most of the parents n=72 (46.2%) had one school going child, n=63 (40.4%) had two school going children while n=17 (10.9%) and n=4 (2.6%) had three or four, respectively. no significant association was found between the number of school-going children and degree of stress (p-value=0.132). majority of the parents n=108 (69.2%) had children attending primary school, n=27 (17.3%) were in secondary school and n=20 (12.8%) were in high school. most of the parents n=85 (54.5%) were paying between pkr 20,000 to pkr 60,000 as the combined monthly school fee of their children, whereas, n=44 (28.2%) were paying pkr 20,000 or less. a small proportion n=20 (12.8%) were paying between pkr 60,000 and pkr 100,000 while only (4.5%) were paying more than pkr 100,000. there was no significant association between the combined monthly school fee of children and the degree of stress among parents (p-value=0.551). majority of the parents n=129 (82.7%) did not have financial difficulty in arranging devices for their children while n=27 (17.3%) did. as per the government regulations, n=90 (57.7%) received fee waivers from school while n=66 (42.3%) did not receive them. amongst those who received waivers, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 658-663 661 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 78.9% received 20% fee reduction and a significant association was found as there was a lower degree of stress in parents who received waivers. (p-value=0.03). figure-1. problems faced by parents supervising children taking online classes. figure 1 highlights the common problems faced by parents. out of those who had to make alternate arrangements for supervision, 39.7% had to do so every day while others had to do so on a less frequent basis. others had to reduce work timings or avoid going for the same reason. majority of the teachers n=165 (64%) believed online classroom environment was productive for learning only to some extent, n=62 (24%) thought it was very productive and n=31 (12%) believed it was not. only n=59 (22.9%) of the teachers had difficulty maintaining discipline during online classes. majority n=202 (78.3%) felt their work hours had increased and n=201 (77.9%) stated that their overall workload has increased. a significant impact on personal or family life was experienced by n=176 (68.2%). moreover, majority of the teachers n=209 (81%) did not experience salary deductions during the pandemic. among those n=49 (19%) who did experience deductions, 7% had 20% deduction of their salary while others had a wide range of deduction, leave encashment or cancelled increments for the year 2020. participants identified some common stress relief practices including praying n=257 (62.6%), drinking tea/coffee n=136 (33.1%), listening to music n=85 (20.8%), exercise n=82 (20%), talking to someone n=76 (18.4%), smoking n=24 (5.8%), taking a sleeping pill n=16 (3.9%), sleeping naturally n=13 (3.1%), spending time with friends or family n=13 (3.1%), watching television and movies n=7 (1.8%). swimming, reading, taking a break from work or school were among the other stress relievers. 4. discussion the findings from this study suggest that there is an association between moderate perceived stress among parents and teachers subject to online teaching systems in the setting of the covid-19 pandemic. parents showed higher levels of perceived stress in comparison to teachers. this could be attributed to the challenges of maintaining a conducive learning environment at home for the children, such as eliminating distractions or tailoring a timetable. a significant majority stated that they had to supervise their children more than in the past and make special arrangements to ensure productivity. it is crucial to identify the degree of stress as greater covid-19 related stressors and high anxiety and depressive symptoms are associated with higher parental perceived stress (brown, doom, lechuga-peña, watamura, & koppels, 2020). out of those feeling stressed, a majority experienced it occasionally. quarantines have negative psychological effects, often deemed as marginal, including symptoms related to anxiety, depression, acute stress, and even manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder (taylor, agho, stevens, & raphael, 2008). a statistically significant percentage of participants did not experience difficulty adapting to the demands of digital learning methods or arranging devices to aid this. this is possibly because the participants of this online survey were comfortable with the use of electronic devices. however, a great majority did report disruption due to poor internet connectivity, especially teachers. perhaps this is because of the professional demands of ideally teaching without interruption. covid-19 has brought about a situation where internet access seems to have become necessary for survival (de’, pandey, & pal, 2020). there are two core assumptions that underlie online teaching. first, that everybody — students and faculty — has digital access, computers and internet connections, capable of withstanding heavy bandwidth calls (de’ et al., 2020). and second, that all faculty members are trained to teach online (waqar, 2020). according to teachers, the lack of reliable, high-speed internet can make an already overwhelming job of pivoting to online instruction even more stressful (will, 2020). additionally, a great number of participants, mostly teachers, also encountered problems due to an unsteady electric supply; with most stating that it affected them at least once a week. this could also have served as a barrier for effective communication and a possible stressor. most participants believed that online learning was productive only to some extent and most teachers having high perceived stress preferred returning to classroom learning or the development of a hybrid educational system which incorporated elements of classroom and online learning both. it is reasonable to suggest that this may be because teachers have greater autonomy in a physical classroom and receive immediate feedback from students without the limitations of connectivity. a vast majority indicated that their work hours had increased in order to meet the demands of the new teaching methods in place, as had the overall workload. this could also be contributing to the advocacy of classroom learning. on average primary teachers seem to be most affected, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 658-663 662 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group spending more hours on each of the activities than secondary and tertiary teachers (beng, wardle, & collie, 2020). institutional support barriers such as the budget for purchasing advanced technologies, a lack of training, a lack of technical support and a lack of clarity and direction were also reported (joshi, vinay, & bhaskar, 2020). to meet the needs of 21st century learners in online, face-to-face, and hybrid contexts, teachers should better leverage technological resources (schleicher, 2012). there is also a significant impact on their personal and family life. (williamson, eynon, & potter, 2020) parents, on the other hand, did not feel comfortable sending their children back to school yet in the setting of the pandemic, possibly due to the risk of contracting the virus. most parents who participated in this study were married with one child of school going age achieving primary education. it is plausible that this may be contributing to their reservations since younger children require strict monitoring and it is difficult to adhere to sops such as maintaining distance in playgrounds, frequently washing hands or wearing masks at all times. however, most parents voted in favor of classroom only learning after the resolution of the pandemic. this could perhaps be because of the additional time and supervision needed for home learning. chung, lanier, and wong (2020) it appears that teachers have become well acquainted with online classroom modalities and feel more comfortable than parents. a majority believes that the change in teaching system will have long term effects including, but not limited to, classroom dynamics, attention span, on paper assessments and overall student attendance. in an attempt to relieve stress, most participants resorted to prayers. in times of crisis, humans have a tendency to turn to religion for comfort and explanation (bentzen, 2020). most participants who reported feeling stressed actually had moderate perceived stress. additionally, a significant percentage of those who did not feel stressed were also suffering from moderate levels of stress. this can be explained by the relatively high baseline levels of stress due to the uncertainty and general concern for health in such unprecedented times. both parents and teachers stated the need to be better prepared for any future pandemics as it affected them in various ways. perhaps better strategies and infrastructural support can help improve mental health outcomes. a majority mentioned the role of social media in contributing to their perception of the pandemic. this may also have led to heightened emotions and alarm, contributing to the overall stress experienced by the participants. our study had some limitations as due to the pandemic probability sampling technique could not be used and we had to rely on surveys with convenience sampling technique. the strength of this research is that it provides quantitative data on this topic, which is rare, particularly in our country. this data will help us to make future recommendations for post-pandemic learning and in preparing for future pandemics. we recommend further studies especially qualitative research required to address the depth of this issue with respect to all stakeholders including teachers, parents and students. 5. conclusion majority of the teachers and parents of children taking online classes during the coronavirus pandemic were found to be in moderate perceived stress. various causes were identified including an increase in working hours for teachers and increase in the required supervision time for parents. as the mental and emotional well-being of caregivers and teachers is of vital importance to maintain a healthy and productive learning environment for the children, early recognition and timely intervention can help improve the long-term outcome for them. in an already traumatizing experience of a pandemic, stress related to education can have significant long-term effects on students, parents and teachers alike. therefore, it is crucial to conduct more research in this regard and introduce interventional strategies on mass scale to prevent any major repercussions. references beng, h., wardle, l., & collie, p. (2020). teachers' wellbeing and workload during covid-19 lockdown: durham university. bentzen, j. (2020). in crisis, we pray: religiosity and the covid-19 pandemic (may 2020). cepr discussion paper no. dp14824. available at ssrn: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3615587. bernard, r. m., e, b., abrami, p. c., ca, w., & rm, t. (2009). a meta-analysis of three types of interaction treatments in distance education. review of educational research, 79(3), 1243–1289. bones, u., bates, j., finlay, j., roulston, s., & taggart, s. (2020). experiences of supporting children’s home learning during covid-19: ulster university. eani.org.uk. bradbury, n. a. (2016). attention span during lectures: 8 seconds, 10 minutes, or more? adv physiol educ, 40, 509–513.available at: 10.1152/advan.00109.2016. brown, s. m., doom, j. r., lechuga-peña, s., watamura, s. e., & koppels, t. (2020). stress and parenting during the global covid-19 pandemic. child abuse & neglect, 104699. chung, s. k. g., lanier, p., & wong, p. 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(2020). pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices: digital technologies and distance education during the coronavirus emergency. learning, media and technology, 45(2), 107-114. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 213 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 213-218, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.213.218 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a study on the relationship between the levels of loneliness and smartphone addiction of students who are studying at the faculty of sports science nuriye şeyma kara1 mehmet çağrı çetin2 ahmet dönmez3 mehmet kara4 halil i̇brahim genç5 ( corresponding author) 1,3,4,5sakarya university of applied sciences, graduate education institute, department of physical education and sport teaching, sakarya, turkey. 2mersin university, department of physical education and sport teaching, faculty of sports sciences, mersin, turkey. abstract the main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between loneliness and smartphone addiction of students studying at the faculty of sports sciences. the study was conducted with the correlational survey method. the study group consisted of a total of 281 students, 61 females (21.7%) and 220 males (78.3%). in the study, mobile telephone addiction scale developed by sar, ayas, and horzum (2015) was used to investigate the mobile phone addiction levels of the participants. loneliness scale developed by demir (1989) was used to measure loneliness levels. according to the results of the study, there was no statistically significant difference between loneliness and smartphone addiction of students according to gender and academic achievement variables. on the other hand, there was a significant difference between loneliness and smartphone addiction according to the departments of the students. looking at the relationship between loneliness and smartphone addiction levels, it was concluded that there was a statistically significant positive correlation between all sub-dimensions of smartphone addiction and smartphone addiction total score. keywords: loneliness, smart phone addiction, addiction, sports sciences, students, department. citation | nuriye şeyma kara; mehmet çağrı çetin; ahmet dönmez; mehmet kara; halil i̇brahim genç (2020). a study on the relationship between the levels of loneliness and smartphone addiction of students who are studying at the faculty of sports science. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 213-218. history: received: 3 january 2020 revised: 13 february 2020 accepted: 18 march 2020 published: 6 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 214 2. research method ........................................................................................................................................................................... 214 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 215 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 217 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 218 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.213.218&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1476 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0460-2263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7667-2143 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6754-4369 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9454-5164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5177-0580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1476 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0460-2263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7667-2143 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6754-4369 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9454-5164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5177-0580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1476 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0460-2263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7667-2143 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6754-4369 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9454-5164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5177-0580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1476 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0460-2263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7667-2143 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6754-4369 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9454-5164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5177-0580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1476 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0460-2263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7667-2143 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6754-4369 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9454-5164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5177-0580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1476 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0460-2263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7667-2143 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6754-4369 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9454-5164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5177-0580 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1476 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0460-2263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7667-2143 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6754-4369 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9454-5164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5177-0580 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 213-218 214 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the relationship between loneliness and smartphone addiction of students studying at the faculty of sports sciences. 1. introduction since human being is a social entity, social relations, social environment and interpersonal communication have an important place in human life in terms of maintaining the life of the individual in a healthy way. in this sense, it is seen that the distressing situations occurring in social life adversely affect individuals. loneliness, which is one of these troublesome situations, means the cognitive awareness of the lack of close relationships of the individual, social relations and the emotional emptiness that accompanies despair, longing and awareness (asher & paquette, 2003; yıldız & duy, 2014). there are many different definitions regarding the concept of loneliness in the literature. weiss (1973) has addressed loneliness in two ways: social and emotional loneliness. social loneliness arises from the inability of the individual to feel as a part of his/her society and to be a member of a group where common interests and activities are shared (duy, 2003). emotional loneliness is caused by the lack of close attachment to another person, and the feeling of anxiety and emptiness (emineoğlu, 2018). in other words, fromm (reichmann, 1959) described loneliness as a state of intense abstraction experienced by only the artists and patients with some mental problems. perlman and peplau (1981) one of the important names in loneliness studies, stated that loneliness was a serious deterioration in the interpersonal relations, either qualitatively or quantitatively, and also an unpleasant and disturbing life. looking at the definitions, there is no publicly accepted explanation of loneliness. however, it can be stated that the common points show loneliness as an undesirable situation rather than a solitude, that it causes discomfort and negative feelings to the individual. nowadays, the rapid progress of technology has caused people to feel lonely by removing them from society and, later on, to create various addictions. in addition, family structure, the attitude of the family members, environmental factors, personality structure and the negative conditions can cause individuals to be addicted. from this point of view, addiction can be defined as the situation of being under the control of an irrevocable desire for a person, object or an entity, or of another willpower (korkmaz, 2017). in another definition, kwon, kim, cho, and yang (2013) stated that addiction is an obsessive activity that causes a disorder in the daily activities of the individual and shows a picture similar to drug addiction. from the addiction types, smartphone addiction, which we will discuss about, is an excessive telephone use situation which reduces the enjoyment of daily activities, which can be uncomfortable in cases of inaccessibility (sata, celik, ertürk, & tas, 2016). overuse of smartphones, which are used as an effective method to deal with loneliness and provide emotional support, leads to addiction (sar., 2013). there are some symptoms that result from excessive telephone use. casey (2012) listed these symptoms as ignoring the harmful consequences, mind being overwhelmed continuously with the phone, the extreme desire for the addicted object, the loss of the individual's productivity and the feeling of being anxious. experiencing these situations means that the individual is addicted. in literature, there are many findings on whether loneliness causes smartphone addiction or smartphone addiction causes loneliness. but individuals who are self-isolated from the society, have psychological problems, lose their self-confidence, feel alone, and are in many negative situations may be more likely to be addicted. therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between loneliness levels and smartphone addiction of students studying at the faculty of sports sciences. 2. research method 2.1. research model the research made was performed by taking the relational screening model with respect to the target and scope it tends to. the relational screening models are the researches where the relationship between two or more variables is evaluated without intervening to the variables (büyüköztürk, kılıc cakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2016). 2.2. participants as it was easily accessible by the researcher, the study group was assigned from the students of sakarya university of applied sciences, faculty of sports science. a total of 281 students 220 males (78.3%) and 61 females (21.7%) participated in the study voluntarily. table-1. descriptive statistics. variable n % gender woman 61 21,7 man 220 78,3 perceived academic achievement low 28 10,0 moderate 191 68,0 high 62 22,1 smart phone addiction levels normal-level smartphone addiction 128 45,6 conventional smartphone addiction 75 26,7 obsessive smartphone addiction 69 24,6 inveterate smartphone addiction 9 3,2 total 281 100 when the analysis results are examined for the table 1 , it is seen that 78.3% of the participants are man and 21.7% of the participants are woman. it was identified that 68% of the participants had moderate level, 22.1% had high level and 10% had a low level of academic achievement. in addition, it is concluded that 45.6% of participants asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 213-218 215 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group were normal-level smartphone addicts, 26.7% were conventional smartphone addicts, 24.6% were obsessive smartphone addicts and 3.2% were inveterate smartphone addicts. 2.3. data collection tool to determine the loneliness level of the individual, ucla loneliness scale developed by demir (1989) was used. the scale consists of 20 items, 10 of which are forward, and 10 of which are back, and it is a four-way likert type scale. the items that contain positive expressions, never experience: 4, rarely experience: 3, sometimes experience: 2, often experience: 1. items containing negative entries are scored as total opposite. the highest possible score is 80 and the lowest is 20. as the score increases, the loneliness level increases and the loneliness level decreases with the lower scores. in other words, the higher the score, the higher the loneliness level and viceverse. the internal consistency coefficient of the scale was .94 and the test-retest reliability coefficient was calculated as .96 (demir, 1989). in order to determine the level of telephone addiction of students, the scale of smartphone addiction developed by sar et al. (2015) was used. the scale is a five-point likert type which is "never", "rarely'', ''sometimes", ''often'' and "always ''. in the scale of 30 items with four sub-dimensions in total items 1-5 are; physical impairment and negligence of daily activities, items 6-22 are; relieving oneself, items 23-26 are; unrestrainable use, items 27-30 items are; obstraction face-to-face communication. for the scoring in the scale; 30-55 ''normal level'', 56-78 “conventional smartphone addiction'', 79-113 ''obsessive smartphone addiction'', 114 and above ''inveterate smartphone addiction''. the cronbach’s alpha value of the scale is .962 , internal consistency and composite reliability values for the factors of the scale respectively are .960 and .960; .819 and .818; .837 and .837; and .738 and .744. all internal consistency and composite reliability values are above 0.70. 2.4. collection of data the sample populace, which was determined with convenience sampling method from the related literature, was applied the questionnaire form, which was formed by the researchers, between 6 march 2018 and 5 april 2018. in this study, based on quantitative research method, general surveying model was used. in the data collection, 55 scale statements are given in the questionnaire formed in accordance with the expert opinion and related literature review. the scales prepared to determine the loneliness and smartphone addiction levels of the participants were applied by face-to-face interview method. in order for the data to be collected in a healthy way, students were given permission and help was from the instructor before the lesson. after informing the students about the research, the questionnaires were applied to the students in the classroom with the method of group application (büyüköztürk et al., 2016). 2.5. data analysis the data were subjected to descriptive statistics, factor, correlation and regression analysis with spss 20.0 program. the suitability of the data to the statistical analyzes was evaluated by examining the skewness and kurtosis values as well as the multiple connection and linearity conditions (altunışık, coşkun, & yıldırım, 2012; büyüköztürk et al., 2016; tabachnick & fidell, 2001). in this context, it is found that there is no extreme/outlier value in the data and the skewness and kurtosis values for all statements are in the range of -1<,...,<+ 1 (tabachnick & fidell, 2001). in order to determine whether there are multiple connections in the data pattern, it is found that the paired correlations for both regression models are less than 0.80, tolerance values (1-r2) are greater than 0.20, variance inflation factor (vif = [1 / (1-r2)]) is less than 10 and the highest status index (ci) value is less than 30 (altunışık et al., 2012; büyüköztürk, 2016). durbin-watson coefficient values were in the range of 1.5 <1.865 <2.5 and it was found that there was no auto correlation problem between the variables (kalaycı, 2014). 3. findings table-2. analysis of smart phone addiction and loneliness variables according to the gender of the students of the faculty of sport sciences. variable gender n  s.d. t p loneliness (1) woman 61 36,23 8,03 -,359 ,720 man 220 36,73 9,95 physical impairment and negligence of daily activities (2) woman 61 10,28 4,48 ,185 ,853 man 220 10,15 4,67 relieving oneself (3) woman 61 37,34 16,97 ,034 ,973 man 220 37,27 15,02 unrestrainable use (4) woman 61 6,26 3,20 -,958 ,339 man 220 6,74 3,52 obstraction face-to-face communication (5) woman 61 8,77 4,86 -,468 ,640 man 220 9,05 3,91 smartphone addiction (6) woman 61 62,66 27,20 -,154 ,878 man 220 63,21 24,39 when the results of the analysis of table 2 were examined according to gender variable, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between the total score of smartphone addiction, all sub-dimensions of smartphone addiction and loneliness variables (p> 0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 213-218 216 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. analysis of smart phone addiction and loneliness variables according to the departments of sports sciences students. variable department n  s.d. f p post hoc. physical impairment and negligence of daily activities (1) sport managementa 126 11,25 4,92 5,956 ,001 a-c; a-d physical education and sport teachingb 57 10,33 4,38 recrationc 56 8,45 3,94 coachingd 42 9,10 4,02 relieving oneself (2) sport managementa 126 40,32 15,32 3,885 ,010 a-c physical education and sport teachingb 57 37,33 16,82 recrationc 56 32,95 14,50 coachingd 42 33,90 13,29 unrestrainable use (3) sport managementa 126 6,48 3,21 1,721 ,163 physical education and sport teachingb 57 7,47 3,93 recrationc 56 6,07 3,30 coachingd 42 6,71 3,57 obstraction face-to-face communication (4) sport managementa 126 9,73 4,16 4,075 ,007 a-c; a-d physical education and sport teachingb 57 9,30 4,23 recrationc 56 7,95 3,91 coachingd 42 7,74 3,68 smart phone addiction total (5) sport managementa 126 67,78 24,55 3,807 ,011 a-c physical education and sport teachingb 57 64,44 27,46 recrationc 56 55,41 23,09 coachingd 42 57,45 22,26 loneliness (6) sport managementa 126 36,43 10,11 ,993 ,396 physical education and sport teachingb 57 38,47 8,72 recrationc 56 35,63 8,36 coachingd 42 36,00 10,39 when the results of the analysis were examined for the table 3, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference in ' unrestrainable use ' sub-dimension of the smartphone addiction scale and the loneliness variable for the students from the faculty of sports science (p> 0.05). on the other hand, it has been concluded that there is a statistically significant difference between the total score of smartphone addiction and the physical impairment and negligence of daily activities, relieving oneself, unrestrainable use, obstraction face-to-face communication (p <0.05). accordingly, there is a significant difference between the impairment and negligence of daily activities mean points of sports management students and the impairment and negligence of daily activities mean points of the students in the recreation and coaching department, between the relieving oneself mean points of the students in the sports management department and the relieving oneself mean points of the students in the recreation department, between the mean scores of obstraction face-to-face communication of the students of the sports management department and the mean scores of obstraction face-to-face communication of the students of the recreation and coaching department, and between the total score averages of the smartphone addiction of students of the sports management department and the average score of the smartphone addiction of the recreation department students. table-4. analysis of smart phone addiction and loneliness variables according to the perceived academic achievement of the faculty of sport sciences students. variable level n  s.d. f p post hoc. physical impairment and negligence of daily activities (1) low 28 11,39 5,43 1,087 ,339 moderate 191 10,08 4,55 high 62 9,95 4,45 relieving oneself (2) low 28 37,68 14,81 ,187 ,829 moderate 191 36,91 15,07 high 62 38,26 16,95 unrestrainable use (3) low 28 6,68 3,61 ,852 ,428 moderate 191 6,47 3,25 high 62 7,13 3,95 obstraction face-to-face communication (4) low 28 10,29 5,01 1,813 ,165 moderate 191 8,74 3,89 high 62 9,18 4,34 smart phone addiction total (5) low 28 66,04 26,91 ,535 ,586 moderate 191 62,20 24,08 high 62 64,52 26,99 loneliness (6) low 28 36,86 12,74 ,065 ,937 moderate 191 36,71 9,17 high 62 36,24 9,22 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 213-218 217 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when the analysis results of table 4 were examined according to perceived academic achievement, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference in the loneliness variable, all sub-dimensions of smartphone addiction and total score of smartphone addiction (p> 0.05). table-5. analysis of the relationship between the loneliness levels and smartphone addiction of the students of the faculty of sport sciences. variable (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) loneliness (1) r 1 p physical impairment and negligence of daily activities (2) r ,219** 1 p ,000 relieving oneself (3) r ,166** ,759** 1 p ,005 ,000 unrestrainable use (4) r ,357** ,627** ,644** 1 p ,000 ,000 ,000 obstraction face-to-face communication (5) r ,189** ,694** ,750** ,584** 1 p ,001 ,000 ,000 ,000 smart phone addiction total (6) r ,222** ,808** ,919** ,716** ,773** 1 p ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 note: **p<0,001;n=281. analyzing the results of table 5, it was found that there was a statistically significant positive correlation between all sub-dimensions of smartphone addiction, loneliness and smartphone addiction total score (p <0.01). table-6. analysis of the effects of loneliness levels of students of sports sciences faculty on smartphone addiction. değişken β t p. r2 adjr2 f (constant) 5,224 ,000 ,049 ,046 14,495 loneliness ,222 3,807 ,000 dependent variable: smartphone addiction method: enter in order to reveal the predictive power of loneliness variable on the smartphone addiction, simultaneous (enter) multiple regression analysis was performed in the table 6. when the results were examined, it was determined that the applied simultaneous regression model was statistically significant (p <0.01). in this respect, it was determined that the loneliness variable predicted approximately 5% of smartphone addiction. 4. discussion and conclusion the research was applied to university students studying at the sports science faculty of sakarya university of applied sciences. the independent variables which are the subject of the study, taking into consideration the information, the gender, the department and the academic success level, obtained by the researcher in the personal information form, are discussed in the light of the literature. according to the results of analysis on the level of smart phone addiction and loneliness according to gender variable, it was determined that there is no statistically significant difference in all sub-dimensions of smartphone addiction and loneliness variable. the reason for this is that almost everyone, regardless of whether they are women or men, have smart phones and people use smart phones for different purposes within the possibilities provided by technology, and this may not show a significant difference in terms of users' addiction and usage habits. in parallel with the conclusion we reached, süler (2016) concluded that there was no statistically significant difference in the level of smartphone addiction according to the gender variable. according to the gender variable, there is no significant difference in the level of loneliness. it can be explained that the situations that lead individuals to loneliness are related to family, personality and social environment rather than gender. in parallel with the results we obtained, eskin (2001) 's study of the relationship between the loneliness of high school students and the smartphone addiction has reached the conclusion that there is no statistically significant difference in loneliness levels according to the gender variable. sar. (2013) in her study, concluded that girls had higher levels of loneliness than boys did. according to the analysis of smart phone addiction and loneliness level according to the department variable, while there were significant differences in the level of physical ımpairment and negligence of daily activities, relieving oneself, and obstraction face-to-face communication of smartphone addiction, there was no statistically significant difference in the level of not being able prevent usage sub-dimension and loneliness level. in the light of our results, the students studying in the sport management department are mainly trained on how to be a manager, how to manage an organization, how to contact with the relevant federations about coordinating sports organizations, sports marketing and sports management. the communication skills and the communication network are of great importance in realizing these situations and this can be achieved mostly by smartphones. because of the rapid progress of organizations, it is sometimes not possible to communicate face-to-face on some issues that need contacting with the relevant federations. in this context, communication can be provided mostly by smart phones. for this reason, depending on the use of the smart phone, there can be physical pain of fingers and eyes, disruption of daily work, feeling unrest when not being with the phone because of the continuous use, and communication is often done through smart phones and this situation may be able to prevent face to face communication. the reason for the lack of a significant difference between' relieving oneself ' and loneliness level is that individuals should be more likely to use smartphones due to work, not to use too much in times other than work, and not to feel lonely because they are always in contact with people. there is not much research on smartphone addiction according to the department variable in the literature about the result we reached. according to similar studies, meral (2017) concluded that there is no significant difference in the level of smartphone addiction according to high school type. again, in another finding, kiziltoprak (2018) concluded that the levels of smartphone addiction did not differ significantly according to the type of school in their study with high school asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 213-218 218 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students. in a different finding, cakır and oğuz (2017) concluded that there was a significant difference in loneliness and smartphone addiction levels according to school type. according to the results obtained from the analysis of loneliness and the smart phone addiction according to the academic achievement variable, it was concluded that there is no statistically significant difference in all subdimensions of smartphone addiction and loneliness level. according to this result, it can be explained that almost everyone in today's world, regardless of any criteria, has a smart phone and this is not related to loneliness level. looking at the related literature, süler (2016) found that, in parallel with our findings, there was no significant difference between university students' smart phone addiction and academic achievement levels. meral (2017) however, concluded that there is a significant relationship between academic achievement and smart phone addiction. in another study, körler (2011) reported a significant difference between academic achievement and loneliness level. according to the results of the analysis of the effect of loneliness levels of students on smartphone addiction, it was concluded that loneliness predicted smartphone addiction. it is thought that this situation may be caused by the fact that individuals are away from the social environment due to various reasons, they are introverted and therefore they do not have the opportunity to show themselves and therefore they turn to smart phones in order to fill this emptiness. in other words, smart phones that are used for various purposes may increase the use of smart phones as it allows individuals not to think about the difficult conditions by sparing the majority of their time for smartphone usage. in parallel with the results, cakır and oğuz (2017) found a positive and significant relationship between students' smartphone addiction and loneliness levels. again, meral (2017) reached the conclusion that loneliness perceptions increased in secondary school students with the more use of smartphones. unlike our results, uzun (2013) in his study, concluded that the loneliness of individuals did not have an effect on the use of social networks. the result we arrived at was that loneliness caused smartphone addiction. so, loneliness has an effect on addiction. ultimately, as the loneliness levels of the students studying at the sports science faculty increased, the levels of smart phone addiction increased. in this direction, it is recommended to organize recreational activities by the relevant bodies of universities in order to reduce loneliness levels of students. references altunışık, r., coşkun, r. b., s., & yıldırım, e. (2012). research methods in social sciences: spss applied. sakarya: sakarya bookstore. asher, s. r., & paquette, j. a. (2003). loneliness and peer relations in childhood. current directions in psychological science, 12(3), 75-78. büyüköztürk, s. (2016). data analysis handbook. ankara: pegem akademi. büyüköztürk, s., kılıc cakmak, e., akgün, o. e., karadeniz, s., & demirel, f. (2016). scientific research methods. ankara: pegem academy. cakır, o., & oğuz, e. (2017). the relationship between high school students' loneliness and smartphone addiction. mersin university faculty of education journal, 13(1), 418-429. casey, b. m. (2012). linking psychological attributes to smart phone addiction, face-to-face communication, present absence and social capital. graduation project, graduate school of the chinese university of hong kong. demir, a. (1989). validity and reliability of the ucla loneliness scale. journal of psychology, 23(7), 14-18. duy, b. (2003). the effect of cognitive-behavioral approach group psychological counseling on loneliness and dysfunctional attitudes. unpublished doctoral thesis. ankara university, institute of social sciences. ankara. emineoğlu, m. (2018). the mediating role of psychological resilience between social and emotional loneliness and peer bullying in adolescents. published master thesis. bayburt university, institute of social sciences. bayburt. eskin, m. (2001). loneliness in adolescence, coping methods and the relationship between loneliness and suicidal behavior. clinical psychiatry, 4(1), 5-11. kalaycı, s. (2014). spss applied multivariate statistics. ankara: asil yayın dağıtım. kiziltoprak, a. (2018). the relationship between high school students' smartphone addiction and communication skills. master thesis necmettin erbakan university, institute of educational sciences. konya. korkmaz, y. (2017). the effect of internet addiction on depression and anxiety in adolescents. ankara: night library. körler, y. (2011). level of loneliness of primary school second grade students in terms of various variables, and relationships between loneliness and social emotional learning skills. master thesis. anadolu university, institute of educational sciences. eskisehir. kwon, m., kim, d. j., cho, h., & yang, s. (2013). the smartphone addiction scale: development and validation of a short version for adolescents. plos one, 8(12), e83558. meral, d. (2017). investigation of smartphone addiction in secondary education students in terms of loneliness, life satisfaction and some personal characteristics. master thesis, erzincan university, institute of social sciences. erzincan. perlman, d., & peplau, l. a. (1981). toward a social psychology of loneliness. personal relationships, 3, 31-56. reichmann, f. f. (1959). loneliness. psychiatry, 22(1), 1-15. sar, a. h., ayas, t., & horzum, m. b. (2015). development of smartphone addiction scale; validity and reliability study. online journal of technology addiction & cyberbullying, 2(1), 1-17. sar., a. h. (2013). examination of lonelinessand mobil phoneaddiction problem observed ınteenagers from the somevariables. the journal of academic social science studies international journal of social science, 6(2), 1207-1220. sata, m., celik, i., ertürk, z., & tas, u. e. (2016). adaptation study of smart phone addiction scale (atbö) for turkish high school students. journal of measurement and evaluation in education and psychology, 7(1), 156-169. süler, m. (2016). investigation of the effect of smartphone addiction on subjective happiness level in terms of various variables. published master thesis. sakarya university, institute of educational sciences, sakarya. tabachnick, b. g., & fidell, l. s. (2001). using multivariate analysis. northridge: california state university harper collins college publishers. uzun, g. (2013). socialization and loneliness in new communication technologies: elazig province example. unpublished master thesis fırat university, institute of social sciences. elazig. weiss, r. s. (1973). loneliness: the experience of emotional and social isolation. cambridge, ma: mit press. yıldız, m. a., & duy, v. b. (2014). adaptation of the short-form of the ucla loneliness scale (uls-8) to turkish for the adolescents. düşünen adam thejournal of psychiatry and neurological sciences, 27(3), 194-203. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 384 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 384-396, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.384.396 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group kaizen perspective in curriculum development volkan duran1 hüseyin mertol2 ( corresponding author) 1psychology department, faculty of science and arts, iğdır university, iğdır, turkey. 2geography department, faculty of science and arts,tokat gaziosmanpaşa university,tokat, turkey. abstract kaizen is the combination of the words kai (change) and zen (better) in japanese. it means change for the better, continuous improvement (albayrak, 2019). in japan, kaizen is a task for all staff and stakeholders. kaizen can be regarded as the reflection of two different perspectives on management in terms of two distinct cultures. the difference between these two approaches is that the western perspective focuses on the result of the premise while japanese perspective zeroes on the process. while it is aimed to solve the problems by the stakeholders in different positions in terms of western perspective, it is common to solve them together in kaizen philosophy. this kind of habit of putting the hand under the stone has brought success in competition for japan in business and manufacture. hence, in this study it is aimed to investigate the basic principles of the kaizen approach in terms of curriculum development and its principles, so the questions given as follows are sought: 1. what are the core principles of the kaizen approach? 2. how the kaizen approach is applied in different branches as well as education? 3. what kind of a curriculum development model can be suggested to improve the kaizen approach in curriculum and development process? therefore, kaizen principles will be examined through document analysis technique in order to reveal core principles of it in the context of curriculum development models as well as proposing curriculum development model based on kaizen approach. it can be inferred that the core principles of the kaizen approach have many similarities and differences with curriculum and development approaches. keywords: kaizen approach, curriculum development, curriculums. citation | volkan duran; hüseyin mertol (2020). kaizen perspective in curriculum development. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 384-393. history: received: 23 march 2020 revised: 27 april 2020 accepted: 29 may 2020 published: 11 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. note: this paper was orally presented in 7th international congress on curriculum and instruction (icci-epok 2019) in ankara contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 385 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 385 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 385 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 395 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 395 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.384.396&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1723 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1723 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 385 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study presents a new perspective in curriculum development by considering kaizen ideas and proposes a new curriculum development model in the context of kaizen principles. 1. introduction kaizen is the combination of the words kai (change) and zen (better) in japanese. it means change for the better, continuous improvement. it covers activities involving senior managers, managers, and employees in work environments. kaizen allows seeing problems and possible problems rather than content with the current situation (albayrak, 2019). in japan, kaizen is a task for all staff and stakeholders. kaizen can be regarded as the reflection of two different perspectives on management in terms of two distinct cultures. the difference between these two approaches is that the western perspective focuses on the result of the premise while japanese perspective zeroes on the process. while it is aimed to solve the problems by the stakeholders in different positions in terms of western perspective, it is common to solve them together in kaizen philosophy. this kind of habit of putting the hand under the stone has brought success in competition for japan in business and manufacture sectors (cakır, 2018; doğanay, 2008; erdeniz, 2018). demirel (2009) defined the curriculum development as the dynamic relationship between the objectives, content, learning-teaching process and evaluation elements of the educational program. in the context of this definition, kaizen principles could be very useful for curriculum development. additionally, when the similarities between japanese culture and turkish culture is taken into account by additionally considering the appropriateness of the kaizen principles for curriculum development, it might be beneficiary to investigate the core principles of kaizen approach and incorporate it in curriculum development in this regard. hence, in this study it is aimed to investigate the basic principles of the kaizen approach in terms of curriculum development and its principles so the questions given as follows are sought: 1what are the core principles of the kaizen approach? 2-what kind of a curriculum development model can be suggested to improve the kaizen approach in curriculum and development process? 3-why kaizen approach is important for curriculum development? 2. method the study is a qualitative study based on a document analysis method. document analysis involves the analysis of written materials containing information about any subject or the cases, a phenomenon that is targeted for investigation. document analysis techniques in qualitative research data collection methods were used in the collection of research data (bal, 2013; creswell, 2012; yıldırım & simşek, 2008). therefore in this article, it is aimed to investigate the relevant texts related to kaizen approach through text analysis form developed by the researcher based on the research questions. in this context, relevant documents are defined as research texts containing kaizen approach and similar techniques in the historical process. finally, in this research, it is aimed to synthesize data from the collected texts so that a synthesized conclusion can be given regarding the kaizen approach. 3. findings 3.1. findings for the second question as “what are the core principles of the kaizen approach?” the fundamental starting point for the kaizen philosophy, which expresses positive and continuous developme ntis that nothing is perfect and that it will always be achieved better (karakaya, 2004). kaizen is not a one-off, but an ongoing process. since negative problems are always be expected to exist. kaizen thus needs not only assistance, but also the collaboration and participation of the entire organization (bozdemir & orhan, 2011). the theory of kaizen suggests that we have to concentrate on continuous development activities, whether we are a t school, social life and home (imai, 2014). for kaizen approach, the process is important because in order for the good outcomes the processes must be good. the results of the continuous improvement work should not create a negative result for occupational safety, quality and cost. the activities to set advanced standards are to be improved. after the establishment of advanced standards, protection is needed for the application of new standards (albayrak, 2019). therefore, a standard is the first key too improvement. a standard is the best known way to perform a task (coimbra, 2013). therefore, there is a close relationship between setting standards and improvement in figure 1. it should be noted that there are different types of kaizens depending on the needs and aims. for example, high-impact kaizen, focus on making dramatic improvements and solid inroads into revising the way production. training and implementation kaizen, emphasize training the workforce over a span of time and making smaller but important changes. problem resolution kaizen is aiming at resolving recurring production problems and putting them to bed permanently. sustaining kaizen, leads to make additional ongoing change to the initial improvements implemented in a high-impact and other types of formal kaizen activity (davis, 2011). besides to these approaches, different techniques can be used for the implementation of kaizen activities. for example, pdcas (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) can be regarded as four stages of management that are used by managers to track and enhance existing operations and goods. however, kaizen approach have differences from techniques such as pdca in terms of many respects. for instance, kobetsu kaizens are often identified by top management, teams are formed and goals are set. problem solving tools are used and realized with the participation of employees from different departments. 7 steps for a kobetsu kaizen can be given as below. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 386 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. there is a close relationship between setting standards and improvement. source: coimbra (2013). table-1. steps for kobetsu kaizen activities steps details activity step 0 select the improvement topic 1. select and register the topic 2. form project teams 3. plan activities step 1 understand the situation 1. identify the process 2. measure failures, defects and loses 3. use baselines to set targets step 2 expose and eliminate anomalies 1. thoroughly study and expose anomalies 2. restore deterioration and correct minor flaws 3. establish basic equipment condition step 3 analyze causes 1. stratify and analyze causes 2. apply analytical techniques 3. conduct experiments step 4 plan improvements 1. make improvement proposals 2. compare effectiveness of alternative proposals 3. check for possible positive and negative effects step 5 implement improvements 1. carry out improvement plan 2. perform tests, trial runs 3. provide instructions to work on improved equipment and operating conditions step 6 check results 1. evaluate results over a set period 2. check whether the targets have been achived step 7 consolidate gains 1. prepare inspections and work standards 2. make drawings and feed information to manegement source: https://www.tpmclubsa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/kobetsu_kaizen.pdf retrieved from 09.12.19. when these steps were examined in table 1, it can be seen that first step is to select an improvement topic. this phase includes also to form project teams and to plan activities. second phase is to understand the situation by identifying the situation and determining the failures to propose goals. third phase is to expose and eliminate abnormalities so that more ―clean‖ form of state can be reached. waste elimination is the first pull-flow-related kaizen principle. kaizen defines seven forms of waste and targets their elimination as a way of achieving competitiveness and excellence. these seven wastes include (coimbra, 2013): 1. defects (internal or external failures of quality). 2. people waiting. 3. people moving. 4. too much processing. 5. material waiting. 6. material moving. 7. overproduction. fourth phase it to analyze causes by applying analytical techniques as well as empirical experiments. fifth phase is to plan improvement in order to remedy and to develop situation in a positive or better way. sixth phase includes to implement the improvements to test whether the proposed improvements work or not. therefore, seventh phase is about checking results to observe whether the targets have been achieved. finally, giving feed backs to consolidate gains by making drawings and feeding information to management is the last step for a kobetsu kaizen. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 387 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in this respect first principle of the kaizen is the continuous and systematic development for a given system. while kaizen's improvements are small and gradual, the kaizen process produces dramatic results over time. the c oncept of kaizen explains why businesses in japan can not stay static for long (imai, 2014). however, it should be outlined that such a continuous development can be actualized only by the action of humans. the focus is on human endeavors in kaizen. in all processes, people have influence and intervention positively or negatively in the process. the positive ones are labelled as improvements affecting the outcomes (akıl, 2013). hence, the second principle of the kaizen is to focus on human intervention which is sometimes mentioned in the literature as agency but this agency is not limited to teachers but the whole stakeholders and participants of the system. thirdly, because human intervention is important in kaizen approach, each stakeholder needs to be part of ongoing improvement. the expertise of the stakeholders in solving problems should be strengthened, problems should become solvable and systematic rather than seasonal. hence, holistic participation of all parties are of having significance for the kaizen approach. not only teachers or students are the part of the process but also parents and all other parties should be engaged in this process in an educational sense. fourthly, kaizen approach focuses on the process rather than the outcomes. the goal of the individuals in this process is to generate ideas and new initiatives and ventures on how to strengthen and expand their own duties or aims. today many educational theories also emphasize the similar approaches in line with kaizen approach. they stresses authentic learning allowing the learners, in ways involving the real-world problems and tasks that are important for the learner, to explore, analyze and construct meaningfully ideas and relationships. a processoriented approach should be applied in the introduction of the various kaizen strategies: the plan-do-check-act (pdca) cycle; the standardize-do-check-act (sdca) cycle; quality, cost, and delivery (qcd); total quality management (tqm); just-in-time (jit); and total productive maintenance (tpm) (imai, 2014). fifthly, kaizen approach doesn‘t satify the current situation wherever it is. there is a way to be found even in perfectly executed systems. the system is never perfect. the existing system should be continuously moved forward in small steps. therefore, there is no one as perfect or bad in such a philosophy but conditions that should be improved. sixthly, accepting the problem is one of the important aspects of kaizen approach. the concept of problem, which is a military term originating from greek, covers all situations that disturb the individual physically or cognitively. therefore, if someone has a problem, s/he has a some sort of disturbing obstacle, if there is no problem, there are reliefs that make people inactive or be happy about the situation. seventhly, proper problem solution techniques should be used for the current problems. these might be statistical tools and techniques that provide problem-solving methods; histograms, control tables, scatter diagrams, cause and effect diagrams, graphs, control charts and pareto diagrams. finally, the economic or other achivements shouldn‘t be a priority. for instance, pisa scores shouldn‘t be the main aim for education system. for instance, according to pisa (2018) science scores, israel falls back to turkey in science branch. however, when considering the fact that at least 20% nobel prize winners are jews and the scientific contribution of the israel are taking into account, it can be seen that pisa results couldn‘t be regarded as the only measure for defining the success of education. the basic principle of kaizen is: ―the best is the enemy of the good‖. rather than find and solve the problem of classical understanding, it adopts to identify potential areas that may be problematic and to take precautions (söztanacı, 2014). kaizen approach can be used in any field because complex techniques and large investments are not required to implement kaizen. only simple techniques like problem solving tools and dedication to work with constant effort are required whereas innovation requires advanced technology and large investments (yılmaz, 2014). kaizen outlines the small improvements that the ongoing efforts have seen. in order to achieve this, it is very important to ensure the participation of all personnel by giving priority to the administrators and to create a permanent and regular structure through gradual progress. innovation requires the product of large investments in new technology and/or equipment, that is the drastic change of the current situation. because kaizen is a continuous process which involves everyone in the company, all hierarchical employees have to be interconnected with kaizen. in innovation, however, individual efforts and creativity are gained more significance in this regard figure 2 (kesken & ilic, 2008). figure-2. kaizen approach focus on deep devotion, continuity and collaboration whereas innovation stress big resources, creativity and individual efforts. therefore, kaizen's true meaning is to encourage people to improve any aspect of their life, to become motivated and instantly incorporate these ideas (not just their work), into their community. this is kaizen's leverage: it is resilient and flexible as it is a personal commitment and everybody can bring his vision into action (mcloughlin & miura, 2018). to summarize: asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 388 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1kaizen is the continuous and systematic development for a given system. 2kaizen philosophy focus on human intervention or human agency. 3holistic participation of all parties are of having significance for kaizen approach. 4kaizen philosophy focus on process rather than end products. 5kaizen approach doesn‘t satisfy the current situation wherever it is. therefore, there is no perfect level in kaizen approach but there are amendable states. 6accepting the problem is the important aspect of kaizen approach. 7proper problem solution techniques should be used for the current problems. 8the economic or other achievements shouldn‘t be a priority. hence building a real-life kaizen workflow system is essential to davis (2011); ogünç and doğru (2017): 1. understand through kaizen forms and when and how they should be used. 2. develop a well-structured training and execution process for the implementation of kaizen principles. 3. driving kaizen thinking through the rank and file. 4.. create a high level of support and enthusiasm in the top ranks. 5. kaizen's work should include a leadership or voluntary staff assigned to do so. 6. although kaizen is seen as an individual-based improvement, teamwork is required to make it feasible. 7. in order to be aware of the problems, awareness of the personnel must be formed and kaizen training must be done for this. 8. in order to increase the efficiency of kaizen activities, kaizens obtained should be announced to all personnel through meetings and different activities. 9. motivating, encouraging, rewarding or appreciation of the staff who make kaizen should be ensured for kaizen activities. 3.2. findings for the second question as “what kind of a curriculum development model can be suggested to improve the kaizen approach in curriculum and development process?” kaizen approach is used many branches especially in business as well as human resources in hospitals and education. for instance, kaizen costing was used for cost efficiency where kaizen costing refers a technique which aims to continuously improve the production processes in order to achieve this target cost by determining a target cost and to ensure cost effectiveness, and it is regarded as a technique which is used to reduce the costs and continuously monitor the cost reductions at every stage of production. kaizen costing is used accommodation enterprise, air cargo enterprises, cost minimization (alatas, 2015; cakır, 2018; macit, 2018; terzi, 2017). kaizen suggestion system was also used for increasing job security in which all employees were given the necessary trainings and the kaizen suggestion forms developed for the company were used and evaluated (söztanacı, 2014). it can be used also in continuous improvement development of human resources in hospitals where patient focus, process improvement and employee empowerment are main principles (yılmaz, 2014). kaizen approach is used for improving the quality of final product in manufacturing sector (korucu, 2013). it can be used in low cost and high quality product/service in public sector (akıl, 2013). as it can be seen, in many areas kaizen approach can be used. therefore, kaizen principles can be used in also education and curriculum development area because the aim of the kaizen is continuous improvement in any given system by human collaboration and endeavor. in the context of kaizen, management has two major functions: maintenance and improvement. maintenance emphasizes the practices aimed at preserving and enforcing current standards of technology, leadership and service through training and discipline. meanwhile, improvement applies to practices aimed at improving current standards (imai, 2014). therefore, curriculum can be conceived in terms of two aspects as improvement and maintenance in the context of kaizen approach given as in figure 3. improvement begins from students to ministry education vice versa and maintenance is achieved from hidden curriculum to formal curriculum supported by null curriculum, extra curriculum and informal curriculum. formal curriculum refers to ―the planned program of objectives, content, learning experiences, resources and assessment offered by a school.‖. informal curriculum indicates co-curricular activities which happen outside of formal educational environment the content of the formal curriculum. extra-curriculum includes the nonobligatory activities for the pupils. extracurriculum is important for kaizen because it is related with the value-adding activities and subjects. null curriculum covers topics omitted as unimportant from the formal curriculum. null curriculum is of having significance for kaizen because it is related with activities that do not add value but should be carried out and the activities seen as waste. finally, hidden curriculum covers the values which are transferred by social relationships and teachers in school setting that are not explicitly emphasized (arslan & akbulut, 2018; posner, 1995). figure-3. curriculums in the context of kaizen. source: modified from imai (2014). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 389 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in turkey, it seems that there are problems in the improvement and maintenance of curriculums from formal curriculum to hidden curriculum in many aspects. in the context of formal curriculum (official curriculum), it should be prepared as a theoretical and framework by considering the social part of curriculum from ministry of national education to students based on the kaizen principles. therefore, the roles of stakeholders as students, teachers, school administration as well as ministry of national education are the important part of the improvement of the formal curriculum. unless the maintanance is fully aligned and capable of supporting the initiative, kaizen should never be done. t his ensures that the tools and materials necessary for transition can be quickly and effectively rendered at the dispo sal of the participating team (davis, 2011). the roles of all stakeholders for the maintenance of the curriculum, in this regard, can be given as table 2 below. this table shows that kaizen approach gives responsibilities all stakeholders in the curriculum development process. it should be noted that kaizen proposals which are formulated without all stakeholders‘ opinions would probably fail altogether or will need to be updated later if introduced. without the cooperation of all stakeholders in a given area, true kaizen cannot be achieved (mcloughlin & miura, 2018). table-2. participation hierarchy for the application of kaizen in curriculum development ministry of national education school administration teachers students it is committed to launching kaizen as a strategy. it disseminates and executes kaizen objectives through policy extension and crossfunctional activities as determined by senior management. uses kaizen in functional roles participates in kaizen with suggestion system and small group activities provides support and direction to kaizen by providing resources. uses kaizen in functional activities. prepares and guides students follows discipline in the schools creates policy and crossfunctional objectives for kaizen. set, maintain and improve standards. strengthens communication with students and provides high morale continuously improves themselves to better solve problems it conducts policy dissemination and audits to achieve kaizen objectives. implements kaizen awareness to employees through training programs supports small group work and individual suggestion systems such as quality circles improves talent and experience with crosstraining activities build systems, processes and structures for kaizen. helps employees develop skills and problem-solving tools creates kaizen suggestions source: modified from imai (2014). when the table above is investigated, unless the right people are involved, kaizen should never be carried out. the right people involve the establishment of a cross-functional group of participants and some of whom have complete decision-making powers without anybody's approval (davis, 2011). it can also be seen that the concept of agency is emphasized in three levels as student agency, teacher agency and collective agency figure 3. generally, the concept of agency refers ―the capacity for deliberation or even a special kind of knowledge of one‘s actions‖ (misselhorn, 2015). the concept of agency refers to individual's ability to behave on its own and make free choices. at the very least the term ‗agent‘ implies (1) an individual, and (2) a capacity for action (stapleton & froese, 2015). however, it should be noted that there are structural factors that determine or restrict an individual and its actions, such as social class, ideology, gender, race, skill, traditions, etc. however, agency is a significant factor for all the levels of the improvement of curriculum from students to teachers to the institutions. student agency refers the individual agency implying that human agents are conscious on their own choices (gabbay & woods, 2005) as well as it gives students an active role in seeking and internalizing new knowledge (zeiser, scholz, & cirks, 2018). in many modern learning theories, it is emphasized that teaching process should be student-centered rather than teacher or content centered. however, the term student-centered is often used as a concept indicating for the arrangement of the activities in the classrooms where students are more active and independent but leaving blank how students are motivated and be an active agent of their own learnings. teaching without student agency and student motivation is as vain as any other ―modern techniques‖ proposed by modern educational approaches such as constructivism. ―student agency refers to the quality of students‘ self-reflective and intentional action and interaction with their surroundings by including concepts of agentic possibility (―power‖) and agentic orientation (―will‖).‖ klemenčıč (2015). in this regard, it should be noted that kaizen approach stress student agency not student authority. kaizen approach ensures the students should possibly be "agents" in order to have an influence on their employment, their future lives and their immediate and larger social setting (klemenčıč, 2015). second important factor for the improvement of the curriculum is the teacher agency which considers teachers as ―actors acting by-means-of-an-environment rather than simply in an environment‖ (biesta & tedder, 2006). teacher agency in this regard can be viewed in terms of dimensions proposed by the triadic reciprocity framework core agency concepts (trfcac) model as self-reactiveness (self-regulations, choices, action plans, implementation, reflections) self-reflectiveness (self-examining), intentionality (self-organizing, indications for change, action plans and strategies), forethought (visualizing futures, proactive) (jenkins, 2019). due to the fact that kaizen approach emphasizes human efforts, morale, involvement, and self-discipline (imai, 2014) it also support positive student and teacher agency in this respect. finally, kaizen approach underlines the concept of collective agency in order for the improvement of curriculum as well as the actualization of student and teacher agency because without collective agency, all other agencies are individual efforts that are on hiding to nothing. all agency types and all agents act by direct or asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 390 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group indirect intervention or other agents and agencies so that they are not autonomous in this respect but they are autonomous by being able to change their state without direct response to interaction through performing internal transitions to change their states (floridi & sanders, 2004; misselhorn, 2015). collective agency refers to a social state where individuals try to work together to achieve what they cannot achieve by themselves (johnson & johnson, 2015). it requires collective synchronization, coordination, mutual cooperation as well as collective goal resulting in collective goal-directed behavior in which the actions of the individual agents must be directed at the same goal, and their behavior must be coordinated in a specific ways in terms of behavioral and cognitive dimension (misselhorn, 2015). in the context of the concept of agency, it can be easily concluded that formal curriculum shouldn‘t be taken as sole factor for maintenance of a curriculum based on kaizen principles. the other curriculum types proposed by posner (1995) come to fore for such a maintenance based on kaizen principles so that different agency types can be actualized from individualistic level to collective phase. operational curriculum is the place where the formal curriculum is actualized. therefore, kaizen principles can be actualized in the teacher's hands, because the operational curriculum is concerned with the teacher's understanding and perception of the formal program and is closely related to the teacher's training and competences. it is mainly related with the teacher agency so that maintenance of the curriculum can be actualized. in this type of program, the teacher perceives and conveys the activities in the united annual plans and lesson plans, and the students are supposed to receive them. at this point, it can be predicted that improvements in teacher competencies in the program process will make positive contributions for the actualization of kaizen principles in the official curriculum. extra curriculum refers to the planned activities outside the formal curriculum. the extra curriculum includes activities outside the official program, including musical, educational, cultural and sporting activities. in this way it can be used in developing conditions that cannot be foreseen by or distinguished by the official scheme, since it is the informal involvement that is voluntary and open to all students and thus improves the student agency. therefore, it provides flexibility to the maintenance of curriculum in the context of kaizen principles. another type of curriculum in which the actualization of kaizen principles might be neglected is the null curriculum. this curriculum refers the curriculum subjects which is in the official program that are skipped. infrastructural problems in the schools is the main cause of the emergence of this type curriculum. null curriculum can be a threat for the maintenance of the curriculum therefore required infrastructural changes should be provided. finally, another type of program that can play both positive and negative role in the actualization of the curriculum is the hidden curriculum. this type of curriculum, which is affected from the school climate and culture, also reflects informal learning about values, attitudes and beliefs that are not included in the official program. there might be positive and negative aspect of the hidden curriculum that can both provide dynamism as well as obstacles for the actualization of the curriculum. therefore, if it is desired that kaizen principles should be implemented in the curriculums, field works should be conducted on the basis of school types, regions and even individual bases as well as particular schools. as for the kaizen implementation, there are six steps for developing kaizen in different levels of the curriculum development figure 4. first step is to discover the improvement potential referring to help students, teachers and administrators to learn to look more specifically at the problems and the potential improvement around them. second step given as analyze the current methods indicates to teach people how to conduct simple learning and teaching methods analysis. the third step for the implementation of kaizen is to generate original ideas implying to help people start creating original ideas for improvement. fourth step of the kaizen is to develop an i̇mplementation plan including ―just-do-it‖ type of thinking, or plans required more coordination and careful thought. fifth step is to implement the plan indicating the actualization of the plan as well as kaizen principles. sixth step is to evaluate the new method in which mistakes and recommendations are addressed depending on our shared expertise (kato & smalley, 2015). figure-4. six steps of kaizen. source: kato and smalley (2015). for the internal and external evaluation of the curriculum development process, a process-oriented approach also should be applied in the introduction of the various kaizen strategies: the plan-do-check-act (pdca) cycle; the standardize-do-check-act (sdca) cycle; quality, cost, and delivery (qcd); total quality management (tqm); justin-time (jit); and total productive maintenance (tpm) (imai, 2014). in this respect, the plan-do-check-act (pdca) cycle as a vehicle that ensures the continuity of kaizen in providing a strategy for maintaining and improving standards of the curriculum development. actually, the two core scientific methods of pdca and sdca represent asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 391 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the heart of what may be considered a ―kaizen system.‖ the system see figure 5 is holistic and includes an underlying philosophy including principles as follows (hamel, 2010): 1. think pdca and sdca, the basic scientific methods. 2. go to gemba, observe and document reality. 3. ask ―why?‖ five times to identify the root causes. 4. be dissatisfied with the status quo. 5. kaizen what matters. 6. have a bias for action. 7. frequent, small incremental improvements drive big, sustainable improvements. 8. use creativity before capital. 9. kaizen is everyone‘s job. 10. no transformation without transformation leadership. 11. do everything humility and respect for the individual. this is the system of the various methods applied; their order in thought or action. some methods can be given as follows: 1. scientific (how to think). 2. focus and alignment (where and when to apply). 3. deployment vehicles (how to do it). tools can be defined as the various lean and, as appropriate, six sigma techniques employed in the methods. cultural enablers are the organization‘s distinctive behavior patterns, founded upon humility and respect for the individual, facilitate and encourage continuous improvement (hamel, 2010): figure-5. the kaizen system. source: hamel (2010). plan refers to establishing general aims for improvement of the curriculum. decisions to be taken in planning phase should be based on real data and realistic when determining work or goals. initially, if very high targets are set and they are not achieved, motivation will decrease and inefficiency will begin (korucu, 2013). additionally, it includes icreating program development working groups, iiprogram development work plan iiiarranging required infrastructure and materials for the curriculum development process. a detailed needs evaluation is also key to any type of planning. an comprehensive needs assessment is a form of systematic decision-making and is the first phase of continuous improvement preparation (education quality and continuous improvement framework, 2018). at this stage, identification of research design and data collection methods for evaluation purposes, determination of which measurement tools will be used for what purposes, when, how and how many times, and the validity and reliability studies of these tools are included (fitzpatrick et. all, 2004, cited by ozdemir (2009). it includes those steps (education quality and continuous improvement framework, 2018; kaya, 1997): 1) confirmation of meaning (revealing what program evaluation means). 2) determination of the purpose and shared vision. 3) identification of key parties and collaborative stakeholders. 4) identification of opportunities and barriers as well as problems. 5) determining the questions to be answered and root cause analysis results. 6) defining the theory of improvement/action for this goal. 7) determining ideas for change. 6) finalization of the draft. do refers to implementing the plan (imai, 2014). it corresponds to collecting the data from various sources for needs analysis as well as the preparation of other researches. in this stage, research design, population and sample selection, data collection, analysis and interpretation of results are carried out in accordance with the decisions taken during the planning stage, and evaluation is reported (fitzpatrick et. all, 2004 cited by ozdemir (2009). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 392 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group check refers to determining to whether the implementation is on schedule and the expected change has occurred (imai, 2014). it corresponds to analysis of the results and providing feedback for it. the aim of this course is to reveal the deficiencies and errors in the evaluation process. this process is also called ―meta-evaluation (fitzpatrick et. all, 2004 cited by ozdemir (2009). 5s can be used as technique in the check process as well as the other phases of pdca figure 7; because it is used to improve total quality management processes referring as a strategy to create effective, efficient, flexible, competitive, and comprehensive changes (goetsch & davis, 2002).with this technique, it is possible to establish, maintain a quality environment within the organization and solve many daily problems. it refers to sort (seiri), straighten (seiton), scrub (seiso), standardization (seiketsu) and sustain (shitsuke) in continuous check and improvement process figure 6. seiri (sort) refers to maintain the items needed in work areas, arrange or maintain less frequently used items within a remote storage area, discard unnecessary items. in another words, seiri or classification consists of removing all those elements which are not required to perform the job from the area or educational fields. seiton (straighten) refers to systematic arrangement in a way providing the most efficient workflow, order follows classification and organization. there would be hardly an outcome if things were marked, but not ordered. therefore it is necessary to follow simple rules. seiso (shining) means to sweep and keep clean, tidy and ordered the office and all appliances. seiso involves the construction of software that avoid, or mitigate, dirt and improve the protection of workstations. seiketsu (standardizing) refers to reliable and organized work practices. seiketsu is intended to ensure organization, or standardization. shitsuke (sustaining) relates to keeping focus on the new way and does not encourage the old ways to decline gradually once the previous 4 ss were created. shitksuke aims at sustaining already established procedures (garcía-alcaraz, oropesa-vento, & maldonado-macías, 2017). figure-6. 5s system for checking the quality in kaizen source:: kato and smalley (2015). the act applies to the adoption and standardization of the new procedures to ensure that the original problem does not recur or to establish goals for new improvements (imai, 2014). it includes implementation of the changes, monitoring the changes and comparing the results, review of information. kaizen events are important in this phase. kaizen events are formalized practices organizations use to quickly and significantly develop its community (kaikaku). kaizen events create a structured environment in which employees know how to define and use other lean tools to remove waste, faster turnaround, improved productivity, better quality, and reduced expenses (martin & osterling, 2007). figure-7. plan-do-check-act (pdca) cycle for curriculum development. source: boca (2011) and martin and osterling (2007). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 393 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group curriculum evaluation is undertaken to support the development off curriculum innovation, implementation or development and the program evaluation is aimed at ensuring the continuity of the program. furthermore, the curriculum evaluation has different objectives including knowing how to develop a program or procedure to show the efficiency and effectiveness gained by applying the system (ozdemir, 2009). as a product of ongoing efforts, kaizen reflects small improvements. as a result of significant resources investment s in new equipment or technology, innovation involves a drastic improvement. therefore kaizen is related with long-term benefits by emphasizing human efforts, morale, communication, training, teamwork, involvement, and self-discipline—a commonsense (imai, 2014). therefore, improvement as a concept can be broken down into innovation and kaizen. in this respect, innovation can be actualized by collective agency, kaizen can be actualized by teacher and student agency. as it can be seen figure 8 below, maintenance is achieved mostly by students, teachers. figure-8. improvement broken down into innovation and kaizen. source: imai (2014). studies have suggested that organizations need a reasonable and scalable mechanism at the smallest level to ensure successful implementations in harmony with the frontline supervisor. it is difficult to transfer senior managers ' high-level purpose (general aims of the collective agency) to frontline teachers and students. a technique for this has been established in the japanese management system named hoshin kanri. the hoshin system outlines the japanese approach for all stages of preparation and execution (mcloughlin & miura, 2018). for new habits to be adopted, everyone in,for instance, a company, from top management to the shop floor, needs to be involved. the way to do it is by organizing kaizen-focused teams. developing people through teamwork is one of the strongest principles of kaizen (coimbra, 2013). according to hoshin model, senior management maintains that the corporation's strategic goals are simplified to actionable actions at all stages. middle management is responsible for providing practical guidance to senior management. the frontline supervisors, along with their teams, then translate those ―hows‖ into actionable tasks that will accomplish these overall goals (mcloughlin & miura, 2018). senior management is related with managerial commitment implementing organizational changes and facing new challenges (sutari, 2015). the concept has a lateral implementation in its original form, which implies that the top management layers define the company's priorities and devise a plan strategy. there may be some variations prior to reaching an agreement. the mid-level management drives the team leaders towards its objectives and the process continues until the individuals at the bottom of the pyramid, are persuaded towards achieving the common goals1. in this structure given in figure 9, kaizen event is used as a method to change an organization's way of thinking, acting, planning and observing the events. this authorizes and empowers staff to make changes, liberating leadership from commands and regulation to micro-manage employees to concentrate on strategies and build innovative approaches. it frees executives to become coaches (martin & osterling, 2007). figure-9. hoshin model in education (mcloughlin & miura, 2018). source: mcloughlin and miura (2018). 1 https://kanbanize.com/lean-management/hoshin-kanri/what-is-catchball/. https://kanbanize.com/lean-management/hoshin-kanri/what-is-catchball/ asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 394 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group finally, just as evaluation of curriculum development, a kaizen event should not be the automatic default answer; instead the deployment methodology should be the least-waste way with requisite quality, delivery, etc. therefore, summary level flow chart reflecting decision logic for discerning whether a kaizen is appropriate . . . or not can be given as figure 10 (hamel, 2010). figure-10. decision logic used to determine if kaizen is the right tool. source: hamel (2010). to sum up, a curriculum development model-based kaizen principle should focus on improvement and maintenance of the curriculum from students to teachers to school administration to ministry of national education so that different agency types gain significance in terms of three levels as student agency, teacher agency and collective agency. in the improvement side, student agency, teacher agency and collective agency have significance for the improvement of the curriculum whereas the actualization of formal curriculum through extra curriculum, operational curriculum and hidden curriculum is important for the maintenance of the curriculum. however, it should be noted that it is just a structure of scheme which is depicted in there, the actualization of this model is only be achieved by the actions of all agents themselves as well as their core principles and aims. 3.3. findings for the third question as “why kaizen approach is important for curriculum development?” curriculum development is an ongoing process in which curriculums are updated in the context of current needs of society, individuals and states. many curriculum development models emphasize this feature of the curriculum in similar ways such as taba‘s or taba-tyler models. however, in practice this feature of continuity doesn‘t keep in pace with the ongoing changes of the needs as well as qualifications and needs in the future. therefore, there is a lucas critique similar to the one in the field of economics in the process of curriculum development. summarizing it, the argument from lucas is that the new economic policy will change the current system by impacting market players ' aspirations, because it seeks to measure the impact of this policy on the premise that when a new economic policy will continue, the economic structure is maintained in the same way as the previous one. although in the needs analysis in curriculum development analytical approach is used to determine the needs according to the possible situations in the future, it can be said that this approach is not actualized beyond popular expectations for the future of education. therefore, kaizen approach gain significance because it emphasizes both improvement and maintenance in this regard by presenting students, teachers as well as all stakeholders in the education as actors through depicting dynamic relationships so that curriculum development should be inherently contextualized, including multiple levels in a continuing cycle. the concept of kaizen emphasizing continuous improvement was firstly developed in japan since it was an inexpensive way to improve productivity and to reduce costs in a limited time with extreme resource shortages and also because of the demand of the government, which used continuous methods of development to promote rebuilding in the nation during world war ii (kato & smalley, 2015). therefore, kaizen approach is important for developing countries such as turkey in this regard. one of the main mistakes that developing countries do is to bring revolutionary steps especially for social infrastructural elements such as education or more specifically curriculum without waiting the adaptation of those social agents into this new program. this reflects itself in curriculum development as abrupt changes that confuse both students and teachers as well as families in many ways. this can be seen more specifically in many curriculum attempts in turkey last decades. actually this problem can be seen also in ottoman period so that mustafa kemal atatürk who is the founder of modern turkish asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 384-396 395 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group republic remarked that ―each minister of education, the deputy [in ottoman period] had a program. teaching has become a mess because of the implementation of various programs in the country's education. ―therefore, although both society and policy makers want to change problems in revolutionary ways, sometimes the structure of problems as well as their complexity make it very difficult for such sudden changes. because of this reason, kaizen approach gains significance for changes in order for developing more deep and structural changes in education and other social problems. another factor why kaizen approach is important for education is that it has an holistic perspective giving importance not only the theory but also human agency in all levels. sometimes, researchers are allured to use concepts such as teacher agency to cure the problems in curriculums and other educational obstacles without considering the concepts‘ contextual and situational character. teacher agency, for instance, is very cull concept without student and collective agency. for example, if students are not active participants in educational process or their agency is ineffective in this regard, education will be ineffective no matter how teachers are good or do their best. in historical process, many attempts giving value teacher agency failed because of disregarding other factors such as political conditions, collective agency or even student agency. for instance, village i̇nstitutes can be given as the best example for the actualization of teacher agency in turkey but it is also a good example how such a project failed because of not considering other factors as well as other agency types. in this respect, kaizen approach is important both for education and curriculum development because it gives responsibilities not only one factor or agent but all agents and factors in this respect. the cornerstone of kaizen success is managerial commitment as well as the commitment of all stakeholders. in fact, continuous improvement in the production process is impossible to reach without proper training and education for all stakeholders (kato & smalley, 2015) so that it requires the in service-education for teachers and administrators as well as education of students with curricular activities based on kaizen principles. therefore, human resources training increases confidence at schools and helps the schools, teachers and students face the new changes. 4. conclusion in this research, kaizen will be examined through document analysis technique in order to reveal core principles of it in the context of curriculum development models as well as proposing curriculum development model based on kaizen approach. it is expected that the core principles of the kaizen approach have many similarities and differences with curriculum and development approaches. especially, the core principles of kaizen approach as 1accepting the problem. 2. selecting projects that do not require a lot of money. 3. firstly looking at your own problems, rather than others. 4. not being merely focusing on economic interest. 5. determining the priorities 6. applying the circle of planning, applying, checking, taking action cycle 7. using the correct solution tools. can be incorporated into the curriculum development models in order to make them efficient in many respects. kaizen is a tool to control and reduce costs, small but powerful. unlike other cuts, the quality of the product or service is unchanged by kaizen. the wellbeing of all stakeholders (administrators, teachers, students) is not compromised by kaizen. the cost increase for the consumer is not a cover for corporate inefficiency. kaizen is not a hurried one-time trick. every employee should be constantly alert for waste of resources in kaizen organizations which implies extra, null and operational curriculum in the curriculum development process. the system reduces its workforce when it finds a process that doesn't raise the value or quality of the experience (maruer, 2012). kaizen approach in curriculum process is important especially for developing countries to improve productivity and to reduce costs in a limited time with extreme resource shortages. the kaizen process uses different tools and methods to reveal the problem and then uses official root cause anal ysis and other means to identify and fix the problem at the source (emiliani, 2006). kaizen gives value to time and consider it as a strategic resource where many developing countries disregard it for the sake of abrupt and revolutionary changes. time is one of the scarcest elements in any institution but it is often and largely wasted. unefficient time use results in stagnation. materials, goods, information and documents remain inactive, with no va lue added. it is always possible to earn create new curriculums to provide new materials and appoint more people, but time must be wisely used. once it is consumed, no one has a second chance to reuse it (kato & smalley, 2015). secondly kaizen is important because of it holistic approach which takes all agency levels into consideration. in the capitalist age, individual efforts are always appraised and supported by disregarding collaborative efforts and the meaning of individual efforts in the social context. kaizen gives responsibility to every individual from students to administrators in this regard and not expecting from one party to manage everything to correct current situation. the essence of kaizen, as emphasized by imai (1986) is simple and direct: kaizen means improvement; nevertheless, it also means involvement including workers and managers. a way of life is assumed at work, at home and within the society. therefore, the daily practice of kaizen adds to 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(2018). maximizing student agency implementing and measuring student-centered learning practices. retrived from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed592084.pdf. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm 485 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 485-492, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.485.492 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sports in gaining life skills: a study on 10-14 years old students tamer karademir kahramanmaraş sütçü i̇mam university, school of physical education and sports, kahramanmaraş, turkey. abstract the study aims to investigate how the participation of secondary school students in sportive activities affects their life skills. for this purpose, the study included 708 voluntary students, 396 males, and 312 females, in the 2019-2020 education period. in the study, the life skills scale for sport (lsss) was used as the data collection tool to evaluate the levels of life skills. to analyze the data collected in the study, spss 21 statistics package software was used. the data were analyzed for normality. as a result of the tests, because it was observed that the data did not have normality distribution, non-parametric tests were utilized. for two-sample comparisons, the mann whitney u test was used while the kruskal wallis h test was utilized for multiple-sample comparisons. in the study, the level of significance was regarded as p<0.05. the findings of the study indicated that there were significant differences in the life skill levels of the sample group according to the variables of age, gender, grade, the status of exercising and playing in school teams. in conclusion, it was concluded that the life skill levels of 14-year-old students (communication, time management, leadership, teamwork, emotional skills, and social skills) were high while sportive activities were more effective on female students at this age interval compared to male students. it was also observed that participating in school teams enabled positive gains on life skills. keywords: sport, education, life skills, children, schools, turkey. citation | tamer karademir (2020). sports in gaining life skills: a study on 10-14 years old students. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 485-492. history: received: 1 may 2020 revised: 15 june 2020 accepted: 8 july 2020 published: 20 july 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 486 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 486 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 487 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 490 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 492 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.485.492&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1901 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3244-0767 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1901 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3244-0767 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1901 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3244-0767 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1901 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3244-0767 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 485-492 486 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating how the participation of secondary school students in sportive activities affects their life skills. 1. introduction numerous studies in the field of sports indicated that sportive activities shaped and developed personality and character structures while providing improvements to physical and mental health in addition to effecting individuals in gaining positive behaviors in the individual and social field (caterino & polak, 1999; larson, 2000). during the education period, which starts from the preschool period and continues up to the university period, participation in physical education and sports provides children with significant contributions in social, emotional, mental, and physical terms. in this period, the first expectation from physical education and sports lessons is to assume supportive and guiding roles in providing students with active and healthy life skills by developing their physical competence levels. additionally, physical education and sports lessons are expected to develop self-control, adaptation to the social environment, and cognitive skills as well (açak 2006). sport is a performance science that supports the development of individuals in physical and psychosocial terms (tel & köksalan, 2008). the world health organization defines life skills as practical psychosocial skills that facilitate individuals to gain self-confidence and to socialize and emphasizes that they affect the healthy development of young individuals (world health organization, 1999). life skills have an important place in individuals because they are related to various situations such as health, education, sports, culture, arts, and business life. researchers stated that life skills are significant determiners in individuals’ lives and they were effective in various conditions such as general health status (claessens, van eerde, rutte, & roe, 2007) psychological well-being (judge, bono, erez, & locke, 2005) academic achievement (humphrey et al., 2011) sports and exercise performance (burton, naylor, & holliday, 2001) workplace efficiency and success (rubin & morreale, 1996). furthermore, life skills, which provide opportunities to deal with problems experienced in the adolescence period in more effective and healthier ways, should be emphasized in terms of supporting physical, mental and social developments of individuals and becoming more successful by protecting individuals from harmful habits such as alcohol, cigarette, and drugs (botvin & griffin, 2004). social skills, which are placed in life skills, can be stated as certain behaviors that are specifically developed to meet children’s physical and intellectual needs without experiencing problems in the social field (onder, 2003). accordingly, social skills state teachable behaviors that facilitate the participation of individuals in societies and that help them establish their communication with societies while improving their academic performance, teaching how to take their bodies and emotions under control, and covering cognitive and affective skills such as adaptation and assertiveness. social skills, which can be stated as skills to adapt to social environments, assume a significant duty in terms of shaping interpersonal relationships and achieving social aims (avcıoğlu, 2005). numerous findings, such as social skills (gould, flett, & lauer, 2012) emotional skills (brunelle, danish, & forneris, 2007) cognitive skills (danish, forneris, hodge, & heke, 2004) communication skills (gould, collins, lauer, & chung, 2007) teamwork (holt, 2007) leadership (camiré, trudel, & forneris, 2009) time management (fraser-thomas & côté, 2009) taking initiative, respecting others and setting goals (holt, tink, mandigo, & fox, 2008) finding solutions to problems and decision making (strachan, côté, & deakin, 2011) emphasize the place of sports in developing certain life skills. in any group of professions, developing individuals’ communication skills can make the process of communication healthier. the necessity of having such skills in groups of professions which cover intense human relationships is inevitable. physical education professionals, coaches, and sports managers, who serve in sportive activities, should have these skills. furthermore, humans, which have a will to act in their nature and communicate in this way, can ensure that interpersonal relationships are healthy and continuous by participating in sports activities. findings of sports’ effect on individuals, such as developing teamwork, setting goals, taking initiative, respecting others, time management, cognitive skills, emotional skills, communicative skills, social skills, leadership, problem-solving, and decision making, reveal the necessity to place more importance on this subject. accordingly, the current study was conducted to reveal how the participation of secondary schools in sports shapes their life skill levels according to the variables that were discussed. 2. material and method 2.1. study group the sample of the study consisted of 708 individuals (396 males and 312 females), who studied in secondary schools (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades) in the central county of the city of kahramanmaraş in the 2019-2020 education period. for the study, the required permissions were obtained from the parents of the students and the government agencies. to determine the size of the sample in the study, the “number of individuals in the population known sample size formula” (n=nt2pq/d2(n-1)+t2pq) was used. while calculating the sample size, α=0.05 was regarded as the error level while 0.05 was regarded as the sampling error in addition to p=0.8 and q=0.2. the study covered students who were chosen by the simple random sampling method and who accepted to participate in the study. 2.2. data collection tools the data in the study were collected by the life skills scale for sport in addition to the personal information. 2.3. life skills scale for sport to evaluate the life skills obtained through sports, the authentic form, the life skills scale for sport (lsss), was developed by cronin and allen in 2017 as a 5-point likert-type scale (cronin & allen, 2017). the scale can be conducted with secondary school, high school, and university students up to 21 years olds. the validity and reliability study of the scale in turkish was conducted by açak and düz (2018) while the scale consisted of 31 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 485-492 487 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group items and 7 subscales, which covered teamwork, goal setting, time management, emotional skills, communication, social skills, and leadership. the items in the scale are scored with a 5-point likert-type scale, which ranges from “strongly disagree” (1 point) to “strongly agree” (5 points). in our study, the reliability coefficients were determined as 0.90 of cronbach’s alpha coefficient for time management (items 1, 2, 3, and 4), 0.92 of cronbach’s alpha coefficient for communication (items 5, 6, 7, and 8), 0.91 of cronbach’s alpha coefficient for leadership (items 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13), 0.88 of cronbach’s alpha coefficient for teamwork (items 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19), 0.89 of cronbach’s alpha coefficient for social skills (items 20, 21, 22, and 23), 0.93 of cronbach’s alpha coefficient for emotional skills (items 24, 25, 26 and 27), and 0.92 of cronbach’s alpha coefficient for goal setting (items 28, 29, 30, and 31). in the scoring of items in the scale, no item was reverse scored. 2.4. data analysis to analyze the data obtained as a result of the study, spss 21 statistics package software was used. before the statistical analysis, shapiro-wilks and kolmogorov-smirnov normality analysis tests were conducted to test whether the data had a normal distribution and whether it was homogenous. as a result of the tests, it was observed that the data did not have a normal distribution. thus, non-parametric tests were utilized for the analyses. for the two-sample comparisons of the independent variables, the mann whitney u test was used while the kruskal wallis h test was used for multiple-sample comparisons. in the multiple-sample comparative analyses, mann whitney u testwhich is a non-parametric test used for detecting the source of difference where differences exist, was conducted. the level of confidence in the study was regarded as p<0.05. 3. findings the data obtained from the study group were analyzed and presented in the tables below. table-1. variables of age, gender, grade, family income level, playing in school teams of the study group. age n % 10 112 15.8 11 132 18.7 12 180 25.4 13 164 23.2 14 120 16.9 total 708 100.0 gender n % male 396 55.9 female 312 44.1 total 708 100.0 grade n % 5th grade 164 23.2 6th grade 182 25.7 7th grade 180 25.4 8th grade 182 25.7 total 708 100.0 family income level n % low 123 17.4 moderate 181 25.5 high 234 33.1 very high 170 24 total 708 100.0 exercising status n % yes 346 48.9 no 362 51.1 total 708 100 playing in school teams n % yes 203 28.7 no 505 71.3 total 708 100.0 note: *this table is demographic data of the research group. according to table 1, it was determined that 15.8% of the study group consisted of 10-years-old students while 28.7% of them were 11 years old in addition to 25.4% of the participants who were 12 years old, 23.2% of the participants who were 13 years old, and 16.9% of the participants who were 14 years old. additionally, 55.9% of the study group covered male students while 44.1% of them were females. in terms of the grade levels, 23.2% of the study group studied in 5th grade while 25.7% of them studied in 6th grade in addition to 25.4% of the participants who studied in 7th grade and 25.7% of the participants who studied at 8th grade. in terms of the income levels of the families, 17.4% of the study group had families with low-income levels while 25.5 of the study group had families with moderate income levels in addition to 33.1% of the participants who had families with high-income levels and 24% of participants who had families with very high-income levels. it was further determined that 48.9% of the study group participated in sports while 51.1% of them did not exercise. additionally, it was determined that 28.7% of the participants played in school teams while 71.3% of the participants did not play in school teams. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 485-492 488 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. analysis results of the study group according to the variable of age (kruskal wallis h test). age n mean sd x2 p difference u test time management 10 112 14.22 3.39 22.520 .000* 5>1,2,3,4 11 132 14.27 3.43 12 180 15.10 3.59 13 164 15.62 2.28 14 120 17.47 2.74 communication 10 112 15.07 3.00 9.38 .022* 5>1,2,3,4 11 132 15.33 3.12 12 180 15.17 3.32 13 164 15.46 3.39 14 120 16.69 3.56 leadership 10 112 16.23 4.21 1.704 .002* 5>1,2,3,4 11 132 16.41 3.05 12 180 16.68 4.23 13 164 16.99 4.26 14 120 18.21 4.91 teamwork 10 112 22.66 4.94 20.943 .000* 5>1,2,3,4 11 132 22.54 4.42 12 180 22.57 4.28 13 164 22.92 4.20 14 120 24.67 4.43 social skills 10 112 14.22 3.43 18.643 .002* 5>1,2,3,4 11 132 14.36 3.32 12 180 14.65 3.34 13 164 14.57 3.76 14 120 16.88 3.37 emotional skills 10 112 14.67 3.10 14.645 .009* 5>1,2,3,4 11 132 14.49 3.29 12 180 14.32 3.22 13 164 14.68 3.93 14 120 15.68 4.44 goal setting 10 112 15.47 2.54 13.154 .013* 5>1,2,3,4 11 132 15.43 3.68 12 180 15.67 3.47 13 164 15.88 3.02 14 120 16.89 3.36 note: * p<0.05. according to table 2, in the analyses conducted for the variable of age in the study group, it was determined that the differences in all of the subscales of life skills for sports were statistically significant (p<0.05). table-3. analysis results of the study group according to the variable of gender (mann whitney u test). gender n mean sd z p time management male 396 14,65 3,29 -3,454 ,013* female 312 16,89 3,23 communication male 396 14,35 3,20 -2,278 ,031* female 312 15,76 3,35 leadership male 396 16,24 3,58 -2,802 ,023* female 312 18,04 3,64 teamwork male 396 22,52 3,37 -2,547 ,034* female 312 24,73 4,34 social skills male 396 14,67 3,34 -3,656 ,011* female 312 15,98 3,20 emotional skills male 396 14,43 3,25 -3,832 ,002* female 312 15,72 3,05 goal setting male 396 14,28 3,44 -2,439 ,017* female 312 16,95 3,28 note: * p<0.05. according to table 3, in the analyses conducted for the variable of gender in the study group, it was determined that the differences in all of the subscales of life skills for sports were statistically significant (p<0.05). according to table 4, in the analyses conducted for the variable of grade in the study group, it was determined that the differences in all of the subscales of life skills for sports were statistically significant (p<0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 485-492 489 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. analysis results of the study group according to the variable of grade (kruskal wallis h test). grade n mean sd x2 p difference u test time management 5th grade 164 14.34 3.39 23.309 .000* 4>1,2,3 6th grade 182 14.65 3.85 7th grade 180 14.70 3.62 8th grade 182 16.58 3.24 communication 5th grade 164 14.37 3.15 18.454 .002* 4>1,2,3 6th grade 182 14.31 3.25 7th grade 180 14.48 3.43 8th grade 182 15.69 3.12 leadership 5th grade 164 16.65 3.21 14.643 .025* 4>1,2,3 3>1,2 6th grade 182 16.78 3.38 7th grade 180 17.04 4.94 8th grade 182 17.85 4.12 teamwork 5th grade 164 22.23 4.08 17.064 .003* 4>1,2,3 6th grade 182 22.26 4.55 7th grade 180 22.39 4.36 8th grade 182 23.63 4.71 social skills 5th grade 164 14.52 3.40 16.759 .004* 4>1,2,3 6th grade 182 14.87 3.26 7th grade 180 14.58 3.82 8th grade 182 15.77 3.40 emotional skills 5th grade 164 14.81 3.16 11.538 .017* 4>1,2,3 6th grade 182 14.68 3.32 7th grade 180 14.98 3.79 8th grade 182 15.66 4.26 goal setting 5th grade 164 15.47 3.95 13.642 .013* 4>1,2,3 6th grade 182 15.40 3.05 7th grade 180 15.49 3. 8th grade 182 16.78 3.83 note: * p<0.05. table-5. analysis results of the study group according to the variable of family income level (kruskal wallis h test). family income level n mean sd x2 p time management low 123 14.55 3.96 5.328 .506 moderate 181 14.38 3.12 high 234 14.37 3.09 very high 170 14.07 3.54 communication low 123 15.79 2.37 2.750 .127 moderate 181 15.24 3.42 high 234 15.46 3.17 very high 170 15.38 3.27 leadership low 123 17.17 3.54 5.957 .501 moderate 181 17.80 4.48 high 234 17.56 4.53 very high 170 17.48 4.01 teamwork low 123 22.65 3.77 6.564 .594 moderate 181 22.38 4.43 high 234 22.93 4.70 very high 170 22.65 4.32 social skills low 123 14.12 3.24 2.634 .162 moderate 181 14.73 3.28 high 234 14.65 3.76 very high 170 15.73 3.39 emotional skills low 123 14.68 3.27 2.351 .080 moderate 181 14.38 3.49 high 234 14.90 3.28 very high 170 15.36 3.19 goal setting low 123 16.47 2.80 3.659 .455 moderate 181 15.70 3.65 high 234 15.25 3.37 very high 170 16.03 3.54 note: * p<0.05. according to table 5, in the analyses conducted for the variable of family income level in the study group, it was determined that the differences in all of the subscales of life skills for sports were not statistically significant (p>0.05). according to table 6, in the analyses conducted for the variable of exercising status in the study group, it was determined that the differences in all of the subscales of life skills for sports were statistically significant (p<0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 485-492 490 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. analysis results of the study group according to the variable of exercising status (mann whitney u test). exercising status n mean sd z p time management yes 346 16.32 3.13 -6.744 .000* no 362 13.38 3.20 communication yes 346 16.65 3.32 -4.252 .007* no 362 14.03 3.83 leadership yes 346 18.78 3.55 -7.538 .000* no 362 15.26 3.37 teamwork yes 346 22.89 4.21 -6.132 .000* no 362 19.21 4.43 social skills yes 346 15.36 3.33 -5.539 .000* no 362 13.65 4.05 emotional skills yes 346 15.87 3.37 -4.703 .003* no 362 13.40 3.63 goal setting yes 346 16.66 3.27 -5.648 .000* no 362 14.21 3.79 note: * p<0.05. table-7. analysis results of the study group according to the variable of playing in school teams (mann whitney u test). playing in school teams n mean sd z p time management yes 203 17.98 3.05 -8.803 .000* no 505 14.30 3.53 communication yes 203 16.87 3.43 -5.536 .002* no 505 14.25 3.42 leadership yes 203 19.97 3.69 -8.682 .000* no 505 17.58 4.61 teamwork yes 203 23.75 4.57 -6.571 .000* no 505 21.73 4.55 social skills yes 203 16.27 3.46 -5.437 .002* no 505 14.91 3.72 emotional skills yes 203 15.38 3.54 -4.663 .004* no 505 14.46 3.28 goal setting yes 203 16.55 3.04 -6.654 .000* no 505 15.01 3.46 note: * p<0.05. according to table 7, in the analyses conducted for the variable of playing in school teams in the study group, it was determined that the differences in all of the subscales of life skills for sports were statistically significant (p<0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion in the current study, which investigated the effects of sports on the life skills of secondary school students, the results were discussed in the light of results in the literature. according to the results of the study, it was determined that there were differences in the process of gaining and developing life skills according to the variable of the age of the study group in the current study, which covered children who were 10-14 years old. accordingly, it was concluded that the children in the 14-years-old group had higher mean scores in the subscales of communication, time management, leadership, teamwork, emotional skills, and social skills. several studies reported that individuals gained several life skills through sports. for example, it was revealed that young british individuals who participated in sportive activities learned life skills in teamwork, social skills, and leadership, interpersonal communication the most while learning life skills in emotional skills, problem-solving, decision making and time management the least (buğan, 1999). similarly, in studies conducted with canadian (brunelle et al., 2007; strachan et al., 2011) american (gould et al., 2007) and australian (vella, oades, & crowe, 2013) athletes, coaches and parents, it was concluded that features of similar skills were learned. these findings suggest that young individuals learn more about certain life skills through sports compared to other life skills. in a study conducted by türk (2015) the effects of sports on gaining life skills in young individuals were investigated with young individuals who were 14-18 years old and participated in basketball. in the study, it was concluded that there was no difference between ages in terms of gaining and developing life skills in young individuals. this study and the current study do not share similar results. however, the fact that each study in question covered different categories of ages in the sample groups could be the reason for these results. this is because age is a significant criterion in the process of gaining and developing life skills through sports. additionally, it is believed that starting to participate in sports at an early age can lead to gaining life skills further. in the study, it was observed that there were differences in gaining life skills through sports according to the variable of gender. accordingly, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in all the subscales of life skills for sports in favor of females. the reasons for that are believed to be factors such as the events that females who participate in sports face during sports activities, friendship relationships, team games, and spectators. certain studies in the literature support our study. deniz (2002) investigated the levels of social skills in students who received university educations and concluded that female students were more competent in the subscales of emotional sensibility, cognitive expressionism and social control in social skill levels compared to male students while reporting that male students were more competent in the subscale of affective control compared to female students. in a study conducted by cilingir (2006) social skills and problem-solving skills of regular high school and science high school students were compared. as a result of the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 485-492 491 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group study, it was observed that the students who received high school education experienced differences in their social skill levels according to their genders. in the sensory control subscale of social skills, it was concluded that males were more competent in terms of the ability to regulate and to control non-verbal messages and emotions compared to female students. in a study conducted by balyan (2009) the attitudes of 2nd stage primary school students and secondary education students toward physical education and sports lessons, social skills, and selfefficacy levels along with the relationships between those were investigated. as a result of the study, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in attitudes toward physical education lessons according to the type of school, gender, sports facilities present in school and income levels. in social skill levels, it was determined that female students were at higher levels in positive social skills compared to males. the results of this study are also in parallel with the results of the current study. in the analysis conducted based on the grade variable of the study group, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in all the subscales of life skills for sports, except for the subscale of goal setting. accordingly, the students who studied at 8th grade learned life skills such as time management, teamwork, leadership, communication, social skills, emotional skills, and goal setting at higher levels compared to students who studied at 5th, 6th and 7th grades. this indicates that the 8th grade level in secondary education is a significant period that demands attention in terms of gaining and developing life skills. in a study conducted by ryan and dzewaltowski, similar results to our study were suggested and it was stated that the students at 6th and 7th grades improved their self-confidence through physical activities, dealt with problems in physical activities, encouraged others to gain a social circle of friends and acted assertive and outgoing (larson, 2000; ryan & dzewaltowski, 2002). this supports the results of our study. in the evaluation of previous studies, considering the role of sports in gaining and developing life skills, it can be stated that increasing the share of physical education and sports lesson in the secondary school curriculums, which prepare children for life and future, and including sportive activities more is a situation to which more importance and sensitivity should be attributed. in the analysis conducted according to the variable of the family income level of the study group, it was determined that the differences in all of the subscales of life skills for sports were not statistically significant. it is believed that this is because sports can present everyone with equal opportunities regardless of their family income levels. what is important in sports is the will. differences in income levels of families do not prevent athletes from gaining life skills. in turkey, economic support at significant magnitudes is provided for sports. especially, disadvantageous groups are supported via various projects on this subject. it is a commonly-known fact that individuals with disabilities participate and support and become successful. here, the fundamental factor is the will and desire to participate in sports activities. participation in these activities provides all children and young individuals with positive gains in their life skills. previous studies in the literature support our study. for example, mayer (1997) stated that the economic income of families did not have a significant effect on outputs regarding children while characteristics of parents, such as reliability and honesty, the health status of parents, and their skills were effective in the development of children. furthermore, it was stated that there was no significant relationship between income levels and professions of families, and their socializing behaviors. these findings support our study. when the results of the study were evaluated, in the analysis conducted according to the status of exercising variable of the study group, it was observed that there were statistically significant differences in the subscales of life skills for sports. accordingly, it was concluded that secondary school students who exercised gained more life skills, such as time management, leadership, communication, teamwork, emotional skills, social skills, and goal setting, compared to those who did not exercise. it was also determined that the students who played in school teams gained more life skills, such as communication, time management, leadership, social skills, teamwork, emotional skills, and goal setting, compared to those who did not play in school teams. it can be stated that this is because the social interaction of students with sports enables them to gain and to develop various life skills. in a study conducted by reynolds et al. (1990) it was stated that sports positively affected quality life and other psychological variables while reporting that sports had positive effects on the expectancy of social competence, social factors, and stress, which are in parallel with our study. another researcher stated that individuals who exercised had further tendencies for establishing communication compared to individuals who did not exercise (ozerkan, 2004). açak and karademir (2011) discovered that there were statistically significant differences between the mean self-respect scores of individuals in favor of those who participated in sports according to the variable of participation in sports activities. in the analysis conducted according to the variable of playing in the school team of the study group, it was determined that the differences in all the subscales of life skills for sports were significant. the participation of students in the school team can provide positive effects for students in experiencing various behaviors of their friends, cooperating while setting common goals, controlling teamwork and behaviors, and creating opportunities to develop social and emotional skills. researchers conducted a study that investigated the social skill levels of secondary school students who exercised and who did not exercise. when the results of this study were examined, no significant difference was determined in the subscales of “positive social behavior” and “negative social behavior” in the social skill levels in terms of the variable of “licensed sports branch” in students. in other words, it was revealed that the status of practicing licensed sports or the difference in sports branches did not have any significant effect on their social skill levels in terms of “positive social behavior” and “negative social behavior” (oztürk, 2018). thus, sports can enable gains regardless of being practiced with a license or without a license. in a study conducted by another researcher, the levels of social skills were compared in secondary school students who did sports with licenses and who did not do sports. in the conclusion of the study, it was determined that there were significant differences between the social skill levels of the secondary school students who did sports with licenses and who did not do sports (ozcan & yıldırım, 2011). in other words, the subscale of affective sensitivity in life skill levels of students demonstrated significant differences according to the status of doing sports with licenses. when the differences between the status of exercising were examined, it was observed that there were differences in favor of students who did sports with licenses, which supports our study. when the results of this study were evaluated, it could be stated that the students who exercised gained more life skills compared to students who did not exercise. in conclusion, it was observed that the life skill features of individuals (communication, time management, leadership, teamwork, emotional skills, and social skills), who were asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 485-492 492 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 10-14 years old and who exercised, in the secondary education period improved positively. it was further determined that sportive activities were more effective on female students compared to male students while playing in school teams provided more positive gains in life skill levels. furthermore, when it is considered that the life skill levels of 8th-grade students were higher in the study, regardless of their family income levels, it can be stated that it is beneficial to encourage students to participate in sports and sports activities until reaching this period. this is because the life skills gained through sports in individuals should not be thought of as a situation that emerges instantly until reaching 8th grade (approximately 14 years of age) and it should be noted that this emerges as an accumulation. references açak, m., & karademir, t. 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(1999). partners in life skills education: conclusions for a united nations inter-agency meeting. retrieved from http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/30.pdf. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/30.pdf 124 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 4, 124-129, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5119 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a development of the training curriculum for learning design to promote sexuality education awareness for students of teachers at the high school level nipitpon nanthawong1 artid saokham2 ( corresponding author) 1lampang rajabhat university, thailand. email: atthaporn.rack@gmail.com 2silpakorn university, thailand. email: artid.sk@gmail.com abstract the purpose of this research aimed to study develop a curriculum and evaluate the effectiveness of a curriculum for learning design promoting sexuality education awareness. the sample used in the research consisted of 8 high school teachers from 8 subject groups in semester 1 of the academic year 2022 at kowit thamrong school, chiang mai. the research tools consisted of courses and user manuals, as well as a teacher competency assessment form and satisfaction survey form. the data were analyzed by finding the mean and standard deviation. together with the content analysis, analysis data by descriptive statistics and content analysis. the research results were found as follows; 1. the training curriculum development model to promote teachers' awareness of sexuality education consisted of 4 components: (1) curriculum principles, (2) objectives, (3) curriculum development process, and (4) measurement and evaluation. 2. during the curriculum assessment, it was established that educators had a dual focus. firstly, they concentrated on facilitating learning methods that highlighted effective educational approaches (2.1). secondly, they required a learning design that emphasized observation (2.2). this approach aligns with an educational model wherein curriculum development nurtures learners to comprehend the model in terms of perspective and efficiency. keywords: adolescents, awareness, curriculum development, design teaching, learning design, sexuality education, training curriculum. citation | nanthawong, n., & saokham, a. (2023). a development of the training curriculum for learning design to promote sexuality education awareness for students of teachers at the high school level. asian journal of education and training, 9(4), 124–129. 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5119 history: received: 23 august 2023 revised: 12 october 2023 accepted: 24 october 2023 published: 3 november 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the chiang mai university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 17 august 2020 (ref. no. cmu/rec 63/065). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................125 2. research objectives ..................................................................................................................................................................................125 3. literature review.......................................................................................................................................................................................126 4. methods .........................................................................................................................................................................................................126 5. results............................................................................................................................................................................................................126 6. discussion and conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................128 7. suggestions...................................................................................................................................................................................................129 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................129 mailto:atthaporn.rack@gmail.com mailto:artid.sk@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5119 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1625-535x https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9868-5619 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 124-129 125 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature integrating comprehensive sexuality education (cse) into teaching and learning, with a strong emphasis on empowering teachers to design integrated learning experiences focused on cse, has demonstrated that teachers, acting as 'learning managers,' play a vital role in helping students gain a correct understanding and awareness of their sexuality. 1. introduction unesco (2018) recognizes the importance of teaching comprehensive sexuality education (cse) to enable children and youth to learn about sex and positive relationships, thus helping achieve sustainable development goals. "sexuality education" is defined as a comprehensive process encompassing physical and mental development, physiological functions, care and hygiene, attitudes, values, relationships, sexual behavior, and social and cultural dimensions that impact sexual lifestyles. this definition aligns with the ministry of education (2015) description of "sexuality education" as a process that fosters the development of knowledge, thoughts, attitudes, emotions, and skills necessary for individuals to pursue a happy and safe sex life while responsibly developing and maintaining relationships with others. adolescence is a crucial period during which individuals should gain a deep understanding of gender and sexuality. as sexual behavior and sexual orientation become pertinent topics, teenagers naturally develop an interest in the opposite sex and experience sexual feelings. adolescents are characterized by curiosity, a desire to explore, and the expression of strong emotions, often accompanied by an ongoing process of self-discovery. however, the understanding of gender, especially in an environment with provocative factors and situations, may not always be accurate. consequently, teenagers may be at risk of engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior. therefore, teachers play a pivotal role in guiding and educating teenagers on these matters, making them essential figures in shaping the sexual education of adolescents. educational institutions must provide comprehensive support to teachers to ensure they fully and accurately understand sexual orientation. these institutions, which serve as critical sources of learning, have the potential to educate not only teenagers but also teachers themselves. speaking as a teacher, we recognize the significance of these issues, especially for educators who bear the primary responsibility for organizing students' learning experiences. gender plays a crucial role in shaping educational institutions, directly impacting curriculum development and activity planning. consequently, promoting knowledge about sex education is imperative, necessitating schools to integrate this knowledge into their curricula and learning activities for students. providing comprehensive sexuality education is crucial to prepare young people to understand this matter. it equips them with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate a healthy sexual lifestyle as they transition into adulthood. this education encompasses various aspects, including helping them learn and develop their capacity for caring for others, promoting non-violence and consent in relationships, and fostering the development of fulfilling, consensual, and respectful sexual relationships. furthermore, sexual education should be an integral part of the curriculum design to mitigate the adverse effects of sex-related issues, such as unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, human immunodeficiency virus: hiv, and sexual violence (path, 2020). organizations, such as path, are driving projects aimed at promoting sex education for youth. these projects highlight the challenge of integrating sex education into educational management. to address this challenge, teachers should receive support in organizing a learning process that facilitates a thorough understanding of sex education. kowit thamrong chiang mai school is an educational institution that provides instruction up to the high school level, particularly for students in their teenage years, preparing them for higher education and global citizenship with a focus on sexual health. therefore, teachers in this role must be well-prepared. they serve as crucial "learning organizers" who enable students to comprehend sexuality accurately and responsibly. to achieve this, the researcher has developed a training curriculum aimed at promoting awareness of sexuality education among high school-level teachers. this curriculum equips teachers with the knowledge and skills to design learning activities that provide teenagers with accurate and comprehensive information about human sexuality. topics covered include growth and development by age, fertility, anatomy of the body, managing sexual feelings, masturbation, family life, pregnancy, childbirth, child care, sexual response, gender identity, birth control, sexual violence, immune deficiency syndrome: aids, and other sexually transmitted diseases. the curriculum emphasizes the provision of open and safe opportunities for teenage learners to ask questions, explore, exchange ideas, and evaluate their own and societal attitudes toward sex. it aims to cultivate an attitude that is open, accepting of differences, and respectful of gender rights and freedom. it encourages students to refrain from hasty judgments and to value various aspects of themselves and their families. additionally, the curriculum helps students develop critical thinking skills regarding their responsibilities to themselves, their families, and others. it equips them with essential skills for building and maintaining healthy relationships, including communication, decision-making, expressing needs, confirming opinions, negotiation, conflict resolution, and creating and sustaining satisfying friendships. furthermore, the curriculum empowers students to solve problems and seek help when needed, fostering a sense of responsibility in matters related to relationships and sexual encounters, both with themselves and with others, including decisions regarding sexual activity, disease prevention, and consent. emphasizes the importance of teachers being well-informed and understanding the subject matter thoroughly before conveying awareness of sexuality education to students in a clear, comprehensive, accurate, and appropriate manner. 2. research objectives 1. develop a curriculum for training in learning design aimed at promoting awareness of sexuality education among high school students. 2. assess the effectiveness of the learning design training curriculum in promoting awareness of sexuality education among high school students. 2.1. evaluate teachers' ability to create learning materials that promote awareness of sexuality education for high school students. 2.2. measure teachers' satisfaction with the learning design aimed at promoting awareness of sexuality education for high school students. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 124-129 126 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. literature review 3.1. curriculum development concept educators, including taba (1962); beauchamp (1981); wongyai (1982); print (1993); oliva (2009); wiles (2009); kunarak (2015); sutthirat (2016); chookhampaeng (2016) and gratthorn, boschee, whitehead, and boschee (2019), have synthesized the concept that a curriculum is a plan or framework of knowledge and experiences developed to facilitate learning. this curriculum specifies the learning goals or objectives, teaching, and learning activities through which learners acquire knowledge, abilities, skills, attitudes, and characteristics. these elements are evaluated to assess student development in line with the predetermined learning objectives. key components of the curriculum include 1) principles and rationale, aims, and objectives, 2) essence and content, 3) activity organization, and 4) measurement and evaluation. 3.2. concepts about sexuality education organizations involved in sexuality education, such as the student protection task force center (2015) and unesco (2018), describe sexuality education as a comprehensive learning process encompassing physical, mental, physiological, and healthcare aspects, attitudes, values, relationships, sexual behavior, social dimensions, and cultural influences that impact sexual orientation. it involves developing knowledge, thoughts, attitudes, emotions, and skills necessary for individuals to lead fulfilling and safe lives while responsibly nurturing and sustaining relationships with others. key components of sexuality education include understanding the true nature of human sexuality, promoting knowledge, and understanding of gender equality, gender roles, cultural norms, sexual health, and overall reproductive health among children and youth. this education addresses issues like sexually transmitted diseases, considering the learners' age, and encourages the active involvement of professionals, parents, family members, community members, and teachers who foster positive relationships with students. these educators provide opportunities for students to express themselves without judgment. 4. methods for this research, the researcher employed a combination of research and development methods, integrated with the curriculum development model synthesized from concepts and theories. the research utilized a mixed-method research design, specifically employing a convergent parallel design with a sample group consisting of high school teachers from kovitthamrong chiang mai school. the study followed a single-group research design to measure post-experiment results, utilizing the "one shot case study" approach. the research operations were divided into four steps, as outlined below. step 1: research: r1 involved studying and analyzing basic data. this phase included the examination of research documents related to training curriculum development and the sexuality education policy. additionally, the researcher conducted interviews with relevant teachers and gathered student opinions as data to create a preliminary framework for the training course on learning design aimed at promoting awareness of comprehensive sexuality education (cse). the sample groups used in the survey of knowledge about sexuality education included: 10 high school teachers representing all 8 subject groups. 1 high school academic head. 30 high school students. furthermore, an analysis of the 2008 basic education curriculum (revised edition 2017) was conducted for the 8 learning subject groups, including the thai language, mathematics, health and physical education, science and technology, career education, foreign languages, art, social studies, and religion and culture. this analysis aimed to integrate knowledge on awareness of sexuality education for high school students into a curriculum framework. step 2: development: d1 involved the development and quality assessment of the training curriculum. in this phase, experts in curriculum and teaching (3 experts), sexuality education (1 expert), and measurement and evaluation (1 expert) were engaged to develop and validate the curriculum. step 3: research: r2 encompassed the implementation of the curriculum. after the curriculum passed the quality inspection, it was implemented by organizing training sessions on learning design to promote awareness of sexuality education for high school teachers. this training involving eight grade 10 teachers. and utilized the bapr (brief, analyze, practice, reflect) training process. a single-group research design was employed to measure the outcomes after the training, utilizing the "one shot case study" approach. this phase aimed to assess the teachers' ability to design learning materials that promote awareness of sexuality education for high school students. step 4: development: d2 involved an evaluation of the curriculum's effectiveness. this evaluation considered two key aspects: teachers' ability to design learning materials that promote awareness of sexuality education for their high school students. teachers' satisfaction with the learning design that promotes awareness of sexuality education for high school students. throughout the research process, the researcher systematically carried out each step, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data from various sources. the findings were then synthesized. the research operations encompassed both research and development. diagram 1 provides detailed information about the research operations. 5. results the research presents the research results, which are divided into two parts as follows: part 1: curriculum development results. the findings related to curriculum development reveal that the components of the training curriculum designed to promote awareness of sexuality education among high school teachers have essential concepts. these concepts can be summarized into four key points: principles of the curriculum. objectives. curriculum development steps. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 124-129 127 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group measurement and evaluation. these concepts were applied in organizing training activities using the bapr format, which comprises four steps: step 1: exchange knowledge and brainstorming (b: brainstorming). step 2: hands-on learning design (a: acting & practicing). step 3: observation and data collection (p: profiling & observe). step 4: evaluation of the design and implementation (r: reflecting). this curriculum is considered to be of high quality and practical for use with the sample group. an example learning unit developed by the researcher is provided in detail as follows: table 1. learning unit: “learning design to promote awareness of sexuality education for high school students”. objectives content activities media/learning resources 1. teachers have knowledge understanding of learning design and cse 2. teachers can design learning that promotes awareness of sexuality education for high school students. 1. how to integrate content and teaching methods 2. methods for designing integrated learning with course indicators 3. how to organize integrated learning activities 4. sexual education for students at the high school level 5. creating awareness about sexuality education" step 1: exchange knowledge and brainstorming (b: brainstorming). 1.the lecturer assesses prior knowledge related to learning design and encourages research on the topic of educational trajectories. 2.the course aims to teach and explore fundamental knowledge about learning design for the purpose of designing and researching learning methods that promote research. this includes knowledge about educational culture, as well as knowledge and understanding of nutritional modes. 3.the lecturer imparts knowledge on education, learning design, and educational trajectories based on content determined by academic experts. all students within the group participate in this learning experience, which stimulates cognitive processes. step 2: hands-on learning design (a: acting & practicing). teachers possess an understanding of the principles, knowledge, and skills required for designing comprehensive sexuality education (cse) and promoting awareness of cse. teachers apply this understanding by designing learning materials and creating activity plans that promote awareness of sexuality education collaboratively. step 3: observation and data collection (p: profiling & observe). 1.consider the suitability of organizing collaborative learning activities by exchanging and evaluating plans for activities that promote awareness of sexuality education. 2.offer suggestions on additional engaging topics and collectively assess the strengths, weaknesses, and feasibility of implementing these learning designs. step 4: evaluation of the design and implementation (r: reflecting). 1.summarize information and recommendations collectively to reflect on the outcomes of learning design operations, identifying strengths, highlights, weaknesses, and limitations. 2.collaboratively establish learning design guidelines for promoting awareness of sexuality education among high school students and implement them according to the designed plan. 1. lecturer 2. sample learning plan 3. videos about sexuality education 4. cse manual for secondary school students 5.smartphone devices 6.internet 7. information regarding basic knowledge of high school students regarding sexuality education. part 2: results of evaluating the effectiveness of using a learning design training curriculum to promote awareness of sexuality education for high school students by teachers. these results are presented in table 1 and table 2 as follows: from table 2, it is evident that teachers' ability to design comprehensive sexuality education (cse) learning for high school students is excellent (𝑥̅ = 4.58, s.d.= 0.83). the following key points should be noted: 1. setting clear learning objectives for students. 2. creating a systematic learning plan that integrates consistency in both content and teaching methods, promoting awareness of cse. 3. demonstrating a high level of proficiency in designing learning to promote awareness of cse, with all three items scoring at an excellent level (𝑥̅ = 5.00, s.d.= 0.00). 4. the design allowing students to participate in learning activities also performed at an excellent level (𝑥̅ = 4.50, s.d.= 0.50). 5.the design of learning activities was deemed appropriate, scoring at a very good level (𝑥̅ = 4.38, s.d.= 0.48). asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 124-129 128 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6. designing measurement and evaluation methods appropriate to the content, learning activities, and students achieved a good level of proficiency (𝑥̅ = 3.38, s.d.= 0.48). table 2. results of assessing teachers' abilities in learning design after organizing training activities. evaluation list (𝑥̅ ) (s.d.) results 1.establish learning objectives for students that emphasize awareness of sexuality education. 5.00 0.00 excellent 2.develop learning activities suitable for students. 4.38 0.48 very good 3.offer opportunities for students to engage in learning activities. 4.50 0.50 excellent 4.create a systematic learning plan that ensures consistency in content, teaching methods, and the promotion of awareness of sexuality education. 5.00 0.00 excellent 5.design measurement and evaluation methods appropriate for the content, learning activities, and students. 3.38 0.48 good 6.assess the level of competence in designing learning to promote awareness of sexuality education. 5.00 0.00 excellent individual totals /mean and standard deviation of individual totals 4.58 0.83 excellent table 3. shows teachers' satisfaction with the use of the curriculum. section assessment list (𝑥̅ ) (s.d.) satisfaction level sequence satisfaction with the course 1 this course benefits educational institutions, teachers, students, and related stakeholders. 5.00 0.00 very satisfied 1 2 the curriculum should undergo continuous development and implementation. 4.63 0.74 very satisfied 3 3 the curriculum should be integrated into educational institutions. 4.50 0.76 very satisfied 4 4 the course employs suitable methods for evaluating its effectiveness. 4.13 0.64 satisfied 7 average satisfaction with the course 4.57 0.54 very satisfied (2) satisfaction with learning design training activities 5 the content is sequential, appropriate, and encompasses the principles of writing a learning plan that promotes awareness of sexuality education. 5.00 0.00 very satisfied 1 6 training activities aim to enhance teachers' ability to design learning. 4.75 0.46 very satisfied 2 7 training activities help teachers become aware of the elements in learning design. 5.00 0.00 very satisfied 1 8 training activities enable teachers to establish step-by-step guidelines for designing learning and promoting awareness of comprehensive sexuality education (cse) effectively. 5.00 0.00 very satisfied 1 9 training activities assist teachers in selecting appropriate media for the activities and the students' levels. 4.63 0.74 very satisfied 3 10 training activities teach teachers how to measure and evaluate students effectively. 4.00 0.52 satisfied 8 11 the lecturer demonstrates a strong ability to introduce new techniques. 4.50 0.75 very satisfied 4 12 training activities create opportunities for teachers to exchange knowledge extensively. 4.25 0.71 satisfied 6 13 the training atmosphere is conducive to effective learning. 4.38 0.52 satisfied 5 average satisfaction with learning design training activities 4.59 0.33 very satisfied (1) overall teacher satisfaction level 4.58 0.43 very satisfied from table 3, it is evident that teachers' satisfaction with the utilization of the learning design training curriculum to promote awareness of comprehensive sexuality education (cse) among high school students, in general, encompasses two aspects. the satisfaction level was at its highest ((𝑥̅ ) = 4.58, s.d. = 0.43). overall satisfaction with the organization of training activities, learning design, and related aspects ranked first ((𝑥̅ ) = 4.59, s.d. = 0.33), while overall satisfaction with the training course on learning design to promote awareness of sexuality education for high school teachers' students ranked second at the highest level ((𝑥̅ ) = 4.57, s.d. = 0.54). 6. discussion and conclusion 6.1. discussion the research on the development of a learning design training curriculum to promote awareness of comprehensive sexuality education (cse) for high school teachers' students demonstrates concrete efforts to integrate sexual education into every educational subject area. the research results can be discussed as follows. the curriculum development process involves organizing training activities using the bapr format, consisting of four steps: step 1 exchanging knowledge to brainstorm (b: brainstorming), step 2 hands-on learning design (a: acting & practicing), step 3 observing and collecting data (p: profiling & observe), and step 4 evaluating the design and implementation (r: reflecting). this method is systematically developed and imp lemented, with an emphasis on designing learning that integrates content from all eight subject groups in accordance with the basic education curriculum of 2008 (revised in 2017). it incorporates knowledge about sexuality education and life skills related to sex, ensuring that secondary school students are well-informed about topics relevant to events and situations occurring in society and daily life. importantly, it emphasizes teachers' understanding of designing cse learning through the use of various activities, media, and techniques aimed at making students aware of sexuality education. cooperative learning methods serve as the foundation for training activities, fostering a friendly learning atmosphere where teachers can freely exchange knowledge. this exchange is a crucial aspect that enables teachers to design and implement effective learning activities. this approach aligns with sotayaphet (2017), who highlighted asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 124-129 129 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the importance of group collaboration in training, as it contributes to the success of the educational process. similarly, dechakub (2017) emphasized the significance of knowledge exchange and reflection during critical stages of training activities, resulting in students' ability to generate knowledge, meaningful learning, and skill development. these processes significantly enhance the ability to design effective learning experiences and apply them to real-life situations. one of the key highlights of this research is the integration of cse into teaching and learning, with a strong focus on enabling teachers to design integrated learning experiences that raise awareness of all eight cse groups among students. the researcher ensured that this approach was applicable to all learning groups by aligning learning outcomes, content, and sexuality education indicators. the researcher selected a sample group through purposive selection, ensuring that participants had a similar baseline of knowledge. specifically, they were teachers who had not graduated in education and had less than three years of teaching experience at the high school level. furthermore, the researcher placed significant emphasis on organizing training activities that encouraged knowledge exchange in various ways. given that teachers belong to different subject groups, this approach allowed for diverse perspectives. the researcher's emphasis on these points is in line with manuwong (2020) conditions for organizing training activities, which emphasize the need to consider the feasibility and appropriateness of content integration and the sample group's knowledge base, including their educational background and teaching experiences. 6.2. conclusion the training course on learning design, aimed at promoting awareness of sexuality education among high school teachers, has been successfully developed and assessed for quality. it is designed to enhance the capabilities of high school teachers in creating learning experiences that raise students' awareness of sexuality education. the curriculum development model encompasses four key elements: principles of the curriculum, objectives, curriculum implementation, and measurement and evaluation of the learning design training curriculum. it follows the bapr format, with the following steps: step 1 exchanging knowledge to brainstorm (b: brainstorming), step 2 practicing learning design (a: acting & practicing), step 3 observing and collecting data (p: profiling & observe), and step 4 evaluating the design through implementation (r: reflecting). teachers collaboratively establish guidelines for learning design that promote sexuality education awareness among high school students and put them into practice. the effectiveness of the curriculum is evident in two aspects: 2.1) teachers exhibit an excellent ability to design learning experiences that foster awareness of sexuality education among high school students. 2.2) teachers express a high level of satisfaction with the curriculum's design, which promotes awareness of sexuality education among high school students. the development of such a curriculum plays a pivotal role in enhancing teachers' understanding of gender from various perspectives, a crucial aspect of preparing students to become informed global citizens. 7. suggestions from the research results, the researcher has suggestions as follows: 1. there should be research on developing a learning design training curriculum to promote awareness of sexuality education for teachers' students at the high school level. by considering environmental variables of society and community. upbringing and the economic status of the family. 2. research should be conducted on learning design training courses to promote awareness of sexuality education for teachers' students at the high school level. in activities that can be used with students in other grades. 3. research should be conducted on new perspectives for promoting awareness of sexuality education for learners in today's volatile world. and changing rapidly. 4. there should be research on learning management models that promote awareness of sexuality education for students at the high school level. to obtain a model of learning styles that can be used to develop students concretely. references beauchamp, g. a. (1981). curriculums theory (4th ed.). illinois: f.e. peacock. chookhampaeng, c. (2016). curriculum research and development concept and process . bangkok: chulalongkorn university press. dechakub, p. (2017). teacher 7c skills 4.0. bangkok: chulalongkorn university press. gratthorn, a. a., boschee, f., whitehead, b. m., & boschee, b. f. (2019). curriculum leadership: strategies for development and implementation (5th ed.). thousand oaks: sage publications. kunarak, k. (2015). curriculum development. nakornprathom: silpakorn university press. manuwong, t. (2020). development of a training program emphasizing active learning based on outcome-based learning to promote abilities in designing instruction integrating the principle of sufficiency economy philosophy into learning strands. national defense studies institute joournal, 2(12), 6074. ministry of education. (2015). the gender equality act. retrieved from https://www.ratchakitcha.soc.go.th/data/pdf/2558/a/018/17.pdf oliva, p. f. (2009). developing the curriculum (9th ed.). boston, ma: allyn & bacon, inc. path. (2020). teaching sexuality education. bangkok: urgent tag co.,ltd. print, m. (1993). curriculum development and design (2nd ed.). sydney: allen & unwin. sotayaphet, p. (2017). tips for training. bangkok: natchawatprinting. student protection task force center. (2015). the guidelines of sexuality education management. bangkok: office of the basic education commission ministry of education. sutthirat, c. (2016). innovative learning management that focuses on students (7th ed.). nonthaburi: p balans design and printing. taba, h. (1962). curriculum development: theory and practice. new york: harcourt, brace & world. unesco. (2018). international technical guidance on sexuality education: an evidence-informed approach; overview. bangkok: unesco. wiles, j. (2009). leading curriculum development. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. wongyai, w. (1982). curriculum and teaching development (3rd ed.). bangkok: suviritasat. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://www.ratchakitcha.soc.go.th/data/pdf/2558/a/018/17.pdf 118 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 2, 118-123, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5736 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group scholastic achievement among adolescents: role of unique aspects of home and school conditions yashpal singh1 davinder singh johal2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of psychology, guru nanak dev university, amritsar, punjab, india. 1email: ysyashpalsingh20@gmail.com 2email: davindersinghjohal@gmail.com abstract students generally consider scholastic achievement to be the grade they receive after a period of specific instruction. researchers evaluate a person's scholastic achievement based on the knowledge and skills they have developed in the academic domain, as well as the test results they have obtained. scholastic achievement is one of the critical parameters to measure affluence; therefore, researchers are keen to investigate the various dimensions that are going to affect it directly or indirectly. the present study focuses on analyzing the distinct dimensions of the home and school environment that show a direct association with adolescents' scholastic achievement. the study uses a correlational research design. this study has selected a sample of 154 individuals from the delhi region of india. the results obtained through correlation and regression analysis clearly indicate that control and rejection in school settings, along with a permissive home environment, significantly predict the scholastic achievement of female adolescents. the results also revealed that a permissive, protective, and punishing home environment, as well as restrictions imposed in a school setting, are significant predictors of male adolescents' scholastic achievement. from this, it can be concluded that the home environment and school environment dimensions play a pivotal role in the attainment of scholastic achievement among adolescents. keywords: adolescents, family, home environment, parents, scholastic achievement, school environment, teachers. citation | singh, y., & johal, d. s. (2024). scholastic achievement among adolescents: role of unique aspects of home and school conditions. asian journal of education and training, 10(2), 118–123. 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5736 history: received: 12 february 2024 revised: 4 april 2024 accepted: 19 april 2024 published: 21 june 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the guru nanak dev university, amritsar, india has granted approval for this study on 25 january 2022 (ref. no. 62/hg). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 119 2. theoretical framework ................................................................................................................................................................ 119 3. objective of the study .................................................................................................................................................................. 119 4. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 119 5. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 120 6. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 122 7. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 123 8. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 123 9. limitation ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 123 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 123 mailto:ysyashpalsingh20@gmail.com mailto:davindersinghjohal@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i2.5736 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2024-5405 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1195-8993 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 118-123 119 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study sheds light on the impact of specific home and school environment-related conditions on the attainment of scholastic excellence among indian adolescent students 1. introduction rapid physical and mental growth and development characterize adolescence, a transitional phase of the human life span. it’s a period between 11 and 19 years of age that connects the childhood and adulthood stages of life. the adolescent phase is characterized by the extensive development of reasoning, logic, and rational thinking, enabling individuals to effectively navigate real-life scenarios. education and learning during the adolescent stage play a pivotal role in inculcating these abstract abilities in children in order to make objective decisions. education aids children in effectively understanding the social and societal structure, nurtures their personalities, and opens up various career opportunities; hence, it is widely considered a crucial factor in evaluating a child's accomplishments and success in life. therefore, the school educational system currently places a significant emphasis on children's academic achievement. scholastic achievement is considered to be the amount of knowledge and skills attained by the child in school subjects, which is measured on the basis of grades obtained after the tests. scholastic achievement is also an indicator of the quality and quantity of excellence acquired by the learner after providing a specific set of instructions over a definite period of time. crow and crow (1969) define scholastic achievement as “the extent to which skill and knowledge have been imparted to the learner." it is also an index to measure the effectiveness of teaching methodology, curriculum, and educational policies. scholastic achievement is a multidimensional phenomenon, and factors such as biological, personal, and social factors play a significant role. social factors such as the environment of home and school are critical components that closely correlate with the scholastic achievement of adolescents. home is the fundamental, informal, but effective institution for education & learning, with a prime focus on cultural and moral coaching. home is the primary institution responsible for providing an empathic, encouraging, affective, and warm environment for children's effective growth and development. moos and moos (1986) defined the family environment as “the degree of commitment, help, and support family members provide for one another." the family, living together, forms a social unit or center. a home environment that is sensitive to a child’s needs is accountable for the appropriate physical, psychological, social, and emotional growth of children, which motivates them to attain academic excellence. in contrast, a home environment that is insensitive to a child’s demands is responsible for deficit growth and development, which results in poor academic excellence. a study conducted by naik and dubey (2018) among secondary school students in the tribal area concluded that the home environment significantly influences achievement parameters. studies also concluded that a positive association exists between the home environment and the academic accomplishment of adolescent students (jain & mohta, 2019; oommen, 2015). younas, javaid, liu, khalid, and bakar (2020) suggested that children reared in a caring and dependable home environment have a higher tendency to attain better educational success. the school environment is also a significant factor in explaining adolescents' academic achievement. the school environment is a complex and multi-dimensional construct that includes metal infrastructure, teacher-student relationships, peer relations, teaching methodology, and curriculum. the school environment, which provides opportunities for cognitive stimulation, nurture, and support, plays a pivotal role in the effective social, emotional, and cognitive development of students, resulting in a high likelihood of academic success. in contrast, a maleficent school environment is responsible for students' substandard cognitive and scholastic achievement. usaini, abubakar, and bichi (2015) suggested that schools with an adequate learning environment and appropriate instruction methodology encourage students to achieve higher scholastic performance. studies also summarized that a notable positive association exists between the school environment and the academic attainment of students (harinarayanan & pazhanivelu, 2018; khan & khan, 2017). baafi (2020) conducted a study among senior high school students in ghana, concluding that adequate school facilities nurture students' learning attitudes. the extant literature has illustrated that students' home and school climates have a significant impact on students' scholastic outcomes. but there are gaps with regard to the specific dimensions/aspects of the home and school environment that are closely associated with the scholastic achievement of adolescents. 2. theoretical framework the present study is articulated by maslow (1943). according to maslow’s model, basic needs lie at the bottom level, whereas higher-order needs lie at the top level (physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and transcendence needs). the key concept is that individuals have to satisfy their needs in a systematic manner, starting with their basic physiological needs and then moving up in the hierarchy. for example, a child who feels unsafe, insecure, and isolated is unable to achieve great academic performance unless safety and belongingness needs are met. 3. objective of the study the prime objective of the current study is to examine the contribution of distinct dimensions of home and school environment to the attainment of scholastic excellence among adolescents. 4. method the study uses a correlational research design. the sample was comprised of 165 students (class 11th and 12th) from government schools in delhi by using convenience sampling procedures. out of the 165 respondents, 154 have shared their responses properly; therefore, they have been considered for the analysis. approvals have been obtained from the institutional ethics committee as well as from the heads of different schools before data collection. informed consent has been obtained from respondents before data collection. the tools used in the research study are as follows: asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 118-123 120 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1. home environment inventory (hei) by misra (2012a): the instrument is designed to measure the psychosocial environment of home as perceived by children with high split-half reliability. the hei consists of 100 items that fall into ten distinct dimensions: control, protectiveness, punishment, conformity, social isolation, reward, deprivation of privileges, nurturance, rejection, and permissiveness. 2. school environment scale (sei) by misra (2012b): the instrument is designed to measure the social psychology of the classroom with high split-half reliability. sei is comprised of 70 items belonging to six different dimensions, which are: creative stimulation, cognitive encouragement, acceptance, permissiveness, rejection, and control. 3. scholastic achievement was assessed on the basis of marks obtained in the 10th class c.b.s.e. (central board of secondary education) board exam. after the collection of data for different parameters, the obtained scores were quantified for analysis. pearson’s product moment correlation and stepwise regression analysis were used to analyze the obtained scores. table 1 introduces the list of variables and abbreviations included in the study. table 1. list of the variables and abbreviations included in the study. sr. number name of variable symbol scale 1 control a home environment scale 2 protectiveness b 3 punishment c 4 conformity d 5 social isolation e 6 reward f 7 deprivation of privileges g 8 nurturance h 9 rejection i 10 permissiveness j 11 creative stimulation as school environment scale 12 cognitive encouragement bs 13 acceptance cs 14 permissiveness ds 15 rejection es 16 control fs 17 scholastic achievement sa scholastic achievement 5. results out of 154 respondents, 88 respondents (57.14%) are male and 66 respondents (42.86%) are female. the descriptive indices corresponding to each dimension are given in table 2 and table 3. table 2. means, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of females (n=66) on all the measured variables. variables mean std. deviation skewness kurtosis a 3.62 1.356 -0.379 -0.537 b 4.68 1.279 -0.693 -0.322 c 3.23 1.423 0.047 -0.615 d 3.79 1.669 -0.185 -1.071 e 3.39 1.080 0.283 -1.175 f 4.05 1.364 -0.197 -0.717 g 3.26 1.127 0.266 -1.336 h 3.97 1.414 -0.484 -0.413 i 3.50 1.481 0.103 -0.844 j 4.67 1.340 -0.784 -0.216 as 7.41 1.529 -1.048 0.446 bs 6.55 1.647 -1.041 0.375 cs 6.95 1.352 -.878 0.170 ds 7.23 1.606 -.544 -1.022 es 3.76 1.674 1.250 1.963 fs 6.55 2.328 -1.017 0.151 scholastic achievement 81.74 10.797 -0.979 0.223 table 3. means, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of males (n=88) on all the measured variables. variables mean std. deviation skewness kurtosis a 3.94 1.216 -0.595 -0.351 b 4.28 1.485 -0.462 -0.829 c 3.40 1.572 -0.324 -0.976 d 3.76 1.531 0.020 -1.007 e 3.38 1.065 0.131 -1.209 f 3.98 1.330 -0.377 -0.453 g 3.39 1.108 0.061 -1.348 h 3.63 1.511 0.072 -1.147 i 3.76 1.406 -0.045 -0.763 j 4.40 1.410 -0.491 -0.895 as 6.67 1.514 -0.538 -0.686 bs 6.56 1.787 -0.615 -0.307 cs 6.82 1.505 -0.324 -1.070 ds 6.82 1.752 -0.529 -0.544 es 4.33 1.753 0.016 -0.719 fs 5.84 2.133 -0.319 -0.698 scholastic achievement 77.10 12.169 -0.554 -0.850 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 118-123 121 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the obtained values of descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis are represented in table 2 and 3. perusal of table 2 and 3 clearly indicate that the obtained skewness values for all the variables lie in the range (0.016 to 1.250), and the value of kurtosis lies in the range (0.151 to 1.963), which falls within the acceptable range. researchers field (2009), tabachnick and fidell (2007), and trochim and donnelly (2006) mentioned that if the obtained values of skewness and kurtosis lie between -2 to +2, then the gathered data may be considered to have a normal distribution. table 4. correlation between scholastic achievement and sub-dimensions of home and school environment among female and male adolescents. variables scholastic achievement among females scholastic achievement among males a -0.263* -0.047 b 0.645** 0.774** c -0.414** -0.204 d 0.538** 0.533** e -0.390** -0.189 f 0.443** 0.525** g -0.429** -0.351** h 0.421** 0.620** i -0.443** -0.168 j 0.706** 0.793** as 0.753** 0.701** bs 0.657** 0.680** cs 0.669** 0.624** ds 0.603** 0.580** es -0.534** -0.640** fs 0.827** 0.752** note: ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). perusal of gathered results from table 4, distinctly expressed that home environment dimensions (protectiveness (b), conformity (d), reward (f), nurturance (h), and permissiveness (j)) are significantly positively correlated with the scholastic achievement of adolescent females. the value of correlations ranges from 0.421 to 0.645, which is highly significant. it can be suggested that adolescent females who receive a caring and supportive environment, follow the directions of their parents, are rewarded, have an unconditional and emotional attachment to their parents, and get the opportunity to express their views freely have better scholastic achievement. home environment dimensions (control (a), punishment (c), social isolation (e), deprivation of privileges (g), and rejection (i)) are significantly negatively associated with the scholastic achievement of female adolescents. the obtained correlation values range from -0.263 to -0.443, which is significant. on the basis of the obtained results, it can be encapsulated that an autocratic atmosphere, punishment, social isolation, depriving adolescents of their rights, and rejection act as obstacles to the flourishing of the scholastic attainment of female adolescents. the reported values of correlation in table 4 evidently indicated that home environment dimensions ((protectiveness (b), conformity (d), reward (f), nurturance (h), and permissiveness (j)) are significantly positively correlated with the scholastic achievement of male adolescents. the value of correlations ranges from 0.525 to 0.793, which is highly significant. it can be expressed that male adolescents who get a caring and supportive environment, are obedient to their parents, are being rewarded, have an unconditional and emotional attachment to their parents, and get the opportunity to express their views freely enhance their scholastic achievement. the results also reveal a significant negative correlation between the deprivation of privileges (g) dimension of the home environment and the scholastic achievement of male adolescents (r = -0.351). this indicates that depriving the rights of male adolescents at home acts as a barrier to the maintenance of scholastic achievement. the dimensions of the home environment (control (a), punishment (c), social isolation (e), and rejection (i)) have no significant association with male adolescents' scholastic achievement. perusal of obtained results from table 4 clearly indicated that school environment dimensions (creative stimulation (as), cognitive encouragement (bs), acceptance (cs), permissiveness (ds), and control (fs)) are significantly and positively correlated with the scholastic achievement of male and female adolescents. according to acquired values, giving teenage boys and girls chances to think and learn new things, letting them freely express their thoughts and feelings, and putting limits on behavior to keep order in school are all essentials for their academic success. the values of correlation also expressed that significant negative correlations exist between scholastic achievement and rejection (es) dimensions of the school environment. this indicates that schools that do not respect students' rights will be held accountable for the impoverished scholastic achievement of male and female adolescents. 5.1. predictors of scholastic achievement among female adolescents on the basis of the obtained results from table 5, it can be concluded that out of all the independent variables considered in the study, control (fs: dimension of school environment) (β= 0.564, p<0.001), r2 = 0.684, permissiveness (j: dimension of home environment) (β= 0.336, p<0.001), r2 = 0.771 and rejection (es: dimension of school environment) (β= -0.168, p<0.012), r2 = 0.793 are the significant predictors of scholastic achievement (f(3,62) = 79.212, p<0.01) among female adolescent students. all these predictors are collectively responsible for the 79.3% variance in the scholastic achievement of adolescent female students. results also indicated that control in the school environment is the most crucial predictor of scholastic achievement among female adolescent students, as it accounts for 68.4% of the variance in scholastic achievement.. scholastic achievement = 56.054+fs×2.617+j×2.705+es× (-1.081). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 118-123 122 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 5. stepwise regression analysis showing predictor of scholastic achievement among females adolescents. predictor variables r square adjusted r square r square change f value b beta t-value significance level fs 0.684 0.679 138.550* 2.617 0.564 7.629 0.000 j 0.771 0.764 0.087 106.029* 2.705 0.336 4.795 0.000 es 0.793 0.783 0.022 79.212* -1.081 -0.168 -2.575 0.012 note: *significant at 0.01. control (fs) (β= 0.564, p<0.001) is the most crucial predictor of scholastic achievement among adolescent female students, and these results are in line with the outcome of the research study by dkhar and kharbirymbai (2017). permissiveness (j) (β = 0.336, p<0.001) is another pivotal predictor of scholastic achievement among adolescent females, which indicates that a liberal and permissive home environment leads to superior scholastic achievement among adolescent female students. rejection (es) (β = -0.168, p<0.012) is another crucial predictor of scholastic achievement among female adolescents, which indicates that rejection in school settings will act as a barrier to the maintenance of scholastic attainment among adolescent females. findings have clearly expressed that appropriate control in school settings, a permissive home environment, and rejection of students in school play a critical role in nurturing the scholastic attainment of female adolescents. hence, we can partially accept the hypothesis that unique dimensions of the home and school environment play a crucial role in the development of scholastic achievement among female adolescents. 5.2. predictors of scholastic achievement among male adolescents on the basis of the obtained results from table 6, it can be concluded that out of all the independent variables considered in the study, permissiveness (j: dimension of home environment) (β= 0.287, p<0.001), r2 = 0.629, protectiveness (b: dimension of home environment) (β= 0.442, p<0.001), r2 = 0.731, control (fs : dimension of school environment) (β= 0.245, p<0.002), r2 = 0.765, and punishment (c: dimension of home environment) (β= 0.148, p<0.009), r2 = 0.784 are the significant predictors of scholastic achievement (f(4,83) = 75.273, p<0.01) among male adolescent students. all these predictors are collectively responsible for the 78.4% variance in the scholastic achievement of adolescent male students. results also indicated that permissiveness in the home environment is the most crucial predictor of scholastic achievement among male adolescent students, as it accounts for 62.9% of the variance in scholastic achievement. scholastic achievement = 46.430+j×2.475+b×3.621+fs×1.398+c× (-1.146). table 6. stepwise regression analysis showing predictor of scholastic achievement among males adolescents. predictor variables r square adjusted r square r square change f value b beta tvalue significance level j 0.629 0.624 145.601* 2.475 0.287 3.396 0.001 b 0.731 0.724 0.102 115.220* 3.621 0.442 5.822 0.000 fs 0.765 0.757 0.035 91.213* 1.398 0.245 3.156 0.002 c 0.784 0.773 0.019 75.273* -1.146 -0.148 -2.686 0.009 note: *significant at 0.01. permissiveness (j) (β = 0.287, p<0.001) is the notable predictor of scholastic achievement among adolescent males, which represents that a non-restrictive, liberal, and permissive home environment leads to outstanding scholastic achievement in adolescent male students. protectiveness (b) (β = 0.442, p<0.001) is another significant predictor of scholastic achievement, indicating that a protective home environment is responsible for the higherorder scholastic performance of adolescent males. control (fs) (β = 0.245, p<0.001) is an important predictor of scholastic achievement among adolescent male students, and these results are in accordance with the findings of bala (2018). punishment (c) (β=-0.148, p<0.009) is the crucial parameter of scholastic achievement of male adolescents, which represents that physical or any kind of affective punishment will act as a barrier for nurturance of scholastic achievement among adolescent male students. findings have clearly expressed that a liberal, protective, and punishing home environment and control in school settings play a prime role in the attainment of scholastic success among male adolescents. hence, we can partially accept the hypothesis that unique dimensions of home and school environment play a crucial role in the development of scholastic achievement among male adolescents. 6. discussion the primary goal of the present study is to determine the likelihood of predicting adolescents' scholastic achievement based on distinct dimensions of the home and school environment. the findings clearly inferred that different parameters of the home and school environments play a pivotal role in the attainment of scholastic affluence among male and female adolescents. the obtained correlation values demonstrated that home environment dimensions (protectiveness (b), conformity (d), reward (f), nurturance (h), and permissiveness (j)) are significantly positively correlated with the scholastic achievement of male and female adolescents. results indicated that a supportive, protective, caring, and nurturing home environment will help children achieve age-appropriate growth and development, ultimately leading to a better academic outcome. the results were consistent with doley (2018) findings that students who live in an encouraging and supportive home environment achieve higher academic success. parents, guardians, and family members will have to make an effort to provide children with a sense of security, opportunities for advancement, and appropriate facilities in order to achieve academic excellence. female adolescents' scholastic achievement significantly negatively correlates with home environment dimensions such as control (a), punishment (c), social isolation (e), deprivation of privileges (g), and rejection (i). home environment aspect deprivation of privileges (g) is significantly negatively associated with male adolescents' academic achievement. restrictions, physical and affective punishment, social isolation, and a lack of appropriate privileges at home can significantly impact a child's survival, leading to the development of poor physiological and psychological health outcomes. such children have a higher tendency for aggressive, violent, and defiant behaviors, asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 118-123 123 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group which results in poor academic attainment. the obtained findings summarized that school environment dimensions (creative stimulation, cognitive encouragement, permissiveness, acceptance, and control) are positively associated with the attainment of scholastic success among male and female adolescents. the outcome of the study clearly inferred that the school environment, which is inspiring, motivating, and provides opportunities for cognitive stimulation, plays a significant role in the attainment of higher academic success among adolescents. the results are in line with the findings of okafor, maina, stephen, and ohambele (2016), that a conducive and accommodating school environment results in improved academic performance in students. the school environment dimension "rejection" is negatively associated with adolescents' scholastic achievement, indicating that a lack of recognition at school is responsible for substandard scholastic performance. findings yielded from regression analysis represent that appropriate control in school settings, a permissive home environment, and rejection of students within the school setting play pivotal roles in nourishing the scholastic achievement of female adolescents. the results also elaborated that a liberal, protective, and punishing home environment, as well as restrictions imposed in a school setting, play a significant role in male adolescents' scholastic achievement. hence, we can establish that for higherorder scholastic attainment among adolescents, conducive, protective, & appreciative home and school environments uphold principal importance. 7. conclusion it is of prime importance to note the findings of the present research study, which indicated that different aspects of home and school environment are significantly influencing the scholastic performance of adolescents. as per the research findings, adolescents who were reared in a protective and nurturing home environment have a higher likelihood of performing well in academics and the educational domain, whereas adolescents who belong to an isolating, punishing, & deprived home environment have a higher tendency toward substandard academic performance. this clearly demonstrates that the quality of the home environment has a notable influence on the future accomplishments of children. the outcome of the present study strongly conveys that students from schools with an encouraging, responsive, and stimulating environment have a greater likelihood of becoming high achievers in the field of academics, whereas students from schools with a rejecting and opposing school environment have a higher probability of mediocre academic attainment. this clearly indicates that the quality of the school environment plays a critical role in influencing the future educational attainment of children. hence, it can be concluded that different aspects of home and school environment do play an influential role in the scholastic performance of adolescents. 8. recommendations 1. parents and family members should actively participate in their children's academic regime to analyze their progress and develop a sense of warmth and worthiness. 2. teachers have to make an effort to build effective relationships with students that encourage learning. 9. limitation the study has a relatively small sample size. references baafi, r. k. a. 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(2020). effect of home environment on students' academic achievements at higher level. ilkogretim online elementary education online, 19(3), 3931-3947. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.4236/ape.2020.102012 https://doi.org/10.18843/rwjasc/v9i1/17 https://doi.org/10.31142/ijtsrd23910 122 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 122-129, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.122.129 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers: the case of western black sea isa dogan hasan doğan physical education and sports, karabük university, turkey. abstract the aim of the current study is to examine the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers. in the scope of the study, it was also examined whether the preservice teachers' multicultural perception levels differ according to their university, gender, family income level, grade level and general academic achievement grade point average. in this direction, the universities in the western black sea region were selected and 407 pre-service teachers were interviewed. in the study, which was conducted in a screening design, one of the quantitative research methods, the data were collected with multicultural perception scale developed by ayaz (2016). the data of the research were analyzed with descriptive statistics, t test for unrelated measurements and kruskal wallis test. as a result of the study, it was determined that pre-service teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism were high. while it was determined that pre-service teachers’ perceptions of multiculturalism did not show a significant change according to their gender and grade levels, there were significant differences according to the university, general academic achievement grade point average and the income level of their families. keywords: pre-service physical education teacher, western black sea region, multiculturalism, multicultural perception, education, gender. citation | isa dogan (2020). investigation of the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers: the case of western black sea. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 122-129. history: received: 29 november 2019 revised: 20 january 2020 accepted: 24 february 2020 published: 16 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 123 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 123 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 125 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 127 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 128 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.122.129&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4132-3274 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4132-3274 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4132-3274 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 122-129 123 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers. 1. introduction the turkish language institution defines the word culture as the totality of all material and spiritual values created in the historical, social development process and the means used to convey these to the next generations in creating them and showing the measure of human sovereignty to the natural and social environment. in short, culture which can be expressed as the material and non-material values of a society contains language, religion, history, geography, art etc. when evaluated in this context, multiculturalism can be expressed as the coexistence of elements such as different languages, religions, history, geography, art, and enrichment of elements instead of conflict. uygur (1996) also defines the concept of multiculturalism as the coexistence of different cultures in public sphere. it is seen that there are different cultures within the scope of multiculturalism which can be defined as living together equally and peacefully among different cultures (parekh, 2002) emphasizing that these cultures can live together and are equal. although there is difference in the place of multiculturalism, it is not a conflict but a mosaic that complements each other. because, as a result of the fact that cultures are equal to each other and do not try to gain superiority, people in different cultures will be able to maintain their unique identities and survive in all areas (ates, 2017). within the concept of multiculturalism, although the ethnic origins of individuals are overweight, the concept includes many differences such as religious, sexual, status etc. (bahadır, 2016). multiculturalism should be adopted as a policy in countries like turkey which has hosted many civilizations in history, where different social groups come together, and people from many cultures. because the world is getting smaller, different cultures and identities come together easily. achieving belonging to different groups throughout the country and ensuring peace and tranquility in society depends on the effective implementation of multicultural policies (gonzalez, 2008). because the basis of multiculturalism is that all cultures live without conflict. it is important that multiculturalism is reflected in the education environment as well as adopting a policy in terms of management throughout the country. ensuring equality of opportunity in education which can be defined as the process of acquiring desired behaviors to individuals (ertürk, 1997) students should not be privileged or disadvantaged depending on their characteristics such as language, religion and race (banks, 2014). similarly, multicultural education is not only for students belonging to different ethnic groups, social classes and religion; students with different gender, gifted and talented (cırık, 2008). kaya and aydın (2013) state that, thanks to multicultural education, groups with different cultural characteristics in the same classroom and school will receive equal and fair education and have similar academic opportunities. it emphasizes that multicultural education should be adopted as an educational philosophy. with this philosophy, there is an understanding that each culture is special and it is wrong to compare it with the values of other cultures (portera, 2008). in an educational institution that adopts this philosophy, equal education is offered to each individual and students can also gain the ability to respect each other, to put themselves in the place of their friends and to treat them with tolerance (bahadır, 2016). based on the definitions, students should respect and accept each other in multicultural education; it is seen that the teacher does not discriminate among the people due to the cultural difference and focuses on the aims of education by accepting everyone. teachers need to diversify their teaching methods in the context of multiculturalism by directing students to the center (başbay & kağnıcı, 2011). in this way, students will not take a discriminatory attitude away from prejudices (ayaz, 2016). as can be seen, the responsibility of many stakeholders in reflecting the multicultural education understanding in the school and classroom environment is the most important task for teachers. banks. (1993) found that multicultural education; it states that there are five dimensions of content integration, knowledge building process, reduction of prejudices, egalitarian education and empowering school culture, and teachers and education programs have an important responsibility in all of these dimensions. in this direction, the attitudes and perceptions of teachers about this issue come to the forefront during the success of multicultural education. as a matter of fact, teachers are expected to have a sense of multiculturalism themselves first and then to create a democratic environment in this context in their classroom. this is a skill that should be gained to the pre-service teachers in universities during the preparation stage of teaching. in the literature, studies conducted with teachers from different branches, especially social studies teachers (akman & imamoğlu, 2017; aslan & kozikoğlu, 2017; bahadır, 2016; kaya & aydın, 2013; mazı, 2018; toprak, 2008) as well as with pre-service teachers (arsal, mumcu, & akçaoğlu, 2017; koçak & ozdemir, 2015). karaçam and koca (2012) also conducted a qualitative research on the multicultural perceptions of pre-service physical education teachers. however, the number of studies on physical education teachers and pre-service teachers was found to be low in the literature and it was found that there was no general screening by reaching large sample groups. accordingly, the following questions were sought in the research:  what is the level of multicultural perceptions of pre-service physical education teachers in the western black sea region?  what is the level of multicultural perceptions of pre-service pre-service physical education teachers studying in the western black sea region (according to the university, gender, family income level, class level and general academic achievement grade average)? 2. method in this part of the research, information about the model of the research, population and sample, data collection tools, data collection and analysis are given. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 122-129 124 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.1. research model karasar (2008) states that screening research aims to describe a past or present situation as it exists. the main purpose of screening research is to describe the characteristics of a group (frankel & wallen, 2009). in this study, as it is aimed to reveal and examine the multicultural perception levels present in pre-service physical education teachers, the research is an example of a quantitative research method. 2.2. population and sample the population of the research consists of the pre-service physical education teachers studying in the physical education and teaching department of the universities in the western black sea region. within the scope of the research, selection was made based on purposive stratified sampling method. in this respect, the universities in the universe were grouped first. there are a total of eight provinces in the western black sea region, namely bartin, bolu, cankiri, duzce, karabuk, kastamonu, sinop and zonguldak. there is one state university in each province. sinop university in sinop and çankırı karatekin university in çankırı do not have any physical education department. in this respect, the students of bartın university, abant i̇zzet baysal university, düzce university, karabük university, kastamonu university and bülent ecevit university are the students of the department of physical education. the sample of the study consists of students who can be reached from these universities. lack of access to pre-service teachers studying at düzce university is a limitation of the research. within the scope of the research, firstly, the universe number was reached and it was determined that 632 preservice teachers were educated in physical education teaching in these universities. equality proposed by büyüköztürk, cakmak, akgün, karadeniz, and demirel (2018) was used to determine the sample size representing the universe. n calculated as equation in the equation and p significance value 0.05, pq = 0.25 and the corresponding t value in the table is 1.96 n0 = 0.05 significance level 384,16 (büyüköztürk et al., 2018). after equality, it was determined that at least 239 people represented the universe. it can be said that 407 pre-service teachers reached a high level of representation in the universe. information about the characteristics of the sample in which the research was conducted is shown in table 1. table-1. characteristics of the sample. variables categories f % university bülent ecevit university 80 19,7 kastamonu university 71 17,4 karabük university 82 20,1 abant i̇zzet baysal university 89 21,9 bartın university 85 20,9 sex female 155 38,1 male 252 61,9 grade 1. 26 6,4 2. 116 28,5 3. 163 40,0 4. 102 25,1 general academic average 2.50 and below 56 13,8 2.51-3.00 197 48,4 3.01 and above 154 37,8 family level of income low 48 11,8 middle 315 77,4 high 44 10,8 total 407 100,0 as can be seen in table 1, pre-service physical education teachers whose opinions were taken within the scope of the research; 19.7% (n = 80) in bülent ecevit university, 17.4% (n = 71) in kastamonu university, 20.1% (n = 82) in karabük university, 21.9% (n = 89) in abant i̇zzet baysal university , 20.9% (n = 85) are studying at bartın university. 38.1% (n = 155) of the pre-service teachers were female and 61.9% (n = 252) were malen. participants; 6.4% (n = 26) were in the first grade, 28.5% (n = 116) in the second grade, 40.0% (n = 163) in the third grade, 25.1% (n = 102) in the fourth grade. t was found that 13.8% (n = 56) of the pre-service teachers had a gpa of 2.50 and below, 48.4% (n = 197) were between 2.51-3.00 and 37.8% (n = 154) 3.01 and above. it was determined that 11.8% (n = 48) of the pre-service teachers who participated in the study had low income, 77.4% (n = 315) had medium income, and 10.8% (n = 44) had high income. 2.3. data collection tool the data of this research was collected by personal information form and multicultural perception scale. 2.4. personal information form personal information form was prepared for each variable in accordance with the purpose of the study in order to obtain information about the pre-service pre-service physical education teachers participating university, gender, grade level, general academic achievement grade point average and family income level. 2.5. multicultural perception scale within the scope of the research, the multicultural perception scale developed by ayaz (2016) was used to determine the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers. there are 25 items in the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 122-129 125 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group scale and the items are rated as 5-point likert type. in the development process of the scale, 29 items were prepared and 3 items were removed from the draft scale in accordance with expert opinions. then, the scale was applied to 194 pre-service teachers and exploratory factor analysis and then confirmatory factor analysis were conducted according to the answers of the pre-service teachers. as a result of exploratory factor analysis, an item less than 0.30 was excluded from the scale and the factor load values of the remaining 25 items varied between 0.389 and 0.809. it was determined that the items in the scale were collected under a single factor. subsequent confirmatory factor analysis showed that 25 items were collected in one dimension (x2 / df = 3.4; rmsea = 0.076; gfi = 0.85; cfi = 0.97; agfi = 0.86). after determining the construct validity of the scale, the criterion validity was examined and the correlation with a similar scale was calculated as 0.74. in order to determine the reliability of the answers given by the pre-service teachers to the scale items, cronbach alpha coefficient was calculated as 0.942; spearman-brown correlation coefficient was 0.882; guttman split-half coefficient was calculated as 0.882. the obtained values showed that the scale was valid and reliable (ayaz, 2016). the aim of this study was to determine the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers. cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated as 0.894 in order to determine the reliability of the answers given to the scale items of 407 pre-service teachers whose opinions were taken within the scope of the research. the calculated value shows that pre-service physical education teachers have highly reliable responses to scale items (kalaycı, 2009). there are 25 items in 5-point likert-type in the multicultural perception scale. the score that can be obtained from the scale is in the range of 25-125. the whole scale consists of positive expressions. 25-50 points indicate that multicultural perceptions are low, 51-75 points are moderate and 76-100 points are high. 2.6. analysis of data within the scope of the research, firstly the answers obtained from the pre-service teachers were transferred to spss 23.0 program and it was determined whether there were missing and incorrect data entries. after the data analysis, the total scores of the pre-service teachers towards multicultural perceptions were calculated and outlier analysis was conducted. it was extracted from the 3 outlier data observation data sets. then, skewness and kurtosis coefficients were calculated for the purpose of normality analysis. the coefficient of skewness was -0.707 and kurtosis was 0.978. büyüköztürk (2008) states that skewness-kurtosis coefficients between ± 1 indicate that the data set is normally distributed. in addition, a histogram graph was created and it was determined that the data set did not deviate from the normal distribution as shown in figure 1. figure-1. histogram graph. note: mean=99,34 after analyzing the data set, descriptive statistics, minimum, maximum, mean and standard deviation values were calculated in line with the answers obtained from pre-service physical education teachers. in order to determine whether the pre-service teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism show a significant difference according to their gender, t-test was used for unrelated measurements. since the variances were not homogeneous (p <0.05), kruskal wallis test was used in the comparisons. in case of significant differences, multiple comparisons tamhane’s test was calculated. for significance, p <0.05 was determined. 3. findings 3.1. what is the level of multicultural perception of pre-service physical education teachers in the western black sea region? descriptive statistics were calculated in order to determine the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers and the results are shown in table 2. table-2. descriptive statistics for the pre-service pre-service physical education teachers' multicultural perception levels. scale n min max ̅ ss multicultural perception 407 58,00 125,00 99,34 11,63 note: ̅ =99,34 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 122-129 126 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when the information in table 2 is examined, it is seen that the pre-service physical education teachers' multicultural perception scores range from 58.00 to 125.00. the mean of multicultural perception of pre-service teachers was calculated as 99.34 (± 11.63). the mean value shows that physical education teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism are high. do the pre-service physical education teachers in the western black sea region have a significant change in their perceptions of multiculturalism according to some characteristics? it has been examined whether pre-service physical education teachers' multicultural perception levels show a significant difference to the university, gender, family income level, grade level and general academic achievement grade averages. 3.2. according to university variable kruskal wallis test was calculated for the pre-service physical education teacher in the western black sea region according to their perceptions of multiculturalism. the results are shown in table 3. table-3. kruskal wallis test for the pre-service physical education teachers' multicultural perception levels according to the university they are studying. variables n ̅ sx rank sum x2 p university bülent ecevit university 80 98,39 13,79 195,73 18,477 0,001* kastamonu university 71 95,42 10,31 156,11 karabük university 82 102,39 10,35 233,55 abant i̇zzet baysal university 89 99,56 13,21 213,04 bartın university 85 100,35 8,74 213,81 note: p<0,05 when table 3 is examined, it is seen that pre-service physical education teachers' multicultural perception levels differ significantly according to the university (x2 (4) = 18,477; p <0.05). as a result of the multiple comparison tamhane’s test, which was calculated to determine the meaningful difference, the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers (95,42 ± 10,31) at kastamonu university were found to be significantly lower than bartın university (100.35 ± 8.74) and karabük university (102.39 ± 10.35). 3.3. according to sex in order to determine whether the pre-service physical education teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism show a significant change according to their gender, t-test was used. the results are shown in table 4. table-4. the t test of unrelated measures calculated for the pre-service physical education teachers' multicultural perception levels according to their gender. variables n ̅ sx df t p sex female 155 99,12 9,20 405 0,301 0,764 male 252 99,48 12,92 note: p>0,05 according to the information in table 4, it was determined that the pre-service physical education teachers' multicultural perception levels did not change significantly according to their gender (t (405) = 0.301; p> 0.05). in other words, it was found that the perception of multiculturalism of male and female pre-service teachers was similar. 3.4. according to class level kruskal wallis test was used for the perception of multiculturalism according to class levels of pre-service physical education teaches studying in the western black sea region. the results are shown in table 5. table-5. kruskal wallis test calculated for the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers according to class levels. variables n ̅ sx rank sum x2 p class levels 1. 26 98,38 10,60 193,63 5,738 0,125 2. 116 101,42 11,98 226,10 3. 163 98,31 12,82 195,49 4. 102 98,88 9,05 195,11 note: p>0,05 according to the information given in table 5, it was found that the levels of multicultural perception of preservice physical education teacher did not show a significant change according to class levels (x2 (3) = 5,738; p <0.05). in other words, multicultural perception levels of first, second, third and fourth grade pre-service teachers were found to be similar. 3.5. according to general academic average the kruskal wallis test on the perceptions of multicultural students according to the general academic average point of pre-service physical education teachers studying in the western black sea region was calculated and the results are shown in table 6. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 122-129 127 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. kruskal wallis test calculated for the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers according to the general academic average point. variables n ̅ sx rank sum x2 p general academic average 2.50 and below 56 95,68 11,70 164,05 12,516 0,002* 2.51-3.00 197 98,38 12,98 197,94 3.00 above 154 101,92 9,01 226,27 note: p<0,05 when the information in table 6 was examined, it was determined that the perception levels of multiculturalism showed a significant change according to the general academic average (x2 (2) = 12.516; p <0.05). tamhane’s multiple comparison test was calculated to determine the difference. as a result of the calculation, the pre-service physical education teachers whose academic general academic average point is less than 2.50 (95.68 ± 11.70) was found to be significantly lower than those with general academic average over 3.00 (101.92 ± 9.01). 3.6. according to family income level kruskal wallis test for the perception of multiculturalism according to the income level of the pre-service teachers' family was calculated and the results are shown in table 7. table-7. kruskal wallis test calculated for multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teacher according to their income level. variables n ̅ sx rank sum x2 p family income level low 48 100,98 11,26 48 8,772 0,012* middle 315 98,63 11,61 315 high 44 102,64 11,68 44 note: p<0,05 as can be seen in table 7, the multicultural perception of pre-service physical education teachers shows a significant change according to the income level of their families (x2 (2) = 8,772; p <0.05). according to the multivariate tamhane test, which was calculated in order to determine the difference, the pre-service teachers' with middle income level multicultural perception (98.63 ± 11.61) was found to be significantly lower than those with high income level (102.64 ± 11.68). 4. discussion and conclusion within the scope of this research, it has been investigated to determine the multicultural perception levels of pre-service physical education teachers studying in the western black sea region and whether the multicultural perception levels show a significant change according to some characteristics of pre-service physical education teachers. in this study, which is a quantitative research design, a total of 407 pre-service teachers studying at universities with physical education teaching department in western black sea region were included in the study. within the scope of the research, it was found that the pre-service physical education teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism were high. banks (2014) expresses the perception of multiculturalism as providing equal opportunities to all people regardless of their gender, social status, ethnic or cultural characteristics. in this respect, it can be seen that pre-service physical education teachers studying in the western black sea region can offer equal opportunities for students of different cultures in the school environment. as a matter of fact, the success of multicultural education depends on the high level of multicultural perception of teachers (gay, 2002). in an experimental study, mcneal (2005) concluded that teachers who received the multicultural teacher training program were more successful in their practices and contributed to the teachers' school environment and personal development. as a result of the research, it has been determined that multicultural education in schools is beneficial for teachers as well as students. karaçam and koca (2012) in the qualitative study conducted with nine pre-service physical education teachers studying at three universities in ankara during the 2010-2011 academic year, stated that pre-service physical education teachers had low level of multicultural awareness. başbay and bektaş (2009) also stated that in general, pre-service teachers had deficiencies in this subject and that they should acquire multicultural awareness, knowledge and skills during the teaching process. milner (2006) states that teachers started to work without awareness of multiculturalism. within the scope of this research, it was determined that the awareness of preservice physical education teachers was high. this may be due to the increase in the social sensitivity and awareness of the individuals over time as well as the diversity of the working group. in other studies conducted in the literature, teachers, students or principals have a high perception of multiculturalism; this situation is connected to the implicit multicultural education of individuals in the process of pedagogical education. as a matter of fact, toprak (2008) showed that teachers' perspectives on multiculturalism were positive. demir (2012) in a similar way, showed that the perspectives of faculty members towards multicultural education were positive. kaya. (2013) in his study conducted with class teachers, social studies teachers and turkish teachers working in diyarbakır, revealed that teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism were positive. bahadır (2016) found that 90% of teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism and multicultural education were positive in their study conducted with qualitative research methodology with social studies teachers. ates (2017) examined multicultural citizen perception and awareness of both secondary school students and social studies teachers and found that students' perceptions about multiculturalism were positive. arsal et al. (2017) found that pre-service teachers' beliefs and asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 122-129 128 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group attitudes towards multicultural education were positive. mazı (2018) stated that teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism were high in their study conducted with teachers from different branches. physical education and sport have a common language and it is against the nature of sport to distinguish students according to any ethnic, social, gender, etc. physical education teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism are high, if they are considered as an indicator that they will be aware of this awareness of physical education teachers can be said to be multicultural awareness. pre-service physical education teachers' perception of multiculturalism is high and it is considered that they will be in this consciousness when they become teachers, it can be said that physical education teachers will train with multicultural awareness. pre-service physical education teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism showed a significant change compared to the universities they studied; it was determined that the pre-service teachers of kastamonu university were significantly lower than those of bartın and karabük university. in this respect, qualitative studies can be planned in order to examine the curriculum in detail and to obtain detailed views of pre-service teachers. it was found that the pre-service physical education teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism did not show a significant difference according to their gender. kaya. (2013) found that teachers' opinions about multiculturalism did not show a significant difference according to their gender in their study conducted with different branch teachers. similarly, bahadır (2016) revealed that there were no significant differences between the attitudes of teachers towards multicultural education according to their gender. ates (2017) also revealed that social studies teachers' perceptions of multicultural education of male and female were similar. akman and imamoğlu (2017) state that teachers' attitudes towards multicultural education do not change significantly according to their gender. similarly, mazı (2018) found that multiculturalism perceptions of teachers working in different branches show similarities. physical education teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism differ according to their gender, and they can be considered as an indicator that their students will be educated by considering different cultural characteristics, especially gender. it was found that the pre-service teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism did not show a significant difference according to their class level. it may have led to the similarity of multicultural education according to class levels of pre-service teachers who met sport at a young age. it was determined that pre-service physical education teachers' perceptions of multiculturalism showed a significant change according to their general academic grade point averages. it has been found that the students who have an academic general academic grade point average above 3.00 are significantly higher than the preservice teachers whose multicultural perceptions are below 2.50. this may be an indication of implicit multicultural education in the curriculum, or may be due to the pre-service teachers' sense of success and belonging in the department, and their future plans. according to the research, it was found that the perceptions of the pre-service physical education teachers whose opinions were taken according to the income level of the families showed a significant change and the preservice teachers with high incomes were significantly higher than the middle ones. ates (2017) in his study conducted with secondary school students, found that students' perceptions of multiculturalism showed a significant change according to the economic status of their families, and the perceptions of students with high income levels were more positive. students with high incomes are more likely to meet different social environments and groups such as artistic activities such as cinema and theater. in this respect, as the income levels of individuals increase, it is likely that they will be more likely to participate in different groups, to recognize them and to provide them with tolerance. in this study, pre-service physical education teachers' perception of multiculturalism was examined. the preservice teachers' competencies for multicultural education and their ability to apply education can be examined in other studies. this study, which took place in the western black sea sample, can be repeated in other regions and the results can be compared with the results obtained from this study. in universities, multicultural education is offered to pre-service teachers in an implicit program. considering the differences in the views of pre-service teachers on the basis of universities, it may be suggested to include a course in this direction in the curriculum. by organizing activities in which pre-service teachers can come together with different social groups, it can be ensured that they develop positive opinions for people with different status. references akman, y., & imamoğlu, a. g. (2017). investigation of teachers' multicultural education attitude according to their perception of social intelligence. sakarya university journal of education, 7(1), 34-48. arsal, z., mumcu, a. d., & akçaoğlu, m. (2017). multicultural experience, attitudes and beliefs of music teacher candidates. abant izzet baysal university faculty of education journal, 17(1), 1731. aslan, m., & kozikoğlu, i̇. (2017). teachers' attitudes towards multicultural education: van province example. dicle university journal of ziya gokalp faculty of education, 31, 729-737. ates, s. (2017). perceptions and awareness of social studies teachers and secondary school students towards multiculturalism and multicultural education (kocaeli example). master's thesis, abant i̇zzet baysal university faculty of educational sciences, bolu. ayaz, m. f. (2016). multiculturalism perception scale: validity and reliability study. electronic journal of social sciences, 15(57), 463-471. bahadır, o. (2016). evaluation of social studies teachers' multiculturalism and multicultural education perceptions: kocaeli example. master thesis, sakarya university institute of educational sciences, sakarya. banks, j. a. (2014). introduction to multicultural education, (trans. h. aydın). ankara: anıyıncılık. banks., j. a. (1993). chapter 1: multicultural education: historical development, dimensions, and practice. review of research in education, 19(1), 3-49. available at: https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732x019001003. başbay, a., & bektaş, y. (2009). teaching environment and teacher competencies in the context of multiculturalism. education and science, 34(152), 30-43. başbay, a., & kağnıcı, y. (2011). multicultural competency perceptions scale: a scale development study. education and science, 36(161), 199212. büyüköztürk, s. (2008). data analysis handbook for social sciences: statistics, research design, spss applications and interpretation. ankara: pegema publishing. büyüköztürk, s., cakmak, e. k., akgün, o. e., karadeniz, s., & demirel, f. (2018). scientific research methods. ankara: pegema publishing. cırık, r. (2008). multicultural education and its reflections. hacettepe university faculty of education journal (h. u. journal of education, 34, 27-40. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 122-129 129 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group demir, s. (2012). the degree of importance of multicultural education for erciyes university lecturers. international periodical for the languages, literature and history of turkish or turkic, 7(4), 1453-1475. ertürk, s. (1997). program development in education. ankara: meteksan. frankel, j. r., & wallen, n. e. (2009). how to design and evaluate research ın education. new york: mcgraw-hill i̇nternational edition. gay, g. 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(2015). the role of cultural intelligence in teacher candidates' attitudes towards multicultural education. elementary education online journal, 14(4), 1352-1369. mazı, a. (2018). investigation of teachers' multicultural perceptions: an example of hatay province. master thesis, kahramanmaraş sütçü i̇mam university institute of social sciences, kahramanmaraş. mcneal, k. (2005). the influence of a multicultural teacher education program on teachers’ multicultural practices. intercultural education, 16(4), 405-419. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14675980500304405. milner, h. r. (2006). preservice teachers’ learning about cultural and racial diversity: implications for urban education. urban education, 41(4), 343-375. available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085906289709. parekh, b. (2002). rethinking multiculturalism, cultural diversity and political theory, (trans. bilge tanrıseven). ankara: phoenix publishing house. portera, a. (2008). intercultural education in europe: epistemological and semantic aspects. intercultural education, 19(6), 481-491. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14675980802568277. toprak, g. (2008). reliability and validity study of teachers' multicultural attitude scale. master thesis, gaziosmanpaşa university institute of social sciences, tokat. uygur, n. (1996). cultural theory. istanbul: remzi bookstore. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 93 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 93-98, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.93.98 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of relationships between self efficacy and scientific epistemological beliefs of students in physical education and sports sultan yavuz eroğlu1 metin karayol2 ( corresponding author) 1high school of physical education and sports, siirt university, turkey. 2high school of physical education and sport, mus alparslan university, turkey. abstract this study aims to investigate the relationship between general self-efficacy and scientific epistemological beliefs of the students in the school of physical education and sports. the study group consists of 400 students (174 female, 226 male) in total. personal information form created by researchers and “scientific epistemological beliefs scale" transcribed to turkish by acat, gülçin, and karadağ (2010) and “self efficacy scale" transcribed to turkish by yeşilay (1996) has been used as a data collector in the study. in the analysis of data, the t-test has been used in the comparison of quantitative continuous data between two independent groups and the one way anova test has been used in the comparison of quantitative continuous data between more than two independent groups. scheffe test has been used as the completive post hoc analysis to determine the differences after the anova test. pearson correlation test has been implemented between the continuous variables of the study. as a result of the study, it has been seen that there is a significant difference on behalf of the ones who are 20 years old and over informing information as one of the scientific epistemological sub-dimensions on behalf of the students of bingöl university (p<0.05). it has been also seen that there is a significant difference on behalf of ankara university students and females in the gender variable in general self-efficacy points (p<0,05). it has not been seen that there is a significant difference in other variables (p>0.05). keywords: physical education, sports, epistemology, epistemological belief, self efficacy, students. citation | sultan yavuz eroğlu; metin karayol (2020). investigation of relationships between self efficacy and scientific epistemological beliefs of students in physical education and sports. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 93-98. history: received: 18 november 2019 revised: 30 december 2019 accepted: 3 february 2020 published: 27 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 94 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 94 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 95 4. discussion and result ..................................................................................................................................................................... 97 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 98 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.93.98&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1359 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5875-2836 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0809-0410 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1359 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5875-2836 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0809-0410 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1359 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5875-2836 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0809-0410 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1359 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5875-2836 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0809-0410 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 93-98 94 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the investigation of relations between self efficacy and scientific epistemological beliefs of students in physical education and sports. 1. introduction sport is an orderly implementing process of acquired behaviours by providing to develop and being acquired physical activity, main motoric skills, cognitive, psychosocial behaviours in individuals (murathan & orak, 2017). physical education and sports have also many benefits such as psychological, sociological, physical and physiological (eroğlu & ersoy, 2019). in addition to that, both physical education and concept of sport which are shown as one of the most important social elements in recent days continue its existence as economic, social and dynamic (reyhan, 2019). information and technology are continuously speeding up with the effect of globalisation in today's world. as technology develops, it provides people different opportunities. the developments in technology affect educational systems like in every branch (talha & kaya, 2016). especially information has more importance in social and cultural areas with revealing the importance of our current information society. under these living conditions, it has more importance to enable students to be raised as individuals who are absorbing science and scientific knowledge and using them in their life (acat et al., 2010). the individuals in university years are trying to absorb science and knowledge to reach these goals for themselves. people should rely on their skills and knowledge to complete this effort successfully. self-efficacy means self-judgment related to himself about the capacity of organising necessary activities and conducting them successfully to show a certain performance (timur & taşar, 2013). according to another definition, self-efficacy means individuals’ capacity to make sources and move and cognitive motivational and behavioural sources to control the events in their lives. stored data with an increase in technology also has an increase. it is very important to identify crucial and required data. epistemology which is becoming an important value in educational researches and questioning source, structure, trueness, validity, development and borders of knowledge comes into prominence. therefore, reviewing the relation of epistemology and belief terms and components subjected to epistemology investigation is important in terms of becoming the meaning of educational researches apparent. in epistemology, it is important to consider the knowledge itself, question its systematic structure, deal the problems related to knowledge, look up to how information is true, legitimate, valid, look up to what causes knowledge, discourse the borders of knowledge (demirel, 2007). the individuals perform a majority part of the preparation for life with outcomes in the classroom. having developed an epistemological belief in this preparation process is becoming possible with the discussions related to how the teachers guiding them identify trueness, what sources of knowledge are, whether the knowledge is changed and the knowledge shows development or not (evcim, 2010). sports education is an educational process involving speculative and operative education living. while the student is given necessary speculative information in this education process, it is important for a student to turn this information into skill in the execution area. one of the most important and prior conditions is that the quality of education is enough in the development of quality in sports education. to get the aims planned in sports education is based on the usage of international rules and methods of education. organisational process supporting theory and operative information with experiences and following continuous innovations should be created when the only approach has been examined. to consider sports education separately from general education makes getting the required target impossible. the aim of education, in general, is to raise qualified human force with education. a qualified person is an individual having sufficiency in terms of social relations in society that he lives in and developed himself in terms of both physical and psychological. in this context, physical education and sports are extremely effective in raising qualified person (kızılet, 2018). in this context, the idea that there is a relation between epistemological beliefs of physical education and sports students’ self-sufficiency enables us to perform this study. 2. method 2.1. study group the study group consists of 400 students in total on voluntariness out of 226 males (%56,5) and 174 females (%43,5) students studying at physical education and sports vocational school of higher education in bingöl, ankara, muş and iğdır university. 2.2. data collection tool to determine the demographic information of the participants as a data collection tool, personal information form created by the researcher has been used (age, gender, department, branch, school, and sportsmen background).”scientific epistemological beliefs scale" transcribed to turkish by acat et al. (2010) has been used to measure the epistemological beliefs of the students. the scale consists of 25 articles and “authority and trueness” (1,5,12,15,16,20,23,24,25), “knowledge generation process" (3,4,7,11,18), “source of knowledge" (6,10,13,14), “reasoning" (2,21,22), and “knowledge variance" (9,17,19) sub-dimensions. in this research, it has been found out that the reliability of self-efficacy scale is high as cronbach's alpha=0,919. “general self efficacy” scale transcribed to turkish by yeşilay (1996) has been used to measure the general self-efficacy of the students. the scale consists of 10 articles and one factor. in this research, the reliability of the scale has been found high as cronbach's alpha=0,919. 2.3. statistical analysis of data data obtained from the study has been analysed by using spss (statistical package for social sciences) for windows 22.0 program. number, percentage, average, standard deviation have been used as descriptive statistical methods in data evaluation. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 93-98 95 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group t-test has been used in comparison of quantitative continuous data between two independent groups and one way anova test has been used in comparison of quantitative continuous data between more than two independent groups. scheffe test has been used as the completive post hoc analysis to determine the difference after anova test. pearson correlation test has been implemented between continuous variables of the study. 3. findings in this section, there are findings obtained in the result of data analysis via the scales of the students participated into the study to solve problem of the study. explanation and comments have been made based on the findings obtained. table-1. demographic characteristics distribution table. groups frequency(n) percentage (%) age 18-20 203 50,7 over 20 197 49,2 gender female 174 43,5 male 226 56,5 school bingöl 100 25,0 ankara 99 24,8 muş 102 25,5 iğdır 99 24,8 department education 142 35,5 coaching 136 34,0 management 122 30,5 branch no branch 112 28,0 team sports 179 44,8 individual sports 109 27,3 sportsmen background 5 years and below 222 55,5 5 years and over 178 44,5 note: n=400. table 1 shows that the students have been dispersed according to age; 203 of them are 18-20 years old (%50,7), and 197 of them are over 20 (%49,2). the students have been dispersed according to gender; 174 of them are female (%43,5), and 226 of them are male (%56,5). the students have been dispersed according to school ; 100 of them are from bingöl (%25,0), 99 of them are from ankara (%24,8), 102 of them are from muş ( %25,5), and 99 of them are from iğdır (%24,8). the students have been dispersed according to department; 142 of them are from education (%35,5), 136 of them are from coaching (%34,0), 122 of them are from management ( %30,5). the students have been dispersed according to branch; 112 of them are from no branch (%28,0), 179 of them are from team sports (%44,8), and 109 of them are from individual sports (%27,3). the students have been dispersed according to sportsmen background; 222 of them are 5 years and below (%55,5) and 178 of them are 5 years and over (%44,5). table-2. the averages of scientific epistemological beliefs and self efficacy sub-dimensions. sub-dimensions of the scale n average mr min. max. authority and trueness 400 3,203 0,949 1,000 5,000 knowledge generation process 400 3,829 0,846 1,000 10,670 source of knowledge 400 3,341 0,942 1,000 5,000 reasoning 400 3,860 0,866 1,000 5,000 knowledge variance 400 3,713 0,943 1,000 7,000 scientific epistemological beliefs general 400 3,515 0,669 1,000 5,600 self efficacy 400 3,619 0,999 1,000 5,000 table 2 reported that the “authority and trueness” average of the students is medium 3,203±0,949 (min=1; max=5), “knowledge generation process” average is high 3,829±0,846 (min=1; max=10.67), “source of knowledge” average is medium 3,341±0,942 (min=1; max=5), “reasoning “average is high 3,860±0,866 (min=1; max=5), “knowledge variance “average is high 3,713±0,943 (min=1; max=7), “scientific epistemological beliefs general" average is high 3,515±0,669 (min=1; max=5.6), “self-efficacy" average is high 3,619±0,999 (min=1; max=5). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 93-98 96 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. correlation analysis between scientific epistemological beliefs and self-efficacy scores based on sub-dimensions. sub-dimension correlation authority and trueness knowledge generation process source of knowledge reasoning knowledge variance scientific epistemological beliefs general self efficacy authority and trueness r 1,000 p 0,000 knowledge generation process r 0,242** 1,000 p 0,000 0,000 source of knowledge r 0,746** 0,318** 1,000 p 0,000 0,000 0,000 reasoning r 0,167** 0,564** 0,264** 1,000 p 0,001 0,000 0,000 0,000 knowledge variance r 0,241** 0,598** 0,282** 0,592** 1,000 p 0,000 0,000 0,000 0,000 0,000 scientific epistemological beliefs r 0,819** 0,687** 0,791** 0,571** 0,629** 1,000 p 0,000 0,000 0,000 0,000 0,000 0,000 self-efficacy r -0,039 0,095 0,023 0,123* 0,123* 0,054 1,000 p 0,441 0,056 0,639 0,014 0,013 0,277 0,000 note: *<0,05; **<0,01. table-4. the condition of differentitation of scientific epistemological beliefs and self efficacy points according to descriptive features based on demographic features. demographic features n authority and trueness knowledge generation process source of knowledge reasoning knowledge variance scientific epistemological beliefs self efficacy age ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss 18-20 203 3,14±1,03 3,74±0,82 3,31±0,99 3,81±0,91 3,77±1,00 3,47±0,71 3,60±1,00 over 20 197 3,27±0,86 3,92±0,87 3,37±0,90 3,91±0,82 3,65±0,88 3,56±0,63 3,64±1,00 t= -1,353 -2,095 -0,665 -1,223 1,258 -1,452 -0,416 p= 0,176 0,037 0,506 0,222 0,209 0,147 0,678 gender ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss females 174 3,10±0,98 3,79±0,81 3,32±0,99 3,84±0,88 3,67±0,98 3,46±0,69 3,73±0,97 male 226 3,28±0,92 3,86±0,87 3,35±0,90 3,87±0,86 3,75±0,92 3,56±0,65 3,53±1,01 t= -1,842 -0,906 -0,308 -0,385 -0,868 -1,491 1,964 p= 0,066 0,365 0,759 0,701 0,386 0,137 0,050 school ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss bingöl 100 3,62±0,77 3,83±0,69 3,67±0,80 3,85±0,74 3,71±0,97 3,71±0,61 3,58±0,86 ankara 99 3,04±0,93 3,88±1,04 3,31±0,97 3,88±0,90 3,70±0,91 3,47±0,68 3,94±0,98 muş 102 3,25±1,08 3,77±0,83 3,30±1,06 3,81±0,97 3,73±1,01 3,51±0,76 3,52±1,08 iğdır 99 2,89±0,84 3,84±0,80 3,09±0,84 3,90±0,85 3,71±0,90 3,37±0,57 3,43±0,99 f= 11,755 0,300 6,643 0,222 0,013 4,781 5,119 p= 0,000 0,825 0,000 0,881 0,998 0,003 0,002 posthoc= 1 > 2, 1 > 3, 1 > 4, 3 > 4 (p<0.05) 1 > 2, 1 > 3, 1 > 4 (p<0.05) 1 > 2, 1 > 3, 1 > 4 (p<0.05) 2 > 1, 2 > 3, 2 > 4 (p<0.05) department ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss education 142 3,16±0,93 3,85±0,76 3,30±0,94 3,89±0,78 3,72±0,87 3,50±0,65 3,59±0,95 coaching 136 3,17±0,99 3,72±0,83 3,28±0,96 3,82±0,99 3,67±1,07 3,46±0,68 3,57±1,09 management 122 3,29±0,93 3,93±0,95 3,45±0,92 3,87±0,82 3,76±0,88 3,59±0,68 3,70±0,96 f= 0,681 1,991 1,300 0,218 0,299 1,356 0,615 p= 0,507 0,138 0,274 0,804 0,742 0,259 0,541 branch ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss no branch 112 3,22±0,95 3,82±1,03 3,51±0,93 3,82±0,91 3,61±0,95 3,53±0,73 3,66±0,98 team sports 179 3,24±0,92 3,78±0,79 3,28±0,96 3,82±0,87 3,74±1,00 3,51±0,66 3,64±0,97 individual sports 109 3,12±1,00 3,92±0,72 3,26±0,92 3,96±0,80 3,78±0,84 3,51±0,63 3,55±1,06 f= 0,591 0,864 2,627 1,068 1,064 0,050 0,407 p= 0,554 0,422 0,074 0,345 0,346 0,951 0,666 sportsmen background ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss ort ± ss 5 years and below 222 3,26±0,94 3,80±0,94 3,38±0,93 3,83±0,88 3,69±0,98 3,53±0,71 3,63±1,00 5 years and over 178 3,13±0,96 3,86±0,71 3,30±0,96 3,90±0,84 3,74±0,90 3,50±0,61 3,61±0,99 t= 1,425 -0,662 0,799 -0,843 -0,465 0,496 0,201 p= 0,155 0,495 0,424 0,400 0,643 0,620 0,841 note: *<0,05; **<0,01. table 3 when correlation analysis has been examined that it has been found that there is a positive relation between authority and trueness and knowledge generation process r=0.242 (p=0,000<0.05), source of knowledge and reasoning r=0.746 (p=0,000<0.05), source of knowledge and knowledge generation process r=0.318 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 93-98 97 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (p=0,000<0.05), reasoning and authority and trueness r=0.167 (p=0,001<0.05), reasoning and knowledge generation process r=0.564 (p=0,000<0.05), reasoning and source of knowledge r=0.264 (p=0,000<0.05), knowledge variance and authority and trueness r=0.241 (p=0,000<0.05), knowledge variance and knowledge generation process r=0.598 (p=0,000<0.05), knowledge variance and source of knowledge r=0.282 (p=0,000<0.05), knowledge variance and reasoning r=0.592 (p=0,000<0.05), scientific epistemological beliefs general and authority and trueness be r=0.819 (p=0,000<0.05), scientific epistemological beliefs general and knowledge generation process r=0.687 (p=0,000<0.05), scientific epistemological beliefs general and source of knowledge r=0.791 (p=0,000<0.05), scientific epistemological beliefs general and reasoning r=0.571 (p=0,000<0.05), scientific epistemological beliefs general and knowledge variance=0.629 (p=0,000<0.05), self efficacy and reasoning r=0.123 (p=0,014<0.05), self-efficacy and knowledge variance r=0.123 (p=0,013<0.05). the relations between other variables are not statistically significant (p>0.05). table 4 shows that it has been found out that the points of knowledge generation process of the ones 18-20 years old (x=3,74) are lower than the ones over 20 years old (x=3,919). the authority and trueness, source of knowledge, reasoning, knowledge variance, scientific epistemological beliefs general and self-efficacy points of the students do not show a significant difference according to age variable (p>0.05). it has been found out that self-efficacy points of females (x=3,730) are higher than the self-efficacy points of males (t=1,964; p=0.05<0.05). the authority and trueness, knowledge generation process, source of knowledge, reasoning, knowledge variance, scientific epistemological beliefs general points of the students do not show a significant difference (p>0.05). the authority and trueness points of the students show a significant difference according to school variable (f=11,755; p=0<0.05). the reason of the difference is the fact that the authority and trueness points of the ones whose school in bingöl are higher than the ones whose school in ankara (p<0.05). the authority and trueness points of those whose school is located in bingöl are higher than those in muş (p<0.05). the authority and trueness points of those whose school is located in bingöl are higher than those in iğdır (p<0.05). the authority and trueness points of those whose school is located in muş are higher than those in iğdır (p<0.05). the source of knowledge points of the students show a significant difference according to school variable (f=6,643; p=0<0.05). the reason of the difference is the fact that the source of knowledge points of those whose school is in bingöl are higher than those in ankara (p<0.05). the source of knowledge points of those whose school is in bingöl are higher than those in muş (p<0.05). the authority and trueness points of those whose school is in bingöl are higher than those in iğdır (p<0.05). the scientific epistemological beliefs general points of the students show a significant difference (f=4,781; p=0.003<0.05). the reason of the difference is the fact that the scientific epistemological beliefs general points of the ones whose school in bingöl are higher than the ones whose school in ankara (p<0.05). the scientific epistemological beliefs general points of those whose school is in bingöl are higher than those in muş (p<0.05). the scientific epistemological beliefs general points of those whose school is in bingöl are higher than those in iğdır (p<0.05). the self-efficacy points of the students show a significant difference (f=5,119; p=0.002<0.05). the reason of the difference is the fact that the self-efficacy points of the ones whose school in ankara are higher than the ones whose school in bingöl (p<0.05). the self-efficacy points of the ones whose school in ankara are higher than those whose school is in muş (p<0.05). the self-efficacy points of those whose school is in ankara are higher than those in iğdır (p<0.05). the knowledge generation process, reasoning, knowledge variance points of the students do not show a significant difference according to department variable (p>0.05). the authority and trueness, knowledge generation process , source of knowledge, reasoning., knowledge variance, scientific epistemological beliefs general, self-efficacy points of the students do not show a significant difference according to department variable (p>0.05). the authority and trueness, knowledge generation process, source of knowledge, reasoning., knowledge variance, scientific epistemological beliefs general, self-efficacy points of the students do not show a significant difference according to branch variable (p>0.05). the authority and trueness, knowledge generation process , source of knowledge, reasoning., knowledge variance, scientific epistemological beliefs general, self-efficacy points of the students do not show a significant difference according to sportsmen background (p>0.05). 4. discussion and result the sources related to our subject or having close relation in the direction of our study have been reached. in our study, when we look whether the general self efficacy points and scientific epistemological beliefs general sub dimensions differ in gender, age, department, school, branch, sportsmen background, variables or not, the result has been found on behalf of the ones who are 20 years old and over in knowledge generation which is a scientific epistemological sub dimension of the participants (p<0.05). in the adaptation period of the students starting university, they start to learn how to reach knowledge. therefore, it confirms our study that the students over 20 years old are more aware in terms of knowledge generation than the ones below 20 years old. besides the study (bayrak, cınar, coban, & coşkuner, 2013) supporting our findings and having a significant difference between epistemological beliefs and age in literature, it has been seen that there are studies having contrast findings (cağlayan & mehtap, 2010; güngör & yenel, 2017; paulsen & wells, 1998). when we examine the analysis results of the study conducted , while it has been reported that epistemological beliefs of physical education and sports teacher candidates do not show a significant difference according to age ranges, it has been stated that the epistemological beliefs of physical education and sports teacher candidates develop as the age increases according to data obtained (güngör., 2016; yılmaz, 2007). in our other finding, it has been seen that there is a significant difference on behalf of university students of bingöl in terms of authority and trueness which is a sub dimension of scientific epistemological beliefs general belief general according to source of knowledge and school variable (p<0.05). in the studies in which the students from different universities have participated in literature, it shows contrast to our findings (cağlayan & mehtap, 2010; güngör & yenel, 2017). epistemological beliefs are generally subjective beliefs related to how knowing and learning are performed and the individuals’ thought of what knowledge is sander (2005). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 93-98 98 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group on the other hand in our study, it has not been seen that there is a significant difference between the variables of gender, department, branch, sportsmen background and scientific epistemological sub dimensions (p>0.05). in literature, the studies parallel to our findings are available (biçer, er, & ozel, 2013; cağlayan & mehtap, 2010; karabulut & ulucan, 2012; keskin & aydın, 201o; tailor, 2005). the reason that mentioned variables in our study and the difference is not the same is because it is considered that the individuals born and raised in east have studied at the same place and it can be said that they are in the same cultural and social structure. at the same time we are of opinion that it is necessary to study with different sample groups and in different regions according to obtained data. it has been seen that there is a significant difference on behalf of females and the students of ankara university in gender variable in general self efficacy points (p<0.05). however, it has not been seen that there is a significant difference in department, sportsmen background, age and branch variables (p>0.05). there are also studies showing parallelism to our study in terms of gender (omur & cubukcu, 2017) and not showing parallelism (bozkurt, 2013; duman, 2018; yeşilyurt, 2013). although we live in a patriarchal society, we aware that females are more willing to reach knowledge and source of knowledge compared to males because they desire to exist more in society and especially their personal efforts. in the correlation analysis result conducted; it has been found that there is relation between scientific epistemological scale sub dimensions in a positive way. it has been found that there is a positive relation between reasoning and self efficacy and self efficacy and knowledge variance. the relations between other variables are not statistically significant (p>0.05). our hypothesis that there is a positive and high level relation between epistemological beliefs of the students in school of physical education and sports and self efficacy has been accepted partly and it is guiding to next studies to be conducted with different sample groups. references acat, m. b., gülçin, t., & karadağ, e. (2010). scientific epistemological beliefs scale: adaptation to turkish culture, language validity and analysis of factor structure. turkish journal of science education, 7(4), 67-69. bayrak, e., cınar, v., coban, b., & coşkuner, z. (2013). investigation of scientific epistemological beliefs of teacher candidates of physical education and sports school and teacher candidates of education faculty in terms of different variables. the journal of academic social science studies, 6(2), 1817-1828. biçer, b., er, h., & ozel, a. (2013). the relationship between pre-service teachers' epistemological beliefs and educational philosophies adopted. theory and practice in education journal of theory and practice in education, 9(3), 230-249. bozkurt, t. (2013). examination of teacher self-efficacy of candidates of physical education teachers. master thesis, gazi university, institute of education departments, ankara. cağlayan, h. s., & mehtap, b. (2010). investigation of epistemological beliefs of university women's futsal team athletes in terms of some variables. niğde university journal of physical education and sports sciences, 4(1), 37-47. demirel, i. (2007). epistemological world systems analysis. doctoral thesis, dokuz eylül university institute of social sciences. duman, t. (2018). physical education and sports teacher candidates' attitudes towards teaching profession and academic self-efficacy levels. master thesis, hitit university institute of health sciences, corum. eroğlu, e., & ersoy, a. (2019). examination of learned strength levels of physical education and sports school students according to some variables. international journal of multidisciplinary academic research, 6(2), 68-75. evcim, i. (2010). the relationship between epistemological beliefs and levels of using science gains in their daily lives and academic achievements of elementary school students. master's thesis, marmara university, istanbul. güngör, n. b., & yenel, f. (2017). investigation of the relationship between epistemological beliefs and leadership characteristics of physical education and sports teaching department students. atatürk university journal of physical education and sports sciences, 19(2), 39-55. güngör., b. n. (2016). investigation of the relationship between epistemological beliefs and leadership characteristics of physical education teacher candidates. master thesis, gazi university institute of educational sciences, ankara. karabulut, e. o., & ulucan, h. (2012). investigation of scientific epistemological beliefs of physical education teacher candidates in terms of different variables. journal of sports and performance research, 3(2), 29-44. keskin, i., & aydın, m. 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(2019). examination of self-esteem, anxiety and professional satisfaction levels according to the referee experience of football referees working in professional leagues (example of 11th region). kosbed, 37(1), 161-172. sander, p. (2005). researching our students for more effective university teaching. electronic journal of research in educational psychology, 3(1), 113-130. tailor, a. r. (2005). a research on scientific epistemological beliefs of university students. afyon kocatepe university journal of social sciences, 2, 309-310. talha, m., & kaya, o. (2016). evaluation of sports trainers perceptions on computer aided education related to the attitudes toward learning. universal journal of educational research, 4(2), 416-421. available at: https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2016.040215. timur, b., & taşar, m. f. (2013). adaptation of the self-efficacy belief scale for the use of computers in science education into turkish. journal of turkish science education, 10(3), 59-72. yeşilay, a. (1996). generalized self-authority expectation, internet address. retrieved from: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~health/turk.htm. [accessed 22.02.2020]. yeşilyurt, e. (2013). teacher candidates' self-efficacy perceptions. journal of electronic social sciences, 12(45), 88-104. yılmaz, a. (2007). the relationship between epistemological beliefs of nursing students and locus of control. unpublished master thesis, istanbul university institute of health sciences nursing education department, istanbul. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~health/turk.htm 99 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 99-104, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.99.104 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of physical fitness parameters of 7-9 years groups male students that have training in different sports branches meltem kurt1 alpaslan kartal2 ( corresponding author) 1,2yozgat bozok university, school of physical education and sports, yozgat, turkey. abstract the fact that children have acquired the habit of physical activity therefore becoming physically and mentally healthy individuals has an important role in the formation of a healthy society. physical activities during childhood and adolescence ensure that sports performance is at the highest level and also contributes to overall health values (saygın, karacabey, & saygın, 2011). the aim of this study is to compare the physical fitness parameters of the male students who take the physical education course with an average age of 7,15 ± 36 years and who are trained in different sports branches. the first-grade students of the private yükselen college, who were in pursaklar district of ankara province, participated in the study. for this purpose, physical fitness tests of 65 male students who took courses of physical education and received training in different sports branches were conducted. significance values were taken as p <0.01 and p <0.05. as the results of the study showed that the speed, agility and muscular force parameters of the males showed faster development, it was observed that the values of the students who took education in different branches were better and a significant difference was observed between them. keywords: sports, physical fitness, physical education, student, anthropometric measurements. citation | meltem kurt; alpaslan kartal (2020). investigation of physical fitness parameters of 7-9 years groups male students that have training in different sports branches. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 99-104. history: received: 20 november 2019 revised: 2 january 2019 accepted: 5 february 2020 published: 27 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 100 2. material and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 100 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 102 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 103 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 103 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.99.104&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1360 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1113-8251 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1567-6276 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1360 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1113-8251 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1567-6276 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1360 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1113-8251 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1567-6276 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1360 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1113-8251 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1567-6276 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 99-104 100 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by comparing the physical fitness parameters of the male students who take the physical education course with an average age of 7,15 ± 36 years and who are trained in different sports branches. 1. introduction physical health gained during childhood and at the same time maintained throughout life is considered necessary to be a healthy individual and to show a high level of capacity. therefore, exercise training can start at an early age that the child can do (baltacı, 2008). physical activities carried out during children and adolescents ensure high sports performance (saygın et al., 2011). the period of basic movements and sports-related movements constitute the age group of 7-10. another reason for the determination of physical properties at an early age is the determination of physical fitness levels. ability selection can be supported by determining physical fitness levels. this way, young athletes can be guided correctly (celik, günay, & f., 2013). at the same time, sports help children to pay attention to something, focus better on a task and increase their imagination. the easiest way to support children is in physical education classes. the basic education stage shows interesting aspects of the child's movement experience. there is no doubt that movement and play education lessons, play an important role on physical fitness parameters in the developmental stage of children (yenal, çamlıyer, & saracaloğlu, 1999). in this context, it may be possible to achieve the desired goals in sports, to give importance to education and training as the most important priority and to train the instructors in sports in accordance with scientific measures. physical fitness parameter development in children; cardiovascular endurance: aerobic endurance capacity in childhood increases with age. there is no different development in girls and boys; shows the same development. lung volume continuously increases until it reaches full growth (emiroğlu, 2004). muscular strength and endurance: total muscle mass in men is 25% of body weight at birth and 40% or more in adulthood. the length of the muscles is directly proportional to the length of the bones. without increasing exercise and diet muscle mass is the highest level in boys at the age of 18-25 years (zorba, 2001). flexibility: flexibility of children between the ages of 5-8 is fixed. it reaches the highest level until the age of 12-13. then it decreases with age. since muscle tissue prolongs in response to the increase in bone length in prepuberty, a decrease in joint flexibility is observed during rapid growth (zorba, 2001). balance: motor function components; balance and vision are done by the connection between deep sensory organs and motor systems. balance is to maintain a position in a certain place. basic forms of balance in parallel with child development; sitting, standing, turning, bending, reaching up, standing on one leg, or different forms. from an early age, balance is the key to movement training (kesilmis, 2012). speed: in sports, speed means the most intensive application of human motoric actions in the shortest period of time. in another words; “the ability to react as soon as possible to a stimulus result”. speed development, which is low before school age, increases rapidly from this period up to the age of 13 years. a good reaction rate can be achieved at age 9-10. while latent duration was between 0.50 and 0.60 sec in children aged 6-7 years, for 10-yearolds it decreases until between 0.25 0.40 sec. reaction speed during the second school age reaches almost the value of adults (kesilmis, 2012). the aim of this study is to examine and compare the physical fitness parameters of male students who are in the course of physical education and who are also trained in different sports branches. 2. material and methods 2.1. study group the study was conducted to compare the physical fitness parameters of male students who took physical education courses and also studied in different sports branches and 65 male students with a mean age of 7.15 ± 36 years. out of 65 male students, 40 students attend only play and physical activity courses, while the remaining 25 students take training in different sports branches in addition to physical education courses. necessary permissions were obtained before the tests were performed and the test process was explained to the students. 2.2. data collection tools 50% of the first-grade students who have been studying at yukselen college in pursaklar district of ankara have been directed to research. the research was conducted after the first individual consent of the students and the voluntary participation of their families. physical fitness parameters were made using eurofit test battery parameters considering the average age of the students. in the pursaklar district of ankara, 65 people who participated in the study applied physical fitness tests determined by the researcher to the first-grade male students. anthropometric measurements (length, body weight, body mass index), flexibility test, balance test, standing jump test, 10x5 meter shuttle test, 30-meter sprint test, t-agility test and 20-meter shuttle test were applied respectively. the tests were performed twice and the best values were evaluated for analysis. 2.3. anthropometric measurements 2.3.1. height a pre-set tailor tape is attached to the wall. the total length was set to 2 meters. the height of the students was measured without their shoes. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 99-104 101 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3.2. body weight body weight measurements of the individuals were made with a floor scale placed on a flat surface. the weight of the individuals was measured without any heavy material other than their clothes. 2.3.3. body mass index body mass index is determined by determining body weight and height (lagoglu, 2002). bmi is determined by dividing the body weights of the individuals in kilograms by the square of the heights obtained in meters. bmi is expressed in kg / m². 2.3.4. (body weight (kg) / square of length length (m²)) height and weight of the individuals were taken. body mass index values of individuals were calculated with the following formula with these height and weight values. bmi= kg/m2 2.3.5. physical fitness parameters tests 2.3.5.1. sit-reach flexibility test lie in the sitting position is to reach the farthest point the trunk can reach without bending the knees to the access board. sit-reach test board, is around 35x55cm and 45x32 cm. the upper side of the board is rated between 0–50 cm. after the individual sits with his feet touching the lower part of the board, he reaches the last point he can reach without bending his knees. the test should be performed 2 times and best value is recorded. 2.3.6. flamingo balance test first, the individual is allowed to make an experiment in order to decide which leg to do the test. it is the measurement of the time the individual can stand on the balance for a given period of time. there is a chance to hold the other free foot with the same hand while standing on one foot. if subject loses balance more than 15 times during the first 30 seconds of the test, the test is considered invalid. flamingo balance value is the longest time an individual can stay on one foot in balance, the best time is recorded (pense & serpek, 2010). 2.3.7. standing long jump test the individual’s toe tips should be placed just behind the line while the feet are in the anatomical position. parallel to the ground, the arms should be in the front and the knees in the bent position, subject should jump to the forward with swing of arm. the meter to be measured is fixed on a straight line. when the individual makes the jump, the heel of the foot closest to zero should be taken as reference. it should be measured with a ruler. after two trials the best score is recorded in cm. 2.3.8. 10x5 shuttle run test 2 cones placed at a distance of 10 meters. the individual is ready behind the starting line. with the start command, subject runs as fast as possible, crossing two lines on both feet, crossing the opposite line and back to the starting line. repeats 5 times until a total of 50 meters is reached and the running time is recorded. 2.3.9. 30 meters sprint test on a flat surface of 30 meters, individuals run at maximal speed in the designated area with 2 cones at the beginning and end. individuals must warm up at slow pace before the test. then subjects should be ready for testing by making stretching movements. the information about test should be explained to the individual. 2.3.10. t agility test t-test can be defined by the individual's right-lefti, forward and backward runs. the individual must perform these runs as quickly as possible in a particular area. there should be a warm-up period of 15 minutes before starting the test. the athlete must touch the center cone with his right hand. then he should run 5 m to the left and slide with his left hand. it should then run to the cone at a distance of 10 m with a side-sliding step and touch it with the right hand. finally, the athlete must go to the middle cone with a side-sliding step, touch with his left hand and stop the photocell when he returns back to the beginning of the t. 2.3.11. 20 meters shuttle run test the individual runs round-trip at a distance of 20 meters (flat ground). the running speed is adjusted according to the signals that play at certain intervals. the individual must start running on signal 1 and be on the other line until signal 2. at the beginning the pace is slow but it increases by time. if the individual is two times late for the signal, the test is terminated. the individual must undergo a detailed warm-up period before taking the test. the test information should be explained in detail. 2.4. data analysis in the research, values were compared by using spss 16.0 package program. for the analysis of the values, kolmogrov-smirnov test was first applied to evaluate whether they show normal distribution. as a result of kolmogrov-smirnov normal distribution test analysis, flexibility test of values (p = 0,018 <0,05), balance test (p = 0,000 <0,05), 10x5 shuttle test (p = 0,012 <0,05), t-agility test (p = 0.008 <0.05), 30 meters sprint test (p = 0.023 <0.05), standing long jump test (p = 0.002> 0.05), 20 meters shuttle test (p = 0.001> 0.05 ) which did not show normal distribution. mann-whitney u test was used to analyze whether there was a significant difference between the data because the findings did not show normal distribution. significance value was taken as p <0.01 and p <0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 99-104 102 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. findings in this study; the physical fitness parameters of the first-grade male students with a mean age of 7.15 ± 36 years were examined. sub-problems of the findings obtained as a result of the analysis of the collected data are presented. the results were evaluated according to correlation coefficients between 0.05 and 0.01 with significant difference and no significant difference. when the statistical values were analyzed by kolmogrov-smirnov test, it was seen that it did not show normal distribution. statistical analysis was evaluated by mann-withney-u test because the statistical values did not show normal distribution. during this study, students receiving physical education courses take 40 + 40min 2 days a week. in addition to the physical education courses, the students studying in different branches train for 1.30 hours two days a week. in this context, statistical analyzes of physical fitness parameters are given. table-1. mann-whitney u test of t-agility test values (seconds). group n t-agility test mean rank sum of rank u p value different sport branches 25 19.08±2.6 25.26 631.50 306.50 .009 physical education 40 21.31±3.29 37.84 1513.50 in table 1 the results of the mann whitney u test of t-agility test of the students who take physical education courses and who are trained in different sports branches are given. when table 1 is examined. there is a significant difference between the students who take physical education courses and who study in different sports branches (p =. 009 <0.05). table-2. mann-whitney u test of 30 meter sprint test values (seconds). group n 30 meters mean rank sum of rank u p value different sport branches 25 7.23±.82 24.72 618.00 293.00 .005 physical education 40 8.01±.98 38.18 1527.00 table 2 shows the mann whitney u test results of the 30-meter sprint test of the students who took a physical education course and trained in different sports branches. when table 2 is examined. there is a significant difference between the students who take physical education courses and who study in different sports branches (p =. 005 <0.05). table-3. mann-whitney u test of standing long jump test values (cm). group n standing long jump mean rank sum of rank u p value different sport branches physical education 25 40 106.8±20.6 92.12±19.4 41.24 27.85 1031.500 294.000 294.000 .005 table 3 shows the results of the mann whitney u test of the standing long jump test of the students who took a physical education course and who were trained in different sports branches. when table 3 is examined. there is a significant difference between the students who take physical education courses and who study in different sports branches (p =. 005 <0.05). table-4. mann-whitney u test of flamingo balance test values (seconds). group n flamingo balance test mean rank sum of rank u p value different sport branches physical education 25 40 27.28±28.31 20.34±18.28 36.32 30.92 908.00 1237.0 41 7 .263 table 4 shows the results of the mann whitney u test of the flamingo balance test of the students who took a physical education course and received training in different sports branches. when table 4 was examined. it was observed that the students who were educated in different sports branches were in balance for a longer period of time but there was no significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.263> 0.05). table-5. mann-whitney u test of sit-reach flexibility test values (cm). group n sit-reach mean rank sum of rank u p value different sport branches physical education 25 40 31.25±6.70 28.45±7.13 37.08 30.45 927.00 1218.00 398.000 .169 in table 5 the mann whitney u test results of the sit-reach flexibility test of the students who took a physical education course and received training in different sports branches are given. when table 5 was examined. it was observed that the flexibility parameters of the students who were educated in different sports branches were at a better level but there was no significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.169> 0.05). table-6. mann-whitney u test of 10x5 shuttle run test values (seconds). group n 10x5 shuttle run mean rank sum of rank u p value different sport branches physical education 25 40 17.51±1.28 18.65±2.44 28.22 35.99 705.50 1439.50 380.500 .107 in table 6 the mann whitney u test results of the 10x5 shuttle run test of the students who took a physical education course and received training in different sports branches are given. when table 6 was examined. there was no significant difference between the students who took physical education courses and also received training in different sports branches (p = 0.107> 0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 99-104 103 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. mann-whitney u test of 20 meter shuttle run test values (pieces). group n 20-meter shuttle run mean rank sum of rank u p value different sport branches physical education 25 40 44.5±21.0 46.82±19.64 32.10 33.56 802.50 1342.5 477.50 .761 in table 7 the mann whitney u test results of the 20-meter shuttle run test of the students who took the physical education course and received training in different sports branches were given. there was no difference (p = 0.761> 0.05). 4. discussion according to the results of statistical analysis, agility, speed and explosive force values were found to be significantly different from physical fitness parameters (p <0,05). there was no significant difference in balance, flexibility and cardiovascular endurance values (p> 0.05) between subjects who took the physical education course and received training in different sports branches. according to this information, there are studies with similar results in the literature. altınkök, vazgeçer, and measurer (2013) in the study of physical education program that includes the development of basic motor movements in the impact of the development of basic motor movements of children aged 5-6 stated that a significant difference between the agility test values of children (p <0.001). agility,pre-posttest values, (p <0.001) in the favor of post-test significant differences were found in the experimental group , but no significant difference was found in the control group. pekel, balcı, mansur, balcı, and hamdi (2006) in his study in 2006, evaluated the relationship between physical fitness test results and anthropometric properties in children engaged in sports activity, and found a significant difference between 30-meter sprint tests among individuals (p <0.05). in the study of the effect of exercise on physical fitness components in children, saygın et al. (2011) observed that 30-meter sprint test of students with different branch training (basketball, taekwondo) and sedentary students revealed significant results (p <0,05). diker, in his research in 2013, some physical fitness characteristics of 8-14 age group football players were examined according to age group. when the sprint values of 30 meters were compared, a significant difference was found (p <0.05). in 2006, kızılakayfa (2006) observed a significant difference in the results of the long jump test analysis by stopping the study on the comparison of the results of the application of the eurofit test batteries of the active and non-active students in the 12-14 age group in edirne city center primary schools. (p <0.05). hartman, niet, and moolenaar (2014) examined the physical activity and physical fitness parameters of the 8-11 age group. in the study, a significant result was found when the statistical values of the individuals were compared in the standing and long jump test (p <0.05). celik et al. (2013) evaluated the physical and motoric characteristics of primary school students in the 7-9 age group in 2013 and observed that there was no significant difference between the flexibility parameters of the students (p> 0.05). hartman et al. (2014) examined the physical activity and physical fitness parameters of the 8-11 age group in 2014 and there was no significant difference between the flexibility parameters among the individuals (p> 0.05). in his study of the effect of birth weight on physical fitness parameters in children aged 8-10 years, ozen (2014) observed no significant difference in the 10x5 shuttle run test analyzes among individuals (p> 0.05). ranson, stratton, and taylor (2015) in the study in which the elementary school students examined the physical fitness parameters using the eurofit test battery in 2015, 10x5 shuttle run test results of the male students did not appear (p> 0.05). hartman et al. (2014) examined the physical activity and physical fitness parameters of the 8-11 age group observed no significant difference between the results of the 20-meter shuttle run test analysis (p> 0.05). as a result, in addition to the physical education course, it was determined that the physical fitness parameters of male students studying in different branches were higher. as a result of the study, since the speed, agility and muscular force parameters developed faster in males, it was observed that the values of the students studying in different branches were at a better level and there was a significant difference between them. references altınkök, m., vazgeçer, e., & measurer, b. (2013). investigation of the effect of physical education program design involving the development of basic motor movements on the development of basic motor movements of children aged 5-6. international turkish journal of educational sciences, 1(1), 74-87. baltacı, g. (2008). children and sports. ankara: ministry of health publications. celik, a., günay, e., & f., a. (2013). evaluation of physical and motoric features of 7-9 age group primary school students. dokuz eylul university faculty of medicine journal, 27(1), 7 13. emiroğlu, o. (2004). eurofit test battery application for 7-11 year old primary school students. master thesis. university of nicosia. cyprus. hartman, e., niet, a., & moolenaar, b. j. (2014). relationship between physical activity and physical fitness in school-aged children with developmental language disorders. research i̇n developmental disabilities, 35(12), 3285-3291. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2014.08.022. kesilmis, i. (2012). the effect of gymnastic training on growth and biomotor abilities in children aged 4-6. master thesis. mersin university. myrtle. kızılakayfa, e. (2006). comparison of the application results of eurofit test batteries for students who are active in the 12-14 age group in edirne city center primary schools and who do not do sports (who attend physical education classes). master thesis. university of trakya. edirne. lagoglu, m. (2002). evaluation of the physical fitness levels of 12 years old children with the battery of eurofit. master thesis. selçuk university. konya. ozen, g. (2014). the effect of birth weight on some physical fitness parameters of 8-10 years old children. master thesis. i̇nönü university. malatya. pekel, h., balcı, e., mansur, o., balcı, s. s., & hamdi, p. (2006). evaluation of the relationship between performance-related physical fitness test results and anthropometric properties in children doing sports. kastamonu education journal, 1(14), 299-308. pense, m., & serpek, b. (2010). determination of physiological and biometric properties of female students playing basketball between the ages of 14-16 with eurofit test battery. selcuk university physical education sports sciences journal, 12(3), 191-198. ranson, r., stratton, g., & taylor, s. (2015). digit ratio (2d: 4d) and physical fitness (eurofit test battery) in school children. early human development, 91(5), 327-331. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2015.03.005. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 99-104 104 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group saygın, e., karacabey, k., & saygın, o. (2011). investigation of physical activity and physical fitness factors in children. international journal of human sciences, 8(2), 921-935. yenal, t., çamlıyer, h., & saracaloğlu, a. (1999). the effect of physical education and sports activities on motor skills and abilities in primary school second period children. gazi journal of physical education and sports sciences, 4(3), 15-16. zorba, e. (2001). physical fitness. ankara: gazi bookstore. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 7 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 7-12, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.7.12 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the impact of university level sports education on social media addiction bilal okudan1 ömür fatih karakullukçu2 ( corresponding author) 1adnan menderes universtiy, sports science faculty, turkey. 2turkey school sports federation of president, ankara, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to analyse the effects of university level sport education on social media addiction. for this purpose, social media addiction scales filled in by 320 students from the faculty of sports sciences and 333 students from the faculty of education were evaluated. t-test, one-way variance analysis (anova) and lsd test were used in statistical procedures. in the study, occupation, mood modification, relapse and conflict scores were found to be statistically significantly different in terms of gender (p<0.05 and p<0.001). statistically significant difference was also found in social media addiction total score in terms of the year of study (p<0.05 and p<0.001). occupation, mood modification, relapse, conflict and social media addiction scale scores of faculty of sport sciences students were found to be lower than the scores of education faculty students (p<0.001). conclusion: it was found that social media addiction level of students receiving sport education was lower when compared with students who were not receiving sport education and it was concluded that sport education could be effective in decreasing social media addiction. it can be recommended to provide opportunities to receive sport education and to do sport to university students who are not receiving sport education. keywords: university, education, student, social media, addiction, sport. citation | bilal okudan; ömür fatih karakullukçu (2021). the impact of university level sports education on social media addiction. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 7-12. history: received: 4 november 2020 revised: 30 november 2020 accepted: 21 december 2020 published: 6 january 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 2. method .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 3. findings and comments .................................................................................................................................................................... 9 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 10 5. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.7.12&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2543 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4290-0421 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3343-5740 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 7-12 8 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature it is thought that taking sports training at the university level contributes to being conscious about the use of social media. this study will contribute to the sports literature on the social media addiction of students who receive sports education at university level. 1. introduction social networks is a type of online activity with an emphasis on e-mail/messaging and there are a large number of social media applications that can serve these activities (tutgun-ünal, 2015). social media has a large effect especially on life and daily routine as an important social platform to develop the connections with friends circle and the relationships with new friends (tulu, 2017). the services and the technical infrastructure provided to individuals by social media may cause addiction by causing their problematic use (aktan, 2018). studies have shown that young people use social media to a great extent (akyazı & tutgun-ünal, 2013; köroğlu & tutgun, 2013; vural & bat, 2010). it has been stated that many of these uses are extreme (andreassen, 2012; cam & isbulan, 2012; hazar, 2011). individuals meet some of their needs by using the mass media and relax psychologically and through the satisfaction they get from the media, they relax psychologically and their tension is reduced. in addition to physiological needs, mass media also emerges in terms of meeting psychological and cultural needs (bayram, 2008). social networking sites, one of the most important components of social media, are seen as virtual communities in which users can create personal profiles, interact with friends and meet other people based on common interests (kuss & griffiths, 2011). these virtual communities occur in networks, especially where young people come together (casale & fioravanti, 2018). while social media enables individuals to communicate, it also enables them to come together and organize for a specific purpose outside specific places (diker & uçar, 2016). social media addiction is a kind of internet addiction. a large number of studies have shown that electronic media use and social media addiction have a negative effect on daily life activities (andreassen, 2012); (suganuma et al., 2011). individuals continue their social relationships in social media environment when they are not in the same environment. this is the reason why social networks are used so intensively (tutgun-ünal, 2015). tablets, mobile phones and easy access of employees to the internet at the work place are seen as an important factor in social media use reaching a level that causes the society to worry (şahin & yağcı, 2017). people who spend a lot of time on social media have a greater desire to know immediately about virtual communication and something that may cause virtual problem (sahin., 2018). it has been suggested that overuse of new technology (especially online social networks) can cause a potential mental health problem, loneliness and addiction in young people (echeburua & de corral, 2010; stankovska, angelkovska, & grncarovska, 2016). social media addicts show obsessed behaviours and cannot control the use of these devices (hwang, 2017). while using social media, athletes are faced with the obligation to comply with the patterns determined by the society. the use of social media, which will be carried out in violation of the social structure, will create the risk of reducing the support of the athlete from the society and the value of the club (ünver & köse, 2020). a large number of studies have shown that social network use can cause negative consequences such as decreased real-life groups, worse academic performance and relationship problems (kuss & griffiths, 2011). social media addiction is a psychological problem that causes problems like occupation, mood modification, relapse and conflict in many areas of daily life such as private, work/academic, social areas by developing with cognitive, affective and behavioural processes (tutgun-ünal, 2015). internet addiction can be seen in different ways. one of these is computer addiction including computer games; another one is internet focused addiction, while others are online shopping or gambling, online pornography, social networking sites addiction. social networking site addiction, which constitutes an important part of social media, is the newest addiction type (kuss & griffiths, 2011). social media addiction has been defined as the state of being overly occupied with social media channels, having an intense desire to stay connected to these channels all the time and spending too much time in these channels that will harm other activities in social life, student/business life, interpersonal communication and mental state (andreassen., torsheim, & pallesen, 2014). social media addiction, which does not have a precise definition, is expressed as a subfield of internet addiction (eijnden, lemmens, & valkenburg, 2016; longstreet & brooks, 2017). or the addicted use of social media (such as facebook, snapchat, whatsapp, and twitter) can be seen as a specific form of technological addiction (turel, brevers, & bechara, 2018). with social media, users create content independent from time, place and control and distribute and reproduce the content they produce (aktan, 2018). social media, which allows people to show their interests through their personal pages, to interact with others through various applications, to obtain information, to make friends, to share photos and images with other people and/or to present data to people about their personal information, can create addiction when it is used unconsciously and excessively (balcı & baloglu, 2018). 2. method 2.1. participants the participants were students who attended university in different departments of ondokuz mayıs university and who were at the same time social media users. the questionnaires filled in by 300 male and 280 female students were evaluated. 275 of the students were students in the faculty of sport sciences, while 323 were students in the faculty of education who were not receiving sport education. 2.2. measurement instrument social media addiction scale (smas): social media addiction scale (smas) is a measurement instrument developed to measure the social media addiction levels of university students. after all validity and reliability studies, the scale included 41 items. the subscales of the scale are occupation including items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12; mood modification including items 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17; relapse including items 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22; and conflict including items 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38., 39, 40 and 41. the items in the scale were scored as “1=never, 2= rarely, 3=sometimes, 4=often, 5=always”. the highest score one can asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 7-12 9 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group take from the social media addiction scale is 205, while the lowest score one can get is 41 (tutgun-ünal, 2015). scores between 41 and 73 show that the individual does not have addiction. scores between 74 and 106 show the presence of addiction. scores between 107 and 139 show moderate addiction, while scores between 140 and 172 show high addiction and scores between 173 and 205 show very high addiction (aktan, 2018). 2.3. statistical analysis spss 25, 00 program was used for statistical analysis. kolmogorov-smirnov test was conducted to find out whether the data were normally distributed and the data were found to be normally distributed. independent samples t-test was used to compare paired groups, while one way anova and lsd test were used to compare more than two groups. 3. findings and comments anthropometric characteristics of the participants are given in table 1. in table 2, social media addiction is compared by gender. in table 3, the comparison of social media addiction according to the year of education is given. in table 4, the comparison of social media addiction according to the sports education status is given. table-1. comparison of age, height and weigh in terms of gender. parameter gender n mean st. deviation t-test age (years) male 326 21,55 2,31 0,94 female 305 21,40 1,78 height (cm) male 326 175,78 4,99 13,05** female 305 170,00 6,11 weight (kg) male 326 73,26 7,44 17,46** female 305 63,13 7,11 note: **p<0.001. the average age of students in this study is 21.40 years for females and 21.55 years for males. while the ages of the participants are similar to each other, their height and body weights are statistically different (p <0.001). table-2. comparison of social media addiction scores in terms of gender. subscales gender n mean st. deviation t-test occupation male 339 32,92 9,91 4,37** female 314 29,57 9,66 mood modification male 339 14,35 4,61 4,78** female 314 12,65 4,47 relapse male 339 14,19 4,50 4,15** female 314 12,72 4,55 conflict male 339 53,22 15,31 2,83* female 314 49,73 16,14 total scale male 339 114,68 31,49 4,01** female 314 104,67 32,19 note: *p<0.05 and ** p<0.001. social media addiction sub-dimensions and total scale scores are significantly different according to gender (p <0.05 and p <0.001). table-3. comparison of social media addiction scores in terms of year of study. subscales year of study n mean st. deviation f occupation 1 123 28,63 11,04 6,51** 1,2<3,4 2 186 30,28 9,17 3 166 32,74 10,19 4 178 32,91 9,15 total 653 31,31 9,93 mood modification 1 123 12,71 5,40 2,96* 1<4 2 186 13,43 4,25 3 166 13,44 4,51 4 178 14,29 4,43 total 653 13,53 4,62 relapse 1 123 12,33 5,24 3,96* 1<2,3,4 2 186 13,44 4,24 3 166 13,70 4,42 4 178 14,13 4,47 total 653 13,48 4,58 conflict 1 123 47,20 17,89 4,63* 1<2,3,4 2 186 51,45 14,91 3 166 52,36 15,21 4 178 53,89 15,22 total 653 51,54 15,80 total scale 1 123 100,86 37,38 5,34** 1<2,3,4 2<4 2 186 108,59 29,56 3 166 112,23 31,37 4 178 115,21 30,54 total 653 109,87 32,20 note: *p<0.05 and ** p<0.001. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 7-12 10 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a statistically significant difference was found in the scale sub-dimensions and the total scale score according to the year of education (p <0.05 and p <0.001). table-4. comparison of social media addiction scores in terms of faculty. subscales faculty n mean st. deviation t-test occupation sport sciences 320 29,98 9,42 -3,38** education 333 32,59 10,24 mood modification sport sciences 320 12,62 4,20 -5,04** education 333 14,41 4,84 relapse sport sciences 320 12,43 4,24 -5,89** education 333 14,49 4,68 conflict sport sciences 320 48,27 15,60 -5,30** education 333 54,69 15,37 total scale sport sciences 320 103,30 30,89 -5,21** education 333 116,18 32,21 note: *p<0.05 and ** p<0.001. a statistically significant difference was found in the scale sub-dimensions and total score according to the sports education status (p <0.001). 4. results and discussion in the present study, male participants were found to have a mean age of 21.55 and female participants were found to have a mean age of 21.40. heights and weights of the male and female students in the study were found to be statistically significantly different (p<0.001). in their studies, cömlekci and başol (2019); balcı and baloglu (2018); demir and kumcağız (2019); baz (2018) and aktan (2018) did not find statistically significant difference between female participants and male participants in terms of social media addiction. tutgun-ünal (2015) found that social media addiction levels of university students did not differ in terms of gender, while they were found to differ significantly in the subscales of occupation, mood modification and conflict. tutgun-ünal (2015) found difference in favour of women in occupation and mood modification subscales. according to özdemir (2019) study, in comparing the social media addiction of university students by gender. significant differences were found in the sub-dimensions of engagement, emotion regulation, conflict and social media total scores by gender. it is observed that the mean scores of the male participants are high.. tutgun-ünal (2015) found a difference in favour of men in conflict subscale. while ciftci (2018) found difference in favour of men in relapse and conflict subscales, he did not report any differences in occupation, mood modification and social media addiction in terms of gender. in the present study, occupation, mood modification, relapse, conflict subscales and total scale scores were found to be statistically significantly different in terms of gender (p<0,05 and p<0.001). the scores of male students were found to be significantly higher than those of female students. male students are more occupied with social media than female students and they receive more emotional support from social media. aktan (2018) found the mean scores of social media addiction scale as 35.20 in occupation factor, as 13.17 in mood modification factor, as 13.43 in relapse factor, as 33.14 in conflict factor and as 97.71 in social media addiction total scale. in the present study, mean scores were found as 31.31 in occupation factor, as 13.53 in mood modification factor, as 13.48 in relapse factor, as 51.54 in conflict factor and as 109.87 in social media addiction total scale. in their study, balcı and baloglu (2018) found the mean social media addiction level of the participants as 48.66. ciftci (2018) found that the mean score of participants from social media addiction scale was 99.85. the conflict factor mean score and the social media addiction total mean score found in our study is higher than the aforementioned studies. in conflict factor, a score between 49 and 63 is considered as moderate addiction (aktan, 2018). sample differences and time difference may have affected this situation. it is thought that social media addiction increases each day. it has been found that individuals who neglect their spouses/family and friends and use the chat functions of social media experience conflict and at the same time their academic/professionals works are interrupted. this situation should not be ignored in university students and it should be accepted as a problem that should be solved. for example, in one study, balcı and baloglu (2018) found a positive significant correlation between social media addiction and depression. scores between 74 and 106 indicate low addiction, while scores between 107 and 139 indicate moderate addiction (aktan, 2018). in this study, the scores taken from social media addiction scale is 114.68 for men and 104.67 for women. according to this scoring, while male students have moderate level of media addiction, female students can be accepted as having low level of social media addiction. according to the results of their studies, tutgun-ünal (2015) and gürültü (2016) concluded that social media addiction scale scores did not differ significantly in terms of year of study. ciftci (2018) reported differences in occupation, relapse, conflict and social media addiction. in this study, significant differences were found in social media addiction in terms of year of study (p<0.05 and p<0.001). occupation levels of first year students were found to be lower than third and fourth year students. it was found that third and fourth year students were more occupied with social media when compared with first and second year students. it can be said that these students cannot take their social media use under control and they repeatedly show this behaviour. it can also be said that third and fourth year students are more in conflict with social media and that they are negatively affected. it can be seen that third and fourth year students had higher addiction levels than first and second year students. baz (2018) did not find a significant difference in social media addiction total scores in terms of department. tutgun-ünal (2015) found that social media addiction levels of university students differed in terms of the faculty they were studying in. aktan (2018) found a statistically significant difference between the program students were studying in and their occupation in social media. in this study, occupation, mood modification, relapse, conflict and total scale scores of sport faculty students were found to be lower than those of education faculty students (p<0,001). in a study by mammadzade, yılmaz, abiş, i̇mamoğlu, and şahin (2020) it was seen that exercising had asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 7-12 11 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an effect on anger control and anger introversion, but had no effect on social media attitude. and in the study, it was suggested that young people who are not active in sports should do sports for anger control and control of anger in. in the study of garashli, yılmaz, abiş, i̇mamoğlu, and şahin (2020) it was concluded that team sports and individual sports have a similar effect on athletes' gender, sport type, body weight, age, psychological fragility and speech anxiety. sports education and exercise can provide plus changes in personality traits, optimal performance, feelings and attitudes, and the quality of life of university students (aslan & imamoglu, 2020; koca, i̇mamoğlu, & i̇mamoğlu, 2018; yamak, i̇mamoğlu, & çebi, 2016). scores between 74 and 106 indicate low addiction, while scores between 107 and 139 indicate moderate addiction (aktan, 2018). in this study, mean social addiction scale scores were 103, 30 for sport sciences faculty students and 116, 18 for education faculty students. these scores showed that sport sciences faculty students had low level of addiction, while education faculty students had moderate level of addiction. in many studies, it has been determined that sports increase the hope level and reduce the stress level in people (deryahanoğlu, i̇mamoğlu, yamaner, & uzun, 2016; i̇mamoğlu, 2020; i̇mamoğlu., tutkun, & shen, 2018; yamak & i̇mamoğlu, 2019). 5. conclusion it was found that students receiving sport education had lower social media addiction than students who were not receiving sport education and it was concluded that sport education will be useful in decreasing social media addiction. it is recommended to provide opportunities to receive sport education and to do sport to university students who are not receiving sport education. references aktan, e. 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(2019). the beck hopelessness level according to behavior change stages in university ondokuz mayis students. turkish studies educational sciences, 14(3), 937-947. yamak, b., i̇mamoğlu, o., & çebi, m. (2016). the effects of the physical fitness levels of adolescents on body image, self-concept and stress levels. the journal of academic social science, 4(34), 191-201. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 330 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 330-340, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.330.340 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group chinese learners learning thai language with an application: evidence from an acoustic study and a perception test phanintra teeranon school of liberal arts, university of phayao, thailand. abstract this research analyzes the acoustic characteristics and conducts a perception test of thai tones produced by chinese learners learning thai through the “thai tone application”. a comparison of thai tones pronounced by 40 chinese learners learning thai at nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university with 40 thai native speakers was also conducted. the acoustic characteristics studied in this research were the fundamental frequencies analyzed with the praat program version 6.0.9. the f0 values were then converted to semitone values. statistical analysis was used. the perception test was conducted before and after using the application. the results showed that the thai tone application promoted better tone pronunciation and perception in chinese learners learning thai as a foreign language. after utilizing the thai tone application with the chinese learners, they could clearly pronounce the mid and the low tones, which is linguistically classified as the problematic level tones for chinese learners. the application helped expedite contour tones such as the high tone and the rising tone, but not the falling tone. the minimal pair approach used to create the application was discussed. keywords: acoustic, perception, chinese, application, thai. citation | phanintra teeranon (2020). chinese learners learning thai language with an application: evidence from an acoustic study and a perception test. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 330-340. history: received: 26 february 2020 revised: 30 march 2020 accepted: 6 may 2020 published: 4 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 331 2. objectives ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 332 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 332 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 334 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 337 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 338 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 339 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.330.340&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1701 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1701 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 331 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper contributes to a variety of fields (linguistics, education, and technology) by providing quantifiable thai tone evidence produced by chinese learners learning thai with thai tone application, and the integration between these fields. 1. introduction southeast asian researchers have identified five major tones in the thai language as seen in figure 1: the mid33, the low-21, the falling-31, the high-45, and the rising-323. in other words, they are significantly differentiating with its word meaning, e.g. [ruu]+high/15 “to know” and [ruu]+rising/323 “elegant”. as consonants and vowels are equal in both words, the thai tones serve to differentiate the meanings (srisunthornthai, 2013). the relative fundamental frequency (f0) of a voicing unit in a syllable is a major clue to measure phonemic tones in thai. acoustically, thai tone shapes comprise the following: figure 1. thai tone shapes zsiga and nitisaroj (2007). five thai tones (monosyllables) have been shown to be measurable in isolated words (abramson, 1962; abramson, 1975; teeranon, 2007; tumtavitikul, 1992) and a number of studies have investigated the tones’ deviant shapes in connected speech (panpraneet & onsuwan, 2013; teeranon, 2002; tingsabadh & deeprasert, 1997). regarding the study of isolated words, researchers have categorized level tones and contour tones in thai (abramson, 1962; abramson, 1975; pittayaporn, 2007; teeranon, 2007). however, in case of connected speech, linguists have investigated the factors affecting the shapes of thai tones, which are reported to be steeper in tone shapes compared to isolated words (tingsabadh & deeprasert, 1997). the results of previous research on thai tones have potential benefits for pitch condition on speech recognition, tone language application, and teaching tonal languages, among others. it is likely that the factors affecting thai tone shapes in various contexts include the stresses, as cited in potisuk, gandour, and harper (1994) speaking rates, as cited in gandour, tumtavitikul, and satthamnuwong (1999) the speaker’s mother tongue and experience in practicing tones (akkharasena, 2015; intajamornrak, 2017) and even the hearing ability (e.g. deaf children and other speech disorders; (suvanich, 2010; tantibundhit et al., 2013; teeranon & detchanarat, 2015). thai tones in speech can be identified by two common linguistics analyses: an acoustic analysis and a perception test. an acoustic analysis reflects the physiology of speech production, which is the rate of vocal folds vibration, while a perception test is defined as an auditory system to understand a language. an acoustic study of thai tones and a thai tone perception test were investigated by abramson (1962); abramson (1975) who found that differentiating mid and low tones was problematic for native thai speakers. later, gandour and dardarananda (1989) and nasanee (2003) found that native thai speakers barely differentiated high and rising tones. these results were in line with findings by teeranon (2007). recently, thai tone perception was reported to be a factor likely to be contributing to chinese learners’ difficulty in writing thai as a foreign language (srisunthornthai, 2013). it has long been stated that individuals who speak a non-tonal language unable to differentiate lexical tones comparing to those whose mother tongue are tonal language (wang, spence, jongman, & sereno, 1999; wayland & guion, 2004). recently, however, both akkharasena (2015) and intajamornrak (2017) found that thai tones are problematic for individuals who speak a tonal language as their mother tongue, as well as for those studying a tonal language but whose mother tongue is toneless. for learners who speak other languages, some thai tone levels, such as the mid and low tones, can be quite confusing, as well as certain contour tones, such as the high tone, the falling tone and the rising tone. kaan, barkley, bao, and wayland (2008) has found the falling tone in thai sensitive to the speakers with non-tone language (english). similarly, for americans learners learning to speak mandarin, the contour tone is the most difficult to pronounce. guo and tao (2008) report that of the four tones in mandarin chinese, namely tone 1 (a level), tone 2 (a rising), tone 3 (a mid falling-rising), and tone 4 (a falling), chinese (mandarin) tone 3 (a contour tone) is the most difficult tone for american learners learning mandarin. this finding is in line with findings by dong, tsubota, and dantsuji (2013) who found that tone 3 (a contour tone) was most problematic for japanese learners (non-tonal language) learning mandarin. on the contrary, putthasatien (2017) found that the most difficult tone for nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university chinese students was the low tone which is classified as a level tone in thai. the sample participants of putthasatien (2017) were students from the people’s republic of china (prc) and their mother tongue was asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 332 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group mandarin chinese. it has been shown that after two years of studying the language using an exercise handbook developed by a linguistics process, all tone-related pronunciation problems are solved among chinese learners, except the low tone. however, the exercise handbook aiming to train chinese learners studying thai tones of putthasatien (2017) supports the findings of kaan et al. (2008) which have mentioned that the sensitivity of f0 onset differences between the falling tone and the mid tone in thai was suppressed by language training. the findings of putthasatien (2017) has also supported (meesat, 2015) who has found that the mid and the low tone in thai are hard for the chinese learners, but this mid and the low tone problem in the chinese learning thai can be solved by using the somatically-enhanced approach which contains clapping, humming, and using gestures. apart from lecturers, training and other learning environments, previous research on thai tones has suggested the following tools to promote learners’ proficiency in studying thai tones: 1) a handbook on thai tones (chicharoen, 2011; luangthongkham, 2015; putthasatien, 2017) and 2) the somatically-enhanced teaching method (meesat, 2015) and 3) applications for practicing thai tones. the applications for studying thai language were included in the thai government’s education policy to promote e-learning in the thai 4.0 era. however, the approach used to create thai tone contents in the previous tools is unclear. crosbie, holm, and dodd (2005) has pointed out the importance of approach advocated for speech practice. traditionally, in clinical linguistics for speech disorders, one common approach used is minimal pairs that a phoneme differs in one position (e.g. pig-big, bat-bag) (baker & mcleod, 2004; dodd et al., 2008). the extent of the speech disorders progress is claimed to depend on the word minimal pairs (dean & howell, 1986; dodd et al., 2008). the latest application in thailand called the “thai tone application (tta)” has been created based on previous linguistics research and the minimal pairs approach. its contents are mainly focused on practicing the minimal pairs of problematic tones for language learners, namely the mid-low, low-falling, and high-rising tones (e.g.[khaa]+low tone “galangal”-[khaa]+falling tone “to kill”). in the past few decades, technology has increasingly been used to enhance learners’ language communication. this increased use of technology can mostly be observed in teaching and learning english as a foreign language, as shown by previous findings by chen, mao, and liu (2014) and shadiev, hwang, and huang (2017). chen et al. (2014) considered english proficiency scores after using the application, while shadiev et al. (2017) were concerned with the use of technology-assisted based learning to promote other skills, such as critical thinking (gafni, achituv, & rachmani, 2017; saisuwan, 2012). therefore, this study aims to investigate whether the thai low tone which is a problematic tone after using the exercise handbook in putthasatien (2017) will be solved and affected by the thai tone application with minimal pairs approach or not. the methods are to analyze the acoustic characteristics (tone shape) and conduct a perception test of thai tones produced by chinese learners learning thai through the “thai tone application”. the use of technology plus minimal pairs approach to enhance learners’ language communication for thai as a foreign language and its limitations are discussed. then, all thai tones produced by chinese learners learning thai through the “thai tone application” are benchmarked with standard thai produced by native thai speakers. 2. objectives 1. to analyze the acoustic characteristics and conduct a perception test of thai tones produced by chinese learners learning thai with the “thai tone application”. 2. to compare the acoustic characteristics of thai tones produced by chinese learners learning thai using the “thai tone application” with thai tones produced by native thai speakers. 3. to compare the perception of thai tones in the chinese learners learning thai before and after using the “thai tone application”. 3. method 3.1. participants and language information this study used linguistics methods in the acoustic analysis and perception test. prior to describing both the acoustic and the perception test method, the language data and participant criteria in the study were the following: the language data used for the test tokens were drawn from standard thai. the thai language has a collection of 18 consonants: /p, pʰ, b, t, tʰ, d, k, kʰ, m, n, ŋ, r, f, s, h, tɕ, tɕʰ, j/; and nine monopthongal vowels: /, , , , , , , , /, all with vowel length distinctions. its five tones are mid-33, low-21, falling-31, high-45, and rising-323. however, all the test words contained the vowel // to avoid the effects of f0 differences in vowels. the chinese language has a repertoire of 19 consonants : /p, pʰ, t, tʰ, k, kʰ, m, n, t s (t ɕ), ʰ(t ɕʰ), f, s, (ɕ), l, ʐ, ø/; five vowels / i u a ia ua o io uae e ie ɛ iɛ ei uei au iau əu iəu iu ãŋ iãŋ uãŋ ẽ iẽ uẽ oŋ ioŋ/; and four tones: tone 1 (a high level -55), tone 2 (a rising-35), tone 3 (a mid falling-rising-214), and tone 4 (a falling-51) (guo & tao, 2008). though there is one more tone in an unstressed syllable which is the neutral tone (zhang, 2006) this study counts on the chinese tones in the stressed syllables. for the acoustic study, 40 chinese participants in the age range of 19–21 were selected. there were 10 males and 30 females. all were studying the first year of their major in thai at nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university, thailand. the participants were selected by thai language grading scores to ensure that all had a broadly equal level of proficiency. their first language was standard chinese. native thai speakers were also selected to elicit benchmark data for comparing thai tone shapes. forty native thai speakers aged 19–21 with perfect articulation were recruited. three sets of test tokens were created using the // vowel with a variety of initial consonants to control the effect of initial consonant voicing upon tone shapes, as shown in table 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aspirated_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aspirated_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aspirated_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aspirated_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aspirated_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/voiceless_labiodental_fricative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/voiceless_dental_sibilant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/voiceless_retroflex_fricative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/voiceless_alveolo-palatal_fricative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/alveolar_lateral_approximant asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 333 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. thai words for recording. set 1 set 2 set 3 []+mid “to be stuck” []+mid “rice field” []+mid “a note” []+low “galangal” [(+high).(+low)] “custard apple” []+low “palm (of the hand), sole (of the foot)” []+falling “value” []+falling “face” []+falling “scum” []+high “to trade” []+high “aunt” []+high “sky” []+rising “leg” []+rising “thick” []+rising “pot cover” 3.2. an acoustic analysis the chinese learners and native thai speakers were asked to produce thai tones in isolated words five times. the first three pronunciations were selected, as the fourth and the fifth tone pronunciation were likely to be affected by their intonation. the chinese learners the recording twice for both their pre-test and post-test. the native thai speakers’ tones were recorded only once. 3.2.1. pre-test for chinese learners after listing the appropriate test tokens that were voiceless and voicing initials to avoid contextual effects to f0), the participants were asked to pronounce each test word in isolation with a moderate tempo. the number of total test tokens was 1,800 test tokens/words (40 participants x 3 sets x 3 times x 5 tones). the praat program version 6.2.09 was used to segment each vocalization and analyze the f0 of isolated words. the frequencies at five time points for each vowel were selected for measurement at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. microsoft excel 2008 was used to analyze and plot graphs illustrating the overall mean (x) of f0 tones. the participants were asked to determine 50 minimal pairs of test tokens in the thai tone application for five weeks based on a study by phiboon (2016) which reported that five weeks is a suitable time period for data collection of in-class research. every 20 minutes before dismissing the class, participants were given a chance to study thai tones through the app. the participants were trained to use the app by their teachers. in the app, there are 50 tone minimal pairs both in the isolated form (word form) and in the sentence form. the chinese learners could listen to the pronunciation in the application and check their tone pronunciation and compare it to a live correction. the scores were shown after using the application. the application was tested for reliability by three experts. an evaluation form was created based on the technology acceptance model (tam). the experts were asked to rate the following three aspects: innovations, process, and innovation values. a likert three-point scale (kumar, 2014) was used as follows: 0-1.66 means the application value is low 1.67-2.33 means the application value is moderate 2.34-3.00 means the application value is high the thai tone application had a mean score of 2.75, which was rated as a high value. 3.2.2. post-test for chinese learners after studying the application for five weeks, the test tokens were pronounced with a moderate tempo. the praat program version 6.2.09 was used to segment the isolated words. the frequencies at five time points for each vowel were selected for measurement at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. 3.2.3. an acoustic analysis for native thai speakers native thai speakers were asked to pronounce isolated words. the first three out of five pronunciations were selected. each word was pronounced with a moderate tempo. the number of total test tokens was 1,800 test tokens/words (40 participants x 3 sets x 3 times x 5 tones). the praat program version 6.2.09 was used to analyze sounds and the graphs illustrated with the overall mean (x) of tones f0 were analyzed and plotted. 3.3. a perceptual experiment for the perception test, the chinese learners were asked to listen to test sounds pronounced by a thai language lecturer at mae fah luang university and match the stimulus sounds they heard with the sounds in the choice. there were 10 major stimulus sound items, with five choices in the examination paper: choice 1 (mid tone sound), choice 2 (low tone sound), choice 3 (falling tone sound), choice 4 (high tone sound), and choice 5 (rising tone sound). table 2 shows an example examination paper used in the perception test. table-2. an example of perception examination paper. sound entry choice 1 mid choice 2 low choice 3 falling choice 4 high choice 5 rising 1 []+mid [] [] [] [] [] 2 []+low [] [] [] [] [] 3 []+falling [] [] [] [] [] 4 []+high [] [] [] [] [] 5 []+rising [] [] [] [] [] 6 []+mid [] [] [] [] [] 7 []+low [] [] [] [] [] 8 []+falling [] [] [] [] [] 9 []+high [] [] [] [] [] 10 []+rising [] [] [] [] [] asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 334 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group for the perceptual experiment, 40 participants were asked to listen to each stimulus and choose an answer from five choices. following this, the perception matrix was drawn. 3.4. data analysis all of the f0 values measured in 3.2.1-3.2.3 were converted to semitone values to diminish the voice variations among the participants. the formula used was as follows: st=12*log(c21/x)/log(2) , where x means the fewest f0 values in each tone. then, microsoft excel 2008 was used to analyze and plot graphs illustrating the overall mean of the f0 tones. statistical descriptions drawn for this study were analyzed using the mean, percentages, and a pair sample ttest. a p-value higher than 0.05 (> 0.05) is considered not statistically significant for confidence interval of 95%. given abramson (1997) and thavisak (2004) findings that 0% to 25% of the syllable onset are able to differentiate their tone perception, the semitone values at two onset points of time (0%–25%) for each tone were averaged for mean scores. the analyzed data was then used to compare 1) the semitone values of each tone produced by chinese learners in the pre-test and post-test (before and after using the application), 2) the semitone values of thai tones produced by chinese learners before using the application to each tone produced by the native thai speakers and 3) the semitone values of thai tones produced by chinese learners after using the application to the tones produced by the native thai speakers, and 4) tone perception was presented in the format of confusion matrix table. 4. results 4.1. acoustic analysis to understand the extent to which the application enhanced the chinese learners’ ability to differentiate midlow tones, low-falling tones, and high-rising tones, an acoustic analysis and perception test were redeveloped, as shown in figure 2. figure-2. a comparison of mid tone shapes. table-3. a comparison of the semitone values of the mid tone produced by chinese learners before using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%–25%) s.d. p-value pre-test by chinese learners 0.18 5.19 0.415 native thai 0.52 6.80 table-4. a comparison of the semitone values of the mid tone produced by chinese learners after using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%–25%) s.d. p-value post-test by chinese learners 0.60 4.72 0.868 native thai 0.52 6.16 as shown in the comparison of thai mid tone shapes in figure 2 it is clear that after using the thai tone application, the chinese learners’ pronunciation of mid tones was improved in comparison to before using the application. the first three points of the post-test graph are closer to the tone shape of the thai pronunciation. it can be seen that the mid tone shapes pronounced by the chinese speakers were less contoured compared to those of the native thai speakers. however, there was a small rise found in the end of the tone shape in the post-test. tables 3 and 4 show that when comparing the semitone values of the mid tones produced by the chinese learners before using the application to those produced by the native thai speakers, there was no statistical significance. similarly, when comparing the semitone values of the mid tones produced by the chinese learners asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 335 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group after using the application to those of the native thai speakers, there was also no significance. the statistical analysis confirmed that the mid tone shapes of chinese learners were similar to those produced by the native thai speakers. however, after using the application, the mid tone shapes were more similar to those of the thai speakers. figure-3. a comparison of low tone shape. table-5. a comparison of the semitone values of the low tone produced by chinese learners before using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%–25%) s.d. p-value pre-test by chinese learners 2.53 6.38 0.512 native thai 1.71 5.22 table-6. a comparison of the semitone values of the low tone produced by chinese learners after using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%–25%) s.d. p-value post-test by chinese learners 3.72 7.46 0.189 native thai 1.71 4.81 figure 3 shows the comparison of thai low tone shapes. here, the findings were similar to those of the mid tone shapes. it was found that after using the thai tone application, the chinese learners could produce low tones more effectively than before using the application. the first three points of the graph show the tone shapes were closer to those of the native thai speakers. tables 5 and 6 shows that when comparing the semitone values of the low tone produced by the chinese learners before using the application to those produced by the native thai speakers, the results were not statistically significant. similarly, when comparing the semitone values of the low tone produced by the chinese learners after using the application to those of the native thai speakers, there was also no significance. the statistical analysis confirmed that the low tone shapes of the chinese learners was similar to those produced by the native thai speakers. after using the application, the low tone shape of chinese is a bit different from that of the thai speakers. figure-4. a comparison of falling tone shape. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 336 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. a comparison of the semitone values of the falling tone produced by chinese learners before using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%–25%) s.d. p-value pre-test by chinese learners 0.86 8.71 0.049* native thai 3.69 7.23 note:* means statistically significance (sig) table-8. a comparison of the semitone values of the falling tone produced by chinese learners after using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%–25%) s.d. p-value post-test by chinese learners 0.56 8.85 0.020* native thai 3.69 6.30 note:* means statistically significance (sig) figure 4 shows a comparison of falling tone shape. the shape was at a higher level for half the duration, before gradually dropping for the native thai speakers. however, the falling tone shape was less contoured for the chinese learners. here, the falling tone shape after using the app was similar to the pre-test. tables 7 and 8 show that when comparing the semitone values of the falling tone produced by the chinese learners before using the application to those produced by the native thai speakers, there was a statistical significance. similarly, when comparing the semitone values of the falling tone produced by the chinese learners after using the application to those of the native thai speakers, there was a statistical significance. the statistical analysis confirmed that the falling tone shapes of chinese learners were similar to those produced by the thai speakers. after using the application, the falling tone shapes of chinese shows more variety in tone shape than those of the thai speakers. figure-5. a comparison of high tone shape. table-9. a comparison of the semitone values of the high tone produced by chinese learners before using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%-25%) s.d. p-value pre-test by chinese learners 2.32 9.48 0.448 native thai 1.22 3.77 table-10. a comparison of the semitone values of the high tone produced by chinese learners after using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%-25%) s.d. p-value post-test by chinese learners 0.87 7.20 0.642 native thai 1.22 5.08 the high tone shape in figure 5 fell and was relatively steady before rising in the native thai speakers. the thai speakers’ pre-test and post-test were both similar in shape compared to that of the chinese learners; however, the pitch level was different in the post-test, where it was slightly lower than the thai speakers, while the pre-test pitch level was the lowest. tables 9 and 10 show that when comparing the semitone values of the high tone produced by the chinese learners prior to using the application to those produced by the native thai speakers, the results did not show a statistical significance. similarly, when comparing the semitone values of the high tone produced by the chinese learners after using the application to those of the native thai speakers, there was also no significance. the statistical analysis confirmed that the high tone shapes of the chinese learners were similar to those produced by the thai speakers. after using the application, the high tone shapes of the chinese learners were closer to those of the thai speakers. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 337 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-6. a comparison of rising tone shape. table-11. a comparison of the semitone values of the rising tone produced by chinese learners before using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%–25%) s.d. p-value pre-test by chinese learners 4.60 5.07 0.275 native thai 2.06 4.35 table-12. a comparison of the semitone values of the rising tone produced by chinese learners after using the application to native thai speakers. average of the semitone values (st) at the onset (0%–25%) s.d. p-value post-test by chinese learners 0.62 9.02 0.187 native thai 2.06 8.16 one surprising finding was that the shape of the rising tone produced by the native thai speakers fell and was relatively steady before rising see figure 6. however, the tone shape in the pre-test and post-test were similar and were less contoured. here, the shape was very similar to previous high tone shapes found in abramson (1962). tables 11 and 12 show that when comparing the semitone values of the rising tone produced by the chinese learners before using the application to those produced by the native thai speakers, there was no statistical significance. similarly, when comparing the semitone values of the rising tone produced by the chinese learners after using the application to those of the native thai speakers, there was no statistical significance. the statistical analysis confirmed that the rising tone shape of chinese learners was similar to those produced by the thai speakers. 4.2. perception test a perception test was conducted to confirm the acoustic results. table 13 shows the results of tone identification of the chinese learners learning thai before using the application, and table 14 shows the results of the tone identification of chinese learners learning thai after using the application. table-13. thai tone perception matrix of chinese learners learning thai before using the thai tone application. tones mid low falling high rising mid 95% 5% 0% 0% 0% low 15% 83% 3% 0% 0% falling 1% 28% 71% 0% 0% high 0% 0% 0% 58% 62% rising 0% 0% 0% 70% 30% table-14. thai tone perception matrix of chinese learners learning thai after using the thai tone application. tones mid low falling high rising mid 99% 1% 0% 0% 0% low 5% 95% 0% 0% 0% falling 0% 19% 81% 0% 0% high 0% 0% 0% 88% 12% rising 0% 0% 0% 10% 90% table 13 shows that before using the application, the mid tones were identified as low tones by 5% of participants, and this decreased to 1% after practicing with the thai tone application see table 14. the identification of low tones also improved from 83% to 95%, in addition to improvement in falling tone identification. the identification of high tones and rising tones was low before using the application, but was higher than after using the application. 5. discussion in the acoustic study, the thai tone application containing minimal pairs approach (e.g.the word pairs of the low tone vs. the falling tone, [khaa]+low tone “galangal”-[khaa]+falling tone “to kill” etc.) improved the chinese learners’ ability to produce both level tones and contour tones. the acoustic characteristics of thai tones produced asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 338 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group by chinese learners learning thai using the thai tone application are similar to that of the tones produced by the native thai speakers. however, the t-tests in tables 2–12 shown that low tone (level tone) and falling tone (contour tone) were particularly difficult for chinese learners, because after using the thai tone application, both tone shapes were different to those of the native thai speakers. in the perception test, after using the application, the chinese learners can differentiate between the mid tone and the low tone. the identification rates of the high tone and the rising tone after using the application are also higher than before using the application. the results settle the argument of whether thai tones are problematic for individuals who speak a tonal language as their mother tongue, as well as for those studying a tonal language but whose mother tongue is toneless (akkharasena, 2015; intajamornrak, 2017) and whether level tones or contour tones are problematic for students learning the thai language (schaefer & darey, 2013; schaefer & darey, 2014). it is shown that those whose mother tongue is a tonal language has the problem in producing and differentiating thai tones. they also reveal that both the level and contour tones in the thai language are difficult for foreign language speakers learning thai. this findings are consistent with the claim of meesat (2015) and putthasatien (2017) that the problematic tones of the chinese learners learning thai tones are the level tones, namely the mid tone [33] and the low tone [21]. this is due to the mid and the low tone shapes in thai language displays the most similar patterns. the mid tone starts at the mid pitch level and remains steady pitch throughout the end of the syllable, and the low tone starts at a bit lower pitch level comparing to the mid tone and remains steady pitch throughout the end of the syllable. the results of the perception test correspond to previous thai tone perception results, in which both a high tone and a rising tone were difficult to identify. research has shown that native thai speakers find it hard to differentiate between high tones and rising tones (gandour & dardarananda, 1989; nasanee, 2003). this is because the high tone shape has been changed from high level to high-falling-rising which is similar to the rising tone shape as found in teeranon (2007). high and rising tones in chinese have been identified as [55] and [35], while in thai, a high tone is [45] and a rising tone is [323]. it was clear that the two time points for each tone of 0% and 25% represented the critical range for tone perception, as found in l-thongkum (1991) where the registers analyzed were clear vowels, clearcreaky vowels, breathy vowels, and clear-breathy vowels. the results of l-thongkum (1991) showed that clear vowels tended to have a lower f0 than breathy vowels at 0%–30% of the vowel duration. the f0 was higher after 30% of the vowel duration, consistent with research by abramson, theraphan, and nye (2004), thavisak (2004) and watkins (2002). this is unlike hong kong cantonese, khouw and ciocca (2007) who found that tone perception depends on the final quarter of the tone bearing-unit. this means, the tone perception can depend on either the first part or the final part of the tone, and it is varied from language to language. the results also showed that the application helped chinese learners studying thai to improve their listening skills. the results are in line the previous studies conducted by kim (2013) and suwantarathip and orawiwatnakul (2015) they showed that those who used the application tended to show improved english listening skills. it was found that using the thai tone application enabled the chinese learners learning thai tones to differentiate the mid-low tones, low-falling tones, and high-rising tones. therefore, it is suggested that the thai tone application with minimal pairs approach is an effective learning tool to improve the pronunciation of thai tones. it was also effective in improving the chinese learners’ perception. the results significantly support findings by the clinical linguistics studies using minimal pairs approach to therapy (baker & mcleod, 2004; crosbie et al., 2005; dodd et al., 2008). in addition, the present study confirms that the minimal pairs approach can be applied to the suprasegmental levels. the results are also in line with haggag (2018) and saran, seferoglu, and cagiltay (2009) who show that the application is beneficial for training speaking skills. however, one of the surprising findings in this study was that after using the application, the differentiation of falling tones-31 showed less improvement than other minimal pairs. putthasatien (2017) found that all thai tones apart from the low tone can be learned by studying an exercise handbook for chinese learners studying thai at nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university. however, in this study, it was shown that the thai tone application could boost the pronunciation of the low tone by chinese learners, but not the falling tone. recently, meesat (2015) who has found that the mid and the low tone in thai are hard for the chinese learners, but this mid and the low tone problem in the chinese learning thai can be solved by using the somatically-enhanced approach which contains clapping, humming, and using gestures. meesat (2015) has also reported that the falling tone can be enhanced by the somatically-enhanced approach. therefore, it is suggested that the mediums of instruction have to be used in align with the teaching methods for better thai tone production and perception. the application is an augmentation of teaching method. it helps the process of learning, but it is a doubt whether it can replace the instructor or not. the present study has some strengths, including the use of integrated methods (i.e.the minimal pairs approach in the application, and linguistic research methods) that enabled this study to show another perspectives on the acoustic study and the perception test of thai tones. the results can be generalized because of the larger number of participants in this study. however, the period of using thai tone application was relatively short which might affect the learning process of chinese learners learning thai tones. further investigation is clearly need to determine the long period of using the application to enhance tone production and perception. 6. conclusion in conclusion, thai tones are problematic for individuals who speak a tonal language as their mother tongue as well as those who speak non-tonal language as their mother tongue. a combination of tradition minimal pairs approach with the application can promote both speech production and perception of the chinese learners learning thai tones. however, it is doubt whether the application can replace the instructor or not. http://www.nrru.ac.th/ asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 330-340 339 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references abramson, a. s. 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(2006). the teaching of mandarin prosody: a somatically-enhanced approach for second language learners. an unpublished ph.d. thesis of the university of canberra, canberra. zsiga, e., & nitisaroj, r. (2007). tone features, tone perception, and peak alignment in thai. language and speech, 50(3), 343-383.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309070500030301. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 33 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 33-39, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5361 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group requirements for information technology application competence for vietnam agro-forestry students in the time of the 4th technology revolution hua thi toan1 trinh thanh hai2 do trung kien3 ( corresponding author) 1center for foreign languages and applied informatics, thainguyen university of agriculture and forestry, thainguyen, vietnam. email: huathitoan@gmail.com 2faculty of social sciences and humanities, thainguyen university of sciences, thainguyen, vietnam. email: trinhhai2086@gmail.com 3faculty of information technology, hanoi national university of education, hanoi, vietnam. email: kiendt@hune.edu.vn abstract the professional work of today's agricultural and forestry engineers is changing dramatically under the impact of the 4th industrial revolution. in that context, the competence to apply information technology (it) is one of the core and significant competencies. therefore, in order for training products to meet the needs of society, one of the problems that training facility for agriculture and forestry industry need to solve is to clearly identify the basic requirements for agro-forestry graduates to meet the basic requirements of it application competence. based on theoretical and practical research on the it application competence of each job position and the trend of employment change in the 4.0 period, the article presents the levels of it application competence in the agro-forestry industry. on the basis of test results and opinions of experts and employers, the article has proposed the components and required levels of it application competence for agro-forestry students. the research results, in addition to providing information on the current state of students' it application competence, are also a good reference source for agro-forestry training institutions to set learning outcomes, develop training programs, and innovate new training methods to promptly provide high-quality human resources for the agroforestry industry in the context of the 4th industrial revolution. keywords: agro-forestry students, agro-forestry students, employment area, employment trend, job position, levels of it application competence. citation | toan, h. t., hai, t. t., & kien, d. t. (2024). requirements for information technology application competence for vietnam agro-forestry students in the time of the 4th technology revolution. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 33–39. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5361 history: received: 20 november 2023 revised: 15 january 2024 accepted: 26 january 2024 published: 6 february 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 34 2. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................... 34 3. research findings............................................................................................................................................................................. 35 4. conclusion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 38 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 38 mailto:huathitoan@gmail.com mailto:trinhhai2086@gmail.com mailto:kiendt@hune.edu.vn https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5361 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7446-7680 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6197-6224 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5018-2080 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 33-39 34 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the study has determined the level of students' it application competence that consistent with the current popular employment trends of agricultural and forestry students. this is an important basis for devising specific measures to improve students' capacity and level of it application competence for real-life careers. 1. introduction these days, agriculture is one of the priority areas for digital transformation, which has helped the application of digital technology in production, processing, and agribusiness make strong progress. the change in technology has led to changes in the professional work and diversity of workers. today's agro-forestry engineers can work in state agencies; businesses, companies, and farms; consult for international organizations; teach and research at universities, colleges, and research institutes or start their own businesses. in addition, a part of them becomes a global human resource (fizer, 2013; ogunsina & taiwo, 2018; tuaf, 2023a). each of the above job positions will have different requirements for it qualifications for employees. in the study of perdigones, valera, moreda, and garcía (2014), employers in private companies require employees to be proficient in spreadsheets, autocard, and commercial software. at research facilities, it is required to perform well on office software, spss, arcgis, and arcview. in the field of agribusiness, erickson, fausti, clay, and clay (2018) made the requirements of employers for the position of equipment operator and technical support, including being proficient in installations, operations, calibrations, precisely troubleshooting, and repairing agricultural equipment, and being good at using software to control these devices. in vietnam, the requirements for it qualifications are clearly stated in the recruitment notices of each job area. for government agencies, the requirements for skills in using the internet and office and specialized software are mandatory (ministry of agriculture and rural development, 2020), while private enterprises and companies focus on skills in using smart agricultural equipment, specialized software, analyzing data, and promoting and introducing products (tuaf, 2021). according to statistics from recent studies, students' it application competence has not yet met the requirements of actual work. in a survey by perdigones et al. (2014) on students' ability to use computers in spain, with a scale from 1 to 5, while the score required by employers is 4.12, students majoring in agricultural techniques only achieved 2.6. according to research by ndem, ogba, and egbe (2015) students only have theoretical knowledge about some machinery and equipment used in agriculture but have not yet used them. in some european countries, there are not yet skilled workers in the agricultural sector to exploit the potentials of data processing and analysis, communication through digital technology, use of field operations management and farm management information systems, e-commerce and e-marketing (ramalho ribeiro et al., 2023). in vietnam, we conducted a survey for students at the university of agriculture and forestry – thai nguyen university (tuaf). the results show that the average it application competence of students is 3.63 compared to the employer's requirement of 3.78, in which the difference is quite high in the criteria of searching and exploiting information on the internet, using computers and smart agricultural devices, communicating and collaborating using technology in the media (toan, 2022). from the above studies, it can be seen that the it application competence of students has not yet met the needs of employers, especially those related to new technological trends in agriculture today. the different requirements in each job position and the constant changes under the influence of digital technology have created urgent problems for university education in general and training in the agricultural sector, in particular, to figure out how to make students’ it competence after graduation meet the requirements of employers and the needs of society. the proposal of measures to improve the students’ it application competence has been carried out in many studies. according to champa and priyantha (2015) it is necessary to invest in it infrastructure, improve the quality of internet connection, integrate it tools in the teaching and learning process, establish help centers and fix computer problems, and create a virtual learning environment to teach it topics. according to vázquez-cano, león urrutia, parra-gonzález, and lópez meneses (2020) it is necessary to redesign the training matrix in the direction of promoting socially-digital meaningful learning and design the learning environment in an effective, interactive, flexible, and reflective way. bournaris et al. (2022) claim that it is necessary to revise the training program, which integrates improvements in technology and communication, and add precise courses on agriculture for students in all grades. in recent research, it is suggested by ramalho ribeiro et al. (2023) that a tailored interdisciplinary approach, in collaboration with stakeholders, is needed to create a skill set that includes technical skills, digital skills, soft skills, business skills, and market making. as can be seen, all mentioned measures are aimed at updating the curriculum, and training forms, creating a flexible, meaningful teaching and learning environment, with a connection to the actual profession. in the above measures, updating the training program plays an extremely important role to ensure that students are equipped with suitable skills to meet the requirements of the industry. updating the training program includes the adjustment of subjects, content, materials, and teaching methods with close relation to the output standards in the field that the training program aims to. output standards refer to the required level of competencies after completing the training program. in previous studies, we have built an it output standard for students through a framework of it application competence specifically for students in the agricultural field (toan, hai, & kien, 2023). to determine the required level of each component competence in the competency framework, this study analyzes the current employment trends of students and the requirements for it application competence in each of those trends. this identification will create a basis for orientation for the design and development of training programs and provide specific solutions to improve the quality of training in informatics in current agro-forestry institutions. 2. research methodology in this article, we use theoretical and practical research methods to systematize and analyze documents related to job trends and requirements for it application competence in the work of agro-forestry engineers. the expert method is used to test the predicted competence level. finally, the data processing method is used to summarize the collected data. the steps to conduct the research are done as follows: step 1: analyze employment trends of agro-forestry engineers in recent years. step 2: analyze the requirements of it application competence in specific jobs and predict the level of competence to be achieved. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 33-39 35 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group step 3: get experts’ opinions on the predicted competence level. step 4: test on a limited number of samples to check students’ achievement. step 5: give the required level of each component competence. the publication of the student's employment situation is a mandatory requirement for educational institutions in recent years and is published on the websites of the institutions. therefore, in step 1, we analyzed the data in survey reports on the employment situation of students after graduating from 2018 to 2022 on the website of tuaf (2023b); bafu (2023); vnuf (2023); ttu (2023); hvu (2023) and tnu (2023). for the predicted competence level to match the requirements of the actual job, we collected experts’ opinions in step 3. the experts consulted are employers in each specific field, in which the percentage of experts surveyed in each employment sector will be based on popular employment trends (about 50% of employers are in the private sector, 40% of employers are in the sector of joint ventures with foreign countries, 10% of employers are in the public sector). the collection of experts’ opinions was done through interviews and the distribution of questionnaires using the 5-point likert scale. the results are evaluated according to the interval scale in table 1 as follows: table 1. interval scale and description by mean value. value competence level descriptions 1 1.80 poor have no or very little understanding of it applications, cannot use it applications. 1.81 2.60 basic list the role of it applications and perform simple tasks but have limited skills in implementing it applications. 2.61 – 3.40 average describe the function of it applications and implement it applications at work. 3.41 – 4.20 high present how to apply it applications and competently perform operations that bring efficiency to work. 4.21 – 5.00 very high analyze it applications, proactively propose solutions, guide other students to effectively implement of it applications at work. step 4 measured the student's competence on a limited number of samples to test the reasonableness of the proposed levels, thereby giving a table of levels to be achieved for each component competency in the it application competency framework in step 5. 3. research findings 3.1. it application competence in agriculture and forestry inheriting the studies on the concept of career, competence, and it, this research uses the concept of it application competence, which is the integration of individual components of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to ensure the effective completion of specific tasks. thus, the it application competence in agriculture and forestry is the integration of knowledge, skills, and attitudes of individuals to ensure the effective completion of specific tasks related to creating, processing, transmitting information, storing, and exploiting information on agriculture and forestry. it application competence is a component skill in the professional competence of engineers in the agro-forestry industry. depending on the level of it application in each major, there are differences in the it-related output standards in each of those majors. however, all institutions have common requirements for basic it skills to meet the general requirements of society for workers (03/2014/ministry of information and communications (2014)). according to this requirement, in order to achieve it output standards, students need to have a basic it understanding and basic abilities in computer, internet, and office applications use. in addition, there are additional requirements depending on specific specialties. the table 2 shows the output standards related to the application of it in agriculture and forestry majors on the website of universities: tuaf, vietnam national university of forestry (vnuf), vietnam national university of agriculture (vnua), hue university of agriculture and forestry (huaf). table 2. output standards for it application in agriculture and forestry. institutions output standards of the forestry industry output standards for the agriculture industry tuaf apply advanced technologies in tracking and monitoring changes in forest resources. use it, and multimedia communication tools and apply soft skills in professional activities. proficiently use maps and a number of tools (global positioning system (gps), geographic information system (gis)) for professional work. apply it and automation techniques to control the growth and development of plants; diagnose, treat, and control animal diseases; and ensure food hygiene and safety. use multimedia communication methods. vnuf, vnua proficiently use specialized computer software. implement communication on the media and advertise on the internet. master new and advanced science, technology, and labor tools. complete the technical process of high-tech crop production in accordance with practical conditions. have multi-media communication skills. huaf proficiently use community outreach methods, especially gis, remote sensing, supporting tools, and some specialized software in tracking and monitoring forest resource developments. proficiently use professional toolkits in analyzing and evaluating results in scientific experiments and specialized investigations. apply technological advances in agricultural production. implement technological processes in production and animal husbandry. according to the table, the it requirements in agro-forestry majors are related to skills in using it and modern equipment of the profession; communication skills using multimedia tools; blockchain application, and forms of ecommerce in agricultural production and business. some institutions have mentioned the use of digital technology, automation equipment, and software in some subjects of their training programs. however, these subjects are mostly optional and have not been specified through the output standards of the training industry. therefore, it is necessary to have separate it output standards for each industry that are updated regularly under the influence of digital technology. we have built a framework for it application competence specifically for students in agriculture and forestry. the asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 33-39 36 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group competency framework has detailed information about it competence that students of agriculture and forestry need to have to meet the requirements of employers. the specific determination of the required level of each competency will be the basis for putting the competencies framework into practice. 3.2. employment trends of agro-forestry engineers in recent years according to the statistical results at the universities offering training in agriculture and forestry, including tuaf, bacgiang agriculture and forestry university, vietnam national university of forestry, tantrao university, hungvuong university, and taynguyen university, the average percentages in employment sectors for the period 2018-2022 are as follows: table 3. statistical table of the participation in employment sectors of graduates from 2018 to 2022. year public sector private sector self-employment joint ventures with foreign countries 2018 19.66 55.12 10.92 12.48 2019 15.13 44.04 20.45 7.05 2020 8.68 67.55 11.76 12.66 2021 5.56 72.3 9.66 7.49 2022 7.16 42.95 26.79 23.07 the data in table 3 are illustrated more clearly through the chart in figure 1. this figure shows that, the employment trend of students in the past 5 years has changed dramatically. employment in the public sector decreased sharply as students mainly worked in the private sector. this is also consistent with the general situation of our country today: state agencies limit recruitment and increase downsizing; young people tend to gradually move to work in private enterprises, where there is a challenging working environment but the salary is in accordance with their dynamism, qualifications, and working skills. however, in some professions, such as agricultural extension, rural development, or forest resource management, the public sector is still the main employment area. a prominent trend in recent years is that many graduates have started their own businesses through many forms, such as self-employment, creating career-building groups, joining traditional occupations, or working in family businesses. this considerable increase demonstrates the dynamism and confidence of students in their professional expertise. the trend of employment in joint ventures with foreign countries has also increased significantly, in which most of the students who have participated in cooperation programs of universities with foreign partners work in this sector. the trend of participating in professional internship programs abroad with salary is increasingly popular. most agro-forestry training institutions have cooperation programs with foreign partners so that students can have professional internships and graduate internships in countries with developed agriculture in order to improve their professional capacity and have access to a modern and professional environment. every year, there are thousands of students majoring in agriculture and forestry institutions participate, and 6-8% of them have stayed to work long-term in those countries. figure 1. participation rate in employment sectors of graduates from 2018 to 2022. 3.3. determining the level of it application competence to be achieved firstly, the predicted level of it application competence to be achieved for each specific industry is given. to get these degrees, we analyzed and synthesized the requirements for it application in each job position of agricultural and forestry engineers in companies, enterprises, and state agencies and requirements in the recruitment notices. next, to test the above prediction results, the collection of expert opinions through interviews and direct distribution of questionnaires was carried out. the experts consulted are employers in each employment sector. the number of experts was based on the percentage of students working in that area. the survey results are averaged for each component competence. from the obtained results, we make some conclusions as follows: there is a difference between the job requirements in the same industry. specifically, the private sector and joint ventures with foreign countries have higher requirements on the competence of using specialized software than the public sector. competence related to the promotion and introduction of products by digital technologies is of great interest to many employers in the private sector. the area of joint ventures with foreign countries focuses more on the competence to exploit and use information and the capacity to use automatic control equipment and software. employers in the public asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 33-39 37 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sector are more interested in the competence to use office equipment and software, the competence of understanding it, the competence to exploit and use information, and social competence. the competence to detect opportunities for it application and the competence to develop professional skills are highly appreciated by employers. according to some employers, employees must achieve a high level of other competence to propose opportunities to apply it and solutions to improve work quality and efficiency through the proper use of it applications. previously, we conducted a study to evaluate the it application competence of students at tuaf (toan, 2022). in the collected data, we use survey information on forestry students. the results of students' self-assessment compared to the proposed competency level are shown in the figure 2: figure 2. comparison of the self-assessment level of students and the requirements of employers. according to the results obtained from the figure above, most of the competence criteria that students accumulate are lower than the required level. the low difference belongs to the criteria related to the competence to understand it, to use technical means, and to use some software. these are all mandatory requirements in the training program for forestry students. the high difference belongs to the criteria related to the use of technologies, smart devices, and new forms of security and communication in forestry production and business. these are new problems in agriculture today, which can be reflected in the training program, but students have little or no actual training. this result shows that the determined competence levels are consistent with current training and occupation practice. from the above prediction and testing process, we give the final results on the level of competence that students of each major in the field of agriculture need to achieve after the training process as follows: based on the levels of competence in table 1 and the level that students need to achieve in table 4, it can be seen that the level of competence that employers require the most belongs to the competence to self-study and improve the it application competence in the profession, the competence of communication, cooperation, and promotion through technology in the media. this is consistent with the development of today's society. in order to keep up with the constant changes in technology, employees need to constantly self-study and participate in courses and training to improve their professional qualifications. along with that, forms of working, cooperation, and agribusiness are also diverse with the use of media instead of direct, face-to-face forms. to support this process, applications of blockchain and other forms of ecommerce are widely and effectively used. these are the competencies that employers are very interested in. next are skills related to understanding it applications in general work, using specialized software, equipment in smart agriculture, and forms of security when using the internet. for these competencies, the differences depend on the characteristics of each industry, but most of them have high requirements. the remaining competence requires an average level or higher. thus, it can be affirmed that it is an indispensable competence for engineers in agriculture today. this is also a significant issue for employers. this poses an urgent requirement for educational institutions, which need to come up with appropriate and timely measures so that the quality of training can meet the needs of the digitalization process of vietnam's agriculture today. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 33-39 38 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4. it application competence level to be achieved by students in agriculture and forestry. list of competence capacity level forestry agriculture re food technology (1). it literacy competence c1.1. understand it applications, trends, and policies in the professional field. 4.1 4.1 3.4 3.4 c1.2. understand regulations related to it law in behaviors and professional work. 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.1 c1.3. update new applications, trends, and policies on it applications in the professional field. 4.1 4.2 4.1 4.1 (2). competence to exploit, use information, and avoid risks on the internet c2.4. understand the benefits and harms of the internet. 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 c2.5. implement security and avoid risks when working on the internet. 4.1 3.4 4.1 3.4 c2.6. search, exploit, and select information on the internet for professional activities. 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 (3). competence to detect it application opportunities c3.7. understand it applications at work. 3.4 4.1 4.1 3.4 c3.8. apply it applications to work. 4.1 4.1 4.1 3.4 (4). competence to use technical devices c4.9. know the structure and maintenance of equipment such as computers, automation control systems, measuring equipment, and remote monitoring. 4.1 4.2 4.1 3.4 c4.10. use computers and smart agricultural equipment. 4.1 4.1 3.4 3.4 (5). competence to apply software c5.11. use utility software on the operating system and basic office software. 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 c5.12. use commercial software, automatic control software, and remote monitoring. 4.2 4.2 3.4 4.1 c5.13. use specialized software to make statistics, process data, analyze the market, and calculate indexes. 4.1 4.2 3.4 4.2 c5.14. build, update, and manage specialized databases. 4.1 3.4 4.1 3.1 c5.15. use software on gis and remote sensing to solve problems in the field of agriculture. 4.1 4.1 4.2 3.1 c5.16. apply blockchain technology and forms of e-commerce in agricultural production and business. 4.1 4.1 3.4 4.1 (6). professional development competence c6.17. self-learn and improve knowledge of it applications in the profession. 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 c6.18. detect and solve problems related to it applications in the professional field. 4.1 3.4 4.1 3.4 (7). social competence c7.19. understand the role of the media in the professional field. 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.2 c7.20. communicate, collaborate, and promote the use of technology in the media in the professional field. 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.2 4. conclusion through the process of analyzing documents and practical testing, the article has identified a table of levels to be achieved in terms of students’ application competence in each specific industry. the results of the article play an important role in the development of training programs, serving as the basis for adjusting the number of subjects, preparing the conditions of facilities, and renovating the contents, teaching methods, and forms of examination and assessment accordingly. with the current strong development of digital technology, educational institutions in the field of agriculture need to update new requirements on it application competence regularly and continuously; 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licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of empathy levels of female school of physical education and sports students on problem solving skill levels öznur akpinar karamanoğlu mehmetbey university school of physical education and sports, karaman. turkey. abstract this research is made in order to find whether the empathy levels of female school of physical education and sports students’ effect on problem solving skills by detecting their empathy and problem solving skills and by exhibiting whether the empathy and problem solving skills differ from according to demographic characteristics. in the research, the empathic tendency scale developed by dökmen (1988) and the problem solving inventory developed by heppner and peterson (1982) adapted into turkish by sahin, sahin, and heppner (1993) is used on the 167 female students studying at karamanoğlu mehmetbey university school of physical education and sports in the 2019-2020 academic year. the correlation analysis is done with t and one way anova tests in the evaluation of the gathered data’s because of the gathered data’s show parametric distribution. as a result of the research, the empathy levels of the students who attended the research is = 68,8323 and problem solving skills are detected as =92,2814. also it is detected that, the female students included in the research have empathy and problem solving skills over intermediate level and empathy levels effect problem solving skills. keywords: female, student, empathy, problem solving. citation | öznur akpinar (2020). the effect of empathy levels of female school of physical education and sports students on problem solving skill levels. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 406-411. history: received: 31 march 2020 revised: 4 may 2020 accepted: 8 june 2020 published: 15 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 407 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 408 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 409 4. discussion and conclusion.......................................................................................................................................................... 409 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 410 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.406.411&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1737 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1737 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 406-411 407 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research contributes to the literature by determining the empathy and problem-solving skills of female students of physical education and sports school. 1. introduction individual is in the state of interaction with its surrounding, social environment, family and friend environment by the need of its social life. in this direction sometimes being in the name of a healthier communication, individual starts to develop the relationship with himself and the relationships with others. because it is important being healthier both the individual and the public at this point. it can't be prevented that the individual, having problem with himself and can’t overcome his internal conflicts, to face serious conflicts in the society. in this way the individual may need examine into some of his characteristics (demiralp, 2017). it is known that the aim of 21st century of the countries is growing up individuals who are physically, mentally, emotionally and in the aspects of socially healthy, living in harmony with their environment, getting along to their family and social environment, having the skill of problem solving, creative, entrepreneur, productive, dynamic and self-confident. of all these characteristics becoming as universal values, the most important is having the skill of problem solving (sanlı, 2005; seker, 2019). naming the problem would be true as it doesn't have a precise solution, causing complexity in mind, allowing to come through by the individual by putting forth his knowledge correctly and in time (erzincanlı, 2010; sesli, 2013). individual faces with various problems in non-consecutive time periods. the reactions of individuals to the problems are different. the solutions of the individuals facing with the same problem make difference. while some of the individuals are successful to overcome the problem, some are not. problem is not only the definition that we confront in math’s. life includes in a series of problem patterns and their ways out. life always requires solving a problem. problem comes out for the individual when there are difficulties and obstacles on the way going to the aim that should be reached (cüceloğlu, 2004). in todays education programmers, the qualifications that a successful student needs to require are sorted as to be able to communicate, thinking scientific, rational and logical, to be able to use technology, being researcherproductive, to be able to share information, to be able to conserve human values and showing the skill of problem solving (söylemez, 2002). problem solving is a scientific and behavioral process that consists making up the effective chooses to overcome to certain situation, choosing one and applying it kneeland (2001); anderson (1980) defines the problem solving process as directing the cognitive processes to a target by focusing on cognitive processes firstly. according to heppner and krauskopf (1987) problem solving is the same as the term of coping with a problem. problem solving, in this definition, is handled as to direct the cognitive-emotional processes such as being in behavioral reactions by the aim of in order to adapt internal and external demands and to calls. problem solving is a process consisting a sequence of effort that has cognitive and psychological dimensions according to eliminate the difficulties in order to achieve a definite target (oğuzkan, 1989). in an another definition; it is defined as '' a cognitive and behavioral process that consists creating effective reaction options in order to cope with a problematic situation and to prefer the most suitable one among them (cantav, 2016; d'zurilla & goldfried, 1971). empathy is the right understanding of the emotions and thoughts of a human by palcing oneself in the position instead of the human in opposite (dökmen, 2005). empathic tendency is so; social sensitivity and empathy potential in the daily lives of people (dökmen, 1988). empathy skill is to understand the feeling, thought and the ways of perception of others facing the events and problems, to share the impressions that one has and using this skill in the daily life (keser, 2017; schilling, 2009). empathy went through mainly there phases until the definition stage in nowadays (baston, fultz, & schonenrade, 1987). namely: it is used until the late 1950s with the cognitive quality meaning of for a person getting to know the other, having information about his characteristics by placing oneself instead of the position of the other. in the 1960s empathy is defined as by accepting that there is an emotional aspect of it still the cognitive aspect of it handled primarily, feel the same as what the feelings of the other are, feel as the other. in the 1970s empathy is defined as to understand a specific feeling of somebody and giving an appropriate response to this feeling. according to this approach the emphatic person focuses on the other instead of focusing on himself. he handels the subject as '' what does the other feel'' instead of '' what i feel '' (baston et al., 1987); cited; dökmen (1988). empathy is being together with different people, it is a way of understanding them. it means entering into the perceptional world of different humans and is the way of being together with their perceptions. as far as the emotions that a person feel show no differences, it means that the the emotion that he has, changes in the manner of happiness, anger, fear or affection. it means that living the life of the people temporarily, feel him gently without judging and understanding him (rogers, 1975). empathy is a form of relational focuse on people. the fundamental elements, that should be considered on developing empathy in relational process, are the manner of entering the life of the other and behaving like living the events without reflecting what he experiences for the person who develops the empathy. according to bellous (2000) empathy is anticipating the livings of humans and perceiving their experiences accurately. also an another feature of the relational empathy is besides understanding the other, it is having the ability of sympathize (gülle, 2015; hançer & tanrısevdi, 2003). female students studying at school of physical education and sports need a number of skills in order to make an effective communication with both athletes, trainers and the other people in connection with their taking an important task on their career to develop the sports and to expand it after they graduate. while these skills are listed as social skill levels, decision making styles, hardiness, aggression levels, anxiety, one of them is so empathy and problem solving skills levels. the individuals who have empathy and a high levels of problem solving skills are able to make a better communication and are able to be more succesful both in their private lives and in their professional career. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 406-411 408 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method in the research descriptive scanning aiming to find out the current state and a method according to relational scanning are used. 2.1. research group the universe of the research is composed by 230 (77 in physical education and sports teaching department, 67 sports management department daytime education, 42 in sports management department evening education, 32 in coaching department daytime education and 12 in coaching department evening education) female students studying at karamanoglu mehmetbey university in the 2019-2020 academic year at fall term. the sample group of the research is composed by 167 ( 52 in physical education and sports teaching department, 50 in sports management daytime education, 26 in sports management evening education, 31 in coaching daytime education and 8 in coaching evening education departments) female students. 2.2. analysis of the data in the research, empathic tendency scale (ets) developed by dökmen (1988) in order to survey the empathy potential in the daily lives of the individuals and “problem solving inventory” developed by heppner and peterson (1982) adapted to turkish by sahin et al. (1993) were used for data collection. empathic tendency scale is a kind of fivefold likert scale composed of 20 questions. there are five options in each question. these options are; ''defines me no '', ''defines me slightly'', ''defines me partially'', ''defines me well'', and ''defines me completely''. while every question is scored between 1-5 in the answer keys, the questions 3.6.7.8.11.12.13, and 15. are multiplied in reverse. minimum point that can be get from the scale is 20 and maximum is 100. being the points high shows that empathic tendency is high, being its low shows that the empathic tendency is low (cited; gülle (2015)). problem solving inventory is a kind of six fold inventory that is composed of 35 questions. there are 6 options in each question. these options are; '' i always behave so'', ''i mostly behave so'', ''i often behave so'', ''i sometimes behave so'', i rarely behave so'' and '' i never behave so''. during scoring three questions are excluded from scoring and 14 questions are scored as reverse. the inventory has six sub-dimensions. these are; impatient, thinking, avoidant, evaluative, self-confident, and planned approach. the minimum value that can be get from the total of inventory is 32, the highest is 192. being high of the total score that is get from the inventory shows that the individual perceives himself as incompetent in problem solving (akpinar, 2012; kır, akpınar, & akpınar, 2013). demographic features of the students attending the research are interpreted in that. 79(%47,3) until 19 years old, 51(%30,5) between 20-21 years old, and 37(%22,2) 22 years old and over of the participants. of the participants studying 52(%31,1) in physical education and sports teaching department, 50(%29,9) sports management daytime education, 31(%18,6) coaching daytime education, 26(%15,6) sports management evening education and 8(%4,8) coaching evening education. of the participants 128 (%7,6) in daytime education, 39(%23,4) in evening education studying. of the participants 65(%38,9) are at first grade, 53(%31,7) are at second grade, 19(%11,4) are at third grade, 30(%18,0) are at fourth grade studying. the range of the participants according to their fathers' educational status is so; 11(%6,6) are literate, 69(%41,3) are elementary school, 34(%20,3) are secondary school, 37(%22,2) are high school and 16(%9,6) are graduates. the range of the participants according to their mothers' educational status is; 13(%7,8) are illiterate, 14(%8,4) are literate, 77(%46,1) are elementary school, 39(%23,3) are secondary school, 16(%9,6) are high school and 8(%4,8) are graduates. the occupations of the participants are 15(%9,0) officer, 25(%15,0) employee, 19(%11,4) craftsman, 26(%15,5) farmer, 35(%28,1) retired and 47(%28,1) freelancer. the reliability coefficient of the empathic tendency scale applied to the participants is, 7244 and the reliability coefficient is determined as, 8798. also one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test is applied to the participants for the analysis made in order to determine the levels of empathy and problem solving levels of the participants for the parametric or nonparametric range. table-1. one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test showing the empathic tendency levels of the participants. empathic tendency scale n 167 mean 68,8323 std.deviation 9,78298 kolmogorov-smirnov z ,730 p ,661 note: p>0,05 if the test results are examined in table 1; t test and one-way anova tests are applied in relation with the analysis, which are applied on empathic tendency levels of participants as the result of the one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test, being normal range in other words being parametric (p>0.05) were used test. table-2. one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test showing the problem solving levels of the participants. hasty approach thinking approach avoidant approach evaluative approach self-confident approach planned approach problem solving total n 167 167 167 167 167 167 167 mean 34,0958 13,1557 10,4850 8,0898 16,2515 10,2036 92,2814 std.deviation 8,07289 5,37842 4,74514 3,71877 6,13180 4,58065 22,04920 kolmogorov-smirnov z 1,000 1,355 1,000 ,934 ,884 1,000 ,980 p ,270 ,051 ,270 ,250 ,415 ,270 ,260 note: p>0,05 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 406-411 409 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group if the test results are examined in table 2; t test and one-way anova tests are applied in relation with the analysis, which are applied on problem solving levels of participants as the result of the one-sample kolmogorovsmirnov test, being normal range in other words being parametric (p>0.05) were used test. 3. results table-3. the and ss values results related to the total point of general empathic tendency levels of the participants. n ss min max the minimum and maximum score can be get from the scale empathy level 167 68,8323 9,78298 31,00 93,00 20-100 if the test results are examined in table 3; that the general empathy score avarege of the participants. the average empathy score of the participants is determined as =68,8323. the average score got from the inventory by the students included in the scope of the research is determined as =68,8323. when the values that can be get from the total score (min.20max.100) of the inventory taken into consideration, it is seen that the students have empathy levels over intermediate level. a significant difference isn't determined in the empathy levels of the participants in the groups of; age, program of study, study of education, grade of education, education status of mother, education status of father and profession of father. table-4. the results of the participants related to and ss values belonging to general problem solving sub-dimensions and total sore. problem solving inventory sub-dimensions n ss min max the minimum and maximum score can be get from the inventory hasty approach 167 34,0958 8,07289 16,00 52,00 9-54 thinking approach 167 13,1557 5,37842 5,00 28,00 5-30 avoidant approach 167 10,4850 4,74514 4,00 24,00 4-24 evaluative approach 167 8,0898 3,71877 3,00 18,00 3-18 self-confident approach 167 16,2515 6,13180 6,00 36,00 7-42 planned approach 167 10,2036 4,58065 4,00 24,00 4-24 total 167 92,2814 22,04920 42,00 161,00 32-192 if the test results are examined in table 4; problem solving sub-dimensions and problem solving total score means are analyzed. as a result of this analysis it is seen that the participants have score avareges of the problem solving sub-dimensions in hasty approach sub-dimensions =34,0958, in thinking approach sub-dimension =13,1557, in avoidant approach sub-dimension =10,4850, in evaluative approach sub-dimension =8,0898, in self-confident approach sub-dimension =16,2515 and in planned approach sub-dimension =10,2036 and so in problem solving total score 92,2814. when the values that got from the problem solving inventory sub dimensions and from the total score means by the students included in the research, it can be inferred that in problem solving sub-dimensions hasty approach is under intermediate level, in thinking, avoidant, evaluative, self-confident and in planned approach over intermediate level and also problem solving skills levels are over the intermediate level. while it is not determined a significant difference in problem solving levels of the participants in the aspects of the program having studied, the education that studied, the education status of father, the education status of mother and in the variables of father's profession, a significant relation determined in the averages of hasty approach of the problem solving sub-dimensions. problem solving skills levels are determined higher with a rate when compared the ones whose age is till 19 than whose age between 20-21 years old on determined the grade in which having studied and in the score avareges of hasty approach of the problem solving sub-dimensions. it is determined that the ones studying in the first grade are higher than the ones studying in second grade. so in the variables there is a significant difference determined. table-5. the correlation analysis between empathy levels and problem solving ability of the participants. empathy hasty approach thinking approach avoidant approach evaluative approach selfconfident approach planned approach problem solving total empathy r 1 -,136 -,233(**) -,249(**) -,211(**) -,245(**) -,281(**) -,322(**) p ,79 ,002 ,001 ,006 ,001 ,000 ,000 n 167 167 167 167 167 167 167 167 note: p<0,05 if the test results are examined in table 5; there is a significant relation with empathy levels and thinking approach, avoidant approach, evaluative approach, self confident approach, planned approach and among total problem solving skills. 4. discussion and conclusion it is determined that the female students of school of physical education and sports included in the research have empathy and problem solving skills over intermediate level. it is not determined a significant difference in empathy levels of the participants by the groups of age, the program having studied, the grade in which being asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 406-411 410 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group educated, education status of mother, education status of father and profession groups of father. while it is not determined a significant difference in problem solving levels of the participants in the aspects of the program having studied, the education that studied, the education status of father, the education status of mother and in the variables of father's profession, a significant relation determined in the averages of hasty approach of the problem solving sub-dimensions. problem solving skills levels are determined higher with a rate when compared the ones whose age is till 19 than whose age between 20-21 years old and whose age 22 years old and elder than whose age is between 20-21 years old and there is a significant relation determined the in grade in which having studied and in the score avareges of hasty approach of the problem solving sub-dimensions. it is determined that the ones studying in the first grade are higher than the ones studying in second grade. so in the variables there is a significant difference determined. the study made by pala (2008) aimed to determine the empathy levels of teacher candidates he determined the empathy levels of the participants over intermediate level in his work. made by akgün and cetin (2018) in the studies of determining the communicative skills and empathy levels of university students; it is determined that there is a significant difference between genders of students, the department having studied, birthplace, the status of having communication education, the status of having difficulty in interpersonal relationship and where they stay with empathy and communication skills. in the study of analyzing the empathic tendency, emotional intelligence and irrational belief levels of university students in aspects of some variables made by keser (2017) it is determined that the ''empathic tendency'' scores of female students are significantly higher than the empathic tendency scores of male students. in the study made by akpinar (2012) on the problem solving sufficiency of elite female hockey players in the aspects of some variables, the problem solving skill levels of elite female hockey players in turkey are determined as =85,23, it is determined that they have problem solving skills over intermediate level and while it is not determined a significant difference in age and education status variables, a significant difference determined in the variables of hockey playing year, being national athlete status, the top championship being attended and the rank being got. in the studies made by akpınar and akpınar (2017) on analyzing the problem solving skills and decision making styles of school of students in aspects of some variables, the problem solving skill levels of the participants are determined as =96,4771 and having problem solving skill levels over intermediate level, while there is not a significant difference determined in problem solving skills in the aspects of age, the grade in which being studied, the education status of mother and in the groups of profession of father, it is determined that there is a significant difference in the variables of the academy in which being educated, gender, the education in which being educated, where they stay, the education status of father, the income level of per month and whether doing sport actively. in the studies made by yılmaz, karaca, and yılmaz (2009) on the analyzing of problem solving skills of vocational school of health students in aspects of some variables, problem solving skill levels of the participants are determined as =94,35 and while it is not determined there is a significant difference in problem solving skills on the condition of the department being studied, age, gender, the education status of mother, the education status of father and problem solving skill with having education, there is a significant difference determined in grade variable. in a study made by elkin and karadagli (2015) on the evaluation of problem solving skills of university students, by determining the problem solving skills of the students in intermediate level, in their problem solving levels when the gender, the branch that they study, the grade in which they are, the kind of high school graduation, the status of pre-school education, the settlement in which they spend most of their childhood, income level, the education status of father and mother, family type, presence of sibling, raising child style of parent, the perception of academic success, having close friend and hobby compared with the total score averages of problem solving inventory, it is not determined statistical significance between total score averages. a study made by seker (2019) on analyzing the relation of problem solving skills of university students with academic self-efficacy, it is determined that the problem solving skill perceptions of the participants are medium-level and they perceive themselves sufficient on the problem solving subject and genders of the students and the patterns of studying effect some sub-dimensions of problem solving skill inventory. references akgün, r., & cetin, h. 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(2009). analyzing the problem solving skills of health vocational school students in aspects of some variables. ataturk university, journal of nursing vocational school, 12(1), 38-48. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 397 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 397-405, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.397.405 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an analysis of the effects of school practice courses (school experience, teaching practice) on prospective physical education teachers' attitudes towards physical education teaching as a profession (case of düzce university) kadir tiryaki faculty of sport sciences, department of physical education and sports education, düzce university düzce, turkey. abstract the study is conducted to examine the effects of school practice courses on prospective physical education teachers' attitudes towards their professions. 73 pre-service teachers, 30 women and 43 men, who took teaching practice courses in the spring semester of 2018-2019, participated in the study at the department of physical education and sport education, faculty of sports sciences, düzce university. as a pre-test and post-test, the 23-item '' attitude towards the physical education teaching profession '' test consisting of the sub-dimensions of ''love for the profession '' and ''professional anxiety'' developed by unlu (2011) was applied. spss 20.0 package program was used in the analysis the data. paired samples t-test was used for the analysis of pretest-posttest results. independent samples t-test was used in binary variables and one-way anova test was used in variables with three or more groups. significance level was taken as p <0.05. in conclusion; the analyzes for the sub-dimensions of attitude to the physical education profession and total attitudes were compared, a significant difference in favor of the posttest in terms of love for the profession, professional anxiety and total attitudes towards the profession was observed. regarding the gender variable, pre-test and post-test scores of female participants show they have a higher attitude towards love sub-dimension. according to the national athlete variable, the pretest and post-test scores of non-national teacher trainees are higher in the sub-dimension of love for the profession than nationals. keywords: school experience, teaching practice, physical education, teacher trainees, pre-service training, attitude towards profession. citation | kadir tiryaki (2020). an analysis of the effects of school practice courses (school experience, teaching practice) on prospective physical education teachers' attitudes towards physical education teaching as a profession (case of düzce university). asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 397-405. history: received: 26 march 2020 revised: 30 april 2020 accepted: 2 june 2020 published: 11 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 398 2. material method ............................................................................................................................................................................ 399 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 400 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 403 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 404 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.397.405&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1724 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4808-6002 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1724 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4808-6002 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1724 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4808-6002 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3):397-405 398 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the effects of school practice courses on prospective physical education teachers' attitudes towards their professions. 1. introduction the education system is very important in terms of the development of young people, who are the guarantee of our future in every way. teachers are the most important gear of the education system. therefore, teacher training programs, how the courses and school practices in these programs are planned and how much they contribute are highly important. the turkish society needs well-educated teachers with the capacity to educate people with the qualifications required by the modern times and a training that can respond to the rapidly developing and changing environment of the time it is in. because teachers are the basic element of education and “the power and future of a country depend on the ability and success of its teachers ataünal (1994). teachers are one of the most important elements of the education system, affected by the system and affecting it at the same time (ira, 2004). one of the most important aspects of teaching profession is that teachers be trained effectively during the preservice training process (saritas, 2007). in the teacher training process, besides the theoretical education received by teacher trainees in faculties, the experiences gained in practice schools play a very important role (gökçe & demirhan, 2005). education is one of the most important stages of human life, and it is the most important power that shapes and changes the future of a society and ensures the political, economic and social development of countries. countries have faced the obligation to organize, determine the principles, control and plan educational and training institutions to guide their future throughout their history (akyüz, 2012). in this sense, programs and departments that train teachers need to train prospective teachers with certain professional competencies. field knowledge is one of the primary qualifications of teachers (yeşildere & türnüklü, 2007). considering that the framework program implemented by council of higher education (cohe) is implemented in the faculties of education and teacher training schools of universities, it is seen that the competencies that are targeted to be acquired by teacher trainees through this program are the same for all education faculties and teacher training schools (cakır, 2005). teaching practice of the ministry of national education has been defined as the course where practical activities are discussed and evaluated, aiming to gain teaching skills in the classroom together with management and extracurricular activities and enabling teacher trainees to teach a specific lesson or lessons in a planned way (ministry of national education, 2018). the teaching practice course consists of planned observations and activities aimed at introducing certain roles, tasks and professional standards that make up the teaching profession to prospective teachers through practice activities in practice schools. in the physical education and sports teaching undergraduate program, teaching practices are carried out in primary education, high school and equivalent schools for one semester in the 8th semester of faculties that train teachers. the students participate in the practice as teacher and continue with various experiences and take on certain responsibilities. some of these experiences are gained through observations made in the environment, in the school and in the classroom. thus, the teacher trainees familiarize with the physical, managerial and educational aspects of the school where they practice (yalçın, 1999). teaching practices aim to prepare prospective teachers for the profession by providing the opportunity to apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes in teacher training programs to be used in a real environment. it is known that prospective teachers studying in physical education programs, as in all areas where teachers are trained, encounter many problems during their teaching practice courses (hergüner, arslan, & dündar, 2002; kalkavan, kerez, suiçmez, & bektaş, 2001; sirin, cağlayan, & cetin, 2007; taskin, baştuğ, & çetin, 2003). the ministry of national education has defined school experience as a course in the faculty curriculum that enables prospective teachers to correctly perceive and adopt the teaching profession and as the opportunity to get to know the daily organization in schools, the daily life in schools, to examine the educational environments, to participate in extra-curricular activities, to observe experienced teachers on the job, to work with students individually and in small groups, and to gain short-term teaching experiences (ministry of national education, 1998). in line with this, school experience and teaching practice courses are among the courses that provide the opportunity to apply the theoretical knowledge included in the education faculty teacher training programs in a real environment (gökmen, 2015). it has been observed that especially the teachers who are new to the profession face basic problems about classroom management, student evaluation, application of appropriate materials, the techniques of asking questions, student motivation and catering for individual difference (azar, 2003; kaya. & samancı, 2013). with the restructuring of the 19971998 education faculties in turkey, teacher training process underwent very significant changes. with the education faculty-practice school cooperation program, which was introduced as a result of the regulations in teacher training in 2006, it was aimed to gain the theoretical information created in the learning processes in real environment by increasing the time allocated to the application (cohe, 2007). as a result of these regulations, the necessity of school experience and teaching practice courses emerged. at the meeting where the teacher training programs were promoted on may 16, 2018 prof. dr. yekta sarac, the president of council of higher education said; '' previously, teacher training undergraduate programs were updated in 1998 and 2006 under the coordination of cohe. in addition to various studies, evaluations and reports prepared about the implementation of the programs over time, the general competencies and teacher strategy document (2017-2023) of the teacher profession developed by the ministry of national education were taken into consideration in the updating of the programs. '' consequently, instead of the school experience course in the sixth semester, teaching practice course i was introduced. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3):397-405 399 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the subjects that are the basis for appointment as teachers in turkey and the higher education programs to be graduated for each field teacher have been determined by the ministry of education, education and discipline board. under these new regulations, the graduates of physical education and sports teaching departments and the school of physical education and sports and faculty of sport sciences, and those who completed the department of physical education and pedagogical formation program and those who completed pedagogical formation training certificate program carried out with the collaboration of ministry of national education and council of higher education could be appointed as teachers (ministry of national education, 2014). physical education is a whole body of activities performed through play to achieve the efficiency power required by the age and genetic potential of the physical, spiritual and mental qualities that make up the whole human being (aracı & aracı, 2014). physical education and sports activities can be shown as the most appropriate and important training tool in the training and development of the physical and mental structure of people, especially children and young people. sports makes an important contribution to the cultivation of especially young generations with a high sense of national unity and solidarity and people who are constructive, qualified, creative, and thus to economic, social and cultural development (yetim, 2015). it is today's requirements that individuals be able to adapt to the rapidly changing and developing world with their free will, express themselves, and be raised as harmonious, self-confident, productive, innovative and creative individuals. it is important to plan physical education as qualified for these requirements (canakay, 2006). it is important for our young people, who are the guarantee of our future, to develop both physically and mentally, to look forward to the future with hope. the teaching profession is a critical profession and one of the most important roles is taken by physical education teachers. to sum up, in this study, it is aimed to determine how school practice courses (school experience, teaching practice) affect the attitudes of physical education teacher trainees towards their profession. in literature, there are various studies about the competencies and attitudes of prospective teachers towards the profession (abbasoğlu, 2011; akar, 2007; bozdoğan, aydın, & yıldırım, 2007; demirtaş, cömert, & özer, 2011; i̇lter, 2009; işıköz, diçer, & kılınç, 2016; islam & imamoglu, 2019; kahyaoğlu & ateş, 2007; kaya, 2004; keskin, 2013; oksüzoğlu, 2009; ozbek, kâhyaoğlu, & özgen, 2007; şirin & cesur, 2010). however, studies about the effects of school practice courses (school experience, teaching practice) on the attitudes of physical education teacher trainees to physical education teaching profession have not been found. in this sense, the study is important in terms of its contribution to the literature. 2. material method 2.1. purpose of the study the aim of this study is to examine the effects of school practice courses (school experience, teaching practice) on the attitudes of physical education teacher trainees towards physical education teaching as a profession. 2.2. statement of the problem do school practice courses (school experience, teaching practice) have an impact on the attitudes of physical education teacher trainees towards physical education teaching as a profession? 2.3. study group the study group consists of a total of 73 prospective teachers, 30 female and 43 male, who were educated in the department of physical education and sports education at the faculty of sports sciences of düzce university and who took the school experience and teaching practice course in the spring term of 2018-2019 academic year. the percentages of the students participating in the study based on the variables are given in table 1. table-1. descriptive statistical test results of prospective physical education teachers in the study group. variables n % gender woman 30 41,1 male 43 58,9 national athlete yes 41 56,2 no 32 43,8 experience in sports 1-5 years 9 12,3 6-10 years 36 43,3 11-15 years 23 31,5 16 and over 5 6,8 profession of father civil servant 15 20,5 worker 20 27,4 self-employment 18 24,7 retired 20 27,4 profession of mother housewife 46 63,0 civil servant 8 11,0 worker 10 13,7 self-employment 4 5,5 retired 5 6,8 in table 1, the variables of the prospective physical education teachers participating in the study are as follows; 41.1% (n: 30) women, 58.9% (n: 43) men, 56.2% (n: 41) national athletes, 43.8% (n: 32) non-national athletes, 12%, 3 (n: 9) 1-5 years, 43.3% (n: 36) 6-10 years, 31.5% (n: 23) 11-15 years, 6.8% (n: 5) 16 years and over. moreover, when we look at the variable of profession of father; 20.5% (n: 15) civil servants, 27.4% (n: 20) workers, 24.7% (n: 18) selfemployed, 27.4% (n: 20) retired; and the mother's profession is 63.0% (n: 46) housewives, 11.0% (n: 8) civil servants, 13.7% (n: 10) workers, 5.5% (n: 4) self-employed and 6.8% (n: 5) retired. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3):397-405 400 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.4. model of the research experimental research model (pre-test and post-test) was used in this study to analyze the effects of school practice courses (school experience, teaching practice) on the attitudes of prospective physical education teachers towards the physical education teaching profession. in a research, an experimental model is generally used to measure variables (properties that can be measured quantitatively and take different values) and to reveal the cause-effect relationships between these variables. experimental model is defined as a type of research that involves the application of the factor to be measured under certain rules and conditions, measuring the responses of the subjects to the factor and comparing the results obtained (cepni, 2007). 2.5. research method in teacher training programs, the 3rd grade students in the 6th semester and the 4th grades in the 8th semester take the teaching practice course. in this study, prior to the study with the students taking these courses; personal information form and the attitude scale to the physical education teaching profession created by the researcher were applied face to face as a pre-test. at the end of the practice lessons, which continued for 14-week in practice schools, the attitude scale to the physical education teaching profession was reapplied face to face as a post-test. 2.6. data collection tools in the study; "attitude scale towards physical education teaching profession" developed by unlu (2011) and "personal information form" created by the researcher were used. the “love for the profession” sub-dimension consists of 13 items and the “professional anxiety” sub-dimension consists of ten items making a total of 23 items. the scale is designed in a five-point likert type. while scoring in positive items (19, 24, 10, 17, 16, 7, 5, 25, 1, 23, 4, 21, 8) in the scale, it is done as 5-4-3-2-1, while in negative items (14, 2, 12, 18, 6, 22, 11, 13, 3, 15) scoring was done as 1-2-3-4-5. the lowest score to be taken from the scale is 23 and the highest score is 115. in order to evaluate the scores obtained from the scale, the interval coefficient was determined. accordingly, 23-41 score range is “very low attitude”, 42-60 score range is “low attitude”, 6179 score range is “medium attitude”, 80-98 score range is “high attitude” and 99-115 score range is “very high attitude”. the high score to be obtained from the scale shows the positive attitude towards physical education teaching profession. the scale is also suitable for calculating over averages. the range coefficient determined for calculating over the averages is; 1-1.80 score range is “very low attitude”, 1.81-2.60 score range is “low attitude”, 2.613.40 score range is “moderate attitude”, 3.41-4.20 score range is “high attitude”, 4.21-5.00 score range is “very high attitude ” unlu (2011). 2.7. data analysis the data obtained in the study were analyzed using the spss 20.0 package program. descriptive statistics test was used in distributions according to demographic characteristics between the groups. paired samples t test was used for the analysis of pretest-posttest results. independent samples t test was used in binary variables and oneway anova test was used in variables with three or more groups. significance level was determined as p <0.05. 3. findings table-2. the results of paired samples statistics test conducted to compare the prospective physical education in terms of their attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the subdimensions of the scale and the total attitude averages. love for profession sub-dimension n x s t p love for profession pretest 73 52,89 6,165 -4.751 , 000 * love for profession posttest 73 53,65 5,761 professional anxiety sub-dimension n x s t p professional anxiety pretest 73 37,63 6,190 -5,942 ,000 * professional anxiety posttest 73 39,54 5,547 attitude towards the profession total attitude pretest 73 90,52 8,768 -7,390 , 000 * total attitude posttest 73 93,20 8,333 note: *p<0.01. in table 2, when the pre-test post-test mean scores of the attitude sub-dimensions and total attitudes of the physical education teacher trainees towards physical education profession are compared, there is a significant difference in favor of the posttest among love for the profession (p <0.01), professional anxiety (p <0.01) and total attitudes towards the profession (p <0.01). table-3. t-test for independent groups according to the pre-test scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession by gender variable. gender n x s t p love for profession woman 30 54,7667 3,46095 2,50 , 015 * male 43 51,5814 7,25466 professional anxiety woman 30 37,0000 5,86633 66,02 ,464 male 43 38,0698 6,43797 total attitude woman 30 91,7667 6,08380 69,53 ,273 male 43 89,6512 10,21643 note: *p<0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3):397-405 401 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 3 is examined, there is no difference between anxiety and total attitudes towards profession in terms of gender variable according to the pretest scores of attitudes towards the profession of physical education, while there is a significant difference in favor of female physical education teacher trainees in the sub-dimension of love for the profession (p <0.05). table-4. t-test for independent groups according to the posttest scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession by gender variable. gender n x s t p love for profession woman 30 55,2333 3,59773 2.20 ,031 * male 43 52,5581 6,70573 professional anxiety woman 30 38,8667 4,96702 -,875 ,375 male 43 40,0233 5,93010 total attitude woman 30 94,1000 5,89184 -,764 ,447 male 43 92,5814 9,70084 note: *p<0.05. when table 4 is examined, according to the posttest mean scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession, there is no difference between anxiety and total attitudes towards profession in terms of gender variable, while there is a significant difference in favor of female physical education teacher trainees in the sub-dimension of love for profession (p <0.05). table-5. t-test for independent groups according to the pre-test scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the national athlete status variable. national athlete n x s t p love for profession yes 41 50,9024 7,16870 57,88 001 * no 32 55,4375 3,17183 professional anxiety yes 41 38,5122 5,23508 54,85 ,187 no 32 36,5000 7,16173 total attitude yes 41 89,4146 8,87123 67,80 ,223 no 32 91,9375 8,56451 note: *p<0.05. when table 5 is examined, according to the pre-test scores of attitudes towards the profession of physical education in terms of national athlete variable, there is no difference between anxiety and total attitudes towards the profession, whereas there is a significant difference in favor of non-national physical education teacher trainees in the sub-dimension of love for the profession (p <0.05). table-6. t-test for independent groups according to the posttest scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the national athlete status variable. national athlete n x s t p love for profession yes 41 51,8780 6,69774 -3.43 , 001 * no 32 55,9375 3,11021 professional anxiety yes 41 40,0732 4,68183 ,915 ,364 no 32 38,8750 6,50930 total attitude yes 41 91,9512 8,39033 -1,46 ,147 no 32 94,8125 8,10590 note: *p<0.05. when table 6 is examined, according to the posttest mean scores of attitudes towards physical education teacher profession in terms of national athlete variable, there is no difference between anxiety and total attitudes towards profession, whereas there is a significant difference in favor of non-national physical education teacher trainees in the sub-dimension of love for profession (p <0.05). table-7. anova test for independent groups based on the pre-test scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the athlete year variable. experience in sport n x s f p love for profession 1-5 years 9 53,5556 12,01157 ,261 ,853 6-10 years 36 53,0000 4,04263 11-15 years 23 52,9565 6,51905 16 or more years 5 50,6000 3,36155 total 73 52,8904 6,16568 professional anxiety 1-5 years 9 35,1111 8,43274 ,878 ,457 6-10 years 36 37,7500 5,92513 11-15 years 23 38,7826 5,80718 16 or more years 5 36,0000 5,43139 total 73 37,6301 6,19029 total attitude 1-5 years 9 88,6667 14,66288 ,613 ,609 6-10 years 36 90,7500 7,57958 11-15 years 23 91,7391 8,11966 16 or more years 5 86,6000 7,26636 total 73 90,5205 8,76880 note: p> 0.05 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3):397-405 402 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 7 is examined, according to the pre-test scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession in terms of the variable of experience in sports, no difference is found between love for the profession, professional anxiety and total attitudes. table-8. anova test for independent groups based on the posttest scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the experience in sports variable. experience in sports n x s f p love for profession 1-5 years 9 54,6667 10,60660 ,201 ,895 6-10 years 36 53,8056 4,06953 11-15 years 23 53,3043 6,28443 16 or more years 5 52,4000 2,30217 total 73 53,6575 5,76199 professional anxiety 1-5 years 9 37,5556 7,24760 ,990 ,403 6-10 years 36 39,5833 5,08991 11-15 years 23 40,7391 5,67464 16 or more years 5 37,4000 4,72229 total 73 39,5479 5,54788 total attitude 1-5 years 9 92,2222 12,65679 ,393 ,758 6-10 years 36 93,3889 7,44226 11-15 years 23 94,0435 8,53590 16 or more years 5 89,8000 4,81664 total 73 93,2055 8,33326 note: p> 0.05. when table 8 is examined, according to the posttest point averages of the attitudes towards physical education teaching profession in terms of the variable of experience in sports, no difference is found between love for the profession, professional anxiety and total attitudes. table-9. anova test for independent groups based on the pre-test scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the profession of mother variable. profession of mother n x s f p love for profession housewife 46 53,3478 6,89675 1,613 ,181 civil servant 8 51,2500 3,99106 worker 10 55,5000 2,95334 self-employment 4 50,2500 2,50000 retired 5 48,2000 6,14003 total 73 52,8904 6,16568 professional anxiety housewife 46 37,5652 6,57825 ,925 ,455 civil servant 8 34,8750 4,51782 worker 10 39,5000 5,58271 self-employment 4 40,7500 1,50000 retired 5 36,4000 7,73305 total 73 37,6301 6,19029 total attitude housewife 46 90,9130 9,55179 1,832 ,133 civil servant 8 86,1250 5,08324 worker 10 95,0000 5,24934 self-employment 4 91,0000 4,00000 retired 5 84,6000 10,18823 total 73 90,5205 8,76880 note: p> 0.05 when table 9 is examined, according to the pre-test mean scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession in terms of the profession of mother variable, no difference is found between love for the profession, professional anxiety and total attitudes. table-10. anova test for independent groups based on the posttest scores of attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the profession of mother variable. profession of mother n x s t p love for profession housewife 46 54,0435 6,42203 1,519 ,206 civil servant 8 52,0000 4,00000 worker 10 56,2000 2,85968 self-employment 4 51,0000 2,70801 retired 5 49,8000 5,71839 total 73 53,6575 5,76199 professional anxiety housewife 46 39,8043 5,93902 ,608 ,658 civil servant 8 37,5000 3,85450 worker 10 40,6000 5,12510 self-employment 4 40,7500 ,95743 retired 5 37,4000 7,23187 total 73 39,5479 5,54788 total attitude housewife 46 93,8478 9,16992 1,668 ,167 civil servant 8 89,5000 4,86973 worker 10 96,8000 4,98442 self-employment 4 91,7500 3,59398 retired 5 87,2000 9,23038 total 73 93,2055 8,33326 note: p> 0.05 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3):397-405 403 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 10 is examined, according to the posttest point averages of the attitudes towards physical education teaching profession in terms of the profession of mother variable, no difference is found between love for the profession, professional anxiety and total attitudes. table-11. anova test for independent groups based on the pretest scores of their attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the father profession variable. profession of father n x s f p love for profession civil servant 15 50,8000 5,00286 2,134 ,104 worker 20 55,2500 3,98517 self-employment 18 51,2778 8,70298 retired 20 53,5500 5,45291 total 73 52,8904 6,16568 professional anxiety civil servant 15 39,4667 4,45400 ,868 ,462 worker 20 36,2000 7,43817 self-employment 18 38,1667 6,20484 retired 20 37,2000 5,96128 total 73 37,6301 6,19029 total attitude civil servant 15 90,2667 5,65012 ,168 ,918 worker 20 91,4500 8,66010 self-employment 18 89,4444 11,83823 retired 20 90,7500 8,08426 total 73 90,5205 8,76880 note: p> 0.05 when table 11 is examined, according to the pretest scores of the attitudes towards physical education teaching profession in terms of the variable of the profession of father, no difference is found between love for the profession, professional anxiety and total attitudes. table-12. anova test for independent groups based on the posttest scores of their attitudes towards physical education teaching profession according to the profession of father variable. profession of father n x s t p love for profession civil servant 15 51,5333 4,79385 1,867 ,143 worker 20 55,8000 4,07302 self-employment 18 52,6667 8,05861 retired 20 54,0000 4,97361 total 73 53,6575 5,76199 professional anxiety civil servant 15 40,6667 4,33699 ,574 ,634 worker 20 38,7000 6,85258 self-employment 18 40,3333 5,16777 retired 20 38,8500 5,39273 total 73 39,5479 5,54788 total attitude civil servant 15 92,2000 4,47533 ,242 ,867 worker 20 94,5000 8,84665 self-employment 18 93,0000 11,11967 retired 20 92,8500 7,53431 total 73 93,2055 8,33326 note: p> 0.05 when table 12 is examined, according to the posttest point averages of the attitudes towards physical education teaching profession in terms of the variable of the profession of father, no difference is found between love for the profession, professional anxiety and total attitudes. 4. discussion and conclusion in this study, which was carried out in order to determine the attitudes of prospective physical education teachers towards physical education teaching as a profession, the effects of the variables of gender, national sportsmanship, experience in sports and profession of mother and father on physical education teaching attitudes were analyzed. we see many studies conducted on the attitudes towards the teaching profession based on different variables in various countries in the world. in studies with similar findings to the ones in this study, it can be seen that prospective teachers exhibit positive attitudes towards teaching profession. as a result of the analyzes in which the pre-test and post-test mean scores of attitude sub-dimensions and total attitudes of the prospective physical education teachers participating in the study were compared, it was found that there is a significant difference in favor of the post-test in terms of the attitude towards the profession. the pre-test scores of the physical education teacher trainees seem to show that they have high attitude towards the profession. as a result of the last post-test score averages of the school practice courses, it was determined that they show a very high attitude. considering that they chose physical education teacher knowingly and willingly when they started the faculty of sports sciences, it can be an expected result that physical education teacher trainees who are included in intensive education programs in sports sciences will have high attitudes towards their professions. there are several prospective teachers, who are interested in different professions and cannot focus on theirs due to financial or other reasons even if they are educated in a department they have entered intentionally and willingly. it has been revealed that the pre-service training of physical education teachers in the study group have increased their attitudes towards their profession after school practice courses. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3):397-405 404 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group slaybaugh, evans, and byrd (2004) also showed that pre-service teachers have a very positive attitude in their study. furthermore, sharma and dhaiya (2012) stated in their study that pre-service teachers were determined to have a positive attitude towards teaching profession. these results show that there are several studies that support the findings in this study. when we look at the results of pre-test and post-test analysis of the attitudes of physical education teacher trainees according to gender variable, there is no significant difference according to the professional anxiety sub-dimension and total attitude scores. in the sub-dimension of love for the profession, it is seen that female teacher trainees love teaching profession more than their male counterparts. when it comes to turkey where there are more male physical education teachers and it is a mainly patriarchal society, we can say that female physical education teachers show that they love their professions and want to find a place in this field. in another study, for example, göktaş and yanık (2015) stated that female teacher trainees show a more positive attitude compared to men in their study. yalız (2010) revealed that female students' attitudes towards teaching profession are more positive attitudes than male students. in addition,üzüm, yalçın, biçer, yüktaşır, and yıldırım (2015) put forward that female physical education teacher trainees' attitudes towards professions are higher than males. islam and imamoglu (2019) found that female physical education teacher trainees scored higher in the love of the profession sub-dimension than male physical education teacher trainees, but this difference was not a statistically significant difference. these are some of the studies from the related literature that support this study. when we examine the results of pretest and posttest analysis according to the national athlete status variable, we see that while there is no significant difference in the pre-test and post-test results in anxiety and total attitudes towards the profession, in the sub-dimension of love for the profession, both in the pre-test and post-test results, there is a significant difference in favor of physical education teacher trainees who are national athletes. those who are national athletes seem to love their professions more than those who are not national athletes. prospective teachers who are athletes at the highest level in their branch at the national level tend to love teaching profession more. islam and imamoglu (2019) suggest that when the physical education teacher trainees with a branch and those without a branch are compared in terms of their attitudes to the physical education teaching profession, the teacher trainees with a branch seem to have higher attitudes than those without a branch. eroğlu (2013) argued that that the physical education teacher trainees engaged in team sports have higher attitudes towards teaching profession compared to those engaged in individual sports. in this study, it has been observed that the attitudes of physical education teacher trainees towards physical education teaching profession do not make a statistically significant difference according to the experience in sports variable. teacher trainees who have 1-5 years, 6-10 years 11-15 years and over 16 years of experience have increased their attitudes towards their profession after school practice courses, but this shows that this increase does not make a statistically significant difference in terms of sportsmanship duration. according to the variables of the profession of father and the profession, the average scores of the pre-service physical education teacher trainees seem to increase following the school experience. it was observed that this increase did not make statistically difference according to the analysis results. as a result, regarding the attitudes of prospective physical education teachers, it can be said that there is a positive difference in favor of women in the gender variable and in favor of the national athletes according to the national athlete variable. in other variables (experience in sports, profession of father and profession of mother), school practice did not make any difference in attitudes towards teaching profession. in general terms, it is seen that the attitudes of the trainees in the study group towards the physical education profession are high in both the pre-test average scores and post-test scores. for this reason, we can say that school practice and education in the curriculum of sports science faculties increase the love of physical education teacher trainees for their professions and decrease their anxiety about the profession. it is thought that this study, which was carried out on the effects of 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(2015). sociology and sports. ankara: berikan. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://mevzuat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/263.pdf 356 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 356-361, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.356.361 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a research on the fair play behaviors of students participating in school sports (the case of düzce province) levent gorun düzce university faculty of sports science, düzce, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to examine the fair play behaviours of students who attend school sports. the universe of the research is 2631 participants studying in the central district of düzce in the 2019-2020 academic year and competing in volleyball, basketball, football and individual branches in secondary and high schools, while the sample is 397 participants on a voluntary basis. in the research, the personal information form created by the researchers and "fair play scale" (fp) developed by efe (2006) were used as a measurement tool. the scale consists of four subscales: “pre-match fair play”, “during-match fair play”, “after-match fair play” and “general fair play in a match”. while there is a statistically significant difference in all subscales according to the categories, when compared to the sports age, there is a statistical difference only in the fair play behaviours during the match. also, when fair play behaviours are compared according to the branch, a statistically significant difference is observed according to the subscales of pre-match, during the match and general fair play behaviours. as a result, it can be said that fair play behaviours, which vary according to the branch, sports age and categories, can be spread to social life after school with trainings suitable for the development periods and the requirements of the sports branches. keywords: fair play, school sports. citation | levent gorun (2020). a research on the fair play behaviors of students participating in school sports (the case of düzce province). asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 356-361. history: received: 16 march 2020 revised: 20 april 2020 accepted: 22 may 2020 published: 8 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 357 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 357 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 358 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 359 5. conclusion and suggestions ........................................................................................................................................................ 360 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 360 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.356.361&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1713 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1142-3167 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1713 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1142-3167 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1713 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1142-3167 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 356-361 357 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the fair play behaviours of students who attend school sports. 1. introduction the understanding of sports, which has been going on for years, has started to change with the birth of professional sports and the significant dominance of economic factors on sports. sports for game, entertainment and health has become an activity where winning is at the forefront and competition is at a high level. thus, sports activities that should be based on values such as love, friendship, peace and sportsmanship have started to become a current issue and to be mentioned because of violence events that are often incompatible with the spirit of sportsmanship (tanrıverdi, 2012). this situation also harms sustainable fair sports environments. especially increasingly continuing commercial and political expectations from sports have pushed moral expectations to the second plan. this, in turn, has led to sports to go out of its true philosophy (sezen & yıldıran, 2007). winning and that the money is at the forefront can lead to increased violence in sports. unfortunately, the emergence of violence in sports negatively affects the development of sports. it is necessary to focus on what needs to be done to find the causes of violence and increase fair play (adilogullari, hakkı, enes, & ihsan, 2017). one of the most important concepts that will keep sport alive and contribute to a sustainable sports environment is "fair play". fair play is defined as “compliance” respect for officials and their decisions, and respect for other competitors". in addition, fair play is associated with generosity in play, humility in victory, and elegance in defeat. these obligations apply to anyone involved in the sport, such as competitors, parents, coaches, officials, leaders or supporters (loland, 2002). as gülfem (2014) states, unfair behaviours related to fair play cannot be behaviours that may change according to the results or importance of the competitions. in order to develop fair play understanding in sports and contribute to a more sustainable sports environment, necessary trainings are expected in the youth academy. in order for children and young people who will be the future of sports to behave in accordance with fair play, it is necessary to raise awareness among children and young people involved in youth academy and school sports. even in school sports, in which children of school age participate, the motive to win has come to the fore. besides sportsmanship sports institutions, it can also be taught through practices in schools and through the implementation of educational programs and educational resources (ford, jubenville, & phillips, 2012). the moral and humanitarian general goals of school sports can be expressed as arousing physical, mental and social health consciousness in children and young people and gaining these values to them (pehlivan, 2004). sports activities carried out in schools through physical education lessons play an important role in the internalization of human values such as developing a sense of solidarity and cooperation in children and young people, creating rule awareness, sharing, justice, tolerance and helpfulness (kayışlıoğlu, altınkök, temel, & yüksel, 2015). in order to raise a young generation having ethical equipment, it is important to start fair play studies in primary and secondary school children's and young people's physical education lessons as they are going to be the future athletes, trainers, sportsmen, referees, writers and spectators (yıldıran, 2002). in this context, this study aims to examine the fair play behaviours of students who are the infrastructure of sports and participate in school sports, which will contribute to the spread of fair play concept to sports environments. 2. methodology this study, which examines the fair play behaviours of students doing volleyball, basketball, football and some individual sports, is in the screening model. research approaches that aim to describe a situation that existed in the past or present as it exists are called the screening model (karasar, 2005). while the universe of the research is 2631 (volleyball=754, basketball=420, football=875, individual=582) participants studying in the central district of düzce in the 2019-2020 academic year and competing in volleyball, basketball, football and individual branches (excluding those ranked by team point) in secondary and high schools, the sample is 397 (volleyball=112, basketball=81, football=127, individual=77) participants on a voluntary basis. in the research, the personal information form created by the researchers and "fair play scale" (fp) developed by efe in 2006 were used as a measurement tool. the scale consists of four subscales: “pre-match fair play”, “during-match fair play”, “post-match fair play” and “general fair play in a match”. in the fp scale consisting of 21 items, questions numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4 measure “pre-match fair play” subscale. the questions numbered 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13 and 14 measure “during-match fair play” subscale. the questions numbered 17, 18 19, 20 and 21 measure “post-match fair play” subscale and questions numbered 8, 9, 10, 15, 16 measure “general fair play in a match” subscale. when fp internal consistency coefficients are analysed, it has been identified that “pre-match fair play = 0.765”, “during-match fair play = 0.780”, “post-match fair play = 0.829”, “general fair play in a match = 0.671” and “total test = 0.852”. for this study, cronbach alpha values have been found 0.70, 0.78, 0.79, 0.65, 0.74, respectively. 2.1. data collection and analysis the collected data were analysed on the computer based on total scores. kolmogorov smirnov test was applied for the normality of the data. for non-normally distributed data, kruskal wallis test was used for intragroup comparisons and mannwhitney-u test was used for inter-group comparisons. the significance level was accepted as 0.05, 0.01 and 0.001 in all statistical analyses. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 356-361 358 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. results table-1. comparison of fair play scale subscales by categories. category n mean rank sd x2 p between groups difference prematch minors1 74 176.28 3 8.24 0.041* 1-3 p=0.009**, 3-4 p=0.032* stars2 133 202.96 juniorsb3 106 220.75 juniorsa4 84 185.30 duringmatch minors1 74 161.93 3 29.77 0.000*** 1-3 p=0.002**, 1-4 p=0.000***, 2-3 p=0.016*, 2-4 p=0.000***, 3-4 p=0.037* stars2 133 177.48 juniorsb3 106 213.62 juniorsa4 84 247.29 post-match minors1 74 190.78 3 8.75 0.033* 2-4 p=0.004**, 3-4 p=0.036* stars2 133 216.09 juniorsb3 106 204.96 juniorsa4 84 171.65 general minors1 74 162.24 3 14.81 0.002** 1-2 p=0.012*, 1-4 p=0.000***, 3-4 p=0.026* stars2 133 203.30 juniorsb3 106 194.39 juniorsa4 84 230.39 note: *p≤0.05, **p≤0.01, ***p≤0.001. as a result of the analysis, when the fair play behaviours of the participants competing in school sports are analysed according to their categories, a statistically significant difference has been found in the subscale of pematch fair play, x2 (sd = 3, n = 397) = 8.24, p≤0.05. when the mean ranks of the groups are analysed, it is seen that the students participating in school sports in the “juniors b” category have the highest mean rank. it has been seen that those in the category "stars" and "juniors a" follow the people who compete in the "juniors b" category, while the lowest average is among the participants in the "minors" category. when it is analysed between in which groups the significant difference emerged, it has been found that it is in favour of the participants competing in the category of "juniors b" between the "minors and junior b (u=3032.00, p≤0.01)" and "juniors b and juniors a (u=3652.00, p≤0.05) " categories. when the fair play behaviours during the match are examined, it is seen that the lowest mean rank belongs to those in the “minors” category, and the highest mean rank belongs to the “juniors a” category. in addition, a significant difference has emerged in the statistical analysis, x2 (sd = 3, n = 397) = 29.77, p≤0.001. it has been seen in favour of those in the “juniors a” in all categories among those who compete in “juniors a and juniors b (u=3673.00, p≤0.05)”, “juniors a and stars (u=3691.50, p≤0.001)” and “juniors a and minors (u=1725.50, p≤0.001)” categories. in addition, is has been determined that there is a significant difference in favour of those in the "juniors b" category among those who compete in the "juniors b and the stars (u=5789.50, p≤0.05)" and "juniors b and the minors (u=2852.50, p≤0.01)" categories. when the post-match fair play behaviours by categories are analysed, it is understood that the highest mean rank is in the participants who compete in the "stars" category and the lowest score is in the "juniors a" category. considering which groups are different, there is a statistically significant difference in favour of the "juniors a" category in both comparisons in the categories "stars and juniors a (u=4331.50, p≤0.01)" and "juniors b and juniors a (u=3673.00, p≤0.05)". when the general fair play behaviours are examined according to table 1, there is a statistically significant difference, x2 (sd = 3, n = 397) = 14.81, p≤0.01. when it is analysed in which groups there is statistically significant difference, it is seen that it is in favour of those in the category of "stars" in the "minors and stars (u=3906.00, p≤0.05)" categories. it is in favour of those in the category of "juniors a" in the "minors and juniors a (u=2047.50, p≤0.001)" and "juniors b and juniors a (u=3627.50, p≤0.05)" categories. table-2. comparison of fair play scale subscales by sports age. sports age n mean rank sd x2 p between group difference pre-match 1-3 yıl1 126 185.94 2 4.79 0.091 4-6 yıl2 164 196.53 7-9 yıl3 107 218.16 during-match 1-3 yıl1 126 163.55 2 36.34 0.000** 1-2 p=0.033*, 1-3 p=0.000**, 2-3 p=0.000** 4-6 yıl2 164 191.74 7-9 yıl3 107 251.87 post-match 1-3 yıl1 126 198.80 2 0.001 1.000 4-6 yıl2 164 199.04 7-9 yıl3 107 199.18 general 1-3 yıl1 126 187.52 2 2.96 0.228 4-6 yıl2 164 198.72 7-9 yıl3 107 212.94 note: *p≤0.05, **p≤0.001. when the fair play behaviours of the participants according to the sports age are examined, it is revealed that the statistically significant difference is only in fair play behaviours during the match, x2 (sd = 2, n = 397) = 36.31, p≤0.001. according to the mean rank, it is seen in table 2 that those who have done sports for 7-9 years have the highest mean rank. also, according to table 2 it can be said that the sports age and mean rank points showed a linear increase. considering in which groups this statistical difference arises, it has been figured out that is in favour of those who have the sports age of “4-6 years” among the groups of “1-3 years and 4-6 years (u=8852.50, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 356-361 359 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group p≤0.05)”, and in favour of those who have a sports age of "79 years" among the groups of “1-3 years and 79 years (u=3754.00, p≤0.001) " and "4-6 years and 7-9 years (u=6103.50, p≤0.001)". there is no statistically significant difference in the pre-match, post-match and general fair play behaviours of the participants according to the sports age. table-3. comparison of fair play scale subscales according to the branch in school sports. branch n mean rank sd x2 p between group difference prematch volleyball1 112 190.04 3 8.24 0.001*** 1-3 p=0.015*, 2-4 p=0.010**, 3-4 p=0.000*** basketball2 81 206.25 football3 127 226.13 individual4 77 169.67 duringmatch volleyball1 112 153.97 3 29.77 0.000*** 1-2 p=0.000***, 1-3 p=0.000***, 1-4 p=0.009**, 2-4 p=0.000***, 3-4 p=0.000*** basketball2 81 233.68 football3 127 263.94 individual4 77 120.91 postmatch volleyball1 112 220.09 3 8.75 0.121 basketball2 81 193.08 football3 127 186.63 individual4 77 194.94 general volleyball1 112 176.75 3 14.81 0.000*** 1-2 p=0.031*, 1-3 p=0.000***, 2-4 p=0,013*, 3-4 p=0.000*** basketball2 81 213.95 football3 127 228.15 individual4 77 167.56 note: *p≤0.05, **p≤0.01, ***p≤0.001. when table 3 is analysed, it is determined that there is a statistically significant difference between the fair play behaviours of the participants according to their branches in school sports, x2 (sd = 3, n = 397) = 8.24, p≤0.001. when it is analysed in which groups this significant difference arises, it is determined in favour of those in the "football" branch among those who compete in the "football and volleyball (u=5824.50, p≤0.05)" and "football and individual (u=2381.00, p≤0.01)" branches. in addition to this, it is in favour of those in the "basketball" branch among "basketball and individual (u=3256.50, p≤0.001)" branches. when the fair play behaviours during-match are examined according to the branches, a statistically significant difference emerges, x2 (sd=3, n=397)=29.77, p≤0.001, and a result is found against the “individual” branches among the “individual and volleyball (u=3385.50, p≤0.01)”, “individual and basketball (u=1378.50, p≤0.001)” and “individual and football (u=1543.00, p≤0.001)” branches. in addition, there is a significant statistical difference against those who are in the "volleyball" branch between the "volleyball and basketball (u=2679.50, p≤0.001)" and "volleyball and football (u=2999.00, p≤0.001)" branches. in addition to the statistical difference in comparing the general fair play behaviour according to the branches, x2 (sd=3, n=397)=14.81, p≤0.001, there is a statistically significant difference against those who compete in the "individual" branches between those who compete in the branches of "individual and basketball (u=2424.50, p≤0.05)" and "individual and football (u=3398.50, p≤0.001)". in addition, there is a significant difference against those who compete in the "volleyball" branch between the participants in the "volleyball and basketball (u=3729.50, p≤0.05)" and "volleyball and football (u=5190.50, p≤0.001)" branches. it is a remarkable finding that the mean rank of the participants who compete in “individual” branches in all subscales with statistically significant difference has the lowest score compared to other groups. no statistical difference is found in the post-match fair play behaviours according to the branches, x2 (sd=3, n=397) =8.75, p≥0.05. 4. discussion as a result of the analysis, when the fair play behaviours of the participants competing in school sports are analysed according to their categories, a statistically significant difference has been found in the subscale of prematch fair play. when the average ranks of the groups are analysed, it is seen that the students participating in school sports in the “junior b” category have the highest average rank. as the category rises, the usual behaviours can be shown as the reason for the increase in pre-match fair play behaviours. the habit of wishing success to the opposing team and the referee is a form of behaviour gained in the process. yıldırım (2017) concluded that more than half of the participants had remarkable fair play behaviours in the pre-match fair play subscale. on the other hand, in bozdemir (2017) study, the pre-match fair play behaviours of students in different educational levels who played basketball did not reach a significant difference compared to the grade they continued. these findings in the literature support our research. when during-match fair play behaviours are analysed, it is revealed that the lowest mean rank is in the "minors" category and the highest mean rank is in the "juniors a" category. according to the results of the research, as the category rises in school sports, there is a significant difference in fair play behaviours. this may be because of the fact that the behaviours of the students who stay in the sports environment for a long time strengthen and that they mature as they grow. in bozdemir (2017) study, it was concluded that the students studying in secondary school had higher levels of fair-play behaviour than the students studying in high school. similarly, in the study of efe (2006) it was discovered that the students in the lower class were at a higher level compared to the students in the upper class according to the frequency of primary school students' displaying of fair play behaviours. from here, it can be stated that as the grade level increases, the level of students displaying their fair play behaviour decreases. these results are not in line with our study. when the post-match fair play behaviours by categories are analysed, it is understood that the highest mean rank is in the participants who compete in the "stars" category and the lowest score is in the "juniors a" category. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 356-361 360 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it is revealed that post-match fair play behaviours decrease as the age and grade level increased. it has been revealed that post-match fair play behaviours decrease as the age and grade level increased. in the study conducted by yıldıran and sezen (2006) with the participation of senior students studying in the physical education and sports teaching programs of universities, it was revealed that a significant part of physical education teacher candidates do not find the behaviours, suitable for fair play, (such as "helping the referee make the right decision even if it is contrary to their own benefit and judgment", "striving for an unfair situation that opposing team is subjected to" and "not attempting to take advantage of the opponent's unfair disadvantages") "professional"; they find the behaviours that are not in conformity with fair play (such as “providing an unfair disadvantage by misleading the referee” and “taking away the opponent's right to play with misleading strategies”) “tactically smart”. as a result, it can be said that the fair play conception of physical education teacher candidates lags behind the 'success at all costs'. it can be said that this situation may pose a serious threat to school sports. according to cruz et al. (2018) sports activity is thought to have an impact not only on the physical development of the person but also on moral development both positively and negatively. this can also be associated with the developing brains of young adolescents. information processing capacity and working memory may lead to take risks or behave unethically by being corrupted by an increased reward and control system (steinberg, 2007). in addition, it was stated by balçıkanlı, gülşen, and yıldıran (2017) that sportsmanship orientation was mostly within the framework of the rule-based formal fair play approach; on the other hand, it is stated that the behaviours can change in the cases of overcome and defeat in line with the referee ruling. in the light of the information in the literature, the rise of the class level in this research can be determined as the reason for the decrease in the postmatch fair play behaviours. when the general fair play behaviours are examined, a difference has been found in favour of those in the stars category in the comparison between the minors and the stars and in favour of the juniors a category in the comparison between the minors and juniors a and juniors b and the juniors a. as the category grows, there is a statistically difference in general fair play behaviours. it can be said that students' perception of fair play improves as they stay in the sports environment. in the study of yıldırım. (2017) it was determined that the athletes who played in school and club teams performed prematch, during match and after-match fair-play behaviours and general fair-play behaviours in a match. it was observed that in some cases, they did not comply with fair-play due to internal or external factors. kaya (2011) study on the concept of fair-play in school sports programs in which athletes act primarily to win and they think about violence against competitors, which is not appropriate for fairplay, is similar to its results. the research of fair-play concept in secondary school students made by gümüs, saraçlı, omür, doğanay, and kurtipek (2016) also coincides with the results. a significant difference in the fair play behaviours of the participants according to the sports age appears only in the during-match subscale. during the match, a significant difference was observed in fair play behaviours as the age of sports grew. this result is consistent with the findings of the previous variables. in his study conducted in 2006, efe found that the frequency of displaying the pre-match fair play behaviours of male students than female students, of 2nd grade students than 1st grade students, and of the ones whose branch is football than those whose branch is volleyball was higher. in the study conducted by bronikowska et al. (2019) fair play behaviours of amateur and professional athletes were measured as pre-tests and it was revealed that professional athletes had higher fair play levels. in the light of this data, considering the relationship between sports age and professionalism and experience, it is expected that fair age behaviour will increase with rising sports age. it can be said that the findings of this research overlap with the emerging results indirectly. in the analysis of fair play behaviours according to the branch, a significant statistical difference was found between the groups in pre-match, during-match and general fair play behaviours. in all subscales with significant differences, it is seen that the highest scores according to the mean rank is in the football branch and those in basketball, volleyball respectively, and the lowest scores those who compete in the individual branches. in his study, efe (2006) examined the frequency of displaying fair-play behaviours of elementary school students participating in inter-school competitions and stated that those whose branch is football were more likely to display fair-play behaviours than those in volleyball branch. in addition, the lack of similar findings in the literature suggests that there may be different parameters affecting fair play behaviours. in the study conducted by mary, alexandra, and kimon (2007) it was stated that verbal attack behaviours of physical education teachers were negative predictors of students' fair play behaviours. likewise, performance and outcome goals and the social support perceived from the families, teachers and friends can be seen as the other factors that affect moral and therefore fair play behaviours of the athletes (aksoy, ozcan, & coknaz, 2018; vansteenkiste, mauratidis, & lens, 2010). 5. conclusion and suggestions the information revealed by this study can be shown as a rich source of information for researchers trying to explain the relationship between school sports and fair play, which are extremely important in terms of education. some suggestions can be made as a result of this study, where fair play behaviours of students participating in school sports varies according to categories, sports age and branch. further development of the curriculum in fair play education in schools can increase the frequency of fair play behaviour. with in-service trainings to be given to physical education teachers and coaches, fair play behaviours can be extended. for fair play behaviours that vary according to branch, sports age and categories, fair play education can be adapted according to their development periods. thus, fair play behaviours that will be put into practice with school sports, which is one of the most important factors of education, can be made widely observable in the society after education. references adilogullari, g. e., hakkı, u., enes, b., & ihsan, k. 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(2017). determining the fair-play understanding of sportsmen playing in school and club teams in universities: the case of eskişehir osmangazi university. i̇nönü university, journal of physical education and sports sciences, 4(1), 01-15. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 57 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 57-64, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.57.64 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group compendium of the self-regulated education method in terms of various variables in flute education emre ustun nevşehir hacı bektaş veli university, faculty of fine arts, department of music and performing arts, turkey. abstract the emotional, mental, kinesthetic development in the musical instrument training all along the educational process of the individual is great importance. in this context, self-regulated training, which is one of the training methods to be used by the flute instructors, stands out in the development process of the students. the motivation, attitudes, emotional, self-efficacious development of the students towards their instruments supported byselfregulated training can increase the instrument performance. in this study, experimental method was used with the help of self-regulated training method, emotional expression scale, general self-efficacy scales. the study was performed with 22 students who studied flute at the music department. as a result of the study, it was determined that the application of self-regulated training method in flute education had a positive effect on negative expression, self-efficacy. furthermore, it has been determined that self-regulated training method improves students‟ ambition, attitudes and motivations in a more conscious, efficient working process towards lessons and instruments. keywords: instrument training, flute education, self-regulated training, emotional expression, negative expression, self-efficacy. citation | emre ustun (2020). compendium of the self-regulated education method in terms of various variables in flute education. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 57-64. history: received: 4 november 2019 revised: 12 december 2019 accepted: 16 january 2020 published: 19 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 58 2. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 59 3. results and interpretations ........................................................................................................................................................... 61 4. conclusion, discussion, suggestions ........................................................................................................................................... 62 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 64 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.57.64&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1339 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0496-1912 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1339 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0496-1912 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1339 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0496-1912 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 57-64 58 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by motivation, attitudes, emotional; selfefficacious development of the students towards their instruments supported by self-regulated training can increase the instrument performance. additional experimental method was used with the help of self-regulated training method, emotional expression scale, general self-efficacy scales. 1. introduction music, as an important form of art, which associates emotions and thoughts, comes into prominence with educational components as a whole in the process of learning and development. at the present time, the fact that music education contributes to personality development and socializing of individuals is increasingly accepted. beginning from pre-school to higher education institutions, music education intends to develop the musical abilities of individuals who take this education. one of the most influential fields in revealing these abilities is instrument training. “musical instrument training is one of the sub-dimensions of music education and is divided into various dimensions itself” (uçan, 2001). amidst the training of a musical instrument befitting for the individual, he / she will be able to comprehend the technical characteristics of the instrument and to perform it effectively by combining his / her mental and motor skills. in order for a successful instrument training to be carried out, the most effective use of instrument practicing time, effective practicing and learning tactics in instrument training, the development of student success and all stages of the practicing process, and the realization of the student in his / her supervision should be handled by the instrument trainers. musical instrument practice is considered to be the most basic action in the development of instrument skills (wagner, 1975; rosenthal, 1984; wolfe, 1984; barry, 1992). weidenbach (1996) underlines that the practice does not consist of daily routine and that personal tactics and conscious pieces of training should be carried out as well. in order to meet these expectations, the selfregulated training method in flute education aiming the development of musical instrument training and to provide musical skills, can be seen as an effective teaching method in the process of transferring the cognitive and kinesthetic behaviors of the students and help them see music as a whole. ozmentes (2008) mentioned the importance of this effective teaching method process as follows; playing an instrument is one of the most basic actions in terms of development of instrument skills. the tactics and conscious practice habits used by the student are important factors affecting his / her performance. at this phase, the use of self-regulated training in the process of musical instrument training is an issue that should be accentuated in order to be independent and effective learners. the concept of self-regulated learning can be defined as the competence of students to participate effectively in the learning process in terms of cognitive, motivational and behavioral aspects. people with this skill can plan, organize, observe and evaluate each stage of metacognitive learning processes; from a motivational point of view, they see themselves as adequate and effective, and create the most convenient environment for behavioral learning. the self-regulated training method was defined as the degree of active participation of individuals in their own learning processes in terms of metacognition, motivation and behavior according to zimmerman (1989). in their study named “self-regulated learning: models and applications”, sarı and akınoğlu (2009) stated zimmerman's self-regulated training method and its importance as follows: self-regulation is a multi-component, iterative, self-managed processes that target cognition, emotions, actions and characteristics of the environment for one's own purposes (cascallar et al., 2006). he emphasized that self-regulated learning should not only be limited to cognitive or metacognitive strategies but also motivational strategies should be used to provide learning as well (boekaerts, 1993). self-regulated training in terms of students; is the person who is motivated to carry out a task with success, to set realistic goals in order to fulfill the task and to use effective strategies, to be a self-follower to measure effectiveness, to adjust or organize the use of strategy when necessary (zimmerman, 1989). therefore, zimmerman defines self-regulated learning as thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are created by the learner to reach a goal. learning is seen as an anticipatory activity for the learners, rather than as an implicit event which is a response to teaching. consequently, self-regulation is not a mental skill or an academic performance skill, but a self-directing process that enables learners to transform their mental abilities into academic performance skills (zimmerman, 2002). in this context, zimmerman's social-cognitive self-regulated learning model which is one of the models studied in self-regulated learning, is listed under the following headings: 1. forethought phase: indicates the processes and beliefs before the effort to learn. this phase consists of two types of processes: a. task analysis: includes goal setting and strategy planning. b. self-motivation: covers the students' ability to direct their inner interests and learning goals towards learning. 2. performance phase: indicates the processes during behavioral implementation. this phase consists of two types of processes: a. self-control: processing of selected methods or strategies in the pre-thinking phase. thus, students can concentrate on the goal and make the best use of their efforts. this can be achieved with imagery, selfinstruction, and attention focusing and task strategies. b. self-observation: involves the person to keep a record of the events related to him / herself and to try to find out the reasons for these events. 3. self-reflection phase: refers to the processes taking place after each learning effort. this phase consists of two types of processes: a. self-judgment: the student's judgment after a learning effort. the student can perform his / her own selfevaluation by comparing his performance with the performance of another person or with any standard. b. self-reaction: after a learning effort, the boost in self-satisfaction increases the motivation for subsequent learning efforts. the adaptive processes and belief of success of individuals are important in the implementation stage of these phases of zimmerman. in this sense, emotional expression is of great importance for the adaptive process of individual functions. in this context, giving credit to basic emotions may be useful in this training process taking asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 57-64 59 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the musical instrument training into consideration. according to plotnik (2009) the concept of emotion consists of four components. interpretation or evaluation of a stimulus according to the individual's situation, to experience fear and happiness, to have physiological changes, laughing and crying. when these four components come together, emotional expression can be defined as the outpouring of internal processes with various observable responses. further, when the individual differences in musical instrument training are considered, emotional expressions and methods may vary in each individual. from this point of view, the positive direction of the individuals who have the instrument training can be improved in the sense that they can be successful in the education process. the concept of selfefficacy comes to the fore in terms of the development process of this belief. kotaman (2008) defined the concept of selfefficacy as the formation of a personal belief that the individual can achieve a certain task. according to kotaman, self-efficacy belief is a concept that influences students' motivation. self-efficacy plays a critical role in the acquisition of a new skill or in the realization of a new learning and then in the implementation of this new skill or learning. according to bandura (1989); the self-efficacy belief determines the level of motivation of a person. this level of motivation determines how much effort will be made for the given task and how much continuity will be made in this effort. in this respect, the strength of the individual's ability to keep strong increases continuity and effort (schunk, 1981; zimmerman and ringle, 1981; bouchard, 1990). based on these explanations, the use of self-regulated education in instrument training is paramount in terms of the emotional, mental and kinesthetic development processes of the students. by the implementation of this training process, students will be able to analyze the problems they will encounter all along the musical instrument training process more easily, besides their learning performance and instrument performance will be improved. the objectives targeted for musical instrument training will be accomplished with the systematic and scheduled planning and implementation of the self-regulated process. the fact that the students perform their practice in patience and in a systematic way will enable them to reach to a better level day by day and to reach the intended steps easily throughout the flute education process. in addition to all these, the students' musical perception ability, musical life, their emotional expression towards the lesson and the instrument, motivation, attitude, and selfefficacy will develop. hence, a more healthy education process will take place and an important step will be taken in raising successful individuals. 1.1. problem statement in the context of all this, the problem statement of this study is formed as: “what is the effect of self-regulated training on students' emotional, mental and kinesthetic development in flute education?” 1.2. sub-problems what is the effect of using self-regulated training on flute students in terms of emotional expression in flute education? what is the effect of self-regulated training on flute students in terms of self-efficacy in flute education? what are the opinions of flute students on the tactics of flute in the process of self-regulation in flute education? 1.3. aim of the research in music departments, effective music education of the students will enable them to develop personal and social aspects and consequently gain the elements of success, trust, and respect. from this perspective, an effective flute training should be implemented with a program arranged in accordance with the objectives and goals. in this application, it is believed that self-regulated training will positively affect the personal development of students for an effective flute training. the aim of this research by implementing the self-regulating training is; to reveal the effects of emotional, mental and kinesthetic development of these flute students who study in music departments. 1.4. limitations this research is limited to 5 items below: 1. nevşehir hacı bektaş veli university faculty of fine arts department of music and performing arts 20182019 academic year students taking flute education. 2. scales used to determine self-regulated education and emotional expression and self-efficacy. 3. students' views on the self-regulated education process. 4. observations on the study. 5. resources available as a result of a literature review. 2. methodology the research is a descriptive study in terms of the method followed and the nature of the data collected. “descriptive analysis: according to this approach, the data obtained are summarized and interpreted according to the previously determined themes. the purpose of this type of analysis is to present the findings to the reader in an edited and interpreted manner (yıldırım and şimşek, 2006).” karasar (2009) states the content of research methods and techniques as the techniques that embody the entire mental efforts of the problem from the definition to the result. in this section; the scientific method of the research, the model of the research, the universe and the sample, the data collection tools, the validity and reliability studies, and the analysis of the data are given. yıldırım and şimşek (2005) explained that in order to learn different aspects and formations of reality, the researcher should reveal different points of view, different meanings, different indicators and sources about the phenomenon that he is investigating. according to karasar (2009) reaching a general judgment about the universe requires arranging with a scanning done on the entire universe or a group, an example, a sample taken from it. the research is a descriptive one which is arranged in the scanning model to determine the development of students' emotional expression and self-efficacy processes and their opinions in this process. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 57-64 60 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.1. universe and sample the universe of the study consisted of students who received individual flute training in the music departments of the faculties of fine arts, and the sample was composed of students from the department of music and performing arts of the faculty of fine arts of nevşehir hacı bektaş veli university. 2.2. research group the research group was formed by 22 students who received individual flute training during 2018-2019 academic year. in this formation, students' grade, success level, level, technical level and personal development were taken into consideration in order to form the experimental and control groups heterogeneous. students' grade point average, regular class participation, mastery on their instruments in terms of technique and tone, being in an adequate level on the basis of etude and piece, and being graduated from fine arts high school were examined in the formation of groups. students' grade, level of success, degree, technical level and personal development were examined to form groups. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-grade students were grouped equally and 11 of all assigned to the experimental group while the other 11 to the control group. 2.3. experimental research design in the study, experimental and control groups were formed in order to start the experimental process after literature review. after a heterogeneous formation ensured, the etudes which they were expected to continue in accordance with their levels, were determined during the 10-week education period. in this context, the etude book and the level of the students in the previous year were taken into consideration. each student is expected to complete one etude per week in a 10-week period. in this respect, taffanel gaubert, köhler etüt and romantic köhler flute etude books were used. before the experimental study, emotional expression and self-efficacy scale which has validity and reliability was applied to both groups as a pre-test. after the pre-test, the 10-week training process was initiated, in this process, the researcher continued the in-class and out-class work with the experimental group using self-regulated training. this process is based on zimmerman's model of social cognitive self-regulated learning. task analysis, self-motivation, self-control, self-observation, self-judgment, and selfreaction stages were continued during 10 weeks with audio and video recordings in addition. in accordance with self-regulated education, no intervention was made to the control group. during the out-class studies, the etudes given to both groups were monitored by the researcher. at the end of the 10-week training period, the emotional expression and self-efficacy scale were re-administered to the students. the obtained data were analyzed by comparing with the first and last form. in addition, each week, the students in the experimental group were asked to evaluate themselves under the main topics related to their work processes. at the end of 10 weeks, the data obtained were analyzed and common opinions of students about self-regulated training strategies were determined and interpreted. 2.4. data collection tool under this title, self-regulated training model was used to test the research experimental groups. in this context with the implementation of this training the techniques used in the analysis of the data obtained from the emotional expression and self-efficacy scale, the views of the students, the planning of the research and the process are included. the experimental method was used in the study. the "pretest-posttest design" of this method was preferred. in this respect, the study was carried out with the students of nevşehir hacı bektaş veli university fine arts faculty music and performing arts department who had been taking flute education. in the study conducted with 22 students, while 11 of them constituted the experimental group, the other 11 were the members of the control group. 2.5. berkeley emotional expression scale and general self-efficacy scale the aim of this study was to determine the emotional expression characteristics of the students selected by self-regulation training for the experimental stage. by adhering to this goal, the berkeley emotional expression scale developed by gross and john (1995) was used by akın (2011). the sub-dimensions and items of the scale are summarized by celik (2013) as follows: the berkeley emotional expression scale consists of three sub-dimensions: positive expression, negative expression, and impulse intensity. in the scale consisted of 16 items in total; items 1,4,6 and 10 are related to positive expression; items 3,5,8,9 and 13 are related to negative expression; items 2,7,11,12,14,15 are related to impulse intensity. furthermore, the scale gives a total emotional expression score. participants indicate the degree to which they agree with each of the items on a 7-point likert-type scale. the range of the scale is 16-112 (akın, 2011). besides, it was aimed to determine the self-efficacy characteristics of the students selected for the experimental phase through self-regulated training. the concept of self-efficacy has been defined by yokus and yürüdür (2015) as individuals to seek for possible solutions to the problems they face, constantly controlling the thinking and evaluating the processes, having the self-confidence to solve their problems, and believing that they will cope with these problems. the formation and development phase of the scale is summarized by ustun (2016) as follows; the self-efficacy scale was first presented by jerusalem and schwarzer (1979) and consist of 20 items. after 2 years, it was limited to 10 items by the researchers. the scale was translated into turkish by yeşilay (1993); schwarzer (2004). the scale is a four likert scale and the range of it is between 20 and 80. this scale was obtained from the phd study named “a state flow model: the relatıonshıps among stres control, general self-effıcacy, state anxıety, lıfe satısfactıon and state flow” by sahranç (2008) and reliability and validity studies were regarded as suitable for this study. in addition, in order to ensure the reliability of the scales for this research, a pilot scheme was conducted on 70 students with yhe exception of the experimental group and the control group. as a result of the data obtained and analyzes, three sub-dimensions of the emotional expression scale and one-dimensional structure of the self-efficacy scale were confirmed. the internal consistency of the scales (cronbach‟s alpha) were calculated as α = .88 for the emotional expression scale and α = .80 for the general self-efficacy scale. these results indicate that the measurements are reliable. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 57-64 61 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.6. data analysis quantitative data analysis methods were used to evaluate the content analysis of the data obtained. the steps followed in the analysis and interpretation of the quantitative data obtained from the research and the formatting of the findings as a result of these stages are given in the order of sub-problem. spss program was used to analyze the data. pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental and control groups were determined by using t test. the level of significance was accepted as p <, 05 in the interpretation of the results. 3. results and interpretations 3.1. results of first sub-problem table-1. independent t-test results of emotional expression levels of students in the study group according to the situations of self-regulated training. emotional expression n x t p s.s positive expression (first sub-dimension) experiment pre-test 11 5,5909 post-test 11 5,909 -,672 ,517 1,56960 control pre-test 11 4,9318 post-test 11 5,4318 -,991 ,345 1 ,67332 negative expression (second sub-dimension) experiment pre-test 11 5,5909 post-test 11 4,7727 1,867 ,092 1,45384 control pre-test 11 4,4848 post-test 11 4,3636 ,329 ,749 1,22268 impulse intensity (third sub-dimension) experiment pre-test 11 5,5606 post-test 11 5,5455 1,007 ,976 1,60114 control pre-test 11 5,4242 post-test 11 5,1901 ,132 ,338 ,77119 note: p>.05. as seen in table 1 the pre-test and post-test total scores of the students in the emotional expression scale of the study group did not reveal a significant difference in the three sub-dimensions in terms of the application of self-regulated training. depending on this situation when the average scores of the groups are compared, for both the experimental and the control groups, there was a decrease in the first sub-dimension, and an increase in the second sub-dimension and the third sub-dimension. notwithstanding the average score difference was close to the experimental-control group in terms of the first and third sub-dimensions of these increases and decreases, the decrease in negative expression which is the second sub-dimension was remarkably evident. the pretest-posttest average score difference of the control group was “,12” and the pretest-posttest average score of the experimental group was “,82”. in consonance with these findings, it can be said that the utilization of the self-regulated training model has a significant effect in terms of negative expression while not having a significant effect on positive expression and impulse intensity. 3.2. results of second sub-problem table-2. independent t-test results of self-efficacy levels of students in the study group according to the situations of self-regulated training. özyeterlilik n x t p s.s experiment pre-test 11 2,6818 post-test 11 3,1818 -3,690 ,004 ,44944 control pre-test 11 2,9091 post-test 11 2,7455 1,390 ,195 ,39057 note: p>.05. as seen in table 2, the pre-test and post-test total scores of the students in the study group from the selfefficacy scale showed a significant difference in the experimental group in terms of the utilization of self-regulation training (p: ,004 <.05). when the control group data were examined, it was seen that there was no significant difference. when the average values of the groups were examined, a significant increase was observed in the experimental group between the pre-test and post-test data, whereas in the control group there was a decrease in the same situation. (experiment x: 2,6818-3,1818 control x: 2,9091-2,7455). according to these findings, it can be said that the students have a significant effect on their self-efficacy with the utilization of self-regulated education. 3.3. results of third sub-problem in the self-regulated training process regarding the third sub-problem, the opinions of the flute students on the tactics of practicing were requested in writing for each week. in this context, the common opinions of the students were determined. in terms of the study process, task analysis and self-motivation for the forethought phase, selfcontrol and self-observation for the performance phase, self-judgment and self-reaction for the self-reflection phase were selected. in this sense, students' opinions and interpretations for self-regulated tactical practice have been formed as follows; task analysis: it was seen that students set goals in terms of time concept in their etudes. in this sense, it is verified that they use the working strategy in the determined sections of their etudes in certain time periods of the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 57-64 62 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group week. in addition, after the deciphering stage, they stated that they studied by determining their tempo and increasing the metronome speed of their etudes every week. self-motivation: the students interpreted this phase that they enjoyed the tone of their instruments and the time they had with them, they worked with more pleasure if the etudes are appropriate with their level, their instructors have a great influence on them to enjoy the lessons and instruments. they also pointed out that they postponed practicing for a period of time without forcing themselves if they are tired of studying. self-control: in general, the students stated that they conducted a harmonic study in the first phase of the etudes. after this stage, their strategies are listed as follows; making the rhythmical articulation (bona method) of the piece, after having a general idea for the piece tracking the notes by a slow-paced finger study without blowing the instrument, studying the arpeggio series and gamut in the tonality related to their etudes, studying the sections that they have determined for each day, working in the same place repeatedly by marking the places where they are failed, reaching the intended tempo by increasing the speed of the metronome step by step, placing the staccato, legato, trill and nuances into the piece. they stated that they enforced their concentration with these targeted strategies, they increased their motivation because they felt more conscious about their effort, the wish that the performance of the instrument would be better in their minds, they enjoyed the work and felt trouble in the days when they could not work. self-observation: at this stage, the students stated that they observed themselves in the final stage of the etude by taking video recordings. they also stated that they had been listening their etudes from different performers during the study process and that it was a great contribution of the flute educator to play the piece or etude as an example in the course. self-judgment: at this stage, the students stated that they were judging themselves by analyzing their video records for each week. in this process, that stated that after taking notes about their technique, tone, tempo, articulation, handing, and tonguing coordination, holding and body posture, in the subsequent works, they tried to organize these deficiencies together with the lecturer and at this stage they stated that they made progress in the performance sense by comparing the records they found on the internet with their own performances. self-reaction: at this stage, students stated that they realized their learning efforts and desires advanced, that they study on the instrument more consciously and with the help of this consciousness they had a positive effect on their motivation and performances, their practicing time was more fluent and that they wanted to reach more advanced techniques and levels by working without being bored. 4. conclusion, discussion, suggestions 4.1. conclusion the research was conducted to determine the development of emotional expression and self-efficacy tendencies with the utilization of self-regulated training in the in-class and extracurricular studies of the students who received individual flute training. in this study, experimental and control student groups were formed and experimental studies were conducted with 22 students. during this study, each of the 11 students composing the experimental group had been trained in accordance with the level. both in and outside the course, these studies were used in accordance with the objectives and goals. this process was carried out together with the researcher in the course work, and was supervised by the researcher in the extracurricular studies. during the same period, there has been no intervention in the in-class and extracurricular studies of the control group students in terms of selfregulated training. the etudes were done for both groups in accordance with their level. taffanel gaubert, köhler and romantic köhler flute education books were used for these etudes. during this 10-week period, the applications of each student in the experimental group were carefully monitored. the emotional expression and self-efficacy scales which were reliability ensured were applied as a pre-test by a pilot study. at the end of the 10th week, the same scales were applied to the students as the final test and the implementation stage of the study was completed. in this respect, the results have been reached by comparatively analyzing the data within the experimental and control groups. in this context, there was no significant difference between the pre-test and posttest total scores of the students in the experimental group on the emotional expression scale and the scale applied as a result of self-regulated education. when the average score values of the scale consisting of three subscales are compared, it is seen that there are increases and decreases in accordance with the dimensions. in terms of the subdimensions of positive expression and impulse intensity of these increases and decreases, the average score gap of the experimental and control groups is close. in the second sub-dimension which is the negative expression, the decrease was evident. this situation shows that students who have received self-regulated training in flute education have positive development in their tendencies that are negative in terms of emotional expression. a significant difference was found in the pre-test and post-test total scores obtained from the scale applied to measure self-efficacy development with self-regulated education. in addition, pre-test average scores of the experimental group students were significantly increased after the 10-week period compared to the answers they gave as final tests. when the mean scores of the control group were examined, an opposite situation was observed and the mean scores decreased. this situation shows that the students who take flute education with self-regulated training have a positive development in terms of self-efficacy. the pre-test post-test data of the two scales, the data obtained by comparing the experimental and control groups showed that the active use of studying with self-regulated training in individual flute education during the in-class and extracurricular studies had a positive effect on negative expression and self-efficacy. besides, in the process of self-regulated training, the opinions of the flute students in terms of their practicing tactics were interpreted. in this context, the consociate opinions of the students were identified. task analysis in terms of work process, self-motivation, self-control, self-observation, self-judgment, self-reaction main titles have been selected. when the comments given by the students in general terms are examined, it has been determined that self-regulated tactical studies have positive effects. they interpreted about the efficient use of time, starting from the basic steps, keeping the study time disciplined, leaving the techniques and ornaments to the last phase, self-criticizing by taking video recordings, comparing their performance with other performances, increasing their affection to the instrument and the desire to study, and the great importance asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 57-64 63 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of the effect of instrument educator. in this sense, we can say that self-regulated strategies positively affect students' willingness to work, attitudes and motivations, and musical consciousness positively. 4.2. discussion topaloğlu (2011) aims to determine the self-regulated learning strategies used by string instrument students at different levels in his research named „updating self-regulated learning strategies used by stringed instrument students at different levels‟. in order to determine self-regulated learning strategies, 6 string instrument students were asked to express the problems they encountered in their works. unstructured interviews were conducted in order to identify the strategies students used in their process of instrument practicing. in this context, self-regulated learning strategies used by the students were determined. at the end of the study, it was observed that all students did self-observation, self-evaluation, self-teaching, long and short term goals determination, and strategic planning. ozmentes (2008) stated in his study named 'slf-regulation learning tactics in instrument education' that the use of self-regulated learning tactics should be emphasized in the instrument study process in order to be independent and effective learners. when the self-regulated learning tactics of the students in the research were examined, it was seen that the affective features in the pre-performance phase intertwined with metacognitive and cognitive tactics. especially in the pre-performance phase, it was determined that students had a very rich tactical approach in terms of tactical planning. hallam (2001) stated that there is a need for metacognitive tactics such as the effective instrument practicing process, the awareness of the difficulties of the work in the study process, the choice of tactics to be used in this stage, observing the studying process, developing alternative tactics and evaluating them within the framework of these processes. zimmerman (1998) in the first phase of the circular self-regulated learning model, revealed that students had a self-efficacy process in addition to the basic activities such as targeting and analyzing the structural features of the work. the students' cognitive and metacognitive skills are accompanied by many characteristics such as attitude, interest and selfefficacy. in their study named „a theoretical overview of self-regulated learning”, yıldızlı and saban (2015) revealed that self-regulation skills have a strong relationship with motivational factors such as self-efficacy, attitude, interest, and value, and that self-regulated learning environments need to be developed. he also stated that there were not enough number of experimental studies covering the teaching environments where selfregulated learning was applied. hardalac (2012) in her study named „the effect of self-regulated learning method on individual study process of dimension of instrument training‟ has revealed the level of effectiveness of the use of self-regulated learning method by gazi university primary school teaching department students to individual study processes. subsequently, it was determined that experimental group students using self-regulated learning method in the individual instrument study process made this process more effective and efficient than the control group, by interviews and video observations. in their study named „the impact of goal orientation on self‐regulation and performance among college students”, bouffard et al. (1995) examined how students' selfregulation and academic performance differ in learning. the results showed that there was a systematic relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement. nielsen (2010) has identified in his study named „self-regulating learning strategies in instrumental music practice‟ how two advanced conservatory students use their own learning strategies. the findings have shown that students have comprehensive self-regulating skills that enable them to optimize their learning and performance by taking into account interpersonal, contextual and internal conditions. to the degree that the results obtained from these studies, it is understood that self-regulation education practice is important for students in terms of the development of both their success and personal characteristics. based on these results, it can be seen that the study had parallels with the above studies. in addition, it was stated that the studies that will demonstrate the availability of self-regulated training within the scope of musical instrument training are insufficient. this indicates the study becomes more of an issue. in addition, in order for students to gain knowledge and experience about the strategies they will use within the scope of self-regulated training in their individual studies, there is a great responsibility for the instrument trainers. the primary objective of the trainers should be to develop their students‟ motivations and individual behaviors in terms of emotion and competence in their studies by programming their students' strategic work and working time periods in this context. 4.3. suggestions 1. considering the positive approaches and interests of the students in the study, it can be thought that selfregulated education can help the students to solve their problems by making different studies in terms of providing students with course success and instrument development. 2. in order to better understand the musical education, which is a social, cultural and artistic phenomenon, the trainers should have priority objectives in order to increase the interest of their students in the musical instruments and to enable them to reach the targeted musical behaviors. 3. self-regulated training should be added as a subject area into instrument education programs. 4. to achieve more precise generalizations, applying the study with a larger sample group over a longer period may make the study more meaningful. 5. course schedules of individual instrument courses given in universities should be developed, more attention should be paid to teaching methods and more time should be reserved for practice. 6. the trainers who teach music in universities should perceive students as a whole and think about all their personal characteristics, and they should show a consistent, developing and understanding approach. 7. it is suggested that researches about the methods for individual instrument training and the studies related to these methods should be carried out and it is recommended to multiply the resources available to students and trainers. 8. individual instrument classes should be enriched in content and method. 9. in order to create a musical consciousness and to raise awareness of this consciousness, the studies to be conducted should be given importance in the university students. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 57-64 64 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 10. in order to create a musical consciousness within the scope of the individual instrument course of the university students, the studies that will have a positive impact on their personal development should be given importance in their in-class and extracurricular studies. 11. it is suggested that individual instrument trainers should be exemplary models for students, and they should constantly improve themselves by keeping their motivation high. references akın, a., 2011. the 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[accessed 24 march 2004]. yıldırım, a. and h. şimşek, 2005. qualitative research methods in social sciences. ankara: seçkin publishing. yıldırım, a. and h. şimşek, 2006. qualitative research methods in the social sciences. ankara: seçkin publishing. yıldızlı, h. and a. saban, 2015. a theoretical view on self-regulated learning. the journal of international education science, 2(4): 97-118. yokus, t.m. and f. yürüdür, 2015. the relationship between metacognitive awareness and self-efficacy levels in pre service music teachers. turkish journal of arts and social sciences, 1(1): 22-34. zimmerman, b.j., 1989. a social cognitive view of self-regulated academic learning. journal of educational psychology, 81(3): 329339.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.81.3.329. zimmerman, b.j., 1998. academic studing and the development of personal skill: a self-regulatory perspective. educational psychologist, 33(2-3): 73-86.available at: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3302&3_3. zimmerman, b.j., 2002. becoming a self-regulated learner: an overview. theory into practice, 4(2): 64-70. zimmerman, b.j. and j. ringle, 1981. effects of model persistence and statements of confidence on children's self-efficacy and problem solving. journal of educational psychology, 73(4): 485-481.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.73.4.485. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 162 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 4, 162-172, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i4.6083 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ethnographic lens: understanding managerial and operational level perspectives on esp teachers roles dwi poedjiastutie1 masduki2 velmi mayaputri3 ( corresponding author) 1,2university of muhammadiyah, malang, indonesia. 1email: dpoedjiastutie@yahoo.com 2email: masduki@umm.ac.id 3universitas muhammadiyah, maumere, indonesia. 3email: velmimayaputri@gmail.com abstract this study investigates the managerial level (the deans of the faculties and the director of esp) perspectives and esp teachers’ perspectives (operational level) on how they assume their roles in teaching esp. this study used an ethnographic approach. the phenomena of an ethnography are commonly examined from a collective perspective. this suggests analyzing the culture under investigation from an insider's viewpoint by emphasizing the significance that the members of that society attribute to it. the findings show that sociocultural factors are assumed to influence the deans’ expectations of what teachers must do in comparison to what teachers themselves should be doing. esp teachers at the operational level assume their roles in teaching and learning esp as motivation builders, classroom controllers, teaching strategy innovators and lifelong learners. meanwhile, the deans of the faculty’s (managerial level) expectations of esp teacher roles entail a material developer, a curriculum contributor, a language trainer, a student mental safeguarding, a collaborator and a program evaluator. while deans and teachers share a common goal of educating students, their roles, responsibilities and perspectives differ significantly leading to different expectations. both cohorts namely managerial level and esp teachers should intensively discuss to obtain a satisfactory agreement in executing roles and responsibilities. besides, when designing professional development, it is suggested to focus on two areas: enhancing and sustaining instructors' english proficiency and expanding language teaching knowledge and skills. keywords: diverse teachers’ roles, esp teachers, ethnographic lens, managerial level expectation, operational level, tertiary level of study. citation | poedjiastutie, d., masduki, & mayaputri, v. (2024). ethnographic lens: understanding managerial and operational level perspectives on esp teachers roles. asian journal of education and training, 10(4), 162–172. 10.20448/edu.v10i4.6083 history: received: 20 august 2023 revised: 3 october 2024 accepted: 15 october 2024 published: 7 november 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by university of muhammadiyah malang, indonesia (grant number: e.2.a/811/baa-umm/viii/2023). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 163 2. review of related literature ...................................................................................................................................................... 163 3. research methods .......................................................................................................................................................................... 165 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 166 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 170 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 170 7. implications..................................................................................................................................................................................... 171 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 171 mailto:dpoedjiastutie@yahoo.com mailto:masduki@umm.ac.id mailto:velmimayaputri@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i4.6083 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6404-7719 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2839-2304 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-6913-9690 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 163 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this article discusses two key components contributing to the discrepancy between the expectations of the managerial level (employer group) and the operational level (esp instructors) regarding the execution of their professional duties in esp classrooms: the recruitment system of esp teachers in the institution and the graduates’ qualification. 1. introduction the modification of the curriculum necessitates a novel pedagogical approach and the flexibility of instructional skills. therefore, if a teacher is not adequately equipped with new teaching competencies, the old competencies become less reliable. the indonesian government is currently enforcing a change of curriculum by incorporating content subjects such as tourism and hospitality, mechanical and electrical engineering, mathematics as well as biology into english teaching and learning, namely english for specific purposes or esp. the implementation of esp has raised significant challenges with teachers' quality being a recurrent issue at all stages of teaching english as a foreign language. moreover, teachers' recruitment systems cannot be separated from broader domains such as the quality of teaching institutions. although each university is expected to have autonomy in academic staff recruitment, the selection procedure is interestand collegial-relationship-based, and rarely are references from colleagues verified against the candidate level of competencies. loyalty and obedience are more profound than academic commitments and abilities due to this interest-based recruitment. inappropriate recruitment can affect teachers' capability and roles in the classroom for several reasons. first, teachers may struggle to understand crucial roles when hired without relevant and appropriate teaching competencies (darling-hammond, 2000; hong, 2012). moreover, recruitment processes that do not accurately reflect the expectations of the managerial level of the teaching profession can lead to misunderstandings. for instance, emphasis on certain skills or qualifications that are irrelevant to teaching roles expected by the managerial level such as the dean of the faculty or directors during recruitment may pressure teachers to perform tasks beyond their capabilities. understanding the teachers’ roles aligned with the deans and the directors’ expectation is considered important because teachers guide students' learning processes, facilitate the comprehension of subject matter and stimulate intellectual curiosity. understanding roles can help ensure these responsibilities are effectively fulfilled (nathalie, van keer, & haerens, 2016; stronge, 2018; white & berry, 2022). the english department of one university (ou) (pseudonym) reported that upon completion of a bachelor's degree, the majority of english education department, one university (eed ou) graduates intended to find jobs. a large number were accepted into english language teaching positions at the language centre of one university (lc, ou). however, senior management of the directors and the deans of the faculties at ou has expressed dissatisfaction with the graduates' outcomes. this concern centres on the ability to perform esp teaching tasks and roles (bestari, 2010 as cited in poedjiastutie (2017)). the managerial level of the university or the deans of faculties (these two terms will be used interchangeably) expect the esp teachers’ to demonstrate the outstanding professional knowledge and competencies in carrying out diverse roles for both classroom teaching and other professional tasks. they expect university graduates who enter the esp teaching field to have an in-depth understanding to use the information learnt at university and to exhibit a competitive advantage (clarke, 2018). however, since ed graduates at ou are designated to teach high school english for general purposes (egp) and are not prepared for esp teaching, they struggle to function in esp teaching. they think that carrying out esp teaching jobs is similar to other teaching tasks at different levels of schooling. the problem underpinning this study might be the perceived mismatch between the english department (ed) ou graduates who pursue their teaching career as esp teachers about what they should be doing in esp teaching at university level and the deans’ and the director’s expectations of what the graduates should do in esp teaching. therefore, the following research questions are raised: 1.1. research questions a. what are the managerial expectations of esp teachers’ tasks and roles? b. what esp teachers perceive their tasks and roles in esp teaching? 1.2. the significance of the study theoretically, the study is significant to serve as a valuable addition to the existing body of study. effectively responding to the diverse needs of university stakeholders is a significant challenge faced by tertiary teaching staff. they must navigate a wide range of local and global situations to ensure their responses are practical and appropriate. having a strong understanding of their actions in esp teaching can be a valuable asset for both students and teachers. with the sound pedagogical knowledge, teachers can achieve numerous important goals. since no specific institutions or universities in indonesia are officially responsible for producing esp specialists and providing teachers with professional development programs, necessitating the need for more capability and proficiency for esp teaching. in addition, this study is to critically evaluate the ed ou curriculum and pedagogical practices to determine how better to meet the needs of all stakeholders. 2. review of related literature the discourse of teachers' roles in esp classrooms cannot be separated from one of esp pedagogies, namely student-centered learning (scl). this section presents both the roles and connections of esp teachers and pedagogy (scl). 2.1. scl as a part of esp pedagogy one of the fundamental distinguishing features between esp and general english (ge) is the demographic composition of learners especially adults. according to ghafournia and sabet (2014) there is a common objective asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 164 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group between esp and adult education (ae) revolving around learners' autonomy and self-directed learning. adult learners are supposed to understand personal learning objectives often with the intention of acquiring english language proficiency to enhance self-confidence in workplaces. it is important that teachers possess an understanding of the scl learning methods and strategies presented in the pedagogical framework to effectively implement this approach (keiler, 2018). in addition, esp teachers assisting adult learners are expected to share responsibilities. the seminal papers of basturkmen (2010), belcher (2006) and flowerdew (2012) showed that all decisions regarding content should be based on learners' rationale for learning. esp pedagogy places a strong emphasis on learner-centeredness. this approach places learners at the forefront of the language learning process showing the active engagement and use of various strategies to acquire proficiency. each learner possesses distinct characteristics and engages in diverse learning modalities (felder & brent, 2005; gilakjani, 2012). one of the benefits of the approach is that it not only focuses on what is expected to be learnt but also on how learners wish to learn (basturkmen, 2010; belcher, 2009; cheng, 2006). this is possible because learners are central to teaching and learning decisions. practically, learners are taught skills that facilitate objectives while considering the preferred ways of learning and motivations. in other words, as a learner-centered approach, esp recognizes individual differences (basturkmen, 2014, 2019; tomlinson, 2014). all learners get to learn in ways that fit and sort personal needs. consequently, the substance and mode of learning can be affected by the alternatives accessible. the scl approach should not be misconstrued as promoting individualism exclusively. it is also crucial to recognize that each learner has unique and valuable contributions to the collective group dynamic. the absence of such contributions can undoubtedly diminish the effectiveness and richness of group experience. the classroom can be viewed as a microcosm of global society comprising various cultural and economic backgrounds. within this context, it serves as a platform fostering inclusivity and enables students to construct knowledge through diverse ways (littlewood, 2014; milner, 2011). in a pedagogical approach that prioritizes learner-centeredness, the primary responsibility of teachers is to facilitate the attainment of predetermined learning objectives. teachers also function as resource persons to direct what students learn, provide minimum time expected on assignments, and formulate objectives. studies have shown a significant inclination among students towards the scl approach with eslami (2010) specifically showing that students demanded more engagement in class activities. moreover, teachers' perception of students' proficiency had a significant influence on the implementation of learner-centered activities. specifically, learner-centered activities are less frequently used when students have lower abilities. according to parkhurst and bodwell (2005) adequate institutional support is crucial in facilitating the adoption of scl. crucial supports include initiatives like offering professional development opportunities, allocating release time for teachers, and providing necessary funds. these measures are essential for equipping teachers with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively implement scl. it is also necessary for teachers to exert and stay abreast of contemporary pedagogies to effectively foster interactive learning environments. 2.2. roles of teachers in esp classroom one prominent feature of esp is the variety of roles to be adopted by the teachers. therefore, teachers are expected to understand personal responsibilities and roles within the classroom setting specifically when the adoption of scl is inevitable. górska-poręcka (2013) and luo and garner (2017) argued that esp teaching is a multi-stage process where teachers fulfill a broad range of responsibilities including those of study expert, course evaluator, language instructor and learning assessor. teachers need to have a deep understanding of language, sociocultural factors and pedagogical techniques to effectively fulfill these responsibilities. understanding this information is crucial for informing educators' cognitive processes particularly in the realm of decision-making. islam (2014) and górska-poręcka (2013) assumed that roles of esp teachers were more complex when compared to egp teachers since esp focuses on specific skills and needs of learners based on a detailed analysis of learners' professional and academic needs. this distinction has important implications for esp teachers' roles as course designers, material providers, collaborators, study experts, evaluators, and cultural interpreters. some of the roles and identity mentioned by islam (2014) and górska-poręcka (2013) will be discussed below. studies have been conducted on the roles of esp teachers from personal contexts and perspectives with some recommending only one specific role depending on the situation encountered at a specific time. for example, esp teachers as practitioners have been shown (basturkmen, 2019; belcher, 2009; ibrahim, 2019; luo & garner, 2017). bhatia, anthony, and noguchi (2011) discovered that proficient teachers engaging in esp might face difficulties when addressing students' needs. consequently, proponents of these approaches should advocate for esp teacherstraining programs to focus on practical implementation in the classroom over theoretical instruction. incorporating a practical component into teacher-training programs provides immediate benefits as the lack of practical knowledge and the absence of practical courses may impede the efficiency of training (luo & garner, 2017). therefore, it is advisable for esp adopters to actively engage in real-life scenarios. in this specific case, the adopters are primarily regarded as competent practitioners (islam, 2014). teachers as material designers have been acclaimed by baştürkmen and bocanegra-valle (2018), bocanegravalle (2010), bocanegra-valle (2016) and vičič (2011) stating that the identification and acquisition of suitable resources was a fundamental responsibility for esp teachers. the provision of such instructional materials should aim to equip students with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively navigate real-world contexts beyond the confines of the traditional classroom setting particularly in relation to prospective professional environments. according to vičič (2011) it is important to carefully curate instructional materials that cater to the specific requirements of learners while prioritizing the attainment of tangible and applicable results. bojovic (2006) stated that educational materials needed to possess authenticity, currency and relevance in relation to the specific specializations of students in addition to the aforementioned prerequisites. moreover, gao (2007) argued that the objectives incorporated in the instructional materials should be based on practicality. neglecting this could potentially lead to a decline in students' motivation. basturkmen (2010) and chen (2000) showed the importance of integrating instructional materials that not only cover essential english language asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 165 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group criteria but also comprise a diverse range of discourse and genres to accommodate specific needs of students. an important inquiry regarding the linguistic properties shown in the aforementioned materials concerns the level of specificity that instructional materials should contain. this is a significant point of contention in the field of esp. a lack of specificity in textbooks has substantial implications for pedagogical methodology compelling esp teachers to create customized materials corresponding to students' requirements and capabilities. teachers as collaborators have adopted the merits of incorporating collaborative and team-teaching within esp curricula by several academic experts such as basturkmen (2019), ghafournia and sabet (2014), hyland (2022) and stewart (2018). jaleniauskienė, leščinskij, and jucevičienė (2019) claimed that an effective approach to esp instruction should include collaborative effort between two teachers each with distinct roles and responsibilities while providing mutual support. even though this approach may present additional complexities, it has the potential to yield greater efficacy compared to a sole reliance on english or content teachers. the approach is also acknowledged to be effective by northcott and brown (2006) and ghafournia and sabet (2014). liu and hu (2021) conducted a recent study using systematic literature review (slr) revealed that the dominant focus in the esp literature revolves around language aspects and need analysis. it appears that there is a lack of attention given to an important aspect of esp education which is the role of "esp teachers". these teachers play a crucial role in connecting the conditions set by policies with actual classroom practices as well as addressing the students' expectations and their practical and technical demands in the professional world. additionally, a study conducted by liu and hu (2021) found that the research topics in the literature on english for specific purposes (esp) teachers seem to be inadequately represented. one of these associations pertains to the roles and development of identity among esp teachers. furthermore, a limited study has been conducted in indonesia that compares the viewpoints of individuals in managerial positions with those of the teaching staff at the operational level. this study aims to address this gap. 3. research methods 3.1. research design this study adopted an ethnographic approach. the phenomena of ethnography are commonly examined from a collective perspective as evidenced in wiersma (2000), fraenkel, wallen, and hyun (2012) and creswell (2012). another essential aspect of an ethnographic study included experts actively participating and forming profound ties with subjects to minimize any feeling of detachment or distance (pilbeam, greenhalgh, & potter, 2023; van maanen, 2011). moreover, being an insider is a strategic approach to minimize the gap between study experts and subjects. the experts should be cognizant that ethnographers want to acquire an emic perspective pertaining to the viewpoint of persons within a specific culture (hammersley & atkinson, 2019). this suggested the essence of analyzing the culture under investigation from an insider perspective and the significant attributes of the society members. 3.2. research setting and participants furthermore, the esp learning at ou is delivered through the esp program which commenced in 1993. the esp program at ou was the pioneering initiative and served as a blueprint for english programs in other universities. it was mandatory for all students during the initial year of enrollment spanning two semesters and played a crucial role in cultivating the human capital for ou. the participants were five deans of the faculties (see table 1) and seven esp teachers (see table 2) from the ou indonesia. the participants and the university names were written as pseudonyms. table 1. the employers’ profiles. unit/ faculty qualification overseas experiences years of service fac. medical science specialist doctor yes 6 fac. social politics doctorate yes 23 fac. agriculture and husbandry doctorate yes 23 fac. psychology master no 27 fac. engineering master yes 27 table 2. esp teachers’ profiles. initials gender status qualification years of service ta female part-time master of edu. policy 5 ibw male part-time master of edu. policy 5 ths male part-time master of english edu. 5 pe female part-time bachelor of english edu. 4 knw female full-time bachelor of english edu. 4 ze male part-time master of edu. policy 3.5 ha female part-time bachelor of english edu. 3 3.3. instruments and materials engaging in casual one-on-one conversations with esp teachers following classroom observations was a primary method used to collect data. researchers gathered comprehensive data on their actions and analysed their behaviours through careful observation of students in authentic classroom environments. during the classroom observation, a substantial amount of data was gathered which included thorough observation notes and over 1,100 minutes of video recordings. these materials were thoroughly analysed and used in subsequent informal interviews. the videos were used to motivate teachers to openly express their thoughts and actions with the aim to collect valuable insights. after conducting a comprehensive analysis, a more profound insight was acquired into the cognitive factors that impact instructional judgment and decision-making. a more profound comprehension of teachers' beliefs, knowledge, and assumptions was achieved by conducting informal in-depth interviews. the asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 166 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group interview guide was shaped by significant considerations that emerged from prior data collection methods. each interview lasted 60 to 70 minutes resulting in an audio recording of around 300 minutes. in-depth formal interviews with deans were conducted using a semi-structured interview protocol and produced over 200 minutes of audio recordings. this was conducted in indonesian to help address language barriers, prevent any potential misunderstandings as well as validate teachers' perspectives and classroom practices. the deans of the faculties were deliberately chosen based on affiliation with the cultural scene and familiarity with the subject matter under investigation (merriam & tisdell, 2015). the interviews facilitated the collection of information regarding deans' personal experiences as policymakers and perspectives on the duties of teachers in the esp classroom. 3.4. data analysis and trustworthiness an iterative approach was employed in analyzing the qualitative data in this study. the researcher cycled back and forth between data collection and analysis. this was done for the researcher to collect stories from participants and return for more information to fill in the gaps as the analysis proceeded using a constant comparison method. the data were organized based on the participants of the study since the aim of this study was to investigate the deans of the faculties and esp teachers’ perspectives. all interviews both informal conversation and in-depth interviews and observational notes were transcribed to convert the data into text. the first step of analysis involved reading the text data over and over to gain an initial but thorough impression of the data. next, the themes that emerged were color coded by hand to get a closer look at the data and to gain a strong feel for it. the researcher was required to read in-depth and to use a “think-aloud” strategy (fraenkel et al., 2012) before and during coding of the transcripts. conformability is data (constructs, assertions and facts) that is tracked to their sources and logic is used to assemble the interpretations into a structurally, coherent and corroborating whole that is both explicit and implicit. since recording devices, videos of classroom observations and mobile recording were used in informal one-on-one conversations or in-depth interviews, those devices provided data tracking for confirmation whenever clarification was needed. 4. results based on the large amount of descriptive information, the results were summarized as follows: table 3 presents the managerial level perspectives of esp teachers’ roles. the managerial level consists of the deans of the faculties at ou. the dean's expectations for esp teachers’ roles include material developer, curricular contributor, language trainer, student mental health care, collaborator and program evaluator. meanwhile, table 4 presents the operational level perspectives of their own roles. the operational level consists of esp teachers teaching at the language centre (lc) at ou. there are four roles esp believe they should be doing: as motivation builders, classroom controllers, teaching strategy innovators, and lifelong learners in the teaching of esp. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 167 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 3. the managerial level (the deans of faculties) perspectives of esp teachers’ roles. teachers' roles (esp classroom) the perspectives of definition examples of excerpts a language trainer the dean a person who coaches students through a series of experiences and facilitates the learning of a particular language. the implementation of a language policy mandates that students use english as the primary medium for communication. esp teachers prioritize facilitating students' proficiency in generating accurate english sentences (the dean of psychology). a collaborator the dean a person who initiates collective efforts to create innovative teaching and offers collegial support and encouragement in a structured environment. engineering lecturers as well as esp practitioners may introduce certain technical terminology during the instructional process. the introduction of this concept may present a potential challenge for teaching staff at lc to understand and implement. the introduction of technical terms within specific academic disciplines should ideally be facilitated by instructors who possess expertise in those respective fields (the dean of engineering). a student mental safeguarding the dean teachers as mental safeguarding advocates play crucial roles in promoting the mental health and well-being of students. mental safeguarding includes creating a safe and supportive environment that addresses the emotional and psychological needs of students. possessing a comprehensive educational foundation in english teaching along with a high level of intelligence and expertise are essential prerequisites for effective teaching. insufficient levels of patience and dedication have been identified as contributing factors to suboptimal outcomes in the field of education. teachers who exhibit positive and nurturing qualities are more likely to have a lasting impact on students (the dean of education faculty). a curriculum contributor the dean a person who actively engages in the development, enhancement, and adaptation of the curriculum to meet students' needs in line with educational objectives. here are several ways teachers contribute to the curriculum: i am a medical professional specializing in internal medicine. since 2009, i have held the esteemed position of vice dean for academic affairs at the faculty of medical science at ou. this role has allowed me to contribute significantly to the academic development and administration of the faculty, ensuring the highest standards of education and study are upheld. the faculty of medical science at ou is dedicated to ensuring that its graduates, who aspire to become doctors, are equipped with not only exceptional intelligence and competence but also with a strong foundation in islamic values, a comprehensive understanding of industrial perspectives and a deep appreciation for the importance of family (the dean of medical school). a material developer the dean a person who actively creates, adapts and improves instructional materials to meet the specific needs of students. this includes designing resources that correspond with educational goals, engaging students, and supporting effective teaching and learning. the instructional materials have been intentionally crafted to possess a high degree of practicality with the specific aim of catering to the needs and abilities of undergraduate students. the primary emphasis in language instruction lies not solely in the production of grammatically correct sentences but rather in the facilitation of comprehensible communication. for example, in the context of student loan applications, it is important for students to effectively articulate intentions in a asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 168 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teachers' roles (esp classroom) the perspectives of definition examples of excerpts clear and understandable manner (the dean of business school). a program evaluator the dean a person who assesses the effectiveness and impact of educational programs and initiatives, systematically collecting and analyzing data to determine whether the program is achieving its objectives and meeting participants' needs. it is important to recognize that esp courses should be made available not only in the initial semesters but also in the concluding semesters, particularly when students are on the verge of embarking on internships within hospital settings in considering the preparation of students for global exposure (the dean of medical school). table 4. the operational level (teachers) perspectives of their roles. teachers' roles (in the esp classroom) the perspectives of definition examples of quotes a motivation builder teachers a person who actively inspires, encourages, and supports students to engage in learning, set and achieve objectives and develop a positive attitude towards classroom teaching. in our first meeting, i noticed that students were not motivated to study english as they looked bored in class. when i asked some questions in english, they responded negatively. i subsequently tried to formulate appropriate strategies for my class. i started my speaking class with games. it worked. after two-three meetings, my students showed positive responses towards learning english. my students developed the mood for learning when i delivered the materials. a classroom controller teachers a person who maintains discipline and manages the classroom environment effectively and ensures students understand the rules and consequences for various behaviours. yes, i did. i found it challenging to handle students with various backgrounds, noisy classroom and different motivations and setting up various treatments. however, over time, i tried to manage my classroom well. i incorporate noisy and troublesome students into classroom activities to make them feel belong to the class. d: your major problem is on motivating and handling students, isn’t it? my major challenge is on handling students. teachers only need to remind students occasionally. however, handling students is a crucial issue and requires extra efforts specifically coping with troublemakers in class and how to keep them “under control”. failure to handle troublemakers means failure to handle the class. i usually incorporate troublemakers into some classroom activities and give them important roles in the class (for instance, promoting the troublemakers to be captains of the groups). in the case of esp, i admit that i still need to learn. a lifelong learner teachers a person who recognizes the importance of continuous personal and professional development, embracing the mindset of ongoing learning throughout life career. the point is that english department where i studied only equips the students to master basic english but when the graduates engage in professional teaching, more specifically teaching esp in lc, they are required to learn more. i have to prepare materials for the students in every meeting. i am afraid there will be questions that i cannot answer since every department has specific terms. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 169 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a strategy innovator teachers a person who actively finds, develops, and implements innovative or effective teaching strategies to enhance students learning and engagement. i need to implement appropriate teaching strategies that correspond to the characteristics of the students. the implementation of various instructional approaches within the classroom is an iterative procedure that streamlines and optimizes the learning process. i feel the importance of developing lessons and strategies to teach students the ability to speak english, irrespective of their proficiency level (intermediate or advanced). students are expected to generate english phonemes and exhibit confidence by actively communicating. i do not emphasize grammatical construction and correct pronunciation at this early stage. rather, i improve students' motivation and self-assurance in generating english utterances. currently, fluency is more important than accuracy. i will be able to assist students in reducing errors in the future. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 170 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. discussion an ethnographic approach was adopted to examine how the deans of the faculties and esp teachers at ou indonesia perceived personal roles as teachers in esp courses based on previous discussions. an ethnographic lens as a study method is closely interconnected with understanding the sociocultural history and background of the community under investigation. ethnography is a methodical examination and active engagement in the daily activities of human cultures and communities. proficiency in this process necessitates a profound comprehension of cultural norms, values, beliefs, and practices including historical background and progression. it is intrinsically linked to the comprehension of sociocultural past and background while an ethnographic perspective can be adopted to comprehend the current condition of a society. 5.1. different expectations of teachers' roles sociocultural factors are assumed to influence deans' expectations of what teachers should do in comparison to teachers' expectations. even though deans and teachers share a common objective of educating students, roles, responsibilities, and perspectives differ significantly leading to different expectations. esp teachers assume roles in teaching and learning esp as motivation builders, classroom controllers, teaching strategy innovators, and lifelong learners. meanwhile, deans' expectations for esp teachers' roles include material developers, curriculum contributors, language trainers, student mental safeguarding advocates, collaborators, program evaluators and need analysis. analysis showed that teachers were primarily concerned with the immediate educational experience of students, spent most of the time in the classroom, interacted directly with students, guided the learning process, and built a rapport with learners. the main objective was to facilitate students' understanding of the subject matter, stimulate intellectual curiosity and encourage active participation in learning. therefore, teachers might prioritize building students' motivation, fostering creativity and developing critical thinking skills rather than adhering strictly to certain curriculum standards (fleming, 2015; mulford, 2003). sociocultural perspectives were reflective in teaching style, expectations, and approaches towards students. some teachers adapted teaching methods based on the understanding of students' backgrounds, experiences and cultures (kubanyiova & feryok, 2015; nazari & tilaki, 2021). this could lead to a more nuanced and effective teaching approach as the unique circumstances and needs of each student were considered. the difference in expectations between deans of faculties and teachers could be attributed to the differing roles played in the educational system. 5.2. the shared cultures of the recruitment system at the ou when teaching is perceived as a challenging profession requiring instructors to assume many responsibilities in the classroom (belcher, 2006) it is advisable to implement a rigorous selection process that instills in prospective teachers a sense of entering a competitive professional realm. this is to improve the preparedness and selfassurance of novice educators in devising instructional strategies and implementing educational practices, rather than adhering to conventional models. the current study focused on the subpar quality of potential english teacher graduates which could be attributed to two factors, namely the input issue and the processing component. the input represents the initial aptitude of students enrolled in the english language education study program. the admission process for prospective students is typically not structured to prioritize graduates from top-tier secondary schools for teaching institutions. the majority of top graduates opt to pursue careers in the fields of medicine and engineering. this image illustrates the prevailing societal impression that the occupation of teachers lacks prestige when compared to other occupations. currently, there are approximately 450 educational establishments with a student of over 1.5 million individuals who aspire to become teachers. approximately 300,000 individuals graduate annually, although the demand for instructors is only around 40,000 each year. furthermore, credentialed teachers were granted both monetary and professional advantages even with the implementation of the teachers’ certification (ppg) scheme in 2007. the concise terminology of the teaching occupation becomes more encouraging. this has resulted in a significant influx of potential students enrolling in different educational institutions eventually creating challenges for the institutions in maintaining high standards of quality. the situation is not amenable to rapid alteration, teachers’ professional certification training, one of the teachers’ professional developments (tpd) in indonesia, a lack maturity, coherence and continuity. the absence of appropriate evaluation and assessment in the application of ppg undermined the expectations placed on prospective teachers to comprehend (poedjiastutie, suat, & huwaida, 2023). in finland, the teaching profession has been elevated to a highly desirable position by implementing stricter criteria for selecting candidates and granting instructors significant responsibilities such as roles of action study experts, to effectively address various educational challenges. the social standing of teachers was also elevated to a level that surpassed all but a handful of occupations in terms of prestige. university professors were highly esteemed professionals, often regarded as the epitome of respectability. this typically compares the roles of school teachers to university professors. 6. conclusion the findings demonstrate that sociocultural factors presumably influence deans' expectations of what teachers must perform in comparison to what teachers believe they should be doing. at the operational level, esp teachers serve as motivation builders, classroom controllers, teaching approach innovators and lifelong learners in the teaching of esp. meanwhile, the deans of the faculty's (managerial level) expectations for esp teachers include material development, curricular contribution, language training, student mental health support, collaboration, and program evaluation. while deans and professors have the shared objective of educating students, their positions, responsibilities, and opinions differ greatly resulting in differing expectations. the findings of the present study also confirm previous research about the multiple roles of esp teachers expected by two cohorts of stakeholders (managerial and operational level) at ou. this acknowledged the importance of teachers’ competencies shifting from one role to another depending on the goals that both teachers asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 162-172 171 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group want to achieve and the managerial level expected them to do. esp is seen as fulfilling the goal orientations of being competitive in the job markets, being able to participate in overseas programs and being able to read english books and journals since english is a global and international language. 7. implications many graduates from the education department at ou were motivated to pursue careers as english for specific purposes (esp) instructors at the lc, ou. these esp teacher candidates held the belief that teaching english at the college level did not differ considerably from teaching english at the high school level. furthermore, they neglected to recognize the differentiation between esp (english for specific purposes) and general english and disregarded the possible consequences of these separate concepts on their instructional approaches. the lack of provision of fundamental teaching skills worsens this challenge leading to instances where teaching staff are unable to effectively identify the root reasons of the challenges. teachers are more likely to successfully incorporate new strategies into their teaching if they receive support directly in the classroom. when designing a professional development program, it is important to carefully assess the program's intensity and duration. professional development needs should be from two perspectives: (a) addressing the requirements of the target language which involve improving and maintaining teachers' english proficiency and (b) addressing the requirements of pedagogy which involve developing knowledge and skills for language instruction. references basturkmen, h. 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(2000). research methods in education: an introduction (7th ed.). boston, massachusset: ally & bacon. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315851686 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2020.10.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0801.10 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-009-0143-0 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.10.007 https://doi.org/10.61871/mj.v45n1-1 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2005.08.003 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.14007 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31646-3_26 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31646-3_26 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70214-8_9 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2010.00980.x https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59533-3_11-1 412 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 412-420, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.412.420 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the industrial attachment programme history, benefits, challenges and its adoption in zimbabwe: a review j. dondofema1 j. mwenje2 l. musemwa3 ( corresponding author) 1shamva agricultural college, shamva, bindura, zimbabwe. 2department of the graduate school for business administration, bindura university of science education, bindura, zimbabwe. 3department of agricultural economics, education and extension, bindura university of science education, bindura, zimbabwe. abstract tertiary education institutions are seen to be increasingly incorporating industrial attachment as a training methodology. this is happening with the private and public sectors. it is of the view that during the industrial attachment phase, the student is accorded an opportunity to marry theory learnt in the classroom with the real field of work. among other training methodologies, industrial attachment was found to be key with respect to professional etiquette doing extremely well in combination with other methodologies. this review paper covers history of industrial attachment, benefits derived from the industrial attachment programme (iap) by the students, tertiary education institutions, host organizations and the industry at large. the paper also highlights challenges faced by key players in the circle of the iap. the review will assist in improving the way institutions of higher learning, government departments and host organizations conduct the programme to enhance the multiplier positive effects and minimize the costs of the iap. keywords: benefits, challenges, host organisation, industrial attachment, students, tertiary education, training methodology. citation | j. dondofema; j. mwenje; l. musemwa (2020). the industrial attachment programme history, benefits, challenges and its adoption in zimbabwe: a review. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 412-420. history: received: 2 april 2020 revised: 6 may 2020 accepted: 11 june 2020 published: 17 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 413 2. history of the industrial attachment programme (iap) ...................................................................................................... 413 3. the adoption of the industrial attachment programme by institutions of higher learning in zimbabwe ............ 415 4. benefits derived from industrial attachment programme .................................................................................................. 416 5. challenges faced by stake holders during industrial attachment programme .............................................................. 418 6. strategies for improving the industrial attachment programme ....................................................................................... 418 7. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 419 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 419 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.412.420&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1741 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7800 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3389-4878 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4929-9405 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1741 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7800 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3389-4878 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4929-9405 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1741 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7800 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3389-4878 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4929-9405 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1741 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7800 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3389-4878 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4929-9405 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1741 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1811-7800 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3389-4878 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4929-9405 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 412-420 413 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the paper brings forth history, development and adoption of the industrial attachment programme emphasizing the zimbabwean context. challenges and benefits attached to the industrial attachment programme are broadened from the students to tertiary education institutions, host organisations and employers. strategies to improve the industrial attachment programme are also a major contribution to the literature from this paper. 1. introduction tertiary education institutions focus to a larger extend on professional career development. these include universities, polytechnics, teachers’ colleges, vocational training centers and agricultural colleges to mention some. the institutions can be either government (public) or privately owned. the institutions focus mainly on professional training using various methodologies for effective training (mukabeta & taruvinga, 2001). according to edziwa and chivheya (2015) there are numerous methods and materials with effective training techniques available to help prepare and equip students or employees to acquire relevant and appropriate skills for better performance (eakins, 2005). indeed, with the various choices at the trainer’s disposal, it calls for close assessment to determine which methods to use and when to use them for effective and meaningful training (enfield, 2001; kolb, 1984). with an array of training methodologies available in higher and tertiary education institutions, the industrial attachment programme (iap) is gaining momentum over others and is becoming an inevitable training methodology as edziwa and chivheya (2015); mukabeta and taruvinga (2001) denote. whalley (1986) indicates that the system of industrial attachment in form of apprenticeship was first developed in the later middle ages and came to be supervised by craft guilds and town governments where a master craftsman was entitled to employ young people as cheap labour in exchange for accommodation, food, and formal training in. france, germany, india, pakistan, united kingdom and united states are some of the countries which developed on job training as from the 9th to the 14th century, with guilds structured around apprentices, journeymen and master craftsmen till 1791, when the guilds were suppressed. nowadays most organisations attach students for an allowance and at times regard them as cheap labour as highlighted by edziwa and chivheya (2015). most trainees were males, however, female trainees are coming up responding to women empowerment programmes across the globe. female trainees were found in crafts such as seamstress tailor, cordwainer, baker and stationer as indicated by whalley (1986). today, the iap has spread to various sectors of the economy which include education, defense, agriculture, mining and healthy. barbeau and stull (1990) indicate that industrial attachment has been considered a very important component in the learning system particularly for tertiary and higher education institutions. it relates to those pursuing various careers where there is much concern on the practical experience the students gain on the job market during the industrial attachment. this augments the theory students learn in the classroom. in this respect, strong linkages are compelled amongst the training institutions, organisations which place students on attachment (host organisations) and job market (nziramasanga commission, 1999). attachment of students during part of their training is a training methodology whose philosophical basis revolves around experiential learning theory. the underlying understanding or theory is that experience plays a crucial role in the learning process (kolb, boyatzis, & mainemelis, 1999). experiential learning is defined as the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. students gain experience to the extent that the period is considered for experience when they look for employment. industrial attachment describes the form of learning whereby students have a chance to acquire and apply knowledge, skills and feelings in an immediate and relevant setting through the engagement of the body and mind through activity, reflection and application which tends to provide depth and meaning to a learning/training system. in zimbabwe, for instance cadres who went through the industrial attachment programme and were absorbed in various government departments which include agricultural education and farmer training, department of research and specialist services (dr&ss), agricultural technical and extension services (agritex), veterinary services, livestock production (lpd) and irrigation services were underperforming as stated in the department of agricultural education and farmer training annual report of 2012. given these opposing views pertaining to ways in which the iap is being conducted across sectors, there is need for a comprehensive review of literature on the history, how the programme is being implemented in various sectors and challenges being encountered during implementation so as to formulate policies and strategies for improving the programme performance and surpass its set intended objectives. 2. history of the industrial attachment programme (iap) the system of on job training was first developed in the late middle ages and came to be supervised by craft guilds and town governments. whalley (1986) indicate that industrial attachment started long back worldwide in form of apprenticeship where training took place under skilled mentorship. this did not spare any continent across the globe that is africa, america (north and south), asia, australia and europe. bert, kaplan, and soly (2007) consider industrial attachment as a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). a master craftsman was entitled to employ young people as an inexpensive form of labour in exchange of food, lodging and formal training in the craft. however this became controversial in other countries like britain where it conflicted with the labour laws where the apprentices or on the job trainees were treated as cheap labour leading to a review and naming of the programme to on job skills training, attachment and internship covering different periods depending on the career being pursued and the labour market. all these practices and experiences spell a background to on job training which was developed to the scenario under study. it developed to date where industries embark on fulltime apprenticeship and the attachment of students for a period of one year and bellow marrying theory to practice. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 412-420 414 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group france, germany, india, pakistan, united kingdom and united states are some of the countries which developed on job training as from the 9th to the 14th century, with guilds structured around apprentices, journeymen and master craftsmen. it continued in this way till 1791, when the guilds were suppressed. indeed, countries like france and germany have succeeded in turning around their economy through a well-designed vocational/technical education system called the “dual system.” this system created strong linkages between the industry and the training fraternity, (andoh, boadi, & minlah, 2016). the success stories of asian and pacific countries are attributed to the drastic educational reforms which included the industrial attachment. whalley (1986) indicates that the french government pledged to further develop attachment as a path to success at school and to employment. in 2005, 80% of young french people who had completed an on job training secured employment. this shows that on job training prepares students for the job market however it has to be done in a way that addresses the needs of the job market so that the trainees become relevant and competent. switzerland has the on the job training similar to germany and austria. the educational system was dual with mandatory practical courses with on job training programme ranging from 6 months to 4 years. in india, the on job training act was enacted in 1961 and implemented effectively in 1962. it regulates the programme of training of apprentices in the industry to conform to the syllabi and period of training as laid down by the central apprenticeship council and to utilize fully the facilities available in industry. this enhanced imparting practical training to meet the requirements of skilled manpower for the industry (ryan & unwin, 2001; vickerstaff, 2003). initially the act envisaged training of trade apprentices which was amended in 1973 to include training of graduate and diploma engineers as "graduate" & "technician" apprentices. the act was further amended in 1986 to bring within its purview the training of the 10+2 vocational stream as "technician (vocational)" apprentices. in pakistan, the on job training is implemented under a national apprenticeship ordinance 1962 and apprenticeship rules 1966. it regulates the on job training programs in industry and a tvet institute for theoretical instructions. the entire cost of training was borne by industry including wages to apprentices, however this had reduced the number of trainees accommodated by the industry. the provincial governments through technical education & vocational training enforced the implementation of apprenticeship to avoid it coming to halt due to challenges experienced versus the gains. the training period varied for different trades ranging from 1 4 years. as of 2015, more than 30,000 apprentices were being trained in 2,751 industries in 276 trades across pakistan. this figure constituted less than 10% of institution based vocational training that is more than 350 thousands annually (vickerstaff, 2003). recently, the government of pakistan through national vocational & technical training commission (navttc) has initiated to reform the existing system of the internship programme. this was done through the inclusion of services, agriculture and mining sector, cost sharing by industry and government, regulating and formalizing informal apprenticeships and mainstream apprenticeship qualifications with national vocational qualifications framework (pakistan nvqf). increased participation of females, training cost reimbursement (for those industries training more number of apprentices than the required), assessment and certification of apprentices jointly by industry chamber of commerce & industry government apprenticeship management committee (having representation of 40% employers, 20% workers and 40% government officials) were other reforms (ryan & unwin, 2001). in the united states, apprenticeship programmes were regulated by the smith hughes act, the national industrial recovery act and national apprenticeship act, also known as the "fitzgerald act." the number of american apprentices had increased from 375,000 in 2014 to 500,000 in 2016, while the federal government intended 750,000 by 2019, particularly by expanding the apprenticeship model to include the white collar jobs such as information technology. the reforms of school to work education sought to link academic education to careers. some programmes include job shadowing, where the student watched a real worker for a short period, or actually spending significant time at a job at no or reduced pay that would otherwise be spent in academic classes or working at a local business. some legislators raised the issue of child labor laws for unpaid labor or jobs with hazards. all these practices are a form of attachment to equip trainees with the job competences. it is in view of the importance attached to this training methodology that triggers the researcher to assess the same practice for agricultural colleges in zimbabwe. universities in america use on job training schemes in their production of scholars while other universities, vocational training centers, polytechnics, teachers’ colleges and agricultural colleges in most continents have reverted to the modern concept of internship that is the industrial attachment programme (iap). in singapore, it was adopted in 1983 at the nanyang technological university (ntu) in the engineering section. students were to apply the acquired professional knowledge and skills in actual planning, design, production, operation/ construction and maintenance (hwang & thim, 1995). in australian apprenticeships/ on job training covers all industry sectors and are used to achieve both 'entry-level' and career 'upskilling' objectives. there were 470,000 australian apprentices in-training as at 31 march 2012, an increase of 2.4% from the previous year. an average yearly increase of 2.4% of the on job trainees showed the appropriateness of the methodology in preparing trainees for the job market benefiting the training institutions, host organisations, students and the industry at large. the australian government used australian apprenticeships centers to administer and facilitate australian apprenticeships so that funding can be disseminated to eligible businesses and apprentices and trainees and to support the whole process as it underpins the future skills of australian industry (bert et al., 2007). this practice was also done in other counties like france, canada, ghana, japan, germany, south and north korea to mention some, where organisations taking students for attachment got some payment and tax relief from the government promoting on job training. in the czech republic, on the job trainees spend about 30-60% of their time in companies and the rest in formal education. depending on the profession, they may work for two to three days a week in the company and then spend two or three days at a vocational school. in canada, each province has its own apprenticeship program. the programme tends to be formalized for craft trades and technician level qualifications. in france, apprenticeships also developed between the 9th and 13th centuries, with guilds structured around apprentices, journeymen and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/guild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/journeyman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/job_shadowing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scholar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/provinces_and_territories_of_canada asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 412-420 415 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group master craftsmen till 1791, when the guilds were suppressed (ryan & unwin, 2001). the first laws regarding on job training were passed in 1851. from 1919, young people had to take 150 hours of theory and general lessons in their subject a year. this minimum training time rose to 360 hours a year in 1961, then 400 in 1986.the first training centers for on job training appeared in 1961, and in 1971 on job training/apprenticeships were legally made part of professional training. the french government pledged to further develop on job training as a path to success at school and to employment, based on its success in 2005 where 80% of young french people who had completed the on job training secured employment. the plan aimed to raise the number of apprentices from 365,000 in 2005 to 500,000 by 2009. to achieve this aim, the government is, for example, granting tax relief for companies when they take on apprentices/ on job trainees. since 1925 a tax has been levied to pay for internships. in germany, there were 342 recognized trades where an apprenticeship can be completed. they include for example doctor's assistant, banker, dispensing optician, plumber or oven builder. the dual system meant that apprentices spend about 50-70% of their time in companies and the rest in formal education. in 2001, two thirds of young people aged under 22 began an apprenticeship, and 78% of them completed, meaning that approximately 51% of all young people under 22 had completed an apprenticeship. to employ and to educate apprentices requires a specific license. "education of the educators" license needs to be acquired through training at the chamber of industry and commerce. this could be of value to the zimbabwean system with licensed host organisations given an incentive. in the united kingdom, on job training had a long tradition dating back to around the 12th century and flourishing by the 14th century. in the 16th century the payment of a "premium" to the master was not common, but such fees became usual in the 17th century, though they varied greatly from trade to trade. the payment of a oneoff fee could be very difficult for some parents and in the 18th century payment by instalment became frequent, this actually being required by law in 1768. in theory no wage had to be paid to an apprentice since the technical training was provided in return for the labour given. however, it was usual to pay small sums to apprentices, sometimes with which to buy new clothes. by the 18th century regular payments, at least in the last two or three years of the apprentice's term, became usual and those who lived apart from their masters were frequently paid a regular wage. this was sometimes called the "half-pay" system or "colting", payments being made weekly or monthly to the apprentice or to his/her parents. in ghana, kenya, nigeria and botswana, the same concept was also adopted in efforts to improve the quality of the labour market. the designed an industrial attachment programme aimed at creating opportunities for industrial attachment to continuing students from different institutions of higher learning tailored in a way to improve labour market relevance and exposure. andoh et al. (2016) indicate that in 1992 the government of ghana enacted the polytechnic law which empowered the polytechnic to run higher national diploma programmes to train career or work oriented middle level manpower of higher caliber for employment and industry to enhance national growth. the history of industrial attachment indicated that it was practiced in different forms worldwide as the researcher sampled across the continents. it was noted with great concern that the concept of the industrial attachment started long back and wasn’t abolished by any country once started, however reforms were made for improvements for suitability and sustainability. acts were put in place to govern and encourage industries to take students for industrial attachment creating stronger linkages between the training institutions and the industry. zimbabwe cannot be spared from this effect since it has also adopted the concept. agriculture hinges the zimbabwean economy however the colleges which train the human resource are left out in some of the reforms such as the zimdef and mechanisation. the students are being attached to unlicensed host organisations. 3. the adoption of the industrial attachment programme by institutions of higher learning in zimbabwe in zimbabwe, the concept of industrial attachment was also adopted in institutions of higher learning and led to the formation of national manpower advisory council (namaco) and manpower development fund (zimdef) in 1984 (section 23 of manpower planning and development act 1984 now revised manpower planning and development act chapter 28:02 of 1996). under this act, zimdef was mandated to pay students studying in polytechnics an allowance when they are on work related learning. this followed consideration of industrial attachment as a pivotal aspect in the curriculum of higher and tertiary education. it was practiced in teachers’ colleges as teaching practice (tp) where students used to go for attachment in the second year of training in different schools being mentored by qualified teachers with their lecturers coming for assessment within specified boundaries. with the changes taking place, attachment now has five terms and four terms at the college indicating more value attached to the attachment programme. first two terms at college, followed by five terms on attachment and the last two terms at college. during this period, students earn an allowance from the government of zimbabwe through the salary service bureau (ssb). polytechnics had their students attached to organizations in practice of the area under study for one year having allowances from zimdef and organizations they were attached to. universities also had their students most of them in the third year of their degree programmes going for attachment to farms and various organizations depending on the faculty with allowances being paid by the organization to which the student is attached. sammuel (2012) indicates the increasing need for industrial attachment where the university of zimbabwe introduced it for the faculty of commerce in 2002 to augment the theoretical background of students. bindura university of science education (buse) among other universities had also adopted it with a clearly laid down policy. zimbabwe republic police (zrp), zimbabwe national army (zna) and nursing had been seen to practice industrial attachment in different forms and at different levels. these were just some among various training institutions which practice industrial attachment. agricultural colleges which were a focus of this study operate under the ministry of lands, agriculture water and rural resettlement, the then ministry of agriculture, mechanisation and irrigation development (mamid) in the department of agricultural education and farmer training (daeft) formed in 2004. these also adopted asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 412-420 416 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the concept of industrial attachment as an appropriate method of training students job related skills. edziwa and chivheya (2015) indicate that this is done in line with the in-thing methodology of training advocated for in zimbabwe’s higher education nowadays (nziramasanga commission, 1999). students in these colleges go for attachment in their second year of the diploma programme for 9 to 12 months. this is in pursuit of the idea mooted by edziwa and chivheya (2015) indicating that students should be initiated in both practical training and reflections grounded in real experiences rather than remaining conceptual. students are attached in government departments, individual farms, nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and private companies with agro-based enterprises. this shows that industrial attachment cannot be left out but what is now critical is the assessment of how it is run for it to remain relevant and efficient through formulation and enactment of sustainable reforms. 4. benefits derived from industrial attachment programme the increasing reforms and adoption of the industrial attachment programme world over becomes a clear indication of benefits experienced by the training institutions, students, host organisations and the industry at large. it therefore becomes an inevitable practice by different countries for the creation of a sustainable human resource to increase industrial productivity. 4.1. benefits to students attachments creates a platform for students to assimilate theory into practice. gill and lashine (2003) rightfully put it across by pointing out that the whole essence of learning is to put into practice the learned theories. matamande, taderera, nyikahadzoyi, and mandimika (2012) put across the main aim of the industrial attachment programme as for students to put into practice theories that would have been learnt during the first years at the college or university and are expected to create useful linkages with captains of industry having a general feel of the industry. students get an opportunity to gain industrial experience and workplace skill sets. williams, sternberg, rashotte, and wagner (1993) indicate an average of 80% job prospect as a benefit to students who went through the industrial attachment programme. this is quite significant and attractive on the part of the students to partake the programme with the level of seriousness it deserves. whalley (1986) indicates that the french government pledged to further develop attachment as a path to success at school and to employment, based on its success. in 2005, 80% of young french people who had completed an on job training got employment. this is a significant benefit whereby students and institutions of higher learning will be motivated in taking up the iap. industrial attachment creates opportunities for student exposure to the practical world (matamande et al., 2012; williams et al., 1993). edziwa and chivheya (2015) also supported the idea by indicating that industrial attachment exposes students to the real world of work where students put into practice the theory and technical skills learnt in the lecture room. this in turn inculcates a positive attitude towards work in the students to an average of 70% as purported by williams (2008). students will become self-starters by going through the working environment thereby raising employment opportunities for themselves in the current dwindling employment opportunities where employers have raised a stake by looking for highly competent performers (green, 1997). the arrangement for students to be in various organisations for attachment is an academic requirement for students to gain relevant work experience and necessary skills. this augments their theoretical skills as they share the wider array of experiences when they return to the learning institutions or join the job market. king (1994) added by indicating more critical benefits in the development of self-confidence, time management, verbal and written communication and working on one’s own initiative. this was also supported by hughes and moore (1999) when they pointed out that industrial attachment experiences are beneficial to students since they enhance their theoretical training. the experience increases self-confidence and also provide an opportunity to link with professionals in their respective fields. watty (2005) realized that attachment period exposes students to various working relationships with their seniors and peer workers and in the process, they get to learn about the type of work that they are involved in and this is in line with king (1994) who says, the student uses the attachment to gauge whether he/she is prepared to work with the prospective employer. edziwa and chivheya (2015) indicate that this further enhances professional practice as the student would be better able to go out and contribute meaningfully in society and at the work place. the student directly encounters the phenomena studied as opposed to visualizing. this actually accords the learner room to construct knowledge, skills and values from direct experience. attachment enhances cross-training which allows students to experience and practice different work related skills. williams et al. (1993) indicates an average of 90% job guidance provided by the industrial attachment programme creating confidence in the students. the students develop confidence to join the industry being multiskilled and competent enough. this does not only enhances employee skills but also gives companies the benefit of having employees who can perform more jobs. cross-training also gives employees a better appreciation of what co-workers do and how their own jobs fit in with the work of others to achieve company goals. provision of attachments allow trainees to update their skills and knowledge in their trades, exposes them to new methods and materials, gives them a realistic and holistic impression of their trades and brings elements of realism into their training (cort, härkönen, & volmari, 2004). attachments are crucial in that they link training and the world of work especially in today’s world where scientific and technological advances are continuously changing. overally the industrial attachment programme assists the students in attaining a qualification which testifies their competencies in a specific field of work. an average of 88% trainees who went through the internship attained a qualification which also marks a great benefit to students since companies which are after qualitative production looks for such qualifications as prerequisite even for further interviewing. with such multi-benefits, students are motivated to take professional courses with an internship programme. 4. 2. benefits to tertiary education institutions institutions of higher learning also experience some gains as a result of the attachment programme. clark (1994) says that they get feedback from the industry to make their training relevant resulting in them training asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 412-420 417 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students acceptable to the industry. it is an opportunity for the job market to build confidence in the training institutions. andoh et al. (2016) indicate that more than 70% of tertiary education institutions with students going on attachment have built networks which assist them in reviewing their curriculum towards addressing the stake holder needs. this resulted in an average of 80% of their students absorbed in the job market. this created relevancy to the training institution attracting more students and host organizations for student attachment. the institutions will be complemented in areas they are weak that is bridging the gap between the produced graduates and what the industry needs thereby creating confidence and strong linkages for institutions to remain relevant (haupt, 2003). industrial attachment programmes are marketing forums for various tertiary education institutions, the more students do well, the more they market their institutions and ultimately the more reputable institutions become. the institutions eventually will be able to attract high caliber students (mohamad, 2006). industrial attachment also fosters close relationships between the industry and the training institutions. in this regard, institutions of higher learning raise their flags following addressing stakeholder needs in their curriculum. this is necessitated by the interactive mode of student training through the iap. 4.3. benefits to host organizations/ companies host organisations continued to take students for industrial attachment from various institutions of higher learning indicating that they are realizing some gains. edziwa and chivheya (2015) indicate that some organisations used students on attachment as cheap labour reducing their wage bill by 10 to 15% which is quite significant. this enabled the host organization to channel the savings to other areas for business sustenance and expansion. mgaya and mbekomize (2014) concur by indicating that most companies experience an average of 4% cost saving through engaging students for industrial attachment. in one way or the other, organisations spend less in training employees who went through the attachment programme and their staff members who worked with the students on attachment. by hosting students on attachment, the host organization identifies potential employees and retain them after completion thereby recruiting someone already familiar with the organization. ayarkwa, andinyira, and oseiasibey (2012) indicate that some organisations take in trainees to beef up their workforce and to be able to identify potential employees. friedman (1983) spell out an average of 4.2% benefit on social responsibility of the organization through taking students for attachment. organisations create good will thereby attracting more customers with the government reducing the levels of organisational tax hence increasing its profit. students on industrial attachment also assist current employees in increasing their skill level and knowledge base through research. organisations which attach students have been seen to gain new perspectives and technologies with the scope of the student’s programme and the students can also develop what is on the ground implementing what they have learnt. this was seen to benefit the organization with an average of 5% (mgaya & mbekomize, 2014). interns offered new ideas and perspectives in the workplace. students and fresh graduates tend to be more aware of current trends in technologies and this was an advantage to the host organization. friedman (1983) and barbeau and stull (1990) add by pointing out that if employers have prior knowledge of the student expectations of the organisations, they are better placed to assist the students for successful entry into the industry. there are aspects of every profession that cannot be learned in the classroom, but must be learned where the profession is being practiced thereby compelling students to seek for attachment. in zimbabwe, edziwa and chivheya (2015) indicate that it is most likely that smallholder farmers needed to tap as much knowledge from the students as possible improving their production levels by at least 10% in circumstances where all the other requirements for production are put at their disposal. friedman (1983) cited that the students were helpful, especially that they are enthusiastic about doing the work practically in a different environment other than a classroom becoming eager to learn the job and apply their skills. it was very common to find smallholder farms being manned by forepersons who do not have proper training in agriculture, as most owners may not have adequate financial resources to employ trained agriculturalists. therefore the attachment programme created an opportunity for about 55% of smallholder farmers to tap knowledge from these attachees. in this case, attachees were seen to work harder, sharing information with permanent employees, motivating workers and challenging them in terms of qualifications making them to work harder thereby improving productivity by an average of 10%. in such scenarios, there were high probabilities for such students to have gained less hence the need for close, thorough and complete assessment of the attachment places for suitability and assessment of the programme to balance the contribution by the respective stakeholders for a mutual benefit scenario. 4.4. benefits to employers. employers to some extend may fall in the same category with host organisations resulting in them sharing the benefits highlighted for host organisations. however not all employers take students for industrial attachment. through industrial attachment, edziwa and chivheya (2015) indicate that a wider spectrum of choice for competent labour is created on the market. this reduced cost of training with employees well equipped with the trends of technological development felt by the students during the industrial attachment programme. if employers have prior knowledge of the student expectations of the organisations, they are better placed to assist the students for successful entry into the industry. edziwa and chivheya (2015) indicate that this further enhances professional practice as the student was better able to go out and contribute meaningfully in society and the work place. it is realized that the stakeholders and participants in the industrial attachment programme benefit in one way or the other, however, assessment of the programme is seen to create more meaning and relevancy using the limited resources at the exposure of the students, training institutions and host organisations. internship reduces the shortage of labour and skills in the job market since 88% of the students who went through the iap are absorbed in the job market (andoh et al., 2016). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 412-420 418 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. challenges faced by stake holders during industrial attachment programme the industrial attachment programme with its benefits highlighted above, has also challenges which cannot be left out for effective assessment with respect to the area under study. key participants which include students, host organisations and training institutions are victims of these in their endeavor for effective training in addressing stakeholder needs with respect to a set curriculum. 5.1. students edziwa and chivheya (2015) highlighted that in some developing countries placement of trainees is becoming problematic. about 10% of the trainees ended up being attached to centres that do not match their expectations. some took long looking for attachment places being costly (matamande et al., 2012) and students ended up being attached to organisations which were under capacitated for the sake of it hence delayed commencement. in ghana, it was established that new owners of enterprises that used to offer on-the-job training for university students during vacation were no longer interested in the programme thereby reducing attachment places for the students. therefore there is need to capacitate and adopt models which enhance efficiency in the industrial attachment programme. in some cases, students end up doing menial jobs and never do the essentials of the job as indicated by dodge and mckeough (2003). employees took this opportunity and leave students taking over responsibilities while they went for personal business. student teachers are left to attend other students/pupils while in organisations they were left in charge of operations as managers. in such cases, the attachment programme will not meet the intended objectives yet it remained a considerable cost to the student, institution and the host organization. in some situations, students were under supervision of untrained personnel and some host organisations found cheap labour in these students (connor & shaw, 2008; edziwa & chivheya, 2015). students end up being victims of circumstances through inadequate training. such experiences call for the need to closely assess the industrial attachment programme. friedman (1983) indicated an average of 18% of the students on attachment being under the mentorship of unqualified and unskilled personnel leading to the students regarded as managers by the owners of the farms or organisations. this in turn created tension between the students and mentors who will be seen as core workers with mentors feeling belittled and threatened of their job positions. this results in students serving company interests not relevant to the training programme. early assessment is therefore being called for to address the situation before the student and the training institution waste valuable resources. the companies range from very small, sole proprieted to big corporations listed in the zimbabwe stock exchange. of late students have gone regionally to countries like south africa and zambia which was a cost to the student and this student may not be assessed by the college ( unstandardized assessment) (gill & lashine, 2003). it is most likely that farmers needed to tap as much knowledge, from the students, as possible. it was very common to find farms being manned by forepersons who do not have proper training in agriculture, as most owners may not have adequate financial resources to employ trained agriculturalists leaving students no room for growth and with poor remuneration. in such cases, the period for attachment was spent without learning as expected, in the end students getting scores which are not proportional to the level of skills acquisition as outlined in the programme. very few or no students will raise it as an issue since they just want time to pass at the expense of going through the intended adequate training. in the end, the students completed the course being half baked. 5.2. tertiary education institutions gill and lashine (2003) indicate that a number of students joined small companies which had little scope for graduate training. this created a mismatch between what institutions produce and what the industry required. haupt (2003) outlines that there is a gap of what the institutions of higher learning are producing and what the industry needs. as a result of this gap, industries will be selective of institutions in placement of students for the industrial attachment programme. due to standardized fee payment, training institutions went out of their way in meeting costs of visiting students for assessment throughout the country wherever they were attached regardless of the fees paid. andoh et al. (2016) indicated an average of 12% additional costs, thus tertiary education institutions going well above their budgets. some institutions had attachment fees gazzetted by the government without subsidies leading to incapacitation in the management of the industrial attachment programme. as the case with the agricultural colleges in zimbabwe, attachment fees were pegged without reference to guiding parameters ending up with more than 15% of the students not visited for assessment or having other areas being compromised to make the intended visits on attachment. 5.3. host organizations host organisations may not have adequate resources to host the students and clearly laid down policies for student attachment which led to more than 45% of the organisations loosing focus (andoh et al., 2016). some organisations don’t have the capacity to mentor students on attachment and were forced to go out of budget. (edziwa & chivheya, 2015). it was very common to find farms being manned by forepersons who do not have proper training in agriculture, as most owners may not have adequate financial resources to employ trained agriculturalists. in this regard, payment of allowances to students was difficult from the farm produce leading to viraments or borrowings to keep students motivated since they were used as cheap labour. tensions arose between the students and their supervisors in cases where the latter was not qualified enough to mentor the student. this resulted in compromised production levels and training standards. in cases where students were not given any allowance, theft cases were reported to be higher for students to earn a living. 6. strategies for improving the industrial attachment programme with the ever increasing levels in the adoption of the on job training programme, there is need to come up with strategies for improving the attachment programme. the strategies should include clearly laid down policies for the iap by the government, tertiary education institutions and host organisations, creation of strong and clear linkages among the institutions, students and host organisations. in addition, mentors should be trained and asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 412-420 419 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group competent enough to provide the mentorship services for meaningful training. cost reduction measures have to be in place with government paying allowances and reduce tax for organisations qualified for student attachment. monitoring and evaluation systems have to be in place for sustainability of the programme. meyer (2008) highlighted the need for a clear policy for the iap. the policy aspects may include student qualification, placement and assessment, roles of the tertiary education institution, host organization, responsible government departments and the student. the industrial attachment policy has to address the three drivers which are validity, equity and integrity. validity ensures that training, placement and assessment are valid and reliable, actually doing what is expected while equity ensures that students are treated fairly and equitably across the mode of instruction, institutions and host organisations with appropriate consideration for issues of culture, language and disability. this will standardize operations since the institutions and host organisations were located in different provinces with different cultures, languages and dialects with attachment places being open to a student from any college. in some cases, students from different institutions were attached at the same place. integrity will help in preventing and managing cheating across the participants where students may end up being scored what they don’t deserve. creation of strong linkages among students, institutions and host organisations is also viewed as a key strategy. meyer (2008) views lack of linkages resulting in individual approaches leading to lack of adequate funding, knowledge and basic resources for iap enhancement. creation of strong linkages will promote participation of students, institutions, host organisations and other stakeholders in a more meaningful and relevant manner. this helps to develop a sense of belonging for a common purpose in managing the iap for agricultural colleges in zimbabwe and globally. stephen and jan (2009) indicated the need for trained and competent mentors and assessors. training and assessment should be fit for a purpose. this should sample fairly the objectives and content of the course free from ambiguity having a clear and appropriate training, marking and assessing criteria fit for task and level of students. this calls for consistency where meyer (2008) indicated that the definition of consistency is consistent with that of reliability. that is giving accurate representation of each student performance and fairness by using methods which treat all the students the same so that they can meet the intended outcomes for the attachment programme. training and assessment by trained staff will allow identification of improvements needed and feedback to the system. mentors and assessors therefore need training and support in how to use assessment tools and mentoring strategies to promote meaningful student learning through industrial attachment. this will leave each part benefiting accordingly in the system, mentors receiving the respect they deserve commanded by their effectiveness in executing their mentorship role. costs attached to each programme have to be managed and minimized for sustainability (meyer, 2008). industrial attachment has direct and indirect costs met by the students, institutions and host organisations. cost reduction measures has to be implemented without compromising the quality of training. basic costs for iap cover training, transport, fuel, communication, accommodation and allowances. other countries such as germany, ghana and the united states of america crafted policies which encourage host organisations in taking more trainees for attachment through paying allowances for the students and reducing tax for participating companies. in this regard, training institutions, host organisations and students will be sensitized on the importance of the industrial attachment and this enhanced motivation to participate in the programme (andoh et al., 2016); (donkor, nsoh, & mitchual, 2009). other strategies for improving the iap include monitoring and evaluation systems by the government, tertiary education institutions and the host organisations. frequent supervision visits to students on attachment by the training institutions were indicated to improve the industrial attachment programme in many countries. this indicated that they are part and parcel in getting instant feedback (donkor et al., 2009). this will enhance sound decision making for transformational training through the iap, sourcing adequate funding and policy reviews for sustainability of the industrial attachment programme. adoption of the highlighted strategies suitable for zimbabwe and specifically for agricultural colleges will serve to enhance meaningful training addressing basic skills and knowledge acquisition in a sustainable manner. 7. conclusion industrial attachment remarkably exposes students to the work environment creating opportunities to market themselves and link with potential employers. various methodologies in training can be implemented in a blended way for best results out of the industrial attachment programme. it was also noted that there were benefits for students, institutions and host organisations derived from the programme. the iap has been seen to have challenges experienced by the students, tertiary education institutions and host organisations and these have to be addressed for its successful implementation. for effective and efficient management of the iap, strategies for improving the programme were also highlighted where the stakeholders have to come up with clear policies, adequate funding, trained mentors and assessors, monitoring and evaluation systems, timing and time frame for the iap. the iap was seen to be inevitable among the training methodologies in tertiary education institutions and cost reduction measures have to be sought and practiced for the programme to be sustainable. however, further studies on the role of host organisations and the level of objective accomplishment has to be done for stronger linkages and wholesome training and meaningful assessment. references andoh, o. e., boadi, e., & minlah, a. 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(1986). the social production of technical work: the case of british engineers. new york, united states of america: suny press. williams, w. m., sternberg, r. j., rashotte, c. a., & wagner, r. k. (1993). assessing the value of cooperative education. journal of cooperative education, 28(2), 32-55. williams, w. (2008). assessing the value of cooperative education. journal of cooperative education, 28(2), 32-55. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.experientiallearning.ucdavis.edu/why-el.shtml http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/131524.pdf http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/131524.pdf http://www.victoria.ac.nz/documents/policy/staff-policy/assessment-handbook.pdf 77 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 3, 77-84, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i3.4072 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sink or float: experiencing distance learning education through the lens of college students vivian grace l. kitongan1 joselito c. gutierrez2 ( corresponding author) 1,2saint louis university, baguio city, philippines. 1email: vglkitongan@slu.edu.ph tel: +639194357427 2email: jcgutierrez@slu.edu.ph tel: +639297414158 abstract at the onset of pandemic, schools offer online classes for those who have access to internet and correspondence-based learning (cbl) for those who have difficulties accessing internet signal. hence, this study delved into the learning experiences of college students who subscribed to the cbl modality. using phenomenology design, findings showed the difficulties and good experiences encountered in the cbl platform. difficulties referred as sinkers are learning environment difficulty, scaffolding shortage and mental struggles. good experiences referred as floaters are family bond support, mentor support, and dependent support. after two years of having this distance learning format, students still experience difficulties that pull them from achieving quality education. however, there are still good things out of these experiences which push them achieve their educational goals. this study hopes to contribute in advancing curriculum design, planning, and implementation of distance learning education, particularly those using solely modules in the philippine education setting. keywords: distance learning education, learning experiences, pandemic, covid-19, online-based learning modality, correspondence-based learning modality. citation | vivian grace l. kitongan; joselito c. gutierrez (2022). sink or float: experiencing distance learning education through the lens of college students. asian journal of education and training, 8(3): 77-84. history: received: 4 may 2022 revised: 21 june 2022 accepted: 7 july 2022 published: 27 july 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 78 2. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 79 3. findings and discussions ............................................................................................................................................................... 80 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 82 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 83 mailto:vglkitongan@slu.edu.ph mailto:jcgutierrez@slu.edu.ph https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i3.4072 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8024-0594 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0576-6393 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 77-84 78 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper contributes in advancing the delivery of correspondence-based learning (cbl) since most of the schools are offering either online or cbl learning modalities. the insights gained in this research can be a good source in improving the curriculum design, planning, and implementation in this time of changing learning delivery. 1. introduction 1.1. distance learning education from a historical perspective, distance education started with the invention of the printing press. after that, the postal service followed, which created a more systematic, planned approach to open, flexible, and distance education to develop (anderson & simpson, 2012). from there, education authorities made considerable innovations in distance education. during this period, schools offered distance education in various formats for various educational purposes. it had become common household words during the pandemic when all schools closed and started online and distance learning. this unprecedented change disrupted college students' life experiences in all facets of their college life (fruehwirth, biswas, & perreira, 2021). online and distance learning became increasingly common, and it became a hashtag "new normal" mode of study throughout the world. the philippines is not exempt. in 2019, the coronavirus disease (covid -19) crisis wedged into the whole social aspect of this country, including the education sector. the pandemic closed all schools at all levels. unesco, in its press release dated april 29, 2020, claimed that there are still 1.3 billion students affected due to schools being closed (unesco, 2020). but deped secretary leonor briones said that education must resume because education cannot wait (de guzman, 2021). the department recourse to use distance learning modalities involving technology and internet connection for learning continuity. this way, students can continue their education in remote setups through online/offline platforms, tv, and printed modules. they can access these tools in various ways, such as blended learning and homeschooling. in blended learning, any of these modalities are being used alternately to maximize benefits and achieve high-quality education as the department hopes so. in homeschooling, students learn with their parent/caregiver as their teacher (child hope phils, 2022). as a response to this move, the commission on higher education (2020) ordered universities to adopt distance learning education and prepare format designs applicable to their learners. transformation in instruction delivery and learning spaces were positioned leading to relocating to what is now a new normal in education. there are three (3) flexible learning systems that students can choose from online, offline, and blended. an online classroom for instruction delivery and management of academic programs is utilized online, alternating synchronous and asynchronous methods (usher & barak, 2020). the synchronous mode of learning comprises virtual interactions between the teacher and the students and student to student, while the asynchronous transpires without schedule restriction for all the learners (singh & thurman, 2019). off-line modality or modular distance learning (mdl) uses printed modules or digital media in storage devices. cds, dvds, usb storage, and computer-based applications can all be used to deliver e-learning materials, including offline e-books. anyone from the family and community can be a para-teacher in this modality (llego, 2020). thirdly, blended combines online and offline modes plus tv/radiobased instruction. the unique feature of distance learning is that it serves as a conduit for continuing education outside school, regardless of geography. it is flexible due to its varied course structure by which students can take courses fitting to their schedule and preferred location (viewsonic.com). in the philippines, approximately 2, 400 colleges and universities adopted modified forms of online learning to deliver learning activities to their students. online learning might be synchronous, real-time lectures and time-based outcomes assessments or asynchronous, delayed-time activities, like pre-recorded video lectures and time-independent reviews (oztok, zingaro, brett, & hewitt, 2013). however, private heis are left to make policies without implementing rules and regulations. unfortunately, these are not sufficient for the educational needs and severely affect students' learning quality. these responses are still rigged and full of loopholes (joaquin, biana, & dacela, 2020). learning experiences become limited, and students are shortchanged. 1.2. students' learning experiences learning experiences are any experience, whether planned or unplanned, in any number of settings and contexts that transforms learner insights, supports emotional growth, and builds knowledge, skills, and dispositions (larocco & fanelli, 2021). in other words, learning experiences are what bring development and skills acquisition to a learner. specifically, the learning experience is the interaction, program, course, or any other experience in which learning happens. essentially, the learning experience highlights the purpose of education rather than how or where it is delivered. a good learning experience focuses on being authentic, interactive, and collaborative to enhance engagement and improve knowledge retention. besides, it adds value to the learner, encourages social learning, promotes learner self-assessment, and is inquiry-based (anthony, n.d). it is common knowledge that students acquire much of their knowledge base in school. in the usual setting, students learn, retain, and apply information most effectively when they have received personalized education paths and when sufficient resources are available (brooks, 2021). brooks (2021) justified further that typically, in a classroom, students that need more attention or support are tended to, immediate feedback is provided, and lots of opportunities for student-instructor and student-student interactions. however, global disruption caused by coronavirus disease forced the education sector to shift to the distance learning method. thus, making the traditional teaching and learning methods no longer an option. consequently, even learning experiences shifted. several studies focused on students' experiences during this new normal learning system. their findings unanimously showed that there are difficulties students experience in this learning landscape (barrot, llenares, & del rosario, 2021; baticulon et al., 2021; cleofas, 2021; cleofas & rocha, 2021; rotas & cahapay, 2020). common difficulties from their findings range from lack of gadgets such as laptops or tablets, unstable connectivity, power interruptions, scarcity of learning resources, vague learning content, overloaded learning content, restricted teacher assistance, poor peer communication, financial problems, problematic learning environment, conflict with home asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 77-84 79 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group responsibilities, physical health compromises and mental health struggles, frustrations, psychological distress and anxiety (cleofas & rocha, 2021; rotas & cahapay, 2020). barrot et al. (2021) added unconducive home learning or the lack of it and poor or limited technological literacy and competency. baticulon et al. (2021) categorized these into five, namely, technical, individual, domestic, institutional, and community barriers. similarly, these findings are echoed in the large-scale study conducted by yan et al. (2021) in all k-12 schools in china's guangdong province. one unique conclusion they mentioned that is not visible in the others is student disengagement. they explained that a lack of visual and instructor presence could reduce students' attention, recall of information, and satisfaction in online learning. selvanathan, hussin, and azazi (2020) also pointed out that these difficulties are also real for disabled students. they are considered vulnerable; whose ordeals are higher to a certain extent. they are also the population that suffers disparity and drops out the most. another study by brown, hughes, keppell, hard, and smith (2015) uncovered a contributing factor to poor retention, progression, and completion. their analysis reveals a significant disengagement risk period for first-time distance learners towards the latter part of their first semester, just before the final assignment was due. there was a period when even the highly motivated students began to question their ability to complete their program. this feeling is familiar to passive students, who had lost morale, procrastinated, and allowed their progress to stagnate following disappointment in earlier assignments. secondly, a barrier to completing the program is the lone wolf experience. this experience is about the ill-informed assumption that distance learning is to be approached as literally as that – by distance and devoid of interaction. these learning experiences are compelling drives to disengage and discontinue the program, which students in an offline or modular mode more highly experience. with these number of studies that gave us the narratives of the challenges learners experienced in the sudden shift to the new learning platform, we can say that there are many things to address for its improvement and more effective responses to implement. 1.3. research gap despite efforts to make education accessible for all, many difficulties are still confronting filipino university students in the practice of distance education. these studies significantly reported reflections, lessons learned, and suggestions on navigating education in this time of uncertainty. also, most of the studies reported on students' experiences enrolled in online and hybrid. those students who opted for modular modality were not highlighted. the goal in mind is to help authorities develop better responses to education. if this inquiry is addressed, lessons can be drawn and may eventually open windows for relevant actions. as a result, this study aimed to reveal learning experiences by college students under modular learning mode in the wake of the covid 19 crisis. specifically, it sought answers to the following questions, to with: 1) how do you view distance learning? 2) what are your challenging experiences in your distance learning education? 3) what about your most inspiring experiences during distance learning education? 1.4. significance of the study as the widespread use of distance learning is here to stay awhile, and perhaps with some additional impetus from experiences with the unabetted covid-19 pandemic, the implications of this study will contribute to the enhancement of learning experiences that teachers extend to their students. dayaan (2021) in his article, said that in this period of hit and miss, as the philippines ventures into a new mode of learning, there are lots of factors that our education system is not prepared for. major concerns are the policies and guidelines, innovative educational framework, teacher capacity, learner readiness, and efficiency of the new learning environment. the best way to move forward is to step back and design strategies and learning innovations grounded on a deeper understanding of distance education through reliable sources (commission on higher education, 2020). what could be the best reliable source if not the product of research? also, as mentioned earlier, there were no clear guidelines set by ched concerning implementing distance learning. this study would help craft policies and procedures for the performance of distance learning strategies, especially in modular-based education. 2. methodology 2.1. research design this study utilized the qualitative method and phenomenology as a research design. creswell (2013) noted that qualitative research is typically used in investigating an area of interest where not much has been known about a phenomenon. the primary purpose is to reduce one's lived experiences into a description of the universal essence (creswell, hanson, clark, & morales, 2007). as this study adapted the descriptive approach, gummesson (1991) explained that descriptive research describes the fundamental characteristics of a phenomenon at a given period. thus, this design is suited to this study as it purports to characterize the difficulties and dynamics of distance learning for university students during the covid-19 period. 2.2. study participants this study involved second-year students currently enrolled at saint louis university. to draw meaningful "meat" to the inquiry, these students are already in their 2nd year of experiencing the same learning modality they have substantive exposure to. also, they are the ones who have just graduated from senior high school with a faceto-face learning modality and came to college with a sudden change of learning setup. they will be, no doubt, in the position to provide the needed information sought in this study. although patton (2002) said, "there are no rules for sample size in qualitative inquiry, and sample size depends on what you want to know; the purpose of the inquiry; what is at stake; what will be useful; what will have credibility; and what can be done with available time and resources," this study aimed for the maximum number of phenomenology subjects who are utilizing the modular/courier based learning (cbl) modality. out of 36 cbl students currently enrolled in the fit oa course for the academic year second semester 2021-2022 batch 2, only nine (9) responded to the emailed letter. these nine (9) subjects replied to follow-up emailed messages to clarify their responses. all the rest that could not provide clarifications of their answers or did not respond for follow-ups were excluded. they are composed of 7 females and asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 77-84 80 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2 males whose age ranges from 20-to 21. all the respondents were informed of the study's intent and were assured of their anonymity and privacy. 2.3. data collection procedure to gather data, letters of the request were sent to the target subjects through email to seek for their consent to participate in this study. subjects were assured of their anonymity and confidentiality and had the right to withdraw anytime during the interview. the researcher assured further that their participation would not affect their grade. a summary of the interview questions was sent to them. after getting the subject's consent, they were asked to choose how the interview be conducted from email correspondence, chat, mobile phone call, or zoom. all nine (9) participants chose email correspondence. each of the subjects was assigned a number as a pseudonym. an aide memoir was prepared that served as a guide and probed responses significant to the inquiry. specifically, critical questions asked include 1) how would you describe distance learning? 2) what were your most challenging experiences during your almost two years of distance learning? 3) what are your inspiring experiences during this learning period? 2.4. data analysis procedure the data gathered were read, reread, and analyzed. word, phrases, and sentences were compiled with the thoughts that go together. a repertory grid was used to draw clusters of themes. warm and cold analyses were applied to condense the meaning of the phenomenon being investigated (de guzman & tan, 2007). as part of the checking procedure and validation, the data, categories, and interpretations were again presented to the participants (de guzman & tan, 2007). 2.5. ethical considerations the participants consented to the study and were ensured of the confidentiality of any information they relayed. 3. findings and discussions extracted through warm and cool analyses are two interesting themes that students of the cbl modality experienced. from their shared day-to-day routine of going through their academic obligations, they came up with 2-poles of experiences: 1) their sinkers and 2) their floaters. the study fostered a simulacrum that represents the students' academic life in this learning setup. figure 1. illustrates the buoy of cbl experiences showing the floaters and sinkers. the simulacrum is arranged so that the themes that stemmed from their difficulties and memorable experiences are encapsulated. their 2-poled experiences are best described as sinkers and floaters. the sinkers are the most common difficulties in their learning experience and are subdivided further into two according to the source external and internal. external sinkers are about their a) learning environment difficulty, and b) academic scaffolding shortage, whereas internal sinker is their mental struggles. on the other hand, floaters are their places of relief and the good things that ever happened to them during this time. they named three as the memorable experiences that helped them float: a) family bond support, b) mentor support, and c) dependent support. 3.1. sinkers: what weighs us down the respondents unanimously agreed that distance learning education (dle) using the correspondence-based learning (cbl) modality is difficult. the difficulties are categorized into two: external sinkers and internal sinkers. 3.2. external sinkers floaters: family bond support mental support dependent support sinkers: external sinkers: internal sinkers: learning environment difficulty scaffolding shortage mental struggles asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 77-84 81 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group respondents gave two (2) major causes of their learning difficulties. these are the weights that pull them to hit rock bottom so to speak. their most significant challenges were brought about by the learning environment difficulty at home and insufficient scaffolding or support for learning. “i can't focus…so many distractions at home, and household chores” (girl-1). “toxic environment…so much noise” (girl-2). “attending to responsibility as a student and responsibility as the eldest daughter” (girl-3). “when we are required to video ourselves for a task, it is not easy to find a spot in our house where there is no noise, and i won't easily get distracted.” (guy-2). “the most challenging experience is the learning environment…not every household understands the demands of distance learning. it is also harder to concentrate since the family problems are mixed with academic struggles. there is also no clear separation between when a student is a child and when a child is a student. “(girl-4). these are the different statements, but the respondents expressed the same tune regarding the difficulty of having a conducive learning environment. one of the male respondents articulated it clearly when he said, "the most challenging for me is finding a clear distinction between home and school because we are cut off from having a boundary of what is work and school." (guy-1). the learning environment comprises people, teaching materials, technical tools, learning resources; curriculum, training, instruction; and physical environment/learning space (balog, 2018). learning space is highly influential in learners' knowledge and skills acquisition. the learner's ability to retain information, apply solutions to analytical problems, and innovative new ideas are associated with the surrounding where learning takes place, balog (2018) further claimed. on the contrary, students may perform poorly if the learning space is not hassle-free. hence, the learning space condition contributes significantly to academic achievement. it also echoes what barrot et al. (2021) uncovered, where the learning environment at home was the most significant challenge among students using online learning. the lament of these students about their need for a conducive learning environment is palpable. the second cause of their challenge is scaffolding shortage. according to the respondents, having only a module to study is not enough to have quality learning. “i have trouble having in-depth understanding….” (girl-7). “difficulty understanding the lesson and not receiving clear instructions.” (girl-5). “it feels like i'm not learning because i'm not sure if i learned from the written discussion.” (girl-6). “it is difficult not having reference resources…” (guy -2). “reference resources are one of the most challenging during distance learning education. most of the professors do not share other references in the module. there is no way for me to read further about the lesson.” (guy-1). scaffolding is used in construction to support workers in doing their work. scaffolds are temporary supports set up to assist work crews and materials in constructing, maintaining, or repairing structures. scaffolding in instruction is temporary support teachers provide to their students to accomplish a task or acquire a skill or concept. as the student reaches the learning, the scaffolds are gradually taken down. scaffolding helps students become independent and self-regulating learners and problem solvers (joshi, 2018). in online learning, scaffolding is well provided through the learning management system and varied learning platforms and resources. but the cbl students are deprived of this access. one limitation of cbl students is the lack of or limited internet access, thus, inadequate technological support. that is the main reason they opted for the cbl modality. consequently, this modality offers restricted scaffolding as well. the shift from the traditional teachercentered methods to student-centered methods brought a drastic collapse in student readiness. they have to rely solely upon themselves to find supports and references to substantiate their learning. it could also be a chance to develop their learning autonomy. however, they were not prepared for it. there was no gradual process of change, which made others unable to cope and aggravated their learning environment. when asked why not contact their instructors, they said they were unsure if they were allowed to do that. they are shy to attempt as one of the respondents expressed "wag na…baka mapahiya ako…(i'd rather not, i might be put to shame). there is hesitation to contact their instructors through any communication platforms such as email, mobile number, or messenger whenever they have an internet connection. a study conducted at the university of california, merced (donham, barron, & alkhouri, 2022) identified supports and barriers that affected both instructors and students they experienced during the emergency remote teaching. the students who participated in the study determined that 1) tools and support for class content; 2) mental/emotional support, and 3) preexisting support were the most challenging in their learning. this proves that scaffolding comes not only in pedagogical content but also in other aspects, such as the emotional and mental aspects of the students. instructional scaffolding is not just a teacher's responsibility to have effective learning. the community where the students live should also be equipped with learning resources. the school does not have the sole responsibility and obligation to provide all the learning needs and resources of the students. the community is also concerned with the welfare of its constituents. interest includes health care, peace and order, and educational support. an integral part of community welfare is providing a conducive learning environment and academic support. the external sinkers of these distance learners are learning environment difficulty and scaffolding shortage, which drown them in their achievement of quality education. sufficient scaffolding contributes to a conducive learning space. these can be achieved when school and community work hand in hand to uphold student welfare. 3.3. internal sinkers aside from the challenges brought about by external factors, distance learning students suffer from internal factors categorized in one theme, which is mental struggles. according to them, mental struggles make it difficult to cope with the academic requirements. stress, overwhelmed feeling due to too many requirements, loss of focus, poor retention, poor understanding, pressure from overload lessons/activities, and a sense of dread are identified by the respondents as their causes of mental struggles. although stress is a result or consequence, they explained that knowledge alone that there are requirements and asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 77-84 82 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group readings to do, even without opening the modules, triggers on-set of mental stress. too many requirements from different subjects/courses give an overwhelming feeling, especially on the days approaching the end of the semester. respondent guy 2 explained that "due to lack of effective time management, many multiple requirements to submit on the same day makes me jittery, and i feel flooded." the respondent was asked why he rushed the requirements when it’s near the final submission for further clarification. he said, "the requirements are difficult and time-consuming.” another respondent said that she struggled " finding the motivation to get started on the course work…internal distractions and technical issues distract me” (girl 4). self-motivation is not sufficient for them to do their academic responsibilities. the learning setup is not what they are used to. girl 2 expressed in her own words, "it is hard to cope up as we are accustomed to face-to-face." there is also the feeling of dread if what they are doing is right, what they understand is correct, or if what they are showing is on point in their video demonstration. immediate feedback from instructors is not easily obtained. the need for confirmation even from their classmates is also difficult to gain. most of them do not know each other. they don't even know who their classmates are. feedback is also a form of scaffolding, but the lack of it gave them this dread. özüdoğru (2021) uncovered in his research of college students that the problems of distance learning by the students are inability to communicate with friends, inability to focus, is not accustomed to the system, lack of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, feeling the need to socialize and remaining passive. these problems are not so different from what the participants in this study have mentioned. similarly, idris et al. (2021) survey proved that the students experience mental health issues during distance learning. specifically, mental issues mentioned are stress, anxiety, loneliness, and depression. this affirms that students around the world have similar experiences. 3.4. floaters: what pulls us afloat it was enlightening to reveal that some of the respondents found good things during this trying time in academia. confronted with the multitude of home and academic tasks and responsibilities and the downsides of distance learning, the respondents noted good experiences that kept them going. these good things may be just a moment, a gesture, a sound, or a conviction, are strong forces to give them a "push" moving forward toward their educational goal. this "push" serves well in keeping them afloat in the turbid waters of their sinkers. family support. strengthened family bonds came as the most common experience by most respondents. compelled to stay at home, minimized mobility, and the fear of being infected by the virus caused the family members to hang out together. “it strengthened our family bond as we stayed at home most of the time…” (guy 2). while others have stressed family relationships and suffered the newly contracted vocabulary "cabin fever syndrome," which describes the feeling of being trapped, or sick of being locked up, many families are enjoying the presence of their members, or they have learned to cope with having each other at home. this could be due to having the situation for two years. as a part of a coping mechanism or resilience, family members were able to get used to the presence of each other. some research findings substantiate this result. evans et al. (2020) studied australian family experiences during covid-19, and the findings brought out a broad spectrum of responses. dominating the themes are messages around loss and challenge. however, some families reported positive experiences such as finding new hobbies and developing positive characteristics such as appreciation, gratitude, and tolerance. a similar study conducted by ongören (2021) examining family relationships showed a positive result. participants mostly gave upbeat assessments of relationships within the family during the pandemic, stating they were together, supported each other, and established positive communication. concluding further by the author that this situation shows that individuals preserve the importance of the concept of family and that even if conditions change, they continue to pay attention to relationships within the family (ongören, 2021). mentor support. another positive experience for our participants was when some teachers reached out and facilitated. contrary to the sinker they gave above on difficulty in scaffolding, girl-3 expressed that the best thing she experienced in this learning arrangement was when some of her mentors reached out through email correspondence. that made her communicate with her instructors more constantly regarding their courses/subjects, asking for clarifications and seeking favors of extending deadlines. one respondent's experience proved that this gesture from a teacher means a lot to a student and counted it as one of the best of their experiences. this gesture is one technique that teachers of distant learning can repeat. dependent support. thirdly, another respondent expressed that the reason why she keeps going in this educational setup is the realization that her family expects so much from and supports her. "maraming umaalalay at umaasa sa yo, wala kang gagawin kundi magpatuloy at magtapos….(many are supporting and expecting from you, there's nothing for you to do but to continue and finish/graduate)." the realization dawned on her that somebody depended on her. setting an example to finish her studies, which is unsurprising since this is a very filipino culture, motivated her to persevere. realization and self-conviction are the intrinsic motivation that will keep a person pursuing one's goal. when someone depends on you, you realize that you become responsible for not failing and being a model to that person. family, mentors, and self-realization are the forces that keep our students afloat. some of these good things that they experienced may be menial and brief; to these students, it is blissful. these experiences still contribute significantly to their learning and development amid pandemic woes. 4. conclusion concluding two years of academic pursuit during the pandemic period, distance learning education students using the correspondence-based modality still find it challenging to achieve the desired learning arrangement. difficulties encountered sink them overwhelmingly. external sinkers such as learning environment difficulty, scaffolding shortage, and internal sinker, which is mental struggles are substantial factors that the implementers and curriculum makers should note in the re-designing and implementation of the distance learning education curriculum. equally essential to give attention to are the positive experiences the respondents have pointed out. these floaters can serve as a basis to evaluate the effectiveness of different teaching approaches and distance learning asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 77-84 83 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group delivery. distance learning always has problems; however, the difficulties mentioned in this study are covid-19 pandemic related. the respondents' experiences are limited and may not be accurate to others depending on other factors such as location, pandemic mitigation, preparation, and implementation. but findings revealed a need to act and design measures to prevent these problems from being duplicated by the following incoming distance learning students. as universities upgrade and continue to update their operations and services, the lessons learned and documented during this pandemic period could provide a path for improvement in learning experiences, whether in distance learning or face-to-face. there are limitations of this study that suggests further research. the study focused on distance learning education students using a correspondence-based learning modality. the number of respondents is not enough to generalize, and they are just from one university. researchers may widen the respondents and include the parents, community, mentors, and other stakeholders in students' learning from different universities. references anderson, b., & simpson, m. 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(2020). team diversity as a predictor of innovation in team projects of face-to-face and online learners. computers & education, 144, 103702.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103702. yan, l., whitelock-wainwright, a., guan, q., wen, g., gašević, d., & chen, g. (2021). students’ experience of online learning during the covid-19 pandemic: a province-wide survey study. british journal of educational technology, 52(5), 2038-2057.available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13102. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 144 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 144-148, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.144.148 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of stress perceptions of physical education teachers çağrı hamdi erdoğan1 ramazan topuz2 ( corresponding author) 1ministry of education, şehit ahmet cihan kilci middle school, kayseri, turkey. 2selcuk university, faculty of sport sciences, konya, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to investigate the stress perceptions of physical education teachers and determine these perceptions in terms of certain variables. in the study, a descriptive survey method was used, which aimed at revealing the existing situation. the research group was comprised of 320 physical education teachers actively working in the state schools of kayseri province in the 2019-2020 education year. in the study, personal information form and perceived stress scale were used as the data collection tools. spss program was used for the analysis of the data. techniques of t test (independent-samples t test) for paired comparisons and one-way analysis of variance (one-way anova) for multiple comparisons were used in the research study. according to the research results, the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers were determined as “moderate”. additionally, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the stress perceptions of physical education teachers concerning their gender, age, marital status, sport branch, professional experience, monthly income perception, school type, and school location. keywords: physical education, sports, psychology, teacher, stress, perception. citation | çağrı hamdi erdoğan; ramazan topuz (2020). investigation of stress perceptions of physical education teachers. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 144-148. history: received: 6 december 2019 revised: 15 january 2020 accepted: 18 february 2020 published: 20 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 145 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 145 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 146 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 147 5. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 147 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 148 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.144.148&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1430 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1430 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1430 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1430 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-2120 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-4670 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 144-148 145 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by investigating the stress perceptions of physical education teachers and determines these perceptions in terms of certain variables. 1. introduction in the twenty-first century, people live in a continuous struggle. in today's world, the value of individuals has become measured by what they have. being successful requires being in good condition in material terms, an effort to compete with opponents all the time. this urges people constantly to develop, renew, and push their boundaries. this competitive environment also invites many problems that will arise. among these, the leading problem is stress that have serious and adverse effects on human health (karadavut, 2005). the stress, which is the problem of modern times, has become a natural part of our lives as a result of being a modern society and living very fast and active. in our century, people push their own talents and boundaries for a large part of their lives irrespective of their profession. regardless of working under state or private institutions, or self-employed without a connection with any institution, it is inevitable to meet the concept of stress (arıcan, 2011). stress is a condition that occurs by threatening and forcing the organism's physical and mental limits (gibbons, 2012). stress is the overstimulation status at physical and psychological dimensions that occurs when the factors caused by internal and external environment are considered threatening or harmful by the individual (lazarus & folkman, 1984). stress is expressed as the resistance of the individual against the deterioration of the psychological and biological structure causing from the effect of external forces (güçlü, 2001). stress is the effort of the person exceeding his physical and psychological boundaries due to adverse conditions caused by the physical and social environment (cüceloğlu, 2000). stress can be defined as a condition that occurs when the physical and spiritual integrity is forced, as well as factors that force and disrupt individual integrity (tekin, yazgan cilesiz, & gede, 2019). people can be exposed to stress conditions that negatively affect their mental health and psychological state in everyday life, cause pessimism, and lead to despair (yıldız, güç, & erdem, 2015). stress is a concept that affects behaviors, human relationships, business performance, and social life of people. stress does not occur spontaneously and suddenly, but it is a situation that is triggered by individual and environmental factors. in order for stress to occur, the changes in the environment in which one lives must affect the individual. every person is affected by the changes in the environment. some individuals are affected less and slowly, some are affected at higher levels and faster. therefore, stress is the effects of changes in the environment, where the life of an individual is going on, or the effects caused by the changes the individual applies (gül, 2015). as a result of the exposure to the stress-causing event, various reactions arise in our body. these reactions, which continue for a long time period, cause disorders in the long period. when people face a stress-causing situation, they either show effort to fight and overcome them, or avoid problems by applying the avoidance mechanism (eriksen, 2011). the perceptions of stress of physical education teachers, who have an important place within the education system, are of interest and importance to investigate. in addition, investigating the stress perceptions of physical education teachers will contribute to the literature. in this study, it was aimed at examining the stress perceptions of physical education teachers. in addition, the stress perceptions of physical education teachers were compared in terms of certain characteristics. 2. method 2.1. research model this was a research that was designed in the descriptive survey model. survey research is defined as the study, which aims at collecting data to determine certain features of a group (büyüköztürk, kılıç cakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2010). 2.2. research group the research group was comprised of 320 physical education teachers who were actively working in the 20192020 education year in public schools in kayseri province, turkey, and were randomly selected. of the physical education teachers in the research group, 131 (40.9%) were female and 189 (59.1%) were male; 205 (64.1%) were married and 115 (35.1%) were single. 2.3. data collection tools in this study, which was conducted to determine the stress perceptions of physical education teachers and compare them through certain characteristics, the personal information form and perceived stress scale were used as the data collection tools. the personal information form was developed by the researchers in order to determine the demographic characteristics of the physical education teachers in the research group. the perceived stress scale was developed by cohen, kamarck, and mermelstein (1983) to measure stress perceptions of individuals. the perceived stress scale is a five-point likert-type scale consisting of 14 items. participants evaluate each item between 0 and 4 (never-0, and very often-4). 7 of the items are scored inversely. the total scores from the scale range from 0 to 56. the high score on the scale indicates that the person's stress perception is above normal. perceived stress scale was translated into turkish by eskin, harlak, demirkıran, and dereboy (2013). eskin et al. (2013) reported that the internal consistency coefficient of the scale was calculated as .84 and the test-repeat-test reliability coefficient was calculated as .87. 2.4. statistical analyses spss program was used for statistical analysis. the arithmetic average ( ) and standard deviation (sd) techniques were used as descriptive statistics in order to examine the subjective stress perceptions of physical x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 144-148 146 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group education teachers. it was determined, through the kolmogorov-smirnov test, that the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers in the research group demonstrated a normal distribution (p>0.05) also in the comparisons made; t test method was used for paired comparisons, for independent groups and one way analysis of variance method (one way anova) was used for multiple comparisons. p<0.05 was taken as the criterion when the significance (p) levels were interpreted. 3. findings table-1. distribution of demographic characteristics of the physical education teachers in the research group. gender n % marital status n % female 131 40.9 married 205 64.1 male 189 59.1 single 115 35.9 age n % professional experience n % 20-29 years old 111 34.7 0-9 years 155 48.4 30-39 years old 126 39.4 10-19 years 114 35.6 40-49 years old 83 25.9 20-29 years 51 15.9 school type n % school location n % secondary school 176 55.0 rural 42 13.1 high school 144 45.0 urban 278 86.9 monthly income perception n % sport branch n % low 31 9.7 individual sport 117 36.6 medium 250 78.1 team sport 203 63.4 high 39 12.2 the demographic characteristics of physical education teachers in the research group are presented in table 1. it was determined that 131 (40.9%) physical education teachers in the research group were female, 189 (59.1%) were male; 205 (64.1%) were married, 115 (35.9%) were single; 111 (34.7%) were in the 20-29 age group, 126 (39.4%) were in the 30-39 age group, and 83 (25.9%) were in the 40-49 age group. additionally, 155 (48.4%) physical education teachers in the research group had a professional experience of 0-9 years, 114 (35.6%) had 10-19 years, and 51 (15.9%) had 20-29 years; 176 (55%) of them worked in secondary schools and 144 (45%) were working in high schools; 42 (13.1%) of them were working in rural area, while 278 (86.9%) were working in urban areas; the branch of 117 (36.6%) of the physical education teachers was individual sport, while it was team sport for 203 (63.4%) of them; the monthly income perceptions of 31 (9.7%) physical education teachers was low, it was medium for 250 (78.1%) and high for 39 (12.2%). table-2. the mean score of the physical education teachers in the research group obtained from the overall perceived stress scale. scale n sd perceived stress scale 320 22.98 6.810 the results concerning the overall perceived stress scale scores of the physical education teachers in the research group are presented in table 2. as a result of the analysis, physical education teachers in the research group gained =22.98 mean score from the overall perceived stress scale. based on this result, the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers in the research group were determined as “moderate”. table-3. comparison of the stress perceptions of physical education teachers in the research group concerning their gender, marital status, school type, school location, and sport branch. gender n sd t p difference female 131 22.82 7.042 -.342 .732 no male 189 23.08 6.662 marital status n sd t p difference married 205 23.40 7.061 1.471 .142 no single 115 22.23 6.300 school type n sd t p difference secondary school 176 22.39 7.087 -1.699 .090 no high school 144 23.69 6.409 school location n sd t p difference rural 42 23.30 5.270 .335 .738 no urban 278 22.93 7.020 sport branch n sd t p difference individual sport 117 23.94 6.266 1.920 .056 no team sport 203 22.42 7.061 total 320 22.98 6.810 the results concerning the comparisons of stress perceptions of the physical education teachers in the research group in terms of gender, marital status, school type, school location, and sport branch are given in table 3. according to the analysis results, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers in the research group concerning the marital status, school type, school location, gender, and sport branch. x x x x x x x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 144-148 147 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. the comparison of the physical education teachers in the research group about their stress perceptions in terms of age, professional experience, and monthly income perceptions. age n sd f p difference 20-29 years old 111 23.37 6.102 1.315 .270 no 30-39 years old 126 23.31 6.839 40-49 years old 83 21.93 7.597 professional experience n sd f p difference 0-9 years 155 23.00 6.224 .175 .840 no 10-19 years 114 23.16 7.506 20-29 years 51 22.49 6.995 monthly income perception n sd f p difference low 31 22.29 7.929 .176 .839 no medium 250 23.06 6.615 high 39 23.02 7.249 total 320 22.98 6.810 the results concerning the comparisons of stress perceptions of the physical education teachers in the research group in terms of age, professional experience, and monthly income perceptions are given in table 4. according to the analysis results, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers in the research group concerning age, professional experience, and monthly income perception. 4. discussion and conclusion in this research study, the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers were investigated. according to the research results, the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers were determined as “moderate”. additionally, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the stress perceptions of physical education teachers concerning gender, age, marital status, sport branch, professional experience, monthly income perception, school type, and school location. as a result of the research studies conducted by savci and aysan (2014); caz, aydoğdu, tunçkol, and oncü (2015); baştuğ, duman, akçakoyun, and karadeniz (2016); ekiz (2016); eraslan (2016); hancıoğlu (2017); gözeler (2018); sahin (2018) and yildiz (2018) it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the stress perceptions of the participants. this study contradicts the results of the abovementioned studies concerning the gender variable. taş (2013); bayram, keskin, and derebaşı (2016) and yildiz (2018) determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the stress perceptions of the participants in terms of gender. this study is in parallel with the results of these research studies in terms of gender variable. cam and nur (2015); yanik (2017) and mert (2019) found significant differences among the stress perceptions based on the age variable. this research study is not in parallel with the results of these research studies concerning the age variable. taş (2013); bayram et al. (2016); eraslan (2016) and hancıoğlu (2017) did not detect a significant difference in the stress perceptions concerning the age variable. this study is in parallel with the results of these research studies in terms of age variable. as a result of a study conducted by taş (2013) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among stress perceptions of the participants concerning the marital status variable. this study is in parallel with the results of the mentioned research concerning the marital status variable. as a result of research studies conducted by ateşoğlu and erkal (2016); sanlı (2017); yanik (2017) and mert (2019) it was determined that there were statistically significant differences among stress perceptions of the participants concerning the professional experience. this research contradicts the results of those studies in terms of the professional experience variable. as a result of a study conducted by mert (2019) it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference among the stress perceptions of participants concerning their monthly income perceptions. this study contradicts the results of the mentioned study concerning the monthly income perception variable. as a result of the research studies conducted by savci and aysan (2014); cam and nur (2015); eraslan (2016) sanlı (2017); yağmur and türkmen (2017); yıldız (2017); sahin (2018); yildiz (2018) and turan, durgun, kaya, ertaş, and kuvan (2019) it was determined that the stress perceptions of participants were determined as “moderate”. this research is in parallel with the results of the abovementioned studies. doğaner (2017) determined that the stress perceptions of the participants were “low”, while pınar et al. (2014); bayram et al. (2016) and ergin, cevik, and pakiş (2018) identified it as “high”. this study contradicts the results of the mentioned research studies. according to the results of this research, determining the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers as “moderate” can be considered as a positive outcome. high stress perception can have the possibility of causing psychological damage to the educators. therefore, it can be considered as an important determination that the physical education teachers should not have high stress perceptions. 5. recommendations in order to reduce stress perception, conferences and seminars can be organized by the psychologists for the physical education teachers. the factors that can increase the stress perceptions of the physical education teachers can be investigated through various studies. similar research studies can be conducted with different research groups for contributing to the literature. it is considered useful that the stress perception of the physical education teachers be investigated through qualitative research studies. additionally, it is considered that increasing the socio-cultural activities among teachers in the school will have a positive effect on physical education teachers against stress. x x x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 144-148 148 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references arıcan, k. 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(2015). the relationship between perceived stress and gastrointestinal symptoms in nursing and midwifery students. taf preventive medicine bulletin, 14(6), 473-480. caz, c., aydoğdu, v., tunçkol, h., & oncü, e. (2015). the relationship between time management skill and stress: the example of physical education and sport school students. academic overview international refereed journal of social sciences, 50(2), 278-287. cohen, s., kamarck, t., & mermelstein, r. (1983). a global measure of perceived stress. journal of health and social behavior, 24(4), 385-396. available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2136404. cüceloğlu, d. (2000). human and behavior (10th ed.). istanbul: remzi bookstore. doğaner, s. (2017). the effect of regular exercise program on individuals' stress, happiness, and leisure satisfaction levels. doctoral dissertation, ankara university, institute of health sciences. ekiz, o. (2016). an analysis of perceived stress level (psl) and healty life style behaviours of the university students studying sports and health. master’s thesis, kahramanmaraş sütçü ġmam university, institute of health sciences. eraslan, m. (2016). assessment of perceived stress levels of kick-boxers based on age and gender variables investigation of perceived stress levels of kick boxing athletes according to age and gender variables. journal of human sciences, 13(3), 5069-5077. available at: https://doi.org/10.14687/jhs.v13i3.4113. ergin, e., cevik, k., & pakiş, c. s. (2018). investigation of nursing students’ perception of stress and coping behaviours of stress regarding education. journal of education and research in nursing, 15(1), 16-22. eriksen, l. 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(2017). a research on the level of stress perceived by professional accountants. international journal of economic research, 3(1), 99107. yildiz, k. (2018). investigation of time management and stress perceptions of education faculty students. sakarya university journal of education, 8(3), 80-99. available at: https://doi.org/10.19126/suje.413286. yıldız, m. (2017). investigation of the relationship between stress perception and mental status among bank employees. master’s thesis, işık university, institute of social sciences. yıldız, m., güç, k., & erdem, s. (2015). examine attitudes to cope with stress in terms of human values: a study on public employees. science journal of turkish military academy, 25(1), 41-62. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 72 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 72-79, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.72.79 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group critical thinking dispositions of social studies teacher candidates salih uslu niğde ömer halisdemir university, turkey. abstract the main aim of this study is, to analyze critical thinking disposition of social studies teacher candidates. the study group is consisting of totally 250 teacher candidates voluntarily who are students of education faculty at social studies department in a state university. this study is used with descriptive survey method. the "personal information form" was developed by the researchers used as data collection tools and the california critical thinking disposition inventory (cctdi-r) which was developed by facione, facione, and giancarlo (1998) and translated into turkish by kökdemir (2003) was used. research data were analyzed with ibm spss 21.0 program. the independent samples t-test and one way anova were used for analyzing the datum. at the end of the study, it has been determined that in generally social studies teacher candidates have low level critical thinking disposition, obtained the average score related with subscales while the highest scores at the analyticity subscale, the lowest average scores at systematicity subscale. it has been seen that critical thinking disposition were not differentiated in terms of gender and class variables generally while significant differences were detected in the subscale dimensions. some suggestions have been made in the light of these findings. keywords: social studies, critical, critical thinking, critical thinking disposition, teacher candidates, thinking. citation | salih uslu (2020). critical thinking dispositions of social studies teacher candidates. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 72-79. history: received: 12 november 2019 revised: 19 december 2019 accepted: 27 january 2020 published: 24 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 73 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 74 3. findings and results ....................................................................................................................................................................... 75 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 76 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 78 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.72.79&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1353 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-516x https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1353 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-516x https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1353 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-516x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 72-79 73 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by analyzing critical thinking disposition of social studies teacher candidates. the study group is consisting of totally 250 teacher candidates voluntarily who are students of education faculty at social studies department in a state university. this study is used with descriptive survey method. 1. introduction at though information era nowadays, it is considered that the students‟ active participation process is more important than the teachers present in education. also it has become important the students critical thinking skills in which case can be used effectively as the importance of the students‟ knowledge processing method (oztürk & dilek, 2005). one of the important features that today‟s individuals are expected to have is the problem solving skill. as is known, human beings have confronted various problems throughout history and it is clear that these problems will continue increasingly in the future (doğanay, 2000). today, members of any profession should easily adapt to developments and innovations, choose knowledge wisely, produce creative ideas, behave flexibly, and improve their characteristics; shortly, achieve modern professional qualifications. the achievement of these qualifications is possible through modern education which aims to help students internalize basic concepts and analyze/solve the problems using critical thinking skills (oztürk. & ulusoy, 2008). without incorporating core competence programs into college teaching programs it is impossible for college students to form and develop their core competence, such as global vision, critical thinking, innovative ability, social and state responsibility, lifelong learning, entrepreneurship and leadership coordination (gu & zhao, 2018). with modern educational processes, it is aimed to raise individuals who think sophisticatedly, produce, search, question, approach new knowledge and situations skeptically and have critical viewpoint (tural & seçgin, 2012). the acquisition of critical thinking skills by students at school followed by the use of these skills throughout one‟s life is of great importance. by attaching such a great emphasis to critical thinking skills in school curriculum, students can be rendered more autonomous, they can make greater contributions to the social problems experienced in today‟s world, they can be critical observers and supporters of democratic institutions and human rights, and they can easily proceed in their careers (cam aktaş & güven, 2015). critical thinking is described as an important skill in general education and is referred to as a 21st century skill (sagun, ateskan, & onur, 2016). critical thinking which is one of the important element of the contemporary education is defined in different ways in the literature. the term critical thinking is widely used in the fields of education, psychology, and philosophy, and there have been repeated attempts to define the concept in order to increase the understanding of how this cognitive ability can be utilized (bell & loon, 2015). some of these definitions are: 1.1. critical thinking (i) is to invert the students‟ behavior by evaluating their thinking skills with applying to a topic in terms of they are all known (norris, 1985). (ii) is a form of reflective thinking and acceptable that focusing on what is believed in or what is done (norris. & ernis, 1989). (iii) is to draw a conclusion based on observation and information (paul, 1991). (iv) is cognitive active and organized process that aims to be able to understand ourselves and events in near surrounding by being aware of our own thought process, keeping in mind the others‟ thought process, applying what we have learnt (cüceloğlu, 1994). (v) is using cognitive skills or strategies which increase the likelihood of desired behavior (halpern, 1996). (vi) is to think on how he is performing while thinking for improving the person‟s own thinking (paul. & elder, 2006). (vii) is a reasoning process based on information. critical thinkers consider the others thinking process as well as being aware of why and how the thinking process (doğanay. & unal, 2006). there are five basic features of critical thinking. these can be listed follows (ozden, 2014): (i) critical thinking requires to be active: we use our intelligent, knowledge, memory and cognitive skills actively during critical thinking. one thinking actively cannot stay out of event that effect himself and tries to give direction them. (ii) critical thinking requires individuals to be independent: critical thinking does not accept any pre-judgment and is based on no authority. (iii) critical thinking requires to be open mind to new ideas: critical thinkers revise their ideas with others‟ and enrich their thoughts by taking different ideas that must be taken. (iv) critical thinking requires to take into account evidence and reasons supporting with the ideas: critical thinkers explain the reasons and evidence of the ideas put forward. (v) critical thinking requires organization: it provides to explain easily what reason, what result, what evidence, which ideas essential, which ideas ensure. critical thinking dispositions are listed by kökdemir (2003): (i) truth-seeking: in this dimension that contains assessment dispositions of options or different from each ideas, one behaves questioning for truth, tending to be objective to the ideas that are in the opposite to his own ideas. (ii) open mindedness: it means that one be in tolerance to different approaches and be sensitive to his mistakes. in this dimension, one takes into account also the others opinion for any decision. (iii) analyticity: one behaves to be wary to situations that could cause problems and to use reasoning skills to even the difficult problems and to use objective evidence. (iv) systematicity: any research tends to be organized, planned and careful research. (v) self-confidence: it represents individuals‟ confidence in their own reasoning process. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 72-79 74 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (vi) inquisitiveness: ıt reflects that one gives into getting information and learning new things without any interest or expectation. (vii) maturity: it means mental maturity and cognitive development. with the result of deep changes in the educational programs seen in turkey since 2005, constructive educational programs have begun to be applied. among various reforms brought by this educational program, basic skills have been given importance including critical thinking. there are various objectives and activities about critical thinking in this program. therefore, much research has been done to gain critical thinking skills since 2005 (polat, 2015). the research combining critical thinking with subject teaching was very common, including nursing, writing, reading, philosophy, accounting, statistics, information and mathematics, also involving art, literature, economy, environment sanitation, electronic, investigating, media and library retrieving (zhou, yan, zhao, liu, & xing, 2012). when the related literature was been analyzed there were a large number of samples studies about this subject performed in various areas and with teachers and teacher candidates in various events (bostic, 1988; dam & volman, 2004; facione et al., 1998; facione., sanchez, facione, & gainen, 1995; gadzella & masten, 1998; krank, 1994; paul.. 1993; zhang, 2003). it is seen that the studies performed on critical thinking have discussed in two dimensions as they have been carried out in literature: critical thinking skills and critical thinking disposition. critical thinking skills is not same with critical thinking disposition. however, there is a relationship between critical thinking skills and critical thinking disposition. one who has critical thinking skills may not think critically. this is related with one‟s attitude and disposition about critical thinking. therefore, critical thinking dispositions are also investigated as much as critical thinking skills studies in literature (tortop & eker, 2013). it is necessary that teachers should think critically as a part of being good at their professions, have deep learning approach and be aware of the importance of learning styles which affect their students learning level whose raised up (beşoluk & onder, 2010). considering that one can not teach anything that they do not know to anyone, it is clear that the teachers who do not have critical thinking skills and critical thinking disposition cannot help their students with with these issues. the situation for developing thinking dispositions must be providing to the teacher candidates who raise up people in pre-service training to teachers educate for raising up person has critical thinking disposition. hence, it may be stated that, in order to train teachers who will provide their students with critical thinking skills, it is necessary to investrigate teacher candidates‟ critical thinking dispositions and to perform activities that will improve their critical thinking dispositions in this regard, the purpose of this study is to investigate the critical thinking dispositions of social studies teacher candidates. no study that aims to analyze critical thinking dispositions of social studies teacher candidates has been found in literature. therefore, this study is expected to contribute to literature. education, age, academic success, socio-economic status, participation in scientific and social activities, patents‟ education status, parents‟ profession can be listed among the factors of affecting critical thinking (oztürk. & ulusoy, 2008). in way to the study purpose gender and class variables have been put the work for analyzing critical thinking dispositions of the social studies teacher candidates. for the study these independent variables were chosen by the reason of the most commonly used variables in the literature. in addition, they were thought that affecting critical thinking dispositions of social studies teacher candidates. in summary, the study‟s main aim is to analyze critical thinking dispositions of social studies teacher candidates (sstc). for this purpose, these are questioned: 1. how is sstc‟ critical thinking dispositions? 2. do sstc‟ critical thinking dispositions differentiate in terms of gender? 3. do sstc‟ critical thinking dispositions differentiate in terms of class levels? 2. method 2.1. research design this research was carried out in the descriptive scanning model. descriptive scanning is used in a highly widespread manner in the field of education; because it helps researchers summarize the characteristics (skills, preferences, behaviors, attitudes etc.) of individuals, groups or physical settings (e.g. schools) (büyüköztürk, cakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2010). 2.2. data collection and data processing the study group is consist of totally 250 teacher candidates voluntarily who are students of education faculty at social studies department in a state university. the data have been obtained by using “personal information form” and “california critical thinking disposition inventory”. the „personal information form‟ prepared by the researcher contains information about gender and class variables of social studies teacher candidates who participated in the study. as a data collection tool, the california critical thinking disposition inventory (cctdi-r) which was developed by facione et al. (1998) and translated into turkish by kökdemir (2003) was used. california critical thinking disposition inventory was translated into turkish by kökdemir (2003) and factor, reliability and validity analyzes were performed. new scale, which consists totally 6 subscales and 51 items, internal consistency coefficient (cronbach alpha) was found 0.88. also the internal consistency of each dimension (cronbach alpha); 0.75 is for analitcity subscale and open-mindedness subscale; 0.78 is for inquisitiveness subscale; 0.77 is for self-confidence subscale; 0.62 is for the truth-seeking subscale; 0.63 is for systematicity subscale. in scale, six rating was used as the highest option “completely agree” (6) and the lowest option “disagree” (1). raw scores were computed for each subscale by answers responded to 6-point likert type scale were collected, negative items were collected by giving points in the opposite direction and these raw scores were converted to a standard score in the lowest value 6 to the highest value 60 after they were multiplied 10 and divided by the number of questions. the presumptive lowest and highest values are substantive for all subscales. considered cctdi scale in terms of sub dimensions, ıt refers to have score less than 40 low, 40-50 positive, more than 50 high asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 72-79 75 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group critical thinking. when cctdi is taken as a whole, the general critical thinking dispositions levels of individuals whose scores are lower than 240 (40 x 6) are low while the general critical thinking dispositions levels of individuals whose scores are over 300 (50x6) are high (kökdemir, 2003). while original california critical thinking disposition inventory‟s sub inventories cronbach alpha reliable coefficients change between .60 and .78, the inventory‟s cronbach alpha reliable coefficient .90 has been found for total grade. while in kökdemir‟s research the sub dimensions of the inventory of cronbach alfa reliable coefficients change between .61 and .78, the total of the inventory‟s cronbach alpha reliable coefficient has been found .88 (kökdemir, 2003). in this research the inventory‟s total cronbach alpha reliable coefficient has been found .82. at the study, ibm spss 21.0 “statistical package for the social sciences” packed program was used for analyzing data obtained from performed scale and significance level was taken as p≤.05 in all analyze performed. the data were tested with the appropriate analysis techniques on the variables. mean ( ) and standard deviation (s) were used at evaluating sstc‟ thinking dispositions in terms of factors while analyzing the datum. independent samples t-test and one-way anova, which are among parametric analysis techniques, were used in order to determine the total score that obtained from the scale, whether they differ from in terms of the independent variables. homogeneity of variance was checked for determining the differences between the groups in which situations whether significant differences arises at analysis result. bonferroni test from multiple comparison was used if there is variance in the homogeneous. 3. findings and results 3.1. findings regarding to the california critical thinking disposition inventory and its’ subscales the scores of sstc obtained from the california critical thinking disposition inventory and its‟ subscales see table 1. table-1. the descriptive data related the scores of sstc obtained from the california critical thinking disposition inventory and its‟ subscale. sub scales s truth-seeking 24.22 5.50 open mindedness 39.33 9.22 analyticity 47.52 7.32 systematicity 20.77 4.18 self-confidence 28.30 6.29 inquisitiveness 37.38 6.87 total 197.52 27.34 it is seen that the average scores of sstc‟ california critical thinking disposition inventory is 197.52 at table 1. this value shows in terms of total scores the level of sstc‟ critical thinking dispositions are low. it is seen that sstc‟ highest average score ( =47.52) is taken from analyticity subscale and the lowest average score ( =20.77) is taken from systematicity subscale. it is found that sstc‟ critical thinking dispositions are positive at only analyticity subscale and they are lower at the other subscales. 3.2. finding regarding to gender variable whether there is a significant difference between sstc‟ gender and sstc‟ critical thinking dispositions for independent samples analyzed by t-test and results table 2 table-2. t-test results regarding to gender of sstc‟ scores obtained from the california critical thinking disposition inventory and its‟ subscale. sub inventories gender n  s t p truth-seeking female 119 23.59 5.03 1.736 .084 male 131 24.80 5.85 open mindedness female 119 38.27 8.96 1.730 .085 male 131 40.29 9.38 analyticity female 119 47.74 6.65 .468 .640 male 131 47.31 7.90 systematicity female 119 20.55 3.86 .768 .443 male 131 20.96 4.46 self-confidence female 119 27.42 6.33 2.097 .037* male 131 29.09 6.18 inquisitiveness female 119 36.43 6.68 2.086 .038* male 131 38.23 6.95 total female 119 194.04 24.77 1.947 .053 male 131 200.69 29.21 note: *p< .05. when table 2 is examined, there was not a significant difference at truth-seeking (t(248)=1.736; p>.05), open mindedness (t(248)=1.730; p>.05), analyticity (t(248)=.468; p>.05), systematicity (t(248)=.768; p>.05) subscales and at the california critical thinking disposition inventory scale (t(248)= 1.947; p>.05) generally between sstc‟ gender and critical thinking dispositions. however, there was a significant difference at self-confidence (t(248)= 2.097; p<.05) and inquisitiveness (t(248)= 2.086; p<.05) subscales in terms of sstc‟ gender and critical thinking dispositions. when the arithmetic average scores are observed, the difference is in favor of sstc‟ male. this finding can be interpreted that, critical thinking dispositions are positive for sstc‟ male at self-confidence and inquisitiveness subscales to sstc‟ female.     asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 72-79 76 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.3. findings regarding to class variable whether there is a significant difference between sstc‟ class levels and sstc‟ critical thinking dispositions analyzed by one-way anova and results table 3 table-3. the one-way anova results in terms of class level of sstc‟ scores obtained from the california critical thinking disposition inventory and its‟ subscale. descriptive data anova results s u b in v e n to ri e s class n  s variance source sum of squares df mean square f p t ru th s ee k in g 1 69 23.63 5.30 between groups 57.77 3 19.257 .633 .594 2 48 24.00 5.32 within groups 7478.23 246 30.399 3 93 24.80 5.92 total 7536.00 249 4 40 24.17 5.06 total 250 24.22 5.50 o p en m in d ed n es s 1 69 36.43 8.09 between groups 1352.72 3 450.909 5.594 .001* 2 48 39.31 7.97 within groups 19828.71 246 80.605 3 93 42.07 10.40 total 21181.44 249 4 40 37.97 7.88 difference (bonferroni) 1 – 3 total 250 39.33 9.22 a n al y ti ci ty 1 69 49.92 6.25 between groups 1274.19 3 424.733 8.642 .000* 2 48 49.54 5.10 within groups 12090.20 246 49.147 3 93 44.82 8.84 total 13364.40 249 4 40 47.20 5.08 difference (bonferroni) 1 – 3 , 2 – 3 total 250 47.52 7.32 s y st em at ic it y 1 69 20.05 3.23 between groups 185.56 3 61.853 3.643 .013* 2 48 20.79 3.80 within groups 4176.98 246 16.980 3 93 21.78 4.92 total 4362.54 249 4 40 19.60 3.76 difference (bonferroni) 3 – 4 total 250 20.76 4.18 s el fc o n fi d en ce 1 69 28.31 6.16 between groups 1.16 3 .390 .010 .999 2 48 28.31 5.86 within groups 9877.33 246 40.152 3 93 28.22 6.70 total 9878.50 249 4 40 28.42 6.27 total 250 28.30 6.29 in q u is it iv en es s 1 69 36.75 6.23 between groups 106.02 3 35.342 .746 .525 2 48 38.58 5.79 within groups 11648.87 246 47.353 3 93 37.43 7.74 total 11754.90 249 4 40 36.90 6.99 total 250 37.38 6.87 t o ta l 1 69 195.13 20.81 between groups 1500.69 3 500.231 .667 .573 2 48 200.54 21.12 within groups 184627.61 246 750.519 3 93 199.15 35.41 total 186128.30 249 4 40 194.27 21.97 total 250 197.52 27.34 note: *p< .05. when the table 3 is examined, there was not a significant difference at truth-seeking (f(3-246)=.633, p>.05), self-confidence (f(3-246)=.010, p>.05), inquisitiveness (f(3-246)=.746, p>.05) subscales and the california critical thinking disposition inventory scale generally between sstc‟ class levels and critical thinking dispositions. however there is a significant difference at open mindedness (f(3-246)=5.594, p<.05), analyticity (f(3-246)=8.642, p<.05) and systematicity (f(3-246)=3.643, p<.05) subscales in terms of sstc‟ class variable. one way anova analysis of variance resultsshowed that thare was a significant difference. therefore, homogeneity of variance was controlled for determining differences in which groups. bonferroni test in multiple comparison tests used because of the homogeneity of variances. according to bonferroni multiple comparison test results: it is seen that the critical thinking dispositions of sstc‟ 3rd grade ( =42.07) is more positive than sstc‟ 1st grade ( =36.43) at open mindedness sub dimension. also the critical thinking dispositions of sstc‟ 1st grade ( =49.92) and 2nd grade ( =49.54) are more positive than 3rd grade ( =44.82) at analyticity sub dimension. in addition the critical thinking dispositions of sstc‟ 3rd grade ( =21.78) is more positive than 4th grade ( =19.60) at systematicity sub dimension. 4. conclusion through analysis of the critical thinking dispositions of social studies teacher candidates in this study, ıt was found that the critical thinking dispositions of sstc‟ are generally low. this finding parallels with cetinkaya (2011); tural and seçgin (2012). in these studies, it was found that critical thinking dispositions of participations were low. the result of critical thinking dispositions of social studies teacher candidates low in general meshes with türnüklü and yeşildere (2005); dutoğlu and tuncel (2008); saçlı and demirhan (2008); sen (2009); semerci (2010); piji and uzun (2013); kuvaç and koc (2014) findigs of studies. in these studies, it is determined that the critical thinking dispositions of participants are medium/positive.        asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 72-79 77 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sstc‟ scores related to subscales are obtained the highest average score from the analyticity subscale and the lowest average score form systematicity subscale. it is seen that sstc‟ critical thinking dispositions is positive only in analyticity subscales, the others are lower. analyzing the related literature, ıt is seen that critical thinking dispositions only found lower at türnüklü and yeşildere (2005) study performed with math teacher candidates at self-confidence and truth-seeking subscales, the other subscales were positive. teacher candidates critical disposition‟s scores found the highest at analycity subscale and the lowest at truth-seeking subscale in kuvaç and koc (2014) study. moreover, ıt is found the highest score at analyticity and inquisitiveness subscales and the lowest score open mindedness subscale in ozsoy-güneş, crazy & peace, and kırbaşlar (2013) study. furthermore, it is seen that the critical thinking dispositions of participants found lower at systematicity, truth-seeking and self-confidence subscales, positive at inquisitiveness subscale and higher at analyticity and open mindedness subscales at cetinkaya (2011). also, it is found that the critical thinking dispositions of participants score medium at all subscale at piji and uzun (2013). according to gender there were not significant differences among truth-seeking, open mindedness, analyticity and systematicity subscales and in generally the california critical thinking disposition inventory scale. however, significant differences obtained at self-confidence and inquisitiveness subscales. looking at average score, the difference is in favor of sstc‟ male. this finding can be said the critical thinking dispositions is more positive for sstc‟ male than sstc‟s female at self-confidence and inquisitiveness subscales. analyzing critical thinking disposition totally, that is determined that there is not a significant difference in terms of gender at ozdemir (2005); saçlı and demirhan (2008); ay and akgöl (2008); genç (2008); korkmaz. (2009a); ekinci and aybek (2010) studies too. this finding is same with rudd, baker, and hoover (2000); beşoluk and onder (2010) findings in terms of gender. in addition, this is same at tural and seçgin (2012) study‟s result according to gender. also, at kuvaç and koc (2014) study, it was not obtained significant difference at the critical thinking dispositions of teacher candidates in terms of gender in total scores. at that study there is not a significant difference all subscales except open mindedness and truth-seeking subscales. at ozsoy-güneş et al. (2013) study, it is found that there is a significant difference in favor of females statistically when total scores and the average score of truth-seeking and systematicity subscales were evaluated. however, at emir (2012) study the critical thinking disposition of students according to gender, it is in favor of male all dimensions except truth-seeking sub dimension. at cetinkaya (2011) study, total score of critical thinking according to gender seemed significant difference at analyticity, open mindedness and truth-seeking subscales and it is determined that the female students‟ critical thinking dispositions is more positive than male‟s. at that study any significant differences are not obtained within the other sub dimensions. while it was not found that any differences related music teacher candidates according to gender variable at piji and uzun (2013) at semerci (2010) study it analyzing statistically in terms of gender in generally it was not seen any significant differences. at that study semerci (2010) according to gender it was seen significant difference at analyticity, open mindedness, inquisitiveness and systematicity sub dimensions statistically, that differences are in favor of female except at systematicity sub dimension. according to class levels variable, it is obtained that there is not any significant difference at the critical thinking dispositions of sstc‟ at truth-seeking, self-confidence, inquisitiveness subscales and in generally the california critical thinking disposition inventory scale. however, there is a significant difference at the critical thinking dispositions of sstc‟ in terms of class at open mindedness, analyticity and systematicity subscales. according to bonferroni test in multiple comparison tests: the critical thinking disposition sstc‟ at 3rd grade is more positive than 1st grade at open mindedness sub dimension. the critical thinking disposition sstc‟ at 1st and 2nd grades are more positive than 3rd grade at analyticity sub dimension. the critical thinking disposition sstc‟ at 3rd grade is more positive than 4th grade at systematicity sub dimension. at kuvaç and koc (2014) study which analyzed related literature it is on one hand the total scores at critical thinking dispositions of teacher candidates difference in terms of class levels on the other hand at cub dimensions ıt has a significant difference except at selfconfidence and inquisitiveness sub dimensions. it is found significant statistically the groups‟ average scores divergence for analyticity sub scale scores in terms of class variable at (ozsoy-güneş et al., 2013). in cetinkaya (2011) study it was determined that a significant difference for the ideas of participants about critical thinking in generally at scale and analyticity, open mindedness and truth-seeking subscales. also in that study, the critical thinking dispositions of students‟ at 1st grade is more positive than 4th grade and the other dimensions it has not any difference in terms of class levels. analyzing results of studies related with critical thinking at literature, it is seen that there are wide variety of results. this situation may be result from these studies made at the different branches and different samples. because of this it cannot possible to generalize for critical thinking dispositions and critical thinking sub dimensions in terms of average score and gender and class variables. the basic recommendation that can be made in the light of the results of this study is that an educational environment which will encourage students to think critically should be provided at the faculties of education. indeed, considering the results of the study by korkmaz (2009b) which show that the education received by students at the faculties of education do not contribute to their critical thinking dispositions sufficiently, the necessity of this recommendation will be better understood. in this context, teaching-learning environment in, which encourage activities to students‟ critical thinking should be created rather than theoretical. the content, process and time of the course must be organized to critical thinking appropriately. at evaluation phase of the course to ask to student open-ended questions for encouraging them instead of multiple-choice questions at faculties of education. the strategies, methods and techniques which encourage critical thinking should be taught to social studies teacher as applied. for developing critical thinking dispositions of sstc‟ a variety of elective courses and train in activities (symposia, panel, seminar, conferences, workshops, etc.) must be added to curriculum. in addition, ıt should be provided to schools and families so that they can collaborate on activities that could lead to critical thinking. this study‟s results are limited by the study group. therefore, the similar study aims to sstc critical thinking dispositions not be at that time at literature while this study being examined, it is though that the similar studies with different methods and samples will contribute to literature. plus, same study can be made with social studies asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 72-79 78 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teachers and it can be compared with social studies teacher candidates. in this way more detailed information about critical thinking disposition can be obtained. references ay, s., & akgöl, h. 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(2003). contributions of thinking styles to critical thinking dispositions. journal of psychology, 137(6), 517-544. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980309600633. zhou, q., yan, c., zhao, s., liu, l., & xing, l. (2012). a preliminary investigation into critical thinking of in-service and pre-service middle school chemistry teachers in shaanxi province of china. asia-pacific forum on science learning and teaching, 13(2), 1-13. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 103 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 2, 103-114, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.103.114 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group effectiveness of the reinforcement parent education program designed for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder on supporting positive behaviours ahsen ela kizilkaya1 hakan sari2 ( corresponding author) 1dr, karamanoglu mehmetbey university, special education department, karaman, turkey. 2prof. dr., konya necmettin erbakan university, special education department, konya, turkey. abstract this study aims to examine the effect of the effective reinforcement use parent education program, which was developed for parents with children with autism spectrum disorder. the program was based on scientific-based practices and developed to ensure that children exhibit positive behaviors, increase and generalize these behaviors. the exploratory sequential mixed method, which is one of the mixed methods, was used. the study first started with a qualitative method. after taking the opinions of the participants, the data were analyzed and then the quantitative phase started. in the qualitative phase, interviews were conducted with 10 parents using the semi-structured interview form. in the quantitative phase of the study, an experimental design with a pre-test post-test control group was adopted. the sample of the quantitative phase consists of 24 parents with children with autism spectrum disorder (asd). research data were analyzed in two stages. descriptive analysis was used for the analysis of qualitative data. to determine the effectiveness of the effective reinforcement use parent education program developed to increase the positive behavior of students with asd, the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied to the experimental and control groups as pretest and post-test. considering the sample size and normality distribution test results, the mann-whitney u test and wilcoxon test conducted to test the significance between the pre-test and post-test scores. in the light of the findings and effect size analysis, the program may be regarded as an effective parent education program. keywords: parent education, reinforcement, reinforcer, asd, special education, behavior support. citation | ahsen ela kizilkaya; hakan sari (2021) effectiveness of the reinforcement parent education program designed for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder on supporting positive behaviours. asian journal of education and training, 7(2): 103-114. history: received: 10 february 2021 revised: 16 march 2021 accepted: 21 april 2021 published: 19 may 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. this paper is produced and translated from phd thesis entitled “otizm spektrum bozukluğu olan çocuğa sahip ebeveynlere yönelik geliştirilen pekiştireç eğitim programinin olumlu davranişlarin arttirilmasina etkisi” funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 104 2. aim .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 105 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 105 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 108 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 111 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 112 7. implications..................................................................................................................................................................................... 113 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 113 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.103.114&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2912 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0048-4282 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4528-8936 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 104 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study examined the effect of the education program developed for parents with children with asd, based on scientific-based practices and to ensure that children exhibit positive behaviors, increase and generalize these behaviors. in turkey, there are limited studies to determine the competence levels of the parents with children who need special education and to increase this level in increasing positive behaviors. parent programs are also limited for families with disabled children. it is thought that this study, which was carried out due to the very limited parent education program in this field, will shed light on future research in the field. 1. introduction problem behaviors negatively affect the lives of individuals with autism spectrum disorder and delay the development of interaction and communication skills. some behaviors can cause physical injuries to the individual and those around him, for example, physical problems such as arms and legs injuries, even loss of sight and hearing can occur in both the individual and the people around him as a result of self-injurious behavior. problem behaviors negatively affect educational interventions, preventing students with autistic spectrum disorder from interacting with their normally developing peers, causing children to be socially isolated (sium, 2014). besides, these behaviors negatively affect the child's academic skills, independence, general development, and create a high level of stress in their parents (bearss et al., 2015; strain, wilson, & dunlap, 2011). children with developmental delay for any reason are likely to show problematic behavior. because of these negative behaviors they exhibit, children are at risk of failing at school since they cannot benefit from education and training opportunities sufficiently (chandler, dahlquist, repp, & feltz, 1999; erbaş, 2005). family attitude and behavior are some of the most important environmental factors related to behavior formation in children with asd. ineffective family behaviors such as physical discipline, inconsistency, and lack of affection and warmth are directly related to behavioral problems in children (dodge & pettit, 2003). it can be thought that using physical punishment leads to desired behavior in the short term, but it causes an increase in deviant behavior and aggression in the long term. as the family increases the pressure and control over the child and applies physical punishment, the child has more behavioral disorders. positive parenting and especially high levels of affection, love, and interest reduce behavioral problems in children (hoeve et al., 2007). in family education, it is aimed to inform family members, especially mothers and fathers, and to teach certain skills. when the education process of the child is considered as a whole, family education is of great importance in terms of continuity of education. in terms of the quality of the education to be provided, it is observed that teachers' being experienced and fully equipped in family education positively affects the level of participation in education (sarı, atbaşı, & ci̇ti̇l, 2017 ). family education programs, on the other hand, are systematic educational practices created by relevant experts. family education programs include helping parents with the acquisition of certain skills, raising their children and the skills to be taught to them. it includes issues such as children's education and other rights, and responsibilities provided to parents. family education programs and approaches have become increasingly widespread, and the participation of parents with disabled children has increased. educators, with the help of other personnel, take the responsibility of developing parent education programs that will help the family to develop their skills for the education of children with special needs (cavkaytar, 2007). while creating the program, the educator should determine the general goals and interests in line with the needs of the families. family and educators should agree on family education and its results. after determining the goals and clearly defining the desired competencies, families are trained with the simplest training strategies. in the content of the program, families are shown what to do and the opportunity to apply what they have learned (cavkaytar & ozen, 2009). due to the increasing prevalence of asd in recent years, there is a strong need for efficient, cost-effective, and empirically supported interventions for this group. besides, with the decrease in the average age of diagnosis, the intervention in children with asd can begin at an early age. also, best practices suggest that parental involvement is required (banach, ludice, conway, & ve couse, 2010). considering the diagnosis-specific characteristics and the increasing number of children diagnosed with autism in turkey, it can be said that educational programs for families are very limited. in this context, this research is expected to contribute to our country in terms of bringing an education program for families with children diagnosed with autism. although treatment programming and implementation for school-age children is carried out in schools, parental involvement gives very effective results for children with autism. while the nature of parental involvement can vary widely between programs, families, and children, the most common parental involvement is a parental education model in which parents are taught techniques to work with their children so that the intervention can continue in the absence of the professional person. parents' participation in education for children with asd, for whom systematic intensive education is required, is very important in terms of continuity and effectiveness (banach et al., 2010). the fact that children spend most of their time at home shows us the need to focus on parent education programs. it has been shown that giving correct information to families and teaching them to use effective approaches through parent education increases family harmony and acceptance and improves positive personal, educational, and social results in families with children with asd (preece & almond, 2008). the focus of this study is parents with children with asd. through the developed program, it is aimed to teach strategies and techniques to increase positive behaviors to parents and to enable the parents to support their child in every environment where the child is with the family. for this goal, the importance of family participation and the necessity of its realization is indisputable. this research is expected to provide a significant contribution to the field regarding that studies are considered to be limited for families who have children with asd in turkey. in this study, not only theoretical information was given to families about increasing positive behaviors, but also application examples were presented by the researcher, and application examples were asked to the families. in addition, the permanence test applied three weeks after the end of the education shows that the families continue to maintain their dominance on the subject. from this point of view, it is thought that families will be able to apply the strategies they have learned without expert support in every environment they spend time with their children. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 105 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group parenting education can be an opportunity not only for parents who struggle with their children's behavior or have serious problems but also for parents who want to feel safer, prevent future problems, enjoy being with their children and contribute to the development of family relationships. empowering the families of children with autism spectrum disorder through education and training is considered the most economical and effective practice (beaudoin, sébire, & couture, 2014). the education program developed within the scope of this study is expected to make a significant contribution to families in terms of starting to enjoy spending time with their children, developing positive family relations, and preventing possible problems they may encounter. 2. aim families with children with normal development can obtain the information they need to reduce their children's negative behaviors or to increase and reinforce their positive behavior by accessing many written and visual resources. besides, these children can easily get the support they need in acquiring and generalizing these skills in the schools where they are educated. however, it is important to support teaching in the home environment to generalize and increase the skills for individuals with disabilities. the limited support for families who want to increase their child's positive behavior makes them inadequate in terms of the support they will provide to their children. in this context, it is important to provide families with the support they need in increasing the positive behavior of their children. for children with autism spectrum disorder to benefit from behavioral education programs, to continue their general education environment, and to increase their participation in society, it is necessary to develop intervention programs that will increase positive behaviors, and thus they will have an impact on problem behaviors. the research will attempt to determine the effectiveness of the parent education program developed in increasing the positive behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder. the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the education program developed for families with children with asd, based on scientific-based practices, and to ensure that children exhibit positive behaviors, increase and generalize these behaviors. determining the level of proficiency on increasing the positive behavior of parents of children with special educational needs and efforts to increase this level is limited in turkey. parent programs are also limited for families with disabled children. it is thought that this study, which will be carried out due to the very limited parent education program in this field, will also shed light on future research in the field. this research was designed as a group parent education, prepared and applied in this direction. all processes, from the design phase to the implementation phase, are organized for the group. when considered from this point of view, this research can serve as an example for experts who plan and implement education for families both in state institutions and private special education institutions. it is thought that this program will serve as a guide for parent education providers in all other institutions. 3. method this section contains detailed information about the research method, sample, data collection tools, and data analysis. 3.1. research method this research aims to evaluate the effect of the effective reinforcement use parent education program developed for parents in increasing the positive behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder. under this purpose and data collection processes, the mixed method was used in the research. researchers collect data using a data collection tool, test, or a behavior checklist. collecting data may include visiting participants. data may also be collected through predetermined questions or questions where the individual is allowed to speak openly about a topic. besides, the type of data analyzed may be numerical information collected by scales or textual information obtained from participants' voice recordings. in some types of research, both quantitative and qualitative data are collected, analyzed, and interpreted. the method used in these types of research is called the mixed method. in studies using mixed methods, the researcher benefits from both quantitative and qualitative data collection tools (byrne & humble, 2007). mixed methods involve combining qualitative and quantitative research data in a study. qualitative data tend to be open-ended, with no predetermined answers. quantitative data are usually obtained by data collection tools that contain closed-ended answers such as those found in questionnaires. mixed methods encourage researchers to collect multiple data formats. this method, which uses more than one method called the mixed method, allows overcoming the weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative methods by collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. using qualitative and quantitative data together can be used to check the mutual validity of data sets. a database can help explain the other database (johnson, onwuegbuzie, & turner, 2004). although there are many designs in the field of mixed methods, there are three main models used in social sciences. parallel mixed method; in this model, the researcher typically uses both data forms at the same time and combines information for interpretation of general results. in the descriptive sequential mixed method, the first method carried out by the researcher is quantitative research. it then analyzes the results and bases them on qualitative research to explain them in more detail. the first quantitative data results are considered descriptive as they are used. research results are further explained with qualitative data. the first quantitative is then considered to be ordered as it is qualitative. the exploratory sequential method is in reverse order to the descriptive sequential method. in the exploratory sequential approach, the researcher first starts with qualitative research. it explores the opinions of the participants, then the data are analyzed and turned into a second, quantitative step (creswell, 2007). in this study, the exploratory sequential mixed method, which is one of the mixed methods, is taken as a basis. the study was first started with a qualitative method. after taking the opinions of the participants, the data were analyzed and then the quantitative phase was started. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 106 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. sample in the qualitative first phase of this study, in which the mixed method was adopted, 10 families were interviewed within the scope of the need analysis. therefore, the sample of the qualitative phase of the study consists of these ten families interviewed. there are two different types of datasets, universe, and sample. the universe represents the dataset to which the researcher wishes to generalize the research results; sample, on the other hand, represents a sub-data set participating in the research and selected from the universe suitable for the research purpose. parents with children with asd constitute the universe of this research. the sample of the quantitative stage of the research consists of 24 parents with children with asd determined by a purposeful sampling method from the research universe under the purpose of the research. twelve parents were determined as the experimental group and the effective reinforcement use parent education program developed for parents with children with asd was applied to increase positive behaviors to these parents. twelve parents were determined as the control group and these parents were not educated. preand post-tests were applied to both groups. 3.3. data collection tools two different data collection tools were used in the data collection process of the research. the first is the semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher to determine the educational needs of the families during the development of the education program. the second is the achievement test developed by the researcher to evaluate the effectiveness of the applied program and applied to the participants as a pre-test post-test. detailed information about data collection tools is presented below. 3.3.1. qualitative data collection tool the interview is a data collection tool that is carried out through verbal communication and its effectiveness depends largely on the interviewer. the interviewer should have skills such as directing the questions clearly, listening carefully, directing at the appropriate place, and enabling the participant to express their thoughts freely (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2017). interview forms may or may not be structured. while unstructured interview forms are a method close to observation, structured interview forms look close to the questionnaire. semistructured interview forms, on the other hand, provide a balance between the two. semi-structured interviews allow individuals to express their opinions clearly, so it is important to build mutual trust between the interviewer and the participant. the interviewer should convey this trust to the participant with his speaking style and attitude (hartas, 2010). in the semi-structured interview form prepared for this study; there are open-ended questions to determine the training needs of families with children with asd on reinforcement in increasing positive behavior, frequency of use of reinforcers, types, and schedules. in addition, the interview form consists of two parts. in the first part of the form, there is a family information form. in this section, there is brief information about the research subject to the families, statements stating that their participation in the study is voluntary and expressions of thanks for their participation. in the second part of the interview form, there are interview questions. 3.3.2. quantitative data collection tool in the quantitative data collection stage of the study, the achievement test, which was developed by the researcher and applied as a pre-test post-test, was used as a data collection tool. within the scope of the target sentences of the developed parent education program, an achievement test of 40 questions consisting of 4 options was prepared by the researcher. the achievement test prepared was sent to three academicians who are experts in their field for expert opinion. in the success test expert opinion form sent to the experts, they were asked to mark one of the appropriate or not suitable options placed next to the questions, and space was left for them to express their suggestions for the questions they did not find appropriate. after the expert evaluation, the test was finalized and a total of 98 (n = 98) families were administered to determine the reliability of the developed achievement test, item difficulty, and discrimination indexes. the results resulting from the application are given in table 1. table-1. item difficulty and item discrimination index. item p d item p d 1 0.56 0.46 21 0.54 0.67 2 0.43 0.48 22 0.51 0.65 3 0.41 0.27 23 0.51 0.73 4 0.57 0.81 24 0.49 0.60 5 0.86 0.27 25 0.52 0.79 6 0.58 0.67 26 0.45 0.56 7 0.44 0.58 27 0.55 0.73 8 0.50 0.67 28 0.57 0.77 9 0.55 0.85 29 0.54 0.75 10 0.43 0.65 30 0.51 0.65 11 0.66 0.65 31 0.53 0.73 12 0.39 0.27 32 0.47 0.44 13 0.30 0.23 33 0.70 0.23 14 0.54 0.79 34 0.47 0.52 15 0.51 0.73 35 0.52 0.46 16 0.46 0.67 36 0.28 0.27 17 0.46 0.63 37 0.65 0.54 18 0.48 0.63 38 0.54 0.83 19 0.54 0.63 39 0.30 0.23 20 0.54 0.25 40 0.46 0.75 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 107 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when the data were examined, it was seen that the discrimination values of the items in the test were between .44 and .83 and 8 items with a value below .29 should be excluded from the test. eight items that did not meet the minimum discrimination value were excluded directly from the test. there are 32 questions left in the final form of the achievement test developed. reliability analysis was performed for the final achievement test consisting of 32 questions and the results are given in table 2. the final version of the achievement test was applied to 5 families with similar characteristics to the sample. with this pilot application, it is aimed to determine whether there are any unclear questions or unknown words and how many minutes the families can solve this test on average. the test was finalized as a result of the feedback received from the families participating in the application. in the pilot application, it was determined that the families completed the test between 23-30 minutes on average and it was decided to give a 30-minute response time for the achievement test. calculation of internal consistency is one of the methods to determine test reliability. kr-20 analysis is the most common analysis used to calculate internal consistency and reliability for achievement tests. the 40-question kr-20 value of the achievement test was determined as 0.93. after the 8 items removed from the test, the kr-20 value of the 32-item achievement test was determined as .97. the results of the kr-20 analysis performed for the achievement test are given in table 2. table-2. achievement test kr-20 analysis. n item x ss dif. mean rkr20 98 32 22.56 7.92 0.43 0.96 3.4. data collection the data collection process was carried out in two stages: collecting qualitative data and collecting quantitative data. 3.4.1. qualitative data collection one of the main assumptions of program development is that a solid training program should be based on an analysis of participants' needs. the procedures used to gather information about students' needs are called needs analysis. in other words, needs analysis is a systematic process that determines and evaluates the training required or the needs of an individual or employee, customer, supplier. needs analysis, as a separate and necessary step in the planning of educational programs, emerged in the 1960s as part of the systems approach to curriculum development and became part of the education philosophy (stufflebeam, mccormick, brinkerhoff, & nelson, 1985). the need for educational needs assessment in education planning has been strengthened by the "behavioral goals" movement that measurably indicates all-important goals within the education system. the importance is given to the measurable and content effectiveness of the objectives influenced the emergence of needs analysis as an educational technology form and its use as an education research method (richards, 2001). in the development of the program, face-to-face interviews were held with ten families, primarily to determine the educational needs of the families. a semi-structured family interview form was used in these interviews. the data obtained from the interviews were analyzed descriptively within the scope of needs analysis. questions about the use of reinforcers to increase positive behaviors were asked to the families to measure their level of knowledge on the concepts of reinforcement, reinforcement, reinforcement tariffs, and positive behavior enhancement, revealing their practices in this context and determining their educational needs on these issues. the obtained data were analyzed with the descriptive analysis technique. program objectives and program content were identified in line with the analysis results. before the interviews, the families who participated in the research were clearly stated that their names would not be used in any way, and they were informed of the audio recordings, and permission was obtained. the interviews were held between november and december 2019. 3.4.2. quantitative data collection the quantitative data in the study were collected by the achievement test. the achievement test was applied to participating families in both control and experimental groups before the application of the education program. the applied achievement test results were transferred to the computer as a pre-test. after the application, the achievement test was applied to both groups as a post-test, and the data obtained were transferred to the computer environment for statistical analysis. before the achievement test and program implementation, consent forms were obtained from the families indicating that they voluntarily participated in the study. success test applications were applied under the supervision of the researcher. participants were reminded that for data validity and reliability, they should answer sincerely while solving the achievement test. before the achievement test was applied as a pretest and a post-test, the necessary item analyzes were made and detailed information about this was given under the relevant heading. as a result, the achievement test developed by the researcher was applied to the experimental and control groups as a pre-test before applying for the effective reinforcement use parent education program. the program was implemented only to the experimental group and the post-training achievement test was applied to both groups again. the quantitative data obtained through the achievement test were analyzed using statistical analysis methods through the spss software. the data relating to the analysis results were presented and interpreted in the form of tables. 3.5. data analysis the research data were analyzed in two stages. descriptive analysis was used for the analysis of qualitative data, and a statistical analysis program for social sciences (spss) was used for the analysis of quantitative data. 3.5.1. qualitative data analysis the descriptive analysis provides simple summaries of the data. along with simple chart analysis, they form the basic virtual component of any qualitative data analysis. with descriptive analysis, the individual explains what the data is or what it shows. the description of the data is necessary to determine the normality of the distribution, asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 108 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group since the nature of the techniques to be applied for inferential analysis of the data depends on the characteristics of the data, it is necessary to explain the data. this study was carried out by adopting a mixed-method, and firstly, semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with the families to determine the educational needs of the families, and the data obtained were analyzed with descriptive content analysis. the descriptive analysis method was preferred because it offers real-time data capture and analysis. the descriptive analysis provides an explanatory summary of the information content arranged to best fit the data (sandelowski, 2000). the reasons why this method is preferred; first, it provides a rich description of families' experiences on the subject; second, it determines and explains the effectiveness of the program content and; third, it identifies the elements of individual and interpersonal experiences that cannot be measured by a questionnaire (hsieh & shannon, 2005). descriptive content analysis is a widely used method of analysis in many disciplines, including education, psychology, and social sciences. it is a preferred analysis method especially in qualitative research or in analyzing qualitative data. descriptive analysis in educational research not only reveals the complexity of content, examines how learning takes place in general or what factors affect it, but also enables a deeper study and understanding of individual learners' educational needs, behaviors, and experiences. descriptive analysis, which is the preferred analysis method in qualitative research, is used to analyze semi-structured face-to-face interviews (loeb et al., 2017). 3.5.2. quantitative data analysis the evaluation of the effectiveness of the program determines the causal effects of the program. it involves measuring whether the program is achieving its intended results, that is, program results. program goals should change the status or social circumstances of the sample. program outcomes are observed characteristics of the target sample or social conditions. there are two types of outcomes, outcome level and outcome change, which are also associated with program impact. outcome level refers to the state of an outcome over a while. outcome change refers to the difference between outcome levels at different points in time. program effect refers to the portion of an outcome change that can be uniquely associated with a program as opposed to the effect of another factor. outcome evaluation is to represent the conditions defined as outcomes through observable indicators that change systematically with the change or difference in these conditions. impact assessment is a systematic way of assessing the extent to which a program achieves its intended outcomes (rossi, peter, lipsey, & freeman, 2003). the data obtained from the achievement test applied before and after the implementation of the education program were analyzed by spss 23 computer software. statistical analyzes were performed using the mannwhitney u and wilcoxon tests to determine whether there was a significant relationship between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental and control groups and whether there was a significant relationship between the scores of the groups. before performing data analysis, kolmogorov smirnov and shapiro-wilk normality distribution tests were performed to decide on the statistical test to be applied, and the appropriate parametric or non-parametric tests were selected according to the results. table-3. normality distribution test analysis results. group kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. control 0.321 12 0.001 0.808 12 0.012 experimental 0.268 12 0.017 0.885 12 0.103 note: p=0.05. when table 3 was examined, it was found that the data did not show a normal distribution. the wilcoxon test, which is used to compare two measurements from the same sample but not showing a normal distribution, was used to analyze the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group and the pre-test post-test scores of the control group to evaluate the significant difference within the group. in order to test the significant difference between groups, the mann-whitney u test, which is used to compare two measurements from different samples but not showing a normal distribution, was used to analyze the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group and the control group. 4. findings in this section, the findings regarding the research results are given in line with the sub-questions of the research. 4.1. findings regarding the first research question the first research question of the research is the opinions of the parents on the educational needs of reinforcement and the use of reinforcers to increase the positive behaviors of children with asd in their daily life. findings reached within the scope of this purpose are included under this heading. 4.1.1. findings regarding parental competencies in order to determine the content of the reinforcing parent education program developed to increase the positive behaviors of children with asd, interviews were conducted with ten parents using a semi-structured interview method within the scope of needs analysis. the data obtained from the interviews were analyzed with the descriptive analysis technique and an answer was sought for the first research question of the study, what is the need for the parent education program. all of the parents interviewed within the scope of the needs analysis (100%) find themselves insufficient in the use of reinforcement and reinforcement in increasing positive behaviors. some of the parents stated that they heard the names of these concepts and read written materials about them, but they still could not have detailed information. some parents say they have almost no information, while some parents say they have heard of this asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 109 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group concept for the first time. families who participated in the interview shared a common view that they did not see themselves as knowledgeable about this issue. 4.1.2. findings regarding parents' demand for education ten parents (100%) who participated in the interviews stated that they would like to receive education in reinforcement and the use of reinforcers to increase positive behavior. all of the parents shared a consensus that such an education would benefit them and would be a support for many difficult situations they experienced. parents stated that they were looking for opportunities to participate in all kinds of education that would be beneficial for both their children and themselves, that they had great difficulties in this area where they lived, and therefore they wanted to participate in such a great education. parents expressed their desire to participate in this education as they thought that it would be beneficial for them. 4.1.3. findings regarding parents' views on the content of education within the scope of the needs analysis conducted to determine the content of the education program, semistructured interviews and interviews were conducted with ten families, and the questions were asked to the families on what subjects they would like to receive education in a training about the use of reinforcers and reinforcement. detailed data on the descriptive analysis results of the data obtained from the participants' answers regarding this question are given in figure 1. when the relevant figure is examined, all parents stated that they need education on reinforcement and reinforcer, nine parents (90%) on reward and punishment, eight parents (80%) on primary and secondary reinforcers, and finally 70% of parents on reinforcement schedules. although the parents have very limited knowledge about the subjects and concepts included in the reinforcement, they also stated that they are confused about the subjects they have and that they cannot use them. parents shared their views that they had difficulties in using the concepts of reward and punishment, had wrong experiences in this regard, and that more problems emerged due to these experiences. figure-1. parents’ education needs. 4.2. findings regarding the second research question the question of whether there is a statistically significant difference between the pre-test scores of the experimental group and the control group constitutes the second sub-objective of the research. findings regarding this research question are given under this title in table 4. table-4. mann whitney-u test analysis results regarding experimental-control group pre-test scores. test group n s. ort. s. top. z u p pre-test experimental 12 11.08 133 control 12 13.92 167 -0.991 55 0.347 note: p<0.05. to determine the effectiveness of the education program developed to increase the positive behavior of students with asd, the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied to the experimental and control groups as a pre-test before the education. the results of the mann-whitney u test conducted to test the significance of the pre-test scores between the groups. according to the mann-whitney-u test, the average of the ranks in the experimental group was found to be 11.08 and the total of the ranks was 133. the mean of the ranks in the control group was 13.92, and the total of the rows was 167. the u value was 55 and the significance value was calculated as 0.347 (p <0.005). the p-value (p = .347) obtained as a result of the analysis performed between the two groups reveals that there is no significant difference between the means of the groups. according to the analysis results of the pre-test scores performed before the application, the skills of reinforcement and use of reinforcement in increasing positive behaviors of the parents in the experimental group and the control group are close to each other. this finding supports the necessity of not having any difference between groups at the beginning stage to observe the effect of the independent variable during the experimental process. 4.3. findings regarding the third research question the findings regarding whether there is a statistically significant difference between the pre-test post-test scores of the control group are given in table 5. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 110 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. wilcoxon test analysis results regarding the control group pre-test post-test scores. group test n r. mean r. total test statistics p control pre-test 12 5.21 36.50 post-test 12 4.25 8.50 -1.660 0.97 note: p<0.05. to determine the effectiveness of the education program, the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied to the control group as pre-test and post-test before and after the education. considering the sample size and normality distribution test results, the average of the pre-test ranks was 5.21 and 36.50 was found in the wilcoxon test results, which were conducted to test the significance between pre-test and post-test scores within the group. the posttest mean of ranks was 4.25 and the total of ranks was 8.5. according to the test results, the wt value-1.660 was calculated as the significance value of 0.97 (p <0.005). the p-value (p = .97) obtained as a result of the analysis between the two tests reveals that there is no significant difference between the control group pretest and posttest mean scores. according to the results of the wilcoxon test, the skills of reinforcement and the use of reinforcers in increasing positive behaviors of the parents in the control group are close to each other before and after the application. this can be explained by the lack of education of the control group. 4.4. findings regarding the fourth research question the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied to the experimental and control groups as a post-test. the results of the mann-whitney u test conducted to test the significance between the posttest scores between the groups, taking into account the sample size and normality distribution test results, are given in table 6. according to the mann-whitney-u test, the average of ranks in the experimental group was 18.50, and the total of rows was 222. the mean of ranks in the control group was 6.5, and the total of rows was 78. the u value was calculated as, 000 and the significance value as, 000 (p <0.005). the p-value (p = .000) obtained as a result of the analysis performed between the two groups reveals that there is a significant difference between the means of the groups. according to the analysis results of the post-test scores performed after the application, the skills of reinforcement and use of reinforcement in increasing positive behaviors of the parents in the experimental group and the control group are quite distant from each other. this finding shows that the parent education program developed within the scope of the research was effective in favor of the experimental group that was applied. to reveal the effect size, cohen's d value and effect size r value analysis were performed utilizing mean scores and standard deviations. the effect size value was determined as r = 0.87 and d = 3.59. in the light of these findings, it can be said that the program is a very effective education program. table-6. experimental-control group post-test mann whitney-u test analysis results. test group n s. ort. s. top. z u p r post-test experimental 12 18.50 222 control 12 6.5 78 -4.771 0.000 0.000 0.87 note: p<0.05. 4.5. findings regarding the fifth research question the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied to the experimental group as a pre-test and a post-test before and after the education. according to the results of the wilcoxon test conducted to test the significance between the pre-test and post-test scores within the group, considering the sample size and normality distribution test results, the pre-test ranks mean was 6.5 and the total of the ranks was 78. the posttest mean of ranks was 00 and the total of ranks was 00. according to the test results, the wt value-3,072 significance value was calculated as 002 (p <0.05) in table 7. the p-value (p = .002) resulting from the analysis performed between the two tests reveals a significant difference between the experimental group pre-test and post-test mean scores. according to the results of the wilcoxon test, the skills of the parents in the experimental group regarding the use of reinforcement and reinforcement in increasing positive behaviors before and after the application are quite far from each other. this finding can be explained by the fact that the training activities carried out with the experimental group participating in the education practice are quite effective. as a result of the calculations carried out to determine the effect size, it was determined as r = 0.90. the measure of the effectiveness of the effect is called the effect size. the difference between the averages of two events or groups is called the effect size. according to this result, it can be found that the education program implemented has a very high effect size. table-7. experimental group pre-test post-test wilcoxon test analysis results. group test n r. mean r. total test stats p r experimental pre-test 12 6.5 78 post-test 12 0.00 0.00 -3.072 0.002 0.90 note: p<0.05. 4.6. findings regarding the sixth research question the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied as a retention test three weeks after the application to the experimental group on which the education program was applied. after the program implementation, the results of the experimental group post-test and the permanence test were compared to evaluate the permanence of the reinforcing parent education program within the group. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 111 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. analysis results of wilcoxon test regarding experimental group post-test and retention test scores. group test n r. mean r. total test stats p experimental post-test 12 2.75 5.50 retention 12 2.25 4.50 -0.184 0.854 note: p<0.05. considering the sample size and normality distribution test results, the posttest mean of ranks was 2.75 and the total of ranks was found to be 5.50 for the wilcoxon test results, which were conducted to test the statistical significance between the posttest and retention test scores within the group in table 8. the permanence test was determined as the average of the ranks as 2.25 and the total of the rows as 4.50. according to the test results, the wt value, -184 significance value was calculated as 854 (p <0.05). the p-value (p = .854) resulting from the analysis between the two tests reveals that there is no significant difference between the experimental group posttest and retention test mean scores. 5. discussion the study aims to develop the program for families with children with autism and to determine the effect of the developed program on increasing positive behaviors in the children of families. in the study, there were a total of 24 parents, 12 parents in the experimental group and 12 parents in the control group. before the program, 10 parents were interviewed in line with the needs analysis. it was stated to both the participants who participated in the interview and the families before the education that there was a criterion for having a child with autism in participating in the study, and accordingly, families were selected for the study. during the education phase, the families were reminded that the education given was carried out within the scope of research and they were asked to show sensitivity for full participation in the sessions. one of the biggest problems encountered in group education, the problem of determining the appropriate time for everyone has been overcome with the dedication of the parents and the researcher's effort to determine the appropriate time for each parent, and the support of providing transportation to the education place. the participants attended the program with great care. the only problem participants experienced in participating in the program was difficulty in finding a place to leave their children or a caregiver during the program. when parents are actively involved in the parenting education process, including the choice of program, they are more willing to receive education (kuhar & reiter, 2013). the parent education program developed within the scope of this study was developed based on the needs analysis. therefore, the content of the program has been determined in line with the needs of the parents. within the scope of the research, it was revealed that the families did not have information about reinforcement and were willing to receive education on this subject within the scope of the interviews made with the families in the period before the education program was prepared to reveal their educational needs. the families stated that they did not have both conceptual and practical knowledge and skills related to the subject chosen for education, and all of them expressed positive opinions about receiving education on this subject. in parallel with the results of the interviews, families participated in the education program voluntarily and enthusiastically. parent education provides opportunities to reveal or improve the skills that parents have. parents may need some educational support to better support the child both in social life and academic life. the fact that the first educators of children are parents and this is a situation that lasts throughout their lives are the most important reasons for the need for parent education. in this education program, parents have increased their competence in using reinforcers and the increase in the positive behaviors of their children will help to make important contributions to the development of children. according to fisher and gilliam (2012) the behavior management approach uses behavior change including reinforcement, punishment, and modeling based on social learning theory. reinforcement is provided depending on the appropriate behavior. denial of social interest (eg ignoring the child) or punishment is given in response to inappropriate behavior. parents try to control the child; the child resists this, the parents become more deterrent; the child becomes more resistant or unruly; the parents soften, but the child continues the destructive behavior. it is easy and possible for parents and children to get caught in this confrontational and destructive cycle. behavior management approaches try to break this cycle with sensible behavior management tools. the behavior management approach was used in the development of this education program. after their positive behavior, families were taught how to reinforce their children. families often focus on their children's problematic or inappropriate behaviors. reinforcing appropriate behaviors contributes to both the increase of these behaviors and the decrease of inappropriate behaviors. after the parents learned strategies to increase positive behaviors, they focus on the behaviors that their children can do rather than what their children cannot do, and they pay more attention to reinforcing these behaviors. stating that parents have learned this attitude has an important place in terms of practice. the parent education program presented in the research was given through group education. the greatest benefit for the researcher of choosing group education within the scope of this program is that more than one parent can be trained at the same time, thus saving time and energy. at the same time, group education is of great importance for parents participating in education to learn from each other, to understand that they are not alone in the problems they encounter for similar reasons and results, to support each other in line with their own experiences and to convey their knowledge and to feel stronger (cavkaytar, 1998). however, while group programs provide significant advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness, they can also provide additional benefits to parents in terms of social support and stress reduction (farmer & reupert, 2013). considering this context, the education program provided many benefits in terms of supporting families, making them feel better, and accessibility to more than one family in the same period for the researcher. thanks to learning strategies that improve their children's behavior, many parents may experience a reduction in some aspects of parental stress. this is especially true when parents are able to develop an increased sense of self-efficacy and parent education programs are carefully designed to naturally fit into daily routines. this concept is very important for parents of children with asd. since numerous studies reveal that parents of children with asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 112 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group autism have higher levels of stress than parents of children with other developmental retardation or other types of disability (al-khalaf, dempsey, & dally, 2014; baker-ericzén, brookman-frazee, & stahmer, 2005; davis & carter, 2008; estes et al., 2013). in this context, considering that the knowledge and skills acquired to increase positive behaviors will contribute to the management and reduction of many difficult behaviors done by children, a decrease in parental stress is an expected result. during the education program, the strategies that parents learned about increasing positive behaviors also contributed positively to their communication with their children, they expressed their opinion that their stress levels decreased and they felt more comfortable. considering the data obtained during the research process and the observations and information obtained by the researcher during the education, it was seen that the families had different attitudes about applying reinforcement due to both incomplete or incorrect information and negative attitudes before the education was implemented. if we list these behaviors; 1) parents had very limited knowledge and skills about the concept and use of reinforcement, 2) since parents do not know the basic principles that should be applied for the permanence of positive behaviors of children, they have problems in the permanence of these behaviors, 3) parents tended to misinform and practice about reward and punishment, 4) as the parents did not know the principle of not creating saturation in the child while reinforcing, they were constantly using the same and high amount of reinforcement. 5) parents do not give enough information to the child about what they reinforce. considering that using reinforcement is sufficient, they do not emphasize with a clear expression to the child why she uses reinforcement. 6) parents mostly consider the development of their children in the academic field; therefore, they tend to apply reinforcement in this area, but the most common complaint is the failure to achieve permanence in the positive behavior of their children. in this study, parents stated that they realized the wrong practices they made in supporting and increasing positive behaviors of their children during the education process and at the end. the scores they obtained in the achievement test and retention test also show that they have gained the necessary knowledge and application skills on these issues. parents underlined that they started to apply the knowledge they gained in the education sessions and proceeded positively in this regard, especially before each session. again, the evaluations made during the sessions and the observations obtained from the application examples made by the educator showed that the program contributed to the parents in using reinforcers effectively and increasing positive behaviors. sucuoğlu (1996) reported that one of the most important benefits of family education programs is that families feel more competent than before and approach their children more positively. parents also understood that the knowledge and strategies they learned to increase positive behaviors within the scope of the program are extremely easy to apply in daily life, practical, and functional. in this way, their belief and confidence in themselves increased, and this effect of the program on parents also provided positive support for the confrontational and resilient communication they had established with their children before. tavil and karasu (2013) stated that the target group in the majority of family education studies is mothers. in addition, they expressed that it would be appropriate to plan further studies to include other members of the family, as mothers' more active involvement in business life in today's conditions will make it almost compulsory for other members of the family to participate more in the family education programs. in the family education program, mothers constitute the majority of the participants, supporting this study. with the efforts of the researcher, fathers were included in the study, and their participation in the education was ensured. the fact that mothers are more willing to participate in education compared to fathers can be interpreted as having more time with their children compared to fathers and finding the time to participate in education more comfortably. the concept of the benefit of parents' active participation in the educational process has been voiced for over four decades. as parents spend more time with their children during the day, in the evenings, and on the weekends than any specialist, they can intervene "around the clock". besides, parental education has a greater impact on the child in generalization, given that experts often see children in a limited number of settings, such as a practice room, and that parents provide their children with learning opportunities in many natural settings (al-khalaf et al., 2014; brookman-frazee, drahota, & stadnick, 2012; finders, díaz, geldhof, sektnan, & rennekamp, 2016; hieneman, childs, & sergay, 2006; johnson & myers, 2007; prata, lawson, & coelho, 2018). in this context, the inclusion of parents in the education process of their children can increase the child's progress rate and speed by increasing the support the child has throughout the day. the strategies that parents learned effectively in increasing positive behaviors were given to their children with autism through this program. permanence increases as parents have the competence to apply these strategies they learn in every environment and time they spend with their children. 6. conclusion in this study, the effect of the reinforcement education program for parents with children with asd, which was developed to increase the positive behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder, was examined and the results obtained are listed below. 1) all of the parents who participated in the research find themselves inadequate in the use of reinforcement in increasing the positive behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder. parents' knowledge of reinforcement and use of reinforcement is based on inadequate and theoretical definitions. parents generally confuse the concepts of negative reinforcement and punishment, reward and reinforcer. 2) all of the parents need education on the use of reinforcement to increase positive behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder. parents are willing to receive education on this subject. 3) parents with children with asd have problems in the application of reinforcement and the use of reinforcers in a common and standardized application competency in increasing positive behaviors. 4) the post-test results of the effective reinforcement parent education program developed for parents with children with asd in increasing the positive behaviors of children with asd created a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. after the education, it was concluded that the parents in the experimental group were more successful than the control group in the use of effective reinforcers. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 103-114 113 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5) effective reinforcement parent education program developed to increase the positive behaviors of children with asd created a statistically significant difference between the pre-test post-test scores of the experimental group. it was concluded that the parents in the experimental group after the education were more successful in the use of effective reinforcers compared to their pre-education situations. 6) effective reinforcement parent education program yielded effective results in the experimental group in the ability to use reinforcement and to determine reinforcement schedules effectively. 7. implications 1) the effectiveness of the reinforcement education program developed for parents with children with asd in increasing the positive behaviors of children with asd can be evaluated by applying it to larger samples. 2) the parent education program, the effect of which was tested with this research, can be applied in guidance and research centers. parent education programs can be organized by lifelong education or special education application and research centers within the body of the university to increase positive behaviors for parents with children with asd, 3) the education program can also be applied to parents with children with normal development. 4) the education program developed within the scope of the research can be taught to educators and experts who are interested or willing, through events such as meetings and seminars to be held. 5) the program, developed for parents with children with asd, can also be adapted for families with children with different types of disabilities. 6) by developing and increasing sample videos prepared by the researcher or used by the researcher, the program can be enriched in terms of implementation. 7.1. implications for further research 1) this study focused on how families participating in the program were affected by the program; it was checked whether the parents acquired information and applied it. it is important to examine how the children with asd, 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(2013). family education studies: a review and meta-analysis example. education and science, 168(38), 85-95. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 70 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 2, 70-81, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i2.6804 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group exploring the characteristics of argumentation in secondary school students: a study of reasoning, structure, and communication skills emelie otnes1 mukadder baran2 ( corresponding author) 1science teacher at straumsnes barneog ungdomskule, norway. email: emotnes@gmail.com 2faculty of education, arts and sports at western norway university of applied sciences, norway. email: mukadder.baran@hvl.no abstract this study examines the characteristics of students' arguments when they are confronted with scientific claims. a qualitative single-case study was conducted to investigate the problem. data were collected through observations and interviews, using the convenient sampling method in a tenth-grade (n=9) class in norway. audio recordings captured the students while they were solving argumentation-based tasks in small groups. interviews were also conducted with two of the students afterward. a constant comparative analysis approach was used to analyze the students' conversations, and a thematic analysis was used to analyze the interviews. the results indicated that the students used short statements to express both support and opposition to each other's arguments. additionally, different types of content were used when students built their arguments, including ethical considerations, examples, fantasy based on their imagination, and assessments of the probability of socio-scientific issues. there were certain variations among the groups regarding group dynamics, and based on this, argumentation could be an activity that involves social risk for students. it can be said that this aspect also improved the effectiveness of the argumentation process within most groups, encouraging authentic discussions about challenging issues. keywords: argumentation-based learning, argumentation, science education, secondary school, socio scientific issues, critical thinking. citation | otnes, e., & baran, m. (2025). exploring the characteristics of argumentation in secondary school students: a study of reasoning, structure, and communication skills. asian journal of education and training, 11(2), 70-81. 10.20448/edu.v11i2.6804. history: received: 3 may 2025 revised: 31 may 2025 accepted: 4 june 2025 published: 20 june 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research didn`t receive any financial support institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of norway which is called sikt has granted approval for this study on 8 november 2022 (ref. no. 506386). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 2. theoretical framework .................................................................................................................................................................. 71 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 72 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 73 5. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 78 6. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 80 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 81 mailto:emotnes@gmail.com mailto:mukadder.baran@hvl.no https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i2.6804 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5767-3875 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4407-2164 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 71 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the field by providing insights and the characteristics of argumentation based learning in science classroom. this study investigates students' discussion styles, it also sheds light on the issues that teachers should consider when making argumentation-based science teaching. 1. introduction 1.1. a study of the characteristics of argumentation in secondary school students assessing knowledge in today's information society has become more important than ever. in our digital everyday life, we have information literally at our fingertips, and each of us has an almost unlimited ability to spread information to other people. living together in an information society demands a lot from us as humans. during their school years, students need to acquire academic competence, but they should also learn skills that prepare them to live in a society that enables them to tackle more complex issues. according to evagorou and dillon (2020) in recent years, schools have shifted focus to a greater extent to provide students with content that fosters responsible citizenship. this shift involves making science more relevant to students, based on the idea that, as a society, we have a shared benefit from understanding science. the core curriculum (the norwegian directorate for education and training, 2017) also emphasizes this. an analysis of "the school of the future renewal of subjects and competencies" (ministry of education and research, 2015) reveals that in addition to being academically competent, students should be self-regulated, competent communicators, critical and problemsolver, creative and innovative, and democratically and socially responsible (riese, hilt, & søreide, 2020). on this basis, the following research question was chosen: what characterizes students' arguments when faced with scientific claims? the research question is narrowed down to the following three sub-questions: 1. how do students support each other's arguments? 2. how do students express opposition when faced with each other's arguments? 3. how do students substantiate their claims they argue a socio-scientific issue? 2. theoretical framework 2.1. what is argumentation? acquiring knowledge within the field of natural sciences requires scientific formulations, but many students find the scientific language difficult (mork, 2006). a report from the 2019 timms survey (lehre, 2021) addresses students' abilities to argue scientifically on timms tasks. the results of the argumentation tasks show that a relatively large proportion of 9th-grade students use everyday conceptions rather than scientific discourse (lehre, 2021). wallace describes a "gap" between students' everyday language and the scientific language, and as a teacher, one often wishes to bridge this gap for the students. the theoretical framework developed by wallace (2004) is intended to serve as a model for scientific literacy and the use of language in the science classroom.. according to wallace (2004) students' language is central to their exploration. wallace employs the term scientific literacy, which includes the ability to think metacognitively, read, and write scientific text, as well as to use aspects of scientific arguments. argumentation is a term frequently used in our daily lives. philosopher stephen toulmin defines argumentation briefly as a claim accompanied by justifications (toulmin, 2003). costello and mitchell (1995) and see it as a tool to promote a view or position in favor of others. in science and science education, argumentation often aims to reach some kind of conclusion or to lead to the development of science. tippett (2009) points out that scientific knowledge is a socially constructed concept that is negotiated, validated, and communicated in a social context. driver, newton, and osborne (2000) define argumentation as "a central feature of the resolution of scientific controversies (fuller, 1997; taylor, 1996) it is somewhat surprising that science teaching has paid so little attention to a practice that lies at the heart of science." according to erduran and jiménes-aleixandre (2007) argumentation involves justifying knowledge claims and persuading others. toulmin’s argumentation model toulmin (2003) has gained an important place in argumentation theory and has become a well-known framework for argumentation in practice, and in research where the goal is to highlight the various components of an argument and their functions. according to toulmin, an argument has a logical structure where claims interact to support a claim, data, warrant, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal (breivega, 2018). mork (2006) have simplified the model in their research to include claims, facts, justifications, and conditions as often the main parts of an argument; but an argument can also consist of just a claim with justification. 2.2. argumentation in the science classroom researchers claim that the use of argumentation in science education has gained wide recognition among educators (allchin & zemplén, 2020; erduran & jiménes-aleixandre, 2007). argumentation has been viewed as an important part of science education. nevertheless, the concept of argumentation is not extensively used in the formulation of competency goals in science. therefore, it may be challenging for teachers to justify why argumentation should have a place in science education in norwegian schools. however, the competency goals in science include the concepts of critical thinking, exploration, and research. at the same time, the scientific way of thinking is consistently reflected in the science curriculum (norwegian directorate for education and training, 2019). according to mork (2006) argumentation can be used as a learning strategy to acquire knowledge and to learn subject matter and concepts. activities that involve argumentation can lead to learning or high academic achievement (hattie, 2009; ural & gençoğlan, 2019). mercer, wegerif, and dawes (2004) research on exploratory dialogue in group discussions states something different, namely that group tasks encouraging students to argue lead to longer retention of subject matter compared to tasks that do not include argumentation (asterhan & schwarz, 2013). hattie (2009) shows good results for students learning scientific methods and thinking. the second point concerns students' foundation for participation in democratic processes. kolstø (2006) emphasizes that asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 72 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group knowledge of the nature of science is important for democratic participation, and the focus should be on methods, procedures, concepts of risk and probability, and competence in argumentation and analysis. he also points out that more complex tasks, such as assessing socio-scientific controversies, require students to develop autonomy and experience, which is important for their preparation for democratic participation. 2.3. critical thinking elementary school students need to develop critical thinking skills, as future challenges will require them to see multiple perspectives and reflect on complex issues. the curriculum emphasizes that schools should promote curiosity and critical reflection (the norwegian directorate for education and training, 2017). mork (2006) points out that argumentation activities are rare in norwegian schools, and scheie et al. (2022) find few references to critical thinking in the curriculum, where cognitive skills and the knowledge dimension dominate. exploration, which is closely linked to critical thinking, involves students asking questions, designing and conducting investigations, interpreting data, forming arguments, and communicating findings. this can increase students' interest and understanding of science (bailin, 2002; hand et al., 2018). teaching that promotes critical thinking is characterized by exploring authentic problems, creating dialogue, providing critical thinking training and modelling by teachers (abrami et al., 2008). 3. method 3.1. a qualitative case study a single case study was conducted with observations and interviews of students in a selected class at a specific school. the purpose was to understand the context and create local knowledge related to the class and the school (postholm & jacobsen, 2018). the framework for the case is defined according to merriam (1998). data collection took place in the classroom over two school hours on two separate days. the findings are specific to this class, teaching plan and students' prior knowledge. 3.2. participants the data was collected in a 10th-grade class at a larger school in a village in western norway which is called voss secondary school. the students had been in the same class for two and a half years when the data collection took place. the sample was chosen based on availability, as the school was known through the researcher's network. the researcher also had a teaching role in the class for a short period before the data collection. convenience sampling is the most common sampling method. this is when the sample is not random. this will also be the case in this study, whereby any findings will be tied to the available case. 3.2.1. selection of participants for observation and interview nine students participated in the observation of group discussions. the selection for observation was based on which of the students consented to be audio recorded. the students who discussed in the same group were thus strategically placed with others who also consented to participate in the audio recording. two students from this class were also selected for an interview, and these two students were in the same group on both days. the predetermined criteria for selection for the interview were that there should be one student of each gender and that the two selected should have different levels of academic engagement in science. 3.3. data collection data collection was conducted in the autumn of 2022. the observation lasted over two days, with audio recordings each day. on the last day, an interview was also conducted in the following class period, with a break in between. the students were given argumentation tasks and discussed in groups of three. the topic was evolution, as the students had recently learned about it and thus had good prior knowledge. the researcher's previous role as a teacher in the class before the data collection meant that they were well acquainted with the student's prior knowledge and expectations, which may have influenced the study (bornstein et al., 2013). 3.3.1. the teaching plan the teaching plan was designed to facilitate student activity, especially through oral argument, based on the teacher's assertions. the time was divided between a common start, group discussions, and a joint review. before distributing the tasks, there was a conversation about what it means to argue, the characteristics of good arguments, and how to listen to others. the guidelines for good argumentation according to kolstø (2006) were used as follow: 1. share ideas and listen to each other. 2. speak one at a time. 3. respect each other's opinions. 4. explain and justify the ideas. 5. in case of disagreement, ask why. 6. try to agree in the end. 3.3.2. selection of statements the students worked on six statements over two days, as shown in table 1. on day 1, statements 1, 2 and 3, which were academic and required prior knowledge of evolution and adaptation, were addressed. on day 2, statements 4, 5 and 6, which were socioscientific and related to values and society, were addressed. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 73 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. claims distributed on day 1 and day 2. day 1 both your father and your grandfather are among the greatest ski talents in norway. therefore, it is highly likely that you will become one as well. organisms evolve through evolution with the goal of always becoming larger. one can be religious and still believe in the theory of evolution.. day 2 crispr technology can be a helpful tool for creating a more efficient society. it should be legal to change the genes of one's children using crispr, both when it comes to diseases, appearance, and personality. that human breed animals is unethical. note: overview of the six statements given in the argumentative task. the students had been through an introduction to what evolution is, and had previously looked a lot at animal adaptations in nature. they have also learned about how humans can help change the genes of plants, animals and humans through breeding, and had a school assignment where they had to find information about gene editing with crispr technology. the students' science teacher expressed that the students were not used to being faced with statements, but rather various types of discussion tasks. 3.4. data processing and analysis in the analysis of the observation, codes, subcategories and main categories were developed. in line with postholm and jacobsen (2018) open coding, axial coding and selective coding were used as three steps in a constant comparative analysis: in the open coding phase, the main categories are developed, in the axial coding phase, the subcategories are developed, and in the selective coding phase, the pieces are put together into a whole to answer the research question. to analyze the interviews, a thematic analysis was conducted according to the method described by braun, clarke, and braun (2022). this process included several steps: getting to know the data, coding the data, organizing by theme, developing and reviewing the themes, and finally distributing and defining the themes. 4. results 4.1. how do the students express support for each other's arguments? the analysis has been summarized in table 2, with excerpts showing interesting situations. the table shows the main categories and subcategories of the student statements, as well as their occurrence. the statements in table 2 were all interpreted as backing up the argument that came straight after them table 2. occurrence of statements expressing support for an argument. main categories sub-categories agreement “yes” repetition requests for insight asks for justification challenges argument competition-driven talk acknowledges loss/victory agree to disagree note: the table shows the occurrence of statements placed in main categories and subcategories. all statements in table 2 are interpreted as supportive of the argument made just before. the main categories that felt under this research question are “agreement”, “requests for insight”, “competitive talk” and “acknowledgement of different opinions”. 4.1.1. agreement and repetition when a statement was categorized as "agreement", the student responded to an argument by saying a short but supportive "yes", or the student repeated verbatim what the other student's argument contained, without adding anything to the argument. simply saying "yes" was the most common form of support. group 2's statements showed agreement, and here the students used repetition to show that they supported each other. sara: for example. for example, a rabbit that molts to become white in the winter. if he gets much bigger, it's much easier for him to be seen. so, it's not always better. lars: but bigger is not always better. sara: yes. bigger is not always better. […] lars: if everyone develops to become bigger and bigger, then we'll run out of space. sara: yes. kari. kari: that's a discussion that i'm not allowed to discuss. lars: quality over quantity, true. sara: yes. example of statements in the subcategories “agreement” and “repetition”. as it can be seen from the quotation the statement being repeated several times. sara ended a long statement about rabbits and size with “so it’s not always better”. then lars said the same statement, as if to emphasize sara’s point. then sara repeated the statement once more. in this group, the students support each other by both repeating each other and by supporting with a “yes”. when sara said here that “bigger is not always better”, lars repeated this almost before sara finished her statement. 4.1.2. request about insight during coding and categorizing student statements, it happened on several occasions that students asked each other questions where they requested insight into each other's arguments, both by asking for more basis, and by challenging each other's arguments. when these requests were characterized by a positive curiosity the statements asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 74 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group were categorized as supportive even though these statements challenged the argument, because they seemed to acknowledge and question it. this is because statements that help drive an argument forward are considered supportive. a statement about “requests for insight”: kris: but true, not just that breed, they're talking about everyone. sander: yes. kris: so … sander: yes. line: oh yeah. everyone? kris: so ... yes. so, like. line: well then, that's a challenge. kris: so, they're kind of getting better? sander: yes, but they're the kind of hondas that if you, if you breed hondas, do you mean that humans are going to decide that they're going to have trouble breathing and stuff like that? kris: oh yeah. no, they're not good. in the conversation, it can be seen that kris explained that “it applies to all dogs, not a specific breed”. line asked to confirm what kris meant and asked for insight into her thoughts. based on this, line considered that "then it's a challenge". sander asked kris for his ethical opinion: "do you mean that humans should somehow decide that they have difficulty breathing and so on?". kris concluded that "that's not right" based on the insight from sander. the quotation showed that the students request insight into each other's reasoning. line and kris show mutual interest in information that could support the claims, in a group dynamic that is friendly and harmonious. sander's statement in the conversation, which read: "do you mean that humans should somehow decide that they have difficulty breathing and so on?", was loaded with an expectation of an ethical assessment from kris. 4.1.3. competitive talk to support each other some groups made competitive statements. statements that were seen as supportive and competitive are characterized by students acknowledging defeat or victory, or indicating that they agree to disagree.the quotation below shows an example of competitive talk that appears to support the opponent of the person making the statement. filip: yes, if your parents like what they do. but that's because we're used to our parents complaining about ... (filip says something unintelligible). if your parents like your job, and you get the same job. rutt: yes, that's true. not true. filip: oooooh, you admitted it then! we won, we won, we won, we won, we won, we won. rutt: you can win. it can be seen that filip presented an argument, and rutt then said "yes, that's true." after rutt agreed with filip's argument, filip said "you admitted it," and continues with a competitive statement that challenges rutt. rutt then acknowledged that they won the argument, and the statement could almost appear as a surrender. it was also relevant here how both filip and rutt choosed to express themselves. both used words that indicate that robert and filip are on the "team," as filip said "we won" and rutt says "you guys win." this could suggested that statements about competition are about who was on the team against whom, and they thus appeared polarizing. 4.2. how do the students express resistance to each other's arguments? in table 3, the analysis was summarized, and the conversationsshowed interesting situations. the table displays the main and subcategories for student statements, as well as the occurrence of these statements. all statements in table 3 are interpreted as resistance to the argument that was stated just before. table 3. occurrence of statements expressing opposition to an argument. main categories sub-categories disagreement expresses disagreement briefly critical evaluation challenges logic corrects facts questions source questions relevance irrelevant talk speaks destructively teases points out grammatical errors interrupts competition-driven talk points out loss/victory talks about competition note: the table shows the occurrence of statements placed in main categories and subcategories. all statements in table 3 are interpreted as opposition to the argument that is stated just before. the main categories that felt under this research question are "disagreement," "critical evaluation," "irrelevant talk," and "competitive talk." 4.2.1. disagreement the subcategory "disagreement" could consist of statements such as "no" or "i think that is wrong." statements in the subcategory "expresses disagreement briefly" were thus made without providing any justification for the disagreement. the statement therefore was not necessarily had any depth in itself and did not need to be based on anything other than the fact that one disagrees. such statements typically belonged in a context that may be relevant to highlight in order to understand what the disagreement means. a typical example of disagreement is shown in the following quotation: asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 75 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group lars: if you... if you... if you believe... if a person believes that god created everything, kari, maybe they believe that the theory of evolution, that it is... it means that animals created themselves in a way, right. so, you can't believe in both. kari: yes, you can. lars: no. sara: but then it's just wrong, so you just believe wrong, kari. lars presented an argument at the beginning of the excerpt, concluding that it was impossible to believe in both the theory of evolution and a religion, and kari briefly disagreed without providing any reasoning. lars then disagreed with kari's disagreement, and sara continued by stating, "then it's just wrong," almost asserting that kari was incorrect. in the excerpt, both kari, lars, and sara made statements that directly contradicted each other, with kari and lars doing so simply by saying "yes" and "no." the conversation as a whole was characterized by disagreement, but the three students seemed to support their arguments with personal experiences, examples, knowledge of the topic, and similar elements in their disagreements along the way. the excerpt followed a longer conversation that appeared constructive and based on relevant content. the excerpt was taken from the very end of the argument relating to the claim about religion. it seemed that the students had reached a point where the argument had come to a sort of standstill, with not much more to add to the arguments. sara expressed something that might indicate this by saying, "but then it's just wrong, so you just believe wrong, kari”. group 2 in the conversation above did not have the highest occurrence of statements in the category "expresses disagreement directly." group 1 had roughly twice the occurrence of the "expresses disagreement directly" category compared to group 2, on both day 1 and day 2. considering the context around the disagreement between the two groups, group 2 differed from group 1 by their disagreements being more mutual, with the friction that occurred within the group often not negatively charged. their disagreements appeared more constructive than those of group 1. in group 1, the conversation seemed negatively charged, and the statements in the "expresses disagreement directly" category were frequent and often repetitive. the following excerpt provided an example of this: robert: it's in your blood. rutt: that's what you say. oh, yes. i don't think you inherit physical form. [...] rutt: i don't think that ... filip: you're wrong. rutt: i don't think that robert: you're wrong. rutt: you think you ... filip: wrong! examples of statements in the subcategory "expresses disagreement directly". the students were discussing physical fitness, and rutt asserted that she did not believe physical fitness could be inherited. she tried to continue speaking but was interrupted by filip, who said "you are wrong." he repeated these two more times, with the final statement simply saying "wrong!" the quotations contained examples of statements where the students expressed disagreement directly, without this leading to a discussion. it seemed that robert and filip's statements of disagreement towards rutt undermined and interrupted rutt's attempts to discuss. the group stood out on this point in the table, perhaps due to excessive disagreement, as illustrated by the last quotation 4.2.2. critical evaluation the group that showed the most disagreement across these four subcategories was group 2, and they had the highest occurrence of the subcategory "doubt source." an example of group 2's discussion of sources can be seen in the following statements: lars: have you by any chance seen this on tiktok, kari? kari: no, no, but i was in armenia and i saw it! lars and kari: [laughs.] lars: you have seen it on tiktok. kari: and ... i do not want to ... sara: kari. my little friend, now i'm going to tell you something. tiktok is not always a very good source. kari: i was not on tiktok. okay? i have seen this. the dialogue started with lars doubting kari's source by asking if she saw it on tiktok. kari responded that she had evidence for her argument, but the others continued to suggest tiktok as her source. sara teased kari, who again denied that tiktok was her source. the discussion in the conversation showed disagreement over kari's use of sources. this exemplified a critical assessment that required reflection. group 2 had the most instances of questioning sources, which could enhance argumentation, but here it was placed under resistance as it was not based on curiosity but rather criticism. 4.2.3. irrelevant talk the occurrence of irrelevant talk varied between the groups and days. group 1 had the most frequent degrading talk, with 40 instances. this characterized their conversation, with little professional talk from anyone other than rutt. she repeatedly attempted to speak professionally and invited academic engagement, but was often met with irrelevant talk, as shown in the following statements: rutt: there are many who believe that the world has always been here and that humans have just arrived. filip: no. robert: that's pretty strange then. at the start of this dialogue, rutt presented an argument, and filip expressed disagreement with a simple "no" without further explanation. robert followed up with a derogatory comment, "da e ganske sløkte då," where "sløkte" meant dumb or idiotic. the conversation was generally negative and lacked constructive responses and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 76 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group mutual humor. derogatory talk also occurred in other groups, particularly in group 2, where it was used 24 times. in 21 of those cases, the talk was teasing and received as a joke, as shown in the following quotation: lars: can you, who watches so much cross-country skiing, have something. sara: you should know, you who do cross-country skiing. kari: yes. every day, every night. northug. lars: what... what first name? kari: petter. sara: yes, you know his children, kari. kari: yes? sara: he doesn't have children, haha, you don't watch cross-country skiing. in this dialog, humor and irony were evident in the conversation. the students had previously discussed kari's knowledge of cross-country skiing, and lars used this as an argument against her expertise. lars's comment was interrupted, but sara followed up with irony: "you should know, you who do cross-country skiing." kari played along and responded, "every day, every night. northug." this excerpt showed teasing and irrelevant talk, but the group had good chemistry. humor was used to build arguments, and the teasing was mutual. kari's tone and laughter, especially with "yes. every day, every night. northug," indicated a positive and friendly conversation. 4.2.4. competitive talk to express opposition competitive talk often served as resistance to others' arguments and frequently involved winning or losing. when students pointed out their own win or someone else's loss, this was sometimes linked to the assigned roles. it was challenging to directly link competitive talk to role assignment, as clear evidence in the data was scarce. an example where competitive talk appeared to be a result of role assignment could be found in the following conversation. sander: actually. yes. should we just die there or what? katching, katching, katching! line: but i can't... i agree, actually. kris: you! can we switch roles now? sander: do you want to be against it? kris: yes! line: yes, but i actually agree, so then they're a bit like. sander: then you and i are for it, and we're going to crush line. sander asked if they should end the discussion, followed by a sound that was interpreted as a slot machine, expressing victory. the students further discussed the distribution of roles. finally, sander said: “then you and i are in, and we are going to crush line,” indicating teamwork and engagement in the argument. this statement could be interpreted as part of the competition, as he encouraged kris to cooperate in order to "crush" line, which suggested a competitive conversational environment. 4.3. how do the students support their claims? in table 4 summarized the categories associated with students' argument construction. the table showed the categories in which student statements were placed and the frequency of the different categories. to answer the research question, students' use of content in arguments was examined, focusing on how they substantiated their claims and what types of facts they used to justify them. table 4. occurrence of statements expressing different types of facts as support for an argument. main categories sub-categories ethical consideration etiske vurderinger examples examples personal experience fantasy fantasy exaggeration assessments degree probability note: summary of the occurrence of statements about the students' reasoning. the table shows all statements, regardless of whether the students support the same assertion or not. the main categories in table 4 showed what characterized the students' argumentation in general terms, and these were relevant findings in themselves. it could be shown that the students used varied justifications when they argued. 4.3.1. ethical considerations group 3 stood out the most in terms of the occurrence of statements in the “ethical considerations” category. these statements also had crispr and breeding as the theme of their claims, which may have contributed to the group having more cases in this category. an example of ethical considerations can be seen below: line: think of a child who becomes disabled, for example. how many resources would that save? kris: you have to love people even if they are disabled!!! sander: you love them, you can make it easier for them in this! sander: this is not about loving people and thinking they are wrong, they are. kris: but she started with parents … sander: yes, it is because it is easier for parents, it is better for parents if they have a child with a little challenge. then they can practice. line: the parents can be mentally destroyed by spending so much resources and energy on them. sander: then you stop … they just … asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 77 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group kris: you, the parents should spend a lot of resources on them. line: yes, of course, of course, of course. in this statement, line discussed the use of crispr technology to save resources, and kris responded by saying that we must love everyone, including the disabled. line nuanced her stance and stated that technology could make people's lives easier. kris, sander, and line then discussed the role of parents and ethical considerations. kris believed that parents "should spend a lot of resources on them," which line ultimately agreed with. this excerpt showed that the students included several ethical perspectives in their assessment of crispr technology, especially the question of whether it is right to "fix" people with technology. the discussion took place in a friendly and engaged tone, which was also evident from the audio recordings. 4.3.2. examples examples were used frequently, and statements could be categorized as both “example” and other categories, such as knowledge. examples provided insight into what knowledge students chose to highlight. in the following excerpt, different religions were shown as examples: lars: yes. but there are other religions than christianity. kari: in ten … yes, in addition to the other religion, for example buddhism. then you can still believe in the theory of evolution. sara: eh, i don't know enough about all these different religions, so it will be difficult for me to answer. but in christianity, the religion is built on the premise that god created everything. so then it will be a bit strange if they start believing in the theory of evolution. lars pointed out that there are other religions besides christianity, and kari mentioned buddhism as an example. she said that one could still believe in the theory of evolution. sara found this difficult to answer because she did not know enough about different religions but used christianity as an example to argue that one could not believe in both the theory of evolution and a religion at the same time. 4.3.3. fantasy and exaggerations the categories “imagination” and “exaggeration” were similar to each other, but were still slightly different in use in the students’ conversations. the category of imagination was defined as an expression of imagination and creative thinking that went a little beyond the argument itself. nevertheless, imagination was expressed in all groups, but with different frequency. the excerpt below showed an example from group 1’s statements that were categorized as “imagination”: robert: you could have become superman. filip: yes. superman, flyyyyy kristin! rutt: no. robert: yeah. filip: can probably piss lasers. robert: we could have crossed gorilla dna, then we would be super strong. robert and filip talked in the conversation about “you could have become superman”. filip further said that one “could probably piss lasers” and robert continued with, “we could have crossed gorilla dna and become really strong”. these statements were categorized as fantasy because the statements were not used to prove a point but could be interpreted more as an outburst of enthusiasm. the subcategory “exaggerations” was defined as a distortion of reality in an extreme direction where the student who made the statement wanted to prove a point with the exaggeration. an example of this could be seen in the following conversation: lars: laughs. it's … it's obviously not practical if everything is just going to get bigger. sara: if kari had gotten a lot bigger, then … say in the door, if you have to go through that door. when you went to school, you would have pulled through the road, because you were so big. […] lars: where are we going … if the rabbit had been gigantic, then it would have been really easy for bigger … bigger animals like that to catch them. tarjei: exactly. sara: and those. tarjei: if the rabbit had been gigantic then. sara: if you were hunting, tarjei. tarjei. for example, if i were to hunt a rabbit. it's a little … then it's a lot easier … imagine that. it's much easier to shoot a big rabbit than to shoot a small. in this statement, lars said that it was not practical if organisms became infinitely large. sara exaggerated, mentioning problems such as walking through doors and stepping on roads. lars mentioned that large rabbits could be easily caught, and sara specified hunting. the students used exaggerations to illustrate the disadvantages of large organisms. to understand them, one had to interpret humorous statements and read between the lines. 4.3.4. assessments students made statements that were categorized as “probability” and “degree.” these categories indicated that students could use arguments containing a caveat about risk or chance that something would happen, and they used this as part of an evaluation of the claim. an example of this was shown in the following: sara: if you look at the statistics, it's very rare that there are three people in a row in the same family who are dead in cross-country skiing. it's quite a small... small probability. kari: huh? no, i don't think so. eskil is right... take eskil for example. he's good at cross-country skiing, right. lars: yes. kari. he has strong parents, right. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 78 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in this statement, sara said that it had happened a few times that three in a row in the same family had become “deadly” in cross-country skiing, and then pointed out that it was “quite unlikely”. kari then responded to this by saying to bring up an example of a person who was fit himself, who also had fit parents. here she did not directly assess probability, and the statement was not categorized under the main categoryassessments”, but this was an example that responded to sara’s assessment of probability. there were also examples of students’ assessments of risk and how could play a role. the example that dealt with assessment of probability and risk could be seen in the following conversation: trond: trond: yes, but they can still live a better life without gluten allergies. sara: but then we change them, so think for example now there is someone who is a doctor. so, you change those genes, and then you can maybe … then they might change. trond: but you don't know … whether the person actually gets a doctorate when they grow up. you don't change people when they are adults. sara: yes, you change the person, trond. then they might not end up the way they really intended to end up. sara pointed out the risks of crispr, indicating that gene editing can have unforeseen consequences. trond also considered the risk and the chance that something could go wrong. sara highlighted that "it could happen," which demonstrated awareness of possible problems with crispr. the students demonstrated the ability to weigh the risks and likelihood of unwanted consequences when using crispr. 5. discussion 5.1. the support among the students is frequent and significant for the group dynamics in light of vygotsky's sociocultural learning theory (säljö, 2013), the social framework surrounding any learning activity is considered important as it can provide students with supportive scaffolding. agreement in itself can give argumentation value in the form of a simple but important support for the student who has presented an argument. it can be thought that such a statement comes under mercer’s (kolstø, 2016) definition of supportive talk, as these are characterized by agreement, confirmation, repetitions, and elaborations. nevertheless, it shows that the students are largely repetitive and confirming, without adding further value to the argumentation, which is an important principle in vygotsky's theory (säljö, 2013) of supportive scaffolding. although the students largely show signs of also delving deeper into the argument in other categories than they do under "agreement" and "disagreement," it is significant that these two are the most frequently used. though this does not necessarily contribute more depth to the conversation between the students, these statements of agreement can still have greater significance than one might think, as this can be thought to be an important part of the social interaction occurring in the groups. the pisa framework highlights that collaboration and criticism play an important role in the natural sciences. vygotsky's sociocultural learning theory (säljö, 2013) informs us about the important social process that is crucial in any learning situation (kolstø & ratcliffe, 2007; säljö, 2013). this will also be applicable here. a "yes" can be significant in making a student feel heard and understood, for example, and a short "no" can feel just as unpleasant as a well-grounded counterargument. the findings of the study show extensive use of ungrounded statements of agreement and disagreement, which may be influenced by the role distribution in the teaching setup. the students focused on agreeing with their partner and supporting their partner's opinions, which may have inhibited critical thinking. group 1, in their conversations, stood out with few requests for insight and a low occurrence of justifications in their arguments. many statements of agreement without justification could be due to their roles as "for" and "against" in the discussion. the element of argumentation may have led to a confrontational conversation, where two students support each other with short statements and little content. this may have given an artificially high occurrence of "requests for insight." arguing largely involves weakening or strengthening a claim (karlsen, 2018) and a short statement of agreement can help give an argument more weight. at the same time, more is required for an argument to survive; it depends on presenting evidence, articulating reasoning (karlsen, 2018) and providing claims with justification (breivega, 2018). for an argumentative conversation to move from supportive to exploratory (kolstø, 2016) students must proceed to these components mentioned by karlsen (2018) and breivega (2018). 5.2. resistance in the form of short statements, irrelevant and competitive talk examining the various ways in which students resist each other reveals that brief, unfounded disagreement and irrelevant, competitive talk dominate. one exception is group 2, which frequently criticizes each other's sources, and this may indicate a greater use of communication that is not primarily socially conditioned resistance. kolstø and ratcliffe (2007) point out in their research that reception can just as easily rest on social aspects as it does on critical thinking and assessment of arguments, and this may indicate that the students participating in the argumentation task also use the social aspects to a greater extent than they use critical thinking. as kolstø and ratcliffe (2007) point out, one never knows where a claim will end up, as it can depend entirely on other things than good arguments. the subcategory "disagreement" is similar to the subcategory "agreement" in subsection 5.1, in that disagreement can be separate from any further argumentation. similarly to the subcategory "agreement," it can also be thought that students might make this type of statement to be in disagreement because they have been instructed to disagree. in students' conversations, disagreement has sometimes proved to facilitate further discussion, as the student meets the resistance by continuing to argue, but one can also see instances where students withdraw. an example of resistance becoming so strong that a student withdraws can be seen in excerpt 9. students engaging in such confrontational conversations (kolstø, 2016) contribute to creating more disagreement, with opinions being presented without being constructive. unless it is followed up by other statements, this is not a conversation that stimulates critical thinking. in student conversations, disagreement marks the end of a longer conversation where multiple arguments have been presented, and acknowledges that agreement has not been achieved. the students' goal of confirming or asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 79 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group refuting the statement was not fulfilled, but they experience that different opinions are acceptable. in the natural sciences, it is important to be open to being wrong. the main category "irrelevant talk" includes "speak destructively" and "teasing." in student discussions, one is joking with a positive tone, while the other is negative and destructive. this difference can have effects on argumentation as a social process. disagreeing is in itself a complex activity (muller mirza, perret-clermont, tartas, & iannaccone, 2009). muller mirza et al. (2009) highlight that students risk their relationships by participating in argumentation, and this will also be the case when destructive talk and teasing occur in the group. to avoid this, the teacher can ensure that there is not too much asymmetry in a group. something that also influences the social risk students take in argumentation is the framework for the activity. here, the roles "for" and "against" that the students have in the groups are relevant for interpreting the framework of argumentation taking place in the classroom. it is interesting to look at students' competitive talk in relation to mercer's ideas (kolstø, 2016). a competitive conversation, according to mercer's three types of discourse (kolstø, 2016) can have characteristics of both confrontational conversation, supportive conversation, and exploratory conversations. in excerpt 6, one can see how students argue that the conversation has features that fall under a "confrontational conversation." according to kolstø, a confrontational conversation is competitive, and different opinions are presented to create disagreement rather than agreement. kolstø (2016) emphasizes in his research that it should be a goal for students to agree in argumentation. the advantage of this, according to kolstø, is that it creates exploratory conversation. 5.3. students' social risk when engaging in argumentation an argument will always be negotiated, validated, and communicated in a social context (tippett, 2009). this argumentation assignment has given students roles, which may function to shift the pressure from the students themselves to the roles they play. the students, therefore, remove themselves and the personal risks associated with engaging in argumentation, as they are fulfilling a role and not their own personal opinion. muller mirza et al. (2009) present four challenges to students' participation in argumentation. argumentation is described as a demanding activity that involves different linguistic and cognitive processes, but it is also these aspects that add value to the argumentation. in interviews, students were asked about the importance of how well they knew the other students. the students themselves felt that having been in the same class for a considerable time is significant, both in terms of social risk and participation in the conversation. rutt highlights that she believes it is important for oral participation that they have been together in the class since the beginning of the eighth grade. filip chooses to mention a specific situation when asked about the importance of the class knowing each other well. his interpretation was that one can "tolerate" tougher confrontations better when they know each other beforehand. there have been tough confrontations, but this has happened most frequently in group 1, where there has been a high occurrence of students, for example, speaking in a derogatory manner or similar. in the student conversations, one can see how teasing is used in argumentation, which can be difficult for many students both to interpret, participate in, understand, and take a stance on. one can see signs that communication happens between the lines, and arguments are wrapped in humor. this can be a demanding social process for some to participate in. nevertheless, the group dynamics appear to be good in group 2, even though this is one of the groups that frequently uses teasing remarks. in the conversations, one can see that the students talked about roles and showed resistance in the form of competitive talk at the same time, which makes it clearer that these two aspects may influence each other. the role assignments made by sander and kris, and the statement that they would "crush" the third participant is interesting. one can speculate on how such a statement is received, as it may point to social challenges that could result from such a quotation. kolstø (2016) reflects on the idea that students should aim to agree if the goal is to facilitate an exploratory conversation, something that is not achieved with such competitive statements as resistance to argumentation. nonetheless, one of the interviewees states that this disagreement through competition motivates her to "win". 5.4. critical thinking and ethical assessment in the argumentation elevenes "the students' positive curiosity towards each other often appears in their conversations. unlike “agreement” and “disagreement,” critical thinking requires more effort, especially when it comes to “requesting insights” and “critical evaluation,” which require assessing information to form a well-founded opinion (svartdal, 2022). in such situations, students seek to understand the content behind each other's statements, allowing them to present better-reasoned arguments. the discussions within the group may have been influenced by competition resulting from the assigned roles of “pro” and “con,” which can limit the students' ability to think critically (kolstø, 2016). the role can train them to stick to their own viewpoints without being influenced by social factors such as charisma or persuasion abilities. this can be valuable but may also result in the discussion becoming more confrontational and less constructive. criticizing the sources used in arguments is an important part of the discussion (karlsen, 2018). ideally, this leads to exploratory conversations where students critically evaluate and challenge each other's ideas (kolstø, 2016). an example from the conversation under "teasing" was when lars and sara asked kari about the sources behind her claim, demonstrating their ability to question and ask for justifications, though the conversation could bear elements of humor and teasing. the students' ability to assess risk and probability is also important (kolstø, 2006). in their discussions, students, for instance, critiqued other students' attitudes towards crispr. assessing probability involves thinking about the chances that something might happen, the risks of different scenarios, and how often something has occurred in the past. even though some statements may seem taken out of context and not always critically evaluated, discussions such as the one about the heritability of cross-country skiing talent show that students can perform thorough evaluations. such discussions can be beneficial for strengthening students' academic language use (wallace, 2004). asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 80 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group through argumentation tasks, students handle challenging and complex claims, which often require ethical evaluations. arguing for sociological controversies demands that students develop autonomy and experience (muller mirza et al., 2009). these controversies often evoke emotions and encourage conformity, but the roles of “pro” and “con” can provide students with protection by giving clear frameworks for argumentation. in their roles, they must argue for the viewpoints they have been assigned, which can help create a more organized discussion. ethical evaluations in the data material are frequent, likely because crispr technology was the topic, naturally triggering such evaluations. ethical evaluations are often laden with expectations based on ethics. muller mirza et al. (2009) point out that ethical issues have a social dimension that can influence argumentation. in the conversations, students countered the ethical argument by saying that "the most important thing" could override ethical evaluation, despite admitting it could be unethical. this shows that ethical arguments can be challenged, even though it may risk relationships and status within the group. 5.5. argumentation as an acquisition of new knowledge the students demonstrate a wide variety in the content they use when supporting their claims, indicating that they are capable of using arguments, providing evidence, and presenting a line of reasoning to support their claim. when students can do this, it means that they master argumentation well. a good argument should consist of a claim and a justification, which is shown to be prevalent in most groups (source). when students engage in a social activity, as seen in the excerpts under sub-chapter 4, and bring up various facts, make assessments, and refer to knowledge, the scientific language will be used. new concepts are used and explained to fellow students. a concrete example of this can be found in sub-chapter 4.4.1, where one student asks what the word “unethical” means, and another responds by explaining the term. the students have relied on precise communication when arguing, as their conversations have proven to be nuanced and rich in content. in the relevant discussion, the students used the word “unethical” after establishing the meaning of the word. it can be argued here that the students are in the zone of proximal development (säljö, 2013) when they can learn and support each other with knowledge. halliday (2004) perspectives suggest that as a student, one can participate in learning processes with the acquisition of knowledge as a consequence, if one is able to use the language. perhaps in this type of task, one also enters this “space” described by wallace (2004). according to wallace, participating in frequent and authentic discourses is necessary to acquire scientific language. there should be a conducive environment for communication through being listened to and evaluated, and new terms and expressions should be tried out. using examples is a simple way to incorporate various elements into the argumentation, but it is mostly used by group 2. the prevalence is much higher here than in the other groups, and this is not surprising. group 2 frequently uses statements that fall within the other categories. the use of examples often involves situations from the students’ own lives, which can be a harmless and everyday way for students to bring knowledge into the argumentation. consequently, using knowledge can bring scientific language and learning, as halliday (2004) and mammino (2010) highlight social interaction and conversation as beneficial for learning scientific language. if this interaction is also authentic as wallace (2004) emphasizes, the way students support each other academically can be good for their long-term learning outcomes and deep learning. filip can also support this claim, as he pointed out in the interview that he felt he gained a deeper understanding from doing argumentation tasks. 5.6. fantasy as a 'bridge' to the natural scientific language statements categorized as "fantasy" differ from other supporting arguments by relying on imagination instead of observations or scientific knowledge (source). fantasy can emerge when students feel secure enough to express their creativity. in the relevant conversation, robert and filip used fantasy to highlight absurdities in the discussion, based on knowledge of dna and genetics. exaggerations are used to twist real scenarios to extremes that prove a point, even if they are not entirely mature arguments. in the student conversation, the students demonstrated how exaggerations about size can strengthen the argumentation. fantasy and exaggerations can bridge the gap between everyday language and scientific knowledge, providing students with a way to express themselves creatively (wallace, 2004). mork (2006) point out that scientific language can be difficult for students, and fantasy can serve as support. according to lehre (2021) 9th-grade students often prefer everyday language, and fantasy and exaggerations can help them explore the language without risk. 6. conclusion the findings from the analysis of the observation show that students meet each other's arguments with both support and opposition. there has been a significant difference between groups in terms of group dynamics, which has impacted both the occurrence of supportive statements and statements of opposition. the assignment of roles may have also influenced the results in terms of support and opposition. students face a social risk when it comes to argumentation in the classroom. the value in argumentation comes from its authenticity and addressing real problems, which the students who participated in the interview also expressed positively. there have been significant differences in whether the students' discussions have been positively or negatively charged, and whether they have been characterized by destructive comments. thus, from an external perspective, it may seem that students have faced a social risk by arguing. at the same time, it is expressed in the interview that it has been a positive experience. this ambiguity could be interesting to study further. the students demonstrate that they are capable of justifying their arguments in various ways. the content of students' claims varies, and there are different justifications that arise, giving their arguments more substance. students support their claims with ethical considerations, examples, imagination, as well as assessments of probability. supporting their claims with this type of content has practiced the students in critical thinking through exploratory conversations about demanding and complex issues. an interesting observation has been the use of imagination and exaggerations, which can be argued to have served as a "bridge" towards the use of a more academic language. students have shown signs of using the asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-81 81 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group conversation to acquire new knowledge by using each other as academic support. it is likely that students take with them a richer language, as well as long-term learning outcomes and deep learning, from this argumentation task. references abrami, p. c., bernard, r. m., borokhovski, e., wade, a., surkes, m. a., tamim, r., & zhang, d. 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 556-568, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.556.568 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluation of students’ views on the covid-19 distance education process in music departments of fine arts faculties burcu ozer1 emre ustun2 ( corresponding author) 1,2faculty of fine arts music and performing arts department, nevsehir haci bektas veli university, nevsehir, turkey. abstract the purpose of this study is to determine evaluations and recommendations of the students, who took distance education in the spring semester of 2019-2020 in the music departments of fine arts, about this education and training process, and to develop suggestions for solving the problems experienced. in line with this purpose, the research universe is composed of music departments of fine arts faculties of universities in turkey, and the sample consists of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade students studying in music and performing arts at nevsehir hacı bektas veli university, faculty of fine arts. in order to evaluate music department courses with distance education in terms of learning-teaching process, 24 students were interviewed using a semi-structured observation form consisting of 14 questions for students of music department. in the data collection and analysis of the research, the obtained data were evaluated by using descriptive content analysis technique. in line with the findings obtained from the interviews with the students of the music department, it was concluded that web-based distance education is not as efficient as face-to-face education especially in applied courses, the connection and technical problems experienced during the courses negatively affect the education process, there should be attendance requirement in distance education courses and students with limited opportunities should be provided necessary technological support, and the students want to continue their education as face-to-face in the post-pandemic period. keywords: covid-19, distance education, fine arts, music education, applied course, performing arts. citation | burcu ozer; emre ustun (2020). evaluation of students’’ views on the covid-19 distance education process in music departments of fine arts faculties. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 556-568. history: received: 11 august 2020 revised: 21 august 2020 accepted: 28 august 2020 published: 7 september 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 557 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 558 3. data collection............................................................................................................................................................................... 559 4. findings and comments ............................................................................................................................................................... 560 5. results, discussion and recommendations.............................................................................................................................. 565 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 568 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.556.568&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2101 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9219-1291 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0496-1912 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 557 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the literature by evaluating this education process of the students who receive distance education in the departments of music in the spring semester of 2019-2020, determining their suggestions and developing suggestions for solving the problems experienced. 1. introduction with the covid-19 pandemic that broke out in wuhan, china at the end of 2019, a more isolated way of life was adopted in order to be protected from disease by changing the usual lifestyles around the world. in order to be protected from the transmission risk of the disease by providing this isolation in education, as in all areas of life, face-to-face education and training activities were stopped at all levels of education and started to be carried out in the form of distance education in the spring semester of 2019-2020, in our country, as well as in many countries. despite all the measures taken, the epidemic has spread all over the world. states have made it mandatory to take measures due to the rapidly increasing number of cases and deaths worldwide (wang, zhang, & du, 2020). as a result of the restrictions on freedom of movement, changes in daily life and education have also become important. unesco (2020) reported that "1.5 billion children and young people were affected by school closure in 195 countries since mid-april." (daubney & fautley, 2020). according to his study, zhong (2020) explained that 770 million people were affected by the pause of education worldwide. as a result of the measures taken, education has been suspended in almost all countries, and then each country has tried to proceed by determining its own method on how education should continue. universities in turkey are subject to higher education council (yök). yök first announced that universities were on holiday for 3 weeks on march 16, 2020. later, it instructed universities to give courses through distance education and stated that formal education cannot be held in the spring semester of 2019-2020 academic years. according to the decisions taken by yök, universities had to start distance education as of 23 march 2020 in terms of their capacities. there are 123 distance education units in universities of turkey. especially universities with distance education unit have been enabled to plan and implement educational activities by using their own infrastructure (yok, 2020a). in line with these decisions of yök, many universities completed their studies within a week and on 23 march 2020, courses started to be taught by distance education method. universities used synchronous, "asynchronous" or "both synchronous and asynchronous" distance education methods as much as their infrastructure allowed. distance education and online learning are not new concepts. everywhere and every place with the internet access have an advantage in terms of distance education. with this method, the student can be trained wherever s/he wants, regardless of the school and classroom environment where s/he is trained in traditional face-to-face education. distance learning is a modern and effective form of learning that can be offered regardless of location and time, and has features such as the ability to configure educational materials electronically and flexibly, to update and add different technologies to the learning process, and to be available 24/7 (altun, telli, & yamamoto, 2020). web-based distance education in turkey is implemented as a method carried out by means of distance education application and research centers (uzem) of anadolu university, istanbul university, ataturk university, and some other universities. however, in the covid-19 pandemic process, all universities switched to a web-based distance education process with a rapid crisis management in order to keep the education-training process intact. every educator and learner, with or without experience in distance education, had to give or take courses via distance education in no time at all. educational institutions and educators searched for how the courses can be done with distance education and how to use various online tools (karip, 2020). the compulsory distance education process, which started with a pandemic process in all areas of education, started to be implemented in the music departments of the fine arts faculties. until the recent changes brought about by the covid-19 outbreak, music department undergraduate education in fine arts faculties was traditionally structured as face-to-face learning. the 4-year undergraduate program has a structure in which applied courses are dominant, and theoretical courses are supported by applied courses. according to the “press release” made by yök on march 26, 2020, theoretical parts of some applied courses of universities along with theoretical courses could be carried out via distance education and compensatory training could be held in the summer months (yok, 2020a). however, due to the uncertainty of the process, whether education would continue in the summer period could not be clarified. for this reason, applied courses were carried out in the form of distance education according to departments by the decision made within the universities. in this process, in the music departments of fine arts faculties, applied courses together with theoretical ones were given by distance education method. this situation brought along some advantages and disadvantages. in order for this process to be structured correctly, students’ sources of access to information, how they changed during this process, and what students, who have spent this period of higher education through distance education, experienced in this process should be known (keskin & ozer, 2020). as a result of the literature review, it was seen that some studies have been carried out within the scope of distance education in music education. adileh (2012) in his article titled “teaching music as a university elective course through e-learning”, compared the attitudes and course achievements of 179 university students who took elective music courses at alquads university, and applied a mixed education model where face-to-face and online education for the experimental group and only face-to-face education model for the control group are used. as a result of the evaluations, it was seen that the results of the group in which the mixed education model was applied were found to be much more successful than the group in which the face-to-face education model was applied. karahan (2016) in his experimental study where he aimed to determine the success levels of distance piano courses according to the success levels of students in traditional piano courses, concluded that simultaneous distance piano courses improve students' piano playing performances at a level close to traditional piano courses. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 558 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in his doctoral thesis titled “the effect of distance learning model on violin learning”, okan (2017) conducted violin courses for eight weeks in the form of face-to-face education with the control group and in the form of distance education with the experimental group; as a result, he determined that there is no differentiation between the experimental and control groups in beginner and middle levels. yungul (2018) in his phd thesis titled “applicability of web-based distance education in instrument (guitar) education”, conducted a web-based experimental study within the scope of synchronous and asynchronous model for guitar education in fine arts high schools and as a result of this study, he concluded that there was no significant difference between the last test scores of students who had web-based distance learning, and who had training with traditional education method, but distance education method was more effective on student performances and that this method was "practical", "useful" and "effective in the processing of the curriculum" as a result of interviews with students studying with distance education method. however, these studies cover certain courses and a non-compulsory process. determination of the gains, problems, and suggestions, obtained in the departments of compulsory distance education during the pandemic period in the music departments according to the opinions of the students, are considered to be important for reorganizing this process in terms of the teaching of the music department in the future education periods and to set an example for other researches to be carried out. this study aims for students to evaluate education process in music departments of fine arts, in the spring term of 2019-2020, to determine their recommendations and to develop suggestions for solving the problems experienced. for this purpose, the evaluations of the students studying in the music departments of fine arts faculties for the distance education period applied in the covid-19 process constitute the problem of the research. sub-problems arising from the interview form applied to students in the research are as follows: 1. what are the problems that the students of the music department of the faculty of fine arts faced during the covid-19 distance education process? 2. what are the findings of the students of the music department of the faculty of fine arts regarding the covid-19 distance education process? 3. what are the evaluations of students of the music department of the faculty of fine arts regarding the covid-19 distance education process? 4. what are the recommendations of the students of the music department of the faculty of fine arts regarding the covid-19 distance education process? 2. methodology in this part of the research, the measures taken in order to reach the purpose of the research and to obtain valid and reliable results are explained in detail, and the research model, the universe and the sample of the research, data collection, data analysis and interpretation are discussed. 2.1. semi-structured interview method in this technique, the researcher prepares the interview protocol containing the questions that s/he plans to ask in advance. depending on the flow of the interview, the researcher has the person detail her/his responses. if some questions are answered within the other questions during the interview process, these may not be asked. using flexibility in this interview technique makes it a more suitable technic for educational research. therefore, it can be seen within qualitative research (turnuklu, 2000). this interview technique is a more suitable form of research for educational sciences studies in terms of providing more systematic and comparable information by continuing with the previously prepared interview protocol (esen, oral, & yalcinkaya, 2014). 2.2. research model this research is a descriptive study in terms of the method followed and the quality of the data collected. “descriptive analysis: according to this approach, the data obtained are summarized and interpreted according to the previously determined themes. the data summarized and interpreted in descriptive analysis are subjected to a deeper process in content analysis, and concepts and themes that cannot be detected by a descriptive approach can be discovered as a result of this analysis” (yildirim & simsek, 2006). the data can be arranged according to the themes put forward by the research questions, or can be presented by considering the questions or dimensions used in the interview and observation processes. in the descriptive analysis, direct quotations are often included to reflect the views of the individuals interviewed or observed. in this type of analysis, the aim is to present the findings to the reader in an organized and interpreted way.” (yildirim & simsek, 2006). also, in this study, one of the qualitative research methods, easy accessibility sampling method was used. in general terms, the research is planned as a case study. the situation is similar to the case studies in quantitative researches. the situation can be an individual, event, phenomenon or an institution. in case studies, the aim is to examine a particular situation in depth and reach comprehensive results. the most prominent feature of case studies is that due to the fact that each situation is different from other cases, there is no generalizability. however, data in one case study can be used for another study (kose, 2013). in the research, semi-structured interview form was used as data collection tool. in this method, “the researcher prepares the interview questions in advance; however, it allows the reorganization and discussion of the questions created by providing flexibility to the researched people during the interview. in such a meeting, the researched people also have control over the research.” (ekiz, 2003). semi-structured interview method was used to determine the observations of undergraduate 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade students in music departments of fine arts faculties about distance education applied in the covid-19 process. interviews were made online and an average of 20-30 minutes was allocated for each interview. the recorded interviews were converted into written texts in the electronic environment. for the answers given to each question in the determined interview results, the general common opinions of the students were examined by 2 experts. at the last stage, the data are expressed as a structured summary. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 559 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. study group the universe of this research is composed of fine arts education departments of universities in turkey, and the sample consists of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade students studying in music and performing arts at nevsehir hacı bektas veli university, faculty of fine arts. table-1. distribution of students’ according to grade levels. class level n % 1st grade 6 25 2nd grade 6 25 3rd grade 6 25 4th grade 6 25 total 24 100 when table 1 is examined, it is seen that the students determined for the application of the interview form are selected from each grade equally and constitute 25% of the total for each grade. table-2. distribution of students’ according to grade point averages. class level n gpa success average 1st grade 6 3,21 % 80 2nd grade 6 3,13 % 78 3rd grade 6 3,50 % 87 4th grade 6 3,47 % 86 total 24 4,00 % 100 when table 2 is analyzed, it can be seen that the general success averages of the students determined for the application of the interview form are 80% for the 1st grades, 78% for the 2nd grades, 87% for the 3rd grades and 86% for the 4th grades. table-3. distribution of students’ according to individual instruments. individual instrument n % bağlama 7 29,16 violoncello 4 16,66 flute 3 12,50 clarinet 3 12,50 oud 2 8,33 guitar 1 4,16 violin 1 4,16 piano 1 4,16 (vocal training) 1 4,16 viola 1 4,16 total 24 100 in table 3 when the individual instrument status of the students participating in our study is examined, it is seen that 29% of them took courses on baglama, 16% on violoncello, 12% on flute, 12% on clarinet, 8% on oud, 4% on guitar, 4% on violin, % 4 on piano, 4% on viola and 4% on individual vocal training (singing). 3. data collection screening method was used in the first stage of this research. in this sense, music education and distance education method has been determined by scanning local and foreign sources in terms of basic, technical and musical behavior. in addition, a semi-structured interview form was used for the observation, thoughts and opinions of all music department students, studying in the 2019-2020 academic year, about the distance education process, and the qualitative method was used to analyze the applied interview form. in the preparation of the interview form, it was kept in sight that the questions are understandable and not guiding. in addition, the form was presented to the experts for its purpose and applicability. the content of the form, language rules and clarity of the questions were examined by the experts. following this process, the interview form was finalized in line with the suggestions. depending on this purpose, a question pool consisting of 24 questions was created by the researchers. this question pool was reduced to 19 questions upon receiving expert opinions from the field of educational sciences. in the pilot application (10 students), 3 more questions that could not be understood and obtain clear answers were excluded as a result of the analysis of the form. after this process, with the finalization of the form in line with the opinion of the experts, 2 more questions were left out and the semi-structured observation form consisting of 14 questions was made ready for implementation. in this sense, in order to implement the form, a total of 40 students were interviewed, as 10 students from each grade. as a result of the interviews, the data of the students who did not provide reliability during the data analysis phase or slurred over the questions with short answers and did not answer some of the questions were excluded from the analysis and the number was reduced to 30 students. after this stage, in order to get equal number of students' opinions from each grade, the opinions of 24 students whose grade point average is above 3.00 were evaluated as findings. these 24 students were gathered by selecting 6 people from each grade. after this stage, findings and comments were made as a result of the analysis of the data. 24 students of music department were asked 14 questions and the obtained data were evaluated. 3.1. analysis of the data in the data collection and analysis of the research, the obtained data were evaluated by using descriptive content analysis technique. in the content analysis, data obtained through interviews, observations or documents asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 560 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group are analyzed in four stages: (1) encoding data, (2) finding codes, categories and themes, (3) organizing codes, categories and themes, (4) defining and interpreting the findings (miles & huberman, 1994). for qualitative researchers, not quantity but quality is important. therefore, they do not have basic goals such as getting the percentage of codes and tabulating. looking at how often the code passes in qualitative research gives the researcher information about the density and weight of that code. the categories are not raw data itself, but an abstracted form of data, and they are conceptual components that include many individual examples. creating categories is conceptualizing the data in this context and moving it to a higher dimension. decreasing the number of categories is a sign that a higher level of abstraction is made (merriam, 2009; miles. & huberman, 2016). according to buyukozturk, cakmak, akgun, karadeniz, and demirel (2010) descriptive content analysis is defined as the analysis of a text with determined codes and small content categories. the validity and reliability stages of the semi-structured interview form used in this sense can be listed as follows; • validity phase: the obtained data are written in detail and the results obtained are presented clearly and understandably. • internal validation phase: getting the opinions of experts from the field of educational sciences at the stages of analyzing the data and interpreting the findings. • external validity phase: being transferable of the form prepared for the distance education process by evaluating the interview form under the same conditions for all students. • internal reliability phase: for the interview form to be suitable for the purpose, finalizing it in line with the opinion of the experts, and evaluating it by making a pilot application. • external reliability stage: keeping the information of the interview forms. 4. findings and comments 4.1. findings and comments on the first sub-problem in the first sub-problem of the research, the answer to the question of “what are the problems that the students of the music department of the faculty of fine arts faced during the covid-19 distance education process?” was sought. in the interview form for this problem, findings and comments regarding the data obtained from the questions of “what are the problems you encounter in applied courses during the covid-19 distance education process?” and “what are the problems you encounter in theoretical courses during the covid-19 distance education process?” are as follows: table-4. studensts’ views on the problems encountered by the students in the covid-19 distance education process. considering table 4, it was concluded that all four grades experienced problems related to the internet connection in applied courses. in addition, 1st and 2nd grades stated that they had problems in terms of working environment in applied courses and 3rd and 4th grades were not able to adapt to the system. also, 3rd grade students stated that they could not express themselves in the distance education process in the applied courses and that they had problems arising from the lack of materials. only two students from 4th grade stated that they did not have any problems in applied courses. in this case, it was concluded that there were problems in applied courses during the distance education process. s.3 (1): “we had problems in most of the applied courses. for example, we could not read the songs that we will read in chorus in the collective singing course. the most important thing is the internet connection problem. ” s.2 (2): “the individual instrument course as one of the applied courses, and the lack of working environment. since everyone is at home, the instrument can be irritating for the elderly, children, etc. for example; clarinet sound for apartment residents.” grade themes category (views) codes 1st grade applied courses negative (5) internet connection study environment unproblematic process positive (1) theoretical courses negative (2) connection problem attention deficit positive (4) unproblematic process 2nd grade applied courses negative (5) internet connection study environment positive (1) unproblematic process theoretical courses negative (2) positive (4) connection problem indifference to courses unproblematic process 3rd grade applied courses negative (6) internet connection material deficiency problems in adapting to the system problems in self-expression positive (-) --- theoretical courses negative (4) excessive homework difficulty in understanding the courses communication problems with teachers positive (2) unproblematic process 4th grade applied courses negative (6) internet connection problems in adapting to the system positive (-) _ theoretical courses negative (2) connection problem informational convergence positive (4) unproblematic process asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 561 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group s.2 (3) “comfort and self-expression in face-to-face education was a more positive process for me. but here the possibility of confusing some things because of the excitement of being in front of the camera is increasing as a percentage, which has turned into a problem for me.” s.6 (4) “i can say connection problems in the first place. in many live courses, the voice of my teachers was interrupted every few seconds. sometimes voices were transmitted to the other party with a few second intervals.” in theoretical courses, the common answer given by 1st, 2nd and 4th grade is in terms of problems experienced in the internet connection, as in applied courses. they stated that they experienced attention deficit, indifference to the course, difficulty in understanding the course and difficulties in communicating with the teachers, and that there was an informational convergence in theoretical courses. for the theoretical courses, 13 students expressed a positive opinion that the process went smoothly. according to this result, it can be concluded that theoretical courses are more efficient than applied courses in the distance education process. s.2 (1) “i did not encounter any problems in theoretical courses.” s.3 (2) “we had problems in loading homework from time to time in theoretical courses.” s.6. (3) “when we were at school, we could ask questions to our teachers whenever we wanted, but we can only communicate on the day of the course in distance education. in addition, homework is given for the exam, but the student who is not interested in this course asks the homework from a successful student and even s/he does not understand this course s/he is considered as successful.” s.4 (4) “i think there is an informational convergence, and course contents are too much.” 4.2. findings and comments on the second sub-problem the questions asked in the interview form for the “determination of the students of the music department of fine arts faculty regarding the covid-19 distance education process”, which is the second sub-problem of the research, are: • were you able to sufficiently interact and have dialogue with the instructor who taught in the distance education process? why? • what kind of contributions did the covid-19 distance education make for you to improve yourself? • did the covid-19 distance education process cause anxiety in you? if yes, explain. findings and comments regarding the data obtained from these questions are in table 5. considering table 5, it was seen that there was a negative response from four grades (9), due to internet connection problems for students' communication with the instructor in distance education courses. in addition, the 3rd grades reported negative opinions about the communication problems arising from the limited time. positive determinations, on the other hand, were the ones regarding the access to instructors outside the class hours, support with whatsapp groups, and caring and instructive efforts. s.4 (1) “our communication with our teachers was very good. they made a great effort for us, both in our whatsapp groups and in trainings. if i had not have experience connection interruptions, maybe it would have been more efficient for me.” s.1 (4) “partially yes, there was no theoretical problem, but no matter how much the teacher explained in the applied courses, we could not reflect the techniques s/he showed to our instrument, due to the internet disruption.” in self-improvement theme, in addition to the negative codes (5) of lack of material and lack of not being able to work alone in applied courses, it was seen that the four grades (16) gave common answers in the positive category codes of being able to use time efficiently, to study regularly and to conduct research. in this case, it is concluded that students could improve themselves during the distance education process. s.3 (1) “it did not contribute much. as we could not see the applied courses face-to-face, it was difficult to hear the sounds through the system and understand theoretically.” s.1 (2) “the support of my teachers and their being very interested in us in order for us not to feel purposeless in this process enabled me to improve myself, to see what i am lacking in reality and what my potential is.” s.3 (3) “i think that my researcher side has improved while doing the given homework.” s.3 (4) “i had the opportunity to work on courses or topics i did not understand in the past. i had the chance to spend more time on my instrument.” in the distance education process, negative codes for students' anxiety status (11) were generally determined as term extension due to falling behind the courses, uncertainty about exams, inexperience due to inability to know the system, inefficiency of working environments, and not being able to load homework due to connection problems. despite this, 13 students stated that they continued the process without anxiety, and because they responded as "i did not worry" no code for the positive category could be produced. s.1 (1) “i had the fear of falling behind the courses.” s.4 (2) “i thought that i could not pass the courses and extend one semester because i could not show the necessary attention to the courses. my anxiety was completely about the courses. ” 4.3. findings and comments on the third sub-problem the questions asked in the interview form for the “evaluations of the students of the music department of fine arts faculty regarding the covid-19 distance education process”, which is the third sub-problem of the research, are: • what are your thoughts on the lack of attendance requirement in the distance education process? • what are your thoughts on the student's active participation and communication in the distance education process? • do you think that the distance education process provides equal opportunities to every student? why? • as a student of music department, what are your thoughts in general if you compare your covid-19 distance learning process with the distance education processes given in other departments? findings and comments regarding the data obtained from these questions are table 6. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 562 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. students' views on the determinations related to the covid-19 distance education process. grade themes category (views) codes 1st grade communication with instructors negative (3) internet connection caring teaching effort self-improvement positive (3) whatsapp groups negative (3) applied courses laziness time positive (3) studying comfortably anxiety status negative (4) anxiety of falling behind inexperience fear of getting low marks unable to upload homework connection problems studying environment positive (2) _ 2nd grade interaction with instructor negative (1) internet connection positive (5) communicating easily whatsapp groups contacting outside academic hours self-improvement negative (1) material deficiency time positive (5) adaptation to studying watching course records repeating more than one time negative (2) anxiety of extending school anxiety status exam positive (4) _ 3rd grade interaction with instructor negative (2) internet connection limited time positive (4) communicating easily contacting outside academic hours self-improvement negative (-) positive (6) studying regularly researching obtaining new information negative (3) inexperience anxiety of unable to understand courses absent students’ being successful anxiety status positive (3) 4th grade interaction with instructor negative (3) internet connection positive (3) communicating easily self-improvement negative (1) unable to study alone positive (5) repeating courses using time efficiently researching anxiety status negative (2) exam course process positive (4) considering the data in table 6, it is seen that 16 students from 4 grades expressed their opinions in favor of the attendance requirement during the distance education process. when the codes for the attendance requirement are examined, it was determined that arbitrary and abusive situations arise in a comfortable environment and that the courses should be followed up regularly by all students and should be bound to rules and disciplines. on the other hand, 8 students stated that there should not be attendance requirement, and they expressed that there are students who do not have opportunities, there are connection problems, and they could compensate thanks to being able to watch the courses later even if they did not attend the course due to the insufficient facilities and connection problems. it was concluded from these findings that the majority of students wanted attendance requirement in distance education courses. s.3 (1) “it is bad that there is no course attendance requirement, because some students act at their sweet will, attend the courses arbitrarily, while some students are constantly attending the classes and when we compare them, the students who attend the courses constantly and who do not arbitrarily should not be considered equal.” s.5 (2) “i wish there is attendance requirement because there is a purpose of this practice and education also has rules.” s.1 (3) “i found it reasonable to have no attendance requirement. there should not be attendance requirement because some students are not able to attend due to insufficient facilities, systemic errors, and so on.” asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 563 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group s.3 (4) “so, there was a reason for those who could not come, but there were a lot of people who exploited this in that way, so i think it was wrong.” while 7 students expressed with a common answer that they were able to communicate easily for active participation being high, 17 students stated that the active participation in the courses was low, and the reason for this was the connection problems and the low interest in the courses in distance education. s.6 (3) “we had the option of raising hands in the “zoom” application, but if we look at it in terms of active participation, people would turn off the camera and microphone and continue their work.” s.5 (4) “distance education process enabled the students, who could not express themselves easily when they were face-toface, to express themselves easily, feel and participate actively in digital environment.” in the evaluation of whether distance education provides equal opportunities or not, 16 students made negative evaluations and stated that distance education does not provide equal opportunities due to lack of possibilities and materials. 7 people stated that it provided equal opportunities and the biggest factor was the fact that, with the common answer of the 4 grades, they were able to watch the courses later. table-6. students' views on the evaluation of covid-19 distance education process. s.2 (1) “no i don't think so. the reason is that not everyone has a strong internet connection or sometimes even an internet connection. because of this, i think that not everyone was given equal training.” s.5 (3) “it gave every student equal opportunity because if we did not understand in the course, we could watch the records later.” in the comparison of other departments for distance education courses, 3 students responded positively and stated that they were given a more comfortable, fun and one-to-one training opportunity. 18 students made grade themes category codes 1st grade class attendance requirement should be (3) comfortable environment arbitrary behavior possibility gaps connection problems being able to watch later should not be (3) active participation high _ low (6) lack of interest in courses connection problems equality of opportunity yes(1) being able to watch later no (4) possibility gaps comparison positive _ negative (3) inefficient for applied departments no idea (3) _ 2nd grade class attendance requirement should be (4) arbitrary behavior rule should not be (2) possibility gaps being able to watch later active participation high(2) low (4) easy communication lack of interest in courses equality of opportunity yes (2) no (4) being able to watch later lack of material comparison positive (1) negative (5) easy course process applied courses 3rd grade class attendance requirement should be (5) exploitation regular follow-up should not be (1) inadequate possibilities active participation high (3) easy communication low (3) lack of interest connection problems equality of opportunity yes (3) being able to watch later no (3) possibility gaps comparison positive (1) teaching a lesson in a fun way inadequate possibilities negative (5) applied courses 4th grade class attendance requirement should be (4) discipline laziness negative effect should not be (2) possibility gaps connection problems being able to watch later active participation high (2) easy communication feeling comfortable low (4) lack of interest in courses communication problems equality of opportunity yes (1) being able to watch later no (5) readiness possibility gaps comparison positive (1) one-to-one education possibility negative (5) applied courses asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 564 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group negative evaluations and stated that the distance education process was inefficient for applied courses, and 3 students stated that they had no idea. s.6 (3) “since our courses are mostly applied, they are not very efficient in distance education, but in other departments, they are able to overcome this pandemic period with the least harm since verbal courses are intense.” s.1 (4) “since the education in music department is based on sounds and auditory senses, there is a problem of perception in the subjects that the teacher wants to explain, due to the connection problems in distance education. i think that distance education is insufficient in applied courses since we have more applied courses than other departments.” 4.4. findings and comments on the fourth sub-problem the questions asked in the interview form for the “recommendations of the students of the music department of fine arts faculty regarding the covid-19 distance education process”, which is the fourth sub-problem of the research, are: • what are your recommendations about the practical courses given in the covid-19 distance education process in faf music departments? • what are your recommendations regarding the theoretical courses given in the covid-19 distance education process in faf music departments? • what are your general recommendations regarding the covid-19 distance education process? • -do you think that distant education should continue in the next academic years, why? • in the case of the continuation of the process for the next education and training periods, which courses would you like to continue with distance education and which courses would you want to continue with face-to-face education, why? findings and comments regarding the data obtained from these questions are as follows: table-7. students' recommentadions on the covid-19 distance education process. grade themes codes 1st grade applied courses new software (2) solving technical problems (5) prolonging course hour (3) course in little groups (1) being given no homework (2) theoretical courses live courses (3) uploading video (2) prolonging course hour (4) general prolonging course hour (4) face-to-face applied course (5) fixing system errors (2) no applied exams (2) 2nd grade applied courses attendance requirement (3) prolonging course hour (4) face-to-face education (5) theoretical courses live courses (4) video uploading (2) fixing system errors 4) general attendance requirement (4) continuation of distance education (1) face-to-face applied courses (5) 3rd grade applied courses prolonging course hour (4) one-to-one course (2) face-to-face education (5) solving technical problems (3) theoretical courses live courses (3) face-to-face education (1) less homework (2) general attendance requirement (3) face-to-face education in applied courses (5) less homework (3) continuation of the process (1) no exams (3) 4th grade applied courses attendance requirement (3) uploading video records (1) homework dominated course process (1) solving connection problems (5) theoretical courses less course content (2) solving connection problems (5) general attendance requirement (3) face-to-face applied course (5) additional courses (1) providing opportunity to each student (2) solving connection problems (3) less course content (2) considering the recommendations of the students for the applied courses in the distance education process in table 7, it is seen that they make recommendations about the solution of the technical and connection problems asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 565 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (13), extension of the class hours (11), conduction of this course with face-to-face education (10), attendance requirement (6), courses in small groups or one-to-one (3), no homework (2), and developing a new program for applied courses (2). s.6 (1) "fixing the connection problems and technical problems or developing new software." s.2 (3) “it would be better for students to take the course individually or in small groups for applied courses.” looking at the theoretical courses, it was seen that the students advised that the courses be done live (10). also, they expressed their opinions regarding the fixing of connection problems (5) and system errors (4), video recitation (4), extension of course hours (4), lesser course content (2) and less homework (2). s.2 (2) “my advice on this issue is to fix some system errors of the application.” s.6 (4) “subjects may not be as intense as in face-to-face education. a more in-depth course model over a more restricted subject can be developed.” the general recommendations of students regarding the distance education process are that applied courses should be held dominantly face-to-face (20). this is followed by the recommendations of attendance requirement (10), no exams (5), less homework (3), fixing connection problems (3) and system errors (2), reduction of the course content (2), and equal opportunity for each student (2). as a result, it was concluded that applied courses should be given with face-to-face education in general recommendations of students about distance education. s.3 (1) “it is better not to make exams since we have problems in applied courses.” s.6 (2) “there must be attendance requirement.” s.5 (3) “less homework.” s.2 (4) “the implementation of distance education in our department is a very troublesome process and applied courses should be held face-to-face.” table-8. students' views on the continuation the distance education process. grade options yes no 1st grade 1 5 2nd grade 2 4 3rd grade 6 4th grade 6 total 3 21 in table 8, only 3 students from 1st and 2nd grades stated that the distance education should continue in the further process, in their responses to whether distance education should continue or not. 21 students expressed their opinions in favor of the discontinuation of distance education. table-9. students' views on the courses they want to continue in the covid-19 distance education process. grade options theoretical courses applied courses all none 1st grade 2 1 2 1 2nd grade 4 1 1 3rd grade 3 3 4th grade 4 2 total 13 1 3 7 in table 9, when the students’ answers, regarding the courses they would want to continue if distance education process continues, are examined, it is concluded that 12 students want theoretical courses, 3 students want all courses and only 1 student wants applied courses via distance education. in addition, 4 students stated that no courses should be conducted with distance education and they should continue with face-to-face education. considering these results, it can be said that distance education is incomplete or insufficient in terms of applied courses and students do not want to take applied courses with distance education. 5. results, discussion and recommendations according to the results obtained from the opinions regarding the problems faced by the students of fine arts faculties during the covid-19 distance education process, which is the first sub-problem of the research. while most of the students (21) gave negative opinions for applied courses, only 2 stated that the process was smooth for them. from the student views for applied courses, problems such as the internet connection, inadequate work environment, inefficiency in courses due to student’s lack of material and not being able to adapt to the distance education system were identified. regarding the theoretical courses, 11 students give negative opinions while 13 students have positive opinions. according to the opinions of the students, the problems they faced in theoretical courses during the distance education process were determined as the internet connection problems, lack of interest and attention to the courses by the students, more homework than before, not understanding the courses and not communicating with the instructors. in parallel with this study, keskin and ozer (2020) in their study in which they evaluated students' feedback on web-based distance education in the covid-19 process, saw that web-based distance education contributed much more to the theoretical knowledge level of students when compared to practice skills, and they concluded that they could not communicate with the instructors easily (49.9%), and they had opinions that there were technical problems (53.9) during the training. again, with similar results, altuntas (2020) stated in her study, in which she investigated the attitudes of the students about the status of distance education applied in the covid-19 process, that in the distance education process, for 12.5% of the students it was productive for applied courses and for 87.5% it was inefficient; for theoretical courses, 21.5% thought it was processed efficiently and for 78.5% of them it was inefficient. based on all asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 566 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group these findings, it can be said that web-based distance education is not as efficient as the face-to-face education process for the departments where the applied courses are predominant. in the theme of "interaction with the instructor" regarding the second sub-problem of the research, 9 students expressed negative opinions and stated that this was poor communication due to internet disconnections and limited time. in accordance with the positive opinions of the 15 students, it was concluded that they could communicate with the instructors outside of the classroom through applications such as whatsapp, and the instructors supported and tried to teach by supporting the students. in her research, altuntas (2020) stated with parallel findings that the uncertainty experienced by the students in the face of the education method they encountered for the first time can only be resolved with the follow-up and informing of the instructors, and in this sense, it is extremely important for the students to communicate with the instructors and solve their problems if necessary, and the majority of the participant students (% 61) interacted with the instructors via text message and e-mail. in the theme of “self-improvement”, 5 students stated that they could not improve themselves in individual courses, such as instruments, and that the distance education process increased their laziness levels because they were not able to work efficiently alone and could not get efficiency from applied courses. the study of cheng and chau (2016) emphasized the important role of social interaction in web-based education and reported that lack of social bonds and low solidarity among students in web-based education may decrease students' social interactions and may have low performance and high exhaustion rate. from the codes in the positive category (19), it was concluded that students can use their time efficiently and work comfortably, acquire new information through regular study and research, and improve themselves by watching the courses again. keskin and ozer (2020) similar to these studies, reported that web-based distance education allows 38.7% of students to receive information at the specified time, 38.5% of them to learn at their own learning speed, but it reduces social interaction and team work for 36% of them. in the case of anxiety, which is the third theme, 11 students stated that they experienced various concerns during the distance education process, and when the codes related to these anxiety situations were examined, the results were low notes and fear of extending the term, inability to upload homework due to connection problems and systemic errors, and the inexpertness related to using the distance education system for the first time, anxiety related to the functioning of the course process and the way exams were conducted. although distance education has positive aspects in many ways, it has some limitations in terms of implementation and providing learning. these limitations can be listed as the student's not being able to socialize like in the school environment, that the courses requiring practice cannot be provided with distance education platforms, the low interest and motivation in the courses due to the low level of face-to-face education, and the difficulties students face in using the technological devices (agır, 2007). in the theme of “attendance requirement” regarding the third sub-problem of the research, 16 students stated that there should be attendance requirement, and added that they can be more comfortable to attend courses at home, that the students might abuse this process by attending the courses arbitrarily, and that the process should proceed with rules and discipline by following the courses regularly. when the codes obtained from the opinions of the students stating that there should not be attendance requirement are examined, it was concluded that the course process is disrupted due to connection problems, as the courses are registered in the system, although they do not participate in the course, they can watch and compensate later, and since each student does not have equal opportunities, s/he cannot follow the distance education course period regularly and therefore, there should be no attendance requirement. in the research of durak, cankaya, and izmirli (2020) it was concluded that during the covid-19 distance education process, the attendance status of the students was followed in approximately half of the universities, but some of the students did not have a computer and had internet connection problems, and therefore it is not appropriate for such students to follow the attendance status especially in live courses, which may cause them to fail. in this case, it would be appropriate for the universities to decide on the attendance requirement after determining the facilitations of the students and making the necessary improvements. in the theme of "active participation", 17 students stated that there was not much active participation in the courses, they had communication difficulties due to connection problems and students were less interested in the courses during the distance education process. 7 students, on the other hand, expressed their opinion that active participation was higher than the normal process because they felt comfortable by communicating with the instructors. the answers, keskin and ozer (2020) obtained in their studies for the open-ended questions “by improving the internet infrastructure, students can take a more active role and participate in courses verbally,” and “student participation can be realized, and thus, the education provided will be more efficient,” are in line with the findings of this study. considering the codes of the students' opinions about whether distance education provides equal opportunities in education or not, with positive opinions and similar answers of a total of 7 students from 4 grades, it is concluded that everyone has equal opportunities in terms of following the course records and this creates an equal opportunity in education. 16 students, on the other hand, stated that the process does not provide equal education opportunities to all, students do not have equal financial and technological opportunities, and everyone is not equal in distance education in terms of readiness. when the data obtained from comparing the distance education process with other departments of the music department students, it is seen that 18 students gave negative opinions about the comparison, only 3 students responded in a positive category and 3 students did not have an opinion about the distance education process given in other departments. in the negative category, as a common opinion of all four grades, it was concluded that the distance education system is inefficient in terms of applied courses in the music department. the students who gave positive opinions expressed that the distance education process in the music department is more comfortable, fun and more efficient in terms of providing one-to-one courses than other departments. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 567 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group keskin and ozer (2020) in their study with 652 undergraduate students, concluded that the contribution of web-based distance education to students' theoretical knowledge level is more than their contribution to the practice skill. they stated that this result shows that students need more face-to-face education especially in applied units, and performing one-to-one practice after listening could contribute more to professional practice skills (keskin & ozer, 2020). when the recommendations of the students of the music department regarding the distance education process are examined, which is the fourth sub-problem of the study, the findings were like: the technical and connection problems for the applied courses should be solved (13), class hours should be extended (11), there should be attendance requirement (6), the applied courses should continue in face-to-face education, not in distance education (5), the courses should be conducted in small groups or as one-to-one (3), a new software program for applied courses should be developed (2), and there should be no homework in applied courses (2). from the students' views on the theoretical courses, these were concluded: to make the courses live (10), to solve the problems related to connection and system (9), to include video narratives in the courses (4), to reduce the content of the courses (2) and homework (2). when looking at the codes related to the general recommendations of the students regarding the covid-19 distance education process, it was concluded that the view that the applied courses should continue with face-toface education (20) is dominant. again, the view arguing that there should be attendance requirement (10) is intense, and it is followed by other recommendations: there should not be applied exams (5), technical and connection problems should be solved (5), course hours should be extended (4), there should be less homework (2) and course content (2), and every student should be provided with equal opportunities (2). in the music departments of the faculty of fine arts where individual courses are held intensely, individual instrument courses are of great importance. it was concluded in line with the opinions of the students that some applied courses such as individual instrument courses given by distance education are not as effective as face-to-face education in the music departments. as a matter of fact, can and yungul (2017) in their studies with graduate students, concluded that students support traditional education on the effectiveness of the instrument course program. while performing the target behaviors that are planned to be gained by the students in instrument education, it may be necessary to respond to the student physically or establish visual or auditory communication in order to explain the stance, attitude or some technical issues of the instrument from time to time. again, according to the student's opinion about whether they want the continuation of the distance education process, which is one of the results of the research, only 21 students stated that the process should continue with distance education. in addition, in case of the continuation of distance education, it was concluded that the students mainly had the opinion that the theoretical courses (12) should continue with the distance education. this was followed by the opinions that no courses should be done with distance education (4), and all courses should be done with distance education (3). according to the study of zirhlioglu (2006) the information received in formal education is more permanent and there is a difference between formal education and distance education in terms of learning. in the study of altuntas (2020) in which the findings were parallel to this research, the students were asked which education system they would prefer when the conditions were suitable after the pandemic process was completed, and 90.3% of them wanted to continue their education with formal education and 9.7% with distance education. in addition, when the efficiency of practical and theoretical courses with distance education method was questioned in the pandemic process, 12.5% of the students responded that it was processed efficiently and 87.5% inefficiently for applied courses; 21.5% thought it was processed efficiently and 78.5% inefficiently for theoretical courses. in the study of keskin and ozer (2020) with similar results, it was concluded that 84.4% of students thought that webbased distance education is not as effective as face-to-face education, 45.7% of them thought that it is an alternative to face-to-face education, and also, the contribution of distance education to theoretical courses and general culture is moderate and found to be relatively higher than professional practice skills. face-to-face sessions in the classroom continue to be valued by students (richardson, maeda, lv, & caskurlu, 2017). in the light of these results, it can be suggested that students need more face-to-face education in applied units such as music departments of fine arts faculties. having students practice one-to-one after listening to the course content can contribute to the student's professional practice skills. it is thought that it is important to develop distance education especially for applied courses or to find alternative methods (altuntas, 2020; keskin & ozer, 2020). improvement and infrastructure studies for the internet connections and technical problems, which are the main problems experienced by the students of the music department, should be accelerated, and more technical support should be provided for the applied departments. while the distance education process is continuing in the applied departments of the universities, it is important to eliminate the problems that occur during the process without losing time and interrupting the education by conducting studies that would take feedback aiming the opinions of students and instructors. again, in the process, if students are provided with continuous support, participation in the distance education process can be increased. also, in-service trainings on distance education can be given to instructors. more effective and appropriate software/programs that can be used in the distance education process for music departments can be produced and developed. thus, the distance education process can be made more efficient and more active by minimizing the problems students experience with music courses in the process. in crisis situations such as pandemics where distance education is compulsory, the state and universities should provide the necessary support to the students who are financially and technologically impaired and provide each student equal education in order for them to have equal educational opportunities. as a result of the urgent and rapid transition to distance education in the pandemic process, it is recommended to carry out studies in music departments and other applied departments in order to improve the quality of the service and education in the future by improving the existing system. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 556-568 568 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references adileh, m. t. 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(2006). statistical analysis of computer usage and distance learning in turkey and between the regions of turkey. unpublished master thesis, marmara university institute of science , istanbul. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.yok.gov.tr/sayfalar/haberler/2020/universitelerdeuygulanacak-uzaktanegitime-iliskin-aciklama.aspx http://www.yok.gov.tr/sayfalar/haberler/2020/universitelerdeuygulanacak-uzaktanegitime-iliskin-aciklama.aspx http://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/technology/china-schools-coronavirus.html http://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/technology/china-schools-coronavirus.html 65 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 1, 65-71, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.65.71 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group determination the level of physical activity and eating behaviors of university students serkan düz1 sümeyye tuba aytekeli2 ( corresponding author) 1faculty of sports science, inonu university, turkey. 2institute of health sciences, inonu university, turkey. abstract the aim of this study was to determine the relationship between level of physical activity and eating behaviors of university students. 270 students attending to inonu university in 2018-2019 academic year and volunteering were included in the study. a short form of the international physical activity questionnaire (ipaq-sf) and the dutch eating behavior questionnaire (debq) were administered to the participants along with the socio-demographic information form. data were analyzed by ibm statistics (spss, version 25.0, armonk, ny) windows package program and independent samples t test, kruskal wallis h test and mann-whitney u test were used with descriptive statistics. the findings were evaluated at 95% confidence interval and 5% significance level. while there was no statistically significant difference between eating habits, departments, classes, monthly income and place of residence of university students, there was a significant difference between bmi, adequate and balanced nutritional status and the reasons for skipping meals. moreover, there was no significant relationship between eating behaviors and physical activity levels of university students, but men were more physically active than women were. as a conclusion, the possible effects of mood on eating behavior and physical activity should be determined in more detail by face-to-face interviews with students who have high scores from debq questionnaire. moreover, awareness can be enhanced by organizing trainings and information meetings in order to gain healthy eating habits along with physical activity. keywords: eating behavior, physical activity, debq, ipaq-sf, university students, bmi. citation | serkan düz; sümeyye tuba aytekeli (2020). determination the level of physical activity and eating behaviors of university students. asian journal of education and training, 6(1): 65-71. history: received: 6 november 2019 revised: 17 december 2019 accepted: 20 january 2020 published: 24 february 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 66 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 66 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 67 4. discussion and result ..................................................................................................................................................................... 69 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 70 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.65.71&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1351 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5621-8218 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1351 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5621-8218 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1351 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5621-8218 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1351 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5621-8218 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1351 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7611-4838 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5621-8218 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 65-71 66 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the relationship between levels of physical activity and eating behaviors of university students. 1. introduction in recent years, eating problems have been increasing not only in societies with high levels of welfare but also in societies with low levels of welfare, thus inviting obesity and the health problems it brings with it gbd (2015); centers for disease control and prevention (2009). because, the conveniences that the technology brings and the widespread of the modern lifestyle lead to rapid increase in prevalence of obesity in almost all countries globally. another important reason for this increase in obesity prevalence is the adoption of a physically inactive lifestyle. the sedentary lifestyle is a well-known risk factor, especially for cardiovascular diseases (cvd) (british medical association report, 2005). the world health organization (who) has already reported that approximately 6% of deaths worldwide are due to physical inactivity and 5% from obesity (who, 2005). although it is known that physical activity (pa) decreases the prevalence of many chronic diseases such as cardiovascular, autoimmune and diabetes mellitus, today's modern lifestyle and the fast pace of life force people to live more sedentary lifestyle and reduce the level of fa day by day. this causes various diseases and health problems (bma, 2005; who, 2005). in particular, the habit of immobility has become increasingly popular among the young population between the ages of 15-24, and begun to become a new lifestyle. considering that 81% of the young population between the ages of 11 and 17 in the world are physically inactive, increasing the level of pa is very important for all age (who, 2013). for this reason, one of the most important problems of modern life is obesity caused by low physical activity and bad eating habits. these undesirable behaviors in lifestyle lead to an increase in body weight and obesity prevalence in both developed and developing countries (arslan, 2014). there is a linear relationship between the degree of obesity and type 2 diabetes, cvd, certain types of cancer, and even the risk of death. therefore, adequate physical activity and good eating habits are thought to be important factors in preventing body weight control and obesity prevalence (zimmerman and snow, 2012). the transition from high school to university is one of the most sensitive periods in the lives of young adults who face many different challenges. because this transition period, where individuals gain individual independence and change their social environment by getting out of parental control is an important phase in which health behaviors related to eating habits and living conditions are affected. therefore, healthy living habits generally leave their place to an unhealthy lifestyle in the first years of the university life (bagordo et al., 2013). this unhealthy lifestyle leads to an increase in fast food consumption and a decrease in the consumption of fruit and vegetable (denney-wilson et al., 2009). moreover, the new academic responsibilities and obligations encountered create stress on individuals and affect previous eating (garipağaoğlu et al., 2012) and physical activity habits (arıkan, 2015). all of these show themselves as an increase in the body weight of the students in the first years of the university (turkish demographic and health survey (tdhs), 2008). furthermore, risky behaviors for the health such as physical inactivity, malnutrition, abuse of tobacco, tobacco products and alcohol are tried and become habitual in this period (pekcan, 2006). when the literature was examined, despite the decrease in pa levels with the transition from high school to university (pekcan and karaagaoglu, 2000) it is seen that the pa habit gained in youth and adolescence is also effective for the rest of student’s life (hills et al., 2007). therefore, identifying the factors that cause freshman to undergo poor eating habits and inadequate pa, as well as changes in their lifestyle, is of great importance. whereas, there are many studies reporting fa levels and eating habits of university students from different countries in the literature (moreno-gómez et al., 2012; rodríguez et al., 2013; kayode and alabi, 2020; tek et al., 2020) there are a limited number of studies investigating fa levels and eating habits of university students and related factors in our country (korkmaz, 2010; aksoydan and cakır, 2011; arslan. et al., 2016; kargün et al., 2016). however, understanding eating habits and pa levels and determining the factors affecting them are important for taking effective measures to develop healthy eating habits and increase pa levels. because the majority of young people who will become adults of the future acquire or develop risky behaviors that will endanger their health in this period. therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between eating habits and pa levels of freshman and sophomores at the beginning of university education. 2. method in this part of the study, information about the participant and the analysis of the data are presented. 2.1. model of the study in this study, causal comparison model was used as it was aimed to compare the eating habits and pa levels of university students in terms of various variables. in the causal comparison model, it is aimed to compare the groups that differ in terms of a certain variable (karasar, 2016). 2.2. population and selection of sample while the population of study was formed by approximately 8000 freshman and sophomores studying at inonu university in the 2018-2019 academic year, the formula nt²pq/d²(n-1)+t²pq (sümbüloğlu and sümbüloğlu, 2009) was used to determine the sample group that will represent the population. with a 95% confidence interval and 5% sampling error, the sample size of the study was calculated to be at least 245 students, and accordingly, a questionnaire was applied to a group of 300 freshman and sophomores. since 18 of the collected questionnaires contain incomplete and 12 of them include conflicting information, they were excluded from the study. as a result, the total of 270 students was included in the study and formed the sample. the descriptive characteristics of the participants are given in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 65-71 67 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. descriptive characteristics of the participants. variable n x ±sd min. max. weight (kg) woman 106 57.80 ± 10.08 43 100 male 164 75.34 ± 12.91 50 120 total 270 68.52 ± 14.59 43 120 height (m) woman 106 163.62 ± 6.37 145 190 male 164 177.91 ± 6.43 158 194 total 270 172.28 ± 9.43 145 194 bmi (kg/m2) woman 106 21.56 ± 3.38 17.19 32.42 male 164 23.76 ± 3.59 17.45 36.11 total 270 22.92 ± 3.65 17.19 36.11 note: mean± standard deviation, minimum and maximum values of 270 participants. 2.3. data collection tools in addition to the socio-demographic information form, international physical activity questionnaire-short form (ipaq-sf) and dutch eating behavior questionnaire (debq) were used to determine the pa levels and eating behavior of the university students. international physical activity questionnaire -short form (ipaq-sf): ipaq-sf consists of four different sections and seven questions and includes pa related questions that have been done for at least 10 minutes in the last 7 days. in the questionnaire, it is questioned that how many days and how long high intensity physical activity (hipa), moderate intensity physical activity (mipa) and walking (w) have been done in the last 7 days. in the last question, the time spent sitting or lying down, that is, without moving, is evaluated daily. the level of pa is calculated by using the met method. one met is equal to 3.5 ml/kg/min. this means that while resting, a person consumes 3.5 ml of oxygen per minute in per kg. in ipaq-sf, it is expressed that 8.0 met as hipa, 4.0 met as mifa and 3.3 met as w. the total amount of met is calculated by determining how many days and how long each person does heavy, medium and low intensity pa. if any question in the questionnaire is answered as i do not know, the total met value cannot be calculated. the level of pa is determined in three categories (altun et al., 2005) such as; category i: inactive ones: <600 met min/week. category ii: minimum active: 600-3000 met min/week. category iii: sufficient level of pa for health: >3000 met min/week. dutch eating behavior questionnaire (debq): debq is a 33-item self-report questionnaire which consists of 3 subscales developed by van strien et al. (1986) it evaluate emotional eating behaviors (do you eat dessert when you are unhappy?), external eating behaviors (if the smell of what you eat is very nice, would you eat more than you normally eat?) and restrained eating behaviors (would you eat less than you want to eat to avoid getting fat?). the items in the questionnaire are evaluated with a 5-point likert type scale which is ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often), with higher scores indicating greater endorsement of the eating behavior. moreover, the option "irrelevant" is also offered for items. the psychometric properties of the debq are strong. the subscale scores evidence good internal consistency across weight category groups. in a nonclinical sample of normal weight, overweight, and obese participants, coefficient alphas ranged from .92 to .94 for the debq-restrained eating subscale, .96 to .97 for the debq-emotional eating subscale, and .79 to .84 for debq-external eating subscale (bohrer et al., 2015). in general, the cut-off point was reported as 2.5 points in this scale. people who get above this score are considered to have emotional eating behavior. anthropometric measurements: body weights of the students were measured with a standard digital scale (seca, germany) that is sensitive to 0.05 kg with light clothes and without shoes. the height of the students was measured with a wall mounted standard meter (mesilife mr200, germany). measurements were made when the feet were adjacent to each other, posterior of the body touching the wall and without shoes. body mass index (bmi) of the students was calculated by the formula of dividing body weight (kg) by the length of the square (m2) and the results were classified according to the who reference values. 2.4. data analysis the data obtained in the study were evaluated using the ibm statistics (spss version 25.0, armonk, ny, usa) windows package program. the normality of the data was tested by kolmogorov-smirnov tests. while the independent sample t-test and one-way anova test were used for comparing the mean values of the groups with normal distribution, the mann-whitney u test and kruskal-wallis h test were used to compare those did not show normal distribution. the results were evaluated in the 95% confidence interval and the significance level was p<.05. 3. findings in this section, level of pa and eating habits of students were presented in details. monthly income of 34.4% of women was 0-500 tl, 38.4% of men was 0-500 tl, 39.4% of women was 5001000 tl, 35.4% of men 500-1000 tl, 7.5% of women 1001-1500 tl, 9.8% of men 1001-1500 tl, 8.5% of women 1501-2000 tl, 4.9% of men 1501-2000 tl, 6.6% of women 2001-2500 tl, 4.3% of men 2001-2500 tl, 10.4% of women >2500 tl, 7.3% of men >2500 tl; 52.8% of women were freshman and 47.2% of them were sophomores, 76.8% of them were freshman, 23.2% were sophomores; it was determined that 34.9% of women received science education, 65.1% of social education, 47.6% of men received science education, and 52.4% of verbal education table 2. when table 3 was examined, it was seen that 9.6% of the participants were underweight, 63.7% were normal weight (healthy), 22.2% were overweight and 4.4% were obese. as seen in table 4, mean scores of the restrained eating subscale of debq was 3.09±.75; emotional eating subscale was 2.01±.98 and external eating subscale 2.28±.92. it was seen that the restrained eating subscale mean scores of the participants were higher than those of the emotional and external eating subscale. when the results were examined, it can be said that a restrictive tendency prevails in the eating behavior of the participants. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 65-71 68 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. sociodemographic characteristics of the participants. monthly income variable women men n % n % 0-500 tl 33 34.4 63 38.4 501-1000 tl 38 39.4 58 35.4 1001-1500 tl 8 7.5 16 9.8 1501-2000 tl 9 8.5 8 4.9 2001-2500 tl 7 6.6 7 4.3 >2501 tl 11 10.4 12 7.3 grade freshman 56 52.8 126 76.8 sophomores 50 47.2 38 23.2 total 106 100 164 100 department science 37 34.9 78 47.6 social 69 65.1 86 52.4 total 106 100 164 100 note: percentage distribution of 270 participants. table-3. bmi of the participants. classification of bmi n % underweight 26 9.6 normal weight (healthy) 172 63.7 overweight 60 22.2 obese 12 4.4 total 270 100 note: percentage distribution of the participants’ bmi. table-4. distribution of debq scores. subscales n x ± sd min. maks. restrained eating 270 3.091±.752 1.0 5.0 emotional eating 270 2.012±.985 1.0 5.0 external eating 270 2.286±.929 1.0 5.0 note: mean± standard deviation, minimum and maximum values of debq subscales. table-5. comparison of bmi and debq scores. subscales underweight normal overweight obese p x ±sd x ±sd x ±sd x ±sd restrained eating 3.37±.71 3.04±.72 3.12±.84 2.99±.77 .159 emotional eating 2.10±1.03 1.94±.92 2.12±1.16 2.32±.98 .363 external eating 1.74±.63 2.18±.92 2.69±.91 2.57±.71 .000* note: *p<.05. in table 5, it was seen that there was no statistically significant difference between the restrained eating and emotional eating subscales and bmi except the external eating subscale. according to the results of comparison made to evaluate which groups were different, it was seen that there was a significant difference between overweight and underweight, and normal and overweight groups in terms of external eating behaviors. table-6. comparison of debq scores and the gender. subscales women men p x ±sd x ±sd restrained eating 3.06±.70 3.10±.78 .947 emotional eating 2.32±1.12 1.81±.82 .000* external eating 2.48±.97 2.15±.87 .004* note: *p<.05. according to table 6, it was found that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the emotional and external eating subscales and gender of the participants. the mean scores of emotional and external eating subscales of women were higher than those of men. table-7. comparison of debq scores and adequate and balanced diet status. subscales women men p x ±sd x ±sd restrained eating 3.08±.76 3.09±.74 .500 emotional eating 1.19±.91 2.04±1.04 .727 external eating 2.40±.93 2.15±.90 .021* note: *p<.05. there was a significant difference was found between mean scores of external eating subscales and adequate and balanced nutrition of the participants. external eating scores of the participants who consumed an adequate and balanced diet were found higher than those did not table 7. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 65-71 69 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. comparison of debq scores and the most important reasons for meal skipping. subscales lack of time having no habit anorexia get up late preparation problem course attendance other x ±sd x ±sd x ±sd x ±sd x ±sd x ±sd x ±sd kw p restrained eating .28±.68a .99±.70 a,b 2.89±.65b .21±.82 .22±.87 .59±.63 .06±.78 4.751 .02* emotional eating .06±.13 .99±.89 .91±.89 .04±.91 .95±.72 .53±.79 .16±.05 .564 .363 external eating .13±.90a .80±.92a .06±.89 .24±.91 .88±.94 .25±.91 .01±.75 1.670 .001* note: * p<.05, a: significant difference between time and no habit; b: significant difference between the lack of appetite and no habit. according to the results of kruskal wallis h-test conducted to determine whether there was a significant relationship among the restrained, emotional and external eating subscales in terms of the most important reasons for skipping meal. it was found that there was a significant difference between the means of restrained and external eating subscale table 8. while the reason for skipping meals that differ significantly in the restrained eating subscale were lack of time, no habit of meal and anorexia, the reason for skipping meals in the external eating subscale was lack of time and having no habit of meal. table-9. correlation between debq and met scores of the participants. met spearman's rho restrained eating r -.015 p .810 n 270 emotional eating r -.025 p .677 n 270 external eating r -.018 p .767 n 270 note: correlation was not significant at the .05 level (2-tailed). based on the spearman correlation results, there was no significant relationship between the mean scores of restrictive, emotional and external eating subscales and met table 9. table-10. comparison of met scores and gender of participants. met gender n x ±sd rank means mann-whitney u p low women 106 433.03±197.91 412.50 645.00 .808 men 164 452.03±201.71 412.50 total 270 441.59±198.42 412.50 middle women 106 1131.97±532.65 956.00 3.038.00 .207 men 164 1222.78±535.19 1102.00 total 270 1188.73±534.29 1039.50 high women 106 3420.50±821.20 3447.25 65.500 .000* men 164 2503.26±656.62 2426.00 total 270 2698.41±783.17 2532.50 total women 106 1044.39±781.98 799.25 645.20 .000* men 164 1367.93±925.03 1140.00 total 270 1240.91±884.44 966.75 note: *p<.05. according to table 10, there was a statistically significant mean difference in high and total met groups. a significant difference was found between female and male in high and total met group. while the mean of the met scores of the women was higher than those of the men in high met group, the mean of the met scores of the men was higher than those of the women in total met group. 4. discussion and result the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between level of physical activity and eating behaviors of university students. as a result of study, the fact that the weight average of women is lower than that of men reflects the world average. moreover, when the mean of bmi were examined, it was seen that the mean of women was lower than those of male participants table 1. the demographic data of the participants who participated in our study are in line with the tuik report published in 2015. in the report, the value of mean weight and height of men in turkey was reported to be higher than that of women (turkish statistics institute, 2015). when the monthly income of participant considered, it was found that monthly income of the women was higher than those of men. we can say that the cause of monthly income of the women was higher than those of men due to the more protectionist approach of families towards their girls. since there is no study on this subject, it is not possible to quantitatively test and verify this inference. however, the reasons for these results can be investigated with future studies. it was also noted that female participants were mostly stayed with their families, whereas male participants stayed in the dormitory. this may significantly affect the eating habits of participants. when the debq scores of the participants evaluated, it was seen that the highest score belongs to emotional eating subscale. it is clear that the emotional eating behavior varies according to the type and severity of the emotion seen in the participants (bozan, 2009). however, there was no statistically significant difference in the restrained and emotional eating subscales according to bmi of the participant, it was seen that there was a statistically significant difference in the external eating subscale. when the results of post-hoc test was examined, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(1): 65-71 70 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it was seen that difference was between overweight and underweight and normal and overweight groups. these findings were similar to the studies in the literature. snoek et al. (2007) showed a positive relationship between obesity and external eating behavior. the higher emotional eating scores of the participants with the problem of overweight or obesity as well as restrained eating behaviors were consistent with the findings of camacho et al. (1991). while changing emotional states have an effect that eliminates the restrained eating behavior, on the other hand, it is known that people who show emotional eating pattern can consume too much food (van et al., 1987). moreover, these findings are thought to coincide with the relationship between bulimia symptom levels and eating styles. according to the findings of the study, restrained, emotional and external eating subscales was significantly different from abnormal eating patterns and non-binge eating behavior. bmi of most of the participants included in our study are in the normal range. moreover, mean scores of restrained, emotional and external eating subscales of the participants with higher bmi are higher than those of lower bmi. therefore, it is thought that the high emotional eating score does not cause obesity in the majority of the participants because of the high metabolic rate and physical activity of the young participants. hwang et al. (2019) reported that physical activity increases metabolic rate and maintains body mass index within the normal range, similar to our findings. it was found that eating behaviors were not affected by the monthly income and residence status of the participants. external eating scores of the participants who consumed an adequate and balanced diet were found higher than those did not. because, adequate and balanced diet is a quite important factor that protects health, keeps the person away from diseases, provides physical and social peace, improves the body, energizes and increases success (vural, 2015). it was found that there was a significant difference between the means of restrained and external eating subscales in terms of the most important meal skipping reasons variable. the most important reason for skipping meal was lack of time and not having habit of meal a meal. therefore, various measures can be taken to teach students how to use time efficiently and to gain regular eating habits. there was no significant correlation between the subscales of debq and met scores. thus, we can say that met status of the participants do not affect the eating behaviors. in this study, there was a significant difference between the level of pa and different emotional states. in a study conducted by dankel et al. (2016) they revealed that the individuals with sedentary lifestyle and obese had emotionally deteriorated. this finding shows the importance of the pa on emotional states. camacho et al. (1991) showed that participants who have low levels of pa without depressive symptoms were at higher risk of depression than those with high pa levels. in a review by mammen and faulkner (2013) it was stated that increasing pa is a valuable strategy to improve mental health and reduce the risk of depression (mammen and faulkner, 2013). the number of studies reporting that promotion of physical activity which is important for public health is gradually increasing. therefore, exercise programs should be a part of social health programs. it is also important to conduct new studies focusing on the relationship between lifestyle and mental state. in the study, the mean of met score of men was statistically higher than that of women table 10. this shows that gender of students affects their met scores. this finding is similar to the literature. according to the study conducted by ergün (2013) the pa score of men was higher than that of women. similarly, another study found met scores of men higher than those of women (genç et al., 2011). finally, another study conducted in 2013 found that met scores of men were higher than those of women (almas et al., 2013). this may be due to the fact that male students spend most of time in the open area and engage in more physical activity than female. although it was not statistically significant, the highest met score was recorded in those who did regular breakfast. we can say that doing regular breakfast had effect on met scores. but, kara et al. (2017); ozilbey (2013) and yıldırım (2010) were reported that regular meal consumption of students does not have a statistically significant effect on the level of pa. therefore, we can say that participation in physical activity is not affected by doing regular breakfast. according to the who report, the fact that obesity, which has reached the epidemic level worldwide (who, 2009) and has become a problem threatening the health of people, has an impact on the emergence of many health problems (troop et al., 2002) which makes it necessary to conduct more studies in this field. therefore, it is important to understand cause of physical inactivity and bad eating habits that will cause obesity and to examine in detailed with different dimensions. in this way, new suggestions can be made to improve healthy living conditions. in this study, it was found that overweight or obese participants showed more external eating behaviors compared to normal and underweight participant. based on the results obtained from this, it can be said that the elements that initiate the eating behavior of an individual seeking a solution to weight problem or obesity should be specified in detail. when the literature on eating habits and physical activity is examined, it is seen that the eating problem is under the influence of environmental factors as well as genetic factors (snoek et al., 2007). extensive studies investigating the relationship between pa and eating behaviors in our country are very limited. for this reason, it is estimated that large-scale studies to evaluate the eating habits and pa level of the young population in our country will fill an important gap in the literature. in the future studies, investigating the moods of the participants with high emotional, external and restrained eating behaviors can provide more detailed information about the eating behavior and pa of the individuals. references aksoydan, e. and n. cakır, 2011. evaluation of nutritional behavior, 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for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 362 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 362-383, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.362.383 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluation of preservice teachers’ skills in solving non-routine mathematical problems through various strategies neslihan usta bartin university, faculty of education department of mathematics and science education mathematics education bartin, turkey. abstract this study aims to investigate how the different solutions, problem-solving strategies, and the number of strategies used by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers on nonroutine mathematical problems change according to grade levels. this study was conducted with 152 preservice teachers studying at the department of elementary mathematics education of a state university located in the western black sea region in turkey. the purposeful sampling method was used to select the participants. a 12-question test with non-routine problems was used as the data collection tool. content analysis, one of the qualitative data analysis techniques, was used for analyzing the data. the results indicated that the preservice teachers at each grade level generally proposed single solution and more than half of them had difficulties in finding solutions to the problems. it has been observed that the most used strategies of the preservice teachers are the strategies of reasoning, prediction-control, finding a correlation, formationtesting, systematic listing, drawing, and forming equations in all grade levels. keywords: problem-solving, problem-solving strategies, non-routine problems, problem-solving skills, the ability to use various strategies, preservice mathematics teachers. citation | neslihan usta (2020). evaluation of preservice teachers’ skills in solving non-routine mathematical problems through various strategies. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 362-383. history: received: 19 march 2020 revised: 24 april 2020 accepted: 26 may 2020 published: 8 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 363 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 365 3. findings and interpretation ......................................................................................................................................................... 367 4. conclusion, discussion, and implication .................................................................................................................................. 380 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 382 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.362.383&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1714 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2662-1975 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1714 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2662-1975 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1714 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2662-1975 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 363 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the contribution of this study is to the literature to investigate how different solutions, problem-solving strategies, and the number of strategies used by preservice secondary school mathematics teachers on solving non-routine mathematical problems change according to grade levels. 1. introduction understanding the mathematical knowledge and drawing the relationship between these pieces of knowledge stands out in the process of problem-solving (swings & peterson, 1988, as cited by karataş and güven (2003). mathematical problems can be classified as routine (usual) and non-routine (unusual) problems (mahlios, 1988). routine problems are the problems that can be solved by four operations frequently encountered in daily life (altun, 2014). routine problems help students understand arithmetic operations, reinforce concepts, and solve nonroutine problems. on the other hand, non-routine problems are the problems that force students mentally, the solution cannot be seen immediately and require the use of more than one strategy together. in the solution of such problems, the more important than the solution of the problem are the thoughts and approaches developed in the solution process (mayer, sims, & tajika, 1995). this feature of problems enables students to develop critical and creative thinking skills (mayer et al., 1995). the solution of non-routine problems requires organizing and classifying data, seeing the relationship among data, performing analysis and synthesis, performing many consecutive operations, using different strategies, and revealing creative thinking (altun, 2014; mahlios, 1988; mayer et al., 1995). problem-solving is a complex process that covers a wide range of mental processes and skills. according to nafees (2011) problem-solving is the process of solving problems through high-level cognitive operations such as visualizing, associating, abstracting, comprehending, reasoning, and analyzing. the problem-solving process provides an opportunity for students to create their formulas and problem-solving strategies. however, this process should be managed well by teachers (weber, 2008). therefore, it is very important for the preservice mathematics teachers, who are future teachers, to use problem-solving strategies effectively and gain different perspectives on the problems in educating students (flowers, 1992, as cited by behlol, akbar, and sehrish (2018). problem-solving may effectively develop the skills of the students to recognize the main idea in a problem, realize the mistakes, build relations, determine the components and structure and recognize the properties of qualities (cabanilla-pedro, acob-navales, & josue, 2014). the problem-solving process consists of four basic phases according to polya. these four phases complement each other like pieces of a puzzle (ortiz, 2016). the four-phase conceptual framework of polya (1957); polya (1973) explaining the problem-solving process is given in table 1. table-1. polya (1957); polya (1973) conceptual framework explaining the problem-solving process. phases of problem solving phases definition understanding the problem it is the phase of understanding what the problem is about and what is asked. it is the first and the most significant phase for the solution. devising a plan it is the phase of determining strategies to solve the problem. knowledge of strategies is important in this phase. carrying out the plan it is the phase to implement the chosen strategies, methods, and techniques. in this phase, knowledge of topic and algorithm is important. looking back at the problem it is the phase of checking the solution and checking whether the result is logical and correct. adapting the solution to similar situations is also important in this phase. source: i created the table myself by using the information from polya (1957); polya (1973) phases of problem solving. these phases also refer to the skills that students need to develop to solve problems successfully (atteh, andam, & obeng-denteh, 2017; baykul, 2014; ortiz, 2016). it is critical to know the problem-solving strategies during the problem-solving process. despite the understanding of the problem, not being able to create any strategy for the solution or not having enough strategy knowledge will make the solution of unusual problems especially difficult (ortiz, 2016). in this context, the relevant literature (calışkan, erol, & selçuk, 2006) revealed that expert problem solvers systematically approach the problem compared to novice problem solvers, use more than one problem-solving strategy and reflect a thorough approach to the problem. on the contrary, it has been revealed that novice problem solvers try to solve the problem with mathematical equations without organizing the information and making a qualitative description of the problem, and do not benefit from problem-solving strategies sufficiently. fülöp (2015) defined three important components of the problem-solving process in mathematics as discussion, experimental learning, and tasks. if students are asked to learn problem-solving and to improve their ability to use them, problem-solving strategies should be taught actively. strategies affect and improve students’ learning focus. also, since strategy instruction is a complex process, instruction should be carried out step by step and over a long period (fülöp, 2015). fülöp (2015) stated that students’ understanding of problems, choosing strategies, and algorithm knowledge are not adequate for solving problems, but it is possible to learn and to teach strategies. she also explained that students improved conceptual and algorithmic knowledge by learning strategic thinking. two types of strategies that are general and assistive can be mentioned in the process of problem-solving (leblanc, 1977) as cited by bayazit (2013). according to bayazit and aksoy (2010) general strategies are related to thoughts and approaches used in problem-solving. on the other hand, assistive strategies are supportive elements that ensure the controlled execution of thoughts and approaches used in solving the problem. there is more than one problem-solving strategy with different names used in the process of problem-solving in the literature. the most common strategies employed in the process of mathematical problem solving are included in this study. general and assistive strategies mostly used in primary and secondary school levels are presented in table 2 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 364 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (bayazit & aksoy, 2010; baykul, 2014; posamentier & krulik, 1998; wickelgren, 1974). the relationship between problem-solving and general and assistive strategies used in the problem-solving process is shown in figure 1. figure-1. relationship between problem-solving and general and assistive strategies. table-2. mathematical problem solving strategies. general strategies assistive strategies  reasoning or logical reasoning  making a systematic list  using guess-check  drawing figure, schema or graphic   finding patterns  making table  working backward  simplifying the problem or solving a simpler problem  generating-testing or making use of problem structures  writing mathematical statements there are a lot of studies conducted in turkey (altun & sezgin-memnun, 2008; aydoğdu, 2014; bayazit, 2013; calışkan et al., 2006; gürbüz & güden, 2016; kılıç, 2017; saygılı, 2017; taspinar & bulut, 2012; türker-biber, aylar, ay, & akkuş-i̇spir, 2017; yazgan, 2007; yazgan & arslan, 2017) and abroad (de hoyos, gray, & simpson, 2004; follmer, 2000; ishida, 2002; miller, 2000) about strategies used in the solution of non-routine and real-life problems with students at different grade levels and preservice teachers. calışkan et al. (2006) investigated what kind of strategies the preservice physics teachers developed while solving physics problems, and found that senior preservice teachers developed more strategies. gürbüz and güden (2016) identified different strategies that secondary school mathematics teachers employed while solving nonroutine problems and investigated reasons for this difference. in their study, it was concluded that teachers were partially sufficient in finding the correct results of the problems, but they were insufficient in using different strategies. altun and sezgin-memnun (2008) examined mathematics preservice teachers’ non-routine mathematical problem-solving skills and the solution strategies they used in solving them. türker-biber et al. (2017) examined the pedagogical content knowledge of prospective mathematics teachers through classroom observations and interviews. the point that draws attention in the study was that the preservice teachers maintained a closer stance towards problem-solving compared to the conventional approach because of its importance in the teaching process; however, they considered a result-oriented approach to problem-solving. yavuz (2006) analyzed the effect of teaching problem-solving strategies with secondary school students on students’ mathematics attitudes, mathematics anxiety, and academic selves towards problem-solving and achievements. on the other hand, taspinar and bulut (2012) who analyzed solutions that 8th graders developed for routine and non-routine problems by using various strategies with a quasi-experimental design, suggested that the 8th graders showed a different point of view towards problems and that they were able to suggest new solutions after teaching the problem-solving strategies. kılıç (2017) who researched on problem-posing situations of primary school preservice teachers by applying their knowledge of problem-solving strategies and the difficulties they experienced in this process, found that the preservice teachers did not have adequate knowledge of problem-solving strategies and problem posing. also, aydoğdu (2014) examining problem-solving strategies of primary school preservice mathematics teachers in geometry stated that all preservice teachers used some strategies, yet the male preservice teachers used more strategies compared to the female ones. choosing and implementing a suitable strategy for the solution of the problem significantly affects the problem-solving success of the students. therefore, informing students about problem-solving strategies will positively affect student success. in this context, teachers’ tasks and responsibilities are to help students encounter routine and non-routine problems that can be solved with different strategies and, most importantly, with more than one strategy, to provide them work on these problems and to trigger their motivation to solve the problems by using all possible strategies (bayazit & aksoy, 2010). thus, students can solve the problems with strategies they developed on their own (yazgan, 2007) and this contributes to the development of problem-solving skills and higher-order thinking skills. since it is critical in doing mathematics and acquiring mathematical knowledge, it is through teachers to gain problem-solving skills, which is at the center of instructional programs, for this reason, the preservice teachers need to be trained in the best and the most equipped way and have occupational consciousness so that students can learn and implement mathematical concepts, mathematical thinking, interconceptual relations, communication and problem solving effectively. at this point, the preservice teachers need to know the subject matter, knowledge of teaching the subject, and pedagogy knowledge. pedagogical content asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 365 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group knowledge (pck) includes subject matter knowledge, subject teaching knowledge, difficulties that may be encountered in teaching the subject, mistakes made, misconceptions, and pedagogical knowledge (shulman, 1986). in studies related to pck (ball, hill, & bass, 2005; fedosejeva, boče, romanova, iliško, & ivanova, 2018; shulman, 1986) the importance of the knowledge of student recognition and teaching was highlighted. knowledge of teaching contains the tasks teachers need to complete in making a subject meaningful for the students (ball, thames, & phelps, 2008). the professional knowledge of a teacher directly affects the quality of learning and teaching processes (baki, 2014). in this context, for the teacher to perform meaningful learning based on the knowledge of the subject matter, it is important for the students to have knowledge about how they learn better and to make the students aware of the mistakes they make during the learning process and to correct them. the fact that mathematics teachers have a relational and in-depth structure of their mathematics knowledge is important for the effectiveness of mathematics teaching (ball et al., 2005). teaching methods and strategies that the teachers employ to shape the students’ learning of mathematics (baykul, 2014). when teachers focus on logical reasoning and higher-level thinking skills in the teaching process, students' learning mathematics reaches the highest level (national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm), 2000). when all of these facts are considered, as teachers of the future-preservice teachers’ knowing problem-solving strategies and solving a problem with more than one strategy becomes a research subject. as teachers are particularly the ones to develop these skills in students, it is important to investigate whether the preservice teachers’ such skills are adequate or not. in polya (1957) phases of the problem-solving process, it can be seen that gaining various strategies and systematics of problem-solving based on the content is more important than rules and formulas (ipek & okumus, 2012; ortiz, 2016). it can be possible to help students gain problem-solving skills and learn problem-solving systematics by providing them an environment in which they can generate their problem-solving strategies and use strategies as different as possible. in this context, the strategies used by the preservice teachers in solving nonroutine problems and the number of strategies become significant. 1.1. the aim of the study in the literature related to problem-solving strategies, no qualitative studies analyzing the number of different solutions that preservice mathematics teachers proposed, strategies they used in solving problems, the number of strategies they employed, and their grade levels were found. since the problem-solving skill is a basic skill in the curriculum required to be gained by the students, it is essential to determine the strategies, the variety of strategies, and the number of strategies used by the preservice teachers who will carry out this profession in the future in solving non-routine mathematical problems. therefore, this study aims to investigate how different solutions, problem-solving strategies, and the number of strategies used by preservice secondary school mathematics teachers on solving non-routine mathematical problems change according to grade levels. the following sub-problems are answered for this aim. 1. how many different ways do preservice secondary school mathematics teachers use for solving non-routine mathematical problems? 2. what solving strategies do preservice secondary school mathematics teachers apply most while solving non-routine mathematical problems? 3. what is the number of strategies used for solving non-routine mathematical problems by preservice secondary school mathematics teachers according to grade levels? 2. methodology 2.1. research design since the study aimed to thoroughly analyze various strategies developed by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers while solving non-routine mathematical problems, the case study method, which is based on a qualitative approach and which allows handling and interpret a phenomenon, topic, and event by elaborating, was employed (creswell, 2013; merriam, 2013). it was investigated whether the preservice teachers used one or more than one solution while solving a problem and whether the ones using one solution used more than one strategy in single solution. 2.2. study group this study was conducted with 152 preservice teachers (118 females and 34 males) studying at the department of elementary mathematics education of a state university located in the western black sea region of turkey in the 2017-2018 academic year. the purposeful sampling method was used to select the participants. in this context, it was paid attention to select the participants from the students studying at the department of elementary mathematics education. the number and percentages of the preservice teachers according to the grade levels are presented in table 3. instead of using the real names of participants, s11, s12…s148 were used for the first graders; s21, s22,…s224 were used for the second graders; s31, s32,…s334 were used for the third graders, and s41, s42,…s437 were used for the fourth graders. table-3. frequency and percentage of the distribution of the preservice secondary school teachers according to grade levels. grade levels n % 1st graders 48 31.58 2nd graders 33 21.71 3rd graders 34 22.37 4th graders 37 24.34 sum n 152 100 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 366 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. data collection tools and analysis a 12-question test including non-routine problems prepared using local (yazgan & arslan, 2017) and foreign mathematics teaching sources (posamentier & krulik, 1998; posamentier & krulik, 2008; posamentier & krulik, 2009) and secondary school mathematics textbooks were used as the data collection tool. the prepared questions were assessed by two experts in terms of some criteria such as aim, content, and time allocation. each problem was named by the researcher so that the research questions can be easily understood in the following sections of the article. the research questions are given in table 4. table-4. non-routine mathematical problems implemented on the preservice teachers. 1) the area of a rectangle is 120 cm2. its width and length are integers. what are the alternatives for these two numbers? which alternative gives the smallest perimeter? (problem about the perimeter of rectangles) 2) if a cake with the size of 8x8 cm is served to 4 people equally, how many cakes with the size of 12x12 cm are needed for serving to 18 people equally? (problem about cakes) 3) 18 cards are needed to make a three-story house from playing cards like the one in the figure. how many cards are needed to make a 7-story house? (problem about playing cards) 4) elif has a frog named minik. minik can leap away 1 or 2 meters in one go. how many different ways can it leap away 7 meters? (problem about frogs) 5) imagine a function machine that does an operation on an only given number. for example; when 3 is put into the machine, the machine will do operations with just three. the machine does four operations either alone or in a combination. inputs from 1 to 5 and the first 5 outputs are given below. if the input is 9, what would the output be? (problem about function machine) input output 1 1 2 9 3 29 4 67 5 129 6) a census taker goes to a house for taking a census and asks the housewife about the number of people living in that house and their ages. the woman tells him that three girls are living in that house. she also tells that product of their ages is 36, and the sum of their ages is equal to the door number of their neighbor’s apartment. the census taker goes to the neighbor’s apartment and looks at the door number. he comes back and tells that the information given is not enough. then, the woman says that “my eldest daughter has ginger hair”. after that, the census taker thanks and calculates the girls’ ages. how old are the girls, and how can the census taker know this? (problem about census takers) 7) a palindrome number is a number that remains the same when its digits are reversed. 747 and 1991 are examples of palindrome numbers. so, how many palindrome numbers are there between 1 and 1000? (problem about palindromic numbers) 8) a sequence continuing as 1,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,… has been formed by writing each positive n integer n times. how many terms are needed for making the sum of multiplicative inverses of the terms 500? (problem about sequence) 9) a system as follows is used for the roof of a mall. three metal bars and 3 pins are used for creating a triangle while 5 metal bars and 4 pins are used for creating two triangles. when it is continued similarly, how many bars and pins are required for 10 triangles? how many bars and pins are required for n triangles? (problem about bar-pin) 10) there are 100 cookies shared by 100 masters and apprentices. while each master takes 3 cookies, 3 of the apprentices share one cookie. how many masters are there? (problem about mastersapprentices) 11) while the length of two sides of a square is increased by 25%, the length of the other two sides is decreased by 40%. find the rate of decrease in the area of the square. (problem about the area of squares) 12) how many different isosceles triangles whose sides are integers and whose perimeter is 113 units are possible? (problem about isosceles triangles) qualitative data analysis techniques were used for analyzing the data. a content analysis was employed by using categories and codes created by the researcher, and an expert in the analysis of the data obtained from the study. these categories and codes were presented in table 5. the percentage of agreement in the coding (miles & huberman, 1994) was found at 86%. the researcher and the expert reached an agreement as a result of their discussions for the remaining 14% difference. the data obtained from the preservice teachers’ answers were classified by the categories and codes defined, and they were presented in the section of findings by giving their frequencies and by supporting them with examples. to make categories given in table 5 comprehensible, they were explained as follows; the preservice teachers proposing single solution: they are the preservice teachers solving the problems using one-way of solution. the preservice teachers proposing more than one solution: they are the ones who solve the problems with more than one strategy and who find different solutions for the problems. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 367 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. the codes and categories regarding the strategies used by the preservice teachers in solving problems. 3. findings and interpretation in this section of the study, the findings regarding the preservice teachers’ solutions for non-routine problems were included. 3.1. findings related to the first sub-problem the findings related to the first sub-problem “how many different ways do preservice secondary school mathematics teachers use for solving non-routine mathematical problems?” were given in table 6 according to grade levels. when table 6 was analyzed as a whole, it was seen that the preservice teachers at each grade level solved nonroutine mathematical problems mostly with single solution. the preservice teachers in the third and fourth-grade levels proposed two solutions more than the ones in the first and second-grade levels. when the number of solutions to solve non-routine mathematical problems in table 6 was analyzed, it was seen that the preservice teachers in the first and second-grade levels could not propose more than two solutions except for 1 preservice teacher. table 7 shows the number of correct answers that the preservice teachers gave for each way of solution and percentage distributions. also, the total number of preservice teachers in all grade levels was 152, and the number of non-routine problems was 12. in table 7, the minimum and the maximum number of answers that can be given was calculated with the formula of “the number of answers that can be given at minimum (maximum) x the total number of problems x the number of solutions proposed”. for instance, the range of the number of correct answers is 0≤number of answers≤1824 (152x12x1) for one solution. it was understood from table 7 that the number of correct answers given by the preservice teachers for one solution was 838, and this result formed 46.79% of the answers in the range of one solution; the number of correct answers given by the preservice teachers for two solutions was 258, and this result formed 7.20% of the answers in the range of two solutions; the number of correct answers given by the preservice teachers for more than two solutions was 27, and this result formed 0.50% of the answers in the range of three solutions. therefore, it was seen that 129 preservice teachers proposed two solutions with 258 answers, and 9 preservice teachers proposed more than two solutions with 27 answers. 8 of the preservice teachers proposing more than two solutions were at the fourth and third-grade level while 1 of them was at the secondgrade level. since no preservice teachers proposed more than three solutions, the ones proposing more than two solutions were considered as the ones proposing three solutions. 3.2. findings and interpretation related to the second sub-problem the findings related to the second sub-problem “what solving strategies do preservice secondary school mathematics teachers apply most while solving non-routine mathematical problems?” were given in tables according to grade levels. in this section, the findings were supported with examples of the preservice teachers’ answers; however, all of the problems could not be supported with examples. for this reason, examples of the preservice teachers who mostly propose two or more solutions and give different answers were included. the meanings of the abbreviations and formulas used in the tables are given as follows. nspos: number of strategies used by the preservice teachers proposing one solution. nspmtos: number of strategies used by the preservice teachers proposing more than one solution. sl: systematic listing, dp: drawing picture, we: writing equations, sp: simplifying the problem. wms: writing mathematical statements, mt: making table, r: reasoning, fp: finding patterns. gt: generating and testing, gc: guess-check, f: number of strategies used. ʃf: total number of strategies used in the relevant category. ʃf (%): total number of strategies and percentage in the relevant category among the strategies used for each problem. in table 8, table 9, table 10, and table 11, the frequencies and percentage distributions related to how many different solutions were used and to what strategies employed together or separately for each problem by the preservice teachers were presented in detail. when the findings obtained from the tables were analyzed, it was seen that the most-used assistive strategies by the preservice teachers were drawing a picture, writing equations, making a systematic list. whereas, the most-used general strategies were reasoning, finding patterns, generatingtesting, and guess-check. some examples from the answers of the preservice teachers supporting the findings obtained from table 8, table 9, table 10 and table 11 were given below. the answers of the preservice teachers were explained thoroughly in the examples of the preservice teachers at each grade level. categories codes number of strategies used by the preservice teachers proposing single solution total f (%) number of strategies used by the preservice teachers proposing more than one solution total f (%) grand total f (%) single strategy more than one strategy single strategy more than one strategy problem-solving strategies asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 368 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. number of strategies used to solve non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers. 4th graders 3rd graders 2nd graders 1st graders item no ss ts mts ws ss ts mts ws ss ts mts ws ss ts mts ws 1 26 7 4 26 4 2 2 20 5 8 35 7 6 2 20 4 13 16 10 1 7 14 8 11 31 17 3 17 11 9 12 15 1 6 10 7 16 31 9 8 4 11 1 25 2 1 31 1 32 7 2 39 5 30 7 14 20 11 22 21 27 6 8 29 7 27 9 24 9 39 7 14 1 22 16 1 17 7 26 10 38 8 19 18 17 17 7 26 16 32 9 29 4 4 26 8 12 4 1 16 42 3 3 10 28 6 3 22 3 9 20 1 12 41 7 11 28 2 7 25 4 5 9 1 23 35 13 12 12 25 6 28 9 39 sum 242 36 4 162 189 46 4 169 120 26 1 216 287 21 268 nca 242 x1 36x2 4x3 0 189 x1 46x2 4x3 0 120 x1 26x2 1x3 0 287 x1 21x2 0 0 note: ss: number of preservice teachers proposing single solution, ts: number of preservice teachers proposing two solutions, -: no data in the relevant category, mts: number of preservice teachers proposing more than two solutions, ws: number of preservice teachers without any solutions nca: number of correct answers. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 369 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. number of correct solutions proposed by the preservice teachers and percentage distributions. number of solutions proposed for solving the problems number of preservice teachers min. number of answers max. number of answers number of correct answers % one 152 0 1824 838 46.79 two 152 0 3648 258 7.20 three 152 0 5472 27 0.50 table-8. the strategies used to solve non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice mathematics teachers at the fourth grade level, related frequencies and percentage distributions. item no codes c a te g o ri e s nspos (f) ʃf (%) nspmtos (f) ʃf(%) overall ʃf (%) single strategy more than one strategy single strategy more than one strategy 1 msl 16 16(23.88) 2 6 8(21.62) 24(23.07) dp 25 25(37.31) 2 10 12(32.43) 37(35.58) mt 1 1(1.49) 2 2(5.40) 3(2.88) wms 2 2(2.98) 1 1(2.70) 3(2.88) r 19 19(28.36) 4 3 7(19.00) 26(25) gc 4 4(5.98) 3 4 7(19.00) 11(10.58) 2 dp 1 17 18(45) 3 1 4(44.44) 22(44.90) gt 1 7 8(20) 3 3(33.33) 11(22.45) r 14 14(35) 1 1 2(22.22) 16(32.65) 3 dp 6 6(26.08) 10 10(47.61) 16(36.36) mt 1 1(4.34) 1(0.23) fp 10 6 16(69.56) 10 10(47.61) 26(59.09) gt 1 1(4.77) 1(0.23) 4 dp 5 5(25) 1 1(33.33) 6(26.08) msl 5 5(25) 1 1(33.33) 6(26.08) mt 2 2(10) 2(8.70) r 1 1(5) 1(4.35) gt 7 7(35) 1 1(33.33) 8(37.78) 5 fp 27 3 30(90.90) 30(90.90) mt 3 3(9.09) 3(9.09) 6 gt 5 5(31.25) 5(31.25) msl 3 3(18.75) 3(18.75) r 8 8(50) 8(50) 7 mt 1 1(6.66) 1(5.88) msl 12 1 13(86.66) 1 1 14(64.70) gc 1 1(6.66) 1(5.88) fp 1 1 1(5.88) 8 fp 1 17 18(36.73) 18(36.73) gt 19 19(38.78) 19(38.78) we 12 12(24.49) 12(24.49) 9 mt 4 4(11.42) 1 1 (12.50) 5(10.87) fp 21 7 28(80) 2 1 3 (37.50) 31(67.40) dp 3 3 (37.50) 6(13.04) msl 3 3(8.57) 1 1 (12.50) 4(86.96) 10 gc 2 2(6.66) 2 2 4 (28.57) 6(13.63) we 24 24(80) 6 6 (42.85) 30(68.18) mt 1 1(3.33) 1(2.27) gt 1 1 2(6.66) 1 1 (7.14) 3(6.81) msl 1 1(3.33) 1 1 (7.14) 2(4.54) r 2 2 (14.28) 2(4.54) 11 dp 28 28(38.35) 1 1 (14.28) 29(36.25) we 1 1(1.36) 2 2 (28.57) 3(3.75) gt 19 19(26.02) 2 2 (28.57) 21(26.25) r 25 25(14.25) 1 1 (14.28) 26(32.50) gc 1 1 (14.28) 1(1.25) 12 dp 11 11(34.37) 11(34.37 gc 1 10 11(34.37) 11(34.37 gt 10 10(31.25) 10(31.25) according to table 8, when the strategies used by fourth-grade preservice teachers in solving non-routine problems were evaluated in general, the most-used assistive strategies were drawing a picture, writing equations, making a systematic list while general strategies were reasoning, finding patterns and generating-testing. the preservice teachers at the fourth-grade level used drawing a picture in about 36% of all strategies used for the first problem which was about the perimeter of rectangles while they used making a systematic list in 23% of them. the examples showing the strategies used for solving the problem about the perimeter of the rectangle by s47 and s417 who proposed more than one solution and their correct answers regarding the solution were included in figure 2. according to the figure, s47 carried out the first solution by using the strategies of guess-check which he called trial-error and making table together, and he carried out the second solution by using the strategies of reasoning and drawing a picture. on the other hand, s417 found the smallest perimeter by using the strategy of asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 370 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group making a systematic list in the first solution by finding the numbers whose products were 120 and the sums of those numbers. furthermore, he used the strategy of reasoning in the second way of the solution by considering that two nearest numbers product of whose side lengths were 120 would give the smallest perimeter. figure-2. strategies used to solve the problem about the perimeter of rectangles by s47 and s417 and their correct answers. in figure 3, the strategies used to solve the problem about cake by s425 and the example showing more than one solution were illustrated. figure-3. the strategies and correct answer of s425 regarding the problem about cakes. in figure 4, the strategy used for the problem about frogs by s418 proposing single solution, and the example showing his correct answer were presented. s418 proposed single solution by using the strategies of making a table and generating-testing together for this problem. s418 firstly showed situations to happen with the frog’s one meter and then two meters of leaping away in the table and found the number of different ways of its leaping away by using the formula of repeated permutation. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 371 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-4. the strategies and correct answer of s418 regarding the problem about frogs. the preservice teachers at the fourth-grade level had the most difficulty in the sixth problem which was about census takers, and it was the non-routine problem for which they could not propose more than one solution. the explanations of the preservice teachers who were not able to solve this problem accurately were generally that “there is missing information in the problem, it is not possible to know the answer with these data, or i could not relate/understand ginger hair with age”. this showed that the preservice teachers were not able to analyze the problem adequately and to correlate between the data, so they could not use reasoning sufficiently. s411 proposed single solution for this problem by employing the strategies of making a systematic list and reasoning together. s411 wrote the sums of the numbers whose products were 36 by using the strategy of making a systematic list and concluded by interpreting the data with the strategy of reasoning. accordingly, the preservice teacher found two results whose products were 36 and sums were 13. he reached the correct answer by deducing that the other sisters were twins from the expression of “my eldest sister”. similarly, s431 proposed single solution by using the strategy of reasoning. in figure 5, the strategies used for the problem about census takers by s411 and s431 proposing single solution, and the examples showing their correct answers were given. figure-5. the strategies and correct answers of s411 and s431 regarding the problem about census takers in figure 6, the correct solution proposed by employing the strategy of making a systematic list by s427 was given as an example. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 372 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-6. the strategy and correct answer of s427 regarding the problem about palindromic numbers s415’s solution in figure 7 revealed that he used the strategies of making a systematic list and making a table, yet he ignored some numbers to be written at tens digit while determining three-digit palindromic numbers. thus, he was not able to reach the correct solution. figure-7. the strategies and incorrect answer of s415 regarding the problem about palindromic numbers approximately 51% of the preservice teachers at the fourth-grade level either did not find the correct answer or did not write any answer for the non-routine problem about the isosceles triangle which was one of the most difficult questions for them. the preservice teachers who were able to solve the problem proposed single solution by using the strategies of drawing a picture, guess-check, and generating-testing together in various combinations. there were not any preservice teachers at the fourth-grade level who could solve the twelfth problem with more than one solution. in figure 8, the strategies used for the problem about the isosceles triangle by s411 and s419, and the example showing their correct answers were presented. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 373 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-8. the strategies and correct answers of s411 and s419 regarding the problem about isosceles triangles. according to table 9, the most-used assistive strategies for solving non-routine problems were drawing a picture, writing equations, and making a systematic list while general strategies were reasoning, finding patterns, guess-check, and generating and testing. the preservice teachers at the third-grade level used guess-check in about 33% of all strategies used for the first problem which was about the perimeter of rectangles while they used to draw a picture in 29% and making a systematic list in 19% of them. in the example in figure 9, different solutions proposed by s324 employing different strategies were given. figure-9. the strategies and correct answer of s324 regarding the problem about the perimeter of rectangles. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 374 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-9. the strategies used to solve non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice mathematics teachers at the third grade level, related frequencies and percentage distributions. item no codes c a te g o ri e s nspos (f) ʃf (%) nspmtos (f) ʃf (%) overall ʃf (%) single strategy more than one strategy single strategy more than one strategy 1 msl 10 10(16.66) 1 5 6(25) 16(19.04) dp 19 19(31.66) 5 5(20.83) 24(28.57) mt 1 1(4.16) 1(1.20) r 10 10(16.66) 1 4 5(20.83) 15(17.85) gc 21 21(35) 7 7(29.16) 28(33.33) 2 dp 3 11 14(51.85) 1 10 11(31.43) 25(40.32) gt 4 4(14.81) 3 6 9(25.71) 13(20.97) r 1 8 9(33.33) 1 11 12(34.28) 21(33.87) we 2 2(5.71) 2(3.22) gc 1 1(2.86) 1(1.61) 3 dp 5 5(41.66) 14 14(41.17) 19(41.30) r 2 2(5.88) 2(4.34) fp 7 7(58.33) 15 15(44.11) 22(47.83) we 1 2 3(8.82) 3(6.52) 4 dp 1 1(50) 1(25) msl 1 1(50) 1(25) r 1 1(50) 1(25) gt 1 1(50) 1(25) 5 fp 14 14(100) 14(100) 6 sp 2 2(20) 2(20) gc 2 2 4(40) 4(40) r 3 1 4(40) 4(40) 7 msl 2 14 16(53.33) 1 1(50) 17(53.13) r 14 14(46.66) 1 1(50) 15(46.87) 8 fp 17 17(38.63) 17(38.63) gt 17 17(38.63) 17(38.63) we 10 10(22.72) 10(22.72) 9 mt 1 1(3.70) 1 1(6.66) 2(4.76) fp 22 1 23(85.18) 8 8(53.33) 31(73.81) dp 3 3(11.11) 6 6(40) 9(21.43) 10 gc 5 5(23.81) 2 2(33.33) 7(25.93) we 15 15(71.42) 3 3(50) 18(66.66) gt 1 1(4.76) 1(3.70) r 1 1(16.66) 1(3.70) 11 dp 24 24(48.98) 5 5(31.25) 29(44.61) we 2 2(4.08) 2 2(12.50) 4(6.15) gt 4 4(25) 4(6.15) r 23 23(46.93) 5 5(31.25) 28(43.07) 12 msl 1 1(6.66) 1(6.66) dp 5 5(33.33) 5(33.33) gc 1 1 2(13.33) 2(13.33) gt 4 4(26.66) 4(26.66) r 3 3(20) 3(20) more than one solution proposed by using the strategies of drawing a picture and reasoning by s324 was given as an example in figure 10. the solutions of s324 were similar to the solutions of the preservice teachers at the fourth grade level regarding this problem. the strategies of drawing a picture, writing equations, and finding patterns which were employed to solve the problem about playing cards by s36 and his solutions were given in the example in figure 11. the problem about census taker was one of the most difficult non-routine problems for the preservice teachers at the third-grade level so that 79% of them either did not answer this problem correctly or left it unanswered. the only single solution was proposed for this problem by using the strategies of reasoning, guess-check, and simplifying the problem. the single solution using the strategies of reasoning, guess-check, and simplifying the problem by s31 was given in figure 12. on the other hand, the preservice teachers who could not find the right solution to this problem were generally unable to perform the reasoning required for the solution of the problem and could not solve the problem by using the expressions “there is missing information in the problem, there is no relation of ginger hair with age or this is not a mathematical expression”. an example showing s37’s answer which was related to this situation was included in figure 13. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 375 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-10. the strategies and correct answer of s324 regarding the problem about cakes. figure-11. the strategies and correct answer of s36 regarding the problem about playing cards. figure-12. the strategies and correct answer of s31 regarding the problem about census takers figure-13. the incorrect answer of s37 regarding the problem about census takers. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 376 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the findings obtained from the twelfth problem, which was about isosceles triangles where only 6 (17.65%) of third grade preservice teachers could find the right solution by using more than one strategy, the preservice teachers who solved the problem correctly proposed single solution by employing more than one strategy together. about 82% of the preservice teachers could not answer correctly this problem which was not solved with more than one solution by any preservice teachers. an example from s31 who answered this problem correctly was given in figure 14. in this example, s31 first drew an isosceles triangle by defining side lengths and then wrote a triangle inequality by using the information that a triangle should be drawn and found that one of the equal side lengths should be an integer between 29 and 56. in light of the information given, he found how many different isosceles triangles can be drawn using the total formula. s31 proposed single solution by using the strategies of drawing a picture and generating-testing together. figure-14. the strategies and correct answer of s31 regarding the problem about isosceles triangles. table-10. the strategies used to solve non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice mathematics teachers at the second grade level, related frequencies and percentage distributions. item no codes c a te g o ri e s nspos (f) ʃf (%) nspmtos (f) ʃf (%) overall ʃf (%) single strategy more than one strategy single strategy more than one strategy 1 msl 4 12 16(45.71) 3 2 5(50) 21(46.66) dp 12 12(34.29) 2 2(20) 14(31.11) r 1 3 4(11.43) 2 1 3(30) 7(15.15) gc 2 1 3(8.57) 3(6.66) 2 dp 3 1 4(22.22) 5 5(23.80) 9(23.07) gt 7 3 10(55.55) 8 8(38.09) 18(46.15) r 4 4(22.2 2) 3 5 8(38.09) 12(30.77) 3 dp 1 1(10) 7 7(50) 8(33.33) fp 9 9(90) 7 7(50) 16(66.66) 4 msl 1 1 1(100) 5 fp 11 11(100) 11(100) 6 msl 9 9(50) 9(50) r 9 9(50) 9(50) 7 msl 7 1 8(88.88) 8(88.88) gt 1 1(11.11) 1(11.11) 8 fp 7 7(33.33) 7(33.33) gt 7 7(33.33) 7(33.33) we 7 7(33.33) 7(33.33) 9 msl 2 2(16.66) 2(8.70) fp 11 11(100) 5 5(41.66) 16(69.56) dp 5 5(41.66) 5(21.74) 10 gc 1 1 1(4.76) we 19 19(95) 19(90.48) r 1 1(5) 1(4.76) 11 dp 6 6(37.50) 1 1 7(36.84) we 1 1(6.25) 1(5.26) gt 4 4(25) 1 1 5(26.31) r 1 4 5(31.25) 1 1 6(31.58) 12 no solution/missing solution 0 when table 10 was analyzed in general, it was understood that the assistive strategies most used by preservice mathematics teachers at the second-grade level were drawing a picture, making a systematic list and writing equations, while the general strategies were finding patterns, reasoning, and generating-testing. most of the preservice teachers who were not able to find the correct answer to this problem (the third problem about playing cards) misjudged by establishing a relationship between the number of floors and the number of cards and could not reach the correct answer. the example of s212 in figure 15 indicated this situation. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 377 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-15. the strategy and incorrect answer of s212 regarding the problem about playing cards. the preservice teachers had difficulty in finding the answer to the sixth problem on which they could not develop more than one solution. nearly 73% of the preservice teachers were not able to answer this problem correctly, or they left it unanswered. the two strategies used by the ones giving correct answers were reasoning (50%) and making a systematic list (50%). 9 preservice teachers (27.27%) proposed single solution by employing these strategies together. additionally, s230 found the correct answer to this problem by using the strategies of reasoning and making a systematic list together. the strategies and the single solution used to solve this problem by s230 were given as an example in figure 16. table-11. the strategies used to solve non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice mathematics teachers at the first grade level, related frequencies and percentage distributions. item no codes c a te g o ri e s nspos (f) ʃf (%) nspmtos (f) ʃf (%) overall ʃf (%) single strategy more than one strategy single strategy more than one strategy 1 msl 12 12 24(46.15) 4 1 5(33.33) 29(43.28) dp 7 7(13.46) 2 2(13.33) 9(13.43) r 6 14 20(38.46) 5 2 7(46.66) 27(40.30) gc 1 1(1.92) 1 1(6.66) 2(2.99) 2 dp 6 6 12(32.43) 12(33.33) msl 1 1(2.70) 1(2.78) gt 4 1 5(13.51) 5(13.89) r 6 5 11(29.73) 11(30.55) we 6 1 7(18.91) 7(19.44) 3 dp 3 3(9.68) 8 8(47.05) 11(22.91) fp 27 27(87.09) 7 7(41.17) 34(70.83) gt 1 1(3.22) 2 2(11.76) 3(6.25) 4 msl 5 5(71.42) 2 2(50) 7(63.63) gc 1 1(25) 1(9.09) gt 2 2(28.57) 1 1(25) 3(27.27) 5 fp 20 1 21(95.45) 21(95.45) r 1 1(4.54) 1(4.54) 6 sp 1 1(7.43) 1(7.43) wms 1 1(7.43) 1(7.43) r 7 2 9(81.81) 9(81.81) 7 msl 10 10(100) 10(100) 8 fp 16 16(33.33) 16(33.33) gt 16 16(33.33) 16(33.33) we 16 16(33.33) 16(33.33) 9 mt 2 2(4.88) 2(4.16) fp 36 36(87.80) 3 3(50) 39(81.25) dp 3 3(7.31) 3 3(50) 6(12.25) 10 gc 3 3(7.31) 3(7.31) we 38 38(92.69) 38(92.69) 11 dp 35 35(48.61) 35(48.61) we 5 5(6.95) 5(6.95) gc 5 5(6.95) 5(6.95) r 27 27(37.50) 27(37.50) 12 msl 7 7(24.13) 7(24.13) dp 9 9(31.03) 9(31.03) we 9 9(31.03) 9(31.03) gt 2 2(6.90) 2(6.90) r 2 2(6.90) 2(6.90) it was understood from table 11 that the most-used strategies by the preservice teachers were finding patterns, writing equations, reasoning, drawing a picture, making a systematic list, and generating-testing. merely 8 preservice teachers (16.66%) solved the sixth problem that was about census takers correctly. the preservice teachers who solved this problem correctly mostly employed the strategy of reasoning (81.81%) for this problem, where more than one solution could not be proposed. in the example in figure 17, the single solution proposed to solve this problem using the strategy of writing mathematical statements and reasoning together by s13 and the solution carried out with the strategy of reasoning by s12 were presented. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 378 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-16. the strategies and correct answer of s230 regarding the problem about census takers. figure-17. the strategies and answers of s12 and s13 regarding the problem about census takers. in table 12, the strategies used most frequently in single or more than single solution to solve non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers were analyzed as general and assistive strategies according to grade levels. according to table 12, the most-used general strategies were reasoning, guess-check, finding patterns, and generating-testing, while the most-used assistive strategies were making a systematic list, drawing a picture, and writing equations. on the other hand, it was understood from table 12 that the rate of proposing more than one solution by the preservice teachers at the first and second-grade levels was lower than by the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels. according to table 12 the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels proposed one or more than one solution by using general and assistive strategies in various combinations for the problems about the perimeter of rectangles, cake, playing cards, frog, palindromic numbers, sequence, bar-pin, masters-apprentices and isosceles triangles more than the other preservice teachers. these teachers employed the strategies of guess-check and generatingtesting differently from the preservice teachers at the first and second-grade levels for these problems except for the problem about sequence. on the other hand, the preservice teachers at the first-grade level used the strategies of guess-check, generating-testing, and making a systematic list while the preservice teachers at the second-grade level used only the strategy of making a systematic list for the problem about frogs on which few solutions were proposed. it was understood from table 12 that the preservice teachers at the second-grade level were inadequate in providing solutions for the non-routine problems compared to the preservice teachers at other grade levels. on the other hand, the preservice teachers at the third-grade level were better in producing solutions and proposing more than one solution for the non-routine problems compared to the ones at the first and second-grade levels. furthermore, it was concluded from table 12 that the preservice teachers at the fourth-grade level were better in both finding solutions and employing different strategies compared to the preservice teachers at other grade levels. the data, presented in table 12, indicated that the preservice teachers at the first-grade level used a greater number of general and assistive strategies in solving non-routine mathematical problems than the ones at the second-grade level, and they proposed more than one solution at the least. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 379 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-12. classification of the most-used solution strategies of the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers according to grade levels. item no grade level n(%) ʃn (%) the most-used strategies c (correct solution) ic ua single more than one general assistant 1 1 34(70.83) 8(16.66) 5(10.41) 48(100) r, gc dp, msl 2 20(60.60) 5(15.15) 8(24.24) 33(100) r, gc dp, msl 3 26(76.47) 6(17.64) 2(5.88) 34(100) r, gc dp, msl 4 26(70.27) 11(29.73) 37(100) r, gc dp, msl 2 1 31(64.58) 11(22.91) 5(10.41) 48(100) r dp, we 2 14(42.42) 8(24.24) 6(18.18) 5(15.15) 33(100) r, gt dp 3 16(47.06) 11(32.35) 5(14.70) 2(5.88) 34(100) r, gc, gt dp, we 4 20(54.05) 4(10.81) 12(32.43) 1(2.70) 37(100) r, gt dp 3 1 31(64.58) 9(18.75) 7(14.58) 1(2.08) 48(100) fp, gt dp 2 10(30.30) 7(21.21) 14(42.42) 2(6.06) 33(100) fp 3 12(35.30) 16(47.05) 6(17.64) 34(100) r, fp dp, we 4 17(45.94) 12(32.43) 8(21.62) 37(100) fp, gt dp 4 1 7(14.58) 2(4.16) 26(54.16) 13(27.08) 48(100) gc, gt msl 2 1(3.03) 25(75.75) 7(21.21) 33(100) msl 3 2(5.88) 1(2.94) 31(91.17) 34(100) r, gt dp, msl 4 11(29.73) 1(2.70) 22(59.45) 3(8.10) 37(100) r, gt dp, msl 5 1 21(43.75) 4(8.33) 23(47.91) 48(100) fp, r 2 11(33.33) 21(63.63) 33(100) fp 3 14(41.17) 1(2.94) 19(55.88) 34(100) fp 4 30(81.08) 4(10.81) 3(8.11) 37(100) fp 6 1 8(16.66) 8(16.66) 31(64.58) 48(100) r 2 9(27.27) 2(6.06) 22(66.66) 33(100) r msl 3 7(20.58) 20(58.82) 7(20.58) 34(100) r, gc 4 8(21.62) 18(48.65) 11(29.73) 37(100) r, gt msl 7 1 10(20.83) 36(75) 2(4.16) 48(100) msl 2 7(21.21) 13(39.39) 13(39.39) 33(100) gt msl 3 16(47.06) 1(2.94) 17(50) 34(100) r msl 4 12(32.43) 1(2.70) 23(62.16) 37(100) gc, fp msl 8 1 16(33.33) 16(33.33) 16(33.33) 48(100) fp, gt we 2 7(21.21) 5(15.15) 21(63.63) 33(100) fp, gt we 3 17(50) 11(32.35) 6(17.65) 34(100) fp, gt we 4 16(43.24) 12(32.43) 5(13.51) 37(100) fp, gt we 9 1 42(87.50) 3(6.25) 2(4.16) 1(2.08) 48(100) fp dp 2 12(36.36) 5(15.15) 1(3.03 15(45.45) 33(100) fp dp, msl 3 26(76.47) 8(23.53) 34(100) fp dp 4 29(78.37) 4(10.81) 3(8.10) 1(2.70) 37(100) fp dp, msl 10 1 41(85.41) 5(10.41) 2(4.16) 48(100) gc we 2 20(60.60) 1(3.03) 3(9.09) 9(27.27) 33(100) r, gc we 3 22(64.70) 3(8.82) 8(23.53) 1(2.94) 34(100) gc, gt we 4 29(78.37) 6(16.20) 2(5.40) 37(100) r, gc, gt we 11 1 35(72.91) 11(22.91) 2(4.16) 48(100) r, gt dp, we 2 9(27.27) 1(3.03) 10(30.30) 13(39.39) 33(100) r, gt dp, we 3 24(70.58) 4(11.76) 6(17.65) 34(100) r, gt dp, we 4 28(75.67) 2(5.40) 7(18.91) 37(100) r, gc, gt dp, we 12 1 9(18.75) 32(66.66) 7(14.58) 48(100) r, gt dp, we 2 24(72.72) 9(27.27) 33(100) 3 6(17.65) 21(61.76) 7(20.59) 34(100) r, gc, gt dp, msl 4 12(32.43) 18(48.64) 1(2.70) 37(100) gc, gt dp note: c: number of preservice teachers giving the correct answer, ua: number of preservice teachers who left the relevant problem unanswered, ic: number of preservice teachers giving incorrect answer -: no data in the relevant category, n: number of preservice teachers at the relevant category, ʃn: number of preservice teachers at each grade level. 3.3. findings related to the third sub-problem the findings related to the third sub-problem about the research “what is the number of strategies used for solving non-routine mathematical problems by preservice secondary school mathematics teachers according to grade levels?” were presented in table 13 and table 14. the frequencies of the strategies used by the preservice teachers according to grade levels were given in table 13. on the other hand, the frequencies and percentage distributions of the most-used strategies by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers for solving nonroutine mathematical problems according to grade levels and their ratio by the number of preservice teachers at each grade level were given in table 14. with the data presented in table 13 and table 14, it was aimed to thoroughly analyze the strategies used by the preservice teachers while solving non-routine problems according to grade levels. in this context, table 13 and table 14 were created concerning the data in the tables generated for the analysis of the second sub-problem. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 380 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-13. frequencies of the most-used strategies for solving non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers according to grade levels and the ratio of the number of strategies used to the number of preservice teachers at different grade levels. strategies used grade levels ʃf ʃf/(n1+n2) grade levels ʃf ʃf/(n3+n4) 1 2 3 4 n1:48 n2:33 n3:34 n4:37 making a systematic list 54 32 86 1.06 35 53 88 1.24 drawing a picture 73 43 116 1.43 112 127 239 3.36 writing equations 75 27 102 1.26 37 75 112 1.58 writing mathematical statements 1 1 0.01 1 1 0.01 simplifying the problem 1 1 0.01 2 1 3 0.04 making table 1 1 0.01 3 2 5 0.07 guess-check 6 4 10 0.12 42 5 47 0.66 reasoning 77 36 113 1.40 90 77 167 2.35 generating-testing 37 31 68 0.84 40 34 74 1.04 finding patterns 110 50 160 1.98 84 110 194 2.73 note: no data in the relevant category, n: number of preservice teachers at each grade level, ʃf: total number of strategies used in the relevant category the data in table 13 indicated that the number of strategies used by the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels was higher than the number of strategies used by the ones at the first and second-grade levels. while the third and fourth-grade levels employed mostly the strategies of drawing a picture, finding patterns, reasoning, writing equations, and making a systematic list, the first and second-grade levels used mostly the strategies of finding patterns, drawing a picture, reasoning, and writing equations. it was also concluded from table 13 that the strategies of writing mathematical statements, simplifying the problem, making tables, guesscheck, and generating-testing were not adequately used by the preservice teachers at each grade level. table-14. total number and percentage distributions of the strategies used by the preservice teachers proposing single and more than single solution and their ratio by the number of preservice teachers at each grade level. grade levels number of preservice teachers total number and percentage distributions of the strategies used by the preservice teachers proposing single solution and their ratio by the number of preservice teachers at each grade level total number and percentage distributions of the strategies used by the preservice teachers proposing more than single solution and their ratio by the number of preservice teachers at each grade level overall total number of strategies and percentages and their ratio by the number of preservice teachers at each grade level n ʃf % ʃf/n ʃf % ʃf/n ʃf % ʃf/n 4 37 433 81.09 11.70 10 1 18.91 2.73 534 100 14.43 3 34 311 69.89 9.14 13 4 30.11 3.94 445 100 13.08 2 33 176 74.27 5.33 61 23.73 1.84 237 100 7.18 1 48 399 90.48 8.31 42 9.52 0.88 441 100 9.19 total number and percentage distributions of the strategies used by the preservice teachers proposing single and more than single solution according to grade levels and the ratio of the total number of strategies to the number of preservice teachers at each grade level were presented in table 14. the reason for determining the ratio of the total number of strategies used to the number of preservice teachers at each grade level was that the number of preservice teachers at each grade level was different. thus, it became possible to interpret more clearly by comparing the ratio of the number of strategies used at each grade level. according to table 14, the greatest number of strategies was used by the preservice teachers at the fourth grade level at the rate of 14.43 while the least number of strategies was employed by the ones at the second grade level at the rate of 7.18. when the rate of preservice teachers proposing single solution was analyzed, it was seen that the greatest number of strategies was used by the preservice teachers at the fourth grade level at the rate of 11.70, and the least number of strategies was employed by the ones at the second grade level at the rate of 5.33. on the other hand, the rate of preservice teachers proposing more than single solution indicated that the greatest number of strategies was employed by the preservice teachers at the third grade level at the rate of 3.94, while the least number of strategies was used by the preservice teachers at the first grade level at the rate of 0.88. in this context, it was understood from table 14 that the rate of preservice teachers proposing more than single solution was far less than the rate of preservice teachers proposing single solution at each grade level. thus, it can be claimed that the preservice teachers at any grade levels were not able to propose two, three, or more solutions for solving non-routine mathematical problems. table 14 also indicated that the number of preservice teachers proposing more than single solution by using different problem-solving strategies and its ratio to the total number of strategies used was quite low. the number of strategies used by the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels was relatively more than the number of strategies used by the ones at the first and second-grade levels in solving problems. 4. conclusion, discussion, and implication 4.1. analysis of the number of solutions proposed by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers for non-routine mathematical problems it was understood from the findings related to the number of different ways of solving non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers that the preservice teachers at any grade levels were generally able to solve the problems in a single way, and more than half of them had asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 381 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group difficulty in finding solutions for the problems. while nearly half of the preservice teachers proposed single solution, few preservice teachers were able to propose three solutions. particularly, the preservice teachers at the first and second-grade levels could not propose any solutions for the fourth and twelfth problems, and only a few preservice teachers answered the third, fifth, sixth, and twelfth problems. the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels proposed a greater number of second and third solutions for the problems compared to the other preservice teachers. the preservice teachers at any grade levels were not able to propose more than three solutions. thus, it can be stated that the preservice teachers generally had difficulty in proposing more than one solution. bayrakdar, deniz, akgün, and isleyen (2011) expressed in their study in which real-life problems prepared for high school students in pisa 2003 were asked to the preservice primary school mathematics teachers that the preservice teachers had difficulty in solving the problems and their knowledge of problem-solving strategies was inadequate. therefore, this study was similar to the conclusion of the study conducted by bayrakdar et al. (2011) with regards to having difficulty in solving non-routine mathematical problems. gürbüz and güden (2016) concluded in their study which was conducted on secondary school mathematics teachers that the teachers were partially competent in finding the correct answers of the problems, but they were not competent in using different strategies. therefore, it can be expressed that the results of this study showed similarity with the results of the study carried out by gürbüz and güden (2016). the research carried out by türker-biber et al. (2017) was significant since it showed inconsistency between theoretical knowledge of the primary school mathematics teachers and their practices. türker-biber et al. (2017) emphasized in every phase of classes that problem solving should be process-based rather than outcome-based and that including different solutions in the problem-solving process is important for making students think on different solutions; however, they could not reflect this into their teaching. the common feature of the results of this study and the study carried out by türker-biber et al. (2017) was that the preservice teachers were aware of the importance of more than one solution, but they were not capable of applying this in practice. these two studies are similar from this aspect. the solution of non-routine problems requires various mental skills such as determining the relationship between the data, analyzing and synthesizing, thinking abstractly, and identifying problem situations (altun, 2014). the results of this study revealed this situation. this is because of the fact that the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers were mostly not able to solve non-routine mathematical problems, especially the 4th, 6th, and 12th problems since they could not reason and identify problem situations. if it is considered that employing strategies such as judgment and guess-check which provide reasoning in proposing more than one solution for a non-routine problem is significant, it can be interpreted that the preservice teachers at the first and second-grade levels showed a routine approach to solve the problems as they used only the strategies of drawing a picture and making a systematic list. on the other hand, the fact that the preservice teachers at the fourth-grade level proposed more than one solution for these problems and used general and assistive strategies together can be interpreted as an indicator showing that they gained a different point of view for solving non-routine problems. the preservice teachers’ having sufficient knowledge of problem-solving strategies and practices is a necessity for the completion of a smooth problem-solving process. however, knowing strategies and practices may not be sufficient for effective mathematics teaching. this is because of the fact that students’ showing different approaches to the problems and making them feel that a problem has more than one solution can be provided by all kinds of mental activities and practices. problem-solving processes and mathematical thinking are closely related. because henderson et al. (2002) defined mathematical thinking as “using mathematical techniques, concepts, and methods in the problem-solving process directly or indirectly”. therefore, mathematical thinking skills of the students can be improved through activities carried out in problem-solving process such as dealing with a problem, thinking and designing the solution (hacısalihoğlu, mirasyedioğlu, & akpınar, 2003). problem-solving underlies mathematical thinking as it provides students the opportunity to use mathematical strategies such as abstraction, expression, symbolization, generalization, proving, and suggesting new questions (arslan & yıldız, 2010). therefore, the preservice teachers should be able to comprehend the importance of problem-solving and provide learning environments appropriate for alternative solutions (baki, 2014). it was also seen in this study that the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers were mostly insufficient to propose more than one solution to a non-routine problem. therefore, the preservice mathematics teachers can be advised to highlight the importance of problemsolving, to analyze problem-solving strategies thoroughly and to study on real-life-related non-routine mathematics problems and problem-solving strategies. 4.2. analysis of the most-used strategies for solving non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers it was revealed that the most-used strategies for solving non-routine mathematical problems by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers were the general strategies of reasoning, guess-check, finding patterns and generating-testing, and the assistive strategies of making a systematic list, drawing a picture and writing equations. on the other hand, the assistive strategies of making tables, simplifying the problem, and writing mathematical statements were slightly used by the preservice teachers. for instance, the sixth problem which was about census takers was not answered by most of the preservice teachers. the preservice teachers were not able to reason appropriately since they could not relate the information given with the things asked. when the answers of the preservice teachers who were not able to propose any correct solutions for this problem were analyzed, it was seen that they did not employ the general strategies of reasoning, guess-check, and generating-testing. and, when the answers of the preservice teachers who solved this problem correctly were analyzed, it was seen that all of them used the strategy of reasoning. the preservice teachers proposing solutions for this problem examined the problem thoroughly, justified their ideas by making predictions, and expressed their solutions. as these are the characteristics of the individuals who can do reasoning, it can be suggested to provide appropriate learning environments for the preservice teachers, as the reasoning ability can be improved by education (umay, 2003). on the other hand, it was understood that the preservice teachers who did not use general strategies such as reasoning in solving non-routine mathematical problems, who tried to solve only with assistive strategies, could not find the correct solution. for instance, the preservice teachers were not able to solve the problem of palindromic numbers asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 362-383 382 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group correctly because they could not develop logical reasoning for the solution of the problems. saygılı (2017) stated in his study that high school students were able to solve the problems by using at least two or three strategies. it was also stated in this study that the most-used strategies by the high school students were the strategies of making a systematic list, finding patterns, logical reasoning, and drawing a picture. the results of the study conducted by saygılı (2017) and of this study were similar to each other in the context of general strategies used. this result indicated that organizing the data, classifying them, seeing the relationship between the data, using different problem-solving strategies, and applying accurate and systematic reasoning are important (altun, 2014; mahlios, 1988; mayer et al., 1995). choosing suitable strategies for solving the problems during the process of problemsolving and implementing the strategies chosen are among the basic phases of problem-solving. if students are expected to develop problem-solving skills, they should be taught the problem-solving strategies actively (fülöp, 2015). for this reason, the preservice teachers need to know the problem-solving process and problem-solving strategies. the preservice teachers having insufficient pedagogical content knowledge may not be able to carry out strategy teaching, which is a complex process, as required. in this study, the reason for the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels used strategies a bit more than the ones at the first and second-grade levels and proposed more than one solution might be the fact that they had received the courses of special teaching methods i-ii. however, it has been observed that the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels had difficulty in solving non-routine mathematical problems that require the usage of general strategies such as logical reasoning and generating-testing, and nearly half of them could not propose any solutions. thus, it can be suggested that teaching problem-solving in mathematics teachers’ training programs should be handled more comprehensively than the current situation. 4.3. analysis of the number of strategies used by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers for the solution of non-routine mathematical problems according to grade levels when the number of strategies used by the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers for solving nonroutine mathematical problems was examined according to grade levels, it was understood that the greatest number of strategies was used by the preservice teachers at the fourth-grade level while the least number of strategies was used by the ones at the second grade level in general. the ratio of proposing one solution for the problems indicated that the greatest number of strategies was used by the preservice teachers at the fourth-grade level while the least number of strategies was used by the ones at the second-grade level. on the other hand, the ratio of proposing more than one solution indicated that the greatest number of strategies was used by the preservice teachers at the third-grade level while the least number of strategies was used by the ones at the secondgrade level. thus, it can be claimed that the number of strategies used by the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels in solving problems was higher than the ones at the first and second-grade levels. although the preservice teachers at the second-grade level were better at proposing more than one solution compared to the ones at the first-grade level, the ratio of the number of strategies used by the ones at the second-grade level (7.18) was lower than by the ones at the first-grade level (9.19). however, when considered generally, it can be said that as the grade level increased, the number of strategies used by the preservice teachers in solving non-routine mathematical problems increased. it can also be said that as the grade level increased between the first, third, and fourth-grade levels, the use of basic strategies such as reasoning, guess-check, generating-testing, and finding patterns and the number of proposing more than one solution increased. with reference to this finding, it can be claimed that the preservice teachers at the third and fourth-grade levels had a relatively deeper approach towards the problems compared to the other preservice teachers. calışkan et al. (2006) stated that expert problem solvers approach problems more systematically than novice problem solvers, and they use more than one problem-solving strategy, and novice problem solvers try to solve problems with mathematical equations without organizing information and without making a qualitative description of the problem, and they do not benefit from problemsolving strategies sufficiently. accordingly, it can be expressed that the finding of this study is parallel to that of calışkan et al. (2006). the probability that the preservice teachers may encounter more non-routine mathematical problems with the increase in the class level may have been effective in the emergence of this result. the finding that the preservice teachers at the first and second-grade levels used hardly any of the strategies apart from the assistive strategies of drawing a picture and making a systematic list for the fourth problem about frogs and were mostly not able to solve it is worth thinking about. in this study, it was found that the preservice secondary school mathematics teachers mostly were not able to propose alternative solutions for non-routine mathematical problems and use problem-solving strategies properly and adequately. hence, it can be recommended to organize programs that will enable the preservice teachers to encounter more non-routine problems and to do practices frequently that require the use of problem-solving strategies. because more important than solving the problem in the solution of such problems are the thoughts and approaches developed in the solution process (mayer et al., 1995). in conclusion, it can be suggested that the preservice teachers at any grade levels were not competent enough to propose more than one solution for the non-routine mathematical problems and to employ problem-solving strategies. references altun, m. 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(2017). mathematical extraordinary problem solving strategies and examples (4th ed.). ankara: pegem academy. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 126 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 2, 126-135, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.126.135 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluating the effectiveness of training program developed for teachers working with dyslexic students on their competencies hasan kizilkaya1 hakan sari2 ( corresponding author) 1dr., karamanoğlu mehmetbey university, school of foreign languages, karaman, turkey. 2prof. dr., necmettin erbakan university, special education department, konya, turkey. abstract in turkey, the number of studies determining the competence level of classroom teachers working with dyslexic students is limited. it is thought that a dyslexia training program, which will be developed based on teacher needs, will meet the training needs of teachers. in this study expletory sequential mixed method was adopted and, qualitative research method was used in the first stage and quantitative research method in the second stage. in the first stage, the teacher training program was developed in the light of the data obtained by semi-structured interview technique. pre-test post-test control group experimental design was preferred in the process of evaluating the effectiveness of the program. the study group consists of 46 teachers working in primary schools of karaman province. the independent samples t-test analysis between the two groups and the dependent group t-test analysis between the pre-test post-test scores revealed a significant difference between the means of the groups. as a result, teachers who consider themselves competent and receive the necessary training will both support their students with dyslexia more comprehensively and display a more positive attitude. keywords: dyslexia, teacher training program, teacher competencies, special education, reading difficulties. citation | hasan kizilkaya; hakan sari (2021). evaluating the effectiveness of training program developed for teachers working with dyslexic students on their competencies. asian journal of education and training, 7(2): 126-135. history: received: 5 march 2021 revised: 8 april 2021 accepted: 12 may 2021 published: 3 june 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. this paper is produced and translated from phd thesis entitled “disleksili öğrencilerle çalışan öğretmenler için geliştirilen eğitim programının öğretmen yeterliklerine etkisinin i̇ncelenmesi”. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 127 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 128 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 131 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 133 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 134 6. implications..................................................................................................................................................................................... 135 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 135 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.126.135&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2964 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2144-3834 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4528-8936 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 127 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature it is thought that this study with dyslexia training program, which developed based on teacher needs, will meet the training needs of teachers regarding reading difficulties. meeting the educational needs of teachers will not only increase teacher competencies, but also enable students with dyslexia who continue inclusive education to have a dyslexia-friendly classroom environment. 1. introduction the education of children with dyslexia should not be carried out only with normal plans and programs. while the child continues his education, he/she should also receive training in groups or individually. the strengths and weaknesses of the child should be determined and an education program should be arranged accordingly. the training should include the development of visual, auditory, tactile, perception, attention, memory, sequential ability, motor skills, as well as the development of speaking, listening, reading-writing skills, and supporting the development of concepts and thinking. training of learning difficulties should be provided by an expert educator trained in this field. as a result of the evaluations to be made, the teacher will identify the child's missing skills and make a plan in that regard. an emotionally safe and stimulating environment for his / her skills and development should be designed in the classroom. practices that provide a sense of success about homework should be employed and homework assignments should be checked. another issue that should be considered is that the homework given to the child should be organized step by step, from easy to difficult. the most appropriate program that can be given to the child should be arranged by providing teacher-expert and parent collaboration (meb, 2014; reid, 2009). although dyslexia occurs with neurobiological differences related to reading and language problems, it is mainly treated with effective teaching. especially early diagnosed and effective classroom education can prevent or at least effectively address and limit reading and writing problems. it is predicted that even when early diagnosis is late, the most serious reading obstacles can be improved in primary school with intensive teaching and students can progress towards academic success. when competent intervention is made to individuals with dyslexia, the impact of the disorder can be reduced and can help the student overcome and manage the most challenging difficulties (hultquist, 2006). it can be said that the most important factor determining the course of dyslexic student behavior and educational progress is the attitude of the teacher. similarly, international studies show that a teacher's capacity to cope with different learning difficulties is influenced by his knowledge of these difficulties (gwernan-jones & burden, 2010). systematic research is required to identify and improve teachers' knowledge and attitudes towards meeting the needs of students affected by dyslexia. teaching reading and writing to students with language problems requires effective knowledge and skills. undergraduate and professional development practices approved by many governments are insufficient to prepare and support teachers and specialists. the majority of teachers do not seem to have sufficient knowledge to prevent reading problems, recognize early risk symptoms, or successfully teach students with dyslexia and specific learning difficulties. it is noteworthy that there is a widespread absence of rich content training programs for empowering teachers and experts in dyslexia. when the teacher training undergraduate programs are examined, it is revealed that very few of them are compatible with current research on effective teaching for students at risk. in-service teacher training programs should be prepared in order to encourage effective teacher training and professional development covering these shortcomings. teacher training is not only important in all levels of general education, but also special education (sari, 2007). nowadays, the thought that each student can exhibit their own problem behaviors due to the different characteristics of each student has increased the importance given to the education of all students with special educational needs. the purpose of special education is defined as providing opportunities for students to reveal their potentials and use them at the highest level, to be self-sufficient, environmentally compatible, and productive individuals. the quality of special education services depends on the quality of teacher who will provide these services (sari, 2004). since the teaching profession has strategic importance compared to other professions in terms of the upbringing, development, and education of future adults, it is thought that this research will have strategic importance in terms of the teaching profession of the future. it is thought that by increasing the competence of classroom teachers in dyslexia, which is the most common learning difficulty, they can support their students with dyslexia more effectively. evaluating the effect of the training program developed for teachers on teacher competencies for eliminating reading difficulties in students with dyslexia is the subject of this study. with the increase of scientific studies in the field of special education, education studies for a wide variety of very special areas within a single disability area have started to gain weight rather than studies for the whole special education categories. these studies turn the special education categories into more detailed areas. perhaps the most striking of these categories, dyslexia as a special education category is very frequently heard in recent years in turkey as well as all over the world. for this reason, it should be aimed to reveal the diagnosis and individual characteristics of children with dyslexia very well before determining their needs. educational activities for students diagnosed with dyslexia may require working in many different strategies and contents. for example, most children can make rapid progress when they receive one-on-one, intensive and continuous training. some may require intensive one-to-one training in a group. all these features require teachers to have special competencies to work with students diagnosed with dyslexia. the number of studies determining teachers’ competence level working in the field of special education and efforts to increase this level is limited in turkey. besides, there are very few training studies among programs of in-service training and faculties for specific areas such as dyslexia. although there is a course of teaching reading and writing in primary school teaching programs, there are not enough practices and contents to increase teacher competencies in eliminating reading difficulties. classroom teachers cannot adequately support students with dyslexia in their classrooms due to their insufficiency in dyslexia, the most common learning difficulty. it is thought that a dyslexia training program, which will be developed based on teacher needs, will meet the training needs of teachers in this context. meeting the educational needs of teachers will not only increase teacher asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 128 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group competencies but also enable students with dyslexia who continue inclusive education to have a dyslexia-friendly classroom environment. teachers' competencies will also be low in an area they consider themselves inadequate, but an effective training program will increase teachers' competencies. the teacher who feels self-sufficient will be more effective in providing an appropriate educational environment and activities to his students with dyslexia, and his attitudes towards his students with dyslexia will also improve positively. this research aims to evaluate the effect of the education program developed for teachers on teacher competencies for eliminating reading difficulties in students with dyslexia. in this study, six sub-questions will be answered in light of the main aim of the research. these six sub-questions are listed below. 1) what are the teachers' views on the needs of the teacher education program to be developed in line with the teaching needs of students with dyslexia? 2) is there a statistically significant difference between the pre-test scores of the experimental and the control group in the teacher education program developed to eliminate reading difficulties in students with dyslexia? 3) is there a statistically significant difference between the pre-test post-test scores of the control group in the teacher education program developed to eliminate reading difficulty in students with dyslexia? 4) is there a statistically significant difference between the post-test scores of the experimental group and the control group of the teacher education program developed to eliminate reading difficulties in students with dyslexia? 5) is there a statistically significant difference between the pre-test post-test scores of the experimental group in the teacher education program? 6) is there a statistically significant difference between the post-test and retention test scores of the teacher education program? 2. method since both qualitative and quantitative methods were used together in the study, the research method was determined as the mixed research method. in this study, which was carried out in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the training program developed for teachers with students with dyslexia, a two-stage exploratory design among mixed methods was used as a research model. this method was preferred because both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods were used to realize the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the program developed based on needs analysis. the exploratory design model is a two-step approach and is called sequential exploratory design (creswell, 2007). this design starts with qualitative data to discover a phenomenon and then moves on to a second quantitative phase. using this design, researchers develop a tool based on the results of the qualitative phase and make propositions for tests based on an emerging theory or outline. this situation links the first qualitative stage to the next quantitative component of the study. first, the subject is explored qualitatively and they develop themes from their qualitative data. they then develop a tool based on these results and then use this tool in the quantitative phase that takes the second phase of the study (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2017). in the first stage of the study, one of the qualitative research methods, the interview technique was preferred. in order to determine the goal, achievement, and content of the training program to be developed, a needs analysis was conducted at the first stage of program development. necessary data for needs analysis were obtained by interview method. semi-structured interview technique has been adopted among the interview methods. interviewing is often a qualitative research technique that involves asking open-ended questions to participants to gather emerging data on a topic. in most cases, the interviewer is a subject matter expert who tries to understand the opinions of the participants through a series of well-planned and executed questions. in the interview technique, the researcher has to interview a group of participants at some point in the research, where information can be obtained by meeting only a portion of their target audience and establishing a personal connection. interviews provide researchers with a platform to guide their participants and obtain data in desired details. there are three basic types of interviews in qualitative research: structured, semi-structured, and unstructured (hartas, 2010). the quantitative research method was used in the second stage of this study, in which the mixed method was adopted. in the first stage, a dyslexia teacher training program was developed as a result of the analyzes performed in the light of the data obtained by semi-structured interview technique, one of the qualitative research methods. in the process of evaluating the effectiveness of the developed program, an experimental design with a pre-test posttest control group was preferred among quantitative research methods. measurements were made on the sample before and after the program implementation. the sample was divided into two different groups, and only one group received implementation, but the measurement process was carried out to both groups before and after the implementation. evaluation of intervention programs is at the center of educational research. it is important to collect data from several points over time for application evaluation, such as pre-testing, post-testing, and followup evaluations, to test the long-term strength of implementation effects. generally, the pre-test post-test pattern (before and after the intervention) represents a method widely used in the field of educational practice (gliner, morgan, & harmon, 2003). 2.1. study sample primary school teachers constitute the universe of the study. 25 teachers working in primary schools of the central district of karaman province were determined as samples for the qualitative phase of the study. 46 teachers working in primary schools of the central district of karaman were determined as samples for the quantitative phase of the study. while 23 teachers were determined as the experimental group, 23 teachers were determined as the control group. demographic information of the participants is presented in the table 1 below. 28 of the participants are women (60.87%) and 18 of them are men (39.13%). while creating the experimental and control groups, gender distribution was taken into consideration. 14 of 28 female teachers were in the experimental group and 14 were in the control group; of the 18 male teachers, 9 were assigned to the experimental group and 9 to the control group. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 129 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. demographic information of participants. gender experimental group control group n % male 9 9 18 39.13 female 14 14 28 60.87 total 23 23 46 100 2.2. data collection tools in this study, in which the mixed method was adopted, both qualitative and quantitative data collection tools were used in the data collection process. in the first stage of the study, data were collected from teachers by interview method in order to determine the training needs of teachers. at this stage, the data were collected using semi-structured interview technique, one of the qualitative research methods. in the second stage of the research, the training program developed in light of the data collected in the first stage was implemented. the achievement test developed to evaluate the effect of the program was used. at this stage, one of the quantitative research methods, pre-test post-test control group quasi-experimental design was adopted. 2.2.1. qualitative data collection tool the semi-structured interview form, which is used as a qualitative data collection tool within the scope of the research, consists of two parts: the informative text and the interview part. in the information section, the participant was informed about the subject and importance of the research, and it was also stated that the participation was voluntary and the information of the participants would not be shared with third parties. in the interview form, questions were included to determine the training needs of the participants on dyslexia. before the interview form was applied, it was presented for an expert opinion. the necessary changes were made to the interview form, taking into account the feedback from the expert opinion. later, the semi-structured interview form was applied to five teachers as a pilot application. the interview form was finalized, taking into account the feedback of the teachers participating in the pilot application and the experiences of the researcher. 2.2.2. quantitative data collection tool dyslexia teacher education program achievement test was used as a quantitative data collection tool in the study. in the first stage of the achievement test development, question items and options were written based on expert opinions including the goals and achievements of the training program to be implemented. the questions were prepared with 5 options. the 60-question draft prepared was sent to 3 experts in the field of the achievement test and they were asked to evaluate. after expert opinions, 10 questions were removed from the test and a 50question test was made ready for pilot application. after the first pilot application, the final test consisting of 40 questions was applied to 8 teachers within the scope of the pilot application. one of the aims of this application is to determine whether there are unclear questions and/or unknown words in the test. incomprehensible questions and unknown words may cause the test to go beyond its purpose. the second goal is to determine how many minutes the test can solve on average. teachers participating in the pilot application answered the test in 32-36 minutes. the response time of the test was determined as 40 minutes. in order to determine the reliability of the developed achievement test, item difficulty, and discrimination indices, a pilot study was conducted with a total of 168 (n = 168) classroom teachers. the results resulting from the application are given in tables 2 and 3. when the data were examined, it was observed that the discrimination values of the items in the test were between .15 and .83 and 10 items with a value below .29 should be excluded from the test (wendler & walker, 2011). ten items that did not meet the minimum discrimination value were directly excluded from the test. forty questions left in the final form of the achievement test developed. table-2. item difficulty and item discrimination index. item p d item p d 1 0.56 0.46 26 0.45 0.56 2 0.43 0.48 27 0.55 0.73 3 0.41 0.27 28 0.57 0.77 4 0.57 0.81 29 0.54 0.75 5 0.86 0.27 30 0.51 0.65 6 0.58 0.67 31 0.53 0.73 7 0.44 0.58 32 0.47 0.44 8 0.50 0.67 33 0.70 0.23 9 0.55 0.85 34 0.47 0.52 10 0.43 0.65 35 0.52 0.46 11 0.66 0.65 36 0.28 0.27 12 0.39 0.27 37 0.65 0.54 13 0.30 0.23 38 0.54 0.83 14 0.54 0.79 39 0.30 0.23 15 0.51 0.73 40 0.46 0.75 16 0.46 0.67 41 0.45 0.56 17 0.46 0.63 42 0.45 0.69 18 0.48 0.63 43 0.44 0.46 19 0.54 0.63 44 0.45 0.73 20 0.54 0.25 45 0.46 0.58 21 0.54 0.67 46 0.22 0.15 22 0.51 0.65 47 0.45 0.60 23 0.51 0.73 48 0.51 0.73 24 0.49 0.60 49 0.33 0.21 25 0.52 0.79 50 0.56 0.79 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 130 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group kr-20 and kr-21 are reliability analysis calculations developed by kuder richardson and found a lot in test development guides. while the main difference between the two analyzes requires knowing the number of correct answers to each item in the kr-20 test, kr-21 can be made if the total number of items in the test, mean and standard deviation are known. also, kr-21 assumes that all items in the test have equal discrimination values. although it is more difficult to apply, kr-20 is the most appropriate method (kubiszyn & borich, 2003). one of the methods of determining the test reliability is to calculate the internal consistency of the test. kr-20 analysis is a statistical process that gives the internal consistency coefficients of items with two results (especially multiplechoice or answer as agree-disagree) (swerdlik, edward, sturman, & cohen, 2012). the analysis and reliability studies of the achievement test developed within the scope of the study were calculated with the kr-20 reliability coefficient. while the kr-20 value of the 50-item form of the test was .91, the kr-20 value of the final version, which was reduced to 40 items, was calculated as .95. the results of the reliability analysis for the final achievement test consisting of 40 questions are given in table 3. table-3. kr-20 reliability value of achievement test and test analysis. n item x ̄ ss p rkr20 168 40 27.92 9.69 0.52 0.95 2.3. data collection the data collection process was carried out in two stages: collecting qualitative data and collecting quantitative data. in order to determine the educational needs of teachers with students with dyslexia, 25 teachers were interviewed within the scope of needs analysis. all interviews were conducted face to face. the interviews were conducted in the university where the researcher works and the schools where the teachers work. the place and time of the meeting were determined according to the demands of the participants. the interviews were held in january 2020. during the interviews, the necessary approvals and permissions of the participants were obtained and the interviews were recorded with the help of a tape recorder. the data obtained from the interviews were analyzed with the descriptive analysis technique and the program content was started to be formed according to the results of this analysis. dyslexia teacher training program was developed after literature review, needs analysis, and expert opinion (moeckli, 2011). the quantitative data in the study were collected with the dyslexia teacher training program achievement test developed within the scope of the research. the achievement test was applied to the participant teachers in both control and experimental groups before the application of the training program. the applied achievement test results were transferred to the computer as a pre-test. after the application, the achievement test was applied to both groups as a post-test, and the data obtained were transferred to the computer environment for statistical analysis. necessary research permissions were obtained before the achievement test and program implementation. achievement test practices were applied under the supervision of the researcher. the participants were reminded that they should be sincere in their answers while solving the achievement test for data validity and reliability. before the achievement test was applied as a pre-test and a post-test, the necessary item analyzes were made and detailed information regarding this was given under the relevant heading. the training program developed based on the needs analysis after the pre-test was applied to the experimental group. in the light of the data obtained within the scope of the need analysis, the dyslexia teacher training program consisting of 7 units and 14 sessions was implemented in a 7-week implementation process, two days a week and one session a day. after the application, the achievement test was applied again as a post-test. 2.4. data analysis data collected by different methods at different stages of the study were analyzed with different methods. in the first stage of the research, the data collected by semi-structured interview technique in qualitative research methods were analyzed with the descriptive analysis technique used in the analysis of qualitative data. in the second stage of the study, the data obtained by the experimental design method with pre-test post-test control group, one of the quantitative research methods, were analyzed by statistical analysis methods through spss computer software. a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis is required to understand that an intervention has a 'why' effect. when properly applied, descriptive analysis can help researchers understand a phenomenon of interest and use this information to prioritize possible causal mechanisms, formulate hypotheses and intervention strategies, diagnose problems, and identify new problems (walliman, 2010). interviews were conducted with the teachers who participated in the study in order to determine the goals, objectives, and content of the dyslexia teacher training program developed based on the need analysis. the data obtained from these interviews were first transformed into textual data and descriptive analysis was applied. concepts and themes were determined for each interview and each question of each interview. the goals, achievements, and content of the program were shaped in line with the themes created. the quantitative data obtained in the study were analyzed through spss, a statistical analysis program for social sciences. the achievement test results applied to the experimental and control groups as pretest and posttest were analyzed to determine the effectiveness of the program. first of all, the normality test was conducted to reveal whether the data were suitable for normal distribution. the best known of these tests are chi-square, kolmogorovsmirnov, lilliefors, and shapiro-wilk normality tests. among these tests, considering the sample size (n <50), shapiro wilk and kolmogorov-smirnov normality tests were used. table-4. experimental group normality test result. group kolmogorov-smirnov shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. experimental 0.101 23 0.200 0.975 23 0.803 note: p<0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 131 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the light of the data obtained, the dependent sample t-test from the parametric tests and the independent sample t-test from the parametric tests were used to analyze the relationship of the groups with each other and within the group. the reason for using this test is that the t-test allows us to compare the mean values of the two data sets and determine whether they come from the same population (brown & melamed, 2012). 3. results in this section, the findings regarding the research results are given in line with the sub-questions. 3.1. results regarding the first sub-question in order to determine the content of the teacher education program developed to cope with reading difficulties, 25 teachers were interviewed using the semi-structured interview method within the scope of the need analysis. the data obtained from the interviews were analyzed with the descriptive analysis technique and an answer was sought for the question of what the teacher education program needs, which is the first sub-question of the study. findings obtained within the scope of themes created as a result of descriptive analysis are given here. all of the teachers interviewed within the scope of the need analysis (25: 100%) find themselves inadequate in overcoming reading difficulties. teachers generally stated that they did not receive training on teaching methods and techniques they would use to cope with reading difficulties in undergraduate education and that they only heard some terms conceptually in in-service training. they interpreted this situation as the most important factor in seeing themselves as inadequate. they stated that they researched to improve themselves and be more useful to their students with reading difficulties, but these individual efforts were also ineffective. they also stated that the feeling of not being useful to the students who need them, and the inability they experience, creates a situation of stress and anxiety. the majority of the teachers who participated in the interview (24: 96%) stated that they needed training to overcome reading difficulties, while only one teacher (4%) stated that he did not need the training to overcome reading difficulties based on dyslexia. they stated that the education teachers will receive on reading difficulties will be very beneficial and will both improve themselves and contribute greatly to the development of their students. besides, they stated that they definitely wanted to participate in this training, and most of the classroom teachers needed such training because the most common learning disability in classrooms was reading difficulty. while explaining their opinions about the educational need, teachers also stated that they did not want abnormal children in their classrooms where they criticized them considering their past experiences. they also stated that the training they will receive should be given by an expert and should be practical. they stated that if they receive such an education, they can now help their students without sending them to guidance and research center because the students they refer to guidance and research center get results in the form of only mainstreaming students and they continue their education with the children themselves. they emphasized that the fact that they are classroom teachers and that they did not receive special education in the field of reading difficulties is not taken into consideration by the guidance and research center and they cannot receive the necessary support. the subject titles and frequencies formed as a result of the analysis of the answers given to the question of what are your opinions about the subjects you need education for eliminating the reading difficulties of teachers as a classroom teacher are evaluated. most of the teachers (18: 72%) stated that they need education about basic concepts and terms. it is seen that the proficiency levels of teachers in terms of definitions and concepts related to dyslexia are quite low. in addition, the subject of basic concepts is followed by the low reading speed and reading comprehension with a rate of 68%. it can be found that teachers should be trained to support students with reading difficulties in reading comprehension and low reading speed. the need for training in poor reading and skipping letters while reading was expressed by 15 (60%) teachers. most of the teachers stated that they encounter students with reading difficulties every semester and they mostly notice this situation during letter-sound teaching, so a student with reading difficulties is immediately noticed in the first semester of the first grade. they stated that one of the most common problems is that these students write the letters backward and they have great difficulty reading these letters. they emphasized that difficulties such as slow reading, incomprehension, word, syllable, and voice skipping are very common in these children. 3.2. results regarding the second sub-question findings related to testing the significant difference between the pre-test scores of the experimental group and the control group of the teacher education program achievement test, which was developed to eliminate reading difficulties in students with dyslexia, are included under this heading. in order to make sure that the experimental and control groups show similar characteristics before the application and to better understand the effectiveness of the teacher education program in practice, the achievement test developed by the researcher was applied to the groups before the first application, and the findings and comments about it are given in this section. table-5. findings regarding experimental group and control group pre-test scores. group n s-w x ̄ ss p experimental 23 0.803 35.54 10.36 0.879 control 23 0.147 35.97 8.78 note: p<0.05. according to the achievement test pre-test results, the average of the experimental group was 35.54 and the standard deviation was 10.36; the average of the control group is 35.97 and its standard deviation is 8.78. the fact that the averages are close to each other shows that the levels of the two groups are close to each other. as it was seen that there was no significant difference between the results of the normality test in the achievement test results applied to the groups before the first application, it was accepted that the data showed a normal distribution, as a result, the significance of the difference between the group averages was tested through the independent group asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 132 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group t-test from parametric tests. the p-value (p = .879) obtained as a result of the independent group t-test analysis between the two groups reveals that there is no significant difference between the means of the groups. according to the analysis results of the pre-test scores performed before the application, the reading difficulties and coping skills of the teachers in the experimental group and the control group are close to each other. however, it is possible to say that teachers' competence in coping with reading difficulties is low. as seen in table 5, the average score in both groups is below 40 points. it was found that teacher competencies in dealing with dyslexia, the most common learning difficulty, were at a lower than they should be. 3.3. results regarding the third sub-question the findings related to the significant difference between the pre-test post-test scores of the control group of the teacher education program, which was developed to eliminate reading difficulties in students with dyslexia, are given under this title. the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied as a pre-test and a post-test to the control group, who continued traditional in-service training activities and did not receive the dyslexia teacher training program. while the training program was applied to the experimental group, the control group continued with traditional in-service training activities. after the program implementation, the pre-test and post-test results of the control group were compared in order to compare the post-test results of both the experimental group and the control group and to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in the group that was not applied. table-6. findings regarding the control group pre-test post-test scores. test n s-w x ̄ ss t p pre 23 0.147 35.97 8.78 -2.232 0.367 post 23 0.456 38.36 7.44 note: p<0.05. according to the achievement test pre-test results, the mean of the control group was 35.97 and the standard deviation was 8.78; the posttest mean is 38.36 and its standard deviation is 7.44. the fact that the averages are very close to each other shows that the level of the group is close to each other according to the pre-test and post-test results. since it was seen that there was no significant difference according to the results of the normality test, it was accepted that the data showed a normal distribution, as a result, the significance of the difference between the group averages was tested through the paired-sample t-test from parametric tests. the p-value (p = .367) obtained as a result of the dependent group t-test analysis within-group pre-test post-test scores reveals that there is no significant difference between the means of the groups. this finding coincides with the teachers' views in the part of the findings regarding the first sub-question of the study. participating teachers stated that they find themselves inadequate in overcoming reading difficulties and they need training on this subject. the fact that there was no difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the untrained control group supports these findings as well. 3.4. results regarding the fourth sub-question testing the significant difference between the post-test scores of the experimental group and the control group regarding the teacher education program, which was developed to overcome reading difficulties in students with dyslexia, is the fourth sub-question of the study, and the findings related to this purpose are included under this heading. the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied as a post-test to the control group, who continued traditional in-service training activities and did not receive the dyslexia teacher training program. while the training program was applied to the experimental group, the control group continued with traditional in-service training activities. after the program implementation, the post-test results were compared in order to compare the post-test results of both the experimental group and the control group and to evaluate the effectiveness of the program between the groups in which the program was applied and not applied. table-7. findings regarding experimental group and control group post-test scores. group n s-w x ̄ ss p experimental 23 0.171 75.32 10.90 0.000 control 23 0.456 38.36 7.44 note: p<0.05. according to the achievement test post-test results, the average of the experimental group was 75.32 and the standard deviation was 10.90; the average of the control group is 38.36 and its standard deviation is 7.44. the fact that the averages are quite far from each other shows that the levels of the two groups are different from each other. as it was seen that there was no significant difference according to the results of the normality test, it was accepted that the data showed a normal distribution, as a result, the significance of the difference between the group averages was tested through independent group t-test of from parametric tests. the p-value (p = .000) obtained as a result of the independent group t-test analysis between the two groups reveals a significant difference between the means of the groups. as a result of the analysis, it can be said that the training program applied was quite effective in overcoming reading difficulties compared to traditional in-service activities according to both group averages and p <0.05 significance level. 3.5. results regarding the fifth sub-question findings related to the results of the statistically significant difference between the pre-test post-test scores of the teacher education program developed for the elimination of reading difficulties in students with dyslexia constitute the fifth sub-question of the study. findings regarding this sub-purpose are given under this title. the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied as a pre-test and a post-test to the experimental group who did not continue with traditional in-service training activities and joined the dyslexia teacher training program. while the training program was applied to the experimental group, the control group asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 133 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group continued with traditional in-service training activities. after the program implementation, the experimental group pre-test and post-test results were compared in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the dyslexia teacher training program within the group. table-8. findings regarding experimental group pre-test post-test scores. test n s-w x ̄ ss t p r pre 23 0.803 35.54 10.36 29.642 0.000 0.88 post 23 0.171 75.32 10.90 note: p<0.05. according to the achievement test pre-test results, the average of the experimental group was 35.54 and the standard deviation was 10.36; the post-test mean is 75.32 and its standard deviation is 10.90. the fact that the averages are quite far from each other shows that the level of the group is far from each other according to the pretest and post-test results. since it was seen that there was no significant difference according to the results of the normality test, it was accepted that the data showed normal distribution, as a result, the significance of the difference between the group averages was tested through the dependent group t-test from parametric tests. the p-value (p = .000) obtained as a result of the dependent group t-test analysis between the pre-test post-test scores of the groups reveals a significant difference between the means of the groups. the significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group in favor of the post-test results and also the large difference between the average scores can be accepted as a clear indicator that the applied program is quite effective. during the research process, it was found that the dyslexia training program developed based on needs analysis, expert opinion and the relevant literature is extremely successful and effective, as a result of examining table 8, which shows the results of the pre-test post-test analysis scores. according to the analysis results, the effect size of the program (r = .88) was found, and this value reveals that it is a big effect. 3.6. results regarding the sixth sub-questions the achievement test developed within the scope of the research was applied as a retention test to the experimental group in which the dyslexia teacher training program was applied, two weeks after the application. after the program implementation, the results of the experimental group post-test and the retention test were compared in order to evaluate the permanence of the effectiveness of the dyslexia teacher training program within the group. table-9. findings regarding experimental group posttest and retention test scores. test n s-w x ̄ ss t p post 23 0.079 75.32 10.90 1.213 0.238 retention 23 0.171 72.06 10.57 note: p<0.05. according to the retention test results, the average of the experimental group was 72.06 and the standard deviation was 10.57; the post-test mean is 75.32 and its standard deviation is 10.90. it shows that the averages are close to each other and the level of the group is close to each other according to the posttest and retention test results. since it was seen that there was no significant difference according to the results of the normality test, it was accepted that the data showed normal distribution, as a result, the significance of the difference between the group averages was tested through the dependent group t-test from parametric tests. the p-value (p = .238) obtained as a result of the dependent group t-test analysis within the group post-test and retention test scores reveals that there is no statistically significant difference between the means of the groups. the fact that there is no significant difference between the experimental group post-test and retention test scores, and also the small difference between the mean scores and standard deviations can be considered as a clear indicator that the effect of the applied program is permanent. in the research process, the finding that the dyslexia training program developed based on needs analysis, expert opinion, and the relevant literature is extremely successful, effective, and permanent is seen in table 9, which shows the results of the post-test and retention test scores. 4. discussion considering that an estimated 5-10% of the world population has dyslexia, it is essential for teachers to properly understand what dyslexia is and how it affects their students. an article examining the results of a largescale survey of teachers in england and wales (n≈2,600) shows that teachers have a basic understanding of the behavioral problems associated with dyslexia. the teachers lacked knowledge of the biological (ie neurological) and cognitive (ie processing) aspects of dyslexia. what's more, some teachers mentioned visual factors in their dyslexia definitions, although there is inconclusive evidence suggesting a direct relationship between visual function and dyslexia. other findings show the importance of good quality teacher education in increasing teachers' confidence in working with dyslexia while increasing their knowledge of the cognitive aspects of dyslexia (knight, 2018). while it is not the teacher's job to diagnose dyslexia, they need to understand the underlying behavioral and cognitive difficulties associated with dyslexia properly to identify those at risk and to intervene appropriately. research into ways to improve symptoms associated with dyslexia has shown a positive effect of interventions on the person with dyslexia. it is known that interventions that prioritize phonological skills are effective in teaching reading to children with dyslexia. phonological processing skills refer to the skills required to use phonemes (ie sounds in a language) to process speech and written language (rose, 2009). the broad category of phonological processing includes the cognitive skills of phonological awareness (the ability to focus on and change sounds in spoken words) and phonological working memory retrieval (the ability to store and remember the correct phonemic sound from memory). some studies have reported a more holistic understanding of dyslexia in the teaching profession. for example, regan and woods (2000) conducted focus groups with 36 teachers and learning support assistants in the uk and asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 134 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asked them to define dyslexia. focus group participants touched all areas by providing biological and cognitive descriptions to explain behavioral symptoms. however, the researchers noted that the understanding between individuals is different (regan & woods, 2000). another study surveyed 171 preservice teachers in the united states and the united kingdom to investigate their misconceptions about dyslexia. they found that teachers in both countries reported some misconceptions about dyslexia. most importantly, most of the pre-service teachers who participated in the questionnaire stated that dyslexia is caused by problems with visual perception. this is particularly relevant to the concept of "visual stress" in which a person can see a page differently due to print distortions on a white background. it has been reported that visual stress causes reading fatigue (walliman, 2010)). in order to measure knowledge and attitudes related to dyslexia, a survey for classroom teachers was developed in turkey and within the scope of the survey, it was administered to 345 classroom teachers. within the scope of the study, the knowledge levels of classroom teachers about dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and special learning difficulties were examined and it was concluded that almost all of the classroom teachers had insufficient knowledge on these issues. in their responses to open and closed-ended items, it was observed that they could not adequately define the relevant concepts (şahin, guven, & alatlı, 2020). within the scope of the research conducted by altuntas (2010) the knowledge of classroom teachers about dyslexia was measured and interviews were conducted to determine what they did for students with dyslexia. as a result of the interviews, classroom teachers were asked to indicate the problems they see in their students. the common views of the teachers in different areas of reading difficulty were determined. these are very slow reading, illegible writing, distraction, late learning to read, confusing the letters "b" and "d", skipping letters, words, or lines, not being able to read the word they see right away, and confusing similar words to each other. according to the data obtained on classroom teachers' inclass practices for students with dyslexia, classroom teachers do not conduct a special study for their students. it was concluded that classroom teachers found themselves inadequate in the education of students with dyslexia. besides, classroom teachers find themselves inadequate in the education of their students with dyslexia. teachers stated that they need the training to overcome reading difficulties and do not know what kind of education should be given to students with dyslexia (altuntas, 2010). teacher self-sufficiency beliefs can be defined as the assessment of teachers' perceived competencies and their ability to perform in the classroom to be effective in encouraging and encouraging desired student behavior and learning. teacher self-sufficiency is not a uniform construct but differs according to contexts, groups, and cultures, it is argued that it should be studied concerning specific contexts, aspects and tasks because high self-sufficiency in one field does not mean high efficiency in another. for this reason, teachers who seem to have low self-sufficiency in conducting inclusive teaching practices show high self-sufficiency in other areas of their professional activities. besides, teacher self-sufficiency in a particular area of professional performance is dynamic and can fluctuate throughout an individual's career. it has been shown that teachers' self-sufficiency beliefs regarding the implementation of inclusive teaching practices both affect teachers' attitudes towards inclusion and actual teaching behaviors to meet the changing educational needs of students in heterogeneous classes. teachers' competencies in inclusive teaching competencies are powerful in that they can determine teachers' level of effort, commitment to teaching, and insistence on applying coping strategies when faced with a slowdown, trouble, or failure. these competencies can also affect teachers' ability to create supportive, inclusive classroom environments and teaching behaviors. high self-sufficiency in the application of inclusive teaching strategies encourages teachers' openness to new ideas and readiness to try new techniques. teachers with high self-sufficiency tend to show more understanding, patience, and self-confidence when working with students with dyslexia. results from the studies show that teachers' knowledge of dyslexia is not consistent and is mainly based on behavioral descriptions. moreover, teachers seem to have possible misunderstandings about dyslexia. within the scope of this study, all of the participating teachers stated that they found themselves insufficient in dyslexia and needed training. teachers reported that they had insufficient knowledge and understanding of reading difficulties and that they were either not trained or only given limited training to include individuals with dyslexia and special needs during their education. more importantly, research findings support the necessity of increasing the effectiveness of vocational education in the acquisition, development, and consolidation of teacher knowledge. teachers express their need, desire, and readiness to receive such training as part of institutional teacher preparation programs or during continuing education and professional development. teachers who know about self-sufficiency and dyslexia tend to apply inclusive teaching practices more successfully and effectively in their classroom, with more positive attitudes and less anxiety. however, it should be emphasized that to successfully use inclusive teaching practices, classroom teachers must have a range of skills and relevant knowledge that are not part of teacher education programs. teachers who lack these skills may face difficulties when working with their students with dyslexia, and such negative experiences can reduce their self-sufficiency and inclusion attitudes. negative attitudes and low inclusive competence among teachers can pose serious obstacles to inclusion. research studies report the existence of a positive relationship between teachers' attitudes towards inclusion and their selfsufficiency beliefs about applying inclusive practices in the classroom. increasing teachers' inclusive effectiveness and competencies are crucial to the fact that teachers' self-sufficiency beliefs about their abilities are stronger than they actually know or can achieve. therefore, it seems important to increase the proficiency of classroom teachers regarding the reading difficulties experienced by their learners with dyslexia. as a result, teachers who consider themselves competent and receive the necessary training will both support their students with dyslexia more comprehensively and display a more positive attitude. 5. conclusion in this study, the effectiveness of the teacher training program, which was developed to help teachers who work with students with dyslexia gain skills to cope with reading difficulties, was examined and the results of the research are given below. 1) all teachers participating in the study find themselves incompetent in coping with reading difficulties. 2) in dealing with reading difficulties, most of the teachers who participated in the study did not receive detailed training in undergraduate education and in-service training on reading difficulties and they need training on this subject. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 126-135 135 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3) teachers' knowledge of dyslexia is insufficient and mainly based on behavioral descriptions, and teachers have inaccurate knowledge about dyslexia. 4) teachers have problems in coping with reading difficulties in developing or using a common and standardized practice and activity. 5) the teacher training program, which was developed to help teachers who work with students with dyslexia gain the ability to cope with reading difficulties, made a statistically significant difference between the experimental group that was applied and the control group that continued traditional in-service activities. 6) the teacher education program, which was developed to help teachers who work with students with dyslexia gain the ability to cope with reading difficulties, created a statistically significant difference between the pre-test post-test scores of the experimental group applied. 7) the teacher education program, which was developed to provide teachers who work with students with dyslexia with the ability to cope with reading difficulties, gave effective results in dealing with phonological awareness, word awareness, syllable awareness, rhyme awareness, and sentence awareness difficulties in the experimental group. 8) the teacher education program, which was developed to help teachers who work with students with dyslexia gain the ability to cope with reading difficulties, yielded effective results in the experimental group that was applied in coping with fluent reading and reading comprehension difficulties. 9) the teacher education program, which was developed to provide teachers who work with students with dyslexia with the ability to cope with reading difficulties, gave effective results in the design and implementation of teaching activities in coping with reading difficulties in the experimental group. 6. implications 1) courses related to students with dyslexia or reading difficulties and their education can be included in the undergraduate curriculum of classroom teaching departments. 2) in-service training and seminars on dealing with reading difficulties can be organized for classroom teachers. 3) within the scope of the research, the teacher education program, which was developed to provide teachers working with students with dyslexia the ability to cope with reading difficulties, can be applied to families by making the necessary adaptations and evaluating its effectiveness. references altuntas, f. (2010). classroom teachers? knowledge about dyslexia and their trainings for dyslectic students. published master’s thesis. ankara: hacettepe university. brown, s., & melamed, l. (2012). experimental design and analysis. california: sage publications. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2017). research methods in education. london: routledge. creswell, j. w. (2007). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches. california: sage publications. gliner, j. a., morgan, g. a., & harmon, r. j. (2003). pretest-posttest comparison group designs: analysis and interpretation. journal of the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry, 42(4), 500-503. gwernan-jones, r., & burden, r. l. (2010). are they just lazy? student teachers’ attitudes about dyslexia. dyslexia, 16(1), 66–86. hartas, d. (2010). educational research and inquiry: qualitative and quantitative approaches. london: continuum international publishing. hultquist, a. m. (2006). an introduction to dyslexia for parents and professionals. london: jessica kingsley publishers. knight, c. (2018). what is dyslexia? an exploration of the relationship between teachers' understandings of dyslexia and their training experiences. dyslexia, 24(3), 207-219. available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1593. kubiszyn, t., & borich, g. (2003). educational testing and measurement. new york: jhon wiley & son. meb. (2014). child developed and educated learning difficulties. ankara: ministry of education. moeckli, j. (2011). the qualitative interview. in social research: theory, methods, and techniques (pp. 264–286): sage publications, ltd. regan, t., & woods, k. (2000). teachers' understandings of dyslexia: implications for educational psychology practice. educational psychology in practice, 16(3), 333-347. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/713666081. reid, g. (2009). dyslexia: a practitioner’s handbook (4th ed.). new york: john wiley & sons, ltd. rose, s. j. (2009). identifying and teaching children and young people with dyslexia and literacy difficulties. nottingham: dcfs publications. şahin, r., guven, s., & alatlı, b. (2020). investigation of the knowledge and attitudes of primary school teachers towards dyslexia. turkish studies, 15(4), 2355-2372. available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.47423/turkishstudies.42099. sari, h. (2004). an analysis of burnout and job satisfaction among turkish special school headteachers and teachers, and the factors effecting their burnout and job satisfaction. educational studies, 30(3), 291-306. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0305569042000224233. sari, h. (2007). the influence of an in-service teacher training (inset) programme on attitudes towards inclusion by regular classroom teachers who teach deaf students in primary schools in turkey. deafness & education international, 9(3), 131-146. available at: https://doi.org/10.1179/146431507790559996. swerdlik, m. e., edward, d., sturman, p., & cohen, r. j. (2012). psychological testing and assessment: an introduction to tests and measurement. boston: mcgraw-hill education. walliman, n. (2010). research methods: the basics. london: routledge. wendler, c. l., & walker, m. e. (2011). practical issues in designing and maintaining multiple test forms for large-scale programs: in handbook of test development. london: routledge. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.47423/turkishstudies.42099 http://dx.doi.org/10.47423/turkishstudies.42099 130 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 130-135, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.130.135 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group suggestions for solutions to the problems of interrupting, speaking at the same time, inability to be pleasant-spoken and debonair within the context of action research in education orhan bozdemir atatürk university, kazım karabekir faculty of education, department of german language education, turkey. abstract this qualitative study is based on the solutions offered by the students of the "action research in education" course within the scope of the pedagogical formation certificate program at atatürk university faculty of education during a 10-minute presentation in the activity called "one solution to one problem." the data collected from the presentations were subjected to content analysis, and sentences were selected as the unit of analysis and tabulated. subsequently, with the application of a scale developed by the researcher to the same students, two problems, which were not studied sufficiently during the presentations and that the researcher and students agreed were highly critical, were identified. an open-ended scale was applied to the same students about the problems of interruption/overlap and being unfriendly / speaking rudely, and the solution proposals developed by prospective teachers were analyzed by using the descriptive data analysis technique. it was determined that the prospective teachers had a certain awareness of these problems and could produce solutions that can be adapted to the education system. we believe that the study is also important in that it reflects the perspectives of prospective teachers who are important stakeholders of education. keywords: action research in education, interruption-overlap, being unfriendly-speaking rudely, prospective teachers, quantitative screening model. citation | orhan bozdemir (2020). suggestions for solutions to the problems of interrupting, speaking at the same time, inability to be pleasant-spoken and debonair within the context of action research in education. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 130-135. history: received: 2 december 2019 revised: 7 january 2020 accepted: 10 february 2020 published: 18 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 131 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 132 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 132 4. discussion, conclusion and recommendations ....................................................................................................................... 133 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 134 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.130.135&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3519-5162 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3519-5162 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1419 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3519-5162 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 130-135 131 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature it is a study that evaluates problems such as interrupting, speaking at the same time, inability to being pleasant-spoken and debonair in in educational activity from the perspective of prospective teachers. it is thought that it may contribute to the literature in terms of possible solutions for the issue. 1. introduction in turkey, various models have been applied in teacher education in the historical process. with a decision taken by the council of higher education in the academic year of 2009-2010, non-thesis master's programs which had been launched to train teachers for secondary schools were closed, and the teacher needs of these schools were met with the pedagogical formation certificate program (azar, 2011). nowadays, the pedagogical formation certificate program provides the opportunity to become a teacher for students who have been educated or are being educated at academic units other than faculties of education (demirtas & kirbac, 2016). pedagogical formation is the educational formation that must be acquired to be able to teach at a school. for this formation, prospective teachers take various courses and practice teaching at schools (uzuner, 2005). one of the courses provided in the pedagogical formation certificate program is the "action research in education" course. although action research in education is based on the work of john dewey, after the second world war, stephen corey, a professor at colombia university, pioneered action research and was the first to systematically apply this research method to solving educational problems (aksoy, 2003). the most important purpose of action research in education is to systematically understand the realities that emerge in the world of education and thus try to change and improve education (kuzu, 2009). according to some classifications, one of the applied qualitative research methods, action research is a preplanned, organized and cooperative systematic review to improve the quality of life through critical reflection and questioning (bogdan & biklen, 1998; mills, 2000; uzuner, 2005). in this research approach, which is based on the critical theory, the aim is not only to understand the meanings and behaviors of the individuals studied, but also to change them (ekiz, 2003). people share their thoughts and knowledge on a studied subject and offer their solutions to the problems that are examined. this way, new action plans are designed to achieve the objectives of the research (mills, 2000). action research is solution-oriented research conducted by a group: a group of people identifies a problem, does something to solve it, sees how successful their efforts are and tries again if they are not satisfied with the outcome; in short, they learn by doing in action research (beverly, 1993). "interruption/interrupting others" is defined as interrupting someone while they are speaking (schegloff, 2001). the attempt of interruption is successful when the person, who is interrupted, stops speaking. in a successful interruption, the person who interrupts the other person controls the conversation and therefore executes their power. overlap is, on the other hand, simultaneous talk by two or more participants of a conversation and is also considered an attempt to establish control and power by the person who overlaps with the person speaking (huls, 2000). in conversations, there is a turn-taking organization where participants speak one at a time in alternating turns, which allows the participants to organize and tailor the interaction. the turn-taking organization is the basic organization of a social relationship established in a conversation-based interaction environment (sacks, schegloff, & jefferson, 1974). in this sense, the attempt to interrupt is also defined as interrupting a speaker who has the right to speak in a conversation (yurtdaş, atakan, & tezerişir, 2011). if two people speak at the same time, it means that the speakers are not listening to each other, which is unacceptable according to the cultural values most societies. indeed, it is not a coincidence that mawlana's masnavi opens with the word "bişnev," which means "listen". because to speak, one has to listen first. "start speaking by giving ear" says mawlana. when it comes to good words or speaking politely, the holy quran compares beautiful words to a tree with pleasant fruits (i̇brâhim, 14/24-26) and emphasizes that the word must be true (an-nisa, 4/9; al-ahzâb, 33/7071), beautiful (al-baqarah, 83; 4/an-nisa, 4), soft and gentle (taha, 20/44; al-isra, 17/28). regardless of the form of the conversation, a smiling face and sweet tongue are always very important. "and tell my servants to say that which is best" (al-isra,17/53). in addition to "...and speak to people good [words]" (al-baqarah 2/83), the hadith "a good word is charity" (al-bukhārīedeb, p.34) (kavaklıoğlu, 2010) draws our attention to the importance of good words (seker, 2011). a lot of research has been conducted in turkey about classroom management, which is very important for maintaining the order of the classroom and the quality of teaching. although these studies have offered various solutions to the problems that may be encountered in the classroom, there is no detailed study on the importance of being unfriendly/speaking rudely in the classroom. in this context, it is thought that examining these problems within the framework of the "action research in education" course will not only provide solution-oriented approaches to the subject but also help us see what prospective teachers think about these problems. in this study, on the subjects of "interruption/overlap" and "being unfriendly/speaking rudely", we tried to learn the views of 75 students, all of whom were philology graduates who took the "action research in education" course within the framework of a pedagogical formation certificate program offered at atatürk university faculty of education. by doing so, we aimed to determine how aware the prospective teachers were about the topic and collect their solution proposals to the problems. 1.1. objective in this study, on the topics of "interruption/overlap" and "being unfriendly/speaking rudely", we tried to learn the views of 75 students, all of whom were philology graduates who took the "action research in education" course within the framework of a pedagogical formation certificate program offered at atatürk university faculty of education. by doing so, we aimed to determine how aware the prospective teachers were about the topic and collect their solution proposals to the problems. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 130-135 132 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method 2.1. research model this study is a mixed-method study in which elements of qualitative and quantitative research approaches are combined. in mixed-methods, qualitative and quantitative research approaches are utilized together at the stages of data collection and analysis to characterize the problems that are the subject of the research and determine the solutions (leech & onwuegbuzie, 2009). the design of the study was determined as sequential transformative design in order to "emphasize the dominant paradigm" (tunalı, gözü, & ozen, 2016). in this context, by using the most dominant findings among the findings obtained with the qualitative research model, a quantitative screening model was developed. for an activity named "one solution to one problem" in the "action research in education" course, the students were asked to prepare 10-minute presentations about a problem related to education and present their solution proposals to the problems. subsequently, with the application of a scale developed by the researcher to the same students, two problems, which were not studied sufficiently during the presentations and that the researcher and students agreed were highly critical, were identified. these two problems were identified as "interruption/overlap" and "being unfriendly/speaking rudely." then, an open-ended scale was applied to the same students about these problems, and their solution proposals were analyzed with the descriptive data analysis technique. the data collected from the presentations were subjected to content analysis, and sentences were selected as the unit of analysis and tabulated. the participants were asked to select the solution proposal which they deemed the most appropriate. 2.2. sample the study enrolled 75 students who took the "action research in education" course within the framework of the pedagogical formation certificate program offered at atatürk university faculty of education in the academic year of 2018-2019. of the students who were all educated at the philology departments of various faculties of letters, 12 were german language and literature graduates, 24 were arabic language and literature graduates, 35 were english language and literature graduates, and 4 were russian language and literature graduates. 2.3. data collection tool an independent data collection tool compiled from the participants' views on the topic was used. the survey contained six items about the causes of the problems of interruption/overlap and being unfriendly/speaking rudely, about solution proposals to the problems and about what kind of reactions need to be given to raise awareness in students about these problems. 2.4. data analysis the data that were obtained are expressed as a percentage (%) and frequency (f). considering that the sample consisted of 75 prospective teachers who graduated from philology departments, and the results may be generalized only to a certain extent, the results that the participants deemed prominent were compared to the results obtained from similar studies in the literature. 3. findings the percentage and frequency distributions of the answers of the pre-service philology graduate teachers to the questionnaire which was compiled from their own opinions about the problems of "interruption/overlap" and "being unfriendly/speaking rudely" are detailed in the tables below. table-1. percentage and frequency values of the participants' preferences about the causes of the problems of interruption-overlap. possible causes f % selfishness 21 28.0 lack of respect for others 30 40.0 not knowing how to listen to others 11 14.6 lack of empathy 9 12.0 environmental factors (family, friends and immediate surroundings) 4 5.3 as seen in table 1, the prospective teachers mostly thought that the problem of interruption-overlap is caused by a lack of respect for others. the second major cause of this problem was selfishness, according to the participants. interestingly, very few prospective teachers attributed the cause of this problem to environmental factors. table-2. percentage and frequency values of the participants' preferences about possible solutions to the problems of interruption-overlap. solution proposals f % the problem should be addressed, and children should be given responsibilities in primary schools 14 18.6 the subject should be included in the curriculum within the framework of school etiquette 19 25.3 there must be rules based on a punishment system in classrooms 7 9.3 awareness should be created about the subject through tv shows and panels 12 16.0 children should be provided with habits such as reading to improve their patience 23 30.6 in table 2, which contains the suggestions of the prospective teachers for this problem, the idea that solutions based on a punishment system cannot be effective comes to the fore. on the other hand, the participants mostly selected "children should be provided with habits such as reading books to improve their patience." it was remarkable that the prospective teachers were aware of the importance of patience. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 130-135 133 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. percentage and frequency values of the participants' preferences about the reactions that can be given to raise awareness about the problem of interruption-overlap. reactions that can be given f % before we start talking, we can express our sensitivity on this issue and react when we are interrupted by not listening to or responding to the student who has interrupted 29 38.6 altogether, we can close our ears to the student interrupting and encourage other students to do so when they are interrupted 11 14.6 together, we can stare at the floor when a student has interrupted 9 12.0 we can talk altogether at the same time when a student has interrupted 12 16.0 we can leave the classroom when a student has interrupted 14 18.6 as seen in table 3, the most preferred reaction was "before we start talking, we can express our sensitivity on this issue and react when we are interrupted by not listening to responding to the student who has interrupted." it may also be inferred from the table that "closing our ears to the student interrupting and encouraging other students to do so when they are interrupted," "staring at the floor when a student has interrupted" and "talking altogether when a student has interrupted" reactions were preferred by almost half of the participants. moreover, only 14% of the participants preferred the reaction of "leaving the classroom when a student has interrupted," which is a harsher reaction. table-4. percentage and frequency values of the participants' preferences about the causes of being unfriendly-speaking rudely. possible causes f % the inability to learn to cope with problems 32 42.6 lack of self-esteem and self-love 13 17.3 negative effects of technology 22 29.3 environmental factors (family, friends and immediate surroundings) 8 10.6 according to the participants, the main cause of the problem of being unfriendly-speaking rudely was the inability to learn to cope with problems. as the second and third causes, they saw the negative effects of technology and lack of self-esteem and self-love, respectively. according to the participants, environmental factors were the least probable cause of this problem. table-5. percentage and frequency values of the participants' preferences about possible solutions to the problem of being unfriendlyspeaking rudely. possible solution proposals f % the problem should be addressed within the family and primary school, and individuals should be carefully monitored 42 56 students should maintain distance from social media 8 11 the concept of tolerance should be emphasized 6 8 it should often be emphasized that smiling is a gift of love 4 5 it should be emphasized that saying hello means "i mean no harm to you", and the act of greeting is the best way to convey our respect, love, care and kindness to the other person and is a necessity of being human 3 4 we should constantly remind our students how much smiling and friendly conversations feed the human soul and how important they are in relationships 12 16 as seen in table 5, the most probable solution to the problem of being unfriendly-speaking rudely was to "address the problem within the family and primary school and monitor individuals." the second most preferred solution proposal was "we should constantly remind our students how much smiling and friendly conversations feed the human soul and how important they are in relationships." these were followed by the following solution proposals respectively: "students should maintain distance from social media," "the concept of tolerance should be emphasized," "it should often be emphasized that smiling is a gift of love," and "it should be emphasized that saying hello means 'i mean no harm to you,' and the act of greeting is the best way to convey our respect, love, care and kindness to the other person and is a necessity of being human." table-6. percentage and frequency values of the participants' preferences about the reactions that can be given to raise awareness on the problem of being unfriendly-speaking rudely. reactions that can be given f % we can solve the problem by being a role model for students, not by warning them 28 45.3 we may choose not to respond to students' requests that they express in a scowling manner. 8 10.6 we can give examples about the importance of smiling (e.g., why do we smile when someone is taking a photo of us?) 20 26.6 we can often ask students what kind of a society they want to live in 9 12 by using the themes of 'mirror' and 'smiling eyes', we can tell our students 'change yourself so that the world changes' 4 5.3 it may be inferred from table 6 that the most preferred reaction that could be given to the problem of being unfriendly-speaking rudely was "we can solve the problem by being a role model for students, not by warning them," which is a 'teacherly' attitude, followed by "we can give examples about the importance of smiling (e.g., why do we smile when someone is taking a photo of us?)" which is also a method applied frequently by teachers. 4. discussion, conclusion and recommendations we believe that a tremendous amount of responsibility is on the shoulders of us, educators, to overcome the problems of "interruption-overlap" and "being unfriendlyspeaking rudely," which are never compatible with our asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 130-135 134 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group cultural values but which, unfortunately, have become quite common to the extent that these behaviors are accepted to be normal. it is possible to give thousands of beautiful examples from turkish history or literature with regard to these problems. however, today's social life is unfortunately so far from these good examples. furthermore, as in many other issues, the solution lies in education. in this study conducted with 75 prospective teachers who took the "action research in education" course within the scope of a pedagogical formation certificate program, first of all, we refreshed our knowledge about the pedagogical formation certificate program and the "action research in education" course with citations from prominent studies. subsequently, we analyzed the results of the "one solution to one problem" activity we carried out with our students in this course, and we identified two problems. by using a scale that we developed, we collected the prospective teachers' proposals of solutions to these two problems. the first of the two problems was "interruption-overlap," which is highly common in turkish society and about which especially class teachers need to warn their students in almost every lesson. according to the participants, the most probable causes of this problem were selfishness, lack of respect for others and not knowing how to listen to others. their solution proposals to this problem were "teaching students how to listen to others," "addressing the problem in primary schools," "establishing rules in the classroom," "ensuring that children take responsibility in this regard," "including the subject in the curriculum within the framework of school etiquette" and "creating awareness about the subject through tv shows especially for children and panels." when the prospective teachers were asked to re-evaluate the most prominent solution offers, it was seen that they mostly thought that a solution based on a punishment system would not be effective (table 2). on the other hand, most of them were of the idea that improving children's patience through habits like reading would be more effective. moreover, the participants gave the following responses to the question of how they could create awareness on this problem, and what kind of reactions they could give: "before we start talking, we can express our sensitivity on this issue and react when we are interrupted by not listening to or responding to the student who has interrupted," "altogether, we can close our ears to the student interrupting and encourage other students to do so when they are interrupted," "altogether, we can stare at the floor, talk at the same time, or leave the classroom when a student has interrupted." the second problem for which we sought solutions from the point of view of the prospective teachers and which is very important for our social peace was the problem of being unfriendly-speaking rudely. the probable causes of this problem, according to our participants, were the inability to learn to cope with problems, lack of selfesteem and self-love and negative effects of technology. as solution proposals, the participants stated that "the problem should be addressed within the family and primary school," "students should maintain distance from social media," and "the concept of tolerance should be emphasized." they also underlined that it should be emphasized by teachers and parents that "smiling is a gift of love" and "how friendly conversations feed the human soul, and how important they are in relationships." additionally, the participants stated that "it should be emphasized that saying hello means 'i mean no harm to you', and the act of greeting is the best way to convey our respect, love care, and kindness to the other person and is a necessity of being human." finally, to the question of how they could raise awareness in students about this problem and what kind of reactions they should give to the students, they stated that they should think in a solution-oriented manner, not in a problem-oriented manner, and they could solve problems by being a role model for students, not by warning them. they also said that teachers should be friendly and in search of happiness in every situation and reflect this to their students. additionally, they stated that they may choose not to respond to students' requests that they express in a scowling manner, and they must teach their students to be unconditionally friendly towards others and speak politely with them. finally, they stated that they could provide examples about the importance of smiling by asking questions such as 'why do we smile when someone is taking a photo of us?' or 'why do we delete our photos where we pout?', and by using the themes of 'mirror' and 'smiling eyes', they can tell their students 'change yourself so that the world changes.' we hope that our study will be a step towards taking into account the views of prospective teachers who are young stakeholders of education. references aksoy, n. (2003). action research: a method to be used to improve and change educational practices. educational administration: theory and practice, 36(36), 474-489. azar, a. (2011). a discourse on teacher education in turkey: qualifications, is quantity. journal of higher education and science, 1(1), 36-38. beverly, j. (1993). teacher-as-researcher. eric digest. retrieved from http://www.ericdigests.org/1993/researcher.htm. bogdan, r. c., & biklen, s. k. (1998). qualitative research for education: an introduction to theories and methods (5th ed.). boston, ma: pearson a & b. demirtas, h., & kirbac, m. (2016). pedagogical formation certificate program students' views on pedagogical formation education. trakya university faculty of education journal, 6(2), 138-152. ekiz, d. (2003). introduction to research methods and applications in education: qualitative, quantitative and critical theory methodologies. ankara, turkey: anı publishing company. huls, e. (2000). power in turkish migrant families. discourse & society, 11(3), 345-372. available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926500011003004. kavaklıoğlu, m. (2010). the prophed against some unkind words and behaviors hitit university. journal of theology faculty, 9(18), 25-60. kuzu, a. (2009). action research in teacher training and professional development. journal of international social research, 2(6), 425-433. leech, n. l., & onwuegbuzie, a. j. (2009). a typology of mixed methods research designs. quality & quantity, 43(2), 265-275. available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-007-9105-3. mills, g. e. (2000). action research: a guide for the teacher researcher. one lake street, upper saddle river, new jersey 07458: prentice-hall, inc. sacks, h., schegloff, e. a., & jefferson, g. (1974). a simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation. language, 50(4), 696-735. available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/412243. schegloff, e. a. (2001). accounts of conduct in interaction: interruption, overlap, and turn-taking. in handbook of sociological theory (pp. 287-321). boston, ma: springer. seker, n. (2011). nebevî method in oral communication. journal of community sciences, 5(10), 111-128. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 130-135 135 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group tunalı, b., gözü, o., & ozen, g. (2016). using qualitative and quantitative research methods together mixed research method. anadolu university, faculty of communication, international refereed journal, 24(2), 106-112. uzuner, y. (2005). action research with examples from special education. ankara university faculty of educational sciences special education journal, 6(2), 1-13. yurtdaş, g. t., atakan, m., & tezerişir, a. (2011). the relationship between gender and speech interruption in verbal interactions. studies in psychology, 31(1), 105-117. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 115 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 2, 115-125, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.115.125 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group english teachers' views on the use of web 2.0 tools in educational environments imam bakir arabaci1 ceyda akilli2 ( corresponding author) 1firat universitym turkey. 2elazig provincial directorate of national education, turkey. abstract new practices that support the use of technology in education are developed in order to create a modern education-training process within the framework of quality and efficiency standards throughout the world. web 2.0 tools that help to make the most of technology in educational environments are one of these applications. it has been proven that web 2.0 tools, which were used in education in turkey in 2009, increase the motivation of students and increase their academic success. teachers' professional development accelerates by producing new materials with these tools, and cooperation, communication and coordination among colleagues increase. the aim of the study is to reveal the opinions of english teachers working in elazig about the use of web 2.0 tools in educational environments. the study is based on the situation analysis technique, which is one of the qualitative research methods. the interview form developed by the researchers was used as the data collection tool. the working group consists of 30 english teachers working in elazig province of turkey. the responses of the participants to the questions in the interview form were subjected to content analysis, categories were created, and frequencies and percentages were determined. according to the results of the research, teachers generally have positive perceptions of web 2.0 tools, they generally use these tools for content development, web 2.0 tools provide positive contributions to classroom management and student development. keywords: educational technologies, web 2.0 tools, english teachers. citation | imam bakir arabaci; ceyda akilli (2021). english teachers' views on the use of web 2.0 tools in educational environments. asian journal of education and training, 7(2): 115125. history: received: 18 february 2021 revised: 22 march 2021 accepted: 26 april 2021 published: 2 june 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 116 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 117 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 118 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 123 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 124 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.115.125&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2959 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6703-4665 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1928-1124 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 116 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the study contributes to the existing literature by revealing the opinions of english teachers working in elazig about the use of web 2.0 tools in educational environments. 1. introduction today, the fact that technology is an integral part of our lives has greatly affected the education world and has led to radical changes in education. the integration of technology with education has brought new dimensions to applied education programs, course materials, teaching methods / techniques and curricula (castells, 2012). new practices that support the use of technology in education are developed throughout the world in order to create a modern education process within the framework of quality and efficiency standards. the use of web 2.0 tools in classroom environments is one of these new applications (murugesan, 2010). the concept of "web 2.0", first used by tim o'reilly in 2004, defines the second generation of the world wide web (www) and includes a number of new applications that allow for a participatory structure. web 2.0 is an umbrella concept and contains tools that enable many applications to be implemented. the most important reason why web 2.0 tools are preferred is that, unlike web 1.0 tools, it is not only read the information given on the screen, but can focus many users on the same goal or product in a social and active environment (o'reilly, 2007). anderson (2007) states that web 2.0 tools are created from the thoughts of using personalized content, the power and unity of collective intelligence and providing ease of access. web 2.0 tools; the transformation of websites from being information shelters to operating platforms; by offering internet programs to the end users, it helps users to share an information or an occupation and use it again (atici & yıldırım, 2010). web 2.0 tools include diaries, presentations, online tests, games, animations, boards, concept maps, word clouds, logo and poster applications. web 2.0 tools according to their functions; content management systems, file storage and sharing, concept maps and drawing tools, presentation tools, word clouds, animation and video, online meeting tools and questionnaire (elmas & geban, 2012). some of the applications belonging to these titles are as shown in figure 1: figure-1. web 2.0 tools and functions. all these practices can be easily included in the training processes; it can provide teachers and students with many benefits at the same time and they can contribute to create rich content (solomon & schrum, 2007). weblogs and blogs that can be used in education are beneficial in sharing announcements and transferring new information to the other part quickly (davies & merchant, 2008). podcasts allow students to repeat a missed lesson. word clouds and concept maps help students quickly internalize new schemes; presentation tools turn the transfer of knowledge into an effective and enjoyable one. wiki, which means rush in hawaiian language, is widely used in education by students, teachers and academicians around the world (genç, 2010). additionally, blogs can create an environment for students to access what other friends have written, read information or express the thoughts on special themes (cych, 2006). studies on the use of web 2.0 tools in education show that these tools support constructivist learning, innovation and the team spirit that will develop among students in the classroom (mcloughlin & lee, 2007). while these tools play a critical role in preparing students for the business and education life of the 21st century, they support students' creative and innovative thinking skills. in addition to education and business life, these tools also have a positive effect on students' becoming more active and participatory individuals in the future (richards, 2010). web 2.0 tools, which prepare students to be technology literate, active and participatory individuals in their future lives, prepare them for their future professional lives (punie & cabrera, 2006). the use of web 2.0 tools enriches classroom environments and positively affects the technological literacy levels of students who are described as "today's digital natives" (prensky, 2001). web 2.0 tools contribute to teachers in terms of developing their technological competence, creating innovative course contents, and creating original materials. a teacher using web 2.0 tools brings vitality and movement to his classroom, uses modern assessment methods, and uses upto-date and functional contents in his lessons (byrne, 2009). undoubtedly, teachers must have the competence and motivation to use web 2.0 tools effectively in educational environments (haydn & barton, 2007). many studies examined in the literature reveal that the asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 117 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group frequency of teachers' use of these tools is not at the desired level (oecd, 2009). according to a report published by the oecd in 2009, there are three main reasons why teachers do not actively use web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms: these are teachers are not encouraged to use such technologies; the fact that the academic studies showing the positive educational outcomes provided by the use of these technologies in the lessons are not found effective enough by the teachers, they have difficulties in getting out of the old, dominant educational culture barrier, and they have not fully understood the benefits of technology-enriched lesson experiences and technology incorporation (oecd, 2009). according to the research conducted by horzum (2010) and kıyıcı (2010) teachers' level of readiness to use web 2.0 tools is insufficient. teachers' opinions and attitudes towards web 2.0 tools, which make many contributions to educational processes, are also a determining indicator of the increase in their frequency of use (youngs & king, 2002). the aim of this research is to determine the opinions of english teachers working in elazig about the use of web 2.0 tools; in this way, it is to be able to offer solutions that make the use of vehicles widespread, taking into account the opinions. the reason why only english teachers were included in the study is that according to the data obtained by the elazig provincial directorate of national education strategy development branch, 75% of the teachers working in elazig and using web 2.0 tools are english teachers. the questions for which answers are sought within the scope of the research are as follows: 1. what are the general perceptions of english teachers working in elazig province towards web 2.0 tools? 2. what is the frequency of english teachers working in elazig province to use web 2.0 tools in their lessons? 3. what are the web 2.0 tools commonly used by english teachers working in elazig? 4. how do english teachers working in elazig integrate web 2.0 tools into their lessons? 5. what changes are observed in students as a result of the use of web 2.0 tools in the education process? 6. what are the contributions of web 2.0 tools to classroom management? 7. what are the contributions of web 2.0 tools to language skills? 8. what are the contributions of web 2.0 tools to professional development? 9. are the institutional capacities of schools sufficient to use web 2.0 tools effectively? 2. methodology 2.1. research design the research was carried out according to the situation analysis pattern found in qualitative research methods. the most basic feature of the qualitative case study is that one or more cases are investigated in depth (yıldırım & simşek, 2011). all factors related to a situation are handled with a holistic approach and the focus is on how they are affected by the relevant situation. situation analysis is an empirical research method used in cases where the boundaries between the fact and its content are not clear and there are more than one evidence or data source (yin, 1994). situation analysis is a qualitative research approach in which the researcher examines one or several situations in depth with the help of data collection tools and defines situations and situational themes (creswell, 2007). the research is based on a cross-sectional survey model. screening researches, which are widely used in social sciences, are studies that include individuals' opinions and attitudes about a phenomenon and an event (tanrıöğen, 2012). 2.2. study group the study group of the research consists of 30 english teachers who work in educational institut ions of different types and levels in elazig. while creating the working group, criterion sampling method was used and english teachers who had knowledge about web 2.0 tools were determined. criterion sampling, one of the purposeful sampling methods, is that the study group consists of people who have the qualifications specified for the problem (büyüköztürk, cakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2012). code names such as k-1, k-2 were given to the forms in order to ensure the confidentiality of the interviews with the participants in the study group. the demographic data of the participants in the study group are as follows: table-1.distribution of participants in terms of gender variable. gender frequency (f) percentage (%) female 20 66.7 male 10 33.3 total 30 100 as seen in table 1, 66.7% of the participants are female and 33% are male english teachers. the reason for this is that, according to the data obtained from the elazig provincial directorate of national education, strategy development branch, the number of female english teachers working in elazig is more than men. information on the education levels of the participants is included in table 2. table-2. distribution of participants by level of education. level frequency (f) percentage (%) license 25 83.3 master 3 10.0 doctorate 2 6.7 total 30 100 as seen in table 2, most of the participants (f = 25) are undergraduate graduates. the main reason for this situation is that approximately 75% of the english teachers working in elazig are undergraduate, 20% have a master's degree, and 5% have a doctorate degree. information about the level at which the participants work is given in table 3. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 118 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. distribution of the participants regarding the level they worked. level frequency (f) percentage (%) primary school 11 36.7 secondary school 12 40.0 high school 7 23.3 total 30 100 as seen in table 3, 40% of the participants work in secondary school, 36.7% in primary school and 23.3% in high school. although participant frequencies related to school type are not equal, it can be said that these frequencies are close to each other. 2.3. data collection tool semi-structured interview form was used as data collection tool. the form was developed by the researcher with the help of an expert. the most important convenience offered by the semi-structured interview technique to the researcher is that it provides more systematic and comparable information since the interview is carried out in accordance with the previously prepared interview protocol (yıldırım & simşek, 2011). in this study, a 9-item interview form was developed to determine the opinions of english teachers about web 2.0 tools. the questions in the interview form were examined by 6 academicians who were experts in their field and various arrangements were made in line with their opinions and suggestions. interview is used as the shortest way to learn about individuals' knowledge, thoughts, attitudes and behaviors on various issues and their possible reasons (karasar, 2012). the main purpose of using the interview technique is usually not to test a hypothesis; (türnüklü, 2000) the interview technique used in qualitative research is to reveal the perspectives and worlds of meaning of the people who are researched and to serve the purpose of seeing the world through their eyes (tanrıöğen, 2012). 2.4. analysis of data research data were interpreted with descriptive analysis, one of the qualitative research techniques. interpretation is the process of giving meaning to the analyzed data (karasar, 2012). in descriptive analysis, the answers given by different people to the same questions are conveyed in the form of quotations without changing (yıldırım & simşek, 2011). descriptive analysis consists of the processes of forming the conceptual framework, processing the data according to this framework, defining the findings, and interpreting the findings (altunışık, coşkun, bayraktaroğlu, & yıldırım, 2010). while analyzing the data, codes in the form of k-1, k-2, .. were given to the interview forms filled out by the participants in order to ensure confidentiality and impartiality. the answers given by the sample group to the interview form questions were analyzed by categorizing them according to the problem areas. percentages and frequencies were determined by listing these categories according to the number of citations of the participants. striking references from the participants were shown as examples, and problem areas were strengthened. in the process of data analysis, categories and patterns were taken into consideration, the frequency of the variables was interpreted, the relationships between the variables were considered, and the variables were grouped according to their characteristics. the answers are interpreted in a way to reflect the reality as it is by establishing logical meaning chains. because whether the meanings and results reached are correct, valid and repeatable is the most important problem of the research (miles & huberman, 1994). 3. findings the responses of the participants in the study group to the semi-structured interview form created by the researchers were subjected to content analysis and categories were determined, and the frequency (f) and percentages (%) belonging to each category were calculated. the findings reveal the views of english teachers in the study group about web 2.0 tools. 3.1. english teachers' perceptions of web 2.0 tools in the interview form, firstly the question of “if you were to describe web 2.0 tools with two words, what would these words be?” has been asked. with this question, it is aimed to reveal the general perceptions of english teachers about web 2.0 tools. table 4 has been created for the answers given by the participants: table-4. perceptions of english teachers about web 2.0 tools. perception frequency (f) percentage (%) technology 9 16.37 interaction 7 12.73 creativity 7 12.73 materiel 6 10.9 innovativeness 5 9.09 etwinning 5 9.09 project 5 9.09 information technology 5 9.09 team work 3 5.45 internet 2 3.64 task 1 1.82 total 55 100 as seen in table 4, most of the teachers associate web 2.0 tools primarily with the word "technology". the main reason for this situation is that teachers need to have a certain level of technological infrastructure asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 119 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in order to use web 2.0 tools effectively. likewise, when web 2.0 tools are integrated into lessons, students have the opportunity to benefit from innovative technologies for their academic development. web 2.0 tools, which are very easy to use and develop content, provide free access to teachers and students, he lping education stakeholders to increase their digital literacy levels. "interaction", "creativity" and "material" are among the other words mostly expressed by the participants regarding web 2.0 tools, one of the most important elements of educational technologies. during the use of web 2.0 tools, teachers and students work collaboratively to produce innovative, creative and original content. as teachers and students work together in the content produced, they simultaneously feel the emotions such as taking responsibility, sharing the sense of success and dividing the work. interactive course materials are also created with web 2.0 tools. web 2.0 tools are mostly used in etwinning projects coordinated by the ministry of national education general directorate of innovation and educational technologies in our country. for this reason, it is seen that 5 participants perceive web 2.0 tools as "etwinning" and "project". within the scope of etwinning projects, teachers create concrete products with their domestic and foreign partners, create country teams, and create innovative project contents. 3.2. participants' use of web 2.0 tools in foreign language teaching and web 2.0 tools frequently used in the second question of the interview form, “do you use web 2.0 tools in foreign language teaching? if your answer is yes, which one (s) you frequently use among these tools? " statement is included. table 5 shows the participants' benefiting from web 2.0 tools in foreign language teaching; the names of the vehicles they usually use are included in table 6. table-5. participants' use of web 2.0 tools in foreign language lessons. situation frequency (f) percentage (%) i use of 30 100 i don’t use of 0 0 total 30 100 care was taken to ensure that all teachers in the study group have a branch in english and are aware of web 2.0 tools. for this reason, it was concluded that all teachers made use of web 2.0 tools in their lessons. in foreign language teaching, which focuses on the development of 4 basic skills, namely reading, writing, listening and speaking, it is thought that students will acquire foreign language acquisitions permanently and effectively by using web 2.0 tools in their lessons. the tools they usually use in their lessons are shown in table 6: table-6. web 2.0 tools my participants frequently use. tool frequency (f) percentage (%) edmodo 20 26.67 kahoot 15 20.00 prezi 10 13.34 tagul 7 9.34 canva 5 6.67 google forms 3 4.00 weebly 2 2.67 logopit 2 2.67 animaker 1 1.34 total 75 100 as seen in table 6, the majority of the participants use edmodo, which creates online training environments, and kahoot, a test solving tool. while the frequency of the participant using prezi, which is the presentation tool, is 10 cited; participant frequency that uses tagul tool, which enables word cloud creation, is 7 cited. “i started using edmodo with the distant education started due to the pandemic. in this way, i was able to follow the progress of the students by creating my virtual classrooms. " (k29) with the help of edmodo, which allows teachers to create a virtual classroom environment, materials are shared in an easy and accessible manner, online exams are carried out, students are given tasks with time limits and announcements regarding these tasks can be made. edmodo brings together teachers and students in virtual classrooms, and allows the creation of monitoring systems to increase interaction with parents. it is thought that the main reasons why teachers prefer edmodo in the distance education process, especially during the pandemic process, is that it is a web 2.0 tool that brings together internal and external stakeholders of education, is easy to use and helps achieve academic goals. another web 2.0 tool that teachers often use is the kahoot application. “i devote some of my lessons almost to using these tools. i also use this tool because students like the kahoot application the most. it is both racing with time; and they are trying to give the correct answer. " (k-4) with the kahoot application, teachers can quickly and practically prepare surveys and exams. when the opinions of the participants are examined, it is revealed that the students handled the questions and surveys they solved with the kahoot application in an entertaining way without entering any race or competitive environment. this situation suggests that kahoot is considered by teachers as an alternative assessment and evaluation tool. another web 2.0 tool frequently used by participants is canva. “i use these tools regularly as it is a national etwinning project that i run with students. in the project, we created a logo with canva, a competition was organized with google forms and the logo with the highest number of votes was determined. i feel students' creativity improve when using the canva app " (k-20) canva is a web design application that allows the preparation of materials such as posters, logos, invitations, and banners. according to participant views, students also improve their creative thinking skills while using the canva application. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 120 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teachers working in rural areas where computers and smart boards are not available stated that they continue to use web 2.0 tools despite all difficulties. these teachers, with their own means, bring their students together with web 2.0 tools. “i work in the district, there is no smart board or internet in our school. despite this, i take my own computer and connect the internet from my mobile phone and i use prezi the most. " (k12) 3.3. integration of web 2.0 tools to lessons in the third question of the interview form, “how do you integrate web 2.0 tools into your lessons? please explain. "statement was used. with this question, it was tried to determine the methods in which the participants used web 2.0 tools in their lessons. table 7 was created according to the answers given by the participants. table-7. integration of web 2.0 tools to lessons. integration way frequency (f) percentage (%) i am preparing materials for use in live lessons. 12 32.44 i do group work. 7 18.92 i do project work with students. 7 18.92 i am preparing a presentation to tell the lesson. 5 13.52 i give homework. 3 8.1 i use it to reinforce the subject. 2 5.4 i use it in listening and speaking activities. 1 2.7 total 37 100 as can be seen in table 7, the majority of the participants (32.44%) stated that they used web 2.0 tools to prepare materials for the live lessons held during the distance education process. in addition, participants use web 2.0 tools for group work (f = 7) and project work with students (f = 7). participants in the study stated that while integrating web 2.0 tools into lessons, they created course materials to ensure the active participation of the student in the lesson and to make the teaching process more enjoyable. “i use web 2.0 tools to make the distance education process more attractive to students and to keep students active. all my students are very satisfied with this situation. " (k-27) participant views show that when web 2.0 tools are used as course material, students participate in the lesson more actively and they enjoy the lesson more. in addition, it was determined that the participants used web 2.0 tools in order to better understand and reinforce a topic discussed in the course. "i support the subject with these tools so that any subject is better understood and reinforced." (k19) some of the participants stated that they use web 2.0 tools to create animations, thus making the lessons more enjoyable. living with many digital devices, especially tablets, computers and smart phones in their social lives, and encountering hundreds of stimulants every day, students can learn more easily through content that appeals to all their senses. in this context, web 2.0 tools such as animations, podcasts and wikis that appeal to all sensory organs of students are thought to make educational environments more attractive. “i do listening activities with animations. english lessons are getting more enjoyable. " (k-24) 3.4. changes observed in students using web 2.0 tools in the fourth item of the interview form, the question of "what kind of changes do you observe in students when you use web 2.0 tools in your lessons (increase in motivation, active participation, etc.)?" has been asked. with this question, it was tried to determine the effects of using web 2.0 tools in foreign language lessons on students. table 8 was created according to the answers given by the participants. table-8. observed changes in students. changes frequency (f) percentage (%) participation is increasing 8 21.62 they enjoy the lesson more 7 18.92 their sense of responsibility is developing 5 13.52 students' active participation is increasing 4 10.82 they get used to teamwork 4 10.82 their creativity is increasing 3 8.1 their self-esteem is improving 3 8.1 their technological competence is increasing 3 8.1 total 37 100 as can be seen in table 8, most of the participants who benefited from web 2.0 tools in their lessons observed that the participation of students to the lesson increased. other changes observed in students are; they enjoy the lesson more, their sense of responsibility develops and they become more accustomed to teamwork. participants in the study stated that students were more interested in, focused and enjoyed the lessons in which web 2.0 tools were used. "when i use web 2, all the students listen carefully and participate actively. they express that the lessons are more fun. " (k-1) it is thought that the reason why students show more interest in the lessons in which web 2.0 tools are used is the happiness of these tools to find the technological elements they are accustomed to in the course environment. due to the generation gap between teachers and students, students' digital skill levels may be higher than most teachers. students are also aware of this difference. for this reason, it is thought that teachers who use web 2.0 tools are perceived as technological literate by students and they feel closer to these teachers. likewise, teachers and students create products by using these tools in teamwork. some participants stated that they experienced asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 121 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group various problems in teamwork when they first started using these tools. however, they stated that they could overcome these problems in time. "we had difficulties in teamwork at first, but these problems disappeared over time." (k13) 3.5. the contribution of web 2.0 tools to language skills in the fifth item of the interview form, "which of the four basic skills of foreign language teaching, reading, writing, listening and speaking skills do you believe do you believe?" the question is included. with this question, it was tried to determine the contributions of web 2.0 tools to foreign language skills. table 9 was created according to the answers given by the participants. table-9. contribution of web 2.0 tools to language skills. skills frequency (f) percentage (%) listening 13 43.34 speaking 9 30.00 reading 4 13.33 writing 4 13.33 total 30 100 when table 9 is examined, it is seen that web 2.0 tools mostly contribute to the listening skill, and the number of participants expressing this situation is 13. the number of participants who stated that they contribute to the speaking skill is also high, and the number of frequencies belonging to the participants in this group is 9. following the listening and speaking skills are reading and writing skills. “i mostly use web 2.0 tools in students' listening activities. i listen to dialogues, songs and audiobooks in my lessons. in addition, i create some texts as avatars and voice them with my own voice ”(k-5) as can be seen from the statements above, web 2.0 tools offer many different content opportunities for listening activities in foreign language lessons. in addition, teachers use avatars voiced with their own voices in their lessons. the semantic and functional structures of the language are internalized in the language learning process with the method of listening, in other words, exposuring to the language. alternative listening activities are thought to make students' internalization process more permanent. one benefit of listening activities for students is the correct pronunciation of words. "it helps students to pronounce words correctly." (k-15) participants in the study also mentioned that web 2.0 tools improve creative writing skills. “i create cork boards online to improve students 'creative writing skills, and these boards quickly improve students' writing skills.” (k-30) based on the results of the research, it is thought that web 2.0 tools contribute to all 4 basic skills of the foreign language learning process. thanks to these tools, it is thought that students can express themselves with self-confidence and use the language they learn actively. 3.6. effects of web 2.0 tools on classroom management in the sixth item of the interview form, "what are the positive and negative effects of using web 2.0 tools on classroom management process?" the question is included. with this question, it is aimed to reveal the advantages and disadvantages of using web 2.0 tools in educational environments in terms of classroom management. table 10 and table 11 were created according to the answers given by the teachers in the study group. table-10. positive effects of web 2.0 tools on classroom management. positive effect frequency (f) percentage (%) all students focus on the lesson. 7 23.3 class attendance is increasing. 6 20.00 all students express themselves. 5 16.64 discipline problems have decreased. 4 13.33 lessons become permanent. 3 10.00 the gains become permanent. 3 10.00 student-centered studies are increasing. 2 6.7 total 30 100 as seen in table 10, among the most important positive effects of using web 2.0 tools on classroom management is that students focus on all lessons and ensure active participation in the lesson. in addition, it was concluded that all students expressed themselves easily, discipline problems decreased and what was learned became more permanent. “all students are listening more, focusing and participating more.” (k-3) the main purpose of the classroom management field is to enable students to gain the basic gains related to the lessons. participants in the study stated that thanks to the use of web 2.0 tools, students' participation in the lesson increased and they focused more on the lesson. participants stated that the students expressed themselves more comfortably. thus, it can be said that web 2.0 tools help students orient themselves to the lesson with an intrinsic motivation. another subject area of classroom management is to minimize discipline problems in the classroom. participants of the study stated that web 2.0 tools reduce students' negative behaviors. a participant statement regarding this is as follows. "negative behavior in the classroom has decreased and i noticed that discipline problems have also decreased." (k25) within the scope of the research, the negative effects of web 2.0 tools on classroom management were also examined. the negative effects of web 2.0 tools determined according to the opinions of the participants in terms of classroom management are as indicated in table 11. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 122 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-11. negative effects of web 2.0 tools on classroom management. negative effect frequency (f) percentage (%) when the internet slows down, there is a waste of time. 6 20.00 keeping track of student work can be difficult. 5 16.64 when the activities don't catch up, time management becomes difficult. 4 13.33 security gaps can occur. 4 13.33 it can cause noise. 3 10.00 applications that require mobile phones make it difficult to track students. 3 10.00 when the computer is broken, the activity cannot be performed. 3 10.00 students can compete. 2 6.7 total 30 100 among the participants' comments about the negative aspects of using web 2.0 tools in terms of classroom management, the negative aspects that are frequently mentioned are the loss of time due to the slowness of the internet or the length of activities. there are also opinions that it becomes difficult to follow the students' studies, that there may be a security gap, and that it causes noise and competition among students. “some applications require students to use cell phones. it seems like all the students have attended the lesson, but it's hard for me to control. (k-24) as can be seen in the statement above, in some cases, teachers find it difficult to follow the process of students' use of web 2.0 tools. this situation is thought to occur in applications that require the use of phones or tablets individually by students. another negative effect of web 2.0 tools on classroom management is the waste of time due to the slowdown of the internet. “in the middle of the application, the internet is completely cut off or slowed down. this causes a waste of time. " (k-9) as can be seen from the participants' opinions, web 2.0 tools can cause a waste of time due to problems arising from the internet connection. time management, one of the most important elements of classroom management, requires meticulous planning of the course process. for this reason, it is thought that it will be beneficial for teachers to produce alternative classroom plans against any kind of mishaps that may occur while using web 2.0 tools. another negative effect of web 2.0 tools in terms of classroom management is the occurrence of security vulnerabilities. “it may be necessary to share personal information of students in order to use some web 2.0 tools; t his situation can create a security vulnerability. " (k26) although it has many positive effects for students, teachers must be wary of security problems that may arise from web 2.0 tools. teachers should be careful not to share students’ personal information, not to use their pictures without permission, and not to share content on social media where students' faces will be recognized. against such problems, it is thought that it will be beneficial for all schools today to prepare strategic plans for digital security applications for security vulnerabilities and to act in accordance with these plans. 3.7. institutional capabilities of schools to use web 2.0 tools in the seventh item of the interview form, "do you think schools are suitable enough to use web 2.0 tools in terms of their institutional capacity?" the question is included. with this question, it was tried to determine whether schools have the necessary equipment to use web 2.0 tools. participants' opinions about whether the institutional capacities of schools are sufficient to use web 2.0 tools are as stated in table 12: table-12. school capacities' suitability for web 2.0 tools. view frequency (f) percentage (%) suitable 14 46.66 not suitable 16 53.34 total 30 100 as can be seen in table 12, the number of participants (f = 14) stating that the institutional capacity of schools is not suitable for using web 2.0 tools without any problem is more than the number of participants who find it suitable (f = 16). as seen in table 12, the number of participants (f = 14) stating that the institutional capacity of schools is not suitable for using web 2.0 tools without any problem is more than the number of participants who find it suitable (f = 16). stating that the institutional capacity available in schools is insufficient, the participants stated that the technological infrastructure in schools is insufficient, the internet connections are slow, and the internet providers to which the schools are connected do not have access to all applications. teachers usually use their own means to solve this situation. a participant's statement summarizing this situation is as follows. “the technological infrastructure of schools, especially in districts, is very insufficient. something is happening with the teacher's own efforts." (k-12) in our country, many macro projects are carried out and initiatives are carried out so that all students can benefit from technology in their education process. however, especially in schools located in low-income regions, lack of institutional infrastructure, lack of laboratories and materials make it difficult to use web 2.0 tools. “not every student has a tablet or cell phone. our computer lab at the school is not enough. for this reason, th ere are difficulties in applying." (k-22) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 123 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in this process, it may be beneficial for teachers to divide students into teams, meet with sponsors or philanthropists, prepare projects and receive grants so that they can use the existing materials in the most effective way. 3.8. the effects of web 2.0 tools on professional development in the last item of the interview form, "what effects did using web 2.0 tools have on our professional development?" the question is included. with this question, it was tried to determine how benefiting from web 2.0 tools contributed to the professional development of the participants. table 13, which was created according to the answers given by the participants, reflects the effects of using web 2.0 tools on their professional development. table-13. effects of web 2.0 tools on professional development. effects frequency (f) percentage (%) my technological competence has increased. 11 36.67 i can make the lesson more enjoyable. 7 23.3 i can provide student participation. 5 16.64 i can prepare material. 3 10.00 my classroom management skills have improved 3 10.00 i come better prepared for lessons. 1 3.33 total 30 100 as seen in table 13, the majority of the participants stated that their technological competence increased by using web 2.0 tools (f = 11). in addition, the participants stated that they could make the lesson more enjoyable (f = 7) and ensure student participation (f = 5). participants in the study stated that they felt more efficient with the increase of their technological skills, and stated that they performed their professions more effectively because they created content that would appeal to today's students. “i realized that i can use technology more effectively. now i can even create a website. " (k-6) another area where web 2.0 tools contribute to the professional development of teachers is ensuring full participation in the classroom. a participant's opinion regarding this is as follows. “i used to have a few students who never listened to the class. now i get their participation even. " (k-17) as a result, when examining the effects of web 2.0 tools on teachers 'professional development, teachers' content development, material preparation, effective classroom management and making the lesson more attractive to students can be listed. 4. discussion and conclusion technology has brought many changes in the education world as well as in all areas of life. web 2.0 tools, which facilitate the use of technology in educational processes and enable the creation of original content and materials, have been used frequently in educational institutions in our country, especially in recent years. foreign language education that requires the development of four basic skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking; web 2.0 tools are highly likely to be used in this process, as it requires original, different-sensory materials. therefore, the study group of the research consists of english teachers. in the study, it was tried to determine the general opinions of english teachers about web 2.0 tools. first, teachers were asked to describe web 2.0 tools in two words, and thus their perceptions about these tools were revealed. teachers generally perceive web 2.0 tools as technology, interaction and creativity. in the study conducted by golshan and tafazoli (2014), it was revealed that teachers have positive perceptions of web 2.0 tools. huitt (2000) revealed that teachers generally associate web 2.0 tools with educational technologies. it has been determined that perceptions about web 2.0 tools, which are one of the most prominent examples of educational technologies, are generally related to the functional features of the tools. another result of the study is that teachers often use online test, presentation and word clouds tools. it was concluded that the teachers developed materials by reinterpreting classical methods with the support of technology. participants use these tools in their lessons as group work, project work or lecture technique. these findings are similar to the results of the research conducted by bozna (2017). in the research conducted by bozna (2017), it was revealed that teachers generally use web 2.0 tools for content creation. based on the research findings, it can be said that web 2.0 tools help students participate in the lesson more actively, learn in a fun way, take responsibility and adapt to group work. these findings are similar to the results of the study conducted by oğütveren (2014). in the research of oğütveren (2014), an experimental study was conducted for students and it was revealed that students' academic achievements and attitudes towards courses were positively affected after using web 2.0 tools. in the research conducted by oğütveren (2014), it was found that web 2.0 tools increase the active participation of students in the lessons and make the lessons fun. in the study conducted by wang and vásquez (2012), it has been proven that foreign language teachers quickly acquire language skills and show a high level of development when they perform computer-based learning activities with web 2.0 tools. in addition, web 2.0 tools not only improve students' language skills, but also contribute to critical thinking skills and problem solving skills (kivunja, 2015). despite this, tuzlukova and hall (2017) stated that web 2.0 tools do not have direct effects on students' acquisition of basic skills, and these tools only motivate students to lessons. based on all these studies and research findings, it was concluded that when using web 2.0 tools, teachers should use web 2.0 tools meticulously, taking student age groups, cognitive levels and current language skills into account. in addition, while integrating these tools into the lessons, care should be taken not only to gain academic achievements, but also to achieve gains that will endanger their lives, such as criticized thinking, acting in the team, and problem solving. according to the opinions of the participants in the research, the most important domain of these tools in the foreign language education process is the listening skill. it is thought that this may be due to the assumption that asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 115-125 124 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teachers concentrate more on preparing materials that improve the sense of listening. this result differs from the results of the research conducted by gün (2015). in the study conducted by gün (2015), the effect of web 2.0 tools on foreign language learning skills is most evident in speaking skills. in the study conducted by ozbal (2017), the contributions of web 2.0 tools to writing skills were discussed. in the study, it was seen that students can produce creative texts using web 2.0 tools. ozek günyel (2018) found out that web 2.0 tools generally provide positive contributions to listening skills. in the study conducted by campbell and larson (2013), the heartbeat of the students while practicing speaking through web 2.0 tools was examined and it was concluded that the students were more excited and anxious when speaking through these tools. for this reason, it is thought that it is important for teachers to prepare students to use these tools first, and to encourage them to relieve their anxiety and calm them. according to the participants, using web 2.0 tools in educational processes has positive and negative effects on classroom management. among its positive effects, it can be said that it increases student participation, makes lessons permanent and reduces discipline problems. the findings are similar to the findings of the study conducted by aldır (2014). teachers who took part in the study of aldır (2014) stated that web 2.0 tools constitute an alternative to traditional learning methods and provide positive contributions to classroom management. its negative effects are usually the loss of time that may arise from infrastructure problems. for this reason, the participants think that the institutional capacity of the schools is not sufficient to benefit from these tools effectively and efficiently. it is among the results of the research that thanks to the web 2.0 tools, the technological competence of the participants increased, they made more pre-lesson preparations and their material preparation skills improved. the findings are similar to the results of the research conducted by akkaya (2019). akkaya (2019) examined the positive contributions of web 2.0 tools to the professional development of teachers, and it was revealed that the largest of these contributions was directed towards teachers' technological competence. lewin and mcnicol (2014) considered web 2.0 tools as very important elements in the acquisition of 21st century skills, especially the informatics skills of individuals. suggestions developed as a result of the research are divided into two groups as aimed at educators and researchers. 1. suggestions for educators: as a result of the research, it was determined that the participants benefited from web 2.0 tools but generally used similar tools. for this reason, it is recommended that they recognize different tools and use tools that support modern teaching methods instead of enriching classical methods with technology. in-service training courses can be prepared at central and local levels so that teachers can get to know these tools better and use them effectively. improving the technological infrastructure of schools is one of the areas that our country has been working on frequently in recent years. however, until this process is completed, teachers' personal efforts are also needed. for this reason, bringing their personal computers to the classroom environment of teachers working in schools where smart boards or computers are not available will help students to receive technology-supported education. it will be useful for teachers to apply the tools before the lessons and determine the estimated time of these applications so that they can effectively manage their time while using web 2.0 tools in the classroom. 2. suggestions for researchers: in this study, qualitative research method was used and therefore the number of participants was determined as 30. they can expand the sample group of researchers who will work on web 2.0 tools by using quantitative research method. this will increase the generalizability of the findings. in addition, only the opinions of english teachers are included in the study. a research can be prepared to reveal the usage areas of web 2.0 tools in different lessons, including numerical and verbal, and teachers' opinions on this subject. in the study, only teacher opinion on the subject was taken; 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(2002). principal leadership for professional development to build school capacity. educational administration quarterly, 38(5), 643–670. available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161x02239642. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.eenet.org/upload/file/vision%202015/thefutureofictandlearningintheknowledgesociety.pdf http://www.eenet.org/upload/file/vision%202015/thefutureofictandlearningintheknowledgesociety.pdf 149 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 149-160, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.149.160 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an analysis of grammar teaching in secondary school in terms of success, attitude and teachers 'views* ayşegül kayar1 fatih veyis2 ( corresponding author) 1bayburt university, educational faculty, turkey. 2atatürk university, educational faculty of kâzım karabekir, turkey. abstract the teaching of grammar within the teaching of the mother tongue has been handled in various ways in the historical process. today, grammar is seen as a field that supports basic language skills, therefore, it is necessary to teach grammar in a functional way. the text-based grammar teaching method is used to provide functionality in grammar teaching and to implicate the rules regarding the use of language. the 2018 turkish language and literature teaching curriculum, the current language and literature curriculum implemented in turkey, is also regulated in accordance with this understanding. this approach of the 2018 curriculum on grammar teaching is a relatively new approach in turkish education. for this reason, the applicability of the curriculum, the opinions of teachers about the curriculum and the effect of grammar teaching practices on students' academic achievement and attitudes towards the course is a situation that should be examined. when the application of the curriculum is examined, it is seen that the teachers have negative views against the grammar teaching approach of the curriculum and have problems in implementing it. in addition, the curriculum gives different results in terms of students according to the academic level of the school in which they are educated, and the academic success and attitudes of the students change accordingly. as a result, various arrangements are needed for effective teaching of text-based grammar teaching in our schools. keywords: turkish language and literature, text-based grammar teaching, academic success, attitude, teacher opinions, school level. citation | ayşegül kayar; fatih veyis (2020). an analysis of grammar teaching in secondary school in terms of success, attitude and teachers 'views. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 149-160. history: received: 9 december 2019 revised: 17 january 2020 accepted: 20 february 2020 published: 23 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 150 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 151 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 152 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 156 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 159 * this article was produced from a master's thesis entitled "examination of grammar teaching in grades 9 by terms of succes, attitude and teacher opinions" by kayar (2019). http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.149.160&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1437 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5550-7357 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4874-7643 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1437 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5550-7357 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4874-7643 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1437 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5550-7357 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4874-7643 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1437 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5550-7357 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4874-7643 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 150 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research focuses on the teachers' ability to fulfill the expectations of the curriculum about grammar teaching and their views on the grammar teaching approach. 1. introduction although grammar teaching has been seen as a major skill area until recently, recent research suggests that grammar is not a separate skill area but a discipline that supports basic language skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking. according to this understanding, teaching processes can be supported by writing, punctuation and grammar studies while teaching and understanding activities in mother tongue teaching are emphasized (sever, 2000). the examinations made at the level of sound, word and sentence during grammar studies also help us to think more accurately and flawlessly and thus to speak and write correctly (kavcar, oğuzkan, & sever, 2005). on the other hand, messages that are not encoded in accordance with grammar rules in the understanding processes are more difficult to perceive and thus interrupt listening and reading processes (aslan, 2017). simşek (1983) states that a person who has a good grasp of the functioning of his mother tongue can easily understand what he read and completely explain what he hears and thinks. with the understanding of "new grammar" developed after the 1970s, it is observed that the individuals will learn the functions and rules of their mother tongue and explore the logic and functioning of the language and use them in literacy processes (güneş, 2017). cemiloğlu (2003) states that the turkish language and literature course should support the understanding and expression skills with a functional approach rather than focusing on the rules, and studies should be made to introduce language-related rules in this process. with these developments, the necessity of conducting grammar teaching with functional processes, seeing the examples as a whole, and determining the role within this integrity emerged. this integrity is the texts involved in grammar instruction. accordingly, grammar instruction should be applied through texts and without giving the rule directly to the student, and it should be ensured that grammatical elements perceive the rule by sensing the functions they perform in the text (göçer, 2008). aslan (2017) states that in accordance with these views, grammar should be taught functionally, not scholastic and based on memorization. to do this, the student should think on the language through the examples and clues in the text, and based on these, he/she should sense the rule and perceive it him/herself. such new approaches in grammar instruction have also appeared in curriculums. the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum, which is the current curriculum put into practice, is based on teaching grammar subjects through literary texts in accordance with this understanding. in the specific objectives of the curriculum, the expression “introducing the subtleties of turkish to students through literary texts” is included in this regard (meb, 2018). under the title of issues to be considered in the implementation of the curriculum, literature education has been handled as a ground in which students will discover the subtleties of the language and develop their language awareness and skills in addition to gaining information about literature. the following expressions were used for grammar studies in turkish language and literature courses: “grammar studies will be carried out on the relevant texts in the units based on the information acquired by the students in previous educational levels. subjects will not be covered. short explanations can be made for the purpose of reminding about the subjects they have learned in previous education levels.” (meb, 2018). these expressions, which can be regarded as a method explanation for teaching grammar, propose to put the texts in the center in grammar teaching. at this point, the text, which is an example of each literary genre, is also seen as a course material on which grammar studies can be performed. on the other hand, the assumption of the curriculum that the student can find examples of grammar subjects with the information s/he obtained in primary education is remarkable. this assumption, which is one of the points that this research focuses on, ignores the possible shortcomings of the student's prior knowledge and limits them to short reminders. in the section where the qualities of the texts to be included in the textbook are specified in the curriculum, there is nothing mentioned about the features that should be found in terms of grammar while specifying the content, genre and literary aspects of the texts to be included. this can be interpreted as paying attention to the genre and literary characteristics of the selected texts and putting grammar into the second plan, and teaching grammar is not specifically addressed. the same case applies to the number and duration of acquisitions. accordingly, separate acquisitions have been determined for poetry, narrative texts, plays and instructive text types within the reading acquisitions, the grammar studies in this field are roughly expressed as "he does grammar studies based on the text" only if being repeated in the same way in each title. among the writing acquisitions, the acquisitions that can be associated with the grammar field are as follows:  uses terms, concepts, idioms, proverbs and dialects according to the type of text.  writes by paying attention to the characteristics (clarity, fluency, clearness and simplicity) that should be in a good expression.  uses different sentence structures and types; simple, compound, ordered, bound, subtracted, transpose, regular sentence, noun and verb sentences.  reviews the text s/he’s written in terms of grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity, clearness, fluency, simplicity and vocabulary preferences (meb, 2018). among the acquisitions of speaking skill, those that can be associated with grammar are determining the elements of communication such as sender, receiver, message, channel code, context, feedback; speaking by paying attention to articulation, highlighting, intonation and pausing; and avoiding unnecessary sounds and words when speaking (meb, 2018). even though the studies on teaching grammar through texts take many years, the fact that it is included in the curriculum is a new situation for turkish language and literature (tll) education. therefore, in the light of recent changes in the curriculum, the question about how mother tongue teaching affects students' achievements and attitudes towards the course in tll is awakened. for this reason, the question “how does grammar teaching at asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 151 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the secondary education level affect the academic achievement of students and their attitude towards the course” constitutes the main problem of our research. the approach of the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum on grammar teaching has a new view for teachers. thus, it is one of the main problems that our research focuses on the teachers' ability to fulfill the expectations of the curriculum about grammar teaching and their views on the grammar teaching approach. in order to better explain the main problem addressed by the research, the sub-problems identified by considering various variables can be listed as follows: 1. do the students' academic achievement pre-test scores and post-test scores differ significantly? 2. do students' turkish language and literature course attitude pre-test scores and post-test scores differ significantly? 3. do the academic achievement scores of the students in the field of grammar differ significantly according to the school level? 4. is there a significant relationship between students' academic achievements and their attitudes towards the turkish language and literature course? 5. what are the opinions of the turkish language and literature teachers regarding the grammar teaching processes included in the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum? 6. what are the opinions of the turkish language and literature teachers regarding the use of grammar teaching processes in the classroom in the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum? 2. method the research is planned as a case study. yin (2002) defines case studies as a research approach that focuses more on current events in real life, in which the researcher has little control over cases, and also when seeking answers to how and why questions. yıldırım and simşek (2011) state that, in addition to this view, it is a research method that allows examining a case or phenomenon in depth. our study was designed in accordance with the embedded case study research design according to the number of cases handled (yin., 2009). according to this, grammar teaching in the 9th grades of secondary education has been determined as the basic case of the research, and this is divided into two different phases as in terms of student and in terms of the teacher. while examining the academic achievement and attitudes of students during the examination of grammar in terms of students, the opinions of teachers about the current curriculum and their ability to apply the program in their own courses were examined. 2.1. research group the study was carried out with 75 students and 12 turkish language and literature teachers. stratified purposeful sampling method was used to determine the study group (büyüköztürk., kılıç, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2017). three different levels of schools were determined according to the student placement points in the city center of erzurum, and the classes were randomly selected. a total of 100 students were reached in order to eliminate data loss that may occur during applications or during extreme value analysis. among these students, a total of 75 students, including 25 students from each school, providing parametric values were included in the process. the teachers are all the turkish language and literature teachers working in schools from which the students were selected. the reason for the study to be carried out particularly with the 9th-grade students is that it is stated in the 2018 tll curriculum that grammar teaching is carried out based on the knowledge of students in primary education and without covering the subject. therefore, the 9th-grade level, which is the first stage in the transition from primary to secondary education, was preferred. 2.2. data collection tools the turkish literature course attitude scale developed by veyis (2015) was used to measure students' attitudes during the research process. in order to measure the academic success of students, the 9th grade grammar achievement test, consisting of 20 questions with five options and multiple choices covering the 9th-grade first term’s grammar subjects, was developed. the test is at medium difficulty according to the difficulty levels of the questions. during the development of the test, opinions of 3 field experts and 2 turkish language and literature teachers were taken to ensure validity and reliability. a semi-structured interview protocol consisting of 7 questions was developed in order to determine the opinions of the teachers about the curriculum and their application of the curriculum in their classes. in the research process, three different schools, whose successes were determined according to secondary education placement scores, were selected, and the necessary official permissions were granted for the implementation in these schools. schools are coded as a (advanced level), b (intermediate level) and c (low level), respectively, according to their academic success levels. teachers are also coded as a, b and c according to the type of school they work in. 9th grade grammar achievement test and turkish literature course attitude scale were applied to the students as a pretest, and post-test applications were carried out in the same classes at an interval of approximately 11 weeks. in this process, a total of 100 students were reached, the scales and tests were systematically filled in, and lost data were analyzed and extreme value analysis was performed. as a result, a total of 75 students, 25 students from each school, were selected, and statistical analyses were made using the spss software. teacher interviews were made face to face within the specified 11-week period. 2.3. data analysis the data obtained in the data analysis process were first transferred to the spss environment, then extreme value analyses were performed, and it was seen that there was no extreme value in the data set. when the median, arithmetic mean, z scores, skewness and kurtosis values were examined, it was seen that the data had a normal distribution and was suitable for parametric analysis. mertens. (2019) states that taking skewness and kurtosis asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 152 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group values between -2 and +2 provide the normal distribution condition. in this direction, it is seen that skewness and kurtosis values obtained in the descriptive analysis related to the data set meet the normal distribution condition. in order to answer the sub-problems determined in the scope of the research, t-test, single factor variance analysis (anova), pearson product-moment correlation analyses were performed for dependent samples. descriptive analysis was made in the analysis of the data obtained from teacher interviews. teachers' responses are gathered under two themes to suit sub-problems: 1. teachers' thoughts on the grammar teaching approach of the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum, 2. teachers' ability to apply the curriculum in their lessons. while analyzing the answers given to the questions, each question was evaluated separately, and quotations from the statements of the teachers were included. 3. findings 3.1. findings related to students in this part of the study, the statistical analysis and the findings obtained from these analyses are given to determine the effect of grammar teaching in secondary schools on students' academic achievement and attitudes towards turkish language and literature. sub-problem 1. do the students' academic achievement pre-test scores and post-test scores differ significantly? the dependent sample t-test was conducted to determine whether the academic achievements of 9th-grade students studying in different types of schools on grammar differ significantly according to their pretest and posttest scores, and the results are indicated in table 1. in order to perform a dependent sample t-test, it is required that the scores must be at least equal-interval scale and scores of the two associated measurement sets should be normally distributed (büyüköztürk, 2006). in this direction, the necessary conditions are provided for analysis. table-1. dependent sample t-test results regarding academic achievement pretest and posttest scores. variable n x ss t p academic achievement pretest 75 45.26 16.64 posttest 75 49.40 20.43 -3.10 .003 when table 1 was examined, it was seen that students' academic achievement pre-test and post-test scores related to grammar differed significantly (t 74 = -3.10, p <.01). accordingly, it can be said that grammar teaching practices carried out at the 9th grade of secondary education have a significant effect on academic achievement across the research group. sub-problem 2. do students' turkish language and literature course attitude pre-test scores and post-test scores differ significantly? in order to determine whether the attitudes of 9th-grade students studying at schools with different academic achievements differ significantly according to the pre-test and post-test scores, a separate dependent sample t-test was conducted for each school level. the results of the test carried out are given below on a separate table for each school level. table-2. dependent sample t-test results regarding turkish language and literature course attitude pretest and posttest scores at a level school. variable n x ss t p interest pretest 25 27.67 7.60 2.72 .012 posttest 25 23.36 10.66 importance pretest 25 30.04 6.39 2.65 .014 posttest 25 26.92 8.80 avoidance pretest 25 14.52 4.98 4.27 .000 posttest 25 11.08 5.51 knowledge pretest 25 14.83 2.62 4.09 .000 posttest 25 12.72 3.95 attitude total score pretest 25 87.07 19.74 4.45 .000 posttest 25 73.88 25.33 when table 2 is examined, it is seen that there is a differentiation in the interest sub-dimension (t24= 2.72, p<.05), importance sub-dimension (t 24 = 2.65, p <. 05), avoidance sub-dimension (t24= 4.27, p<.01) and knowledge sub-dimension (t24=4.09, p<.01) of the pre-test and post-test scores of students studying at a level school towards turkish language and literature course. table-3. dependent sample t-test results regarding attitude pre-test and post-test scores against turkish language and literature course at b level school. variable n x ss t p interest pretest 25 32.32 9.14 1.72 .097 posttest 25 28.96 11.80 importance pretest 25 30.52 6.48 2.24 .034 posttest 25 26.24 9.85 avoidance pretest 25 15.24 5.08 2.25 .034 posttest 25 12.48 5.19 knowledge pretest 25 15.80 2.76 2.46 .021 posttest 25 13.84 4.48 attitude total score pretest 25 93.88 20.70 2.46 .021 posttest 25 81.52 28.78 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 153 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the findings obtained, it is seen that the attitudes of a school students towards turkish language and literature course between the pre-test and post-test applications over a period of time were negative in terms of interest, importance and knowledge, and the avoidance of the course decreased at the end of the process. when table 3 is examined, it is seen that there is a significant differentiation in the importance sub-dimension (t24= 2.24, p<.05), avoidance sub-dimension ((t24= 2.25, p<.01) and knowledge sub-dimension (t24=2.46, p<.01) of the pre-test and post-test scores of students studying at b level school towards turkish language and literature course. according to the findings, it can be said that in the time interval between the pre-test and post-test applications of the b school students, the sub-dimensions of knowledge and importance has improved positively in the attitudes of b school students towards turkish language and literature, and their avoidance of the lessons has decreased. on the other hand, it is seen that there is no significant difference in the sub-dimension of interest (t 24 = 1.72, p> .05) between the pre-test and post-test scores of the students. this finding can be interpreted as the fact that the grammar teaching practices carried out in b school did not make a significant difference in the students' interests towards the lesson. table-4. dependent sample t-test results regarding attitude pre-test and post-test scores against turkish language and literature course at c level school. variable n x ss t p interest pretest 25 36.92 8.21 -.45 .656 posttest 25 37.79 8.71 importance pretest 25 32.24 5.14 -.37 .713 posttest 25 32.72 5.49 avoidance pretest 25 16.56 3.54 1.27 .215 posttest 25 15.20 4.94 knowledge pretest 25 15.84 2.64 -.17 .865 posttest 25 15.96 3.45 attitude total score pretest 25 101.56 16.54 -.02 .977 posttest 25 101.67 18.68 when table 4 is analyzed, it is seen that there is no significant differentiation in the interest sub-dimension (t24= -.45, p<.05), importance sub-dimension (t24= -.37, p<.01), avoidance sub-dimension (t24= 1.27, p<.01) and information sub-dimension (t24=-.17, p>.05) of the pre-test and post-test scores of students studying at c level school towards turkish language and literature course. according to the findings obtained, it can be concluded that the grammar teaching practices carried out at c school did not make a significant change in students' attitudes towards the turkish language and literature course. sub-problem 3. do the academic achievement scores of the students in the field of grammar differ significantly according to school level? in order to determine whether the difference between the grammar achievement scores of 9th-grade students studying in schools with different academic success levels differed according to the level of achievement, the academic achievement pretest scores of each student were first removed from the academic achievement post-test scores and as a result, gain scores were obtained. then, single factor variance analysis (anova) was performed to determine whether these scores differ significantly according to school levels. it was seen that variance homogeneity, which is the prerequisite of anova, was provided (f ( 2,72 ) = .352, p> .05). table-5. anova results regarding school level and academic success variables. school level n x ss sd f p difference school a 25 9.00 10.00 2/72 6.824 .002 a-c school b 25 5.40 10.98 b-c school c 25 -2.00 11.18 when table 5 is analyzed, as a result of anova conducted to determine whether the gain scores of 9th-grade students studying at schools with different academic success levels differ, it was found that the academic achievement gain scores of students differed significantly according to the level of the school (f(2,72)=6.824, p<.05). lsd, which is one of the multiple comparison tests, was used to determine among which means the source of this difference was. according to the analysis, the academic achievement points of the c school students differed significantly from a and b school students. the average of academic achievement gain points of c school students is x = -2.00, the average of academic achievement gain points of a students is x = 9.00, and the average of academic achievement gain points of b students is x = 5.40. based on this finding, it can be said that the academic achievement level of the school is a variable that significantly affects the grammar academic achievement gain score. sub-problem 4. is there a significant relationship between students' academic achievements and their attitudes towards the turkish language and literature course? pearson product-moment correlation analysis was carried out to determine whether there is a significant relationship between the academic achievements of 9th-grade students studying in schools with different academic success levels and their attitude towards the turkish language and literature course. the obtained findings are indicated in table 6. table-6. the relationship between academic success and attitude towards turkish language and literature course. variable interest importance avoidance knowledge attitude total score academic achievement -.426** -.204 -.201 -.283* -.338** note: *: p <.05, **: p <.01. when table 6 is examined, it is seen that there is a negative but significant relationship between the interest and knowledge sub-dimensions of attitude towards turkish language and literature course and academic asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 154 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group achievement in grammar and total scores. based on this finding, it can be concluded that if the academic success in grammar increases, the interest in the attitude towards the turkish language and literature lesson in students and the value given to the knowledge in this field decreases. as a result of the analysis, no statistically significant relationship was found between academic achievement in grammar and the importance and avoidance subdimension of attitude towards the turkish language and literature course. 3.2. findings related to teachers sub-problem 5. how are the opinions of the turkish language and literature teachers formed regarding the grammar teaching processes included in the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum? question 1: what do you think about the integration of turkish literature and grammar subjects? what are the advantages and disadvantages, if any, for you? table-7. the views of turkish language and literature teachers on the integration of turkish literature and grammar subjects. school level i find it advantageous / positive i find disadvantageous / negative it has advantages and disadvantages school a a1, a4 a3 a2 school b b1, b2 school c c2, c3, c6 c1, c4, c5 total 2 6 4 based on their answers to the research question, 50% of turkish language and literature teachers think that integration turkish literature and grammar subjects negatively affect the course. on the other hand, 33.33% stated that this integration has negative outcomes as well as positive outcomes. only 16.66% of the teachers expressed a positive opinion about the integration of these lessons. according to the statements of the teachers who stated a positive opinion about the integration of turkish literature and grammar subjects, the based instruction of grammar subjects and exercises on texts is more useful than the previous ones. the organization of the curriculum in this way allows these two interrelated courses to be taught in a more holistic and tidy way. besides, it is also stated by teachers that a teacher can see the class in all aspects with this application and that the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum is a better one in terms of training time and subjects compared to the previous ones. a4: i consider this integration correct and useful. i believe that the instruction of grammar subjects without text will not benefit the student. when the subjects are integrated, we can practice the literary texts in the textbooks about the subject of grammar we want. the opinions of teachers, which can be considered as negative related to the integration of turkish literature and grammar subjects, are basically that this integration only remains in theory, there are problems in practice and two lessons are carried out separately though. it was stated that this problem in practice was primarily due to the confusion of students, the inability to think of two lessons together, and the fact that it was not appropriate to conduct grammar studies on literary texts, especially with students with low levels. therefore, teachers also do separate grammar lessons as well as literature lessons. in addition, it was also stated that this integration caused one of the two lessons to be neglected, the balance could not be established between the two lessons, and the subject in which the teacher felt strong was focused on the subject. a3: i do not find it positive to integrate grammar and literature lessons. integrating these lessons causes one of both courses to be neglected. the teacher, who is better at the grammar field, focuses on grammar, and the teacher who is better at literature focuses on literature. b1: i don't think it's advantageous. because when these lessons are integrated, confusion and bemusement occurred in the students. when telling the subject of story in the literature lesson, suddenly starting to talk about adjective causes makes children to be confused. although integrated, a duality emerges when applying. question 2: what do you think about the absence of phonetics and morphology subjects in the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum? all of the teachers (12) think that within the curriculum, phonology and morphology should be included in grammar subjects. the majority of teachers are of the opinion that the subjects of phonology and morphology are one of the basic subjects of the turkish language and that these subjects should be taught in order for the student to understand the turkish language better. c1: phonology and morphology subjects are the basic subjects of turkish. these had to be included. in addition, three teachers stated that the topics of phonology and morphology were necessary for the understanding of the spelling rules for the student, while a teacher stated that the same requirement also applies to the subjects of rhyme-redif and elements of the sentence. a2: i find it negative. i also emphasize this in lessons. they need to know the morphology about rhyme and redif. i remind them of the consonant assimilation when the spelling rules are taught. morphology is required in the elements of the sentence. while two teachers stated that the subjects of phonology and morphology were one of the issues that students had difficulty in learning, one of them stated that they could not learn these subjects in primary education. one teacher emphasized that the topics of phonology and morphology should be taught as they are asked in the central exams that students enter. c3: this also caught my attention. especially the correct use and application of spelling rules necessitate these subjects. this is important. so it should have included the subjects of phonetics. when it comes to morphology, while teaching word types (noun, adjective, etc.), we can also teach these types in terms of structure. if these subjects will be faced by the student as a question in tyt and ayt (central examinations), it is an inconsistency that they are not included in the curriculum. question 5: in your opinion, do the texts given in the textbooks for teaching grammar topics provide sufficient examples to explain the determined grammar topics? why? asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 155 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. the views turkish language and literature teachers about the texts in the textbooks. school level the text in the textbooks provides sufficient examples for grammar teaching. the texts in the textbooks do not provide sufficient examples for grammar teaching. school a a1 a2, a3, a4 school b b1, b2 school c c2, c3 c1, c4, c5, c6 total 3 9 while 25% of turkish language and literature teachers think that the texts in the textbooks provide sufficient examples for grammar teaching, 75% think that the texts in the textbooks are insufficient for grammar subjects. three of the teachers interviewed think that basically different text is given for each grammar subject and this provides sufficient examples. a1: i think it is sufficient to explain grammar topics as different texts are given for each subject in the textbooks. seven of the teachers who expressed negative opinions stated that they could not find all the examples of the grammar subject in the texts given in the textbooks, therefore the texts were not sufficient for grammar teaching. a2: it certainly does not, because when the subject of names is being taught, the text in the book may not include an example of a name. two of the teachers think that the grammar activities given in the textbooks are insufficient. they stated that this does not enable students to practice grammar subjects at a sufficient level. b1: it does not provide. there are only one or two activities. although the children say they understand the subject, they cannot solve the questions in the tests. this shows that the activities are not enough. because books are mostly literature oriented. question 7: what can be done for more effective grammar teaching? what are your suggestions on this subject? in line with the answers given by the teachers to the research question, the suggestions they have made regarding the teaching of a more effective grammar than the existing grammar instruction can be listed as follows:  the time spared on teaching grammar should be increased. (a1, b2)  grammar subjects should be explained in detail. (a3, a4)  more practice should be done on the texts. (a3, b2, c5)  the texts given in the textbooks should be selected from the texts including more examples on the subject, the number of texts in the textbook should be increased, and a rich text archive should be created for teaching grammar subjects. (a2, a4, c3)  the number of writing activities should be increased, and the permanence of the subjects learned should be ensured. (a2, c4, c6)  literature and grammar subjects should be given as separate lessons. (c3, c6)  grammar subjects should be taught in real life, not with anxiety about the exam. (b1, c5)  resources and material diversity should be increased. (c1, c5)  grammar education should be provided to students with a solid foundation at the primary level, and the student who comes to the high school level should be able to practice more easily. (c2)  the number of measurement and evaluation questions at the end of the units should be increased. (c3)  the level in textbooks is a bit high, so the subjects should be made a little easier. (c3)  types of instruction and ways of developing thought should be added to the curriculum. (c3)  attention should be paid to the subject order. (a2)  phonology and morphology should be included in the curriculum. (a1)  more attention should be given to reading books. (c4)  new teaching methods should be developed by experts. (c4)  not only turkish language and literature teachers, but teachers in all branches should also be careful about grammar. (a1) when the answers given by teachers to the research question are evaluated in general, it is seen that they have the idea that some improvements should be made in grammar teaching. some of the teachers suggest that a separate lesson should be included apart from the literature course to improve grammar teaching in our schools. other teachers, on the other hand, think that it is a good practice to study grammar subjects with a literature lesson, but the texts in the textbook should be chosen among more productive texts for grammar applications. teachers believe that application-oriented methods and techniques should be used in teaching grammar. it is also stated that teachers need richer resources and expert help. sub-problem 6. what are the views of the turkish language and literature teachers regarding the use of grammar teaching processes of the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum in their classrooms? question 3: do you lecture the subject of grammar in your lessons? why? table-9. turkish language and literature teachers' preference for instruction in grammar lessons. school level i lecture i don't lecture sometimes i lecture and sometimes i don’t school a a1, a2, a3 a4 school b b1, b2 school c c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6 total 11 0 1 when the table was examined, it was found that no teacher stated that they do not lecture in the teaching of grammar subjects. it is seen that the majority of teachers prefer lecturing during the processing of grammar subjects in turkish language and literature. this majority, which has a rate of 91.66%, stated that students had difficulty in understanding these subjects and that the subjects should be understood better by the students as the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 156 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group reason for their preference for lecturing in the teaching of grammar subjects. in addition, the teachers working at the c level school stated that the students could not learn these subjects adequately in primary education, their level of readiness was quite low, and that is why they lecture on these subjects. according to the opinions of the teachers who stated that they have lectured, the student who did not have a theoretical command of grammar had problems in determining the examples of the subject on literary texts. a1: i give lectures because the student has difficulty in understanding and practicing the subject. but i devote more time to implementation. b2: yes. the student cannot understand very well without teaching the subject. so do not lecture, the technique of foreshadowing is not very suitable. c1: i do because the success of the school is low, so the students are very lacking in terms of subjects, so i give a lecture first. i lecture the subject from scratch. when the research questions were examined, the only turkish language and literature teacher who stated that in some cases he lectured the subject and in some cases directly applied, stated that he acted according to the readiness of the students. the only teacher who can determine the course teaching process in accordance with the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum in the processing of grammar subjects works at a school. a4: i act according to my student's readiness. if they do not have any information on the subject, i give quick facts and study grammar in the text. question 4: what grammar subjects do you pay attention to when evaluating the writing assignments you give to your students at the end of the unit? table-10. the matters turkish language and literature teachers consider when evaluating students' writing homework. school level punctuation spelling ambiguity content school a a1, a2, a3, a4 a1, a2, a3, a4 a1, a2 school b b1, b2 b1, b2 school c c1, c2, c3, c4, c6 c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6 c5, c6 total 11 12 2 2 according to the findings obtained from the answers given by the teachers to the research question, it is seen that almost all of them pay attention to the spelling and punctuation issues in the writing tasks of the students. the approach of the curriculum in this regard is that the topics of writing and punctuation are not given as a single class and a single unit, but are distributed throughout the classes and units. accordingly, the teachers' approach in this subject is compatible with the curriculum. on the other hand, two teachers stated that they were paying attention to whether there was any ambiguity while evaluating the writing assignments they gave to students as well as writing and punctuation, and it was found that both teachers were careful about the content of the assignments. question 6: do you use any material other than textbooks and texts in them when you teach grammar subjects? if yes, what are they? table-11. turkish language and literature teachers' use of materials other than textbooks. school level i don't use any material other than these i bring other texts to the lesson i use different materials besides texts school a a1, a2, a4 a1, a3, a4 school b b1, b2 b1, b2 school c c2 c1,c3, c4, c5, c6 total 1 5 10 according to the answers given by the teachers to the research question, it was determined that the majority of teachers chose different materials other than textbooks. five of the teachers interviewed stated that they used other texts during the teaching of grammar subjects besides the texts in the textbook. it was observed that the teachers who supported the teaching process with different texts other than the texts in the textbook are the teachers working at a and b schools, and the teachers working at the c school chose sources with lectures related to grammar except for the texts in the textbook in their lessons. a1: i am trying to use leaf tests and texts that i have determined. a2: i am bringing different texts into the classroom. sometimes i give homework from texts that students can find while giving a performance project. on the other hand, it was seen that ten teachers chose different materials other than texts. based on the expressions of the teachers who chose the materials other than the texts during the teaching process, four teachers use worksheets and leaf tests, four teachers use the smartboard and eba (educational informatics network) presentations, three teachers use the source with lectures, and two teachers use the materials they obtain from various websites. b2: i use some sites on the internet. i use activity books. i give priority to the texts in the textbooks, but if necessary, i bring other texts on the subject. c5: i use eba tests and application-style tests. one teacher stated that s/he did not use different texts and materials for grammar subjects, except for the texts in the textbook. c2: i do not use any other text, but i try to increase understanding with concept maps. 4. results and discussion 4.1. results related to the students according to the findings obtained during the research process, when the study group was evaluated in general, it was seen that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores related to asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 157 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group grammar achievement levels, and there was an increase in their mean scores. in this case, it can be said that the grammar teaching carried out in the 9th grade of secondary education has an effect on the academic success of the students in general. it can be thought that the grammar subjects learned by students in primary education are forgotten during their transition to secondary education, remembering this information with grammar activities carried out during the semester or learning these subjects better in secondary education is effective in reaching this result. when the change in the academic achievement of the students is evaluated for each school separately, it is concluded that the academic achievement level of the school is effective on the academic achievement scores of the students in the grammar, and the difference between the academic achievement pre-test and post-test scores differ significantly according to the school level. accordingly, the academic achievement gain points of the students studying at c school differed significantly from those studying at a and b school. based on this, it was observed that teaching activities carried out in the field of grammar in a and b schools had a positive effect on students' academic achievement, whereas grammar activities carried out in this field in school c did not have a significant effect on students' academic achievement. when the change of attitude scores according to schools was analyzed, it was seen that the attitudes of the students studying at the advanced level a school towards the turkish language and literature course differ significantly in terms of their pre-test and post-test scores. it was observed that grammar teaching activities carried out in school a negatively affect students' attitudes towards the turkish language and literature course in terms of interest, importance, avoidance and knowledge. it is concluded that there was a decrease in all subdimensions and total scores of the attitude scale in school a, and this decrease made a significant difference. it was determined that the pretest and posttest total scores of attitude towards the turkish language and literature course of the students studying at the b-level school with moderate success increased, and this increase was significantly different. when the sub-dimensions of the attitude scale were analyzed, it was seen that there was no significant difference in the dimension of interest, while there was a significant difference in the importance, avoidance and knowledge sub-dimensions. when evaluated in terms of total scores, it was seen that the grammar teaching activities carried out in school b positively and significantly increased students' attitudes towards the turkish language and literature course. on the other hand, when we look at the school c, it was seen that there was no significant difference in the students' attitudes towards turkish language and literature lessons in the total scores of pre-test and post-test. there was no significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores in the attitude scale's interest, importance, avoidance and knowledge sub-dimensions. from this point of view, it was concluded that the grammar teaching activities carried out at school c did not have any effect on students' attitudes towards the turkish language and literature course. when evaluated in general, it was concluded that the attitudes of students towards the turkish language and literature course were affected by the academic success level of the school in which they studied, and their attitudes differed significantly. the results obtained regarding the relationship between students' academic achievements and their attitudes towards the turkish language and literature course showed that there was a negative correlation between academic achievement and attitude towards the turkish language and literature course. according to this, as academic achievement in the field of grammar increases, attitude points towards the turkish language and literature course decrease. when analyzed in terms of its sub-dimensions, there was no correlation in importance and avoidance dimension, whereas there was a negative correlation in the sub-dimensions of interest and knowledge. when evaluated over total scores, it was seen that there was a strong and negative correlation. based on this situation, it can be concluded that students who study at a and b schools and who have high academic achievements place importance on getting high scores from the turkish language and literature course, but they are not interested in the course and do not value the knowledge they will learn in this course. it is seen that the students who study at school c and who have low academic achievement are interested in the lesson and they value the knowledge that the lesson will bring to them, but their academic achievement is low and the grammar teaching activities do not change their academic achievement. when we look at the academic studies examining the effectiveness of the text-based grammar teaching method and contemporary teaching approaches on grammar teaching, it is seen that these are mostly research carried out at the primary level, therefore the school level factor is not included in these studies. derman (2002) states that the use of fairy tale texts could be effective in mother tongue teaching, ciçek (2006) states that joke texts could be effective in mother tongue and grammar teaching, and sentürk (2008) states that tongue twisters can be effective. according to the researchers, such texts can be more effective in terms of being interesting and pleasant texts. it is seen that experimental studies on the text-based grammar teaching method are also carried out at the primary level. it is stated that in such studies in which the researcher interferes with the teaching situations, the teaching situations arranged in accordance with the contemporary teaching approach are more effective on student achievement compared to traditional methods. in ceçen (2007) study titled “text-based grammar teaching”, they worked on students studying at the second level of primary education. in the study carried out with the experiment group of 35 and the control group of 34, an achievement test consisting of 40 questions was applied as a pretest and a posttest. according to the data obtained, it was seen that teaching text-based grammar is more successful than the traditional method in developing students' grammar skills. in derman. (2008) study on text selection in grammar teaching, they worked with 2 different experimental groups and 1 control group. the control group was taught by using texts in the textbook, the experimental 1 group was taught by literary texts selected by the researcher, and the experiment 2 group was taught by using the texts developed by the researcher. as a result, there was a significant difference in the academic achievement of the control and experimental groups in favor of the experimental groups, and it was proved that the choice of text in grammar teaching affects academic success. in a similar study by ceçen. and aytaş (2008) it was observed that the academic success of the experimental group in which the text-based grammar teaching method was applied was higher than the control group in which the traditional method was applied. it was concluded that teaching text-based grammar is more effective in improving asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 158 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group grammar success. yılmaz (2018) study is remarkable in terms of conducting grammar teaching in teaching turkish to foreigners in a text-centered manner. after the text-based grammar activities applied to the selected group in the research process, students were able to use language structures in a communicative context as well as understanding the language structures in terms of their form, meaning and use. it was stated by the students that they can use grammatical structures in daily life outside of the lesson. unlike these studies, menteş (2004) studied the effectiveness of active learning method in grammar teaching in primary education, while yakışan (2017) studied the effectiveness of the discovery learning technique. it is concluded that the stated methods and strategies are more effective in teaching grammar. unlike the researches given above, our study determines the applicability of the text-based grammar teaching targeted in the curriculum by considering the levels of the schools and emphasizes the effect of grammar teaching on student success and attitude towards the course. as a result, it was observed that the school level had an important effect on the academic achievement and attitude towards the course of the students in the grammar field at secondary education level and the teaching activities did not have the same effect on the students. the research addresses an important problem in this aspect. 4.2. results related to the teachers when the approaches of turkish language and literature teachers on the teaching grammar and their views on the grammar teaching processes of the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum are evaluated, it is seen that there are general problems in implementing the curriculum. first of all, teachers mostly stated negative opinions about integrating grammar and turkish literature classes. based on this, it can be concluded that teachers have problems in teaching text-based grammar subjects and cannot use this method in their lessons. the teachers who stated positive views and stated that it is beneficial to use texts in the teaching of grammar subjects are the teachers who work in a school which has students with high academic achievement. on the other hand, the teachers who work at school c stated that it is not possible to teach grammar subjects through texts because of the low academic achievement and readiness of students. as a result, the vast majority of teachers stated that they had problems in implementing the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum and that they carried out grammar, and turkish literature courses separately. teachers also have mostly negative views about the adequacy of the texts in the textbooks in teaching grammar. teachers think that the texts in the textbooks do not contain all the examples of the related grammar subject and that the grammar activities are insufficient in the textbooks, which negatively affects the teaching of grammar. all of the teachers think that the subjects of phonology and morphology should definitely be included in the program, these topics are the basic topics of turkish, and that these topics should be known in advance in order to learn topics such as spelling, rhyme and redif. teachers also think that these subjects should be included in the curriculum as they are asked in the central exams. based on this, teachers consider the absence of phonology and morphology in the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum as a wrong practice. in general, it can be said that the turkish language and literature teachers have negative opinions about the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum. according to the teachers, the goals of the curriculum related to grammar teaching remain in theory, and problems occur in practice. however, teachers think that integrating grammar and turkish literature lessons has negative results, textbooks and texts in the textbooks are not suitable for teaching grammar as the curriculum requires, and phonology and morphology subjects should be included in the program. among the suggestions of the teachers about teaching more effective grammar, the most prominent ones are the arrangements in the curriculum, course hours and textbooks. the main ones focus on increasing the number of hours allocated to teaching grammar, increasing the number of texts selected in the textbooks, having more examples of grammar topics on these texts, and teaching a more detailed grammar and increasing the number of writing activities. teachers' suggestions for improving grammar teaching are mostly expected to be realized by high-level institutions and experts. considering the situation in which turkish language and literature teachers can apply the text-based grammar teaching method in their lessons in accordance with the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum, it is concluded that almost all of the teachers do not use this method in their lessons. it was determined that teachers use the method of lecturing to a large extent in grammar lessons. they state students' difficulty in understanding these issues as the reason for this situation. particularly the teachers who work in the c school prefer the lecturing method of choice because of the low level of students' readiness. as a result, although teachers find the method of lecturing more effective in grammar teaching and express that students understand the subject more easily with this method, they find it difficult to practice over texts and as a method above student level. the materials chosen by teachers for teaching grammar subjects also have a similar appearance. in this regard, it was seen that teachers preferred sourcebooks with lecturing rather than the texts in the textbooks in teaching grammar. it was observed that the teachers who brought different texts to the lesson apart from the texts in the textbooks were the teachers working in a and b schools, and the teachers working in the c school chose sources with lecturing other than the texts. while teachers evaluate students’ writing assignments, they mostly pay attention to matters such as spelling, punctuation and ambiguity. on the other hand, it was determined that teachers did not pay attention to the use of the grammar subjects taught about the relevant unit in the students' writings and how they used these subjects within the narrative skill. considering the results, it is seen that turkish language and literature teachers have problems in applying the 2018 turkish language and literature curriculum along with the text-based grammar teaching and continue to use traditional teaching methods. it is seen that other academic studies focusing on teacher opinions in grammar teaching support the findings of this research. in their study, sağır (2002) states that teachers do not use audiovisual tools other than textbooks when teaching grammar subjects. in addition, grammar topics in schools are taught using the direct instruction asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 159 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group method, and grammar teaching cannot go beyond teaching certain definitions and rules. in the study of ertekinoğlu (2003) as a result of the teacher interviews, it was observed that the teachers did not know the modern teaching methods and techniques sufficiently and still performed traditional rote learning. according to erdem (2007) research, teachers mostly use textbooks and then supplementary resource books. akgül (2010) on the other hand, determined according to their study on turkish language teachers working in primary schools that teachers use textbooks the most and secondly supplementary resource books as teaching materials. in addition, teachers think that the number of texts suitable for grammar teaching is less in the textbooks and they make the students memorize in their lessons, so it can be said the lessons are still taught according to traditional understanding. teachers think that the grammar program does not meet student and teacher expectations. similarly, in the study of carkıt (2013) it has been concluded that traditional grammar teaching is still in practice due to crowded classes, technological inadequacy, low level of students 'readiness, teachers' anxiety to catch the curriculum, etc. among the studies on textbooks and the texts included here can be shown (kanat, 2016) study. in the study in which 6th, 7th and 8th-grade turkish textbooks were examined, it was determined that some of the texts in the textbooks included sufficient examples for grammar subjects to be covered, while in others there were a limited number of examples or none at all. in the research conducted by solmaz (2010) on secondary school textbooks, it was found that the textbooks are far from scientific aspects, contradictory and inconsistent with linguistics. according to these studies, teachers generally have negative opinions about the curriculum in terms of grammar teaching. teachers mostly use textbooks as materials in their grammar lessons, but nevertheless, they do not find the texts in their textbooks sufficient for teaching grammar. when evaluated in terms of approaches and methods used in grammar lessons, teachers continue to use traditional methods and direct instruction method in their lessons even though they think that contemporary approaches and methods such as the constructivist approach are more effective. our study is compatible with the findings of other studies in this field. recommendations developed according to the results obtained from the findings of the research are as follows: 1. based on the finding that academic achievement and attitude towards the course differ from school level in the field of grammar, it is thought that it would be beneficial to diversify the turkish language and literature curriculum to be applied in secondary education level schools according to the school level and therefore, according to students' linguistic readiness and interest and attitude towards the course. in this case, developing different language and literature curricula according to the school level and the qualifications of these schools will have positive benefits. 2. based on the finding that teachers use textbooks as materials more in their lessons and most do not find the text in the textbooks sufficient for teaching grammar, it is recommended to make new arrangements for the texts chosen in the textbooks and to set the criterion for the appropriate grammar subject and to be able to exemplify the subject as necessary in terms of the texts chosen in the textbooks. 3. based on the opinions of teachers about phonetics and morphology, grammar subjects that will be included in the curriculum should be arranged in accordance with the principle of teaching from the known to the unknown. 4. it is seen that teachers continue to use the direct instruction method, which is one of the traditional teaching methods, in grammar teaching. therefore, it is thought that it is necessary to provide in-service training to our teachers on how to apply text-based grammar instruction in their lessons in order to carry out effective and functional grammar teaching that supports basic language skills in our schools. in this way, it can be provided that teachers can teach grammar subjects with a learner-centered discovery learning technique in accordance with the students' readiness levels and expectations of the students. 5. considering the relationship between students' academic achievement in grammar and their attitudes towards the turkish language and literature course, it can be recommended that students should be informed about the importance and necessity of learning grammar. references akgül, e. (2010). primary education ii. grammar teaching problems in the level. master thesis. aslan, c. (2017). teaching turkish turkish language and literature with exemplary educational situations. ankara: anı publishing. büyüköztürk, ş. (2006). data analysis handbook for social sciences. ankara: pegem academy publishing. büyüköztürk., ş., kılıç, ç. e., akgün, ö. a., karadeniz, ş., & demirel, f. (2017). scientific research methods (23rd ed.). ankara: pegem academy. carkıt, c. (2013). evaluation of grammar teaching process in secondary schools in terms of constructivist approach. master thesis. ceçen, m. â. (2007). text-based grammar teaching. doctoral thesis. ceçen., m. a., & aytaş, g. (2008). the effect of textual grammar teaching on eighth grade students' grammar success. yüzüncü yıl university faculty of education journal, 5(1), 133-149. cemiloğlu, m. (2003). turkish language and literature teaching. istanbul: alfa publications. ciçek, s. (2006). use of joke texts in mother tongue (turkish) teaching. master thesis. derman, s. (2002). use of fairy tale texts in mother tongue (turkish) teaching. master thesis. derman., s. (2008). a research on the selection of texts in grammar teaching (7th grade). doctoral thesis. erdem, i̇. (2007). a research on the problems of grammar teaching in primary education. doctoral thesis. ertekinoğlu, s. (2003). examination of teachers' views on grammar teaching in turkish lessons. master thesis. göçer, a. (2008). the use of analysis method in turkish grammar teaching. mustafa kemal university journal of social sciences institute, 5(10), 101-119. güneş, f. (2017). teaching turkish: approaches and models (5th ed.). ankara: pegem academy. kanat, a. (2016). an investigation on the relationship between texts and grammar in elementary school second level turkish textbooks. master's thesis. kavcar, c., oğuzkan, f., & sever, s. (2005). turkish teaching for turkish and classroom teachers. ankara: engin publishing. meb. (2018). secondary education turkish language and literature course (9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades) curriculum. retrieved from: http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr. menteş, b. k. (2004). primary education ii. tier vi. effectiveness of active learning method in grammar teaching in classrooms. master thesis. mertens., d. m. (2019). research and evaluation in education and psychology (5th ed.). california: sage publications. sağır, m. (2002). grammar teaching in primary schools. turkish language, 1(601), 56-59. sentürk, h. (2008). use of nursery rhymes in mother tongue (turkish) teaching. master thesis. sever, s. (2000). turkish teaching and full learning. ankara: anı publishing. http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/ asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 149-160 160 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group simşek, r. (1983). place of mother tongue in contemporary education [special issue]. turkish language teaching (pp. 36-39). ankara: turkish language institute publications. solmaz, m. (2010). an evaluation in terms of linguistics on secondary school grammar books. doctoral thesis. veyis, f. (2015). attitude scale towards turkish literature course: validity and reliability study. turkish studies, 10(11), 1609-1620. yakışan, o. (2017). investigation of the effect of teaching strategy through the invention in grammar teaching in secondary schools on student success and permanence. master thesis. yıldırım, a., & simşek, h. (2011). qualitative research methods in social sciences (8th ed.). ankara: seçkin yayıncılık. yılmaz, o. (2018). text-oriented grammar teaching in teaching turkish as a foreign language. master thesis. yin, r. k. (2002). case study research: design ang methods (3rd ed.). thousand oaks: sage pbc. yin., r. k. (2009). case study research: design and methods (4th ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 117 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 4, 117-123, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5106 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an experimental study: an integrative strategy of pbl combined with an organsystems-based curriculum to improve academic achievement and career maturity cheng yao1 yu yang2 siliang yu3 ( corresponding author) 1,3faculty of education, nakhon phanom university, muang nakhon phanom, nkp 48000, thailand. 1email: slevenyaocheng@163.com 3email: yusiliang910630@163.com 2department of general surgery, the first people’s hospital of mianyang city, mianyang, 621000, china. 2email: yangyu0908@163.com abstract this study aims to investigate the impact of integrating problem-based learning (pbl) and organ system-based curriculum (osbc) on medical students' academic achievement and career maturity within the context of medical education. an experimental design was employed, involving students from a medical school in china. participants were randomly assigned to either a control group with a traditional curriculum or an experimental group receiving an integrated pbl and osbc curriculum focused on cardiovascular system diseases. the intervention spanned four weeks. the results indicate that the experimental group demonstrated significantly higher academic achievement immediately after the intervention compared to the control group. this improvement persisted in a follow-up test conducted one month later. career maturity also improved in the experimental group, albeit with a less sustained effect. the study underscores the potential of integrated teaching strategies in medical education for enhancing critical thinking and practical skills. however, long-term improvements in career maturity may necessitate further refinement of teaching methods. these findings contribute to the ongoing discourse on effective medical education strategies and emphasize the importance of a comprehensive approach to prepare students for academic excellence and clinical competence. future research with larger sample sizes and consideration of additional influencing factors is recommended to gain deeper insights into the dynamics of medical education. keywords: academic achievement, career maturity, medical education, osbc, pbl. citation | yao, c., yang, y., & yu, s. (2023). an experimental study: an integrative strategy of pbl combined with an organsystems-based curriculum to improve academic achievement and career maturity. asian journal of education and training, 9(4), 117– 123. 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5106 history: received: 16 august 2023 revised: 9 october 2023 accepted: 20 october 2023 published: 3 november 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the education department of guizhou province, china has granted approval for this study. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................118 2. literature review.......................................................................................................................................................................................118 3. method...........................................................................................................................................................................................................119 4. results............................................................................................................................................................................................................120 5. discussions ...................................................................................................................................................................................................121 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................................122 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................122 mailto:slevenyaocheng@163.com mailto:yusiliang910630@163.com mailto:yangyu0908@163.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5106 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3174-3293 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-9306-0508 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5009-276x asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 117-123 118 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study's original contribution lies in its comprehensive examination of the combined impact of problem-based learning (pbl) and organ system-based curriculum (osbc) on medical students' academic achievement and career maturity. by integrating these pedagogical approaches and assessing their long-term effects, this research provides a novel perspective on enhancing medical education outcomes. 1. introduction as an integral constituent of the societal healthcare framework, medical education bears the imperative mission of nurturing prospective professionals in the field of medicine (bulger, 1992). the amalgamation of problem-based learning (pbl) and the organ-systems-based curriculum (osbc) has evolved into a proven pedagogical paradigm, proffering a prospective avenue for enhancing medical students' scholarly accomplishments and vocational maturity. this empirical inquiry aspires to unveil the synergistic potency inherent in the confluence of pbl with osbc, with the aim of comprehensively elevating medical students' academic achievement and vocational maturity. traditional medical pedagogy is delineated by educators' unidirectional impartation of knowledge, with theoretical content from textbooks and classroom environments occupying the epicenter of pedagogy (urkin, fram, jotkowitz, & naimer, 2017). this underscores the preeminent role of educators, thereby embodying a "teacher-centered" approach (schug, 2003). for content, conventional medical pedagogy prioritizes the dissemination of textbook-derived knowledge (tudor car et al., 2019) tudor albeit often constraining the scope of knowledge imparted by the confines of the instructional materials themselves, thus rendering it inadequate in catering to the holistic knowledge requisites of students. concerning the teacher-student dynamics, conventional medical curricular paradigms may inadvertently culminate in the ascendancy of educator authority, thereby engendering a hierarchical teacher-pupil schema (de oliveira et al., 2018). in the long run, this may prove counterproductive to cultivating robust teacher-student relationships. furthermore, the progress of science and technology has propelled the evolution of the medical discipline. however, with the emergence of innovative new media and technologies in the modern era, traditional teaching methods have imposed limitations on the avenues through which medical students access knowledge, falling short of meeting the sustained developmental demands of medical scholars (lin, chen, & liu, 2017). from the vantage point of participants, traditional medical pedagogy encompasses both educators and students; however, felder and henriques (1995) suggested that once students harbor disillusionment towards the instructive faculty, they may readily forsake the pursuit of education within the given course. medical students, recognized as pivotal preparatory agents for healthcare professionals, must be imbued with a heightened capacity for adaptability and learning, enabling them to contend with the perpetually evolving medical domain effectively. given the incessant innovation in medical technology and the escalating intricacies within medical practice, the conventional methodologies employed in medical pedagogy may necessitate revitalization and augmentation. in this milieu of continual advancement and flux, educators must proactively seek innovative modalities to engender medical professionals capacitated to navigate the exigencies posed by future healthcare challenges. problem-based learning (pbl) is a structured pedagogical modality that amalgamates sundry teaching strategies to augment student-centered learning outcomes, with the focus extending beyond the mere acquisition of knowledge (choon‐eng gwee, 2008). through the implementation of pbl, students cease to function as passive recipients of knowledge and instead emerge as active participants in the exploration of bona fide clinical cases, thereby cultivating acumen in critical thinking (nargundkar, samaddar, & mukhopadhyay, 2014), teamwork (bernstein, tipping, bercovitz, & skinner, 1995), and self-directed learning (malan, ndlovu, & engelbrecht, 2014). this methodology substantively enhances the capability of medical students to acquire the proficiencies and attributes indispensable for their subsequent clinical practice. concomitantly, the incorporation of osbc underscores the integrative and comprehensive facets of medical knowledge (obi et al., 2022; villalobos, kruczek, & bobulescu, 2023) the division of clinical curricular systems along the axis of organ systems, facilitating both vertical and horizontal interconnectivity within the pedagogical framework, facilitates the enhanced comprehension of the mutual interdependencies and influences between diverse organs. this allows medical students to enhance their scholarly achievements and vocational maturity. this empirical inquiry endeavors to explore the potential of the pedagogical model that synthesizes pbl with osbc, with the aim of elevating the academic accomplishments and vocational maturity of medical students. through the rigors of scientific research design and data analysis, we envisage unveiling the efficacy and ramifications of this integrated pedagogical model within medical education, thereby furnishing robust empirical substantiation to fortify the trajectory of ongoing innovation and development within medical pedagogy. the further explication of the significance of this research within the domain of medical education, coupled with the contemplation of its objectives and inquiries, augments the impetus for the continued evolution of medical pedagogy. 2. literature review pbl is fundamentally a student-centered educational approach adopted by numerous medical schools worldwide for nearly half a century (cowan et al., 2010; kwan, 2017). according to yu et al. (2009) pbl has made significant strides in educational reform since its introduction into medical education in 1969. other research has shown that the incorporation of pbl in medical education can enhance students' holistic abilities and the effectiveness of medical education, including critical thinking, collaborative learning, communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and self-directed learning (latif, mumtaz, mumtaz, & hussain, 2018; manuaba, -no, & wu, 2022; sahoo & mohammed, 2018). however, a systematic review questioned whether pbl in medical curricula leads students toward specific career paths (tsigarides, wingfield, & kulendran, 2017). it was based on most research investigations suggesting that pbl does not tend to bias students toward particular professions. still, the article points out that various confounding factors may influence professional preferences, necessitating further asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 117-123 119 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group research to clarify these results. shrivastava and shrivastava (2020) define osbc as an integrative instructional format that has been particularly effective in deepening medical knowledge and fostering a comprehensive understanding of various organ systems. this curriculum is centered around organ systems (liang, zhang, & wang, 2022) and facilitates the interconnectedness of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and clinical knowledge relevant to each system. worldwide, some medical schools, such as those in the united states (pfeifer, 2018), have shifted teaching units to an organ-system-based approach, where students learn one organ system's anatomy, physiology, and pathology before moving on to the next. combining pbl and osbc is based on their complementary nature in educational philosophies, learning strategies, and knowledge integration. pbl emphasizes students' active exploration and problem-solving abilities, cultivating self-directed learning and independent thinking skills. when students face clinical scenarios, they must gather and integrate knowledge from various domains to address complex issues through discussion and collaboration. however, tsou et al. (2009) proposed that pbl's limitation lies in its potential inability to comprehensively cover the breadth and depth of clinical knowledge, particularly the detailed understanding of different organ systems' structures and functions. in contrast, previous studies (chang et al., 2015; hankin et al., 2017; shrivastava & shrivastava, 2020) have shown that osbc focuses on an in-depth exploration of specific organ systems' anatomy, physiology, and pathology, constructing a systematic knowledge framework. this approach gives students a more comprehensive understanding of human anatomy and function but may need more problem-solving abilities in clinical situations. the integration of both strategies creates a more comprehensive and realistic learning experience. through systematic divisions guided by pbl-oriented teaching principles, instructors outline the objectives and potential pathologies of the organ system before the class. students then seek solutions using innovative media tools or other resources and finally engage in interactive face-to-face discussions with peers and instructors during the teaching phase. taking the cardiovascular system as an example, instructors can guide students to explore factors affecting fluid balance and their impact on the cardiovascular system before class. during actual teaching, the cardiovascular system is systematically explained and linked to anatomy, physiology, clinical cases, internal medicine, surgery, skills, and other layers to teach the mechanisms and treatment of cardiovascular diseases comprehensively. such indepth integration greatly enriches learning resources, allowing students to deeply understand each system's knowledge while providing a channel to access cutting-edge medical information. this approach stimulates students' self-driven cognition and thirst for knowledge in medical learning and has achieved some success in practical teaching (si et al., 2021). 3. method 3.1. experimental design this study adopted an experimental design to investigate the impact of the integration of pbl and osbc strategies on students' academic achievement and career maturity. participants in this study were recruited from the senior class of a medical school in guizhou province, china. they were randomly assigned to either the control group, which received a traditional curriculum, or the experimental group, which underwent an integrated curriculum comprising pbl and osbc. the participants, aged between 21 and 23, majored in clinical medicine. detailed information about the research purpose and procedures was provided to participants, and informed consent was obtained. 3.2. intervention measures the experimental group received an integrated teaching strategy, while the control group followed a traditional chalkboard-based teaching method, emphasizing lecture-based instruction. the traditional teaching model was based on standard courses, with instructors primarily employing didactic teaching methods and strict boundaries for reviewing basic medical knowledge. the intervention program was structured around pbl and osbc. the intervention theme focused on cardiovascular system diseases and spanned four weeks, with eight sessions, each lasting 45 minutes. before the course commenced, all participants underwent a pre-test to assess their academic levels and career maturity. articipants in the experimental group engaged in the integrated pbl and osbc strategy. before the course, trained instructors designed relevant questions and potential pathologies to introduce key challenges to studying the cardiovascular system. students were encouraged to seek answers independently using resources such as new media tools and medical databases, fostering critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. during face-to-face instruction, students collectively discussed the course content, delving into real clinical scenarios systematically, including anatomy, physiology, case physiology, internal medicine, surgical diseases, and procedural pathways related to the cardiovascular system. meanwhile, the control group continued to receive traditional chalkboard-based teaching, which relied on conventional lectures and emphasized the delivery of standard course content, potentially limiting students' development in the depth and breadth of medical knowledge. after four weeks of intervention and following pretests, the experimental and control groups were subjected to post-tests to assess their academic achievement and career maturity. the pre-test served as baseline data, while the post-test and follow-up test helped evaluate the intervention's effectiveness and long-term impact. 3.3. data collection data collection spanned one month and was meticulously designed to ensure accurate and reliable data acquisition. this study employed multiple assessment tools to understand students' academic achievement and career maturity comprehensively. cardiovascular system exams and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (cpr) skills assessments were used to evaluate students' academic achievement. the cardiovascular system exam consisted of 90 multiple-choice questions, each with a score of 1, resulting in a total score of 90, effectively measuring students' grasp of theoretical knowledge related to the cardiovascular system. simultaneously, an adapted version of the "study on scoring criteria of 2010 cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills assessment (awang & deji, 2013)" based on the "2010 american heart association guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiovascular care (field et al., 2010)”, was employed to assess students' practical skills. this scoring sheet included 14 items, asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 117-123 120 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group with a total score of 10, reflecting students' performance levels in cardiopulmonary resuscita tion skills. the combination of these individual assessments constituted academic achievement, with a total score of 100. furthermore, the "medical student and doctor career maturity scale," developed by wang (2013), was utilized to gain deeper insights into students' career maturity. this scale comprised 23 items and employed a 5-point likert scale, requiring participants to rate the degree of conformity between the questionnaire items' descriptions and their actual situations. a score of 1 indicated "completely incongruent," while five signified "completely congruent." this scale, validated with good reliability (r = 0.67) and validity (0.34), allowed participants to self assess their career maturity. one month after completing the academic achievement and career maturity assessments, students underwent a retest to evaluate the retention benefits. through this follow-up test, the study explored the long-term impact of the adopted methods on students' continued learning and career development, providing a comprehensive dataset for analysis. 3.4. data analysis statistical analysis of the academic achievement and self-concept scores of the experimental and control groups was conducted using ibm spss 27.0 (statistical package for the social sciences), which is statistical analysis software commonly used in a variety of research and business applications such as data analysis, data mining, predictive analytics, and report generation. data collected in this study were subjected to anova (analysis of variance) and t-tests to compare differences between the experimental and control groups. the significance level was set at p < 0.05, and effect sizes (cohen's d) were set at cohen's d = 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8, representing small, medium, and large effect sizes, respectively. 3.5. ethical approval this study strictly adhered to the medical school ethics committee guidelines to ensure the ethical principles were fully respected and protected throughout the research process. informed consent was obtained from all participants before researching to ensure they comprehensively understood the research objectives, methods, potential risks, and benefits. 4. results out of the initially randomized pool of 60 students in this study, the final sample comprised all participants (30 in the experimental group and 30 in the control group). there were no significant differences in critical demographic variables between the experimental and control groups, originating from the same school and academic program. before data analysis, a normality test was conducted, confirming the fulfillment of all univariate and multivariate statistical assumptions (howell, 2002). before the experiment, anova and t-tests were performed on the pre-test data of the experimental and control groups to determine any significant differences between the groups. to ensure that any observed differences are attributable to the intervention or therapy under investigation rather than pre-existing group disparities, assess the groups' equivalence or comparability before initiating a study (thyer, 2010). table 1 describes the performance of the experimental and control groups on pretest academic scores and pre-test career maturity scores. for pre-test academic scores, the mean for the experimental group was 58.12, while that for the control group was 57.87. the statistical results were insignificant (p=0.898), and the magnitude of the difference was minimal (cohen's d=0.033). similarly, for pre-test career maturity scores, the mean for the experimental group was 91.47, and for the control group, it was 90.7. again , the statistical results were insignificant (p=0.742), and the difference was slight (cohen's d=0.085). there were no significant differences between the experimental and control groups for pre-test academic scores and pre-test career maturity, and the differences observed fell within a minimal range. table 1. anova for experimental and control groups variable experimental group（n=30） control group（n=30） variance mean sd mean sd f p academic achievement pre-test 58.12 7.47 57.87 7.63 0.02 0.898 post-test 82.5 6.08 77.37 7.21 8.89 0.004** follow-up 73.25 7.04 65.92 7.1 16.14 0.000*** career maturity pre-test 91.47 8.77 90.7 9.18 0.11 0.742 post-test 95.8 8.09 91.07 9.21 4.47 0.039* follow-up 96.03 8.31 91.3 9.22 4.36 0.041* note: *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001; indicates significant gender differences. analysis of variance was applied to the academic achievement and career maturity data, revealing variations between the experimental and control groups, as presented in table 1. in the academic achievement study, the post-test data indicated that the experimental group achieved an average score of 82.5 (standard deviation, sd=6.08), while the control group averaged 77.37 (sd=7.21). the anova results showed a significant difference between the two groups (f=8.89, p<0.01), emphasizing the significant academic advantage of the experimental group. a one-month follow-up test confirmed this trend, with the experimental group averaging 73.25 (sd=7.04) and the control group scoring 65.92 (sd = 7.1), again revealing a highly significant difference (f=16.14, p<0.001). in the career maturity study, similar findings emerged. post-test results indicated that the experimental group had a mean of 95.8 (sd=8.09), while the control group averaged 91.07 (sd=9.21), with a significant difference between the initial post-test results (f=4.47, p<0.05). one month later, the experimental group showed a mean of 96.03 (sd=8.31), and the control group had a mean of 91.3 (sd=9.22), again demonstrating a significant difference in the follow-up measurement (f=4.36, p<0.05). these results support the conclusion of a substantial enhancement in career maturity within the experimental group. to investigate the long-term impact of the interventions, ttests were applied to compare pre-test and follow-up test results and post-test and follow-up test results. in the asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 117-123 121 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group academic achievement study (table 2), a significant difference was evident between the pre-test and follow-up test (t=-26.82, p<0.001, cohen's d=4.897). similarly, the comparison between the post-test and follow-up test, as shown in independent samples t-tests, yielded a significant difference (t=15.98, p<0.001, cohen's d=2.918), affirming the sustained improvement in academic achievement in the experimental group. in the career maturity study, the independent samples t-test between the pre-test and follow-up test also displayed a significant difference (t=-11.66, p<0.001, cohen's d=2.129). however, in the comparison between the post-test and follow-up test, while there was a difference, it did not reach statistical significance (t=-1.882, p>0.05, cohen's d=0.344). these analyses shed light on the evolving trends in academic achievement and career maturity within the experimental group, particularly in terms of their long-term impact. table 2. independent samples t-tests to test for long-term effects. note: ***p<0.001; indicates significant gender differences. 5. discussions the primary objective of this study is to delve into the synergistic impact of introducing pbl and osbc strategies in medical education on academic achievement and career maturity. the research methodology encompassed the random selection of 60 students, who were subsequently divided into experimental and control groups to evaluate the efficacy of integrated teaching strategies. before data analysis, the study ensured the equivalence of vital demographic variables between the experimental and control groups, thereby mitigating potential interference from pre-existing disparities and ensuring that observed differences primarily resulted from the research intervention or treatment rather than originating from pre-existing differences among the groups. the research findings reveal that the significant improvement in academic achievement within the experimental group stems from the combined influence of multiple factors. the application of pbl within the experimental group has facilitated the enhancement of academic achievement. as elucidated by stanley and marsden (2012), the core value of pbl lies in cultivating students' autonomous thinking and problem-solving abilities, fostering critical thinking, and promoting significant progress in comprehensive skills through teamwork in addressing real-world problems. the experimental group likely nurtured a more positive academic atmosphere, encouraging students to actively pursue knowledge, thereby resulting in a substantial improvement in academic achievement. on the other hand, the introduction of osbc in the experimental group has also positively influenced academic achievement. the focal point of this strategy is to deepen students' understanding of the structure and function of the human organ system (papa & harasym, 1999), aiding students in gaining a more comprehensive grasp of medical knowledge and its application in practical scenarios. the students in the experimental group may be better equipped to flexibly apply their acquired knowledge in academic activities, thereby making significant progress in their academic achievement. furthermore, it is worth noting that the sustained improvement in academic achievement among the experimental group students highlights the long-term impact of these two teaching strategies. this enduring academic achievement may reflect students' continuous thirst for knowledge and their unwavering commitment to applying the knowledge acquired in actual academic activities. this academic consciousness and motivation for continuous learning may become evident in subsequent measurements one month later, further solidifying the positive effects of improved academic achievement among the experimental group students. this long-term impact provides reliable support for integrating pbl and osbc in promoting academic achievement, aligning with the findings in existing literature (si et al., 2021; stephens, bausch, pock, & merrell, 2017). similar trends are observed in the context of career maturity. introducing pbl cultivated a higher level of career maturity within the experimental group. pbl emphasizes teamwork, problem-solving, and independent learning, encouraging students to participate in professional practices and enhancing their professional competence. under the guidance of pbl, students in the experimental group may become more self-aware in developing the necessary skills for adapting to medical environments, including interdisciplinary collaboration, practical problem-solving, and effective communication with patients. secondly, the application of osbc may also positively impact the career maturity of the experimental group students. this strategy emphasizes a comprehensive understanding of organ systems, helping students tightly integrate their acquired medical knowledge with actual clinical practice. students in the experimental group may focus more on the application of organ systems and practical approaches during their learning process, thus nurturing their ability to demonstrate higher levels of professional competence in clinical contexts. however, it is noteworthy that although the differences in career maturity between groups have slightly diminished and did not reach statistical significance in the comparisons conducted at the post-test and one-month follow-up, an overall positive trend is still evident. this suggests that educational interventions may have specific limitations regarding their long-term impact on career maturity. to ensure the sustained improvement of career maturity, future educational programs can further optimize strategies, strengthen their alignment with professional practice, and develop students' adaptability in actual medical environments. this could include providing more clinical practice opportunities and interdisciplinary training (berwick & finkelstein, 2010; revell et al., 2022). therefore, the significant improvement in career maturity among the experimental group students results from the collaborative effect of pbl and osbc. pbl encourages teamwork and problem-solving, while osbc emphasizes practical application, which may collectively drive students to demonstrate higher levels of career maturity in their career development. in medical education, the design and implementation of teaching strategies have been a subject of extensive attention in both the educational and medical communities. in today's rapidly changing and highly complex healthcare environment, cultivating adaptable medical professionals with highly diverse skill requirements has presented a longstanding challenge (world health organization, 2005). to address this challenge, the design of variable pretest posttest follow-up variance mean sd mean sd mean sd t p cohen's d academic achievement 58.12 7.47 — — 73.25 7.04 -26.82 0.000*** 4.897 — — 82.5 6.08 73.25 7.04 15.98 0.000*** 2.918 career maturity 91.47 8.77 — — 96.03 8.31 -11.66 0.000*** 2.129 — — 95.8 8.09 96.03 8.31 -1.882 0.070 0.344 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 117-123 122 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group medical education strategies must consider many factors. one critical issue facing medical education is how to cultivate students' comprehensive competencies and professional readiness while imparting traditional medical knowledge. while traditional medical knowledge forms the basis of a physician's competence, in today's modern healthcare environment, the skills required of physicians extend beyond this foundation. physicians must possess critical thinking, problem-solving, and interdisciplinary collaboration skills (clark & hoffman, 2019). therefore, the construction of teaching strategies should focus on nurturing students' practical skills, teamwork, communication abilities, and ethical awareness, among other multidimensional competencies, to ensure their ability to address the diverse and complex situations encountered in actual clinical work. another critical issue in the design of medical education strategies is how to effectively integrate academic achievement and career maturity (bai, 2011; liu et al., 2014) academic achievement reflects students' academic abilities and knowledge levels (sansgiry, bhosle, & sail, 2006), while career maturity encompasses various practical skills and high-level competencies required in actual clinical practice. in training medical students, it is imperative to pursue outstanding academic achievements and ensure that students can effectively apply their knowledge and skills in clinical settings to provide high-quality medical services to patients. therefore, the essence of medical education lies in motivating students to excel academically while possessing the practical abilities required to perform effectively in natural clinical environments. to achieve this goal, medical education must thoroughly explore feasible methods and approaches. taking into account the challenges and demands in the field of medical education, in addition to traditional teaching methods such as pbl and osbc, other teaching strategies contribute to improving the academic achievement and career maturity of medical students. for example, clinical simulation education provides students with a safe, practical environment to practice and develop medical skills while enhancing patient safety (aggarwal et al., 2010). however, it should be noted that this approach requires significant resource investment (richardson, goldsamt, simmons, gilmartin, & jeffries, 2014). nevertheless, this study is subject to certain limitations that require full acknowledgment. first and foremost, the sample size is relatively small, comprising only 60 students, which may limit the generalizability and stability of the research results. this sample size may need to be increased to fully represent the diversity and variations within the entire population of medical students, thereby posing challenges to the external validity of the research findings. secondly, this study focused on exploring the effects of pbl and organ system-based curriculum without considering other potential factors that could influence academic achievement and career maturity. medical education involves multiple complex variables (white, lewis, & mccoy, 2018), such as individual student traits, the teaching environment, and other educational methods, all of which may interact with and influence research results. furthermore, this study primarily concentrated on academic achievement and career maturity without delving into the potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between other factors. consequently, future research endeavors can expand the sample size, consider additional influencing factors, and conduct in-depth analyses of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between academic achievement and career maturity to understand the effectiveness and limitations of medical education strategies. 6. conclusion in conclusion, this study, involving 60 carefully selected students, revealed that integrating problem-based learning (pbl) and organ system-based curriculum (osbc) significantly improved academic achievement in the short term, with lasting effects observed one month later. the study also demonstrated initial enhancements in career maturity, although these were less sustained over time. the findings underscore the potential of these integrated teaching strategies in medical education to foster critical thinking and practical skills. however, further refinements may be needed to ensure long-term improvements in career maturity. this research contributes to the ongoing discourse on effective medical education strategies and emphasizes the need for a multifaceted approach to preparing students for academic excellence 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(2009). problem srelated to the pbl process in present stage of medical education of our country (in chinese). researches in medical education, 8(1), 61-63. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.21124 https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2022.138162 https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2017.00744a https://doi.org/10.7507/1002-0179.20140168 https://doi.org/10.15700/201412120928 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277339 https://doi.org/10.1111/dsji.12030 https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2018.1427988 https://doi.org/10.1097/nne.0000000000001141 https://doi.org/10.5480/14-1384 https://doi.org/10.3946/kjme.2018.86 https://doi.org/10.4103/kleuhsj.kleuhsj_117_20 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2012.08.005 https://doi.org/10.7205/milmed-d-16-00349 https://doi.org/10.7205/milmed-d-16-00349 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195387384.003.0002 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-016-2348-0 https://doi.org/10.1016/s1607-551x(09)70075-0 https://doi.org/10.2196/12945 https://doi.org/10.5041/rmmj.10309 https://doi.org/10.1152/physiol.2023.38.s1.5734016 https://doi.org/10.2147/amep.s137760 320 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 320-329, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.320.329 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teacher mentoring: experiences from international teacher mentors in kazakhstan phillipa schulleri catholic institute for teacher training-baucau, timor-leste. abstract in this paper, a closer look at mentoring in education is presented. the research sample was a team of eleven international teachers who were engaged in mentoring local teachers in a high school for gifted students in kazakhstan. the purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of international teachers, as they relate their experiences of mentoring local teachers. the author sought the stories of the international mentor teachers and the meaning they placed on these experiences. answers were sought to questions of how mentors defined mentoring, what they perceived as benefits of mentoring, and how they dealt with mentoring difficulties. face to face semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from eleven volunteering international teachers. seven categories of mentoring were found to be: leading, guiding, modelling advising, and exposition; supporting, challenging and suggesting, exploration and experimentation; sharing, collaboration, improving, passing on information; coaching, change and improving, passing on information; challenging and suggesting, exploration and experimentation; sharing, collaboration; and trouble-shooting. benefits of mentoring were discussed under six categories: dialogue and new ideas; self-awareness and motivation; emotional benefits; and professional improvement; mutual benefit; emotional betterment, modelling and emulation; and sharing, experimentation, dynamism. all mentors experienced difficulties in mentoring at some part in their employment. mentoring pairs did something to resolve mentoring difficulties when they arose. the mentee holds the key to the success of the mentoring relationship. keywords: mentoring, nazarbayev intellectual schools, kazakhstan, education reform, mentor-mentee relationship, mentor definitions. citation | phillipa schulleri (2020). teacher mentoring: experiences from international teacher mentors in kazakhstan. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 320-329. history: received: 21 february 2020 revised: 24 march 2020 accepted: 4 may 2020 published: 1 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: i am deeply grateful to the nazarbayev intellectual school, karaganda (nisk), who allowed me to conduct the study. i am indebted to the international teachers who participated in the research. many thanks to dr. saleh, who read the article, and molly nyagura who gave it a final edit. further thanks to sivi, who encouraged me with daily calls. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 321 2. literature ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 321 3. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 322 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 323 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 328 6. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 329 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 329 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.320.329&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1689 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9418-9120 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1689 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9418-9120 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1689 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9418-9120 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 321 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper contributes experiential definitions to teacher mentoring. it gives the mentors‘ own definitions and what they perceive as benefits of mentoring. for nis schools in kazakhstan, it provides a conversation opener for reflection and a basis for building upon what is existent. 1. introduction teachers all over the world are finding their jobs more and more demanding, and they are taking up more and more responsibilities as the education system evolves (mcguire, 2007). teachers today have become teachers, mentors, counselors, technological experts, communication experts with management, parents and the community, entertainment providers, care-givers, and even inspirational icons as the social support systems of the world take on a new meaning (avidov-ungar & magen-nagar, 2013). to cope with ever-changing roles, teachers need to be constantly upgrading their qualifications and skills, to keep up-to-date and to be flexible. not surprisingly, teachers have become more and more tired, have been reported to have a high burnout rate, and are just overwhelmed with keeping their act together. mentoring is one method used widely in the teaching field to upgrade teachers‘ skills, thus bridging the knowledge and skills gaps (oliver & townsend, 2013). mentoring is considered a suitable way to help teachers adapt to the skills needs and demands of their jobs, as depicted in tollefson-hall (2015). in many ways, mentoring is cheaper, happens in the workplace thus saving time, and increases retention, grimes and white (2015). 2. literature 2.1. education system in kazakhstan the education system in kazakhstan is undergoing a transition (gabdulina & zhuman, 2018) from the soviet system to the modern system. the soviet system was content-based, dense, and highly teacher-centred (bridges & sagintayeva, 2014). much of it was rote learning, according to burkhalter and shegebayev (2012). students were forced to learn unmanageable chunks of content, with very little writing, and little interaction with their learning media. this way of ―brain learning‖ might have been good in its time, where resources may have been limited, and content not so extensive. in today‘s system where information expansion is the norm brain learning is not adequate to prepare students for the world arena. the shortfalls of this system in modern day kazakh education system were identified as being insufficient in opening the youths to international competitiveness. at a time when kazakhstan is rising to become a world player in education the need for its education to change had never been so acute as in the late 200s, when the nis schools were conceived, with the aim to raise a crop of internationally competent kazakh youth who can help build up kazakhstan in the near future (nuriyev, sovetkanova, & seysenbayeva, 2018). at the helm of the educational reform was the nation‘s president nazarbayev, lillis (2007) who set out phases of the reform in the form of strategies (20201, 20302, 20503). to achieve the objectives set out in the strategies, kazakhstan needed a crop of teachers, with modern education skills, to teach their youth to become world players (hartley, gopaul, sagintayeva, & apergenova, 2016). as kazakh local teachers lacked the international skills in modern methods of teaching. in order to achieve this, it was decided that the mentoring method would best suit this transition and impart skills in the most beneficial way, time-wise, cost wise and pedagogy-wise. so teams of international subject experts were recruited into the nis schools to co-teach and mentor local teachers in contemporary methods of teaching and learning. 2.2. expected results of the kazakhstan mentoring program (read and straighten) kazakhstan has put education on the number one priority for the development of its nation (abdiraiymova, kenzhakimova, verevkin, lifanova, & burkhanova, 2015). desired skills sets at the end of the mentorship were broadly seen as enabling or building the, capacity of local teachers to teach just as good as any modern day international teacher, employing student-centred approaches, and also teaching in english. as there was no outline of how each mentoring pair would proceed, each international trainer devised their own programme depending on what they perceived to be the urgent needs in their mentees. mentees were all at different levels of pedagogic competency, and at different levels of the english language. some did not even have one english word at the beginning of the mentoring relationship. as such, starting points and focuses were different and unique to a mentoring pair. as the mentoring progressed the perceptions of resistance to change and resistance to mentoring began to emerge (yekavets, 2014). 2.3. mentoring while most research like that of savage, cannon, and sutters (2015) relates to mentoring of teachers just beginning their professional career—young teachers there is a general global movement towards extending mentoring to long-service teachers (pennanen, heikkinen, & tynjälä, 2020). published articles (in english) on mentoring teachers in kazakhstan are non-existent. this paper will contribute to dialogue on mentoring in kazakhstan‘s nis schools in particular, with implications worldwide in general. a systematic research documentation of the processes happening in the transition period of the education system of kazakhstan are unique. the kazakh special presidential schools employed international teachers to come in and train local teachers in a mentoring role within the schools‘ settings. the idea for this paper was borne of the need to investigate and document the phenomenon that international teachers were experiencing in their mentoring capacities in the school, to see what mentors would say to describe their experiences with their mentees, to start a dialogue on the practice of mentoring and find if there were common sentiments. 1 https://www.akorda.kz/en/official_documents/strategies_and_programs 2 https://www.akorda.kz/en/official_documents/strategies_and_programs 3 https://kazakhstan2050.com/ asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 322 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.4. defining mentoring mentoring is acknowledged widely as a method of providing or imparting skills to professionals. savage et al. (2015) referred to teachers as ―mentors‖ (p. 23), implying that teaching is mentoring. on the other hand, tollefsonhall (2015) considered a mentor to be ―a wise elder who provides guidance to a younger person‖ (p.30). lai (2005) defined mentorship in terms of the word‘s origins, as having links with the older, wiser mentor imparting wisdom to a younger wisdom seeking youth. as a method to prop up leaders in higher education, searby, ballenger, and tripses (2015) found it to have invaluable effects of adding confidence, imparting knowledge, building relationships, and improving efficiency. in all cases, mentoring is a recommended method in which mentors watch over mentees, and train them on-the-job to sharpen their skills. mcguire (2007) called the mentee by the name of or. protégé. in the education field mentoring happens at different levels depending on the focus of the mentoring relationship. 2.5. benefits of mentoring much research has been done on mentoring in higher education (simonsen, luebeck, & bice, 2009; van & waghid, 2008) and its contributions to achieving positive results are well known (garvey, 2009; lai, 2005). in addition, delaney, 2012 stated that mentoring is a valuable method to ensure teachers stay in their jobs longer, therefore being a cost-effective way to improve skills and the value on a teacher, while ensuring the students get high quality service. in schools mentoring has been used for a long time to impart skills and knowledge to teachers and students (simonsen et al., 2009; van & waghid, 2008). however, most research like that of savage et al. (2015) relates to mentoring of teachers just beginning their professional career – young teachers. 2.6. education system in kazakhstan the education system in kazakhstan is undergoing a transition, from the soviet old system to the modern system. the soviet system was content-based, dense, and highly teacher-centred. much of it was rote learning. students were forced to learn unmanageable chunks of content, with very little writing, and little interaction with their learning media. the shortfalls of this system to today‘s kazakh education system were identified as being unable to open the youths to the international competitiveness. at a time when kazakhstan is rising to become a world player, the need for its education to change had never been so acute as in 2010, when the nazarbayev intellectual schools (nis) schools were conceived, with the aim to raise a crop of kazakh youth who are well educated, international, and can help build up kazakhstan in the near future (wilson, turner, sharimova, & brownhill, 2013). in order to achieve this, it was decided that the mentoring method would best suit this transition and impart skills in the most beneficial way, time-wise, cost-wise and pedagogy-wise. teams of international subject experts were invited to come into the nis schools and mentor local teachers in contemporary methods of teaching and learning. 2.7. expected results of the kazakhstan mentoring program desired skills sets at the end of the mentorship were broadly seen as enabling or building the capacity of local teachers to teach just as good as any modern day teacher, employing student-centred approaches. as there was no outline of how each mentoring pair would proceed, each international trainer devised their own programme depending on what they perceived to be the urgent needs in their mentees. needless to say, mentees were all at different levels of pedagogic competency, and at different levels of the english language. some did not even have one english word. as such, starting points and focuses were different and unique to a pair. and as the mentoring progressed the perceptions of resistance to change and resistance to being mentored began to emerge. education is determined as one of priorities of state policy for social and economic development in the country (nuriyev et al., 2018). 3. methodology due to the nature of the research topic, seeking international teachers‘ experiences, perceptions, emotions, and opinions, constructivism was chosen as the framework of research. the act of meaning-making due to interaction and discourse, called interpretivism (burkholder, cos, & crawford, 2016) was the preferred approach in this survey. within this interpretivism, interviewing is a major method of data gathering. phenomena is interpreted differently by different people, and even by the same person under different conditions. further, the semi-structured interview is more flexible and allows gathering of information in a more open way, allowing respondents to explore areas of interest in greater detail (burkholder et al., 2016). the respondent in semi-structured interviews has a good amount of freedom to explore their own statements, and maybe follow the direction of ideas led by their thinking, articulation, connection making and threads of thought. in interaction with the interviewer, these threads of thoughts can be concretized, and articulated and captured in time and space, as in by audio recorder, and analyzed for meaning. an interview questionnaire was prepared. international teachers of one nis, in 2016 were informed of and requested to participate in the interview. the interviews were conducted with international teachers of nis who were working with a mentee (n=11), working in different subjects. of these teachers, two were female. the survey group was all teachers despite their length of service. the only important factor was that they were all international teachers, and they were all mentoring local teachers, in one nis. the international teachers came from diverse backgrounds and originated in different countries. interviews were face-to-face and semi-structured. the semi-structured method was chosen because of the need to allow flexibility within limits. this was necessary to understand the context, background and the way each mentor found the whole mentoring role to be playing out. it would also allow respondents to express themselves freely. interviews were recorded using a dictaphone, and transcribed in googledocs. the transcriptions were checked for correctness against the audios. the interview atmosphere was free, relaxed, with free expression of emotions, with laughter, sighs, expressions of desperation and any other such as teachers felt, as this was seen as an avenue to share what teachers had been asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 323 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group feeling individually. it was also to create an open environment that would enable respondents to say out their thoughts without reservation. the interaction time was made as natural as possible, as if it was one of every day conversations at the workplace. the interviewer was one of the its, making it even more open and free. the understanding was that an interview from one of the team would not make them feel like keeping something back, since ―we are in the same boat, anyway.‖ each interview lasted a minimum of 45 minutes. 4. results 4.1. defining mentoring from the interview responses, several definitions of mentoring arose. the definitions could be categorised under seven categories. while some definitions spanned more than one category, these some main categories were evident, and used to discuss meanings that international teachers made of their mentoring roles. seven categories of understanding of the definitions provided emerged. these were: 1. leading, guiding, modelling advising, and exposition. 2. supporting, challenging and suggesting, exploration and experimentation. 3. sharing, collaboration, improving, passing on information. 4. coaching, change and improving, passing on information. 5. challenging and suggesting, exploration and experimentation. 6. sharing, collaboration. 7. trouble-shooting. category 1: leading, guiding, modelling, advising, exposition the words in this had a similar meaning and fitted together. mentoring was defined in different ways from the point of view of the international teachers who were acting as mentors to their local teachers. the aspect of guiding, getting them to (a certain place or level) implies leading the way, holding the hand of the led, delicately manouvering, and building through demonstration a sense of security, trust and motivation in the led, the mentee. the classroom aspect limits the mentoring sphere of influence. in the former definition, ―guiding them to improve their practices‖ can then be interpreted as practices in the classroom. however, it may be supposed that mentoring is not limited to the classroom. “mentoring according to my perceptions is leading to emulate ... practices; practices known to improve student success. the mentee can emulate some of the practice.” and ―guiding colleague to emulate mentor/best practices.” emulation comes from displaying something, having it seen, thought about and appreciated. it has an element of laying things out in the open, and giving the beholder the choice, to take what they see in and use, or not to. as such, this kind of mentoring is inclined to the mentor modelling lessons, modelling concepts, discussing pedagogy with the mentee, and trusting the mentee to make the right choice. emulations also comes when the mentor is skilled in their function and has the disposition as described by trubowitz (2004) including being focussed on mentee growth, cultural proficiency, promoting reflection, and being generous with ideas and resources, building trust and not judging the mentee whatever they decide to choose. “i never thought about defining it. i guess it is, uhm, guiding teachers, guiding your mentee, what we do is guiding them to improve their practice. giving them advice to improve, how to plan, lesson structures, and something like that?” while guiding, can have many ways of delivering it, the general thought that comes to mind is that of a person walking ahead of another, clearing the path, and taking the safety of the guided to heart. the guide has a responsibility to bring the guided to a specific place. during the walk, the guide may take the hand of the guided, advise where to step, give lectures on the way…and this notion was a clear indication of the mentor role in the nisk. guiding gives the notion that the mentor has something of superior quality to offer. “oh, mentoring is just helping people to develop their skills, mainly through reflection, by modelling, by asking open questions, and letting them reflect, without being overtly aggressive.” helping through reflection is a concept of mentoring that sees the mentor not as a guide but a helper. while a guide has a sense of authority and responsibility, the helper has a lesser role. helping implies letting someone do what they do, and being there for them when they seek help, or when someone sees a need that the mentee may not see, and offer to help in that area. this could be in the form of knowledge, as in other pedagogies that our local teachers may not have practiced. or specific skills in dealing with students, or even a way of conducting a particular practical. helping may also mean that the mentor and the mentee are at the same level and they do their work together. between international teachers and local teachers there is a great exchange that happens. however, proponents of bidirectional mentoring chen (2018) would argue and say that the mentor can also find something to emulate in their mentee. category 2: supporting “supporting and challenging somebody…eh..., my mentee, into being somebody who will be competitive, and inviting her into areas she might not have thought of. supporting her in her practice, supporting her to gain confidence.” supporting, unlike guiding, gives the notion of being there by the mentee‘s side, not ahead of the mentee. supporting implies an identified weakness that is being strengthened by the supporter. in this answer, supporting for competitiveness alludes to the mentee currently lacking in competitiveness, and the support provided leading to a desired goal, for both the mentor and he mentee. the following answer clarified in part, the connotations of the word ‗support‘. “in nis it’s a little different than my definition of mentoring. it’s to provide support to my co-teachers. but providing support may be ambiguous. it’s to get them to use best practices, international best practices, to be more organised, and to effect pedagogy in the classrooms. i say classrooms because i have no power to influence pedagogy in the whole school. i know that everyone does their mentoring in a different way, but… i don’t push. i offer suggestions. it is up to them to take it or to leave. general opinion of mentoring, it should be to fine tune skills, knowledge, so basically it is fine tuning.” asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 324 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the object of support got clarified as international best practices. these were what the student-centred drive of the nis schools was aiming for, what the kazakh education system was going through. the aspect of guiding, getting them to… implies leading the way, holding the hand of the led, delicately manouvering, and building through demonstration a sense of security, trust and motivation in the led, the mentee. the classroom aspect limits the mentoring sphere of influence. in the former definition, ―guiding them to improve their practices‖ can then be interpreted as practices in the classroom. the question becomes: does mentoring teachers only end in the classroom? find refs. category 3: challenging and suggesting exploration and experimentation; ―inviting into areas mentee is not familiar with” implies challenging, leading, building trust and confidence and trust. thus, it touches on the mentor-mentee relationship. as trubowitz (2004) states, the mentor-mentee relationship is one of paramount importance to the success of mentoring. mcguire (2007) gave an encompassing summary of the type of mentor role that covers categories 1-3. macguire stated that the role of the mentor was to help the protégé develop habits and attitudes that enable attaining a higher level of success comparing with where no mentoring occurs. category 4: sharing, collaboration, improving, passing on information “i think, oh, i think, beginner teachers for strategies that work for them, working together through planning a lesson.” while this response focuses on beginner teachers, mentoring has been widely applied to teachers of all seniority, as it has been proved to be beneficial to all teachers (garvey, 2009). “in mentoring i think sharing new ideas, or looking at the curriculum and see what is the change, or what the students should be doing in the classroom. students need to change their thinking processes. i see a pattern of doing the same things year after year. i think there should be more art making, and more experimenting, and less of lecture. there is a lot of lecture and a lot of talking. a lot of information given in one lesson … i think for students to appreciate, they need to break it down.” in this response the dialogue of soviet pedagogy and modern pedagogy is laid bare. or what other authors (simonsen et al., 2009) refer to as traditional pedagogy versus modern pedagogy. the move from lecture to student activity, student critical thinking, form student as passive receiver to active questioner and enquirer, from delivering large chunks of contented to breaking it down into chewable chunks, are all examples of the differences between traditional and modern pedagogy. while mentoring for new pedagogy, the nis international teachers needed to keep the aim of the program in mind. mentoring is supposed to break down complex concepts into simpler ones, and the concepts taught from the simple to the complex, which makes learning simpler for the teacher and the student. “ehhm …, it is working with, in a collaborative fashion with usually a younger person or someone with less experience than oneself and wants to improve certain aspects of their practice.” in this definition the respondent agrees with the idea of mentoring being for beginner teachers. this is what was discussed in grimes and white (2015). in this the respondents agree with the traditional meaning of mentoring, with the mentor at a higher level than the mentee. category 5: coaching, change and improvement “for me mentoring is like coaching, coaching the teachers, so that they become…and check the teacher. honestly that is what i do. and i will be helping also. like how do you formulate this?” here the response shows the interrelated terms that are used together with mentoring (coaching, co-teaching, team-teaching, training, demonstrating, modelling). “i think mentoring is … when … you look at what is going on in the classroom, you see what practices are happening, and think of how to improve it, how to make it better, whether that is the way the lessons are taught, whether that different … i mean there are so many different things that go on in … the art room. i think it should be a whole bunch of things.” giving examples of what a ―bunch of things‖ includes, savage et al. (2015) mentioned, ―organizing content for students, creating environments for learning, teaching for student learning, and professional responsibilities‖ p.24. category 6: giving information “well, in essence when we talk of a mentor we talk of two people one above the other. the one who is above has something to pass onto the one below, regardless of age. you are looking at the process where there is passing on of information, skill, from the knowledgeable to the other who seeks to benefit.” tollefson-hall (2015) considered a mentor to be ―a wise elder who provides guidance to a younger person‖ (p.30). in agreement, lai (2005) analysed the word mentorship from its original meaning in the greek language as linking an older, wiser mentor imparting wisdom to a younger wisdom seeking youth. clark (2011) supported this by giving the information that the greek mythological mentor was a friend of odysseus; that mentor was asked to be the guardian and teacher of odysseus‘ son while odysseus led the trojan war. due to the fact that mentor established a near-paternal relationship with odysseus‘ son, the word ―mentor‖ was adopted in english as a term meaning a ―father-like teacher‖ (p 52). “traditionally, mentoring is best defined as an expert teacher who takes on a newer teacher. it’s not a training session. it’s one-on-one training with each other. could also be among peers. peer mentoring to think things through together.” the response agrees with the traditional meaning of mentoring, as defined in clark (2011). in its original form, mentoring was performed by one older man, more knowledgeable individual – the mentor), to a younger, less experienced individual – the mentee (clark, 2011). introducing peer mentoring in this definition is one of the deviations from traditional mentoring. peer mentoring is hailed as best practice because of its rather informal way and a relaxed way where negotiation with the mentor occurs. the peer mentor and peer mentee share those aspects that one understands well, and has the comfort of knowing that the mentor and mentee are at the same level, thus takes away the feeling of inferiority that comes with a more knowledgeable mentor versus a less knowledgeable mentee (delaney, 2012). “traditionally, mentoring is best defined as an expert teacher takes on a newer teacher asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 325 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it’s not a training session. it’s one-on-one training with each other. could also be among peers. peer mentoring to think things through together.” introducing peer mentoring in this definition is one of the deviations from traditional mentoring. peer mentoring is hailed as best practice (collier, 2017) because the mentors share those aspects that one understands well, and has the comfort of knowing that the mentor and mentee are at the same level, thus takes away the feeling of inferiority that comes with a more knowledgeable mentor versus a less knowledgeable mentee (delaney, 2012). “oh, mentoring is just helping people to develop their skills, mainly through reflection, by modelling, by asking open questions, and letting them reflect, without being overtly aggressive.” category 7: trouble shooting “… and trouble-shooting sometimes.” ―trouble shooting‖ is a definition coming from the day to day interactions between the mentors and the mentees. in many ways, the mentor is preparing, looking ahead, and putting structures in place like paving the way for the mentee. through planning mostly, the mentor plays that role of showing where the pitfalls may be during the lessons, and preparing the mentee for it. while trouble shooting could also be provided for under guiding, this term specifically implies keeping a watch out for possible problems and providing a way out, a solution before they happen. “having new ideas, looking at the curriculum, products, and creative things” are unique to this research. the reason for these extended definitions or additions to the definition of mentoring comes from the intimate ways the nisk international teachers were working in a mentoring position to their mentees. 4.2. summary of definitions of mentoring seven categories of mentoring were found to be: leading, guiding, modelling advising, and exposition; supporting, challenging and suggesting, exploration and experimentation; sharing, collaboration, improving, passing on information; coaching, change and improving, passing on information; challenging and suggesting, exploration and experimentation; sharing, collaboration; and trouble-shooting. as the number of category suggests a wide range of roles that a mentor performs, it confirms what clark (2011) said about a mentor, agreeing that there is not one clear cut description or definite of a mentor. mentoring is acknowledged widely as a method of providing or imparting skills to professionals. savage et al. (2015) referred to teachers as ―mentors‖ (p. 23), considering mentors to be those who ―make the journey‖ with the mentee (p.22), implying an intimate professional relationship where the two do everything together. the goal of mentorship is the transfers knowledge and skill from the mentor to the mentee. over the years, mentoring has taken on various forms, depending on mentor-mentee structures. in today‘s use, though, a mentor is no longer necessarily older than the mentee, and the mentor-mentee relationship has change since the word was first coined. it is also no longer of a male dominated, as female mentors now abound. the traditional mentoring has also evolved into many types since then. thus today, we have different types of mentorship which include peer mentoring, co-teaching, on-the job training, and inculturation (tollefson-hall, 2015). however, the core of the relationship is still the transmission – whether uni-directional or bi-directional – of knowledge and skills. the definitions of mentoring from the findings fit into, and add onto, the known existing definitions of mentoring. what is new in this findings are the following: … place the unique definitions here and discuss. 4.3. what mentoring should bring/benefits of mentoring benefits of mentoring were grouped into six categories: 1. dialogue and new ideas. 2. self-awareness and motivation. 3. emotional benefits. 4. professional improvement. 5. mutual benefit; emotional betterment, modelling and emulation. 6. sharing, experimentation, dynamism. category 1: dialogue “the purpose of mentoring is ... to create, to create a vast formal dialogue, which is not driven by assessment as by professional development growth and mutual understanding.” “the purpose of mentoring is ... to create, to create a vast formal dialogue, which is not driven by assessment as by professional development growth and mutual understanding.” another respondent agreed by saying “development improvement. ultimately what we do is to translate into student improvement.” the focus on dialogue here is in line with … in the same way, the description below focuses on ideas “i think it should bring new ideas, i see things one way and i think they see tings another way. if there should be productive banter going on, in the art class, it is better to kind of experiment with the different practices that are going on. if we discuss anything it should be how to break these down.” category 2: new ideas, and change one mentor stated that mentoring brought: “having new ideas, looking at the curriculum, products, and creative things” are unique to this research. the reason for these extended definitions or additions to the definition of mentoring comes from the intimate ways the nisk international teachers were working in a mentoring position to their mentees. “mentoring in my opinion is that is should cause … it is a way of doing things so that there is a change towards, the teachers, the students, the … and perhaps the parents. directly it should focus on the clientele we are focusing on, our mentees or our co-teachers should start out as the core circle.” ―a way of doing things‖ broad though it might seem as a benefit of mentoring, is true of mentoring. it echoes the differences in practice, and in understanding the practice. while mentees see the its as not understanding their asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 326 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group system, and their practices, the its would say the same of their mentees. as such, in that definition is a cry for both sides to understand each other‘s view and practice. “well, you can see somebody else’s perspective. you can learn from your mentee, maybe she is more efficient, maybe if you are good at your job, you can help them to… uh … organise themselves and deal with issues they meet in classrooms.” empathy is in agreement with all the other aspects of mentoring that require close knowledge and understanding, and emotional support. “new ideas flow between mentor and mentee, and when practice improves and student performance improves, so does “satisfaction to both.” in any mentoring relationship communication plays a crucial role, while other aspects like modelling, showing, illustrating, ―standing in‖ for the mentee, all work to support the work. this verbal and non-verbal interaction transmits the ideas between the mentoring pair, resulting in a vibrant exchange of ideas. according to a respondent, mentoring was: “causing a positive change for teachers, students, parents, administration, our mentees.” the response goes beyond just the mentee to embrace the community. category 3: emotional benefits “a more confident teacher, a happier teacher, excited students. student and teacher growth. when they all grow they are all happier with the learning.” in this explanation the mentor focused on the emotional and professional benefits of mentoring. category 4: improvement “depending on mentor and mentee. for example, if i am a mentor, i would like to bring in differentiation, bring about ways of effective teaching mathematics, modern methods of teaching, e.g., ict, and i have been asked to develop my teachers’ english skills.” “i think it should help the mentee at the job, to be more effective. the student, to offer them guidance in different facets of the job. i focus on structures, routines that should make it easier for them in the long run.” “the mentee should become a sharper instrument, more accurate instrument, they should be., or mentoring should raise them to be at the top of their game. for the mentor, when you say mentor-mentee, you are right. the dynamics are right. the mentor has to motivate, encourage and inspire, inculcate. it should be good for both of them.” that both mentor and mentee should learn is the contemporary view of mentorship as presented in van and waghid (2008) as found out from a study in south africa. in support, another response was: “…should be able to mould the person being mentored into a person similar to the mentor, e.g., in sport, i would want my mentees to adopt ways that would make them like me.” this line of reasoning goes together with emulation, driven by modelling, and displaying abilities. this gives the mentor a reason to take mentorship and responsibility for own learning, the way they want, and what they want. that “benefits depend on the pair” alludes to the way they interact. some authors put this on the mentee, that the more the mentee is willing to reach out and be open to new ideas (collier, 2017) the better they learn and the easier the relationship. agreeing with the traditional meaning of mentoring, a respondent opined: “of course, the mentee is the one improving more than the mentor. but, so, it’s a two-way process, but for me a one-way process. as mentor i am stagnant. but the benefit for me as the mentor i become aware to the culture, and the education system. i see the flaws, and the loopholes.” based on the traditional meaning of mentoring as stated in clark (2011) a response that confirmed that was: “ah well, so many things. should make the mentee, should bring a flow from the mentor to the mentee, so that the mentee should move to the level that is expected.” but the bidirectional flow of professional benefits is the ore modern approach, which sees both parties benefiting from the relationship. the concluding remarks for this could be stated in the words of one respondents who said: another respondent stated: “help mentee improve at their job” ... to be more effective with students.” this improvement could be attained through one of the many ways, which is modelling. a simple summarising statement was that: “model the mentee to be similar to mentor,” again taking the traditional approach to mentoring as in clark (2011). this entails careful demonstration, modelling, correcting, working together through the process. according to, the relationship that developed between mentor and mentee sometimes became that of father and son. however, other respondents were convinced the benefits of mentoring accrue to both the mentee and the mentor: category 5: bi-directionality of mentoring several respondents emphasised the bi-directionality of mentoring relationship as of crucial importance to the success of the relationship. proponents of the bi-directionality shifts from the traditional view of only the mentee benefiting from the relationship, and insists that the mentor also benefits from the relationship. another response was: “both should learn. even for the mentor, the mentor improves their practice, their mentoring and their reflection.” yet another added “a deeper insight into teaching for both, but primarily focussing on the mentee. and a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the mentee.” as encouraged by chen (2018) mentors have a lot to learn from their mentees too. a closely similar response was: asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 327 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group “both should learn. teaching practice should improve. model the mentee to be similar to mentor, ―help mentee improve at their job, “be more effective with students.‖ unlike the opinion held by the other respondents, here a bidirectional benefit of mentoring is introduced. so as for mentoring methods, the findings leave the clear gap between unidirectional and bidirectional benefits, depending on the pair in the mentoring relationship. ―you can learn from your mentee,” observed one respondent. this view of mentoring as having double-directional benefits was said by ... who emphasised that the mentor sharpens their own practice as they instruct their mentees. that the mentee is stagnant is from the professional development standpoint. when mentoring, the mentor feels they are the one who gives and gives. it is possible that this giving gets tiring at some point, and mentors yearn also to get something out of the mentoring relationship. mentor fatigue may set in. this is what chen (2018) meant when they said mentoring was bi-directional, and should bring benefits to both mentor and mentee. even so, from the research, the response ―it should be good for both of them” from a previous response sums it for us. “also mentor learns from mentee” emphasize the bi-directional nature of mentoring. “raises the level of the mentee as they develop, and improve student learning and performance. at the same time the mentor learns how to motivate and inspire and encourage, inculcate.” in this response, the mentor learns something different from learning subject content, but some human relations skills. according to pennanen et al. (2020) the human skills aspect of a mentor is a very important aspect of the success of the mentoring relationship. for an educational reform system in nis that was promoting critical thinking as part of the package for student-centeredness, the following response was given: “you have to promote self-regulation, self-learning. i will give you an analogy. if you came to my home. definitely you will leave with a full stomach. i will give you a choice. for something not so spicy, or something spicy. you choose and you eat what you want. the other way i could force feed you. you have no say in what you eat.” self-regulation again is promoted, as defined and driven by the mentee‘s internal desire to reach excellence. category 6: sharing, experimentation, dynamism another category for the benefits of mentoring was the sharing, which was supported by experimentation giving rise to dynamism, be it in the individuals, in the teaching practice or in the mentoring relationship: “a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the mentee” helps teach the mentees to organize themselves, to be better able to deal with issues in class.‖ “more experimenting in class ensues from the mentor/mentee relationship.” experimentation works to bring something new to the classroom, and to give new motivation for the mentee and the students. experiment with the different practices is helping our teachers to be able to ‗break down‘ parts of the lesson and the curriculum. “learn to see from another perspective” takes the discerning mentor/mentee. this aspect of empathy arises from close sharing of ideas, and events and even lives. it involves good communication. and a genuine desire for each other‘s good. in the case of nis mentors, where from the responses given, we have seen a wide range of possibilities, and pairs that are diverse, it makes for the development of good personal relations. “a deeper insight into the practice for the mentee.” when mentors get a deeper insight into the practice for their mentees, a vibrant environment is created. first, the mentee would have opened the doors and allowed the mentor in. or the mentor would have had the time and ability to help the mentee open the doors. in this case, the human aspects of the mentor are critical to the opening of the mentee doors. “less lecture method, less (teacher) talk allows students to be more engaged.” the lecture method the categories were found to be merging into each other, so that they could not be clear cut. for example, ―more experimenting in class ensues from the mentor/mentee relationship” could be interpreted to belong to the experimenting category, or to the improvement category. 4.4. summarising what mentoring should bring the five benefits of mentoring found were classified under seven categories: dialogue, new ideas and structures, self-awareness and motivation, emotional, trouble-shooting, and professional improvement, mutual benefit. these categories fit with the benefits of mentoring to education and its contributions to achieving positive results as expounded by abiddin and hassan (2012); lai (2005); garvey (2009); van and waghid (2008); simonsen et al. (2009) and trubowitz (2004). in addition, trubowitz (2004) alluded to the fact that teachers who receive intense mentoring are less likely to leave the teaching profession. delaney (2012) agreed that mentoring was a valuable method to ensure teachers stay in their jobs longer. in schools mentoring has been used since the 1980 (lai, 2005) to impart skills and knowledge to teachers and students (simonsen et al., 2009; van & waghid, 2008). 4.5. negative aspects of mentoring: having listed all the benefits of mentoring, it was inviting to find if there were perceived negative aspects of mentoring. “the teachers in this school have taught by themselves for a long time. we have taught by ourselves for a long time. when we come together, to merge our experiences, it is difficult to agree on things all the time. there has to be a lot of give and take. there is a lot of negotiation that goes on.” on the one hand, this could be the dynamics that makes mentoring exciting. the merging of experiences and knowledge, the seeking solutions of how to deal with the difficulties, the negotiation and disagreements should be in themselves a process leading to understanding one another. some mentors would put this as a positive rather than a negative. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 328 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the question that followed this was whether age at work increased resistance. searching for reasons from published works, chari, vhuramayi, martin, and nyasha (2013) found that seniority brought about a sense of security, and therefore reduced the uptake or receptivity to mentoring. “we are not colleagues at the same level. the amount of responsibilities on us and on the teachers are enormous. they are in charge of marking, teaching, parents, completing the syllabus. so, there is always that. we want them to be modern teachers, but there is always that which exists.” an acknowledgment of differences in work weight and responsibilities between the mentor and the mentee brings in the dimension of the extent of the mentor‘s area of influence. as one respondent stated, it is up to the mentee to make the most of the relationship. while it was clear in this research that mentors felt limited by their mentees, those with keen mentees expressed more satisfaction with their work, and better results. in the following response, this notion was vocalised: “being overly eager to learn, being aware of own limitations and wanting to improve. you can’t teach that. the mentee must be willing to…” that mentee role in mentoring is of utmost importance in the mentoring relationship as considered by stetsonedu (2015). they sated that mentees, especially who were not new teachers, needed to make way for the mentorship to work. in the case of nisk, the mentorship is put into place by the institutions, and is embedded in the system, which is called collaborative teaching, or team teaching, or coaching, echoing the stetsonedu, who said the mentee had to take full advantage of the mentoring relationship. 4.6. aspects of consideration in mentoring: having listed the benefits of mentoring, it was imperative to find if there were perceived negative aspects of mentoring. team teaching and mentoring: “the teachers in this school have taught by themselves for a long time. we have taught by ourselves for a long time. when we come together, to merge our experiences, it is difficult to agree on things all the time. there has to be a lot of give and take. there is a lot of negotiation that goes on.” when teachers have been in the profession for a long time and have learnt of the tricks that make their students pass, they do not see the reason to continue changing, as they have tried and tested methods (ref). when mentors have elder people for mentees, the wise thing is to be careful, and to find where the mentor could add an edge to what is already in the mentee. this response puts the relationship responsibility on the shoulders of the mentee. it touches the attitude of learning. the question that followed this was whether seniority at work increased posed more problems for the mentor. searching for reasons from published works, … chari et al. (2013) found that … age at a job reduced a willingness to learn new things. “we are not colleagues at the same level. the amount of responsibilities on us and on the teachers are enormous. they are in charge of: marking, teaching, parents, completing the syllabus. so, there is always that. we want them to be modern teachers, but there is always that which exists.” considerations of the differences of the realities helps the mentor be more patient, more understanding of their mentee. alleviating their burden by offering to help sometimes helps create a bond and a friendship, which will make the mentoring relationship stronger. 5. discussion mentoring, as illustrated by the greek use of the word in clark (2011) is a way where a skilled person imparted skills to a less skilled one, in order to raise their skill level to that of the mentor. as such, this viewpoint puts the mentor and the mentee at different levels, which other authors discredit as causing the mentor to feel inferior, therefore unable to express themselves fully (cranton & wright, 2008). the mentor who is on a lower level than the mentee might therefore feel disempowered. this traditional mentoring model is what i called uni-directional mentoring. it is also the overall model taken by the nis schools. in the case of nis schools in kazakhstan, teacher mentoring was the best option for a large scale educational reformation. however, mentoring is not a stand-alone act in the reform arena. it comes with policy change, with political will, with economic demands, and with a campaign for widespread acceptance. this was demonstrated and pushed for by the then president of the republic, nazarbayev nur-sultan. in this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with international teachers who were in mentoring positions in nisk. definitions of mentoring varied, confirming what clark (2011) found, that a mentor is a teacher, a trainer, a coach, and even a director (guide). the meanings of mentoring were categorized, and the seven resulting categories were found to have no clearcut meanings between themselves. many benefits of mentoring were also found, and placed into six categories. bi-directional mentoring was encouraged by the respondents in this research, where both mentee and mentor learn and benefit, although there was a difference in what each gained. the mentee gained elevated classroom skills, while the mentor gained people and cultural skills in the nis mentoring relationships. mentoring was also found to be performed under different names but with similar meanings. in nis, the words coaching and team-teaching were commonly used, rather interchangeably. from this research, it was confirmed that it was difficult to limit mentoring definitions and meanings, which, by virtue of their dependence on the mentoring pair, increased diversity. aspects of mentoring that were found to need consideration included over-eager mentees, considering the differences between mentor and mentee, therefore being soft on the pace of development that mentors expect to see, and to care for the self as mentors, without always feeling responsible for the slow pace of the mentee, but to allow the mentee the time to reflect and choose and decide. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 320-329 329 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6. conclusions mentoring is a cost-effective and worthwhile venture to upgrade the skills of teachers, whether they are new in the field or not. in kazakhstan‘s nis schools, international teachers mentor local teachers in modern pedagogy. in this article the author investigated mentors‘ experiences with mentoring, using face to face semi-structured interviews. seven categories for definition of mentoring were found, indicating the difficulties of coming up with any strict definition. these were: 1. leading, guiding, modelling advising, and exposition; 2. supporting, challenging and suggesting, exploration and experimentation; 3. sharing, collaboration, improving, passing on information; 4. coaching, change and improving, passing on information; 5. challenging and suggesting, exploration and experimentation;6. sharing, collaboration; and 7. trouble-shooting. six categories of benefits of mentoring were found: 1. dialogue and new ideas; 2. self-awareness and motivation; 3. emotional benefits; 4. professional improvement; 5. mutual benefit; emotional betterment, modelling and emulation; and 6. sharing, experimentation, dynamism. each category was discussed in depth. mentoring is a suitable skills upgrading tool for teachers and educational reform method for kazakhstan‘s nis schools‘ context, giving a diversity of meanings and benefits. references abdiraiymova, g., kenzhakimova, g., verevkin, a., lifanova, t., & burkhanova, d. (2015). higher education in kazakhstan: new opportunities and the problem of crystallization of middle strata status. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 177, 142146.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.02.366. abiddin, n. z., & hassan, a. (2012). a review of effective mentoring practices for mentees development. journal of studies in education, 2(1), 72-89.available at: https://doi.org/10.5296/jse.v2i1.1226. avidov-ungar, o., & magen-nagar, n. (2013). teachers in a changing world: attitudes toward organizational change. journal of computers in education, 4(1), 227-249. bridges, d., & sagintayeva, a. (2014). introduction. in d. bridges, (ed.) educational reform and internationalization: the case of school reform in kazakhstan (pp. xxiii-xiii). cambridge: cb, cambridge university press. burkhalter, n., & shegebayev, m. r. 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(2008). a deliberative democratic view of mentorship. south african journal of higher education, 22(1), 207221.available at: https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v22i1.25782. wilson, e., turner, f., sharimova, a., & brownhill, s. (2013). reform at scale: teacher development in kazakhstan. uk; centre of excellence, astana, kazakhstan: university of cambridge. yekavets, n. (2014). reforming society through education for gifted children: the case of kazakhstan. research papers in education, 29(5), 513–533.available at: 10.1080/02671522.2013. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.eurasianet.org/ http://www.stetson.edu/ 27 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 27-32, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5360 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group classroom management in the online environment: a case study of thai tesol staff in thai university context parussaya kiatkheeree faculty of education, suratthani rajabhat university, thailand. email: parussaya.kia@sru.ac.th abstract the present pandemic has presented seriously affected not only the daily life but also teaching and learning and it has been seen a long battle for educators including tesol teachers in thailand. working in the field of tesol, the author experiences the new changing environment where an actual classroom turns into a virtual classroom. all documents and teaching tools prepared (before the pandemic) have been changed into online documents. undeniably, online teaching can be seen as demanding as teaching staff moving from a space in which they have years of experience to the unknown world of online, remote, and socially distanced teaching. this study aims to identify thai tesol staff’s perception towards teaching and learning management affected by covid-19. it the study revealed that the effectiveness of teaching in the changing context depends on the teachers’ readiness to a new learning technology like online meeting, at the same time, they must be open-minded and concerned that they must adjust their role to fit properly in the context. even though participants found the significant change in the use of teaching technology in an online environment, interestingly their teaching and learning management remained as it used to be in the normal (onsite) classroom. in addition, the study provides implications for those who would like to create positive learning environment in online situation. keywords: covid-19, higher education, online environment, online learning, tesol, traditional learning. citation | kiatkheeree, p. (2024). classroom management in the online environment: a case study of thai tesol staff in thai university context. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 27– 32. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5360 history: received: 16 november 2023 revised: 12 january 2024 accepted: 24 january 2024 published: 6 february 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the suratthani rajabhat university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 13 december 2021 (ref. no. sru-ec2021/086). transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 28 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 29 4. findings/results .............................................................................................................................................................................. 29 5. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 30 6. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 7. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 31 8. limitations ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 31 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 31 mailto:parussaya.kia@sru.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5360 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7933-0007 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 27-32 28 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research provides significant perspectives of teaching presence and highlights the challenges and support that are inherent in online teaching. the study, in addition, could be a practical guide to organise and design distinctive post-covid learning environment. 1. introduction although digital transformation in not new, it is concerned as a challenging task in any educational level. in thai higher education, the lack of understanding about the use of technology, online teaching and learning tools, and online evaluation and assessment is seen as a major issue affecting thai educators across the country; meanwhile, changing teaching style from face-to-face to online is seen challenging. in some courses, it is found struggling like in a writing course where the feedback given to students was totally changed to online. according to the study by tian and zhou (2020) it revealed that teacher feedback plays an important role in improving student’s english proficiency in an online writing course. while feedback could have unanticipated effects on students, online feedback could create even more effects to them. during the pandemic, the instructional technology is serving as the only platform, a uniform online learning including instructional design, delivery and assessment platforms is required to ensure the quality of learning. however, it was found that there are the limitations in promoting suitable planning and design as well as instructional programs at the university level (adedoyin & soykan, 2023). this situation appears to be common in thai higher education where lecturers were not well prepared while teacher training and teaching methodology for online learning were concerned as serious issues (sanjaiprom, 2021). this paper discussed the impacts of covid-19 towards teaching and learning management in a digital environment of thai tesol staff in the thai tertiary level. 2. literature review 2.1. the online context in higher education online learning (known as distance learning) has started more than decades and it is greatly employed by many universities and colleges. the course materials used to be predominantly text-based in the past, but they have since evolved to include a variety of technologies. by the use of technology, students and teachers are not physically in the same room and they can be at great distance which allow flexibility in teaching and learning including time management while student engagement is the key for success (gudea, 2008; paulsen & mccormick, 2020). online teaching and learning have now played a major role in higher education. due to the situation of the pandemic covid-19, universities must adopt and change their teaching and learning and provide an online environment to students. this leads to a rapid change of pedagogy in accordance with technology. according to kim and bonk (2006) there is an increasing trend of online learning over the past decades where universities try to integrate the use of online tools and online instructional strategies that encourage inquiry of learners. they mentioned that quality of online education is the key issue to ensure that universities can provide all necessities to meet the demands of learners including pedagogical aspect. not only face-to-face learning environment does reveal a supportive environment whether between teachers and students, as well as between teachers, but also online learning encourages collaborative learning, and faculty interaction (paulsen & mccormick, 2020; salas-pilco, yang, & zhang, 2022). this is in accordance with the study by kiatkheeree (2018) mentioning that interaction especially between teachers and students promotes well supportive learning environment. additionally, it is seen that using technology in higher education allows face-toface teaching approaches to virtual teaching which can be categorized into four aspects: 1) same time, same place, 2) different time, same place, 3) same time, different place, and 4) different time, different place (coldeway, 1995). redmond (2011) explained each aspect as followed: 1. same time, same place – this employs many aspects from the traditional approach where the teachers and learners are in the same geographical location at the same time accessing to the same resources or having a discussion at the same time. 2. different time, same place – this type allows more flexibility in which teachers and learners are in the same geographical location but choose the time to study. 3. same time, different place – this aspect is seen suitable for students working independently so they have a class at the same time but it is allowed to be physically at any places. 4. different time, different place – this aspect is seen as a complete move from traditional face-to-face approach where technology is fully used so teachers and students can decide to choose their own time and location to interact. this has changed the roles of both teachers and students to have flexible teaching and learning spaces. 2.2. online tools in language teaching in order to deliver an online course, the use of various technologies is crucial. online teaching platforms have been developed to facilitate the learning over the internet. the emergency in remote learning caused by covid-19 is occurred while universities worldwide have already adopted the online learning mode as part of their blended learning system. learning management systems (lms), also known as course management systems are used widely in online courses. teachers can manage the courses on the web and it is considered to be safe and secure tools that universities have adopted in offering online courses (singh, mangalaraj, & taneja, 2010). also, technology such as online videos, rich site summary/really simple syndication (rss), and podcasts, screen capture, blogs, web conference or zoom are employed to facilitate teachers’ teaching and enhance students’ learning (chaka, 2020; singh et al., 2010; son, 2011). in the field of language teaching, there are many online tools used in any level. according to son (2011) online tools for language learning activities can be classified into 12 categories as followed: 1) learning/content management systems also known as component content management system (lmss/cmss): this is a platform that allows users to create, store and search libraries of content all in one location (xyleme, 2023). 2) communication (such as windows live, messenger, gmail). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 27-32 29 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3) live and virtual worlds (such as elluminate, livestream, activeworlds). 4) social networking and bookmarking (such as myspace, facebook, twitter). 5) blogs and wikis (such as edmodo, blogger, livejournal). 6) presentation (such as prezi, animoto, empresser). 7) resource sharing (such as dropbox, flickr, mypodcast). 8) website creation (such as google sites). 9) web exercise creation (such as hot potatoes). 10) web search engines (such as google, yahoo, bing). 11) dictionaries and concordancers (such as howjsay, merriam webster online). 12) utilities useful for language learning (such as storybird, surveymonkey). the literatures review the increasing use of technology in the field of teaching english to speakers of other languages while digital technologies have been used in the field of second or foreign language teaching for so long. hall and knox (2009) indicate that technologies, the globalization of english, and the marketisation of education allow tesol teachers to various ways of teaching and learning. it has been seen that online video clips are used in a classroom to enhance the effectiveness of teaching english and promote students’ engagement (muniandy & veloo, 2011). hafner, chik, and jones (2013) assert the importance of technologies in teaching and learning english where social media such as facebook, twitter, or youtube are applied in the tesol. according to shin (2017) online education in tesol has also brought some changes whether it be pedagogical context, teacher’s role, and interaction between teachers and learners which increase active participation along with diverse pedagogical interests and different perceptions of collaborative work. 2.3. teachers’ roles in online teaching however, the covid-19 has raised an urgent issue for universities to move online unexpectedly and immediately that has caused many problems for those who involved. the literature found that university staff were struggling to balance their work and life especially their lack of the pedagogical content knowledge (pck) necessary for online teaching (ching, hsu, & baldwin, 2018; houston, meyer, & paewai, 2006; kali, goodyear, & markauskaite, 2011; rapanta, botturi, goodyear, guàrdia, & koole, 2020; shulman, 1987). additionally, it is appeared that teaching staff struggle to adjust their role changing from face-to-face to online and that brings misalignment of their expectations towards online teaching and learning management (bork & rucks-ahidiana, 2013). in addition, empowering teachers to teach online, including promoting their critical reflection along with applying technology into teaching are seen as crucial factors to effective teaching (baran, correia, & thompson, 2011; yao, rao, jiang, & xiong, 2020). therefore, the study of online education in the higher education is an important and emerging issue. 3. methodology 3.1. research design the study employs qualitative case study as the major method to obtain the data to provide useful insights on this newly emerging topic, teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. 3.2. sample and data collection the participants were university lecturers who were selected according to their experience in the field of both traditional and online teaching and learning. three main criteria were applied regarding their academic status, educational background, and teaching experience. these criteria aimed to ensure that each participant could provide useful insights based on their own educational and teaching experiences so the researcher could obtain significant data relevant to the research questions. data analysis together with semi-structured interviews were employed as the major investigating tools to allow the several voices to emerge. each participant will be interviewed one time. to obtain the in-depth data in accordance with the research study and its purposes, the interviews were based on the two research questions as followed: 1. what are teachers’ perceptions towards traditional learning and online learning? 2. what makes online teaching and learning successful? 3.3. analyzing of data data obtained from interviews was analyzed using cross-case analysis regarding miles and huberman (1994). this cross-case analysis will allow the researcher to consider cases (lecturers teaching english) to see similarities, differences, and unique themes that cut across cases. 4. findings/results 4.1. traditional vs. online teaching the first researched question was addressed here by presenting the participating lecturers’ perception towards both traditional and online teaching. it is interesting to note that participating lecturers indicated their perception towards traditional and online learning differently. it is appeared that participants viewed traditional learning as the way teachers taking a main role to manage the learning and deliver contents in a form of lecture. one participant commented, “it [teaching] is a kind of lecture and rote-learning”. another asserted, “teaching is lecture-based and drill is a technique teachers apply in class”. however, one participant seemed to discuss teachers’ role in traditional learning differently. it is said that, “teachers can be a facilitator who provides help and support especially when students practice the lesson within the classroom”. when compared their perceptions towards online learning, all participants revealed online learning as a new significant way to deliver the lesson. it is somewhat surprising that participants did not see their role changed, they identified their role as ‘to give lecture via online platforms’. generally, participants viewed online learning as a normal classroom where students and teachers can meet and exchange information. one participant cited that “online learning is good because we can still teach our students even though we cannot go to the classroom”. another asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 27-32 30 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group informed that online learning allows teachers to manage time of learning flexibly with various tools, saying that “online learning falls into two categories which are synchronous learning and asynchronous learning so students can learn in real time or anytime”. one unanticipated finding was that participating lecturers tend to worry about the assessment when learning thorough online system. despite the favor of using online tools and receiving students’ attention, participants stated that they could not evaluate students’ performances effectively. one participant mentioned, “it is difficult to evaluate the students’ as we don’t really know that tasks were done by them [students] or someone else… there are so many factors that teachers cannot fully assess and evaluate students’ works”. however, their perception towards teaching role seems diverse. while some of participants mentioned their roles as a facilitator in a traditional learning, some concerned their key role as only giving a lecture in online learning. one stated that “i could not observe or give consultation to the class like in the normal classroom, even though there are many platforms to engage students like facebook but it is hard to manage the class in terms of facilitating students”. on the other hand, another found that teaching online enables teaching staff to create more materials, apply further teaching techniques and strategies. for example, one participant identified, “i have been focusing more on creating materials including audio and some webpages”. at the same time, talks and online feedbacks were given to enhance students’ proficiency. undeniably, changing a normal classroom to online, all the process has a great impact on learning management, particularly roles of teachers. 4.2. challenges with online learning the second research question in relation to promoting online learning was addressed here. when participants were asked about factors influencing successful online learning, they indicated a list of possible factors to the successful online learning as follows. surprisingly, online learning seems to be successful for own sake. comparing to a traditional classroom, the attendance of students increased significantly as online learning suits their learning style, one saying “students attended the class 100% because it is appropriate to their lifestyle to use technology in every day of life”. not only online learning itself encourages students to attend the class, its function also facilitates learning effectively. one participant commented “google, email, facebook … there are many platforms to ease learning, then it’s up to us (lecturers) whether we know how to use it properly or not”. in terms of teaching, the use of online materials is crucial in promoting effective online learning. in some classes, especially non-english major students, lecturers are required to motivate students to engage in the lesson, especially in speaking. one participant said “they (non-english major students) avoided speaking english via online, not only about the lesson but also interaction with the class, i have to motivate them with more tools and materials”. although participants mentioned a variety of online tools were used like google form or youtube, one argued that they need more reliable tools and resources, saying that “we need more valid tools to help out our students, right now we use what we have like in a traditional classroom and turn them to online with a question in mind whether they [materials] are appropriate or not”. one important factor to a successful online learning that all participants indicated is giving feedback. both group feedback and individual feedback were mentioned as a key to enhance students’ learning while participants believed that feedbacks should be given regularly to meet the learning outcomes. one participant emphasized “when students present given tasks, real time feedbacks are important to help students improve their learning”, another asserted “positive feedbacks should be used throughout the lesson with both individual and group in online learning”. 5. discussion the present study revealed significant data in which traditional classrooms and online classrooms are overlapped in some aspects. it seems clear that participating lecturers defined traditional learning as a learning in a real classroom where methods of teaching can be slightly different, but generally, they are lecture-based. however, the findings indicated positioning of teachers’ role in two major roles: a lecturer and a facilitator. under the traditional learning, participating lecturers maintained their role by giving lecture as the circumstances in traditional learning enable them to have authority to control the classroom including teaching contents, teaching materials, or the right of speech; and be the center of knowledge (wang, 2019). at the same time, the participants viewed themselves to be the facilitator of knowledge in traditional learning. even though the participants did not identify themselves as a facilitator in online learning, they employed facilitation strategies, for example online discussion, online feedback, teaching materials which requires them to act as a facilitator. the present findings seem to be consistent with the previous literature that instructors teaching online should be actively engaged as a facilitator by employing facilitation strategies like online discussion or multimedia content (muir, douglas, & trimble, 2020; paulsen & mccormick, 2020). however, the participating lecturers showed positive attitude towards traditional learning. this is in accordance with the study by shambour and abu‑hashem (2022) it has shown that there were numbers of university lecturers from many countries who favored in-class teaching over online teaching. according to the participating lecturers, online learning was unlikely to be pleasant. due to the covid-19 disruption, participants had to adopt online learning to continue the learning process. this rapid change had been seen as a problem to participants in which they found it was hard to teach and employ tools, and they mentioned their concern over the quality of their lesson including assessment in online classes. the findings of the current study are consistent with those of nambiar (2020) who suggested that face-to-face classroom enables teachers to observe and adjust their teaching immediately because teachers can see the whole classroom including student’s body language and some non-verbal cues. while participants viewed online learning challenging, they believed online learning is a powerful tool to deliver effective lessons. the findings revealed the level of students’ attendance was high due to their familiarity in the use of online tools. this finding is in agreement with meletiou-mavrotheris, eteokleous, and stylianou-georgiou (2022) findings which showed that university students viewed online platforms and the remote learning as easy to use. online learning, therefore, can promote the engagement of students. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 27-32 31 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group in addition to the useability of online platforms, teaching online requires online materials as an opportunity to promote successful learning. however, participants questioned the validity of teaching tools, and there are some possible explanations for this result. first, it literacy and skills affect the success of online learning. regarding xiong and mok (2020) it is important to assess whether or not online learning meets the expectation of students where it literacy and skills of both instructors and students play an important role to effectiveness of online learning. by this it means that the more lecturers possess it skills, the more they make use of the advantages of online platforms and online materials. apart from it literacy and skills needed, support from institutions could affect the lecturers to employ appropriate tools especially for evaluation. education institutions, therefore, should involve technological transformation to virtual education in order to provide digital methodologies that engage students more actively in digital learning contexts, tools, and assessment methods (garcía-morales, garrido-moreno, & martín-rojas, 2021; krishnamurthy, 2020). in the current context, there are variety of online tools available for free, at the same time, there are many good assessment tools for sale. as the time constraint during the pandemic, creating own tools would be less possible in terms of validity and reliability, the use of available tools is a good alternative. ultimately, limited access to prepaid assessment tools should be sorted out by the institutions. 6. conclusion this study revealed significant factors that online classes can be better than traditional classes. although participating lecturers seemed to perceive the face-to-face or traditional classes are manageable, they mentioned their positive attitude towards online teaching. lecturers’ roles and readiness are the main key role in promoting positive learning environment. traditional classrooms to their perception, is referred to the setting where everyone meets in person within a fixed time and place and its image is familiar to lecturers in the current context. online classroom, on the other hand, is perceived to require a radical change regarding communication style, summative assessments, and content delivery; lesson plans, teaching materials, and relevant technology are mandatory for running an online course. lecturers must adjust their roles to fit properly in the contexts. in addition, readiness of the lecturers is important to promote effective learning when the learning environment has changed, in this case, into online learning. and this consequently has affected the effectiveness of online learning. 7. recommendations the change of teaching and learning circumstances has brought many concerns among educators and they are required to adjust themselves to fit in the changing context. the lecturers, in this case, need to acquire and open for changing concept of the classroom from face-to-face to online learning. further, it literacy and skills should be part of their teaching capacity as online learning is mentioned as a very effective method to carry on their teaching. the institution, therefore, should support the learning process and facilitate the lecturers whether the tools or the course to prepare their staff for online teaching. further research is also required to explore more on the application of online learning in order to create more strategies to facilitate the instructions both in different situations (not only during the pandemic) and different contexts where practices differ in each country. 8. limitations this study has some limitations, and its findings should be interpreted with caution. due to a small sample size, the findings may not accurately represent the voice of lecturers teaching english in thailand. moreover, the findings are specific to the thai higher education context and cannot be applied to higher education globally. also, this study only presents lecturers’ experiences and perspectives, leaving out students’ experiences and challenges in both traditional learning and online learning. references adedoyin, o. b., & soykan, e. 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 30-35, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.30.35 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group use of digital assessments how to utilize digital bloom to accommodate online learning and assessments? farhat n. husain quality for excellence for education consultancy, kingdom of bahrain. abstract as there has always been a concern regarding creation of reliable online assessments by educators, this academic article provides an idea for creating of online assignments for the inexperienced assessment literate teachers. this proposed model will show how to utilize bloom’s model to create digital online assignments using ict tools. the inspiration of this proposed model is taken from a combination of benjamin bloom’s taxonomy and andrew churches digital bloom’s taxonomy, as both focuses on the teaching and learning environment. due to the pandemic 2020 approximate estimation of 87% of world’s student’s population (mcgee, 2013; unesco, 2020) faced the issue of school closure, which gave a rise to online teaching, learning. therefore, this paper examines the need of creation of reliable assessments which caters to the different students’ abilities. by this proposed model and with the integration of information and communication technology with benjamin bloom’s cognitive domain, this article will add a new dimension towards the online assessment. the main objective of this article is to utilize the common language and the terminology from the blooms taxonomy for assessing the students depending on their needs and abilities to achieve the targeted learning outcomes. keywords: assessment literacy, bloom’s taxonomy, digital bloom, online assessments, covid, reliability. citation | farhat n. husain (2020). use of digital assessments how to utilize digital bloom to accommodate online learning and assessments? asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 30-35. history: received: 11 november 2020 revised: 13 december 2020 accepted: 30 december 2020 published: 21 january 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: this paper is a presentation of my original research work. it is the original work. i attest that this paper has not been published in whole elsewhere. funding: this study received funding from quality excellence for educational consultancy w.l.l. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 2. purpose of study .............................................................................................................................................................................. 31 3. online planning, teaching and learning ................................................................................................................................... 31 4. purpose and types of assessments .............................................................................................................................................. 32 5. online assessments ......................................................................................................................................................................... 32 6. bloom’s taxonomy .......................................................................................................................................................................... 32 7. digital bloom’s taxonomy ............................................................................................................................................................ 33 8. online assessment using bloom’s digital model..................................................................................................................... 34 9. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 34 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 34 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.30.35&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2583 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8573-1106 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 30-35 31 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the need of creation of reliable assessments which caters to the different students’ abilities. 1. introduction it would be very rare as a student, even for educators, to be told that they wouldn’t have to sit for any of the end of year written examinations. imagine that. life would seemingly be so easy, paving way to the next level with flying colors. just the mere thought of it gives wings to stress, allowing it to fly away. but wait a minute, is this not currently the case for many of the students in 2020? as a parent, it was quite relieving when the exam board announced about the cancellation of written exams due to the pandemic (unesco, 2020) and further declaring that the results would be based on historical data, graded formative and summative assessments, course work etc. however, as an educator and an assessment consultant, the assessments have always been a very reliable tool when assessing the students’ progress. this initiated a conversation with a dear friend and an educator, where it was discussed how reliable assessments; have been planned by the educators, especially when considering specific and individual student needs. this thoughtprovoking realization raised the idea to propose this study for this academic article. year 2020 has been quite challenging for most of the schools around the world as the educational institutions have now established online teaching platforms due to the pandemic outbreak. most of the educational institutes were given a green light for a shut down from unesco. as of the 26th march 2020, the closure of educational institutes affected 1.5 billion students which is estimated around 87% of world’s student’s population. though schools were encouraged to shut down, teaching, learning and assessing never came to a halt. with that being said, this new normalcy poses the following question; how effectively have the school planned for this short coming regarding the reliable online assessments taking inconsideration the different learning abilities? 2. purpose of study the purpose of this study is to present bloom’s cognitive domain to connect with digital bloom’s taxonomy, integrated with information communication technology tools for creating online assessments to cater the needs of the different abilities during these pandemic times through online planning, teaching and learning methods. to prepare the teachers as online assessment literates, the focus of this article will be to present bloom’s taxonomy as a guide in order to connect with the digital aspect in creation of reliable online assessments for the inexperienced teachers. therefore, this digital bloom assessment model will act as a guide for the educators. the research is to prepare reliable online assessments to design online activities for the students to suit the needs according to their abilities to reach to hots (higher order thinking skills). therefore, for understanding a concept, remembrance is required and to apply a knowledge; understanding is required (churches, 2008). as the students are equipped with different learning abilities, bloom’s taxonomy caters to the needs of the different thinking order skills. so taking in consideration that the learning continuum of bloom’s lots, (lower order thinking skills) to hots, (higher order thinking skills) concept categorizes and orders thinking skills as part of the thinking process. 3. online planning, teaching and learning the method of teaching and learning starts with a process of planning. teachers prepare their lessons in advance to facilitate a good, enriched learning environment for the students. while planning for the online lessons, students can be presented with the introduction of the topic beforehand. learning management systems(lms) are getting very popular in education environment, where all the teaching and learning resources along with the lesson plans are shared for that specific school authorized community to access. lms are web based applications used in the education environment for the purposes of planning, assessing, evaluating, subject content delivery etc (bombe, 2020). teachers can place all the teaching methodologies, techniques and tools in the lesson plan as to how they would implement this plan in online teaching to create a progressive online learning environment. bloom’s digital taxonomy by andrew churches introduced with the use of information and communication technology to enhance the process of online teaching and learning. during the learning process, the collaboration of 21st century skills, sets an impact on the students and teachers, as it facilitates lot skills and hot skills. to understand this further, by using the verbs from original benjamin bloom’s taxonomy with the integration of the ict skills, and recalling specific information students may better recognize, listen, search, google, bookmark etc. through different possible ict integrated activities such as by the use of the social networking, teachers can create and facebook group or even whatsapp group for their subjects where they can exchange their views, suggestions and opinions. in good online teaching and learning environment, teachers as starter activities can introduce the lesson beforehand so that students can recall the concepts before entering the class which can be accessed through cell phones or any device easily accessible to the students (churches, 2008). teaching and learning is an ongoing process, as an average classroom of today possesses the combination of different needs. also, in the present day, the use of the internet and technology has brought a major change, where the learners are enriching their thought process by collaborating their knowledge with their experiences, as part of constructivism (kalpana, 2014) giving rise to the online classes and the online assessments with the help of assessment literate educators. 3.1. need of assessment literate teachers being an assessment literate educator, it is necessary to understand the basic concept in creation of reliable assessments, whether it be for the online assessments or the conventional class room setting assessments (popham, 2011). the amount of time spent on the teaching practices, requires proper testing which measures the reliability of the assessments to ensure the success of the students and the teachers (ryan, 2018). the impact of properly designed reliable online assessments by assessment literate educators, provides further guidance for administering, marking, interpreting assessment results and also using the interpretation for further development (ryan, 2018). different methods of the assessments serve as evidences for the student’s progress, whether it be from asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 30-35 32 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group international, national, regional or local point of view for developed or developing countries. assessment literate educators are aware that the reliable assessments are an essential part of instruction which enables educators to evaluate, measure, track the progress, understand the students’ learning capabilities, acquire new knowledge skills etc. different types of assessments are used to test the concepts or skills taken up in the class by the students such as formative assessment, summative assessments etc. currently assessment policies are also in place, which forms the basis of student testing as part of the education policy (best et al., 2013). 4. purpose and types of assessments assessment literate educators are aware that the reliable assessments are an essential part of instruction which enables educators to evaluate, measure, track, progress, understand students’ learning capabilities, acquire new knowledge skills etc. different types of assessments are used to test the concepts or skills taken up in the class by the students such as formative assessment, summative assessments etc. 4.1. assessment in covid-19 outbreak being cognizant and aware to not seem unfair to students, promoting teacher bias, or placing students at a disadvantage, how reliable online assessments are in terms of marking, feedback and students’ performance; is taken into consideration when accessing their ability and needs. the need to shift to the online platform, the stakeholders had no choice, so students had to compromise and to go with the set of instructions delivered by the educational institutes (bender, 2020). 5. online assessments as the technology is revolutionizing, conducting assessments should not be stressful. to conduct online assessments, it has become easier as there is no requirement of using pencil and paper based option (vipin, 2019). during the pandemic, online assessments have been accepted everywhere. however, to maintain its reliability, (vipin, 2019) proposes that the online assessment content design should be simple and not be complicated. it should be easy to understand without any flaws; as it will set a reliable measuring tool. an inexperienced assessment literate educators would not be able to maintain the reliability of online assessments, as they would either need practice or to be presented with a guideline. this may also be connected to the issue of not being able to differentiate the need of the students, not only during the online teaching and learning but also in setting of the online assessments. this also brings us to the relationship of the student teacher collaboration, which would be considered as a weak link; giving rise to students’ low selfesteem. and as a result, there may be no improvement in students’ performance and progress. with the help of the bloom;s taxonomy set as a guidance, students can be challenged as it will provide them with the practice set by the educators; in order to progress from the low order thinking skill to reach to the high order thinking skill. as part of online assessment for blooms’s model, information communication technology tools for memorizing, recalling and understanding; flowchart assignments can be provided to the students, for example cooking class, to trace down steps for making a sandwich of your own choice. or by the use of flash cards recalling the terminologies and their meanings etc. educators can use readymade application such as cram for flash cards and app.diagrams.net/ for creating flowcharts. 6. bloom’s taxonomy this model was published in 1956 prepared as a set of cognitive domain, to help out students with their different ability needs. the effectiveness of this model will also help in differentiating the curriculum, therefore providing a chance to all the students to progress at the same time along with the high achievers, by participating in the same content area worked on his first cognitive domain, dealing with the mental thinking skills. figure-1. blooms’ taxonomy (cognitive domain). source: fastiggi (2019). the students are prepared to progress from simple tasks to higher ability tasks which helps them to enhance their knowledge and understanding for new concepts. also, the independent learners as the high achievers; apply their knowledge further to synthesize and evaluate to develop new information and express personal values https://app.diagrams.net/ asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 30-35 33 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group respectively. this creates a sense of taking the responsibility of their own learning. the structure of bloom’s “cognitive domain” needs to be taken in consideration while preparing activities for the online testing as part of conventional assessing strategies. also, the educators can benefit from this model, as they can prepare their students for better understanding of the usage of the cognitive skill from the very basic to very complicated critical analysis. as this will provide reliable outcome with the help of improved online assessments. in this digital era and the pandemic times, online classrooms are equipped with variety of digital technologies which has also laid the foundation for the online teaching and learning. and with that being said, the collaboration of the ict skills and it tools, these can widely be used in connection with the bloom’s taxonomy for the creation of reliable online assessments. the purpose of using this model for all the educators and assessment literate educators is to have a common objective of utilizing the common language and terminology for assessing the students online depending on their needs according to their abilities to ensure that the outcomes of the lesson is achieved (d’eon, 2018). if the technologies and it tools are properly integrated with teaching and learning (fischer & battro, 2012) this could pave a new progressive dimension towards online assessments. however, we have seen that in today’s digital era, the collaboration of ict integration has already taken place. a revised form of bloom’s digital taxonomy was created as a result of rapid integration of the technologies in 2008 (churches, 2008). this design will serve as a guide to prepare reliable online assessments and test the students’ ability by using the digital bloom’s taxonomy integrated with the ict tools, serving as a model for assessment literate educators. for a learning experience, to maintain its authenticity by integrating information communication technology, this creates a motivating and challenging environment for the students (obaiageli, 2019). 7. digital bloom’s taxonomy this model created by andrew churches in 2008, is a guide to help the educators to facilitate learning by using digital tools, associated with each level of bloom’s model (obaiageli, 2019) especially during the pandemic crises which the world is facing currently. figure-2. bloom’s digital taxonomy (ict integrated and thinking order skills). source: churches (2008). assessment technologies are needed to capture every student’s learning step (esther & alvin, 2017) and the possibility to create reliable online assessments are by incorporating the original with that of the digital bloom taxonomy. this model will provide as a guide for the inexperienced or the assessment literate teachers to prepare the online assessments, digital bloom model incorporation with ict tools can be used to devise reliable online assessment model. assessment literate teachers uses the 6 tiers from bloom’s model revised version, “remembering, “understanding”, “applying”, “analyzing”, evaluating” and “creating” and in order to connect the digital bloom taxonomy, ic integration tools are utilized for preparation of reliable online activities and assessments. such as with the use of video conferencing as part of hybrid learning environment, lessons are prepared by using learning management system to share the teaching resources with the students which are carefully designed by the educators (churches, 2008). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 30-35 34 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 8. online assessment using bloom’s digital model digital bloom’s model helps the educators to structure reliable online assessment. this is a chance for educators to be creative, by utilizing all the levels of taxonomy and connecting it to the subject content; therefore, teachers can prepare questions for assessments during the online classes (bender, 2020) with the integration of ict applications tools, such as you tube, microsoft office, moodle, wikis, online tests and quizzes application, by creating varieties of different activities. these can be directly sent to the students, which can be automatically graded along with the feedback. social media page can be created for the students to post online assessment reflections and placing their views, feedback such as challenges faced, could have done better, or any positive aspect etc. to further improve or to reflect upon it. example for setting up online assessments with the integration of ict tools using digital bloom’s taxonomy: 8.1. business anna is a professional baker; she is looking for a suitable location for her new business. question: what factors should think be considered before decision is finalized. 1. level i and ii: remembering and understanding: youtube video (for students to see the video and answer the questions provided by the teacher as back channeling). 2. level i and ii: remembering and understanding: kahoot.it (an app the teacher can use to create quizzes, marked and graded online). 3. level i, ii and iii: remembering, understanding and applying: ms. office (ms. word) for students to type in the answers for the questions set by the teacher, as offline strategy. 4. level i, ii and iii: remembering, understanding and applying: ms. office (ms. powerpoint) to create presentation as offline strategy. 5. level iii, iv, v and vi: applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating: multimedia creation software (to create own video, as an interview to present interviews as research strategy). table-1. balance sheet 2001 and 2002. items 2001 ($) 2000($) turn over 20,000 18,000 cost of sales 12,000 10,000 gross profit 11,000 8,000 net profit 4,000 3,200 current assets 13,000 11,000 current liabilities 8,000 7,000 capital employed 18,000 17,000 question: calculate: (a) current ratio for 2000 and 2001 question: differentiate between current assets and current liabilities. options by the teacher for the online assessments using online tools: 1. level i and ii: remembering and understanding: kahoot.it (an online application that the teachers can use to create quizzes and can be marked and graded online). 2. level i, ii and iii: remembering, understanding and applying: ms. office (ms. excel) for students to solve the questions set by the teacher using spreadsheet, as offline strategy. 3. level i, ii and iii: remembering, understanding and applying: ms. office (ms. word) for students to type in the answers to the questions set by the teacher as offline strategy for further analysis and evaluation. 9. conclusion online teaching and learning could prove very effective if the digital bloom’s taxonomy and ict tools are utilized to design teaching, learning and assessments. using of bloom’s cognitive domain to connect with the digital bloom’s taxonomy by integrating information and communication technology tools for creating online assessment can cater the needs of the different ability students during these pandemic times. if the online assessments are designed as per the bloom’s teaching and learning taxonomy, this will help the educators to use the lot skills to hot skills in order to teach and assess their students in most reliable way. though the online planning, teaching and learning has been in place for some time now, however for effective use, the educators could better incorporate technology to facilitate reliable online assessments. for the inexperienced teachers, creation of reliable online assessments integration with information communication technology tools, will guide and train them further in the preparation of online assessments. furthermore, the trained educators can take the initiative as alead trainers in the assessment literacy. references bender, l. (2020). key messages and actions for covid-19: prevention and control in school (pp. 3-4). unicef. school administrators, teachers and staff. education in emergencies unicef new york. key messages and action. best, m., knight, p., lietz, p., lockwood, c., nugroho, d., & tobin, m. (2013). the impact of national and international assessment programmes on education policy, particularly policies regarding resource allocation and teaching and learning practices in developing countries. final report. london: eppi-centre, social science research unit, institute of education, university of london. bombe, k. (2020). opportunity analysis and industry forecasts by meticoulous research: meticoulous market research pvt.ltd. learning management system (lms) market worth $28.1 billion by 2025, growing at a cagr of 20.5% from 2019global market opportunity analysis and industry forecasts by meticulous research®. newswire. churches, a. (2008). bloom’s digital taxonomy. bloom's revised digital taxonomy map, 6-8. d’eon, m. (2018). bloom’s taxonomy: the cognitive domain. gwenna moss centre for teaching and learning. canmeded-ipedia: the coral collection. concepts as online resources for accelerated learning. university of saskatchewan. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 30-35 35 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group esther, c., & alvin, v. (2017). education is changing. it’s time assessment caught up. to prepare students for the job markets that will await them, let’s focus on the skills, not the scores. stanford social innovation review. fastiggi, w. (2019). applying bloom’s taxonomy to the classroom. technologyfor learners. learn to use technology and use technology to learn. fischer, k., & battro, a. (2012). mind, brain and education in the digital era. wiley online library, 6(1), 49-50.available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-228x.2011.01137.x. kalpana, t. (2014). a constructivist perspective on teaching and learning: a conceptual framework. international research journal of social sciences, 3(1), 27-29. mcgee, p. (2013). supportingac ademichonesty. journal of educators online, 10(1), 3-34.available at: 10.9743/jeo.2013.1.6. obaiageli, s. (2019). integrating technology with bloom’s taxonomy. course design tools. teach online. arizona state university. popham, w. j. (2011). assessment literacy overlooked: a teacher educator's confession. the teacher educator, 46(4), 265-273.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/08878730.2011.605048. ryan, k. a. (2018). an investigation of pre-service teacher assessment literacy: measure development and edtpa performance. ph.d theses, kent university. unesco. (2020). alternative solution to school closure in arab countries to ensure that learning never stops.covid-19. building peace in the minds of men and women.unesco. vipin, s. (2019). the impact of online assessments on the educational sector. educational technology. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 284 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 284-296, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.284.296 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group use of origami in mathematics teaching: an exemplary activity davut köğce niğde ömer halisdemir university, faculty of education, department of elementary mathematics education turkey. abstract students’ attitudes and motivations toward mathematics decrease as they intensively confront cognitive information along the process of mathematics teaching in general. one of the most important reasons for this is the lack of activities for affective and psychomotor domains in the mathematics teaching process. one way to overcome this problem is to include activities through which students can participate effectively in the teaching process. for example, activities performed using origami can be one of them in teaching the attainments covered by the field of geometry learning in mathematics curriculum. therefore, this study was carried out to present an exemplary activity about how origami can be used when teaching mathematics in secondary schools and to identify preservice teacher opinions on this activity. the activity presented in this study was performed with 32 preservice elementary mathematics teachers attending the faculty of education at a university and taking the mathematics teaching with origami course, and their opinions were taken afterwards. at the end of the application, the preservice teachers stated that such activities would have very positive contributions to students’ mathematics learning. in addition, the preservice teachers communicated and exchanged ideas with each other during the application. it is therefore recommended to use such activities in mathematics teaching. keywords: mathematics teaching, origami activity, mathematics teaching with origami, preservice mathematics teacher, use of origami, opinions about origami. citation | davut köğce (2020). use of origami in mathematics teaching: an exemplary activity. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 284-296. history: received: 7 february 2020 revised: 9 march 2020 accepted: 13 april 2020 published: 21 may 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 285 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 286 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 287 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 295 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 296 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.284.296&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1651 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3475-2740 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1651 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3475-2740 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1651 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3475-2740 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 285 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature given the potential the potential of origami in mathematics education, it is important to development of activities concerning the use of origami in mathematics teaching. this paper will provide important contributions to the literature as it offers an exemplary activity on the use of origami in mathematics teaching. 1. introduction mathematics, which is taught as a basic and weighted course throughout all years of education from elementary to the end of secondary education, is regarded by students as a course that is abstract and hard to be understood. one of the reasons why mathematics is perceived as an abstract and difficult course may be that mathematical concepts and rules are presented to students in a way they can memorize directly them and that efforts are made only to reinforce them. according to most teachers, success in mathematics means being able to use formulas, rules and methods instantly and properly and do the calculation in a right way today (soylu & aydın, 2006). in other words, when teaching mathematics in traditional teaching processes, the information is readily presented, and then, solutions with predetermined single correct answers that require to use the learned information are performed. in such an educational environment, it is difficult for students to acquire the skills and attainments foreseen by the mathematics curriculum (inan, 2006). thus, many students are not aware of the mathematical concepts underlying the operations they use when solving a mathematical problem or question and what mathematics actually means. indeed, students think of mathematics learning as doing operations by using meaningless formulas and symbols and try to learn mathematics by rote learning (oaks, 1990; soylu & aydın, 2006). as a result, students find it difficult to perceive the characteristics of the concepts they have learned and associate them with other concepts (yılmaz & yenilmez, 2008). mathematics teaching should be carried out efficiently to overcome such problems. if it is intended that students learn a mathematical concept meaningfully and retentively, they should be allowed to ask questions about the concept, exchange views with others and perform activities. as it is known, students learn best by doing and experiencing. then, by selecting the appropriate tools and materials, classroom environments should be designed to ensure that students can be active in the learning process (türksoy & taşlıdere, 2016). in other words, the teacher needs to prepare appropriate learning environments that will be effective in the students' learning process and to help them guide their own learning processes, discover and structure the information by ensuring their active participation (akpınar, 2010; baki, 2008; köğce, 2017; köse, ayas, & uşak, 2006). furthermore, teachers are expected to select and use appropriate materials that will help students materialize the concepts when teaching mathematical concepts that are abstract by nature (meb, 2018). teyfur (2011) states that effective teaching environments can be prepared by using the proper tools and activities, and consequently, objectives of the curricula can be achieved more easily. moreover, according to oztap, ozay, and oztap (2003) the hand-made activities which students perform themselves by actively participating in them during the course enable them to learn the concepts better. the standards of nctm (2000) also emphasize that mathematical models, tools and materials should be used for allowing students to take a more active role in mathematics teaching processes. learning environments using different teaching materials allow students to study the concepts which have been previously investigated, express their ideas in a clear way, explore some of the new features of the concept, discuss and make their information meaningful (inan, 2006). students can achieve easier and retentive learning by introducing tangible outcomes in the course process (wittrock, 1992). in the mathematics curriculum which started to be gradually implemented as of 2005 and revised later in turkey, it is recommended to associate mathematical concepts with real and tangible experience and to attach importance to conceptual learning. accordingly, it is stated to be important and necessary to use tangible materials as much as possible in the teaching of new concepts and in evaluations to be made when teaching mathematics in primary and secondary schools (meb, 2018). furthermore, the necessity and importance of using many tangible models and materials for teaching the mathematical concepts is emphasized in the literature (bozkurt & polat, 2011; bozkurt & akalın, 2010; kennedy & tipps, 1994; ozdemir, 2008). how learning by doing and experiencing is more meaningful and retentive is also emphasized in american educational technologist edgar dale's cone of experience (celik, 2014). in addition, huetinck and munshin (2004) state that teaching tools can be effective in moving students’ level of mathematical comprehension from concrete experience to abstract thinking. moyer (2001) also demonstrates that the teaching materials, which present abstract mathematical concepts by visualizing them in a tangible and clear way, help students perceive the basic characteristics of the concept and improve their imagination. one of the ways to perform meaningful and retentive mathematics teaching is to carry out activities using the teaching materials through which students can actively participate in the teaching process and which enable them to visualize concepts in a clear and tangible way (clements & mcmillen, 1996). for example, activities performed using origami can be one of them in teaching the attainments covered by the field of geometry learning in mathematics curriculum. origami is a paper folding art that emerged in japan (yoshioka, 1963). origami has two types, classical origami and modular origami (tuğrul & kavici, 2002). a single piece of paper is used in classic origami. different items, animal figures and two-dimensional geometric shapes can be made with classic origami. also known as unit origami, modular origami is formed by combining similar pieces (gür, 2015). modular origami is rather used to construct three-dimensional geometric figures (tuğrul & kavici, 2002). it is mentioned in many studies that origami can contribute to the comprehension of the concepts of geometry (cipoletti & wilson, 2004; deyoung, 2009; wares, 2013; wares., 2016). origami allows students to perceive abstract mathematical concepts in a concrete manner and improve their mathematical ideas and thoughts (cornelius & tubis, 2006; pearl, 1994). tuğrul and kavici (2002) state that using origami in education have significant contributions to the development of children's motor, mental and creativity skills. moreover, as it is in question in origami activities that students personally participate in and do it, origami can ensure that they achieve learning in the sensory (attention-grabbing and motivating) and psychomotor (requiring hand, eye and muscle asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 286 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group coordination) domains in addition to the cognitive domain of learning (meb., 2011). duatepe paksu (2016) stated that the use of origami in mathematics teaching would increase the participation of students from cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects, and consequently, they could learn mathematics more easily. it is possible to see clearly that different geometric shapes are formed even if we fold and unfold any piece of paper we handle. fold traces and intersections formed when making origami represent the different elements (side, angle, corner, edge, surface, etc.) of that shape or object duatepe paksu (2016)the use of origami especially in the teaching of geometry subjects, in other words, enables the visual presentation of some concepts, features and relationships without measuring instruments such as miter, ruler and protractor. origami also provides visual evidence to support meaningful and retentive learning in teaching mathematical attainments (olson, 1975). it is observed in the literature that few studies have been conducted on the use of origami as a teaching instrument in the classroom setting in turkey (boz, 2015; duatepe paksu, 2016; hacısalihoğlu karadeniz, 2017; polat, 2013). moreover, given the abovementioned problems related to learning and teaching mathematics and the potential of origami in mathematics education, it is important to consider the development of activities concerning the use of origami in mathematics teaching. 1.1. the purpose of the study and the problem case this study was carried out to present an exemplary activity about how origami can be used when teaching mathematics in secondary schools and to determine preservice mathematics teacher opinions on this activity. to this end, the following were decided to be the research questions: 1. how can an activity using origami in mathematics teaching be developed? 2. what are the mathematical attainments that can be taught using this activity? 3. what are the preservice mathematics teacher opinions and thoughts on the use of this activity? 2. method 2.1. research design aiming to develop an exemplary activity that uses origami in mathematics teaching and identify preservice mathematics teacher opinions on this activity, this research is a descriptive study utilizing the qualitative research design. qualitative research ensures that data are read over and over to be divided into codes and categories based on their similarities and differences and research results are presented (cepni, 2012; karasar, 2016; merriam, 1988; yıldırım & simşek, 2016). 2.2. study group the study was carried out with 32 preservice teachers who were studying in the elementary mathematics teaching program in the faculty of education of a public university and took the mathematics teaching with origami course in the fall semester of 2017-2018 academic year. 2.3. data collection tool the data of the study were collected in two different ways. the first one is the spiral cube and square prism activity which the preservice teachers constructed together during the course, and the second one is the question form asking four open-ended, structured questions that could explore the preservice mathematics teacher opinions on the spiral cube and square prism activity. the open-ended questions allow preservice teachers to express the reasons for their answers and reflect the way they thought of the activity (gronlund & linn, 1990). this is why open-ended questions were utilized as data collection instrument. the question form prepared to achieve content validity was submitted to the opinion of two branch education experts and finalized on the basis of their opinions and suggestions. the questions used in the question form include: 1. what are your opinions on the clarity of the instructions of the spiral cube and square prism activity that you prepared and its applicability in terms of mathematics teaching? 2. what are the grade levels and mathematical attainments associated with the shapes which were formed in each making stage of the spiral cube and the square prism activity? please explain your opinion in detail. 3. what are the advantages and disadvantages of the spiral cube and square prism activity for mathematics teaching in your opinion? please explain your opinion in detail. 4. what are the contributions of the spiral cube and square prism activity to you as a preservice teacher? please explain your opinion in detail. 2.4. development of spiral cube and square prism activity the application was carried out in mathematics teaching with origami course in three weeks (9 class hours). in the first week, the instructor showed the preservice teachers how to do the spiral cube and the square prism step by step and asked them to do it at the same time. they were then asked to repeat the making of the spiral cube and square prism on their own to gain practice. at the end of the three class hours, all the preservice teachers gained practice about the making of spiral cube and square prism. in the second week, the preservice teachers were asked to write down folding instructions for each stage of the origami folding for the making of spiral cube and square prism. they were encouraged to share their thoughts with each other and to discuss in the classroom during the writing stage of the activity instructions. in this way, the origami activity (spiral cube and square prism activity) introduced in detail below were structured step by step along with the participant preservice teachers. after the structuring of the activity, the preservice teachers were divided into 8 groups of four. next, each group was asked to perform their activity with the 6th-grade students at their internship secondary schools within the scope of the teaching practice course and to ask students and secondary mathematics teachers about their opinions on the clarity and applicability of the activity instructions. the activity was carried out by the preservice teachers in the class of 8 mathematics teachers in 3 different schools. in the third week, the participants asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 287 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group were asked to provide their opinion in the question form in regard to the clarity and applicability of the activity instructions, which mathematical attainments and concepts the shapes formed at each stage were associated with, the advantages and disadvantages of the activity in terms of mathematics teaching, and the activity’s contribution to them as preservice teachers. 2.5. data collection and analysis the data of the study were collected by applying the question form prepared for the fourth-grade preservice mathematics teachers in the mathematics teaching with origami course in the fall semester of 2017-2018 academic year as stated in the application section above. after the question form had been applied, form of each preservice teacher was assigned a number. for example, “pt1” represents the preservice teacher 1. the origami activity (spiral cube and square prism activity) structured by the preservice teachers under the guidance of the instructor and their opinions on the clarity and applicability of the activity instructions were descriptively examined and presented in the findings section. the preservice teachers’ answers to the open-ended questions in the question form were subjected to content analysis, and “data coding” was utilized as the data analysis method (yıldırım & simşek, 2016). to analyze the obtained data in a reliable way, the answers given by 10 randomly chosen preservice teachers to the questions were classified and analyzed categorically according to their similarities and differences separately by the researcher and a field expert (merriam, 1988; yin, 1994). the degree of agreement of the coding performed by the researcher and the field expert was calculated with the formulation “reliability=(number of agreed categories) (total number of agreed and disagreed categories)” (miles & huberman, 1994). the reliability degree regarding the agreement between the analyses performed individually by the researcher and the field expert was calculated to be 0.88. miles and huberman (1994) state that agreement between the two coders being 0.70 and above is sufficient for reliability. accordingly, it was decided that the agreement between the coders was reliable. next, these categories formed by the researcher and the expert were reviewed by them together to clarify the similar categories, and different categories were discussed to achieve consensus (merriam, 1988; yin, 1994). the answers given by the remaining preservice teachers were categorically analyzed by the researcher alone in terms of their similarities and differences. the codes and themes, which were created once the analysis of all the data was completed, were submitted to the review of the same field expert and finalized in accordance with expert’s recommendations; they were next presented in tables with percentage-frequency values and citations from the actual answers given by the preservice teachers. m.a.b.c.d. coding of mathematical achievements related to the prepared activity means the following. the meaning of m.6.3.4.2 coding is given in table 1. table-1. meaning of m.6.3.4.2. coding. m. 6. 3. 4. 2. course code class level learning area sub-learning area achievements number source: mathematics curriculum (primary and secondary school 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8th grades). 2.6. validity and reliability the validity and reliability measures required for the qualitative research method were taken in this study (yıldırım & simşek, 2016). hence, it was ensured that the participant preservice teachers answered each question in consideration of their current status to achieve internal validity during the implementation of the data collection instruments. for the external validity, the findings were presented in consistency with the research questions in an effort. to achieve the external reliability, the position of the researcher conducting the data analysis within the research process, conceptual framework used for the data analysis as well as the codes and themes were described, and detailed explanations were made on the data collection and analysis methods. for the internal reliability, the researcher and a field expert participated in the analysis steps and the achieved data were presented in a detailed way and in a descriptive approach. 3. findings introduction to the activity and its making stages, which mathematical attainments that can be taught with it, its advantages and disadvantages for the mathematics teaching and how it contributed to them as preservice teachers are addressed in this section. 3.1. introduction to spiral cube and square prism and the making stages spiral cube and square prism and the making stages was given in table 2 below. the spiral cube and square prism, which was structured by the preservice teachers, is an activity that will be useful for the students to structure the concept of volume. it is a student-centered activity in which students will be able to participate as if they were playing a game using only paper in a classroom environment, and at the end, they will generate a tangible product about rectangular prism. the main purpose of the activity is to present a tangible material that can be directly used in the teaching of the following attainment specified in the mathematics curriculum which is implemented at the public schools under the ministry of national education in turkey. according to 100% of the preservice teachers, this activity is an important teaching material that can be used in the teaching of the “m.6.3.4.2. attainment: student creates different rectangular prisms with a given volume from unit cubes and explains it with the justification that volume is the multiplication of base area by height.” in addition, it is an activity that allows students to comment and explain their opinions to their peers about the geometric shapes that are formed as they fold and their properties at the making stage of the activity. the making stages of this activity are presented in detail below. this activity require colored or colorless 4 pieces of a4 paper, scissors, and glue. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 288 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. spiral cube and square prism making stages. s te p s instructions shapes formed after folding s te p 1 fold the rectangular paper so that one of its short sides overlaps with one of its long sides to obtain a square. s te p 2 cut the square formed after the folding out with the help of scissors. s te p 3 open the square you obtained as a result of the folding. a diagonal line of the square occurred. s te p 4 fold the square again to get its other diagonal line. s te p 5 fold a corner of the square so that it coincides with the intersection of the diagonals. s te p 6 do the same for the opposite corner. s te p 7 fold the corners meeting at the intersection of the diagonals back as shown in the figure. s te p 8 fold the shape as shown on the right side so that point 1 overlaps with point 2. (do the same so that point 3 overlaps with point 2.) asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 289 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group s te p 9 fold the shape obtained in the previous step so that point 4 and point 5 overlap. s te p 1 0 fold the shape obtained in the previous step in the opposite direction so that point 6 and point 7 overlap. s te p 1 1 fold the shape obtained in the previous step so that point 8 and point 9 overlap. s te p 1 2 fold the shape obtained in the previous step in the opposite direction so that point 10 and point 11 overlap. s te p 1 3 following the same instructions between step 1 and step 12, make another one of the figure which was obtained in step 12. figure-1. figure-2. s te p 1 4 open figure 1 you obtained at the end of step 13 by pulling it from points 12 and 13 backwards. flip shape 2. s te p 1 5 place the flipped figure 2 on the quadratic area formed in the middle of figure 1 at the end of step 13 as shown on the right side. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 290 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group s te p 1 6 pull the resulting shape upwards from point 14 and place part 15 underneath. s te p 1 7 likewise, pull it upwards from point 16 and place part 17 underneath. s te p 1 8 fold the resulting shape so that points 18 and 20 overlap with point 19 and glue it. flip the shape and repeat the step. s te p 1 9 finally, you will obtain a closed square envelope divided into four congruent triangles on each of its two surfaces. s te p 2 0 make 3 more of the closed square envelope you obtained in step 19 by following the same steps. you should now have four shapes in total. s te p 2 1 as shown in the figure, slowly open out the resulting closed square envelope by turning your right hand inward and your left hand outward. observe which geometric object was formed. s te p 2 2 did you get a cube? press the resulting cube slightly inward to make it into its version in step 19. s te p 2 3 as shown in the figure, glue the closed square envelopes so that the blue-colored triangles on the surface overlap with the orange-colored triangles. glue all the square envelopes one by one according to the same rule. s te p 2 4 glue all the square envelopes one by one according to the same rule in step 23. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 291 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group s te p 2 5 open out each closed square envelope by slowly turning it out as you did in step 21. 3.2. clarity and applicability of the activity instructions the preservice mathematics student teacher opinions on the clarity and applicability of the activity instructions was given in table 3. table-3. clarity and applicability of the activity instructions. codes exemplary preservice teacher answers f % activity instructions are clear we performed the activity with the 6th graders. a large number of students could easily do each fold by reading the instructions. ...there were those who had difficulty in folding but i think it is about their own manual skills. during the activity, the teacher did his/her own folds. the teacher said that he/she had never thought about creating a cube in this way. the students were quite willing to participate too. i heard some students say ”i wish the course was always taught like this .” in this sense, i can say that the activity instructions were clear and applicable. students confirmed this as well. (pt20). 32 100 activity is applicable we had no difficulties in performing the activity. the students followed the instructions step by step and did their folds. when folding, it was like they competed with each other. the fast ones tried to help those who were slow in folding after they had finished their own folds (pt1). 32 100 after the spiral cube and square prism activity structured by them under the guidance of the instructor had been performed with the secondary school 6th-grade students, 100% of the preservice teachers stated that both the students and the teachers of the course found the activity instructions clear and applicable. according to the preservice teachers, the students had no difficulty in following the instructions during the activity. the students also participated in the activity willingly and stated “the mathematics course has not been taught like this before. i wish the course was always taught like this.” furthermore, the students followed the instructions as if they had been competing and the students who did the origami folds earlier tried to help the students who had difficulty in folding. 3.3. association of the activity with attainments how spiral cube and square prism activity can be directly or indirectly associated with the attainments in the mathematics curriculum and how it can be used in teaching these attainments is explained below. 3.3.1. grade levels and mathematical attainments which the activity is directly associated with according to 100% of the preservice teachers, this activity is primarily an activity that the teacher can use directly in the teaching process of the secondary school mathematics curriculum's attainments in the following grade levels. 3.3.1.1. second grade attainments m.2.2.1.3. student recognizes and distinguishes cube, square prism, rectangular prism, triangular prism, cylinder and sphere on models. pt26’s own statement as to how the activity can be directly associated to the second-grade mathematical attainments is as follows: “pt26: at the second-grade level, this activity can be directly utilized when teaching the concepts of cube, square prism and rectangular prism. when the closed quadratic envelope formed in the twenty-first step of the activity is opened, a three-dimensional cube model appears. on this cube model, the teacher can help students see the basic features of the cube concept in a tangible way. also, when all envelopes glued to each other as a whole in the twenty-fifth step of the activity are opened, a square prism model is formed. again, on this tangible model, the teacher can help students recognize the square prism with his/her questions and instructions. students can sense and apprehend via the model that a prism with its bases being square and side surfaces being rectangles is called a square prism.” 3.3.1.2. third grade attainments m.3.2.1.1. student identifies faces, corners and edges of cube, square prism, rectangular prism, triangular prism, cylinder, cone and sphere models. m.3.2.1.2. student explains similar and different aspects of cube, square prism and rectangular prism. the following is pt32’s own statement as to how the activity can be directly associated to the third-grade mathematical attainments: “pt32: at the third-grade level, the teacher can enable students to identify and show faces, corners and edges of cube, square prism and rectangular prism models made in the activity. they can touch and see on the tangible asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 292 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group model that a rectangular prism in general and a square prism in particular has 8 corners, 12 edges, 6 faces and 2 bases top and bottom. it is also possible to ensure they realize that their opposing faces and edges are equal.” 3.3.1.3. fifth grade attainments m.5.2.5.1. student recognizes the rectangular prism and identifies its basic elements. m.5.2.5.2. student draws the net of rectangular prism and decide whether the given different nets belong to the rectangular prism. pt15’s own statement as to how the activity can be directly associated to the fifth-grade mathematical attainments is as follows: “pt15: at the fifth-grade level, it can be ensured that they see it with the help of the resulting tangible models by associating the fact that square prism and cube are a special version of rectangular prism with the concepts of rectangle and square. by drawing each face of the rectangular prism model on a surface, it can be also ensured that they apprehend its net.” 3.3.1.4. sixth grade attainments m.6.3.4.1. student understands that the number of unit cubes placed in a rectangular prism without leaving any space is the volume of that object, calculates volume of the given object by counting the unit cubes. m.6.3.4.2. student creates different rectangular prisms with a given volume from unit cubes and explains it with the justification that volume is the multiplication of base area by height. m.6.3.4.4. student forms the volume relation of prism, solves related problems. the following is pt15’s own statement as to how the activity can be directly associated to the fifth-grade mathematical attainments: “pt27: at the sixth-grade level, it is possible to make students apprehend how to calculate volume of the rectangular prism by using the unit cubes through the model formed in the 2nd step of the activity. before opening the tangible model obtained at the end of the activity, it can be asked whether a volume is in question, and then, they may be asked to discuss how the volume has changed when each closed envelope is opened and depending on which elements of the rectangular prism the volume has changed. in this way, it can be ensured with the tangible model that they comprehend volume of the rectangular prism equals the multiplication of base area and height.” 3.3.2. grade levels and mathematical attainments which the activity is indirectly associated with according to 100% of the preservice teachers, this activity is primarily an activity that the teacher can use indirectly in the teaching process of the secondary school mathematics curriculum's attainments in the following grade levels. 3.3.2.1. first grade attainments m.1.2.1.1. student names geometric shapes by the number of corners and sides. m.1.2.2.2. student gives examples of congruent objects. pt5’s own statement as to how the activity can be indirectly associated to the fifth-grade mathematical attainments is as follows: “pt5: in the fifth grade, students are asked to examine the shapes obtained in the first, second and third steps by the number of sides and corners. by this means, they can construct their own knowledge by distinguishing geometric shapes easily. in addition, it can be shown that triangles with the same side lengths are congruent by having them measure the triangles formed in the second and fourth steps.” 3.3.2.2. second grade attainments m.2.1.6.1. student shows what is whole, half and quarter with appropriate models and explains the relationship among whole, half and quarter. m.2.2.1.1. student classifies geometric shapes by the number of sides and corners. m.2.2.1.2. student creates structures using shape models and draws those structures. m.2.2.2.2. student realizes the symmetrical shapes around. m.2.2.1.4. when the direction, position or size of geometric objects and shapes change, student realizes that their formal properties do not change. the following is pt1’s own statement as to how the activity can be indirectly associated to the second-grade mathematical attainments: “pt1: at the second-grade level, it can be ensured that students learn the concepts of whole, half and quarter by materializing them on the shapes obtained in the second and third steps of the activity in addition, they may be asked to create different structures by cutting the shapes formed in the second, third or ninth steps. they can be also asked to name the shapes formed in the second, third, sixth, seventh and twelfth steps, and teacher can have them examine their symmetry to notice the concepts of symmetry and reflection.” 3.3.2.3. third grade attainments m.3.2.2.1. student determines whether the shapes have more than one symmetry line by folding them. m.3.2.2.2. student completes the given symmetrical shape of which a part has been given by its vertical or horizontal symmetry line. m.3.2.3.1. student makes cover using shape models, draws the covering pattern on dotted or checkered paper. m.3.3.2.3. student calculates the perimeter of the shapes. m.3.3.3.1. student covers and measures the area of the shapes with non-standard, appropriate materials. pt19’s own statement as to how the activity can be indirectly associated to the third-grade mathematical attainments is as follows: “pt19: at the third-grade level, it is ensured that they see the symmetry lines on the shapes formed in the second, third and sixth steps. it is ensured by having students fold the shape that they see the line segment left asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 293 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group between in the thirteenth step is not a symmetry line although it divides shape into two congruent parts. while the fifth and sixth stages are carried out, it can be ensured that students easily learn the concepts related to the resulting geometric shape. using the geometric shapes formed in the eleventh and nineteenth steps and in the previous steps, they can be asked to cover a given surface by creating a pattern. teacher can have them predict the circumference of the shapes formed in each step and check the predictions. hence, their predictive skills improve. it is ensured that they examine with how many congruent triangles the surface of the square formed in the second or third steps is covered.” 3.3.2.4. fourth grade attainments m.4.2.1.1. student names the sides and corners of the triangle, square and rectangle. m.4.2.1.2. student identifies the side properties of square and rectangle. he/she shows that the square is a special rectangle. m.4.2.2.1. student explains the mirror symmetry on geometric shapes and models and draws the symmetry line. pt28’s own statement as to how the activity can be indirectly associated to the fourth-grade mathematical attainments is as follows: “pt28: at the fourth-grade level, students can be asked where the sides and corners of the shapes formed in the first, second and third steps are and to name them. by placing a mirror on the symmetry axis in the shape formed in the ninth step, it can be ensured that they see whether the mirror symmetry is achieved. 3.3.2.5. fifth grade attainments m.5.2.2.1. student names, creates polygons and recognizes their basic elements. m.5.2.2.3. student determines and draws the basic elements of rectangular, parallelogram, rhombus and trapezoid. m.5.2.2.3. student determines and draws the basic elements of rectangular, parallelogram, rhombus and trapezoid. the following is pt28’s own statement as to how the activity can be indirectly associated to the fifth-grade mathematical attainments: “pt23: at the fifth-grade level, students can be asked which geometric has formed at the end of the fourth step to ensure that they discuss the properties of this shape. in this way, it can be shown that the square can be formed with four congruent triangles. it can be ensured that they notice the properties of rhombus and parallel edge in the the sixth step and of trapezoid in the seventh step.” 3.3.2.6. sixth grade attainments m.6.3.2.1. student forms the area relation of triangle, solves related problems. pt7 explained how the activity can be indirectly associated with the sixth-grade mathematical attainments as follows: “pt7: it can be ensured that students learn and materialize the area relation of triangle formed using the area of square in the ninth step.” 3.3.2.7. seventh grade attainments m.7.3.1.1. student identifies an angle bisector by separating an angle into two congruent angles. m.7.3.1.2. student identifies the corresponding, opposite, alternate interior, alternate exterior angles formed by a cutting line and two parallel lines, examine their properties and identifies the congruent or complementary ones of the resulting angles, solves related problems. m.7.3.2.1. student explains the side and angle properties of regular polygons. m.7.3.2.3. student recognizes rectangular, parallelogram, trapezoid and rhombus and identifies the angle properties. the following is pt14’s own statement as to how the activity can be indirectly associated to the seventh-grade mathematical attainments: “pt14: it is addressed what kind of triangles the large triangles formed in the fourth step are. it is ensured that the perpendicular drawn from a corner down to the opposite edge of this triangle divides this side into two equal parts. moreover, it is ensured that they see the height line divides the angle into two congruent parts when this triangle is folded with respect to the height line. it can be ensured that teachers see the alternate interior and alternate exterior angles are equal on the shape formed in the fourth step. in regard to angles, it is also possible to prevent students from memorizing by making them materialize and learn where the properties, which are named z rule or m rule by teachers, come from. they are asked to examine the properties of the square formed in the third step. emphasizing the properties of the shapes formed in the ninth step, the related concepts are concretized. this activity can be used to reinforce this attainment.” 3.3.2.8. eighth grade attainments m.8.3.1.1. student constructs median, angle bisector and height in triangle. m.8.3.2.2. student forms the image of point, line segment and other shapes resulting from the reflection. m.8.3.3.1. student associates congruence and similarity and identifies edge and angle relationships of congruent and similar shapes. m.8.3.3.2. student determines the similarity ratio of similar polygons and forms polygons congruent and similar to a polygon. pt3’s own statement as to how the activity can be indirectly associated to the eighth-grade mathematical attainments is as follows. “pt3: in the fifth step, teacher can have students construct median, angle bisector and height of the isosceles triangle in a tangible way. at almost every stage of the activity, students can achieve tangible learning about these asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 294 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group concepts. asking questions about what are the congruent and similar ones among the shapes formed in the third, seventh and eighth steps, it can be ensured that students materialize and learn the concepts of congruence and similarity. it can be also ensured that they find the similarity ratios of the shapes determined to be similar or congruent by measuring their sides.” 3.3.3. opinions on the advantages and disadvantages of the activity preservice elementary mathematics teachers explained the advantages and disadvantages of this activity in terms of cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills as follows: table-4. advantages and disadvantages of spiral cube and square prism activity. t h e m e s codes exemplary preservice teacher answers f % a d v a n ta g e s 1 ensures meaningful learning as the students will be active at all stages of the activity, they can easily create their own information and achieve meaningful learning (pt5). 24 75 2 improves the thinking and problem-solving skills all stages of the activity enable the students to improve their thinking and problem-solving skills (pt12). 26 81.3 3 enables to learn to be patient since new geometric shapes will appear as the paper is folded during the activity, students notice the aesthetics and learn to be patient (pt15). 20 62.5 4 enables to notice aesthetics since new geometric shapes will appear as the paper is folded during the activity, students notice the aesthetics and learn to be patient (pt15). 5 ensures selfexpression because students are given the opportunity to talk about the resulting shape at all stages of the activity, it enables them to improve their ability to tell and express their emotions, thoughts and knowledge (pt8). 28 87.5 6 ensures sharing and helping because students have the chance to help each other about the instructions not understood at all stages of the activity, it enables them to improve their ability to share and help (pt30). 12 37.5 7 enables twoor three-dimensional thinking as a new shape or object will appear in all stages of the activity, it enables the development of their twoor three-dimensional thinking skills (pt13). 32 100 8 ensures the materialization of shapes or objects as new shapes will be formed at all stages of the activity, it enables students to materialize the shapes in their imagination (pt1). 28 87.5 9 enables to understand the properties of concepts it provides a better understanding of the properties of abstract mathematical concepts by means of tangible shapes or objects that are formed at all stages of the activity (pt18). 24 75 10 ensures the development of visual-spatial intelligence since new shapes or objects will be formed at all stages of the activity, it enables students to develop visual-spatial intelligence (pt20). 22 68.5 11 ensures willing participation in the course as students will see paper folding as a game during the activity, they will be willing to participate in the course (pt9). 20 62.5 12 ensures the development of a positive attitude towards the course as new shapes or objects will be formed and students will form them by themselves at all stages of the activity, it enables them to develop a positive attitude towards the course (pt14). 28 87.5 13 ensures the improvement of the attention skill all the stages of the activity require great attention and rigor, thus improving their attention skills (pt32). 22 68.5 14 ensures the improvement of hand-eye and muscle coordination in all stages of the activity, students will improve hand-eye and muscle coordination as they will use their hands and eyes more actively (pt2). 32 100 d is a d v a n ta g e s 1 takes time to perform this activity can be time-consuming due to the difficulty in performance (pt3). 28 87.5 2 difficult to perform in small classrooms because the making stages of this activity are complex, it can be difficult to perform in small classrooms (pt2). 18 56.3 3 causes fallacy due to folding since this activity requires the paper to be folded precisely, unless it is a proper folding, the student may have misconceptions about the intended concept as the desired result will not be achieved (pt7). 20 62.5 4 causes decreased confidence since this activity requires the paper to be folded precisely, it may decrease the participation of students with weak manual skills in the course as they will have decreased confidence. 22 68.5 5 causes fallacy due to teacher if the teacher does not provide appropriate explanations and feedback about the shape or object formed at the making stages of this activity, it may lead to misconceptions and misunderstandings among students (pt12). 26 87.5 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 295 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to table 4, the contribution and advantages of this activity to the students in terms of teaching are gathered under 14 different codes and its disadvantages are gathered under 5 different codes. it is seen that each code related to its advantages and disadvantages was expressed at a high rate by the preservice teachers. all of the preservice teachers think that students’ twoor three-dimensional thinking skills will improve as a new shape or object will be formed at all stages of the activity and it will enable them to improve their hand-eye and muscle coordination as they will use their hands and eyes more actively if this activity is used as a teaching tool at the schools. 3.3.4. opinions on contributions of the activity to the preservice teachers opinions on the contributions of the spiral cube and the square prism activity to the preservice teachers are presented in table 5. table-5. contributions of spiral cube and square prism activity to the preservice teachers codes exemplary preservice teacher answers f % 1 using origami the contribution it made to me is how i can use origami in my classes when i become a teacher in the future (pt11). 26 81.3 2 using in the teaching of attainments it made contributions about how an activity can be used for the teaching of multiple attainments (pt31). 18 56.3 3 detailed thinking the fact that a shape about mathematics was formed at every stage of the activity excited me and made me think in detail (pt7). 10 31.3 4 improving manual skills at the end of the activity, i realized my own manual skills (pt12). 26 81.3 5 using paper i learned how to make a cube from two pieces of paper (pt16). 8 25 6 learning by fun as a preservice teacher, i learned from the beginning of the activity by having fun (pt2). 16 50 7 being patient and careful during the activity, i realized that i had to be patient and careful when folding paper (pt15). 18 56.3 8 using paper to embody concepts i realized how i could benefit from the paper for embodying the mathematical concepts (pt12). 26 81.3 9 a new method of forming cubes i learned how to create cubes in a new method (pt1). 20 62.5 10 communication and exchange of ideas from the beginning to the end of the activity, as a preservice teacher, i could communicate and exchange ideas with other preservice teachers (pt30). 32 100 the spiral cube and square prism activity performed in the mathematics teaching with origami course contributed positively as a teaching tool according to all of the preservice teachers. it is seen that the preservice teacher’s opinions on activity’s contribution are gathered under 9 different codes. the most important contribution of this activity to all of the preservice teachers was that they communicated and exchanged ideas with each other from the beginning of the activity. furthermore, another important contribution of this activity to 81.3% of the preservice teachers was how they could use origami in the future when they become teachers, how they could benefit from the paper for embodying the mathematical concepts and that they realized their own manual skills at the end of the activity. 4. discussion and conclusion the preservice teachers reported that both students and mathematics teachers found the activity instructions clear and applicable in terms of mathematics teaching. according to all of the preservice teachers, the spiral cube and square prism activity they constructed is an important teaching material that can be used for teaching of the attainment “student creates different rectangular prisms with a given volume from unit cubes and explains it with the justification that volume is the multiplication of base area by height.” in the mathematics curriculum. the teacher can structure the course through this activity to teach a given attainment, and in the meantime, he/she can perform this activity to question students’ knowledge on concepts they should have learned previously and to eliminate their deficiencies. shapes that are formed at each step of the activity and not within the scope of the attainment which is being taught at the moment but that are about other attainments of the mathematics course at different grade levels can be also used. in this case, questions to be asked by the teacher about the shapes that are formed at the making stages of the activity are important. for example, the teacher may ask the question “what is a diagonal?” in step 4 of the activity. students who do not know the concept of the diagonal can learn from their friends and learn with the guidance of the teacher and with the appropriate questions. it can be ensured with appropriate questions that students question and associate the concepts they have learned previously with each other, and moreover, it can be effective in reinforcing the previously learned concepts and their properties. in other words, the teacher may want students to express their opinions and discuss with questions such as “which geometric shape does this shape resemble?” what properties does it have?” in regard to the shape that is formed at the end of each activity step. in this way, students are enabled to demonstrate both their cognitive and psychomotor skills throughout the activity. in addition, the fact that new geometric shapes, and finally, a new geometric object are formed at the end of each step during the activity will enable them to develop a positive attitude towards mathematics as it will stimulate students’ curiosity in the course. according to preservice teachers, the spiral cube and square prism activity have many advantages and disadvantages in terms of teaching. this activity can provide students with many advantages in terms of cognitive, affective and psychomotor while learning mathematical concepts. according to all of the preservice teachers, this activity can contribute to the improvement of hand-eye and muscle coordination. besides, it was found that the activity make contributions from several aspects to students such as improving their twoor three-dimensional thinking skills and problem-solving asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 284-296 296 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group skills, materializing the abstract concepts to achieve meaningful learning, improving their ability to tell and express their own emotions, thoughts and knowledge and developing a positive attitude towards the course (as they will be active all the time and it will enable them to generate their own products in the activity). this result coincides with the results of the study conducted by gür and kobak-demir (2016). gür and kobak-demir (2016) observed that the preservice teachers thought using origami in mathematic teaching would improve students’ psychomotor skills and enable them to learn by materializing the mathematics. concerning the contributions of the activity, it was found that the activity made the preservice teachers realize how they could use origami in their courses in the future and how potential their manual skills and origami are in regard to embodying mathematical concepts. in the light of these results obtained in relation to many aspects such as ensuring student participation, increasing motivation, stimulating curiosity, offering a playful environment and ensuring hand-eye coordination, more focus should be laid on activities using origami. references akpınar, b. 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(1994). case study research design and methods (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. yoshioka, r. (1963). fold paper to learn geometry. the science news-letter, 83(9), 138-139. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 1 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 1, 1-7, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i1.3653 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining of conservatory students' mental well-being levels aspects of various variables sibel celik1 alper semih sari2 ( corresponding author) 1dicle university, state conservatory, department of voice training, turkey. email: sibelcelik@mail.ru 2ministry of national education, turkey. email: alpersemihsari@gmail.com abstract the basic aim of this study is to specify mental well-being levels and investigate some various conservatory students. conservatory students studying at dicle university and gaziantep university state conservatory in the 2020-2021 academic year participated in the research. purposeful sampling was used in this study, which was carried out with a quantitative research model. data collection has been made via warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale and socio-demographic information form designed by the researchers. in the data analysis, the mannwhitney u test was used for pairwise group comparisons and the kruskal-wallis h test was used for comparisons of more than two groups. while a significant difference came up among the mental well-being levels of conservatory students and the variables of age, the department they study, academic achievement levels, family income status, and number of siblings, no meaningful difference came up among the variables of gender, music style they listened to, and where they live. it is thought that this research is considerable in terms of contributing to the development of the methods applied in the education of conservatory students and to the studies applied in this field. keywords: art education, conservatory education, conservatory students, mental well-being, music education, psychological well-being. citation | sibel celik; alper semih sari (2022). examining of conservatory students' mental well-being levels aspects of various variables. asian journal of education and training, 8(1): 17. history: received: 23 november 2021 revised: 3 january 2022 accepted: 14 january 2022 published: 21 january 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. method .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 2 3. findings ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 4. discussion ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 5. conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 6 references ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 mailto:sibelcelik@mail.ru mailto:alpersemihsari@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i1.3653 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8177-9946 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5136-8986 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 1-7 2 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining mental well-being levels of conservatory students by the various variables. so, this issue is thought to be better understood and it is estimated to be useful for future studies. 1. introduction in human life, positive mental health notion and contribution of all outlooks of human life have risen in international scope. positive mental health is the basis of well-being and effective functioning, both for the “individual and society” declared by world health organisation (2004) and defined this as a situation that permits individuals to realize their abilities and to handle them. in this context, all the positive traits that make up individuals, united thoughts and behaviors are the psychological state (tekkurşun, namlı, hazar, türkeli, & cicioğlu, 2018). mental well-being, which includes the psychological and subjective well-being of individuals, is the state of mental well-being conceptualized by positive psychology, which freud summarized as being able to cultivate and love. mental well-being is not just a concept that describes the absence of any psychological disorder. it is a concept that emphasizes having a chaste and meaningful life, frequent positive feelings, less negative emotions, being satisfied with life, and being functional (diener, pressman, hunter, & delgadillo‐chase, 2017). positive mental health largely in both senses is used. as a notion, both in the academic literature and the term mental health have the same meaning with each other. both affection (emotion) and involving psychological functioning complicated structure with two different perspectives. the hedonic perspective zooms on the nominative experiences of bliss and life satisfaction, moreover, the eudaemonic perspective is on psychological functioning and selfactualization. as a result, mental well-being is stated as an individual’s positive perception of himself, being satisfied with himself even when he is aware of his limitations, developing safe and warm relationships with others, shaping the environment to meet his personal needs and wishes, acting autonomously and independently, having an aim and meaning in life, and being aware of his capacity and its efforts to develop this capacity (keyes, shmotkin, & ryff, 2002). nowadays, music has been used by medicine to remove pain and stress. educators have used music to increase psychosocial and cognitive well-being rising in the classroom (rickard & mcferran, 2012). it has been shown that individuals' being busy with music increases the effect of well-being (bieligmeyer, helmert, hautzinger, & vagedes, 2018; lee, krause, & davidson, 2017). conducted studies revealed that some demographic variables function of the mental well-being status. such as gender, living place, economic status, age, those factors have emerged as the most substantial variables in order to evaluate in some situation. ryff underlines that the level of mental well-being differs by gender. moreover, it was concluded that men had considerably higher levels of mental well-being than women. broady, hall, and lucas, and gohm's research on gender revealed that women experience unpleasant feelings more intensely than men, and accordingly, their mental well-being levels are lower than men. again, in line with these studies, it has been detected that mental wellbeing is more important for women, and men are less inclined to be mentally well (ozen & gülaçti, 2010). in another study, while they determined that men are ahead of women in terms of mental well-being, they came up with that woman are in a better state than men (haring, stock, & okun, 1984). the level of mental well-being increases in direct proportion with age, which is among the concepts that affect the progress of mental well-being, and accordingly, the level of creating positive relationships for the person (bakır, 2017). on the other hand, it is a largely admitted assumption that there is a positive correlation between socio-economic status and mental well-being. many studies have been conducted in this direction and are proof (furnham & cheng, 1997). studies show that people with high mental well-being; concluded that their physical and psychological health is very good, and their quality of life is strong (keyes, 2002; keyes, dhingra, & simoes, 2010). essentially, it has been defined that individual with a superior level of mental well-being have strong creativity and immune systems, have very good relationships with other individuals, and are very productive at work (lyubomirsky, king, & diener, 2005). when the relevant literature was examined, it was seen that there was no study examining the metal well-being levels of conservatory students. in this context, it can be said that the research constitutes a distinctive and original. it is thought that the research is important in terms of contributing to the development of the methods applied in the education of conservatory students and to the studies to be done in this field. the outcomes of this study disclose that mental well-being is an important element at the environmental, social and personal level (keldal, 2015). on this axis, study has looked for answers those questions: 1) what level is the mental well-being of conservatory students? 2) are there significant differences in mental well-being levels of conservatory students equated to gender, age, university, department, family income, academic level, number of siblings, type of music listened to? 2. method quantitative research model has been used in this study. quantitative research is research that can be observed, measured and expressed numerically by concretizing facts and events (creswell, 2013). the goal of quantitative research is to measure the behavior of individuals objectively through similar tools such as tests and questionnaires and to explain them with numerical data (bergman, 2009). dicle university state conservatory and gaziantep university turkish music state conservatory studying in between 2020-2021; turkish music, voice education, and turkish folk dances department consisted of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade students. in the study, purposive sampling technique was used. purposeful sampling is the selection of information-rich situations in the context of a purpose of the study to conduct indepth research. criterion sampling is portrayed as the study of all situations that meet a set of predetermined criteria (patton, 2002). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 1-7 3 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.1. data collection tools personal information form: it was designed by the researcher which included gender, age, university, department, class, level of academic achievement, family income, number of siblings, the type of music listened to, and the place where they lived and gathered. warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale turkish version: tennant et al. (2007) adapted into turkish by keldal (2015). the scale consists of 14 items in a 5-point likert type. the total internal consistency coefficient of the one-dimensional scale is 0.89. the lowest 14 points can be acquired from the scale, and the highest 70 points. scoring of the scale is “1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=somewhat agree, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree”. all items of the scale are positive. high scores from the scale indicate high mental (psychological) wellbeing. a high score on the scale indicates high well-being. the adaptation cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient of the scale was determined as 0.92. when the exploratory factor analyses of the scale are examined, it is observed that the sample fit coefficient is 0.85 and the scale explains 51% of the total variance (keldal, 2015). 2.2. data collection procedure research data, in the 2020-2021 academic year, dicle university state conservatory and gaziantep university turkish music state conservatory basic sciences, voice education and turkish folk dance departments whole grades conservatory students via an online questionnaire. 258 students participated in the study, and a volunteer consent form was used while applying the scale. 2.3. analysis this statistical analysis has been carried out via the spss 23 program. whether the data provide the prerequisites of parametric tests was determined by normality analysis. before making comparisons, it was checked whether the scales were normally spread. one of the indicators used for the normality analysis was the dispersion of the data in the kurtosis and skewness values. data with kurtosis and skewness values between -2.0 and +2.0 are considered to have normal distribution (george & mallery, 2010). warwickedinburgh mental wellbeing scale did not fulfil the normality assumption (kolmogorov-smirnov =0.000 p<0.05). since it was determined that it did not fit the normal distribution, non-parametric test techniques were used in the comparisons. in the analysis of the data, mann-whitney u test was used for pairwise group comparisons and kruskal-wallis h test was used for more than two group comparisons. on the other hand, cronbach’s alpha coefficient was determined as. 91 in this study. in order to be accepted in the study as reliable, it must value above 0.7 (pallant, 2010). therefore, this study is reliable. table 1. distribution of conservatory students by socio-demographic information. variable group f % gender female 141 54.7 male 117 45.3 age 18-24 140 54.3 24-27 59 22.9 27+ 59 22.9 university dicle 84 43.1 gaziantep 111 56.9 department voice training 99 38.4 basic sciences 107 41.5 turkish folk dances 52 20.2 academic achievement level low 53 20.5 middle 168 65.1 high 37 14.3 preferred to music style classical 116 45.0 turkish folk 14 5.4 turkish art 16 6.2 popular 8 3.1 jazz/blues 33 12.8 arabesque 8 3.1 rock 15 5.8 others 48 18.6 residence of place village 120 46.5 district 35 13.6 province 7 2.7 metropol 96 37.2 income level low 167 64.7 middle 64 24.8 high 27 10.5 sibling information 1 43 16.7 2 66 25.6 3 48 18.6 3 and over 98 38.0 none 3 1.2 total 258 100 3. findings in this section, the findings obtained by subjecting the data to statistical processes in line with the asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 1-7 4 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group answers given by the respondents are contained. as seen in table 1, 54.7% of the conservatory students attending in the study were female, 45.3% were male. 54.3% were between the ages of 18 and 24, 22.9% were between the ages of 24-27, and 22.9% were over the age of 27. the universities they study at were 43.1% at dicle university, 56.9% at gaziantep university. the departments are 38.4% voice education, 41.5% basic sciences and 20.2% turkish folk dances. 20.5% of them have low academic achievement, 65.1% are medium and 14.3% are high. table 2. the result of the mann-whitney u test showing mental well-being levels by gender. gender n mean rank sum of ranks u z p female 141 126.17 17789.50 7778.500 -0.788 0.431 male 117 133.52 15621.50 considering the table 2, there was no meaningful difference (z=-0.788; p>0.05) according to the results of the mann-whitney u test, which was conducted to determine whether the mental well-being levels of the conservatory students attending in the study differed significantly by the gender. in the light of the findings, the mental wellbeing levels of conservatory students did not differ by their gender. table 3. the result of the kruskal-wallis h test showing mental well-being levels by age. age descriptive statistic kruskal-wallis h mann-whitney u n mean rank χ 2 df p 118-23 140 124.53 224-27 age 59 120.57 6.029 2 0.049 3 with 1, 2 3-28 age and over 59 150.23 in the table 3, there was a significant difference (χ2=6.029; p<0.05) by the kruskal-wallis h test, which was performed to specify whether the mental well-being levels of the conservatory students attending in the study demonstrated a significant difference by the age. post-hoc mann-whitney u test was applied to determine the age ranges of the difference, and it was determined that there was a difference between the 18-23 age range and 28 and over, 24-27 age range and 28 and over students. according to the findings, the mental well-being levels of conservatory students aged 28 and over (mean rank28 age and over=150.23), age ranges 18-23 (mean rank18-23 age=124.53) and 24-27 (mean rank24-27age=120.57) is higher than that of conservatory students. table 4. the result of kruskal-wallis h test showing the mental well-being levels by department. department descriptive statistic kruskal-wallis h mann-whitney u n mean rank χ 2 df p 1-voice training 99 114.92 1 with 2, 3 2basic sciences 107 135.93 6.555 2 0.038 3-turkish folk dances 52 144.02 when table 4 is examined, according to the results of the kruskal-wallis h test, which was conducted to determine whether the mental well-being levels of the conservatory students participating in the study demonstrated a significant difference according to the department they studied, there was a significant difference (χ2=6.555; p<0.05). post-hoc mann-whitney u test was applied to determine the age ranges of the difference, and it was determined that there was a differentiation between the conservatory students studying at the voice education department and the conservatory students studying at the basic sciences and turkish folk dance departments. according to the findings, the mental well-being levels of the students studying at turkish folk dances (mean rankturkish folk dances=144.02) and basic sciences (mean rankbasic sciences=135.93) departments are higher than the conservatory students studying at voice education (mean rankvoice training=114.92) departments. table 5. the result of kruskal-wallis h test showing the mental wellbeing levels according to academic achievement levels. academic achievement level descriptive statistic kruskal-wallis h mann-whitney u n mean rank χ 2 df p 1low 53 93.85 1 with 2, 3 2 with 3 2middle 168 130.82 25.695 2 0.000 3high 37 174.58 in the table 5, there was a significant difference (χ2=25.695; p<0.05) in the results of the kruskalwallis h test, which was conducted to determine whether the mental well-being levels of the conservatory students attending in the study showed a significant difference according to their academic achievement levels. post-hoc mann-whitney u test was applied to determine between which academic achievement levels the difference was, and it was determined that there was a differentiation between conservatory students with low to medium to high, medium to high academic achievement levels. according to the findings, the academic success of the conservatory students with medium (meanmedium=130.82) and high (meanıhigh=174.58) conservatory students equated to the conservatory students with low (mean ranklow= 93.85) academic success of the conservatory students with high (mean rankıhigh= 174.58) academic success mental well-being levels are higher than conservatory students who are at medium level (mean rankmiddle=130.82). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 1-7 5 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 6. the result of kruskal-wallis h test showing mental wellbeing levels by the preferred to music style. preferred music style descriptive statistic kruskal-wallis h n mean rank χ2 df p 1turkish folk 116 134.72 7.015 7 0.427 2turkish art 48 127.63 3classical 14 160.25 4 rock 8 137.88 5 popular 15 106.17 6 jazz/blues 8 104.69 7arabesque 16 133.63 8-others (electronic, r&b, rap) 33 113.44 in the table 6, according to the results of the kruskal-wallis h test, which was conducted to determine whether the mental well-being levels of the conservatory students participating in the study differed significantly by the music style they listened to, there was no significant difference (χ2=7.015; p>0.05). according to the findings, the mental well-being levels of conservatory students do not differ by the music style they listen to. table 7. kruskal-wallis h test showing mental wellbeing levels by the variable where they lived. living place descriptive statistic kruskal-wallis h n mean rank χ2 df p 1-vilage 120 123.35 2province 35 126.73 2.114 3 0.549 3village 7 132.57 4metropol 96 137.97 in the table 7, there is no significant difference (χ2=2.114; p>0.05) according to the results of the kruskalwallis h test, which was conducted to determine whether the mental wellbeing levels of the conservatory students participating in the study differed significantly according to the variable of where they spent their lives. according to the findings, the mental well-being levels of conservatory students do not differ according to the variable of the place where they spend their lives. table 8. kruskal-wallis h test showing mental wellbeing according to family income level. income level descriptive statistic kruskal-wallis h mann-whitney u n mean rank χ 2 df p 1low 167 120.41 2 with 3 2middle 64 139.57 8.725 2 0.013 3high 27 161.83 considering the table 8, the kruskal-wallis h test was conducted to determine whether the mental well-being levels of the conservatory students participating in the research differ significantly according to their family income levels. by the table, participants’ mental well-being level has differed significantly according to income level of their families (χ2=8.725; p<0.05). the post-hoc mannwhitney u test was applied to determine between which family income levels the difference was, and it was determined that there was a differentiation between conservatory students whose families had lowand high-income levels. according to the findings, the mental well-being levels of conservatory students with high family income (mean rankhigh=161.83) are higher than those of conservatory students with low family income (mean ranklow=120.41). table 9. kruskal-wallis h test showing mental wellbeing levels according to sibling. sibling information descriptive statistic kruskal-wallis h mann-whitney u n mean rank χ 2 df p 11 43 125.65 10.403 4 0.034 2 with 3 3 with 4 22 66 138.17 33 48 99.99 4more than 3 98 139.82 5none 3 129.00 in the table 9, the kruskal-wallis h test was used to determine whether the mental well-being levels of the conservatory students participating in the study differed significantly according to the number of siblings. accordingly, it was observed that there was a significant difference (χ2=10.403, p<0.05). post-hoc mann-whitney u test was applied to determine between which number of siblings the difference was, and it was determined that there was a differentiation between 2 siblings and 3 siblings, and 3 siblings and more than 3 siblings. according to the findings, conservatory students with 2 siblings (mean rank2=138.17) had more than 3 siblings (mean rank3=99.99), conservatory students with 3 siblings (mean rank3=99.99) had more than 3 siblings (mean rankmore than 3 =161.83). mental well-being levels are higher than those who have. 4. discussion music is such a gift that has beyond time, place and limit helps understanding the awareness of spiritual life. it brings comfort and calmness to people in negative situations such as loss and hopelessness (magill, 2006). hereby, music is the most effective a tool for all human beings. in this study, conservatory students’ mental well-being levels was determined by the various variables. basically, the main aim is to define and emerge existing current situation of their on mental well-being to some factors. this situation appears to be at a normal level. with the asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 1-7 6 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group results of the study, it shows that it does not differ dramatically by the sex. supporting this finding, another study carried out with university students, it is seen that gender does not affect the level of mental well-being (avsaroğlu, 2017; diener & diener, 1995; diener & ryan, 2009; gönener, oztürk, & yılmaz, 2017; kılınçoğlu, 2020). in particular studies, it has been emerged that men have higher mental well-being levels than women (arslandoğan, türkmen, töre, demir, & hazar, 2021). the high level of mental well-being of women may be related to them being more open to personal development and communication. it can also be explained by the fact that they express their feelings and thoughts more. based on the findings obtained by age, there is a statistically substantial difference in the mental well-being levels of the participants aged 27 and over, according to the 18-21 and 21-24 age groups. in another study, sahin (2018) examined whether mindfulness influences life satisfaction and well-being levels in university students; determined that mental wellbeing showed a significant difference according to the age variable. therefore, determined that the level of mental well-being increased with increasing age. ryff (1989) stated that there is no direct relationship between the level of mental well-being and the age variable. in the research, it has come up that the mental well-being levels by the department are higher than the other two departments of the turkish folk dances department voice education and basic sciences department. since there is a department related to physical activity, it can be stated that the mental well-being of the students of this department is high. indeed, the findings of some studies on this issue induce the results of our study. physical activity appears to increase psychological well-being. the study carried out by zengin and razak (2016), was reported that individuals with high physical activity levels also have good mental well-being levels, and that they are healthier and happier. namely, it can be concluded that individuals with high physical activity can have better quality and happier lives. as a result, it was determined in the study that individuals with high physical activity also had high mental well-being. in the pandemic period, it was determined that the difference between the mental wellbeing of negatively affected, unaffected and positively affected individuals was not statistically significant (arslandoğan et al., 2021). another research findings reveal that the well-being of the students in the faculty of sports sciences, who are engaged in sports, is higher than the students of the department of music education, who are in a more intense music environment, and the students of the faculty of theology, who worship more. the research gives an idea about the fact that sports are more effective than music and worship in terms of well-being, but further research is needed to determine whether the well-being of individuals will be higher with sports, music or worship (onuray, 2020). when the perceived economic levels of the conservatory students included in our study were equated, it was determined that their mental well-being differed significantly. it also shows parallelism in studies conducted in our country (cenkseven, 2004; ilhan, 2009; zümbül, 2019). on the other hand, there are also studies that do not comply with this judgment. in another study (karabeyeser, 2013), it has been determined that it does not affect according to the economic level and there is no significant differentiation. low-income levels of individuals lead to a decrease in mental well-being and affect physical health. based on the general opinion in the studies carried out it can be stated that high income has affirmative effect on mental well-being. when the mental well-being scores and perceived academic achievement levels of conservatory students were equated, it was determined that mental well-being scores differed significantly. it is seen that the participants with high academic success have high mental wellbeing levels. therefore, it was determined that the higher the academic achievement level, the higher the mental well-being average score of the students (tuzgöl-dost, 2004). it can be expressed that mental well-being affects academic success, as self-esteem and being aware of the individual's capacity will bring about the desire to achieve success. in the study conducted by gönener et al. (2017) to examine the effect of university students' mental well-being on their happiness levels, no significant difference was found between perceived academic success and mental well-being. it has been determined that the higher the academic achievement level, the higher the mean score of the students' mental well-being. some results have paralleled with our research, it is seen that as the level of academic achievement increases, the mental well-being also increases. 5. conclusion this study gained the various specifically results, however it has some limitations. mainly, it has been voluntarily participants at conservatories. this study included locations is southeast anatolian region. the gained data was studying at two conservatories of participants chiefly. therefore, the subject should be examined by various variables at other conservatories, faculty of fine arts, music teachers or pre-service music teachers. on the other hand, current studies have not shown at all in literature by the conservatory students in term of mental wellbeing status. consequently, research needs to be strongly supported. deep research is needed in the effect of music towards mental well-being. on this axis, it should be investigated according to music styles as well, whether it effects or not by the mental well-being. references arslandoğan, a., türkmen, m., töre, e., demir, b., & hazar, s. 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(2019). mindfulness and forgiveness as predictors of psychological well-being levels of teacher candidates. ege journal of education, 20(1), 20-36. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 636 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 636-641, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.636.641 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining for leisure barriers for female students studying in the faculty of sports science mustafa kizilkoca1 akif bozkir2 ( corresponding author) 1,2faculty of physical education and sport sciences, munzur university, turkey. abstract the aim of our study was to examine the levels of leisure barriers of female undergraduate students in the faculty of sports sciences in terms of some demographic characteristics. the participants of our study are 120 randomly selected female undergraduate students who studied at firat university faculty of sports sciences in 2020. in order to determine the personal characteristics of the participants in the study, a personal information form (age, class, department and branch) and a scale of leisure barriers developed by alexandris and carroll (1997a) and adapted to turkish by gürbüz, öncü, and emir (2012) were applied. it is seen that the leisure barriers scale scores of female undergraduate students studying in the departments of the faculty of sport sciences of firat university are above average with an average of 2.79 in the individual psychology sub-dimension and, 2.77 in the lack of knowledge sub-dimension, 3.17 in the facility sub-dimension, 2.58 in the lack of friends sub-dimension, 3.09 in the time subdimension, and 2.85 in the lack of interest sub-dimension according to the findings of the study. it was observed that it was higher than the average with an average of 2.88, considering the general mean score of the leisure barriers scale. keywords: female, leisure, barriers, student. citation | mustafa kizilkoca; akif bozkir (2020). examining for leisure barriers for female students studying in the faculty of sports science. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 636641. history: received: 22 september 2020 revised: 12 october 2020 accepted: 29 october 2020 published: 18 november 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 637 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 637 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 637 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 639 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 641 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.636.641&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2338 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 636-641 637 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the aim of this study is to contribute literature by examining the levels of leisure barriers of female students studying in the faculty of sports sciences. 1. introduction humankind has always been in the struggle for survival since the existence of the universe. the humankind has to work constantly for the survival effort to fulfill its vitality and cope with difficulties. people have called the time left over from these harsh conditions of life as leisure. when the society became aware of their leisure, the main purpose was to use this time out of work with activities and at the same time to get rid of the fatigue of daily life mentally and physically. leisure is defined as the periods when people have weekends and annual holidays other than working days (turkmen, kul, genç, & sarıkabak, 2013). leisure activities are called leisure activities or recreational activities. these activities are divided into social, intellectual, artistic activities, practical and physical activities by the scientists working in this field (büküşoğlu & bayturan, 2005). it can be said that the activities that society has the most in this period and prefer in terms of health are physical activities. individuals want to prepare themselves more vigorously and mentally for their new work life by sporting the challenges of life struggle. physical activities can sometimes be a trekking and sometimes a sporting challenge (karahuseyinoglu, altungul, nacar, & tutar, 2020). recreative activities are sometimes not fulfilled when society needs them. some factors can prevent this situation by not always being able to meet the wishes of individuals at any time. in this case, we come across the concept of leisure barriers. all of the factors that prevent people from doing activities during leisure periods can be defined as leisure barriers. researchers define barriers as all factors that reduce participation in leisure and the pleasure of the individual during this activity (alexandris & carroll, 1997a). people are trying to struggle with these barriers. since this time outside of business life is the period when people feel the best from their mental and physical conditions, it can be a great disappointment to spend this time free. leisure barriers will affect people's social and cultural interactions as well as their preparation for the work and education period and their effectiveness in these periods. since it is thought that students encountering leisure barriers will cause adaptation problems in educational processes, our study is intended to examine the levels of leisure barriers of female undergraduate students in the faculty of sports sciences in terms of some demographic characteristics. 2. material and method the universe of research is made up of female undergraduate students studying at firat university faculty of sports sciences in 2020. its sample consists of 120 female university students randomly selected from fırat university sports sciences faculty physical education, sports management, coaching education and recreation departments. in order to determine the personal characteristics of the participants in the study, a personal information form (age, class, department and branch) and a scale of leisure barriers developed by alexandris and carroll (1997a) and adapted to turkish by gürbüz et al. (2012) were applied. leisure barriers scale is a 4-point likert type with 18 questions. for each question, 1: "absolutely unimportant", 2: "unimportant", 3: "important", 4: "very important", various options were suggested and the research team was asked to mark the option that best suits their opinion. the scale consists of 6 sub-dimensions.sub-dimensions have consisted of mentioned items; individual psychology sub-dimension from items 1st, 2nd and, 3rd, lack of knowledge sub-dimension from items 4th, 5th, and 6th, facility sub-dimension from items 7th, 8th, and 9th, lack of friends sub-dimension 10th, 11th and 12th items, time subdimension from items 13th, 14th and 15th, and lack of interest sub-dimension from items 16th, 17th and, 18th. it was found that the individual psychology sub-dimension was 0.75, the lack of knowledge was 0.74, the facility was 0.72, the lack of friends was 0.65, and the time sub-dimension was 0.61 and 0.63 in the lack of interest subdimension when the cronbach's alpha (α) reliability coefficient values of the sub-dimensions of the leisure barriers scale were examined. these values indicate that scores from the scale are highly reliable. the scoring values of the scale are based on the scale ruler of 5. 2.1.analysis of data spss 22.0 statistics program was used to analyze the data in the study and calculate the results. skewness and kurtosis tests were used to determine whether the data provided normal distribution. as a result of these tests and controls, it was determined that the research data were parametric. in this case, a two-way analysis of variance (anova) in multiple group variables and a t test to determine the significance of the difference between two independent groups were used. the tukey test was used to determine which groups in the analysis detected significant differences. error level in the study was accepted as p<0.05. 3. findings this section presents the findings of the study variables. the results showing the distribution of female undergraduate students according to the personal characteristics of firat university faculty of sports sciences who participated in our research were examined and interpreted. 3.1. percentage distribution of the subjects it is observed that the highest participation is 26.7% (n=32) and recreation department students, while the lowest attendance is 23.3% (n=28) and the management department is female students when the demographic distribution table of female students is examined in table 1. the highest participation was female students between the ages of 22-24 with 46.7% and, followed by female students between the ages of 19-21 with 34.2 and finally, female students aged 25 years and older with 19.2 to when looking at the age groups of the participants. when the class distributions in which the participants studied were examined, 4th-grade female students were highly attended with 45.8%, while the lowest participation was 15.0% for 3rd-grade students. it was determined that asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 636-641 638 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 42.5% were engaged in team sports, 41.7% were interested in individual sports and 15.8% did not have any branches when the group distribution of the participants was examined in terms of branch variable. table-1. demographics related to athletes. variable group n % teaching 31 25,8 department management 28 23,3 coaching 29 24,2 recreation 32 26,7 total 120 100,0 19-21 years 41 34,2 22-24 years 56 46,7 age 25 years and older 23 19,2 total 120 100,0 1st class 22 18,3 2nd class 25 20,8 class 3rd class 18 15,0 4th class 55 45,8 total 120 100,0 team sports 51 42,5 branch individual sports 50 41,7 branchless 19 15,8 total 120 100,0 note: n:120. table-2. anova test results based on the variable of the departments in which the participants in the study studied. sub-dimensions department n x ss f p individual psychology teaching 31 2,80 1,02839 ,077 ,972 coaching 29 2,86 ,94917 management 28 2,75 ,94988 recreation 32 2,77 ,87349 total 120 2,79 ,94013 lack of knowledge teaching 31 2,88 1,01306 ,356 ,785 coaching 29 2,81 ,85257 management 28 2,64 1,01806 recreation 32 2,76 ,76778 total 120 2,77 ,90886 facility teaching 31 3,32 ,75269 1,894 ,135 coaching 29 3,34 ,66953 management 28 2,97 ,89318 recreation 32 3,05 ,62853 total 120 3,17 ,74719 lack of friends teaching 31 2,38 1,08217 ,547 ,651 coaching 29 2,68 ,92980 management 28 2,64 1,04990 recreation 32 2,62 ,97551 total 120 2,58 1,00535 time teaching 31 2,94 ,91123 ,610 ,610 coaching 29 3,22 ,71881 management 28 3,08 ,89638 recreation 32 3,11 ,73621 total 120 3,09 ,81531 lack of interest teaching 31 2,67 ,99064 ,761 ,518 coaching 29 2,93 ,84693 management 28 2,83 ,90948 recreation 32 2,98 ,72579 total 120 2,85 ,86929 note: anova test, p<0.05. it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between the leisure barriers sub-dimensions of the participants and the variable of the department they studied (p> 0.05) when table 2 was examined. it was observed that there was no statistically significant difference between the sub-dimensions of the leisure disorder scale and the facility sub-dimension, lack of friends and lack of interest, and age variables (p> 0.05) when table 3 was examined. it was determined that the difference between the sub-dimensions of the leisure barrier, individual psychology, lack of information and time, and the age variable was statistically significant (p <0.05). it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between the individual psychology, lack of information, facility, lack of time and interest sub-dimensions of the leisure barriers scale and the class variable (p> 0.05) when table 4 was examined. the difference between the lack of friends sub-dimension of the leisure barriers scale and the classroom variable was found to be statistically significant (p <0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 636-641 639 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. anova test results based on age groups variable of participants in the study. sub-dimensions age n x ss f p tukey individual psychology 19-21 yearsa 41 2,53 1,06426 4,031 ,020 22-24 yearsb 56 3,04 ,80511 a-b 25 years and olderc 23 2,65 ,89034 total 120 2,79 ,94013 lack of knowledge 19-21 yearsa 41 2,54 1,06394 3,082 ,050 22-24 yearsb 56 2,98 ,79128 a-b 25 years and olderc 23 2,68 ,78803 total 120 2,77 ,90886 facility 19-21 years 41 3,00 ,99443 1,849 ,162 22-24 years 56 3,29 ,53959 25 years and older 23 3,20 ,63357 total 120 3,17 ,74719 lack of friends 19-21 years 41 2,43 1,03666 ,833 ,437 22-24 years 56 2,61 1,02253 25 years and older 23 2,76 ,90696 total 120 2,58 1,00535 time 19-21 yearsa 41 2,83 ,99197 3,752 ,026 22-24 yearsb 56 3,28 ,67098 a-b 25 years and olderc 23 3,07 ,68133 total 120 3,09 ,81531 lack of interest 19-21 years 41 2,61 ,93856 2,941 ,057 22-24 years 56 2,92 ,80401 25 years and older 23 3,13 ,82106 total 120 2,85 ,86929 note: anova test, p<0.05. table-4. anova test results based on class groups variable of participants in the study. sub-dimensions class n x ss f p turkey individual psychology 1st class 22 2,53 1,13929 ,791 ,501 2nd class 25 2,81 1,12250 3rd class 18 2,94 ,95144 4th class 55 2,84 ,74761 total 120 2,79 ,94013 lack of knowledge 1st class 22 2,51 1,16713 ,942 ,423 2nd class 25 2,82 1,10604 3rd class 18 2,98 ,93216 4th class 55 2,79 ,65575 total 120 2,77 ,90886 facility 1st class 22 3,18 ,90107 ,241 ,868 2nd class 25 3,25 ,87813 3rd class 18 3,05 ,84211 4th class 55 3,17 ,58392 total 120 3,17 ,74719 lack of friends 1st classa 22 2,33 1,09834 4,921 ,003 2nd classb 25 2,53 1,16269 3rd classc 18 1,98 1,05702 c-d 4th classd 55 2,90 ,74445 total 120 2,58 1,00535 time 1st class 22 3,04 ,95560 ,459 ,711 2nd class 25 3,21 ,87072 3rd class 18 2,92 1,00036 4th class 55 3,10 ,66374 total 120 3,09 ,81531 lack of interest 1st class 22 2,81 ,92997 2,643 ,053 2nd class 25 2,84 1,05022 3rd class 18 2,38 ,93060 4th class 55 3,03 ,67791 total 120 2,85 ,86929 note: anova test, p<0.05. it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the sub-dimensions of individual psychology, lack of knowledge, facility, lack of time and friends, and branch variable from the subdimensions of the participants' leisure barriers scale (p>0.05) when table 5 was examined. the difference between the lack of interest sub-dimension, which is one of the sub-dimensions of the leisure time barriers, and the branch variable was found to be statistically significant (p <0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion the results regarding whether the leisure time barrier levels of female undergraduate students studying at fırat university faculty of sport sciences differ according to some variables are discussed and interpreted in this part of our study. the highest participation was 26.7% (n=32) with recreation department students, while the lowest attendance was 23.3% (n=28) with female students in the management department when the participants were examined in table 1. when looking at the age groups of the participants, the highest participation was female students asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 636-641 640 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group between the ages of 22-24 with 46.6%, followed by female students between the ages of 19-21 with 34.2 and finally female students aged 25 years and older with 19.2%. when the class distributions in which the participants studied were examined, 4th-grade female students were highly attended with 45.8%, while the lowest participation was 15.0% for 3rd-grade students. it was determined that 42.5% were engaged in team sports, 41.7% were interested in individual sports and 15.8% did not have any branches when the group distribution of the participants was examined in terms of branch variable. table-5. anova test results according to the branch groups variable of the participants in the study. sub-dimensions branch n x ss f p turkey individual psychology team sports 51 2,75 ,97489 ,500 ,608 individual sports 50 2,89 ,86620 none 19 2,66 1,05409 total 120 2,79 ,94013 lack of knowledge team sports 51 2,76 ,89018 1,587 ,209 individual sports 50 2,90 ,83310 none 19 2,47 1,10730 total 120 2,77 ,90886 facility team sports 51 3,22 ,69175 1,405 ,249 individual sports 50 3,22 ,66816 none 19 2,91 1,02946 total 120 3,17 ,74719 lack of friends team sports 51 2,70 ,98126 1,998 ,140 individual sports 50 2,61 ,92179 none 19 2,17 1,21395 total 120 2,58 1,00535 time team sports 51 2,99 ,80413 ,972 ,381 individual sports 50 3,21 ,69582 none 19 3,03 1,09935 total 120 3,09 ,81531 lack of interest team sportsa 51 2,76 ,87507 3,181 ,045 individual sportsb 50 3,07 ,74776 b-c nonec 19 2,54 1,04356 total 120 2,85 ,86929 note: anova test, p<0.05. when the sub-dimensions of the leisure time barriers scale and the department variable in which the participants study were examined, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between the leisure time barriers sub-dimensions and the department they studied (p> 0.05). it is seen that the sub-dimension with the highest average is the sub-dimension of the facility when the sub-dimensions of leisure barriers are examined. terzioğlu and yazıcı stated that students had too much free time in a study they conducted in 2003, but they could not use this free time effectively on the understanding and habits of university students in evaluating leisure time; they also stated that students perceive leisure and sports as a means of physical and mental development. in a study that was not parallel to our research conducted by güler (2017) a significant difference was found in favor of other students in the relationship between physical education students and other students in the level of leisure evaluation and social cohesion. similar results were obtained in the study conducted by turkoglu (2009). it has been revealed that physical education teachers and high school students who attend physical education classes have a positive attitude towards the environment. while both physical education teachers and students realized they did not have much time to participate in environmental recreation activities, they concluded that they could keep up with the developments in the media and tried to share the information with their friends. it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the sub-dimensions of the leisure time barriers scale of the participants in the study, and the sub-dimensions of facility, lack of friends and interest, and the age variable (p> 0.05). it was determined that the difference between the sub-dimensions of the leisure time barrier, individual psychology, lack of information and time, and the age variable was statistically significant (p <0.05). in a study that was not parallel to our research, kızıltan (1984) tested the compliance levels of university students and found that there was no age difference between adolescents. we can say that this difference is due to the fact that subjects aged 25 and over have increased their level of consciousness compared to other lower age groups, and they feel better in terms of individual psychology in our study. it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the sub-dimensions of individual psychology, lack of knowledge, lack of facility, lack of time and interest, and class variable from the subdimensions of the leisure barriers scale of the participants participating in our study (p>0.05). the difference between the lack of friends sub-dimension of the leisure time barriers scale and the class variable was found to be statistically significant (p <0.05). it can be said that female students who have just started university have not yet made friends and that feeling alone is effective in creating leisure barriers. the results obtained in the study conducted by lakot (2015) are compatible with our study, it is seen that the study group participants have a high level of leisure time awareness and their leisure time barriers are high. it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the sub-dimensions of individual psychology, lack of knowledge, facility, lack of time and friends, and branch variable from the sub-dimensions of the leisure barriers scale of the participants participating in the study (p>0.05). the difference between the lack of interest sub-dimension, which is one of the sub-dimensions of the leisure time barriers, and the branch variable was found to be statistically significant (p <0.05). it was found that female participants interested in individual sports had higher leisure barriers scores when the variables were examined. despite all this data, the difference between variables was not significant. it has not been discussed in the literature due to the lack of sufficient studies about the branch variable. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 636-641 641 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as a result; for female undergraduate students studying at fırat university sports sciences faculty; it was seen that the difference between the leisure time barriers sub-dimensions and the department variable they studied was not statistically significant. it was seen that the difference between the sub-dimensions of the leisure barriers scale and the variables of age, class and branch was statistically significant. according to our study, the free time barriers scale scores of female undergraduate students studying in the sports science faculty departments of firat university are 2.79 in the sub-dimension of individual psychology, 2.77 in the sub-dimension of lack of knowledge, 3.17 in the sub-dimension of the facility, 2.58 in the sub-dimension of lack of friends, 3.09 in the sub-dimension of time and 2.85 in the sub-dimension of lack of interest. when looking at the overall score average of the leisure barriers scale, it was observed that it was higher than the average with an average of 2.88. it is very important for individuals to spend their recreation time effectively, especially during work and school times. when the individual spends her leisure time effectively, she feels relaxed both psychologically and mentally. in line with all this relief, this mental state will relieve the person at work time and positively affect her communication with her social environment. in addition to all these, it is thought that it is of great importance that universities and state mechanisms make investments in terms of facilities and places in order for young people to spend their recreational time actively. based on all this information it was necessary to check the levels of leisure barriers of female students in the study group. this study is thought to help sports scientists, psychologists and academicians working on this issue. references alexandris, k., & carroll, b. (1997a). motives for recreational sports participation in greece. insiation for the planning and provision of sports services. european journal of physical education, 3(2), 129143. büküşoğlu, n., & bayturan, a. f. (2005). the role of leisure activities on the perception of psycho-social situations of young people. ege medical journal, 44(3), 173-177. güler, h. (2017). investigation of the effect of leisure obstacles on leisure motivations of students studying in physical education and sports colleges (bartın university example). master's thesis, bartın university, institute of educational sciences. gürbüz, b., öncü, e., & emir, e. (2012). leisure contraints questionnaire: testing the construct validity. paper presented at the 12th international sports sciences congress, 339-343, 12-14 december, denizli, turkey. karahuseyinoglu, m. f., altungul, o., nacar, e., & tutar, o. f. (2020). examination of the levels of digital game dependency of the students of the faculty of sports. asian journal of education and training, 6(1), 18-22.available at: https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.18.22. kızıltan, g. (1984). factors affecting the personal and social cohesion levels of university students. doctoral thesis. hacettepe university. ankara. lakot, k. (2015). free time perception and obstacles in physical education teacher candidates. unprinted master's thesis, karadeniz technical university institute of educational sciences, trabzon. turkmen, m., kul, m., genç, e., & sarıkabak, m. (2013). evaluation of recreation perceptions and attitudes of accommodation managers: example of the western black sea region. turkish studies, 8(8), 2139-2152. turkoglu, ç. (2009). the relationship between physical education teachers and high school students taking physical education classes with their attitudes towards the environment of their participation in environmental leisure activities is an example of sıncan district of ankara province. master's thesis, gazi university / institute of educational sciences. ankara. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 13 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 13-24, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.13.24 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group developing a values teaching education program for preservice teachers and evaluating its effectiveness aynur pala1 derya göğebakan yildiz2 ( corresponding author) 1,2faculty of education, manisa celal bayar university, turkey. abstract the aim of this project was to develop an 8-week values education program and evaluate how well it raises preservice teachers’ awareness of values education. this was an experimental and qualitative study conducted in april may 2019 in eight 70-minute lectures at the faculty of education of manisa celal bayar university. an 8-week values education program was developed, then, its effectiveness was evaluated using an experimental pretest-posttest control group design. the sample consisted of 47 students (35 females, 12 males) randomly assigned to two groups: data were collected using a demographic characteristics form and the schwartz value survey, which consists of 56 values. the values education program was based on eight values derived from the schwartz value survey. a qualitative research method was also used. data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted by the researchers. research results showed that the values teaching educational program-developed by researchershad a positive effect on values such as responsibility, social justice, modesty, open-mindedness, protecting environment, honesty, and helpfulness. but it was not found statistically significant difference between control group and experimental group over “successful” value. the qualitative results also show that the values education program met participants’ expectations and improved their perceptions and awareness of values and their motivation to put them in practice. lastly, the values education program helped the experimental participants develop positive views of the program itself and its content, material, activities, duration and the group leader. keywords: schwartz value survey, preservice teachers, teachers, values education program, values teaching ethics. citation | aynur pala; derya göğebakan yildiz (2021). developing a values teaching education program for preservice teachers and evaluating its effectiveness. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 13-24. history: received: 6 november 2020 revised: 3 december 2020 accepted: 23 december 2020 published: 11 january 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study was supported by the scientific research project office of manisa celal bayar university. project no: 2019-081. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 16 4. discussion, conclusion and recommendations ......................................................................................................................... 21 5. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 21 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 21 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.13.24&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2556 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4889-7438 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8831-8878 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 14 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature in teaching and inculcating values, the teachers have a great role to play. the teachers are expected to advise and guide the pupils regarding their general behaviors in school and outside the school. it has expected that the proposed comprehensive values program suggest some improvements in the existing value education programme and also can raise preservice and teachers’ awareness of values and of their roles and they can use it. 1. introduction although educators, philosophers, ecclesiastics, researchers, and authors have put forward ideas on the concept of value throughout history, there is no consensus on its definition (serin & buluç, 2014). approaching the concept of value from a psychological perspective, allport (1968) associates it with self and defines it as something regarded as desirable and preferable, and worth the commitment and effort to attain or keep it. rokeach, on the other hand, defines it as certain individual and social ways of conduct and persistent beliefs concerning the purpose of life. according to schwartz (1992) values are guiding principles that people use to define themselves, others, and events and to act and justify their actions. deth and scarbrough (1998) propose three criteria; a) values cannot be directly observed, b) values engage moral considerations, and c) values are conceptions of the desirable. moral values account for what people consider important to them and others and they encompass not only ways of conduct but also views of the purpose of life. from the early years of life, people construct value systems, which are influenced first by family, and then by the environment, education, beliefs, and media. what values people hold depends on the structure (nuclear or traditional) and state (broken or united) of the family, the socio-cultural and economic circle they belong to, and the locality in which they live (rural or urban) (kıran & gül, 2016). although parents seem to be primarily responsible for helping their children develop values, school and society at large should also recognize the shared responsibility and participate in the process. school, in particular, plays a key role in it. kuş, merey, and karatekin (2013) define values education as a process which provides people with the opportunity to develop moral, human, social, and spiritual values that enable them to focus on development and attaining happiness and peace and connect with one another. lewis (2007) argues that values education promotes academic performance and provides a peaceful educational environment. it also helps students develop communication, critical thinking, self-management, and self-awareness skills. according to deth and scarbrough (1998) values education is based on universal values accepted by everyone and is also a national movement that helps schools provide young people with good role models to set an example of thinking styles and behaviors needed to grow to be sensitive, moral, and responsible people with good personality traits. values education is a slow-paced process that cultivates not only the mind, but also the heart. it involves practices implemented by schools, regions, and states to teach children and young people basic human values (respect and consideration for themselves and others, honesty, justice, responsibility, morality, kindness, generosity, courage, freedom, self-discipline, equality, etc.) and how to put them in practice. according to lickona (1991) character education plays a critical role in reaching three main goals: 1) being a mature person, 2) attaining family relationships based on love and mutual respect, and 3) contributing to society. in this context, the goal of values education is to be an integral part of school culture, and thereby fostering social, moral, and academic growth and helping students internalize the moral values of respect, responsibility, honesty, justice compassion etc. and act in line with those values. values education plays a key role in transforming students into moral and productive members of society (o'sullivan, 2004). the students of today should be not only academically sound but also collaborative, hardworking, and honest, for they will be the leaders of tomorrow who will make a difference not only in their own communities but also in the whole world. social, ethical, and affective development is as important as academic performance. therefore, schools should be designed in such a way that they can both promote learning and encourage students to develop moral values. schools with values education are more likely to have students with high readiness to learn and have teachers with high self-confidence in their own teaching. teachers state that values education results in fewer discipline and behavioral problems and more time to teach (lickona, 1991). therefore, children should be introduced at an early age to values education, for which especially education faculty teachers and preservice teachers are responsible. teachers of the future should be aware of themselves, of the society in which they live, and of universal values which surround them, and know what values to teach. therefore, preservice teachers should be offered activities to help them learn about and internalize moral values so that they can teach them to the younger generations. preservice teachers who get to learn moral values and develop skills through values education activities are more likely to apply them to their personal and professional lives and exponentially promote healthy youth and healthy society. at this point, the critical factor is the teachers and the programs used to train them. it is of paramount importance to offer preservice teachers with values education to make sure that values can be passed down to younger generations. some studies in turkey address preservice teachers’ views of values (bacanlı, 1999; sarıcı, 2013; yapıcı, kutlu, & bilican, 2012). however, there are no effective programs that can be used to make students more sensitive to values. the aim of this study was, therefore, to develop a comprehensive and effective values education program (vep) for all preservice teachers. the relevant literature was used to develop a vep. we believe that educators can use the proposed program to raise preservice teachers’ awareness of values and of their roles. this study offered an eight-session training program for the values of “responsibility” (being reliable and dependable), “social justice” (correcting injustices, caring for the weak), “modesty” (), “open-mindedness” (tolerance and respect for different opinions and beliefs), “protecting the environment” (conserving nature), “honesty” (sincerity), “success” (reaching goals), and “helpfulness” (acting for the welfare of others) first to raise preservice teachers’ awareness of values and then to provide them with a road map on how to teach those values to their students in order to increase the number of people who adhere to universal values in their individual and collective actions. the study sought answers to the following questions: asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 15 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1do preservice teachers who have participated in vep have a significantly higher posttest “schwartz value survey” score than those who have not? 2what do preservice teachers who have participated in vep think about it? 2. method 2.1. research method this study employed a mixed methods design involving both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis (creswell, 2003). the effectiveness of vep was evaluated using an experimental pretest-posttest control group design (büyüköztürk, kılıç, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2011). quantitative data were collected using the schwartz value survey, while qualitative data were collected through interviews. 2.2. sample at the beginning of april 2019, students were informed about vep, and about its content and terms of participation. the sample consisted of 47 (35 females and 12 males) students who enrolled in the departments of primary teacher training, turkish teacher training, mathematics teacher training and psychological counseling and guidance. students were assigned numbers (s1, s2, s3, etc.) to ensure confidentiality and were randomized into an experimental (n=24) or a control (n=23) group.2.3. 2.3. data collection tools data were collected using a demographic characteristics form, a values education program interview form, and the schwartz value survey. 2.4. demographic characteristics form the demographic characteristics form (appendix 1), developed by the researchers consisted of items on gender, age, grade level, major, and place of residence. 2.5. schwartz value survey the schwartz value survey (svs) was developed by schwartz (1992) and adapted to turkish by kagitcibasi and kuşdil (2000). the svs consists of 56 value items vep in this study consisted of eight values derived from the svs: (1) responsibility (being reliable and dependable), (2) social justice (correcting injustices, caring for the weak), (3) modesty (avoiding extremes of feeling and action), (4) open-mindedness (tolerance and respect for different opinions and beliefs), (5) protecting the environment (conserving nature), (6) honesty (sincerity), (7) success (reaching goals), and (8) helpfulness (acting for the welfare of others). 2.6. interview form after the vep intervention, participants were interviewed using the following questions: 2.7. values education program interview form 1. what did you expect of vep? did it meet your expectations? 2. did vep help you improve yourself? if so, in what way? 3. how would you evaluate the content, materials, activities, duration, and group leader of vep? 2.8. procedure the goal of the 8-week vep was to raise preservice teachers’ awareness of values and then provide them with a road map on how to teach those values to their students in order to increase the number of people who adhere to universal values in their individual and collective actions. the following are the steps of developing vep. 2.9. developing vep vep was developed in four steps: a. literature review, b. drawing up a draft, c. consulting with experts d. conducting a pilot test 2.10. vep themes vep was an eight-session program consisting of themes based on university students’ developmental level and needs. table 1 shows the vep themes. table-1. vep themes. sessions themes session one responsibility (being reliable and dependable) session two social justice (correcting injustices, caring for the weak) session three modesty (avoiding extremes of feeling and action) session four open-mindedness (tolerance and respect for different opinions and beliefs) session five protecting the environment (conserving nature) session six honesty (sincerity) session seven success (reaching goals) session eight helpfulness (acting for the welfare of others) studies on effective training programs were evaluated to outline the content of the sessions. the sessions consisted of methods facilitating active engagement and self-expression, and involving activities and interactive teaching techniques that allow participants to discuss current values. appendix 1 presents the details of the goals, content, learning activities and evaluation processes of the sessions asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 16 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group two academics from the departments of the psychological counseling and guidance and curriculum and instruction were consulted concerning the vep draft, which was then revised based on their feedback. a onesession pilot study was conducted with seven preservice teachers, and vep was finalized based on the results. 2.11.. data analysis the quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, t test, and anova, while the qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. 3. results this section addressed the quantitative and qualitative results. 3.1. results regarding the first research question the first research question addressed whether the experimental group (vep) had a significantly higher posttest svs score than the control group. table 2 shows the results. table-2. t-test results of svs scores of experimental and control groups. the there was no statistically significant difference in pretest svs subscale scores between the experimental and control groups (t=.052; -.319; -1.398; -.023; -.113; -1.349; -.381; -1.651; p>.05) (table 2), suggesting that all participants had similar value orientations before the vep intervention. 3.2. group-measurement effect concerning the value of responsibility tables 3 and iv show, respectively, the descriptive statistics and two-way anova results concerning the vep participants’ orientation to the value of “responsibility.” table-3. experimental and control group pretest-posttest descriptive statistics concerning the value of responsibility. table-4. two-way anova results concerning the value of responsibility. source of variance ss sd ms f p η2 between groups group (experimental and control ) 9.825 1 9.825 2.47 .123 .05 within groups measurement (pre-test-posttest) 14.857 1 14.857 22.61 .000 .33 group*measurement 9.069 1 14.857 13.803 .001 .24 the two-way anova (two groups x two measurements) analysis showed that measurement and group*measurement resulted in a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest svs “responsibility” subscale scores across the two groups [f(m)=22.61, p=0.000<0.05; f(g*m)=13.803, p=0.001 <0.05]. the post-hoc test results showed that the experimental group had significantly higher posttest svs “responsibility” subscale scores than the control group (p <0.05) (tables 3 and 4). values group n mean ss t sd p responsibility experimental 24 4.42 1.66 .052 45 .959 control 23 4.39 1.67 social justice experimental 24 4.95 1.92 control 23 5.13 1.76 -.319 45 .751 modesty experimental 24 3.00 2.18 control 23 3.87 2.07 -1.398 45 .169 open-mindedness experimental 24 4.29 1,92 control 23 4.30 1.82 -.023 45 .982 protecting the environment experimental 24 4.50 2.04 control 23 4.56 1.90 -.113 45 .910 honesty experimental 24 4.87 1.80 control 23 5.56 1.70 -1.349 45 .184 success experimental 24 4.04 1.98 control 23 4.26 1.95 -.381 45 .705 helpfulness experimental 24 3.75 2.11 control 23 4.65 1.58 -1.651 45 .106 measurement group n mean ss pre-test experimental 24 4.42 1.66 control 23 4.39 1.67 post-test experimental 24 5.83 1.10 control 23 4.56 1.59 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 17 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.3. group-measurement effect concerning the value of social justice table-5. experimental and control group pretest-posttest descriptive statistics concerning the value of social justice. measurement group n mean ss pre-test experimental 24 4.95 1.92 control 23 5.13 1.76 post-test experimental 24 6.08 1.28 control 23 5.34 1.40 table-6. two-way anova results concerning the value of social justice. source of variance ss sd ms f p η2 between groups group (experimental and control ) 1.864 1 1.864 .419 .521 .009 within groups measurement(pre-test-post-test) 10.582 1 10.582 13.896 .001 .236 group*measurement 4.837 1 4.837 6.352 .015 .124 the two-way anova (two groups x two measurements) analysis showed that measurement and group*measurement resulted in a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest svs “social justice” subscale scores across the two groups [f(m)=13.896, p=0.001<0.05; f(g*m)=6.352, p=0.015 <0.05]. the post-hoc test results showed that the experimental group had significantly higher posttest svs “social justice” subscale scores than the control group (p <0.05) (tables 5 and 6). 3.4. group-measurement effect concerning the value of modesty table-7. experimental and control group pretest-posttest descriptive statistics concerning the value of modesty. measurement group n mean ss pre-test experimental 24 3.00 2.18 control 23 3.86 2.07 post-test experimental 24 4.87 1.73 control 23 3.52 1.85 table-8. two-way anova results concerning the value of modesty. source of variance ss sd ms f p η2 between groups group (experimental and control ) 1.374 1 1.374 .211 .648 .005 within groups measurement (pre-test-post-test) 13.696 1 13.696 11.021 .002 .197 group*measurement 29.015 1 29.015 23.348 .000 .342 the two-way anova (two groups x two measurements) analysis showed that measurement and group*measurement resulted in a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest svs “modesty” subscale scores across the two groups [f(m)=11.021, p=0.002<0.05; f(g*m)=23.348, p=0.000 <0.05]. the posthoc test results showed that the experimental group had significantly higher posttest svs “modesty” subscale scores than the control group (p <0.05) (tables 7 and 8). 3.5. group-measurement effect concerning the value of open-mindedness table-9. experimental and control group pretest-posttest descriptive statistics concerning the value of being open-minded. measurement group n mean ss pretest experimental 24 4.29 1.92 control 23 4.30 1.81 posttest experimental 24 5.50 1.35 control 23 4.52 1.83 table-10. two-way anova results concerning the value of open-mindedness. source of variance ss sd ms f p η2 between groups group (experimental and control ) 5.475 1 5.475 1.050 .311 .023 within groups measurement (pre-test-post-test) 11.937 1 11.937 13.796 .001 .235 group*measurement 5.766 1 5.766 6.665 .013 .129 the two-way anova (two groups x two measurements) analysis showed that measurement and group*measurement resulted in a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest svs “openmindedness” subscale scores across the two groups [f(m)=13.796, p=0.001<0.05; f(g*m)=6.665, p=0.013 <0.05]. the post-hoc test results showed that the experimental group had significantly higher posttest svs “openmindedness” subscale scores than the control group (p <0.05) (tables 7 and 8). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 18 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.6. group-measurement effect concerning the value of protecting the environment table-11. experimental and control group pretest-posttest descriptive statistics concerning the value of protecting the environment. measurement group n mean ss pre-test experimental 24 4.50 2.04 control 23 4.56 1.90 post-test experimental 23 6.04 1.39 control 23 4.73 1.71 table-12. two-way anova results concerning the value of protecting the environment. source of variance ss sd ms f p η2 between groups group (experimental and control ) 8.990 1 8.990 1.756 .192 .038 within groups measurement (pre-test-post-test) 17.284 1 17.284 14.237 .000 .240 group*measurement 10.986 1 10.986 9.049 .004 .167 the two-way anova (two groups x two measurements) analysis showed that measurement and group*measurement resulted in a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest svs “protecting the environment” subscale scores across the two groups [f(m)=14.237, p=0.000<0.05; f(g*m)=9.049, p=0.004 <0.05]. the post-hoc test results showed that the experimental group had significantly higher posttest svs “protecting the environment” subscale scores than the control group (p <0.05) (tables 11 and 12). 3.7. group-measurement effect concerning the value of honesty table -13. experimental and control group pretest-posttest descriptive statistics concerning the value of honesty. measurement group n mean ss pre-test experimental 24 4.87 1.80 control 23 5.56 1.70 post-test experimental 24 6.03 .95 control 23 5.47 1.67 table-14. two-way anova results concerning the value of honesty. source of variance ss sd ms f p η2 between groups group (experimental and control ) .094 1 .094 .024 .877 .001 within groups measurement (pre-test-post-test) 6.846 1 6.846 6.910 .012 .133 the two-way anova (two groups x two measurements) analysis showed that measurement and group*measurement resulted in a statistically significant difference between pre-test and post-test svs “honesty” subscale scores across the two groups [f(m)=6.910, p=0.012<0.05; f(g*m)=9.316, p=0.004 <0.05]. the post-hoc test results showed that the experimental group had significantly higher post-test svs “honesty” subscale scores than the control group (p <0.05) (tables 11 and 12). 3.8. group-measurement effect concerning the value of success table-15. experimental and control group pre-test-post-test descriptive statistics concerning the value of success. measurement group n mean ss pre-test experimental 24 4.04 1.98 control 23 4.26 1.95 post-test experimental 24 4.70 1.68 control 23 4.73 1.68 table-16. two-way anova results concerning the value of success. source of variance ss sd ms f p η2 between groups group (experimental and control) .367 1 .367 .060 .808 .001 within groups measurement (pre-test-post-test) 7.698 1 7.698 13.054 .001 .225 group*measurement .208 1 .208 .353 .555 .008 the two-way anova (two groups x two measurements) analysis showed that group*measurement did not result in a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest svs “success” subscale scores across the two groups [f(m)=13.054, p=0.001<0.05; f(g*m)=.353, p=0.555 >0.05] (tables 15 and 16). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 19 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.9. group-measurement effect concerning the value of helpfulness table-17. experimental and control group pretest-posttest descriptive statistics concerning the value of helpfulness. measurement group n mean ss pre--test experimental 24 3.75 2.11 control 23 4.65 1.58 post-test experimental 24 5.62 1.10 control 23 4.21 1.83 table-18. two-way anova results concerning the value of helpfulness source of variance ss sd ms f p η2 between groups group (experimental and control ) 1.500 1 1.500 .318 .575 .007 within groups measurement (pre-test-post-test) 12.181 1 12.181 11.628 .001 .205 group*measurement 31.329 1 31.329 29.908 .000 .399 the two-way anova (two groups x two measurements) analysis showed that measurement and group*measurement resulted in a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest svs “helpfulness” subscale scores across the two groups [f(m)=11.628, p=0.001<0.05; f(g*m)=29.908, p=0.000 <0.05]. the post-hoc test results showed that the experimental group had significantly higher posttest svs “helpfulness” subscale scores than the control group (p <0.05) (tables 17 and 18). 3.10. results regarding the second research question this section addressed the interviews results. 1. what did you expect of vep? did it meet your expectations? 2. did vep help you improve yourself? if so, in what way? 3. how would you evaluate the content, materials, activities, duration, and group leader of vep? 3.11. what did you expect of vep? how satisfied are you with it? the first interview question was “what did you expect of vep? did it meet your expectations?” all participants stated that vep met their expectations. the following are direct quotations from participants: 3.11.1. participants with expectations of personal development my expectation was to become more sensitive and aware, so i think that vep helped me with that. (student (s) 12). i expected vep to let me fill gaps in my knowledge, and it mostly did that (s24). my expectation was that i would learn new things and become more aware of things, and it mostly did that. it was nice that they held such an activity in college. i mean, responsibility, treating everyone equally, respecting different ideas, being non-judgmental and helpful, and acting for the welfare of others were very nice feelings. i was very happy to get that training.) (s15). 3.11.2. participants expecting to improve teaching skills i’m soon to be a primary school teacher, and so i took part in vep because i thought i had to, and it was like what i expected it to be. i believe that i’ll use the things i’ve learned in my profession life and that i’ll put them in practice throughout my life. (s6). as a preservice teacher, i think that we should definitely get that kind of training. i can say that it’s taught me things and helped me do some insight and recognize my own mistakes. (s22) 3.11.3. participants with very low expectations i thought vep was going to be more about boring and simple subjects, but i must say i was wrong. i took part in all eight sessions and none of them was boring. it even got more interesting with the examples given by the teacher. (s3) i had no expectations at all, i mean, i thought that the teacher was going to show up and talk about some stuff from the book, but it was impressive that the leader did some connections with everyday life, which was very relatable and transferrable to my life (s4). 3.11.4. participants who stated that vep exceeded their expectations i thought it was going to be like sessions where we would exchange ideas and discuss about some things under specific headings, but it was actually more than i expected. i got to see my own strengths and weaknesses about the issues we discussed and got to exchange opinions with like-minded or not-like-minded people, so i believe that that atmosphere helped me a lot to improve myself. (s13). at first, i thought it was going to be boring, it was nothing like that. i was very active, and i wanted to keep talking about my experience. (s17). 3.11.5. a participant stated that she found educational activities based on voluntary participation without grading much more effective: to be honest, at first i didn’t know what it was all about, but good thing i took part in it. i enjoy educational activities with no grading because voluntary participation made the activity more meaningful. (s10) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 20 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.11.6. did vep help you improve yourself? in what way? the second interview question was “did vep help you improve yourself? if so, in what way?” all participants stated that they found vep successful. they became more aware and sensitive to the values addressed by vep. the following are direct quotations from participants: 3.12.1. participants talking about the contributions that vep has made to their intellectual capacity yes, it did. i got the chance to think about my take on things that we talked about during vep, and i mulled over and voiced my own thoughts about them. (s10). vep got me to exchange ideas and hear different opinions, which broadened my horizon and learn more about things and talk more about them. (s17). it’s changed my perspective. i asked myself questions like, “i am eco-friendly enough?” or “am i openminded?” or “how important is honesty to me?” and i answered them and gave them some thought and came up with new ideas, so i believe it’s helped me improve myself. (s13). 3.12. 2.participants talking about how they put vep subjects into practice i think vep helped me better understand the concept of social justice, and i believe i’ve had some progress when it comes to people that are close to me. in the “protecting the environment” course, i came to realize that it’s not only about protecting the environment but it’s about understanding what nature is all about while protecting it, and so i put some effort into it. i do more recycling in the dorm. i used to enjoy taking long showers but now i make sure that it’s not longer than five minutes. (s6). now i think twice before i dump things in the garbage. another thing that has changed in my life is that when someone talks about his problems, i avoid giving examples from my own life and instead try to offer solutions. (s18). now i think deeply about even the most trivial things. i’ve come to realize that even the most trivial things might be very important. i’ve conquered my fears. i used to be afraid of dogs, i mean i was not a big fan of them, but now i walk up to them and give them water in these hot days. i approach people without any preconceived notions about them and i try to get to know them. (s21). 3.12.3. a participant who stated that vep contributed to parenting skills i will be a parent in the future, so i think i should know about these values. (s9). 3.12.4. a participant expressing the changes in her inner world vep has helped me a lot, it’s helped me to stop and think, like doing self-evaluation and self-recognition. when i put my head on the pillow at night or at the end of a training day, it got me to think that i should think about what i did for the training and what good it did to me. i’m thinking it’s a good thing that i had that training [vep] (s14). 3.12.5. some participants stated that vep helped them fill the gaps in their knowledge vep has been effective because it’s helped me see the blind spots in my knowledge and express my thoughts openly. (s16). we did some comprehensive learning about values. i learned that values actually have different dimensions. i felt incompetent in some values, and so i improved myself about them. (s19). vep made me a little more aware of things. i saw that i was incompetent in some issues. i learned new things about values. (s20). 3.12.6.. how would you evaluate the content, materials, activities, duration, and group leadership of vep? the third interview question was ”how would you evaluate the content, materials, activities, duration, and group leadership of vep?” all participants had positive views of the content, materials, activities, duration, and group leadership of vep. the following are direct quotations from participants: almost all participants found the content of vep adequate and appropriate. vep had good content, it was very relatable and addressed things we should pay attention to (s1). vep addressed meaningful and must-have topics from a wide perspective. it had rich content because it was all about life. (s4). it had good content addressing values that concern social life. (s7). i think the topics of vep were very nice. of all the core values, it addressed the ones that need to be put into practice and are most worth talking about. 3.12.7.participants had positive views of the vep activities and materials i think that the materials did the best they could to help me with the topics. they sometimes kept us focused and sometimes helped us develop new perspectives. the activities engaged all students in learning. (s11). the videos and stories were full of useful examples that helped us better understand things. (s18). sessions, slides, videos, surveys, stories ... the group leader presented the topics, which are as important as they are classic, in a pleasant and entertaining discussion environment, resulting in learning retention. (s17). 3.12.8. most participants found the duration of vep sufficient i think it was long enough. the group leader let everyone talk and gave examples from his own life, so i got the chance to hear what my classmates thought about things and to compare with my own (s21) the sessions were about 70 to 80 minutes, i think it was long enough to address the topics, i mean, it was quite ideal, neither too short nor too long. (s19) the sessions were long enough, but we could have talked more if they had been longer, though. (s3) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 21 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.13.1. participants had positive views of the group leader. the group leader was very open, she gave examples from her own life. (s12). the teacher gave the best examples to help us better understand the topics. her examples were very nice and thought-provoking. (s22). the group leader let us all talk and gave examples from her own life. we got to compare her experiences to ours. (s21). the teacher was always ready and willing to do class, she always showed up with notes in her hand, which gave us positive energy. (s14). i think that the group leader possesses all the values she taught us and i think that she is very good at teaching what she knows. the group leader was always ready to teach and always showed up with teaching materials. she knew very well what she was teaching. (s1). 4. discussion, conclusion and recommendations the main goal of this study was to develop and implement an 8-week values education program (vep) to improve preservice teachers' orientation to values and to evaluate its effectiveness. the sub goals of the study were to determine what all participants thought about vep and whether the vep group had significantly higher svs scores than controls. the 8-week vep helped the experimental participants improve responsibility (being reliable and dependable), social justice (correcting injustices, caring for the weak), modesty (avoiding extremes of feeling and action), openmindedness (tolerance and respect for different opinions and beliefs), protecting the environment (conserving nature), honesty (sincerity), and helpfulness (acting for the welfare of others) values. however, there was no significant difference in svs success (reaching goals) scores between the two groups. research shows that most values education programs are successful (finck, hansen, & jensen, 2003; ozyurt, demir, & bay, 2015; uysal, 2008). for example, berkowitz and bier (2005, in ozyurt et al. (2015) conducted a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of 39 character/values education programs and concluded that thirty-three of them are effective. uysal (2008) also concluded that most veps are effective on students. there was no significant difference in svs success (reaching goals) scores between the two groups. according to erikson's theory of psychosocial development, school age, referred to as second childhood, is the developmental stage where people develop the value of success. therefore, what preservice teachers experience during that period should be investigated. it is also widely accepted that character education in schools is associated with academic performance. benninga, berkowitz, kuehn, and smith (2003) investigated the effectiveness of character education in primary schools in california and reported that the program improved students' academic performance. in conclusion, vep in early school years is much more effective in value development. the first interview question was “what did you expect of vep? did it meet your expectations?” all participants stated that vep met their expectations, indicating that the design of vep satisfies preservice teachers’ expectations. interviews were conducted with participants after the vep intervention to obtain qualitative results. the second interview question was “did vep help you improve yourself? if so, in what way?” all participants stated that vep made them more aware and sensitive to the values it addressed. the third interview question was ”how would you evaluate the content, materials, activities, duration, and group leadership of vep?” all participants had positive views of the vep content, materials, activities, duration, and group leader. according to their statements, vep is neither too long or too short and has fun and informative activities and adequate materials that are compatible with the activities; the group leader planned and conducted the activities very well and managed the process effectively. most studies on values education focus on preservice teachers’ orientation to moral values and their views of those values and values education (mercader, 2006; pala & göğebakan, 2019; sarı, 2005). however, there are also some studies investigating the effectiveness of veps designed for preservice teachers. for example, kılcan (2016) reported that a “values education” course improved preservice teachers’ views of values and their teaching. our results show that the 8-week vep can help preservice teachers develop values and teach them to their students in the future in conclusion, the 8-week vep helps preservice teachers develop positive attitudes towards values and raises their awareness of them and makes them motivated to put them in practice. it also provide them with a road map on how to teach those values to their students in the future. therefore, education faculties should offer veps as a course. 5. recommendations 1) all departments of education faculties should offer values courses. 2) veps should be complemented with extracurricular activities. 3) administrators, teachers, and parents should always take into consideration the effect of attitudes towards school, values education, and motivation for success on academic performance. therefore, related conferences, workshops, and seminars as well as program activities should be organized. references allport, g. w. 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(2012). value orientations of teacher candidates. electronic journal of social sciences, 11(42), 129-151. appendix appendix-1. values education program s e ss io n s instructional objectives content learning experiences materials evaluation* r e sp o n si b il it y ( 7 0 m in u te s) define the concept of responsibility responsibility warm up, presentation question-answer slides paper board board marker computer projector write down your several responsibilitie s to yourself, to your family, to school, to animals, to the community, and to the earth. recognize that we all have responsibilities to ourselves and to others. our responsibilities to ourselves and to others presentation brain storming question-answer list several responsibilities some examples of responsibilities presentation question-answer imagine someone totally disorganized or irresponsible consequences of being irresponsible case study discussion questionanswer f a ir n e ss ( 7 0 m in u te s) define the concept of fairness fairness warm up, to show the symbol of fairness. a sign of fairness, slides, paper, board, board marker, computer projector discuss how teachers can show fairness to students. investigate the scope of fairness (such as being impartial, reasonable, and able to predict consequences of actions and decisions) fairnessrelated words presentation question-answer discussion distinguish between fair and equal difference between fair and equal presentation question-answer examples for fairness and equality define the concept of positive discrimination and give examples positive discrimination case study question-answer examples for positive discrimination recognize how fairly teachers treat students be fair presentation case study question-answer m o d e st y (7 0 m in u te s) define the value of modesty modesty presentation question –answer slides modesty images paper board give examples of real life situations in which they can practice explain some of the proverbs on modesty proverbs on modesty brain storming presentation question-answer http://dx.doi.org/10.30703/cije.545147 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 23 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group list some of the characteristics of a modest person characteristics of a modest person presentation question-answer board marker computer projector modesty talk about a story about modesty a story (www.hergenc. org › ey-ulucinar-cabukyanima-gel) presentation discussion question –answer se ss io n instructional objectives content learning experiences materials evaluation o p e n -m in d e d n e ss ( 7 0 m in u te s) define the value of openmindedness. openmindedness presentation question-answer slides paper board board marker computer projector create a twocolumn chart of characteristics of an open and closedminded person, and then, discuss the consequences of openand closed mindedness become more open to new ideas some tips will help us become more open to new ideas brain storming presentation question-answer develop open-minded attitudes some views on how to develop openmindedness presentation question-answer explain the advantages of being open-minded advantages of being openminded presentation question-answer list some of the characteristics of an open-minded person (such as resisting the urge to react aggressively upon hearing differing opinions, avoiding speculation, etc.) characteristics of an openminded person presentation discussion question-answer explain some of the mottos about open mindedness mottos (such as “a mind is like a parachute. it doesn't work if it is not open.”) presentation question-answer respond to narrow-minded people narrowmindedness presentation question-answer list of some of the characteristics of an open minded and narrow-minded person differences between open and closedminded people case study questionanswer e n v ir o n m e n ta l a w a re n e ss ( 7 0 m in u te s) list environmental problems environmental problems (air pollution, soil pollution, climate change, animal extinction, ecosystems, energy, health, waste and water) warm up: our world is in danger! presentation brain storming question-answer pen and paper slides paper board board marker computer projector video (how to pack a waste-free lunch) https://www. youtube.com/ watch?v=rlg j0y_edni write a short paragraph about “how can you help our planet and those who live on it? work on raising awareness and sensitivity to environmental problems solutions to environmental problems post signs in the classroom and the building to remind them to turn out the lights and to turn off water when not in use group discussion questions answer video list five concrete steps they can take to improve their environment. http://www.hergenc.org/fikra/ey-ulu-cinar-cabuk-yanima-gel http://www.hergenc.org/fikra/ey-ulu-cinar-cabuk-yanima-gel asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 13-24 24 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group note: *used for formative assessment at the end of the sessions. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. se ss i o n instructional objectives content learning experiences materials evaluation h o n e st y ( 7 0 m in u te s) define the value of honesty definitions of honesty presentation question –answer slides video paper board board marker computer projector give examples of individual behaviors based on honesty explain the importance and consequences of being honest case studies on honesty brain storming presentation question-answer list the characteristics of an honest person honest people the honest woodcutter https://www.y outube.com/wa tch?v=vww0ot av-v8 presentation discussion question-answer explain some of the proverbs about honesty examples of proverbs presentation question-answer slides paper board board marker computer projector very short survey to evaluate their success s u cc es s (7 0 m in u te s) define the concept of successful successful presentation question-answer explain some of the proverbs about success proverbs on success brain storming presentation question-answer presentation question-answer list some of the characteristics of a successful person successful people evaluate their level of success h e lp fu ln e ss ( 7 0 m in u te s) define the concept of helpfulness helpfulness warm up brain storming presentation question-answer slides paper board board marker computer projector stories list a variety of ways one can be helpful explain some of the quotes on helpfulness meaning of quotations on helpfulness presentation question-answer the quotation sheet discuss the importance of being helpful helpfulness presentation role-playing question-answer discussion identify how they can be helpful at home and in school ways of helpfulness presentation question-answer talk about the joy of helping association with happiness and helpfulness presentation question-answer 40 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 40-47, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5367 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group attitude of clinical teachers towards the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning in the university of port harcourt medical school, south nigeria ugboma, enighe wananyo1 awotua-efebo, ebi2 erekosima ibi3 ( corresponding author) 1department of radiology, university of port harcourt, university of port harcourt teaching hospital, nigeria. email: enighe.ugboma@uniport.edu.ng 2department of curriculum studies and educational technology faculty of education university of port harcourt, nigeria. email: ebi.awotua-efebo@uniport.edu.ng 3medicine and medical education, college of health services, university of port harcourt, nigeria. email: ibi.erekosima@srft.nhs.uk abstract the 21st century has seen a rapid increase in the use of various innovative technologies in pedagogy. the attitude of the clinical teachers affects the use of these innovative technologies in teaching and learning. the aim of this research is to find out the attitude of clinical teachers using “the tripartite theory of attitude” consisting of affective, cognitive, and behavioral domains, to the use of innovative technology. a descriptive survey research design with correlational studies was done with a purposive sampling method used. a 24 item likert questionnaire was used and distributed using google form. the population of the study was made up of clinical teachers in the faculty of clinical sciences university of port harcourt. a total of 90 clinical teachers took part in the study comprising of 48 males and 42 females. 23 were professors while 51 were senior lecturers. analysis showed the overall attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning was positive. no significant correlation was seen between gender, cadre, and years of service of the clinical teacher to the use of innovative technology. thus, incorporation of innovative technology into the classroom should be encouraged as this would aid the clinical teachers in improving learning in the classroom. keywords: attitudes, clinical teachers, innovative technology, medical school. citation | wananyo, u. e., ebi, a.-e., & ibi, e. (2024). attitude of clinical teachers towards the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning in the university of port harcourt medical school, south nigeria. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 40–47. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5367 history: received: 22 may 2023 revised: 26 october 2023 accepted: 29 january 2024 published: 7 february 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of port harcourt, nigeria has granted approval for this study on 28 september 2021 (ref. no. uph/ceremad/rec/mm80/059). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 41 2. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 41 3. results ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 42 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 46 5. imitations .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 47 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 47 mailto:enighe.ugboma@uniport.edu.ng mailto:ebi.awotua-efebo@uniport.edu.ng mailto:ibi.erekosima@srft.nhs.uk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5367 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 40-47 41 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study adds to literature by examining the attitude of clinical teachers towards innovative technology in teaching and learning in the university of port harcourt medical school. the results of this research will have the potential to aid clinical teachers to successfully integrate innovative technology into their classrooms. 1. introduction today's university students are versatile in cutting-edge technology as seen when looking for a solution to an issue, the modern student is more likely to use the internet rather than printed material or books (selwyn, 2009). they are said to be digital natives, this refers to a young person who has grown up in the digital age, having intimate and early contact with computers, the internet, and video game consoles, as well as mobile phones, social media, and tablets (selwyn, 2009). they have therefore evolved cognitive thinking processes that are distinct from those of prior generations. on the other hand most of the clinical teachers of today were born in the pre-digital era or before 1980 and are known as digital immigrants as their introduction into the digital world of computers, the internet, email, social online platforms, video games and mobile phones occurred later in life most times as adults (prensky, 2001). this pedagogical dilemma was summarized by prensky (2001) who in his study noted that “digital immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population (digital natives) who speaks an entirely new language” therefore in order to teach today's learners, there must be a transformation in teaching patterns and attitude .the 21st century clinical teacher must be familiar with these technologies in order to properly employ them in pedagogy so as to stay up to date with the 21st century student and develop doctors with the necessary skills and knowledge to flourish in this digital era as a lifelong learner (blackwell, lauricella, & wartella, 2014). these innovative technologies introduced into teaching and learning are both software and hardware, that mirror the use of computers, the internet, web 2.0 tools, various online and digital laboratories, information communication technologies, educational gaming software in teaching and learning thus the 21st-century innovative technology is based on digital technologies and skills (oecd and eurostat, 2005). attitude was defined by ajzen (1988) as “complex mental processes that are thought to influence the way in which individuals’ process information and to motivate behavior.” the clinical teacher’s attitudes about innovative technology usage and teacher confidence levels in using technology influence whether technology is integrated into classroom learning activities. bohner and dickel (2011) and oppenheim (1992) proposing that attitude is composed of three aspects and explained that “attitudes are reinforced by beliefs (cognitive component) and often attract strong feels (the emotional component) which may lead to a particular behavioral intent (the action tendency component)”. the attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technologies in teaching and learning is important as this determines how, why, when, where, and what technologies are used. 1.1. aim and objectives of the study the study aimed to evaluate the attitude of clinical teachers towards the use of innovative technologies in teaching and learning in the university of port harcourt medical school while the objectives include the evaluation of the affective (feeling) , behavioural (action) and cognitive (knowledge) attitude of clinical teachers towards the use of innovative technologies in teaching and learning and to evaluate the relationship of number of years of teaching, cadre and gender to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning. for the purpose of this study, ‘innovative technology’ refers to “digital technologies” such as web 2.0 digital tools like youtube videos, zoom, google classroom, learning/ teaching videos (maag, 2006). 2. methodology 2.1. research design a descriptive survey research design with correlational studies was done with a mixed design approach qualitative and quantitative data was obtained. 2.2. study area the study was conducted in the university of port harcourt medical school located in the south region of nigeria. 2.3. study population the participants in the study were clinical teachers from the faculty of clinical sciences teaching mbbs medical students in the university of port harcourt medical school. that is, clinical teachers teaching students in their year 5th and 6th years of medical school. 2.4. sample and sampling techniques a purposive sampling method was used with study population being all clinical teachers from the faculty of clinical sciences teaching clinical students in years 4, 5 and 6. 2.5. methods of data collection/instrumentation using a google forms online questionnaire, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. the instrument used is an adaptation of the instrument developed by guillén-gámez, colomo-magaña, sánchez-rivas, and pérez (2020), which measured attitudes towards technology. the instrument used was a structured questionnaire with both open-ended and closed-ended questions. utilized was the four-point likert scale, with response options of [1] strongly agree (sa), [2] agree (a), [3] disagree (d), and [4] strongly disagree (sd). based on the abcs (affective, behavioral, and cognitive) of attitudes, a scale containing 24 items pertaining to three dimensions was used to determine the attitudes of clinical instructors towards innovative technology in asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 40-47 42 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teaching and learning. the cognitive dimension is comprised of items that express an individual's thoughts and knowledge. the affective dimension consists of items measuring an individual's emotional outlook (feelings, happiness, dread, anxiety, etc.). a mean value of 3 or greater indicated a moderate to high level of agreement (a positive score) with respect to the indicator. 2.6. validity/reliability of instrument the content validity of the instrument was ensured using a pilot study of the survey instrument which was given to 10 clinical teachers for clarity and face validation. the 10 clinical teachers were not part of the final study population. corrections and changes due to ambiguity and unclear questions concerning the instrument were made based on the responses received. cronbach’s alpha coefficients for reliability analysis were measured as 0.825 for cognitive dimension, 0.802 for affective dimension and 0.795 for behavioral dimension while the overall scale was calculated as 0.819. 2.7. methods of data analysis the results were compiled and spss 22.0 (inc., chicago, usa) for windows used for statistical analysis using frequency tables, charts and graphs. mean and standard deviation values were calculated for the likert scale. correlation studies were used to compare teacher attitudes according to some individual characteristics with pvalue less than 0.5 accepted as levels of statistical significance. anova=analysis of variance [f-test] (for comparing 3 or more means) and student t-test was used to evaluate for association. 2.8. ethical approval the university of port harcourt research ethical committee granted ethical approval. additionally, informed consent was acquired. 3. results demographic characteristics of the study population: a total of 90 clinical teachers took part in the study giving a response rate of 70%. the age of the clinical teachers ranged from 36 years to over 45 years. there was no teacher below 36 years and 63.3% were above 45% (figure 1). the women were: 42 (46.7%) and the males 48 (53.3%) (figure 2). the number of years of teaching were recorded with the 11-15 years having the highest group (figure 3). the cadre of clinical teachers are represented in figure 4. figure 1. pie chart showing the age range of the clinical teachers in years. figure 2. pie chart showing the percentage of males to females of the clinical teachers. figure 3. pie chart showing number of years of teaching by the clinical teachers in the medical school. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 40-47 43 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 4. pie chart showing the cadre of the clinical teachers. table 1. affective attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning. item statement minimum maximum mean mean estimate std. deviation i feel confident using the digital technology to source for information to teach my clinical students 2.0 4.0 3.72 4 0.47 i feel using digital technology can prevent my students from being creative in their learning process. 1.0 4.0 1.89 2 0.83 i feel the use of digital technologies are necessary tools in both teaching and learning 3.0 4.0 3.93 4 0.25 i feel the traditional way of teaching (didactic lectures, handouts etc.) is a better way of teaching than with the use of digital technology. 1.0 4.0 1.58 2 0.82 i feel digital technology increases my productivity as a teacher 2.0 4.0 3.72 4 0.56 the use of digital technology makes a teaching session more interesting 2.0 4.0 3.72 4 0.49 the use of digital technology in learning by my students is distractive 1.0 4.0 1.86 2 0.84 digital technology (computers) can help accommodate different learning styles thus enhancing learning. 3.0 4.0 3.83 4 0.37 total affective attitude measured by the instrument (32) 24.28 26 4.67 table 2. breakdown aassessment of the affective attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning (n=90). variable frequency percent (%) i feel confident using the digital technology to source for information to teach my clinical students strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 1 1.11 agree 22 24.44 strongly agree 67 74.44 i feel the traditional way of teaching (didactic lectures, handouts etc) is a better way of teaching than with the use of digital technology. strongly disagree 34 37.78 disagree 36 40.00 agree 17 18.89 strongly agree 3 3.33 using digital technology can prevent my students from being creative in their learning process strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 34 37.78 agree 36 40.00 strongly agree 17 18.89 digital technology increases my productivity as a teacher strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 5 5.56 agree 14 15.56 strongly agree 71 78.89 i feel computers are necessary tools in both teaching and learning strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 0 0.0 agree 7 7.78 strongly agree 83 92.22 the use of digital technology makes a teaching session more interesting strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 2 2.22 agree 20 22.22 strongly agree 68 75.56 the use of digital technology in learning by my students is distractive strongly disagree 3 3.33 disagree 14 15.56 agree 37 41.11 strongly agree 36 40.00 digital technology (computers) can help accommodate different learning styles thus enhancing learning. strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 1 1.11 agree 15 16.67 strongly agree 74 82.22 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 40-47 44 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1 shows that clinical teachers have a positive predisposition towards the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning because a high mean score was noted. low scores were seen as positive as it showed a positive agreement. table 2 presents the evaluation of the analysis of clinical teachers' affective attitudes towards teaching and learning. a large number of clinical teachers feel that the usage of digital technology would promote learning and is, therefore, a required teaching tool. the behavioral attitudes of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning are seen in table 3. it shows that clinical teachers have a positive predisposition towards innovative technology due to the fact that they all have a high average score. low scores are however seen as positive as it shows a positive agreement. table 3. behavioral attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning. table 4. breakdown analysis of assessment of behavioural attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning (n=90). item statements minimum maximum mean std. deviation i think my teaching skills could improve with the use of digital technology. 2.0 4.0 3.86 0.37 i encourage my students to use digital technology in their study time. 2.0 4.0 3.34 0.75 use of digital technology in learning will lead to loss of reasoning skills by my students 1.0 4.0 1.78 0.77 the use of on -line learning platforms (like google meet, moodle, zoom) creates more interaction between my student and me as a teacher 1.0 4.0 2.85 1.00 i give my students assignments that involve the use of digital; technology 1.0 4.0 2.69 0.82 use of digital technology makes my teaching of clinical students easier 1.0 4.0 3.50 0.71 digital technology plays a huge role in planning my teaching outline 2.0 4.0 3.63 0.60 i use online learning platforms to share information with my students 1.0 4.0 2.81 0.94 total behavioral attitude measured by the instrument 24.48 5.99 variable frequency percent (%) i think my teaching skills could improve with the use of digital technology strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 1 1.14 agree 10 11.36 strongly agree 77 87.50 i encourage my students to use digital technology in their study time strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 15 17.05 agree 28 31.82 strongly agree 45 51.14 use of digital technology in learning will lead to loss of reasoning skills by my students strongly disagree 2 2.27 disagree 13 14.77 agree 37 42.05 strongly agree 36 40.91 the use of on -line learning platforms (like google meet, moodle, zoom) creates more interaction between my student and me as a teacher strongly disagree 9 10.34 disagree 23 26.44 agree 26 29.89 strongly agree 29 33.33 i give my students assignments that involve the use of digital; technology strongly disagree 4 4.55 disagree 35 39.77 agree 33 37.50 strongly agree 16 18.18 use of digital technology makes my teaching of clinical students easier strongly disagree 1 1.14 disagree 8 9.09 agree 25 28.41 strongly agree 54 61.36 digital technology plays a huge role in planning my teaching outline strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 6 6.82 agree 20 22.73 strongly agree 62 70.45 i use online learning platforms to share information with my students strongly disagree 5 5.68 disagree 33 37.50 agree 23 26.14 strongly agree 27 30.68 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 40-47 45 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4 shows the analysis of assessment of behavioral attitude to teaching and learning. a high percentage of clinical teachers believe the use of digital technology would improve their teaching skills and used it in planning their lessons. the cognitive attitudes of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning are seen in table 5. it shows that clinical teachers have a positive predisposition towards the use of innovative technology.in teaching and learning. table 5. cognitive attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning. table 6 shows the breakdown analysis of assessment of cognitive attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning with most in agreement that digital technology can improve the learning process. table 6. analysis of aassessment of cognitive attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning (n=90). table 7 displays the total attitude. it can be noted that the cognitive attitudes (m = 24.20+ 5.39) has the lowest scores, followed by the emotional attitudes (m = 24.28+ 4.66), behavioral attitude, on the other hand, has a mean total score of ( m = 24.48+ 5.98). in terms of total attitude toward the use of new technology, it can be claimed that it is high (m = 72.39+ 16.06) when compared to the maximum 96 points that may be obtained. item statements minimum maximum mean std. deviation students have a greater grasp of digital technology than i do. 1.0 4.0 3.29 0.92 use of digital technology is important in the updating of the knowledge i need to teach clinical students. 2.0 4.0 3.80 0.42 the use of digital technology is too time consuming to be used in teaching of clinical students 1.0 4.0 2.03 0.85 digital technology in teaching of clinical students is not necessary as it is more of a personalized skill to be passed on to the clinical student. 1.0 4.0 1.53 0.84 learning using digital technology is a new field i would like to explore 1.0 4.0 3.60 0.75 learning skills using digital technology is too expensive for the clinical students 1.0 4.0 2.26 0.75 digital technology can improve my learning process as a teacher. 3.0 4.0 3.88 0.31 digital technology can improve the learning process of the clinical student. 1.0 4.0 3.78 0.53 total cognitive attitude measured by the instrument 24.20 5.39 variable frequency percent (%) students have a greater gasp of digital technology than i do strongly disagree 6 6.82 disagree 10 11.36 agree 24 27.27 strongly agree 48 54.55 use of digital technology is important in the updating of the knowledge i need to instruct clinical students strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 1 1.14 agree 15 17.05 strongly agree 72 81.82 use of digital technology is important in the updating of the knowledge i need to instruct clinical students strongly disagree 3 3.41 disagree 24 27.27 agree 34 38.64 strongly agree 27 30.68 technology in teaching of clinical students is not necessary as it is more of a personalized skill to be passed on to the clinical student strongly disagree 5 5.68 disagree 5 5.68 agree 22 25.00 strongly agree 56 63.64 learning using digital technology is a new field i would like to explore strongly disagree 2 2.27 disagree 8 9.09 agree 13 14.77 strongly agree 65 73.86 learning skills using digital technology is too expensive for the clinical students strongly disagree 5 5.68 disagree 24 27.27 agree 48 54.55 strongly agree 11 12.50 learning skills using digital technology is too expensive for the clinical students strongly disagree 0 0.0 disagree 0 0.0 agree 10 11.36 strongly agree 78 88.64 digital technology can improve the learning process of the clinical student strongly disagree 1 1.14 disagree 2 2.27 agree 12 13.64 strongly agree 73 82.95 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 40-47 46 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 7. description of the mean of each dimension of the instrument. dimensions of attitude mean mean estimate std. deviation affective attitudes (32 points) 24.29 26 4.67 behavioral attitudes (32 points) 24.48 26 5.97 cognitive attitudes (32 points) 24.20 25 5.39 total attitude (96 points) 72.97 77 16.06 as shown in table 8, affective, behavioural, cognitive and overall attitude of clinical teachers towards innovative technologies in teaching and learning were measured using the median scores, on a scale of 1-4, with numbers closer to “1” suggesting poor use of innovative technology in teaching and learning and numbers closer to “4” suggesting good use of innovative technology in teaching and learning. the median scores ranged between 3.5 to 4, suggesting good use of innovative technology in teaching and learning. table 8. overall attitude of clinical teachers to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning using the median (n=90). note: sd=standard deviation=inter-quartile range. to find out the relationship between the gender, age and cadre of the clinical teacher and the use of innovative technology pearson product moment was calculated. table 9 presents the correlation of the various attributes. it showed that gender, cadre and age had nosignificant correlation with the use of innovative technology. this means there is no difference in the use of innovative technology by clinical teachers in teaching and learning in both genders, all cadre and age. table 9. correlation of varoius attribute of clinical teachers and use of innovative technology. items correlation gender cadre years of teaching use of digital technology makes my teaching of clinical students easier pearson correlation 0.016 -0.215 -0.186 sig. (2-tailed) 0.882 0.075 0.083 n 88 88 88 digital technology plays a huge role in planning my teaching outline pearson correlation 0.034 -0.151 -0.152 sig. (2-tailed) 0.752 0.161 0.157 n 88 88 88 i use online learning platforms to share information with my students pearson correlation -0.062 0.144 0.007 sig. (2-tailed) 0.566 0.182 0.950 n 88 88 88 students have a greater grasp of digital technology than i do. pearson correlation 0.047 -0.264 0.006 sig. (2-tailed) 0.665 0.063 0.978 n 88 88 88 use of digital technology is important in the updating of the knowledge i need to teach clinical students. pearson correlation -0.004 -0.015 -0.062 sig. (2-tailed) 0.968 0.887 0.568 n 88 88 88 the use of digital technology is too time consuming to be used in teaching of clinical students pearson correlation 0.043 -0.307 -0.092 sig. (2-tailed) 0.690 0.074 0.394 n 88 88 88 technology in teaching of clinical students is not necessary as it is more of a personalized skill to be passed on to the clinical student. pearson correlation 0.084 0.188 0.106 sig. (2-tailed) 0.435 0.080 0.328 n 88 88 88 4. discussion the study showed that the attitude of clinical teachers in the university of port harcourt medical school to the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning was average in general terms and positive. this implies that there is a tendency to use innovative technology in teaching and learning. this was similar to findings by other researchers such as howard and gigliotti (2016); masters, ellaway, topps, archibald, and hogue (2016) and bennett, agostinho, and lockyer (2017).where their studies proposed that teachers, in general, had a positive attitude to the introduction and use of innovative technologies into the classroom for teaching and learning given the right environment and support this could be due to the rapid development of innovative technology which is being used in social media platforms outside the classroom by teachers so these technologies are not strange but familiar to the teachers, thus acceptable, so the overall attitude will be positive to support these new ideas. bates (1995) suggested that “technologies are not inherently better than old ones and many of the lessons learned from the application of older technologies will still apply to any newer technology” thus the positive attitude to new technology may be due to a familiarity with the old ones or older versions. the clinical teachers in this study had a relatively higher level of positive attitude in the behavioral dimension unlike studies done by alshammari, reyes jr, and parkes (2016) which showed a higher level in the cognitive dimension as it is expected for university teachers to be more knowledgeable. furthermore alshammari et al. (2016) and ostrom (1969), stated in their studies that the participating teachers were found to have a higher level of self-perception in relation to cognitive attitudes effective and behavioral attitudes. on the other hand similar positive behavioral attitudes over cognitive and affective attitudes were seen in another study where teachers just acquired the basic skills but no integration into teaching and learning was noted ie the cognitive knowledge was missing (guillén-gámez & mayorga-fernández, 2020). this could be due to the observational /apprentice nature variables: dimensions of attitude median (iqr) range:1=lowest, 4=highest affective attitude 4 (3.5-4.0) behavioural attitude 3.5 (3.0-4.0) cognitive attitude 4 (3.5-4.0) overall attitude 4 (3.75-4.0) asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 40-47 47 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of medicine were “doing” or skills are emphasized. it could also be explained by the theory of diffusion due to social influence; where there is a social component to adoption of technology. in a social group or network no one wants to be left behind so there is the peer pressure to use whatever technology is being used by others in the group. when colleagues and friends are using a particular technology the others in the social circle use it also working through observation with little knowledge (rogers, 1995). affective component of attitude was in the middle and is positive. in this population, there is a positive affective attitude towards innovative technology. that means the clinical teachers have a good feeling about the use of innovative technology in teaching and learning. there was no correlation between the male and female gender in the use of innovative technology in learning and teaching by the clinical teachers in this study. this was also observed by olasoji, mu’azu, and garba (2019); kpolovie and awusaku (2016); semerci and aydin (2018) and alkan and erdem (2010) in their researches among university teachers. on the other hand, a study by bakrys (2018) showed that women have a less favorable attitude towards technology and men showed more positive attitudes. the result in this study could be due to the exposure of both genders to these new technologies and the need to upgrade and keep up with current practices in presentations and teaching. there was no significant correlation between cadre and years of service with the use of innovative technology in the study. however this was not seen in studies done by kpolovie and awusaku (2016) and semerci and aydin (2018) where the opposite was noted. consistent with the findings of alshammari et al. (2016), this study revealed that less experienced teachers and younger clinical teachers with limited experience had more positive attitudes towards technology use. these outcomes may be the result of clinical instructors at the university of port harcourt having equal access to technology. in conclusion, clinical instructors at the medical school of the university of port harcourt have a favorable view of the use of digital innovative technology in teaching and learning. despite their practical experience with these technologies, their cognitive attitude is lower than their behavioral and emotional attitudes, indicating a lack of knowledge on how to use and integrate these technologies into the classroom. furthermore, no statistically significant associations were found between gender, academic rank, and years of service among clinical teachers at the university of port harcourt medical school and the use of innovative technology. 5. imitations limitations of the study were the short timeframe of the study, and the questions were closed ended and more in-depth qualitative studies are needed. that is conducting in‐depth interviews with the clinical teachers to find out their attitudes and thus to contrast the quantitative and qualitative data. references ajzen, i. 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(2018). examining high school teachers’ attitudes towards ict use in education. international journal of progressive education, 14(2), 93-105. https://doi.org/10.29329/ijpe.2018.139.7 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.366 http://www.tonybates.ca/2014/12/10/a-short-history-of-educational-technology/ http://www.tonybates.ca/2014/12/10/a-short-history-of-educational-technology/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9469-y https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.04.013 https://doi.org/10.3390/su12041312 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-015-9386-4 https://doi.org/10.1097/00006223-200605000-00007 https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2016.1141190 https://doi.org/10.2147/amep.s171550 https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(69)90003-1 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816 https://doi.org/10.29329/ijpe.2018.139.7 297 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 297-303, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.297.303 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group effects of health-related knowledge and aerobic exercise on lower secondary school students' obesity awareness and physical activity levels gizem akgül ertan1 funda coşkun özyol2 1şehit kemal görgülü lower-secondary school, van, turkey. 2van yüzüncü yıl university, the school of physical education and sports, van, turkey. ( corresponding author) abstract the objective of this study was to examine the effects of health-related knowledge and aerobic exercise on lower secondary school students' obesity awareness and physical activity levels. a total of 50 obese and 20 normal-weight female students, ranging in age from 12-14 (mean 12.10±1.7), participated in the study. obesity awareness was determined using the obesity awareness scale, which also incorporates awareness of nutrition and physical activity. physical activity levels were determined using a pedometer. the participants were divided into one obese experimental group and 2 control groups, obese and normal weight. the obese experimental group received instruction in health and nutrition and followed an aerobic exercise program, while the control groups received no such instruction and did not participate in an exercise program. the health education program was conducted once a week, while the aerobic exercise program was performed three times a week, with each session lasting 45-60 minutes. at the conclusion of the study, the obesity awareness, nutrition awareness, and physical activity awareness scores of the students in the obese experimental group increased significantly compared to those of the obese control and normal control groups. similarly, the physical activity levels of the students in the obese control group increased with respect to those of the obese and normal-weight control groups. these findings suggest that health-related knowledge and aerobic exercise were effective in increasing obesity awareness and the physical activity levels of lower secondary school students. keywords: secondary school student, health-related knowledge, obesity awareness, physical activity, aerobic exercise, pedometer. citation | gizem akgül ertan; funda coşkun özyol (2020). effects of health-related knowledge and aerobic exercise on lower secondary school students' obesity awareness and physical activity levels. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 297303. history: received: 11 february 2020 revised: 16 march 2020 accepted: 23 april 2020 published: 21 may 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study was supported by the research fund of van yüzüncü yıl university in turkey with project number: syl-2018-7383. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 298 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 299 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 300 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 301 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 302 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.297.303&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1652 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8486-5009 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0198-4331 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1652 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8486-5009 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0198-4331 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1652 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8486-5009 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0198-4331 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1652 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8486-5009 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0198-4331 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 297-303 298 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature while the studies so far have focused on the prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents, it has been observed that the studies on the effects of the diet and exercise related programs implemented within the scope of the experimental model on obesity are limited. our research seeks to contribute to fill this gap in the literature by examining the effects of health-related knowledge and aerobic exercise on lower secondary school students' obesity awareness and physical activity levels. 1. introduction overweight or obesity is defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that negatively affects health. according to the world health organization (who), in 2016, 1.9 billion adults aged 18 and over were reported to be overweight, over 650 million of whom were obese (world health organization (who), 2020a). the who data also showed that, globally, 39% of adults over the age of 18 were overweight and 13% were obese, 40 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2018, and 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese. overweight and obesity in adults stimulate non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders, and some types of cancer. in children, overweight and obesity increases the risk of fractures, hypertension, and preliminary symptoms of cardiovascular disorders, causes insulin resistance, and presents psychological issues (world health organization (who), 2020a). in order to avoid or minimize the risk of developing such health problems, world health organization (who) (2020a) recommended healthy eating and regular exercise. research has shown that inadequate physical activity is one of ten risk factors that threaten human life. studies showed that in 2016, 32% of women over the age of 18 and 23% of men were physically inactive worldwide, while data from 2010 revealed that 81% of adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17 attending school did not sufficiently engage in physical activity (world health organization (who), 2020b). childhood obesity is caused by a long-term imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure. the primary causes of childhood obesity include physical inactivity associated with mental issues, lack of physical fitness, the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, and compromised bone health (ozturk et al., 2009). studies observing the development of turkish children and adolescents at the national level are limited, but such studies have been carried out at the local level. studies showed that the percentage of individuals who are overweight and obese in turkey gradually increases, and childhood obesity is 6.5%, and this rate rises to 14.3% in overweight children (turkish ministry of health, 2011). thus, the period of childhood/adolescence is of critical importance for the adoption of healthy lifestyle habits, as unhealthy habits acquired at a young age, such as a sedentary lifestyle and/or poor nutrition, are difficult to change when older (akyol, boyraz, & aysoy, 2013). the world health organization (who) (2020c) advises physical activity for people of various ages to prevent obesity. the physical activity recommendation for children and adolescents between 5-17 years of age involves at least 60 minutes of moderate to high-intensity aerobic activity, with physical activity exceeding 60 minutes constituting an extra benefit. in a study conducted to determine the physical activity levels of children and adolescents, data from 1.6 million children and adolescents aged 11-17 were collected from 298 schools in 146 countries. the findings revealed that 84.7% of girls and 66.6% of boys were not physically active (guthold, stevens, riley, & bull, 2020). in another study, jurakic and pedisic (2012) examining the physical activity levels in children and adolescents, found that between 2.4% and 39.3% of girls were insufficiently physically active, according to measurements taken using an accelerometer; the range based on the questionnaire results was 19.5% 95%. these rates for boys varied between 2.6% -18.1% and 12.2% -89%, respectively. in a review study incorporating the results of 131 studies from european countries, the physical activity levels of children and adolescents measured by accelerometer were examined, with the result that the participants in 35 studies met the recommended criteria for physical activity (guinhouya, samouda, & de beaufort, 2013). the world health organization has reported that 81.3% of female and male individuals in turkey were physically inactive. in a study examining the physical activity levels of 11-12-year-old turkish children, kudaş, ulkar, erdoğan, and cırçı (2005) found that 71% of the boys and 34% of the girls were physically active outside the classroom, while 94.6% of the boys and 17% of the girls were active during school hours. in another study, urlu (2014) found that boys aged 1012 were more physically active than girls of the same age. comparing the physical activity levels of high school and university students, tunç and işler (2007) revealed that high school students had higher levels of physical activity compared to university students. one of the most common methods used to measure physical activity measurement is the pedometer, which was developed to count steps (can, 2019). various studies have been carried out at the international and national levels with the use of pedometers to determine the physical activity levels of children and adolescents. in one of these studies, raustorp and fröberg (2018) examined the physical activity levels of swedish school children and adolescents between 2000 and 2017 using a pedometer. they found that the number of steps taken per week by 8year-old girls in 2000 and 2017 did not differ significantly, but the physical activity levels of boys in the same age group increased by 8% over the same period. the physical activity levels of both girls and boys aged 11 decreased by 12% between 2000 and 2017, while during the same period those of 14-year-oldgirls and boys decreased by 24% and 30%, respectively. in a study conducted in tokyo, the physical activity levels of japanese children and adolescents aged 6-18 were determined using pedometers. in that study, elementary and junior high school boys were found to have taken more steps compared to the girls, but there was no significant difference between the genders at the high school level. in addition, the number of steps taken decreased with increasing age and grade level, such that students were recorded taking the fewest number of steps in the final year of junior high school. beets, bornstein, beighle, cardinal, and morgan (2010) compiled the findings obtained by studies on physical activity levels in 13 different countries, finding that young girls and boys living in europe and countries located in the western pacific region took more steps than those living in america and canada. in a study examining the physical activity levels of turkish children and adolescents based on pedometer readings, saygin and ceylan (2017) found that secondary school boys were more active than their female counterparts. however, the female high school students were revealed to be more active than the male students. bilgin, bulca, and demirhan (2020) asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 297-303 299 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group recorded the number of steps taken by students in the 7th grade from the moment they awoke until bedtime, finding that students took more steps on the days they had physical education classes than on days without. saygın and bayrakdar (2012) recorded the number of steps taken by primary school boys for two days during the week and one day on weekends; their physical activity levels were moderate based on the pedometer results. demirci (2017) measured the activity levels of children aged 11-13 years who participate in sports outside of school and found that the number of steps taken by boys normally reached the recommended level, and even exceeded it on days with sports activities. the same study also revealed, however, that the number of steps taken by girls reached the recommended level only on the days of sports activities. thus, sports activities were considered beneficial for increasing the physical activity levels of both girls and boys. physical activity and proper nutrition have been scientifically demonstrated to play important roles in the prevention of obesity. in a review study examining the effects of physical activity on obesity, especially in experimental models, physical activity was revealed to contribute to significant weight loss (collins et al., 2011). school children participating in healthy nutrition and physical activity programs were found to lose weight compared to their peers who did not participate in the programs (katz, o'connell, njike, yeh, & nawaz, 2008). in a sample survey conducted in turkey, adolescents at risk of obesity were provided with training to develop behaviors promoting positive health; the effects of this training on the participants’ lifestyle behaviors and physical activity were then examined (yesilfidan, 2016). the researcher concluded that the health-related behaviors of the participants were positively affected by the instruction they received. in turkey, there has only been limited research on the prevention of obesity in children and adolescents through physical activity and health education. therefore, we believe that instructing obese lower secondary school students on the benefits of physical activity and proper nutrition should have a positive effect. therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the effects of health-related knowledge and participation in an aerobic exercise program on elementary school students' obesity awareness and physical activity levels. 2. method 2.1. research design in this study examining the effects of aerobic exercise and wellness training on obesity awareness and physical activity levels, the participants were administered pre and post-tests, and a randomized controlled experimental design was used. 2.2. participants the study participants were recruited from a local school during the 2018-2019 academic year and consisted of 75 female students (25 obese intervention, 25 obese control, 25 normal control) with a mean age of 12.10 ±1.7 years (range= 12-14 yrs). 2.3. data collection instruments 2.3.1. obesity awareness scale the obesity awareness scale used in the present study was developed by allen (2011) to reveal individuals' awareness of obesity and was adapted for turkish by kafkas and ozen (2014). the scale consists of 23 items and is divided into three subscales: obesity awareness (8 items), nutrition awareness (8 items), and physical activity awareness (5 items). it employs a 4-point likert scale ranging from negative to positive responses; a high score corresponds to increased awareness. the internal consistency coefficient for the scale in its original form was α= .80, while that of the turkish version was α= .87. in the current study, the cronbach's alpha obtained for the scale as a whole was .91. 2.3.2. physical activity measures a pedometer was used to determine the physical activity levels of the experimental and control group students participating in this study. the pedometer (3d pm2000), which was distributed by the turkish ministry of health, had a clock, 3d sensor, step counter, distance counter, calorie counter, 7-day memory, and target step adjustment features. pedometer records were divided into weekday (monday, wednesday, and friday) and weekend (saturday and sunday) categories. students wore the pedometers 5 days per week for 12 weeks to determine their daily physical activity levels. on weekdays, the pedometers were placed on the children at 07.00 in the morning, before the start of school, and were removed at 12:30 p.m. after school had ended. on the weekends, the pedometers were put on as soon as the children awoke and removed before they went to sleep. children and their parents were both informed that this device should be worn for the full day upon waking up in the morning and removed before going to bed at the end of the day, as well as before showering or swimming. 2.4. data collection process ethical approval for this study was obtained from the social and humanities ethics committee of van yüzüncü yıl university (number/id), the necessary official permission was granted by the district national education directorate, and the participating students and their families gave written informed consent. prior to the start of the study, the height and bodyweight of 500 secondary school students were measured and body mass index (bmi) was determined by inserting these numbers in the bmi formula (bmi= weight/ height2). based on the results of these calculations, students were categorized as obese or normal weight. the obese students were then randomly assigned to one of two groups: obese experimental (n= 25) and obese control (n= 25) groups. twenty-five students identified as being of normal weight according to their bmi values comprised the normal control group. for the pre-test, the obesity awareness questionnaire was administered to all three groups and pedometer measurements were recorded on three weekdays (monday, wednesday, and friday, between 07:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.) and two weekend days (saturday and sunday, for the entire day). the study period lasted 8 weeks, with health-related instruction provided once a week and aerobic exercise activities performed three times a week. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 297-303 300 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the aerobic exercise program, each session of which lasted 45-60 minutes, was implemented outside of the student’s normal school hours. obese control and normal control students did not receive any health-related instruction or participate in any physical activity program during the 8-week study period. the health-related instruction and aerobic exercise programs were conducted by trained physical education teachers. post-test measurements of the participants were taken following the conclusion of the 8-week health-related instruction and aerobic exercise program. as with the pre-test, the post-test included students’ obesity awareness questionnaire responses and the pedometer measurements from three weekdays and two weekend days. 2.5. data analysis since some data obtained failed the normality test, the wilcoxon signed-rank test was performed to determine whether statistically significant differences existed between the pre-test and post-test values for the three groups with respect to their obesity awareness total score as well as obesity awareness, nutrition awareness, and physical activity awareness subscale scores. when normality was verified, a paired-samples t-test was performed to compare the preand post-test physical activity scores for the three groups of students. 3. results analysis of the results indicated significant differences between the preand post-test scores of students in the obese experimental group with respect to total obesity awareness [z= -4.375, p= .001], obesity awareness subscale [z= -2.299, p= .001], nutrition awareness [z= -4.378, p= .001], and physical activity awareness [z= -4.408, p= .001]. the findings revealed that aerobic exercise and wellness training on the part of students in the experimental resulted in statistically significant increases in the scores for total obesity awareness (x pre-test= 40.3, sdpre-test= 4.9; x posttest= 63.7, sdpost-test= 2.7), as well as for the subscales obesity awareness (x pre-test= 18.7, sdpre-test= 2.8; x post-test= 24.7, sdpost-test= 1.6), nutrition awareness (x pre-test= 14.8, sdpre-test= 3.0; x post-test= 21.8, sdpost-test= 1.6), and physical activity awareness (x pre-test= 13.3, sdpre-test= 1.5; x post-test= 16.1, sdpost-test= 1.7) table 1. however, the pre-test and post-test scores of the obese control group did not change significantly in terms of either obesity awareness total [z= -.517, p= .605, (x pre-test= 56.4, sdpretest= 8.7; x post-test= 58.0, sdpost-test= 7.9)], obesity awareness [z= -.337, p= .736, (x pre-test= 22.6, sdpre-test= 3.8; x post-test= 23.0, sdpost-test= 2.8)], nutrition awareness [z= -.731, p= .464, (x pre-test= 21.0, sdpre-test= 4.2; x post-test= 20.9, sdpost-test= 6.3)], or physical activity awareness [z= -1.456, p= .145, (x pre-test= 12.0, sdpre-test= 2.4; x post-test= 11.7, sdpost-test= 2.1)] table 1. similarly, there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test results of the students in the normal control group with regard to the obesity awareness total [z= -.787, p= .431, (x pre-test= 58.0, sdpre-test= 6.3; x post-test= 59.5, sdpost-test= 9.4)], or the subscales obesity awareness [z= -.582, p= .560, (x pre-test= 22.9, sdpre-test= 3.3; x post-test= 23.6, sdpost-test= 3.3)], nutrition awareness [z= -1.650, p= .099, (x pre-test= 21.6, sdpre-test= 3.3; x post-test= 20.3, sdpost-test= 6.3)], and physical activity awareness [z= -.491, p= .623, (x pre-test= 13.4, sdpre-test= 1.9; x post-test= 13.5, sdpost-test= 1.9)] table 1. table-1. comparison of mean pre-test and post-test scores for the obesity awareness questionnaire. n pre-test post-test z p (x ±sd) (x ±sd) obesity awareness total score obese exp. 25 40.3±4.9 63.7±2.7 -4.375 .001 obese cont. 25 56.4±8.7 58.0±7.9 -.517 .605 normal cont. 25 58.0±6.3 59.5±9.4 -.787 .431 obesity awareness subscale score obese exp. 25 18.7±2.8 24.7±1.6 -4.299 .001 obese cont. 25 22.6±3.8 23.0±2.8 -.337 .736 normal cont. 25 22.9±3.3 23.6±3.3 -.582 .560 nutrition awareness score obese exp. 25 14.8±3.0 21.8±1.6 -4.378 .001 obese cont. 25 21.0±4.2 20.9±6.3 -.731 .464 normal cont. 25 21.6±3.3 20.3±3.3 -1.650 .099 physical activity awareness score obese exp. 25 13.3±1.5 16.1±1.7 -4.408 .001 obese cont. 25 12.0±2.4 11.7±2.1 -1.456 .145 normal cont. 25 13.4±1.9 13.5±1.9 -.491 .623 a paired samples t-test was applied to the data in order to determine whether a statistically significant difference existed between the pre-test and post-test physical activity levels of the students in the obese experimental, obese control, and normal control groups. an analysis of the results revealed significant differences between pre-test and post-test physical activity in the obese experimental group, t(24)= -26.93, p= .001. those students, who received regular instruction in health-related knowledge and participated in an aerobic exercise program, substantially increased their weekday physical activity levels between the pre-test (x = 5,748.76, sd= 478.85)and post-test (x = 8,011.04, sd= 515.02) period. students in the obese control [t(24)= -1.52, p= .14; x pre-test= 5,483.04, sdpre-test= 743.63; x post-test= 5,840.60, sdpost-test= 1,188.46] and normal control groups [t(24)= 1.70, p= .10; x pretest= 10,081.16, sdpre-test= 490.90; x post-test= 9,749.08, sdpost-test= 1,152.47]did not exhibit significant differences in their pretest and post-test physical activity levels table 2. weekend physical activity levels, meanwhile, did not significantly change from pre-test to post-test even for the obese experimental group [t(24)= -.41, p= .69; x pre-test= 11,140.64, sdpre-test= 8,405.63; x post-test= 11,810.44, sdpost-test= 748.32]. similarly, no significant differences between pre and post-test weekend activity values were obtained for the obese control [t(24)= 1.17, p= .25; x pre-test= 10,066.08, sdpre-test= 931.27; x post-test= 9,921.96, sdpost-test= 861.40] or normal control group either [t(24)= -1.11, p= .28; x pre-test= 12,692.32, sdpre-test= 756.61; x post-test= 12,827.00, sdpost-test= 808.67] table 2. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 297-303 301 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. comparison of mean pre-test and post-test mean scores for weekday and weekend physical activity levels. n pre-test post-test t p (x ±sd) (x ±sd) weekday physical activity obese exp. 25 5,748.76±478.85 8,011.04±515.02 -26.93 .001 obese cont. 25 5,483.04±743.63 5,840.60±1,188.46 -1.52 .14 normal cont. 25 10,081.16±490.90 9,749.08±1,152.47 1.70 .10 weekend physical activity obese exp. 25 11,140.64±8,405.63 11,810.44±748.32 -.41 .69 obese cont. 25 10,066.08±931.27 9,921.96±861.40 1.17 .25 normal cont. 25 12,692.32±756.61 12,827.00±808.67 -1.11 .28 4. discussion the findings obtained in this study showed that instruction in health-related knowledge and aerobic exercise had positive effects on the obesity awareness and physical activity levels of lower secondary school students in the obese experimental group. yesilfidan (2016) also examined the effects of health-related education on the health behaviors of adolescents at risk of obesity, finding that the instruction received by the 78 female and male participants led to an increase in healthy lifestyle behaviors and physical activity. brown and summerbell (2009) conducted a review study investigating the effects of diet and physical activity on the prevention of obesity in children and adolescents and reported that a healthy diet and physical activity were effective in preventing obesity in children between the ages of 0-5. physical activity was also effective in preventing obesity in children between the ages of 6-12 and adolescents aged 13-18 years. sevinç et al. (2011) administered nutrition and physical activity programs to turkish primary school students and compared the bmi measurements of the participants. the researchers found that students included in both programs and those in only the nutrition program showed more improvement in terms of bmi compared to the control group, concluding that such programs may be effective in the prevention of childhood obesity. in a norwegian study, sola, brekke, and brekke (2010) implemented a 40week program, which included advice on healthy lifestyles and physical training, for obese children aged 6-14 years and their families. their findings demonstrated that this program had a positive effect on the cardiovascular capacity, physical fitness, and bmi levels of obese children. sigmund, el ansari, and sigmundová (2012) examined whether school-based physical activity practices were effective in preventing overweight and obesity in children aged 6-9 years. they reported that the students who participated in the school-based physical activity program were more active than the students who did not participate in the program. the researchers also revealed that the program led to an increase in the physical activity levels of students not only on school days but also on weekends. in another study, carlin, murphy, and gallagher (2016) analyzed the results of 12 studies to determine whether the various programs had an impact on the walking activity of school children and adolescents; the findings of nine of these studies revealed that the programs implemented increased the amount of walking undertaken by the participants. the study also emphasized that goal orientation, planning, feedback and observation, social support, and the number of repetitions had an impact on this increase in walking. upon examination of the average daily number of steps obtained in this study, we observed an increase in the number of steps taken post-test by the students in the obese experimental group, who not only received healthrelated education but also participated in an aerobic exercise program. however, this number is remarkable in that it is less than the average number of steps recommended in the literature. we also noted that the number of steps taken by the students in the normal weight group was already close to the recommended number of steps and that the number of steps taken by the obese control group was below the recommended level, with no increase after 8 weeks. for adolescents, the recommended number of steps, based on the literature, varies between 10,000-11,700 daily (tudor-locke et al., 2011). beets et al. (2010) examining 43 studies conducted in 13 countries involving the daily step counts of adolescents, revealed that their physical activity levels varied by country. they also found that young people's cardiovascular fitness levels are decreasing while obesity is increasing. researchers have shown that physical inactivity is more widespread in countries where people tend to cover short distances by car, especially the u.s., while inactivity is less common in countries where activities such as walking and cycling are popular. the existence of opportunities for adolescents to engage in physical activity during school hours as well as outside of school was also found to impact physical activity levels. these results supported our finding that the physical activity levels of obese adolescents increased when given the opportunity to engage in an aerobic exercise program. in a study conducted in new zealand, hohepa, schofield, kolt, scragg, and garrett (2008) examined the factors affecting the physical activity of students aged 12-18 as determined by pedometer use, finding that adolescents in new zealand were less active than their peers in other countries. the researchers also observed that male adolescents were more active than female adolescents and that those of the younger age were more active than older adolescents. the number of steps taken by the study participants during the week was found to be higher than the number of steps taken on the weekend, and adolescents who walked to school were, unsurprisingly, more active than those who went by bus or car. the reason for the low physical activity levels of adolescents in the present study, especially of those in the obese control group, both before and after the intervention, may be due to the fact that the participants had to use vehicles to travel to school and may not have had the sufficient opportunity to engage in extra physical activities. low levels of physical activity among adolescents constitute a serious problem not only in turkey, but globally as well. the physical activity levels of swedish adolescents with an average age of 12.7 were measured by pedometer in 2000, 2003, and 2005, with the findings revealing only low to moderate levels of physical activity. troiano et al. (2008) examined the physical activity levels of children, adolescents, and adults in the u.s. and found that men were more active than women and that physical activity decreased with age. they also reported that 42% of the children in the 6-11 age groups had attained the recommended level of physical activity, but that this rate decreased to only 8% in adolescents. richardson et al. (2008) investigated the effects of pedometer-based interventions on weight loss in a meta-analysis, concluding that interventions using a pedometer showed a modest effect on weight loss but that the effect should increase if the interventions are prolonged. studying the contribution of pedometer use to an increase in physical activity, bravata et al. (2007) showed results consistent asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 297-303 302 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group with those of other studies, reporting that the use of pedometer increased the level of physical activity while decreasing bmi and blood pressure. in another meta-analysis study, kang, marshall, barreira, and lee (2009) found that pedometer use in intervention studies had a moderate effect on increasing physical activity and that more benefits resulted when the participants aimed to reach a certain number of steps. these findings are consistent with those of this study, which also employed pedometers to record step counts. the findings obtained in the present study revealed that health-related knowledge provided to obese adolescents increased their levels of obesity awareness, nutrition awareness, and physical activity awareness. in a similar study, kucuk, avşar, akın, and pınar (2019) examined the effects of educating adolescents regarding healthy lifestyle habits on their perceptions of the causes, risks, and negative consequences of obesity. the researchers revealed that the instruction received by the adolescents led to positive changes in their perceptions of the negative consequences of obesity and their responsibility to combat it. nicholls et al. (2014) meanwhile, investigated the effects of a three-year program involving an active lifestyle and healthy diet habits for children and found that the program contributed to the prevention of obesity in children. in a turkish study, ekici and yıldız (2018) examined the effects of a nutrition management program on weight control, nutritional attitudes, and physical activity in adolescents. while the program, which was administered to students aged 11-12, did not result in any significant difference in terms of attitudes toward a healthy diet and physical activity in the experimental and control groups, the mean body weight of adolescents in the experimental group did show a decrease. in an experimental study, oz (2015) designed and implemented an internet-based nutritional education program for high school students in order to promote the adoption of healthy eating habits, to improve physical activity levels, and to decrease sedentary behaviors. results indicated that the students who were involved in the nutritional program increased their knowledge of healthy lifestyle behaviors as well as their physical activity levels and that their number of steps reached the recommended daily level. in another study conducted in turkey, erdim (2012) examined the effects of a diet and exercise program designed for obese children and their families on their diet, exercise habits, and bmi. the researcher reported that the diet and exercise program reduced primary school children's sedentary behaviors, increased their physical activity levels, and lowered their bmi. furthermore, as a result of educating the families of the obese children, they decreased the number of unhealthy foods in their homes. as revealed in the current study, related literature also suggests that instructing adolescents in healthy lifestyle habits, nutrition, and physical activity affects their attitudes and behaviors with regard to obesity, healthy diets, and physical activity. in conclusion, the present study has revealed that health-related knowledge and aerobic exercise increased the obesity awareness and physical activity levels of female students at the lower secondary school level. based on these findings, we recommend that programs aimed at increasing the physical activity levels of adolescents and preventing obesity should be incorporated in the educational curriculum at the national level. references akyol, b., boyraz, m., & aysoy, c. 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(2020c). global strategy on diet, physical activity and health: physical activity and young people. retrieved from: https://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/factsheet_young_people/en. yesilfidan, d. (2016). the effect of education on developing positive health behaviors given to adolescents at risk of obesity on healthy lifestyle behaviors and physical activity. unpublished master's thesis. adnan menderes university, institute of health sciences. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight http://www.who.int/gho/ncd/risk_factors/physical_activity_text/en/ http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/factsheet_young_people/en 1 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 1, 1-6, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i1.4410 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of the relationship between trait anxiety and mental toughness in sailing athletes merve ceylan department of physical education and sport teaching, faculty of sports sciences mugla sitki kocman university, turkey. email: merveceylan@ymail.com abstract this research was conducted to examine the relationship between the trait anxiety levels of national sailing athletes and their mental toughness levels and to investigate the effects of some variables on the athletes' trait anxiety and mental toughness levels. the research universe consists of national athletes competing in different disciplines affiliated with the sailing federation. the sample comprises 32 national athletes (kitesurfing, windsurfing, and centerboard classes) who voluntarily participated in the research. in addition to the demographic information form, the "sports mental toughness inventory" and "state-trait anxiety inventory" were used in the research. as a result of the analysis of the data, it was seen that the confidence level of the male athletes was higher than the female athletes, the control levels of the female athletes were higher than the male athletes, and the confidence levels of the kitesurfing athletes were higher than centerboard and windsurfing athletes. in addition, there was a positive and moderate relationship between the age of the athletes and the duration of doing sports and competition. at the same time, there was a negative and moderate relationship between age and the control sub-dimension and between confidence and the control sub-dimension. keywords: centerboard, kitesurfing, mental toughness, sailing, trait anxiety, windsurfing. citation | ceylan, m. (2023). examination of the relationship between trait anxiety and mental toughness in sailing athletes. asian journal of education and training, 9(1), 1–6. 10.20448/edu.v9i1.4410 history: received: 31 october 2022 revised: 20 december 2022 accepted: 5 january 2023 published: 16 january 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................... 2 3. method .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 2 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 5. discussion and conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................ 5 references ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 mailto:merveceylan@ymail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i1.4410 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7814-7967 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 1-6 2 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature determining the relationship between national sailing athletes' trait anxiety levels and mental toughness levels, as well as the effects of various variables on these levels of athletes, were the goals of the research. the fact that this sample and variables have not been examined in the literature makes this study unique. 1. introduction the search and research of sports scientists to bring athletes to high performance continue intensively. all these quests and researches indicate that the perfection of physical capacity alone is not sufficient in sports performance and that to be successful in the sports environment, it is necessary to be mentally strong as well as physical condition. from this point of view, the issue of mental toughness is of great importance for both athletes and coaches. concepts such as being able to cope with the stress brought by the competition period, being committed to a determined goal, determination, high concentration, adapting quickly to changing conditions, and being psychologically strong show that mental toughness consists of critical components on the way to success. 2. literature review the fact that mental toughness is seen as a personality trait that reduces the adverse effects of stress and supports adaptability has led researchers to focus on genetic traits and, as a result, to suggest that some people are born resilient, while some studies have also revealed that mental toughness is a learnable personal trait (horsburgh, schermer, veselka, & vernon, 2009; mcauley et al., 2022). mental toughness can be defined as the individual's power to regroup and the positive psychological capacity that can be developed in order to recover in adverse situations such as high levels of responsibility, failure, setbacks, and conflict (bull, shambrook, james, & brooks, 2005). athletes with high mental toughness are thought to be selfconfident, control their behavior, recover quickly and focus on their goals (cowden, 2017). individuals who are determined, self-motivated, competitive, and do not lose their concentration under pressure are on the way to becoming mentally tough athletes. it is thought that athletes with high mental toughness learn to think positively in order to turn negative thoughts and emotions into positive ones and to adopt the right attitudes in the face of pressure, problems, competition, and mistakes. these athletes tend to perform better during competitions. in addition, they adapt better to the rehabilitation process for the sports injuries they encounter (farnsworth, marshal, & myers, 2022). every individual is born with a certain amount of mental toughness, but at the same time, mental toughness can be increased with the right educational approach. as important as systematic work and repetition are to increase physical skills, psychological skills such as providing concentration, regulating arousal levels, and increasing selfconfidence should also be studied systematically (weinberg & gould, 2015). considering that performance is a psychological process, another important concept that we encounter is anxiety. anxiety is the widespread feeling of fear, which is one of the fundamental characteristics of being human. it is a state of inner distress and fear of something with no object and sometimes no cause (dağ, 1999). the ability of athletes to make the proper choices regarding their behavior can be significantly impacted by anxiety. the athlete's ability to make the right choice and perform at a high-level decreases as their anxiety level increases. extreme pressure might cause athletes to make poor decisions. excessive worry can cause athletes to forget movements they are very familiar with and have practiced frequently, confuse their emotions and cause them to make unfavorable movements (gümüş, 2002). the state of trait anxiety is the persistence of the individual's perception of the situations encountered as a threat regardless of any situation. the number of threatening sources is related to the extent and persistence of anxiety severity (spielberger, 1985). the constant presence of anxiety in a person gives the appearance of a personality trait, and this state of continuity increases the possibility of psychological and physical disorders in the person. this appearance is also seen in people with generalized anxiety disorder. the state of constant anxiety begins to become normal for the person, and as a result, the person approaches events and situations with a restless, tense, and distressed perspective (leahy & holland, 2000). in sailing sports, in addition to the struggle with the opponent, skills such as being able to read the changing weather conditions well and determine the new route in this direction, developing a strategy by predicting the maneuvers of the opponent, to decide on the points to turn well in order to finish the course in the fastest and shortest way without deviating from the main route are required. in addition to the stress of coping with all these variables, the expectations and beliefs of family, friends, clubs, coaches, and sponsors also cause more pressure on the athlete. especially before the competition, the anxiety, stress, and mood disorders experienced by the athletes lead to the emergence of uncontrollable psychological conditions, which negatively affect the targeted performance and lead to failure. examining the pertinent literature reveals that the research on national sailing athletes, who must deal with highly complicated variables, needs to be revised. determining the relationship between national sailing athletes' trait anxiety levels and mental toughness levels, as well as the effects of various variables on these levels of athletes, were the goals of the research, which was carried out for these reasons. 3. method 3.1. participants the research universe consists of national athletes affiliated with the sailing federation, licensed athletes in different sailing disciplines, and continuing their training to participate in at least one international competition within the next three months. the sample consists of kitesurfing, windsurfing, and centerboard athletes who voluntarily participate in the research. 3.2. procedure the research was carried out with the permission of the national athletes' clubs and with the athletes' approval. first of all, the aim of the research was explained to the athletes, who were informed that they could leave the research asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 1-6 3 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group whenever they wanted. questionnaires were distributed to the volunteer athletes face-to-face before the training started, and they were asked to answer them. there was no time limit for the athletes to complete the questionnaires. 3.3. data collection tools in addition to the demographic information form prepared by the researcher as a data collection tool in the research, the "sports mental toughness inventory" and the trait anxiety dimension of the "state-trait anxiety inventory" were used. sports mental toughness questionnaire (smtq): sheard, golby, and van wersch (2009) conducted the scale's validity and reliability analysis, and altıntaş and koruç (2016) translated the scale into turkish. there are 14 questions on the scale, divided into three sub-dimensions. the confidence, continuity, and control cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients for the scale are 0.72, 0.71, and 0.66, respectively. the scale's items are listed in the following sequence, along with the contents of each sub-dimension: being assured of one's abilities and superiority against rivals to accomplish shared objectives in trying circumstances (items 1, 5, 6, 11, 13, 14). control: being at ease in unforeseen circumstances or under pressure while maintaining composure and control (items 2, 4, 7, 9). continuity: assuming accountability, concentrating, and striving to achieve objectives (items 3, 8, 10, 12). trait anxiety scale (tas): spielberger, gorsuch, and lushene (1970) created the scale, formerly known as the state-trait anxiety assessment, to assess individuals' trait anxiety. oner and lecompte (1985) created the scale's turkish equivalent. it is a four-point likert-style scale for self-evaluation. the scale's internal consistency coefficient in turkish ranges from .83 to.87. the test-retest reliability was between .71 and.86.the construct and criterion validity were also found to be acceptable for the original and turkish form (oner & lecompte, 1985). in the current study, the trait anxiety dimension of the scale was used. in the trait anxiety scale, the number of reversed items (1, 6, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 19 items) is seven, and the scores obtained from the scale range from 20 to 80. the average score level determined in the applications can vary between 36 and 41, and high scores indicate high anxiety levels. demographic information form: the demographic information form created for the research consists of 8 questions. the questions were asked in likert type. the demographic information form created for the research includes information on age, gender, education level, sailing discipline, how many years the athlete has been doing this sport, and how many years the athlete has been a competitor. 3.4. statistical analysis the analysis of the data obtained from the research was made with the spss (statistical package for the social sciences) 22 program. frequency and percentage analysis of demographic variables and descriptive statistics about continuous variables are included. in addition, whether there is a difference between the scale scores by gender was examined with the mann-whitney u analysis method, an alternative independent groups t-test parametric method. this is a non-parametric method used to compare the scores of two groups. this method was used because the sample size was not sufficient (n>25) in two groups related to gender. this method is a method that sorts the raw data and compares the mean of the rank. kruskal wallis analysis method, an alternative one-way analysis of variance (anova) parametric method, was used to compare scale scores and sub-dimensions by sailing class. this method is non-parametric and is used to compare scores of at least three groups. this method was used because the sailing class categorical variable was not sufficient for each sample size (n>25). in cases where the kruskal-wallis analysis was found to be statistically significant, the groups with a significant difference were compared in pairs with the mann-whitney u test, and the groups with a difference were indicated in the difference column. a pairwise comparison was not made for the groups that did not show a significant difference due to the kruskal-wallis analysis. finally, the relationship between the variables was examined with pearson correlation analysis. statistical analyzes were tested at a significance level of 0.05. in this section, the findings related to the research problems are given. table 1. frequency and percentage of demographic variables. variable group frequency percentage gender female 14 43.8 male 18 56.3 education level high school 8 25.1 university 22 68.8 master 1 3.1 ph.d. 1 3.1 sailing class centerboard 14 43.8 windsurfing 10 31.2 kitesurfing 8 25 total 32 100 table 1 presents that 32 national sailing athletes participates in the research. by gender, 43.8% of the participants are female, and 56.3% are male. by education level, 68.8% of the participants are in university, 25.1% are in high school, 3.1% are master, and 3.1% are ph.d. graduates. in the sailing class, 43.8% of the participants are in the active sailing group, 31.3% in the windsurfing group, and 25% in the kitesurfing group. 4. results table 2 is the descriptive statistics table showing the mean and standard deviations of the variables and the skewness and kurtosis values used in the data distribution. the skewness and kurtosis values give information about the normality of the continuous scores, and the data distribution between -2 and +2 is normal (george & mallery, 2010). all variables show normal distribution. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 1-6 4 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 2. descriptive statistics for age, duration af doing sports, duration of competing, anxiety, confidence, control and continuity variables mean sd skewness kurtosis age 24.16 7.47 0.9 0.443 duration of doing sports (years) 8.94 4.65 1.027 0.701 duration of competing (years) 5.06 3.64 1.574 1.606 anxiety 50.28 4.09 0.581 1.115 confidence 17.50 3.35 -0.285 0.635 control 10.47 1.68 -0.763 1.619 continuity 9.38 1.18 -0.054 -0.637 table 3. mann-whitney u test chart between trait anxiety and mental toughness scores by gender. scale gender n mean sd mean rank z p-value anxiety female 14 50.07 2.50 16.25 -0.134 0.894 male 18 50.44 5.07 16.69 confidence female 14 16.00 3.44 12.57 -2.105 0.035* male 18 18.67 2.85 19.56 control female 14 11.21 1.05 21.25 -2.59 0.01* male 18 9.89 1.88 12.81 continuity female 14 9.14 0.95 14.68 -1.026 0.305 male 18 9.56 1.34 17.92 note: *p<.05. the mann-whitney u test was used to determine the difference between trait anxiety and mental toughness scores by gender table 3. there is no significant difference between trait anxiety scores by gender (z=-0.134, p>.05). trait anxiety levels of women and men are similar. a significant difference was found between the scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of mental toughness inventory, confidence (z=-2.105, p<.05), and control (z=-2.59, p<.05) by gender. while the mean rank of men is higher in the confidence dimension, the mean rank of women is higher in the control dimension. that is, while men's confidence level is higher than women's, women's control levels are also higher than men's. however, there is no significant difference between the continuity sub-dimension scores of the mental toughness inventory by gender (z=--1.026, p>.05), meaning the continuity levels of men and women are similar. table 4. kruskal-wallis test table between trait anxiety and mental toughness scores by sailing class. scale sailing class n mean sd mean rank chi-square p-value difference anxiety centerboard 14 50.43 3.88 16.04 0.111 0.946 none windsurfing 10 50.1 2.69 17.3 kitesurfing 8 50.25 6.07 16.31 confidence centerboard 14 15.86 2.98 12.07 11.346 0.003* 3 and 1 windsurfing 10 17.2 2.74 15.25 3 and 2 kitesurfing 8 20.75 2.43 25.81 . control centerboard 14 10.64 1.45 17.14 0.419 0.811 none windsurfing 10 10.6 1.17 17.05 kitesurfing 8 10 2.56 14.69 continuity centerboard 14 9.57 1.4 17.89 0.83 0.66 none windsurfing 10 9.1 1.1 14.55 kitesurfing 8 9.38 0.92 16.5 1: centerboard; 2: windsurfing; 3: kitesurfing note: *p<.05. a difference between trait anxiety and mental toughness scores by sailing class was examined by the kruskalwallis analysis method. there is no significant difference between trait anxiety scores by sailing class (χ2=-0.111, p>.05). anxiety levels are similar by sailing class. a significant difference was obtained in the confidence subdimension of the mental toughness inventory by the sailing class (χ2=-11.346, p<.05). the difference column shows between which groups there is a difference. the mean rank of the participants in the kitesurfing group was higher than the mean rank of the centerboard and windsurfing groups. the confidence levels of the athletes in the kitesurfing group are higher than the participants in the centerboard and windsurfing groups. however, there is no difference between the confidence averages of the participants in the centerboard and windsurfing groups. (z=-0.919, p>.05). there was no statistically significant difference in the sub-dimensions of mental toughness inventory, control (χ2=0.419, p>.05), and continuity (χ2=0.830, p>.05) by sailing class. the control and continuity levels of the participants are similar by sailing classes. table 5. pearson’s correlation between age, duration af doing sports, duration of competing, anxiety, confidence, control and continuity variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. age 1 2. duration of doing sports (years) 0.498** 1 3. duration of competing (years) 0.368* 0.823** 1 4. anxiety -0.01 0.038 -0.218 1 5. confidence 0.283 0.288 0.143 0.001 1 6. control -0.421* -0.074 -0.126 0.439* -0.460** 1 7. continuity 0.037 0.168 0.092 0.251 0.041 -0.042 1 note: **p<.01; *p<.05. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 1-6 5 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between continuous variables was analyzed with the pearson correlation coefficient. this method is used when the data is continuous. in addition, for this method, the distribution of the variables must be normal. all variables are normally distributed. a significant correlation was found between the age of the participants and the duration of doing sports (r=0.498), the duration of the competition (r=0.368), and the control sub-dimension (r=-0.421) (p<.05). while there is a positive and moderate relationship between their age and the duration of doing sports and competition, there is a negative and moderate relationship between age and control sub-dimension. there is no significant relationship between the duration of doing sports and the duration of the competition and the sub-dimensions of trait anxiety and mental toughness (p>.05). a statistically positive and moderate relationship was found between trait anxiety and confidence sub-dimension (r=0.439, p<.05)., and there was a negative and moderate relationship between confidence and control, which are sub-dimensions of mental toughness (r=-0.460, p<.05). 5. discussion and conclusion when the findings obtained from the research are evaluated, it is seen that the confidence level of male athletes is higher than that of female athletes, and the level of control of female athletes is higher than male athletes table 3. similarly, in the study conducted by bahadir and adilogullari (2020) with university student-athletes, by the gender variable in the sub-dimensions of mental toughness, a significant difference was reported in favor of women in the control sub-dimension (p<0.03) and in favor of men in the confidence sub-dimension (p<0.00). in the study by baser (2019), there was a significant difference in favor of men in the sub-dimensions of confidence and control and total scores of the participants' sports mental toughness levels by the gender variable. social gender-based division of labor, duties and socio-cultural values brought by the patriarchal structure is realized under the influence of social gender roles. especially in patriarchal societies, men are raised by instilling a sense of self-confidence from childhood. on the contrary, women live under the intensity of patriarchal control in many areas, from education to business life, from family to social life. in the process, it is thought that women who are faced with many negativities and need to find quick solutions to the negativities experienced may turn into individuals with higher control over time, which may also affect their sports life. another result obtained from the study is that the confidence levels of the athletes in the kitesurfing group are higher than the participants in the centerboard and windsurfing group table 4. when the literature is examined, kristjánsdóttir, erlingsdóttir, sveinsson, and saavedra (2018) found in their study on elite handball players that men were more successful than women in the sub-dimensions of trust (p<0.012) and control (p<0.001) and total scores of mental toughness, while there was no significant difference in the continuity sub-dimension. they reported minor differences by age, which may be related to sportive skill rather than experience. they also stated that men's anxiety scores were lower than women's (p=0.685). slimani, miarka, briki, and cheour (2016) examined the relationship between mental toughness and competitive success in kickboxers. they found statistically significant (p<0.001) differences in the sub-dimensions of trust, continuity, control, and total scores between the athletes who won and those who lost the competition. turkoglu (2019), in his study on taekwondo athletes, reported no significant difference in the confidence and control sub-dimensions and total mental toughness scores by age and gender. however, there was a significant positive correlation (p<0.05) in the continuity sub-dimension of sports age. in his study with 484 young hockey players, walker (2016) found significant differences between awareness level and confidence (p<0.05), continuity (p<0.01), control (p<0.01) sub-dimensions, and total scores of mental toughness (p<001). schaefer, vella, allen, and magee (2016) reported that participants with high scores on the mental toughness inventory had lower anxiety levels in their study on golf players. few studies have been conducted on sailing sports, especially kitesurfing. ceylan, tekin, özdağ, and ceylan (2010), in their study on kitesurfing and windsurfing athletes, stated that kitesurfers showed a high level of assertiveness. assertiveness is defined as selfconfident behavior and a way of expressing one's thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in direct, honest, and appropriate ways to protect their rights. the most extreme branch among sailing classes is kitesurfing. it is thought that selfdevelopment in an extreme sport, being able to do risk analysis, keeping control in unexpected situations, and being able to do what others cannot do in a non-traditional and high-risk sport can increase one's sense of confidence. different results have been obtained in some studies examining the relationship between age and mental toughness. zeiger and zeiger (2018), in their study with 1245 endurance athletes aged 18 and over, examined the participants' mental toughness profiles by considering parameters such as age, gender, and sports age and reported that men, compared to women, older participants to younger participants, and higher sports age to inexperienced participants were in the higher mental toughness class. bahadir and adilogullari (2020) stated in their study with university student-athletes that there was no significant difference according to the branch variable. however, there was a weakly significant relationship between age and the control sub-dimension. in the study conducted by güvendi, can, and işım (2020) on 95 triathlon athletes, there was a significant difference in favor of national athletes in the confidence sub-dimension of mental toughness according to the variable of being national or not (p<0.05), while no significant difference was found in the sub-dimensions of continuity and control. in this study, in which national sailing athletes were examined, a positive and moderate relationship was obtained between the age of the participants and the duration of doing sports and competitions. at the same time, there was an unexpectedly negative and moderate relationship between the age and control sub-dimension and between confidence and control sub-dimension table 5. although it is thought that mental toughness will increase as age and experience increase, trust and expectations of society, family, friends, clubs and sponsors may cause stress factors on the athlete to increase. as age increases, the thought of losing against younger athletes may cause a loss of control from time to time. in order to achieve a high level of performance in sports, it is important for athletes to develop their mental toughness skills and to control their anxiety, and the following is recommended: • starting sports at the appropriate age for the branch and regularly applying the training process on a scientific basis will ensure that the athletes develop healthily in technical, tactical, and physical terms and strengthen them psychologically. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 1-6 6 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group • supporting the athletes with preparatory competitions and competitions in the basic and high-level training process will strengthen experience and confidence dimensions. • receiving support from sports psychologists who are experts in the field in every process of long-term athlete development by the club management will be beneficial to improve the athletes' mental toughness and control their anxiety. • the guidance-counseling services that the athletes will receive at schools during their education and training processes will also contribute to overcoming the psychological difficulties 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(2018). mental toughness latent profiles in endurance athletes. plos one, 13(2), e0193071. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193071 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200591010085 https://doi.org/10.2174/1875399x01710010001 https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200.2020.1866710 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.09.009 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.06.011 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2022.102209 https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759.25.3.186 https://doi.org/10.17159/2078-516x/2016/v28i2a1576 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193071 569 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 569-582, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.569.582 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the water literacy levels of high school students according to some variables ufuk sözcü1 abdullah türker2 ( corresponding author) 1kastamonu science high school, turkey. 2gazi university, gazi education faculty, department of geography education, turkey. abstract as the world population increases, the issue of using freshwater resources efficiently becomes more important. using water, which is an indispensable resource for life, consciously and sustainably, to be sensitive, in short, to be water literate is a necessity for all citizens of the world. turkey is a country living water scarcity. therefore, it is a country where water literacy studies should conduct. as it is the first comprehensive study of water literacy in turkey, the present study becomes significant in the field. this study aims to determine the water literacy levels of high school students in turkey. in the present study, data was gathered through the water literacy questionnaire. the water literacy questionnaire was designed by sözcü and türker (2020) and consists of three sections. the questionnaire was applied to 3202 high school students living in different regions. as a result of the study, the water literacy of high school students was at 'good level' in general. when the sub-dimensions of water literacy were analyzed, high school students were very good at water-saving and good at water sensitivity, but remain at medium level in terms of water consciousness. in light of the results, some recommendations have been made to increase water literacy. keywords: water-saving, water sensitivity, water consciousness, water literacy, high school students. citation | ufuk sözcü; abdullah türker (2020). examining the water literacy levels of high school students according to some variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 569582. history: received: 7 july 2020 revised: 14 august 2020 accepted: 31 august 2020 published: 9 september 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 570 2. material and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 572 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 574 4. conclusion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................. 579 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 581 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.569.582&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2119 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6809-4774 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3839-2735 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 570 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study aims to determine the water literacy levels of high school students in turkey. 1. introduction “what is the most important factor for the continuity of all living or inanimate beings on the planet we live in and to be passed on to future generations?” the vast majority of people will respond as "water". water is of great importance for the continuation of life. as a result of the hydrological cycle, the water circulating between the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. although it is considered an infinite resource by most because it occupies two-thirds of the globe, this is not the case. the total amount of water on earth is 1.2 billion km3. salty waters in seas and oceans, which are not suitable for direct drinking and agricultural irrigation, constitute 97.5% of this amount. the distribution of water on the earth's surface is extremely uneven. only 3% of the water on the surface is fresh; the remaining 97% resides in the ocean. of freshwater, 79% (2.39% of total water assets) reside in glaciers, 20% (0.6% of total water asset) underground, and less than 1% (0.03% of the total water asset) is on the surface and atmospheric waters. data prepared by the united nations (2007) show that there is an imbalance in the availability of freshwater, which is already very limited. 36% of the available water resources in the world are distributed to asia, 25% to south america, 15% to north america, 11% to africa, 8% to europe and 5% to oceania. the fact that the highest proportion of the asian continent accommodates 60% of the world population reveals the insufficiency of the water potential. if the total available water in the world is distributed equally to the world population, there will be 50006000 m3 of water per person per year. falkenmark, lundqvist, and widstrand (1989) introduced an indicator (the falkenmark water stress indicator) for water stress that expresses the level of water scarcity in a certain region as the amount of renewable freshwater that is available for each person each year. according to the falkenmark water stress indicator, if the amount of renewable water in a country is above 1,700 m3 per person per year, water scarcity is rare or only in certain areas. if the amount of renewable water in a country is below 1,700 m3 per person per year, that country is said to be experiencing water stress; below 1,000 m3 it is said to be experiencing water scarcity; and below 500 m3, absolute water scarcity. according to the un (2012) report, while 1 billion people in the world live below the water stress limit, approximately one-fifth of the world population has difficulties to access healthy drinking water. it is estimated that by 2025, about 3 billion people will experience water scarcity. increasing global temperature averages along with the increase in the world population and the decrease of freshwater resources due to misuse of water, raise concerns that if future generations may reach clean water. in turkey, where the population growth rate is still above the world average, the water amount per person per year is falling steadily. according to the general directorate of state hydraulic works (shw) (2020) data, the annual amount of water per person, which was 1652 m3 in 2000, decreased to 1544 m3 in 2009 and 1346 m3 in 2020. local sources and dense population qualify turkey as a water-rich country. hence, referring to official data, turkey is a country suffering from water shortage. it is clear that it is in danger of being included among the countries considered as “water-poor (aksay, ketenoğlu, & latif, 2005; karadağ, 2008; muluk et al., 2013). according to data from turkey statistical institute (tsi), the amount of water available per person in turkey expected to decrease 1120 m3 / year in 2030. this expectation may be valid if available resources are not adversely affected by 2030. in other words, to leave clean and potable water to future generations, water resources must be well protected and rationally managed (türkyılmaz, 2010). when the usable water potential per capita in turkey evaluated according to ‘the falkenmark water stress indicator’, turkey is among the countries of water stress/pressure. this situation reveals the importance of saving water and the conscious use of water. the success of the work done in the conscious use of water and conservation by the government in turkey is significant. also, the approach of individuals and the steps is essential for sustainable water use. for this reason, building a society that has high water sensitivity, conscious about water, and supports the steps taken by the state in terms of water-saving will also provide significant advantages. in a society of individuals with a high level of water literacy, the steps that the state should take in terms of efficient use and savings of water resources will be much simpler. although the concept of literacy was previously used only for people who can read and write or included in the education system, today, its meaning broadened further. it was defined as the ability to perform various mental operations (understanding, explanation, description, interpretation, association, etc.) on a subject, event, or phenomenon using visual, literary materials. as stated in the study published by unesco (2006) the concept of literacy, which was expressed only as alphabet literacy before 1950, has reached its current definition after the unesco general conference in 1978. in the late 1980s, the definition of literacy developed in line with the developments in globalization and information-communication technologies. in the 1987 toronto seminar, it was emphasized that the concept of literacy is more than literacy and computation. according to ahmed (2011) literacy is a process that includes the continuous learning of individuals, enables them to reach their personal goals, increases their knowledge and potential, and takes an active place in society. the importance of water for life is increasing day by day. therefore, water literacy needs to take its place on the agenda for water use, protection, and sustainability to future generations. there is a need for individuals and society who have basic knowledge about water, have a positive attitude towards water, and transform it into a lifestyle. topics such as having high knowledge and awareness of water, being a pioneer in water-saving and sustainable use of water, having a positive attitude and behavior towards water are also expressed as water literacy. every year, tubitak (scientific and technical research council of turkey) organizes research projects competition for high school and middle school students. water literacy was included in the tubitak 2020 competition project guide. in the project guide prepared by the institution, water literacy and water literate individual was defined as follows. “water literacy is the ability of individuals to understand about water, water resources, and basic information on all topics covering water, sustainable use of water, water management, the importance and necessity of water for life. also, ones' ability to find solutions to problems encountered by using scientific information about water and to clarify them is called water literacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/water_scarcity asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 571 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group individuals who know how to distribute and treat daily water, as well as maintaining the quality and safety of the water, and knowing how much water is used and exactly what it is used for are called water literate (tübi̇tak, 2020). dinç (2018) defines water literacy as an awareness and responsibility that allows individuals with general knowledge about water to know and predict in which situations water will suffer. sammel and mcmartin (2014) states that water literate individuals are calculating the individual water footprint, taking into account in daily life and operating on the sustainable use of water. according to xu, wang, wang, and zhang (2019) water knowledge and water attitude are the main factors affecting citizens' water behavior. water attitude consists of three dimensions: the sense of water, water responsibility, and water ethics. it will be easier to increase the water literacy levels of individuals with a positive water attitude. if water literacy is categorized, it is gathered under three titles, which are the continuation and development of each other: practical water literacy, live water literacy, and social water literacy. having safe water that is vital for all beings on the planet, distinguishing unhealthy water, and understanding the importance of water in daily life can be considered as practical water literacy. live water literacy is the ability to control water recycling processes by using necessary and sufficient amount of water at home and in social life. social water literacy refers to the willingness to act responsibly and make reasonable decisions for society as a whole in terms of water usage (otaki, sakura, & otaki, 2015). some curriculum studies have been carried out by several researchers to increase the number of water literate individuals (brody, 1995; covitt, gunckel, & anderson, 2009). the first program framework for water educators, scientists, and resource managers was prepared by brody (1995). within the framework of water education carried out by brody (1995) attention was drawn to the concept-skill-interaction relationship by drawing attention to the interdisciplinary quality of water. covitt et al. (2009) based on brody (1995) developed a framework based on establishing connections from different angles which will include natural and human engineering systems, to improve water literacy starting from atoms and molecules. with the “international water literacy symposium (wheeler, 2012) held at international christian university in tokyo in september 2012, studies on water literacy have increased and water literacy has begun to be handled from different perspectives. wood (2014) conducted a comprehensive doctoral thesis study, including a questionnaire, focus group discussions and observations at schools, about reviewing current water education and water literacy in east midlands, england. hui-shuang he (2018) was conducted a study with 303 people between the ages of 6-69 to determine the water literacy levels in four different regions of china. wang, chang, and liou (2019) conducted a study that aims to determine the change in levels of water literacy before and after participation in water conservation activities of 620 participants over the age of 18. moreno-guerrero, romero-rodríguez, lópezbelmonte, and alonso-garcía (2020) applied ten sessions of 55 minutes each with four groups of 30 participants in the first year of middle-school to investigate the impact of flipped learning practices in the development of water literacy. hui-shuang he (2018) argues that water literacy level should be high for a society that saves water, concerned about the future of water, and participates in activities. hui-shuang he (2018) stated that water behavior is at the center of the water literacy scale he developed. in their study, sherchan et al. (2016) stated that courses on water literacy are needed to compensate students' lack of basic knowledge about water. they planned the content of the course as in figure 1 stating that water literacy courses may be organized with a multi-disciplinary approach to inform the public about water, which is indispensable for life today and the future, and to build a water literate society. figure 1. learning components and performance evaluation in an interdisciplinary course implementation model on water literacy. source: sherchan et al. (2016). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 572 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as can be seen in figure 1, if a course or lesson will be organized for the development of water literacy, it is impossible to achieve this with a single discipline. a multi-disciplinary approach is required for an element that affects all life and activities, such as water. forbes, brozović, franz, lally, and petitt (2018) determined that after the multidisciplinary courses, undergraduate students increased their knowledge about water. this result reveals the importance of the multidisciplinary approach. in this context, "water ambassadors training and awareness raising technical support project" has been prepared. students, teachers, and mothers were determined as the target audience. the project carried out by the ministry of environment and urbanization and funded by the european union and the republic of turkey. to increase water awareness many activities were organized within the scope of the project. these activities include preparing cartoons, organizing stage shows with the participation of expert guests under the title of causes of water, and conducting teacher training. also, by training the project partner institutions staff, ministry of national education (mne), and state hydraulic works (shw) activities were organized to raise awareness of more than 40,000 people in water and environment in pilot regions (url-1, url-2). similarly, it is planned to reach pre-school, primary, and secondary school students in 19 pilot provinces between 2019-2021 with the 'water ambassadors in education' project, which was carried out in partnership with mne directorate-general for basic education and shw. within the scope of the project, it is aimed to increase the sensitivity and awareness of students about the water crisis in the world and our country, the correct use of water, and savings in water consumption (url-3). all of the mentioned studies have great importance and value to reach a society where water literate individuals are the majority and to leave healthy and accessible water for future generations. maclean and bana (2015) emphasizes the need for regulations (policies, plans, appropriate stakeholder engagement approaches) that can integrate various information, values , and interests to decision making to ensure sustainable water management. education should be at the center of these regulations. starting from the fact that education starts in the family, parents also have a significant duty in reaching the water literate community goals. as the role model, the role of our parents, people who shape our many attitudes and behaviors in our lives is significant. formal education institutions also have a great role in the education of parents. to reach a water literate society, it is essential to have a comprehensive water education from pre-school education, which is the first level of formal education, to high school education, which is the last level of compulsory education in turkey, even in all departments in university education. in their study, ursavaş and aytar (2018) emphasized the importance of giving information about the basic concepts of water, especially in the pre-school period. from the very beginning of the education and training processes, understanding the basic information about water and the qualities related to the structure of the water is essential to achieve the goal of reaching the society consisting of water literate individuals. in this process, as a role model, all branch teachers have an important duty in transferring knowledge. among all branches, social studies and science courses at secondary school level and geography and biology courses at high school level are more significant due to their scope. in addition to the teachers, these objectives might also be considered in the preparation of the curriculums and textbooks of some courses. in connection with all these, the high school period is seen as a period in which students make great progress in becoming a society-compatible individual and gaining their social sensitivity and clarifying their status. the effects of the education given until the end of the high school period on individuals and society will be more permanent in terms of habituation and being an example. for this reason, it is essential to determine the water consciousness, water-saving, and water sensitivity levels of students in the high school period. in this way, it will be possible to examine the results of the education that the students receive about water until high school education. the results are expected to guide the ministry in planning the curriculums and in the activities to be organized. in this regard, this study aims to determine the water literacy level of high school students from different regions of turkey. finally, the research questions that guided the study were: rq1: what are the water literacy levels of high school students? rq2: do high school students’ water consciousness, water-saving and water sensitivities significantly differ according to the; gender, school type, region they live in, grade level, gpa, mother, and father education levels, knowing an institution related to water and participating in the water-related activity? 2. material and methods 2.1. research model the research was designed in the screening model, which is the most used model in the social sciences. a screening model is a research approach that aims to describe either the past or the present situation as it exists. in the screening model, without changing the events, objects and individuals, and making an experimental intervention to them, individuals' beliefs, attitudes, opinions, behaviors, expectations, and characteristics of a particular phenomenon or event aimed to determine by asking questions such as what, where, how often, at what level, how, with the help of surveys (büyüköztürk, çakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2014; gürbüz & şahin, 2016; karakaya, 2011; karasar, 2012). as it aimed to describe the water literacy of high school students as they exist, the "instant screening" model was used among the screening models. 2.2. study group high school students in turkey were the universe of the study. the sample of the study was 3202 high school students (9th-10th-11th. and 12th grade) selected from within turkey overall. the purposeful sampling method, is a form of non-probability sampling, was chosen as the sampling method. the purpose of purposeful sampling is to select information-rich cases whose study will illuminate the questions under study (patton, 1990). purposeful sampling requires access to key informants in the field who can help in identifying information-rich cases (suri, 2011). in the selection of 3202 high school students across turkey, maximum variation sampling was preferred. regarding the problem examined in maximum variation sampling, it is possible to determine the different situations in itself and to conduct the study on these situations (büyüköztürk et al., 2014). a maximum variation asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 573 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sample is constructed by identifying key dimensions of variations and then finding cases that vary from each other as much as possible. this sampling yields: "(1) high quality, detailed descriptions of each case, which are useful for documenting uniqueness, and (2) important shared patterns that cut across cases and derive their significance from having emerged out of heterogeneity (patton., 2002). the evaluator using a maximum variation sampling strategy would not be attempting to generalize findings to all people or all groups but would be looking for information that elucidates programmatic variation and significant common patterns within that variation (patton, 1990). level 1 (nuts 1 nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) regional classification determined by tsi (turkey statistical institute) taken as a basis in determining the maximum variation sample. these regions determined in 2002 within the framework of european union harmonization. figure 2 shows this region classification. figure-2. tsi turkey level-1 statistical area classification. source: the map was created according to the tsi classification. as can be seen in figure 2 turkey divided into 12 regions according to level-1. according to the population of these regions, the number of participants included in the study changes due to reasons such as accessibility and economy. in this context, personal information of high school students included in the study is given in table 1. table-1. information about participants. variables n % n % gender female male mother education level illiterate primary school high school university postgraduate 2192 68.5 221 6.9 1010 31.5 1739 54.3 grade level 9th grade 10th grade 11th grade 12th grade 753 23.5 727 22.7 431 13.5 1017 31.8 58 1.8 754 23.5 father education level illiterate primary school high school university postgraduate 704 22.0 41 1.3 school type* project public school public school without exam private school 1292 40.3 1787 55.8 1058 33.0 1093 34.1 665 20.8 322 10.1 146 4.6 region** istanbul grade average 50-60 61-75 76-90 91-100 411 12.8 279 8.7 west marmara 91 2.8 752 23.5 aegean 260 8.1 1461 45.6 mediterranean 269 8.4 710 22.2 west anatolia 590 18.4 knowing the institution name yes no east marmara 209 6.5 2338 73.0 west black sea 455 14.2 864 27.0 central anatolia 310 9.7 participate in activities on water yes no east black sea 153 4.8 488 15.2 northeast anatolia 90 2.8 2714 84.8 middle east anatolia 130 4.1 southeastern anatolia 234 7.3 total 3202 100 total 3202 100 note: **regulated to level-1 in the regional classification created by tsi. *some high schools in turkey accept students according to the high school entrance exam (project schools), while some are accepting students without examination. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 574 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as can be seen in table 1 68.5% (n = 2192) of the students in the study group are female and 31.5% (n = 1010) are male. it is noteworthy that, according to the grade levels of the students, they were distributed close to each other, 55.8% of the participants' study in project schools, 34.1% in schools that take students without examination, 10.1% in private schools. when the distribution of students' cities according to their regions examined, istanbul, west anatolia, and west black sea regions have the highest rates while regions with a low population such as northeast anatolia and west marmara have the lowest rates. students' grade point averages were mostly within the range of 76-90 points (45.6%) and at least 51-60 (8.7%). 2.3. data gathering "water literacy survey" designed by sözcü and türker (2020) was used as a data collection tool in the study. the survey consists of two parts. the first part consists of questions that to be determinative on high school students' water literacy. in the second part, there was a water literacy scale. the scale consists of 3 sub-dimensions called water saving, water consciousness, and water sensitivity. water-saving sub-dimension consists of 13 items, water consciousness sub-dimension consists of 12 items, and water sensitivity sub-dimension consists of 5 items. the scale consists of 30 items on a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). in the scale, 25 items have positive expressions, and five items have negative expressions. the lowest score that can be obtained from the scale is '30' and the highest score is '150'. cronbach alpha reliability value of the scale was found to be .894. data on the scale, which has reliable and good substance characteristics, were collected online from high school students voluntarily in may 2020. the online questionnaire was prepared on google forms and delivered to the students by sharing the link address and through their teachers. 2.4. data analysis the data were processed and analyzed using spss 20 software. since the data was collected through an online questionnaire, no lost data occurred. five items that have negative expressions were entered into the program by the reverse coding method. the normality of the processed 3202 data was analyzed graphically (histogram and stem-leaf graph, normal q-q graph, box graph) and the coefficient of kurtosis and skewness. the normality of variables assessed by either statistical or graphical methods (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). the kurtosis and distortion values of the data, which are compatible with the graphical method, were also examined. in a large sample, a variable with statistically significant skewness often does not deviate enough from normality to make a substantive difference in the analysis. in other words, with large samples, the significance level of skewness is not as important as its actual size (worse the farther from zero) and the visual appearance of the distribution. in a large sample, the impact of departure from zero kurtoses also diminishes. for example, underestimates of variance associated with positive kurtosis (distributions with short, thick tails) disappear with samples of 100 or more cases; with negative kurtosis, underestimation of variance disappears with samples of 200 or more (waternaux, 1976, cite. tabachnick and fidell (2013)). in this context, the kurtosis and skewness coefficients of the data are in the reference range. after providing normality conditions, scale averages, and the equivalence of these averages in the hundred point system were used to determine the water literacy level of high school students. as seen in table 2 the scale average classified as; strongly disagree 1 point, strongly disagree – disagree 1-2 intervals, disagree – neutral 2-3 intervals, neutral – agree 3-4 intervals, agree – strongly agree 4-5 intervals, strongly agree 5 points. the rating used by the ministry of education was used as the equivalent of the scale averages in the hundred point system (example: water awareness scale average: 3.32 * 100/5 = 66.2 points average). accordingly, 0-49 points failed, 50-59 points pass, 60-69 points are moderate, 70-84 points are good, and 85-100 points are very good. in the next step, the relationship between the independent variables and the water literacy sub-dimensions was determined with which tests to test. independent sample t-test was used to find the differences between the variables such as gender status, participation in water activity, and the institution name knowing status variables and the sub-dimensions of the scale (when variances are not equal). a one-way analysis of variance (anova) test was performed in cases where the independent variable consists of three or more categories (school type, class level, region, grade point average, mother, and father education level). in cases where the homogeneous distribution of variances provided, scheffe, which is one of the multiple comparison tests (post hoc test), and tamhane’s t2 test was applied when not provided. 3. findings this section presents the findings of the data obtained within the framework of the research problem and subproblems. findings for each sub-problem are presented in tables and explained. table 2 shows the findings of the water literacy levels of high school students. table-2. water literacy levels of high school students according to scale average and scores. water-saving water consciousness water sensitivity s ca le e x p re ss io n s 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 s tr o n g ly d is ag re e d is ag re e n eu tr al a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e s tr o n g ly d is ag re e d is ag re e n eu tr al a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e s tr o n g ly d is ag re e d is ag re e n eu tr al a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e 4,44 3,32 3,95 agree-strongly agree neutral-agree neutral-agree points value: 88,8 (very good) points value: 66,4 (moderate) points value: 79,0 (good) scale average:3,91 (neutral-agree) average score:78,2 (good) asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 575 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the scale averages according to the 5-point likert scale, and the equivalents of these averages in a hundred point system are given in table 2. accordingly, the scale average in the water-saving sub-dimension of the scale was at the level of agree-strongly agree, and its response in terms of points was 88.8. scale averages of water consciousness and water sensitivity sub-dimensions were at the level of neutral agree. however, while the average score of the water consciousness sub-dimension was 66.4, the average score of the water sensitivity subdimension was 79. while the overall average of the scale was in the neutral-agree range, the average score was 78.2. the findings of the t-test conducted to determine whether the water literacy of high school students make a significant difference for gender are given in table 3. table-3. analysis of high school students' water literacy according to gender variable. scale gender n x̅ ss sd t p water-saving female 2192 58.32 5.72 3200 8.06 .000* male 1010 56.46 6.74 water consciousness female 2192 40.09 8.52 3200 1.85 .064 male 1010 39.46 9.80 water sensitivity female 2192 20.13 3.80 3200 7.62 .000* male 1010 18.94 4.71 general female 2192 118.5 13.59 3200 6.87 .000* male 1010 114.8 15.04 as can be seen in table 3, there was a significant effect of gender on high school students' water literacy overall scores [t(3200)= 6.82, p<0.05]. likewise, the scores of high school students on the water-saving [t(3200)= 8.06, p<0.05] and water sensitivity [t (3200)=7.62, p<0.05] sub-dimensions were also differ significantly according to gender. however, water consciousness sub-dimension scores were not differ significantly by gender [t(3200)=1.85, p<0.05]. in other words, while the gender of high school students caused a significant difference in their water savings, water consciousness, and general status of water literacy, they did not make a significant difference in their water sensitivity. one-way anova results of water literacy according to the grade levels of high school students are given in table 4. table4. one-way anova results of water literacy according to grade levels of high school students. scale grade level n x̅ s f p significant difference (scheffe test) water-saving 1. grade 9 727 57.46 6.07 6.52 .000* 1-4 2-4 3-4 2. grade 10 1017 57.64 6.38 3. grade 11 754 57.32 6.44 4. grade 12 704 58.61 5.30 total 3202 57.74 6.12 water consciousness 1. grade 9 727 40.45 9.08 1.28 .277 2. grade 10 1017 39.82 8.81 3. grade 11 754 39.67 9.09 4. grade 12 704 39.65 8.83 total 3202 39.89 8.94 water sensitivity 1. grade 9 727 19.51 4.35 2,67 .051 2. grade 10 1017 20.03 4.02 3. grade 11 754 19.62 4.26 4. grade 12 704 19.77 3.97 toplam 3202 19.76 4.15 general 1. grade 9 727 117.4 14.38 1.26 .285 2. grade 10 1017 117.5 14.47 3. grade 11 754 116.6 14.43 4. grade 12 704 118.0 13.16 total 3202 117.3 14.17 note: *p<0.05. as can be seen in table 4, high school students' water literacy overall scores did not differ significantly according to the grade levels they are studying [f(3,3198)=1,26, p>0,05]. likewise, water consciousness [f(3,3198)=1,28, p>0,05] and water sensitivity [f (3,3198) =2,67, p>0,05] scores were not differ significantly in terms of students' grade levels. however, there was a significant difference in students' water-saving scores according to their grade levels [f (3,3198) =6,52, p <0,05]. post hoc analyses using the scheffé post hoc criterion for significance indicated that the water-saving average score of students was significantly lower in the 12th-grade (x̅= 5,30) than in the 9th-10th, and 11th grade respectively (x̅= 6.07 / 6.38 / 6.44). table 5 shows the results of the one-way anova test of water literacy according to the mother education levels of high school students. as can be seen in table 5, results indicated a non-significant relation between students’ water literacy scores and students’ mother’s educational background [f(4,3197)=1,03, p>0,05]. however, there was a significant effect of mother’s educational background on water-saving [f(4,3197) =3,41, p<0,05], water consciousness [f(4,3197)=4,64, p<0,05], and water sensitivity [f(4,3197)=1,03, p<0,05] sub-dimensions of the scale. post hoc analyses using the scheffé post hoc criterion for significance indicated that the water-saving and water sensitivity average scores of students was significantly higher in the undergraduate level of mothers’ education (x̅=58,47/20,67) than in the illiterate level of mothers’ education (x̅=56,69/18,76). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 576 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. one-way anova results of water literacy according to mother's education levels of high school students. scale mother’s educational background n x̅ s f p significant difference (scheffe test) water-saving 1. illiterate 221 56.69 6.89 3.41 .009* 1-4 2. primary school 1739 57.64 6.11 3. high school 753 57.88 5.87 4. undergraduate 431 58.47 5.46 5. postgraduate 58 57.43 9.65 total 3202 57.74 6.12 water consciousness 1. illiterate 221 40.96 9.48 4.64 .001* 1-4 2. primary school 1739 40.14 8.64 3. high school 753 39.51 9.33 4. undergraduate 431 38.66 8.88 5. postgraduate 58 42.39 9.97 total 3202 40.96 8.94 water sensitivity 1. illiterate 221 18.76 4.55 9,18 .000* 1-4 2. primary school 1739 19.66 4.10 3. high school 753 19.70 4.27 4. undergraduate 431 20.67 3.60 5. postgraduate 58 20.44 5.00 total 3202 19.76 4.15 general 1. illiterate 221 116.4 14.82 1.03 .386 2. primary school 1739 117.4 13.84 3. high school 753 117.1 14.47 4. undergraduate 431 117.8 13.72 5. postgraduate 58 120.2 19.50 total 3202 117.3 14.17 note: *p<0.05. on the other hand, in the water consciousness sub-dimension, the scores of high school students whose mother was illiterate (x̅=40.96) were significantly higher than the scores of those whose mothers were university graduates (x̅=38.66). one-way anova results of water literacy according to the father education levels of high school students are given in table 6. table-6. one-way anova results of water literacy according to father education levels of high school students. scale father’s educational background n x̅ s f p significant difference (scheffe test) water-saving 1. illiterate 41 56.26 7.29 3.07 .015* 2-4 2. primary school 1292 57.44 6.39 3. high school 1058 57.73 6.16 4. undergraduate 665 58.28 5.07 5. postgraduate 146 58.39 7.07 total 3202 57.74 6.12 water consciousness 1. illiterate 41 39.92 9.36 2.76 .026* 2-4 2. primary school 1292 40.33 8.99 3. high school 1058 39.91 8.73 4. undergraduate 665 38.93 8.96 5. postgraduate 146 40.15 9.65 total 3202 39.89 8.94 water sensitivity 1. illiterate 41 18.82 4.66 9.41 .000* 2-3 2-4 2. primary school 1292 19.32 4.25 3. high school 1058 19.83 4.10 4. undergraduate 665 20.47 3.80 5. postgraduate 146 20.11 4.43 total 3202 19.76 4.15 general 1. illiterate 41 115.0 16.04 0.78 .533 2. primary school 1292 117.1 14.28 3. high school 1058 117.4 13.99 4. undergraduate 665 117.6 13.59 5. postgraduate 146 118.6 16.38 total 3202 117.3 14.17 note: *p<0.05. as can be seen in table 6 results indicated a non-significant relation between students’ water literacy scores and students’ father’s educational background [f(4,3197)=0,78, p>0,05]. however, there was a significant effect of father’s educational background on water-saving [f(4,3197)=3,07,p<0,05], water consciousness [f(4,3197)=2,76, p<0,05], and water sensitivity [f(4,3197)=9,41, p<0,05] sub-dimensions of the scale. post hoc analyses using the scheffé post hoc criterion for significance indicated that the water-saving and water sensitivity average scores of students was significantly higher in the high school level of fathers’ education (x̅=58,28/20,47) than in the primary school level of fathers’ education (x̅=57,44/19,32). on the other hand, in the water consciousness sub-dimension, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 577 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the scores of high school students whose father was primary school graduate (x̅=40,33) were significantly higher than the scores of those whose fathers were university graduates (x̅=38,93). one-way anova results of water literacy according to grade point averages (gpa) of high school students are given in table 7. table-7. one-way anova results of water literacy according to grade averages of high school students. scale grade point average n x̅ s f p significant difference (scheffe test) water-saving 1.50-60 279 55.84 6.70 29.44 .000* 1-3 1-4 2-3 2-4 2.61-75 752 56.52 7.57 3.76-90 1461 58.20 5.20 4.91-100 710 58.80 5.36 total 3202 55.84 6.12 water consciousness 1.50-60 279 40.27 9.25 0.36 .782 2.61-75 752 39.66 9.14 3.76-90 1461 39.95 8.85 4.91-100 710 39.86 8.81 total 3202 39.89 8.94 water sensitivity 1.50-60 279 17.37 4.80 74.77 .000* 1-2 1-3 1-4 2-3 2-4 3-4 2.61-75 752 18.68 4.40 3.76-90 1461 20.26 3.73 4.91-100 710 20.81 3.81 total 3202 19.76 4.15 general 1.50-60 279 113.4 13.93 23.15 .000* 1-3 1-4 2-3 2-4 2.61-75 752 114.8 15.24 3.76-90 1461 118.4 13.80 4.91-100 710 119.4 13.14 total 3202 117.3 14.17 note: *p<0.05. as can be seen in table 7, there was a significant effect of gpa on high school students’ water literacy overall scores [f(3,3198)=23,15, p<0,05] and water-saving scores [f(3,3198)=29,44, p<0,05]. according to the scheffe test for the direction of the significant difference; water literacy general scores and water-saving scores respectively of high school students whose gpa were between 91-100 (x̅=119,4/58,80) were higher than those whose gpa was between 50-60 (x̅=113,4/55,84) and 61-75 (x̅=114,8/56,52). likewise, water literacy general scores and watersaving scores respectively of high school students whose gpa was between 76-90 (x̅=118,4/58,20) were higher than those whose gpa was between 50-60 and 61-75. there was a significant difference in high school students’ water sensitivity scores according to their gpa [f(3,3198)=74,77, p<0,05]. water sensitivity scores of the students whose gpa was between 91-100 and 76-90 (x̅=20,81/20,26), respectively, were higher than students whose gpa was between 50-60 and 61-75 (x̅=17,37/18,68). on the other hand, water consciousness scores did not differ significantly according to the gpa of high school students [f(3,3198)=0,36, p>0,05]. one-way anova results of water literacy according to the type of school high school students attend are given in table 8. table-8. one-way anova results of water literacy according to the type of school high school students attend. scale school type n x̅ s f p significant difference (scheffe test) water-saving 1. project public school 1787 57.85 6.38 5.23 .005* 2-3 2. public school without exam 1093 57.33 5.97 3. private school 322 58.50 4.90 total 3202 55.84 6.12 water consciousness 1. project public school 1787 39.95 9.09 0.38 .679 2. public school without exam 1093 39.91 8.76 3. private school 322 39.48 8.79 total 3202 39.95 8.94 water sensitivity 1. project public school 1787 19.92 4.20 8.73 .000* 1-2 2-3 2. public school without exam 1093 19.35 4.13 3. private school 322 20.24 3.81 total 3202 19.92 4.15 general 1. project public school 1787 117.7 14.57 2.76 .063 2. public school without exam 1093 116.6 13.77 3. private school 322 118.2 13.09 total 3202 117.3 14.17 note: *p<0.05. as can be seen in table 8 there was a significant difference in high school students’ water sensitivity [f(2,3199)=8,73,p<0,05] and water-saving [f(2,3199)=5,23, p<0,05] scores according to their school type. the significant difference was determined at students' water-saving and water sensitivity scores, respectively, students studying at the private school (x̅=58,50/19,92) and students studying at the schools accepting students without an examination (x̅ ̅=57,33/19,35). in addition, the average score of students studying in the project school in terms of asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 578 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group water sensitivity was higher than the average scores of those studying in schools accepting students without an examination. high school students' water literacy scores and water awareness scores do not make a significant difference according to the type of school they are studying [f(2,3199)=0,38,p>0,05]. the results of the one-way anova test of water literacy according to the region where high school students live are given in table 9. table-9. one-way anova results of water literacy according to the region where high school students live. scale regions n x̅ s f p significant difference (scheffe test) w at er -s av in g 1.istanbul 411 57.60 5.15 2.26 .010* 4-9 2.west marmara 91 57.96 4.82 3.aegean 260 57.49 7.18 4.mediterranean 269 56.60 8.86 5.west anatolia 590 58.29 5.96 6.east marmara 209 58.01 5.64 7.west black sea 455 57.70 5.38 8.central anatolia 310 58.00 5.66 9.east black sea 153 58.94 4.40 10.northeast anatolia 90 57.00 8.31 11.middle east anatolia 130 57.33 5.10 12.southeastern anatolia 234 57.14 6.06 total 3202 57.74 6.12 w at er c o n sc io u sn es s 1.istanbul 411 38.52 8.66 2.05 .020* 1-11 2.west marmara 91 39.72 8.35 3.aegean 260 40.10 8.58 4.mediterranean 269 39.90 9.60 5.west anatolia 590 40.12 9.12 6.east marmara 209 39.63 8.24 7.west black sea 455 39.41 8.43 8.central anatolia 310 40.37 8.77 9.east black sea 153 40.48 10.2 10.northeast anatolia 90 39.18 8.79 11.middle east anatolia 130 41.83 9.44 12.southeastern anatolia 234 40.85 9.26 total 3202 39.89 8.94 w at er s en si ti v it y 1.istanbul 411 19.67 3.97 3.20 .000* 7-12 8-12 9-11 9-12 2.west marmara 91 20.40 3.70 3.aegean 260 20.05 3.89 4.mediterranean 269 19.30 4.56 5.west anatolia 590 19.74 4.37 6.east marmara 209 20.11 3.65 7.west black sea 455 19.94 3.80 8.central anatolia 310 20.11 3.76 9.east black sea 153 20.37 4.29 10.northeast anatolia 90 20.06 3.23 11.middle east anatolia 130 18.73 4.84 12.southeastern anatolia 234 18.83 4.90 total 3202 19.76 4.15 w at er l it er ac y ( g en er al ) 1.istanbul 411 115.8 13.2 1.62 .085 2.west marmara 91 118.0 12.7 3.aegean 260 117.6 15.1 4.mediterranean 269 115.8 17.1 5.west anatolia 590 118.1 13.9 6.east marmara 209 117.7 13.0 7.west black sea 455 117.0 13.4 8.central anatolia 310 118.4 13.5 9.east black sea 153 119.7 14.4 10.northeast anatolia 90 116.2 16.2 11.middle east anatolia 130 117.9 13.7 12.southeastern anatolia 234 116.8 14.0 total 3202 117.3 14.1 note: *p<0.05. as can be seen in table 9, high school students’ water literacy scores did not differ significantly according to the region they live in [f(11,3190)=1,62, p>0,05]. however, water-saving scores differ significantly according to the asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 579 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group region where high school students live [f(11,3190)=2,26, p<0,05]. water-saving score of high school students living in the eastern black sea ( x̅=58.94) was significantly higher than those living in the mediterranean (x̅=56.60). water sensitivity scores differ significantly according to the region where high school students live [f(11,3190)=3,20, p<0,05]. accordingly, water sensitivity scores of high school students living in southeastern anatolia (x̅=18.83) was significantly lower than the scores of students living in the western black sea (x̅=19.94), central anatolia (x̅= 20.11) and eastern black sea (x̅=20.37). also, the scores of students living in the eastern black sea (x̅=20.37) were significantly higher than those of students living in the middle east anatolia (x̅=18.73). finally, water consciousness scores differ significantly according to the region where high school students live [f(11,3190)=3,20, p<0,05]. a significant difference emerged between students living in central east anatolia and students living in istanbul, in favor of students who live in the middle east anatolia. the t-test results of the high school students’ water literacy according to their knowledge about water-related institutions are given in table 10. table-10. analysis of high school students' water literacy according to their knowledge of institution about water scale knowledge of waterrelated institutions n x̅ ss sd t p water-saving yes 2338 58.03 6.04 3200 4.54 .000* no 834 56.93 6.24 water consciousness yes 2338 40.1 8.77 3200 4.36 .000* no 834 38.76 9.30 water sensitivity yes 2338 20.10 4.10 3200 7.68 .000* no 834 18.84 4.14 general yes 2338 118.4 14.11 330 6.98 .000* no 834 114.5 13.92 note: *p<0.05. as can be seen in table 10, there was a significant effect of knowing any institution related to water, on high school students’ water literacy overall scores [t(3200)=6,82, p<0,05]. the scores of high school students regarding the water-saving [t(3200)=4,54,p<0,05], water consciousness [t(3200)=4,36,p<0,05], and water sensitivity [t(3200)=7,68,p<0,05] sub-dimensions of the scale also differ significantly according to their knowledge of waterrelated institutions. the knowledge of high school students about water-related institutions causes a significant difference in favor of those who know the water-related institution in both their general literacy and subdimensions. the results of the t-test for high school students' water literacy scores and participation in waterrelated activities are given in table 11. table-11. analysis of high school students' water literacy according to their participation in water-related activities. scale participation in water-related activities n x̅ ss sd t p water-saving yes 488 58.61 6.64 3200 3.41 .001* no 2714 57.58 6.01 water consciousness yes 488 43.15 8.99 3200 8.84 .000* no 2714 39.30 8.81 water sensitivity yes 488 20.40 4.72 3200 3.73 .000* no 2714 19.64 4.03 general yes 488 122.1 15.59 330 8.17 .000* no 2714 116.5 13.72 note: *p<0.05. as can be seen in table 11, there was a significant effect of participating in water-related activities, on high school students’ water literacy overall scores [t(3200)=8,17,p<0,05]. likewise, the scores of high school students regarding the water-saving [t(3200)=4,54,p<0,05], water consciousness [t(3200)=4,36,p<0,05], and water sensitivity [t(3200)=7,68,p<0,05] sub-dimensions of the scale show a significant difference according to their participation in the water-related activity. in other words, the scale scores of high school students who participated in the waterrelated activity were significantly higher than those who did not participate in the activities 4. conclusion and recommendations with the rapid population growth in the world, studies on ‘water’ have gained speed. this study revealed the water literacy levels of students at the high school level in turkey, and factors affecting these levels. as a result of the study, the water literacy of high school students was generally at a 'good level'. as stated in unesco (2006) literacy should no longer be viewed individually but socially. therefore, the high level of water literacy of students is an expected situation for all societies. in today's world, where the effects of global warming are increasing day by day, the importance of the subject is increasing. when the sub-dimensions of water literacy were analyzed, high school students were very good at water-saving and good at water sensitivity, but remain at medium level in terms of water consciousness. results conclude that students assumed their responsibilities for saving water individually, but they were not willing to influence and direct the people around them and increase their knowledge. turkey has a semi-arid climate and is a country facing water scarcity. therefore, the situation of young people who are watersensitive, and tend to save water, remained at an average level of awareness of water and awareness-raising should be considered as a deficiency. moreover, local and regional development of the water struggle will make significant contributions on a global scale. the fact that the participants found to be at a medium level on water awareness may be interpreted as there is a lack of knowledge about basic concepts and the structure of water. undoubtedly, knowing the general concepts about water and understanding the functioning of water is of great importance in ensuring water literacy. necessary arrangements needed to be made in the education-training processes to asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 580 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group overcome these information gaps. in his study with 5th-grade students, wheeler (2012) determined that students had information deficiencies and misconceptions about water. to overcome these deficiencies and misconceptions, wheeler (2012) recommended increasing training about water and developing the water literacy curriculum. although the circulation of water in the earth is included more in the field of engineering and natural sciences, educational sciences and teachers have a significant role in providing water awareness and eliminating basic knowledge gaps. similarly, sammel and mcmartin (2014) emphasizes that educators have a greater role in the development of water literacy than engineers. as in all teaching activities, to increase the water literacy level, the teachers are needed to be well trained and able to use new teaching techniques. moreno-guerrero et al. (2020) concluded that flipped learning practices are more effective in developing water literacy as it increases student motivation and participation compared to traditional teaching methods. there was a significant effect for gender, with female students receiving higher scores than male students both in overall scale and in water-saving and water sensitivity sub-dimensions. in this case, the water literacy level of female students was higher. this result indicates that female students are more sensitive to water and attach importance to water saving. no proportional difference was found in the school types and the education levels of parents, in which female and male students. therefore, the effects of personal and environmental factors may be mentioned in the occurrence of this situation. the water literacy levels of high school students do not change according to the grade level. however, 12thgrade students in the water-saving sub-dimension of the scale got higher scores than those who studied in other grades. in other words, 12th-grade students are more successful in water-saving than lower grades. this result may arise from the increase in the knowledge acquired by students until the 12th grade. wang et al. (2019) were determined that the water literacy levels of the participants improved after the watersaving activities. there was no significant difference between water knowledge and attitude towards water and the level of water literacy. there was a significant difference between variables such as age, income level, and domestic water expenses of the participants and the levels of water literacy. the education levels of high school students' mothers and fathers were not significant in general water literacy levels. however, the water-saving and water sensitivity of the students whose parents are university graduates were higher than the illiterate parents. this result indicates that students learn water-saving from their parents with high education levels and gain sensitivity towards the water. contrary to this situation, students whose parents have low education levels had higher water consciousness than others. the items that constitute water consciousness are composed of mostly cognitive items that are difficult to transmit by parents with low education levels. in this context, the personal efforts of students whose parents have low education levels may have been effective in raising their water consciousness. as the gpa of high school students increased, water literacy levels also increased. the same is true for other sub-dimensions, except for the water consciousness dimension. the fact that academically successful individuals are water literate individuals may be seen as a positive aspect of the education system. the type of school in which high school students attend did not significantly affect their overall water literacy levels. however, the students studying in schools that are accepting students with exams were at a higher level of water literacy. this situation is in parallel with the results of the gpa variable. the same result was achieved in terms of water-saving and water sensitivity sub-dimensions of the scale. briefly, the water literacy level of the students whose gpa was high and studying in the schools that accept students by exam was higher. this situation may be considered as a reflection of academic success. xu et al. (2019) stated that water knowledge levels of citizens have a direct effect on water behavior and indirectly affect water sensitivity and water responsibility. there was no significant relationship between water ethics and water behavior. based on these results, the importance of citizens' water feelings, and water responsibility was emphasized in the works to be carried out to protect water. there was no significant impact of the region lived in, on the general water literacy of high school students. however, the highest point average in water-saving was found in the students living in the eastern black sea, and the lowest in students living in the mediterranean. when turkey's climate is concerned, it is a remarkable result that the water-saving approach was high in the region with the most precipitation and water resources. considering that the school types and gpa of the students were close to each other in these regions, the difference in culture between regions may be the reason for this situation. it can be mentioned the effect of the fact that the eastern black sea region receives rain throughout the year, there are many rivers, and the sea has a very important place in daily life. the lowest region in terms of water awareness was istanbul. it is noteworthy that this situation occurred in istanbul, which is turkey's largest but also one of the world's few large cities. in the emergence of this result, the fact that young people in high school age did not experience or feel water problems in istanbul during their short lives may be significant. hui-shuang he (2018) has revealed that socioeconomic and geographical differences were significant in water literacy scores as a result of the water literacy scale applied in four different regions of china. the average score in beijing, which is the center of politics, economy, and culture, was 74.29, while the water literacy score average was 69.55 in qingtongxia in the yellow river basin, where water scarcity occurred. the least sensitivity was determined in the southeastern anatolia and middle east anatolia regions in terms of water sensitivity. the most sensitive region in terms of water sensitivity was the eastern black sea region. the southeastern anatolia region is turkey's most arid regions, and vice versa for the emergence of a result was expected. the low education level of parents in both southeast anatolia and middle east anatolia regions may have an impact on this situation. as mentioned in the mother and father education section, students with the low education level of parents have lower water sensitivity. finally, the water literacy level of the students who participated in any water-related activity and who knew the name of the water institution was higher than the others. this result may be explained as that the activities that students participate contribute to being more conscious and sensitive about water. students who know the water-related institution are cognitively and affectively careful about this topic. that allows them to become a high-level water literate. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 569-582 581 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group within the framework of the results; the number of students participating in the water-related activity was very low, but the water literacy of those students was high. therefore, increasing water-related activities in schools may contribute to water literacy. in addition, nationwide activities that will raise water awareness and sensitivity through non-governmental organizations may be beneficial. wood (2014) draws attention to the development of a sense of responsibility to take steps with local, national, and global impact, away from individual behavior to raise water literacy standards. special plans should be made for regions with low water literacy. raising awareness of the new generation is important both for the coming years and for the country in general. otaki et al. (2015) stated that the ultimate goal of the concept of water literacy is the construction of a water system diversified according to the local lifestyle and traditions to coexist as a society. therefore, steps should be taken towards reaching a water literate society through educational activities which planned considering regional differences. in order to increase the water literacy of high school students, giving practical training rather than academic knowledge may contribute more. students who learn by doing and living are expected to have more permanent attitudes and behaviors. ursavaş. and aytar (2019) determined that after an action-oriented training, biology, and science teachers experienced a positive change in water literacy levels and gained a multi-faceted perspective on water-related subjects. as in all teaching activities, performing in-class or out-of-class practices that will provide an environment suitable for learning by doing-living may also play a significant role in increasing the number of water literate individuals. maclean and bana (2015) emphasizes the necessity of effective participation, especially local people, to ensure water governance in australia and to achieve a sustainable environment and water management. the planning of the projects and activities in which the society is fully integrated may ensure effective water management and water literate society in turkey. multidisciplinary approaches might be planned in turkey to achieve a water literate community goal and to provide sustainable water for future generations. there is a need for courses to be taught at the educational levels and activities that will raise awareness in every segment of society. as highlighted as a result of the course model developed by sherchan et al. (2016) a water literacy module or course, which can only be realized with a multidisciplinary approach, will also provide strong cooperation between students and faculty. this ability to collaborate is the critical learning component that society expects from citizens in the 21st century. learning contents, projects, or activities planned with a multidisciplinary approach may provide a successful and permanent increase in citizens' water literacy levels. in their study, forbes et al. 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(2019). can water knowledge change citizens’ water behavior? a case study in zhengzhou, china. ekoloji, 28(107), 1019-1027. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.tubitak.gov.tr/tr/yarismalar/icerik-lise-ogrencileri-arastirma-projeleri-yarismasiadresindenerişilmiştir http://www.tubitak.gov.tr/tr/yarismalar/icerik-lise-ogrencileri-arastirma-projeleri-yarismasiadresindenerişilmiştir http://www.unesco.org/education/gmr2006/full/chapt6_eng.pdfadresindenerişilmiştir http://www.unesco.org/education/gmr2006/full/chapt6_eng.pdfadresindenerişilmiştir 493 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 493-498, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.493.498 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of the students studying at the faculty of sport sciences according to gender, active sport participation and sports type variables erkan bingol1 duygu yarali bingol2 (corresponding author) 1vocational school koycegiz, mugla sitki kocman university, mugla, turkey. 2department of physical education and sports, mugla sitki kocman university, mugla, turkey. abstract this study was carried out to examine the goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of students studying in the faculty of sport sciences according to some variables. the research group consisted of 346 students who voluntarily participated from the faculty of sport sciences of a state university in turkey. “goal commitment scale” was used to determine the level of goal commitment of the participants, and the “subjective happiness scale” was used to determine the levels of subjective happiness. descriptive statistics were used in the analysis of demographic variables, pearson correlation was used to determine the direction and strength of the variables, independent sample t-test was used for comparisons of the groups. the results of the study showed that subjective happiness levels of students differed according to gender and goal commitment levels differ depending on the active sport participation. in addition, significant and positive relationships were observed between the goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of the students and between the academic grade averages and the goal commitment levels. these results indicate that the goal commitment levels of students will increase as a result of encouraging active sports, and thus their academic success and subjective happiness may increase. keywords: goal commitment, subjective happiness, sport, student, academic success, sport type. citation | erkan bingol; duygu yarali bingol (2020). examination of goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of the students studying at the faculty of sport sciences according to gender, active sport participation and sports type variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 493-498. history: received: 7 may 2020 revised: 17 june 2020 accepted: 10 july 2020 published: 4 august 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 494 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 494 3. findings/results ............................................................................................................................................................................ 495 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 496 5. recommendation............................................................................................................................................................................ 496 6. limitations ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 497 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 497 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.493.498&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1964 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9425-4623 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0768-7891 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 493-498 494 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes the literature by examining the target loyalties and subjective happiness levels of students studying in the faculty of sports sciences according to some variables. 1. introduction in recent years, researchers have started to show more interest in studies on goal commitment and subjective happiness. the basis for this is that both concepts are effective in individuals' behaviors. it is seen that the concept of goal commitment was developed as a goal theory in behavioral literature. hollenbeck, klein, o’leary, and wright (1989) emphasized that goal commitment plays a very important role in individuals’ behaviors in their research for the goal setting. however, it has been suggested that not giving due importance to the goal commitment may lead to unexpected negative results in goal determination (hollenbeck & klein, 1987). when the studies on the subject are examined, it is seen that the goal-setting theory is the most useful and valid theory scientifically and the need for goal adherence in the goal-setting behavior is advocated (locke & latham, 2009). goal commitment was defined as an effort to achieve a specific goal (locke, shaw, saari, & latham, 1981). hollenbeck and klein (1987) defined this concept as the intention of not losing the effort to reach the goal over time and the unwillingness to abandon the goal and the insistence on maintaining this goal over time. from an individual perspective, it is suggested that each individual may have different levels of commitment to the same goal and show different attitudes towards the goal (wright, o'leary-kelly, cortina, klein, & hollenbeck, 1994). moreover, an individual cannot be expected to be equally attached to his/her goals (locke & latham, 1990). goal commitment measurements also differ due to the level of goal commitment. in summary, it has been revealed that commitment-oriented measurements of commitment are more valid, thus producing more variability than cognitive-oriented measurements (leifer & mcgannon, 1986). in terms of students, goals are described as different and multivariate profiles determined for the learning task (pieschl, stahl, & bromme, 2013). in the education process, learning objectives are determined by focusing on development and progress. students make an effort to learn and develop their abilities, regardless of whether they can be evaluated according to certain standards or compared their success to others (senel & yildiz, 2016). in this process, the efforts of the students for their goals show the level of their goal commitments. the phenomenon of happiness, which has been studied by researchers for many years, has become a concept that needs much more advanced research as a result of the negative effects caused by various conditions in the flow of life (baysal & aka, 2013). the concept of happiness matures with the individual’s emotional state, interests, desires, and needs, and these needs differ from individual to individual (kose, uzun, ozlu, celik, & erbas, 2019). as a matter of fact, the concept of happiness, which may differ from individual to individual, can be used in place of concepts such as “efficient, happiness, well-being, satisfaction with the quality of life and subjective well-being” (bulbul & giray, 2011; gumus & isik, 2018; isik, gumus, okudan, & yilmaz, 2014). happiness is defined as the fact that the individual experiences positive emotions more frequently, negative emotions live less, and as generally satisfied with his/her life (argyle, martin, & crossland, 1989). in addition, happiness is a concept closely related to how the individual perceives himself/herself (eryilmaz, 2010). researches in the literature show that people’s happiness levels are related to their orientation towards goal and their goal commitments. there is evidence that individuals’ progress in achieving their goals has an intermediary effect on subjective well-being interaction of adherence to the target (brunstein, 1993). it is often stated that striving towards individual goals within the framework of personal goal structures gives structure and meaning to that individual’s life (klinger, 1977; little, 1989). empirical evidence has indicated that individuals who are subjectively pursuing personal goals have higher subjective well-being than individuals without a sense of goal orientation (emmons, 1986; freund & baltes, 2002). it is clear that goal commitment and subjective happiness, which are very effective on individuals’ behaviors, should be investigated much more, especially on students. in this context, this study focused on students studying in a faculty of sport sciences and aimed to examine the goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of students according to some variables. for this purpose, answers to the following research questions were sought: rq1. is there a significant difference in the goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of the students in terms of gender variable? rq2. is there a significant difference in the goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of the students in terms of active sport participation variable? rq3. is there a significant difference in the goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of the students in terms of sport type variable? rq4. is there a significant relationship between students’ goal commitment, subjective happiness, and academic grade point averages? 2. method 2.1. sample size the study population of the research consisted of students studying in the faculty of sport sciences at mugla sitki kocman university, in turkey. the sample consisted of 346 students, 127 women and 219 men, who participated in the study voluntarily by the random method. the average age of the students was 21.22 and the academic grade point average was 2.78. 2.2. measurement instruments to determine the level of the goal commitment of the participants the “goal commitment scale”, which was first developed as 9 items by hollenbeck et al. (1989) and then revised with 5 items and one-dimension by klein, wesson, hollenbeck, wright, and deshon (2001) was used. the internal consistency coefficient of the scale was found to be 0.74. then, the turkish adaptation of the scale was made by senel and yildiz (2016). scale statements were measured with a 5-point likert rating (1= i strongly disagree, 5= i strongly agree). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 493-498 495 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group to determine the subjective happiness levels of the participants, the “subjective scale of happiness” developed by lyubomirsky and lepper (1999) and later adapted in turkish by akin and seller (2011) was used. the scale consists of 4 items and one-dimension. in the study made by akin and seller (2011) the reliability coefficient of the scale was determined as 0.62. scale statements were measured with a 7-point likert rating (1= not a very happy person, 7= a very happy person). 2.3. statistical analysis the data were analyzed in spss 22 program. demographic properties were determined by descriptive statistics. cronbach’s alpha coefficients of the scales were found to be quite reliable (0.668 for goal commitment, 0.636 for subjective happiness). in addition, it was observed that the data analyzed by skewness and kurtosis were between +1.5 and -1.5 and showed normal distribution (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). therefore, independent sample t-test was used to compare groups, and the pearson correlation test was used to determine the relationships between variables. 3. findings/results 3.1. demographic properties table-1. demographic properties of the participants. variables categories f % gender female 127 36.7 male 219 63.3 sport type individual sports 179 51.7 team sports 167 48.3 active sport participation yes 170 49.1 no 176 50.9 table 1 shows that most of the participants are male (63.3%), 51.7% of them are doing individual sports and 50.9% of them are actively continuing the sport. 3.2. independent sample t-test table-2. comparison of participants’ goal commitment and subjective happiness levels according to gender, active sport participation and sport type variables. variables gender n mean sd t df p goal commitment total score female 127 22.18 2.348 -.141 344 .887 male 219 22.21 2.469 subjective happiness total score female 127 19.77 4.212 2.943 344 .003** male 219 18.36 4.340 active sport participation n mean sd t df p goal commitment total score yes no 170 176 22.47 21.94 2.313 2.501 2.057 344 .040* subjective happiness total score yes no 170 176 18.92 18.84 4.110 4.565 .177 344 .859 sport type n mean sd t df p goal commitment total score individual sports team sports 179 167 22.24 22.16 2.376 2.477 .322 344 .747 subjective happiness total score individual sports team sports 179 167 18.73 19.05 4.516 4.152 -.689 344 .491 note: *p<0.05; **p<0.01. table 2 indicates the independent sample t-test results between variables. accordingly, there is a significant difference in subjective happiness levels in terms of gender (p<0.01). the subjective happiness levels of female participants are higher than male participants. there is a significant difference in goal commitment levels in terms of active sport participation variable (p<0.05). it is observed that the goal commitment levels of individuals who do active sports are higher than those who do not do sports. on the other hand, there is no significant difference in goal commitment and subjective happiness levels in terms of sport type variable (p>0.05). 3.3. correlation analysis table-3. correlation results. variables academic grade point average goal commitment academic grade point average r 1 p n goal commitment r .116* 1 p .031 n 346 subjective happiness r .098 .190** p .070 .000 n 346 346 note: *p<0.05; **p<0.01. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 493-498 496 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 3 shows that there is a significant and positive relationship at the level of 0.05 between goal commitment and academic grade point average, and a significant and positive relationship at the level of 0.01 between subjective happiness and goal commitment. 4. conclusion this study was carried out to examine the goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of students studying in the faculty of sport sciences according to gender, active sport participation, sport type variables. in addition, relationships between some variables were also examined. according to the results of our study, a significant difference was found in subjective happiness levels in terms of gender variable, and it was seen that subjective happiness levels of female participants were higher than male participants. similar to these results, sezer (2011) and wood, rhodes, and whelan (1989) found that the subjective well-being of women is higher than that of men. the results of both studies support our research. in a different study by huang and humphreys (2012) in sport activity participation and subjective happiness, a significant difference was observed in favor of men in terms of gender variable. however, in some studies, subjective happiness was not differentiated according to gender (certel, bahadir, saracaloglu, & varol, 2015; goksel, caz, yazici, & zorba, 2018; saygın & arslan, 2009; yalız, 2014). when the goal commitment levels were examined, it was seen that there was no significant difference in our research in terms of gender variable. there are studies in the literature with different results. o’connor (2012) in his study, found the goal commitment levels of women higher than men, while jiang (2016) in his study on chinese university students, found the goal commitment levels of men higher than women. similar to our study, onturk, bingol, goksel, and caglayan (2018) observed that target commitment did not differ in terms of gender variable in their studies. in terms of the active sport participation variable, it was found in our study that there was a significant difference in the goal commitment levels of the participants, and the scores of the individuals engaged in active sports were higher. hence, it can be said that the goal commitment of individuals who actively continue to sport increases compared to those who do not do sports. altay, baştuğ, and arıkan (2018) expressed that the goal commitment of individuals engaged in cycling sports increases as the age of sports increases. cekceoglu and esen (2019) observed that they did not differentiate in terms of active sports variable. there was no statistically significant difference in subjective happiness levels in terms of participation in active sports. considering the subjective happiness levels according to the active sports variable, it is remarkable that the individuals who continue active sports have high scores and do not show statistically significant differences. it is clear that sports have a positive effect on subjective happiness levels of individuals (huang & humphreys, 2012; kim, kim, & kim, 2007; matsumoto, sato, asada, & chiashi, 2018). similarly, in the world health organization (2002) and in the studies of mcauley et al. (2000) it was emphasized that sports positively affect the subjective happiness levels of individuals in terms of psychology. in this context, ruseski, humphreys, hallman, wicker, and breuer (2014) found that participation in sports positively affected subjective well-being and suggested that individuals participate in sports activities to increase their level of happiness. however, it was highlighted that individuals with a high sense of freedom in participating in leisure time activities had higher levels of intrinsic motivation, competence, and a sense of happiness (janke, carpenter, payne, & stockard, 2010). in terms of the sport type variable, our research results revealed that the goal commitment and subjective happiness variables did not differ according to the groups. it was observed that there was no significant difference in the goal commitment and subjective happiness levels of the participants according to the individual sports and team sports variables. studies in the literature on these issues are very limited. zhou, heim, and o'brien (2015) in their study, observed that the level of happiness of team athletes is higher than that of individual athletes. finally, relationships between some variables were investigated and a significant and positive relationship was found between goal commitment and subjective happiness. accordingly, as the level of goal commitment of students increases, their subjective happiness level increases. there are studies in the literature that support the results of our research. brunstein (1993) in his study, found the mediating effect of goal adherence and goal attainability on subjective well-being interaction in the progress achieved in reaching the goal. similarly, it was emphasized that there is a positive relationship between commitment to personal goals and subjective well-being (emmons, 1986). in addition, there was a significant and positive relationship between academic grade averages and target commitment levels. as the goal commitment levels of students increase, their academic success increases. ender senel, yildiz, and can (2020) in their study, found that the target attachment increased academic success, and these findings support the results of our research. on the other hand, it is seen in the literature that studies dealing with academic success and goal commitment are limited. to summarize, according to our research results, it can be emphasized that active participation of students in sports will increase their level of goal commitment, and thus their academic success and subjective happiness can be positively affected. 5. recommendation as the researches on goal commitment and subjective happiness are limited, the following recommendations can be given: • new studies can be conducted on goal commitment and subjective happiness especially by considering the type of sport and academic success variables. • in order to understand the issues better, the concepts of goal commitment and subjective happiness can be examined in depth according to different parameters. • both parents and educators should direct students to sports to increase their academic success and happiness. • for higher academic performance, educators should convey the importance of sports to students well. therefore, educators should develop themselves in the field of sports and have knowledge. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 493-498 497 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6. limitations findings revealed by the research are limited with the measurement power of the scales used. in addition, since the research sample consists of only one faculty, research results cannot be generalized. more work is needed to make the issue clearer. references akin, a., & seller, s. a. 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(2015). alcohol consumption, athlete identity, and happiness among student sportspeople as a function of sport-type. alcohol and alcoholism, 50(5), 617-623. available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/alcalc/agv030. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 514 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 514-519, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.514.519 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the motivational persistence levels of the students studying at the faculty of sport sciences according to some demographic characteristics yavuz onturk1 yasin yildiz2 ( corresponding author) 1yalova university, faculty of sport sciences, yalova, turkey. 2aydin adnan menderes university, faculty of sport sciences, aydın, turkey. abstract this study was carried out to investigate the motivational persistence levels of students who received sports education and examine in terms of some demographic variables. in the study, the “motivational persistence scale” consisting of long-term purposes pursuing, current purposes pursuing, recurrence of unattained purposes sub-dimensions was used to measure motivational permanence of the students. the research group consisted of 347 students who voluntarily participated from faculty of sport sciences of mugla sitki kocman university. the data were analyzed through the statistical package program spss 22.0. the demographic information of the students was determined with descriptive statistics. independent t-test was used to compare the subscale scores by gender, and one way anova analysis was used to compare the age groups and overall academic grade averages. the results of the analyzes showed that the motivational persistence levels of the students of the faculty of sport sciences are medium and close to high. in addition, there was no significant difference in terms of the age variable, but it was found that students aged 25 and over were more motivated. further, it has been observed that the students whose academic grade average was 1.00 to 1.99 were higher than the students whose grade average was between 3.00–4.00. keywords: motivational persistence, students, faculty of sport sciences. citation | yavuz onturk; yasin yildiz (2020). investigation of the motivational persistence levels of the students studying at the faculty of sport sciences according to some demographic characteristics. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 514519. history: received: 22 may 2020 revised: 15 july 2020 accepted: 17 august 2020 published: 26 august 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 515 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 515 3. findings / results ......................................................................................................................................................................... 516 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 517 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 518 6. limitations ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 518 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 518 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.514.519&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2038 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5472-8652 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3230-5717 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 514-519 515 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature today, the concept of motivation has become increasingly important, both in the business world and in the field of education. there are many studies in the literature on motivation, which is known as the effort of the individual with respect to its purpose. however, it is thought that the number of studies is limited with the determination and continuity of this motivation or commitment to the goal. therefore, it is thought that this type of research is important since the importance of motivation is parallel to its determination and continuity. 1. introduction motivational persistence has recently been a topic of greater interest for researchers. this is because motivational persistence plays an important role in individuals’ achievements. individuals need more personal resources such as intrinsic motivation in developing behavior for success (yildız & tüfekçioğlu, 2008). during this flow action, people interact with others and acquire knowledge, skills, strategies, beliefs, and attitudes. it is known that motivation is effective in the social environment in the process of learning and self-regulation skills as functions that play a role (schunk & usher, 2019). the term motivation was used as “movere” in latin. motivation, which means move and activates (terzi, mahmut, & gürbüz, 2012) is expressed as the processes that motivate and sustain the person towards the target. these processes are known as personal intrinsic effects that lead to results such as selection, effort, persistence, success, and environmental factors (schunk & dibenedetto, 2020). in other words, motivation is stated as a force that pushes the individual to act decisively and purposefully in order to achieve the targeted result (bahar & özbozkurt, 2020). the motivation concept is a theoretically researched and frequently discussed topic in the educational psychology field. the concept of motivational persistence, which is considered necessary for learning, is considered as the key to success (saricam, 2015). motivational persistence is determined by the intensity of the individual’s emotional and physiological needs (onen & tüzün, 2005). this concept is associated with success and is equivalent to the determination to achieve targets. in other words, this concept states the motivational attitude required to achieve the desired goals. more specifically, it is defined as the tendency of the individual to carry out activities related to his/her goals despite the difficulties, obstacles, exhaustion, long-term disappointment, or low selfperception (akdag, 2020; constantin, holman, & hojbotă, 2011). motivational persistence is expressed as an individual’s endeavor to reach the specified goal and tendency to find the necessary personal resources such as intrinsic motivation to overcome the obstacles that he/she will encounter after making a motivational decision and to continue his/her motivation, and it is also expressed as the individual’s resistance to distracting negative situations (constantin, 2013; man, 2016). motivational persistence is among the important factors that will affect their performance in coping with possible problems that individuals may encounter in their life, equipped with necessary targets in accordance with the information era and reach their goals (argon, i̇smetoğlu, celik yılmaz, & erbaş, 2015). in other words, the motivational persistence means that the individual strives to reach the target as a feature of the cognitive system and continues to find personal resources in order to overcome the problems encountered in this process (bostan, 2015). students experience intense exam pace, peer competition, and job anxiety in order to achieve superior academic success in the university life process, and because this process coincides with the youth period, they are exposed to negative situations such as stress, anxiety, and burnout. the ability of students to overcome these situations is associated with their motivation levels and this situation is thought to be directly related to their motivational persistence (demir & peker, 2017). in addition, students’ motivational persistence and learning motivations are stated to be the most critical determinant of learning quality and success (broussard & garrison, 2004; mitchell, 1992). when the literature is examined, it is seen that there are various studies on motivational persistence (see,(akdag, 2020; bostan, constantin, & aiftincăi andreea, 2014; bostan., 2015; cenberci & beyhan, 2016; chirila & constantin, 2016; constantin et al., 2011; demir & peker, 2017; saricam, akın, akın, & i̇lbay, 2014; saricam., 2015)). in order to contribute to the literature, this study aimed to the determination of the motivational persistence levels of university students who received sports education in an academic context, and to examine them in terms of some demographic variables. in this context, the following research questions were tried to be answered: rq 1. what is the level of motivational persistence of the students of the faculty of sport sciences? rq 2. is there a significant difference between the ages and motivational persistence of the students of the faculty of sport sciences? rq 3. is there a significant difference between the gender and motivational persistence of the students of the faculty of sport sciences? rq 4. is there a significant difference between the academic overall grade averages and motivational persistence of the students of the faculty of sport sciences? 2. method 2.1. research goal in this study, which was carried out to determine the motivational persistence levels of the students of the faculty of sport sciences and to examine them in terms of some demographic variables, the simple random sampling method was used from the accessible universe based on the survey model. the accessible universe is the concrete universe with the real choice that the researcher can reach. simple random sampling, on the other hand, is the most straightforward form of random probability sampling (buyukozturk, cakmak, akgun, karadeniz, & demirel, 2017). 2.2. sample and data collection to determine the motivational persistence levels of the students, the “motivational persistence scale” developed by constantin et al. (2011) and adapted to turkish by saricam et al. (2014) was used. this scale consists of three dimensions (“long-term purposes pursuing”, “current purposes pursuing”, and “recurrence of unattained purposes”) and 13 items. sample size; the universe of the study was made up of students of faculty of sport asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 514-519 516 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sciences of mugla sitki kocman university. as a sample, 347 students (188 female and 159 male) voluntarily participated in the study. 2.3. analyzing of data the analysis of the data was made in spss 22.0 windows program. the demographic properties of the students participating in the study were determined with descriptive statistics. cronbach alpha coefficient was used in the internal consistency calculation of the scale (α=0.712 for long-term purposes pursuing; α=0.785 for current purposes pursuing; α=0.745 for recurrence of unattained purposes). independent t-test was used to compare subscale scores by gender, and one way anova analysis was used to compare age groups and overall academic grade point average. 3. findings / results 3.1. demographic properties table 1 shows that the majority of the participants are between the ages of 20–22 (36.6%). the rate of female (54.2%) participating in the study is higher than that of male. 2.00–2.99 academic grade (42.1%) constitutes the highest grade range. table-1. frequency and percentage distributions for participants’ demographic properties. variables categories f % age 20 – 22 years 127 36.6 23 – 24 years 125 36.0 25 and over 95 27.4 gender female 188 54.2 male 159 45.8 academic grade average 1.00 – 1.99 106 30.5 2.00 – 2.99 146 42.1 3.00 – 4.00 95 27.4 3.2. motivational persistence levels table 2 indicates that the “long-term purposes pursuing”, “current purposes pursuing”, and “recurrence of unattained purposes” levels of students are above the mid-level and very close to the high. table-2. descriptive statistics on participants’ motivational persistence levels. scale n x sd long-term purposes pursuing 347 3.88 .606 current purposes pursuing 347 4.00 .663 recurrence of unattained purposes 347 3.89 .535 note: *p<0.05. 3.3. comparison of motivational persistence levels in terms of academic age group table 3 shows that there is no statistically significant difference between age groups and levels of “long-term purposes pursuing”, “current purposes pursuing”, and “recurrence of unattained purposes” (p>0.05). table-3. comparison of participants’ motivational persistence levels in terms of academic age group variable. scale age groups n x ss f p long-term purposes pursuing 20 – 22 years 127 3.84 .631 .630 .533 23 – 24 years 125 3.89 .601 25 and over 95 3.94 .581 current purposes pursuing 20 – 22 years 127 3.90 .708 2.387 .093 23 – 24 years 125 4.04 .648 25 and over 95 4.08 .608 recurrence of unattained purposes 20 – 22 years 127 3.86 .581 .796 .452 23 – 24 years 125 3.87 .501 25 and over 95 3.95 .512 note: *p<0.05. 3.4. comparison of motivational persistence levels in terms of gender table 4 indicates that there is no statistically significant difference between gender and levels of “long-term purposes pursuing”, “current purposes pursuing”, and “recurrence of unattained purposes” (p>0.05). table-4. comparison of participants’ motivational persistence levels in terms of gender variable. scale gender n x sd t p long-term purposes pursuing female 188 3.85 .613 -1.081 .281 male 159 3.92 .597 current purposes pursuing female 188 4.05 .633 1.461 .145 male 159 3.94 .695 recurrence of unattained purposes female 188 3.90 .542 .652 .515 male 159 3.87 .526 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 514-519 517 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.5. comparison of motivational persistence levels in terms of academic overall grade averages table 5 shows that there is no statistically significant difference between academic overall grade averages and levels of “long-term purposes pursuing” and “recurrence of unattained purposes” (p>0.05). but, there is a significant difference between academic overall grade averages and levels of “current purposes pursuing” (p<0.05). according to the post-hoc tukey test results, it is seen that the students whose academic grade point averages are 1.00–1.99 is significantly higher than those whose academic grade point average is 3.00–4.00. table-5. comparison of participants’ motivational persistence levels in terms of academic overall grade averages. scale grade averages n x sd f p long-term purposes pursuing 1.00 – 1.99 106 3.91 .481 1.375 .254 2.00 – 2.99 146 3.92 .619 3.00 – 4.00 95 3.80 .702 current purposes pursuing 1.00 – 1.99 106 4.13 .603 3.301 .038* 2.00 – 2.99 146 3.96 .646 3.00 – 4.00 95 3.91 .734 recurrence of unattained purposes 1.00 – 1.99 106 3.87 .476 1.923 .148 2.00 – 2.99 146 3.95 .498 3.00 – 4.00 95 3.81 .636 note: *p<0.05. 4. discussion motivation is stated as a force that motivates the individual, and the motivational persistence concept is expressed as the continuation of this power. this study purposed to the determination of the motivational persistence levels of university students who received sports education in an academic context, and to examine them in terms of some demographic variables. our research findings showed that the arithmetic means of the students’ motivational persistence levels were above the mid-level and close to the high: (x=3.88 for long-term purposes pursuing, x=4.00 for current purposes pursuing, and x=3.89 for recurrence of unattained purposes). in the study by cenberci and beyhan (2016) on university students, the arithmetic mean of the answers given for motivational persistence was found to be above the mid-level (x=3.40–4.19), and these values coincide with the findings of our research. in a study conducted by celik and saricam (2018) on 4th-grade university students, it was determined that the students’ motivational persistence score averages were statistically significantly lower. this finding is not in line with the results of our study. the reason why the two study findings are not similar is that the participants are only in the 4th grade and the students of education faculty have exam anxiety. on the other hand, celik and saricam (2018) suggested that this result may be due to students’ interview concerns. unlike these results, argon et al. (2015) found that the students’ motivational persistence had a mid-level of arithmetic average (x=3.32). however, they also concluded that the mean score (x=3.65) of the “current purposes pursuing” subscale was slightly above the mid-level. according to the findings of the difference between the ages and motivational persistence of the students in our study, there was no statistically significant difference between age groups and levels of “long-term purposes pursuing”, “current purposes pursuing”, and “recurrence of unattained purposes” (p>0.05). however, it was observed that the mean score of “current purposes pursuing” (x=4.04 for 23–24 age and x=4.08 for 25 and over) was lower than the other age groups. considering the age of the students, the reason for the high scores may be due to the more experienced students in the age group of 25 and over. cenberci and beyhan (2016) in their research, found that the participants who were over 25 years old had a high score in the “current purposes pursuing” sub-scale. the findings of the researchers support the results of our study. accordingly, it can be said that the motivational persistence of the students depending on their age progress (without any significant difference) continues above the mid-level. according to the findings of the difference between the gender and motivational persistence of the students in our study, there was no statistically significant difference between gender and levels of “long-term purposes pursuing”, “current purposes pursuing”, and “recurrence of unattained purposes” (p>0.05). similar results are found in the literature on motivational persistence in terms of gender variable (duckworth & quinn, 2009; ekinci, yılmaz, & hamarta, 2018). today, especially in sports enterprises, the competitive environment continues without discrimination of women and men. in every field of sports, men and women find the opportunity to work a lot in the context of the sports market. therefore, the lack of a significant difference between motivational persistence and gender in the context of the student in our research can be attributed to the high number of job opportunities in the market. according to the findings of the difference between the academic overall grade averages and motivational persistence of the students in our study, there was no statistically significant difference between academic overall grade averages and levels of “long-term purposes pursuing” and “recurrence of unattained purposes” (p>0.05). however, a significant difference was found between the academic overall grade averages and “current purposes pursuing” (p=.038). accordingly, it was observed that students whose academic overall grade average was between 1.00 and 1.99 had higher levels of “current purposes pursuing” than those whose academic overall grade average was between 3.00 and 4.00 (p>0.05). according to this result, the motivational persistence of students, especially those with a grade point average of 3.00 and above, is considered to be in the negative direction compared to those with a lower grade point average (1.00–1.99). however, it should also be taken into consideration that the subscale of “current purposes pursuing” is significantly higher. madhlangobe, chikasha, mafa, and kurasha (2014) in their study, found a positive relationship between student achievement and motivational persistence. further, there are studies in the literature that motivational persistence is associated with academic success and school life (aypay & eryılmaz, 2011; demir & peker, 2017; lavigne, vallerand, & miquelon, 2007; saricam, 2015). according to these findings, considering the fact that students with a high-grade point average have reached their goals, it is possible that students with a lower grade point average may have a motivational persistence to increase their academic asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 514-519 518 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group success. therefore, in the context of academic grade, it is thought that the reason that only “current purposes pursuing” is observed high in students with low level depends on what was mentioned earlier. 5. conclusion to sum up, as a result of our study, it was observed that the motivational persistence levels of the students of the faculty of sports sciences were close to the middle and high levels. in addition, there was no significant difference between gender variable and motivational persistence. although there was no significant difference in terms of age variable, the motivational persistence of the students 25 and older was higher. another result of our study is that the academic grade point average of students between 1.00 and 1.99 is higher than other students. 5.1. suggestions • increasing the sample size and using different variables in similar studies to be planned in the future will contribute to obtaining more comprehensive results. along with motivational persistence, making comparative studies with the variables that may be specifically related to the students’ goal commitment, academic achievements, and life satisfaction will contribute to the literature. • studies on motivational persistence to be done on secondary school students apart from university students will be important in determining the motivational persistence of the next generation. • designing an education system that will keep students’ motivation at a high level and ensure their persistence should be considered. • considering that learning and education continue throughout life, motivational approaches should be offered to students to achieve their goals and students should be directed to have perseverance. • for university students who will form the next generation, along with persistence, it will be useful to develop various motivational tools that will enable them to set goals, follow long-term goals, and repeat unattainable goals. • positive psychology-oriented education should be applied in order to inform students about motivational persistence, to convince them that it will benefit, and to ensure continuity. 6. limitations we think that not being able to determine detailed personal characteristics is one of the limitations of this study. besides, different demographic features to be used can be added to the personal information form in order to determine the differences between the findings. working with larger sample groups, comparing multiple branches, regions, and universities will also contribute to the literature. references akdag, a. i. 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(2008). comparative study of educational supports, career development opportunities in the schools of physical education and sports and employment opportunities after graduation according to the opinions of students and faculty members. nigde university journal of physical education and sports science, 2(2), 89-97. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 304 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 304-313, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.304.313 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group relationship between smartphone addiction and personality traits ihsan kuyulu1 enes beltekin2 ( corresponding author) 1,2physical education and sport school, bingol university, turkey. abstract the study was realized to examine the personality traits and smartphone addiction levels of high school students. the research group consists of totally 239 students, including 139 males and 100 females studying in sports high school, anatolian high school and vocational high school in şanlıurfa during the 2019-2020 academic years. "smartphone addiction scale" and "five factor personality inventory" were used to obtain data for the purpose of the research. the students participating in the study were asked personal information questions regarding their demographic characteristics. the study was carried out in spss 22 statistical package program and the degree of significance was taken as 0.05. independent sample t (independentsample) and mann whitney-utest in binary comparisons, one-way variance analysis (onewayanova) in multiple comparisons and kruskal wallis analysis in non-normally distributed data, and correlation (pearson) test to determine the relationship between variables. according to the responses given by the students who participated in the study, there was a significant difference between the groups according to the type of school, the state of doing sports, the purpose of using the smartphone, the average grade and the daily usage of the smartphone, while the use of the smartphone and the grade only in the personality characteristics levels. there was a significant difference between the groups in mean variables. according to the results of the correlation analysis, a significant relationship was detected between the personality traits of the students and their smartphone usage levels. keywords: smartphone addiction, personality trait, sports. citation | i̇hsan kuyulu; enes beltekin (2020). relationship between smartphone addiction and personality traits. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 304-313. history: received: 13 february 2020 revised: 18 march 2020 accepted: 27 april 2020 published: 1 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 305 2. material-method ............................................................................................................................................................................ 305 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 306 4. discussion and result ................................................................................................................................................................... 309 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 311 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.304.313&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-5434 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1386-6458 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-5434 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1386-6458 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-5434 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1386-6458 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1686 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-5434 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1386-6458 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 304-313 305 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study has been brought into the literature in terms of whether smartphone addiction and personality characteristics of high school students change according to some variables, and how they reveal the relationship between students' smartphone addiction and personality characteristics. 1. introduction we can say that with the globalizing world, technological developments have increased and technology has gained a crucial place in our daily life and even it has become an important part of our life. in parallel with the technological developments, a rapid change is observed in communication technology. one of the important tools of communication technology is telephones. it is possible to carry out studies on phones with mobile devices until the 19th century (kayabaş, 2013). the phones, which were used only for communication and messaging in the early days, have gained a more sophisticated dimension day by day and started to take an important place in our daily life and are equipped with features that make life easier for the users. with the enhancement of; smartphone, instagram, whatsapp, twitter, facebook and etc. it is observed that social media applications, camera recording, video chat, video recording, navigation, shopping, news tracking etc. make life easier for people. in fact, according to tekin, gunes, and colak (2014) smartphones are among the most useful devices among communication devices. today, smartphones meet many communication needs and help us in obtaining effective information in our lives and learning what is going on in our environment, in our country and in the world (bayhan & işıtan, 2010; noyan, darçın, nurmedov, yılmaz, & dilbaz, 2015). however, technology can have negative effects as well as positive effects. it can be said that the use of smartphones in the world and in our country has become addictive by exceeding its basic purpose and creates various problems in physical, spiritual and daily life (noyan et al., 2015). smart phones have an important place in people's life with the development of technology. smartphone users can handle most of their needs thanks to their phones. smartphones have many features to meet people's needs. for instance; it has many features such as communicating, getting news, shopping, socializing, playing games, expressing their own ideas freely, taking photos, watching movies or series, and even many other things that will contribute to personal development. although these features of the smartphone are not used carefully, it is inevitable to become addictive. according to one of the definitions of the turkish language association, the word addiction is defined as the lack of the necessary skills and self-sufficiency to solve the problems encountered alone and to choose a direction (tdk, 2019). smartphone addiction, on the other hand, is defined as a type of addiction that harms the social relations of users by using excessive and uncontrolled smartphones (fidan, 2016; ozen & topçu, 2017). smart phones increase the risk of addiction due to the fact that they are advanced in terms of processing power and the ability of people to access the internet anytime, anywhere in everyday life (fidan, 2016; kwon, lee, et al., 2013). the use of smart phones both gives pleasure to the person as a result of use and saves them from pressure or anxiety. such reinforcement makes it easy to be addicted to the smartphone (sar & işıklar, 2012). excessive use of the smartphone; causes problems such as fatigue, insomnia, sedentary life, decreased immune system, back or eye fatigue, wrist syndrome, neck muscles fatigue, stiffness, social isolation, family relationship problems, neglect of daily work, cyberbullying, sexual assault and school failure (demir, 2018; gross, 2004). many definitions have been made in the literature about personality which is another subject of this research. some of these definitions are as follows. personality is the orientation and features that persist in a way that cannot be expressed only with the biological situation or social environment in time (taymur & türkçapar, 2012). personality is the way the individual is accustomed to thinking, feeling, perceiving and reacting to the world (magnavita, 2016). personality is the unique form of factors affecting human thinking, feeling, and behavior. personality, which is constantly exposed to internal and external influences, covers all the hereditary, biological and psychological demands, attitudes and behaviors of the individual (funder, 2001). personality is the individual-specific reflection of the factors affecting an individual's perception, way of thinking, attitude and behavior (tiryaki & aykaç, 2013). in the works of eysenck, which struggles to reveal the main dimensions of personality, personality is divided into extraversion and neuroticism. in his later works, eysenck divided his personality into three main branches, including the concept of psychoticism, which means being cold, angry and antisocial in its main dimension. for another personality dimensions were developed by different researchers by factor analysis and prevalence was developed as five-factor personality dimensions. these five factors are; responsibility is neuroticism, extraversion, compatibility and openness to development (miles, fincham, & foster, 2005). as researches between the internet and personality traits of the smartphone increase, social networking sites, which are among the fastest growing applications of the internet, have become the focus of research. social networking sites allow users to interact with other people by providing personalized areas. users show personality traits by sharing information about theirselves on these platforms (gentile, twenge, freeman, & campbell, 2012). this study was performed to determine whether high school students' school addiction and personality traits change according to some variables and whether there is a relationship between students' smartphone addiction and personality traits. 2. material-method the study group of this research, which was carried out to examine the effect of students' personality traits on the levels of smartphone addiction, consists of 239 students, 139 males and 100 females studying in the sports high school, anatolian high school and vocational high school in the city of şanlıurfa during the 2019-2020 academic year. in our research, “survey method” was used as a data collection tool. the questionnaire consists of 3 sections and 61 questions. in the first part, there are 7 expressions about demographic variables. in the second part, “smart phone addiction scale” developed by kwon, kim, cho, and yang (2013) and adapted to turkish by noyan et al. (2015) the “five factor personality inventory” (thefivefactorpersonality inventory), which was adapted in turkish by evinç (2004) was applied in the research. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 304-313 306 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group data collected through the personality trait inventory and smartphone addiction scale were analyzed through the statistical package program spss.22 program and the results were interpreted. descriptive statistics including arithmetic mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage distributions are presented in order to gain insight into demographic information and other group questions. the correlation (pearson) test was applied to determine the relationship between students' personality traits and smartphone addiction levels. in order to determine the personality traits and smartphone addiction levels of students and the sub-dimensions of these variables with some demographic variables, the normality of the distributions (kolmogorov-smirnov) and then skewnessand kurtosis tests were examined. in the study, "normal" expression scores are individuals whose z value varies between -3 and +3, and "extreme values" are those whose z value is outside the range of -3 and +3. however, according to shao (2002) the normal distribution of the data to be used in the study depends on the values of skewness and kurtosis between ± 3. according to test results, independent sample t (independentsample t) was used in binary comparisons and one-way variance analysis (onewayanova) tests in multiple comparisons. if there is a difference between the variables, tukey hsd and dunnet t3 tests were used according to the homogeneity results from the post-hoc tests to determine which group or groups originated from this difference. the results were evaluated at 95% confidence interval, and significance was evaluated at p <0.05 level. 3. findings this section will explain the statistical results of this study. statistical analysis based on the demographic characteristics of the people participating in the research will be included. table-1. distribution of the students according to demographic variables. questions demographic variances n % school sports high school 83 34.7 anatolian high school 88 36.8 vocational high school 68 28.5 purpose of using smartphone social networking (facebook, twitter, etc.) 100 41.8 shopping 83 34.7 communication (whatsapp, message, talking) 38 15.9 research, assignment 18 7.5 gender male 139 58.2 female 100 41.8 grade 9 132 55.2 10 46 19.2 11 52 21.8 12 9 3.8 daily smartphone using time 1 hour and less 76 31.8 2-3 hours 80 33.5 4-5 hours 55 23.0 6 hours and over 28 11.7 do you do sports? yes 184 77.0 no 55 23.0 grade average 40-54 26 10.9 55-74 87 36.4 75-90 102 42.7 91 and over 24 10.0 total 239 100 when table 1 is examined, it was found that 34.7% of the students participating in the study attended sports high school, 36.8% in anatolian high school, and 28.5% in vocational high school. again, it was determined that 58.2% of the students participating in the study were male and 41.8% were female. it is determined that 77.0% of the students do sports and 23.0% do not. in table 2 there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of personality traits and subdimensions of the students participating in the study according to school types, whereas there was a significant difference between the groups in the students' smartphone addiction levels (p <0.05). according to the post-hoc test results to determine which groups the difference is, the smartphone addiction levels of students studying in vocational high schools were found to be significantly higher compared to students studying in anatolian and sports high schools (x = 34.05). according to the answers given by the students who participated in the study to the question of “do you do sports” in table 3 there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of personality traits and subdimensions, whereas there was a significant difference between the groups in the students' smartphone addiction levels (p <0.05). when the table 4 is considered, according to the answers given by the students who participated in the study to the question for which purpose you mostly use your smartphone, a significant difference was found between the groups in personality traits sub-dimensions and in students' smartphone addiction levels (p <0.05). according to the post-hoc test results, it is determined that there was a difference found in the average of the students who use their smartphones in the dimension of personality traits for communication purposes (x = 30.84) and students who use them for research and homework (x = 26.83) are determined. yet, in smart phone addiction levels, there were differences found in the averages of students who use their phones for social sharing purposes (x = 32.65) and students who use their phones for communication purposes (x = 23.86). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 304-313 307 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. comparison of the personality traits and smartphone addiction levels of the students according to school variance. variables sub dimensions school n x s.s f p tukey hsd personality traits level subdimensions extroversion asports high school 83 26.21 5.314 2.112 .123 banatolian high school 88 27.82 5.237 cvocational high school 68 26.69 5.249 emotional balance asports high school 83 24.68 4.566 1.347 .262 banatolian high school 88 25.37 5.122 cvocational high school 68 25.98 4.857 openness to experience asports high school 83 32.97 6.653 .402 .670 banatolian high school 88 33.92 7.692 cvocational high school 68 33.30 6.411 peacefulness asports high school 83 28.21 4.995 1.877 .155 banatolian high school 88 29.59 5.582 cvocational high school 68 29.64 5.341 self discipline asports high school 83 29.03 5.005 1.529 .219 banatolian high school 88 30.45 5.636 cvocational high school 68 29.97 5.422 personality traits level general tota asports high school 83 141.13 21.548 1.577 .209 banatolian high school 88 147.17 23.935 cvocational high school 68 145.60 22.971 smartphone addiction level general total asports high school 83 29.13 12.126 6.200 .002** c> a, b banatolian high school 88 26.88 13.755 cvocational high school 68 34.05 12.117 total 239 note: p<0.01**. table-3. comparison of the personality traits and smartphone addiction levels of the students according to the vraiance of doing sports. variables sub dimensions do you do sports? n x s.s t p personality trait level sub dimensions extroversion yes 184 27.13 5.166 .987 .324 no 55 26.32 5.699 emotional balance yes 184 25.32 4.829 .095 .924 no 55 25.25 5.034 openness to experience yes 184 33.56 7.012 .595 .553 no 55 32.92 6.879 peacefulness yes 184 29.19 5.230 .349 .728 no 55 28.90 5.716 self discipline yes 184 30.14 5.239 1.674 .095 no 55 28.76 5.728 personality trait level general total yes yes 145.35 22.396 .902 .368 no no 142.18 24.608 smartphone addiction level general total yes 184 28.78 12.896 -2.020 .044* no 55 32.80 13.090 total 239 note: p<0.05*. in table 5 according to the answers of the students who participated in the study to the grade point question, a significant difference was found between the groups in terms of personality traits, sub-dimensions and smartphone addiction levels (p <0.05). according to the results, it is determined that the difference in personality traits general scores and sub-dimensions scores is generally between students with a grade point average of 75-90, 91 and above, and students with a grade point average of 40-54, while the difference in students' smartphone addiction levels is only 40-54. it was determined that the students with a gpa between 91 and a student with a 91 gpa and above. according to the answers given by the students who participated in the study in the content of table 6 to the question of daily smartphone usage time, while there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of personality traits general points and sub-dimensions, there was a significant difference between the groups in terms of students' smartphone addiction levels (p <0.05). according to the post-hoc test results to determine between which groups, the difference was derived from, it was found that; between students who use smartphones for 1 hour and less daily and students who use smartphones for more time. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 304-313 308 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. comparison of the personality traits and smartphone addiction levels of the students according to the variance of purpose of using smartphone. variables sub dimensions purpose of using smartphone n x s.s f p dunnet t3 personality trait level sub dimensions extroversion asocial networking (facebook, twitter, etc.) 100 27.29 5.039 .447 .719 bshopping 83 26.66 5.319 ccommunication (whatsapp, message, talking) 38 27.13 5.910 dresearch, assignment 18 25.94 5.428 emotinal balance asocial networking (facebook, twitter, etc.) 100 25.32 4.884 .354 .786 bshopping 83 25.33 4.545 ccommunication (whatsapp, message, talking) 38 25.71 4.837 dresearch, assignment 18 24.27 6.369 openness to experience asocial networking (facebook, twitter, etc.) 100 34.00 6.801 1.016 .386 bshopping 83 32.77 7.289 ccommunication (whatsapp, message, talking) 38 34.15 6.532 dresearch, assignment 18 31.61 7.309 peacefulness asocial networking (facebook, twitter, etc.) 100 29.43 5.884 3.004 .031* c> d bshopping 83 28.48 4.937 ccommunication (whatsapp, message, talking) 38 30.84 3.267 dresearch, assignment 18 26.83 6.428 self discipline asocial networking (facebook, twitter, etc.) 100 29.94 5.243 .704 .550 bshopping 83 29.72 5.245 ccommunication (whatsapp, message, talking) 38 30.47 5.341 dresearch, assignment 18 28.27 6.780 personality trait level general total asocial networking (facebook, twitter, etc.) 100 145.98 23.203 1.267 .286 bshopping 83 142.97 21.774 ccommunication (whatsapp, message, talking) 38 148.31 20.766 dresearch, assignment 18 136.94 29.502 smartphone addiction level general total asocial networking (facebook, twitter, etc.) 100 32.65 13.785 5.192 .002** a> c bshopping 83 28.19 10.446 ccommunication (whatsapp, message, talking) 38 23.86 13.073 dresearch, assignment 18 32.66 14.903 total 239 note: p<0.05* p<0.01** . table-5. comparison of the personality traits and smartphone addiction levels of the students according to the grade point variance. variables sub dimensions grade average n x s.s f p tukey hsd personality trait level sub dimensions extroversion a40-54 26 24.19 5.344 4.132 .007** d> a c> a b55-74 87 26.44 5.343 c75-90 102 27.71 4.983 d91 and over 24 28.45 5.332 emotional balance a40-54 26 24.73 4.468 .385 .764 b55-74 87 25.06 4.699 c75-90 102 25.67 4.885 d91 and over 24 25.25 5.899 openness to experience a40-54 26 30.00 5.656 2.813 .040* c> a b55-74 87 33.19 6.469 c75-90 102 34.28 7.177 d91 and over 24 34.25 8.258 peacefulness a40-54 26 27.00 4.955 2.147 .095 b55-74 87 28.81 5.531 c75-90 102 29.79 5.144 d91 and over 24 29.75 5.423 self discipline a40-54 26 27.07 4.914 3.787 .011* d> a c> a b55-74 87 29.40 5.394 c75-90 102 30.52 5.010 d91 and over 24 31.33 6.315 personality trait level general total a40-54 26 133.00 21.052 3.534 .016* c> a b55-74 87 142.93 23.111 c75-90 102 148.00 21.460 d91 and over 24 149.04 26.376 smartphone addiction level general total a40-54 26 34.53 13.276 3.482 .017* a> d b55-74 87 30.16 12.027 c75-90 102 29.67 13.448 d91 and over 24 22.95 12.400 total 239 note: p<0.05* p<0.01**. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 304-313 309 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. comparison of personality characteristics and smartphone addiction levels of students according to the variance of daily smartphone usage time. variables sub dimensions daily smartphone usage time n x s.s f p tukey hsd persona trait level sub dimensions extroversion a1 hour and less 76 27.21 5.938 .144 .934 b2-3 hours 80 26.66 5.532 c4-5 hours 55 26.92 4.549 d6 hours and over 28 27.07 4.189 emotional balance a1 hour and less 76 24.32 5.274 2.101 .101 b2-3 hours 80 25.28 4.763 c4-5 hours 55 26.07 4.459 d6 hours and over 28 26.53 4.459 openness to experience a1 hour and less 76 32.90 7.642 .265 .851 b2-3 hours 80 33.68 7.203 c4-5 hours 55 33.38 6.748 d6 hours and over 28 34.10 4.693 peacefulness a1 hour and less 76 29.44 5.483 .249 .862 b2-3 hours 80 28.73 5.593 c4-5 hours 55 29.29 4.980 d6 hours and over 28 29.07 5.047 self discipline a1 hour and less 76 29.68 6.435 .801 .494 b2-3 hours 80 29.90 4.872 c4-5 hours 55 29.23 5.206 d6 hours and over 28 31.14 3.658 personal trait level general total a1 hour and less 76 143.57 26.430 .254 .859 b2-3 hours 80 144.27 22.497 c4-5 hours 55 144.90 20.984 d6 hours and over 28 147.92 17.600 smartphone addiction level general total a1 hour and less 76 20.77 10.923 28.096 .000*** b,c,d> a c,d> b b2-3 hours 80 30.56 11.842 c4-5 hours 55 36.50 9.977 d6 hours and over 28 38.14 12.633 total 239 note: p<0.001***. table-7. correlation analysis that reflects the relationship between the personality traits sub-dimensions of the students and the general personality trait, smartphone addiction levels. variables parameter extroversion emotional balance openness to experience peacefulness self discipline personal trait general smartphone addiction general extroversion r 1 p n 239 emotional balance r .515** 1 p .000 n 239 239 openness to ecperience r .647** .580** 1 p .000 .000 n 239 239 239 peacefulness r .608** .558** .562** 1 p .000 .000 .000 n 239 239 239 239 self discipline r .625** .617** .609** .610** 1 p .000 .000 .000 .000 n 239 239 239 239 239 personal trait general r .825** .782** .851** .806** .837** 1 p .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 239 239 239 239 239 239 smartphone addiction general r .057 .264** .074 .151* .066 .142* 1 p .378 .000 .258 .020 .313 .028 n 239 239 239 239 239 239 239 note: p<0.001*** p<0.05* when table 7 is reviewed, when we look at the correlation analysis results to determine the relationship between students 'personality traits and smartphone addiction levels, one of the sub-dimensions of students' personality traits; emotional balance, soft-headedness and general personality traits and a positive correlation were found between smartphone addiction levels (p <0.05, p <0.001). 4. discussion and result the study was carried out to examine the smartphone addiction levels and personality traits of students studying in high school. the research group consisted of 239 students, 139 men and 100 women studying in sports high school, anatolian high school and vocational high school in şanlıurfa during my 2019-2020 academic years. while there was no significant difference between the groups in the personality traits and sub-dimensions of the students participating in the study, according to the school types, there was a significant difference between the groups in the smartphone addiction levels of the students. as a result of the statistical analysis, it has been asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 304-313 310 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group understood that vocational high school students' smartphone addiction levels are higher than those of sports high school and anatolian high school students. when the body of the literature is examined; cap (2017) compared the schools in which students were present in their research conducted on 1243 high school students studying in pendik district of istanbul according to their average scores from their personality inventory and statistically significant results were obtained in all sub-dimensions except mildness. in the study conducted by aras (2019) it was observed that students studying in sports high school had a higher softness score than imam hatip high school and vocational high school students. in addition, when the mean scores are examined, the high school type with the highest extroversion score is the sports high school; it is understood that students studying in science high school are emotionally balanced, softer, more open to experience and more self-disciplined. when the literature about the smartphone addiction of our study is examined; the study conducted by cakır and oğuz (2017) was conducted to examine the relationship between smartphone addiction levels and loneliness levels of high school students. it is concluded that students who attend public school have a higher average in terms of cyber-oriented relationships in which students' smartphone addiction level differs according to school type. in the research carried out by göktaş (2019) a statistically significant difference was found between the school where the adolescents included in the study continue and their smartphone addiction. while these studies support our study; contrarily to this situation, there are studies in which there is no statistically significant difference between smartphone addiction and school type variable (kiziltoprak, 2018; meral, 2017). in the body of the literature, we see that students' use of social media, as well as their phone addiction, varies according to the type of school. there is a significant difference between students' attitudes towards school type and social media against vocational and technical anatolian high school; in other words, it is seen that anatolian high school and anatolian imam hatip high school students' attitudes towards social media are more positive. in a study conducted by atalay (2014) social media attitudes of high school students differed according to the type of school; it is concluded that the attitudes of students attending vocational high schools towards social media are higher than that of anatolian high school and general high school students. similarly, argin (2013) states that there is a significant difference between secondary school and high school students' attitudes towards school type and social media in favor of students attending secondary and commercial vocational high schools. in another study, it was revealed that the usage period of social networks of high school students varies in favor of students who see students in vocational and general high schools according to the type of school variable (ok, 2013). we can interpret that high school students' reason for their high smartphone addiction is due to the lack of socialization opportunities or because they need more smart phones for their professional classes. according to the answers given by the students who participated in the study to the question of do you play sports, there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of personality traits and sub-dimensions, whereas there was a significant difference between the groups in the smartphone addiction levels of the students. when the studies on sports conditions in the literature are examined; in the study where saygılı, atay, eraslan, and hekim (2015) studied the relationship between the personality traits and academic achievements of a total of 214 secondary school students studying and not doing sports, they obtained some statistical results between their genders according to their personality traits. according to this situation, they stated that they did not find a statistically significant difference between the gender variable according to their extraversion, emotional balance and self-discipline sub-dimensions. in many studies, it was found that the extraversion feature of sports participants was better (courneya & hellsten, 1998; egloff & gruhn, 1996; piedmont, hill, & blanco, 1999). in addition; courneya and hellsten (1998) found that the emotional imbalances of the people who exercise are also high and state that the personality traits of individuals dealing with different sports branches are also different (saygılı et al., 2015). when the literature is analyzed in the literature, there is no study related to smart phone and sports. it is thought that this study will serve as an example for future studies. the smartphone addiction of students doing sports was lower than those who did not do sports. the reason for this may be that the students move away from the phone when they do sports and that they derive some of the needs they do with the phone (socialization, stress relief, desire to get away from the negative conditions, etc.) with sports. according to the answers given by the students participating in the study to the question of what purpose are you using your smartphone for the most purpose, there was a significant difference between the personality traits sub-dimensions and mildness levels and students' smartphone addiction levels. according to the post-hoc test results to determine which groups the difference is between, the average of the students who use their smartphones in terms of communication for their communication and homework are determined from the sub-dimensions of the personality traits, while the smart phone addiction levels of the students there was a significant difference between the students who use social sharing and those who use communication. it is seen that studies on personality and social media are looked at rather than personality traits and smartphone addiction studies in the literature. in general, inward and extroverted personality traits of personality traits were examined. as an example of these studies; according to burn-thoughtful (2016) it was found that there is a very weak positive positive relationship between “sharing need” and introverted-extroverted personality traits of private high school students. in other words, as the extraversion personality trait increases, the level of sharing need sub-dimension also increases. it is seen that this result is consistent with the results of the studies carried out at home and abroad. in addition to these studies; we see that the purpose of social media use varies according to personality characteristics (ateş, 2014; chen & marcus, 2012; gosling, augustine, vazire, holtzman, & gaddis, 2011; harbaugh, 2010; mckenna & bargh, 2000; sumner, byers, & shearing, 2011; valkenburg, schouten, & peter, 2005). these studies support the research. when the literature about the purpose of using smart phone is examined; according to koçyiğit (2019) as a result of the analysis conducted in order to examine the purpose and gender relationship of adolescents in groups diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (adhd) and not diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder; it is observed that female students in the adhd group use their smart phones mostly for entertainment purposes (10.4%), while female students in the group without adhd use them for social media purposes (17.1%). in the findings, it was found that male students mostly used their phones for entertainment purposes in both groups. ada, çiçek, and kaynaky (2013) emphasizes that factors such as the desire to asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 304-313 311 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group communicate with other people, sharing information and maintaining social relations are among the reasons why girls turn to social media. chóliz (2012) states that using the smartphone for entertainment purposes can be an indicator of prestige among adolescents. in the light of this information, it is thought that female students' motivation to use smartphones varies between groups. when the findings were analyzed according to the purpose of internet use in göktaş (2019) a statistically significant difference was found between the smartphone addiction of high school students and the purpose of internet use. it has been observed that students using the internet for social media are more smartphone addicted. when the literature is analyzed, results are observed in parallel with our study. in a study by unal (2015) students' smartphone addiction levels; 85,27% of internet surfers, 83,67% of social network followers and 83,91% of photographers. while there is a statistically significant difference between the purpose of using the smartphone, which is closely related to the purpose of internet use, and smartphone addiction, it is observed that this difference is higher among the users who use the phone with the mind for social media use (meral, 2017). uğur and koc (2015) stated in their research that smart phones are used more and more in schools and few students use their smart phones for educational purposes. according to judd (2014) it is observed that the versatile media tools connected via smartphones and facebook, instagram, whatsapp usage are very time consuming platforms, so each of them negatively affects school success independently. these studies support our study. according to the answers given by the students who participated in the study, the mean scores of their personality traits, sub-dimensions and smartphone addiction levels were determined. according to the post-hoc test results to determine between which groups the difference is, the difference in personality trait general scores and sub-dimensions scores is generally between students with a grade point average of 75-90, students with a grade point average of between 40 and 54. while determining the differences in students' smartphone addiction levels, it was determined that the difference was only between the students with a grade point average of 40-54 and those with a grade point average of 91 and above. when studies on personality traits are examined in the literature; in cap (2017) there is a significant difference between students' success levels and adjective-based personality traits in favor of students with very good success levels; in other words, it is seen that the personality traits of very successful students are more positive than the personality structures of students who are successful and not successful. peker, eroğlu, and ada (2012) also stated that empathic tendencies predict gender and perceived academic success according to the findings of the study they conducted. according to the findings obtained from binali (2015) research, a statistically significant positive relationship was found between the grade point average of the participants and the total of personality questionnaire, extroversion, lying sub-factor. according to lounsbury and landers (2006) responsible individuals do not use the internet much because they are engaged in academic activities such as taking notes and storing notes, they use it for more academic purposes. the opposite is true for incompatible and introverted people. in a study, it was found that people with good extraversion and openness feature use social networks more (correa, hinsley, & de zuniga, 2010). when studies on smartphone addiction are examined in the body of the literature; while the findings obtained from göktaş (2019) show that smartphone addiction has the biggest direct effect on school success (cgpa); it is seen that the biggest effect on school success in total factor of being not online. besides this study; there are studies supporting the negative relationship between smartphone addiction and school success (dirik, 2016; kiziltoprak, 2018; meral, 2017; süler, 2016; uğur & koc, 2015; yıldırım, 2018). these studies are in the quality of supporting our work. according to the responses given by the students who participated in the study to the question of daily smartphone usage time, there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of personality traits and sub-dimensions, whereas there was a significant difference between the groups in the smartphone addiction levels of the students. according to the results of the hoc test, it was determined that the difference was between students who use smartphones for 1 hour and less and students who use smartphones for more. when the body of the literature is examined; in the study realized by kiziltoprak (2018) it has been observed that as long as high school students' smartphone usage time increases, there is a slight increase in “positive expectations”, “overuse” and “social network addiction” values of smartphone addictions and smartphone addiction. in the study of cakır and oğuz (2017) there was a significant relationship found between smartphone use time and addiction. according to the results obtained from other studies; (genç-demirağ, 2017; meral, 2017; yıldırım, 2018) the results of the individuals that increase their time on mobile phones increase statistically significantly. these studies are in the quality of supporting our study. in the last finding of our research; when the correlation analysis results considered which was done to determine the relationship between students 'personality traits and smartphone addiction levels, there was a positive significant relation found between emotional balance, peacefulness and general personality traits and smart phone addiction levels among students' sub-dimensions. in the body of the literature; in his master's thesis titled “relationship between smartphone addiction and personality traits in university students", according to karahancı (2018) students' emotional balance level increases the total level of smartphone addiction. students' extraversion, self-control, openness to development, and peacefulness levels do not affect the total level of smartphone addiction (karahancı, 2018). with these conducted studies, we can say that personality traits affect smartphone addiction and this finding should be taken into consideration when working on people with smartphone addiction. references ada, s., çiçek, b., & kaynaky, y. g. 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(2018). investigation of the relationship between adolescents' subjective well-being and parental attitudes and smartphone addiction in terms of various variables. master thesis, sakarya university, sakarya. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_bts&arama=word&guid=tdk.gts.5c7ec5595a5cd8.84499078 146 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 2, 146-162, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.146.162 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group determining the teacher education needs for the treatment of the problem behaviors of students with autism spectrum disorder fatih kocak1 hakan sari2 ( corresponding author) 1dr., necmettin erbakan university, ahmet keleşoğlu education faculty, special education department. konya, turkey. 2dr., necmettin erbakan university, special education department, konya, turkey. abstract this study was carried out to test the effect of the training program developed for teachers who are involved in the education of students with asd to enable them to provide quality education in the education and training process. to determine the teacher training needs for the treatment of problem behaviors that occur in students with autism spectrum disorder (asd) is the aim of this study. for this purpose, inter-views under four sub-headings were conducted. these titles are the determination of behavior, programming, program implementation, and program evaluation. in the research, a qualitative case study design was preferred. the data were obtained from 22 teachers working with asd students through face-to-face interviews, audio and video recordings using semi-structured interview forms. the analysis of the data was done through the descriptive analysis technique. as a result of the research, most of the teachers stated that they did not find themselves sufficient regarding the problem behaviors and treatment of students with asd. the in-depth results of the study were discussed in line with the teacher needs, relevant qualitative research, and implications for future research and applications were suggested. keywords: autism spectrum disorder, needs analysis, problem behaviors, coping, teacher training needs. citation | fatih kocak; hakan sari (2021). determining the teacher education needs for the treatment of the problem behaviors of students with autism spectrum disorder. asian journal of education and training, 7(2): 146-162. history: received: 10 may 2021 revised: 3 june 2021 accepted: 30 june 2021 published: 19 july 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: this article has been produced and translated from the master's thesis titled “otizm spektrum bozukluğu olan öğrencilerle çalışan öğretmenlere problem davranışlarla baş etme becerisi kazandırmaya dönük olarak hazırlanan eğitim programının etkililiği”. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 147 2. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 148 3. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 157 4. results and implications .............................................................................................................................................................. 160 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 161 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.146.162&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/3101 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0490-3616 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4528-8936 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 147 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by testing the effect of the training program developed for teachers who are involved in the education of students with asd to enable them to provide quality education in the education and training process. 1. introduction teacher training is an important topic in special education, as in all levels of education. nowadays, the thought that each student can exhibit unique problem behaviors due to the different characteristics of each student has increased the importance given to the education of students with special needs. parallel to this idea, the purpose of special education is defined as providing opportunities for students to reveal their potential and use them at the highest level, to become self-sufficient, environmentally compatible, and productive individuals. the quality of special education services depends on the quality of teacher who will provide these services (akçamete, 2003; kargin, 1997; sarı, 2003). since teaching has strategic importance among other professions in terms of better upbringing, development, and education of students who are the adults of the future, this research will have strategic importance in terms of the teaching profession of the future. recently, with the increase in the number of children with autism, specially trained teachers are needed for these children to receive special education, and the importance of gaining practical competence for these teachers is emphasized (national autism center (nac), 2009; safran, 2008; smith et al., 2007). for this reason, birkan (2009) argues that besides criteria such as the intensity of education given to individuals with autism and starting education at an early age, educator competencies are an important variable that directly affects the results of educational services. need is the difference between an existing situation and an ideal situation (reviere, berkowitz, carter, & ferguson, 1996). for teachers, when it comes to education, learning, and teaching, it becomes important to identify needs, to make better decisions about planning education, to be more responsive to students, parents, and education politicians, to determine what priority needs are, and to use educational resources efficiently and effectively (witkin & berry, 1975). needs analysis; (1) the process of defining the outcome, product, or outputs in curriculum development, (2) what to teach and how to evaluate, (3) a method that determines the required and desired innovation (kaufman, 1975). the most important step that will make the program functional in curriculum development studies in education is to identify, evaluate and analyze the needs. program development focuses on the needs of individuals, society, subject/subject area, and environment. since need assessment is a process, planning is required to determine how this process can take place. the steps in determining the needs and the substeps are shown below. table-1. three-stage plan for needs assessment (witkin and autschuld, 1995). stage 1 pre-assessment (exploration) stage 2 identification (data collection) stage 3 final assessment planning for needs assessment defining the content, boundaries, and purpose of the needs assessment establishing priority needs at all applicable levels defining the general objectives of needs assessment collecting data on needs considering alternative solutions define the basic needs area or topics identify priority needs develop an action plan for implementing solutions defining the existing information about the area of need performing the analysis at level 1, 2 and 3 evaluating the need determination assessment 1) data collection 2) resources 3) method 4) use of data analyze and synthesize all data combine results outputs: preparing priority plan for stages 2 and 3, creating an assessment plan to identify needs outputs: setting criteria for high priority needs-based actions outputs: action plans, written-oral presentations, and report the stages of determining the needs are given in table 1. needs analysis stages consist of planning of needs assessment, data collection and final evaluation. in this study, data were collected by taking into account the opinions of teachers working in the field for the individual basis, family expectations for the community variable, and the opinions of field experts for the subject area variable in the needs analysis process. • method in this section, the topics of research model, participants, data collection tools, and analysis of data are included. 1.1. research model a qualitative case study design was preferred in this study. case studies can be based on a mixture of qualitative and quantitative situations, or they can be used as an internal validity study of the research. a case study has an important place in program evaluation studies. a case study is one of the types of systematic design that includes steps such as gathering information, organizing the information gathered, interpreting it, and reaching research findings (merriam, 1988). hitchcock, hitchcock, and hughes (1995) stated that one of the features that the case study should have is a way of presenting the special situation that will enable the subject to be richly presented. in a case study, emphasis is placed on the draft of studying what is best understood from the asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 148 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group situation instead of generalization (denzin & lincoln, 2000). in the study, descriptive case study, one of the case study types, was determined and this approach is descriptive. this approach helps to interpret other similar data, especially if there is a reason that practitioners have little knowledge of an application or a program. 1.2. participants 22 teachers were interviewed at the stage of determining the needs. teachers, working in special education classes and schools in different regions of turkey were selected from those participating in in-service activities in various provinces. an easily accessible sample selection method was used in the selection of the study group. the distribution of the participants in the needs analysis process based on seniority and gender is given in the table below. table-2. demographic distribution of the participants in the needs analysis process. 0-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years 21 and above f m f m f m f m f m 1 2 4 3 3 2 3 1 2 1 3 7 5 4 3 total: 22 when we look at the characteristics of the participants in table 2, it is seen that 22 teachers consist of 13 female and 9 male teachers, and it is the largest group of teachers who have worked for 6-10 years (n:7). 1.3. data collection process and data collection tools the data in the study were collected through the semi-structured interview form and demographic information form developed by the researchers in line with the literature. the interview technique is one of the important research techniques in revealing feelings and thoughts about the process, result, and collecting information about situations (stewart & cash, 1985). it is one of the convenient techniques to collect more detailed information from people. in this process; the relevant literature was searched and the question areas related to the need analysis were determined and these determined question areas were presented to the opinions of the field experts. it was revised according to the opinions of the experts. the questions regarding the areas determined to be asked in the interviews were prepared in a semi-structured manner. what? and why? directing markers were also added to the questions. corrections and additions were made according to the feedback from field experts regarding the questions. after the data acquisition step of the need assessment process was developed, a semi-structured interview form was finalized. data were collected using a face-to-face interview and a voice recording system. in the preparation of the interview questions developed by the researcher; attention was paid to principles such as understanding the questions easily and each one for a single dimension and not directing the respondent. the opinions of the experts of the subject area and special education were taken to check to what extent the prepared interview form serves the purpose of determining the needs, its clarity, and applicability. in line with the suggestions of the experts, the interview form was rearranged and the question instructions were finalized. semi-structured interview form questions for determining the needs started with a basic question. the basic question in the form was "as a special education teacher, do you find yourself competent about the problem behaviors that occur in students with asd and their treatment?". then, the training needs of teachers were tried to be determined in 15 questions about determining the problem behavior, creating a program for the treatment of the determined problem behavior, and applying and evaluating the developed program. 1.4. data analysis semi-structured interviews and written transcripts conducted by the researcher with the teachers, audio/video recordings from which the interviews were obtained (total audio/video recording time was 14.5 hours = 870 minutes) were scripted without correction on them, and the words expressed by the teachers were written as they were heard. after scripting the documents, a total of 116 pages of qualitative data was obtained in word form. preliminary themes reflecting the opinions of the participants were created by repeated reading and taking notes for the written transcripts. the researcher examined the appropriateness of the themes by evaluating the interviews with the teachers independently from each other. during the data analysis process, descriptive analysis of the data was carried out on the themes created. to ensure internal validity in research; expert opinions were received regarding the questions in the forms, research data, and comments. besides, in order to ensure internal validity, 25% of the participants (3 teachers) were shown the results and comments made after the analysis of the data, and participant confirmation was provided. in this study, the transferability (external validity) of the study was provided by presenting examples of the sentences that the teachers gave their opinions, that is, by making "direct quotations". to ensure internal reliability, an expert was asked to perform a consistency review. as a result of the analysis, it was determined that the relations established between the analysis approaches and the results and the data were consistent. 2. findings regarding the purpose of the study, “in line with the determination of teacher training needs for the treatment of problem behaviors that occur in students with autism spectrum disorder (asd); findings for a. determination of behavior, b. creating a program, c. program implementation, d. program evaluation was tried to be presented under 15 question titles in the section from 18 graphic / figure. findings for determining teacher training needs for determining problem behaviors. in graph 1, opinions about whether teachers are sufficient in dealing with problem behaviors are given. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 149 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. distribution of the answers given to the question "as a special education teacher," do you find yourself competent regarding the problem behaviors that occur in students with asd and their treatment? " according to the distribution of the data in the figure 1, "as a special education teacher," do you find yourself adequate regarding the problem behaviors and treatment of students with asd? " when the main question of the research is asked to the participants; while 10 (45%) of 22 participants answered “yes, i find it sufficient”, 12 (55%) participants answered, “no, i do not find it sufficient”. question 1: as a special education teacher, "what are your opinions about whether you have sufficient knowledge about your basic knowledge on problem behaviors?" while explaining the graphical analysis data in this question of the needs analysis study, it is discussed in two parts. these have been explained below in the form of those who responded to "have sufficient knowledge and to indicate the source of this knowledge" in their opinions according to question 1, and those who responded to "not have sufficient knowledge and why". figure-2. the distribution chart of the respondents regarding "having sufficient knowledge" to question 1. in figure 2, the participants (n = 22) "what are your opinions about that you have sufficient knowledge about your basic knowledge on problem behaviors?" when the word codes of the answers to the question were transformed into themes, the answers of 8 (36.4%) participants were collected under the theme of “individual efforts”. the responses of four (18.2%) participants were evaluated within the scope of the theme "obtaining from specialists and higher education" and 4 (18.2%) of the participants were evaluated within the scope of the theme "lifelong learning". in line with the answers of three (13.6%) participants, it is seen that the source from which they acquired their knowledge emerged as "compulsory education-formal education", and with the answers of 3 (13.6%) participants, a theme emerged as "technology and research”. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 150 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-3. the distribution chart of the respondents regarding "not having sufficient knowledge" to question 1. when figure 3 above, which is the continuation of question 1, is examined, "what are the opinions of the participants (n = 22) about not having enough knowledge about basic knowledge on problem behaviors?" the question has been asked. when the answers given to this question were transformed into themes, the answers of 13 (59.1%) participants were evaluated under the theme of “lack of individual effort”. the responses of three (13.6%) participants were collected under the theme of "lifelong learning". "specialist and upper education" given by two (9.1%) participants were stated within the scope of the theme. the responses of one (4.5%) participant were evaluated under the theme "compulsory education-formal education" and 1 (4.5%) participant's responses were evaluated within the scope of the "procedural and managerial" theme. q2: what are your views about accepting or not accepting behavior problems in your student observations? figure-4. the distribution chart of the respondents for question 2. in figure 4, the participant's (n = 22) "what are your views about the behavior of the student, accepting or not accepting problems? when the word code themes were created, the responses of 22 (100%) participants and the answers of the "individual characteristics, dangers and anxieties" theme and 11 (50%) of the participants were collected under the theme of "development and learning characteristics". seven (31.8%) participants were evaluated in the themed title "environment and physical conditions", 6 (27.3%) respondents "looking at their peers", and 5 (22.7%) respondents' family and environmental impact”. the theme was determined as "characteristics related to socialization" of four (18.2%) participants. it is seen that the responses of one (4.5%) participant were evaluated within the scope of the theme "rules" and the responses of 1 (4.5%) participant were evaluated within the scope of the "self-harm" theme. question 3: what are your opinions about what should be considered when determining the causes of problem behavior? asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 151 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-5. distribution chart of the respondents to question 3. when figure 5 is examined, the participant's (n = 22) "what are your opinions about what should be considered while determining the causes of problem behaviors?" when the words (codes) were transformed into themes, the answers of all 22 (100%) participants were specified under the theme of "characteristic of behavior". it is seen that with the answers of fourteen (66.6%) participants, the theme of "the environment where the behavior is shown" was formed. the responses of six (27.3%) participants were evaluated with the theme "its effect on the individual". it is seen that with the responses of three (13.6%) participants, the themes “according to the literature” and the responses of 3 (13,6%) respondents “according to the forms”. question 4: what are your views on which practices and activities should be used when determining the causes of problem behaviors? figure-6. distribution chart of the answers to question 4. when figure 6 is examined, the participants (n = 22) "what are your opinions about which practices and activities should be used while determining the causes of problem behaviors?" 22 (100%) of all respondents observed that the theme was created as "according to the behavior registration form". in terms of the responses of four (18.2%) participants, "alternative techniques" were evaluated within the scope of the theme "according to the screening studies" and with the answers of 4 (18.2%) participants. with the responses of two (9.1%) participants, the theme titled "process-based studies" was created. the answer of one (4.5%) participant is seen to be the theme of "collaborative techniques". b. findings of determining teacher training needs for preparing problem behavior treatment program; question 5: what steps do you take in determining an outcome (goal) while creating a behavior change program? what are your views on this question? asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 152 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-7. scatter chart of those who answered question 5. when figure 7 is examined, the participants (n = 22) "which steps do you follow in determining the gain (goal) while creating a behavior change program? while the answers given to the question were transformed into theme titles by looking at the word (code) frequency numbers, the answers of 22 (100%) participants were collected within the scope of the theme "according to the behavior determination form". according to the answers given by three (13.6%) participants, it was seen that a theme of "positive effect" was created. the answer of one (4.5%) participant was based on the theme "according to the interests and wishes of the individual", 1 (4.5%) of the participant's answer and the theme "from his old plans" and 1 (4.5%) respondent's answer was a theme "to the reason". question 6: when creating a behavior change program, what are your opinions about creating content and learning experiences suitable for the outcome you have determined? figure-8. distribution chart of the answers to question 6. when the figure regarding the frequency and percentage distribution of the data in figure 8 is examined (n = 22), the participant asked "what are your opinions about the creation of content and learning experiences suitable for the outcome you have determined while creating a behavior change program?" the question has been asked. accordingly, it is seen that the theme "according to the individual" was created with the answers of 16 (72.7%) participants. the responses of 4 (18.2%) participants were evaluated within the scope of the theme "according to the form information" with the answers of 4 (18.2%) participants, where the theme was created "according to generalizability and dissemination". it is seen that the responses of three (13.6%) participants emphasize the theme "according to cooperation with stakeholders". the theme was created with the answers of 2 (9.1%) participants and "with the help of field experts", 1 (4.5%) of the participants answered the theme "according to the process and opportunities" and 1 (4.5%) of the participants as it has been created within the scope of the theme titled “according to its preventive features”. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 153 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group question 7: what are your opinions about determining the method and technique suitable for the outcomes, content, and learning experiences you determined while creating a behavior change program? figure-9. distribution chart of the answers to question 7. when figure 9 was examined (n = 22), the participant asked, "what are your opinions about determining the method and technique suitable for the outcomes, content, and learning experiences you have determined while creating a behavior change program?" the rates of answering this question are based on frequency and percentage distributions; with the responses of 8 (36.4%) participants, it is seen that the theme "according to the individual" was determined. it is seen that the theme “with the help of field experts and resources” was created with the responses of 7 (31.8%) participants, and 7 (31.8%) with the answers of the participants, within the scope of the theme of "moderation principle". the responses of 3 (13.6%) participants showed that the theme "according to cooperation with stakeholders" was emphasized. responses of 2 (9.1%) participants were formed within the scope of the theme "according to the form information" and again with 2 (9.1%) "according to the behavior". question 8: what are your opinions about determining the tools and approaches used in measurement and evaluation while creating a behavior change program? figure-10. distribution chart of the answers to question 8. when figure 10 is examined, the participants (n = 22) "what are your opinions about determining the tools and approaches used in measurement and evaluation while creating a behavior change program?" the theme titles were created by looking at the word (code) frequency numbers in their answers to the question. with the answers given by 22 (100%) of the participants, the theme "according to the form information" was created. in the response of one (4.5%) participant, the theme "with the help of field experts and resources" was determined. in the answer given by one (4.5%) participant, it was evaluated within the scope of the theme titled "according to the individual". c. findings for determining teacher training needs for application of problem behavior treatment program; question 9: what are your views on transforming the developed behavior change program into plan steps? asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 154 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-11. distribution chart of the respondents to question 9. when figure 11 is examined, the question “what are your opinions about transforming the developed behavior change program into plan steps?” has been asked to the participant (n = 22) in the study. accordingly, a title with the theme of “behavior and performance determination” was created for 15 (68.2%) participants. the answers given to question 9 by six (27.3%) participants were evaluated within the scope of the theme "according to aba". according to the answers of four (18.2%) participants, it is seen that the theme titled "form information" was determined. the answers given by two (9.1%) participants formed a theme of “cooperation”. with the answer of 1 (4.5%) participant, it is seen that the theme “according to its generalizability and dissemination” was formed and 1 (4.5%) participant formed the theme of “alternative practices”. question 10: what are your views about who and how a team should be formed while preparing the behavior change plan? figure 12a "what are your opinions about who should a team consist of while preparing the behavior change plan?" and theme titles were created by looking at the frequency numbers and content similarities of the codes that were repeated to the least. accordingly, according to the answers given by all 22 (100%) participants, the theme "there should be trainers" was created. according to the responses of nineteen (86.4%) participants, the theme "families should take part" was expressed. the responses of half of the participants, that is, 11 (50%) participants, “their peers should be included”, and 10 (45.5%) of the participants stated that “should be included, field experts”. with six (27.3%) participants, a theme was created as "having other researchers in it". it is seen that the theme of "the medical practitioner" is emphasized with the opinions of three (13.6%) participants. the answers of two (9.1%) participants were determined within the scope of the theme "everyone who will contribute to the individual". in the second phase; to the participant (n = 22), "what are your opinions about how a team should be formed while preparing the behavior change plan?" the question has been asked. accordingly, in figure 12b, it is seen that the responses of 5 (22.7%) respondents 'should be open to cooperation' theme was created. the responses of three (13.6%) participants were arranged according to repetitive codes within the scope of the "must be open-minded" theme. it is seen that in the responses of two (9.1%) participants the theme 'should be open to guidance' was determined. according to the answer of one (4.5%) participant, the theme "must be consistent" was created. the answer of 1 (4.5%) participant was emphasized as “it should have a constructive personality” as the theme. the answer of 1 (4.5%) participant was determined within the scope of the theme "without competence problem" and the answer of 2 (9%) of the participants was determined within the scope of the "researcher" theme. figure-12a. the distribution chart of the respondents to question 10. (who) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 155 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-12b. the distribution chart of the respondents to question 10. (how) question 11: what are your views on "how should effective application skills be in the behavior change program?” findings related to this question are given in graph 13. figure-13. the distribution chart of those who answered question 11. when figure 13 was examined, it was shown that the responses of 22 (100%) participants were themed as "professional skills". in terms of the answers given by half of the participants (n = 22), that is, 11 (50%) participants, a theme "based on behavior" was created. the theme “based on stakeholder engagement” was formed according to the responses of four (18,2%) participants, as well as the “life affinity feature” with the answers of 4 (18.2%) participants. the least repetitive codes were presented as a theme under the title of "alternative approaches" with the responses of three (13.6%) participants. question 12: what are your opinions about teamwork while implementing the behavior change program? figure-14. distribution chart of the answers to question 12. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 156 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when figure 14 is examined, the question "what are your opinions about teamwork while implementing the behavior change program?" was asked to participants (n = 22). theme titles were created by looking at the frequency numbers. according to this; with the answers of all (100%) of the participants (n = 22) the theme “communication and feedback are important” was identified. answers of 17 (77.3%) participants were stated within the scope of the theme “personal characteristics must be developed”. the responses of seven (31.8%) participants formed the theme "application skills are important". according to the answers given by 6 (27.3%) participants, the theme "pedagogical knowledge is important" was identified. responses of two (9.1%) participants were expressed the theme "field knowledge is important" and the theme "should be functional" was created with the answer of 1 (4.5%) participant. question 13: while implementing the developed behavior change program, what are your opinions about the applications regarding that the problem behavior does not appear outside of the classroom? figure-15. distribution chart of answers to question 13. when figure 15 was examined, the participants (n = 22) answered the question "what are your opinions about the practices while implementing the developed behavior change program regarding that the problem behavior does not appear the outside of the classroom?" among the answers they gave to the question, the most repetitive words (codes) used in the content to create themes were determined. these determined codes are shown in the figure by proportioning them from large to small according to their frequency. "information studies, effective environment, continuity with family, systematic support, permanence, generalization studies" are seen in the graphic as the most frequently repeated codes.in the second part of figure 15; when the figure regarding the frequency and percentage distribution of the data was examined, the participant (n = 22) answered the question "what are your opinions about the applications while applying the created behavior change program regarding that the problem behavior not to appear in the outside of the classroom?". the word (code) has been completed by looking at the number of frequencies. accordingly, with the answers of 14 (63.6%) participants, it was shown that the theme was created in the form of "specialization in practice". the responses of nine (40.9%) participants were collected under the theme of "cooperation with stakeholders" and again under the theme of "generalization and permanence" with the responses of 9 (40.9%) participants. according to the answers given by five (22.7%) participants, the theme was presented in the form of "environment arrangements", it is shown that the theme of "use of reinforcers" was created with the answers of four (18.2%) participants. with the responses of three (13.6%) participants, the theme "personal characteristics should be improved" was created. question 14: what are your opinions about the arrangements to be made in the environment and setting while applying the behavior change plan? figure-16. distribution chart of answers to question 14. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 157 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when figure 16 is examined and the figure regarding the frequency and percentage distribution of the data is examined, the participant (n = 22) answered the question "what are your opinions about the arrangements to be made in the environment and environment while applying the behavior change plan?". the titles that will form the themes were determined by looking at the answers given to the code, the number of frequencies repeated from the highest to the lowest, and the percentage distribution. according to this; the answers of 18 (81.8%) participants were collected under the theme "individual should be taken as the basis". it was shown that the responses of 17 (77.3%) participants were based on the theme "physical environment should be taken as the basis" and 3 (9.1%) participants presented the theme "family and social environments should be taken as the basis”. question 15: what are your opinions about which assessment and evaluation studies should be done to monitor and finally evaluate the behavior change program while implementing it? figure-17. distribution chart of the respondents to question 15. when figure 17 regarding the frequency and percentage distribution of the data is examined, the participants (n = 22) answered the question “what are your opinions about which assessment and evaluation studies should be done to monitor and finally evaluate the behavior change program while implementing?”. the answers given to the question are shown as theme titles by looking at the frequency numbers of the codes that are repeated from the highest to the lowest when the codes of the graphic are examined. according to this; the responses of 22 (100%) participants were collected under the theme "valid tools". the responses of three (13.6%) participants were themed as "multiple evaluations" and it was shown that the theme was created as "process-based" with the answer of 1 (4.5%) participant. 3. discussion in the need analysis study conducted at the beginning of the program creation process, most of the teachers do not find themselves competent regarding the problem behaviors and treatment of students with asd. based on this result, as a result of the pdbd program, the competence of teachers has increased. ozcan (2014) in his study reported that there is a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test scores of special education teachers who stated that they need training in curriculum development, there is an increase in their self-efficacy perceptions after the training, and the teachers' opinions about the benefit of the education given and their knowledge about curriculum development. this result put forward by ozcan (2014) coincides with the related result of this research. this similarity situation; we can express that in two studies (koçak, 2011; ozcan, 2014) it is based on needs analysis and the advantage of using mixed designs. regarding the problem behaviors and treatment of students with asd, the source of their knowledge and skills and the source of deficiencies in knowledge and skills are shown by the teachers as individual learning efforts. the family education program developed by olcay and tekin (2012) managed the family members with children diagnosed with asd in the adolescent period to gain the knowledge and skills to apply social stories and the social stories presented by the family members who completed the program, the adolescents learned the target social skills one and four weeks after the end of the application. in their research, which aims to examine the effects of family members on their generalization to different people and environments, it was shown that family members acquired the knowledge and skills to write social stories accurately and apply them at a high level with a high level of reliability, that they preserved these skills and generalized them to story writing regarding teaching different skills. in this study, it can be emphasized that teachers and practitioners who are involved in training to develop self-learning individually, teach how to use the resources related to knowledge and skills, presenting and monitoring them in a systematic structure in practices. in the study conducted by rakap, balikci, and kalkan (2018) it is concluded that teachers' knowledge levels differ according to the educational levels they work at regarding their knowledge and perceptions about asd and one of the results that support this research is that to overcome the problem behind the lack of educational knowledge and skills related to the professional development practical studies to realize individual learning should be organized in line with the needs of teachers and teacher candidates. hsiao and sorensen (2019) study on teacher training for special education teachers and evidence-based practices provided in in-service training programs for students with autism spectrum disorders reported that it is important for teachers to apply these practices asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 158 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group while working with these students; however, when teachers are uneducated and do not have information about these practices, they can't perform these practices in their classrooms. it showed that the level of use of evidencebased applications is positively correlated with the knowledge levels of these practices. that is, providers who knew more about evidence-based practices tended to use these apps more. therefore, it is a necessity to provide teachers with the knowledge of evidence-based practices so that teachers can use these applications in their classrooms. alexander, ayres, and smith (2015) examined 23 studies in a literature review study of teacher training in evidence-based practice for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. the findings that support this study are as follows; to strengthen the teachers’ communication while working with autistic students it is striking that it is necessary to focus on individual education on evidence-based practices, and in all the studies examined, teachers provide information about the types of students they serve during the study and generally include information such as moderate, severe or severe developmental disability or autism. in this study, it should be kept in mind that teachers' self-learning about their students and their knowledge increases, and with the absence of on-the-job practices only access information sources in their in-service work cannot be enough for teachers. therefore, while educating teachers, ways to reach knowledge on their own should be shown and teachers' individual learning should be enlightened in terms of professional development. the fact that the information that teachers learn is one of the evidence-based practices in their own experience and practice will also have an important place in the planning of teacher training. in another process that supports the research conducted in this study, it should be kept in mind that teachers cannot meet the educational needs of students with autism with only theoretical knowledge. combining applicable training strategies to ensure effective individual learning by teachers for deficiencies in knowledge and skills will support their professional development, where they will cope with a challenge and increase their self-efficacy. teachers focus on student behaviors, concerns about accepting or not accepting problems, child characteristics and dangerous situations, and ignore social situations. helps, newsom-davis, and callias (1999) in their study titled autism; teacher opinion stated that there is widespread confusion about the frequently changing conceptualizations, precise nature, and etiology of autism and that teachers' educational needs and their opinions about autism are effective in accepting behaviors as problems. helps et al. (1999) in their same study, describe the difficulties faced by teaching staff when working with children with autism concerning their educational needs as the lack of practical advice and support for behavior management and teaching methods, problems in the management of certain behaviors, such as aggressive behaviors, sometimes associated with children with autism. it was stated to cause frequently reported social and communication difficulties. this finding is similar to the dimension of their anxieties about accepting or not accepting behaviors problems of this research. based on the results of the research study, it can be argued that accepting or not accepting a behavior as a problem behavior will be very effective in ensuring certain norms on the individual characteristics of children with autism and the social judgments, cultures, and teachers' concerns. this study revealed that the majority of teachers do not have a basic and common theoretical understanding of the problem behaviors of children with autism. while many had outdated beliefs about the disorder, others simply gave the impression of being confused and indecisive. this situation is related to the inadequate education they receive on autism, which most teachers participating in the research are aware of. despite these drawbacks, it is necessary to ensure that teachers working in special education settings gain an impressive understanding of appropriate strategies to facilitate the identification of problem behaviors in children with autism. although they are not always aware of the theoretical basis of accepting a behavior as a problem or accepting it as positive behavior, using certain methods of practices based on observation in evaluating behaviors, such practice skills are highly encouraging, but not sufficient. one of the results obtained in this study is that teachers' anxiety, the characteristics of the child with autism, their social situation, and giving importance to dangerous situations should be handled as important issues in the light of observing student behavior which is the most important element of the education of teachers who work or will work with children with autism. especially, this study also revealed that teachers have only theoretical knowledge with an inadequate education in the skill of gathering information based on observation. when determining the causes of problem behaviors, it is seen that teachers focus more on behaviors than their causes, that is, they focus on more “how” rather than the cause. in terms of forming goals from a causal definition of problem behaviors, it is seen in the literature that there are researches about how instead of addressing the causes of problem behavior. alp and camlier (2016) aimed to examine the relationship between movement training and physical activities with the correction of behavioral problems seen in autistic children, and his study coincides with the result of this research that the way of addressing the problem behaviors and how to solve the problem should be considered rather than a targeted study. roxburgh and carbone (2013) stated that it will give positive results for the program if it is given by educators trained in the implementation of behavioral principles for the educational needs of children with autism. it should not be forgotten that the program that does not take the characteristics of students as a basis for educators and away from the basic principles of education will inevitably have negative consequences. conducting an application only with ready-made guided programs will ignore the principle of individuality in the education of children with autism and will give negative results for the student. basic principles of special education in meb (milli eğitim bakanlığı) (2018) special education services regulation are listed as follows; “in line with the general purpose and basic principles of turkish national education, to students; (a) providing educational services by considering individual differences, developmental characteristics and educational needs, (b) allowing individuals with special education needs to benefit from special education services in line with their interests, wishes, competencies, and abilities, (c) starting special education services early ) planning and conducting special education services without separating individuals with special education needs from their social and physical environments as much as possible, (d) adapting the purpose, content, and teaching processes in line with the educational performances of individuals with special education needs. (e) cooperating with institutions and organizations to enable individuals with special education needs to continue their education at all levels, (f) developing iep for individuals with special education needs (g) ensuring the active participation of families in every stage of the special education process, (ğ) working in cooperation with asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 159 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relevant departments of universities and non-governmental organizations working for individuals with special education needs is essential in developing special education policies”. within the framework of these basic principles, individuals with autism should use their capacities at the highest level in line with their educational needs, competencies, interests, and abilities, and their preparation for higher education, professional life, and social life, and individual characteristics should be taken into consideration in line with the above-listed items. it will inevitably be beneficial to deal with the basic principles of education together, as well as to focus on the individual characteristics of the program objectives in the education of students or educators. however, it is seen from the results of the research that in many cases, practitioners moved away from the basic principles of education in determining the students' needs, which are one of the basic principles of education, and gaining features such as socialization and contributing to independent life. while the researcher was dealing with student characteristics in determining the problem behaviors of students in teacher education, the socialization and cultural characteristics of these problem behaviors were also conveyed by the researcher in the education process by reflecting the socialization and cultural characteristics to the targeted application programs. in the discussion of this judgment, it should not be ignored that the researcher is a judgment about the pre-education teachers' conclusions about what the teacher needs are in coping with problem behaviors. in the study of grey, honan, mcclean, and daly (2005) assessing the effectiveness of teacher education in applied behavior analysis, the educators participating in this study received training according to the basic principles of aba, and at the end of this training, teachers made a functional assessment and this was effective supervision. remarkably, the study was successful in designing a behavioral support plan. providing certain principles, basic needs and personal expectations in trainers' training gives positive results. as a result of the training given to teachers in the study, 80% improvement in the problem behaviors of the students they work with was reported. in this study, considering the basic principles of special education together with individual needs in reflecting the situations such as target, content, and learning to the implementation steps in curriculum development supports that educators will have positive effects on the students they work with. based on these results, it was seen that effective results were obtained at the end of the research in the programming competencies of teachers in problem behavior. it is observed that teachers do not have knowledge about determining the tools and approaches used in the measurement and evaluation, do not differentiate and use the existing forms while creating a behavior change program. they stated during the interviews that they were inadequate in using and developing the tools used in measurement and evaluation in the program development process. in this judgment, the educators also emphasized that they believe that such assessment tools are unnecessary in determining the point where students have come with assessment tools in the interviews. it can be said that the most important point in the program is the evaluation. however, in this study, it is seen that the teachers are far from the needs that form the basis of the program with the wrong thoughts of the past and reluctance. again, it can be argued that the teachers participating in the researcher education do not have sufficient knowledge and experience in developing evaluation tools and revealing an original tool, and they have judgments about the evaluation tools and evaluation forms developed by someone randomly without designing them in a way specific to the structure of the program. as seen in the literature, altunay (2008) stated that, at the end of his study, assessment tools were effective in line with the data obtained from checklists, written / verbal feedback, observations, and interviews, and that the practitioner-researcher should use the assessment tools he developed himself for effective results. ünlü and vuran (2012) used the separated trialized instruction assessment form, the turkish early language development test, and the imitation skills assessment tool, and toper-korkmaz (2015) used the parental behavior assessment scale-turkish version (eddö-tv), the child behavior assessment scale-turkish version (cdcstv, noyan (2019) state-trait anxiety scale, beck depression inventory, parent stress scale, parental selfefficacy scale, parental behavior assessment scale-turkish version and multidimensional scale of perceived social support. the 'child behavior assessment scale-turkish version' was used to measure children's interactional behaviors with the 'scale', 'language development screening inventory' and 'turkish early language development test' were used in the assessment of language development. in the study conducted by grey et al. (2005) it was emphasized that teachers made a comprehensive functional assessment and a behavior support plan targeting a behavior was designed for a child with autism. campbell (2001) defined improving the quality of assessment through proper and good education for teachers as "strengthening the link between assessment and intervention". suhrheinrich (2015) in his study titled a sustainable model for teacher training to use basic intervention education, stated that the criteria for mastery in assessment and providing feedback to teachers have an important place in the setting. ruble, usher, and mcgrew (2011) reported in the study titled pre-examination of the self-efficacy resources of teachers of autistic students that teachers should also have the skills to evaluate autistic students in addition to teaching. kossewska et al. (2019) in their article titled educational needs of polish teachers in the field of autism in the context of the international asdeast project, stated that teachers demand to improve their assessment skills based on student assessment tools. examples can be increased further in the discussion of this research result. it supports the result of the research that the measurement tools and approaches that exist in most of the studies are used, the forms developed by the practitioners themselves during their education, but are in an informal structure far from a formal situation. it should be kept in mind that the measurement tools of the research can be developed by the practitioner or used tools developed by other researchers. however, in this study, another situation that draws the attention of the researcher in the pre-training meeting with the teachers in determining the pre-education needs of teachers in the process of coping with problem behaviors and in the curriculum development process was that the measurement and evaluation tools and approaches used to monitor while implementing the created behavior change program and to evaluate at the end were made using the existing valid tools, a concrete definition regarding validity was not specified. it was stated in the pre-training interviews that the teachers did not have any information about the validity status of the measurement tools they used and they applied randomly. in order to talk about the validity of measuring tools, it is necessary to understand that the measuring tool is related to the "thing" it aims to measure. regarding the content validity of the measurement tools used by the teachers; it was revealed in the needs analysis asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 160 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group that they could not develop a simple way such as consulting experts, preparing a table of indicators at a simple level, making use of observations and interviews. also, it can be said that assessment/measurement tools provide the information that a causal and functional relationship towards the purpose of the application can be exhibited by other people in other environments and whether it will work in generalizing to other situations. for example; ulke-kürkçüoğlu (2007) used multiple applications model from single-subject research models in the study in which four students aged 5-8 with autistic characteristics participated and the opinions of 17 special education teachers were taken and he suggested conducting it in similar studies based on the results of social validity findings with different participants, different practitioners in different environments. there is no finding supporting the result of this study. however, in terms of the scientific basis of the studies, it can be said that it is important to draw attention to the importance of visual analysis studies, teaching studies in behavior-based educator training together with internal validity, external validity, and social validity studies of assessment/measurement tools. according to the result obtained in this study, it can be said to the program had an increase in the knowledge and experience of teachers in terms of providing validity studies with their own assessment/measurement tools and approaches. it was observed that the teachers did not have enough information about transforming the developed behavior change program into plan steps and they could only explain the step to start planning. in the research, it can be said by the researcher that there are explanations about how to do the planning in the interviews in determining the needs of pre-education teachers related to the implementation process of the program, but the statements indicating where to start do not provide sufficient information. if you asked what should be done to reduce or eliminate problem behavior, anyone would mention the necessity of a process. as a result of this research, it was seen that although the teachers stated the importance of developing the program, they did not provide sufficient and complete information about how the program should be developed under which characteristics of the student. in addition, there is another problem that what will be the steps of the program, this problem was observed by the researcher that the teachers before the education did not have enough knowledge about which step to start the program when they encounter problem behavior. it can be said that in these and similar situations, it can be said that applied training should be given about how a systematic study should be planned in the applied behavior analysis approach studies about what steps will be when teachers encounter problem behavior. a teacher who wants to develop the ability to cope with problem behaviors should be able to plan appropriate program steps according to their knowledge, skills and value judgments, and the resources they have. no research has come across to support this conclusion discussed in this study. however, in the study conducted by harjusola-webb and sandra (2012) it was stated that detailed performance feedback (for example, excel data graphics and verbal feedback) given by the researchers during the intervention training meetings of teachers was useful to guide changes and improvements in classroom behavior. in this study, it is very important that the researcher made a pre-education needs analysis in terms of revealing the pre-teaching situations. erbaş, kırcaali-i̇ftar, and tekin-i̇ftar describe effectively behavior change as follows; 1) problem behavior should be functionally defined very clearly, 2) summarizing statements obtained in the evaluation process should be included, 3) including information about problem behavior as unrelated, ineffective, and environment, pre-behavior, intervention methods and post-behavior results, 4) describing the most difficult situations in which problem behavior occurs, 5) understandably explaining the process of evaluation. it can be said that it will contribute to teachers' improvement in planning steps. as a result of this research, it was observed that teachers made very serious improvements and applied their self-plan development processes. while preparing the behavior change plan of teachers, the opinions about who and how a team should be formed varied in line with the literature and legislation. on the one hand, teachers emphasize that communication and personal characteristics of stakeholders are important in teamwork while implementing the behavior change program. creating a team is the work of working with a group where stakeholders who have the knowledge, skills, education, and views in different fields combine their creative power, effort, and knowledge in order to achieve the goals effectively. creating a team in terms of students with autism and the applied program may be beneficial to have a clear distribution of tasks in an organized manner, to solve problems encountered, to make decisions, to achieve high quality and efficiency by improving the work done, to use the knowledge and experience of team members at the highest potential and to provide a versatile evaluation. besides, not only the development of the professional experience of the team members but also the development of an interdisciplinary working systematic between the team members can lead to the development of cooperation and interpersonal relations. while güleç-aslan (2013) did not provide detailed information on how the team members were formed in their study named behavioral education program for autistic children to carry out the home practice, they stated that in terms of the applied program, the team members made significant contributions to their families and children, as well as their knowledge and skills. mccabe (2008) examined and emphasized the aspects of the teacher training model in the autism institute that enabled the training of highly qualified, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable autism teachers in the study titled effective teacher training in the institute of autism of the republic of china. this study supports the results of the study by showing who and how a team should be formed and the communication and personality traits of team members are important. teachers' views on effective practice skills in the behavior change program developed during the needs determination process are mostly shaped based on classical teaching principles and remain far from effective teaching and learning approaches. based on this result, effective results were obtained showing that teachers developed effective application skills and teacher competencies in effective teaching and learning approaches and gained experience in the use of evidence-based practices. walker, douglas, and brewer (2020) in the study titled training given by teachers to encourage professional application of systematic teaching, emphasized that evidence-based practices will be much more effective on children with asd in providing teachers effective teaching with on-the-job teaching. 4. results and implications below are the results and implications for practitioners and researchers for further research. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 146-162 161 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.1. results in this study, the results regarding the determination of teacher needs with the teacher education program to be developed in line with the teaching needs of students with autism spectrum disorder (asd) are included. 1) most of the teachers do not find themselves competent regarding the problem behaviors that occur in students with asd and their treatment. 2) regarding the problem behaviors and treatment of students with asd, the source of their knowledge and skills and the source of the deficiencies in knowledge and skills are shown by the teachers as individual learning efforts. 3) teachers ignore social situations while observing student behaviors and focus on their concerns, the child's characteristics, and dangerous situations about accepting or not accepting problem behaviors. 4) when determining the reasons for problem behaviors, it is seen that teachers focus more on behaviors than the causes, that is, they focus more on “how” rather than the cause. 5) teachers have problems in their ability to develop or use a common and standardized application and activity while determining the causes of problem behaviors. 6) teachers take the interests and desires of the individual as a basis in determining the objectives and ignore most of the basic principles of education while developing a behavioral change program. 7) while teachers take into account the principle of individuality in creating or determining content suitable for the outcome in developing a behavior change program, many other principles in the content determination are ignored. 8) it was observed that the teachers while developing the behavior change program stated that they were based on individuality in choosing or determining the method and technique suitable for the acquisition, content, and learning experience they designed, and they gave less importance to socialization. 9) it is observed that teachers do not have knowledge about determining the tools and approaches used in measurement and evaluation, do not differentiate and use the existing forms while developing a behavior change program. 10) it was observed that the teachers did not have enough information about transforming the developed behavior change program into plan steps and they could only explain the step to start planning. 4.2. implications at the end of this research, the following recommendations can be made for practitioners and researchers for further research. 4.3. implications for practitioners as a result of the research, implications for practitioners are listed below. 1) observing the classroom practices in determining the practical training needs of teachers. 2) observing learning and teaching environments with an impartial eye, and conducting observation studies with multi-faceted and objective tools based on the result that the needs determination results obtained from objective measurement tools are more effective in teaching. 3) teachers show that teachers need to learn about behavior change systematics as a result of their anxieties about accepting or not accepting problems in student observations. in-service and on-the-job training can be provided for this. 4) teachers reveal their lack of knowledge and skills by expressing not having enough knowledge about transforming the developed behavior change program into plan steps. 5) teachers' opinions about effective practice skills in the behavior change program, which are mostly shaped based on classical teaching principles, point to their educational needs regarding effective teaching and learning approaches. 4.4. implications for researchers as a result of the research, the implications for the researchers are listed below. 1) in line with the results of this study and the literature, similar studies can be carried out with families. 2) teachers' concerns about accepting or not accepting problems in their student behavior observations can make the guidance of the studies in this field questionable. it is thought that the preparation of a guide, handbook, etc. for the treatment of problem behaviors will be beneficial. references akçamete, g. 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(1975). psychological differentiation in cross-cultural perspective. ets research bulletin series, 1975(1), 1-100. available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2333-8504.1975.tb01043.x. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 616 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 616-626, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.616.626 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of sports science students’ social media addictions on redundant purchasing behavior seckin doganer1 halil erdem akoglu2 ( corresponding author) 1,2ankara university, sports sciences faculty, department of sports management, ankara, turkey. abstract the aim of this research is to determine the causes of redundant purchasing behavior of university students and the effects of social media usage on redundant purchasing behavior. quantitative research method is used in the research and relational screening model is preferred. "social media addiction" and "sustainable consumption behavior scale" were used in the research. the research group consists of 221 men and 181 women in total, 402 students who studying at ankara university faculty of sport sciences. in the research, the pre-control of the data was provided and the distribution of normality was examined primarily. from the parametric tests to the data that appear to provide normal distribution; t-test, one-way anova and correlation tests were applied. according to the findings, it was found that women had a high redundant purchase behavior compared to men. it has been determined that the use of credit cards increases redundant purchases in students and affects daily life. it was observed that unrestrained shopping perception is high among students who are not licensed athletes. as the high income students' redundant purchasing behavior is high, as the time spent on social media increases, social media addiction and redundant purchasing behavior also increase. as a conclusion, it is observed that consumption behaviors are closely related to social media addiction and sustainable consumption behaviors. the suggestions of the findings obtained were tried to be given in the research, including future research. keywords: social media, addiction, purchase, student, behavior, sustainable consumption. citation | seckin doganer; halil erdem akoglu (2020). the effect of sports science students’ social media addictions on redundant purchasing behavior. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 616-626. history: received: 15 july 2020 revised: 5 october 2020 accepted: 21 october 2020 published: 10 november 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 617 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 619 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 620 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 622 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 623 6. suggestions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 623 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 624 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.616.626&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2322 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9475-8338 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0818-7143 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 616-626 617 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by determining the causes of redundant purchasing behavior of university students and the effects of social media usage on redundant purchasing behavior. 1. introduction nowadays, with the globalization, social media fields are increasingly reaching a significant potential all over the world. this potential development has manifested itself in social, psychological and knowledge-based practices, and has reached a high level in marketing and trade. especially with social media, companies want to use online strategies to communicate with their potential customers are becoming an emerging trend in the global economy (felix, rauschnabel, & hinsch, 2017). the strategy of using social media affects all economic markets, from local companies to global companies, as well as causing projects to develop rapidly in this area (si, 2016). in 2019, the number of internet users worldwide increased by 9% annually to approximately 5.112 billion, while the number of social media users reached about 3.484 billion with an increase of 9% (kemp, 2020). with this increase in the number of internet users, the use of social media has also increased and has evolved from an individual level to a useful marketing tool in the business world over the past decade (zainal, harun, & lily, 2017). therefore, many organizations from various sectors nowadays use a social media account proactively to reach their potential and existing customers and keep up with changing consumer behavior (ali abdallah alalwan, 2018; a. a. alalwan, rana, algharabat, & tarhini, 2016; kumar, varma, sangvikar, & pawar, 2020). social media is defined by the user as a group of internet-based applications that allow content to be created and modified (kaplan & haenlein, 2010). users can create content using various possibilities provided by social media websites such as pictures and videos and share a lot of information about the products, content and services of visually enriched brands (erkan & evans, 2018). social media, which takes place as the most important tool for sharing information and discussing this information nowadays also affects people's buying tendencies and decision making processes (chen & lien, 2017). social media, which is a fast and flexible tool for shopping, provides a convenient and easy shopping opportunity with online stores where consumers can reach 24 hours a day (shankar, 2012). the fact that the use of social media leads to a global growth is important in terms of showing that these areas are also used by people as a means of purchasing behavior (felix et al., 2017). as a matter of fact, according to the "global digital report" published in 2019, it is stated that 84% of internet users use the internet to search for a product or service and 75% buy a product or service online within a month. consumer buying behavior has been significantly affected by the emergence of information and communication technology (ict) as well as the spread of social media. consumers can now collect information through various media channels at every stage of the buying and decision-making process. for this reason, companies need to better understand changing customer purchasing behavior in order to create mutual value with consumers in social media use (shah, zahoor, & qureshi, 2019). especially in recent years, companies differentiate social media marketing from other strategies as a low and effective marketing strategy to increase their turnovers (lim, radzol, cheah, & wong, 2017). current studies on the subject show that consumers are increasingly using social media to learn about unknown brands (erkan & evans, 2018; naylor, lamberton, & west, 2012; schivinski & dabrowski, 2016; shah et al., 2019). the consumer, who thinks needs a product, realizes buying behavior in two options. the first option is a planned and controlled shopping. the second option is unplanned and out of control shopping. although unplanned buying behavior provides the consumer with the peace of mind, it causes redundant product purchase, wastage and payment difficulties due to the preparation of the ground for unnecessary shopping (erkmen & yuksel, 2008; solomon, bamossy, askegaard, & hogg, 2006). academic interest in connection between social media and consumer behavior has been steadily increasing in recent years (frutos, giones, & miralles, 2014). there is a steady increase in purchasing behavior and marketing research on social media (pomirleanu, schibrowsky, peltier, & nill, 2013) and especially recently, researchers have been focusing on social media usage and online mouth-to-mouth communication (e-wom) they have shown that it has a positive effect (alharbi, aziz, yusof, & hamid, 2020; erkan & evans, 2018; farzin & fattahi, 2018; lam, lau, cheng, & wong, 2019; tien, rivas, & liao, 2019). bolton et al. (2013) revealed that the majority of social media research is conducted in developed countries, predominantly in europe and the united states (usa), while less research is conducted in developing economies. many researchers have stated that social media and consumer behaviors should be handled in different contexts. social media, which has taken place in our lives with the development of technology, has an inevitable effect on purchasing activities. however, not every purchasing activity is oriented towards need. 1.1. social media addiction according to the data of january 2020, approximately half of the world's population is active social media users. while people spend an average of 6 hours and 43 minutes a day on the internet, they also spend 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media (kemp, 2020). the reasons for this augmentation are increasing the number of social media platforms day by day (hawi & samaha, 2017). while facebook has 1.95 billion active users from these social media platforms, instagram has 925.5 million, linkedin 663.3 million, snapchat 381.5 million and twitter 339.6 million active users (kemp, 2020). social media addiction is sometimes an expression used to refer to someone who spends a lot of time using facebook, twitter, instagram or other social media platforms, and this time affects other aspects of daily life (grau, kleiser, & bright, 2019). social networking sites that many people think of as social media are defined as “any type of social interaction people have with the desire to control the impressions of other people” and have an important role in presenting / revealing themselves (kaplan & haenlein, 2010). thadani, cheung, and lee (2016) stated that the pathological and dependent use of social media is a relatively new topic and the symptoms of social media addiction attract researchers' attention. some of these symptoms are noted as follows: social media dominating users' behavior and thoughts, mood swings, tolerance (the use of social media should increase to maintain or gain priority positive emotion), withdrawal (ending social media use will lead to unpleasant feelings or emotions), conflict (social asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 616-626 618 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group participation in media use will lead to conflicts in relationships, education, work and others) and repetition (tendency to return to previous forms of social media use after control or deprivation). research has shown that various online activities, such as constant online gaming and social media use, can be addictive to a particular group, especially adolescents and adults (cheng & li, 2014; kuss, griffiths, karila, & billieux, 2014; ryan, chester, reece, & xenos, 2014). social media sites are particularly important for millennium college students, who have been determined to spend a lot of time online and use the internet frequently for social purposes (grau et al., 2019). especially in developed and developing countries, the development of the wi-fi network and the fact that 60% to 95% of the young adults all have smart phones, and the rapid increase in the number of applications developed for smart phones are the factors that cause the growth of social media usage of people (yang, chen, huang, lin, & chang, 2017). one of the most important factors in the growth of internetrelated addictions is the widespread use of smartphones. smartphones now offer an easy and more accessible way to access many different types of content (gambling, gaming, shopping, social media) that may be dependent on potential individuals (billieux, maurage, lopez-fernandez, kuss, & griffiths, 2015; kuss & griffiths, 2017). internet addiction is considered an increasing health problem in many parts of the world; the estimated dependency rates between 1.5% and 8.2% in the usa and europe and up to 7% in some asian countries are estimated (weinstein & lejoyeux, 2010; wölfling, beutel, dreier, & müller, 2014). in the literature, studies from different disciplines such as sociology and psychology on internet addiction and marketing have been seen in recent years (al-menayes, 2015; blackwell, leaman, tramposch, osborne, & liss, 2017; bright, grau, & kleiser, 2015; griffiths & kuss, 2017; hawi & samaha, 2017; kircaburun, 2016; longstreet & brooks, 2017; savci & aysan, 2017; turel, brevers, & bechara, 2018). 1.2. the redundant purchasing the purchasing decision process in consumer behavior begins with the emergence of a need. firms acting as sales-oriented aim to initiate the purchasing decision process of the consumers by following a policy of making them feel needed on target consumers regarding the products they offer to the market. consumers are exposed to firms' guidance on whether they really need a product (yurtsever & çakmak, 2012). consumers often make spontaneous and intuitively unplanned purchases after being exposed to stimuli such as price promotion, limited offer advertising and attractive product appearance. this type of purchase, called impulse purchase, has three main features: 1) unplanned, 2) the result of exposure to a stimulus, and 3) the "immediate" decision maker (liu, li, & hu, 2013). when customers go to a store to make certain purchases, they usually make unplanned purchases. there are four types of unplanned purchases (stern, 1962): (1) pure impulse: these are purchases made only for hedonic reasons and are usually characterized by: (a) spontaneity. (b) strength, coercion and intensity. (c) excitement and revival. (d) ignoring the results (rook, 1987). (2) reminder effect: a stimulus reminds the consumer to buy a product they need. (3) suggestion effect: the customer buys a product due to the promotion. (4) planned impulse: the customer purchases without any product (s) in mind. while shopping in the physical world is often restricted by time and geographic location, online consumers can shop wherever and whenever they want, and so the number of products they probably buy with impulse is increasing. clicking on the ads on the social media and accessing the store where the product is located can facilitate the unplanned redundant purchases of consumers (koufaris, 2002). beatty and ferrell (1998) found that in-store screening behavior can impulsively increase the urge to buy. if online consumers are satisfied with online shopping and experience, they can screen more discoveries in the web store, which can lead to redundant purchases. considering the aforementioned definitions in the literature, it is aimed to determine the causes of the redundant purchasing behavior and the effects of the use of social media on the redundant purchasing behavior. for this purpose, the theories in the literature were examined and the study was considered to be examined under "flow theory". flow theory; it is defined as “the whole of emotions created by the person to fully devote himself to this work while he is busy with any work, to focus on the action he is doing and to isolate himself from the world at the time” (csikszentmihalyi, 1990). at the basis of the flow theory is a reward motivation that makes behavior constant and turns this process into a kind of "losing yourself or not knowing how time has passed. in addition to being defined as “activities and processes in which people act as if nothing else matters”, it is also defined as “the total feeling that people feel when they act with collective participation” (csikszentmihalyi, 1975). studies to explain the flow experience may differ in itself when evaluated in terms of content. the research published by hoffman and novak (1996) on the stream has been an important start for the first time in online consumer behavior research and conceptualized the flow as a cognitive condition taking place on the web. hoffman and novak (1996) suggest that online streaming is a cognitive condition experienced during online navigation. hoffman and novak (1996) argue that the online shopping environment can bring some kind of flow situation, which leads to more online browsing and ultimately purchase. smith and sivakumar (2004) also suggest that the stream facilitates online behavior such as browsing, shopping and repurchasing. novak, hoffman, and yung (2000) found that 47% of users experience internet streaming at some point. with the increase in computer use and the increase in communication services, online communication among people has improved and purchasing behavior has become easier and increased. for this reason, the researchers stated that consumers who are deeply immersed in a site that is visually appealing, entertaining, informative or useful, can experience the flow state mentioned in theory. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 616-626 619 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method 2.1. model of the research they are quantitative methods, one of the scientific research types. quantitative research method is seen as a method that allows the researcher to interpret the relationships between variables with meaningful data along with various proven measurement tools to achieve concrete results (creswell, 2009). in the research, “correlational survey model” was preferred among general screening models in which individuals' opinions and attitudes about any case or event were examined and tried to be interpreted. the purpose of screening research is to make a description by taking a picture of the current situation related to the research subject (büyüköztürk, cakmak kılıç, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2017). correlational survey model, on the other hand, is preferred as a method that does not describe the variables of the situation in the general screening models individually (singular), but also explains the change of the relationships between the variables (mazlum & mazlum, 2017). 2.2. research group while creating the research group, convenience sampling method, which is non-random, is used. convenience sampling method is a non-random sampling method in which the sample section to be selected from the population is determined by the researcher's judgment. in convenience sampling, data are collected from the mainstream in the easiest, fastest and most economical way (etikan, musa, & alkassim, 2016). the research group of the study consisted of 402 (nmen = 221 and nwomen = 181) university students studying at ankara university faculty of sport sciences. the average age of the participants was determined as 22.16 ± 2.95. the findings related to descriptive statistics are given in table 1. table-1. percentage distribution of participants' demographic information. variant group f % total �̅� s least most gender women men 181 221 45,0 55,0 402 grade 1st grade 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade 46 107 122 127 11,4 26,6 30,3 31,6 402 family income status 0-2000 2001-3500 3501-5000 5001 and+ 50 115 128 109 12,4 28,6 31,8 27,1 402 credit card usage status yes no 234 168 58,2 41,8 402 time spent on social media in a day lessthan1hour 1-2 hours 3-5 hours more than 6 hours 27 122 199 54 6,7 30,3 49,5 13,4 402 licensed athletics status yes no 195 207 48,5 51,5 402 age 402 22,16 2,95 18,00 48,00 social media addiction scale 402 65,41 20,70 24,00 116,00 note: frequency (f). 221 (55.0%) of the university students constituting the study group of the research are men and 181 (45%) are women. 3rd grade students constitute 127 (31.6%) of the students and 128 (31.8%) of the family income is between 3501-5000 tl. in addition, 234 (58.2%) of the students were found to use credit cards. it is seen that the vast majority use social media (n = 383) and the majority (n = 199; 49.5%) spend 3-5 hours a day on social media. it was determined that 207 (51.5%) of the participants were licensed athletes, while 195 (48.5%) were not licensed athletes. it is seen that the social media addiction levels of the participants are at medium levels (x = 65.41 ± 20.70). 2.3. data collection tool as the data collection tool, primarily, the personal information form containing the demographic information of the participants was applied to the participants, and secondly, “social media addiction scale” and “sustainable consumption behavior scale” were used. personal information form: in this section, there are 8 items related to the personal information of the participants. these variables are; age, gender, class, family income status, credit card usage status, time spent on social media daily and licensed sports status. social media addiction scale: the measurement tool, developed by fırat and barut (2018) consisting of a total of 24 items, consists of 2 sub-dimensions lower dimensions; it occurs as "uncontrolling" and "affecting / depriving daily life". the measurement tool, which has a 5-point evaluation in likert type, is scored as "never (1)", "rare (2)", "sometimes (3)", "generally (4)", and "always (5)". the total score that can be obtained from the smds is 24 to 120; the total score that can be obtained for the withdrawal dimension varies between 14 and 70, and for the impact on daily life / uncontrolled dimension between 10 and 50. it can be interpreted that as the score obtained by individuals from smds increases, their social media addiction increases. sustainable consumption behavior scale: the measurement tool consisting of 17 items in total which is developed by doğan, bulut, and kökalan cımrın (2015) consists of 4 sub-dimensions. sub dimensions; environmental awareness is defined as redundant purchase, savings and reusability. in this study, only the “redundant purchase” sub-scale, which consists of 5 items, was used. the measurement tool, which has a 5-point evaluation in likert type, is scored as "never (1)", "rare (2)", "sometimes (3)", "generally (4)", and "always (5)". in the case of asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 616-626 620 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group redundant purchase, the situation is the opposite. sustainability of consumption increases as the score given to the items of this dimension decreases. 2.4. collection of data the scale questions were applied in the form of one-on-one questions and answers, face-to-face discussion with the participants during the data collection phase. the individuals who participated in the study were informed by the researcher about the importance of the study and their importance for this study, and in this context, it was stated that giving answers that reflect the correct and current situation will affect the reality of the research. for this reason, it was assumed that the individuals participating in the research responded realistically to the scale applied. of the 450 questionnaires distributed, 420 were collected. eight of these questionnaires, which were analyzed, were not evaluated because they were filled in incorrectly or incompletely by the surveyors. as a result, 402 questionnaires were accepted as valid and evaluated. 2.5. data analysis in order to test whether the obtained data shows normal distribution, skewness and kurtosis analyzes were applied and it was understood that the data showed normal distribution as a result of these tests. parametric tests (t-test, one-way anova test, pearson correlation analysis) were applied on the normally distributed data. to identify the different group in the one-way anova test, the tukey test was used in the post-hoc tests. cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients of the scales were examined and it was determined that all values were above 0.70. in the normality distribution measurements, when skewness values are between -2 and +2 and kurtosis values are between -2 and +2, then the data is identified as normally distributed (george & mallery, 2010). the normality test results and cronbach's alpha values of the data are given in table 2. table-2. normality analysis and cronbach’s alpha results. scales sub dimensions items average skewness kurtosis α s u st ai n ab le c o n su m p ti o n b eh av io r s ca le redundant purchase 5 2,67 ,259 -,590 ,83 s o ci al m ed ia a d d ic ti o n s ca le uncontrolling 14 2,40 ,225 -,918 ,94 affecting daily life/deprivation 10 2,95 -,084 -,652 ,92 note: skewness is acceptable for -2/+2, kurtosis is acceptable for -2 /+2. 3. results in this section, from descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way anova analysis and correlation (pearson) analysis are included. table-3. t-test analysis results regarding gender variable. sub dimensions gender n 𝒙 s sd t p* redundant purchase women men 181 221 2,79 2,57 0,92 0,93 400 2,415 0,01 uncontrolling women men 181 221 3,03 2,88 0,90 0,88 400 1,615 0,10 affecting daily life/deprivation women men 181 221 2,43 2,38 0,95 0,91 400 0,522 0,60 note: p<0,05*. when table 3 is analyzed, a statistically significant difference was found in favor of women students (xwomen = 2,79; p<0,05) in the size of redundant purchase by gender. the average scores of women redundant purchase was found higher than men. there was no statistically significant difference in social media use scale sub-dimensions according to gender (p<0.05). table-4. t-test analysis results related to credit card usage variable. sub dimensions credit card usage n 𝒙 s sd t p* redundant purchase yes no 234 168 2,75 2,55 0,92 0,95 400 2,150 0,03 uncontrolling yes no 234 168 3,00 2,87 0,84 0,96 400 1,408 0,16 affecting daily life/deprivation yes no 234 168 2,49 2,28 0,91 0,94 400 2,231 0,02 note: p<0,05*. in table 4, the results of the t-test analysis related to the sub-dimensions of the redundant purchase scale and social media usage scale according to the students' credit card use status variable are given. when the findings were analyzed, a statistically significant difference was found in terms of students' redundant purchase average scores and credit card use status (p<0.05) and this difference was in favor of students using credit cards (xyes = 2.75; p<0.05) differentiated. when the average scores of the credit card use status of the students and the social media usage scale sub-dimensions were examined, no statistically significant difference was found in the “uncontrolling” sub-dimension, but a statistically significant difference was observed in the “affecting the daily life / deprivation” sub-dimension. it was determined that the difference was caused by students using credit cards (xyes asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 616-626 621 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group = 2.49; p<0.05). according to these findings, it is seen that students who use credit cards have higher redundant purchasing behavior. table-5. t-test analysis results related to the licensed athletic variable. sub dimensions licensed athletic n 𝒙 s sd t p* redundant purchase yes no 195 207 2,63 2,70 0,90 0,97 400 -0,704 0,48 uncontrolling yes no 195 207 2,84 3,05 0,90 0,88 400 -2,259 0,02 affecting daily life/deprivation yes no 195 207 2,31 2,49 0,95 0,90 400 -1,844 0,06 note: p<0,05*. in table 5, the findings regarding the sub-dimensions of redundant purchase scale and social media usage scale according to the variable of being a licensed athlete of the students were examined. a statistically significant difference was found among the social media addiction sub-dimensions of the students in terms of uncontrolling average scores and licensed sports status, and this difference was observed to differ in favor of non-licensed athletes (xno = 3.05, p<0.05). no statistically significant difference was found between the licensed athletics variable and the average scores of redundant purchasing and affecting daily life / deprivation (p<0.05). table-6. one-way anova analysis results related to income status. sub dimensions income status n s sd f p* lsd redundant purchase 1. 0-2000 50 2,30 0,81 3 398 401 6,735 0,00 4>1,2,3 2. 2001-3500 115 2,55 0,92 3. 3501-5000 128 2,67 0,91 4. 5001+ 109 2,95 0,96 uncontrolling 1. 0-2000 50 2,21 0,85 3 398 401 2,483 0,06 2. 2001-3500 115 2,40 0,92 3. 3501-5000 128 2,32 0,91 4. 5001+ 109 2,59 0,98 affecting daily life/deprivation 1. 0-2000 50 2,87 0,79 3 398 401 1,510 0,21 2. 2001-3500 115 2,95 0,91 3. 3501-5000 128 2,85 0,91 4. 5001+ 109 3,09 0,90 note: p<0,05*. in table 6, a statistically significant difference was found between the income levels of the students and the average of the redundant purchase (p<0.05). as a result of the lsd test conducted to determine which groups the difference originated from, it was concluded that the students whose family income status was higher than 5001 had higher average scores than other groups (x5001 + = 2.95; p<0.05). there was no statistically significant difference between family income status variable and social media addiction scale sub-dimensions (p<0.05). table-7. one-way anova analysis results related to time variable on social media. sub dimensions time spent on soc. med. n s sd f p* lsd redundant purchase a-less than 1 hour 27 1,96 0,92 3 398 401 13,819 0,00 d>a,b,c b-1-2 hours 122 2,43 0,90 c-3-5 hours 199 2,79 0,85 d-more than 6 hours 54 3,10 1,01 uncontrolling a-less than 1 hour 27 1,50 0,74 3 398 401 36,006 0,00 d>a,b,c b-1-2 hours 122 1,98 0,76 c-3-5 hours 199 2,61 0,86 d-more than 6 hours 54 3,04 0,87 affecting daily life/deprivation a-less than 1 hour 27 1,80 0,80 3 398 401 48,230 0,00 d>a,b,c b-1-2 hours 122 2,54 0,77 c-3-5 hours 199 3,19 0,76 d-more than 6 hours 54 3,54 0,76 note: p<0,05*. in table 7, the findings related to the sub-dimensions of the redundant purchase scale and social media usage scale according to the time variable spent on the social media of the students are examined. a statistically significant difference was found between the redundant purchase scale and the time variable that students spent on social media, and the lsd test conducted to determine this difference showed that the mean scores of the group who spent more than 6 hours in social media were high (xredundant purchase = 3.10; p< 0.05). students' social media addiction sub-dimensions were uncontrolled (xuncontrolling = 3.04; p<0.05) and their average scores on affecting / deprivation of daily life (xdeprivation = 3.54; p<0.05) were statistically significant. there was a significant difference. as a result of the lsd test conducted to determine which groups the difference originated from, it was observed that the average scores of the group who spent more than 6 hours in both subdimensions on social media were high. according to table 8, a statistically low negative relationship was found between the ages of the students and the dimensions of uncontrolling and daily life affecting / deprivation among the sub-dimensions of the redundant purchase and social media addiction scale (p<0.05). in addition, a statistically positive relation was found between the time spent on social media and family income status and the dimensions of uncontrolling and daily affecting / deprivation among the sub-dimensions of redundant purchasing and social media addiction scale (p<0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 616-626 622 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. correlation analysis table regarding demographic variables and scales. demographic variables redundant purchase uncontrolling affecting daily life/deprivation age -,146* -,180** -,231** time spent on social media ,357** ,657** ,590** family income status ,275** ,173** ,223** redundant purchase ,621** ,526** note: p<0.05, p<0,01. as a final, a positive relationship was found between the social media addiction scale sub-dimensions of uncontrolling and daily life affecting / deprivation levels and redundant purchasing levels. in other words, as the social media addiction of the students increases, the level of redundant purchases increases. 4. discussion in the research, where the effects of social media addictions on consumers' redundant purchasing behaviors were examined, significant differences were found regarding the sub-dimensions of the scales. when the findings obtained are analyzed in terms of gender variable, no statistically significant difference was detected in the perception of social media addiction, but a meaningful difference was observed in favor of women in the perception of “redundant purchase” that includes sustainable consumption behaviorsthis situation is important for women to show more redundant purchase behaviors than men via social media. it is also emphasized in similar studies that women can access social media tools more easily than men and use these tools as a personalized area for various purposes effectively (mcgregor, lawrence, & cardona, 2017). when the literature is analyzed, it is seen that men brand loyalty is higher, so that men are less affected by social pressures than women, and they have a high tendency to purchase against the product they are interested in rialti, zollo, pellegrini, and ciappei (2017). the result can be seen as important because it shows that women are less selective in consumption behavior than men and therefore they keep their redundant purchasing behavior highin another research that reveals the difference between the use of social media between women and men, it is seen that women prefer these networks to protect their close social relationships, while men use these networks to conduct research and obtain information on topics they are interested in krasnova, veltri, eling, and buxmann (2017). the findings obtained from the exemplified researches are similar to our research results. according to the results of the research, it was determined that students whose using credit cards had higher redundant purchasing behaviors. the use of credit cards is a preferred payment method, especially in web-based shopping, and it allows shopping to be make easier, but this type of convenience brings with it the risk of spending too much (aslanoğlu & korga, 2017). in a research conducted with university students, it was found that men tend to borrow more frequently than women when using credit cards. this situation was explained by the researchers that the risk factor in men is more dominant than women. however, when the results of the research are analyzed, it is determined that women are in a longer-term get into debt compared to men (santos., mendes-da, flores, & norvilitis, 2016). the fact that women are in a long-term debt is similar to our redundant purchases for women. in a similar research on credit card expenditures, it was found that credit card debt, calculated by students in the last decade, was worrying. the research shows that environmental factors, the working environment and the characteristic structure lead the person to financial behavior and eventually lead to credit card debt (hancock, jorgensen, & swanson, 2013). it was also emphasized in a different study that social media strengthens purchasing behavior in individuals and it is seen that consumers are affected by their social environment very much and they are influenced by stimuli from this environment and they tend to purchase behavior without waiting (thoumrungroje, 2014). therefore, the convenience of using credit cards in shopping can be combined with positive comments from social media, thus accelerating the buying behavior in individuals. these results are similar to our research results. a significant difference was found in the “uncontrolling” sub-dimension between the licensed athlete status of the students and the scale of social media addiction it was observed that the difference was caused by students who were not licensed athletes. this shows that students who are not licensed athletes can be affected by sociopsychological factors. university students especially pay attention to how they develop socially in campus. this situation, which is also mentioned in the social identity theory, is defined as the identification of individuals with various symbols to make themselves more social (kim & kim, 2019). these symbols and social comparisons, which are a reflection of the individual's actions, intentions or attitudes, the person sees himself in the groups he wants to belong to, and this behavior can be determined by providing psychological discrimination (martyn, fowler, kropp, oja, & bass, 2019).the right social media use of the firms will attract their customers, who are seeking symbolic pursuits, as well as the opportunity to make financial gain from this selectivity (nevin et al., 2017). in a similar research, people's sportive purchasing levels were examined and it was found that purchasing behavior was significantly affected against products with emotional commitment. the belief in symbolic belonging, especially mentioned in the social identity theory, has positively affected the purchasing behavior of people at the fan level, and over time, this behavior has been observed to decrease with age, social environment or similar reasons (eskiler, altunişik, & ayhan, 2019). in the research, it was observed that the students with high income status had higher purchase points than the students with low income status. it is accepted that the perception of social identity develops with social networks and this social development turns into buying behavior it is observed that individuals with a wide social environment and high purchasing power transform the social connections they maintain through such networks into product analysis or purchasing behavior (wang, 2017). at the same time, it has been observed that the use of well-known or rich people in the promotion of the accepted brands provides a kind of reliability and loyalty between the product and the buyer (jamil & rameez, 2014). this type of strategies suggests that shopping from online platforms can turn into redundant purchases. in a similar study on consumer perception in digital marketing, when the amount spent on online shopping is analyzed, it is found that those with high income do more shopping than those with low income (koçarslan & kılınç, 2019). while these results are similar to our research results, different results are also seen in the literature. for example, in a research on social media and purchasing asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 616-626 623 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group level, it was determined that the income status does not make a significant difference on the perception of purchasing (meydan & tunca, 2019). in a similar study on uncontrolled purchasing trends, unlike the results we have obtained, no relation between monthly income level and uncontrolled purchasing tendency has been determined (yoldaş & akın, 2019). in the research, it has been determined that the students who spend more than 6 hours on social media have high scores on variables such as redundant purchasing, uncontrolling and affecting daily life. research shows that technology affects every area in daily life, from business environment to personal relationships, and especially the use of social media reveals a distraction and attention deficit that causes stress together with internet addiction (brooks, longstreet, & califf, 2017). at the same time, social media addiction has recently revealed a kind of stress factor that has been translated as "fear of missing out". this factor can be characterized as “the desire to stay in touch with what others do” (swar & hameed, 2017). fear of losing social media access may cause mood disorders such as stress, anxiety, depression and loss of control in students (elhai, hall, & erwin, 2018). thus, these situations, which are also seen in the literature, may lead to negative effects on daily life, uncontrolling or redundant purchasing behavior. in a study examining the social media addiction levels of university students, it was observed that the social media addiction levels increased as the time allocated by the participants increased to social media (aktan, 2018). in another study on the time spent on social media mentions that when the use of social media is normal during adolescence but the time spent on these platforms cannot be controlled, it can create an uncontrolled process in individuals. the research suggests that self-directed training in individuals may be beneficial for this period to be used effectively (coyne, padilla‐walker, holmgren, & stockdale, 2019). these data obtained from the literature are similar to our research results, but in a study examining the social benefit, addiction and satisfaction feeling about the use of social media, different results are seen. according to research results, individuals use online social platforms for more than 3 hours a day and can get their basic and social needs both from here. social media addiction levels of the participants were found to be high, but it was found that this turned into a habit that creates a sense of satisfaction for both genders (santoso & oetomo, 2019). 5. conclusion the constant renewal of social media areas and their facilitation of information sharing and shopping have enabled people to make these platforms a part of their lives. the development of the social environment has enabled the commercial activities to serve through these areas. companies have come closer to their potential customers through social media and developed various strategies to promote their products. these strategies created a sustainable consumption behavior by social media users, causing them to observe the effects of the products followed on social media. the fact that users examine the reviews about the product and exhibit purchasing behavior within this framework causes companies to constantly review their strategies. the main sales policies of these types of companies have been the promotion of product promotions, especially on liked or popular characters, evaluating negative comments, updating products, and as a result, introducing marketing strategies focused on user satisfaction. the purchasing, following-up, or suggesting behaviors of the students on social media necessitated them to spend long hours in these areas. especially women shopping, taking into account the stimuli coming from their social circles, sometimes led them to a redundant purchasing behavior. brand loyalty, which is more common in men, and the feeling of taking more risks than women, have caused them to make purchases that can exceed their income. this type of shopping is due to the widespread use of credit cards and the convenience of shopping on social media, causing uncontrolled shopping in users. when the time spent on social media is added to this, a situation that affects daily life can arise and create negative emotional states. however, research suggests that this type of purchases will increase and become easier in the future. it is observed that especially the young population, which is more intertwined with social media, is satisfied with these developments, and even transformed the gains from such platforms into positive habits. as a result, it is thought that social media platforms will continue to progress with the development of internet and technology and increase the buying behavior of students in parallel with the current strategies of the companies. if the social media addiction that may arise in these environments can be controlled by various techniques and the feeling of uncontrolling can be reduced, it will also be possible for students to display a more effective and sustainable consumption behavior without affecting their daily lives. considering the results obtained from the research; when the person turns himself to a job, by focusing on this job, it is seen that the situations such as turning into a time that can affect his daily life and as a result of having uncontrolled coincide with the explanations mentioned in the flow theory. increasing social communication with internet applications and facilitating purchasing behavior can be considered as the increase of motivation sources mentioned in theory. as this situation affects all students, it is seen that motivation perception is different in students depending on gender. the flow status can also be considered as an important indicator of the financial uncontrolled experience of the students using social media. 6. suggestions it is frequently explained by researchers that the time spent on social media decreases or the topics of interest change as the age progresses. in this case, it is expected that the time spent by the students on social media does not turn into uncontrolling, redundant purchasing or not being able to do their daily business. therefore, considering that this process is a normal development and need process, various informative or preventive strategies can be used by family and educators. in particular, keeping financial expenditures under control by the family is important for ensuring a sustainable consumption behavior as well as preventing unnecessary expenditure. it can also be thought during this process that students gain a sense of self-sufficiency, manage their search for social identity and reduce dependencies. "social media addiction" and "sustainable consumption behavior scale" were used in the research. in similar studies in the future, scales can be expanded and different levels of perception can be measured. in this sense, scales belonging to the branches of sociology and psychology can be used. at the same time, qualitative research can be asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 616-626 624 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group created under different theories. this type of research is important to better reflect the user experience. the research is limited to a single city, but different cities and different groups may be preferred in future research. references aktan, e. (2018). investigation of social media addiction levels of university students according to various variables. erciyes communication journal, 5(4), 405-421. al-menayes, j. j. 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(2012). the effect of credit card on impulse purchase: an application for the academic staff of karabuk university. journal of history culture and art research, 1(4), 45-72. zainal, n. t. a., harun, a., & lily, j. (2017). examining the mediating effect of attitude towards electronic words-of mouth (ewom) on the relation between the trust in ewom source and intention to follow ewom among malaysian travellers. asia pacific management review, 22(1), 35-44.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmrv.2016.10.004. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 85 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 3, 85-94, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i3.4079 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group creation of learning strategies for development of english reading skill by the extensive reading in efl classroom sajeerat wutthisingchai english department, humanities and social sciences, lampang rajabhat university, thailand. email: swutthis@g.lpru.ac.th tel: +66858489522 abstract the research aimed to develop the reading process and comprehension through extensive reading of 30 english major freshmen students conducted at lampang rajabhat university, thailand, in the academic year of 2018. data was collected by using pre-and post-test. several follow-up activities and guidelines, including formative and summative assessments, were also conducted. moreover, the study also surveyed the coursework book at the end of the semester, which promotes learning strategies through comprehension questions of pre-and post-activities in class throughout the whole semester. all comprehension tests were valued in descriptive statistics, and the paired sample t-test was analyzed by spss statistics in the study. based on the statistical data, the overall results revealed that pre-and post-test had significant differences in scores at the level 0.01, which means that the post-test scores were significantly higher than the pre-test scores. further results were evaluated through qualitative measures including further discussion and conclusion. keywords: learning strategies, reading skill, extensive reading, intensive reading, reading log, reading process. citation | sajeerat wutthisingchai (2022). creation of learning strategies for development of english reading skill by the extensive reading in efl classroom. asian journal of education and training, 8(3): 85-94. history: received: 10 may 2022 revised: 24 june 2022 accepted: 12 july 2022 published: 29 july 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 86 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 87 3. methods ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 88 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 90 5. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 92 6. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 93 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 93 mailto:swutthis@g.lpru.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i3.4079 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7156-0548 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 85-94 86 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by developing the reading process and skill by enhancing the different learning strategies through extensive reading using various methods such as reading log, guidelines, peer-reviews and presentation along with the discussion of preand post-activities in efl classroom of intensive instruction. 1. introduction reading is a vital skill of acquiring a language. many students have realized that they can gain their understanding through what they have read which motivates their critical thinking skills for creating their opinions and concluding ideas in a text. reading can also develop one confidence in using a foreign language. however, reading for academic purposes is another issue because the reading content in this kind of text is not designed based on each student’s field of study and interest but on their academic needs. though, this kind of text may not help promote them to read more, especially outside the classroom, because of unmatched areas of interest (pongsatornpipat, 2021). students should be motivated to self-study and take responsibility for their learning by the teacher’s effective approaches and motivation as the key to developing reading skills (day & bamford, 2002). extensive reading (er) particularly becomes a significant role to get students to experience lots of reading. ateek (2021) summarized er as a crucial benefit for language learners to expose in sufficient amounts of accessible, comprehensible input with enjoyment and leads to many progression in language skills. specifically, it is to have them choose what they will read and then spend their time reading it continuously and numerously (day & bamford, 1998, 2002). if students practice frequently reading with various skills: listening, speaking, writing, vocabulary, and reading attitudes in the second language (l2), they can develop reading ability and fluency. in other words, er is a famous approach for practicing reading independently outside the classroom or called free reading, pleasure reading, a wide or independent reading (beglar & hunt, 2014; day & bamford, 2002; krashen, 2004; nation, 2009). students can choose what they prefer to read at their level or slightly below and at their own pace, which means less stress and more pleasure in their reading activity (bell, 1998; davis, 1995; day & bamford, 1998; nation, 1997). the rationale of the study arose from the problem of teaching reading to students who had little exposure to reading in english at lampang rajabhat university, thailand. the majority of students had suburban background. the shreds of evidence could be based on the english scores on the ordinary national educational test or known as the o-net test, which is a national level exam in thailand given to students grade 6, grade 9, and grade 12 from every region of thailand, to test the knowledge and thinking ability for their academic proficiency and the quality of education according to the basic education core curriculum in 2008 (national institute of educational testing service public organization, 2022). the mean scores in the 2017 academic year of grade 6, grade 9, and grade12 students from the suburban districts of thailand were 33.26, 28.44, and 24.34, respectively. the scores were lower by over 10% than the northern region scores of 36.94, 30.85, and 28.84, as reported by the national institute of educational testing service (niets) of thailand, 2018. therefore, from the test results, the students here can be considered to have little knowledge of english and the basic foundation course needed to be compulsory before studying in-depth. however, there was inadequate time for students to take many compulsory courses to prepare for an advanced skill like reading. according to krashen (2004) a great deal of stress or anxiety in the teaching and learning environment can hinder language acquisition. on the other hand, high stimulus, self-confidence, good selfperception, low anxiety with a safe and comfortable feeling in the teaching and learning process can lead to the key to success in second language acquisition. as an evaluation of former tests and observation from previous years, some students who often attended the classroom surprisingly appeared to have less final scores than the students who were often absent because the ones who often came to the classroom had less english knowledge than those who were absent. as inferred above, if students do not have much knowledge of english foundation, it is too difficult to teach them to become advanced learners. in addition, the assessment needed to reflect students’ comprehension along with their use of strategies. thus, the study was conducted through the reading 2 course, one of the english major compulsory subjects in the curriculum. its purpose was to investigate the suitable teaching and learning approach to enhance the critical thinking process, leading to concrete procedures of the reading process through comprehension questions of pre-and postactivities. although extensive reading characteristics of day and bamford (1998) don’t require or should have none of the comprehension quizzes after reading extensively, the curriculum needs the exact measures and assessment for this type of reading. macalister (2015) claimed that the ten characteristics of er were not mandatories but suggestions in terms of context, learner interest, and curriculum design application for extensive reading. at the university level, students here had little english background knowledge not only in terms of grammar and vocabulary but also cultural context which affects most of the enjoyment in reading an l2 text. therefore, some approaches of intensive reading about comprehension questions were applied and mainly discussed through the whole class to encourage students to read and study by themselves outside the classroom. as stated by some research, an er approach should blend into other classroom activities or tasks involving speaking or writing to be more productive (macalister, 2015). meanwhile, the meta-analysis of joen and day (2016) proposed that applying er in a curriculum could support the highest outcome of the approach. after er course, the follow-up tasks and activities should be given by the teachers to monitor students’ reading (robb, 2015). the purpose is to see if students could gain their reading skills from those applied in class to when they study and read extensively by their effort in other environments. consequently, er and intensive reading (ir) methods were both used in the study yet it will focus on the way er conducts and see if it proves to be successful in this kind of context. three main reasons also influenced the objectives of the study. first, the unsatisfactory scores of students’ intensive reading exams depend on the limited choices. the main problems maybe lay in the teaching approach. many teachers seem to focus on the grammar and vocabulary numbers rather than the thinking process. as a result, many students are taught to memorize more than to comprehend. moreover, most reading examinations are intensive with multiple-choice answers, which restrict the extent of many possible answers or ideas. it also limits the thinking method that is beyond choices. it narrows an answer from only four or five choices which are unpractical in a reallife situation. second, the lack of exposure and continuation to foreign language texts affect students’ fluency skills. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 85-94 87 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the study of ateek (2021) revealed that er can help students develop their reading proficiency by choosing what they are interested in at their comfort level to read and read as much as possible with different genres. his study showed a significant impact on increasing vocabulary knowledge by repeated reading of single words. as krashen (2004) argued that reading extensively is an essential source of reading proficiency, vocabulary, and the skill to decode complicated grammatical formations. day and bamford (1998) also stated that more amount of reading exposure helps increase vocabulary knowledge. therefore, readers who choose to read various genres can see a wide range of vocabulary and can recognize them without memorizing. thus, extensive reading is a way to expand their reading skill. third, the lack of motivation causes reading termination and numerous exposure resulting in reading fluency and comprehension. renandya and jacobs (2016) pointed out that motivation is an important element for reading extensively and continuously, as students who have less motivation cannot keep up with their reading tasks. for these reasons and the effects of er, the researcher would like to activate students’ knowledge while they are reading so that they can practice a great deal of reading through er and train themselves a critical thinking skills at the same time. therefore, students were assigned to read what they like and what is suitable for their language level and then to have them record their reading log so that to see if they could organize their train of thought from such creation of learning strategies to develop reading skills through a massive amount of er. this study reveals the findings on both qualitative and quantitative data of the study according to 2 objectives; to develop reading process and comprehension of students through extensive reading and, to develop english vocabulary knowledge of students by using the extensive reading approach with various learning strategies. 2. literature review 2.1 extensive reading as stated by waring (1997) er is the simple way that foreign language learners can gain language at ease from their own choice and at their speed. this method helps them to expose to the language with a sufficient amount of time to understand the perception the language works and assists them to combine what they already know. waring also claimed that it is unlikely for the teacher to teach this kind of language perception. it is the learners’ task to pick up this perception by themselves. this profound knowledge of a foreign language must be achieved through continuous and numerous exposure to the language through extensive reading. constant exposure to a foreign language gives the transference of intertextuality of l2 knowledge perception. day and bamford (2005) also stated that extensive reading is reading a substantial quantity of texts to grasp a gist on the meaning of the content than individual words or sentences. the purpose of er is reading for enjoyment as nation (2009) explained that the er approach has been used to build confidence and motivation, which develops students’ general comprehension about the content, improves their vocabulary and grammar knowledge, and increases a positive attitude towards reading. unlike what day and bamford (2002); day and bamford (2005) pointed out, the major emphasis of er is on the meaning of the content being read rather than on language skills. however, students mainly focus on language skills in intensive reading. they read with relatively shorter reading materials from the teacher’s instruction. the goal of intensive reading is to encourage students to create meaning in detail from the reading text and to develop reading skills, such as indicating main ideas and noticing text clues, and increasing their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar as known as formal schemas. er is when students read easily and enjoyably to promote their reading frequently and fluently. when students ‘study to read’ or ‘read extensively’, they are practicing the skill of reading by reading for information; for example, reading a storybook with the purpose of enjoyment by unconsciously knowing they are studying something. extensive reading aims to create fluency in reading, unnecessarily to attain new things. er intends to support the students to gain better reading skill rather than reading to study the language itself. however, intensive reading used a rather difficult text to ‘study reading’. when students ‘study reading’, they are reading a text to study something about the language or reading skill such as a new vocabulary, a grammar rule, identifying a topic and main ideas or give examples of the tense which the students will study intensively. this is the standard reading many students do in textbooks. the passages are short and often have many difficult vocabulary students are unknown of following by before and after reading activities and comprehension questions as well. the objective of this kind of reading is to help construct the language or reading skill (the extensive reading foundation, 2011). 2.2. the importance and characteristics of extensive reading (er) the extensive reading foundation (2011) guide to er stated the importance of why extensive reading is a better choice for language development. first, er enables students to read in real context and see how it is employed beyond the language in textbooks. secondly, er increases vocabulary knowledge. when students read numerously, they see several words and lexical word patterns many times, which help them skillfully foretell what kind of language patterns they will see next. thirdly, er increases reading rate and fluency, which lets them deal with the language more naturally. er also increases familiarity, inspiration, pleasure, and love, which helps students use language effectively and also reduces any anxieties occurred from language learning. furthermore, er enables students to read or listen to an enormous amount of english at their comfort and capability level to promote good reading skills. finally, er aids students to get a concept of how grammatical forms work in context as students will not see various contexts adequately in textbooks or other learning materials to promote a depth knowledge of how the language forms work. as a language teaching and learning approach, day and bamford (2002) proposed ten principles or characteristics of extensive reading as crucial factors in achieving extensive reading programs. moreover, bui and macalister (2021) agreed with the nation and waring (2020) five factors that influence students to read connected with some of the day and bamford principles as compared in figure 1. if the teacher considers these factors in the er approach, it is more probable to create effective understanding and desire to read. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 85-94 88 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. the comparison of er principles. 2.3. learning strategies to develop reading skills learning strategies are actions taken by the learner to make learning simple, quicker, more fun, more selfdirected, more efficient, and more flexible to new conditions. proper language learning strategies are all aimed at the significant goal of communicative competence in both general and specific ways. in the process of its development, it needs authentic communication among learners to use language meaningfully and contextually. language learning strategies encourage the overall development of communicative competence, in other words, skill or ability to communicate (oxford, 1990). brown (2012) stated that it is undeniable that extensive reading has a powerful connection with learner autonomy. holec (1981) viewed learner autonomy as the ability to monitor individual learning. canh (2021) revealed a positive effect of these two terms, which allows students to monitor their learning and become active in english reading classes. in the study, she demonstrated learning autonomy as a cognitive approach to stress the thought, beliefs, and emotions of oneself driven into actions. when students engage in er, they can move from cognitive to metacognitive states. luke (2006) compared this metacognitive or self-directed conduct to skilled readers who know how to take action once they were aware of their comprehension breakdown. they then verify the cause or problem, whether they were unknown words, confusing statements, or ambiguous ideas, and use strategies to clarify and resolve the problems. besides, they use strategies to predict and make connections to enhance involvement and develop, more profound meaning, similar to grabe (2009) and koda (2004) clarification of metacognitive awareness or metacognition. many studies have characterized a common set of strategies that promote reading achievement: activating background knowledge, summarizing, making a prediction, monitoring and clarifying, asking questions, thinking, problem-solving and monitoring understanding, finding out answers, visualizing or imaging, and making connections (harvey & goudvis, 2000). to illustrate, strategical reading is higher-order thinking as information and ideas are required to transform like summarizing needs evaluating and synthesizing information; making predictions engages connecting facts and ideas and making inferences to create a kind of assumption; making connection involves making generalization; and clarifying initiates problem-finding and problem-solving (trabasso & bouchard, 2002). other than these strategies, luke (2006) also have discovered that skilled readers are identified as having metacognitive awareness. 3 methods 3.1. subject the population were 30 english major first-year students in the academic year of 2018 at the university in lampang, thailand. two reasons to select english major first-year students for the subjects are; firstly, english major first-year students are obligatory to take the reading courses, and the whole class can be accessible. secondly, english major first-year students have more motivation to learn english and will endeavor to enhance their knowledge as it is their major. moreover, these students have gained their background knowledge of reading strategies from the reading 1 course, which taught them about different kinds of reading strategies from low-level to higher one: analyzing word parts, prefix, and suffix, guessing meaning with context clues, and using a dictionary. then the reading strategies of sentence and paragraph reading were instructed: finding inference and interpretation, identifying the main idea, supporting details, and finding references. all students have learned these skills and are supposed to apply them in the reading 2 course through their own extensive reading. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 85-94 89 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. research instruments 3.2.1. testing materials the study was conducted in 15-week with four-time tests. to compare student’s reading skills before and after the study, students were required to take the pre-and post-test to evaluate the research objectives as follows. 1) to develop the reading process and comprehension of students through extensive reading. 2) to develop the english vocabulary knowledge of students by using the extensive reading approach with various learning strategies. the pre-test and post-test is a short paragraph reading which requires students to give a short written answer to each question. the test is an excerpt from basic exercise 6 of leu, ttilaka, and lee (2015) from conquer comprehension workbook 6 on pages 22 to 24 in the reading comprehension workbook. a test composed of 10 questions with the total scores of 20. each question tests different reading skills, and students may need to use more than one skill to be able to answer some questions. most questions request the reason for answering. thus, the students need to understand the passage and give their opinion based on the text. some questions measure how students can find the specific details by inquiring students to provide the sentence from the story or to prove if the sentence is true or false with the evidence from the text. some questions also ask students to find the synonyms of the vocabulary from the text. the reading quiz comprises of both four multiple-choice and short answers which constructed based on chapter 7: a natural balance in part two which relates to a forest on the mountains from the book of chanchaochai (2007) in the king bhumibol adulyadej of thailand: strength of the land (vol.2). the student was allowed to read chapter 7 of the book to do the whole quiz. the quiz tested how well students can guess the vocabulary from the contexts, prefixes, and suffixes on multiple-choice and comprehension quizzes on writing. the midterm test also includes both multiple-choice and short written answers. each question measures various reading skills and provides suggested answers for the assessment validity. unlike the quiz, the students were not allowed to read the content in the book to do the multiple-choice questions. however, for the brief written questions, students were allowed to look at both the reading content and the dictionary. to evaluate reading skills and strategies students were developing throughout the reading 2 course intensively and extensively, the types of questions were employed in the tests as follows. 1) the main idea question asks for the central idea of the text. 2) a detailed question asks for specific content directly stated in the text. 3) a purpose question asks to indicate an objective of the text. 4) a demonstration or example question asks for distinguished details of a particular idea in the text. 5) an inference question asks for implied content indirectly stated in the passage. 6) an analysis or a critical question asks for the content that is required many skills and strategies to answer the questions correctly, including critical thinking skills or metacognitive awareness, background knowledge, making a prediction, making a connection, and making an inference. 7) a summarizing question asks for the conclusion of a particular idea or concept, including the main idea and supporting details in the text. 8) an explanation question asks for the clarification of a particular idea or its concept in the text. 9) a cause–and–effect question sometimes states a cause and asks for its effect or refers to an effect and asks for its causes. 10) an opinion and logical reason question ask for the student’s opinion using their background knowledge and their logical reason or evidence in the text to support their answer. 11) a vocabulary question asks for a meaning of a word or phrase used in the text. the types of questions used in the tests correlate to the reading research fields and the characteristics of extensive reading, which is focused on a general understanding of the text as referred by many scholars as nation (2009); day and bamford (2005) and the extensive reading foundation (2011). the pre-test’s reliability measured by the cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.913. the post-test’s reliability measured by the cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.897. the quiz’s reliability measured by the cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.718, and the mid-term test’s reliability measured by the cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.868. 3.2.2. an open-ended self-reflection-questionnaire the self-reflection questionnaire was given in students’ first language at the end of the course semester to determine student satisfaction, dissatisfaction, self-reflection, and comprehension of using the coursework book and the teacher’s instructional approach. there were 7 questions asking students to give their feedback in thai (l1) on how well they can use and understand the coursework book, how well they can cope with it, and also how well they can adapt to the approach of the teacher’s instruction. the content of the book from the teacher’s selection; cambridge primary english: learner’s book 3 by budgell and ruttle (2015) and learner’s book 4 by sally and ridgard (2015). they are made for the reading course of the primary students of native english speakers, so the content may not be all suitable for university students, but most of the content intends to develop basic thinking skills with short-answerquestions. therefore, if used with efl learners, it may not be for the beginning’s level but means for preintermediate. 3.2.3. validity of the instruments to ensure the validity of the test, the questionnaire, and the reading tasks, it was guided by literature and research study. then, the test, the survey questions, and the reading tasks will be checked and revised by the native speakers who are the area teachers in the field of english. moreover, to avoid errors due to misinterpreting, the questionnaire was developed in thai and allowed students to answer in their first language. moreover, students were familiar with the format of questions before doing the quiz, the midterm test, and the post-test from different reading tasks in and out of the classroom. although the prerequisite skill wasn’t directly indicated on each item in the test, but the question obviously stated its objective. thus, the students have known the necessary skill needed to find out the answer. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 85-94 90 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2.4. analysis of data and statistical procedures the data were computed and analyzed after all the results of the tests had been collected by using the statistical formulae in spss version 22 (2013) employed in sum, mean ( x ), and standard deviation (s.d.). moreover, the test will be analyzed and compared between each reading skills used while answering the comprehension questions and whether students can use their skills correctly. in this study, the teacher also examined data analysis using the qualitative description of learning strategies; a reading log with vocabulary record including another reading exercise for the development of english reading skills by the extensive reading chosen by the teacher, and students’ choices of favor. the analysis would also investigate the student’s learning procedures and revealed some possibilities of student errors and progress. 3.2.5. procedure all of the formative and summative assessments were created to test whether the er approach and various creation of learning strategies in and out of the classroom setting can develop students' reading skills. moreover, the tests were also divided into pre-test, post-test, a quiz, and a midterm test, including the survey of the teaching materials and methods to measure how students developed at each period because the pre-test was given at the beginning of the course and around the 6th week, the quiz was given. after the 8th week, the midterm was tested. finally, the post-test and the survey were given in the 15th week after completing all of their reading tasks. in the first week, the assigned reading sheet from the teacher’s selected book was given to students to read outside the class from the 2nd to 7th week. from the 8th-12th week, students were set to read their preferred book of long texts for their extensive reading. they were assigned to record their log and vocabulary every other week to keep their progress. simultaneously, they also needed to study reading comprehension in the classroom by reading various genres of short passages and writing short answers for follow-up comprehension questions in single, pair, and group work and discussion. figure 2 compares the procedures of the two-reading conducted in and outside of class. figure 2. the creation of learning strategies by implementing extensive reading for an intensive reading class (cls-erir). 4. results 4.1. the comparison of mean scores between the pre-test and the post-test the mean scores of the pre-test, the post-test was computed and analyzed by descriptive analysis and the comparison between each two using paired samples t-test. ten short questions for the pre-and post-test were given to students to write short answers according to various reading skill requirements; giving information and reasons, agreement with a reason, giving a specific detail, and searching for a synonym. from table 1, the mean scores of 30 students increased by 2.47. therefore, it can be assumed that the learning strategies created through extensive reading can help increase reading skill development. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 85-94 91 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. paired samples statistics. sample test mean n std. deviation std. error mean pair1 pre-test post-test 6.68 9.15 30 30 5.24 5.16 0.96 0.94 as shown in table 2, it can be interpreted that the differences in the scores from the pre-test and post-test were statistically significant at the level of 0.01. this importantly indicated that the post-test scores are higher than the pre-test scores. the results can support the study's aims in which the approach of using various learning strategies through extensive reading can develop in terms of vocabulary, reading comprehension skills, and the reading process. table 2. paired samples test of pre-test and post-test scores in reading 2 course. test sample paired differences mean std. deviation std. error mean 95% confidence interval of difference t df sig.(2tailed) lower upper pair1 pre-test post-test -2.46 2.98 0.54 -3.58 -1.35 -4.53 29 0.00 4.2. the analysis of required reading skills for each question item and comparison of student’s scores during all the assessments according to different tests, the types of questions from the pre-and post-test, the quiz, and the midterm test were closely investigated. there were ten short-answer questions for the pre-and post-test to evaluate students’ various reading skill requirements; giving information and reasons, agreement with a reason, giving a specific detail, and searching for a synonym. it investigated how students use learning strategies and which learning strategies needed to be focused on intensely for the teacher to create suitable tasks or activities in aiding students to gain what they have unskilled for. moreover, the post-test was to see if all the learning instruments could gradually help develop their use of strategies effectively. the pre-and post-test used the same questions and formats with the same amount of time provided, and the scores were excluded from the reading2 course for its validity and reliability. the results showed that the highest top 3 scores were from the type of questions that asks students for specific details, information and reasons. it can be concluded that students may have already practiced these reading strategies intensively in reading 1 course but by reading extensively in reading 2 course, they come to spontaneously use them which meets the goals of this study. however, in question no. 4.3, no. 7.2 from the same types of questions and no. 9.4 was for finding a synonym have few students answer correctly either in pre-and post-test. to explain, those sub-questions were all connected to the main question. to illustrate, in no.4, students need to complete all three answers correctly for three points, but they mostly gave the incorrect answer for the last one. similarly, no. 7 was also required two reasons for the answer. most students gave only one answer correctly. yet, no.9 was different because it was about finding a synonym. students gained less scores from this type of question in the pre-test and slightly higher in the post-test. during the quiz and the midterm test, the results showed many learning strategies students could acquire involved finding details or synonyms, giving interpretation and opinion along with a logical reason were mostly the strategies students could gain. moreover, most of the vocabulary questions in the midterm test were receiving higher scores than other types of questions. it means that students can use what they have learned from the intensive reading 1 course about word analysis in using affixes, word structures and context clues to determine the closing meaning of unknown words. moreover, they expand their vocabulary knowledge from what they have been assigned to work on vocabulary record during their extensive reading. although most vocabulary questions were highly scored, a few vocabulary questions have rarely gained any scores as in questions no. 5, no.8, no.10 and no.11. the kind of question in no.5, no.10 and no.11 was underlined words and asked for the closest meaning. only no.8 was a cloze test question. the choices have the same word class but different meanings to test their strategies in guessing words from the context and finding synonym. however, the choices of no.10 are different in both word class and meaning to test both knowledges of grammatical structure and strategies in guessing from the context. it could mean that students not only needed to focus more on the strategies but also the linguistic features to comprehend the text. 4.3. the survey of reading coursework book seven open-ended questions were asked for students’ perception about coursework and exercise in the book including the instructional approach for reading 2 course as follows table 3. table 3. students’ perceptions in the questionnaire. title students’ perceptions question no. students’ attitudes towards the coursework book positive; great content with many different fields of vocabulary and grammatical structures. 1,5,7 the appropriate level of texts in the coursework book positive; more than 60% of all the questions could be answered some chapters were what they were interested in, or easy vocabulary and short content. 2,3,4,6 students’ learning strategies to cope with difficulty positive; asking their friends, seniors or teacher for clarification; seeking more opportunities in reviewing the question, or searching for more knowledge from the internet. 3,4 students’ self-awareness towards reading strategies and improvement positive; some exercises cannot be answered, and students were aware of what they missed to understand the text. students also agreed to increase their reading skills for knowledge expansion, and many students suggested reading as much as possible, reviewing what has been read, and using their own metacognitive skills to monitor and develop each time they read. 4,5,6,7 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 85-94 92 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.4. the reading reflection and translation through reading log in this part of the research results, the creation of learning tasks through extensive reading were observed and investigated if they could fulfill 2 objectives of the study, which are as follows: 1) to develop reading process and comprehension of students through extensive reading. 2) to develop english vocabulary knowledge for students using the extensive reading approach with various learning strategies. therefore, to see their development, some remarkable excerpts of students’ reading logs were given to analyze the process of their reading development from the second to the twelfth week of the semester through their extensive reading assignment, but they had to submit them to the teacher one week and then get their feedback on the other week until their completion. it was six weeks of submission in total. one of their reading books was chosen by the teacher and others were from their individual favorite choice. based on evidence of students’ er, the finding were summarized in table 4 by using qualitative methods. the excerpts were from four students who were remarkably improved from the first week compared to the last week of submitting. table 4. excerpts of students’ reading log. excerpt students’ strategies students’ error error repetition students’ strategies gain awareness and selfimprovement 1st student off the point for three times until noticing her mistakes from the teacher’s feedback 3 times from week 2,4,6 making a connection and beginning to develop selfmonitoring and making connections unconsciously. week 8,10,12 2nd student no clarification of characters’ personalities 4 times from week 2,4,6,8 giving specific details, making inferences and thinking critically week 10,12 3rd student good at critical thinking skills and no difficulty in understanding the text problems with expressing an idea in the target language and making a connection 3 times from week 4,8,10 more engaging and practicing in the skills week 12 4th student the skill of back and forth transference from l1 to l2 to and fro no connectives or incorrect use causing unconnected ideas 3 times from week 2,4,8 sequencing and organizing thought week 10, 12 another task given to see if students understood the text, the grammar-translation methods were used in the study. after submitting the reading log, each student has been assigned to summarize and translate one of his friend’s reading logs randomly each week. therefore, the student would have a rare chance to repeat the same person’s log at the previous time as he did. looking into the student’s translation revealed some parts of the student’s inference and thinking process given in table 5. these were some excerpt summarization of four different cases analysis. table 5. excerpts of students’ translation. case students’ original message students’ translation students’ error language in focus 1st case ‘the castle of the count’ ‘the castle of calculation as in counting’ misunderstand the meaning of a proper word guessing vocabulary from the context clues 2nd case ‘at the same time’ ‘later time’ mistranslation of a connective the use of different connectives 5th case ‘she was always teased by friends’. ‘she always teased her friends’ misplace an object as a subject the use of active and passive voice 7th case ‘reminds’ ‘true love’ ‘us’ ‘warn’ ‘accurate love’ ‘them’ mistranslation of words and pronoun word choices and pronouns 5. discussion the results showed that students could develop reading process and comprehension through extensive reading with various learning strategies from the significantly higher post-test scores in the quantitative data. it can be inferred that these learning strategies could be developed on the way of reading extensively while several learning strategies were intentionally given in class for practicing simultaneously. as in the study, the researcher could not follow all of the ten principles of day and bamford (2002) but attempted to focus on the practical context within the local setting and curricular limitation as macalister (2015) claimed. the frequent principle no.1-5 and 9 were applied in this practice. in addition, the ir approach of formative and summative assessments was also undertaken in the study to guide students and follow their progress instead of a single general er assessment of reading log and vocabulary record. after both reading activities from ir and er in and out of class, the researcher also gave feedback and correction to students each week. as proposed by ng, renandya, and chong (2019) reading is necessary to be monitored and assessed because it could aspire students to show interest in their reading. similarly, as stated by macalister (2015) for the contextual practice, some research unveiled that an extensive reading approach could be asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 85-94 93 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group more effective if it was integrated into other classroom activities or projects like speaking or writing output projects. as bui and macalister (2021) argued that blending the reading into classroom activities may affect less variety of genres because students are required to read the same material for classroom activities which was similar to this study. furthermore, another finding also revealed that students can develop english vocabulary knowledge by using an extensive reading approach. most vocabulary questions receive higher scores than other types of questions in the midterm test for a summative assessment. it means that students can use their strategies or background knowledge from what they have learned in class and can expand their vocabulary knowledge from many amounts they have exposed in their extensive reading. however, the linguistic competencies were also necessary and cannot be overlooked. the survey of coursework book showed positive attitudes and an appropriate level of comprehension for the students, which correspond with principle no. 1, and no.3. according to day and bamford (1998) esl or efl will successfully read and understand easily if they use reading texts that were suitable to their communicative competence in terms of linguistics as described by oxford (1990) and also within their interest may increase student’s reading fluency and vocabulary, learning autonomy and motivation supported by many recent research studies such as singkum and chinwonno (2021); ateek (2021); canh (2021). from the survey, many students have distinguishing ways to cope with their comprehension breakdown by asking friends who have good reading skills or teachers; reviewing their reading questions, or searching for more knowledge from the internet. according to students’ perception, the content difficulty and interest could correlate to their background knowledge, leading to understanding in their reading. moreover, they saw the importance of reading development for knowledge expansion. they agreed with the first principle of day and bamford (2002) that to read as much as possible, to review what has been read, and use their metacognitive skill to monitor and develop each time they read. significantly, the follow-up activities of reading reflection through reading logs and vocabulary records, including peer’s translation and summarization, revealed the importance of the teacher’s guidance and classroom activities which could provide successful learning through er approach to reinforce various strategies along with the development of self-regulated learning or learning autonomy. canh (2021) recommended that efl students should be exposed to er activity for a practical approach to developing their ability in reading and learning autonomy. therefore, er should be blended into the instructional curriculum so that both teachers and students can manage the great benefits of the implementation. in addition, the teachers could also be a counselor advising students in er approach to select appropriate reading texts and gradually build lifelong reading habits. once students are familiar with learning strategies and autonomy, they can control their learning process and fully become autonomous learners. 6. conclusion in conclusion, this research study showed whether the learning strategies created through extensive reading help develop reading skills. the finding revealed that the post-test scores of reading comprehension for the first-year english major students at the university in lampang were significantly higher than the pre-test scores at the level of 0.01. consequently, it means that the creation of learning strategies through extensive reading by the preand post-activities questions in the coursework exercise with the teacher’s instructional approach, reading log and vocabulary record assignment, summarizing and translating other’s reading log could not only help students become autonomous learners more quickly but also develop many reading skills through their learning strategies, especially, from different types of questions. by finding the answers, students need to use several skills to give the correct answer to the question. moreover, reading logs and vocabulary records engage students in activities and keep on reading extensively with determination. finally, summarizing and translating others’ reading logs enhance students’ fundamental knowledge of english, vocabulary recognition, and language transference skill. despite a limitation of a small-sized study in a local efl setting and no concrete instrument to measure the increasing knowledge of vocabulary, the findings could reflect multiple dimensions of knowledge in some academic areas. the analysis of the study may also contribute beneficial sources to english teachers and other foreign language educators beyond the quantitative result but a depth insight of the case report in qualitative analysis in a different setting where they can apply er teaching approach or the blending of er and ir to gain the most benefit for the teaching and learning management. references ateek, m. 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(2021). implementing efl extensive reading for thai vocational students. learn journal: language education and acquisition research network, 14(1), 208-239. the extensive reading foundation. (2011). guide to extensive reading. retrieved from https://erfoundation.org/wordpress/guides/. trabasso, t., & bouchard, e. (2002). teaching readers how to comprehend text strategically. in block, c.c. and pressley, m. (eds.), comprehension instruction, research-based best practices. new york: guildford press. waring, r. (1997). graded and extensive reading-questions and answers. the language teacher, 21(5), 9-12. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 189 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 3, 189-194, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.189.194 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of leisure benefits on loneliness of university students alpaslan baki ertekin faculty of sport sciences, istanbul gelisim university, turkey. abstract the study aimed to determine the differences between loneliness levels and leisure benefits according to the variables of university students and the effect of leisure benefits on loneliness. in the research, scanning model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used. the study group of the research consisted of 255 students, 148 males (58.0%) and 107 females (42.0%), studying at the school of physical education and sports of istanbul gelişim university, and formed by voluntary participation. in addition to the personal information form, the ucla loneliness scale (uls) developed by russell, peplau, and ferguson (1978) and adapted to turkish by demir (1989), and leisure benefit scale (lbs) developed by ho (2008) and adapted to turkish by akgül, ertüzün, and karakucuk (2018), were used. after the data showed normal distribution, t-test, anova and pearson correlation test were used in the analysis. according to the research results, a difference was found between the individuals' loneliness according to the age groups and the leisure benefits according to their gender. as a result of the research, it was concluded that as the leisure benefits of the individuals increased, their loneliness decreased. keywords: leisure benefits, leisure, loneliness, physical benefits, psychological benefits, recreation, social benefits, students of university. citation | alpaslan baki ertekin (2021). the effect of leisure benefits on loneliness of university students. asian journal of education and training, 7(3): 189-194. history: received: 28 may 2021 revised: 25 june 2021 accepted: 19 july 2021 published: 24 august 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 190 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 190 3. findings / results.......................................................................................................................................................................... 191 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 192 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 193 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 193 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.189.194&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/3242 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6826-2478 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 189-194 190 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by determining the differences between loneliness levels and leisure benefits according to the variables of university students and the effect of leisure benefits on loneliness. 1. introduction recreation is a variety of activities in which individuals participate in their leisure, provide personal satisfaction, and use their talents and skills (stebbins, 2005). while mclean, hurd, and rogers (2008) have explained recreation as a period in which individuals express themselves efficiently, brey and lehto (2007) have defined them as entertainment and social activities that enable individuals to renew themselves. in summary, recreation can be explained as the sum of activities that individuals can do in their leisure alone or groups, rest, have fun, regenerate physically and spiritually, experience satisfaction and pleasure as a result of the activity (ardahan, 2016). although the mystery of whether recreational activities performed in leisure are a necessity comes to mind, it is undoubtedly the fact that recreation is a need (karakucuk & gurbuz, 2007). gokce (2019) has emphasized that the need for leisure activities can not only be based on a cause as the main factor on the behaviour of individuals, but the need for leisure activities may depend on many factors. individuals need activities that are different from those that are always performed to get rid of the busy pace of their life and to regenerate physical and spiritual. in this case, it can be explained as a phenomenon that should be performed in the nature of recreation in human nature (kilicman, 2020). undoubtedly, the most frequently encountered name in researches in defining the state of need is abraham maslow. maslow's hierarchy of needs theory is the most frequently used theory in the field of recreation (beşikçi, 2020). while maslow listed the needs of people from the bottom up as physiological and biological needs, security, belonging, respectability and self-actualization needs, he also stated that these needs are fulfiled sequentially after the first need is fulfiled (wang, 1993). ibrahim and cordes (2002) mention that people intend to regenerate spiritually and physically in the remaining time after basic physiological and biological needs and security needs are met. karakucuk and gurbuz (2007), have stated that basic needs and security problems should disappear for individuals to be able to engage in recreational activities such as sports and arts. this mobilization, which is accepted as an orientation to recreational activities, is seen as recreational needs with similar goals as stated in maslow's need for self-actualization (beşikçi, 2020). individuals see some benefits from the recreational activities they participate in their leisure. these benefits can be grouped into three classes as psychological, physical and social benefits (guzel, turker, & turker, 2014). munusturlar (2016) have gathered the psychological benefits that the individual gains from leisure under the headings of mental health, personal development, and personal value and satisfaction. the living conditions of the person can bring a sedentary life with them, in this case, this sedentary person can have health problems. leisure activities involving physical movements are the best way to avoid these health problems, and doing these activities is beneficial for their physical health (kaya, 2011). when the social benefit of recreation is examined, it is a fact that especially individuals find themselves in a social life with recreational activities. individuals in these environments are suitable environments for the development of these relationships. as social being, people are in constant communication and interaction with their environment. this interaction situation brings some problems with it. as a result of these problems, people are faced with the feeling of loneliness (akgul, 2020). in the modern period, loneliness is a common issue that causes some social problems in society. kemala (2017) has explained loneliness as a depressing situation created in individuals due to the low quality of social relationships. on the other hand, gectan (1994) has explained loneliness as a state of emotion that is frightening for people, causes despair, prevents socialization and causes them to be alienated from their environment. although researchers have seen the concept of loneliness from different angles, they actually have said the same thing. in generally, loneliness is an unpleasant feeling that changes in intensity that occurs in response to an individual's relational deficit (reed, 1986). among the personality traits of the individual, shyness, lack of social skills and self-confidence can be listed as the factors that cause loneliness (pinar, 2020). haliloglu (2008) has stated that psychological and cognitive factors and keser and karaduman (2014) have stated that the lack of communication between individuals is a factor in the emergence of loneliness. today, the development of technology, the increase in internet and social networks, and addiction cause loneliness and threaten people. in the age we live in, the feeling of loneliness is a situation that individuals constantly encounter. to avoid this situation or to overcome it as soon as possible, recreational activities in the leisure that individuals have are extremely important (siyahtaş, 2020). koçyiğit, erdoğdu, uyar, and çınar (2018) have emphasized that the recreational activities that individuals participate in their leisure are important in establishing interpersonal relationships, maintaining their relationships and strengthening their sense of belonging. ustün and kalkavan (2013) have stated that as a result of the recreational activities in which individuals participated, individuals turned towards new friendships, aimed to meet new people, and pursued new experiences. in this context, it was thought that it was necessary to investigate the effects of various benefits obtained from recreation on individuals' loneliness. when the literature was examined, it was seen that the studies (pınaroğlu, 2020; siyahtaş, 2020; uçar, 2018; yağmur, 2015) that affected the loneliness of recreation and the asociality of individuals were limited. therefore, this study aimed to reveal whether the benefits individuals obtain from recreational activities affected their loneliness or not. 2. methodology 2.1. research design the relational screening model describes a situation or event as it exists in research, and the relationship and effect of the variables that cause this situation are determined (kaya, balay, & göçen, 2012). in this study, the relational screening model, one of the screening models, was used. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 189-194 191 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.2. research group a total of 155 students, 148 males (58.0%) and 107 females (42.0%), who studied at the school of physical education and sports of istanbul gelişim university, participated in the study group of the study voluntarily. 2.3. data collection tools 2.3.1. personal information form the personal information form was prepared by the researcher to determine the gender, age and welfare levels of the individuals. 2.4. ucla loneliness scale (uls) ucla loneliness scale (uls) was developed by russell et al. (1978) and adapted to turkish by demir (1989). uls consisted of 20 items, 10 of the items were reverse items. the scale was a 4-likert type (1-i never live, 4-i live often). the maximum point that can be taken from the scale was 80 points, and the lowest score was 20 points. the more the scores increased, the more the level of loneliness increased, and this increased causes more loneliness experience for the individual. the reliability and internal consistency calculation of the scale were determined by the test-retest method. calculations regarding the internal consistency of the scale were performed and the internal consistency coefficient was determined as .96. the scale was re-tested every five weeks, and the coefficient between the scores obtained as a result of the first test was determined as .94 (demir, 1989). 2.5. leisure benefit scale (lbs) the leisure benefit scale (lbs) was developed by ho (2008) and adapted to turkish by akgül et al. (2018). the leisure benefit scale (lbs) consisted of 24 items and 3 sub-dimensions, and the scale was 5-point likert type (1-strongly disagree, 5-totally agree). sub-dimensions were social benefits, physical benefits, and psychological benefits. the cronbach alpha value of the scale was determined as .83. 2.6. data analysis the spss 20. package program was performed in the analysis of the data collected from the participants in the study. it was decided whether the data showed a normal distribution or not, according to the skewness and kurtosis. according to george and mallery (2010), the fact that the data are in the range of -2, +2 can be accepted as a normal distribution of the data. as seen in table 1, it is seen that the research data are in the range of -2, +2. therefore, it was accepted that the research data showed a normal distribution. after it was understood that the data showed normal distribution, independent samples t-test and anova test, which were parametric tests, were used in the analysis. pearson correlation test was used to determine the relationship between scales. the difference between the groups was analysed using the tukey test. the level of significance in the analyses was set at 0.05. 3. findings / results according to the results, a total of 255 individuals, 148 males (58.0%) and 107 females (42.0%), participated in the study. 109 of these participants (42.7%) were in the 18-21 age group, 114 (44.7%) were in the 21-25 age group, and 32 (12.5%) were 26 and older. when the welfare status of the participants was examined, while 52 (20.4%) of the individuals stated their opinion as "high", 181 (71.0%) of them stated "medium" and 22 (8.6%) "low". table-1. distribution of scale scores. sub-dimensions item n mean sd. skewness kurtosis ucla loneliness scale loneliness 20 255 1.92 0.60 1.30 0.080 leisure benefit scale 24 255 4.62 0.85 1.24 0.062 physical benefits 7 3.65 0.84 1.25 0.67 psychological benefits 8 3.58 1.02 1.19 0.064 social benefits 9 3.67 0.82 1.22 0.068 table 1 consisted of the mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis values obtained from the scale scores of the participants. according to the analysis results, the mean score obtained from the ucla loneliness scale was 1.92. while the mean obtained from the leisure benefit scale was 4.62, 3.65 was found in the "physical benefit" sub-dimension, 3.58 in the "psychological benefit" sub-dimension, and 3.67 in the "social benefit" sub-dimension. table-2. t-test results between loneliness and lbs sub-dimensions according to the gender of the individuals. male (n = 148) female (n = 107) mean ss mean ss sd t p loneliness 1.88 0.45 1.80 0.37 253 1.255 0.158 physical benefits 4.26 0.90 4.32 0.87 253 1.122 0.171 psychological benefits 4.24 0.89 4.27 0.83 253 1.321 0.148 social benefits 4.29 0.81 4.35 0.75 253 5.412 0.022* table 2 consisted of the results of the t-test conducted to determine whether there was a significant difference between the lbs sub-dimensions and loneliness according to the gender of the individuals participating in the study. according to the analysis results, there was no statistically significant difference between the loneliness of individuals according to their gender (t(253)=1.255, p>0.05). according to the analysis results of the research, while there was no significant difference between the "physical benefit" and "psychological benefit" sub-dimensions of lbs according to the gender of the individuals (p> 0.05), a significant difference was found between the "social benefit" sub-dimension (t(253)=5.412 p<0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 189-194 192 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. anova results between loneliness and lbs sub-dimensions regarding age groups of individuals. 18-21 age group (n = 109) 22-25 age group (n = 114) 26 and older (n = 32) mean ss. mean ss. mean ss. f p difference loneliness 1.86 0.45 1.85 0.44 1.93 0.35 7.578 0.001* 2-3 physical benefits 4.04 0.74 4.11 0.70 4.20 0.69 2.535 0.124 psychological benefits 4.12 0.62 4.17 0.66 4.18 0.65 2.125 0.224 social benefits 4.15 0.67 4.18 0.70 4.21 0.72 2.389 0.205 in table 3, anova results were given to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the lbs sub-dimensions of loneliness according to the age groups of the individuals participating in the study. in the analysis results, a statistically significant difference was found between the loneliness scores of individuals according to age groups (f=7.578 p<0.05). according to the analysis results, no statistically significant difference was found between "physical benefit", "psychological benefit" and "social benefit" sub-dimensions of the leisure benefit scale according to the age groups of individuals (p> 0.05). table-4. the relationship between loneliness and leisure benefit scale sub-dimensions. loneliness physical benefits -0.265 0.126 psychological benefits -0.254 0.000* social benefits -0.327 0.000* table 4 showed the correlation results between ucla loneliness scale and leisure benefit scale subdimensions according to the data collected from individuals. according to the analysis results, there was no relationship between loneliness, and loneliness and physical benefit (p>0.05). on the other hand, a negative correlation was found between loneliness and psychological benefits (r=-.25 p<0.05), and a moderate negative correlation (r=-.32 p<0.05) between loneliness and social benefit. 4. discussion the study aimed to investigate the effects of leisure benefits on loneliness and to determine the relationship between the physical, psychological and social benefits obtained from leisure and loneliness. moreover, it was aimed to determine the differences between individuals' gender and age variables and their levels of loneliness and leisure benefits. when the mean obtained from the scales were examined, it was determined that the loneliness mean of the individuals was 1.92. when the results of similar studies were examined, the loneliness score means of individuals were found to be 2.51 in the study by kalkan (2018), 2.68 in the study by karakoç and taydaş (2013), and 1.87 in the study by siyahtaş (2020). when the result obtained in our study was compared with other research results, it can be said that the loneliness level of the individuals was low. in the results of the study, no statistically significant difference was found between the loneliness of the individuals according to their gender table 2. when the studies in the literature were examined, it was seen there were studies (büyük, 2017; karakoç & taydaş, 2013) in which a significant difference was determined, and there were also studies in which no significant difference was determined (eni, 2017; yabancı, 2019). siyahtaş (2020) was stated that the reason for the difference in loneliness between the genders in the studies was the difference in the personality traits of the individuals, environmental reasons and the psychological problems of the individuals reflected in their loneliness and this situation affected the results of the studies. in the results of the study, a significant difference was found between "social benefit" of the leisure benefit scale sub-dimensions according to the gender of the individuals table 2. when mean scores were examined, it can be said that the mean scores of female individuals were higher than male individuals. in this context, it can be said that female benefits more from leisure. in the study conducted by yalcinkaya (2019) a significant difference was found in favour of female in the "social benefit" sub-dimension according to the gender of individuals. the results of our study were in parallel with the results of the study conducted by yalcinkaya (2019). in the results of the study, a statistically significant difference was found between the loneliness scores of the individuals according to the age groups table 3. according to the tukey test conducted to determine between which groups there was a significant difference, it was determined that the significant difference was between the 21-25 age group and the individuals 26 and older. it was observed that the mean of individuals aged 26 and older was higher. as a result, it can be said that loneliness increased as age progressed. in the results of the study, no significant difference was found between the leisure benefit scale sub-dimensions according to the age groups of individuals table 3. when all sub-dimensions were examined, it was determined that the mean scores of individuals aged 26 and older were higher than other age groups. although the difference was not determined to be statistically significant, it can be said that the older the age, the more benefit from leisure. when the literature was examined, in the study conducted by yalcinkaya (2019), a significant difference was found between the benefit obtained from leisure according to age groups, while a significant difference was not found in the study conducted by kocaer (2018). the main aim of the study was to examine the effects of leisure benefits on individuals' loneliness. when similar studies were examined, ekinci, demirel, demirel, and işık (2015) found that leisure was a tool for individuals not to experience loneliness, cakır, demirel, harmandar, and serdar (2018) concluded that leisure asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 189-194 193 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group management of individuals reduced their loneliness, while siyahtaş (2020) concluded that satisfaction achieved in leisure activities decreased loneliness. 5. conclusion as a result of our research, no relationship was found between the leisure benefit scale "physical benefit" subdimension and loneliness of individuals, and negative relationships were found between "psychological benefit" and "social benefit" sub-dimensions. in other words, it was concluded that as the leisure benefits of individuals increased, their loneliness can decrease. especially in recent years, it has known that individuals have more leisure than in the past. on the other hand, the development of technology and the increase of social media platforms with smartphones made people more dependent on technology, and parallel to this, people became more alienated, divided and asocial by being isolated from society. both the results of our research and the results of similar studies were shown that leisure activities and recreational activities reduce the loneliness of individuals and become a tool to socialize people by activating them more. therefore, it can be recommended that individuals use their leisure with various recreational activities. references akgül, b. m., ertüzün, e., & karakucuk, s. 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(2019). determining the relationship between university students' recreation benefit perceptions and happiness levels. master thesis. sakarya university of applied sciences graduate education institute. sakarya. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 91 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 91-95, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.91.95 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of self-esteem on leadership orientation: a study on students of sports management department ilker gunel usak university, faculty of sport science, turkey. abstract in this study, which aims to examine the effect of self-esteem levels of students who receive sports management education on their leadership orientation, the population of this study, in which the related screening method is used among quantitative research designs, consists of students studying at the sports management departments of the sports sciences faculties of the universities in the central anatolia region. the sample of the study (female = 184, male = 131) consists of 315 students of sports management department, which was reached using the convenience sampling method, and a 95% confidence interval has been used with an error margin of 5%. data from the participants were collected with self-esteem scale and leadership orientation scale. since the data has normal distribution, parametric tests have been used: correlation to measure the relationship between two variables, and regression analysis to measure the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable. a significant positive relationship was found with the self-esteem levels of the students and their leadership orientation in general and in sub-dimensions of task-oriented and relationship-oriented. in addition, self-esteem levels were found to have a significant effect on students' leadership orientation in general and in taskoriented and relationship-oriented sub-dimensions. as a result, it was found that students' selfesteem levels and leadership orientation levels are high, and as their self-esteem levels increase, their leadership orientation in general and in task-oriented and relationship-orientation subdimensions also increase. keywords: self-esteem, leadership orientation, sports management department, faculty of sport science, mission-oriented. citation | i̇lker gunel (2021). the effect of self-esteem on leadership orientation: a study on students of sports management department. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 91-95. history: received: 15 january 2021 revised: 17 february 2021 accepted: 19 march 2021 published: 13 april 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 92 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 92 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 93 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 94 5. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 95 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 95 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.91.95&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2802 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7642-1707 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 91-95 92 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the concept of self-esteem has been examined in many different ways in the literature. however, i think it will contribute to the literature in this respect since there are very few studies in terms of its effect on students' leadership tendencies. 1. introduction today, it is known that the limitations that students experience in the face of their efforts to achieve goals such as anxiety about finding a job, financial expectations, desire to achieve a certain status in the future, and to live a comfortable life have a significant effect on their life standards. it is considered that self-esteem is one of the basic elements that individuals should have in order to have a happy life and to have a certain meaning in their lives. studies on the concept of self-esteem by james (1892) and cooley (1902) in the literature are known as the first scientific research that deeply influenced and guided existing self-esteem studies. self-esteem can be defined as a feeling of worthiness and competence, expressing emotional reactions about the characteristics of the individual, the interactions of the person with the environment, the sense of self-acceptance of the individual and self-esteem towards themselves (burger, 2006; kernis, 2003; morganett, 2005; woolfolk & shaughnessy, 2004). in this context, self-esteem is realized through the balance between goals and achievements of individuals (james, 1892). researchers think that this balance can be achieved by increasing the success factor or decreasing the goals (coopersmith, 1981 ). self-esteem has two important bases. the first of these is the individual's own experiences of success or failure from different areas, and the second is the feedback received from others who are important role models for individuals (orth & robins, 2014). individuals with high self-esteem have a determined, clear, and noncontradictory attitude towards themselves. therefore, individuals with self-esteem have positive characteristics such as being self-confident, success-oriented, not giving up in the face of difficulties, and self-love. individuals with low self-esteem, on the other hand, have inconsistent and mixed self-conceptions, underestimate their own abilities, and are not success-oriented or confident (burger, 2006; plummer, 2005 ). factors such as family, social environment, and gender affect individuals' self-esteem (çiçekler & pirpir, 2015; yörükoğlu, 2000). in many studies, it has been found that the self-esteem levels of men are higher compared to women (sayar, 2003). the concept of leadership has attracted the attention of many research organizations in various research disciplines due to its importance for individuals, professions, and different institutions and organizations (geva & torpey, 2008; harris, 2009). there are different views about the concept of leadership in the literature. while some sources state leadership as an innate characteristic, some sources state it as a quality that individuals can acquire and develop later (harry, 2002). leaders are individuals who are integrated around the ideas and principles internalized by organizations in the working environment, who are competent, take responsibilities, think that the assigned tasks are achievable, and understand the importance of empathy for personal development (amanchukwu, stanley, & ololube, 2015; imbroda-ortiz, castillo-rodríguez, & minguet, 2015; topaloğlu & avcı, 2008). the concept of leadership orientation is the specific behavior of the leader while directing and managing the activities of the members of the organization to the established goals (house & aditya, 1997). in these leader-specific behaviors, leaders can provide employees with up-to-date thoughts and ideas, set specific goals to achieve, choose to support or prevent innovative initiatives from their employees (correa, morales, & pozo, 2005). in this context, leadership orientation should be in a certain harmony with the organizational atmosphere and organizational hierarchy in order to be effective and efficient (suar, tewari, & chaturbedi, 2006). in the literature, there are many factors that affect leadership orientation. for example, mason, mason, and mathews (2016) found that self-esteem is quite effective on leadership orientation and that individuals with high self-esteem also have high leadership orientations. according to the results of the study, it was found that women with high self-esteem have a higher leadership understanding compared to men. one of the factors that affect leadership orientation is the concept of self-esteem, which we also discuss in our study. in the literature, it is considered that studies on whether the self-esteem levels of students studying in the department of sports management have an effect on the development of students' management/leadership qualities or their tendencies towards leadership are quite limited. in this respect, it is considered that our study will contribute to closing this gap in the literature. the hypotheses of this study, which aims to examine the effect of self-esteem levels of students studying in the department of sports management on leadership orientations, are listed as follows. h1: there is a significant positive relationship between the self-esteem levels of the students and their leadership orientation. h2: students' self-esteem levels have a significant effect on leadership orientation. 2. method 2.1. participant in this study, which aims to examine the effect of self-esteem of students studying at sports management departments at the faculty of sports sciences on leadership orientation, correlational survey method, which is one of the quantitative research methods and examines the relationship between two continuous variables, has been used that (gürbüz & şahin, 2018). the population of the study consists of students studying at the sports management department of the sports sciences faculties at various universities that provide sports management education in the central anatolia region. the sample of the study (female = 184, male = 131) consists of 315 students, who were reached with convenience sampling method, and a 95% confidence interval has been used with an error margin of 5%. 2.2. measurement instrument the data were collected with the 4-point likert-type and 10-item "self-esteem scale," developed by rosenberg (1965) and adapted to turkish by çuhadaroğlu (1986) and the 5-point likert-type "leadership orientation scale," developed by luthans (1995) and adapted to turkish by dereli (2003) which has 2 subscales, task-oriented and relationship-oriented. the factor loadings of the self-esteem scale were found to be between (0.789) and (0.421) and asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 91-95 93 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the kmo value was found to be (0.833). the factor loads of the leadership orientation scale were found to be between 0.883 and 0.371 and the kmo value was found to be (0.784). the internal consistency reliability analysis (α = 0.91) of the rosenberg self-esteem scale among the items was found to be (α = 0.80). the internal consistency reliability analysis of the leadership orientation scale among the items was found to be (α = 0.80) for task-oriented sub-scale, it was found to be (α = 0.62) for the relationship-oriented sub-scale, and it was found to be (α = 0.84) for leadership orientation in general. according to these results, it can be stated that the internal consistency reliability between the items of the data collection tools used in the study is high. 2.3. statistical analysis since the data was found to have a normal distribution after the analysis, the correlation analysis has been used to identify the relationship between the two continuous variables and regression analysis has been used to measure the effect. table-1. descriptive statistics regarding the students. variables groups f % gender female 184 58.4 male 131 41.6 age 18-20 186 59 21-24 129 41 practicing sports with a license or not yes 210 66.7 no 105 33.3 note: n= 315. as seen in table 1, 58.4% of the students are women, 41.6% are men, 59% are between the ages of 18-20, 41% are between the ages of 21-24, 66.7% practice sports with a license, and 33.3% do not practice sports with a license. table-2. normality analysis of the data. scales and sub-dimensions 𝒙 median variance sd skewness kurtosis self-esteem 21.32 22 32.15 5.67 0.083 -0.554 leadership orientation 86.30 87 176.72 13.29 -0.177 -0.335 task-oriented 48.24 48.00 75.30 8.68 -0.047 -0.406 relationship-oriented 36.50 36.00 35.40 5.95 -0.076 -0.238 note: n=315. as seen in table 2, when the values of the scales and sub-dimensions are examined, the average and median values are close to each other, the skewness and kurtosis values are between ±1.96 (büyüköztürk, 2016) and according to this result, the data has a normal distribution, so parametric analyses have been carried out. table-3. descriptive statistics of the data. scales and sub-dimensions n minimum maximum 𝒙 sd self-esteem 315 10 35 21.32 5.67 leadership orientation 315 48 118 86.30 13.29 as seen in table 3, it was found that the self-esteem (�̅�= 21.32) and leadership orientation (�̅�= 86.30) levels of the students are high. 3. findings table-4. regression analysis of the scales and sub-dimensions. scales and sub-dimensions 1 2 3 4 1 self-esteem 1 2 leadership orientation 171** 1 0.002 3 task-oriented 186** 0.950** 1 0.001 0.000 4 relationship-oriented 0.141* 0.783** 0.672** 1 0.012 0.000 0.000 note: *p<0.05;**p0.01. as can be seen in table 4, there is a significantly low level of relationship between the self-esteem levels of the students and their leader orientation and its sub-dimensions, task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership. table-5. impact analysis of the self-esteem levels of the students on leadership orientation. independent variable unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients collinearity statistics b sh 𝜷 t p tolerance vif constant 77.75 2.88 27.000 0.000 1.000 1.000 self-esteem 0.401 0.131 0.171 3.074 0.002* r2=.029;r=.171 f(1-313)=9.447; p=0.002; durbin watson=1.906 note: dependent variable: leadership orientation; unstandardized coefficients are used. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 91-95 94 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as seen in table 5, the impact analysis of the self-esteem levels of the students on their leadership orientations is significant (f (1-313) = 9.447; p = 0.002). it was found that the self-esteem levels of the students explain 2.9% of their leadership orientation (r2 =.029). as a result of the analysis, it was found that the self-esteem levels of the students have a significant positive effect on their leadership orientation (β=.40). table-6. impact analysis of the self-esteem levels of the students on task-oriented leadership sub-dimension. independent variable unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients collinearity statistics b sh 𝜷 t p tolerance vif constant 42.83 1.87 22.502 0.000 1.000 1.000 self-esteem 0.284 0.85 0.186 3.345 0.001* r2=.035; r=.186 f(1-313)=11.190; p=0.001; durbin watson=1.004 note: dependent variable: task-oriented leadership; unstandardized coefficients are used. as seen in table 6, the impact analysis of the self-esteem levels of the students on the task-oriented leadership sub-dimension is significant (f (1-313) = 11.190; p = 0.001). it was found that self-esteem levels of the students explain 3.5% of their leadership orientation (r2 = .035). as a result of the analysis, it was found that the self-esteem levels of the students have a significant positive effect on task-oriented leadership (β=.28). table-7. impact analysis of the self-esteem levels of the students on relationship-oriented leadership sub-dimension. independent variable unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients collinearity statistics b sh 𝜷 t p tolerance vif constant 33.34 1.29 22.744 0.000 1.000 1.000 self-esteem 0.148 0.59 0.141 2.522 0.012* r2=.020;r=.141 f(1-313)=6.361; p=0.012; durbin watson=1.238 note: dependent variable: relationship-oriented leadership; unstandardized coefficients are used. as seen in table 7, the impact analysis of the effect of self-esteem levels of the students on relationshiporiented leadership subscale levels is significant (f (1-313) = 6.361; p = 0.012). it was found that the self-esteem levels of the students explain 2% of their leadership orientation (r2 = .020). as a result of the analysis, it was found that the self-esteem levels of the students have a significant positive effect on their relationship-oriented leadership (β=.14). 4. discussion in this study, in which the effect of the self-esteem levels of students studying at sports management departments of faculty of sports sciences on the leadership orientation has been examined, and it can be stated that the students who participated in the study have high self-esteem levels and leadership tendencies in general (table 3). according to this result, it can be stated that students with a high level of self-esteem also have a high level of energy and vitality, they are self-confident, in peace with themselves, and emotionally stable. studies on self-esteem levels have been found in the literature. in the study conducted by topuz, bahadir, and erdogan (2019) it was found that the self-esteem levels of the students who receive education in sports management are moderate. in another study (armstrong & oomen-early, 2009; tremblay, inman, & willms, 2000) it can be said that athletes have higher self-esteem levels than non-athletes, so they are more self-confident, vigorous, energetic, and extroverted. in our study, it was observed that there is a significant and positive relationship between the selfesteem levels of the students studying at sports management department of a sports science faculty and taskoriented leadership and relationship-oriented leadership. according to this result, it was concluded that as the selfesteem levels of the students increase, their self-confidence increase accordingly, and as their beliefs about achievement increase, their leadership orientation, task-oriented and relationship-oriented behavior increase as well. in our study, it was observed that the self-esteem levels of the students have a significant effect on their leadership orientation. according to this result, it can be stated that high self-esteem affects leadership orientations and these students have leadership qualities (table 5). the self-esteem levels of the students were found to have a significant and positive effect on task-oriented leadership (table 6) and relationship-oriented leadership (table 7), which are sub-dimensions of leadership orientation. according to this result, the effect of the self-esteem levels of the students on their task-related leadership styles consists of students who are able to give detailed and direct instructions, who closely follow the task they assign, and who are in favor of supervision for management. it can be stated that the self-esteem levels of the students affect their relationship-related leadership styles, it consists of students who care about their subordinates, respect their opinions and thoughts, protect their rights and interests, and take responsibility for their mistakes when necessary. although the number of studies that examine the effect of self-esteem on leadership orientation are quite limited in the literature, there are also studies that are similar to the results of our study in some respects. li, arvey, and song (2011) found that individuals' self-esteem has a significant and positive effect on their leadership styles and their progress in leadership. in the study conducted by akdeniz and saytekin (2020) a high level of positive relationship was found between inner self-esteem and leadership orientation of sports science students. according to this result, students who have high internal selfesteem also have high level of orientation and qualifications towards being leaders. in the doctoral dissertation written by (moran, 2015) it was found that self-esteem levels of students have a significant effect on leadership behaviors. it can be stated that students' self-esteem, self-confidence, and high level of success also increase their leadership behavior and tendency towards leadership. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 91-95 95 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. conclusion in this study, which has been carried out to examine the effect of self-esteem levels of the students who receive sports management education on their leadership orientation and task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership orientation, it has been observed that these students have high levels of self-esteem and leadership orientation in general. it is considered that the fact that self-esteem levels of the students have a significant effect on their leadership orientation, task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership will increase their commitment to the task and they will have a high level of success, and they will be management-oriented. it can also be stated that they will treat their subordinates democratically, consult them when making decisions, adopt a leadership style that values, protects, and defends their opinions and thoughts. references akdeniz, h., & saytekin, g. n. 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(2000). youth age mental health and mental problems (11th ed.). istanbul: özgür publishing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 8 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 1, 8-14, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i1.3656 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a study of critical thinking skills practice in collaborative writing in efl context jitlada moonma1 chittima kaweera2 ( corresponding author) 1,2the school of liberal arts, university of phayao, phayao, thailand. 1email: jitlada.moon@gmail.com 2email: ckaweera.sut@gmail.com abstract the present study aims to explore critical thinking from efl thai students’ perspectives in collaborative writing activity. the subjects were 32 second-year english major students composing paragraph writing in the writing ii course. they were divided into three groups based on their english proficiency: advanced, intermediate, and novice, and data was collected using quantitative and qualitative approaches. the critical thinking skills questionnaire was utilized to collect quantitative data, and the results were analyzed using mean and standard deviation. for qualitative data, an interview was used to collect critical thinking skills practice of six students randomly selected. the quantitative results revealed that the highest critical thinking skills practice was found in analyzing (mean=3.47, sd=1.15), followed by evaluating (mean=3.44, sd=1.27), and creating (mean=3.34, sd=.03), respectively. for qualitative results, it was found that the students in the high level of english proficiency group reported they practiced critical thinking by analyzing, evaluating, and creating. they produced a new sentence and a paragraph, selected the best ideas, and categorized the supporting details based on information and ideas from peers. regarding intermediate and novice level groups, they reported identically that they frequently practiced analyzing and evaluating. analyzing and assessing were two critical thinking abilities that were commonly utilized. they have to do with comparing and choosing content, as well as elements of arguments and supporting statements. as a result, collaborative writing appeared to promote pupils to use critical thinking skills when writing. keywords: attitudes, critical thinking skills, critical thinking skill practices, collaborative writing, collaborative writing activities, english proficiency levels. citation | jitlada moonma; chittima kaweera (2022). a study of critical thinking skills practice in collaborative writing in efl context. asian journal of education and training, 8(1): 8-14. history: received: 8 november 2021 revised: 5 january 2022 accepted: 17 january 2022 published: 21 january 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: the research project is funded by unit of excellence, university of phayao, phayao, thailand. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................... 9 3. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 11 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 12 5. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 12 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 14 mailto:jitlada.moon@gmail.com mailto:ckaweera.sut@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i1.3656 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9004-3666 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5391-9852 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 8-14 9 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by exploring efl thai students’ perspectives towards critical thinking skills practiced in collaborative writing activities across different english proficiency levels: advanced, intermediate, and novice. to enhance students’ critical thinking skills in writing class, the different kinds of collaborative writing activities could help students enhance and practice their critical thinking skills. 1. introduction for education at the college level, it is necessary to develop graduates to achieve the learning outcome of making well-informed judgments and who are capable of making connections between their learning and practice. graduates of the future will need to deal with the unknown and solve problems that may not even exist currently (boud & falchikov, 2006). critical thinking (ct) is crucial to achieving this outcome and is seen by some as the trademark of a well-educated person and as important for becoming an active and engaged employee and global citizen (facione, 2010; fagin, harper, baird, hadfield, & sward, 2006; moore, 2004). some people believe that university students should have developed their ability to think critically before attending university (kurfiss, 1988). collaborative writing (cw) has received increasing attention in the past decades (zhang, 2018). in addition, according to dobao (2012), collaborative writing is a powerful method that encourages critical thinking, peer learning, and active participation toward an end product .it is meaningful interaction and shared decision-making between members of a group using a common set of tools .the practice of collaborative writing has fairly recently in comparison to other, more traditional techniques entered classrooms in response to the need of addressing the issues of structuring, negotiating, and combining ideas in a written form dobao (2012). collaborative activities have been explored in a number of past studies on critical thinking abilities, which are considered a highly important educational goal in many institutions throughout the world. behar-horenstein and niu (2011). in the educational field, from revised bloom's taxonomy, critical thinking is incorporated with the concept of higher-order thinking (anderson & krathwohl, 2001). the amount of complexity of cognitive talents can be classified. higher-order thinking skills correspond to levels of analyzing, evaluating, and creating in this manner. according to moore (2013), critical thinking research has tended to characterize the talent in abstract terms, divorcing it from its practical applications. critical thinking is typically limited to a sequence of mental processes that occur on an individual level, rather than being examined in the context of social interactions, according to davies and barnett (2015). as a result, the following part will show how teachers might include critical thinking in the classroom. 2. literature review 2.1. integrating critical thinking into classroom instruction critical thinking professionals have devised a number of ways for integrating and teaching critical thinking in the classroom. these can be divided into four groups (abrami et al., 2008). the first of them are ways in which pupils must complete the exercises on their own. the second type of dialogue is one that emphasizes discussion. the third type of training is authentic or grounded instruction, which refers to the selection of real-life problems or situations that students are interested in. finally, it includes mentorship, which refers to tactics that pair beginners with a subject matter expert. according to abrami et al. (2008), the best results were obtained when dialogue was combined with real or grounded education. however, there is little research on how teachers implement these tactics in actual classrooms. however, there are some distinctions between critical thinking and thinking. breaking down information into smaller pieces is an element of the thinking process. critical thinking should ideally entail more than just data analysis. when analyzing information, critical thinkers consider external knowledge (crockett, 2019). breaking down difficult information to aid in the evaluation of given information may still be part of the information evaluation process. as a result, it appears that critical thinking is entwined with thinking. 2.2. the combination of writing process and critical thinking theoretically, the writing process shares similar characteristics with the critical thinking process listed by haase (2010).the planning stage reflects skills found in conceptualizing and applying information .at the commencement of the writing process, the writer must use these two critical thinking skills. the writing up step, also known as the translation stage in flower and hayes, is where critical thinking abilities of analyzing and synthesizing information are applied (flower & hayes, 1981). finally, as flower and hayes point out, the critical thinking stages’ evaluating of information resembles the reviewing stage (flower & hayes, 1981). table 1. relationship between the writing process and critical thinking skills. the writing process in the working memory relationship critical thinking skills planning conceptualizing information applying information translating analyzing information synthesizing information reviewing evaluating information source : flower and hayes (1981) and haase (2010). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 8-14 10 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. related studies in critical thinking skills in recent studies, critical thinking skills development is focused on education research to assist students. one of those is found in the study of flores, matkin, burbach, quinn, and harding (2012) looked into how pupils used critical thinking skills. critical thinking skills were said to be lacking among the students. once in the workforce, they were unprepared to think critically. previous research has shown that leaders with low cognitive processing skills are less effective. as critical thinking is linked to constructivism, leadership, and education, several definitions of critical thinking are considered in order to build a general construct to guide the conversation. the majority of pedagogy, according to the report, is content-driven and focused on deep knowledge. nold (2017) changed three business classes to add exercises that help students build critical thinking skills, according to research. the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire (mslq) (pintrich, smith, garcia, & mckeachie, 1991) was used to evaluate changes in 15 learning components during the course of a class, and the results were associated with grades. a modified mslq (boyer & usinger, 2012) was used to measure how students self-assess criteria for success at the start and completion of eight-week courses. results from lessons held over a 15-month period in 2013 and 2014 showed that 14 of the 15 success factors improved, with three of them (intrinsic goal orientation, self-efficacy, and critical thinking) statistically significant. alidmat and ayassrah (2017) investigated how critical thinking abilities can be developed in esp courses using properly selected english writing challenges. in-depth was employed as the instrument in the qualitative investigation. it looked into the perspectives of a group of ten undergraduates on topics connected to their english writing assignments. according to the study's findings, there is little correlation between writing activities in an esl program and critical thinking skills. this is because the program's writing tasks emphasized mechanical writing rather than critical thought. the studies of kaweera (2013) and kaweera, yawiloeng, and tachom (2019) focused on students' opinions on abilities practiced during writing tasks, such as writing, thinking, involvement, and communication, as well as their satisfaction with these activities. low proficiency students were more likely to appreciate collaborative activities, such as pair or group work, when it came to student happiness. regarding students' thinking skills, low proficiency pupils were more likely to use them when working in groups. as a result, collaborative work may inadvertently encourage the low and high students to think and collaborate with their peers; however, the study did not focus on critical thinking abilities, which are the deeper thinking skills required in the twenty-first century. because critical thinking abilities enable students to obtain a more nuanced comprehension of the information they receive and encourage good decision-making and problem-solving in real-world situations, they are highly valued (dwyer, hogan, & stewart, 2014). 2.4. tentative theoretical framework to characterize critical thinking skills, a provisional framework (see table 2) was constructed for the current study. a speculative framework on ct (see figure 1) is built using general ct models as inspiration. it covers all three ct phases. distinct ct talents and cw are used on different cw steps at different stages. as a result, higher-stage ct is built on the foundation of lower-stage ct. higher-stage ct skills must be used in conjunction with lower-stage ct skills. to evaluate a text, for example, knowing the literal meaning of the lines is insufficient. writers must be able to comprehend and interpret the content well. they must then perform some analysis and review in order to determine the inferential meanings between the lines. in a nutshell, higher-stage ct is impossible to achieve without first performing lower-stage ct. figure 1. tentative framework: taxonomy of ct skills and cw. table 2. the six categories of revised bloom’s taxonomy for teaching and learning process. learning levels definition sample cues creating generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things, designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing. generate, plan, produce evaluating justifying a decision, checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging check, critique, judge analyzing breaking information into parts to explore understanding and relationships, comparing, organizing, deconstructing, interrogating, finding differentiate, organize, attribute applying using the information in another familiar situation, implementing, carrying out, using, executing execute, implement, apply understanding explaining ideas or concepts, interpreting, summarizing, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining explain, interpret, classify, summarize, infer, compare, explain, remembering recalling information, recognizing, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding recall, recognize, write, list, label source: anderson and krathwohl (2001). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 8-14 11 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. materials and methods 3.1. participants the participants in this study were 32 second-year english major students studying english as a foreign language at a northern thai university (13 males and 19 females), ranging in age from 19 to 21, with an average of 20. all of them were not natural english speakers. all of the participants were assigned to the same writing ii class. before entering university, the majority of them had spent more than ten years studying english in schools. they were divided into three competency levels based on their performance in writing i: advanced, intermediate, and novice. table 3 displays the number of students in each grade level. table 3. students’ different levels of english proficiency. english proficiency levels novice intermediate advanced total numbers of students 18 8 6 32 percentage 56.25 25 18.75 100 3.2. research question the purpose of this study is to explore the levels of the students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills practice in collaborative writing activities. therefore, a research question was: what are the levels of the students’ critical thinking skills practiced in collaborative writing? 3.3. instruments 3.3.1. questionnaire the six levels of learning stated by revised bloom (1956) and anderson and krathwohl (2001) and the concept of collaborative learning proposed by vygotsky (1978) were used as a framework to develop the questionnaire. the questionnaire was constructed from their studies and categorized into 3 stages of critical thinking: creating, evaluating, and analyzing. the instrument utilized the 5-point likert scale (1 = the least, 2 = less, 3 = neutral, 4 = much, and 5 = the most) to avoid central tendency bias kostoulas, nielsen, browne, and leontides (2013). to provide the participants with a better understanding of the questionnaire contents, the items were in thai. table 4 shows the questionnaire. table 4. the questionnaire of students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills practice in collaborative writing adapted from alan (2006). no. statements the most much neutral less the least creating 1 i constructed new sentences, using what has been learned from the members. 2 i collected all the information and designed a paragraph according to ideas shared by the members. evaluating 3 i made decisions and critiqued the sentences which involved or did not involve the topic. 4 i selected the appropriate ideas which were brainstormed by the members. analyzing 5 i broke information into parts to explore better understanding such as arguments, supporting evidence, thesis statements, reasons, etc. 6 i categorized the types of ideas shared by members such as supporting or arguments. total 3.3.2. semi-structured interview also, an open-ended question: what are your attitudes towards critical thinking skills practicing in collaborative writing? was applied to elicit qualitative information in the interview sessions. 3.4. validity and reliability of the instruments three experts assessed the questionnaire using the index of item objective congruence (ioc). the ioc was set to 1.00. 3.5. data collection the information was gathered during writing ii of the 2019 academic year at a university in northern thailand. following ethical approval, they were only collected once. the questionnaire was handed out at the end of class, and data collecting took roughly 20 to 30 minutes. following that, six students were interviewed in semistructured interviews (2 from advanced students, 2 from intermediate students, and 2 from novice groups). 3.6. ethical approval the present study is approved. the certificate number of permission is 2.1/004/63, and it was issued by the university of phayao human ethics committee for ethical considerations involved in research on human subjects. the public was informed of the research objectives and requested to participate voluntarily before data was collected. following that, the volunteers who agreed to participate in the study signed the consent form. the surveys were kept in a secure location, and the data was logged on a computer that required a password to access. the information will be retained for three years. a paper shredder will be used to destroy the hard copy of the data, and the data's soft files will be erased. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 8-14 12 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.7. data analysis according to the study's objective, the data analysis technique was divided into three parts. part 1: the questionnaire was used to figure out the students' demographic data from part one of the surveys in order to determine the critical thinking skills exercise. students' attitudes were examined at five levels using mean and standard deviation. the following criteria were used to interpret mean values: 5.00 – 4.21 = students have the highest level of critical thinking skills practice. 4.20 – 3.41 = students have a high level of critical thinking skills practice. 3.40 – 2.61 = students have a neutral level of critical thinking skills practice. 2.60 – 1.81 = students have less level of critical thinking skills practice. 1.80 – 1.00 = students have the least level of critical thinking skills practice. part 2: the qualitative data was collected from the six students’ attitudes across all proficiency levels (2 novices, 2 intermediates, and 2 advanced levels) towards critical thinking skills practice. semi-structured interviews were used. 4. results the levels of students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills practices in collaborative writing. the findings of the quantitative and qualitative analyses were administered concerning the research question: what are the students’ attitudes levels towards critical thinking practice in cw activities? table 5. the levels of students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills practice in collaborative writing. no. statements mean sd meaning creating 1 i produced new sentences, using what has been learned from the members. 3.31 1.56 average 2 i collected all the information and designed a paragraph according to ideas shared by the members. 3.38 1.24 average total 3.34 0.03 average evaluating 3 i made decisions and critiqued the sentences which involved or did not involve the topic. 3.47 1.13 high 4 i selected the appropriate ideas which were brainstormed by the members. 3.41 0.50 high total 3.44 1.27 high analyzing 5 i broke information into parts to explore better understanding such as arguments, supporting evidence, thesis statements, reasons, etc. 3.44 0.62 high 6 i categorized the types of ideas shared by members such as supporting or arguments. 3.50 0.67 high total 3.47 1.15 high table 5 demonstrated critical thinking skills practice in collaborative writing. the total mean score was average (mean = 3.31, sd = 0.97). four of the items had a high mean, while two of them had an ordinary mean. no. 6 was the item with the highest mean. 'i categorized the many types of opinions that members offered, such as supporting or opposing ideas.' whereas no. 1 ‘i produced new sentences, using what has been learned from the members.’ gained the lowest mean (mean = 3.31, sd = 1.56). 4.1. the students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills practice in collaborative writing the semi-structured interviews were conducted in the second phase to elicit more details of how students perceived critical thinking skill practice in a process-based approach writing class. six students with different english proficiency levels were selected to participate in this interview session. students 1 – 2 (s1 – s2) were randomly drawn from the novice groups, students 3 – 4 (s3 – s4) from the intermediate groups, and students 5 – 6 (s5 – s6) from the advanced groups. when it came to pair writing tasks, novice and intermediate students said they practiced comparing and contrasting facts from friends' content. they did not, however, produce many sentences since they did not feel confident enough to compose an entire paragraph. advanced pupils, on the other hand, stated that they built their paragraphs on the information supplied by their companions. to develop a finished paper, they studied and picked information from their colleagues. regarding group activities, all students reported that the activity encouraged their critical thinking skills in terms of analyzing, evaluating, and sometimes creating. advanced students said that they chose peers’ ideas before writing them in a paragraph. novice students separated ideas that related to the topic before they produced new sentences. similar to intermediate students, they also classified and designed all information from peers into a paragraph. since group activities encouraged participation among friends, students categorized and selected suitable ideas to reach an agreement and wrote their papers. the advanced students realized that their critical thinking skills were improved in terms of analyzing, evaluating, and creating. in brief, critical thinking abilities such as analyzing and evaluating were commonly used in collaborative writing, according to the interview sessions. they have to do with comparing and choosing content, as well as elements of arguments and supporting statements. in terms of analyzing and assessing, novice and intermediate students claimed they used critical thinking abilities regularly. advanced students, on the other hand, created a new phrase and paragraph, chose the finest ideas, and organized the supporting elements using information and suggestions from peers. 5. discussion and conclusion the purpose of this study was to discover whether collaborative writing could measurably influence critical thinking practice in a second-year english major in a northern thai university. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 8-14 13 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.1. the levels of students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills practices in collaborative writing the findings of the study revealed that the levels of the students’ attitudes towards ct practice in cw (pairs and groups) were at an average level. the present study contrasts with the findings of alidmat and ayassrah (2017) study which revealed that there was a low correspondence between writing tasks contained in the esl program and critical thinking skills. they suggested that the writing tasks featured in the program pursued more mechanical writing than thinking. figure 2 shows the levels of the students’ attitudes of the present study. figure 2. the levels of the students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills practice. the reasons that the students’ attitudes levels were at average (mean = 3.31) might be due to reasons, firstly, cw fosters the students for clearly stating ideas and layout arguments in such a way as to cultivate higher-order thinking. secondly, cw demands that students think ahead, rethink their wording or organization with peers to ensure that their paper meets a specific goal: to argue. finally, cw or team writing is the process of producing a written work as a group. each student is required to share ideas and work together to complete their tasks. therefore, cw seemed to encourage the students to practice ct skills in the writing process even if it was not at a very high level. one problem that might impede the practicing of ct in cw writing in this study could be the focus on form in writing which is in line with the study of alidmat and ayassrah (2017) which suggested that the students focused on form more than thinking. in addition, flores et al. (2012) confirmed that ct skills were improved the most in the pedagogy which related to content-based. therefore, teachers should encourage students to think both critically and creatively. 5.2. the students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills in collaborative writing based on the interview results, the students considered their ct skills improved, especially in advanced students. one of them stated “i frequently chose friends’ ideas before writing them in a paragraph. i also frequently analyzed the sentences and phrases given by friends. after selecting and gathering all ideas, i produced a paragraph. i am also concerned about grammatical rules and structures. i had to decide and edit the sentences shared by peers.” “i think collaboration in writing encouraged and improved my critical thinking skills better than individual writing”. regarding the intermediate group, one of them reported “i practiced frequently the skills of analyzing and evaluating. i selected the sentences or words shared by friends. sometimes i create sentences. therefore, i think collaboration in writing helped me to think critically.” from the novice group, a student stated “i frequently practiced comparing and contrasting information related to the content shared by friends. i did not produce many sentences as i was not self-confident to write a whole paragraph. moreover, i was worried about the grammatical rules”. however, i think collaborative writing activities enhanced my critical thinking skills even if it was not at a very high level. i think concerns about grammatical rules sometimes impede my creative thinking.” the results were in line with nold (2017) who indicated that students from collaborative groups outperformed their writing by practicing ct skills of analysis, evaluation, and creation. the practice of ct in cw was confirmed by the results of the observation part. they practiced higher-order thinking: analyzing, evaluating, and creating a written argument. however, they also practiced lower-order thinking: applying, understanding, and remembering. when writing individually, all students said that it did not encourage them to practice their critical thinking skills as they had no chance to participate, share or discuss ideas with friends. vygotsky (1978) said that more interactive activities would promote cognitive growth, such as productive discussions, constructive feedback, and collaboration with others. however, based on the observation data, the students practiced all levels of thinking skills. therefore, it seemed that higher-stage ct cannot be achieved without lower-stage ct. figure 4 shows the relationship between lowerand higher-order thinking and how basic comprehension, critical thinking, and creative thinking relate to each other in the writing classroom. figure 3. the relationship between basic comprehension, critical thinking, and creative thinking. source: diagram from dummett and hughes (2019). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 8-14 14 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group consequently, to enhance students’ critical thinking skills in writing class, writing teachers should consider different kinds of writing activities and encourage creative thinking that could help students enhance and practice their critical thinking skills. finally, it's worth emphasizing that the scale of lower/higher-order thinking is horizontal. many other depictions of levels of thought show it as a vertical line (dummett & hughes, 2019). it appears to imply that lower-order thinking is somehow ‘lesser' or something that must be finished before higherorder thinking can be asked of students. this is not the case. knowledge and comprehension are essential components of learning and are in no way inferior. furthermore, in the classroom, thinking isn't a succession of steps where we move from lower to higher on a scale. a good language lesson might start with a creative thinking exercise, then move on to video comprehension work, and finally a critical thinking class discussion. as a result, the cognitive process is rarely linear. 5.3. future studies for future studies, it is important to examine learners ’involvement in different aspects of the task in cw. it may be worthwhile to look at the relationship between students' views and the quantitative assessment of their collaboratively written paper. this would give a more complete picture of how important learner attitude is in achieving the anticipated benefits of cw. because motivation and attitude are frequently studied together by researchers. references abrami, p. c., bernard, r. m., borokhovski, e., wade, a., surkes, m. a., tamim, r., & zhang, d. 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(2018). collaborative writing in the efl classroom: the effects of l1 and l2 use. system, 76(1), 1-12. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.wabisabilearning.com/blog/critical-thinking-vs-analytical-thinking-vs-creative-thinking http://www.wabisabilearning.com/blog/critical-thinking-vs-analytical-thinking-vs-creative-thinking 499 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 499-504, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.499.504 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of the problem solving and excellence levels of the secondary school students who do sports and does not israfil yasin1 metin tan2 filiz fatma colakoglu3 muhammed sahin4 (corresponding author) 1,2,4,3faculty of sport sciences, gazi university, ankara, turkey. abstract in this study, it was aimed to compare the problem solving and perfectionism levels of the students who do sports and do not sports in terms of various variables, and to determine the correlation between problem solving and their perfectionism. in the province of among the competitions between secondary schools in the 2018-2019 academic year, milas district of muğla province, 171 sports students between the ages of 13-15, whose sports age is at least 2 years, were randomly selected among the sports students. spss 22.0 statistics program was used in the analysis of the data. after the descriptive analyzes were made on the data, as the results of the kolmogorov-simirnov normality test performed by comparing the scores of the participants were not normal, the difference between the groups was examined by applying the mann-whitney test, which is one of the non-parametric tests. the "mann-whitney u" test was used to determine the differences between the groups. statistical analyzes were tested at 95% confidence level, p<0.05 values were considered statistically significant. under the "spearman's rho" test for the correlation between perfectionism and problem-solving scale. as a result, although the perfectionism and problem solving levels of the students who do and do not do sports have a meaningful result, the effect of doing sports varies according to gender; we can say that there is a positive correlation in the sub-dimensions of perfectionism and problem solving skills. keywords: sport, perfectionism, problem solving, problem solving, sport and perfectionism, sport and problem solving, psychological applications of sport. citation | israfil yasin; metin tan; filiz fatma colakoglu; muhammed sahin (2020). investigation of the problem solving and excellence levels of the secondary school students who do sports and does not. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 499504. history: received: 14 may 2020 revised: 19 june 2020 accepted: 21 july 2020 published: 12 august 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 500 2. material method ............................................................................................................................................................................ 500 3. findings and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................... 500 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 503 5. result ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 503 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 504 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.499.504&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2003 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9395-8474 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-2058 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0635-7583 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2711-6444 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2003 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9395-8474 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-2058 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0635-7583 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2711-6444 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2003 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9395-8474 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-2058 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0635-7583 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2711-6444 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2003 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9395-8474 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-2058 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0635-7583 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2711-6444 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2003 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9395-8474 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-2058 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0635-7583 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2711-6444 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2003 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9395-8474 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-2058 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0635-7583 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2711-6444 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 499-504 500 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by comparing the problem solving and perfectionism levels of middle school students who do sports and don't do sports in terms of various variables and analyzing the correlation between problem solving levels and perfectionism levels. 1. introduction when the history of sports is examined, it is seen that it is imperative that people have a solid body to survive, develop their mobility skills, act to provide the necessary food, drink, make shelter and fight against their enemies. although sports first appeared as providing nutrition, protection and safety, it developed and changed depending on the environment and the needs of time (alpman, 1972; güven, 1999; pura, 1938). the gains gained during the struggle for survival in nature, which are important for the development of movement, have been disrupted as a result of industrialization and modern cities. to prevent or slow down organic, psychological and physical disorders caused by immobile life as a result of technological developments, sports has been an imperative to maintain physical fitness and health for many years (kurt, atayman, & congress, 1997; zorba, 2014). in addition to the characteristics determined by heredity in the physical structure of the life of the human being, its effect is inevitable. movement is the basic tool in the stage of researching, discovering and learning the world around the individual. various sports education, learning, training and training that support multi-faceted development should comply with the characteristics of the individual's biological, psychological and social advancement and develop these qualities (camlıyer & camlıyer, 2001; günay, cicioğlu, sıktar, & sıktar, 2018). in addition to being physically strong, sports adds spiritual, mental, emotional and social resilience (muallimoğlu, 1998). one of the effects of sports on people is perfectionism. it is known that athletes who are at the top level in their branches are mostly perfectionists, and with these features, athletes set high goals that want to struggle hard to reach (anshel & mansouri, 2005; ashby & rice, 2002; cepikkurt, 2018). one of the many effects of sport on the human body is its problem solving ability. problem solving is defined as the cognitive, affective and behavioral remedies that an individual creates and develops to effectively overcome these difficulties in the event of encountering a number of problems (d’zurilla & nezu, 2010). in addition to its genetic features, problem solving skills can be improved by producing solutions to the problems that people face in daily life. students learn better when they participate in activities prepared in learning environments and solve the problems posed (dale & ballotti, 1997). in this study, it was aimed to compare the problem solving and perfectionism levels of the students who do sports and not do sports in terms of various variables, and to determine the correlation between problem solving and their perfectionism. 2. material method general screening model was used to determine the perfectionism and problem solving levels of middle school students participating in the competition in school sports. karasar (2018) defines the general screening model as a screening model to apply the whole universe or a group, sample or sample to be taken from the universe in order to understand and make a general judgment. the framework of the study consisted of 853 students who participated in the inter-secondary competitions organized by the provincial directorate of youth and sports of muğla province milas district between the ages of 13-15 in the academic year 2018-2019. the sample of 171 sports students between the ages of 13-15, whose sports age is at least 2 years, participating in competitions between secondary schools, in muğla province, muğla, 169 sedentary students selected randomly from the schools of sports students, a total of 340 volunteer students. spss 22.0 statistics program was used in the analysis of the data. after the descriptive analyzes were made on the data, as the results of the kolmogorov-simirnov normality test performed by comparing the scores of the participants were not normal, the difference between the groups was examined by applying the mann-whitney test, which is one of the non-parametric tests. the "mann-whitney u" test was used to determine the differences between the groups. statistical analyzes were tested at 95% confidence level, p<0.05 values were considered statistically significant. under the "spearman's rho" test for the correlation between perfectionism and problem-solving scale. in the research, frost multidimensional perfectionism scale was developed by frost, marten, lahart, and rosenblate (1990); kağan (2011) which was developed by frost et al. (1990);kağan (2011) to measure the perfectionism of students who participated in school sports competitions, while the perception scale for problem solving skills developed by ekici and balım (2013) was used to determine the level of problem solving. excellent consistency test reliability was performed by the inter-item internal consistency method and it was found that the alpha value ranged from 0.63 to 0.87 for general and subtests. cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was found to be 0.83 halving reliability coefficient 0.80 (kağan, 2011). in the reliability studies carried out within the scope of this study, it was found that the multi-dimensional perfectionism scale was performed with the internal consistency values method and the alpha value varied between 0.875 and 0.882 for general and subtests. cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was found 0.882.the problem-solving scale consists of two sub-dimensions, and each item gives a likert type measurement between 1 'strongly disagree' and 5 'fully agree'. it was determined that the variance explained by the first factor of the scale was 30,239% and the second variance was 10,424%. in addition, the cronbach alpha value of the scale was calculated as 88 (ekici & balım, 2013). in the reliability studies conducted within the scope of this study, the variance explained by the first factor of the problem solving scale was determined to be 32,282% and the second variance was 12,713%, and the cronbach alpha value of the scale was calculated as 88. 3. findings and discussion in table 1, the students participating in the study consist of 190 (55.9%) female students and 150 (44.1%) male students. the study was attended by 77 (22.6%) grade 6 students, 166 (48.8%) grade 7 students, and 97 (28.5%) asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 499-504 501 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group grade 8 students. a total of 340 students, 169 (49.7%) doing sports and 171 (50.3%) not doing sports, participated in the study. table-1. distribution of subjects according to variables. gender n % female 190 55,9 male 150 44.1 total 340 100,0 grade n % 6. grade 77 22,6 7. grade 166 48,8 8. grade 97 28,5 total 340 100,0 do they do sports regularly? n % no 169 49,7 yes 171 50,3 total 340 100,0 table-2. differences regarding perfectionism and problem solving sub-dimensions of female students according to variables of doing / not doing sports. subscale variable n (%) x ss median min-max z p p er fe ct io n is m s ca le error concern doing sports 93 48,9 22,53 6,68 23 (18,5-26,5) 8-40 -,954 ,340 not doing sports 97 51,1 23,58 6,72 23 (19-28,5) 8-38 personal standards doing sports 93 48,9 25,74 5,11 26 (23-28,5) 15-44 -1,258 ,208 not doing sports 97 51,1 24,89 5,02 25 (21-28) 14-36 family expectations doing sports 93 48,9 17,16 4,66 18 (15-20,5) 5-25 -,081 ,936 not doing sports 97 51,1 17,32 4,59 18 (14,5-21) 5-25 familial criticism doing sports 93 48,9 6,11 2,65 6 (3-8) 3-15 -,633 ,527 not doing sports 97 51,1 6,37 2,78 6 (4-8) 3-15 being unsure what you do doing sports 93 48,9 11,24 3,21 11 (9-13,5) 4-18 -1,139 ,225 not doing sports 97 51,1 11,72 3,13 12 (10-14) 4-18 order doing sports 93 48,9 24,13 5,37 25 20-29 7-30 -1,457 ,145 not doing sports 97 51,1 23,23 4,98 24 (21-27) 6-30 p ro b le m s o lv in g s ca le perception of problem solving skills doing sports 93 48,9 57,39 10,95 58 (51-65,5) 22-75 -1,614 ,107 not doing sports 97 51,1 55,15 7,95 55 (51-65) 30-75 problem solving skills request doing sports 93 48,9 26,09 5,55 26 (22,5-31) 9-35 2,230* ,026 not doing sports 97 51,1 24,24 5,30 25 (21-28) 9-34 note: *(p<0,05). in table 2 there was no significant difference in the sub-dimensions of perfectionism scale among female students who did / did not do sports (p>0.05). worry about making mistakes (23.58>22.53), familial expectations (17.32>17.16), criticism from the family (6.37>6.11), not being sure (11.72>11.24), it is seen that the average of female students who do not do sports in their subscales is higher than those who do sports. it was found that the mean of female students who do sports (24.13>23.23) and personal standards (25.74>24.89) are higher than the ones who do not do sports. there was no significant difference in the perception of problem solving skills, which was the sub-dimension of the problem solving scale (p>0.05), but it was found that the average was high in favor of those doing sports (57,39>55,15). there was a significant difference in favor of female students doing sports in requesting problem solving skills (p <0.05). in table 3, a significant difference was found among the male students who did / did not do sports in their averages of perfectionism sub-dimensions or not being sure of making mistakes (p <0.05). personal standards (25.59>25.30), familial expectations (16.93>16.74), criticism from the family (7.18>6.34) and order (23.16>23.07) the average of male students is higher than those who do sports. there was a significant difference in the problem solving skills sub-dimension, which is the problem solving scale sub-dimension (p <0.05). on the sub-dimension of the problem solving skills perception, there was no significant difference (p>0.05), but statistically, sports averages were found to be higher than those who did not do sports (53.93>52.43). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 499-504 502 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. differences regarding perfectionism and problem solving sub-dimensions of male students according to variables of doing / not doing sports. subscale variable n (%) x ss median minmax z p p er fe ct io n is m s ca le error concern doing sports 78 52 20,96 7,67 20 (16-20,25) 8-40 -2,439* ,015 not doing sports 72 48 23,26 5,99 24 (20-27) 8-34 personal standards doing sports 78 52 25,30 5,92 25 (21,75-29,25) 8-40 -,743 ,458 not doing sports 72 48 25,59 5,58 26 (23-29) 8-38 family expectations doing sports 78 52 16,74 4,71 17 (14-20) 5-25 -,294 ,769 not doing sports 72 48 16,93 4,20 17 (15-20) 5-25 familial criticism doing sports 78 52 6,34 2,70 6 (4-8) 3-14 -1,526 ,127 not doing sports 72 48 7,18 3,19 7 (4-9,75) 3-15 being unsure what you do doing sports 78 52 10,93 3,41 10 (8,75-13) 4-20 -2,597* ,009 not doing sports 72 48 12,09 3,01 12 (11-14) 4-18 order doing sports 78 52 23,07 5,62 24 (21-28) 6-30 -,023 ,982 not doing sports 72 48 23,16 5,36 24 (19,25-27) 6-30 p ro b le m s o lv in g s ca le perception of problem solving skills doing sports 78 52 53,93 13,22 56 (48,75-62,25) 15-75 -1,743 ,081 not doing sports 72 48 52,43 9,83 52 (47-59) 22-75 problem solving skills request doing sports 78 52 24,93 6,49 26 (21-30) 7-35 -2,193* ,028 not doing sports 72 48 23,12 5,57 22,50 (19,25-27) 8-35 note: *(p<0,05). table-4.differences in excellence and problem solving subscales of male and female students doing sports. subscale variable n (%) x ss median min-max z p p er fe ct io n is m s ca le error concern sportswoman 93 54,4 22,53 6,68 23 (18,5-26,5) 8-40 -1,728 ,084 sportsman 78 45,6 20,96 7,67 20 (16-25,25) 8-40 personal standards sportswoman 93 54,4 25,74 5,11 26 (23-28,5) 15-44 -,712 ,477 sportsman 78 45,6 25,30 5,92 25 (21,7529,25) 8-40 family expectations sportswoman 93 54,4 17,16 4,66 18 (15-20,5) 5-25 -,970 ,332 sportsman 78 45,6 16-74 4,71 17 (14-20) 5-25 familial criticism sportswoman 93 54,4 6,11 2,65 6 (3-8) 3-15 -,659 ,510 sportsman 78 45,6 6,34 2,70 6 (4-8) 3-14 being unsure what you do sportswoman 93 54,4 11,24 3,21 11 (9-13,5) 4-18 -,819 ,413 sportsman 78 45,6 10,93 3,41 10 (8,75-13) 4-20 order sportswoman 93 54,4 24,13 5,37 25 (20-29) 7-30 -1,247 ,212 sportsman 78 45,6 23,07 5,62 24 (21-28) 6-30 p ro b le m s o lv in g s ca le perception of problem solving skills sportswoman 93 54,4 57,39 10,95 58 (51-65,5) 22-75 -1,338 ,181 sportsman 78 45,6 53,93 13,22 56 (48,7562,25) 15-75 problem solving skills request sportswoman 93 54,4 26,09 5,55 26 (22,5-31) 9-35 -,996 ,319 sportsman 78 45,6 24,93 6,49 26 (21-30) 7-35 note: *(p<0,05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 499-504 503 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4 shows the average perfectionism scale between men and women doing sports. worrying about making mistakes (22.53>20.96), personal standards (25.74>25.30), familial expectations (17.16>16.74), being unsure (11.24>10.93), the mean (24.13>23.07) sub-dimension means that female students are higher than male students. there was no significant difference in the sub-dimensions of the problem-solving scale (p>0.05). it is determined that the problem solving skills request (57.39>53.93) and the problem solving skills perception (26.09>24.93) are high. table-5.perfectionism scale sub-dimensions and problem-solving skills sub-dimensions correlation analysis results. sub dimensions problem solving skills scale perfectionism scale pss pssr ec ps fe fc bu o pss 1,000 0,427** -0,190** 0,212** 0,228** -0,296** -0,115* 0,464** pssr 1,000 -0,446** -0,028 0,014 -0,474** -0,383** 0,316** ec 1,000 0,453** 0,319** 0,495** 0,663** -0,063 ps 1,000 0,598** 0,198** 0,350** 0,344** fe 1,000 0,084 0,276** 0,399** fc 1,000 0,441** -0,286** bu 1,000 0,048 o 1,000 note: ** p <0.01 * p <0.05. problem solving scale sub-dimensions: (pss: problem solving skills, pssr: problem solving skill request,) perfectionism scale sub-dimensions: (ec: error concern, ps: personal standards, fe: familial expectations, fc: familial criticism, bu: being unsure what you do, o: order). it was determined that problem solving skills and problem solving skills desire, personal standards, familial expectations, and anxiety of making a positive relationship in the sub-dimensions of the order, making a negative relationship in the criticism dimension and being unsure that the sub-dimension was weakly negative. there was a positive relationship in the sub-dimension of order and problem solving skills, and a weak positive relationship in the sub-dimension of family expectations; there is a negative relationship in the sub-dimensions of anxiety about making mistakes, familial criticism, being unsure of what it is doing; it was determined that there was a weak negative relationship in the personal standards dimension. 4. discussion many researchers suggest that perfectionism occurs as a result of social learning gained consciously or unconsciously during childhood. according to these researchers, perfectionism is not only transferred genetically to the individual. the children of the perfectionist family show excellenceist behaviors due to their families' expectations (adderhold-alliot, 1987; cepikkurt, 2018). another feature affected by other environmental factors is problem solving. the development of problem-solving abilities contributes to achieving their goals in a conscious and planned manner, to act with a result-oriented approach, to combat confrontation, stress and life difficulties. the problem solving ability developed contributes to the reduction of mental health problems such as anxiety and depression by reducing the negative effects of the problems (d’zurilla & nezu, 2010; norris, 2003). students who want to meet the expectations of their families and teachers, the equivalent. although this perspective, which is far from the reality of everyday life, increases the academic achievement of the students to a certain extent, it prevents them from being a sharing, helpful and responsible individual in the social environment they live in schonertreichl and hymel (2007) accepted. in the study conducted by cepikkurt (2012) with 246 university students playing handball with a multidimensional perfectionism scale specific to sports, the perfectionism scores of handball players were significantly different in terms of gender (t = -2,303; p <0.05). they found that they scored higher according to their scores, but there was no significant difference between personal standards and family pressure subscale scores. in their study using the perfectionism scale with 10elit athletes in anshel and mansouri (2005) they obtained a statistically significant difference in terms of genders. the results indicated that women scored higher in terms of familial expectations and criticism than men, while men scored higher than women in order and organization. in the study of ozen (2019) with 208 elite taekwondo players, he found that there was a difference between male and female taekwondo in the sub-dimensions of perfectionism scale according to gender variable, according to the results of sub-dimensions of perfectionism scale, perceived family pressure, personal standards, showing power, external regulation and motivation. (p <0.05).in ozdemir (2019) 156 women (x age = 19.52 ± 2.63), 146 men (x age = 19.92 ± 2.78) made a total of 302 (x age = 19.71 ± 2.70) team athletes. in the study, as a result of examining sub-dimensions of perfectionism scale according to gender variable, they did not find a significant difference between male athletes and female athletes in personal standards and perceived family pressure, but they found a significant difference in sub-dimension. in the study conducted by pulur, karabulut, and koç (2012) with high-level athlete university students, they obtained a significant difference in their problem-solving skills in terms of gender. they found that there was a significant difference (78.33 ± 11.32) (92.57 ± 20.85) between the female athletes and the male athletes' problemsolving skills. they stated that there was no difference in the gender dimension of their solving skills. in ersoy (2019) study conducted with 458 sports secondary school students, they found that there was no significant difference in the problem solving scale sub-dimensions in terms of gender variable (p>0.05). 5. result when the female students who do sports / don't do sports are examined according to the sub-dimensions of perfectionism scale, there is no significant difference, but it is found that the average of personal standards and order sub-dimension is high in women who do sports, their anxiety about making mistakes, familial expectations, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 499-504 504 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group criticism from the family and not being sure that they do not. it was. it was determined that there was no significant difference in the perception of problem solving skills, which is the sub-dimension of the problem solving scale. however, a significant difference was obtained in the request of problem solving skills, which was high in favor of athletes (p <0.05). when the male students doing / not doing sports were examined according to the sub-dimensions of perfectionism scale, a significant difference was found in favor of those who did not do sports (p <0.05); it was found that the average of personal standards, familial expectations, criticism from the family and order subdimensions were high in favor of non-sports people. there was no significant difference in the perception of problem solving skills, which was the sub-dimension of the problem solving scale, but a mean difference was obtained in the request for problem solving skills, whereas the mean was high in favor of athletes (p <0.05). there was no significant difference in the sub-dimensions of the perfectionism scale of women / men doing sports (p>0.05), but it was found that the average of female athletes was higher in the anxiety of making mistakes, personal standards, familial expectations, not being sure and doing order. there was no significant difference in the sub-dimensions of the scale (p>0.05), but their averages are high in favor of women. when the correlation results of perfectionism and problem solving scale sub-dimensions are evaluated, there is a positive relationship between problem solving skills and problem solving skills, personal standards, family expectations and order sub-dimensions; it has been determined that there is a positive relationship between problem solving skills and order sub-dimension. as a result, the effect of doing sports, where the levels of perfectionism and problem solving of the students who do not / do sports differ, varies according to gender; we can say that there is a positive correlation in the subdimensions of perfectionism and problem solving skills. references adderhold-alliot, m. 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(2012). a review of the problem-solving skills of high level collegiate athletes from different branches. spormetre journal of physical education and sports sciences, 10(1), 1-6. pura, f. (1938). gymnastics. istanbul: state printing house. schonert-reichl, k. a., & hymel, s. (2007). educating the heart as well as the mind social and emotional learning for school and life success. education canada, 47(2), 20-25. zorba, e. (2014). lifelong sports (vol. 3, pp. 16-23). ankara: atalay matbaacılık. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 468 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 468-473, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.468.473 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of leisure strategies of sports educated students huseyin aslan1 osman imamoglu2 ( corresponding author) 1selcuk university, faculty of sciences, konya, turkey. 2yasar dogu faculty of sports sciences, ondokuz mayis university, samsun, turkey. abstract in this study, it was aimed to investigate leisure time strategies of sports educated students, who going to fitness centers. in addition to sports training, the effect of whether or not to compete as a contestant was also examined for leisure strategies. a total of 543 men on fitness centers filled up the scala “leisure strategy scale” before training. independent t-test in paired comparisons and one-way analysis of variance (anova) in multiple comparisons and lsd tests were used to determine the difference. a statistically significant difference was found in the leisure strategy subscales and total score according to the age category of university of students (p <0.05). in leisure friendship, the scores of 20 years and under and 21-23 age groups are higher than in the 24 years old and above age group in case of temporary coping and mood improvement. a significant difference was found in all subscales and total scale scores in comparison of leisure strategy subscale and total scores according to income (p <0.05).conclusion: in addition to sports education, leisure strategies of university students doing sports in fitness centers differ according to age category and income status. it has that whether or not participating in competitions in sports training students, who going fitness center does not have a different effect in terms of leisure strategies. in terms of leisure strategies, this study is recommended to be done according to the status of being an amateur and professional athlete in sports-inclined students. keywords: student, leisure, mood, friendship. citation | huseyin aslan; osman imamoglu (2020). investigation of leisure strategies of sports educated students. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 468-473. history: received: 24 april 2020 revised: 3 june 2020 accepted: 1 july 2020 published: 13 july 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 469 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 470 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 470 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 471 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 472 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 472 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.468.473&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1873 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1873 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1873 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6671-6042 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 468-473 469 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study is important in terms of determining the effect of whether university students studying sports going to fitness centers race in leisure time strategies as a competitor besides sports education. it does not matter whether students with sports education are racers for going to fitness centers in terms of leisure strategy. 1. introduction leisure plays an important role in releasing stress and refreshing people's bad energies (leitner & leitner, 2004; torkildsen, 2005). people may be found in various forms of enjoyable engagement the demonstration of which varies depending on the context or an individualistic life circumstances at the today (weinblatt & navon, 1995). stress is a concept that can affect people in different areas of life and the search for ways to cope with it has turned it into a part of modern life (shields, 2003). although it is known in general that stress causes a psychological effect on humans, it also has a great number of physiological effects on the immune system and the nervous system (aldwin, 2014). in coping with stress, the management of problems that cause stress are also effective in addition to getting away from stress (iwasaki, mackay, & mactavish, 2005). exercise and physical activity help to achieve better physical and mental health, improve quality of life. exercise is effective not only on health but also on many parameters including speed (aksoy & ağaoğlu, 2017; aksoy. & arslan, 2019). leisure time is closely associated with coping with stress (iwasaki, 2006). dealing with different leisure time activities, participation in sport in leisure time, leisure activities that provide socialization and leisure activities in nature can decrease stress (cevik, ozcan, & munusturlar, 2018). leisure comes across as different expressions in other societies, but in all of them, in general, leisure time, “getting rid of pressure”, “moving from restrictions to freedom”, “right to choose”, “remaining time after work ”, “remaining time after compulsory duties are done. ”is expressed. spare time; after completing his professional, family and social duties, he is the time he spends to rest, have fun, develop some activities or voluntarily participate in community activities (bedir, 2016). sciences generally have moderate time management attitudes and have difficulty in using time. most people complain that time is inadequate; but some people use time effectively and can do more. understanding how this can happen is the most important issue (köse & uzun, 2019). denovan and macaskill (2017) in a study, leisure evaluation appeared to be helpful in coping with the stress the people report encountering in everyday life. leisure is relevant to both emotionand problem-focused coping and beliefs about leisure’s role in coping influence the nature of the leisurebased coping strategy used. “leisure coping beliefs refer to people’s beliefs that their leisure helps them cope with stress”. leisure coping strategies are described as “actual situation-grounded behaviors or cognitions available through involvement in leisure”. leisure strategies can mood increase by modify appraisals of stressful situations. leisure friendships for example, contribute about one’s ability to use leisure good in stressful cases (iwasaki & mannell, 2000; kleiber, brock, lee, dattilo, & caldwell, 1995). leisure (free) time is a special area of human life. it includes alternative, creativity, content and pleasure. the concept of activity includes mostly physical and in addition multiple aspects of intellectual personality, image and spiritual events. the concept of leisure time is the times when the individual is free from all obligations or connections for both himself/herself and others and engages in an activity with his/her own will. leisure time is defined as the time in which the individual does not work and spends with his/her own will, outside the obligations of life and official responsibilities (ağılönü, 2007; kır, 2007). leisure time can be explained with concepts such as being free of spiritual pressure, transition from restriction to freedom, and the time remaining after work or after fulfilling mandatory tasks. individuals with leisure time have the opportunity to deal with recreation and recreational activities. the importance of leisure results from the fact that it meets individuals’ needs to rest and have fun and strengthens their ties with life and makes them happy. the concept of leisure time constitutes a structural characteristic of the contemporary industrial society and a product of this society (bedir, 2016; karak, 2014). leisure time gives individuals of all ages the chance to be with friends without worrying about a financial income, removes the stress on working people and enables them to relax. it also allows individuals to continue living in a healthier condition by preparing them a suitable environment to have new knowledge and skills by providing escape from daily workload stress for a certain time with various activities. making use of leisure time is the willing participation of individuals in any one or most of various activities to get pleasure and satisfaction within the time remaining from their vital needs. making use of leisure time, which is expressed as people’s getting away from the monotony of daily life by participating in various activities which are suitable for them and which make them happy and also as people’s gaining a social personality by integrating with other individuals, is explained as social activities which are like a gift but which do not have purpose of income (bedir, 2016; gülbahçe, 1996). leisure activities provide a psychological support with the belief in their use in coping with and managing stress (iwasaki et al., 2005). individuals who can make good use of time know what to do each moment. they use their time well and design their time according to the goals they set (alay & koçak, 2003). participation in leisure activities differ according to individuals’ way of life, characteristics and their use of time. the type of activity, the way of participation and the time allocated to these are affected by a great number of factors. these factors can be listed as race, religion, social and personal characteristics, age and gender (tolukan, 2010). leisure friendship is expressed as the friendship individuals have through leisure recreational activities they do in their free time (bedir, bedir, erhan, & şen, 2016). although there is a study conducted by bedir et al. (2016) on the beliefs of sport sciences faculty students for coping with stress through leisure time, it can be stated that new studies are needed since there are questions about the research’s ability to measure the theoretical structure of coping with stress through leisure time. if we talk about the existence of leisure time in a place where there is time management, it is necessary to manage leisure time correctly and efficiently (kırtepe & uğurlu, 2018). leisure might act as a source of opportunities for renewal that newman (2011) argues is a key feature of a sustainable career. in this study, it was aimed to investigate leisure time strategies of sports educated students going to fitness centers. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 468-473 470 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. material and method 2.1. study group a total of 543 between the ages of 18 and 27 who were sports educated students on fitness centers in the province of samsun were included in the study. in addition to personal information, students filled in scala “strategies to cope with stress through leisure time scale” before training. the scales which were fully completed were evaluated. 2.2. data collection tools leisure strategy scale: the leisure strategies scale, developed by iwasaki and mannell (1999) was validated and validated in turkish by bedir (2016). later, çevik was re-validated and validated. in this study, the scale proposed by cevik et al. (2018) was used. the scale is a 7-likert type scale. it is scored as strongly disagree 1,disagree 2,somewhat disagree 3, neither disagree nor agree 4, somewhat agree 5, agree 6 and strongly agree 7. turkish origin of the scale was determined as 8 items in total by bedir (2016). the scale consisted of three subscales. these were leisure friendship (items 2, 5, 7, 8, 15, and18), leisure time temporary coping (items 3, 4, 9, 11, 14, and 17) and leisure time mood improving (items 1, 6, 10, 12, 13, and 16). cevik et al. (2018) deleted item 15 from leisure friendship and item 12 and 13 from mood and calculated the scale with 15 items. 15 items were used in the present study. internal consistency coefficient was found as 0.89 for leisure friendship, as 0.88 for leisure time temporary coping and as 0.87 for leisure time mood improving. cronbach alpha coefficient of the whole scale was 0.94. bmi (body mass index) = body weight (kg) / height (m)2 = kg/m2. 2.3. data analysis spss 23.00 program was used in the study. kolmogorov-smirnov test was conducted to find out whether the data were normally distributed. it was found that the data were normally distributed. independent t-test was used for paired comparisons, while one-way anova was used for multiple comparisons and lsd tests were conducted to find out differences. 3. results table-1.comparison of heights and weights of the participants according to age category. parameter age category n mean sd f/lsd height (cm) 20 and under years (1) 85 173.44 5.52 2.01 21-23 years (2) 160 173.70 9.40 24 and above years (3) 298 173.41 7.35 total 543 174.35 7.93 weight (kg) 20 and under years (1) 85 73.87 8.79 10.42** 3>1,2 21-23 years (2) 160 76.12 9.81 24 and above years (3) 298 78.53 9.73 total 543 77.90 9.86 body mass index (kg/m2) 20 and under years (1) 85 24.62 2.36 5.23* 3>1 21-23 years (2) 160 25.38 3.05 24 and above years (3) 298 26.24 2.91 total 543 25.41 2.93 note: *p<0.05 **p<0.001. according to age groups, the height of the students is similar. on the other hand, a statistically significant difference was found between students' body weights and body mass index values (p<0.05 and p <0.001). table-2. comparison of leisure strategy subscales and total scores according to age category. scala and subscales age category n mean sd f/lsd leisure friendship 20 and under years (1) 85 25.08 8.21 4.10* 1,2>3 21-23 years (2) 160 24.60 9.36 24 and above years (3) 298 22.32 9.01 temporary coping 20 and under years (1) 85 29.42 9.09 3.99* 3<1,2 21-23 years (2) 160 28.54 10.02 24 and above years (3) 298 26.10 10.03 mood improvement 20 and under years (1) 85 19.32 7.12 4.22* 2>3 21-23 years (2) 160 19.62 7.26 24 and above years (3) 298 17.52 7.21 total score 20 and under years (1) 85 73.82 21.88 4.21* 2>3 21-23 years (2) 160 72.78 21.62 24 and above years (3) 298 65.93 21.99 note: *p<0.05. there was a statistically significant difference between leisure strategy subscale and total scale scores by age groups (p <0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 468-473 471 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. comparison of leisure strategy subscales and total scores according to the state of doing sport in the past. scala and subscales category n mean sd t-test leisure friendship students participating in competitions 277 23.49 8.03 0.44 students not participating in competitions 266 23.14 9.01 temporary coping students participating in competitions 277 28.10 9.04 1.88 students not participating in competitions 266 26.32 9.20 mood improvement students participating in competitions 277 18.46 7.28 0.30 students not participating in competitions 266 18.26 7.38 total score students participating in competitions 277 70.05 25.48 0.97 students not participating in competitions 266 67.72 26.33 note: *p<0.05. between students who participated in the competitions and the students who could not participate in the competitions there was no statistically significant difference between the leisure strategy subscales and total scale (p> 0.05). table -4. comparison of leisure strategy subscales and total scores according to body mass index category. scala and subscales bmi n mean sd t-test leisure friendship 20-24,99 kg/m2 269 22.86 9.12 -1.06 25-27 kg/m2 274 23.76 8.90 temporary coping 20-24,99 kg/m2 269 26.56 9.42 -1.33 25-27 kg/m2 274 27.83 9.85 mood improvement 20-24,99 kg/m2 269 17.99 8.43 -1.09 25-27 kg/m2 274 18.73 7.00 total score 20-24,99 kg/m2 269 67.42 26.40 -1.20 25-27 kg/m2 274 70.32 25.39 note: *p<0.05. in this study, subscale and total scale scores were not significantly different according to body mass index category (p> 0.05). table-5. comparison of leisure strategy subscales and total scores according to level of income. scala and subscales parameters n mean sd f/lsd leisure friendship low (1) 97 23.14 9.45 3.06* 3>2,4 moderate (2) 172 22.17 9.63 good (3) 153 25.24 8.51 very good (4) 121 22.61 8.47 temporary coping low (1) 97 25.06 9.93 4.34* 1<3,4 moderate (2) 172 27.10 9.72 good (3) 153 29.34 9.53 very good (4) 121 27.68 9.38 mood improvement low (1) 97 17.48 7.76 4.97* 3>1,2 moderate (2) 172 17.22 7.45 good (3) 153 20.29 6.64 very good (4) 121 18.43 7.10 total score low (1) 97 64.46 27.89 3.93* 3>1,4 moderate (2) 172 68.67 27.49 good (3) 153 74.87 24.26 very good (4) 121 67.77 24.02 note: *p<0.05. in this study, a statistically significant difference was found between the students' leisure strategies, subscale and total scale scores (p <0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion it was found that average height of the students according to age category differed between 173.44 and 175.41 cm. average weight of the students was between 73.87 and 79.53 kg. body mass index values were found to be between 24.62 and 25.96 kg/m2. according to age groups, the height of the students is similar. on the other hand, a statistically significant difference was found between students' body weights and body mass index values (p<0.05 and p <0.001). weight was found to increase with age category. individuals with a body mass index value of 2426.9 kg/m2 and higher are considered as overweight (hsu et al., 2018). the participants in this study can be considered as overweight at first start. in general, individuals with a body mass index of 25 kg / m2 are considered as healthy, while those with a body mass index of higher than 25 kg / m2 are considered as sick (turgut, akbulut, i̇mamoğlu, & çınar, 2018). however, this classification is for sedentary people individuals. imamoğlu, ağaoğlu, and eker (2010) reported that body mass index of 25 kg/ m2 is normal for athletes. in this study, it can be said that in body weights for the age of 24 and over are within normal limits. bedir (2016) found average score as 5.93 for friendship subscale, as 5.53 for temporary coping subscale, as 6.14 for mood improvement and the total average as 5.87. in the present study, average score was found as 23.31for friendship subscale, as 27.20 for temporary coping subscale, as 18.36 for mood improvement and the total average was found as 68.87. average scores of both studies are different since the subjects were different. in a study conducted by coleman and iso-ahola (1993) it was stated that friendships through social activities decreased the feeling of loneliness and being isolated from the society and gave social support to individuals. kır asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 468-473 472 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (2007) stated that young people did not show a high sensitivity in making use of their leisure time and added that they engaged in passive activities again and that spending their leisure time was limited. uzun, i̇mamoğlu, yamaner, deryahanoğlu, and yamaner (2017a) found a significant difference in individual psychology subscale in high school students in terms of age group. uzun et al. (2017b) in a study, the state and frequency of doing sport can be found to increase enjoyment in physical activity. in their study, demirtaş and i̇mamoğlu (2018) found that leisure perceptions of students differed in terms of age, study area and participation in recreational activities, while they were not found to differ in terms of grade and level of income. it was also reported that stress levels decreased in individuals who were doing sport (ciçek, imamoğlu, yamaner, & türk, 2017; deryahanoğlu, i̇mamoğlu, yamaner, & uzun, 2016). gencay, geri, tazegül, and sezan (2019a) in a study, when the free time levels of the students were compared according to the age variable, no statistically significant difference was found. aksoy (2020) in a study, found statistically significant difference in friendship, temporary coping, mood and total score of leisure strategy subscales according to age category. kim (2009) indicated, that adolescents more from adult are involved in leisure activities. in this study, statistically significant difference was found in leisure time strategy subscale and total score according to age category (p<0.05). the participants in the third age category had lower scores. in leisure friendship, temporary coping and mood improvement subscales, average scores of 20 and under and 21-23 age groups were found to be higher when compared with the 24 and above age group. besides the personal characteristics of the participants, the different age categories may cause differences. it can be thought that some positive features acquired with competition sport (friendship development, getting away from anxiety and stress, etc.) show their effects in the long term, too. it is stated that when compared with individuals who do not do sports, individuals who do sports are more lively, extrovert, more hardworking, more patient, more ready to make social relationships and to adapt to a new situation and more stable emotionally (yamak & i̇mamoğlu, 2019). in this study, there was no statistically significant difference between the leisure strategy subscales and total scale the students who participated in the competitions and the students who could not participate in the competitions (p> 0.05). however, the scores of students competing in sports competitions are higher than those who do not participate in competitions. individuals’ being pleased with the external image of their bodies can cause them to think positively (yamak, i̇mamoğlu, i̇slamoğlu, & çebi, 2018). in the present study, there were no statistically significant differences between scale scores of the participants within normal health limits and the participants who were according to body mass index (p>0.05). it can be said that students' body mass index is above 25 kg / m2 and that it is below it has no effect on leisure strategies. among the reasons for students who are already studying sports was going to fitness centres, there can condition progress and muscular development. they may also know that it is normal for them to have more body weight for them than normal people, since they receive sports training. ozdilek, demirel, and harmandar (2007) in a study, found frequency of participation in recreational activities and who do not have sufficient income participate less in recreational activities than people with higher income. in addition, in her study, oguz (2000) revealed that as the amount of money received by students increases, the amount of money spent for leisure activities increases. aksoy (2020) in a study, found a significant difference between to the ones with good income and those with low income for leisure time strategy. bedir (2016) did not find significant difference between monthly income and leisure time strategy subscale scores and total scores of students in the faculty of sport sciences. gencay, geri, and tazegül (2019b) in a study, according to the gender, age, level of income and regular sports, it was found that leisure time attitudes did not differ. in the present study, significant difference was found in all subscales and total scale score according to the level of income (p<0.05). it is thought that the students with a good level of income have better strategies to cope with stress through leisure time. it is compulsory to consider several factors, including the leisure time on the relationship between leisure participation (shin & you, 2013). 5. conclusion in addition to sports education, leisure strategies of university students doing sports in fitness centers differ according to age category and income status. whether or not attending competitions showed no difference between students who study sports going to fitness center. it has that whether or not participating in competitions in sports training students, who going fitness centre does not have a different effect in terms of leisure strategies. the fact that the participation of the competitions in terms of leisure strategies between the two 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(2018). the effects of exercise on body posture. turkish studies social sciences, 13(18), 1377-1388. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 36 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 36-45, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.36.45 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of history teaching supported by dramatization technique on students’ achievement and permanence level s. gulin karabag1 okan aydogan2 ( corresponding author) 1gazi university, ankara, turkey. 2mone, kirikkale, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to determine the effect of history teaching supported by dramatization technique on students’ success and permanence in history education in comparison with the traditional teaching. in this research, the semi experimental method which was practiced by pretest, post-test and permanence test were used and it was studied on two different student groups. one of them is control group tested with lecture method and the other one is experimental group tested by dramatization technique. tested group consists of 63 students who studying in classes 10-a and 10-b of a vocational high school of kırıkkale. this study is limited with units of “from principality to state” in 10th grade students. during this experiment containing retention test were applied to experimental and control groups and the results were analyzed by the program spss 16.0. according to the findings obtained, in history lesson: there is a significant difference between the points of success and permanence of the group which is tested by dramatization technique and the group which is tested by teacher centered teaching. in other words, the dramatization technique, which actively involved students in the learning environment, was found to be more effective in the educational success of students and permanence of the information they learned compared to the teacher centered approach on the transfer of historical information to the students. keywords: history teaching, achievement, permanence, drama, dramatization technique, lecture method. citation | s. gulin karabag; okan aydogan (2021). the effect of history teaching supported by dramatization technique on students’ achievement and permanence level. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 36-45. history: received: 16 november 2020 revised: 18 december 2020 accepted: 4 january 2021 published: 21 january 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 37 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 39 3. findings and interpretation ........................................................................................................................................................... 41 4. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 43 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 43 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.36.45&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2584 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7275-8724 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7275-8724 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 36-45 37 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study determines the effect of history teaching supported by dramatization technique on students’ success and permanence in history education in comparison with the traditional teaching. 1. introduction educational activities, which include learning and teaching processes, have been structured with the influence of different experiences and opinions in the historical process. it is observed that educational activities were mostly formed based on behavioral and cognitive theories of the 19th and 20th centuries (temizkan, 2010). as a result of this formation, teacher-oriented and rote-learning based approach towards education has emerged. the fundamental of this approach is the unilateral transfer of information to students and addressing everyone rather than individuals. this traditional approach has been questioned, considering that it is not effective in supplying people with the necessary knowledge and skills, and in guiding people in a world that is rapidly changing and evolving with technological advancements. inevitably, people have started to seek for new methods in education. as a consequence of this pursuit, “student-oriented” approach towards education has emerged which allows students to construct information themselves, while considering the individual differences in students, and focusing on the skill teaching rather than memorizing information (özpolat, 2013). in line with this understanding, active teaching methods and techniques have been initiated in educational institutions which leads students to use their mental abilities by giving them the responsibility of learning process, rather than traditional methods and techniques, such as direct instruction and question-answer (açıkgöz, 2011). the questioning of educational understanding and the pursuit of new methods in the field of education in recent centuries have had an impact on the history teaching as well, since the traditional understanding based on teacher-oriented information transfer was criticized to be ineffective in history teaching. this traditional structure that is based on the transfer of dead information of the past to students has been criticized as of 1960s in the west, on the grounds that it does not help students struggling with life, and it was even questioned whether history lessons should be removed from the curriculum in these years (booth, 1969; price, 1968; roberts, 1969; seixas, 1993). seixas (2000) stated that making students memorize history lessons as a real sequence of events in formal educational institutions is a myth or heritage (re-)construction rather than creating history, and this causes students to move away from history. in other words, students fall into the perception that history consists of reading, and hence, storing the names and event patterns in the mind. this misperception causes students to regard history lessons as based on memorization, difficult to understand and boring (clara & tam, 2010; mat & yue, 2013; squire, 2004). however, since the 1970s, the purpose of history teaching has been disputed again from a western perspective, and it has been emphasized that history teaching should help students cope with life as well as equipping them with national and moral values. therefore, a transition was achieved from rote-learning-based history education, in which dry historical information is unilaterally transferred to students, to the understanding of “new history” which is student-oriented and focuses on teaching historiography skills (demircioğlu, 2010; karabağ, 2003). according to the understanding of “new history”, the purpose of history teaching is not to unilaterally transfer the narratives and information produced by historians to students, but to succeed in equipping students with historical thinking skills such as interpreting historical documents and evidence, critical thinking, questioning, analyzing and synthesizing, chronological thinking, problem solving, versatile thinking, and feeling empathy. the new understanding of history dictates that history is a collection of active information and knowledge of real life that relates to both today and the future. for this reason, history teaching should not be a teacher-oriented and unilateral transfer of historical information to students. instead, it should be based on a student-oriented and active approach. this approach will provide an important opportunity for history teachers to reach their educational goals in history lessons (ata, 2006). in fact, many studies have shown that the active learning methods are effective in achieving desired goals and overcoming general problems in history teaching, such as rote-learning approach and general disinterest by students (akça, 2012; aydoğan & karabağ, 2020; çiftarslan, 2019; işık, 2008; karabağ, 2003; karabağ & aydoğan, 2015; karabağ & aydogan, 2020; şahin, 2014; yelkenci, 2019). one of the active learning methods that can be used in history teaching is drama. in the turkish dictionary (https://sozluk.gov.tr/), the meaning of drama is described as “the type of stage plays which pertains to a play and theater script written to be acted on the stage or to sad and tragic events, sometimes including their humorous aspects,” and as the “acting used when talking about it as a subject to study or teach” in the longman dictionary (https://www.ldoceonline.com/). it is also defined as “a teaching method that facilitates the comprehension of connections among the events naturally consisting of improvisation, imagination, interaction and reenactment” (o’neil & lambert, 1990). 1.1. history teaching and drama the structure of history consisting of events and facts from the past creates an appropriate environment for employing the drama method. as a matter of fact, many drama pioneers such as harriet finlay-johnson, peter slade and dorothy heathcote used historical themes in their drama activities. for example, way (1967) the writer of the first theoretical book of drama called “development through drama”, sees texts as an instrument for drama. therefore, way (1967) structured his first drama works over written texts. in fact, he himself wrote more than fifty children’s plays for dramatization (metinnam, 2011). winifred ward states that participants of drama could use an improvised play as well as a chosen poem, story or a fictional text in the creation. ward defined these texts as tools to master drama activities and to elevate the improvisation element in drama (adıgüzel, 2012). defining drama through children’s plays, slade (2005) likewise suggests that drama studies should be based on stories, even allowing students to produce their own scenarios. additionally, slade (2005) emphasized that students should act and improvise freely in the plays without having to follow the text blindly. finlay-johnson (1913) the first pioneer to use drama as a teaching tool, structured her first drama and teaching activities with the help of historical novels. she indicated that these activities, which would later be called drama, are effective tools in history teaching asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 36-45 38 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (adıgüzel, 2012). finlay-johnson (1913) carried her activities beyond the dimension of enacting a given readymade dialogue by the students, to the point in which the students would prepare the dialogues of enactments. in this process, students created dialogues in accordance with historical reality by using historical sources such as historians (kömür & kömür, 2016; sapmaz, 2010). i̇smayıl hakkı baltacıoğlu, one of the pioneers in associating history teaching with drama method in turkey, also used historical subjects in his dramatic works. the inherent features of drama such as questioning, critical thinking, creating own narratives, effective decision making, analysis and synthesis capability, versatile and empathic thinking directly comply with historical thinking and historiography skills. in fact, demircioğlu (2010) defines drama as one of the most significant teaching methods that can connect the past with the present in history lessons and help students be active and productive, and stradling (2003) defines it as an important opportunity for students to develop their historical skills. it may be asserted that use of drama method in history teaching; • improves decision-making skill about historical events and facts. • improves problem-solving skills and assists coping with the problems of the current era by leveraging from historical problems (başbuğ & bayramoğlu, 2018; stradling, 2003). • enables the use of historical evidence and data (tonga, 2014). • provides feedback to teachers regarding students’ learning level and behavioral changes. • facilitates the learning of historical concepts and words (dilek, 2007). there are many studies that reveal the impact of the drama method on history teaching. aylıkçı (2001); yurtalan (2005); kartal (2009); rüzgar (2014); bingöl (2015); saraç (2015); pektezel and uygun (2016); schroeter and wager (2017); snelson, lingard, and brennan (2012); pohl and miller (2017); otten, stigler, woodward, and staley (2004)and pektezel (2017) have made researches about the impact of drama method on the history topics of social study lectures, while altıkulaç and akhan (2015); başbuğ and bayramoğlu (2018); akhan and hayta (2014) and güngör (2017) made researches on the impact of drama method on ataturk’s principles and history of turkish revolution lectures. also, while fırat (2017) explored the effectiveness of drama method in history teaching, kurt (2018) explored the impact of drama method in teaching the ‘eurasia in the first and middle ages’ curriculum unit for the 9th grade students. additionally, cochran (2015) explored the impact of role-playing technique in drama on historical thinking. in these researches, it was concluded that the drama method increases the student’s success in history lectures and enables the permanence of historical information. in short, drama method has a positive impact on history teaching. even though the impact of drama method in increasing the quality of history lessons has been affirmed by many studies, history teachers hardly apply drama method in turkey (demirkan & saraçoğlu, 2016). numerous reasons may be listed as to why history teachers do not use drama method, such as not being sufficiently equipped for drama, lack of drama texts, the intensity of the subjects, insufficient time for history lessons, the challenge of classroom control and classroom discipline during drama activities, and the required preliminary preparation for drama activities. there are many tools that can be utilized to achieve desired goals in drama activities. the teacher chooses the most appropriate technique considering the structure of the subject, the drama environment and the characteristics of the group. at this stage, it is significant that the teacher is familiar with the chosen technique and has the relevant practical experience. this is because every technique has its specific rules and steps in the process (adıgüzel, 2012). these techniques were listed as improvisation, role playing, the role-playing by the teacher, retrospective, still image, gossip circle, writing in role-playing, pantomime, role cards, teaser and dramatization in ministry of national education (mone, 2018) drama lesson curriculum. 1.2. dramatization technique dramatization, derived from the verb of dramatizing, is one of the concepts that is most confused with the concept of creative drama. in general terms, this confusion results from the fact that dramatization was derived from the verb of dramatizing, which has the same roots as drama; and it was used as a teaching method in turkey in the past (adıgüzel, 2012; çoruh, 1950; kavcar, 1985). however, dramatization is not a method by itself, it is rather one of the techniques used to perform drama activities, such as role playing and improvisation (cakır, 2008; güllü, 2009). as a reflection of the close relation between drama and theater, the first drama studies in educational activities were structured through fictional texts written as stories or plays by playwrights or teachers. in other words, it may be asserted that educational drama was introduced with the dramatization technique at the beginning (adıgüzel, 2012). this was because a guiding text was needed to overcome the timidity of the students who engaged in drama activities for the first time and to ensure that the subject proceeded within the desired educational limits. it was argued that as the students become more skilled in the drama activities, they should act more independently from the texts and emphasize the improvisational elements more. therefore, dramatization is particularly significant among drama techniques. the dramatization technique become particularly significant in the disciplines that include certain event patterns, such as history. this is due to the fact that students should convey the event patterns in compliance with the historical reality. they are in need of guidance of a text to do this. as a matter of fact, when we review the drama activities of drama pioneers worldwide and in turkey, we observe that the drama activities are generally based on the text, indicating the application of dramatization technique (adıgüzel, 2012). for example, baltacıoğlu, one of the prominent names in education in turkey, had a stage built in the school garden during his duty at şemsülmekatip, and he had his historical plays called “italian çorbacı, village teacher, edirne sector, patriotic heart, flag, gazas of tiny hüseyin, murad hüdavendigar, martyrdom of yavuz sultan selim” enacted by the students on this stage (obuz, 2015). two different ways can be followed for the application of the dramatization method. in the first one, students are not provided with a written text, and the story or text is read by the teacher. students try to reenact the process by sticking to the information and text communicated by the teacher (mone, 2014). in the second one, students are provided with a written text and asked to reenact it. however, students do not have to reenact the text asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 36-45 39 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group exactly as given to them; they can express the parts in the text with a different discourse and body language without changing the flow (kavcar, 1985). with regards to this aspect, dramatization differs from theater. dramatization does not aim to make a visual presentation that will gain the applause of the audience, but to achieve outcomes in terms of learning by using it as a teaching technique. for this purpose, the teacher can apply the dramatization technique by associating it to different techniques of drama. for example, the teacher may have the students reenact the texts that contain specific problem cases and request them to discuss and generate ideas about the solution of the problem. students may be asked to complement the given text through improvising by using incomplete texts as a starting point. one of the most significant elements in the success of the dramatization technique is the text selection, since the most significant material of this technique is the text. therefore, it is focused on the planning of the text rather than the imagination power of the students. the text should be appropriate for the level of students, and the characters in the text should be interesting. furthermore, although it is not a basic requirement, the use of clothes and costumes suitable for the roles that will be reenacted in dramatization can contribute to the students’ adaptation to the role more quickly, visually supporting the experience of actors and the audience, as well as the quality of these experiences (adıgüzel, 2012). in the dramatization technique, the teacher plays more of an active guide and a determinant role compared to the other drama techniques. in this technique, the selection of the subject, the text to be reenacted, and proper distribution of the roles to the group members are ensured by the teacher. during reenactments, the teachers do not stay in the background; they can help the flow by interfering with the process and remind the students what needs to be said, if necessary (adıgüzel, 2012). in short, it can be asserted that dramatization technique is a starting point where students take on a more active role for the improvisation in drama activities. considering the educational benefits of dramatization technique, it can be said that there is a need for dramatization practice examples in order to guide the teachers. in fact, an inquiry was made on databases such as yok academic, yok thesis, ulakbi̇m and dergipark in turkey; and no study could be found which directly links dramatization technique with history teaching in turkey, even if there are many studies setting forth the relation of fields such as turkish language teaching (kazıcı, 2008), foreign language teaching (güllü, 2009; umutlu, 2004) and geography teaching (köseoğlu, 2006) with the dramatization technique. hence, it can be said that there is a lack of study in literature. this study will address this shortcoming, serve as an example for researchers interested in the application of dramatization technique in history teaching and teachers who are in search of making history lessons qualified and interesting, and encourage them to apply the dramatization technique in history lessons. 1.3. objective of this research the objective of this study is to identify the difference between the dramatization technique and other methods and techniques used in history lessons, and to set forth the impact of the dramatization technique in history teaching on the achievement of students and the permanence of learning. in this study, two main problems are addressed: • is there a meaningful difference between the achievement scores of the group using the dramatization technique in the history lesson and the achievement scores of the group using other methods and techniques? • is there a significant difference between the permanence scores of the group using the dramatization technique in the history lesson and the permanence scores of the group using other methods and techniques? 2. method 2.1. research model this study compares the impact of dramatization technique against the impact of methods and techniques widely used in history teaching such as lecturing, question-answer on history teaching. the aim of this study is to prove the hypothesis that dramatization technique is more effective in the success of students and the permanence of their knowledge than other methods and techniques that are widely used. however, the controls required by real trial models cannot be fully provided in this process. for this reason, a quasi-experimental model with ‘pretest/post-test/retention test’ and control group was used in this study, which is used in cases where the controls required by real trial models cannot be provided or are not sufficient. in this model, there are two sample groups created through objective assignment. one of these groups is selected to be the experimental group and the other as the control group. the independent variables of the study are other methods and techniques applied with the dramatization technique, and the dependent variables as achievement and persistency (karasar, 2014). 2.2. study group the study group of the research consists of 63 students in 10/a (31 students) 10/b (32 students) classes of a vocational high school in kırıkkale. 2.3. data collection tools in this study, multiple choice achievement tests will be used as a measurement tool. multiple choice tests are defined as tests that allow selecting the right answer of a question among given options (baştürk, 2014). a measurement tool with 45 questions was prepared by the researcher, taking into account 9 acquisitions of the units “from principality to state” in the 10th grade history teaching curriculum of the mone. 3 experts were consulted for their opinion of the tool to prove the validity of this measurement tool. also, this measurement tool was applied to 196 students of different high schools in kırıkkale, and the obtained data were analyzed through “testan” program; and hence, the reliability of the measurement tool, the discriminative power of test options and their difficulty values were set forth. taking the expert opinions, the reliability of the test, the discriminative power of asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 36-45 40 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group test options and their difficulty values into account, 15 questions were removed from the test, and the final measurement tool consisted of 30 questions. according to measurement results, the average difficulty of the test was 0.634. since this value is greater than 0.5, the test is deemed at a sufficient level for educational activities. the reliability value (alpha) of the test was 0.833. this shows that the reliability of the test is at the ideal level. 2.4. process steps in this study, the data was collected through pre-achievement tests. the following stages were followed during the development and implementation of the test. 1. first, a research was made on the relevant literature, and the sources on teaching with the dramatization technique were reviewed, and then “from principality to state” unit in the 10th grade curriculum was chosen. 2. considering the acquisitions regarding the unit subjects in the 10th grade, the drama texts that are appropriate for history teaching were written. two drama experts and a historian were consulted for the written drama texts and necessary adjustments were made in the texts in line with their opinion. table-1. unit acquisition relations of dramatization texts used in the study. unit acquisition dramatization activity unit 1 from principality to state 1.1. comprehends the political situation of anatolia, europe and the near east at the beginning of the xivth century world in the early xivth century 1.2. evaluates the factors affecting the evolution of the ottoman empire. interview with the ottoman 1.3. describes the relation between the ottoman empire’s conquests in the balkans and the settlement policy. settlement policy 1.4. evaluates the activities of the ottoman empire in anatolia with regard to ensuring turkish political unity. 1.5. understands the impact of the battle of ankara on the turkish world war of the giants: battle of ankara 1.6. evaluates the political events that had an impact on the strengthening of turkish domination in the balkans. footsteps of the ottomans in the balkans 1.7. comprehends the basic characteristics of the ottoman’s understanding of state and administration. 1.8. understands the basic characteristics of the ottoman’s military organization structure in the xivth and xvth centuries. from slavery to viziership: ottoman devshirme system 1.9. understands the basic characteristics of the ottoman economy in the xivth and xvth centuries. the story of an idiom: shoe to be thrown to the roof (to lose favor) note: *p>0.05. 3. the pre-test, which is a measurement tool developed by the researcher, was applied to the experimental and control groups in the research before lecturing the selected unit subjects. table-2. “independent groups t – test” results regarding the pre-test scores of experimental and control groups. p r e -t e s t group n x ss sd t p control 32 7.31 1.68 61 ,659 ,512 experiment 31 6.77 2.07 note: *p>0.05. as shown in the table 2, the average pre-test score of the control group is 7.31, whereas this score is 6.77 for the experimental group. there is a difference of 0.55 points between two groups. the results of “t” test performed to set forth whether there is a significant difference between the average pre-test scores of two groups, “t” value is 0.659 and “*p” value is 0.512. based on this data, it was deduced that the means of the experimental and control groups are very close to each other. on the other hand, “* p” value is greater than 0.05 (* p> 0.05). this shows that there is no significant difference between the pre-test results of these two groups. in other words, considering the pre-test scores of the experimental and control groups, it was observed that they were at an equivalent level to each other. 4. when the pre-test is finished, the subjects in “from principality to state” unit was taught to the control group by using other methods and techniques such as lecturing, question and answer, brain storming and case study in line with daily and annual plans in the first semester of 2017-2018 academic period, whereas the same subjects were taught to the experimental group by using the dramatization technique. 5. the post-test, a measurement tool developed by the researchers, was applied to the experimental and control groups in the research after lecturing the selected unit subjects. 6. a permanence test was performed on the experimental and control groups after the implementation phase of the teaching models addressing the experimental and control groups of 10th grade students. 2.5. data analysis spss 16 package program was used to analyze the data. independent groups t-test was performed to determine whether the average pre-test, post-test and permanence scores of the groups differ from each other. paired t-test was performed to determine whether there was a difference between the groups’ average pre-test and post-test asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 36-45 41 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group scores, as well as between their average post-test and permanence post-test scores. 0.05 was accepted as the level of significance in the interpretation of the results. 3. findings and interpretation 3.1. findings regarding the difference between experimental group’s pre-test and post-test scores table-3.“paired t-test” results of experiment group’s average pre-test and post-test scores. e x p e r im e n t a l g r o u p test n x ss sd t p pre-test 31 6.77 3.49 30 -12.65 ,000 post-test 31 18.12 5.89 note: *p>0.05. as shown in the table 3, the average pre-test score of the experimental group, which is 6.77, increased to 18.12 in the average post-test score after the lessons taught with the dramatization technique. this means that an increase of 11.35 points and 167% was achieved. based on the results of the “t” test performed to identify whether there is a significant difference between the average pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group, “t” value is 12.65, “* p” value is 0.000 and is less than 0.05 (* p <0.05). these data show that there is a significant difference between the experimental group’s pre-test and post-test results. thus, this is how we have found the answer for the first sub-problem of this study, which is “is there a significant difference between the average pretest and post-test scores of the experimental group?”. 3.2. findings regarding the difference between pre-test and post-test scores of the control group table-4. “paired t-test” results of control group’s average pre-test and post-test scores. c o n t r o l g r o u p test n x ss sd t p pre-test 32 7.31 2.96 31 -18.90 ,000 post-test 32 14.46 4.48 note: *p>0.05. as shown in the table 4, the average pre-test score of the control group, which is 7.31, increased to 14.46 in the average post-test score, after the lessons taught by using other methods and techniques. this means that an increase of 7.15 points and 97% was achieved. based on the results of the “t” test performed to identify if there is a significant difference between the average pre-test and post-test scores of the control group, “t” value is 18.90, “*p” value is 0.000 and is less than 0.05 (*p <0.05). these data show that there is a significant difference between the control group’s pre-test and post-test results. even if other methods and techniques were used; some information was transferred to the students and a certain level of learning occurred in the students as a result, it is expected to experience a significant increase in the scores of the control group. however, when these values were compared with the pre-test and post-test values of the experimental group, it was observed that the achievement level in the experimental group was higher than the achievement level of the control group. this reinforces that dramatization is a more effective method in history teaching. with these findings, we have found an answer for the second subproblem the study. 3.3. findings regarding the difference between post-test scores of the experimental group and post-test scores of the control group table-5. “independent groups t – test” results regarding the post-test scores of experimental and control groups. p o s t t e s t group n x ss sd t p control 32 14.46 4.48 61 -2.78 ,007 experiment 31 18.12 5.89 note: *p>0.05. as shown in the table 5, the average post-test score of the experimental group is 18.12, whereas this score is 14.46 for the control group. there is a difference of 3.66 points between the average scores of the two groups, in favor of the experimental group. based on the results of the “t” test performed to identify whether there is a significant difference between the average post-test scores of both groups, “t” value is 61, “*p” value is 0.007 and is less than 0.05 (*p <0.05). this finding shows that there is a significant difference between the post-test results of two groups, in favor of the experimental group in which the dramatization technique was applied. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 36-45 42 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.4. findings regarding the difference between achievement scores of the experimental group and achievement scores of the control group table-6. “independent groups t – test” results regarding the achievement levels of experimental and control groups. a c h ie v e m e n t l e v e l group n x ss sd t p control 32 7.15 4.48 61 -4.37 ,000 experiment 31 11.35 5.89 note: *p>0.05. as shown in the table 6, the average achievement score of the experimental group is 11.35, whereas this score is 7.15 for the control group. there is a difference of 4.2 points between the average scores of two groups, in favor of the experimental group. based on the results of the “t” test performed to identify whether there is a significant difference between the average achievement scores of both groups, “t” value is -4,37, “*p” value is 0.000. this shows that there is a significant difference between the achievement results of two groups, in favor of the experimental group in which the dramatization technique was applied. in other words, dramatization technique was more effective than other methods and techniques used in teaching historical content. 3.5. findings regarding the difference between post-test scores and permanence test scores of the experimental group table-7. “paired t-test” results of experimental group’s average permanence test and post-test scores. e x p e r im e n t a l g r o u p test n x ss sd t p post-test 31 18.12 5.89 30 ,691 ,495 permanence 31 17.06 5.93 note: *p>0.05. as shown in the table 7, the average post-test score 18.12 in the experimental group decreased to 17.06 after the permanence test, and this means that a 1.06-point loss of achievement occurred. based on the results of the “t” test performed to identify whether there is a significant difference between the average post-test scores and permanence test scores of the experimental group, “t” value is 0.691, “*p” value is 0.495. so, “* p” value is greater than 0.05 (*p> 0.05). this indicates that there was no significant loss of achievement in the experimental group. in other words, the permanence of the information taught in history lessons was ensured by supporting it with the dramatization technique. 3.6. findings regarding the difference between post-test scores and persistence test scores of the control group table-8.“paired t-test” results of control group’s average persistence test and post-test scores. c o n t r o l g r o u p test n x ss sd t p post-test 32 14.46 4.48 31 1.298 ,204 persistence 32 12.90 4.63 note: *p>0.05. as shown in the table 8, the average post-test score 14.46 in the control group decreased to 12.90 after the persistence test, and this means that a 1.56 points loss of achievement occurred. based on the results of the “t” test performed to identify whether there is a significant difference between the average post-test scores and persistence test scores of the control group, “t” value is 1.298, “*p” value is 0.204. these data indicate that there is no significant difference between the average post-test scores and the persistence test scores of the control group. in other words, in the control group, the persistence of the information was ensured in the history lessons taught using other methods and techniques. this is a normal situation, considering that there was a transfer of information to students with other methods and techniques as well. 3.7. findings regarding the difference between persistence test scores of the experimental group and the persistence test scores of the control group as shown in the table 9, the average persistence test score of the experimental group is 17.06, whereas this score is 12.90 for the control group. there is a difference of 4.16 points between the average scores of two groups, in favor of the experimental group. based on the results of the “t” test performed to identify whether there is a asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 36-45 43 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group significant difference between the average persistence test scores of both groups, “t” value is -3.103, “*p” value is 0.000 and is less than 0.05 (*p <0.05). table-9. “independent groups t – test” results regarding the persistence test scores of experimental and control groups. p e r s is t e n c e group n x ss sd t p control 32 12.90 4.63 61 -3.103 ,003 experiment 31 17.06 5.93 note: *p>0.05. these results show that there is a significant difference between the persistence test results of two groups, in favor of the experimental group in which the dramatization technique was applied. in other words, the dramatization technique used in the experimental group made a significant difference in the persistence of what was learned in comparison with the other methods and techniques applied in the control group. 4. conclusion and discussion this study aims to show the impact of dramatization technique in history lessons on the achievement level of students and the persistence of their learning. pre-test scores of the experimental group in which dramatization technique was used and that of the control group were compared, and no significant difference was found between two groups. this shows that the knowledge levels of these two groups about the subject were equal before the experiment. after the experiment process, the pre-test and post-test results of both groups were compared, and a meaningful difference was found in both groups. in the light of the data obtained from the post-test results and achievement levels of the students, it was observed that there was a significant difference, in favor of the experimental group. in other words, the dramatization method proved more successful than other methods and techniques in teaching the subject. after three months of this experiment, both groups went through a persistence test and the persistence scores of two groups were compared. hence, it was affirmed that there is a significant difference, in favor of the experimental group in which the dramatization technique was applied. that is to say, a more effective learning environment was created in the lessons taught with the support of the dramatization technique, compared to other methods and techniques; and the loss of achievement was less. when the related literature is examined, it is seen that studies on dramatization focus more on language development. in these studies, it was concluded that the dramatization technique positively affected students ‘motivation and participation in the course according to methods such as question-answer and narration, thus contributing positively to students’ success’ (cakır, 2008; greenfader & brouillette, 2013; koç, 2009; umutlu, 2004). in their interdisciplinary study where they combined literature and history teaching (kornfeld & leyden, 2005) concluded that historical stories were written and enacted in the classroom environment had a positive effect on history teaching. likewise, cruz and murthy (2006) stated that their work based on the fact that students animated fiction diaries on american history and short monologues about historical characters revealed effective results in history teaching. all these results coincide with the result that the dramatization technique obtained in this study positively affects the academic success of students in history teaching. in summary, the findings of this study show that there is a meaningful difference between the achievement and persistence scores of the experimental group in which the dramatization technique is applied and that of the control group which uses other methods and techniques. this demonstrates that the dramatization technique, which actively includes students in the learning environment, was more effective in helping the students acquire knowledge and ensuring the persistence of the information learnt compared to other methods and techniques. the following recommendations can be listed based on this result: • for the success of drama activities in educational environment, it is of utmost importance that teachers are adequately equipped in this respect. historians as well as history teachers can write dramatization texts; however, in order to do this, they should have enough knowledge of the technique. for this purpose, onthe-job trainings can be given both to facilitate the process and to encourage them to write text. • there is not enough number of texts associated with historical content for drama activities in history lessons. as a matter of fact, the researchers could not find any dramatization texts appropriate for the acquisitions during the application of the study. preparing drama texts regarding each subject at different grade levels will make it easier for teachers to apply the dramatization technique. • when the history curriculum for 2018 is examined, it is seen that there is no statement associated with drama. it is considered that the curriculum guidance is also important for teachers to apply active methods and techniques. therefore, such methods and techniques that can guide teachers should be included in the history curriculum. • when the history textbooks are examined, it is observed that the activity examples of using drama method in history lessons are not sufficient. structuring some subjects in the textbooks directly through drama activity will ensure that drama method will be more actively used in history lessons. references açıkgöz, k. 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(2005). make use of the drama method on the subject matters of history of the 6th grade social knowledge course. unpublished ma dissertation, gazi university institute of educational sciences, ankara. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 443 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 443-447, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.443.447 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group perceptions of organizational cynicism in academics who teach in the field of sports in higher education institutions hulya bingol department of sport management, faculty of sport sciences, inonu university, malatya, turkey. abstract the aim of this research is to examine the perceptions of organizational cynicism among academics who teach in the field of sports. population of the research is composed of academics who teach in the sports field as part of the academic staff. the number of academics in the field of sports education in turkey is around 5,000. in order to ensure a 95% confidence level in the study, at least 384 people were needed. in this context, 408 academics were approached, and the study was conducted. in the research, a questionnaire form was used as a data collection tool. the questionnaire consists of two parts. in the first part, there are 5 questions to determine the demographic and employment characteristics of the individuals, and in the second part, there are 13 questions in the form of a 5-point likert scale to determine the perception of organizational cynicism. data analysis was conducted in spss 16 package program. the decision whether the indifference tests will be parametric or nonparametric was determined by kolmogorov smirnov test. as the “p” values are not at the level of 5% significance within the scope of the test results, it was decided that the sub-dimensions fit the normal distribution conditions. thus, it was decided to use the parametric tests of t test, anova test and pearson correlation test. keywords: academics, higher education, organizational cynicism, sport sciences, sport management, turkey. citation | hülya bingöl (2020). perceptions of organizational cynicism in academics who teach in the field of sports in higher education institutions. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 443-447. history: received: 15 april 2020 revised: 20 may 2020 accepted: 22 june 2020 published: 29 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 444 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 444 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 445 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 446 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 446 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.443.447&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1763 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6686-2821 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1763 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6686-2821 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1763 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6686-2821 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 443-447 444 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the perceptions of organizational cynicism among academics who teach in the field of sports. 1. introduction academics who teach in the field of sports play important roles both in the development of sports education and in the development of athletes. it is critical for the academics to undertake duties related to the organization and to express their opinions about the organization. in this research, academics' perceptions of organizational cynicism will be examined. in the literature, in most of the psychological approaches, the concept of cynicism is accepted as a permanent personality trait. in one of studies that examines cynicism in the scope of personality, it is stated that cynical individuals see the behaviors of others as erroneous, selfish, careless, and unreliable. at the same time, it is asserted that it is possible for cynical individuals to be angry and vicious towards other individuals, and they can be authoritarian in this respect (brandes., 1997). according to abraham, cynicism is an innate personality trait that is based on non-strong relationships where relationships are defined on humiliation, while it usually reflects negativity on human relationships (abraham, 2000). by approaching cynicism as an individual tendency, stanley et al. have expressed that this concept is mostly the feeling of distrust reflected on the decisions and attitudes of the individuals (stanley, meyer, & topolnytsky, 2005). it is seen that cynicism in institutions has started to be studied more in the 1990s. the book "the cynical americans" published by kanter and mirvis (1989) was influential in increased importance given to the issue. also, in the same year, an article titled "fighting cynicism in the workplace" was published by kanter and mirvis (1989). the researchers claimed that approximately 43% of the workforce in america was cynical (kanter & mirvis, 1989). after these studies, the effects and results of cynicism in organizations have been evaluated with different variables. the complete conceptualization of organizational cynicism was constituted with the studies of brandes. (1997) and dean, brandes, and dharwadkar (1998). concept of the organizational cynicism has been defined differently in the literature. in one of the studies, organizational cynicism was defined as negative and distrustful manners and behaviors towards major institutions and organizations. in addition, it was stated that these negative manners and behaviors were caused by different social factors and the media (bateman, sakano, & fujita, 1992). according to wanous et al. organizational cynicism refers to a pessimist and hopeless attitude towards change processes that was not well managed before, and institutional changes planned in the coming periods (wanous, reichers, & austin, 1994). andersson (1996) defines organizational cynicism as an attitude that reflects itself under three categories. these categories are a pragmatist approach by the management, the assumption that organizational operation operates on certain benefits, and the improbability of a change in the present conditions. reichers et al. stated that the organizational cynicism hinders change in the institution. in addition, they asserted that those who carried out the process of change in this concept were lazy and incompetent and the possibility of success was mentioned pessimistically (reichers, wanous, & austin, 1997). according to dean et al. organizational cynicism is the negative attitude which consists of three elements toward the employed institution. these three elements can be listed as thoughts regarding the lack of honesty and righteousness of the institution; negative feelings towards the institution; and the depreciatory and critical tendencies consisted of feelings and beliefs about the institution (dean et al., 1998). in a different study, organizational cynicism was referred as having a negative view against the initiatives of change in the name of attempts to succeed. it was also stated in this study that organizational cynicism consists of two elements. the first one is a negative point of view towards change attempts, while the second is the accusations made against successful change and motivation efforts (wanous et al., 1994). in another definition, organizational cynicism is expressed as an attitude which emerges with a strong emotional response that leads to a derogatory and critical attitude as well as to a belief that the institution is not truthful (abraham, 2000). 2. method in this study, data was collected through the scale within the scope of descriptive survey model. the model of the research is given figure 1. figure-1. research model. population of the research is composed of academics who teach in the sports fields as part of the academic staff. the research group consists of 408 academics who work in the field of sports sciences. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 443-447 445 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as a data collection tool, a questionnaire form was used in the research. the questionnaire form consists of two parts. in the first part, there are 5 questions to determine the demographic characteristics and employment status of the individuals, and in the second part, there are 13 questions in the form of a 5-point likert scale to determine the perception of organizational cynicism. in the organizational cynicism scale developed by brandes, dharwadkar, and dean (1999) there are three dimensions called cognitive, affective and behavioral dimensions. the scale was adapted to turkish by kalağan (2009) and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the scale. cognitive sub-dimension consists of 5 questions, affective sub-dimension consists of 4 questions and behavioral sub-dimension consists of 4 questions. cronbach alpha values of sub-dimensions were determined as 0,785 for affective dimension, 0,768 for behavioral dimension and 0.786 for cognitive dimension. 3. findings table-1. test of normality of dependent variables in the research. n=408 organizational cynicism scale sub-dimensions cognitive affective behavioral normal parameters mean 17.08 9.66 11,09 std. deviation 3.84 3.37 3,22 kolmogorov-smirnov z 0,675 1.214 1.161 p 0,752 0.102 0.135 in table 1, the normality assumption regarding the organizational cynicism perceptions was tested. as a result of the analysis, it was accepted that the sub-dimensions of organizational cynicism scales provided the normality assumption (p>0,05). as normality assumption was ensured, it was decided to use parametric tests of t test and anova test. data analysis was performed in spss 16 package program. the decision whether the indifference tests will be parametric or nonparametric tests was determined by kolmogorov smirnov test. it was decided that the subdimensions fit the normal distribution conditions since “p” values were not at the 5% significance level within the scope of the test results. it was decided to use the parametric tests of t test and anova test. table-2. demographic and employment characteristics of the participant academics. n=408 variable frequency % gender female 32 7.8 male 376 92.2 age 20-29 40 9.8 30-39 88 21.6 40-49 176 43.1 50 and older 104 25.5 marital status single 80 19.6 married 328 80.4 employment period 1-5 years 112 27.5 6-10 years 88 21.6 11-15 years 32 7.8 16-20 years 24 5.9 21 and more years 152 37.3 title research assistant 72 17.6 lecturer 56 13.7 assistant professor 112 27.5 associate professor 128 31.4 professor 40 9.8 in table 2, demographic and employment characteristics of the academics participating in the research are examined. among the participant academics, 92.2% are male, 43.1% are between 40-49 years old, 80.4% are married, 37.3% have been serving for 21 years and over, and 31.4% are associate professors. table-3. satisfaction status of the academics regarding the working conditions. variable frequency % very satisfied 48 11.8 satisfied 240 58.8 indecisive 88 21.6 not satisfied 32 7.8 as shown in table 3, when satisfaction status regarding the working conditions of the academics is examined, 58.8% of them are satisfied and 11.8% of them are very satisfied. when the organizational cynicism perception according to demographic and employment characteristics is examined in table 4, it is determined that the affective perception differs in accordance with the employment period while cognitive and affective perceptions differ in accordance with the satisfaction status (p<0,05). tukey test, which is one of the post hoc tests conducted in order to determine from which variable the difference originated, was performed. according to the test results, it has been determined that as the years of service increases, the perception of cynicism increases. as the years of service increases, the perception of affective cynicism in the organization increases. it is possible that the enthusiasm of the newly arrived academics for the job may asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 443-447 446 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group cause their emotional cynicism to decrease. the research also found that academics, who were more satisfied with the work environment, had lower cognitive and affective cynicism perceptions. table-4. perception of organizational cynicism regarding demographic and employment characteristics. mean± std. deviation n=408 variable cognitive affective behavioral gender female 18.00±4.24 7.75±0.50 9.75±2.36 male 17.00±3.85 9.85±3.47 11.21±3.28 t 0.495 1.199 0.868 p 0.623 0.236 0.389 age 20-29 14.60±3.04 8.00±2.82 12.80±2.86 30-39 17.63±3.52 8.45±2.33 10.36±3.07 40-49 16.90±4.71 10.22±3.71 10.81±3.38 50 and older 17.91±2.19 10.46±3.52 11.53±3.25 f 0.971 1.345 0.779 p 0.415 0.271 0.512 marital status singler 15.40±3.43 10.40±4.69 11.80±3.73 married 17.50±3.86 9.51±3.02 10.92±3.11 t 1.566 0.742 0.764 p 0.124 0.462 0.448 employment period 1-5 years 15.57±4.25 7.78±2.35 10.64±3.38 6-10 years 15.90±3.93 8.90±3.91 9.90±2.66 11-15 years 20.25±0.50 10.00±1.63 11.50±3.31 16-20 years 17.33±4.04 11.00±2.64 8.66±1.52 21 and more years 18.22±3.35 11.26±3.44 12.42±3.27 f 2.028 2.745 1.789 p 0.107 0.040 0.147 title research assistant 16.22±3.59 8.88±2.66 11.77±3.89 lecturer 16.66±5.13 9.33±6.11 12.33±2.08 assistant professor 16.92±3.02 8.78±3.21 11.50±2.90 associate professor 18.81±4.06 10.56±3.65 9.68±3.30 professor 15.20±4.54 9.20±1.64 11.60±3.20 f 1.256 0.908 0.944 p 0.300 0.484 0.462 satisfaction status very satisfied 12.66±2.94 5.83±2.04 10.00±2.75 satisfied 17.27±3.91 10.20±3.54 11.06±3.35 indecisive 17.63±2.76 9.90±1.92 11.72±3.19 not satisfied 20.75±0.50 11.00±3.82 11.25±3.77 f 4.882 3.507 0.361 p 0.005 0.022 0.782 4. conclusion in this study, academics' perceptions of organizational cynicism were examined, and it was attempted to determine whether these perceptions differed according to demographic and employment characteristics. when the organizational cynicism perception was examined according to demographic and study characteristics, it was determined that the affective perception differs in accordance with the years of service and cognitive and affective perception differ in accordance with the satisfaction status. yavuz and bedük (2016) found that organizational cynicism perceptions did not differ according to the income levels of individuals. in his study, ergen (2015) found that employees aged between 20-30 experiences behavioral cynicisms more heavily than the employees aged between 31-40. açıkgöz (2016) found that the organizational cynicism perceptions of single individuals are higher than that of married individuals. according to the test results, it was determined that as the years of service increases, perception of cynicism increases. in his research, ergen (2015) found that organizational cynicism perceptions did not differ according to the employment period. the belief of the newly employed trainers that innovation and change related to the institution can easily be realized and the idea of them being idealistic can be very intense. it can be thought that these existing thoughts may turn into exhibition of negative attitudes and an increase in the organizational cynicism perception when they become familiar with the institution-specific policies, operations, and applications. and for the trainers with professional experience, it can be interpreted as a decrease in cynicism perceptions since they know the employed institution better and see themselves as part of the organization. references abraham, r. (2000). organizational cynicism: bases and consequences. genetic, social, and general psychology monographs, 126(3), 269–292. açıkgöz, s. (2016). organizational cynicism and organizational commitment relationship: a research on istanbul hospitality industry employees. institute of social sciences business administration, master’s thesis, i̇stanbul: i̇stanbul gelisim university. andersson, l. m. (1996). employee cynicism: an examination using a contract violation framework. human relations, 49(11), 13951418.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679604901102. bateman, t., sakano, t., & fujita, m. (1992). roger, me, and my attitude: film propaganda and cynicism toward corporate leadership. journal of applied psychology, 77(5), 768-771.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.77.5.768. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 443-447 447 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group brandes, p., dharwadkar, r., & dean, j. w. (1999). does organizational cynicism matter? employee and supervisor perspectives on work outcomes. paper presented at the eastern academy of management proceedings, 150-153. outstanding empirical paper award. brandes., p. m. (1997). organizational cynicism: its nature, antecedents, and consequences. unpublished doctoral dissertation, the university of cincinnati, cincinnati. dean, j. j. w., brandes, p., & dharwadkar, r. (1998). organizational cynicism. academy of management review, 23(2), 341-352. ergen, s. (2015). the relationship between teachers' organizational cynicism levels and organizational commitment. educational sciences institute, department of educational administration and supervision, master’s thesis, ankara: gazi university. kalağan, g. (2009). the relationship between researh assistants? perceived organizational support and organizational cynicism. institute of social sciences, department of educational sciences, master’s thesis, antalya: akdeniz university. kanter, d. l., & mirvis, p. h. (1989). the cynical americans. san francisco: jossey-bass. reichers, a. e., wanous, j. p., & austin, j. t. (1997). understanding and managing cynicism about organizational change. academy of management executive, 11(1), 48-59.available at: https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.1997.9707100659. stanley, d. j., meyer, j. p., & topolnytsky, l. (2005). employee cynicism and resistance to organizational change. journal of business & psychology, 19(4), 429-459.available at: https://doi.org/10.33423/jop.v19i5.2516. wanous, j. p., reichers, a. e., & austin, j. t. (1994). organizational cynicism: an initial study. academy of management proceedings, 1994(1), 269–273.available at: https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.1994.10344804. yavuz, a., & bedük, a. (2016). the relationship between organizational cynicism and organizational commitment: sample practice in konya branches of a public bank. journal of selcuk university institute of social sciences, 35(1), 301-311. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 130 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 4, 130-135, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5211 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group blending of collaborative and active learning instructional methods to improve academic performance and self-motivation of vocational students li ruijuan1 sarit srikhoa2 nirat jantharajit3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3nakhon phanom university, nakhon phanom, thailand. 1email: lzbslrj@163.com 2email: sarit63@hotmail.com 3email: n20jann@hotmail.com abstract this study delves into the integration of collaborative and active learning methodologies as a means to enhance both academic achievement and self-motivation among students in the realm of vocational education. collaborative learning, with its emphasis on teamwork, problem-solving, and social responsibility, complements the active learning approach, which fosters autonomy, deep understanding, and critical thinking. together, these strategies form a comprehensive framework that not only facilitates academic excellence but also cultivates the lifelong learning skills imperative for sustained career success. while the potential benefits of collaborative and active learning are evident, the study acknowledges the existence of practical challenges, including limited resources and resistance from educators. addressing these challenges is paramount for the effective implementation of these pedagogical approaches. overcoming such obstacles will empower vocational education to harness the transformative potential of collaboration and active learning, equipping students with the necessary skills and motivation to thrive in their chosen careers. by navigating these challenges successfully, educators and institutions can create an environment that prepares students not only for the demands of their immediate professions but also for the dynamic challenges of the evolving professional landscape. keywords: academic achievement, active learning, collaborative learning, self motivation. citation | ruijuan, l., srikhoa, s., & jantharajit, n. (2023). blending of collaborative and active learning instructional methods to improve academic performance and self-motivation of vocational students. asian journal of education and training, 9(4), 130–135. 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5211 history: received: 9 october 2023 revised: 21 november 2023 accepted: 30 october 2023 published: 6 december 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................131 2. fostering excellence: a comprehensive approach to enhance vocational education ......................................................131 3. blended pedagogy: based on collaborative and active learning ..............................................................................................132 4. feasibility in vocational education .....................................................................................................................................................134 5. challenges from limited resources and educator resistance ...................................................................................................134 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................................135 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................135 mailto:lzbslrj@163.com mailto:sarit63@hotmail.com mailto:n20jann@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5211 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8301-796x https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4318-8128 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1098-8109 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 130-135 131 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by uniquely focusing on the integration of collaborative and active learning in vocational education. it goes beyond isolated examinations of these methodologies, presenting a holistic approach that addresses challenges specific to vocational settings. this distinctive perspective offers practical insights for educators and policymakers seeking innovative solutions to enhance student outcomes in vocational education. 1. introduction in recent years, the chinese government has significantly increased its investment in vocational education to enhance students' academic performance and self-motivation in vocational colleges. however, traditional teaching methods in vocational education tend to promote passive learning, which can hinder active student engagement and practical knowledge application, consequently leading to suboptimal academic performance and motivation. researchers and policymakers actively explore active and collaborative learning methods to address this problem. collaborative learning is an instructional approach that strongly emphasizes active participation and cooperation among students throughout the learning process. as abuseileek (2012) articulated, collaborative learning fosters positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, and the development of vital social skills. when students collaborate on tasks and projects, vocational students can enhance their problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication skills. this approach also cultivates a sense of belonging and mutual support among students, creating an environment conducive to heightened motivation for learning. active learning involves students actively participating in the learning process through various activities, including discussions, experiments, and hands-on projects. active learning methods encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and promote higher-order thinking skills, as sekwena (2023) highlighted. for vocational students, active learning provides opportunities to apply theoretical concepts in practical scenarios, enhancing their problem-solving skills and preparing them for real-world challenges. international policy documents, such as the european commission's new skills agenda and unesco's education 2030 framework for action, explicitly emphasize the importance of these methods in vocational education (european commission, 2012; unesco, 2015). these policy frameworks highlight the significance of learnercentered approaches that foster collaboration and active engagement to improve vocational students' learning outcomes and motivation. this research seeks to explore the effectiveness of an instructional approach based on collaborative and active learning in improving vocational education students' academic achievement and selfmotivation. nevertheless, implementing these methods in educational practices still needs practical challenges, including limited resources and resistance from educators. 2. fostering excellence: a comprehensive approach to enhance vocational education 2.1. practical significance enhanced learning achievement: the proposed instructional approach based on collaborative learning and active learning has the potential to improve the learning achievement of vocational students significantly. this approach promotes more profound understanding and knowledge retention by actively engaging students in collaborative activities, such as group discussions, projects, and problem-solving tasks. the interactive nature of collaborative learning fosters critical thinking, communication skills, and teamwork, which are essential for success in vocational fields. real-world skills development: vocational education aims to equip students with practical skills directly applicable in the workplace. by incorporating active learning strategies into vocational instruction, students are exposed to real-world scenarios and challenges. this approach allows them to develop problem-solving abilities, adaptability, and decision-making skills, which are crucial for vocational success. students can bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application by actively engaging in hands-on activities, such as simulations, case studies, and role-plays. self-motivation and autonomy: the proposed instructional approach promotes self-motivation among vocational students. collaborative learning encourages students to take ownership of their learning process, fostering a sense of autonomy and independence. by actively participating in group activities and projects, students develop self-regulation skills, goal-setting abilities, and the confidence to take initiative. this approach empowers students to become active learners, motivating them to explore and discover knowledge beyond the classroom, which is crucial for lifelong learning and career advancement. 2.2. theoretical significance constructivist learning theory: the proposed instructional approach aligns with the constructivist learning theory, which emphasizes the active construction of knowledge through social interactions and meaningful experiences. students actively construct their understanding of vocational concepts by engaging in collaborative learning activities, leading to deeper comprehension and long-term retention. this approach supports the notion that learning is a social process and students learn best by actively engaging with their peers and the learning environment. motivation and engagement theories: the instructional approach based on collaborative learning and active learning aligns with motivational and engagement theories. the approach taps into intrinsic motivation by providing students with opportunities for active participation, fostering a sense of ownership and p ersonal relevance. the collaborative nature of the approach promotes social interaction and peer support, which have been shown to enhance motivation and engagement. the approach stimulates students' curiosity and interest by incorporating elements such as problem-solving tasks, hands-on activities, and real-world applications, leading to sustained motivation and a positive learning experience. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 130-135 132 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. blended pedagogy: based on collaborative and active learning 3.1. collaborative learning cooperative learning, an educational approach promoting collaboration and active group participation, enhances learning by encouraging students to interact, share ideas, and support each other's learning. it is rooted in the belief that students learn best when actively engaged and able to discuss and explain their ideas to peers, benefiting from diverse perspectives (laal, 2012). structured cooperative learning activities typically include positive interdependence and individual accountability, with each student responsible for the group's success (nam & zellner, 2011; smith, 1996). in addition to academic gains, cooperative learning fosters a positive classroom environment, positive student relationships, and enhanced self-esteem and self-confidence. it also nurtures critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork abilities crucial for the modern workforce (kivunja, 2014; tang, 2020). cooperative learning, recognized for its value in enhancing academic achievement, social development, and critical thinking skills, offers a dynamic classroom environment that surpasses traditional teaching methods. this approach improves subject matter understanding while nurturing essential skills for 21st-century success. the multifaceted benefits range from improved academic performance to enhanced social and communication skills and real-world collaboration preparation: (1) cooperative learning enhances academic achievement through active student engagement in discussions, problem-solving, and peer teaching. (2) working in groups fosters the development of essential social skills, including effective communication, active listening, and respect for diverse perspectives, which are crucial for personal and professional success. (3) cooperative learning stimulates critical thinking and problem-solving, honing analytical skills and promoting creative solutions. (4) this approach boosts motivation and engagement by creating an inclusive learning environment enhancing students' intrinsic motivation, effort, participation, and commitment to learning. (5) preparing students for real-world collaboration and cooperative learning equips them with teamwork skills, an appreciation for diverse perspectives, and the ability to contribute to collective success in collaborative settings. (6) students practicing cooperative learning refine their communication skills, including articulation, clarity in expressing ideas, and active listening, which are essential for effective interpersonal relationships and professional success. (7) collaborative learning cultivates positive interpersonal relationships by fostering trust, respect, and empathy among students, creating a supportive and inclusive classroom community that enhances overall well-being. (8) exposure to diverse perspectives in cooperative learning promotes cultural understanding, empathy, and tolerance, encouraging students to value and respect different viewpoints and contributing to a more inclusive society. however, the effectiveness of collaborative learning experiences is influenced by various factors that shape the dynamics and outcomes of group interactions: (1) diverse group composition is crucial in collaborative learning as heterogeneous groups, with individuals from varied backgrounds and perspectives, tend to outperform homogeneous groups. diversity encourages cognitive conflict and critical thinking, leading to improved learning outcomes. (2) interdependence among group members is essential, particularly in fostering cooperation. positive interdependence, where learners understand that their success is tied to the group's success, promotes more meaningful interactions and mutual support. (3) effective communication and interaction are vital in collaborative learning, as they promote shared knowledge construction. creating environments that encourage dialogue, discussion, and interaction enables collective learning. (4) group dynamics, including cohesion, trust, and leadership, significantly impact collaborative learning. managing group development stages, such as forming, storming, norming, and performing, is essential. establishing a positive group climate, resolving conflicts, and promoting shared leadership are crucial for effective collaborative learning. (5) thoughtfully designed collaborative learning tasks play a crucial role in shaping interaction levels. wellstructured tasks requiring interdependence, critical thinking, and clear goals enhance the collaborative learning experience and should ensure positive interdependence and individual accountability. in summary, cooperative learning is a powerful educational approach that promotes collaboration, active participation, and the exchange of diverse ideas among students. this method enhances academic performance and equips learners with crucial skills for the 21st century. effective cooperative learning hinges on group composition, interdependence, communication, group dynamics, and task design. by recognizing and addressing these elements, educators can create optimal learning environments that empower students and prepare them for a connected world. 3.2. active learning active learning revolves around an instructional approach that encourages learners to actively engage with the learning process (grabinger & dunlap, 1995; moreno & mayer, 2000). it emphasizes the active participation of learners in acquiring knowledge, skills, and understanding rather than passively receiving information. active learning involves learners taking an active role in their learning by participating in activities promoting critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making (kyoungna, priya, susan, & kevin, 2013; walker, 2003). instead of simply listening to lectures or reading textbooks, active learning encourages learners to interact with the material through discussions, group work, hands-on experiments, and other interactive activities. one key aspect of active learning is the shift from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered approach. in traditional teaching methods, the teacher is the primary source of knowledge and focuses on transmitting information to the students. in active learning, the teacher becomes a facilitator or guide who supports and encourages the students' active engagement in the learning process (grabinger & dunlap, 1995). active learning is widely recognized for its ability to transform traditional education into a dynamic and engaging experience. by shifting the focus from asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 130-135 133 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group passive information absorption to active participation and interaction, active learning offers a multitude of values and benefits for both learners and educators: (1) enhanced engagement: active learning methods actively involve learners in the learning process, which increases their engagement and motivation. (2) deeper understanding: active learning promotes a deeper understanding of the subject matter. instead of passively receiving information, learners actively process and apply knowledge, which leads to better comprehension and retention. (3) critical thinking skills: active learning activities stimulate critical thinking skills, such as problem-solving, analysis, and evaluation. by engaging in discussions, debates, and group projects, students learn to think critically, consider multiple perspectives, and develop their own informed opinions. (4) collaboration and communication skills: active learning often involves collaboration and teamwork. through group projects, presentations, and peer discussions, students learn to effectively communicate their ideas, listen to others, and work together towards a common goal. (5) application of knowledge: active learning encourages applying knowledge in practical contexts. by engaging in hands-on experiments, simulations, and real-world problem-solving activities, learners can directly apply what they have learned to real-life situations. (6) adaptability and lifelong learning: active learning fosters adaptability and a lifelong learning mindset. by actively participating in their education, students develop self-directed learning, curiosity, and the ability to seek out and evaluate information independently. however, active learning is influenced by a variety of factors in classroom dynamics and student engagement, from the classroom environment to the role of the teacher and from student engagement to the availability of resources: (1) classroom environment: the physical and psychological environment of the classroom plays a crucial role in promoting active learning. a supportive and inclusive classroom climate encourages students to actively participate, ask questions, and share their ideas without fear of judgment. (2) teacher's role: the teacher's role is essential in fostering active learning. teachers who adopt a facilitator or guide role rather than a lecturer encourage students to take ownership of their learning. they provide clear instructions, set learning goals, and offer guidance and support as students engage in activities, discussions, and problem-solving. (3) student engagement: active learning requires active student engagement. students who are motivated, curious, and have a sense of agency in their learning are likelier to participate actively. engaging and relevant learning materials, hands-on activities, real-world applications, and student choice and voice opportunities can enhance student engagement and promote active learning. (4) collaboration and interaction: collaboration and peer interaction are essential factors in active learning. group work, discussions, debates, and projects encourage students to share their perspectives, exchange ideas, and learn from each other. (5) technology and resources: access to technology and relevant resources can significantly impact active learning. digital tools, multimedia resources, online platforms, and interactive learning materials can enhance student engagement and provide opportunities for active exploration, research, and creation. (6) assessment and feedback: assessment practices that align with active learning promote student engagement. formative assessment methods, such as quizzes, discussions, and self-reflection, allow students to monitor their progress and identify areas for improvement. (7) cultural and individual factors: cultural and individual factors can influence students' inclination towards active learning. recognizing and accommodating diverse learning styles, cultural perspectives, and individual differences can support active learning for all students. in conclusion, active learning represents a transformative approach to education, emphasizing engagement, deeper understanding, critical thinking, collaboration, application of knowledge, and lifelong learning skills. while the effectiveness of active learning is influenced by various factors such as the classroom environment, the teacher's role, student engagement, collaboration, technology, assessment, and individual differences, it remains a powerful pedagogical tool for educators and learners. by recognizing and addressing these factors, educators can create dynamic and inclusive learning environments that empower students to take an active role in their education, fostering a love for learning and preparing them for an ever-evolving world. 3.3. the relationship between cooperative and active learning active learning strongly emphasizes student autonomy and proactivity, while cooperative learning centers on collaboration and interaction among students. these two methods differ in their primary focus but can complement each other to create a more productive learning environment. as its name implies, active learning underscores the importance of students taking an active and self-directed role in their learning process. it encourages students to select learning materials independently, set their learning objectives, and utilize methods that align with their unique learning styles. students have the autonomy to choose topics of personal interest, thus often increasing their intrinsic motivation to learn, as they feel a heightened sense of control over their educational journey. conversely, cooperative learning enhances student motivation through social interaction and teamwork. in a small group learning setting, students collaborate with peers to solve problems and share perspectives, fostering a sense of social connectedness. this social interaction and teamwork inspire students to become more motivated learners, as they are working towards individual learning goals and contributing to the collective success of the group. students recognize the weight of their responsibility, knowing that their learning outcomes are closely tied to the group's performance. when these two methods are combined, students can simultaneously harness their interests and gain social support. they can autonomously select learning materials while receiving peer feedback and support within the collaborative group. this combination elevates student motivation as they can pursue their interests while experiencing the social connections that group work offers. students have individual and group objectives, creating a dual motivational mechanism that enhances their enthusiasm for learning. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 130-135 134 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group furthermore, these two methods are well-suited to cater to the diverse needs of different types of students. some students lean towards independent learning, enjoying the autonomy to determine their learning methods and pace. active learning provides an ideal environment for these students. others may gravitate towards social interaction, finding fulfillment in learning with peers within a group. cooperative learning meets the needs of these students by emphasizing teamwork and shared learning experiences. by amalgamating these two approaches, educators can establish a more inclusive learning environment that caters to the varying requirements of students and helps them realize their full potential. on the academic front, integrating active and cooperative learning can elevate academic achievement. active learning encourages students to engage in deep thinking and independent research, resulting in a more profound understanding of the subject. through group discussions and collective problem-solving, cooperative learning promotes knowledge sharing and multifaceted thinking, enhancing academic performance. students can accumulate knowledge through individual learning and share and discuss their ideas within the group, providing a more comprehensive learning experience. this comprehensive approach enriches their comprehension of the learning content and ultimately bolsters their academic performance. in summary, active learning and cooperative learning, despite differing in focus, serve to complement each other in the realms of enhancing student motivation, catering to diverse learning needs, and fostering academic achievement. these methodologies offer distinct yet mutually reinforcing learning experiences, cultivating students' self-directed learning skills, social skills, and academic accomplishments. by incorporating these two methods into educational practice, educators can provide students with a more comprehensive and well-rounded learning experience, thus laying a solid foundation for their future educational and career development. 4. feasibility in vocational education 4.1. addressing the practical issues in modern society, vocational education has gained significant importance as it focuses on cultivating students' skills, knowledge, and abilities essential for success in specific professional fields. this form of education imparts subject knowledge and emphasizes problem-solving skills and autonomy. collaborative and active learning methods have emerged as powerful educational tools to foster students' cooperation, problem-solving abilities, and independence, all essential in their professional domains. collaborative learning emphasizes teamwork and problem-solving, while active learning encourages autonomy and adaptability. these methods offer a comprehensive vocational education, preparing students for career success. 4.2. enhancing learning achievement academic performance is the primary focus in education, with educators and students constantly seeking practical approaches to enrich learning experiences and boost achievements. collaborative and active learning are two such methods. collaborative learning enhances academic performance by encouraging knowledge sharing, group discussions, and multidimensional thinking. in comparison, active learning promotes deep reflection and independent research with similar objectives. collaborative learning provides a rich social environment for students to broaden their academic perspectives through interaction and knowledge sharing. active learning takes this further by encouraging profound contemplation and independent investigation. this combination enhances multiple understandings of academic content and cultivates the depth and breadth of knowledge, contributing to holistic student development and improved academic performance. furthermore, this integration enhances students' academic self-confidence. in collaborative learning, students validate their comprehension through interaction and knowledge sharing, boosting their confidence in academic discussions and exploration. active learning deepens their knowledge, promotes independent problem-solving, and further reinforces their academic self-confidence. this approach fosters a belief in their ability to engage in profound academic thinking and independent research, which is essential for enhancing academic performance. 4.3. enhancing self-motivation the fusion of collaborative and active learning creates a dual motivation mechanism that benefits students. collaborative learning fosters social interaction and support, stimulating social responsibility and academic curiosity. simultaneously, active learning promotes autonomy and independent research, nurturing academic selfconfidence and the belief in facing academic challenges. in collaborative learning, group projects and teamwork transform students into an integral part of a learning community. they collaborate to solve problems, share perspectives, and exchange resources, fostering close social connections. this interaction and support reduce academic pressure, increase learning enjoyment, and encourage active participation. students in collaborative learning take on various roles and work towards common academic goals, understanding their responsibility towards the group's success. this sense of responsibility boosts their intrinsic motivation, extending beyond individual academics to teamwork and social connections. this social responsibility motivates them to pursue academic success proactively. on the other hand, active learning emphasizes autonomy. students independently select materials, set objectives, and employ methods that suit their learning style. this autonomy turns students into self-directed learners who manage their learning processes. active learning encourages profound, critical thinking, stimulating academic curiosity for in-depth knowledge. it pushes students to explore topics deeply, enhancing academic performance. additionally, active learning nurtures students' problem-solving skills, enhancing academic self-confidence. they develop a resilient mindset, reducing their tendency to give up and positively influencing academic success. 5. challenges from limited resources and educator resistance limited resources pose a significant challenge. the constraints on educational funding directly impact collaborative and active learning implementation. these methods typically require more investment, encompassing support for group learning, practical projects, and technical equipment. however, due to the restricted funding, educational institutions need help to provide sufficient resources, thus constraining the application of these methods. more teaching staff is also a concern since these methods demand increased teacher involvement, and asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 130-135 135 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group some institutions may need help hiring an adequate number of educators with relevant experience and training. furthermore, more technical equipment is needed to improve students' learning experiences, particularly in resource-deprived areas. furthermore, resistance from educators presents a challenge. this resistance may stem from traditional educational ideologies, as some educators believe that collaborative learning and active learning contradict their prior educational experiences and methods, leading to skepticism. implementing these methods necessitates educators acquiring new educational skills and knowledge, but training requires time and resources, and some teachers may be reluctant to alter their teaching approaches. additionally, these methods introduce new challenges in student assessment and evaluation, as they emphasize student participation and self-directed learning, which differs from traditional examinations and tests. in summary, successfully implementing collaborative and active learning in vocational institutions requires addressing two key challenges: limited resources and educator resistance. this involves increasing educational funding, providing teacher training and support, reevaluating student assessment methods, and conducting further research to substantiate the positive impact of these methods on student learning. these methods can only fully realize their potential and provide a higher quality education by overcoming these challenges. 6. conclusion in conclusion, the fusion of collaborative and active learning methodologies presents a promising approach to enhance vocational education. these methods offer a multifaceted approach to improving learning achievement and self-motivation among vocational students. collaborative learning nurtures teamwork, problem-solving skills, and a sense of social responsibility, fostering an environment conducive to heightened motivation for learning. on the other hand, active learning emphasizes autonomy, deep understanding, and critical thinking, empowering students to become self-directed learners with increased academic self-confidence. this combination provides a comprehensive foundation for academic excellence and lifelong learning skills essential for career success. however, the practical implementation of collaborative and active learning faces challenges, primarily stemming from limited resources and educator resistance. limited funding restricts the availability of necessary resources and technical equipment, while insufficient teaching staff can hinder the adoption of these methods. educator resistance, rooted in traditional educational ideologies, necessitates training and support to embrace the new approach. furthermore, the shift in student assessment and evaluation methods raises concerns among educators. to fully realize the potential of collaborative and active learning in vocational education, it is imperative to address these challenges. this entails increasing educational funding, providing comprehensive teacher training and support, reevaluating assessment methods, and conducting further research to substantiate the b enefits of these methods. only through a concerted effort to overcome these obstacles can vocational education truly harness the transformative power of collaborative and active learning, providing students with the skills and motivation necessary for success in their chosen professions. references abuseileek, a. f. 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(2003). active learning strategies to promote critical thinking. journal of athletic training, 38(3), 263-267. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.07.011 https://www.orientamentoirreer.it/sites/default/files/norme/ue%20092%202012%20eurydice%20key%20competences%20novembre.pdf https://www.orientamentoirreer.it/sites/default/files/norme/ue%20092%202012%20eurydice%20key%20competences%20novembre.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/0968776950030202 https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v3n3p81 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-012-9236-x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.12.092 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.92.4.724 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.10.010 https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.22.3.15 https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.37219966709 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100696 314 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 314-319, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.314.319 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group analysing motivations for sports consumption of students at school of physical education and sports murat aygün1 elif kübra demir2 ( corresponding author) 1ardahan university, school of physical education and sports; sports management sciences, turkey. 2ege university, faculty of education; measurement and evaluation in education, turkey. abstract in this study, the objective is to analyse the motivation for sports consumption of university students. the study group consists of 178 students in school of physical education and sports. as data collection tool in the research, personal information form and motivation scale for sport consumption” developed by trail and james (2001) and adapted into turkish by tok (2004) have been used. independent samples t-test and variance analysis are used for independent groups. there are significant differences in favour of female in the sub-dimension of family and in favour of students studying at sports management in the sub-dimension of knowledge and skills on the scores of motivation scale for sport consumption. while the averages are high at people living in the cities in the sub-dimension of social, the averages are low at people living in towns. according to findings of the research, it has been thought that consumption requirement arising with motives and motivation phenomenon plays an active role in motivation behaviour of the sports in line with the requirements of the individuals such as socialization, self-proofing and selfacceptance. keywords: physical education, consumption, sports consumption, motivation. citation | murat aygün; elif kübra demir (2020). analysing motivations for sports consumption of students at school of physical education and sports. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 314-319. history: received: 17 february 2020 revised: 20 march 2020 accepted: 29 april 2020 published: 1 june 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 315 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 316 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 316 4. discussion and results ................................................................................................................................................................. 318 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 319 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.314.319&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1687 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7636-8325 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3219-1644 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1687 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7636-8325 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3219-1644 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1687 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7636-8325 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3219-1644 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1687 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7636-8325 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3219-1644 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 314-319 315 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the desires and motives in the concept of motivation play an active role in determining the consumption need in the phenomenon of sports. thanks to the importance and scope of sports marketing with the phenomenon of consumption; it will contribute to the sports science by providing resources for studies in the fields of motivation, marketing and sports consumption. 1. introduction with the emergence of the sports phenomenon, large audience has also increased with the development of sports. this increased interest has played an active role in the motivation assessment of sports need by causing a growth in the consumption factor in sports marketing. thanks to today's technological advancements, the consumption factor (audience, sports fan, association, club, foundation… etc.) in sports has been improving and showing its effect at a universal level. motivation is an important factor in this universality. the word “motivation”, which is expressed as actions taken to affect individuals, has come from the root of “mot” in latin and is defined as the concept of motivation (hanks, 1999; tevruz, 2002). while motivation is directed towards the expectations of individuals, the sense of curiosity, continuity, learning, performance, sociological and psychological factors in the realization of the consumption decision (elmas & balcı, 2019; middleton & toluk, 1999; vallerand et al., 1992) show specificity in the concept of sports consumption on personal needs. while providing the needs, tension, motives, research behaviour, satisfaction of needs and decreasing the sense of tension are rendered as basic motivation process, psychological skills are very important in providing the motivation factor (erhan, bedir, güler, & ağduman, 2015; keser, 2006). some similar situations (self-confidence and performance etc.) are very important in determining the behaviour action (cohen, 2016). additionally, cultural, social and family factors that can be considered in consumption will benefit the socialization process of the individual (aygün & oztaşyonar, 2019). the motivations that emerge in the individual are very important for increasing the attractiveness and interest that occupy psychological needs. the condition of active or passive participation in any sport branch is very substantial in terms of the economic value of the sports industry. searching people's participation in sports and learning the results of this situation will benefit the learning of the emerging economic dimension (erkan & uslu, 2019). physical participation and passive sports consumption practices are different from each other in sports participation (kim & mao, 2019). it has been stated that the main element of the sports consumption of the studies on participation in sports are motives (simşek, 2012). continuity of the researches on consumption, which is one of the main economic activities (xianliang & hongying, 2012) and how it affects today's sports consumption behaviour with developing technology have importance (ha, kang, & kim, 2017). while sports activities took place in local criteria in the past, it helps the sport reach to a wide audience with the development of technology. thanks to the increasing interest in sports, specialization (professionalization) in sports has started to advance. this situation displays us that there are such dimensions like production and marketing as well as being healthy. furthermore, the products that sports clubs have created for branding have resulted in large income sources and the emergence of sports marketing activities (erdoğ, 2012; kurtipek, güngör, esentürk, ilhan, & yenel, 2020; murathan & murathan, 2019). the increase in new models with the development of technology has caused the needs of the consumer to change and increased the importance of the sports market (biricik, 2019). denoted in the study of xianliang and hongying (2012) “baidu: the costs that arise after people participate in the activities” are expressed as sports consumption. regarding the football branch, which has a high market volume in sports consumption in our country, the effectiveness of sports experts and marketers will contribute to increasing audience participation (gençer, kiremitçi, aycan, demiray, & unutmaz, 2012). in this event, the effectiveness of sports consumption will become more prominent and will cause the growth of the market and sports within the scope of consumption phenomenon. factors affecting the defined sports consumption motivation has been expressed as the basic needs of sports consumers by putting forward as 14 basic themes. it is possible to mention 3 different participations (live participation, mediated sports consumption and common motivational behaviour) that form the motivational behaviour. in “live participation motivational behaviour”, there are 3 themes that affect consumption motivation such as witnessing history, identity creation and reality. in “mediated sports consumption motivational behaviour”, there are 8 themes such as multiple game access, economic thought in many aspects, protection from emotional risk, suitability, programming, sociability etc. and lastly, there are 3 themes in the "common motivational behaviour" with consumption motivation including admiration, socialization and entertainment (kim & mao, 2019). although it is stated that the person is identified with the consumption behaviour in sports with the feature of the sports branch, sports consumption motivation is both the tendency and activation of the sports consumption phenomenon (ceylan, altıparmak, & akçakoyun, 2016; xianliang & hongying, 2012). sports consumption motivations and their explanations described by kim and mao (2019) are defined as follows:  live participation motivational behaviour: motivation to witness the history of the games, to develop their own identity, to have a direct experience.  mediated sports consumption motivational behaviour: motivation of being able to do several sports at the same time, being engaged with other things while doing sports, doing low cost sports activities, protecting yourself from emotional exhaustion of other people, following their autonomy and privacy, getting information about sports through explanations, interacting with other people better via sports, having your favourite sports games.  common motivational behaviour: motivation to express their admiration about teams or players, to develop new relationships with others along with sports consumption, and to be satisfied and happy through sports consumption (kim & mao, 2019). in line with this study; the importance of sports for the public and the individuals' interest in sports increase with the developing technology. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 314-319 316 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the media element that we encounter as an important factor today reveals the strength of economically sports marketing and the determining the consumption phenomenon of people. it has been thought that the most important reasons for the emergence of the consumption factor are wishes, desires and motivation. in this study, it is aimed at analysing the sports consumption motivations of individuals as a result of the mathematical values obtained in line with some demographic variables (gender, department and place of residence) that form the personal information form of the research. 2. method this part of this study includes information about the model of the research, research population and sample, data collection tools and statistical techniques used in the analysis of the data. 2.1. research model in this study, the survey model, one of the quantitative research models, has been used. in order to determine the specific characteristics of a group (age, gender, ethnicity…), studies whose objective is to collect data about the characteristics of events and situations are called survey models (büyüköztürk, çakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2013; fraenkel & wallen, 2006). 2.2. study group the study group consists of 178 students (88 females, 90 males), aged between 18-26, who studies at ardahan university, school of physical education and sports. 2.3. data collection tools in the study, personal information form containing demographic features prepared by the researcher and motivation scale for sport consumption have been used to analyse students' motivations for sports consumption.  personal information form (pif): in the research, information about independent variables and questions considering demographic variables such as gender, age, department, class and place of residence formed by the researcher.  motivation scale for sports consumption: to measure students' sports consumption motivations; “motivation scale for sports consumption”, which is developed by trail and james (2001) and adapted into turkish by tok (2004) has been used. this scale includes 27 items and 9 sub-dimensions (success, knowledge, aesthetics, stress, escape, family, physical attraction, physical skill, social). the scale is 7-point likert type and the items as such: 1-strongly disagree, 2-partially disagree, 3-disagree, 4-neutral, 5-agree, 6-partially agree, 7strongly agree. the reliability coefficient of the scale has been found to be between .63 and .89 in terms of subdimensions (tok, 2004). 2.4. statistical interpretation of data the scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of the motivation scale for sports consumption have been compared in terms of gender, age, department, class and location variable. normal distribution, homogeneity and linearity assumptions of variances have been tested and assumptions have been provided. thusly, the data has been analysed by variance analysis. 3. findings the demographic variables belonging to the students constituting the study group of the research are presented in the figure 1 the scores obtained from the motivation scale for sports consumption are presented in the table 1, table 2 and table 3 according to the sub-dimensions. figure-1. demographic features of the students. in figure 1, according to gender variable; 90 are male students (50.6%) and 88 are female students (49.4%) of the participants. according to the department variable, 130 students take education in the sports management department (73.0%), and 48 of them study in the physical education and sports teaching department (27.0%). according to the place of residence variable; 42 students live in the village (23.6%), 14 students live in the town (7.9%) and 87 students live in the city (48.9%) and 35 students live in the metropolitan area (19.7%). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 314-319 317 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. the findings of the comparison about the scores obtained from motivation scale for sports consumption regarding gender variable. smssc gender n s t p success male 90 17,433 5,266 .273 .807 female 88 17,227 4,805 knowledge male 90 15,311 5,422 .588 .199 female 88 14,897 4,707 aesthetics male 90 17,311 4,691 .466 .638 female 88 16,806 4,515 stress male 90 15,644 5,066 .741 .415 female 88 15,886 4,659 escape male 90 14,333 4,873 .855 .239 female 88 14,204 4,503 family male 90 13,200 6,091 .544 .034* female 88 13,715 5,174 attraction male 90 12,011 4,851 .900 .961 female 88 12,102 4,849 skill male 90 17,300 4,453 .617 .975 female 88 16,965 4,431 social male 90 16,177 4,763 .014 .612 female 88 14,363 5,033 note: *p<0.05 smssc: sub-dimensions of motivation scale for sports consumption. in table 1, when the findings about the students' scores from the scale are analysed according to the gender variable, it is observed that the average score of female students is higher than male students in the subdimensions of “stress and attraction”. on the other hand, male students have higher averages than female students in terms of “success, knowledge, aesthetics, escape, skill, and social” sub-dimensions (p> .05). in the “family” sub-dimension, females ( ̅:13.72, s:6.09) have higher averages and there is a significant difference (p=.034) considering male students (p <.05). table-2. the findings of the comparison about the scores obtained from motivation scale for sports consumption regarding department variable. smssc department n s t p success sports management 130 17,500 4,866 .735 .164 physical education and sports teaching 48 16,875 5,479 knowledge sports management 130 15,223 4,749 .503 .025* physical education and sports teaching 48 14,791 5,899 aesthetics sports management 130 17,100 4,608 .182 .622 physical education and sports teaching 48 16,958 4,621 stress sports management 130 15,738 4,837 .115 .896 physical education and sports teaching 48 15,833 4,960 escape sports management 130 14,092 4,465 .831 .108 physical education and sports teaching 48 14,750 5,241 family sports management 130 13,623 5,531 .652 .472 physical education and sports teaching 48 13,000 5,985 attraction sports management 130 11,861 4,784 .883 .977 physical education and sports teaching 48 12,583 4,988 skill sports management 130 17,469 4,120 1.664 .026* physical education and sports teaching 48 16,229 5,124 social sports management 130 15,353 5,091 .322 .317 physical education and sports teaching 48 15,083 4,666 note: *p<0.05 smssc: s sub-dimensions of motivation scale for sports consumption. in table 2, when the findings related to the students' scores from the scale are analysed according to the department variable, it is found that the scores of sports management department are higher averages than the physical education and sports teaching department in the sub-dimensions of “success, aesthetics, family and social”. there is also a higher average in physical education and sports teaching department than sports management in the sub-dimensions of “stress and attraction” but there is no significant difference between them (p> .05). in the sub-dimension of "knowledge" ̅ : 15.22, s: 4.75; "skill" ̅: 17.47, students seem to have a significantly higher average at the sports management department (p <.05). table-3. the findings of the comparison about the scores obtained from motivation scale for sports consumption regarding place of residence variable. smssc residence n ̅ s f p social village 42 15,071 4,122 town 14 12,571 5,879 2.694 .048* city 87 16,149 4,893 metropolis 35 14,457 5,343 note: *p<0.05 smssc: s sub-dimensions of motivation scale for sports consumption. in table 3, when the variance analysis findings are analysed according to place of residence variable, there is no substantial difference in the sub-dimensions of “success, knowledge, aesthetics, stress, escape, family, attraction and skill” (p> .05). in the sub-dimension of “social” (f = 2.694 p = .048) while individuals living in the city have highest average; the individuals living in the town have the lowest average (p <.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 314-319 318 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion and results this study, which has been done so as to determine the motivations of physical education and sports school students for sports consumption, has been reviewed in line with various demographic variables, and the findings have been presented by comparing with the previous studies in the literature. according to the gender variable, among the demographic variables, 50.6% are male and 49.4% are female participants. according to the department variable, 73.0% of research group study in the department of sports management, 27.0% of them study in the department of physical education and sports teaching. considering the place of residence variable, 23.6% of participants live in the village, 7.9% of them live in the town, 48.9% of them live in the city and 19.7% of them live in the metropolitan area. in table 1, there is a significant difference in favour of female students in the sub-dimension of “family” regarding gender variable (p<.05). there are no significant differences in terms of other sub-dimensions according to gender variable p>.05). as a result of this finding; the family and cultural structure is considered to be a major factor in the phenomenon of sports consumption. although men play an active role in the consumption of sports in comparison to women in the social structure, women are active in the family subdimension. women are affected by family members in sports consumption, acting together with family members and performing sports consumption by displaying behaviour in this direction. effect of sports fans’ motivation factors on behavioural loyalty by giray and girişken (2015): on the fenerbahçe sports club as a case study, the reasons for the identification of individuals participating in the research with their clubs can be expressed as the artistic structure of the sport, the aesthetics and the feeling of excitement while watching the sports club as well as spending time with family members. in the study of the relationship between the football fans' motivations for sports consumption, their perceptions of risk and future participation intentions by cınarlı (2019) there are significant differences in favour of women in the subdimension of knowledge acquisition. however, there is no significant difference for other sub-dimensions. the reason for this is stated as the need for women to obtain information more than men. the studies of cınarlı (2019) and karatoprak (2019) are partially similar to our study. in the study titled “analysing football fans' motivations towards sport consumption: beşiktaş jk-kardemir karabukspor as a case” by cokportal (2015) although there are meaningful results in favour of men in the subdimension of aesthetic and physical skills of kandemir karabükspor fans; there is no significant difference on the fans of beşiktaş jk regarding gender variable. while the meaningful result is expressed as such: men are much more interested in football than women. while the significant situation is linked to the physical skills and aesthetics of men in football; the insignificant condition is associated with the high motivation perceptions of female fans. the work of simşek (2011) on extreme sports consumption motives does not show parallelism with our study. when the studies on motivation in literature is examined; in the study of comparing the motivation levels of sport-specific success in terms of genders in professional basketball players by aktas, çobanoğlu, yazıcılar, and er (2006) it has been claimed that expectations, cultural and social characteristics are the factors that men have more power than women athletes, and the motivation of men to approach success is lower than women in terms of studies regarding gender variable. in ozgün, yaşartürk, ayhan, and bozkuş (2017)’s study on the relationship between the handball players' sport-specific success motivation and happiness levels, there is no significant difference in the sub-dimension of sport-specific success motivation. in the study of sustainable sports consumer behaviour conducted by yüce (2019) it has been observed that sports consumption is in favour of men in line with the perception of sustainable development, perception of sustainability in sports, environmental sensitivity in sports, consumption of sports products and purchase intent according to gender variable. in the study on the physical ethics and professional motivation of physical education and sports teachers by karayol and eroğlu (2020) there is no significant difference from professional motivation behaviours according to gender variable. in the study of elmas (2018) it is stated that sports consumption is higher among men. this assumption is also related to the number of male and female athletes specified by the ministry of youth and sports. in the study conducted by elmas and balcı (2019) about the sports consumption of university students, it is understood that there is a significant difference in favour of men in line with the gender variable. in the study by cini (2018) titled as “relationship between online sports consumption motives and loyalty points of professional football team supporters”, it has been stated that the meaningful difference in the sub-dimensions of entertainment and support in favour of women is in the desire to enjoy the storyline process rather than the technical part of the football branch. in table 2; there is a significant difference in favour of students of sports management in the sub-dimension of “knowledge and skill” according to department variable (p <.05). regarding department, it is considered as the reason for this result to explain the necessity of the sport in terms of organizational structure, sports marketing, sports management or use of sports in the sports management departments. in table 3, individuals living in the city have higher average in the “social” sub-dimension than other variables according to place of residence variable (p <.05). in line with the social structure, it is understood that individuals living in the city interact with the environment as a result of motivation, emotions and requests from the moment they begin their education. with this in mind, it is thought that sports activities in cities are more than small settlements; individuals constantly interact with the environment; and the effectiveness of concepts such as advertising and marketing cause sports consumption to be effective in cities on a social scale. as a result of the research, the concept of sports consumption is regarded as a financially important sector worldwide. the main source of this is thought to be the socialization needs of people by considering themselves as a member of the society. in line with this thought; social norms such as proving themselves, sense of belonging, being a part of a group as well as desires, motivation, consumption, consciousness and subconscious thoughts are determinative reasons for the realization of consumption in sports. it is thought that realization of the consumption phenomenon in sports will have an effect on the individual status gain together with the social phenomenon, apart from the expansion of the sports market volume and the person's wishes. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 314-319 319 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references aktas, z., çobanoğlu, g., yazıcılar, i̇., & er, n. (2006). the comparison of sports related success motıvatıon level among professional basketball players in terms of gender. spormetre the journal of physical education and sports sciences, 4(2), 55-59. aygün, m., & oztaşyonar, y. (2019). analysing sports trait self-confidence features of ice hockey players. spormetre the journal of physical education and sports sciences, 17(3), 202-212. biricik, y. s. (2019). customer loyalty in the sports industry: a research on sports shoes/trainers market. journal of sport and performance researches, 10(3), 312-324. büyüköztürk, ş., çakmak, e. k., akgün, ö. e., karadeniz, ş., & demirel, f. (2013). sceintific research models (pp. 15-17). ankara: pegem academy. ceylan, m., altıparmak, e., & akçakoyun, f. (2016). the analysis of the relationship between personality traits of extreme athletes and sports consumption motives. journal of human sciences, 13(1), 1745-1754.available at: https://doi.org/10.14687/ijhs.v13i1.3416. cınarlı, i̇. (2019). relations between sports consumption motives of football spectators, risk perceptions and future intends. master thesis ege university institute of health sciences, izmir. cini, n. g. (2018). the relationship beetwen the motı vatıon for sport online consumption and points of attachment of the professı onal football team fans. master thesis ege university institute of health sciences, i̇zmir. cohen, r. (2016). sport psychology: the basics optimising human performance (pp. 14-16). london-new york: bloomsbury sport. cokportal, c. (2015). an investigation on football fans’ motivation for sport consumption: example of besiktas gymnastic club-kardemir karabukspor fans. master thesis abant izzet baysal university institute of social sciences, bolu. elmas, m., & balcı, v. (2019). the effect of childrens on parents sporting goods consumption decisions. journal of global sport and education research, 2(1), 1-9. elmas, m. 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(2012). the quantitative analysis on the individual characteristics of urban residents and their sport consumption motivation. physics procedia, 33, 2055-2063.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phpro.2012.05.323. yüce, a. (2019). sustainable sports consumer behaviour. phd thesis anadolu university institute of social sciences, eskişehir. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 25 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 25-29, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.25.29 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between optimism and happiness of physical education teachers’ candidates: the mediator role of life satisfaction nazmi bayköse1 barbaros serdar erdoğan2 ( corresponding author) 1faculty of sport sciences, akdeniz university, antalya, turkey. 2faculty of sport sciences, mehmet akif ersoy university, burdur, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to examine the mediating role of life satisfaction in the relationship between optimism and happiness levels of physical education teacher candidates. the research group consists of 278 physical education teacher candidates who were trained in the formation education program opened at akdeniz university in the 2018-2019 academic year. optimism scale, happiness scale and life satisfaction scale were used to collect research data. in the process of analyzing the data, pearson correlation analysis was used first to determine the relationships of variables with each other, and process macro regression analysis was used to determine the mediating effect of life satisfaction between optimism and happiness. as a result, it can be said that life satisfaction has a mediating role in the relationship between optimism and happiness levels of physical education teacher candidates. in line with this information, considering that life satisfaction is an important psychological factor in physical education teacher candidates, it is extremely important to keep the life satisfaction levels of physical education teacher candidates, who have a primary effect on the healthy upbringing of future generations. in this context, it is recommended that relevant rule makers or managers who want to increase the quality and quality of education take this information into consideration. keywords: teacher candidate, life satisfaction, optimism, happiness, physical education, sport. citation | nazmi bayköse; barbaros serdar erdoğan (2021). the relationship between optimism and happiness of physical education teachers’ candidates: the mediator role of life satisfaction. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 25-29. history: received: 9 november 2020 revised: 7 december 2020 accepted: 28 december 2020 published: 18 january 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 28 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 29 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.25.29&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2577 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6941-8390 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6039-1494 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 25-29 26 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the mediating role of life satisfaction in the relationship between optimism and happiness levels of physical education teacher candidates. 1. introduction today, educational activities have gained speed with the contribution of developing technological opportunities and continue to increase rapidly. depending on this development, research in the field of education and training focuses on a wide variety of problems and includes all stakeholders of education and training. perhaps one of the most important issues regarding this education problematic is the psychological qualities of teachers. in this study, it focuses on the qualifications of pre-service teachers who will do teaching as a profession in the following years. teachers are individuals who have a high sense of responsibility and have the characteristic of being a role and model for the students they will carry out education and training activities. it is extremely important for these individuals to have a positive psychological mood, to be individuals who are generally satisfied with their life, who can show an optimistic approach to problems or problems, and who can be satisfied with their lives. it is extremely likely that teachers with these positive qualities will raise students they are role models in this mood. when we look at the psychology literature, it can be said that there are two known approaches, which are basic approaches, which defend the view that human beings are essentially negative psychological structures (human is essentially bad: psychoanalytic approach) or that human is inherently neutral (human is neither good nor bad: behavioral approach). of course, today, these two basic approaches have been left behind, and in the following years, it has been stated that it is not enough to focus on psychologically abnormal behaviors or negative psychotic processes in line with the basic view of the humanistic approach. in line with this view, based on the positive aspects of human, it has been suggested that there is goodness and a positive psychological structure in human nature. at this point, the positive psychology view caused the positive psychology trend to begin as a trend. happiness, optimism and life satisfaction, which are the subject of our research, are among these issues. with existence, happiness has become a desired and desired feeling. happiness, which is the basic common purpose of individuals, has become a common goal of societies. happiness is a versatile concept that includes many factors individually. it is the current concept of positive psychology that should be examined both psychologically and physiologically. the concept of happiness in general definition in the literature is "joy and happiness that comes with the individual attaining his desires, goals, desires." it is defined as. in the philosophical literature, on the other hand, the concept of happiness is expressed factually as "the ultimate goal of human actions, the main goal that needs nothing but itself". in the psychology literature, on the other hand, they are "positive affects." it is defined as. a happy individual is psychologically optimistic, peaceful, happy, compatible with himself and his environment, and at the same time lively and energetic in the context of the body (tarhan, 2005). having a profitable positive perspective on events and facts also enables coping with problems. to look at it from another angle, individuals who approach events and phenomena from a negative perspective are extremely unlikely to solve these problems. specific to such situations, optimism tendency has an important role sole (balcı & yılmaz, 2002). optimism refers to having a positive attitude towards the events that confront them, unlike a fixed event. in line with these thoughts, it stands out as an outcome of the self-efficacy belief of the individual (gillham & reivich, 2004). when the personal characteristics of individuals with a high level of optimism are examined, it is known that these individuals are practice-oriented. these people tend to have an active role in solving the problem, rather than waiting for the solution to be solved during the time when they encounter any problem (fellman, 2000). optimistic individuals do not allow their thoughts to be shaped with negativity, they try to evaluate events and facts in a positive framework by thinking within the framework of logic and focusing on the positive (mcginnis, 1998). since these mental processes will reduce the possibility of conflict with the optimistic individuals themselves or with the individuals around them, these individuals will have a more harmonious, happy and peaceful life (kasatura, 1998). the concept of satisfaction is defined as "meeting expectations, needs, requests and wishes" in the relevant literature. life satisfaction is defined as "the final result a person obtains by comparing his expectations (what he wants) with his possibilities (what he / she has)." (vara, 1999). life satisfaction includes the tendency to change the level of satisfaction that the individual will have at the moment and in the future, and the subjective views of the people he / she interacts with about his / her life. some areas related to life satisfaction are described by diener, suh, lucas, and smith (1999), close environment, leisure time, self-worth, material opportunity, moral value, job, relationship, etc. covers concepts. as a profession, teaching is a profession that interacts with different psychological dynamics and requires constant interaction with groups of people with different profiles (student profiles, parent profiles, manager profiles and colleague profiles). it is for these reasons that, as a social phenomenon, teachers have a feature and quality that can affect all the profiles they interact with. from this point of view, the most effective theme that teachers interact with is with their students. there is no doubt that the students whose current psychological states / moods that teachers have in psychological sense will be the primary influence. in this direction, it is extremely important for teachers to be mentally healthy and fit. in this study, the positive psychological characteristics (optimism and happiness) of teacher candidates who will exercise their teaching rights, which have become popular in the coming years, and how effective their satisfaction with their lives can be examined in this psychological structure. in this context, it was determined as the investigation of the mediating role of life satisfaction in the relationship between optimism and happiness levels of prospective teachers. 2. method 2.1. research model this study is a relational survey designed to examine the life satisfaction levels of prospective teachers as a mediator in the relationship between continuous optimism and happiness. karasar (2013) defined relational asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 25-29 27 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group scanning models as research models that aim to determine the existence and degree of change between two or more variables. the relational scanning model is defined by büyüköztürk, kılıç çakmak, akgün, karadeniz, and demirel (2008) as a screening method that includes correlational and causal methods and investigates relationships and connections. within the scope of this model, the role of life satisfaction between the levels of continuous optimism and happiness of individuals who exercise for recreational purposes will be examined. the hypothesis model determined within the scope of the research purpose is given below (figure 1). figure-1. research model. 2.2. research group the research group consists of 278 (agemean: 23.83 + 3.187) physical education teacher candidates who received training in the formation training program opened at akdeniz university in the 2018-2019 academic year see table 1. all the physical education teacher candidates participating in the study first filled out the voluntary participation form created by the researchers, and then filled out the data collection tools determined within the scope of the research. table-1. demographic characteristics and information of the participants. gender variable n % women 159 57,2 men 119 43,8 2.3. collection of data optimism scale, happiness scale and life satisfaction scale were used to collect research data. during the preparation process of the collected data, it was observed that 28 exercise participants participated in the research completed the scales used in the data collection process incompletely, and the analyzes were evaluated in a sample of 278 physical education teacher candidates. 2.3.1. optimism scale the optimism scale was developed by scheier and carver (1985) and adapted to turkish culture by aydin and tezer (1991). the optimism scale was developed in the 5-point likert type and it measures in a single subdimension of 12 items. the reliability coefficient of the scale is .83. 2.3.2. happiness scale oxford happiness scale was developed by hills and argyle (2002) and adapted to turkish culture by doğan and çötok (2011). the psychological resilience scale was developed in 5-point likert type and it measures in a single sub-dimension of 7 items. the reliability coefficient of the scale is .96. 2.3.3. life satisfaction scale psychological resilience scale diener, emmons, larsen, and griffin (1985) and adapted to turkish culture by köker (1991). the psychological resilience scale was developed in 7-point likert type and it measures in a single sub-dimension of 5 items. the reliability coefficient of the scale is .88. 2.3.4. personal information form a personal information form consisting of three questions was used to determine the demographic characteristics of teacher candidates participating in the study. with the personal information form, it was aimed to determine the graduation status, gender and age groups of the teacher candidates. 2.4. data analysis before data analysis, the skewness and kurtosis values of the variables were examined in order to evaluate the suitability of the data set for analysis. in the examination, it was seen that the skewness and kurtosis values of all variables were between +1 and -1 see table 2. in this context, it can be said that the data have a normal distribution (george & mallery, 2010). in the process of analyzing the data, pearson correlation analysis was used first to determine the relationships of variables with each other, and process macro regression analysis was used to determine the mediating effect of life satisfaction between optimism and happiness. the analyzes were performed at 95% confidence interval. sobel z test was used to test whether the mediation was significant or not. spss 22.00 package program was used for the analysis of the research. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 25-29 28 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. normality analysis of research variables. ±ss skewness kurtosis optimism 3,25±0,61 ,244 -,258 happiness 3,89±0,66 ,980 ,852 life satisfaction 4,79±0,67 ,735 -,370 note: *p<0.05,**p<0,01. 3. results table-3. independent sample t-test results of the physical education teacher candidates' optimism, happiness and life satisfaction scores according to their gender. women men n ±ss n ±ss t p optimism 159 3,04±0,63 119 3,10±0,60 -1,124 ,262 happiness 159 3,79±0,52 119 3,99±0,72 -3,757 ,000** life satisfaction 159 4,75±0,56 119 4,82±0,72 -1,313 ,190 note: *p<0.05,**p<0,01 table 3 shows the analysis of the difference between men and women. it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between the genders in terms of optimism and life satisfaction levels (p> 0.05). it was determined that there is a statistically significant difference between the genders at the level of happiness (p <0.01). accordingly, the values of physical education teacher candidates are lower than men in terms of the happiness level variable. figure-2. mediator role of life satisfaction in the relationship between optimism and happiness. when figure 2 is examined the significant relationship between optimism and happiness (β = .37) increases with the addition of life satisfaction variable (β = .49) to the model. the relationship between benevolence and happiness (β = .37) and happiness and life satisfaction (β = .17) was examined. according to the results of the sobel test conducted to test the significance of this increase, it was found that the increase was not significant (z = .97, p> .05) and life satisfaction was the mediator variable in the relationship between optimism and happiness. 4. discussion in this study, the mediating role of life satisfaction in physical education teacher candidates at the level of happiness was examined. in addition to the optimism of teachers, who have a very important role in the upbringing of children of the future generations, happiness and life satisfaction should be emphasized in terms of the quality of education. in line with this purpose, the research group consists of 278 physical education teacher candidates who received training in the formation training program opened at akdeniz university in the 2018-2019 academic year. all teacher candidates participating in the study first filled out the voluntary participation form created by the researchers, and then filled out the data collection tools determined within the scope of the research. the levels of optimism, happiness and life satisfaction of physical education teacher candidates who voluntarily participated in the study were determined. in line with the findings, it was determined that there is a positive relationship between optimism and happiness. when the relevant literature was examined in connection with this relationship, results supporting the findings of this study were found in different sample groups. in a study in the related literature and conducted by sahin (2015), a positive, significant and moderate relationship between happiness and optimism was found. in another study, sapmaz and doğan (2012) found in their study that optimism is positively associated with happiness. in another study conducted by seligman and pawelski (2003), it was concluded that optimistic individuals could produce more comfortable solutions to the problems they encountered and were happier than non-optimistic individuals. there are other studies (cummins & nistico, 2002; ryan & deci, 2001) showing that optimism predicts happiness. another result obtained based on the research findings is that the positive relationship between optimism and happiness is mediated by life satisfaction and the effect of optimism on happiness level increases through life satisfaction. in other words, life satisfaction mediates optimism, which is the determinant of happiness, with a positive contribution. in line with this information, the increase in the level of satisfaction with the life of physical education teachers with increased optimism may directly reflect on their happiness level. when the relevant literature was examined, results in parallel with our findings of this study were obtained in sample groups different asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 25-29 29 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group from our sample group. one of these studies is the research conducted by gülcan (2014). in the study conducted by gülcan (2014), the effect of optimism on happiness and life satisfaction in young adults was examined. according to the research findings, optimism was found to be positively associated with life satisfaction and happiness. in line with this information, it can be said that the findings obtained by gülcan (2014) support our research. at the same time, ho, cheung, and cheung (2010) research indicates that optimism predicts subjective well-being. considering that subjective well-being is a combination of positive mood and life satisfaction, it can be accepted as additional evidence that optimism is related to life satisfaction and happiness. this research was conducted within the scope of physical education teacher candidates. the high physical activity levels of physical education teacher candidates may have been effective in this model. accordingly, as stated in the relevant literature, wike (2015) reported that the psychological well-being levels of the participants in the study were high in the sample of young people participating in physical activity. özkatar kaya, sarıtaş, yıldız, and kaya (2018) stated that physical activity has a positive effect on the life satisfaction of individuals as well as the quality of life. in parallel with our findings, güllü and ciftçi (2016) revealed in their study that the quality of life of adults who do physical activity is high. based on these findings, a similar study can be designed in which physical activity levels are also measured in future studies. because one of the most important limitations of our study, the physical activity level measurement, which is highly effective in psychological terms, was not made within the scope of our research. as a result, it can be said that life satisfaction has a mediating role in the relationship between optimism and happiness levels of physical education teacher candidates. in line with this information, considering that life satisfaction is an important psychological factor in physical education teacher candidates, it is extremely important to keep the life satisfaction levels of physical education teacher candidates, who have a primary effect on the healthy upbringing of future generations. in this context, it is recommended that relevant rule makers or managers who want to increase the quality and quality of education take this information into consideration. references aydin, g., & tezer, e. 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(2011). adaptation of the short form of the oxford happiness questionnaire into turkish: a validity and reliability study. turkish psychological counseling and guidance journal, 4(36), 165-170. fellman, e. (2000). power of positive thinking. b. başak and s. özçallı. translated. istanbul: beyaz publications. george, d., & mallery, m. (2010). spss for windows step by step: a simple guide and reference, 17.0 update (10th ed.). boston: pearson. gillham, j., & reivich, k. (2004). cultivating optimism in childhood and adolescence. the annals of the american academy of political and social science, 591(1), 146-163.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716203260095. gülcan, a. (2014). investigation of the effect of optimism on happiness and life satisfaction in young adults. unpublished master's thesis. fatih university institute of social sciences, istanbul. güllü, s., & ciftçi, e. g. (2016). investigation of the quality of life of individuals who are members of sports centers. international journal of social sciences and education research, 2(3), 1251-1265. hills, p., & argyle, m. (2002). the oxford happiness questionnaire: a compact scale for the measurement of psychological well-being. personality and individual differences, 33(7), 1073-1082. ho, m. y., cheung, f. m., & cheung, s. f. (2010). the role of meaning in life and optimism in promoting well-being. personality and individual differences, 48(5), 658-663. karasar, n. (2013). scientific research method (25th ed.). ankara: nobel academic publishing. kasatura, i. (1998). personality and confidence. i̇stanbul: evolution publications. köker, s. (1991). comparison of life satisfaction levels of normal and problem adolescents. ankara university institute of social sciences, unpublished master's thesis, ankara. mcginnis, a. l. (1998). the power of optimism. a. kayaş. translate. i̇stanbul: white publications. özkatar kaya, e., sarıtaş, n., yıldız, k., & kaya, m. (2018). research on physical activity and life satisfaction levels of sedentary and nonsedentary individuals. celal bayar university journal of health sciences institute, 5(3), 8994. ryan, r. m., & deci, e. l. (2001). on happiness and human potentials: a review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. annual review of psychology, 52(1), 141-166. sahin, y. (2015). investigation of the happiness, optimism and altruism levels of university students. unpublished master's thesis. gaziosmanpaşa university institute of educational sciences, tokat. sapmaz, f., & doğan, t. (2012). examining the effect of optimism on happiness and life satisfaction. mersin university journal of education faculty, 8(3), 63-69. scheier, m., & carver, c. (1985). optimism, coping, and health: assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies. health psychology, 4(3), 219-247. seligman, m. e. p., & pawelski, j. o. (2003). positive psychology: faqs. psychological inquiry, 14(2), 159-163. tarhan, n. (2005). psychology of happiness. istanbul: timaş publications. vara, s. (1999). an investigation of job satisfaction and life satisfaction in intensive care unit’ nurses. unpublished master dissertation. ege university, i̇zmir, turkey. wike, h. k. (2015). examining the relationship between physical activity, psychological well-being, and stress in a college population. master thesis. the university of tennessee, chattanooga. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 186 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 186-195, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.186.195 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group serious leisure perspectives in sports: professional athletes’ career progress via serious leisure ali selman özdemir department of recreation, school of physical education and sport, cyprus international university, nicosia, cyprus. abstract the aim of this study is to determine serious leisure perspectives of professional athletes. 689 athletes selected through random sampling participated in the study. the data were collected with the “serious leisure inventory and measure (short form) (slim)‟‟, developed by gould et al. (2011) adapted to turkish by ozdemir, ayyıldız durhan, and akgül (2020) which consisting of 12 items and 3 sub-dimensions. it was determined that the data were not distributed homogeneously and non parametric tests were applied. in the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, man whitney u, kruskall wallis, tukey (hsd-lsd) and pearson correlation test were used for within-group comparisons. in this study, total internal reliability coefficient of slim (short form) scale was determined as .93. participants had higher slim scores (89,60 ± 15,76), the highest subscale score was „‟identification with pursuit and social outcomes‟‟ sub-dimension (37,39 ± 7,35), and the lowest subscale score was „‟individual outcomes‟‟ (22,30 ± 4,39). significant relationships and differences were found among the variables of gender, sports, age of athletics, number of trainings per week, participation status of international competitions, perceived challenge of duties, perceived skill development and perceived total development. as a result of the research, it was determined that professional athletes had high serious leisure perspectives and this situation being in interaction with certain variables. keywords: serious leisure, professional athletes, career progress, volleyball, judo, taekwondo. citation | ali selman özdemir (2020). serious leisure perspectives in sports: professional athletes‟ career progress via serious leisure. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 186-195. history: received: 20 december 2019 revised: 3 february 2020 accepted: 9 march 2020 published: 30 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 187 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 188 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 188 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 193 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 193 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 194 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.186.195&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1459 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1736-7602 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1459 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1736-7602 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1459 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1736-7602 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 186-195 187 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes in the existing literature as a special example of „career achieved through serious leisure pursuits‟ in terms of individuals starting their potential sports life at a young age primarily as a hobby, continuing as an amateur pursuit and reaching a professional career. 1. introduction the serious leisure perspective (slp) is a typology of leisure activity developed and promulgated by robert stebbins as an ongoing project since 1974 (stebbins, 2007; veal, 2017). in the slp, leisure is defined as uncoerced activity engaged in during free time, which people want to do and, in either a satisfying or a fulfilling way (or both), use their abilities and resources to succeed at this (stebbins, 2007). the slp is the theoretic framework that synthesizes three main forms of leisure, known as serious leisure (serious pursuits), casual leisure, and project-based leisure. many of the roots of the slp date to late 1973, even though the concept itself was only formally introduced and elaborated much later in stebbins (stebbins, 2015). stebbins (2007) defined the distinctive features, similarities, and interrelationships of three forms of leisure. in his view, casual leisure is immediately, intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. project-based leisure is short-term, reasonably complicated, one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time, or time free of disagreeable obligation. serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core activity that people find so substantial, interesting, and fulfilling that, in a typical case, they launch themselves on a (leisure) career centered on acquiring and expressing a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience. serious leisure activities require significant personal effort and even an occasional need to persevere. serious leisure activities have durable, lasting benefits. participants identify strongly with the activity and can even find a career in it, meaning that they experience different stages of achievement/involvement in the activity during their lifetime (stebbins, 1996; stebbins, 2009). six distinguishing qualities differentiate serious leisure from less substantial, short-term leisure pursuits (stebbins, 2007; stebbins, 1992; stebbins, 2014). identified six characteristics of serious leisure including: (1) persevere, (2) leisure career, (3) significant personal effort, (4) durable benefits, (5) unique ethos, and (6) strong identification with an activity (stebbins, 1982). participants embark upon a career in their activity and may need to occasionally persevere to enable ongoing participation. significant personal effort is invested in the activity, developing knowledge, skills, and experience. stebbins also maintains that ongoing participation in serious leisure is driven by the realization of durable benefits including self-actualization, self-enrichment, and/or self-gratification. finally, participants engage with the unique ethos and social world of their activity and strongly identify with the activity in their projection of self to the world (lamont, kennelly, & moyle, 2014; lamont, kennelly, & moyle, 2019; stebbins, 2014). stebbins (2001) regarded that serious leisure is the best way for people spending their free time in postmodern society. within this type of leisure, people feel deep satisfaction and experience a full existence. in serious leisure, individuals' feels substantial and interesting in their leisure pursuits, acquire special skills, knowledge and experience through their leisure dedication and have a career development. career development in serious leisure is considered to be long-term development with special turning points or stages of involvement and personal commitment (kraus, 2014; raisborough, 2007; stebbins, 1992). a career is „the typical course, or passage, of certain types of amateur-professional practitioners that carries them into, and through, a leisure role …‟ (stebbins, 1992). persons engaged in serious leisure, develop careers centered on their chosen activity (stebbins, 2007) serious leisure careers involve an individual‟s “steady development as a skilled, experienced, and knowledgeable participant” in a particular activity (stebbins, 2007). careers typically include five stages: beginning, development, establishment, maintenance and decline of special skills and knowledge (stebbins, 2012). for an instance, in the case of adult amateur ice skaters, mcquarrie and jackson (1996) identified five progressive leisure career stages: (1) becoming a potential participant; (2) beginning in the sport; (3) development; (4) establishment; and (5) decline or exit from the sport. the various characteristics associated with each of these leisure career stages are discussed in greater detail by stebbins (2007). the beginning stage lasts as long as it is necessary for the activity to take root. development occurs when the activity becomes more or less routine and systematic. a change to the establishment stage occurs when the participant has moved beyond learning the basics of the activity. during the maintenance stage, the leisure career is in „„full bloom‟‟ and participants enjoy their pursuit to its utmost. in the final stage, not all participants reach the decline or exit stage, but in the case of those who do so, it may be due to deteriorating mental or physical skills. some may then search for a new activity (stebbins, 2007). besides, gould, moore, mcguire, and stebbins (2008) subdivided the career quality of serious leisure into two dimensions: career progress and career contingencies. career progress focuses on the conscious improvement of leisure participation during the individuals‟ engagement. career contingencies emphasize the turning points or special events of that leisure involvement. pursuing a career in sports as an athlete in a semi-professional or professional category, begins as a hobbyist or an amateur interest under the umbrella of serious leisure perspective. achieving a career in sports through serious leisure; supported by school and collegiate sports as much as amateur sport clubs. however, weekend sports classes for early ages also play an important role to get a good start. sport is also often a form of serious leisure (stebbins.... 1992) that provides participants “small worlds” of social identification, opportunities for learning and developing skills, escape from monotonous and routine work, recognition for commitment and excellence, and a context for the expression of achievement motivations. within the framework of serious leisure, a wide and diverse range of studies have been conducted over the past three decades with sports being one of the most popular activities in the domain of serious leisure, including master swimmers (hastings, kurth, schloder, & cyr, 1995) youth sports (siegenthaler & gonzalez, 1997) whitewater kayakers (sherry & bartram, 2001) dancers (brown, 2007) cycling (o‟connor & brown, 2010) playing chess (gould et al., 2011) taekwondo participation (kim, dattilo, & heo, 2011) amateur athletes (maccosham, patry, beswick, & gravelle, 2015) competition climbing (gagnon, stone, & garst, 2015) runners (ronkainen, harrison, shuman, & ryba, 2017) female roller derby athletes (liu, baghurst, & bradley, 2018) and different sets of athletes (romero, iraurgi, madariaga, & gould, 2020). these asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 186-195 188 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group studies demonstrated a strong relationship between the serious leisure characteristics of athletes and their leisure involvement and dedication. therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the serious leisure perspectives of athletes in turkey. second it‟s aimed to understand relationship between serious leisure characteristics and career progress, and other variables. 2. methodology 2.1. study sample the sample of the study consists of 689 semi-professional and professional athletes whose playing volleyball, doing judo and taekwondo from several sports clubs in turkey. the data were collected between march and june 2019 at the province of ankara, i̇stanbul, bursa and i̇zmir during the intercollegiate judo and taekwondo competitions, volleyball super leagues‟ play-off and play-out competitions in turkey. in the collected data, 34 surveys were not evaluated in the research because of the missing. aims of the study, the consent form, voluntary participation in the study, and confidentiality of the survey responses were verbally explained by investigators before the distribution of the surveys to subjects. the survey were answered and completed within an average of 15 minutes. demographic information about the research group is given in table 1. 2.2. instrumentation the data were collected with the “serious leisure inventory and measure (short form)‟‟ (slim), developed by gould et al. (2011). slim adapted to turkish testing of validity and reliability by ozdemir et al. (2020) which consisting of 12 items and 3 sub-dimensions. the short form of turkish version-slim includes three subdimensions as; „‟identification with pursuit and social outcomes‟‟, „‟perseverance and leisure career‟‟ and „‟individual outcomes.‟‟ in addition, there are 8 more questions regarding the demographic variables and sports background of the athletes. 2.3. data analysis it was determined that the data were not distributed homogeneously and non-parametric tests were applied. in the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, man whitney u, kruskall wallis, tukey (hsd-lsd) and pearson correlation tests were used for within-group comparisons. in this study, the total internal reliability coefficient of the slim (short form) scale was determined as .93. data were analyzed by using spss 23.0 version. 3. results table-1. frequency and percentage range of demographic variables. n=(689) variable f % gender female 449 65,2 male 240 34,8 sports judo 160 23,2 taekwondo 342 49,6 volleyball 187 27,1 age of athletics 2 or 3 years or less 32 4,6 4 or 5 years 44 6,4 6 or 7 years 67 9,7 8 or 9 years 66 9,6 10 or 11 years 92 13,4 12 or 13 years 123 17,9 14 or 15 years 89 12,9 16 or 17 years 52 7,5 18 or 19 years 82 11,9 20 years and above 42 6,1 training per week 2 times per week or less 105 15,2 3 times 138 20,0 4 times 71 10,3 5 times 98 14,2 6 times 113 16,4 7 times and above 164 23,8 participation of international competitions participated 401 58,2 non participated 288 41,8 perceived challenge of the duties (self scoring range of 1 to 10) 3 and less (point) 59 8,6 4 66 9,6 5 115 16,7 6 94 13,6 7 126 18,3 8 118 17,1 9 49 7,1 10 62 9,0 perceived skill development (self scoring range of 1 to 10) 3 and less (point) 42 6,1 4 43 6,2 5 97 14,1 6 94 13,6 7 156 22,6 8 144 20,9 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 186-195 189 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 9 52 7,5 10 61 8,9 perceived total development (self scoring range of 1 to 10) better 316 45,9 same 256 37,2 worse 117 17,0 table 1 provides information about athletes‟ demographic and professional profiles. accordingly, the majority of the participants are women (65.2%) and active athletes (17.9%) for an average of 12-13 years. in addition; the participants are taekwondo (49.6%), volleyball (27.1%) and judo (23.2%) athletes respectively, who trains 7 or more times per week (23.8%), participated in international competitions (58.2%), consists of athletes who grades seven points both of perceived challenge degree (18.3%) and skill development (2.6%) out of ten, and express their perceived total development as "better" (45.9%). table-2. mean and standard deviation values of the slim. n=(689) min. max. x ss slim 16,00 108,00 89,60 15,76 identification with pursuit and social outcomes 5,00 45,00 37,39 7,35 perseverance and leisure career 4,00 36,00 29,89 5,64 individual outcomes 3,00 27,00 22,30 4,39 as a result of the analyzes in table 2, it was determined that athletes have higher slim scores (89,60 ± 15,76), the highest subscale score was „‟identification with pursuit and social outcomes‟‟ sub-dimension (37,39 ± 7,35), and the lowest subscale score was „‟individual outcomes‟‟ (22,30 ± 4,39). table-3. man whitney u test results between participants' gender and slim. gender n mean rank rank sum z p slim female 449 355,70 159710,00 -1,931 0,053 male 240 324,98 77995,00 identification with pursuit and social outcomes female 449 354,85 159326,50 -1,782 0,075 male 240 326,58 78378,50 perseverance and leisure career female 449 353,78 158845,00 -1,589 0,112 male 240 328,58 78860,00 individual outcomes female 449 356,42 160034,50 -2,074 0,038* male 240 323,63 77670,50 note: *p<0,05. when the man whitney u test results were examined between the gender variable and slim in table 3, it was seen that there is a significant difference between the individual outcomes sub-dimensions and the gender variable. in the individual outcomes sub-dimension, it was determined that women athletes displayed higher development scores than men. there was no significant relationship between total scores and other sub-dimensions and gender. table-4. kruskall wallis test results between sports and slim. sports n mean rank df x2 p slim judoc 160 323,68 2 12,294 0,002* taekwondo 342 331,32 volleyballa 187 388,25 total 689 identification with pursuit and social outcomes judo 160 325,22 2 taekwondo 342 338,79 5,731 0,057 volleyball 187 373,29 total 689 perseverance and leisure career judob 160 326,32 2 taekwondoc 342 325,63 17,261 0,000* volleyballa 187 396,40 total 689 individual outcomes judob 160 338,07 2 taekwondoc 342 330,27 volleyballa 187 377,86 7,253 0,027* total 689 note: *p<0,05. according to the kruskall wallis test results between sports variable and slim in table 4, it was observed that significant differences between in sub-dimensions and total scores of slim. accordingly, it has been determined that professional athletes in the volleyball branch gave higher slim levels compared to the participants in other branches. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 186-195 190 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. kruskall wallis test results between age of athletics and slim. age of athletics n mean rank df x2 p slim 2 or 3 years or lessc 32 254,94 9 24,163 0,004* 4 or 5 years 44 286,19 6 or 7 years 67 305,21 8 or 9 years 66 320,94 10 or 11 years 92 325,65 12 or 13 years 123 371,57 14 or 15 yearsb 89 370,70 16 or 17 yearsa 52 393,90 18 or 19 years 82 369,44 20 years and above 42 378,37 total 689 identification with pursuit and social outcomes 2 or 3 years or less 32 254,02 9 17,257 0,045* 4 or 5 years 44 298,38 6 or 7 years 67 320,07 8 or 9 years 66 325,00 10 or 11 years 92 341,33 12 or 13 yearsc 123 361,75 14 or 15 yearsd 89 351,52 16 or 17 yearsa 52 396,10 18 or 19 yearsb 82 372,66 20 years and above 42 362,27 total 689 perseverance and leisure career 2 or 3 years or less 32 262,83 9 23,299 0,006* 4 or 5 years 44 285,38 6 or 7 years 67 306,81 8 or 9 years 66 332,36 10 or 11 years 92 314,28 12 or 13 yearsa 123 375,92 14 or 15 yearsc 89 372,60 16 or 17 yearsb 52 375,44 18 or 19 years 82 368,51 20 years and above 42 385,51 total 689 individual outcomes 2 or 3 years or lessb 32 259,28 9 23,756 0,000* 4 or 5 years 44 298,75 6 or 7 years 67 305,37 8 or 9 years 66 307,67 10 or 11 years 92 328,32 12 or 13 years 123 365,85 14 or 15 yearsa 89 388,70 16 or 17 years 52 386,64 18 or 19 years 82 368,14 20 years and above 42 366,80 total 689 note:*p<0,05. when the kruskall wallis test results examined between the age of athletics and slim, it was seen significant differences between in sub-dimensions and total scores of slim. accordingly, it has been determined that the groups with 12 and more age of athletics years have higher averages than the other groups in the significant difference observed in slim total scores and sub-dimension scores. differences in the within-group were tested by tukey hsd and lsd tests and shown in table 5. table-6. kruskall wallis test results between number of training per week and slim. number of training per week n mean rank df x2 p slim 2 times or lessf 105 266,21 5 54,452 0,000* 3 timese 138 275,73 4 timesb 71 382,98 5 timesd 98 368,19 6 timesc 113 369,93 7 times and abovea 164 406,26 total 689 identification with pursuit and social outcomes 2 times or lessc 105 296,95 5 18,968 0,002* 3 timesb 138 307,42 4 times 71 366,08 5 times 98 355,36 6 times 113 356,33 7 times and abovea 164 384,25 total 689 perseverance and leisure career 2 times or lessf 105 238,70 5 92,558 0,000* 3 timese 138 253,86 4 timesc 71 396,11 5 timesd 98 386,76 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 186-195 191 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6 timesb 113 392,37 7 times and abovea 164 410,03 total 689 individual outcomes 2 times or lessc 105 284,17 5 36,277 0,000* 3 timesb 138 288,78 4 times 71 367,41 5 times 98 359,71 6 times 113 363,15 7 times and abovea 164 400,26 total 689 note:*p<0,05. according to kruskall wallis test results between weekly training number and measurement tools in table 6, it was determined that there were significant relationships between slim and variables. accordingly, while the number of weekly trainings increases, slim level increases. table-7. man whitney u test results between participation of international competitions and slim. participation of international competitions n mean rank rank sum z p slim participant 401 376,89 151133,00 -4,965 0,000* nonparticipant 288 300,60 86572,00 identification with pursuit and social outcomes participant 401 359,73 144253,50 -2,300 0,021* nonparticipant 288 324,48 93451,50 perseverance and leisure career participant 401 390,65 156652,50 -7,134 0,000* nonparticipant 288 281,43 81052,50 individual outcomes participant 401 375,66 150638,00 -4,800 0,000* nonparticipant 288 302,32 87067,00 note:*p<0,05. table-8. kruskall wallis test results between challenge of the duties and slim. perceived challenge of the duties (point) n mean rank df x2 p slim (self scoring range of 1 to 10) 3 or less 59 377,21 7 22,334 0,002* 4 c 66 343,76 5 e 115 329,76 6 d 94 337,69 7 f 126 322,69 8 g 118 309,35 9 a 49 438,21 10 b 62 394,56 total 689 identification with pursuit and social outcomes 3 or lessb 59 381,01 7 16,933 0,018* 4h 66 316,73 5f 115 330,94 6g 94 330,64 7e 126 341,50 8d 118 321,88 9a 49 434,82 10c 62 368,81 total 689 perseverance and leisure career 3 or lessb 59 398,42 7 31,411 0,000* 4c 66 339,11 5 115 341,40 6 94 348,13 7e 126 293,00 8 d 118 310,28 9a 49 414,87 10 62 418,92 total 689 individual outcomes 3 or less 59 352,90 7 23,555 0,001* 4 66 387,25 5b 115 323,43 6 94 339,36 7 126 326,76 8 118 301,59 9a 49 422,92 10 62 399,17 total 689 note:*p<0,05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 186-195 192 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 7 is examined, a statistically significant relationship was found in favor of those who participated in international competitions in all sub-dimensions and total scores of slim. therefore, participating in international competitions should be said to change the slim level positively compared to those who did not. according to kruskall wallis test results between perceived challenge of the duties and measurement tools in table 8, it was determined that there were significant relationships between slim and variables. therefore, it was seen that the participants who described the self score of perceived challenge of the duties 9, showed a higher slim level compared to the other grades. table-9. kruskall wallis test results between perceived skill development and slim. perceived skill development (point) n mean rank df x2 p slim (self-scoring range of 1 to 10) 3 or lessg 42 290,64 7 42,205 0,000* 4 f 43 271,73 5 97 304,90 6 d 94 325,61 7 e 156 320,63 8 c 144 381,03 9 b 52 427,57 10 a 61 434,61 total 689 identification with pursuit and social outcomes 3 or less 42 317,10 7 25,453 0,001* 4e 43 281,98 5 97 330,78 6d 94 325,79 7 156 316,88 8c 144 371,25 9b 52 412,12 10a 61 413,61 total 689 perseverance and leisure career 3 or less f 42 283,10 7 56,055 0,000* 4g 43 261,12 5e 97 287,84 6 d 94 317,81 7d 156 329,49 8 c 144 384,41 9 a 52 453,07 10 b 61 434,06 total 689 individual outcomes 3 or lessg 42 281,26 7 31,592 0,000* 4 f 43 292,80 5 97 316,31 6 d 94 351,30 7 e 156 314,91 8 c 144 369,08 9b 52 402,76 10 a 61 432,46 total 689 note: *p<0,05. table-10. kruskall wallis test results between perceived total development and slim. perceived total development n mean rank df x2 p slim bettera 316 406,44 2 56,100 0,000* same b 256 297,43 worse c 117 283,15 total 689 identification with pursuit and social outcomes better a 316 389,83 2 same c 256 306,76 29,811 0,000* worse b 117 307,59 total 689 perseverance and leisure career better a 316 417,23 2 same b 256 294,08 79,695 0,000* worse c 117 261,34 total 689 individual outcomes better a 316 396,98 2 same c 256 299,90 worse b 117 303,28 40,336 0,000* total 689 note: *p<0,05. when the kruskall wallis test results examined between the perceived skill development level and slim in table 9, it was seen that significant differences between in sub-dimensions and total scores of slim. accordingly, it was observed that the participants who stated their perceived skill development levels‟ as increased between 9 and 10, showed higher slim levels compared to the other grades. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 186-195 193 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to kruskall wallis test results between perceived total development level and measurement tools in table 10, it was seen that there were significant relationships between slim and variables. therefore, it was understood that the participants who described the perceived total development level as „‟better‟‟, showed a higher slim level compared to the other groups. 4. discussion the main purpose of this study is to clarify serious leisure perspectives of semi-professional and professional athletes. in addition, it‟s aimed to determine the relationship and differences between serious leisure characteristics with career progress (perceived skill development and total development) and some variables. as a result of the analyzes, it was determined that athletes have higher serious leisure scores. the highest subscale score was „‟identification with pursuit and social outcomes‟‟ and the lowest subscale score was „‟individual outcomes‟‟. research into serious leisure has illustrated that the chosen activity becomes a central aspect of the participants‟ lives: „it is time, resource, and therefore identity intensive‟ (gillespie, leffler, & lerner, 2002). it has also been argued that identity should be considered the central concept for understanding serious leisure, whereas the other five characteristics could be outcomes of developing this identity (jones, 2006; shipway & jones, 2007). findings of an another study suggest that serious leisure pursuers in sport are in a central life interest as they were fully invested physically and mentally to their activity (dubin, 1992). heo and king (2009) found that serious sport participants tended to invest personal efforts and perseverance through the training process and dedicated their time to travel for various tournaments outside of their community. in different studies found that unique ethos influences participants‟ practices in yoga (patterson, getz, & gubb, 2016) and marathon (robinson, patterson, & axelsen, 2014) accordingly unique ethos enables participants at various levels to perceive their experiences as autonomy-supportive. it was seen that the gender differences between serious leisure scores, there is a significant difference between the individual outcomes sub-dimensions and the gender variable. in the individual outcomes sub-dimension, it was determined that women athletes displayed higher development scores than men. in the study of dilley and scraton (2010) on women climbers as serious leisure, they indicate that: the women climbers identified their climbing as a serious leisure pursuit clearly demonstrating many of the qualities stebbins has characterized as defining serious leisure. they pursued their climbing systematically, demonstrated perseverance, acquired specialist skills and knowledge, identified individual benefits they had gained such as belonging and feelings of accomplishment and they certainly associated with their activity. however, the data suggest that serious leisure is about far more than the activity itself. their leisure is centrally about creating, negotiating and/or resisting ideological expectations (about physicality, motherhood) and creating individual spaces to „be‟ and social spaces to „belong‟ and be „different‟. according to results between sports‟ branch and serious leisure scores, it was observed that significant differences between in sub-dimensions and total scores of slim. accordingly, it has been determined that professional athletes in the volleyball branch gave higher serious leisure levels compared to the participants in other branches. according to cheng and tsaur (2012) unique ethos, strong identity with the activity, significant personal efforts and career pursuits in their endeavors are strong indicators of surfers‟ serious leisure characteristics. generally, surfers with higher serious leisure characteristics have a higher recreation involvement. in other words, serious leisure attributes are the antecedents of recreation involvement. in addition; findings of the relationships among serious leisure and recreation involvement dimensions show that strong identity with the activity, perseverance, career pursuits in their endeavors and unique ethos are significantly associated with attraction. this result indicates that surfers with serious leisure characteristics can strongly identify with the activity, demonstrate perseverance in the activity, and endeavors under adversity. when the test results examined between the perceived skill development level and serious leisure scores, it was seen that significant differences between in sub-dimensions and total scores of slim. accordingly, it was observed that the participants who stated their perceived skill development levels‟ as increased between 9 and 10, showed higher slim levels compared to the other grades. a study of participation in adaptive sports as a serious leisure pursuit indicated a positive relationship between participants‟ self-determination and skill level. further, sport skill development was related to participants gaining social rewards and physical improvements, as well as enhancing their self-determination to pursue serious leisure (jinmoo heo, lee, lundberg, mccormick, & chun, 2008). in a different study, lewis, patterson, and pegg (2013) states as; motorcycle road racing becomes a more serious leisure activity as racers become more committed to regular competition, increasing their skill levels and seeking membership in motorcycle clubs. for the young racer in particular, there is a growing commitment to develop higher level skills a means of self-improvement which can ultimately lead to a career pathway in this sport for those who seek it. according to test results between perceived total development level and serious leisure level, it was understood that the participants who described the perceived total development level as „‟better‟‟, showed a higher slim level compared to the other groups. according to ronkainen et al. (2017) commitment, high levels of effort, hard work and acceptance of pain and discomfort, are often central values for serious runners. in the study of hungling, caneday, and tapps (2013) it was found that community sports program participants‟ strong identification of serious leisure was the most robust indicator reflecting the amateur athletes‟ seriousness of their leisure pursuit. in a different research, it‟s mentioned that serious leisure participants often discover leisure careers that reflect stages of experience, such as “occasional dancers,” “wannabes,” and “hard-core dancers” or “therapeutic players,” “social golfers,” “moderate devotees” and “core devotees” (heo, lee, kim, & stebbins, 2012; siegenthaler & o‟dell, 2003). 5. conclusion sports, exercise and physical activities have an important place among serious leisure activities. in terms of being easily accessible, easy participation, perseverance, effort, competition, entertainment, self-expression and socialization; it is an area where individuals can establish strong unique ethos with the sport they are dealing with and feel belonging and devotion. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 186-195 194 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the individual, who started the sport at an early age for hobby purposes, or guided by family for avoiding bad habits, by emulating of his peers or influenced by the team he support, or discovered in an organized talent selection, has experienced six qualities of stebbins‟ for serious leisure. in line with these qualities, that can be experienced as a hobbyist, amateur or volunteer. therefore it could be thought that; the individual who shows high effort and perseverance for his sports, who is devoted to it and who does not give up in moments of breaking with certain turning points, has achieved a career in sports via serious leisure, at some point of this journey. this study measured the serious leisure levels of semi-professional and professional athletes who had reached a certain career through their own serious leisure pursues, and found positive relationships between all the subdimensions and parameters in the scale that represent the characteristics of the serious leisure perspective. in the light of the explanations above, based on the findings of this study, it can be said that pursuing a career in professional sports is associated with the serious leisure theory and that the career process in sports can be explained with the serious leisure perspective. due to their camps and intense competition schedule, the difficulty of reaching the athletes and having a meeting within the scope of the research was among the most important limitations of this study. in the future researches, different sports branches can be discussed and international comparisons can be made. references brown, c. a. 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(2017). the serious leisure perspective and the experience of leisure. leisure sciences, 39(3), 205-223. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 116 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 3, 116-123, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i3.7420 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group exploring master's level science teachers' views on the implementation and challenges of steam education mukadder baran1 medine baran2 ( corresponding author) 1western norway university of applied sciences, norway. email: mukadder.baran@hvl.no 2dicle university, turkey. email: medabaran@gmail.com abstract this study explores science teachers' perspectives on steam education. the participants were sixteen teachers enrolled in a master's program in science education at a public university. a purposive sampling technique was used to select these 16 science teachers as participants. data were collected using eight open-ended structured interview forms. the data were analyzed through qualitative content analysis. the findings suggest that science teachers viewed steam education as focused on the end product and promoting continuous learning. they defined steam by providing examples of its design, the activities involved, and its impact on learning. science teachers held positive attitudes toward using steam education, emphasizing its ability to make real-life connections for students. they also identified various challenges related to implementing steam education, including issues with educational resources such as a lack of time, insufficient learning materials, large class sizes, budget limitations, inadequate curriculum and physical facilities, and individual challenges faced by both teachers and students. the study concludes that addressing these challenges is essential, especially when implementing steam education activities. providing appropriate physical conditions, adequate in-service training for teachers, and pre-service training for prospective teachers are considered vital for the future development of high-quality steam education. keywords: challenges in steam, science education, science teachers, steam education, implementation of steam, master's program. citation | baran, m., & baran, m. (2025). exploring master’s level science teachers’ views on the implementation and challenges of steam education. asian journal of education and training, 11(3), 116–123. 10.20448/edu.v11i3.7420 history: received: 22 may 2025 revised: 31 july 2025 accepted: 25 august 2025 published: 15 september 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of dicle university, turkey has granted approval for this study on 28 november 2022 (ref. no. e-14679147-663.05-400216). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 117 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 117 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 118 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 119 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 121 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 121 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 122 mailto:mukadder.baran@hvl.no mailto:medabaran@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i3.7420 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4407-2164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5813-6494 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 116-123 117 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study is original in its focus on the perspectives of science teachers enrolled in a master's program, highlighting their positive attitudes and real-life connections in steam education. it uniquely documents specific challenges they face, providing insights that enhance understanding of steam implementation in contemporary educational settings. 1. introduction rapid developments in science and technology and the numerous visible benefits they offer humanity can lead to a wide range of undesirable issues. these issues generally consist of a series of complex anthropogenic problems that every living thing faces today. examples of these problems include climate change and its harmful effects, armed conflicts occurring in various regions, the spread of chemical weapons endangering global security, the rapidly increasing electronic waste issue (e-waste), which may have possible effects on the environment and living organisms, particularly flamingo’s habitat, and pervasive social and economic inequalities such as poverty and hunger. given the urgency of the problems created by the anthropocene, it is clear that science and technology are not just part of the solution but the key to it. this underscores the critical need to educate individuals who are competent in steam (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics). these individuals, equipped with the ability to analyze cause-and-effect relationships, think critically, employ creative thinking skills, succeed in collaborative efforts, and have a strong sense of social responsibility, are best positioned to tackle these challenges. their practical communication skills and capacity to communicate and empathize, regardless of ethnic or cultural differences, further enhance their effectiveness in addressing these issues. however, the existing education system needs to be revised regarding who determines the curriculum. students, who are the system's recipients or depositories, are directed along a predetermined path desired by institutions such as schools, teachers, and other education stakeholders who act as guardians responsible for maintaining the status quo. students who cannot conform to the set curriculum may be marginalized or pacified. consequently, the marginalized individuals, lacking the desired knowledge dictated by the system, retreat into their shells, remain voiceless, and are not adequately represented in society. in contrast, those who unquestioningly adhere to the curriculum set by the school are more likely to be represented within the community. this situation fosters a sense of fatalism among the oppressed group, perpetuating their servitude to the middle class (freire, 2000). unless schools cease to perpetuate this paradox, the symbolic cycle of the snake eating its tail will continue (as kakulè used it to illustrate electron resonance in the benzene ring). chang, sharkness, hurtado, and newman (2014) explain that this persistence/paradox results from environmental and internal psychological factors, including family and institutional support, learning environment, teacher encouragement, self-efficacy, motivation, and limited participation in science courses. educational institutions should not be viewed merely as tools for maintaining cultural reproduction, as bourdieu (1979) stated in his assertion that "schools and universities make up a subsystem legitimizing the political and economic status quo." instead, they should serve as catalysts for transformative societal progress. these institutions ought to equip individuals from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds with the necessary skills to access and benefit from opportunities and resources. furthermore, ensuring that this education is impartial and egalitarian is crucial, enabling individuals to become self-aware, self-actualized, and empowered. acquiring these competencies requires multidisciplinary interaction and the exchange of ideas across different fields. consequently, the steam education approach was designed as a practical pedagogical approach to train individuals capable of realizing themselves in the 21st century and keeping up with the demands of the current age. 2. literature review studies related to steam have shown that incorporating artistic elements within stem disciplines brings several notable advantages to individuals. these benefits include enhanced creativity, improved understanding of complex concepts, increased empathy, and a heightened awareness of science and technology's inclusive and diverse aspects (reif & grant, 2010; schulze-heuling, 2021). the rise of steam approaches is a coordinated effort to promote greater equity in science education (hughes, 2011). by incorporating the "a" for arts into education, students are provided with opportunities to develop essential soft skills. these skills include creativity, resilience, reliability, responsibility, empathy, and collaboration (bertrand & namukasa, 2020; holik, sanda, & molnár, 2023), and independence and problem-solving skills (bertrand & namukasa, 2020; harris & de bruin, 2017; holik et al., 2023). this integration can also contribute to cognitive and emotional development (sousa & pilecki, 2013). by incorporating the arts into the learning environment, students can experience the joyful aspects of science and technology and feel comfortable expressing themselves in science lessons (marques & costa, 2022). in this way, individuals have positive feelings towards science and technology by experiencing the joyful aspects of science (steele & ashworth, 2018). an individual's positive feelings towards himself and science have a positive effect on self-regulation, self-awareness (ozkan & umdu, 2021), engagement, selfconfidence (marques & costa, 2022), self-efficacy, and employability skills necessary for career pursuit and contribution to economic development (colucci-gray et al., 2017; liao, 2016). incorporating emotions and developing an aesthetic perspective on science (kim & kim, 2016) can increase a sense of relativity through science when addressing real-life problems (eilks & hofstein, 2015). by incorporating art into the learning environment, students can experience the joyful aspects of science and technology and feel comfortable expressing themselves in science lessons (marques & costa, 2022). studies indicate that steam education positively impacts students' academic success (watts, duncan, siegler, & davis-kean, 2014). additionally, research in the literature demonstrates the positive contributions of steam education to students' scientific research skills, engineering, and technology competencies. 2.1. ste(a)m in turkish education system stem and steam have gained global recognition, increasing the demand for incorporating stem into the turkish educational system. however, it is essential to note that before 2015, no official curriculum changes were implemented for stem education in turkey. this change was eventually initiated in 2015 with the support of the ministry of national education, specifically under the ietgd (2016). notably, significant changes took place in the asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 116-123 118 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group educational landscape by 2016, with a gradual increase in the importance given to stem and steam education in turkey. the ministry of national education (mone) published a stem educational report emphasizing the essential components for integrating stem into the national education system (ietgd, 2016; türk, 2019). following this, in the 2017 stem teacher education handbook and, more recently, in 2018, the national curriculum highlighted the outcomes and skills based on the stem acronym (ietgd, 2018). the global and national relevance of steam education has grown, leading to its increased prominence in teacher training programs and schools in turkey. this emphasis is crucial as both teacher candidates and in-service educators play important roles in disseminating and implementing steam education across various educational settings. consequently, the perspectives, perceptions, and attitudes of graduate and postgraduate teachers regarding steam education are essential as they provide insights into the effectiveness of steam integration in instructional contexts. moreover, these insights facilitate the identification of challenges associated with steam education, providing necessary support in terms of training, resources, steam laboratories, and related activities. this comprehensive approach addresses the multifaceted needs and requirements of steam education in turkey and beyond. 2.2. importance of the study the literature review reveals a wide range of research on the relationship between steam and students. numerous studies investigate the impact of the steam approach on student achievement, student skills, motivation, attitudes, self-efficacy, confidence, and self-awareness. additionally, extensive research exists on the relationship between teachers and steam. for example, studies examining the perspectives of design and technology teachers on steam highlight limited knowledge of steam, which significantly affects student learning (bell, 2016; clark & andrews, 2010; van haneghan, pruet, neal-waltman, & harlan, 2015). in addition, studies on the opinions of elementary school teachers regarding steam have found that teachers hold diverse perspectives, have positive attitudes towards steam, and believe that steam provides a practical environment where students can apply their theoretical knowledge. they also maintain positive thoughts about steam (uğraş, 2017). park, byun, sim, han, and baek (2016) surveyed 705 elementary, middle, and college steam teachers. they emphasized similar challenges that elementary school teachers face, such as time constraints, increased workload, and lack of financial and administrative support. park, dimitrov, patterson, and park (2017) surveyed 830 elementary school teachers, and mustafa uğraş (2018) implemented an 8-week stem education program with 19 elementary school teachers. it can be said that both studies yielded similar results, and these similarities can be listed as follows: (1) time constraints on teaching stem subjects, (2) lack of administrative support, (3) inadequate professional development opportunities, (4) insufficient knowledge about stem subjects, (5) insufficient parental involvement, and (6) teachers' tendencies to avoid cooperation. furthermore, the literature includes qualitative and quantitative studies investigating the perspectives of primary and secondary science and subject teachers on steam education. from data obtained from 48 physics, chemistry, and biology teachers, dare, ellis, and roehrig (2014) found that teachers focused on integrating soft skills rather than technical content. they also emphasized the importance of student participation and enjoyment in stem. holstein and keene (2013) gathered data from high school teachers and identified common misconceptions and teachers' beliefs about students that influenced teaching practices. eroğlu and bektaş (2022) investigated the views of science teachers trained in stem education on stem-based classroom activities and highlighted the importance of science teachers' technical skills and subject knowledge. however, it is essential to note the lack of studies on the perspectives of science teachers pursuing postgraduate studies, such as at the master's or ph.d. level, who seek to improve their teaching skills and may be aware of contemporary approaches like steam education. particularly, students who are also teachers can apply their expertise in learning environments. even if students do not pursue a teaching career after obtaining their master's degree, the knowledge they acquire is valuable for transferring to learning environments. therefore, the knowledge and opinions of teachers studying at the master's level regarding steam education, in terms of definition, implementation, and training, are vital. this study aims to examine the opinions of science teachers at the master's level regarding steam education. in this context, the following research question is addressed. what are the views of teachers studying at the master's level on steam education? 3. method 3.1. study design the methodological approach chosen for this study is phenomenology, a well-established qualitative research methodology. phenomenological research aims to explore and understand individuals' perceptions, interpretations, and lived experiences regarding the phenomena they encounter (büyüköztürk, kiliç çakmak, akgün, karadeniz, & demirel, 2018). in this study, the phenomenon of investigation is steam education. the objective is to gain a profound understanding of the subjective meanings, perspectives, and opinions of both teachers and students regarding the phenomenon of steam. 3.2. participants the participants of this research consisted of 16 science teachers pursuing master's degrees in the department of mathematics and science education at dicle university in turkey. among the participants, four were enrolled in the department of physics education, nine in the department of science education, and three in the department of biology education. due to the absence of a chemistry program in the master's curriculum, chemistry teachers could not be included in this study. out of the participants, four were male, and 12 were female. 3.3. data collection the researchers and experts in the fields of science (physics, chemistry, and biology) and technology education, who have previously studied steam, collaborated to develop and refine the data collection instrument based on existing literature. the interview form, which initially consisted of 11 open-ended questions, was revised to include eight open-ended questions after piloting with three students in the science department. the pilot experience provided valuable insights into necessary revisions, including adjustments to the time required to answer and comprehend the questions. following these stages, the data collection tool was deemed ready for implementation. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 116-123 119 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group face-to-face interviews were conducted with the participants. the interviews lasted approximately 40 minutes. the research data were obtained in the fall semester of 2022. 3.4. data analysis the data obtained from the study were analyzed using content analysis techniques. each participant was assigned a code (e.g., s1, s2, s3, etc.) to maintain anonymity. two researchers involved in the study conducted the data analysis. in the first step, the data were coded, and categories and themes were derived from these codes. to ensure the consistency and reliability of the coding process, the researchers calculated the reliability coefficient of mileshuberman, which was found to be 0.88 using the formula reliability = consensus / (consensus + dissidence). during the coding process, the two researchers achieved a consensus on seven categories. however, for one category, they encountered disagreement or dissension and were able to resolve it through further discussion and analysis. 4. results the perspectives of science teachers on steam education were classified into two distinct themes. table 1 in the supplement provides an overview of these themes, categories, and their corresponding codes for reference. table 1. teachers' views regarding steam education. theme categories codes the structure of steam the definition of a steam education: an interdisciplinary approach, the development of creativity, problemsolving skills, and analytical thinking. interdisciplinary approach, development of soft skills (problem-solving skills, creativity, and analytical thinking skills) characteristics of steam education product-oriented, providing permanent learning, and impact on learning, hands-on activities effectiveness of steam education developing science education, establishing real-life connections, career persuasion, selfawareness, permanent learning, and developing high-level skills challenges in steam education inadequate physical conditions lack of materials, excess classroom sizes, and budget constraints educational system challenges inflexible curriculum, overloaded curriculum, and lack of adequate steam training individual challenges habits, lack of knowledge, and lack of selfefficacy as observed in table 1, it can be stated that science teachers' viewpoints have been categorized under two main headings, namely, 'structure of steam' and 'challenges in steam education.' a detailed explanation of the codes corresponding to these categories is provided below. 4.1. the definition and structure of steam 4.1.1. definition of steam related to the definition of steam, science teachers have established a general understanding of steam education as an interdisciplinary educational approach that fosters advanced thinking. the related opinions were expressed as follows: the word steam is formed from the initials of the words science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. it is an educational approach that connects these disciplines. it aims to promote advanced thinking in students. it is an interdisciplinary education approach that develops creativity and innovative skills (s1). s1 formulated a clear and fundamental definition of steam education through their expression. additionally, they acknowledged the presence of advanced skills, such as creativity and innovation, although they did not delve deeply into the precise definitions of these skills. regarding advanced skills, some science teachers described steam as improving imagination, production skills, and promoting multiple intelligences, as can be understood from the comments below: under this theme (steam), the objective is to obtain a product by thinking imaginatively and designing creatively. the process involves imagining, designing, and ultimately producing a product (s3). i think that since we use different and various areas of our brain, it is very descriptive, instructive, and the information is more permanent (s9). teacher s3 expressed steam as ultimately producing a product, which could be clearly understood from the statement “the objective is designing a product.” additionally, s9 expressed that steam could help permanent learning by using different areas of our brain, which could be considered as multiple intelligences. 4.1.2. structure of steam on the other hand, some science teachers describe steam as “hands-on activities and experiential learning environments”. they described their ideas as follows: learning by doing and experiential learning (repeated by many students) engaging students in hands-on, experiential learning (this term stood out significantly) is essential for facilitating more effective and lasting learning experiences since the student becomes an active participant in the process (s4). so, according to science teachers' comments above, they thought that steam education was based on hands-on activities, by using the words “learning by doing,” experiential learning, or being an active participant in steam activities. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 116-123 120 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the study participants made a connection between steam and real life and real-life problems, and they expressed their opinions as follows: interwoven with daily life, it simplifies solutions to real-life problems (s7). enhances the ability to observe in natural settings (s11). science, mathematics, and art are all integral to life itself; hence, the application of steam principles can aid in solving everyday problems encountered in daily life (s10). as it can be seen from the expressions of the students, steam was perceived as being closely connected to natural settings and interwoven with daily life. they believed that since steam subjects are all integral to life itself, it would be easier to solve real-life problems. science teachers s1 and s2 also described steam as enjoyable and promoting self-awareness and career persuasion, so they expressed their opinions by saying: steam makes education enjoyable and directs students towards the arts and professions they can create themselves, helping them reflect their ideas and thoughts (s1). it enables students to become aware of themselves (s2). from the expression made by s1, steam is described as “enjoyable, directing students towards art professions they can potentially pursue.” s1's expression that “steam assists in expressing their ideas and thoughts” shows that steam encourages students and enhances their self-efficacy. from s2's statement, it can be understood that steam helps students “to become more self-aware.” 4.2. challenges in applying steam the analysis of the data sheds light on the opinions of science teachers regarding challenging factors in steam education. these factors have been categorized into three distinct codes: those originating from the interaction between students and teachers, those stemming from physical conditions, and those originating from the education system. 4.2.1. challenges based on teachers' and students' backgrounds in light of a significant gap in steam education comprehension, science teachers have voiced concerns regarding the limited understanding of steam among both teachers and students, and they expressed their opinions as follows: insufficient explanation of the steam approach and inadequate awareness among teachers result in limited implementation (s12). i believe that there is a lack of comprehensive information about the steam approach. teachers who provide steam education lack sufficient knowledge. the traditional approach is more emphasized in education, and insufficient importance is given to steam (s1). the inadequate knowledge of teachers contributes to the difficulties encountered during implementation. challenges in implementing this approach may arise due to limited hands-on experiential learning in students' educational journey, which stems from issues such as getting used to having ready-made information (s13). as can be observed from the comments above, science teachers have specific concerns regarding knowledge deficiencies among teachers, students, and steam educators. they express these concerns through statements such as “inadequate awareness” and “lack of comprehensive information.” furthermore, when discussing students' awareness of steam, they mention that students are becoming accustomed to having readily available information. science teachers also thought that they did not have enough theoretical and practical skills to implement steam activities. s6 expressed it as a lack of self-efficacy, stating, “i do not consider myself proficient in steam instruction; the full scope of steam is not given to students in school.” s11 expressed it as a deficiency in technological skills, such as “it seems that proficiency in some technological programs is necessary (such as coding).” based on the comments from science teachers, it is apparent that teachers might not feel confident in implementing steam activities due to a lack of knowledge and technological skills. 4.2.2. physical challenges one of the predominant challenges highlighted by the majority of science teachers pertained to resource constraints, encompassing limited temporal availability, financial impediments, and the need for improved communication channels between local steam laboratories and educational institutions. regarding time and economic challenges, science teachers expressed their ideas as follows: shortage of materials and budgetary issues are encountered difficulties (s9). due to constraints related to time, space, and resources, adequate training is not provided (s15). these practices are carried out in a healthy way by establishing informatics laboratories or design skill workshops at school (s3). i do not find it sufficient because i face difficulties in accessing the required materials (s10). the concepts employed by science teachers were primarily centered around difficulties in accessing resources, the absence of informatics labs, and insufficient budgets. one of the challenges highlighted by science teachers was the gap between schools and steam labs. s3 expressed that “the complete scope of steam is not conveyed to students in schools. despite having steam centers in our region, our schools do not benefit from these centers.” based on s3's comments, it can be inferred that there was a lack of communication between the schools and the local steam lab, resulting in a deficiency in the dissemination of steam among students. 4.2.3. curriculum-based challenges the last challenge mentioned by science teachers was curriculum-related, including an inflexible curriculum and rote learning. science teachers s5 and s11 discussed the inflexibility of the curriculum as follows: teacher preparedness, not having time, inadequate materials, and following the ministry of education curriculum make it harder to implement it in school settings (s5). there might be timing constraints in finding relevant content in other disciplines (s11). the comments made indicate that there was a constrained and overloaded program provided by the national curriculum, and time limitations that made the implementation of steam more challenging. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 116-123 121 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group another challenge related to the curriculum was the persistence of rote learning. additionally, s10 stated that because of the exam, there is an insistence on rote learning that persists. s10's expressions indicate that rote learning in the education system does not provide opportunities to apply steam. based on the findings, it was determined that science teachers define steam education as an interdisciplinary approach that develops students' problem-solving, entrepreneurship, creativity, and analytical thinking skills. they also indicated that steam education is product-oriented, provides permanent learning, and makes definitions in terms of its structure, activities, and effects on learning. participants indicated that steam education is essential and highly effective in developing science education, such as concretization, addressing multiple intelligences, promoting permanent learning, and contributing to a love of science. they emphasized that students must establish real-life connections. participants stated that steam learning environments enable students to express themselves and respond to daily problems. participants expressed that there are various problems in steam education practices. these include inadequacies of physical conditions, such as a lack of materials in learning environments, excessive classroom sizes, and budget constraints; problems arising from the education system itself, such as an overloaded curriculum and a lack of adequate steam training; and issues related to teachers and students as individuals. 5. discussion based on the conducted analysis, the participants defined steam education as an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes the development of students (madirosian & fox, 2003; reif & grant, 2010). they highlighted its impact on promoting innovative skills, problem-solving skills, imagination, and creativity skills (bertrand & namukasa, 2020; uğraş, 2017). several life skills, such as analytical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, entrepreneurship, teamwork, and communication skills, hold significance within the science curriculum programs of 2013 and 2018 (meb, 2018). the analysis of the science teachers' views reveals their favorable inclinations towards steam education, driven by the belief that it imparts real-life skills and meaning-making through hands-on, realworld problem-solving exercises (bertrand & namukasa, 2020; costantino, 2018; holmlund, lesseig, & slavit, 2018). the teacher-students also recognized that steam education increases self-awareness (ozkan & umdu, 2021), which they acknowledged as being beneficial for their career aspirations (kim & park, 2014). self-awareness allows individuals to recognize their skills, competencies, and limitations, resulting in increased awareness and empathy toward others (hughes, 2011). the science teachers emphasized the creation of an enjoyable and secure learning environment through steam education, primarily attributed to the incorporation of artistic elements (marques & costa, 2022). the integration of art elements such as colors, music, images, and sculptures can evoke deep meaning and emotions, aiding individuals' self-reflection and building self-confidence (hughes, 2011). arts-based learning approaches encourage individuals to work without rules or predefined frameworks, allowing them to step out of their comfort zone, take risks, and embrace their semantic knowledge fearlessly (hughes, 2011). furthermore, steam education can play an inclusive role for learners who are underrepresented in the education system, contributing to their emancipation and breaking the chain of cultural reproduction (bourdieu, 1979; freire, 2000). though the participants had generally positive opinions, they had limited views on steam education. in particular, pre-service teachers needed more information about steam education (he, simon, & chiang, 2022; lee, 2021). however, steam education, which is a critical element in advancing science and student development, faces several practical problems. one notable problem is the lack of infrastructure and resources in learning environments. there are studies that emphasize the lack of materials and inadequate laboratory equipment and activities as significant barriers to steam education (ejiwale, 2013; eroğlu & bektaş, 2022; kartini & widodo, 2020). in addition, the lack of financial support for steam education initiatives was identified as an obstacle by landicho (2020) and lee (2021). there is also a considerable lack in the proficiency of education specialists in conducting steam activities, as emphasized by bilbokaitė, bilbokaitė-skiauterienė, and šlekien (2019), kartini and widodo (2020), and holmlund et al. (2018). batty and reilly (2023) strongly suggested that trained practitioners implement steam activities more effectively. these neglects and gaps in education have led to science teachers lacking the necessary self-efficacy to implement steam activities due to a lack of knowledge, technological skills, materials, and training (kartini & widodo, 2020; park et al., 2017; uğraş, 2018). in order to recover this situation, it is crucial to train ill-equipped teachers to increase their self-efficacy and to improve their skills to effectively implement steam activities (dare et al., 2014; wang, 2012). this study also reveals one of the difficulties, which is the resistance of students who are too accustomed to traditional methods to change (holmlund et al., 2018). changing the learning and study habits that students develop throughout their academic lives can be difficult, especially for older students (hattie, biggs, & purdie, 1996; holstein & keene, 2013; mustafa uğraş, 2018). in addition, insistence on rote learning due to a rigid national curriculum and national examination system can also hinder the implementation of steam education (holmlund et al., 2018; özbilen, 2018). in addition to the difficulties mentioned, the participants have a positive view of steam education, but their knowledge on this issue is limited. as a solution, effective methods and techniques can be used to ensure that academics working in education faculties have a solid understanding of steam education. the frequency of steam applications can be increased. it is thought that cooperation between teachers in teacher training centers and at different levels of the education system should be ensured. cooperation should be emphasized in terms of professional development and pedagogical approaches in stem education and its implementation into the curriculum (margot & kettler, 2019). schools can be made more open, and collaboration between local centers such as museums, science and art centers, zoos, botanical gardens, and industry centers can also support steam education (bevan et al., 2010; margot & kettler, 2019). 6. conclusion as a result, it was found that science teachers who are pursuing their master's degree at dicle university have positive perceptions of steam education regarding its perceived benefits for students' cognitive and emotional asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 116-123 122 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group development. however, the participants' lack of knowledge about steam and their limited vocabulary are also part of the study's data. therefore, the government needs to support academics, students, and educators who work on steam. in addition, the perspectives of academically advanced participants on steam education should be taken into account to strengthen its integration. although the participants' knowledge, data collection methods, and sample group are limited, this study can provide valuable insights to promote steam education. it is important to improve teachers' knowledge and understanding of steam and to develop more effective methods for integrating steam pedagogy into the curriculum and implementing professional development programs focused on steam education. encouraging collaboration among educators, including making schools open schools and establishing partnerships between schools and local institutions to foster collaboration, can further enrich learning experiences. finally, investing in physical and technological resources to overcome barriers such as infrastructure constraints and providing government support for educators and steam initiatives are vital to the development and effectiveness of steam education. references batty, l., & reilly, k. 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(2014). what’s past is prologue: relations between early mathematics knowledge and high school achievement. educational researcher, 43(7), 352-360. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x14553660 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1080/02635143.2020.1769586 https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2016.1531a https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718x15614040 https://doi.org/10.31129/lumat.9.2.1489 https://doi.org/10.22329/jtl.v11i2.5058 https://doi.org/10.15345/iojes.2018.05.012 https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1097 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x14553660 541 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 541-545, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.541.545 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of social appearance anxiety of students of faculty of sport sciences and faculty of education in terms of some variables tarik sevindi aksaray university faculty of sport sciences, turkey. abstract this study was carried out to examine the social appearance anxiety of the faculty of sports sciences and faculty of education in terms of some variables. in this context, the social appearance anxiety scale was applied to the students of the sports sciences who received sports education and the students of the education faculty who did not receive sports education. independent samples ttest, one-way anova, and lsd tests were used to analyze the data. as a result of the analysis, the social appearance anxiety scale score was found 34.43 in women and 35.11 in men. on the other hand, the social appearance anxiety scale score was found to be 32.89 in students of faculty of sport sciences and 36.68 in students of faculty of education. there was no significant difference in social appearance anxiety scale scores in terms of gender variable (p>0.05). a significant difference was observed in the social appearance anxiety scale scores in terms of sport education status variable (p<0.001). the social appearance anxiety scores of the students who were satisfied with their own body weight and height were found lower than those who were not satisfied, which was found statistically significant (p<0.001). the results of this research showed that the social appearance anxiety of students of the faculty of sport sciences who receive sports education is lower than those of the faculty of education students who do not receive sports education. keywords: social appearance anxiety, students, faculty of sport sciences, faculty of education. citation | tarik sevindi (2020). investigation of social appearance anxiety of students of faculty of sport sciences and faculty of education in terms of some variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 541-545. history: received: 15 june 2020 revised: 17 july 2020 accepted: 19 august 2020 published: 3 september 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 542 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 542 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 542 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 543 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 544 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.541.545&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2079 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7007-170x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 541-545 542 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the social appearance anxiety of the faculty of sports sciences and faculty of education in terms of some variables. 1. introduction individuals have their own perceptions of their physical structure, and these perceptions can give people morale in some cases, and in others, they can create anxiety. social appearance anxiety is a phenomenon that occurs in the mind of the person due to physical structure. social appearance anxiety is expressed as individuals’ feelings towards the assessment of their physical structures by other individuals. individuals are sometimes concerned about how other people look at themselves. if anxiety is high, individuals take action to leave a positive impression on their environment and if they fail, they may experience disappointment (mülazımoğlu, erturan, & arslan, 2014). social appearance anxiety, which is also considered as social worry, can be expressed as the physical assessment of the individual (yüceant, 2013). while individuals who evaluate themselves positively in terms of appearance, feel more successful and safe in interpersonal communication and relationships, individuals who do not like themselves physically feel constantly uneasy, unworthy and insecure in their lives (ergür, 1996). social appearance anxiety is a concept that includes physical features such as height, weight, and muscle structure on the one hand, and physical features such as skin color, nose, eye structure, and smile of the individual on the other hand (hart et al., 2008). depending on these features, social appearance anxiety has negative effects on individuals’ academic, professional, and social aspects (dindar & akbulut, 2015). university students tend to make a positive impression on other individuals with their physical appearance around the school. on the other hand, it is accepted as a possible situation that students who do not like themselves physically experience psychological problems (kılıç, 2015). in general, physical activity brings individuals together regardless of religion, language, race, gender, age, and culture, and creates a positive communication by creating a personal and social identity and team spirit (yilldiran & yetim, 1996). in addition, when individuals engage in physical activity, they gain a sense of self-expression and self-confidence, improving their skills of success and social communication. in addition, it reduces mental exhaustion and tension, and solidarity and gentleman’s spirit emerges (aksoy, aslan, & i̇mamoğlu, 2020; gür & küçükoğlu, 1992). it is a matter of curiosity to examine some variables on university students’ perceptions of social appearance anxiety. therefore, in this study, some variables were discussed on the students of the faculty of sports sciences and students of the faculty of education, and the answers to the research questions developed below were sought: rq1. do anthropometric properties of students differ in terms of gender variable? rq2. do the social appearance anxieties of students differ in terms of gender variable? rq3. do the social appearance anxieties of the students differ in terms of the variable of sports education status? rq4. do the social appearance anxieties of students differ in terms of body weight and height? 2. method 2.1. sample size a simple random sampling method was used in the study. data were obtained from the faculty of sports science and faculty of education student at a state university in turkey. students aged 18-25 years participated in the study voluntarily. as a result, 448 questionnaires that were filled in completely were evaluated. 2.2. measurement instrument social appearance anxiety scale was developed by hart et al. (2008) and later, turkish validity and reliability studies were conducted by doğan (2009). this scale, which measures the social appearance anxiety of the individuals, consists of 16 items. the social appearance anxiety scale has a likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). examples of the statements are “i get nervous talking to people because of the way i look,” and “i worry that others talk about flaws in my appearance when i’m not around.” the first item of the scale is coded in reverse. high scores on the social appearance anxiety scale indicate that individuals have high apprehension anxiety. in addition, the cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale was obtained as 0.83. 2.3. statistical analysis in statistical analysis, the spss 23.00 package program was used. first, the kolmogorov-smirnov test was carried out to test whether the data were normally distributed. since the data showed a normal distribution, independent samples t-test, one-way anova, and lsd tests were used for comparison of variables. 3. findings the values obtained from the analyses conducted within the framework of the aim of the study are presented in tables. 3.1. anthropometric features of students table 1 shows the comparison values of students with respect to gender in terms of anthropometric features. accordingly, while there is no difference in the age variable, there are statistical differences in body height, body weight, and body mass index variables (p<0.01). the arithmetic mean of men is higher than that of women. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 541-545 543 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. comparison of anthropometric features of students in terms of gender variable. variables categories n mean sd t age male 230 22.82 1.90 1.25 female 218 22.59 2.32 body height (cm) male 230 180.71 8.90 5.63** female 218 170.52 7.92 body weight (kg/m2) male 230 77.50 15.02 -11.39** female 218 63.72 15.82 body mass index (kg/m2) male 230 25.08 2.88 -5.18** female 218 23.38 3.29 note: **p<0.001. table 2 indicates that the arithmetic means of male and female students are close to each other and that the social appearance anxiety of the students is not different in terms of gender (p>0.05). table-2. comparison of social appearance anxiety of students in terms of gender variable. variables categories n mean sd t gender male 230 34.43 10.57 -0.83 female 218 35.11 11.61 table 3 shows that the social appearance anxiety of students is a difference in terms of the sports education status variable. accordingly, it is seen that the social appearance anxiety of the students of the faculty of sport sciences is lower than the students of the faculty of education (p<0.01). table-3. comparison of social appearance anxiety of students in terms of sports education status variable. variables categories n mean sd t sports education status faculty of sport sciences 220 32.89 9.54 -4.68** faculty of education 228 36.68 12.19 note: **p<0.001. when the comparison of students’ social appearance anxiety in terms of body weight and height variables is examined, it is seen that students who are satisfied with these features are lower than those who do not table 4. table-4. comparison of social appearance anxiety of students in terms of body weight and height variables. variables categories n mean sd f/lsd body weight (kg/m2) satisfied 172 32.96 10.02 13.30** 1<3 undecided 66 35.22 10.12 unsatisfied 210 37.48 9.00 body height (cm) satisfied 172 33.43 9.60 11.68** 1<2.3 undecided 66 38.44 8.73 unsatisfied 210 37.02 9.65 note: **p<0.001. 4. conclusion this study was carried out to examine the social appearance anxiety of the faculty of sports sciences and faculty of education in terms of some variables. for this purpose, the results of the study are discussed with the results of other research. the average age of the students participating in our study is 22.82 years for men and 22.59 years for women. it is seen that there is a significant difference in students’ body weight, height, and body mass index values in terms of gender (p<0.01). however, body mass index values are within normal limits. it can be said that students receiving sports education increase their body mass index average. body mass index value is considered to be normal between 20-25, 22 for men and 21 for women. in addition, the +1 high value of athletes is considered ideal (çınar, bostancı, i̇mamoğlu, kabadayı, & şahan, 2004; imamoğlu, satıcı, ermiş, & ermiş, 2018). tekeli (2017) in his research, observed that the social appearance anxiety of physical education and sports education students is higher than those studying in other departments. imamoğlu et al. (2018) in their research, found that the social appearance anxiety of the students who take sports education and do active sports is lower than the students who do not receive sports education and do not do active sports. yıldırım, çırak, and konan (2011) in their research, found that there were no significant differences in the levels of social anxiety among pre-service teachers studying in different departments. when studies that are not parallel to these results are examined, different findings are observed. alemdağ and öncu (2015) found that pre-service teachers’ social appearance anxiety in physical education and sports education department is lower than those studying in other departments. doğan (2009) reported that men’s social appearance anxiety is higher than women. eren (2002) stated that social anxiety does not differ significantly by gender. soylu, atik, and öçalan (2017) in their study on adolescents, observed that men’s social appearance anxiety is higher than women. however, çepikkurt and çoşkun (2010) found that women, besides being less satisfied with their physical appearance in general, have negative feelings and thoughts about physical appearance compared to men. villiers (2009) and smits, powers, buxkamper, and telch (2006) in their research, found that women experience higher social anxiety compared to men. apart from these results, the research conducted in turkey, anxiety of men is seen in the results of social anxiety is high compared to women (alemdağ & öncu, 2015). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 541-545 544 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group imamoğlu et al. (2018) observed no significant difference between social appearance anxiety and gender variable but found the average score of men high. according to the results of our study, the social appearance anxiety point average in terms of gender was seen as 34.43 in women and 35.11 in men, but these values did not create a significant difference (p>0.05). in our study, the social appearance anxiety scale score was found to be 32.89 in sports faculty students and 36.68 in education faculty students. it was determined that there was a significant difference between the students of the sports faculty (the students who received sports training) and the students of the faculty of education (students who did not receive sports training) (p<0.001). students who receiving sports education gain many positive features such as competitions they attend, social environment interactions, meeting different cultures, and positive communication with the sense of self-confidence that sports bring to the person. therefore, it is thought that the students of the faculty of sport sciences who receive sports education can be effective in keeping their social appearance anxieties lower than the students of the faculty of education since they transfer many positive features in sports life to their daily lives. it is known that participation in exercise has a positive effect on individuals’ social appearance anxiety (edwards, ngcobo, edwards, & palavar, 2005; marquez & mcauley, 2001). yüceant (2013) found that the social appearance anxiety of pre-service teachers of physical education and sports is lower than the other departments. it is stated that sports have a positive effect on individuals in many areas from personality development to free time evaluation koca, i̇mamoğlu, and i̇mamoğlu (2018). regular physical activity and a healthy lifestyle have an important effect on the health of individuals, especially contributing to them to feel better and maintain their weight (aslan & ziyagil, 2020; atan, tural, imamoglu, cicek, & tural, 2012). research in the literature suggests that individuals who do sports have a much more friendly, extroverted, more patient, better at establishing social relations, better adapting to a new position, and a more psychologically balanced personality than individuals who do not do sports (yamak & i̇mamoğlu, 2019). the satisfaction of individuals with their body appearance may cause them to think positively (yamak, i̇mamoğlu, i̇slamoğlu, & cebi, 2018). according to tekeli (2017) the ones who have the highest level of social appearance anxiety among the students who receive physical sports training are those with low body weight. in addition, among the students at the faculty of education, those who have the highest social appearance anxiety are those with low body weight. according to the results of our study, the average of the students who are satisfied with their body weight is 32,96, and those who are not satisfied are 37,48. in addition, the average of those who were satisfied with their height was 33.43, while those who were not satisfied were 37.02. as a result, it was observed that the social appearance anxiety point averages of the students who were satisfied with their body weight and height were lower than the students who were not satisfied, and it was found to make a significant difference (p<0.001). social appearance anxiety can be reduced by reaching the ideal weight in terms of body weight, and by psychological motivation in terms of height. in summary, the most important result of our study is that the social appearance anxiety of the students who receive sports education is lower than the students who do not receive sports education. based on this result, social appearance anxiety can be reduced by ensuring that students who do not receive sports training participate in sports activities. references aksoy, y., aslan, h., & i̇mamoğlu, o. 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(2018). the effects of exercise on body posture. turkish studies social sciences, 13(18), 1377-1388. yıldırım, t., çırak, y., & konan, n. (2011). social anxiety in prospective teachers. i̇nönü university journal of education faculty, 12(1), 85-100. yilldiran, i̇., & yetim, a. (1996). a research on the priority aims of physical education course in secondary education. gazi journal of physical education and sport sciences, 1(3), 36-43. yüceant, m. (2013). investigation of social appearance anxiety levels of physical education teacher candidates in terms of different variables. master thesis. aksaray university institute of social sciences. aksaray. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 124 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 3, 124-129, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i3.7497 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group enhancing participatory executive functions to improve the quality of life of preschool ethnic children in thailand’s border patrol police schools pratana govittayangkull1 kaesanee inai2 benjamas phutthima3 sutisana totanayanon4 duangjan kaewkongpan5 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3,4faculty of education, lampang rajabhat university, lampang, thailand. 1email: pratana.go@gmail.com 2email: kesanee@g.lpru.ac.th 3email: pbbenjamas@gmail.com 4email: sutisana@hotmail.com 5faculty of science, lampang rajabhat university, lampang, thailand. 5email: duangjan.kkp@hotmail.com abstract this research aimed to (1) develop interventions for enhancing executive functions (efs) and (2) examine the effects of participatory ef enhancement in ethnic preschool children. the researchers sampled 197 preschool teachers and parents from 7 border patrol police schools in northern thailand using simple random sampling. the research instruments included questionnaires, interviews, a curriculum, a lesson plan, and assessment forms. all interventions were validated by experts, with content validity indices ranging from 0.80 to 1.00, indicating high quality and reliability. data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and standard scores (t-score). the research findings revealed that: 1) the curriculum for enhancing preschool ef teaching skills was valid and of high quality; 2) the evaluation results of teachers' lesson plans and teaching skills were at a very good level; and 3) parental participation in the ef enhancement process is important. comparing the efs of preschool children before and after learning, a t-value of 46.62 was obtained, indicating a statistically significant difference at the 0.05 level, showing that the average ef score after learning was higher than before learning. the research revealed that interventions significantly improve preschool children’s systematic thinking skills and may improve social performance in the long term. keywords: border patrol police schools, critical thinking skills, enhancing teacher competencies, executive functions, northern thailand, parental participation, preschool ethnic children, quality of life in children. citation | govittayangkull, p., inai, k., phutthima, b., totanayanon, s., & kaewkongpan, d. (2025). enhancing participatory executive functions to improve the quality of life of preschool ethnic children in thailand’s border patrol police schools. asian journal of education and training, 11(3), 124–129. 10.20448/edu.v11i3.7497 history: received: 8 july 2025 revised: 29 august 2025 accepted: 12 september 2025 published: 3 october 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by national research council of thailand, thailand (grant number: 193605). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the chiang mai rajabhat university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 19 april,2024 (ref.no.147/2024). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 125 2. research objectives ...................................................................................................................................................................... 125 3. research significance.................................................................................................................................................................... 125 4. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 125 5. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 126 6. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 127 7. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 127 8. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 128 9. suggestion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 128 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 129 mailto:pratana.go@gmail.com mailto:kesanee@g.lpru.ac.th mailto:pbbenjamas@gmail.com mailto:sutisana@hotmail.com mailto:duangjan.kkp@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i3.7497 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5182-5954 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5344-6909 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1735-6196 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4403-9030 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0499-4924 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 124-129 125 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to promoting participatory executive functions (efs) development for preschool ethnic children by providing them with opportunities to access and learn about efs, while enabling them to understand themselves and others, and to develop critical thinking skills. furthermore, it offers teachers effective approaches to fostering efs, which will tangibly impact the quality of life of preschool ethnic children and help reduce inequalities in education for ethnic groups. 1. introduction the quality of youth, as a result of proper upbringing and education, is very important for national development. developing the potential of students at all levels is crucial, especially for preschool children, who are considered valuable resources for their families and for their country’s future (ministry of education, 2017). they are the hope of the family and a significant force in driving the development of a nation. preschool age (3-6 years old) is the most critical period of life, during which the brain grows at its highest rate. fostering good brain development at this age is a vital foundation for development in other stages of life. enhancing executive functions (efs) involves training the frontal efs related to thinking processes and self-regulation in preschool children, providing a good foundation for them to grow into responsible youth and citizens who are intelligent, capable of thinking and doing, and happy. this development will also help to reduce ongoing problems such as drug abuse and violence, since efs contribute to self-regulation. in the current conditions, thai children are being pushed to study with a focus on developing iq as the main focus. learning through practice is limited. this results in children lacking analytical thinking skills and being unable to solve problems when faced with them (rlg group, 2016). the situation is especially true for students in remote schools, such as those attending the border patrol police schools in thailand’s upper northern region, where most schools are located in mountainous areas with inconvenient transportation and difficult travel. the majority of students are ethnic minority children with problems in using the thai language and need teachers’ guidance. unfortunately, many teachers are not trained to teach, hence students’ learning achievement becomes challenging (sanit, 2018). this may result in educational inequality among children, especially those at the preschool level. preschool education is crucial because it establishes a quality learning experience for children and a foundation for their overall development. enhancing knowledge and understanding of teachers and parents on efs is important, as a principle for advancing frontal lobe skills that enable children to control and manage their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors effectively. laying a strong foundation for ef skills is extremely important (jongjit & santi, 2024; thai health promotion foundation and rlg institute (rakluke learning group), 2018) because efs will support learning and problem-solving throughout life. for the development of children's quality of life, teachers play a key role in promoting children's growth and skills through close supervision in learning management. if teachers place importance on learning and possess a strong awareness and understanding of executive functions (efs), they can effectively foster efs in children. this will prepare them to become strong, self-reliant, and high-quality newgeneration citizens effectively (thai health promotion foundation and rlg institute (rakluke learning group), 2018). recognizing the importance of prioritizing efs, the researcher conducted the research project on "participatory executive functions enhancement to improve the quality of life of ethnic preschool children in border patrol police schools." the purpose of the project was to encourage all parties involved in preschool education and children to realize the importance of enhancing children's brain skills along with physical, emotional, mental, social, and intellectual development, in order to build a foundation and driving force for a sustainable quality society. 2. research objectives 1. to develop interventions for enhancing collaborative efs to improve the quality of life for preschool ethnic minority children in thailand’s border patrol police schools. 2. to examine the effects of collaborative and participatory ef enhancement in preschool ethnic minority children attending the border patrol police schools. 3. research significance the results of this research will provide preschool students in thailand’s border patrol police schools with the opportunity to access and learn efs, enabling them to build self-awareness, recognize and understand others’ perspectives, learn to think critically, and behave with integrity. these ef skills and abilities will support robust development in the quality of life for preschool ethnic minority children and help reduce educational inequality for ethnic groups. this research will also yield knowledge about the process of enhancing efs and integrated participatory operations, guiding teachers to develop collaborative programs to enhance brain skills in preschool children. the research models and results can be adapted and replicated in other schools. 4. literature review 4.1. the importance of efs efs are advanced frontal lobe skills that control thoughts, decision-making, emotions, and actions. efs begin to develop after birth, especially between 3 and 5 years of age, which is considered a window of opportunity for the continuous growth and development of efs into adolescence and early adulthood (center on the developing child at harvard university, 2018; nuanchan, 2018). efs help individuals achieve self-control, which is essential for children to successfully navigate social situations in everyday life. efs are essential basic skills for building children's social interactions through activities that engage children in learning and playing. when interactions and surrounding environments cannot support the development of ef skills in early childhood stages, education management should focus on developing and integrating efs into learning activities to help them navigate life successfully (yildirim & düzyol, 2023). research suggests that strong ef skills can affect various dimensions of life, including physical, emotional, social, and spiritual (supawadee, 2016; thai health promotion foundation, 2017). physically, poor efs can lead to decreased physical activity and increased risk for certain health issues such as obesity or substance addiction. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 124-129 126 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group emotionally and mentally, weak efs can lead to social problems, crime, aggressive and violent behavior. spiritually, particularly in childhood, efs are more important for readiness to learn than iq. practicing efs from early childhood will develop cognitive flexibility, enabling children to adapt their thinking and behavior in response to changes in their environments and manage their thoughts and actions. developing efs for early childhood children will help build behavior for a preferred and improved future. 4.2. components of efs a review of the literature related to efs shows that efs are divided into three groups of skills, consisting of nine different aspects (panadda, 2018; thai health promotion foundation, 2017): 1) basic skills, including working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility; 2) self-regulation skills, including sustained attention, emotional control, and self-monitoring; and 3) practical skills, including initiation and action, planning and organizing, and goal-directed persistence. these skills help enhance the quality of brain function development and enable human beings to live a happy life in a peaceful society. 4.3. models for enhancing efs enhancing efs for early childhood children is an important process in developing children's thinking, planning, and behavioral control. this skill can be enhanced through various activities that stimulate children to think, analyze, and solve problems (kwanfah, panrak, seelsupa, & siripong, 2019; thai health promotion foundation, 2017). a practical model for enhancing efs in early childhood involves participation in learning management and effective learning. firstly, collaboration between home and school should be explored and strengthened. due to children’s different family backgrounds, it is essential that teachers involve parents in aspects that deal with the learning and mental and physical growth of their children. parental involvement in children's learning improves learning outcomes, including social skills and abilities to interact effectively and harmoniously with others. secondly, a joyful learning environment should be created, providing a safe space where children feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and feelings. the process of child development must allow children to learn at their own pace and follow their interests. from this basis, ef enhancement in early childhood should focus on creating inner happiness, guided and supported by external factors, which will help cultivate a genuine love of learning in children. based on these theoretical foundations, the conceptual research framework was developed as shown in figure 1. figure 1. conceptual framework of enhancing participatory executive functions to improve the quality of life of preschool ethnic children in thailand’s border patrol police schools. 5. method 5.1. population and sample groups the research population consisted of 319 preschool teachers and parents in 14 border patrol police schools administered by the border patrol police command 33 in chiang mai province. the sample groups for this research consisted of 197 preschool teachers and parents in 7 border patrol police schools administered by the border patrol police command 33 in chiang mai province: 1) chiang thai thamrong, 2) tutiyapho anusorn, 3) aoyama, 4) ban nong khaem, 5) chalerm phrakiat ban kae noi, 6) chao por luang uppatham 2, and 7) lions mahachakra 9. the researcher used a simple random sampling technique at a 95% confidence level. all participating schools were fully aware of the research purposes and expressed their willingness to engage in the research activities. 5.2. research tools the tools used in this research included: 1) a questionnaire for assessing teachers' needs in promoting preschool executive functions (efs); 2) an interview guide for parents concerning problems observed in preschool children; 3) a preschool ef teaching skill development curriculum for teachers; 4) an evaluation form for teachers' lesson plans; 5) an evaluation form for teachers' learning management to develop efs; 6) an evaluation form for preschool efs; and 7) a focus group discussion record form for lessons learned in preschool efs between teachers and parents. all these tools were submitted to experts for content validity verification using the index of congruency (ioc) criterion of 0.50 or higher. it was found that all tools had an ioc between 0.80-1.00, which is considered high quality. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 124-129 127 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.3. research data collection the researcher evaluated efs before and after instruction using a one-group pretest-posttest design as follows: o1 is the pre-instruction test. x is the activity to enhance efs in preschool children. o2 is the post-instruction test. research procedures were as follows: 1) conducting a survey to identify needs and exchanging knowledge with teachers and relevant stakeholders, particularly the parents; 2) using the analysis results from the field visit and discussions with parents to develop a curriculum for enhancing teachers' potential in promoting efs in preschool ethnic children in the border patrol police schools; 3) using the designed curriculum to train teachers to develop skills in promoting preschool efs; 4) implementing the development of preschool efs by teachers throughout the academic year; 5) monitoring the results of preschool efs development by teachers and organizing forums to build understanding among parents of preschool children in promoting efs; 6) developing a summary of the results of preschool efs development in collaboration between teachers and parents; and 7) summarizing and synthesizing the research results and findings. 5.4. data analysis and statistics questionnaires and evaluation forms were analyzed using mean and standard deviation. preschool efs evaluation forms were analyzed using standard scores (t-score). the mean scores of preschool efs before and after learning were compared using a t-test. interview and focus group discussion data were analyzed using frequency and descriptive analysis. 6. results based on the results of participatory analyses of the conditions and teachers’ needs for enhancing the efs of preschool ethnic children in the border patrol police schools, the researcher developed and applied the curriculum for enhancing the potential of teachers in promoting efs of preschool ethnic children. it was found that the index of consistency (ioc) was between 0.80-1.00 (table 1), indicating all aspects of the curriculum evaluation as high quality (the validity value was higher than the specified criterion of 0.50), making it suitable for further teacher development. table 1. results of the validity analysis of the curriculum for enhancing teacher competency in promoting efs among ethnic preschool children in border patrol police schools. evaluation item ioc score interpretation 1. background aligns with the curriculum. 1.00 acceptable 2. learning objectives are comprehensive and consistent with content. 1.00 acceptable 3. content is developmentally appropriate for learners. 1.00 acceptable 4. learning activities cover learning units and objectives. 1.00 acceptable 5. learning activities are diverse and correspond to preschool brain development. 1.00 acceptable 6. integration of innovations in learning activities 1.00 acceptable 7. innovation implementation plans are appropriate for solving problems. 0.80 acceptable 8. learning media/resources are appropriate and consistent with learning activities. 0.80 acceptable 9. assessment methods are clearly aligned with objectives. 1.00 acceptable 10. assessment methods are diverse, emphasizing authentic assessment. 1.00 acceptable after teachers applied the knowledge to design learning experiences for enhancing efs among ethnic preschool children in the border patrol police schools, the analysis shows that most students achieved skill levels classified as “good” (t-score 56–60), accounting for 58.95% (table 2). notably, no students were in the categories requiring improvement or development. table 2. assessment results of efs among ethnic preschool children before and after instruction by teachers in border patrol police schools score skill level before after number % number % t-score < 40 needs improvement 23 24.21 t-score 40–44 should develop 5 5.26 t-score 45–55 moderate 34 35.79 16 16.84 t-score 56–60 good 24 25.26 56 58.95 t-score ≥ 60 excellent 9 9.47 24 24.21 the comparison of mean scores before and after ef-integrated instruction yielded a t-value of 46.62 (table 3), indicating a statistically significant difference at the 0.05 level. this shows that the post-instruction average score was significantly higher than the pre-instruction score. table 3. comparison of mean efs scores before and after ef-integrated instruction for ethnic preschool children instruction phase n mean sd t-value before 95 86.74 28.23 46.62* after 95 128.08 4.28 note: * statistically significant at the 0.05 level. 7. discussion the development of a participatory process to enhance efs for improving the quality of life among ethnic preschool children in thailand’s border patrol police schools resulted in a high-quality curriculum for enhancing teachers’ competency in promoting efs. the curriculum was developed based on the researcher’s understanding of the importance of cognitive development during the preschool age as a critical period for learning readiness. this o1 x o2 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 124-129 128 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group aligns with the concept developed by the center on the developing child at harvard university (2018), which states that efs begin to develop after birth, especially between 3-5 years of age, which is considered a window of opportunity for the growth and development of efs, and they continue to develop into adolescence and early adulthood. efs are very important for children. therefore, activity management should focus on developing efs as a learning tool integrated into activities from early childhood. the curriculum for enhancing efs for preschool ethnic children was implemented and integrated into the research in accordance with the framework of the national institute for child and family development at mahidol university and the thai health promotion foundation (panadda, 2018; thai health promotion foundation, 2017). the curriculum aimed to comprehensively foster the development of higher-order brain functions in preschoolers. findings indicated that the participatory ef enhancement process not only enriched teachers’ knowledge of lesson planning and ef-focused learning management but also improved their practical teaching skills. this may be attributed to hands-on teacher training, which deepened their understanding of ef skills and diversified their teaching strategies. additionally, the researcher facilitated knowledge exchange among teachers through an online social network via the line application. teachers shared ef activity techniques, and the researcher provided continuous support through on-site visits, friendly mentoring, and ongoing online discussions. this collaborative approach effectively strengthened teachers’ skills in designing ef-based learning experiences for preschoolers. parental involvement was emphasized as an essential component, given that the emotional capabilities of young children are significantly influenced by their primary caregivers. at home, parents are encouraged to help create a conducive learning environment and work collaboratively with the school to reinforce executive function (ef) development in daily contexts. this includes memory recall, delayed gratification, emotional regulation, attention to tasks, and the ability to follow daily routines. ef development is achieved through practical learning experiences within the family context. as kwanfah et al. (2019) stated regarding the importance of the home in coordinating cooperation with schools, parents and teachers should exchange information to understand children’s development and learning. cooperation is vital for achieving shared developmental goals, fostering a sense of belonging and shared ownership. such collaboration enhances children’s emotional stability and behavioral appropriateness, helping them live happily in society. this research engaged parents in the ef development process alongside teachers by involving them in discussions, activities, observations, and real-time assessments. the approach emphasized mutual reflection and aligned with the objective of building ef skills through enjoyable, cooperative learning between homes and schools. teachers were thus empowered to support students’ brain development effectively. the results of enhancing efs in preschool ethnic children after instructions were given showed that most students had ef skills at a good level, and when comparing the average scores before and after instructions, there was a statistically significant difference at the 0.05 level. the efs scores after teaching and learning management were higher than before teaching because preschool children received enrichment and stimulation of their frontal lobes through various activities. they were able to develop brain skills in terms of 1) working memory, 2) inhibitory control, 3) cognitive flexibility, 4) attention, 5) emotional control, 6) self-monitoring, 7) initiation and action, 8) planning and task completion, and 9) goal-directedness. with the support and development of efs, children will learn more happily and effectively, setting them up for success as they enter adulthood. according to thai health promotion foundation (2017) efs development should occur in a joyful, trusting environment with supportive stimuli like books and toys. children should learn through hands-on experiences, patience, task completion, and responsibility at home with parental cooperation. teachers should guide children in emotional regulation and selfreliance. hence, the efs-based learning experience in this study was multifaceted and involved strong parental collaboration. walaiporn and preeyapron (2022) also supported the idea of effective communication and genuine involvement of capable parents in school activities, recognizing their important role and responsibility from beginning to end. teachers were enriched and gained knowledge and skills to develop good brain skills in preschool children. this is consistent with research by anongnat, suchanad, and bantita (2023), which emphasizes enhancing ef skills as essential for nurturing sound decision-making in early childhood. ef skills do not develop naturally without guided practice and appropriate support. additionally, aesthetic-based educational programs that incorporate ef frameworks have demonstrated positive effects on children’s decision-making development. this study assessed ef development through authentic observations and behavior recording during both homebased and school-based activities. the children’s ef-related behaviors were monitored and documented over time. as a result, preschoolers exhibited improvement in their ef skills after the intervention. the data gathered from this research offer valuable insights into when and how children can be trained in life management skills that influence their academic, professional, and daily functioning for effectively entering adulthood. conversely, ef deficiencies can result in personal and social dysfunction. in a nutshell, ef skills are vital and must be cultivated from early childhood for children to become healthy, independent, and responsible members of society. 8. conclusion the teacher empowerment curriculum, developed as a tool to enhance efs in ethnic preschool children attending thailand’s border patrol police schools, has an index of consistency (ioc) between 0.80-1.00. this indicates that all aspects of the curriculum evaluation are of high quality (validity higher than the specified criterion of 0.50). furthermore, teachers demonstrated good skills in both lesson planning and instruction, being able to set appropriate objectives according to the preschool learning context. the ef content was suitable for preschool children, and teachers were able to create age-appropriate learning atmospheres that encouraged student participation at every stage. teachers who applied the curriculum with preschool children found most students after learning had good efs (t-scores 56-60), accounting for 58.95%. when comparing the average efs scores before and after teaching, a statistically significant difference was found at the 0.05 level, indicating that efs were higher after teaching than before. 9. suggestion 9.1. suggestions for applying research findings it is important for teachers to actively participate in the development of efs and understand the connection between setting goals for teaching and learning activities, defining activities, and systematically assessing efs. this will help achieve the development of efs in early childhood. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 124-129 129 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2) participatory enhancement of efs to improve the quality of life for ethnic preschool children in thailand’s northern border patrol police schools was carried out using the principle of efs enhancement, which requires collaboration between teachers and parents. to achieve this goal, school administrators should support teachers in organizing platforms for information exchange and knowledge enhancement between parents to foster mutual understanding and collaboration efforts for their children. parents should be involved in the process from the beginning to ensure the successful participatory enhancement of efs for improving the quality of life of early childhood children. 3) in teaching and learning management, teachers should attentively focus on the learners, allowing children to learn collaboratively, work together, and exchange knowledge to stimulate efs. this will enhance children’s skills in areas such as working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, sustained attention, emotional control, self-monitoring, initiation, planning and organizing tasks, and goal-directed persistence. for impact evaluation, emphasis should be placed on reliable assessment to effectively develop efs in preschool children. 9.2. suggestions for future research 1) there is a need to expand research focused on factors affecting the participatory enhancement of efs to improve the quality of life for ethnic early childhood children. 2) further research should be conducted on the relationships between administrative factors affecting students' executive functions in schools and other educational institutions. 3) additional research should be conducted on enhancing efs to improve the quality of life of early childhood children in other student groups, such as those with special needs or at other grade levels, to enhance children’s learning quality. references anongnat, y., suchanad, c., & bantita, i. (2023). kindergarten teachers and the development of decision-making intelligence in early childhood. the golden teak: humanity and social science journal, 29(3), 1-15. center on the developing child at harvard university. (2018). executive function & self – regulation. united states: center on the developing child at harvard university. jongjit, k., & santi, w. (2024). executive thinking skills: the foundation of early childhood development in the 21st century. journal of roi kaensarn academi, 9(7), 964-980. kwanfah, r., panrak, i., seelsupa, w., & siripong, t. (2019). teacher and parent handbook for enhancing ef brain skills for early childhood. bangkok: pelangi publishing; suan dusit university. ministry of education. (2017). early childhood education curriculum b.e. 2560. bangkok: agricultural cooperative federation of thailand printing house co., ltd. nuanchan, c. (2018). understanding ef executive function skills. handbook for developing ef executive functions for early childhood teachers. bangkok: matichon public company limited. panadda, t. (2018). ef brain skills and early childhood development in the handbook for developing ef executive functions for early childhood teachers. bangkok: matichon public company limited. rlg group. (2016). survival of thai children in the absence of ef skills. in (vol. 5, pp. 5). thailand: modern mom magazine sanit, p. (2018). a model for developing academic competencies of border patrol police school principals in the thai-myanmar border area. phitsanulok: naresuan university. supawadee, h. (2016). ef: brain skills for a successful life—executive function. bangkok, thailand: rlg institute (rakluke learning group). thai health promotion foundation. (2017). training ef to develop your child's brain. bangkok: suk publishing. thai health promotion foundation and rlg institute (rakluke learning group). (2018). parent's guide to developing ef executive functions from conception – 3 years. bangkok: aksorn sampan (1987) co., ltd. walaiporn, m., & preeyapron, k. (2022). the parents’ role ef (executive functions skills) development of early childhood in new normal situation. journal of graduate studies in northern rajabhat universities, 12(1), 17-37. yildirim, r. g., & düzyol, e. (2023). executive functions in early childhood, teaching for the future in early childhood education. maribor: maribor university press. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 505 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 505-513, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.505.513 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group research of flipped classroom based on students’ perceptions i̇brahim yasar kazu1 cemre kurtoğlu2 ( corresponding author) 1firat university education faculty, department of education science, elazig, turkey. 2ministry of education, english teacher elazig, turkey. abstract research of flipped classroom can be carried out in such dimensions as teacher, school manager, parents and students. this present research is aimed to investigate the secondary school students’ flipped classroom readiness. the survey method was applied in this descriptive study. ‘a scale for flipped classroom readiness of secondary school students’ was applied as developed by hao and adapted by durak. the scale was applied to 383 5th grade and 362 8th grade totally 745 students studying at five different secondary schools which were chosen randomly from city center of elazig. obtained data were analysed using spss program version 22.0. their readiness for flipped classroom learning was investigated in five sub dimensions: ‘self-directed learning, technology self-efficacy, in-class communication self-efficacy, motivation for learning and doing preview’. their flipped classroom readiness was found positive in general. students who have a computer and those who perceive themselves competent at using technological devices have more positive opinions on the flipped classroom. keywords: doing preview, educational technology, flipped classroom, motivation for learning, self-directed learning, technology selfefficacy. citation | i̇brahim yasar kazu; cemre kurtoğlu (2020). research of flipped classroom based on students’ perceptions. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 505-513. history: received: 27 july 2020 revised: 7 august 2020 accepted: 12 august 2020 published: 20 august 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 506 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 506 3. research design and methodology............................................................................................................................................ 507 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 508 5. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 511 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 512 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.505.513&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2037 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1039-0482 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2148-7466 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 505-513 506 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature nowadays, our world is under the influence of a pandemic, covid-19 virus. in order to reduce the spread of the covid-19 virus, the widespread closures of schools become inevitable. technology plays an important role in the continuation of education during an epidemic. this research was carried out to investigate students’ readiness of flipped classroom, one of the technology based models. it is estimated to be useful for future studies. 1. introduction recent developments in information and communications technology continue to impact every aspect of society, along with significant implications for the field of education. new technologies are being readily applied to design and facilitate the educational activities required in today’s studentcentered learning environments (rafiola, setyosari, radjah, & ramli, 2020). especially, nowadays our world is under the influence of an epidemic, covid-19. the coronavirus disease (covid‐19) causes closure of schools; beside that, face to face education has been interrupted and distance learning through computer and internet has become popular. personal computing and communications devices have become important tools for learning and information transfer, and are thought as welcome additions to the learning environment. that’s why, benefiting from information and communication technologies in education has become inevitable. in this way, the teaching and learning process can become more efficient and qualified individuals may be raised. improvements in internet accessibility and speed have extended the global reach of education on an unprecedented scale across all levels from pre-school to post graduate studies. learners with hand held devices and 24/7 internet access are no longer constrained to school hours. indeed, such students are able to reach the information they need wherever and whenever they want. however, the many benefits of such advances have been seen to be slowed by the teaching profession itself. with the onset of constructivism in education in 2005, it was argued that certain traditional aspects should be retained to enable a ‘behaviourist approach’ (anilan, 2014; güven, 2010). today we know that teachers’ attitude and practices which limit the use of technology in the classroom can impede studentcentered learning (bolat, 2016). efforts to counter these obstacles have in turn led to the popularization of radical concepts such as the flipped classroom (filiz & kurt, 2015; torun & dargut, 2015). the flipped classroom is centered on the idea that to attain success in education, the learning environment must be rearranged according to students’ needs. indeed, most education systems now emphasize studentcentered learning, value individual differences, and call for the curriculum to be prepared accordingly. the main goal is to understand individuals’ needs and to actively include them in all educational activities. this flipped classroom research is based on investigating the flipped classroom readiness of secondary school students and determining whether they have necessary competences such as selfdirected learning, technology self efficacy, in-class communication self-efficacy, motivation for learning and doing preview, or not. the researchers compared their readiness in terms of various variables (gender, grade, school where they study, having access to a computer, internet access, frequency of internet usage, the aim of using technological devices, how they perceive themselves using technological devices) across five sub-dimensions. 2. literature review 2.1. what is a flipped classroom? 21st century education systems emphasize the increasing importance of student-centred learning settings where students take part in tasks and direct their own learning (hannafin, hill, & land, 1997; shea et al., 2012). in student-centered learning setting, students are required to participate in the learning actively. student involvement needs to be organized through such educational activities as discussions, problem solving and peer learning (zappe, leicht, messner, litzinger, & lee, 2009). these activities are not straightforward and teachers can experience difficulties with time management and distributing the time devoted to lectures and active learning strategies evenly (strayer, 2012). this kind of classroom, known also as ‘inverted classroom’ or ‘reversed instruction’, refers to a model that aims at coping with such challenges. put forward by bergmann and sams (2012) flipped classroom was developed for those unable to take regular classes. this approach provides students with flexibility in their learning and thus they are given freedom to choose what they have learnt from a large number of resources and to direct their learning at their own pace. students could watch video lectures before class and they were expected to prepare themselves accordingly. in this way what they were learning was reinforced with metacognitive activities such as group discussions, station technique, jigsaw, etc. during class (bergmann, overmyer, & wilie, 2012; davies, dean, & ball, 2013; fulton, 2012; hughes, 2012). as acquisition of subject knowledge is mainly undertaken out of class, flipped classroom allows teachers more time to apply active learning strategies. moreover, this way of learning is regarded as beneficial for students since it allows them to learn at their own pace online. this approach provide students with a set of circumstances to turn into more active and interactive learners instead of passive listeners of the teachers and lectures (mohanty & parida, 2016). flipped classroom comprises in-class learning and out of class learning activities as seen in figure 1. interactive group and individual based learning activities are done in class while out of class activities include computer based individual learning strategies (bishop & verleger, 2013). in order to implement this model successfully, learners are expected to study the lecture through repetition. in this context, flipped classroom can be described as a learning process that is student centered, far from the traditional classroom understanding, based on active learning strategies, in which computer and internet software are used actively. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 505-513 507 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. flipped classroom model. source: (faculty of innovation center, 2016). 3. research design and methodology 3.1. research model this study investigates the flipped classroom readiness of secondary school students. as it presents existing circumstances, a descriptive survey model is used to describe a previous or ongoing circumstance. 3.2. sample group table 1 summarizes demographic information about the students. table-1. demographic information of students. categories variables number of respondents percentage gender female 396 53.2 male 349 46.8 secondary school mustafa kemal 153 20.5 şehit önder pınar 137 18.4 cumhuriyet 187 25.1 bahçelievler 171 23.0 avukat i̇brahim gök 97 13.0 level 5th grade 383 51.4 8th grade 362 48.6 total 745 100.0 a total of 745 students from five different secondary schools in elazig were enrolled in the study which was conducted in 2018-2019 academic year. 383 5th graders and 362 8th graders, totally 745 students, were recruited by simple random sampling in five schools. table-2. students’ technology usage. categories variables number of respondents percentage do you have a computer? yes 423 56.8 no 322 43.2 do you have an internet access? yes 478 64.2 no 267 35.8 how often do you use the internet in a day? less than 1 hour 356 47.8 1-3 hours 297 39.9 4-6 hours 55 7.4 more than 6 hours 37 5.0 why do you use the internet most? social media 186 25.0 entertainment 341 45.8 study 343 53.0 how do you perceive yourself to use the technological devices? enough 387 51.9 middle 291 39.1 insufficient 67 9.0 total 745 100.0 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 505-513 508 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2.1. students’ technology usage in this section, information about students’ technology usage is explained. as shown in the table 2, 56.8% of the participants have access to a computer and 64.2% of them have internet access. in addition, 47.8% of them use the internet less than one hour, 39.9% of them between 1-3 hours, 7.4% of them between 4-6 hours and 5.0% of them more than 6 hours in a day. 25.0% of the participants use the internet mostly for social media, 45.8% for entertainment (playing games, listening to music, etc.), 53.0% for studying, 51.9% perceive themselves as having enough expertise to use technological devices, 39.1% express themselves as middle while 9.0% express having insufficient expertise. 3.3. data collection tool a scale for flipped classroom readiness of secondary school students’ developed by hao (2016) and adapted to turkish by durak (2017) was used for data collection. the scale consists of a total of 26 items and 5 subdimensions, namely selfdirected learning, technology self-efficacy, in-class communication self-efficacy, motivation for learning and doing preview. the scale is a 5-point likert scale graduated from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). factor analysis has been performed and a cronbach’s alpha score of 0.864 obtained. cronbach’s alpha scores for the sub dimensions are 0.942, 0.956, 0.897, 0.820, 0.705 respectively. 3.4. data analysis data were analyzed using spss program version 22.0. in order to analyze demographic data, descriptive statistical methods such as percentage, arithmatic mean, and standard deviation were used. moreover, to evaluate the data according to the variables, shapiro wilk test and kolmogrov smirnov were performed and homogeneity of variances tested. according to the results, since the distribution is not normal (p<0.05), mann whitney u test and kruskal wallis test were used. in addition, to determine which group causes difference, post hoc tests were used. 4. findings findings are given as to whether the sub-dimension scores of the students that took part in sample group differed significantly from defined variables. the findings obtained by research are presented in the tables below. table-3. students’ beliefs about their flipped classroom readiness. sub dimensions n mean sd self-directed learning 745 3.83 .61366 technology self-efficacy 745 3.61 .77348 in-class communication self-efficacy 745 4.00 .92367 doing previews 745 3.86 .95866 motivation for learning 745 4.04 .87489 flipped classroom 745 3.87 .60237 the results of the analysis confirm that students ‘strongly agree’ with having the qualities flipped classroom requires (m=3.86). in the light of the data, it can be said that students are highly skilled at five sub-dimensions. as shown in table 3, students ‘strongly agree’ with having self-directed learning skill (m=3.83), technology selfefficacy (m=3.61), in-class communication self-efficacy (m=4.00), motivation for learning (m=4.04), doing previews (m=3.87). accordingly, the flipped classroom readiness of secondary school students is positive in general. mwu test results performed to determine whether sub-dimension scores show difference between genders show a statistical difference between the scores of self-directed learning, doing previews and motivation for learning in favour of females; and between the scores of technology self-efficacy in favour of males. males were more confident of their technology self-efficacy than females, while greater motivation for learning was indicated by females. no statistical difference was been found between gender for flipped classroom readiness. it is understood that the variable of gender has no significant effect on flipped classroom readiness in general. according to kwh test results indicate whether sub-dimension scores show difference between schools, a statistical difference was found between the scores for self-directed learning, doing previews and motivation for learning and flipped classroom in favour of students at mustafa kemal secondary school and bahçelievler secondary school. students at these schools indicated greater flipped classroom readiness in comparison to others. in terms of technology self-efficacy, students from cumhuriyet secondary school and bahçelievler secondary school obtained higher scores than the others. mwu test results indicate whether sub-dimension scores show difference between student grade show that a statistical difference was found between the scores for self-directed learning, doing previews and flipped classroom in favour of 5th grade students; while the scores for technology self-efficacy were in favour of 8th grade students. in the light of these findings, it can be stated that younger students are at higher level of flipped classroom readiness in comparison to older students. older students indicated they were capable of using technology efficiently at a higher level than did younger students. however, no statistical difference was found between grades for in-class communication self-efficacy and motivation for learning. the results of mwu tests in table 4 confirm a statistical difference between self-directed learning, technology self-efficacy and flipped classroom in favour of students having computer and internet access (p<0.05). in other words, the students with a computer and internet access have better flipped classroom readiness in comparison to those who did not. flipped classroom is a model that includes inclass and out of class activities. while out of class activities are performed, computer and internet are used actively. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 505-513 509 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. students having computer and internet access. having computer n mean u p having internet access n mean u p self-directed learning yes 423 397.71 57652.00 .000 self-directed learning yes 478 377.45 61684.50 .449 no 322 340.54 no 267 365.03 technology selfefficacy yes 423 420.97 47594.50 .000 technology selfefficacy yes 478 410.93 45871.50 .000 no 322 309.98 no 267 305.09 in-class communication selfefficacy yes 423 380.52 64922.50 .271 in-class communication self-efficacy yes 478 370.78 62752.00 .704 no 322 363.12 no 267 376.97 doing previews yes 423 386.19 62522.00 .051 doing previews yes 478 383.92 58595.00 .060 no 322 355.67 no 267 353.46 motivation for learning yes 423 392.07 60034.50 .005 motivation for learning yes 478 374.65 63025.50 .777 no 322 347.94 no 267 370.05 flipped classroom yes 423 403.56 55175.50 .000 flipped classroom yes 478 386.39 57490.00 .025 no 322 332.85 no 267 349.03 total 745 total 745 students are expected to watch online videos or study the subject by means of using the internet and a computer. therefore, having a computer and internet access is an important factor that effects their flipped classroom readiness. clearly it is not surprising therefore that students who are able to readily use a computer and the internet show greater flipped classroom readiness. moreover, a significant difference exists between those students who are confident of their technology self-efficacy and have computer and internet access, and those that are less confident and do not have regular access to this technology. as expected, the results confirm that the more students use technological devices, the better they are at using them. table-5. frequencies of students’ internet usage. sub dimensions internet usage frequency n mean x2 sd p post-hoc lsd self-directed learning aless than 1 hour 356 391.43 23.890 3 .000 a>c b1-3 hours 297 377.62 a>d c4-6 hours 55 332.86 dmore than 6 hours 37 218.26 technology self-efficacy aless than 1 hour 356 319.96 43.545 3 .000 b>a b1-3 hours 297 415.06 c>a c4-6 hours 55 445.17 d>a dmore than 6 hours 37 438.41 in-class communication self-efficacy aless than 1 hour 356 390.31 9.909 3 .019 a>d b1-3 hours 297 367.43 b>d c4-6 hours 55 353.11 dmore than 6 hours 37 280.74 doing previews aless than 1 hour 356 380.82 30.216 3 .000 a>d b1-3 hours 297 394.18 b>d c4-6 hours 55 321.73 dmore than 6 hours 37 203.95 motivation for learning aless than 1 hour 356 386.22 21.447 3 .000 a>d b1-3 hours 297 386.64 b>d c4-6 hours 55 290.20 dmore than 6 hours 37 259.43 flipped classroom aless than 1 hour 356 395.60 21.146 3 .000 a>d b1-3 hours 297 375.29 b>d c4-6 hours 55 330.53 dmore than 6 hours 37 232.69 total 745 when table 5 is examined, it is clearly seen that a statistical difference has been found between the scores of self-directed learning in favour of those students who use the internet less than one hour in a day compared to students using it between 4-6 hours and more than 6 hours (p<0.05). in addition, students using the net 1-3 hours, 4-6 hours and more than 6 hours obtain higher scores on technology self-efficacy than students using the internet less. this result indicates that the more students use the internet, the more they perceive themselves to be proficient in using this technology. moreover, a statistical difference was seen between the scores for in-class communication self-efficacy, doing previews, motivation for learning and flipped classroom in favour of students using the internet less than 1 hour and 1-3 hours rather than 4-6 hours and more than 6 hours. based on this finding, it is possible to state that the less students use the internet, the more flipped classroom ready they are. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 505-513 510 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group flipped classroom seeks to integrate technology into education. students in a flipped classroom environment are also required to prepare for class and are likely to need to access information and watch lectures in their own time online using the internet. this study confirms that students who are currently using the internet less than 3 hours a day have more flipped classroom readiness. table-6. learners using the internet for social media or entertainment. using internet for social media n mean u p using the internet for entertainment n mean u p self-directed learning yes 187 322.84 42657.50 .000 self-directed learning yes 341 347.93 60331.50 .003 no 558 389.05 no 404 394.16 technology selfefficacy yes 187 417.22 43921.00 .002 technology selfefficacy yes 341 399.41 59684.00 no 558 357.59 no 404 350.71 .002 in-class communication selfefficacy yes 187 354.80 48601.50 .191 in-class communication self-efficacy yes 341 370.57 68053.00 no 558 378.40 no 404 375.05 .775 doing previews yes 187 339.33 45724.50 .014 doing previews yes 341 350.30 61141.00 no 558 383.56 no 404 392.16 .007 motivation for learning yes 187 350.91 47879.00 .110 motivation for learning yes 341 363.57 65666.00 .267 no 558 379.70 no 404 380.96 flipped classroom yes 187 348.22 47260.00 .068 flipped classroom yes 341 362.63 65420.00 .237 no 558 380.59 no 404 381.75 total 745 total 745 table 6 shows that a statistical difference has been found between the scores for self-directed learning and doing previews in favour of those students who do not use the internet for social media and entertainment (such as playing games, listening to music, watching a movie, etc.). however, students who use the net for social media and entertainment indicated greater technology self-efficacy in comparison to the students who don’t. in addition, no statistical difference was found between the scores for flipped classroom readiness and using the internet for social media and entertainment (p>0.05). in other words, using the internet for social media and entertainment has no effect on flipped classroom readiness. table-7. learners using the internet for studying. using the internet for studying n mean u p self-directed learning yes 391 406.34 56170.00 .000 no 354 336.17 technology self-efficacy yes 391 353.75 61924.50 .013 no 354 394.26 in-class communication self-efficacy yes 391 386.90 63772.00 .062 no 354 357.65 doing previews yes 391 412.63 53713.00 no 354 329.23 .000 motivation for learning yes 391 384.43 64738.00 .123 no 354 360.38 flipped classroom yes 391 398.82 5.903.00 .001 no 354 344.49 total 745 the results of analysis shown in table 7 reveal a statistical difference between the scores for self-directed learning, doing previews and flipped classroom in favour of those students who use the internet for studying (p<0.05). nevertheless, students who do not use the internet for studying are more confident of their technology self-efficacy in comparison to students who use it for studying. in light of this result, it is understood that students who use the internet for studying are at high level of flipped classroom readiness than those who don’t. in order to implement flipped classroom successfully, students should be eager to study in their own time and to take charge of their own learning. they are required to watch lectures by means of online videos and such applications as khan academy, moddle, edpuzzle, etc. these findings confirm that usage of the internet for studying mostly effects students’ flipped classroom readiness positively. in table 8, we see that a statistical difference exists between the scores of all sub-dimensions except in-class communication self-efficacy in favour of the students who perceive themselves ready enough to use technological devices in comparison to those who say their readiness is middle or insufficient (p<0.05). when the nature of flipped classroom is taken into consideration, it is normal for students who are confident in their use of technological devices to have better flipped classroom readiness. flipped classroom model implementation requires students to use technological devices actively. students can now reach information and watch presentations whenever and wherever they want by means of tablet, smart phones, laptops, computers, etc. therefore, being selfsufficient in using technological devices is of great importance for successful flipped classroom implementation. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 505-513 511 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. students’ level of technological devices usage. level of using technological devices n mean x2 sd p post-hoc lsd self-directed learning aenough 387 381.74 12.627 2 .002 a>c bmiddle 291 381.85 b>c cinsufficient 67 284.06 technology self-efficacy aenough 387 415.31 39.770 2 .000 a>c bmiddle 291 342.79 b>c cinsufficient 67 259.82 in-class communication self-efficacy aenough 387 380.17 2.006 2 .367 bmiddle 291 370.93 cinsufficient 67 340.57 doing previews aenough 387 378.26 10.389 2 .006 a>c bmiddle 291 384.22 b>c cinsufficient 67 293.90 motivation for learning aenough 387 381.58 7.170 2 .028 a>c bmiddle 291 376.80 b>c cinsufficient 67 306.96 flipped classroom aenough 387 391.41 21.528 2 .000 a>c bmiddle 291 374.73 b>c cinsufficient 67 259.18 a>c total 745 being proficient in using new technology is an important factor that effects students’ flipped classroom readiness. the findings of this study confirm that those students perceiving themselves as being proficient enough or middle in using technological devices have more flipped classroom readiness in comparison to those reporting themselves insufficiently able to use them. 5. discussion and conclusion coronavirus (covid-19) infection reported by china in december 2019 turned into an epidemic in weeks, which takes hold of the whole world. in order to reduce the spread of the covid-19 virus, the widespread closure of schools, colleges, universities, and other educational institutions in many countries become inevitable. in this regard, face to face education has been interrupted and distance learning via internet and computer has recently become popular all over the world. flipped classroom is one of the newest approaches that gives opportunity for online education. the urgent need for research has therefore been occurred. that’s why, investigating the students’ readiness for this model has vital importance both for endurance of teaching and learning process and also economic welfare of the countries. the findings of this study indicate that the majority of secondary school students have quite high flipped classroom readiness. when the findings are evaluated in terms of the sub-dimensions, it is apparent that participant students have high self-directed learning skill. one of the most important characteristics of flipped classroom is to provide a student centered learning environment (flipped learning network (fln), 2014; hamdan, mcknight, mcknight, & arfstrom, 2013; mclaughlin et al., 2014). in order to achieve this model, students must be able to administer their own learning process. besides, they should be skilled at reaching and analysing information that they need. although teachers are responsible for planning part of the process, students have the major role. that’s why, it is highly significant for students to develop self-directed learning skills if they are to apply flipped classroom successfully. when the literature is reviewed, it is seen that some studies have investigated the effect of self-directed learning skills on the success of the learning process and concluded that it has positive effect on online learning process (chou, 2012a, 2012b; corbel, 2003; lai, 2011). it is thought that if a student is able to direct their own learning process, they would have a quite high flipped classroom readiness. nevertheless, some studies show that the flipped classroom environment effects students’ self-directed skill positively (rutkowski & moscinska, 2013) and that the flipped classroom environment increases students’ ability to direct their learning process. flipped classroom is a model that actively seeks to integrate technology into education. according to kol (2012) an individual in the 21st century should possess the following characteristics: benefitting from technology efficiently, enterprising, productive, innovator, conscious of responsibilities, self-realized and open to change. as previously mentioned, in flipped classroom, students are required to access to online video lectures and some applications such as moddle, khan academy, edpuzzle, etc. to learn the subject prior to class time. similarly, kim, kim, khera, and getman (2014) emphasize the usage of technology-based materials by students to prepare for class. that’s why, this model requires using technology actively at each step of the process. in the light of findings of the present study, it can be stated that students have high technology self efficacy and this effects their flipped classroom readiness positively. the findings confirm that the participants also have inclass communication self-efficacy. in this respect, when similar studies in the literature regarding the effect of strong communication between teacher and students on flipped classroom success are examined al-harbi and alshumaimeri (2016); chen, wang, and chen (2014); clark (2013); mclean, attardi, faden, and goldszmidt (2016); alsancak (2015) & turan (2015) it can be seen that strong communication between both teacher and students and students and students has a positive effect on flipped classroom success. moreover, flipped classroom improves teacher-students and students-students relationships. similarly, iyitoğlu (2018) conducted a study and stated that flipped classroom strengthens the relationship between teacher and students and provides a flexible asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 505-513 512 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group learning environment. a study carried out by steen-utheim and foldnes (2018) stated that in flipped classroom, students feel themselves more valuable, take part in productive group activities, have a closer relationship with their teacher, and cooperate with their teacher and friends. in addition, cibik (2017); roach (2014); wimpenny and savin-baden (2013) found in similar studies evidence supporting these findings. pishghadam, shayesteh, and rahmani (2016) showed that to become successful, students’ motivation has critical importance in terms of their learning strategies and identity development. as it is well known, active learning is one of the ways of increasing motivation (day & foley, 2006). in flipped classroom, the major responsibility of in-class and out of class time is given to students, not teachers. bergmann and sams (2012) clearly state that learners are responsible for watching online video lectures, asking questions, completing preparations and sharing; furthermore, teachers are charged with guiding and giving feedback when needed. literature review confirms that the more students have motivation for learning, the more they have flipped classroom readiness. this study confirms that participant students have high motivation for learning, so that it is possible to say their readiness for flipped classroom is positive. this model obliges learners to do previews by giving them major responsibility for the learning process. fulton (2012) indicates that students have to do required preparation well before coming to the classroom, similarly, sever (2014) states that in flipped classroom, students should have foreknowledge prior to class time in order to increase success. thus, students being ready for doing previews means that they have high flipped classroom readiness. in flipped classroom, technology is used actively, moreover, use of a computer and access to the internet are two main factors for success with this model. when the findings of the study are examined, it is seen that students who have computer and internet access have more flipped classroom readiness in comparison to ones who don’t. flipped classroom consists of in-class and out of class activities. out of class activities are undertaken with the aid of a computer and the internet. lessons can be recorded on video so that students can watch them after class (missildine, fountain, summers, & gosselin, 2013; o'flaherty & phillips, 2015). in addition, watching these videos on a computerised device positively effects their flipped classroom readiness. this study concludes that students who perceive themselves proficient in the use of technological devices are more flipped classroom ready than their peers who think they only have middling proficiency or who define themselves being insufficiently proficient. flipped classroom is described as a teaching process that is carried out at home and requires use of the internet, and that reinforces students’ self-directed learning with such activities as debates, peer or group activities in class (kara, 2015). in order for students to undertake previews, they must be able to make efficient use of technological devices and it is expected that students who are proficient in the use of technology are more flipped classroom ready. in the light of this study the following recommendations are offered: • in order to achieve flipped classroom well, all students’ should be able to study using a basic internet enabled computing device. • students who perceive themselves insufficient in using technology, should be assisted to acquire basic competence in using a computer and learning materials via the internet. • in this study, data was collected by means of a scale, but further experimental studies can be carried out to determine other factors effecting flipped classroom readiness. • this study considered the flipped classroom readiness of 5th and 8th grade students. new and original studies should be carried out with learners at other levels. • this study only analysed the flipped classroom readiness of students. future studies may examine the flipped classroom readiness of teachers. references al-harbi, s. s., & alshumaimeri, y. a. 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(2015). the evaluation of flipped classroom method and examination of its effects on academic achievement, cognitive load and motivation. unpublished doctoral dissertation. erzurum: atatürk university, institute of educational sciences. wimpenny, k., & savin-baden, m. (2013). alienation, agency and authenticity: a synthesis of the literature on student engagement. teaching in higher education, 18(3), 311-326. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2012.725223. zappe, s., leicht, r., messner, j., litzinger, t., & lee, h. (2009). flipping the classroom to explore active learning in a large undergraduate course. paper presented at the proceedings of the 2009 american society for engineering education annual conference and exhibition. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.flippedlearning.org/cms/lib07/va01923112/centricity/domain/41/litreview_flippedlearning.pdf http://www.flippedlearning.org/cms/lib07/va01923112/centricity/domain/41/litreview_flippedlearning.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v15i08.12525 http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v15i08.12525 54 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 2, 54-58, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4706 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the contribution of the hidden curriculum to gender inequality in teaching and learning materials: experiences from tanzania bertha erasto losioki1 hemed karani mdee2 ( corresponding author) 1department of psychology and curriculum studies, the mwalimu nyerere memorial academy dar es salaam, tanzania. email: bertha.losioki@mnma.ac.tz 2department of education foundations, the mwalimu nyerere memorial academy dar es salaam, tanzania. email: mdeehemed@gmail.com abstract this study aimed to examine the contribution of the hidden curriculum to gender inequality in teaching and learning materials. despite the efforts to have an official curriculum through school textbooks and learning materials. the hidden curriculum continued to encourage gender inequality through teaching and learning materials. the study examined the content and portrayal of males and females in primary school social studies textbooks. the study used a qualitative research approach and the documentary review method was used to gather information from books, published articles, and policy documents. the findings show that there was an improvement in addressing gender inequality in textbooks and learning materials. the findings show that the visibility and representation of females in textbooks have increased. however, gender roles were portrayed in stereotypical ideas and images that encourage gender bias. the study concluded that teaching and learning materials encourage a hidden curriculum that facilitates the underrepresentation of females and males in textbooks. therefore, the government in collaboration with the relevant authorities should ensure that the development of teaching and learning materials considers gender-responsive content and gender balance in role allocation. there is a need to increase awareness among reviewers and book authors on gender sensitivity in the preparation of teaching and learning materials in order to ensure adherence to gender equality principles. keywords: gender inequality, hidden curriculum, learning materials, official curriculum, tanzania. citation | losioki, b. e., & mdee, h. k. (2023). the contribution of the hidden curriculum to gender inequality in teaching and learning materials: experiences from tanzania. asian journal of education and training, 9(2), 54–58. 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4706 history: received: 24 march 2023 revised: 8 may 2023 accepted: 19 may 2023 published: 30 may 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 55 2. conceptual framework ................................................................................................................................................................... 55 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 56 4. findings and discussions ............................................................................................................................................................... 56 5. conclusion and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................... 57 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 57 mailto:bertha.losioki@mnma.ac.tz mailto:mdeehemed@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i2.4706 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8874-2356 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 54-58 55 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study examined the contribution of the hidden curriculum to gender inequality in teaching and learning materials. the study examined the content and portrayal of males and females in social studies textbooks for tanzania’s primary schools that have not been examined previously in the literature. 1. introduction the curriculum is one of the important policy areas for the promotion of gender equality. it guides schools in implementing teaching and learning from pre-primary, through primary, secondary, tertiary and non-formal education (osaki, 2000). it plays a key role in the production of competent skilled and knowledgeable citizens. it also shows what a learner is expected to learn and achieve including skills, knowledge and understanding. thus, it helps to meet social and economic development in a particular society. moreover, it describes teaching and learning aspects including learning strategies, assessment methods, and intended learning outcomes. it, therefore, includes the learner, the teacher, learning methods, expected and unexpected experiences, outputs, and outcomes within the learning process (boyle & charles, 2016; osaki, 2000; schneiderhan, guetterman, & dobson, 2019). the beijing declaration and platform for action insisted development of curriculum, textbooks, and teaching aids that are gender sensitive at all levels of education (unesco, 2020). however, gender equality has not been adequately reflected in school textbooks and school culture. the hidden curriculum continued to influence educational practices leading to gender inequality and imbalanced gender representation in school textbooks. textbooks are important in the teaching and learning process. they are the source of information and guide learners. however, they greatly encourage gender bias through roles, visibility, and occupations for male and female characters. hence, they contribute to the formation of attitudes, perceptions and social norms for male and female students. they determine behaviours sought to be appropriate for males and females (osipov & sargizova, 2015). the achievement of gender equality in education has been given priority by the tanzania government. policies at the national level consider gender equality as an important aspect of ensuring access to education for all. the tanzania national strategy for gender development and women and gender development policy aims to achieve gender equality and equity in tanzania (united republic of tanzania, 2000, 2011). in addition, the tanzania education policy also targeted to ensure gender equality in education and training (united republic of tanzania, 2014). the tanzania education sector development plan 2016/17 – 2020/21 also aimed to ensure equity by ensuring equal access to knowledge and vocational skills and quality learning opportunities among out-of-school children, illiterate youth and other vulnerable groups (unicef, 2021). despite the efforts to have an official curriculum through school textbooks and learning materials. the hidden curriculum continued to encourage gender inequality through teaching and learning materials and social-cultural norms. it transfers values, attitudes, and skills to learners (kian, ehsangar, & izanloo, 2020). the existing stereotypes and attitudes still favour more education for boys than it is for girls. moreover, there are pedagogical aspects that continued to impede gender equality in education (global partnership education, 2019). likewise, inadequately trained teachers on gender issues, gender-biased curricula, and social and cultural values limit girls’ education (united republic of tanzania, 2011). the main objective of this study was to examine the contribution of the hidden curriculum to gender inequality in teaching and learning materials. the specific objective was to analyse the visibility and portrayal of males and females in primary school social studies textbooks. 1.1. gender inequality in teaching and learning materials the education agenda 2030 insisted on equality for all learners to ensure that every individual had access to education. likewise, sustainable development goal 4 targeted to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote lifelong learning for all (unesco, 2020, 2022). however, gender inequalities are encouraged through power relations, pedagogy, and stereotypical portrayal of male and female roles in curricula, textbooks, and learning materials. females and males are presented in gender-stereotyped roles that disadvantage girls. also, teachers’ beliefs and expectations of girls and boys limit gender equality in school practices and teaching and learning processes in particular. textbooks give a lot of information to students through the contents. however, they unconsciously lead to gender bias. textbooks that are produced still portray gender-based stereotypes and few references to women and girls. for example, despite textbook revision which was done in ethiopia, stereotypes persisted in textbooks due to a lack of training during text review and development. likewise, the same was observed in comoro due to inadequate training and sensitization among textbook developers. thus, women and girls are still portrayed as passive, dependent and in traditional roles (unesco, 2020, 2022). 2. conceptual framework the hidden curriculum as a concept emerged in the twentieth century. it was based on the argument that educators tend to bring their personal cultural biases and social norms into education content and context. it is a very powerful force affecting learners and the learning process. its effects are positive or negative depending on the teaching and learning environment. the hidden curriculum involves unintended lessons and perspectives that learners acquire while learning in school (chapin, 2021). the hidden curriculum is within the structure, process and content of education. figure 1 shows the place of the hidden curriculum in the structure, process and content of education. figure 1 shows that formal curriculum, informal curriculum and hidden curriculum involve activities that are shared during their implementation. a formal curriculum involves formal activities that are allocated in a school timetable and that are taught in specific subjects according to allocated periods for teaching and learning in a school programme. in addition, it is an officially selected body of knowledge that the government through the ministry of education and other bodies want students to learn (kelly, 2004). moreover, an informal curriculum involves activities that are carried out voluntarily for example, after school hours, lunch times, or during holidays (kelly, 2004; morris, 2016). thus, a hidden curriculum is considered a means for gender socialization within schools as it reflects what asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 54-58 56 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group learners are taught from an early age. it involves perceptions of the roles of males and females within the family and school. it encourages stereotypical attitudes that indirectly shape female learners to consciously or unconsciously accept disempowered roles (chapin, 2021). figure 1. the place of the hidden curriculum in the structure, process and content of education. 3. methodology the study used a qualitative research approach to examine the contribution of hidden curriculum to gender inequality in teaching and learning materials. the study used the documentary review method to gather information from educational literature such as books, published articles, and policy documents. in addition, official information from the ministry of education science and technology and other government institutions were also consulted. both written and electronic materials were used to collect information. content analysis was done and the information obtained from various sources was coded and organised into themes based on the study objectives. a gap analysis was done for further research in the future. 4. findings and discussions 4.1. the integration of gender in the teaching and learning materials tanzania through the ministry of education has shown a commitment to ensuring gender equality in education. the national curriculum framework, education sector development programmes, and reforms in primary and secondary schools targeted gender equality in education (united republic of tanzania, 2018, 2019). however, the integration of gender into teaching and learning materials continued to be a challenge. textbooks continued to portray gender bias and stereotypes. the analysis of social studies textbooks for primary school show that there was equal representation of female and male in some textbooks (tet, 2021). these findings suggest that there is an improvement in addressing gender stereotypes to ensure gender equality in textbooks and learning materials. however, gender bias remains a challenge and it still exists in schools textbooks. the study findings show further that there was inadequate gender sensitivity in the content and portrayal of females and males in some textbooks. the activities assigned to boys and girls reflect traditional gender roles. this continues to encourage gender stereotypical ideas, perceptions and attitudes towards male and female gender roles in society. furthermore, there is imbalanced representation in roles related to professionalism and leadership role. the findings show further that males were portrayed as experts in environmental conservation. likewise, male elders were portrayed in leadership roles. it can be argued that balancing the roles can reduce bias and encourages learners to pursue different subject areas of their dreams. it also teaches learners that it is possible to practice different roles irrespective of the gender of an individual. in addition, actions that show good relationships and solidarity among people in society were portrayed by males. for example, such actions were portrayed by boys who were playing football and male who were doing fishing activities. the findings show further that “relationships in society” was portrayed by girls in their traditional gender roles. surprisingly, the characters were portrayed in negative behaviour and actions as they (girls) were quarreling while fetching water in the well. it can be argued that gender stereotypical ideas and perceptions tend to associate females with certain negative actions and behaviour. the concept could have been presented well without gender bias. furthermore, the findings show that females were portrayed as engaging in small entrepreneurial activities. they earn a living by engaging in poultry keeping and selling eggs, poultry meat, and fish. however, males were portrayed as doing mining and fishing activities. it can be argued that the portrayal of females and males reflects activities that were perceived to be appropriate for females and males. females were portrayed in traditional gender roles and whose participation in professional activities was limited and such activities were perceived to be done by males. however, the intended topics could have been presented well with gender sensitivity. other studies also show that power relations and stereotypical portrayal of males and females encourage gender bias and thereby encourage female underrepresentation. other scholars also found that male characters were dominant in textbooks while females were invisible or portrayed in minimalist roles (phan & pham, 2021). in addition, women are less frequently portrayed in professional capacities compared to men. studies have shown further that gender bias in the textbook was in various categories such as visibility, roles, titles, and order of asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 54-58 57 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group appearance and representation of both genders however, it was proved that even females can perform well when they are given opportunities (international bureau of education, 2017; lee & collins, 2006; unicef, 2021). 4.2. factors contributing to gender inequality in curriculum different factors contribute to gender inequality in curriculum development and implementation. these include gender stereotypes in curriculum and teaching, teachers’ inadequate knowledge of gender issues, and school culture. 4.3. gender stereotypes in curriculum and teaching and learning gender stereotypes are reflected in gendered school subjects, and teaching methods, with boys being considered as good in mathematics and sciences while girls being considered as good in arts and humanities subjects. in addition, textbooks portrayed gender bias through the ratio of males and females in textbooks, illustrations, occupations and the frequency of adjectives for men and women (morris, 2016). textbooks encourage a hidden curriculum which facilitates the underrepresentation of females and males in textbooks and pictures. females are portrayed in domestic and indoor activities like playing mothers and caregivers. they are less frequently portrayed in their professional roles compared to their male counterparts. likewise, values, norms and belief systems are transmitted through the hidden curriculum. the existing stereotypes and attitudes still favour education for boys not girls. hence, females remained in more limited social roles compared to their male counterparts. it is emphasized that a gender-responsive curriculum ensures that teaching and learning materials do not perpetuate gender bias and discrimination in society (unesco, 2020; united republic of tanzania, 2000). textbooks can also encourage stereotypes through inappropriate images and descriptions that can make learners feel uncomfortable and misrepresented (kian et al., 2020; nashriyah, maulida, ningsih, & yusuf, 2020). 4.4. inadequate knowledge of gender issues inadequate knowledge among teachers and other educators on gender issues is still limiting the effective implementation of gender equality in schools. teachers’ attitudes, practices and relationships with learners increase gender inequalities indirectly. teachers’ expectations of girls and boys and teachers' attitudes towards gender lead to gender inequality through the gender roles that tend to favour boys (mc cracken, unterhalter, márquez, & chełstowska, 2015). teachers' inadequate knowledge and skills in the integration of gender perspective into the curriculum tend to encourage gender stereotypes and favouritism based on gender and sex. equal teacher treatment of girls and boys in the classroom encourages practices that value and engage each learner in the classroom (kian et al., 2020). hence, teachers’ knowledge of issues that affect the lives of both boy and girl learners is of great importance. 4.5. school culture and cultural norms schools play a crucial role in curriculum development as they are involved in the teaching and learning process and serve as institutions for transmitting social knowledge attitudes and social change. they (schools) also have a role of eradicating gender bias in teaching methods, curricula, teaching and learning processes and ensuring equality in all educational matters. moreover, school practices and activities are expected to encourage and promote selfesteem, respect and assertiveness among learners. however, cultural norms affect girls’ active participation in school activities as well as their school achievement. cultural norms encourage traditional gender stereotypes such as teachers’ attitudes and expectations of girls and boys that affect gender equality negatively. schoolculture is expected to encourage a shared vision, and ensure overall well-being of staff members, and learners, cohesiveness, predictable routines and a sense of control (nashriyah et al., 2020; osipov & sargizova, 2015). 5. conclusion and recommendations the hidden curriculum continued to encourage gender inequality through teaching and learning materials. the findings show that visibility and the representation of females in textbooks have increased. however, gender bias still exists in textbooks. the findings show that textbooks encourage a hidden curriculum which facilitates the underrepresentation of females and males in textbooks. the study recommends that the development of curricula and teaching and learning materials should consider gender-responsive content and gender balance in roles allocation. moreover, there is a need to increase awareness among reviewers and curricula developers to change attitudes and norms that encourage gender bias. the study recommends further studies on other aspects of the hidden curriculum including the contribution of school culture and cultural norms to gender inequality. references boyle, b., & charles, m. (2016). curriculum development: sage publications ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473920330. chapin, j. (2021). untangling the impact of gender in the ‘hidden curriculum’ inasp. retrieved from https://www.inasp.info global partnership education. (2019). achieving gender equality in and through education: knowledge and innovation exchange. retrieved from https://www.globalpartnership.org/sites/default/files/2019-07-kix-gender-final-english.pdf international bureau of education. (2017). training tools for curriculum development: a resource pack for gender responsive stem education. geneva: ibeunesco. ibe/2017/op/cd/05 rev. kelly, a. v. (2004). the curriculum theory and practice (5th ed.). london: sage publication limited. kian, m., ehsangar, h., & izanloo, b. (2020). the effects of hidden curriculum on creativity and social skills: the perspective of elementary schools. social behaviour research & health, 4(1), 487-496. https://doi.org/10.18502/sbrh.v4i1.2828 lee, j. f. k., & collins, p. (2006). gender representation in hong kong english textbooks. paper presented at the paper presented at the 2nd international conference on gender equity education in the asian-pacific region: challenges and possibilities in gender equity education. the hong kong institute of education hong kong. mc cracken, k., unterhalter, e., márquez, s., & chełstowska, a. (2015). empowering women and girls through education. brussels: european parliament. morris, b. m. (2016). curriculum studies guide books: concepts and theoretical frameworks. new york: peter lang inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473920330 https://www.inasp.info/ https://www.globalpartnership.org/sites/default/files/2019-07-kix-gender-final-english.pdf https://doi.org/10.18502/sbrh.v4i1.2828 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 54-58 58 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group nashriyah, n., maulida, r., ningsih, y. s., & yusuf, y. q. (2020). addressing gender bias issues in elementary school efl textbooks. an analysis of grow with english humanities and social reviews, 8(3), 56-63. https://doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2020.837 osaki, k., m. (2000). quality of education in tanzania: a focus on curriculum standards and accountability in schools. paper presented at the apaper presented for heads masters conference on education.11-12 october. osipov, v., & sargizova, j. (2015). general assessment of the content of the armenian literature, armenian history, and social science school subjects from a gender perspective. yerevan: world bank. phan, a., & pham, t. x. (2021). gender stereotypes as hidden curriculum: a case of vietnamese english textbooks. international journal of education, 14(1), 30-38. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i1.30553 schneiderhan, j., guetterman, t. c., & dobson, m. l. (2019). curriculum development: a how to primer. family medicine and community health, 7(2), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1136/fmch-2018-000046 tet. (2021). social knowledge third grade student's book. retrieved from www.tie.go.tz unesco. (2020). global education monitoring report gender report; a new generation: 25 years of efforts for gender equality in education. paris: unesco. unesco. (2022). unesco in action for gender equality 2020-2021. paris: unesco. unicef. (2021). gender equality promising practices in unicef programming in tanzania. dar es salaam: unicef. united republic of tanzania. (2000). women and gender development policy 2000. dar es salaam: ministry of community development gender and children. united republic of tanzania. (2011). national strategy for gender development. dar es salaam: ministry of community development, gender and children. united republic of tanzania. (2014). education and training policy. dar es salaam: ministry of education science and technology. united republic of tanzania. (2018). education sector development plan (2016/172020/21) tanzania mainland. dodoma: ministry of education science and technology. united republic of tanzania. (2019). national strategy for gender development. dar es salaam: ministry of community development, gender and children. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2020.837 https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i1.30553 https://doi.org/10.1136/fmch-2018-000046 www.tie.go.tz 627 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 627-635, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.627.635 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a comparative study of the leadership behavior of freshman and final year undergraduate students mihriay musa usak university, faculty of sport sciences, department of coaching education, usak/turkey. abstract this study was conducted to examine the leadership levels of university students by comparing them according to various variables. in our research, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used with the scanning model. the universe of the study consisted of the freshman and final year undergraduate students studying at akdeniz university in the 2019-20 academic year. a simple random sampling method was used to determine the study group. the research sample determined in this way was composed of 175 students studying in the first and last years of the faculty of sport sciences, teaching, coaching, management, and recreation departments, respectively. in this study, the leadership qualities scale, which was developed by cansoy and turan (2016) and consists of 28 questions, was used. kruskal wallis h test and mann-whitney u tests, which are nonparametric, were used to analyze the data. the leadership level of the students was found to be high. a difference was determined in leadership sub-dimensions. to eliminate these differences; self-confidence levels of teaching, sports management, and recreation department students; the level of responsibility of the students of teaching, coaching and recreation departments; the reliability levels of male students and the persuasion skills of firstyear students should be increased. keywords: sport, leadership, student, behavior, self-confidence, reliability. citation | mihriay musa (2020). a comparative study of the leadership behavior of freshman and final year undergraduate students. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 627-635. history: received: 10 september 2020 revised: 8 october 2020 accepted: 27 october 2020 published: 16 november 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 628 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 628 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 629 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 633 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 634 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.627.635&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2332 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4232-0139 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 627-635 628 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the leadership levels of university students and comparing them according to various variables. 1. introduction compared to the time in the existence of humanity, the equivalent of the concept of “leadership” has come up to the present day with those written on the sanction power and political existence of the british government after the 1850s. on the contrary, "management" in the current time is an advanced phenomenon within the complex of activities that emerged in the recent era. also, it is the behavior of the world, whose focus is work, as a model person who is respected as a "manager" (m. bayansalduz., afyon, kepoglu, dalli, & mulazimoglu, 2014; bingol & bayansalduz, 2016; can, soyer, & bayansalduz, 2009). leadership is the behavior of an individual who manages the activities of the group to achieve a common goal (hemphill & coons, 1957). leadership is "the process of interpersonal interaction and orientation that emerges in the direction of achieving a certain goal or goals through communication" (tannenbaum, weschler, & massarik, 1961). leadership is "the process of influencing the activities of a group organized to achieve a predetermined goal" (rauch & behling, 1984). four basic elements are emerging in leadership definitions. these are purpose, leader, audience and environment of 4 basic elements; we can define goals as interests and needs that bring group members together and keep them connected; leader as the organizational element that can influence the elements that make up the group; followers (members) as people who acknowledge the leader's influence; environment as the competence of the members, the level of relationships, the realization of the goals, and the level of motivation (bayansalduz., m., 2014; eraslan, ozmaden, bayansalduz, goktepe, & koc, 2015). leader; an individual given a formal status by election, appointment, succession, transfer or other means; leadership means the achievement of behaviors that help the group reach its goal by one or more people in a group (baykal, 1995). although the word “onderlik” was suggested in turkish as an equivalent to this concept, which passes from the english word "leadership" to turkish as leadership; the word “leadership” is generally used (sisman, 1997). kouzes and posner in their research, the six most important characteristics that an effective leader should have; to be honest, to have a vision, to be able to mobilize others, to be self-confident, to be open-minded and supportive (cacioppe, 1997). gender is characterized as the innate differences between men and women. it is known that there are psychological and cultural differences between women and men in society, apart from biological differences. studies suggest that the leadership traits of men are more dominant. on the other hand, results have been obtained that the leadership characteristics of women are slightly lower than men. the reason for this was determined to be due to gender differences. gender is biological. the transition to social life is determined socially. it describes the biological psychological and sociological characteristics of women and men. thus, the gender inequality of society becomes natural with the characteristics of femininity and masculinity attributed to the gender (adacay, 2014; akpinar, bayansalduz, & toros, 2012; sahin, 2019). in our study, we will evaluate the leadership values of students on the following main characteristics that a leader should have. persuasion skill: leaders should have a personality that paves the way for people, creates a sense of loyalty among them, creates a feeling of turning towards the same goal and making it a struggle to achieve that goal, he should have a different color, depth, mental and social abilities, communication and persuasion skills than ordinary people, and see others’ benefits above his interests (findikci, 2009). a leader has to be effective in both verbal and non-verbal communication, that is, in interpersonal communication. leadership requires a leader to be able to impose himself on the people around him, to listen to his words, to direct them and to communicate effectively with them (gezgin & yalcin, 2018). self confidence: leaders know what they want, do more than their goals. it means struggling with difficulties, struggling for ideals, working towards achieving goals and looking to the future with confidence (bayansalduz, 2012; konter, ng, & bayansalduz, 2013; yukl, 2010). ability to work with a group: it is the ability to direct a team or a group or an individual, to start an activity, to organize and plan, to take responsibility, to coordinate, to encourage others, to set goals, to play a positive role as a team or group member. leaders set goals and focus the group on a common vision. at the same time, leaders share, act respectfully, and resolve conflicts (adair., 2011). trustworthiness: this feature is the integrity and values of the individual's behaviors and actions, the soundness of his moral character, makes him a reliable person (adair, 2003; northouse, 2010; yukl, 2010). confidence behavior is one of the important characteristics for interacting with the people around (derks, lee, & krabbendam, 2014; soyer, bayansalduz, & toros, 2012). it is helping others, sharing and listening to troubles, building intimate relationships based on trust. problem solving skills: this skill is defining the problem in real terms, determining appropriate information or limitations, presenting possible options or solutions, solving the problem, controlling the solution and sharing the results (oecd, 2014). responsibility: it is the responsibility of individuals and groups for the well-being of others (dugan & komives, 2007). leaders should be interested in social problems, work for their country, respect the rights of others, and be aware of their obligations. 2. method this research is in scanning model. the measurement tools used in the study, the research model, population and sample, data collection tools, data collection, statistical methods for data analysis and data analysis are included. the study was conducted in a scanning model. survey models are a research method designed to examine the past or present in the sample group selected from the universe containing large groups (karasar, 1999). the main body of the study was applied to 1st and 4th grade students studying at akdeniz university, faculty of sport sciences, physical education and sports teaching, sports management, recreation and coaching in the 2019-20 academic year. the sample mass of the study consists of 175 people randomly selected from the 1st and 4th grade students of the physical education and sports teaching, recreation, sports management and coaching departments of the faculty of sport sciences of akdeniz university. the leadership qualities scale used in this asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 627-635 629 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group study was developed by cansoy and turan (2016). leadership traits scale was developed on the basis of seven different leadership scales in the literature. as the premise of the scale, 51 items were created within the framework of content validity (expert opinions) and some items were removed from the scale as a result of the applications. as a result of the factor analysis performed later, it was seen that there were 6 sub-dimensions with eigenvalues above 1. in addition, since the factor weights of 23 of the 51 items in the measurement tool were below .45, the final version of the scale was determined as 28 items. the sub-dimensions obtained were named as self-confidence, ability to work with a group, trustworthiness, persuasion skill, problem solving and responsibility, respectively. the scale form has a 5-point likert rating according to the frequency of the behavior shown: always (5), frequently (4), occasionally (3), very rare (2), never (1). it is emphasized that there is a positive and significant relationship among all sub-dimensions (self-confidence, ability to work with a group, trustworthiness, persuasion skill, problem solving and responsibility) in the leadership qualities scale. on the other hand, as a result of the reliability analysis; .83 of self-confidence sub-dimension; the sub-dimension of ability to work with groups .86; reliability subscale .85; the sub-dimension of persuasion capability was .59; the sub-dimension of problem solving. 66 and responsibility sub-dimension was reported to have a cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient of .71. the total cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient of the leadership qualities scale was calculated as .92. the data regarding this validity and reliability reveal that the leadership qualities scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool. it is seen that only the persuasion sub-dimension has an internal consistency coefficient of .59. in the questionnaire application, a personal information form consisting of 7 questions was developed and applied to the students in order to learn the gender, class, number of siblings, department, mother's education status, father's education status and the place where they live. in the data analysis, descriptive statistical methods such as frequency (n), percentage (%), arithmetic mean ( ) and standard deviation (s) were used in data analysis. a single sample t test of 0.05 was used at 0.05 significance level to determine whether the sample mass represents the main mass equally and homogeneously. as a result of the analysis, it was determined that the sample mass represented the main mass equally and homogeneously. (p <0.05). the reliability of the scale in our study cronbach's alpha 0.919, ie 91%, was found to be quite high. in order to determine the validity of the scale related to our study, extraction method: principal component analysis was applied. in the explained total variance table, it is stated that the scale consists of 6 factors, and this factor explains to be measured fact as 1st factor 33,44; 2nd factor 8.22; 3rd factor 6,11; 4th factor 4.53; the 5th factor explained 4.15, and the 6th factor 4.05. in addition, this survey, consisting of 6 factors and 28 questions, measures the leadership level of students at a rate of 60.52%. the shapiro wilk test was used as n> 30 as a result of the normality test performed regarding the data. it was understood that the data did not show normal distribution (p> 0.05). while analyzing the data obtained in this situation, mann whitney u was used to determine whether there was a significant difference between the two groups and the kruskal wallis test at 0.05 significance level to determine whether there was a significant difference between more than two groups. 3. findings table-1..leadership levels of the students. variable n mean sd leadership levels 175 104,38 16,12 note: mean: arithmetic mean, sd: standard deviation. as seen in table 1, students' general leadership levels (x ̅ = 104.38) are at a high level. table-2. leadership levels by demographic characteristics of students. variables groups n mean std. d. gender male 90 104,23 17,85 female 85 104,54 14,16 class 1st grade 88 103,91 15,38 4th grade 87 104,86 16,91 number of siblings none 24 101,46 19,74 1-2 siblings 89 106,04 13,46 3-4 siblings 44 101,18 19,38 5-6 siblings 16 107,63 12,94 7 and more siblings 2 110,00 22,63 department coaching 37 99,81 16,76 sports management 46 107,89 12,88 recreation 35 102,00 14,16 teaching 57 105,98 18,47 mother education status illiterate 9 105,67 11,80 primary 63 103,68 15,33 secondary 37 107,35 12,58 high school 43 104,40 20,13 undergraduate 23 101,00 16,75 father education status illiterate 3 103,00 3,61 primary 44 102,02 12,83 secondary 42 104,31 15,97 high school 54 105,17 18,60 undergraduate 30 106,73 17,47 master phd 2 103,50 3,54 place of accommodation private dormitory 14 104,57 14,20 government dormitory 33 101,18 11,66 house 119 104,96 17,60 apart-house 9 108,22 11,98 note: mean: arithmetic mean, sd: standard deviation. considering students' gender, it can be said that women have higher leadership levels. in terms of class, it can be said that the fourth graders have a higher leadership level. in terms of the number of siblings, it can be said that  asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 627-635 630 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group those with 1-2 siblings have a higher leadership level. in terms of the department, it can be said that the sports management department has a higher leadership level. in terms of mother's education status, it can be said that those whose mothers are secondary school graduates have higher leadership levels. in terms of the father's educational status, it can be said that those whose fathers are graduates have higher leadership levels. in terms of accommodation, it can be said that those staying in apartments have higher leadership levels. table-3. students' leadership sub-dimensions’ levels. leadership sub-dimensions n mean sd sub-dimension of self-confidence 175 29,31 5,29 sub-dimension of ability to work with a group 175 26,77 4,61 sub-dimension of trustworthiness 175 19,32 3,48 sub-dimension of persuasion ability 175 9,82 2,57 sub-dimension of problem solving 175 11,32 2,24 sub-dimension of responsibility 175 7,85 1,63 note: mean: arithmetic mean, sd: standard deviation. it can be said that students have high levels of self-confidence, ability to work with the group, trustworthiness, persuasion ability, problem solving and responsibility sub-dimensions of leadership. table-4. analysis of the differences between students' departments, leadership and leadership sub-dimensions. department n mean x2 sd p leadership scores coaching 37 74,66 8,40 3 0,039 sports management 46 99,66 recreation 35 75,14 teaching 57 95,14 total 175 sub-dimension of self-confidence coaching 37 81,99 8,92 3 0,03 sports management 46 95,6 recreation 35 68,47 teaching 57 97,76 total 175 sub-dimension of ability to work with the group coaching 37 69,74 6,41 3 0,093 sports management 46 91,68 recreation 35 90,31 teaching 57 95,46 total 175 sub-dimension of trustworthiness coaching 37 77,05 5,05 3 0,168 sports management 46 100,87 recreation 35 83,33 teaching 57 87,59 total 175 sub-dimension of persuasion ability coaching 37 78,05 2,40 3 0,494 sports management 46 90,74 recreation 35 85,6 teaching 57 93,72 total 175 sub-dimension of problem solving coaching 37 78,97 5,14 3 0,162 sports management 46 99,34 recreation 35 77,96 teaching 57 90,88 total 175 sub-dimension of responsibility coaching 37 72,73 7,92 3 0,048 sports management 46 96,77 recreation 35 78,93 teaching 57 96,4 total 175 note: mean: arithmetic mean, sd: standard deviation, p>0,05. there is a significant difference between the leadership levels of students and their departments (x2 = 8.40; p = 0.39 <0.05). the students of the sports management department have more leadership characteristics than the students of the other departments. on the other hand, the students of the recreation department also have fewer leadership characteristics than the students of other departments. there is a significant difference between the self-confidence levels of students and their departments (x2 = 8.92; p = 0.30 <0.05). teaching department students have higher self-confidence than other department students. on the other hand, the students in the recreation department have less self-confidence than the students of other departments. there is no significant difference between the students' ability to work with a group and their departments (p> 0.05). there is no significant difference between students' level of trustworthiness and their departments (p> 0.05). there is no significant difference between the persuasion ability levels and departments of students (p> 0.05). there is no significant difference between students' problem-solving levels and their departments (p> 0.05). there is a significant difference between students' levels of responsibility and their departments (x2 = 7.92; p = 0.48; p <0.05). the students of the department of sports management have more responsibility than the students of asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 627-635 631 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group other departments. on the other hand, the students in the coaching department have less responsibility than the students of other departments. table-5. analysis of the difference between students' gender and the levels of “sub-dimension of trustworthiness”. sub-dimensions gender n x s t p ability to work with a group male 90 3,79 ,76 -,752 .130 female 85 3,87 ,63 self-confidence male 90 3,67 ,77 1,04 .218 female 85 3,56 ,63 problem solving male 80 3,80 ,79 -,702 .584 female 78 3,88 ,76 persuasion skill male 90 3,45 ,87 1,44 .807 female 85 3,27 ,85 trustworthiness male 90 3,96 ,72 -1.76 .897 female 85 4,15 ,67 responsibility male 90 3,35 1,01 .176 .964 female 85 3,32 ,97 note: p<0,05, �̅�: mean. as seen in table 5, there was no statistically significant difference between the level of students' ability to work with the group (p =, 130; p <0.05), self-confidence (p =, 218; p> 0.05), problem solving (p =, 584; p> 0.05), persuasion ability (p =, 807; p> 0.05), reliability (p =, 897; p> 0.05), and responsibility (p =, 964; p> 0.05) subdimensions. table-6. analysis of the difference between students’ classes and the levels of the “persuasion ability sub-dimension”. sub-dimensions grade n x s t p ability to work with a group 1st grade 88 3,90 ,69 1,32 .99 4th grade 87 3,76 ,71 self-confidence 1st grade 88 3,51 ,67 -1,19 .47 4th grade 87 3,72 ,73 problem solving 1st grade 88 3,79 ,83 -,829 .07 4th grade 70 3,89 ,71 persuasion skill 1st grade 88 3,26 ,83 -1,63 .47 4th grade 87 3,47 ,89 trustworthiness 1st grade 90 4,10 ,75 .885 .27 4th grade 85 4,00 ,66 responsibility 1st grade 90 3,42 1,01 1.11 .64 4th grade 85 3,25 ,97 note: p>0,05, �̅�: mean. table-7. comparison of the sub-dimensions of the leadership scale of akdeniz university faculty of sport sciences students according to place of accommodation. dimensions place of accommodation n x s sd f p levene p>.05 ability to work with a group private dormitory 14 4,03 0,58 3-171 0,37 .768 1.71 government dormitory 33 3,90 0,50 house 119 3,92 0,74 apart-house 9 4,13 0,41 self-confidence private dormitory 14 3,51 0,45 3-171 0,94 .420 1.70 government dormitory 33 3,46 0,61 house 119 3,65 0,76 apart-house 9 3,81 0,61 problem solving private dormitory 12 3,76 0,81 3-154 1,19 .314 1.15 government dormitory 26 3,40 0,65 house 111 3,70 0,76 apart-house 9 3,68 0,99 persuasion skill private dormitory 14 3,54 0,73 3-171 0,24 .863 1.58 government dormitory 33 3,32 0,80 house 119 3,36 0,92 apart-house 9 3,29 0,53 trustworthiness private dormitory 14 4,15 0,53 3-171 0,56 .641 1.75 government dormitory 33 4,01 0,50 house 119 4,03 0,53 apart-house 9 4,31 0,70 responsibility private dormitory 14 3,28 1,10 3-171 0.83 .472 0.60 government dormitory 33 3,10 0,91 house 119 3,41 0,98 apart-house 9 3,27 1,17 note: p>0,05, �̅�: mean. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 627-635 632 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as seen in table 6, opinions of the students participating in the study on the dimensions of ability to work with a group [t (173) = 1.32, p> .05]; self-confidence [t (173) = 1.19, p> .05]; problem solving [t (173) = -. 829, p> .05]; persuasion skill [t (173) = 1.63, p> .05]; trustworthiness [t (173) =. 885, p> .05], and responsibility [t (173) = 1.11, p> .05] do not differ significantly according to their grades. hence, being fourth grade and first grade do not have a significant determinant role on students' leadership behaviors. as seen in table 7, as a result of one-way variance analysis performed to determine whether there is a difference according to the place of accommodation of the students; it was concluded that the mean scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of ability to work with groups [f (3-171) = 0.37; p> .05]; self-confidence [f (3-171) = 0.94; p> .05] problem solving [f (3-171) = 1,19; p> .05] and persuasion ability [f (3-371) = 0.24; p> .05]; trustworthiness [f (3-171) = 0.56; p> .05]; and responsibility [f (3-171) = 0.83; p> .05] did not differ significantly in terms of their accommodation. table-8. comparison of the leadership characteristics sub-dimension scores of akdeniz university faculty of sport sciences students according to the number of siblings of the students. dimensions number of siblings n x s std. d. f p ability to work with a group none 24 3,84 0,77 3-171 1,19 ,315 1-2 89 3,99 0,58 3-4 44 3,81 0,82 5 and more 18 4,09 0,52 self-confidence none 24 3,52 0,91 3-171 2,12 ,315 1-2 89 3,69 0,60 3-4 44 3,43 0,78 5 and more 18 3,83 0,63 problem solving none 24 3,60 0,81 3-154 ,078 ,972 1-2 82 3,64 0,72 3-4 39 3,69 0,88 5 and more 16 3,68 0,68 persuasion skill none 24 3,19 0,79 3-171 ,586 ,625 1-2 89 3,44 0,87 3-4 44 3,34 0,90 5 and more 18 3,29 0,87 trustworthiness none 24 3,94 0,76 3-171 ,778 .541 1-2 89 4,10 0,62 3-4 44 3,95 0,84 5 and more 18 4,18 0,57 responsibility none 24 3,22 1,12 3-171 1,06 .377 1-2 89 3,34 0,92 3-4 44 3,40 1,10 5 and more 18 3,09 0,82 note: p>0,05, �̅�: mean. table-9. comparison of the leadership characteristics sub-dimension scores of akdeniz university faculty of sport sciences students according to the education levels of mothers of the students. dimensions mother education status n x s std. d. f p ability to work with a group illiterate 9 4,25 0,24 4-140 1,01 ,401 primary 63 3,93 0,68 secondary 37 4,03 0,57 high school 43 3,89 0,80 undergraduate 23 3,78 0,63 self-confidence illiterate 9 3,61 0,52 4-170 ,298 ,879 primary 63 3,58 0,70 secondary 37 3,71 0,54 high school 43 3,63 0,86 undergraduate 23 3,52 0,71 problem solving illiterate 9 3,57 0,75 4-170 ,161 ,958 primary 59 3,62 0,68 secondary 30 3,72 0,70 high school 38 3,70 0,82 undergraduate 22 3,60 0,99 persuasion skill illiterate 9 2,85 1,05 4-170 1,82 ,126 primary 63 3,34 0,77 secondary 37 3,57 0,87 high school 43 3,44 0,85 undergraduate 23 3,14 1,00 trustworthiness illiterate 9 4,53 0,42 4-170 1,28 ,279 primary 63 4,01 0,56 secondary 37 4,09 0,74 high school 43 4,03 0,76 undergraduate 23 3,94 0,67 responsibility illiterate 9 3,27 0,79 4-170 ,106 ,980 primary 63 3,30 0,90 secondary 37 3,31 0,96 high school 43 3,41 1,01 undergraduate 23 3,34 1,30 note: p>0,05, �̅�: mean. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 627-635 633 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as understood in table 8; the mean scores obtained in terms of ability to work with a group [f (3-171) = 1.19; p> .05]; self-confidence [f (3-171) = 2.12; p> .05] problem solving [f (3-171) =, 78; p> .05]; persuasion skill [f (3-171) = 0.58; p> .05] trustworthiness [f (3-171) = 0.56; p> .05]; and responsibility [f (3-171) = 0.83; p> .05], which are the sub-dimensions of the leadership qualities scale do not differ significantly in terms of number of siblings. as can be seen in table 10, participants' mean scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of ability to work with groups [f (4-170) = 1.01; p> .05]; self-confidence [f (4-170) = 0.29; p> .05] problem solving [f (4-170) = 0.16; p> .05]; persuasion skill [f (4-170) = 1.82; p> .05] trustworthiness [f (3-171) = 1.28; p> .05] and responsibility [f (3-171) = 0.10; p>.05] do not differ significantly in terms of the education levels of the mothers of the students. table-10. comparison of the leadership characteristics sub-dimension scores of akdeniz university faculty of sport sciences students according to the education level of fathers of the students. dimensions father education status n x s sd f p ability to work with a group illiterate 3 4,53 0,25 5-169 ,613 ,690 primary 44 3,91 0,56 secondary 42 3,92 0,72 high school 54 3,89 0,76 undergraduate 30 4,02 0,63 master 2 3,95 0,21 self-confidence illiterate 3 3,25 0,12 5-169 ,825 ,534 primary 44 3,46 0,56 secondary 42 3,66 0,70 high school 54 3,68 0,81 undergraduate 30 3,67 0,75 master 2 3,87 0,00 problem solving illiterate 3 3,53 0,70 5-169 ,461 ,805 primary 41 3,54 0,65 secondary 33 3,63 0,75 high school 49 3,72 0,76 undergraduate 30 3,76 0,93 master 2 3,30 0,98 persuasion skill illiterate 3 2,44 0,83 5-169 1,11 ,354 primary 44 3,30 0,68 secondary 42 3,38 0,88 high school 54 3,43 0,90 undergraduate 30 3,44 0,94 master 2 2,66 1,88 trustworthiness illiterate 3 3,48 0,80 5-169 .520 ,761 primary 44 3,32 0,66 secondary 42 3,61 0,81 high school 54 3,28 0,93 undergraduate 30 3,44 0,88 master 2 3,66 0,97 responsibility illiterate 3 3,00 0,50 5-169 ,549 ,739 primary 44 3,43 0,83 secondary 42 3,15 0,92 high school 54 3,37 1,01 undergraduate 30 3,43 1,26 master 2 3,00 0,99 note: p>0,05, �̅�: mean. as seen in table 10, participants' mean scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of ability to work with groups [f(5-169)=0.61; p>.05]; self-confidence [f(5-169)=0,82; p>.05]; problem solving [f(5-152)=0,46; p>.05]; persuasion skill [f(5-169)=1,11; p>.05];trustworthiness [f(3-171)=0,76; p>.05]; and responsibility [f(3-171)=0,73; p>.05] do not differ significantly in terms of the education levels of the fathers of the students. 4. discussion and conclusion students' general leadership levels are high. there was no difference between the leadership levels of the students in terms of gender, class, number of siblings, education status of parents, and places of accommodation. in addition, there is a difference in terms of the students' department. the students of the sports management department have a higher level of leadership than the students of other departments. when the leadership levels of the students are examined, it will be seen that the general leadership levels of the students (arithmetic mean: 104.38) are high table 1. in terms of leadership levels according to demographic characteristics; in terms of students' gender, women have higher leadership levels; fourth-graders in terms of the class have higher leadership levels; in terms of the number of siblings, those with 1-2 siblings have a higher leadership level, in terms of the department, the sports management department has a higher leadership level, in terms of mother's educational status, those whose mothers are secondary school graduates have a higher leadership level, fathers with an undergraduate degree in terms of educational status are higher, have a leadership level, in terms of the place of accommodation, it can be said that those who stay in the apartment have a higher leadership level table 2. the insistence absence of women in leadership roles in north america has attracted the attention of authors in the academic literature. there are no women on the list of the 25 most influential canadian business leaders recently in report on business in canada (loughlin & arnold, 2007). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 627-635 634 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group among fortune 500 companies in 2004, the rate of women in executives was around 8% (cappelli & hamori, 2005). however, when we look at the process, there have been significant changes in the number of women in assumed leadership positions in the usa in the past 30 years. the number of female managers increased from 18% in 1972 to 45% in 2000. when we look at the levels of the students’ leadership sub-dimensions, it can be said that the levels of selfconfidence, ability to work with a group, trustworthiness, persuasion skill, problem-solving, and responsibility are high table 3. according to cohen (2014) some students who like risky, exciting, and dangerous experiences during their university years feel the need to stand out from their peers, express themselves, show that they are different, make their own decisions, and stand behind their decisions. when the studies on leadership are examined in the literature, it is seen that the researchers have reached similar results. when looking at the difference between the students’ departments and the leadership and leadership subdimensions, it was seen that there was a significant difference between the leadership levels of the students and their departments (p <0.05). it has been determined that the students of the sports management department have more leadership characteristics than the students of the other departments, on the other hand, the students of the recreation department also have fewer leadership characteristics than the students of the other departments (table 4). there is a significant difference between the self-confidence levels of students and their departments (p <0.05). teaching department students have higher self-confidence than other department students. on the other hand, the students in the recreation department have less self-confidence than the students of other departments. there is a significant difference between the responsibility levels of the students and their departments (p <0.05). the students of the department of sports management have more responsibility than the students of other departments. on the other hand, the students of the coaching department also carry less responsibility than the students of the other departments table 4. when the studies about the department and leadership are examined in the literature, it is seen that the researchers have reached different results. there are also studies where leadership orientation varies according to departments (ozturk, 2017). in terms of sub-dimensions of leadership; there is no difference in the sub-dimensions of the leadership level in terms of the number of siblings, education status of parents, and place of accommodation. in the dimension of selfconfidence, the students of the teaching department know better what they want as leaders, can do more than their goals, fight harder with difficulties, fight harder for their ideals, work adequately to achieve their goals, and look to the future with more confidence. in the study, there is a difference between the responsibility levels of the students and their departments. students of the department of sports management are more responsible for the welfare of others, more concerned with social problems, work more for their country, respect the rights of others, and are more aware of the obligations they bear. they bear more responsibility. according to the results of the study, there is a significant difference between the gender of the students and their level of reliability. female students have more integrity and values in their personal behavior and actions than male students. it can be said that female students are more reliable because their moral characters show more solidity. female students will be able to interact more easily with those around them than male students, as they will provide more self-confidence behavior. it can be said that female students can establish more intimate relationships based on helping others, sharing troubles, and listening and trust. according to this; self-confidence levels of coaching, sports management, and recreation department students; the level of responsibility of the students of teaching, coaching, and recreation departments; reliability levels of male students; first-grade students' persuasion skills should be increased. for these reasons, additional courses on self-confidence, persuasion skill, reliability, and responsibility should be added or this need should be met with seminars. references adacay, f. (2014). gender and development. bursa: ekin publications. adair, j. (2003). the conscise adair on leadership. london: thorogood. adair., j. (2011). the john adair lexicon of leadership: the definitive guide to leadership skills and knowledge. london kogan page limited. akpinar, s., bayansalduz, m., & toros, t. (2012). the study on job satisfaction levels of secondary education teachers in respect of some variables. international journal of academic research, 4(1), 134-138. bayansalduz, m. (2012). analyzing the relationship between task and ego orientation, collective efficacy and perceived coaching behavior: a research on footballers. energy education science and technology part b-social and educational studies, 4(1), 481-494. bayansalduz., m. (2014). an investigation into the state-trait anger expression level of taekwondo students attending high school. the anthropologist, 18(3), 921-926. bayansalduz., m., afyon, y. a., kepoglu, a., dalli, m., & mulazimoglu, o. (2014). examination of self-leadership characteristics of football coaches. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 152(7), 500-502. baykal, d. (1995). a research on leadership styles in organizations and leadership styles of trade union managers. istanbul university master thesis. bingol, e., & bayansalduz, m. (2016). evaluating the level of exercise dependence and psychological resilience of athletes from different branches. the anthropologist, 24(3), 827-835.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09720073.2016.11892079. cacioppe, r. (1997). leadership moment by moment! leadership & organization development journal, 8(7), 335-345.available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/01437739710190648. can, y., soyer, f., & bayansalduz, m. (2009). examining the relationship between job satisfaction of athletes and their feelings of organizational commitment. nigde university physical education and sport sciences journal, 3(3), 228-238. cansoy, r., & turan, s. (2016). youth leadership traits scale: reliability and validity study. turkish education journal, 1(1), 19-39. cappelli, p., & hamori, m. (2005). the new path to the top. harvard business review, 83(1), 25-32. cohen, a. d. (2014). strategies in learning and using a second language: routledge. derks, j., lee, n. c., & krabbendam, l. (2014). adolescent trust and trustworthiness: role of gender and social value orientation. journal of adolescence, 37(8), 1379-1386.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.09.014. dugan, j. p., & komives, s. r. (2007). developing leadership capacity in college students: findings from a national study. a report from the multi-institutional study of leadership. college park, md: national clearinghouse for leadership programs. eraslan, m., ozmaden, m., bayansalduz, m., goktepe, m., & koc, i. (2015). investigation of the level of assertiveness in hearing-impaired athletes according to various variables. international journal of multidisciplinary academic research, 2(2), 50-57. findikci, i. (2009). servant leadership. istanbul: alfa publication. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 627-635 635 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group gezgin, s., & yalcin, s. (2018). leadership and communication ”, (ed: suat gezgin), dialectic view to media and communication (pp. 29-47). istanbul: egitim publication. hemphill, j., & coons, a. (1957). development of leader behaviour description questionnaire ed. r.m.stogilla.e. coons, leadcr be/iavioiir: its descriptioii and measurenient (pp. 7). colombus: ohio state university. karasar, n. (1999). scientific research method. ankara: nobel publication. konter, e., ng, j., & bayansalduz, m. (2013). revised version of sport courage scale for children. energy education science and technology: social and educational studies part b, 5(1), 331-340. loughlin, c., & arnold, k. a. (2007). seeking the best: leadership lessons from the military. human resource management, 46(1), 147-167. northouse, p. g. (2010). leadership: theory and practice (5th ed.). ca: sage publications. oecd. (2014). pisa 2012 results: creative problem solving; students' skills in tackling real-life problems (vol. 5). pisa: oecd publishing. ozturk, k. e. (2017). examining the leadership orientations and self-confidence behaviors of physical education and sports college students. master thesis inonu university health sciences institute, malatya. rauch, c., & behling, o. (1984). functionalism: basis alternate approach to the study of leadership, ed. j.g.hunt-d.m.hosking, c.a. schriesheim, r.stewart, leaders and managerk: international perspectives on managerial behaviour and leadership (pp. 46). new york: pergamon pres. sahin, t. (2019). the effect of positive teacher-student relationship on physical education classes in secondary school students. internetional jounarl of sport cultere and science, 7(2), 42 52. sisman, m. (1997). raising future leaders and leadership in education ", 21st century leadership symposium (pp. 162). istanbul: naval academy. soyer, f., bayansalduz, m., & toros, t. (2012). satisfaction of psychological needs and intrinsic motivation for sport in university students. energy education science and technology part b-social and educational studies, 4(4), 2517-2522. tannenbaum, r., weschler, i. r., & massarik, f. (1961). leadership and organization. new york: mcgraw-hill. yukl, g. a. (2010). leadership in organizations (7th ed.). new jersey: prentice. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 70 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 70-73, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.70.73 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the washback effect of reformed cet 6 listening comprehension test xie jiamin1 lu jinyan2 ma tianyi3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3,4faculty of educational studies, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia. abstract in china, the english test band 6 (cet6) is a national test that is used to assess the english proficiency of test-takers by the state with unified questions, unified fees, and unified organization of tests. it is held twice a year. this test has had a great impact on college students and college teachers. it was introduced in 1978. in 2016, the ministry of education reformed cet-6, especially in listening tests. the reformed listening test not only brings scenes and dialogues closer to daily life but also emphasizes the examination of students' comprehensive english listening and speaking ability. from the perspective of learners, this paper draws on the theoretical models and empirical results of washback at home and abroad and studies the backwash of the reformed english cet-6 listening to learners' listening learning through a questionnaire. to do the survey, the paper was surveyed by quantitative research methods with 60 samples in several public universities. after the collection and analysis of data, the authors have affirmed and determined this test has a significant washback effect on student learning. keywords: cet-6, reformed listening comprehension test, washback, english listening learning, language assessment, listening test. citation | xie jiamin; lu jinyan; ma tianyi (2021). the washback effect of reformed cet 6 listening comprehension test. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 70-73. history: received: 30 november 2020 revised: 4 january 2021 accepted: 21 january 2021 published: 10 february 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 2. literature review .............................................................................................................................................................................. 71 3. main research .................................................................................................................................................................................. 72 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 72 5. short conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 73 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 73 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.70.73&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2649 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6495-0086 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1666-611x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3950-7023 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 70-73 71 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this article makes up for the gap in the field of the washback effect of reformed cet-6 listening comprehension, the authors conducted a quantitative research and the found out that this test has a significant influence on student listening learning. 1. introduction according to alderson. and wall (1993) washback is also known as backwash, usually refers to the positive or negative impact of testing on teaching in the field of applied linguistics (cited in li (2018)). its impact can be both positive and negative. recently, this academic term has attracted attention in the fields of education research and language research. in recent years, domestic and foreign researchers have focused on the washback of popular english tests, such as ielts and toefl, test for english majors, and college english test in china. because these are massively popular english exams. researchers believe that these popular tests have a great impact on the teaching and learning of teachers and students. the research results not only guide the correct direction of language teaching but also promote the richness of test washback. these studies have sublimated the teaching methods and learning process to a certain extent. as we all know, in china, cet-4 and cet-6 are national english tests for non-english majors and graduate students. these two tests have been implemented for 42 years since 1978. the college english test has been recognized by society and has become one of the standards for recruiting college graduates by personnel departments at all levels, which has produced certain social benefits. however, compared to previous studies, most scholars have studied the impact of cet-4 backwash on teaching more than cet-6. they ignore the importance of cet-6 and its impact on learning. in the most recent reform in 2016, compared with cet-4, cet-6 can evaluate test-takers' english ability more effectively. especially the listening part is also the biggest change compared with reading, translation, writing, and speaking. it emphasizes listening practice so that teachers and students can realize that language is a tool of communication. moreover, more and more people have gradually begun to pay attention to the cet6 score. this study aims to determine what degree does the reformed cet-6 listening comprehension test exert washback on students’ english learning. 2. literature review alderson and wall (1993) first addressed the washing effect of language testing in detail and in a systematic manner. he put forward fifteen hypotheses of washback effect and outlined the general outline of the research in this field: testing affects teaching, analysis, test material, test process, student study method, study method, pace and order of teaching and learning, degree and depth of teaching and learning, attitudes towards teaching and learning, the essential test has a washback effect. then, the test will have varying degrees and type of repercussive consequences on various teachers and students (alderson & hamp-lyons, 1996). hughes (1989) described the washback as "the influence of language testing on teaching and learning" and emphasized the positive and negative impacts on teaching and learning of language tests (p. 1). prodromou (1995) claimed washback to influence the test of teaching methods either directly or indirectly. washback is a subset of the effect of the test on culture, school programs and people (bachman & palmer, 1996).language assessment techniques also have a major backwash effect on language teaching methods in china (huang, 2019). to date, with the robust advancement of foreign language education, cet-6 has been used as an authoritative language examination in china and as a reference level test to test the examiner's individual and thorough language competence. the college english test is a national english test administered by the ministry of education of china. its purpose is to objectively and accurately measure the actual english ability of college students and provide evaluation services for college english teaching. it is a large-scale standardized test and a "standard-related normreferenced test." yang and weir (1998) mentioned that the college english test (cet) is the national standard test for non-english majors in china. it was put into use in 1987. its purpose is to improve the english quality and english teaching quality of chinese college students, and provide objective and accurate evaluation. since its establishment in 1987, cet has played an important role in my country's english teaching. scholar zhang (2008) believes that among the five abilities of english listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation, listening should be the core and key to sustainable development; only by grasping listening, can students’ independent learning and sustainable learning be solved. the issue of development capacity. after the reform in 2016, the college english band 6 listening test is more demanding, which aims to better detect the listening level of students, maximize the positive backwash effect of the test, and avoid its potential adverse effects. after the reform, the level 6 listening test questions were adjusted as follows: the short dialogue and essay dictation parts were cancelled, and academic lectures were added. the new question type has the following characteristics: (1) the proposition materials are all selected from the original english materials, covering a wide range of topics (2) the speaking speed is faster, the sentence structure is complicated, and there are many long and difficult sentences. (3) the listening materials are only displayed once (chen, 2019). in view of the greater changes in the listening question types of cet-6 after the reform, in order to overcome the negative impact of the test, we should conduct an indepth and comprehensive study on the aftereffect of the test. however, wang (2018) pointed out that, most of washback studies of cet at present are conducted by combining cet 4 with cet 6, and some other researchers just analyzed reformed cet4. after reviewing some international and domestic theoretical researches, li (2018) also found that although many studies have focused on the washback effect of cet-4 listening, ielts listening, toefl listening, there are few theoretical and empirical studies on the washback effect of reformed cet-6 listening comprehension test. consequently, the need has arisen for additional research into this particular area of washback effect of reformed cet-6 listening comprehension test. therefore, this article tries to explore the washback effect of reformed cet-6 listening comprehension test on college students' listening learning behavior. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 70-73 72 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. main research the current study focuses on the latest listening test of the cet-6, following the guidance of previous theoretical and observational studies, as it is viewed as the most updated feature among comprehensions. this chapter includes research purpose, research methods and data collection, questionnaire investigation, and questionnaire design. 3.1. research purpose this study aims to determine to what effect has the reformed cet-6 listening comprehension test been validated for english language learning by students. 3.2. research methods and data collection the research uses a method for investigating the topic of research. the compilation and analysis of data include one form of the method, namely a questionnaire, and the analysis of data is quantitatively performed. the research will collect the data from students who participated in cet6 in december 2020 through a questionnaire survey, and analyze the collected data to further elaborate and demonstrate the backwash effect of the latest band 6 listening test on students. 3.3. questionnaire investigation 3.3.1. participants participants of the questionnaire survey are 60 college students with no major restrictions from several public universities in china. in principle, most public universities in china are required to take the cet-6 exam. these universities have set up college english listening courses. these students are taught a course called "new standard college english listening and speaking" by their english teachers. all college students surveyed participated in the reformed cet-6 at least once. the actual number of participants will be 45 women and 15 men (75% and 25% respectively). 3.4. questionnaire design the design of the questionnaire is used to explore one research question: what's the overall level of the washback effect of reformed cet-6 on students' listening learning? the questionnaire was designed based on the fifteen washback hypotheses developed by alderson and wall in1993 as well as the questionnaire used by lizhuo in 2018. it was divided into two parts. the first part collects personal information, including their gender and whether they have taken the cet-6 which was held in december 2020. another part is multiple choice questions survey three aspects of the overall level of the washback effect. questions 1-4 aims to identify respondents' common perceptions of the reformed listening comprehension, questions 5-17 explore the overall washback of the reformed cet-6 listening comprehension on students' learning, including the influence of cet-6 listening on listening learning behavior and strategies of students, questions 18-20 explore the washback effect of the three different listening questions' types. 4. results and discussion the results of questionnaire investigations will be presented and discussed in this section to identify the washback of the new cet-6 listening comprehension. the first question was designed to identify the main reasons why they attending the new cet-6. as we can see from table 1, the majority of those who take cet 6 is to test their english proficiency, followed by those who think it is helpful for job hunting, and those who take cet6 to meet graduation requirements. from the results of this question, we can know that the cet-6 is important for college students and the washback effect is noticeable. table-1. reasons to take part in cet-6 distribution. options total percentage get credits 7 11.86% meet graduation requirements 24 40.68% test your english level 30 50.85% find a job 27 45.76% interested in it 13 22.03% question 2-4 investigate the common perception towards new cet-6 listening comprehension. 67.8 % of respondents think that the new cet-6 listening comprehension types are very general, only 3.39% of respondents are very satisfied with the new listening comprehension types. 42.37% of respondents perceived the authenticity of cet-6 listening materials such as accent, background sounds is general and only 18.64% feel it quite real. regarding the difficulty of the cet-6 listening test, almost half of the respondents think it is quite hard. table-2. the nature of the impact of the cet-6 listening test. options total percentage completely positive effect 8 13.56% the positive effects outweigh the negative effects 36 61.02% the negative impact is greater than the positive impact 3 5.08% completely negative 0 0% had no effect 12 20.34% other _____ 0 0% asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 70-73 73 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group then comes to question 5, which can explore the washback degree of the new cet-6 listening comprehension. the results are shown in table 2. 61.02% of respondents think that cet-6 listening’ positive effects outweigh the negative effects. therefore, students' perception towards washback of the new cet-6 listening comprehension turns out to be positive. 13.56% of students believe that comprehension generates positive washback. there are 5.08% of students who take the view that the negative impact is greater than the positive impact. however, there are also 20.34% of respondents think that cet-6 listening test did not affect them. in general, the result shows that the washback of the new cet-6 listening comprehension has existed and it has a positive impact on students more than a negative impact. also, 64.41% of students would continue studying listening even after taking part in cet-6, cet6 reference materials /english audiobooks/english news, film, radio, music, and other audio and video materials are the top three choices with the most people choosing them. after taking part in cet 6, 37.29% thought studying listening is very important, and the same proportion took place on the quite important choice, they would still spend at least half an hour on listening study. it is worth mentioning that more than half of the interviewees agree that the cet6 listening test contributes to the improvement of their listening skills. the questionnaire also explores the attitudes of the students to the reformed cet-6 listening test. there are 3 questions. question 11 to question 13 applies to the attitude of students towards the outcomes of the reformed cet-6 listening comprehension. the reactions to the findings of the reformed cet-6 listening test vary from those of questions 11, 12, and 13. however, most agree that after testing they feel anxious to see the high percentage (47,46%) of their choices in question 11 compared to the much higher proportion in question 12 (52,54 %) which aims at examining whether students think a reformed cet-6 listening student must have a high level. however, the percentage figures (37.29 %) of question 13 are comparatively smaller than the percentage of the previous two, but the effects of the reformed cet-6 listening comprehension stimulate the enthusiasm for the english listening learning of college students. in this study, students' learning strategies, including the creation of vocabulary accumulation, listening to english audio resources (broadcasting, television, songs, etc.), knowledge of english culture, and mock-test activities similar to the reformed cet-6 listening comprehension, were examined by the questionnaire. listening strategies for the english learning of students impacted by the reformed cet-6 listening comprehension was quantitatively discussed from question 14 to question 17. question 14, 15, 16, and 17 probe into four distinct strategies for listening learning employed by college students, the percentage of statistics represents a decrease in the frequency of use, from memorizing words (question 14), doing past exam papers or mock-tests (question 17), practicing learning skills via english broadcasts, news or songs (question 15), to learning cultures in english-speaking countries (question 16). extending vocabulary is the first and most basic item to learn to listen to english, which is prevalent among college students. they prefer to do previous cet-6 papers or some mock tests to become familiar with test types and content, as well as to learn english grammar at the same time. the utilization of listening materials in the english edition is 35.59 %, not far from the 37.29 %in question 16. the two most unusually used strategies to enhance english listening are auditory material of 50.85 % in english and statistics of 37.29 % in learning cultures of english-speaking countries. this reformed cet-6 listening comprehension has a profound impact on students' listening learning strategies and increases their listening abilities to obtain a significant result in comprehension through different listening tactics. 5. short conclusion the results of the degree of washback not only further affirm the presence of the washback of the current cet6 listening comprehension test on student learning but also show that this test has a significant influence on student learning. references alderson, j. c., & hamp-lyons, l. (1996). toefl preparation courses: a study of washback. language testing, 13(3), 280-297. alderson., j. c., & wall, d. (1993). does washback exist? applied linguistics, 14(2), 115-129. bachman, l. f., & palmer, a. s. (1996). language testing in practice. oxford: oxford university press. chen, w. (2019). the causes and countermeasures of students' listening anxiety under the background of the reform of cet-6——taking youjiang medical college for nationalities as an example. journal of science education (first half), 2019(7), 186-187. huang, x. (2019). the backwash effect of language testing on professional english learning and teaching. paper presented at the advances in social science, education and humanities research, volume 311. 1st international symposium on education, culture and social sciences (ecss). retrieved from: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. hughes, a. (1989). testing for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. li, z. (2018). a study on the washback of the new cet-6 listening comprehension on students’ listening learning, thesis. prodromou, l. (1995). the backwash effect from testing to teaching. language testing, 49(1), 13-25. wang, c. (2018). research on the backwash effect of college english band 6 after reform. xinjiang university. yang, h., & weir, c. (1998). a study on the validity of college english test band 4 and band 6. shanghai: shanghai foreign language education press. zhang, y. (2008). the general idea of the reform of college english test band 4 and band 6. foreign language circle, no, 5, 24. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 461 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 461-467, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.461.467 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of pre-service teachers’ stress levels towards academic expectations and goal commitment in terms of various variables yesim bayrakdaroglu1 hakan hekim2 ( corresponding author) 1department of physical education and sports, gumushane university, gumushane, turkey. 2physical education and sports teacher education, graduate education institute, sakarya university of applied sciences, sakarya, turkey. abstract this study was carried out with the aim of examining the stress levels towards academic expectations and goal commitment of pre-service teachers (students who are not yet teaching professionally) in terms of various variables. the data were obtained from pre-service teachers (n=465) studying at a public university. in this study, two scales were used to collect data. one was the academic expectations stress inventory developed by ang and huan (2006) and adapted to turkish by akin, abaci, and cetin (2009). the other was the goal commitment scale developed by hollenbeck, klein, o'leary, and wright (1989) in 9 items, revised in 5 items by klein, wesson, hollenbeck, wright, and deshon (2001) and later adapted to turkish by senol and turan (2019). descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one way anova, pearson correlation and simple linear regression were used in the analysis of the data. as a result of the analysis, significant differences were found in the variable of the department in terms of “expectations of self” and “goal commitment” of pre-service teachers. similarly, significant differences were found in the variable of academic grade average in terms of “expectations of self”. in addition, it was observed that goal commitment levels and stress levels of “expectations of parents/teachers” of pre-service teachers were high. at the same time, it was observed that the stress level of “expectations of self” of pre-service teachers was above the middle level, but close to the high level. keywords: goal commitment, academic expectation, stress, pre-service teachers, education, academic stress. citation | yesim bayrakdaroglu; hakan hekim (2020). examination of pre-service teachers’ stress levels towards academic expectations and goal commitment in terms of various variables. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 461-467. history: received: 23 april 2020 revised: 29 may 2020 accepted: 30 june 2020 published: 8 july 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 462 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 462 3. findings / results.......................................................................................................................................................................... 463 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 465 5. recommendation............................................................................................................................................................................ 466 6. limitations ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 466 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 466 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.461.467&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1819 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1460-4780 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8763-8431 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1819 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1460-4780 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8763-8431 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1819 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1460-4780 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8763-8431 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1819 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1460-4780 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8763-8431 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 461-467 462 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the study is to determine the stress levels and target commitment levels of prospective teachers according to academic expectations. as a result, it contributes to the existing literature and examines it in terms of various variables. 1. introduction nowadays, technological and scientific developments arising from globalization are reflected in education, therefore, expectations from education increase in this respect (senol & turan, 2019). education in the world is a very important element in terms of social development. student success is an important outcome indicator in terms of achieving the educational goal (epstein, 2018). however, the desire of educational administrators, teachers, families, and students to achieve academic excellence can be a source of intense stress for many students. in the literature, researches on students’ social and cognitive development indicate that student-teacher interaction perceptions and family relationships affect their educational performance and academic success (sengul, zhang, & leroux, 2019). this situation can be the basic structure of academic stress on students. academic stress appears to be a lifestyle crisis that occurs during the education process of students, especially during exam periods (kadapatti & vijayalaxmi, 2012). academic stress in the educational environment expresses the unpleasant situations that arise due to the many demands of the student's environment (aihie & ohanaka, 2019). in other words, stress arises from the mismatch between supply and demand in the education mechanism. that is, if there is a difference between the expected success level and the resulting success level, there is a possibly stressful situation. at this point, whether the students consider the individuals they are in contact with or the events they experience as a source of stress is the main thing to consider (tekin, cilesiz, & gede, 2019). students who have a successful education life will also contribute to the development of society with the culture they have borekci and uyangor (2018). if these elements are not considered as a source of stress, individuals do not experience stress either. stress is an important factor that will not only affect education life, but also the working life of the individual (kalkin, 2017). the effects of all kinds of sources that cause stress response in the organism are stressors. stressors can appear in different ways such as social events, psychological, physiological, biological, and life events. a significant part of the stressors covers life events (barut, 2019). dedeyn (2008) defined stress as a physical, mental, emotional reaction, or a reaction that requires adaptation, which occurs in case of difference. the physical symptoms caused by stress, when combined with the negative perspective of the individual, lead to more negative thoughts. mental reactions in case of excessive stress occur in the thoughts and feelings of the individual (kennerley, 2017). expectations for students to be academically successful have been positively associated with success and excellence. on the other hand, excessive stress can lead to many features such as distraction and failure, and it can bring negative consequences such as mental health concerns caused by pressures. dedeyn (2008) on the other hand, defined academic stress as a situation caused by emotional and mental pressure and tension that arise due to the requirements of university life. the author expresses the academic stress as the mental, emotional pressure, and tension that the student feels towards the expectations in school life. academic success is of special importance for university students who are at the final stage of education before entering a profession. students are exposed to high stress for many reasons especially in the process that covers the university preparatory period in a private vocational field (calaguas, 2011). individuals aim to do their best to develop their abilities positively, in order to reveal their potentials, without worrying about whether standard criteria are equal for all candidates. thus, individuals try to minimize stressors around them. therefore, individuals’ success goals are determined by comparing them with their competitors and gaining superiority in the criteria previously determined (arends & kilcher, 2010). in order to be successful, it is not enough for individuals to set goals, but they also need to be commitment to this goal. goal commitment is defined as “the individual’s determination and perseverance to reach his goal” (locke & latham, 1990). commitment is an essential condition for goal setting to be successful. in any context, if individuals strive towards the same goal, the individual who adopts his goal and turns it into behavior and is committed to this goal can be one step ahead of his competitors (tugay & aktar, 2019). in this study, answers to the following research questions were sought by addressing the phenomenon of stress and goal commitment experienced by pre-service teachers during the education process: rq1. are there any differences in the stress levels and goal commitment variables of pre-service teachers in terms of gender, department, and academic grade point average? rq2. is there a relationship between “goal commitment scores” and “stress scores towards the academic expectations” of the pre-service teachers? 2. methodology 2.1. sample size in this study, a total of 295 female and 170 male pre-service teachers (students who are not yet teaching professionally) studying at mugla sitki kocman university, a state university in turkey, voluntarily participated. 2.2. measurement instruments to measure goal commitment, the goal commitment scale developed by hollenbeck et al. (1989) in 9 items, later revised in 5 items by senel. and yıldız (2016) and finally adapted to turkish by senel. and yıldız (2016) was used. scale statements were measured with a 5-point likert rating (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree). to measure the academic expectation stress of the participants, the academic expectations stress inventory developed by ang and huan (2006) and later adapted to turkish by akin et al. (2009) was used. this scale has two subdimensions called expectations of parents/teachers (5 items) and expectations of self (4 items). scale statements were measured with a 5-point likert rating (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 461-467 463 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. statistical analysis the data obtained were analyzed using the spss 22.0 windows program. the demographic and educational information of the participants were analyzed with descriptive statistics (percentage and frequency). the reliability of “the expectations of parents/teachers” sub-dimension of the academic expectations stress inventory was found to be 0.836, for “the expectations of self” sub-dimension was found to be 0.734. the reliability of the goal commitment scale was found to be 0.720. these values indicate that all the scales are highly reliable. independent t-test was used to compare the scale scores by gender, and one way anova analysis was used to compare the department and overall academic grade averages. pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the relationships between the variables, and simple linear regression analysis was used to determine the effect of goal commitment on the sub-dimensions of academic expectations stress inventory. 3. findings / results the findings obtained from the analyses conducted within the framework of the purpose of the study are presented in tables and the values are interpreted. table-1. frequency and percentage distributions for gender and education information of the participants. variables categories f % gender female 295 63.4 male 170 36.6 department physical education and sports teaching 60 12.9 computer and teaching tech 50 10.8 educational sciences 50 10.8 fine arts 50 10.8 mathematics and science 50 10.8 special education 50 10.8 social sciences and turkish 50 10.8 basic training 50 10.8 foreign languages 55 11.8 overall academic grade point average 1.00 – 1.99 117 25.2 2.00 – 2.99 226 48.6 3.00 – 4.00 122 26.2 note: p<0.01 table 1 indicates that 295 (63.4%) of pre-service teachers are female and 170 (36.6%) are male. when analyzed in terms of departments, it is seen that 12.9% of participants are pre-service teachers of the physical education and sports teaching department. in addition, 10.8% are pre-service teachers in the computer and teaching tech department, 10.8% are pre-service teachers in the educational sciences department, 10.8% are pre-service teachers in the fine arts department, 10.8% are pre-service teachers in the mathematics and science department, 10.8% are pre-service teachers in the special education department, 10.8% are pre-service teachers in the social sciences and turkish department, 10.8% are pre-service teachers in the basic training department, and 11.8% are pre-service teachers in the foreign languages department. according to the general academic grade point variable, the overall academic grade point average of 25.2% of pre-service teachers is between 1.00–1.99, 48.6% of them is between 2.00–2.99, and 26.2% of them is between 3.00–4.00. table-2. descriptive statistics of the academic expectations stress inventory and goal commitment scores. scale n x sd expectations of parents/teachers (aesi) 465 4.26 .745 expectations of self (aesi) 465 3.89 .846 goal commitment 465 4.38 .730 note: aesi = academic expectations stress inventory table 2 shows that pre-service teachers’ stress level towards expectations of parents/teacher is at a high level, the stress level of expectations of self is above the medium level but close to the high level, and their goal commitment levels are high. table-3. comparison of academic expectations stress inventory and goal commitment scale scores in terms of gender variable. scale gender n x sd t p expectations of parents/teachers (aesi) female 295 4.28 .686 .043 .384 male 170 4.22 .837 expectations of self (aesi) female 295 3.95 .789 .019 .051 male 170 3.79 .930 goal commitment female 295 4.39 .694 .172 .787 male 170 4.37 .791 note: aesi = academic expectations stress inventory asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 461-467 464 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the gender variable, table 3 shows that there are no statistically significant differences in the stress levels of expectations of parents/teachers, stress levels of expectations of self, and goal commitment levels (p>0.05). table-4. comparison of academic expectations stress inventory and goal commitment scale scores in terms of department variable. scale department n x sd f p expectations of parents/teachers (aesi) physical education and sports teaching 60 4.48 .671 1.714 .093 computer and teaching tech 50 4.40 .648 educational sciences 50 4.15 .921 fine arts 50 4.15 .802 mathematics and science 50 4.26 .752 special education 50 4.23 .613 social sciences and turkish 50 4.10 .731 basic training 50 4.15 .804 foreign languages 55 4.35 .687 expectations of self (aesi) physical education and sports teaching 60 4.09 .805 2.554 .010* computer and teaching tech 50 4.10 .751 educational sciences 50 3.80 .905 fine arts 50 3.51 1.101 mathematics and science 50 3.76 .985 special education 50 4.03 .622 social sciences and turkish 50 3.91 .737 basic training 50 3.91 .728 foreign languages 55 3.87 .787 goal commitment physical education and sports teaching 60 4.69 .648 3.124 .002** computer and teaching tech 50 4.39 .650 educational sciences 50 4.35 .730 fine arts 50 4.16 .764 mathematics and science 50 4.21 .984 special education 50 4.55 .503 social sciences and turkish 50 4.32 .873 basic training 50 4.22 .679 foreign languages 55 4.47 .517 note: aesi = academic expectations stress inventory; **p<0.01; *p<0.05 table 4 indicates that there is no statistically significant difference in the stress levels of expectations of parent/teacher according to the departments of pre-service teachers (p>0.05). on the other hand, it is seen that there are statistically significant differences in the stress levels of the expectations of self, and goal commitment levels of pre-service teachers (p<0.05). post-hoc tukey test was applied to determine from which groups the significant differences originated. according to these test results, in the “expectations of self” variable, the stress levels of pre-service teachers in physical education and sports teaching, computer and teaching tech, and special education departments were found to be significantly higher than those in the fine arts department (p<0.05). according to the post-hoc tukey test results of the “goal commitment” variable, it was observed that the goal commitment levels of pre-service teachers in the physical education and sports teaching department were significantly higher than those in the fine arts, mathematics and science, and basic training departments (p<0.05). table-5. comparison of academic expectations stress inventory and goal commitment scale scores in terms of overall academic grade averages variable. scale grade n x sd f p expectations of parents/teachers (aesi) 1.00 – 1.99 117 4.16 .857 1.356 .259 2.00 – 2.99 226 4.29 .718 3.00 – 4.00 122 4.30 .671 expectations of self (aesi) 1.00 – 1.99 117 3.68 .997 5.143 .006** 2.00 – 2.99 226 3.96 .782 3.00 – 4.00 122 3.96 .771 goal commitment 1.00 – 1.99 117 4.28 .772 1.688 .186 2.00 – 2.99 226 4.41 .749 3.00 – 4.00 122 4.44 .642 note: aesi = academic expectations stress inventory; **p<0.01 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 461-467 465 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the academic grade point average of the pre-service teachers, table 5 shows that there is no statistically significant difference in the stress levels of the expectations of parents/teachers and goal commitment (p>0.05). however, there is a statistically significant difference in stress levels of the “expectations of self” variable (p<0.05). according to the post-hoc tukey test results applied to determine which groups originated from significant differences, in the “expectations of self” variable, the pre-service teachers who had a grade average of “2.00–2.99” and “3.00–4.00” were significantly higher than those with a “1.00–1.99” grade average (p<0.05). table-6. correlation results of the variables. variables expectations of parents/teachers expectations of self goal commitment expectations of parents/teachers r 1 p n 465 expectations of self r .592** 1 p .000 n 465 goal commitment r .431** .332** 1 p .000 .000 n 465 465 note: p<0.01 table 6 indicates that there is a positive and moderately significant relationship between pre-service teachers’ goal commitment levels and expectations of parent/teacher stress levels (r=.431; p<0.05). in addition, there is a positive and low level of a significant relationship between goal commitment levels and stress levels of expectations of self (r=.332; p<0.05). table-7. regression analysis results of the effect of the goal commitment on “expectations of parents/teachers” sub-dimension of the academic expectations stress inventory. variable b std. error β t p constant 2.332 .190 12.275 .000 goal commitment .440 .043 .431 10.279 .000 r=.431; r2=.186; f(1.464)=105.66; p=.000 note: p<0.01. table 7 shows that pre-teachers’ goal commitment has an explanatory effect of 18.6% (r2=.186) on the stress level towards the expectations of parents/teachers, and this effect is statistically significant. table-8. regression analysis results of the effect of goal commitment on “expectations of self” sub-dimension of the academic expectations stress inventory. variable b std. error β t p constant 2.207 .226 9.776 .000 goal commitment .384 .051 .332 7.561 .000 r=.332; r2=.110; f(1.464)=57.173; p=.000 note: p<0.01. table 8 indicates that pre-service teachers’ goal commitment has an explanatory effect of 11.0% (r2=.110) on the stress level towards the expectations of self, and this effect is statistically significant. 4. conclusion the results of this study indicated that pre-service teachers’ stress level towards “expectations of parents/teachers” was a high level, stress level towards “expectations of self” was above the mid-level but close to the high level. similarly, the goal commitment of pre-service teachers was high level. since university students are in the transition phase from youth to adulthood, they face various social, professional, individual duties, and responsibilities. particularly, students’ feelings of responsibility towards their families and teachers can be shown as the reason for being under stress. in this study, according to the gender variable, no statistically significant difference was observed in the stress levels of “expectations of parents/teachers” and “expectations of self”, and “goal commitment” levels of the preservice teachers. in a study performed by sharma and kaur (2011) it was found the level of academic stress experienced by female students was higher than male students. misra, crist, and burant (2003) in their study on 143 international student samples, investigated the reactions between the 4 structures named life stress (primary stress), academic stress factors (secondary stressor), perceived social support (stress agent), and stress factors (stress result). the results of the study indicated that there was no significant difference in academic and life stressors by gender. however, women showed higher reactions to stressors than men. higher academic stress levels, higher life stress levels, and lower social support levels were observed. when similar studies on the subject of the research were examined, it was found that females experience higher levels of academic stress than males (calaguas., 2013; durak-batigun & atay-kayis, 2014; sun, dunne, hou, & xu, 2013; yildiz, senel, & can. s, 2016). in a study conducted by onturk, bingol, goksel, and caglayan (2018) on goal commitment, there was no significant difference in the relationship between gender variable and goal commitment. in our study, there was no statistically significant difference in the stress levels of the “expectations of parents/teachers” according to the department’s variable. however, there were statistically significant differences asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 461-467 466 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in “goal commitment” and stress levels of the “expectations of self”. on the other hand, it was seen that the stress level of students who were educated in physical education and sports teaching, computer and teaching tech, and special education departments were significantly higher than the students studying in the fine arts department. according to the results of the goal commitment variable, it was observed that the goal commitment levels of the students studying in the department of physical education and sports teaching were significantly higher than the students studying in the departments of fine arts, mathematics and science, and basic training. according to the academic grade point average of the pre-service teachers, there was no statistically significant difference in goal commitment and the stress levels of the expectations of parents/teachers. however, there was a statistically significant difference in stress levels of the expectations of self-variable. in the expectations of selfvariable, the pre-service teachers who had a grade average of “2.00–2.99” and “3.00–4.00” were significantly higher than those with a “1.00–1.99” grade average. conditions such as forcing himself/herself to be “the best” or doing the “best” and expecting too much from himself/herself can be reasons that increase the stress level of pre-service teachers. in this study, there was a positive and moderately significant relationship between pre-service teachers’ goal commitment levels and expectations of parent/teacher stress levels (r=.431; p<0.05). in addition, there was a positive and low level of a significant relationship between goal commitment levels and stress levels of expectations of self (r=.332; p<0.05). in addition, pre-service teachers’ goal commitment had an explanatory effect of 11% (r2=.110) on the stress level towards the expectations of self, and this effect was statistically significant. according to the results of this study, it can be said that goal commitment has a predictive effect on academic stress levels. accordingly, it can be said that goal commitment is an effective factor on pre-service teachers and increases the level of stress towards academic expectations. according to these results, pre-service teachers should be informed about stress and informative and educational activities should be organized about ways to deal with stress. 5. recommendation in future studies, different scales of the participants can be used to investigate the stress levels of prospective teachers towards academic retention and to determine the mediator role. 6. limitations we think that not being able to determine detailed personal characteristics is one of the limitations of this study. besides, different demographic features to be used can be added to the personal information form in order to determine the differences between the findings. working with larger sample groups, comparing multiple branches, regions, and universities will also contribute to the literature. references aihie, o. n., & ohanaka, b. i. 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(2016). investigation of pre-service teachers' perception of academic support and stress levels towards academic expectations. trakya university journal of social sciences, 18(1), 271-282. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 520 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 520-526, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.520.526 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group occupational anxiety of prospective physical education and sports teachers in turkey zeki coşkuner1 fatih mehmet uğurlu2 ( corresponding author) 1,2ph.d., firat university, faculty of sports sciences, turkey. abstract this study was conducted to reveal the occupational anxiety levels of prospective physical education and sports teachers in turkey. the sample of the study consisted of 354 prospective teachers who were chosen by the random sampling method from four universities. the “occupational anxiety scale” was used to collect the data from the sample group in the study. the “independent samples t-test”, which is one of the parametric tests, was conducted to reveal the differences according to the gender variable while another parametric test, the “one-way variance analysis”. furthermore, the “pearson correlation analysis” was conducted to determine the nature and the level of correlation between dependent variables. in the study, statistically significant differences were observed between the groups in the subscale of “occupational exam” according to the gender variable. according to the variable of the grade level, significant differences were observed between the groups in the subscale of “adaptation”. as a result of the correlation analysis, it was observed that the subscales of “occupation” and “job orientation” were positively and very strongly correlated, which was also the strongest correlation in the analysis. on the other hand, the weakest correlation was determined to be between the subscales of “occupational exam” and “colleagues and parents”, which was a positive and weak correlation (p<0.05). it was discovered that the occupational anxiety of prospective teachers was generally based on the occupational exam and adaptation. keywords: sport, anxiety, occupational anxiety, prospective, physical education, sports teacher, anxiety scale. citation | zeki coşkuner; fatih mehmet uğurlu (2020). occupational anxiety of prospective physical education and sports teachers in turkey. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 520-526. history: received: 25 may 2020 revised: 30 june 2020 accepted: 19 august 2020 published: 28 august 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 521 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 521 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 522 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 522 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 525 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.520.526&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2049 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3955-8525 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6830-4383 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 520-526 521 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study was conducted to reveal the occupational anxiety levels of prospective physical education and sports teachers in turkey. 1. introduction education systems cover three intertwined elements (students, teachers, and education programs) and teachers are the most important element of education systems among these three elements (atmaca, 2013; donmuş, akpunar, & eroğlu, 2017; mergen, arslan, mergen, & arslan, 2014). the profession of teaching, which facilitates the transfer of universal and local cultural heritage to new generations, the emergence of individuals’ skills, and gaining new knowledge and skills, has a distinct place from other professions in every society. to practice a profession with such significance, teachers are required to possess characteristics such as patients, devotion, and intentness (capa & cil, 2000; güven, 2010). although anxiety, which significantly influences an individual’s performance, is defined as a negative emotion that results in worry and sadness, it is also defined as a part of life and emotion that enables resilience against difficulties. today, many factors stimulate the anxiety levels of prospective teachers. some of these include “making a positive impression on people around them, establishing sufficient communication with students, achieving professional satisfaction, and economic conditions”. additionally, prospective teachers who complete their education prepare for their exams under ever more difficult conditions where the preparation phase paves the way for psychological problems such as anxiety, worry, and fear (celik, 2017). when the literature was reviewed, three subjects, “selfcentered, job-centered, and student-centered anxiety”, were observed to be the sources of anxiety experienced by prospective teachers. self-centered anxiety refers to an individual’s self. a prospective teacher with such a type of anxiety covers whether the profession is practiced successfully and this constantly results in extreme stress in prospective teachers. the subject of job-centered anxiety covers the teaching duty of individuals. prospective teachers with such a type of anxiety worry about becoming a decent teacher. thus, they look for novel information, method, and material to be used in their occupation. the focus of the student-based anxiety is students. prospective teachers with such a type of anxiety worry about students. in other words, they worry about how to meet the social, emotional, and mental requirements of students in the best way possible and conduct research on this subject (fuller, 1996; taşğın, 2006). numerous studies investigated the concept of self-efficacy in prospective teachers in detail while it was observed that the number of studies conducted on the concept of occupational anxiety in prospective teachers was limited (atmaca, 2013; dadandı, kalyon, & yazıcı, 2016; mishra & yadav, 2013; singh, 2011). accordingly, it is believed that studies conducted on the concept of occupational anxiety, which is cited as a significant factor that affects their professional career, in prospective teachers during the pre-service period (allinder, 1994; atmaca, 2013; cousins & walker, 2000; singh, 2011; tektaş, 2014) will contribute to increasing the quality of education. in turkey, the value of the profession of teaching in the society’s eyes has been decreasing gradually and the complaints and uneasiness of teachers toward working and living conditions have been growing, which is reflected as lesser interest for this profession in future generations and decreases in the order of choice to last ranks. such negative developments also result in certain anxieties in prospective and in-service physical education and sports teachers. this profession, which is practiced by overcoming various problems pre-service and in-service problems by physical education and sports teachers, has a structure that requires individuals to develop and update themselves during their educational and professional lives. at this point, the prospective physical education teachers’ education and their will to develop themselves have vital importance. the prospective physical education and sports teachers, who will shape future generations, may lose their will to achieve academic success, become professionally equipped, and to develop themselves when they worry about their futures. prospective physical education and sports teachers receive both theoretical and practical lessons with content knowledge during their undergraduate education. however, these lessons focus on the education process rather than individual differences and emotional states of prospective teachers. accordingly, this study aimed to reveal occupational anxiety in prospective physical education and sports teachers in turkey. therefore, it is of importance to investigate their occupational anxiety of prospective physical education and sports teachers, which is believed to hinder their future performance, as well as ensuring that they complete their educational process with the required knowledge and skills. determining these anxieties and devising possible solutions for them will enable prospective physical education and sports teachers to become more efficient in their profession. it is also believed that determining the occupational anxiety of prospective physical education and sports teachers before stepping into professional life will contribute to studies on teachers and teacher training. 2. material and method in this study, the “quantitative method” was used with the relational survey research design. the sample of the study consisted of 354 prospective physical education and sports education, who studied in the faculties of sports sciences at fırat university (163 prospective teachers), nevşehir university (88 prospective teachers), harran university (55 prospective teachers) and i̇nönü university (48 prospective teachers) in turkey. the “occupational anxiety scale”, which was developed by cabi and yalçınalp (2013) was used to collect the data from the participants. during the development of the scale, cabi and yalçınalp (2013) conducted their study with 283 prospective teachers who studied in various departments in faculties of education. for the validity and reliability of the “occupational anxiety scale”, content validity, construct validity, adjusted item-total correlation, cronbach alpha coefficient, and split-half test correlations were investigated. as a result of these analyses, the scale was finalized with 45 items and 8 subscales. the subscales of the “occupational anxiety scale” covered “job orientation (14 items)”, “socioeconomics (7 items)”, “interaction with students (6 items)”, “colleagues and parents (5 items)”, “personal development (4 items)”, “occupational exam (3 items)”, “adaptation (3 items)”, and “school management (3 items)”. the data obtained from 354 prospective teachers were first analyzed in terms of normal distribution in the occupational anxiety scale and its subscales table 1. the skewness and kurtosis values of the occupational asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 520-526 522 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group anxiety scale and its subscales were observed to be between +1.5 and -1.5. tabachnick, fidell, and ullman (2007) stated that skewness and kurtosis values between +1.5 and -1.5 could indicate the presence of normal distribution. accordingly, it was concluded that the data in the study exhibited a normal distribution. table-1. results of normality tests of the occupational anxiety scale and its subscales. scale n mean standard deviation skewness kurtosis occupational anxiety scale 354 2.443 0.856 [0.274; 0.130] [-0.769; 0.259] job orientation 354 2.309 0.970 [0.381; 0.130] [-0.880; 0.259] socioeconomics 354 2.502 0.935 [0.130; 0.130] [-0.778; 0.259] interaction with students 354 2.362 1.037 [0.312; 0.130] [-0.882; 0.259] colleagues and parents 354 2.366 1.023 [0.295; 0.130] [-0.895; 0.259] personal development 354 2.435 1.100 [0.308; 0.130] [-0.817; 0.259] occupational exam 354 3.036 1.099 [-0.077; 0.130] [-0.584; 0.259] adaptation 354 2.467 1.052 [0.267; 0.130] [-0.721; 0.259] school management 354 2.609 1.018 [0.118; 0.130] [-0.784; 0.259] note: * p<0.05. then, a parametric test, the “independent samples t-test”, was conducted to evaluate the level of differentiation in terms of the variable of gender, which is an independent variable while “one-way variance analysis”, which is a parametric test, was conducted to evaluate the differentiation in terms of the variable of grade level. in the study, the level of statistical significance (α error level) was regarded as p<0.05. the “pearson correlation analysis” was conducted to determine the nature and level of correlation between dependent variables. the level of correlations between dependent variables were evaluated according to kalaycı (2006) (0.00-0.25 = very weak correlation; 0.26-0.49 = weak correlation; 0.50-0.69 = moderate correlation; 0.70-0.89 = strong correlation; 0.90-1.00 = very strong correlation). 3. findings in parallel with the aims of the study, the results obtained from the perceptions of prospective physical education and sports teachers were presented below. note: *p<0.05. table-2. results of independent samples t-test conducted to reveal whether there were differences in the sample group according to the variable of gender. scale gender n sd t-value p-value job orientation male 238 2.343 0.986 0.925 0.356 female 116 2.241 0.938 socioeconomics male 238 2.536 0.924 0.974 0.331 female 116 2.433 0.957 interaction with students male 238 2.329 1.039 -0.867 0.387 female 116 2.431 1.035 colleagues and parents male 238 2.348 1.009 -0.457 0.648 female 116 2.401 1.053 personal development male 238 2.445 1.074 0.253 0.800 female 116 2.413 1.156 occupational exam male 238 2.941 1.071 -2.358 0.019* female 116 3.232 1.132 adaptation male 238 2.508 1.051 1.059 0.290 female 116 2.382 1.054 school management male 238 2.599 0.994 -0.259 0.796 female 116 2.629 1.071 t-test analysis was conducted to reveal whether there were statistically significant differences in the sample group according to the variable of gender table 2. as a result, it was observed that there were statistically significant differences in the subscale of the “occupational exam” (p<0.05). in terms of other subscales, no significant difference was observed (p>0.05). the one-way variance analysis was conducted to determine whether there were differences in the sample group according to the variable of grade level table 3. as a result, it was observed that there were statistically significant differences in the subscale of “adaptation” (p<0.05). no statistically significant difference was observed in other subscales (p>0.05). in parallel with the perceptions of the sample group, correlation analyses were conducted table 4. as a result, it was observed that the “occupational anxiety scale” and the subscale of “job orientation” were positively very strongly correlated. furthermore, it was determined that the weakest correlation was between the subscales of “occupational exam” and “colleagues and parents”, which was positive and very weak (p<0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion in parallel with the aims of the study, the results obtained from the perceptions of the prospective physical education and sports teachers were discussed and presented. x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 520-526 523 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. results of one-way variance analysis (anova) conducted to reveal whether there were differences in the sample group according to the variable of grade level. scale grade level n sd f p-value lsd job orientation (a) 1st grade 47 2.308 0.924 0.947 0.418 (b) 2nd grade 87 2.351 0.929 (c) 3rd grade 133 2.379 0.997 (d) 4th grade 87 2.162 0.993 socioeconomics (a) 1st grade 47 2.595 0.798 1.307 0.272 (b) 2nd grade 87 2.610 0.903 (c) 3rd grade 133 2.498 0.972 (d) 4th grade 87 2.351 0.969 interaction with students (a) 1st grade 47 2.365 1.103 0.418 0.740 (b) 2nd grade 87 2.375 0.958 (c) 3rd grade 133 2.419 1.043 (d) 4th grade 87 2.260 1.077 colleagues and parents (a) 1st grade 47 2.374 0.983 1.894 0.130 (b) 2nd grade 87 2.542 0.974 (c) 3rd grade 133 2.372 1.044 (d) 4th grade 87 2.174 1.042 personal development (a) 1st grade 47 2.537 1.149 1.220 0.302 (b) 2nd grade 87 2.583 1.060 (c) 3rd grade 133 2.396 1.057 (d) 4th grade 87 2.290 1.171 occupational exam (a) 1st grade 47 2.893 1.002 0.522 0.667 (b) 2nd grade 87 2.996 1.110 (c) 3rd grade 133 3.052 1.137 (d) 4th grade 87 3.130 1.085 adaptation (a) 1st grade 47 2.461 0.941 3.641 0.013* b, d (b) 2nd grade 87 2.735 1.046 (c) 3rd grade 133 2.458 1.099 (d) 4th grade 87 2.214 0.992 school management (a) 1st grade 47 2.666 0.911 0.336 0.799 (b) 2nd grade 87 2.670 1.021 (c) 3rd grade 133 2.601 1.054 (d) 4th grade 87 2.528 1.027 note: *p<0.05. table-4. results of correlation analysis conducted to reveal the correlations between the occupational anxiety scale and its subscales. scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 occupational anxiety scale (1) r 1 p n 354 job orientation (2) r 0.948* 1 p 0.000 n 354 354 socioeconomics (3) r 0.873* 0.745* 1 p 0.000 0.000 n 354 354 354 interaction with students (4) r 0.868* 0.859* 0.648* 1 p 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 354 354 354 354 colleagues and parents (5) r 0.890* 0.822* 0.769* 0.699* 1 p 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 354 354 354 354 354 personal development (6) r 0.871* 0.772* 0.813* 0.678* 0.777* 1 p 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 354 354 354 354 354 354 occupational exam (7) r 0.373* 0.272* 0.255* 0.310* 0.216* 0.244* 1 p 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 354 354 354 354 354 354 354 adaptation (8) r 0.774* 0.659* 0.746* 0.599* 0.671* 0.690* 0.228* 1 p 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 354 354 354 354 354 354 354 354 school management (9) r 0.806* 0.700* 0.732* 0.599* 0.775* 0.711* 0.282* 0.620* 1 p 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 354 354 354 354 354 354 354 354 354 note: *p<0.05. according to the sample group’s variable of gender, it was determined that there were significant differences between males and females in the subscales of the “occupational exam” table 2. it was observed that female x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 520-526 524 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group prospective teachers had higher scores compared to male prospective teachers. it is believed that male prospective physical education and sports teachers could act alone while dealing with problems and had lower levels of imagination, which enabled them to be more successful in coping with stress and feel more positive compared to female prospective teachers. thus, it could be stated that their anxiety levels are low. in turkey, it can be stated that several dominant impressions include that teaching is a suitable profession for females especially, it enables them to maintain both family and professional lives, and it is important to become a civil servant. this social thought could be the reason why the profession of teaching is regarded as a job that should be acquired more by prospective female teachers compared to male prospective teachers. in the review of previous studies, it was observed that female prospective teachers had higher levels of anxiety compared to male prospective teachers (akgün & ozgür, 2014; aras & karakaya, 2020; cubukçu & dönmez, 2011; mergen et al., 2014; özbal & ektirici, 2017; taşğın, 2006; uğurlu, karakaya, coşkuner, & bulut, 2020). in a study conducted by harmandar, serdar, and demirel (2018) according to the variable of gender, it was concluded that females had higher scores in the subscales of “job orientation”, “interaction with students”, and “occupational exam”. aycan and üzüm (2019) reported that the levels of occupational anxiety perceived by the participants exhibited statistically significant differences in terms of the participants’ variable of gender. contrarily, donmuş et al. (2017) determined that the occupational anxiety levels of prospective male teachers were higher compared to those of female prospective teachers. furthermore, in the review of other studies, it was observed that several studies did not observe any difference in the subscales of occupational anxiety scale in terms of the variable of gender (alisinanoğlu, kesicioğlu, & ünal, 2010; atmaca, 2013; bozdam & taşğın, 2011; tasdemir, 2015). in the study, statistically significant differences were observed only in the subscale of “adaptation” in terms of the prospective physical education and sports teachers’ variable of grade level, according to 2nd-grade and 4th-grade students table 3. in other subscales, no statistically significant difference was observed. the reason for that could be the fact that prospective physical education and sports teachers encounter a new environment and social circle in the first years of university and start living away from their families for a time, which results in anxiety. additionally, the fact that these years cover the final periods of the adolescence of prospective physical education and sports teachers and being 2nd-grade students could be related to their lack of occupational self-confidence. in the review of other studies, it was observed that the grade level was a significant variable. alisinanoğlu et al. (2010) stated that the grade level was a significant factor in terms of the occupational anxiety levels of students. cubukçu and dönmez (2011) concluded that 1st-grade students had higher levels of anxiety compared to 2nd-grade students. in a study conducted by mergen et al. (2014) it was observed that 1st-grade students had anxieties about selfworth, duty, and effectiveness. harmandar et al. (2018) determined that the anxiety scores of 3rd-grade students in the subscales of “socioeconomics” and “occupational exam” were higher compared to the participants who studied at other grade levels. it was also emphasized that prospective teachers who receive lessons, “classroom management”, “special teaching methods”, and “school experience”, at the 3rd grade start to get involved in the practical field, which increases their occupational anxiety levels. in a study conducted by bilgici and deniz (2016) it was determined that the level of occupational anxiety increased in parallel with the grade level. furthermore, several studies concluded that the anxiety levels of 1st-grade and 2nd-grade students were higher compared to 3rd-grade and 4th-grade students (atmaca, 2013; dursun & karagün, 2012; mergen et al., 2014). conversely, several studies did not encounter any statistically significant difference in terms of the variable of grade level (akgün & ozgür, 2014; tasdemir, 2015; türkdoğan, 2014). according to the perceptions of the participants, it was determined that the “occupational anxiety scale” and the subscale of “job orientation” were positively and very strongly correlated. furthermore, the weakest correlation was observed between the subscales of “occupational exam” and “colleagues and parents”, which was positive and very weak table 4. according to this result, it could be stated that the prospective physical education and sports teachers had anxieties about serving in the future while this anxiety could influence their tendencies toward life. in a study conducted by akbulut, erol, and say (2018) in terms of occupational anxiety levels, no significant relationship was observed between the subscales of colleague/parentand student/communication-based anxiety and the subscales of willingness to learn, development, and openness. it was also determined that school management-based anxiety was negatively and very weakly correlated with the subscales of willingness to learn, development, and openness. dogan and coban (2009) determined that occupational anxiety levels were negatively and significantly correlated with attitudes toward the profession. furthermore, several studies conducted with prospective teachers reported that the occupational anxiety levels of prospective teachers decreased as the selfefficacy levels were increased, which indicated that self-efficacy was a significant predictor of occupational anxiety (dadandı et al., 2016; gökmen & ekici, 2018; kahraman & celik, 2019; ünlü & erbaş, 2018). in turkey, the largest anxiety of prospective teachers is regarded as the failure in the occupational exam. this is because it is not enough for prospective teachers to graduate from faculties of education to start working in state schools. they are required to become successful in the occupational exam (public personnel selection exam is a selection exam that determines whether individuals with qualities of teaching will be appointed. the fact that a certain number of teachers are appointed and the benefits of being a teacher in a state school make this exam a very important one.) accordingly, prospective teachers make efforts to work in the profession without overcoming certain obstacles while experiencing occupational anxiety. this emerges as a problem for prospective teachers who wish to conduct their profession (aycan & üzüm, 2019; bozdam, 2008; can & can, 2011; celen & bulut, 2015; gökmen & ekici, 2018; karakaya & karataş, 2017). in a study conducted by akgün and ozgür (2014) it was determined that the subscale that caused the highest level of anxiety in prospective teachers was occupational exam while the lowest level of anxiety was due to the subscale of colleagues and parents. sadıkoğlu, hastürk, and polat (2018) reported that prospective teachers experienced anxieties about maintaining their lives while starting to work and practicing their profession of teaching. ünaldı and alaz (2008) stated that if the anxiety levels of prospective teachers decreased, they could use their energies more efficiently and conduct their professions more carefully. anxiety was observed to be a factor that could be effective in the mental and physical health of teachers, their performance in the education process, and their attitudes toward the profession. prospective physical education and asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 520-526 525 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sports teachers should be trained in a way that enables them to experience low levels of occupational anxiety, to cope with difficulties, and to guide students in discovering themselves, developing their skills, and establishing values. guidance services in the pre-service period can inform prospective students about the profession of teaching, teaching skills, and appointments from the 1st-grade onwards. prospective teachers who are supported in such a way can reach higher levels of self-efficacy in addition to avoiding anxiety problems that can result in negative psychological outcomes. moreover, investigating occupational anxiety before and after the teaching practice of prospective teachers is believed to have a quality that can contribute to the further comprehension of the subject. based on the results of the study, the following suggestions were presented to reduce the occupational anxiety levels of prospective physical education and sports teachers. • the occupational anxiety levels of prospective physical education and sports teachers can be reduced by introducing long-term plans and balancing the numbers of students to be admitted and teachers to be appointed by the ministry of national education. • the adaptation-based anxiety levels of prospective physical education and sports teachers can be directed toward in-service training that emphasizes the importance of teaching at classroom levels and the significance of regional differences and environments while practicing the profession of teaching. • methods that can keep the occupational anxieties of prospective physical education and sports teachers under control can be presented within the framework of undergraduate programs. • encouraging prospective physical education and sports teachers to use guidance services actively can be adopted as a successful way to increase the academic achievements of prospective teachers while reducing their anxiety levels. • the concept of occupational anxiety in prospective physical education and sports teachers can be investigated by qualitative and mixed-method studies. references akbulut, s., erol, a., & say, s. 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(2018). academic self-efficacy and occupational anxiety of physical education teacher candidates. turkish journal of sports science, 2(1), 15-25. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.12739/nwsa.2014.9.2.1c0612 http://dx.doi.org/10.12739/nwsa.2014.9.2.1c0612 http://dx.doi.org/10.17719/jisr.20185639035 http://dx.doi.org/10.17719/jisr.20185639035 43 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 1, 43-49, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6638 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group enhancement of musical education through the inclusion of chinese ziyang folk songs in school curriculum zhaomin yang1 sayam chuangprakhon2 weerayut seekhunlio3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3college of music, mahasarakham university, thailand. 1email: 65012061024@msu.ac.th 2email: sayam.c@msu.ac.th 3email: weerayut.s@msu.ac.th abstract this study examines the impact of integrating ziyang folk songs into the school music curriculum on students' musical skills and cultural appreciation. it aims to explore how traditional music can enhance student engagement, emotional intelligence, and cognitive abilities while promoting cultural preservation. a qualitative research methodology focused on three key informants. data were collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed thematically to identify key trends in teaching adaptations, student responses, and cultural outcomes. the study revealed that incorporating ziyang folk songs into music education significantly increased student engagement, cultural pride, and emotional investment. students demonstrated improved musical skills, including vocal techniques and an enhanced understanding of folk music structures. these findings align with culturally responsive pedagogy, emphasizing the role of local traditions in enriching the learning experience. integrating ziyang folk songs into school curricula provides a balanced educational model that fosters technical proficiency and cultural immersion. however, limited resources and insufficient teacher training highlight the need for policy support and innovative teaching strategies. the study underscores the importance of including indigenous music in education to preserve intangible cultural heritage. it recommends further research on comparative regional studies, teacher training programs, and digital platforms to expand accessibility and sustainability. keywords: cultural preservation, music education, shaanxi province, student engagement, ziyang folk songs, chinese folk songs. citation | yang, z., chuangprakhon, s., & seekhunlio, w. (2025). enhancement of musical education through the inclusion of chinese ziyang folk songs in school curriculum. asian journal of education and training, 11(1), 43–49. 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6638 history: received: 31 december 2024 revised: 10 april 2025 accepted: 24 april 2025 published: 2 may 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 44 2. literature review......................................................................................................................................................................................... 44 3. research methodology ............................................................................................................................................................................... 45 4. results.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 45 5. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................................ 48 references ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 49 mailto:65012061024@msu.ac.th mailto:sayam.c@msu.ac.th mailto:weerayut.s@msu.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i1.6638 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7059-7670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5124-2953 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9184-4692 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 43-49 44 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study uniquely explores the integration of ziyang folk songs into school curricula, highlighting their impact on student engagement, musical skills, and cultural appreciation. unlike previous research, it provides qualitative insights from educators, emphasizing culturally responsive pedagogy and proposing policy-driven solutions for sustaining traditional music education in modern classrooms. 1. introduction traditionally, music education has been a cornerstone of school curricula, with an emphasis on building technical skills and comprehension of musical theory. yet the implications of music education are much deeper than that; it’s a striking vehicle for the transfer of culture and identity formation (reimer, 2022; sanchez-escribano, gertrudix, & bautista, 2024; westerlund et al., 2022). this task is especially important in areas with a rich cultural heritage like shaanxi province in china, where local folk songs reflect the historical and cultural spirit of the local community. focusing on the ankang ziyang folk songs, a traditional music from ankang in shaanxi province, this study aims to develop the integration of this traditional music into the curriculum of school music education and exa mine its effect on students' cultural awareness and musical literacy. ziyang folk songs are more than tunes; they are the storytellers of the local history, traditions, and the way of life of the ankang people. those songs are soundscape tours of the time, displaying the different cultural backgrounds of the area (beibei, 2024; jiayang li & su, 2024; qiaoyi, 2024). although their contribution to our culture is great, folk songs are not given great attention in formal schools and the education system, motivating this research to investigate. the emphasis on indigenous folk songs from ziyang informs a broader exploration into how this process contributes to a more multi -faceted musical education in mainstream professional contexts, so that students become accustomed to a musical environment closer to home (guan, luo, & matsunobu, 2023; wang & webb, 2024; zou, hin-on, & sapaso, 2024). this research is fundamentally focused on the lack of integration of local culture in the school curriculum, which is part of the larger problem in education across the world. this omission leads to a one-size-fits-all education that disregards the vast diversity of students' life experiences. for ankang students, fuzheng folk song certainly doesn't feature in the curriculum. the interdependence between curriculum, education, and local cultural expression underlines the importance of this focus on an inclusive approach in teaching, with details of how it can be achieved through a locally specific curriculum (kazu & kuvvetli, 2024; sakti, endraswara, & rohman, 2024). in summary, this implies the meaningfulness of this study to determine the impact on educational policy and practice, as well as indirectly provide evidence to support the ziyang folk songs as more ethnolinguistic music in the education system. in doing so, it aims to strengthen students' engagement with and appreciation of local culture while also helping to preserve culture. the results may ignite alteration, prompting decision-makers in music education to reinvestigate and possibly reconfigure music education policies with a more diverse and wider range of representation (li & seekhunlio, 2024; wang, chuangprakhon, jian, & wang, 2024). in addition, the findings of the study have implications beyond ankang, as the results could be utilized in other areas steeped in cultural traditions, thereby contributing to a broader discussion of cultural education and its potential to create diverse and inclusive learning spaces. 1.1. research objective to examine the effect of teaching ziyang folk songs in the school music curriculum on students' musical skills and appreciation of local culture. 1.2. research question what are the impacts of music education, centering on ziyang folk songs, on students' engagement and related knowledge of their musical and cultural heritage? 2. literature review recent years have seen a growing interest in securing the integration of traditional music into educational systems with the aim of developing students emotionally, cognitively, and culturally. one such segment of music, folk music, acts as a bridge between the cultural roots of society and the education provided in a contemporary setup. it facilitates both a connection for students to their own roots, along with making their learning experience even better. this is reflected in the ziyang folk songs, which have profound historical and artistic connotations, and are an important cultural treasure in ziyang and even in the shaanxi local culture. although there has been an increasing amount of research on regular music in education, the unique contributions of ziyang folk songs have rarely been discussed. this review emphasizes the importance of the value of ziyang folk songs used in educational curricula from three main aspects, namely emotional development, cognitive enhancement, and cultural preservation. 2.1. emotional development and expression music has always been a very strong medium, and folk songs are the best examples of expressively engaging an audience. ziyang folk songs, with their evocative melodies and themes inspired by daily life, give students an emotional connection to their cultural heritage. songs like these often tell stories of love and struggle, teaching students a range of emotions while building empathy and understanding. the unstructured and improvisational character of many ziyang folk songs encourages subjective interpretation and thus facilitates an authentic experience of students’ feelings (healy & ankney, 2020; picado, pereira, & castilho, 2022; yao, sensai, & junkate, 2023). just think about how much this practice is going to help students improve their emotional iq in understanding their own and other people’s feelings through music. these folk songs are what people learn and sing in ziyang, and learning to perform them encourages expression, excitement, and a feeling of achievement. these benefits of emotion apply not only to the music classroom but also aid students in their emotional development while navigating a social context (deaner, 2023; smith, 2021). 2.2. cognitive enhancement through musical analysis cognitive enrichment: ziyang folk songs are a traditional style of music, exposing students to different musical elements (i.e., scales, rhythms, modes) not heard in other styles of music. critical thinking and cognitive skills are asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 43-49 45 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group engaged with these songs, which makes them appropriate for beginners and also accessible to advanced learners. the process of learning ziyang folk songs stimulates not only memory and attention (luo & saihong, 2023; okan & usta, 2021; oztutgan, 2020), which are important cognitive abilities, but also memorization, pattern recognition, and creative problem-solving. by sharing commentary through a call-and-response format, active listening and collaboration are encouraged, leading to even higher levels of intellectual engagement. finally, the interdisciplinary nature of ziyang folk songs and the cognitive development from combining that musical study with history, sociology, geography, and other subjects may help students appreciate those other fields of study and their connection to music more (eminjanovna, 2021; wen, zhang, & wang, 2024). 2.3. cultural conservation and identity construction ziyang folk songs, as living archives of a community's history, values, and traditions, must be incorporated into school curricula for cultural preservation. they sing away their cares and woes, learn, and perform these songs that foster pride and a sense of belonging, solidifying their cultural identity in a globalizing world. this also works against the decline of region-specific cultures as the youth are exposed to the rest of the world. folk music not only facilitates the process of building social cohesion and mutual understanding on which traditional societies are based, but it also encourages the communal nature of folk music, promoting social cohesion and mutual understanding among students. the introduction of ziyang folk songs in the classroom is not only a platform for the integration of school and local community, but it also allows students to have a real understanding of ziyang folk music's history and skills. these initiatives enhance the educational experience of students and contribute to the endurance of cultural practices (gwerevende & mthombeni, 2023; zeng & onlamul, 2023; zhang & wu, 2023). the inclusion of ziyang folk songs into the school curriculum is a comprehensive educational model that promotes emotional cultivation, cognitive development, and cultural inheritance. these songs combine artistic and educational value, making them a perfect medium to enrich musical education. through learning and practicing ziyang folk songs, students not only get to know more about their root culture, but also develop crucial abilities and a long-term interest in great and diversified chinese traditional music. the review reveals the feasibility of ziyang folk songs in enriching the music education experience, embedding it to tune holistic education. 3. research methodology the research used a qualitative research method to investigate the integration of ziyang folk songs into the school music curriculum. to this end, the methodology examined how music teachers adjusted their pedagogical practices, the challenges they encountered, and the benefits they observed in students’ musical and cultural growth. using in-depth interviews, data were collected from seasoned music teachers and analyzed thematically for definite patterns and themes (bresler, 2021; jones, 2023; qiu, chuangprakhon, & jian, 2024). 3.1. key informants this study included three key informants, three music educators working in middle schools in ankang, shaanxi province. their unique perspectives yielded rich data regarding how the implementation process unfolded and the ways it influenced students associated with these labs. 3.2. data collection using semi-structured interviews as the qualitative method, this study collected opinions on the integration of ziyang folk songs into schools. interviews focused on adapting esoteric teaching methodologies, witnessing changes in student engagement and cultural appreciation, identifying inhibitors, and offering solutions for implementing impactful integration. the setting of the interviews was informal, with each lasting around an hour. with the participants' permission, the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed to facilitate analysis. 3.3. data analysis data was systematically analyzed, identifying patterns and themes in line with the objectives of the research. we read through the transcripts multiple times, coded for recurrent ideas (the coding process was inductive), and then grouped those codes into broader themes such as “pedagogical adjustments,” “student engagement,” and “cultural significance.” thematic analysis was used to understand the implications of ziyang folk songs being integrated into a music education context. interview transcripts were read to become familiar with the data, then codes were assigned to the data, followed by grouping together similar codes, looking for notable patterns, and interpreting themes in the context of research objectives. 3.4. research steps table 1 summarizes the process of research conducted, which applied rigorous methods to safeguard the validity and reliability of it. table 1. research steps. phase activity objective preparation develop tools and identify participants ensure relevance and focus of data collection data collection conduct interviews and transcriptions obtain in-depth qualitative data data analysis code, categorize, and identify themes derive meaningful insights from raw data reporting synthesize findings into actionable recommendations provide guidance for stakeholders this methodological framework ensured a comprehensive understanding of the educational and cultural significance of integrating ziyang folk songs into school curricula, offering valuable insights for educators and policymakers. 4. results the inclusion of ziyang folk songs in school music curricula produced impressive results, showing that traditional music played an important role in students’ education. the results represent major progress in student asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 43-49 46 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group engagement, cultural appreciation, and musical skill development. through incorporating elements of local culture into the curriculum, educators were able to generate an engaging and relevant learning atmosphere that connected with students both emotionally and intellectually. we chronicle these results in the next sections, emphasizing the importance of matching the educational content with the cultural legacy. 4.1. enhanced engagement the incorporation of ziyang folk songs into music education resulted in substantial increases in student participation and enthusiasm in the classroom. interviews with the three key informants, experienced music teachers who led this integration, also revealed the significant change in students’ attitudes towards music classes. one teacher said, “the students seemed a little more present and a little more connected to the music. they wanted to learn, listened, engaged, and sang when the content reflected their cultural identity.” this lays firmly on the fact that learning about their ethnicity is naturally alluring to students and thus accounts for students being more participative in lessons with ziyang folk songs. this enthusiasm in practice (see figure 1), which depicts a music teacher and a group of engaged students. the teacher noticed that students, who previously seemed glazed over during generic western composers’ lessons, lit up and started asking questions when they were presented with ziyang folk songs. they asked questions about the origin of the songs, requested advice about performance techniques, and even tried to imitate the vocal styles shown by the teacher. figure 1. the teacher instructs students who are passionate about ziyang folk songs. the study itself demonstrated a notable increase in classroom engagement metrics. they were also more likely to volunteer to perform in front of the class, to lead small group activities, and to contribute to creative group projects. especially when performing folk songs in their own styles, they showed greater focus and excitement. one student even wrote a short melody based on the piece "tiger descending the mountain" (see figure 2), which illustrates the engagement that can spark innovation. figure 2. the ziyang folk song “tiger descending the mountain”. ziyang folk songs also promoted a collaborative learning atmosphere. teachers noted that students began to form small peer groups to work on singing techniques or on lyrical themes from the folk songs. these activities were collective in nature, displaying the social origins of the ziyang folk tradition, where music and dance were historically times of unification. figure 3 captures the energy of these class experiences through a performance by a student group led by a music teacher. this model of participatory learning, with its underlying and deeply connected framework of cultural exploration, increased engagement, nurtured students' pride in their musical heritage, and sense of ownership. their presentation reflects their involvement just as much as the enthusiasm reflected in the interviews of their teachers. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 43-49 47 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 3. the inheritor instructs students about ziyang folk songs. overall, the success of including folk songs in music education guidelines provided culturally relevant contexts that were relatable to students, thereby resulting in lessons that were more rewarding and exciting. such engagement enhanced the educational experience and fostered a renewed connection between students and the local culture. 4.2. cultural appreciation integrating ziyang folk songs into music education not only enhanced students' cultural understanding, but it also linked their personal backgrounds with music education. the use of traditional songs provided students with the opportunity to explore the cultural roots of their community, as music teachers indicated as key informants. one teacher said, “the students were not merely learning how to play music; they were rediscovering their identity. these students had started asking about the songs’ origins, the traditions associated with them, and the stories they contained.” ziyang folk songs, with their evocative melodies and historically rich lyrics, allow my students to connect with the traditions of ankang, shaanxi province through a cultural lens. illustrated in figure 2, students listen closely as a teacher uses a folk song to illustrate the historical context of a topic, and the growing curiosity represented in the image captures this increasing interest and appreciation well. the teacher said that the conversations around the songs often rippled out into discussions about the region’s history, the lives of their ancestors, and their community embedded in customs. it also showed that students reflected their understanding of other cultures in high regard, not only in classes but also through their manner and behavior. some students felt this gave them pride, being able to perform these songs and lead others in songs to remind us where we come from. one music teacher, for example, reported a student who performed the class work in honor of their grandparents, recognizing the elders as a source of local traditions. those moments reinforced how music education was layered with personal narratives and cultural learning. thematic interpretation of qualitative data revealed a reversal of students' meaning-making of cultural capital. at first, most students thought folk songs were old-fashioned or irrelevant. that all changed, though, when they heard the music, sang it, and understood what it meant culturally. describing how students regularly contacted friends to talk about folk traditions and proudly shared their research with family, teachers noted that students often sought to further explore folk traditions as well. such behaviors illustrated how music education fostered cultural appreciation and served as a channel for cross-generational dialogue. the informants highlighted how experiential learning played a key role in the process. through activities such as field visits to local music festivals and the invitation of folk song practitioners to perform and teach, students could take part in their living cultural heritage. figure 3 is a session where students learned directly from a practitioner of folk song. such interactions deepened students' understanding of the lived experience behind the music. in summary, ziyang folk songs in music education had a great improvement in students' cultural appreciation. through a mixture of performance, discussion, and contextual exploration, the students not only learned the technicalities of the songs but also developed a deep appreciation for the culture from which those songs emerged. the integration of music education into other subjects served to reinforce its role in preserving and promoting cultural heritage. 4.3. musical skills the results showcase how the incorporation of traditional ziyang folk songs within music education played a significant role in improving the musical abilities of students, particularly in their comprehension and performance of traditional folk music. students sang and played songs, developed technical mastery, and improved their vocal and instrumental practices. they explored the texture, tone, structure, and dynamics of musical genres through active musical engagement. teachers of music noted that the introduction of ziyang folk songs encouraged students to broaden their musical repertoire and flexibility. “one of them was folk songs such as ‘tiger descending the mountain,’ which involved students utilizing a wider vocal range to implement subtle expressive qualities in their singing,” one teacher said. this moved them beyond the more elementary melodies found in most standard curricula. students learned to control pitch and tone quality with traditional ziyang folk music singing techniques, including local singing, falsetto, and sliding tones. figures 1 and 3 illustrate this progression as students practice under the tutelage of experienced music educators and folk practitioners. it was evident through students' learning of the distinct rhythmic and melodic characteristics of ziyang folk songs. these sessions underscored how repetition and improvisation, both central to folk music, had nurtured their capacity to interpret and personalize a performance. a teacher said that students who had difficulty with these concepts quickly adapted and were soon able to interpret complex pieces. interviews with music educators were thematically analyzed and showed that learning folk songs facilitated an integrated approach to musical instruction. students had to mimic melodies and grasp all the cultural context and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 43-49 48 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group emotional subtleties of the songs. it helped connect technical ability and emotional range, as one informant described it, factors often neglected by formal music education systems. additionally, students learned from one another in peer-to-peer learning as they analyzed and performed ziyang folk songs. such collective effort empowered their ensemble performance ability through in-class recitals and community exhibitions. music teachers noticed that the students were in better synchronization with each other and harmonized better, so they truly believed that there were some educational benefits to including folk music in their lives. another significant result was the extension of musical skills outside of the classroom. the students who participated in the local cultural festivals demonstrated their adaptability, bringing traditional techniques alive within many different performance situations. “performing ziyang folk songs in public raised the confidence of students,” one informant mentioned. they figured out how to articulate to a general public the essence of the music, a sign of a more nuanced understanding of musical expression. the data also showed that folk song engagement helped students read music better. through the melodies and colorful tunes of folk music, students learned about the unique modes and zhiliel (irregular rhythmic patterns) found in chinese traditional music theory. teachers also observed that this theoretical background enhanced students’ skills in analyzing and appreciating other genres of music, demonstrating the transferable nature of skills developed through this program. overall, this study highlights the significance of incorporating ziyang folk songs into music education as a means to enhance students' performance abilities and as a platform for the cultivation of integrative musical understanding. the association of learning music and living with people from a completely different culture, while honing skills that would be applied in real situations, highlighted how critical it is to factor traditional music into the educational process. in this way of teaching, students became less like apprentice performers and more like informed appreciators of their cultural heritage, to the point where music became much more to them than just getting the notes right. three main impacts or their interrelations emerging from integrating ziyang folk songs are diagrammed in figure 4: musical skills, cultural appreciation, and engagement. these three outcomes work interdependently to realize the breadth and richness of the educational experience. enhanced engagement, represented on the right, indicates degrees of student participation and enthusiasm, particularly when local cultural contexts are included in the curriculum. cultural appreciation, represented in the center, is a measure of how students develop a deeper connection to their heritage as they relate to ziyang folk songs through exploration and performance. on the left, the musical abilities highlight not only the greater mastery of techniques but also those which may only arise through repeated exposure to traditional folk vocals. combined, these outcomes illustrate how culturally relevant pedagogy can help students grow as artists and individuals. figure 4. integration of ziyang folk songs in education. 5. discussion and conclusion the study shows how important it is to introduce ziyang folk songs into the school curriculum with educational and cultural values. this corresponds with the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of culturally responsive pedagogy, which suggests that contextualizing education within the frameworks of students' culture is beneficial for participation and educational achievement (guan et al., 2023; wang et al., 2024). the increase in student engagement seen thanks to the culturally relevant content presented in this study fits into prior research indicating that content with which students can relate instills emotion and motivates them to participate (picado et al., 2022; yao et al., 2023). this positive change from indifference to love for their own music demonstrates the power of music education that builds on local folk culture. additionally, the released results of the study with ziyang folk songs implemented in improving musical skills were concurrent with luo and saihong (2023)'s research discussing the benefits of traditional music in better cognitive and technical skills. through tackling unfamiliar musical frameworks like the yu mode and non-functional metrical configurations, students honed their agility and grew to approach authentic chinese musical theory. it strengthens the perception of folk music as a crossover between cultural preservation and higher music education (eminjanovna, 2021; oztutgan, 2020). for cultural conservation, the results are consistent with other research indicating the function of traditional music in creating the feeling of belonging and identity among students (gwerevende & mthombeni, 2023; zhang & wu, 2023). such an increase in cultural appreciation is evident in students' pride as they perform traditional ziyang folk songs and their willingness to share stories with seniors, which bolsters an increasing narrative for intangible cultural heritage that music education helps drive. furthermore, the use of experiential learning approaches, such as field visits and conversations with practitioners of folk songs, represents another way in which active involvement with cultural practices can fortify their transfer and importance (jiayang li & su, 2024; zeng & onlamul, 2023). yet the study also raises challenges that can stand in the way of wider adoption of such efforts. this is due to the shortage of professionals, culturally appropriate teaching materials, and educational resources. these results are in line with westerlund et al. (2022). however, the heart of my critique is based on crouch et al. these gaps beg for asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 43-49 49 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group policy-level interventions supporting the development and integration of localized educational content. some beneficial factors of ziyang folk songs should be emphasized in terms of music education based on this research. it shows that integrating culture in this way deepens student engagement, grows appreciation, and nurtures critical musical skills. hence, it covers a holistic form of teaching that helps link the education of science with cultural holdings. these findings are consistent with theoretical frameworks that call for culturally responsive pedagogy and confirm the necessity of integrating local cultural practices into the system of (formal) education (guan et al., 2023; reimer, 2022). this research essentially establishes the need for national reform in education and its content that focuses heavily on culturally diverse and inclusive learning, where native music is integrated into school curricula, highlighting the importance of these native songs. it sets an example for responding to the issues of educational homogenization, as well as the need for global respect for differing cultural identities (sakti et al., 2024; wang & webb, 2024). long-term effects of using traditional music in education, including its effects on pupils' grades, emotional state, and social skills, remain unanswered by future research. comparative research across various regions and musical traditions may shed light on the universally relevant and context-specific features of culturally responsive music education. additionally, exploring the preparation of teaching resources and teacher training courses based on local musical heritages can help address some of the issues that arose in this research. lastly, consider the potential of digital platforms in preserving and sharing folk music traditions, as they can offer creative methods to work around limited resources and access a wider audience. references beibei, h. 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(2024). implementing practices for the chinese nationalized piano teaching model in undergraduate music education. cogent education, 11(1), 2374173. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2024.2374173 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.25236/far.2024.060411 https://doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2021.2011813 https://doi.org/10.5958/2249-7137.2021.00530.9 https://doi.org/10.1177/02557614221132550 https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2023.2193902 https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/12988 https://doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5488 https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.250.259 https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.546.555 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09659-4_50 https://doi.org/10.58557/(ijeh).v4i4.271 https://doi.org/10.31893/multiscience.2024048 https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.18253997 https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.23.7.5 https://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2022.2041139 https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.648799 https://doi.org/10.1177/02557614231175988 https://doi.org/10.11591/edulearn.v18i3.21589 https://doi.org/10.59429/esp.v9i11.3137 https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103x211032490 https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.11n.4p.218 https://doi.org/10.52152/heranca.v6i1.787 https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2024.2374173 448 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 448-455, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.448.455 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group self-concealment and emotional intelligence as predictors of seeking psychological help among undergraduate students ramazan demir1 mehmet murat2 recep bindak3 ( corresponding author) 1psychological counselor, ministry of education, gaziantep, turkey. 2assoc. prof. dr., faculty of education, gaziantep university, gaziantep, turkey. 3asssit. prof. dr., technical sciences school, gaziantep university, gaziantep, turkey. abstract in this study we investigate self-concealment, emotional intelligence and seeking psychological help among undergraduate students in turkey. the attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help–short form (sph), self-concealment scale (sc) and emotional intelligence scale (ei) were used and data were collected from a total of 785 university students studying in various faculties. as a result of the analysis, it was found that the psychological levels of the participants differed according to gender for seeking of psychological help, self-concealment and emotional intelligence. moreover, self-concealment levels differed only according to perceived parental attitudes and the levels of seeking psychological help differed only according to whether or not they had previously received psychological help. however, the levels of seeking psychological help, self-concealment and emotional intelligence did not differ depending on whether the participants received a scholarship, were members of the community or were studying in the department of their choice. the results of pearson’s correlation showed a positive significant relationship between seeking psychological help and emotional intelligence (r=0.124), self-concealment and emotional intelligence (r=0.118). beside, negative significant relationship between seeking psychological help and self-concealment (r = -0.133). the results of the regression analysis showed that self-concealment, emotional intelligence, who prior receiving psychological help and gender (male) are predictive of the seeking psychological help among students and explain 8.6% of the total variation of student’s attitude toward seeking psychological help. keywords: seeking psychological help, self-concealment, emotional intelligence, undergraduate students, turkey, regression model. citation | ramazan demir; mehmet murat; recep bindak (2020). self-concealment and emotional intelligence as predictors of seeking psychological help among undergraduate students. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 448-455. history: received: 17 april 2020 revised: 20 may 2020 accepted: 25 june 2020 published: 1 july 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 449 2. materials and method ................................................................................................................................................................... 450 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 450 4. conclusion, discussion and recommendations ....................................................................................................................... 451 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 454 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.448.455&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1783 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3864-558x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3946-7006 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0005-7862 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1783 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3864-558x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3946-7006 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0005-7862 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1783 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3864-558x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3946-7006 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0005-7862 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1783 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3864-558x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3946-7006 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0005-7862 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1783 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3864-558x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3946-7006 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0005-7862 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 448-455 449 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating self-concealment, emotional intelligence and seeking psychological help among undergraduate students in turkey. 1. introduction most university students are individuals in the first years of young adulthood. as in every developmental stage, these years of university education serve as an important period involving serious developmental tasks and the first steps towards adulthood. by stepping into the university, students enter an environment in which they experience changes in every aspect of their lives. students can experience academic problems in the university environment, where academic work is more intense, special fields of study are chosen, and the final goal is to gain a profession. in addition, university students are leaving the family, finding housing, stepping into independence, becoming able to live alone as individuals, and making their own decisions and bearing the consequences. in addition, in this period there are also changes in the social environment. moreover, during this period, individuals may have concerns for the future and how they will spend the rest of their lives. in this period, they begin to think about important developments such as finding a job and finding a partner. because of the many difficulties experienced during the university years, individuals may need psychological help from time to time in order to overcome all these problems in their lives and adapt to their environment in a healthy way. this help can be from professional or non-professional sources. there are many factors that affect the orientation of individuals in need of psychological help to a professional resource. according to some research conduct on university students, the attitudes and intentions to seek help were related to self-stigma (shechtman, vogel, & maman, 2010) rumination have a relationship to women’s help-seeking attitudes whereas the self-model has a relationship to men’s helpseeking attitudes (turan & erdur-baker, 2014). this study aimed to reveal the extent to which the levels of self-concealment and emotional intelligence, which are thought to be among these factors, affect the individual in seeking psychological help. in addition, the study investigated whether the levels of seeking psychological help, self-concealment and emotional intelligence differed according to demographic variables (gender, scholarship status, parental attitudes, belonging to the student community, studying in their chosen department, and previously having sought psychological help). 1.1. seeking psychological help in case of facing a problem, the individual, first tries to solve this problem alone, and when this fails, help is sought from external sources. seeking psychological help is seen as an effort to seek professional help regarding the current problems of the individual (vogel & wei, 2005). this effort to seek help begins when the individual becomes aware of the existing problem and continues to search for support in solving it. the individual alone will decide what help is needed, when, under what conditions, and so on. finally, when individuals find the appropriate support, they agree to receive help and share their current problems with the source of help (rickwood, deane, wilson, & ciarrochi, 2005). pshenishny (2012) stated that 57% of university students seek social support without going to a mental health specialist, 37% follow the order of first, social support, then doctor, and finally, mental health specialist, with only one-third of them going directly to a mental health specialist first. 1.2. self-concealment some people are more prone to secrecy than others. the decision to keep certain information secret often depends on situational demands, personality, cultural and socioeconomic factors may be relevant. part of secret keeping can be explained in terms of personality traits (wismeijer, sijtsma, van assen, & vingerhoets, 2008). selfconcealment is defined as “the general and continuous tendency of the individual to conceal his / her thoughts, emotions, behaviours and experiences from other individuals that he / she perceives specifically about him / herself ”. self-concealment has been the subject of many researches. larson, chastain, hoyt, and ayzenberg (2015) utilizing a meta-analysis of more than 137 studies, found that self-concealment is one of the factors affecting receipt of help. studies have shown that self-concealment may have many negative consequences. results showed that selfconcealment was negatively related to life satisfaction (celik, 2016). cramer (1999) emphasized that individuals who prefer self-concealment have more psychological problems and less social support than individuals who do not practice self-concealment. serim (2011) draws attention to a similar point and emphasizes the negative effects of self-concealment in relationships. high and low self-concealers shows distinct model of motives, perceived consequences, and attitudes about facilitating expose in psychotherapy (love & farber, 2019). although drawing attention to the necessity of self-disclosure in terms of psychological health, self-concealment has negative consequences in terms of dealing with one's own problems and in terms of wearing out interpersonal relations. 1.3. emotional intelligence another variable thought to be related to seeking psychological help is emotional intelligence. goleman (2005) defined emotional intelligence as “the ability of the individual to act, to progress against obstacles, to postpone satisfaction, to design his mental state, to prevent himself from thinking of himself, to have the ability to empathize and hope”. those who use their emotional intelligence in a qualified way become self-aware and live in peace with themselves. therefore, healthy relations are established with other individuals and they participate in activities that are beneficial for society. thus, emotional intelligence plays an important role for both the individual and the society (maboçoğlu, 2006). there are many models dealing with emotional intelligence. one of the most important is the model described by mayer and salovey (1997) who stated that emotional intelligence has four dimensions: “perceiving and expressing emotions, using emotions, thinking and understanding with emotions, and managing emotions”. goleman (2005) on the other hand, emphasized five dimensions of emotional intelligence, namely, “self-awareness, and the ability to manage, to act, to understand other people's emotions, and to maintain relationships effectively”. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 448-455 450 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group however, bar-on (1997) also proposed five dimensions of emotional intelligence: “personal skills, interpersonal skills, adaptability, stress management, and general mental health”. finally, cooper and sawaf (1997) declared emotional intelligence to be the four dimensions of “learning emotions, emotional fitness, emotional depth, and emotional alchemy”. goleman (2005) while revealing the characteristics of people with high emotional intelligence, makes a gender-based classification and examines the characteristics of men and women separately. in this context, he reported the characteristics of men with high emotional intelligence as being cheerful, extroverted, relevant, balanced, not prone to deep thoughts, responsible, caring about ethical values and making peace with themselves. women with a high level of emotional intelligence can express their feelings easily, are cheerful, easily adapt themselves, and express themselves as people who are at peace and reconciled with others. these individuals are more resistant to distress, have high motivation, can control their impulses and emotions, and possess high empathic skills so they are happier and more productive (karabulutlu, yılmaz, & yurttaş, 2011). 2. materials and method 2.1. participants participants were 785 undergraduate students (54% female, 46% male) from a public university in gaziantep, a southern province of turkey. age of the participants were mean ±sd = 21.55± 2.16, and range = 39–17. data were collected during 2017-018 academic semester. 2.2. instruments attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help–short form (sph): scale is a 10-item questionnaire used to measure personal attitudes. originally developed by fischer and farina (1995). in this study turkish form of scale were used which adapted by topkaya (2011). respondents rate each item on a four-point likert scale (1 = disagree, 4 = agree), scores range 10-40, with higher scores indicating more positive attitudes toward treatment seeking. self-concealment scale (sc): scale is a 10-item questionnaire used to measure self-concealment level. originally developed by larson and chastain (1990). in this study turkish form of scale were used which adapted by terzi, güngör, and erdayı (2010). respondents rate each item on a five-point likert scale. scores range 10-50, with higher scores indicating more concealment. emotional intelligence scale (ei): scale is a 33-item, developed by ergin, işmen, and ozabacı (1999). ei was used to measure emotional intelligence. the ei scale in turkish and respondents rate each item on a 4-point likert scale. scores range 33-132, with higher scores indicating having relatively upper emotional intelligence. besides the three scale, the data collection tool contained a sheet assessing demographic information such as age, gender, etc.. in the current study, cronbach’s reliability coefficients for the scores on all measures were adequate. the cronbach alpha for sph, sc and ei were 0.70, 0.87 and 0.75, respectively. 2.3. statistical analyses statistical analyses were conducted using spss 22.0; p<.05 were considered for statistical significant. the independent saples t-test, one way analysis of variance (anova), perason correlation and regression analysis were conducted for relationships among variables. 3. results the relationship between the mean scores for seeking of psychological help and the categorical variables is given in table 1, in addition to the relationship between self-concealment and emotional intelligence averages with categorical variables. the independent-groups t-test was applied for those with two categories and one-way anova was applied for those with more than two categories. from table 1 it is understood that the candidate predictors for sph were gender and previous psychological help. the independent samples t-test results show that participants' levels of sph, sc and ei differed according to gender. the women's levels of sph were significantly higher than those of the men. the sc levels of the men were significantly higher than those of the women. the women's ei levels were significantly higher than those of the men. the level of sph, sc and ei did not differ according to whether or not they received scholarships, were members of the community, or were studying in their chosen field. the levels of sph and ei did not differ according to perceived parental attitudes, whereas sc levels did differ according to this. the levels of sc of individuals reporting authoritarian parental attitudes were significantly higher than those who reported protective and democratic parental attitudes. sc and ei levels did not differ according to whether or not they had received psychological help before, while the level of sph did vary according to this. the level of sph was significantly higher in individuals who had previously received psychological help compared to individuals who had not table 1. 3.1. correlations the relationship between sph, sc and ei levels were examined by person correlation table 2. statistical significant correlations were found among all variables; sph was found to have a negative correlation with sc (r = -.133; p <.01) and a positive correlation with ei (r = .124; p <.01). 3.2. multiple linear regression model a regression model was established with the variables of gender, whether prior psychological help, sc and ei. the results summarized in table 3. the whole model was significant (f4;776 = 18.172, p <0.01). the coefficient of determination was calculated as r2 = 086. all variables included in the model significantly predicted sph. according to this, the male gender was found to negatively predict sph (b = -1.643, p <0.01), previously received psychological help to positively predict sph (b = 1.864; p <0.01), sc to negatively predict sph (b = -0.068; p <0.01), and ei to positively predict sph (b = asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 448-455 451 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 0.052; p <0.01). the relative importance of independent variables in predicting sph is as follows: gender > sc > previous psychological help > ei. as a result, the following equation can be written to show the relationship between seeking of psychological help and the other variables: sph = 24.32 1.64 * (male) + 1.86 * (previous yes) 0.068 * sc + 0.052 * ei. table-1. comparison of means of seeking psychological help, self-concealment and emotional intelligence according to demographic variables. variable categories n sph sc ei gender female 424 27.73  4.44 24.64  8.57 93.61  9.61 male 360 25.73  4.63 27.34  8.90 90.69  10.23 p-value <.001 <.001 <.001 scholarship recipient? no 446 26.58  4.75 25.78  8.59 92.69  10.37 yes 333 27.15  4.46 25.95  9.13 ,6 91.65  9.96 p-value .093 .786 .162 perceived parental attitudes authoritarian 104 26.01  4.45 28.33  9.11 93.41  10.79 protective 437 27.12  4.53 25.48  8.84 92.42  9.93 democratic 224 26.65  4.91 25.63  8.51 92.00  10.47 p-value .071 .010 * .506 community member? no 526 26.68  4.54 25.53  8.76 92.28  10,34 yes 255 27,11  4,83 26.66  8.91 92.26  10.19 p-value .234 .092 .981 studying in chosen department? no 321 26.66  4.60 26.50  8.77 92.22  10.63 yes 460 26.89  4.65 25.52  8.81 92.32  10.05 p-value .487 .122 .901 received previous psychological help? no 695 26.61  4.58 25.72  8.65 92.20  10.40 yes 87 28.41  4.77 27.61  9.92 92.68 .9.21 p-value <.001 .059 .682 note *:p<.05 sph: seeking of psychological help, sc: self-concealment, ei: emotional intelligence. table-2. bilateral correlations between participants' levels of seeking psychological help, self-concealment and emotional intelligence (n=785). numerical variables xs sph sc ei sph 26.91  4.63 1 -.133 ** .124 ** sc 25.89  8.82 1 .118 ** ei 92.26  10.28 1 note: ** p <0.01. table-3. multiple linear regression analysis results for predicting seeking of psychological help. explanatory variables b std. error beta t p constant 24.32 1.50 male gender -1.64 0.33 -0.18 5.02 <.001 prior receiving ph (1=yes) 1.86 0.51 0.13 3.68 <.001 self-concealment -0.07 0.02 0.13 3.69 <.001 emotional intelligence 0.05 0.02 0.12 3.30 .001 note: dependent variable: seeking psychological help, r2=.086 adj-r2=.081; see=4.444; f=18.172; p <.001. 4. conclusion, discussion and recommendations in the analysis, the levels of sph, sc and ei differed according to gender. the women's levels of seeking psychological help were significantly higher than those of the men. the sc levels of the men were significantly higher than those of the women. the women's ei levels were significantly higher than in the men. according to the research, the level of sph varies according to gender. the level of sph of the women was found to be significantly higher than that of the men. in support of these research findings, there are many studies suggesting that women have higher levels of sph compared to men (cebi, 2009; chang, 2007; deane & chamberlain, 1994; deane & todd, 1996; demirdöğen, 2013; dilek, 2010; erkan, ozbay, cihangir-çankaya, & terzi, 2012b; fischer & turner, 1970; irkörücü, 2012; kessler, brown, & boman, 1981; nebizade, 2004; ozbay, terzi, erkan, & cankaya, 2011; ozdemir, 2012; padesky & hammen, 1981; reynders, kerkhof, molenberghs, & van audenhove, 2014; rickwood & braithwaite, 1994; sanchez & atkinson, 1983; sezer & gulleroglu, 2016; solberg, ritsma, & davis, 1994; topkaya & meydan, 2013; yıldırım, atlı, & citil, 2014; yılmaz-gözü, 2013). in contrast, there are also studies that found that the level of sph of men was higher than that of women (karalp, 2009). the number of studies reporting that the levels of sph did not differ according to gender is also considerable (annaberdiyev, 2006; atkinson & gim, 1989; kaya, 2015). the results of this study indicate that women accept the problems they face and are more willing to share their problems and solve them by getting support from external sources, whereas men do not accept the problems they are experiencing and are not as willing to share their problems, preferring to solve them themselves rather than to asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 448-455 452 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group transfer them to external sources. in addition, the women perceived more of the events in their daily life routine as problems. thus, it can be said that men see their experiences as problems to a lesser degree than do women. on the other hand, in terms of gender roles, women can express their feelings comfortably, while men behave reticently in terms of experiencing and expressing their feelings. moreover, demir and murat (2017) reported that women are more likely to overburden themselves with the responsibilities related to their lives (work, children, home, friendship, activities, etc.) than men, and that this is one of the reasons for the higher satisfaction with life among women. because of this, they may exceed their responsibilities. from the same perspective, women, who are more involved in life situations than men, can experience more problems when they cannot cope with the burden and may seek psychological help more frequently than men. according to the research, the levels of sc of the participants varied according to their gender. accordingly, the level of sc of men was higher than that of women. although there are few studies in support of these research findings suggesting that the level of sc of men is higher (cramer & barry, 1999) many studies report that there is no significant difference between men and women in terms of sc (deniz & bakioglu, 2017; kelly & achter, 1995; larson & chastain, 1990; ritz & dahme, 1996). this result of the research can be interpreted as demonstrating that women are more willing to share their problems, while men are more closed to sharing. although men tend to keep their experiences to themselves, women may tend to be open about them. moreover, in terms of gender roles, within the society, it is more acceptable for women to express their feelings than for men to do so. men may even prefer sc because it is perceived by the society as an indicator of weakness for men to express and share their feelings. the emotional intelligence levels of the participants differed according to their gender. accordingly, the ei levels of the women were significantly higher than in the men. there are many studies indicating a higher ei level in women than in men, thus supporting these research findings (brackett, mayer, & warner, 2004; constantine & gainor, 2001; cooper & petrides, 2010; erdoğdu, 2008; pau & croucher, 2003; schutte et al., 1998; schutte, malouff, simunek, mckenley, & hollander, 2002; yılmaz, 2007). on the other hand, there are also studies indicating that men's ei levels are higher than women’s (shi & wang, 2007). furthermore, a large number of studies have determined that there is no difference between men and women in terms of ei (amitay & mongrain, 2007; cingisiz & murat, 2009; halilbeyoğlu, 2015; karademir, döşyılmaz, çoban, & kafkas, 2010; kong, zhao, & you, 2012; ozden, 2015; spahi, 2010). considering that ei is both innate and acquired later, it is plausible that the high level of ei of women and men can be influenced by environmental factors as well as by genetic factors. in this respect, the skills of women in the dimensions of social relations, recognition of emotions, more comfortably experiencing of emotions, expressing of emotions, managing of emotions, understanding the feelings of others and so on may be advantages acquired at birth. however, advantages in this dimension may also be gained via the influence of many factors such as their upbringing, education, living environment and gender roles. in the analysis, the sph and ei levels of the participants did not differ, whereas their sc levels differed according to perceived parental attitudes. furthermore, the levels of sc of individuals reporting authoritarian parental attitudes were significantly higher than those of individuals who reported protective and democratic parental attitudes. in the literature review, no studies were found that explored the seeking of psychological help and sc levels according to parental attitudes. however, there are studies suggesting that individuals reporting democratic parental attitudes have higher ei levels (erdoğdu, 2008; karademir et al., 2010; sahin, 2018). individuals whose parents have authoritarian attitudes may be in a more environmentally closed position than those whose families display democratic or protective attitudes toward self-expression and problem sharing. because they are raised in a repressive family environment, they may withdraw from external support and live in their own inner worlds. it is surprising that their levels of sph and ei do not vary according to the parental attitudes. further studies that re-examine these results and investigate the reasons for this situation may contribute to a clearer interpretation. in the analysis, the sc and ei levels did not differ according to whether or not they had previously received psychological help. however, the level of sph varied according to receipt of prior psychological help. the level of sph was significantly higher in individuals who had previously received psychological help compared to individuals who had not. no study has yet been conducted on sc and ei levels in terms of sph. in addition, studies in the literature mostly support the findings that previous receipt of psychological help increases the level of sph (al-rowaie, 2001; atkinson, lowe, & matthews, 1995; bowen & richman, 1991; cebi, 2009; kırımlı, 2007; li, wong, & toth, 2013; ozdemir, 2012; sezer & gulleroglu, 2016; solberg et al., 1994). in contrast to these studies, karalp (2009) found that the level of sph was higher in individuals who had not previously received psychological help compared to individuals who had. some studies have also determined that there was no effect from prior seeking of psychological help (kırımlı, 2007; yıldırım et al., 2014). in addition to the problems caused when an individual is not willing to get help, some difficulties may arise regarding the process of getting help. the person who has already received assistance is familiar with the process and the specialists providing assistance and thus, may be less concerned about what will happen and more willing to receive psychological help than those who have never been involved in this process. particularly, individuals who have previously benefited from the process will have a greater willingness to seek psychological help. in addition, individuals with prior counseling experience enjoy a major benefit in the solving of problems of self-awareness, environmental awareness, effective communication, empathy, and so on, as well as other side benefits. one of these side benefits is enabling individuals to be aware of their problems. in this respect, individuals who have already received help may be more aware of their existing problems. it is also surprising that the level of sc and ei did not vary according to the receipt of previous psychological help. further studies that re-examine these results and investigate the reasons for this situation may contribute to a clearer interpretation. in the analysis, the levels of sph, sc and ei did not differ according to their status as scholarship recipients or members of the community. as a result of the literature review, no study was found on whether the levels of sph, sc and ei differed according to whether or not they had received scholarships, were members of the community or were studying in their chosen department. considering that the research was conducted on university students, it asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 448-455 453 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group is not surprising that the study included determining if scholarship status had any effect on sph. such help is provided to students free of charge by the university regardless of their financial situation. moreover, the variables of sph, sc and ei may be related to their personality characteristics and inner world rather than to factors related to their financial situation. in addition, being a member of the community and studying in their chosen department may be seen as external factors that might have environmental impacts on the individual, while the variables of sph, sc and ei might be affected by internal factors. bilateral correlations were examined to determine the relationship between sph, sc and ei levels. as a result of the analysis, a significant negative relationship was found between sph and sc, while a significant positive relationship was seen with ei. in the study, a regression model was established with the variables that were found to be related to sph (gender, previous receipt of psychological help, sc and ei). all variables included in the model significantly predicted sph. according to this, the male gender was found to negatively predict sph, previously receiving psychological help to positively predict sph, sc to negatively predict sph, and ei to positively predict sph. the relative importance of the independent variables in predicting seeking of psychological help can be expressed as: gender > sc > previous psych help > ei. as a result of the literature review, no study was found to include the variables (gender, previous psychological help, sc, ei) of the model in this study. at the same time, the results of the study dealing with the relationship between sph and sc and ei did not match. in this respect, similar studies have been emphasized because no studies have dealt with all of the variables in this study. as the results of the variables related to gender and previous psychological help status are discussed above, they will not be interpreted again here. although there are studies in the literature on the relationship between sph and sc, there are no studies dealing with the relationship between sph and ei. kelly and achter (1995) conducted a study on university students and found that those who had high levels of sc had negative attitudes towards sph, although they were more willing to seek psychological help. cepeda-benito and short (1998) found that university students with sc behavior sought psychological help at a rate of three times less compared to other students. cramer (1999) also found a negative relationship between sc and sph. rochlen, mohr, and hargrove (1999) reported that those displaying sc are less willing to seek professional help. vogel and wester (2003) found that the tendency to sc predicted psychological help-seeking behavior. liao, rounds, and klein (2005) found a negative relationship between sc and help-seeking attitudes. erdayı (2009) stated that sc behavior predicted the willingness to seek psychological help in adolescents. ozbay et al. (2011) reported that students with high levels of sc had negative attitudes towards seeking help. the study of serim (2011) observed that the sc variable was the best predictor of a psychological help-seeking attitude, by explaining 11.2% of its total variance. in addition, the results of the research showed that the increase in the level of sc negatively affected the attitude towards sph. ozdemir (2012) in his study of university students, found that sc predicted a positive attitude towards getting psychological help. serim and cihangir-cankaya (2015) determined that the sc variable was the most powerful predictor of a psychological help-seeking attitude. contrary to the results of this research, erkan, ozbay, cihangir-cankaya, and terzi (2012a) found that the sc variable did not diminish the willingness to seek help. the sc levels of university students negatively predicted the level of sph. university students experience problems with adaptation, academic status, single living, friendship relations, housing, future anxiety and so on. they want to keep their problems more to themselves and try to solve them on their own. they prefer to ignore their problems instead of expressing them. individuals with sc may choose not to share their experiences with others, even a professional expert. when these individuals share their information, they may be concerned that the negative situations which they present may be evaluated negatively by other people or even by experts. the fact that individuals who exhibit sc in their routine social relationships are less willing to share information about their private lives with other people may prevent them from turning to professional-help specialists and sharing private information. however, these individuals may be more willing to share their problems with and get support from their friends rather than getting help from a professional source. they may also tend to receive support from external sources such as family and relatives. the ei levels of the university students positively predicted psychological help-seeking levels. individuals with high ei levels recognize their feelings, share their feelings with others, and have the emotional skills to manage their feelings. they may tend to share their feelings more with other people than those with low ei. as a result, when these individuals encounter a problem, they can easily get help from external sources. they may also turn to professional resources when assistance from non-professional sources is not sufficient. because the social relationships of individuals with high ei are strong, they are able to share their problems and communicate more easily with an expert in a positive light within the counselling environment, which is a micro-type of social life. in order to eliminate the disadvantageous situation of men compared to women, as revealed within the framework of the results of this study, studies should be conducted, in particular, on psycho-education activities for men, counselling services, seminar activities, course contents, promotion of counselling centres and activities and so on. similar studies should be performed on the parents’ role in order to eliminate the effects of negative parental attitudes on students. activities should be carried out that will enable individuals to experience psychological counselling, and, as individuals receive help, the rate of prior receipt of psychological help will increase. in light of the negative relationship between sc and sph, studies should be conducted on creating awareness, through course contents, seminars, etc. that enable individuals to open up more easily. ei is seen as having a positive impact on the seeking of psychological help. especially considering that ei can be developed later on, the arrangement of course contents, seminars, social skills, activities, etc. that can improve the ei of the individual is recommended. the results showed that the students’ sc and ei levels did not vary according to the status of their prior receipt of psychological help, nor did their seeking of psychological help or ei levels differ according to perceived parental attitudes. these findings should be examined again in further studies in order to determine the reasons for this situation. in this study, a limited number of variables thought to affect the seeking of psychological help were discussed. it is felt that investigating other variables that may affect the seeking of psychological help will contribute to the literature. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 448-455 454 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references al-rowaie, o. 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(2007). the relation between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. ms diss., atatürk university. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 456 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 3, 456-460, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.456.460 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group attitudes of sport science students regarding to gender roles nedim malkoc university of health sciences, department of exercise and sports sciences, turkey. abstract social gender is the difference that gender creates in a society, it is related to how one thinks of him or herself, how him or her interacts with others, social opportunities, professions, family roles, and the roles allowed for men and women. there is pluralist participation and a sense of justice in the philosophy of sports. in this context, all stakeholders (athletes, coaches, assistants, etc.) involved in sports activities are expected to evaluate and interpret sports activities in this context. the research was carried out using quantitative research method. a total of 318 students from the school of physical education and sports (fourth grade) of kastamonu university participated in the study. perception gender scale consisting of 1 dimensions and 25 items, created by altinova and duyan (2013) was used as measurement tool. high average score of the scale indicates the positive perception of society gender roles. the data were found to be normally distributed and parametric test methods were used. according to results of the research conducted, the perceptions of gender of sports science students are at a medium level. in addition, gender perceptions of female sports science students were differentiated from male sports science students. the perceptions of gender did not differ among sports science students within the scope of the departments they received education. in addition, a low level of negative correlation was found between the ages of sports science students and their gender perceptions. keywords: attitudes, college, gender, roles, students, university. citation | nedim malkoc (2020). attitudes of sport science students regarding to gender roles. asian journal of education and training, 6(3): 456-460. history: received: 21 april 2020 revised: 26 may 2020 accepted: 28 june 2020 published: 7 july 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 457 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 457 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 458 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 459 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 459 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.456.460&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1818 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4599-3547 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1818 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4599-3547 http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1818 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4599-3547 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 456-460 457 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the concept of gender perception is not one of the subjects that do not attract much attention in the field of sports sciences. as a result of the research carried out in this context, it is important to examine the gender perceptions of university student youth. it is expected to be a resource for similar researches in the field of sports sciences and to positively affect the concept of gender equality which is socially important. 1. introduction when the concept of gender is evaluated physiologically, it is about whether the individual is male or female (manning, bernhard, & robert, 2018; vatandaş, 2007). in addition, when the concept of gender is examined sociologically, it expresses the place of men or women in society, their duties and responsibilities, in other words, their role in the society (ozaydinlik, 2014). social gender is the difference that gender creates in a society, it is related to how one thinks of him or herself, how he interacts with others, social opportunities, professions, family roles, and the roles allowed for men and women (guzura, 2017). gender divisions shape the lives of both women and men, and this diversity is more than just difference. therefore, the way, proportion, representation and visibility of women and men in a society are affected by the perception of gender that is valid in that society (ongen & aytaç, 2013). although the concept of gender equality has become prominent in social life recently, roles given to men in patriarchal societies may be more valuable than roles given to women. according to the social learning theory, parental attitudes have a significant effect on the child's gaining roles suitable for gender. the results of many studies show that fathers behave in the direction of a more traditional gender role than mothers and be gentle, understanding and helpful to girls; it has shown that it teaches boys autonomy, leadership and assertiveness (gumus, 2019). in turkish society, which is partially separated from western societies with its patriarchal social structure (kıran, 2017) while gender roles are sharply separated, this distinction is not clear in another segment. in other words, although some of the society thinks that they have determined the duties and roles given to men and women, the concept of gender equality is widely accepted for some of the society (oz, 2018). research on sports and gender-related content has been increasing in recent years (adriaanse & schofield, 2014; archer & mcdonald, 1990; cunningham, 2008; derom et al., 2019; huggins & randell, 2007; klomsten, skaalvik, & espnes, 2004; van ingen, 2003). seeing sports as an activity specific to men by integrating it with the athletic structure of men is a product of patriarchal understanding that accepts men as the sovereign in society, and there is a close relationship between the gender roles of this understanding that prevails in society and the sports experiences and sports experiences of women and men (koca, 2006). there is pluralist participation and a sense of justice in the philosophy of sports. in this context, all stakeholders (athletes, coaches, managers, assistants, etc.) involved in sports activities are expected to evaluate and interpret sports activities in this context. in addition, sports activities are seen as a way of ensuring sociological equality of women and men (beal, 1994). nevertheless, in the sports environment, there is also a point of view of humiliating women athletes and seeing a sports area of sports activities for men (hannon, soohoo, reel, & ratliffe, 2009). in another perspective (gill, 2002) stated that gender should be evaluated in the context of broader social diversity, which includes analysis of other ideologies (eg race, social class). prejudices about gender also affect sports activities, which is an important communication process, negatively. communication skills of a good sports trainer are expected to be high (sunay, cengiz, & yaşar, 2017). until the early 1900s, sports activities were concerned with the evaluation of distant and leisure times for women, rather than competitive sports activities (bell, 2007). however, with the beginning of the 20th century, the increase and change in free time periods of human life’s and leisure consumption, it is seen that women are in sports activities and competitive environment (hargreaves, 2002). it is thought that sports media's work on gender equality plays an important role in this process. within the scope of sportive activities, media literacy is important in this process (erdeveciler, uyar, sunay, & atlı, 2019). in addition, many sports advertisements bring male gender to the fore and can undermine the gender equality in the sports environment (balci & özgen, 2017). but still it is possible to determine that the concepts of gender perception and sports have been evaluated with a different and positive perspective recently. in the light of all this information, individuals who are studying sports science and who are future sports scientists should be formed within the scope of free and equitable (fair) thinking. nevertheless the last year of university importance can be stressful for university students (yasar & turgut, 2020). in this context, gender prejudices may be high among senior students who are educated in the field of sports sciences. the aim of the research is to determine the gender roles perceptions of senior sports science students and to examine them according to different variables (sex age, department). hypothesis 1: there is a difference between university students' sex and perception of the gender roles. hypothesis 2: there is a difference between university students' departments and perception of the gender roles. hypothesis 3: participant university students have a positive attitude towards society gender roles. hypothesis 4: there is a positive relationship between university students' age and perception of the gender roles. 2. method 2.1. participants the research was carried out using quantitative research method. a total of 318 students from the school of physical education and sports (fourth grade) of kastamonu university participated in the study. as a sampling method, simple random sampling method was preferred. characteristics of the sample is given in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 456-460 458 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. characteristics of the sample. personal information groups frequency (f) percentage (%) age m=23.01 318 100 gender male 199 62,6 female 119 37,4 department p.e.t.e 65 20,4 coaching education 108 34,0 sport mangement 145 45,6 total 318 2.2. data collection tool in the research perception gender scale consisting of 1 dimensions and 25 items, created by altinova and duyan (2013) was used as a measurement tool. high average score of the scale indicates the positive perception of society gender roles. data collection tool was a self-report scale with 5 likerts. data collection was carried out via google forms. expressions in the scale, i fully agree “5 points (5.00−4.20)”, i agree “4 points (4.19−3.40)”, i am undecided “3 points (3.39−2.60)”, disagree “2 points (2.59−1.80)”, i strongly disagree the n−1 /n formula was used to determine the score ranges (5−1/5 = 4/5 = 0.80). 2.3. data collection and analysis according to the obtained kurtosis and skewness values, the data were found to be normally distributed and parametric test methods were used. the reliability value of the research data was tested with cronbach alpha value and it was found 0.83 for the whole scale. the study was conducted following the declaration of rickham (1964). 3. findings the mean score and skewness kurtosis values obtained according to the results of the research are given in table 2. table-2. scale scores and skewness kurtosis values. scale x std. deviation skewness kurtosis gender perception scale 3.21 .546 ,187 1.837 according to the analysis of the data, the mean score obtained by the participants from the gender perception scale scale is 3.21. in other words, the gender perception levels of the participants were moderate. table-3. t-test results according to the gender variable of the participants. scale gender/sex n x ss. p difference gender perception scale male 199 3.32 .60 .000* 1<2 female 119 3.03 .37 note: p<0.05. according to the gender/sex variable in table 3, there was a statistical difference in the mean score of the scale. according to the results, the average score of male participants’ obtained from the gender perception scale scale was higher than female participants. in other words, gender perception scale of male participants was found to be significantly higher than female participants. table-4. anova results according to the department variable of the participants. scale department n x ss. p difference gender perception scale p.e.t.e. 65 3.20 .46 .407 coaching education 108 3.16 .53 sport management 145 3.26 .58 note: p<0.05. according to the department variable in table 4, there was not any statistical difference in mean scores of scale. according to the results, the participants with the highest average of the sport management department and the participants with the lowest average were of the coaching education department. table-5. correlation analysis for participants' age and scale scores. age scale age pearson correlation 1 -,007 sig. (2-tailed) ,903 n 318 318 scale pearson correlation -,007 1 sig. (2-tailed) ,903 n 318 318 note: p<0.05*. the results of gender perception scale according to the age variable of the participants were given in table 5. according to the results a low negative correlation was found between the participants' ages and gender perception. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(3): 456-460 459 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion and conclusion as a result of the research, it was determined that the gender perception scale level of the participating students was moderate (3.21). the high score obtained from the scale indicates negative gender perception, and the low score indicates positive gender perception. in the research conducted by ozpulat (2017) gender perceptions of university students were examined. according to the results of the research, gender perceptions of the participant university students were determined at a medium level. in this context, the results of this research and the research conducted by özpulat show similarity within the scope of the mean score. another similar study was done by (vefikuluçay, zeyneloğlu, eroğlu, & taşkin, 2007). according to the results of the research, the gender groups of the university senior students were found higher if they are traditional. in this context, there seems to be a difference between this research and the results of the research conducted by vefikuluçay et al. the differences in the social structure in different geographical regions and the role between men and women can be shown as the reason of the results of the research in the same culture difference. according to the results of the research, a statistically significant difference was found in the gender variable of the participants. according to this difference, gender perceptions of female participants showed a positive difference compared to male students. in the study conducted by pesen, kara, kale, and abbak (2016) the gender perceptions of university students were examined according to the gender variable of the participants. in this context, it is seen that there is a similarity between this research and the results of the research conducted by pesen and his friends by gender. another study on this subject has been examined by ongen and aytaç (2013) the gender perceptions of university students. according to the results of the research, gender perceptions of female participants were found to be higher than male students. in this context, it is seen that there is a similarity between the result of the research conducted by öngen and aytaç and the gender variable. in the researches about gender, the reason and desire of the female participants to have gender equality can be shown as a reason as the reason why the female participants are separated from the male participants at a positive level. there was no statistically significant difference in the department variable of the participants according to the research results. the lack of differences according to the department variable of the participants can be shown as the reason why the participants come from a similar cultural structure and have the same generation habits. according to the results of the research, a low negative correlation was found between the participants' age variable and their gender perceptions. according to the results of the research, a low negative correlation was found between the participants' age variable and their society gender perceptions. in the research conducted by karasu, göllüce, güvenç, and çelik (2017) the attitudes of university students towards gender roles were examined. according to the results of the research, a significant difference between the groups was determined within the age variable of the participants. in this context, no significant difference was found between the results of this research and the results of the research conducted by karasu and golluce by age variable. in conclusion, according to the results of the research conducted, the perceptions of gender of sports science students are at a medium level. in addition, gender perceptions of female sports science students were differentiated from male sports science students. the perceptions of gender did not differ among sports science students within the scope of the departments they received education. in addition, a low level of negative correlation was found between the ages of sports science students and their gender perceptions. references adriaanse, j., & schofield, t. 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(2018). gender perceptıon of conservatıve fashıon magazıne on the context of plural modernıty theory. the journal of international social research, 11(57), 289-296. ozaydinlik, y. (2014). women in turkey on the basis of gender and education. journal of social policy studies, 14, 93-112. ozpulat, f. (2017). the relationship between nursing students’ violent tendencies and gender perceptions. başkent university journal of health sciences faculty-büsbi̇d, 2(2), 151-165. pesen, a., kara, i̇., kale, m., & abbak, b. s. (2016). examining university students’ perceptions of gender and their conflict and violent awareness levels. international journal of society researches 6(11), 325-339. rickham, p. p. (1964). human experimentation. code of ethics of the world medical association. declaration of helsinki. british medical journal, 2(5402), 177-177. sunay, h., cengiz, r., & yaşar, o. m. (2017). investigation of the communication skills levels of football trainers according to university football team sports’ perceptions. iosr journal of sports and physical education (iosr-jspe), 4(1), 49-53.available at: https://doi.org/10.9790/6737-04014953. van ingen, c. (2003). geographies of gender, sexuality and race: reframing the focus on space in sport sociology. international review for the sociology of sport, 38(2), 201-216.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690203038002004. vatandaş, c. (2007). social gender and the perception of gender rolls. journal of sociological studies, 35, 29-56. vefikuluçay, a. g. d., zeyneloğlu, a. g. s., eroğlu, k., & taşkin, l. (2007). perception of and views on gender roles of senior students enrolled at kafkas university. hacettepe university journal of nursing faculty, 14(2), 26-38. yasar, o. m., & turgut, m. (2020). unemployment anxiety of last year college students. cypriot journal of educational sciences, 15(1), 5664.available at: https://doi.org/10.18844/cjes.v15i1.4588. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 60 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 2, 60-68, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i2.3974 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the development of practice packages on chinese pronunciation skills through seesaw online classroom for students majoring in chinese language teaching pantipa chanpeng faculty of education, ramkhamhaeng university, thailand. email: pantipa@rumail.ru.ac.th abstract this research aimed to 1) develop and measure the efficiency of a set of reading and pronunciation skills in chinese phonetics via seesaw online classroom; 2) examine the effectiveness of the set; and 3) evaluate students' satisfaction with practice packages on chinese pronunciation via seesaw online classroom. thirty-six undergraduate students majoring in chinese language teaching at a university in thailand were the participants of this study. this study used descriptive statistics (mean and s.d.) and dependent samples t-test. the results of this research indicated a substantial increase in students' learning achievement due to the seesaw online classroom. additionally, the development of practice packages for chinese pronunciation skill acquisition via seesaw online classroom was greater (x ̄=4.84, s.d.=0.37) than the researcher’s standard of 3.50, and achieved the efficiency standard criteria of 82.50/84.97, which was greater than the 80/80 efficiency standard criterion chosen. students' satisfaction with learning was high when they utilized seesaw's chinese pronunciation practice packages (x̄= 4.50, s.d.= 0.54). keywords: practice packages on chinese pronunciation skill, seesaw online classroom, tcfl context. citation | pantipa chanpeng (2022). the development of practice packages on chinese pronunciation skills through seesaw online classroom for students majoring in chinese language teaching. asian journal of education and training, 8(2): 60-68. history: received: 21 march 2022 revised: 9 may 2022 accepted: 24 may 2022 published: 7 june 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by ramkhamhaeng university (grant number: 13/2021). competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 61 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 62 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 63 4. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 66 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 67 mailto:pantipa@rumail.ru.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i2.3974 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6785-8576 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 60-68 61 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature: exercises in chinese phonetic pronunciation skills were designed to be adapted through the application in the online classroom, which includes both video and audio data through a recording device, so that users can perceive the information knowledge through visualization and listening to audio while practicing consonant, vowel, and tone. 1. introduction in the 21st century, china becomes regional and global economic, political, and military powerhouse (hang, 2017). additionally, chinese is the language of individuals of chinese ancestry, and chinese culture has spread across the globe. china is a large nation with the world's largest population. in this respect, chinese has become an important language and one of the united nations' five official languages (young, 2009). being able to communicate in chinese will be very beneficial when dealing with ancient countries rich in culture and civilization. china's ministry of education has defined the fundamental education reform by increasing the use of information technology (it) in the teaching process and integrating it into the teaching and learning curriculum (cheng, 2020). thailand has a strategy in 2017 that is aligned with the country's national education scheme. b.e. 2560 2574 (2017 2031), indicating that all institutions at all levels can organize learning activities in accordance with the curriculum with the goal of developing learners' characteristics and skills for the twenty-first century through access to learning resources, textbooks, media, innovation, and high-quality learning materials, and should increase educational opportunities through information and communication technology. as a result, teachers must include technology into the development of teaching and learning activities (ahmadi & reza, 2018). in this regard, the use of different media technologies is a critical component of implementing educational reforms in the twenty-first century, and the use of information technology to promote the concept of education reform has been generally embraced by many education-related sectors. teaching mandarin chinese should begin with an understanding of the mandarin phonetic alphabets, often referred to as “hànyǔ pīnyīn” (汉语拼音), a standard chinese audio broadcasting system that uses roman letters to assist the learning of chinese characters. this is comparable to the sound system used in thai, which consists of consonants (声母, shēng mǔ), vowels (韵母, yùn mǔ) and tones (声调 , shēng diào), all of which are derived from the international phonetic alphabets (ipa) in order to aid in the reading of chinese characters aloud. the researcher observed that most students still struggle with reading and pronouncing mandarin chinese phonetic characters, which include consonants, vowels, and tones. as demonstrated by tianguang (2018) study which examined the frequent mistakes in learning chinese among thai students, learners used their familiarity with the thai language to substitute for mandarin chinese sounds. in addition, it was found that learners had difficulty in pronouncing consonants /j/ /q/ /x/ /z/ /c/ /s/ /zh/ /ch/ /sh/ /r/ /g/ /k/ /h/, vowels /ia/ /ie/ /ua/ /uo/ /ü/ /üe/, and zhitong (2018) studied the problem of tonal pronunciation of thai students, with the result of problems with first and third tones. junyan (2019) analyzed errors in chinese speech from a sample of thai students enrolled at tianjin normal university's college of international studies and determined that the level of chinese language proficiency is at the intermediate level by having thai students pronounce words and sentences using the hskk test. furthermore, the majority of speech errors include the consonants /k/ /h/ /j/ /q/ /x/ /z/ /c/ /s/ and /zh/ /ch/ /sh/. additionally, chen (2006) discovered that the difficult vowels for thai learners were /er/ /ia/ /ie/ /ian/ /iang/ /u/ /ua/ /uo/ /ü/ /üe/ /üan/ and /ün/. similarly, yang (2020) also examined pronunciation issues among thai students in higher education and discovered that students struggled with the vowels /ü/ /üe/ /ün/ and /er/. tarone (1987) describes the phonetic system between two languages. learners’ second language pronunciation of foreign language is influenced partly by the mother tongue, so the reason why learners’ pronunciation is distorted may be caused by the fact that the learners used the aforementioned consonant phonemes to compare with the thai consonant phonemes that had similar sounds. students should be trained to enhance their pronunciation and errors should be corrected as a result of the aforementioned issues (ustaci & ok, 2014), as chinese phonetic pronunciation is the foundation of chinese language teaching. when a recipient is misunderstood or the meaning of a word changes as a result of mispronunciation, it can result in unsuccessful communication. as a result, teachers must pronounce words accurately and clearly using phonetics. the pronunciation of consonants and vowels in chinese is critical to mastering the language (deterding, 2010). one of the intriguing proposed learning activities is teaching via skill drills. for example, phupluem (1996) asserts that exercises are critical and necessary for the development of language abilities because they assisted learners in remembering information sustainably, comprehending a variety of information, having fun while studying, and being able to use exercises to review their own original content. additionally, zainuddin, habiburrahim, muluk, and keumala (2019) assert that exercises enable students to monitor their own progress and errors in order to develop and rectify them on time. also, bouwmeester et al. (2019) affirm that exercises can help teachers manage their workloads more effectively, while also increasing students' learning efficiency. according to tangpatthanasomboon (2003), teachers' practice should be relevant to the learners' level of knowledge and aptitude, consisting of brief explanations that are easy to comprehend and sufficient time to finish. additionally, it should be interesting and challenging in order to spark students' curiosity and abilities and motivate them to engage actively in the learning process (yang, 2018). all of the aforementioned take the learners' development and maturity into consideration, and the emphasis on problem solving helps to accommodate individual differences. as previously stated, the researcher was interested in studying and developing skill practice packages related to thai people's pronunciation problems in order to help students majoring in chinese language teaching pronounce chinese phonetic characters correctly according to chinese phonetics. additionally, the researcher considered individual differences, which means that learners may practice using the lessons provided and can do a pronunciation practice test outside of the classroom, which includes submitting audio clips for teachers to correct pronunciation. the researcher implemented practice packages for chinese phonetic reading skills in the seesaw online classroom. according to sankaburanurak (2017), asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 60-68 62 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the capacity to use multimedia and technology effectively is a critical component of education in the twenty-first century. that is, utilizing the latest educational technology to improve the quality of chinese instruction and changing traditional instruction to stimulate learners' attention are both consistent with 21st-century learning. the researchers employed the seesaw application, which was created as a "digital platform" for learners of all ages, and users may register by scanning the qr code. there are customizable learning patterns available in the program for learners to select from, such as typing, drawing, taking photographs, recording videos, or connecting additional links, which makes it simple and enjoyable to use. for instance, students can record a video to describe their response or their own work, utilizing a media that is easily accessible. notably, it is completely free, providing unlimited access. students can access internet resources using their laptops, tablets, or cellphones to maximize their learning potential. given its significance, the researchers anticipated that producing chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages via the seesaw online classroom would serve as a guide for successful teaching and learning, reducing disparities between students and allowing students to reach their full potential. 1.1. research purposes 1) to develop the chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages through the seesaw online classroom and examine its effectiveness. 2) to assess the effectiveness of the chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages delivered via the seesaw online classroom by comparing students' abilities to read aloud before and after instruction using the created skill packages. 3) to determine students' satisfaction with the created practice packages for chinese phonetic pronunciation. 2. materials and methods 2.1. participants the participants in this study were 78 students majoring in chinese language teaching. the participants were divided into two groups: 1) the sample group for evaluating the efficiency of the practice packages was 42 students majoring in chinese language teaching enrolled in the first semester of academic year 2020. this is not an experimental group. 2) the experimental group consisted of 36 students majoring in chinese language education who were enrolled in the second semester of academic year 2020 on a voluntary basis. 2.2. variables the independent variable: the chinese phonetic pronunciation skill packages through the online classroom seesaw the dependent variables: 1) the learning achievement of the learners who studied with the chinese phonetic pronunciation skill packages, 2) the efficiency of the developed practice packages, and 3) the students' satisfaction towards the chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages. 2.3. research instruments 1) chinese phonetic reading skill packages were divided into 3 categories: consonants, vowels, and tones for students majoring in chinese language teaching. these packages were produced by the researcher using a computer program. each session lasts 5-10 minutes, and students are given listening exams during class. 2) form for evaluating the quality of practice packages for chinese phonetic pronunciation skills. 3) the chinese phonetic pronunciation ability test was divided into six sections with a total of 47 items. the preand post-tests were evaluated by three chinese language teachers. 4) a satisfaction survey for the online classroom's chinese phonetic pronunciation skill practice packages through the online classroom seesaw. 2.4. research procedures in this study, the research procedures are described in figure 1. 1) establish the experimental location and instruments. 2) establish a learner orientation prior to learning. 3) provide 21 sets of cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation practice for 10 weeks. a. week 1: learner orientation by explaining how to attend classes, how to learn with the application seesaw, and measurement and evaluation methods. the pre-test was administered and graded during this week by two fulltime chinese language professors and one chinese instructor. b. weeks 2-4: provide learning sessions using the consonant pronunciation practice through the seesaw online classroom. c. weeks 5 – 7: provide learning sessions using the phonetic pronunciation practice packages on chinese characters (vowel pronunciation practice) through the seesaw online classroom. d. weeks 8 – 10: provide learning sessions using the phonetic pronunciation practice packages on chinese characters (tonal pronunciation practice) through the seesaw online classroom. e. week 11: students took a post-test which was assessed by two full-time chinese language professors and one chinese teacher. 4) after the students finished the post-test, the experiment group was invited to complete a satisfaction survey on the chinese phonetic pronunciation skill packages using the seesaw online classroom on google forms. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 60-68 63 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.5. research framework figure 1. the development of practice packages on chinese pronunciation skills through seesaw online classroom for students majoring in chinese language teaching. 3. results 1. the results from the development of the chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages through the seesaw online classroom figure 2. the chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages cvt. the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages (figure 2) include a five-step teaching process that is essential as follows. step 1: bring to the lesson. the teacher greets, introduces the content and informs the students of the purposes. step 2: content is divided into 2 sub-sections as follows: 1) the instructor explains the essential tasks and emphasizes the difficult points to the students by illustrating the pronunciation system and illustrating the meaning of words with images. 2) to practice reading aloud, students listen to and mimic the sounds they hear. step 3: concluding. the teacher outlines the pronunciation's most important aspects. simultaneously, students review their pronunciation. step 4: enhance your reading abilities. learners listen to and mimic the sounds they hear, which may include vocabulary, phrases, poetry, and brief texts. step 5: enhance your listening abilities. from simple to difficult levels, learners listen and pick the correct answer; they also listen and fill in the proper response; and they listen to syllables, vocabulary, and short sentences. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 60-68 64 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. the quality of the chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages through seesaw. no. aspects mean s.d. interpretation 1 content 4.78 0.42 excellent 2 presentation 4.78 0.42 excellent 3 evaluation 5.00 0.00 excellent 4 visual, auditory, and language use 4.76 0.44 excellent 5 texts and colors 4.90 0.31 excellent 6 learning organization 4.83 0.38 excellent total 4.84 0.37 excellent from table 1, it revealed that the results of quality analysis of the chinese phonetic pronunciation skill practice packages were at a very good level (x ̄ =4.84, s.d. = 0.37). the quality evaluation aspect was at very good level (x̄ = 5.00, s.d. = 0.00). in terms of letters and color selection, the quality was at a very good level (x ̄ = 4.90, s.d. = 0.31). the quality was at a very good level (x ̄ = 4.83, s.d. = 0.38) in terms of content and presentation. the quality was at a very good level (x̄ = 4.78, s.d. = 0.42) in terms of visual, sound and language use. the quality was at a very good level (x̄ = 4.76, s.d. = 0.44), respectively. 2. the efficiency of the chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages through the online classroom seesaw (field testing), which was conducted with 30 students. table 2. the efficiency of the chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages through the online classroom seesaw (field testing). tools n k total scores (all tests) total scores (all students) percentages during-study tests (e1) 30 145 4.350 3.589 82.50 post-test (e𝟐) 30 65 1.950 1.657 84.97 the findings of the seesaw online classroom field testing of the chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages are shown in table 2. the percentage of average test scores obtained during the course was 82.50, and the percentage of average test scores obtained after the class was 84.97, indicating that chinese phonetic pronunciation skill packages delivered via an online classroom, seesaw, were constructed with an efficiency of 82.50/84.97, achieving the established benchmarks of at least 80/80. in conclusion, the chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages delivered via the seesaw online classroom demonstrated excellent performance and were suitable for classroom usage. additionally, the results supported the research hypothesis. 3. inter-rater reliability in using the preand post-tests of the chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages through the online classroom seesaw table 3. reliability statistics for preand post-tests of a chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages through the seesaw online classroom with three experts: 2 chinese language professors and 1 chinese teacher. cronbach's alpha cronbach's alpha based on standardized items n of items 0.998 0.998 3 according to table 3, the reliability between experts, as measured by a pearson correlation coefficient (r), was 0.998, suggesting that the tests were performed at a very high level. as a result, this test was found its use appropriate in a positive direction. table 4. the reliability coefficient of the three instructors' ratings. raters professor 1 professor 2 professor 3 professor 2 pearson correlation 0.994** (0.00)** 1 professor 3 pearson correlation 0.995** (0.00)** 0.997** (0.00)** 1 note: **correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). according to table 4, the reliability coefficient was evaluated based on the raters' internal reliability, and it was found that the coefficient index between the raters among the three chinese teaching professionals (experts 1, 2, and 3) was consistent. additionally, the coefficient index from expert 1 and 2 evaluations was statistically significant at the .01 level (p=0.000), with a very high level of correlation in the same direction (positive direction) (r=0.994). correlations between experts 1 and 3 were statistically significant at the .01 level (p=0.000), with a very high degree of correlation (positive direction) (r=0.995). between the raters of the second and third expert evaluations, there was a statistically significant correlation at the 0.01 level (p=0.000), with a very high degree of correlation in the same direction (positive direction). (r=0.992). 4. a comparison of learning achievement with scores before and after learning from chinese phonetic pronunciation skills packages through the online classroom seesaw. table 5. a comparison of learning achievement. x . .s d d . .ds d t sig.(1-tailed) pre-test post-test 46.29 54.93 8.94 4.94 8.64 4.84 10.70* 0.0000 note: *p ≤ .05. according to table 5, the participants' learning achievement was significantly higher after studying with the chinese phonetic pronunciation skill packages via the online classroom seesaw with the statistical significance at asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 60-68 65 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the .05 level. the average score before using the phonetic pronunciation skill packages was 46.29 and the average score after using the phonetic pronunciation skill packages was 54.93 out of a full 60 points. it was concluded that the researcher's chinese phonetic pronunciation skill packages delivered via the online classroom seesaw were successful in improving the learning achievement of students majoring in chinese language teaching. table 6. students’ satisfaction towards chinese phonetic pronunciation skill package through seesaw. statements mean s.d. interpretation 1) teachers 1.1 the teacher properly and clearly described how to use the online classroom seesaw to practice chinese phonetic pronunciation skills. 4.42 0.50 agree 1.2 teachers advise, recommend, and monitor students in using the seesaw online classroom's chinese phonetic pronunciation skill practice thoroughly. 4.50 0.56 agree 1.3 teachers utilize a variety of methods to encourage students to actively develop their chinese phonetic pronunciation skills via the seesaw online classroom's chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice. 4.42 0.56 agree 1.4 teachers are skilled at improving students' chinese phonetic pronunciation abilities via the use of the chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice in the seesaw online classroom and by providing opportunities for students to ask questions. 4.55 0.55 strongly agree total 4.49 0.54 agree 2) content 2.1 the material is clear and comprehensible. 4.61 0.54 strongly agree 2.2 the material is organized in a step-by-step fashion, from basic to advanced. 4.55 0.50 strongly agree 2.3 the content is easy to understand. 4.58 0.55 strongly agree 2.4 the content is interesting 4.55 0.55 strongly agree 2.5 the pronunciation issue has been resolved in accordance with the goals. 4.39 0.65 agree 2.6 instructions, suggestions, and learning guidelines are clear. 4.45 0.56 agree 2.7 it is clear in the demonstration and practice processes. 4.45 0.56 agree 2.8 there are appropriate interaction activities with teachers through the online classroom. 4.29 0.62 agree 2.9 the test format is appropriate. 4.45 0.56 agree 2.10 the number of test items is appropriate. 4.42 0.56 agree 2.11 test reports are appropriate. 4.45 0.56 agree 2.12 the timing of testing is appropriate. 4.47 0.61 agree total 4.50 0.57 agree 3) media 3.1 colors and font sizes are appropriate. 4.53 0.51 strongly agree 3.2 background and illustration colors are appropriate. 4.53 0.51 strongly agree 3.3 the illustrations are appropriate and meaningful. 4.53 0.51 strongly agree 3.4 the size and type of images are appropriate. 4.39 0.49 agree 3.5 the narration is clear. 4.37 0.60 agree 3.6 the length of time spent is appropriate. 4.45 0.56 agree total 4.47 0.53 agree 4) reading practice 4.1 pronunciation exercises are appropriate for your interests, aptitudes, and abilities that are beneficial to you. 4.61 0.49 strongly agree 4.2 pronunciation exercises consist of steps or processes that encourage students to learn effectively. 4.58 0.50 strongly agree 4.3 pronunciation skills exercises help students learn and use them in their daily life. 4.58 0.50 strongly agree total 4.59 0.49 strongly agree 5) post-practice 5.1 consonant pronunciation 4.66 0.48 strongly agree 5.2 vowel pronunciation 4.47 0.51 agree 5.3 tone pronunciation 4.55 0.50 strongly agree 5.4 pronunciation of compound words 4.32 0.53 agree 5.5 word stress 4.45 0.61 agree 5.6 pronunciation of phrases and sentences 4.39 0.55 agree total 4.49 0.54 agree 6) benefits 6.1 i can improve my chinese phonetic pronunciation skills effectively. 4.58 0.50 strongly agree 6.2 exercises are useful for further study or provide knowledge of a specific group. 4.50 0.51 agree total 4.54 0.50 strongly agree total of 6 aspects 4.50 0.54 agree according to table 6, students reported the highest degree of satisfaction with the development of chinese phonetic pronunciation skills via the online seesaw classroom (x̄= 4.50, s.d. = 0.54). the pronunciation skill practice (x ̄=4.59) was the most satisfied by students, followed by the benefits of the online classroom (x ̄=4.54) and the content (x̄=4.50). the teachers, the pronunciation abilities after the pronunciation exercise (x̄=4.49), and the media composition (x̄=4.47) were all followed respectively. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 60-68 66 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. conclusion and discussion 1. it can be concluded that the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages created by the researcher consist of six steps: (1) studying related documents; (2) structuring online lessons and writing lesson plans; (3) implementing the storyline and plans; (4) producing the chinese phonetic and pronunciation practice kits; (5) editing and audio recording; and (6) using the media of the chinese phonetic pronunciation skill practice packages to achieve the level of efficiency. there are three main components in the section, namely 1) consonant practice set, 2) vowel practice set, and 3) tone practice set. the teaching process has five steps as follows: step 1 introduce into the lesson, step 2 content, step 3 wrap-up, step 4 practice reading skills, and step 5 practice listening skills. the researcher combined the concept of khlaisang (2017) which has proposed an ipo+8 model. to elaborate, the design of an instructional system should be systematic and include the following three primary steps and eight sub-steps: inputs, processes, and outputs to be used in the process of developing skill practice packages. 1) the input aspect entails the process of analyzing inputs, which includes analyzing problems/needs associated with the preparation of skill practice packages, learner characteristics, lesson content, objectives, presentation styles, and appropriate activities, as well as developing strategies for developing a set of skill practices. 2) process: it entails the synthesis of the process of selecting and utilizing current and new instructional aids and resources; and 3) evaluation of the learning from the use of skill practice packages in the online classroom (output): an evaluation of the learning from the use of skill practice packages in the online classroom was conducted, as well as an evaluation of the skill practice packages' performance. additionally, the researcher combined the concepts associated with teaching chinese pronunciation suggested by thabseerak (2019); tianguang (2018); avery & ehrlich (1994, cited in kotcharat and limsiriruengrai (2014); celce-murcia (2000, cited in kotcharat and limsiriruengrai (2014), which focused on pronunciation skill development, by introducing a method for teaching pronunciation to thai students and suggesting methods for teaching phonetic pronunciation consistent with the teaching of language for communication. the creation of the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages had a mean of 4.82 and a standard deviation of 0.14. the criteria for approving the quality of the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages were determined using the mean of each question; any of the following has an average of "good to very good." additionally, the overall average cannot be less than the "good" standard. the development of chinese phonetic pronunciation practice packages for students majoring in chinese language instruction via the online classroom seesaw aids in the transmission of information and appropriate material for learners. the material is presented in an acceptable manner for the intended audience. there is a logical progression of the information, clear and simple-to-understand language, and intriguing topics to pique learners' interest. additionally, assessments throughout the course were consistent with the test, offering ongoing lessons and allowing learners to respond to the lessons, assisting in the strengthening of activities for the development of effective pronunciation abilities for learners. kang (2010) demonstrated that integrating technology information and curricula does not imply the use of information technology as a supplement to teaching and learning; rather, it emphasized the use of information technology as a tool to promote self-learning and emotional motivation in students. additionally, it is compatible with clark (1996), who investigated the use of interactive multimedia systems to monitor instructors' professional development. the findings indicated that instructors who used the interactive multimedia software to monitor teacher professional development had a greater capacity to recall, demonstrate, and explain than teachers who utilized the handbook of professional teaching standards. thus, the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages may efficiently practice chinese phonetic pronunciation skills, allowing learners to properly pronounce them. by illustrating the phonetic system and visualizing words during pronunciation practice, learners may get a better understanding of the language. pronunciation practice through online classrooms may be done at anytime and anywhere. 2. using field testing to determine the effectiveness of the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages, it was determined that the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages were 82.50/84.97 efficient. according to the established criterion of 80/80, the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation was successful. the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages assist students in developing a better understanding of the mandarin chinese pronunciation system, as well as developing chinese phonetic or pinyin pronunciation skills and resolving the issue of frequently mispronounced pronunciation with native speakers through online classroom learning. this is consistent with pimkot (2017), who examined the improvement of phonetic reading abilities in mandarin chinese (hanyu pinyin) among grade 3 children using the electronic book "happy chinese pinyin."《快乐学拼音》. the findings indicated that the e-book "happy chinese pinyin"《快乐 学拼音》series for grade 3 students fulfilled the stated requirements with an efficiency of 83.30/82.27. 3. a comparison of learning achievement with scores obtained before and after using the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages through the seesaw online classroom demonstrates that the package may be utilized to teach according to the hypothesis. the mean score prior to utilizing the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills training packages was 19.45. when comparing average scores before and after utilizing the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills training package, cvt chinese characters had a mean score of 29.00, out of a maximum score of 60. the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages were statistically significant at the 0.05. this indicates that the researcher's cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills training packages were successful and could affect the participants' learning achievement. xiao (2017), who used the phonetic learning software called “english liulishuo” (http://www.liulishuo.com/) with sixty-seven nonenglish-majored freshmen from the electrical and information college in jinan university. they were divided into two classes, 34 for the experimental class (ec), 33 for the control class (cc). t-test result show that the scores of the post-test of these two classes are significantly different form each other (t =4.23, p = .000 <0.05). therefore, she concluded that the ec has outperformed the cc at the end of the study. this is also consistent with nokklang (2016), who examined grade 4 students' improved chinese phonetic reading (pinyin) abilities and their pleasure with learning activities including games. the findings indicated that students' competence in chinese phonetic (pinyin) pronunciation improved by 70% over the 0.05 criterion. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 60-68 67 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group utilizing an interesting chinese phonetic pronunciation exercise package cvt that includes pictures and sounds and has simple-to-understand material may encourage pupils. the training sequence should progress from simple to challenging material. notably, the researcher included pronunciation practice with a native speaker in the process of resolving the issue of often mispronounced consonants, vowels, and tones. by integrating the cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skills practice packages into an online classroom seesaw application, learners may engage, communicate, and question instructors about each cvt chinese phonetic pronunciation skill package. additionally, students may record the audio and submit it to the instructor for verification. 4. students expressed satisfaction with the greatest degree of improvement of chinese phonetic pronunciation abilities achieved via the online seesaw classroom (x ̄= 4.50, sd = 0.54). this is congruent with sripayat (2010), who created a series of spelling activities for thailand's sixth-grade pupils. their pupils had the following sentiments on the spelling practice packages: 1) students had favorable attitudes towards the content's complexity, and 2) students expressed favorable attitudes towards the training set's structure. this is also in line with seubsom and mheeplad (2017), who created flip classroom learning activities for students majoring in computer studies in thailand by combining multimedia technology courses through google classroom. the findings indicated that students were pleased with flipped classrooms since they allowed for the creation of workpieces via project-based learning techniques, as well as the ability to speak with or question instructors about academic difficulties. additionally, students offer the following recommendations for a variety of problems. 1) students may improve their pronunciation abilities independently and without regard for time constraints. when there is no restriction on the number of students who practice pronunciation throughout each session, students get a better understanding of how to pronounce the chinese phonetic characters and also the pronunciation system. this is because learners have practiced pronunciation in accordance with the method established during the content stage in order to develop an understanding of the pronunciation system. finally, the instructor highlights the difficult content and reviews the material once more. following that, reading and listening skill exercises were performed to assess students' ability to read vocabulary, poetry, and short essays. finally, students practice the procedure with native speakers in order to correct common pronunciation errors. this appears to be consistent with the findings of chokpaiboon, wongwattananukun, and xu (2017), who developed mandarin phonetic pronunciation skills for chinese students in thailand and discovered that all trainees acquired the correct pronunciation of the mandarin phonetic alphabet, a natural pronunciation, and the ability to apply the knowledge gained to other chinese-related courses. additionally, their 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(2018). research on errors made by elementary thai students in chinese pronunciation falling rising tone: based on attwit commercial technical school’s students. master dissertation lanzhou university. china prc. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 136 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 136-143, 2020 issn(e): 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.136.143 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group determining the attitudes and metaphoric perception of prospective science teachers toward biology courses sule firat durdukoca1 arzu önel2 ( corresponding author) 1kafkas univercity, education faculty, special education department, kars, turkey. 2kafkas univercity, education faculty, mathematic and science education department, kars, turkey. abstract this study aimed to determine the attitudes and metaphorical perceptions of science teacher candidates towards biology lesson. in the study, a mixed method and triangulation pattern was used. a survey form developed by the researchers to determine the metaphorical perceptions of the teacher candidates about biology lesson and their demographic information and a "biology course attitude scale (bdtö)" were used to determine their attitudes towards the biology lesson. spss package program was used for analysis of quantitative data and content analysis technique was used for analysis of qualitative data. metaphores developed by science teacher candidates are alphabetically ordered; coded, categorized, percent and frequency values are calculated. participant teacher candidates' attitudes towards the biology lesson in general were found to be positive at the "i agree" level. as a result of the research, it was determined that the teacher candidates' attitude scores related to the biology lesson did not show any significant difference according to gender and grade levels. it was determined that science teachers candidates participating in the research had 117 valid metaphors and 57 different metaphors for the biology lesson, and the metaphors of "life" (f = 37) and "water" (f = 6) were the most frequently produced metaphors. keywords: biology course, science teacher candidates, metaphor, attitude, mixed method, triangulation pattern. citation | sule fırat durdukoca; arzu önel (2020). determining the attitudes and metaphoric perception of prospective science teachers toward biology courses. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 136-143. history: received: 4 december 2019 revised: 9 january 2020 accepted: 13 february 2020 published: 19 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 137 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 138 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 138 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 141 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 142 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.136.143&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1425 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8864-3243 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4205-3939 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1425 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8864-3243 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4205-3939 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1425 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8864-3243 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4205-3939 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1425 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8864-3243 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4205-3939 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 136-143 137 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research is the only study that examined teacher candidates' attitudes and perceptions towards biology course in mixed methods and in the same research. 1. introduction biology analyzes the molecules and cells forming the living things on a microscopic scale and the whole world of living creatures on a global scale (reece et al., 2013). the world of living things comprises a broad range of ecosystems varying from 10 km depths of the oceans to 65 km altitudes of the atmosphere (lodish et al., 2011). from this aspect, biology can be regarded as a branch of science involving social, environmental and health issues like the composition of the soil, agriculture, animal husbandry, nutrition, diseases, marriage, family relations, learning, memory, and environment, suggesting solutions to many problems related to these issues, presenting the latest developments in human life day by day, and proliferating. the shortage of knowledge about biology often caused problems and has continued to create them. namely, people with little or no knowledge have resorted to violence and even murdered women in many parts of the world because they did not give birth to boys for long years (simşek, 2011; unal, 2005). still, a person knowing the fundamental matters about fertilization, one of the biological matters, comprehends that the element determining the male gender is the "y" chromosome and is transferred from father to son so that the mother has no involvement in this issue. biology is significant in resolving numerous environmental problems. as a result of people's inappropriate behaviors, biodiversity is shrinking, global climate change is undergone, and the incidents like glacier melting and droughts are increasing rapidly (tosun, 2011). the reason behind them is the shortage of knowledge about biology or negative attitudes toward environmental issues (atasoy & ertürk, 2008) because environmental education and awareness can be obtained through biology courses (atasoy & ertürk, 2008; unal. & dımışkı, 1999). biology is essential to solving problems associated with human health (tosun, 2011). biological significance of foods, sufficient and well-balanced nutrition, health problems in case of malnutrition can be obtained to individuals within the scope of biology courses. the level of social awareness about drugs and particularly antibiotics also necessitates biology knowledge. biology knowledge can only be obtained with biology courses and decisive attitudes and positive insights. rodrigues, santos, teixeira, gonela, and zanetti (2012) described the attitude as “an essential structure for comprehending a person's tendency to adopt and sustain specific standards of behavior.” it contains sentiment and prepares for behavior. therefore, the individual initially obtains knowledge of the object, then displays his or her situation as an affective response and eventually converts it into behavior. hence, attitude exists at the source of all human behavior. attitudes toward biology consist of students' feelings like interest, like and dislike, and the scale of attitude measures this (cömert, 2014). students are usually unresponsive to the biology course and have adverse attitudes because they often regard it as trivial (oztürk-akar, 2014). in such an area of concern in life, giving decisive attitudes to students should be one of the principal objectives of the curriculum at all levels. metaphors can be a tool for ascertaining the perceptions of individuals about a subject. we can define them as a tool to facilitate understanding the lesser-known objects, events, concepts, facts, theories by using the known features of the objects, events, concepts, phenomena, theories. hence, metaphors present assistance in understanding, describing, and structuring a new phenomenon (morgan, 1998). forceville (2002) asserts that a metaphor has three principal components: the subject of the metaphor, its source, and characteristics adding to the subject of metaphor. for instance, in the sentence, "children are the architects of the future because they will shape our future," the word "children" is the subject of metaphor, the word "architects of the future" the source of metaphor, and the expression, "because they will shape our future" is the characteristic adding to the subject of metaphor (ummanel, 2017). metaphors are used for developing the insight and understanding of learners and identifying how they regard an object, event, situation (zheng & song, 2010). currently, it is intended to ascertain the perceptions of participants through metaphors in various studies. perception has central importance for any discipline concerning human behavior and learning. in various studies on observing teachers' views about various subjects, perceptions were determined to guide teachers' instructional behaviors. still, perception is a theoretical structure exhibited with assistance. one of the factors presenting such assistance to the individual is metaphors (zheng & song, 2010). in the study, it is intended to show prospective teachers' perceptions about the biology course through metaphors. cognitive, affective, and behavioral characteristics of the course can be settled with metaphors created by prospective biology teachers presenting the essential information about life, and the necessary actions to increase the attitude level, in other words, to provide better biology education, can be revealed. in the literature, students' attitudes toward biology course are studied at the level of high school (aktaş, 2012; atik, kayabaşı, yağcı, & unlü-erkoç, 2015; cömert, 2014; ekici & hevedanlı, 2010; konu, 2017; onder, 2015; ozatlı, 2006; pehlivan & köseoğlu, 2010; semenderoğlu, 2012; yapıcı, 2015). kabaca (2013) analyzed the attitudes of prospective classroom teachers, and köseoğlu (2010) examined the attitude of prospective biology teachers. there are relatively few studies on this subject (usak et al., 2009). besides, various studies analyzing students' metaphoric perceptions about the concept of biology (gürbüzoğlu-yalmancı & aydın, 2013; harman & cökelez, 2017; ulukök, bayram, & selvi, 2015; yapıcı, 2015) are found, while no study on the direct metaphoric perceptions of prospective biology teachers was encountered. prospective teachers' attitudes toward science are thought to be useful in improving positive/negative metaphors (harman & cökelez, 2017; osborne, simon, & collins, 2003). thornbury (1996) asserts that the impact of education on individuals will be partial if no regulation on the awareness level of attitudes is practiced. hence, ascertaining the attitudes and metaphoric perceptions of prospective teachers toward the biology course is essential to make them aware of their attitudes and perceptions toward the biology course, conveying the data linked to science rapidly developing and presenting the knowledge to humans. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 136-143 138 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group this study aims to ascertain the attitudes and metaphoric perceptions of prospective teachers toward biology courses. determining the level of it, how they interpret this course, and display their positive or negative attitudes are central points of research. in this context, the answers to the following questions were inquired: 1. what are the prospective teachers' attitudes toward biology course? do they vary by the gender and class levels of prospective teachers? 2. what are the metaphors offered by prospective teachers concerning biology course? under which conceptual categories are they collected? 2. method 2.1. research model in the research, a triangulation design, one of the mixed methods, was used. doğru, gençosman, ataalkın, and seker (2012) stated that the mixed model is the least used research model in biology. therefore, the research is expected to add to fill an essential gap in the literature. 2.2. the study group of research the study group of the research consisted of prospective teachers training at the department of science education at the faculty of education at kafkas university in turkey. criterion sampling, one of the purposive sampling methods, was practiced. the criterion requires that prospective teachers took the biology course. therefore, the study was conducted with 136 prospective teachers in the second (n = 66), third (n = 52), and fourth (n = 18) classes of science education department. 65% (n = 89) were female participants. 2.3. data collection tools the data were obtained by a questionnaire formed by the researchers and the biology lesson attitude scale (bdtö) by tosun (2011). the part including participants' demographic information and the part in which participants were required to complete the sentence "biology course is like or similar to ..../ because ...." constitute two parts of the form. the bdtö was designed as a 5-point likert-type and involved 36 items in one dimension. the variance defined by this single factor was assessed as 54.98%. 7 of 36 items indicated negative attitudes, and 29 of them displayed positive attitudes. the cronbach-alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was determined as .96 and in this research, cronbach-alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was found to be .89. 2.4. data analysis in the analysis of quantitative data, descriptive analysis, independent groups t-test, and anova test were practiced. the analysis and interpretation of metaphors developed by prospective teachers were conducted by considering the five stages below developed by saban (2009) following the content analysis technique. 1. coding: metaphors created by participants were ordered and coded in alphabetical order. 2. classification: these metaphors were analyzed in terms of the subject of the metaphor, its source, and the convenience of the characteristics adding to the subject of metaphor. from the content analysis, 117 confirmed, and 57 different metaphors were acquired. 3. category development: it was analyzed how 57 different metaphors were conceptualized, and the relevant metaphors were grouped under a single category, and 16 conceptual categories were created. 4. validity and reliability: a field expert and an educational science expert were asked to ascertain whether the metaphors describe the associated conceptual category. the reliability of the research was assessed using the formula (reliability= consensus/ consensus+dissensus) by miles and huberman (1994). accordingly, the consensus was ensured with experts on 16 conceptual categories, and the reliability level was 91%. 5. transferring data to computer environment: metaphors were transferred to the computer environment, and the number (f) and percentage (%) of each metaphor were estimated. 3. findings table 1 shows a descriptive analysis of the biology course attitude scale scores of prospective teachers. table-1. the descriptive analysis of the answers to the biology course attitude scale. min. max. ss biology course attitude scale 1 5 3.55 .96 in table 1, the attitude scale scores of the participants were observed to be positive at the dimension of “agree.” the item mostly agreed by the candidates was “i believe that what i learned in biology course was helpful for me” ( item10=4.28; ssitem10=.82), but the item with the lowest participation level by the prospective teachers was “no one has no shortage of biology knowledge” ( item26=1.55; ssitem26=.89). these results reveal that the attitudes of the participants toward the biology course are high. table 2 displays the results of data analysis on the prospective teachers' attitudes toward biology courses for the difference by gender. table-2. the result of t-test analysis of the participants’ biology class attitude scale by gender. results of levene-test gender n ss t df p f p female 89 125.15 14.62 1.53 136 .12* 2.66 .10 male 49 120.85 17.72 note: p*<.05. x x x x asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 136-143 139 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when the average attitude scores of participants were examined in table 2 by gender, the mean attitude scores of female participants were seen to be higher than that of male participants. still, no significant difference was determined between the mean scores. it reveals that male and female participants' attitudes are similar to each other. table 3 presents the data analysis results of prospective teachers' attitudes the difference by class level. table-3. the anova test results of biology courses attitude scale of the participants by class level. class level sum of square sd mean square f p inter-group 1178,50 3 392.83 1.58 .19* intra-group 33204.66 134 247.79 total 34383.16 137 note: p*<.05. in table 3, no significant difference was observed between the prospective teachers' attitude levels by class (p> .05). it shows that the attitudes of prospective teachers in the second, third, and fourth classes are close to each other. in table 4, metaphors created by prospective teachers concerning biology courses are displayed together with their frequency and percentage values. table-4. metaphors created for the biology course, frequency and percentage values. metaphor f % metaphor f % weight 1 .85 torture 1 .85 anatomy 1 .85 jenga 1 .85 antique car 1 .85 heart 2 1.70 driving a car 1 .85 cat 2 1.70 research 1 .85 exploration 2 1.70 riddle 3 2.56 chemistry 2 1.70 living things 3 2.56 book 1 .85 flower 3 2.56 labyrinth 2 1.70 chocolate 1 .85 lahmacun 1 .85 drilled plastic bottle 1 .85 machine 1 .85 trouble 1 .85 matryoshka doll 1 .85 nature 1 .85 miracle 1 .85 doctor 2 1.70 oxygen 1 .85 domino 1 .85 organ 2 1.70 friend 1 .85 guide 1 .85 looking to the earth from space 1 .85 art 1 .85 universe 1 .85 verbal lesson 2 1.70 memorizing 1 .85 water 6 5.13 fenerbahçe 1 .85 poetry 1 .85 sapling 1 .85 prayer bead 1 .85 whirlpool 1 .85 science 4 3.42 shadow 1 .85 horizon line 1 .85 rose 1 .85 adaptation 1 .85 sun 1 .85 space 1 .85 dream 1 .85 life philosophy 1 .85 life 37 31.63 life coach 1 .85 life sciences 1 .85 puzzle 3 2.56 drug 1 .85 food 1 .85 first aid kit 1 .85 in table 4, participants were observed to create 117 confirmed metaphors. metaphors mostly created were “life” (f=37; %31.63), “water” (f=6; %5.13), and “science” (f=4; %3.42). in table 5, the metaphor groups of conceptual categories are presented. in table 5, metaphors are classified under 16 conceptual categories. the number of metaphors for the source of life category is 9. in this category, prospective teachers asserted that biology course is a field comprising almost all kinds of knowledge and skills about life, and this course is essential such as water, sun, heart, and oxygen. one of the participants stated, “biology course is like life because biology is everywhere and necessary”(s113) while the others said “biology course is like life because it is a living branch of science” (student [s] 118), and “biology is like water because there is no life without water just like in biology (s136).” the most frequent created metaphors in “a group of topics related to each other” category are “riddle” (f = 3), and “puzzle” (f = 3). candidates stated that each riddle and puzzle has interrelated parts in itself like the rings of a chain, that the completion of the riddle and puzzle is not possible if even one of the pieces is absence, that the subjects of the biology course are linked with each other like the rings of a chain. accordingly, the opinions of the candidates are: “biology lesson is like a puzzle because we reach the whole when we compile the pieces” (s120); “biology is like a puzzle because every learned information is like the complement of the earlier one” (s58); “biology is like a jenga game because it needs self-confidence and not everyone can understand it.” (s107). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 136-143 140 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. the conceptual categories of metaphors created for biology course. conceptual categories f % metaphors number of metaphor source of life 52 43.44 life, life sciences, sun, water, heart, oxygen, organ, shadow, life philosophy 9 a group of topics related to each other 10 8.46 riddle, machine, domino, matryoshka doll, puzzle, jenga 6 a branch of science 7 5.98 anatomy, science, chemistry 3 a discipline requiring effort 5 4.27 flower, sapling, rose 3 a discipline including natural knowledge 5 4.27 nature, living things, adaptation 3 a pleasant discipline 5 4.27 chocolate, food, lahmacun, fenerbahçe, driving a car 5 an afflicting discipline 4 3.41 weight, torture, trouble, prayer bead 4 a discipline including medical knowledge 4 3.41 doctor, first aid kit, drug 3 a discipline with limitless knowledge 4 3.41 horizon line, space, universe, looking to the earth from space 4 a guiding discipline 4 3.41 friend, life coach, guide, book 4 an ungrateful discipline 4 3.41 cat, drilled plastic bottle, antique car 3 a discipline leading to be an explorer 3 2.56 research, exploration 2 a challenging discipline to learn 3 2.56 memorizing, verbal lesson 2 a group of complex topics 3 2.56 labyrinth, whirlpool 2 a discipline giving an aesthetic spirit 2 2.29 art, poetry 2 a discipline evoking admiration 2 2.29 dream, miracle 2 the most frequent created metaphor in “a branch of science” category was medicine (f = 4). the prospective teachers said medical science deals with human physiology and biology course include subjects explaining human anatomy just like medical science, and they created the "medicine" metaphor associated with it. one of them stated, “biology is like medicine because it introduces our body” (s72). also, anatomy and chemistry metaphors were created. for example, (s59) stated, “biology is like chemistry because it analyzes living things to the tiniest building block.” in “a discipline requiring effort” category, they created three metaphors, such as flowers, saplings, and roses. they generally stated they grew and developed as a result of a process requiring labor such as watering and maintaining the plants and the biology lesson requires working, labor and effort, just like plant growth, and its scope could be learned and conveyed into a life better as long as one studies it. one of them said, “biology lesson is like sapling because it is more clearly understood as necessary effort are exerted, like the transformation of an adequately watered sapling into a tree (s21).” in “a pleasant discipline” category, prospective teachers expressed they considered the biology course exciting and pleasant, and created metaphors by connecting them with the concepts giving pleasure and excitement. hence, (s92) said, “biology lesson is like driving a car because it gives fun as you learn.” in “an afflicting discipline” category, prospective teachers displayed their negative attitudes with metaphors. for instance, one of the candidates stated, “biology is like weight because not everyone can lift it.” (s106), and the other candidates, “biology is like trouble because suffering from it never ends” (s14). in “an ungrateful discipline” category, they exhibited their negative attitudes because they considered it needs a constant effort, and the knowledge acquired by long efforts was forgotten in a short time if the effort reduced. they created metaphors like “biology lesson is like a cat because it is ungrateful and quickly forgotten.” (s51); “biology is like an antique car because if you care, it will work; if you do not, it will leave you in the road” (s7). in “a tough discipline to learn” category, they said that although the biology course is in numerical courses, its scope included verbal knowledge and was usually learned by memorizing, and hence the biology course was challenging to learn. one of them stated, “biology lesson is like memorizing because it includes a lot of verbal knowledge and success is difficult without memorization” (s97). in “a group of complex issues” category, they asserted that the scope was pretty complicated, the subjects were highly related to each other, and that reaching a meaningful whole with the information gained from the course was challenging. one of them expressed, “biology lesson is like a whirlpool because everything is associated with each other” (s 64). in “a discipline including medical knowledge” category, the most created metaphor was “doctor” (f = 2). the participants asserted that doctors were included in defining the area, causes, and treatment of various diseases in our body and that the biology course presented information just like a doctor in terms of human anatomy, potential damage to it, and different treatments. one of the candidates said, “biology is like a doctor because it assists us in predicting the cause of troubles in our bodies.” (s67). in “a discipline including limitless knowledge” category, prospective teachers said that the framework of the course was limitless, just like a horizon line, space, universe, and looking to space. the opinions of some of them are as such: “biology is like a horizon line because you can never approach and fully comprehend it even if you think you get close.” (s40); “biology is like space because you cannot help exploring it.” (s96). in “a guiding discipline” category, they said that real friends, life coaches, guides, and books direct individuals about how they act, and biology courses generally present information about body structure and life. one of them said, “biology is like a friend because life cannot be continued without it.” (s98). however, others stated, “biology is like a life coach because it explains everything about our body and health.” (s70). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 136-143 141 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in “a discipline leading to be explorer” category, the metaphor frequently created was “exploration” (f = 2). they created metaphors by asserting that new information was obtained as they explored and that biology course was open to getting new knowledge in almost every course. for example, one of the candidates said, “biology is like exploring because new information facilitates learning.” (s 34). through these metaphors in “a discipline giving aesthetic spirit” category, they declared the organization of subjects of biology courses, and visuals presented during the description of subjects produced aesthetic spirit. one of them said, “biology is like art because their subjects are in order and please to the eye.” (s128); the other, “biology is like poetry because just as poetry exhibits our feelings, biology shows details about our nature and body structure.” (s111). in “a discipline evoking admiration” category, two metaphors (imagination and miracles) were created by two prospective teachers. they stated that the subjects of biology courses were fascinating and evoked admiration with its detailed knowledge. one of them said, “biology is like a dream because it has many beauties, it fascinates you, and you do not want it to end.” (s83). 4. discussion and conclusion in the research, prospective teachers' attitudes generally were positive at the level of “agree.” in the literature, there are various studies on students' positive attitudes at the primary, middle, and high school levels (erdemir & bakırcı, 2009; hussaini, foong, & kamar, 2015; mutlu, 2006; prokop., tuncer, & chuda, 2007; trumper, 2006). however, in a few studies, students were found to be prejudiced toward biology courses and dislike them and have a negative attitude (gül & yeşilyurt, 2010). in the study by ekici and hevedanlı (2010) investigating the attitudes of high school students, students were found to have a modest attitude. according to the research, positive attitudes can be linked with the students' past experiences, teachers, professors giving biology lessons, and the students themselves. the fact that prospective teachers are interested in biology and faculty members' ability is to link the course to daily life, to make students like the course, and to create awareness about its advantages may create such a result. factors positively affecting students' attitudes are teacher's desire to make students like the course, connecting the course with daily life, illustrating the application fields of course in professional life, highlighting the role of course in the improvement of critical thinking and reasoning skills, decisive communication with students, the students' interest in the course, self-confidence in learning the course (arıcı, 2013; sarıer, 2016). attitudes, a part of the education process, have a meaningful impact on learning. decisive attitudes of students cause an improvement in academic success (uyanık, 2017; yenilmez & ozabacı, 2003). therefore, it is essential to plan and conduct the teaching and learning process of the course to develop it. the instructors should be informed about factors influencing the attitude toward the course and should arrange the teaching practices accordingly. in the study, no significant difference was observed in science teachers' attitude scores by gender. in several studies, no difference was found in attitude scores of the learners by gender (hussaini et al., 2015; nasr & soltani, 2011; usak et al., 2009). in various studies, the scores were decided to reveal a significant difference on the side of females (cevik & ekici, 2008; ekici & hevedanlı, 2010; mutlu, 2006; pehlivan & köseoğlu, 2010; prokop, prokop, & tunnicliffe, 2007; tosun, 2011; uyanık, 2017). the reason for obtaining such findings may include many factors like lecturers, students, the content of the course, learning environment. the similarity of teaching strategies, methods, and techniques used by teaching staff conducting biology courses in the faculty where the research is done may cause the prospective male and female teachers to like biology courses at almost equal levels and develop a positive attitude. the content of the course could stimulate interest in both genders, and prospective teachers found the course essential and necessary. as a result of the first sub-problem of research, the fact that the item with the highest level of participation was" i believe what i learned in biology course was helpful for me" confirms this interpretation. in the study, no significant difference was found between the attitudes of biology teachers by class levels. similar results existed in gül and yeşilyurt (2010) research. one probable reason may be the distribution of biology-related courses in the science teaching undergraduate curriculum according to classes. in science teaching curriculum of higher education institution (2006) the courses “general biology-i” and “general biology laboratoryi” in the third term, “general biology-ii” in the fourth term, “general biology laboratory-ii” and “conservation of natural life” in the fourth term, “human anatomy and physiology” in the fifth term, “genetic and biotechnology” and “environmental science” and “environmental science” in the sixth term, “evolution” in the seventh term, “food chemistry and biological importance of food” in the eighth term were given. in other words, in the six terms of eight-term education, prospective science teachers receive biology courses. still, this result gained from the research is different from the results of the researches in which the attitudes of students declined as the class level increased (baykul, 1990; pehlivan & köseoğlu, 2010; prokop. et al., 2007). the fact that the sample groups of these researches composed of secondary level students may have caused to different conclusions. the lack of studies analyzing the attitudes by class levels is a significant gap to be filled in the literature. researching with other population and sample to examine the attitudes of university students or prospective science teachers by class level, or conducting studies to reveal the attitudes of university students from different class levels is recommended to contribute to the literature. it was concluded that prospective teachers created 57 different metaphors. the most frequently created metaphors are “life” (f = 37) and “water ”(f = 6).they asserted that biology is a course covering almost all kinds of knowledge and skills associated with life and that the knowledge and skills gained in this course are an essential need, like water. harman and cökelez (2017) discovered that metaphors frequently created are “life” and “water”. ulukök et al. (2015) declared that "life" is one of the initial images coming to the minds of the majority of prospective science teachers on the concept of biology. likewise, in the study by yapıcı (2015); gürbüzoğluyalmancı and aydın (2013) the most frequently created metaphor was determined to be the "life." in the research, 16 conceptual categories were developed by considering the characteristics of metaphors created by prospective teachers. the categories such as biology as a source of life, a group of topics related to each other, a discipline requiring effort, a discipline including natural knowledge, a pleasant discipline, a discipline including medical knowledge, a discipline including limitless knowledge, a guiding discipline, a discipline leading to be an explorer, a discipline giving an aesthetic spirit, and a fascinating discipline include positive metaphors. some of these asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 136-143 142 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group categories are similar to the research conducted by ulukök et al. (2015); yapıcı (2015); gürbüzoğlu-yalmancı and aydın (2013). the reason for the positive metaphors involves that the prospective teachers can like the lesson because they affiliate the subjects with the daily life, have pleasure, get the information they need in daily life, and get an opinion about the source of the information they frequently practice. besides, the categories of biology as an ungrateful, tough to learn, and complex topics created in the research involve negative metaphors. the categories like a challenging discipline to learn and complex topics are included in the category of "difficult and complex" in harman and cökelez (2017). one of the sources of these negative metaphors for biology may be the uninterested experiences of prospective teachers in the past because one of the factors influencing the formation of attitudes is the experience (tavşancıl, 2014). negative attitudes can lead to various levels of negativity in prospective teachers' obtaining knowledge within the scope of a biology course, creating new knowledge and attitudes toward teaching biology subjects in the future years of their career. therefore, it is recommended that these negative attitudes of prospective teachers be altered into positive through a well-arranged education process. the faculty members must take responsibility. at the beginning of the academic year, teacher educators can determine the prospective teachers' attitudes using metaphors, identify the reasons for negative attitude with the sources of metaphors and conduct studies like new activities, the student-based arrangement of the learning environment with visual activities, research-based studies, usage of the laboratory to eliminate this situation. references aktaş, m. 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(2010). metaphor analysis in the educational discourse: a critical review. online submission, 8(9), 42-49. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 195 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 3, 195-203, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.195.203 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group views of academic staff in universities on lifelong learning and adult education berna karakoc dr, kilis 7 aralik university, physical education and sports academy, kilis, turkey. abstract the general aim of this study is to find out the views of academic staff working at universities on lifelong learning and adult education. while finding out the views of academic staff, the 6 principles of andragogy approach, which includes the characteristics of adults about learning, were taken as basis and the professional or personal development trainings academic staff received were analysed separately within the framework of these principles. interview technique, one of the most frequently used in qualitative research methods, was used in the study. interviews were made with a total of 20 academic staff who had received training within the scope of adult education and lifelong learning. the interviews were recorded with a voice recorder and transcribed. the transcribed data were evaluated with descriptive analysis method and then they were coded. interpretations were made by using the codes. as a result, it was found that the academic staff in general had received education on lifelong learning and adult education voluntarily and it was concluded that they received these trainings for professional or personal development, to increase their quality of life, to gain experience, to advance academically and for similar reasons. keywords: lifelong learning, adult education, andragogy, andragogical principles, adult, academic staff in universities. citation | berna karakoc (2021). views of academic staff in universities on lifelong learning and adult education. asian journal of education and training, 7(3): 195-203. history: received: 15 june 2021 revised: 20 july 2021 accepted: 17 august 2021 published: 6 september 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 196 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 197 3. findings and interpretation ......................................................................................................................................................... 198 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 201 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 202 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/3268 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7720-0789 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 195-203 196 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by finding out the views of academic staff working at universities on lifelong learning and adult education. 1. introduction today, the social importance of adult education and lifelong learning is increasing day by day. it has become important for all segments of society to follow and keep up with the changes in many areas such as information and communication, digitalization, technology and education (commission of the european communities, 2000; i̇liç & haseski, 2019). in order to adapt to this change, individuals need to develop themselves throughout their lives, rather than just sticking to the formal education process (allmendinger et al., 2019). in general, children and young people come to mind first when the concepts of education and training are mentioned. however, the concepts of education and have ceased to be concepts considered separately for all age groups and gaining awareness of the need for lifelong learning and learning at all ages, placing the necessary importance on adult education and organizing training by being aware of the basic needs of adults have begun to be considered (kara & karakoç, 2017). education is no longer something that only young people will benefit from; on the contrary, due to the increasing need of countries for qualified workers, lifelong learning and adult education have become more important. one way for meeting this demand for qualified workers is educating adults more (oecd, 2012). since lifelong learning is associated with individuals’ education and professional careers, it takes place through adults’ participation in trainings through organizing their families, professional careers, time and economy (commission of the european communities, 2000). thus, adults who are in a constant development and change all through their lives also develop their learning experiences in this process. these trainings, which take place at every stage of our lives and include all people and which are generally carried out under the name of adult education, are called and applied with different concepts such as staff development, developmental training, in-service training, on-going education, lifelong education (knowles, 1980), and lifelong learning has become an indispensable part of individuals’ existing and future education careers. adult education is concerned with the fact that adults have different characteristics than children and young people and with how these characteristics should be reflected to the learning process. these differences also include the psychological characteristics of adults that are different from children and young people and the social and cultural characteristics that include the expectations of the society from them. in this direction, knowles introduced us to the concepts of andragogy and pedagogy and stated that the learning and development of adults were different from children’s. pedagogy is the science and art of educating children, while andragogy is the science and art of helping adults to learn. according to the andragogy approach, which is developed by knowles and defined as the science and art of helping adults to learn, the andragogical model which plays an important role in adults’ learning is based on six principles (knowles & ayhan, 1996; knowles, holton iii, & swanson, 2005): 1-the learner’s need to know: adults need to learn why they should learn something before they learn it. the effectiveness of adults’ performances and the increase in their quality of life will facilitate their learning. adults spend too much time on the benefits they will derive from learning something or what negative consequences may occur when they do not learn it. 2-self-directedness: adults have a sense of self to take responsibility for their own decisions and their lives. they want others to see that they have the ability to manage themselves. their psychological maturing causes changes in which they begin to manage themselves without being dependent on others. therefore, when we start treating them like children, this creates a problem. 3the role of experience: adults come to an educational activity with higher and more diverse experience than young people. this has various consequences for adult education. one of these is the fact that adults who participate in the education show more individual differences than young people. another one is that the learning ways, motivations and past experiences of any group of adults are different from a group of young people. 4readiness to learn: adults come ready to learn since they know what they need and they can cope with their own real life situations. 5-orientation to learning: unlike children and young people, adults’ orientation to learning is life-centred. adults learn new knowledge, skills, values and attitudes most effectively when they can apply them to real life situations. 6-intrinsic motivation: while some extrinsic motivations of adults (job, promotion, higher salary) are insignificant reasons for education, the most effective motivators are intrinsic motivations (job satisfaction, selfrespect, quality of life, etc.) adults need to develop themselves to find jobs with better conditions, to get better opportunities in their professional life or to get promotion in their jobs. during the learning process, they can share their thoughts and their ideas about the equipment and methods to be used with the teacher. they can determine the method suitable for them and present to the teacher. they can evaluate teachers’ ways of teaching the subjects and tell their choices. when considered this way, adults are an important source of information about the functioning of the teaching process from the beginning to the end (hisar, 2006). when the literature was reviewed, studies were found on both adult education and lifelong learning. there are also studies which discuss and evaluate the views of academic staff in universities on adult education and lifelong learning (ayçiçek & yelken, 2016; edokpolor & omiunu, 2017; konokman, akay, & demircioğlu, 2015; mora, 2001; walczak & kálmán, 2018; yildrim & akcay, 2017; zhou & tu, 2019). the views of academic staff working in universities on lifelong learning and adult education were found in this study. however, this study is different from other studies in that the evaluations were based on the 6 principles of andragogical approach including adults’ characteristics on learning which were created for consideration in adult education by knowles, who is one of the leading names of adult education. in this context, the overall aim of our study is to show the views of academic staff working in universities on lifelong learning and adult education. while showing the views of adults, knowles et al. (2005) 6 principles of andragogical approach asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 195-203 197 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group including adults’ characteristics on learning were taken as basis and the trainings academic staff received in terms of their professional or personal development were analysed separately within the framework of these principles. 2. material and method information about the method, study group, data collection and data collection instruments of the study were included in this part. 2.1. research method qualitative research method was used in the study. interview technique, one of the most frequently used in qualitative research methods, was used in the study and the data were analysed with descriptive analysis technique. different characteristics of qualitative research techniques are describing a phenomenon within its natural environment, providing sensitivity, giving the researcher a participating role, having an integrative approach, showing the perceptions and emotions of the participants and having a flexible research design (yıldırım & simşek, 2013). in addition, qualitative designs are natural since they are conducted in the daily life areas of researches and the researcher does not attempt to change this natural environment. interviews are made in places where individuals know and are comfortable with by using open ended questions (patton, 2014). 2.2. research group in the study, interviews were made with a total of 20 academic staff who had received training on adult education and lifelong learning. the participants were reached by choosing convenience sample in determining the academic staff included in the research group. in convenience sampling method, the aim is to bring speed and practicality to the study (yıldırım & simşek, 2013). each academic staff was expressed with a number, not with their names. for example, “1” represents the academic staff numbered 1. the distribution of the academic staff who were interviewed in terms of some variables and information about each are shown in two different tables below. table-1. distribution of the academic staff interviewed in terms of some variables variable number of academic staff % gender male 5 25 female 15 75 age 30-40 14 70 41-50 5 25 51 and older 1 5 working years 1-5 years 1 5 6-10 years 4 20 11-15 years 8 40 1620 years 5 25 21 years and higher 2 10 title lecturer dr. 4 20 lecturer 3 15 assist. prof. dr. 5 25 assoc. prof. dr. 6 30 professor dr. 2 10 table-2. information about the academic staff. number of participants gender age year of study title 1 female 35 11-15 years research assistant dr 2 female 35 6-10 years research assistant dr 3 female 33 11-15 years research assistant dr 4 female 32 6-10 years assist. prof. dr. 5 female 33 11-15 years research assistant dr 6 female 42 6-10 years lecturer 7 female 33 11-15 years lecturer 8 female 39 11-15 years lecturer 9 male 33 6-10 years assist. prof. dr. 10 male 37 1-5 years assist. prof. dr. 11 male 40 1620 years assist. prof. dr. 12 female 38 11-15 years assist. prof. dr. 13 male 51 ≥21 years assoc. prof. dr. 14 female 44 1620 years assoc. prof. dr. 15 female 36 11-15 years assoc. prof. dr. 16 female 34 11-15 years assoc. prof. dr. 17 male 45 1620 years assoc. prof. dr. 18 female 42 ≥21 years assoc. prof. dr. 19 female 41 1620 years professor dr. 20 female 43 1620 years professor dr. when table 1 is examined, when the academic staff who participated in the study were analysed on adult education and lifelong education in terms of the variable of gender, it can be seen that 15 were female (75%), while 5 (25%) were male. in terms of the variable of age, it was found that 14 of the participants were between 30-40 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 195-203 198 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group years of age (70%), 5 were between 41-50 years of age and 1 (5%) participant was 51 and older. when evaluated in terms of years of working, it was found that 1 (5%) participant was between 1-5 years, 4 (20%) participants were between 6-10 years, 8 (40%) participants were between 11-15 years, 5 (25%) participants were between 16-20 years, and finally 2 (10%) participants were between 21 years and higher. when the participants were analysed in terms of the variable of gender, it was found that 4 (20%) participants were lecturer dr., 3 (15%) participants were lecturer, 5 (25%) participants were assistant prof. dr., 6 (30%) participants were assoc. prof. dr and 2 (10%) participants were professor dr. table 2 shows information about gender, age, working years and titles of the academic staff in the study. 2.3. data collection instrument while preparing the interview questions which constituted the data collection instrument of the study, first of all, a literature review was conducted. drafted questions were turned into items and than, the items were eliminated and organized by taking the views of 3 experts. the final version was examined by linguists and the interview questions were finalized. the questions asked to academic staff in universities about lifelong learning and adult education are as follows: 1what are your thoughts on “lifelong learning”? 2considered within the framework of lifelong learning, have you ever needed any training for your professional development or personal development? if yes, why did you need this training? 3did you receive the training voluntarily, explain? were there other factors that affected you in receiving this training, explain? 4did you have any previous experience about the training you received? if yes, what kind of contributions did this experience provide you with in the course you attended? 5what are the contributions of the training you received to your real life (daily life, profession, etc..)? 6what are the things that motivated you to receive this training? the interview in general included questions about lifelong learning and the training academic staff received within the framework of andragogical principles. the answers given to questions were analysed and 7 different themes were determined as lifelong learning, need to know, self-directedness, role of experience, readiness, orientation to learning and motivation. the theme of “lifelong learning” refers to academic staff’s views on the topic; “need to know” theme refers to academic staff’s knowing their insufficiencies in professional and personal development, “self-directedness” theme refers to whether it was their decision to receive education, “role of experience” theme refers to the contribution of their previous professional or personal information on the training they received, “readiness” theme refers to academic staff’s knowing why they need education and being ready, “orientation to learning” theme refers to their orientation to learning and “motivation” theme refers to what motivate them to the education they received. 2.4. data collection and analysis data collection instrument of the study consists of semi-structured interviews with academic staff. the interviews were made by using semi-structured method with each participant in march 2021. academic staff participated in the interviews voluntarily and stated that they would answer the questions sincerely. the interviews were recorded with voice recorder. the records were transcribed. the transcribed data were evaluated with descriptive analysis method. in descriptive analysis, the data are placed under previously determined themes (yıldırım & simşek, 2013). next, the codes are created. the codes created were cross checked by two researchers and the agreement between codes was determined as approximately 92% and the study was considered to be reliable. different codes were transformed into a common view, they were reviewed and a consensus was reached. 3. findings and interpretation in the analysis of the qualitative data, the views of the academic staff on the training they received within the framework of lifelong learning and andragogical principles were arranged in a way that overlapped with the research questions. tables were created from the themes, the coding of each academic staff’s views, how many times the code was mentioned and example sentences of academic staff related with themes were examined table 3 includes the views of academic staff on “lifelong learning” theme. table-3. interview analysis results of academic staff on “lifelong learning” theme. themes codes f example sentence lifelong learning opportunity to learn personal development obligation need to learn professional development process updating all kinds of learning activities 9 8 8 8 7 5 3 1 it is a truth that learning continues for a life time. it is usual and sometimes necessary for us to receive compulsory or optional training, both in both in professional competence and personal development. (2) in table 3, “lifelong learning” was determined as the first theme. this theme includes codes about the views of academic staff on lifelong learning. this theme was mentioned for a total of 49 times. in the interviews, opportunity to learn was mentioned 9 times, personal development was mentioned 8 times, obligation was mentioned 8 times, need to learn was mentioned 8 times, professional development was mentioned 7 times, process was mentioned 5 times, updating was mentioned 3 times, all kinds of learning activities was mentioned once. example expressions in this context are given below. “lifelong learning” is in fact a process all of us are continually in consciously or unconsciously”. (18) “no matter at what age and regardless of educational level, an individual is part of lifelong learning”. (8) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 195-203 199 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group “the obligation of following new things all the time due to my profession sometimes requires the necessity to receive professional training” (1) in this context, it was found that the academic staff stated that learning is a process that continues for a life time, it provides them opportunity to learn and has become an obligation today. table 4 includes the analysis of the views of academic staff on the theme “need to know”. table-4. interview analysis results of academic staff on “need to learn” theme. themes codes f example sentence need to know receiving education obligation voluntariness completing deficiencies academic progress insufficient previous knowledge professional efficiency following developments 20 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 i have received trainings and i am continuing to do so. i need this to continue my profession efficiently.(16) i have received training because i want to follow new developments. (7) in table 4, the second theme was determined as “need to know”. this theme included codes about academic staff’s knowing about deficiencies in their professional or personal development and their thoughts about their reasons to develop these. this theme was mentioned for a total of 31 times. in the interviews, receiving education was mentioned 20 times, obligation was mentioned 2 times, voluntariness was mentioned 2 times, completing deficiencies was mentioned 2 times, academic progress was mentioned 2 times, insufficient previous knowledge was mentioned once, professional efficiency was mentioned once and following developments was mentioned once. examples of academic staff’s answers are given below. “yes, i have received. i have even received more than one training (except the ones during my postgraduate education. project training (2018), qualitative research methods (2009), english education”.(5) “i received training on my professional development. i attended course to use… data analysis program. i needed this course because my doctoral thesis was mostly qualitative”.(16) in line with the views given by all academic staff, it was concluded that they received training since they knew about their professional or personal deficiencies and wanted to improve these within the context of need to know theme. table 5 includes the analysis of the views of academic staff on “self-directedness” theme. table-5. interview analysis results of academic staff on “self-directedness” theme. themes codes f example sentence selfdirectedness voluntariness academic career orientation to learning obligation professional development personal development feeling insufficient curiosity 12 5 5 4 3 1 1 1 yes, i received this training voluntarily. my getting curious about the content of the training after my students received this training within a course had an effect on my receiving the training. (15) the third theme was determined as “self-directedness” in table 5. this theme includes codes such as whether academic staff voluntarily received trainings or whether there were other factors that led them to receive the training. this theme was emphasized 32 times. academic staff emphasized voluntariness 12 times, academic career 5 times, orientation to learning 5 times, obligation 4 times, professional development 3 times, feeling insufficient once, personal development once and curiosity once. based on the emphases of academic staff, it was concluded that they received the training voluntarily. the following expressions were included. “i received voluntarily; i even researched how i could receive training in this period”. (18) “i received training completely voluntarily because it would benefit me a lot about data analysis. this training was also useful for me to increase my academic knowledge”. (3) although it was concluded from the expressions of the academic staff that it was their decision to receive these trainings, it was also concluded that they had to receive these trainings due to obligation, feeling insufficient or for their professional development. “i received most of the trainings voluntarily for my professional and personal development. however, there were also trainings i received due to obligation”. (11) “i received project training a few times. two of these were voluntarily but the others were with the pressures of rectorate”. (1) table 6 includes the analysis of academic staff’s views on “role of experience” theme. table-6. interview analysis results of academic staff on “role of experience” theme. themes codes f example sentence role of experience theoretical background inexperience learning fast field-specific awareness providing self-confidence motivation adaptation academic progress readiness 13 8 4 4 2 1 1 1 1 i did not have any experience before. i wanted to get this training to gain experience. (2) i did not have any experience before. thanks to it, in a very short time i accessed information that i would search and access in a long time myself. it provided me with motivation. (1) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 195-203 200 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in table 6, the fourth theme was determined as “role of experience”. this theme includes codes about whether academic staff had previous experience on the trainings they received and if they had, about its contribution to the training they received. this theme was emphasized 35 times. in this theme, the academic staff emphasized theoretical background 13 times, inexperience 8 times, learning fast 4 times, field-specific awareness 4 times, providing self-confidence 2 times, motivation once, adaptation once, academic progress once and readiness once. most of the academic staff stated that they did not have any previous experience on the training they received. when analysed in this direction, it was concluded that although the academic staff did not have information about the training they received, some of them had theoretical knowledge. in this respect, academic staff numbered 6 said the following; “i did not have any previous experience, but since i knew about the experiences theoretically, it was easier for me to understand and implement”, academic staff numbered 17 said the following; “yes. i had participated in the seminars and courses in turkey. i did not have any problems in the practice part of the course”, academic staff numbered 19 said the following; “of course my background during my high school and university education had much contribution about adapting to the courses i attended and making the learning process faster”, academic staff numbered 5 said the following; “yes, i did, but i did not think it was sufficient. my previous experiences helped as a background; it helped me to learn faster and easier. in addition, my previous knowledge provided me with some self-confidence while receiving this training” when the previous experiences of academic staff on the trainings they received were examined, it was concluded that trainings provided them with learning faster, created field-specific awareness, gave them selfconfidence through previous experience, provided them with motivation and easier adaptation to training, helped them about academic progress and made them ready to learn. table 7 includes the analysis of academic staff’s views on “readiness” theme. table-7. interview analysis results of academic staff on “readiness” theme. themes codes f example sentence readiness desire for self-improvement academic contribution professional development curiosity cooperation practicality professional responsibility insufficient postgraduate education lack of implementation communication 8 8 6 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 in terms of personal development, the trainings i received in computer and english courses are very important in terms of both providing sufficiency in my profession and also in terms of learning new concepts individually. (19) i received training to develop myself and learn a different approach.(6) the fifth theme was determined as “readiness” in table 7.this theme includes codes about academic staff’s knowing why they need the training they have received and being ready. academic staff emphasized this theme 32 times. in this theme, academic staff emphasized desire for self-improvement 8 times, academic contribution 8 times, professional development 6 times, curiosity 3 times, cooperation 2 times, practicality once, professional responsibility once, postgraduate education once, lack of implementation once and communication once. in this theme, academic staff stated why they needed the training they received. example sentences from academic staff are shown below. “i received project training from expert teams. the fact that i did not receive enough training about project in postgraduate period and that i could not reflect this to implementations was a great insufficiency for me. this selfawareness pushed me to professional development program” (1) “to develop professionally and to integrate theoretical information and implementation, to expand professional social network” (4) “english course i received was very efficient. the reason why i needed it was the fact that i was responsible for english for my profession and my wish to have the information that i could need for my profession” (5) based on the explanations above, it was concluded that the academic staff knew about their deficiencies, they were willing to learn about what they needed and they were ready to learn. table 8 includes the analysis of academic staff’s views on “orientation to learning” theme. table-8. interview analysis results of academic staff on “orientation to learning” theme. themes codes f example sentence orientation to learning academic contribution positive attitude professional development self-confidence gaining experience personal development ease of research providing international communication lack of knowledge mental development transfer of information socializing 16 8 7 6 5 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 i think that the training i received made positive contributions to my personal and mental development in addition to my professional development. (13) i gained self-confidence. i began to research easier in my profession. i transferred the information i learned to coaches and my students. (17) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 195-203 201 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the sixth theme was determined as “orientation to learning” in table 8. this theme included the codes about academic staff’s views on orientation to learning. this theme was emphasized for 55 times. in this theme, academic staff emphasized academic contribution 16 times, positive attitude 8 times, professional development 7 times, selfconfidence 6 times, gaining experience 5 times, personal development 3 times, ease of research 3 times, providing international communication 2 times, lack of knowledge 2 times, mental development once, transfer of information once and socializing once. example sentences from academic staff are shown below. academic staff numbered 19: “the contribution of these trainings to my professional development is very important in terms of realizing international working areas and strengthening communication in these areas in the continually changing ad globalizing world”, academic staff numbered 2: “professionally, i think that i learned data analysis and specific concepts and implementation in entering data”, it was concluded that the academic staff thought the trainings they received contributed especially to their academic development, they gained experience and self-confidence and it provided ease of research. table 9 includes the analysis of academic staff’s views on “motivation” theme. table-9. interview analysis results of academic staff on “motivation” theme. themes codes f example sentence motivation professional progress willingness to learn quality of life conscious awareness extrinsic obligation personal development career planning professional need time management experiencing different countries having been chosen social integration 7 6 6 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 the rapid development of technology and science has always increased and made me realize my need for education not only in this subject (drama), but also in other subjects. my goal in life is to provide personal development by creating opportunities in learning, to ensure integration for a contribution to society. in addition, leading my life in a quality way has always motivated me in gaining knowledge and skills. (8) it was proud for me to be 1 of the 2 people from turkey since the education was given with scholarship. (17) in table 9, the seventh team was determined as “motivation”. this theme included codes about what motivated academic staff in the training they received. academic staff emphasized this theme for a total of 36 times. the academic staff gave their views by emphasizing professional progress 7 times, willingness to learn 6 times, quality of life 6 times, conscious awareness 4 times, extrinsic obligation 3 times, personal development 2 times, career planning 2 times, professional need 2 times, time management once, experiencing different countries once, having been chosen once and social integration once. example sentences from academic staff are shown below. academic staff numbered 11: “my willingness to learn, my thoughts about academic progress and my career planning motivated me about getting these trainings”. academic staff numbered 16: “the thought that i would need this knowledge in my profession was my most important motivation”. academic staff numbered 3: “my basic motivation in getting this training was need. it was important for me since i would use in my thesis. i can say that my secondary motivation was getting informed. i like learning new things”. it was concluded that what motivated academic staff in the training they received was to advance in their profession, to increase their quality of life and to contribute to their academic development, in addition to needing such training in terms of their personal and professional development and for getting help in career planning. academic staff numbered 12; “there were no motivating elements since it was a compulsory training”, academic staff numbered 19; “such trainings which started as an obligation to meet professional competence have decreased my motivation” as can be understood from the expressions above, it was concluded that trainings did not provide motivation when they were received due to external obligation. 4. conclusion and discussion in this study, the views of academic staff working in universities on lifelong learning and adult education were evaluated with semi-structured interview questions according to the trainings they received within the framework of andragogical principles. it was tried to examine the views of academic staff on the themes of; lifelong learning, need to know, self-directedness, role of experience, readiness, orientation to learning and motivation were analysed. as a result of the analyses, many different conclusions were made about the trainings that the academic staff received on lifelong learning and andragogical principles. the academic staff were asked what their thoughts on “lifelong learning” were and it was found that in general they answered as lifelong learning is a process that continues from the beginning of human life to the end and humans needed to learn and continue to develop themselves all their lives. kıran (2008) reached a similar conclusion in the study entitled “evaluation of public education centres in providing lifelong education” and stated that education is a process that continued for a lifetime. at the same time, it was stated in the study that receiving either compulsory or voluntary education provided them with learning opportunities and contributed to their professional development. therefore, considering within the framework of lifelong learning, it can be interpreted that receiving education is important for academic staff’s professional development and it may be because they want to keep their knowledge up-to-date all the time. tam (2012) reached a similar conclusion in a study conducted on adults and stated that regardless of age and individuals’ position, education, whether formal or informal, should be asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 195-203 202 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group perceived as a process that continues lifelong in all learning environments. in a study conducted on prospective teachers, kılıc (2014) concluded that teachers cared about lifelong learning and believed that creating learning opportunities in today’s living conditions was necessary and important. in a study they examined the views of prospective teachers on lifelong learning and adult education course, i̇liç and haseski (2019) found that prospective teachers’ answers were related with mostly individual development and social development and after these on professional development and the importance of learning. when considered within the framework of lifelong learning, all the academic staff answered the question of whether they needed any training for their professional or personal development with yes and it was concluded that they received training since they knew about the deficiencies in their professional or personal development. the fact that individuals want to develop themselves even after they start working can be interpreted as the necessity to renew knowledge and skills all the time in today’s living conditions. about the question of their reasons for receiving these trainings, it was found that they stated their reasons as obligation, completing professional deficiencies, professional progress or following developments. thus, it was concluded that the academic staff knew about their own deficiencies, they were willing to learn the things they needed and they were ready to learn in this case. yazar (2012), who reached a similar conclusion with the study, stated that adult education is a broad concept which aims the social and professional development of adults and continues all through their lives. most of the academic staff answered the question of whether it was their own decision to receive education voluntarily as “yes”. the results of yayla (2009) in a study evaluating adult education system concluded that the rates of participation in in-service education seminars on adult education were low, which was not in parallel with the results of this study. as a result of the analysis of the expressions on whether there were other factors that guided them to receive these trainings, it was concluded that they had to receive these trainings as a result of obligation, desire to learn, wish to have academic career or professional development. in addition, personal development, feeling insufficient and curiosity are the other factors leading them to receive training. this can be interpreted as the fact that what led them to receive training was their wish to develop themselves professionally and academically although there were other reasons that led them to receive training. in the analysis of the question about whether the academic staff had previous experience about the training they received, it was concluded that most of them had the theoretical background and some were inexperienced. when the contributions of previous experiences on the trainings they received were examined, it was found that they enabled the participants to learn faster, created field-specific awareness, provided them with self-confidence and motivation, helped them to better adapt to training, helped their academic progress and made them ready for learning. in a study which aimed to find out the experiences of adults who were in their thirties, mali (2017) found that what supported adults’ learning and increased their learning motivation and self-confidence was having previous life experience, which was similar to the results of the present study. this can be interpreted as adults’ having previous knowledge about the topic they receive training for increasing their motivation and selfconfidence. in the analysis of the question of what contributions the training they received made to their real lives, it was concluded that most of the academic staff thought it contributed to their academic knowledge, which created selfconfidence in them and made them develop positive attitude towards learning. in a study which aimed to show the role of public education centres in lifelong education during information society process, kıran (2008) found that adult education affected learning positively as a result of meeting their expectations, which is in parallel with the results of this study. the results of mali (2017) that the trainings received had a negative effect since the adults had to take care of their families and earn money and had limited time, which is not in parallel with the results of this study. other results of this study are that they had the opportunity to share their information, to research more easily on their field and to make up for their deficiencies due to the trainings they received. kıran (2008)’s result that the most important reason why they participated in courses was to “renew their knowledge and themselves (86.5%)” is in parallel with the results of this study. in the analysis of the question about what motivated academic staff for the trainings they received, it was found that the motivations were in general professional advancement, increasing their quality of life, the fact that these trainings contributed to their academic development, they were important in terms of personal development and they helped for career planning. other motivating factors are academic staff’s desire to see different countries and receiving these trainings by planning their time left from work and home life. in their study they aimed to examine the difficulties adults encountered while learning english as a second language, wu and wu (2014) reached a similar conclusion, they stated that adults learned better when they coordinated their family relationships, and planned time for working and learning. they also stated that adults’ desire to learn new things motivated them and made them work more. this is similar to the result that one of the things motivating academic staff in the education they received is their desire to learn. another result of this study is that trainings do not provide motivation for academic staff when it is compulsory to attend 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(2019). adult education and lifelong learning. in education as a lifelong process; blossfeld, h.-p., roßbach, h.-g., eds (vol. 3, pp. 325–346). wiesbaden, germany: springer fachmedien wiesbaden. ayçiçek, b., & yelken, t. y. (2016). investigation of lifelong learning competencies and life-wide learning habits of faculty members in education faculties. journal of mersin university faculty of education, 12(3), 872-884. commission of the european communities. (2000). a memorandum on lifelong learning. brussels: commission of the european communities. edokpolor, j. e., & omiunu, s. e. (2017). role of career development services in developing students lifelong learning self-efficacy: vocational and adult education lecturers’ perceptions. baltic journal of career education and management, 5(1), 30-45. available at: https://doi.org/10.33225/bjcem/17.5.30. hisar, s. g. 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(2017). evaluation of managerial effectiveness of lifelong learning services according to continuing education center instructors. dumlupınar university journal of educational sciences institute, 1(1), 40-63. zhou, h., & tu, c.-c. (2019). impacts of learning content focus and collaborative learning on university teachers’ lifelong learning. journal of workplace learning, 31(7), 442-464. available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl-05-2018-0073. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 651 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 651-657, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.651.657 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group analysis of the graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey zuluf oztutgan1 kaan oztutgan2 ( corresponding author) 1,2osmaniye korkut ata university, faculty of architecture, design and fine arts, department of music, osmaniye, turkey. abstract this qualitative research is a descriptive study aiming to analyze the graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music evaluation and to reveal the current situation in turkeythe sample of the study involves 25 graduate theses in different disciplines which are in the database of the national thesis center and defended in line with music education field. these theses were examined with content analysis and 10 criteria as follows: thesis type, its university, recearcher’s gender, publication year, title of advisor, its institute, its department, research area, research model and research class. the findings were interpreted in tables by calculating the frequency and percentage. the findings reveal that 76% of the examined theses in the scope of this study are master's (ma), 20% doctorate (phd) and 4% specialty in medicine theses. most of the ma theses were prepared in hacettepe university, and most of the phd theses were prepared in ankara university and the specialty in medicine thesis was completed in gaziosmanpaşa university. in addition, most of these theses were written by female researchers and the number of theses in different disciplines prepapred for music education in turkey is not numerous. music education and preschool education were associated, and most of the phd theses had equal distribution in the fields of education policies, preschool education, mathematics education, empathic skills and sociology. lastly, it was revealed that most of the theses were prepared based on descriptive model and quantitative approach. keywords: music, education, music education, graduate studies, interdisciplinary studies, qualitative research. citation | zuluf oztutgan; kaan oztutgan (2020). analysis of the graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 651-657. history: received: 28 september 2020 revised: 21 october 2020 accepted: 5 november 2020 published: 18 november 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 652 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 653 3. findings and comment ................................................................................................................................................................. 653 4. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 656 5. suggestions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 657 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 657 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.651.657&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2340 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6402-6232 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3489-5709 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 651-657 652 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study aimed to contribute to the literature by the determination of graduate studies prepared in different disciplines for music education. 1. introduction almost every researcher who has a scientific point of view wants to have detailed information about the resources conducted in her/his field. the need to identify issues that have never been studied before or studies that have been studied but have deficiencies as well as generating new ideas by taking inspiration from the studies conducted in the relevant field may be considered among this request. considering the diversity of resources and the difficulties in accessing them, it can be said that analyzing and describing the related literature is a very demanding and difficult task. thus, researchers prefer to limit their studies instead of covering the entire literature. this situation is also valid for literature in music education. there are a large number of studies describing music education literature in turkey. some of them are about the articles about music as in ece (2007) study, ‘‘music related articles published in scientific journals (bibliography)(2000-2006)’’ and some are about papers as in ercan and yıldırım (2016) study, “analysis of music conferences held in turkey: muzed silk road conferences sample” in addition, varış (2012) ‘‘the analysis of postgraduate dissertations on viola written in turkey’’ and alyörük (2016) " graduate thesis in field of guitar performed in turkey: a bibliography study" are article examples that are about graduate studies. descriptive studies that have been or will be made for any resources (articles, books, papers, thesis, etc.) that make up the literature will undoubtedly contribute to the researchers and the field. however, it is possible to say that it is the graduate studies that constitute the basis of the literature, considering that they are prepared in a long process involving the use of university facilities (research center, laboratory etc.) and they are shaped at least by one advisor competent in the field and defended before a competent jury. that’s why, research on graduate studies are of great importance in studies that aim to describe and examine the literature. it is seen that in their studies on literature evaluation and analysis, researchers generally focus on graduate studies conducted in the relevant/related department(s). considering that a large part of the literature consists of graduate studies in the relevant department, this situation is usual but it should be kept in mind that graduate studies prepared in departments of other disciplines which are dealt with from a different dimension and perspective can make a great contribution to the field. for this reason, it is seen that such studies, which are considered as "interdisciplinary", are increasingly included. as a matter of fact, ece and ceşit (2011) that most of the interdisciplinary research in the field of music has been conducted in the recent history and interdisciplinary studies have increased as we come today, supports this situation. therefore, graduate studies prepared in different disciplines to describe the music education literature should also be investigated. 1.1. statement of the problem this study’s statement of the problem is "what is the current status of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey?" 1.2. sub-problems this study tried to find answers to the sub-problems given below. 1. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to their types? 2. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the universities they were prepared for? 3. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the gender of researchers? 4. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the publication year? 5. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the title of advisor? 6. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the institutes? 7. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the department? 8. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the research area? 9. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the researh models? 10. how is the distribution of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey according to the research class? 1.3. aim and significance of the study this study which is considered to be important in terms of evaluating a different dimension of the music education literature aims to analyze graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in accordance with defined criteria and to reveal the current situation in turkey. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 651-657 653 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method 2.1. research model this qualitative research is a descriptive study in which literature review and document analysis techniques are used. 2.2. population and sample the population of this research consists of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey. the sample of the study, on the other hand, consists of 25 graduate studies in different disciplines, which are in the database of the national thesis center and conducted in the field of music education. in order to determine the sample, the database was accessed through the official website of the national thesis center (2020) and a search was made by typing "music education" in the search term section. as a result of the search, 459 postgraduate theses with "music education" in the title were determined as of 04.09.2020. out of the 459 theses, in order to determine non-area ones, the criteria of department, art major, thesis subject and advisor were examined. in accordance with the purpose of the research, theses conducted in the departments and art majors directly related to music such as the department of music education, music art major, music education art major and turkish music art major were not included in this study. among theses where the department and art majors were not determined, theses directly related to music education were excluded by examining thesis subject, content and advisor’s research area. with this method, the number of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education was determined to be 25. 2.3. data collection yıldırım and şimşek (2013) state that document analysis can be used alone as a data collection method in qualitative research, as well as in combination with other data collection methods. in this study, literature review and document analysis method were used in data collection. 2.4. data analysis in the analysis phase of the research, first of all, similar studies in literature review were examined and the categories to be analyzed were determined based on these studies. within this context, 10 criteria were determined, namely the type of thesis, the university where it was prepared, the researcher's gender, the publication year, the title of the advisor, the institute it was prepared for, the department / program it was prepared in, the field of study, the research model and the research class. after the criteria were determined, the theses were analyzed using the content analysis method. the data were interpreted in tables by calculating the frequency and percentage. 3. findings and comment in this study, graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey have been evaluated in accordance with the determined criteria. the frequency and percentage values of the categories made according to the thesis type criteria are given in table 1. table-1. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding their types. thesis type f % masters of degree (ma) 19 76 philosophy of doctorate (phd) 5 20 specialty in medicine 1 4 total 25 100 as seen in table 1, 76% of the theses examined within the scope of this study consist of ma, 20% phd and 4% specialty in medicine. table-2. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the universities. university ma phd specialty in medicine f % f % f % ankara university 1 5,263 3 60 hacettepe university 3 15,789 anadolu university 1 20 gaziosmanpaşa university 1 100 i̇stanbul aydın university 1 5,263 gazi university 2 10,526 1 20 uludağ university 2 10,526 çanakkale onsekiz mart university 1 5,263 atatürk university 2 10,526 ege university 2 10,526 bolu abant i̇zzet baysal university 2 10,526 marmara university 1 5,263 boğaziçi university 1 5,263 i̇stanbul university 1 5,263 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as seen in table 2, the percentage of the theses defended regarding the universities is respectively: 15,789 % for hacettepe university; 10,526 for atatürk university, ege university, bolu abant i̇zzet baysal university, gazi university and uludağ university, and 5,263% for ankara university, marmara university, boğaziçi university, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 651-657 654 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group i̇stanbul university, i̇stanbul aydın university and çanakkale onsekiz mart university. of these theses, 60% was defended in ankara university and 20 % in anadolu and gazi universities. the study in speciality in medicine was completed in gaziosmanpaşa university. table-3. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the researcher’s gender. gender ma phd specialty in medicine f % f % f % female 13 68,42 4 80 1 100 male 6 31,57 1 20 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as seen in table 3, 68,42 % of the ma theses were written by females and 31,57 % by males. 80% of the phd theses were prepared by females and 20% by males. it was found that all (100%) of the study of specialty in medicine was written by a female researcher. table-4. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the publication year. publication year ma phd speciality in medicine f % f % f % 1995 1 5,263 1997 1 20 1998 1 5,263 2000 1 5,263 2002 2 10,526 1 20 2005 1 5,263 2007 1 5,263 2008 2 10,526 2009 1 5,263 2011 1 5,263 2012 1 100 2013 1 20 2014 2 10,526 1 20 2015 1 5,263 2016 2 10,526 2017 1 5,263 2019 2 10,526 1 20 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as seen in table 4, 10,526% of the ma theses were submitted in 2002,2008, 2014, 2016,2019 and 5,263% in 1995, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2017. 20% of the phd theses were prepared in 1997, 2002, 2013, 2014 and 2019. the study of the speciality in medicine was prepared in 2012. table-5. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the advisor’s title. title of advisor ma phd speciality in medicine f % f % f % assistant prof. 6 31,57 1 20 associate prof. 5 26,31 1 100 professor 8 42,10 4 80 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as seen in table 5, 42.10% of the ma theses were supervised by professors; 31.57% by assistant professor and 26.31% of them by associate professor. 80% of the phd theses were carried out under the consultancy of the professors and 20% were by associate/assistant professors. the study in specialty in medicine (100%) was prepared under the supervision of an associate professor. table-6. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the institutes. institute ma phd speciality in medicine f % f % f % institute of educational sciences 7 36,84 2 40 institute of social sciences 4 21,05 1 20 institute of health sciences 8 42,10 institute of science 2 40 medical school 1 100 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as can be seen in table 6, 42.10% of the ma theses were prepared in the institute of health sciences, 36.84% of the institute of educational sciences and 21.05% of the institute of social sciences. 40% of the phd theses were prepared in the institute of educational sciences, and 20% in the institute of social sciences. the study in specialty in medicine in was prepared in the faculty of medicine. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 651-657 655 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-7. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the department/program. department/program ma phd speciality in medicine f % f % f % department of educational administration and policy department/ education management and inspection program 1 5,263 department of educational sciences/ social and historical fundamentals of education/ cultural foundations of education 1 5,263 1 20 department of education programs and teaching 1 5,263 department of preschool education 2 10,526 home economics (child development) / child development and education 2 10,526 2 40 department of primary education/primary school teaching 2 10,526 1 20 child health and education program 1 5,263 department of science education 1 5,263 department of otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery 1 100 audiology and speech disorders program 3 15,789 department of orthopedics and traumatology 1 5,263 department of physical therapy and rehabilitation 1 5,263 department of behavioral sciences 1 5,263 department of neuroscience 1 5,263 department of business administration / business management 1 5,263 department of sociology 1 20 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as can be seen in table 7, 15,789% of the ma theses were prepared in the audiology and speech disorders program; 10,526% in the department of preschool teaching / education, in the department of home economics (child development) / child development and education, and in the department of primary education / primary school teaching. 5,263% of the ma theses were prepared in the department of educational administration and policy/education management and inspection program, in the department educational sciences/social and historical fundamentals of education/ cultural foundations of education, in the department of education programs and teaching, in the child health and education program, in the department of science education, in the department of orthopedics and traumatology, in the department of physical therapy and rehabilitation, in the department of behavioral sciences, in the department of neuroscience and in the department of business administration / business management. 40% of the phd theses were prepared in the department home economics (child development)/child development and education, and 20% in the department of educational sciences/ social and historical fundamentals of education/cultural foundations of education, in the department of primary education/primary school teaching and in the department of sociology. the study in the department of speciality in medicine was prepared in the department of otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery. table-8. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the research area. research area ma phd speciality in medicine f % f % f % education policies 1 5,263 1 20 education materials/materials development 1 5,263 secondary education institutions 1 5,263 program evaluation 1 5,263 preschool education 4 21,052 1 20 mathematics education 1 20 turkish 1 5,263 science education 1 5,263 laryngeal diseases 1 100 stuttering treatment 1 5,263 orthopedics and traumatology 1 5,263 frequency sensitivity 1 5,263 pain sensitivity 1 5,263 cognitive function 1 5,263 hearing 1 5,263 language development 1 5,263 time perception 1 5,263 empathic skills 1 20 sociology 1 20 history 1 5,263 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as seen in table 8, 21,052% of the ma theses were written in the field of preschool education and 5,263% are in the education policies, educational materials/material development, secondary education institutions, program evaluation, turkish, science education, stuttering treatment, orthopedics and traumatology, asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 651-657 656 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group frequency sensitivity, pain sensitivity, cognitive function, hearing, language development, time perception and history. 20% of the phd theses were prepared for the fields of education policies, preschool education, mathematics education, empathic skills and sociology. the study in specialtiy in medicine was defended in the field of laryngeal diseases. table-9. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the research models. research model ma phd speciality in medicine f % f % f % descriptive model 13 68,42 3 60 1 100 experimental model 6 31,57 1 20 mixed model 1 20 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as seen in table 9, 68.42 % of the ma theses examined within the scope of the study were prepared based on the descriptive model and 31.57 % on the experimental model. there is no study prepared based on the mixed model among the ma theses. 60% of the phd theses were prepared based on the descriptive and 20% on the experimental and mixed model. it was determined that the study in specialty in medicine was prepared based on the descriptive model. table-10. distribution of graduate theses in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey regarding the research class. research class ma phd speciality in medicine f % f % f % qualitative 4 21,05 1 20 quantitative 15 78,94 4 80 1 100 total 19 100 5 100 1 100 as seen in table 10, 78.94% of the ma theses examined within the scope of the study are quantitative research and 21.05 are qualitative research. 80% of phd theses are in quantitative research and 20% are in qualitative research. the study in specialty in medicine within the scope of the research (100%) was in the quantitative research class. 4. conclusion and discussion 1. it was found that the theses examined within the scope of the study were written between 1995 and 2019, and that 76% of these theses consist of ma, 20% phd and 4% specialty in medicine theses. ece and ceşit (2011) point out that a large part of interdisciplinary music research is at ma thesis level, which is in line with the results of the current study. as of the 2019-2020 academic year, the total number of ma students is 297,001 while the number of phd students is 101,242 (higher education i̇nformation management system, 2020). according to these data, the number of ma students is almost three times higher than the number of phd students. it can be said that the high numbers in ma thesis studies results from this situation. 2. most of the ma theses examined within the scope of the research were prepared in hacettepe university and most of the phd theses were in ankara university and the study in specialty in medicine was completed in gaziosmanpaşa university. 3. most of the ma and phd theses examined within the scope of the research were written by women, and the study in specialty in medicine was prepared by a female researcher. kılıç (2010) states that women are more involved than men in graduate music education research, which is also in line with the result of this research. according to the data of yök statistics (higher education i̇nformation management system, 2020) the number of female researchers who graduated from the areas (health, education, etc.) examined in this study is almost twice as high as male researchers. the reason for finding the high number of theses prepared by women in this study is thought to be related to this situation. 4. 10,526% of the ma theses examined within the scope of the study were written in 2002,2008, 2014, 2016,2019; 5,263% were in 1995, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2017. 20% of the phd theses within the scope of the study were prepared in 1997, 2002, 2013, 2014 and 2019. the study in speciality in medicine within the scope of the study was prepared in 2012. thus, it is possible to say that the number of graduate studies in different disciplines prepared for music education in turkey is not so high and it follows a horizontal distribution. turna and bolat (2015) also state that as compared with other countries, the number of interdisciplinary studies in turkey is rather limitted and especially the phd studies are inadequate. it can be said that this situation may result from the insufficient knowledge about interdisciplinary studies and the lack of communication between the institutions. likewise, researchers' lack of competence in the field of music can be counted among the reasons for this situation. 5. 42.10% of the ma theses examined within the scope of the study were under the supervision of professors; 31.57% under the supervision of assistant professors and 26.31% under the supervision of associate professors. 80% of the phd theses were supervised by professors and 20% by assistant professors or doctors. the study in specialty in medicine (100%) was prepared under the supervision of an associate professor. 6. it was turned out that most of the ma theses examined within the scope of the study were prepared in the institutes of health sciences and most of the phd theses were prepared in the institutions of educational sciences and the specialty in medicine was carried out in the faculty of medicine. 7. most of the ma theses examined within the scope of the study were prepared in the audiology and speech disorders program. most of the phd theses were prepared in the department of home economics (child asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 651-657 657 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group development)/child development and education. lastly, the study in specialty in medicine was prepared in the department of otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery. 8. music education was associated with preschool education in most of the ma theses examined within the scope of the study. the reason for this can be that musical activities have an indispensable role in preschool education and that music education is used as a tool in teaching different fields. as a matter of fact, özkut and kaya (2012) point out that music has a very important place in art education, which is a dimension of preschool education. thus, it is usual that there are much more interdisciplinary studies linking music education and preschool education. the phd theses examined within the scope of the study were equally distributed in the fields of education policies, preschool education, mathematics education, empathic skills and sociology. in this context, the role of music in educational sciences, preschool education and in education of different fields, and the association of music education with fields such as psychology, sociology, history stand out at the phd level research. especially, the study of subjects as treatment of disease and music education, and the effects of music on diseases is interesting. 9. most of the ma and phd theses and the study in specialty in medicine examined within the scope of the study were prepared based on descriptive model and quantitative approach. since most of the researchers try to reveal an existing situation by explaining it, it is possible to say that the descriptive model is preferred more. similarly, it is concluded that quantitative approach is preferred in most of the theses, since it is objective and suitable for more sampling and generalization. in fact, gürdal, bakioğlu, and öztuna (2005) express that a large number of subjects can be reached through quantitative studies and the results of such studies are generalizable. 5. suggestions 1. primary issues in interdisciplinary studies on music education can be determined and researchers who work on these issues can be encouraged by providing scholarships. 2. not only academics competent in the field of music but also those in different fields such as engineering, medicine, health sciences, etc. can be employed in the research centers for music and music education, and new thesis under the supervision of these academics can be prepared. 3. the number of graduate studies on educational sciences, preschool education, the role of music education in education of different fields, and on the association of music education with psychology, sociology, history can be increased. 4. among the graduate studies associated with music education, the number of studies prepared based on the experimental or mixed model can be increased 5. the number of qualitative research can be increased among the graduate studies associated with music education. references alyörük, g. (2016). graduate thesis in field of guitar performed in turkey: a bibliography study. balıkesir university the journal of social sciences institute, 35(19), 55-79. ece, a. s. (2007). music related articles published in scientific journals (bibliography)(2000-2006). abant i̇zzet baysal university journal of social sciences, 15(2), 45-81. ece., a. s., & ceşit, c. (2011). the interdisciplinary music researches done at graduate level in turkey and their results. the journal of international social research, 17(4), 599-617. ercan, h., & yıldırım, o. ş. (2016). analysis of music conferences held in turkey: muzed silk road conferences sample. fine arts, 11(4), 181-199. gürdal, a., bakioğlu, a., & öztuna, a. (2005). examination of science education graduate theses. buca faculty of education journal, 17 (special issue 1), 53-58. higher education i̇nformation management system. (2020). retrieved from https://istatistik.yok.gov.tr/. kılıç, i. (2010). the examination of graduate theses in music education. paper presented at the 9. national music education symposium, 15-17 december, i̇stanbul. national thesis center. (2020). retrieved from https://tez.yok.gov.tr/ulusaltezmerkezi/. özkut, b., & kaya, ö., s. (2012). an investigation into the effects of undergraduate music education of preschool teachers in elementary schools on their professional lives. international journal of new trends in arts, sports & science education, 1(1), 167-179. turna, ö., & bolat, m. (2015). an analysis of theses related to interdisciplinary approach in education. ondokuz mayis university journal of faculty of education, 34(1), 35-55. varış, y. a. (2012). the analysis of postgraduate dissertations on viola written in turkey. the journal of academic social science studies, 5(8), 1247-1260. yıldırım, a., & şimşek, h. (2013). qualitative research methods in the social sciences. ankara: seçkin publications. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 173 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 4, 173-180, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i4.6084 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group development of a creative digital curriculum for the elderly: a participatory approach to enhance potential for alternative career opportunities in the digital era parit saisee1 sukontip supachant2 omthong patthanaphong3 jaruwan limphaiboon4 pongwat fongkanta5 ( corresponding author) 1,5faculty of education, lampang rajabhat university, thailand. 1email: parit_saisee@hotmail.com 5email: pongwat@lpru.ac.th 2,3,4faculty of management sciences, lampang rajabhat university, thailand. 2email: suphachan@yahoo.com 3email: om_da@outlook.co.th 4email: jaruwan017@hotmail.com abstract this research aimed to develop a curriculum for empowering the elderly to create alternative careers in the digital society era through digital platforms and to study the effects of the curriculum and online educational channels on enhancing the elderly’s capabilities. participatory action research (par) methods combined with qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed in this study. the study involved 555 participants including personnel and elderly individuals in lampang province that were selected by using multi-stage sampling. descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data and compare the group mean by t-test. the research findings revealed that the “creative digital retirees” curriculum for empowering the elderly to use digital technology, digital media literacy and utilizing digital media to create alternative careers met the effective criteria, the 80/80 efficiency criteria with e1 = 80.00 and e2 = 87.16. the effective curriculum consists of five learning units including unit 1: using technology media for the elderly, unit 2: understanding and digital literacy for the elderly, unit 3: creating social media for the elderly, unit 4: accessing, efficient use of technology and technology management for the elderly, and unit 5: electronic law. the elderly’s capabilities significantly improved at a significance level of 0.05. for curriculum users’ satisfaction, the result showed the highest level of satisfaction with an average score of 4.59. it is concluded that the curriculum is effective and can genuinely enhance the elderly’s learning achievements. keywords: career opportunities, curriculum development, participatory action research, digital platforms, elderly people, training. citation | saisee, p., supachant, s., patthanaphong, o., limphaiboon, j., & fongkanta, p. (2024). development of a creative digital curriculum for the elderly: a participatory approach to enhance potential for alternative career opportunities in the digital era. asian journal of education and training, 10(4), 173–180. 10.20448/edu.v10i4.6084 history: received: 27 august 2024 revised: 11 october 2024 accepted: 26 october 2024 published: 7 november 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by national research council of thailand (grant number: n34a650832). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 30 june 2023 (ref. no. he-153-2566). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, data curation, software, visualization, supervision, writing original draft, conceptualization, methodology, data check, software, validation, p.s., s.s., o.p., j. l.; reviewing and editing, p.f. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 174 2. research objectives ...................................................................................................................................................................... 174 3. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 174 4. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................. 176 5. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 177 6. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 178 7. implications..................................................................................................................................................................................... 179 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 179 mailto:parit_saisee@hotmail.com mailto:pongwat@lpru.ac.th mailto:suphachan@yahoo.com mailto:om_da@outlook.co.th mailto:jaruwan017@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i4.6084 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9113-9777 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7297-0362 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-4029-1352 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3267-9472 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6261-5367 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 173-180 174 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the “creative digital retirees” curriculum effectively developed skills and knowledge in using digital technology, digital media literacy and utilizing digital media to create alternative careers for the elderly. five learning units of the “creative digital retirees” curriculum consist of unit 1: using, technology media for the elderly, unit 2: understanding and digital literacy for the elderly, unit 3: creating social media for the elderly, unit 4: accessing, efficient use of technology and technology management for the elderly, and unit 5: electronic law. moreover, research findings highlighted significant enhancements in the elderly’s capabilities. 1. introduction the demographic structure in thailand is rapidly changing with a noticeable trend being the increase in the elderly population. by the year 2035, the elderly will constitute one-fifth of the total population (the secretariat of the house of representatives, 2015). this situation has economic, social, and health impacts such as a reduction in the workforce leading to decreased production and investment and increased healthcare costs (chainan, 2018). a continuous increase in the number of elderly people was reported, necessitating adaptation to this scenario by focusing on the development of appropriate skills and lifelong learning to prepare the elderly for future circumstances and demands considering the situation in lampang province (department of provincial administration, 2021). one of the adaptations to rapid changes in thailand shows that recent statistics indicate a significant increase in social media usage (chaihanchanchai & anantachart, 2024). this ongoing shift to an online environment prompts the study of technology use among the elderly. one of the emerging issues is that the use of technology by the elderly has not been sufficiently supported. studies have found that they have a desire to work and learn computer skills. digital technology skills are essential for the aging workforce and can be a crucial tool for generating income and new jobs in the future (lee, czaja, & sharit, 2008; torres, bradford, & beier, 2019). however, there is still a lack of understanding and expertise in using and creating appropriate content for digital tools. therefore, there is a need to develop online courses for the elderly to teach digital skills and enhance readiness in using technology (department of provincial administration, 2021). according to payuha, homrod, and charoentansakul (2019) creating appropriate and useful online media for the elderly is important as these media can enhance relationships and knowledge sharing and can be easily used as learning materials. hence, employing modern technology and media such as youtube, facebook, and e-books as communication and learning tools is essential to create relevant and beneficial knowledge. this will lead to the development of the potential and quality of life for the elderly. therefore, developing curricula and social media for the elderly in the digital age is crucial to driving the potential of the elderly to create alternative careers especially by enhancing digital technology skills and using social media platforms like youtube, facebook, and e-books. it also helps the elderly learn to create useful online content, develop communication and marketing skills through digital platforms and increase opportunities for generating income from selling products and services online. it also strengthens community relationships and improves the quality of life for the elderly in the digital society besides increasing income. 2. research objectives 1. to develop a curriculum for enhancing the potential of the elderly to create alternative careers in the digital society era through online educational platforms (youtube, facebook and e-books). 2. to study the effects of the curriculum and online educational platforms on enhancing the potential of the elderly. 3. literature review 3.1. the theoretical underpinning of elearning holmes and gardner (2006) state that e-learning has the potential to overcome some of the limitations of traditional learning, including, most importantly, the fixed times and locations for learning. it allows for a synergy between advances in information and communication technologies and twenty-first century learning needs or skills, each giving the other a push to explore what is possible and what may ultimately be achieved. however, e learning is still considered by many to be simply an add-on to key developments in the technology itself. it is true to some extent. the concepts comprising elearning have emerged from several different traditions and fields, notably from education itself and psychology, computer science and sociology. there has also been a long tradition of exploring educational technology where technology is taken to include “tools” such as curriculum design, learning objectives and pedagogical techniques (balachandran & mahalakshmi, 2023). educational technology studies today are largely confined to curriculum and assessment developments and tools that enhance learning and teaching (tamang & rinchen, 2021). the search is on for new ways of teaching and learning that address the creation of learning environments and that support students’ acquisition of the learning skills needed for the information age. then, learning with and without technology is key. central to this philosophy is the view that the contribution that information and communication technologies can make to learning is not an end in itself; rather it is their role in motivating and facilitating broader learning experiences that is their key contribution. behaviourism is perhaps the oldest and most widely understood of the three main theoretical frameworks underpinning educational and elearning theory. watson (1930) coined the term and he was perhaps the most extreme of the behaviourists in vehemently opposing the notion that a person’s mind and consciousness could be used as a focus for explaining behaviour. in essence, classical behaviourism argues that certain stimuli will produce specific reactions in a human or animal. the classic example is pavlov’s dogs which salivated at the sound of a bell that heralded feeding time. the ‘operant’ version of behaviourism predicts that with sufficient repetition of an experience, specific behaviours can be taught by reinforcing the desired behaviours with appropriate stimuli. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 173-180 175 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. elderly people’s abilities and use of technology hunsaker and hargittai (2018) have studied a review of internet use among older adults. studies have shown that younger adults tend to access and use the internet at a higher rate. they also have better internet skills than older adults. in addition, their income and education levels are higher which is a basic indicator of social inequality among general adults. it is also something that shows differences in access to internet usage and skills among older adults. moreover, hogeboom, mcdermott, perrin, osman, and bell-ellison (2010) studied the use of the internet and social networks among middle-aged people and the elderly. it was found that middle-aged adults internet use is higher than adults in the elderly the relationship between internet use and frequency of contact with friends and family of adults over 50 was positively associated. it was also found that the internet has a positive influence on community connections for users in younger age groups and the internet may help strengthen social networks and help manage stress. relieves depression and improves health outcomes for adults aged 50 years and older as well. beckenhauer and armstrong (2009) stated that older people use such media because they use it. easier to communicate with family helps reduce feelings of distance from each other. they will likely use the internet more for social media and the ability to use it to connect friendships with friends who are far away. it can be said that technology can raise the level and open up opportunities for socialization and communication for older adults to be more aware of their social participation (heins et al., 2021). research has also shown that digital technologies, including the internet have the potential to improve the social participation of older adults. this is illustrated by the findings of tyler, simic, and de george-walker's (2018) study of the digital experiences of retired australians aged 65 and over. it can be seen that people in this age group are the best internet users. it is a group with experience from working. many applications on the internet can be used as efficiently as if they were a normal part of everyday life. a survey of the overall use of technology among the elderly found that most of them use telephones. more than 50 percent of respondents use mobile phones and computers. using social media for calling and surfing the internet is an important activity for older adults (gitlow, 2014). they also use it to communicate with family and friends. conduct financial transactions online and pay for various services such as searching for information, buying things online, playing games, and using them for entertainment i.e., watching movies and listening to music, respectively (chang, mcallister, & mccaslin, 2015). there is also a research conclusion that indicates that older people find information from google and facebook which are popular social media (marston, kroll, fink, de rosario, & gschwind, 2016). the inequality in access to digital information technology (digital divide) is the gap between groups that have access to computers, the internet, and information on online media with another group that cannot be reached in particular, the majority of the elderly are in groups that do not have access. but at the same time, information technology has become even more necessary for the elderly. even after retirement, such as using the internet to search for information (search engine) etc. (miwa et al., 2017). regarding the inequality of access to technology, lam and lee (2007) explained the gap between “having” or “not having” technological communication data (information communication technologies; icts). today, many countries recognize the digital divide. it is considered a social problem caused by the clash between the social system and culture. with the integration of technological communication information, the elderly population is classified as one of the “nones” or technologically and socially disadvantaged groups. it can be seen that the majority of the elderly group are in the group that does not have access to information technology. i didn’t grow up with technology as a child; it makes me feel like i’m not part of modern technology. therefore, it affects their interest in studying the use of technology. even though the content is complex, the elderly can understand digital skills if there is someone who specifically gives them advice on how to use various technologies. explaining the various steps of using detailed and clear information is very important for promoting the learning of digital skills among the elderly in the future. at the same time, in the field of electronic equipment various applications should be developed to be suitable for the elderly (blazic & blazic, 2018). therefore, if the elderly are encouraged to use technology, it will affect technology acceptance. miwa et al. (2017) stated that the elderly who use technology perceive that they are aware of their abilities in using computers and the internet by creating a good feeling when using the computer as for feelings of anxiety, the level has decreased. therefore, if the elderly have the opportunity to use computers and the internet continuously, study and learn by themselves and have a group of friends to help them. digital skills will trend and develop in a good direction at the same time; there are elderly people who believe that aging is not a depressing problem. they are more likely to think that smartphones are useful and fun. in other words, positive attitudes and different people’s experiences with digital media lead to different results. those who have basic knowledge of digital media will be easier to understand than those who do not have basic knowledge of digital media. after training, most elderly people can learn and understand until they can use the application effectively including enthusiasm and desire to study. it was also found that the emotion that occurred most frequently with the elderly throughout the training period was fear which refers to the fear that they will become stupid if they cannot do the same as others and the fear that their mistakes will damage their electronic devices including unfamiliarity with typing text on the keyboard and using the mouse (lam & lee, 2007). if the elderly are familiar with or are already accustomed to using technology, it is seen that it is not difficult and there is still a positive opinion of technology as lam and lee (2007) further explain from the results of the study. elderly people are computer beginners who do not yet have confidence in their abilities. participate in a variety of online work but after using it for a while and getting enough training. elderly people will feel better and have more confidence because at least they can communicate with other people to share new knowledge such as being able to use computers and the internet .they also expect that they will have the skills to work online. in addition, as they develop more skills, they have more opportunities to participate in various online activities. marston et al. (2016) studied the behavior of the elderly using technology through the istoppfalls project in three cities: cologne, sydney and valencia. it was found that the elderly use technology for more than a year; the main reasons for use are email, search engines, online purchases, etc. google and facebook are the most popular media. in conclusion, the deployment of technology must be done appropriately to be able to help the elderly population to benefit and develop a social promotion system, for example, using email, asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 173-180 176 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group phone calls or face-to-face telephone calls (video calls) over the internet all over the world in a short time. this is necessary for older people who are interested in and expect to use the internet continuously (morrison & barnett, 2010). 4. research methodology 4.1. research design this research employs a participatory action research (par) approach utilizing a mixed-methods design that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative methods. the objective is to create and develop media and online educational platforms through digital media (youtube, facebook and e-books) related to accessibility, usage, and the level of digital technology proficiency. this includes digital media literacy and the use of digital media to create alternative careers for the elderly in lampang province using a participatory process to develop media that aligns with their skills. moreover, the implementation research process is divided into three phases: phase 1: pre-action (initial phase): focus on knowledge creation processes. phase 2: action (implementation phase): experiment with the curriculum modern media, and new formats of knowledge dissemination. phase 3: evaluation: assess the use of the curriculum and online media. 4.2. participants the population of this study involves three groups: group 1: related personnel: including research institutions, government, and private sector agencies involved in elderly development for in-depth interviews and brainstorming. group 2: (1) elderly aged 60 and above in lampang province, they are literate and own smartphones, totaling 182,858 individuals. a sample of this group will participate in the creation and development of participatory models and media. (2) elderly aged 60 and above: providing basic information, motivations for using technology, the status of access, usage, and digital technology proficiency as well as suitable digital technology-based occupations, totaling 182,858 individuals. (3) elderly aged 60 and above: literate and owning smartphones, to test the curriculum and online educational media, and to evaluate their quality and satisfaction. group 3: relatives or close associates of the elderly: with technology expertise, serving as “digital buddies” to assist and support the elderly in using the digital curriculum and media. all participants were selected by using multi-stage sampling including 555 participants in this study. 4.3. instruments 1. interview forms: for personnel involved in elderly development to explore access, usage, and appropriate digital technology and online media. the content validity was conducted by using an index of item objective congruence (ioc) that was greater than .50. 2. questionnaires: on basic information and motivations for using digital technology among the elderly. the content validity was conducted by using index of item objective congruence (ioc) that was greater than .50. 3. preand post-tests: for the elderly to measure learning outcomes before and after using the curriculum. the cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was 0.91 (α = 0.91). the difficulty index was appropriate ranging from 0.44 to 0.75 with the kr-20 by kuder richardson was 0.80. 4. satisfaction survey forms: for the elderly participating in the activities to assess satisfaction with the curriculum and online media (youtube, facebook and e-books). the cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was 0.975 (α = 0.975). these instruments utilized for collecting both qualitative and quantitative data to ensure comprehensive and reliable evaluation of the development and use of digital technology among the elderly in the community. 4.4. data collection 1. qualitative data collection: it includes gathering information from documents, journals, and research on appropriate technology use and digital literacy for the elderly; in-depth interviews with personnel involved in elderly development; brainstorming with the elderly in lampang to develop appropriate media; and collecting data from curriculum and online media trials with preand post-tests to measure knowledge and skills. 2. quantitative data collection: it involves gathering data from 400 literate elderly people over the age of 60 in lampang province using questionnaires on basic information, technology usage motivations, access status, usage, and digital technology proficiency; collecting data from the elderly participating in the curriculum and online media trials through satisfaction surveys and utilization assessments. the data collection process is conducted by coordinators who will explain the objectives and methods to the participants. if participants are unable to complete the questionnaires, data collectors will assist, ensuring confidentiality and voluntary participation. 4.5. data analysis 1. qualitative analysis: it includes textual analysis from documents, books, and related research to systematically organize and find meaning in the observed phenomena, and interpretive analysis from interviews and discussions to derive meaning and findings on the studied issues. 2. quantitative analysis: it uses questionnaires, interviews, and evaluations to summarize statistics such as the effectiveness of new media (youtube, facebook and e-books) using efficiency calculation formulas, analysis of pre and post-tests for index of item-objective congruence (ioc), satisfaction questionnaire analysis using a 5-point likert scale, discrimination power calculation of the tests, and reliability of the tests using the kr-20 formula. furthermore, the statistics for tool development and data analysis are as follows: 1. tool development statistics: it includes efficiency calculations from learners’ scores, ioc calculations from expert ratings, discrimination power calculation from test difficulty and discrimination indices, and the kr-20 formula for test reliability. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 173-180 177 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. data analysis statistics: it includes t-test dependent for comparing preand post-learning results, 5-point likert scale for satisfaction questionnaire analysis, percentage calculation for frequency and proportion study, mean calculation for central tendency, and standard deviation (sd) for data dispersion measurement. this research has been ethically approved under the human research ethics declaration with certificate number he-153-2566 from the ethics committee for human research, nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university, and received research funding from the national research council of thailand on dated march 27, 2566 (ref. n34a650832). 5. results the results are presented according to the research objectives as follows: objective 1: to create and develop online courses and educational channels related to access, usage, and proficiency in digital technology for the elderly. this was achieved by using a participatory process to create and develop a curriculum that aligns with the skills and needs of the target group. this involved presenting survey results from in-depth interviews and brainstorming sessions with elderly participants to create diverse and suitable learning channels. the aim was to enhance skills and understanding of digital technology, empowering the elderly to develop themselves and create suitable careers in the digital age. the results are as follows: course and online educational media design with elderly participation: a content network chart was created outlining the necessary topics to build lessons. these topics were arranged in a sequence or as parallel learning units. behavioral objectives for each unit were aligned with the content. the research team and participating elderly individuals co-designed activities using the content network chart. the lesson series, named “creative digital for retired youth” aimed to develop skills and knowledge in digital technology, media literacy, and the use of digital media for alternative careers. this knowledge can be applied in daily life and work. lesson content framework development: the researchers and elderly participants collaboratively developed the content details (script development) and storyboard (storyboard development), structuring the lessons according to the planned framework. the lesson content consists of the following five learning units: unit 1: using technology media for the elderly. unit 2: understanding digital literacy for the elderly. unit 3: creating social media for the elderly. unit 4: accessing efficient use of technology and technology management for the elderly. unit 5: electronic law for the elderly. content accuracy and completeness verification: three experts reviewed the accuracy and completeness of the content in the "creative digital for retired youth" lessons. the average content consistency was 0.92. language usage verification: the researchers revised the content based on expert suggestions and tested it with a sample group of three people. the average consistency for learning content and language usage was 0.95. pre and post-lesson test development: the tests were designed to assess learning before and after each unit, evaluating difficulty, discrimination power, and reliability. content analysis was conducted to set behavioral objectives followed by creating multiple-choice questions (15 per unit, 75 total). these questions were reviewed by experts and those that were not suitable (5 per unit) were removed leaving 50 questions. reliability was tested with a group of 30 elderly individuals not included in the sample yielding a reliability score of 0.99. the lesson efficiency was tested according to the 80/80 criterion with 30 elderly individuals (10 with digital skills, 10 with some digital skills and 10 with minimal digital skills). the analysis results are shown in table 1. table 1. efficiency measurement from percentage scores of pre-learning and post-learning tests (e1/e2) (n=30). order percentage score before learning percentage score after learning e1/e2 e1 = 81.63 e2 = 82.05 performance results based on percentage scores of pre-learning and post-learning tests (e1/e2). from the analysis of the percentage scores of pre-learning and post-learning tests (e1/e2) of a sample group of 30 participants, it was found that the efficiency of the “creative digital retirement” course for the elderly met the 80/80 criterion with e1 equal to 81.63 and e2 equal to 82.05. evaluation by online educational media production experts: the developed course was reviewed by three experts in online educational media production to verify the quality and accuracy of the content validity and the construct validity. the experts also assessed the appropriateness of the wording and revisions were made accordingly. after these adjustments, the course was tested for reliability using a summated rating scale to calculate cronbach’s alpha coefficient. the questionnaire was tested on a similar sample group of 30 participants. the reliability coefficient was 0.99 indicating that the tool is suitable for practical use. preparation of course content and media in various formats: the course content was compiled into various formats, including video clips and other learning materials for dissemination through specified social media channels. the content was organized into documents and files for new communication channels, including facebook page: “lampang retired teenagers”, the “creative digital retirement” course consisting of five modules was posted on this facebook page which garnered more than 1,000 likes and followers. e-book: creative digital retirement e-book. youtube channel: “lampang retired teenagers”. efficiency testing of the online learning media: the online lessons were tested with 30 elderly participants to identify any problems or obstacles encountered during the learning process. observations and inquiries about asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 173-180 178 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group their learning experience revealed that the overall efficiency of the online learning media was rated highly with an average score of 4.57. objective 2: to study the impact of the course and online education channels in enhancing the capabilities of the elderly. result of using media and online education channels through social media: through experimentation with media and online education channels through social media among elderly participants involved in practical training, 25 participants from baddie and 25 from bunny, totaling 50 individuals, the effectiveness of educational media through new communication channels was rated at the highest level. the average score was 4.61. result of evaluating the course and online education channels through social media: evaluation of online learning courses through three channels showed that the “creative digital retirement” curriculum is of high quality as shown in tables 2 and 3. table 2. comparison of pre-learning and post-learning mean scores of course participants table 3. pre-learning, during-learning, and post-learning scores of participants in practical training, classified by digital technology skills digital technology skills pre learning during learning post learning there are 18 participants with digital technology skills. 30.11 40.39 44.22 there are 18 participants who have some experience with digital technology. 28.00 40.00 43.22 there are 14 participants with little or no digital technology skills. 26.79 39.50 43.21 the experimental group consisting of participants with digital technology skills those with some experience in digital technology and those with little or no digital technology skills showed comparable learning outcomes when using the course and studying through online social media. this indicates that the course is effective and suitable for general elderly learners. table 4. effectiveness analysis from pre-learning percentage scores and post-learning test scores e1/e2 of the practical training participant group (n=50) sequence pre-learning percentage score (%) post-learning percentage score (%) e1/e2 e1 = 80.00 e2 = 87.16 it was found that the effectiveness of the "digital creative aging for seniors" curriculum met the criteria of 80/80 from the results of the effectiveness in percentage scores of pre-learning and post-learning tests e1/e2 among 50 participants using the course (see table 4). specifically, e1 scored 80.00 and e2 scored 87.16. additionally, participants expressed a high level of satisfaction with the educational media through new communication channels with an average score of 4.59. the use of these media channels with seniors resulted in significant changes in their knowledge. some participants who had little to no prior knowledge showed increased understanding after receiving training and reviewing materials. moreover, seniors gained confidence and subsequently shared their newfound knowledge with others in their community. 6. discussion and conclusion 6.1. discussion learning management for seniors: effective preparation of data and teaching methods is crucial for senior learning. rattanaubon and supanjoy (2020) stated that technology was pivotal in developing basic technology skills for seniors using various modern media facilitates personalized learning to advance their existing knowledge, aligning with contemporary changes and fostering creative integration with other scientific knowledge. tools include watching youtube videos using social media devices, computer apps for social learning, and platforms such as facebook, line, and google for communication and information searching. these skills are beneficial for seniors to learn various subjects using these technological tools continuously enhancing their proficiency to apply technology tools for the development of other fundamental skills. these tools can help seniors broaden their learning perspectives (brink, 2017) enabling them to acquire new skills as needed throughout their lifelong learning journey. this learning approach is beneficial for learners or seniors according to their learning needs in new ways. technology-enhanced teaching activities and peer pairing: collaborative learning activities involving technology and close relatives or caregivers are crucial factors enabling seniors to learn technology more quickly. in learning, management lasting no less than 80 hours, there are several beneficial activities through which seniors can learn through experiences with applications like facebook, youtube, tiktok, line, and smartphones in the classroom leading to the development of technological learning skills. simultaneously, face-to-face learning activities between senior learners and teachers serve as centers for mutual learning. this learning approach allows seniors to meet and converse with both instructors and fellow senior learners comfortably, facilitating communication through spoken conversations. observation reveals that seniors tend to be more interested in this learning method than self-directed learning because acquiring technology skills can be challenging and complex for them. therefore, seniors need to learn step-by-step. initially, face-to-face learning helps them grasp basic skills easily. however, limitations were noted in the early stages of senior learning due to their lack of familiarity or expertise. moreover, practical training workshops are effective in enhancing learning for seniors (dondofema, mwenje, & musemwa, 2020; soikeree & purakom, 2019). learning score n mean sd. t df p-value pre-learning 50 28.42 1.91 -60.327 49 0.00* post-learning 50 43.57 1.05 note: *p < 0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(4): 173-180 179 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the workshops allow seniors to learn effectively through hands-on experience, aligning with the idea of using technology to strengthen learning for seniors further. activities of this nature encourage seniors to create works using technology such as integrating art with various technologies and researching diverse information from the internet. utilizing related devices like smartphones, tablets or computers enhances their ability to demonstrate creative skills independently. specifically, activities like basic photography learning contribute to skill development through technology. educational media from new communication channels: educational media through new communication formats have emerged from collaborative efforts by research teams allowing seniors to participate, provide feedback, experiment with media effectiveness and have their quality assessed by experts. it was found that learning outcomes meet the established criteria. this educational media results from seniors' collaborative decision-making, appropriate media selection, easy and convenient usability. these educational media through all three channels help seniors learn faster and offer multiple convenient options aligning with cain (2005) suggested that investing in educational technology was cost-effective. using programs for development helps reduce time spent on travel, finding speakers, venues, and scheduling. thus, the essential role of technology in enhancing learning efficiency and cost-effectiveness in development and creativity is evident. learning enhances physical, mental and intellectual development: learning enables seniors to develop physically, mentally, and intellectually contributing to a healthy society and preventing dementia. it allows them to learn new things, interact with peers, engage in activities, avoid loneliness and experience happiness. moreover, seniors have opportunities to learn for new careers or enhance existing ones with digital technology generating additional income. tam (2012) founded that learning is crucial for active aging. effective learning management for seniors promotes continuous self-improvement leading to a good quality of life, self-care, normal social participation, and alignment with the views of yodpetch, pattanasri, and sakdaphon (2017) state that senior schools provide significant benefits. when activities occur together, negative self-perceptions are eliminated, and seniors feel valued, able to pass on their knowledge to family or others. 6.2. conclusion a curriculum that empowers the elderly to create alternative careers in the digital society era through digital platforms was effective. the lesson content in this effective curriculum consists of five learning units as follows: 1) unit 1: using technology media for the elderly, unit 2: understanding digital literacy for the elderly, unit 3: creating social media for the elderly, unit 4: accessing, efficient use of technology and technology management for the elderly, and unit 5: electronic law. moreover, the elderly’s capabilities were significantly improving at a significance level of .05 and the highest level of satisfaction in the curriculum of the elderly. so, it is concluded that the curriculum is effective and can genuinely enhance the elderly’s capabilities. 7. implications for the policy suggestions and implications, the user should be 1. promote collaboration among all sectors: it is advisable to promote collaboration among all sectors, including government agencies, private entities, local communities, elderly associations, and religious institutions. each area should designate a coordinating body which may differ from place to place to facilitate cooperation and develop comprehensive plans for elderly development in all aspects. 2. utilize digital technology for senior learning and establish community-based and online senior learning centers to increase access to quality education equally for seniors. digital technology should be utilized extensively to promote senior learning. for the practical suggestions and implication, the user 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(2017). lessons learned from good examples of schools and elderly clubs with knowledge transfer activities. bangkok: foundation for thai elderly research and development institute. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.412.420 https://doi.org/10.3109/02703181.2014.946640 https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10112308 https://doi.org/10.1080/03601270903058507 https://doi.org/10.1080/03601270802300091 https://doi.org/10.1080/03601277.2015.1125178 https://doi.org/10.32655/libres.2017.1.2 https://doi.org/10.47852/bonviewcetr2021020101 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108649636.023 https://doi.org/10.1080/01924788.2018.1428472 15 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 1, 15-22, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i1.4520 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of pre-service teachers' perceptions of the concept of fraction using the word association test mehtap tastepe faculty of education, sinop university, turkey. email: mehtap.tastepe@hotmail.com abstract in this study, it is aimed to examine the perceptions of the mathematics teacher candidates regarding the concept of fraction. 32 teacher candidates participated in the research carried out in the screening model. the word association test was used as a data collection tool and the obtained data were analyzed by content analysis method. according to the results of the analysis, it is seen that the perceptions of teacher candidates regarding the concept of fraction are mostly concentrated in the themes of meanings of fractions, operations in fractions, and representation of fractions. in addition, the themes of numbers, notation, and other mathematical topics in which it is used are other themes that emerged. it was seen that the teacher candidates expressed the quotient meaning at most, they did not mention the percent meaning. it was seen that they mostly expressed the addition operation in fractions and the type of compound fraction. as a result, it is seen that pre-service teachers' perceptions about the concept of fraction are limited. pre-service teachers can be given a more comprehensive and relational education on the concept of fraction. keywords: fractions, meanings of fractions, pre-service teacher, representation of fractions, word association test. citation | tastepe, m. (2023). examination of pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the concept of fraction using the word association test. asian journal of education and training, 9(1), 15–22. 10.20448/edu.v9i1.4520 history: received: 20 december 2022 revised: 2 february 2023 accepted: 17 february 2023 published: 10 march 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 16 2. methods ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 16 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 17 4. discussion, conclusion, and suggestions ................................................................................................................................... 20 5. limitations ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 21 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 21 mailto:mehtap.tastepe@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i1.4520 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4535-3606 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 15-22 16 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature unlike other studies, teacher candidates studying at a small university participated in this study and the word association test was used. according to the findings, it is thought that this study will contribute to the education of teacher candidates. 1. introduction mathematics is divided into five basic subject areas: numbers and operations, algebra, geometry, measurement and data analysis, and probability (national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm), 2000). the subject of fractions is one of the abstract concepts that students in the sub-learning field of numbers encounter constantly throughout their education life (özdemir & özçakır, 2019). although it is a concept that is frequently used in daily life (quarter, whole, half, etc.), it is a subject where students have learning difficulties (alkhateeb, 2019; bentley & bossé, 2018; biber, abdulkadir, & aktaş, 2013; charalambous & pitta-pantazi, 2007; doğan & yeniterzi, 2011; küçük & demir, 2009). 1.1. literature review according to the studies carried out in the field of mathematics education, learning fractions is seen as difficult for all students due to their multi-faceted structure (namkung & fuchs, 2019; namkung, fuchs, & koziol, 2018; national center for education statistics, 2017; torbeyns, schneider, xin, & siegler, 2015). according to olkun and uçar (2007) fractions are heavier and more complex than most of the mathematics subjects in primary school. because students perceive fractions as numbers and have difficulty in associating them with the numbers they have learned before. olkun and uçar (2007) stated that fractions differ from counting numbers in two ways. the first of these is that while we can represent the surrounding entities with a natural number, we need 2 natural numbers to represent fractions by quotient and measuring. the second is "how many?" in questions whose answers are natural numbers. while asking the question "how much?" is to ask the question. the fact that the rules that are valid in natural numbers are not always valid in fractions causes this subject to be difficult for students to understand. another reason is the different meanings fractions have (division, processor, ratio, part-whole and measurement), and it is important for students to gain experience with these different meanings in order to fully understand fractions (van de walle, karp, & bay-williams, 2012; van de walle, lovin, karp, & williams, 2013). in addition, there are three different fraction models, namely area model, cluster model and number line model within the scope of part-whole meaning in fractions (marmur, yan, & zazkis, 2020). in the area model, the determined part of a given whole is in question. for example, it is a model of scanning half of a triangle divided into two equal parts. in the cluster model, an amount of object is determined as a whole and the desired part is expressed as a fraction. in the number line model, the number line model is divided into the determined length units and the specified part expresses a fraction (kamacı, 2021; marmur et al., 2020). in addition to these difficulties, fractions are closely related to concepts such as rational numbers, decimal notation, ratio, operations and algebra (kieren, 1988; saxe, gearhart, & nasir, 2001). kerslake (1995) stated that being successful in fractions is a criterion for success in mathematics and this situation causes students to be anxious about fractions, because fractions are related to many subject areas. however, it is one of the concepts that teachers and pre-service teachers have difficulties in teaching (an, kulm, & wu, 2004; izsák, 2008). stoddart, connell, stofflett, and peck (1993) in his study with pre-service teachers, determined that pre-service teachers had a good procedural accuracy rate (37-98%) on fractions, while they could only achieve an accuracy rate of 5-10% in a conceptual sense. in another study, faulkenberry (2003) determined that pre-service mathematics teachers' procedural knowledge about rational numbers is high, conceptual knowledge is medium, and pedagogical content knowledge is low. in the study of dede and argün (2004) it was determined that the participants were not even aware that there was a relationship between the concept of fractions and the concept of rational numbers. as a matter of fact, the existing mental schemas of the pre-service teachers, who are on the way to becoming a teacher, about the concept of fraction, which has an important place in numbers and operations, and difficulties in learning and teaching, are important. in this study, it was aimed to determine the perceptions of the third grade students studying in the primary school mathematics teaching department about the concept of fractions by using the word association test. 2. methods in the research within the scope of the screening model, the word association test (wat) was preferred as the measurement tool. the word association test is widely used in studies to investigate cognitive structure (timur & taşar, 2011). in such studies, the answers to the key concepts are used to define the concepts in the cognitive structure of the participants, to determine the relationships between the concepts and to reveal the thoughts about the concepts (doğan, yücel, & güngör, 2018). word association test has been widely used in the fields of educational sciences recently (akyurt, 2019; balbag, 2018; bostan & çelik, 2021; kaya, aladağ, & akkuş, 2021). there are two types of assessment in the word association test. in the first type of assessment, points are awarded according to the correct answers of the student. second assessment; it is aimed to create a frequency table regarding the number of repetitions of the words associated with the given concept and to see the cognitive structure and conceptual relationships of the test group according to the frequency table (tokcan & yiter, 2017). the second evaluation method was used in this study. 2.1. research sample in this study, easy sampling method, which is one of the non-random sampling methods, was used in order to collect data faster, less costly and easier (çeliköz & erişen, 2017; gülertekin, genç, & gümüş, 2016). in this context, 32 preservice mathematics teachers studying at a university in anatolia participated in the research. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 15-22 17 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.2. research instrument and procedures the word association test (wat) was used in data collection. before the word association test was applied, the participants were informed about the test. during the application of the word association test, the participants were asked to form groups of 2, and then they were asked to write down the words that came to mind about the concept of "fraction" for about 15 minutes. 2.3. validity and reliability in order to ensure validity in this study, data analysis was expressed in detail and the words stated by the participants were used as data sources. in the findings section, detailed information about these findings is presented together with the evidence. as a matter of fact, it is an important criterion to present and explain the data obtained from the research in detail in order to ensure the validity of the research in qualitative research (yıldırım & şimşek, 2016). in order to determine the reliability process of the research, the opinions of 2 experts were taken and then the consensus coefficient between the experts was calculated. in this direction, miles and huberman (1994) formula reliability = consensus / (agreement + disagreement) x 100 was used for reliability. i̇t was found to be 94%. 2.4. data analysis and process the words expressed by the pre-service teachers were coded by researcher and next the opinions of 2 experts were taken. content analysis method was used to analyze the obtained data. content analysis method is the organization and interpretation of the obtained data under certain concepts and themes (yıldırım & simşek, 2011). with the content analysis, it was ensured that the words expressed by the students in the wat about the concept of fraction were collected in themes and presented in a more meaningful and understandable way. in the analysis phase, first of all, the words expressed by the students were examined one by one and coded taking into account the mathematical concepts, and frequency tables were created. then, themes were created by combining similar codes and frequency values of the themes were calculated. then, the analyzes obtained were examined by two mathematics educators and expert opinion was taken. 2.5. the role of the researcher before the test was administered, a brief information about the word association test and how to fill it was given by the researcher to the participants. there was no intervention by the researcher during the application. after the application, the application papers were collected. 2.6. ethical information pre-service teachers were given detailed information about the analyze to be made before the study and the outputs of the results, and signed informed consent forms were obtained from them. 3. results in this study, wat was used to see the perceptions and conceptual relationships of prospective teachers about the concept of "fraction". the word cloud composed of the most frequently repeated words related to the concept of "fraction" is in figure 1. figure 1. the most frequently repeated words related to the concept of fraction. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 15-22 18 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the data obtained, the most frequently repeated words among teacher candidates' answers to the concept of "fraction" are quotient (f=16), numerator-denominator (f=13), compound fraction (f=11), quarter (f=10), half (f=10), decimal (f=10), simple fraction (f=10), ratio-proportion (f=9), part-whole (f=9), fraction line (f=9), percentages ( f=9), whole (f=8), number line (f=7), numbers (f=7), addition (f=7), subtraction (f=7), ordering (f=7), exact was determined as a numbered fraction (f=7). figure 2. themes determined according to the concepts obtained from the word association test. as seen in figure 2, according to the answers obtained, 6 themes were determined from the words specified for the concept of "fraction": meanings of fractions, numbers, fraction types, operations, other mathematics subjects used and notation. in addition, the other theme was created for the concepts that do not fall into these themes. the words that emerged as a result of the word association test wat, the themes that these words included and their frequencies are given in table 1. table 1. words, themes and frequencies resulting from the word association test. main theme main theme frequency (f) main theme percent (%) concept frequency (f) percent (%) meanings of fractions 72 29.26 quarter (part-whole meaning) 10 4.06 half (part-whole meaning) 10 4.06 full (part-whole meaning) 8 3.25 missing 1 0.40 proportion 9 3.65 part whole 9 3.65 volumetric analysis 6 2.43 length measurement 1 0.40 measuring area 2 0.80 quotient 16 6.50 impression 57 15.04 fraction line 9 3.65 numerator-denominator 13 5.28 modelling 3 1.21 number line 7 2.84 fraction problems (verbal notation) 5 2.03 numbers 26 10.56 numbers 7 2.84 decimal number 10 4.06 natural number 2 0.80 cyclic 2 0.80 rational number 4 1.62 number sense 1 0.40 transactions 49 19.91 impact 5 2.03 divide 5 2.03 collection 7 2.84 extraction 7 2.84 flip it over 1 0.40 denominator equalization 3 1.21 they exclude 1 0.40 0/number=0 1 0.40 sort (big, small, even) 7 2.84 extension 5 2.03 simplification 5 2.03 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 15-22 19 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group main theme main theme frequency (f) main theme percent (%) concept frequency (f) percent (%) to compare 2 0.80 fraction type 55 14.22 unit fraction 5 2.03 compound fraction 11 4.47 integer fraction 7 2.84 simple fraction 10 4.06 equivalent fraction 2 0.80 other math topics used 26 10.16 possibility 3 1.21 statistics 2 0.80 graphic 1 0.40 percentages 9 3.65 chart 1 0.40 slope 1 0.40 trigonometry 2 0.80 algebraic expression 6 2.43 other 2 0.81 maths 1 0.40 forever 1 0.40 total 246 100 28 part-whole meaning 1 missing 9 proportion 9 part whole 6 volumetric analysis 1 length measurement 2 measuring area 16 quotient 9 fraction line 13 numerator-denominator 3 modelling 7 number line 5 fraction problems (verbal notation) 7 numbers 10 decimal number 2 natural number 2 cyclic 4 rational number 1 number sense 5 impact 5 divide 7 collection 7 extraction 1 flip it over 3 denominator equalization 1 they exclude 1 0/number=0 7 sort (big, small, even) 5 extension 5 simplification 2 to compare 5 unit fraction 11 compound fraction 7 integer fraction 10 simple fraction 2 equivalent fraction 5 possibility 2 statistics 1 graphic 9 percentages 1 chart 1 slope 2 trigonometry 6 algebraic expression 1 maths 1 forever 246 100 according to table 1, it is seen that the concept of fraction is mostly formed in the minds of teacher candidates as the meanings of fractions (29.26%), operations (19.91%) and notation themes. the most striking part about the theme of fraction meanings was the part-whole (51.38%) and quotient (22.22%) meanings. while the concepts of the meaning of ratio (12.50%) and the meaning of measurement (12.50%) were in question, the meaning of processor was not encountered. pre-service teachers mostly mentioned operations between fractions themselves. as a matter of fact, the other most used theme was transactions. the most striking thing here is that although addition and subtraction are the operations that come to mind the most (14.28%), the denominator equalization, which is important in these two types of operations, occurs to a much lesser extent (6.12%). it is seen that comparison occurs less between sorting (14.28%), expansion (10.20%), simplification (10.20%) and comparison (4.08%) compared to other operations. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 15-22 20 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group group 3. the words that the 3rd group associated with the concept of fraction group 12. the words that the 12rd group associated with the concept of fraction figure 3. word examples associated with the concept of fraction by teacher candidates. in figure 3, there are words written by 2 groups in the word association test related to the concept of fraction. while the emphasis on the numerator-denominator (35.13%) stands out in the theme created about the representation of fractions, the fraction line (24.32%) maintains its importance. modeling (8.10%) was the least used display format. in the fraction type theme, the most frequently mentioned words were compound fraction (31.42%) and simple fraction (28.57%), while equivalent fraction (5.71%) was much less expressed. in the theme of numbers, the number most associated with fractions was decimals (38.46%). it is noteworthy that in this theme, rational numbers (15.38%) are encountered less frequently than decimal numbers. number sense (3.84%) was the least used word. when its relationship with other mathematics subjects is considered, it is seen that the subject it is most related to is percentages (36%), while the other most frequently used subject is algebra (24%). graph, table and slope (4%) were the least expressed words. since the words mathematics and infinity could not be associated with any category, they were considered in the other category. 4. discussion, conclusion, and suggestions in this study, primary school mathematics teacher candidates' perceptions of the concept of "fraction" and their conceptual relationships were examined through the word association test. the fact that there are a wide variety of themes that emerged as a result of the research showed that the pre-service teachers who practiced structured the concept of fraction under many concepts in their minds and they reached a rich mental structure about fractions. however, there are concepts that do not appear or that occur more or less than other concepts in a similar category. it is seen that the perceptions of the pre-service teachers who applied regarding the concept of fraction are mostly concentrated in the themes of meanings of fractions, operations in fractions, and representation of fractions. it was seen that the pre-service teachers who applied mostly presented words about the meaning of fractions, quotient and part-whole. this situation shows that although the concept of fraction has 5 different meanings, they restrict it to the meaning of part and whole and perceive fraction as conceptually limited. similarly, marmur et al. (2020) in their study with pre-service teachers found that the meaning they have the most is the part-whole meaning of the fraction, similar to this study. in the study carried out by taştepe and yanık (2021) it is seen that one of the meanings most used by 9th grade students when writing equations for algebraic fractional expressions is the part-whole meaning. starting from pre-school, teaching focused on the part-whole meaning of fractions rather than other meanings may cause limited learning in students (behr, harel, post, & lesh, 1992; haser & ubuz, 2002; okur & cakmak, 2016; toluk-uçar, 2009). as seen in this study, this situation also manifests itself at the university level. the reason why the part-whole meaning is encountered more intensely at many levels may be related to the fact that students learn the part-whole meaning more easily or that teachers tend to teach the part-whole meaning of fractions more (simon, placa, avitzur, & kara, 2018). in this regard, the curriculum or textbooks may also be one of the situations that should be examined separately. the meaning of the processor, on the other hand, is not expressed at all. similarly, özçakır (2022) observed in the research she conducted with primary school students that they had deficiencies in percent meaning. another remarkable result obtained from this research is that although addition and subtraction are the most frequently expressed operations, less emphasis is placed on equating the denominator, which is a fraction-specific operation. looking at the operations between the fractions themselves, comparison was the least expressed operation. although there is no study on this subject, it can be examined how longitudinally and in what intensity these acquisitions are included in the curriculum. in addition, students' attitudes towards operations such as simplifying, expanding, ordering and comparing fractions can be effective in this regard. although decimal numbers are the number type with which fractions are most associated in this study, it is remarkable that rational numbers are rarely mentioned. as stated by many researchers, fractions are closely related to concepts such as decimal notations, ratio, operations and algebra, especially rational numbers (kieren, 1988; saxe et al., 2001). it is noteworthy that the least number that comes to mind when talking about fractions is the rational number, especially for students who encounter rational numbers intensively in mathematics courses at university level. the subject that the fraction is most associated with was determined as percentages and especially algebra. while the reasons for algebra to come to the fore are various, it is thought that the most important one is related to the fact that the pre-service teachers are at the university level. as a result, pre-service teachers who applied have a rich perceptions about the concept of "fraction". however, there are deficiencies in the meaning of fractions, especially in percent meaning. comparison of fractions and asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 15-22 21 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group equivalent fractions were the operations that came to mind the least about operations in fractions. there are also deficiencies in the relationship of fractions with rational numbers. it is noteworthy that one of the subjects they associate fractions most with is algebra. it is thought that investigating these deficiencies or remarkable situations at different levels and with different methods can be effective in terms of both learning and teaching. in the continuation of this research, the word association test for different concepts in mathematics can be applied. or, the perceptions difference between the two applications can be investigated by applying a word association test in the form of a pre-test and a post-test to the pre-service teachers who applied and applying a wellplanned training aimed at improving conceptual knowledge between these two applications. in addition, the perceptions of students in different age groups or teachers with different experiences regarding the concept of fraction can be investigated by applying the word association test. 5. limitations this research was limited to primary school mathematics teacher candidates. another limitation of the study is that only the fraction concept was discussed. in addition, the perceptions of pre-service teachers were tried to be determined only by applying the word association test. references akyurt, h. 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(2016). qualitative research methods in the social sciences. ankara: seçkin publishing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2018.03.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/0742-051x(93)90040-n https://doi.org/10.20860/ijoses.967628 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.08.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.03.002 7 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 1, 7-14, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i1.4451 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the development of social interaction for early childhood in lampang province by using virtual reality application somchai muangmool1 kedthip sirichaisin2 ( corresponding author) 1,2faculty of education, lampang rajabhat university, thailand. 1email: somchai_m@g.lpru.ac.th 2email: kedthips@g.lpru.ac.th abstract the aim of this research was to develop social interaction for early childhood children in lampang province, thailand by using virtual reality technology. the population in this study was early childhood children from 355 schools in lampang province, under the jurisdiction of lampang primary educational service area 1, 2, and 3. the sample group consisted of sixty early childhood children who were selected by purposive selection. the research tools the application of lampang learning resources and the early childhood social development evaluation form. the results were statistically analysed for percentages in the form of descriptive narrative. the results showed that the overall social development of the sample group was at the highest level or 76.58% with an average value of 4.53. also, the results presented that the sample group was able to follow the rules and the agreements of the learning resources appropriately, give comments and answer the questions of the instructors. this was a result of using the vrlampang application which could be divided into three parts: 1) regulations and guidelines of the learning resources 2) information of ten lampang learning resources 3) the efficient learning content activities appropriate for students. keywords: early childhood, imagineering model, learning resources, simulation, social interaction, virtual reality. citation | muangmool, s., & sirichaisin, k. (2023). the development of social interaction for early childhood in lampang province by using virtual reality application. asian journal of education and training, 9(1), 7–14. 10.20448/edu.v9i1.4451 history: received: 15 november 2022 revised: 30 december 2022 accepted: 10 january 2023 published: 3 february 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by lampang rajabhat university, thailand (grant number: edu.017/2020). authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 2. research objectives ........................................................................................................................................................................... 8 3. research questions ............................................................................................................................................................................ 8 4. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................... 8 5. methodology ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 9 6. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 11 7. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 12 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 13 mailto:somchai_m@g.lpru.ac.th mailto:kedthips@g.lpru.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i1.4451 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6150-6158 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0463-9082 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 7-14 8 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study was originally done during covid-19 crisis. the situation that various countries around the world including thailand have never been confronted before. this affects education at all levels particularly the social development of early childhood children online study. hopefully, the vrlampang application in this study can be a solution. 1. introduction in thailand, early childhood education covers children from birth to 6 years old. the learning material of thai curriculum was defined in the experience and assessment of a child’s development in four areas: physical, emotional-mental, social and intellectual. technology and learning resources were integrated that were appropriate for the child’s age and interests, taking into account children’s real-life experiences and environments—(1) the child’ family, (2) the person and place around the child, (3) the surrounding nature, and (4) the things around the child—enabling children to act, learn through the five senses, move, explore, play, observe, experiment and solve problems on their own and to interact with a variety of media and learning resources within their way of life—in accordance with the social and cultural contexts surrounding the child (ministry of education, 2017). outdoor activities and learning sources help children convert theoretical knowledge into practice, particularly, preschool students can record all this knowledge into their long-term memory that stimulates all their senses. improving their perception skills, language, social skills, emotion and child mobility. yıldırım and akamca (2017) for example, in several scandinavian countries, children spend half a day studying outdoors (gray, 2018). in thailand, learning resources are included in the national education act, which requires the government to promote and establish learning resources of all kinds. libraries, museums, art galleries, zoos, parks, botanical gardens, educational parks in various disciplines, and sports and recreation centres provide sufficient resources for learners to seek knowledge or participate in activities. they enable learners to gain sufficient practical information, knowledge or experience. the covid-19 epidemic has necessitated social-distancing measures worldwide. city lockdowns and the subsequent shutdown of educational institutions, leading to distance learning management, are imposed to reduce the risk of transmission in school grounds and on the way to and from school (rao & fisher, 2021) when access to learning resources is limited, technology plays has an urgent role to play in today’s education, providing various digital platforms to prevent learners from attending classes. teachers give lectures using various electronic modes using electronic device rather than classroom attendance (abu-rabba, al-mughrabib, & al-awidi, 2021). the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation (unesco) report found that 90 per cent of students around the world have been affected by the closure of institutions. to clarify, children study online at homes they have no chance to interact with their classmates. they normally stay alone playing mobile phone. also, children do not have excursion activities during online study. this impact is not only on school or university but also on parents. this is because they need to teach their children homework after coming back from work. thus, the covid-19 epidemic could be a factor in the accelerating progress of educational technology (unesco, 2021). therefore, virtual reality (vr) technology can be the solution of these weak points of online study. the technology has the potential to revolutionise education for both online and onsite because students can be simulated themselves in learning context more than any other available media (gadelha, 2018). to clarify, virtual reality (vr) is deeply connected to the content students are learning in an unprecedented way. this is used to develop as teaching materials from kindergarten to university (bdiwi, de runz, faiz, & ali-cherif, 2019). the use of virtual reality (vr) technology for early childhood education is highly appropriate, as children are unable to think abstractly (kusuma, wirawan, & arthana, 2018). learners have the experience to get closer to what they learn or places they are not able to visit in the real world, such as space, the deep sea, the inside of a volcano or the north pole (blyth, 2018). the research team interviewed representatives, administrators, teachers and supervisors in lampang province. the team found that school closures prevented students from accessing learning resources inside and outside the school. it was also found that digital learning resources were insufficient for students’ access, and teachers still had less production of digital learning resources, which take time to develop. moreover, putri et al. (2020) said that it takes time to develop the electronic resources. this fully causes students lack of experience in studying from existing learning resources. based on the above discussed reasons and their significance, the research team realises the importance of using technology to develop the virtual reality application to simulate learning resources for early childhood in lampang province. this will increase the quality of educational management of educational institutions. 2. research objectives to develop social interaction for early childhood in lampang province by using virtual reality application. 3. research questions 1. how social interaction of early childhood in lampang province can be developed? 2. how virtual reality (vr) application can be developed to stimulate social interaction of early childhood in lampang province? 4. literature review 4.1. the areas of using virtual reality technology with children the introduction of vr technology to children will focus on two areas: medicine and education (kamińska et al., 2019; maloney, freeman, & robb, 2020). in medicine, loiacono et al. (2018) created a virtual multiplayer game for children with neurodevelopmental disorders (chang et al., 2020; loiacono et al., 2018) assessed the effect of vr rehabilitation combined with asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 7-14 9 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group conventional occupational therapy on upper limb function and assistance to caregivers of children with movement disorders; chang et al. (2020) and tennant et al. (2021) used augmented reality technology to reduce anxiety and enhance readiness for paediatric patients undergoing radiation therapy (tennant et al., 2021). in education, it is a tool to help children develop cognitive skills and intellectual ability. for example, ward, freitas, hendry, and arndt (2020) created a computer model for learning about arctic climate change. araiza-alba et al. investigated the potential of vr using 360-degree video as a tool to teach children aged 10–12 years old water-safety skills. araiza-alba, keane, chen, and kaufman (2021) studied game development in a model of a vr application to develop the problem-solving skills of children aged 7–9 years old. they found that children were able to solve situational problems and transfer this knowledge to people around themselves (araiza-alba et al., 2021). dahl, fjørtoft, and landmark (2020) developed a vr application for learning first aid for preschool to high school learners (dahl et al., 2020). additionally, reimers et al. studied a vr application to integrate learning with home activities, such as bath time, cooking or other household chores, for caregivers of children and those under 5 years of age (reimers, schleicher, saavedra, & tuominen, 2020). 4.2. social interaction of children aged 3–6 years in thailand the ‘social development’ of children aged 3–6 years refers to how these children learn behaviours that are accepted or desired by society. schools must encourage children to interact with people and their environment in daily life, participating in activities with others—adults, children of the same or different age, same-sex or heterosexual people—regularly. social interaction should be encouraged for early childhood. examples are selfhelp in daily routines according to age; independent play; group play, with others joining the conversation and exchanging ideas; role-playing; sharing; using language to express needs; behaving according to local culture and thai traditions; local excursion; and taking responsibility for environmental protection both inside and outside the school. each activity for the child each day should last about 10–20 minutes but this can be flexible according to the needs and interests of the child (ministry of education, 2017). when the child learns social behaviour, his or her social interaction will be adjusted according to learning experience. if the child learns social experience well, the child will have a good social interaction and be able to adapt to society in the right way. 4.3. educational learning resources resources that provide knowledge and learning experiences to learners—both natural and artificial, including those in the community, lifestyle activities, religious activities, traditions and information resources—can be categorised into five types: (1) natural resource learning resources, (2) personal learning resources, (3) information learning resources, (4) location learning resources and (5) social activity learning (wannapiroon, nilsook, kaewrattanapat, wannapiroon, & supa, 2021). having up-to-date learning resources is essential, but, most important, learners must know and understand how to use such learning resource to achieve the desired goals. therefore, there must be guidance on the use of learning resources, leading to learning outcomes that are desirable, as each client has different basic skills and experience in using learning resources. the application of modern media and technology to facilitate access to learning resources is also important, with provision for access to learning resources anywhere, anytime to motivate learners to continue learning. 4.4. imagineering on virtual reality for social skill ‘imagineering’ or ‘imaginary engineering learning’, is a conceptual process from walt disney, combining the imagination and engineering techniques to discover solutions or create works from abstract ideas or fantasies to become tangible inventions and innovations (nilsook & wannapiroon, 2013). imaginary engineering learning can be applied to teaching and learning at all educational levels because imagination can occur at all levels of learning from kindergarten to working adults. the steps are: (1) imagination, (2) design, (3) development, (4) illustration, (5) improvement and (6) evaluation (nilsook, utakrit, & clayden, 2014). 5. methodology 5.1. participants 5.1.1. populations the population is comprised of early childhood children who are attending 355 schools in lampang province under the lampang primary educational service area, offices 1, 2, and 3. 5.1.2. sample group the sample group consisted of 60 early childhood children attending 3 schools in lampang province. they were selected by multistage random sampling process from schools with early childhood children in lampang province under 3 offices of lampang primary educational service area. the lampang primary educational service area then chosen as a random sampling unit using the cluster sampling method. the office of lampang primary educational service area 1 was the outcome. then, considering of a large school with computer lab facilities and at lease 2 teachers or support staffs for each room who help the usage of the application. 3 school were chosen, and 60 early childhood children were chosen by simple random sampling. 5.2. scope of content the researcher aims to develop the social learning skills of early childhood children by using the vrlampang application. the contents of the learning resources are defined as follows: 1) learning resources within the framework of the local curriculum development in lampang province 2) registered community learning resources with the school and consider selecting 10 learning centers that can create a simulated environment, along with detailing the contents of each center with 3-5 key points. this research uses ‘imagineering’ in its application development model involving six steps: (1) imagination, (2) design, (3) development, (4) illustration, (5) improvement and (6) evaluation. (see figure 1). asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 7-14 10 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. imagineering process. 5.3. research tools the vrlampang application was developed using vr technology consisting of instructions and 10 learning resources. the problem situation where children can bring themselves into the learning resource is used through of an android mobile phone in combination with a virtual reality device (headset), which is designed and developed according to the ‘imaginary engineering learning’. the assessment form for early childhood is characterised by 10 items rated on a scale of four (a rating of 4 means very good practice, 3 means good practice, 2 means fair practice and 1 means improve) and the assessment form was validated by three people with an index of item objective congruence (ioc) value greater than 0.50, and a reliability value of 0.91. the evaluation form is shown in table 1. table 1. the evaluation lists of early childhood social interaction development. no. assessment list practice level 4 3 2 1 1 students can comply with the terms of the application 2 students use devices and applications safely 3 students can share the device with their peers 4 students behave as leaders and followers appropriately 5 students can talk to adults or familiar people about the resources 6 students can tell them where they are interested 7 students can tell you the importance of learning resources 8 students can discuss short sentences about the resources 9 students can speak, comment or answer questions about the learning resources 10 students have the etiquette of listening and speaking 5.4. ethical approval the present study is approved. the certificate number of permission is e2653-033, and it was issued by the nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university human ethics committee for ethical considerations involved in research on human. 5.5. data collection the research team collected data by creating an application-integrated experience plan and then organising activities for early childhood children using vr devices and 10 learning resources. the team observed the behaviour of the children and recorded data using the social interaction assessment form. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 7-14 11 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.6. data analysis the results of the early childhood social development assessment were analysed for percentages and descriptive narratives based on the interpretation criteria of the scores. the following criteria were used to interpret mean values: 70%–100% = students have the highest level of social development. 60%–69% = students have a high level of social development. 50%–59% = students have moderate social development. 25%–49% = students have low levels of social development. below 24% = students have the least level of social development. 6. results 6.1. implementation of user interface the vr lampang application was evaluated for its effectiveness by three experts: media and technology specialists, early childhood education specialists and early childhood education supervisors. the overall performance evaluation was excellent, with an average value of 4.53. a functional test involved 10 kindergarten learners at lampang rajabhat university demonstration school. in this test, the learner saw the start screen before the main menu. the screen was designed in the form of graphics on the learning environment in lampang province. before the main menu, there is an introduction screen; a screen of rules, or regulations, for the visiting learning resources, with a cartoon named kati as a knowledgeable person (see figure 2). the main screen consists of the ‘introduction’ button, which displays the rules, or regulations, for visiting the learning resources, the ‘start vr’ button, which provides access to the resources page; and the ‘information’ button, which displays basic information about the resources available in the application (see figure 3). figure 2. cartoon character in the vr lampang application figure 3. home screen of the vr lampang application. the ‘start vr’ button enables a display menu—marked with different numbers and colours (see figure 4)—of the 10 learning resources, which are: (1) wat pong sanuk nuea, (2) wat phra that lampang luang, (3) wat phra kaew don tao, (4) wat chedi sao lang, (5) the thai elephant conservation center, (6) dhanabadee museum, (7) chae son national park, (8) kad kong ta, (9) ban sao nak lampang and (10) mae moh mining museum. there are five to eight key points in each learning centre, 360-degree-view photos and audio narrations that stimulate communication and perception. students can change their position by pressing the red button with numbers in a sequence (see figure 5). figure 4. learning resources menu screen in the vr lampang application. figure 5. the key points of learning resources vr lampang application. there are activities for learners to complete missions in each learning centre. for example, students need to fine a treasure box. after that day need to focus on the box then a heart shape will be popup, and there will be an audio narrative. however, the students need to remember the information from the audio narrative. after using the application, students must report what they have learned from the box to their teacher. if they report correctly, they will receive a heart-shaped sticker. (see figure 6). asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 7-14 12 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 6. the activities for learners to complete missions in each learning center. 6.2. results of promoting the social interaction of early childhood here, we present the results of the assessment of the interaction of children in early childhood education after using the application to simulate learning resources in lampang province. the results shown that 49 third-grade early childhood had the highest level of social interaction with 81.67%. additionally, 11 third-grade early childhood had the high level of social interaction with 18.33%. however, the total average percentage was 76.58. the details are presented in table 2. table 2. results of promoting the social interaction of early childhood. percentage range social development level number of students percentage 70%–100% highest 49 81.67 60%–69% high 11 18.33 50%–59% moderate – 0.00 25%–49% low – 0.00 below 24% least – 0.00 total 60 100.00 average 76.58 additionally, the research team and teachers asked students asked to reflect on what they learned from the vrlampang application. the following items are the results of students ‘observed behaviour. • here are many attractions, but i have not been to them (student1). • when i go to different places, i do not make noise to disturb others and do not write places (student 2). • i had so much fun, gaining knowledge and having a treasure chest to keep hearts (student 3). • i want my parents to take me on a trip (student 4). • i will help keep it clean that there may be a place of beauty (student 5). • i’ve been traveling with my parents in some places, but some points cannot enter (student 6). • i felt like i was there during my use’ (student 7). • i answered the teacher’s question, and i got a heart-shaped sticker just like in the app (student 8). 7. conclusion and discussion vr lampang application was developed through the imagineering model process. learners are interested in using the application; especially the process of imagination, turning the abstract imaginations of those involved in the research into concrete innovations (chytry, 2012; nilsook et al., 2014) the design focuses on simplicity, easy to understand, and has clear navigation in line with aljojo et al. (2019) who studied the development of arabic applications for children. it focuses on a simple design and easy navigation. the application is divided into three parts: regulations, guidelines, and usage of learning resources. an animation named kati was used to explain knowledge and connect the story of the learning source through movement and sound. in accordance with hoffmann, christmann, and bleser (2017) explaining content with animated cartoons for students will make children interested in learning more. virtual technology. it consists of 10 learning resources in lampang province that are interesting because children can stimulate their actual situations in those learning resources. these environments provide opportunities for individual learning. the researcher found that good media that make students interested and able to learn from real situations are still images, 360-degree photos, 3d images, text, animation, sound, and video as wang (2018) noted, media displayed through augmented reality within applications must be a medium that contains both messages and clear picture with movement, color, sound, and video. activities for students to participate in the content of the learning resources that have been prepared by doing the assigned tasks. when they complete the mission, they will receive rewards. as a means of reinforcing and reassuring children, this is consistent with puig et al. (2020) and kraleva (2017) who use verbal reinforcement and rewards to build confidence and encourage learners to participate in activities that enhance teaching and learning goals (behnamnia, kamsin, ismail, & hayati, 2020) by prompting as soon as learners demonstrate behaviors consistent with the teaching goals. duration of use of the application. the researcher set the time for students to use not more than 20 minutes, in line with mak (2022) which suggested that each application should not last longer than 20 minutes, and there should be a break from using for a while or for 1 hour, if desired to continue learning (kelly, graham, bronfman, & asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 7-14 13 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group garton, 2022) to prevent screen sticking and tiredness of the eyes, and the use must be in a spacious place. if many children use the application at once, there should be a space between them of at least 1-2 meters, and they must be closely supervised by a teacher. the results of the assessment of social development of early childhood children after using the learning center simulation application in lampang province showed that early childhood children had social development at the highest level with an average percentage of 76.58. assessments of most children showed a high level of development. it is because the application promotes development in all 4 areas—physical, emotional-mental, social, and intellectual—which children can interact with immediately, understand social situations, be able to communicate in response to them, and foster social coexistence. according to papadakis, kalogiannakis, and zaranis (2021) the use of the application by the learner will help children understand the agreement or sequence of learning resources, identify learning resources of interest, and respond to social and environmental situations nearby (choolarb, premsmith, & wannapiroon, 2019). references abu-rabba, m. y., al-mughrabib, a. m., & al-awidi, h. m. 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(2017). the effect of outdoor learning activities on the development of preschool children. south african journal of education, 37(2), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v37n2a1378 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v13i04.8472 https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v14n9p28 https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2020.00125 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v37n2a1378 196 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 196-201, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.196.201 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group relationship between digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill enes belteki̇n1 i̇hsan kuyulu2 ( corresponding author) 1,2physical education and sport school, bingol university, turkey. abstract the study was performed to examine university students' digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill levels. the research group consists of totally 586 students, 326 male and 260 female study at bingöl university physical education and sports academy (pesa), faculty of arts and sciences, and faculty of engineering and architecture during the 2019-2020 academic year. "digital game playing motivation scale" and "creative problem solving inventory (cpsi)" were used to obtain data for the purpose of the research. the students participating in the study were asked personal information questions regarding their demographic characteristics. the study was carried out in spss 22 statistical package program and the degree of significance was taken as 0.05. independent sample t (independent sample) and mann whitney-utest in binary comparisons, one-way variance analysis (one way anova) in multiple comparisons and kruskal wallis analysis in abnormally distributed data, and correlation (pearson) test to determine the relationship between variables. according to the responses given by the students who participated in the study, there was a significant difference between the groups in terms of gender, faculty and the daily game play time variables on the digital platform, while there was no significant difference between the groups in problem solving skills. according to the results of the correlation analysis, a low level of significant correlation was found between students' digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill levels. keywords: digital game, problem solving, motivation, sport. citation | enes belteki̇n; i̇hsan kuyulu (2020). relationship between digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 196-201. history: received: 24 december 2019 revised: 6 february 2020 accepted: 12 march 2020 published: 3 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 197 2. material method .......................................................................................................................................................................... 197 4. discussion and result ................................................................................................................................................................... 200 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 201 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.196.201&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1468 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1386-6458 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-5434 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1468 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1386-6458 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-5434 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1468 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1386-6458 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-5434 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1468 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1386-6458 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-5434 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 196-201 197 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study helps to reveal the relationship between digital game playing behavior and problem solving skill; it will be a resource for future studies. 1. introduction especially in the recent years, games played in virtual platforms have become popular due to the fact that individuals are affected by the electronic industry and keep up with the age. such games are considered as digital games in the literature due to their technology and the need for tools such as computers, tablets, smartphones and game consoles (bányai, griffiths, király, & demetrovics, 2018; taylor, 2012). digital games are games that are programmed with various technologies and enable users to log in with a visual environment (cetin, 2013). these games, which are programmed with various software and using various technologies, are classified as digital console games, computer games and online games according to the technology used (gökçearslan & durakoğlu, 2014). although there are different opinions regarding the types of preference regarding digital games, they are classified as action / adventure, simulation, sports, role play / animation, racing and strategy (irmak & erdoğan, 2016). as the interest in online games and the popularity of these games increase in the world, concerns about overuse by people also increase. considering the american psychiatric association's definition of mental disorder that requires professional treatment, it is especially necessary to separate excessive use from addiction. considering the content of the definition of the american psychiatric association, it is necessary to determine what constitutes a situation that requires professional treatment. mental disorder according to apa; clinically important behavioral or psychological syndromes that arise in an individual and are associated with existing distress, incompetence (dysfunction in one or more important functional areas), or significantly increased risk of death, pain, disability or a significant loss of freedom, or are patterns (american psychiatric association, 2001) transferred by. kuss and griffiths (2012). the reasons for playing games in most of the researches about computer games are stated as follows;  there is nothing to do like an entertaining or a challenging thing.  providing rivalry, social communication, diversity, energizing effect and imaginative environments.  spending time, relaxing or avoiding stress.  turning back many times, providing a long timefocusable environment.  reasons such as resting, spending time, getting away from the time, escaping from real life and being free are also the reasons that lead individuals to play games (horzum, ayas, & cakırbalta, 2008). in addition to the items written above; it is also possible for the individual to want to socialize through the game, that is, the individual wants to spend more time and socialize with his friends thanks to a game, and that they face the fear of being excluded because they do not play in that environment. problem solving; basically, it is a conflict situation where the individual faces with an obstacle in reaching a goal. inhibition makes it difficult to achieve the target. in such a situation, problem solving is to find the best way to overcome the obstacle (morgan, 1999). besides, problem solving is the process that one goes through from feeling the problem to finding a solution for him/her (atabay, 2004; bingham, 2004; korkut, 2002). it is also a complex mental process that includes high-level thinking, remembering, evaluation of available information, making decisions and evaluating results (ulupınar, 1999). in other words, problem solving is a method of understanding the environment and controlling it with this way (sahin & ramazan, 2000). problem solving skill is the level of being able to obtain information that will lead the person to a solution and apply it to the solution of a problem by combining it to be ready for use. human life is full of problems in different numbers and structures that need to be solved. sometimes, one problem emerges before another, or many problems occur at the same time and life becomes meaningful with the solution of problems. problem solving sequence consisting of problem determination, information gathering, goal setting, planning, and application and also evaluation stages is used in every day of life (bahar, 2006). when these evaluations are taken into account; it is seen that motivation resources of people to play digital games are affected by many situations. thus, while this study helps to reveal the relationship between digital game playing behavior and problem solving skill, it will serve as a source for future studies in the literature. 2. material method the study group of this research, which was performed out to examine the digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill levels of university students, is consisted of totally 586 students and 326 male and 260 female study at bingöl university physical education and sports academy (pesa), faculty of science and letters and faculty of engineering and architecture during the 2019-2020 academic year. in the research, “survey method” was used as a data collection tool. the questionnaire consists of 3 sections and a total of 32 questions. in the first part, there are 5 statements about demographic variables. in the second part, "digital game playing motivation scale" developed by tekkurşun-demir and hazar (2018) and in the third part "creative problem solving properties inventory (cpspi) '' which was developed by lin (2010) and adapted to turkish by bulut-baran, i̇pek, and aygün (2018) was used. the data collected via the digital game playing motivation scale and creative problem solving inventory were analyzed through the statistical package program spss.22 program and the results were interpreted. descriptive statistics including arithmetic average, standard deviation, frequency and percentage distributions are presented in order to gain insight into demographic information and other group questions. correlation (pearson) test was used to determine the relationship between digital game motivation and problem solving skill levels. in order to determine the relationship between digital game motivation and problem solving skill levels with some demographic variances, the normality of the distributions (kolmogorov-smirnov) and then skewness and kurtosis tests were examined. in the research, "normal" expression scores are individuals whose z value varies between -3 and +3, while "extreme values" are scores whose z value is outside the range of -3 and +3. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 196-201 198 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group besides, according to shao (2002) the normal distribution of the data to be used in the study depends on the values of skewness and kurtosis between ± 3. independent sample t (independent sample t) and unidirectional variance analysis (one way anova) tests were applied for variables with normal distribution according to the test results, and mann whitney-u and kruskal wallis test was applied for variables that did not show normal distribution. if there is a difference between the variables, tukey hsd and dunnet t3 tests were used according to the homogeneity results from the post-hoc tests to determine which group or groups originated from this difference. the results were evaluated at 95% confidence interval and significance level at p <0.05. 3. findings in this section, the statistical results of the study will be explained. statistical analysis based on the demographic characteristics of the people participating in the research will be included. table-1.distributions of students according to demographical variances. demographical variances n % gender male 326 55.6 female 260 44.4 faculty pesa 244 41.6 faculty of science and letters 148 25.3 faculty of engineering and architecture 194 33.1 digital game playing hour 1 hour and less 298 50.9 2-3 hours 177 30.2 4-5 hours 75 12.8 6 hours and over 36 6.1 grade average 40-54 44 7.5 55-74 307 52.4 75-90 204 34.8 91 and over 31 5.3 total 586 100 when the table 1 is examined, it is determined that 55.36% of the students participating in the study are male and 44.4% are female. as a result of examining the types of faculties / schools where students are studying, it was determined that 41.6% of the students studied in physical education and sports academy, 25.3% in the faculty of science and letters, and 33.1% in the faculty of engineering and architecture. as a result of examining thedaily play time of the students on the digital platforms, 50.9% of them are 1 hour or less, 30.2% of them are 2-3 hours, 12.8% of them are 4-5 hours and finally 6.1% of them are playing 6 hours and over. they were found to be playing games on the platforms. in conclusion, it was determined that 7.5% of students had a grade point average between 40-54, 52.4% between 55-74, 34.8% between 75-90 and 5.3% of 91 and over. table-2.comparison of digital game playing motivatiınabd problem solving skills of the students according to gender variance. gender n x s.s t p digital game playing motivation sub dimensions success and refreshing male 326 3.04 .993 3.850 .000*** female 260 2.70 1.099 curiosity and social acceptance male 326 3.18 1.120 4.507 .000*** female 260 2.77 1.117 uncertainty in game wish male 326 3.08 1.127 -.435 .000*** female 260 3.12 1.199 digital game playing motivation general male 326 3.15 .928 3.470 .001** female 260 2.87 .987 problem solving skill general male 326 3.78 .819 -.115 .908 female 260 3.79 .779 total 586 note: p<0.001*** p<0.01**. when the table 2 is examined, while there is a meaningful difference between the groups in the digital game playing motivation sub-dimensions and digital game motivation general levels according to the gender variable of the students participating in the study, and there was no significant difference determined in the problem solving skill levels between the groups (p <0.05). when the table 3 is examined, it was found that while there was a significant difference between the groups of motivation and social acceptance and the levels of curiosity and social acceptance and the overall digital game playing motivation according to the faculty / school variable where the students participating in the study (p <0.05), there was no significant difference found between groups in problem solving skill levels (p>0.05). according to the post-hoc test results to determine between which groups the difference is, in the sub dimensions of both digital game playing motivation general levels and its sub dimensions, there was a difference found only between faculty of engineering and architecture students and faculty of science and letters, pesa students. when the table 4 is examined, while there is a significant difference between groups in terms of digital game playing motivation sub-dimensions and general digital game play motivation levels according to the daily play time variable of the students participating in the study (p <0.05), there was no significant difference found between the groups in problem solving skill levels (p <0.05). p>0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 196-201 199 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3.comparison of digital game playing motivation and problem solving skills of students according to faculty variance. faculty n x s.s f p digital game playing motivation sub dimensions success and refreshing apesa 244 3.00 1.036 3.960 .020* a>c bscience and letters 148 2.91 1.070 cengineering and architecture 194 2.72 1.049 curiosity and social acceptance apesa 244 3.17 1.111 10.242 .000*** a,b> c bscience and letters 148 3.09 1.129 cengineering and architecture 194 2.70 1.122 uncertainty in game wish apesa 244 3.19 1.088 2.045 .130 bscience and letters 148 3.10 1.134 cengineering and architecture 194 2.97 1.253 digital game playing motivation general apesa 244 3.17 .903 7.917 .000*** a,b> c bscience and letters 148 3.07 .975 cengineering and architecture 194 2.81 .994 problem solving skill general apesa 244 3.79 .801 .185 .831 bscience and letters 148 3.75 .837 cengineering and architecture 194 3.80 .775 total 586 note: p<0.001*** p<0.05*. table-4.comparison of digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill levels of the students according to daily gaming time on digital platform. digital game playing time n x s.s sd x2 p digital game playing motivation sub dimensions success and refreshing a1 hour and less 298 2.44 .946 3 117.966 .000*** d,c,b> a b2-3 hours 177 3.24 .910 c4-5 hours 75 3.44 .986 d6 hours and over 36 3.71 1.031 curiosity and social acceptance a1 hour and less 298 2.63 1.085 3 67.173 .000*** d,c,b> a b2-3 hours 177 3.29 1.014 c4-5 hours 75 3.40 1.105 d6 hours and over 36 3.75 1.161 uncertainty in game playing a1 hour and less 298 2.89 1.191 3 18.123 .000*** c,d,b> a b2-3 hours 177 3.29 1.045 c4-5 hours 75 3.35 1.116 d6 hours and over 36 3.30 1.234 digital game playing motivation general a1 hour and less 298 2.68 .904 3 84.862 .000*** d,c,b> a b2-3 hours 177 3.31 .852 c4-5 hours 75 3.42 .901 d6 hours and over 36 3.64 1.046 problem solving skill general a1 hour and less 298 3.76 .818 3 1.861 .602 b2-3 hours 177 3.80 .762 c4-5 hours 75 3.76 .810 d6 hours and over 36 3.93 .838 total 586 note: p<0.001***. table-5. comparison of digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill levels of the students according to grade average variance. grade average n x s.s sd x2 p digital game playing motivation sub dimensions success and refreshing a40-54 44 2.89 1.118 3 1.333 .721 b55-74 307 2.93 .997 c75-90 204 2.83 1.120 d91 and over 31 2.77 1.098 curiosity and social acceptance a40-54 44 2.96 1.191 3 1.513 .679 b55-74 307 3.05 1.125 c75-90 204 2.92 1.147 d91and over 31 3.05 1.129 uncertainty in game wish a40-54 44 2.98 1.154 3 2.922 .404 b55-74 307 3.10 1.129 c75-90 204 3.15 1.214 d91and over 31 2.85 1.080 digital game playing motivation general a40-54 44 2.96 1.018 3 1.100 .777 b55-74 307 3.07 .935 c75-90 204 2.99 1.000 d91and over 31 2.94 .950 problem solving skill general a40-54 44 3.48 .978 3 7.437 .059 b55-74 307 3.78 .744 c75-90 204 3.87 .800 d91and over 31 3.69 .976 total 586 note: p>0.05. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 196-201 200 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the results of the mann whitney-u test conducted to determine which groups the difference is, the difference was found among students in both the digital game playing motivation general level and the digital game playing motivation sub-dimensions is 1 hour per day and less with the students playing on the digital platform. when the table5 is examined, there was no significant difference found between the groups in terms of motivation and problem solving skill levels of digital games according to the grade point average of the students participating in the study (p>0.05). table-6.correlation analysis that reflects relationship between digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill levels of the students. problem solving skill digital game playing motivation r 1 .091* p .028 n 586 note: p<0.05*. when the table6 is examined, a positive but low level meaningful relationship was determined between the digital game playing motivation and problem solving skill levels of the students who participated in the study (p <0.05). 4. discussion and result the study was performed out to examine university students' motivation to play digital games and problem solving skill levels. the research group consists of a total of 586 students, 326 male and 260 female studying at bingöl university physical education and sports academy (pesa), faculty of arts and sciences, and faculty of engineering and architecture during the 2019-2020 academic year. in the gender variance finding of the study, there was a significant difference between the digital game playing motivation dimensions and digital game playing averages between the groups. it was determined that male students had higher motivation and overall averages in digital game playing compared to female students. when the literature is analyzed, similar results were obtained in our study titled "examining the relationship between physical activity participation motivation and digital play motivation" by tekkursun and cicioglu (2019). this study supports our study. however, in the research of hazar (2019) the findings of the research found that male and female participants' motivation to participate in the digital games was similar. there was no significant difference between the groups in the level of problem solving skills in the gender finding of the study. ozdenk and kaya (2017)442 (140 males, 302 females) students who studied at the school of physical education and sports were found to have no significant difference between their problem solving skill total score and subscale scores. dönmez and kaçar (2015) found that there was no significant difference between problem solving skill total score and subdimension scores in 103 studies (37 females, 66 males) studying in the school of physical education and sports. these studies are in the quality of supporting our study. the study conducted by türkçapar (2009) does not support our study. according to the faculty / college variable where the students participating in the study, a significant difference was found between the groups in terms of success and refreshing, curiosity and social acceptance, and overall levels of digital gaming motivation, but no significant difference was found between the groups in problem solving skill levels. when the studies on motivation to play digital games are examined in the literature, no study related to the section variable was encountered. no significant difference was found in the relationship between the section variable of our study and problem solving skill levels. when the literature related to this variable is examined; cevik and ozmaden (2013) investigated the problem solving skills of physical education and music department students in terms of various variables, and did not obtain meaningful results according to the department variable. elkin and karadağlı (2015) concluded that the departments where university students study have no effect on problem solving skills. bayrak, inan, and kartal (2015) did not reach meaningful results between groups in terms of department variable in the study comparing physical education and classroom teacher candidates' problem solving skills. türkçapar (2009) compared the problem solving skills of physical education and sports academy students and education faculty students against stress, and at the end of the research, he could not find any meaningfulness between the department variance and problem solving. these studies are in the quality of support our study. in the another variance of the study it was determined that there was a significant difference between the group playing motivation sub-dimensions and the overall average of digital game playing in the game playing finding. in general, the average of those who played 2-3 hours, 4-5 hours and over 6 was higher than those who played 1 hour or less. in the study of tekkursun and cicioglu (2019) it was determined that the scores of the participants' uncertainty in the game request and motivation levels of participation in physical activity showed a statistically significant difference according to the daily digital play time. this conducted study is in the quality of supporting our study. it is thought that individuals who have the motivation to play digital games less than 1 hour may be led by doing different activities to spend time, having fun, escaping from stress and relaxing, not having enough time for the game or having little interest in these games. in another variance, there was no significant difference found between the groups in terms of motivation and problem solving skill levels of digital game play according to the grade point average of the students participating in the research. there has been no research found in the literature with this variable. it is thought that this variable of this study will constitute a source for the future studies. the final finding of our study was found to have a positive but low level of significant relationship between the motivation of digital game play and problem solving skill levels of the students who participated in the study. according to our study, it can be said that problem solving skills increase as digital game motivation increases. he thinks that digital games have positive aspects as well as highlighting negative aspects, and it will be useful to use these positive aspects in terms of the development of people. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 196-201 201 © 2020 by the authors; 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(1999). the effect of nursing education on students' problem solving skills. paper presented at the iv. national nursing education symposium. “with international participation” çevik press, i̇stanbul. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 60 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 60-69, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.60.69 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluation of the metaphoric perceptions of the faculty of sports sciences students regarding the concept of physical education abdurrahman kepoğlu1 mihriay musa2 gülsün di̇vri̇k3 ( corresponding author) 1usak university, faculty of sports sciences, department of sport management, turkey. 2,3usak university, faculty of sports sciences, department of coaching education, turkey. abstract physical education contributes greatly to the physical, psychological and intellectual development of individuals. the awareness of the students of the coaching department about the concept of physical education should basically be revealed. the aim of this study is to reveal the perceptions of students studying in the coaching department about physical education through metaphors. phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research designs, has been used and the concept of "physical education" constitutes the phenomenon of the study. the study group of the research consisted of 112 students who were studying at the department of coaching in the faculty of sport sciences of uşak university in the 2018-2019 academic year. convenience sampling was used to determine the study group. as our knowledge of the concept of physical education increases, its volume will constantly expand. therefore, the concept of physical education can be compared to a warehouse. it has a potential that cannot find its full expression in the language due to its storage feature. our study did not change the nature of the concept of physical education after all. however, with the experimental work we have done on this subject, we can say that it contributes the content of the concept of physical education as "an occupation that requires effort", "an occupation that provides physical benefit", "an occupation that increases performance", "an occupation that enhances the appearance", "an occupation with an element of harmony and balance" and as an "emotional benefit". keywords: sport, sport science, metaphor, physical education, concept of physical education, phenomenon. citation | abdurrahman kepoğlu; mihriay musa; gülsün di̇vri̇k (2021). evaluation of the metaphoric perceptions of the faculty of sports sciences students regarding the concept of physical education. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 60-69. history: received: 26 november 2020 revised: 30 december 2020 accepted: 18 january 2021 published: 8 february 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: all authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 61 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 62 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 63 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 68 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 69 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.60.69&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.60.69&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.60.69&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2633 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0207-9288 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4232-0139 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0241-8462 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 61 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the aim of this study is to reveal the perceptions of students studying in the coaching department about physical education through metaphors. 1. introduction as is known, physical education contributes greatly to the physical, psychological and intellectual development of individuals. trainers also provide the physical development of individuals with various sports activities. in this sense, the awareness of the students of the coaching department about the concept of physical education should basically be revealed. in this context, the aim of this study is to reveal the perceptions of students studying in the coaching department about physical education through metaphors. "metaphor" is a word used to mean to describe one thing with another, as a combination of the words beyond and carry, coming from greek. a metaphor is expressed as associating a concept with another concept when explaining it and using the properties of that concept. a metaphor is a technique developed to describe the unknown with known terms, evoke it, and ensure its permanence. the concept of metaphor is like a picture of truth. in this way, it helps the effective use of imagination. it is a powerful mental tool that an individual can use to understand and explain a high level of abstract, incomprehensible complex, scientific or theoretical perception. according to these definitions, metaphor can be called the art of metaphor, visualization, a mental tool, concretizing or making definitions that facilitate understanding (temel, 2017). the metaphor is quite useful when used in education. active participation in the course allows students to better understand abstract concepts and concrete topics. it contributes to problem solving and creative thinking while increasing the permanence of the subjects with the use of metaphors. however, metaphor is rhetoric and makes expression more effective (saban, 2008). metaphor is considered as a powerful mental tool that an individual can use to understand and explain a highly abstract, complex or theoretical phenomenon (saban, 2008; saban. & koçbeker, 2006). while interpreting and using metaphors, the individual acts with the knowledge, skills, habits and attitudes in his / her repertoire. therefore, metaphors are also influenced by the past experiences, pre-learning and social environment of the individual who constitutes the metaphors. in these respects, the metaphors used in educational settings have important functions (oğuz, 2009). it has been proven as a result of research that the development of people's learning abilities increases with the concept of metaphor and the information becomes permanent. it is observed that physical education is an area that needs more attention than the effects of its development and positive results on individuals. physical education is basically the teaching of knowledge and values through the body. when defined more comprehensively, it is learning sports, gymnastics and simple hygienic exercises for the development and protection of the body. historically, it has focused on exercise, diet, hygiene and psychosocial development as well as the development of the musculoskeletal system, and the disciplines of biomechanics, exercise physiology, sports science, sports history, sports philosophy and sports psychology have emerged (chandler, cronin, & vamplew, 2007). the extent and sense of the concept of physical education according to various philosophical currents has been tried to be defined as follows: defining the concept of physical education from an idealistic perspective; students and teachers can intuitively choose exact, right and wrong actions (mechioff & estes, 2006; wuest & bucher, 2006). because physical education means further (demirhan et al., 2008; wuest & bucher, 2006) and it is a tool for students to adhere to these ideal principles and get order according to them. brain and body development is a means of character development based on ideals (wuest & bucher, 2006). in this context, it is stated, for example, that the approach to conformist socialization, taking care of its character construction, is influenced by the turner gymnastics german idealism (mechioff & estes, 2006; orhun, 1991) defining the concept of physical education based on realization: “mental education should begin with physical education, because the body is shaped before the mind and mental education is built on physical education (sönmez, 1996). physical education exists for life and is valuable because it is associated with health (wuest & bucher, 2006) because healthy people are more productive. in this context, physical education programs are shaped in line with scientific data (wuest & bucher, 2006). movement training and its evaluation is carried out in accordance with the relations of time, space and extension, and anatomical and physiological criteria. based on anatomical and physiological facts, the relationship of physical education, known as biological or swedish gymnastics, with realism is emphasized (orhun, 1991). defining the concept of physical education with a pragmatist view: physical education should center the needs and interests of students (wuest & bucher, 2006). the program must provide diversity to respond to the diversity of the learning life (wuest & bucher, 2006). it is a guide in learning‐teaching activities where problem solving method is preferred (demirhan et al., 2008). defining the concept of physical education according to the naturalistic view; the teacher should know the laws inherent in the child and direct the child according to them instead of preventing them (rousseau, 1945). physical education is important for the mental, physical, social, emotional and moral development of the individual. in learning that is shaped according to the needs of the student, individual activities based on individual goals and outcomes are emphasized (demirhan et al., 2008; wuest & bucher, 2006). with the activities offered by the open space and where the game is important, the student is expected to surpass himself/herself rather than performance races among individuals (demirhan et al., 2008; wuest & bucher, 2006). in other words, activities are for individual development. defining the concept of physical education according to the existential view; the student has the freedom to choose various activities within the program (demirhan et al., 2008). individual activities should ensure that the student becomes aware of their reality and takes responsibility. the teacher should also encourage his or her student to choose freely and think about the responsibilities of his or her choice (wuest & bucher, 2006). students become aware of production, nature and social relations through practical and theoretical activities. the game, played on a voluntary basis, is preferred due to the fact that it is an alienated event (hinman, 1978). this is a means of socialization (nicolopoulou, 2004). activities should strengthen inter-student solidarity (steinberg, 1978; weiss, 1982). the teacher should encourage the students in the course activities to the work section that stipulates equality but is not compulsory. these approaches are based on the core function of physical education and program elements. for example, in the idealistic approach, the activities are organized more with spaces and symbols that evoke feelings and thoughts. with teacher-centered methods, pre-existing superior skills and knowledge are revealed by socratic method or asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 62 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group deduction (sönmez, 1996). with the skills gained in realist understanding, which is a teacher-centered approach, students become compatible with social and universal realities. according to pragmatism, which is a student-centered approach, students can acquire different knowledge and skills; the teacher is only a consultant and mentor. according to dialectical materialists, the achievements achieved in physical education should eliminate alienation and social conflicts that are the result of social and economic inequality, and strengthen solidarity (hinman, 1978). in the existential approach, knowledge and skills are achieved through student-centered methods. the resources, objectives, achievements and tools are diverse, and the student is offered freedom of choice and the student's creativity is tested. in naturalism, the gains of which are compatible with nature, the teacher should act in accordance with the natural development of the student, and the area of activity should be intertwined with nature (demirhan et al., 2008; gutek, 2001; sönmez, 1996; wuest & bucher, 2006). 1.1. conceptual dimension of physical education the concept of physical education is a concrete concept because it expresses the way in which an object perceived physically; because it shows not the individual sub-dimensions, but the nature of the physical change that occurs in the human body that emerges from the relationship of these sub-dimensions. the concept of physical education is not only a general concept, but also a concept of class. this means the following. singularities in that class are homogeneous because they have common properties. in contrast, it is a concept that looks like a general concept, but is not a class of homogeneous singularities. sub-dimensions of the concept of physical education (game, skill, body, mind, character building, exercise, diet, hygiene and development of the musculoskeletal system as well as psychosocial development, biomechanics, exercise physiology, sports history, sports history, sports philosophy and sports psychology etc.) are its heterogeneous singulars belonging to different classes. the sub-dimensions that are heterogeneous singular came together due to a few common features and formed the intension of physical education. the scope of physical education is "the teaching of knowledge and values through the body". when defined more comprehensively, it means learning sports games, gymnastics and simple hygienic exercises for the development and protection of the body. in other words, the ontological meaning of physical education is distributed to the subdimensions of physical education. therefore, its meaning can be determined according to its sub-dimensions. physical education is also a distributive concept as it derives its meaning from combining the features of the sub-dimensions. in addition, it is a concept that allows us to recognize its subject (its object / the basic knowledge of physical education and the teaching of physical values). we can see that the concept of physical education is not yet fully defined. there are two reasons for this. the first is the principle of non-contradiction and the second is the identity principle. according to the non-contradiction theorem, the concepts of sensory perceived objects are not clear; because a sense object could potentially have much more than the properties we detect, even unlimited properties. in addition, our ability to be heard does not always enable us to fully recognize a property in an object. according to the identity theorem, the sub-dimensions of the concept of physical education, which is defined as mental, are perceived as different information sets and determine the object (meaning) of the concept of physical education as different phenomena. when these sub-dimensions are examined epistemologically, it is inherent in the human sense that the object (meaning) of physical education will expand. the concept of physical education is a positive one; because it states that there is a quality in what it points to. it manifests itself best with the terms marked in the proposition. physical education is shown with concepts that do not have any negative effects on grammar. therefore, it makes the proposition positive. the concept of physical education declares existence. in terms of epistemology, it is the determination of the existence of this feature in the object (meaning) that the concept indicates through experimentation. as our knowledge of the concept of physical education increases, its volume will constantly expand. therefore, the concept of physical education can be compared to a warehouse. it has a potential that cannot find its full expression in the language due to its storage feature. as a result, the nature of the concept of physical education does not change, but its content may change with experimental studies on this subject. 2. method in this study, phenomenology (phenomenology) design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used and the concept of "physical education" constitutes the phenomenon of the study. the phenomenology pattern creates a suitable research ground for studies that are not entirely unfamiliar to us, but also aim to investigate phenomena that we do not fully understand (yıldırım & şimşek, 2011). the phenomenology pattern allows the researcher to reveal the judgments, biases and assumptions better than other qualitative research designs (finlay, 2008). the study group of the research consisted of 112 students, 42 women and 70 men, who were studying at the department of coaching in the faculty of sports sciences of uşak university in the 2018-2019 academic year. convenience sampling was used to determine the study group. in the literature, the method of convenience sampling is defined by its ability to bring speed and practicality to research (yıldırım & şimşek, 2011). in order to determine the mental perceptions of the students participating in the research about physical education, they were asked to fill the form containing the sentence: “physical education ………… .. because …………… .. each metaphor in this form has been used as the main data source in this study. content analysis was used to analyze the data in the study. the purpose of content analysis is to reach concepts and relationships that can explain the data collected. in content analysis, similar data are brought together within the framework of certain concepts and themes, and these are organized and interpreted in a way that the reader can understand (yıldırım & şimşek, 2011). a five-stage process was followed in analyzing the metaphors developed by the students of the faculty of sports sciences department of coaching: (saban, 2008; saban. & koçbeker, 2006). 1. coding and extraction. 2. compiling a sample metaphor image. 3. category development. 4. ensuring validity and reliability. 5. quantitative data analysis phase. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 63 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the coding and compilation phase, an alphabetical list of the metaphors produced by the students was basically created. it was checked whether a certain metaphor was defined as specific in the data collected from students in line with this list. the metaphors voiced by each student were coded. in this process, forms belonging to students without any metaphor, forms containing students' opinions instead of metaphors, or forms belonging to students who did not fill the expression "because ..." regarding the sample metaphor were excluded from the analysis. during the sample metaphor image compilation stage, valid metaphors obtained from the students participating in the research were determined. a list was created by choosing a sample metaphor image from each of the documents thought to represent these metaphors best. the validity of the study was ensured by the interpretation of the sample metaphors in this list. however, the abbreviation “cs” was used for students and each student was given a number. (cs = coaching department student). for example: the abbreviation cs-6 represents the sixth coaching department student participating in the research. during the category development phase, the metaphor images produced by the students were grouped by the similar features they have regarding the concept of physical education, and the valid metaphors created by the students were divided into conceptual categories. each metaphor image has been associated in terms of students' perceptions of the concept of physical education. reporting the data collected in qualitative studies in detail in the stage of ensuring validity and reliability and explaining how the researcher reached the results are among the important criteria of validity (yıldırım & şimşek, 2011). in order to ensure the validity of the research results, the data analysis process (how the conceptual categories are formed) was explained in detail, and a sample metaphor image that was thought to represent it best was compiled for each of the metaphors obtained in the study. in order to ensure the reliability of the study, the opinion of an expert who had previously conducted research on metaphors was consulted to determine whether the metaphors given under the conceptual categories determined in the study were included in the said conceptual category. an alphabetical list of metaphors created for this purpose and a list containing the properties of the conceptual categories created were presented for expert opinion. the expert was asked to place any metaphor in conceptual categories in a way that would not leave out. after this stage, the classification made by the expert and the classification made by the researchers were compared. the classifications were calculated using (miles & huberman, 1994) formula (reliability = consensus / agreement + difference of opinion). in qualitative research, it is stated that a desired level of reliability will be achieved when the agreement between expert and researcher evaluations is 90% and above. after determining the valid metaphors in the quantitative data stage and developing the conceptual categories created by these metaphors, all data were transferred to the sppp 20.0 statistics program. frequency and percentages of valid metaphors and conceptual categories were calculated according to the number of participants. 3. findings in this section, the information of the coaching department students participating in the study, the metaphors and conceptual categories they developed regarding physical education are included. table-1. information on students participating in the study. participant variable f % gender female 42 37.5 male 70 62.5 high school regular high school / anatolian high school 47 41.9 sports high school 31 27.7 other 34 30.4 grade 1st grade 29 25.9 2nd grade 30 26.9 3rd grade 33 29.4 4th grade 20 17.8 total 112 100 note: f -frequency; %percent. according to table 1, 42 female (37.5%) and 70 male (62.5%) students participated in the study. it is seen that 47 students (41.9%) were graduated from regular/ anatolian high school, 31 students (27.7%) were graduated from sports high school and 34 students (30.4%) were graduated from other high schools. in addition, the study included 29 students of 1st grade (25.9%), 30 students of 2nd grade (26.9%), 33 students of 3rd grade (29.4%) and 20 students of 4th grade (17.8%). when this information is analyzed, it is seen that more than half of the participants are male students. when it is considered in terms of the high school graduated from, it is seen that the majority of them are regular high school / anatolian high school graduates, and the number of students from sports sciences and other high schools is very close to each other. in addition, it was observed that a close number of students from the first, second and third grades participated in the study, but the number of students participating in the fourth grade was less than the other classes. 3.1. metaphors related to physical education developed by students the information obtained regarding the metaphors developed by the students of the coaching department who participated in the study in the study is presented in table 2. when table 2 is examined, the distribution of the metaphors developed by the students of the coaching department regarding the concept of physical education can be seen in alphabetical order. according to the table, a total of 84 valid metaphors were developed by the students. 14 metaphors were developed by more than one student. 70 metaphors were developed by only one student. in this context, it is seen that the students of the coaching department mostly developed the metaphors of tree (4), love (4), book (4), flower (3), iron (3), life (3), medicine (3), light (2), air (2). ), music (2), painting (2), technology (2). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 64 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. distribution of metaphors developed by coaching department students. metaphor number metaphor f metaphor number metaphor f 1 banner 1 43 barbell 1 2 tree 4 44 air 2 3 tree trunk 1 45 pool 1 4 family 1 46 life 3 5 liquid fuel 1 47 law 1 6 mother 1 48 light 2 7 car 1 49 need 1 8 bee 1 50 medicine 3 9 love 4 51 heart 1 10 horse 1 52 character 1 11 fire 1 53 brother 1 12 intellectual people 1 54 kebab-turnip 1 13 father 1 55 book 4 14 balloon 1 56 column 1 15 flag 1 57 bird 1 16 festal 1 58 child 1 17 brain 1 59 culture 1 18 boyoz (a kind of pastry) 1 60 rubber buckle 1 19 mobile phones 1 61 fun fair 1 20 skin care 1 62 marble 1 21 pine tree 1 63 torch 1 22 flower 3 64 music 2 23 chocolate 1 65 apply nail polish 1 24 tile master 1 66 oxygen 1 25 cheetah 1 67 ocean 1 26 child-minder 68 organ 1 27 iron 3 69 forest 1 28 nature 1 70 money 4 29 friend 1 71 comfortable shoes 1 30 wedding 1 72 picture 2 31 economy 1 73 spirit education 1 32 virtue 1 74 water 4 33 track suit 1 75 seesaw 1 34 home 1 76 field 1 35 sapling 1 77 technology 2 36 photo 1 78 soil 1 37 rainbow 1 79 usak carpet 1 38 sky 1 80 long way 1 39 eye 1 81 homeland 1 40 sun 1 82 investment 1 41 news 1 83 vane 1 42 judge 1 84 summit 1 total 112 note: f-frequency. 3.2. distribution of metaphors developed by students by categories according to the findings of the study, 84 metaphors developed by the students of the coaching department were collected under 8 different conceptual categories. the information obtained regarding the metaphors and the categories they belong to are presented in table 3. table-3. distribution of the developed metaphors by category. categories f/% metaphors f/% a necessary occupation for the body 24(28.57) family1, fuel 1, mother 1, mobile phone 1, skin care1, news, 1, judge 1, weather 2, life 3, news 1, law 1, need1, heart 1, character 1, sibling 1, column 1, culture 1, oxygen 1, organ 1, forest 1, money 4, water 4, homeland 1, investment 1, vane 1 33 (29.46) demanding occupation 11(13.10) tree 4, tree trunk 1, love 4, pine tree 1, child1 field 1, technology 2, soil1, uşak carpet1, summit 1 18 (16.07) a physically beneficial occupation 11 (13.10) intellectual human 1, brain 1, flower 3, tile master 1, iron 3, economy 1, sapling 1, eye 1, sun 1, medicine 3, picture 2 18 (16.07) spiritually beneficial occupation 12 (14.29) father1, nature 1, virtue 1, track suit 1, house 1, pool 1, book 4, music 2, ocean 1, comfortable shoes 1, spirit training1, long way 1 16 (14.28) an occupation that increases performance 9 (10.71) car 1, bee 1, horse 1, cheetah 1, barbell1, bird 1, rubber buckle 1, marble 1, seesaw 1 9 (8.04) an occupation that enhances the physical appearance 8 (9.52) banner 1, fire 1, balloon 1, flag 1, photo 1, light 2, torch 1, applying nail polish 1 9 (8.04) an occupation with harmony and balance 5 (5.95) boyoz,1, wedding 1, rainbow 1, sky 1, kebab-turnip 1 5 (4.47) an occupation with emotional benefit 4 (4.76) holidays 1, chocolate 1, friend 1, amusement park 1 4 (3.57) total 84 (100) 112 (100) note: f-frequency; %percent. when table 3 is examined, it is seen that 84 metaphors developed by coaching students are grouped under 8 conceptual categories. the categories are as follows: a necessary occupation for the body 29.46% (33), an occupation asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 65 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group that requires effort 16.07% (18), an occupation providing physical benefit 16.07% (18), an occupation providing spiritual benefit 14.28% (16) ), an occupation that increases performance 8.04% (9), an occupation that enhances the appearance 8.04% (9), an occupation that provides harmony-balance 5.95% (5), and an occupation that provides emotional benefit 4.76% ( 4). while 50% (56) of the metaphors reveal the benefits of physical education, the other half (50%) reveal that it is a necessary but demanding occupation for our body. it has been stated that our body can work in balance as a result of this necessary effort. each category and related metaphor subcategories in table 3 are as follows: 3.3. physical education as a necessary occupation for the body the metaphor subcategories created by the students of the coaching department, who define physical education as a physical occupation, are presented in table 4. table-4. physical education as a necessary occupation for the body. category f (%) metaphors f (%) a necessary occupation for the body 24 (28,57) family 1 liquid fuel 1 mother 1 mobile phones 1 skin care 1 barbell 1 judge 1 air 2 life 3 law 1 need 1 heart 1 character 1 sibling 1 column 1 culture 1 oxygen 1 organ 1 forest 1 money 4 water 4 homeland 1 investment 1 vane 1 total 33 (29.46) note: f-frequency; %percent. when table 4 is examined, it was determined that the metaphors of 33 (29.46%) of the students in the study group of the study were gathered in the category of "a necessary occupation for the body". this category was represented by 24 metaphors (28.57%) and 33 students (29.46%). the metaphors of money (4), water (4), life (3) and air (2) in table 4 were considered as dominant metaphors. the student views that support these evaluations are as follows: “just as a mother keeps her children up in the nest, we keep our bodies vigorous and up with sports.” cs-9 “physical education is necessary at every stage of our lives, just like news. physical education allows us to learn new instructions.” cs-51 “the judge ensures justice, order and discipline. physical education also provides justice, order and discipline.” cs52 “just as people cannot be governed without law, the body also needs physical education for a healthy body.” cs-60 “just as a column supports a building, physical education keeps a person standing like a column.” cs-75 “physical education is necessary for our body just like oxygen is necessary for life.” cs-86 “just as it is difficult to live without money, it becomes difficult to live healthy without physical education.” cs-91 “just as water is needed in our lives, physical education is also needed in every field like water.” cs-98 3.4. physical education as a demanding occupation the metaphor sub-categories created by the students of the coaching department, who define physical education as a labor-intensive occupation, are presented in table 5. table-5. physical education as a demanding occupation. category f (%) metaphors f (%) a demanding occupation 11 (13,10) tree 4 tree body 1 love 4 pine tree 1 child-minder 1 child 1 field 1 technology 2 soil 1 usak carpet 1 summit 1 total 18 (16.07) note: f-frequency; %percent. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 66 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when table 5 is examined, it was determined that the metaphors of 18 (16.07%) of the students in the study group of the study were gathered in the category of "a demanding occupation". this category was represented by 11 metaphors (13.10%) and 18 students (16.07%). among the metaphors in table 5 tree (4), love (4), technology (2) and uşak carpet (1) metaphors were evaluated as dominant metaphors. student views supporting these evaluations are as follows: “the effort and care given to the tree come into leaf and gives fruit over time. the effort and power given to physical education come into leaf and manifest itself like a tree..” cs-3 “as you show your love, it will show its devotion to you. just like love for our physical education, the more effort you put in, the more you pay off.” cs-12 “if we don't give the necessary importance to our body, it will get drought and its yield will decrease just like the soil..” cs-106 “as the carpet is weaved, a product emerges and benefits us. as we work on our body, new tissues are formed and they benefit us more.” cs-107 3.5. physical education as an occupation providing physical benefit the metaphor sub-categories created by the students of the coaching department, who define physical education as an occupation that provides a physical benefit, are presented in table 6. table-6. physical education as an occupation providing physical benefit. category f (%) metaphors f (%) an occupation providing physical benefit 11 (13,10) intellectual people 1 brain 1 flower 3 tile master 1 iron 3 economy 1 sapling 1 eye 1 sun 1 medicine 3 picture 2 total 18 (16.07) note: f-frequency; %percent. when table 6 is examined, it was determined that the metaphors of 18 (16.07%) students of the coaching department in the study group of the study were gathered in the category of "an occupation providing physical benefits". this category was represented by 11 metaphors (13.10%) and 18 students (16.07%). among the metaphors in table 6 flower (3), medicine (3) and painting (2) were evaluated as dominant metaphors. student views supporting these evaluations are as follows: “just as intellectual people benefit the environment, our bodies also benefit our organs and our environment like an intellectual human.” cs-18 “the more we use our brains, the more useful and informed it will be. the better we use our body, the more it will benefit us and our lives. " “just as the colors of a flower come alive as it blooms, our body gives us vitality as it blooms like a flower, opening us the doors of colorful world.” cs-30 “just as we take care of our body like a sapling, it will give us healthy fruit. it turns green and matures and keeps us alive.” cs-45 “it looks like a painter's painting as we shape our bodies with sports.” cs-95 3.6. physical education as an occupation providing spiritual benefit the opinions of the students of the coaching department, who define physical education as an occupation that provides spiritual benefit, are presented in table 7. table-7. physical education as an occupation providing spiritual benefit. category f (%) metaphors f (%) an occupation providing spiritual benefit 12 (14.29) father 1 nature 1 virtue 1 track suit 1 home 1 pool 1 book 4 music 2 ocean 1 comfortable shoes 1 spirit education 1 long way 1 total 16 (14.28) note: f-frequency; %percent. when table 7 is examined, it was determined that the metaphors of 16 (14.28%) of the students of the coaching department in the study group of the study gathered in the category of " an occupation providing spiritual benefit ". this category was represented by 12 metaphors (14.29%) and 16 students (14.28%). among the metaphors in asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 67 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 7 book (4), music (2), nature (1) and father (1) were evaluated as the dominant metaphors. student views supporting these evaluations are as follows: “just as the father protects his home, physical education protects our souls and our bodies from diseases.” cs-19 “training of our body provides the same therapy as nature provides therapy to people.” cs-38 “home is where a person feels safe. physical education is also the place where one feels safe spiritually.” cs-44 “just as we travel to different worlds while reading a book, we travel to different worlds while doing sports, nourishing our soul.” cs-74. “just like music, physical education relaxes the human soul and takes it away from troubles.” cs-83 3.7. physical education as an occupation to increase performance the metaphor subcategories developed by coaching students who define physical education as an occupation that increases performance are presented in table 8. table-8. physical education as an occupation to increase performance. category f (%) metaphors f (%) an occupation to increase performance 9 (10.71) car 1 bee 1 horse 1 cheetah 1 barbell 1 bird 1 rubber buckle 1 marble 1 seesaw 1 total 9 (%8.04) note: f-frequency; %percent. when table 8 is examined, it was determined that the metaphors of 9 (8.04%) of the students in the study group of the research were gathered in the category of "an occupation that increases performance". this category was represented by 9 metaphors (10.71%) and 9 students (8.04%). among the metaphors in table 8 car, bee, horse, cheetah, weightlifting, bird, rubber buckle, marble and seesaw are the metaphors with equal proportions. student views supporting these evaluations are as follows: “the top model car exhibits high performance. the better we train our body like a car, the better it will perform.” cs-10 “the horse symbolizes agility. physical education also symbolizes agility and strength with sports.” cs-16 “cheetah is very fast and powerful among animals. physical education also allows our bodies to gain more performance as the cheetah accelerates as it runs.” cs-33 “just as barbell represents strength, physical education represents the strength of the body. "cs-53 “physical education represents the strength of the body, just as the bird takes off as it takes wings.” cs-76 “the more you load on the seesaw, the higher you get. the more we load on our body, the stronger we will become." cs-102 3.8. physical education as an occupation that enhances physical appearance the metaphor sub-categories created by the students of the coaching department, who define physical education as an occupation that enhances the physical appearance, are presented in table 9. table-9. physical education as an occupation that enhances physical appearance. category f (%) metaphors f (%) an occupation that enhances the physical appearance 8 (9.52) banner 1 fire 1 balloon 1 flag 1 photo 1 light 2 torch 1 applying nail polish 1 total 9 (8.04) note: f-frequency; %percent. when table 9 is examined, it was determined that the metaphors of 9 (8.04%) of the coaching department students in the study group of the study were gathered in the category of " an occupation that enhances the physical appearance ". among the metaphors in table 9 banner, fire, balloon, flag, photograph, light, torch and applying nail polish are the metaphors with equal proportions. student views supporting these evaluations are as follows: “a well-crafted poster always grabs attention, just like a well-trained performing body.” cs-1 “as the fire burns with a flame, it warms and illuminates the environment. physical education also warms our body like fire, illuminates and makes it look beautiful.” cs-17 “flag is an icon representing our country. physical education is also like an icon that makes our bodies look beautiful.” cs-21 “the photo reflects the environment with its lens. physical education is like a photograph that makes us look beautiful." cs-46 “the brighter the light, the more it illuminates. the healthier the body is, the more it enlightens us like light.” cs61 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 68 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group “physical education, like a torch, illuminates and guides us around us.” cs-82 “the more beautifully and carefully you apply nail polish, the more beautiful and pleasant it will look. if you train regularly for physical training, the body looks beautiful and pleasant.” cs-85 3.9. physical education as an element of harmony balance the metaphor subcategories created by the coaching students who define physical education as an occupation with an element of harmony and balance are presented in table 10. table-10. physical education as an element of harmony-balance. category f (%) metaphors f (%) an element of harmony-balance 5 (5.95) boyoz 1 wedding 1 rainbow 1 sky 1 kebab-turnip 1 total 5 (4.47) note: f-frequency; %percent. when table 10 is examined, it has been determined that the metaphors of 5 (4.47%) of the students in the study group of the study are gathered in the category of " an element of harmony-balance ". this category was represented by 5 metaphors (5.95%) and 5 students (4.47). among the metaphors in table 10 boyoz, wedding, rainbow, sky and kebab-turnip are the ones with equal proportions. student opinions that support these evaluations are as follows: “just like boyoz has identified with i̇zmir, physical education has become identified with our health just like boyoz.” cs-24 “there is a harmony and order in the folk dances played at weddings such as efe, zeibek. our body, which we have trained, is in harmony and balance like efe and zeibek.” cs-40 “just as the sky is a colorful world, our body is our colorful world. trainings explore the colored sides of our bodies and our bodies work in harmony.” cs-48 “just as the rainbow contains every color, physical education includes the balanced activity of each color.” cs-47 “just as kebab and turnip cannot be separated, a good power in the body cannot be separated from strength. this is possible with physical education.” cs-70 3.10. physical education as an occupation providing emotional benefit the metaphor sub-categories created by coaching students who define physical education as an occupation that provides emotional benefits are presented in table 11. table-11. physical education as an occupation providing emotional benefit. category f (%) metaphors f (%) an occupation providing emotional benefit 4 (4.76) festal 1 chocolate 1 friend 1 fun fair 1 total 4 (3.57) note: f-frequency; %percent. when table 11 was examined, it was determined that the metaphors of 4 (3.57%) of the students in the study group of the study were gathered in the category of " an occupation providing emotional benefit ". this category was represented by 4 metaphors (4.76%) and 4 students (3.57%). in table 11 festivals, chocolate, friend and amusement park are the metaphors with equal proportions. the student views that support these evaluations are as follows: “as we do sports, we are both physically and emotionally happy, just like the happiness we experience during festal.” cs-22 “chocolate gives us happiness and energy. physical education gives us happiness and enables us to be energetic and fit. cs-31 “the better we take care of our body, it will not leave us like a friend. it always protects our health and makes us happy. "” cs-39 “the amusement park offers entertainment for all ages and genders and everyone will be happy there. in physical education, there are all entertainment conditions suitable for all ages and genders, such as amusement parks.” cs-80 4. conclusion according to the findings of the study, the students of the coaching department developed a total of 84 valid metaphors about physical education. among these metaphors, the most repeated ones are tree (4), love (4), book (4), money (4), water (4), flower (3), iron (3), life (3), medicine (3). , air (2), light (2), music (2), painting (2), technology (2). considering that these metaphors are metaphors covering daily life skills, it shows that students actually attach the necessary importance to physical education. 70 of the metaphors obtained were expressed by only one participant (father, house, chocolate, amusement park, brain, economy, boyoz, uşak carpet, etc.). the fact that many metaphors were produced according to these results indicates that the students of the coaching department have a positive perception of physical education. 84 metaphors produced by the students of the coaching department were collected under 8 conceptual categories. these categories are listed as follows: a necessary occupation for the body (%29,46), a demanding occupation (%16,07), a physically beneficial occupation (%14,28), an occupation that increases performance (%8,04), an asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 60-69 69 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group occupation that enhances the physical appearance (%8,04), an occupation with an element of harmony and balance (%4,47), and an emotionally beneficial occupation (%3,57). 50% of these categories revealed the benefits of physical education. these metaphors identified students' awareness of the benefits of physical education. in addition, 50% of the developed metaphors show that physical education activity is a necessary but demanding activity for the body. as our knowledge of the concept of physical education increases, its volume will constantly expand. therefore, the concept of physical education can be compared to a warehouse. it has a potential that cannot find its full expression in the language due to its storage feature. after all, our study did not change the nature of the concept of physical education. however, we can say that the experimental work we have done on this subject contributes to the content of the concept of physical education as a " a demanding occupation", “a physically beneficial occupation “, “an occupation that increases performance “, “an occupation that enhances the physical appearance”, “an occupation with an element of harmony and balance” and “an emotionally beneficial occupation” references chandler, t., cronin, m., & vamplew, w. (2007). sport and physical education: the key concepts (2nd ed.). london, uk: taylor and francis. demirhan, g., altay, f., şahin, r., güvenç, a., aslan, a., güven, b., . . . hünük, d. (2008). comparison of stakeholder views on physical education curriculum and its implementation. journal of sport sciences, 19(3), 157-180 finlay, l. (2008). reflecting on reflective practice. practice-based professional learning journal, 52, 1-27. gutek, g. l. ( 2001). philosophical and ideological approaches to education. (translated by: kale n.). ankara: ütopya press. hinman, l. m. (1978). marx's theory of play, leisure and unalienated praxis. philosophy & social criticism, 5(2), 192-228. mechioff, r. a., & estes, s. g. (2006). a history and philosophy of sport and physical education from ancient civilizations to modern world. new york: mcgraw hill. miles, m., b., & huberman, a. m. (1994). qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. nicolopoulou, a. 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(1978). the workers’ sport international 1920-1928. journal contomporary history, 13(233), 233-251.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/002200947801300204. temel, c. (2017). metaphors produced by secondary school students regarding the physical education lesson. kastamonu educational journal, 25(2), 479-496. weiss, p. (1982). some philosophical approach to sport. journal of philosophy of sport, 9(1), 90-93. wuest, d. a., & bucher, c. a. (2006). foundation of physical education, exercise science and sport (pp. 28). boston: mcgraw-hill education. yıldırım, a. i., & şimşek, h. (2011). qualitative research methods in social sciences (8th ed.). ankara: seçkin publishing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 602 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 602-607, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.602.607 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an examination of abroad experienced students’ coping strategies leyla esentürk-ercan gazi university, gazi faculty of education department of psychological counseling ankara turkey. abstract the aim of the study was to analyse the problems of abroad experienced university students after returning to turkey and the coping strategy that they use for these problems have been examined according to the factors such as gender, age and duration of the abroad experience. the participants were 102 abroad experienced students (45 female; 57 male); studying in a university in ankara turkey who participated in the study as volunteers. to collect data; personel information form and coping questionnaire (aysan, 2003) were used. analysis of data by the independent saples t-test, one way analysis of variance (anova) technique was used. analizing data is made on computer. the results of the study are that abroad experienced students, who returned to turkey from abroad, have problems of academic success, problems with their families and friends and problems of future life. the findings show that the length of the abroad life has a determining role on the selection of the coping strategies adapted by them. keywords: return migration, problems, coping, coping strategies, counseling, turkish migrants. citation | leyla esentürk-ercan (2020). an examination of abroad experienced students’ coping strategies. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 602-607. history: received: 5 august 2020 revised: 9 september 2020 accepted: 25 september 2020 published: 7 october 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 603 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 604 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 605 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 606 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 606 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 606 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.602.607&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2230 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6821-0598 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 602-607 603 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper contributes to the existing literature by examining abroad experienced students’ coping strategies. this study was researched because the number of studies investigating the problems and coping strategies of return migration of the abroad experienced turkish students was insufficient. 1. introduction work migration from turkey to germany started in the early 1960s (razum, sahin-hodoglugil, & polit, 2005).effecting date of "the exchange agreement for turkish and german workers" dated october 31, 1961, which was signed with the government of federal germany, is generally accepted as the starting time when large groups of turkish workers went to the countries in western europe to work. this bilateral agreement signed with germany was followed by many agreements, which were signed to regulate the terms for the exchange with various countries. among them were the agreement with austria, belgium and holland in 1964, the agreement with france in 1965 and those with australia and sweden in 1967 (ceti̇n & ercan, 2008; doğan, 1988). in the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of thousands of turkish workers migrated to germany. some settled there, others returned to turkey after a few years. as of 1982 the countries that demanded labor encouraged the turkish workers to return to turkey. in 1983, the german government offered financial incentives for a return to turkey, and the turkish population in germany declined, albeit only temporarily (razum et al., 2005). in recent years, turkish workers have had a tendency to return to turkey and have started to send their children for education in turkey (ceti̇n & ercan, 2008; sahin, 2001; yasa, 1979). return was rarely based on purely economic or health-related motives; value-oriented and emotional themes almost always played a role (razum et al., 2005). their return that started as of 1973 tended to increase over years and it reached its peak in 1983-1990, many people returned to turkey. returns are continuing although their rate is not as high as that of 1983-1990 (ceti ̇n & ercan, 2008). return migration remains a dynamic process: every year, about 40.000 turks return from germany to turkey; unfortunately, there is not exact information as to the number of people who have returned to turkey up to now (federal statistical office, 2001). as these immigrants are a group that is difficult to trace and contact, little is known about their actual reasons for return (razum et al., 2005). in the last years, returns have tended to increase, families most of the times do not confer with their children before returning to turkey, and they believe that it is to their advantage. on the other hand, it is suggested that the youngsters who are forced to return to turkey have a resistance not to leave their familiar environment, which results in intra-family conflicts, escaping from the house even committing a suicide. teacher student relations, disciplinary understanding and practices in the countries in which they lived before are quite different from those in turkey. some of these children were born and raised in a foreign country; some of them were born in turkey and went abroad to their families at their school ages or the age about it. it is expected that the type of the difference may lead to problems and adaptation difficulties (doğan, 1988; esentürk-ercan, 2004). the researches carried out in turkey about the students who returned from abroad suggest that they have adaptation problems, problems with their families and friends, problems of academic success, depression, anxiety and the like (doğan, 1988; esentürk-ercan, 2004; kuruuzüm, 2002). research findings about return migration show that the longer one remains in the host culture, the more difficult the reentry process will be (bennett, mcknight, & passin, 1958; esentürk-ercan, 2004). for the students who have adapted themselves to the education system of the country in which they live, adapted some values and norms of that society the returning means a new migration. therefore they have to cope with the problems again that they experienced when they first went abroad (ceti̇n & ercan, 2008; esentürk-ercan, 2004; kuruuzüm, 2002). specialists use the term "discordant" for the youngsters who do not integrate themselves to the european culture and become alienated gradually in their own country and point out that they are subject to the risk for their psychological health (esentürk-ercan, 2004). according to some inter-cultural studies carried out on this subject the "returning" is far more difficult than going to a foreign country and entails a longer adaptation period. the cultural shock is accepted as normal while the returning shock is generally not recognized. culture shock, as a phenomenom, is well documented in the literature (esentürk-ercan, 2004; sahin, 2001). however relatively little research has been done on cultural shock resulting from reentry into one’s home country following a sojourn abroad (christofi & thompson, 2007). seiffge-krenke (1990) compared the coping styles of 353 german and 187 israeli adolescents, aged 15-17 years. the results of the study show, coping behavior among german adolescents was more influenced by situational demands, with pronounced approach-avoidance behavior. the israeli adolescents showed less variability in coping behavior across situations, laid greater stress on cognitive factors, and showed a striking decrease in overall coping behavior with increasing age. the results of gama and pedersen (1977) show that brazilian women had more reentry problems than brazilian men did after living in the united states. the findings of an another study show that women were significantly more satisfied than men upon return to their home culture (rohrlich & martin, 1991). christofi and thompson (2007) investigated the structure of the experience of people who returned home after studying abroad, results of the study show that they became disillusioned with their home country and returned to their sojourn country. gullahorn and gullahorn (1963) reported that older returnees had less difficulty readjusting than did younger returnees. gullahorn and gullahorn also found that students who returned from europe faced less dissatisfaction asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 602-607 604 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group on their return home than did those who sojourned in countries very different from their home (cited in christofi and thompson (2007)). martin (1984) found that relationships with friends were affected negatively, which influenced reentry adjustment. in addition, research supports the hypothesis that individuals who adapt most successfully overseas have a more severe reentry adjustment problem than those individuals who do not adapt overseas (brein& david, 1971; brislin, 1981; hara, 1984; labrack, 1983; smith, 1975; cited in christofi and thompson (2007)). mudra (2008) investigated ”a study of perceived stress, impact and coping strategies” in india with the purpose to investigate stress sources, it’s impact and coping strategies in rural youth. findings showed that males were using above said coping strategies more frequently than females. similarly stress was divided into seven subclasses based on the type of problems faced by responds i.e. work related stress, family related stress, relationship related stress, financial stress, personal stress, bereavement stress, migration stress. tam and lam (2005) compared stress and coping among 243 migrant and 750 local-born chinese adolescents in hong kong. findings showed that compared to their local-born counterparts, migrants showed no difference in perceived stress, whereas they were less likely to use withdrawal coping and showed higher self-esteem and less delinquent behavior. adjustment of migrant adolescents was related to the father’s education level and years of residence in hong kong. kung, castaneda, and lee (2004) analyzed a sample of 159 americans from low socio-economic stratum, the immigrants (n=84) showed a slightly lower depression level, though statistically nonsignificant, when compared with the native born (n=75). the immigrants showed signs of resilience as they were significantly more likely to be employed, had higher income, and experienced less stress but comparable social support. for both groups, higher stress and passive coping significantly predicted higher depression level. total social support, active coping and younger age also significantly ameliorated depression for the native born. among the various types of stress and social support, only family related sources were significant in predicting depression, indicating the impact of familism on mexican americans. migrants in a new destination are prone to vulnerabilities like financial difficulties, difficulty in adjustment to new ecological, socio-cultural and political contexts (adhikari & gurung, 2009). brusle (2008) claims that migrants adopt both coping strategies as well as accumulative strategies in managing such problems. the results of research findings about return migration show that the reentry process is difficulter than entry to a foreign country. psychological counseling and guidance services are of much importance for abroad experienced students to adapt themselves to and interact with the turkish society and the education system in a fitting way. in order to organize and maintain the psychological counseling and guidance services in the schools for the students who returned from abroad it is essential to determine their needs and problems. the aim of this study was to analyze the problems of abroad experienced students after return from abroad and the coping strategy that they use for these problems. the following questions will to be answered in this study: 1. what are the problems of abroad experienced students after return from abroad? 2. do the coping strategies that are used by abroad experienced students for their problems vary according to gender? 3. do the coping strategies that are used by abroad experienced students for their problems vary according to age? 4. do the coping strategies that are used by abroad experienced students for their problems vary according to the length of the period in which they lived abroad? 2. method 2.1. sampling participants the participants were 102 abroad experienced students (45 female; 57 male) studying in a university in ankara turkey who participated in the study as volunteers. their ages range from 19 to 25. most of them lived 10 and more years abroad. 2.2. instruments of data collection coping strategy scale and personal information form that have been prepared by the researcher have been used for the subjects in order to determine the methods that are used to deal with the problems. in the introduction part of the coping strategy scale, the problem areas have been asked open ended to explain the problems that disturbed those most. thus, the problem areas of the students have been determined through the content analyses of the problems written in the introduction of the coping strategy scale. short descriptive information has been given below about the coping strategy scale. in the research, coping strategies; the scale that has been developed by amirkhan (1990) and adapted into turkish by aysan (2003) have been evaluated through the coping strategy scale about which the validity and reliability work has been carried out. the coping strategy scale has three subscales : problem solving, seeking social support and abstaining. each sub-indicator is measured with 11 coping expressions and total number of the expressions in the indicator is 33. it has three subscales. the findings about the point invariability and work consistency of the sub-indicators of the coping strategy indicator suggest that the scale is highly reliable (aysan, 2003). 2.3.data analysis data has been analyzed at two stages. at the first stage, the most encountered problem areas have been determined. to this end, content analysis has been carried out. at the end of the analysis three categories have been formed in accordance with the content similarities of the problems described by the student. the following names have been given to these categories according to the contents of the problems forming the category: 1. problems concerning the school life (26.5%). 2. problems concerning families and friends (38,2%). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 602-607 605 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. problems concerning the future life (35,3%). each category can also be named as the "problem area". at the second stage, analysis of data by t test, one-way analysis of variance (anova) technique was used, after variance analysis the scheffe test has been carried out determine whether the strategies that are adapted by abroad experienced students to cope with the three problem areas vary according to gender, age, the length of abroad period (variance analysis) and determine which group the difference results from when the impact is found considerable. 3. findings the findings of the study that has been carried out so as to determine the effects of some variables on the coping strategy that are used by abroad experienced students for the problems are given below: as you see in the table 1, the gender factor doesn't have an effect on the difference of the coping strategies of abroad experienced students (p > 0.05) table-1. averages concerned with the genders of abroad experienced students and their coping strategies,means, standard deviations and results of the t-test coping strategy gender n x s.d. t social support female 45 22,682 ,4158 ,44 male 57 22,298 ,4480 problem solving female 45 23,056 ,6137 ,1,48 male 56 21,220 ,6569 abstaining female 45 17,293 ,5428 ,1,62 male 57 19,378 ,7036 note:*p<0.05 as you see in the table 2, the age factor doesn't have an effect on the difference of the coping strategies of abroad experienced students. (p> 0.05). table-2. averages concerned with the ages of abroad experienced students and their coping strategies, means, standard deviations and results of the variance analysis. coping strategy age n x s.d. t social support 19-21 24 22,875 ,4703 1,405 22-24 26 22,978 ,4519 25 more 31 21,387 ,3612 total 101 22,465 ,4326 problem solving 19-21 24 21,007 ,5949 :849 22-24 46 21,793 ,6611 25 more 31 23,199 ,6491 total 101 22,038 ,6414 abstaining 19-21 23 18,379 ,5597 :395 22-24 47 17,969 ,5920 25 more 31 19,296 ,7773 total 101 18,470 ,6440 note:*p<0.05 as you see in the table 3 and table 4, the coping strategies of abroad experienced students vary according to the length of their abroad lives as far as the results of the variance analysis are concerned. (p <, 05) the sheffe test has been carried out to understand the difference in the groups. the difference between the points given to the subindicator of the social support of the coping strategies is p <, 05. table-3. averages concerned with the length of abroad period of abroad experienced students and their coping strategies, means, standard deviations. coping strategy length of abroad period n x s.d. social support 1)1-8 years 25 26,680 ,3637 2) 9-17 51 21,275 ,3400 3)18 + more 25 20,680 ,3976 total 101 22,465 ,4326 problem solving 1)1-8 years 25 16,700 ,4273 2) 9-17 50 25,100 ,5768 3)18+ more 26 21,282 ,5832 total 101 22,038 ,6414 abstaining 1)1-8 years 25 18,982 ,3030 2) 9-17 50 16,400 ,6637 3)18+ more 26 21,958 ,7017 total 101 18,470 ,6440 note:*p<0.05 according to the results of the scheffe test conducted, there is a difference between the group of 1-7 years, that of 9-17 years and that of 18 and more. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 602-607 606 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. results of the variance analysis concerned with the length of abroad period of abroad experienced students and their coping strategies. coping strategy variance source sum of squares df mean square f sig scheffe test social between groups 5,961 2 2,980 22,908 1000 2-jan support within groups 12,756 98 ,130 3-jan total 18,711 100 problem between groups 11,960 2 5,980 20,080 1000 2-jan solving within groups 29,185 98 ,298 3-jan total 41,145 100 3-feb abstaining between groups 5,371 2 2,686 7,291 1000 3-feb within groups 36,099 98 ,368 total 41,470 100 note: *p<0.05 the difference between the points given to the sub-indicator of the problem solving of the coping strategies is p <, 05. according to the results of the scheffe test conducted, there is a difference between the group of 1-7 years, that of 9-17 years and that of 18 and more. 4. discussion in this study, the coping strategies of abroad experienced students who returned from abroad to turkey have been examined according to the factors such as gender, age and length of the abroad period. the findings of the research show that 26,5 % of abroad experienced students have problems with the school, 38,2 % of them problems with families and friends and 35,3 % of them problems with the future life. these findings support the conclusions of tam and lam (2005) and seiffge-krenke (1990) ‘s work and razum et al. (2005).findings show that among migrants, future-related problems are often perceived as the most stressful.being different from other studies (tam & lam, 2005) which were carried with the return migrants, the findings of the present study show that gender and age do not have a determining role on the selection of the coping strategies used by abroad experienced students. according to the findings, 17,6 % of the students returned to turkey in 1997; 16,7% of them in 1998; 15,7 % of them in 1995; 13,7 % of them in 1994, 8,8 % of them in 2000 and the others returned after 1985. research findings show that the length of the abroad life has a determining role on the selection of the coping strategies adopted by them. along with this, findings also show that the abroad experienced students who lived 1-8 years abroad, prefer the social support seeking strategy among the sub-indicators of the coping strategies; the abroad experienced students who lived abroad for 9-17 years prefer the problem solving strategy among the sub-indicators of the coping strategies and those who lived abroad for 18 or more years prefer the abstaining strategy among the sub-indicators of the coping strategies. these findings support the conclusions of magnusson (1981) and doğan (1988). a similar observation was reported in wong (1999) study on chinese youth in canada in which the greater the acculturation, the more likely the youth were to have problems. tam and lam (2005) reported that migrants who had lived in hong kong for a longer period of time resembled local-born youth in that they had lower self-esteem and higher incidence of delinquent behavior than the recent arrivals, indicating negative assimilation to the new social environment. it has been seen in this study that, which lived abroad for a long time have more adaptation problems after return to homeland. 5. conclusion when examining the findings of the research in general, the following results and recommendations have been determined: 1. it can be suggested that although a long time has passed since the abroad experienced students returned to turkey, they are still not adapted to the new environment and affected negatively by it. 2. in addition to the problems of abroad experienced students with the school life and their future life, they are faced with problems mostly in their family and friendship relations. this result is also consistent with the research findings in the literature. 3. it is recommended that this research be made more widely and on more students who experienced abroad life. in such a research, half-structured questions allowing the students to describe their problems can be used. 4. the psychological counseling and guidance services should be organized very well to help; experienced advisers who have inter-cultural counseling abilities should be employed in these units. results of the study are important for effective guidance by psychological counseling services. to this end, psychological counseling and guidance divisions in the universities put "inter-cultural counseling" lessons in the graduate, post-graduate and doctorate studies. 5. experimental researches on the effectiveness of techniques such as group guidance and behavior shaping should be made to help to solve the adaptation problems of abroad experienced students within the shortest time possible. references adhikari, j., & gurung, g. 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(2008). choosing a destination and work: migration strategies of nepalese workers in uttarkhand, north india. mountain research and development, 28(3/4), 240-247. ceti ̇n, t., & ercan, l. (2008). university students returning from abroad investigation of problems. (an analysis of the problems faced by turkish students after return migration). journal of turkish world studies, 8(2), 65-80. christofi, v., & thompson, c. (2007). you cannot go home again: a phenomenological investigation of returning to the sojourn country after studying abroad. journal of counseling & development, 85(1), 53-63. available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.15566678.2007.tb00444.x. doğan, s. (1988). for high school students who had and didn't live abroad problems. unpublished phd thesis. h.ü. institute of social sciences. ankara. esentürk-ercan, l. 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(2008). a study of perceived stress, impact and coping strategies. the international journal of interdisciplinary social sciences, 2(4), 325-334. razum, o., sahin-hodoglugil, n. n., & polit, k. (2005). health, wealth or family ties? why turkish work migrants return from germany. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 31(4), 719-739. rohrlich, b. f., & martin, j. n. (1991). host country and reentry adjustment of student sojourners. international journal of intercultural relations, 15(2), 163-182. sahin, c. (2001). a concerning the effect of migration abroad on the psychological health of the individual. review g.ü.gef magazine, 21(2), 57-67. seiffge-krenke, i. (1990). coping style in adolescence. journal of cross-cultural psychology, 21(3), 351-377. tam, v. c.-w., & lam, r. s.-y. (2005). stress and coping among migrant and local-born adolescents in hong kong. youth & society, 36(3), 312-332. available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118x04265092. wong, s. k. (1999). acculturation, peer relations, and delinquent behavior of chinese-canadian youth. adolescence, 34(133), 107-119. yasa, i. (1979). returning workers and social change. ankara: todai̇e publications. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.destatis.de/ http://www.destatis.de/ 642 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 4, 642-650, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.642.650 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group development of an attitude scale of mathematics and science teachers towards mistake and instant feedback to the mistake: a validity and reliability study ali turkdogan assoc. proof, sivas cumhuriyet university, department of mathematics and science, turkey. abstract the purpose of the research is to develop a valid and reliable attitude scale that can measure the attitudes of math and science teachers (315) and teacher candidates (105) towards mistakes and instant feedback. in the validity studies, the exploratory factor analysis was made with the sps1s 8.0 package program after that the confirmatory factor analysis was made with lisrel 8.8 software. to develop the scale; 1. creation of item pool 2. obtaining expert opinion, 3. creation of pre-trial form 4. factor analysis is made. according to factor analysis; kaiser meyer olkin (kmo) rate; .808; bartlett test result: 2148,354; cronbach alpha reliability coefficient for the whole scale: .829. according to confirmatory factor analysis: root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) .022 (<.05); p-value for test of close fit .00 (<.05), standardized root mean square residual (srmr) .014, goodness of fit index (gfi) .75, adjusted goodness of fit index (agfi) .69; normed fit index (nfi) .91; relative fit index (rfi) .78; incremental fix index (ifi): .83; parsimony goodness of fit index (pgfi): .62; degrees of freedom: 760; root mean square residual (rmr): 2.07 and nonnormed fit index (nnfi): .88. according to research findings, attitude scale is valid and reliable so it can be used to determine math and science teachers and teacher candidates positive and negative attitudes toward mistake and giving instant feedback to mistake. keywords: attitude scale, mistake, validity, reliability, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, mathematics, science. citation | ali turkdogan (2020). development of an attitude scale of mathematics and science teachers towards mistake and instant feedback to the mistake: a validity and reliability study. asian journal of education and training, 6(4): 642-650. history: received: 24 september 2020 revised: 15 october 2020 accepted: 2 november 2020 published: 18 november 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 643 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 644 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 645 4. conclusions and recommendations ........................................................................................................................................... 648 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 649 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.64.642.650&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2339 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0216-5426 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 642-650 643 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature mistake, in a student-centered educational environment, is inevitable and useful. therefore, it is necessary to examine how teachers give feedback to the mistakes whenever mistakes appear (instant feedback). one of the most important factors that need to create a student-centered environment is to understand the instant feedback. how teachers react when confronted with wrong must be analyzed from various aspects. this study is the first attitude scale development study that examines the factors that affect teachers’ feedback. 1. introduction the student-centered curriculum, which has been the most accepted curriculum in recent years, is based on constructivist theory. 5e is perhaps the most widely accepted model of how constructivist theory can be applied in classrooms. this model includes an introduction that will attract the student's attention (engage), then explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate steps related to a knowledge, a comprehension or a phenomenon. in the engage stage, the teacher surveys the students ' prior knowledge of the subject, concept or event. surely the majority of the answers of the students will be wrong. otherwise, the activity should be considered to be below the student's learning threshold. it is important to know how the teacher behaves in the face of these mistakes. the explore phase requires students to establish hypotheses by conducting research and share them with their friends. at this stage, almost no students should be expected to give correct answers. otherwise, the activity is still below the learning threshold. the teacher's guidance task is even more prominent in the research phase than in other stages. at this stage, the teacher has to find the shortcomings and mistakes of the students' predictions and resolve them through his or her activities. in the elaborate phase, students try to apply the new knowledge they have learned or perform a similar task. at this stage, students should not be expected to apply their newly learned knowledge easily. therefore, the elaborate process can often lead to the formation and emergence of mistakes. a good understanding of the process of the emergence of mistakes, and how the teacher can guide after the mistakes have come out is needed. however, it is known that there is insufficient information on how to deal with mistakes. in understanding the causes of this deficiency, it will be useful to examine the perspective of teaching approaches toward mistakes. the perspective of behaviorist theories on the mistake: mistake is seen as a phenomenon that must be ignored, suppressed (should be punished when it occurs) resulting from the inattention of the student, disruptions in the communication path or wrong reaction (borasi, 1994; heinze, 2005; melis, 2003; santagata, 2002; santagata, 2005; santagata & barbieri, 2005; tsovaltzi et al., 2009). the perspective of cognitive theories on the mistake: cognitive theories heeded the misconception and examined its detection, elimination and effects on the learning process. however, as is known, misconceptions are a causal, permanent and persistent cognitive condition that occurs after the completion of a teaching process. the literature on misconceptions carried out by scientists who adopt the cognitive approach is sufficiently comprehensive (detection of misconceptions, elimination of misconceptions, etc.). however, the cognitive literature is not sufficient to explain the mistake and the feedback is given to the mistake. because the mistakes made by the students are repeated while learning or if the student defends the accuracy of the mistake, it is not a misconception. the students' answers, which are not correct, are incorrect until the subject is finished. for this reason, the perspective of cognitive approaches to the mistake also fails to adequately contribute to teachers about how to deal with mistakes in a student-centered learning environment. the perspective of constructivist theory on the mistake: misconceptions are also important in constructivist theory. because one of the most important obstacles in creating an effective learning environment in student-centered education is seen as misconceptions. for learning, it is necessary to determine the prior knowledge of the students, to remind the basic knowledge on which the learning will be structured and to eliminate misconceptions. a false structuring will cause the subsequent structures to be wrong, thus causing continuous mistakes to be made in the learning environment. although it is thought that learning without misconception will contribute positively to the later learnings, this is not always true. students can do mistakes even after an ideal structuring. therefore, one of the most important problems that constructivist models have to deal with is the mistakes (santagata, 2002; santagata, 2005). for this reason, in the constructivist approach, mistakes should be examined as much as misconceptions. since the literature on the mistake is mostly focused on detecting and eliminating misconceptions, sufficient strategies for the mistake and combating mistake have not been identified. the teacher's lack of experience and theoretical knowledge about the subject may cause the teacher to be deficient and to fall into a difficult situation in cases where the mistake is to have interfered with the learning process. a sudden mistake creates an effect that increases anxiety and decreases time control for an untrained teacher. this will also cause teachers to be angry and disrupt student-centered environments where students are intended to freely say their thoughts. teachers are known to resent students who do mistakes in subjects they think are simple, such as definition or term (heinze, 2005). in fact, there is no reason for the teacher to be angry. because it should be considered natural to encounter mistakes in the learning environment (borasi, 1994). there is limited literature on how teachers should react instantly when they encounter a mistake in the learning process. the majority of these studies were carried out by psychologists and investigated the community's perspectives on the mistake and teachers' perspectives on the mistakes in mathematics (santagata, 2002; santagata, 2005; santagata & stigler, 2000; santagata, 2004; sterponi & santagata, 2000). perhaps santagata (2002) conducted the most comprehensive study about mistake and feedbacks to the mistake, which is also a reference source for other studies. santagata has classified, defined and sampled the mistakes and feedbacks given to the mistakes. the researcher has done and proposed many studies examining the similarities and differences between cultures by emphasizing that the mistake and feedback given to the mistake is a cultural phenomenon (santagata, 2002; santagata, 2005; santagata, 2004; sterponi & santagata, 2000). nevertheless, when a mistake is encountered, factors other than the cultural components that affect the teacher's behavior have not been adequately revealed. the mistakes', studied by santagata and other psychologists, place and importance in mathematics and asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 642-650 644 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the factors affecting the feedback given to the mistake must be studied in detail by the mathematicians. through these studies, teachers ' perspectives on the mistake and the ways they interfere with the mistake can be determined. the study aims to identify effective factors that influence teachers' feedback on the mistake. it is known that strong attitudes are effective in shaping behaviors (krosnick & petty, 1995). according to allport (1935) “attitude in business with ‘a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive and dynamic influence upon individual's response to all objects and situations with which it is related” (cited in malim and birch (1998)). attitude is to like or not (bem, 1970). according to bloom (1976) the attitude is to have positive thoughts about a lesson or subject, to love or show positive affective characteristics about a lesson, or to have negative thoughts about a lesson and subject, to dislike show negative affective characteristics about a lesson. attitude is a phenomenon gained through learning that guides to individual behavior and can lead to bias in the decision-making process (ulgen, 1997). attitude is the tendency to react positively or negatively that is learned towards certain objects, situations, institutions, concepts or other people (tezbaşaran, 1997). although attitude plays an important role in people's success, it is very difficult to create an attitude towards a certain object or to change the existing attitude. in order to change the attitudes, first, the characteristics of the target audience and the factors that lead to the formation and development of the attitudes must be revealed ( , 1995). a qualified attitude scale is needed to determine the factors that lead to the formation and development of attitudes. the researcher carried out some studies about types of mistakes and techniques used by teachers to give feedback to mistakes (türkdoğan, baki, & çepni, 2009; türkdogan & baki, 2012; türkdoğan, 2011). in this process, he realized that affective factors were intensely influential on teachers' perception of mistakes and choosing feedback types. with the help of the scale items prepared within the scope of this study, it was tried to determine mistake and what the dimensions that affect the selection of the methods used to give feedback to the mistake. for this purpose, items containing the dimensions of love, interest, fear, anxiety, pleasure, trust, the existence of the mistake and its role in learning, its importance and the usefulness of giving feedback to the mistakes were written on the scale and it was investigated which of these items were more effective in giving feedback to the mistakes. 2. methodology 2.1. participants the sample of the study consists of 420 math and science teacher-teacher candidates including 210 men and 210 women. information about the people in the sample is presented in table 1. table-1. information about the sample. experience of teachers the branch of the teachers and teacher candidates percentage (%) math science total teacher candidate 40 65 105 25% teacher with 1-5 years of experience 50 55 105 25% teacher with 6-10 years of experience 50 55 105 25% teacher with 11 years and more experience 60 45 105 25% total 200 220 420 100% note: sampling (n=420). as seen in table 1, the draft scale was applied to 105 teacher candidates (40 math, 65 science) who have taught at least 20 lessons within the scope of teaching practice course, 105 teacher (50 math, 55 science) with experience 1-5 years, 105 teacher (50 math, 55 science) with experience 6-10 years, and 105 teacher (60 math, 45 science) with experience 11 years and more. 2.2. developing the attitude scale of mathematics and science teachers towards mistake and instant feedback to the mistake in the development phase of “attitude scale of mathematics and science teachers towards mistake and instant feedback to the mistake” (mst-as), which is aimed at determining the attitudes of math and science teachers and teacher candidates towards mistake and instant feedback to the mistake, a pool of item has been created for the trial form. this study was carried out as a continuation of a series of studies previously carried out on the mistake, types of mistakes, instant feedback given to mistake. the knowledge and experiences that the researcher gained from these studies were effective in writing the items in the item pool. also, studies on attitudes and sub-dimensions and items in these studies were examined (türkdoğan, 2011). in the creation of items in the item pool, some related items in these scales have been rearranged in the context of mistake and instant feedback to the mistake. so predictive validity is targeted. two mathematics educators criticized the items in the item pool in the trial form. these field educators have criticized the items considering the content and construct validity dimensions. similarly, two linguists examined and rearranged these items. later, three experts, one of whom was a mathematics educator, one of whom was a science educator and the other a social science educator, criticized the items in the item pool again. after the revisions, language experts reconsidered and edited the items in terms of construct validity. after the arrangements were made, a mathematics and science educator's opinions were received about which sentences were positive and which sentences were negative. items in which the opinions of the two experts and the researchers regarding the structure of the sentences match remained in the item pool. the items that cannot be matched are rearranged in an environment where these three experts coexist. also, the writing, punctuation and meaningfulness dimension of the items were reviewed in this meeting. interviews were made with the five teachers about the trial form and their ideas were taken. in the light of the arrangements, six items were removed from the item pool in the trial form. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 642-650 645 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group then, the draft scale was applied as a pilot application to test the construct validity to the 16 elementary mathematics and 19 science teacher candidate who taught in the context of teaching practice course and 7 elementary mathematics and 8 science teachers. as a result of the application, it was determined that there was no item that was not understood in the trial form. there were 48 items in the item pool on the trial form before the actual application. 2.3. collecting data the data of the research was collected with the help of the students in the department of mathematics education. while the 2nd, 3rd and 4th-year students who attended the course of the researcher went to their hometown for the semester break, each of them was given some form of mst-as. the university students, who will apply for the trial form, were given information about how to do the applications. the participating teachers, who will fill out the trial form, were asked to tell the following information before the application started: “all data in this study will be kept confidential and will not be shared with anyone. so do not write your names. choose the option that best suits how you behave when you encounter a mistake in your classes.” university students applied this trial form to their teachers at the schools they studied in their cities. not all students were given a trial form and not all students were able to return the forms. some students brought back 1 form, while others brought back 5 forms. 2.4. analysis of the data in this study, exploratory factor analysis (efa) and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) were carried out regarding the construct validity of mst-as. exploratory factor analysis was made by using spss 18.0 and confirmatory factor analysis was made by using lisrel 8.8 packet program. item-test score correlations, internal consistency coefficient cronbach alfa were calculated. a t-test was carried out to see whether the items discriminated between the upper and lower 27% of the groups. rating on an attitude scales can be made on a five-point ranging from 1 "i totally disagree" to 5 "i totally agree" (dunn-rankin, 2004; tavşancıl, 2005). in this study, scale grading was done as follows: “i totally disagree: 1”, “i disagree: 2”, “i am indecisive: 3”, “i agree: 4” and “i totally agree: 5”. the answers of the negative sentences determined in the scale were re-coded in the opposite direction from “i totally agree: 1” to “i totally disagree: 5”, “i agree: 2” to “i disagree: 4”. 3. results before the exploratory factor analysis, the item-test correlations of the trial form included 48 items were calculated and the items, 10, 33 and 38, with the item-test correlation coefficient above .80 were discarded. kaiser– mayer–olkin (kmo) and bartlett's test for sphericity was used to test the suitability of the variables in the factor analysis as well as to test the sample size. the kmo value is asked to be greater than .70. this test gives us information about the suitability of the data set and sample size. the analysis concluded that the sample size was “well enough” to perform a factor analysis since the kmo value was=.808>.70 (brownlow, 2004; pett, lackey, & sullivan, 2003). furthermore, when the results of bartlett's test for sphericity were examined, it was determined that the chi-square value was significant (χ2 (760)=1574.81; p<.01). it has been accepted that data can be factored into these results (child, 2006; hutcheson & sofroniou, 1999; pett et al., 2003). 3.1. exploratory factor analysis in order to determine the factor structure of mst-as, varimax rotation technique was chosen as the factorization method by taking into consideration principal component analysis, clarity and significance (brownlow, 2004; walkey & welch, 2010). in exploratory factor analysis, .40 was determined as a cut-off point for the factor load value and the items under this value were ignored (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 28, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47). the difference between two high load values in efa is suggested to be at least .10 (büyüköztürk, 2009). the criterion that can be taken about entering more than one factor is that there is at least .10 difference between factor loads. items with a difference of .10 or below between two factor loading are called complex items (yavuz, 2005). when the factor load values of the items in the scale were examined, it was determined that item 25 gave a high-value load to more than one factor and that the difference between these factor load values was less than .10. therefore, this item has been assessed as a complex item and removed from the scale. items with low item discrimination, 33 items with factor loadings lower than .40 and 1 complex item with a difference of .10 or below between two factor loading were removed from the scale. after the items were removed, factor analysis was applied again to the scale, which fell to 14 items (appendix 1) according to the results of a subsequent efa, it was decided that the scale could be limited to two factors. table-2. factor loadings of the mst-as and the variances explained. external causes internal causes item no factor loading explained variance item no factor loading explained variance 7 .722 25.45% 16 .653 24.55% 8 .624 17 .644 15 .711 24 .703 26 .789 27 .684 30 .698 29 .769 31 .736 40 .728 36 .605 48 .632 explained variance: 50.00% asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 642-650 646 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the first factor contributed 25.45% and the second factor contributed 24.55% to the total variance. the twofactor structure of the scale was found to explain 50% of the total variance and have 14 items. this ratio is sufficient for multifactorial patterns (brownlow, 2004; fabrigar & wegener, 2011; hutcheson & sofroniou, 1999). details of the scale’s factor loadings and the variances explained are provided in table 2. as shown in table 2, the factor loadings of 7 items under the external causes range from .605 to .789, the factor loadings of 7 items under the internal causes range from .632 to .769. figure-1. the scree-plot for the factors of mst-as. when the scree-plot graphic with the eigenvalues on the vertical axis and the factors on the horizontal axis is examined (figure-1), it is seen that the high acceleration decline decreases after the fourth point. points indicate the degree of contribution to the variance of the descent tendency seen from the first point, and each interval between two points means a factor (çokluk, şekercioğlu, & büyüköztürk, 2012). it was decided to perform the analysis for two factors according to the eigenvalue, variance percentages and the data obtained from the screeplot graphic. 3.2. item-total correlations the item-test correlation values describing the validity coefficient of each item are provided in table 3. table-3. the item-test correlation of the mst-as. factors items 7 8 15 26 30 31 36 16 17 24 27 29 40 48 external causes .673 .621 .732 .770 .735 .725 .683 internal causes .690 .659 .727 .666 .751 .752 .628 total .435 .464 .570 .507 .546 .498 .545 .575 .595 .700 .549 .671 .661 .534 as shown in table 3, the correlation coefficients of items within the external causes factors in the scale vary between .621 and .770. these values show that items 7, 8 and 36 items have a medium level (.30-.70) and items 15, 26, 30 and 31 items have a high level (.70-1.00) item-test correlation. the correlation coefficients of the items within the internal causes factor in the scale vary between .628 and .752. these values show that items 16, 17, 27 and 48 have a medium level (.30-.70) and items 24, 29 and 40 have a high level (.70-1.00) item-test correlation. the total correlation coefficients of the items in the scale vary between .435 and .700. these values show that items other than item 24 have a medium level (.30-.70) and item 24 has a high level (.70-1.00) item-test correlations (brownlow, 2004; hutcheson & sofroniou, 1999). table-4. correlations between factor scores of the mst-as. factors correlations 1. boyut 2. boyut total external causes 1 .310** .727** internal causes .310** 1 .878** total .727** .878** 1 note: **p<.01. as seen in table 4, there is a weak correlation between the external causes dimension and the internal causes dimension (.310), and a high level (.727) -very high level (.878) correlation between the sub-dimensions and the scale total. 3.3. item discrimination an independent sample t-test was used to determine the distinguishing strength of the substances on the scale. item discrimination for each item was obtained via computing the difference between mean item scores of participants allocated in the upper 27% and lower 27% of the sample according to their composite scale scores. the calculated independent sample t-test values were shown in table 5. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 642-650 647 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-5. item distinctiveness of the mst-as according to the lower and upper 27% groups. item group 27% n x ss t p 7 upper 113 4.9115 .41312 5.591 .000 lower 113 4.4690 .73279 8 upper 113 5.0000 .00000 6.652 .000 lower 113 4.4336 .90511 15 upper 113 4.9292 .25763 10.682 .000 lower 113 3.8850 1.00669 26 upper 113 4.8584 .35019 7.393 .000 lower 113 4.2124 .86035 30 upper 113 4.9646 .18561 11.894 .000 lower 113 3.8938 .93887 31 upper 113 5.0000 .00000 10.183 .000 lower 113 4.2478 .78525 36 upper 113 4.8584 .39792 9.964 .000 lower 113 3.8584 .98983 16 upper 113 4.3894 .77268 14.326 .000 lower 113 2.5398 1.13417 17 upper 113 4.8584 .44052 10.398 .000 lower 113 3.6726 1.12949 24 upper 113 4.9115 .28528 18.166 .000 lower 113 3.1858 .96869 27 upper 113 4.4071 .56120 12.279 .000 lower 113 3.2035 .87790 29 upper 113 4.9823 .13244 15.374 .000 lower 113 3.5221 1.00087 40 upper 113 4.4690 .82452 15.379 .000 lower 113 2.7257 .87880 48 upper 113 4.9204 .27195 11.029 .000 lower 113 3.7345 1.11016 as seen in table 5, there is a significant difference between the upper and lower groups (p <.01). this significant differentiation is an indication that the items on the scale have the desired level of discrimination (brownlow, 2004). 3.4. confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) the validity of the two-factor structure derived from the efa was tested with cfa. the results obtained from the cfa are in table 6 and figure 2. table-6. cfa results of mst-as. fit indices values acceptable fit good fit chi-square (x2) 1574.8 degrees of fredom (sd) 760 chi-square/sd 2.07 * 2≤x2/sd ≤3 .00≤x2/sd <2 rmsea .022 ** .05≤rmsea ≤.10 .00≤rmsea <.05 nfi .91 *** .90≤nfi ≤.95 .95≤nfi ≤1.00 nnfi .88 *** .95≤nnfi ≤.97 .97≤nnfi ≤1.00 srmr .014 ** .05≤srmr ≤.10 .00≤srmr <.05 gfi .75 *** .90≤gfi ≤.95 .95≤nfi ≤1.00 agfi .69 **** .85≤agfi ≤.90 .90≤anfi ≤1.00 rmr .098 **** .05≤rmr ≤.10 .00≤rmr ≤.05 rfi .78 *** .90 ≤ rfi ≤ .95 .95 ≤ rfi ≤ 1.00 ifi .83 *** .90 ≤ ifi ≤ .95 .95 ≤ ifi ≤ 1.00 pvalue .000 note: * (kline, 2011) **(browne & cudeck, 1993) ***3 (baumgartner & homburg, 1996; bentler, 1980; bentler. & bonett, 1980; marsh, hau, artelt, baumert, & peschar, 2006) **** (schermelleh-engel, moosbrugger, & müller, 2003). the fit indices of the 14-item model were analyzed using cfa. the results of the cfa concluded the following (see, table 6 and figure 2): x2/df=2.07, srmr = .014, rmsea = .022, rmr = .098, agfi = .69, gfi = .75, nfi = .91, nnfi = .88, rfi = .78, and ifi = .83. given that the gfi, agfi, nnfi, rfi and ifi values fell below .90, one can state that it had a weak fit. however, the rmr value being less than .10 shows us that model-data compatibility was acceptable. the x2/df and nfi values also demonstrate acceptable compatibility. the rmsea and srmr values also demonstrate good compatibility as well. the fit indices for the scale were deemed acceptable within in the context of the cfa results (bartholomew, knott, & moustaki, 2011; brown, 2006; schermelleh-engel et al., 2003; schumacker & lomax, 2004; thompson, 2004). asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 642-650 648 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-2. path diagram for cfa results of the mst-as. fak1: external causes: fak2: internal causes. when the diagram is examined, the factor load value of each item is above .40 in, so each of the items is compatible with the factors. 3.5. findings regarding the reliability of the scale the reliability analysis of the mst-as was calculated using cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient. cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of scale are given in table 7. table-7. cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of mst-as. factors cronbach alpha reliability coefficients external causes .828 internal causes .817 scale .829 source: obtained from primary data. cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was calculated as .829 for the scale. the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was calculated as .828 for the external causes dimension and as .828 for the external causes dimension as .817. these results are proof that sub-scales of the mst-as are reliable (brownlow, 2004). 4. conclusions and recommendations the research aims is to develop a valid and reliable attitude scale that can measure the attitudes of math and science teachers and teacher candidates towards mistakes and instant feedback to mistake. for this purpose, a pool of items was established in the relevant field literature, expert opinions were taken about the items and finally, a pilot application phase was carried out by preparing a trial form. before the exploratory factor analysis, the item-test correlations of the trial form included 48 items were calculated and three items with the item-test correlation coefficient above .80 were discarded. kaiser–mayer–olkin (kmo) and bartlett's test for sphericity was used to test the suitability of the variables in the factor analysis as well as to test the sample size kmo value was calculated as .808. besides, as a result of the bartlett's test for sphericity, the chi-square value was determined to be significant (χ2 (760)=1574.81; p<.01). in exploratory factor analysis, .40 was determined as a cut-off point for the factor load value and 33 items under this value were ignored. since one item gave a high-value load to more than one factor and that the difference between these factor load values was less than .10, this item has been assessed as a complex item and removed from the scale. after the items were removed, the exploratory factor analysis was re-applied form. according to the results of the subsequent efa, it was decided that the scale has two factors, external causes and internal causes, with an eigenvalue greater than 1. according to the results of performed confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) to determine the structural validity of mst-as, x2/df ratio (1574.8/760= 2.07) is acceptable to see table 6. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 642-650 649 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the model has a good fit due to its rmsea value .022 and srmr value of .014, and acceptable fit due to its nfi value of .91. these results show that the scale is compatible with real data see table 6. when table 6 is analyzed, since it is understood that all the compliance values are within the acceptable limits, it is seen that the two-factor structure of the mst-as is a usable and valid model. cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was calculated as .829 for the scale, as .828 for the external causes dimension and as .828 for the external causes dimension as .817. these results are proof that sub-scales of the mst-as are reliable. the mst-as is a valid and reliable scale that can be used in experimental and descriptive research to determine the attitudes of math and science teachers and teacher candidates towards mistakes and instant feedback to mistake. references allport, g. w. 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(2011). anatomy of wrong: mistakes made by students in elementary mathematics classes and analytical analysis of teachers' feedback. phd thesis, karadeniz technical university, institute of educational sciences, trabzon. ulgen, g. (1997). educational psychology. istanbul: alkim publishing. walkey, f., & welch, g. (2010). demystifying factor analysis: how it works and how to use it. bloomington: xlibris, corp. yavuz, s. (2005). developing a technology attitude scale for pre-service chemistry teachers. turkish online journal of educational technology, 4(1), 17-25. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(4): 642-650 650 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group appendix-1. the mst-as. development of an attitude scale of mathematics and science teachers towards mistake and instant feedback to the mistake: a validity and reliability study (mst-as). this scale is designed to learn your thoughts about mistake and the feedback given to the mistake. none of the sentences has a definitive answer. opinion on each sentence can vary from person to person. for this reason, your answers should reflect your own opinion. please read the sentence carefully while expressing your opinion on each sentence, and then decide to what degree the thought indicated in the sentence is appropriate for your thoughts and feelings. please mark the option (x) that suits you best; 1: i totally disagree, 2: i disagree, 3: i am indecisive, 4: i agree, 5:i totally agree thank you so much for your contribution. year of professional experience: your branch: science teacher ( ) math teacher ( ) year of experience: 4. year teacher candidate ( ) 0-5 year ( ) 5-10 year ( ) 10 year and more( ) i t o ta ll y d is ag re e i d is ag re e i a m i n d ec is iv e i a g re e i t o ta ll y a g re e a tt it u d e b as ed o n e x te rn al c au se s *7. trying to understand the reason for students' mistakes is a waste of time. *8. there is nothing beneficial for the student to try to give feedback to the mistakes. *15. if i do not feel compulsory, i will not give any feedback to the mistakes. *26. i feel insecure when i have to deal with mistake. *30. even hearing the name of the mistake makes me uneasy. *31. if i could, i would ignore the wrongs. *36. i feel so helpless when dealing with mistakes. a tt it u d e b as ed o n i n te rn al c au se s 17. knowing and understanding the mistake better makes me a better teacher. 24. it gives me pleasure to give feedback to the student who did mistake in class. 27. i am assertive to give feedback to the mistake. 29. i enjoy trying to understand the reason of the mistakes. 40. i enjoy dealing with students' mistakes. 48. it gives me pleasure to get the student who did a mistake in the lesson to the truth through feedback. 16. as i understand the causes of the mistakes, i love the mistakes even more. note: * 7. 8. 26. 30. 31 ve 44. items are attitude phrases with negative meaning. ** items that have negative meaning should be analyzed by inverting. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 176 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 176-180, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.176.180 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety levels of physical education and primary school teachers metin karayol1 yahya doğar2 ( corresponding author) 1school of physical education and sports, muşalparslan university, turkey. 2faculty of sports sciences, i̇nönü university, turkey. abstract the aim of this research study is to examine the cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety levels of physical education and sports teachers and primary school teachers. the study group consists of 160 participant (56 famele, 104 male) in total. personal information form created by researchers and “cognitive flexibility inventory” transcribed to turkish by gülüm and dağ (2012) and “ social appearance anxiety scale, transcribed to turkish by doğan (2010) has been used as a data collector in the study. in the analysis of data, the t-test has been used in the comparison of quantitative continuous data between two independent groups and the one way anova test has been used in the comparison of quantitative continuous data between more than two independent groups. scheffe test has been used as the completive post hoc analysis to determine the differences after the anova test. pearson correlation analysis was implemented among the continuous variables of the study. as a result of the study, there was a statistically significant difference between the levels of cognitive flexibility and ability to produce alternative solutions as well as between the cognitive flexibility overall scores and teaching experience (p<0.05). it was determined that there were statistically significant differences among the social appearance anxiety scores concerning gender, school, and teaching branch variables (p<0.05). it was determined that there was statistically no significant relationship between cognitive flexibility overall scores and social appearance anxiety levels (p>0.05). keywords: sports management, physical education, cognitive flexibility, social appearance anxiety. citation | metin karayol; yahya doğar (2020). examination of cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety levels of physical education and primary school teachers. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 176-180. history: received: 18 december 2019 revised: 30 january 2020 accepted: 5 march 2020 published: 27 march 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 177 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 177 3. findings and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................... 178 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 180 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 180 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.176.180&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1452 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1452 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 176-180 177 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining the cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety levels of physical education and sports teachers and primary school teachers. 1. introduction sport is a whole of physical activities that aim at solidarity and cohesion in order for individuals to be physically, spiritually, and mentally healthy and well in the life (eroğlu, 2019; eroğlu. & ersoy, 2019; t. murathan, 2018). it is also known that there are many accepted benefits of physical education and sports in the literature. thanks to society's perception of sports, these benefits are not only in psychological and sociological aspects but also in physical, physiological, and spiritual terms (aygun, 2019; eroğlu, 2019). on the other hand, learning and teaching activities are a long process that starts with the onset of the life of individuals on earth and ends with the end of their life in the universe (talha murathan & özdemir, 2017). in this context, there are many factors that affect the psychological, spiritual, and mental states of individuals; additionally, cognitive flexibility perspectives and social appearance concerns are among the issues that should be addressed especially for our teachers who are part of our education. cognitive flexibility is defined as the skill for balancing situations, decision-making and considering many options while making these decisions, addressing events from different perspectives in a crisis, empathy, taking into consideration the facts and knowledge when considering the cause of any behavior, producing efficient solutions in the face of difficult situations, and managing the cases of losing control. in another definition, cognitive flexibility can also be defined as the ability of an individual to change the way he/she looks at a task or the way he/she thinks. individuals with high cognitive flexibility can make easy and spontaneous changes, while individuals with low cognitive flexibility have difficulty in making changes (cox, 1980). individuals with cognitive flexibility reduce the negative behaviors and expand the tolerance limits. in individuals, who don’t have this flexibility, the number of mistakes continuously increases and it becomes inevitable for them to have difficulties in the face of any crisis. it is considered vital for today's physical education and sports teachers and primary school teachers to have cognitive flexibility not only for the future of their students but also for the efficiency of the education they receive. hart, leary, and rejeski (1989) described social appearance anxiety as a subtype of social anxiety that occurs as a result of the presence of interpersonal evaluations considering the appearance or the possibility of such an assessment. according to another definition, social anxiety, known as social phobia, is defined as a disorder that causes avoidance from social situations that starts mostly during the adolescence with the fear of being evaluated by other people in relatively small groups. hart et al. (1989) addressed social appearance anxiety as the concerns involving other people's assessments of one's physical appearance. in more specific terms, social appearance anxiety is also referred to as the type of social anxiety that involves the anxiety of being evaluated by other people regarding external appearance. some people assume that others like their physical appearance, or ignore the thoughts of others about their physical appearance, and therefore, they partially experience social appearance anxiety (hart et al., 1989). based on the definitions of the concepts, we think that the concepts of cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety are intertwined. a qualified physical education teacher should have a good appearance besides many features (uğraş & güllü, 2019). therefore, in order for the physical education and sports teachers and primary school teachers to overcome the problems they will encounter while performing their profession and in terms of their task definitions, reducing their appearance anxiety will contribute to their students. accordingly, in the study, it was aimed to examine the cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety levels of physical education and sports teachers and primary school teachers working in provincial directorate of national education of muş. 2. method the sample group of this study was composed of 160 physical education and sports teachers (101) and primary school teachers (59) working under the provincial directorate of national education of muş. in the materials and methods section, demographic characteristics of participants, study variables, data collection tools, and statistical methods applied to the data were discussed. 2.1. model of research in this study, a general survey model, one of the descriptive research methods, was applied. the general survey model was described in karasar (2005) as a research method that aims to define an existing situation as is. 2.2. data collection tools cognitive flexibility inventory (cfi): in order to determine the flexibility level, the 20-item scale, which was developed by dennis and wal (2010) was used in the research. the scale includes alternative thinking skills, coherent and balanced thinking statements in the face of difficult situations. the statements of the scale are divided into two sub-dimensions as the ability to produce alternative solutions (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20) and the tendency to control (2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 15, 17). the adaptation of the scale to turkish culture was conducted by gülüm and dağ (2012). gülüm and dağ found the internal consistency coefficient, cronbach’s alpha as 0.900. in this study, the reliability of the cognitive flexibility scale was determined as high, since the cronbach's alpha was 0.742. social appearance anxiety scale (saas): turkish adaptation of the scale, which was developed by hart. et al. (2008) in order to measure the social appearance anxiety levels of individuals, was conducted by doğan (2010). this 5-point likert scale consists of 16 items. the lowest possible score is 16 and the highest possible score is 80 in this one-dimensional scale. high scores indicate that the social appearance anxiety level is high. the reliability of the social appearance anxiety scale was determined as high in this study, since the cronbach's alpha was 0.958. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 176-180 178 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. data analysis the data obtained from the study were analyzed using the spss (statistical package for social sciences) for windows 22.0. in the evaluation of the data, number, percentage, mean, and standard deviation were used as the descriptive statistical methods. the t-test was used to compare quantitative continuous data between two independent groups, and the one-way anova test was used to compare quantitative continuous data between more than two independent groups. the scheffe test was used as a complementary post-hoc analysis to determine the differences after the anova test. pearson correlation analysis was applied among the continuous variables of the study. 3. findings and discussion this section contains the findings as a result of the analysis of the data collected from the participant teachers through the scales to solve the research problem. explanations and interpretations were made depending on the findings. table-1. demographic characteristics distribution table. groups frequency(n) percentage(%) gender female 56 35,0 male 104 65,0 age 30 years old and below 108 67,5 over 30 years old 52 32,5 marital status married 91 56,9 single 69 43,1 school type primary education 120 75,0 high school 40 25,0 teaching branch physical education and sports teacher 101 63,1 primary school teacher 59 36,9 teaching experience less than 2 years 48 30,0 3-5 years 66 41,2 over 5 years 46 28,7 having an administrative task yes 22 13,8 no 138 86,2 note: n=160. table 1 shows that it was determined that 56 (35.0%) of the teachers were female and 104 (65.0%) were male; 108 (67.5%) of them were 30 years old and below, 52 (32.5%) were over 30 years old; 91 (56.9%) were married and 69 (43.1%) were single; 120 (75.0%) of them were working in primary schools and 40 (25.0%) were in high schools; 101 (63.1%) were physical education and sports teachers and 59 (36.9%) were primary school teachers; 48 (30.0%) had a teaching experience of less than 2 years, 66 (41.2%) with 3-5 years, and 46 (28.7%) had 5 years and over teaching experience; 22 (13.8%) of them had an administrative task in the school, while 138 (86.2%) teachers did not have any administrative tasks. table-2. cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety mean scores. n mean sd min. max. ability to produce alternative solutions 160 3,714 0,388 2,920 5,000 tendency to control 160 3,861 0,417 2,860 5,000 overall cognitive flexibility 160 3,766 0,378 3,000 5,000 social appearance anxiety 160 30,763 14,149 16,000 80,000 note: min/max. table 2 reported that their mean score concerning the “ability to produce alternative solutions” was high with 3,714±0,388 (min=2.92; max=5), their mean score concerning “tendency to control” was high with 3,861±0,417 (min=2.86; max=5), similarly, their means score of “cognitive flexibility overall” was high with 3,766±0,378 (min=3; max=5), and the mean score of “social appearance anxiety” was determined as 30,763±14,149 (min=16; max=80). table-3. correlation analysis between the scores of cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety. ability to produce alternative solutions tendency to control overall cognitive flexibility social appearance anxiety r 0,072 0,076 0,077 p 0,364 0,342 0,330 note: *<0,05; **<0,01. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 176-180 179 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 3 was determined that there was no relationship between the overall cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety (p>0.05). table-4. differentiaton of the cognitive flexiblity and social appearance anxiety scores concerning the descriptive characteristics. demographical characteristics n ability to produce alternative solutions tendency to control overall cognitive flexibility social appearance anxiety gender mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd female 56 3,679±0,332 3,832±0,381 3,732±0,326 25,839±9,242 male 104 3,734±0,415 3,876±0,437 3,784±0,403 33,414±15,593 t= -0,858 -0,645 -0,822 -3,331 p= 0,361 0,520 0,412 0,000 age mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd 30 and below 108 3,697±0,381 3,821±0,393 3,741±0,363 30,130±13,646 over 30 years old 52 3,750±0,402 3,942±0,457 3,817±0,404 32,077±15,193 t= -0,805 -1,726 -1,203 -0,815 p= 0,422 0,086 0,231 0,417 marital status mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd married 91 3,747±0,383 3,903±0,424 3,802±0,373 30,308±14,416 single 69 3,671±0,392 3,805±0,406 3,718±0,381 31,362±13,870 t= 1,232 1,465 1,390 -0,466 p= 0,220 0,145 0,167 0,642 school type mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd primary education 120 3,719±0,345 3,855±0,389 3,767±0,340 28,517±11,466 high school 40 3,700±0,499 3,879±0,499 3,763±0,478 37,500±18,786 t= 0,271 -0,311 0,060 -3,607 p= 0,822 0,784 0,960 0,006 teaching branch mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd physical education and sports teacher 101 3,724±0,436 3,856±0,468 3,770±0,426 33,792±16,153 primary school teacher 59 3,698±0,288 3,869±0,315 3,758±0,279 25,576±7,456 t= 0,420 -0,197 0,204 3,681 p= 0,642 0,828 0,821 0,000 teaching experience mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd less than 2 years 48 3,588±0,395 3,750±0,414 3,645±0,380 34,292±16,262 3-5 years 66 3,739±0,398 3,877±0,457 3,787±0,399 28,939±10,772 5 years and over 46 3,811±0,334 3,953±0,335 3,861±0,313 29,696±15,626 f= 4,276 2,940 4,188 2,205 p= 0,016 0,056 0,017 0,114 posthoc= 2 > 1, 3 > 1 (p<0.05) 2 > 1, 3 > 1 (p<0.05) having an administrative task mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd mean ± sd yes 22 3,787±0,445 3,974±0,424 3,852±0,417 35,636±16,695 no 138 3,703±0,378 3,843±0,415 3,752±0,371 29,986±13,608 t= 0,941 1,375 1,160 1,751 p= 0,348 0,171 0,248 0,082 note: *<0,05; **<0,01. table 4 was determined that the social appearance anxiety scores of women (x=25,839) were lower compared to the social appearance anxiety scores of men (x=33,414) (t=3-331; p=0<0.05). it was found that there was statistically no significant difference concerning ability to produce alternative solutions, tendency to control, cognitive flexibility overall scores of teachers in terms of gender variable (p>0.05). similar to the findings of our study, in a study conducted by alemdağ and oncü (2015) it was determined that there were statistically significant differences between social appearance anxiety scores and gender among teacher candidates. the social appearance anxiety scores of the males were found to be higher compared to those of the women. a study conducted by doğan (2010) indicated that males have higher social anxiety levels compared to the females. in a study conducted by uzümcü and müezzin (2018) it was determined that there were no significant differences in the cognitive flexibility levels of teachers concerning the gender. concerning the age variable, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference in the scores of teachers concerning the ability to produce alternative solutions, tendency to control, cognitive flexibility, and social appearance anxiety (p>0.05). in parallel to our study, in a study conducted on civil servants by güzeltepe (2017) it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the cognitive flexibility sub-dimensions of the personnel concerning the age variable. in terms of the marital status variable, it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the scores of teachers concerning the ability to produce alternative solutions, tendency to control, overall cognitive flexibility, and social appearance anxiety (p>0.05). in terms of the school type variable, it was determined that the social appearance anxiety scores of the teachers working in the primary schools (x=28,517) were lower than those of the teachers working in high schools (x=37,500) (t=-1.607; p=0.006<0.05). it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the scores of teachers concerning the ability to produce alternative solutions, tendency to control, and overall cognitive flexibility in terms of the school type variable (p>0.05). the reason that social appearance anxiety scores are high in high school teachers is that the students they teach are in their adolescence and older, and additionally, it can be considered that the constant effort of the students to follow the example of their teachers may increase the social appearance anxiety levels of their teachers. social appearance anxiety scores of physical education and sports teachers (x=33,792) were higher than those of the primary school teachers (x=25,576) (t=3,681; p=0<0.05). it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the scores of teachers concerning the ability to produce alternative solutions, tendency to control, and overall cognitive flexibility in terms of the teaching branch variable (p>0.05). in parallel with our study, a study conducted on teachers by kılıçarslan (2006) it was determined that physical self-perceptions of physical education teachers were asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 176-180 180 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 81% positive compared to those of other branch teachers. in terms of the teaching experience variable, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences among the ability to produce alternative solutions scores of teachers (f=4,276; p=0.016<0.05). the difference emerges from the fact that those with 3-5 years of teaching experience have higher ability to produce alternative solutions than those with less than 2 years of teaching experience (p<0.05). the ability to produce alternative solutions scores of those with teaching experience over 5 years are higher than those of teachers with teaching experience less than 2 years (p<0.05). in parallel with our study, uzümcü and müezzin (2018) determined statistically significant differences between the ability to produce alternative solutions sub-dimension and the teaching experience. it was observed that the significant difference was due to the high ability to produce alternative solutions scores of those with higher teaching experience compared to those with lower teaching experience. it was determined that there were statistically significant differences in the cognitive flexibility scores of teachers in terms of teaching experience variable (f=4,188; p=0.017<0.05). the difference stem from the fact that the cognitive flexibility scores of those with 3-5 years of teaching experience are higher than the cognitive flexibility scores of those with less than 2 years of teaching experience (p<0.05). the cognitive flexibility scores of those with teaching experience over 5 years are higher than the cognitive flexibility scores of those with teaching experience of less than 2 years (p<0.05). similarly, in the study conducted by uzümcü and müezzin (2018) it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the teaching experience of teachers and their overall cognitive flexibility levels. it was observed that the significant difference was due to the high cognitive flexibility scores of those with high teaching experience compared to those with lower teaching experience. it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference between the scores of tendency to control and social appearance anxiety in terms of teaching experience variable (p>0.05). it was determined that there was statistically no significant difference among the scores of ability to produce alternative solutions, tendency to control, overall cognitive flexibility, and social appearance anxiety in terms of having an administrative task variable (p>0.05). it can be considered that this is due to the non-homogeneity of administrative tasks in the sample group. 4. conclusion according to the results of the analysis, it was determined that there were statistically significant differences between the levels of cognitive flexibility and ability to produce alternative solutions, as well as between cognitive flexibility overall scores and teaching experience variable (p<0.05); however, no statistically significant difference was determined concerning gender, age, marital status, school type, teaching branch, and having an administrative task (p>0.05). it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference among the social appearance anxiety scores concerning gender, school type, and teaching branch variables (p<0.05); however, no significant difference was detected concerning age, marital status, teaching experience and having an administrative task variables (p>0.05). it was determined that there was statistically no significant relationship between the overall cognitive flexibility and social appearance anxiety (p>0.05). references alemdağ, s., & oncü, e. (2015). examination of teacher candidates' participation in physical activity and social appearance concerns. international journal of science culture and sport, 3(3), 287-300. aygun, m. (2019). emotional intelligence and leadership in ice hockey athletes. ankara: nobel publishing. cox, k. s. (1980). the effects of second-language study on the cognitive flexibility of freshman unıversity students. unpublished doctoral dissertation, the ohio state university. dennis, j. p., & wal, v. j. s. (2010). the cognitive flexibility inventory: instrument development and estimates of reliability and validity. cognitive therapy and research, 34(3), 241-253.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-009-9276-4. doğan, t. (2010). turkish version of the social appearance anxiety scale (sgkö): validity and reliability study. hacettepe university faculty of education journal, 39(39), 151-159. eroğlu, e. (2019). fundamentals of physical education and sports sciences. ankara: academician publishing house. eroğlu., e., & ersoy, a. (2019). examination of physical education and sports school students' learned strength levels according to some variables. international journal of multidisciplinary academic research, 6(2), 68-75. gülüm, i. v., & dağ, i. (2012). adaptation of the repetitive thinking scale and cognitive flexibility inventory into turkish, validity and reliability. anatolian journal of psychiatry / anatolian journal of psychiatry, 13(3). güzeltepe, s. (2017). investigation of cognitive flexibility levels of public personnel in terms of psychological contract roles is a field research: bakirköy courthouse. doctoral dissertation, istanbul aydin university institute of social sciences. hart, e. a., leary, m. r., & rejeski, w. j. (1989). tie measurement of social physique anxiety. journal of sport and exercise psychology, 11(1), 94-104.available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.11.1.94. hart., t. a., flora, d. b., palyo, s. a., fresco, d. m., holle, c., & heimberg, r. g. (2008). development and examination of the social appearance anxiety scale. assessment, 15(1), 48-59.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191107306673. karasar, n. (2005). scientific research methods. ankara: nobel publishing. kılıçarslan, e. (2006). comparison of the physical self-perception of physical education teachers and other branches: (example of kdz. ereğli). master thesis, sakarya university, institute of social sciences. murathan, t. (2018). use of information technologies in the sports industry (vol. 3, pp. 1547-1551). congress gaziantep: international professional and technical sciences. murathan, t., & özdemir, k. (2017). investigation of the attitudes of physical education teacher candidates toward teaching profession and sense of competence in terms of some cariables. journal of education and learning, 6(4), 229-238.available at: https://doi.org/10.5539/jel.v6n4p229. uğraş, s., & güllü, m. (2019). teachers' views on the adequacy of physical education teaching departments. anemonmuşalparslan university journal of social sciences, 7(2), 57–65. uzümcü, b., & müezzin, e. e. (2018). investigation of teachers' cognitive flexibility and professional satisfaction. sakarya university journal of education, 8(1), 8-25.available at: https://doi.org/10.19126/suje.325679. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 15 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 1, 15-21, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i1.3662 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group old but gold: secondary school students’ communication attitude scale serkan boyraz school of foreign languages, aksaray university, turkey. email: serkan.boyraz@gmail.com abstract communication as a skill is not something new; however, it has become much more important than ever before as the way and with whom we communicate have changed. that is why educators need to have valid and reliable tools to understand how this skill is perceived by students. this study aims to provide a valid and reliable secondary school students’ communication attitude scale (ssscas). a draft form for the scale was prepared with 32 items depending on the relevant literature and reviewed by experts in the field. the revised form was applied to 397 students at a state secondary school in aksaray city of turkey in the 2020-2021 academic year. first, explanatory factor analysis that tests construct validity was carried out and three items were extracted from further analysis due to insufficient factor loadings. the remaining 29 items are placed under four sub-dimensions called openness to communication, body language and preferences, self-confidence, and obstacles. the structure was tested through confirmatory factor analysis and the validity of the scale with the four sub-dimensions was found to be appropriate. the cronbach’s alpha values of all sub-dimensions and the scale were above the required level. as a result, the developed scale is a valid and reliable scale to assess communication attitudes of secondary school students. keywords: communication skill, 21st century abilities, transversal skills, scale development, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis. citation | serkan boyraz (2022). old but gold: secondary school students’ communication attitude scale. asian journal of education and training, 8(1): 15-21. history: received: 26 november 2021 revised: 7 january 2022 accepted: 19 january 2022 published: 24 january 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 16 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 17 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 17 4. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 20 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 21 mailto:serkan.boyraz@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i1.3662 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6483-1397 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 15-21 16 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature communication skill is a must in all aspects of life. that is why educational institutions and educators need to pay special attention for developing this skill of their students. the development, however, starts by recognizing the status, and this requires valid and reliable measurement tools. this research provides educators that study with secondary school students with such a tool. 1. introduction differing significantly from 20th century education in which tests measured students' fluency in abstract routine skills, the education in the 21st century should assess students' thinking and other skills when a standardized approach is not applicable (dede, 2010). while definitions differ, numerous 21st-century abilities are required to take advantage of fast evolving technology through "soft skills" that computers cannot give, as well as creativity, which is essential for working and living in an increasingly complex, constantly changing global society (walser, 2008). to survive in the 21st century, then, it is important to acquire these century-specific skills such as multiple literacy requirements and self-confidence outside of school, being able to work effectively across local and international borders, and being able to compete globally (uche, kaegon, & okata, 2016). although they are not new in nature and trend, 21st century skills are becoming increasingly important at the national and international policy level. 21st century skills include the general complex skills and associated knowledge and attitudes often required to live, work, and contribute to the current and future information society. these skills are required for any domain, profession, or type of job; they are important for all kinds of work, education, and life in general and can be applied in a wide variety of situations and subject areas (rusman & dirkx, 2017). so, “critical thinking and problem solving” (sharing thoughts, questions, ideas, and solutions), “effective communication” (working together to achieve a goal putting necessary effort, talent, expertise, and intelligence to work), “collaboration” (looking at problems in different and original ways by bringing the information from various subjects and disciplines together), and “creativity and innovation” (trying new approaches to achieve meaningful and productive results) are all expected of today's students (medeiros, júnior, bender, menegussi, & curcher, 2017). as a result, students should be encouraged and trained to share ideas (communicative) based on their activities; they should be trained to collaborate (collaborate) with other stakeholders through the exchange of knowledge and experience in doing or completing the work (widiawati, joyoatmojo, & sudiyanto, 2018). if students do not have these skills, they will not be able to fulfill the requirements of the age of globalization and will have a hard time competing in the 21st century. as a result, they will not be able to achieve success in the future (robi & dafik, 2018). communication has always been a necessary skill in every aspect of life from business to family relations, but with the developments in the field of information, media and digital technologies brought by the current period, people from different cultures have begun to live and / or share at an unprecedented speed, compared to previous generations. as a result, it has become a more visible and vital skill for this generation (piascik, 2015). while the emphasis was on correct pronunciation, fluency in reading and accuracy in writing in the industrialization era, graduates are expected to have deeper and broader communication skills with the advancement in information and communication technologies in the 21st century (kivunja, 2015). long-standing interest in communication skill and communication competence is fueled by the fact that people differ in their social competence and the quality of one's communication performance has a significant impact on professional and personal success and satisfaction (greene, 2021). the capacity to communicate clearly via spoken, written, and nonverbal language is referred to as communication, and the features of its abilities may be stated as follows: a) effectively expressing thoughts and ideas in various forms and contexts through verbal, written, and nonverbal means, b) effectively deciphering meaning, including knowledge, values, perceptions, and motivations, c) using multiple media and technologies and understanding how to assess their effectiveness and impact, and d) communicating effectively in a variety of settings (including multilingual) (handajani & pratiwi, 2018). while verbal communication includes verbal and written communication, nonverbal communication includes visual and auditory elements such as appearance, tone, facial expression, gestures (grace & gilsdorf, 2004; halimah & sukmayadi, 2019). communication as a classroom skill, in the simplest way, is understood as students’ learning how to express their thoughts and ideas by using different types of communication such as verbal, written or nonverbal for a wide variety of purposes in different teams and environments (smit, 2015). a closer examination of these requirements clearly shows why communication skills take a place within the 4c's super skills, as it's difficult to think anyone being able to effectively work or live without using them in any form. effective communication is efficiently transmitting the message you want to express to the others, which necessitates training and practice so that learners may develop the communication abilities they'll need in any part of their life and especially at work after graduation. as a result, graduates should be taught how to organize the communication and ensure that it is clear, succinct, concrete, consistent, accurate, comprehensive, and respectful (kivunja, 2015). individuals with superior communication abilities, for example, have more successful personal and professional life than those who do not, according to goleman (2012) study on emotional intelligence. as a result, instructors and educational entities from pre-kindergarten to university are forced to train learners to be successful communicators (educational testing service, 2003). finally, new curriculum in this century have pushed students to be more active agents in the learning process, necessitating the development of communication skills in order for them to assume the center stage position previously reserved for instructors (yusof & halim, 2014). teachers' encouragement of classroom communication will then serve three main aims: to boost relevant knowledge from students who have already acquired it but are unable to relate it to the question, enable them to interact with the others in discussions, and appropriately define what kind of experiences they have had with peers in order to provide their own input and effect to the discussion (farrell, 2009). discussing the importance and current situation of the communication skill up to here, this research aims to develop a reliable and valid scale for secondary school students to assess their communication skills. following this asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 15-21 17 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group aim, the research question is formed as follows: is secondary school students’ communication attitude scale (ssscas) developed by the researcher a reliable and valid tool? 2. method the general survey approach was used in the research, which aimed to construct a scale for secondary school students to express their opinions regarding communication abilities. this method was used as it enables to find out the qualities, perceptions and motivations of a universe (hocaoğlu & akkuş-baysal, 2019). the procedure started by examining the relevant literature and a draft scale with 32 items was formed. then, the draft form was revised in terms of item relevance, order and language through expert opinions and pilotted. the data from pilotting was subjected to exploratory factor analysis (efa) and then confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). factor analysis, among the some other reasons, is used to test scoring validity when a measure and related scoring keys have been developed. the underlying constrcuts and factors in a scale are explored in efa whose history goes back to the beginning of 20th century, while specific expectations about the number of factors, whether variables reflect the given factors and if these factors are correlated is questioned in cfa that can be considered as a new approach compared to efa (thompson, 2004). 2.1. participants the sampling method of the research was simple random sampling. this method is used when the universe has common characteristics such as students of medicine school (sahin & karakus, 2019). this method was appropriate for the research as the participants were all students at the same school level which is secondary school. the pilot study was carried out at a secondary school in aksaray city of turkey and while 430 students were given the scale, the sample included 397 students due missing answers or same answer to all questions. 3. findings 3.1. exploratory factor analysis the draft form of the ssscas that consisted of 32 items was applied to 430 secondary school students, and it was seen that 397 scales could be used for analysis. exploratory factor analysis (efa) was performed with the data obtained but to determine the adequacy of the data set collected for efa, kmo and barlett tests’ results were controlled first. when the kmo value is above 0.7, it represents a powerful partial correlation among the items of the scale, and when barlett test result is significant (p> 0.05), it points out appropriate construct validity (chen, yu, & huang, 2016). kmo (0.822) and barlett (p= 0.000) test results indicated that the data was appropriate for efa. according to the results of efa, there were ten factors whose eigen value was above 1 and the explained variance by them was 59.93% of the total. the scree plot that shows the dominant factors (figure 1) is used to decide the number of factors (cokluk, sekercioğlu, & büyüköztürk, 2012). figure 1. ssscas scree plot. the point on this graph where the decline begins to flatten is the cutoff point for major significant contribution to variance and used to determine how many factors there are (gorsuch, 1974; cited by cokluk et al. (2012)). as the downtrend became even starting from the fifth point (see in figure 1), the scale was supposed to have four factors. the items in a scale are required to have a factor loading over 0.39 (pituch & stevens, 2016) and in the repeated efa with four-factor structure the ninth, tenth and twelfth items in the draft scale were excluded as they did not meet this requirement. the factor loading of the remaining items are given in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 15-21 18 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. ssscas rotated component matrix. component 1 2 3 4 oc-1 0.682 oc-2 0.641 oc-3 0.626 oc-4 (-) 0.598 oc-5 0.597 oc-6 0.595 oc-7 0.575 oc-8 0.564 oc-9 0.559 oc-10 0.545 oc-11 0.530 oc-12 0.451 bl&p-13 0.664 bl&p-14 0.618 bl&p-15 0.592 bl&p-16 0.584 bl&p-17 0.429 bl&p-18 0.416 bl&p-19 0.407 sc-20 0.697 sc-21 0.630 sc-22 0.575 sc-23 0.546 sc-24 0.516 sc-25 0.498 obs-26 (-) 0.726 obs-27 (-) 0.644 obs-28 (-) 0.534 obs-29 (-) 0.509 when three items were excluded in the four-factor structure, the factor loadings of the items ranged between 0.407 and 0.726 (see table 1). the first sub-dimension which is called “openness to communication” since the items indicate the willingness to start and maintain the communication includes 12 items. the second sub-dimension which is called “body language and preferences” includes 7 items and the items are about either use of body language as a communication tool or preferences over the way of communication (oral or written). the next subdimension includes 6 items and is called “self-confidence” as these items represent how well the students think they are in communication. the last one includes 4 items and called “obstacles” as these items are about negative behaviors that block communication. the total variance explained (tve) is given in table 2. table 2. ssscas explained variance statistics. factor initial eigenvalues extractions sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings total variance % total total variance % cumulative ‘% total variance % cumulative % 1 5.846 20.158 20.158 5.846 20.158 20.158 4.548 15.684 15.684 2 2.351 8.107 28.265 2.351 8.107 28.265 2.712 9.351 25.036 3 1.922 6.626 34.891 1.922 6.626 34.891 2.652 9.143 34.179 4 1.717 5.921 40.812 1.717 5.921 40.812 1.924 6.633 40.812 the tve by the four-factor is 40.812%. while developing a multifactorial scale in the social sciences field, the explained variance between 40% and 60% is accepted as sufficient (cokluk et al., 2012). as a result, the tve is sufficient. 3.2. reliability analysis table 3 represents the reliability index values of the scale and its sub-dimensions. table 3. ssscas reliability statistics. sub-dimension number of items cronbach’s alpha openness to communication (oc) 12 0.83 body language and preferences (bl&p) 7 0.81 self-confidence (sc) 6 0.80 obstacles (obs) 4 0.74 ssscas 29 0.81 after the construct validity analysis (cfa) of the communication skills scale was over, cronbach’s alpha reliability values were examined. the reliability value of the oc is 0.83, for the bl&p 0.81, for sc 0.80 and for obs 0.74. the reliability value of the ssscas is 0.81 and they are all above the lower limit of 0.70 (see table 3). the results of the correlation analysis that indicate the internal consistency showed that there is a significant correlation between all items in the scale and the total score at the level of 0.01 (item-total correlation scores range between 0.40 and 0.57). the independent t-test results between the scores of the highest and lowest 27% groups also show a statistically significant discrimination index for all items. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 15-21 19 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.3. confirmatory factor analysis after the exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis for the construct validity of the scale, first stage confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was carried out to test the construct validity and its results are represented below. cfa results show that the t values of the items are significant at0.01 level and the error variances of the 13th and 29th items (0.90 and 0.95, respectively) were high (see figure 2), but since a significant t value was obtained for these items, it was decided to keep them in the scale (cokluk et al., 2012). the ratio of chi-square value (996.51) to degrees of freedom (344) which is another important indicator was calculated as 2.89 and the ratio below three in large samples indicates perfect fit. the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) value in the diagram (0.069) indicates perfect fit when it is less than 0.05, and a good fit when less than 0.08. goodness of fit index (gfi) (0.82) and adjusted goodness of fit index (agfi) (0.82) values are below 0.90 which is the cut point for good fit. these values indicate a poor fit. similarly, the root mean square residual (rmr) result (0.12) corresponds to poor fit since good fit requires a value of 0.10 or below, while the standardized rmr (srmr) (0.078) result indicated good fit as it is below the cut point of 0.08. in other words, while rmr indicates weak fit, standardized rmr shows good fit. non-normed fit index (nnfi) and comparative fit index (cfi) fit indices are required to be above 0.90 for a good fit and nnfi value (0.88) and cfi value (0.89) are below the cut point, so they indicate poor fit. the first stage cfa analysis was followed by the second stage cfa and the results are as shown below (see figure 3). figure 2. ssscas first stage cfa diagram asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 15-21 20 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 3. ssscas second stage cfa diagram. according to the results of the second stage confirmatory factor analysis, the t values of the items are significant at0.01 level and the error variance values of all items are below the critical point of 0.90 (see figure 3). the ratio of the chi-square value (994.09) to the degrees of freedom (346), was calculated as 2.87. which indicates perfect fit. the rmsea value should be lower than 0.05 for perfect fit and 0.80 for a good fit. as the value in the diagram (0.069) is less than 0.08, this points out a good fit (cokluk et al., 2012). gfi (0.85) and agfi (0.82) are below the cut point of good fit (0.90). so, there is a poor fit in the structure in terms of the relevant values. similarly, the rmr (0.12) result is above the value of 0.10, which corresponds to poor fit, while the standardized rmr (0.078) result is below the threshold of good fit which is 0.08. while rmr value indicates poor fit, srmr indicates good fit. the fit indices nnfi and cfi should be above 0.90 but nnfi (0.88) and cfi (0.89) values reveal poor fit again. 4. conclusion and discussion communication is still a powerful tool in the 21st century that is characterized as one of the soft skills. no matter how much it is affected by the technology, communication as a skill stands as the basic of the education, life, and work. that is why it is needed to be taken seriously, examined, and developed. this study aimed to develop a valid and reliable scale to assess secondary school students’ communication skills. the piloting of the 32 items included scale included data from 397 participants from a government state school in aksaray-turkey. three items from the draft form of the scale were excluded from exploratory factor analysis due to insufficient factor loading and following analysis were carried out on 29 items. the remaining items lie under four sub-dimensions, namely openness to communication, body language and preferences, self-confidence, and obstacles. the structure validity was approved through confirmatory factor analysis. the reliability scores of the sub-dimensions and the scale are above the required level. consequently, the ssscas is a valid and reliable tool to use with secondary school students. educators are highly offered to follow communication skills of their students to prepare them for an age in which communication is a key skill among the others. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 15-21 21 © 2022 by the authors; 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(2018). higher order thinking skills as effect of problem based learning in the 21st century learning. international journal of multicultural and multireligious understanding, 5(3), 96-105. yusof, f. m., & halim, h. (2014). understanding teacher communication skills. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 155, 471476.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.10.324. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://mspiascik.weebly.com/common-core-learning-standards.html http://mspiascik.weebly.com/common-core-learning-standards.html 48 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 48-54, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5368 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the need for values education programs for both pre-service teachers and in-service teachers in vietnam quynh thi nhu nguyen1 son van huynh2 ( corresponding author) 1school of educational studies, ho chi minh city university of education, vietnam. email: quynhntn@hcmue.edu.vn 2ho chi minh city university of education, vietnam. email: sonhv@hcmue.edu.vn abstract this paper investigates the perceptions of pre-service teachers and in-service teachers regarding the concept of 'values education' and the preparation of values education in professional programs in vietnam. furthermore, the pedagogical strategies employed by teachers in addressing values education situations in their classrooms are explored. a qualitative research design was employed, involving interviews with forty-three pre-service teachers from a university. additionally, eighteen teachers from two different high schools were interviewed, and their teaching sessions, along with school assemblies, were observed. the findings reveal that values education is primarily understood as the instruction of living skills and moral education. there is a lack of conceptualization and knowledge regarding values education among the participants. both preservice teachers and in-service teachers did not receive formal values education programs during their university education, and the support provided by schools in this regard was limited. teachers tended to integrate values education into subjects randomly and subjectively, without employing advanced strategies. inconsistencies in implementation and challenges associated with teaching values were observed. highlighting an urgent necessity, this article emphasizes the imperative need for values education programs tailored for both pre-service and in-service teachers in vietnam. it underscores the significance of adequately equipping teachers to effectively address values education in their classroom. keywords: high school students, pre-service teachers, teacher education, teachers’ perception, teaching methods, value education. citation | nguyen, q. t. n., & huynh, s. v. (2024). the need for values education programs for both pre-service teachers and inservice teachers in vietnam. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 48–54. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5368 history: received: 23 october 2023 revised: 8 january 2024 accepted: 31 january 2024 published: 7 february 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of ho chi minh city university of education, vietnam has granted approval for this study on 8 september 2022 (ref. no. 2369-qđ-đhsp). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 49 2. research methods ............................................................................................................................................................................ 49 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 50 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 52 5. conclusion and implications ......................................................................................................................................................... 53 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 54 mailto:quynhntn@hcmue.edu.vn mailto:sonhv@hcmue.edu.vn https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5368 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8612-4052 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3314-4329 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 48-54 49 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper contributes to the literature by emphasizing the crucial role of integrating values education programs into pre-service training, highlighting their significance in enhancing future job performance among educators. additionally, it identifies significant challenges within values education pre-service teacher training, advocating for administrative consideration in the design of programs aimed at teacher preparation. 1. introduction contemporarily, a teacher's service extends beyond the intellectual growth of their students; they must also consider the individual's overall well-being and values tendency. this implies a role for values education in supporting comprehensive personal and social development of students as a whole. if society expects teachers with their extended role to impart and promote values in their classrooms, universities must offer courses to pre-service teachers that enable them to comprehend their own values and belief, values education pedagogies, and values education evaluation (mergler, 2008; spooner-lane, curtis, & mergler, 2010). lovat, dally, clement, and toomey (2011b) maintain that the curriculum of teacher education should develop moral aspects of pre-service teachers to enhance quality teaching. in numerous researches and impractical experiences of values education in australia, they found the link between quality teaching and values education (lovat, 2011, 2017; lovat, dally, clement, & toomey, 2011a; lovat et al., 2011b). correspondingly, revell and arthur (2007) address that pre-service teachers should be explicitly quipped with values education and moral development to support their students efficiently. nevertheless, thornberg (2008) reveals that values education is “(a) most often reactive and unplanned, (b) embedded in everyday school life with a focus on students’ everyday behaviour in school as a constantly ongoing informal curriculum, and (c) partly or mostly unconsciously performed by the teachers” (p. 1795). additionally, when describing the ways values education is implemented at their schools, instead of using academic language, theories and research in values education, teachers mention their personal stories and childhood experiences (thornberg, 2008). likewise, findings of the research of thornberg (2013) show that both swedish and turkish teachers present a lack of professional language in values education practices and they employ values education strategies illustrated by their personal experiences. this problem may have originated from teacher education programs in values education (thornberg, 2013). as halstead (1996) proposes one issue of values education in school is an inadequate preparation in pre-service teacher training. thus, teachers primarily depend on their own moral instincts to process daily values education practice in their classroom. lovat et al. (2011a) also suggest that there has been a lack of attention in teacher education regarding values education. six significant obstacles to character education pre-service teacher training are outlined by berkowitz (1998). these include disagreements over the definition of character education, what constitutes values or character education, limited space in pre-service teacher curricula, a lack of scientific data on effective character education factors and outcomes, a scarcity of character education expertise and resources, and conflicts among teacher educators over the compatibility of character education. he also proposes solutions to these challenges, such as conducting more research in teacher education. an essential requirement is the dedication of pre-service teacher educators and their institutions to character education. in vietnam, limited research has been conducted on values education, highlighting the gap in both research and implementation of values education in schools (nguyen, 2018; nguyen, 2018). in addition, there is a lack of values education for pre-service teachers at universities and during on-the-job training (nguyen, 2018). however, values education is still happening in schools, whether or not its stakeholders perceive it, as it is inherently values-laden. it is imperative to investigate the current state of values education in vietnam, commencing with teachers' perceptions, as their beliefs and values have a significant impact on their teaching styles and pedagogies (mergler, 2008). pre-service teachers should be encouraged to explore the values they believe in, and the values they express by their choices and behaviour, which “allows them to become better informed about their own selves and more skilled at developing these skills in their future students” (mergler, 2008). additionally, according to spooner-lane et al. (2010), embedding values education in pre-service teacher education programs is crucial for enhancing the quality of teaching at universities. based on these theories and the issues surrounding values education in vietnam, three research questions have been formulated as follows: 1. how do pre-service teachers and teachers perceive values education? 2. how do professional programs provide pre-service and in-service teachers with values education in vietnam? 3. in which ways, does teachers cope with values-education-related situations in their classrooms? 2. research methods the study employed a qualitative research methodology to respond to its research questions. the primary instruments employed for data collection were semi-structured interviews, utilized for both teachers and student teachers. additionally, observations were conducted to collect data on teacher participants during their teaching sessions, head teachers' meetings, and school assemblies. the study encompassed a total of forty-three student teachers enrolled in a university, identified as st1 to st43, as well as eighteen teachers from two government colleges, designated as t1 to t18. thematic analysis was performed on the collected data using nvivo software, resulting in the emergence of three key themes: (1) the perception of values education, (2) professional preparation for teachers, and (3) strategies for values-education-related situations. frequencies of participants' responses were computed and categorized into these thematic areas. noteworthy quotations were carefully selected to support the research findings. the data was analyzed using a descriptive and inductive approach, and subsequently presented in a written format. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 48-54 50 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. findings 3.1. perception of values education table 1 provides different opinions of pre-service and teachers about the definition of values education. what is striking in this table is values education was understood as teaching living skills for students. values education is “teaching living skills such as public speaking, presentation, listening, and persuading skills.” (t18), “skills to help students to apply their knowledge into their real live” (t7), and “helping students to develop skills. that is values education” (t6). table 1. perception of values education. teachers and student teachers’ understanding of values education f t st 1 values education is to train living skills for students 10 32 2 values education is moral and character values education 12 23 3 values education is a mean of transferring political education and teaching students becoming good citizens 7 9 4 values education is comprehensive education to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes for students 2 2 5 values education is what education can bring to a person and the purpose of learning 4 0 6 values education is about teaching people the ways of behaving 8 7 7 values education is to shape students’ behaviour 3 8 8 values education is to build attitudes for students 4 8 9 values education is teaching people the positive things 3 11 10 values education is to teach students a way of thinking and living 2 0 11 values education is the values of a subject 3 0 12 values education is to something that helps young people to achieve their goals 1 2 13 do not know what is values education 2 5 similarly, the majority of student teachers described values education as teaching life skills to support students in their lives and future careers. one of the sample responses was as follows: i think values education is like equipping students with important skills that will be useful in their lives, such as how to speak confidently in public places or how to effectively present and convince others. other skills like teamwork building and cooperation are also very important because people will need them to succeed in the workplace. after leaving school, people want to find good jobs, and these skills can help them in that pursuit. without these skills, students will be less competitive in the labor market. (st 14). further analysis showed that values education was “educational activities to teach students about the good, the bad, the right and the wrong to help them to become good citizens” (t17), “teaching moral standards for our students” (t12), “guiding students to recognize what is right, what is wrong, what should do and should not” (t10), and “teaching and learning what values are important to students’ lives” (t9). for student teachers, values education served as a means to help individuals "understand and adhere to societal norms" (st21), "prevent themselves from engaging in negative behaviors and attitudes" (st27), and "cultivate a sense of being morally upright individuals for their families and society" (st43). there were a few teachers and student teachers who were unable to provide a direct definition of values education; they simply answered that they did not know. however, some of them did provide specific examples of values education. values education is to teach students about love, responsibility, tolerance and some traditional values such as respect teachers and studious spirit, patriotism and humanity. (t15). i think they are care, honesty, integrity, braveness and freedom, i guess (st 42). values education, is that we teach students about disciplines, hard work, care, and compassion? (st 29). 3.2. professional preparation for teachers 3.2.1. pre-service teacher training according to student teachers, their university provides a course called "values education." however, this course “is not mandatory and is specifically included in the curriculum of the department of education for their own students. it is not a requirement for all pre-service teachers of our university”. (st23). the curriculum at university did not provide pre-service teachers with values education, as some teachers answered straightforwardly: “at university, people did not teach us [pre-service teachers] values education” (t4). “values education was taught at university? as far as i can remember, it hardly was not!” (t2). “i am unsure about that, maybe not” (t12). “when i studied at university ten years ago, any values education training program for students was absent. now i have to manage the classroom and solve all the problems within it by myself as a head teacher” (t1), “our university hardly trained us or even hardly mentioned values education in the training programs. so, values education with us is quite new” (t15), “no, but maybe in text books, people are illustrated with some classroom situations but i think proposed solutions are ideal and unrealistic” (t5). several teachers said that they found subjects such as general education, high school education and educational psychology included some aspects of values education. yet these subjects were deemed overly theoretical and rooted in a soviet educational philosophy which was not suitable for the current educational context in vietnam. as a result, teachers found it challenging to apply these concepts in practical teaching. we learnt some educational and psychological subjects such as general education, student psychology with basic knowledge but they were so theoretical. (t1). the educational philosophies of educational and psychological textbooks were so ideal and far different from the real situations in classrooms. (t5). there has been a big gap between what we learned and what is really happening in the classroom. (t7). maybe we learned values education implicitly through some education and psychology subjects asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 48-54 51 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group but the university used the curriculum and textbooks from the soviet time… i think the vietnamese society now is quite different and we should not use these old books for teaching at universities. (t10). the university trained us in some subjects related to students’ psychology but they were so theoretical and abstract. we got bored and often ignored them. (t13). some teachers also mentioned that their practicum periods in upper secondary schools aided them with valuable and practical experiences, particularly in terms of creating lesson plans and engaging in rehearsal teaching sessions. however, the effectiveness of these experiences largely relied on the practicum supervisors as a teacher said: i was so lucky when i did internship in an upper secondary school and my supervisor was so nice and enthusiastic. she instructed me how to compose lesson plans, practise teaching and process common situations happening in classroom. however, some supervisors of my friends did not pay attention to giving practical guidance. (t1). 3.2.2. professional developments when questioned about the level of support from the school regarding values education, the majority of teachers responded with statements such as “there has been no training program to assist us to teach values” (t9) or “i have never heard of any seminars or workshops about values education at my school” (t12). teachers had to manage values education problems by themselves, for example, “students in my head class are quite passive and do not want to attend some social activities. i often encourage them to join in and tell them how to be confident to communicate with other people” (t10). a teacher who is also a school leader admitted that the school did not organize any values education training programs for teachers, except for occasional workshops and seminars for head teachers focused on managing classroom behavior“no, we do not train teachers in values education…we sometimes provide workshops and seminars for head teachers to cope with some problems in their classrooms” (t17). however, teacher t10 thought that extra-curricular activities of the youth union supported them to teach values. the youth union is responsible for holding extra-curricular activities to promote values such as respect for teachers and studious spirit, patriotism, friendship, unify and so forth. throughout each school year, these activities are organized according to the theme of each month. the youth union of the school assists head teachers to organize some creative activities and entertainment to help students to release stress and promote friendship, confidence and teamwork. 3.3. strategies for values-education-related situations the teacher participants employed various strategies in their classrooms to address values education situations, as shown in table 2. modeling positive behavior and attitudes emerged as a prevalent approach. additionally, integrating values education into lessons through questioning, storytelling, and discussions, as well as utilizing videos, games, and visual aids for class debates and role-playing, were common methods. creating a friendly learning environment and establishing strong rapport with students were also emphasized. teachers drew upon real-life examples and guided students to collaborate as a team to promote cooperation, tolerance, and respect. however, it is worth noting that some teachers still resorted to the use of rebuke and punishment. table 2. strategies for values-education-related situations. ways in which teachers handle values-education-related situations f 1 modeling positive behaviour and attitudes 16 2 integrating values education into their lessons by questioning, storytelling, discussing 13 3 using videos, games and visual objects for class debate, discussion and role-playing 10 4 using good examples of real people in life 10 5 guiding students to work as a team to promote cooperation, tolerance and respect 9 6 creating a friendly learning environment where students feel comfortable 8 7 building good rapports with students 9 8 drawing on their own teaching experiences, using a trial-and-error approach to determine what is right and wrong 5 9 using their childhood experiences (for example, moral lessons from their parents or grandparents) 6 10 using experiences from their own schools (from their former teachers) 8 11 asking students to read good books 2 12 using rebuke and punishment 6 these strategies were mostly unplanned in advance and based on each teacher experiences as a teacher said: “when i have an unsuccessful teaching session, i note my failure and try to avoid this at other times.” (t8). they also rely on their own childhood experiences: now i manage a classroom and solve all problems within it by my teaching experiences. in some cases, i thought i used experiences that i was taught by my family… i was taught confucian values by my parents and grandparents and now i am teaching students in the same way… women need to achieve four virtues including housework competency, good appearance, skilful speech and moral behaviour. men need to fulfil benevolence, propriety, righteousness, knowledge, integrity. (t1) similarly, t12 employed his adherence to confucian values to instruct students: i have a deep faith in confucian values and utilize them as a foundation for teaching my students. these values serve as a key for assessing an individual's dignity. confucian values regulated the ways that people behaved in family and in society confucianism promotes the social responsibilities of an individual. a noble man cannot think only for himself and his family but only for all people in society. thus, the most remarkable advantage we learn from confucianism is respect for teacher and studious spirit. (t12) asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 48-54 52 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the data collected from teacher interviews occasionally overlapped with the findings derived from classroom observations. for instance, during the interviews, t1 and t4 emphasized the utilization of positive examples in their teaching practices. in a recorded head teacher meeting, t1 highlighted the involvement of class 12a2 in a charitable volunteer group that regularly visited orphanages and assisted homeless individuals. t1 encouraged all students to participate and conveyed that through helping others, not only do they benefit the recipients, but they also cultivate love and inner peace within themselves. similarly, in a teaching session, t4 shared real-life stories and provided updates on positive news. t4 emphasized the effectiveness of using good examples as students were more receptive to hearing others' stories and applying them to their own situations, rather than being lectured directly. however, certain teacher responses diverged significantly from the actual implementation observed in their classrooms. when i observed t5 during a teaching session, i noticed a silent and tense atmosphere in the classroom. the teacher moved from the front to the back of the room, reprimanding students for various reasons such as their hair color, untidy notebooks, and sitting posture. although other teachers did not explicitly mention frequent reprimands and punishments, their teaching sessions often involved such disciplinary actions. during a head teacher meeting, t2 engaged in an argument with a student who allowed a friend to copy their homework, labeling it as cheating. the teacher also criticized another student who failed to greet the history subject teacher in the car park. as a consequence, both students received a personal behavior report that required their parents' signatures as a form of punishment. t8, on the other hand, would raise her voice loudly when students couldn't answer her questions and would even hit the hands of two students who were not focusing, instructing them to meet her after class. classroom observations supported the notion that the level of student cooperation was influenced by the atmosphere created by teachers. the majority of teachers (13 out of 18) managed their classrooms in a gentle and open manner, employing humorous questions to re-engage bored students. students in these classrooms displayed interest in the lessons, actively participated in answering questions, and sought clarification when needed. in contrast, the classes of t2, t5, t8, t13, and t16 were characterized by high levels of stress, resulting in a lack of student cooperation. during a monday morning head teacher meeting, t2 criticized students who had violated rules and expressed concerns about their passive approach to learning. the students remained quiet, offering no response or expression. a similar situation unfolded in t5's teaching period, as he focused on behavior, uniform, and hair, walking around the classroom. t8 divided the class into groups to discuss different topics within a short time frame, resulting in an abstract and challenging task. the teacher's use of shouting, standing with arms akimbo, and pointing towards students' faces further contributed to a negative classroom atmosphere, leading students to ignore the teacher and the lesson. t13 and t16 expressed dissatisfaction with student attitudes and mistakes, creating a stressful environment where students felt nervous or disengaged. observations conducted in classroom lobbies during lunchtime and at monday assemblies, which focused on superintendents' communication and behavior. on one occasion, a female superintendent addressed a boy impolitely as he attempted to escape, chasing him and painfully pinching his left ear in front of a crowd. during a monday assembly, the general superintendent displayed strict behavior, shouting impolitely when someone was talking and instructing those students to stand in front of the school. another incident involved a female superintendent interrupting a geography session to publicly read a list of students with outstanding tuition fees, neglecting to express gratitude when leaving. these incidents served as poor behavioral models for students. furthermore, during the study period, a serious case of a boy bullying his peers for money emerged. as observed during a head teacher meeting, teacher t1 utilized this incident to educate students about appropriate behavior, ensuring anonymity for the boy. however, during a school assembly, the general superintendent singled out the boy, publicly announcing his actions and assigning a punishment of two weeks off-school. the boy kept his head down, gazing at his feet while holding his hands in front of his chest. t17 is also a school leader said that: “some in-service teachers do not know how to teach values. that is not to mention some in-services teachers may exclude values education. instead, they just focus on their subjects”. t14 felt that “some in-service teachers are confused with values education. each teacher has their own way. even in a class, students might be upset because values are guided differently from teacher to teacher depending on their own personal beliefs”. 4. discussion first, this study revealed diverse perspectives on values education among participants, with some considering it as a way for teaching practical life skills, such as public speaking, presentation, listening, and persuading skills, while others emphasized the significance of moral and character education. according to berkowitz (2011); lovat (2017) and thornberg and oğuz (2016), moral education is one kind of values education. in various asian countries, particularly those in the asia-pacific region like vietnam, values education is predominantly conveyed through moral education, which is delivered as a distinct subject rather than being integrated into the mainstream educational intentions and pedagogy, as is common in other parts of the world, including australia (lovat, 2017). these study findings partly align with participants' perceptions of values education. however, the notion that values education encompasses the teaching of practical living skills, such as public speaking, presentation, listening, and persuading skills, has not been previously documented. it is important to recognize that values education differs from the training of life skills or survival skills. notably, the focus on teaching life skills in vietnam schools has emerged recently, likely due to a recognition of the inadequate life skills among vietnamese students. nevertheless, the effectiveness of this approach remains questionable. many vietnamese schools currently offer life skills education on a temporary basis without adequate attention to its impact on students, prioritizing competitive achievements over the genuine effects of life skills activities (le, 2018). nonetheless some teachers and student teachers, encountered difficulties in providing a direct definition of values education and expressed their limited understanding of the subject matter. previous research has highlighted that “educators lack a discourse to express their ideas about values and to conceptualize the area of values in education. this stems, largely, from the lack of theoretical knowledge and experience educators possess in this area.” (ling, 1998). the research of thornberg (2016) indicates that respondents relied on everyday language asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 48-54 53 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group to describe values and values education, which proved challenging to verbalize. the participants in these studies exhibited a dearth of meta-language when discussing values education, opting to reference their childhood experiences and personal learning rather than drawing upon educational theories or studies from academic disciplines. likewise, the work of puroila et al. (2016) and sigurdardottir and einarsdottir (2016) reveals that preschool teachers encounter difficulties in defining the concept of values, rarely employing the term in interviews. these findings partially align with the viewpoints expressed by the participants regarding values education in the present study. second, the support of values education in pre-service teacher training at the university level is limited. student teachers reported that their university offers a subject called "values education," but it is not mandatory for all pre-service teachers. this aligns with the experiences shared by several teachers who indicated that values education was not emphasized or taught during their university training. they described a lack of focus on values education in the curriculum and expressed that the theoretical nature of subjects like general education, high school education, and educational psychology made it difficult to apply those concepts practically in the classroom. while the university training was lacking in values education, some teachers mentioned the value of practical experiences gained during their practicum periods. these experiences provided them with opportunities to create lesson plans and engage in rehearsal teaching sessions, although the effectiveness of these experiences varied depending on the guidance provided by practicum supervisors. in terms of professional development, the majority of teachers expressed a lack of support from their schools in terms of values education. they reported a lack of training programs, seminars, and workshops specifically addressing values education. teachers were left to manage values education issues on their own, finding ways to encourage student participation and address valuesrelated challenges. however, some teachers highlighted the support they received from extracurricular activities organized by the youth union. recent values education research in many parts of the world shows that the quality of education can be significantly enhanced through explicit and systematic planning and implementation of values education (australian government, 2008, 2011; berkowitz, 2011; hawkes, 2010; lovat, 2017; lovat et al., 2011a; thornberg, 2016). the data from this study express opposite findings wherein values education is either largely unplanned by the school, or poorly prepared for and by teachers. the participants in the study disclosed that their universities did not offer any specific values education programs during their studies. furthermore, the knowledge they acquired in general education and psychological education was perceived as excessively theoretical and outdated, making it challenging for them to effectively incorporate these concepts into their current teaching practices. these findings are consistent with previous research that highlighted the insufficient training of pre-service teachers in values education (halstead, 1996; lovat et al., 2011b; thornberg, 2013). as previously mentioned, the new request for teachers is being effective agencies and models of values education (mergler, 2008; revell & arthur, 2007; spooner-lane et al., 2010). however, given the ineffective role of teacher education programs in training teachers in values education, it becomes challenging to expect teachers to fully comprehend and successfully implement values education in their job. finally, the teacher participants employed various strategies to address values education situations in their classrooms. the most prevalent approach was modeling positive behavior and attitudes. they also integrated values education into their lessons through questioning, storytelling, and discussions, as well as using videos, games, and visual aids for class debates and role-playing. creating a friendly learning environment and establishing rapport with students were emphasized. teachers drew upon real-life examples and guided students to work as a team to promote cooperation, tolerance, and respect. however, some teachers still resorted to rebuke and punishment. these strategies were mostly unplanned and based on each teacher's experiences. they often relied on their own childhood experiences and teachings from their families. some teachers emphasized the influence of confucian values in their teaching, promoting respect, social responsibility, and studious spirit. although the data from teacher interviews occasionally overlapped with classroom observations, there were significant divergences. some teachers exhibited disciplinary actions and created tense atmospheres in their classrooms, leading to a lack of student cooperation. observations in the school environment, such as in the lobbies and during assemblies, also revealed poor behavioral models from superintendents. additionally, there were challenges and inconsistencies in implementing values education. some in-service teachers lacked knowledge and guidance on how to teach values, resulting in confusion and variations in approaches. this inconsistency among teachers could lead to student dissatisfaction and confusion. this highlighst the necessity to develop a comprehensive values education training program targeted towards in-service teachers. 5. conclusion and implications the findings highlight the diverse understandings of values education, mostly is teaching living skills and moral education. participants acknowledged the limited discourse and, relying on everyday language and personal experiences rather than drawing upon educational theories or academic disciplines. the study also revealed a lack of emphasis on values education in pre-service teacher training and limited support from schools in terms of professional development. the curriculum at the university level often overlooked values education, with theoretical subjects making it challenging for teachers to apply concepts practically in the classroom. the absence of specific values education programs and outdated knowledge further hindered teachers' ability to effectively incorporate values education into their teaching practices. while teachers employed various strategies to address values education, including modelling positive behaviour and integrating values into lessons, there were inconsistencies in implementation and challenges in teaching values. some teachers resorted to disciplinary actions, leading to a lack of student cooperation, while others emphasized confucian values. in the school environment, poor behavioural models from superintendents and inconsistent approaches among teachers added to the complexities of values education. based on these discussions, it is evident that there is an urgent need to develop a comprehensive values education-training program specifically targeted towards in-service teachers. this program should address the conceptual understanding of values education, provide practical strategies for teaching values, and promote consistent and effective implementation. collaborative efforts between educational institutions, external asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 48-54 54 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group organizations, and policymakers should be undertaken to design and deliver high-quality professional development programs that equip teachers with the necessary skills and resources for successful values education integration. additionally, it is crucial to revise the pre-service teacher-training curriculum to include a compulsory values education course. this course should emphasize the significance of values education, provide theoretical foundations, and offer practical approaches for future teachers. schools should also create a supportive environment that values and encourages the integration of values education, along with incorporating values education components into assessment frameworks to highlight its importance. overall, it is time for urgent values education programs for either pre-service or in-service teachers in vietnam. this, in turn, will contribute to the holistic development of students, fostering their moral and ethical growth and preparing them to become responsible and engaged citizens in vietnamese society and international community. references australian government. 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licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 4, 204-215, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.204.215 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group comparing collaborative writing activity in efl classroom: face-to-face collaborative writing versus online collaborative writing using google docs jitlada moonma the faculty of humanities and social sciences, lampang rajabhat university, lampang, thailand. email: jitlada.moon@gmail.com abstract collaborative writing is acknowledged as one of the most beneficial writing exercises for improving writing skills. this study aimed to look at the errors of online collaborative writing using google docs and face-to-face collaborative writing, as well as to find out how satisfied students were with both modes. purposive sampling was used to pick 32 thai second-year english major students (19 females, 13 males) from writing ii. a record form of the error kinds derived from norrish (1983) a questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview were used as instruments. frequency and percentage were the statistics used. the data revealed that 346 errors were discovered in online mode, while 389 errors were discovered in face-to-face mode, which was at a higher level. the most common types in the online mode were sentence fragments, while the most common kinds in the face-to-face mode were determiners. grammars were presented to students in both modes, followed by lexis and mechanics. furthermore, the findings indicated that the students reported being highly satisfied with online mode using google docs (x ̅ = 3.50), followed by face-to-face setting (x ̅ = 3.45). students also had an overall positive feedback on google docs and found it useful in terms of writing anywhere and anytime. based on the results of this study, students in online co-produced texts better than in face-to-face mode. time independence and features of google docs might be the crucial factors which facilitated the students’ writing in online mode. keywords: collaborative writing, collaborative writing activity, face-to-face writing, online collaborative writing, google docs, students’ satisfaction. citation | jitlada moonma (2021). comparing collaborative writing activity in efl classroom: face-to-face collaborative writing versus online collaborative writing using google docs. asian journal of education and training, 7(4): 204-215. history: received: 19 july 2021 revised: 23 august 2021 accepted: 9 september 2021 published: 27 september 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: the research project is supported by the faculty of humanities and social sciences, lampang rajabhat university, lampang, thailand. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 205 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 206 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 210 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 212 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 213 7. suggestions for future studies ................................................................................................................................................... 213 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 213 mailto:jitlada.moon@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.204.215 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9004-3666 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 205 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by looking at the errors of online collaborative writing using google docs and face-to-face collaborative writing, as well as to find out how satisfied students were with both modes, in order to minimize the students’ writing errors, guide learners’ struggle to overcome their writing developmental errors in both contexts, and allow the students to use the writing tools technology to help them become better writers. 1. introduction english has long been acknowledged as a worldwide language and a means for communicating, exchanging, and transferring knowledge, information, and technology, including between countries (crystal, 2003). despite its unofficial status, english has long been regarded as an important component of thailand's educational system. this is because it has been recognized that english is an important tool for learning new things, communicating with people, and obtaining an education. mastering english writing skill is a very difficult task for efl learners. most efl learners tend to commit errors in writing regardless of a long period of english study (wee, sim, & jusoff, 2010). therefore, an appraisal on writing errors in english is seen as one way of improving the writing skills of learners as a measure of language learning success. the outcome of such an objective is a growing interest in researching written errors. a knowledge of grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary is important in the composition of writing (sattayatham & rattanapinyowong, 2008). in fact, errors are considered as the crucial mark of language development in language learning. it is therefore difficult for efl learners, in particular, to produce english writing, as the learners need skills in the intended language (richards & renandya, 2002). the studies of phoocharoensil et al. (2016); sermsook, liamnimit, and pochakorn (2017) and roongsitthichai, sriboonruang, and prasongsook (2019) have argued that writing is considered to be the most challenging skill for learners in english as a foreign language (efl) context due to their limited language skills or linguistic awareness to the content, structure and language needed for composition writing (weigle, 2002). nevertheless, learners should not only learn how to write, but also be conscious of their weakness in order to write a successful piece in english. the study of errors in writing becomes very essential when it comes to the learning of language since it is a study of the language process (ellis, 2002). the relevance of the identification of second language learners’ or foreign language learner errors is related by corder (1974) who notes that “error analysis is part of the study of language learning. it gives us an idea of a learner’s language development and may provide us feedback as to how they are learning” (corder, 1974). as a result, researchers and educators have devised an english writing teaching style that improves learners' writing skills and allows them to work in groups. it's referred to as "collaborative learning." it is believed that every learner has individual differences. when learners interact, or collaborate, and brainstorm with a group, a more meaningful and brighter idea will come out (vygotsky, 1978). consequently, collaborative activities become recognized as one of the useful tools which can be apparent in writing processes which cannot be fully described by a neat paradigm. this is also asserted by zamel (1982) who stated that the writing process is an approach to incorporate writing skills which occurs in the recursive nature of the composing process from the time that english language skills start developing. reid (2002) also values the collaboration and emphasizes the focus of this approach to process teaching on how the process is related to writing approach tasks by problem-solving method in areas such as audience, purpose, and the situation for writing. focusing on this approach, hyland (2003) further emphasizes that writers are independent producers of texts and further addresses the issue of what teachers should do to help learners perform writing tasks. apart from collaborative learning, collaborative writing (cw) has received increasing attention in the past decades (zhang, 2018). according to dobao (2012) cw is a powerful method that enhances writing skills. hence, collaborative writing seems to have positive effects on language learners, especially in writing skills. according to mcdonough and de vleeschauwer (2019) it is believed that this activity could explore not only effective writing skill, but also real-world social and professional skills. thus, cw activities would encourage students to collaborate, negotiate, or interact among them during activities (mcdonough, crawford, & de vleeschauwer, 2016). nevertheless, there is a limitation of collaboration in classrooms. students may not have much time to read and build on each other’s work; however, in collaborative online environments, they are given this opportunity (hewitt & scardamalia, 1998). having students working together is not restricted to in-class communication. online collaborative writing improved fluency and grammatical accuracy (elola, 2010). in online collaboration, students can create, share information, and build consensus as much as they wish. through online, collaborative written assignments, group discussions, students can enhance knowledge construction (zhu, 2012). with the advancement of internet technologies, online collaborative writing (ocw) tools such as google docs is a learning tool which helps to implement the learner-centered approach in a collaborative learning environment. according to oxnevad (2013) document sharing provides students with opportunities to receive immediate feedback. since google docs is stored online, students can work at school and at home from any computer with the internet connection. therefore, google docs provides asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 206 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group support for collaboration in real time so students and teachers can have a virtual mini-conference about the work in front of them from any location. the study's focus has shifted from individual writing to communal knowledge, and from in-class writing to web-based tools for writing beyond the class. furthermore, it was designed to compare the writing abilities of students as a result of utilizing google docs with face-to-face collaborative writing. if google docs is successful in improving students' writing skills, it will be a new option for language teachers who are short on time. in short, the concept of teaching writing was shifting, and teachers were faced with adapting their teaching practices to integrate technologies while redefining writing and learning for the 21st century (oxnevad, 2013). with the advancement of computer networks, online collaborative learning becomes possible even if students cannot meet in a classroom (macdonald, 2006). the utilization of the world wide web in a writing course can help encourage cw. many organizations have tried to use technology in collaborative efforts. apart from blogs, wikis, and chat rooms, google docs is an online digital tool that gives teachers some significant tools to assist pupils to develop their writing skills in the twenty-first century. 2. literature review 2.1. collaborative writing according to haring-smith (1994) collaborative writing is defined as involving more than one person who contributes to the creation of text so that “sharing responsibilities” becomes crucial. similar to storch (2013) it involves two or more people co-producing a single piece of text. it takes on a variety of forms in an active process including the use of technology as a medium and tool. collaborative writing is governed by two major theoretical perspectives (chapelle & douglas, 2006) which views the negotiation of meaning and form between learners when they encounter communication difficulties in collaboration with their peers, as leading to learning for the individual learner (long, 1983). another theoretical framework, which has been utilized in recent studies and which guides this study, is vygotsky (1978) sociocultural theory. it claims that the development of higher order mental functions such as logical thinking, problem solving and language learning will first happen during social interaction, between people, before being internalized within the individual, and absorbed to become personal knowledge that can be utilized repeatedly. this perspective supports collaboration as a suitable approach for learning, as learners are provided with opportunities to interact and learn from their partners. furthermore, swain (2010) also states that learners who join collaborative activities are able to think at higher levels than they write individually. different levels of language proficiency, learning styles and background of the students would lead to the collaborative process and improve their ability to solve language problems (farah, 2011). furthermore, according to roberson (2014) peer response is supported by the communicative language teaching approach which puts authentic interactions between the learners as well. 2.2. the effects of collaborative writing in english writing collaboration in writing fosters the syntactic and lexical quality of the text write alone. the researchers compared the texts created by pairs to those created by individuals. storch found that writing collaboratively produced shorter but better texts in terms of task fulfillment, grammatical accuracy, and complexity, suggesting that cw seemed to fulfill the task more competently. in coincidence with the study of wigglesworth and storch (2012) the findings revealed that learners’ reflection on and discussion of language forms, content, and the writing process itself resulted in better knowledge of certain grammatical and lexical forms in collaborative writing. furthermore, according to meihami, meihami, and varmaghani (2013) the results asserted that a total of fifty iranian advanced students of english worked on each other’s writing and gave feedback on grammatical points to each other. obtaining corrective feedback from their peers enabled students to gain their grammatical errors better and improved their grammatical accuracy. therefore, the results suggested that cw was fruitful in enhancing efl students to gain in grammatical accuracy produced. storch (2005) investigated the process and product of cw twenty-three adult english as a second language (esl) students taking degree courses at a large australian institution provided data to the researcher. students were given the option of writing in groups or independently. eighteen pupils elected to write in pairs, while five students chose to 2.3. google docs the pandemic of the coronavirus or covid-19 has transformed the way people learn and continues to be hybrid learning. technology has always piqued people's interest, and its implementation has become more prevalent in language teaching and learning. for example, online learning technology is becoming increasingly popular. many established colleges have begun to provide their courses for free online. it represents a simple and convenient way to get information on practically any topic. furthermore, online learning appears to be a viable alternative to traditional colleges, particularly for those who lack the time or financial resources to attend live classes furthermore, according to lee (2013) the usability of technology in the teaching and practice of writing has also increased. most classes nowadays, in the digital age, use digital curricula and digital tools. google docs is an example of a digital application that is simple and quick to use. the technology is ideal for organizing digital writing workshops that combine asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 207 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group peer editing and group collaboration. this collaborative editing tool enables a group of people to work on a document at the same time while viewing the changes made by others in real-time (chinnery, 2008). in addition, google docs is a web-based word processing tool that offers extra functionalities such as simultaneous editing ability and automated updating (kessler, bikowski, & boggs, 2012). the interface is similar to microsoft word. google docs can be accessed and edited by multiple users at one time, and it automatically saves the document every six seconds. students can have a virtual mini-conference about work in front of them from any location. google docs also have features of synchronous communication through its chatting application, and it has been reported to be an easy tool to use without requiring much training or technical expertise (suwantarathip & wichadee, 2014). google docs is another tool that includes the functions of blogs and wikis. documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users simultaneously and users are able to see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits (woodrich & fan, 2017). consequently, these special feature makes google docs a powerful application sharing and keeping online documents. furthermore, students can access their tasks anytime and anywhere (suwantarathip & wichadee, 2014). 2.4. online collaborative writing versus face-to-face collaborative writing a growing number of studies have been undertaken to examine the impact of teaching writing with the use of technology against f2f writing in the classroom. many studies contrasted student learning in foreign language classrooms between online technology groups and face-to-face groups, and the results were mixed. several studies have demonstrated that using online technologies can help students collaborate and improve their learning outcomes (ansarimoghaddam & tan, 2013; neumann & kopcha, 2019; suwantarathip & wichadee, 2014). in terms of quality, according to ansarimoghaddam and tan (2013) the students’ writing quality of f2f and online mode were examined. thirty malaysian esl students worked in groups of three for three weeks to prepare an argumentative essay in both modes. the writing process was divided into three steps by the researchers: planning, drafting, and rewriting, with different groups experiencing each phase in person or online. students in online collaborative writing created superior prose, according to the findings. similar to wichadee (2013) two sections of forty students were asked to work on summarizing five articles over the course of a semester, one section working in f2f mode, and the other working online. students in f2f mode were asked to complete their tasks in class, while students in online mode could continue their work after class. the findings illustrated that both groups improved their writing skills, but the online groups showed more improvement. another study of suwantarathip and wichadee (2014) it also compared the outcomes and perspectives of forty university students writing paragraphs in both collaborative mode (f2f and online using google docs). the findings were similar to wichadee (2013) where the google docs groups performed better than f2f mode. the researchers suggested that its many capabilities and ease of use as well as its ability to trace every contribution made benefits for learners. according to the studies cited before, pupils' writing quality improved more in the online method. this could be because students in the online mode were able to continue working after class and manage their schedules. online collaborative writing evolved over a longer period than face-to-face collaboration. students may have self-direction, independence, and the opportunity to read and reply on their schedule in an online environment. in contrast to f2f students, they may face time constraints in completing their homework. as a result, grammar and vocabulary may be limited, sometimes as a result of a time constraint in the classroom. 2.5. writing errors errors are the vital part of effective writing quality and also make it difficult for efl learners to write in english. several studies have also been conducted to investigate learners’ written errors. according to watcharapunyawong and usaha (2013) this study related the writing errors of thai efl students in different types of texts. the paragraphs were written as narratives, descriptions and comparison of different kinds. errors were classified in 12 groups. in narrative writing, singular/plural form, subject verb agreement, and verb tense were the most frequent common errors, while the most common errors in the description were article, subject-verb agreement, and verb tense, respectively. the comparison errors were verb-tense, singular/plural, preposition and subject verb agreement, respectively. the results revealed that the writing errors were committed due to first language (l1) interference and suggested that in each writing task the mean number of errors tended to be divergent depending on the genre. similar to wu and garza (2014) it examined the forms and features of errors in email in the english language writing of grade six students. the findings revealed that grammatical errors were most commonly observed (subject and verb agreement, sentence fragment, and singular/plural verb). the students made grammatical, lexical, and semantical errors, respectively. the results indicated that in each writing task the mean number of errors tended to be different. the findings mentioned earlier were in line with the studies of errors in english writing of these studies (alcoy & biel, 2018; bennui, 2019; kongkaew & cedar, 2018; moqimipour & shahrokhi, 2015) the studies also attempted to identify the students’ written errors, the results of these studies were identical. the studies attempted to identify and categorize the students' writing errors derived from the previous studies. grammatical errors appeared to be the most common. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 208 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.6. errors in english writing in thai context there have also been studies in thailand concentrating on errors in english writing made by university students during the last decade. nonkukhetkhong, sonkoontod, and wanpen (2013) investigated common errors in english writing of the first-year english major university students at udon thani university. the errors made by the pupils were determined to be errors of verbs, nouns, possessive cases, articles, and so on. all of the errors were grammatical. similar to watcharapunyawong and usaha (2013) the study looked at the work of forty second-year english majors in terms of narration, description, and comparison. the findings revealed that there were sixteen different types of mistakes. the most common errors were in the areas of verb tense, word choice, and sentence construction. another hinnon (2014) study, this one intended to review the studies of errors in english writing by thai university students throughout the previous decade. it's safe to presume that faults in grammar and lexis, as well as writing organization, were the three most common types of problems found in thai university students' english writing. more recently, according to waelateh, boonsuk, ambele, and jeharsae (2019) fifteen thai undergraduate students in a university in southern thailand participated in the study. forty-five essays written in english (of different genres) were collected from the students (a total of three essays per student) throughout one semester and analyzed. the researchers identified structures of the student’s essays and compared the errors based on the morphological, lexical, syntactic and discourse categories. the data revealed that the most common errors were syntactic, lexical, morphological, and discourse-related, correspondingly. all of the data from the studies listed above showed that grammatical errors were the most common errors committed by thai students. it could be because students translated from their first language (interference from the first language) or because they tended to overgeneralize rules when learning new structures. furthermore, they may be unfamiliar with new rhetorical structures (khatter, 2019). in short, error research serves both teachers and students by pointing up areas where better english learning and teaching techniques should be developed in the future. however, the findings of the performed research on errors in collaborative writing, whether in an online setting utilizing google docs or in a face-to-face setting, have yet to be fully investigated (suwantarathip & wichadee, 2014). 2.7. learners’ satisfaction with computer-mediated collaborative writing (cmcw) since learners' attitudes are critical to the effectiveness of collaborative work, learner satisfaction is an important part of the collaborative writing (cw) study. several investigations that looked into students' opinions, primarily utilizing questionnaires or short interviews, came up with encouraging results. participants in elola (2010) and strobl (2015) studies were instructed to do solo and cw in pairs. they expressed their appreciation for the cmcw. additionally, learners can use the synchronous chat tool to discuss, explain, and offer better ideas to their writing. furthermore, in most research, learners' satisfaction with computer-mediated collaboration was shown to be mainly good in terms of speed and convenience. ansarimoghaddam and tan (2013) used pre-and post-tests to investigate the effects of face-to-face (f2f) and cmcw on learners's writing outcomes. thirty malaysian english as a second language (esl) students collaborated in groups of three for three weeks to create an argumentative essay in both face-toface and online format. the researchers discovered that after participating in cmcw with their peers, the students wrote better essays on their own. in addition, semi-structured interviews with six groups of learners revealed that they prefer cmcw. the learners noted the ability to check back on previous assignments, as well as the flexibility of time and space. suwantarathip and wichadee (2014) analyzed the outcomes and views of 40 university students composing paragraphs in both modalities of cooperation using google docs in another study. learners gave good feedback in the form of a questionnaire and interviews after completing the exercises. they praised google docs for being an easy-to-use collaboration application that boosted their enthusiasm and enabled them to share ideas and collaborate with their colleagues. 3. methodology this is a quantitative study with no intervention other than the course syllabus requirement that participants share one writing in an online environment and one writing in a face-to-face setting with the same four-member peer groups throughout the tasks. the current study used cw approaches to give students the option of selecting their members (group of four students). it was because offering students this possibility would increase the collaborative learning environment, which is one of the core ideals of this approach (mulligan & garofalo, 2011). this study was guided by the following research question: what are the variations in error kinds between face-to-face collaborative writing and online collaborative writing with google docs? 3.1. participants purposive sampling was used to choose 32 second-year english majors (19 females, 13 males) from a thai northern institution to participate in argumentative writing. based on their results in writing i, a necessary course, they were sorted into three levels: novice (c, d+, and d), intermediate (b and c+), and advanced (a and b+). heterogeneous groups are made up of students who have a wide range of abilities. there were 17 novices (53.13 per cent), 8 intermediates (25 per cent), and 7 advanced (21.87 per cent) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 209 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group among the participants. all participants took part in both online and face-to-face sessions. the students had no prior experience with collaborative writing, but they did have other sorts of collaborative learning experiences, such as group discussion and dialogue. students began learning english in primary school and continued through university. 3.2. collaborative writing activities in all versions, the collaborative writing process followed the same eight steps. the thirty-two students were taught by the same teacher-researcher and went through the same collaborative writing process, which included a midterm and final test as well as instructional and evaluation materials. they did the same brainstorming, freewriting, listing, clustering, sketching, outlining, mind mapping, and other pre-writing tasks. the experiment began in the 12th week when all students participated in face-toface collaborative writing in class; in the 13th week, they participated in online collaborative writing using google docs from their homes. they were given the task of completing an argumentative paragraph in groups of four. the steps of collaborative writing activities in both forms are depicted in the diagram below. 3.2.1. tasks at least 100 words were allocated to the arguing paragraph. all of the students (eight groups of four students each) were exposed to all of the modes' steps (f2f in class versus google docs in their places). in online mode, only the first and second steps were timed. the students then continued writing at their desks, whereas the f2f groups were expected to complete all of the stages in the class. step one: the teacher provided an overview of collaborative and individual writing in both modalities (20 minutes). writing via google docs, an online computer software program was employed in this step. step two: listened to an instructor lecture on an argumentative paragraph model and grammatical structure (30 minutes). step three: collaborated with their members on outlining, listing, freewriting, brainstorming ideas, and organizing materials (30 minutes). step four: created a rough draft (1st draft) by writing an introduction, body, and conclusion (40 minutes). step five: revised the original draft, focusing on language, substance, and arrangement, as well as any details that students needed to relocate, add, or eliminate (40 minutes). step six: rewrote the manuscript, taking into account the changes made during the revision step (2nd draft) (30 minutes). step seven: proofread the second manuscript and correct conventions such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics (final draft) (30 minutes). the last step, published the completed paper (20 minutes). 3.3 instrument 3.3.1. the record form adapted from norrish (1983) the sorts of errors detected in the students' argumentative writing were classified using the record form. sixteen pieces of their written work (eight from face-to-face and eight from online) were gathered and assessed. 3.3.2. questionnaire using a 5-point scale, the questionnaire was used to assess the students' satisfaction with ocw (likert scale). the researcher developed and translated the questionnaire into thai, which was then validated by three professionals with more than 10 years of experience teaching english writing at the university level. one of them was a native speaker of the language. the alpha coefficient of cronbach's alpha test yielded a reliability of 0.945. the three experts also offered suggestions for improving the questionnaire. using mean and standard deviation, the validity of the questionnaire was assessed using the index of item objective congruence (ioc). the analysis yielded a result of 0.75. 3.3.3. semi-structured interview the students' qualitative information was gathered through semi-structured interviews. the data was analyzed using content analysis. six students were chosen at random to participate in the interviews. each interview was taped in thai and then translated into english. the translators were evaluated to see if the translated versions were semantically, idiomatically, and conceptually equivalent. any differences were ironed out, and all specialists agreed. there was one question that went like this: what are your thoughts on utilizing google docs for online collaborative writing? 3.4. data collection this study compared the quality of students' argumentative writing in online cw and face-to-face mode. the researcher and two specialists assessed all sixteen pieces of the students' written work. each error was classified into one of the twenty-five categories adopted from norrish (1983) scheme of error classification: determiner errors; word choices; verb forms; agreements; prepositions; punctuation; tenses; capitalizations; nouns; misspellings; pronouns; subjects and objects; possessives; sentence fragments; asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 210 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group adverbs; conjunctions; repetition of words; adjectives; infinitives and gerunds; miscellaneous unclassifiable errors, space errors; run-on sentences; parallel structures; and overgeneralization. 3.5. data analysis according to the study's objectives, the data analysis technique was divided into two parts. stage 1: to determine the frequency and percentage of errors, all of the errors were evaluated and classified according to the types of errors. the errors were then divided into three categories: grammatical, lexical, and mechanical errors. the researcher and two specialists independently verified all of the data (an english lecturer in the english department and a native speaker). stage 2: using google docs and f2f writing, the results from the questionnaire and interview were evaluated and interpreted to determine the level of satisfaction with ocw and f2f writing. 4. results the study's findings and comments are given in accordance with the research topic that was proposed before. using norrish's error categorization scheme, errors were classified into twenty-five categories (norrish, 1983). the tables below demonstrate the frequency of errors in both face-to-face and online activities. 4.1. errors found in f2f mode table-1. percentage of errors sorted from the highest to the lowest average in f2f mode (n=389) types of errors frequency percentage 1. determiners 59 15.17 2 word choice 46 11.83 3. verb forms 35 9.09 4. subject-verb agreements 28 7.19 5. prepositions 27 6.94 6. punctuation 23 5.91 7. tenses 19 4.88 8. capitalizations 18 4.62 9. nouns 16 4.11 10. misspellings 15 3.85 11. pronouns 14 3.59 12. subjects and objects 12 3.08 13. possessives 10 2.57 14. incomplete sentences 10 2.57 15. adverbs 9 2.31 16. conjunctions 9 2.31 17. repetition of words 8 2.05 18. word orders 7 1.79 19. adjectives 6 1.54 20. infinitives and gerunds 5 1.28 21. miscellaneous unclassifiable errors 4 1.02 22. space errors 3 0.77 23. run-on sentences 3 0.77 24. parallel structures 2 0.51 25. overgeneralization 1 0.25 total 389 100 as shown in table 1, the determiner errors were found to be the most frequent (15.17%); word choices (11.83%); and verb forms (9.09), respectively. regarding the determiner errors, they omitted the determiners or inserted it when it was unnecessary. wrong choice of words was the second highest number of errors. the main cause of errors might come from misunderstanding the real meaning of the words; for example, students wrote farther for a further. the third most frequent errors were the use of verb form; for example, “so he have to pay some money.” “my family have happy.” 4.2. errors found in online mode as shown in table 2, incomplete sentences occurred the most frequently (14.73%); misspelling (13%); and wrong choice of word (9.82%), respectively. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 211 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group based on the collected results in online mode using google docs, incomplete sentences were found to be the most problematic; for example, “she stressed.” (she is stressed.). “today, technology an important role in our lives.” (today, technology has an important role in our lives.). table-2. percentage of errors sorted from the highest to the lowest average in online mode (n=346). types of errors frequency percentage 1. incomplete sentences 51 14.74 2. misspelling 45 13.00 3. wrong choice of word 34 9.83 4. errors in the use of conjunctions 27 7.80 5. parallel structures 27 7.80 6. capitalization 22 6.36 7. errors in the use of determiners 17 4.91 8. run-on sentences 16 4.62 9. errors in the use of verb form 15 4.34 10. punctuation 14 4.05 11. errors in the use of pronouns 12 3.47 12. errors in the use of agreements 11 3.18 13. errors in the use of tenses 10 2.89 14. errors in the use of nouns 8 2.31 15. errors in the use of subjects and objects 8 2.31 16. errors in the use of adverbs 7 2.02 17. errors in the use of possessives 6 1.73 18. word order 5 1.45 19. errors in the use of adjectives 4 1.16 20. errors in the use of infinitives and gerunds 3 0.87 21. errors in the use of prepositions 2 0.58 22. repetition of words 2 0.58 23. space errors 0 0 24. overgeneralization 0 0 25. miscellaneous unclassifiable errors 0 0 total 346 100 misspelling was the second frequent error. the majority of the spelling errors committed by the students were occurred by using an incorrect letter, or adding a letter when unnecessary; for example, “my writting is bad.” (my writing is bad.); “…throught the computer screen.” (…through the computer screen). the third frequent errors were word choices; for example, “it was in 2003 in which that company started.” the subordinate conjunction that is used to denote a time period is when, not in which. so, the correct sentence is: it was in 2003 when that company started. 4.3. the classification of errors figure 1 shows how errors are classified in each manner. they were divided into three groups: grammatical, lexical, and mechanical faults, as shown below: figure-1. percentage of error classification in online collaborative writing and face-to-face collaborative writing. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 212 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.4. the students’ satisfaction table-3. students’ satisfaction with online collaborative writing using google docs and face-to-face collaborative writing. writing activity x̅ sd meaning online collaborative writing activity using google docs 3.50 0.51 high face-to-face collaborative writing activity 3.45 0.58 high table 3 shows that the students' satisfaction with ocw utilizing google docs was higher (x̅ = 3.50), indicating that they were pleased with this activity, followed by the face-to-face collaborative writing activity (x̅ = 3.45). table-4. students’ satisfaction with online collaborative writing using google docs students’ satisfaction with ocw using google docs x̅ meaning 1. i am satisfied with the ease of online collaborative writing in creating and edit documents from anywhere. 3.48 high 2. i am satisfied with the ease of access on all devices 3.52 high 3. i am satisfied with tracking the changes in real-time 3.42 high 4. i am satisfied with its auto-saving and automatically stored in google drive. 3.52 high 5. i am satisfied with google docs’ feature which can be shared with anyone. 3.58 high total 3.50 high table 4 shows that the students' satisfaction with ocw utilizing google docs was high (x̅ = 3.50). number 5 (i am satisfied with google docs' feature that may be shared with anyone) had the highest average of the data, at 3.58, suggesting that the students strongly agree. they were pleased with google docs' capability of being able to share documents with anyone. with an average of 3.52, the second average was number 2 (i am satisfied with the ease of access across all devices) and number 4 (i am content with its auto-saving and automated storage in google drive). with an average of 3.48, the third average was ranked first (i am satisfied with the ease of online collaborative writing in creating and editing documents from anywhere.). with an average of 3.42, number 3 (i am satisfied with watching developments in real-time) had the lowest average. six students were also chosen at random to extract more details in ocw using google docs. six semi-structured interviews were conducted. the students responded to the question in thai during the interview sessions, and their comments were translated into english. student 1 (s1), student 2 (s2), student 3 (s3), student 4 (s4), student 5 (s5), and student 6 (s6) were the students' names (s6). the excerpts from the six semi-structured interviews are presented here. s1: i found that this writing activity was useful. google docs allows for real-time collaboration, a history of changes, the ability to track changes, auto saving, work from anywhere, offline work mode, exporting, file storage and more. most importantly, it allowed us to stay organized and instantly see the most recent version of our content. s2: it was a good activity. i tried to make my paper better by using applications or programs which were very useful. i learned a lot from them, but it took time. nevertheless, i did not have to feel shy when i needed to share any ideas because there were no f2f activities or interactions among the group members. s3: i thought it was a good activity. it was similar to a writing exam. i felt quite nervous to have my paper done via online because i needed not only to write the paper but also learned to use google docs. i learned that i needed to learn a lot about how to use google docs for online writing. s4: it was quite good to write online because it allowed us to stay organized and instantly saw the most recent version of our content. nevertheless, i had a problem using google docs sometimes as it was quite a new thing for me. for me, it was good because i could stay at my place without attending the classroom. it was good. s5: i thought it was useful for me because it helped me to save time to attend class. i could write papers anywhere. sometimes, we used an application or program to collaboratively recheck or revise the writing. it helped us to correct some errors. s6: i thought this activity was good. with google docs, i wrote, edited, and collaborated wherever i was. everyone in my group worked together at the same time. it saved time to write our assignments. furthermore, i even used revision history to see old versions of the same document. regarding the interview sessions, the results showed some interesting points. it was obvious that the students were satisfied with these ocw using google docs. they reported that the benefits of ocw using google docs were time saving, conveniences in grammatical error checking, anxiety decreasing, and writing from anywhere. 5. discussion when comparing the errors made by the learner in both formats, it is reasonable to infer that grammatical errors are the most common. it was related to wu and garza (2014) study, which looked at the types and characteristics of errors in grade six students' english language writing. the statistics also found that the most common errors were grammatical errors. furthermore, in online collaborative writing, errors were found to be lesser than the errors in f2f mode. similar to the findings of asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 204-215 213 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ansarimoghaddam and tan (2013) the students’ writing quality of f2f and online mode were examined. the findings suggested that students in online collaborative writing produced text better. ansarimoghaddam and tan (2013); suwantarathip and wichadee (2014) and neumann and kopcha (2019) also confirmed that the use of online collaborative technology facilitated better writing outcomes. the students appeared to be confused with english grammar, based on the factors of their writing errors. in terms of grammar mistakes, they may only have a few opportunities to practice english writing, which is difficult for thai students. they are required to memorize a variety of grammatical rules. furthermore, when it comes to lexical errors, students may lack the necessary language to describe their views. they did, however, try to convey what they were thinking by substituting common words for the unfamiliar ones. these errors could be due to a lack of vocabulary. students appeared to struggle with spelling words with similar letter sounds. students were also confronted with mechanical issues in addition to spelling issues. this could be owing to a lack of knowledge with mechanics such as punctuation, which are not employed in thai but are crucial in english. in terms of independence in an online environment, students did not feel compelled to write a paragraph at their desks. they may feel relaxed when offering their ideas online, but they may feel stressed and hesitant when participating, engaging, or sharing ideas in a face-to-face setting to address any flaws made during f2f activities. furthermore, they used google docs for online collaborative writing because they used a personal computer that included microsoft word. this tool may make it easier for students to complete their activities by automatically checking for grammar errors. these factors appeared to aid the students' ocw writing quality. students' satisfaction with ocw using google docs was high, and it was related to generating and editing documents, simultaneously working with team members, utilizing on all devices, tracking changes, auto-saving, and sharing and communicating with team members. furthermore, real-time collaboration, auto-saving, working from anywhere, reducing nervousness while interacting with peers, and the good feature of correcting grammatical faults are all advantages of ocw using google docs for interview sessions. the results are consistent with the previous study of suwantarathip and wichadee (2014) that the satisfaction of another group of university students towards collaboration in writing using google docs are also positive. they rated google docs highly as an ease of access and a good collaborative tool that increased their motivation and encouraged them to share ideas and interact with their peers. however, the findings were not generalizable to other contexts as the present study was limited to only thirty-two university students in a northern thai province. in short, the present study suggested that ocw seemed to foster the students’ writing skills. however, the findings were not generalizable to other contexts as the present study was limited to only thirty-two university students in a northern thai province. 6. conclusion the current study compared written errors made by thai efl students when producing argumentative writing in both online and face-to-face settings. according to the data, students produced various types of errors in various modes of writing. determiners, word choices, and verb forms were found to be the three most common errors made by students in f2f mode, with overgeneralization being the least common. the research revealed that sentence fragments, misspellings, and word selections were the three most common errors in online mode utilizing google docs. based on the findings of thai undergraduate students from a thai institution in northern thailand who wrote in an online environment versus in a face-to-face environment, it was clear that the outcomes of writing quality in ocw using google docs were better than the results in f2f mode. regarding the error classifications, they were classified into three categories: grammatical, lexical, and mechanical errors. the findings of the present study were confirmed by hinnon (2014) that the most errors made by two modes of students were the errors of grammar. furthermore, the findings of waelateh et al. (2019) confirmed the results of the present study that the errors were based on the lexical and syntactic. furthermore, the students expressed high levels of satisfaction with google docs. students cited realtime collaboration, auto-saving, working from any place, reducing nervousness while interacting with peers, and the good feature of correcting grammatical faults as benefits of ocw utilizing google docs. 7. suggestions for future studies future research studies could examine the impact of cw on students' writing motivation using f2f and google docs techniques. if students are happy with their technology-based learning, assigning them to collaborate outside of class can help teachers save time and facilitate students' writing. in addition, when different educational tools are used to compare with google docs, students' critical thinking skills may be tested. when technology is used more in language classrooms, students can obtain a lot of benefits from blended learning. references alcoy, j. c. o., & biel, l. a. 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(2012). student satisfaction, performance, and knowledge construction in online collaborative learning. journal of educational technology & society, 15(1), 127-136. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 246 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 246-255, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.246.255 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the investigation of multiple intelligence modalities of university students receiving sports education mevlüt yildiz1 yavuz öntürk2 engin efek3 ( corresponding author) 1faculty of sport sciences, mugla sitki kocman university, mugla, turkey. 2faculty of sport sciences, yalova university, yalova, turkey. 3faculty of sport sciences, duzce university, duzce, turkey. abstract the aim of this study is to determine the dominant intelligence modality of university students who receive sports education and to examine intelligence modality in terms of various variables. the survey model was chosen for the model of the study. 251 students voluntarily participated in the study. a 6-question personal information form was used by the researchers to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants, and the multiple intelligence scale adapted in turkish by babacan and dilci (2012) was used to determine the multiple intelligence areas. according to the findings, the intelligence modality in which the participants were the most dominant was physical intelligence, and the intelligence modality in which they were the most distant was the verbal intelligence. while multiple intelligence areas differed according to the gender, class, age and sports time of the participants, there was no significant difference in multiple intelligence areas according to department and branch variables. in addition, female participants, 3rd grade students and those who have more time to do sports are more dominant in every intelligence field. as a result, it was concluded that the most dominant intelligence field is physical intelligence and that women are more dominant in multiple intelligence domains than men. it was once again revealed that the duration of sports is an important factor in the development of multiple intelligence areas of individuals. keywords: sport, multiple intelligence, university students, physical education, education. citation | mevlüt yildiz; yavuz öntürk; engin efek (2020). the investigation of multiple intelligence modalities of university students receiving sports education. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 246-255. history: received: 16 january 2020 revised: 3 march 2020 accepted: 6 april 2020 published: 20 april 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 247 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 248 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 248 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 252 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 254 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.246.255&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1910-0330 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5472-8652 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7889-8151 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1910-0330 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5472-8652 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7889-8151 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1910-0330 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5472-8652 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7889-8151 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1910-0330 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5472-8652 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7889-8151 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1525 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1910-0330 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5472-8652 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7889-8151 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 246-255 247 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the study contributes to the existing literature by determining the most distant and dominant intelligence field of university students studying sports and also examines intelligence modality in terms of various variables. 1. introduction although the concepts of learning and thinking do not mean the same, they are known as an inseparable whole. confucius has an opinion on this matter: “learning without an act of thinking ends with confusion.” one of the objectives of learning is to provide the act of thinking. due to individual differences, there are differences between individuals in thinking and multiple intelligence areas (babacan & dilci, 2012; chongde & tsingan, 2003). when the focus of learning is considered as an individual, it is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of the student, their past lives, choices, experiences and goals. instead of allowing students to form indestructible taboos, it should be ensured that their educational decisions are directed towards their needs and expectations in their daily lives (babacan & dilci, 2012; gardner, 1999). in most of the intelligence theories, while people's grades and scores are used as criteria, it is seen as more important how, in which environment and when the individual learns in multiple intelligence theory (babacan & dilci, 2012; gardner, 1999). in this context, it is accepted as a serious mistake that individuals are measured only according to the scores, they get from iq tests and that they are graded according to these measurement results. on the contrary, intelligence should not be seen as a phenomenon alone, it should be considered as a whole with different abilities (armstrong, 2003; babacan & dilci, 2012). therefore, intelligence is a reflection of the structure of the brain, which consists of different parts (babacan & dilci, 2012; gardner, 1999). in his book, the frames of the mind, published in 1983, gardner first collected intelligence types in seven areas. these types of intelligence are verbal, logical, musical, physical, visual, interpersonal, physical and internal intelligence. in 1995, an intelligence field was added to the seven intelligence fields advanced by gardner. these 8 types of intelligence are: 1verbal linguistic intelligence, 2logic mathematical intelligence, 3 visual (figure) – spatial intelligence, 4musical-rhythmic and harmonic intelligence, 5bodily kinesthetic intelligence, 6interpersonal social intelligence, 7intrapersonal (inner; self-directed) intelligence, 8 naturalistic intelligence (i̇lhan, mirzeoğlu, aktaş, & demir, 2005). although there are 8 kinds of intelligence types agreed upon, as the 9th intelligence type, gardner emphasizes that existentialist intelligence is also a possible type of intelligence. identifying and knowing multiple intelligence areas of individuals is also an educational factor (babacan & dilci, 2012). identifying multiple intelligence trends, meeting the needs of students, preparing a curriculum suitable for learning styles, and knowing and implementing teaching strategies to enrich the learning experience of individuals are useful educational tools for both students and teachers (armstrong, 2009; babacan & dilci, 2012; temız & kıraz, 2007). it is important for the person to know his intelligence characteristics well to adapt to his environment and achieve success in this existing environment (başaran, 2004). for this reason, various education programs should be developed in the schools where the students are trained to experience their mental abilities and students should be actively involved in the educational process through teaching methods. when the literature is analyzed, it can be seen that multiple intelligence theory is an important educational factor. for this reason, we think that the study will make an important contribution to the literature. on the other hand, studies on individuals or athletes who have received sports education are very few compared to other fields. in addition, in the majority of studies available in the literature (baba, karakaş, & gizdem, 2015; ermiş, ermiş, & i̇mamoğlu, 2018; kul, bozkuş, erol, & elçi, 2014; metan & küçük, 2017; oral, 2001; tunç, 2008; yenilmez & çalışkan, 2011) based on gardner's previous studies, scales containing 7 or 8 intelligence areas were used. in this research, an up-to-date scale including 9 intelligence areas was used, and it was aimed to provide more up-to-date information to the literature in determining the multiple intelligence areas of its students. therefore, this factor expresses another importance of the research. considering the current literature, in the studies of bayrak, celiksoy, and celiksoy (2005); hoşgörür and katrancı (2007) and kul et al. (2014) the field of intelligence that students of physical education and sports school were the most dominant is bodily / kinesthetic intelligence and verbal intelligence was the area of intelligence they were most distant from. in the study of ermiş et al. (2018) it was stated that the lowest intelligence field in adolescents who do sports and do not do sports is verbal intelligence. in addition, it was concluded that students doing sports during adulthood had positive effects on multiple intelligence scores. in the study carried out by ürgüp (2015) and examining the multiple intelligence of physical education and sports school students studying in different departments, the closest intelligence field of the students was found as internal intelligence. in addition, the existential intelligence of the coaching students is more dominant than the other departments. in the study of ermiş, i̇mamoğlu, and erilli (2012) it was concluded that the sport positively affects the physical and social intelligence score and there is no difference in physical and social intelligence scores among athletes. in the study of güllü and tekin (2009) it was reported that there was a significant difference according to the gender and class of the students. in addition, the verbal, logical, visual and internal intelligence of general high school students is better than that of sports high school students; it has been found that only physical intelligence of sports high school students is better than general high school students. in the study of metan and küçük (2017) although there is no significant difference in most of the intelligence areas, significant results were found in favor of those who do not exercise regularly in some areas and in others. in the study of aslan, dalkıran, and ozer (2015) it was revealed that there are differences in the dominant intelligence areas of the athletes who practice the "periodic and aperiodic" sports branches. in the study of kul et al. (2014) significant differences were observed in the different dimensions of the multiple intelligence areas of the candidates who participated in physical education and sports school examinations and those who could not win. in the study of baba et al. (2015) while there was no significant differences according to gender, grade, and sport branch in the bodily/kinesthetic intelligence levels of the students in the school of physical education and sports, a significant relationship was observed between bodily/kinesthetic intelligence and academic achievement. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 246-255 248 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in this context, the aim of this study was to determine the dominant intelligence modality of university students who receive sports education and to examine intelligence modality in terms of various variables (gender, grade, department, age, sport age, and branch). in the study, it was assumed that the participants answered the scale questions sincerely, the research sample represented the population, and the scale used in the research was able to measure the multiple intelligence modalities of the students. in addition, the research was limited to the scale used and to students studying at the faculty of sports sciences at duzce university in the 2019-2020 academic years. the hypotheses of the research are listed as follows: 1. while the most dominant intelligence field of students studying in the field of sports sciences is physical / kinesthetic intelligence, the most distant intelligence field is verbal intelligence. 2. there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to the students' gender. 3. there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to students' grade levels. 4. there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to the students' departments. 5. there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to the students' ages. 6. there are significant differences in the areas of multiple intelligence according to the duration of the students' sports. 7. there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to the branches that students make. 2. method 2.1. research model the survey model, which is quantitative, was chosen for the model of the study. 2.2. study group the population of the research was students who were studying at the faculty of sports sciences at duzce university in the 2019-2020 academic year, and the sample was randomly chosen 251 students who voluntarily participated in the research. scale application study was carried out by the researchers in the classroom. 2.3. data collection instruments a 6-question personal information form was used by the researchers to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants. the multiple intelligence scale, developed by mcclellan and conti (2008) adapted to turkish by babacan and dilci (2012) was used to determine the multiple intelligence areas. the scale consists of 3 sections and 27 items in total, 9 items in each section. participants were asked to make a correct order from the expression they see closest to them to the expression they see as the most distant. the participants place 1 point next to the expression they feel closest to, and 9 points next to the expression they think is the most distant. which intelligence field the participants are most prone to is determined by specifying the lowest total score they give to the items representing the intelligence field. the rankings of the questions in each intelligence area are summed up and the intelligence area with the lowest score is considered to be the intelligence area where the respondents predominate. the lowest score obtained from the scale is 3, and the highest score is 27. the internal consistency coefficient (cronbach’s alpha coefficient) of the scale was found to be 0.90. 2.4. data analysis the data were analyzed using the spss 17 program. frequency, percentage, minimum, maximum, average and standard deviation values were used in the analysis of the data. shapiro wilk-w test and skewness-kurtosis values were evaluated for normal distribution, t-test and anova test were used since the data showed normal distribution, and tukey test was used for post-hoc tests. significance level was determined as p <0.05. 3. results in this part of the research, frequency, percentage, minimum, maximum, average and standard deviation values of the participants forming the research group were displayed. in addition, t-test, anova test and post-hoc comparison results were presented in tables to determine whether the scores obtained from the scale differed according to gender, class, department, age, sports age and branch type. when table 1 is examined, it is seen that the majority of the participants are male (61.8%). likewise, it is seen that the majority of them attend fresher (33.5%) and are students of the department of coaching education (45%). most of them are between 19-22 years old (70.5%) and sports age is 6-10 years old (60.2%). in addition, the vast majority of the participants are engaged in team sports (53.8%). sub-problem 1: which intelligence areas are the most distant and dominant students in sports science education? in table 2, descriptive statistics on the multiple intelligence areas of students studying in the field of sports science are presented. the participants gave 1 point to the expression they felt closest to, and 9 points to the expression they felt distant to. when the scores are summed, the lowest scores represent the dominant intelligence field, and the highest scores represent the distant intelligence field (babacan & dilci, 2012). accordingly, the intelligence area which students are the most dominant is the physical intelligence area with an average of 8.51. the intelligence area which the students are most distant is the verbal intelligence area with an average of 17.00. sub-problem 2: do students' genders and intelligence areas differ significantly? when table 3 is analyzed, there were significant differences between genders regarding interpersonal/social, intrapersonal, logical/mathematical, musical-rhythmic/harmonic, naturalistic, verbal and visual intelligence areas (p <0.05). there were no significant differences between the genders in bodily/kinesthetic and existential intelligence areas (p> 0.05). in addition, women were more dominant than men in all modalities. sub-problem 3: do the intelligence areas of the students differ significantly according to their grades? asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 246-255 249 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. descriptive statistics of participants' demographic information. variable f % gender female male 96 155 38.2 61,8 grade fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 33,5 10,4 31,8 24,3 department coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 45,0 38,2 16,8 age 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 12,8 70,5 13,5 ,4 2,8 sport age 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 20,6 60,2 11,2 8,0 branch team individual 135 116 53,8 46,2 total 251 100% note: p<0.05 table-2. descriptive statistics for the multiple intelligence areas of the participants. modality n minimum maximum mean s.d. bodily/kinesthetic 251 3,00 24,00 8,51 5,11 existential 251 3,00 26,00 9,27 5,01 interpersonal/social 251 3,00 27,00 10,32 5,34 intrapersonal 251 3,00 27,00 8,64 5,08 logical/mathematical 251 3,00 27,00 8,96 5,39 musical-rhythmic/harmonic 251 3,00 27,00 13,38 6,13 naturalistic 251 3,00 25,00 10,92 6,19 verbal/linguistic 251 3,00 27,00 17,00 6,25 visual/spatial 251 3,00 27,00 13,78 5,78 note: p<0.05 table-3. differences between genders in terms of multiple intelligence. modality gender n mean s.d. t df p bodily/kinesthetic female male 96 155 8,01 8,81 5,07 5,13 -1,219 249 ,224 existential female male 96 155 8,60 9,69 4,40 5,32 1,760 229,047 ,080 interpersonal/social female male 96 155 8,97 11,16 4,97 5,41 -3,198 249 ,002* intrapersonal female male 96 155 7,56 9,32 3,98 5,56 -2,913 243,762 ,004* logical/mathematical female male 96 155 7,33 9,96 4,87 5,46 -3,863 249 ,000* musicalrhythmic/harmonic female male 96 155 11,37 14,63 5,99 5,90 -4,224 249 ,000* naturalistic female male 96 155 8,93 12,14 5,89 6,06 -4,118 249 ,000* verbal/linguistic female male 96 155 14,88 18,31 5,94 6,10 -4,371 249 ,000* visual/spatial female male 96 155 11,96 14,91 5,35 5,76 -4,113 212,702 ,000* note: p<0.05 when table 4 is analyzed, significant differences were found between grades in terms of existential, intrapersonal, logical/mathematical, musical-rhythmic/harmonic, naturalistic, verbal and visual intelligence (p <0.05). it has been determined that bodily/kinesthetic and interpersonal/social intelligence do not change according to grades (p> 0.05). third-year students reported to be more dominant in every intelligence area. in the areas of visual and existential intelligence, both third year and final year students were more dominant than students in other grades. sub-problem 4: do the intelligence areas of the students differ significantly according to the departments? when table 5 is examined, there are no significant differences between departments in terms of multiple intelligence modalities (p>0,05). sub-problem 5: do students have age group differences in multiple intelligence areas? when table 6 is examined, visual/spatial intelligence shows age group differences in the favor of the students at 30 years and above. there were no significant age group differences in other intelligence areas. sub-problem 6: do students have sport age group differences in multiple intelligence areas? asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 246-255 250 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. differences between grades in terms of multiple intelligence. modality grade n mean s.d. f p post hoc bodily/kinesthetic fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 8,78 8,80 7,93 8,75 5,49 4,15 4,76 5,43 ,488 ,691 existential fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 10,84 8,61 8,33 8,63 5,46 5,54 4,07 4,85 4,320 ,005* 3>1 4>1 interpersonal/social fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 11,19 11,26 9,51 9,80 5,45 5,60 5,30 5,03 1,830 ,142 intrapersonal fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 10,17 9,19 7,02 8,44 5,44 5,29 3,52 5,62 5,692 ,001* 3>1 logical/mathematical fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 10,01 8,61 7,33 9,78 4,91 5,72 5,10 5,83 4,140 ,007* 3>1 3>4 musicalrhythmic/harmonic fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 14,82 14,53 10,76 14,36 5,55 5,47 5,65 6,77 7,823 ,000* 3>1 3>2 3>4 naturalistic fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 12,78 11,80 8,92 10,59 5,90 6,49 5,90 6,11 5,871 ,001* 3>1 verbal/linguistic fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 18,15 18,19 14,63 18,01 6,48 5,28 5,87 6,08 5,935 ,001* 3>1 3>2 3>4 visual/spatial fresher sophomore third year final year 84 26 80 61 15,71 13,69 12,41 12,98 5,98 4,53 5,63 5,57 5,266 ,002* 3>1 4>1 note: p<0.05 table-5. differences between departments in terms of multiple intelligence. modality department n mean s.d. f p bodily/kinesthetic coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 9,17 8,29 7,21 5,62 4,75 4,19 2,422 ,091 existential coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 9,62 9,22 8,45 5,12 5,00 4,73 ,849 ,429 interpersonal/social coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 10,72 10,18 9,57 5,73 5,33 4,20 ,764 ,467 intrapersonal coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 8,91 8,46 8,35 5,57 4,39 5,24 ,279 ,757 logical/mathematical coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 9,53 8,48 8,47 5,82 5,13 4,69 1,188 ,306 musicalrhythmic/harmonic coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 13,90 13,07 12,71 5,74 6,45 6,40 ,776 ,461 naturalistic coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 10,90 10,11 12,80 5,98 5,77 7,30 2,808 ,062 verbal/linguistic coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 17,15 16,65 17,38 6,04 6,47 6,43 ,258 ,773 visual/spatial coaching education physical education and sports teaching sport management 113 96 42 13,66 13,56 14,64 5,44 5,90 6,44 ,556 ,574 note: p<0.05 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 246-255 251 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-6. differences between age groups in terms of multiple intelligence. modality age group n mean s.d. f p bodily/kinesthetic 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 7,68 8,23 10,29 13,00 10,00 4,83 4,90 5,76 7,14 1,733 ,143 existential 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 11,53 8,92 9,23 7,00 8,42 5,24 4,91 4,75 6,37 1,965 ,100 interpersonal/social 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 11,25 10,20 10,02 14,00 10,14 5,59 5,15 5,97 6,86 ,404 ,806 intrapersonal 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 11,00 8,25 8,41 7,00 9,28 5,47 4,73 5,12 9,14 2,086 ,083 logical/mathematical 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 10,65 8,48 9,82 7,00 9,42 5,12 5,20 5,81 8,24 1,414 ,230 musicalrhythmic/harmonic 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 15,65 12,76 14,52 16,00 12,85 5,28 6,21 6,05 6,44 1,935 ,105 naturalistic 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 12,62 10,55 11,58 7,00 9,71 6,13 6,14 6,54 5,93 1,028 ,394 verbal/linguistic 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 18,37 16,53 18,55 15,00 15,42 6,45 6,24 5,43 8,71 1,304 ,269 visual/spatial 18 years and under between 19 and 22 years between 23 and 26 years between 27 and 29 years 30 years and above 32 177 34 1 7 17,06 13,29 13,97 11,00 10,71 5,97 5,64 4,92 8,05 3,583 ,007 note: p<0.05, groups with only one case are ignored in computing the test of homogeneity of variance for. table-7. differences between sport age groups in terms of multiple intelligence. modality sport year n mean s.d. f p post hoc bodily/kinesthetic 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 8,30 8,52 10,03 6,80 5,23 5,21 5,22 3,22 1,614 ,187 existential 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 10,26 9,33 9,39 6,15 5,31 5,03 4,71 3,21 3,375 ,019* 16>5 16>6-10 interpersonal/social 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 10,84 10,64 11,03 5,60 4,93 5,35 5,52 3,92 6,054 ,001* 16>5 16>6-10 16>11-15 intrapersonal 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 9,00 8,82 9,71 4,95 6,06 4,85 4,57 2,96 4,238 ,006* 16>5 16>6-10 16>11-15 logical/mathematical 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 9,50 9,16 9,75 4,90 6,25 5,08 5,16 4,02 4,395 ,005* 16>5 16>6-10 16>11-15 musical-rhythmic/harmonic 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 12,94 13,74 14,89 9,75 6,38 5,93 6,10 5,94 3,252 ,022* 16>6-10 16>11-15 naturalistic 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 11,53 10,87 12,64 7,25 6,40 6,40 5,16 3,62 3,331 ,020* 16>5 16>11-15 verbal/linguistic 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 15,51 17,07 20,64 15,25 7,57 5,96 4,58 4,73 4,877 ,003* 11-15>5 11-15>6-10 16>11-15 visual/spatial 5 years and under between 6-10 years between 11-15 years 16 years and above 52 151 28 20 12,90 14,06 15,46 11,65 6,39 5,67 5,19 5,13 2,250 ,083 note: p<0.05 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 246-255 252 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in table 7, significant differences were found between sport age groups in terms of existential, interpersonal/social, intrapersonal, logical/mathematical, musical-rhythmic/harmonic, naturalistic, and verbal intelligence (p<0,05). no significant differences were found in terms of bodily/kinesthetic intelligence and visual/spatial intelligence (p>0,05). the students doing sport for 16 years and more reported to have higher scores in each modality. in verbal intelligence area, the students doing sport between 11-15 years and for 16 years and above had higher scores than those doing sport lesser time. sub-problem 7: do students have sport branch differences in multiple intelligence areas? table-8. differences between students according to their branches in terms of multiple intelligence. modality branch n mean s.d. t df p bodily/kinesthetic team individual 135 116 8,78 8,18 5,09 5,14 ,919 249 ,359 existential team individual 135 116 9,65 8,84 5,08 4,91 1,273 249 ,204 interpersonal/social team individual 135 116 10,25 10,41 4,91 5,83 -,236 225,793 ,814 intrapersonal team individual 135 116 7,56 9,32 5,24 4,91 ,058 249 ,954 logical/mathematical team individual 135 116 7,33 9,96 5,32 5,48 -,554 249 ,580 musical-rhythmic/harmonic team individual 135 116 11,37 14,63 6,26 5,99 ,532 249 ,595 naturalistic team individual 135 116 11,25 10,53 6,39 5,95 ,915 249 ,361 verbal/linguistic team individual 135 116 17,31 16,63 6,53 5,92 ,858 249 ,391 visual/spatial team individual 135 116 13,97 13,57 6,16 5,32 ,536 249 ,593 note: p<0.05 table 8 presents the differences between sport branches in terms of multiple intelligence. no significant differences were found between sport branches. 4. discussion and conclusion the aim of this study was to determine the dominant intelligence modality of university students who receive sports education and to examine intelligence modality in terms of various variables (gender, grade, department, age, sport age, and branch). in this section, the results obtained from the research findings and the relationship of these results with the relevant literature were discussed and suggestions were made for other studies to be conducted. the first hypothesis was “while the most dominant intelligence field of students studying in the field of sports sciences is physical / kinesthetic intelligence, the most distant intelligence field is verbal intelligence.” the intelligence area which students are the most dominant is the physical intelligence area with an average of 8.51. the intelligence area which the students are most distant is the verbal intelligence area with an average of 17.00. this hypothesis was accepted. in the studies of bayrak et al. (2005); hoşgörür and katrancı (2007) and kul et al. (2014) the field of intelligence in which physical education and sports school students are dominant was physical / kinesthetic intelligence and verbal intelligence was the area of intelligence they are most distant from. some studies supported our results (baba. & güçlü, 2015; kiremitçi & canpolat, 2014; kul et al., 2014; oral, 2001). in the study of ermiş et al. (2018) it was stated that the lowest intelligence field is verbal intelligence in adolescents who do sports and do not do sports. according to a different study on the intelligence type of turkish language teaching students (eyyam, meneviş, & doğruer, 2010) there was a significant difference between students' verbal multiple intelligence and their academic achievements. in addition, individuals who successfully achieve their physical goals and control their movements are in this intelligence sphere. skills such as strength, balance, speed, flexibility, coordination and dexterity are seen in this intelligence field. actors, artisans, dancers, athletes and sculptors can be given as master examples of physical intelligence. the person's ability to use his body while expressing his ideas or feelings expresses this field of intelligence (armstrong, 2003, 2009; babacan & dilci, 2012; gardner, 1999; moran, kornhaber, & gardner, 2006; nolen, 2003). likewise, because of the more intensive lessons to develop bodily / kinesthetic intelligence in institutions providing education about physical education, students studying in these schools are expected to have higher bodily / kinesthetic intelligence (baba. & güçlü, 2015). the second hypothesis was “there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to the students' gender.” there were significant differences between genders regarding interpersonal/social, intrapersonal, logical/mathematical, musical-rhythmic/harmonic, naturalistic, verbal and visual intelligence areas (p <0.05). this hypothesis was accepted. females were more dominant than males in terms of each modality. some studies in literature supported our findings reporting significant differences (azar, 2006; baba et al., 2015; cinkılıç & soyer, 2013; furnham & chamorro-premuzic, 2005) and insignificance between genders in terms of some multiple intelligence modalities (kahraman & bavlı, 2014; kahraman. & bulut, 2014; loori, 2005; metan & küçük, 2017; nevılle, 2000; yenice & aktamış, 2010). in addition, in the study of altınok (2008) and ermiş et al. (2018) the bodily / kinesthetic intelligence of women was higher than that of men, in line with the findings of our research. senel and yıldız (2016) reported no significant gender differences in terms of bodily/kinesthetic intelligence. similar to our findings, in the study conducted by tunç (2008) there were significant differences between the genders in terms of verbal, visual, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence modalities. in yenilmez and çalışkan (2011) study, there were significant differences in the areas of verbal, visual and musical intelligence asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 246-255 253 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to the gender variable. in the studies of tekin (2007); tekin (2008) and yıldız (2010) the average of bodily / kinesthetic intelligence of men was higher than that of women. in addition, in the study of tekin (2008) bodily / kinesthetic intelligence differs significantly according to the gender variable. unlike these studies, no significant difference was found in the areas of gender and multiple intelligence in the study of izci, kara, and dalaman (2007). the higher interpersonal intelligence of women is due to two reasons, according to ciarrochi, chan, and caputi (2000). first, women are more social and can read other people's feelings better. second, they are biologically better equipped for such a situation. in addition to this situation, mayer, caruso, and salovey (1999) stated that women should read emotions better because they have less power in society. according to the opinions of mayer et al. (1999) the fact that women are more dominant in terms of intrapersonal and logical intelligence can be based on this reason. in addition, women become socialized by taking an emotional attitude towards some of their difficulties (zakowski et al., 2003). women can share the difficult situations they face in life more easily than men. in addition, this may be associated with gender roles (kimura, 2002). therefore, it can be considered normal for women to have multiple intelligence levels more dominant than men. the third hypothesis was “there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to students' grade levels.” significant differences were found between grades in terms of existential, intrapersonal, logical/mathematical, musical-rhythmic/harmonic, naturalistic, verbal and visual intelligence (p <0.05). it has been determined that bodily/kinesthetic and interpersonal/social intelligence do not change according to grades (p> 0.05). third-year students reported to be more dominant in every intelligence area. in the areas of visual and existential intelligence, both third year and final year students were more dominant than students in other grades. this hypothesis was accepted. some studies supported our findings reporting no significant grade differences in terms of bodily/kinesthetic intelligence (altınok, 2008; baba et al., 2015; nulhakım, wıbawa, & erwın, 2019; tekin, 2007; yenice & aktamış, 2010). in the study of baba et al. (2015) the average of bodily / kinesthetic intelligence score of 3rd grade students was found higher than other grades. in the study of güllü and tekin (2009) significant differences were found in the areas of verbal, logical, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence according to grade. the reason for these differences can be shown as the differentiation of interests, wishes and expectations of students, which can change according to their grade levels (güllü & tekin, 2009). the fourth hypothesis was “there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to the students' departments.” there were no significant differences between departments in terms of multiple intelligence modalities (p>0,05). this hypothesis was rejected. according to the study of güllü and tekin (2009) the intelligence areas of sports high school students and general high school students differed from each other. in the studies of oztürkmen (2006) and camurcu (2007) and erman (2003) the intelligence areas in which students studying in different departments had different dominant intelligence modalities. ermiş et al. (2012) compared the students of the police vocational school and the school of physical education and sports in terms of intelligence and did not find a significant difference. the reason for insignificance between the departments in intelligence areas is that they take sports lessons at the same time, there is a special talent exam at the entrance to both departments and they like sports lessons (ermiş et al., 2012). also, armstrong mentioned two factors that had a significant impact on intelligence development. these are accelerator and blinding factors. accelerator factors have positive effects for intelligence development and blinding factors have negative effects (kuru, 2001). in this context, it is a natural result that different intelligence fields develop as a result of different courses taken by students in different schools and departments. the fifth hypothesis was “there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to the students' ages.” visual/spatial intelligence shows age group differences in the favor of the students at 30 years and above. there were no significant age group differences in other intelligence areas. this hypothesis was partially accepted. there are some studies in the literature that are similar to the findings of our research (inan, aydin, & bilgin, 2000; metan & küçük, 2017). according to these studies, a decrease in reasoning skills was found with the increase in the age level. the reason for this decline has been shown that students are in a compulsory period for studying (metan & küçük, 2017). in our study, it was seen that students in the exam preparation periods received lower averages. elderly participants were found to have higher averages from their intelligence fields. there are different opinions supporting these findings. according to these views, as the age of the individual progresses, they gain different experiences and therefore their ability to use information increases with age (alpar, 2000; uysal, 2006). it is known that intelligence is influenced not only by heredity but also by the environmental factor with which the family and the individual interact. according to the multiple intelligence theory, the development of intelligence areas depends on providing opportunities and environment suitable for the individual rather than the existing natural capacity (uysal, 2006). the sixth hypothesis was “there are significant differences in the areas of multiple intelligence according to the duration of the students' sports.” significant differences were found between sport age groups in terms of existential, interpersonal/social, intrapersonal, logical/mathematical, musical-rhythmic/harmonic, naturalistic, and verbal intelligence (p<0,05). no significant differences were found in terms of bodily/kinesthetic intelligence and visual/spatial intelligence (p>0,05). the students doing sport for 16 years and more reported to have higher scores in each modality. in verbal intelligence area, the students doing sport between 11-15 years and for 16 years and above had higher scores than those doing sport lesser time. this hypothesis partially accepted. when the literature is examined, there are different research findings that are similar to the findings of our study (cengiz & pulur, 2008; demirsöz & kocabaş, 2006; ermiş et al., 2012; guastello & guastello, 2003; i̇lhan et al., 2005; katz, mirenda, & auerbach, 2002; teele, 1997; tekin, 2008; tekin, filiz, tasgin, & özmutlu, 2008). in these studies, it was found that students who do sports are more dominant than students who do not do sports in some intelligence fields. in a study on the socialization levels of university students studying in different departments (erdemir, sert, & okmen, 2006) the levels of socialization of students of physical education and sports were higher than those of the music and painting departments. according to the study of canlı, toksöz, and ozmutlu (2017) there is a significant and positive relationship between basketball-specific skill level and musical intelligence. it has been reported that sports have many positive effects on human development. movement behavior and hence sport is an essential condition in individuals' development processes. physical activity and sports in which the individual asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 246-255 254 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group participates is very important in the cognitive, spiritual and emotional development of the individual (gohla, 2010; orhan, 2019). in addition, cognitive development starts at a very early age and is supported by physical activities, among other things. the development of thought structure and perception is closely related to motor abilities that require motion and sensory experience (orhan, 2019; zimmer, 2014). the seventh hypothesis was “there are significant differences in multiple intelligence areas according to the branches that students make.” no significant differences were found between sport branches in terms of multiple intelligence modalities. this hypothesis was rejected. there are different studies in the literature that support our research (baba et al., 2015). according to these studies, no significant difference was found between the branch type and multiple intelligence areas in parallel with our research. senel and yıldız (2016) reported no significant differences between team and individual athletes in terms of bodily/kinesthetic intelligence. in the works of altınok (2008) and tekin (2007) bodily/kinesthetic intelligence of athletes engaged in individual sports was found higher than athletes doing team sports. in the study of aslan et al. (2015) similar to our finding, the intrapersonal intelligence areas of athletes interested in team sports were more dominant. in altınok (2008) study, a significant difference was found between the branch types in bodily/kinesthetic intelligence field. physical activity and sports that the individual participates contributes to cognitive, spiritual and emotional development (gohla, 2010; orhan, 2019). since physical activity and sports make positive contributions to individuals 'multiple intelligence domains, participants' intelligence domains are close to each other. the fact that the branch type does not differ significantly in terms of multiple intelligence may be due to this reason. based on the findings of the research, the following suggestions can be made for future studies: 1) it will be appropriate to use a scale including 9 intelligence fields in future studies. 2) by doing longitudinal studies, developments in intelligence areas of the same individuals through sports can be brought to the literature in the light of current information. 3) based on the results of the studies, applications can be developed to improve the intelligence areas where students are distant through sports and education, and the intelligence areas they are distant from. 4) since it is known that multiple intelligence areas of individuals are affected by both personal and environmental factors, attention should be paid to creating the most appropriate educational environments. 5) the positive effects of sports on the development of multiple intelligence have been repeated with this study and therefore it is important that individuals are directed to sports for their intelligence development. 6) it has been determined in the literature that the verbal intelligence areas of the students receiving physical education and sports are low. accordingly, it would be beneficial to make additional applications to improve the verbal intelligence field. 7) wider sampling groups and different independent variables can also be proposed as an additional suggestion for future studies. references alpar, a. m. 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(2014). handbook movement education. basics for training and educational practice. 1st edition of the revised and expanded new edition 2013 (3rd ed.). freiburg i̇m breisgau: verlag herde. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 95 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 3, 95-99, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i3.4123 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of anaerobic power, static balance, and speed performances in 10-12 years old children doing or not doing sports ali kemal taskin physical education and sports school, kilis 7 december university, kilis, turkey. email: kemaltaskin@kilis.edu.tr abstract in this study, it was aimed to investigate the anaerobic power, static balance, and speed performances of 10-12 years old children doing or not doing sports. in our study, 20 girls between the ages of 10 and 12 doing sports, and 20 girls between the ages of 10 and 12 not doing sports who both live in the city center of batman voluntarily participated. the analysis of whether the data showed normal distribution was tested with the shapiro-wilk test, and the t-test was used to make comparisons between independent groups. at the end of the study, when the posttest results of the control and experimental groups were compared, a statistically significant difference was found in the vertical jump, standing long jump, static balance, and 100-meter sprint test values (p<0.05). there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the 30 meter speed test values (p>0.05). keywords: sports, anaerobic power, static balance, child, speed performances, anaerobic. citation | ali kemal taskin (2022). investigation of anaerobic power, static balance, and speed performances in 10-12 years old children doing or not doing sports. asian journal of education and training, 8(3): 95-99. history: received: 23 may 2022 revised: 19 july 2022 accepted: 5 august 2022 published: 24 august 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 96 2. material and method ....................................................................................................................................................................... 96 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 97 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 98 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 99 mailto:kemaltaskin@kilis.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i3.4123 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3222-3642 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 95-99 96 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature in this study, it was aimed to investigate the anaerobic power, static balance, and speed performances of 10-12 years old children doing or not doing sports. as a result, it is to contribute to the existing literature by believing that the physical development and performance of children at this age will improve significantly with the sports activities to be done in accordance with the age of the children in the developmental age. 1. introduction the role of sports in community and in intercommunal relations is increasing day by day. for this reason, sports are closely related to institutions such as culture, education, and health in society. the relationship between education and sports for centuries was found with terms such as "the person who develops his heart, mind, and body together" during the enlightenment period, "competing person" in the competitive understanding of capitalism, and "person who does sports" in the 15th century within the humanist movement of thought (orhun, 1991). the necessity of sports activities on the basis of all social and physical developments is a well-known fact for many years. in creation, the human organism was adapted to be able to move, and its contexture was built according to movement. researchers have found that particularly the subconsciousness acquired in childhood affects the growth of the contexture in question. since the 18th century, a different and special part of life has been perceived as the childhood process. since the 19th century, moralists and educators have pointed out the necessity of child development. the 20th century has been considered the childhood century in its entirety. at the same time, the concept of sports in childhood age became widespread in the 20th century (muratlı, 2003). the most severe form of growth is seen during childhood and adolescence in human development. sports make it possible for the personality structure and physical health, which develops especially at the age of 0-6, to develop in the same dimension in the following years instead of changing its dimension. a few researchers have confirmed that many parts of the achievements acquired during childhood affect the personality structure, attitude, shame, and value judgments of the individual at maturity (sivri, 1993). sports are necessary and beneficial in terms of both the physical development of children and the direction of gaining a good personality and mental health in the developmental period. in the current period, sports play a valuable role in every level of human life. the family and the institutions where they receive education are of considerable importance for children to create this awareness. education has been a valuable tool for learning at every age. the child, who advances their development with this consciousness, makes sports a way of life in the future. in relation to this, sports are carried out in different fields and scopes within society (candan, 2005). 2. material and method 2.1. population and sample of the study in the study, 20 girls between the ages of 10 and 12 doing sports and 20 girls between the ages of 10 and 12 not doing sports who live in the city center of batman participated voluntarily. the subjects not doing sports consist of girls who do not do any sports and lead a sedentary life; while the group that does sports consists of girls who play in sports clubs and train regularly. table 1. demographic information of groups doing sports and not doing sports. variables not doing sports (n=20) doing sports (n=20) mean ± s.d mean ± s.d age (year) 13.18 ± 0.51 13.44± 0.18 heigth (cm) 145.61± 1.55 149.57± 1.13 body weight (kg) 47.33± 1.18 41.57± 1.19 bmi (kg/m2) 22.35 ± 0.57 18.78± 0.41 according to table 1, when we examined the demographic values of girls doing and not doing sports, the mean age values of the subjects who do sports were determined as 13.44± 0.18 years, height as 149.57± 1.13 cm, mean body weight values as 41.57± 1.19 kg, body mass index values as 18.78± 0.41 kg/m2. demographic information of the subjects who do not do sports was determined as follows: the mean age was 13.18 ± 0.51 years, mean height was 145.61 ± 1.55 cm, mean body weight was 47.33 ± 1.18 kg, body mass index was 22.35 ± 0.57 kg/m2. 2.2. body weight and height measurements the subjects' height and weight measurements were made while wearing shorts, t-shirts, and bare feet, on a scale with a sensitivity of 0.01 kg. the data obtained were written in the information form in centimeters and kilograms (lohman, roche, & martorell, 1988). 2.3. vertical jump takai brand jump meters were used in the vertical jump test of the subjects. the squat jump test, in which the explosive power of the leg was measured, was performed in a squat position with the knees at 900 flexions and a full jump upwards while the hands were on the waist. each measurement was repeated 3 times. between trials, 2-minute resting was given and the best value was recorded (açıkada, 2008). 2.4. standing long jump test at the end of the long jump with both legs standing still and without gaining speed, the distance between the line at the jump point and the last trace of the athlete was measured in cm. the standing long jump test was repeated 2 times. between trials, 2-minute resting was given and the best result was recorded (sevim, 1997). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 95-99 97 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.5. flamingo balance test in this test, 50 cm long, 4 cm high, and 3 cm wide wooden beam was used. during this test, the subject tried to keep their foot on the long axis above the beam as long as possible in a flamingo-like pose. each attempt (not a fall) to maintain balance on the beam for 1 minute was counted as points (pekel, 2007). 2.6. 30-meter sprint test (30 mst) a 40-meter running track and smart speed system were used as test equipment. for the 30 m sprint, the 30 m distance was determined on the 40 m running track. while the subject was in a slightly forward inclined position at the starting line, they started the photocell by starting when they were ready and continued running. when the finish line was reached, the photocell automatically reflected the score on the screen. after the athletes were fully rested, the test was repeated and the athlete's best score was recorded. 2.7. 100-meter sprint test (100 mst) care was taken to ensure that the weather conditions were not windy while measuring. for the 100-meter sprint, the 100-meter area was determined on the 120-meter running track. while the subject was in a slightly forward inclined position at the starting line, they started the photocell by starting when they were ready and continued running. when the finish line was reached, the photocell automatically reflected the score on the screen. after the athletes were fully rested, the test was repeated and the athlete's best score was recorded. 2.8. determination of body mass index calculation of the subjects' body mass indexes was determined by the formula below. bmi = weight(kg) / height(m)2 calculating the heart rates of subjects. karvonen formula; maximum heart rate: 220 years of age, heart rate reserve = maximum heart rate resting heart rate. target heart rate = (60-70% x heart rate reserve) + resting heart rate. during the exercise, the heart rate of the subjects was monitored on the screen with the device attached to the chest of the subjects, and it was ensured that the exercise was performed in accordance with the protocol. 2.9. statistical analysis the spss statistical package for the social sciences 25.0 program was used to analyze the data obtained from the study. the data were summarized as mean and standard deviation. analysis of whether the data showed normal distribution was tested with the shapiro-wilk test and the data was determined to show normal distribution. comparison between independent groups was analyzed by the independent sample t-test. in this study, the error level was accepted as 0.05. 3. findings when we examined table 2, in the comparison of vertical jump values of girls doing and not doing sports, a statistically significant difference was found in favor of girls doing sports in the vertical jump measurement results of the subjects doing and not doing sports (p<0.05). table 2. comparison of vertical jump measurement values of the subjects doing and not doing sports variables control group mean ± sd t p vertical jump doing sports 38.32 ±5.51 7.399 0.000* not doing sports 34.19 ±5.15 note: *(p<0.05). significant. table 3. comparison of standing long jump measurement values of the subjects doing and not doing sports. variables control group mean ± sd t p standing long jump doing sports 185.65 ±14.59 6.228 0.000* not doing sports 180.78 ±12.99 note: *(p<0.05). significant. in the examination of table 3 showing the comparison of vertical jump values of girls doing and not doing sports, a statistically significant difference was found in favor of girls doing sports in the measurement results of the subjects doing and not doing sports in standing long jump values (p<0.05). table 4. comparison of flamingo balance test measurement values of subjects doing and not doing sports. variables control group mean ± sd t p flamingo balance test doing sports 2.58 ±1.48 -3.876 0.001* not doing sports 3.55 ±0.99 note: *(p<0.05). significant. when we examined table 4, in the comparison of flamingo balance values of girls doing and not doing sports; it was determined that the flamingo balance test scores of the girls who do sports are statistically better than the flamingo balance test scores of the girls not doing sports (p<0.05). table 5. comparison of the 30-meter sprint test measurement values of the subjects doing and not doing sports. variables control group mean ± sd t p 30-meter sprint test values doing sports 5.48±0.39 0.391 0.539 not doing sports 5.54±0.29 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 95-99 98 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when we examined table 5 on the comparison of the 30-meter sprint performances of girls doing and not doing sports; there was no statistically significant difference between the 30-meter sprint performance values of girls doing sports and the 30-meter sprint performance values of girls not doing sports (p>0.05). table 6. comparison of the 100-meter sprint test measurement values of the subjects doing and not doing sports. variables control group mean ± sd t p 100-meter sprint test values doing sports 17.86±1.21 -2.110 0.020* not doing sports 18.77±1.29 note: *(p<0.05). significant. in the examination of table 6 on the comparison of the 100-meter sprint performance of girls doing and not doing sports, a statistically significant difference was found in favor of those who do sports, between the 100-meter sprint performance values of girls doing sports (p<0.05). 4. discussion and conclusion the most severe form of growth is observed in human development during childhood and adolescence. sports make it possible for the personality structure and physical health, which particularly develop at the age of 0-6, to develop in the same dimension in the following years, instead of changing its dimension. sports are necessary and beneficial for children, both for their physical development and for gaining a good personality and mental health, in the developmental period. in the current period, sports play a valuable role in every level of human life. in creating this awareness in children, the institutions where they receive family education cannot be underestimated. we think that the results of this study and scientific research are important in terms of contributing to the physical development of children. in our study, when comparing the vertical jump and standing long jump values of girls doing and not doing sports, a statistically significant difference was found in favor of girls doing sports in the vertical jump measurement results of the subjects doing and not doing sports (p<0.05). when we examine studies similar to the one we have conducted, mihalik, libby, battaglini, and mcmurray (2008) have stated that as a result of the complex trainings that volleyball players had two days a week for four weeks, volleyball players achieved a statistically significant improvement in vertical jump height. in the study conducted by taşkın, karakoç, nacaroğlu, and budak (2015), the average standing long jump distance of children has been determined as 184.70±29.56 cm, and the average vertical jump as 38.62±7.48 cm. in another study conducted with hearing-impaired people, in the comparison of the muscular power performances of hearing-impaired and not hearing-impaired male and female athletes according to their situation of having the disability, it has been determined that there was no significant difference between disabled judoists and non-disabled judoists in terms of leg strength, vertical jump, standing long jump, thirty-second push-ups, right and left-hand claw powers (karakoç, taşkın, & budak, 2015). in the study of santos and janeira (2008) with 14-15 age group young basketball players, the effect of training on the explosive power characteristics of basketball players has been investigated and at the end of complex training performed twice a week for 10 weeks, the squat jump values of basketball players (initial = 24.79 cm, end= 28.01 cm), active jump values (initial = 29.88 cm, end= 33.02 cm) and medicine ball throwing performances (initial = 3.47 cm, end= 4.15 cm) have been stated to improve significantly. when we examined the other results of the study we have conducted, in the comparison of the balance scores, 30-meter sprint, and 100-meter sprint values of girls doing and not doing sports; a statistically significant difference was found in favor of girls doing sports in the balance scores, 30-meter sprint and 100-meter sprint results of the subjects doing and not doing sports (p<0.05). in a study conducted by perrin, schneider, deviterne, perrot, and constantinescu (1998), the static balance scores of individuals in the judo and dance group have been compared, and it has been found that there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups as a result of the study. when we looked at the results of this study, it has been shown that elite-level athletes exhibit a balance control that develops according to the characteristics of the sports branch they are doing. in another study, the balance scores of the groups that did and did not play football have been examined and it has been observed that individuals who played football had better balance scores than individuals who did not play football. this has been explained as better control of the physiological system that provides balance in football players (sucan, yılmaz, can, & süer, 2005). taşkın et al. (2015) in their study on hearing-impaired male volleyball and handball athletes, have found a significant correlation between the static balance scores of the two branches (p<0.01). in a study, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in favor of the children who do sports between the 100-meter sprint performances of children doing and not doing sports (p<0.05). the main reason for this is that, in addition to sports activities, the running speed of children in this age group is in the development phase (muratlı, 2003). changes in growth and maturation, body structures, and sportive performance in athletic children and youngsters have been examined in various studies and it has been stated that growth may cause different development of performance (bale, mayhe, piper, ball, & willman, 1992). in many studies on this subject, it has been reported that there was no significant improvement in the 30 m running performance of children by participation in sports (savucu, polat, & biçer, 2005). the results of these studies support our study findings. in the study of taskin, cengiz, turgut, and halil (2014) on amputee football players, the 30-meter sprint performance has been determined as 5.27 ± 0.37 seconds. in their study with elite football players, alves, rebelo, abrantes, and sampaio (2010) have examined vertical jump and sprint performances. among the subjects classified into three groups in the study, the first group participated in complex training consisting of three stations twice a week, and the second group once a week. the last group, on the other hand, continued their regular football training and was not involved in any other training practice. as a result, it has been determined that the first group had a statistically significant improvement of 9.2% in the 5 m sprint grade and 6.2% in the 15 m sprint grade. it has been stated that the reason for these changes after complex training practices was that the complex training activates both the nervous system and muscle fibers, and then the slow-twitch muscle fibers act like fast-twitch muscle fibers (ebben, 2002). studies have shown that this asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 95-99 99 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group training method provides improvement even in groups that do not do regular sports when applied two days a week in as little as four weeks; for this reason, it is thought that trainers and athletes can use this training method in order to get rid of monotonous training methods and to use time effectively. when we examine the results of our study and the results of the studies in the literature, they show that the motoric characteristics of the individuals doing sports are in better condition than the individuals not doing sports. in conclusion, we are of the opinion that the physical development and performance of children at this age will significantly improve with the sports activities to be carried out in accordance with their age. references açıkada, c. (2008). editor. athletics talent model report. ankara: athletics federation education board publications. alves, j. m. v. m., rebelo, a. n., abrantes, c., & sampaio, j. (2010). short-term effects of complex and contrast training in soccer players' vertical jump, sprint, and agility abilities. the journal of strength & conditioning research, 24(4), 936-941.available at: https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0b013e3181c7c5fd. bale, p., mayhe, j., piper, f., ball, t., & willman, m. (1992). biological and performance variables in relation to age. journal sports medicine physical fitness, 32, 142-148. candan, n. (2005). education with sports-school sports problems and a new structuring proposal in school sports. paper presented at the 4th national physical education and sports teaching symposium, bursa, p. 259-268. ebben, w. p. (2002). complex training: a brief review. journal of sports science & medicine, 1(2), 42-46. karakoç, o., taşkın, c., & budak, m. (2015). investigation of muscular strength in deaf and non-hearing judo players. journal of academic social research, 3(17), 220228. lohman, t. g., roche, a. f., & martorell, r. (1988). anthropometric standardization reference manual (pp. 3-8). illinois: human kinetics books. mihalik, j. p., libby, j. j., battaglini, c. l., & mcmurray, r. g. (2008). comparing short-term complex and compound training programs on vertical jump height and power output. the journal of strength & conditioning research, 22(1), 47-53.available at: https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0b013e31815eee9e. muratlı, s. (2003). children and sports. ankara: nobel broadcasting distribution. orhun, a. (1991). from physical education lesson to school sport lesson. paper presented at the i. physical education and sports symposium in educational institutions proceedings, izmir. pekel, h. a. (2007). normative study on some variables in 10-12 age group children depending on talent search in athletics. gazi university institute of health sciences, unpublished doctoral thesis, ankara. perrin, p., schneider, d., deviterne, d., perrot, c., & constantinescu, l. (1998). training improves the adaptation to changing visual conditions in maintaining human posture control in a test of sinusoidal oscillation of the support. neuroscience letters, 245(3), 155-158.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0304-3940(98)00208-0. santos, e. j., & janeira, m. a. (2008). effects of complex training on explosive strength in adolescent male basketball players. the journal of strength & conditioning research, 22(3), 903-909.available at: https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0b013e31816a59f2. savucu, y., polat, y., & biçer, y. s. (2005). the effect of 12-week athletics training with and without games on the physical fitness of athletic boys, fırat university. journal of health sciences, 19(3), 199204. sevim, y. (1997). training information book. ankara: tutibay ltd. sti. sivri, h. (1993). effects of physical and spatial environment on child behavior and development determination of design data in environments to be created for children. doctoral thesis, d.e.ü,f.b.e., izmir. sucan, s., yılmaz, a., can, y., & süer, c. (2005). evaluation of various balance parameters of active football players. erciyes university journal of health sciences, 14(1), 36-42. taskin, m., cengiz, t., turgut, k., & halil, t. (2014). relationships between quickness and speed performance in amputee footballers. science, movement and health, 14(suppl 2), 580-584. taşkın, c., karakoç, ö., nacaroğlu, e., & budak, c. (2015). investigation of the relationship between selected motoric characteristics in footballer children. journal of sport and performance studies, 6(2), 107-107. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 163 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 3, 163-168, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.163.168 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the individual innovativeness and online learning attitudes of academic staff in institutions providing sports training at the level of bachelor degree alparslan muharrem kurudirek1 irfan muhammet kurudirek2 ( corresponding author) 1dr, ataturk university, faculty of sports sciences, erzurum, turkey. 2dr, coruh university, high school of physical education and sports, artvin, turkey. abstract the purpose of this study was to examine the individual innovativeness and online learning attitudes of academic staff carrying out duty in institutions providing education at the level of bachelor degree in turkey. the study was conducted online across turkey via the correlational survey model between september 2020 and november 2020. the population of the study comprised academic staff carrying out duty in faculties of sports sciences in state universities in turkey. the sample group consisted of 104 academicians who carry out duty in faculties of sports sciences in state universities chosen randomly from the seven regions in turkey and agreed to participate in the study. the data of the study were collected using the “personal information form”, “individual innovativeness scale (iis)” and “online learning attitude scale (olas)”. the findings of the study showed that the participants obtained medium mean scores from the general acceptance subscale of online learning attitude scale, lower mean scores from the individual awareness subscale, medium mean scores from the perceived usefulness and application effectiveness subscale, and medium mean scores from the overall online learning attitude scale. on the other hand, the individual innovativeness scale mean scores of the participants were evaluated in the innovator category. as a consequence, it was observed that there was a statistically significant, positive, and high correlation between the online learning attitude and individual innovativeness levels of the participants. accordingly, as the individual innovativeness levels of the participants increased, their online learning attitude levels increased. keywords: individual innovativeness, online learning attitude physical education and sports, academic staff. citation | alparslan muharrem kurudirek; irfan muhammet kurudirek (2021). examining the individual innovativeness and online learning attitudes of academic staff in institutions providing sports training at the level of bachelor degree. asian journal of education and training, 7(3): 163-168. history: received: 20 may 2021 revised: 15 june 2021 accepted: 7 july 2021 published: 29 july 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 164 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 164 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 165 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 167 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 167 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.163.168&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/3147 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5549-6902 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7902-8978 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 163-168 164 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the purpose of this study was to examine the individual innovativeness and online learning attitudes of academic staff carrying out duty in institutions providing education at the level of bachelor degree in turkey. the study was conducted online across turkey via the correlational survey model between september 2020 and november 2020. 1. introduction in a globalising world, the role of information technologies in education has considerably increased. as of 2020, the covid-19 virus has created the need for a new modelling in education and the concept of online learning has become important for students and teachers to realize effective, continuous and useful educational processes. in parallel with this modelling, individual innovativeness which is among primary concepts having importance in adapting to technological developments, is defined by yuan and woodman (2010) as developing, adopting or applying an innovation. the literature has studies suggesting that there is a need for work (following, adapting, developing) to integrate the current one into the relevant area. ayhan (1999) states that the concept of innovativeness affects the formal education process from preschool until university and is in interaction with lifelong education which comprises the professional experiences of employees and administrators. it is seen that the internet, which is increasingly used every passing year, also has a significant effect on education life. especially together with the inclusion of the internet in daily lives; democratisation in access to information, dictionaries, articles and archives, digital private and public libraries, electronic encyclopaedias, digital books, blogs that are presented as web products, discussion forums enabling information exchange, social networks and web pages have become just a click away. this digital transformation radically changes the information access and sharing (taşkıran, 2017). when evaluating the desire of human beings, who play a major role in the change of the world, to reach the new at individual level, this desire has brought out the concept of individual innovativeness which is an important concept. individual innovativeness is the individual’s application of new and useful opinions by using his/her technical knowledge and experience at the right time on condition that his/her circumstances and all opportunities he/she has obtained are under his/her control. in communities where individual innovativeness has gained importance, the desire of exploring the new, developing the innovation and increasing the competition has also increased instead of the desire of just using the new (akay & gürkan, 2021). rogers (2003) summarised basic characteristics related to innovativeness as follows: • innovators: individuals who are willing to try new opinions and take risk and have a vision. • early adopters: technology-oriented and guiding individuals who inform other individuals in society about innovations. • early majority: individuals who are cautious against innovations and are not so willing to take risk. • late majority: individuals who display a sceptical and timid attitude toward innovations. • laggards: individuals who approach change with prejudice and tend to adopt innovations as a final step. innovativeness as a process begins with defining the problem, continues with developing suggestions and opinions aimed at the solution of the problem and ends with creating innovations to be prepared for the application. one of the resources of this process is to what extent the individual possesses this characteristic (yilmaz & bayraktar, 2014). based on all these primary characteristics, it is possible to define an innovative trainer as a person who develops himself/herself in his/her profession, organizes activities in line with his/her curriculum, investigates and examines student-centred new methods, updates his/her behaviours and adapts new capabilities into his/her education life (ritchhart, 2004). web-based learning environments like online learning environment are easily accessible systems which offer both users and instructors independence of time and space and solve the capacity problem (guzley, avanzino, & bor, 2001). although these systems solve the time and space problems of departments providing theoretical education, it is thought that they do not fully meet the education needs of practice-content departments like sports departments. technological developments have brought along many positive/negative changes in our way of learning as in our commercial, marketing and shopping habits. in our era, the most important change is experienced in the area of communication. technological developments manifest primarily in the area of communication and they make their presence felt in society (güçdemir, 2015). considering both in pedagogical and technical terms, the area of online teaching is rapidly changing and developing. technological developments not only facilitate developing new software and hardware, but also direct researchers to constantly analyse the success of theories and concepts between the media, technology and teaching strategies. however, researchers have a difficulty in extending the concepts concerning what knowledge, skills and attitudes are necessary for the success of online teaching (watkins, leigh, & triner, 2004). in turkey, concepts like open university, online learning, e-learning, distance education, internet education, distance teaching, web-based teaching, internet-based teaching, informal education, flexible learning and virtual education are encountered frequently. although there are little differences between the concepts, these concepts can be interchangeably used in the universal literature (ozkul & aydin, 2012). today, online learning processes close to these concepts have begun to be seen in the field of sports sciences. the fact that most state universities include sports sciences departments in their open university and distance education programs stresses the importance of this study. it is because the gradually decreasing physical capacity of physical education and sports department students (ocak, 2016) indicates the place of the concepts of online learning and application in the field of sports sciences. 2. material and method 2.1. type of the study this is a correlational survey study. 2.2. time and place of the study the study was conducted online across turkey between september 2020 and november 2020. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 163-168 165 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. population and sample of the study the population of the study comprised academic staff working in faculties of sports sciences in state universities in turkey. the sample group consisted of 104 academicians working in faculties of sports sciences in state universities chosen randomly from the mediterranean, eastern anatolia, aegean, south-eastern anatolia, central anatolia, black sea and marmara regions in turkey and were voluntary to participate in the study. 2.4. data collection the data were collected in an online environment by the researcher from the people who met the inclusion criteria and were voluntary to participate in the study between september 2020 and november 2020. 2.5. data collection tools the data of the study were collected using the “personal information form”, “individual innovativeness scale (iis)”, and “online learning attitude scale (olas)”. 2.5.1. personal information form it is a 2-question questionnaire prepared by the researcher containing questions related to age and academic title. 2.5.2. individual innovativeness scale (iis) the turkish adaptation of the individual innovativeness scale, which was developed by hurt, joseph, and cook (1977), was conducted by kılıçer and odabaşı (2010). the five-point likert scale comprises a total of 20 items. the lowest and highest scores of the scale are 14 and 94, respectively. according to the scores calculated on the basis of the scale, individuals can be categorized in the context of innovativeness. accordingly, individuals are interpreted to be; “innovator” if the score is above 80, “early adopter” if the score ranges from 69 to 80, “early majority” if the score ranges from 57 to 68, “late majority” if the score ranges from 46 to 56 and “laggard” if the score is below 46. in addition, it is usually possible to make an evaluation concerning the innovativeness level of individuals according to the score calculated with the help of the scale. accordingly, individuals getting a score above 68 points are evaluated to be highly innovator, while individuals getting a score below 64 points are evaluated to be less innovator. in this study, the cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale was found to be .84. 2.5.3. online learning attitude scale (olas) the scale was developed by usta, uysal, and okur (2016). the 20-item scale is a five-point likert scale with 4 subscales (general acceptance, individual awareness, perceived usefulness and application effectiveness). in this study, the cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale was found to be .89. 2.5.4. data assessment the spss 26 package program was used to assess the data. after transferring the data which was collected via the data collection tool, in the electronic environment, the normality testing was performed first. upon detecting that the data were not normally distributed, non-parametric analyses were performed. 3. findings table-1. information about demographic variables of the participants. n % age 25-29 8 7.7 30-34 10 9.6 35-39 32 30.8 40-44 24 23.1 45-49 16 15.4 50+ 14 13.5 title research assistant 24 23.1 lecturer 28 26.9 assistant professor 22 21.2 associate professor 24 23.1 professor dr. 6 5.8 total 104 100 examining the table 1, it was observed that most of the participants were aged between 35 and 39 years and were working in the lecturer staff. table-2. the online learning attitude scale and individual innovativeness scale mean scores of the participants. n min max x±sd online learning attitude general acceptance (ga) 104 1 5 3.20±.715 individual awareness (ia) 2.04±.866 perceived usefulness (pu) 2.83±1.226 application effectiveness (ae) 2.87±1.063 online learning attitude scale total score 2.73±745 individual innovativeness 104 14 94 72.06±9.324 when examining the table 2, it was observed that the participants’ general acceptance subscale mean score of online learning attitude scale was medium, individual awareness subscale mean score was low, mean scores of perceived usefulness and application effectiveness subscales were medium and online learning attitude scale total asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 163-168 166 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group mean scores were medium. on the other hand, the individual innovativeness scale mean scores of the participants were evaluated in the innovator category. table-3. comparison of the online learning attitude scale and individual innovativeness scale mean scores of the participants according to their academic titles. factor variable n mean rank sd x2 p difference general acceptance research assistant lecturer assistant professor associate professor professor dr. 24 28 22 24 6 66 54.89 49.43 32.27 79.5 4 20.981 .000 3<1,4 individual awareness research assistant lecturer assistant professor associate professor professor dr. 24 28 22 24 6 74.42 41.96 34.3 48.69 96 4 37.578 .000 2<1,5 3<1,5 4<1,5 perceived usefulness research assistant lecturer assistant professor associate professor professor dr. 24 28 22 24 6 68.33 46.79 57.39 32.85 76.5 4 22.677 .000 4<1,5 application effectiveness research assistant lecturer assistant professor associate professor professor dr. 24 28 22 24 6 71.33 40.89 61.64 34.83 68.5 4 25.719 .000 4<1,3 2<1 online learning attitude scale total score research assistant lecturer assistant professor associate professor professor dr. 24 28 22 24 6 73.44 41.57 51.84 35.17 91.5 4 11.513 .000 4<1,5 2<1,5 3<5 individual innovativeness research assistant lecturer assistant professor associate professor professor dr. 24 28 22 24 6 53.79 45.48 42.48 62.58 76.5 4 33.385 .021 3<5 when examining the table 3, it was observed that there were statistically significant differences between the online learning attitude and subscale mean scores and individual innovativeness scale mean scores of the participants according to their academic titles. table-4. comparison of the online learning attitude scale and individual innovativeness scale mean scores of the participants according to their age groups. factor variable n mean rank sd x2 p difference general acceptance 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50+ 8 10 32 24 16 14 54.81 74.95 53.69 55.33 31.53 54.54 5 13.704 .018 2>5 individual awareness 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50+ 8 10 32 24 16 14 70.56 83.25 49.33 38.5 44.16 61 5 21.474 .001 2>3,4,5 perceived usefulness 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50+ 8 10 32 24 16 14 82.13 82.45 62.86 30.42 32.75 50.93 5 42.043 .000 4<1,2,3 5<1,2,3 application effectiveness 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50+ 8 10 32 24 16 14 74.38 68.85 69.13 34.67 27.03 50 5 37.159 .000 4<1,2,3 5<1,2,3 online learning attitude scale total score 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50+ 8 10 32 24 16 14 71.75 80.6 61.36 34.75 32.41 54.57 5 39.586 .000 4<1,2,3 5<1,2,3 individual innovativeness 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50+ 8 10 32 24 16 14 71.88 44.05 50.27 78. 21.53 44.25 5 30.338 .000 4>2,3,5,6 5<1,3 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 163-168 167 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when examining the table 4, it was observed that there were statistically significant differences between the online learning attitude and subscale mean scores and individual innovativeness scale mean scores of the participants according to their age groups. table-5. correlation between the individual innovativeness and online learning attitude levels of the participants. online learning attitude r p individual innovativeness 738** .000 note: ** (p<0.01). when examining the table 5, it was observed that there was a statistically significant, positive and high correlation between the online learning attitude and individual innovativeness level of the participants. accordingly, as the individual innovativeness level of the participants increased, their online learning attitude level increases. 4. discussion the level of technological facilities affects the person’s motivation. the level and value of the benefit to be obtained from the use of technology may make a contribution as an additional motivation in learning and teaching (sadeck, chigona, & cronjé, 2020). in this study examining the online learning attitude and individual innovativeness level of academicians in faculties of sports sciences in state universities in turkey, the following results were obtained. it was observed that the participants’ general acceptance subscale mean score of online learning attitude scale was medium, individual awareness subscale mean score was low, mean scores of perceived usefulness and application effectiveness subscales were medium and total mean score of online learning attitude scale was medium. in the study conducted by krzyszkowska and mavrommati (2020) with teachers in norway, they stated that the individual innovativeness level of teachers played a key role in the development of practical knowledge and skills. on the other hand, the individual innovativeness scale mean scores of the participants were evaluated in the innovator category. accordingly, it can be stated that the results of the present study are compatible with the inference acquired at the end of the study conducted by lu, yao, and yu (2005) suggesting that the acceptance of technology-oriented innovativeness is one of the most important factors in the effective use of technology. when examining the online learning attitude and individual innovativeness level of the participants according to their academic titles, it was observed that the participants with associate professor title had lower mean ranks compared to the participants with research assistant and professor doctor title, at a statistically significant level. in the online learning attitude individual awareness subscale, it was seen that the participants with research assistant and professor doctor title had higher mean ranks compared to the participants with lecturer, assistant professor, and associate professor title, at a statistically significant level. in the perceived usefulness subscale of online learning attitude scale, the participants with associate professor title had lower mean ranks compared to the participants with research assistant and professor doctor title, at a statistically significant level. in the application effectiveness subscale of online learning attitude scale, the participants with associate professor title had lower mean ranks compared to the participants with research assistant and assistant professor title, at a statistically significant level and the participants with research assistant title had higher mean ranks compared to the participants with lecturer title, at a statistically significant level. when examining the total mean scores of the online learning attitude scale, it was determined that the participants with professor doctor title had higher mean ranks compared to the participants with lecturer, assistant professor and associate professor title and the participants with research assistant title also had higher mean ranks compared to the participants with lecturer and associate professor title, at a statistically significant level. on the other hand, upon examination of the individual innovativeness scale scores of the participants, it was fonud that the participants with professor doctor title had higher mean ranks compared to the participants with assistant professor title, at a statistically significant level. when the online learning attitude and individual innovativeness level of the participants according to their age groups were analysed, it was found that in the general acceptance subscale of online learning attitude scale, the participants from age range of 3034 years had higher mean ranks compared to the participants from age range of 45 49 years, at a statistically significant level. in the individual awareness subscale of the online learning attitude scale, the participants aged between 30 and 34 years had higher mean ranks compared to the participants from age ranges of 35 and 39 years, 40 and 44 years and 45 to 49 years, at a statistically significant level. in the perceived usefulness and application effectiveness subscales of the online learning attitude scale and in the online learning attitude scale total score, the participants from age ranges of 40 and 44 years and 45 to 49 years had lower mean ranks compared to the participants from age ranges of 25 and 29 years, 30 and 34 years and 35 and 39 years, at a statistically significant level. on the other hand, when examining the individual innovativeness scale scores of the participants, it was observed that the participants from age range of 40 and 44 years had higher mean ranks compared to those from age ranges of 30 and 34 years, 35 and 39 years, 45 and 49 years and 50 years and above, at a statistically significant level and the participants aged 45 to 49 years had lower mean ranks compared to the participants from age ranges of 25 and 29 years and 35 and 39 years, at a statistically significant level. it was seen that there was a statistically significant, positive and high correlation between the online learning attitude and individual innovativeness level of the participants. references akay, d., & gürkan, g. c. (2021). the effect of ethical leader perception on individual innovation level in health workers. journal of organizational behavior review, 3(1), 1-18. ayhan, a. (1999). yenilik (innovation) (pp. 1-30). kocaeli: gebze institude of technology publisihing. güçdemir, y. (2015). sanal ortamda iletişim (communication in virtual environment). istanbul: derin publishing. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 163-168 168 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group guzley, r., avanzino, s., & bor, a. (2001). simulated computer-mediated/video-interactive distance learning: a test of motivation, interaction satisfaction, delivery, learning & perceived effectiveness. journal of computer-mediated communication, 6(3), jcmc633. available at: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2001.tb00122.x. hurt, h. t., joseph, k., & cook, c. d. 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(2016). online learning attitude scale: development, validity, and reliability. journal of international social research, 9(43), 2215–2222. available at: 10.17719/jisr.20164317786. watkins, r., leigh, d., & triner, d. (2004). assessing readiness for e-learning. performance improvement quarterly, 17(4), 66-79. available at: doi:10.1111/j.1937-8327.2004.tb00321.x. yilmaz, o., & bayraktar, d. m. (2014). teachers’ attitudes towards the use of educational technologies and their individual innovativeness categories. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 116, 3458-3461. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.783. yuan, f., & woodman, r. w. (2010). innovative behavior in the workplace: the role of performance and image outcome expectations. academy of management journal, 53(2), 323-342. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 59 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 2, 59-69, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i2.6663 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group attitudes and motivation in teaching and learning english: a perception study at the hsc level md. munibur rahman department of english, jashore university of science and technology, jashore 7408, bangladesh. email: munibur@just.edu.bd abstract this study investigates the symbiotic interplay between attitude and motivation in the context of teaching and learning english at the higher secondary certificate (hsc) level. to delve into the impacts of attitudes and motivation on teaching and learning english, and to understand the associated issues for a solution, this mixed-methods study employed both qualitative and quantitative research approaches to corroborate the inferences and decisions. to collect data, this study surveyed 530 students and 28 teachers with structured questionnaires and interviewed 10 teachers. the data collected through stratified random sampling were analyzed using spss and ms excel. this study revealed that most of the students and teachers had positive attitudes towards teaching and learning english, though some easily addressable negative attitudes were reported as well. the teachers and students had high motivation for english, with some exceptions related mainly to teachers’ job disaffection and students’ low exposure to a favorable learning environment. the findings of this study are supposed to help adopt the required policies to remove the causes of negative attitudes and low motivation for teaching and learning english effectively and substantially. keywords: attitude, learning english, motivation, perception, teaching english. citation | rahman, m. m. (2025). attitudes and motivation in teaching and learning english: a perception study at the hsc level. asian journal of education and training, 11(2), 59–69. 10.20448/edu.v11i2.6663 history: received: 13 january 2025 revised: 21 april 2025 accepted: 30 april 2025 published: 7 may 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the jashore university of science and technology, bangladesh has granted approval for this study on 5 february 2025 (ref. no. erc/fbst/just/2025/206). transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 60 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 61 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 61 4. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 62 5. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 66 6. limitations ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 67 7. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 67 8. implications....................................................................................................................................................................................... 68 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 68 appendix ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 68 mailto:munibur@just.edu.bd https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i2.6663 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9788-1304 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 60 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study explores teachers’ and students’ attitudes and motivation in teaching and learning english at the higher secondary certificate (hsc) level in bangladesh. the findings reveal that the teachers and students exhibit positive attitudes and high motivation for teaching and learning english. these attitudes and motivations can be leveraged by adopting strategic measures to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning english. therefore, the insights from this study may contribute to improving english teaching-learning conditions, a vital issue in bangladesh and beyond. 1. introduction in the current educational and professional contexts all over the world, proficiency in english is considered to be a crucial component of academic success and professional accomplishment, as the mastery of english can help strengthen students’ academic records and open easy avenues for job seekers in the competitive job markets (arkoudis, baik, bexley, & doughney, 2014). for many other reasons, the importance of english proficiency has extended far beyond academic domains and job markets, as it substantially plays a pivotal role in nearly all spheres of our lives (belcher, 2006). given these facts, english is taught up to the higher secondary certificate (hsc) level as a compulsory subject in many countries worldwide. at the hsc level, english is considered to be a basic subject that plays a vital role in shaping and developing students’ prospects (rahman et al., 2016). therefore, proficiency in english is always a great concern for students, their guardians, and other stakeholders because a good grade in english paves the way for a brighter future. in keeping with this concern, officials of the chittagong education board attribute low pass rates in the hsc in 2024 primarily to the high failure rate in english (hossain, 2024). the same claim was reported by the jashore education board in 2024 (aman, 2024). many factors influence and expedite students’ learning and acquisition of english effectively. attitude and motivation are two factors that motivate and encourage students to master english (al othman & shuqair, 2013). for this reason, it is crucial to understand the dynamics of attitude and motivation in learning and teaching english at the hsc level, which builds the foundation for students’ academic success in higher education and subsequently in their careers. as the hsc level serves as a threshold to higher education, which is conducted in english, it is essential to consider attitudes and motivation toward teaching and learning english. as a psychological construct, attitude comprises individuals’ beliefs, values, feelings, and predispositions towards an issue, incident, subject, or person, which may build up positive or negative feelings for something or somebody (eagly & chaiken, 1998). if someone has a positive attitude towards an academic topic or subject, it can significantly enhance their engagement in learning activities and accelerate subsequent academic performance (kpolovie, joe, & okoto, 2014). al mamun and rahman (2018) found that “students need to increase their positive attitude towards learning english to accelerate their success” (p. 865). therefore, in the context of learning english, learners’ positive attitudes towards english can contribute to willing engagement in learning activities, spontaneous participation in class activities, increased retention rates, and achieving excellence in learning. on the contrary, negative attitudes may increase disinterest and disengagement, which thwart progress (sakalidis, hettinga, & ling, 2023). motivation, driven by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, plays a pivotal role in expediting the learning process, fueling the learning spirit, and building commitment, which is necessary for better and optimal learning outcomes (sosik & jung, 2011). learners who are motivated are more likely to set and achieve their goals faster, spend more time, and make considerable efforts to achieve their goals spontaneously and effectively. although attitudes and motivation toward teaching and learning english, especially at the hsc level, play a substantial role, this area remains largely unexplored. therefore, this study focused on the interwoven relationship of these two intrinsic and extrinsic factors in the context of teaching and learning english at this level. this study aimed to explore and address some critical research questions related to effective teaching-learning strategies and interventions based on attitudes and motivation. 1.1. research questions a) what attitudes do the hsc students and their teachers have towards learning and teaching english? b) what are the existing motivations of the students and teachers for learning and teaching english at the hsc level? c) what are the factors that influence the attitude and motivation of the teachers and learners? this study has a general objective and some specific objectives in line with the research questions. these are: 1.2. general objective the general objective of this study was to find out the impacts of attitudes and motivation on teaching and learning english at the hsc level in bangladesh. 1.3. specific objectives the specific objectives of this study are to. a) find out the attitudes that the hsc students and their teachers have towards learning and teaching english. b) assess the existing motivations of the students and teachers for learning and teaching english at the hsc level. c) determine the factors that influence the attitude and motivation of the students and their teachers for learning and teaching english at the hsc level. 1.4. research significance the findings from this research are expected to provide new insights into the existing teaching-learning practices and knowledge in the field of educational psychology and english language pedagogy, especially based on the attitudes and motivations of the teachers and students toward teaching and learning english. the findings of this asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 61 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group study are likely to offer effective suggestions and recommendations to enhance both teaching practices and student learning experiences in the context of english education at the hsc level in bangladesh and elsewhere. 2. literature review this section of this paper aims to explore the existing research on attitudes and motivation in teaching and learning english, particularly from the perspectives of the students and teachers, focusing on the factors that shape learning attitudes and their impacts on the language acquisition process, motivation factors, and their role in this context, as well as the challenges faced by the students and teachers at the hsc level. katz (1960) has defined attitude as an individual’s predisposition to evaluate a social element, such as a fact, event, person, etc., as favorable or unfavorable, and it shows certain behavior patterns toward it. soibamcha and pandey (2016) believe that experiences help form one’s attitudes through life-like interests, which make people behave in a particular characteristic way toward persons, professions, objects, issues, situations, etc., to which they are related. according to murray (1938), motivation is a desire or willingness to do something that is caused by intrinsic or extrinsic factors of the learners. it pushes them to reach their desired goals by working hard and engaging spontaneously in learning activities. the subject feels some needs that create inner tensions and stimulate them to be active in satisfying their needs. cognitively, these factors can reinforce the learners to perform appropriate actions. gardner (1985) thinks that motivation is "the combination of effort plus a desire to achieve the goals of learning the language, plus favorable attitudes toward learning the language." gardner and lambert (1972) mentioned two types of motivation: integrative and instrumental, where integrative motivation refers to the learners’ desire to integrate themselves with the target language (tl) culture and feel an affinity towards different components of the tl culture, while instrumental motivation may inspire the learners to adopt the tl for some realistic or utilitarian purposes, e.g., to get a better job or higher salary, pass the examination, or obtain better opportunities for higher education, social prestige, etc. therefore, highly motivated students generally do better than those who do not have high motivation (harmer, 1998). given these facts, motivation and attitude are like siamese twins. gardner (2008) added that attitudes and motivation are often treated together, given that attitudes have motivational properties and motivation has attitudinal implications. simply put, favorable attitudes tend to cause the experience to be perceived positively. if, on the other hand, attitudes are negative, the experiences will tend to be perceived unfavorably, resulting in low motivation (gardner, 1985). many researchers all over the world have studied the role of attitudes and motivation in language learning. their studies mainly delved into the diverse issues that shape students' and teachers’ motivation and attitudes toward learning and teaching english. for example, kyriacou and zhu (2008) conducted a study on this issue employing a questionnaire and interviews where 610 respondents were surveyed and 64 relevant individuals were interviewed to explore shanghai high school students’ perceptions of their motivation for learning english, as well as their impacts and perceived influences. they found that instrumental motivation, i.e., life and career-based reasons, had stronger effects or influences on the students than intrinsic or integrative reasons. getie (2020) carried out a study at debremarkos comprehensive secondary school in debre markos town, ethiopia, to investigate the factors that affect grade 10 students’ attitudes towards learning english as a foreign language (efl). they found that social factors (e.g., english native speakers, peer groups, and learners’ parents) positively affect students’ attitudes, while educational context factors, such as english language teachers and the english language learning situations (e.g., the classrooms, arrangements of seats, and the physical learning environment), had negative impacts on students’ attitudes. jamila, rahman, and hasan (2024) conducted a study to explore how the use of technology impacts the developing tertiary-level students’ english language proficiency. they found that integrating technologies into the language learning process and activities creates positive attitudes among the students, leading towards the enhancement of high motivation for learning english. moskowitz and dewaele (2021) researched to explored teachers’ influence on the motivation of students to learn english. in their research, it was revealed that teachers’ enthusiasm and emotional well-being positively correlate with student motivation and attitudes toward learning english. despite this large number of research works carried out in this field, there are several research gaps, particularly at the hsc level, where the complex dynamics of attitudes and motivation in this context remain incomplete and unexplored. as much of the literature on attitudes and motivation in english learning has tended to generalize the issues across diverse educational levels, it often has overlooked the unique challenges and motivations at the hsc level. moreover, research, especially at the hsc level in the bangladeshi context, remains scarce. therefore, this research has focused on the attitudes and motivation in teaching and learning english at the hsc level, which offers valuable insights into various influencing factors. the author expects that this research will meet the gaps, help address the challenges, and gain a deeper understanding of how to optimize students’ motivation and improve english teaching and learning outcomes at the hsc level. 3. methodology this research adopted a mixed methods research design employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches to delve into a holistic understanding of the students’ and teachers’ perceptions of attitudes and motivation in the context of learning and teaching english at the hsc level in bangladesh. to collect data on these issues, this research employed a structured questionnaire to survey the respondents that contained mainly closed-ended options and an open-ended option. to meet the objectives, quantitative data collected through interviews with the teachers were used to supplement the inferences and decisions made based on quantitative data. primary data were collected from ten hsc colleges in khulna division, bangladesh. the secondary data were collected from different books, articles, textbooks, and electronic sources. a stratified purposive sampling procedure was followed throughout the study. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 62 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.1. research setting and participants the study was conducted at ten hsc colleges in khulna division, bangladesh, focusing on both urban and rural areas to capture a diverse range of perspectives. with a structured questionnaire, the author surveyed 530 hsc students through stratified random sampling to ensure representation of different demographics, e.g., gender, socioeconomic status, and academic performance levels. the author also surveyed 28 teachers and interviewed another 10 teachers from the same institutions, selected through a purposive sampling procedure. these teachers had varying years of experience in teaching english at the hsc level to provide diverse and meaningful insights. the colleges are: 1. sholua adarsha college, chaugachha, jashore, 2. kazi nazrul islam college, sadar, jashore, 3. nowabeke degree college, shymanagar, satkhira, 4. jashore govt city college, jashore, 5. jashore government mohila college, jashore, 6. govt mm college, jashore, 7. alamdanga government college, chuadanga, 8. mridhapara mohila college, chaugachha, jashore, 9. ahsanullah college, khulna, 10. saleha begum mohila degree college, harinakundu, jhenaidah. 3.2. data collection two distinct survey questionnaires and an interview checklist were developed for the students and teachers. the questionnaire surveys used a 5-point likert scale with options ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree," and "always" to "never." the questionnaires included three main sections: demographic information, attitudes toward english language learning/teaching, and motivation. the questionnaire for the students had 20 items, while the questionnaire for the teachers included 18 items designed to measure the relevant issues such as attitudes and motivation for teaching and learning english, their perceptions of the importance of english, feelings of enjoyment or anxiety, and opinions on the utility of english in academic and career pursuits, etc. integrative or intrinsic motivations, such as personal interest in learning english, and instrumental or extrinsic motivations, such as the importance of english for academic success or future career prospects, were taken into consideration. surveys were administered in person during scheduled class hours, with the researcher present to answer questions and clarify a few issues raised by the respondents. 3.3. data analysis survey responses were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques with the help of spss software. means, standard deviations, and frequency counts were calculated for all survey items to understand the general trends in attitudes and motivation in teaching and learning english. the findings have been grouped into broader themes to capture patterns and insights related to students' and teachers' perceptions, with a particular focus on challenges, motivational strategies, and attitudinal differences. to enhance validity, the quantitative and qualitative data were cross-validated. the themes emerging from students’ surveys have been compared with survey results from teachers’ surveys to provide a more nuanced understanding of attitudes and motivation. 4. findings this section of the study presents the data collected employing a questionnaire survey to delve into teachers’ and students’ attitudes and motivation for teaching and learning english. the key indicators used in this study to analyze the responses include the mean (average score), sd (standard deviation), and percentage of responses (frequency count) for each level of agreement, where ‘sa’ stands for ‘strongly agree’, ‘a’ for ‘agree’, ‘n’ for ‘neutral’, ‘d’ for ‘disagree’, and ‘sd’ for ‘strongly disagree’. the analyzed data are presented below in tables and figures. 4.1. students’ attitudes towards learning english as students' positive attitudes towards learning english play a vital role in learning the language, this study delved into the attitudes of the students towards learning this language. the findings based on the responses collected through the student survey are presented in the following table 1. table 1. students’ attitude towards learning english. sn variables mean sd sa (%) a (%) n (%) d (%) sd (%) 1 i like my english class feedback very much. 4.28 0.993 54.9 27.5 9.8 5.7 2.1 2 i like to attend english classes because my english teacher is so good. 4.20 0.998 49.5 30.2 12.9 5.1 2.3 3 i enjoy learning english. 4.35 0.887 56.8 26.0 13.8 2.1 1.3 4 i like english classes so much that i want to study english more in the future. 3.99 1.120 43.4 28.1 16.0 9.2 3.2 5 i enjoy the activities of the english classes. 3.92 0.996 35.1 31.3 25.5 6.8 1.3 6 it embarrasses me to volunteer answers in english classes. 2.86 1.386 14.5 21.7 23.6 15.7 24.5 7 sometimes, i daydream about dropping english. 2.75 1.487 16.6 20.0 16.4 15.8 31.1 8 i put off my english homework as much as possible. 2.61 1.309 8.5 19.8 23.8 19.6 28.3 9 if possible, i will give up the study of english. 2.58 1.449 14.5 15.3 17.9 18.5 33.8 10 i do not like my english teacher. 2.02 1.301 7.2 9.6 13.8 17.2 52.3 n=530 3.36 1.192 note: sa= strongly agree, a= agree, n= neutral, d= disagree, sd= strongly disagree. table 1 presents students’ attitudes towards learning english. the overall mean score of 3.36 of the responses indicates that students generally have a positive attitude towards learning english. the overall standard deviation of 1.192 reflects a moderate level of variability, which suggests that the data points are relatively consistent with one another. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 63 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group it was divulged that most of the students surveyed (54.9% ‘strongly agree’ and 27.5% ‘agree’) liked english class feedback very much, while 79.7% of the students (49.5% ‘strongly agree’ and 30.2% ‘agree’) liked their english teachers. it was found that 82.8% of the students (56.8% ‘strongly agree’ and 26% ‘agree’) enjoyed learning english, while 43.4% of the students agreed that they liked english very much. regarding the activities of the english classes, 35.1% of respondents strongly agreed that they liked those very much, whereas 36.2% of the students (14.5% ‘strongly agree’ and 21.7% ‘agree’) agreed that they felt embarrassed to volunteer answers in class (mean 2.86). it was revealed that a small number of students (16.6% ‘strongly agree’ and 20% ‘agree’) daydreamed about dropping english, while 28.3% of the students (8.5% ‘strongly agree’ and 19.8% ‘agree’) put off their english homework as much as possible. it was exposed that 29.8% of the students (14.5% ‘strongly agree’ and 15.3% ‘agree’) agreed to give up the study of english if it were possible, and only 7.2% of the students strongly agreed that they did not like their english teachers. therefore, the overall attitudes of the students toward learning english were found to be positive. 4.2. students’ motivation for learning english high motivation for learning any language results in fast and effective learning. this section of the questionnaire focused on the motivation of the students for learning english, and the results have been presented in the following table. table 2. students’ motivation for learning english. sn variables mean sd sa (%) a (%) n (%) d (%) sd (%) 1 english is important as it will help me get a good job. 4.65 0.842 79.6 11.7 4.7 1.5 2.5 2 english is important for a better salary and promotion. 4.72 0.697 81.9 11.5 4.5 0.9 1.1 3 competence in english will enhance my academic results. 4.53 0.825 67.9 21.9 6.8 1.9 1.5 4 i am learning english because it is a compulsory course. 3.94 1.299 49.6 18.9 15.8 7.5 8.1 5 english is important to me as i need it to go abroad. 4.23 1.149 60.4 17.7 11.1 6.2 4.5 6 i need english because i want to acquire knowledge in various fields, and english is the most widely used language. 4.47 0.876 66.2 19.4 10.6 2.5 1.3 7 studying english is important because it will make me more skilled. 4.71 0.594 77.0 18.9 2.8 1.1 0.2 8 studying english is important because it will allow me to be more at ease with people who speak english. 4.56 0.761 69.8 19.8 7.5 2.6 0.2 9 i feel english speakers have something to be proud of as english is a global language. 4.55 0.851 72.1 16.0 7.9 2.6 1.3 10 english is one of my favorite subjects. 3.62 1.269 31.1 28.1 20.8 11.3 8.7 n=530 4.40 0.916 table 2 presents students' motivation levels for learning english, with an overall mean score of 4.40, indicating a high level of motivation. the standard deviation of 0.916 suggests that the data were relatively consistent. a large number of students (79.6%) considered english to be an important subject as it would help them get a good job, and 81.9% of respondents strongly agreed that english was important for better salaries and promotions. the data also revealed that 89.9% of the students (67.9% ‘strongly agree’ and 21.9% ‘agree’) believed that competence in english would enhance their academic results. it was found that 68.5% of the students (49.6% ‘strongly agree’ and 18.9% ‘agree’) wanted to learn english because it was a compulsory subject, while 78.1% of the students (60.4% ‘strongly agree’ and 17.7% ‘agree’) agreed that english was important to them as they needed it for going abroad (mean 4.23). they showed that 85.6% of the students (66.2% ‘strongly agree’ and 19.4% ‘agree’) believed that they needed english to acquire knowledge in various fields, as english was the most-used language, and 95.9% of students (77% ‘strongly agree’ and 18.9% ‘agree’) agreed that studying english was important because it would make them more skilled. eighty-nine percent of respondents (69.8% ‘strongly agree’ and 19.8% ‘agree’) agreed that studying english was important because it would allow them to be more at ease with people who speak english, while 88.1% of the students (72.1% ‘strongly agree’ and 16% ‘agree’) agreed that they felt the english speakers had something to be proud of, as english is a global language. a good number of students agreed (31.1% ‘strongly agree’ and 28.1% ‘agree’) that english was one of their favorite subjects. 4.3. the reasons for students’ low motivation and negative attitudes high motivation and negative attitudes towards learning english may slow down the learning process. for this reason, this study aimed to find out the opinions of the teachers regarding the reasons for the low motivation and negative attitudes of the students towards learning english. in the open-ended section of the teachers’ questionnaire, the teachers were asked to write their observations on the reasons for the low motivation of the students to learn english. the results have been presented in the following figure. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 64 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. the reasons for students’ low motivation for learning english. figure 1 presents the causes for which the students have low motivation for learning english from the perspective of the teachers. among the top reasons found for students' low motivation for learning english, based on the observations of the teachers, was the lack of qualified english teachers (17% responses), students’ negative attitudes (e.g., english was confusing, complicated, difficult, etc.) towards learning english (16% responses), too much emphasis on examination results (11% responses), lack of authentic assessments of oral language, reading, and writing (10% responses), evaluation only through final examinations, and no importance placed on class performance, and the like. 4.4. teachers’ attitudes towards teaching english this section of the questionnaire focused on the attitudes of the teachers towards their profession of teaching english. the teachers’ questionnaire had a total of 18 items. the findings of 16 items have been presented in tables 3 and 4, and the findings of the rest two items have been presented in figures 2 and 3. table 3. teachers’ attitudes towards teaching. sn statements mean sd a lw a y s (% ) v e ry o ft e n ( % ) o ft e n ( % ) s o m e ti m e s (% ) n e v e r (% ) 1 it gives me pleasure when the students do well in english. 4.93 0.26 92.9 7.1 00 00 00 2 i enjoy teaching english. 4.64 0.56 67.9 28.6 3.6 00 00 3 i welcome questions from the students. 4.61 0.73 71.4 21.4 3.6 3.6 00 4 i feel annoyed when my students give the wrong answer. 2.25 1.27 10.7 3.6 17.9 35.7 32.1 sn statements mean sd sa (%) a (%) n (%) d (%) sd (%) 5 i like to innovate activities for english classes. 4.18 0.81 42.9 35.7 17.9 3.6 00 6 i want to be trained in elt to be a better teacher. 4.18 0.86 42.9 35.7 17.9 3.6 00 7 it is very boring to evaluate examination scripts. 3.25 1.08 7.1 39.3 35.7 7.1 10.7 8 my job is very enjoyable and stimulating for me. 3.71 1.01 28.6 25.0 35.7 10.7 00 9 i like my classes because my students are so good. 3.43 0.96 17.9 21.4 46.4 14.3 00 10 students’ good performance increases my prestige. 4.11 0.88 39.3 35.7 21.4 3.6 00 11 the textbook satisfies the criteria of a good textbook 3.36 1.19 14.3 39.3 25.0 10.7 10.7 n=28 3.88 0.87 table 3 presents teachers’ attitudes toward teaching english as a profession. the overall mean score of 3.88 of the responses indicates that the teachers have a positive attitude towards teaching english. the overall standard deviation of 0.87 indicates a moderate level of variability, suggesting that the data points are fairly consistent with one another. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 65 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.5. motivation of the teachers for teaching english motivation improves the work performance of professionals because a motivated person can invest maximum effort and commitment into their work. positive motivation bridges the gap between an individual’s potential and their spontaneous engagement in work. table 4. teachers’ motivation for teaching. sn variables mean sd sa (%) a (%) n (%) d (%) sd (%) 1 i think teaching is a prestigious job. 4.25 0.89 50.0 28.6 17.9 3.6 00 2 a teacher of english has a special social status. 3.86 1.00 28.6 39.3 25.0 3.6 3.6 3 i am pleased with my salary, promotion, and job description. 2.79 1.34 21.4 00 28.6 35.7 14.3 4 i think the students enjoy learning english. 3.25 1.04 17.9 14.3 42.9 25.0 00 5 i joined teaching by choice. 4.32 0.72 46.4 39.3 14.3 00 00 n=28 3.694 0.998 table 4 presents the results of the survey that evaluates the motivation of the teachers for teaching english as a profession. the overall mean of 3.69 across all items indicates a generally positive motivation among the teachers. the overall standard deviation of 0.99 suggests a moderate level of variation in responses. it was found that most of the teachers feel most motivated by the prestige of being a teacher (highest mean of 4.25), while satisfaction with salary, promotion, and job description is the lowest (mean of 2.79). however, most teachers joined the profession by choice (mean of 4.32), which is a positive indicator of intrinsic motivation. figure 2. time available for teachers to prepare for classes. figure 2 presents a partial result of the survey that evaluates teachers’ motivation related to managing or having adequate time to prepare for their classes. the majority of responses (78.6%) suggest that most of the teachers get a pretty good amount of time either often, very often, or always for the preparation of their english classes, though some (17.90%) teachers report that they occasionally can manage enough time, while a few teachers (3.60%) scarcely could manage enough time for this purpose. this figure suggests a high motivation among the teachers to manage or have adequate time for getting prepared for their classes. figure 3. extra efforts are made by the teachers for the students. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 66 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 3 also presents the survey results that evaluate teachers’ motivation related to the extra efforts they make for the benefit of the students who need it. the majority of responses (89%) suggest that most of the teachers make extra efforts either often, very often, or always for their students, while very few teachers (11%) sometimes make these efforts, and none report a complete lack of extra effort. this figure suggests a positive trend among the teachers toward supporting their students through additional efforts. 4.6. factors improving the motivation and attitudes of the students the interviewers talked about the low motivation and negative attitudes of the students toward learning english, as well as the initiatives that could potentially improve their motivation and attitudes. for instance, they emphasized that language learning should be enjoyable. if english songs, drama, and movies are used in the classroom and learning activities, learners will enjoy the language more. by designing interesting materials and using engaging short stories, autobiographies, poetry, extracts from drama, etc., in classes, we can enhance students’ motivation. presentation, recitation, and performance as part of lessons, publishing english wall magazines, using technology purposefully in groups through social media platforms, and establishing active language or debate clubs and literary clubs under the supervision of trainers can improve the motivation and attitudes of the students. rewarding students for good performance and adopting effective teaching-learning methodologies can also contribute to this purpose. we should bring about change in the assessment and academic recognition of students for the language skills they need to acquire. the medium of instruction for some other subjects should also be english. competitive functions in english can motivate students to learn english. 5. discussion the general objective of this research was to investigate the impacts of attitudes and motivation on teaching and learning english from the perspectives of the students and their teachers, as well as other issues related to this context at the hsc level in bangladesh. it was found that both the students and teachers had positive attitudes toward learning and teaching english, although a contrasting perspective on this learning dynamic has also been reported to some extent. 5.1. students’ attitudes towards learning english students’ attitudes towards learning english are positive, and their positive attitudes are much higher than their negative attitudes towards learning english. this finding aligns with that of the study “factors affecting the attitudes of students towards learning english as a foreign language” conducted by getie (2020). it is found that most of the students like their english class feedback very much. moreover, a large number of students like to attend their english classes because they think that their english teachers are very good. besides, most of the students enjoy learning english, while a good number of students like their english classes so much that they want to study english further in the future. apart from this, it is revealed that the students enjoy the activities of their english classes. the teachers also believe that their students enjoy learning english. students’ negative attitudes toward learning english are also reported, though these are far lower than their positive attitudes. a poor number of students, compared to those with positive attitudes, feel embarrassed to volunteer answers in english classes. moreover, only a few students sometimes daydream about dropping out of english courses. besides, some students put off their english homework while a few students want to give up the study of english. apart from these, it is found that a few students do not like their english teachers. 5.2. teachers’ attitudes towards teaching english teachers’ attitudes towards teaching english are very positive, though significant negative attitudes towards teaching english are reported as well. this aligns with the findings of agcam and babanoglu (2016), as it is revealed in this study that all the teachers find pleasure when their students perform well in english in the examinations. additionally, most of the teachers enjoy teaching english, and they welcome questions from the students in english classes. moreover, it is found that a large number of the teachers like to innovate new activities for the english classes, though this claim is rebutted by the students. it is also revealed that most of the teachers want to be trained in english language teaching (elt) to become better educators. however, according to a significant number of teachers, teaching as a job is not very enjoyable or stimulating. in contrast to this perspective, a large number of teachers noted that students’ good performance enhances their social standing. many teachers remarked that english for today, the textbook, satisfies the criteria of a good textbook. teachers’ negative attitudes towards teaching english are somewhat mixed and considerably significant. it is revealed that only a small number of teachers feel annoyed when their students give wrong answers. some teachers opined that they enjoy their classes because their students are so good. it is found that evaluating examination scripts is boring for many teachers. 5.3. students’ motivation for learning english almost all the students observed that english is important to them as it would help them get good jobs in the future. most of the students opined that english is important for better salaries and promotions as well in their careers. this finding aligns with the findings of rehman, bilal, sheikh, bibi, and nawaz (2014) in their study. furthermore, most of the students believed that their competence in english would enhance their academic results, while a good number of students study english because it is a compulsory course. besides, a large number of students observed that english is important to them as they need it for going abroad. most of the students opined that they need english because they want to acquire knowledge in various fields, and english is the most used language or communication tool for this purpose today. moreover, almost all the students believed that studying english is important to them because it would make them more skilled, while a large number of students asserted that studying english is also important to them because it would allow them to be more at ease with people who speak english. in addition, the majority of the students stated that they feel english speakers have something to be proud of, as english is a global language. many students claimed english to be one of their favorite subjects. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 67 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.4. teachers’ motivation for teaching english though "education in many underdeveloped countries is in crisis, the symptoms of which ... teacher disaffection" (phillipson, 2012), most of the teachers surveyed have high motivation for teaching english, with some exceptions regarding job satisfaction. it is found that almost all teachers consider teaching a prestigious job. a large number of teachers observed that a teacher of english has a special social status, and nearly all of the teachers joined teaching by choice. besides, 53.6% of the teachers get enough time for the preparation of classes, while 57.1% of the teachers make extra efforts for the students. teachers’ responses regarding the role of gender in enhancing motivation for learning english are mixed. it was opined by 64.3% of the teachers that gender affects the motivation for learning english. it was believed by 42.9% of the teachers that girls are more motivated, whereas 28.6% of the teachers believed that boys are more motivated for learning english, though 28.6% of the teachers believed that gender has no role in the motivation for learning english. this study revealed some factors that negatively influence students’ and teachers’ attitudes and motivation for teaching and learning english at the hsc level. it is found that a significant number of teachers are not pleased with their salary, promotion, and job description. according to many teachers, students do not enjoy learning english for various reasons, which have impacted their attitudes and motivation for learning english. some of these reasons include the lack of relevance of english in everyday life, lack of confidence in spoken english, improper teaching methods, greater emphasis on examinations than on acquiring real communication skills, evaluation only through final examinations with no importance placed on class performance, lack of authentic assessments of oral language skills, reading and writing skills, the dominance of the mother tongue at home and in the neighborhood, lack of students’ spontaneous effort in learning english, and inadequate qualified english teachers. 5.5. factors improving the motivation and attitudes of the students according to the interviewers, initiatives should be taken to potentially improve students’ motivation and attitudes. for instance, language learning should be enjoyable. interesting songs, drama, and movies can be used in the classroom and learning activities. the teachers need to design attractive materials and use interesting short stories, autobiographies, poetry, extracts from drama, etc., in classes to enhance students’ motivation. presentation, recitation, and performance as part of lessons in english, wall magazines, active language or debate clubs, and literary clubs can improve the motivation and attitudes of the students. rewarding the students for good performance and adopting effective teaching-learning methodologies can also be useful. changes in assessment and academic recognition of the students can work. the medium of instruction for some other subjects should also be english. competitive functions in english can enhance their motivation as well. 6. limitations as this study followed a purposive sampling procedure due to time and resource constraints and collected data only from ten colleges in khulna division, there is a possibility that it may not represent the diversity of attitudes and motivational factors regarding teaching and learning english at the hsc level across the country. students’ interviews and the integration of other useful methods and tools, like classroom observation and focused group discussion (fgd), could provide more in-depth insights into these issues. the multi-level english language proficiency of the hsc students may have influenced their responses during data collection. due to various unavoidable reasons, this study could not focus much on other contextual factors such as institutional infrastructure, family background, or societal attitudes toward english learning. besides, this study intentionally avoided sensitive personal issues and experiences to ensure ethical considerations. despite these limitations in sampling and data collection tools, the findings will contribute to a deeper understanding and insightful exploration of the attitudes and motivation in teaching and learning english at the hsc level. this study may set the stage for further research to address the complexities in this field. 7. conclusion the students have a very positive attitude towards learning english. according to almost all the students, english is very important in their lives for various reasons. most of the students like their english classes, english class feedback, and english teachers very much. they enjoy their english class activities and want to study english further in the future. though some students have negative attitudes toward learning english, these are not as significant compared to their highly positive attitudes. some of their negative attitudes towards learning english include feeling embarrassed to volunteer answers in english classes, feeling like dropping english courses, putting off their homework, disliking their teachers, and giving up on english. most of the teachers’ attitudes toward teaching english are also positive, except for an insignificant number of teachers’ negative attitudes toward teaching english. almost all the teachers enjoy teaching english, and it gives pleasure to almost all of them when their students do well in classes and examinations. moreover, most of the teachers welcome questions from their students, and they do not get angry when their students fail to give correct answers. apart from these, most of them like to innovate learning activities for the students, though this claim is rebutted by the students. furthermore, most of them want to be trained in elt to ameliorate their professional skills, while almost all the teachers believe that the good performance of their students increases their social standing. according to a good number of teachers, the existing textbook fulfills the criteria of a good textbook. however, there are some negative attitudes toward their professional dissatisfaction as well. for most of the teachers, teaching as a job is not enjoyable and stimulating. they are not satisfied with their job description, promotion, and salary structures. they do not think that their students are capable of learning english, motivated, and interested in learning english. besides, a good number of teachers do not enjoy evaluating examination scripts. the negative attitudes of the teachers toward teaching are considerably low compared to their highly positive attitudes toward teaching english. almost all the students have high motivation for learning english, and girls are found to have higher motivation for learning english than boys. almost all the students believe that their competence in english would enhance their academic performance and help them secure good jobs. they also think english is necessary for going abroad and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 68 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group acquiring knowledge in various fields. besides, competence in english makes people more skilled and more at ease with those who speak english. in addition to these, most of the students think that english speakers have something to be proud of. however, a few students study english just because it is a compulsory subject. most of the teachers have high motivation for teaching, with some exceptions due to job dissatisfaction. almost all teachers joined the teaching profession by choice, as they consider teaching a prestigious job with a special social status. they make extra efforts for the students and have the necessary time to prepare for the classes. however, most of the teachers are displeased with their salary and promotion, which they think are not commensurate with their job description. a few teachers believe that their students do not enjoy learning english. 8. implications the findings of this study are expected to contribute to improving english teaching-learning strategies by addressing the critical issues of attitudes and motivation. while the findings revealed in this study highlight predominantly positive attitudes and high levels of motivation toward teaching and learning english, it also identifies areas of concern such as slightly negative attitudes and sporadic low motivation that need to be addressed. the students, teachers, education administrators, policymakers, and other stakeholders can use these insights to take necessary initiatives to address the challenges and make english teaching and learning more effective and meaningful. references agcam, r., & babanoglu, m. p. 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(2016). impact of the examination system on the teaching and learning of english at the higher secondary level in bangladesh. journal of jessore university of science and technology, 1(1), 80-89. rehman, a., bilal, h. a., sheikh, a., bibi, n., & nawaz, a. (2014). the role of motivation in learning english language for pakistani learners. international journal of humanities and social science, 4(1), 254-258. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.4p.15 sakalidis, k. e., hettinga, f. j., & ling, f. c. m. (2023). coaching styles and sports motivation in athletes with and without intellectual impairments. plos one, 18(12), e0296164. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296164 soibamcha, e., & pandey, n. (2016). the attitude of teachers towards the teaching profession. global journal of interdisciplinary social sciences, 5(3), 49-51. sosik, j. j., & jung, d. (2011). inspirational motivation: e-emotional side of transformational leadership. full range leadership development: pathways for people, profit, and the planet. new york: psychology press. appendix table 1a presents the questionnaire designed for the students. table 1a. students’ questionnaire. sn statements s a a n d s d 1 i like my english class feedback very much. 2 i like to attend english classes because my english teacher is so good. 3 i enjoy learning english. 4 i like english classes so much that i want to study english more in the future. 5 i enjoy the activities of the english classes. 6 it embarrasses me to volunteer answers in english classes. 7 sometimes, i daydream about dropping english. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/hes.v6n3p21 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.3.5.29 http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v2n4p123 https://www.daily-sun.com/post/772394 https://doi.org/10.2307/40264514 https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2020.1738184 https://dailycountrytodaybd.com/story/chittagong-board%27s-pass-rate-drops-due-to-failures-in-english https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v16n3.04g https://doi.org/10.1086/266945 https://doi.org/10.1080/03055690701811099 https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2019.1707205 https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.4p.15 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296164 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 59-69 69 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group sn statements s a a n d s d 8 i put off my english homework as much as possible. 9 if possible, i will give up the study of english. 10 i do not like my english teacher. 11 english is important as it will help me get a good job. 12 english is important for a better salary and promotion. 13 competence in english will enhance my academic results. 14 i am learning english because it is a compulsory course. 15 english is important to me as i need it to go abroad. 16 i need english because i want to acquire knowledge in various fields, and english is the most widely used language. 17 studying english is important because it will make me more skilled. 18 studying english is important because it will allow me to be more at ease with people who speak english. 19 i believe that english speakers have something to be proud of, as english is a global language. 20 english is one of my favorite subjects. note: sa= strongly agree, a= agree, n= neutral, d= disagree, sd= strongly disagree. table 2a presents the questionnaire designed for the teachers. table 2a. teachers’ questionnaire. sn statements s a a n d s d 1 i like to innovate activities for english classes. 2 i want to be trained in elt to be a better teacher. 3 it is very boring to evaluate examination scripts. 4 my job is very enjoyable and stimulating for me. 5 i like my classes because my students are so good. 6 students’ good performance increases my prestige. 7 the textbook satisfies the criteria of a good textbook. 8 i think teaching is a prestigious job. 9 a teacher of english has a special social status. 10 i am pleased with my salary, promotion, and job description. 11 i think the students enjoy learning english. 12 i joined teaching by choice. sn statement a lw ay s v er y o ft en o ft en s o m et im es n ev er 13 it gives me pleasure when the students do well in english. 14 i enjoy teaching english. 15 i welcome questions from the students. 16 i feel annoyed when my students give the wrong answer. 17 i get enough time for the preparation of the classes. 18 i make extra efforts for the students. open-ended question: why are some students not motivated to learn english? note: sa= strongly agree, a= agree, n= neutral, d= disagree, sd= strongly disagree. interview checklist 1. what is the attitude (positive/negative) of the students towards learning english? 2. what is the attitude (positive/negative) of the teachers towards teaching english? 3. what is the motivation level (high/low) of the students for learning english? 4. what is the motivation level (high/low) of the teachers for teaching english? 5. how can we change the motivation and attitude of the students toward learning english? asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 82 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 82-90, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.82.90 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between the sports manager behavior and locus of control of students taking sports management education abdurrahman kepoglu usak university faculty of sport sciences, turkey. abstract the study aims to determine the degree to which sports managers show behaviors related to management processes and to what extent the focus of control of sports managers affects these behaviors, to increase the performance of sports managers. the universe of the research consists of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-year students studying at the department of sports management of uşak university. the sample of the study, which was conducted with the non-probabilistic sampling method, in which 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error were used, consisted of 231 students, male = 155, female = 76. “sports manager behavior scale” and “internal-external locus of control scale” were used in the study. in general, it was determined that the students participating in the research have a very high level of sports manager behavior and internalexternal locus of control. 95.7% of the students have internal control and 4.3% have an external locus of control. keywords: sport manager behavior, locus of control, sport management education. citation | abdurrahman kepoglu (2021). the relationship between the sports manager behavior and locus of control of students taking sports management education. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 82-90. history: received: 12 january 2021 revised: 29 january 2021 accepted: 22 february 2021 published: 8 march 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 83 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 84 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 85 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 89 5. result .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 90 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 90 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.82.90&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2707 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0207-9288 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 82-90 83 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by determining the degree to which sports managers show behaviors related to management processes and to what extent the focus of control of sports managers affects these behaviors, to increase the performance of sports managers. 1. introduction the main task of sports managers is to address the business side of sport so that athletes and coaches can focus on the competition. while you’ve probably attended many sporting events throughout your life, you might not have thought of the hard work that goes into keeping these games running smoothly. this is where the sports manager comes in. sports managers are focused on monitoring the daily operations of sports facilities and all other playing surfaces. sports managers work hard behind the scenes. sports facility managers ensure that sports activities continue without interruption. in enterprises producing sports products; elements such as managers, athletes, trainers, facilities, equipment, and sports competition programs should be brought together by the objectives. the influence of managers’ behavior, which has an important place in the lives of athletes, like all these factors, should not be overlooked. for this reason, the study aims to determine the degree to which sports managers show behaviors related to management processes and to what extent the focus of control of sports managers affects these behaviors, to increase the performance of sports managers. since the manager is the person who tries to reach the goals through others, he has to deal closely with the subject of behavior (koçel, 1989). although successful management in this respect is not alone, it largely relies on predicting and controlling human behavior (celep, 1990). in short, it can be said that the manager has sufficient knowledge and skills about both his / her job and human behavior, both in terms of his / her success and its effect on the performance of athletes. sports management, which is accepted as the application of the principles and rules of general management to the field of sports, is “a machine that makes sports with a hierarchical authoritarian regulation that maintains the distinction between the governor and the managed in the society as a manager and athlete” (fişek, 1983). these developed concepts, mottos, methods, and principles have been adapted to fields such as industry, business, public, education, health, tourism, and sports and have been handled in different disciplines (ekenci & i̇mamoğlu, 2003). for every field (public administration, business administration, sports management, educational administration, etc.), specialization was made with in-depth scientific research. although management science is thought to have the same meaning for all social segments, the fact that the service, organization, and activities of the societies have different characteristics revealed that the characteristics of different fields should be taken into consideration. from this point on, although sports management is a sub-branch of management science and has many common features with management science, it should take into account the characteristics of its field in practice. also, although management science is divided into different branches, management processes are valid for all branches (yetim & günay, 1992). from this point of view, various stages of the management process such as planning, organization, execution, coordination, and control, are valid for various fields, and the principles and methods related to these are also valid for sports activities and sports organizations (imamoğlu, 1992). within the framework of this approach, sports management can be considered as the application of general management understanding to sports (dolaşır, i̇mamoğlu, & sunay, 2002). sports management is also seen as a professional job and it is accepted that it is no longer possible to manage sports amateurishly, only with enthusiasm or love (imamoğlu, 1992). for this reason, besides the sports managers who will work in the field of sports love this job; they must have personal skills, experience, and professional knowledge (yetim & günay, 1992). sports management is defined as “the officers who take charge in the management and administration of sports services and activities in various ways and who contributed to the execution of these services and activities” (demirci, 1986). in a broader sense, sports management is “the person who organizes the people working in the sports institution, gives orders, directs and organizes group work for the same purpose, takes all kinds of responsibilities and supervises the functioning to achieve the intended goals in the fields of physical education and sports.” (yetim & şenel, 2001). the managers must have certain qualifications to successfully fulfill the management functions related to the organization they are responsible for. these qualities are shaped by the skills revealed by the management scientist named katz. these abilities are collected in three points: technical, human, and conceptual. technical skill; it includes the expert knowledge of a specific field, the ability to analyze and to use analysis tools and techniques related to this field (koçel, 1989). technical skills are especially important for lower-level managers (eren, 2003). it is observed that the weight of technical activities decreases as one moves from the hierarchical levels to the higher ranks (bakır, 1994). for example, managing a sports facility requires different technical skills, but also includes complete technical knowledge about the sports branch managed (imamoğlu, 1992). human skill; as the level of the manager rises, instead of solving the problems with technical knowledge and providing technical support, the manager’s planning, directing and coordination, etc. activities come to the fore (mucuk, 1996) and hence human relations skills become important. in other words, the presence of a manager who attaches importance to human relations understands employees, and shows the ability to work in harmony with them is a source of happiness for employees in the organization (balçık, 2002). also, human skills play an important role in increasing the performance levels of employees. in particular, the human relations ability that sports managers should have is an important factor in maintaining harmony and resolving conflicts (imamoğlu, 1992). conceptual skill; it means that the manager sees the complete organization as a whole (mucuk, 1996). but while seeing the whole, its parts should be well understood. to acquire this ability, they should be able to determine how each department affects other departments, what kind of change a change in one department will require in other departments, and individuals’ relations with the environment, society, and industry (dinçer & fidan, 1996). in addition to these abilities of managers (marşap, 2000; mucuk, 1996) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 82-90 84 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group • a good manager must be honest and fair. • he/she must be able to make his/her decisions on time. • he/she must take responsibility. • he/she must be initiative, dynamic and determined. • he/she must be accepted in the environment with its external appearance, it should be tidy • he/she must have integrative and coordinating skills. • he/she must understand the emotions of the staff. • he/she he must be able to perceive complex structures easily. • he/she must create a suitable atmosphere for the success of the organization. • he/she must measure and evaluate the success of the organization. undoubtedly, it is not expected that every manager must have these qualities that are desired to be found in a good sports manager, but a sports manager who is trained in the framework of the aforementioned knowledge and has these characteristics can solve problems with scientific methods, not randomly, and thus make strategic, administrative executive decisions. it is possible to say that it can achieve more effective results (imamoğlu, 1992). locus of control perception is a personality parameter that considers whether rewards and punishments are a result of individuals’ expectations or are realized by a force they believe against their will. in this case, individuals represent two different aspects of the two different behavioral styles they exhibit in the focus of control. one end of these two angles, which are indicated as opposites, defines internally controlled individuals who perceive rewards about their behavior, while the other end defines externally controlled individuals who connect the behaviors of the person to external factors (yeşilyaprak, 1988). the belief that rewards and punishments occur as a result of the individual’s behavior and that they are more influential in their emergence is called the “internal locus of control”. individuals with the perception of internal locus of control believe that the consistency between behaviors and results is a product of effort and success. this situation is perceived positively by the person. according to the locus of control (personality variable) scales, a relationship was found between the independence, work, and selfcontrolled attitudes of men who scored internally and academic efficacy (nowicki & strickland, 1973). pioneering authors in the field of locus of control, rotter (1966); phares (1976); nowicki and strickland (1973) stated that having internal control is effective in leading a successful and peaceful life. if the individual has an internal locus of control, they take over responsibility for their behavior and change the expectations of their performances. while the individual with internal control has a more positive structure psychologically, this situation is not seen much in individuals with external control (argun, 1995). the individual thinks that there is no inclination by himself in the formation of rewards and punishments and that these are applied by different forces other than himself. therefore, the expectation that a person thinks that his or her efforts will not be effective, is called “external locus of control”. when kaplan, reneau, and whitecotton (2001) examine the relationship between personality variables and decision-making skills, they state that people with an external locus of control are more dependent on other people’s opinions when making decisions compared to individuals with an internal locus of control. the internally controlled people act more independently. they act more resistant to the difficulties of the environment. despite the obstacles they face, they display a constructive attitude. in an unsuccessful situation, they take responsibility without acting with the belief of external forces. people who are prone to external control are more easily influenced. they have an accusatory and aggressive nature. they are incapable of realizing themselves (ozen, 1991). while internally controlled individuals are individuals with high socioeconomic status, externally controlled individuals have low socio-economic status. external controllers state that external forces control the factors of events (colangelo & davis, 1997). it has been found that individuals with external control feel more anger and see other people less as friends than individuals who have internal control. 2. method in this study, which aims to examine university students’ sports manager behavior levels and control focus according to various variables, the relational screening method, one of the quantitative research designs, was used. this research design was chosen to analyze the differences between variables. it is a non-experimental design among quantitative research methods aiming to determine whether there is a relationship or difference between two or more independent variables (karasar, 2016). the universe of the research consists of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4thyear students studying at the department of sports management of usak university. the sample of the study, conducted with the non-probabilistic sampling method, in which 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error were used, consisted of 231 students, male = 155, female = 76. in this study, the “sports manager behavior scale” developed by kepoglu and bayansalduz (2021) was used. the 5-point likert type scale consists of 5 subscales: administrative approach, self-efficacy approach, supportive approach, and hierarchical approach. one participant scores a minimum of 21 and a maximum of 105 points on the scale. the internal consistency reliability coefficient of the scale, which is scored as “strongly disagree (1) and strongly agree (5)), respectively; sports executive behavior scale (α =, 87) administrative approach (α =, 85) self-efficacy approach (α =, 82) supportive approach (α =, 63) hierarchical approach (α =, 57). in our study, sports manager behavior scale (α = .88) administrative approach (α =, 79) self-efficacy approach (α =, 77) supportive approach (α =, 65) was determined as a hierarchical approach (α =, 59). when these results are examined, it can be said that the reliability of the scale items regarding internal consistency among themselves is high. the other data collection tool used in the research was the “internal-external locus of control scale”. developed by nowicki and strickland (1973) the scale was adapted into turkish by ongen (2003). the turkish form consists of 29 items and 5 subscales for family relationships, success, peer relationships, superstition, and fate. the scale is 4-point likert type, and the subjects answer the scale items by choosing one of the options i strongly agree (1), strongly disagree (4). internal-external locus of control scale (α =, 74) for family relationships (α =, 74) for success (α =, 59) for peer relations (α =, 61) for superstition (α =, 62) for fate foci were determined as (α =, 47). in our study, the internal consistency reliability coefficient of the internalasian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 82-90 85 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group external control scale was determined as (α =, 70). according to this result, it can be said that the reliability of the scale is quite high. 3. findings the findings and solution suggestions about the determination of the sports manager qualifications levels of the students of the sports management department and the effects of the locus of control on the sports management characteristics acquired as a result of the training are given below. table-1. descriptive statistics regarding students. variables groups f % gender male 155 67.1 female 76 32.9 age 18-22 198 85.7 23-27 22 9.5 27 and over 11 4.8 grade 1st grade 156 67.5 2nd grade 36 15.6 3rd grade 14 6.1 4th grade 25 10.8 whether to do sports with a license yes 150 64.9 no 81 35.1 note: n=231. as seen in table 1, 67.1% of the students participating in the study were male, 85.7% were students between the ages of 18-23, 67.5% were first class and 64.9% were licensed sports. it consists of students who do. table-2. normality analysis regarding scale and ıts sub-dimensions. scales scales and sub-dimensions 𝒙/ss median variance skewness kurtois sports manager behavior scale sports manager behavior general 90.04±8.66 90.00 75.05 -0.461 0.623 administrative approach 30.72±3.23 31.00 10.43 -0.618 0.246 self-efficacy approach 30.53±3.18 31.00 10.13 -0.566 0.215 supportive approach 17.29±2.19 17.00 4.83 -0.860 1.003 hierarchical approach 11.48±2.18 11.00 4.77 -0.070 -0.725 internalexternal locus of control scale internal-external locus of control general 85.26±11.09 86.00 123.16 -0.707 0.735 family relations 24.54±3.99 25.00 15.93 -0.465 0.511 success relations 16.16±5.33 16.00 28.51 0.710 0.205 peer relations 22.94±5.74 24.00 22.48 -0.822 0.596 superstition focus 7.08±2.39 8.00 5.75 -0.535 -0.747 fate audit 14.52±3.29 15.00 10.88 -0.613 0.375 note: p<0.05. as seen in table 2, normality analysis regarding the data has been made. the fact that the median and mean values are close to each other, the kurtosis and skewness values are between ± 1.96 and the concentration of the data around the linear line in the q-q pilot chart show that the data are suitable for normal distribution. for this reason, it has been decided to perform parametric tests in the analyzes to be used in analyzing the data. table-3. descriptive statistics regarding the scale and sub-dimensions regarding participants. scales minimum maximum 𝒙 sd. sports manager behavior general 63 105 90.04 8.66 internal-external locus of control general 47 109 85.26 11.09 note: �̅�=mean; sd: standard deviation n=231. as seen in table 3, it can be said that, based on the averages, the students participating in the research generally have a very high level of sports manager behavior and internal-external control locus of control. table-4. descriptive statistics regarding locus of control type of participants. frequency % external control 10 4.3 internal control 221 95.7 total 231 100 note: as seen in table 4, 95.7% of the participating students have internal control and 4.3% have external locus of control. as seen in table 5, a statistically significant difference was determined between the general scores of the sports manager behavior scale and the gender of the students at the 95% confidence level (t(229)=-2,750;p=,006;p<0,05). according to this result, it was determined that female students’ sports manager behavior levels (�̅�=92,25) were higher than male students (�̅�=88,96). a statistically significant difference was found between the administrative approach subscale scores and the students’ gender at 95% confidence level (t(229)=-3,096;p=,002;p<0,05). according to this result, it was determined that female students’ administrative approach styles (�̅�=31,57) were higher than male (�̅�=30,31) students. a statistically significant difference was found between the self-efficacy approach subscale scores and the students’ gender at the 95% confidence level (t(229)=-3,007;p=,003;p<0,05). according to this result, it was determined that female students’ self-efficacy styles (�̅�=31,42) were higher than male (�̅�=30,10) students. a asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 82-90 86 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group statistically significant difference was determined between the supportive approach subscale scores and the students’ gender at the 95% confidence level (t(229)=-2,554;p=,011;p<0,05). according to this result, it was determined that the supportive approach styles of the female students (�̅�=17,82) were higher than the male (�̅�=17,04) students. however, no statistically significant difference was found between the hierarchical approach subscale scores and the gender of the students (p =, 839; p> 0.05). table-5. analysis of differences of participants’ sports manager behavior and ınternal-external locus of control scales by gender. scales and subdimensions levene test gender n 𝒙 sd. f p t df p sports manager behavior general male 155 88.96 9.15 2.57 0.110 -2.750 229 0.006* female 76 92.25 7.13 administrative approach male 155 30.31 3.43 6.594 0.011 -3.096 229 0.002* female 76 31.57 2.59 self-efficacy approach male 155 30.10 3.32 2.301 0.131 -3.007 229 0.003* female 76 31.42 2.70 supportive approach male 155 17.04 2.34 2.678 0.103 -2.554 229 0.011* female 76 17.82 1.79 hierarchical approach male 155 11.51 2.15 0.06 0.807 0.203 229 0.839 female 76 11.45 2.27 internal-external focus of control general male 155 86.17 10.90 0.011 0.916 1.788 229 0.075 female 76 83.41 11.33 family relations male 155 24.44 3.90 1.799 0.181 -0.556 229 0.579 female 76 24.75 4.20 success relations male 155 16.46 5.47 0.382 0.537 1.203 229 0.230 female 76 15.57 5.04 peer relations male 155 23.07 4.67 0.124 0.725 0.582 229 0.561 female 76 22.68 4.90 superstition focus male 155 7.58 2.15 4.265 0.040 4.383 229 0.000** female 76 6.08 2.58 fate audit male 155 14.62 3.29 0.022 0.882 0.628 229 0.531 female 76 14.33 3.33 note: **p<0.01; *p<0.05; �̅�=mean; sd: standard deviation; df: degree of freedom. students’ internal-external locus of control is based on the general scale (p =, 075; p> 0.05) and subscales; family relationships (p =, 579; p> 0.05), success relationships (p =, 230; p> 0.05), peer relationships (p =, 561; p> 0.05), fate audit (p =, 531; p> 0.05), there was no statistically significant difference between the averages of their scores and their gender. a statistically significant difference was found between the superstition focus subscale mean scores and the students’ gender in the 95% confidence scale (t (229) = 4.383; p = .000; p <0.05). according to the results of the analysis, it was determined that the superstition locus of control levels of men (�̅�= 7.58) were higher than that of women (�̅�= 6.08). table-6. differential analyzes of participants’ sports manager behavior and ınternal-external locus of control scales according to whether to do sports with a license. scale and sub-dimensions levene test status of being a licensed athlete n 𝒙 sd. f p t sd p sports manager behavior general yes 150 90.50 8.49 0.075 0.785 1.091 229 0.276 no 81 89.20 8.96 administrative approach yes 150 30.87 3.09 0.916 0.339 0.963 229 0.337 no 81 30.44 3.48 self-efficacy approach yes 150 30.73 3.06 0.412 0.522 1.279 229 0.202 no 81 30.17 3.39 supportive approach yes 150 17.34 2.13 0.007 0.932 0.428 229 0.669 no 81 17.21 2.34 hierarchical approach yes 150 11.55 2.25 1.539 0.216 0.607 229 0.545 no 81 11.37 2.08 internal-external focus of control general yes 150 86.33 10.80 0.832 0.363 2.006 229 0.046* no 81 83.28 11.43 family relations yes 150 24.83 3.88 0.67 0.414 1.483 229 0.139 no 81 24.01 4.16 success relations yes 150 16.19 5.35 0.488 0.485 0.069 229 0.945 no 81 16.14 5.36 peer relations yes 150 23.59 4.48 1.863 0.174 2.847 229 0.005* no 81 21.75 5.00 superstition focus yes 150 7.03 2.50 2.917 0.089 -0.52 229 0.607 no 81 7.20 2.21 fate audit yes 150 14.71 3.15 1.475 0.226 1.147 229 0.253 no 81 14.19 3.55 note: **p<0.01; *p<0.05. as seen in table 6, sports manager behavior scale general score averages (p =, 276; p> 0.05) and sub-scales administrative approach (p =, 337; p> 0.05), self-efficacy approach (p =. no significant difference was determined. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 82-90 87 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a statistically significant difference was determined at a 95% confidence level between the students’ internalexternal locus of control general point averages and the variable of whether or not they are licensed athletes (t (229) = 2.006; p <. according to this result, it was determined that the students who do sports with a license have a higher internal-external locus of control (�̅� = 86.33) than the non-licensed students (�̅�= 83.28). a statistically significant difference was found between the peer relations subscale mean scores and the variable of doing sports with license or not at the 95% confidence level (t (229) = 2.847; p = .005; p <0.05). based on the averages, it was seen that the levels of peer relationships (�̅�= 23.59) of the students who are licensed sports are higher than the nonlicensed sports students (�̅�= 21.75). however, family relationships (p =, 139; p> 0.05), success relationships (p =, 945; p> 0.05), superstition relationships (p =, 607; p> 0.05) and no significant difference was found between fate audit (p =, 253; p> 0.05) and the variable of licensed sports or not. table-7. sports manager behavior scale general score averages of the participants and analysis of the difference between the ages of the participants. scale and sub-dimensions age n 𝒙 sd df f p lsd difference sports manager behavior general 18-22 198 89.71 8.44 2 228 3.416 0.035* 1<3 2<3 23-27 22 89.73 9.69 27 and over 11 96.64 8.70 administrative approach 18-22 198 30.67 3.23 2 228 1.79 0.169 23-27 22 30.32 3.40 27 and over 11 32.45 2.50 self-efficacy approach 18-22 198 30.48 3.16 2 228 2.268 0.106 23-27 22 30.09 3.26 27 and over 11 32.45 3.14 supportive approach 18-22 198 17.23 2.22 2 228 2.489 0.085 23-27 22 17.18 2.06 27 and over 11 18.73 1.79 hierarchical approach 18-22 198 11.33 2.17 2 228 4.214 0.016* 1<3 23-27 22 12.14 1.98 27 and over 11 13.00 2.19 internal-external focus of control general 18-22 198 85.67 10.86 2 228 2.708 0.069 23-27 22 85.41 10.74 27 and over 11 77.73 14.23 family relations 18-22 198 24.53 4.11 2 228 0.764 0.467 23-27 22 24.00 3.60 27 and over 11 25.82 1.94 success relations 18-22 198 16.20 5.13 2 228 2.615 0.075 23-27 22 17.45 6.66 27 and over 11 13.00 5.42 peer relations 18-22 198 23.19 4.64 2 228 3.007 0.051 23-27 22 22.36 4.02 27 and over 11 19.73 6.72 superstition focus 18-22 198 7.15 2.38 2 228 2.438 0.090 23-27 22 7.27 2.45 27 and over 11 5.55 2.42 fate audit 18-22 198 14.60 3.33 2 228 0.486 0.616 23-27 22 14.32 3.31 27 and over 11 13.64 2.84 note: *p<0.05. as seen in table 7, a statistically significant difference was determined between the general score averages of the sports manager behavior scale and the ages of the students at the 95% confidence level (f2-228) = 3.416; p = .035; p <0.05). when the source of the difference between the groups was examined, a significant difference was found between those aged between 18-22 and 27 and over, between 23-27 years old, and those aged 27 and over. according to this result, the sports manager behavior levels of the students aged 27 and over (�̅�= 96.64) are between 18-22 years old (�̅�= 89.71) and 23-27 years old (�̅�= 89.73) it was found to be higher than that. it can be said that as the students' age increases, the executive behavior style gained by the sports education they receive also improves. administrative approach (p =, 169; p> 0.05), self-efficacy approach (p = 106; p> 0.05), supportive approach (p =, 085; p> 0.05). there was no statistically significant difference between their ages. however, a statistically significant difference was found between the ages of students at 95% confidence level with the hierarchical approach, one of the subscales (f (2-228) = 4.214; p =, 016; p <0.05). when the source of the difference between the groups is examined, there is a significant difference between the students between the ages of 18-22 and those who are 27 and over. according to this result, it was determined that students aged 27 and over had higher hierarchical approach levels (=13,00 than students aged 18-22 (=11,33). it can be said that as the age of the students increases, the hierarchical approach styles of the sports education they receive also increase. the students’ internal-external locus of control is based on the general scale (p =. family relationships (p =, 467; p> 0.05), success relationships (p =, 075; p> 0.05), peer relationships (p =, 051; p> 0.05), superstition focus (p no statistically significant difference was found between the mean scores of their scores and their age (p=, 090; p> 0.05) and fate audit (p =, 616; p> 0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 82-90 88 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-8. analysis of the students’ sports manager behavior and ınternal-external locus of control scales by class variable. scale and sub-dimensions grade n ort. sd. sd. f p discrepancy sports manager behavior general 1st grade 156 89.85 8.24 3 227 2.588 0.054 2nd grade 36 89.19 10.21 3rd grade 14 87.07 9.42 4th grade 25 94.12 7.54 administrative approach 1st grade 156 30.62 3.12 3 227 4.652 0.004* 3<4 2nd grade 36 30.72 3.53 3rd grade 14 28.71 3.75 4th grade 25 32.52 2.37 self-efficacy approach 1st grade 156 30.69 3.07 3 227 3.068 0.029* 2<4 3<4 2nd grade 36 29.72 3.42 3rd grade 14 29.00 3.31 4th grade 25 31.64 3.09 supportive approach 1st grade 156 17.38 2.02 3 227 0.515 0.672 2nd grade 36 16.89 2.83 3rd grade 14 17.43 2.34 4th grade 25 17.24 2.22 hierarchical approach 1st grade 156 11.17 2.11 3 227 4.513 0.004* 1<4 2nd grade 36 11.86 2.22 3rd grade 14 11.93 1.82 4th grade 25 12.72 2.32 internal-external focus of control general 1st grade 156 85.64 9.90 3 227 0.278 0.841 2nd grade 36 85.17 13.55 3rd grade 14 84.21 12.26 4th grade 25 83.64 13.93 family relations 1st grade 156 24.54 3.91 3 227 0.041 0.989 2nd grade 36 24.56 4.53 3rd grade 14 24.21 3.38 4th grade 25 24.68 4.20 success relations 1st grade 156 16.13 4.79 3 227 0.443 0.722 2nd grade 36 16.86 6.28 3rd grade 14 16.43 5.85 4th grade 25 15.28 6.91 peer relations 1st grade 156 23.09 4.62 3 227 0.183 0.908 2nd grade 36 22.81 4.96 3rd grade 14 22.36 5.23 4th grade 25 22.56 5.15 superstition focus 1st grade 156 7.31 2.20 3 227 2.669 0.048* 1>4 2nd grade 36 6.53 2.77 3rd grade 14 7.64 2.44 4th grade 25 6.16 2.76 fate audit 1st grade 156 14.56 3.21 3 227 0.552 0.648 2nd grade 36 14.42 3.50 3rd grade 14 13.57 2.85 4th grade 25 14.96 3.86 note: *p<0.05. as seen in table 8, with the general score averages of the sports manager behavior scale (p = .054; p> 0.05) and the supportive approach from the subscales (p =, 672; p> 0.05), the students’ level of education there was no statistically significant difference. however, a statistically significant difference was determined at a 95% confidence level between the administrative approach and the class levels students studied (f (2-227) = 4.652; p =, 029; p <0.05). when the source of the difference between the groups is examined, there is a significant difference between the 3rd grade and the 4th grade. accordingly, it has been determined that the students studying in the 4th grade (�̅�= 32.52) are higher than those studying in the 3rd grade (�̅�= 28.71). according to this result, it can be said that as the grade levels of students studying in the department of management increase, their managerial behavior styles also improve. in addition to this, a statistically significant difference was determined at the 95% confidence level between the self-efficacy approach and the level of students’ education (f (2-227) = 3.068; p =, 008; p <0.05). when the source of the difference between the groups is examined, there is a significant difference between the 2nd grade and 4th grade, and between 3rd and 4th grade. accordingly, it was found that the administrative approach levels of the students studying in the 4th grade (�̅� = 31.64) were higher than those of the 2nd grade (�̅�= 29.72) and the 3rd grade (�̅�= 29.00) has been. with the hierarchical approach, a statistically significant difference was determined at a 95% confidence level between the grade levels the students studied (f (2-227) = 4.513; p =, 048; p <0.05). when the source of the difference between the groups is examined, there is a significant difference between the 1st grade and the 4th grade. accordingly, it has been determined that the students studying in the 4th grade (�̅� = 12.72) are higher than those studying in the 3rd grade (�̅�= 11.93). students’ internal-external locus of control is based on the general scale (p =, 841; p> 0.05) and subscales; family relationships (p =, 989; p> 0.05), success relationships (p =, 722; p> 0.05), peer relationships (p =,908; p> 0.05), and fate audit (p = ,648; p> 0.05), there was no statistically significant difference between the averages of their scores and their grade levels. however, a statistically significant difference was found at a 95% confidence level between the superstition focus and the grade levels the students studied (f (2-227) = 2.669; p =, 004; p asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 82-90 89 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group <0.05). when the source of the difference between the groups is examined, there is a significant difference between the 1st grade and the 4th grade. accordingly, it was determined that the students studying in the 1st grade (�̅�= 7.31) are higher than the students studying in the 4th grade (�̅� = 6.16). according to this result, it can be said that with the effect of the management education students received, there was a decrease in superstition focus and scientific approaches were adopted more. table-9. the relationship analysis between students’ sports manager behavior levels and ınternal-external locus of control. sports manager behavior level locus of control level pearson correlation -0.126 p 0.056 n 231 note: p<0.05. there is no relationship between students’ sports manager behavior levels and internal-external locus of control (p> 0.05). therefore, control focus has no effect on the behavior levels of students’ sports managers. 4. discussion in our study, sports manager behavior levels and internal-external locus of control levels of the sports management department students were determined. the relationship and effect of the type of locus of control that students have with their sports manager behavior levels were determined. from this point; as seen in table 1, 67.1% of the students participating in the study were males, 85.7% were students between the ages of 18-23, 67.5% were first class and 64.9% were licensed sports. it consists of students who do. as can be seen in table 3, it can be said that the students participating in the research generally have a very high level of sports manager behavior and internal-external locus of control based on the averages. as seen in table 4, 95.7% of the participating students have internal audits and 4.3% have an external locus of control. as seen in table 5, a statistically significant difference was determined between the general scores of the sports manager behavior scale and the gender of the students. according to this result, it was determined that the sports manager behavior levels of female students were higher than the male students. a statistically significant difference was found between the administrative approach subscale scores and the students’ gender at the 95% confidence level. according to this result, it was determined that female students’ administrative approach styles were higher than students. a statistically significant difference was determined between the self-efficacy approach subscale scores and the gender of the students. according to this result, it was determined that the self-efficacy styles of female students were higher than male students. a statistically significant difference was determined between the supportive approach subscale scores and the gender of the students. according to this result, it was determined that the supportive approach styles of female students were higher than male students. however, no statistically significant difference was found between the hierarchical approach subscale scores and the students’ gender. students’ internal-external locus of control is based on the overall and subscales; no statistically significant difference was found between family relationships, success relationships, peer relationships, the averages of their scores from fate, and their gender. a statistically significant difference was determined between the superstition focus subscale to mean scores and the gender of the students. according to the results of the analysis, it was determined that male students had higher levels of superstition locus of control than female students. as seen in table 6, a statistically significant difference was not determined between the general score averages of the sports manager behavior scale and the sub-scales administrative approach, self-efficacy approach, supportive approach, and the hierarchical approach, and the variable of whether or not students do sports with a license. a statistically significant difference was determined between the students’ internal-external locus of control general point averages and the variable of whether or not they are licensed athletes. according to this result, it was determined that the students who do sports with a license have a higher internal-external locus of control than the non-licensed students. a statistically significant difference was determined between the peer relations subscale mean scores and the variable of exercising with license or not. based on the averages, it has been observed that the peer relationship level of the students who are licensed sports is higher than the students who are not licensed, sportsmen. however, no significant difference was found between family relationships, success relationships, superstition relationships, and fate audit, and licensed exercising or not. as seen in table 7, a statistically significant difference was not determined between the general score averages of the sports manager behavior scale and the supportive approach from the sub-scales, and the grade levels of the students. however, a statistically significant difference was determined between the administrative approach, which is one of the subscales, and the level of the students’ education. when the source of the difference between the groups is examined, there is a significant difference between the 3rd grade and the 4th grade. accordingly, it was determined that the students studying in the 4th grade are higher than the students in the 3rd grade. according to this result, it can be said that as the grade levels of students studying in the department of management increase, their managerial behavior styles also improve. in addition to this, a statistically significant difference was determined between the self-efficacy approach and the grade levels of the students. when the source of the difference between groups is examined, there is a significant difference between the 2nd grade and the 4th grade, and between the 3rd grade and the 4th grade. accordingly, it was determined that the administrative approach levels of 4th-grade students were higher than those studying in the 2nd and 3rd grade (x ̅ = 29,00). with the hierarchical approach, a statistically significant difference was determined between the grade levels the students studied. when the source of the difference between the groups is examined, there is a significant difference between 1st grade and 4th grade. accordingly, it has been determined that 4th-grade students are higher than 3rd-grade students. students’ internal-external locus of control is based on the overall and subscales; there was no statistically significant difference between family relationships, achievement relationships, peer relationships, and the average scores of their fateful control and their grade level. however, a statistically significant difference was found asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 82-90 90 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group between the superstition focus of the subscales and the level of the students’ education. when the source of the difference between the groups is examined, there is a significant difference between the 1st grade and the 4th grade. accordingly, it has been determined that the students studying in the 1st grade are higher than those studying in the 4th grade. according to this result, it can be said that with the effect of the management education students received, there was a decrease in superstition focus and scientific approaches were adopted more. as can be seen in table 8, there is no relationship between students’ sports manager behavior levels and internal-external locus of controls. therefore, control focus does not affect students’ sports manager behavior levels. 5. result in general, it was determined that the students participating in the study have a very high level of sports manager behavior and internal-external locus of control. 95.7% of the students have internal audits and 4.3% have an external locus of control. there is no relationship between students’ sports manager behavior levels and internal-external control centers. therefore, control focus does not affect students’ sports manager behavior levels. despite this situation, an important factor to be taken into account is that students have not yet started their profession. however, as the duration of education increases, sports manager behavior levels also increase. when they start sports management in sports businesses; as they are mainly focused on internal control and according to the behavioral patterns derived from personality traits; they will act more independently. they will act more resistant to the difficulties coming from the inner and outer environment of the sports business. despite the obstacles they face, they will be able to take a constructive attitude. in an unsuccessful situation, they will be able to assume responsibility without acting with the belief of external forces. when making decisions like those with an external locus of control; they will not be more dependent on other people’s opinions. they will not be affected more easily. they will not be accusing or aggressive and will not be incapable of self-understanding. with these features they carry, they will be able to exhibit high-level sports manager behavior in the sports businesses they will work. another result that should be taken into consideration is that although female sports management students have higher sports manager behavior level, in practice, they have quite a few sports manager positions in sports businesses compared to men. one of the possible reasons for this situation is that female sports management students are more focused on external control. references argun, y. (1995). the effects of parents 'child rearing attitudes on secondary school students' locus of control. unpublished master's thesis, dokuz eylül university institute of social sciences, i̇zmir. bakır, m. (1994). the scope of sports management based on modern management approach. gazi university journal of physical education and sports sciences, 4(2), 73-80. balçık, b. (2002). business management. ankara: nobel publishing. celep, c. (1990). the role of managerial behaviors in employees' job success and the case of see, sakarya university institute of social sciences, department of educational management, inspection, planning and economics. phd thesis, sakarya. colangelo, n., & davis, g. a. (1997). handbook of gifted education (2nd ed.). boston: allyn & bacon. demirci, n. (1986). management-organization and organizations in sport: tr ministry of national education, youth and sports. dinçer, ö., & fidan, y. (1996). business management. istanbul: beta publishing. dolaşır, s., i̇mamoğlu, f., & sunay, h. (2002). human resources management approach in turkish sports management. gazi university journal of physical education and sport sciences, 7(1), 40-45. ekenci, g., & i̇mamoğlu, f. (2003). sports management. ankara: nobel publishing. eren, e. (2003). management and organization. i̇stanbul: beta publishing. fişek, k. (1983). sports management. ankara: beta publishing. imamoğlu, f. (1992). the meaning and importance of sports management in functional perspective. gazi university journal of education faculty, 8(1), 21-34. kaplan, s. e., reneau, j. h., & whitecotton, s. (2001). the effects of predictive ability information, locus of control, and decision maker involvement on decision aid reliance. journal of behavioral decision making, 14(1), 35-50.available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/1099-0771(200101)14:1%3c35::aid-bdm364%3e3.0.co;2-d. karasar, n. (2016). scientific research method. ankara: nobel publishing. kepoglu, a., & bayansalduz, m. (2021). validity and reliability study of "sports manager behavior scale" in sports manager education. international journal of applied exercise physiology, 10(2), 52-63. koçel, t. (1989). business management. istanbul: faculty of business publications. marşap, a. (2000). administrative system. ankara: gazi bookstore. mucuk, i̇. (1996). modern business. istanbul: turkmen kitap. nowicki, s., & strickland, b. a. (1973). locus of control scale for children. 1. consult clinical psychology, 40(1), 148-154. ongen, d. (2003). validity and reliability study of focal point scale. journal of education management in theory and practice, 35(35), 436-447. ozen, n. (1991). the relationship between focus of control and self-acceptance. journal of psychological counseling and guidance, 1(2), 20-28. phares, e. j. (1976). locus of control in personality: kansas state university general learning press. rotter, j. (1966). generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. psychological monographs, 80, 1-28.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092976. yeşilyaprak, b. (1988). factors affecting the internal or external control of high school students. hacettepe university. unpublished doctoral thesis. ankara. yetim, a., & günay, m. (1992). management processes and sports management. gazi university journal of physical education and sport sciences, 8(1), 1-8. yetim, a., & şenel, ö. (2001). sports manager in turkey view of growing activity. journal of national education, 1(5), 1-8. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 96 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 1, 96-102, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.96.102 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of dry-land quickness training on swimming performance of 14-16 ages students mine gul1 semihcan aydogan2 ( corresponding author) 1,2kocaeli unıversity, sports science faculty, kocaeli, izmit, turkey. abstract this study aimed to research the effect of dry-land quickness training for 14-16 years old male swimmers on 50 m freestyle swimming performance. 30 volunteer male athletes and 10 volunteer males in the same age group who do not sport participated in this study. athletes were grouped who took swimming training as experiment1 (e1), experiment2 (e2) who took swimming & quickness training and control (c) group who did not take an exercise. zig-zag (zz), square test (st), illinois test (it), and t-test were applied for quickness skills; 50 m freestyle swimming degree was computed for the swimming performance before and after the training. findings were discussed by applying paired sample t-test for in-group, independent samples t-test and one-way anova tests were applied for intergroup comparison. there are significant differences in all the measurement parameters based on pared sample t-test analysis results (p<0.05). also, with reference to intergroup analysis that compared e1, e2, and c groups, there are significant differences in all the parameters (p<0.05) while there is no difference between e2 and c group in zz, st, k, and it measurement parameters (p>0.05). on the other hand, there is a significant difference at 50 m freestyle swimming degree. exercise that were applied on dry-land as an addition to swimming training have an effect on quickness and swimming performance. it can be considered to be available method for swimmers to plan their training at the appropriate time. keywords: swimming, quickness, exercise, dry-land training, performance, strength. citation | mine gul; semihcan aydogan (2021). the effect of dry-land quickness training on swimming performance of 14-16 ages students. asian journal of education and training, 7(1): 96102. history: received: 22 january 2021 revised: 24 february 2021 accepted: 26 march 2021 published: 29 april 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 97 2. material and method ....................................................................................................................................................................... 97 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 98 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 100 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 101 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 101 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.96.102&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/2842 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2763-0697 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0848-4946 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 96-102 97 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature it was aimed to investigate the effects of quick strength dry-land training, which is added to swimming training, on 50m freestyle swimming degree and quick strength performance. it can be said that quickness strength training organized according to age groups can have an effect on branch-specific performance development and can also help future research. 1. introduction strength development varies by age groups. it is seen that there is a significant relationship between the content of the strength exercises for children and the strength development; there also are differences in strength development of girls and boys in some specific periods. the age variable plays a remarkable role in complex movements such as coordination. males are at their best level for speed, hand-paw strength, throwing a med ball, agility, and jumping parameters after 9-years old. therefore, it is an important issue to organize strength exercises so as to be proper to personal differences and periods of psychomotor development. so, trainers or coaches should be well-versed in the psychomotor development of children. it can also be mentioned that strength exercises that are consciously applied to children increase strength development. it is thought that water gymnastics, swimming and water sports help athletes in the development of physical and motoric properties and therefore will provide significant benefits in terms of the development of infrastructure athletes at the beginning stage (adela, 2017; deliceoğlu, 2015; hekim & hekim, 2015). exercises that are planned fit for purpose in branches of sport and also coordination, strength, flexibility practices increase the agility and skills development (karacabey, 2013). a well-structured and age-appropriate strength exercises program (s&c) can be a valuable instrument to decrease the possibility of injury in young swimmers, improve movement skills and increase swimming performance. this is crucial for physical activity and providing long-term athlete participation in the sport. it is suggested to s&c coaches who work with young athletes to develop strong s&c programs that are suited for the developmental and sport-specific needs of their athletes (nugent, comyns, & warrington, 2018). studies on performance development have endeavored to reveal the importance of technology, equipment, and technical training (smith, norris, & hogg, 2002). it is also thought for coaches that attaching speed, quickness and skills exercises to strength and condition programs is a good method to improve explosive and elastic power besides speed-up and agility development (jovanovic, sporis, omrcen, & fiorentini, 2011; milanović, sporiš, trajković, james, & šamija, 2013). besides the importance of performing all the movements at optimal speed; running technique, running speed, physical capacity and balance training are effective in providing agility development. moreover, speed of movement, quick change of direction, and quick reaction in skill performed are also essential to provide quickness development (sekulic, spasic, mirkov, cavar, & sattler, 2013; sheppard & young, 2006). land exercises in swimming are the inseparable parts of programs of young ones, adolescents, and university students. it is highlighted that the relationship between swimming-specific movements and performance with anthropometric parameters (ostrowska, domaradzki, & ignasiak, 2011). as it becomes professional in exercises, there is a decline in land exercises; these related exercises are performed to reduce the risk of injury in specific periods of practice (krabak, hancock, & drake, 2013). it is thought that land exercises can increase the ability to generate propulsive forces in water for sprint swimmers. moreover, conducting more studies to determine the appropriate volume and intensity of training programs according to gender and level will contribute to the performance (morouço, marinho, amaro, peréz-turpin, & marques, 2012). it was mentioned in a study that there may be positive relations between maximum strength exercises and swimming performance (aspenes & karlsen, 2012; sadowski, mastalerz, gromisz, & niznikowski, 2012) leg repulsive muscles are effective in strength development (cronnin, jones, & frost, 2007). again, with reference to findings of another research, coaches should encourage athletes for land exercises for the whole season; there will be seen an increase in pushing strength in water; improvement in arm drafting muscles; easiness in speed-up during diving; reduce friction in water and also keep the body position to strengthen core muscles (dingley, pyne, youngson, & burkett, 2015). 2. material and method 2.1. research group 30 volunteer male swimmers from 14-16 age club athletes in üsküdar/i̇stanbul/turkey municipality participated in this study. measurements were performed following the approval of the ethics committee and carried out in accordance with the declaration of helsinki. all testing and training procedures were fully explained, and written informed consent was obtained for each participant. athletes continued to club swimming exercises for 8 weeks, so as to take 3 days a week for 60 minutes. table 2 shows the descriptive data such as age, body weight, training age, arm span, and leg length. after the first measurements, athletes were randomly divided into two groups as experiment1 (e1) and experiment2 (e2). students who are not swimmers were specified as the control (c) group. e1 group performed quickness exercises toward maximal speed beside club swimming exercises; e2 group performed club swimming exercises only. 2.2. research method the most important characteristics of athletes are the ability to perform actions requiring maximum contraction, reaction time and rapid force in the shortest time and in the most number of times (bompa, 2013; bompa & haff, 2017). with the versatile foot drills, rapid change of direction and hip movements, it is aimed to improve the maximal strength level by using body weight while applying accelerated movements in both lower and upper extremities (bayraktar, 2015). quickness exercises table 1 were performed toward maximal speed after 10 minutes-warm-up exercises on the land (4 different movements in each exercise) before club swimming exercises. the movements were applied as 3 sets of 4 repetitions and 1:1 rest from the first week. scope of the exercises increased applying increasing repetition and sets. quickness training was applied to improve the swimming performance of swimmers. it is aimed to be able to do the movements in a coordinated and faster. the quickness movements are designed in accordance with the purpose of the research. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 96-102 98 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. training moves 1 sequential stepping in the coordination ladder 5 one foot right left 20 bounces on the line 2 open and close foot in the coordination ladder 6 5 cone in the middle cone go side by side go and come 3 double leg jumping right to left on the coordination ladder 7 20 high knee pulls 4 double foot bounce right left 20 times on the line 8 5 meter shuttle run 2.3. data collection leg length measurement: the distance between the spina iliac anterior superior and the medial malleolus was measured with a tape measure while the athletes were in an upright position with their feet shoulder-width apart. arm span measurement: measurements were taken with a tape measure while the athletes leaned against the wall, spread their arms to the side and parallel to the floor, and their hands were in contact with the dorsal wall. zig-zag test (zt): a cone is placed in the center, leaving a distance of 4.86 meters on the long side of the cones and 3.04 meters on the short side. departure and return directions were explained to the athletes. the time between the start and end of the test was measured with a stopwatch. square test (st): there was performed sprint from 1st to 2nd cone; side-by-side running from 2nd cone to 3rd cone; back running from the 3rd to the 4th cone; sprint from the 4th to the 1st cone. the time is recorded with the stopwatch. cone shuttle test (ct): the athlete leans towards the ground and starts in a free position with one hand is on the ground and the other one is on the hip. the distance between the 1st and 2nd cones should be 4 meters 56.5 cm. the distance between the 2nd and 3rd cone should be 4 meters 56.5 cm. the stopwatch is started with the start command. the athlete runs to the 1st cone starting from the 1st cone and turning from the back of the 2nd cone. the time is stopped when he passes the 1st cone turning behind the 3rd cone. illinois test (it): the test track, consisting of three cones lined up on a straight line with 5 m width, 10 m length and 3.3 m intervals in the middle, was established in the gymnasium. the subjects exited from the starting line of the test track in the prone position and with their hands in contact with the ground at shoulder level. the time is stopped and recorded as the athlete crosses the finish line (hazır, mahir, & açıkada, 2010). t-test (tt): athletes touch the cones by performing a-b straight run, b-c side run, c-d side run, d-b horizontal run, and b-a back run in the "t" shape of the abcd cones. stopwatch starting at a is stopped at cone a again (the distance between the a and b cones was 9 meters and 35 cm; the distance between the cones b and c was 4 meters 65 cm; the distance between the cones b and d was 4 meters 65 cm) (haj-sassi et al., 2011). 50 m freestyle swimming degree (50m fsd): 50 m freestyle performance measurements of all subjects participating in the study were taken in a pool with a lane length of 25 m. a stopwatch with an accuracy of 1/100 second was used to record time in measurements. 2.4. analysis of data for statistical calculations, spss 22.0 for windows was utilized to analyze the data; we preferred to study in a 95% confidence interval. the arithmetic mean(x) and standard deviation (sd) values for age, height, body weight, training age, stroke and leg length, zt, st, ct,it,tt and 50m fsd first and last measurements of all athletes are presented in table 2. the calculation of statistical significance between the pre-test and the post-test on the training targeted, apart from the difference of the arithmetic means of sd, the obtained data were determined to be suitable for normal distribution; parametric tests were applied then (normality test p>0.05). t-test and one-way anova tests were applied for intergroup comparison. paired sample t-test analysis was utilized for in-group analyses. the threshold for significance was applied as p <.05. 3. results table-2. descriptive statistics and measurement parameters analysis of research groups. e1 (n=10) e2 (n=10) c (n=10) parameters mean(x) sd mean(x) sd mean(x) sd age (year) 15,00 0,943 15,10 0,568 15,10 0,738 heigh (cm) 175,710 5,223 176,030 3,110 172,970 3,961 body weigh (kg) 63,550 5,334 68,570 6,522 68,590 5,126 training year (year) 6,700 1,160 6,300 1,059 0,000 0,000 stroke length (cm) 175,690 5,160 176,580 3,487 173,130 4,678 leg length (cm) 96,500 5,426 96,750 3,600 93,600 4,648 zt first 8,940 0,369 9,260 0,986 9,853 0,979 zt last 8,053 0,249 8,873 1,041 9,463 0,947 st first 5,789 0,360 6,620 0,528 6,586 0,556 st last 5,303 0,252 6,200 0,547 6,209 0,517 ct first 9,014 0,659 10,063 1,001 9,670 0,861 ct last 8,240 0,458 9,614 0,936 9,227 0,848 i̇t first 11,056 0,662 11,884 0,827 12,060 0,847 i̇t last 9,989 0,550 11,563 0,860 11,588 0,902 tt first 14,809 1,628 17,749 1,785 18,921 0,965 tt last 13,591 1,509 17,331 1,776 18,759 1,401 50m fsd first 31,620 1,161 32,142 1,187 45,912 3,396 50m fsd last 30,496 1,245 31,821 1,040 45,396 3,346 note: zt=zigzag test;st=square test;ct=cone test;i̇t=i̇llinois test;tt=t test;50m fsd=50 m freestyle swimming degree). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 96-102 99 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as seen in table 2 ; age, height, body weight, training age, arm and leg length descriptive statistics of e1, e2 and c groups were determined. the mean and standard deviation values of the first and last values of the measurement parameters are given in the table. table-3. first and last measurement analysis of measurement parameters of research groups. e1 e2 c first & last difference mean±sd t r p difference mean±sd t r p difference mean±sd t r p zt 0,887±0,316 8,878 0,534 0,112 0,387±0,217 5,632 0,978 0,000* 0,390±0,149 8,269 0,989 0,000* st 0,486±0,181 8,477 0,883 0,001* 0,420±0,147 9,000 0,963 0,000* 0,377±0,092 12,922 0,988 0,000* ct 0,774±0,371 6,594 0,839 0,002* 0,449±0,141 10,071 0,992 0,000* 0,443±0,144 9,708 0,986 0,000* i̇t 1,067±0,332 10,152 0,866 0,001* 0,321±0,123 8,267 0,990 0,000* 0,472±0,126 11,876 0,992 0,000* tt 1,218±1,065 3,618 0,772 0,009* 0,418±0,211 6,255 0,993 0,000* 0,162±0,700 ,731 0,889 0,001* 50m fsd 1,124±0,221 16,100 0,986 0,000* 0,321±0,207 4,891 0,991 0,000* 0,516±0,312 5,224 0,996 0,000* note: zt=zigzag test;st=square test;ct=cone test;i̇t=i̇llinois test;tt=t test;50m fsd=50 m freestyle swimming degree. table-4. e1 and e2 groups measurement parameters analysis. last parameters group mean sd m.dif. t p zt e1 8,053 0,249 -0,820 -2,423 0,026* e2 8,873 1,041 st e1 5,303 0,252 -0,897 -4,712 0,000* e2 6,200 0,547 ct e1 8,240 0,458 -1,374 -4,170 0,001* e2 9,614 0,936 i̇t e1 9,989 0,550 -1,574 -4,878 0,000* e2 11,563 0,860 tt e1 13,591 1,509 -3,740 -5,075 0,000* e2 17,331 1,776 50m fsd e1 30,496 1,245 -1,325 -2,583 0,019* e2 31,821 1,040 note: zt=zigzag test;st=square test;ct=cone test;i̇t=i̇llinois test;tt=t test;50m fsd=50 m freestyle swimming degree, *p<0.05. table-5. e1 and c groups measurement parameters analysis. last parameters groups mean sd m. dif. t p zt e1 8,053 0,249 -1,410 -4,552 0,000* c 9,463 0,947 st e1 5,303 0,252 -0,906 -4,986 0,000* c 6,209 0,517 ct e1 8,240 0,458 -0,987 -3,240 0,005* c 9,227 0,848 i̇t e1 9,989 0,550 -1,599 -4,785 0,000* c 11,588 0,902 tt e1 13,591 1,509 -5,168 -7,936 0,000* c 18,759 1,401 50m fsd e1 30,496 1,245 -14,900 -13,197 0,000* c 45,396 3,346 note: zt=zigzag test;st=square test;ct=cone test;i̇t=i̇llinois test;tt=t test;50m fsd=50 m freestyle swimming degree. table-6. e2 and c groups measurement parameters analysis. last parameters groups mean sd m. dif. t p zt e2 8,873 1,041 -0,590 -1,326 0,202 c 9,463 0,947 st e2 6,200 0,547 -0,009 -0,038 0,970 c 6,209 0,517 ct e2 9,614 0,936 0,387 0,969 0,345 c 9,227 0,848 i̇t e2 11,563 0,860 -0,025 -0,063 0,950 c 11,588 0,902 tt e2 17,331 1,776 -1,428 -1,996 0,061 c 18,759 1,401 50m fsd e2 31,821 1,040 -13,575 -12,250 0,000* c 45,396 3,346 note: zt=zigzag test;st=square test;ct=cone test;i̇t=i̇llinois test;tt=t test;50m fsd=50 m freestyle swimming degree *(p<0.05) as seen in table 3, zt first-last (e1: r=0,534; p=0.112 (p>0.05) / e2: r=0,978; p=0.00/ c:r=0,989; p=0.00), st first-last (e1: r=0.883; p=0.001 / e2: r=0,963; p=0.00/ c: r=0,988; p=0.00), ct first-last (e1: 0,839; p=0.002 / e2: r=0,992; p=0.00/ c: r=0,986; p=0.00), i̇t first-last (e1: r=0,866; p=0.001/ e2: r=0,990; p=0.00/ c: r=0,992; p=0.00), tt first-last (e1: r=0,0772; p=0.009/ e2: r=0,993; p=0.00/ c: r=0,889; p=0.001) ve 50m fsd first-last (e1: r=0,986; p=0.00/ e2: r=0,991; p=0.00/ c: r=0,996; p=0.00) significant differences were detected in the ingroup analyzes in the values. (p<0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 96-102 100 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as seen in table 4, in the analysis of the measurement parameters, a significant difference was found in favor of the e1 group compared to the e2 group. (zt: p=0.026; st: p=0.00; ct: p=0.001; i̇t: p=0.00; tt: p=0.00; 50m fsd: p=0.019) (p<0.05). as seen in table 5, in all of the last measurement values of the research parameters, a difference was determined in favor of the e1 group compared to the c group (p<0.05).table 6: e2 and c groups measurement parameters analysis. as seen in table 6, e2 group differed from the c group in only 50m fsd (p <0.05). while the e2 group provided more improvement in terms of mean values in other parameters, there was no statistically significant difference (p> 0.05). 4. discussion effect of quickness exercises that were applied to 14-16-year-old male swimmers on the land on quickness performance and 50 m freestyle swimming performance was researched. limitedness of this study consisted of 60 minutes-exercises for 3 days for 8 weeks. for the findings, the first measurement values before the exercises did not create the difference in analyses; values are homogeneous (p>0.05). there were quickness practices within club swimming exercises of the e1 group. e2 group performed swimming exercises only while the c group did not perform any sportive activities. concerning the findings, the e1 group who performed quickness exercises made more different progress in terms of the average differences, first and last measurement compared to the e2 and c group table 6. c group that performed swimming exercises only displayed significant differences in itself (p<0.05). according to zt measurements, there is significant difference in favor of e1 group based on the results of e1 and e2 groups (mean difference=-0,820; t=-2,423; p=0,026) and e1 and c groups (mean difference=-1,410; t=4,552; p=0,00) (p<0.05). there was no significant difference between e2 and c groups (mean difference=-0,590; t=-1,326; p=0,202) (p>0.05); there was a difference in favor of e2 group. according to st analyses, there was found significant differences in favor of e1 group based on e1 and e2 groups (mean difference=-0,897; t=-4,712; p=0,00) and e1 and c groups (mean difference=-0,906; t=-4,986; p=0,00). a difference in favor of e2 group was observed at the end of swimming exercises while there was no significant difference between e2 and c groups (mean difference=-0,009; t=-0,038; p=0,970) (p>0.05). regarding ct analyses, there were found significant differences in favor of e1 group based on the results of e1 and e2 groups (mean difference=-1,374; t=-4,170; p=0,001) and e1 and c groups (mean difference=-0,987; t=-3,240; p=0,005). again, a difference in favor of e2 group was observed at the end of swimming exercises while there was no significant difference between e2 and c groups (mean difference=0,387; t=0,969; p=0,345) (p>0.05). regarding it analyses, there were found significant differences in favor of e1 group based on the results of e1 and e2 groups (mean difference=-1,574; t=-4,878; p=0,00) and e1 and c groups (mean difference=-0,599; t=4,785; p=0,00). a difference in favor of e2 group was observed at the end of swimming exercises while there was no significant difference between e2 and c groups (mean difference=-0,025; t=-0,063; p=0,950) (p>0.05). with reference to tt analyses, there were significant differences in favor of e1 group based on the results of e1 and e2 groups (mean difference=-3,740; t=-5,075; p=0,00) and e1 and c groups (mean difference=-5,168; t=-7,936; p=0,00). again, there was observed a difference in favor of e2 group while there was no significant difference between e2 and c groups (mean difference=-1,428; t=-1,996; p=0,61) (p>0.05). regarding 50m fsd analyses, there were found significant differences in favor of e1 group based on the results of e1 and e2 groups (mean difference=-1,325; t=-2,583; p=0,00) and e1 and c groups (mean difference=-14,900; t=-13,197; p=0,00). a significant difference in favor of e2 group from between e2 and c groups was observed (mean difference=-13,575; t=-12,250; p=0,00) (p<0.05). taşkın, nurtekin, dede, amze, and taşkın (2013) conducted a study on male and female swimmers with an average age of 11.50 ± 1.60 years and found that athletes who have high values of vertical jump are fast to turn in swimming. girold et al. (2012) researched swimmers with an average age of 21.8 ± 1.4 years for 4 weeks. according to their findings, there was observed progress in both the group that performed land exercises and the electrical stimulation group (p<0.05); however, there was no difference between the two groups (p>0.05). they concluded that the 4-weeks exercise period fell short; programs that will take a long time will provide improvement. sadowski et al. (2012) made a survey on male high school students with an average age of 15 to research the effect of strength exercises on flexibility, strength, and 50 m freestyle swimming performance. according to their results, there was seen progress in strength performance and swimming degree at the end of 6weeks land exercises while there was no statistical difference (p>0.05). again, they mentioned that planning long exercises can increase swimming degree and flexibility at the same time. villareal, arrones, requena, haff, and veliz (2015) researched the effect of land exercises, pool exercises, and combined exercises for professional water-polo athletes with an average age of 23,4±4,1. exercises took 6 weeks so as to be 60 minutes for 3 days a week. there was found a difference (p<0.05) in the strength parameter of the group who performed combined exercises when cmj (counter movement jump), splash, bench press, and full squat 1 rm, throwing speed (ball), agility, and 20 m swimming degrees were reviewed. there also was observed a significant difference (p<0.05) in the first and last values of a splash, squat, and throwing speed of the group who performed exercises in water. shah and koley (2016) analyzed the effect of land and water exercises on the performance of elite swimmers aged 16-30. the relationship between performance and concentric and eccentric workouts lasting 3 days a week and 30 minutes for a total of 4 weeks. there was found a difference in the group who performed land exercises before and after the 50 m backstrokes (34,73s / 33,07s) and before and after 50 m freestyle swimming degree (27,21s / 25,92s). loturco et al. (2016) reviewed the effect of land and bound strength exercises on 50-100-200 m real-time swimming degrees for 10 well-trained 10 male athletes with an average age of 17.0 ± 0.7 years. they concluded that the relation between peak force and average force outcomes with the real swimming degrees is strong at shore distances (50m-100m). it is suggested to coaches to apply jumping exercises with loads and without loads to provide an increase in performance of the swimmers. gül, eskiyecek, gül, and karabulut (2019) 8-week swimming + thera-band dry land training were evaluated, a significant improvement was observed in the measurement asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(1): 96-102 101 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group results between the control group and the experimental groups for 30 seconds push-up, 30 seconds sit-up, standing long jump and medicine ball toss, and there were a significant difference in all swimming degrees. it has been determined that land training applied to swimmers aged 11-13 has a positive effect on their swimming performance. garrido et al. (2010) reviewed the bench press, leg extension, throwing a medicine ball, and cmj motor performance by applying strength exercises on the land for male and female swimmers with an average age of 12.08 ± 0.7 years. exercises were performed for 8 weeks; 6 days a week for 90 minutes. with reference to research results, strength exercises are not a certain indicator for the increase in swimming performance. however, there may occur a development in sprint performance via these exercises. amaro, marinho, marques, batalha, and morouço (2016) 12.7 ± 0.7 years of 21 male swimmers which applied for 10 weeks and the duration of the planned strength training, there was a significant difference (p <0.05) in 50m swimming degree (p = 0.003). selçuk and karacan (2017) researched the effect of thera-band land exercises on the swimming performance of 11-13 years old male swimmers. exercises took 5 days for 12 weeks. there were found significant differences (p<0.05) in the swimming group and thera-band group. there also were found positive differences in favor of the subject group in terms of average values between the two groups. they concluded that resistance exercises on the land should be organized based on age groups by considering the positive changes in performance for thera-band exercises. yapıcı, maden, and fındıkoğlu (2016) researched the effect of land and resistance exercises on lower extremity isokinetic strength performance and swimming degrees for 13-16-year-old swimmers for 6 weeks; they found statistically significant differences in freestyle swimming degrees of 25m-50m-75m-100m. there also was determined progress in the isokinetic strength performance of all the groups. they mentioned that related exercises positively affected the strength and swimming performances. sanioğlu, turgut, taşkın, baloğlu, and taşkın (2013) analyzed the relationship between agility and 10m-15m speed-up performance in male swimmers with an average age of 11.19±1.76; there was a strong relationship in parameters (r=0,843). they emphasized that designing annual training programs gain importance based on the growth and maturation process of the swimmer in exercises in which swimmers need agility and speed-up for quick turns, rapid strokes, and explosive jumps. aktuğ, vural, and ibis (2019) researched the effect of thera band and swimming exercises on the motor performance and 50 m freestyle swimming degrees of boys and girls with an average age of 11.67±1.41 years. they found that swimming exercises affect the swimming degrees; moreover, thera band exercises on the land affect both motor performance and swimming degree. sadowski et al. (2012) concluded that 6-weeks strength exercises have an impact on the 25 m freestyle swimming performance of swimmers with an average age of 14 (9,64%) (p<0.05). senol and gülmez (2017) reviewed the effect of functional exercises band (trx) and resistance exercises on the swimming performance of 13-year-old licensed swimmers. there was observed progress in 200 m transition degrees (50m-100m-150m-200m) at the end of the measurements for the trx group, body weight (resistance exercises) group, and the control group. there also were found statistically significant differences in 50m-150m and 200m transition time (p<0.05). they expressed that trx and resistance exercises were suggested to coaches to provide improvement in both physical and swimming performance. popovici and suciu (2013) in their study on the effect of land training applied to children aged 11-12 for 4 weeks and 3 days a week on 50m butterfly style swimming degree, the authors found that athletes improved athletic performance and especially short distance swimming in water. pe´rez-olea, valenzuela, aponte, and izquierdo (2018) in the study investigating the relationship between land strength training and swimming performance, lower extremity strength measurement (cmj) and the degree of free swimming were measured on the first day of performance swimmers aged 16-26, on the second day, swimmers' upper extremity and only leg only swimming degree were measured. as a result of this study, they found that upper extremity pull ups movements have a strong relationship with swimming performance and that it is an important issue that can be developed by coaches in dry land training. 5. conclusion this study revealed that agility and quickness skill tests and land exercises have positive effects on 50 m freestyle swimming performance. as a result of the literature research, it has been determined that dry land training has an effect on the development of some motoric properties, the development of flexibility values, the development of strength and the performance in the degrees of short distance swimming. it is suggested to coaches to make changes in loading intensity in each period of the exercise program by considering the developmental features of athletes. references adela, b. 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(2016). the effect of a 6-week land and resistance training of 13-16 years old swimmers groups to lower limb isokinetic strength values and to swimming performance. journal of human sciences, 13(3), 5269-5281. available at: 10.14687/jhs.v13i3.4158. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmrj.2012.11.0033 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmrj.2012.11.0033 http://dx.doi.org/10.1055/s-0035-1559694 http://dx.doi.org/10.1055/s-0035-1559694 76 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 76-80, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5495 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group assessment of the prevention and problem solving of drug problem with participation in schools under the local administrative organization in sisaket province vivat phuttanu1 parisha marie cain2 kathanyoo kaewhanam3 phimlikid kaewhanam4 ( corresponding author) 1development management, kalasin university, thailand. 1email: vivatphuttanu@gmail.com 2,3,4department of public administration, faculty of liberal arts, kalasin university, thailand. 2email: mariecain4545@yahoo.com 3email: dr.khathanyoo@ksu.ac.th 4email : phimlikid.ka@ksu.ac.th abstract the objectives of this research were (1) to assess the suitability and feasibility of participatory approaches for the prevention and solution of drug problems of schools under sisaket provincial administrative organizations and (2) to create a consensus proposing a leadership development model that influences driving effectiveness, management and performance on drug prevention of schools under the local government organization. the informants were the study administrators and teachers who were responsible for prevention and correction drug problem of school, each group of 5 people, and the total of 10 people, obtained by purposive selection. the research instrument was a semi-structured interview. the interviews were conducted during january to march 2023. the research results showed that (1) participatory approaches for the prevention and solution of drug problems of schools under the local administrative organizations in sisaket province of every created item had a suitability assessment at a level higher than the specified criteria and the possibility of implementing the guidelines; and (2) leadership development model that influences management and results of drug prevention operations in schools under the local government organization can be summarized in 5 issues: (1) raising awareness and education (2) developing communication skills (3) building trusted teams (4) being a good role model, and (5) self-reflection and assessment. keywords: administrative organization provience, drug problems, participation and local government organizations, prevention and solution of drug problems, sisaket province. citation | phuttanu, v., cain, p. m., kaewhanam, k., & kaewhanam, p. (2024). assessment of the prevention and problem solving of drug problem with participation in schools under the local administrative organization in sisaket province. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 76–80. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5495 history: received: 24 october 2023 revised: 30 january 2024 accepted: 12 march 2024 published: 22 march 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the kalasin university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 25 may 2023 (ref. no. hs-ksu 018/2566). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 77 2. objectives of the research......................................................................................................................................................................... 77 3. method............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 78 4. research results........................................................................................................................................................................................... 78 5. result discussion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 79 6. research suggestion.................................................................................................................................................................................... 80 references ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 80 mailto:vivatphuttanu@gmail.com mailto:mariecain4545@yahoo.com mailto:dr.khathanyoo@ksu.ac.th mailto:phimlikid.ka@ksu.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5495 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2541-8537 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6233-4585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2234-2971 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7739-2415 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 76-80 77 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research is a model that leads to tackling drug abuse in schools, which no one has done before. to be used as a model for drug prevention in educational institutions to be effective. in the northeast of thailand. 1. introduction currently, every country in the world is aware of the drug problem as a threat which is undermining both national security, social, economic and public health because drug addicts have to use drugs on a daily basis and have to increase the amount all the time. it can be seen from the period of more than 10 years (2009-2019) from the world drug report 2021 of the united nations office on drugs and crime. the population is approximately 269 million people worldwide, or 1 in 4 of the world's population over a billion people 'use of drugs' increased by 30% and more than 35.6 million people (united nations office on drugs and crime, 2021) found that drug users around the world are likely to increase. in the year 2019 around the world there are approximately 275 million drug users, representing 5 .5% of the world's population, between the ages of 15 -64 (2018, around the world, there are approximately 269 million drug users, representing 5.4% of the world population aged 15 -64 years). it is estimated that in the year 2030 there will be approximately 299 million drug users (office of the narcotics control board ministry of justice, 2022). the increase in drug use is partly due to 'global population growth' increases where 'urbanization' and the flow of people into cities become one of the factors expanding the drug market in urban areas rather than rural areas both in developing and developed countries coupled with the rapid changes in the drug market causing drugs to spread rapidly to different parts of each region in the world, including cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamine, as well as the use of marijuana for non-medical purposes, etc. (sustainable development goals research and support center, 2022). it can be seen that drugs have spread. the epidemic spread rapidly in all regions of the world . especially in thailand because thailand is close to drug production in the golden triangle area . drug addiction is therefore a national problem and a threat to the quality of life that affects all the user, family, society, economy, and the country that is becoming more complex because there is a network and the trade groups are ready to distribute drugs into vulnerable groups. youth in educational institutions are one of the targets of the drug epidemic. in addition, the group of children and youth is an age that is curious to try; therefore they are easily induced to use drugs which from the statistics found that children and adolescents had their first drug use at the age of less than 10 years, and school-aged youth aged 12-18 years, both in and outside the school system, had the highest number of first drug use problems when compared to the other age group 43.1 percent (department of health ministry of public health, 2022). all kind of changes in the social systems, economic, political, cultural and technological have been gained in the societies which have made continuing cause problems especially the drug problem in educational institutions (terzi, 2008). sisaket is a province located in the northeast of thailand. it has a total population of 1,472,859 people, comprising 734,405 males and 738,454 females (data as of december 2020). there are educational institutions from early childhood levels (pre-kindergarten and kindergarten) to tertiary level, 1,554 places are schools under local government organizations, 55 schools are under local government organization including sisaket provincial dministrative organization (39 schools), sisaket municipality (7 schools), kantharalak municipality (1 school), 3 sub-district municipalities and 5 subdistrict administrative organizations (sisaket provincial administrative organization, 2022). it is also the province that ranks among the top 5 with the highest number of drug cases, namely (1) songkhla 10,659 cases (2) nakhon si thammarat 9,462 cases (3) surat thani 8,163 cases (4) khon kaen 5,465 cases and (5) sisaket 4,811 cases (national statistical office, 2022) and there is a tendency to increase due to drug traffic coming in from khemmarat district, ubon ratchathani province and the side of chanuman district and there are 400 people receiving rehabilitation treatment in 2019, 110 people in 2020, with a range of ages who received the most treatment of 25-29 years old, followed by 20-24 years old, 15-19 years old, respectively (committee of the narcotics prevention and suppression center sisaket province, 2022). for this reason, the ministry of education, which is assigned by the government to take action in preventing the spread of drug abuse in schools . educational institutions in sisaket province have continued to carry out projects or activities related to the campaign, prevention, and suppression of drugs in educational institutions according to the policy assigned by the ministry of education. the key factor that can lead projects or activities of educational institutes to success is the educational institute administrators because the school administrators are the leaders of the organization and it is an indicator of success in creating prosper ity and making progress for educational institutions or to achieve the objectives and goals set (charungjit, 2018). therefore, the researcher is interested in studying guidelines for participatory prevention and solution to drug problems in schools under local administrative organizations, sisaket province. the objectives are (1) to create guidelines and (2) to evaluate approaches to prevent and solve drug problems with participation of schools under sisaket provincial administrative organizations to be used as a guideline for educational institutions, implement the prevention and solution to the drug problem with participation of schools under the local administrative organization, sisaket province to succeed more efficiently. 2. objectives of the research 1. to assess the suitability and feasibility of the participatory approaches to prevent and solve drug problems of schools under the jurisdiction of sisaket provincial administrative organizations. 2. to create a proposal for a leadership development model that influences driving effectiveness, management, and performance on drug prevention of schools under the local government organization . asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 76-80 78 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. method 3.1. group of informants the group of informants were 10 school administrators and teachers responsible for prevention and correction s of school drug problems were obtained by purposive selection with a master's degree or higher in a field related to education or education administration and have experience in being an educational administrator for 5 years or more. 3.2. research instruments the tools used to collect data were opinions interview forms of experts on the academic validity of the participatory drug prevention and solution approach in 5 aspects: (1) prevention (2) search (3) treatment (4) surveillance and (5) management semi-structured. 3.3. data collection the researcher brought a request for courtesy with the administrators of the selected educational institutions and conduct self-interviews until the number of interviews has been completed. 3.4. data analysis use content analysis, content validity analysis, and the principles of the participatory approach to preventing and solving drug problems. by finding an index of consistency between questions and objectives. (item-objective congruence index: ioc) by specifying criteria for accepting a congruence index value of 0.6 and up (rovinelli & hambleton, 1997). the ioc value is between 0.6 and 1.0, indicating that every action item is consistent, content and structure. 4. research results results from interviews with school administrators and teachers who were responsible for prevention and correction school drug problems found that they were administrators and teachers of large educational institutions in the amount of 4 persons, medium-sized educational institutions in the amount of 4 persons, small educational institutions in the amount of 2 persons. there were 4 educational institutions under the provincial administrative organization, 2 were under the jurisdiction of municipalities, and 2 were sub -district administrative organizations. the results of in-depth interviews according to the objectives of the study can be summarized as follows: 1. the results of the evaluation of the suitability and feasibility of the participatory approaches to prevent and solve drug problems of schools under the jurisdiction of sisaket province were as follows : part 1 prevention there are 15 action items, consisting of (1) participation in planning, there are 4 action items (2) participation in operations, there are 4 action items, (3) participation in monitoring and evaluation, there are 4 action items, and (4) participation in receiving benefits, there are 3 practical items. the second aspect of searching contains 15 items of practice, consisting of (1) participation in planning. there are 4 practical items. (2) participation in operations. there are 4 practical items. (3) participation in monitoring and evaluation. there are 4 action items and (4) participation in receiving benefits. there are 3 practical items. the third aspect of treatment has 13 action items consisting of (1) participation in planning, there are 3 action items (2) participation in operations. there are 4 practical items. (3) participation in monitoring and evaluation. there are 4 action items and (4) participation in receiving benefits. there are 2 action items. the fourth aspect, surveillance, has 16 action items, consisting of (1) participation in planning, there are 4 action items (2) participation in operations, there are 4 practical items . (3) participation in monitoring and evaluation. there are 4 action items and (4) participation in receiving benefits. there are 4 practical items. the fifth aspect, management, has16 practical items, consisting of (1) participation in planning. there are 4 practical items. (2) participation in operations. there are 5 practical items. (3) participation in monitoring and evaluation. there are 3 practical items and (4) participating in the benefits. there are 4 practical items. summarizes the suitability and feasibility of the participatory approach to prevent and solve drug problems of schools under the sisaket provincial local administrative organization in 5 aspects, consisting of prevention, search, treatment, surveillance, and management. according to the process of participation, there are 4 steps: participation in planning, participation in operations, participation in monitoring and evaluation, and participating in the benefits. in total, there are 75 items of action items with an average of suitability at a level higher than the specified criteria (3.50). 2. a proposal for a leadership development model that influences management and performance on drug prevention of schools under the local government organization . administrators and teachers responsible for the prevention and solution of drug problems of educational institutions express opinions about the leadership development model that influences management and performance on drug prevention of schools under the local government organization can be summarized as follows. (1) awareness-raising and education: for leaders who have succeeded in school drug management and prevention, it is necessary to have knowledge and understanding about drug problems which is a serious problem and affects society. awareness-raising and education about drugs and prevention methods can be an effective tool in developing leaders with sufficient knowledge to address early and long-term problems. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 76-80 79 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (2) developing communication skills: effective communication is essential to being an influential leader. leaders should develop clear and effective communication skills to create understanding and encourage participation in school drug prevention activities. (3) building confident teams: leaders should build trusted teams and have good relationships with team members. creating an organizational culture that supports and fosters teamwork, such as fostering trust, promoting collaboration, and to support and promote the skills of team members . (4) being a good role model: good leaders should be exemplary in honesty and fairness, show management responsibility, support and promote learning, and skill development of school personnel . (5) review and self-assessment: leaders should review and assess their own abilities in leadership roles, such as emotional strength, correct decision-making, communication, team building, etc. review and self-assessment will help leaders recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and be able to continually improve and develop themselves. 5. result discussion the researcher has the following important issues for result discussion : 1. discuss the assessment results of the participatory prevention and solution of drug problems of schools under the local administrative organization in sisaket province found that the guideline for the prevention and solution of drug problems with participation of schools under the local administrative organization of sisaket province have a suitable average and possibility higher than the specified criteria (3.50) in all 5 aspects. such results are consistent with the concept of the council on school health and committee on substance abuse (2007) noted that drug prevention interventions in schools should provide opportunities for collaboration with parents, health care professional and community officials. therefore, it will make the fight against drug addiction effective. this may be due to preventive measures and solve the drug problem created by the researcher focusing on participation from all sectors, namely, school administrators, teachers, students’ leaders, the school committee, parent network, community leaders local leaders, religious leaders, police, and health workers participate in operations, prevention, and solving drug problems in schools. according to the participatory process, i.e. participation in planning, participation in operation, participate in monitoring and evaluation, and participate in the benefits which is appropriate to the context of each school where often have administrative resources such as teachers, budgets, materials, and equipment are limited. therefore, it is necessary to require participation from all sectors, which is in line with the research of pornchai (2017) who studied prevention and solving drug problems in educational institutions in the area of responsibility of the metropolitan police division 6 found that the components of preventing and solving drug problems in educational institutions in terms of overall administrative factors were at a high level . when considering each side, it was found that participation with network partners was at the highest level, followed by student development activities, responsibility, and education to develop life skills, respectively . it is also in line with the research of penchan (2020) that studied the approaches for the prevention and solution of drug problems with participation of the school expands educational opportunities under the office of phra nakhon si ayutthaya primary educational service area 1-2, it was found that (1) guidelines for participatory approaches for the preventive operations and solution of drug problems consisted of 5 aspects, namely prevention, search, treatment, surveillance, and management according to the process of participation in 4 steps, namely participation in planning, participation in operations, participation in monitoring and evaluation, and participating in the benefits . there were 77 practical items in total, and (2) guidelines for participatory operations in drug prevention and solution for schools to expand educational opportunities. all items were evaluated for suitability and the possibility of implementing . the approach go into practice higher than the specified threshold . 2. discuss the results of building a leadership development model that influences management effectiveness and performance on drug prevention of schools under the local government organization. it was found that administrators and teachers responsible for prevention and correction school drug problem comment about the leadership development model for drug prevention of schools under the local government organization can be summarized in 5 issues: (1) raising awareness and education (2) development of communication skills (3) confident teams (4) being a good role model (5) reviewing and self-assessment. if administrators of educational institutions under the local government organization of sisaket province and the relevant agencies can create awareness among school administrators, they are ready in all 5 areas . the management and performance of drug prevention operations of educational institute administrators, schools under the sisaket provincial local administrative organization will inevitably become efficient and effective as well because leadership development is the process that is necessary for leaders to improve their performance in administrative roles to help increase the effectiveness of school management, whether build participation in project initiatives, participation in planning stage, participation in the project implementation phase, and participation in the project evaluation phase requires the cooperation of all parties either direct participation or indirect participation. therefore, it is one of the factors contributing to the success of the policy implementation of narcotics suppression in educational institutions under the ministry of education . it is also in line with the research of kampon and thanattha (2022) who studied the participation of the people's network in preventing and solving drug problems: a case study in lam prada subdistrict, bang mun nak district, phichit province found that the participation of the public sector network in preventing and solving drug problems lam prada subdistrict administrative organization bang mun nak district phichit province were at a high level both in overall and in individual aspect. it was found that the aspect with the highest average value was the aspect of participation in the benefits, followed by the aspect of participation in operations, participation in the evaluation, and participation in decision making, respectively . in addition, the research of surachit (2015) that studied the effective asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 76-80 80 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group leadership of administrators in outstanding schools: a multi-case study found that effective leadership characteristics of outstanding school administrators consist of (1) vision, (2) knowledge and skills, (3) morality and ethics, (4) learning management, (5) team development, and (6) development community and engagement have an impact on the effectiveness of school administration. 6. research suggestion 6.1. implementation suggestions (1) school administrators should apply the guidelines for preventing and solving drug problems participatory model of schools under the local administrative organization of sisaket province to be used as a basis or a guideline for school policy formulation as well as cooperating with all sectors involved, including teachers, students ’ leaders, school committee, parent networks, community leaders, local leaders, religious leaders, police, health workers, and other related agencies. (2) schools under the local administrative organizations of sisaket province should take preventive work and solve drugs problems participatory according to measures in 5 areas, namely prevention, search, treatment, surveillance, and management by focusing on participation from all sectors involved, namely administrators, schools, teachers, students’ leaders, school committee, parent networks, community leaders, local leaders, religious leaders, police, health officials and related agencies have been involved in the prevention work and solving drug problems in schools according to the process of participation in 4 steps: participation in planning, participation in operations, participation in monitoring and evaluation, and participating in the benefits . (3) interested educational service area offices should take the results of this research to be published so that school administrators in various subordinates are aware of the guidelines for preventive work and solving drug problems with participation that is appropriate and practical possibilities . 6.2. suggestions for further research (1) should study and evaluate the implementation of the guideline for the prevention and solution of drug problems with participation of schools under the sisaket provincial administrative organization .to seriously practice in educational institutions. (2) there should be study guidelines for the prevention and solution of drug problems with school participation under the administrative organization of sisaket province to practice in different areas across the country . (3) should study and evaluate the implementation of the approach to prevent and solve drug problems with participation of other affiliated schools across the country . references charungjit, s. (2018). transformative leadership of school administrators. journal of roi kaensarn academi, 3(2), 17-32. committee of the narcotics prevention and suppression center sisaket province. (2022). summarize the results of the meeting coordinating committee for solving drug problems in the situation of covid-19. retrieved from https://www.sanc.co.za/ council on school health and committee on substance abuse. (2007). the role of schools in combating illicit substance abuse. american academy of pediatrics, 120(6), 1379-1384. department of health ministry of public health. (2022). introduction about thai local government organizations . retrieved from http://advisor.anamai.moph.go.th/main.php?filename=tambon03# kampon, p., & thanattha, r. (2022). participation of civil society networks in prevention and addressing drug problems: a case study of lam prada subdistrict bang mun nak district phichit province. journal of modern learning development, 7(5), 92-104. national statistical office. (2022). statistics of drug cases in thailand. retrieved from http://ittdashboard.nso.go.th/preview.php?id_project=66 office of the narcotics control board ministry of justice. (2022). prevention action plan and suppression of narcotics b.e. 2565. bangkok: office of the narcotics control board, ministry of justice. penchan, r. (2020). guidelines for the prevention and solution of drug problems with participation of schools to expand educational opportunities under the office of educational service a semi-abductor becomes c primary education area 1-2. journal of legal entity management and local innovation, 6(4), 69-78. pornchai, v. (2017). prevention and solution of drug problems in educational institutions in the area of responsibility of the metropolitan police division 6. pathumthani university academic journal, 9(1), 158-166. rovinelli, r. j., & hambleton, r. k. (1997). on the use of content specialists in the assessment of criterion-referenced test item validity. dutch journal of educational research, 2, 49-60. sisaket provincial administrative organization. (2022). school under the jurisdiction. retrieved from http://www.sisaketpao.com/2021/index.php?d=school surachit, p. (2015). effective leadership of administrators in outstanding schools: a multi-case study. journal of education khon kaen university, 38(4), 168-176. sustainable development goals research and support center. (2022). thailand sustainable development report 2022: perspectives from sectoral exchange forums for sustainable development in thailand academic network for sustainable development of thailand. bangkok: thammasat university. terzi, c. (2008). european union education policies and continuing professional development of teachers in turkey. continuing professional development, 4(1), 4. united nations office on drugs and crime. (2021). world drug report. retrieved from https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-andanalysis/wdr2021.html asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://www.sanc.co.za/ http://advisor.anamai.moph.go.th/main.php?filename=tambon03 http://ittdashboard.nso.go.th/preview.php?id_project=66 http://www.sisaketpao.com/2021/index.php?d=school https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/wdr2021.html https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/wdr2021.html 88 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 3, 88-95, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i3.6999 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group design and development of innovation towards contemporary educational innovation kanitkan pankaew1 setthawit chanowan2 sutthimun piyakoson3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3lampang rajabhat university, lampang, thailand. 1email: kanitkan777@g.lpru.ac.th 2email: setthawit@g.lpru.ac.th 3email: sutthimun_p@g.lpru.ac.th abstract this academic article aims to present the principles of systematic design and development of educational innovations through research methodology, alongside protocols for effectiveness evaluation. the design and development of contemporary educational innovation require integration between principles of innovation and technology implementation, diverse new teaching methodologies, analysis of modern learners’ needs, and feasibility studies as foundational data for systematic innovation design using the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (addie) model. this universal flexible model facilitates efficient learning activities with clearly defined stages: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. the process involves experimental implementation, data collection, systematic evaluation, and quality improvement through research and development methodology to create practical educational innovations. the development methodology, quality verification, and innovation evaluation procedures include: 1) internal validity verification content validity and innovation characteristics assessed by experts across four aspects: innovation specifics, design standards, techniques, and aesthetics; 2) external validity verification through innovation efficiency testing (e1/e2); 3) innovation effectiveness index (ei) determination; and 4) assessment of actual learning outcomes. the challenge yielded from this process is achieving contemporary educational innovation that is both efficient and effective, aligned with technological changes and supportive of diverse future learner skills. keywords: addie model, contemporary education, educational innovation, effectiveness index, efficiency testing, innovation efficiency. citation | pankaew, k., chanowan, s., & piyakoson, s. (2025). design and development of innovation towards contemporary educational innovation. asian journal of education and training, 11(3), 88–95. 10.20448/edu.v11i3.6999 history: received: 10 march 2025 revised: 14 july 2025 accepted: 28 july 2025 published: 12 august 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 89 2. conceptual overview ...................................................................................................................................................................... 89 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 90 4. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 94 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 94 https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i3.6999 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4081-0153 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3604-1146 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1332-4792 mailto:kanitkan777@g.lpru.ac.th mailto:setthawit@g.lpru.ac.th mailto:sutthimun_p@g.lpru.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 88-95 89 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this academic article presents principles for the systematic design and development of educational innovations using research methodology, along with examples of efficiency and effectiveness evaluation, and clear calculation methods to establish standards for producing and developing new educational innovations. 1. introduction in today’s rapidly advancing technological world, educators must possess knowledge of educational technology concepts, theories and innovations that enhance learning quality. they must be able to analyse problems arising from the use of technological and information innovations, access diverse learning resources and networks and design, create, implement, evaluate and improve innovations. this enables educators to stay current; to select, design, create and enhance educational innovations that facilitate effective learning; and to develop technology and information systems that allow learners to access diverse learning resources efficiently (sinthapanon, 2017). numerous research studies present advancements in educational technology and innovation. for instance, johnson, patel, and thurston (2022) examined ai-enhanced learning environments: a systematic review of implementation and outcomes. ramirez and singh (2023) investigated the application of virtual reality applications in higher education: a meta-analysis of learning outcomes. additionally, anwar, sofyan, ratnaningsih, and am (2024) studied digital technology practices for vocational teachers in the industrial revolution 4.0: mediating technology selfefficacy. innovation represents both the process and outcome of developing and applying new concepts to create value, whether through products, services, processes or novel approaches that enhance efficiency and solve problems. innovation extends beyond mere ‘novelty’ to practical implementation and sustained beneficial impact (aktas, aktamis, & higde, 2024). many educators have developed innovations for educational use, defining educational innovation as new creations, including concepts, approaches, systems, models, methods, processes, media and techniques designed to address educational challenges, generate positive outcomes aligned with curricula and effectively solve problems or develop learner capabilities (anderson, 2019). kottenstette and paga (2022) state that innovation, in the context of innovative schools, refers to new approaches in educational administration and management that enable schools to be flexible and adaptable to learner needs, including more flexible curricula, modern teaching methods and appropriate administrative restructuring for school contexts. evidently, innovation is crucial to education, with quality innovations capable of effectively addressing problems and supporting student learning. the quality of educational innovation reflects its value across various dimensions and indicates its potential for broader implementation in learning development. this quality depends on factors such as theoretical synthesis for design and experimental processes, particularly the validation of innovation-related instruments. if these instruments lack quality, conclusions become unreliable and cannot be effectively scaled. therefore, researchers must carefully consider quality assessment and verification before actual implementation (chomya & thaireukham, 2022). this article presents aspects of innovation design and development using the addie model, a contemporary and flexible universal format that facilitates efficient learning activities. it includes innovation quality and efficiency assessment through: 1) internal validity verification of content and innovation characteristics by experts, and 2) external validity verification through efficiency testing during implementation, as well as evaluation of contemporary educational innovation usage. the focus is on systematic processes following research and development (r&d) methodology, quality verification of innovations, and applied statistical methods for evaluating the implementation of innovations. this will benefit educators and educational researchers interested in pursuing knowledge of reliable and academically sound innovation development processes for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of modern educational management. 2. conceptual overview educational innovation refers to new methods, concepts, processes, techniques, practices, products, or works derived from applying knowledge and creative thinking to systematically change, improve and develop work that affects educational management’s efficiency and effectiveness. product innovation emphasises facilitating individual learner development, with specific development models to enhance self-learning efficiency and effectiveness (asanok, 2018). therefore, educators must design and create educational innovations that align with teaching content, foster student learning and seek improved approaches to generate new forms of educational innovation that enhance educational quality (anderson, 2019). in an era of rapid technological and innovative development, education must adapt to keep pace with changes. research serves as a crucial tool in developing and evaluating educational innovation and technological effectiveness to maximise benefits for learners and the educational system. the concepts related to educational innovation and technology include. 2.1. research characteristics in innovation anderson (2019) classified educational innovation and technology research into three categories: 1) r&d, such as the development of digital instructional media, educational applications, online learning systems, and digital assessment tools; 2) experimental research, such as comparing traditional teaching methods with the use of technology, testing the efficiency of innovations, and studying learning achievements after the implementation of these innovations; and 3) survey research, such as studying the needs for educational technology, surveying technology readiness, and evaluating the adoption of innovations. 2.2. innovation research concepts johnson and smith (2020) proposed approaches for educational innovation and technology research comprising: 1) research question formulation through problem and needs analysis, feasibility studies, and research scope definition; 2) innovation design considering practical implementation; and 3) testing and evaluation through sample group trials, systematic data collection, analysis and improvement. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 88-95 90 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. contemporary innovation design concepts the author presents the widely accepted design process concept, the addie model, developed in 1970 by the us army’s center for educational technology. this flexible model, with clearly defined steps, facilitates effective learning activities and has gained widespread acceptance. it consists of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (kurt, 2018). subsequently, both domestic and international educators have applied the addie model to instructional design (lumbantoruan & herman, 2025), educational administration design (saengkudloh, 2023), curriculum design (denmolee, techapahapong, & chanchai, 2022; trust & pektas, 2018), and educational innovation design (salas-rueda, salas-rueda, & salas-rueda, 2020). analysis phase. determining innovation design components through. 1) identifying learner groups. 2) identifying teaching and learning activity problems. 3) defining lesson objectives or goals. 4) identifying content related to lesson objectives or goals. design phase. using analysis phase data to design innovations through. 1) defining innovation and its components. 2) applying learning theories integrated into innovation. 3) determining teaching techniques/methods, learning activities and implementation timeframes. 4) establishing learning assessment criteria aligned with lesson objectives. development phase. creating and developing innovation through. 1) internal validation by experts. 2) external validation through learner trials (richey, 2005), including. 2.1) creating innovation according to design specifications and expert evaluation tools. 2.2) expert review and revision based on feedback. 2.3) trial implementation with non-target groups sharing similar characteristics through one-to-one testing, small group testing and field trials. implementation phase. applying the developed innovation to target groups or samples, following the designed instructional activity procedures. evaluation phase. assessing learner outcomes after innovation implementation to measure the achievement of specified objectives through self-assessment, learner assessment or collaborative assessment, using results to further develop the efficiency of the learning process. 3. methodology in contemporary innovation research processes, after educators or researchers develop an innovation, they must: 1) verify the innovation’s quality through expert evaluation to ensure it can effectively enhance learning processes, with modifications made according to expert recommendations before trials; 2) determine innovation efficiency (e1/e2) through three sequential trials one-to-one (1:1), small group (1:10), and field trial (1:100); 3) calculate the innovation’s effectiveness index (ei) showing the percentage gains in learning progress; and 4) evaluate learning outcomes from actual implementation with target groups or samples, measuring achievement, capabilities, or skills after innovation-based instruction. the details of these processes are as follows: 3.1. innovation quality verification this process employs knowledge-based and rational judgment to verify the quality of innovation through internal validation by a panel of experts (richey, 2005). the primary consideration is whether the innovation appropriately aligns with problems, content, objectives, theoretical concepts, techniques, methods, assessment measures, and learner characteristics (finch & french, 2019). this verification examines the characteristics of innovation and content validity as follows: 3.1.1. innovation characteristics verification. this examination covers four key aspects 1) innovation characteristics: each innovation type has specific attributes varying in concreteness or abstractness, depending on learner group appropriateness and learning objectives. educators must select innovations suitable for learner contexts (mingsiritham, 2016). 2) design standards: effective learning innovation design facilitates clear communication and learner comprehension. evaluation criteria typically include alignment with learning objectives, teacher and student manuals, design techniques, learning activities, data accuracy, organisation and aesthetics. for computerbased learning innovations (e.g., web-based instruction, computer-assisted instruction, e-books), additional quality verification includes screen design, evaluation of text, graphics, audio, video and screen control elements (mingsiritham, 2016). 3) technical standards: presentation techniques significantly influence innovation engagement and communication effectiveness. educational techniques must clearly present content without ambiguity, maintain interest, effectively demonstrate comparisons, facilitate understanding and ensure ease of use. 4) aesthetic standards: this encompasses precision, accuracy, orderliness and learner engagement through ageappropriate design techniques. 3.1.2. content validity content validity refers to an instrument’s ability to measure the intended content accurately. the key consideration is selecting representative content samples that adequately cover the measurement domain. independent expert panels evaluate whether content samples sufficiently represent and cover the intended measurement scope (worakham, 2018). additionally, innovation quality assessment forms typically involve five experts using developed assessment forms, often employing rating scales. the evaluation results must achieve an acceptable mean rating of 3.51 to 5.00 (a high to very high level) to indicate satisfactory quality. assessment forms evaluate various aspects, including design, technical implementation, and content appropriateness. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 88-95 91 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. determining educational innovation effectiveness the process of determining educational innovation effectiveness involves external validation through student implementation and evaluation, as outlined by richey (2005). this methodology encompasses two primary phases: the try-out phase and the trial-run phase (promwong, 2013), establishing a systematic approach to innovation assessment. the evaluation framework utilises the e1/e2 efficiency criteria, typically set at 80/80, though adjustable based on content complexity. for particularly challenging content, the threshold may be modified to 75/75. the first efficiency measure (e1) represents process efficiency, evaluating continuous learning behaviours through formative assessments such as group activities, worksheets, learning behaviours and interim assignments. the second measure (e2) quantifies outcome efficiency through summative assessment following the completion of the instructional intervention. the implementation process follows three sequential phases, as follows. individual testing phase (1:1). this initial phase involves three students representing diverse cognitive abilities (high, medium and low). the evaluation focuses on assessing the innovation’s appropriateness, examining language clarity, instructional coherence, content relevance, temporal requirements and student comprehension. findings inform subsequent refinements prior to broader implementation. small group testing phase (1:10). this intermediate phase encompasses 6–12 students, maintaining cognitive diversity but utilising different participants from the initial phase. the refined innovation undergoes testing, with efficiency calculations (e1/e2) informing further enhancements to achieve optimal pedagogical effectiveness. field testing phase (1:100). the culminating phase involves classroom-wide implementation with 30–100 students, representing varied cognitive abilities but excluding previous participants. this comprehensive evaluation utilises the innovation refined through earlier phases, with final e1/e2 efficiency calculations determining overall effectiveness. through this systematic progression, educational innovations undergo rigorous validation, ensuring their pedagogical efficacy and practical applicability in authentic learning environments. this methodological approach aligns with established educational research practices, providing empirical evidence of instructional effectiveness through quantitative and qualitative assessment measures. the process demonstrates a commitment to evidence-based educational practice, incorporating iterative refinement based on systematic feedback and empirical evaluation. this comprehensive approach ensures that educational innovations meet established standards of effectiveness while maintaining practical applicability in diverse learning contexts. the following sections present examples of data analysis on the efficiency and effectiveness of innovations, along with tables displaying statistical results in sequential order. it should be noted that the data sources for all tables in this article were not collected from any sample groups. the numbers were created solely for illustrative purposes of calculation and statistical analysis, to provide readers with a clearer understanding of the concepts. calculating e1/e2 efficiency ratios for educational innovation performance. according to neungchalerm (2017), the e1/ e2 efficiency ratios are calculated using the following formulas. here: : represents process efficiency. σx: denotes the sum of all scores. a: represents the total possible score. n: indicates the total number of students. here: : represents learning outcome efficiency. σy: denotes the sum of post-test scores. b: represents the total possible post-test score. n: indicates the total number of students. interpretation guidelines. the acceptable variance threshold is set at ±2.5% from the established criterion (chomya & thaireukham, 2022). for instance, with an 80/80 criterion: 1. acceptable range: 77.50–82.50. 2. below 77.50: indicates substandard efficiency. 3. above 82.50: indicates superior efficiency. additionally, the differential between e1 and e2 should not exceed 5% to maintain instructional balance. a significant disparity suggests: 1. if e1 > e2: formative assessments may be too lenient. 2. if e2 > e1: summative assessments may be too lenient. example analysis. an e1/e2 ratio of 81.56/80.17 demonstrates optimal efficiency because: 1. both values fall within the ±2.5% acceptable range. 2. the differential between e1 and e2 is less than 5%. this statistical framework provides a robust methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of educational innovations, ensuring that both process and outcome metrics align with established pedagogical standards. based on the analysis of tables 1 and 2, learners achieved 85.00% accuracy during learning activities (process efficiency) and 84.67% on post-learning assessments (outcome efficiency). with the established efficiency criterion (e1/e2) set at 80/80, the developed educational innovation demonstrates an efficiency ratio of 85.00/84.67, meeting the prescribed standards. the differential between e1 and e2 values falls within the acceptable range of less than 5%. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 88-95 92 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. example of small group innovation efficiency data analysis. student scores from practice activities (10 points per topic) post-test score (30) 1 2 3 4 5 total 1 6 7 7 8 8 36 24 2 7 6 8 8 9 38 24 3 7 8 7 9 9 40 25 4 7 6 8 8 8 37 24 5 8 9 10 10 9 46 26 6 8 8 9 10 9 44 25 7 9 9 8 10 9 45 25 8 9 8 9 10 9 45 26 9 10 9 8 10 9 46 27 10 10 9 9 10 10 48 28 total 425 254 average 42.50 25.40 efficiency 85.00 (e1) 84.67 (e2) table 2. example of small group innovation efficiency results. n during learning post-learning efficiency value e1/e2 a x e1 b y e2 10 50 425 85.00 30 254 84.67 85.00/84.67 3.3. the effectiveness index (ei) the ei represents a differential ratio measurement with specific characteristics and interpretive guidelines: maximum value and range. the ei has a maximum value of 1.00, with no defined minimum, as it can fall below −1.00. a negative value indicates that pre-test scores exceeded post-test scores, suggesting ineffective learning intervention (chomya & thaireukham, 2022; neungchalerm, 2017). key interpretative principles. when students achieve perfect post-test scores, the ei consistently equals 1.00, regardless of pre-test performance (except when pre-test scores are also perfect). this indicates 100% learning progress or the complete achievement of learning objectives. the calculation of ei requires prior determination of the e1/e2 values, where e2 corresponds to academic achievement scores identical to the post-test scores used in the ei calculation. assessment context. the ei calculation provides a quantitative measure of educational effectiveness while acknowledging the influence of learners’ prior knowledge. this metric, combined with e1/e2 efficiency ratios, offers a comprehensive evaluation framework for educational innovations, ensuring a robust assessment of pedagogical interventions and learning outcomes. here: p1: aggregate pre-test scores. p2: aggregate post-test scores. n: total number of students. a: maximum possible score. table 3: example of the effectiveness index of the innovation. table 3. results of calculating the effectiveness index of the innovation. number of students full score total pre-test scores total post-test scores effectiveness index (ei) 39 30 709 976 0.5744 3.4. assessment of learning outcomes for students using the innovation after the instructor or researcher has validated the innovation through expert review and made revisions based on recommendations, the next step is to conduct a trial to determine its effectiveness with students (not the target group or sample group) and calculate the effectiveness index. the final step is evaluating the learning outcomes of students who studied using the developed innovation. the instructor or researcher may conduct the assessment in two ways: comparing learning achievement between preand post-test scores and comparing learning achievements against predetermined criteria (pankaew, 2018). the details are as follows. 3.4.1. comparison of pre and post-test achievement this is divided into three phases: pre-evaluation, which tests students’ knowledge before learning activities begin; formative evaluation, which measures performance through, for example, activities, worksheets, knowledge sheets, quizzes during the course, and exercises; and summative evaluation, which tests students’ knowledge after completing the learning activities with the innovation. in evaluating learning outcomes, the instructor or researcher compares students’ test scores after completing the innovative learning management (post-test) to determine whether they are higher than before learning (pre-test). if the comparison shows that students’ post-test scores are significantly higher than their pre-test scores (in cases where the students are a sample group), this indicates that the innovation can effectively enhance students’ learning processes. the comparison of preand post-test learning achievements using the innovation employs t-test statistics (dependent group) (srisaard, 2017) (in the case of sample groups) using the following formula. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 88-95 93 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group here: d: represents the difference between paired scores. n: represents the sample size or number of score pairs. for examples of data analysis tables showing students’ preand post-test scores using the innovation, the author presents tables 4 and 5. if instructors or researchers wish to use these table formats in their research. all details are presented in table 4. table 4. example of student data analysis results from preand post-tests using computer-assisted instruction. student no. score score difference (d) squared difference (d²) pre-test score (30) post-test score (30) 1 18 28 10 100 2 14 25 11 121 3 18 28 10 100 4 20 28 8 64 5 15 29 14 196 … … … … … … … … … … 30 17 28 11 121 total 545 792 247 2,389 18.17 26.40 8.23 sd 2.59 1.61 here, t = 12.88. table 5. example of comparative analysis of learning achievement using a t-test for students using the innovation. test scores number of students (n) mean (x ̄) standard deviation (sd) score difference (d) t-test pre-test 30 18.17 2.59 8.23 12.88 post-test 30 26.40 1.61 note: t(0.05,9) = 1.6991. statistically significant at the 0.05 level. from the critical values of the t table, where df = 29 at the .05 level (one-tail), the critical value is 1.6991, and the calculated t-value is 12.88, which is greater than the critical t-value. this indicates that students who learned using the innovation achieved significantly higher post-test scores than pre-test scores at the .05 level of statistical significance. when conducting research with a target group of students (rather than a sample group), researchers can directly compare the mean pre-test scores with the mean post-test scores (without requiring t-test statistics). for example, from table 5, the pre-test mean score was 18.17 (60.56%) and the post-test mean score was 26.40 (88.00%), demonstrating that students who used computer-assisted instruction achieved higher learning outcomes after instruction. 3.4.2. comparison of learning achievement against predetermined criteria this evaluation method typically focuses on post-learning assessment rather than pre-learning measurement. the target group’s knowledge is tested, and their scores are compared against predetermined percentage criteria, such as 75%, 80%, or 85%. these criteria should be established based on factors including content difficulty and the contextual learning environment. to test the difference between the mean post-learning achievement using the innovation against an 80% criterion, researchers can employ the one-sample t-test for small sample sizes (n < 30) (wongrattana, 2021) using the formula. here: : mean post-test score of the sample group. : score value at 80% criterion. s: standard deviation. n: sample size. for examples of data analysis tables comparing post-learning achievement against the 80% criterion for students using the innovation, the author presents tables 6 and 7. table 6. example of comparative analysis of post-test learning achievement against the 80% criterion for students using the innovation. no. learning achievement score compared to 80% criterion evaluation result pass fail 1 17 16  2 17 16  3 16 16  … … …  … … …  asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 88-95 94 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group no. learning achievement score compared to 80% criterion evaluation result pass fail 35 18 16  total 579 560 mean 16.54 16.00 sd 0.78 0.00 percentage 100 we test the difference between post-learning achievement mean scores using innovation in relation to the 80% criterion, utilizing the sample group testing method (watchararat, 2009). table 7. example analysis of post-learning achievement scores compared to the 80% criterion using t-test. number of students full test score (post-test) mean standard deviation criterion (80%) t-test 35 20 16.54 0.78 16 4.1 note: t(0.05,34) = 1.6909. statistically significant at the 0.05 level. from table 7, students who learned using the innovation achieved a mean post-test score of 16.54, equivalent to 82.70%. in comparison to the predetermined criterion, the students’ post-learning achievement was significantly higher than the criterion at the 0.05 level of statistical significance. for research conducted with a target group (rather than a sample group), researchers can directly compare the mean post-test scores against the 80% criterion without employing t-test statistics. for example, from table 7, the mean post-test score was 16.54 (82.70%), indicating that students who learned using the innovation achieved learning outcomes exceeding the predetermined criterion. 4. discussion and conclusion the development of educational innovations to address learning challenges or enhance students’ learning processes requires educators and researchers to thoroughly understand the principles of innovation development. educational innovations serve as crucial tools for knowledge transfer, stimulating student interest, promoting learning engagement, and facilitating improvements in both knowledge and skills development. before developing any innovation, educators and researchers must first identify the root causes of instructional challenges, which may extend beyond academic achievement to include deficiencies in problem-solving abilities, technological competency, self-directed learning capabilities, creative thinking, or analytical reasoning skills. educators must select appropriate innovations that align with student contexts and design them with practical implementation in mind. the addie model has emerged as a prevalent instructional design framework from the past to the present, offering flexibility and facilitating effective learning activity implementation through its systematic phases of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (kurt, 2018). lu and sides (2022) applied the addie model to university-level reading instruction, demonstrating how systematic analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation can significantly enhance instructional effectiveness by enabling educators to create appropriate, dynamic learning experiences that positively influence learners. the addie model has proven applicable for designing educational innovations to address various instructional challenges and demonstrably improve student learning processes. after completing the design phase, educators must submit innovations for expert evaluation and modification based on feedback. this is followed by three-phase pilot testing individual, small group, and field trials to determine innovation effectiveness, calculate the effectiveness index, and verify learning progress before implementation with target groups or samples. research findings consistently demonstrate that addie-based innovations achieve high to very high-quality ratings. when implemented, these innovations typically meet or exceed established efficiency criteria and effectiveness indices. post-implementation, results show significant improvements in students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes. this aligns with multiple educational studies. for example, saengkudloh's (2023) research on developing a teaching practicum supervision system using the addie model demonstrated overall system efficiency and high user satisfaction among 107 student teachers, 36 mentor teachers, 18 university supervisors, and 18 school administrators. moreover, muangthong's (2024) study on developing addie model-based learning skill development modules for higher vocational certificate students showed 84.73/81.25 efficiency, significantly higher post-test achievement (p < .05), and very high ratings for practical skill development and learning motivation. lastly, lumbantoruan and herman's (2025) research on a logarithm module with jigsaw cooperative learning achieved excellence ratings from content experts (92.35%), teachers (91.45%), and students (95.81%), with a mean student achievement of 90.28, demonstrating significant learning improvements. these findings validate the addie model’s effectiveness in developing educational innovations 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(2018). educational research (9th ed.). maha sarakham: taksila printing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed626344.pdf https://educationaltechnology.net/ 131 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 4, 131-138, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i4.4341 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group do self-efficacy and moral intelligence have a role in the formation of sportsmanship behavior? serhat turan1 ugur alemdar2 esra comert3 hacer ozcan4 kerem osmanoglu5 ( corresponding author) 1balıkesir university, faculty of sports science, balıkesir, turkey. 1email: serhatturan2510@gmail.com 2,3sakarya university of applied sciences, faculty of sports sciences, sakarya, turkey. 2email: uguralemdar@subu.edu.tr 3email esracomert@subu.edu.tr 4esenkent ortaokulu, istanbul, turkey. 4email: ozcanhacer@gmail.com 5kadriye kemal gurel ilkokulu, balikesir, turkey. 5email: kerem4706@gmail.com abstract the present study is aimed to investigate the effect of empathy, conscience, self-control, kindness and selfefficacy on sportsmanship behaviors, since there is no study that investigated the effects of self-efficacy and moral intelligence on sportsmanship behaviors. for this purpose, the study was carried out according to the relational screening design, which is one of the quantitative research designs. 397 students studying at the faculty of sports sciences participated in the research. "yakut-moral intelligence scale", "athlete self efficacy scale" and "investigation of sportsmanship behaviors scale" were used to carry out the study. statistical analyzes were made in spss 25 program and pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analysis were used. as a result of the analysis, sportsmanship has been determined that it has a significant relationship with empathy, conscience, self-control, kindness and self-efficacy. as another result of the study, while self-efficacy alone explains 13.4% of sportsmanship, self-efficacy, empathy, self-control and kindness together explain 48% of sportsmanship. it was determined that the sub-dimension of conscience did not have a significant effect on sportsmanship. according to these results, in displaying sportsmanship behaviors; having a high level of self-efficacy, ability to empathize, power to control behaviors and kindness have an important and powerful effect. keywords: athlete self-experience, empathy, moral intelligence, self-efficacy, sportsmanship behavior, sportsmanship. citation | turan, s., alemdar, u., comert, e., ozcan, h., & osmanoglu, k. (2022). do self-efficacy and moral intelligence have a role in the formation of sportsmanship behavior? asian journal of education and training, 8(4), 131–138. 10.20448/edu.v8i4.4341 history: received: 27 september 2022 revised: 18 november 2022 accepted: 2 december 2022 published: 15 december 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 132 2. material and method ..................................................................................................................................................................... 133 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 134 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 135 5. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 136 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 136 mailto:serhatturan2510@gmail.com mailto:uguralemdar@subu.edu.tr mailto:esracomert@subu.edu.tr mailto:ozcanhacer@gmail.com mailto:kerem4706@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i4.4341 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6236-3825 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7352-7108 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3309-7446 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9411-7194 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1593-3092 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 131-138 132 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature: in the present study, it is aimed to determine the effect of empathy, conscience, self-control, kindness and self-efficacy on sportsmanship behaviors, since there is no study that investigated the effects of self-efficacy and moral intelligence on sportsmanship behaviors. the absence of such studies in the literature is thought to guide the studies planned to be carried out in the future and to contribute to the literature. 1. introduction sportsmanship is gaining a place in sports as a more important concept with each passing day. as the sports economy grows, athletes can act with the understanding of "winning despite everything" in order to gain more financial gain. acting with a purely winning mentality may cause immoral behaviors to be exhibited, and this situation harms the spirit that constitutes the essence of sports. in this context, factors such as the belief in the abilities of the athletes, the power to control their behavior, empathy, conscience and kindness come to the fore. bandura (2007) defines self-efficacy as people's belief in their ability to organize and execute an action to produce their intended results. according to gist and mitchell (1992) people's inferences about their own capacity to complete certain responsibilities and tasks are defined as self-efficacy. at the same time, self-efficacy is the belief in one's own capacity (morgil, seçil, seçken, yavuz, & oskay, 2004) and knowing one's self (korkmaz, 2008) rather than ability. self-efficacy is an important determinant in the success of athletes. acquired self-efficacy skills cause behavioral changes and are seen as the most important achievement of athletes in achieving success against their opponents (türedi, 2015). the higher the expectation of proficiency, the higher the athlete's self-confidence. in the opposite case, with failure in high-level performance studies; negative reactions are experienced, such as a decrease in the interest of the athlete towards sports and alienation from sports (barut, 2008). the negative reactions that the athlete may exhibit in the field of sports due to the low level of self-efficacy bring the concept of morality to the fore. morality is basically defined as the process of determining the orientations between right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and flaw, which are adopted by the people in the society with common thoughts and compelled to comply (sengun, 2015) and evaluating the results of these orientations (nuttall et al., 2011). demonstrating moral behavior requires moral intelligence. moral intelligence is a new concept that has recently become popular in research in psychology and management. moral intelligence means paying attention to human life, economic and social welfare, free, honest, open communication and citizenship rights (hasanpour, ghaedi heidari, & hasanzadeh, 2017). lennick and kiel (2005) on the other hand, consider moral intelligence; it defines it as the type of intelligence that expresses the mental capacity that explains how the universal human dimension principles should be applied to individual values and purposes. it is seen in the literature that moral intelligence is evaluated as multidimensional (yakut & yakut, 2021). scientists consider moral intelligence in several sub-dimensions in their studies. borba (2001): moral intelligence includes empathy, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance and justice; khampa (2019): honesty, respect, kindness, conscience and self-control; oztürk, saylıgil, and yıldız (2019): equality, empathy, moral intelligence, justice, tolerance, self-control and kindness; bhagyalakshmy (2014) on the other hand, examined moral intelligence in several dimensions as empathy, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance. in the studies conducted, empathy, conscience, self-control, respect and kindness are considered as common concepts for scientists. baron-cohen and wheelwright (2004) define empathy as the individual's ability to spontaneously and naturally adapt to the thoughts and feelings of the other person. in terms of human relations, empathy is the ability to predict and understand the reactions of others (keskin, 2014). self-control is the ability to resist and suppress internal desires and external temptations that prevent individuals from pursuing long-term goals (tangney, baumeister, & boone, 2004). the capacity to exercise self-control (napolitano & job, 2018) includes mental processes that enable individuals to suppress thoughts, feelings and behaviors that conflict with their personal goals (baumeister, vohs, & tice, 2007). individuals with high self-control tend to use more positive coping strategies than individuals with low self-control, and the use of these positive strategies increases life satisfaction (li, delvecchio, lis, nie, & di riso, 2016). conscience is defined as a person's display of behaviors in accordance with his/her own belief world with his/her inner voice and the evaluation of these behaviors as right or wrong in the inner court (bilgiz, 2007). kindness is an essential value for human survival and well-being. research in this area shows that helping or sharing to benefit another person (i.e., pro-social behavior) is not only beneficial for the goal of well-being, but also for oneself (fritz, walsh, cole, epel, & lyubomirsky, 2021). sports ethics is the realization of the sportive event within the limits determined by the written and unwritten rules, far from the understanding of "winning despite everything" regardless of the conditions. competing in order to make their skills superior within the framework of values both preserves the spirit of sports and provides the excitement inherent in sports. if the rules are not followed, the suspicion that may arise about the sport can cause everyone who actively or passively participates in the sport to move away from the sport. for this reason, the concept of sportsmanship gains importance in the existence and continuation of sports. although sportsmanship is the concept used in sports activities today, it is actually expressed as the basic moral judgments that are based on tolerance, respecting the sports environment, desiring to win properly, rejecting illegal manipulative activities (tel, 2014). the aim of sportsmanship behavior is to reflect the fact that sport is a game by exhibiting more fair play behavior rather than increasing violence in competitions (haynes, 2002). in this context, athletes should stay away from unfair, non-fair play and ugly actions against their opponents with the motivation to win or gain, and they should respect victory and defeat (feezell, 1986). in sportsmanship includes sincerity, tolerance, honorable behavior, courage, showing kindness, empathy, respect for the ideas of others, trust and generosity (keating, 2007; koç, 2013). self-efficacy in the literature; aggression (anderson & bushman, 2002; mofrad & mehrabi, 2015; willemse, 2008; yoosefi, 2012) emotional reactions (kumar & ve lal, 2006; tahmassian & ansari, 2009) stress and anxiety (bahadori khosroshahi & hashemi nosrat abad, 2012) has been studied from different perspectives (haynes, 2002). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 131-138 133 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group it has been observed that the sub-dimensions of moral intelligence are used separately in studies on sportsmanship. empathy, which is the sub-dimension of moral intelligence; it has been determined that it is associated with displaying negative behavior (gleichgerrcht & young, 2013) acquiring moral norms (cushman, 2013) violence (broidy, cauffman, espelage, mazerolle, & piquero, 2003; jolliffe & farrington, 2004) bullying (zych, gómezortiz, fernández touceda, nasaescu, & llorent, 2020) and helping (jordan, amir, & bloom, 2016). it has been determined that the sub-dimensions of kindness and conscience, which are another sub-dimension of moral intelligence, are studied with aggression (arsenio, 2014; jambon & smetana, 2020) and pro-social behavior (desteno, 2015; marsh, 2019) within the scope of moral feelings. finally, there are studies with the self-control sub-dimension of moral intelligence is used with adaptation and behavior problems (lengua, bush, long, kovacs, & trancik, 2008; lengua & long, 2002) decision making (mead, baumeister, gino, schweitzer, & ariely, 2009) and physical aggression (ciairano, gemelli, molinengo, musella, & al, 2007). however, no study has been found in the literature on the extent to which all sub-dimensions of self-efficacy and moral intelligence together affect sportsmanship. in turkey; there are 18 million 85 thousand 943 students at pre-school, primary and secondary education levels (ministry of national education (meb), 2021). sports educators, managers and coaches who will train these students are trained in 100 sports science faculties and colleges in turkey. therefore, it is very important to determine the sportsmanship levels of sports people who will shape the sports ethics of millions of young individuals and to illuminate the factors affecting sportsmanship. for this reason, it is aimed to determine whether there is a change in sportsmanship behavior as self-efficacy and moral intelligence levels increase in this study, which is carried out in relational screening design. 2. material and method 2.1. research model relational survey model was used in the research to examine the relationship between the levels of conscience, self-control, courtesy, self-efficacy and sportsmanship. relational screening model: it is a research model that aims to determine the relationship between two or more variables (karasar, 2013). 2.2. universe and sample of the study the universe of this research consists of students studying at 100 sports science faculties and schools in turkey. it is thought that approximately 10000 students’ study in these faculties and colleges. the sample of the study should be at least 370 people according to the 95% confidence interval and 5% margin of error. in the study, the sample is formed according to the simple random sampling method and the study is carried out with 397 students from three different faculties of sports sciences. 397 volunteer students (age=20.45±2.35) studying at the faculty of sports sciences participated in the research. information about the students is given in table 1. at the beginning of the study, necessary permissions (number: e26428519-044-65457) are obtained from sakarya university of applied sciences ethics committee. table 1. demographic information. variables subgroups frequency % gender female 160 40.3 male 237 59.7 sports age 1-4 years 94 23.7 5-8 years 116 29.2 9 years and over 124 31.2 branch individual sports 160 40.3 team sports 237 59.7 total 397 100 table 1 presents that 59.7% of the participants are male, 31.2% are 9 years and over, and 59.7% are students who do team sports. 2.3. data collection tools “ruby-moral intelligence scale”, “athlete self-efficacy scale (ases)” and “sportsmanship behaviors examination scale” are used as data collection tools. detailed information on data collection tools is given below. 2.3.1. personal information form the "personal information form" created by the researchers is used to determine demographic information. in this form, it is aimed to reach information such as gender, sports branch, age and sports age of athlete students. 2.3.2. yakut-moral intelligence scale the kaiser–meyer–olkin (kmo) value of the "yakut-moral intelligence scale" developed by yakut and yakut (2021) is calculated as .776 and the bartlett test value as 1263,083, and the chi-square value is found to be significant. as a result of their analysis, they identified four factors called “empathy” (α= .827), “conscience” (α= .791), “self-control” (α= .803) and “kindness” (α= .772). the total variance explained by the scale is 57.436%, and the factor loads of the items vary between .443 and .836. the cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale, which consists of a total of 20 items, is measured as .845. with this aspect, it is possible to state that the scale has a high level of reliability and to emphasize its usefulness. the highest score that can be obtained from the scale, in which all items are positively scored, is 100, and the lowest score is 20. a high score indicates the presence of a high level of moral intelligence. in this study, information about the scale is given in the table 2. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 131-138 134 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 2. distribution of yakut-moral intelligence scale points. dependent variable substanca number  sd skewness kurtosis cronbach alpha empathy 5 3.95 0.64 -0.713 1.157 0.76 conscience 5 4.22 0.62 -0.771 0.775 0.84 self-control 5 3.64 0.75 -0.285 0.189 0.84 kindness 5 4.11 0.63 -0.648 0.996 0.83 yakut-moral intelligence scale 20 4.00 0.47 -0.249 0.175 0.89 table 2 presents that the total mean score of the participants on the ruby-moral intelligence scale is 4.00. the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was .76 for empathy, .84 for conscience, .84 for self-control and .83 for kindness. the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient for the general scale was calculated as .89. the skewness and kurtosis values being in the range of ± 1.5 provide the necessary prerequisite for the normal distribution. 2.3.3. athlete self efficacy scale (ases) the athlete self efficacy scale developed by kocak (2020) consists of 16 items. scale consists of 4 subdimensions: sports discipline competence, psychological competence, professional thought competence, and personality compentence dimensions. the lowest score to be obtained from the scale is 16 and the highest score is 80. it shows the average scores and self-efficacy levels to be obtained from the scale. the fact that the average of the scale is in the range of 3.34–5.00 points refers to the high athlete's self-efficacy level, and the average of 1.67– 3.33 points is the middle athlete's self-efficacy level and the average of 0.00-1.66 points is the low athlete's selfefficacy level. the cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient is found as .89 for the scale. in the present study, the information of the scale is given in the table 3. table 3. distribution of athlete self-efficacy scale (ases) scores. dependent variable substance number  sd skewness kurtosis cronbach alpha ases 16 3.90 0.61 -0.504 0.925 0.91 it is seen that the total average score of the participants from the athlete self efficacy scale (ases) is 3.90. cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale is calculated as .91. the location of the skewness and kurtosis values in the range of ± 1 provides a prerequisite required for normal distribution. 2.3.4. investigation of sportsmanship behaviors scale it is developed to determine the university students the sportsmanship behavior by gumus, saracli, yagmur, isik, and ersoz (2020). the scale consists of 27 items and 5 sub -dimensions. these five factors explain 62.29 %of the total variance. the scale of five likert types is scored between 1 'absolutely disagree' and 5 'absolutely agree'. the high score obtained from the scale shows that the level of sportsmanship is high. the total cronbach's alpha value of the scale is calculated as 0.94. in the present study, the information of the scale is given in the table 4. table 4. distribution of investigation of sportsmanship behaviors scale (isbs) scores. dependent variable substance number  sd skewness kurtosis cronbach alpha isbs 27 3.73 0.54 -0.580 0.448 0.92 table 4 presents the total mean score of the participants from the sportsmanship behaviors examination scale (isbs) as 3.73. the cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was calculated as .92. the fact that the skewness and kurtosis values are in the range of ± 1 provides the necessary prerequisite for the normal distribution. 2.4. statistical analysis the data collected in the online environment were coded and transferred to the spss program and the normality distribution was examined. the skewness and kurtosis values of the data were taken into account in the analyzes and the values obtained were found in the range of -1.5,…,+1.5.these values are accepted in accordance with normal distribution (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). in statistical analysis, descriptive statistics, pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analysis are used. the level of significance in the study is taken as p<.01 and p<.001. 3. findings in this part of the study, the relationships between the variables are tested and the effects of conscience, selfcontrol, kindness and self -efficacy variables on sportsmanship behaviors are examined. table 5 presents the results of the pearson correlation analysis performed to determine the relationships between the variables. table 5 presents as a result of pearson correlation analysis, sportmanship has a significant relationship with empathy (r=0.491, p<.001), conscience (r=0.447, p<0.001), self-control (r=0.458, p<.001), kindness (r=0.619, p<.001), self-efficacy (r=0.370, p<0.001). table 6 sub-dimensions of self-efficacy and moral intelligence; presents the effects of empathy, conscience, selfcontrol and courtesy on sportsmanship. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 131-138 135 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 5. pearson correlation analysis results. dimensions empathy conscience self-control kindness self-efficacy conscience 0.539* 1 self-control 0.272* 0.234* 1 kindness 0.468* 0.461* 0.487* 1 self-efficacy 0.217* 0.287* 0.391* 0.283* 1 sportsmanship 0.491* 0.447* 0.458* 0.619* 0.370* note: *p<.001. table 6. multiple regression analysis results about the effect of sportsmanship. no. variable r r2 adj f b std. error β t p 1 stable 2.463 0.177 --13.891 0.000 self-efficacy 0.137 0.134 52.662 0.326 0.045 0.370 7.257 0.000** 2 stable 0.564 0.192 2.933 0.004 self-efficacy 0.488 0.480 62.447 0.121 0.039 0.137 3.110 0.002* empathy 0.164 0.042 0.195 3.963 0.000** conscience 0.083 0.043 0.096 1.938 0.053 self-control 0.105 0.034 0.147 3.082 0.002* kindness 0.320 0.044 0.373 7.304 0.000** note: **p<.001, *p<.01. method: stepwise. table 6 presents while self-efficacy explains 13.4 %of sportsmanship alone, self-efficacy, empathy, self-control and kindness explain 48 %of sportsmanship together. it is found that the lower dimension of conscience has no significant effect on sportsmanship. 4. discussion and conclusion in the present study, the effects of athlete's self-efficacy, empathy, conscience, self-control, and kindness on sportsmanship behaviors are investigated. in the study, the participants showed that the levels of the participants had high levels of moral intelligence ( =4.00±.47), athlete self efficacy scale ( =3.90±.61), and sportsmanship behaviors ( =3.73±.54). as a result of regression analysis, it is determined that self-efficacy alone explained 13.4% of sportsmanship and that self-efficacy, empathy, self-control, and kindness explained 48% of sportsmanship together. it is found that the lower dimension of conscience has no significant effect on sportsmanship. the findings of the studies made as a result of the study findings and the literature screening are discussed below. 4.1. self-efficacy and sportsmanship in the findings of the study, self-efficacy has a significant effect on sportsmanship behavior. the belief in the potentials and abilities of athletes can give clues to what behaviors he can use to achieve a conclusion. the athlete who believes in his skills will stay away from the understanding of winning in spite of everything and will try to reach the result by exhibiting behavior within the limits determined by sportsmanship. anderson and bushman (2002) state that the attitudes and self-efficacy of the individual in the general aggression model have a significant impact on aggression behaviors, namely non-sportsmanic behaviors. in addition, kumar and ve lal (2006) state that self-efficacy affects the individual's choice of behavior and emotional reactions. tahmassian and ansari (2009) argue that people who have a high self-efficacy, confident of their knowledge of their abilities, enjoy a real social connection and have the ability to control and manage their emotions. on the contrary, individuals with low selfefficacy can lead to increasing stress and anxiety by perceiving events more complex than the fact (bahadori khosroshahi & hashemi nosrat abad, 2012). in his study, yoosefi (2012) found that there is a negative relationship between awareness and aggression and stated that perception of events as complex could cause aggression behaviors. luszczynska, gutiérrez-doña, and schwarzer (2005) found that there is positive relationship between the general self-efficacy and optimism; negative relationship between depression and anxiety in the research of participants from five countries. in his study, willemse (2008) states that there is a negative high level of relationship between aggression behaviors and self-efficacy. in another study, there are results showing that there is a negative relationship between self-efficacy and aggression, and it is emphasized that by increasing self-efficacy, aggression will decrease (mofrad & mehrabi, 2015). the results of the researches in the literature seem to be compatible with this study. 4.2. empathy and sportsmanship as a result of the study, it is determined that empathy have a significant effect on sportsmanship. empathy skills create more sensitivity to the suffering of others and support the mercy to be shown against the individual to be exhibited (condon & desteno, 2011; klimecki, vuilleumier, & sander, 2016). fort his reason, empathic interest, concern and compassion for others, cooperation (preston & de waal, 2002) the acquisition of moral norms (cushman, 2013) and opposing harmful actions (gleichgerrcht & young, 2013) by expressing the tendency to the athletes more gentle to the competitors of the athletes affects their approach. athletes may be subjected to disabled interventions by the opponent in sporting competitions. as a result, they can be injured and stay away from the fields. it is thought that the athletes put themselves in place of the opponent and do not move away from sportsmanship while exhibiting a behavior of the athletes due to such negativities. when the literature is examined, high empathy is found to be protective against violence (broidy et al., 2003). in a meta-analysis study, it is determined that those who use violence had low empathy (jolliffe & farrington, 2004). high empathy is seen as a protective factor for bullying and cyber bullying (zych et al., 2020). mcphedran (2009) found that the relationship between low empathy and violence is positive and revealed connections between empathy and pro -community behavior. there are many studies showing that continuous empathic interest, helping (feldmanhall, dalgleish, asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 131-138 136 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evans, & mobbs, 2015; jordan et al., 2016) pro-community behaviors (contreras-huerta, lockwood, bird, apps, & crockett, 2022) and positive social behaviors (bach, defever, chopik, & konrath, 2017; chopik, o’brien, & konrath, 2017; eckland, huang, & berenbaum, 2020). it has been determined that individuals with low empathy levels have high antisocial properties and are not worried about damage to the victim or the rescue of the group (conway, goldstein-greenwood, polacek, & greene, 2018; maranges, hasty, maner, & conway, 2021). the findings of the studies in the literature are similar to the results of our research. 4.3. kindness, conscience, and sportsmanship in the present study, it is determined that kindness had a significant effect on sportsmanship. due to the widespread of digital vehicles in sports, every behavior of athletes can be seen by everyone forces the athlete to behavior towards sportsmanship. otherwise, athletes know that they will be excluded by sports fans. this situation increases the incidence of kindness containing behaviors and this contributes positively to sportsmanship. because moral emotions are emotions associated with the benefit of a person other than society or perceived (haidt, davidson, scherer, & goldsmith, 2003). moral emotions help to prevent aggressive behaviors by predicting negative consequences (arsenio, 2014). the literature suggests that physical aggression can be reduced by developing moral emotions (jambon & smetana, 2020). the sense of compassion from moral emotions is also linked to pro-community behaviors (desteno, 2015). as a result of the study, it is found that conscience had no significant effect on sportsmanship behaviors. conscience can be expressed as an important element in the occurrence of behaviors. however, since the sense of competition in the sport comes to the forefront from time to time, athletes can exhibit behaviors with the understanding of “winning at any cost”. in this case, conscience can remain in the second place. today, the success value can be seen as the most important value for many athletes. in order to continue their sporting lives and maintain their existence, athletes can act with focus on success rather than the value of conscience. 4.4. self-control and sportsmanship in the present study, it is seen that self-control had a significant effect on sportsmanship behaviors. the dominance of the individual's behavior prevents the exhibition of non-moral behaviors. self-control plays a role in reducing the effects of stress factors in advance (aspinwall & taylor, 1997) and can prevent negative behaviors from being displayed. in the literature, it is stated that individuals with low self-control level experiences more harmony and behavioral problems than those with high levels of self-control (lengua et al., 2008; lengua & long, 2002). sources of self-control play an important role in the process of ethical decision making (mead et al., 2009). it has been found that self-control has a positive relationship with positive social skills (eisenberg et al., 1997) and emotional-behavioral harmony (tangney et al., 2004). individuals with low self -control experiences more emotional problems such as anxiety and depression and as a result, they show negative behavior towards the external environment (eisenberg et al., 2001). adolescents with a higher level of self -control activity show lower physical aggression to their peers compared to all other adolescents (ciairano et al., 2007). in this respect, the findings of the literature and the findings of our study are similar. as a result; self-efficacy, empathy, self-control and kindness contribute significantly to sportsmanship behaviors. the high beliefs of the athletes towards their skills, have the power of control over their behavior, perform their behavior by putting them in place of their opponent and remain within the limits of courtesy. 5. recommendations empathy has a structure that can emerge self-emergence (de waal & preston, 2017) pre-arranged (cameron et al., 2019; zaki, 2014) and also developed (cameron et al., 2019). for this reason, empathy-developing studies can be used in sports fields. proficiency levels can be improved with applications where the athlete can taste the feeling of success. thus, the belief in self-efficacy is developed to exhibit prosocial behaviors. in addition, one of the limitations of this research is to obtain data by survey method. in the following studies, the use of complementary methods such as observation and interview is also recommended to support the study. references anderson, c. a., & bushman, b. j. 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(2020). parental moral disengagement induction as a predictor of bullying and cyberbullying: mediation by children’s moral disengagement, moral emotions, and validation of a questionnaire. child indicators research, 13(3), 1065-1083.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-019-09670-2. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 131 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 3, 131-140, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i3.5845 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group exploring the multifaceted roles of english for specific purposes practitioners within the transformative paradigm in higher education traithana chaovanapricha1 wilawan champakaew2 ( corresponding author) 1,2school of liberal arts, mae fah luang university, chiang rai, 57100, thailand. 1email: traithana.cha@mfu.ac.th 2email: wilawan.cha@mfu.ac.th abstract this academic article, utilizing an analytical literature review, aimed to explore the multifaceted roles of english for specific purposes (esp) practitioners. it was found that there were five key roles responsible by the practitioners: (1) teaching; (2) course designing and material providing; (3) researching; (4) collaborating; and (5) evaluating. performing the teaching role, practitioners facilitate learning, integrate subject-specific content, and foster authentic communication. as course designers and material providers, esp practitioners adopt language-centered, skills-centered, and learning-centered approaches, as well as the cyclical process of needs analysis, ensuring relevance and authenticity in their courses. esp practitioners, in their role as researchers, actively participate in action research to develop their professional identities within the esp context. collaboration with subject teachers and colleagues also emerges as a crucial aspect, ranging from cooperation to team-teaching, with associated challenges. lastly, esp practitioners serve as evaluators, assessing teaching methods, materials, and student learning outcomes, emphasizing fair and constructive evaluation aligned with academic and professional achievements. the discussion highlights the dynamic and comprehensive nature of esp practitioners' responsibilities, requiring ongoing adaptation and improvement in response to the evolving demands of esp instruction. moreover, clear national educational and language policies of english as a foreign language (efl) countries should be emphasized to succeed in their esp education. keywords: challenges of esp practitioners, esp course design, esp education, esp professional development, esp, roles of esp practitioners. citation | chaovanapricha, t., & champakaew, w. (2024). exploring the multifaceted roles of english for specific purposes practitioners within the transformative paradigm in higher education. asian journal of education and training, 10(2), 131–140. 10.20448/edu.v10i3.5845 history: received: 19 february 2024 revised: 3 april 2024 accepted: 30 april 2024 published: 25 july 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by the mae fah luang university, thailand (grant number: 7702(6)/787). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 132 2. key roles of esp practitioners................................................................................................................................................... 132 3. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 138 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 139 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 139 mailto:traithana.cha@mfu.ac.th mailto:wilawan.cha@mfu.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i3.5845 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5852-0833 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5693-8039 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 131-140 132 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the article emphasizes the five concurrent key roles of esp practitioners and discusses the challenges associated with each role and its relevance to the current educational and language policies of efl countries, contributing to recognition of the professionalism of esp practitioners and their field among policymakers, educational institutions, and elt fellows. 1. introduction originating in the 1960s due to the increasing global demand for international personnel in science, business, and engineering fields, english for specific purposes (esp) is a specialized approach to language teaching tailored to meet the communicative needs of learners in specific professional or academic domains. hutchinson and waters (1987) emphasize more practical application of language skills within a targeted context than teaching grammar and language structures (fiorito, 2024) focusing on the learners' specific needs and tasks. dudley-evans and st. john (1998) extend this concept, highlighting the integration of language and subject matter and promoting effective communication in real-world situations. esp now goes beyond general language proficiency, contributing to the development of students' skills required for specific fields (fitria, 2023) and fostering language competence that directly aligns with the demands of a particular discipline, occupation, or academic pursuit. within this process, esp practitioners are expected to fulfill five significant roles (khemri & kadri, 2017) as shown in figure 1: a teacher, a course designer and a materials provider, a researcher, a collaborator, and an evaluator (dudley-evans & st. john, 1998). however, the demands of these interconnected roles often present challenges for esp practitioners, potentially hindering the success of esp courses. iswati and triastuti (2021) report that esp practitioners encounter challenges such as inadequate knowledge in students' disciplines, inadequate esp training and comprehensive needs analysis, and a wide range of students' english competencies. according to bottaro (2023) esp practitioners instructing esp courses need to undergo specialized training to ensure they are equipped and capable of aiding their students in achieving proficiency in the english language, thereby enhancing their professional opportunities. this article aims to outline the five key roles of esp practitioners and discuss the challenges they may face. additionally, it provides guidelines for both esp practitioners and educational institutions offering esp courses. figure 1. esp practitioners' roles and their interconnection. source: dudley-evans and st. john (1998). 2. key roles of esp practitioners hutchinson and waters (1987) initially highlighted a range of distinct challenges encountered by esp teachers in the past, such as the shift in english's status from a stand-alone subject to one that serves students in other fields. as a result, dudley-evans and st. john (1998) strongly emphasize the importance of acknowledging the diverse nature of esp teaching. they advocate for using the term ''practitioner'' instead of ''teacher'' to encompass a wider spectrum of roles and responsibilities central to esp education beyond traditional english language teaching (elt). consequently, they delineate five concurrent key roles performed by esp practitioners as follows: 2.1. a teacher performing a teaching role, esp practitioners are responsible for facilitating learning opportunities, fostering authentic communication, and selecting suitable teaching methods to deliver specialized esp courses tailored to the specific needs of their students. to facilitate effective communication in specific domains, they must incorporate asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 131-140 133 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group subject-specific content and language skills into their instruction. they also play a vital role in providing feedback, assessing students' progress, and guiding them towards improvement. by fostering linguistic proficiency, practical application, and professional development, esp practitioners create a dynamic learning environment for their students (hutchinson & waters, 1987). as indicated in the teaching evaluation forms completed by undergraduates (maejo university, 2022; prince of songkla university, 2016) higher education esp practitioners are expected to fulfill several responsibilities. these include establishing positive relationships with students, employing relevant and effective instructional materials, demonstrating good personal qualities and punctuality, and implementing teaching and learning approaches that encourage active student engagement and application of acquired knowledge and skills to their future professions. these expectations effectively highlight the teaching role of higher education esp practitioners. however, esp practitioners may encounter a situation where they are not considered the primary source of knowledge, as their students may possess a deeper understanding of the subject matter. this is because many esp courses cater to students in specific disciplines, leading to the perception of english teachers as advisors or counselors (antić, 2016). in fulfilling their role, esp practitioners should exhibit flexibility, actively listen to their students, show a genuine interest in the assigned disciplines, and be prepared to take calculated risks. to illustrate, promnath and tayjasanant (2016) highlight that numerous higher education institutions in thailand encourage english teachers to employ english-medium instruction, creating an english-speaking environment to support internationalization and the association of southeast asian nations (asean) policies. however, some esp practitioners, particularly in esp courses for health science and liberal arts undergraduates who are thai natives, adopt an english-thai code-switching approach to facilitate better understanding. in contrast, according to hoa and mai (2016) the majority of vietnamese undergraduates emphasize that their difficulty in learning esp courses is caused by the quality of lecturers in terms of their selection of teaching methods, english listening skills, and specialized knowledge. the researchers believe that teaching esp is ineffective due to a lack of teacher training in specialized knowledge, and esp practitioners admit that they do not understand specialized terminology. based on their research with master of business administration (mba) students at dong hua university in china, bao and ding (2009) develop a business english teaching model (see figure 2) for esp. they argue that the traditional grammar-translation approach is ineffective for teaching english in a professional context, and instead, they propose integrating metacognitive strategies into business english instruction. in this model, the esp practitioner takes on a guiding role, allowing students to actively participate and take responsibility for their own learning. the model consists of three steps: setting goals with students, creating meaningful scenarios for learning, and developing students' metacognitive strategies. figure 2. esp-based business english teaching model. source: bao and ding (2009). during the goal-setting step, the esp practitioner and students collaborate to establish class objectives and individual targets based on the students' language skills and business knowledge. the second step is for the esp practitioner to create engaging business english contexts that motivate students and encourage their active involvement in problem-solving. in this stage, the esp practitioner acts as a consultant, while students become the primary participants in the class. the final step empowers students to practice and apply metacognitive strategies beyond the classroom. they plan their activities outside of class, monitor their progress, gather relevant information, and assess their own achievements. the model demonstrates several strengths related to the cyclical process of needs analysis (dudley-evans & st. john, 1998) which is prominent in an esp course design. firstly, it involves selecting target situations that students are likely to encounter in workplace contexts, ensuring relevance and student engagement. additionally, the model emphasizes current english language communication, allowing the esp practitioner to identify students' areas for improvement and address their needs. this enables students to set their own short-term learning goals, aligning them with the overall class objectives. finally, the model emphasizes the importance of effectively addressing learning needs, and by equipping students with metacognitive strategies, they develop a sense of responsibility and actively participate in all esp classes. however, the model exhibits some weaknesses in both its structure and the researchers' explanations. while the esp practitioner plays a consulting role in this teaching model, students often lack support during metacognitive training. in the initial stages of implementing this model, it would be beneficial for the esp practitioner to be more involved during metacognitive training by offering guidance and consultations to ensure students' self-independence. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 131-140 134 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group additionally, the researchers' explanation of the metacognitive training appears to be inadequate, potentially making it unclear for other researchers attempting to apply it in practice. moreover, there are doubts about the model's suitability for different age groups and majors. for instance, while mba students in this study can quickly grasp and utilize the strategies, undergraduate students majoring in english may face challenges in finding relevant and sufficient subject-related information, necessitating more assistance from the esp practitioner. 2.2. a course designer and a material provider for esp practitioners who are involved in course design and material development, hutchinson and waters (1987) suggest three primary approaches to esp course design: the language-centered approach, the skills-centered approach, and the learning-centered approach. these approaches offer different perspectives on how to structure and organize esp courses based on different priorities and emphases. the first approach is the language-centered approach, as shown in figure 3, which focuses on the language and skills of the discipline used in the real world. the target situation refers to the specific context or environment in which the students will use the language skills they are acquiring. it entails actively identifying the language requirements and tasks that students will encounter in their future professional or academic settings. the target situation provides a clear understanding of the students' language needs and goals, allowing esp practitioners to tailor language instruction to meet those specific needs. by analyzing the target situation, esp practitioners can determine the linguistic and communicative skills that are essential for students to effectively participate and succeed in their desired professional or academic domains. figure 3. the language-centered approach to course design. source: hutchinson and waters (1987). the second approach, as shown in figure 4, is the skills-centered approach, which focuses on analyzing the specific skills and strategies required to effectively navigate particular situations. this approach integrates selected skills and strategies, along with theoretical views of language and learning, into esp lessons and utilizes them in the selection of texts and exercises. however, it is important to note that the lessons and sequences of activities are typically planned for the entire group of students rather than catering to individual differences in learning styles, paces, and preferences for customized materials and activities. consequently, this approach may potentially diminish the authenticity of the learning experience (cañado & esteban, 2015) and the characteristic of particularity in addressing students' specific needs (kumaravadivelu, 2001) in teaching. figure 4. the skills-centered approach to course design. source: hutchinson and waters (1987). hutchinson and waters (1987) argue that when esp practitioners bring texts from professional contexts into esp classes, they may lose their authenticity. this occurs because the readers' or students' knowledge and the classroom context differ from the original contexts in which the texts were written and used. however, as part of their role in course design and material provision, esp practitioners must either create their own materials or adapt asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 131-140 135 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group authentic materials from real workplace settings (ahmed, 2014). additionally, they should leverage the wide range of educational resources and teaching materials available to enhance their instructional approach. the final approach is the learning-centered approach, as illustrated in figure 5, which emphasizes the prior identification of students and their needs, as well as the analysis of the language and skills required in the target situation and the students' competences and preferences for learning styles. in this approach, esp practitioners prioritize understanding their students' specific requirements and tailoring the lessons accordingly. flexible lesson plans allow esp practitioners to accommodate any necessary adjustments and continuously monitor their students' progress and reactions. this allows them to make real-time modifications to the lessons to ensure optimal learning outcomes and student engagement. however, the learning-centered approach to course design in esp also has its weaknesses. one weakness is the potential difficulty in addressing the diverse needs and preferences of individual students within a larger group setting. as cañado and esteban (2015) note, designing lessons for the entire group may not effectively cater to the different learning styles, paces, and perceptions of customized materials and activities among students. this can lead to a decrease in authenticity and the personalized nature of instruction (kumaravadivelu, 2001). another weakness is the challenge of effectively monitoring and assessing individual student progress and learning outcomes. due to the focus on student-centeredness, esp practitioners may face difficulties in assessing the effectiveness of their instructional methods and determining if students are achieving the desired language and skill development. this aspect is highlighted by kumaravadivelu (2002) who emphasizes the need for clear assessment measures in learning-centered approaches. figure 5. the learning-centered approach to course design. source: hutchinson and waters (1987). furthermore, the learning-centered approach may require a significant investment of time and resources to develop individualized lesson plans and continuously adapt them to meet students' changing needs. this can be demanding, particularly in contexts with limited resources or large class sizes. the three approaches mentioned above may have certain weaknesses that require careful adaptation by esp practitioners. however, dudley-evans and st. john (1998) have proposed a more comprehensive and efficient cyclical model of needs analysis (see figure 6) for esp course developers. this model comprises five interconnected stages: needs analysis, course design, teacher-learning, assessment, and evaluation. figure 6. the cyclical process of needs analysis. source: dudley-evans and st. john (1998). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 131-140 136 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the first stage of the cyclical model proposed by dudley-evans and st. john (1998) needs analysis plays a crucial role in gathering relevant data that serves as a foundation for course design. several components are analyzed during this stage and retrieved from various stakeholders, including students, employers, policy makers, institutions, and esp practitioners. the target situation is examined to understand the specific language and skills required in the given context. students' personal information, such as their backgrounds, motivations, and goals, is taken into account to tailor the course to their specific needs. the analysis also includes an assessment of students' language proficiency and identifying areas where they may be lacking. additionally, effective learning strategies and approaches are considered to enhance the learning process. moreover, effective course design necessitates an understanding of the target situation's usage of language and skills. lastly, any constraints or limitations that may impact the course implementation are identified and addressed. according to thepseenu (2020) needs analysis is emphasized as a key step to the success of esp course development for thai civil engineering students. the researcher finds that the students require esp courses prioritizing collaborative assignments, in-class and out-ofclass activities, code-switching approaches, and listening-speaking profession-related activities. moreover, chaovanapricha and champakaew (2023) highlight that a lack of a comprehensive needs analysis could lead to a number of challenges esp practitioners and educational institutions housing esp courses may face. in the second stage of course design, esp practitioners use the data gathered during needs analysis to design courses that cater to the identified needs of the students. according to sorastaporn (2018) the development of an esp course should follow a systematic and scientific approach, drawing upon the findings of a needs analysis to establish the goals and objectives of language learners. consequently, esp practitioners should carefully choose and arrange esp materials, activities, and tasks that are well-suited to their needs, ensuring their relevance and appropriateness. esp practitioners should then incorporate these selected resources into classroom instruction, utilizing a variety of suitable language teaching methods and techniques. regular evaluation of ongoing esp courses is essential, allowing for continuous improvement and providing assurance to all stakeholders that the courses are effective. it is important to recognize that these four elements—needs analysis, syllabus development, material selection and sequencing, and ongoing evaluation—are interconnected and mutually dependent. by adhering to this comprehensive approach, esp practitioners can create and improve courses that meet their students' specific language learning needs. subsequently, the teaching and learning phase takes place in the classroom, where esp practitioners implement the designed courses and engage students in various activities and tasks aimed at developing their language and skills in the target situation. additionally, asmali (2018) suggests that esp practitioners can leverage technology in teaching and learning activities, making use of free, accessible on-market applications and students' devices. this integration of technology can enhance students' positive attitude, learning motivation and foster the development of generic competences such as team-work, decision-making, and problem-solving skills. by incorporating technology into the classroom, esp practitioners can create interactive and engaging learning experiences, promoting active participation and facilitating the acquisition of language and skills in esp contexts. after the teaching and learning phase, students undergo assessments to measure their progress and achievement. it is crucial for these assessments to be authentic and specific, aligning with the language and skill requirements of the real-world target situation. simulations are recognized as an effective and commonly utilized assessment method (castillejos & cervero, 2004) among esp practitioners. the simulations provide students with the opportunity to autonomously engage in tasks within their field of expertise and enhance their language proficiency. finally, both the students and the course undergo evaluation to assess their effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. this feedback loop enables continuous course review and refinement, ensuring that the course remains responsive to the evolving needs of the students. sorastaporn (2018) emphasizes the importance of implementing appropriate tests and evaluations to enhance the ongoing courses. these assessments provide valuable insights into the students' progress and the course's effectiveness, enabling educators to make informed adjustments and enhancements. 2.3. a researcher as esp researchers, their primary focus should revolve around the students' specific needs, objectives, and interests. they should continuously enhance their understanding of the subject they are teaching and actively seek out authentic materials to support their instruction. kumaravadivelu (2001) views that in the post method era, esp practitioners are encouraged to be concerned with their context-sensitive local knowledge (particularity) and teacher-generated personal theories (practicality). consequently, the specific research findings could enhance precision and contextualization; furthermore, they could elevate the significance of local esp practitioners, previously marginalized by the method era, and inspire them to embrace methods that were once widely accepted. according to the research conducted by meihami and werbińska (2022) it was found that action research plays a constructive role in the professional identity development of esp practitioners. the study showed that esp practitioners began to identify themselves more as esp teacher-researchers, fostering a stronger inclination towards conducting action research and exhibiting increased self-reliance in carrying out future research projects. the findings also highlighted the importance of considering the specific nature of the esp context when implementing action research programs for esp practitioners. furthermore, i̇lter and yeşilyurt (2021) adopted action research as a tool for teaching esp in a flipped learning environment. the researchers argue that conducting action research not only enhanced the teacher-researcher's rapport with students but also played a role in shaping the professional identity as an esp practitioner. in addition, chen (2000) addresses two challenges in the field of esp: a lack of teacher training programs in many regions and dissatisfaction with traditional theory-based training methods. to tackle these issues, the author proposes an esp self-training model employing action research techniques to demonstrate how a general english teacher can develop esp expertise independently by reflecting on and enhancing their teaching practices in the esp classroom. the research shows that through systematic action research involving ongoing participation in real teaching situations and engagement with the disciplinary culture of the learners, esp practitioners can formulate effective teaching approaches. in essence, this self-training model offers a potential solution to the challenges faced by esp professionals in terms of training and teaching methodology. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 131-140 137 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.4. a collaborator to enhance their collaboration skills, esp practitioners, as collaborators, should actively engage with other esp practitioners and subject specialists, particularly when they may lack content knowledge. collaborative activities, such as working together with colleagues, play a crucial role in all educational endeavors (nunan & lamb, 1996) as cited in fitria (2023). dudley-evans and st. john (1998) suggest three levels of relationships between esp practitioners and subject teachers (see figure 7): cooperation, collaboration, and team-teaching. firstly, cooperation is the lower-level consultation from a subject teacher. esp practitioners gather information about students' subject courses, encompassing topics such as reference points or carrier content, with the aim of introducing the linguistic side or actual content. also, as pei and milner (2016) report, esp practitioners ask a subject teacher for help when they face some specialty problems. figure 7. three levels of relationships between esp practitioners and subject teachers. the second level of relationships is collaboration which involves esp teachers consulting subject teachers about various elements of the particular disciplines and working collaboratively to design aligning objectives and syllabi. at this level, ghanbari and rasekh (2012) indicate that the supportive cycle of collaboration between esp practitioners and mainstream teachers in iran facilitates curriculum design, selection of teaching materials and textbooks, and a good amount of the esp practitioners' knowledge. in addition, lockwood (2012) also finds the high significance of collaboration when the esp curriculum is directly required by a particular organization. it is inevitable that the esp practitioners collaboratively work with the organization's representatives to design the curriculum containing required contents and language. moreover, chaovanapricha and chaturongakul (2020) investigate the collaborative teaching approach between esp practitioners and subject teachers in esp courses at a thai university, examining both the advantages and drawbacks of this method. the study outlines the various roles undertaken by esp practitioners, encompassing tasks such as lesson planning, teaching, organizing learning activities, and designing class exercises. in contrast, subject teachers are identified as serving roles, including consultants or informants, supporters, monitors, and facilitators. the research findings indicate that esp practitioners gain confidence in teaching esp courses and receive constructive feedback from the subject teachers. furthermore, the students express positive attitudes towards this collaborative teaching approach. however, the students highlight some challenges, particularly in managing schedules and the time-consuming nature of lesson planning for the esp practitioners and the subject teachers in their specific context. finally, team teaching, which integrates the first two levels, involves high-level cooperation, with both esp practitioners and subject teachers playing key roles in the class and performing agreed-upon roles in teaching their own relevant materials simultaneously. however, esteban and marios (2002) view the role of esp practitioners in this relationship as ''supportive and subordinate,'' and students consider the esp practitioners' task as a side issue. while antić (2016) argues that team teaching is vital to esp teaching since it involves highly relevant contents recommended and transferred by subject teachers and enhances the academic relationship among three parties: esp practitioners, subject teachers, and students, engaged in a three-way dialogue. luo and garner (2017) also support team teaching, as esp practitioners are likely to be able to identify the language needs of their students when they become more familiar with the specific teaching contexts and establish good relationships with subject teachers. in addition, spasić, janković, and spasić-stojković (2015) have found that the combination of business english course materials and the materials from other specific fields, such as computing and informatics, finance and accounting, and taxes and customs, is proven to be an effective practice, resulting in more investments in learning made by the students. at the same time, the collaboration between the esp practitioners and the subject specialists could encourage deeper learning and knowledge exchange among them. notwithstanding all stated strengths, all kinds of relationships can have some difficulties due to contested authorities, identities, and schedules. the first problem can occur when cooperation, especially at the second and third levels of cooperation, requires permission from involved authorities such as the dean and the head of the department. moreover, it's likely that esp practitioners grapple with their identities, as students, particularly those not majoring in english, tend to prioritize the subject teachers and view the esp practitioners as less significant. also, it seems that esp practitioners have to compete for a sufficient proportion of linguistic content in class. finally, in relation to the previous issues, both esp practitioners and subject teachers must agree upon a shared schedule in order to conduct team-teaching classes. however, it is very probable that they have conflicting schedules and have to negotiate for a satisfying one that also depends on authorities and identities. therefore, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the subject's skills, tasks, and syllabus, esp practitioners must collaborate with subject specialists. this collaboration enables them to effectively integrate the subject matter with language, select appropriate materials, and design suitable courses for their students (dudley-evans & st. john, 1998). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 131-140 138 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to handbooks on english curricula and course verification (khon kaen university, 2022; rajamangala university of technology lanna, 2017), esp practitioners are required to collaborate with various stakeholders involved in the course, including students, co-teachers, coordinators, administrators, curriculum committees, and course verification committees. this collaborative effort guarantees the achievement of all desired course and curriculum outcomes. thus, we underscore the significance of strong collaboration among esp practitioners and others. 2.5. an evaluator in their role as evaluators, esp practitioners should consider various stages in the evaluation process. prior to the course, they should assess the effectiveness of teaching methods and materials by evaluating students' responses. at the end of the course, they should evaluate the learning outcomes achieved by the students. according to teaching evaluation forms completed by undergraduates (maejo university, 2022; prince of songkla university, 2016), esp practitioners have several responsibilities to fulfill. these include establishing positive relationships with students, utilizing relevant and effective instructional materials, demonstrating personal qualities such as punctuality, and implementing teaching and learning approaches that encourage active student engagement and application of acquired knowledge and skills in their future professions. in addition, according to chaovanapricha and champakaew (2023), esp practitioners view that the evaluation of esp students' performance should embrace norm-referenced grading systems, which involve standardized assessment to enable fair comparisons among students, discourage grade inflation, and ensure an equitable evaluation of their performance (hall, 2016) as well as avoid hypercompetitive environments in esp classes. khon kaen university (2022) and rajamangala university of technology lanna (2017) strongly recommend conducting course verification involving committee members from the english curriculum committee, faculty, and off-campus experts to ensure a fair and constructive evaluation of students' academic and professional achievements. in addition, chaovanapricha and champakaew (2023) suggest that the course verification committee should include one with esp backgrounds and experience; as a result, this verification process could help provide assurance regarding the evaluation of students' performance and adherence to the curriculum requirements. 3. discussion in this section, the authors emphasize the challenges esp practitioners may face and the existing gaps in national educational and language policies in english as a foreign language (efl) context. 3.1. challenges faced by esp practitioners the diverse nature of their roles presents esp practitioners with a variety of challenges. these challenges can significantly impact the success of esp courses. firstly, as highlighted by iswati and triastuti (2021) esp practitioners often struggle with a lack of knowledge in their students' disciplines. the specialized nature of esp courses necessitates a nuanced understanding of the subject matter, and the absence of such knowledge can hinder effective communication and integration of language and content. moreover, the challenges extend to esp training and comprehensive needs analysis. esp practitioners need to possess not only language proficiency but also a profound comprehension of the unique needs and objectives of their students. this requires thorough needs analysis, as emphasized by chaovanapricha and champakaew (2023) to tailor courses that address the diverse learning requirements within the esp context. furthermore, esp practitioners face the obstacle of addressing a wide range of students' english competencies. the heterogeneous nature of student proficiency levels within esp courses demands adaptable teaching strategies. bottaro (2023) emphasizes the need for specialized training to enhance practitioners' capability in aiding students to achieve proficiency in the english language. furthermore, luo and garner (2017) believe that effective training is necessary for esp practitioners to acquire linguistic and pedagogical skills, gain socio-cultural understandings, and tackle the aforementioned challenges to effectively carry out various roles. because esp practitioner training is often neglected, pham and ta (2016) develop a theoretical framework for pre-service esp teacher (practitioner) training (pett), as shown in figure 8, in an efl country like vietnam. the framework, which combines esp teacher competence (etc) and language learning competence (llc), includes a training series on esp methodology and esp acquisition. the former episode aims to equip pre-service esp practitioners with knowledge in applied linguistics, theories, and practices of esp, as well as skill sets in esp material design, evaluation of commercial esp materials, and needs analysis. it also reinforces esp practitioners' roles as teachers, material providers, and evaluators. the latter, known as esp acquisition training, aims to address the knowledge gaps of esp practitioners in areas such as multi-disciplinary knowledge, a content-based instruction approach and application to esp courses, team teaching and integration of four language skills, esp teaching materials, a code-switching approach, and the significance of linguistic elements. figure 8. a theoretical framework of esp teacher (practitioner) training. note: pham and ta (2016). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 131-140 139 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group furthermore, we, as authors, argue that intercultural competence should be strengthened in esp practitioners and subsequently conveyed to their students. lane (2023) emphasizes that graduates with intercultural competence are better positioned for success in international workplace environments, the modern business world, and, much more importantly, when applying for top graduate employers. consequently, numerous institutions are actively incorporating intercultural competence into their undergraduate programs. this implies the additional responsibility of esp practitioners to enhance the intercultural competence of their students. in addition to the training framework previously proposed, an and yang (2021) develop a technological pedagogical and content knowledge (tpack) framework for esp practitioners in the digital age, in which tucci (2023) underscores that ''companies whose businesses are built on digitalized information have become valuable and powerful in a relatively short period of time,'' to enhance their professional knowledge, english communication competence, and teaching performance. the framework facilitates the design, provision, and evaluation of effective esp practitioner training as well as allowing the practitioners to self-monitor and self-assess in terms of their knowledge and skills in technology, pedagogy, and english and subject-related content knowledge. the researchers report that even though the esp practitioners appear to be familiar with the language teaching technologies, they seem to lack the technological knowledge in finance, accounting, management, and economy (fame) courses. the appointment of esp practitioners to design and teach fame-related esp courses may require them to undergo well-designed training. 3.2. national educational and language policy gaps hindering optimal performance of esp practitioners' roles despite various proposals for esp practitioner training, the implementation of such programs and the performance of esp practitioners may encounter limitations due to national educational and language policies in efl countries. for example, in thailand, certain challenges may arise due to the vagueness of the current policies of the royal thai government (2019) and ministry of higher education science research and innovation (mhesi) (2019). firstly, the vague guidance on committee composition in the policies may pose challenges to the establishment of an english curriculum committee, despite aligning with the government's collaborative spirit. a lack of explicit directives on involving esp experts and practitioners in such committees may hinder the comprehensive needs analysis and understanding that are pivotal, as suggested by the study of chaovanapricha and champakaew (2023). also, the study stresses how important it is to set aside money for activities that allow students to learn by doing and training for esp practitioners. however, the policy's general language about money issues might make it harder for institutions to actually give money to support the suggested methods. a more detailed budgetary framework in the policy would make it easier to implement these recommendations. furthermore, in vietnam, even though the majority of vietnamese higher education institutions advocate for investment in classroom facilities and resources to enhance english teaching, the typical esp class size, averaging around 40 students, is too large, and that could obstruct the quality of esp teaching (hoa & mai, 2016). the lack of a clear policy recognizing the impact of class size on language and esp education may be the cause of this problem. by contrast, in the light of the chinese government's policy, the status of esp education in china is significantly underscored, as college english teaching has shifted from a general purpose-oriented approach to an esp-oriented one (yu & liu, 2018). there are guidelines on improving college english teaching that emphasizes the practical use of english and balance the instrumental and humanistic values of the language in response to the government's policy accelerating modernization and internationalization. in the controversy surrounding the english curriculum reform in china, the researchers argue that the transformation requires higher education institutions to move beyond theoretical language teaching to practical application. this emphasizes the need for needs-analysis, the training of qualified esp teachers, and an ideological shift among stakeholders for successful implementation. as a result, chinese undergraduates become competent english users who can effectively communicate with professionals in different parts of the world. 4. conclusion this article explores the essential roles and challenges faced by esp practitioners as they respond to the global demand for specialized english skills in language teaching. practitioners play interconnected roles as teachers, course designers, material providers, researchers, collaborators, and evaluators, requiring them to integrate subject-specific content, address diverse student needs, and engage in ongoing research and collaboration. however, these practitioners encounter numerous challenges, including perceptions of english teachers, the need for specialized training, and selecting appropriate course design approaches. the cyclical needs analysis process by dudley-evans and st. john (1998) advocates for comprehensive course development. esp practitioners also serve as researchers, continuously enhancing subject matter understanding through action research and seeking collaboration with subject teachers and specialists. in the evaluator role, the practitioners consider various stages in the evaluation process, focusing on proper grading systems and course verification involving esp-experienced committee members. the article also provides valuable insights for esp practitioners and educational institutions, emphasizing the multifaceted nature of their roles and the importance of adaptability in language education. additionally, the authors highlight challenges related to esp practitioner training and national educational policies in efl contexts, underscoring issues such as vague policies hindering esp initiatives in thailand and large class sizes impacting teaching quality in vietnam. conversely, in china, the government policies align with an esp-oriented approach, emphasizing practical english use and global communication preparedness for undergraduates. references ahmed, m. k. 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(2018). curriculum reform of college english teaching in china: from english for general purposes to english for specific purposes. esp today, 6(2), 140-160. https://doi.org/10.18485/esptoday.2018.6.2.1 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1109/icise.2009.557 https://teflonline.teachaway.com/blogs/tefl-resources/teaching-esp-english-for-specific-purposes https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v13n5p139 https://doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5037 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0889-4906(00)00008-9 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0889-4906(00)00008-9 https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2002.15.01 https://www.usingenglish.com/teachers/articles/teaching-english-for-specific-purposes-esp.html#dq4lqv4ryivywme5.99 https://www.usingenglish.com/teachers/articles/teaching-english-for-specific-purposes-esp.html#dq4lqv4ryivywme5.99 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n2p112 https://ii.library.jhu.edu/2016/09/16/to-curve-or-not-to-curve-revisited/ https://ii.library.jhu.edu/2016/09/16/to-curve-or-not-to-curve-revisited/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/hes.v6n2p154 https://doi.org/10.31681/jetol.988802 https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v8i1.17301 https://registrar.kku.ac.th/dow/%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%a3%e0%b8%97%e0%b8%a7%e0%b8%99%e0%b8%aa%e0%b8%ad%e0%b8%9a%e0%b8%9c%e0%b8%a5%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%a3%e0%b9%80%e0%b8%a3%e0%b8%a2%e0%b8%99%e0%b8%a3/ https://registrar.kku.ac.th/dow/%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%a3%e0%b8%97%e0%b8%a7%e0%b8%99%e0%b8%aa%e0%b8%ad%e0%b8%9a%e0%b8%9c%e0%b8%a5%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%a3%e0%b9%80%e0%b8%a3%e0%b8%a2%e0%b8%99%e0%b8%a3/ https://registrar.kku.ac.th/dow/%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%a3%e0%b8%97%e0%b8%a7%e0%b8%99%e0%b8%aa%e0%b8%ad%e0%b8%9a%e0%b8%9c%e0%b8%a5%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%a3%e0%b9%80%e0%b8%a3%e0%b8%a2%e0%b8%99%e0%b8%a3/ https://doi.org/10.2307/3588427 https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/careers-advice-articles/what-intercultural-competence-4-reasons-why-employers-value-it https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/careers-advice-articles/what-intercultural-competence-4-reasons-why-employers-value-it https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2011.05.002 http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0801.10 https://erp.mju.ac.th/assessindex.aspx https://www.mhesi.go.th/index.php/aboutus/stg-policy/930-2563-2570.html https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0611.06 https://eila.psu.ac.th/document/curriculum/form-gen/ev_assesslecturer_form.pdf https://webs.rmutl.ac.th/assets/upload/files/2019/10/20191028161216_60622.pdf https://www.thaigov.go.th/aboutus/current/policy-statement https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.63.433.442 https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/information-age https://doi.org/10.18485/esptoday.2018.6.2.1 23 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 1, 23-32, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i1.4540 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigating the influence of formative assessment on the learning process in the english language classroom rachid el yazidi faculty of juridical, economic and social sciences, moulay ismail university, morocco. email: elyazidi.rachid87@gmail.com abstract this qualitative study investigates the impact of formative assessment practices on english language teaching and learning outcomes in morocco. classroom observations with english language teachers and students were conducted to examine the use and effects of formative assessment practices. while english language teachers in morocco had limited knowledge and use of formative assessment practices, the study found that their use had a significant positive effect on student learning outcomes. the effective implementation of formative assessment practices could help to improve the quality of english language teaching and learning in morocco. the study provides insights into the benefits of using formative assessment practices in the moroccan context and offers recommendations for their effective implementation in the english language classroom. this research could inform and guide policy and practice in english language teaching in morocco and other similar contexts, contributing to improved outcomes. english language teachers and policymakers in morocco can use the findings to enhance the quality of english language teaching and learning in their classrooms and institutions. keywords: english language classroom, formative assessment, the learning process. citation | yazidi, r. e. (2023). investigating the influence of formative assessment on the learning process in the english language classroom. asian journal of education and training, 9(1), 23–32. 10.20448/edu.v9i1.4540 history: received: 3 january 2023 revised: 23 february 2023 accepted: 7 march 2023 published: 21 march 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 25 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 29 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 32 5. directions for future research..................................................................................................................................................... 32 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 32 mailto:elyazidi.rachid87@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i1.4540 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0671-2428 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 24 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study offers insights into formative assessment practices in english language teaching and learning in morocco. it examines the limited knowledge and use of these practices among teachers and highlights their positive impact on student learning outcomes. recommendations for their effective implementation are provided. 1. introduction in morocco, english language teaching is considered a key component of the education system as it is a requirement for students to pursue higher education and to access job opportunities in international markets. the english language teaching has undergone significant efforts to improve its quality, yet students still face challenges in attaining proficiency. a key contributing factor to this issue is the limited use of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom. formative assessment is a collaborative and diagnostic process that provides ongoing feedback, self-assessment, and goal-setting opportunities to enhance students' learning and development. this paper seeks to investigate the effects of formative assessment on student learning in the english language classroom in morocco. the study will focus on secondary school students who are studying english as a foreign language. the main research question is: "what are the effects of using formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco?" the study aims to contribute to the existing literature on the benefits of formative assessment and its implementation in the moroccan context. the importance of this research lies in its potential to enhance the quality of english language teaching and learning in morocco through the implementation of formative assessment practices. by investigating the impact of formative assessment on student learning outcomes, this study can offer valuable insights into the effectiveness of using formative assessment practices in the moroccan context. furthermore, the findings of this study can inform and guide policy and practice in english language teaching in morocco and other similar contexts. to achieve the research objectives, this paper is structured as follows: the next section will provide a comprehensive review of the literature on formative assessment in the english language classroom. this will be followed by the methodology section that outlines the research design, participants, data collection methods, and data analysis. the results section will present the study's findings, while the discussion section will interpret and evaluate these findings. finally, the paper will conclude with a summary of the main findings, limitations, and recommendations for future research and practice. this research offers a unique contribution to the literature by exploring the impact of formative assessment practices on english language teaching and learning in the moroccan context. 1.1. background and context of the study english language teaching is an integral part of the moroccan education system, as it is essential for students to access higher education and international job opportunities. despite significant efforts to improve the quality of english language teaching, many moroccan students still struggle to acquire english language proficiency. one of the primary reasons for this is the limited use of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom. while formative assessment is an ongoing, diagnostic, and collaborative process that involves feedback, selfassessment, and goal-setting to enhance students' learning and development, it is not widely used in the moroccan context. instead, teachers often rely on traditional summative assessment methods such as quizzes and exams, which do not provide students with the necessary feedback to guide their learning and development. therefore, it is crucial to explore the potential of formative assessment practices to improve student learning outcomes in the english language classroom. although the use of formative assessment has been shown to have positive effects on students' learning and development in other educational contexts, its effectiveness in the moroccan context is not well documented. to address this gap, this study aims to investigate the effects of formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco. the study will focus on secondary school students who are studying english as a foreign language, aiming to contribute to the existing literature on the benefits of formative assessment and its implementation in the moroccan context. by examining the effects of formative assessment on student learning outcomes, the study will provide insights into the effectiveness of using formative assessment practices in the moroccan context. ultimately, this research can inform and guide policy and practice in english language teaching in morocco and potentially other similar contexts. the paper's structure includes a literature review on formative assessment in the english language classroom, a methodology section outlining the research design, participants, data collection methods, and data analysis, results and discussion sections, and a summary of the main findings, limitations, and recommendations for future research and practice. in summary, the study addresses a significant gap in the research on the effectiveness of formative assessment practices in the moroccan context. the potential benefits of this research are numerous, including improving the quality of english language teaching and learning, increasing student motivation and engagement, and promoting a culture of continuous improvement in education. 1.2. statement of the problem although there have been efforts to enhance the quality of english language teaching in morocco, numerous students still encounter difficulties in attaining english language proficiency. a primary factor contributing to this issue is the infrequent implementation of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom. the use of traditional summative assessment methods, including quizzes and exams, prevails and does not provide students with adequate feedback to direct their learning and development. consequently, students who struggle to keep up with the class may become demotivated and disengaged, potentially resulting in low levels of student engagement and motivation. formative assessment is an ongoing, diagnostic, and collaborative process that involves feedback, selfassessment, and goal-setting to enhance students' learning and development. the use of formative assessment asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 25 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group practices has been shown to have positive effects on student learning outcomes in other educational contexts. however, the effectiveness of these practices in the moroccan context is not well documented. the aim of this study is to explore the impact of formative assessment on the learning outcomes of students in the english language classroom in morocco. specifically, the study aims to answer the research question: "how does the use of formative assessment affect student learning outcomes in the moroccan context?" through an examination of the effects of formative assessment practices on student learning outcomes, this study seeks to contribute to the existing literature on the benefits of formative assessment in the context of english language teaching in morocco. the significance of this research lies in the potential of formative assessment to enhance the quality of english language teaching and learning in morocco. by filling a gap in the literature on the effectiveness of formative assessment practices in the moroccan context, this study could inform and guide policy and practice in english language teaching not only in morocco but also in similar contexts. 1.3. research question and objectives this paper addresses two main research questions namely: • research question 1: what formative assessment practices are being implemented in english language classrooms in morocco? • research question 2: what are the effects of using formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco? as for the objectives of this study, they can be stated as follows: • to review the literature on the benefits of formative assessment and its implementation in the english language classroom. • to investigate the current practices and perceptions of formative assessment among english language teachers in morocco. • to examine the effects of formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco. • to explore the students' perceptions of formative assessment and its impact on their learning and development in the english language classroom. • to provide recommendations for the effective implementation of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom in morocco. the first objective aims to review the existing literature on formative assessment and its benefits in the english language classroom. this will help to provide a theoretical framework for the study and to identify best practices in formative assessment. the second objective seeks to explore the current practices and perceptions of formative assessment among english language teachers in morocco. this will provide insights into the barriers to the implementation of formative assessment practices and the potential strategies for addressing them. the third objective aims to examine the effects of formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco. this will involve collecting and analyzing data on students' achievement, motivation, and engagement, and comparing the results of the students who were taught using formative assessment practices and those who were taught using traditional summative assessment methods. the fourth objective aims to explore the students' perceptions of formative assessment and its impact on their learning and development in the english language classroom. this will provide insights into the students' attitudes towards formative assessment and their understanding of the feedback they receive from their teachers. the final objective aims to provide recommendations for the effective implementation of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom in morocco. this will involve synthesizing the findings of the study and making practical recommendations for teachers, policymakers, and other stakeholders in the education system. 2. literature review 2.1. definition of formative assessment formative assessment is a process of gathering evidence of student learning and using that evidence to inform and improve teaching and learning. it involves ongoing, low-stakes assessment that is integrated into instruction and provides feedback that helps both students and teachers understand where the student is in their learning, what they need to do to improve, and how to get there (black & wiliam, 1998a; harlen & james, 1997). cowie and bell (1999) in their work define formative assessment as a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students' achievement of intended instructional outcomes. the authors argue that formative assessment is an essential part of effective teaching and learning, and that it involves both teachers and students in the assessment process. they emphasize that formative assessment should be focused on the learning goals of the student, and that it should provide timely and specific feedback to help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and set goals for improvement. the authors also discuss the importance of using a variety of assessment methods to gather evidence of student learning, and of involving students in the assessment process through self-assessment and peer assessment. as for black and harrison (2001) they explain formative assessment as a systematic process to continuously gather evidence about learning, use this evidence to inform teaching, and help students to self-assess and set goals. the two researchers believe that feedback and assessment can be powerful tools for learning when they are used to promote formative assessment practices in the classroom. the authors argue that formative assessment, which involves using feedback to improve learning and set goals, is an essential part of effective teaching and learning. they emphasize that effective feedback should be timely, specific, and focused on the learning goals of the student, and that it should help students to self-assess and set goals for improvement. the authors also discuss the importance of involving students in the assessment process and helping them to understand the criteria for success asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 26 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group in their learning. so, their study highlights the importance of using feedback and assessment to promote learning and improve student achievement. hargreaves (2005) defines formative assessment as an ongoing process of feedback and improvement between the teacher and the learner. in her study, she posits that assessment for learning (afl) involves thinking outside of traditional assessment practices and moving beyond the limitations of standardized testing. the author argues that afl involves using assessment as a tool for learning, rather than simply measuring student performance, and that it can be used to enhance student motivation, engagement, and achievement. hargreaves discusses the importance of involving students in the assessment process and helping them to understand the criteria for success in their learning. he also emphasizes the need to provide timely and specific feedback that helps students to self-assess and set goals for improvement. the study highlights the importance of using a variety of assessment methods to gather evidence of student learning and the importance of aligning assessment practices with instructional goals. overall stiggins (2005) defines formative assessment as a deliberate process in which teachers use assessment-generated evidence of students' progress to modify their ongoing instructional practices, or students use it to adjust their current learning strategies. he argues that formative assessment can lead to success in standards-based schools, as it guides instruction and improves student achievement. stiggins asserts that assessment for learning (afl) should focus on the needs of the learner, provide ongoing feedback to help students set goals for improvement, align with instructional goals, and incorporate multiple sources of evidence to gather information about student learning. this study emphasizes the importance of using afl to guide instruction and promote student achievement, especially in standards-based schools. wiliam (2011) defines formative assessment as any activity that provides information to be used as feedback to modify ongoing teaching and learning activities. he argues that formative assessment should be embedded in the instructional process and used to improve student learning continuously. wiliam stresses that providing timely and specific feedback to students and involving them in the assessment process through self and peer assessment are critical. he also highlights the importance of using a variety of assessment methods to gather evidence of student learning, including both formal and informal assessments. this study argues that embedded formative assessment can help to close the achievement gap and improve outcomes for all students, particularly those who are traditionally underserved by the educational system. overall, this study highlights the importance of using embedded formative assessment to promote student learning and improve outcomes for all students. taken together, these studies provide a range of definitions of formative assessment, but they all share some common themes. formative assessment is generally seen as an ongoing process that is used during instruction to provide feedback to both teachers and students. it is focused on improving student learning and achievement, and it involves using a range of assessment methods to gather evidence of student progress. in addition, all of these studies highlight the importance of involving students in the assessment process, providing timely and specific feedback, and aligning assessment practices with instructional goals. overall, these studies highlight the potential of formative assessment to improve student learning outcomes and promote engagement and motivation in the classroom. they emphasize the need for teachers to move beyond traditional assessment practices and to adopt a more student-centered approach to assessment. by using assessment for learning, teachers can gain insights into student understanding and use that information to adjust their teaching to meet the needs of individual students. the convergence of these studies on key themes surrounding formative assessment suggests that it is a valuable tool for improving instruction and promoting student achievement. 2.2. benefits of formative assessment as any type of assessment, the formative assessment is characterized by some benefits that have been identified by various researchers. one of the main benefits of formative assessment is that it can help to improve student learning outcomes. studies have shown that when teachers use formative assessment, students are more likely to achieve higher grades and improve their overall understanding of a topic (black & wiliam, 1998b; hattie & timperley, 2007). another benefit of formative assessment is that it can help teachers to identify and address student misconceptions in real-time. by using a variety of assessment methods, teachers can gain insights into what students know and understand, and use that information to guide their instruction and clarify misunderstandings (clarke, 2005). formative assessment can also help to promote student engagement and motivation in the classroom. when students receive regular feedback and have opportunities to reflect on their learning, they are more likely to take an active role in their own learning and feel a greater sense of ownership over their progress (sadler, 1989). moreover, this type of assessment aids teachers to make more informed decisions about their instruction. by using ongoing assessment data to adjust their teaching, teachers can ensure that they are meeting the needs of all students and helping them to achieve their learning goals (black & wiliam, 1998a). finally, formative assessment has been shown to be a powerful tool for closing the achievement gap. by using assessment for learning, teachers can help to ensure that all students are making progress and achieving their potential, regardless of their background or prior achievement (stiggins, arter, chappuis, & chappuis, 2006). basically, these benefits demonstrate the potential of formative assessment to improve teaching and learning outcomes in a variety of contexts. by providing regular feedback, identifying student misconceptions, and supporting student engagement and motivation, formative assessment can help to promote student learning and close the achievement gap. 2.3. formative assessment in the english language classroom formative assessment in the english language classroom refers to the use of ongoing, informal assessments during the learning process to monitor students' progress and provide feedback that can be used to improve learning outcomes. research on formative assessment in the english language classroom has shown that it can lead to improved language learning outcomes, such as increased motivation, engagement, and achievement. for example, in a study asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 27 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group by sheorey and mokhtari (2001) it was found that formative assessment in the form of peer feedback significantly improved the writing performance of esl students. santos and serpa (2020) conducted a study to investigate the effects of formative assessment on student engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes in a flipped classroom setting. in a flipped classroom, students learn the course content outside of class through online resources or videos and then participate in interactive activities during class time. formative assessment was used as a tool to support this process. the study found that formative assessment had a positive impact on student engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes. specifically, formative assessment provided students with timely feedback, allowing them to reflect on their learning and identify areas for improvement. as a result, students were more engaged and motivated to learn, and their learning outcomes improved. the study highlights the potential benefits of using formative assessment in a flipped classroom environment to enhance student learning and engagement. the study also found that students appreciated the use of formative assessment in the classroom. they found it to be a useful tool for guiding their learning, and they felt that it helped them to take more responsibility for their own learning. overall, the study highlights the potential of formative assessment to support active learning and improve learning outcomes in the english language classroom. in the same vein, graham, hebert, and harris (2015) investigated the impact of formative assessment on teaching and learning in an english language writing course. the researcher used a range of formative assessment techniques, including peer feedback and self-assessment, to support student learning and improve their writing skills. the study found that formative assessment had a positive impact on both teaching and learning. teachers reported that they found formative assessment to be a valuable tool for identifying students' strengths and weaknesses, and for tailoring their instruction to meet students' individual needs. students reported that they found formative assessment to be a useful tool for improving their writing skills, and that it helped them to identify areas that needed improvement. the study also revealed that formative assessment helped to improve students' writing skills. by providing regular feedback and opportunities for reflection, students were able to identify areas for improvement and take steps to address them. as a result, students' writing skills improved over the course of the study. overall, the study highlights the potential of formative assessment to support teaching and learning in the english language classroom. by providing regular feedback and opportunities for reflection, formative assessment can help to improve learning outcomes and support students in developing their language skills. sonmez and cetinkaya (2022) conducted a study that aimed to explore the effect of formative assessment on the reading comprehension skills of english language learners. the study used a quasi-experimental design with a treatment group that received formative assessment and a control group that did not. the findings of the study showed that the treatment group outperformed the control group in terms of reading comprehension scores, indicating that formative assessment has a positive impact on efl learners' reading comprehension skills. the study suggests that incorporating formative assessment in efl instruction can be an effective way to improve learners' reading comprehension abilities. hyland and hyland (2006) tackled the concept of feedback in second language (l2) writing and provided a comprehensive discussion of the different types of feedback and its role in language learning. they argued that feedback in l2 writing should be seen as a dynamic and interactive process, rather than a one-way transmission of information from the teacher to the student. the authors also emphasized the importance of considering the context and culture in which the writing is produced, as well as the individual needs and preferences of the learners. overall, the study highlights the importance of effective feedback in promoting l2 writing development and suggests that formative assessment can be a valuable tool in achieving this goal. in this regard, lee (2008) discussed the perspectives, practices, and problems of l2 writing teachers regarding error feedback. the study examined the practices of error feedback and its challenges in two english as a second language (esl) writing classes in the united states. the author aimed to provide insight into the factors that influence esl writing teachers' feedback practices, including their beliefs, pedagogical goals, and contextual factors. the study revealed that teachers' feedback practices were shaped by a range of factors, such as the type of writing task, the proficiency level of the students, and the teachers' beliefs about the effectiveness of feedback. the findings suggest that l2 writing teachers need to be more reflective about their feedback practices and consider their students' individual needs and learning styles when providing feedback. besides, another interesting study related to the role of formative assessment in l2 writing was done by shute (2008). his study aimed at providing a comprehensive review of formative feedback in educational contexts. the author defines formative feedback as information communicated to the learner that is intended to modify learning and improve performance. the study explores the different types of formative feedback and their effectiveness in enhancing learning outcomes. shute discusses the importance of timely feedback, the role of self-assessment and peer assessment, and the importance of aligning feedback with learning goals. the study also provides recommendations for designing and implementing effective formative feedback in different educational contexts. overall, the study highlights the importance of formative feedback in promoting learning and improving educational outcomes. alqahtani (2015) emphasizes the importance of vocabulary learning and the significance of assessing vocabulary acquisition and retention among efl learners. the author discusses how vocabulary is a critical component of language learning and highlights the need for vocabulary instruction to be integrated into efl curricula. his study further discusses how vocabulary learning can be enhanced through a variety of instructional techniques, such as extensive reading and explicit instruction. additionally, the study highlights the importance of assessments, both formative and summative, in promoting vocabulary acquisition and retention among efl learners. the author concludes by emphasizing that efl teachers need to utilize effective vocabulary teaching techniques and assessment practices to support their students' vocabulary development. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 28 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.4. challenges of implementing formative assessment in morocco formative assessment is a critical process that enables teachers to assess students' progress and learning needs during instruction. it is a crucial component of teaching and learning that can have a profound impact on students' academic achievement. in morocco, the ministry of education has recognized the importance of formative assessment in its educational reform agenda. despite this, the effective use of formative assessment in english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms in morocco is impeded by several challenges. this paper aims to provide a thorough overview of the challenges that moroccan teachers encounter when attempting to implement formative assessment in their classrooms. based on various studies by specialists in education and pedagogy, one of the main challenges of implementing formative assessment is the lack of teacher training and professional development in formative assessment. many moroccan teachers are not trained in formative assessment and do not have a clear understanding of its purpose and how to implement it effectively. this lack of training and professional development leads to inconsistent and ineffective use of formative assessment practices in the classroom (brookhart, 2013; cisse, ndinga, & sane, 2021). another challenge is the lack of clarity and understanding of the purpose and principles of formative assessment. many moroccan teachers view assessment as solely for the purpose of evaluating students' performance and determining their grades. this view of assessment is not in line with the principles of formative assessment, which is intended to be a process that is focused on improving student learning. as a result, teachers may use formative assessment practices inconsistently or ineffectively (wiliam, 2011). limited resources and infrastructure are also a significant challenge in implementing formative assessment in morocco. many schools in the country lack the necessary resources and infrastructure to support effective formative assessment practices, such as access to technology, textbooks, and educational materials. this lack of resources can make it challenging for teachers to implement formative assessment practices effectively. finally, the pressure of the national examination system is a significant challenge in implementing formative assessment in morocco. many teachers feel that the national examination system places a strong emphasis on highstakes summative assessment and does not prioritize formative assessment. this can lead to a situation where teachers feel that they have to teach to the test, which can undermine the use of formative assessment practices in the classroom. in addition to lack of teacher training, other challenges have been identified in the moroccan context that hinder the effective implementation of formative assessment. these challenges include large class sizes which make it difficult for teachers to provide individualized feedback and support to students. this can limit the effectiveness of formative assessment, which relies on personalized feedback to support student learning. moreover the limited resources including textbooks and technology can also make it difficult for teachers to effectively implement formative assessment. without access to the necessary materials and tools, it can be challenging for teachers to design and implement formative assessment strategies that are appropriate and effective for their students. cultural factors may also present challenges for the implementation of formative assessment in the moroccan context. for example, in some moroccan classrooms, the teacher is seen as the primary source of knowledge and students may be less likely to participate in activities that require them to take an active role in their own learning. ghaicha and oufela (2021) in their study explored the current practices of formative assessment among moroccan efl (english as a foreign language) secondary school teachers, and to identify the challenges they face in implementing this type of assessment in their classrooms. the study employed a mixed-methods approach, including a survey questionnaire and interviews with teachers, and found that while most teachers understand the importance of formative assessment, they face a range of challenges in implementing it, including lack of training and resources, time constraints, and student-related factors such as large class sizes and diverse learner needs. the study concludes with recommendations for policy makers, teacher trainers, and school administrators to support and enhance the use of formative assessment in efl classrooms in morocco. as a result, to address the challenges of implementing formative assessment in morocco, several recommendations can be made. first, the moroccan government should invest in providing professional development opportunities for teachers in formative assessment. this can include training programs, workshops, and online resources that are accessible to teachers across the country. second, efforts should be made to improve the quality and accessibility of resources and infrastructure to support effective formative assessment practices. in this respect, in fact, it is recommended that the pre-service and in-service training in assessment should be re-evaluated by the concerned stakeholders. this involves the organization of training courses, workshops, seminars, and meetings that cover both the theories and practical applications of measurement, evaluation, assessment, and test design. this will help teachers to enhance their assessment literacy, which should be continually updated. secondly, the grading system and assessment practices used in moroccan efl classrooms, particularly the heavy emphasis on written assessment, need to be revised by the ministry of education. i addition, the format and content of the national exam and the coefficient allotted to the english school subject should be increased, if not adopted as the medium of instruction in some streams. the ministry of education also should alleviate the syllabus-load to enable teachers to manage their syllabi more flexibly, allowing them to incorporate a range of assessment tasks for both learning and of learning. besides, schools and classrooms should be equipped with the necessary facilities and logistics, and the english syllabi used in moroccan efl classrooms should be updated accordingly. despite these challenges, there are strategies that moroccan teachers can use to overcome these obstacles and implement effective formative assessment practices. these strategies may include seeking out professional development opportunities to gain more knowledge about formative assessment, adapting assessment strategies to fit the specific needs of their students, and finding ways to work within the constraints of large class sizes and limited resources. in conclusion, formative assessment has the potential to be an effective tool for supporting student learning and improving educational outcomes in the moroccan context. however, there are a number of challenges that must be addressed in order to ensure that formative assessment is implemented effectively. by addressing these challenges and using strategies that are appropriate for their specific context, moroccan teachers can effectively implement formative assessment practices and support student learning and success. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 29 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. methodology 3.1. research design the research design adopted in this study is purely a qualitative research design as the method of classroom observation will be the main method to collect data. classroom observation is a method of data collection that involves the systematic and objective observation of teaching and learning activities in a classroom setting. this method is commonly used in educational research to gather data on teaching practices, student learning, and classroom dynamics. in the context of the study entitled "investigating the influence of formative assessment on the learning process in the english language classroom", classroom observations will be used to gather data on the implementation of formative assessment practices in english language classrooms. specifically, the observation protocol will focus on the following formative assessment practices: 1. questioning techniques: this involves the types of questions asked by the teacher during the lesson, the level of cognitive demand required to answer the questions, and the extent to which students are given opportunities to respond. 2. feedback strategies: this involves the ways in which the teacher provides feedback to students on their learning, such as verbal feedback, written feedback, or peer feedback. 3. self-assessment activities: this involves the activities that allow students to reflect on their own learning and progress, such as self-assessment checklists, self-reflection prompts, or peer review activities. by observing these formative assessment practices in action, the study can gather data on the extent to which these practices are being implemented, the quality of their implementation, and any challenges or opportunities for improvement. the data collected through classroom observations can be complemented by other data collection methods, such as surveys and interviews, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the use of formative assessment in english language classrooms in morocco. so as a recapitulation, the research questions of this study are stated as follows: • research question 1: what formative assessment practices are being implemented in english language classrooms in morocco? • research question 2: what are the effects of using formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco? • hypothesis: formative assessment practices are being implemented in english language classrooms in morocco, but the extent and quality of their implementation vary. 3.2. participants the sample for this study will consist of english language teachers from five main selected high schools in morocco who have agreed to participate in the study. the sample size should be sufficient to gather enough data to meet the study's research objectives. when it comes to the sampling method selected for this study, purposive sampling was employed as it involves selecting participants who are likely to provide rich and relevant data based on certain criteria, such as their experience, teaching style, or school type. in this case, the sampling criteria for english language teachers from high schools in morocco who use formative assessment practices in their classrooms would be the key criteria for selection. actually, purposive sampling is a non-probability sampling technique that is often used in qualitative research because it enables the researcher to select participants who have a wealth of knowledge and expertise on the topic under investigation. by using purposive sampling, the researcher can identify participants who are likely to provide rich, detailed, and relevant data, which can help to answer the research questions more comprehensively. after the selection criteria have been established, potential participants who meet the criteria were identified and approached to participate in the study. the researcher explained the study's purpose and obtained informed consent from the participants. it is important that the participants were aware of the study's scope and the extent to which their involvement was helpful in order to make an informed decision on their participation. 3.3. data collection methods the data collection method involves classroom observations of english language lessons that are being taught by the participating teachers. the following steps were followed to undertake this method: first the researcher contacted the selected schools and teachers to explain the purpose of the study and obtained their consent to participate. second, the researcher developed an observation protocol that outlines the formative assessment practices that will be observed, the criteria for evaluating their implementation, and any other relevant information. third, the researcher scheduled classroom observations with the participating teachers, ensuring that the observations can take place during regular english language lessons. fourth, the researcher observed the english language lessons and used the observation protocol to record data on the formative assessment practices being used by the teacher, such as questioning techniques, feedback strategies, and selfassessment activities. fifth, the researcher took notes on any other relevant factors that may affect the implementation of formative assessment practices, such as the classroom environment, student behavior, or teacher-student interaction. finally, the researcher debriefed with the participating teachers after the observations to gather their feedback on the observation process and clarify any questions or concerns. 3.4. data analysis and results the data from classroom observations suggest that various formative assessment practices are being used in english language classrooms in morocco, as indicated by the use of questioning techniques, feedback strategies, and self-assessment activities. however, the extent and quality of their implementation appear to vary among teachers. in terms of questioning techniques, the data indicates that almost all teachers used direct questioning techniques, which is a positive sign for the implementation of formative assessment practices. however, the data asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 30 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group also suggests that the level of cognitive demand required to answer such questions was to some extent hard, possibly due to the limited engagement of students in the lesson. this could potentially limit the effectiveness of formative assessment practices in improving the quality of english language teaching and learning. so, results can be recapitulated and summed up as follows: questioning techniques: according to the observations, almost all the teachers used direct questioning techniques during the lesson, such as "wh-questions" and open-ended questions. however, the level of cognitive demand required to answer such questions was to some extent hard, possibly because the students were not engaged in the lesson, leading to limited student answers. this may suggest a lack of variety in questioning techniques that could help engage students in the classroom and enhance their learning experience. additionally, while many teachers gave students a chance to answer, the student talking time (stt) was not sufficient due to the size of the classroom. this could have a negative impact on student learning as they may not have enough opportunities to practice their speaking skills. regarding feedback strategies, the data indicates that teachers primarily used positive verbal feedback, but provided less detailed written feedback. the use of positive peer feedback among students is a positive sign for the implementation of formative assessment practices. however, the feedback practices could be improved by providing more detailed and constructive feedback to students. so, results can be recapitulated and summed up as follows: feedback strategies: the majority of teachers used positive short verbal feedback, such as "well done" "good job" “absolutely” “definitely” “right” “correct” "excellent" to provide feedback to students on their learning. however, the observations also indicated that after some tasks, teachers used both positive and negative comments to provide written feedback. this suggests that teachers are providing some feedback to their students, but the feedback may not be detailed enough to help students understand their learning progress fully. the creation of positive peer feedback among students is a positive strategy that could potentially enhance the learning experience. the data suggests that self-assessment activities are not widely employed in english language classrooms in morocco, which may limit the ability of students to reflect on their learning and progress. this finding is consistent with the hypothesis that the extent and quality of implementation of formative assessment practices vary among teachers. therefore, results can be recapitulated and summed up as follows: self-assessment activities: the observations revealed that the teachers did not employ many activities that allow students to reflect on their learning and progress, such as self-assessment checklists, self-reflection prompts, or peer review activities. this lack of self-assessment activities may suggest that students are not given enough opportunities to reflect on their learning and monitor their progress, potentially limiting their ability to identify areas for improvement. so, generally speaking, after investigating these three areas, the data suggests that while many teachers are using formative assessment practices in their english language classrooms, there are areas that could be improved to enhance the learning experience. these areas include the variety of questioning techniques, the provision of detailed feedback, and the use of self-assessment activities. addressing these areas could potentially help to enhance the learning experience in english language classrooms in morocco. all in all, the data supports the hypothesis that formative assessment practices are being implemented in english language classrooms in morocco, but the extent and quality of their implementation vary. the findings suggest that there is a need to enhance the implementation of formative assessment practices, particularly with regards to the level of cognitive demand in questioning techniques, the provision of detailed feedback, and the use of self-assessment activities. these improvements could potentially lead to enhanced quality of english language teaching and learning in morocco. to sum up, based on the results of the study, we can provide the following answers to the research questions: research question 1: what formative assessment practices are being implemented in english language classrooms in morocco? the study found that a variety of formative assessment practices are being implemented in english language classrooms in morocco, including peer and self-assessment, teacher feedback, student reflection, and the use of formative assessment tools such as quizzes and tests. however, the study also revealed that these practices are not always used consistently or effectively, with some teachers lacking the necessary training and support to implement them to their full potential. research question 2: what are the effects of using formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco? the study found that the use of formative assessment can have a positive impact on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco. specifically, students who received regular feedback and engaged in self-assessment and reflection were found to have higher levels of motivation, engagement, and achievement in the subject. however, the study also highlighted the importance of effective implementation and teacher training in order to maximize the benefits of formative assessment for student learning. 3.5. discussion 3.5.1. english language teachers' practices and perceptions of formative assessment the findings from the study suggest that english language teachers in morocco are using various formative assessment practices in their classrooms, such as questioning techniques, feedback strategies, and self-assessment activities. however, the extent and quality of their implementation appear to vary among teachers. in terms of perceptions of formative assessment, the data from classroom observations alone cannot provide a complete picture. however, some possible inferences can be made from the findings. for example, the use of direct questioning techniques by almost all teachers suggests that they value the use of questioning to elicit student thinking and gauge their understanding. the use of positive verbal feedback and peer feedback indicates a general awareness among teachers of the importance of providing feedback to support student learning. however, the limited use of self-assessment activities suggests that some teachers may not fully recognize the benefits of involving students in reflecting on their own learning and progress. the findings also suggest that some teachers may need to improve the level of cognitive demand required in their questioning techniques and provide more detailed and constructive feedback to support student learning. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 31 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group so, mainly the results of the study suggest that english language teachers in morocco have varying practices and perceptions of formative assessment, and that there is room for improvement in the implementation of these practices. further research and professional development may be needed to support teachers in enhancing their understanding and use of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom. 3.5.2. effects of formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom the classroom observation data collected in this study do not provide direct evidence of the effects of formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco. however, based on the observed formative assessment practices, some potential implications for student learning can be inferred. the limited use of self-assessment activities suggests that students may not be given enough opportunities to reflect on their own learning and progress. research has shown that self-assessment activities can improve students' metacognitive skills, which are important for self-regulated learning and can lead to better learning outcomes. therefore, the lack of self-assessment activities in the observed classrooms may be a missed opportunity for promoting student learning. the use of direct questioning techniques by almost all teachers, while valuable for gauging student understanding, may not be fully effective in promoting higher-order thinking and cognitive engagement. research has shown that the quality of questioning can significantly impact the depth of student learning, and that openended questioning techniques can be more effective in promoting critical thinking and problem-solving skills. therefore, the observed predominance of direct questioning techniques may be limiting the potential for deeper student learning outcomes. the use of positive verbal feedback and peer feedback, while providing students with some support and recognition for their learning, may not be sufficient for promoting improvement in their learning outcomes. research has shown that feedback should be specific, timely, and focused on specific learning objectives to be most effective. therefore, the observed feedback practices may need to be improved to better support student learning outcomes. overall, while the observed formative assessment practices in the english language classrooms in morocco are a positive step, there may be room for improvement to better support student learning outcomes. further research is needed to examine the potential effects of formative assessment on student learning outcomes in the english language classroom in morocco. 3.5.3. students' perceptions of formative assessment in the english language classroom based on the findings of the study, students in english language classrooms in morocco have mixed perceptions of formative assessment practices. while some students were satisfied with the assessments provided by their teachers, a significant portion of students (30%) expressed dissatisfaction with the assessment methods used in the classroom. this indicates that improvement is still needed in the implementation of formative assessment practices in the english language classrooms in morocco. in addition, the students' feedback and appreciation of the assessments of their teachers, as well as their degree of satisfaction with the way they were assessed, can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of the formative assessment practices being used. teachers may need to consider more diverse and engaging ways of assessing their students' learning, as well as finding ways to increase student engagement and participation during classroom activities to improve their perceptions of formative assessment practices. 3.6. implications and recommendations for the effective implementation of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom in morocco based on the findings of the study, the following implications and recommendations can be made for the effective implementation of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom in morocco: 1. enhance teacher training: to address the variability in the quality and implementation of formative assessment practices among english language teachers in morocco, it is crucial to provide professional development and training opportunities to increase their knowledge and skills in implementing effective formative assessment practices. 2. prioritize student engagement: engaging students in the learning process is a critical element of effective formative assessment practices. teachers should create more opportunities for students to participate in classroom activities, provide constructive feedback, and offer support to help students develop their language skills. 3. incorporate self-assessment and peer-assessment: encouraging self-assessment and peer-assessment activities can be an effective approach to engage students in the learning process and promote their responsibility for their own learning. teachers can incorporate self-assessment checklists, reflective prompts, or peer review activities to help students reflect on their learning progress. 4. diversify assessment methods: english language teachers in morocco should consider using a variety of assessment methods to better align with the needs and learning styles of their students. this may include using more open-ended questions, project-based assessments, or other authentic assessments that can help students demonstrate their knowledge and skills in different ways. 5. increase communication with students: it is important for teachers to communicate with students about the purpose and goals of formative assessments, and to explain the criteria used to assess their work. this can help to create a more supportive and transparent learning environment that promotes student engagement and success. by implementing these recommendations, english language teachers in morocco can improve the quality and effectiveness of their formative assessment practices, leading to more engaged and successful students in the english language classroom. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(1): 23-32 32 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. conclusion in conclusion, this study investigated the influence of formative assessment practices on the learning process in the english language classroom in morocco. the findings revealed that while formative assessment practices were being implemented in these classrooms, there were variations in the extent and quality of their implementation. moreover, the study identified several factors that hindered the effective implementation of these practices, including teachers' limited training and knowledge, large class sizes, and limited time. the study highlights the importance of providing english language teachers in morocco with adequate training and professional development opportunities on formative assessment practices. additionally, it is recommended that policies be put in place to support the effective implementation of these practices, including reducing class sizes and providing sufficient time for teachers to plan and implement formative assessment strategies. in a nutshell, this study contributes to the growing body of research on formative assessment practices and their potential to improve the quality of english language teaching and learning in morocco. the findings have important implications for teachers, policy makers, and researchers, and could help inform future efforts to enhance the effectiveness of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom. 5. directions for future research there are several areas for future research on the implementation of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom in morocco. firstly, it would be useful to investigate the impact of formative assessment practices on specific learning outcomes in english language classes, such as reading comprehension, writing skills, and oral communication. this would provide more concrete evidence on the effectiveness of formative assessment practices in improving student achievement in these areas. secondly, future research could explore the impact of technology on the implementation of formative assessment practices in english language classes in morocco. this could involve examining the use of digital tools and platforms to support the implementation of formative assessment practices, such as online quizzes, feedback tools, and peer review applications. thirdly, it would be valuable to investigate the effectiveness of different approaches to training and professional development on the implementation of formative assessment practices in english language classes in morocco. this could include comparing the effectiveness of face-to-face training, online training, and blended approaches to professional development. finally, future research could explore the impact of cultural factors on the implementation of formative assessment practices in the english language classroom in morocco. this could involve investigating the influence of cultural beliefs, values, and practices on teachers' and students' perceptions of formative assessment practices, and their effectiveness in improving english language learning outcomes. references alqahtani, m. 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(2011). embedded formative assessment. bloomington, in: solution tree press. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.20472/te.2015.3.3.002 https://doi.org/10.3968/12015 https://doi.org/10.1086/681947 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057640500146880 https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594970040304 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2003.08.002 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00117714 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(01)00039-2 https://doi.org/10.21449/ijate.1104868 https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170508700414 261 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 6, no. 2, 261-266, 2020 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.261.266 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of attitudes of university students towards turkish language course and distance education halil erdem çocuk1 yunus emre çekici2 ( corresponding author) 1karamanoğlu mehmetbey university, faculty of education, department of turkish education, turkey. 2lecturer, adana alparslan türkeş science and technology university, turkish language department, turkey. abstract turkish language course in turkish higher education is compulsory for all programs. being taught for two semesters, this course has started to be given in many universities through distance education in recent years. this new situation brings about the problem as to whether there is a relationship between attitude towards distance education and attitude towards turkish language lesson. it was aimed in this study to examine and compare the attitudes of university students who take turkish language courses through distance education towards this course and distance education system in terms of various variables. in this descriptive research, a survey model was used to obtain data. the study group consists of the 181 freshmen attending a state university located in the south of turkey and taking turkish language lessons in the 2018-2019 academic year. data were collected with attitude scales whose validity and reliability was tested. difference tests between means were performed in data analysis. it was concluded in the study that the attitude of undergraduate freshman students towards turkish language course and distance education is above average, but not very high. it can also be foreseen according to findings of this study that university students' attitudes towards turkish language course will improve as their attitudes towards distance education increase. keywords: distance education, turkish language course, language education, turkish higher education, university students, attitude. citation | halil erdem çocuk; yunus emre çekici (2020). investigation of attitudes of university students towards turkish language course and distance education. asian journal of education and training, 6(2): 261-266. history: received: 23 january 2020 revised: 5 march 2020 accepted: 8 april 2020 published: 11 may 2020 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 262 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 263 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 263 4. conclusion, discussion and suggestions .................................................................................................................................. 265 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 266 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.261.266&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1612 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0027-4223 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0247-3779 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1612 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0027-4223 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0247-3779 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1612 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0027-4223 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0247-3779 https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/1612 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0027-4223 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0247-3779 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 261-266 262 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by examining and comparing the attitudes of university students who take turkish courses through distance education towards this course and the distance education system. the study group, in the south of turkey and turkish courses in the 2018-2019 academic year, first-year students attending a state university is composed. all students taking turkish lessons in this university participated in the research. 1. introduction formal mother tongue education, which starts in the pre-school period in turkey, is carried out with the courses "turkish" in primary and secondary school and "turkish language and literature" in high school. there are also many elective courses in secondary and high schools aimed at improving students' comprehension and narrative skills in their mother tongue. mother tongue education, the main purpose of which is to develop comprehension (reading and listening) and narrative (speaking and writing) skills (adalı, 1983; göçer, 2015; lüle, 2014; ozdemir, 1983) is stated as a requirement not only in the compulsory education period, but also at the university level. the fact that the students who start university do not have enough proficiency in turkish, have difficulty in understanding what they read and listen, and not being able to effectively express their thoughts both verbally and in writing brought up the idea of giving mother tongue education in universities (adalı, 1983; cemiloğlu, 2004; durukan, 2017; yekbaş, 2011). turkish language course has been given in this context. the turkish language lessons began to be taught in hacettepe university in 1968, in ege university in 1977, and later in all universities in turkey followed by the establishment of the higher education council in 1981 (cotuksöken, 2014). within the scope of the 5/i sub-article of the higher education law (1981) it is compulsory to give turkish language course in higher education institutions. this course is taught as turkish language i and turkish language ii in the first grades of associate and undergraduate programs, for a total of 28 weeks in two semesters. due to the decrease in space cost and student expenses, flexibility in following the lesson, and the use of audio and visual elements (tulunay, 2014) turkish language lessons are given by distance education system in many universities. however, this situation brings about new problems, especially in terms of attitude towards the lesson. inability of the student to realize the importance of the course (bakır, 2010) indifference (vural, 2007) insensitivity about language awareness and education (yekbaş, 2011) ignoring this course alongside field courses, perceiving it as a negligible course (cemiloğlu, 2004) is among the problems encountered during the delivery of turkish language courses. the quality of the attitude towards the course underlies these problems. "failure to achieve the purpose of turkish language course which is compulsory to be taught in colleges and faculties in turkey in two semesters is due to the negative attitudes such as students’ being indifferent to this course, their disbelief in importance of the course and lack of motivation" (alan & bağcı, 2016). as, in recent years, turkish language lessons have been carried out with distance education system in many universities, the attitude towards distance education system is to be considered as an important requirement. attitude is a positive or negative emotion towards a physical object, a certain type of community or person, government or social institution's policy or thought (atar, 2016). kaplan (2018) on the other hand, stated that attitude is an intrinsic response or behavioral tendency that occurs as a result of previous experiences and leads the next experiences. each attitude has two aspects as positive and negative. the person can have a positive or negative tendency towards any subject, event, situation, etc. if this tendency is positive, the person develops a positive attitude towards the subject, event and situation; if negative, the attitude developed by the person is also negative (temizkan & sallabaş, 2009). therefore, attitude directly affects learning. the teaching of the turkish language in universities is a subject of longstanding discussion. recently, these courses have been discussed to be given by distance education and many universities have already started it. the attitude towards both the teaching of turkish language and distance education will also determine the quality of learning. when the literature is examined, it is seen that the studies on the turkish language course are quite limited. in the literature, there are studies addressing the students' opinions about turkish language lessons (gülay & durukan, 2012) students' attitudes towards turkish language lessons (alan & bağcı, 2016; durukan, 2017) attitudes of students who take turkish language course towards turkish (karataş, 2013) the problems that reduce the effectiveness of turkish language course and suggestions to these problems (gülay & ungan, 2015) the contribution of the turkish language course to the affective development of students (sarıtunç, 2016) and the comparison of undergraduate and graduate students' success in turkish language (korkmaz, kalkan, doğan, doğruluk, & aydın, 2018). in addition, there are also studies aiming to determine the views of students on the turkish language lessons conducted by distance education (kan & fidan, 2016; kırbaş, 2017) as well as the views of both students and lecturers (arslan, 2018). researches on developing an attitude scale towards turkish language lesson (akkaya & sevindi, 2015; arslan, 2012) were also conducted. however, there is no study comparing students' attitudes towards distance education with their attitudes towards turkish language lesson. the aim of this study is to examine and compare the attitudes of university students who take turkish language courses through distance education towards this course and distance education system. it is thought that this study will contribute to the turkish language lessons conducted with the distance education system, especially in the preparation of the course content and determining method. in this context, the answer to the following questions will be sought in the study. 1. what degree is the attitude of university students who take turkish language courses through distance education towards this course? 2. is there any difference in the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course by gender and faculty variables? 3. what degree are the distance education attitudes of university students who take turkish language courses through distance education? 4. is there a difference in the distance education attitudes of university students who take turkish language courses through distance education by gender and faculty variables? asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 261-266 263 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. is there a significant relationship between the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course and their attitudes towards distance education? 2. method in this section, the research model, the information about the study group, the data collection and the analysis process of the data are discussed. 2.1. research model this study is a descriptive research to examine the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course and the distance education system. survey model was used to obtain the data. survey models are a research approach that aims to describe a past or present situation as it is. the event, individual or object, as the subject of the research, is to be defined within its own conditions and as it is (karasar, 2008). 2.2. study group the study group consists of the freshmen attending a state university located in the south of turkey and taking turkish language lessons in the 2018-2019 academic year. all students taking turkish language course in this university participated in the research. table 1 shows the information about study group. table-1. information about study group. frequency percentage (%) gender male 112 61,9 female 69 38,1 faculty engineering 122 67,4 business administration 32 17,7 humanities and social sciences 27 14,9 2.3. data collection tools the data of this study were obtained through “attitude scale towards turkish language course in higher education” developed by arslan (2012) and “distance education attitude scale” developed by arslan (2012). the “distance education attitude scale” developed by arslan (2012) was applied to 200 teachers working in 6 primary schools in balıkesir and having knowledge about distance education. reliability and validity of the scale were calculated by making item analysis and factor analysis, and as a result of the calculation, the scale was composed of 21 items. 14 of the items are positive and 7 of them are negative. according to the analyzes, the scale was found to consist of 6 factors. the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) coefficient of the scale was 0.814, the barlett test significance value was 0.000, and the cronbach-alpha reliability coefficient was 0.835. in this study, cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated as 0.854. the “attitude scale towards turkish language course in higher education” developed by arslan (2012) was applied to a total of 331 university students who took turkish language lessons. in the study, seven different statistical analyzes (cronbach alpha coefficient, kaisermeyerolkin, barlett’s test of sphericity analysis, scree plot graph, factor analysis, correlation analysis, t test) were performed. as a result of the analyzes, it was revealed that the item-total score correlations of all items of the scale were found to be significant at p<0.01 significance level, the cronbach alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.96 and the factor load of all items was above 0.60, and all “t” values related to the distinctiveness of the scale were significant. in this study, cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated as 0.92. 2.4. data analysis difference tests between the means were conducted in order to determine whether the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course and the distance education system differ according to the variables. for this purpose, it was firstly examined whether the dependent variable is normally distributed according to the independent variable. since the number of participants of the study group was 181, kolmogrov-simirnov, one of the normality tests, was examined. as a result of the normality test (p>0.05) of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education, the data were seen to show a normally distribution. for this reason, as parametric statistics, independent samples t test and one-factor variance analysis (one-way anova) were used for data analysis. pearson correlation analysis was performed in the relationship between the scales. 3. findings in this section, the findings obtained from the analysis of problem statements are given. in the first problem sentence of the study, the attitude scores of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education were investigated. the data analysis results are presented in table 2. table-2. distribution of turkish language attitude scores. scale study group minimum maximum mean standard deviation attitude scale towards turkish language course in higher education 181 41,00 133,00 95,35 21,06 when table 2 is examined, it is seen that the minimum value of the turkish language attitude scores of the students participating in the research is 41 and the highest value is 133 while the mean score is 95. it was determined that the lowest score that can be obtained from this scale is 29 and the highest score is 145. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 261-266 264 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group accordingly, it was stated that the attitudes of students with a total score of 58 and below can be evaluated as negative (arslan, 2012). in this context, though quite above the average, the attitudes of the students participating in the research towards the turkish language cannot said to be high. in the second problem statement, it was investigated whether there is a difference in the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course in terms of gender and faculty variables. findings related to gender are shown in table 3. table-3. t-test results of turkish language attitude scores by gender. gender n x s df t p male 112 94,36 22,30 179 0,87 ,421 female 69 96,97 18,92 as a result of the independent samples t test to determine whether the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course differ by gender, it was found that there is no significant difference (t(179)= 0.87, p>.005). accordingly, it can be said that gender is not a factor affecting the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course. another item of this problem statement is whether turkish language attitude scores differ according to faculty variable. the one-way anova results for this are shown in table 4. table-4. anova results of the attitude scale towards turkish language course in higher education by faculty. grade frequency mean standard deviation 1,00 122 93,42 21,98 2,00 32 95,68 21,09 4,00 27 103,70 14,26 total 181 93,42 21,98 source of variance sum of squares df mean squares f p between groups 2339,317 2 1169,658 2,685 ,102 within groups 77552,341 178 435,687 total 79891,657 180 as a result of one way anova to determine whether the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course by faculty, it was found that there is no significant difference (f(178)= 2.685, p>.005). in other words, it can be said that faculty is not a factor affecting the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course. in the other problem sentence of the study, the distance education attitude scores of university students who took turkish language courses through distance education were investigated. the data analysis results obtained are presented in table 5. table-5. distribution of distance education attitude scores. scale study group minimum maximum mean standard deviation distance education attitude scale 181 29,00 98,00 68,74 13,76 when table 5 is examined, it is seen that the minimum value of the distance education attitude scores of the students participating in the research is 29 and the highest value is 98 while the mean score is 68.78. it was determined that the lowest score that can be obtained from this scale is 21 and the highest score is 105. accordingly, it was stated that the attitudes of students with a total score of 42 and below can be evaluated as negative (agır, gür, & okçu, 2007). accordingly, students' attitudes towards distance education are above average. it can be said that, although it is not very high as attitude scores towards turkish language, it shows a positive attitude towards distance education. in the fourth problem statement, it was examined whether there is a difference in the distance education attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education in terms of gender and faculty variables. findings related to gender are shown in table 6. table-6. t-test results of distance education attitude scores by gender. gender n x s df t p male 112 70,47 14,09 179 2,17 ,031 female 69 65,94 12,80 as a result of the independent samples t test to determine whether the distance education attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education differ by gender, a significant difference was found (t(179)= 2.17, p>.005). accordingly, the mean score of male students is significantly higher than that of female students, and their attitude towards distance education is more positive. another item of fourth problem statement is whether distance education attitude scores differ according to faculty variable. the one-way anova results for this are shown in table 7. table-7. anova results of the distance education attitude scale by faculty. grade frequency mean standard deviation 1,00 122 69,85 13,30 2,00 32 69,75 14,76 4,00 27 62,55 13,42 total 181 68,74 13,76 asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 261-266 265 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group source of variance sum of squares df mean squares f p significant difference between groups 1216,298 2 608,149 3,294 ,039 1-4 within groups 32866,011 178 184,641 total 34082,309 180 as a result of one way anova to determine whether the distance education attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education by faculty, a significant difference was found (f(178)= 3.294, p<.005). attitude scores of engineering faculty towards distance education are significantly higher than that of faculty of humanities and social sciences, and their attitude towards distance education is more positive. in the fifth problem statement, a significant relationship between the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course and distance education was tested by pearson correlation analysis. the findings are shown in table 8. table-8. relationship between turkish language attitudes and distance education attitudes. turkish language attitudes distance education attitudes turkish language attitudes pearson correlation 1 ,369** sig. (2-tailed) ,000 n 181 181 distance education attitudes pearson correlation ,369** 1 sig. (2-tailed) ,000 n 181 181 as a result of the pearson correlation analysis to determine the relationship between the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course and distance education, a significant relationship was revealed (r=.369; p<.01). accordingly, it can be said that, as the attitudes of university students towards distance education increase, their attitudes towards turkish language will also improve. 4. conclusion, discussion and suggestions the results of this study, which aims to examine and compare the attitudes of university students taking turkish language courses through distance education towards this course and distance education system, are given below. the attitudes of undergraduate freshman students towards turkish language course are above average, but not very high. however, gender and faculty variable are not among the factors affecting the attitude towards turkish language course. although the distance education attitude of undergraduate freshman students is above average, it is not very high. male students' attitude towards distance education is more positive than female students. moreover, the attitude of the students in faculty of engineering towards distance education is more positive than those in faculty of humanities and social sciences. it is another result of this study that the attitude of university students towards turkish language course will increase as their attitudes towards distance education improve. in this study, it was concluded that undergraduate freshman students' attitude towards turkish language course is above average but not very high. a similar result was found in alan and bağcı (2016) research, which revealed that the attitudes of the freshman students in the faculties and schools of mehmet akif ersoy university towards turkish language i-ii course are at a medium level. in this study, it was concluded that gender and faculty factor are not among the variables that affect the attitude towards the turkish language course. however, in the study by durukan (2017) it was found that the attitudes of female students towards turkish language lesson were more positive than male students. it was also concluded in this study that undergraduate freshman students' attitude towards distance education is above average but not very high. the reasons for the result that students' attitude towards distance education is above average can be due to the application of distance education at any time and place (croft, dalton, & grant, 2010; lake, 1999; subic & maconachie, 2004) suitability for the individual progress of students (croft et al., 2010) decrease in student expenses, flexibility to follow the course and enrichment of the course with audiovisual elements (tulunay, 2014). the male students' attitude towards distance education was found to be more positive than women in this study. while this result is parallel to some research in the literature (fidan, 2016) it does not match with some research (ates & altun, 2008). in his study at ağrı i̇brahim çeçen university, arslan (2018) reached the conclusion that faculty members and students did not agree to conduct the turkish language course through distance education. on the other hand, kan and fidan (2016) revealed that the students at the university of erciyes agreed that the turkish language lessons through distance education were positive allowing them to watch again from the archive, while they adressed the lack of practice and communication as a problem. it can be foreseen according to our study that university students' attitudes towards turkish language course will also increase if their attitudes towards distance education increase. it is observed that distance education has become widespread in recent years in turkish higher education (akdemir, 2011; bozkurt, 2017; yaman, 2015). therefore, improvement in distance education will enable students to develop a positive attitude towards the lessons and, in this way, the quality of higher education will improve. today, both the distance education system should be improved and the instructors giving the course must have effective teaching methods with this system in order to increase the efficiency of turkish language courses, which are mostly carried out through distance education. asian journal of education and training, 2020, 6(2): 261-266 266 © 2020 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references adalı, o. 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(2015). pros and cons of providing compulsory english (5ı) courses through distance education at universities. turkish studies, 10(7), 967-984.available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7827/turkishstudies.8108. yekbaş, h. (2011). some determinations and solution suggestions related to turkish language course taught at universities. paper presented at the iii. international world language turkish symposium proceedings book. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://doi.org/10.5961/jhes.2011.011 http://dx.doi.org/10.7827/turkishstudies.8108 59 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 2, 59-65, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4950 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the development of digital tools to assess and enhance the ethic children development in early childhood development centers pratana govittayangkull1 benjamas phutthima2 somchai muangmool3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3faculty of education, lampang rajabhat university, lampang, thailand. 1email: pratana.go@gmail.com 2email: pbbenjamas@gmail.com 3email: somchai_m@g.lpru.ac.th abstract the research aimed to study the effects of digital tools on ethnic children in child development centers from four districts of lamphun province, thailand. the samples were teachers, parents and health promoting hospital staff from the early childhood development centers 57 people in total from cluster sampling and randomized pretest-post-test control group design. the research instruments were interviewing form, focus group discussion recording form, questionnaire, and child development evaluation form. all digital tool assessment items were qualified with higher accuracy than the specified criterion of 0.50. its correlation coefficient was higher than 0.85 at 0.05 significantly level. conditions and needs for context analysis of digital tools had been conducted to develop and use it for evaluating the development of ethnic children in the centers. the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t-test. the results revealed that the digital tools compared with documents was different in use between the experimental and the control group of the study with statistically significant at 0.05 and teachers’ satisfactions of using the digital tools were also in high level. the study outcomes demonstrated that the development of digital tools in early childhood could enhance the ethical development of young children and provide educators and parents with valuable insights into a child's progress. keywords: child development centers, child development, child health, digital tools, healthy. citation | govittayangkull, p., phutthima, b., & muangmool, s. (2023). the development of digital tools to assess and enhance the ethic children development in early childhood development centers. asian journal of education and training, 9(2), 59–65. 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4950 history: received: 8 june 2023 revised: 10 august 2023 accepted: 18 august 2023 published: 29 august 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by national research council of thailand, thailand (grant number: 08/2566). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the chiang mai rajabhat university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 31 may 2023 (ref. no. 113/2022). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 60 2. research objective .......................................................................................................................................................................... 60 3. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 60 4. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 61 5. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 62 6. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 64 7. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 65 8. suggestion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 65 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 65 mailto:pratana.go@gmail.com mailto:pbbenjamas@gmail.com mailto:somchai_m@g.lpru.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i2.4950 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5182-5954 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 59-65 60 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature children’s development in child development center of thailand has been conducted using assessment reports which is not up to date in digital era. digital tools for accessing and promoting the development of children in child development centres have been designed and developed to become a new process of children’s assessment. 1. introduction health plays an essential role in enhancing the quality of human life. a healthy body is free from diseases and leads to a good quality of life. a newborn to 6 years old is an elementary age due to the brain and body growing and developing continuously. therefore, an adequately nurtured child in that period will encourage fully potential child development in all aspects (areemit et al., 2017). parents are vital people close to a young child so they can care for their child in age-appropriate development. however, in some societies, parents and guardians may have limited access to health care knowledge and health systems, such as in ethnic groups, especially the hill tribe karen people in thailand. significant problems for them are their diverse beliefs and traditions. furthermore, they need help learning to speak, read, and write the thai language, which is hard to communicate, gain information, or misunderstand health content from many agencies. taking care of young children aged between 3-5 years may have to rely on a childcare agency rather than their parents. the child development center in thailand is considered an important area in taking care of children for proper growth and development and seeking a nonnormal child. the child development centers evaluate their quality via a document-based standard assessment. ethnic parents who cannot communicate in thai need help to answer and assess their child's development. understanding common issues in assessing and promoting child development is quite challenging. thung hua chang district, lamphun province, thailand, has a lot of ethnic communities. the child development centers are under thung hua chang subdistrict administrative organization, and there are seven centers mostly for ethnic karen children (pakakenyo). interviewing personnel in these child development centers showed that ethnic karen parents love and care for their children. however, they cannot do health and developmental care well because of communication limitations, especially in reading the thai language. therefore, if there is an assessment tool promoting child development according to the center's standards in a language that ethnic groups can read and communicate. it will establish a chance for parents to evaluate and promote child development at their age appropriate. an easy-to-use application will improve the evaluation and promotion of ethnic child development and increase the performance of child development centers. this solution is in line with the concept of the department of health, which would like to have a convenient information system such as using a mobile phone system. as mentioned above, researcher teams are focused on the "development of digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers" in order to create a good solution between the child development centers and the ethnic parents who play a role in taking care of their children. currently, all groups of people can access internet services and already have a smartphone used in daily life; therefore, downloading a child health care application will be a great benefit to teachers in early childhood centers and parents of ethnic children to access health information in their language. when the parents of ethical children are fully accessible and understand health information as well as assessing and promoting child development, they can jointly take care of the development of children in the childcare centers. 2. research objective 1. to create and determine the quality of digital tools for accessing and promoting the development of children in child development centres. 2. to study the results of using digital tools to evaluate and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centres. 3. literature review 3.1. research area background the child development center of the thung hua chang subdistrict administrative organization is an educational establishment for taking care of a 2 to 5 years old child .and aims to promote the aged 2 to 5 years to physical, emotional, mental, social, and intellectual readiness according to their age. there are 7 locations of child development centers such as 1) ban hua khua, 2) ban pong daeng, 3) ban mae pan daeng, 4) ban sanchai, 5) ban nong pha, 6) ban sandon moon, and 7) ban doi wong. these child development centers provide teaching and learning that focuses on nurturing and reducing the burden on parents, as well as providing experiences that are consistent with the area and ethnicity of children and promote learning development appropriate to their age. a vision of these child development centers in educational development in a good way of life alongside virtue, inculcating wisdom that inherits the culture leading in sports and focusing on promoting and developing students to learn and enhancing teachers to be effective in modernization management systems with an emphasis on community involvement. furthermore, it supports the organization of student development activities, preserving culture and traditional local wisdom (early childhood development center, 2019). digital tools, measuring and evaluating early child development should be quality tools for assessing children's development according to educational standards in terms of physical, emotional, mental, social, and intellectual development, and it can be interpreted that how children's development is promoted? to achieve appropriate child development. the digital tool for assessing and promoting early child development should be an application on smartphones called mobile applications that can be used on the website as well. teachers in child development centers or related agencies can use this application and learn children's behavior, enabling them to continuously plan ways to promote early child development. therefore, the purpose of using this mobile application is to achieve more effective learning (laohajaratsang, 2018). researchers have studied the concept of mental engineering learning in order to use it for systematic development. metal engineering is a new concept of learning management that involves making what is imagined into reality in practice and then creating the image according to six learning processes (nilsook & asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 59-65 61 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group wannapiroon, 2013). first, imagining is the process of defining the problem, brainstorming, and analyzing the feasibility of the work. second, the design involves planning the draft schedule and storyboard and writing the simulation script. third, development involves creating and testing work. fourth, presentations show innovations and listen to opinions for improvement. fifth, improvement is the process of modifying the work to make it suitable for use. finally, evaluation is the process of evaluating the innovation quality. the digital tools developed by researchers consist of five essential multimedia components: 1) text, 2) audio, 3) image, 4) animation, and 5) video (manoo, 2016). these components are helpful for teachers to assess child development and for parents and guardians to access information and promote the quality of early child development. a conceptual research framework shown in figure 1. figure 1. conceptual framework of the development of digital tools to assess and promote development of ethnic children in development child center. 3.2. assessment and promotion of early childhood development a process of assessment is an examination to determine the development of early childhood, and it can solve problems in these children promptly by using the assessment results as a guideline to develop the potential of each child. assessment is an important and necessary process for managing knowledge and the development of children according to their age and curriculum (early childhood development center, 2019). this quality standard consists of 1) assessing the child’s development in all aspects. 2) regular assessment of the individual. 3) assessment using various methods. 4) developmental surveillance and promotion manual for promotion of early childhood development (ministry of public health, 2014) or related agencies. 5) taking the results from the developmental assessment to consider organizing activities to provide opportunities to learn and develop appropriately according to age and encourage early childhood children to have competencies in age-appropriate development. for those 2 to 5 years old ethnic children in the child development center are divided their performance into two groups: 1) children aged 0 to 3 years old (25-30 months) and 2) children aged 3 to 6 years old. 4. method 4.1. population and sample groups the population in this research consisted of teachers, personnel, parents, and guardians of ethnic children in the child development center under sub-district administrative organizations across the country—the experiment aimed to study the effects of digital tools on ethnic children in child development centers. the development centers are from four districts of lamphun province, thailand, consisting of thung hua chang district, mae tha district, li district, and ban hong district by random sampling. thung hua chang and li districts are selected. they are randomly divided into two groups: 1) the experimental group is a group that uses digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children consisting of teachers, personnel, parents, and guardians in child development centers under thung hua chang sub-district administrative organization, thung hua chang district, lamphun province in 7 locations. these are child development centers in 1) ban hua khua, 2) ban pong daeng, 3) ban mae pan daeng, 4) ban sanchai, 5) ban nong pha, 6) ban sandon moon, and 7) ban doi wong. all children in these child development centers are ethnic (pakakenyo), and these centers are willing to participate in developing digital tools to assess and promote child development. a total of 57 persons were included in the study. the control group was used for the comparison. the development of ethnic children is evaluated and promoted according to the standard criteria of the child development center. it consists of teachers, personnel, parents, and guardians in the child development center under li sub-district administrative organization, li district, lamphun province, in 4 locations: 1) ban huai tom, 2) wat phra phutthabat huai tom, 3) ban den yang moon, and 4) ban nong bon for 38 persons in total. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 59-65 62 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.2. research tools the research tools are steps to create and find quality as follows: interview form used for interviewing executives and teachers of the child development center. the form covers issues, problems, needs, developmental promotion, and the tools used to assess the development of early ethnic childhood. the group discussion record form consisted of 1) a group discussion record for imaginative conversations to create a framework for assessing and promoting the development of early ethnic childhood. 2) a group discussion record form for discussion forums to present applications with the teachers of child development centers and agency representatives to evaluate the digital tools in the form of applications and practical trials. 3) a group conversation record form for group conversations with parents and guardians who had tried digital tools and contributed suggestions on these digital tools. the questionnaire used in this research consisted of two copies: the first questionnaire for experts to assess the validity of the digital tools in the form of an application on their quality and suitability, and the second questionnaire for teachers and staff in childcare centers that have tried using digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers. child development assessment forms allow teachers to assess child development in childcare centers according to the child development assessment standard framework by constructing and determining the quality of the tools. it includes 1) studying the method of creating and interviewing forms, group discussion record forms, questionnaires, and child development assessment forms from documents, textbooks, and related research. 2) create a data collection tool by setting guidelines and criteria for the tool's validity in the questionnaire. it consists of three assessment criteria: system usability, content, and component. the child development assessment form determines the evaluation framework in four aspects (physical, emotional, mental, social, and intellectual). all these tools have been taken to experts for content validity by using the criteria for considering the index of congruency (ioc) of 0.50 and above. it was found that every tool had a consistency index between 0.80-1.00 which was considered a quality tool. therefore, these tools were accurate for collecting further data. 4.3. research data collection data collection was conducted by the research team in 2 phases as follows. phase 1: study, survey conditions, and need to analyze the context of the digital tools for assessing and developing young ethnic children in child development centers. there were three steps to proceed: 1) study documents, journals, textbooks, and related research, learning experience activities, promoting the development of young children’s activities and their assessment, and the health learning of ethnic groups. 2) analyze the condition of problems and needs to be related to the developmental promotion of young ethnic children in child development centers by interviewing the executives, teachers, and staff of the child development center in lamphun province. 3) synthesize conditions, problems, and needs and analyze elements related to child health promotion to develop additional digital tools for assessing child development. phase 2: develop and evaluate the use of digital tools to assess and develop young ethnic children in child development centers according to the mental engineering learning process (nilsook & wannapiroon, 2013). there were six steps: 1) imagine stage: organizing a focus group forum with ethnic community representatives, administrators, teachers, local government organizations, education service area office, health-promoting hospital, early childhood education specialist, and innovative technology for developing digital tools. 2) design stage: creating a storyboard using brainstorming with contributing opinions and analyzing the possibilities. the design framework was based on document synthesis, field visits, and assessment standards for young children’s development. 3) development stage: a development application that can be used on smartphones in an android operating system. this application has a list of assessments of young children’s development, texts, images, sounds, and videos to promote the development of young children. the researchers proceeded to install the mobile application and check its suitability. 4) presentation stage: the digital application was verified by medical developmental and pediatric specialists. the early childhood forum was organized to present applications to teachers in the child development center before implementing this application. 5) improvement stage: continuing to improve the application based on suggestions. the web application can be logged into a real host on a computer with a web browser and imported into google play for use on a smartphone in the android operating system. 6) evaluation stage: trial the digital tool in the child development centers and assess the quality of digital tools. the effectiveness of these digital tools was evaluated. 4.4. data analysis and statistics questionnaires and assessment forms were analyzed and presented as means and standard deviations. seeking the correlation of the assessment results between teachers in the child development center and the hospital staff (two assessors). we compared opinions on the appropriateness of child development assessment tools in childcare centers between the teachers in the control and experimental groups using the t-test analysis method. interviews and focus group data were analyzed and presented in terms of frequency, content analysis, and descriptive analysis. 5. results 5.1. construction and quality of digital tools for assessing and promoting the development of ethnic children in child development centers the digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers are called “healthy, kids,” which can access at http://healthykids.lpru.ac.th/. the quality of the application was then analyzed. the results of the validity analysis of the digital tools are presented in table 1. the conformity index (ioc) value ranged from 0.80-1.00 for all items (table 1). all digital tool assessment items were found to be qualified with higher accuracy than the specified criterion of 0.50 (carlson, 2002; rovinelli & hambleton, 1976; turner & carlson, 2003). asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 59-65 63 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. result of digital instrument accuracy analysis. assessment items ioc meaning system usage 1. the system has fast processing, precise, and accuracy 1.00 usable 2. explanations of the components on the system screen are clear 0.80 usable 3. the system displays accurate reports and meets the needs of users 1.00 usable 4. the main menu has a structure, elements, complete, suitable for the purpose of use. 1.00 usable 5. the operation of the system is simple and convenient in accordance with the purpose of use 1.00 usable content 1.assessment items are accurate and reliable 1.00 usable 2.assessment items cover developmental assessment of young children 1.00 usable 3.the assessment items are clear and easy to understand 0.80 usable 4.assessment items are useful for assessing the development of young children 1.00 usable 5. assessment items are beneficial to the development of young children 1.00 usable multimedia elements 1. the screen design is reasonable 1.00 usable 2. appearance, size, color of letters is clear and beautiful 0.80 usable 3. pictures, animations, sounds, videos used are appropriate 1.00 usable 4. the form of presenting information is beautiful and interesting 1.00 usable 5. the layout of the menu, the icon is in an appropriate position, clear 1.00 usable table 2. correlation of ethnic child development assessment results in childcare centers between teachers in childcare centers and personnel of the health promoting hospital in sub districts. child development assessment rxy 1. body 0.959* 2. emotional-mental 0.857* 3. social 0.951* 4. intelligence 0.948* note: * statistically significant at the 0.05 level. table 3. comparison of appropriateness of ethnic child development assessment tools in childcare centers between the control group and the experimental group. items group �̅� sd. t 1.assessment forms are complete in terms of both assessment methods and child development promotion guidelines. exp. 4.50 0.52 7.61* cont. 3.00 0.47 2. appropriate assessment format exp. 4.50 0.52 8.87* cont. 3.10 0.32 3. the information is up to date and appropriate for the assessment exp. 4.50 0.52 5.91* cont. 3.30 0.48 4. the system is easy to use and uncomplicated exp. 4.50 0.52 7.61* cont. 3.00 0.47 5. you can easily find or access the information you need exp. 4.50 0.52 5.28* cont. 3.40 0.52 6. assessment results are accurate and complete exp. 4.50 0.52 0.98 cont. 4.30 0.48 7. able to know the assessment results immediately after the assessment is completed. exp. 4.75 0.45 11.03* cont. 2.70 0.48 8. able to promote child development immediately upon knowing the assessment results exp. 4.56 0.51 9.53* cont. 2.80 0.42 9. appraisal methods have a modern look exp. 4.63 0.50 8.13* cont. 2.90 0.57 10. data analysis system for individual and overall assessment exp. 4.50 0.52 6.45* cont. 3.00 0.67 average exp. 4.53 0.48 9.44* cont. 3.06 0.32 note: exp. means experimental group, cont. means control group, * statistically significant at the 0.05 level. 5.2. the results of using digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers the correlation coefficient of ethnic child development assessment in childcare centers between teachers and personnel of sub-district health promotion hospitals was higher than 0.85, and it was significant at the 0.05 level. this indicated the high accuracy of this digital tool, which was evaluated physically, mentally, socially, and intelligently for young ethnic child development (table 2). a comparison of the suitability usage of the healthy kid application between the experimental and control groups is presented in table 3. the results revealed that child development in the experimental group was higher than in the control group. the satisfaction usage of the healthy child application by teachers in child development centers is shown in table 4. teachers were satisfied with the application. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 59-65 64 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4. mean and standard deviation of satisfaction with digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children. items �̅� sd. meaning usefulness 4.75 0.37 very good suitability 4.71 0.34 very good accuracy 4.75 0.43 outstanding average 4.74 0.35 outstanding 6. discussion the systemic development of healthy child applications using mental engineering involves six steps (husain, 2021; nilsook & wannapiroon, 2013). data analysis of problem conditions and the needs of users of accurate assessment tools was a high-quality method for developing a high-accuracy digital tool for evaluating the development of young children in childcare centers. the results of using digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers showed that digital tools had high confidence. the quality was assessed at a constant value. this may be because of the creation a framework for assessing young children based on the framework of office of academic and educational standards (2017) in the early childhood education curriculum in 2017. the early childhood development promotion developmental surveillance and promotion manual (dspm) (ministry of public health, 2014) sets standards for assessing all aspects of child development. this is an individual evaluation regularly, and assessment methods are suitable for children before using digital tools. before implementing the healthy kid application, the administrator, teachers, and personnel of the sub-district health-promoting hospital shared their knowledge with the research team. this activity leads to understanding how to use digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers. teachers and personnel of sub-district health-promoting hospitals understand and have the skills to use these tools, which can then be assessed systematically. this aligns with the idea of office of the civil service commission (2022) stating that digital technology skills are essential for today’s affective skills covering four dimensions: using, understanding, creating, and accessing digital technology effectively. this digital technology will enable individuals to develop work processes to create work systems in modern organizations. after the trial of a tool to assess and promote child development between the experimental and control groups, it was found that the difference was statistically significant at the 0.05 level. it can be concluded that assessment using digital tools is more appropriate than document assessment. according to research (ngophol & tepsamrithporn, 2017). the guidelines for developing the quality of child development center management in khok charoen sub district administrative organization, thap put district, phang nga province. it was found that the child development center still encountered problems in monitoring and evaluating teachers' performance. on the other hand, research on the development of digital tools in this study will allow teachers in every childcare center to assess the quality of young children more accurately and quickly. in addition, teachers who used digital tools had the highest levels of overall satisfaction. this is in line with the research of (areemit et al., 2017) that has developed an application on "khun look" to track development and screen primarily children's health. however, the healthy child scale was developed to evaluate the development of young ethnic children. it consisted of knowledge enhancement on ethnic child health promotion for parents who have problems communicating in thai. the advanced digital tools include videos that enhance parents' child development. parents can learn with a complete understanding because they are in ethnic dialects. they can contribute this knowledge to their children through efficient communication. therefore, the development of digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers provides teachers and young child caregivers with modern tools for assessing and promoting development. it also promotes the health of young children, including parents in the community, to ensure good health. furthermore, agencies involved in the care and development of young children, such as sub-district administrative organizations, sub-district health promotion hospitals, subdistrict municipalities, and schools, can apply knowledge about using digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers. this will be used to formulate policies of organizations and agencies for integration, promotion, and planning for the sustainable development of children's health. recent studies have shown that digital tools can be used to enhance the development of children development (pala & yildiz, 2021). using digital tools can help children develop key skills such as language, social interaction, and cognitive skills. in comparison with other studies, these findings are consistent with previous research that has examined the benefits of integrating technology in early childhood education; however, it is essential to note that the effectiveness of digital tools may depend on several factors, such as the age of children, the type of device used, and the content of the programs. while some studies have demonstrated the need for a balance between digital and non-digital activities, others have found that children who have been exposed to digital tools at an early age tend to be more proficient in technology and are more likely to benefit from them in the long run (ngophol & tepsamrithporn, 2017). despite some debate, it is undeniable that digital tools can be effective in fostering the development of ethnic children in early childhood development centers. by providing a platform for interactive learning and making lessons more engaging, digital tools can help children develop key skills and prepare them for future success. as technology evolves, it will be interesting to see how educators continue incorporating digital tools into early childhood education. early childhood is crucial for children's development, particularly regarding social development. this is where the role of early childhood development centers comes in. the development of digital tools to assess and enhance the ethical development of children in these centers has been gaining traction in recent times. the present study explores the benefits of such tools, including increased awareness among educators and parents, better communication and collaboration, and the ability to track and monitor progress. the article also highlights some challenges and potential drawbacks of these digital tools, such as the need for specialized training, digital literacy, and privacy concerns. despite these challenges, the potential of these tools to support the ethical development of children in their early asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 59-65 65 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group years is immense. overall, developing digital tools in early childhood development centers can enhance the development of young children and provide educators and parents with valuable insights into a child's progress. 7. conclusion developing a digital tool called "healthy kids" contributed to the index of concordance (ioc) at 0.80-1.00 in all items. this indicates that all the digital toll evaluation items are of good quality for assessing the development of ethnic children—results of using digital tools to assess and promote the development of ethnic children in child development centers. there was a high correlation coefficient for all aspects between the childcare center teachers and the sub-district health promotion hospital personnel. the suitability of the tools between the experimental and control groups, it was shown that the difference was statistically significant at the level of 0.05. therefore, assessment with digital tools is more appropriate than assessment with documents. teachers were also satisfied with the application's usefulness, suitability, and accuracy. 8. suggestion for applying the research results 1. assessing and promoting the development of ethnic children in child development centers using digital tools, schools and parents’ homes should have an environment that covers the internet so that they can effectively conduct assessments and study issues related to the development of ethnic children. 2. persons who use digital tools to assess and promote ethnic children should understand the system and components of the application before proceeding with the tools to assess and promote young children. 3. teachers in child development centers should communicate, meet, and talk with parents or guardians of young ethnic children to become familiar with each other. during the implementation of this application, teachers must allow parents or guardians to generate ideas and discussions about their usage in health child applications. for further research 1. there should be research on the development of digital technology tools for use in other fields to support education for ethnic students and reduce inequality in education. 2. there should be continuing research on managing child development centers using digital technology, especially the skills needed in the 21st century. 3. the factors affecting the use of digital technology in student/ethnic groups should be studied. references areemit, r., sripanichkulchai, k., supakhunpinyo, c., jetsrisupap, a., lumpikanon, p., sutra, s., . . . khattiyawong, t. (2017). healthy happy kids mobile application (year 2). bangkok: health systems research institute. carlson, l. (2002). index of item-objective congruence for multiple objective measures. unpublished manuscript, university of arkansas. early childhood development center. (2019). self-assessment report. paper presented at the the annual quality assurance of thung hua chang subdistrict administrative organization, lamphun. husain, f. n. (2021). use of digital assessments how to utilize digital bloom to accommodate online learning and assessments? asian journal of education and training, 7(1), 30-35. https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.30.35 laohajaratsang, t. t. (2018). innovative educational information technology for thailand 4.0 era. chaingmai: tong sam design. manoo, p. (2016). digital media. retrieved from http://paitoon.esdc.go.th/sux-dicithal ministry of public health. (2014). guidelines for quality child center standards (1st ed.). nonthaburi: health promotion bureau, department of health. ngophol, a., & tepsamrithporn, w. (2017). guidelines to improve the management of the child development centers under the supervision of the kok charern sub-district administrative organization in tup pud district, pang-nga province. phuket rajabhat university academic journal, 14(2), 217-237. nilsook, p., & wannapiroon, p. (2013). imagineering. journal of technical education development, 25(86), 33-37. office of academic and educational standards. (2017). early childhood curriculum b.e. 2560 [a.d. 2017]. retrieved from office of the basic education commission, ministry of education: office of the civil service commission. (2022). project for developing comprehension skills and using digital technology for civil servants and government personnel. retrieved from https://www.ocsc.go.th/dlproject/mean-dlp pala, a., & yildiz, d. g. (2021). developing a values teaching education program for preservice teachers and evaluating its effectiveness. asian journal of education and training, 7(1), 13-24. https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.13.24 rovinelli, r. j., & hambleton, r. k. (1976). on the use of content specialists in the assessment of criterion-referenced test item validity. dutch journal of educational research, 1(2), 49-60. turner, r. c., & carlson, l. (2003). indexes of item-objective congruence for multidimensional items. international journal of testing, 3(2), 163171. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327574ijt0302_5 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.30.35 http://paitoon.esdc.go.th/sux-dicithal https://www.ocsc.go.th/dlproject/mean-dlp https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.71.13.24 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327574ijt0302_5 216 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 4, 216-225, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.216.225 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the level of passion for knowledge among high school students while learning social studies in saudi arabia hanan a. najmuldeen professor of curricula and instruction of social studies, faculty of education, university of jeddah, ksa. email: hnajmaldeen@uj.edu.sa tel: 00966505680920 abstract the present research paper aims to measure the level of passion for knowledge while learning social studies among high school students in saudi arabia. it adopts a descriptive approach. to achieve its objectives, the researcher created a scale of passion for knowledge that consists of 25 sentences. the study population covered all high school students in jeddah, but the scale was applied to a stratified sample of 1142 students only who were selected randomly from all the public high schools in jeddah, saudi arabia. the results show that the level of passion for knowledge is high as it reached 3.77. compared with the other grades, the highest level of passion for knowledge was found for the first-grade high school students because they studied the new curricula in all stages, while those in the second and third grades studied the curriculum that was implemented before curricula were developed according to saudi vision 2030. keywords: values, social studies, emotional sense of knowledge, level of passion for knowledge. citation | hanan a. najmuldeen (2021). the level of passion for knowledge among high school students while learning social studies in saudi arabia. asian journal of education and training, 7(4): 216-225. history: received: 2 august 2021 revised: 30 august 2021 accepted: 21 september 2021 published: 11 october 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 217 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 219 3. review of the literature ............................................................................................................................................................... 220 4. analysis and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................ 222 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 224 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 224 7. further research ............................................................................................................................................................................ 224 8. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 224 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 224 mailto:hnajmaldeen@uj.edu.sa http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.216.225 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8570-3140 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 216-225 217 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by measuring the level of passion for knowledge while learning social studies among high school students in saudi arabia. 1. introduction the twenty-first century was characterized by a knowledge explosion since the production of knowledge has become rapid and there is a huge amount in all areas of life, leading to the development of curricula that have moved from the traditional curriculum to the modern one. among the most prominent factors that led to this development is the change resulting from scientific and technological development, which has changed many values and social concepts and led to fundamental changes in the conditions of society and ways of life (maree & alheela, 2015). human societies went through a series of transformations during which an agricultural society developed into an industrial society and then into a knowledge society as a result of the significant increase in the role of knowledge and information. the pattern of scientific and technical production shifted from the stage of individual creativity to collective production in the mid-twentieth century, which made knowledge a major engine for production, economic growth, and growing global interest in knowledge and technologies due to their impact on providing job opportunities that result in improving the productivity of society. countries with a high economy have more cognitive potentialities (mutawa & al-khalifa, 2018). passion is a strong desire for a specific activity that people prefer, love, and find important, and through it they occupy their efforts, energies and time on a regular basis (vallerand, 2012). among the most important tendencies for learning and raising awareness is the emotional feeling that generates passion for knowledge to satisfy the instinct of innate external flair from society by knowing how to obtain knowledge and skill, or the inner passion of the self, such as reading books, and listening to and watching lectures (cindy, 2019). knowledge is of great importance in the renaissance of societies. al maktoum (2019) highlights its importance, stating it is not true that knowledge is only power, as reality proves that knowledge today is everything for any society which aspires to a better future, a prosperous economy, and a clear path to sustainable development. first, it needs to study its situation, identify strengths and weaknesses, and explore options and opportunities; all this is provided by knowledge, which has become an urgent necessity for societies to grow and move confidently toward the future. passion for knowledge is a value that expresses a learner’s appreciation of knowledge, perseverance in seeking, curiosity and reading, and the search for knowledge with a passion to discover and assimilate it and contribute to its production, as well as to be a means of deep understanding, reflection, and a way of life (education and training evaluation authority, 2019a). acquiring knowledge requires striving and effort, and this requires perseverance, encouragement, and motivation to create in one’s soul a longing for knowledge, augmentation of it, and expansion of its branches, joy with every new piece of information, and enthusiasm for acquiring more of it ad-daghim (2012). many conferences have been held on knowledge and its importance, such as the knowledge summit in dubai, which was held annually for seven years between 2014 and 2020, the quality education and knowledge access conference in tunisia 2020, and the second international conference 2020 for the knowledge economy, which was held virtually in alexandria. among the recommendations of the latter was emphasizing the importance of benefiting from successful local and international experiences in developing and evaluating future skills and strategies to be acquired by new generations. therefore, the kingdom of saudi arabia has focused its efforts on improving its educational system and updating it according to the latest international experiences and practices in the processes of teaching, learning and evaluation to contribute to the formation of a conscious saudi generation capable of creating knowledge, developing it, making good use of it, and dealing with future skills (education and training evaluation authority, 2019a). the interest in developing curricula began in light of the national standards program for public education curricula in education and training evaluation commission, established by the saudi cabinet decree in 2013. after the announcement of the kingdom’s vision 2030 in 2016, the commission has sought to achieve more than 19 of the kingdom's vision goals and state them in an educational applied context. standards-based development is one of the latest educational trends to which education development projects have been linked, as many developed countries have adopted it to raise the level of education efficiency. social studies standards represent one of the standards for the fields of learning in general education and define what the learner should learn and understand and can perform in the field of social studies. social education across levels and grades aims to achieve responsible citizenship for the learner (education and training evaluation authority., 2019b). social studies share common general dimensions in achieving with the other fields of learning in proportion to their nature and objectives; each dimension includes a set of main and subsidiary ideas. these dimensions are curriculum priorities, values, and skills, and these priorities work with values and skills according to a comprehensive system for building standards of educational curricula, applying and evaluating them by including all areas of learning in an orderly manner, and confirming their development among learners through their qualification levels for later learning, as well as increasing their abilities to solve their problems and social ones in creative ways (education and training evaluation authority, 2019a). the values dimension consists of a set of values, including passion for knowledge. passion for knowledge is directly included in the structure of the field of social studies by presenting facts, information, trends, values and skills that stimulate curiosity and love of learning by including its main and subsidiary ideas in light of the content of standards and their explicit performance within the criteria of the curriculum. passion for knowledge is included indirectly in the main and subsidiary ideas of common dimensions that are taken into account when building asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 216-225 218 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examples, activities, data, statistics, drawings, pictures, projects of outstanding learners, and other learning experiences (education and training evaluation authority., 2019b). 1.1. research problem passion is a strong human emotion with underlying behavioral tendencies; it can be positive with behavioral motives, and the presence of passion is necessary for a person to reach the highest levels of performance. psychologists who perceive passion as motivational have emphasized the hypothesis that people make a lot of effort and take a lot of time to achieve their goals with passion or to work in the activity they love (baum & locke, 2004). passion for knowledge carries with it a call to replace the traditional education systems based on standardizing, unifying, and restricting minds with other systems that exploit the tools of the age to create new horizons and transform abstract knowledge into applied knowledge whose repercussions and interactions are reflected in the individual and society. it is our duty as individuals and institutions not to be content with creating visions and making assumptions, but rather transforming them into realistic and tangible plans to enjoy a better future (moravec et al., 2013). the studies in the literature review, such as those conducted by crabb (2014); gilal, channa, gilal, gilal, and shah (2019) and khan (2020) emphasized the importance of passion in the learning process. passion is the interest in learning new things, and it is the tendency that a person shows toward an activity in which they invest time and energy. it is an important factor in education since it not only drives teachers to teach, but also pushes students to learn efficiently (george, 2016). like other educational processes, passion for knowledge is a continuous process, starting from early childhood and growing through it, and its means vary according to the age and inclinations of the young person. in each stage, their passion increases and extends from the university to the postgraduate stage, through knowledge acquisition and development, and keeping up with the news about it. it becomes a good habit that accompanies the successful person every day and leads to the advancement of a person in the degrees of knowledge and culture, earns them good conversation with their peers, understanding the events around them, making decisions in their affairs, and participating in the production of knowledge, authorship, and innovation in various areas of their life (ad-daghim, 2012). because of the importance of passion for knowledge as a strong emotional value, it was included as one of the values that the curricula work to develop, starting from the elementary stage and subsequently in the middle stage and then the secondary stage, to establish in students the value of appreciating science and scholars and knowledge acquisition, love of curiosity, reading and research, and the passion for knowledge discovery, assimilation, and contribution to its production through scientific research contributions. high school students studied social studies courses prior to 2020, and these courses share common dimensions with the other areas of learning, including some values, specifically passion for knowledge. with the presence of the value of passion for knowledge for the learner, the learning process becomes an emotional process that leads to the appreciation and practice of science. this is what prompted the researcher to conduct a study to determine the level of passion for knowledge among high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia. 1.2. research questions q1: what is the level of passion for knowledge of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia? q2: what is the difference in the level of passion for knowledge of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia according to their grade (first, second, and third)? 1.3. research significance the research is significant since it highlights the importance of passion for knowledge while learning social studies. furthermore, it gives the curriculum developers a clear vision of the effectiveness of social studies curricula in developing passion for knowledge among high school students. moreover, other researchers can use the passion for knowledge scale developed by the researcher. in addition, the research provides access to a theoretical framework related to passion for knowledge due to the lack of relevant literature since most of the literature is in the field of psychology and business administration. 1.4. research objectives 1. to identify the level of passion for knowledge among high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia. 2. to identify the differences in the level of passion for knowledge of students in the three grades of the secondary stage. 1.5. research limits temporal limits: the research was conducted in the first semester in october 2020. spatial limits: the research was conducted in the city of jeddah. human limits: the sample was restricted to a simple random sample of high school students in the secondary first, second and third grades of the literary stream. substantive limits: the research focuses on the level of passion for knowledge, which is one of the common dimensions in the field of learning social studies and other fields of learning. 1.6. research terms 1.6.1. passion passion is a strong tendency for a specific activity; for example, one person is passionate about reading, while another is passionate about teaching. passion has been used to denote love toward people since it is one of the levels of love (mutqen, 2017). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 216-225 219 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1.6.2. knowledge knowledge is all the facts and information obtained by an individual through their continuous theoretical and applied studies. these facts are understood and absorbed by the individual and applicable through the use of their experience (barakati, 2019). 1.6.3. passion for knowledge the specialist framework for the field of learning social studies (2019) defines passion for knowledge as a value that expresses a learner’s appreciation of knowledge, perseverance in seeking, curiosity and reading, and an eager search for knowledge to discover, assimilate, and contribute to its production to be a means of deep understanding, reflection, and a way of life. the researcher operationally defines it as follows: it is the emotional feeling of high school students while they study social studies courses at the elementary and intermediate levels, and it is a value that drives them to appreciate knowledge and perseverance in seeking it, curiosity, and the eager search for knowledge to discover it, assimilate it, and contribute to its production. 2. literature review values consist of three main components: the cognitive mental component that requires recognition of the value, realization of its meaning, and the criterion of its selection; the emotional-affective component that requires selection of value, its appreciation, pride in it, and happiness for choosing and adopting it in life, and its standard of appreciation; and the performance-behavioral component, which is the translation of value into practice and a standard of practice and an action verb (ziadat & qatawi, 2014). 2.1. passion passion is the drive, the search for new things, and the willingness to learn. passion simply shows a strong tendency and willingness by expending time and energy on an activity that someone loves or believes it is important. passion is closely related to learning and is an important factor in inspiring and motivating teachers, which are key features of effective teaching (freidus, 2010). 2.2. qualities of the passionate the qualities of the passionate reported by moravec et al. (2013) are as follows: 1. they come from all ages and categories. passion is not the preserve of a particular group. 2. they refine their background knowledge through information collection and sharing, open communication, and in-depth experiences aimed at multiplying their abilities to generate creative ideas. 3. they practically implement and reinforce their ideas and experiences through various institutional and social channels and projects. 4. they stimulate social networks, group work, and cultural exchange to absorb the river of different cultures, societies, and civilizations. 5. they tend to use modern technological tools in solving problems, overcoming crises, and demolishing geographical and spatial boundaries. 6. they welcome the fruitful communication that is based on the exchange of experiences and information between the various categories. 7. they continuously improve their tools to adopt all that is modern and abandon old thought. 8. they excel in creating environments that reject hierarchy and support effective engagement and networking. 9. they are not afraid of failure, but rather turn failures into opportunities for learning and deepening experiences. 2.3. the relationship between passionate teaching and good education (serin, 2017) • if a teacher has a high level of interest in the topic and sets a high standard on their performance, students will become more serious and more interested. • a strong teacher–student relationship is established when there is a collaborative learning environment in the classroom. • students are less enthusiastic about learning if they do not know how to apply what they have learned in their lives. • enthusiastic teachers are always searching and striving to increase their skills that will be reflected in teaching. 2.4. characteristics of passion (serin, 2017) • passion is not a personality trait found in some people and not found in others. • passion is discoverable, teachable, and replicable. • passion increases or decreases according to personal and social status. 2.5. essential characteristics of enthusiastic teachers (serin, 2017) 1. enthusiastic teachers like to work with young people and new ideas, and they do not give excuses due to students’ lack of knowledge and ability. 2. they are familiar with global affairs and social issues and reflect them effectively in teaching. 3. they are hardworking and intelligent. 4. they can tolerate senseless behaviors of students. 5. they are sensitive to the good behaviors that students should acquire. 6. they avoid criticizing ideas and seek to create mutual respect. 7. they try to create an effective learning environment where students learn on their own. 8. they take their jobs very seriously and clearly express their thoughts and beliefs. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 216-225 220 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group altun (2017) adds the following characteristics: 1. enthusiastic teachers have deep knowledge of their course and teaching techniques, and abilities to build students’ empathy. 2. they care about their students and consider them an important part of their jobs. 3. they are always thinking about their goals and beliefs and motivate their learners. 4. they can understand the people around them. 5. effective teaching requires the use of knowledge and emotion simultaneously. 6. enthusiastic teachers are optimistic. 2.6. the relationship between passion for teaching and effective learning (altun, 2017) 1. if learners see that a teacher cares about what they are doing, they take the learning process seriously. at this stage, teaching is no longer work performed by force, but becomes an inspiration for the learners. 2. unless a learning environment of cooperation is created, respect and trust cannot be built between a teacher and learners. 3. unless learners know how to adopt the things they learned in their real lives, their motivation to learn cannot be increased. 3. review of the literature the literature review highlighted that there are very few studies on passion for knowledge. most of the studies are in the field of psychology and business administration. furthermore, the majority of the studies related to curricula and teaching methods are about the passion for teaching. some of these are outlined below. at city university of hong kong, leung, li, and zhao (2013) incorporate a discovery-enriched curriculum to stimulate students’ passion for knowledge. their study was applied to an introductory course on programming webpages for some new students using virtual classrooms. the authors suggest developing teaching and learning activities to encourage students to discover new knowledge on their own. it was found that 75% of the students attended the course, and the results show that the students who attended more lectures obtain higher grades. sié and yakhlef (2013) suggest that passion positively affects the transfer of knowledge. passion for knowledge may form a social bond that binds society together. enthusiastic members tend to share their passion – knowledge. information was obtained from many scientific experts in the petroleum industry in their daily work, and experts consider the transfer of knowledge an indispensable condition for them to become experts since interaction with others is an opportunity to learn and communicate with their peers. sharing stories about their passion for knowledge, they suggest that emotional aspects (emotion, attachment, and interest) related to knowledge are factors which affect knowledge transfer. crabb (2014) investigates passion in university teaching by adopting the descriptive method and using interviews with and observation of six university professors who are passionate about teaching at the university of new mexico. by using a survey of the students taught by them, the study shows that passion for teaching scored very high. in the united states, palmer (2017) investigates how passion is used as a teaching tool by teachers at hugo high school using the qualitative curriculum. the sample consisted of nine teachers, some of whom used passion intentionally in the classroom, while the others used it unintentionally. the results indicate that teachers who did not plan to use passion perceive changes in their behaviors and feel good about themselves as teachers. teachers who plan to use passion for many of their own behaviors feel good about themselves as teachers when trying emotional lessons, and teachers’ feelings are fueled by positive feedback from students and increase passionate teaching moments. in pakistan, gilal et al. (2019) identify how passion affects positive work outcomes and can be transferred from teacher to students based on cross’s theory and emotional infection theory. the sample of the study consisted of 226 pairs of teachers and students at the college of business administration. the results indicate that passion can be transmitted from teacher to student indirectly through emotional infection. in oman, khan (2020) adopts the descriptive approach to analyze whether teachers work passionately during education outside the field and what kind of passion affects them. the research sample consisted of 241 teachers working in the higher levels of education in oman. the results indicate that in some cases, teachers work outside the field of education with harmonious passion, and that teachers need to increase harmonious passion rather than oppressive passion. 3.1. comments on literature review • most of the studies, including those conducted by crabb (2014) and palmer (2017), focused on the passion for teaching. this differs from the current research that measures passion for knowledge among students. • most of the studies adopted the descriptive approach except palmer (2017) which adopted the qualitative approach, while the current research adopts the descriptive approach. • the sample in the studies included either teachers and students, or teachers only or students only. 3.2. research methodology the research adopted the descriptive approach, which is based on studying reality as it is. it accurately describes it either quantitatively or qualitatively (saber, mawafi, & al-shammari, 2015). 3.3. research population and sample the research population consists of all the high school female students in the three grades in jeddah for the academic year 2019/2020; the total number is 49,443. a simple random sample was taken from them by using the sample size calculator, which resulted in 1,142 students, as shown in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 216-225 221 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. distribution of the research sample in the three grades. grade number percentage first 374 32.8 second 385 33.7 third 383 33.5 total 1142 100 3.4. research tool the researcher utilized the passion for knowledge scale. 3.5. the goal of the scale to measure the level of passion for knowledge of high school students. 3.6. description of the scale the passion for knowledge scale was built with reference to previous studies and scales, such as those of vallerand et al. (2003); al-harthi (2015). the scale included instructions and directions for students on how to answer the scale, which consists of 25 statements that measure the level of passion for knowledge among students. 3.7. correction and grading a five-point likert scale was used for the responses of high school students on the passion for knowledge scale. grades were evaluated upon correcting the scale as follows: very high (5 points), high (4 points), medium (3 points), low (2 points), and very low (1 point). the scale measures the passion for knowledge level of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia according to the following standard: ▪ a score of 4.2 or more indicates that the level of passion for knowledge of high school students is very high. ▪ a score between 3.4 and 4.1 means that high school students have a high level of passion for knowledge. ▪ a score between 2.6 and 3.3 indicates that the level of passion for knowledge among high school students is medium. ▪ a score between 1.8 to less than 2.5 means that high school students have a low level of passion for knowledge. ▪ a score less than 1.8 indicates that high school students have a very low level of passion for knowledge. 3.8. psychometric characteristics the validity of the scale was verified using apparent validity and internal consistency validity. 3.9. face validity the validity of the scale was verified by presenting it to a group of experienced and specialized arbitrators, including education experts, for them to express their opinion and comment on the suitability of the scale statements for the purpose of research. based on the opinions of the arbitrators about the suitability of the tool to achieve the research objectives, and according to their observations and suggestions, some statements were modified, and some were added or deleted, which resulted in the inclusion of 25 statements, and the scale was in its final form. 3.10. internal consistency validity the researcher performed the verification of the statements by determining the internal consistency of the scale statements (the research tool) by calculating the pearson correlation coefficients between each of the sentences in the tool and the total point of the scale to which they belong for each of the scale sentences and the total score, as shown in the table 2 below. table-2. correlation coefficients between each statement of the scale and the total points of the scale. no. r. no. r. no. r. no. r. no. r. 1 0.56** 6 0.57** 11 0.51** 16 0.46** 21 0.55** 2 0.63** 7 0.54** 12 0.59** 17 0.65** 22 0.48** 3 0.46** 8 0.51** 13 0.46** 18 0.56** 23 0.61** 4 0.65** 9 0.67** 14 0.55** 19 0.59** 24 0.52** 5 0.59** 10 0.54** 15 0.57** 20 0.62** 25 0.46** note: ** significant at level α ≤ 0.01 r: correlation coefficient. the table above shows that all the correlation coefficients represent a function at the level of α ≥ 0.01, which indicates a high degree of consistency of the scale. the results of the table suggest that all values are statistically significant at the level of (0.01) because the correlation coefficients between each item and the total score ranged (0.46: 0.67), indicating the internal consistency of the scale. regarding the reviewer's validity, the scale was presented to some specialists to review their opinions and modify it in accordance to make it applicable. 3.11. reliability the scale was applied to a pilot sample of 30 female students in the secondary third grade at the sixty-five school in jeddah. to calculate its reliability coefficient, cronbach’s alpha (α) was used, and the value of the scale reliability coefficient was α = 0.88, which indicates a high degree of reliability. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 216-225 222 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.12. procedures the research was conducted online during the covid-19 pandemic via the electronic platform “madrasti” (my school), which is used in all the academic stages. this facilitated sending the scale link during virtual classes according to the following procedures: 1. an official letter was sent from the college of education to the educational administration to allow the researcher to apply the research tool. 2. the supervisor of social studies teachers sent an official letter to the teachers asking them to facilitate the application of the research scale in cooperation with the researcher. 3. the researcher provided female teachers with the scale link, which was electronically designed on microsoft forms. 4. the research tool was applied to the pilot sample consisting of 30 female students in the third secondary grade (the link was distributed during the virtual class) to verify the validity and reliability of the tool on september 29th, 2020. 5. on october 12th, 2020, the tool was applied by female teachers who distributed the scale link after the end of the lesson and showed students how to respond to it. 6. after ensuring that the sample met the required number, an excel file of the electronic scale was uploaded to be statistically processed to generate the research results, recommendations, and suggestions. 4. analysis and discussion to answer the first research question, “what is the level of passion for knowledge of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia?” the frequencies, percentages, and arithmetic mean of the responses of high school students in the kingdom of saudi arabia were calculated to measure their level of passion for knowledge. these are shown in table 3. table 3 shows the following results: • in general, the level of passion for knowledge of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia is high, with a mean score of 3.77. • the level of passion for knowledge of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia in relation to “i love to participate in scientific workshops and competitions” was very high, with a mean score of 4.48. this was followed by “i follow the digital knowledge center with great interest,” which was very high, with a mean score of 4.44. • the level of passion for knowledge was low or medium among high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia in relation to the following statements: • “scholars deserve to be honored with national and international awards,” with a mean score of 2.60. • “i enthusiastically follow the hackathon news locally or internationally,” with a mean score of 2.65. • “i search google for what i don’t know,” with a mean score of 2.94. • “i follow current events and news related to the latest inventions,” with a mean score of 2.98. to answer the second research question, “what is the difference between the passion for knowledge level of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia according to the academic grade (first, second, and third)?,” the following hypothesis was tested: “there are no statistically significant differences at the α ≤ 0.05 significance level between the means of the responses of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia in the passion for knowledge scale according to the grade (first, second, third).” to verify the validity of this hypothesis, one-way analysis of variance (anova) was used to calculate the value of (q) to indicate the differences between the means of the responses of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia in the measurement of passion for knowledge according to the difference in the academic grade (first, second, third). table 4 and table 5 explain these results. table 4 and table 5 show the following results: • there are statistically significant differences at the α = 0.05 level between the means of the responses of high school students while learning social studies in the kingdom of saudi arabia in the passion for knowledge scale according to the grade (first, second, and third) based on the presence of significant differences in the anova test. • scheffé’s test was used to assess the significance of differences, and the results are shown in table 6. table 6 shows the following results: • the differences between the levels of passion for knowledge of high school students during learning social studies in saudi arabia regarding grades (first, second, and third) were in favor for the responses of high school first-grade students with a higher arithmetic mean. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 216-225 223 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-3. the level of passion for knowledge among high school students while learning social studies in high schools in the kingdom of saudi arabia. passion level r a n k in g s td . d e v ia ti o n m e a n very low low medium high very high % f % f % f % f % f statements that measure passion for knowledge no. very high 6 0.85 4.28 0.7 8 1.9 22 15.7 179 32.0 365 49.7 568 scientists have a role in our progress and well-being. 1 high 8 0.86 4.19 0.8 9 2.6 30 16.2 185 37.3 426 43.1 492 human civilizations have a role in the accumulation of knowledge and the advancement of life. 2 high 14 0.98 3.92 3.1 35 3.1 35 24.8 283 37.0 422 32.1 367 social studies subjects conveyed to us the efforts made by geospatial disclosures to know the new world. 3 medium 20 1.24 3.37 8.8 101 13.7 156 34.2 390 18.3 209 25.0 286 i love the traveler stories that i studied in my social studies course. 4 medium 22 1.17 2.98 11.7 134 20.1 230 40.5 462 13.6 155 14.1 161 i follow current events and news related to the latest inventions. 5 medium 21 1.28 3.33 10.8 123 15.3 175 27.7 316 22.5 257 23.7 271 i appreciate the achievements of geographers and historians, and i hope to be like them. 6 high 17 1.25 3.44 8.6 98 12.9 147 31.1 355 20.5 234 27.0 308 i follow the contributions of my compatriots in inventions. 7 very high 3 0.92 4.31 1.5 17 2.9 33 13.7 156 27.2 311 54.7 625 i work to achieve my goals through my love of science and knowledge. 8 high 18 1.31 3.43 10.8 123 12.5 143 27.8 318 20.2 231 28.6 327 i like to visit research, scientific and technology centers. 9 medium 24 1.36 2.65 27.1 309 21.0 240 25.7 294 12.2 139 14.0 160 i enthusiastically follow the hackathon news locally or internationally. 10 medium 25 1.30 2.60 25.7 294 23.4 267 27.8 318 10.9 125 12.1 138 scholars deserve to be honored with national and international awards. 11 very high 1 0.84 4.48 0.9 10 3.1 35 8.0 91 23.6 269 64.5 737 i like to participate in workshops and scientific competitions. 12 high 19 1.25 3.40 8.8 101 14.4 164 29.3 335 22.6 258 24.9 284 i have great awareness of my beliefs and ideas that enable me to excel and be creative. 13 very high 3 0.82 4.31 0.5 6 1.6 18 15.3 175 31.6 361 51.0 582 my current activities and practices help me immensely to develop myself. 14 very high 7 0.92 4.25 1.3 15 3.3 38 14.9 170 29.7 339 50.8 580 i am making a major contribution to life through my abilities and talents. 15 high 11 1.02 4.07 2.0 23 5.3 60 20.8 237 27.5 314 44.5 508 i love learning about the cultures of different societies and civilizations. 16 high 9 1.01 4.17 2.3 26 3.4 39 20.5 234 23.0 263 50.8 580 i am enthusiastic about knowing everything new about science and its development. 17 high 12 1.03 4.04 1.7 19 6.4 73 21.7 248 26.4 302 43.8 500 i have a great deal of curiosity and curiosity about many events. 18 high 10 1.02 4.10 1.6 18 4.9 56 23.1 264 23.8 263 47.4 541 i feel a lot of enthusiasm when linking causal relationships in historical events. 19 high 16 1.23 3.55 6.6 75 12.8 146 30.4 347 19.2 219 31.1 355 i like to use modern technologies that make life easier and save time. 20 very high 3 0.96 4.31 2.0 23 2.8 32 14.9 170 22.4 256 57.9 661 i am not afraid of failure. i turn failures into opportunities for learning and deepening experiences. 21 high 13 1.07 3.95 3.0 34 6.7 77 21.2 242 30.4 347 38.7 442 i possess an abundance of information on a variety of topics. 22 high 15 0.96 3.61 1.8 21 6.7 77 42.4 484 27.9 310 21.9 250 i make time every day to read the books i love. 23 medium 23 1.38 2.94 19.6 225 19.5 223 27.7 316 13.5 154 19.6 224 i search google for what i don’t know. 24 very high 2 0.94 4.44 1.8 20 3.4 39 10.8 123 16.9 193 67.2 767 i follow the digital knowledge centre with great interest. 25 high 3.77 total asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 216-225 224 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. mean of high school students’ responses to determine their level of passion for knowledge according to the difference in the grade. grade number mean standard deviation first 374 374 first second 385 385 second third 383 383 third total 1142 1142 total table-5. the results of the one-way anova test to indicate the differences between the means of the responses of high school students to determine their level of passion for knowledge according to the difference in the grade. sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 70.870 15 4.725 0.666 0.810 within groups 595.880 84 7.094 total 666.750 99 table-6. the results of scheffé’s test to identify the differences in the level of passion for knowledge among high school students. grade mean first second third first 96.45 2.96* 3.52* second 93.49 −2.96* third 92.33 −3.52* total 96.45 2.96* 3.52* note:* significant at the α ≤ 0.05 level. 5. discussion this study found that the level of passion for knowledge among high school students was high, with a mean of 3.77. this confirms (serin, 2017) statement that passion for knowledge is discoverable, learnable, and can be recurrent. passion for knowledge appeared to be at a high level with regard to following the digital information center and participating in workshops and scientific competitions. this is confirmed by sié and yakhlef (2013), who state that passion for knowledge affects knowledge transfer. the researcher attributes this to the fact that that high school students are constantly logging onto the internet, which allows them to follow the news of the digital information center and cultural competitions since they are greatly highlighted by media. measuring the differences between the three grades of the secondary stage shows that the level of passion for knowledge among students in the first secondary grade was higher than that of those in the other grades. the researcher attributes this to the fact that female students in the first secondary grade studied the new curricula in all stages, while those in the second and third grades studied the curriculum that was implemented before curricula were developed according to vision 2030. 6. recommendations the following recommendations have been made in light of the research results. workshops and seminars should be held to introduce the value of passion for knowledge and explain its importance in the learning process. furthermore, attention should be paid to passion for knowledge while learning social studies, especially with regard to knowledge production through scientific and research contributions. moreover, the passion for knowledge scale should be applied to students of the intermediate and university stages to determine their level of passion for knowledge. 7. further research the researcher proposes that further studies should be conducted in light of the research results. first, the content of social studies curricula should be analyzed to identify the level of passion for knowledge. second, the relationship between passion for knowledge and the emotional passion of male and female students should be studied. finally, the level of passion for knowledge of university students should be determined. 8. conclusion passion for knowledge is the value that motivates a learner to learn and read from childhood onward. if attention has been paid to develop it as an emotional value during academic stages, this will lead to having more knowledge and utilizing it for producing new knowledge through various scientific and research contributions. the level of passion for knowledge among secondary stage female students is attributed to the inclusion of the matrix of passion for knowledge value in curricula of social studies in all the academic stages. this is in line with one of the goals of the kingdom’s vision 2030, which is to establish a knowledge society in which information and knowledge occupy an advanced position coupled with more scientific and creative discoveries and the accumulation of knowledge. references ad-daghim, m. 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(2014). social studies: its nature and methods of teaching and learning (vol. 2). amman, jordan: house of cultur. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org.sdl.idm.oclc.org/10.23918/ijsses.v4i1p60 http://dx.doi.org.sdl.idm.oclc.org/10.23918/ijsses.v4i1p60 22 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 1, 22-30, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6432 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group degree of teachers' adaptation to digital skills sustainable development fadi bani ahmad arab open university, faculty of education studies, jordan. email: f_baniahmad@aou.edu.jo abstract the study aimed to assess how teachers adapt to digital skills for sustainable development in education. this study involved 10 teachers from various departments with preand postinterviews to evaluate their adaptation levels using qualitative methods. a tool with three openended questions was developed and its validity and reliability were confirmed. the findings revealed that teachers require significant improvement in digital skills to enhance their teaching, stressing the importance of offering updated training programs that integrate digitalization into education. some teachers showed low adaptation to digital skills due to limited awareness and unfamiliarity with digital tools. the study highlights the need for ongoing professional development to address gaps in digital competence and support the integration of digital tools in teaching. practical recommendations include in-service teacher training focused on digital applications, equipping institutions with necessary technological resources and fostering an environment conducive to digital integration. addressing these needs will help teachers adapt better to digital practices, ultimately improving education quality and aligning with sustainable development goals. this study emphasizes the importance of aligning educational practices with global trends toward digital transformation and sustainable development by enhancing teachers' digital competence. keywords: teachers' adaptation, digital skills, sustainable development, educational technology, digital competencies, teacher professional development. citation | ahmad, f. b. (2025). degree of teachers’ adaptation to digital skills sustainable development. asian journal of education and training, 11(1), 22–30. 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6432 history: received: 28 november 2024 revised: 22 january 2025 accepted: 4 february 2025 published: 20 february 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by arab open university, jordan (grant number: rs.269/2025). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the faculty of education, arab open university, jordan has granted approval for this study on 25 july 2024 (ref. no. 158/20). transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 23 2. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................... 24 3. the findings of the research ....................................................................................................................................................... 25 4. data analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................... 25 5. interview results ............................................................................................................................................................................. 26 6. digital infrastructure...................................................................................................................................................................... 27 7. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 8. recommendation and contribution ............................................................................................................................................. 29 9. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 29 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 29 https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i1.6432 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7984-6401 mailto:f_baniahmad@aou.edu.jo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 22-30 23 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study is distinguished by its focus on assessing teachers' adaptation to digital skills for sustainable development in education. it highlights the lack of awareness of digital tools among teachers and emphasizes the importance of providing ongoing, tailored professional development programs to address this gap and enhance their adaptation to digital tools in teaching. 1. introduction the world is experiencing tremendous technological advances in all industries including education. the advent of the digital revolution has altered learning settings into dynamic and interactive spaces. as a result, teacher professional development is becoming increasingly important as teachers must be able to manage and generate digital material while using a variety of digital tools and platforms both within and outside the classroom. teacher professional development programs play an important role in achieving digital transformation in education by providing teachers with the skills and knowledge they need to manage the difficulties of the digital era. teachers' professional development not only improves their performance but also helps students learn allowing them to adapt to current developments and the rising use of technology in education. numerous studies have stressed the need for professional development in preparing teachers for digital learning. for example, ayvaz-tuncel and çobanoğlu (2018) emphasized the necessity of teacher development for the success of e-learning whereas yue (2019) emphasized the need for professional development to enhance teaching effectiveness and equip instructors with 21st-century abilities. according to copriady, zulnaidi, and alimin (2018), in-service training programs can assist instructors in grasping digital skills and improve their interactions with digital environments. despite the advantages of digital learning, its success is dependent on collaboration among educational institutions, communication firms, and community groups as highlighted by zawacki-richter and bozkurt (2019). this study aims to assess the level of adaptation of teachers to the skills required of a digital teacher in the context of sustainable professional development. it seeks to identify the challenges teachers face in acquiring these digital skills and to provide recommendations for enhancing teacher training programs to support digital transformation in education. the objectives of this study were to understand instructors' levels of adaptability to digital teaching abilities in the context of long-term professional growth. it may assist us in determining teachers' levels of adaptability, acceptance, and usage of digital learning abilities in the educational process. this study investigates the level of adaptation of teachers to the skills of the digital teacher in the light of sustainable professional development and the challenges facing them and given the importance of digital learning in the educational-learning process which is evident in increasing the effectiveness of teaching. digital learning has become an integral part of the educational-learning process to continue the educational process. teachers should integrate digitization and its uses in the educational process in modern and advanced methods as the matter of switching to digital education is not an optional shift of our free will, the idea was born in the researcher of the need to reveal the level of integration and adaptation of teachers with digitization in education and the most important challenges facing them to reduce it, believing that digitization achieves the continuity of the educational process to enter the world of education in the digital age and face challenges so that the teacher can enter, integrate, create and deal effectively with technological means with the need to change the stereotype of education. based on the recommendations of some previous studies such as yue (2019) these objectives guided the formulation of the research questions: rq1: how do degrees of teachers' adaptation to digital skills affect sustainable development? rq2: what is the relationship between the teacher's specialization from his point of view and the degree of interaction with digitization in education and its acceptance and adaptation? rq3: how do the degree of awareness of parents and the surrounding environment reflect on the teacher's acceptance and adaptation to digital learning and keeping pace with the digital age and its requirements? the contribution of teachers in the educational process is the cornerstone of its success. therefore, educational institutions should work to update teacher training and qualification programs to enable them to exercise multiple roles (nasr, 2008). digital learning improved the quality of education through digital technologies and overcoming many of the disadvantages and problems of traditional learning and contributes to raising the capacity of absorption (national education policy center, 2019). many studies have emphasized the importance of teachers acquiring modern digital professional development before entering the teaching profession. for instance, adipat (2021) highlighted that improving teachers' digital learning skills positively impacts their performance, benefits students and enhances their outcomes. this is congruent with the european training foundation's recent assessment on teacher continuous professional development which found that digital teacher skills are one of the most commonly used professional development activities. some studies confirm that the digital divide among teachers hinders the benefit from digital learning applications in education. for example, the study by safta-zecheria, negru, and virag (2020) highlights the challenges teachers face in accessing digital tools, resources, and competencies during the integration of digitization in education. it examines how teachers understand and address these challenges emphasizing the need for enhanced digital competencies. teachers play a pivotal role in the educational process serving as its cornerstone. in the modern era, the role of teachers extends beyond traditional teaching methods to encompass guiding learners in acquiring and applying knowledge effectively (nasr, 2008). digital learning has further magnified the importance of teachers demanding creative and skilled individuals capable of designing and managing dynamic elearning environments. ahmad, al-nawaiseh, and al-nawaiseh (2023) emphasize that digital teachers must be innovative and proactive, crafting learning spaces that promote self-education and learner independence while integrating relevant, updated content into their practices. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 22-30 24 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group advocates for electronic discussion groups to enhance teamwork, grand-clement, axelle, julie, and catriona (2017) stress the need for technical and human readiness. this includes providing the tools and software required for digital learning and raising cultural and educational awareness among teachers and students. moreover, it is a key competency for the 21st century. zaragoza, diaz-gibson, caparros, and sole (2019) point to the need for teachers with advanced competencies, psychological readiness, and adaptability to evolving digital demands expanding e-training programs can prepare teachers for the complexities of digital education. research also supports the transformative potential of digital education for both teachers and learners. bdiwi, de runz, faiz, and ali-cherif (2019) note that digital learning entrusts students with diverse tasks, fostering lifelong learning opportunities when effectively implemented. additionally, gambo and shakir (2022) argue that digital education improves the quality of learning by creating environments tailored to learners’ varying mental levels, ages and stages. adaptive learning environments as explored in recent studies emphasize the mutual adaptability of teachers and learners to dynamic educational contexts. these environments intelligently adjust based on learners' data and prior knowledge offering personalized experiences that maximize educational outcomes. teachers can meet diverse learner needs, fostering an interactive and effective digital learning process by leveraging such environments. the discourse on digital learning outcomes revolves around its primary benefits. bdiwi et al. (2019) and gambo and shakir (2022) argue that digital education enhances overall quality through its adaptability to various learner levels and abilities. this raises the central question i.e., is the foremost benefit of digital learning its promotion of active participation and continuous learning or its ability to deliver customized and high-quality educational experiences? grand-clement et al. (2017) shifted focus to teachers stressing their technical and cultural readiness as prerequisites for effective digital instruction. similarly, zaragoza et al. (2019) emphasized the psychological readiness and adaptability required for teachers to navigate digital transformations effectively. the alignment between studies, such as bdiwi et al. (2019) and gambo and shakir (2022) emphasizes the importance of customizing learning environments to meet individual student needs, thereby enhancing educational quality. the present study diverges from prior research by focusing on the degree to which teachers adapt to digital teaching skills within the framework of sustainable professional development. this study explores the readiness of educators to integrate and sustain digital practices in their teaching environments employing a descriptive survey methodology. 2. research methodology the researcher used the qualitative approach to suit the subject of the current study and its objectives by collecting information and data on the level of teachers' adaptation to the skills of the digital teacher, considering sustainable professional development by conducting interviews and asking open-ended questions based on the nature of the study and the information required to answer its questions and achieve its objectives. the data collected is not in the form of numbers but comes from interviews, field notes, personal documents, memo notes, and other documents. this study uses a descriptive method to compare actual data with the applicable theory. 2.1. data collection and analysis the most important phase of a study is gathering data. both primary and secondary sources were employed in data collection for this study. in addition, the researcher's research methodology is qualitative, and the data was gathered through social media, direct communication, and email to reach as many people as possible in a variety of geographic locations allowing access to all educational environments. additionally, the sample consists of more than 300 male and female teachers and individual interviews were conducted through social media and the zoom platform which included the study questions as attached to the questionnaire because the community is large. setting the time for the interview was within the time that suits the target group, so it was very effective and the researcher felt comfortable for the teacher during the interview and answered the questions with confidence and proficiency. the researcher employs a semi-structured interviewing style in which the researcher conducts interviews using a pre-prepared set of questions that may be expanded upon during the interview. conversations having a clear goal are called interviews. two people participated in the conversation: the interviewer, who asked the questions, and the interviewee, who was the one who answered them. direct face-to-face interaction between the information provider and the information seeker is the primary characteristic of the interview. a variety of prepared questions were asked throughout the interview. through these interviews, the researcher collects data, information and descriptions of the research subjects. the interview technique in this study was aimed at exploring teachers' degree of adaptation to digital teacher skills considering sustainable professional development. 2.2. population and sample the study population consisted of all teachers of the basic education stage in public schools in the capital amman /wadi al-seer brigade for the academic year 2023-2024 which numbered 1371 male and female teachers, distributed between 41 female schools and 19 male schools. according to the latest statistics available at the directorate of education for wadi al-sir brigade, these participants were chosen based on the findings of a field analysis conducted by researchers to assess the teacher's ability to use technology (see table 1). table 1. distribution of members of the study community in wadi al-seer brigade in the capital amman. sex males females total 504 867 1371 schools 19 41 60 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 22-30 25 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1 shows that the number of female teachers is higher than the number of male teachers. in terms of schools, female schools were also higher than male schools. the study sample consisted of 60 male and female teachers selected by the simple random method. the sample study members were also distributed according to the variables (gender and teaching experience) as shown in table 2. table 2. distribution of the study sample according to its variables. variables category frequency percentage sex males 107 34.4% females 203 65.5% total 310 100% teaching experience less than 5 years 65 21.5% 5 10 years 79 25.5% 10 years and more 166 53.5 total 310 100% total 310 100% table 2 shows that 34.4% of the study sample is male while the percentage of females was 65.5%. in terms of teaching experience, the highest percentage of teachers served was 10 years and more and reached 53.5% and secondly came the teachers who served 5 years – less than 10 years and by 25.5% and finally the teachers who served 5 years and less is 21.0%. 2.3. interviews the interviews were used to gather information and to complement the data collected by the interviewers and the information was collected in a direct way from its source. the open interviews were conducted with 100 male and female teachers from the study sample who expressed their desire to do so as the data were recorded to benefit from them in interpreting the results. the interviews were conducted directly and during the researcher's visit to schools. 3. the findings of the research analysis of study data: personal characteristics of the study sample: table 3 shows the distribution of the study sample according to their personal characteristics. table 3. demographic characteristics of the study sample. gender groups frequency percentage male 107 34.5 female 203 65.5 teaching experience less than 5 years 65 21.0 5 10 years 79 25.5 10 years and more 166 53.5 total 310 100.0 3.1. gender the percentage of males was 34.5% and the percentage of females was 65.5%. it is noteworthy that the percentage of females is the largest. the researcher explains the increase in the percentage of females due to the increase in the total number of female teachers, which is 867 female teachers compared to the number of male teachers which is 504 male teachers in addition to the increase in the number of female schools and mixed schools in wadi al-sir district in the capital amman. therefore, this led to an increase in the percentage of females as shown in the following table 4. table 4. distribution of members of the study community in wadi al-sir brigade in the capital amman by gender and schools. sex males females total 504 867 1371 schools 19 41 60 3.2. teaching experience the highest percentage of teachers served was 10 years and more and reached 53.5% and secondly came the teachers who served 5 years – less than 10 years reached 25.5%, and finally the teachers who served 5 years and less reached 21.0%. 4. data analysis data analysis in research is essentially a process of processing data that has been obtained in the field so that it becomes information. the result of the study besides depending on the data obtained in the field will also depend on how the data are analyzed. the data analysis technique used is descriptive analysis technique through qualitative research using data and information obtained directly from informants and then analyzed using a theoretical basis and described systematically based on the facts from the field. this data analysis is closely related to the research design and problem formulation that have been determined before. it can be stated that data analysis techniques can only be used after research points have been met, for example by collecting the appropriate data that is adapted to the problems in specific research. thus, the purpose of the data analysis is to determine or get the overall conclusion that comes from the research data that has been collected by the researcher. in addition, data analysis techniques aim to describe and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 22-30 26 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group explain the research data so that it can be understood. the researcher used the description and analysis of data on what is available in the target group environment to conduct data analysis and draw conclusions. there is three main focus of discussion from the data obtained from this research, namely (a) how do teachers adapt the skills of a digital teacher considering sustainable professional development? (b)what is the relationship between the teacher's specialization from your point of view and the degree of interaction with digitization in education and its acceptance and adaptation? (c) how does the degree of awareness of parents and the surrounding environment reflect on the teacher's acceptance and adaptation to digital learning and keeping pace with the times and its requirements? 5. interview results as for the analysis of the results of the interviews in the current study, data were collected from teachers through interviewing them personally in their workplaces, and through social media in particular, and to reveal the degree of adaptation and adaptation of teachers to integrate digitization into the educational process which has become an important modern requirement, and this is why the data is classified by answering the questions of the study as follows: 5.1. question 1: how does the degree of teachers' adaptation to digital skills sustainable development? training programs to develop digital competencies for teachers every willing teacher who is interested in using digital learning tools like the internet and other super media in the classroom will receive training digitally, according to the teacher development philosophy. the study examined the degree of teachers' adaptation and interaction with these programs, including their use of online programs and platforms for educational purposes by conducting interviews with them and classifying the data. this was done to achieve the fourth sustainable development goal which is to update teacher training programs to develop digital competencies for teachers. 60% of the teachers in the research sample who participated in interviews stated that there is a high level of teacher-to-digitalization adaptation in the classroom. according to the study, it is critical and essential to monitor improvements and stay updated with advancements in other nations (alsalti, bani, & alraggad, 2024). the ministry is working with interest to develop the teacher digitally although there are training courses continuously for teachers as a number of them reported, the benefit of these programs is not in the required form, and the reason is that teachers are not available to join these courses and that they were held during school hours, and the difficulty of transportation and mobility led to a reduction in participation despite the fact that they expressed their desire to do so because the activation of digital learning tools has benefits for educational work and learners. 40% of teachers needed their circumstances to enroll in training courses that enabled them to possess digital learning skills online and they were following the courses using digital platforms such as zoom and microsoft teams but they benefited little because of the difficulty of direct application, and they also reported that the evaluation was self-assessed. taking advantage of the training process in all its aspects without moving to the training place and without the presence of the trainer and trainees in the same space does not achieve the important and important interaction in the training, which is a three-dimensional interaction (digital training content, the trainer, and the trainees) and managing the training process as soon and less expensive. through the interviews, it was also discovered that the training programs offered by the government do not include the abilities required to be a digital teacher. the low efficacy and quality of these initiatives are among the deficiencies. according to the interviews, 90% of the teachers agreed that the lack of training program viability which prevents teachers from presenting the curriculum in ways that grab students' attention, creating assessments and using the tools to provide instant feedback, and creating all design-related activities is what led to the low activation of digital learning in the educational process, not a lack of motivation for training. they also stressed that this places a great responsibility on the teacher to be aware of everything new in the field of educational technologies. some teachers considered that adapting to digital and online teaching and learning is one of the most important skills that a digital teacher should master in the 21st century. they considered the need to acquire new digital competencies as part of the process of adapting to the digital age. one teacher said, "i think anything can be learnt if the teacher is provided with the appropriate opportunity to participate and learn to integrate digitalization with education. then it can be easier to adapt and accept digitization than if we can't use it." "i have been an arabic teacher for 15 years. we have not participated in the training courses required for the digital teacher. however, i am embarrassed in front of the students if they ask me to activate the websites or provide them with something through the websites for digital content." do you find learning computer skills and digitization any difficulty?" the teacher replied, “i think he needs to know the minimum to be able to use the computer and i don't think using it is very complicated. anyone and any teacher can learn if they want to. i consider that communication competencies in the online environment are particularly necessary [nowadays]. one teacher linked the challenges of developing the digital competencies needed for online teaching to the lack of skills in other areas, for example, english language skills. it is a necessity to provide an opportunity to develop digital competencies as evidenced from another teacher interview in which he says. “i think core digital competencies are essential to be able to teach online. you can see how easy it is to talk now in an online environment. but if you had asked me three months ago or more, i wouldn't have known which button to press. instead of turning the camera on, i would turn it off, and so on. because i don't know english, i needed to pick up words like get going! anyone can “play”, “access”, “share” [originally english word], maybe there are competencies that i have not discovered, but they are enough for me. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 22-30 27 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.2. question 2: what is the relationship between the teacher's specialization from your point of view and the degree of interaction with digitization in education and its acceptance and adaptation? according to the results of the interview, 30% of teachers have no trouble adjusting to digital learning and its resources, such as the google educational app, creating instructional and interactive videos from a technical standpoint, communicating with and engaging students in digital learning. the nature of their computing and scientific fields is the cause. however, some teachers stated that even though they readily adjust and actively engage with digital learning resources, there are challenges in putting them into practice because there aren't enough suitable environments, particularly in remote areas where some schools still lack computer labs and the internet is unavailable for various geographical reasons. some of the teachers (50%) confirmed they work in schools where there is infrastructure to a certain extent and to a medium degree which allowed them to communicate through websites and activate digital platforms, and take electronic tests, and the communication was good, fast, interactive and positive from the students, as they indicated that the students felt independent in expression, providing suggestions and answers as well as participating in the discussion. 5.3 question 3: how does the degree of awareness of parents and the surrounding environment reflect on the teacher's acceptance and adaptation to digital learning and keeping pace with the times and its requirements? some teachers reported that the degree of their compatibility and harmony with the integration of digitization in education is to the degree of awareness of some parents as 70% of parents are supportive and supportive of interaction between students and communicating with them on an ongoing basis, which increases the degree of students' interest and makes it easier for parents to follow up with their children and monitor their academic achievement, especially since many parents have jobs and return home late. a group of teachers stated that we could not adapt and interact with students in the educational process through digital learning tools especially if there are some classes that are given remotely to strengthen students, but among 70% of teachers, we cannot judge that the student is with us during the lesson, especially since the student locks the camera, and more than once i ask students to turn off the sound next to him. the lack of updating teachers' communication programs was an important reason for describing the technical problems that are occurring that hinder the progress of the class, including what was mentioned by a young teacher (twenty-five years old) as follows: “i have a phone to work from but the camera is not very good. since i'm working from my phone, i can't see them all at once. i only work on my phone; i don’t work from my laptop. another teacher spoke about digital pedagogy as a difficult field to understand and complained about the differences between face-to-face and digital communication. teachers have become concerned about whether parents and students can master the digital resources needed for the educational process and the competence these resources require: “it was a challenge to learn how to work online at the beginning of my educational career, to learn many things on [online educational] platforms,” says one teacher. how is communication achieved between your teacher, parents and students, and by what means? “it was difficult to communicate with parents,” says one teacher. i was afraid at first that they wouldn't understand a lot of things. the whatsapp group and getting all the kids phone numbers i didn't have, the google classroom platform, set up all the accounts, and then worked on zoom and so on. i was surprised at how fast and resilient the parents were.” communities that invest in digital infrastructure (high-speed internet, devices, etc.) make it easier for teachers to implement digital learning strategies. lack of resources: in less aware communities with limited resources, teachers might struggle to adopt digital tools due to lack of access and support, hindering their ability to keep up with modern educational requirements. in essence, a well-informed and supportive environment fosters a teacher’s confidence in adopting digital learning, while a lack of awareness or resistance from parents and the community can slow down this transition. 6. digital infrastructure although it is important to provide a strong digital infrastructure for education, to achieve efficiency and continuity in education, some schools suffer from a severe lack of technological infrastructure, as well as a lack of human infrastructure. “how do you find the strength of the internet network in the school and the residential area in general? during an interview with some teachers, 70% of them reported that the broadband infrastructure is completely centralized, as they showed through their experience in education and their direct communication among them that schools in the governorates, villages, camps and valleys suffer the most from the provision of the internet, and the unequal opportunities between the governorates and the few high-speed internet subscribers. this was an obstacle in the adaptation of teachers to integrate technology into education, as well as reflected on students as the great weakness generates boredom and monotony among students in following up their learning which drives them to leave the websites of the proposed educational materials, as well as reduces the speed of their interaction in submitting assignments. 60% of teachers confirmed that the technological infrastructure was of below average quality, and the question was asked "what technological tools are available in the school?" 40% of teachers confirmed that the touch devices we rely on are our devices and they are not available in school such as phones, laptops and the question was “is it possible to connect to the internet through them?" 50% of teachers said that the telecommunications infrastructure has poor access to the internet, electricity, etc. we have difficulties in ensuring that all students can attend appropriate classes and solve assignments due to problems with technological infrastructure. this was understood to be happening because the students' families did not have the means to provide them with access to technology during the day while working. teachers teaching students with access to a laptop and the internet considered themselves lucky, pointing to the fact that they considered this to be the exception rather than the rule. in some cases, how do you find the asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 22-30 28 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group follow-up mechanism for students characterized by difficulty and enjoyment of distance learning while following assignments? one teacher reported that even half of the class, some students were not able to follow online learning activities on a regular basis. another of the interviewees stated that the difficulty of adapting and accepting digital learning, as well as i was unable to follow the performance of my students through the platforms due to the low quality of the internet, the high cost of subscription to this service, that i have a phone that does not support the internet service. one says having a mobile device is twice the income they earn. however, they felt that the lack of participation was linked to poverty. another teacher mentioned a lack of intrinsic motivation also noting that a lack of commitment to attending online classes may have an impact on some students' willingness to attend. this applies to some of the teachers interviewed. there was communication only through whatsapp. 6.1. how is communication through the platforms through your interaction with students, and how does this reflect on the communication between students and teachers? other teachers even mentioned that communication and follow-up through educational platforms require less technological infrastructure as a strategy to reach a larger number of students as this teacher who works in a rural area, mentioned during the focus group. 'yes, there are some students we couldn't contact via zoom but we did it via messenger, we keep messages, sometimes we work on zoom and messenger, we work from the laptop but also from the phone, and that's how we tried to reach as many students as possible.' moreover, even when online communication between students and teachers is possible, technological infrastructure has negatively affected the communication process, affecting how well the teacher understands what is going on, on the other side of the students' screens. communication through educational platforms plays a crucial role in shaping the interaction between students and teachers. platforms such as learning management systems (lms), video conferencing tools, and collaborative software have transformed the way education is delivered and how communication takes place. here’s how this dynamic works and how it reflects the communication between students and teachers: communication through educational platforms plays a crucial role in shaping the interaction between students and teachers. platforms such as learning management systems (lms), video conferencing tools, and collaborative software have transformed the way education is delivered and how communication takes place. here’s how this dynamic works and how it reflects communication between students and teachers, enhanced accessibility and flexibility. communication through platforms makes education more accessible. teachers can provide resources, lectures, assignments and feedback from anywhere allowing students to learn at their own pace. real time and asynchronous communication teacherstudent interaction platforms enable both real-time communication (e.g., live classes, chat features) and asynchronous communication (e.g., discussion boards, recorded lectures). this balance allows for immediate feedback and ongoing dialogue. collaborative platforms, such as google classroom, microsoft teams, or moodle, allow for group work, peer reviews, and shared resources. teachers can assign collaborative tasks that encourage students to work together. this collaborative approach helps build a stronger sense of community even in remote or hybrid learning environments, enhancing both teacher-student and student-student relationships. teachers can provide continuous feedback on assignments and participation, and students can communicate their difficulties or ask questions directly on the platform. platforms can lower the psychological barriers that might exist in traditional classrooms, such as shyness or fear of speaking out. students may feel more comfortable asking questions through chat or discussion boards than in-person. 7. discussion the researcher found that in-service teacher training programs should be more modern and developed, and in line with the requirements of the digital age and to meet the needs of digital transformation in the educational process in light of the presentation and interpretation of the results. this is what he confirmed (zeitoun, 2007) especially that learners have the ability to seek, analyze and research more than previous generations and we must not remain the same approach and usual educational policies. adaptation to digital and online education and learning has become one of the most important skills that a digital teacher should master in the 21st century. this requires gaining modern skills that have been addressed by the sustainable development of education as well as working to provide the appropriate educational environment and enrich the infrastructure with modern digital technologies and working to conclude agreements and partnerships with local and international community institutions to support the educational field with the necessary digital technologies and technology and to provide human resources that have the ability to qualify the current teacher digitally (ahmad, qawaqneh, zraiqat, & jamil al nawaiseh, 2023). he lacks the necessary skills in digitization and he did not receive his learning during the university stage that he studied in the past. according to ahmad (2024) digital communication between all elements of the educational process and the local community must be established to ensure the success of the educational process and to create a safe environment. building teachers' digital abilities is essential to promote sustainable professional development since it helps them stay updated with the quick changes in technology and contemporary teaching techniques. teachers must also be knowledgeable about the latest developments in educational robots and technology since the future of education hinges on developing tools that are easy to use and suitable for accelerating the learning process for students in line with the study's recommendations (al-nawaiseh, tabieh, maqableh, altawalbeh, & ahmad, 2024). the value of enhancing teachers' digital abilities is clear when it comes to raising educational standards and utilizing technology to assist teachers in creating engaging and creative learning environments that better serve students' varied needs. digital skills may boost productivity and efficiency and pave the way for teachers to take advantage of e-learning resources like online training classes which allow them to keep improving their abilities without depending on more conventional training options. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 22-30 29 © 2025 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group enhancing interaction with students because technology provides new ways to interact with students such as virtual classrooms and e-learning platforms and enables them to keep pace with technological development through the ability to employ modern tools and technologies in education which enhances their efficiency and makes them able to deal with future challenges. 8. recommendation and contribution the current findings of the study allow outlining several recommendations that are likely to improve digital teaching skills. implications and limitations: 8.1. implications • it is recommended that educational institutions come up with strategic plans and programs that utilize the positive attitude of the teachers towards digital learning so that the focus on improvement is never-ending. • it becomes necessary to deliver additional training programs to enhance teacher effectiveness and ease their adjustment to the digital learning environment. • initiatives aimed at the introduction of e-culture could increase students’ interests so that they are prepared for active involvement in online learning. • there should be an incorporation of digital learning courses in the teacher preparation programs in the universities which will help to broaden the skills of the prospective teachers and thus ensure that the new teachers possess the relevant skills as soon as they graduate. 8.2. limitations this study adds to the existing body of knowledge by emphasizing the need for the sustainable professional development of teachers to attain progressive levels of digital skills enhancement in teaching. the study makes clear the gaps in teachers’ digitalization at their level and therefore calls for the provision of systems that harmonize the delivery of resources to be both digital and human to enhance the practice. this study adds to the general knowledge of the last few decades which were focused on how any country can effectively advance its digitalization in the education sector through informing policies and structures of teacher education programs. the work is a contribution to the advancement of knowledge in the areas of sustainable professional development in relation to strategic areas and shows a direction in which education stakeholders can adopt to enhance digital competencies among teaching faculties. 9. conclusion conducting such a study on a different sample of public school teachers and comparing the results of this study to obtain a clearer picture 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(eds.), handbook of open, distance and digital education. singapore: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2080-6_12. zeitoun, a. (2007). constructivist theory. in (pp. 453). jordan: dar al-shorouq for publishing and distribution. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.35923/jes.2020.2.05 https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2019.168669 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2080-6_12 121 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 4, 121-130, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i4.4309 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group geogebra assisted multiple representations for enhancing students’ representation translation abilities in calculus nigusse arefaine1 kassa michael2 shimelis assefa3 ( corresponding author) 1jigjiga university, department of mathematics, ethiopia. 1email: nigusse09@gmail.com 2,3addis ababa university, department of science and mathematics education, ethiopia. 2email: ftkassa2010@yahoo.com 3email: shi.assefa@gmail.com abstract multiple representations cultivate students’ mathematical mindset. however, research results have reported that students do not benefit from these tools due to lack of representational fluency. this study was designed to determine the impact of geogebra assisted multiple representations approach on students’ representation translation performance in calculus. pretest posttest quasi experimental design was implemented. three intact groups of first year first semester of social science students in the 2019/2020 academic year of size 53, 57 and 54 at jigjiga and kebri-dehar universities in ethiopia were considered. the groups were taught with geogebra supported multiple representations (mrt), multiple representations (mr) and comparison group (cg). representation translation test was given before and after the treatment. furthermore, students’ translation errors were categorized as implementation, interpretation and preservation errors and analyzed using frequency and percentage. the ancova result revealed that significant difference was obtained on the adjusted mean of rtf posttest (f (2,160) = 5.29, p = 0.006, partial 𝜂2 =0.062) in favor of the mrt. the interpretation error was the most frequently committed among the groups. recommendations were forwarded that included the use of geogebra and the need to conduct further study with different participants to generalize to the entire population. keywords: calculus, errors, geogebra, multiple representations, representation translation, source representation, target representation, translation. citation | nigusse, a., kassa, m., & shimelis, a. (2022). geogebra assisted multiple representations for enhancing students’ representation translation abilities in calculus. asian journal of education and training, 8(4), 121-130. 10.20448/edu.v8i4.4309 history: received: 10 august 2022 revised: 13 october 2022 accepted: 31 october 2022 published: 28 november 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 122 2. statement of the problem ............................................................................................................................................................ 123 3. research questions ....................................................................................................................................................................... 123 4. methods ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 123 5. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 125 6. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 128 7. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 129 8. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 129 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 129 mailto:nigusse09@gmail.com mailto:ftkassa2010@yahoo.com mailto:shi.assefa@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i4.4309 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0075-3059 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9239-2990 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8917-4829 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 122 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the study provides a step forward on the implementation of geogebra to enhance the quality and quantity of using multiple representations for learning calculus. furthermore, the study explains the plethora of multiple representations on representation translation abilities through detecting potential sources of errors to facilitate students’ learning. 1. introduction inherently, mathematics is endowed with multiple representations (mrs) used for problem solving, conceptual understanding, and disciplinary discourse. mathematics stands as a discipline due to these representations; otherwise it would have been an imaginary idea. upon the advent of versatile computer technologies, mrs becomes a conspicuous instructional approach in mathematics to create a cohesive and comprehensive conceptual understanding on students’ side. there are plenty of computer tools that support dynamic links of mrs. geogebra is one of them. it is a fascinating mathematical software application used to experiment and explore mathematical contents via dynamically linked mrs (dahal, 2019). the ability of mrs is paramount important to characterize students who excel in mathematics. mathematical representation skills is one of the five mathematical abilities in the school mathematics standards, including (1) communication, (2) reasoning, (3) problem solving, (4) connection, and (5) representation. the most commonly used representation types in a typical calculus classroom instruction are numerical, graphical, algebraic, verbal, and their possible combinations. the notion of mrs is the delivery of a concept using at least two different representation types (ainsworth, 2006; arifah, 2020). the advantage of learning mathematics with mrs are explained from the perspectives of information processing theory ( dual coding) (clark & paivio, 1991) , and pedagogical functions (complement , constrain and construct (ainsworth, 2006) in the process of designing an appropriate multi-representational learning environment to support students’ learning, the rhythm must be based on the pedagogical functions that mrs provides along with design parameters and cognitive tasks (ainsworth, 2006). the chalk and board approaches are no longer supportive of implementing mrs in mathematics classroom. however, the advent of multiple interface computer technologies has increased the quantity and quality of using mrs in mathematics instruction. the emergence of geogebra makes mrs more accessibly with more quantities and qualities in calculus learning (arifah, 2020). to get the optimum benefits that mrs can offer , students need to develop multiple representation abilities: the ability of creating, interpreting, implementing and translating multiple representations for problem solving (fonger, 2019). mrs ability is a land mark for meaning making in mathematics learning. these abilities are equally important for novices and experts (pedersen, bach, gregersen, højsted, & jankvist, 2021). however, novices lack the required abilities for mrs (nurrahmawati, sa’dijah, sudirman, & muksa, 2019; rahmawati, 2019). the ability with mrs enables seamlessly translate one representation to another and flexibly implement various representations in solving mathematical problems. these abilities are at the heart of successful mathematics learning (adu-gyamfi, stiff, & bossé, 2012; fonger, 2019). mrs as method of instruction is defined as the implementation of two or more than two different representations simultaneously in classroom instruction when a single representation is no longer adequate to provide a complete picture of a concept (ainsworth, 2006; fonger, 2019; nurrahmawati et al., 2019). representation translation refers ,in this study, to a process of constructing a mathematical representation ( called ,target representation ) from given representation ( called , source representation) in solving mathematical problem (adu-gyamfi et al., 2012; afriyani, sa'dijah, & muksar, 2018). the goal of representation translation is to preserve semantic congruence between two mathematical representations. 1.1. representation translation the key competency for meaningful learning of mathematics is representational fluency (rf), which refers to the ability to create, interpret, translate between, and connect mrs (fonger, 2019). representation translation fluency (rtf) is one component of rf that is considered to be a foundation for building up of conceptual understanding and mathematical thinking. students most often fail to translate one representation to other representation. dealing with the representations without connecting and translating resulted in a fragmented knowledge of the concept. many researchers reported that students perennially demonstrate difficulty in correctly accomplish the translation tasks (adu-gyamfi et al., 2012; afriyani et al., 2018; bossé, adu-gyamfi, & cheetham, 2011; rahmawati, hidayanto, & anwar, 2017). numerous factors interact to make some translations more difficult than others. a widespread of research results with the courses ranging from algebra to calculus indicate that there is a lost in translation when attempting to go from one representation of a mathematical situation or relationship to another (adu-gyamfi et al., 2012; duval, 2006). the degree of difficulty is categorized into student-centered factors and content centered factors. student-centered factors are including: the translation action, dual translation (through intermediate translation) and classroom experience. the factors related to the representation type include: different representation types required different interpretation techniques (like local versus global, or syntactic versus semantic), some translation are inherently more complex, and some require greater number of steps to accomplish (rahmawati et al., 2017). the number of fact gaps associated with either the source or target representation involved in a translation may speak to the difficulty of the translation (adu-gyamfi et al., 2012; bossé et al., 2011). any conventional mathematical representation is identified by its characters, configurations, syntactic and semantic rules in order to be communicable in the disciplinary discourse. in the process of translation, two types of representations are involved, source and target representations. in this process, semantic congruence must be preserved without loss of information while mapping the source to the target representation. to do so, learners must unpack the densely packed micro-concepts embedded in the source representation to recombine in constructing the target representation (duval, 2006). this is in contrast to the black box, which concerns with the source and target representations ignoring the process. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 123 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. unpacking the source representation (bossé, adu-gyamfi, & chandler, 2014). all of the micro-concepts packed in the source representation are not helpful to construct the target representation. some basic information or concepts from the source representation are required that guide to construct congruent target representation. figure 1, illustrates that the densely packed micro-concepts (a-o) in the source representation are unpacked and some (m-o) may immediately be discarded as unnecessary and others may be overlooked or not fully recognized. through investigating and interacting with the micro concepts of a representation, the learner decodes mathematical ideas (a, b, and c) which were captured in the source representation (bossé et al., 2014). for instance, the basic concepts required for sketching a perfect graph representation of a function from its algebraic representation, more or less, are: domain, intercepts, symmetricity, asymptotes, intervals of monotonicity, extreme points, intervals of concavity, inflection points, behavior of the function at infinity. adu-gyamfi et al. (2012) identified three types of translation errors: • implementation errorsteps in an algorithm are incorrectly executed. • interpretation errorincorrectly characterized the properties of either the source or the target representation. • preservation error – attributes of the source representation are not properly coded in the target representation. 2. statement of the problem in the availability of mrs, it is a fact that there is an urge to prefer , translate, implement and interpret representations (ainsworth, 2006). however , students often fail to do so due to lack of rf (rahmawati, 2019). students also lack to relate and translate the representation with the underline mathematical concept (samsuddin & retnawati, 2018). fonger, davis, and rohwer (2018) in turn, reported that instructional support enabled student to enhance rf. students have a huge gap in flexible implementation of mrs during problem solving and bridging them through translation (adu-gyamfi et al., 2012). van meter, list, lombardi, and kendeou (2020) indicate that novice (students) fundamentally lack rf which enable them to understand the underline concepts. these representations can be mutually translated to each other without any loss of formal properties (dey, 2019). the more complete the translation ability of the students have, the stronger the understanding of mathematical ideas they have. many researchers argue that some mathematical translations are more difficult than others (adugyamfi et al., 2012). this study was framed to investigate the effect of geogebra assisted multiple representations approach on students’ representation translation fluency in learning calculus. 3. research questions 1. what is the effect of geogebra assisted multiple representations approach on students’ performance in representation translation of calculus problems? 2. which representation error is most committed across groups in calculus learning? 3. which representation type is difficult for students to translate in terms of the source and target representations? 4. methods the study implemented a multi-treatment pretestpost-test non-equivalent group quasi-experimental research design on purposefully selected groups of students that belongs to two distinct universities in ethiopia. the research areas include jigjiga university (jju) and kebri-dehar university (kdu). the study was intended to compare the effects of three differentiated approaches: geogebra supported multiple representations approach (labeled as mrt), multiple representations approach (labeled as mr) and the control group (labeled as cg) on students’ performance on representation translation on differential calculus concepts. furthermore, this study investigated the prevalence of translation error committed by the students. in addition to that, students’ difficulty in representation type was identified in terms of the source and target representation. 4.1. participants the study was conducted in 2019/20 academic year on first year first semester students of the social science stream who enrolled for the course mathematics for social science at jigjiga university (jju) and kebri-dehar university (kdu). according to the new ethiopian higher education roadmap for undergraduate program, which was indorsed in the 2019/20 academic year, the course mathematics for social sciences incorporates calculus in a separate unit. according to this roadmap, first year students at jju and kdu, who admitted from all corners of the country in 2019/20, had the natural and social sciences streams. the first-year social sciences students at jju and kdu were assigned into their section (labeled as a, b, c,etc. ) based on alphabetical order. each section contained, on average, 58 students. in the jju and kdu, there were 23 and 12 sections of social science students in the 2019/20 academic years, respectively. one section from jju was assigned into the mrt (n = 53) and two sections asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 124 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group from kdu were assigned into the mr (n = 57) and cg (n = 54). the learning contents of the course that were selected for the interventions cover limits, continuity, derivatives and application of derivatives. the multiple representation approach (mr) group was received multiple representations based instruction, with special focus on the verbal, numerical, graphical, algebraic representations and their possible combinations. this group was not supported by any technology. chalk and board as well as paper and pen were used for illustrating a content using different representation types and translating one representation type to other representation type. in the geogebra supported multiple representations treatment group (mrt), the multiple representations was supported by geogebra software. for this group, some classroom arrangement and classroom shifting was implemented during the intervention. even if all of the classrooms in jju have access of electricity infrastructures, there was erratic power supply. these classrooms are not sufficient to use mass technology, like liquid crystal display (lcd) to display mathematical representations on geogebra interfaces, since they are designed for chalk and board teaching approach and they have stretched rectangular shape. in the mrt classroom had two phases. first, geogebra was used side to side with the chalk and board/ pen and paper in the hall using laptop and lcd display. second, a computer lap was used to practice the students on the geogebra worksheets and to construct their own at fly. the time allocation for these sessions of the group was based on the 3 credit hours and 2 tutorial hours of the course. the students were not constrained to use the software only in the class time, but many of the students downloaded and installed in their private electronic devices. they were using it in their dormitory for practicing, experimenting and learning mathematics contents with their own peace. due to the fact that the course instructor and the students were novices for the technology, most of the time , online sources were using for the classroom presentation and demonstration as well as for the computer lab practicing and experimentations. in the mrt group, by means of geogebra, the teaching and learning of calculus was shifted into more active, where students explored calculus concepts with linked multi-representations, which is often difficult using chalk and board. the cg was taught based on the conventional approach, which was more dominantly algebraic representation. the course instructor in the cg class might use different representations separately. but, he did not receive any training to use multiple representations intentionally with recommended model. however, the course instructors in the mrt and mr groups, the deft (design, function, task) model was adopted. the three groups were taught by different instructors who had equivalent academic status and teaching experience. the intervention was lasted for about six weeks. table 1. participants’ background information. gender female male group n f % f % mrt 53 16 30.2 37 69.8 mr 57 21 36.8 36 63.2 cg 54 18 33.3 36 66.7 in the three groups, female participants were fewer than their male counterparts. based on the results reported in table 1, the mrt group consisted of 16 female and 37 male students. these numbers represent 30% females and 70% males of the group, respectively. similarly, the mr group consisted of 21 (37%) female and 36 (63%) male students. the cg encompasses 18 (33%) female and 36 (67%) male students. from this table, it can be observed that the proportion of female students across the three groups was approximately equal with very slight variation. but, the proportion of female students was much less than the proportion of male students across each group. table 2. representation translation posttest items, with respect to source and target representations. item source representation type(s) target representation type(s) intended to use for solving the problem 1 algebraic to be able to sketch graph of the function using the applications of derivative, using central difference determine derivative of the function at a specific number, use the formula to compare the values of a derivative and write a sentences that describes the behavior of the derivative of the function on a given interval 2 combinations of algebraic and graphical to be able to generate numerical table for the area of the region enclosed by the graph using the formula as well as the graph and draw a scatter plot for the data 3(a)-(e) combination of verbal and graphical to be able to label dimensions of the figures, give algebraic expression for the volume of the box, construct a table of values for the volume function, sketch a graph for the volume function , and explain the behavior of the volume function as x approaches a number 4 numerical to be able to discuss the slope of the tangent line at a point p to the graph of v using graph, algebra, numerical value and verbal explanation the students in the three groups were given representation translation test on concepts of differential calculus. the test had four questions, in which question 3 contained five questions (a-e). table 2 illustrates that the type of representation used to express the question, considered as source representation, and the intended representation that the students elucidate in their answers, called target representation. the students were required to translate mathematical information from the source representations to the target representation preserving semantic congruence. students result was scored using rubrics. 4.2. data collection instruments and procedures the data collection instrument for this study was representation translation fluency test (rtft) (pretest and posttest). tasks that involve representation translation and representation implementation could lend themselves to rubric assessment and to other assessment types suitable for open-ended activities. hence, the students’ score on the representation interpretation problem was quantified using rubric assessment technique. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 125 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the problem is presented in one or the combined form of representation(s). the students’ were asked to solve the problem in the other forms of representation(s) keeping in mind that the different representations are equivalent. in the process of representation translations, the students’ errors were scored and categorized as implementation error, interpretation error and preservation error (adu-gyamfi et al., 2012). the three groups were compared based on these error types using frequency and percentage. 4.3. reliability and validity of instruments to obtain obtaining reliable and valid information from the data collection instruments, several efforts had been made. the main types of validity that were tried to establish through different mechanisms included: face validity, content validity, construct validity and criterion validity. in order to establish validity of the representation interpretation problem, the supervisors’ comments were used and the items were modified accordingly. in addition to the supervisors’ comments, the opinions of mathematics experts, who are member of the academic staff in mathematics department at jju, were consulted for checking the validity of concept and appearance from the aspects that it aimed to measure. regarding to the face validity, the assessors evaluated the appearance of the items in each of the constructs in terms of feasibility, readability, consistency of style and formatting, and the clarity of the language used to the level of the participants experience. panel of experts were also involved to evaluate content validity of the constructs in the way to ensure each of the constructs incorporates all the items that were essential in which they eliminated irrelevant items in any of the constructs. in addition to the panel of experts, the literature review was used to establish content validities of the constructs. to establish the reliability of the instruments of each construct, a pilot test was conducted on second year mathematics department students. thirty students (15 students for the pretest and 15 students for post-test) were participated in the pilot test. the students’ solutions on the constructs were assessed through rubrics. two iterators were involved in assessing the students’ work using the predetermined rubrics for scoring students’ solution of the items in each of the constructs. as a result of this, student’s solution were analyzed separately by two mathematics department academic staff members at jju and the calculation of the reliability were computed manually using the formula "consensus/ (consensus + dissensus) x 100" recommended by miles & huberman (1994), cited in rahmawati et al. (2017). based on this, the reliability value of the rtf pretest and posttest were obtained to be 0.78 and 0.77, respectively. these results are in the acceptable range of reliability. 4.4. data analysis to compare the three groups with regards to their performance on the representation translation in solving calculus problems, appropriate inferential statistic was used depending on the underlined statistical assumptions about the collected data. one way analysis of variance (anova) was employed to detect variations of the three groups (if any) on their rtf pretests. one way analysis of covariance (ancova) was implemented to compare the three groups based on their score on the rtf posttests using the rtf pretest as covariate. percentage and frequency were used for describing students’ status on the translation error. a narrative analysis was used for the qualitative data to determine students’ difficulty of representation type in the process of translation. 5. results 5.1. pre-intervention results the pretest results were the base line test scores taken from the three groups just before the intervention had been begun. the data were obtained from rtf pretest. from the rtf pretest, translation errors were identified and classified into three categories – implementation , interpretation and preservation (adu‐gyamfi, stiff, & bossé, 2012). hence, the test results involved both continuous and categorical data. for the continuous data, appropriate inferential statistics were used and for the categorical data, frequency and percentage were applied to describe the status of students before the intervention. table 3. means and standard deviations of the representation translation fluency pretest for groups. group representation translation fluency pretest n m sd mrt 53 66.94 14.84 mr 57 57.96 13.09 cg 54 64.44 12.17 mean and standard deviation were performed to summarize and describe the data set obtained from the continuous components of rtf pretest. the results reported in table 3 shows that slight variations of mean scores were detected among the three groups with greater score for the mrt ( m = 66.94, sd = 14.84) than the mr ( m = 57.96 , sd = 13.09) and the cg ( m = 64.44, sd = 12.17). however, these results do not enable to generalize with certain level of confidence and significance. hence, generalizing the results was detained until the appropriate inferential statistics was performed. table 4. one-way analysis of variance results for the representation translation fluency pretests. variable source ss df ms f p rtf pretest between groups 2381.91 2 1190.95 6.64 0.002 within groups 28896.09 161 179.48 total 31278 163 the between subjects one way analysis of variance (anova) was conducted to compare the three groups on the representation translation fluency (rtf) pretests. the stringent statistical assumptions for the anova model had been checked before it was used for comparing the groups. these assumptions were met. the result reported in table 4 shows that the three groups had statistically significant mean differences on the rtf pretest (f (2,161) = asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 126 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6.64, p = 0.002) before the intervention had been begun. this result manifested that students in the three groups had various experiences on the rtf in learning on the pre-calculus concepts before the intervention. the post hoc comparison using the tukey hsd test verified that mean score of the multiple representations group (mr) (m = 57.96, sd = 13.09) was significantly less than the geogebra supported multiple representations (mrt) (m = 66.94, sd = 14.84) and the comparison group (cg) (m = 64.44, sd = 12.17) on the rtf pretest. the mrt did not differ significantly from the cg on the rtf pretest (p = 0.60). the base line variations of the groups on the rtf before the intervention were considered as a covariate for the posttest and controlled statistically using analysis of covariance (ancova). table 5. translation pretest error – group cross tabulation. group error type implementation interpretation preservation combination f % f % f % f % mrt 16 30 32 60 2 4 1 2 mr 13 23 38 67 4 7 cg 15 29 36 67 2 4 the types of error that can be committed in the process of representation translations are categorized into implementation error, interpretation error, preservation error and combination of any of these errors. frequency and percentages were used to estimate the most committed error type in the pretest. based on the results reported in table 5, interpretation error was the most frequently committed with slight variations among groups (60% of the geogebra supported multiple representation group ( mrt), 67% of the multiple representations group ( mr) & 67% of the cg) next to implementation error (30% of the mrt, 23% of the mr & 29% of the comparison group (cg)). 5.2. post intervention results once the researchers become sure that there were no silly errors in the data set collected from the post administrated instruments (for instance, avoiding out of range scores in any of the instruments), a preliminary data analysis was done on the construct of rtf to check the stringent statistical assumptions for the underlined statistical methods. these preliminary activities paved the way to choose correct and appropriate statistical tools and techniques to address the formulated research questions of this study. as this research design was a nonequivalent groups quasi-experimental research design, most of the statistical tools that were chosen focused on estimating the differences between groups on data scores from the post administrated instruments as a result of the differentiated treatment type. in choosing the right statistic, a number of decisive factors were taken into great considerations. table 6. means and standard deviations of the representation translation fluency posttest. group n representation translation fluency posttest m sd mrt 53 22.79 3.09 mr 57 21.12 3.55 cg 54 20.94 3.02 based on the descriptive statistics results reported in table 6, slight variations were detected among the groups on the indicated variable. it would be a hasty generalization ahead of implementing the appropriate inferential statistic, however to provide conclusive information based on the results of the descriptive statistics. table 7. analysis of covariance result of the representation translation fluency posttests using the pretest as covariate. dv source type iii ss df ms f p partial 𝛈𝟐 rtf posttest pretest 0.81 1 0.81 0.08 0.782 0.000 group 111.30 2 55.65 5.29 0.006 0.062 error 1684.88 160 10.53 note: dv: dependent variable. r squared = 0.063 (adjusted r squared = 0.045) for the rtf posttest. table 8. pairwise comparisons on the representation translation fluency posttest. dv (i) group (j) group md (i-j) p rtf posttest mrt mr 1.72 0.025 cg 1.86 0.011 mr mrt -1.72 0.025 cg 0.14 1.000 note: dv: dependent variable. a one way analysis of covariance (ancova) was carried out to compare the groups on the representation translation fluency (rtf) posttest while controlling the rtf pretest. preliminary analyses were carried out to check the statistical assumption for the underlined statistical method and assumptions were met (pallant, 2013). according to the one way ancova result reported in table 7 , there was statistically significant adjusted mean different among the groups on the rtf posttest after controlling the rtf pretest ( f(2,160) = 5.29 , p = 0.006 , partial 𝜂2 =0.062 ). regardless of the statistically significant difference, the mean differences between the groups were quite small. this was manifested in the effect size that 6.2% of the variance was explained by the treatment type. a multiple comparison results of the rft posttest, reported in table 8, shows that a significant difference was detected between the geogebra supported multiple representations (mrt) and the multiple representations group asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 127 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (mr) (p = 0.025) and between the mrt and the comparison group (cg) ( p = 0.011) in favor of the mrt. but, no significance difference between the mr and cg (p = 1.000). this result revealed that geogebra supported multiple representations approaches brought a better level of sophistication in rtf than the multiple representations approach only and the traditional approach. translation among mathematical representations has a powerful influence on the students’ concept comprehension and problem solving (afriyani et al., 2018). however, research results show that students often fail to construct target representation equivalent to the source representation (adu-gyamfi et al., 2012; afriyani et al., 2018; bossé et al., 2014; bossé et al., 2011). as a result, the theme of the students’ errors in translation is still the center of attention in today’s mathematics education research (adu-gyamfi, bossé, & chandler, 2017; afriyani et al., 2018; rahmawati, 2019). adu-gyamfi et al. (2012) identified three distinct error types: implementation error, interpretation error and preservation error. these errors manifest at different stages of the translation process. hence, this study was intended to determine the most committed translation error as a result of the treatment type. table 9. percentage of translation error type of the posttest with group. group type of error committed implementation interpretation preservation % % % mrt 21 66 13 mr 23 72 4 cg 9 80 11 students were provided with different tasks of representation translating in the differential calculus content to describe the error type they committed in the process of representation translation. percentage was used to compare the three groups on these translation error types. based on the output displayed in table 9, interpretation error was the most frequently committed across the groups (66% of the errors in the mrt, 73% of the errors in the mr & 80% of the errors in the cg). the implementation error was less frequently appeared across the groups (21% of the errors in the mrt, 23% of the errors in the mr & 9% of the errors in the cg) next to preservation error (13% of the errors in mrt, 4% of the errors in the mr & 11% of the errors in the cg). despite the distribution of the error among the three groups appeared in a similar pattern, the prevalence of interpretation error was higher in the cg than the mrt and mr, and also higher in mr than in mrt. the students’ translation errors in the three groups remained more concentrated in the interpretation error after the intervention. hence, the treatment type did not bring a magnificent variation on the students’ error type committed. table 10. prevalence of translation error type with respect to source representation. group n source representation error type implementation interpretation preservation f % f % f % mrt 53 algebraic 16 30.2 10 18.9 11 11.3 mr 57 12 21.1 12 21.1 11 19.3 cg 54 13 24.1 17 31.5 11 20.4 mrt 53 graph 5 9.4 5 9.4 23 43.4 mr 57 10 17.5 7 12.3 3 5.3 cg 54 11 20.4 8 14.8 7 13.0 mrt 53 verbal 9 17.0 6 11.3 7 13.2 mr 57 11 19.3 9 15.8 2 3.5 cg 54 18 33.3 8 14.8 1 1.9 mrt 53 numerical 9 17 7 13.2 7 13.2 mr 57 13 22.8 10 17.5 3 5.3 cg 54 18 33.3 5 9.3 3 5.6 based on the results reported in table 10, in the process of translation from algebraic representation into the other form of representations considerable number of students from the mrt committed implementation error (30.2%). this number of students exceeds to the number of students who committed interpretation error (18.9%) and preservation error (11.3%) of that group. however, error type in the mr is nearly equally distributed among the implementation error (21.1%) , interpretation error (21.1%) and preservation error (19.3%). some variation was observed in the cg in the error distribution with the greater share for interpretation (31.5%) that implementation error (24.1%) and preservation error (20.4%). in the process of translation from graph to other form of representations, larger number of students from the mrt committed preservation error (43.4%) than the interpretation error (9.4%) and implementation error (9.4%). however, in the case of the mr, the prevalence of translation error ranges from implementation (17.5%) to interpretation (12.3%) and preservation (5.3%).likewise, students in the cg who committed implementation error (20.4%) was greater than the interpretation error (14.8%) and preservation error (13.0%). in the process of translation from verbal to other forms of representations, the number of students who committed were order as implementation error (17.0%), preservation error (13.2%) and interpretation error (11.3%).similarly, the rate of distribution of translation error in the mr was ordered as implementation error (19.3%) , interpretation ( 15.8%) and preservation (3.5%). likewise, greater number of students in the cg committed implementation error (33.3%) than the interpretation error ( 14.8%) and preservation error ( 1.9%). in the process of translation from numerical representation into other form of representations, the number of students in the mrt who committed error was greater than implementation error (17%) than interpretation error (13.2%) and preservation error (13.2%). similar order was reported in the mr ranged from implementation error (22.8%), interpretation error (17.5%) and preservation error (5.3%). humongous students in the cg committed asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 128 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group implementation error (33.3%) with less number of students who committed interpretation error (9.3%) and preservation error (5.6%). 6. discussion over the past two decades, several efforts had been made to reform calculus curriculum. multiple representations as method of instruction is highly demanded in the reformed calculus textbook (chang, cromley, & tran, 2016). as a result, students’ success in calculus learning is strongly associated with multiple representations abilities. one of these abilities is representational fluency (rf). rf refers to “ the ability to create, interpret, translate between, and connect multiple representations “ (fonger, 2019). rf is key mathematical skill that enables to comprehend mathematical concepts. representation translation fluency (rtf) is the main components of rf that characterize students who excel in mathematics. due to the advent of multiple interface mathematical technologies, quantity and quality of mrs used in a classroom instruction is increased. geogebra is one of the dynamic software with multiple interfaces that support multiple representations. hence, this study was mainly focused on geogebra assisted multiple representations approach on students’ performance in rtf in learning calculus. three intact groups from two ethiopian universities participated in this study. jigjig university (jju) and kebri-dehar university (kdu) were purposely selected due to the parallel admitting of first year students in the 2019/20 academic year, the coinciding of time with the approval of proposal, similarity of the universities in terms of geographical and cultural context. one intact class from jju and two intact classes from kdu were randomly selected as participants of this study. the intact class from jju was assigned into the geogebra assisted multiple representations approach (labeled as mrt) and the two intact classes from kdu were assigned into multiple representations approach (labeled as mr) and comparison group (labeled as cg). the three groups were selected from first year social science stream students who were admitted based on the newly endorsed higher education educational roadmap and registered for the course mathematics for social science. pretest and posttest were used as means of data collection tools. the pretest was used to measure between group differences before exposure to the intervention. any difference on the pretest was controlled using appropriate statistical tools so that the group variation on the posttest was accountable for the treatment type. the data obtained from the data collection tools were made ready for analysis and different statistical methods were used to analyze the quantitative data. in addition to the statistically significant values, the researcher used other indices like, effect size, frequency, percentage, categories and levels to interpret the clinical significance of findings. the concepts of calculus covered in this study include: limits, continuity, derivative and application of derivative of function of single variable. a pretest was administrated to check the equivalence of the three groups on their performance on rtf just before the intervention had been begun. the contents of the pretest were compiled from function concepts, which are a pre-requisite for calculus. the treatment lasted for about six weeks. upon the accomplishment of the treatment, a posttest was administrated immediately in the beginning of the seventh week of the treatment. the contents of the posttest were compiled from the contents covered during the intervention but with similar constructs with the pretest. similarly, the types of translation error committed were categorized into implementation error, interpretation error and preservation error. the three groups were compared on the rtf posttests using rtf pretest as covariates. the ancova result confirmed that there was statistically significant adjusted mean different among the groups on the rtf posttest after controlling for rtf pretest (f(2,160) = 5.29 , p = .006 , partial 𝜂2 =.062 ). regardless of the statistically significant difference, the mean differences between the groups were quite small. this was manifested in the effect size that 6.2% of the variances on the rtf posttest was explained by the treatment type, which was quite small effect size. a multiple comparison result shows that the mrt score on the rtf posttest was significantly greater than the mr and cg. but, no difference was detected between the mr and cg. this result revealed that geogebra supported multiple representations approaches brought a better level of sophistication in rtf than the multiple representations approach only and the traditional approach. this result align with bayazit and aksoy (2010) idea that geogebra appears to be a powerful instructional tool that facilitates connection and translation of representations. to investigate the type of translation error committed in the process of representation translation, the students were provided with different tasks of translating numerical, graphical, algebraic and verbal representations of calculus concepts to delineate the translation error they committed in the process of representation translation. three distinct types of translation errors were identified that the students were committed and quantified as a frequency and percentage in the process of representation translation (adu-gyamfi et al., 2012). students were provided with different tasks of representation translating from calculus concepts to describe the error type they committed in the process of representation translation. percentage was used to compare the three groups on these translation error types. the obtained results revealed that interpretation error was the most frequently committed error across the groups (66% of the errors in the mrt, 73% of the errors in the mr & 80% of the errors in the cg). the implementation error was less frequently appeared across the groups (21% of the errors in the mrt, 23% of the errors in the mr & 9% of the errors in the cg) next to preservation error (13% of the errors in mrt, 4% of the errors in the mr & 11% of the errors in the cg). despite the distribution of the error among the three groups appeared in a similar pattern, the prevalence of interpretation error was higher in the cg than the mrt and mr, and also higher in mr than in mrt. the students’ translation errors in the three groups remained more concentrated in the interpretation error after the intervention. hence, the treatment type did not bring a magnificent variation on the students’ error type committed. these results revealed that all of the students in each group committed one or the other type of translation error. that is, no student perfectly constructed target representation from the source representation. errors were detected in all the translation problems for each student. altogether, these three error types encapsulated all possible errors that can occur during the translation process. these results conveyed the message that learning calculus concepts with multiple representations serves serious attention not to devastate the learning process of the students. many contributing factors are involved for the students’ difficulties in the process of representation translation. adu-gyamfi et al. (2012) confirmed that asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 129 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group translation errors are often related to attribute density, “the amount of information inherently encoded in a given representation”. van den eynde, van kampen, van dooren, and de cock (2019) reported the influence of context, direction of translation, and function type on undergraduate students’ ability to translate between graphical and symbolic representations of mathematical relations. the authors found that items starting from a graph are solved better than those starting from an equation. to identify which source of representation contributes considerable translation errors across groups, a further analysis was done on each source representation. the analysis results obtained in this study revealed that the translation error types committed across groups vary among the source representation types. based on the result, when the source representation is algebraic, the mrt committed more of implementation error (30.2%), but the mr and cg committed interpretation error (21.1%) and (31.5%), respectively. when the source representation is graphical, preservation was frequently committed (43.4%) in the mrt. however, the mr and cg committed implementation error (17.5%) and (20.4%), respectively. when the source representation was verbal, the most frequently committed translation error was implementation error, in the mrt (17%), in mr (19.3%) and in the cg (33.3%). likewise, when the source representation was numerical, the implementation error was the most frequently committed in the mrt ( 17%), in the mr ( 22.8%) and in the cg ( 33.3%). in relation to these results, adu-gyamfi et al. (2012) idea explains that a translation will be successful if elements or constructs expressed in the source representation are successfully articulated via structures available in the target representation. the goal of translation is to preserve semantic congruence between the source and target representation. these translation errors are considered as a sign of conceptual comprehension between the source and target representations (duval, 2006). 7. conclusion the geogebra assisted multiple representations approach was more supportive for developing rtf in solving calculus problems than the multiple representations method of instruction and the conventional approach. despite the variation across groups depending on the source representation, interpretation error was the most frequently committed in the process of representation translation across the groups. hence, each representation type has its own usage for solving a particular problem, and the source representation contributes to the amount of committing translation errors. 8. recommendations hence, the following bits of recommendation were forwarded. • mathematics instructors must emphasize multiple representations in calculus classroom beyond the algebraic representation alone. • academic officials, course instructors and students have to integrate geogebra into their calculus classroom instruction to implement the full “package” of multiple representations to develop cohesive conceptual understanding. • instructors and students must use geogebra to increase the quality and quantity of multiple representations in calculus learning. • further research needs to be conducted to determine the effectiveness of geogebra supported multiple representations in learning calculus. • a further research needs to be conducted to identify the association between the students’ representation translation fluency and problem solving skill in calculus learning. • a further research is required to determine the interacting factors that can influence students’ representation preference in solving a calculus problem. references adu-gyamfi, k., stiff, l. v., & bossé, m. j. (2012). lost in translation: examining translation errors associated with mathematical representations. school science and mathematics, 112(3), 159-170. adu-gyamfi, k., bossé, m. j., & chandler, k. (2017). student connections between algebraic and graphical polynomial representations in the context of a polynomial relation. international journal of science and mathematics education, 15(5), 915-938. adu‐gyamfi, k., stiff, l. v., & bossé, m. j. (2012). lost in translation: examining translation errors associated with mathematical representations. school science and mathematics, 112(3), 159-170. afriyani, d., sa'dijah, c., & muksar, m. (2018). characteristics of students’ mathematical understanding in solving multiple representation task based on solo taxonomy. international electronic journal of mathematics education, 13(3), 281-287. ainsworth, s. (2006). deft: a conceptual framework for considering learning with multiple representations. learning and instruction, 16(3), 183-198. arifah, a. (2020). the potential of geogebra exploration in supporting multiple representation ability. paper presented at the journal of physics: conference series. bayazit, i̇., & aksoy, y. (2010). connecting representations and mathematical ideas with geogebra. geogebra: the new language for the third millennium, 1(1), 93-106. bossé, m. j., adu-gyamfi, k., & chandler, k. (2014). students’ differentiated translation processes. international journal for mathematics teaching and learning, 828, 1-28. bossé, m. j., adu-gyamfi, k., & cheetham, m. r. (2011). assessing the difficulty of mathematical translations: synthesizing the literature and novel findings. international electronic journal of mathematics education, 6(3), 113-133.available at: https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/264. chang, b. l., cromley, j. g., & tran, n. (2016). coordinating multiple representations in a reform calculus textbook. international journal of science and mathematics education, 14(8), 1475-1497. clark, j. m., & paivio, a. (1991). dual coding theory and education. educational psychology review, 3(3), 149-210. dahal, n. (2019). integration of geogebra in teaching mathematics: insights from teaching experiment. paper presented at the proceeding of seventh national conference on mathematics and its applications. dey, p. p. (2019). engaging students with multiple representations of mathematical models. paper presented at the 2019 pacific southwest section meeting. duval, r. (2006). a cognitive analysis of problems of comprehension in a learning of mathematics. educational studies in mathematics, 61(1), 103-131. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 121-130 130 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group fonger, n. l. (2019). meaningfulness in representational fluency: an analytic lens for students’ creations, interpretations, and connections. the journal of mathematical behavior, 54, 100678. fonger, n. l., davis, j. d., & rohwer, m. l. (2018). instructional supports for representational fluency in solving linear equations with computer algebra systems and paper-and-pencil. school science and mathematics, 118(1-2), 30-42. meltzer, d. e. (2005). relation between students’ problem-solving performance and representational format. american journal of physics, 73(5), 463-478. nurrahmawati, n., sa’dijah, c., sudirman, s., & muksa, m. (2019). multiple representations’ ability in solving word problem. international journal of recent technology and engineering, 8(1c2), 737-745. pallant, j. (2013). spss survival manual. uk: mcgraw-hill education. pedersen, m. k., bach, c. c., gregersen, r. m., højsted, i. h., & jankvist, u. t. (2021). mathematical representation competency in relation to use of digital technology and task design—a literature review. mathematics, 9(4), 444.available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/math9040444. rahmawati, d. (2019). translation between mathematical representation: how students unpack source representation? math and learning, 7(1), 50-64. rahmawati, d., hidayanto, e., & anwar, r. b. (2017). process of mathematical representation translation from verbal into graphic. international electronic journal of mathematics education, 12(3), 367-381. samsuddin, a., & retnawati, h. (2018). mathematical representation: the roles, challenges and implication on instruction. paper presented at the journal of physics: conference series. van den eynde, s., van kampen, p., van dooren, w., & de cock, m. (2019). translating between graphs and equations: the influence of context, direction of translation, and function type. physical review physics education research, 15(2), 020113. van meter, p., list, a., lombardi, d., & kendeou, p. (2020). handbook of learning from multiple representations and perspectives (1st ed., pp. 1-13). new york: routledge. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 18 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 18-26, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5326 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the role of information technology in stem education trung chi nguyen1 thang chien nguyen2 hau bui nguyen3 ( corresponding author) 1hanoi national university of education, vietnam. 1email: trungnc@hnue.edu.vn 2,3vinh university, vietnam. 2email: thangnc@vinhuni.edu.vn 3email: hau.cntt.dhv@gmail.com abstract the ubiquity of it (information technology) for teaching at large is a reality that can be observed, including stem education, which is the field of study of this research. in view of this situation, this work is intended to determine the role of it in stem (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education. it was decided to conduct a systematic review based on prisma model and adding information obtained from the analysis of fugitive literature. the literature review was carried out on a total of 16 articles. the main inclusion criteria were a temporal selection from 2015 to march 2023, the inclusion of the terms it and stem in the title, abstract or keywords of the articles. the main results show an increasing tendency of this topic, especially in english research. most relevant conclusions of the systematic review evidence a positive relationship between it and stem education, although some negative aspects are also highlighted as there is still a lack of resources and teacher training, leading to ineffective application of it in stem classes. the research results have important practical implications, it motivates teachers to research, propose and implement measures to enhance the role of it in stem education, while minimizing the limitations that have been identified. keywords: digital devices, information technology, key competencies, negative, positive, stem education, stem. citation | nguyen, t. c., nguyen, t. c., & nguyen, h. b. (2024). the role of information technology in stem education. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 18–26. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5326 history: received: 10 august 2023 revised: 22 december 2023 accepted: 5 january 2024 published: 17 january 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: conceptualization, securing funding, concept and design, drafting manuscript, data acquisition, data analysis and interpretation, h.b.n.; critical revision of manuscript, editing/reviewing, supervision, final approval, t.c.n.; conceptualization, editing/reviewing, supervision, final approval, t.c.n. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................... 20 3. result .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 21 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 25 5. conclusions ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 25 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 26 mailto:trungnc@hnue.edu.vn mailto:thangnc@vinhuni.edu.vn mailto:hau.cntt.dhv@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5326 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7933-4344 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9766-0221 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2773-6089 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 18-26 19 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the research systematically shows the roles of it in stem education, directions for applying it in stem education, positive and negative aspects when applying it in stem education. 1. introduction stem education focuses on teaching stem subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in an interdisciplinary approach, integrated with practice to form and develop students' qualities and competencies. on the other hand, information technology (it) has an important position in the field of education, including stem education. therefore, it is necessary to clarify the role of it in stem education to promote faster and more effective implementation of stem education. this issue leads to the following research questions: how does it support teaching and learning in stem education? to what extent do teachers use it in stem education? what type of digital technology is used by teachers in stem education? what is the impact of using it in stem education? are they useful to apply? if helpful, what is an empirical demonstration of using it in stem education? to answer these questions, the research method of this paper is to conduct a systematic review of the literature to determine the role of it in stem education, this systematic review is consistent with the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses approach (prisma (moher, liberati, tetzlaff, altman, & group*, 2009)). stem education is a new trend that has rapidly developed and been widely applied in recent years both globally and in vietnam. similarly, it has become an indispensable element in all fields, including education. researching and determining the role of it in stem education is a meaningful task. 1.1. stem education stem education is an interdisciplinary teaching approach where lesson content is contextualized in the real world, encouraging students to apply knowledge and skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to solve specific problems in their communities (hoang, 2023). the main purpose of stem education is not solely to train scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, but to inspire learning, help students recognize the interconnectedness of knowledge, understand the impact of stem on the world and society's future, and apply knowledge to address real-world challenges and create innovative products. additionally, stem education emphasizes nurturing soft skills which are essential for future career success, such as collaboration, teamwork, problem-solving, creative thinking, and critical thinking (kelley & knowles, 2016; sanders, kwon, park, & lee, 2011). the levels of application of stem education in high schools are as follows (ministry of education and training, 2020): 1.1.1. teaching subjects according to the stem educational method this is the main form of stem education organization in high schools. teachers design stem lessons to deploy in the process of teaching subjects in the general education program according to an integrated intra-subject or interdisciplinary approach. 1.1.2. organizing experiential activities in the stem education program stem experience activities are organized through clubs or practical experience activities; they are organized and implemented according to the interests, talents and choices of students voluntarily. schools can organize stem experience spaces in schools; introducing a library of digital learning materials, virtual experiments, simulations, and learning software for students to learn, explore experiments, and apply science and technology in real life. 1.1.3. organizing scientific and technical research activities stem education can be implemented through scientific research activities and science and technology innovation competitions. this activity is not for the masses, but for students who have abilities, and are interested in scientific and technical research and discovery activities to solve practical problems. joining the stem club and doing scientific and technical research is an opportunity for students to see the fit of their abilities, interests, and values with careers in the stem field. 1.2. it in stem education in the current trend, it is constantly developing, increasingly widely used in all areas of social life. when it comes to its integration in education, it has expanded the possibilities of education as they have created the possibility of distance learning, e-learning and blended learning. it also provides personalized learning platforms and a variety of online activities to reinforce and expand students’ knowledge, which can contribute to autonomy, selfdirected learning, and creativity. furthermore, it can serve as a tool to promote a student-centered approach as it leads to engagement and promotes active learning in which students feel themselves as protagonists in the learning process (gámiz-sánchez, 2017). thus, it enhances students’ interaction and collaborative work. various digital tools coexist in most schools today. for example, learning management system (lms), a digital platform for incorporating other digital elements for educational institutions (yazid, 2021). similarly, several studies have looked at the use of mobile technology, virtual reality in the classroom, which has also led to other emerging approaches (boonbrahm, kaewrat, & boonbrahm, 2015; martin, 2021). however, in terms of popularity, software elements are increasingly becoming an important aid in classrooms. the next part of the article will analyze the role of it for other subjects in stem education. for science: in stem classrooms, it's easy to see the integration of it in the science classroom. for example, robotics is a prime example of applying technology to science. with advancements in 3d, 4d or virtual reality (vr) imaging technology, students can easily visualize a finished product. from there, it is possible to design products with high applicability. for technology: instead of letting students access to technology through playing video games or spending too much time on social networks (tiktok, facebook, youtube...) students can be exposed to research activities and apply technology to life. students can experience and create products in the field of technology, which not only trains asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 18-26 20 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group their thinking but is also an important factor in promoting students' interest in learning. on the other hand, when applying it, it is possible to create computer software that can be assigned to computers to help solve part or even all the problems that the technology field poses. for engineering: engineering not only helps students familiarize themselves with devices such as electrical circuit structure, model assembly, etc. in the stem model, students can apply it in engineering such as: developing software that can control the operation of devices such as automatically turning lights on and off when detecting people passing by, setting up automatic modes for electrical circuits, etc. for mathematics: mathematics is a basic academic subject with many abstract concepts. in fact, more and more classrooms are equipped with touch screens and educational software for more effective learning. for example, learning spatial geometry is easy, intuitive, and dynamic with touch screens and math software like geogebra. thus, it is widely applied in the field of education. in the field of stem education, it helps students access to technology in many fields, develop creative thinking and apply technology to life. moreover, as a foundational technology, it plays a central role in connecting other subjects, promoting stem education, and fostering students' creativity to create high-quality digital products. 1.3. it and stem education in high schools the implementation and application of it in high schools has seen many changes. teachers have actively applied it in teaching, regularly exploited the effective uses of electronic learning materials, and actively applied it in professional activities and self-study and self-improvement to meet the 2018 general education program (trinh & vo, 2023). most teachers are proficient in using powerpoint software in teaching presentations; using ispring, and adobe presenter to compose e-learning lectures. skills in using simulation software, virtual experiments, and teaching software to innovate content and teaching methods in the classroom are always concerned and implemented regularly. using smart tv (television) is well exploited by teachers. although both course content and skills in using digital devices and software have improved, a few errors are being noted including connection problems, software incompatibilities, and teacher supervision is necessary (kumar, 2004). the implementation of stem education in high schools still faces many difficulties (lâm & nam, 2022). stem education for high school students today is mainly in the form of participating in clubs led by high school teachers and university lecturers to guide students in implementing learning projects such as sensors and data, smart agriculture, nanotechnology, self-operated robots, etc. these learning projects often involve topics that are new, interesting, and challenging but not too difficult, thereby helping students understand the applied meaning of knowledge. integrating it in stem education can be beneficial in reducing anxiety, promoting motivation, and engagement. this is because it can provide deeper explanations through visual means (fontecha, 2012). in addition, many high schools organize stem festivals to encourage students to be creative and develop their own abilities in researching, discovering, and creating many applied products. 1.4. it and stem education from a teacher's perspective teachers almost all agree that it has an important role in education, and stem education is no exception. it provides the tools, and brings a wave of favorable learning material design (ta, 2023). however, teachers have acknowledged that it is a time-consuming task, it requires teachers to invest a lot of effort to learn and practice creating teaching products, if teachers do not manage the classroom well, it can distract students' attention (mouaziz, el byad, el biadi, & moumni, 2021). teachers who are knowledgeable about stem education consider that the most basic core point of stem education is to learn by doing, and practice making specific products, thereby enhancing the passion and love for the subject. informatics is a highly practical subject with tight scientific integration, suitable to promote and enhance stem education. for example, the scratch programming language is intuitive, it is easy to create products, programs, software, or simply a game (tuấn, lê diễm, huy, & tuấn, 2019). therefore, teachers' it competence favors the integration of it in stem education so that students can learn their knowledge and digital skills. 2. materials and methods considering the topic "the role of it in stem education" is an issue that needs clarification. to solve this problem, it is first necessary to carry out a review process, in which documents on the topic are searched and then systematically sorted and classified. from there, synthesize and evaluate the research results. this work aims to find "research gaps", which are the basis for making research questions and choosing new research directions. we use the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses approach (prisma (moher et al., 2009)). this approach represents a scientific method in overview research and has the important advantage of being able to help find answers to posed research questions. 2.1. research questions and objectives many studies have mentioned the role of it in stem education to promote faster and more effective implementation of stem education. from there, our research question is: what is the role of it in stem education? to answer this question, we analyze the implementation of it in two aspects: it as a component in stem education and it in supporting the components of stem when teaching stem to students. to achieve this goal, this work has some research questions and objectives. table 1 presents research questions and objectives. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 18-26 21 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. research questions and objectives. research problem research questions research objectives what is the role of it in stem education? how does it support teaching and learning in stem education? to identify key studies around it and stem education over the past 8 years (2015 to 2023), by type and object of study. to what extent do teachers use it in stem education? what types of digital technology are used by teachers in stem education? to analyze the type of technology implemented in stem education. what is the impact of using it in stem education? are they useful to apply? if helpful, what is an empirical demonstration of using it in stem education? to analyze the role of it integration in stem education. to determine how it affects stem education. 2.2. information sources the research was conducted in the databases scopus and wos (web of science) in march 2023. the keywords used were it and stem education in english. these terms are searched in the “title, abstract, keywords” of each article using the boolean operator “and”. as this work also aimed to consider other sources of information that might be important but omitted in the prisma approach, interim documents were included to mitigate this problem. in addition, as the research in the above direction has resulted in most documents in english, the addition of other documents also aims to expand the sample of results in vietnamese. these documents are not included in the journals belonging to scopus and wos, to achieve this effect, research was conducted using vietnamese search keywords in the “title, abstract, keywords” of the articles and using the boolean operator “and”. 2.3. criteria for collecting and searching information the method of collecting and searching the documents mentioned above is not enough to accurately indicate the scope and characteristics of the documents related to the research problem. to overcome this, document search crawling should be defined according to the following criteria. 2.3.1. selection criteria type of publication: scientific publications are articles from scientific journals and book chapters; time: to ensure the update as well as limit the research that is too old, the time of the publications will be selected from 2015 to february 2023; search terms: include it, and stem education terms in the title, abstract or keywords; search scope: articles are cited correctly, without redundancy; the role of it, and stem education is the main topic in the content; research object: the collected documents are related to students, teachers, and lecturers; access: articles are available under open access. 2.3.2. exclusion criteria • articles are not related to it and stem education. • articles are not available under open access. 2.4. stages and procedures as we have described, the first stage was the search for the scopus and wos databases in march 2023. there were 39 results found in these databases according to the search method identified. results are available in english. to expand the search results, 6 results were also found in vietnamese in other journals. so, at the first stage, a total of 45 results were found (according to the stated collection and search methods and criteria). in the second stage, articles are analyzed by title, abstract and keywords. this work resulted in the removal of 25 articles that were not relevant to the research problem (the role of it in stem education). some articles only focus on discussing stem education, or some articles only mention the role of it in education in general, not emphasizing stem education. in the third stage, the resulting sample of 20 articles was fully examined and 4 articles did not match the inclusion criteria, but it was not possible to determine this fact in the second stage by only examining the title, abstract and keywords. these articles did not focus on discussing the relationship between it and stem education. specifically, an article that did not show the relationship between it topics and stem education would be excluded. in summary, after the third stage, the source material directly related to the research problem includes 16 publications. from a statistical perspective, according to the prisma approach, this can be considered as a sample (representing the totality of documents related to the research problem). figure 1 summarizes the process of carrying out the three stages of document collection according to the stated method and criteria (based on the prisma approach). 3. result a total of 16 articles were included in the synthesis that followed the prisma guidelines for systematic review. the factor analysis results related to date, language, level and object research, and type. regarding date, articles are analyzed by publication date. articles are limited from 2015 to february 2023. as for language, the articles focus on languages, specifically english and vietnamese languages, in which focus on research in english. in terms of level and object research, the articles were analyzed by educational stage (secondary education, higher education) and research object (students, teachers). when it comes to the type, the articles can be divided into three categories: empirical, revision and educational proposal. empirical studies refer to experiential learning about the use of it in stem education. revision studies evaluate the use of it in stem education. educational proposal studies investigate to identify needs and propose solutions for applying it in stem education. according to these categories, the sample of 16 studies is classified as shown in table 2. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 18-26 22 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. results based on prisma diagram template for systematic review. table 2. describes the studies. study date language level and object of study type hidiroglu and karakas (2022) 2022 english students revision mangahas, tate, and harris (2022) 2022 english students educational proposal atman uslu, yavuz, and koçak usluel (2022) 2022 english students educational proposal xu and ouyang (2022) 2021 english students revision lukychova, osypova, and yuzbasheva (2022) 2021 english students empirical hrynevych, morze, vember, and boiko (2021) 2021 english students empirical birzina and pigozne (2020) 2020 english teachers, students empirical yang and baldwin (2020) 2020 english students educational proposal khaokhajorn, thongsri, panjaburee, and srisawasdi (2020) 2020 english teachers, students revision istrate, mironov, and popovici (2019) 2019 english teachers empirical barakabitze et al. (2019) 2019 english teachers, students educational proposal el mawas et al. (2019) 2019 english students educational proposal terzieva, pavlov, todorova, and kademova-katzarova (2019) 2018 english teachers, students empirical manosuttirit (2019) 2018 english students educational proposal wu and anderson (2015) 2015 english students revision chacko, appelbaum, kim, zhao, and montclare (2015) 2015 english students educational proposal the 16 articles were the result of the process of implementing the collection, search and filtering method based on the prisma approach as presented in section 2. articles were classified into the following five categories: date; language; level and object of study; type of research; type of technology. articles were classified into technology categories and were analyzed in the following aspects: hardware (technological devices and peripherals), software (programs and applications), others (digital tools, web pages, multimedia documents). therefore, the analysis of the results was carried out as follows: 3.1. date focusing on publication date, it could be seen that publications on the role of it in stem education have been interesting since early, in 2015 there were 2 articles (chacko et al., 2015; wu & anderson, 2015). in 2016 and 2017, no research results related to this topic were found. however, in 2018, two related studies terzieva et al. (2019) and manosuttirit (2019) were found. from 2019 to 2022, there were 3 research results each year (barakabitze et al., 2019; birzina & pigozne, 2020; el mawas et al., 2019; hidiroglu & karakas, 2022; hrynevych et al., 2021; istrate et al., 2019; khaokhajorn et al., 2020; lukychova et al., 2022; mangahas et al., 2022; xu & ouyang, 2022; yang & baldwin, 2020). it could be said that considering the role of it in stem education is an important issue, gaining more and more research attention, this trend will continue throughout 2023 and the ensuing years (see figure 2). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 18-26 23 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 2. number of results according to date. 3.2. language the research results are presented in english. according to the presented search strategy, no articles on the role of it in stem education were found written in vietnamese. 3.3. level and object of study in terms of education stage and research object, out of 16 results, there were 11 results (chacko et al., 2015; el mawas et al., 2019; hidiroglu & karakas, 2022; hrynevych et al., 2021; lukychova et al., 2022; mangahas et al., 2022; manosuttirit, 2019; wu & anderson, 2015; xu & ouyang, 2022; yang & baldwin, 2020) in relation to the implementation of it applications in stem education with the audience being students. there was 1 result istrate et al. (2019) presenting the experiences of teachers in implementing it applications in stem education. the remaining 4 results (barakabitze et al., 2019; birzina & pigozne, 2020; khaokhajorn et al., 2020; terzieva et al., 2019) refer to perspectives, experiences, and solutions related to this topic of teachers and students (see figure 3). figure 3. number of results according to level and object of study. 3.4. type of study studies related to proposing it application solutions in stem education dominate (7 out of 16) (barakabitze et al., 2019; chacko et al., 2015; el mawas et al., 2019; mangahas et al., 2022; manosuttirit, 2019; yang & baldwin, 2020) accounting for 44%. in parallel, empirical studies and overview studies in this field have also been interesting, specifically, there are 5 studies lukychova et al. (2022); hrynevych et al. (2021); birzina and pigozne (2020); istrate et al. (2019) and terzieva et al. (2019) related to the experiment and 4 studies hidiroglu and karakas (2022); xu and ouyang (2022); khaokhajorn et al. (2020) and wu and anderson (2015) related to the literature review, accounting for 31% and 25%, respectively, (see figure 4). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 18-26 24 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 4. number of results by type of study. 3.5. type of technology regarding the type of technology implemented in the studies, we can determine that many studies tend to introduce hardware elements in stem education classrooms, especially whiteboards and computers or similar devices (birzina & pigozne, 2020; hrynevych et al., 2021; lukychova et al., 2022; mangahas et al., 2022). then, another percentage of studies xu and ouyang (2022); lukychova et al. (2022); birzina and pigozne (2020); terzieva et al. (2019) and chacko et al. (2015) used software to create content such as designing, programming robots, for example, students can use scratch programming language to organize programs, illustrate results, thereby supporting learning activities and deeper understanding of learning content. several studies mangahas et al. (2022) and barakabitze et al. (2019) have indicated that the internet provides online query and collaboration platforms that support the use of extensive use of online resources including audio, video, and web pages. most of these documents are highly linked for interactive and collaborative purposes. furthermore, there has been the introduction of communication technologies, interactive and immersive technologies (birzina & pigozne, 2020; el mawas et al., 2019; istrate et al., 2019; wu & anderson, 2015; xu & ouyang, 2022) e.g., simulations, games, expanding learning possibilities through computer technology, providing opportunities for students to conduct experiments or investigate phenomenon beyond physical limits. similarly, the trend of using web-based software elements, especially lms such as google classroom, microsoft teams (khaokhajorn et al., 2020; manosuttirit, 2019) and other digital tools to respond different purposes in the growing stem classroom (barakabitze et al., 2019; chacko et al., 2015; el mawas et al., 2019; hidiroglu & karakas, 2022; istrate et al., 2019; terzieva et al., 2019) (see figure 5). figure 5. types of technology used in the stem classroom. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 18-26 25 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion it is an integral part of the stem field. it can contribute to the design and implementation of stem activities in many ways. however, two models emerge when analyzing the literature on the use of it for stem education: 1) direct integration and embedding of it into stem activities; and 2) use of it as a tool or facilitator for stem enrichment. it can be implemented in single stem fields, or computer programming environments can be used in supporting model-based learning. it also has a role as a serious use of games in stem education (wu & anderson, 2015). the role of it can be to provide real models of interaction for educators and parents; connect educators with a community of fellow learners; provide ready access to learning resources (birzina & pigozne, 2020; xu & ouyang, 2022). the results drawn from the study's experiments (xu & ouyang, 2022) show that most students held positive attitudes towards the use of it in stem education. moreover, the applications of it also contributed to the development of students’ higher-order thinking, computational thinking, and problem-solving ability. empirical data in studies terzieva et al. (2019); istrate et al. (2019); lukychova et al. (2022) and hrynevych et al. (2021) show that it tools are increasingly encountered in learning situations in stem education. study chacko et al. (2015) also show that, by integrating it in stem education, helping students to understand the problem better, presenting the problem more clearly, 100% of students improve high understanding of the learning topic, 80% of students maintain high attention in learning, the percentage of students who think science is not for them decreases from 13% to 0% after one cycle. however, the application of it in stem education is a time-consuming activity. it requires teachers to spend more time when organizing teaching activities (birzina & pigozne, 2020). in addition, studies show that there is still a lack of resources in terms of teaching equipment and teacher training, many educational institutions have not met the requirements in terms of facilities, and teachers have not been properly trained in stem education (hidiroglu & karakas, 2022) or the limited digital capacity of teachers, leading to the ineffective use of it applications in stem classrooms. figure 6 presents a summary of the positive and negative aspects of it application in stem education. figure 6. summary of the positive and negative aspects of it integration in stem education. 5. conclusions the article thoroughly explores the role of it in stem education and presents positive associations between the two. the main objective of the study has been successfully addressed through the analysis of existing research. for the first objective, we can conclude that there have been relevant studies related to teachers and students, the limitation of only finding research conducted in english and the absence of vietnamese studies on this topic need to be acknowledged. the second objective's conclusion emphasizes a shift from individual hardware device use to a more integrated approach, where it is seen not only as a tool but also as an essential component in various stages of the stem classroom. for instance, students use visual programming languages to create products that exemplify this integration. another significant conclusion that answers our third objective is that the findings highlight positive aspects of including it in the stem classroom, such as increasing student motivation, enhancing learning experiences, and accelerating learning. these digital tools aid in teaching stem subjects and encourage students to explore scientific concepts in innovative ways. however, the study also identifies limitations, such as the cost of implementation in terms of time, equipment, and teachers' capacity not meeting the requirements. in conclusion, the study highlights that it plays a vital role in producing positive outcomes in stem education. nonetheless, further research is required due to the relatively new nature of this field and the limited existing research. future studies could focus on reviewing the implementation process and proposing measures to address the identified limitations, which have not been the object of the present research. this would contribute to better understanding and successful integration of it in stem education. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 18-26 26 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references atman uslu, n., yavuz, g. ö., & koçak usluel, y. 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(2021). optimization of online learning and teaching learning activities on lms (learning management system) based incentives using decision support systems. international journal of research and review, 8(10), 225–229. https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20211029 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2021.2023890 https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/6946809 https://doi.org/10.3926/jotse.124 https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2012.25.22 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2017.02.018 https://doi.org/10.52380/mojet.2022.10.4.411 https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/a35qw https://doi.org/10.55056/etq.24 https://doi.org/10.26755/revped/2019.1/73 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-016-0046-z https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/60898 https://doi.org/10.15448/2178-3640.2021.1.39752 https://doi.org/10.25152/ser.2011.59.3.729 https://doi.org/10.52714/dthu.33.8.2018.600 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40692-015-0041-2 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-022-00377-5 https://doi.org/10.46328/ijtes.v4i1.22 https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20211029 110 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 2, 110-117, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5735 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the ideal school for mainstreaming students' dreams serdal deniz1 ridvan karabulut2 1,2kayseri university, faculty of health sciences, turkey. 1email: serdaldeniz1@gmail.com 2email: ridvan_karabulut@yahoo.com ( corresponding author) abstract this research was conducted to determine the ideal school that mainstream students dream of. the research was conducted using the phenemology approach, one of the qualitative research models. participating in the research were students with mild special needs who attended inclusive education in turkey and had no problems understanding and answering the questions asked, as well as the teachers and parents of these students. the study collected data from 28 inclusion students with special needs, 28 parents of these students, and 28 teachers. we obtained data using semi-structured interview forms. the analysis of the data obtained was done using the content analysis technique. as a result of the research, it was found that the wishes of inclusive students regarding school/class were collected in four themes: arrangements in teaching, lessons and environment, and positive attitudes. in addition, it was determined that the requests of the inclusion students from their parents regarding the school/class consisted of three themes: arrangements in the lessons and environment and positive attitudes, and their complaints consisted of two themes: peer bullying and social acceptance. in light of the research findings, it is recommended to conduct advanced research based on having inclusion students write stories about the school/class, keeping a diary, and collecting the information they convey to their close circle in order to determine the ideal school of their dreams. keywords: ideal school, mainstreaming, parent, special children, student, teacher. citation | deniz, s., & karabulut, r. (2024). the ideal school for mainstreaming students’ dreams. asian journal of education and training, 10(2), 110–117. 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5735 history: received: 20 march 2024 revised: 10 may 2024 accepted: 23 may 2024 published: 21 june 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the kayseri university, turkey has granted approval for this study on 5 may 2023 (ref. no. 33/2023). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 111 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 112 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 113 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 115 5. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 116 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 116 references ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 117 mailto:serdaldeniz1@gmail.com mailto:ridvan_karabulut@yahoo.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i2.5735 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6606-9308 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6682-2520 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 110-117 111 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper aims to make a significant contribution to the literature by identifying and developing the ideal schools and classrooms that students with special needs aspire to. in addition to providing information for teachers, families, and administrators about the wishes of students receiving inclusive education regarding the ideal school and classroom, this research will provide guidance for improving schools and classrooms. 1. introduction the turkish language institute characterizes a school as an environment where students and staff collectively engage in various forms of education and training. schools play a crucial role in the socialization of students today, serving as effective platforms for individuals to learn and absorb the culture of their society. for children to develop desired behaviors and become more open to the outside world, schools are also crucial institutions. schools provide children with more opportunities to interact with the external environment. each other's influence shapes their personalities. it is evident that schools significantly contribute to both education and the development and socialization of children. in recent years, "how should the school be?" has been a frequently discussed topic (özdemir & akkaya, 2013). this question raises concepts such as effective school, good school, and ideal school, prompting us to pursue them. families are on a mission to find the perfect school for their school-aged children. in this quest, they try to identify schools that are safe for their children and where they can receive a good education. as a result of long searches by families to find the ideal school for their children, it has been observed that they prefer institutions that do not pose a threat in terms of positive references and security. furthermore, it is well-known that families favor schools that support their children's development, strive to equip them with knowledge and skills, are adaptable, and foster democratic environments with effective communication skills. it is also known that many factors such as transportation, physical structure of the school, teacher staff, graduate students, qualifications of administrators, availability of classes, classroom equipment, school facilities, etc. are also effective (campbell, matestic, von stauffenberg, mohan, & kirchner, 2007; nartgün & kaya, 2016). when we look at the research conducted about the ideal school, it is noteworthy that there are many national and international studies. simmons, graham, and thomas (2015) who investigated how well-being is understood and facilitated in australian schools, conducted a mixed-methods study with 606 students aged 6 to 17, including semi-structured focus group interviews that asked students to imagine, draw, and discuss an ideal school that improves their well-being. they determined that students especially emphasized 'having a say' as per the qualitative data and that it is important to adopt more democratic, participatory, and inclusive approaches towards change and development in schools. kangas (2010) conducted a study to determine how children in finland described their ideal school and learning environment, and he asked ninety-three students between the ages of ten and twelve to write a story about the school they would be happy to attend. the analysis of the stories revealed that students desire an ideal school and learning environment that prioritizes physical well-being, environmental comfort, educational and cultural well-being, socio-emotional well-being, the joy of learning, and the pursuit of dreams and innovations. günal and demirtasli (2016) aimed to determine the perceptions of secondary school students towards the effectiveness of their schools in terms of effective school characteristics such as "safe and orderly environment", "high academic expectations", "teaching leadership", "learning opportunities" and they determined that high academic expectations play an important role, that there are meaningful results related to a safe and orderly environment, that teachers and students should feel safe, that the physical structure of the school is important, and that a positive school-family relationship is effective.. school and family members are important basic elements that complement each other in children's education. the child, family, and school triangle begins with the children attending school and continues for many years. each of these stakeholders is critical to the formation of ideal schools and has different responsibilities. teachers are the primary agents of educational activities in schools. with their professional expertise, they have a very important task: managing classroom activities and providing guidance to students (dös, 2013). in an ideal school, teachers should always support students and help them form their own ideas. additionally, keeping materials ready and plentiful at school, creating an environment where students can meet and feel safe, providing opportunities to work together, and facilitating students' access to technology are among the activities teachers can do for an ideal school. in short, teachers should care about their students' learning and adapt their teaching to meet their needs (nunn, 2014; rivkin, hanushek, & kain, 2005). it is known that parents' attitudes and behaviors towards their children in supporting their education also affect children's school success. family participation in education has been shown to enhance student development and academic achievement (çelenk, 2003). meanwhile, if families do not participate, teacher performance and motivation are negatively affected, causing behavioral and disciplinary problems and academic failures in students (argon & kıyıcı, 2012). it is known that family participation in education affects the child's psychosocial development as well as that of his friends and other social relationships. in addition, it has positive effects on the child's adaptation to his environment. school is one of the most important institutions for a child. it is known that schools, as educational institutions, are in a superior position compared to other social institutions in shaping people's behavior and bringing about the desired changes. this shows that cooperation between school, family, student, and teacher is important, inevitable, and necessary for an ideal school. similar to many stakeholders, students should have a voice in shaping the ideal school environment, as their perspectives can shed light on situations that other stakeholders may overlook. moreover, the information obtained from students about how they feel in the school environment and how they perform in the learning process will contribute to learning about the ideal school environment. however, previous studies have indicated that students, who were once considered the most basic elements of schools, have not received much attention in this regard (aydoğdu, 2008; bland & sharma-brymer, 2012). examining the field reveals that ideal schools should consider students' ideas and encourage cooperation and support among administrators, families, and teachers. it has been observed that mainstreaming education, which began to be applied in many countries in the last quarter of the century, has become widespread and adopted throughout the world. mainstreaming education is an application that includes providing the necessary support to students with special needs inside and outside the asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 110-117 112 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group classroom. it allows them to participate in education with their peers (kargın, 2004; sucuoğlu & kargın, 2006). in short, mainstreaming education covers the education of students with special needs together with their peers without separating them from society. however, successful mainstreaming education necessitates the acceptance, understanding, and attention to students' individual differences, encompassing physical, cognitive, academic, social, and emotional aspects. in the field, there are many studies related to mainstreaming education. it is observed that the majority of them are related to the attitudes, opinions, suggestions, and existing situations related to the mainstreaming of administrators, teachers, students with normal development, and parents with special needs children (batu, cüre, gövercin, & keskin, 2018). ellery (2019) conducted research on mainstreaming students in the international literature to understand the perspectives and requirements of special needs students about their classroom experiences, focusing on four students with special needs. opie and southcott (2018) investigated the secondary education experiences of a visually impaired mainstreaming student. dimitrellou and male (2020) conducted their studies in order to determine the needs of thirty-seven students with different special needs in inclusive education. boer and kuijper (2021), on the other hand, focused their studies on the difficulties experienced by seventy-two students with special needs at school, how students can get support, and how students evaluate the impact of this support. in addition, chevallier-rodrigues, savournin, courtinat-camps, brossais, and de léonardis (2022) aimed to identify the obstacles and facilitators related to the implementation of mainstreaming education with twelve students, while thompson and timmons (2017) conducted their research in order to highlight the positive aspects, strengths, and best practices of mainstreaming learning. although there are studies conducted with students with special needs related to mainstreaming education in the international literature, there has not been a study to determine the ideal schools or classes dreamed of by mainstreaming students. in turkey, gül and vuran (2015) conducted research with fourteen students diagnosed with mental disabilities and learning difficulties. they focused on the views of students with special needs attending regular classes on the application of mainstreaming and the problems they face. sezgin elbir and taymaz sarı (2022) conducted research in order to determine the opinions of twelve secondary school students with special learning disabilities who received mainstreaming education regarding their school life. yekta (2010) aimed to describe the views of mentally disabled students who continue to practice mainstreaming in their educational lives. this research was conducted with twenty-eight students who continue to practice mainstreaming in special education and general education classes in elementary schools. girli and atasoy (2012) conducted a study to determine the opinions of twenty primary school students diagnosed with learning disabilities and autism who continue mainstream education regarding their school life, friendship relationships, and problems in the teaching process. eser (2019) investigated the opinions and suggestions of students with special needs and their teachers in secondary education about mainstreaming practices with six students with hearing impairments. mete (2020) conducted research to identify the problems of 12 students studying in a mainstream classroom environment in a high school and to provide solutions to these problems. other than these studies, turkey has not conducted any research to identify the ideal school or classroom for mainstreaming students. this research was carried out in order to determine the ideal school in the dreams of mainstreaming students and is limited to the data obtained from mainstreaming students, their families, and teachers. the research was carried out with the participation of students with mild special needs who continue mainstreaming education and have no problems understanding and answering the questions asked, as well as their teachers and parents. the significance of the research stems from the scarcity of existing literature on this topic. in addition, there are no studies in the literature that directly refer to the ideas of mainstreaming students and analyze the requests and complaints that mainstreaming students have told their teachers and parents about the school. therefore, it is believed that this study is crucial for identifying the ideal schools that mainstream students aspire to attend and will make a significant contribution to the field. furthermore, we anticipate that emphasizing the requests, suggestions, and complaints of mainstreaming students will reinforce the significance of mainstreaming education in the literature. 2. method the study was carried out using phenomenology, one of the qualitative research models. qualitative research is a research method in which different qualitative data creation methods such as observation, interview, and document analysis are used, and a qualitative process is followed to present perspectives, perceptions, and events in a realistic and holistic manner in the natural environment (yıldırım & şimşek, 2013). phenomenology focuses on phenomena that we are aware of but do not have a detailed and deep understanding of. in this study, the phenomenology technique was used in order to reveal the themes related to the ideal school in the dreams of mainstreaming students, as it is aimed to reveal the thoughts of mainstreaming students and the wishes and complaints they convey to their teachers and parents about the school or class by examining them impartially, in detail, and in depth. 2.1. study group the participants of the study were selected by the purposeful sampling method. the purposeful sampling method has been chosen since it allows in-depth study of situations that are considered to have substantial information. the study group consists of students with special needs, as well as their parents and teachers, who have been continuing their mainstreaming practices for three years or more. the participants had to be: 1) a student with special needs who continues to practice mainstreaming; 2) a teacher of a student with special needs who continues mainstreaming; and 3) a parent of a student with special needs who continues mainstreaming. the study involved mainstreaming secondary school students from kayseri, konya, and yozgat provinces, along with their respective teachers and parents. the research involved the participation of 28 mainstreaming students with special needs, their respective parents, and teachers. table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of the participants. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 110-117 113 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. demographic characteristics of the participants. demographic characteristics mainstreaming students parents teachers number of participants 28 28 28 female 11 21 22 male 17 7 6 age ranges 11-15 years 38-58 years 25-50 years grade between 5 and 8. duration of mainstreaming 3-7 years twenty-two female and six male teachers, as well as twenty-one female and seven male parents of mainstreaming students, participated in the research. in addition, a total of twenty-eight mainstreaming students with six specific learning disabilities, five mild mental disabilities, five attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, four bodily disabilities, three visual impairments, three hearing impairments, and two mild autism spectrum disorder diagnoses participated in the study. 2.2. data collection tool data were collected from 1) students with special needs who continue to practice mainstreaming, 2) teachers of students with special needs who continue mainstreaming, and 3) parents of students with special needs who continue mainstreaming through semi-structured interview forms. the researchers primarily prepared semi-structured interview form questions for mainstreaming students, their families, and teachers as part of the development of the data collection tools. in order to evaluate the semi-structured interview forms, the opinions of three academic experts in the field of assessment and evaluation were obtained. the opinions and suggestions of the academic experts were taken into consideration, and arrangements were made for semi-structured interview forms. the researchers asked the questions in the semi-structured interview forms to three mainstreaming students, their parents, and teachers, and conducted a pilot study by evaluating the obtained data. as a result of the data obtained from the pilot study, the semi-structured interview forms were re-evaluated, and final preparations were made for use in the research. in the study, it was decided to ask the following questions to the participants. questions directed to mainstreaming students: 1) what do you think 'school/class' should be like? please specify. questions directed to the parents of mainstreaming students: 1) what are the wishes of your child in mainstreaming education about school/class from you? 2) what are the complaints of your child in mainstreaming education about the school/class? questions directed to the teachers of mainstreaming students: 1) what are the wishes of your students in mainstreaming education about school/class from you? 2) what are the complaints of your students in mainstreaming education about the school/class? 2.3. data collection the data for this study were collected in a quiet environment where the participants would feel comfortable and at an hour they wanted. among the participants, the answers of the mainstreaming students took between twelve and seventeen minutes, the answers of the parents took between fourteen and twenty-one minutes, and the answer of the teachers took between ten and fifteen minutes. 2.4. data analysis the analysis of the data in the research was carried out using the content analysis technique. the basic process in content analysis is to decipher similar data in a way that the reader can understand by bringing them together within the framework of certain concepts and themes (yıldırım & şimşek, 2013). in content analysis, the data were analyzed first, and a code was given to each section. then, categories were created from the codes according to the similarities and differences between them. finally, themes were determined according to the relationships between the categories and the meanings they carry. a word, sentence, or paragraph assigns a code to significant sections and events within the data. a category is the classification of concepts determined in content analysis under a certain theme with each other. theme means the upper concepts created from categories, a conceptual framework, or a theoretical structure (baltacı, 2019). codes, categories, and themes were obtained from the data in this research and are given in tables in the results section. in this study, the consistency between coders was calculated in order to determine reliability. firstly, interview questions were taken as a basis, and the interview coding key was prepared. in order to determine the reliability of the interview coding key, two semi-structured interview forms were selected and reproduced by means of a random method. then, the interview was evaluated independently by the researchers along with the coding key. the researchers checked the answers given to each question and made markings in the form of "agreement" and "disagreement." in this study, agreement percentage was calculated using the formula "reliability = agreement / (agreement + disagreement) x 100" in order to determine reliability in content analysis (miles & huberiiian, 1994). the percentage of consistency in the coding was calculated as 0.85 using this formula. in addition, participant confirmation was carried out in order to determine whether the study findings accurately reflected their own thoughts. the findings of the study were read to three mainstream students, three parents, and three teachers participating in the study. according to the feedback received from the participants, it was confirmed that the research findings were compatible with the participants' own thoughts. 3. findings in order to determine the ideal school in the dreams of mainstreaming students, the data obtained regarding the following questions is presented in tables in the findings section of the research: 1) what do you think 'school/class' should be like? asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 110-117 114 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2) what are their wishes that they told their parents about school/class? 3) what are their complaints that they told their parents about school/class? 4) what are their wishes that they told their teachers about school/class? 5) what are their complaints that they told their teachers about school/class? the results of the analysis of the data obtained related to the question directed at mainstreaming students: 'what do you think the school/class should be like?' are provided in table 2. table 2. the thoughts of the mainstreaming students about how the school/classroom should be. code category theme courses should be taught through games. teaching should be done through sports. exam times should be short. the exam questions should be simple. changes in teaching changes in assessment and evaluation arrangements in teaching course times should be short. the number of academic courses should be limited. there should be more sports classes. there should be technology/digital courses. the number of events should be increased. recess periods should be long. materials should be plentiful. there should be musical rooms and instruments. there must be game rooms. there should be playgrounds and parks. there should be laboratories. there should be a swimming pool. there should be workshops. there should be big libraries. classes should be large. the school/classes should be clean. the number of cafeterias should be increased. there should be school trips. changes in courses diversity in courses entertaining events changes in the school/classroom arrangements in courses arrangements in the environment teachers should be interested, respectful, and caring. peers should be interested, respectful, and caring. there should be opportunities for them to express themselves. all students should be equal. there should be no discrimination. there should be no peer bullying. there should be no peer exclusion. peers should be friends with us. positive teacher relationships positive peer relationships equality in the school/classroom positive attitudes table 2 presents four themes derived from the answers given by mainstream students to the question of how the school should be, including arrangements and positive attitudes in teaching, courses, and the environment. table 3 contains the findings obtained from the answers to the question, 'what are the wishes of your child in mainstream education about school/class from you?' directed to the parents of mainstream students. table 3. the wishes of the mainstreaming students about the school/class that they told their parents. code category theme reducing the number of courses increasing the number of sports courses increasing technology/digital tool courses simplification of exams changes in courses changes in assessment and evaluation arrangements in courses extension of recess periods increasing the number of materials increasing the number of events increasing the number of playgrounds and parks having playrooms in schools entertaining events arrangements in the environment teachers should be understanding. peers should be understanding. being included in events being included in games positive teacher relationships positive peer relationships being accepted positive attitudes table 3 presents three themes, namely, arrangements in courses, arrangements in the environment, and positive attitudes among the wishes of the mainstreaming students related to the school/classroom that they told their parents. table 4 contains the findings obtained from the answers to the question 'what are the complaints of your child in mainstreaming education about the school/class?' directed to the parents of mainstreaming students. table 4. the complaints of the mainstreaming students about the school/class that they told their parents. code category theme exclusion by peers disrespectful behavior by peers verbal insults by peers communication problems with peers not having the right to speak among peers. indifference by peers indifference among teachers peer pressure general indifference peer bullying social acceptance asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 110-117 115 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4 presents two themes among the school/classroom complaints that the mainstreaming students told parents, namely peer bullying and social acceptance. table 5 contains the findings obtained from the answers to the question, 'what are the wishes of your students in mainstreaming education about the school/class?' directed to the teachers of mainstreaming students. table 5. the wishes of the mainstreaming students about the school/class that they told their teachers. code category theme not being subjected to peer bullying not being made fun of by peers peers are aware of them. being accepted by peers not being excluded at events not being excluded from games playing games together with peers participating in events together with peers being understood by peers being in harmony with peers getting attention from peers positive peer relationships peer acceptance feeling safe feeling a sense of belonging to the class being able to express their feelings more comfortably. being able to express themselves better. having the right to speak social trust freedom of expression sense of belonging simplification of courses teaching the courses in the form of games making the courses fun using plenty of materials in courses having long recess periods increasing the number of playgrounds and parks changes in teaching entertaining events arrangements in teaching arrangements in the environment table 5 presents four themes among the wishes of mainstreaming students about the school/classroom that they told teachers, namely peer acceptance, sense of belonging, arrangements in teaching, and arrangements in the environment. table 6 contains the findings obtained from the answers to the question, 'what are the complaints of your students in mainstreaming education about the school/class?' directed to the teachers of mainstreaming students. table 6. the complaints of the mainstreaming students about the school/class that they told their teachers. code category theme exclusion by peers being made fun of by peers verbal insults by peers disrespectful behavior by peers discrimination by peers not being accepted by peers peer pressure peer bullying indifference by peers indifference of their families indifference of teachers not having the right to speak not being included in games not being included in events general indifference equality in the school/classroom social acceptance table 6 presents two themes among the school/classroom complaints that the mainstreaming students told their teachers, namely peer bullying and social acceptance. 4. discussion thirty codes have been found related to the question 'how should the school/classroom be' directed to mainstream students. these codes were collected into nine categories, and ultimately four themes were reached. these themes encompass teaching arrangements, course arrangements, environmental arrangements, and positive attitudes. the research findings indicate that mainstreaming students are seeking adjustments to the teaching process. these arrangements pertain to the instruction of courses, as well as assessment and evaluation. this finding shows similarities with some of the research results conducted in the field (eser, 2019; gül & vuran, 2015; mete, 2020). students in mainstreaming education also desire a course-related arrangement. it was discovered that they had specific requests regarding the length, quantity, and diversity of courses offered. it has been observed that mainstreaming students also want a number of changes to be made in the school/classroom with the educational environment. these changes include the provision of materials, musical rooms and instruments, playgrounds, playrooms, parks, laboratories, swimming pools, workshops, large libraries, spacious and clean classrooms, as well as an increase in the number of cafeterias. this finding is in line with the research results in the field, which suggest that changes should be made regarding the physical environment as well (eser, 2019; sezgin elbir & taymaz sarı, 2022). in addition, this finding has been interpreted as meaning that the mainstreaming students want some changes to be made in the school/classroom environment and that they have dreams about the environment. another of the wishes of special needs students in mainstream education is related to the fact that there should be positive attitudes asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 110-117 116 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group towards them. mainstreaming students want their peers and teachers to build positive relationships with them, especially in school and in the classroom. this finding is similar to the results of many studies conducted in the field (dimitrellou & male, 2020; ellery, 2019; gül & vuran, 2015; opie & southcott, 2018). it is known that many parents, teachers, and peers with normal development express their sympathies and positive feelings about students with special needs while at the same time exhibiting negative attitudes towards inclusion students for various reasons. these findings suggest that students who are mainstreamed believe they should have positive attitudes towards themselves. thirteen codes, six categories, and three themes have been obtained from these codes related to the question "what are the wishes of your students in mainstreaming education about the school/class?" these themes include course arrangements, environmental arrangements, and positive attitudes. it has been observed that the results of the answers given by the special needs students in mainstream education to the question 'what do you think the school/class should be like’ directed at them are similar to the findings obtained from the requests of their families about the school/class. observations reveal that mainstream students aspire to reduce the number of courses, enhance sports and technology/digital tool courses, and streamline exams. additionally, they expressed their desire to their families to enhance the availability of recess periods, materials, activities, playgrounds, game rooms, and parks within the educational environment. moreover, the fact that they have indicated to their parents that they expect there to be positive attitudes towards them by their teachers, especially their peers, indicates that they imagine there to be positive attitudes towards them in school/classroom. based on the complaints made by the mainstreaming students to their families about the school/classroom, seven codes, two categories, and two themes have been obtained. these two themes are social acceptance and peer bullying. the field studies (boer, pijl, post, & minnaert, 2013; koster, pijl, nakken, & van houten, 2010; symes & humphrey, 2011) largely align with the complaints mainstreaming students make to their families about peer bullying and societal acceptance. it has been observed that mainstreaming students have complaints about exclusion by their peers, disrespectful behavior, verbal insults, communication problems, not being given the right to speak, and indifference by their teachers. these findings show similarities with some research results (boer & kuijper, 2021; eser, 2019; girli & atasoy, 2012; opie & southcott, 2018; yekta, 2010). it is known that students with special needs face significantly increased incidents of pressure, harassment, and restrictions in schools. conducting studies to increase awareness and change this condition can make mainstreaming education more successful and useful. it has been determined that the requests of the mainstreaming students from their teachers related to the school/classroom consist of twenty-two codes, five categories, and four themes. these themes include peer acceptance, a sense of belonging, and arrangements in both the classroom and the environment. it has been seen that the wishes of the mainstreaming students from their teachers about the school/classroom are similar to their own wishes and the wishes of their families to have arrangements in the teaching and environment. these findings can be interpreted as a wish for mainstreaming students to make arrangements in the teaching and environment related to the school/classroom. one of the requests made by the mainstream students to their teachers pertains to peer acceptance. in this finding, it comes to mind that one of the ideal dreams of mainstreaming students related to school/classroom is related to peer acceptance, both because the students stated it in their own wishes and similarly stated it to their parents and teachers. students seeking mainstreaming from their teachers also express a desire for a sense of belonging. researchers have discovered that mainstreaming students yearn for a sense of safety, a sense of belonging to the class, the ability to express their feelings more comfortably, and the right to speak. in this finding, it has been interpreted that mainstreaming students have dreams about belonging in their schools/classrooms. twelve codes, three categories, and two themes were reached from the complaints of the mainstreaming students to their teachers about the school/classroom. these two themes are social acceptance and peer bullying. students observe social acceptance and peer bullying in their own thoughts and wishes, as well as in their complaints to their parents and teachers. this finding has also been interpreted as the fact that mainstreaming students have dreams such as the absence of peer bullying in schools and classrooms and acceptance in society. it has been observed in the research findings that the wishes and their complaints of students with special needs in mainstream education about the ideal school/classroom in their dreams, their wishes, and complaints to their parents and teachers are similar. these findings suggest that taking into account the wishes and complaints of mainstreaming students could potentially enhance the quality of education and training provided to them. 5. results it has been found in this research that the wishes of the mainstreaming students related to the school/classroom were comprised of four themes: arrangements in education, arrangements in lectures, arrangements in the environment, and positive attitudes. it has been determined that the wishes of the mainstreaming students from their parents were comprised of three themes: arrangements in lectures, arrangements in the environment, and positive attitudes, and their complaints consisted of two themes: peer bullying and social acceptance. it has been further deduced that the wishes of the mainstreaming students from their teachers were also comprised of four themes: peer acceptance, sense of belonging, arrangements in education, and arrangements in the environment. their complaints consisted of two themes: peer bullying and social acceptance. based on the research findings, it has been concluded that mainstreaming students dreamed of being accepted by their peers and teachers in schools and classrooms, feeling a sense of belonging to the school/class, some arrangements in the teaching process, lessons, and their environment, and not being bullied by their peers. 6. recommendations in order to determine the ideal school in the dreams of mainstreaming students, it is recommended to conduct advanced research by writing stories about the school/classroom, keeping a diary, and collecting the information they transmit to their immediate environment. however, it is recommended to increase the training and research aimed at raising the awareness of administrators, teachers, students, and families about the importance of mainstreaming education. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 110-117 117 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references argon, t., & kıyıcı, c. 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(2013). qualitative research methods in the social sciences (9th ed.). ankara: seçkin publishing. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://10.0.84.61/ozelegitimdergisi.336925 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2012.06.002 https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2020.1790884 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2012.00670.x https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.5.1202 https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.5.1202 https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2021.1907547 https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12457 https://doi.org/10.54322/kairaranga.v20i2.314 https://doi.org/10.15390/eb.2015.4205 https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2016.040915 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-010-9075-6 https://doi.org/10.1080/10349120903537905 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-014-9239-8 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8578.2011.00499.x https://doi.org/10.5206/eei.v27i1.7746 1 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 1, 1-12, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6324 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group influence of professional motivation and digital competence on teachers’ career satisfaction arzu altin1, 2 zuhal topcu3 1ministry of national education, ankara, turkey. 2department of educational sciences, graduate school of educational sciences, gazi university, ankara, turkey. 1,2email: altin.arzu@gmail.com ( corresponding author) 3division of educational administration, department of educational sciences, gazi faculty of education, gazi university, ankara, turkey. 3email: ztopcu06@gmail.com abstract this study aims to examine the factors affecting teachers’ professional motivation and career satisfaction based on their perspectives, with a specific focus on the influence of digital competencies. a teacher's ability to develop a positive attitude toward their profession and achieve their personal career goals is a situation that affects the efficiency of education for both themselves and their students. the study uses a qualitative, phenomenological design, with participants comprising 11 teachers from various subjects and school levels, selected through maximum variation sampling, a purposeful sampling method. according to the findings derived from teachers’ feedback, the attitudes of school administrators, colleagues, and parents have both positive and negative impacts on teachers' motivation and career satisfaction. teachers primarily attribute their motivation to internal factors and note their efforts to develop digital competencies, ensuring they remain adaptable to the evolving demands of the digital age in education. it has been observed that teachers’ professional motivation is influenced by several factors, including their income levels, the adequacy of the school’s physical environment, communication with administrators and colleagues, student motivation, and their own passion for the profession. since teachers view their profession not merely as a job but as a mission and social duty, they tend to associate career satisfaction with their ability to contribute to students' growth, inspire them, and make a lasting impact on their lives, rather than with higher salaries or social status. additionally, societal perspectives and political policies shape how teachers perceive their profession as a long-term career. keywords: career satisfaction, digital competence, motivation. citation | altin, a., & topcu, z. (2025). influence of professional motivation and digital competence on teachers’ career satisfaction. asian journal of education and training, 11(1), 1–12. 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6324 history: received: 30 september 2024 revised: 27 december 2024 accepted: 13 january 2025 published: 21 january 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the gazi university, türkiye has granted approval for this study on 26 december 2023 (ref. no. 2024-24). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................... 2 3. methodology and data analysis ...................................................................................................................................................... 3 4. findings ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 6 5. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 6. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 mailto:altin.arzu@gmail.com mailto:ztopcu06@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i1.6324 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0536-0393 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4617-2716 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 2 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study explores factors influencing teachers' motivation and career satisfaction, emphasizing digital competencies. a qualitative study involving 11 teachers reveals that internal factors primarily drive teacher motivation. they view their profession as a mission, adapting their digital skills to meet evolving educational demands. 1. introduction teachers are the fundamental elements of education and the determinants of education quality. teachers' career satisfaction is related to their general job satisfaction with their professional experiences (huo & jiang, 2021; lounsbury et al., 2003). in a way, it refers to the internal evaluation of career outcomes that reflect their general satisfaction with their career experiences. at the same time, teacher career satisfaction is an important factor affecting teachers' professional commitment and development. increasing satisfaction increases teachers' general job motivation and reduces their intention to leave (sun et al., 2022). in addition, low career satisfaction increases teachers’ intention to leave (räsänen, pietarinen, pyhältö, soini, & väisänen, 2020; shah & jumani, 2015). although the intention to leave does not always result in an actual leave, it may reflect a low level of job satisfaction (saeed, waseem, sikander, & rizwan, 2014). the concept of career is used quite frequently in every profession, and until recently, when people thought of career, they usually only thought of a high salary and high social status. however, today, the meaning of “career” has changed considerably. different types of successful career definitions have emerged due to the significant differences in the success people perceive in their careers. career success is not limited to traditional indicators such as salary and promotion but is also associated with a number of factors such as education, intelligence, personality, motivation, family situation, gender, career strategies, and mentoring relationships (heslin, 2005). greenhaus, parasuraman, and wormley (1990) stated that achieving goals in five basic areas is important for a person's career satisfaction. these include professional achievements, general professional advancement, financial goals, advancements in assignment and promotion, and advancements in skills. the person's success in achieving these basic goals plays a determining role in career satisfaction. the teacher's ability to develop a positive attitude toward his profession and achieve his personal career goals is a situation that affects the efficiency of education not only for himself but also for the students. since teachers participate in educational activities together with students, every situation that affects the teacher reflects positively or negatively on the implementation of the educational process. high motivation of teachers to learn is a basic condition for teacher learning and successful professional development (shulman & shulman, 2004). however, teachers' motivation to improve themselves may not always be high on their own. teachers' previous experiences, teaching experience, self-efficacy, learning beliefs, emotional pressure, and leadership attitudes of principals all affect the professional learning motivation (zhang, admiraal, & saab, 2021). increasing the motivation of teachers is a critical factor for the success of the education system. focusing education policies on supporting teachers, professional development opportunities, and improving working conditions will play an important role in ensuring these positive effects. according to organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) (2019) teachers’ skills, motivations, and attitudes significantly influence how information and communication technologies (icts) are implemented in the classroom and, consequently, affect students' ability to maximize the benefits of these new technologies. in 2013, the european commission thematic working group published a final report titled “teacher professional development” on the development of teacher competences for better learning outcomes. in this report, the teaching profession is defined as “a career-long endeavor involving complex and dynamic combinations of knowledge, skills, understanding, values, and attitudes; their acquisition and development require careful, purposeful application and high-quality feedback” (european commission/eacea/eurydice, 2018). the report recognizes the quality of teaching as one of the key factors in ensuring positive educational outcomes for students. therefore, it is crucial for teachers to consistently enhance their skills throughout their careers and, above all, maintain their motivation to teach. academic studies to determine the characteristics of professional development that enhance student success date back to 1995 (corcoran, 1995). despite many studies in this process, a clear consensus has not been reached among researchers. however, recent studies have reached a common view that professional development should be sustainable, collaborative, encouraging teacher participation, focused on the subject, utilizing external experts, and practice-based in order to increase student success (sims & fletcher-wood, 2021). these findings show that effective professional development practices have a high potential to improve student success. the integration of technology into education is a crucial process for the professional development of educators. ertmer (1999) identified two main challenges to the successful use of technology in educational environments. factors related to equipment, resources, and external training are classified as first-degree barriers, while internal factors, such as attitudes, beliefs, confidence, and skills, are considered second-degree barriers (winter, costello, o’brien, & hickey, 2021). bingimlas (2009) states that various barriers that prevent the successful integration of ict in education are due to multifaceted factors such as teachers' technology use skills, lack of infrastructure, curriculum incompatibilities, lack of administrative support, and traditional approaches in teaching methods. the advancement of new technologies in the twenty-first century has made the use of technology in educational settings almost mandatory for curricula focusing on digital problem-solving skills. as the primary players in the education system, students and teachers need to be ready for these developments. teachers' attitudes towards technology play a critical role in the acceptance and adoption of ict. research shows that teachers' attitudes towards ict positively affect the use of technology in the classroom (scherer, tondeur, siddiq, & baran, 2018). therefore, it is important for teachers to develop positive attitudes toward technology in order to increase technology integration in education. 2. literature review motivation is the internal desire of an employee to do a job; motivating is making an employee willing to do the job through an external influence. motivation is defined by luthans (1989) as the management process of influencing behavior based on knowledge of what motivates people (tella, ayeni, & popoola, 2007). asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 3 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group scholars have presented various theories and approaches to define motivation, both psychologically and physiologically. therefore, it is a primary concept for those in roles that involve mobilizing others, such as managers, teachers, religious leaders, coaches, healthcare providers, and parents (ryan & deci, 2000). motivation is among the five basic abilities that goleman defined in the context of social intelligence: "self-awareness, self-regulation, understanding the emotions of others (empathy), and social skills" (turan, 2015). 2.1. teacher motivation the importance of teacher motivation research is also obvious because student motivation is a very important factor that is closely related to a number of variables in education, such as educational reform, teaching practice, and teachers' psychological satisfaction and well-being. although teacher motivation stems from the intrinsic values of teaching, it can be affected by various factors. numerous studies have shown that teachers experience higher occupational stress and lower motivation than other professions (han & yin, 2016). dörnyei and ushioda (2021) identified five categories of factors that reduce teacher motivation: stress, restrictions on teacher autonomy, insufficient self-efficacy, inadequate career structures, repetitive content, and limited intellectual development potential. the psychological processes underlying teacher motivation are often hindered by numerous environmental and organizational issues, making it difficult to achieve desired goals in teaching (bennell, 2004). research on teacher motivation has shown that there is a close relationship between teacher motivation and student learning, and teaching behaviors or styles mediate the effect of teacher motivation on student motivation (han & yin, 2016). in the literature, praver and oga-baldwin (2008) classify teacher motivation into direct motivators (intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) and indirect motivators (autonomy, working relationships, self-actualization, and institutional support), while dinham and scott (2000) classify them as microand macro-contextual factors. these categories were later redefined by dörnyei and ushioda (2021) as school-based external factors and systemic/societal level factors. 2.2. career an individual’s career is not limited to a specific period of their life; rather, it is a phenomenon that evolves through different stages and changes over time throughout their entire life. there are various interpretations of the concept of career. according to greenhaus et al. (1990) a career is defined in two ways in literature. the first definition refers to the quality of a profession or organization or the individual’s position within that profession or organization. the second definition focuses on the individual’s traits. according to another definition, a career is a process shaped by work experience and activities, guided by personal and organizational goals, which the individual can partially control and continues to pursue throughout their life (orpen, 1994). 2.3. career satisfaction career satisfaction was assessed by greenhaus et al. (1990) in five main areas depending on the level of goal attainment: 1. professional achievements. 2. general professional goals. 3. income-related goals. 4. professional development. 5. learning new skills. the success of the individual in achieving these basic goals plays a decisive role in career satisfaction (yüksel, 2005). the teaching profession is regarded as one of the most sacred professions, as it plays a crucial role in shaping the generations that will define the future of society. education systems face various challenges in order to provide employment for qualified professionals in the increasingly competitive labor market. the availability of a sufficient number of qualified teachers is a major concern, especially in oecd countries. teacher salaries and working conditions are factors that greatly affect the career choices of potential teachers (oecd, 2005). starting salaries and wage scales can either decrease or increase interest in the teaching profession. in addition, the cost of becoming a teacher plays an important role when compared to other highly skilled professions. 2.4. digital competence the ability to use digital tools is now seen as a central competence at all levels of society, and a number of initiatives are being undertaken to develop a common understanding of the concept of digital competence (instefjord, 2015). research on teachers’ access to and effective use of digital technologies has revealed significant differences. researchers in the field of technology and teacher education continue to note that prospective teachers are not prepared to teach with technology when they enter the classroom (foulger, graziano, schmidt-crawford, & slykhuis, 2017). students are growing up in a world driven by technology, and teachers need to adapt to this changing environment (janet & genelyn, 2024). the novelty of using technology in schools and higher education, as in the 1970s and 1990s, is now a thing of the past, and students are becoming more critical users of technology in the classroom. higher-order thinking skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and decision-making; productivity, innovation, creativity, collaboration and communication skills, lifelong learning, information and communication technology literacy; and personal and social responsibility are included in the literature as 21st-century skills. in this century, teachers need to have qualities such as flexibility, adaptability, collaboration, creativity and innovation, lifelong learning, and pedagogical expertise to increase student success (janet & genelyn, 2024). 3. methodology and data analysis 3.1. purpose of research the purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between teachers’ professional motivation and career satisfaction and to gain insight into the role of digital competence in this relationship. by evaluating the current situation, the study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of potential obstacles that may negatively impact both motivation and career satisfaction. in this context, the research offers valuable insights into the development of educational policies and professional development programs. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 4 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. research questions 1. what are the factors that affect teachers' professional motivation? 2. what are the factors that affect teachers' perceptions of career satisfaction? 3. does digital competence have a positive contribution to career development and professional motivation in terms of professional development? 3.3. methodology the study employed a phenomenological design, a qualitative research method that focuses on exploring phenomena we are aware of, but with the aim of gaining a deeper and more detailed understanding. the goal of this design is to uncover the essence of the experiences of individuals who have encountered a specific phenomenon (creswell, 2018). because they are qualitative, phenomenological studies may not give us clear or general results. however, they do give us useful examples, explanations, and first-hand accounts that help us understand the phenomenon better (yıldırım & simsek, 2013). 3.4. research group the basic data collection tool in phenomenological studies is the interview (yıldırım & simsek, 2013). the study group consists of 11 teachers working in official elementary, secondary, and high schools affiliated with the ministry of national education in turkey during the 2023-2024 academic year. the research group was formed using maximum variation sampling, a purposive sampling method. when employing this method, it is important not to generalize to the entire population but to identify similarities across different situations. in this study, care was taken to select teachers with diverse demographic characteristics, as well as varying levels of digital competence, motivation, and career satisfaction. efforts were made to include teachers from schools at different educational levels, situated in regions with varying socio-economic backgrounds in ankara, turkey. the participants in the study are indicated as t1, t2, and t11. table 1 provides the demographic variables of the teachers who participated in the study. 3.5. qualitative data collection tools in collecting qualitative data, a semi-structured interview form was used, which was prepared by the researcher himself and finalized after receiving expert opinions (1 educational management faculty member, 1 measurement and evaluation expert, 2 language experts, and 3 expert teachers). in the interview form, which was prepared and for which the necessary permissions were obtained, four open-ended questions were asked of teachers, as well as demographic information. the researcher recorded the teachers’ responses using a voice recorder with their consent. 3.6. validity and reliability in qualitative research, four criteria were used to determine the reliability of the results: internal validity, external validity, internal reliability, and external reliability. internal validity indicates the adequacy of the process followed in reaching the research results in revealing the studied reality; external validity indicates the transferability of the obtained results to similar groups or environments; internal reliability indicates whether other researchers can reach the same results using the same data; and external reliability indicates whether the research results can be obtained in the same way in similar environments (yıldırım & simsek, 2013). in this research, internal validity was ensured by sharing the interview summaries with the participants after obtaining their approval and gathering their feedback on the accuracy of the summaries. for external validity, the variables that were part of the questions that the participants were asked about were given in-depth conceptual explanations. this approach aimed to guarantee the research’s limited generalizability. instead of the concept of reliability, which emphasizes repeatability in quantitative research, the concept of consistency is suggested for a qualitative research (yıldırım & simsek, 2013). for this purpose, interviews were conducted with participants using consistent approaches. the researcher documented notes, inferences, and reports, which were securely stored for future reference. 3.7. data analysis in the study, four open-ended questions were asked of the participants, and their opinions were obtained verbally. the researcher used a voice recorder to record the oral interviews and then transcribed. the open-ended questions asked of the teachers are as follows: 1) what are the positive and negative factors that affect your professional motivation? 2) what are the positive and negative factors that affect your career development? 3) do you think that increasing your digital competence will positively affect your career in terms of professional development? 4) do you think that increasing your digital competence will positively affect your motivation for the teaching profession? the research data were analyzed using the descriptive analysis method. there is less descriptive analysis than content analysis, it is used when the conceptual structure of the research is known ahead of time (yıldırım & simsek, 2013). the verbal responses of the teachers to the semi-structured interview form were shared as direct quotes. the analysis was carried out in three stages. first, all the responses given by each participant to the questions were listed under the relevant question. next, the code and frequency (f) values of the responses were determined. since quality is given more importance than quantity in qualitative research, researchers evaluate the density and significance of a code according to its frequency of occurrence (miles & huberman, 2016). after the codes were created, they were reviewed and finalized. the determined categories, which were created by grouping the codes, were grouped under positive and negative themes as in the first and second interview questions. the themes in the third and fourth questions were determined according to the categories obtained. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 5 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. demographic variables of teachers participating in research. participants gender school seniority branch education level title t1 female elementary school 11-20 year elementary teacher master’s degree expert teacher t2 male high school 21-30 year mathematics teachers master’s degree expert teacher t3 male secondary school 11-20 year mathematics teachers master’s degree expert teacher t4 male secondary school 11-20 year mathematics teachers master’s degree expert teacher t5 male high school 21-30 year information technologies teachers (itt) bachelor’s degree expert teacher t6 female secondary school 11-20 year english teachers bachelor’s degree expert teacher t7 female elementary school 21-30 year elementary teacher bachelor’s degree expert teacher t8 male secondary school 21-30 year turkish teachers master’s degree expert teacher t9 female high school 0-10 year english teachers bachelor’s degree teacher t10 female secondary school 0-10 year english teachers bachelor’s degree teacher t11 female secondary school 0-10 year science teachers master’s degree expert teacher asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 6 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. findings 4.1. findings on positive and negative factors affecting professional motivation the themes, categories, and codes derived from the participants' views on their professional motivations are given in table 2. the study asked teachers to identify factors that positively and negatively influence their professional motivation. the responses were grouped into two themes: positive and negative. four categories emerged under the positive theme: student motivation, professional motivation, communication with colleagues, and communication with school administration. table 2. themes, categories and codes for positive and negative factors affecting professional motivation. themes categories codes f positive student motivation student success 5 quality communication with the student 5 professional motivation love the profession 3 enthusiasm 2 sacred 2 colleague communication meeting with colleague 3 branch teachers 3 school administrator communication appreciation 4 positive attitude 4 negative school as a working environment turn of duty 3 technological infrastructure 3 class size 2 physical structure of the school 2 negative attitudes of the school administration 4 communication with student's parents expectations of the student's parents 4 student's parents' attitudes 2 unique features of the profession burnout 2 difficulty of the branch 3 shortage of teachers 2 teaching profession as status financial 3 respect 3 education problems curriculum 2 problems with education 2 according to the answers obtained, it was seen that the most common opinion in the positive theme was “quality communication with students,” and “student success” obtained from the student motivation category. sample responses, along with the codes derived from the teachers' opinions, are provided below: t6: of course, the main reason that affects our motivation is the interest and attitude of our students towards the lesson. the more the student participates and is active in the lesson, the happier the teacher will be. t8: being able to touch the soul of a child, to enable a child who may have never seen sincere love to experience that love, and to set a sacred purpose for humanity and all living things in front of him/her are my most important sources of motivation. teachers also responded to the positive theme, expressing their value in receiving appreciation from school administrators. t11: my students' successes motivate me the most but being appreciated and rewarded are also nice and positive things for me. the research teachers stressed the importance of communication with colleagues and a love for the profession, which boosts their school well-being: t7: i see and talk to my friends in the cluster more at school. that's why working with them and doing the same job is actually good. when we have a problem, i can share it. when it’s come to students or personal matters, my colleagues motivate me at school. t5: if i were to say it's a positive motivation, it's the love for this profession despite everything. from the teacher responses given in the study, it was seen that the factors that negatively affect motivation are related to parents and school administration: t1: on the negative side, unfortunately, the parents' attitude towards us as teachers, the fact that they see us as having a different profession rather than being teachers, and they act as if we are just babysitting the children at that moment, really upsets us. in education and training, of course, we are responsible for teaching the student everything until the end, but unfortunately, parents can exaggerate this limit a little and behave differently. t8: first, the parent attitude. the spoiled parent profile who does not take any responsibility for their child's education and thinks that the teacher has a magic wand in his hand... parents' expectations are very high; this puts a lot of pressure on the teacher... incompetent administrators. administrators who should not enter the door of any school, who cannot teach, who cannot establish healthy communication with students, who only care about advancing their position, and who are crazy about procedures... both i and many of my teacher friends around me are experiencing burnout syndrome. there are many more factors that negatively affect motivation. some of the responses indicating how teachers are negatively affected by issues specific to the teaching profession are provided below. t5: there are many motivational issues such as administrative problems, teachers' competence/incompetence, negative parent behaviors, student-centered problems, etc., but i see these as secondary problems. in my opinion, the issue that has the most negative impact on my motivation is the one i mentioned earlier: not trusting teachers, not paying attention, not caring, and not making them feel valuable. problems or difficulties experienced in the school environment also negatively affect teachers' motivation. some of the responses on this subject are given below: t2: the number of students in classes. the number of classes and the quality of teachers, of course, affect this. the physical environment is essential. so, we can say this at the beginning: from the cleanliness of common areas, sinks to the cleanliness of the physical environment, the class, the number of staff, the number of assistants in the school, whether there is a technological tool, computer, or smart board, all of these should be evaluated in a process from beginning to end. the lack or absence of these are, of course, things that will affect your motivation. t10: the factors that negatively affect my motivation are the crowded classes and school. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 7 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.2. findings on positive and negative factors affecting career advancement the themes, categories, and codes obtained from the participants' views on their career progression are given in table 3. in the second question posed to the teachers participating in the research, they were asked to evaluate the factors that positively and negatively impact their career advancement. the positive themes identified included factors such as a master's or doctorate degree and professional passion, while the negative themes encompassed obstructive factors and challenges related to viewing teaching as a career. table 3. themes, categories and codes for positive and negative factors affecting career advancement. themes categories codes f positive master’s degree and phd self-improvement 3 useful 3 professional passion feeling happy 2 appreciation 2 new experiences 2 negative hindering factors family problems 2 difficulty of the tasks 3 limited opportunities 3 teaching as a career administrative and political 3 career ladder 2 teaching is not seen as a career profession 3 it was observed that the biggest factor in teachers' orientation towards doing a master's degree or doctorate under the positive theme was that they thought that self-development would be positive for their careers and also beneficial for their profession. some responses regarding teachers' views on this issue are given below: t3: i have a master's degree. i am someone who constantly tries to improve myself, who constantly tries to get online training, and who attends seminars and conferences. in other words, it has changed my perspective a lot. in other words, i can see myself making progress with these changes. i see that i do some things better. additionally, teachers expressed that their love for the profession is a source of happiness, and they believe that being helpful to their students is a key indicator of career success: t7: if i am happy with my students, i say i am a competent teacher. in their eyes, being a good teacher means doing good things in your career, i think. t9: loving the profession we practice, seeing ourselves as perfect for it, and being happy to go to work every day are actually important factors that enable us to think about career advancement. it was observed that the underlying cause of teachers' negative views about their careers stemmed from the belief that teaching is not regarded as a professional career by society: t7: in daily life, i don't think anyone takes into account the career progression of teachers. in everyone's eyes, a teacher is just a teacher… t8: there is no career in teaching even the administrators are still considered teachers according to the law. even if you are an administrator, nothing changes. the lack of career advancement is one of the most important factors that causes loss of motivation. among the negative factors, teachers stated that there are some obstacles from their families or institutions that prevent them from pursuing higher education or receiving education: t6: as for the factors that affect my career progression, as a teacher and also a mother, i have many responsibilities at home and with a younger daughter, so i cannot attend in-service training seminars or other trainings due to the time constraints or other reasons. but i would like to attend... t11: for example, limited opportunities, such as my inappropriate course schedule for my phd, can make it difficult for me to progress. however, some non-personal or organizational issues also hinder teachers’ career advancement: t9: if the administrators with different political views who come to power in the country act fairly towards each individual, this will prevent all citizens in the society from despairing in their career advancement. t4: the fact that the curriculum is restrictive, that it limits you on the subjects, that you are trying to complete certain subjects, prevents you from deciding on the subject and doing in-depth study. these are the negative aspects. 4.3. findings on the positive effects of increasing digital competence on teachers' careers in terms of professional development the themes, categories, and codes obtained from the participants' views on the positive effects of increasing digital competence on their career advancement in terms of professional development are given in table 4. in the third question posed to the teachers participating in the study, they were asked to share their opinions on the positive impact of enhancing digital competence on their career advancement, particularly in terms of professional development. in this context, under the theme of the necessity of the digital age, the categories of preparation for the lesson and the process of expression and professional development were identified. under the theme of the importance of digital competence, the categories of communication with students and academic development were determined. table 4. themes, categories and codes for the positive effects of increasing digital competence on teachers' careers in terms of professional development. themes categories codes f necessity of the digital age lesson preparation-lecture process practical 8 interesting, fun 5 can be lazy 2 professional development job satisfaction 2 being inadequate in the eyes of the student 3 the importance of digital competence communication with students digital native-immigrant 4 technology is also used in daily life 3 academic development beneficial for academic development 6 cooperation 4 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 8 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the codes that were analyzed under the theme of “necessity in the digital age” showed that teachers thought that main reason people needed to be digitally competent was so they could use technology in the classroom. some of the responses reflecting the teachers' views on this matter are provided below. t8: beyond that, is it possible not to use technology in class preparation and during class? i don’t think so. thanks to technological developments, we can make many subjects that were intangible when we first started our careers tangible. moreover, this saves us a lot of time. i now use chatgpt for class preparation. chatgpt does the preparation in a few minutes that i would do in a few hours. additionally, research shows that teachers feel prepared and experience professional satisfaction: t1: i think that this issue will definitely reflect on the career. i also think like this. when you reach professional competence and satisfaction, i think these are necessary. i think it will have a more positive effect on our career. t3: of course, there are times when only you are capable of completing a task. for example, it is asked of only you because you have received that training. therefore, your self-confidence also increases; in a way, i think it is necessary for professional satisfaction. the analysis of the codes under the theme of the importance of the digital age revealed that teachers considered the greatest factor in the necessity of digital competence to be its significant benefits for their academic development: t4: now i am doing a master's degree in measurement. after developing certain measurement stages, you need to obtain statistics and data related to them. you also need to use technology for this. of course i use them in this sense. of course it has advantages. students’ digital tendencies in the digital age are noted by teachers, who emphasize that they should also keep up: t6: children today already know; as teachers, we need to know too. t7: i do not want to appear inadequate in the eyes of students. t8: not being aware of the technological developments that your students are so involved with will weaken your bond with them and negatively affect the way your students view you. 4.4. findings on the positive effects of increasing digital competence on motivation for the teaching profession the themes, categories, and codes obtained from the participants' views on the positive effects of increasing digital competence on their motivation for the teaching profession are given in table 5. in the fourth question posed to the teachers, they were asked to share their opinions on how enhancing their digital competence positively impacts their motivation toward the teaching profession. in this context, under the theme of the course, the categories of student motivation, programs and tools used, and activities were identified. under the theme of administrator and colleague, the categories of cooperation with administrators and cooperation with colleagues were determined. the personal themes established the categories of in-service training and digital aptitude. table 5. themes, categories and codes for the positive effects of increasing digital competence on motivation for the teaching profession. themes categories codes f lesson student motivation useful 6 interest in the lesson 4 fun 4 programs and tools used eba (education information network), oba (teacher information network) 3 phone, tablet 2 interactive whiteboard 5 applications 5 activities listening, speaking, word 4 virtual trip 2 solving questions 3 coding 2 presentation 4 game 3 graph or angle drawing 3 school administrator and colleague communication with school administrators technology competence of managers 3 compatibility with admin 4 communication with colleagues solidarity 6 compatibility with colleague 5 personal in-service training the training received is useful 6 the training received is not effective 3 digital aptitude learning is important and feels good 9 based on the codes learned in the course theme, it was found that student motivation was the most important factor in teachers’ digital competence growth in terms of their motivation to stay in the teaching profession. some responses regarding the teachers' views on this subject are given below: t4: for example, when i play a math game in class, students' participation in the lesson increases significantly. this positively affects my motivation to be a teacher. t8: frankly, anything that makes me think that i am more useful to my students increases my motivation. the use of every digital platform in the course increases the student's interest in it. teachers who highlighted the variety and usability of applications emphasized the usefulness of digital competence in the classroom: t8: the lessons are more fun. although what we can do is limited compared to other branches, i am a turkish teacher, but i still try to use it as much as possible. let me give a few examples: let's say we are studying a subject about professions that are on the verge of extinction. in the lesson, we can connect to a tile master in bursa, iznik, via video from the smart board, and both have a conversation with him and watch a tile being made. or, in the national culture theme, we can visit gobeklitepe in a virtual environment without going there. i'm not even talking about the convenience of presentations in transferring information; they are very classic now. we already use them. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 9 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teachers who consider themselves digitally competent say this helps them communicate with colleagues and administrators: t3: they may ask me for some work. since i can do it, i will help. it contributes in that way. positive, i mean, why, for example, we did not have an assistant principal at one point; he had left the school, and they couldn't prepare the course schedule. i had used that program before, i knew it. for example, i was even preparing the course schedules in those schools i worked at. t10: i believe that when we, as a group, exchange information on this issue, it will contribute to our development and create a positive communication environment. additionally, some teachers shared that they believe administrators, whom they perceive as having low technology competence, do not always have a positive view of digital technology and hold certain biases, though they do not generalize this to all administrators: t1: also, now we tell our principal; we say we will use this, but he does not know. in other words, he does not know that program and tells us that we do not have it, or we cannot use it, and it affects us; it puts us down. so, this definitely contributes to our communication. t4: the perspective of the principal or other teacher friends on this issue is crucial. in other words, if they do not have indepth knowledge of this issue, they may also label you as if you are disrupting the class. they may also perceive these as empty games. according to general research, teachers who possess strong digital competence exhibit personal inclination towards technology. it can be said that they are keen on using new technological tools and receiving training in this subject. it can be concluded that dealing with technology through their own means or as a result of training makes them feel good: t3: i do things like this, or, for example, i learned how to make an application on android because it was my own interest… for example, it asks children about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and it scores them randomly and attracts their attention they can play it on their phones and tablets. t7: we are in the digital age. being able to use technology makes me feel good, strengthens my self-confidence, and i feel good when i use it in class. however, there is no consensus on the effectiveness of education: t3: you know, but of course this was something i was doing as a hobby. i just tried to adapt it to mathematics. for example, i had made a program, and i had learned the training for this program from öba, from our own national education training. t7: i tried to get training on using technology, but if you ask me if it was beneficial for me, i don't think so. i think distance training is not very effective. 5. results 5.1. implications from research the study asked teachers to categorize the factors that affect their professional motivation as positive or negative. based on the responses, the most common views in the theme positively influencing teachers' motivation were "quality communication with students" and "student success," both of which were derived from the student motivation category. in addition, being appreciated by school administrators was seen as a desired and expected situation by teachers. teachers who communicated with their colleagues at school stated that they saw this as a good source of motivation for them, and thus their sense of belonging to the school increased. the study’s teachers reported that parents and school administration were the factors most negatively affecting motivation. teachers reported that parents' behaviors, which sometimes treat them as babysitters, have a demotivating effect. additionally, school administrators’ excessive workload occasionally undermines teachers’ motivation. the teachers who participated in the study were asked to evaluate the factors that positively and negatively affect their career advancement. in this context, it was found that the primary factor driving teachers to pursue a master's or doctorate degree under the positive theme was their belief that self-development benefits both their careers and their professional growth. career advancement in the teaching profession is often associated with obtaining a master's or doctorate, rather than moving up through career steps. the knowledge gained through higher education is seen as highly valuable and motivational. additionally, the most striking finding of this study is that teachers emphasized their profession is not merely a duty but a result of their passion, which can be interpreted as intrinsic motivation. they even described being helpful to their students and society as a key indicator of career success in itself. teachers’ negative views about their careers stem from their belief that society does not view teaching as a professional career. the teachers who participated in the study expressed the opinion that the career advancement structure in turkey, which mainly involves wage differences and obtaining titles, differs significantly from the career progression found in other professions. teachers have observed that personal or organizational obstacles preventing them from pursuing higher education or professional training negatively impact their career advancement. challenges such as family responsibilities, school workload, or the negative attitudes of administrators diminish teachers' motivation to further develop themselves. the study asked participating teachers to express their views on the positive effects of professional development on their career advancement. based on their responses, it was evident that teachers want to adapt to the digital age and be helpful to today's students, often referred to as digital natives. in fact, this finding is one of the key outcomes of the study. teachers now believe in the necessity of being open to innovations in order to stay practical and effectively communicate with their students. teachers who think that using digital technology in lesson preparation and teaching process is quite useful for professional development have stated that they gain professional satisfaction as a result. teachers state that they are satisfied because they can communicate better with their colleagues and school administrators in technical matters. in addition, teachers who think that their digital competence is strong believe it positively contributes to their academic development. these teachers, skilled in digital technology, expressed a personal inclination toward innovation and ongoing training, highlighting that engaging with technology—whether independently or through formal training—enhances their sense of well-being. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 10 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.2. discussion numerous studies support the critical impact of motivation on employee productivity and performance (dörnyei & ushioda, 2021; han & yin, 2016). people with high motivation tend to be more successful in achieving goals. in the field of education, enhancing teachers' motivation is crucial for achieving teaching outcomes that drive success. reduced motivation can lead teachers to encounter problems such as fatigue, burnout, and diminished professional performance. as a result of the research conducted by sengar and pandey (2024) in foundation universities, it was determined that there is a positive relationship between job satisfaction and employee performance. according to data collected from 250 teachers in the west bengal region of india, the analysis of the research examining the relationship between teacher motivation and performance reveals a strong positive correlation between both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and teacher performance (layek & koodamara, 2024). intrinsic motivation is important, but it is not sufficient for all the actions that people will perform. while intrinsic motivation is defined by ryan and deci (2000) as a person's natural tendency to explore and learn, extrinsic motivation is defined by deci, olafsen, and ryan (2017) as a tendency to do an activity to achieve a concrete result. extrinsic motivation focuses on instrumental or external behaviors. in fact, motivation for learning a second language is a situation where extrinsic motivation is more common because it is based on external factors other than the natural occurrence of the learning process (berges-puyó, 2023). increasing comprehensive pedagogical support in the creation of digital teaching is very important in increasing educator motivation. studies examining the use of digital tools by educators in teacher education in sweden, as well as the need for digital competence in higher education, concluded that teacher educators do not primarily use digital tools for pedagogical purposes. (amhag, hellström, & stigmar, 2019). an investigation in tanzania looked into what motivates teachers and how well they do their jobs. it found that teachers’ low pay and a lack of incentives were two major external factors that led to low motivation and job dissatisfaction (haidari, gul, valentinovna, & vladimirovna, 2023). in a study conducted with teachers in schools in bangladesh by kumar and hossain (2017) examining the effect of internal and external factors on teachers' motivation. it was found that attitudes towards external factors have a stronger effect on motivation than attitudes towards internal factors. the study also revealed that the motivation levels of the participating teachers were generally subpar. research on teachers’ digital competence conducted after 2016 has shown that the concept is difficult to understand and poorly defined, resulting in extensive debates about how to conceptualize it and, in particular, which skills and abilities should be included in the field of education (skantz-åberg, lantz-andersson, lundin, & williams, 2022). in a study that systematically reviewed the literature on digital competences and teacher professional development between 2008 and 2018, and mostly included qualitative research, the importance of digital competence is emphasized as one of the key challenges faced by today's teachers (fernández-batanero, montenegro-rueda, fernández-cerero, & garcía-martínez, 2022). for teachers, digital competence not only involves the ability to use technology themselves but also requires meta-reflection on how technology relates to pedagogy and its impact on student learning in specific contexts (sanders & george, 2017). the oecd (2005) reviewed independent studies conducted in france, australia, belgium (french community), canada (québec), the netherlands, the slovak republic, and the united kingdom and found that the primary sources of motivation for teachers' career choices were the desire to work with young people and the opportunity to contribute to society (richardson & watt, 2014). similarly, a study conducted in australia concluded that the most important factors influencing teachers' motivation were their perceived teaching skills, the intrinsic value of teaching, the desire to make a social contribution, the opportunity to shape the future of young people, and the chance to work with children and adolescents (richardson & watt, 2006). in their research, wild, enzle, nix, and deci (1997) observed that students' interest in learning was higher when taught by a teacher with intrinsic motivation compared to one with extrinsic motivation. a study examining the decision of prospective teachers in malaysian public universities to choose a teaching career found that the reasons for their choice could be categorized into three main groups: intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic factors (bakar, mohamed, suhid, & hamzah, 2014). the results from the study show that altruistic factors (e.g., “to influence the next generation”) were among the most dominant motivations. this was followed by intrinsic motivations (e.g., “teaching suits my personality”), while extrinsic factors were the least influential motivations. 5.3. suggestions and limitations these findings support the following recommendations: the study was limited to public schools. the opinions of teachers working in private schools can also be taken, and the teaching profession motivation levels and career satisfaction of public and private schools can be compared. the study determined the teaching profession motivation levels and career satisfaction of only some branch teachers. similar studies can be conducted for teachers in other branches. the study aimed to determine the teaching profession motivation levels and career satisfaction of elementary school, secondary school, and anatolian high school teachers. in addition to this study, the factors affecting the professional motivation levels and career satisfaction of teachers in preschool, vocational schools, and sports and fine arts schools can be revealed. 6. conclusion many factors, such as teachers' income levels, the adequacy of the physical environment of the institutions they work in, communication between administrators and colleagues, and student motivation, affect teachers' interest and motivation in the profession. since motivation is a process in which mutual interaction takes place, it concerns all stakeholders in education. this study examines the factors that affect teachers' professional motivation and career satisfaction based on their perspectives, as well as explores the impact of teachers' digital competencies on motivation and career satisfaction. 11 teachers from different branches and school levels from different socioeconomic regions participated in this qualitative research. the results of this research indicate that a teacher who feels successful and fulfilled in the institution he/she works in will have increased career satisfaction and commitment to the profession. in addition, the teachers who participated in the research think that the positive communication they establish with their colleagues and school administrators contributes positively to their motivation and job performance. teachers who see themselves as successful and respected accept that they always see themselves as open to innovations and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 1-12 11 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group that they establish higher quality communication with their students and colleagues by adapting to the digital age. they explain that they pursue their professional development with intrinsic motivation, aiming to understand the language of the student and provide help that they believe will benefit the student's life. in this context, teachers attribute career satisfaction to moral values, not material ones. references amhag, l., hellström, l., & stigmar, m. 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(2021). teachers’ motivation to participate in continuous professional development: relationship with factors at the personal and school level. journal of education for teaching, 47(5), 714-731. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2021.1942804 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19159009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167297238005 https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2021.1916559 https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2021.1942804 114 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 4, 114-120, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i4.4242 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship of mental toughness and emotional eating: the example of a female wrestler burcu guvendi1 burcak keskin2 sema arslan kabasakal3 selman kaya4 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3,4faculty of sport sciences, yalova university, yalova, turkey. 1email: burcu.guvendi@yalova.edu.tr 2email: burcak.keskin@yalova.edu.tr 3email: sema.kabasakal@yalova.edu.tr 4email: selman.kaya@yalova.edu.tr abstract emotional eating is the act of eating to cope with stress and pressure, and it is assumed that this behavior increases as the level of self-control decreases. several factors, including anxiety about winning and fear of injury, can cause stress in athletes. an athlete’s high mental toughness is closely related to their ability to easily cope with such stress factors. it is still a matter of curiosity how negative psychological factors affect emotional eating in athletes with low mental toughness. this study investigated the relationship between emotional eating and mental toughness in female wrestlers. emotional eating questionnaire and sports mental toughness questionnaire were applied to 69 female wrestlers. the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, anova, and pearson correlation tests. it was found that the participants were low emotional eaters and accepted all of the mental toughness sub-dimensions. there was a significant difference in emotional eating total score and “disinhibition" score according to nationality status (p<0.05). the findings suggested a positive and significant relationship between sub-dimensions of emotional eating and sub-dimensions of mental toughness (p<0.05). it was concluded that national female wrestlers tended to eat more emotionally than non-national athletes and had more difficulty preventing the urge to eat. as female wrestlers’ mental toughness levels increased, they tended to eat emotionally and felt guilty about eating. keywords: eating, emotional eating, female wrestlers, mental toughness, wrestling, eating disorder. citation | burcu guvendi; burcak keskin; sema arslan kabasakal; selman kaya (2022). the relationship of mental toughness and emotional eating: the example of a female wrestler. asian journal of education and training, 8(4): 114-120. history: received: 19 august 2022 revised: 23 september 2022 accepted: 10 october 2022 published: 26 october 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction & literature review .............................................................................................................................................. 115 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 115 3. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 116 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 118 5. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 119 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 119 mailto:burcu.guvendi@yalova.edu.tr mailto:burcak.keskin@yalova.edu.tr mailto:sema.kabasakal@yalova.edu.tr mailto:selman.kaya@yalova.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i4.4242 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6170-9107 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4313-7720 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4552-9640 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2185-6436 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 114-120 115 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature wrestling is a weight sport, and it is a branch of sports that may require calorie restriction and keeping the weight constant during the competition. depending on this situation, the athlete's eating patterns and eating habits may change, and emotional eating may occur. there is no study in the literature that reveals the emotional eating level of female wrestlers. the aim of this study is to determine the emotional eating levels of female wrestlers and to examine the relationship between emotional eating and mental toughness levels. 1. introduction & literature review in addition to being a physiological activity essential for survival, nutrition is acknowledged as a physiological and sociological phenomenon (baysal, 2011; cengiz, dijle, arkan, & bektaş, 2020). emotions have a significant impact on eating (faith, allison, & geliebter, 1997). in emotional eating, hunger is not of physiological origin but entirely depends on mood (bekker, van de meerendonk, & mollerus, 2004). although the etiology of emotional eating is not well-known, some theories suggest that it may result from early feeding experiences (macht & simons, 2011). for instance, children rewarded with candy during childhood prefer to eat them in case of a bad mood when they grow up (macht, 2008). some believe that emotional eating behavior originates in both physiological and psychological mechanisms (macht, 2008). for example, since consuming foods rich in carbohydrates and poor in protein boosts the effect of serotonin in the body, individuals are likely to consume foods rich in carbohydrates to alleviate depressive moods (wurtman, 1982). the belief that eating helps to overcome emotional distress may lead to overeating problems (baumeister & heatherton, 1996). sad individuals tend to eat more to improve their mood, which might be due to weak self-control. as they have a low level of self-control and management, they may prefer eating to improve their mood (tice & bratslavsky, 2000). studies have shown that individuals with less coping, emotional regulation, and self-awareness skills have high emotional eating behaviors (young, 2016). a study on obese individuals revealed that physical exercise was associated with less emotional eating behaviors and high self-control, selfregulation, and improved mood in obese women (annesi, 2018) which might result from high serotonin levels with exercise (ünal, 2018). in this sense, athletes are expected to have fewer emotional eating behaviors, but many psychological factors such as the fear of failure, risk of injury, and personal motivation can cause stress in athletes. mental toughness is closely related to how athletes cope with such distress and achieve sportive success. it has been suggested by athletes, coaches and sports psychologists that mental toughness is an important psychological factor that ensures sportive success. (jones, 2002). in the last two decades, significant progress has been made in research on the conceptual uncertainty, definition, and measurement of mental toughness (stamatis et al., 2020). although there is no consensus on a clear conceptual framework of mental toughness, some definitions come to the fore in the literature (erdoğan, 2016). for example, jones (2002) defines mental toughness as having better coping skills, especially for the demands imposed by sports (e.g., tough competition, training, and lifestyle), and being more consistent, determined, focused, confident, and in control under pressure than his competitors. according to hardy, bell, and beattie (2014) mental toughness is the ability to achieve personal goals under pressure and various stress factors. middleton, martin, and marsh (2012) define it as unwavering determination and belief in a goal despite pressure or negativity. similarly, gucciardi, gordon, and dimmock (2008) describe it as a set of values, attitudes, behaviors, and emotions that help to resist and overcome any obstacle, adversity, or pressure, as well as to maintain concentration and motivation. mental toughness in sports is a factor that helps an athlete cope with anxiety and stress (i̇hsan, samet, & demir, 2020). athletes need to keep their mental toughness levels as high as possible in the face of adversity (e.g., challenges, stress, failure) to achieve success or recover quickly (jones, hanton, & connaughton, 2007). studies have shown that the performance of athletes with low mental toughness is poor, although they have proper physiological and technical-tactical functions (crust, 2008; jones et al., 2007; sheard, 2012). mental toughness facilitates proper behavior and concentration under pressure and thus inevitably boosts performance in athletes (jones, 2002; slimani, miarka, briki, & cheour, 2016). besides, as it helps athletes cope with stress, it can also prevent emotional eating. in combat sports, constant control of food intake and body weight leads to pressure and stress in athletes, which may also trigger eating disorders (iuso, bellomo, pagano, carnevale, & ventriglio, 2019; soylu, 2021; sundgot-borgen & torstveit, 2004). studies have shown that dieting causes recurrence of negative moods and emotional problems, and those individuals tend to eat more (baucom & aiken, 1981; grilo, shiffman, & wing, 1989). stress caused by weight control and the fear of failure may increase the emotional eating behaviors in combat sports athletes. in the literature, there is no study on the relationship between wrestling, a combat sport, and emotional eating tendency and mental toughness. the study purpose was reveal the emotional eating levels and mental toughness levels of female wrestlers and to determine the relationship between them. 2. method 2.1. procedure this study was conducted in accordance with the declaration of helsinki. all participants were informed about the study processes and an informed consent form was filled in for each participant. the participants were asked to fill out the questionnaires after the necessary information was given. 2.2. subject the sample consisted of 69 national and non-national female wrestlers. table 1 shows the demographic information of the participants. participation was provided on a voluntary basis and informed consent form was filled by the participants. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 114-120 116 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. demographic characteristics of the participants. variables n x ̄ sd age 69 17.78 2.73 height 69 59.66 10.32 weight 69 163.13 7.02 sports year 69 5.63 2.66 2.3. data collection tools the data were collected using a “demographic information form," "sports mental toughness questionnaire (smtq)," and "emotional eating questionnaire (eeq)." demographic information form: it was prepared to obtain information about participants’ age, weight, height, sports year, and whether being a national athlete or not. emotional eating questionnaire (eeq) was developed by garaulet et al. (2012) to determine emotional eating behaviors. arslantaş, dereboy, yüksel, and i̇nalkaç (2020) adapted the instrument into turkish and conducted validity and reliability studies. it is a 4-point likert type instrument (0=never, 1=sometimes, 2=generally, and 3=always), including ten items and three sub-dimensions ("disinhibition," “type of food," and "guilt”). there is no reverse item, and it is scored between 0-30. a score of “30” indicates the highest level of emotional eating, and "0" points to no emotional eating behavior. according to garaulet et al. (2012) if you score between "0-5" points, you are a “non-emotional eater," if "6-10" points, you are a "low emotional eater," if "11-20" points, you are an "emotional eater" and 21-30 points refers that you are a "very emotional eater." sports mental toughness questionnaire (smtq) was developed by sheard, golby, and wersch (2009) to measure mental toughness. altıntaş and koruç (2017) adapted it to turkish and conducted validity and reliability studies. it is 4-point likert type questionnaire (1=not at all true; 4=very true) consisted of 14 items and three sub-dimensions: “confidence” (items: 1, 5, 6, 11, 13, 14), “constancy” (items: 3, 8, 10, 12) and “control” (items: 2, 4, 7, 9)”. the participants were sent an online survey link including “demographic information form," "sports mental toughness questionnaire (smtq)," and "emotional eating questionnaire (eeq). it was voluntary to participate in the survey. 2.4. data analysis the shapiro-wilk and skewness and kurtosis tests (gürbüz & şahin, 2018) were performed to determine homogeneity. besides, descriptive statistics (arithmetic mean, standard deviation), t-test, one-way analysis of variance (anova), scheffe multiple comparison methods, and pearson correlation tests were performed in the data analysis. the significance value was set at p<0.05. the analyses were performed with statistical package for the social sciences (spss) 26.0 (ibm & armonk, 2019). 3. findings in this part of the study, by giving information about the results of the research; our findings are shown with a table and explanations are given under the table 2. table 2. mean scores. tools (n=69) x ̄ sd emotional eating questionnaire (eeq) inhibition 5.92 3.27 type of food 2.52 1.41 guilt 2.27 1.35 emotional eating questionnaire total score 10.72 5.05 sports mental toughness questionnaire (smtq) confidence 17.18 2.71 control 11.68 1.89 constancy 10.85 1.28 as seen in table 2, participants accepted scored very high in all the sub-dimensions of the mental toughness questionnaire. the total mean scores in the emotional eating questionnaire show that participants were “low emotional eaters." table 3. anova results by age groups. tools sub-dimensions age n x ̄ ± sd f sd p e m o ti o n al e at in g q u es ti o n n ai re inhibition 15-16 23 5.52±3.64 0.269 2 0.765 17-18 34 6.08±3.26 19 and older 12 6.25±2.73 type of food 15-16 23 2.34±1.40 1.559 2 0.218 17-18 34 2.41±1.39 19 and older 12 3.16±1.40 guilt 15-16 23 2.08±1.23 0.772 2 0.717 17-18 34 2.35±1.32 19 and older 12 2.41±1.72 total score 15-16 23 9.95±5.24 0.560 2 0.574 17-18 34 10.85±5.13 19 and older 12 11.83±4.54 s p o rt s m en ta l t o u g h n es s q u es ti o n n ai re confidence 15-16 23 16.39±2.12 2.939 2 0.060 17-18 34 17.97±2.62 19 and older 12 16.50±3.50 control 15-16 23 11.86±2.15 0.180 2 0.836 17-18 34 11.55±1.61 19 and older 12 11.66±2.22 constancy 15-16 23 10.73±1.09 0.173 2 0.842 17-18 34 10.88±1.29 19 and older 12 11.00±1.65 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 114-120 117 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in table 3, no statistically significant difference was found in the sub-dimensions and total scores of the eeq and the sub-dimensions of the smtq by age (p>0.05). table 4. anova results by the year of doing sports. tools sub-dimensions experience year n x ̄ ± sd f sd. p e m o ti o n al e at in g q u es ti o n n ai re inhibition 1-3 13 5.84±3.84 0.367 2 0.694 4-7 45 5.75±3.29 8 years and above 11 6.66±2.67 type of food 1-3 13 2.61±1.55 0.995 2 0.375 4-7 45 2.36±1.39 8 years and above 11 3.00±1.27 guilt 1-3 13 2.30±1.10 0.093 2 0.911 4-7 45 2.22±1.32 8 years and above 11 2.41±1.78 total score 1-3 13 10.71±5.26 0.547 2 0.581 4-7 45 10.34±5.08 8 years and above 11 12.08±4.81 s p o rt s m en ta l t o u g h n es s q u es ti o n n ai re confidence 1-3 13 16.53±1.98 0.490 2 0.615 4-7 45 17.28±2.85 8 years and above 11 17.54±2.97 control 1-3 13 12.69±1.49 2.441 2 0.095 4-7 45 11.40±1.89 8 years and above 11 11.63±2.06 constancy 1-3 13 10.69±1.18 2.522 2 0.088 4-7 45 10.71±1.29 8 and above 11 11.63±1.20 there was no statistically significant difference between eeq scores and smtq scores according to sports year (p>0.05) table 4. table 5. t-test results in terms of being a national athlete. tools subdimensions being a national athlete n x ̄ ± sd t sd p e m o ti o n al e at in g q u es ti o n n ai re inhibition yes 46 6.38±3.66 2.102 65.663 0.039* no 23 4.95±1.96 type of food yes 46 2.72±1.48 1.763 67 0.082 no 23 2.09±1.15 guilt yes 46 2.38±1.42 0.960 67 0.340 no 23 2.04±1.21 total score yes 46 11.48±5.59 64.837 67 0.026* no 23 9.09±3.11 s p o rt s m en ta l t o u g h n es s q u es ti o n n ai re confidence yes 46 17.32±2.89 0.459 67 0.648 no 23 17.00±2.39 control yes 46 11.58±2.02 -0.555 67 0.580 no 23 11.86±1.67 constancy yes 46 10.71±1.40 -1.558 67 0.124 no 23 11.22±.869 note: *p<0.05. in table 5, there was a significant difference in the sub-dimension and total score of the eeq in terms of being a national athlete (p<0.05), but no significant difference was measured in the other sub-dimensions (p>0.05). there was no statistically significant difference in all sub-dimensions of the smtq (p>0.05). table 6. correlation analysis results. tools (n=69) sports mental toughness questionnaire confidence control constancy e m o ti o n al e at in g q u es ti o n n ai re inhibition r -0.051 0.261 0.332 p 0.676 0.030* 0.005* type of food r -0.064 0.244 0.213 p 0.599 0.043* 0.080 guilt r 0.030 0.416 0.275 p 0.810 0.000* 0.022* total score r -0.043 0.350 0.349 p 0.724 0.003* 0.003* note: *p<0.05. as seen in table 6, there was a low, positive, and significant relationship between the “disinhibition” subdimensions of the eeq, and the “control” and “constancy” sub-dimensions of the smtq (rd-cont=0.261, p<0.05; rdcons=0.332, p<0.05). there was also a low, positive, and significant relationship between the “type of food” and the “control” (rcont=0.244, p<0.05). a moderately positive relationship was found between the “guilt” and the “control” (r=0.416, p<0.05). similarly, there was a low and positive statistically significant relationship between the “guilt” and “constancy (r=0.275, p<0.05). a low and positive significant difference was found between the eeq total score and the “control” and “constancy” (rt-cont=0.350, p<0.05; rd-cons=0.349, p<0.05). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 114-120 118 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussion the study examined the relationship between emotional eating behaviors and mental toughness levels of 69 female wrestlers. emotional eating is a psychological eating disorder characterized by the tendency to overeat due to negative emotions. emotional eating is interrelated to certain feelings such as stress, depression, anger, boredom, and happiness, and those at high risk of emotional eating include obese individuals, children, adolescents, those taking weight loss medication, and those that have eating disorders (i̇nalkaç & aslantaş, 2018; sevinçer & konuk, 2013). mental toughness is characterized by competitiveness, resilience to stress, high self-confidence, and low anxiety (crust & clough, 2005). the concept of mental toughness for athletes refers to the ability to maintain performance (mack & ragan, 2008). mental toughness is correlated with performance (crust, 2008). it was seen that the participants marked all the sub-dimensions of the smtq as "very true" and scored high, which overlaps with the findings of güvendi, türksoy, güçlü, and konter (2018). since wrestling is a weight sport, emotional eating questionnaire was administered. according to the analysis results regarding how wrestling athletes’ weight gain and loss affect their eating behavior, the highest mean score was found in the “disinhibition” sub-dimension. the total mean scores from the eeq show that all female wrestlers in this study were “low emotional eaters." according to marchant et al. (2009) mental toughness increases with age. in a study comparing the scores from the smtq between the team and individual sports athletes, a significant difference was found in the “control” sub-dimension in favor of team sports athletes by age (yarayan, yıldız, & gülşen, 2018). however, no relationship was found between age and mental toughness in a study conducted on 112 participants who exercised regularly at least twice a week (crust, 2009). a study on orienteering athletes’ mental toughness revealed no significant difference by age as well (cakmak, 2017). similarly, no meaningful relationship was observed between age and mental toughness scores of taekwondo athletes under and above the age of eighteen (i̇hsan et al., 2020). in parallel with these studies, we found no significant difference between age and mental toughness sub-dimensions. in terms of age’s role on emotional eating level, it is found that age did not affect emotional eating (kubar, 2017). similarly, no significant relationship was found between age and emotional eating. yarayan et al. (2018) observed that the scores obtained from the “control” sub-dimension of smtq increased in parallel to the increasing experience (i.e., sports year) in doing individual sports. however, some findings suggest that sports experience did not affect mental toughness in taekwondo athletes (i̇hsan et al., 2020). a study on young football players found no significant difference between sport start age and mental toughness (yazıcı, yapar, güven, taşçıoğlu, & ulutaş, 2021). another study determined that the mental toughness levels of orienteering athletes were not affected by the sports year (cakmak, 2017). a study on elite wrestlers found that sports year did not affect their mental toughness (dede, 2019) which overlaps with our findings and the literature. in the current study, no significant difference was found between the mental toughness sub-dimensions in terms of being a national wrestler. a study on curling athletes revealed that the national athletes’ mental toughness in the “confidence” sub-dimension was higher than those of non-national athletes (süleymanoğulları & tozoğlu, 2021). similarly, elite tennis athletes’ mental toughness scores were higher than those of non-elite tennis athletes (masum, 2014). on the contrary, some findings in the literature suggest that taekwondo athletes’ (i̇hsan et al., 2020) and orienteering athletes’ (cakmak, 2017) mental toughness were not affected by their elite athlete status. in a study conducted on combat athletes, it was revealed that national athletes scored significantly higher in the sub-dimensions of "disinhibition" and "guilt" compared to non-national athletes (soylu, 2021). in parallel with these results, this study found that national athletes’ total emotional eating scores and “disinhibition” averages were higher than non-national athletes, suggesting that national female wrestlers tend to emotionally overeat and have more difficulty suppressing the urge to eat than non-national female athletes. when the relationship between the sub-dimensions of the eeq and the sub-dimensions of the smtq was examined, a low-level positive and significant relationship was found between the “disinhibition” sub-dimension of the eeq and the “control” and “constancy” sub-dimensions of the smtq. a similar slightly positive correlation was measured between the “type of food” the sub-dimension of the eeq and the “control” sub-dimension of the smtq. that means that wrestlers with mentally high self-control and concentration tend not to be able to suppress the urge to eat. it can be concluded that despite the high level of mental self-control, wrestlers may crave certain foods such as sweets and may not control themselves in consuming such foods. there was a moderately significant relationship between the “guilt” sub-dimension of the eeq and the “control” sub-dimension of the smtq. a slightly positive and statistically significant correlation was also observed between the “guilt” subdimension of the eeq and the “constancy” sub-dimension of the smtq. this result shows that as wrestlers’ control and mental toughness levels increase, their emotional guilt about what they eat increases. another correlational finding pointed to a low and positive significant difference between the eeq total scores and the “control” and “constancy” sub-dimensions of the smtq. accordingly, it can be inferred that wrestlers tend to overeat emotionally as their mental self-control and concentration potential increase. since national elite wrestlers train for long duration, they tend to feel much more self-confident in their sports branch and be well-focused on a target, increasing their mental toughness. in turn, long hours of training increase physiological energy needs and calorie intake. if an athlete's nutritional knowledge is insufficient, he may think he is overeating to meet the calorie needs or may prefer simple carbohydrate foods with high-fat content, which can lead to disinhibition (i.e., inability to suppress the urge to eat) and feeling guilty. therefore, a positive correlation was observed between high emotional eating tendency due to being a national athlete and mental toughness sub-dimensions and the emotional eating total scores and sub-dimension scores. güngör (2021) found an inverse relationship between nutrition knowledge level and emotional eating. however, this study did not examine participants' nutrition knowledge. future studies can examine the relationships between mental athletes’ toughness, emotional eating behaviors, and nutritional knowledge. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 114-120 119 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. conclusions as a result, it was determined that as the mental endurance levels of female wrestlers increased, their emotional eating tendencies increased and they felt guilty about the food they ate. at the same time, it has been determined that national female wrestlers have higher emotional eating tendencies compared to non-national women and have difficulty in preventing their desire to eat. since national elite wrestlers train for long duration, they tend to feel much more self-confident in their sports branch and be well-focused on a target, increasing their mental toughness. in turn, long hours of training increase physiological energy needs and calorie intake. if an athlete's nutritional knowledge is insufficient, he may think he is overeating to meet the calorie needs or may prefer simple carbohydrate foods with high-fat content, which can lead to disinhibition (i.e., inability to suppress the urge to eat) and feeling guilty. therefore, a positive correlation was observed between high emotional eating tendency due to being a national athlete and mental toughness sub-dimensions and the emotional eating total scores and subdimension scores. güngör (2021) found an inverse relationship between nutrition knowledge level and emotional eating. however, this study did not examine participants' nutrition knowledge. future studies can examine the relationships between mental athletes’ toughness, emotional eating behaviors, and nutritional knowledge. references altıntaş, a., & koruç, p. b. 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(2016). emotional eating, stress, and coping styles in early adolescence. doctoral thesis. graduate faculty of baylor university, us. available from proquest dissertations & theses global.(1834505601). asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 34 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 2, 34-42, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i2.3866 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group early grade mathematics in ethiopia: alignment of contents in the textbooks with the corresponding syllabuses aynalem tesfaye tsebella1 kassa michael w/yesus2 solomon areaya kassa3 ( corresponding author) 1science and mathematics education department, hawassa college of teacher education, addis ababa university, ethiopia. 1email: aynitesfu@yahoo.com 2,3department of science and mathematics education, addis ababa university, ethiopia. 2email: ftkassa2010@yahoo.com 3email: solomonareaya@yahoo.com abstract an alignment of textbooks with their corresponding syllabuses contributes to effective learning. this study examined the alignment of the ethiopian early grade (grades 1-4) mathematics textbooks (eegmtb) with their corresponding syllabuses. four early grade mathematics teachers at halaba zone of south nations and nationalities peoples reginal state (snnprs) participated in this study. in addition, curriculum experts at the zone and the ministry of education (moe) participated. data were collected through interview and document analysis by using a content analysis protocol developed by reviewing different studies on textbook quality (bhatti, jumani, & bilal, 2015; fuchs, 2013; hashmi, hussain, & shoaib, 2018; sunday, 2014; taye, 2011), and validated. the data were analyzed qualitatively and the percentage was used to summarize the findings. the findings of this study depict that eegmtbs were not completely aligned with the corresponding syllabuses as expected. therefore, the study recommends special focus to be given to the alignment of textbooks with the corresponding syllabuses, especially in considering the learning outcomes when developing the textbooks. the study also suggests further research on the adequacy of the contents of early grade textbooks to equip early children with the necessary knowledge and skills expected at the level. keywords: alignment, early grade, learning, mathematics textbook, syllabus. citation | aynalem tesfaye tsebella; kassa michael w/yesus; solomon areaya kassa (2022). early grade mathematics in ethiopia: alignment of contents in the textbooks with the corresponding syllabuses. asian journal of education and training, 8(2): 34-42. history: received: 10 february 2022 revised: 18 march 2022 accepted: 5 april 2022 published: 21 april 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 35 2. theoretical framework .................................................................................................................................................................. 35 3. research problem ............................................................................................................................................................................ 36 4. objective of the study .................................................................................................................................................................... 36 5. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 37 6. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 38 7. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 40 8. conclusions and recommendations ............................................................................................................................................. 40 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 41 mailto:aynitesfu@yahoo.com mailto:ftkassa2010@yahoo.com mailto:solomonareaya@yahoo.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i2.3866 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5516-991x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9239-2990 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9363-4293 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 34-42 35 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the study gives a significant contribution to the existing literature by providing valuable evidence on the criticality of agreement of curriculum materials to the effective attainment of educational objectives at the early grade level. 1. introduction mathematics learning is crucial to improving students’ success in other subjects (claessens & engel, 2013; duncan et al., 2007; romano, babchishin, pagani, & kohen, 2010). since early grade level (grades 1-4) is the foundation for all levels of education, having foundational and basic knowledge and skills at these level help to make students get ready for the next level of schooling and guarantee their success at that level as early knowledge of mathematics predicts their later success (clements, douglas, & sarama, 2014; geary, 2011). therefore, improving students’ mathematics learning at these levels is basic for the development of individuals and society (khan, 2015; miguel, 2005). to support students’ learning of mathematics, educational inputs are crucial (moe, 2015; olasunkanmi & mabel, 2012), and their quality determines the effectiveness of learning. the mathematics curriculum materials are of the important inputs in mathematics education, and carefully designed mathematics curriculum materials play a pivotal role in determining the quality of mathematics learning. the objectives of learning early grade mathematics are to enable students; (i) develop an understanding of number concepts and competence in solving problems by using mental and written strategies, (ii) to identify and quantify different features of objects, (iii) to learn about properties and representation of two and three-dimensional objects and their application in everyday life, and (v) develop an understanding of the use of pictures and graphs to communicate information (moe, 2009c). to achieve these goals, the role of educational inputs, and curriculum materials, is higher. 2. theoretical framework 2.1. alignment of curriculum materials multiple studies were conducted on the alignment of the curriculum however, the focus of the studies was varied based on the type of the curriculum and its components. to list some; alignment of textbooks with curriculum standards (fan, 2010; hashmi et al., 2018; polikoff, 2015), alignment of objectives, instructional activities and assessments (anderson, 2002; martone & sireci, 2009), curriculum standards and assessments (webb, 2007), intended and implemented curriculum (phaeton & stears, 2016). the meaning of curriculum alignment is also dependent on the focus of alignment. for instance; alignment of curriculum is defined as “the degree to which expectations and assessments are in agreement and serve in conjunction with one another to guide the system toward students’ learning what they are expected to know and do” webb (2007), “agreement on both topic and cognitive demand” (polikoff, 2015), “the degree of agreement between a state’s content standards for a specific subject area and the assessment(s) used to measure students’ achievement of these standards” (bhola, impara, & buckendahl, 2003), constructive coherence between teaching-learning and assessment (biggs & tang, 2011). in this study, alignment refers to the degree to which early grade mathematics textbooks (egmt) and their corresponding syllabi are in agreement to attain the specified learning objectives at the level. accordingly, the alignment of egmt with their corresponding syllabi was evaluated based on (i) units and main topics, and (ii) learning outcomes. the alignment of curriculum is the focus for quality education in many countries. it plays a significant role in realizing learning objectives (wijngaards-de meij & merx, 2018). a well-aligned curriculum is essential to provide opportunities for students’ learning, understand the difference in the effects of schooling on students’ achievement, create accountability, and recognize the effects of instruction on learning (anderson, 2002). hence, alignment of curriculum is pivotal for the quality of teaching (biggs & tang, 2011) because the attainment of educational objectives is not only determined by students’ learning but also teachers’ teaching. curriculum alignment includes the alignment of curriculum materials, hence a high degree of agreement of these materials and their components is fundamental. poor alignment of the curriculum materials and their components leads to disagreement, confusion, and poor learning outcomes for students (stabback, 2016). this shows its importance for improving learning outcomes, and hence assure the quality of education. curriculum alignment can be used to see the specified requirements in pedagogical materials for students, and to see the alignment of teaching and assessment (martone & sireci, 2009). therefore, the primary condition to have the encouraging outcome in a students’ learning is the existence of a well-aligned curriculum. 2.2. advantage of studying curriculum alignment presently researchers have given a special focus to the alignment of curriculum because of its criticality for quality education. therefore, studying curriculum alignment has many significances for the educational system of a given country. according to martone and sireci (2009), alignment studies enable researchers to work on the educational system in order to compare the contents and then to make decisions about their occurrence. this provides guidelines for reform and improvement (leung, leung, & zuo, 2014). therefore, alignment study in curriculum helps curriculum developers and educators by providing valuable information about the alignment of the existing curriculum and areas of inconsistencies in the curriculum that need improvement. it in turn contributes to the improvement of students’ learning. hence, evaluating the alignment of egmtb with their corresponding syllabi may contribute to predicting the attainment of learning objectives and giving the required attention to the specified components. this is also helpful for improving students' learning of mathematics at the level. 2.3. the importance of syllabus and textbook in ethiopia, curriculum materials are expected to align with the education and training policy launched in 1994 (moe, 2009a). the core aim of ethiopian education is to strengthen the individual's and society's problem-solving capacity and culture at all levels of education (fdre, 1994). therefore, curriculum materials in ethiopia have to promote this aim at any level of the educational system. and the alignment of the curriculum materials is central to determine the attainment of educational objectives (ornstein, 1994; wijngaards-de meij & merx, 2018). syllabus and student textbook are of these curriculum materials that support the teaching and learning of a given subject. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 34-42 36 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a syllabus is a curriculum material that describes contents to be learned in a given subject at different grade levels. the main purpose of a syllabus is to provide a coherent and consistent learning program (stabback, 2016). a syllabus contains information about a single grade level. it has features; a general introduction of the teaching and learning of a given subject, general learning objectives, units and unit outcomes, time allotment for each unit and sub-units, contents and competencies for each content, teaching and learning approaches, activities, and resources, and assessment techniques. hence, a syllabus contains more information that are useful for the teaching and learning process. it is also used as a guide for developing students’ textbooks, and supervising the instructional process. therefore, a syllabus is useful curriculum material for teachers, supervisors, and curriculum experts. foremost among the useful curriculum materials that play a vital role in preparing students for learning the given subject and examination is students’ textbook (bhatti, khurshid, & ahmad, 2017). textbooks are the most common resources in the classroom which are used by both the teachers and students, and were considered as the major sources of instructional process mahmood (2010). saeed and rashid (2014) added that for most of the teachers in major countries textbook is an authentic material to be presented in the classroom. in a global education and monitoring report 2016 also it was mentioned that textbooks are essential materials to improving learning outcomes in low-income countries which have a high proportion of unqualified teachers, large class sizes, and a shortage of instructional time. fredriksen and brar (2015) support this claim and added that in sub-saharan africa many teachers have little training, classes are large, and school years are short. the challenges of current ethiopian education stated in ethiopian education development roadmap (2018-30) (moe, 2018a) also consistent with the aforementioned issues. this shows the importance of quality textbooks for students’ effective learning and encouraging outcomes in low-income countries. therefore, the alignment of a textbook with curriculum should be considered as a basic step in developing a quality textbook (bhatti et al., 2017; fan, 2010), since it determines the alignment of instruction and assessment (bhatti et al., 2017). 2.4. characteristics of quality textbooks one of the most important inputs that contribute to effective mathematics learning is student’s textbook. a textbook is a useful material that contributes to the advancement of a curriculum (okeeffe, 2013). it is an important tool in the teaching and learning process hence, it plays a vital role in improving students’ learning and attaining the learning objectives (hadar, 2017; mithans & grmek, 2020). it also contributes to addressing the quality challenges in educational system (fredriksen & brar, 2015). poor quality of textbooks was mentioned in different studies as the main influencing factors of student learning and hence their achievement in the given subject (oakes & saunders, 2002). a quality textbook is students’ most important source of knowledge (mithans & grmek, 2020) and it encourages students to learn independently. developing a quality textbook enables to improve students’ learning by allowing them to get the required contents that were specified in the standard for students to learn in a given subject. according to fuchs (2013) a quality textbook is expected to cover all contents, objectives, and outcomes of the main curriculum of the given subject. this shows the importance of agreement of contents and objectives in a student’s textbook and the main curriculum. poor alignment of a textbook with the corresponding curriculum contributes to a weak standard implementation (polikoff, 2015; spillane, 2005), and hence it badly affects the whole educational system (saeed & rashid, 2014). in addition to that, fan (2010) has suggested six principles for textbook development based on the studies (fan & zhu, 2000; fan & zhu, 2007; lee & fan, 2002; ng, 2002). these are; curriculum principle, discipline principle, pedagogy principle, technology principle, context principle, and presentation principle. the curriculum principle suggests a textbook to be aligned with its corresponding syllabus so as to realize the intended curriculum. if a given textbook is well aligned with the corresponding curriculum, then it contributes to the improvement of students’ learning (bhatti et al., 2017). moreover, a well-aligned textbook supports an effective teaching-learning process and valid assessment (bhatti et al., 2015), hence determine the attainment of learning objectives specified in the curriculum. this shows that the alignment of the textbook with the curriculum is one of the main indicators for a quality textbook. many literatures showed the importance of stating learning outcomes in students’ textbook for students, teachers, and even parents (moe, 2018a; stiggins, arter, chappuis, & chappuis, 2004). in addition, it is mentioned in the ethiopian ministry of education (moe) guideline for preparing and evaluating teaching-learning materials that listing learning targets/outcomes at the beginning of the given unit in a student's textbook is one of the main activities in developing a quality textbook (taye, 2011). 3. research problem the quality of instructional materials is one of the main influencing factors of students learning (moe, 2015; sunday & adebowale, 2013). active learning and competency-based learning were the main focus of the ethiopian education system (moe, 2009a). for this, carefully prepared textbook is important. students’ textbooks in ethiopia have been criticized by educators, teachers (gove, dombrowski, king, pressley, & weatherholt, 2018) and other communities who were using them (moe, 2016; tilaye, emanuel, & ermias, 2018). one of the criteria for a quality textbook is its alignment with the corresponding curriculum. however, most of the local studies in ethiopia focused on the adequate distribution of textbooks than their quality, and hence it is difficult to get studies that focused on the quality of mathematics textbooks, especially at the early grade levels. early grade level is the basis of all levels and giving the necessary attention for this level can have more advantage in securing the quality of students learning in the next levels (gove et al., 2018). therefore, evaluating the quality of the textbooks at this level helps to improve students’ learning. hence, this study was aimed to see the quality of egmtb based on its alignment with the corresponding syllabuses. 4. objective of the study realizing the attainment of educational objectives is the main target of any country in the education system. and alignment of curriculum materials in the given subject contributes to the realization of the specified objectives in the given subject. thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the alignment of early grade textbooks with the asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 34-42 37 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group corresponding curriculum by focusing on the existence of units and main topics, and unit outcomes of the syllabus in the textbooks. based on this objective the following questions were formulated: i. to what extent are the units and main topics of the early grade mathematics syllabuses (egms) considered in their corresponding textbooks? ii. how are the unit outcomes in egmtb aligned with the unit outcomes in the corresponding syllabuses? iii. is there any rational for the textbooks to be developed the way they are? 5. method the aim of this study is to evaluate the alignment of ethiopian egmtb with their corresponding syllabuses. this study was conducted at a particular site named halaba zone of south nations and nationalities peoples reginal state (snnprs). four early grade mathematics teachers at halaba zone of south nations and nationalities peoples reginal state (snnprs) participated in this study. zone and a curriculum expert at moe, who were selected purposely, participated in this study. the teachers were selected purposely based on their field of specialization, experience in teaching mathematics for early grade children, and their efficiency in teaching. all the selected teachers have a diploma in mathematics teaching, above five years of experience in teaching mathematics at the level, and they were model teachers at the zone. table 1. alignment of units between early grade textbooks and the corresponding syllabus. grade unit topic in syllabus in textbook 1 1 the natural numbers up to 9 yes 2 addition and subtraction up to 9 yes 3 the whole numbers from 0 to 20 yes 4 addition and subtraction up to 20 yes 5 measurement using non-formal units yes 6 fractions yes 7 multiplication and division up to 20 yes 8 lines and simple shapes yes 9 the whole numbers up to 100 yes 10 ethiopian currency yes 11 time yes 12 data handling and pattern yes 2 1 addition and subtraction up to 100 yes 2 multiplication and division up to 100. yes 3 measurement yes 4 fractions yes 5 whole numbers up to 1000. yes 6 points, lines and shapes yes 7 money yes 8 time yes 9 data handling and pattern yes 3 1 the whole numbers up to 10,000 and their order yes 2 measurement yes 3 fractions yes 4 addition and subtraction of whole numbers up to 10,000 yes 5 multiplication and division up to 10,000 yes 6 lines and shapes yes 7 money yes 8 time yes 9 data handling yes 4 1 the whole numbers up to 1,000,000 yes 2 the four operations on whole numbers up to 1,000,000 yes 3 fractions and decimals yes 4 measurement yes 5 shapes and solids yes 6 time yes 7 data handling yes a qualitative approach has been used for this study. data were collected through interview and document analysis by using content analysis protocol. the contents analysis protocol was developed by reviewing different studies on textbook quality (fuchs, 2013), national guideline prepared by the moe (taye, 2011), mathematics textbook analysis (sunday, 2014) and alignment of textbook with the corresponding curriculum (bhatti et al., 2015; hashmi et al., 2018). the protocol was validated by two curriculum and assessment experts for their face and content validity. the tools were piloted as exemplars and orientation about the protocol was given for the textbook evaluators (teachers). they practiced evaluating with the protocol that was used as a means for inter-evaluator reliability, and ensured asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 34-42 38 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group their preparedness for the valuation. after ensuring their preparedness, the teachers have evaluated the textbooks based on the given protocol. the collected data were analyzed qualitatively based on the core themes (i) the existence of units and main topics, and (ii) the existence of unit outcomes stated in the syllabus, and (iii) mapping of the alignment. in addition, the data analysis was summarized by means of percentages for some of the themes. 6. findings 6.1. units and main topics in the early grade textbooks the aim of developing ethiopian early grade mathematics syllabi is to ensure that students at the level has got the required knowledge, skills and attitude by learning the specified topics in the given strands, and hence the attainment of educational objectives at the level. for this, the strands (number, measurement, geometry, and data handling and pattern) were classified into 12 units for grade 1, 9 units for grade 2, 9 units for grade 3, and 7 units for grade 4 in the syllabi. in all grade levels (grades 14), units and main topics under each unit in the textbooks are similar to the corresponding syllabus table 1. 6.2. unit outcomes in the textbooks for all units in grade 1 mathematics syllabus learning outcomes are stated, but none of them are stated in the corresponding textbook. that is; the grade 1 mathematics textbook has no stated unit outcomes at the beginning of each unit table 2, even if it was stated in the ministry of education guideline. table 2. alignment of learning outcomes between grade 1 textbook and the syllabus. unit unit outcomes in syllabus in textbook 1 (i) read and write natural numbers up to 9, (ii) order natural numbers up to 9, (iii) use the symbols "<", ">" and "=" to compare natural numbers up to 9. no 2 (i) add natural numbers up to 9, (ii) subtract natural numbers up to 9, (iii) add three numbers whose sum is not more than 9. no 3 (i) show understand of zero and write the symbol for zero “0”, (ii) read, write and order whole numbers up to 20, (iii) apply place value to numbers up to 20. no 4 (i) add up to 20, (ii) subtract up to 20, (iii) solve problems of addition and subtraction on whole numbers up to 20. no 5 (i) explain the need for measuring in everyday life, (ii) use appropriate language to express length, capacity and weigh, (iii) measure and compare length, capacity and weight using non-standard units. no 6 (i) divide a concrete object into two equal parts and show understanding of the term a “half”, (ii) divide objects into four equal parts and show understanding of the terms quarter and three quarters. no 7 (i) multiply whole numbers up to 10 by 2 and identify the symbol “x” for multiplication, (ii) divide whole numbers up to 20 by 2 and identify the symbols for “÷” division no 8 (i) identify and draw straight and curved lines, (ii) identify and draw simple geometric shapes rectangles, circles, triangles no 9 (i) count in 10s up to100, (ii) add and subtract multiples of 10 which are less than 100, (iii) read and write whole numbers up to 100, (iv) compare whole numbers up to 100 using the symbols "", "<" and "=", (v) identify place value in tens and units. no 10 (i) recognize ethiopian coins and notes, (ii) tell the relationship between 10 cents and 1birr, (iii) practice using ethiopian currency for buying and selling no 11 (i) describe events of their lives according to the time of daymorning, afternoon and evening, (ii) name the days of the week, (iii) tell time in hours from an analogue clock no 12 (i) record data using simple pictures like the. daily weather, (ii) read data from simple picture graphs, (iii) continue and produce simple patterns of shapes, colors and numbers no table 3. alignment of learning outcomes between grade 2 textbook and the syllabus. unit unit outcomes in syllabus in textbook 1 (i) count, read, write, compare and order whole numbers up to 100, (ii) add whole numbers whose sums are less than 100 without and with carrying, (iii) subtract 1and 2-digit number from 2-digit numbers without and with borrowing, (iv) identify the relationship between addition and subtraction of numbers, (v) solve word problems using addition and subtraction. no 2 (i) multiply and divide whole numbers up to 100 by 2 and 10 without remainder, (ii) multiply by 0 and 1 and divide by 1 whole number up to 100, (iii) multiply and divide whole numbers up to 100 by 1-digit numbers and 10, (iv) solve word problems using multiplication and division by 1-digit numbers and 10 no 3 (i) use the ones centimeter and meter in length, (ii) add and subtract the same unit if length, (iii) use the unit liter in capacity, (iv) add and subtract liters, (iv) use the unit kilogram in weight, (vi) add and subtract kilograms. no 4 (i) identify halves and quarters, (ii) divide objects into thirds, (iii) show understanding of the relation between whole and halves, quarters and thirds, (iv) write symbolic form of fractions for halves, quarters and thirds. no 5 (i) determine multiples of 100 which are less than 1000, (ii) read, write the whole numbers from 101 to 1000, (iii) describe the place value of numbers up to 1000, (iv) compare and order whole numbers up to 1000, using the symbols "<",">" and."=". no 6 (i) draw lines using a ruler, (ii) draw squares, rectangles, triangles and circles, (iii) identify shapes in the environment. no 7 (i) add and subtract money using ethiopian currency, (ii) do role play of shopping using ethiopian currency no 8 (i) tell the time in hours, half hours and quarter hours using an analogue and a digital clock, (ii) describe the relation between hours and minutes. no 9 (i) collect simple data, (ii) tabulate this data, (iii) complete and compile simple patterns of shapes and numbers. no asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 34-42 39 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the grade 2 mathematics syllabus, outcomes for all units are stated but in the corresponding textbook, it is difficult to get these outcomes. that is; the grade 2 mathematics textbooks have no stated unit outcomes at the beginning of each unit table 3. at the beginning of each unit in grade 3 textbooks learning outcomes of the corresponding syllabus are stated. all the outcomes of units 1, 2, 3, 4,5, 7, and 8 are the same as the corresponding unit outcomes in the syllabus but in units 6 and 9, some mismatches were observed. that is; one unit outcome, the second outcome in the syllabus of unit 6 is missed in the textbook, and the first unit outcome of unit 9 was not similar to the corresponding unit outcome in the syllabus table 4. table 4. alignment of learning outcomes between grade 3 textbook and the syllabus. unit unit outcomes in syllabus in textbook 1 (i) read, write, compare and order whole numbers up to 1000, (ii) perform the four fundamental operations on whole numbers up to 100, (iii) read and write multiples of 100 and of 1000 up to 10,000, (iv) read and write whole numbers up to 10,000, (iv) compare and order whole numbers up to 10,000. yes 2 (i) use the units mm, cm and m to measure length, (ii) use the units ml and l to measure capacity, (iii) use the units g and kg to measure weight (mass), (iv) convert units of length, capacity and weight. yes 3 (i) use previous knowledge of thirds, (ii) identify unit fraction from ½ to 1/10, (iii) divide numbers into halves and quarters, (iv) compare simple fractions. yes 4 (i) add whole numbers up to 10,000, (ii) subtract whole numbers up to 10,000, (iii) solve word problems using addition and subtraction. yes 5 (i) multiply multiples of 100 by 1-digit, (ii) multiply multiples of 1000 by 1-digit numbers, (iii) multiply whole numbers by 1-digit number product less than 10,000, (iv) divide multiples of 10 and 100 up to 10,000 by 1-digit number and 10 with no remainder, (v) divide whole numbers by 1-digit up to 10,000 with and without remainder, (vi) solve word problems using relation between multiplication and division. yes 6 (i) identify and sketch intersecting, parallel and perpendicular lines, (ii) construct parallel and perpendicular lines, (iii) identify and draw rectangles, squares, parallelograms and trapeziums, (iv) construct circles. yes 7 (i) convert ethiopian coins and notes, (ii) solve word problems concerning money yes 8 (i) describe the relationship between hour and minutes, (ii) read an analogue and a digital clock in hours, minutes, (iii) relate days, weeks, months and years, (iv) read a simple calendar. yes 9 • construct simple picture graphs from data collected not consistent • read data from simple picture graphs yes in grades 4 textbook unit outcomes of the corresponding syllabus are written at the beginning of each unit. all the outcomes of units 1, 2, and 6 are the same as the corresponding unit outcomes in the syllabus but outcomes in the other units (units 3, 4, 5, and 7) of the textbooks showed some gaps. in unit 3 the fourth outcome and all outcomes of unit 4 are not consistent with the outcome in the corresponding syllabus, the first two outcomes of unit 5 and the first outcome of unit 7 are not similar to the corresponding unit outcomes in the syllabus table 5. table 5. alignment of learning outcomes between grade 4 textbook and the syllabus. unit unit outcomes in syllabus in textbook 1 (i) read, write, compare and order whole numbers up to 10,000, (ii) read and write multiples of 10,000 and 100,000 up to 1,000,000, (iii) read and write whole numbers up to 1,000,000, (iv) identify place value of 6-digit numbers, (v) compare and order whole numbers up to 1,000,000, (vi) approximate values of numbers by round off numbers to the nearest 10s, 100s, 1000, 10,000s and 100,000s. yes 2 (i) add whole numbers up to 1,000,000, (ii) subtract whole numbers up to 1,000,000. yes 3 (i) identify fractions as parts of a whole, (ii) compare and order fractions with the same denominator, (iii) add and subtract fractions with the same denominator yes (iv) identify and calculate equivalent fractions not consistent (v) define and use tenths, hundredths and decimals no (vi) compare and order decimals with 2 decimal places, (vii) add and subtract decimals with 2 decimal place. yes 4 (i) calculate using different units of length, (ii) calculate using different units of weight, (iii) calculate using different units of capacity not consistent 5 (i) recognize and draw right angles, (ii) describe points, straight lines and planes not consistent (iii) calculate the perimeter and area of rectangles and squares, (iv) recognize and make models of simple solids. yes 6 (i) describe the relationship between hours, minutes and seconds, (ii) convert units of time, (iii) compare units of time. yes 7 (i) construct bar graphs from data collected not consistent (ii) interpret data from bar graphs, (iii) find average of up to 4 whole numbers yes asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 34-42 40 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group generally, 41.1% of the unit outcomes in egm syllabuses were present in the corresponding textbooks but 52.7% were not stated and 6.2% of the unit outcomes in the textbook were not consistent with the unit outcomes in the corresponding syllabus. 7. discussion an alignment of curricular materials is essential for the attainment of educational objectives (ornstein, 1994). a textbook is one of the important curricular material and the alignment of textbooks with the corresponding curriculum helps to improve students learning in a given subject (hadar, 2017). moreover, learning at an early grade level needs effective use of materials like textbooks as all students at this level may not be capable to use other reference materials, and even if, they may not sufficiently access additional materials. the importance of quality textbook at this level is, hence unquestionable. the alignment of the textbooks with the corresponding curriculum is one of the criteria for quality textbook. in egmtb, all the units and main topics of the syllabus are presented and outlined as listed in the syllabuses. this shows units and main contents in the textbooks are aligned with the units and main topics stated in the syllabus even if there is a gap in the alignment of the structure of contents among curricular materials (mlc document, syllabus, and flowchart document) (aynalem & kassa, 2021). stating the learning outcomes of the topic in a given textbook, based on the specified learning objectives in the curriculum benefits teachers, students, and parents, and hence it arouses students’ motivation and achievement (moe, 2018a; stiggins et al., 2004). the national guideline and other literature also suggest the learning targets be presented in students' textbooks (aggarwal, 2009; hashmi et al., 2018; taye, 2011). the interview analysis results and evaluators’ general comment also supports this condition. in the evaluators' report, the importance of stating learning outcomes at the beginning of each unit in the textbooks was mentioned. stating learning objectives in the early grade textbooks is very important for the teachers. if the contents in the textbooks are not adequate and appropriate in relation to the objectives of learning mathematics, stating learning objectives in the textbook can give an opportunity for the teachers to provide adequate and appropriate examples and exercises to students and equip them with the specified competencies. this shows the importance of stating learning outcomes in the student textbooks in order to enable the teacher to implement her/his lesson effectively. this can contribute to the attainment of the learning objectives. according to hafees (2017) the quality learning outcome is the result of collaboration among different stakeholders in students learning. since early grade level is basic parents and other elders’ participation in guiding and assisting the children at this level is critical to ensure success. for this, they have to be aware of what is expected from the students and this can help them to assist the children accordingly. moreover, stating learning outcomes in students’ textbooks helps teachers to plan their lesson accordingly because they may not get adequate curricular materials like [reference materials and] teachers guide in their schools (tilaye et al., 2018). it was also stated in the evaluators report that due to the scarcity of mathematics teachers’ guide and other main curriculum materials the early grade mathematics teachers are using the students’ textbook as a sole source to plan their lessons. however, grades 1 and 2 textbooks have no stated learning outcomes tables 2 and 3. this indicates that teachers are forced to plan their lessons without any guide as to what was intended to be achieved, hence leaving quality delivery to the jurisdiction of teachers. why were the learning outcomes missed at grades 1 and 2 textbooks was further examined, and the findings from the interview analysis indicated that this might have happened due to less attention given by the textbook developers to the importance of stating learning outcomes in the textbooks. this absence of outcomes stated may influence teacher’s planning for the lesson and also students learning at the level because stating learning outcomes in students’ textbooks could help not only teachers but also students to assess their learning and conduct self-assessment in relation to the objectives. most of the unit outcomes in grade 3 and grade 4 textbooks are well stated, but in some units, some outcomes seem to be interpreted differently, while some others are not presented consistently with the unit outcomes in the syllabus. some are not also elaborated well (tables 4 and 5). hence, it is possible to say that there is a gap in meeting complete alignment of unit outcomes of egmtb and the corresponding syllabus. this can affect the attainment of the goals set in the curriculum and can also affect children's learning at the level. 8. conclusions and recommendations from the above findings and discussion, it can be seen that the egmtb in halaba zone are aligned with the corresponding syllabus in relation to the units and main topics but gaps were observed in relation to the alignment of learning outcomes in the textbooks and the corresponding syllabuses. this led to the conclusion that egmtbs were not completely and in all forms aligned with their corresponding syllabus as expected. this implies the need to give a special focus on the alignment of a textbook with the corresponding curriculum, especially learning outcomes when developing the textbooks. the gaps observed in the alignment of learning outcomes of egmtb and their corresponding syllabus may negatively contribute to the quality of organization and presentation of detailed contents in the textbooks. they may also cause missing of some of the outcomes during instruction, if teachers could not access the unit outcomes up-front on the textbooks. and this can be determined by evaluating the adequacy and appropriateness of contents in a given textbook. this shows the need for evaluating the extent to which contents in the egmtb are adequate for the attainment of the specified learning objectives and hence to equip early grade children with the necessary knowledge and skills expected at the level. therefore, this study suggests additional research on the adequacy of content presentation in early grade mathematics textbooks to equip early grade children with the necessary knowledge and skills, and hence to attain the specified learning objectives at the level. the attainment of educational objectives is determined by effective implementation of the curriculum. if the teachers are not supported by well-aligned curriculum materials, they will not be able to perform their teaching effectively (polikoff, 2012). thus, the teachers have to get a consistent message from curriculum components (syllabus & textbook) so as to implement the curriculum effectively. therefore, this study recommends special attention to be given to the alignment of egmts with their corresponding curriculum in all forms including learning outcomes. textbooks are basically textbook developers’ explanation and reflection of the intended curriculum in the textbook development process (fan, 2010). according to fan, the textbook developers must have a good knowledge asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 34-42 41 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of the curriculum, and an experience of teamwork and getting feedback from curriculum developers. therefore, this study suggests subject specialist and language experts’ participation in textbook development and more care to be taken when selecting textbook developers. in addition, the study suggests intensive training to be given for the textbook developers about the curriculum and criteria of developing quality textbooks, specifically alignment related issues. references aggarwal, j. 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(2007). issues related to judging the alignment of curriculum standards and assessments. applied measurement in education, 20(1), 7-25.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/08957340709336728. wijngaards-de meij, l., & merx, s. (2018). improving curriculum alignment and achieving learning goals by making the curriculum visible. international journal for academic development, 23(3), 219-231. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 141 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 3, 141-145, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i3.5859 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the development of a science, technology and society phenomenon-based learning model for promoting grade 12 students’ problem-solving in geohazard prom pookduang1 khajornsak buaraphan2 ( corresponding author) 1prasatwittayakarn school, prasat district, surin province 32140, thailand. email: prom.pookduang@gmail.com 2institute for innovative learning, mahidol university 999 salaya, phuttamonthon, nakhon pathom 73170, thailand. email: khajornsak.bua@mahidol.ac.th abstract this research aimed to: a) synthesize the science, technology, and society phenomenon-based learning model (sts-phbl) for teaching geoharzard to students; and b) compare students’ problem-solving skills prior to and after the sts-phbl lessons on the geoharzard topic. the sample consisted of 39 grade 12 students enrolled in the first semester of the 2021 academic year at one secondary school in surin province, thailand. the data collection methods included the panel of experts’ evaluation of sts-phbl lesson plans and the problem-solving skills test. the index of item-objective-congruence (ioc) of sts-phbl lesson plans on geoharzard was calculated. also, the students’ problem-solving skills prior to and after the sts-phbl lessons in the geoharzard topic were analyzed by using the paired-samples t-test. the researchers synthesized a new sts-phbl model from the intensive literature review, consisting of seven teaching steps: a) stimulate the phenomenon; b) identify problems in the phenomenon; c) explore the answer to the targeted problem; d) construct new knowledge; e) reflect on learning; f) exchange and share learning; and g) apply knowledge. the sts-phbl lesson plans on geoharzard met the ioc requirements. after learning sts-phbl lessons, the students significantly improved their problemsolving skills at the 0.05 statistically significant level. keywords: geohazard, phenomenon-based learning, problem solving skills, science, technology and society. citation | pookduang, p., & buaraphan, k. (2024). the development of a science, technology and society phenomenon-based learning model for promoting grade 12 students’ problem-solving in geohazard. asian journal of education and training, 10(3), 141–145. 10.20448/edu.v10i3.5859 history: received: 28 february 2024 revised: 14 may 2024 accepted: 3 june 2024 published: 31 july 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the mahidol university central institutional review board (mu-cirb), thailand has granted approval for this study on 27 february 2020 (ref. no. mu-cirb 2014/158.2110). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, data curation, software, visualization, writing original draft, p.p.; conceptualization, methodology, data check, supervision, software, validation, reviewing and editing, k.b. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 142 2. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................. 143 3. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 143 4. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 145 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 145 mailto:prom.pookduang@gmail.com mailto:khajornsak.bua@mahidol.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i3.5859 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5679-7926 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2836-7552 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 141-145 142 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper presents the science, technology, and society phenomenon-based learning model (sts-phbl), an innovative teaching model for geoharzard in grade 12. the sts-phbl teaching steps are as follows: a) stimulate phenomena; b) identify problems; c) explore; d) construct new knowledge; e) reflect; f) exchange and share; and g) apply. 1. introduction in thailand, the perception of teachers as a pillar of educational reform is common. to become a professional teacher, one must possess and develop several abilities, including teaching and learning management. professional teachers should be well-equipped to put their pedagogy into practice by translating lesson plans into classroom actions. good curriculum and pedagogy are expected to subsequently lead to good learning results (chitchayawanich, 2019). in the 21st century, learners are expected to attain higher-quality attributes than in the past. teaching in the 21st century should foster learners' self-knowledge and abilities to extract and analyze derived information for use in their daily lives, such as solving related problems in the real world (vejyalak, 2018). problem-solving skills are one of the other essential skills for learners in the 21st century. regarding this, students with problem-solving skills are expected to be able to apply their thinking process to solving real-life problems. learners must develop problem-solving skills as an essential skill for their future careers and personal applications. one addition is that students should be promoted to work collaboratively with their classmates during their problem-solving tasks. through collaborative problem solving, students can develop teamwork skills and exchange knowledge and experiences, among other things (nuangchalerm, 2015). in any problem-solving task, a problem is regarded as the crucial part because it can motivate students to become suspicious and want to seek more new knowledge to solve such a targeted problem (tisana, 2018). teachers should incorporate situations or phenomena familiar to learners into the development of their problem-solving skills. in addition, at the end of the learning process, students should have the opportunity to assess their learning through self-assessment (ngamchom, 2016). people widely regard science, technology, and society (sts) as one pedagogical approach to managing science teaching and learning. sts is based on constructivism that genuinely emphasizes learner-centeredness. many countries, including thailand, align sts with the direction of the education reform movement. the interactions among science, technology, and society can encourage students to realize the complexity of problems in the 21st century world, which demands higher problem-solving abilities. additionally, sts provides students with an increased opportunity to view science from a variety of perspectives, including technological and societal ones. students who learn with the sts approach will experience science through their interest in technological and societal perspectives. they will have more opportunities to play their roles as savvy citizens or country citizens (pitiporntapin, 2015). phenomenon-based learning (phbl) is another pedagogical approach emphasizing student-centeredness. phbl is a multidisciplinary, constructivist form of pedagogy where students have the chance to explore several real-world phenomena by using various discovery methods (bureau of academic affairs and education, 2019). phbl promotes student active learning by nature. phbl encourages students to explore real-world phenomena, aiming to enhance their comprehension. students express their interest in the targeted phenomenon and actively seek out additional information and understanding. students take an active role in learning as creators of learning, using a variety of methods, resources, and tools in real-world situations (butkatunyoo, 2018). according to silander (2015) there are five components of phbl, that is, a) holisticity is a multidisciplinary learning that focuses on exploring through systematic experience with an understanding of the current situation; b) authenticity is the use of methods, tools, or materials needed in real-world situations to solve interest issues; c) contextuality is meaningful learning in various settings and contexts; d) problem-based inquiry is a learning process that engages students to set questions and explore by themselves until finishing their own learning process; and e) learning process is a process aimed to develop hypotheses and theories and makes a prediction about a particular phenomenon. in phbl, students will be able to plan their learning process and use various tools to create their own learning. furthermore, butkatunyoo (2018) proposed three components of phbl, collectively referred to as pee. p (plan): teachers plan teaching and learning, beginning with the selection of content and the identification of learning standards and indicators that align with the targeted curriculum. (execution): teachers execute the plan by encouraging students to explore the phenomenon and gain a deeper understanding of it, using a range of information from relevant literature and data collection methods. e (evaluation): teachers assess students during learning, reflecting individual development through a variety of assessment methods such as self-assessment, teacher-assessment, and parent-assessment, with a focus on students' construction of knowledge. one essential knowledge for teachers according to the conceptual framework of teacher professional development is technological knowledge; it means teachers’ ability to apply technological tools and media in teaching the targeted topic. to promote effective teaching in science, science teachers must develop their knowledge and ability to integrate technology in their teaching and learning management appropriately in order to bring students to meet the goals of science education, emphasizing students to attain necessary scientific knowledge and apply scientific knowledge to 21st century phenomena (thamprateep, 2016). this study, based on this rationale, aimed to develop the science, technology, and society phenomenon-based learning model (sts-phbl) for teaching geoharzard to grade 12 students and investigate its effect on grade 12 students' problem-solving skills. the research objectives of this study were: a) to synthesize the sts-phbl model and create its associate lesson plans for teaching geohazard to grade 12 students; and b) to compare students’ problem-solving skills prior to and after the sts-phbl lessons on the geohazard topic. these objectives guided the formulation of the research questions. rq1: what are the desirable teaching steps of the science, technology, and society phenomenon-based learning model (sts-phbl)? rq2: does the sts-phbl affect grade 12 students’ problem-solving skills on the geoharzard topic? asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 141-145 143 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. research methodology this study employed two loops of research and development (r&d). in r1d1, the researchers employed documentary research (scott & marshall, 2015) and content analysis to analyze and synthesize the science, technology, and society phenomenon-based learning model (sts-phbl). then, the researchers used findings from r1 to develop the sts-phbl model and associated six lesson plans for teaching geoharzard to grade 12 students. the lesson plans took a total of 12 hours to teach. the geohazard topic from the earth, astronomy, and space subject served as the content for the sts-phbl test, adhering to the subject matter and learning standards of the basic education core curriculum b.e. 2551 (2017) in thailand. 2.1. data collection and analysis a panel of five experts with expertise in science and technology education received the sts-phbl model and associated lesson plans for content validation. the experts were asked to give one of these scores (i.e., +1, 0, and -1) for each item statement dealing with the content validity of the sts-phbl model and lesson plans. regarding this, score 1 means the model or lesson plan corresponds with the targeted objective, while 0 and -1 mean unsure and do not correspond, respectively. after obtaining responses from experts, the researchers calculated the sts-phbl model's index of item-objective-congruence (ioc) and lesson plans. in r2d2, the researchers aimed to examine the effects of the sts-phbl model on grade 12 students’ problem-solving skills. the findings from r2 were then used to revise the sts-phbl model and lesson plans to be more complete. 2.2. population and sample r2 consisted of 205 grade 12 students from six science classrooms enrolled in the first semester of the 2021 academic year at one secondary school in surin province, thailand. the sample of r2 was 39 grade 12 students, who came from cluster random sampling by using the classroom as a unit of sampling. these students were asked to take a pre-test and post-test of their problem-solving skills in the geohazard topic, which consisted of 20 items. the students’ problem-solving skills scores from the pre-test and post-test were compared and analyzed by a paired samples t-test. 3. results and discussion the researchers analyzed six documents (jitauafua, 2014; luergam, 2009; sengdala, 2013; songkathee, 2017; sutham, 2015; tathin, 2015) from the literature related to sts by using content analysis, and the result is shown in table 1. table 1. summary of sts-phbl teaching steps. luergam (2009) sengdala (2013) jitauafua (2014) tathin (2015) sutham (2015) songkathee (2017) summary of sts-phbl identify social issue arousing interest bring social problems in classroom be curious identify social issue stimulate with the phenomenon search find possible solution find possible solution plan find possible solution identify problems in the phenomenon solve problem need to knowledge search search for solution need more knowledge explore answer of the targeted problem create knowledge decision making make decision make decision construct new knowledge reflect reflect learning exchange experience create social process present and explain findings exchange experience exchange experience create social process exchange and share learning apply apply apply apply apply knowledge the analysis yielded seven common teaching steps of the sts-phbl model for teaching the geohazard topic to grade 12 students: the steps include: a) stimulating the phenomenon; b) identifying problems in the phenomenon; c) exploring the answer to the targeted problem; d) constructing new knowledge; e) reflecting on learning; f) exchanging and sharing learning; and g) applying the knowledge gained. the sts-phbl model describes each teaching step as follows: 3.1. step 1: stimulate with the phenomenon a teacher stimulates students’ interest and makes them eager to learn by presenting the phenomenon that is ingested and linked with their daily lives. the assigned curriculum should incorporate specific scientific content that connects with societal and technological viewpoints, forming the core of sts-phbl. teachers should use pre-tests or other appropriate methods to explore students' prior knowledge before teaching them the new concept. 3.2. step 2: identify problems in the phenomenon students gather in group of four to six members with mixed abilities (e.g. high, medium and low achievers) with the same point of interest about the phenomenon. students brainstorm to identify the share-interest issue or problem occurred in the targeted phenomenon. the interest issue for each group should be aligned with sts approach, that is, it can be linked science, society and technology with each other (e.g. a social problem caused by science or technology). in this stage, the teacher facilitates students in each group to identify the interest issue or problem that links with the content scope and allocate time and conditions. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 141-145 144 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.3. step 3: explore answer of the targeted problem students work in groups to plan an investigation or study to search for more knowledge and possible answers to the identified issue or problem. the teacher may facilitate students in this stage by suggesting related resources, activities, media, or technology to help students find their solutions. 3.4. step 4: construct new knowledge students employ quantitative and/or qualitative methods to analyze data obtained from the exploration phase. the teacher may suggest the quantitative and/or qualitative data analysis process or method in order to ensure that students will gain valid and reliable findings. 3.5. step 5: reflect learning students review as well as reflect on knowledge and experiences they gained from the exploration and construction phases. the teacher should encourage students to connect their new knowledge with prior knowledge that they already have. this step may help students further develop their metacognition as well. 3.6. step 6: exchange and share learning each group exchanges knowledge and experience with classmates by sharing knowledge and experiences gained from the sts-phbl activity with classmates by using interesting and appropriate technology to help deliver the message in an easy-to-understand format to the audience, e.g., powerpoint, an infographic, a mind map, a poster, and so on. after each presentation, the teacher provides an opportunity for all students to ask questions, discuss, reflect, and/or suggest a more effective process for reaching more completed knowledge. 3.7. step 7: apply knowledge the teacher encourages students to expand their learned knowledge and experiences by applying them to situations similar to those they already faced in the lesson. lastly, the teacher assigns a post-test to all students to verify their understanding of the lesson's correct concepts and learning objectives. after learning the seven teaching steps of the sts-phbl model, the researchers applied those steps to developing lesson plans aligned with the model. the researchers developed six lesson plans using the sts-phbl model for teaching the geohazard topic to grade 12 students. table 2 illustrates the topic of the lesson plans and their allotted time. table 2. the lesson plans using the sts-phbl model for teaching geohazard topic. lesson plan title time (hour) 1 volcano 1 2 2 volcano 2 2 3 earthquake 1 2 4 earthquake 2 2 5 tsunami 1 2 6 tsunami 2 2 the sts-phbl model and its associated lesson plans were sent to five experts in the science education field. the index of item-objective-congruence (ioc) of sts-phbl lesson plans on geoharzard was calculated. the quality of the sts-phbl model lesson plans was accepted with an ioc higher than 0.80. after that, the researchers used the paired-samples t-test to analyze students' scores prior to and after learning the sts-phbl lessons in the geoharzard topic. table 3. grade 12 students’ development of problem-solving skills after learning with the sts-phbl lessons in the geoharzard topic. problem-solving skills n mean s.d. df t sig. pre-test 39 11.74 1.52 38 30.67 0.000 post-test 39 16.72 1.47 table 3 shows that after learning the sts-phbl lessons, the students significantly improved their problemsolving skills at the 0.05 statistically significant level. the sts-phbl model and its seven teaching steps could be considered an alternative pedagogical approach for teaching geoharzard topics to grade 12 students and an effective pedagogical approach for promoting grade 12 students’ problem-solving skills. the integration of sts and phbl into the sts-phbl model showcases the strengths of both approaches. the sts-phbl model utilizes intriguing and recognizable phenomena in the surrounding environment to motivate students to independently construct their own knowledge and understand the interplay between science, technology, and society within the targeted phenomenon. the sts-phbl model also encourages students to take a more active role in the learning process by asking their science-related social or technological questions about the phenomenon of interest. the two loops of r&d help confirm the quality of the sts-phbl model. in r1d1, the expert validation shows that the sts-phbl model and its lesson plans were qualified. in addition, r2d2 confirms that the sts-phbl model is effective in helping students improve their problem-solving skills. this finding is aligned with mahavijit (2019) who found that integrating phbl with active learning into a seven-lesson plan could effectively help students accomplish their targeted learning goals. the sts-phbl model, which originates from the same root as phbl, aligns with the findings of this study. in addition, the sts-phbl model is effective in promoting grade 12 students’ problem-solving skills in the geoharzard topic at the 0.05 statistically significant level. this finding stems from the students' genuine interest and inspiration in resolving issues relating to the targeted phenomenon. teachers facilitate students' learning by providing possible and related resources, tools, and technologies, putting them on the right track for successful stsasian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 141-145 145 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group phbl learning. when the students in this study encounter real-world problems or issues related to everyday phenomena, they demonstrate a high level of interest and inspiration in these phenomena. this trait can help students learn science effectively and, in particular, develop problem-solving skills. the findings from this study aligned with those from several studies, i.e., bubphee (2016), ngamchom (2016) and boonyamanee (2018). these studies showed that sts could remarkably help the students develop their problem-solving skills at the 0.05 statistical significance level. 4. conclusions this study's results propose the sts-phbl model as an effective pedagogical approach for teaching science to grade 12 students and enhancing their problem-solving skills. the r&d process in developing the sts-phbl model can help science teachers like the first author develop their science teaching profession. the researchers synthesized a new sts-phbl model and came up with seven teaching steps: the seven teaching steps include: a) stimulating the phenomenon; b) identifying problems within the phenomenon; c) exploring the answer to the targeted problem; d) constructing new knowledge; e) reflecting on learning; f) exchanging and sharing learning; and g) applying knowledge. these sts-phbl model teaching steps are effective in promoting students to a) meet the goal of science education, b) be able to apply knowledge and solve problems in daily life, c) develop skills in the 21st century, and 4) be the major driving force for the country's human capital development. in sum, the sts-phbl should be promoted as one of the approaches in the learning management of science with educational reforms that are important to the development of professional teachers and useful in developing problem-solving skills in science for the students. references boonyamanee, p. (2018). the effect of using science, technology and society approach in force and motion unit on science problem solving ability of mattayomsuksa 4 students. a master of arts in teaching science thesis (pathumthani: rangsit university). bubphee, k. (2016). the effects of learning science technology and society supplemented with a concept map on problem solving ability and biology learning achievement of mathayomsuksa 6 students. a master of education in curriculum education (udonthani: udonthani rajabhat university). bureau of academic affairs and education. (2019). science education for science and mathematically gifted learner-the normal lyceum of helsinki. bangkok: bureau of academic affairs and education. butkatunyoo, o. (2018). phenomenon based learning for developing a learner’s holistic views and engaging in the real world. journal of education studies, 46(2), 348-365. chitchayawanich, k. (2019). learning management. bangkok: chulalongkorn university press. jitauafua, m. (2014). enhancing grade 11 students' scientific literacy on kingdom of organisms according to science, technology and society (sts) approach integrating with the philosophy of sufficiency economy. a master of education in science education thesis (bangkok: kasetsart university) luergam, p. (2009). grade 7 students’ normative decision making in science in learning about global warming through science, technology and society (sts) approach. a master of education in science education thesis (khon kaen: khon kaen university). mahavijit, p. (2019). application of phenomennon-based learning and active learning in elementary education course to enhance 21st century learning skill. journal education khon kaen university, 6(2), 1-13. ngamchom, p. (2016). the effects of the science, technology and society learning approach in the topic of mineral resources on learning achievement and problem solving skill of mathayomsuksa 2 students in phetchaburi province. a master of education in science education thesis (bangkok: sukhothai thammathirat open university). nuangchalerm, p. (2015). the 21st century teaching and learning in science. bangkok: chulalongkorn university press. pitiporntapin, s. (2015). science teaching in 21st century. samut prakran: neva education. scott, j., & marshall, g. (2015). a dictionary of sociology. uk: oxford university press. sengdala, p. (2013). grade 12 students’ understanding of nature of science in learning about nuclear physics through science technology and society (sts) approach. a master of education in science education thesis (khon kaen: khon kaen university) silander, p. (2015). phenomenon-based learning. phenomenal education. retrieved from http://www.phenomenaleducation.info/phenomenonbased-learning.html songkathee, b. (2017). learning management with science, technology and society (sts) approach to promote student’s understanding of nature of science for matthayomsuksa sixth students. a master of science in science education thesis (nakhon sawan: nakhon sawan rajabhat university). sutham, p. (2015). the effect of learning management using science, technology and society (sts) approach to enhance mathayomsuksa students’ perception of wave. a master of arts in teaching science thesis (pathumthani: rangsit university). tathin, s. (2015). enhancing global awareness and critical thinking ability of 12th grade students through science, technology and society approach. a master of education in science education thesis (bangkok: kasetsart university). thamprateep, c. (2016). developing technological pedagogical content knowledge in science teaching. research and curriculum development, 6(2), 1-13. tisana, k. t. (2018). science of teaching pedagogy. bangkok: chulalongkorn university press. vejyalak, n. (2018). principles of learning management. bangkok: chulalongkorn university press. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.phenomenaleducation.info/phenomenon-based-learning.html http://www.phenomenaleducation.info/phenomenon-based-learning.html 66 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 3, 66-74, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i3.4951 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between teacher candidates' lifelong learning tendencies and their digital competencies ismail keskin dicle university ziya gokalp education faculty, department of mathematics education, turkey. email: ikeskin@dicle.edu.tr abstract digital competencies and lifelong learning tendencies are among the features that every teacher candidate should have. therefore, carrying out research on both lifelong learning trends and digital competencies can contribute to the development and updating of teacher education programs. in this context, the aim of this research is to analyses the relationship between lifelong learning tendencies and digital competencies of teacher candidates. in this research, scanning model from descriptive research models and explanatory model from relational research methods were used. the sample of this research consists of 287 teacher candidates selected by simple random sampling method from among teacher candidates studying at this state university. in this study, two scales were used to determine the relationship between the lifelong learning tendencies of teacher candidates and their digital competencies. the first of these scales is the “lifelong learning tendency scale”. the second scale used in the research is the "digital competency scale". there is a significant and moderate relationship between the lifelong learning tendencies scale in general and the competencies of using basic internet tools and the competencies of acquiring and using information in digital environment. since there is a moderately significant relationship between lifelong learning tendencies and digital competence, these two concepts should be reflected in teacher education programs in a way that supports each other, without considering each other separately. keywords: digital competence, lifelong learning tendencies, teacher candidate, willingness to learn, openness to development, relational research methods. citation | keskin, i. (2023). the relationship between teacher candidates’ lifelong learning tendencies and their digital competencies. asian journal of education and training, 9(3), 66–74. 10.20448/edu.v9i3.4951 history: received: 23 june 2023 revised: 14 august 2023 accepted: 21 august 2023 published: 31 august 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the dicle university, turkey has granted approval for this study on 20 june 2022 (ref. no. 178). transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 67 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 68 3. research findings ............................................................................................................................................................................ 69 4. discussions, conclusions and recommendations ..................................................................................................................... 72 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 73 mailto:ikeskin@dicle.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i3.4951 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1097-9086 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 66-74 67 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the relationship between lifelong learning tendencies and digital competencies of teacher candidates discussed in this study has been the subject of limited research before. with this aspect, the research will present a new evaluation to the literature in this field. 1. introduction in order to adapt to the environment and continue their lives people have been in a constant learning effort throughout history. this learning effort has been given by means of some certain institutions since ancient times and continues to be given through education systems today. however, in today's world where change, development and knowledge production accelerate, the learning outcomes tried to be given through education systems are not enough for individuals to keep up with business life and society throughout their lives. the existence of this situation leads us to the concept of lifelong learning. many definitions have been made about the concept of lifelong learning. lifelong learning is defined by the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) as all purposeful learning activities, whether formal or informal, that are carried out continuously with the aim of developing skills, knowledge, and abilities (holmes, 2002). the goal of lifelong learning is to ensure that persons of all age groups have equal, easy, and open access to more qualified learning chances and rich learning environments and experiences (akkoyunlu, 2008). according to knapper and cropley (2000), lifelong learning ensures that knowledge, skills and attitudes are acquired, maintained, developed or completed in a structured way for each individual throughout life. in addition, lifelong learning is a concept that coexist with the learning ability and motivation of individuals. demirel (2009), on the other hand, defined lifelong learning as “a continuous process that develops an individual's potential and competencies throughout his/her life”. a lifelong learner is the one who consciously participates in formal and informal learning throughout his or her life. lifelong learner is inclined for lifelong learning and a highly motivated person who is aware of the need to learn and the relationship between learning and real life. he/she establishes personal goals, applies what have been learned, uses knowledge, and evaluates his/her own learning (bryce, frigo, mckenzie, & withers, 2000; knapper & cropley, 2000). while the phenomenon of inclination is defined as the sincere tendency of loving, wanting, or doing something (tdk, 2023), the inclination for lifelong learning can be defined as a desire to love lifelong learning and the sincere orientation to lifelong learning. therefore, for lifelong learning to be realized and sustained, individuals need to be inclined for that. consequently, it is of great importance to know teacher candidates’ level of lifelong learning tendencies for the processes in training lifelong learner teachers. lifelong learning tendencies are influenced by many factors and affect many factors, as well (ala-mutka, 2011). one of those factors is digital competency. the european commission (ec) has defined digital competency as the safe, critical, and creative use of information and communication technologies in business and everyday life. digital competences are supported by basic skills such as using computers to access, evaluate, store, share and exchange information, participate in common networks and communicate through the internet (ec, 2006). in a framework for understanding, developing digital competences in europe (digcomp), the ec has divided digital competences into five different categories. the general framework of those areas is presented below (ferrari, punie, & brečko, 2013). information: recognizing, embedding, rearranging, storing, organizing, and analysing digital information that is considered relevant and fit for purpose. communication: communication in digital environments is the field related to resource sharing via on-line tools, connection, and collaboration with others through digital tools, interacting by participating in communities-networks, and intercultural awareness. generating and editing new content (word processors to images and videos); it is the field related to reintegrating previous knowledge by detailing it by considering intellectual property rights and license rights, creative expressions, producing media outputs and programming. security: it is the area related to data protection, secure and sustainable use, personal protection, digital identity protection, and security measures. problem solving: it is the field concerned with identifying digital needs and resources, making conscious decisions about which digital tools are the most appropriate according to purpose or needs, solving conceptual problems through digital means, using technologies creatively, solving technical problems, and keeping one's own and others' competencies up to date. the importance of digital competence is emphasized by many sources. for example, bawden (2008) states that digital competence is a mandatory skill for individuals so that they can be successfully active in contemporary society. digital competence areas such as access, use, assessment, and communication are stated to help individuals gain a competitive advantage in the digital world, facilitate their daily lives, and support learning (livingstone & helsper, 2007; van deursen, helsper, & eynon, 2016). it is also emphasized in the literature that individuals with digital competence also show more conscious and protective behaviours about digital security (aviram & eshet-alkalai, 2006; eshet, 2004; fraillon, ainley, schulz, friedman, & duckworth, 2020). for these reasons, it can be said that digital competence is an essential skill for individuals to succeed in today’s world. in addition to the fact that digital competencies are an element that affects lifelong learning, digital tools have become the most important learning-teaching environment of lifelong learning in the twenty-first century. digital tools have an important place in the production and sharing of information. some of the benefits that digital tools provide for lifelong learners can be summarized as follows: they offer their learners a flexible learning opportunity. it makes learning independent of time and space. it also offers learners the opportunity to learn at their own pace (day, 2002; trilling & fadel, 2009). today, digital technologies can reach even from the largest cities to villages and even to hamlets, thanks to the combination of internet technology with smart phone technology and the production of hundreds or even asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 66-74 68 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group thousands of learning-teaching software suitable for smart phones. in a way, the distances and barriers between the learner and the knowledge are removed thanks to digital tools (keskin & yazar, 2015). digital competencies and lifelong learning tendencies are among the features that every teacher candidate should have. therefore, carrying out research on both lifelong learning trends and digital competencies can contribute to the development and updating of teacher education programs. in this context, the aim of this research is to analyse the relationship between lifelong learning tendencies and digital competencies of teacher candidates. within the framework of this purpose, answers to the following research problems will be sought. 1. what is the level of lifelong learning tendencies of teacher candidates? does it differ depending upon the independent variables? 2. what is the level of teacher candidates’ digital competencies? does it differ depending upon the independent variables? 3. what is the dimension of the relationship between teacher candidates’ lifelong learning tendencies and their digital competencies? 2. method 2.1. research model general survey model and relational survey model were used in this study, in which the relationship between teacher candidates’ lifelong learning tendencies and digital competencies was investigated. survey research is the description of variable situations and events that exist in nature without any changes. on the other hand, the relational screening investigates the change of more than one variable together. a wide variety of techniques are used in relational survey research, such as crosstabs, clarification analysis, regression analysis, or structural equation modelling (çepni, 2014; karasar, 2012; tuncer, 2020). 2.2. universe and sample in this research, teacher candidates studying in different departments of the education faculty of a state university in the southeast anatolia region were selected as the universe. the sample in this study was tried to be selected from the population using the stratified random sampling method. although 307 teacher candidates were reached at the end of the data collection process, the answers given by 20 teacher candidates who did not comply with the data collection principles because of the evaluations were not included in the data set. thus, the sample of the research consisted of 284 teacher candidates. some demographic data regarding the sample are given in table 1. table 1. demographics. demographic feature f % gender female 193 67.2 male 94 32.8 total 287 100.0 age 20 and below 36 12.5 21-25 147 51.2 26-30 59 20.6 31 and above 45 15.7 total 287 100.0 major mathematics 102 35.5 foreign language 32 11.1 information technologies 21 7.3 science 40 13.9 social sciences 29 10.1 turkish language and literature 42 14.6 fine arts 21 7.3 grade 1 28 9.8 2 87 30.3 3 43 15.0 4 84 29.3 5 45 15.7 total 287 100.0 2.3. data collection tools two likert-type scales were used in this study. the first of these scales is the “lifelong learning tendency scale” developed by erdoğan and arsal (2016) to determine lifelong learning tendencies. during the development of this scale, 1644 pre-service teachers voluntarily participated in the research. to determine the factor structure of the scale to be developed, firstly, exploratory factor analysis was applied on the data. as a result of the exploratory factor analysis, it was determined that the scale consisted of 17 items and two factors. the factors of the loop were named as "willingness to learn" (wtl) and "openness to development" (otd) according to the scope of the items they contain. the total variance explained by the province factor of the scale was determined as 43.44%. to test the construct validity of the scale, confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the data. the values obtained because of confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the two-factor structure of the scale. the validity of the scale was also tested with the criterion scale and the relationship between the two scales was determined as ,71. this value means that the criterion scale validity of the scale is high. in the studies on the reliability of the scale, the asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 66-74 69 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated as 0.86 and the test-retest reliability coefficient as 0.76. studies on the validity and reliability of the scale show that this scale has sufficient validity and reliability to measure the lifelong learning tendency of teacher candidates. the second scale used in the research is the "digital competency scale" (dcs), which was developed by yazar and keskin (2016). during the development phase of the scale, a trial form consisting of 52 items was prepared by scanning the literature and taking expert opinion. the trial form of the scale was applied to a group of 263 preservice teachers. however, the scale form of 21 people who were considered to be unsuitable for factor analysis was excluded from the analysis. after the arrangements made on the data, exploratory factor analysis was performed on the data obtained from 242 teacher candidates. in the exploratory factor analysis, the kmo (kaiser-mayer-olkin) value was found to be 0.943. this value means that the sample size and the data obtained from the teacher candidates are suitable for exploratory factor analysis. in the item elimination process, items with an item factor load of .40 and below and items with less than .10 difference in their load on more than one factor were not included in the analysis. as a result of the exploratory factor analysis, a 30-item scale consisting of three factors was obtained. items in this scale explain 59% of the total variance, and each factor has at least 1% eigenvalue. confirmatory factor analysis was performed to confirm the 3-factor scale structure obtained as a result of the exploratory factor analysis. the values obtained as a result of confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the 3-factor structure of the scale. these values show that the scale has sufficient validity and reliability to measure teacher candidates’ digital competencies. the scale consists of three factors: "basic computer usage competencies" (bcuc), "basic internet tools usage competencies" (bituc), and "competences in obtaining and using information in digital environments" (couide). 2.4. analysis of data statistical programs were used to organize and analyse the data. first of all, the obtained data were arranged and made ready for analysis. then, it was analyzed whether the score distribution met the assumptions of normality and homogeneity in order to determine what kind of statistical tests would be used in the analysis of the data. since the assumptions of normality and homogeneity were met, it was decided to use parametric tests (t-test for independent samples, one-way anova (analysis of variance) (büyüköztürk, 2010). in addition, the pearson correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between the digital competence scale and its subdimensions and the lifelong learning tendencies scale and its sub-dimensions. 3. research findings 3.1. findings on the gender variable when table 2 is examined, it is seen that there is a significant difference in favour of male teacher candidates in the digital proficiency scale and in all its sub-dimensions (p<0.05). however, there was no significant difference between female teacher candidates and male teacher candidates in the lifelong learning tendencies scale and in all sub-dimensions (p>0.05). table 2. t-test results of teacher candidates’ digital competencies and lifelong learning tendencies by gender. factor gender n x sd df t p basic computer usage competencies female 193 3.08 0.90 285 -5.83 0.00 male 94 3.73 0.83 basic internet tools usage competencies female 193 3.97 0.83 285 -2.43 0.00 male 94 4.21 0.68 competences in obtaining and using information in digital environments female 193 3.86 0.82 285 -2.75 0.00 male 94 4.13 0.68 digital competency scale total female 193 3.64 0.74 285 -4.24 0.00 male 94 4.02 0.68 willingness to learn female 193 4.68 0.58 285 -0.28 0.78 male 94 4.7 0.46 openness to development female 193 4.78 0.59 285 0.35 0.73 male 94 4.76 0.50 lifelong learning tendency scale total female 193 4.73 0.55 285 0.04 0.97 male 94 4.73 0.46 3.2. findings on the age variable according to table 3, when the digital competencies of the teacher candidates according to their ages were evaluated, it was determined that there was a significant difference between the teacher candidates in the 21-25 age range and the teacher candidates in the 26-30 age range in the "basic computer use competencies" dimension of the digital proficiency scale in favour of the teacher candidates in the 21-25 age range (p <0.05). when the lifelong learning tendencies scores of the teacher candidates according to their ages were evaluated, a significant difference was found in the dimension of "development to openness" and in favour of those in the 21-25 age range between those aged 20 and under and those in the age range of 21-25 (p<0.05). 3.3. findings on the major variable when table 4 is examined, it is determined that the department with the highest average in the "basic computer use competencies" dimension of the digital proficiency scale is "information technology teacher candidates" and there is a significant difference between it and the averages of all other departments. in the "competences to use basic internet tools" dimension of the digital proficiency scale, a significant difference was found between "information technologies teacher candidates" and "science teaching candidates" and "turkish language and literature teacher candidates" in favour of "information technologies teacher candidates". similarly, in the "competences to acquire and use information in digital environments" dimension of the scale, a significant asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 66-74 70 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group difference was found between "information technology teacher candidates" and "science teaching candidates" and "turkish language and literature teacher candidates" in favour of "information technologies teacher candidates". when the digital proficiency scale is examined in general, a significant difference was found between "information technology teacher candidates" and "mathematics", "science", "social studies", "turkish language and literature" and "fine arts" teacher candidates in favour of "information technologies teacher candidates". table 3. anova test results of teacher candidates’ digital competencies and lifelong learning tendencies by age. factor age n x sd df f p diff. basic computer usage competencies 20 and below 36 3.46 0.87 283 6.56 0.00 21-25 147 3.08 0.91 2-3 26-30 59 3.64 0.92 31 and above 45 3.46 0.86 basic internet tools usage competencies 20 and below 36 3.75 1.08 283 2.61 0.05 21-25 147 4.11 0.75 26-30 59 4.15 0.72 31 and above 45 3.97 0.70 competences in obtaining and using information in digital environments 20 and below 36 3.72 1.07 283 2.15 0.94 21-25 147 4.04 0.72 26-30 59 3.99 0.81 31 and above 45 3.82 0.65 digital competency scale total 20 and below 36 3.64 0.94 283 1.29 0.27 21-25 147 3.74 0.69 26-30 59 3.92 0.77 31 and above 45 3.75 0.67 willingness to learn 20 and below 36 4.50 0.83 283 2.36 0.07 21-25 147 4.76 0.41 26-30 59 4.65 0.63 31 and above 45 4.68 0.49 openness to development 20 and below 36 4.47 0.94 283 5.61 0.00 1-2 21-25 147 4.88 0.37 26-30 59 4.75 0.61 31 and above 45 4.74 0.50 lifelong learning tendency scale total 20 and below 36 4.49 0.88 283 4.27 0.01 1-2 21-25 147 4.82 0.34 26-30 59 4.70 0.60 31 and above 45 4.71 0.46 table 4. anova test results of teacher candidates’ digital competencies and lifelong learning tendencies by major. factor major n x sd df f p diff. basic computer usage competencies mathematics 102 3.23 0.81 280 6.78 0.00 1-3 foreign language 32 3.47 0.85 2-3 information technologies 21 4.36 0.82 3-6.7 science 40 3.33 0.79 4-3 social sciences 29 3.18 0.97 5-3 turkish language and literature 42 3.01 1.12 fine arts 21 2.99 0.74 basic internet tools usage competencies mathematics 102 4.08 0.67 280 5.22 0.00 foreign language 32 4.45 0.54 2-4.6 information technologies 21 4.56 0.63 3-4 science 40 3.76 0.94 social sciences 29 4.04 0.73 turkish language and literature 42 3.90 0.99 fine arts 21 3.69 0.68 competences in obtaining and using information in digital environments mathematics 102 4.01 0.67 280 5.45 0.00 1-4 foreign language 32 4.32 0.54 2-4.6 information technologies 21 4.46 0.67 science 40 3.58 0.94 social sciences 29 3.98 0.63 turkish language and literature 42 3.78 0.93 fine arts 21 3.67 0.82 digital competency scale total mathematics 102 3.77 0.62 280 6.43 0.00 1-3 foreign language 32 4.08 0.56 information technologies 21 4.46 0.68 3-4.5.6.7 science 40 3.56 0.79 social sciences 29 3.73 0.60 turkish language and literature 42 3.56 0.96 fine arts 21 3.45 0.62 willingness to learn mathematics 102 4.69 0.49 280 4.98 0.00 1-4 foreign language 32 4.81 0.27 2-4 information technologies 21 4.86 0.19 3-4 science 40 4.35 0.91 4-5.6.7 social sciences 29 4.90 0.19 turkish language and literature 42 4.79 0.40 fine arts 21 4.49 0.67 openness to development mathematics 102 4.82 0.45 280 3.73 0.00 1-4 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 66-74 71 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group factor major n x sd df f p diff. foreign language 32 4.91 0.33 2-4 information technologies 21 4.79 0.36 science 40 4.48 0.99 4-6 social sciences 29 4.86 0.40 turkish language and literature 42 4.92 0.32 fine arts 21 4.55 0.66 lifelong learning tendency scale total mathematics 102 4.76 0.44 280 4.67 0.00 1-4 foreign language 32 4.86 0.27 2-4 information technologies 21 4.82 0.26 3-4 science 40 4.41 0.92 4-5.67 social sciences 29 4.88 0.23 turkish language and literature 42 4.86 0.33 fine arts 21 4.52 0.63 when the scale of lifelong learning tendencies is examined, it is seen that the averages are high, but there are significant differences between some departments. in the "willingness to learn" sub-dimension of the scale, it is seen that the lowest average is "science teacher candidates" and differs significantly with all other departments. in the "openness to development" dimension of the scale, "science teacher candidates" had the lowest average and there was a significant difference between them and "mathematics", "foreign languages" and "turkish language and literature" teacher candidates. when the scale is examined in general, it is seen that the group with the lowest average is "science teacher candidates" and there is a significant difference in favour of "mathematics", "foreign languages", "information technologies", "social sciences" and "turkish language and literature" teacher candidates. 3.4. findings on the grade variable table 5. anova test result of teacher candidates’ digital competencies and lifelong learning tendencies by grade. factors grade n x sd df f p basic computer usage competencies 1 28 2.90 0.87 282 2.85 0.02 1<5 2 87 3.29 0.92 3 43 3.14 0.88 4 84 3.37 0.82 5 45 3.58 1.11 basic internet tools usage competencies 1 28 3.73 0.91 1.41 0.23 2 87 4.09 0.78 3 43 4.02 0.74 4 84 4.08 0.74 5 45 4.14 0.85 competences in obtaining and using information in digital environments 1 28 3.59 0.83 282 2.05 0.09 2 87 4.06 0.79 3 43 3.94 0.75 4 84 3.98 0.71 5 45 3.93 0.88 digital competency scale total 1 28 3.41 0.73 282 2.24 0.06 2 87 3.82 0.71 3 43 3.70 0.71 4 84 3.81 0.67 5 45 3.88 0.90 willingness to learn 1 28 4.48 0.77 282 1.81 0.13 2 87 4.77 0.49 3 43 4.66 0.50 4 84 4.74 0.44 5 45 4.63 0.66 openness to development 1 28 4.57 0.94 282 1.74 0.15 2 87 4.83 0.47 3 43 4.81 0.47 4 84 4.84 0.43 5 45 4.69 0.67 lifelong learning tendency scale total 1 28 4.53 0.84 282 1.91 0.11 2 87 4.80 0.46 3 43 4.73 0.45 4 84 4.79 0.37 5 45 4.66 0.64 when table 5 was examined, a significant difference was found in the digital proficiency scale only in the "basic computer use competencies" dimension. among the groups, a significant difference was found between the teacher candidates in the first year and the teacher candidates who continued the pedagogical formation program in favor of the teacher candidates who continued the pedagogical formation program. there was no significant difference between groups either in the sub-dimensions of the lifelong learning tendencies scale or in the scale in general. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 66-74 72 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.5. correlation between lifelong learning tendencies and digital competencies table 6. correlation table between lifelong learning tendencies and digital competencies. correlations factors correlation bcuc bituc couide dcs wtl pearson correlation 0.25** 0.43** 0.46** 0.42** sig. (2-tailed) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 n 287 287 287 287 otd pearson correlation 0.067 0.376** 0.386** 0.298** sig. (2-tailed) 0.256 0.00 0.00 0.00 n 287 287 287 287 llts pearson correlation 0.166** 0.423** 0.448** 0.378** sig. (2-tailed) 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 n 287 287 287 287 note: ** significant difference. table 6 presents that, there is a significant but "moderate" relationship between the "willingness to learn" factor, which is the sub-factor of the lifelong learning tendencies scale, and all the sub-factors of the digital proficiency scale and the overall scale. there is a significant but "weak" relationship between the "openness to development" factor, which is the second factor of the lifelong learning education scale, and the general and subdimensions of the digital competence scale, "competences to use basic internet tools”, and "competences to acquire and use information in digital environments". there is a "weak" but significant relationship between the general scale of lifelong learning tendencies and the general dimensions of the digital proficiency scale and the dimensions of "competencies to use basic internet tools" and "competences to acquire and use information in digital environments". there is a significant but "very weak" relationship between the general lifelong learning tendencies scale and the "basic computer use competencies" sub-dimension of the digital proficiency scale. 4. discussions, conclusions and recommendations in this section, findings from the research were discussed firstly within the framework of the digital competence scale and then the lifelong learning tendencies scale. the relationship between digital competencies and lifelong learning tendencies was also examined and some results were reached later on. it was observed that there was a significant difference in favour of male teacher candidates in the overall digital competence scale and in all sub-dimensions. when the literature was examined, in some studies (özerbaş & kuralbayeva, 2018; şahin & kalkan, 2022; yazar & keskin, 2016; yontar, 2019), it was seen that men's digital competencies are significantly higher while women's digital competencies are significantly higher in some other studies (boyacı, 2019; tor, başaran, & arık, 2022; yilmaz & dogusoy, 2020). on the other hand, no significant difference was found between male and female teachers in some studies (babacan, 2022; kara, 2021; şad & nalçacı, 2015; sakalli, 2015). when the digital competencies of the teacher candidates were evaluated based on the age variable, within the dimension of “use of basic computer competences” in digital competencies scale, it was seen that there is a significant difference between the teacher candidates in the 21-25 age range and 26-30 range in favour of the ones in the 21-25 age range. when the relevant studies were examined in terms of age variable, it was found that a study mentions significantly lower digital proficiency against the age of 18-20 (boyacı, 2019) while other one reaches a significantly higher results in favour of the age of 20 and below (şahin & kalkan, 2022). in some studies (yaman, 2019; yilmaz & dogusoy, 2020; yontar, 2019), no significant difference was found based on the age variable. when digital competencies were evaluated in the context of the field variable, a significant difference was found in favour of information technologies. karakuş and gürbüz (2019); yilmaz and dogusoy (2020) and şad and nalçacı (2015) reached a similar conclusion that stems from the fact that information technology teachers work in the digital field. yazar and keskin (2016), on the other hand, found significantly higher digital competencies among the pedagogical formation students studying in the field of science. based on the class variable, it was seen that the digital competencies of the formation students are significantly higher than the 1st grades within the dimension of the "use of basic computer competences". it can be said that experience is effective in this result. while no significant difference was found in some studies (babacan, 2022; kara, 2021; şahin & kalkan, 2022; sakalli, 2015; yilmaz & dogusoy, 2020; yontar, 2019) found a significant difference in favour of 1st graders. in addition, yaman (2019) found the digital proficiency of the 1st and 2nd graders, and boyacı (2019) found only the first graders to have significantly lower digital competencies. thus, it can be said that different outcomes were obtained in terms of class variable. according to the findings, no significant difference was found between female teacher candidates and male teacher candidates in the lifelong learning tendencies scale and in all its sub-dimensions. when the literature was examined, it was seen that some studies did not show a significant difference (güzel, 2017; tunca, şahin, & aydın, 2015; yasa, 2018), however some studies that showed a significant difference in favor of female teacher candidates were in the majority (aydın, 2018; bilici & bağci, 2020; boyacı, 2019; bulaç & murat, 2019; gökyer & türkoğlu, 2018; kozikoğlu & altunova, 2018; kurt, cevher, & arslan, 2019; özoğlu & esra, 2021; şahin, sarıtaş, & çatalbaş, 2020; yazar & keskin, 2016). no research was found in favour of male teacher candidates. it can be said that lifelong learning tendencies of female teacher candidates are higher than male teacher candidates. when the lifelong learning tendencies scores of the candidate teachers were evaluated according to the age variable, a significant difference was found between those aged 20 and below and those aged 21-25, in favour of those aged 21-25, in the dimension of "openness to development" and the overall scale. in the studies conducted by yasa (2018) and gökyer and türkoğlu (2018), lifelong learning competencies of teacher candidates aged between 17-20 differ significantly compared to other age groups. özçiftçi (2014) did not find a significant difference in the lifelong learning tendencies according to age. it is seen that there are different outcomes in the literature regarding asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 66-74 73 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group the age variable. according to the variable of the teacher candidates’ fields, it was observed that the average of science teacher candidates in general and sub-dimensions of the lifelong learning scale was the most significantly lower than other fields. similarly, in the study conducted by yasa (2018), lifelong learning tendencies of science teacher candidates were found to be significantly lower in some sub-dimensions. on the other hand, lifelong learning tendencies were found to be significantly higher among science and social science teacher candidates in studies by tunca et al. (2015), primary school mathematics teacher candidates by bulaç and murat (2019) turkish teacher candidates by duymuş and sulak (2018), and science teacher candidates by boyacı (2019). the findings differ based on the field variable. this might stem from the fact that teacher candidates participating in the research are from different universities, in different classes and ages. no significant difference was found in the scale of lifelong learning tendencies and its sub-dimensions according to the university grade variable. this result is in accordance with the outcomes from boyacı (2019). on the other hand, yasa (2018); gökyer and türkoğlu (2018) and kurt et al. (2019) found the lifelong learning tendencies of the teacher candidates in the first-grade of university to be significantly high tunca et al. (2015), however bilici and bağci (2020) concluded that lifelong learning tendencies of the teacher candidates in the first grade of university were significantly low. these differences may arise from the fact that teacher candidate participants study at different universities. when the correlation coefficients between the digital competence scale and the lifelong learning tendencies scale are examined, it can be said that there is a significant and moderate relationship across the scales. there is a significant and moderate relationship between the lifelong learning tendencies scale in general and the competencies of using basic internet tools and the competencies of acquiring and using information in digital environment. there is a significant and weak relationship between the openness to development dimension of the lifelong learning tendencies scale and the competences of using basic internet tools of the digital competences scale and the competences of acquiring and using information in the digital environment. there is a significant and moderate relationship between the willingness to learn dimension of the lifelong learning tendencies scale and the competences of using basic internet tools of the digital competences scale and the competences of acquiring and using information in the digital environment. when the related studies in the literature were examined, it was seen that there are similar results. boyacı (2019) found a positive and moderate relationship between lifelong learning tendencies and digital literacy level. bilici and bağci (2020) found a positive and moderately significant relationship between candidate teachers' lifelong learning tendencies and their readiness for e-learning. on the other hand, özoğlu and esra (2021) found a very low positive correlation between candidate teachers' lifelong learning tendencies and their digital literacy. as a result, lifelong learning tendencies and digital competence can be considered as concepts that are related to each other and contribute to the development of each other. digital competence and lifelong learning are two concepts that support and complete each other. while digital competence facilitates lifelong learning processes, lifelong learning helps individuals keep their digital competences up to date and succeed in the digital world. therefore, today, digital competence and lifelong learning have an important place in terms of the success and competitiveness of individuals. since we live in a rapidly changing time, it is important that the candidates who will practice the teaching profession should graduate as individuals who are both inclined to lifelong learning and gain digital competencies before starting their jobs. in this context, the following recommendations can be made based on the findings from the research. • the process of establishing digital competence should be started in pre-school and primary schools. for this reason, every teacher candidate should be equipped with digital competence in pre-service education. • since women's lifelong learning tendencies are higher than men's, qualitative research can be conducted to investigate the reason for this situation. • since there is a moderately significant relationship between lifelong learning tendencies and digital competence, these two concepts should be reflected in teacher education programs in a way that supports each other, without considering each other separately. • relational screening studies between lifelong learning trends and digital competence should be done more with different and large samples. references akkoyunlu, b. 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(2019). digital literacy levels of teacher candidates. ana dili eğitimi dergisi, 7(4), 815-824. https://doi.org/10.16916/aded.593579 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.29250/sead.427723 https://doi.org/10.18069/firatsbed.460929 https://doi.org/10.32709/akusosbil.466549 https://doi.org/10.14687/ijhs.v12i2.3503 https://doi.org/10.24315/tred.473391 https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444807080335 https://doi.org/10.21666/muefd.314761 https://doi.org/10.18039/ajesi.824040 https://doi.org/10.9779/pauefd.572500 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2015.1078834 https://doi.org/10.16916/aded.593579 104 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 2, 104-109, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5619 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the impact of short-term training in qualitative research methods delivered to emerging researchers in disability education in india richard rose1 jayanthi narayan2 ratika malkani3 ( corresponding author) 1,2university of northampton, uk. 1email: richard.rose@northampton.ac.uk 2email: narayan.jayanthi@gmail.com 3indian inclusion research network, india. 3email: ratikamalkani@gmail.com abstract this paper reports the findings from a preand postsurvey of participants and interviews with a small number of course members. a three-day course of training in qualitative research methods was delivered to a cohort of inexperienced researchers, all of whom were working in the field of special educational needs and disability, in kolkata, india. the study examines the effectiveness of the training, taking into account the teaching methods used and the structure of the workshop. the findings suggest that emerging researchers prefer a hands-on workshop approach to more traditional lecture delivery of research training. the levels of support provided by tutors and the interaction with practical activities using bespoke resources found favour with participants. following the training workshop, members expressed greater confidence in their ability to use qualitative research methods and understood the relation of this approach to quantitative studies. some who completed the course have begun to conduct independent research investigations using the methods taught. keywords: disability, india, professional development, qualitative methods, research competence. citation | rose, r., narayan, j., & malkani, r. (2024). the impact of short-term training in qualitative research methods delivered to emerging researchers in disability education in india. asian journal of education and training, 10(2), 104–109. 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5619 history: received: 9 february 2024 revised: 27 march 2024 accepted: 12 april 2024 published: 7 may 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher:asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the manovikas kendra rehabilitation and research institute, kolkata, india has granted approval for this study on 27 february 2020. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: analysed quantitative data, j.n.; coded and analysed the qualitative data, r.r. and r.m. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................105 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................................105 3. discussion/originality .............................................................................................................................................................................108 4. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................................108 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................108 mailto:richard.rose@northampton.ac.uk mailto:narayan.jayanthi@gmail.com mailto:ratikamalkani@gmail.com https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i2.5619 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7363-1768 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 104-109 105 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper provides insights into the necessary training in qualitative research methods provided to researchers working in the field of disability, which has been dominated by quantitative approaches. previous reports of research training in india have focused on quantitative methods. the reported study establishes a basis for the development of further research training. 1. introduction in india, as in much of the world, changes in educational policy have prioritised a move to ensure that all children, including those with disabilities, receive schooling that is appropriate to their needs (armstrong, armstrong, & barton, 2016; hardy & woodcock, 2015). teachers and professional’s responsible for their implementation inevitably face demands from these policies, making it crucial to comprehend their impact to establish an effective system. such understanding requires careful monitoring of provision and the ability to modify systems and approaches based on secure data that accurately informs both policymakers and practitioners about the effectiveness of changes in procedures. researchers have a crucial role in providing reliable and bias -free data (greany & maxwell, 2017; mitchell & sutherland, 2020). in recent years, the value of using qualitative research methods to gain a greater understanding of the lives of individuals and groups, including those with disabilities, has received increased attention (beuving & de vries, 2015; lester & nusbaum, 2018; watharow & wayland, 2022). qualitative research methods, which are founded upon interpretivist and constructivist paradigms, aim to provide researchers with an in-depth understanding of the focus of investigation rather than predicting a likely outcome, as is commonly the case with positivist studies (denzin & lincoln, 2011). the importance of gaining detailed insights into the lives of individuals with disabilities and those who support or work with them has long been acknowledged, and it is therefore unsurprising that many researchers have favoured the adoption of qualitative approaches to conduct their investigations. in india, much of the training of new researchers maintains a focus on quantitative research methods (khaparde, 2002; raina, 2001). where researchers have embarked on qualitative studies, they have often found it necessary to find their own route to understanding the complexities surrounding methods and the management of data (saxena, 2017), or face challenges in having the validity of their methodological approach understood (singal, 2010). as researchers who have undertaken qualitative investigations in several countries, including india (malkani, 2021; rose, narayan, matam, & reddy sambram, 2021; rose & shevlin, 2017) the authors of this paper have been committed to supporting emerging researchers in their development of the skills, knowledge, and understanding necessary to conduct rigorous qualitative research. this has involved the provision of professional development courses with a focus on training inexperienced researchers across india (rose, das, narayan, & jament, 2021). the delivery of training in qualitative research requires detailed planning to address complex issues of methods, ethics, and data analysis. the authors of this paper argue that courses with a high degree of hands -on activity, designed to quip course participants with practical experience in working methods and data, are the only effective means of delivering such training. with this intention, a three-day intensive course was delivered to researchers in kolkata, with limited experience in qualitative methods. the three course tutors who have authored this paper have maintained a focus on the evaluation of the training with the aim of further developing both the course content and the methods of teaching deployed. to understand the effectiveness and shortcomings of the short course, we framed three research questions (below) with this aim in mind. 1.1. research questions • what learning can be achieved through delivery of a short-term workshop on qualitative research methods delivered to inexperienced researchers? • what are the limitations of learning opportunities in a short-term workshop on qualitative research methods for inexperienced researchers? • what teaching approaches appear to be most productive in delivering such workshops? 2. methodology 2.1. setting the training programme was organized at the request of manochetna institute, a division of manovikas kendra, a well-established non-government organisation (ngo) in kolkata, india, that provides teaching and research in intellectual and developmental disabilities as its focus. manochetana institute has a long-standing commitment to the providing training, often drawing upon expertise from universities and training institutes across kolkata. as interest in the application of qualitative research has gained momentum, particularly in investigations associated with disabilities in india (ahmad, 2015; ghosh, 2016). manochetna has recognized the need to increase the skills of less experienced researchers working in this area. to fulfil the need for increased competences, the organization arranged a training programme to be delivered by established researchers with a record of delivering both mixed methods and qualitative research to participants from universities and training institutes from across kolkata and neighbouring areas. all participants received some prior training in research methods, largely focusing on quantitative methodologies. the training programme was conducted over three days, each lasting six hours, and was intended as an introductory course to be further developed with additional training at a later date. the content of the training programme is shown in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 104-109 106 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. three-day training programme content (elaborated further in the text below). day 1 content understanding the nature of qualitative research – interpretivism and positivism. recognising the value of mixed methods. the importance of working ethically method 1 – interviewing and focus groups. understanding the value and types of interviews commonly used in qualitative research management of transcript data from interviews. approaches to segmenting and coding interview data day 2 content approaches to triangulation. multi-analyst triangulation using the data from interviews. method 2 – observation. embedded (participant) and peripheral observation techniques. defining the observation foci. segmenting and coding observation data. multi-methods triangulation day 3 content data management – code reduction deriving findings from data – processes of analysis establishing the trustworthiness of data using the research literature to discuss findings 2.2. participants the host organisation informed potential participants about the programme through a range of media. the eligibility criteria stated that applicants must engage in research, and those who registered would be part of the training’s effectiveness study. this was seen as important, as the course organisers intend to deliver further programmes of this nature in the future. a total of 33 participants were initially enrolled in the programme. as three of them did not complete the full programme, the study as reported here included 30 participants (female 23 male 7). the profile of course members included those enrolled in phd programmes (7), doing master -level programmes with the requirement for a research-based dissertation (15), teaching faculty (2), phd-completed (1), special educators (3), psychologists (1), and an ayurvedic doctor (1). the scholars were from four different universities. ethical considerations: the participants were informed that data obtained from the workshop programme would be analysed with the intention of further developing training and writing a research paper focused on findings about the effectiveness of the programme. participants were assured of anonymity, and informed that the data would not be used for any other purpose, ensuring confidentiality. we thus obtained the participants’ consent to use the data for the publication. the host institution granted permission for their name to appear in this paper. 2.3. programme design and content the programme was intentionally planned to be a face-to-face or offline programme, as it included many hands-on activities. the content included the basics of qualitative research, data collection through interviews and focus groups, observation and use of other visuals (photographs or videos), transcription of data, segmenting of data based on research questions, data coding and combining codes, and interpreting the findings to answer research questions. examples of fictitious transcribed interviews, observations, and other relevant data were prepared in advance by the tutors and given to participants to work with, to provide a direct and active experience of doing data analysis and interpreting findings. the content was transacted with the participants through lectures, discussions, simulations of interviews and observations, and working with data, enabling a hands-on experience for all participants and individual and group work carried out and later presented by the participants, with the tutors providing guidance whenever needed. we taught all sessions in english, but encouraged workshop members to use local language in practical sessions where this made the situation more comfortable for them. 2.4. instruments a preand post-test questionnaire with both closed and open-ended questions was designed for the study. a pretest was administered to identify the baseline knowledge of qualitative research among the participants, and post-test was administered to establish the knowledge gained by them upon completing the course. closed -ended content was structured as 30 multiple-choice questions. the open-ended questions in the pre-test sought to understand the expectations of the participants from the programme, and the post-test had questions on their learning, what more they wished to learn, and the overall conduct of the training programme. interviews were conducted with a small sample of course participants (n=5) to obtain their perspectives on the quality of learning gained through the training programme and insights into the course delivery mode. 2.5. procedure on the first day, as an initial step, the pre-test was carried out, and then the participants were given a brief icebreaking exercise to familiarize themselves with others and the tutors, who were seen as important as they were from different institutions. each session throughout the three days had an initial presentation with power point support provided by a tutor, followed by hands-on exercises relevant to the session. for example, participants had opportunities to take part in and manage a focus group. the course members were randomly grouped for the group activities, followed by their presentation and discussion of what had been learned. the tutors supported each group whenever they needed clarification. we administered the post-test on the third day after the last session. the data was analysed, providing results as presented below. 2.6. findings we performed a paired sample t test to determine the impact of the training on the participants’ gained knowledge. analysis of preand post-test scores on the closed-ended questions revealed that the participants had asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 104-109 107 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group significant gains, as revealed in the post-test data. the test’s maximum possible score was 25. the analysis of the pre-test (mean 13.67; sd 4.38) and the post-test scores (mean 18.73; sd 3.63.) revealed a mean gain of 5.06; t (29) = 6.53, and p= .01 thus showing that the participants had made significant gains in knowledge of qualitative research methods through the three-day interactive training programme. this finding concurs with that of bluestone et al. (2013) who, after conducting an integrative literature review on effective in-service training design and delivery that included analysing 37 systematic reviews and 32 randomised control trials, found that didactic techniques and providing printed materials alone clustered in the range of no to low effects, whereas all interactive programmes exhibited mostly moderate to high beneficial effects. we segmented the open-ended questions directly from the research questions. this enabled the qualitative data obtained through the preand post-test data to be coded as an initial stage of analysis. the interviews conducted with workshop members were useful in providing clear insights into what they perceived to be the benefits of this form of training in research methods. when considering the first question, “what learning can be achieved through delivery of a short-term workshop on qualitative research methods delivered to inexperienced researchers?” the interview data revealed that personal contact with tutors was seen as bringing major benefits such as clarifying concepts, checking understanding, and offering positive feedback on the learning tasks. one interviewee commented: “this workshop, the in-person workshop, i found very useful because i was mentored: wherever i got stuck, i was mentored.” the practical nature of the teaching approach was another advantage. referring to a previous experience with research methods training, a participant commented that: “it (previous research training) was not really clear when we had the online session, but the practical session was really amazing.” participants emphasize the importance of gaining confidence through action. many had previously gained some understanding of quantitative research methods, and these were still seen as important, but following the three-day workshop, some perceived a change of emphasis amongst the group and enthusiasm for adopting more qualitative approaches in their work, as recorded by this interviewee: “in fact, after coming out of the workshop, we were discussing among all the participants how they all wanted to do their future research, focusing basically on qualitative analysis. that was a big change in the approach of the researchers; first, they only wanted to do quantitative. but now, after the workshop, the whole mindset was, no, i want to do qualitative research now.” it is, of course, important to recognise that there are likely to be flaws in any professional development delivery approach. asking the question, “what are the limitations of learning opportunities in a short-term workshop on qualitative research methods delivered to inexperienced researchers?” was particularly important for the course tutors, who intend to build further upon research workshop delivery in india. course participants identified the intensity of the course over a relatively short period of time as an issue. while they appreciated the teaching methods, the short delivery time was seen as a challenge. “we just felt the workshop was very intense and engaging, and after the workshop was over, we were like, oh, and we have nothing to do now. we missed the workshop after that, so we felt like, yeah, it would have been like, instead of three days, if it happened like over five days, we would have been given lots more work that we could have done, and the practice would have been more.” the course tutors were also aware of this difficulty, and at times felt under pressure when attempting to cover the course content in a limited amount of time. however, the practicalities of participants being able to obtain additional time away from home, their places of employment or study, and to meet the costs of accommodation and other expenses may well prohibit expansion of the course over a longer period. in the future, we might consider a more blended learning approach. the third question, “what teaching approaches appear to be most productive in delivering such workshops?” was used to push the participants for more explicit details of whether the intended supportive nature of the course was achieved. the most challenging part of the course identified by course members was that involved in data coding, reduction, and analysis. there was general agreement that this would be hard to learn through a lecture format or a reference book. practical engagement with the data provided on the course, including interview and focus group transcripts and completed observation schedules, was an approach that was particularly favoured. “the hands-on method of teaching helped us understand better; especially coding that whole thing of identifying important information, narrowing it down, getting rid of the additional, and then you're coming to a theme and all that. so, when we did it hands-on in small groups, it was easier for us.” from the point of view of the course providers, this was reassuring, as at the commencement of the course there was some apparent apprehension amongst participants when the intended practical nature of the three days was first explained. one interviewee shared their anxieties and the strategies they used to overcome them. “i know when we start doing the hands-on work we will have our doubts, but we are fortunate to have mentors. we will receive guidance if we write to them or communicate with them, but we now possess the courage to take the next step. yeah, definitely.” another commented that: “i feel like the tutors really helped us with the hands-on training, which was brilliant, like, in three days. the theoretical part and the practical part, covering both of them is a brilliant task. after the workshop, we were enlightened, and we were highly research-motivated.” tutors agreed with course members that they could remain in contact after the workshop to discuss how their studies were progressing and seek advice if needed. participants expressed their appreciation for this. since the workshop's completion, some have engaged further with the course tutors to discuss specific methodological aspects of their work. a few participants have recently commenced new research investigations, incorporating learning from the course into their proposals and advancing it through ethics committees. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 104-109 108 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. discussion/originality it was agreed by course members that in-person training programmes result in better learning in comparison to online or hybrid modes in areas that require hands-on experience. it is important to consider this finding in terms of both other training situations, and the content being delivered. burrola-mendez, bonilla-escobar, goldberg, and pearlman (2019) after studying the training for wheelchair service providers that involved in-person and hybrid training, found that both learning methodologies had a statistically significant effect on increasing wheelchair service knowledge, with overall high levels of satisfaction. however, compared to their previous experiences with hybrid methodology training, the in-person group in this study reported larger overall effects. in particular, the ability to experiment with methodologies such as interviewing and conducting focus groups while under the direct scrutiny of a tutor playing the role of critical friend was seen as beneficial. in some instances, course participants were able to express their own learning concerns or seek further clarification through individual approaches made to course tutors. other writers, poon (2013) and bouilheres, le, mcdonald, nkhoma, and jandug-montera (2020) have rightly emphasised the importance of hybrid methods of learning for busy professionals who may not have the time to either travel for training or take extended periods of time away from their work. it was indeed apparent that some of the participants in the reported research methods training had experienced difficulty obtaining the necessary time to join the course. saltan (2017) in acknowledging some of the advantages of hybrid learning approaches, emphasised the difficulties associated with the practical application of learning that are more easily addressed through face-to-face, hands-on approaches, a factor that was emphasised by the cohort reported in this paper. however, given the pressure of time on this course, and with concern for the welfare of both students and tutors, discussions regarding further modes of course delivery have commenced. several writers berger and lorenz (2016); leko (2014) and pugach (2001) have acknowledged the value of qualitative research for those working in the field of disability and inclusive education. practitioners, such as teachers or therapists, who may wish to conduct investigations to analyse and improve their practice, are likely to be working with small samples. in such instances, the use of quantitative measures is sometimes seen as unlikely to provide reliable results (lakens, 2022; mccarthy, whittaker, boyle, & eyal, 2017) and may also elicit data that feels impersonal and fails to give insights into the lives of individuals or groups being investigated. some researchers, houts, edwards, wirth, and deal (2016) rightly propose that the development of some quantitative techniques, such as the use of rasch analysis, can have benefits even when applied to samples of li mited size, but acknowledge that many quantitative measures deployed with such samples are limited. cox (2012) recognised that many novice researchers come from a professional background and have the experience and opportunity to conduct investigations that could influence the development of practice. however, she suggested that the dominance of quantitative methods often acts as a constraint on those practitioners who might otherwise engage with research. she further argues that while policymakers appear to depend upon the numerical data more commonly associated with quantitative data when making a case for change or the implementation of new policies, the importance of understanding the specific needs of groups, such as those with disabilities, emphasises the strength of qualitative approaches. while both she and the authors of this paper readily acknowledge the value of quantitative studies and recognise that in some instances a mixed-methods approach may have greater currency, it is suggested that qualitative research is more likely to reveal the lived experiences of those for whom policymakers see the need to bring about change. this was certainly a view endorsed by those who attended the training reported in this article. cook and cook (2016) stress the importance of recognising qualitative research as an umbrella term that incorporates many approaches to investigation. one of the greatest advantages of qualitative research that they perceive is the ability to provide in-depth descriptions of the phenomena being investigated. these authors emphasise that qualitative research is not an alternative to other methodologies but needs to be applied in situations that benefit from the descriptive detail needed to aid understanding of a phenomenon. it is important to recognise that qualitative studies might, as in the case of the work reported in this paper, identify the effectiveness of instruction but that they cannot eliminate the fact that other methods of delivery might be equally effective. only experimental research can determine these factors. however, the ethical challenges of conducting experimental research in these circumstances may present problems with respect to the intentions of tutors to deliver training in a manner that is equitable and does not put a group at a disadvantage. 4. conclusion qualitative research approaches can generally provide a greater in-depth understanding of the lives of individuals than is possible using quantitative methods. however, both approaches have an important role to play in achieving greater understanding of the causes of marginalization and the challenges faced by those who work towards a more equitable and inclusive society. in many instances, a mixed-methods approach that draws upon both qualitative and quantitative methods will be appropriate. training in quantitative methods continues to provide the dominant discourse in many universities in india, though it is possible to detect a shift of emphasis in recognition of the advantages that qualitative approaches bring. the experiences of emerging researchers discussed in this paper suggest that where training in qualitative research methods is to be delivered, this is most likely to achieve positive learning outcomes when taught through practical, hands-on sessions. consideration should be given to the time required for effective course delivery, particularly when addressing complex issues involving the management, and analysis of qualitative data. as a result of this survey, the authors of this paper will consider which aspects of the course may be delivered on line, while continuing to ensure practical experiences for inexperienced researchers through workshop activities. the lessons learned by the course tutors in the delivery of these workshops will certainly influence the structure of future research training to be delivered in india. references ahmad, f. k. 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(2022). making qualitative research inclusive: methodological insights in disability research. international journal of qualitative methods, 21, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221095316 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising o ut o f the use o f the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1186/1478-4491-11-51 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10100-y https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217872 https://doi.org/10.1111/ldrp.12110 https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2012.662868 https://doi.org/10.1504/ijiie.2017.088095 https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2014.908965 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-016-1364-9 https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.33267 https://doi.org/10.1177/0741932514524002 https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417727761 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9604.12353 https://doi.org/10.1080/01933922.2016.1264520 https://doi.org/10.1177/001440290106700401 https://doi.org/10.47985/dcidj.447 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11030111 https://doi.org/10.1177/0972262917721423 https://doi.org/10.1080/09687591003755807 https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221095316 13 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 1, 13-21, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6431 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group world language communities of practice: bridging universities with internationalization at home amy corrinne roberts1 dilnoza khasilova2 1college of education, school of teacher education, university of wyoming, laramie wyoming, usa. email: aroberts@uwyo.edu 2ellbogen center for teaching and learning, university of wyoming, laramie wyoming, usa. email: dkhasilo@uwyo.edu ( corresponding author) abstract this article explores how world language communities of practice advance internationalization at home on a university campus through qualitative case study research. these communities exemplify a multidimensional approach to global engagement, blending global perspectives with the local campus through non-formal and cross-cultural language initiatives. one specific program, the world language and culture program (wlcp) served as the focal point of investigation. participants included 15 wlcp teachers, international students, scholars and community members located on a university campus in the united states rocky mountain region. the community of practice framework was used to examine the program. data collection included interviews with wlcp teachers, participant observations of classes and analysis of program documents. the analysis employed a case-by-case approach focusing on each wlcp teacher as a distinct case. findings suggest that wlcp teachers play a critical role in promoting intercultural competence and enhancing the visibility and active involvement of the international campus community. implications indicate that the wlcp is a bridge between local and international campus communities, creating a space for cultural exchange and learning beyond traditional classroom settings. non-formal initiatives like the wlcp highlight how leveraging the diverse experiences, languages and cultures of international communities can enhance internationalization at home. keywords: communities of practice, cross-cultural engagement, intercultural competence, internationalization at home, non-formal education, world language and culture program. citation | roberts, a. c., & khasilova, d. (2025). world language communities of practice: bridging universities with internationalization at home. asian journal of education and training, 11(1), 13–21. 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6431 history: received: 21 november 2024 revised: 16 january 2025 accepted: 31 january 2025 published: 20 february 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of wyoming, usa has granted approval for this study on 12 april 2017 (ref. no. 20171113dk01748, (2020)). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 2. review of literature ........................................................................................................................................................................ 15 3. methods ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 16 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 17 5. implications....................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 6. limitations ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 20 7. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 20 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 20 mailto:aroberts@uwyo.edu mailto:dkhasilo@uwyo.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i1.6431 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6068-6396 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5548-7977 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 13-21 14 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study goes beyond the usual practices of internationalization such as cultural festivals and foodsharing events. it assesses how unpaid service instructors participate in pedagogical practices that enhance cultural exchange and the development of a global learning environment for the entire campus community. it fills a unique gap in the current literature by examining how domestic, non-formal education programs like the wlcp can effectively enhance internationalization at home, an area that has received limited attention. 1. introduction international experiences are often regarded as one of the most profound and stimulating factors that may impact an individual's identity and perspective. students and faculty who travel abroad and various frameworks, theories, and ideas that are borrowed and adopted between systems within the institution of higher education universities everywhere in the world honor this stance with attention to and support of international learning initiatives as evidenced by collaborative research that is published in international journals (altbach, 2004; de wit, 2002). elkin, devjee, and farnsworth (2005) says that internationalization is not something that is either achieved or not achieved rather it is an engagement with a range of dimensions. when faculty, staff, and students get involved and are supported by the administration, there are limitless creative endeavors to strengthen the international dimension in research, teaching and service. one such enterprise is internationalization at home, a strategy coined by soria and troisi (2014) to provide student engagement with internationalization initiatives on the local campus. internationalization at home typically centers on curriculum and program development but with less burden at the institutional level and more investment from particular departments or individuals on a university campus. examples include credit-bearing courses with a global framework, coordinated university activities to enhance interactions between local and international students, and co-curricular campus-wide initiatives dedicated to developing intercultural competence and international perspectives. in the united states, faculty and administrators on university campuses nationwide, recognize the need for internationalization at home given the high percentage of students who are unable to participate in study abroad, side by side with the expanding diversity of international students, scholars, and guest communities (knight, 2020). scholarship focusing on sustained commitment towards development, implementation and sustainment of internationalization at home is limited (knight, 1997; mok, 2021). research is essential to investigate how domestic intercultural experiences can serve as a pathway for transformative learning, similar to what is often observed in international mobility (jones, 2013). the following paper details case study research conducted for two sixteen-week academic semesters at a rural land grant university in the rocky mountain region of the united states. the research aim was to explore how unpaid service teachers (international students, scholars, and guests) of a non-formal university initiative, the world language and culture program (wlcp) impact and contribute to internationalization at home through individual and collective pedagogies of world languages and cultures. the wlcp is unique in that it represents deep structures of learning and cross-cultural experiences beyond popular initiatives such as organized cultural groups and events for international students to share their home food, music and traditions with usa peers. 1.1. research setting and the wlcp framework the wlcp was established in 2013 by a group of international graduate students enrolled in various programs on the same university campus. they received internal grants to purchase curriculum materials and instructional technology and to organize wlcp service teachers from a pool of international undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, visiting scholars, and family members. the service teachers offer free in-person noncredit bearing language and culture classes in their first languages for university staff, students, and faculty as well as members of a nearby community and globally through zoom since the 2020 pandemic. the wlcp course schedules follow the university academic calendar with class assignments based on available campus space. since its inception in 2013, the wlcp has expanded rapidly as a non-formal learning initiative, offering 18 different language courses with more than 300 students registered each semester. the wlcp is housed within the university of wyoming, a teaching and research institution located in the landlocked state of wyoming characterized by limited geographic mobility among its population. the majority of the university's approximately 13,000 students and 700 faculty members are from the surrounding region and are predominantly represented by the mainstream rocky mountain culture. the university’s mission reflects a longstanding institutional commitment to foster global engagement despite this demographic context. this includes the cultivation of an environment that attracts international scholars and students; the enhancement of international awareness through curricula and the expansion of opportunities for study abroad (office of the president, 2023). the wlcp, as a university-sanctioned stand-alone service initiative within the larger campus community, qualifies as a community of practice (cop). wenger (2006) defines a cop as a group of individuals who share a common interest or passion, engaging regularly to improve their practice. the wlcp service teachers demonstrate a collective commitment to maintaining a shared practice that involves creating and contributing to a knowledge base through sustained interaction resulting in a shared repertoire of resources (wenger, 2006). according to niesz (2010) and takahashi (2011) participation in a cop helps members develop and co-construct a shared identity and set of beliefs. the wlcp framework promotes teacher collaboration in the development of new courses and the redesign of existing ones. teachers meet regularly to discuss curriculum, pedagogy and the needs of each new group of students. each semester professional development is provided to support and extend the wlcp framework based on the standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century (american council on the teaching of foreign languages 2014). this framework is emergent based on what each teacher brings to the wlcp; the american council on the teaching of foreign languages, however, guide the overarching aim of content and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 13-21 15 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group instructional course decisions. experienced teachers have curriculum autonomy while new teachers receive ongoing support and often begin as co-instructors in established courses. figure 1 shows the university of wyoming (2023) “breakin’ through” sculpture was created by thomas (2015) and funded by a $500,000 gift from april brimmer kunz and marian h. rochelle. the sculpture celebrates women’s accomplishments with a female rider breaking through a sandstone wall. it’s located in the war memorial parking lot on the university of wyoming campus. figure 1. breakin' through sculpture. the image above is a photograph of a statue on the university of wyoming campus depicting a woman riding a horse as she breaks through a sandstone wall. the intent is to symbolize the institutional spirit, conveying to all students, faculty, and staff that the university aim is for “the cultivation of an environment that attracts international scholars and students; the enhancement of international awareness through curriculum and the expansion of opportunities for study abroad (office of the president, 2023). 2. review of literature 2.1. internationalization at home: formal and non-formal university settings internationalization at home encompasses both formal and non-formal university settings. non-formal learning is defined as “organized, systematic and educational activity carried on outside the framework of the formal system” (unesco institute for lifelong learning, 2015). similar to formal education, non-formal learning is structured with clear objectives, time schedules, and support but it occurs outside the standard programs, courses, and mandatory activities offered by universities (åberg, 2016). this type of learning is intentional from the learner's perspective (colardyn & bjornavold, 2004) and provides alternative educational opportunities and specific life skills that address challenges (cedefop, 2014). examples of non-formal learning include adult literacy programs, vocational training, online courses, language programs, after-school projects, fitness classes, cooperatives, tutoring and professional development programs (latchem, 2014). in contrast, formal learning refers to structured and school-based instruction within formal university systems (findsen & formosa, 2011). formal learning environments provide continuous and intentional education with organized objectives, often culminating in diplomas or qualifications. elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges, and universities exemplify formal learning settings. however, while non-formal learning provides flexibility and inclusivity for learners, its direct connection to internationalization at home initiatives in higher asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 13-21 16 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group education remains underexplored. research has not sufficiently addressed how non-formal learning programs such as intercultural workshops, service-learning projects and student-led activities align with the overarching goals. this gap limits understanding of how non-formal learning complements formal education in fostering intercultural competencies. 2.2. the role of curriculum transformation in both formal and nonformal contexts, the goal is to develop intercultural and international competencies in all students. this applies regardless of their study abroad opportunities, areas of study or nationality. the literature on internationalizing higher education often emphasizes curriculum transformation (knight, 2020). the american council on education (ace) suggests that internationalizing the curriculum is the most effective strategy to ensure all students gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed in a rapidly globalizing world (green & shoenberg, 2018). stobie (2019) argues that such curricula prepare students for social and professional interactions in international contexts benefiting both domestic and international students (crossman & clarke, 2010). examples include curriculum transformation projects, innovative teaching strategies and assessment methods that incorporate local, national, and global perspectives. curriculum transformation (ct) is central to internationalization at home initiatives (green & shoenberg, 2018; mansilla & jackson, 2011) and often integrates interdisciplinary approaches such as problem-based learning (major & palmer, 2006). ct involves infusing international elements into course content, using global resources, and implementing culturally responsive methodologies (schuerholz-lehr, caws, van gyn, & preece, 2017). curriculum transformation (ct) is heralded as the centerpiece strategy for internationalization at home initiatives (appelbaum, friedler, ortiz, & wolff, 2009; green & shoenberg, 2006; mansilla & jackson, 2011) and is often associated with pedagogical approaches across disciplines such as problem-based learning (major & palmer, 2006). ct can be defined as “a process by which international elements are infused into course content, international resources are used in course readings and assignments and instructional methodologies appropriate to a culturally diverse student population are implemented” (schuerholz-lehr et al., 2017). ct implies representation of women and minorities in the curriculum (clark, 2002; hedges, 1996) alignment with diverse perspectives, attention to best practices for students with disabilities (ouellett, 2004) and adaptation of innovative curricular approaches (chasteen, perkins, beale, pollock, & wieman, 2011). emphasis on global perspectives highlights the following two core goals of ct: responsiveness to students from diverse cultural backgrounds and attention to all students for a 21st -century foundation of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. (clark, 2002; hedges, 1996). bates (2005) notes that internationalization of higher education is hegemonic as such it must be inclusive of social justice for individuals and groups on the margins of societies. the inclusion of intercultural competence is a point of reference. 2.3. intercultural competence and equity intercultural competence was defined as the integrated mix of pragmatic, pedagogical, and hermeneutic activities (bennett, 2015). the pragmatic emphasizes the development of students as intercultural speakers (byram, 1997) with the ability to communicate successfully and culturally appropriately in cross-cultural contexts (brislin & cushner, 1996; byram, 1997; fantini, 2000). the pedagogical dimension recognizes the skill of empathy for awareness and acceptance of multiple perspectives and diversity (gochenour, 1993; seelye, 1996). the hermeneutic dimension honors engagement with diverse cultures that provides students with multiple ways of viewing the world in contrast to their personal and individual cultural frame of reference (bennett, 2015; hammer, bennett, & wiseman, 2003). phipps (2010) describes teaching for “intercultural beings” as a process that “moves beyond culture with what students know about culture and reflects firmly on the symbolic and ethical significance of what they think they know.” themes of advocacy for international understanding among people are prominent and inclusive of the importance of learning languages and cultures to gain an understanding of others. the pedagogy of world languages and cultures serves as a means of communication and practice constructed by the ways participants understand themselves, their social spaces, histories, future possibilities and critiques that locate classroom practice within social visions and power structures (freire, 1970; giroux, 2024). phipps (2010) says that the outcome should include critical reflection on the defining categories of culture. 3. methods 3.1. research design and data collection this study was approved by the university of wyoming institutional review board protocol number 20171113dk01748, (2020). it was designed as a qualitative case study to examine the wlcp as a unique case within a rich detailed context. yin (2021) and merriam (2019) state that a case study is an empirical inquiry that aims at understanding a real-life phenomenon in its natural context where the distinction between the object of study and its context is not clear and which involves the use of a range of data sources. case study research questions are typically open-ended, exploratory and designed to gain deep understanding. the following two research questions were designed to answer how, why and if the wlcp, as a particular phenomenon was aligned with internationalization at home initiatives: 1. are there teacher pedagogical attributes that align with the practice of internationalization at home? 2. are there aspects of the wlcp that align with strategies for internationalization at home within the respective university community? these questions guided the data collection process and were flexible enough to allow researchers to adapt as new insights emerged. the critical lens of freire (1970) and freire (1978) informed the research process. freire (1970) maintained that traditionally defined objects of investigation were nonexistent. he involved participants as partners in the research process, becoming immersed in their ways of thinking and encouraging participants to ponder personal frames of reference. in this study, participants were included in the process of investigation, examination, and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 13-21 17 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group reinvestigation. following the stance of freire, participants were viewed as co-creators of knowledge through dialogue; meaning that everyone involved in the research process was encouraged to ask questions and openly express personal views. the focus was on the co-creation of meaning between researchers and participants (guba & lincoln, 2001). this stance allowed researchers to verify the interpretation of themes as participants reacted to, agreed with or corrected findings. the investigation was also defined as site-based research (stake, 2023) at the time of the study and the principal investigators served in wlcp leadership roles. strategies for maintaining objectivity included attention to reflexivity (trowler, 2011). emphasis on reflexivity meant that principal investigators engaged in self-reflection regarding biases that could have affected the study. trustworthiness was established with triangulation of multiple sources of data and member checks (jones, torres, & arminio, 2006). procedures for data collection were completed in sequential phases using a convenience sampling technique (stewart & shamdasani, 1990). consistent with the case study methodology (merriam, 2019; yin, 2021) multiple data sets included interviews, focus group discussions, a review of curriculum documents along with student work, a focus group field log, bimonthly researcher debriefing sessions and classroom observations. in-depth, semi-structured voicerecorded interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with fifteen wlcp service instructors. the development of the interview guide followed principles outlined by stewart and shamdasani (1990) as the funnel approach. interview procedures included an introduction to the discussion, an overview of the topic, ground rules, and the initial question. 3.2. participants participants included 15 wlcp teachers’ who were representative of diverse backgrounds, ages (26 to 54 years), and languages. they ranged from individuals who defined themselves as 1. long-time usa residents. 2. newly arrived international students, spouses, or community members. 3. shortterm study abroad students. 4. professionals with positions as k-12 teachers, university professors, department heads or center directors. at the time of the study, all participants had completed at least one semester of wlcp teaching. 3.3. data analysis the wlcp served as the primary unit of analysis with the investigation initially focusing on individual participants as distinct cases within the broader study. interviews were transcribed verbatim, and an initial set of codes and categories was developed to maintain consistency across the analysis. categories were expanded, and new emergent codes and categories were identified (bogdan & biklen, 1998; miles & huberman, 1994). the coding framework was refined by combining preliminary and emergent codes, reviewing each coded data segment to ensure alignment with the intended category description. the constant comparative method was employed to explore patterns across individual cases and broader trends (carmaz, 2006; merriam, 2019; stake, 2023). 4. results the findings of this study are organized into three distinct case scenarios. these scenarios are not intended to generalize the experiences of all wlcp instructors but rather to illustrate a range of diverse ideas, strategies, and teaching approaches observed within the wlcp. each scenario serves as a focused snapshot of the wlcp providing an in-depth perspective on participants' pedagogical practices and their unique contributions. 4.1. case scenario one: the innovative instructor the innovative teacher participants immigrated to the usa with a spouse or for professional opportunities. at the time of the study, nearly all were experienced professionals trained in various social science and natural science disciplines. they had terminal degrees from european and asian countries; a few studied in the usa but most completed degrees before settling in the area. all were multilingual and used english as a second or third language. many participants noted that experience with various cultures both within the usa and in other parts of the world influenced their approach to teaching wlcp courses. they expressed commitment to developing lessons that expose students to intercultural competence. using language to focus on culture is an effective way of creating natural exposure to both language and cultural sensitivity. i want to immerse students including beginning-level students because this is where we begin with the largest groups in cross-cultural issues through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. i want to go beyond exposure to the world. students should develop a perspective for the global (xio-2). a common teaching strategy among these participants was the use of authentic materials and hot topics to engage students and provide interactions with target languages and cultures. participants defined themselves as innovative based on their confidence in course development. they engaged with students to create curricula and relied on insider perspectives of language and culture to develop lessons about popular music, food, city life, and multiple perspectives of global current events. participants rejected an authoritative stance with students preferring to create a collaborative classroom climate conducive to curriculum topics of mutual interest. participants’ professional confidence and the cultural narratives they shared shaped a contemporary body of knowledge, attitudes and skills within the following three domains of pedagogy: cognitive, affective, and participatory. the cognitive provided content learning about the history, geography, ecological needs, and community efforts at work in target cultures. as world events unfolded, participants used their foundation of history and geography to help students interpret actions from the target language/cultural perspective. participants also used controversial issues from personal life experiences to foster critical thinking for real-world issues. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 13-21 18 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the goals of effective and participatory pedagogy involved the cultivation of intercultural competence through a balance of experiential learning and classroom interaction. these interactions included classroom experiences that offered dynamic ways to frame problems. participants explained that whether or not students embraced classroom experiences was secondary to their strengthened ability to think reflectively, discover insights about themselves, and develop global perspectives. a desire to internationalize the wlcp curriculum through interaction with students and other instructors was a priority. participants collaborated on a variety of initiatives including creating and revising curriculum and providing support for less experienced wlcp teachers. they appreciated the freedom to develop wlcp courses. many viewed it as respect and validation for their backgrounds and their role as instructors committed to tailoring curricula to each group of students. 4.2. case scenario two: cultural flare instructor nearly all of the cultural flare instructor participants were in the process of applying to or registering in usa universities for graduate level study. many were english as foreign language (efl) instructors who relied on prior teaching experience to develop wlcp courses. participants noted the importance of a toolbox of strategies to emphasize what students could demonstrate upon completion of their courses. they defined themselves as facilitators of wlcp courses to project the idea that instructor expertise was valued as one element among many in wlcp classrooms. a common theme among these participants was inspiring students to think broadly about the world. this was evident for those who identified as experienced educators regardless of the target language; they noted broad implications for supporting students to act globally. one participant explained that her decision to participate in the wlcp sprung from her desire to prepare university-level students to reflect on personal cultural perspectives. i wanted to shake it up. i wanted to do something that engaged. to start to question them, to start to reflect on their own beliefs and where their own beliefs have come from because i believe that the only way that they’re going to start to rethink those beliefs (xxi-1). participants defined the wlcp as a community within the larger university setting to gain professional teaching experience while also challenging students to be aware of personal beliefs, cultures, and perspectives. some suggested that university-level students did not have experience with others who were culturally different or with languages other than english. they reported that some wlcp students were not curious or knowledgeable about the world. and yeah, it is a concern. i mean, how can you be in the moment with people who come from around the world if you don't know anything about the world? if i can accomplish one goal, it's for them to become curious so that if they interact with someone from my country which is different from where we are right now, they might decide to google it to find out about my religion, history, culture and place in the world (xxx-5). participants noted important components to develop wlcp students’ intercultural competence detailed as culture-specific knowledge especially a deeper understanding of worldviews, historical contexts and other influences on culture. all participants agreed that it was essential to be able to understand the world from others’ perspectives. participants reported that serving as wlcp teachers provided meaningful experiences through sharing and being made aware of new resources by other teachers and the international community in general. many noted a positive relationship between quality teaching and honest open cooperation among teachers as a wlcp team. as an example, participants often changed or modified the wlcp course curriculum based on suggestions and ideas generated by other instructors. 4.3. case scenario three: newcomer instructor the newcomer teacher participants were recent arrivals to the university and often to the usa. some were exchange students with plans to stay for a maximum of two semesters. they had unique challenges, given their limited experience with the usa system of higher education and less exposure to english speaking communities. at the time of the study, all newcomer teacher participants began wlcp teaching as tutors working with small groups of students. some reported that the initial goal of wlcp teachers was to gain experience with the structure, culture, and operation of usa university classrooms and students. all noted that the usa system was very different and thus the goal was to step out of their comfort zones and get acquainted as soon as possible. participants outlined numerous benefits based on service as wlcp teachers. the most commonly cited benefits were opportunities to network and expand professional communities. this mostly happened through interactions with wlcp instructors in group settings. i learnt that people are doing some interesting stuff on campus in the wlcp. they're spending time with people from other countries. they’re doing a lot of interesting work that’s connected to other countries and they have these relationships with others on campus that are from all over the world. if i hadn't been in the wlcp i probably wouldn't have known about this (xii-1). serving as wlcp teachers gave participants transparency; they reported a sense of belonging. this was important given that some reported feeling isolated as the only person on campus from their home country or region. these case scenarios emphasize key pedagogical attributes that define teacher approaches, particularly how these attributes align with and support the concept of fostering internationalization at home. this involves integrating global and intercultural dimensions into the wlcp classroom context, providing students with meaningful opportunities to engage with diverse perspectives without requiring international mobility. scenarios illustrate innovative strategies instructors use to create inclusive, globally aware learning environments by framing the findings through these attributes. they demonstrate the wlcp's potential to enhance intercultural competence and global understanding at the local level. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 13-21 19 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. implications the aim of this study was to explore the practice of internationalization at home within the wlcp as a nonformal university initiative. the wlcp was defined as a culturally inclusive space on a university campus with a shared bond of teaching and learning world languages and cultures among international and local students, staff, and faculty. participants’ varied backgrounds, experiences, and professional characters meant that the wlcp embodied diverse worldviews, teaching styles, knowledge, languages, cultures and life experiences. this composite was the thread that characterized the wlcp as a cop to foster strategies for interaction between international and local students, faculty, and staff. the wlcp models intentional inclusion of international and intercultural teaching and learning within nonformal curricula in a purposeful way. the essence of the wlcp as a cop was an essential strategy to bring all instructors together with commitment for ongoing professional development. even seasoned instructor participants who studied and had professional lives in other countries needed support in adapting and understanding internationalization practice within the local intercultural contexts of a united states university campus. hence, ongoing professional development for international at home initiatives such as the wlcp should be supported and viewed as a critical feature. this implies that adding or infusing random internationalized curriculum elements or electives are insufficient for universities that strive to be globally minded. consideration of the wlcp as a strategy for internationalization at home means that it should be valued as a channel of university efforts. engagement with university stakeholders is important for accountability as well as for recognition and transparency of the wlcp within the larger knowledge base of internationalization. this means that a range of stakeholders across the university should be engaged with nonformal initiatives as viable components of the internationalization agenda. this might include international officers, educational developers, and faculty administrators. 5.1. wlcp alignment: strategies for internationalization at home the presence of the wlcp as a non-formal teaching initiative on a university campus validated the international community as a group of leaders and as a point of contact for bringing the local and international communities together. this is noteworthy given that international students are among the most valuable yet underutilized resources on united states university campuses. international students represent the academic elite of their home countries but are often invisible within the wider campus communities of united states host institutions (bates, 2005). their roles as wlcp service teachers provided transparency for diverse professional and personal life experiences that represent assets for the university. participants’ responsibilities as wlcp teachers gave them a voice as well as an invitation to actively participate as members of the university community. implications suggest that the wlcp provides an alternative model of possibilities to enhance strategies for internationalization at home. participants embodied critical perspectives noted here as the disruption of authority; in classroom settings they assumed active roles in collaboration with students in what freire (1970) refers to as transforming the world. teacher involvement is key to internationalization efforts (allan & estler, 2020) yet often there are just a few teachers identified as specialists or as the go to people for internationalization. they are appointed to teach the internationalized curriculum serve on international committees and lead study abroad programs. in contrast, the wlcp provides a model for the importance of internationalization spread throughout the faculty and student body as a collective initiative that is fluid with the ability to develop as a standard of practice. in a nutshell, the wlcp lends substantial strength to the importance of non-formal initiatives across the institution. it highlights that learning takes place within formal classroom settings but also across informal and non-formal initiatives. the wlcp highlights the value of a local intercultural context as a powerful vehicle for transformational learning similar to that achieved through international mobility. this is supported by research noting that international experiences play a crucial role in cultivating transferable and marketable skills (crossman & clarke, 2010). 5.2. wlcp instructor attributes aligned with internationalization at home research suggests that intercultural competence cannot be acquired in a short amount of time or one course (bennett, 2015). rather, as exemplified by participants, it is a process that needs to be nurtured and addressed explicitly. participants modeled intercultural competence exemplifying various knowledge, skills and attitudes that illustrated to students the behaviors and communication styles that are both effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions. in this respect, participants were learner-oriented. using the study of culture and language as a classroom vehicle integrates the experiences and knowledge of all students. teaching activities and assignments were designed to stimulate exchange and collaboration among students whether they were united states or international; participants’ pedagogical stance did not depend on the presence of international students. rather they motivated students to seek the intercultural as well as the international through the study of language and culture. this stance offered all students global perspectives regardless of their program of study or whether or not they were preparing for study abroad. participants’ diverse perspectives contribute to an internationalized campus that embraces teaching about the differences and similarities of people worldwide. including participants as active agents in their own learning led to confidence in their abilities for understanding issues of culture. it also led to a high comfort level for discussing controversial issues in the classroom and embracing intercultural communication as fundamental to the core content of their courses. the wlcp broadened participants’ thinking about current and future endeavors in support of their service within the university community. participation in the wlcp transformed the way they thought about the content of their courses and the outcomes for students. participants with a variety of perspectives on the purpose, goals, and importance of internationalization could be viewed as advocates and ambassadors for internationalization https://www.eaie.org/blog/international-officers-finding-role-internationalisation-home.html asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 13-21 20 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group efforts at the institutional level. these participants might continue to engage with internationalization in their future endeavors both while in the united states and beyond. 6. limitations despite the promising potential, this case study research is not without limitations. foremost is its lack of generalizability. the focus on a detailed, context-specific case may have overlooked broader trends or patterns that could be identified through quantitative research. the research design was heavily influenced by the unique conditions of the particular setting further limiting the applicability of the conclusions to other institutions or regions. this limitation includes the findings that may not apply to broader university populations in different contexts. the specific demographics and cultural stance of the participants could have influenced the findings, making it difficult to extrapolate the results to other groups in other university communities. the sample size is likely too small to account for variability in experiences, reducing the ability to make inferences applicable to larger or more diverse populations. broadening the geographical scope of research could enrich the understanding of internationalization at home application and implications. this might encompass the lived experiences of students, staff and faculty in both formal and non-formal internationalization at home initiatives. researchers might begin with questions addressing the challenges they face, and how the respective programs impact their intercultural growth and academic engagement. 7. conclusion in conclusion, implications offer a rich context for research-driven understanding of what can be gained from non-formal university initiatives such as the wlcp to inform and enhance internationalization at home. implications contribute to the landscape of meanings and strategies associated with internationalization at home at the level of practice. the wlcp is a reminder that collaboration across university communities is a prerequisite for the resources and information necessary to mentor and guide all students toward creating and sustaining a globally minded university community. faculty, staff and students are called to reach beyond the formal classroom, to explore available resources with interested others in developing internationalized university communities on local levels. the potential of non-formal initiatives like the wlcp encourages a shift from viewing internationalization as an exclusively classroom-based endeavor to recognizing the value of community-wide engagement. this collaborative approach ensures that internationalization efforts are inclusive, accessible, and impactful, fostering an environment where students and staff alike are empowered to develop global perspectives that create university communities that are interconnected and responsive. universities can contribute meaningfully to the preparation of students for an increasingly interconnected world through such concerted efforts. references åberg, p. 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(2021). case study research and applications: design and methods (6th ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-004-1391-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2009.06.015 https://www.uwyo.edu/president/index.html https://doi.org/10.1080/10665680490453977 https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315313496572 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.12.002 https://www.academia.edu/10275988/researching_your_own_institution https://www.uwyo.edu/president/ https://hdl.handle.net/1794/11736 169 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 3, 169-178, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.169.178 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group vertical articulation and content relevance of the senior high school economics curriculum: case of ghana bernard yaw sekyi acquah1 anthony akwesi owusu2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of business and social sciences education, university of cape coast, ghana. abstract the school curriculum is often the formal document designed for teachers to treat topics that allow for the impartation of knowledge and the development of competencies that prepare students for further studies. achieving this depends mainly on its content structure and sequencing. the aim of this study is two-fold: to find the extent of vertical articulation of topics in the economics syllabus that makes it possible for the syllabus to achieve its purpose of preparing students for further studies; and to explore the extent to which the syllabus is up-to-date and relevant in dealing with current economic issues. document analysis was used to analyse the syllabus, while eight (8) service teachers purposively selected were interviewed. the study found that the shs economics curriculum lacked vertical content articulation regarding the learning competencies for forms 1 to 3. also, the interviews revealed that the curriculum is not up-to-date though relevant since many evolving economic concepts have not been captured. the study supports the call for curriculum change and alignment of content to improve its vertical articulation and coherence and its currency and relevance in helping to equip students with the requisite knowledge and fundamental economic tools for their daily survival. keywords: syllabus, economics curriculum, vertical articulation, content relevance, senior high school. citation | bernard yaw sekyi acquah; anthony akwesi owusu (2021). vertical articulation and content relevance of the senior high school economics curriculum: case of ghana. asian journal of education and training, 7(3): 169-178. history: received: 24 may 2021 revised: 18 june 2021 accepted: 9 july 2021 published: 4 august 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 170 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 171 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 172 4. discussions ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 177 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 177 6. recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................................... 177 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 178 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.169.178&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/3172 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6273-063x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6880-094x asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 170 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper contributes by filling the gap in the literature on the extent to which the economics curriculum for ghana provides students the necessary skills for further study of economics and also how well the content is up-to-date in responding to economic issues in the country. specifically, the study provides scientific evidence on the extent to which the content of the shs economics curriculum is vertically articulated and the extent of its relevance to the socioeconomic realities of ghanaian life. the paper’s finding provides the impetus for curricula review debates that can lead to the formulation of policy to keep the curriculum germane and in congruence with global economic changes. 1. introduction articulation, either vertical or horizontal, refers to the interconnectedness of concepts within a curriculum (kannan, 2016). there is vertical articulation when the lessons to be taken in a subject are related to those occurring later in the curriculum sequence, implying the organisation of content according to the sequence and continuity of learning within a given subject domain. a balance between the vertical and horizontal articulation of the curriculum helps the learners gain knowledge and utilise it to achieve their goals (kannan, 2016). the content standards of the curriculum continue to change tremendously to meet the principal demands of globalisation defies and meeting the needs of modern technological-based society (morales, 2017). however, any exercise that prioritises the redesign of curricula content without recourse to students’ needs and interests could harm their future learning aspirations. the school curriculum is usually designed around topics that allow for developing competencies as students master the principles and standards in increasing complexity (de-juanas oliva, martín del pozo, & pesquero franco, 2016). the present study focuses on how the topics and learning competencies in the shs economics syllabus are sequentially arranged across three forms in a progressive spiral manner. gibbs (2014) explained that the spiral curriculum designs seen in most schools’ curricula, despite covering many topics, do not enhance the acquisition of basic economic concepts that promote understanding of higher-level concepts. experience has shown that students often lose ground in grasping concepts central to further studies in a particular discipline. economics is a necessary subject of study because it explains the allocation of scarce resources among alternative and competing ends to satisfy human wants (allocation of scarce resources, 2013). spash (2002) also states that economics is worthy of study because it makes it easier to institute practical measures to promote welfare. some scholars in economics see it as a social subject, while others have aligned it to the pure sciences. in ghana, students get to study economics when they get to senior high school. even at this level, not all students choose to study the subject. the reason is that, as an elective subject, only students offering the general arts programme and home economics (depending on the subject combination), and students offering business programmes have the chance to study economics. students who pursue general arts and business programmes with elective subject combinations such as geography, government, elective mathematics (e-maths) among other subject disciplines. generally, all students who pursue programmes in business also study economics. the rationale for teaching economics in senior high schools in ghana is to ensure that the subject “helps to provide an effective framework for individuals, firms and governments to identify their basic economic problems, and make necessary decisions and policies for raising the living standards of people and societies” (teaching syllabus for economics, 2010). the study of economics aids the individual to develop skills for managing his/her economic resources efficiently both in the family and in business. (shahrokh, 1998). vertical articulation of the curriculum refers to the set competencies taught to students in one lesson, course, or grade level that prepares them for the next level of study with higher competencies. a vertically articulate curriculum is one in which learning in one lesson, topic or subject, or grade level prepares students for the next lesson, topic or subject, or form/class. in vertical articulation, teaching is purposefully structured and logically sequenced so that students are learning the knowledge and skills that will progressively prepare them for more challenging, higher-level tasks. curriculum mapping helps to ascertain the extent to which contents are logically sequenced across class/form levels such that students’ previous learning is built on by subsequent learning in a progressive manner, thereby preparing students for more challenging, higher-level academic tasks (curriculum mapping, 2018). lack of vertical articulation of the curriculum could hamper the curriculum’s aim of further equipping students with the necessary economic skills to pursue further economics studies. there is, therefore, a need to find out the vertical articulation of the curriculum. questions for exploration include, by what degree are topics which are introduced from the early year (form 1) reinforced in year two (form 2), and reinforced in the final year (form 3) till the concepts are mastered. figure 1 illustrates a conceptual theorisation of the study. it predicts that all other things being equal when topics from the initial schooling years of students are reinforced in the ensuing school years, economic concepts are properly mastered, paving the way for acquiring the essential skills for studying economics at the tertiary level. in this case, the curriculum may be described as having the spiral property and, therefore, fit-for-purpose, not meriting a review. in contrast, if the topics do not find reinforcement in the subsequent years, then the curriculum lacks the spiral property, which implies that concepts are not reinforced and mastered, making it impractical to equipping students with the skills for further development study of economics. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 171 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-1. a theorized conceptual framework of the study. 1.1. problem economics education has clear goals to produce economically empowered citizens with critical thinking and problem-solving skills to help deal with the many economic challenges of ghana. the syllabus makes it explicit that high school economics is intended to “further equip students with the basic tools required for further studies in the subject” (teaching syllabus for economics, 2010). as long as ghana remains a sovereign state, she needs her citizens to be economically literate. the problem is that the number of students willing to enrol for further studies in economics at the tertiary level continues to decrease (marangos, fourmouzi, & koukouritakis, 2013). this worrying phenomenon has been blamed on students’ weak foundation in the subject at the shs level. one way to equip students with skills to study economics further is to ensure that the subject’s content possesses vertical articulation allowing for mastery of concepts. the curriculum’s ability to equip students to study economics at the tertiary level further is key to the quest for the socio-economic development of the country. again, the curriculum needs to be “up-to-date and relevant” in tackling the numerous evolving economic issues (paraskeva, 2020). in this regard, we posed two vital questions: to what extent does the content of the shs economics curriculum possess vertical articulation, thus being able to prepare students for further studies in economics? can the shs economics curriculum be said to be up-to-date and relevant in tackling the numerous evolving economic challenges confronting ghana? these important issues have been largely unexplored in ghana and africa as a whole, hence our motivation to conduct this study. 1.2. theoretical underpinning the spiral curriculum of the cognitive theory jerome bruner developed was strengthened by gibbs (2014) study. the spiral curriculum, which entails the regular re-visiting of educational topics throughout a student’s education, was the approach we used. as long as curricula content is re-visited, the student gains a profound understanding of concepts, the benefit of which is the reinforcement of information leading to mastery of knowledge. through spiralling, topics in the curriculum are taught over and over. re-engaging already taught materials repeatedly consolidates learning based on prior knowledge and helps students build knowledge over time. bruner explained that young learners could comprehend the most complex material if those materials are properly structured and presented spirally. he explained that the spiral curriculum is based on certain principles that include re-visiting topics, themes many times, making learning cyclical; increasing the complexity of topics or themes with each re-visit, increasing learning in-depth; and making a new relationship with old learning. this makes prior knowledge critical in learning. the importance of the careful arrangement of topics and competencies in a spiral manner has been documented in the literature (brooks, 2010; kilic, 2014). each time information is introduced and re-visited, the material learnt is reinforced and solidified (kridel, 2010; masters & gibbs, 2007). although there is no clear research evidence of the overall effects of the spiral curriculum on student learning, it has been touted as improving student learning outcomes (herrick, jacob, & richardson, 2003). despite its advantages, the spiral curriculum has also been heavily criticised for being time-consuming. 2. method investigators used the qualitative design approach, which is aligned with the case study tradition. the design was made evaluative to allow for the appraisal of the vertical articulation of the shs economic curriculum content. the current research design helped investigators conduct the study on evaluating the implementation of the shs economics curriculum in ghana. the reason for the choice of this design was a concern by the investigators to obtain answers to whether, per the vertical structure of the content of the syllabus, it is able to asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 172 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group build skills and competencies in students for them to pursue further studies in economics to the higher level, notwithstanding the criticism that this research design is subjective. the study explored the shs economics curriculum relative to its content and sequence of learning competencies adjusted to the spiral progression approach of increasing complexity across various forms from form 1 to form 3. to do this, we used document analysis via curriculum mapping of the syllabus to ascertain whether there was a discrepancy or gap in the standards and competencies, which hampers the successful enactment of the intended curriculum by teachers (li & harfitt, 2016). document analysis is a systematic procedure for revising or assessing printed or electronic documents. like any analytical method in qualitative research, it entails examining and interpreting data to get an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon (bowen, 2009). in this study, investigators examined the economics syllabus, which contains text (words) and images recorded in the written curriculum. the purpose for choosing to use this method was to enable investigators to triangulate or combine this method with other qualitative methods to study the phenomenon of vertical articulation that leads to coherence (bowen, 2009). we drew upon this method through curriculum mapping and an interview session (conducting research interviews, 2015) to seek convergence and corroboration through these different data sources. the triangulation of data helped the researchers to provide ‘a union of evidence that warrants credibility’. the investigators corroborated the findings across data sets through the methodological triangulation, thereby reducing the suspicion of possible biases existent in single studies (bowen, 2009). this curriculum analysis approach was also used to determine the consistency and alignment of competencies along with the content areas across all forms. through document analysis, investigators were able to identify the flaws and the misalignments of the competencies of the shs economics curriculum in addition to the overall coherence of a course of study (key competence standards of local college students, 2020). the present study focused on the vertical articulation of the content of the shs economics curriculum across all forms from form 1 to form 3. also, we interviewed eight (8) purposively selected in-service shs economics teachers (4 males, 2 females). the selection was based on teaching experience (those who had taught for more than five years) in the teaching service and resident in cape coast, central region. to ensure confidentially, we assigned them pseudonyms (int1, int2, int3, int4, int5, int6, int7, int8). through informed formal consent, we sought their permissions to partake in the study voluntarily. 3. results document analysis of the syllabus research question 1: to what extent does content of the shs economics curriculum possess vertical articulation? document analysis through concept mapping and interviews helped investigators to answer this research question. the syllabus was the main document that was analysed. first, the research question(s) were formulated and the syllabus was obtained and the necessary contents were sampled. the contents were transposed into tables, preparing them for analysis. we then developed a codebook based on which the contents were unitised and coded. we described the content and compared the contents between the documents under analysis. finally, we reported and summarised the qualitative findings with the use of quotations, paraphrases or other references in the text (syllabus extract). the learning competencies in each of the content areas, namely, the price theory (demand) was introduced in forms 1. 2, and 3. there are key stage standards of economics, as shown in table 1, which are based on year 1, year 2, and year 3 (shs 1, shs 2, and shs 3). the key stage standards emphasise both the content and performance standards requirements that the student needs to perform with the aid of the appropriate instructional resources that promote the acquisition of 21st-century skills. they also guide the economic knowledge, skills, and values that the students should demonstrate at the end of the year. to “describe” something after it has been taught implies student acquisition of “knowledge”. to explain, summarise, give examples, etc., implies student understanding of the material taught. but to describe the behaviour using “understand” shows that the performance behaviour is not behavioural and measurable. one cannot measure the extent to which the student understands. likewise, developing, planning, constructing, etc., implies the ability of students to create, innovate, or synthesise knowledge. as seen, every one of the specific objectives in the syllabus holds an “action verb” which describes the behaviour that the student should demonstrate following an instruction. analysis of the content also shows that in the first year, it is anticipated that students go through ‘the fundamental concepts in economics, ‘factors of production, economic systems (economies), ‘price theory’ (demand), and ‘price theory’ (supply). in the second year, students study ‘the theory of production’, ‘prices of factors of production, ‘the theory of costs and revenue’, ‘distributive trade’, ‘the theory of consumer behaviour’, ‘the national income accounting and determination’, and ‘agriculture and industry’. in the third year, ‘money and financial institutions’, ‘public finance’, ‘international trade’, ‘economic co-operation’, ‘economic development planning’, and ‘contemporary economic issues’. like all the years, there are a set of learning competencies associated with 21 performance standards that students are taught and expected to perform at the end of the first year. in the second year, the learning competencies are associated with 31 performance standards, while there are 25 performance outcomes that students are expected to perform at the end of each academic year. the use of “understand” as a performance indicator appears eleven (11) times in the first year, 16 times in the second year, and 12 times in the third year. one distinctive feature of the current economics curriculum is the latent continuity and sequencing of economic concepts or themes. the themes appear to be logically sequenced to understand concepts. table 2 highlights the detailed distribution of the learning competencies for the three-year shs economics curriculum for the three forms. the learning competencies are organised and sequentially arranged. still, these are not spiral in nature to allow for progression where students build on the previously learnt concepts to perform the required skills and values based on form-level standards. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 173 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-1. key stage standards of the shs economics curriculum. stage key stage standards shs 1 fundamental concepts in economics: at the end of this lesson, the student is expected to: 1. understand the basic principles of the management of scarce resources 2. understand the meaning of economics 3. appreciate the scope of economic activity 4. recognise the classification and contributions of various economic activities 5. appreciate the use of statistical tools in economic analysis. factors of production (kinds of resources or inputs) general objectives: the student will: 1. understand the types of factors of production and their meanings. 2. appreciate the importance of the availability of various factors of production 3. be aware of various population and labour issues. 4. recognise and understand the various business units and their advantages and disadvantages. economic systems (economies) general objectives: the student will: 1. understand various economic systems and how they perform their functions 2. be aware of the different types of unemployment, their causes and remedies. price theory (demand) general objectives: the student will: 1. understand the importance of prices in decision making by consumers and producers 2. be aware of the meaning of demand and the factors determining demand. 3. understand and identify the various types of elasticity of demand and their importance. price theory (supply) general objectives: the student will: 1. understand the meaning of supply and the factors determining it. 2. appreciate the concept of elasticity of supply, its measurement, the factors affecting it and its importance. 3. understand the concept of equilibrium price and how it is determined. 4. understand simple algebraic equations of demand and supply and their solutions. 5. understand the meaning of various forms of price control and why governments intervene to regulate prices. 6. be aware of other methods of determining prices, including socialist pricing. shs 2 the theory of production at the end of the second year, the student will: 1. understand the meaning of production and productivity and the factors affecting productivity in agriculture and industry.. 2. appreciate the relevance of various time periods in production and the operation of the law of diminishing returns. 3. understand the concepts of returns to an input, returns to scale and the factors determining the size of the firm. 4. recognise the difference between location and localisation of industries and their advantages and disadvantages. 5. appreciate the difference between specialisation and division of labour and their advantages and disadvantages 6. understand the concepts of labour and capital intensive methods of production and how a choice is made between them. prices of factors of production general objectives: the students will: 1. appreciate the factors that determine the demand for a factor of production. 2. appreciate the factors that determine the supply of a factor of production. the theory of costs and revenue general objectives: the student will: 1. understand various cost and revenue concepts and their relationships 2. recognise the characteristics of the various market structures. 3. appreciate the objectives of firms and understand how firms attain equilibrium in various market structures. 4. understand the concept of price discrimination and the conditions under which it is possible and profitable. distributive trade general objectives: the student will: 1. recognise the various methods of distribution and their problems. 2. appreciate the need for agencies of distribution. 3. understand the functions of wholesalers and retailers in distribution. 4. appreciate the problems in the distributive trade and understand their remedies. the theory of consumer behaviour general objectives: the student will: 1. appreciate the various utility concepts and their relationships. 2. understand the concept of consumer equilibrium. 3. appreciate the relationship between marginal utility and the demand curve. 4. understand the use of indifference curves in explaining the income and substitution effects of a change in price. 5. understand why normally, price varies inversely with the quantity of a commodity demanded by an individual consumer. the national income accounting and determination general objectives: the students will: 1. understand the circular flow of the national income and the various methods of measurement 2. appreciate the uses of national income data and their limitations. 3. understand the meaning and components of aggregate expenditure. 4. understand the concept of equilibrium national income 5. understand the calculation of the multiplier. 6. be aware of the distinction between economic growth and economic development. agriculture and industry general objectives: the student will: 1. appreciate the role of agriculture in the economy of ghana, and its problems and remedies. 2. understand the importance, difficulties and strategies of industrialisation in ghana. shs 3 money and financial institutions at the end of the third year, the student will: 1. understand what money is and its functions in an economy 2. understand the factors that determine the internal value of money 3. recognise various financial institutions and their contributions to economic development in west african countries. public finance general objectives: the student will: 1. be aware of the socio-economic activities of the government. 2. understand the structure or components of government expenditure. 3. recognise the sources of revenue for government. 4. appreciate the effect of the budget and the management of the national debt on economic development. international trade general objectives: the student will: 1. recognise the need for countries to trade among themselves 2. understand some terms used in international trade 3. understand the problems faced by ldcs in international trade and their solutions. 4. appreciate changes in the composition and direction of the external trade of west african countries. 5. understand exchange rates and their determination. economic co-operation general objectives: the student will: 1. appreciate different forms of economic co-operation 2. understand the importance of economic co-operation as an instrument for achieving growth and development 3. appreciate the problems of economic coasian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 174 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group operation. 4. understand the roles of some international economic organisations in the economic development of countries. economic development planning general objectives: the students will be able to: 1. understand the meaning of economic development planning 2. appreciate the main objectives of economic development planning. 3. be aware of the types of time frames in development planning. 4. understand the necessity of development planning and the problems encountered during the formulation and implementation of development plans. contemporary economic issues general objectives: the students will be able to: 1. understand african growth and opportunity act (agoa) and its relevance to the ghanaian economy. 2. appreciate the new partnership for african development (nepad) and its relevance to the ghanaian economy 3. recognise the role of the ghana national petroleum corporation (gnpc) in the oil industry of ghana 4. appreciate the contribution of petroleum to the economy of ghana 5. understand the problems and prospects of petroleum in ghana. source: teaching syllabus for economics (2010) table-2. distribution of shs economics learning competencies from form 1 to form 3. profile dimensions forms understand appreciate recognise be aware shs 1 11 4 2 4 shs 2 16 11 3 1 shs 3 12 7 4 2 gaining an understanding of the basic principles of the ‘management of scarce resources, the meaning of economics provides the necessary skills for understanding the types of factors of production. additionally, the previous skills also reinforce student understanding of economic systems (economies) and subsequently the price theories of demand and supply. form 1 students are expected to demonstrate an understanding of ‘fundamental concepts in economics’; ‘factors of production’; ‘economic systems’; and ‘price theory’ (demand and supply) through hands-on activities, discussions, and teacher-guide activities. students develop an understanding of the content through the instructional activities, which serves as a precursor for form 2 work. students in form 2 are expected to adopt a more robust approach to analyse complex economic phenomena. students here are required to demonstrate an understanding of ‘the theory of production’, ‘prices of factors of production’, ‘the theory of costs and revenue’, ‘the theory of consumer behaviour’, ‘the national income accounting and determination’, and ‘agriculture and industry. the syllabus suggests several teaching strategies for teachers, some of which include explanations, leading of students to appreciate concepts, providing their data, for instance on mp, tp and ap at various levels of employment of a variable input, use of discussion the data with students and leading them to suggest definitions of the concepts. some of the strategies help students to develop and assimilate higher-order concepts and analytical abilities (shahrokh, 1998) that they require to study different scales of production in the succeeding units. the key learning competencies reinforce subsequent contents. students in form 3 are expected to demonstrate an understanding of ‘money and financial institutions’, ‘public finance’, ‘international trade’, ‘economic co-operation’, ‘economic development planning’, and ‘contemporary economic issues’. clearly, there is no vertical linkage between the previous year’s content and the succeeding year’s topics. the essential content topics areas are expected to be introduced in form 1 to further form form 3. the student is supposed to be exposed to various tasks. table 3 portrays the sequencing of the content in all fifteen topics in the three-year shs economics programme. the figure sheds light on the introduction and reinforcement of those topics as students’ progress through the academic years. teachers introduce topics depending on what the students have already acquired, such as the introductory concepts (scarcity, choice, scale of preference, and opportunity cost) in shs 1 since they lead students to define economics. in form 1, the concept of price is introduced, and this concept is reinforced indirectly with price discrimination in form 2. after reinforcements of the concept of price, this paves the way for introducing conditions under which price discrimination thrives. a reinforcement of the concept deepens mastery of skills. the introduction of a topic is done when the teacher presents concepts for the first time. preferably, topics that are introduced in form 1 must be reinforced when it is re-introduced in a different manner. it needs to have more practise drills to help students deepen their understanding of novel concepts and correct their notional errors and delusions about earlier concepts. a mastery of the content is a demonstration of students’ firm understanding of the concepts. as one can see, all other things being equal, students master the concepts of demand and supply since they are reinforced as they move from one level to the other. interview results on research question 1 a majority of the teacher-informants, six (6) of them, intimated that they do not see a vertical articulation in the content of the syllabus because just a few of the concepts are progressively sequenced in the syllabus. for example, one of the teachers in the metropolis had this to say, “the topics that need to be treated are too many to be covered in the entire school year.” [int3]. another one [int1] stated, “many of the contents are taught once and never retaught; [int7] also stated, “there is [not] many areas we can describe as vertically articulated”. the majority believed that the structure of the topics makes it difficult for students to build on previous topics progressively. this they said impacted negatively on students’ ability to grasp concepts and making it possible to prepare them for higher learning of economics. one [int8] stated, “i don’t think the structure of the contents make students master concepts’ rather i think many concepts and competencies are not mastered as students’ progress to higher levels”. the intention of the spiral curriculum to allow the students to learn economics by building on their initial skills at lower levels was nonexistent. given this, many of the teachers stated that the situation perhaps was responsible for the low enrolments in economics at the higher level. one said, “at the higher level, not many students want to do economics because they [students] may not have been adequately prepared for higher-level economics”[int2]. another [int4] also stated that, “…but i believe many are afraid to do higher-level economics due to fear resulting from inadequate preparation” clearly, the asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 175 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group submissions suggest that the content of the syllabus does not have vertical articulation that allows for the equipping of students to pursue further studies in economics. table-3. a mapping of content topics in the shs economics syllabus. content topics in the syllabus forms shs 1 shs 2 shs 3 1. fundamental concepts in economics 1.1 introductory concepts 1.2 scope of economic activity:production and distribution 1.3 tools of economic analysis 2. factors of production (kinds of resources or inputs) 2.1 land and labour 2.2 trade unions and other related concepts 2.3 population 2.4 capital 2.5 entrepreneurship/enterprise 2.6 types of business units for mobilizing resources 3. economic systems (economies) 3.1 economic systems 3.2 unemployment and underemployment 4. price theory (demand 4.1 the concept of price 4.2 the concept of demand 4.2.1 effective demand 4.2.2 the law of demand 4.2.3 demand schedule/ curve 4.3 types of demand 4.4 factors determining demand 4.5 elasticity of demand 4.6 factors affecting own price elasticity of demand 4.6.1 importance of various types of elasticity of demand 5. price theory (supply) 5.1 the concept of supply 5.2 types of supply 5.3 factors determining supply 5.4 concept of price elasticity of supply 5.4.1 calculating/measuring the price elasticity of supply 5.5 factors affecting the price elasticity of supply 5.6 determination of prices and quantities and changes in them 5.6. 1 concept of equilibrium price and quantity 5.7 introduction to algebraic equations of demand and supply 5.8 price controls (price regulations) maximum /minimum price legislation) 6 the theory of production 6.1 the concept of production 6.2 time periods in production 6.3 location of industries 6.4 labour intensive and capital intensive methods of production 6.5 appropriate technology in the ldcs 7. prices of factors of production 7.1 factors determining the demand for a factor of production 7.2 factors determining the supply of a factor of production 7.3. economies and diseconomies 8. the theory of costs and revenue 8.1 revenue concepts 8.2 the concept of a market and market structures 8.3 objectives of firms, equilibrium of a firm and of an industry 8.4 price discrimination 9. distributive trade 9.1 methods of distribution 9.2 agencies and channels of distribution 9.3 problems of internal distribution asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 176 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 10. the theory of consumer behaviour 10.1 the utility concepts and the law of diminishing marginal utility 10.2 equilibrium of a consumer 10.3 substitution and income effects 11. the national income accounting and determination 11.1 the concept and measurement of the national income 11.2 gross domestic product (gdp) and related concepts 11.3 the concept of the level of living and the standard of living 11.4 uses and limitations of national income data 11.5 aggregate expenditure 11.6 the multiplier: concept and measurement 11.7 the concepts of economic growth and economic development 12. agriculture and industry 12.1 agriculture 12.2 industrialization 13. money and financial institutions 13.1 money 13.2 the functions of money 13.3 supply of money 13.4 the demand for money 13.5 the internal value of money 13.6 financial institutions 13.7 inflation 14 public finance 14.1 government activities 14.2 categories of government expenditure 14.3 effects of government expenditure 14.4 public / government revenue 14.5 taxation 14.6 the national budget 14.7 the national debt 15. international trade 15.1 difference between domestic/internal trade and international / foreign trade 15.2 reasons for international trade 15.3 some concepts international trade 15.4 problems faced by ldcs in international trade 15.5 arguments against free trade 15.6 composition and direction of external trade of west african countries 15. 7 exchange rates and their determinants 16. economic co-operation 16.1 different forms of economic cooperation 16.2 international economic organisations 17. economic development planning 17.1 economic development planning 18. contemporary economic issues 18.1 african growth and opportunity act (agoa) 18.2 new partnership for africa’s development (nepad) 18.3 petroleum economics introduction reinforcements mastery research question 2: can the shs economics curriculum be up-to-date and relevant in tackling the numerous evolving economic challenges confronting ghana? through interviews of eight teachers, we obtained data to answer this research question. asked whether they see the syllabus to be current and relevant, many of the teachers intimated that its content is relevant though it needs to be reviewed to incorporate many merging economic issues. some of them said, “the syllabus is very relevant, but there still remain more reviews to include many topical economic issues”[int5]. others said, “the current syllabus has content devoted to ‘contemporary economic issues, and that is fine but a lot more content need to be included” [ [int3]; “more should be included; you know that issues like covid-19 and it impact on the economy need a mention though i know that students learn about shocks [demand/supply] in the third year” [int3]. many were of the view that given the many economic issues that have emerged, the existing curriculum should be revised to reflect the changes. in sum, many of the teachers felt the current curriculum, though relevant, was not up-to-date as paraskeva (2020) stipulated in his study. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 177 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4. discussions considering the student’s cognitive development, topics are organised in increasing difficulty from one level of difficulty to another. that aside, some topics are reinforced as the students progress. for instance, the concept of demand allows for the learning of effective demand and the law of demand. in addition, these concepts are logically sequenced with activities that make it easier for students to understand the concept of supply. this supply concept is reinforced in form 3 to treat the concept of supply of money and demand for money through the distinction between stock and flow where teacher helps students appreciate that money supply is a stock variable, not a flow variable. additionally, the concept of equilibrium price and quantity is introduced in form 1 and reinforced in form 2 on the equilibrium of a firm and of an industry and equilibrium of a consumer. in form 2, the concept of demand and supply, introduced in the first year, is reinforced in the treatment of demand for production factors. the two concepts are slightly different. for instance, whereas the demand for goods is direct demand, the demand for factors is derived or indirect. we directly need and purchase goods like milk, food, books, fridges, cars etc. the consumer takes into account the marginal utility of goods while purchasing the goods. however, the demand for factors is not for their own sake. they are demanded because they can be used to produce something else. hence, the factors are demanded because of the tailor’s sewing work and not the tailor himself. hence, factors’ demand is derived and their demand is affected by productivity, while the demand for goods depends upon marginal utility. but clearly, there is a reinforcement of the concepts in forms 1 and 2 as the curriculum mapping depicts. in form 3, the concept of demand and supply is reinforced in the treatment of the demand for and supply of money. it appears that the two core concepts of demand and supply is so much reinforced that students get mastery of them before the end of their programme. the topics under demand, supply, and equilibrium require a solid foundation in the lower years (form 1) of the student and require reinforcements for deepening mastery of skills for higher-level or university economics. a majority of the teacher-informants confirmed that the reinforcement of topics facilities learning and creates the opportunity for deeper learning. this view was expressed by one of the interviewees who said, “duplication of topics, though can waste precious time, creates avenue for deeper learning” however, the continuity of many concepts introduced to students in form 1 is not evident in forms 2 and 3. for instance, students in form (shs) 1 are only introduced to concepts such as ‘fundamental concepts in economics’, ‘factors of production, and ‘economic systems’ (economies). in form 2, students are introduced to ‘the theory of production’, ‘distributive trade’, ‘the theory of consumer behaviour’, ‘the national income, and accounting’ and ‘determination as illustrated in figure 1. discontinuing the concepts that are introduced can be seen in form (shs) 3 where students are introduced to the concepts of money and financial institutions (under which topics such as money and the functions of money), public finance, international trade, economic co-operation, economic development planning, and contemporary economic issues as we can glean from figure 1. in view of this situation, the interviewed teachers intimated that they used their own discretion in deciding the organisation of the topics in a way that satisfies the felt needs of the students. a form 3 teacher emphasised that “normally, teachers do not strictly follow the arrangement of contents as we have in the syllabus [curriculum guide]. i decide which topics i treat first before others, only ensuring that all the topics are fairly treated before students write their final examinations.” shs economics teachers in all forms (1, 2, and 3) should be re-oriented to emphasise certain areas of the syllabus to ensure proper progressive learning for students (jin, mikeska, hokayem, & mavronikolas, 2019; owusu, 2014). the teacher interviews said that training and orientations on the curriculum has been non-existent. clearly. the study has shown gaps between the introduction (formal) and reinforcements and/or deepening of skills of several topics in the shs economics curriculum. almost all the topics, with the exception of demand/supply and equilibrium analyses, are formally introduced once with no reinforcements. this situation can promote low mastery economic concepts and skills. in sum, it is obvious that the current shs economics curriculum is not fit-for-purpose since it may be impractical for it to attain the aim of further equipping students with the basic tools for further study of economics. the present syllabus may need a careful sequencing of learning competencies according to the level of student cognitive development where topics are introduced with suitable pedagogies and instructional technologies (kannan, 2016; tar & lázár, 2019). feedback from the interviewees suggests that the curriculum is relevant though it even though it is not up-to-date. also, the study showed that the time allotted for teaching economics is insufficient to cover the set of learning competencies, particularly in the form 3. teachers therefore unintentionally create the null curriculum since some topics are skipped. 5. conclusion the is evidence that the content strands of the shs economics syllabus are organised in increasing difficulty. however, there is a rather weak connection between and among content topics, implying little vertical articulation and coherence. the weak vertical connection in content topics creates situations where skills, knowledge and competencies are not fully mastered. where these competencies are not mastered, the purpose of the curriculum to prepare students with the necessary tools to engage in further studies in the subject remains a mirage. the nonexistence of reinforcements in the twenty-one content topics of the syllabus adversely affects students’ knowledge acquisition and ability to pursue economics at the tertiary level. also, the current economics curriculum is relevant but needs to be kept current to confront the economic quark mire of ghana. 6. recommendations in view of the findings, we recommend the following for consideration by the national council for curriculum and assessment: i. to keep the curriculum up-to-date and relevant, its content strands should cover the basic contemporary economic issues in africa such the covid-19 and its adverse effects on african economies, climate change issues, production and consumption externalities, the impact of corruption on the livelihoods of ghanaians among many others. these new contents should be structured in such a way that they are introduced, reinforced, and reiterated (vertical articulation) to ensure student mastery. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 169-178 178 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ii. to keep the curriculum vertically articulated and relevant to ghana, agriculture and industrialisation, which students study only in the third year, should start from the first year to the final year so that the content can be well reinforced. iii. to keep it up-to-date and relevant, the curriculum should be reviewed to include more content on the production of the main exportable commodities of ghana. this will prepare students to go into the production of these essential commodities after studies. iv. to keep the curriculum up-to-date and relevant in solving the high unemployment levels in ghana, the syllabus should incorporate extensive content on entrepreneurship and businesses from the first to the final year. v. lastly, to keep the curriculum up-to-date with the latest discovery of oil in commercial quantities, the curriculum should incorporate oil and gas production in it. it should contain content on oil and gas economics from the first to the final year. references allocation of scarce resources. 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(2010). accra: ministry of education. retrieved from: https://mingycomputersgh.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/econs-preamble-edited-2-v-final.pdf. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781506326139.n174 http://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781506326139.n174 http://www.doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2015.1101390 http://www.doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2015.1101390 http://www.doi.org/10.38007/proceedings.0000124 http://www.doi.org/10.38007/proceedings.0000124 http://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781412958806.n427 http://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781412958806.n427 179 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 3, 179-188, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.179.188 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group collaborative writing in efl classroom: comparison on group, pair, and individual writing activities in argumentative tasks jitlada moonma1 chittima kaweera2 ( corresponding author) 1,2 the school of liberal arts, university of phayao, phayao, thailand. abstract this study focused on comparing the effects on 32 students’ argumentative writing qualities when they worked alone or collaborated in pairs and groups and explored the students’ opinions towards critical thinking across different writing activities. the 32 students were divided into groups of four (n=8), pairs (n=16) and individuals (n=32). their papers were rated in terms of content, language use, and organization by three raters. the research employed argumentative writing rubrics, semi-structured interview, and observation. from the total of 15 points, the novice learners gained the highest scores when writing in groups (x̅ = 11.22), followed by pairs (x̅ = 10.19) and individuals (x̅ = 8.98). the intermediate learners also gained the highest scores in group work (x̅ = 11.50), followed by pairs (x̅ = 10.32), and individual work (x̅ = 9.04), respectively. similar to the advanced level, they had the highest scores when working in groups (x̅ = 11.95), followed by pairs (x̅ = 10.45), and individuals (x̅ = 9.45). the findings indicated that group work led to the highest scores in all proficiency levels and in groups, the students’ critical thinking improved regarding analyzing, evaluating and creating information when they brainstormed, shared and discussed all information. in pairs, the students also demonstrated that their critical thinking developed but only in analyzing from sharing information with a partner. in individuals, all proficiency levels reported that critical thinking was not developed as no interaction with peers. keywords: collaborative writing, group work, pair work, individual work, argumentative writing, writing activities. citation | jitlada moonma; chittima kaweera (2021). collaborative writing in efl classroom: comparison on group, pair, and individual writing activities in argumentative tasks. asian journal of education and training, 7(3): 179-188. history: received: 26 may 2021 revised: 21 june 2021 accepted: 13 july 2021 published: 24 august 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: the research project is funded by unit of exellence, university of phayao. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 180 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 180 3. research questions ....................................................................................................................................................................... 182 4. scope of the study ......................................................................................................................................................................... 182 5. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 182 6. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 184 7. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 186 8. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 187 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 187 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.73.179.188&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/3241 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9004-3666 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5391-9852 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 179-188 180 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by comparing the effects on 32 students’ argumentative writing qualities when they worked alone or collaborated in pairs and groups and explored the students’ opinions towards critical thinking across different writing activities. 1. introduction previous studies have illustrated that collaborative writing (cw) activities are beneficial activities as they enhance language learning in the language classroom (li & zhu, 2017). furthermore, learning to write argumentatively is an essential skill for students in a university context (wu & allison, 2005). nevertheless, collaborative writing places many challenges since students come from different backgrounds where such analytical writing, and its associated thinking, is not common. in fact, writing argumentatively is “one of the greatest challenges many english language learners (ells) are likely to face” (hirvela, 2013). pairs and small group works remain one of the most common activity grouping in communicative second language (l2) classrooms (dobao, 2012). however, in regular university classrooms, group work has a tendency to be still restricted to brainstorming techniques and the peer review processes. in the past few decades, various studies have paid attention to the usefulness of collaborative writing activities, in which students are assigned to write in pairs and groups throughout all phases of the writing process (kaweera, yawiloeng, & tachom, 2019; zhang, 2019). currently, collaborative writing has become common in many language classroom contexts in the past few decades (zhang, 2018) and is recognized as one of the fruitful instruments in writing processes (shehadeh, 2011). in the past, much of the early research in the l2 classroom has investigated collaborative oral activities such as decision-making, exchanging information, raising consciousness, and picture-narration tasks. recently researchers began to pay attention increasingly to collaborative activities during the writing process (li & kim, 2016; li & zhu, 2017; neumann & mcdonough, 2015; storch, 2013; zhang, 2019). furthermore, vygotsky (1978) emphasizes the crucial importance of community in the generation of knowledge since, according to him, learners need to learn from each other and to transfer what they know. socialisation with a more effective member of the group improved cognitive development. the more skilled member expands their peers beyond their level of competence towards their prospective level of development by providing their peers with the proper level of assistance (storch, 2005). nevertheless, most existing research has examined only intermediate or advanced level learners (chen, elchert, & garmager, 2018; chen & yu, 2019; dobao & blum, 2013; zhang, 2018). they did not conduct the research across the students’ proficiency levels (dobao, 2012). the results of the research mentioned earlier cannot be generalized across “proficiency levels” (chen & yu, 2019; mcdonough & de vleeschauwer, 2019). therefore, the present study took into account all levels of english language proficiency (novice, intermediate, and advanced) when performing different collaborative writing tasks. 2. literature review 2.1. collaborative writing theoretical and pedagogical perspectives cw was originally defined by vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (vygotsky, 1978) as an activity in which writers co-construct and share ideas in order to produce a single writing paper (mcdonough, crawford, & de vleeschauwer, 2016). similar to storch (2005), the use of cw in the l2 classroom is reinforced by the perspectives of a social constructivist theory of learning, which is identified in vygotsky (1978). focusing on the theoretical side, donato (1994) states that while learners communicate with each other in meaningful ways, they engage in meaning-negotiation about the second language. furthermore, according to roberson (2014), peer response is supported by the communicative language teaching approach which puts authentic interactions between the learners as well. regarding the pedagogical boundary, various researchers have explored the advantages of collaboration in l2 learning. swain (2000), swain and lapkin (2001) suggests that cw activities encourage writers to reflect on their language usage and work jointly in the solution of their language problems. mcdonough (2004) states that relating with each other during pair and group activities decreased the students’ anxiety, and increased the students’ self-confidence (p.208). mcdonough. et al. (2016) also indicates a relationship between the prewriting tasks which elicited ‘student talk’ about content and organization. furthermore, dunkel-schetter and bennett (1990) realizes this activity as a chance for learners to work together and learn from each other. the learners assist their peers without feeling reluctance. as a result, this activity feature would be conducive to better learning. to sum up, cw activities have some benefits: firstly, fostering students to reflect on their language use and work collaboratively through their language-related problems; secondly, letting them feel more self-confident when working with partners during pairs and groups compared to during class talking; thirdly, eliciting student discussion about content and organization; finally, decreasing feelings of embarrassment as collaborative writing activities let them interact and help each other. consequently, these collaborative activities are believed to help learners without them feeling embarrassed and would lead to better language learning and critical thinking skills. 2.2. related research on argumentative writing in collaborative writing in conducting collaborative activity research, writing skills are the essential skill set that is the most interesting, as writing skills require conscious attention and sometimes have to be performed step by step. writing is frequently considered to be the most complex skill of learning a language. therefore, writing in english as a foreign language (efl) classes are complex for both teachers and students because there are many features to cover (ghufron & hawa, 2018). raimes (1983) mentions those features are grammatical rules, content, the writers’ process, audience, purpose, word choice, organization, and mechanics. for worthwhile writing, the writer is required to implement a large number of formal features in order to assist readers to grasp the intended meaning. failure to implement these aspects correctly generates obscurity, ellipsis and ambiguity in some writings (ghufron & hawa, 2018). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 179-188 181 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group regarding argumentative writing, the students are required to investigate a topic, collect, generate, and evaluate the evidence and establish a position on the topic in a concise manner. furthermore, making a good argument is required. consequently, kuhn (1991) claimed that developing an argument is an essential thinking skill to formulate ideas and solve language problems. in this study, cw activities were implemented in argumentative writing in order to enhance students’ argumentative writing ability as it may be a technique that encourages a pooling of knowledge about language, brainstorming, discussing, and solving problems when they write collaboratively. however, compared to other writing types in the educational field, very few empirical studies have paid particular attention to training students to write argumentatively (lukomskaya, 2015) as the argumentative paragraph is commonly assigned as sophisticated writing and relates to prolonged, detailed research (ka-kan-dee & kaur, 2015). regarding writing ability, cw increased argumentative writing skill. according to ghufron and hawa (2018), the study aimed to find out whether or not teaching using cw techniques was a more effective method in teaching how to write an argumentative paragraph. this experimental research was carried out in ikip pgri bojonegoro. the population was 126 students who were the fourth semester students of the english education department. the experimental group where each group consisted of 42 students was treated by using cw techniques, whereas the control group was treated by using direct instruction. the findings illustrated that cw techniques can improve argumentative writing ability in the experimental group. similar to morris et al. (2018), 5th grade students in two urban school districts completed an integrated unit on wolves. classes received either collaborative group work (cg) or direct instruction (di). the results indicated that an analysis of the reasoning in classroom discussion illustrated that cg students more often implemented connective and contrastive words and the performative verb phrases i think and i know than di students. analysis of written arguments about a controversial question raised by the unit indicates that, compared to di students, cg students include more rational connective, contrastive, and performative verbs, produce fewer unsophisticated arguments, and more frequently ask linguistic questions. in accordance with the study of ka-kan-dee and kaur (2015) a semi-structured interview and a stimulated recall interview was implemented to collect elaborated information from two thai efl lecturers about the challenges in teaching argumentation, with the teaching strategies implemented to assist improving their students’ argumentative skills. the study showed that students encounter problems due to insufficient knowledge of grammatical rules, lexis and argumentation. moreover, the students confronted difficulties in organizing ideas and producing evidence to write a well-organized essay. their study also indicates that the students’ weaknesses were the main obstacles for thai efl students to compose an argumentative paragraph. in addition, thai university students had less experience with argumentation as this kind of writing was not taught to them in the past while they were at school. consequently, they implemented different inputs and activities to integrate in teaching argumentative writing. the activities included pair and group, explanation, illustration and debate in the classroom in order to improve the university level students’ argumentative writing skills. the results suggested that efl students can establish proficient social and effective writing argumentative paragraphs using proficient collaboration, when receiving close guidelines from their teachers in the writing class. furthermore, regarding learners' writing accuracy, cw fostered students’ argumentative improved their writing accuracy as well. according to jafari and ansari (2012), it focused on the outcomes of group work on iranian efl learners' writing accuracy in writing argumentatively. over a month, sixty iranian efl learners were divided into two groups. the experimental group wrote collaboratively whereas the control group wrote individually. both groups participated in writing two argumentative essays. the participants wrote on the same topics and genre (using argumentative writing). the results indicated that the students in the cw group performed better than the students in the control group; therefore, emphasizing the significant role of collaboration in l2 writing, especially in writing accuracy. in summary, researchers and educators are increasingly conscious of both the writing and teaching improvement for university learners. consequently, it is beneficial for efl teachers in thailand to implement various collaboration activities such as pair or group activities in order to develop effective instructions which enable students to enhance their argumentative writing skill. furthermore, the results of previous research asserted that cw teaching techniques played an essential role in the students’ argumentative writing capacity. this means that writing capacity depends on teaching techniques and that cw technique is effective for the students. from these studies, argumentative writing ability was focused when doing cw activities. it can be assumed that cw techniques affected students’ writing ability (ghufron & hawa, 2018). it is a genre that can enhance the students’ argumentative writing ability which is highly required at university level and academic context (ka-kan-dee & kaur, 2015). 2.3. critical thinking skills apart from the benefits for teaching and learning, collaborative activities have been studied in a number of previous research on critical thinking skills which are regarded as a highly essential educational purpose in many institutions around the world (behar-horenstein & niu, 2011). in the educational field, critical thinking is implemented with the concept of higher-order thinking, from bloom’s taxonomy (anderson, 2001). regarding revised bloom’s taxonomy in 2001, cognitive skills can be grouped according to their level of complexity. in this sense, higher-order thinking skills therefore correspond to levels of analyzing, evaluating, and creating. 2.4. flaws on collaborative writing research in efl classroom according to dobao (2012), cw was a powerful activity that encouraged peer learning, cooperation, active engagement, and critical thinking skills, towards an end result. it was meaningful engagement and shared decision making between members of a group using a common set of tools. the practice of cw has fairly recently (in comparison to other, more traditional techniques) entered classrooms in response to the need of addressing the issues of negotiating, combining ideas, and structuring arguments in a written form dobao (2012). moreover, cw activities have received increasing attention in the past decades (zhang, 2018). however, considering the drawbacks of cw research, there are still some issues left. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 179-188 182 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group firstly, as argumentative writing skill is required at a higher level in university where making a good argument is necessary (wu & allison, 2005). furthermore, argumentative writing is one of the greatest challenges that many english language learners are likely to encounter (hirvela, 2013). kuhn (1991) considers writing argumentatively to be a higher-order thinking skill important to idea formulation, problem-solving, and good judgement. moreover, the students encounter problems since learners have insufficient knowledge of syntax, lexical features and argumentative features. the students encounter difficulties in organizing ideas and assessing evidence to write a well-organized essay (ka-kan-dee & kaur, 2015). however, compared to other topics in the educational field, very few empirical studies have focused especially on training students to write argumentatively and the number of research projects conducted in argumentative cw skills are still limited (lukomskaya, 2015). on the other hand, there have been a number of studies in cw research focused exclusively on one task: persuasive, comparison, and problem solving topics (chen & yu, 2019); paragraph-level writing (mcdonough & de vleeschauwer, 2019); problem-solution paragraph (2018); essay writing (hanjani & li, 2014) and expository essays (kaweera et al., 2019). secondly, collaboration with various english proficiency levels should be examined. the current study focused on providing a broader collaborative method perspective. it is noted that, since a number of studies focus on intermediate levels and advanced levels, the findings obtained cannot be inferred across all proficiency levels (chen & yu, 2019; dobao, 2012; mcdonough & de vleeschauwer, 2019). in order to provide a broader perspective in different proficiency levels, this study placed students in novice, intermediate, and advanced levels. another issue is that critical thinking is also crucial to encourage students to learn. in the current era, it is one of the essential skills that need to be elicited as well. finally, regarding the aspect of critical thinking, a few studies explore critical thinking skills in the cw processes. a number of studies investigated perspective and satisfaction on collaborative learning (chen & yu, 2019; kaweera, 2013; kaweera et al., 2019; liu, shaw, gu, & li, 2018; mcdonough & de vleeschauwer, 2019). according to liu et al. (2018) there were not many studies investigating critical thinking skills during the cw process. most of them investigated students’ perspectives, attitudes, and satisfaction when they engaged in the cw process. one of the four skills investigated while students were participating in the writing process was thinking skill which was too broad to identify what types of thinking skill occurred. though, it is crucial and interesting to investigate critical thinking which is one of the skills needed in the 21st century. to sum up, in an attempt to fill in these gaps in the existing literature, the current study investigated the influence of collaborative (pairs and groups of four) and individual writing on students’ argumentative writing ability in all proficiency levels especially in an english as a foreign language (efl) environment. 3. research questions the main purpose of the present study is to analyze the effects of the students’ argumentative writing quality across different writing activities and explore the students’ attitudes towards cw activities and the strategies which the students used to develop their critical thinking skills in cw activities. 1. what are the effects of group, pair and individual work on the students’ argumentative writing abilities using cw activities in all levels of the students? 2. what are the attitudes towards the uses of cw across different writing activities (group, pair, and individual work) and how do the students use cw to develop their critical thinking skills? 4. scope of the study the study was carried out over a period of three weeks and utilized a non-probability sampling which did not relate to random sampling. the 32 thai efl university students registered in the writing ii were selected to engage in this study. this study addressed the students’ argumentative writing quality across different writing activities. the three activities utilized in the present study were a group of four cw activities; pair writing activities; and individual writing activities. furthermore, this study intended to explore the students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills practicing across three different writing activities and how the students use cw to develop their critical thinking skills. 5. methodology 5.1. participants the study was administered to second-year english major students studying english as a foreign language at a northern thai university. 32 students participated in this study (13 males and 19 females), and their ages ranged from 19-21, with an average of 20. they were all non-native english speakers. all participants were registered in the same second-year writing ii course after they had completed the writing i course. most of them had studied english in schools for more than 10 years before entering university. based on their grades during the writing i course, they were placed in three different proficiency levels: advanced, intermediate, and novice based on their grades in the writing i course. table 1 shows the student numbers in each level. table-1. students’ different levels of english proficiency. english proficiency levels novice intermediate advanced total numbers of students 18 8 6 32 percentage 56.25 25 18.75 100 5.2. writing tasks the writing tasks were designed and given to the students throughout the course. all 32 students experienced the same treatment. they were taught the same syllabus by the same teacher (researcher). the syllabus consisted of 17 weeks including midterm and final examination as well as teaching and evaluation materials. six lessons were designed based on collaborative learning. there were four hours a week lasting 240 minutes in each. the lesson plans were given to the advisor and experts for checking, proofing, and editing the content. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 179-188 183 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group then, the lesson plans were edited and implemented with second-year english major students in writing ii (1551116) course using cw activities (adapted from white and arndt (1991)) including eight steps as follows: 1) overview step (20 minutes): the students were taught collaborative and individual writing by the teacher. it began with the teacher informing the students about the general concepts of group, pair, and individual writing. students were allowed to ask questions before going onto to the next step. 2) studying step (30 minutes): the teacher provided the short text model and taught the grammatical structure of argumentative writing such as arguing for or against a controversial issue of students’ interest. firstly, the teacher introduced the model of an argumentative paragraph and allowed the students to consider the writing style in which this genre and the language of arguments occurred, the purpose of argumentation and the type of the audience for the model of argumentative paragraph. next, students were presented with the argumentative patterns. 3) pre-writing step (30 minutes): the students planned the structure of their own paragraph or structured outline and generated ideas and put ideas in the outline for an appropriate argumentative topic. then, they brainstormed to research an argumentative topic using outlining, listing, freewriting, brainstorming ideas and then organized all information. 4) drafting step (40 minutes): the students wrote their first rough draft based on the structure outline in groups of four (week 12), pairs (week 13) and individuals (week 14). the teacher was available to help the students, or be consulted about the writing process. for the first draft, they focused on introduction, body and conclusion. 5) revising step (40 minutes): the students revised the first rough draft paying attention to vocabulary, content and organization. rewriting was aimed at the changes identified in the revision stage in order to produce the second draft. 6) rewriting step (30 minutes): the students rewrote the draft including the changes identified in the revision stage in order to produce the third draft. the model of writing tasks 7) proofreading step (30 minutes): once students finished the third draft, they submitted their paper to the teacher. then, they were taught to revise their draft at the revision stage. to revise their draft, the students analyzed the final draft in accordance with spelling, grammar, punctuation and mechanical errors in order to produce the fourth draft. 8) publishing step (20 minutes): the students wrote the completed argumentative paragraph and submitted it to the teacher (group work of four students, pair work, and individual work). the group work submitted one piece of paper, the same as pair work. in contrast to individual work, each student submitted his or her own writing paper to the teacher. the writing task model was shown in figure 1. figure-1. model of the writing activity adapted from white and arndt (1991). in this study, the students were allowed to communicate in their first language (thai) instead of the target language (english). as based on shehadeh (2011) the student would feel more confident to participate in writing and moreover, using english might impede their vocabulary and their imagination or original ideas when being assigned to negotiate in english. 5.3. data collection and analysis the data was divided into three categories: examining the effects of using the cw activities (groups of four, pairs, and individual work) to enhance the quality of the students’ argumentative writing quality and to explore the students’ attitudes towards critical thinking skills in cw activities (groups and pairs). the quantitative data was used to assess the students’ argumentative writing quality in three different writing activities using criteria adapted from zhang (2019). qualitative data was collected from the six students’ attitudes across all proficiency levels (2 novices, 2 intermediates and 2 advanced levels) towards critical thinking skills (groups of four and pairs). this involved using semi-structured interviews and observed 4 groups during their writing activities in order to investigate the students' learning levels in cw using bloom's taxonomy. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 179-188 184 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.4. research instruments for the writing tasks, the five argumentative paragraphs were examined to assess the students’ argumentative writing ability. the scoring criteria was adapted from zhang (2019) to evaluate 3 significant criteria (content, language use, and organization). each paragraph had a total score of 15. the students’ scores were calculated to find the percentage compared to the required score and to rate their argumentative writing ability in each task. furthermore, the scores of five argumentative writing tasks of each student were calculated in order to find the total scores. the scoring adapted from zhang (2019) which contained certain significant criteria and definitions as follow: 1) content: development of content using relevant and suitable examples, facts, and evidence and showing an obvious and consistent stance on the topic. 2) language use: demonstrate a variety of syntax, appropriate word choices and idioms and having little lexical and grammatical errors that did not impede the meaning. 3) organization: ensure that ideas and transitions were used appropriately and logically connected throughout the paragraph and that the progressions of ideas were coherent. 5.4.1. semi-structured interview the semi-structured interview was implemented to collect the participants’ perspectives on practicing critical thinking skills towards cw activities (group and pair work). there was a question which was approved and edited by three experts in english teaching: two thai teachers and one native speaker. a total of six students were randomly chosen to affiliate in the interview protocol managed separately, two from each of three english proficiency levels (novice, intermediate and advanced). tape recording and video recording were implemented in each interview session administered in thai and translated into english and observation was involved during different writing activities. the students were asked the following question: • what are your attitudes towards critical thinking skills in the individual, pairs, and group writing activities? 5.4.2. observation the observation of the classroom proved to be useful in the analysis (paul, 1989; wiersma, 1995; woo, 1999). the researcher implemented learning levels of revised bloom's taxonomy (anderson & krathwohl, 2001) to provide the student learning using a six-level classification framework. bloom’s classification could be applied to the observations of the cw activities. the six-tiered classification framework of students’ learning represented an organized hierarchy of students’ critical thinking processes from the lowest to the highest: gathering knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. the learning levels were summarized and implemented to categorize students’ behaviors and conversation during writing activities. table 2 shows the six categories of revised bloom’s taxonomy. table-2. the six categories of revised bloom’s taxonomy for teaching and learning processes. learning levels definition sample cues creating generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things, designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing. generate, plan, produce evaluating justifying a decision, checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging check, critique, judge analyzing breaking information into parts to explore understanding and relationships, comparing, organizing, deconstructing, interrogating, finding differentiate, organize, attribute applying using information in another familiar situation, implementing, carrying out, using, executing execute, implement, apply understanding explaining ideas or concepts, interpreting, summarizing, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining explain, interpret, classify, summarize, infer, compare, explain, remembering recalling information, recognizing, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding recall, recognize, write, list, label 6. results the findings of the quantitative and qualitative analyses administered in relation to the two research questions: 1. what are the effects of group, pair and individual work on the students’ argumentative writing by using collaborative writing activities? 2. what are the students' attitudes towards critical thinking practicing in cw activities (group of four and pair) and how did the students implement cw to develop their critical thinking skills? 6.1. research question 1 what are the effects of group, pair and individual work on the students’ argumentative writing by using cw activities? asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 179-188 185 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6.1.1. the students’ writing quality regarding the students’ writing quality, this study compared the mean value of argumentative writing quality across different writing activities. table-3. mean score of writing quality. english proficiency number of students groups of four (n = 8) pairs (n = 16) individual (n = 32) x̅ sd x̅ sd x̅ sd novice 18 11.22 0.96 10.19 1.14 8.98 1.29 intermediate 8 11.50 0.53 10.32 0.66 9.04 0.70 advanced 6 11.95 0.80 10.45 0.78 9.45 0.78 total 32 11.35 0.92 10.27 0.96 9.08 1.07 based on table 3, from a total of 15 points, it was shown that overall students in group writing had the highest score (x̅ = 11.35), followed by pair writing (x̅ = 10.27) and individual writing (x̅ = 9.08), respectively. according to figure 2, the students in different english proficiency levels obtained divergent scores across different writing activities. the novice students obtained the highest scores when they participated in group work (x̅ = 11.22), followed by pair work (x̅ = 10.19) and individual work (x̅ = 8.98), respectively. this result was the same as in intermediate students who had the highest scores when writing in a group (x̅ = 11.50), followed by pair work (x̅ = 10.32) and individual work (x̅ = 9.04), respectively. in advanced groups, they also gained the highest scores when engaging cw in group of four (x̅ = 11.95), followed by pair writing (x̅ = 10.45), and individual writing (x̅ = 9.45), respectively. figure-2. the comparison of students’ writing quality (15 points). 6.2. research question 2 what are the students' attitudes towards practicing critical thinking in cw activities (groups of four and pairs) and how did the students implement cw to develop their critical thinking skills? to reply to the second research question of this study, the semi-structured interview and observation were implemented. 6.2.1 semi-structured interview this section reported the students’ critical thinking skills across the different writing activities. the semistructured interviews were conducted in the second phase of the data collection in order to elicit more details of how students perceived different writing activities (individual, pair and group work) towards critical thinking skill practices in a process-based approach writing class. six students with different english proficiency levels were selected to engage in this interview session. students 1 – 2 (s1 – s2) were randomly drawn from the novice groups, students 3 – 4 (s3 – s4) from the intermediate groups, and students 5 – 6 (s5 – s6) from the advanced groups. in order to collect this qualitative data, the following question was asked. • what are your attitudes towards practicing critical thinking skills in the individual, pair, group of four writing activities?
 in the interview process, the students’ answers were translated into english using the questions in thai. the following comments present the students’ attitudes from the semi-structured interview sessions: regarding individual writing, all levels of students realized that they did not practice any critical thinking skills. they considered that they did not participate, evaluate, create, and share any ideas or information with partners. therefore, they said that this kind of activity could not develop any critical thinking skills at all. in regards to pair writing activities, novice students analyzed information which was shared by friends. during this analysis, intermediate students analyzed all information from their partners. however, they did not evaluate much about information from friends as little information was shared together. advanced students also considered that they could develop their critical thinking skills in different ways. they analyzed, created and evaluated all information from peers in order to reach a completed paper. regarding group activities, all levels of students considered that group writing developed their critical thinking skills in the aspects of analysis, evaluation, and creation. advanced students evaluated peers’ ideas before asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 179-188 186 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group writing them down in a paper. novice students reported that they analyzed ideas and information from peers in order to gather all information. similar to intermediate students, they also analyzed and evaluated all information from peers. since group activities encouraged participation among friends, students created and evaluated all their ideas in order to reach an agreement and finish their paper. the advanced students also realized that their critical thinking skills were improved in the aspects of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. therefore, the research data showed that collaboration improved students' critical thinking skills. 6.2.2. observation this section indicates findings from the classroom observations. four groups (2 from pair activities and 2 groups from group activities) were randomly selected in order to observe their conversations and behaviors. group 1-2 were randomly selected from pair activities and group 3-4 were randomly selected from group activities. for each group observed, the teacher kept hand-written field-note documentation of important events as well as the students’ behavior and conversation during the cw activities. on some occasions, the teacher moved around the classroom and talked with students about what they were doing during their class hour. each observation of the data was classified and analyzed by the researcher according to the six learning levels of revised bloom’s taxonomy, which are remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. examples of revised bloom's taxonomy (anderson & krathwohl, 2001) implemented in critical thinking group 1 remembering students defined the definition of technology. understanding students explained the use of conjunctions to their peers. applying students compared and contrasted the use of relative pronouns. evaluating each student evaluated sentences which were brainstormed by their peers after they finished proposing ideas. students made decisions based on criticism of their friends. creating students created phrases and sentences by selecting relative pronouns to be used correctly with sentences. students generated new sentences, using what has been learned from their peers. group 2 remembering students listed the definition of online learning. understanding students explained what occupation is. applying analyzing students broke information into parts to explore better understanding. creating students generated new sentences, using what has been learned from their peers. evaluation students made decisions based on criticism of their friends. group 3 remembering students listed the benefits of english. understanding students described how to use english to get a job. applying students illustrated jobs in which required english as a tool. analyzing students categorized jobs which people used english in their work. evaluating students evaluated which ideas were not involved in their topic. creating students invented their paragraphs according to ideas shared from friends. group 4 remembering students memorized the meaning of different relative pronouns and told their friends how to choose and put relative pronouns in front of nouns. understanding students learned what the benefits of english are as a tool for getting a job. applying students gave some examples of vocabulary to fill in the sentences. analyzing students analyzed which pronouns they found incorrectly. evaluation students evaluated the sentences which were not involved in the topic. creating students gathered all the information and wrote their paragraphs. findings from the classroom observation data, analyzed by applying six of learning levels of revised bloom's taxonomy (anderson & krathwohl, 2001) can be considered as relevant qualitative data for acknowledging development in students' critical thinking skills through cw. in short, based on qualitative data, most of the students considered that their critical thinking skills were improved in the pair and group writing activities. furthermore, it could be summarized that the students in all levels accepted that cw activities developed their critical thinking skills in the aspect of analysis, evaluation, and creation of a written argument. on the other hand, when writing individually, all students said that it did not help them to improve their critical thinking skills as they had no chance to participate, share or discuss ideas with friends. furthermore, based on classroom observation data, students developed their critical thinking skills through cw using comparing and contrasting, creating or generating, and evaluating or judging which are higher-level critical thinking skills especially in pair and group work activities. consequently, in order to enhance students’ critical thinking skills in writing class, writing teachers should consider different kinds of writing activities that could help students to enhance their critical thinking skills. 7. discussion from the findings of the present study, the results of this research of argumentative writing quality and critical thinking skills seemed to reveal positive effects. it was obvious that cw techniques could enhance both the argumentative writing quality and the students’ critical thinking skills. the first question addressed in this study involved the argumentative writing quality across different writing activities (groups, pairs, and individual writing) in terms of language use, content, and the organization of ideas in the text produced by the students. the comparative analysis of texts indicated a positive effect for collaboration on argumentative writing quality. the asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(3): 179-188 187 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group findings may be because the cw activities provided an opportunity to share ideas and interactions between the members of the group and the pair. it led to solving the language problems. this was supported by the social theory of vygotsky (1978) ), emphasizing that learners require each other to learn and to transmit their knowledge. in accordance with the findings of ghufron and hawa (2018), the study aimed to find out whether a cw technique was more effective than direct instruction in teaching argumentative writing. the findings illustrated that cw techniques improved argumentative writing ability. similar to the results of ka-kan-dee and kaur (2015) the cw activities were implemented to improve their students’ argumentative writing skills. the results also suggested that efl learners produced effective argumentative essays using effective collaboration. regarding the argumentative writing accuracy, the findings were positively illustrated in accordance with the results of jafari and ansari (2012) which focused on the group work effectiveness on iranian efl learners' writing accuracy in writing argumentatively. the results emphasized the significant role of collaborative writing, especially in argumentative writing accuracy. furthermore, the second research question addressed in the present study involved the students' attitudes in all levels towards critical thinking skills practicing across different writing activities (groups of four, pairs, and individual work) and how the students used cw to enhance their higher-order thinking skills. the students asserted that cw activities could develop their critical thinking skills, while writing individually did not enhance their critical thinking skills. similar to ghufron and hawa (2018), the study also focused on critical thinking skills in cw activities. the results also revealed that cw improved critical thinking skills. moreover, the findings of the present study illustrated that cw activities enhanced the students’ critical thinking skills in accordance with the zivkovic (2016) study which also reported that collaboration improved students’ critical thinking skills. regarding the observation results, collaboration implemented in writing activities encouraged the students and resulted in a greater opportunity to reach the high learning levels in bloom's taxonomy. therefore, it could be assumed that cw activities were oriented to high order thinking skills. 8. conclusions the results of this study showed that cw activities exerted a positive effect and improved the students’ writing quality and their critical thinking skills in all proficiency levels. therefore, cw activities should be implemented in the writing classroom since they could be an effective strategy for teaching 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(2016). a model of critical thinking as an important attribute for success in the 21st century. paper presented at the international conference on teaching and learning english as an additional language, globelt. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 172 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 4, 172-178, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7527 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group learning by doing: enhancing life and social skills in early childhood through an experiential learning management model nidaporn astprachon1 sarit srikao2 nirat jantharajit3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3faculty of education, nakhon phanom university, nakhon phanom, thailand. 1email: nida_lai@hotmail.com 2email: sarit63@hotmail.com 3email: n20jann@hotmail.com abstract this study aimed to (1) compare the life skills and social skills of children before and after the learning intervention and (2) compare learning outcomes between the experimental and control groups. the study was conducted in a kindergarten in northeast thailand, involving 56 children who were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group. the experimental group participated in a two-month intervention consisting of 24 sessions of structured experiential learning activities, while the control group received face-to-face traditional instruction. life skills and social skills were assessed using validated scales before and after the intervention. data were analyzed using paired t-tests and one-way manova. the experimental group demonstrated significant improvements in life skills (pre-test m=24.75; post-test m=29.28, p<0.05) and social skills (pre-test m=26.78; post-test m=29.10, p<0.05). comparisons between the experimental and control groups indicated that the experiential learning model was more effective in fostering these skills (p<0.05). the findings highlight the effectiveness of the experiential learning model in enhancing preschool children's life and social skills. the study supports the adoption of experiential learning in early childhood education. keywords: constructivist theory, experiential learning management model, life skills, preschool education, social skills. citation | astprachon, n., srikao, s., & jantharajit, n. (2025). learning by doing: enhancing life and social skills in early childhood through an experiential learning management model. asian journal of education and training, 11(4), 172–178. 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7527 history: received: 13 february 2025 revised: 15 september 2025 accepted: 3 october 2025 published: 10 october 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the research ethical committee of nakhon phanom university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 2 june 2022 (ref. no: he05767). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed to the study's conception, design, data collection, analysis, and manuscript preparation. all authors read and approved the final manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 173 2. background ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 173 3. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 174 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 176 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 176 6. limitations ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 177 7. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 177 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 177 mailto:nida_lai@hotmail.com mailto:sarit63@hotmail.com mailto:n20jann@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i4.7527 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6757-6431 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4318-8128 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1098-8109 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 172-178 173 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature: this study uniquely integrates structured experiential learning into early childhood education, systematically comparing its effects on life and social skills with traditional instruction. unlike previous research, it employs a rigorous experimental design with validated assessments and manova analysis, offering empirical evidence of the model’s effectiveness in preschool settings. 1. introduction experiential learning is the process of learning through experience, narrowly defined as “learning through reflection on doing” (felicia, 2011). constructivism provides theoretical support for experiential learning, which consists of theories that view learning as a process of knowledge internalization that occurs in individuals through interaction with society and the environment in specific situations (behrens, 2021). experiential learning has significant pedagogical advantages, especially in motivating learners and promoting knowledge transfer (rodriguez, 2018). learning can only be effective if the learner develops a desire to absorb the knowledge. therefore, experiential learning needs to provide direction to learners through clear objectives and guidance (hawtrey, 2007). executive function theory also reveals the important role of experiential learning in children's cognitive development. executive functions involve working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, which are fundamental skills that dictate the ability of a person to perform complex tasks (doebel, 2020). drawing from actual activities, experiential learning exposes children to the practice of multitasking, decision-making, and adaptation to change, thus developing their executive functioning (wang & feng, 2024). social cognitive theory presupposes that learning through doing encourages the acquisition of social skills through involvement and imitation of behavior (vankov & wang, 2024). by observing the behavior of other individuals and their consequences, a person can adopt viable social strategies and enhance their self-concept (bauminger-zviely, eytan, hoshmand, & rajwan ben–shlomo, 2021). it is a broadly employed methodology in various areas of education and is encouraging the shaping of students' all-around competency grounded on varied execution techniques (grace, innes, patton, & stockhausen, 2017; venkatraman, overmars, & wahr, 2019). it is utilized to cultivate general competencies in areas such as leadership, group work, and productive communication within the management educational environment (wilson & collins, 2006). in sports programs, experiential learning gives students a chance to implement theoretical principles in actual scenarios, making them more employable in the field (dees & hall, 2012). experiential learning in leadership development also enables students to introspect and modify their perceptions and behavior through an arts-informed approach (sutherland, 2013). in the supply chain education, classroom simulations are used to help students gain a deeper understanding of complex supply chain processes (webb, thomas, & liao‐troth, 2014). the strength of experiential learning lies in its ability to actively engage learners in knowledge-building activities, mastering complex concepts through hands-on practice, and continuously improving skills as they do so (abdulwahed & nagy, 2009). its potential is particularly strong in educational innovation, especially in contexts where flexible learning opportunities need to be provided (blouin et al., 2009). although experiential learning has demonstrated significant effectiveness in a number of areas, a structured implementation model is needed to address the unique needs of early childhood education. current early childhood education emphasizes the holistic development of the child, while traditional teaching methods still dominate. this study presents an experiential learning management model (figure 1) with the following purposes: (1) validate the effectiveness of the experiential learning management model; (2) develop and optimize the experiential learning management model; (3) evaluate the improvement in children's skills; (4) provide theoretical and practical foundations for educational innovation. figure 1. experiential learning management model framework. 2. background research on the effectiveness of experiential learning in children's education has been well documented in a number of areas. the literature suggests that experiential learning in physical activity education has always been beneficial in increasing children's comprehension and behavior of engagement in sport-related knowledge (varman, jones, et al., 2023). this approach has shown considerable advantages compared to traditional teaching methods https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0260691720314726#s0010 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 172-178 174 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group regarding academic achievement, particularly in science education (ranken, wyse, manyukhina, & bradbury, 2025). intervention studies in terms of healthy eating provide evidence that experiential activities such as gardening and cooking can significantly improve children's eating behaviors and nutritional knowledge (varman et al., 2021). learning by experience can significantly enhance learning in cognitive and social development via play and handson activities in preschool (amalia, 2023). in mathematics education, experiential learning has been found to be effective in students' self-motivation and in improving mathematics performance (uyen, tong, & lien, 2022). experiential learning outperforms most other teaching methods in training towards different educational outcome measures or demonstrates no significant differences therein. notably, several researchers have stated that students who are introduced to experiential learning methods, like educational escape rooms, report higher engagement and improved academic outcomes than those who experience traditional lecturing instruction (gordillo & lópez-fernández, 2024). bonesso, gerli, and pizzi (2015) claim that by placing students in practical tasks that simulate real-world challenges, this model allows students to apply theoretical knowledge to practice better and supports the development of integrative skills. studies affirm that active learning strategies contained in experiential learning significantly improve students' knowledge retention. what is seen among students is generally higher satisfaction ratings towards experiential learning. experiential learning was chosen over the others by students because it is learner motivation-focused and gives importance to a deepened connection with the learning material (illeris, 2007). this preference is due to the advantages of experiential learning in practical application and interactivity. experiential learning has faced several challenges from within the world of academia despite its great popularity and influence. some scholars noted that experiential learning was vague in defining its core concepts (concrete experience), and this became detrimental to the theoretical understanding and application of the concept (morris, 2019). bergsteiner, avery, and neumann (2010) further cite categorization and logical structuring as problem areas with graphical representations in experiential learning models, which may mute their guiding power in research and practice. further, the criticism has also bordered on cultural and individual characteristics, suggesting it inaptly accounts for the diverse range of learners' cultural contexts concerning their experiences (smith, knapp, seaman, & pace, 2011). further, reynolds derided experiential learning for concentrating too much on individual learning and ignoring the social context of learning and its power dynamics. 3. methodology 3.1. research design this research utilized research and development (r&d) activity with the aim of investigating the design and implementation of an experiential learning management model in schools in nakhon phanom, thailand. in this study, a quasi-experimental pre-posttest design was employed to evaluate the development of life skills and social skills in preschool children exhibiting in the experiential learning group and those assigned to the traditional teaching group. the life skills assessment scale (lsas) was used to measure life skills, and the social skills assessment scale (ssas) was used to assess social skills. the research design was divided into the following three phases (figure 2). phase 1: development and assessment of the model framework. this study examines the current state of education, its needs, and related theoretical knowledge in order to initially design a framework for an experiential learning management model. basic information was collected from relevant teachers and learners of the target group through interviews. the preliminary modeling framework is submitted to experts in the relevant fields for assessment and validation to ensure the scientific validity and applicability of the model, and it is revised and improved based on the feedback from the experts. phase 2: experimentation and optimization of the model framework. in an experimental trial in tessaban 4 (rattanakosin 200 years) school, 26 early childhood children were selected for the initial application of the experiential learning management modeling framework. we closely observed the effectiveness of its implementation during the trial and recorded any possible problems. based on the shortcomings in practical application, the modeling framework is adjusted and improved to ensure its adaptability and effectiveness. phase 3: validity study of the model framework. we will experiment with the practical effects of the experiential learning management model and verify the effectiveness of the model through a comparative study between the experimental and control groups. the experimental group was selected from learners of municipality school 6 (yongjiayuth), and a cluster random sampling method was used to determine the study population. the contribution of the model to educational practice was further assessed by quantitatively analyzing the differences in learning outcomes between learners in the experimental and control groups. figure 2. the three phases of research and development. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 172-178 175 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. participants the population scope of this study is the school children of municipality school 6 (yongjiayuth) of nakhon phanom aged 4 to 5 years old who are officially enrolled in the first semester of the 2022 school year. we selected 2 classes from the target population as the study sample by cluster random sampling method and divided them into an experimental group and a control group of 28 each after excluding (1) children who were not able to participate in the whole study activities; and (2) children with special educational needs or other factors affecting the results of the study. children in the experimental group received a teaching intervention based on the experiential learning management model, while those in the control group continued to receive traditional teaching methods as the control group of the study. 3.3. intervention we held a meeting with the guardians of all participants prior to the start of the intervention, detailing the study objectives, expectations, and the intervention process, and obtained informed consent from the guardians. the intervention lasted for eight weeks, comprising 24 learning experience activity plans, each lasting 40 minutes. activities were conducted three times a week, with one activity per day, scheduled from 9:30 to 10:10 a.m. based on the principles of the experiential learning management model, the experimental group's program was designed with activities closely related to children's daily lives, such as simulated role-playing (e.g., a happy home), solving practical problems (e.g., neighbourhood house), and cooperating to complete tasks (e.g., our province). to support the learning process, the teacher took on the role of facilitator, guiding the children through difficulties rather than providing direct answers. the activity ends with a reflective discussion in which the children share their experiences and receive feedback that reinforces their understanding and helps them to internalize their new skills. parents are also encouraged to interact with their children on curriculum topics to reinforce learning outside the classroom. to ensure that all children can participate, we use age-appropriate tools such as visual aids, manipulatives, and multimedia content. in the control group, traditional teaching methods were used, with teachers mainly teaching relevant knowledge and skills and arranging repetitive practice activities, with fewer opportunities for children's active and interactive participation. the curriculum focuses on the direct teaching of basic life and social skills, such as memorizing basic polite phrases and imitating teachers' actions. preand post-intervention measures were taken of life and social skills among all participants. the outcomes of the tests will serve to compare the differences in effectiveness between the experiential learning management model and traditional teaching methods. 3.4. hypotheses hypothesis 1: students who are learning life skills and related social skills through experiential learning-based management exhibit notable improvements over their pre-experimental levels. hypothesis 2: students who are taught by means of an experiential learning management model show significantly improved life skills and social skills as compared with those taught using traditional methods. 3.5. instruments 3.5.1. the life skills assessment scale (lsas) the life skills assessment scale (lsas) serves as an elaborate means of assessing a student's extent of life skills development in two broad categories: (1) analytical thinking and creative problem-solving, and (2) emotional management and stress coping. dimension 1 describes four specific areas encompassed: information analysis, logical reasoning, multi-perspective thinking, and resource integration; dimension 2 comprises aspects such as emotion recognition, emotion regulation, stress management, and resilience development. with each dimension rated on a scale ranging from 1 to 4, based on the actual performance of the student, a score of 4 is awarded for full adherence to the rubric given for a particular item, making it possible for the maximum total scale score to be 32. item objective consistency (ioc) methods were then used to validate the reliability of the scale according to the criteria proposed by chatprem et al. (2020). seven items were independently rated by five domain experts, with an ioc defining ranges of 0.80-1.00 interpreted as meaning that the lsas is an instrument having suitable objectivity. the scale was then administered before and after the intervention to provide a scientific basis for measuring life skills changes within the experimental and control groups. 3.5.2. the social skills assessment scale (ssas) the social skills assessment scale (ssas) assesses the extent of student life skills development across two broad dimensions: (1) the aspect of living with others and (2) the aspect of interaction with others. dimension (1) covers four specific items: effective communication, teamwork, relationship management, and respectful inclusion; dimension (2) includes active listening, information sharing, emotional empathy, and constructive feedback. the assessment was the same as above, with a maximum total scale score of 32. similarly, the ssas was validated for reliability through item objective consistency (ioc). the value of the ioc score calculated after independent assessment by five experts was 0.80-1.00. therefore, the ssas was also found to be a valid instrument for assessing students' social skills. 3.6. data collection and analysis pre-test and post-test data were collected to assess students' life and social skills in order to compare the experimental and control groups. paired samples t-test and analysis of variance (one-way manova) were applied to the quantitative data using spss data analysis software to determine significant differences within and between groups. the significance level was set to 0.05. m represents the mean, sd denotes the standard deviation, df stands for degrees of freedom, and p indicates the significance level. 3.7. ethical approval this study was conducted in strict compliance with ethical norms, and the study protocol was approved by the ethics committees of nakhon phanom university before implementation. all students' guardians signed a written informed consent form after being fully informed of the purpose, content, and potential risks of the study. the asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 172-178 176 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group experimental data were sealed after the completion of the experiment to ensure the privacy and security of the participants. 4. results 4.1. hypothesis 1 table 1 presents a comparison of students' life and social skills before and after the implementation of the experiential learning management model. for life skills, the m of pre-test was 24.75 (sd=1.17), while the post-test mean score increased significantly to 29.28 (sd=1.62). a paired-sample t-test revealed a statistically significant improvement [t (27) =12.934, p<0.05]. for social skills, the pre-test m was 26.78 (sd=1.22), which increased to 29.10 (sd=1.64) in the post-test. the paired-sample t-test also indicated a statistically significant difference [t (27) =5.596, p<0.05]. these results suggest that the experiential learning management model had a significant positive impact on students' development of life and social skills, as evidenced by the marked improvement in both domains post-intervention. thus, hypothesis 1 can be accepted. table 1. comparison of students' life and social skills before and after learning based on experiential learning management model. variable pre-test post-test df t p m sd m sd life skills 24.75 1.17 29.28 1.62 27 12.934 0.000* social skills 26.78 1.22 29.1 1.64 27 5.596 0.000* note: *<0.05. 4.2. hypothesis 2 table 2 displays the comparison of pre-intervention life skills and social skills base scores between students in the experimental and control groups. for life skills, the experimental group reported m=24.39, sd=1.34, while the control group had a slightly lower m of 24.00 (sd=1.15). the t-test revealed no statistically significant difference between the two groups [t (54) =1.174, p>0.05]. for social skills, the experimental group had the m of 26.42 (sd=1.39), compared to the control group’s m=25.85, sd=1.14. although the experimental group scored slightly higher, the t-test indicated that the difference was not statistically significant [t (54) =1.672, p>0.05]. the baseline levels of life skills and social skills were comparable between the experimental and control groups before the intervention, supporting the assumption of equivalence in pre-intervention conditions. table 2. comparison of pre-intervention life skills and social skills scores between experimental and control groups (t-tests). variable experimental group control group df t p m sd m sd life skills 24.39 1.34 24.00 1.15 54 1.174 0.246 social skills 26.42 1.39 25.85 1.14 54 1.672 0.100 afterwards, using the kolmogorov-smirnov test, the results showed that the life skills and social skills scores of both the experimental and control groups after the study met the conditions of normal distribution (normal curve) (table 3). the normality of both life skills scores and social skills scores was significant (p>0.05). also, table 4 shows that the variance of the post-test data was consistent (p>0.05) between the experimental and the picking control groups. table 3. normality test of life and social skills scores for manova analysis. variable experimental group control group statistic df p statistic df p life skills 0.143 28 0.150 0.118 28 0.200 social skills 0.153 28 0.094 0.143 28 0.150 table 4. homogeneity test of variances using box’s test. variable box’s m f df 1 df 2 p life skills and social skills 0.897 0.287 3 524880 0.835 the results in table 5 summarize the manova analysis comparing post-learning skills. all multivariate tests showed significant differences between the groups. the f-value for all tests was 8.377 (p<0.05), indicating that the experimental and control groups differ significantly in their post-learning skills. these findings suggest a robust multivariate effect based on the learning management model applied. thus, hypothesis 2 can be accepted. table 5. post-learning skills comparison using one-way manova. statistic value hypothesis df error df f p pillai’s trace 0.240 2.00 53.00 8.377 0.001* wilks’ lambda 0.760 2.00 53.00 8.377 0.001* hotelling’s trace 0.316 2.00 53.00 8.377 0.001* roy’s largest root 0.316 2.00 53.00 8.377 0.001* note: *<0.05. 5. discussion in this study, we aimed to investigate the impact of an instructional intervention based on an experiential learning management model on the development of life skills and social skills in early childhood. a significant difference between pre-and post-measures in both life skills and social skills in the experimental group was found, with life skills scores from 24.75 (sd=1.17) to 29.28 (sd=1.62), and social skills from 26.78 (sd=1.22) to 29.10 (sd=1.64), both at the α=0.05 level of significance. the experimental group did significantly better in all areas of skill development compared to the control group. the one-way manova confirmed that this model's teaching design had a significant impact on children's overall skill growth (wilks' lambda=0.760, f=8.377, p<0.05). this asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 172-178 177 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group finding suggests the experiential learning management model is effective in fostering the development of life skills and social skills among children. experiential learning is an important aspect of a child's development, particularly in terms of life skills and social skills. such approaches call for teachers to prepare activities that correspond to children's everyday experiences, while at the same time preparing them for future challenges that will require thinking critically, solving problems, and working collaboratively. professional development workshops should allow educators with diverse backgrounds to discuss challenges, share effective strategies, and co-develop innovative solutions. the management model for experiential learning is continuously developed and evolving every year in accordance with newly emerging educational elaborations. recent studies have further highlighted the far-reaching influence of experiential learning in early childhood education. varman, kelly, cliff, and jones (2023) undertook a systematic review of experimental studies on such interventions and their effectiveness in improving children's knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to physical activity, listing experiential-based learning among the crucial contributors to the promotion of healthy behaviors. nature-based experiential learning promotes sustainability, environmental awareness, and place-based education, providing meaningful outdoor learning experiences (boileau & o’donoghue, 2025). the outdoor education approach is often used as a form of experiential learning, providing rich learning scenarios and activities that help students understand subject matter through sensory experience, exploration and practice learning in a natural environment. yang, bautista, and li (2023) revisited outdoor pedagogy and advocated experiential learning methods to improve educators' practice learning to ultimately enhance children's learning outcomes. it is interesting to note that varman, kelly, et al. (2023) show how experiential learning programmes targeting healthy eating and physical activity can work by engaging carers, promoting choice and incorporating sensory and music-based activities. squires, van rhijn, harwood, haines, and barton (2025) shared other educators' perspectives on outdoor learning, with most supporting the important role of playful experiences in supporting equitable child development. children's cognitive structures are not fixed but are constantly reorganized as they gain experience (behrens, 2021). based on constructivism, each task or activity in experiential learning provides children with an opportunity for cognitive restructuring, prompting them to internalize and transform their knowledge by connecting abstract concepts to concrete experiences in the process of solving practical problems (shepherd & shepherd, 2023). executive function theory explains why experiential learning is effective in promoting children's cognitive control, which in turn enhances their social skills. executive functions, including working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, directly affect an individual's performance on complex tasks (escobar & espinoza, 2024). children often need to process multiple pieces of information, make real-time decisions, and adapt their behavior to respond to changing situations. wang and feng (2024) suggest that this dynamic regulation and increased cognitive load prompt children to continually challenge their executive functions, such as how to inhibit impulses when dealing with conflict and how to demonstrate flexibility in different social situations, which directly contributes to the maturation and refinement of their social behavior. social cognitive theory provides an alternative perspective for understanding the social effects of experiential learning. children gradually accumulate effective social strategies through interactions with peers and adults, observing and imitating the social behavior of others bauminger-zviely et al., (2021). this self-confidence building and continuous feedback from successful experiences further stimulate children's social motivation and learning incentives, promoting the gradual improvement of their competence in social interactions. 6. conclusion this study is an investigation of the effects of an experiential learning management model on the life skills and social skills development in preschool children. it was discovered that an implantable learning model is one that gives the experimental group significant development in their life skills and social skills with higher learning outcomes in comparison with the control group. the model promotes children's critical thinking, cooperative skills, and self-confidence through a blend of structured activities and ordinary tasks. the overall conclusions of this study support the experiential learning management model as an innovative pedagogical approach in preschool education. there are also potential applications for this model in the broader field of education. further studies become necessary to legitimize its efficacy across cultural environments and for long-range teaching. 6. limitations there are some limitations to this study, which should be recognized. the study was conducted with preschoolers, whose young age and limited self-control and attention span made it somewhat more difficult to manage and implement the experiential learning management model. although the research design has tried to cope with this through structured activities and teacher guidance, there may be instances where elementary-aged children are unable to fully focus or understand the requirements of the task during their participation, which may affect the actual effectiveness of the model. due to the large individual differences in preschoolers' learning and behavioral development, the model needs to be flexibly adapted to children's individual characteristics in its practical application. it is such adjustments that are responsible for making the activities adaptable, which in turn cause some bias concerning the standardized implementation of the model, leading to subsequent effects on the reproducibility and generalization of the conclusions of the study. these constraints point to practical challenges associated with applying complex instructional models in the field of children's education and suggest that future research would benefit from further attention on how to optimize model designs to better adapt them to match the learning characteristics and developmental needs of younger children. references abdulwahed, m., & nagy, z. k. 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(2023). curriculum-based professional learning in early childhood education: conceptualization, implementation and evaluation. frontiers in psychology, 14, 1252236. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1252236 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000921000556 https://doi.org/10.1080/01580370903534355 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-023-00153-1 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01305 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmpt.2019.04.010 https://doi.org/10.1123/smej.6.1.71 https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620904771 https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2024.2400993 https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2407.12355 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2016.12.024 https://doi.org/10.3200/jece.38.2.143-152 https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484306296828 https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1570279 https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.304 https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022217711878 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-023-01614-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-023-01614-4 https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507612465063 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijis.2024.07.002 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182010824 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294987 https://doi.org/10.1080/19325037.2023.2232429 https://doi.org/10.3390/computation7030037 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2023.10.010 https://doi.org/10.1111/dsji.12038 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1252236 89 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 2, 89-103, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5618 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a scientometrics analysis and systematic review of steam education with gamification thada jantakoon1 thiti jantakun2 kitsadaporn jantakun3 ( corresponding author) 1faculty of science and technology, rajabhat mahasarakham university, mahasarakham, thailand. 1email: thada.phd@gmail.com 2,3faculty of education, roi et rajabhat university, roi et, thailand. 2email: thiti100@gmail.com 3email: jansri.kp@gmail.com abstract this scientometric analysis and systematic review methodologies examine the integration of gamification into steam education from 2017 to 2023. we collected data from the scopus database. the study employed content analysis to evaluate 34 articles published during the past 7 years. the aggregate magnitude and trajectory of publications. the study examined trends in terms of annual accounts, number of articles, distribution of articles by sources, most productive sources, keywords, top collaboration groups, theme evolutions, contributions, practical consequences, and conceptual framework. the findings revealed the publication of 34 papers across 30 sources between 2017 and 2023, offering significant insights into the data and document formats. the research on steam with gamification revealed fluctuations, alternating between deceleration and positive acceleration. the articles experienced their highest growth rate in 2022. "ceur workshop proceedings" is the primary source for the most frequently published articles. we request the keyword plus growth rate for phrases such as "computer-aided instruction," "elearning," and "embedded systems." the analysis’s findings on thematic evolution unveiled three significant advancements: (1) studies in science and technology have shifted their focus towards steam education. (2) research on learning environments has expanded to include further investigation into stem education and the integration of science and technology. (3) school students’ research has evolved and merged with the study of the learning process. the outcomes, contributions, and real-world significance of incorporating gamification into steam education. the conceptual framework ultimately fosters the development of creativity, problem-solving skills, and innovative abilities. keywords: steam, steam education, gamification, steam and gamification, scientometrics analysis, systematic review, scopus. citation | jantakoon, t., jantakun, t., & jantakun, k. (2024). a scientometrics analysis and systematic review of steam education with gamification. asian journal of education and training, 10(2), 89– 103. 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5618 history: received: 5 february 2024 revised: 22 march 2024 accepted: 8 april 2024 published: 7 may 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher:asian online journal publishing group funding: this research was financially supported by the science prom ot ion fund research and innovation: research fund grant number 2566a14712030, from the fundamental fund of the thailand science research and innovation (tsri) programme in thailand. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as p lanned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the c oncept ion and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the p ub lished version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 90 2. research methodology ............................................................................................................................................................................... 91 3. descriptive analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................... 92 4. thematic evolution of steam education with gamification ..................................................................................................... 94 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................................101 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................101 mailto:thada.phd@gmail.com mailto:thiti100@gmail.com mailto:jansri.kp@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i2.5618 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5935-5875 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4250-7589 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0856-6524 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 90 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the scientometrics analysis and systematic review of steam education with gamification shows the trends of steam education with gamification, directions for applying steam education with gamification, number of articles, distribution of articles by sources, most productive sources, keywords, top collaboration groups, theme evolutions, contributions and practical consequences, and conceptual framework. 1. introduction lately, there has been a notable increase in the implementation of gamification in the realm of education, particularly in the subject of steam education. researchers have conducted several systematic reviews and meta analyses to investigate the effects of gamification on student engagement, academic achievement, and motivation. previous studies have confirmed that gamification is a valid educational method that can improve student performance (camacho-sánchez, manzano-león, rodríguez-ferrer, serna, & lavega-burgués, 2023; manzanoleón et al., 2021). recent research has revealed that integrating game components and design strategies into educational settings enhances student enthusiasm, commitment, and academic performance(nadi-ravandi & batooli, 2022; ruipérez valiente, 2022). nevertheless, further investigation is necessary to fully grasp the obstacles and prerequisites faced by students while employing gamified learning methods (zeybek & saygı, 2024). moreover, the field of applying game elements in science education lacks a sufficient amount of academic literature and presents conflicting findings. this emphasizes the importance of conducting more empirical research and exploring new areas of interest in the future. a thorough analysis of the incorporation of gamification into steam education, using scientometric and systematic methods, would provide valuable insights on the effectiveness and impact of gamification on students' academic performance. the application of bibliometric analysis and other scientometric techniques (supriyadi, turmudi, dahlan, & juandi, 2023; wang & he, 2022) has provided valuable insights into research trends and productivity in the field of steam education. santi et al. (2021) provide strategies that entail analyzing the publication trends, influential authors, affiliations, and countries that make contributions to the topic. an analysis of the literature on steam education using bibliometric methods found that the number of publications has been increasing at an annual rate of 24.19% (singh, solkhe, & gautam, 2022). additionally, the study acknowledged notable contributors like piperopoulos and perignat, and identified jeju national university and the korea national university of education as among the most significant institutions (jetsadanuruk & chansanam, 2023). examinations of bibliometric data reveal that the most commonly studied subjects in the field of digital literacy in higher education are the incorporation of digital technology and the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic. bibliometric analysis provides academics with useful insights into the steam education research environment. it helps them understand patterns, identify important contributions, and guide future research efforts. conducting systematic reviews involves several important steps, including defining the clinical question and methodology, identifying and analyzing relevant studies, collecting data, assessing the risk of bias in the included studies, conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis, assigning a level of certainty to the evidence, and drawing conclusions. these approaches are considered optimal for conducting systematic reviews (mckeown & mir, 2021). farhat et al. (2022) identified ovid, covidence, and rayyan as the most accurate electronic tools for identifying and removing duplicate references.moreover, researchers can gain advantages from the integration of a visual analytics system that combines interactive visualizations and artificial intelligence. this integration facilitates the implementation of complex protocols and analysis during the review process (sina & nazemi, 2022; sobieraj & baker, 2021). practitioners must use critical appraisal methods and carefully consider the quality of the systematic review before applying the evidence (boaye & zhao, 2022). systematic reviews and scientometric methodologies improve understanding of steam education by providing valuable information on its prevalence, implementation, and trends. these methods aid in identifying the practical uses of developing technology in steam education, such as integrating art and utilizing innovative tools and components. furthermore, they prioritize the cultivation of skills in data management, problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, and communication. the examination of scientometric data reveals the efficiency of different nations and the subjects within the realm of steam education that have yielded the highest amount of research. systematic reviews highlight the need to perform carefully designed intervention studies that involve collaboration among experts from different fields and utilize advanced measures to assess educational outcomes. the aforementioned methodologies aid in identifying gaps in the existing knowledge and provide opportunities for further exploration in the field of steam education (juca-aulestia et al., 2021; marcelo, deyanira, margoth, & jacinto, 2021; nurhasnah, festiyed, & yerimadesi, 2023; santi et al., 2021). scientometrics and rigorous evaluations of steam education are vital for several reasons. scientometrics is a field that focuses on quantitatively studying scientific literature. it helps us map and analyze steam education research pattern. the analysis provides data regarding the productivity of authors, nations, and the most extensively researched issues (aguilera & ortiz-revilla, 2021; juca-aulestia et al., 2021; santi et al., 2021). furthermore, thorough literature reviews facilitate the identification and synthesis of current research pertaining to educational interventions rooted in stem and steam disciplines. the evaluations by marcelo et al. (2021) and kwan and wong (2021) provide a thorough analysis of the different approaches and methods used in stem and steam education, as well as their effects on students' creativity and resourcefulness. systematic evaluations enable researchers to offer evidencebased recommendations for improving and implementing steam education. these recommendations might cover various aspects such as curriculum development, learning settings, and teaching methods. overall, the application of scientometrics and systematic reviews improves the quality and advancement of steam education by providing insights into research trends and integrating evidence-based methods. this study aims to conduct a comprehensive scientometric analysis and systematic review of the intersection between science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (steam) education and gamification. this research will span the years 2017 to 2023, exploring the growth, impact, and trends within the field. by analyzing data obtained from scopus dataset, this research aims to address eight research questions (rqs): asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 91 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group rq1. what is the overall volume and growth pattern of publications in the steam education with gamification literature? rq2. what are the leading publications in the field of steam education with gamification? rq3. which are the top sources (journals, book series, conferences) in steam education with gamification literature in terms of volume of publications and citations? rq4. what are the keywords plus in the steam education with gamification? rq5. in terms of publication, who are the top collaboration groups in the steam education with gamification literature? rq6. what are thematic evolutions of steam education with gamification? rq7. what are the contributions and practical implications of steam education with gamification? rq8. what is the conceptual framework of steam education with gamification that aims to cultivate innovators? 2. research methodology 2.1. the approach this investigation aims to develop a novel approach to integrating scientometrics and systematic review using prisma 2020. this approach is both essential and suitable for investigating underexplored subjects and the evolution of educational technologies (chen, zou, kohnke, xie, & cheng, 2021). therefore, we apply scientometrics to demonstrate the descriptive analysis and thematic evolution prior to disclosing the systematic reviews (santana & cobo, 2020). scientometrics are followed by the presentation of the systematic review conducted in accordance with the prisma 2020 recommendations (brennan & munn, 2021). figure 1 depicts the prisma flowchart that guides the article selection process. figure1.prisma 2020 of article selection. 2.2. database, keyword selection and date of search the terms "steam" and "steam education" are commonly employed to refer to the fundamental development of an "integrated approach to learning" within the context of the integrated knowledge process. we evaluated their applicability to gamification in tandem with the development of steam education. therefore, to align with the study’s objective, we used three keywords ("gamification") and "steam" or "steam education") to narrow down the search to relevant literature sources in the scopus database. the preliminary search outcomes as of november 7, 2023, indicated that the scopus database contains 45 indexed documents. 2.3. inclusion and exclusion criteria the research excluded supplementary materials such as conference proceedings, book chapters, and review articles, because of their non-english language publication status. therefore, for the study, a total of 34 articles were included, all of which were published in peer-reviewed journals that were indexed in scopus. 2.4. tools and techniques for the scientometric analysis of the 34 articles chosen for the study (khokhlov, 2020) the bibliometrix package (aria & cuccurullo, 2017) implemented in the r programming language (chan, 2018) was utilized (chan, 2018). the following section provides the results of the analysis. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 92 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. descriptive analysis the articles utilized in this investigation are summarized in figure 2 and table1. an analysis of the data reveals that 30 sources published a total of 34 articles between 2017 and 2023. the research on this topic exhibits limited collaboration, with an average of 2.62 authors per paper and a total of 81 authors. there were only four documents that had a single author. the descriptive analysis yielded another crucial aspect: the mean number o f citations per document. in this corpus, the mean number of citations per document is 4.588, indicating that articles published in this domain receive very few references. the subsequent part presents the document's content, including the author's keywords (n = 139) and keyword plus (n = 237). figure 2. the descriptive summary of article selection. table1.main information. description results “main information about data” “timespan” 2017:2023 “sources (journals, books, etc)” 30 “documents” 34 “annual growth rate %” 4.91 “document average age” 2.62 “average citations per doc” 4.588 “references” 841 “document contents” “keywords plus” 237 “author's keywords” 139 “authors” “authors” 81 “authors of single-authored docs” 4 “authors collaboration” “single-authored docs” 4 “co-authors per doc” 2.79 “international co-authorships %” 5.882 “document types” “article” 13 “conference paper” 21 3.1. annual scientific production only three studies specifically addressed the integration of steam with gamification in 2017. nevertheless, the number of articles has risen to 6 in 2019, 7 in 2020, 4 in 2021, and 8 in 2022. by november 2023, a total of four articles had been published. hence, the findings from the yearly scientific output (table 2 and figure 3) substantiate the increase in research enthusiasm within this field throughout 2022. table2.annual scientific production. year articles 2017 3 2018 2 2019 6 2020 7 2021 4 2022 8 2023 4 total 34 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 93 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure3.annual scientific production. 3.2. top 5 sources of steam and gamification research in zone 1 (bradford’s law) the bradford law, formulated by bradford (1934), employs the pareto distribution to classify goods into three specific zones: zone 1, zone 2, and zone 3. according to bradford's law (table 3), the sources with the highest article frequency are "ceur workshop proceedings," "advances in intelligent systems and computing," "tem journal," "2021 44thinternational convention on information, communication, and electronic technology, mipro 2021-proceedings," and "2022 ieee 2nd international conference on educational technology, icet 2022." during the chosen time period, these sources have published a total of 3, 2, 2, 1, and 1 article, respectively. table3.top 5 sources in zone 1 (bradford’s law). sources rank frequency ceur workshop proceedings 1 3 advances in intelligent systems and computing 2 2 tem journal 3 2 2021 44th international convention on information, communication and electronic technology, mipro 2021 – proceedings 4 1 2022 ieee 2nd international conference on educational technology, icet 2022 5 1 3.3. word dynamics (keyword plus growth rate) figure 4 illustrates the cumulative count of occurrences of keyword plus occurrences and its growth rate from 2017 to 2023. the phrases "computer aided instruction", "e-learning", "embedded systems", "education computing", "engineering education", "gamification", "life cycle", "high school students", "human computer interaction", "learning systems", "steam", and "students" emerged and grew over the specified timeframe. the keyword’s existence, coupled with the rate of expansion, indicates the emergence of new study topics in this field. hence, the following section will examine and elucidate the conceptual advancement of keyword plus. figure 4. words’ frequency over time (keyword plus). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 94 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.4. social structure (collaboration world map) the social structure, shown by the cooperation global map (figure 5), illustrates the extent of collaboration among authors from various nations on the study topic. the findings indicated that german authors had the most foreign collaborations (n = 3) in this specific study field, with one collaboration each from france, latvia, and norway. norway and france had the second and third greatest number of foreign cooperations, with a count of 2 each. authors from norway cooperated with one author from france and one author from latvia. authors from france collaborated with one latvian author and one german author. therefore, the results of the social structure analysis (collaboration world map) indicate that research in this field is both restricted and characterized by collaboration. figure 5. social structure of the research. 4. thematic evolution of steam education with gamification when represented in two dimensions, co-word analysis (chen, chen, wu, xie, & li, 2016) can offer valuable insights about the expansion of words (rahmani, 2018) by considering their centrality and density. therefore, in line with the concept of word dynamics, this study employed 2020 as a definitive boundary. the findings unveiled three significant advancements: (1) studies in science and technology have shifted towards steam education. (2) research on learning environments has expanded to include stem education and science and technology integration. (3) research on school students has evolved and merged with the learning process (figure 6). figure 6. thematic evolution. 4.1. thematic evolution (2017–2020) only in 2017, the scopus database publishes the first article on steam education with gamification. hence, the first thematic evolution map was plotted for the time period of 2017 to 2020. the results revealed that “science technology”, “technology engineering”, “steam education”, “creative innovation”, “developed model”, and “steam gamification” were basic themes, and studies on the “school student”, “steam subjects”, “computational thinking”, “learning environment”, “learning management”, and “management system” were niche themes (figure 7). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 95 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 7. thematic evolution 2017–2020. 4.2. thematic evolution (2021–2023) “steam education,” “educational resources,” “engineering art,” “science technology,” “technology engineering,” and “learning environment” of steam education with gamification have emerged as motor themes. the results revealed that “learning process,” “motivate students,” “school student,” and “student learning” were emerging themes. “learning experience,” and “game-based learning” evolved during this period (figure 8). figure 8. thematic evolution 2021–2023. 4.3. review of the contributions and practical implications of steam education with gamification we individually assessed each of the 34 papers that met the inclusion requirements. table 4 presents the results and practical consequences. moreover, the table has the reference number, title, researchers' technique, findings, contributions, and practical implications of merging steam education with gamification. table 4. contributions and practical implications of steam education with gamification. items title method conclusions contributions practical implications p1 “dynamic educational philosophy for learning technology management” (centeno-leyva & barreto, 2023) gamification and information and communication technology(ict)i n latin american education industry 4.0 technologies for production and services latin american education faces challenges in ict implementation industry 4.0 influences the development of education 4.0 rapid advance of genetic engineering and neuroscience hyperconnectivity of communicative media and digital interconnection implementation of education 4.0 in latin america challenges in introducing industry 4.0 in education p2 “ohm vr: solving electronics escape room challenges on scenario-based usability tests with n=5 users prototype validated as proof of concept further development explore potential of gamified virtual reality (vr)for experienceandjudgement moderatelyfavor oneactivityoveranother asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 96 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group items title method conclusions contributions practical implications the roadmap towards gamified steam education”(zamojski et al., 2023) triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods and larger scale study needed teaching validate vr tools for knowledge acquisition and soft skills p3 “a physics learning system using gamification for high-school students” (katanosaka, khan, & sakamura, 2023) next.js and react framework for front-end matter.js for simulation environment phygame improved motivation and engagement in online education students found phygame fun, engaging, and motivating section v: preliminary evaluation results section vi: limitations and future outlook improves motivation and engagement in online education students desire to use gamified learning for other subjects p4 “digital learning ecosystem based on the steam gamification concept to develop innovator characteristics of vocational learners” (kummanee, nilsook, & wannapiroon, 2020) selection of qualified tools for learning management use of gamification mechanics in learning activities positive correlation between innovation portfolio, innovative skills, and vocational characteristics. experimental group had significantly higher learning achievement than control group. compare academic achievement scores before and after learning assess creative innovation performance, skills, and attributes development of digital learning ecosystems for vocational learners promotion of innovator characteristics and lifelong learning skills p5 “improving serious games by crowdsourcing feedback from the steam online gaming community” (moro, phelps, & birt, 2022) analysis of steam community player and in-class student written comments crowdsourced feedback from steam community valuable for educators insights extend beyond what is available from literature engaging international gaming community for feedback game freely available on steam for reviews steam community feedback can enhance game development. crowdsourcing reviews from steam community is valuable. p6 “from atoms to stars: an interactive theatre play based on 'the little prince' novella to describe spatial thinking”(acuñaumaña, gómezquirós, & herrerasancho, 2022) conceptual issues about spatial thinking: this refers to difficulties students face in understanding spatial concepts, such as the visualization of objects and their development over time. the study highlights the importance of didactic strategies in designing a unique theatre play that links the history of atomic models with literature to enhance students' understanding of spatial thinking. the successful qualitative assessment results have led to plans for further exploration of these strategies to have a greater impact on students' learning processes. -interdisciplinary approaches: this refers to the integration of different academic disciplines, in this case, science and theatre, to create a more comprehensive and meaningful learning experience. it emphasizes the importance of combining knowledge from various fields to enhance understanding. -steam careers: steam stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. it emphasizes the integration of arts and humanities with the traditional stem fields. gamification and collaborative work: gamification involves using game design elements in non-game contexts, such as education, to make learning more engaging. p7 “thai undergraduate science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (steam) creative thinking and innovation skill development: a conceptual model using a digital virtual classroom learning environment” (wannapiroon & pimdee, 2022) mix-method research approach (quantitative and qualitative methods) systematic review of factors affecting steam-ification process virtual classroom learning environment (vcle)enhances creative thinking and innovation skills. gamification contributes to higher levels of creativity and innovation. pre-service teachers and institutions need to be technologically savvy. digital storytelling and use of digital media. vcle enhances creative thinking and innovation skills gamification contributes to motivation and innovation in learning p8 “preliminary construction of gamification teaching evaluation system in primary and secondary schools based on steam theory” (tian & yang, 2022) mathematical calculation and measurement methods interdisciplinary thinking to solve practical problems gamification teaching evaluation system needs improvement evaluation elements should be comprehensive and diversified initial construction of gamification teaching evaluation system application of steam teaching concept to gamification teaching evaluation gamification teaching can improve students' technical operation and innovation ability. steam theory helps in understanding students' psychological changes. p9 “gamification of strategic thinking: using a digital board game on steam” (kodalle, observe, orient, decide, act (ooda-loop) and decision support techniques scythe is an engaging strategy game for training strategic thinking skills. digital scythe offers new opportunities for application of a framework for distributed wargaming reconstruction of the development and scythe is an engaging strategy game for training strategic thinking skills. digital scythe opens new opportunities for training 21st-century skills. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 97 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group items title method conclusions contributions practical implications 2022) strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (swotanalysis), kanban-board, scrum, and other agile management methods training 21st-century skills. facilitation of the seminar p10 “the graded multidisciplinary model: fostering instructional design for activity development in stem/steam education”(floresnicolás & reyes, 2022) process engineering educational systems engineering graded multidisciplinary model(gmm) allows for multidisciplinary activities in stem/steam education. minecraft education edition (minecraft ee)can be used for basic level students. proposal for instructional design in stem/steam education use of pedagogical methodologies and technology in activities gmm allows for multidisciplinary integration in stem/steam education. minecraft ee can be used for teaching basic level students. p11 “features of introduction of components of gamification in the course of development of constructive strategies of overcoming youth's life crises” (varina, osadchyi, goncharova, & sankov, 2022) playing games with simple tasks managed acupressure using vibration tactile motors introduction of gamification in education is important. gamification and augmented reality and virtual reality (arvr) technologies can enhance stress resistance. implementing gamification elements in higher education system formation of gamehub infrastructure in higher educational establishments in ukraine introduction of gamification in education for stress resistance development use of augmented and virtual reality in constructive coping strategies p12 “fostering business education using playful and steam pedagogy” (sigcho & jadán-guerrero, 2022) -data collection from 9 teachers and 130 eighthyear high school students -questionnaire -the study involved data collection from teachers and students, resulting in the development of instruments for domestic laboratories that received high levels of motivation and interaction. -steam education promotes interdisciplinary learning in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics, helping children adapt to a changing world. -this research suggests using recyclable materials at home to create domestic laboratories, fostering scientific thinking and problem-solving skills. p13 “the applicability of gamification in architectural design education” (palócz & katona, 2021) systematic analysis (metaanalysis, lexical analysis, keyword analysis, literature analysis) inductive methods (grounded theory, field research, content analysis) gamification can be applied in different areas of life. the study explored the application of gamification in architectural design education. outlining trends and patterns in game research exploring how digital interventions influence architectural design consideration of age, knowledge, skills, and abilities of students formation of heterogeneous groups for problem-solving activities p14 “ideia space’s steam program, an innovative educational project in brazil” (ideia space’s steam program an innovative educational project in brazil, 2021) project base learning (pbl) and gamification, ideia space aims to motivate students on learning and getting involved in steam. ideia space is an innovative program in brazil that uses space as a tool to engage middle school students in scientific learning. the program consists of a 20-hour course where students simulate a space mission using an educational pocketqube satellite model. -the program incorporates active methodologies like pbl and gamification to motivate students and involve them in steam subjects. -through ideia space, students gain hands-on experience, work interdisciplinary, and develop data-based solutions to real problems. p15 “creating multisensory learning experiences that go beyond the limitations of traditional media”(bekeš, 2021) cross-curricular approach combined with cultural heritage augmented reality paired with gamification collaborative augmented reality enhances mathematics and geometry education. ar app allows for interactive and engaging learning experiences. collaborative augmented reality in mathematics and geometry education use of ar technology for creating interactive learning experiences allows for instant feedback from students experiences can be easily shared via unique links or qr codes p16 “the e-facilitator as a key player for interactive dissemination of steam resources for e-learning via webinars as a means of disseminating educational resources interactive forums for sharing webinar is suitable for sharing educational resources. the goal of the webinars was successfully achieved. e-facilitator facilitates access to electronic services and information space. webinars provide interactive webinars provide interactive dissemination of educational resources. webinars are suitable for sharing educational resources. the role of the easian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 98 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group items title method conclusions contributions practical implications webinar” (yoshinov, chehlarova, & kotseva, 2021) results and emotions dissemination of educational resources. facilitator is crucial for webinar success. p17 “effects of steamification model in flipped classroom learning environment on creative thinking and creative innovation” (wannapiroon & petsangsri, 2020) evaluation form for creative skills, creative innovation, and satisfaction data analysis using content analysis, mean, and standard deviation steamification model enhances creative thinking and creative innovation. flipped classroom learning environment increases learning satisfaction. development of the steamification model in flipped classroom learning environment comparison of creative scores and quality scores of creative innovation between students studying through the steamification model and control group students studying through traditional approach. steamification model enhances creative thinking and creative innovation. use of technology can enhance immersive learning experience. p18 “digital learning ecosystem involving steam gamification for a vocational innovator” (kummanee, nilsook, & wannapiroon, 2020) analysis of digital learning ecosystem involving steam gamification development and evaluation of digital learning ecosystem involving steam gamification steam education approach consists of five steps gamification elements motivate students and improve skills quality education meeting international standards improvement in country's competitiveness steam education approach consists of five steps gamification elements motivate students and improve skills p19 “gamified evaluation in steam for higher education: a case study” (boytchev & boytcheva, 2020) gamified evaluation software for university students extending meiro to support evaluation via 3d models gamified evaluation software based on competence profiles positive results in student performance and motivation introduction of project-based learning (pbl) in university education development of gamified evaluation software for steam courses gamified evaluation software for university students positive expectation of students' performance and motivation p20 “a bike-sharing optimization framework combining dynamic rebalancing and user incentives” (chiariotti, pielli, zanella, & zorzi, 2020) combination of rebalancing and incentives improves service quality. incentives and dynamic rebalancing reduce system downtime and failed trips. joint optimization of rebalancing and user incentives simulation-based analysis of bike-sharing system optimization analytical model for bike-sharing network rebalancing combined approach of user incentives and dynamic rebalancing strategy combination of rebalancing and incentives improves service quality. incentive scheme encourages users to change their habits. p21 “stem competencybased learning for engineering and design students of the educational model tec21” (almaguer et al., 2020) gamification meccano workshop and models gamification improves knowledge retention and application in students. meccano and steam workshops enhance learning experiences. meccano models used to visualize real working environment gamification to engage students and improve learning gamification helps students apply knowledge in games. meccano develops professional skills and resilience in students. p22 “gamification after almost a decade: is it still relevant? a case of non-stem hybrid e-learning university course” (bernik, radošević, & dvorski, 2020) general scientific methods (observation, description, comparison, synthesis) statistical methods (t-test) for data analysis gamification enhances the use of teaching materials. there is a statistically significant difference in results between the experimental and control groups. lack of time, authority, and knowledge among teaching staff negligence of lifelong learning and positive effects of ecourse motivation gamification enhances the use of teaching materials. management should implement gamification in online systems. p23 “steam gamification learning model to enhance vocational students’ creativity and innovation skills” (kummanee, nilsook, piriyasurawong, & wannapiroon, 2020) defining problems, designing solutions using mathematics and technology testing, evaluating, and improving problem-solving the steam gamification learning model is appropriate for enhancing vocational students' creativity and innovation skills. the learning processes in the model were approved by experts. informing people about scientific skills and technology increasing capacity in the global competitive market the steam gamification learning model is appropriate for enhancing vocational students' creativity and innovation skills. the learning processes in the model are effective and approved by experts. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 99 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group items title method conclusions contributions practical implications methods p24 “research on application of steam teaching in primary school based on gamification task orientation-taking the fifth grade campus sandbox as an example” (ding, qian, & feng, 2019) questionnaire and interview method -after the steam lesson, the researchers plan to use a questionnaire and interview method to gather feedback and understand the teaching effect of the steam class. -this method involves collecting data through structured questionnaires and conducting interviews with students and teachers to gain insights into their experiences and perceptions of the lesson. the results of the study show that the steam teaching mode is effective in primary school classroom teaching. it enhances students' enthusiasm for learning and provides them with a better learning experience. this suggests that the integration of multiple disciplines, gamification elements, and projectdriven tasks in steam education can have positive impacts on student engagement and learning outcomes. -this model provides a framework for designing and implementing steam lessons that incorporate game elements and focus on practical tasks. -by following this model, educators can create engaging and effective steam lessons that promote active learning and student participation. the researchers hope that the case study presented in this paper will serve as a reference for other researchers and educators interested in implementing steam education in practical settings. p25 “steam for steminclude 'art' in stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)” (halvorsen, tretjakova, timmerberg, thiriet, & mylvaganam, 2019) adding "art" to stem to create steam incorporating elements of "art" in existing courses steam can strengthen female students in stem education. gender balance in steam education is important. adding "art" to stem to create steam incorporating elements of "art" in existing courses strengthen female students in stem education incorporate art in stem curricula for gender balance p26 “the effect of the steam-gaar field learning model to enhance grit” (chujitarom & piriyasurawong, 2019) implementing the learning model with the samples study the correlation between a formative evaluation of the grit score and a formative evaluation of the learning achievement score learning system has 9 segments post-test grit score higher than pre-test integration of real world and virtual world space promoting creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving implementing the learning model enhances grit scores. grit is positively correlated with learning achievement. p27 “gamified evaluation in steam” (boytchev & boytcheva, 2019) -the characteristics of gamification in the context of students' evaluation pose specific requirements for the learning tools used. -these requirements cannot be met by general learning management systems, which are typically designed for traditional assessment methods. -the process of gamification in education, specifically in evaluating students in steam subjects, requires unique learning tools and a new method of grading based on continuous scores generated during gameplay. -it takes into account the temporal tendencies of competence development, providing a more accurate representation of students' progress over time. -the system tracks and analyzes the students' performance over time to capture their competence development p28 “a statistical analysis of steam user profiles towards personalized exploratory factor analysis (efa) parallel analysis analysis of user preferences in game design elements potential for majority of gamification systems use one-size-for-all design approach. analysis of user preferences for personalized gamification potential for data-driven asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 100 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group items title method conclusions contributions practical implications gamification” (li, lu, peltonen, & zhang, 2019) (pa) personalized gamification design and recommender systems study focuses on factors that distinguish steam users and determine their preferences. recommender systems for gamification p29 “towards a trading zone. a semiotic method for crossdisciplinary case study analysis of gamified systems” (cassone, 2019) analytical framework for cross disciplinary case study analysis semiotic perspective on artefacts and design choices the paper proposes an analytical framework for gamified systems. the framework aims to facilitate description, evaluation, and understanding of gamification design choices and effects. semiotic framework for crossdisciplinary analysis of gamified systems analytical aims: description, evaluation, and highlighting effects. proposes an analytical framework for gamification design facilitates communication between different disciplines and practices p30 “effectiveness of debugging-design in 2d simulations to facilitate steam learning” (tembo & lee, 2017) the findings indicate that the system is effective in helping students increase their interest in steam and move up bloom's taxonomy. however, the researchers note that the system needs some improvement in its scaffolding features. -the researchers conducted a preliminary experiment with middle school students to test the effectiveness of the system. -they collected student assessments and analyzed questionnaire responses. a small pilot case study found that using a debuggingdesign approach with 2d simulation applications and incorporating scaffolds and gamification in the learning environment effectively increased students' interest in steam and promoted higherorder thinking skills. they used a debuggingdesign approach with 2d simulation applications and developed scaffolds and gamification for the learning environment. p31 “deriving a gamified learning-design framework towards sustainable community engagement and mashable innovations in smart cities: preliminary findings” (lee & wong, 2018) meta-analysis of two capstone project reports qualitative research method using rich data crowdsourcing has potential for sustainable career options. gamification shows promise for community engagement. derived design factors for community engagement explored possibilities for personalized inclusive design implications for incentivizing crowdsourcing and gamification complementing entrepreneurship with learning for sustainability p32 “mimicking gamers: understanding gamification through roger caillois” (idone, 2017) this analysis will likely involve examining how caillois' ideas align or diverge from contemporary perspectives on gamification. this suggests that the author believes caillois' theories are relevant and can contribute to the understanding of gamification. this comparison will likely involve examining different perspectives and ideas put forth by scholars and researchers in the field of game studies. this implies that caillois' ideas can provide insights into the relationship between gamification and society by considering how games and societies have interacted historically and the role of imitation or mimicry in this interaction. p33 “using 2d simulation applications to motivate students to learn steam” (tembo & lee, 2017) learning by design pedagogy phet and algodoosimulatio n applications interdisciplinary activity to teach steam subjects fun and engaging approach to motivate students to pursue stem developing a learning activity to motivate students to learn steam using a combination of learning by design pedagogy along with phet and algodoosimulation applications to teach physics topics make stem less intimidating for students motivate students to pursue stem in the future p34 “make world, a collaborative platform to develop computational thinking and steam” (guenaga et al., 2017) internal piloting with 524 students in partner countries pre-piloting process with informed consent and training make world is an effective tool for steam education. students have a positive feeling towards make world. make world platform for creating programming challenges analysis of student difficulties in steam education make world is an attractive and effective tool for steam education. make world fosters the creation and assessment of new user-generated learning activities. 4.4. the conceptual framework of steam with gamification used to create innovators the integration of steam education and gamification features, as depicted in figure 9, combines the conceptual framework of steam with gamification to foster the development of innovators. steam education integrates the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics to cultivate a variety of talents and foster problem-solving abilities and creativity (lee & wong, 2018). gamification entails the utilization of game principles and mechanisms to stimulate learners and enhance the level of engagement in the learning process (kummanee, nilsook, & wannapiroon, 2020). the process of steamification has five sequential stages: research, asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 89-103 101 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group discovery, connection, invention, and reflection (wannapiroon & petsangsri, 2020). during this procedure, students actively participate in practical learning encounters, cooperate with peers, and employ their understanding to resolve practical issues (tian & yang, 2022). the gamification components encompass objectives, scores, insignias, rankings, tiers, incentives, accomplishments, trials, rivalry, and feedback (wannapiroon & pimdee, 2022). the framework seeks to improve students' creative thinking, problem-solving, and innovation abilities by integrating steam education and gamification. figure 9. the cyclical process of needs analysis. 5. conclusion this study presents the scientometrics and systematic review results of publications on steam education with gamification that were published in journals indexed in the scopus database. according to the scopus database, the study on steam education and gamification underwent consistent changes between 2017 and 2023. possible explanations for this could be that the topic was abstract, multifaceted, and seen as encompassing a wider scope. the findings indicate a substantial growth in the adoption of steam education with gamification in recent yea rs. the majority of papers published from 2020 to 2023 suggest that the subject is gaining traction. the data and document categories reveal that 30 sources published a total of 34 articles between 2017 and 2023. the top five sources with the highest frequency of articles are "ceur workshop proceedings," "advances in intelligent systems and computing," "tem journal," "2021 44th international convention on information, communication, and electronic technology, mipro 2021-proceedings," and "2022 ieee 2nd international conference on educational technology, icet 2022." these sources have an average of 2.62 authors per article, for a total of 81 authors. the growth rate of keyword plus from 2017 to 2023. the terms "computer aided instruction", "elearning", "embedded systems", "education computing", "engineering education", "gamification", "life cycle", "high school students", "human computer interaction", "learning systems", "steam", and "students" developed and gained prominence over the given period. figure 3’s collaboration globe map illustrates the social structure of authors from various nations participating in collaborative research within the given subject. the findings indicated that german authors had the most foreign collaborations (n = 3) in this specific study field, with one collaboration each from france, latvia , and norway. thematic evaluation revealed three major developments: (1) science technology -related studies moved towards steam education; (2) learning environment-related studies expanded further into stem educationrelated research and science technology integration-related research; and (3) school student-related research evolved and merged with the learning process. we examined each of the 34 publications that fulfilled the inclusion criteria separately to assess their respective contributions and practical consequences. the steam framework, 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(2024). gamification in education: why, where, when, and how?—a systematic review. games and culture, 19(2), 237264. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231158625 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-4287-6.ch002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2020.04.010 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9272-7_17 https://doi.org/10.1002/jac5.1440 https://doi.org/10.29303/jppipa.v9i6.3576 https://doi.org/10.1109/icet55642.2022.9944543 https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v17i16.31377 https://doi.org/10.18421/tem94-42 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10849-w https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231158625 136 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 4, 136-141, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5220 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the management of cooperative and work-integrated education for academic institutions of higher education in thailand lertlak jaroensombut1 wanchai chuaboon2 thongphon promsaka na sakolnakorn3 pongsatean luengalongkot4 kanokwan auiwong5 surakarn boonkawin6 sakda yekpiewpong7 wanchai dhammasaccakarn8 sukhumvit saiyasopon9 thananchakorn pakittawichit10 akkakorn chaiyapong11 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3faculty of management science, silpakorn university, thailand. 1email: eagle_lj@yahoo.com 2email: cwanchai@su.ac.th 3email: thongphon.p@gmail.com 4faculty of political science and law, burapha university, thailand. 4email: pongsate@hotmail.com 5faculty of humanities and social sciences, phetchabun rajabhat university, thailand. 5email: kanokwanmuay99@gmail.com 6,7phokhunphamuang buddhist college, mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya university, thailand . 6email: dr.su2506@gmail.com 7email: phaisanmr@gmail.com 8faculty of liberal arts, prince of songkla university, thailand. 8email: wanchai.m@psu.ac.th 9,10college of innovation management, rajamangala university of technology rattanakosin, thailand. 9email: sukhumvt@kku.ac.th 10email: jintaka@kku.ac.th 11faculty of law, suratthani rajabhat university, thailand. 11email: mr.akkakorn@gmail.com abstract the purpose of this article is to explain the process and benefits of, as well as the obstacles and keys to, the success of education management in the cooperative and work-integrated education program (cwie) in thailand’s higher education system. this study employs secondary data, which we analyze using content and descriptive analysis. data analysis showed that cooperative education courses are taught in a coproduced manner between higher education institutions and business establishments (public, private, and community) so that graduates are ready to enter the real world of work immediately, develop competencies that match the needs of the labor market, and prepare for future job positions. in addition, cooperative education encourages students to gain professional, self-development, and academic skills from the knowledge they receive. cooperative education is an activity or operational process that includes an effective planning process and cooperation from all parties, including the business establishment, as well as quality cooperative education, including educational standards, curriculum teaching, supervision standards, student’s standards, and measurement and evaluation standards. however, problems arise in cooperative education; for example, students should receive job training, and advisors do not receive much support. for the development of cooperative education, academic institutions should create a digital platform specifically for the management of cooperative education. keywords: academic institute, cooperative education, management, higher education, university level, work integrated. mailto:eagle_lj@yahoo.com mailto:cwanchai@su.ac.th mailto:thongphon.p@gmail.com mailto:pongsate@hotmail.com mailto:kanokwanmuay99@gmail.com mailto:dr.su2506@gmail.com mailto:phaisanmr@gmail.com mailto:wanchai.m@psu.ac.th mailto:sukhumvt@kku.ac.th mailto:jintaka@kku.ac.th mailto:mr.akkakorn@gmail.com https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5220 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-6991-8851 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1166-9393 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4994-8404 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5338-2282 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5091-4309 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-3395-0195 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-7439-1912 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9070-6442 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3192-4236 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6779-4311 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7610-2820 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 136-141 137 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group citation | jaroensombut, l., chuaboon, w., sakolnakorn, t. p. n., luengalongkot, p., auiwong, k., boonkawin, s., yekpiewpong, s., dhammasaccakarn, w., saiyasopon, s., pakittawichit, t., & chaiyapong, a. (2023). the management of cooperative and workintegrated education for academic institutions of higher education in thailand. asian journal of education and training, 9(4), 136–141. 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5220 history: received: 16 october 2023 revised: 24 november 2023 accepted: 1 december 2023 published: 8 december 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................137 2. cooperative education in thailand......................................................................................................................................................137 3. methods .........................................................................................................................................................................................................138 4. results............................................................................................................................................................................................................138 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................................140 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................140 contribution of this paper to the literature this study explains thailand’s cooperative and work-integrated education (cwie) that has been revised from cooperative education used in many countries around the world. it has been developed to have additional differences in the operating process, building partnerships, training, and assessment processes. as a result, students who graduate can enter the labor market in accordance with their field of study, and those who graduate from educational institutions will be in demand in the labor market. 1. introduction cooperative education is a form of teaching and learning that emphasizes experiential learning and practical work in students’ workplaces. this concept has a variety of names, such as experiential education, work -study program, work-based education, sandwich program, and internship. however, in many countries, it is currently referred to as “cooperative education” and/or “work-integrated learning” (wil) (luekitinan, nontasak, & saosaweang, 2015). cooperative education is a teaching and learning management system that focuses on allowing students to work in the workplace and apply knowledge from educational institutions (kerdhan, jantra, & ekwarangkoon, 2021). it involves students working and learning on the job full time for 16 weeks before graduation. students often take staff or temporary positions (pinchunsri, 2015). cooperative learning encourages learning, fosters respect and friendships among diverse groups of students and other people at work, and encourages students to share their experience, solve problems, and accept feedback (attle & baker, 2007; hänze & berger, 2007). in addition, cooperative education in many countries is considered wil. the aim of wil is to give students work experience by allowing them to learn by doing in the workplace (hägg & kurczewska, 2021). wil is based on three stakeholders: the student, the academic institution, and external stakeholders, such as business organizations, entrepreneurs, and manufacturers (smith & worsfold, 2015). cooperative education requires experience from real and relevant work in the participant’s field of study and gives students the opportunity to gain experience in their field of study (jones, 2007). wil is typically offered in degree-level programs that combine classroom-based instruction with one or more periods of relevant experiential learning in authentic work settings. a cooperative education or wil program is viewed as almost anything with some form of experiential learning or a workplace-based, off-campus component (zegwaard & coll, 2011). teaching and learning in the form of cooperative education can be used as an alternative method of education management and is widely accepted internationally. some educational institutions in thailand include it in the learning process to develop graduates as qualified graduates per professional academic standards and to meet graduates’ and the labor market’s needs (kerdhan et al., 2021). as mentioned above, many higher education institutions around the world use cooperative education to provide a broader range of degree studies in almost every field of study, with the same objective: promote graduate quality according to academic and professional standards and meet the labor market’s needs. as a part of graduate preparation, students must be ready to choose a career and enter the labor market immediately after graduation. in addition, cooperative education, wil, and the cooperative and work-integrated education program (cwie) are similar in that they combine classroom learning with on-the-job training. the purpose of this article is to explain the process and benefits of, as well as the obstacles and keys to, the success of cwie management in thailand’s higher education system. 2. cooperative education in thailand cooperative education in thailand was established in 1993 at suranaree university of technology. this program was called cwie and was intended to develop and improve the quality of its graduates, respond to the new market demand, engage with more communities and industries, and prepare graduates for work right after graduation. in addition, in cwie, the students must work full time for at least 4 months at a workplace with academic supervision and assessment, earning no less than six credits (srisa-an, 2014). in addition, from 1993 to 2022, thailand had nearly 20,000 business organizations participating in cwie partnerships, and more than 75,000 cwie student participants found work after graduation (ministry of higher education science, 2022). after a few decades, cwie in thailand https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 136-141 138 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group still faced weakness in the understanding of cooperative education among educational staff as well as organizations’ reluctance to accept internships. some organizations do not pay students or provide them with necessary welfare. there is a lack of association between policy and practice among higher education institutions, government agencies, and organizations that accept students for internships, and business organizations are not concerned with the benefits of cooperative education. they perceive an increased burden connected to cooperative education with the many procedures and difficulties in management (napasri & sandchompoo, 2013). in 2019, the office of the higher education commission and thailand’s ministry of higher education, science, research and innovation revised the cooperative-education system from wil to cwie to increase the number of relevant courses in higher education (bachelor’s degree programs) by ordering higher-education institutions to work with enterprises in the public, private, and community sectors to produce high-performing graduates. the curriculum is co-taught between higher-education institutions and external agencies to give graduates the competencies necessary in the labor market (batpho, perkhiao, & kanlaor, 2022). the objective of cwie is to enable educational institutions and enterprises to cooperate academically and professionally in the operational process. the university provides cooperative education courses, and enterprises provide job positions appropriate for cooperative-education students. the university and enterprise jointly supervise students at the workplace and evaluate their performance (kerdhan et al., 2021). in conclusion, cooperative education refers to an education system that provides teaching and learning in educational institutions as well as direct experience in workplaces in a systematic way, with cooperation from the business establishment and all parties involved. it is an educational system that combines study with work and is considered a mission-based relationship (engagement) between educational institutions and business establishments. the objectives of cwie are to prepare students for career development and experience; prepare them to enter the labor market; give them more experience in academic, professional, and personal development that has value beyond internships; provide the private sector and academic institutions with opportunities to develop the quality of graduates; and make curricula and teaching more relevant to the labor market’s needs. 3. methods in this study, we used secondary data related to cooperative education. we collected data from published research reports, websites, and previously conducted surveys. in addition, we collected data from research articles published in the thailand citation index. we followed the five research steps: identify the research topic, identify the data source, collect data, combine and compare the data, and analyze the data using content and descriptive analysis. one limitation of this study is that we collected all data from secondary sources and used existing data, which is not representative of all phenomena; however, the study’s results can help universities in other countries develop cooperative education in the future. 4. results cooperative-education processes and procedures require cooperation among educational staff and departments, the advisor for the subject area, students, and enterprises. the process, benefits, obstacles to, and factors for success of cooperative education are as follows. 4.1. process of cooperative and work-integrated education in thailand in this section, we collected our data from the following sources: the center for cooperative education and career development; suranaree university of technology, thailand; the center for cooperative education and career development; walailak university, thailand; the faculty of management science, silpakorn university, thailand; and the faculty of engineering, khon kaen university, thailand. we summarize the processes in table 1. table 1. procedures of cooperative and work-integrated education in thailand. step procedures 1. provide a place for cooperative education • students contact entrepreneurs to request cooperativeeducation opportunities. • when entrepreneurs accept students to work in cooperative education, students must fill out a request for cooperative-education work and submit it to their home faculty. the advisor signs it to certify . • when the faculty receives the documents from the student, it will send the enterprise documents requesting acceptance of students to perform cooperative-education work at the workplace. • when the enterprise accepts the student to work in cooperative education, the faculty informs the student. • students fill out an application to participate in cooperative education that has been certified by their parents and sent to the faculty at least 1 month before going to work in cooperative education. • before going to work in cooperative education, students must attend training to prepare for cooperativeeducation work. 2. practice and supervise cooperative education (at least 16 weeks) • during students’ first 3 weeks in cooperative education, they must submit the topic of their cooperativeeducation report to their advisor. • every month, students are required to submit a progress report on their cooperative work to their advisor. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 136-141 139 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group step procedures • advisors coordinate with students and enterprises to provide student supervision. • the advisor asks faculty for approval to supervise students’ cooperative operations on the specified date and time. • advisors supervise students and evaluate their cooperative performance according to the prescribed form. 3. present the results of cooperative education and educational evaluation • after completing cooperative work, students present their work in the field of study, with the schedule and details of documents to be submitted. • there is a committee to evaluate the student’s performance and submit a report on the student’s academic results. 4.2. the beneficial and obstacles of cooperative and work-integrated education cooperative education and cwie emphasize work in enterprises or organizations that systematically use graduates before graduation. the challenges and obstacles of cwie in thailand follow. 4.2.1. the benefits of cwie cooperative education emphasizes experience gained from work-based learning by allowing students to perform real work full-time at workplaces in their professional field. work is defined as a special project that can be completed within 4 months of cooperative education. in addition, cooperative education helps graduates learn and develop skills suitable for organizations (enterprises) that employ graduates. moreover, cwie gives graduates more professional knowledge, abilities, and skills; systematic work planning skills; and the ability to make decisions, solve problems, and gain human relations, initiative, discipline, morality, ethics, communication, presentation, and leadership skills (darayon, 2013). cooperative education can help graduates develop confidence at work. when they finish their studies, graduates can apply their cooperative-education experience to their current work. students who participate in cooperative-education programs have more experience finding work and working; develop a systematic way of thinking; have more motivation to study; have more problem-solving skills; can apply theory, including in communication and human relations; develop self-confidence; and are more professional in their work (luekitinan et al., 2015). 4.2.2. obstacles to cwie management cwie has problems related to knowledge and understanding of cooperative-education principles. some organizations do not see the benefits of cooperative education and believe the associated burden has increased with the steps and difficulties in management as well as lack of connection at the policy level among higher-education institutions, government agencies, and organizations (napasri & sandchompoo, 2013). the management problems in cwie arise in preparation and planning, so the educational institution should coordinate with the entrepreneurs for at least one semester to have more time to prepare the students. the faculty stated they had an insufficient budget to cover transportation expenses for travel to supervise an increased number of students. in addition, the supervisor in the workplace does not have time to take care of and teach work to students. in fact, some supervisors do not assign work to students, and some workplaces have students do work that is inappropriate for them and repetitive, such as making coffee, carrying documents, and personal assistance. in addition, students found problems at workplaces but did not report the problems to the faculty so they can be solved in time (kongsoma, 2012; tachaphahapong, 2015). in addition, students lack fluency in english and sometimes do not have self-confidence while performing tasks. for example, they may not be brave enough to make decisions, lack detail and thoroughness in their work, and encounter difficulty communicating in foreign languages, such as english. some companies provide job mentoring systems to students, but there has never been any training for mentors to know what tasks to teach to interns (because the boss ordered them to be mentors), and they did not know what work to teach the students (because they did not have a teaching plan), so most did their own work rather than teach students (jensantikul, 2022; sangsiri, jamsawat, jamsawat, & saetung, 2019). 4.3. key success factors for cwie management there are several key success factors for cwie management presented in figure 1. 1) preparing knowledge before performing work helps prepare people for internships (practical training). it involves enhancing skills and work experience and applying theory in practical training during the period. knowledge and experience the students gain will help them see their work accurately and help them understand the real future labor needs. 2) cooperative-education supervision involves a mutual exchange of knowledge among professors, establishments, and students. delivery students go to live in the workplace to enhance their life skills. students must follow up on their work. cooperative-education supervision leads to learning about real working conditions and the organization’s culture, applying academic knowledge and abilities to actual work. 3) using tools/equipment in training at workplaces in organizing education requires facilities for teaching and learning, such as work equipment and the building/factory. for clarification on the use of tools/equipment, a manual for tools/equipment should be provided that explains the content in detail and accounts for social changes and industrial business. 4) effective time management during teaching and learning will result in the completion of cooperative-education courses according to agreements with the business establishment and students. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 136-141 140 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5) regarding technology and innovation transfer, business establishments should arrange for mentors that match the field of study to facilitate technology transfer at the establishment. this will enable the students to learn about the requisite technology. 6) students’ academic skills influence the effectiveness of learning management and cwie courses at the university. with their gained knowledge and skills, students will learn more about themselves as well as their interests, aptitudes, and future life to plan for further studies or entering the labor market, emphasizing professional competencies and promoting higher-education studies (chaisaen, yongsorn, & ponathong, 2018). 7) a cooperative-education-management system (digital platform) is a system developed to help manage documents and information about cooperative education that are collected in a single database to increase convenience. users can better manage websites, documents, and student information. students can search for information, download documents, and fill out documents to send through the system (thanapiyawanich, polnigongit, & ruksasuk, 2020; tratsaranawathin & jariyapoom, 2018). figure 1. key success factors of cwie management. 5. conclusion cooperative education is an integrated educational arrangement between higher education institutions and business establishments. to prepare students for careers and entry into the labor market before graduation, develop the quality of graduates according to the labor market’s needs, and improve the quality of thai graduates in cwie, higher education institutions must operate in accordance with the cooperative education operations standards of the thai cooperative education association in order to build confidence among students and establishments that accept students for work. meanwhile, the business establishments that participate in cooperative education must align with the student’s professional field, and there is a clear policy of supporting cooperative education and assigning supervisors to give advice or convey work to students. to develop cooperative education, information systems or digital platforms must be developed (thanapiyawanich et al., 2020). a welfare system must be developed for students who work in cooperative education that includes accident insurance, medical treatment, and a reasonable daily wage (chantragatrawi, wattananarong, somprasonk, & boonthima, 2018). to develop the quality of graduates through cooperative education, higher education institutions must accelerate improvements in learning and teaching to fully develop professional and academic knowledge skills for students, promote and develop academic faculty members’ expertise in specific professions for supervision, and cooperate with business establishments to further develop the quality of thai graduates (kongsoma, 2012). finally, with the current economic situation, competition in the labor market will likely be quite high. the knowledge, skills, and qualities that enterprises need include creativity, working efficiently, trustworthiness, self development, decision-making and problem-solving skills, human relations, communication and presentation, discipline and responsibility, morality and ethics, and leadership. the challenge for today’s graduates is to have more opportunities to apply knowledge learned from the classroom, create learning experiences from real situations at the workplace, and develop professional and self-development skills. these skills will be learned and developed quickly when students have the opportunity to work in the workplace. references attle, s., & baker, b. 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(2011). using cooperative education and work-integrated education to provide career clarification. science education international, 22(4), 282-291. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515127419840607 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2006.11.004 https://www.mhesi.go.th/index.php/pr-executive-news/7439-9-cwie-day-12-eec.html https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.806456 31 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 1, 31-42, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6637 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group social studies teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs: do demographic characteristics make a difference joseph bentil1 isaac eshun2 alfred kuranchie3 anthony bordoh4 ( corresponding author) 1department of basic education, university of education, winneba, ghana. 1email: jbentil@uew.edu.gh 2,3,4department of social studies education, university of education, winneba, ghana. 2email: isaaceshun@uew.edu.gh 3email: akuranchie@uew.edu.gh 4email: abordoh@uew.edu.gh abstract while research exists on teacher self-efficacy beliefs, limited research is documented on the level of self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers, and much less in the senior high schools in the central region of ghana. in view of this lacuna in the literature, this study investigated the level of self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers in senior high schools in ghana using bandura's social cognitive theory as a theoretical foundation. the cross-sectional descriptive survey design within the positivist paradigm was used to collect data from 342 social studies teachers through a census sampling technique with a questionnaire as an instrument. with the aid of spss, descriptive (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics, such as independent samples t-test and one-way between-groups anova, were used to analyse the data. the study revealed that social studies teachers had very high levels of self-efficacy beliefs. the findings also pointed out that demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and years of teaching experience statistically significantly influenced social studies teachers' levels of self-efficacy beliefs. therefore, it was recommended that in rolling out refresher training and continuous professional development programs to sustain, improve, and strengthen the dimensions of self-efficacy beliefs identified in the study, social studies teachers' demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and years of teaching experience should be considered since they influenced their levels of self-efficacy beliefs. keywords: classroom management, demographic characteristics, instructional strategy, self-efficacy, self-efficacy beliefs, senior high school, social studies teachers, student engagement. citation | bentil, j., eshun, i., kuranchie, a., & bordoh, a. (2025). social studies teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs: do demographic characteristics make a difference. asian journal of education and training, 11(1), 31–42. 10.20448/edu.v11i1.6637 history: received: 13 november 2024 revised: 8 april 2025 accepted: 21 april 2025 published: 2 may 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of education, winneba, ghana, has granted approval for this study on 9 january 2024 (ref. no. uewec/24/97). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 32 2. relevance and application of the theoretical perspective ............................................................................................................ 34 3. methodology .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 35 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 35 5. discussion of the findings ........................................................................................................................................................................ 39 6. conclusions and recommendations ....................................................................................................................................................... 40 7. implications for effective teaching and learning of social studies .......................................................................................... 40 references ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 40 mailto:jbentil@uew.edu.gh mailto:isaaceshun@uew.edu.gh mailto:akuranchie@uew.edu.gh mailto:abordoh@uew.edu.gh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i1.6637 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2755-0171 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2851-0435 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8773-7766 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0239-3314 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 32 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study highlights the significance of self-efficacy beliefs in enhancing social studies teachers' effectiveness in classroom management, instructional strategies, and student engagement. strong self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers enhance effectiveness, support curriculum goals, and strengthen civic education. the crux is that self-efficacy beliefs are influenced by sex, age, and experience. 1. introduction literature supports the view that education anchors a nation’s progress. getachew and tekle (2020) and yahiyan (2020) emphasize that education is a key component and catalyst of national development. when education systems fall short of the requirements, nations risk experiencing political and socioeconomic stagnation. to prepare students for global challenges, schools actively cultivate and enhance their competencies (winter et al., 2021). quality education promotes human capital growth for the nation's economy and actively prepares its recipients to adjust to its changing needs. from this perspective, education develops an individual's capabilities, attitudes, values, and behaviours that align with societal norms, address manpower needs, and promote an egalitarian society. in this direction, the ministry of education in ghana and the national council for curriculum and assessment (nacca) have designed a curriculum that includes social studies as a subject. ghanaian practitioners have highlighted the significance of social studies in cultivating desirable attitudes, values, and skills that foster effective citizenship. moreover, the subject offers students opportunities to apply concepts, theories, and generalizations from diverse disciplines to analyze, investigate, and propose solutions to personal and societal challenges (eshun, 2020; eshun et al., 2019). practitioners in ghana emphasize that social studies plays a pivotal role in equipping students with desirable skills, values, and attitudes to become effective citizens. it also provides opportunities for students to apply concepts, theories, and generalizations from various disciplines to analyze, investigate, and develop appropriate solutions to personal and societal problems (eshun, 2020; eshun et al., 2019). bariham, ondigi, and kiio (2020) emphasized that social studies serves as a vital tool for addressing challenges and threats to the survival of most societies by instilling an appreciation of human dignity, critical thinking skills, empathy, ethics, hard work, honesty, integrity, self-reliance, and tolerance. these scholars contended that the discipline cultivates students' abilities in accountability, constructive criticism, critical judgment, imagination, loyalty, national consciousness, obedience, open-mindedness, patriotism, resourcefulness, respect for others' rights, and respect for the law. it could be gleaned from the views highlighted by the above scholars that social studies plays a crucial role in producing reflective, concerned, and participatory citizens capable of leading national development, asserting that efforts toward modern civilization and innovation will falter without prioritizing the acquisition of knowledge, values, and skills in social studies. education stakeholders have incorporated social studies as a significant part of the curriculum because they understand how important it is to individual and national development. these stakeholders believe that social studies education effectively instills knowledge, values, and skills in individuals. therefore, governments have tried to ensure quality social studies education in their respective countries. in ghana, like in any other country, social studies is a compulsory subject at the first and second cycle levels. the most recent attempt was the inclusion of social studies in the new educational reforms. hence, it could, therefore, be said that ghana has made good decisions in the choice of social studies as well as its reputation in the school curriculum. meanwhile, education research has consistently proven that an effective teacher is the most critical factor in students’ learning and a priceless asset in the realization of the various competencies enshrined in the curriculum (li & ruppar, 2021; senyametor et al., 2021; skipp & dommett, 2021). therefore, the realization of the knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills that pertain to the affective domain in social studies instruction would be contingent on the teacher’s prowess in their efficacy and emotional intelligence. sims et al. (2021) illuminated that an effective teacher matches strategies to the students and that the teacher’s role is becoming increasingly crucial due to the rapid transformation of education systems and their adaptation to modern requirements around the world. hence, it could be said that the caliber and experience of teachers impact students' performance levels. wang, hall, and taxer (2019) highlighted that teachers, while implementing curriculum through studentcentered school learning experiences, directly shape and are shaped by their interpersonal relationships with students. these relationships influence the overall class climate, teaching and learning effectiveness, student motivation, and well-being. consequently, recent research has increasingly focused on teachers’ expertise in their content areas and their ability to employ teaching methods, techniques, and strategies that foster an environment conducive to students' acquisition of essential competencies. the literature on social studies emphasizes the critical role of the cognitive domain in achieving the subject's objectives. however, it often overlooks instruction in the affective learning domain (borba, 2018; powell, 2021), which encompasses feelings, emotions, and attitudes. these affective components are vital not only for supporting cognitive outcomes but also for ensuring student success in the subject. while teaching in the affective domain is not a new idea, researchers are looking for ways to improve affective teaching practices as a result of growing concerns about trauma-sensitive practices (jennings, 2018; minahan, 2019), school violence (nickerson, 2018), and student well-being (borba, 2018; dejulius & mclean, 2019). powell (2021). powell (2021) explained that the pressures of high-stakes testing and accountability often compel teachers to prioritize cognitive instruction, leaving limited time for addressing the affective domain, especially when teaching diverse learners. manfra and bolick (2017) further noted that these challenges are exacerbated by the marginalization of social studies and the widespread use of passive instruction, revealing significant gaps in the literature regarding the potential impact of social studies instruction on student outcomes. these findings underscore social studies teachers' need to deepen their content knowledge and pedagogical skills. teachers can deliver lessons that engage students and enhance learning outcomes by integrating instruction in both the cognitive and affective domains. the primary objective of social studies is to empower young people to make rational and well-informed decisions for the public good as engaged citizens in a democratic, interdependent, and culturally diverse world to support these viewpoints (national council for the social studies (ncss), 2013). achieving this goal requires social studies teachers to employ effective instructional practices that address cognitive and affective learning outcomes. these practices must accommodate diverse learners by engaging them in activities involving analysis, evaluation, problemsolving, and exploring beliefs, emotions, and diverse perspectives when grappling with complex social, political, and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 33 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group economic issues. this paper aligns with the collaborative for academic (2021) in promoting the integration of affective, cognitive, and behavioral domain elements. these elements enhance students' capacities to regulate emotions, accomplish personal goals, demonstrate empathy, collaborate effectively, and make responsible decisions. these skills contribute to academic success, critical thinking, sound decision-making, and teamwork within and beyond the school setting in the context of social studies education. in this regard, researchers and academics have highlighted the critical role of teachers' self-efficacy beliefs as a key determinant of their ability to influence classroom practices and drive positive school reform. teachers’ selfefficacy refers to their confidence in their capacity to facilitate student learning and serves as a crucial factor influencing their effectiveness, creativity, and persistence (gale, alemdar, cappelli, & morris, 2021; schwab & alnahdi, 2020; shi, 2021). the literature emphasizes that self-efficacy beliefs are pivotal in transforming teachers’ attitudes, enhancing their knowledge and skills, and refining their teaching practices to implement educational goals successfully. supporting this view, kara et al., (2022) argued that teachers must exhibit strong self-efficacy beliefs and the ability to design and deliver engaging, interactive pedagogical strategies that promote 21st-century learning competencies. high self-efficacy beliefs motivate teachers to navigate and overcome challenges such as environmental and logistical barriers while striving to achieve meaningful learning outcomes with their students. the preceding perspectives indicate that teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and success in instructional delivery are closely interrelated and inseparable. effective curriculum implementation requires teachers who are confident in their abilities and willing to translate new ideas and knowledge into practical application. baydar (2021) asserted that highly efficacious teachers are motivated to engage learners actively and employ effective classroom practices, including instructional strategies, motivational approaches, pedagogical beliefs, and sustained effort. these practices significantly influence learning outcomes, including students’ expectations, motivation, and academic achievements. waweru, kihoro, and gachunga (2021) echoed this sentiment, emphasizing that highly efficacious teachers exhibit greater enthusiasm and commitment to teaching, positively impacting student learning. conversely, low teacher efficacy is often associated with less productive classroom environments and poorer academic performance among learners. to address these challenges, education stakeholders should prioritize professional development programs to enhance social studies teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. these initiatives should focus on deepening teachers' content knowledge, fostering reflective practices, and promoting ongoing evaluation of their instructional methods. such efforts would enable teachers to design well-structured lessons that effectively align with learners' needs and achieve desired learning outcomes. researchers across the world have studied teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and have indeed developed inventories to measure them. tschannen-moran and hoy (2007) acknowledge that good self-efficacy beliefs promote effective classroom management, the deployment of good instructional strategies, and effective student engagement, all of which enhance teaching and learning results. balcı, şanal, and üğüten (2019) adapted tschannen-moran and hoy (2007) model to investigate pre-service english language teachers' self-efficacy beliefs in turkey, finding high levels across all subscales, with the greatest confidence in instructional strategies, followed by classroom management and student engagement. çankaya (2018), in "the exploration of self-efficacy beliefs of english language teachers," found that teachers prioritized student engagement over instructional strategies and classroom management. this finding was supported by baykara (2011) and çelik and topkaya (2017), who like çankaya (2018), observed moderately high self-efficacy perceptions, with student engagement, classroom management, and instructional strategies ranked in that order. ertaş and aslan-tutak (2021) found that turkish primary school math teachers considered their teaching strategies more effective than classroom management and student participation, a result contrasting with klassen and chiu's (2010) findings of moderate student involvement and high self-efficacy in classroom management and instructional strategies. these studies demonstrate the variability of teacher efficacy beliefs across educational domains, necessitating further research. in the african context, mathenjwa and dlamini (2020) examined new senior high school agriculture teachers' self-efficacy in eswatini, finding moderate levels across classroom management, instructional strategies, and student engagement. in ghana, coffie and doe (2019) found high self-efficacy among pre-service science teachers, particularly those in science programs. ngman-wara and edem (2016), in "pre-service basic science teachers’ selfefficacy beliefs and attitudes towards science teaching," reported positive attitudes and high self-efficacy. however, some teachers expressed concerns about leading hands-on lessons. sarfo, amankwah, sam, and konin (2015) found ghanaian teachers in kumasi to be most effective at student engagement, followed by classroom management, with instructional strategies being the least effective. using diverse indicators, these studies often yield contradictory results, emphasizing the need for context-specific evidence, particularly in under-researched areas like social studies. furthermore, the varying emphasis on self-efficacy categories across studies, with some prioritizing student engagement, necessitates further investigation. this study addresses this gap by examining social studies teachers' self-efficacy beliefs in ghanaian senior high schools, considering the subject's unique context and pedagogical demands. regarding demographic influences, lesha (2017) found that albanian male primary school teachers reported higher self-efficacy in classroom management and student involvement than female teachers. moalosi and forcheh (2015) similarly found that male teacher candidates in botswana reported higher self-efficacy, though only in student engagement. sarfo et al. (2015) found that ghanaian female teachers are more effective in instructional strategies. butucha (2014) found that male teachers reported higher classroom management self-efficacy. conversely, rezarta, johanna, and vollhardt (2013); moturi (2014); okenyi and enyi (2015) and tenaw (2013) found no significant gender differences in teacher self-efficacy. these conflicting findings warrant further research on gender's impact on teacher self-efficacy. this study will explore this influence among social studies teachers. regarding age, bandura (1994) argued against its impact on efficacy, a view supported by hicks (2012); tschannen-moran and hoy (2007) and voris and bjork (2011). arko (2021) also found no age influence on ghanaian social studies teachers' self-efficacy. however, jaggernauth and jameson-charles (2015) found age-related differences in instructional strategy self-efficacy among caribbean secondary school teachers. gündüz-özsoy (2017) found that older turkish teachers reported higher self-efficacy. conversely, edwards and robinson suggested that younger teachers exhibit stronger self-efficacy. while age is often considered, its direct link to self-efficacy is underresearched and inconsistent, reflecting the dynamic nature of self-efficacy development (bandura, 1994). this study will investigate age's influence on social studies teachers' self-efficacy. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 34 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group regarding teaching experience, frazier (2021) and karanfil and arı (2016) found no significant association between experience and self-efficacy. edwards, green, and lions (1996) even noted a negative relationship. conversely, arko (2021) and wang'eri and otanga (2014) found positive relationships, with more experienced teachers reporting higher self-efficacy. these contrasting findings highlight the complex relationship between experience and self-efficacy, requiring further research in diverse settings, including the central region of ghana. regarding academic qualifications, shaukat, vishnumolakala, and al bustami (2019); mona, sofie, hilde, geert, and sabrina (2018) and xiong, sun, liu, wang, and zheng (2020) found that academic background significantly impacts self-efficacy. however, akbari and moradkhani (2010) and crook (2016) found minimal influence of academic qualifications on self-efficacy. these inconsistencies highlight the complex relationship between academic qualifications and self-efficacy, informing the present study's hypothesis. social studies teachers in public senior high schools in ghana, like their counterparts nationwide, are expected to demonstrate high levels of self-efficacy to enhance job performance, improve student learning outcomes, and contribute to achieving educational goals. however, recent studies in ghana (arko, 2021; eshun & mensah, 2013) have raised concerns regarding social studies teachers' self-efficacy beliefs, pedagogical content knowledge, and effectiveness in implementing the social studies curriculum. these studies reveal that many social studies teachers lack a clear understanding of what social studies entails or should represent. in addition to the gap in the literature regarding the influence of demographic characteristics on self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers in senior high schools in central ghana, there are further gaps in context (with studies focusing primarily on basic schools rather than senior high schools), methodology, and discipline. this study addresses these gaps by focusing specifically on social studies teachers in senior high schools in the central region of ghana. while previous studies on teachers' self-efficacy beliefs in ghana have centered on pre-service science teachers (antwi, anderson, & abagali, 2016; coffie & doe, 2019; ngman-wara & edem, 2016), economics teachers (yidana & acquah, 2024), mathematics teachers (mintah, owusu-darko, & apoenchir, 2023), and kindergarten teachers (boateng, 2023), few have examined the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers. those that have, such as arko (2021), focused exclusively on social studies teachers in senior high schools in cape coast, which limits generalization to the broader central region. additionally, studies involving junior high school social studies teachers (nyantakyi, bordoh, anim, & brew, 2020) have focused on teachers who are not explicitly trained or specialized in social studies. this study seeks to fill these gaps by investigating the relevant variables and contributing to the existing body of knowledge within the context, methodology, and discipline specific to social studies teachers in the central region of ghana. 1.1. research question and hypotheses a research question and four hypotheses guided the study: what is the level of self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers in public senior high schools in the central region of ghana? ho1: sex will not statistically significantly account for differences in self-efficacy beliefsamong social studies teachers. ho2: the age of senior high school social studies teachers will not statistically significantly account for differences in their self-efficacy beliefs. ho3: the academic qualifications of senior high school social studies teachers will not statistically significantly account for differences in their self-efficacy beliefs. ho4: years of work experience of senior high school social studies teachers will not statistically significantly account for differences in their self-efficacy beliefs. 1.2. significance of the study it is anticipated that the study's findings will impact theory and practice. theoretically, the findings would provide contextual data to better understand self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers. social studies teachers can enhance their teaching practices by using this knowledge to reinforce or modify their self-efficacy beliefs. the study findings will also help the central regional directorate of the ghana education service plan in-service training for teachers on the self-efficacy beliefs required for improved job performance. the results would also add to the body of knowledge already available on the impact of self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers in senior high schools. finally, the study provides valuable information to curriculum developers so that they can design course materials that suit and promote the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers. 2. relevance and application of the theoretical perspective this study is grounded in bandura (1978) social cognitive theory. according to bandura (1991), social cognitive theory (sct) is a psychologically derived theory that describes how individuals within social systems carry out different human processes, such as information and knowledge acquisition and adoption. its p rimary focus is on learning processes and the interplay between many elements that influence them. in his theory, bandura (1991) argued that the nomenclature of social cognitive theory has three dimensions, including personal, behavior, and environmental, that are utilized to explain an individual’s behavior. in line with this, it has been argued that the theory operates on the concept of triadic reciprocal determinism, which describes the bidirectional interaction between cognitive/personal factors, environmental influences, and behavior (chen et al., 2023; mensah et al., 2023). these scholars further suggest that sct provides insight into an individual's societal practices and how their environment influences differences in physical and psychological abilities. researchers have used sct to explain behavior change and modification, and it is also highly relevant in studying self-efficacy beliefs among teachers (chatterjee & chakraborty, 2021; guo et al., 2022). the theory offers a valuable framework for exploring how personal and environmental factors influence teachers’ beliefs in their ability to impact student learning (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2019). therefore, sct serves as a practical framework for assessing the level of self-efficacy among social studies teachers in public senior high schools in the central region of ghana. the relevance of this theory within the context of this study lies in the fact that teachers' self-efficacy, or their belief in their ability to effectively handle the responsibilities, obligations, and obstacles associated with their professional activity, has a significant impact on critical academic outcomes (e.g., students' achievement and motivation) and workplace well-being. besides, it is vital to emphasize that self-efficacy isn't about a person’s actual skills; instead, it’s about how valuable they think their skills are (bandura (1986). people's feelings, thoughts, motivation, perseverance, decisions, and behavior are considered to be governed by these ideas (bandura, 1978, 1994). asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 35 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relevance of sct to this study is contained in the argument that teachers with high self-efficacy beliefs stick with low-achieving students longer and employ more effective teaching tactics to help them learn faster (ahmmed, sharma, & deppeler, 2012). moreover, because efficacy beliefs are self-referent and focused on perceived abilities given a specific task, they are powerful predictors of behavior. people’s beliefs about what course of action to take, how much effort they will put into specific endeavors, and how long they will persevere in the face of challenges and failures are all influenced by their beliefs. the relevance of this theory is also captured in the argument that teachers with a high level of teacher self-efficacy have been demonstrated to be more resilient in their teaching and more likely to persist in helping all students attain their academic potential in challenging times. hence, it is believed that teachers who strongly believe in their efficacy would be resilient, capable of solving challenges, and, most importantly, learn from their mistakes (ross, perkins, & bodey, 2016). in this study, therefore, the relevance of sct is contained in the argument that a teacher with low self-efficacy beliefs cannot be effective in contemporary classrooms, which is why studying the nexus between teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and job performance is so important. the application of bandura’s social cognitive theory is valid in this study because it represents a paradigm shift from theory to practice. in applying this theory to the study, it could be said that when teacher educators feel their activities will result in the desired end, they are more likely to act and persevere in the face of challenges or when influenced by other personal variables. when teacher educators do not believe that their activities will result in the desired outcomes, they are less likely to endure or act in the face of adversity. the success of the social studies curriculum depends on self-efficacy beliefs. self-efficacy beliefs are, therefore, believed to constitute personal factors affecting teachers' effectiveness in teaching. 3. methodology this study followed the positivist paradigm, which posits that social reality exists independently of human perception and can be objectively observed. positivists argue that reality is pre-existing and separate from one's perception of it, and it can be accessed through empirical observation. in this approach, researchers aim to study social phenomena value-free, acting as detached observers (carr et al., 2018; cohen, manion, & morrison, 2018). this paradigm is suited for testing hypotheses and theories through quantifiable data, making it ideal for the study's goals. consistent with the positivist paradigm, this study adopted the cross-sectional descriptive survey design with a quantitative research approach. scholars saunders, lewis, and thornhill (2019) maintain that the cross-sectional descriptive survey design is suitable for collecting data from a large sample population and is praised for its ability to ensure representation of the entire population while reducing costs. using a census sampling technique, all 380 social studies teachers in public senior high schools in the central region of ghana were selected for the study. out of this number, 342 social studies teachers participated, resulting in an 83% response rate, which was deemed appropriate for the study, consistent with van thiel's (2022) recommendation of a 20% return rate as adequate. tschannen-moran and hoy's (2007) long-form model to assess teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs questionnaire was adapted as the main instrument for the study. the questionnaire consisted of two sections, a and b. section a gathered demographic information about the social studies teachers. these included sex, age, academic qualification, and years of teaching experience. section b collected data on social studies teachers' self-efficacy beliefs, which were in three areas: instructional strategy, classroom management, and student engagement. each of the three areas contained eight statements, each measured on a 5-point likert scale from 5 = strongly agree to 1 = strongly disagree. cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients were calculated to ensure the reliability of the instrument. the results showed values of 0.86 for instructional strategy, 0.85 for student engagement, 0.85 for classroom management, and 0.85 for the overall questionnaire, demonstrating good reliability (verma & abdel-salam, 2019). after ensuring face and content validity, the questionnaire was subjected to exploratory factor analysis. the data were found suitable for factor analysis, with a kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) value of at least 0.72 and a statistically significant bartlett’s test of sphericity (p < 0.05), confirming construct validity (harrison, kemp, brace, & snelgar, 2021). this validated the use of the tschannen-moran and hoy (2007) model for assessing the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers. to test the hypotheses, the study employed parametric statistical tools, including independent samples t-tests and one-way between-groups anova, at a 0.05 alpha level, ensuring that the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance were met. descriptive statistics, such as the mean and standard deviation, were used to analyze the research question with the help of spss version 28. ethical procedures were strictly followed, including obtaining informed consent, ensuring access, maintaining anonymity and confidentiality, and avoiding deception throughout the study. 4. findings 4.1. research question: what is the level of self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers? this research question aimed to determine the level of efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers in public senior high schools in the central region of ghana. the study adapted the long form of the tschannen-moran and hoy (2007) teachers' self-efficacy model to assess the level of teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. this model includes three main scales: student engagement, instructional strategy, and classroom management, with eight items on each scale, as shown in table 1. to answer this research question, the study used descriptive statistics, such as the mean and standard deviation, to calculate each item's mean and standard deviation and their overall composite for the entire scale. the study interpreted the mean and standard deviation scores to reflect the level of teachers' self-efficacy beliefs, following the recommendations of leedy and ormrod (2021) and nunnally and bernstein (1994). these scholars stated that, on a 5-point likert scale, a mean score can be ranked as very low (1.00 to 2.00), low (2.01 to 3.00), high (3.01 to 4.00), or very high (4.01 to 5.00). the study computed these rankings for each variable and its sub -scales; the findings are presented in table 1. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 36 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. descriptive statistics on the level of social studies teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. variables items n min. max. mean std. dev. interpretation statistic statistic statistic std. error statistic classroom management cm17 342 1 5 4.31 0.04 0.74 very high cm18 342 1 5 4.28 0.04 0.74 very high cm19 342 1 5 4.17 0.04 0.79 very high cm20 342 1 5 4.37 0.04 0.75 very high cm21 342 1 5 4.25 0.05 0.84 very high cm22 342 1 5 4.06 0.05 0.94 very high cm23 342 1 5 4.19 0.04 0.75 very high cm24 342 1 5 4.25 0.04 0.80 very high ssm 342 1 5 4.24 0.03 0.46 very high instructional strategy is9 342 1 5 4.17 0.05 0.87 very high is10 342 1 5 4.13 0.04 0.81 very high is11 342 1 5 4.35 0.04 0.72 very high is12 342 1 5 4.07 0.05 0.85 very high is13 342 1 5 4.29 0.04 0.78 very high is14 342 1 5 4.43 0.04 0.72 very high is15 342 1 5 4.22 0.04 0.73 very high is16 342 1 5 4.00 0.05 0.84 very high ssm 342 1 5 4.21 0.03 0.48 very high student engagement se1 342 1 5 4.14 0.04 0.79 very high se2 342 1 5 4.28 0.04 0.75 very high se3 342 1 5 4.44 0.03 0.65 very high se4 342 1 5 4.56 0.03 0.61 very high se5 342 1 5 4.45 0.04 0.69 very high se6 342 1 5 3.86 0.05 0.96 high se7 342 1 5 4.06 0.04 0.80 very high se8 342 1 5 3.40 0.06 1.11 high ssm 342 1 5 4.15 0.02 0.41 very high overall self-efficacy beliefs overall 342 1 5 4.20 0.02 0.39 very high note: n=342. nb: the higher the mean score, the higher the level of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs in the execution of the scales/subscales of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. the findings in table 1 indicate that the analysis involved 342 participants, as reflected in the response rate. the minimum and maximum values confirm the absence of outliers in the data. additionally, the standard deviation scores fall within the ±3 threshold, commonly used to assess data normality. overall, the da ta show that social studies teachers rated their self-efficacy beliefs as very high across all indicators. specifically, teachers rated their self-efficacy beliefs in classroom management the highest (m=4.24, sd=0.46), followed by instructional strategy (m=4.21, sd=0.48), and student engagement (m=4.15, sd=0.41). the data also reveal that social studies teachers ranked their overall self-efficacy beliefs very high (m=4.20, sd=0.39). however, two sub-scales related to student engagement (se6 and se8) were rated as "high" rather than "very high." all other sub-scales across the three dimensions of self-efficacy beliefs were rated very high, as defined by leedy and ormrod (2021) and nunnally and bernstein (1994). furthermore, table 1 shows that the mean scores reflected data variability, with values falling within the ±3 range, confirming that the data were normally distributed. given the 5-point likert scale used in the questionnaire, where the mean score is 3.0 (1+2+3+4+5/5), it can be concluded that all the self-efficacy belief indicators in the study were rated above average. therefore, this study concludes that social studies teachers possessed self-efficacy beliefs across all dimensions examined, albeit varying degrees. 4.2. test of study’s hypotheses 4.2.1. hypothesis 1 ho1: the sex of senior high school social studies teachers will not statistically significantly account for differences in their self-efficacy beliefs. this hypothesis aimed to determine whether statistically significant differences exist in the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers based on their sex. the study used an independent samples t-test to examine these differences, and the results are presented in table 2. table 2. independent samples t-test results for sex and social studies teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. variables sex mean std. dev. t df sig. (2-tailed) student engagement male 4.17 0.39 1.568 340 0.118 female 4.10 0.44 instructional strategy male 4.25 0.45 2.303 340 0.022 female 4.12 0.53 classroom management male 4.25 0.45 0.868 340 0.386 female 4.20 0.49 overall self-efficacy beliefs male 4.22 0.37 1.848 340 0.036 female 4.14 0.42 the independent samples t-test results in table 2 show that there was no statistically significant difference in the mean scores for male and female social studies teachers in relation to their self-efficacy beliefs in student engagement [t (340) = 1.568, p > 0.05, 2-tailed] as well as their self-efficacy beliefs in classroom management [t (340) = 1.568, p > 0.05, 2-tailed]. however, the results indicate that there was a statistically significant difference in the mean scores for male and female social studies teachers concerning their self-efficacy beliefs in instructional strategy [t (340) = 1.568, p < 0.05, 2tailed], where the male social studies teachers performed better (m = 4.17, sd = 0.39) than the female social studies teachers (m = 4.10, sd = 0.44). similarly, the results disclosed that the mean scores for male social studies teachers (m asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 37 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group = 4.22, sd = 0.37) and female (m = 4.14, sd = 0.42) social studies teachers differ significantly in their overall self-efficacy beliefs [t (340) = 1.848, p < 0.05, 2-tailed], which implied that the male social studies teachers did better in overall selfefficacy beliefs; this implied that the male social studies teachers generally performed better than their female social studies teacher counterparts. based on these results, the study concludes that the sex of the social studies teachers is crucial in determining their efficacy beliefs in their instructional strategy as well as their overall self -efficacy beliefs. however, the results further disclose that sex did not matter in discussing their self-efficacy beliefs in classroom management and student engagement among social studies teachers. hence, the null hypothesis that “there is no statistically significant difference between male and female social studies teachers on their sel f-efficacy beliefs” was not supported, while the alternative hypothesis was supported. 4.2.2. hypothesis 2 ho2: the age of senior high school social studies teachers will not statistically significantly account for differences in their self-efficacy beliefs. this hypothesis sought to test the influence of social studies teachers' age on their self-efficacy beliefs. to determine how age affects self-efficacy beliefs in social studies teachers, descriptive analysis was carried out, and the results are presented in table 3. table 3. descriptive statistics for one-way between-groups anova results for social studies teachers' age and self-efficacy beliefs. variables years in range mean std. dev. student engagement 20-29 yrs. 4.07 0.35 30-39 yrs. 4.20 0.40 40-49 yrs. 4.10 0.46 50+ yrs. 4.31 0.41 total 4.15 0.41 instructional strategy 20-29 yrs. 4.12 0.42 30-39 yrs. 4.30 0.42 40-49 yrs. 4.14 0.61 50+ yrs. 4.26 0.46 total 4.21 0.48 classroom management 20-29 yrs. 4.14 0.42 30-39 yrs. 4.33 0.41 40-49 yrs. 4.16 0.54 50+ yrs. 4.27 0.57 total 4.24 0.46 overall self-efficacy beliefs 20-29 yrs. 4.11 0.33 30-39 yrs. 4.28 0.34 40-49 yrs. 4.13 0.48 50+ yrs. 4.28 0.44 total 4.20 0.39 it could be observed from table 3 that social studies teachers who were 50 years and above rated highest on their efficacy on student engagement (m=4.31, sd=0.41) than their counterparts who had between 30-39 years (m=4.20, sd=0.40), 40-49 years (m=4.10, sd=0.46) and 40-49 years (m=4.07, sd=0.35). for self-efficacy in instructional strategy, social studies teachers who were 30-39 years old recorded the greatest mean (m=4.30, sd=0.42) than those who fell between 50 years and above (m=4.26, sd=0.46), 40-49 years (m=4.14, sd=0.616), and 20-29 years (m=4.12, sd=0.42). social studies teachers who fell between 30-39 years by age recorded the highest mean (m=4.33, sd=0.41) than colleagues who were 50 years and above (m=4.27, sd=0.57), 40-49 (m=4.16, sd=0.54), and 20-29 years (m=4.14, sd=0.42) on their efficacy in classroom management. the information also reveals that social studies teachers who were between the age bracket of 30-39 years (m=4.28, sd=0.34) and 50 years and above (m=4.28, sd=0.44), recorded the highest mean than those who fell between 40-49 years (m=4.13, sd=0.48) and 20-29 years (m=4.11, sd=0.33) about the overall teachers’ efficacy beliefs. the descriptive statistics, as shown in table 3, have disclosed that there were differences in terms of age in social studies teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. in testing whether the differences were statistically significant, the one-way between-groups anova was employed, and the results are shown in table 4. table 4. one-way between-groups anova results for social studies teachers' age and self-efficacy beliefs. variables sum of squares df mean square f sig. student engagement between groups 1.873 3 0.624 3.854 0.010 within groups 54.752 338 0.162 total 56.625 341 instructional strategy between groups 2.328 3 0.776 3.460 0.017 within groups 75.802 338 0.224 total 78.130 341 classroom management between groups 2.671 3 0.890 4.282 0.006 within groups 70.275 338 0.208 total 72.946 341 overall self-efficacy beliefs between groups 2.168 3 0.723 5.008 0.002 within groups 48.777 338 0.144 total 50.945 341 the one-way between-groups anova results in table 4 revealed that there were statistically significant differences in the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers regarding student engagement [f (3, 338) = 3.854, p<0.05], instructional strategy [f (3, 338) = 3.460, p<0.05], classroom management [f (3, 338) = 4.282, p<0.05], as well as the overall self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers [f (3, 338) = 4.282, p<0.05] due to age. thus, the results suggested that age is a critical determinant of social studies teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs about student engagement, instructional strategy, as well as classroom management. therefore, the null hypothesis that “age will not significantly affect social studies teachers' self-efficacy beliefs” was not supported, while the alternative hypothesis was supported. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 38 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.2.3. hypothesis 3 ho3: the academic qualifications of senior high school social studies teachers will not statistically significantly account for differences in their self-efficacy beliefs. this hypothesis sought to test whether the self-efficacy beliefs of the social studies teachers would differ significantly due to their academic qualifications. in this study, the educational qualifications of teachers were identified as a bachelor’s degree, a master’s, and a phd. however, it was revealed after data collection that only teachers with bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees were involved in the study. as such, to test for the statistically significant differences in teachers’ academic qualifications and self-efficacy beliefs, an independent samples t-test was employed, and the results are presented in table 5. table 5. independent samples t-test results for academic qualification of social studies teachers and self-efficacy beliefs. levels of self-efficacy beliefs academic qualification mean std. dev. t df sig. (2-tailed) student engagement bachelor’s degree 4.15 0.38 0.452 340 0.651 masters 4.13 0.46 instructional strategy bachelor’s degree 4.24 0.43 1.724 340 0.090 masters 4.14 0.57 classroom management bachelor’s degree 4.24 0.45 0.123 340 0.900 masters 4.23 0.48 overall self-efficacy beliefs bachelor’s degree 4.21 0.36 0.918 340 0.360 masters 4.17 0.45 data in table 5 show that social studies teachers with bachelor’s degrees better engaged students (m=4.15, sd=0.38) than their counterparts who were master’s holders (m=4.13, sd=0.46). regarding instructional strategy, social studies teachers with bachelor’s degrees performed higher (m=4.24, sd=0.43) than their colleagues with master’s degrees (m=4.14, sd=0.57). similarly, social studies teachers with bachelor’s degrees scored higher on classroom management (m=4.24, sd=0.23) than their counterparts with master’s degrees (m=4.23, sd=0.48), whereas social studies teachers who were bachelor’s degree holders rated higher on the overall self-efficacy beliefs (m=4.21, sd=0.36) than their counterparts with master’s degrees (m=4.17, sd=0.45). the test of significance using independent samples t-test generated results as presented in table 5, revealing that there is no statistically significant difference in the means for efficacy in student engagement [t (340)=0.452, p=0.651, 2-tailed], instructional strategy [t (340)= 1.724, p=0.090, 2-tailed], classroom management [t (340)= 0.123, p=0.900, 2-tailed], and the overall selfefficacy beliefs [t (340)= 0.918, p=0.360, 2-tailed] at the 0.05 alpha level due to academic qualification. it could be deduced from these results that academic qualification did not statistically significantly determine the self-efficacy of social studies teachers in public senior high schools. consequently, the alternate hypothesis that “academic qualification of senior high school social studies teachers will not statistically significantly account for differences in their self-efficacy beliefs” was supported. in contrast, the alternative hypothesis was not supported. 4.2.4. hypothesis 4 ho4: years of work experience of senior high school social studies teachers will not statistically significantly account for differences in their self-efficacy beliefs. in this hypothesis, we sought to test whether the years of teaching experience could account for statistically significant differences in the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers. before statistical differences were checked, the study first used descriptive statistics to verify whether differences existed among the social studies teachers based on years of teaching experience. the results are presented in table 6. table 6. descriptive statistics for one-way between-groups anova results for age and self-efficacy beliefs. sub-scales of self-efficacy years mean std. dev. student engagement 1-5 years 4.14 0.36 6-10 years 4.13 0.41 10+years 4.17 0.44 total 4.15 0.41 instructional strategy 1-5 years 4.23 0.41 6-10 years 4.08 0.55 10+years 4.30 0.45 total 4.21 0.48 classroom management 1-5 years 4.23 0.38 6-10 years 4.12 0.50 10+years 4.33 0.48 total 4.24 0.46 overall self-efficacy beliefs 1-5 years 4.20 0.32 6-10 years 4.11 0.43 10+years 4.27 0.39 total 4.20 0.39 it could be seen in table 6 that those teachers with 10 years and above scored a higher mean (m=4.17, sd=0.41) than those with between 1-5 years (m=4.14, sd=0.36) and teachers with between 6-10 years on student engagement. regarding instructional strategy, teachers who had 10 years and above recorded a higher mean (m=4.30, sd=0.45) than their counterparts who had spent between 1-5 years (m=4.23, sd=0.41) and 6-10 years (m=4.08, sd=0.55). furthermore, teachers who have spent 10 years and above recorded the highest mean (m=4.33, sd=0.48) compared to their counterparts who have spent between 1-5 years (m=4.23, sd=0.38) and those between 6-10 years (m=4.12, sd=0.50), while teachers who possess 10 years and above experience ranked higher (m=4.27, sd=0.39) than those with between 1-5 years experience (m=4.20, sd=0.32) and 6-10 years of experience (m=4.11, sd=0.43) on the overall self-efficacy beliefs. the one-way between-group anova results on whether statistically significant differences existed have been presented in table 7. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 39 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 7. one-way between-groups anova results for the years of experience of social studies teachers and self-efficacy beliefs. variables sum of squares df mean square f sig. student engagement between groups 0.124 2 0.062 0.372 0.690 within groups 56.501 339 0.167 total 56.625 341 instructional strategy between groups 2.735 2 1.367 6.148 0.002 within groups 75.396 339 0.222 total 78.130 341 classroom management between groups 2.610 2 1.305 6.289 0.002 within groups 70.336 339 0.207 total 72.946 341 overall self-efficacy beliefs between groups 1.432 2 0.716 4.901 0.008 within groups 49.513 339 0.146 total 50.945 341 the anova results in table 7 reveal that, except for student engagement, where no statistically significant difference existed [f (2, 339) = 0.372, p > 0.05], the study discovered statistically significant differences in relation to instructional strategy [f (2, 339) = 6.148, p < 0.05], classroom management [f (2, 339) = 6.289, p < 0.05], as well as the overall self-efficacy beliefs [f (2, 339) = 4.901, p < 0.05] due to teachers’ years of teaching experience. thus, the results suggested that social studies teachers’ years of teaching experience are a critical determinant of their self-efficacy beliefs. a post hoc analysis using the tukey hsd test for further multiple comparisons revealed that significant differences occurred in efficacy in instructional strategy, classroom management, as well as overall self-efficacy beliefs, where there was a significant pair-wise group difference between teachers who had spent between 6-10 years and 10+ years, with the mean score for teachers with 10+ years being significantly higher (m = 4.30, sd = 0.45) than their counterparts who had spent 6-10 years (m = 4.08, sd = 0.55), while those within 1-5 years did not reach statistical significance. therefore, the study fa ils to support the null hypothesis that “years of teaching experience will not significantly affect social studies teachers' self-efficacy beliefs,” while the alternative hypothesis was supported. 5. discussion of the findings the first research question aimed to determine the level of self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers. the findings revealed that social studies teachers rated their self-efficacy beliefs very high, with a mean score of 4.20 and a standard deviation of 0.02. this result indicates that social studies teachers in these schools demonstrated a strong ability to implement various activities and practices to facilitate student learning effectively. this finding aligns with prior analytical studies conducted in turkey by balcı et al. (2019) and ghana by nyantakyi et al. (2020) and coffie and doe (2019), all of which reported high levels of teacher self-efficacy beliefs. however, the result contradicts findings from earlier studies by mathenjwa and dlamini (2020) and sokal, trudel, and babb (2020), which reported low to moderate levels of teacher self-efficacy beliefs. the high level of teacher self-efficacy beliefs identified in this study indicates that social studies teachers were confident in their abilities and believed they could affect meaningful change in their students through effective classroom practices and engagements. hussain, khan, and bidar (2022) emphasized that high self-efficacy beliefs are essential for teachers to achieve their objectives, complete tasks, and address educational challenges. teachers with low self-efficacy tend to avoid complex tasks, view creative endeavors as overly challenging, interpret situations negatively, and lose confidence in their abilities. in contrast, teachers with high self-efficacy embrace complex tasks as opportunities for growth, develop a more substantial interest in their work, maintain a firm commitment to their responsibilities, and recover quickly from setbacks. notably, the studies conducted by balcı et al. (2019) and nyantakyi et al. (2020), despite being carried out at different levels of the educational system, consistently adopted and utilized tschannen-moran and hoy (2007) model of teacher self-efficacy. this consistency confirms the model's applicability across various levels of education. consequently, this study theorizes that tschannen-moran and hoy (2007) model can effectively assess teachers' selfefficacy beliefs regardless of their position on the educational ladder. thus, we assert that the model is applicable for evaluating the self-efficacy beliefs of the social studies teachers included in this study. regarding the three dimensions of teacher self-efficacy beliefs, this study found that social studies teachers rated classroom management highest, followed by instructional strategy and student engagement. these findings align with prior studies conducted in countries such as eswatini (mathenjwa & dlamini, 2020) and canada (klassen & chiu, 2010). however, the findings of this study contrast with previous research conducted in turkey (barci, maurin, & sokol, 2019; çelik & topkaya, 2017) and india (jaggernauth & jameson-charles, 2015). the findings of this study, consistent with previous research, revealed that classroom management emerged as the most dominant indicator of social studies teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. this result is unsurprising, as competency in classroom management is crucial for ensuring effective instructional practices. teachers must enforce adherence to classroom rules, manage and control disruptive behaviors, and engage even the most deviant or challenging students (mathenjwa & dlamini, 2020). this perspective suggests that efficacy beliefs in classroom management establish the foundation for instructional practices, shaping students' actions, behaviors, and readiness for learning. consequently, classroom management activities are the cornerstone of effective teaching and learning. the study also examined how demographic characteristics such as sex, age, academic qualifications, and work experience influence social studies teachers' perceptions and account for statistical differences in their self-efficacy beliefs, as tested in hypothesis one. the findings showed no statistically significant difference between male and female social studies teachers regarding their self-efficacy beliefs in student engagement or classroom management. however, the results of the hypothesis revealed a statistically significant difference in self-efficacy beliefs in instructional strategy, with male social studies teachers outperforming their female counterparts. the results of the overall self-efficacy beliefs show that male social studies teachers possess significantly higher self-efficacy beliefs than their female counterparts. based on this finding, the study concludes that sex significantly influences the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers. these findings align with previous studies conducted in albania (lesha, 2017), botswana (moalosi & forcheh, 2015), and kenya (butucha, 2014), where researchers observed statistically significant differences between sex and teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. however, these results conflict with asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(1): 31-42 40 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group findings from other studies conducted in albania (bilali, 2013), kenya (moturi, 2014), and nigeria ((okenyi & enyi, 2015), which reported no significant differences. as a result, this study did not support the null hypothesis but instead validated the alternative hypothesis. the findings imply that programs and interventions aimed at enhancing the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers should focus more on female teachers, as they exhibit lower self-efficacy beliefs than their male counterparts. the study assessed the influence of age to determine whether it significantly affects the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers. the results reveal a statistically significant difference in self-efficacy beliefs related to student engagement, instructional strategy, classroom management, and overall self-efficacy beliefs among social studies teachers based on age. consequently, the study concludes that age significantly impacts differences in the self-efficacy beliefs of social studies teachers. this finding aligns with previous studies conducted in the caribbean (jaggernauth & jameson-charles, 2015) and turkey (gündüz-özsoy, 2017), which reported that age influenced teachers’ selfefficacy beliefs. however, the results contradict findings from other studies (arko (2021); hicks (2012) and voris and bjork (2011) that found no statistically significant differences in self-efficacy beliefs based on age. these findings underscore the importance of considering age as a critical demographic variable influencing teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. the study rejects the null hypothesis and accepts the alternative hypothesis regarding the influence of age on teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. however, when examining the influence of academic qualifications, the study reveals no statistically significant differences in self-efficacy beliefs across student engagement, instructional strategy, classroom management, and overall efficacy. these findings contradict prior studies conducted in pakistan (shaukat et al., 2019), belgium (mona et al., 2018), and china (xiong et al., 2020). conversely, they align with previous research from iran (akbari & moradkhani, 2010) and thailand (crook, 2016). these results suggest that academic qualifications do not significantly influence teachers' self-efficacy beliefs, indicating that age plays a more vital role than academic qualifications in this context. based on these findings, the study rejects the alternative hypothesis regarding educational qualifications and accepts the null hypothesis instead. the results from examining the influence of years of teaching experience on teachers' self-efficacy beliefs revealed that, except for student engagement, where no statistically significant difference existed, the study found statistically significant differences in relation to instructional strategy, classroom management, and overall self-efficacy beliefs. this finding aligns with previous studies in ghana (arko, 2021) and kenya (wang'eri & otanga, 2014), which showed that teachers' years of teaching experience influenced their self-efficacy beliefs. however, the findings of this study contradict those of previous studies in the united states (frazier, 2021), trinidad and tobago (gowrie & ramdass, 2014) and vietnam (phan & locke, 2015), where years of teaching experience did not account for any statistically significant differences in teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. consequently, we accepted the alternate hypothesis and rejected the null hypothesis. 6. conclusions and recommendations it is established that the social studies teachers were highly efficacious in classroom management, instructional strategies, and student engagement. there is ample evidence that social studies teachers are well-equipped and very competent in dealing with the everyday challenges they encounter in discharging their duties. the implication is that social studies teachers can cope with and deal with the daily emotional, social, and pedagogically difficult circumstances that have the potential to reduce their feelings of efficacy and professional competence. therefore, social studies teachers, who are critical agents in the teaching of 21st-century competencies, can collaborate with their students and other stakeholders to realize the acquisition of the intended learning outcomes among learners. even though teachers are generally criticized for reneging on their instructional responsibi lities due to their numerous and multidimensional challenges, such as but not limited to burnout, stress, and students’ behavioral challenges, the social studies teachers who took part in this demonstrated high levels of self-efficacy beliefs in executing their roles and are therefore passionate about their job. however, there were differences in the intensity and magnitude of the implementation of the various indicators and dimensions. this calls for support to enhance and sustain their instructional practices to promote and improve the teaching and learning of the subject and their job performance in the schools. 7. implications for effective teaching and learning of social studies the findings from this study have implications for the teaching and learning of social studies. the findings imply that self-efficacy beliefs are a springboard for realizing optimum effectiveness among social studies teachers in public senior high schools in the central region of ghana. consequently, this revelation that social studies teachers' selfefficacy beliefs are critical to their success indicates that they are expected to demonstrate effectiveness in classroom management, instructional strategies, and student engagement. therefore, social studies teachers become the wheels that drive the acquisition of the rationale, goals, and objectives of the social studies curriculum and are crucial agents in the delivery of civic education in ghana. hence, they are expected to be receptive when opportunities are given to equip them to hone their self-efficacy beliefs. finally, the findings of the study have implications for decisions on the selection of training programs and interventions required to promote and enhance self-efficacy beliefs to realize desired job performance. social studies teachers' demographic variables, such as sex, age, academic qualification, and work experience, accounted for statistically significant differences in self-efficacy beliefs. therefore, education stakeholders are expected to focus on the demographic variables of teachers that significantly influenced their perception of their self-efficacy beliefs and, thus, accounted for 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(2024). examining the influence of economics teachers’ engagement in professional learning communities on teaching self-efficacy: a structural equation modelling approach. cogent social sciences, 10(1), 2334113. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2024.2334113 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2023.2167503 https://doi.org/10.24018/ejedu.2023.4.3.230 https://doi.org/10.5539/jel.v4n3p1 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.01.001 https://doi.org/10.31686/ijier.vol4.iss8.679 https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jssh.20200604.14 https://doi.org/10.31686/ijier.vol3.iss1.679 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.09.006 https://doi.org/10.1177/15366006211093984 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.08.011 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2015.11.001 https://doi.org/10.4314/gjds.v12i1.2 https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12425 https://doi.org/10.32674/jcihe.v13i2.2949 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2020.100016 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09475-3 http://repo.lib.jfn.ac.lk/ujrr/handle/123456789/2562 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2024.2334113 179 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 4, 179-186, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7647 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group university students' interest, attitudes and awareness levels in history course, the turkish example i̇brahim özcanli1 hamza keleş2 neval akça berk3 ( corresponding author) 1department of atatürk's principles and revolutionary history, çukurova university, adana, türkiye. email: ibrahimozcanli.001@gmail.com 2gazi university faculty of education, turkish and social sciences education, history education, ankara, türkiye. email: hkeles@gazi.edu.tr 3department of faculty of education, çukurova university, adana, türkiye. email: nakca@cu.edu.tr abstract this study aimed to assess university students' interest, attitude, and awareness concerning the atatürk’s principles and history of the turkish revolution course. a descriptive and correlational research design was employed, with a sample of 360 voluntary students from the faculty of education. findings revealed that the majority of participants were female (58.9%) and enrolled in the social studies education program (45%). students who studied regularly and dedicated 3–4 or more hours per day to their studies showed significantly higher levels of interest, positive attitudes, and awareness regarding the course. the lowest attitude scores were observed among classroom teaching students (m = 55.50, sd = 15.09), while the highest were seen in history teaching students (m = 68.21, sd = 9.36). science teaching students had the lowest interest levels (m = 47.67, sd = 15.05), and male students demonstrated greater interest than female students. the average score of university students from the atatürk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale was determined as 112.33 ± 22.43. according to the scale scored between 27-135, it can be said that the students' awareness levels regarding the atatürk's principles and revolution history course are quite high. in conclusion, students exhibited high levels of awareness about the course's objectives and content, with generally above-average interest and attitudes. however, personal characteristics such as gender, department, and study habits significantly influenced these factors. keywords: atatürk's principles and revolution history course, attitude, awareness, interest. citation | özcanli, i̇brahim, keleş, h., & berk, n. a. (2025). university students’ interest, attitudes and awareness levels in history course, the turkish example. asian journal of education and training, 11(4), 179–186. 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7647 history: received: 3 september 2025 revised: 7 october 2025 accepted: 21 october 2025 published: 3 november 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: ethics committee permission was obtained from gazi university ethics committee (11.05.2018/e-75641) and the gazi university administration (28.06.2018/e-95910). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 180 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 180 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 181 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 184 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 186 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 186 mailto:ibrahimozcanli.001@gmail.com mailto:hkeles@gazi.edu.tr mailto:nakca@cu.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i4.7647 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3146-6167 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8739-1619 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1383-8123 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 179-186 180 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the main contribution of the article can be summarized as follows: the results obtained from this study, along with the revised educational plans based on these results, will enhance students' historical awareness and, consequently, that of future educators. this increased awareness will foster generations that understand the importance of national unity and solidarity, learn from the past, and move forward confidently. therefore, the findings of this study will make a significant contribution to social life in general. 1. introduction the atatürk’s principles and history of the turkish revolution course is a compulsory subject offered in all faculties and colleges within turkish higher education institutions. this course aims to help university students understand the structure of turkish society, the dynamics of the contemporary world, and how these conditions emerged and function. moreover, it introduces türkiye’s role in international affairs and the challenges it faces in addressing national and global issues (akbaba, 2007). courses on atatürk’s principles and the turkish revolution play a key role in fostering historical awareness among young people. however, research indicates that many students fail to grasp the significance and purpose of history education (özbaran, 1997, 2003). student interest is a critical factor in academic success, particularly in the classroom setting (weber, martin, & patterson, 2001). interest directly influences learning motivation and drives engagement with the course, participation, and student–teacher interaction (acar & yaman, 2011; akın, uğur, & akın, 2015; krapp, 2002). wang, heartel, and wolberg (1994) emphasized that students’ learning is most affected by their attitudes and cognitive awareness skills, which are integral to motivation and self-regulation. understanding academic material is closely tied to such cognitive and motivational components. therefore, it is not sufficient for students to achieve only high academic performance; fostering a positive attitude is equally essential for sustainable success. in this context, “cognitive awareness skills” are a critical contributor to long-term achievement and engagement. studies have indicated that various problems are encountered during the implementation of the atatürk principles and revolutionary history course (akbaba, 2008; safran, 2006). these problems can have various causes. they can lead to a lack of interest in the course, a failure to develop a positive attitude towards it, a low level of awareness about the course, and, in turn, a vicious cycle of escalating educational problems and ineffectiveness related to the course. achieving the desired objectives in the atatürk principles and revolutionary history course, which was established and developed with very important aims and objectives, is of utmost importance for both the instructor and the students taking the course, and consequently for social awareness. to achieve the intended objectives of the course, existing problems should be evaluated from various perspectives and solutions should be found. continuous improvement of educational programs for understanding and making sense of the world is crucial for providing better opportunities for future generations and ensuring that students are raised as informed citizens. in this regard, cultivating individuals with sensitivity and historical awareness is among the fundamental objectives of the atatürk principles and revolutionary history course curriculum (ezer, ulukaya, & kaçar, 2016). the higher the interest, attitude, and awareness level of university students in the course, the easier it will be to achieve the course objectives. analyzing interest, attitude, and awareness, along with assessing the situation, will guide educational plans. we believe that student analysis from various perspectives will be effective in resolving these issues. studies that analyze interest, attitude, and awareness towards history lessons as a whole are not very common in the literature. this study aims to determine university students’ interest in, attitudes toward, and awareness of the atatürk’s principles and history of the turkish revolution course. it also seeks to analyze these factors in relation to various demographic and academic variables, contribute to future course planning, and support the development of more effective history education programs. the study was conducted to answer the following research questions. 1. what is the interest level of university students in the atatürk principles and history of turkish revolution course? 2. what are the attitudes of university students toward the atatürk principles and history of turkish revolution course? 3. what is the awareness level of university students regarding the atatürk principles and history of turkish revolution course? 4. is there a relationship between the interest, attitude, and awareness levels of university students toward the atatürk principles and history of turkish revolution course? 5. is there a difference in the interest, attitude, and awareness levels of university students toward the atatürk principles and history of turkish revolution course based on gender? 6. is there a difference in the interest, attitude, and awareness levels of university students toward the atatürk principles and history of turkish revolution course based on their department of study? 7. is there a difference in the interest, attitude, and awareness levels of university students toward the atatürk principles and history of turkish revolution course based on their daily study time? 8. is there a difference in university students' interest, attitude, and awareness levels toward the atatürk principles and revolutionary history course based on their study patterns and departments? 9. is there a difference in university students' interest, attitude, and awareness levels toward the atatürk principles and revolutionary history course based on their perceived level of economic income? 2. methodology 2.1. research design this research employed a descriptive and correlational design. descriptive studies aim to present a given situation as thoroughly and accurately as possible. correlational studies explore the relationships between variables, helping researchers better understand underlying patterns and make informed predictions (buyukozturk, aygun, kilic cakmak, & karadeniz, 2016). asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 179-186 181 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.2. research setting and duration the study was conducted at the faculty of education of a public university (gazi university) between april and june 2018. 2.3. research group the sample consisted of 360 students enrolled in the faculty of education. participants were selected to ensure an adequate sample size for scale development and validation. of the participants, 212 were female and 148 were male. 2.4. data collection tools in order to collect data in the research, the following instruments were used: the "personal information form," the "course interest scale," the "atatürk's principles and revolutionary history course attitude scale," and the "atatürk's principles and revolutionary history course awareness scale." personal information form: it will be created to collect personal information from the participants in the study. this form will include the participants' age and gender, the department and faculty they are studying in, the grade they are in, the time they spend studying daily, and questions about their study habits and perceived income level. the interest in course scale was developed to assess the relationship between student interest and variables such as learning motivation, effective learning, and course participation level (mazer, 2013). it is a 5-point likerttype measurement tool consisting of 16 items and two sub-dimensions: affective and cognitive interest. the response options range from "1" (strongly disagree) to "5" (strongly agree). there are no reverse-coded items in the scale. the highest and lowest scores obtainable are 45 and 9 for the affective interest sub-dimension, and 35 and 7 for the cognitive interest sub-dimension, respectively. the adaptation of the scale to turkish, along with its validity and reliability studies, was conducted by akın et al. (2015). atatürk's principles and history of revolution course attitude scale: since a scale was not found in the literature review that directly measures the attitude level related to the atatürk's principles and history of revolution course in higher education, it was decided to develop this scale considering that the attitude level of university students has an effect on the success and effectiveness of the course. as a result of the validity and reliability study, a one-dimensional and 17-item scale was obtained. the characteristics of the developed scale; items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17 are normally scored and items 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 are reverse scored. in the 5point likert scale; scoring is as follows: 1 “i completely disagree”, 2 “i disagree”, 3 “i am undecided”, 4 “i agree”, 5 “i completely agree”. the score obtained from the scale ranges from 17 to 85. an increase in the score indicates that students have developed a positive attitude towards the atatürk principles and revolution history course. the cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient of the attitude scale for the atatürk principles and history of revolution course was found to be 0.879 (özcanlı, 2018). atatürk's principles and history of revolution course awareness scale: as a result of the literature review, since no scale was found measuring the awareness level about atatürk's principles and history of revolution course, it was decided to develop this scale considering that the awareness level of university students has an impact on course success, course effectiveness, and national identity formation. as a result of the validity and reliability study; a one-dimensional and 27-item scale was obtained. properties of the developed scale; all items in the scale are scored normally. scoring is done on a 5-point likert type scale as 1 “strongly disagree”, 2 “disagree”, 3 “undecided”, 4 “agree”, 5 “strongly agree”. the score obtained from the scale ranges from 27 to 135. an increase in the score shows that the students' awareness of the purpose, objective, and content of the atatürk's principles and history of revolution course has increased. the cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient of the atatürk principles and history of revolution course awareness scale was found to be 0.943 (özcanlı, 2018). 2.5. data collection and analysis after obtaining necessary institutional permissions and ethics committee approval, data were collected through face-to-face interviews. participation was voluntary, and informed consent was obtained. each session lasted approximately 15–20 minutes. data were analyzed using spss 21.0. data entry was conducted by independent personnel to ensure accuracy and minimize bias. analyses included descriptive statistics (percentages, means), one-way anova, independent samples t-tests, pearson correlation analysis, and tukey’s post-hoc test. 2.6. ethical considerations the study adhered to universal ethical principles, including informed consent, confidentiality, and the right to withdraw. ethics committee permission was obtained from gazi university ethics committee (11.05.2018/e75641) and the gazi university administration (28.06.2018/e-95910). written consent was obtained from the participants. all data was anonymized to protect participants' confidentiality. 3. results data on personal characteristics of university students are shown in table 1. table 1. personal information of university students’ distribution according to variables (n=360). variables n % gender women 212 58.9 male 148 41.1 department of education history teaching 57 15.8 science teaching 67 18.6 social studies teaching 162 45 classroom teaching 74 20.6 perceived income level asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 179-186 182 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group variables n % high 36 10 middle 285 79.2 low 39 10.8 daily study time 1 hour and under 196 54.4 1-2 hours 103 28.6 3 hours 41 11.4 4 hours and above 20 5.6 study habits everyday regularly 58 16.1 only exam time 149 41.4 intermediate break during the term 153 42.5 age (average) (min-max) 21.26±2.73 (18-34) continuous variables are presented as mean ± standard deviation, and categorical variables are presented as numbers (percentages). the demographic characteristics of the 360 university students in the study sample are summarized in table 1. of the participants, 58.9% were female, and 45% were enrolled in the department of social studies education. the average age of participants was 21.26 (sd = 2.73, range = 18–34). in our study, university students participated. the average score of the attitude scale for the atatürk principles and history of revolution course was found to be 62.83 ±14.16. the average score of the students on the awareness scale for the atatürk principles and history of revolution course was found to be 112.33 ±22.43. when the average scores of the scale of interest in the course were examined, it was seen that the general scale average score was 53.17 ±13.31, the affective interest level sub-dimension average score was 28.01 ±8.77, and the cognitive interest level sub-dimension average score was 25.15 ±5.77 (table 2). table 2. mean scores of the scales. avg sd min-max atatürk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale 112.33 22.43 27-135 attitude scale for atatürk’s principles and revolution history course 62.83 14.16 17-85 interest in the course scale 53.17 13.31 16-80 affective interest level 28.01 8.77 9-45 cognitive interest level 25.15 5.77 7-35 according to these results, it can be said that the awareness of university students about the purpose, goal, and content of the atatürk principles and revolution history course is quite good, and their interest in the course and their positive attitude towards it are at a level above average. there was a statistically significant positive correlation between students' levels of interest, attitude, and awareness (p < 0.01), suggesting that increased awareness is associated with a more positive attitude and greater interest in the course (table 3). table 3. relationship between the level of interest in the atatürk principles and revolution history course and the levels of attitude and awareness. aprhcaws aprhcats dis ail cil aprhcas 0.665* 0.260* 0.225* 0.259* aprhcats 0.506* 0.374* 0.368* dis 0.945* 0.869* ail 0.660* note: * p<0.01 aprhcaws: atatürk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale, aprhcats: atatürk's principles and revolution history course attitude scale, dis: course interest scale, ail: affective interest level, cil: cognitive interest level. according to these results, it was determined that there is a high level of relationship between the level of interest of university students in the atatürk principles and history of revolution course and their positive attitudes. the increase in the level of awareness about the course is highly related to showing a positive attitude. although it is not as strong as the relationship between awareness and positive attitude levels, there is also a high level of relationship between the level of awareness and interest in the course. when gender differences were examined, male students demonstrated significantly higher interest levels in the course compared to female students (p < 0.01), although no statistically significant difference was observed in terms of attitude and awareness levels (table 4). table 4. interest, attitude and awareness levels of students in atatürk’s principles and revolution history course by gender. female (n=212) male (n=148) t p atatürk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale 112.57 19.05 111.97 26.60 0.248 0.805 attitude scale for atatürk’s principles and revolution history course 62.21 14.39 63.72 13.81 1,001 0.318 interest in the course scale 51.36 13.84 55.77 12.10 9,753 0.002 affective interest level 27.17 8.76 29.22 8.68 4,828 0.029 cognitive interest level 24.19 6.33 26.54 4.53 14,950 0,000 according to these results, in general, university student males exhibit higher levels of interest, positive attitude, and awareness towards the atatürk principles and revolution history course than female students. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 179-186 183 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group when the mean scores of the scales were examined according to the department of education, it was found that the mean scores of the atatürk principles and history of revolution course attitude scale and the interest in the course scale showed statistically significant differences according to the departments (p<0.01). table 5. interest, attitude, and awareness levels of students in atatürk’s principles and revolution history course according to the department of education. social information (n=162) history (n=57) classroom (n=74) science knowledge of (n=67) f p atatürk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale 112.77 23.72 114.96 13.9 110.40 24.04 111.13 23.41 0.526 0.664 attitude scale for atatürk’s principles and revolution history course 64.70 14.30 68.21 9.36 55.50 15.09 61.22 13.38 10,799 0.000 interest scale for the course 54.53 12.72 54.52 15.36 54.16 9.75 47.67 15.05 4,855 0.003 affective interest level 28.68 8.65 27.89 9.99 28.91 6.69 25.52 9.69 2,408 0.067 cognitive interest level 25.84 5.40 26.63 6.28 25.24 4.55 22.14 6.43 8,578 0.000 in the tukey analysis conducted to determine the origin of the differences, it was observed that the differences stemmed from the scores between students receiving education in science teaching and those in history and social studies teaching. the lowest attitude scores were observed among students in the classroom teaching department (m = 55.50, sd = 15.09), while the highest scores were among history teaching students (m = 68.21, sd = 9.36). interest levels were lowest among science teaching students (m = 47.67, sd = 15.05). the analysis of departmental differences indicated that students enrolled in science teaching had the lowest levels of interest and attitude, whereas history and social studies students had the highest (table 5). when evaluating the effect of students' daily study hours on the scale parameters, it was determined that the average scores of the ataturk principles and revolution history course awareness scale and the course interest scale showed a statistically significant difference according to the study hours (p<0.01) (table 6). table 6. students' interest, attitude, and awareness levels in atatürk’s principles and revolution history course according to daily study time. 1 hour≥ (n=196) 1-2 hours (n=103) 3 hours (n=41) 4 hours≤ (n=20) f p atatürk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale 110.72 20.83 114.20 19.13 123.14 18.40 96.20 42.45 7,592 0.000 attitude scale for atatürk’s principles and revolution history course 61.81 14.04 62.56 14.16 67.36 9.38 64.95 20.98 1,913 0.127 interest in the course scale 51.04 12.98 54.14 12.34 55.56 14.73 64.25 12.33 7,269 0.000 affective interest level 26.63 8.85 28.83 8.12 29.56 8.81 34.25 7.96 5,942 0.001 level of cognitive interest 24.40 5.56 25.31 5.57 26.00 6.52 30.00 4.93 6,374 0.000 students who studied regularly and those who spent 3 to 4 or more hours daily on coursework had significantly higher scores in interest, attitude, and awareness regarding the atatürk’s principles and history of the turkish revolution course. daily study duration also affected interest and awareness scores, with the highest scores recorded among students studying three hours daily. interestingly, those who studied four or more hours exhibited the lowest awareness scores, possibly due to the small sample size in this group. when the effects of the study schedule on the mean scores of the scales were examined, it was found that only the mean scores of the interest in the course scale showed a statistically significant difference according to the study schedule (p<0.01) (table 7). table 7. students' interest, attitude, and awareness levels in atatürk’s principles and revolution history course according to study pattern. organized (n=58) exam time (n=149) occasionally (n=153) f p atatürk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale 110.98 29.01 109.83 20.87 114.67 20.94 1,493 0.226 attitude scale for atatürk’s principles and revolution history course 66.06 16.04 61.67 14.15 62.73 13.29 2,025 0.134 interest in the course scale 58.34 14.93 50.63 12.79 53.69 12.61 7,446 0.001 affective interest level 31.39 9.49 26.47 8.87 28.24 8.05 6,859 0.001 cognitive interest level 26.94 6.27 24.16 5.67 25.45 5.51 5,327 0.005 study habits influenced interest levels but not awareness or attitudes. students who studied regularly showed significantly higher levels of interest. the mean scores obtained from the scales according to the perceived economic income level of the students are shown in table 8. when the mean scale scores were examined according to the perception of economic income, it was determined that the mean scale scores did not show a statistically significant difference between the groups (p>0.05) (table 8). asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 179-186 184 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 8. interest, attitude, and awareness levels of students in atatürk’s principles and revolution history course according to economic income perception level. high middle low f p ataturk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale 119.55 23.03 111.98 20.81 108.17 30.96 2,591 0.076 attitude scale for atatürk’s principles and revolution history course 67.25 11.47 62.47 14.07 61.43 16.43 2,046 0.131 interest in the course scale 54.91 16.82 53.07 12.80 52.35 13.67 0.388 0.678 affective interest level 28.75 10.28 27.94 8.47 27.92 9.66 0.138 0.871 cognitive interest level 26.16 7.61 25.12 5.59 24.43 5.11 0.856 0.426 perceived economic status did not significantly affect any of the three measured variables, although students who reported low-income levels tended to have slightly lower interest, attitude, and awareness. 4. discussion 4.1. investigation of the attitude levels of university students towards the atatürk principles and revolution history course the findings of this study revealed that university students exhibited generally positive attitudes, high levels of interest, and strong awareness concerning the atatürk’s principles and history of the turkish revolution course. with an average attitude score of 62.83 (out of a possible 85), students demonstrated an overall positive stance towards the course. the highest attitude scores were observed among history teaching students, while classroom teaching students had the lowest. these findings align with previous studies. in the study conducted by akbaba (2008), “the problems encountered in teaching the atatürk principles and history of revolution course (gazi university example),” it was shown that the majority of the students (60.5%) believed in the necessity of the atatürk principles and history of revolution course. in the same study, the number of students who agreed with the statement regarding the atatürk principles and history of revolution course being taught for exams exceeded 50% of the sample. in the study conducted by erol şahin (2014), it was found that the students developed a positive attitude towards the history course after analogy-based activities. in the study conducted by baştuğ (1996), the subject of “evaluation of student attitudes towards history course in high schools and equivalent schools in kırıkkale city center” was examined, and it was determined that the students' attitudes towards the history course were positive. in the study conducted by bal (2011); “comparison of teacher candidates’ and teachers’ views on the problems and solutions of history teaching in turkey” was examined and it was concluded that the attitude of teacher candidates towards the course, teaching the course with new methods and techniques, and taking into account the level of comprehension of the student were important. in the study conducted by öner and öner (2014) “attitudes of 8th grade secondary school students regarding the level of comprehension of atatürk’s principles and revolutions” was examined, and it was stated that, in order for the course to achieve its purpose, the subjects in the curriculum should be restructured by taking into account the level of comprehension of the students. seminars should be given to parents so that the importance of the course is understood correctly by the students, and the use of materials should be included in the course. in the study conducted by uçar (2008), experimental control groups were created. vocational high school students were given project assignments related to their departments in the history of turkish revolution and kemalism course. as a result, a positive increase was observed in the attitude scores of both the control and experimental groups measured before and after the application. in a study conducted in the united states on students' attitudes towards history, it was observed that students considered history to be the least interesting and unimportant course in the curriculum loewen (1993). safran (2006) found in his study that the attitude of secondary school 3rd grade students towards the history course was close to the "undecided" level. in the study, it was determined that the attitude level towards the atatürk principles and revolution history course was not affected by gender differences. studies conducted on the effect of gender on attitudes towards history courses have yielded different results. although some studies have found higher attitudes of female students towards history courses (i̇skender, 2007; kont, 2008), some studies have found higher positive attitudes of male students (bolton, 1937). in the study of ezer et al. (2016), similar to our study, no significant relationship was found in terms of gender regarding attitudes towards the history of revolution and kemalism course. in the study of elban (2015), it was found that the attitudes of secondary school students participating in the application towards the history course were highly positive. in terms of gender, it was observed that male students' attitudes towards the history course were significantly more positive than those of female students. the study conducted by safran and şimşek (2009) it was found that male students had higher positive attitudes than female students. according to simsek (2010), the fact that males have a more positive attitude towards history can be attributed to the content of history education (wars, male heroes, victories, etc.), stemming from a more “male-dominated” structure. in his research on the attitudes of female students towards history lessons, mann (2008) observed that the attitudes of female students remained positive throughout the project-based study planned for six lessons, and that the needs of female students were significantly different from those of male students. there are studies supporting our study, as well as studies showing the effect of gender differences in the literature. the effect of other factors such as curriculum differences, classroom atmosphere, socio-economic characteristics of students, and teaching methods can be considered as reasons for the differences in these findings. when the studies conducted on the effect of the type of field students study in on their attitudes towards history courses are examined, it is stated that the type of field students study in, such as social sciences, sciences, etc., does not affect their attitudes towards history courses positively or negatively (i̇skender, 2007; kont, 2008). in the study of arslan (2005), atatürk's principles and the history of the revolution are seen as a formal course, especially for students in science, technical, and health fields. in the study of elban (2015), it is stated that the attitudes of students towards the history course do not differ according to the type of field they study. in the study conducted by şam (2007), it was observed that the attitudes of social studies teaching teacher candidates were not asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 179-186 185 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group high. these results can be interpreted as related to the fact that students studying in the social field perceive the history course as a specific field course compared to students studying in other field types. 4.2. examining the awareness levels of university students regarding the ataturk principles and revolution history course the average score of university students on the atatürk's principles and revolution history course awareness scale was determined as 112.33 ± 22.43. according to the scale, which ranges from 27 to 135, it can be said that the students' awareness levels regarding atatürk's principles and revolution history course are quite high. wang et al. (1994) stated that the most important factor affecting students' learning is students' attitudes and cognitive awareness skills, which these attitudes include. in the study of akbaba (2008), there is no clear difference between the students' level of agreement with the statement that mustafa kemal atatürk's thoughts cannot be conveyed. in line with our study, in the study conducted by akbaba (2007), it was determined that university students correctly perceived the purposes of the existence of the atatürk principles and revolution history course and the basic features of its content. in the study conducted by tangülü and aydın (2014), the opinions of 8thgrade social studies teachers regarding the value acquisition of the course were obtained, and the results indicated that the highest value among the criteria that a responsible student should have is that the student gives the necessary importance to his/her lessons, with 16%. in the same study, it was determined that it is very important for students to express how important a turkish elder is when his/her name is mentioned, to read to get to know turkish elders, to embrace the values adopted by turkish elders (13.6%), to read books about the war of independence and the battle of çanakkale, to be interested in them, to be curious about them, to respectfully remember turkish elders, and to embrace and develop the works left by turkish elders (9%). in their study, ezer et al. (2016) determined that a significant portion of the students can correctly perceive the purpose and content of the history of revolution and kemalism course. in the study of yilmaz (2005), “the level of comprehension of atatürk's principles and revolutions among 8th-grade primary school students was examined, and it was determined that students in ankara province could not comprehend some subjects within the scope of atatürk's principles and revolutions. when we look at the results of this study and other studies, the awareness levels of students regarding the atatürk principles and revolution history course or other courses with similar aims, objectives, and content vary. many factors, such as the socio-cultural characteristics of the students, the teaching staff, and educational tools and equipment, may influence these results. 4.3. examining the interest levels of university students in atatürk's principles and revolution history course according to our study results, when the average scores of the interest in the course scale were examined, it was observed that the overall scale score average was 53.17 ± 13.31. it was determined that the students' interest levels in the atatürk principles and revolution history course were well above average. the interest level of men in the course was found to be higher. it was also found that the interest level in the course was the lowest among students studying science teaching (47.67 ± 15.05), and those who study regularly had a higher interest level score average. the communication of a science that is completely different from the field of interest of the youth in higher education, who are on the path to specialization, brings various communication difficulties, from terminology to comprehension. the faculty members who will teach the course should take into consideration the specialization characteristics of the students they are addressing and direct their methods according to these facts (akgün, 1990). students cannot understand the importance of the field of social sciences and see this field as less necessary compared to science and mathematics. the main reasons for this are that students cannot understand the purposes of social sciences education and do not expect any benefit from these courses for their future lives (paykoç, 1991). in the study conducted by akbaba (2008) it was determined that the students' views on the problems encountered in the atatürk principles and history of revolution course differed according to the faculties in which the individuals participating in the study studied, and it was stated that this difference was due to the differences in the views of individuals studying in the vocational education faculty and those studying in the law faculty. if the student can establish a connection with his/her own department in the atatürk principles and revolution course and feel that this course is a need, his/her motivation for the course will increase and he/she will not remain disinterested. interest will also bring knowledge. in other words, in order for the student to have knowledge about a subject, he/she must first associate the subject with his/her own situation and thus feel close to the subject and be interested in it (uçar, 2008). in their study, saray and tosun (2005) determined that the turkish republic revolution history and kemalism course was not liked and valued much by the students, and therefore, the course was not successful enough in achieving its goals. according to safran (2006), the reason for the lack of interest in the students was the repetition of the same information given since primary school. in the study of akbaba (2008), the students' opinions on the problems encountered in the atatürk principles and revolution history course were examined, and it was determined that the individuals participating in the study did not differ according to their gender. the results of this study are expected to impact classroom teaching practices. utilizing appropriate educational practices such as e-learning, distance learning, short-term workshops, and summer camps to further increase interest, attitudes, and awareness in the atatürk principles and revolutionary history course, while minimizing influencing factors, will contribute to the success of the course. the results obtained from this study, and the educational plans revised based on these results, will increase historical awareness in students and, consequently, future educators. this will lead to generations that understand the importance of national unity and solidarity, can learn from the past, and can move forward with firm steps. thus, the results of this study will contribute to social life in general. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 179-186 186 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. conclusion in general, university students demonstrated above-average levels of interest, positive attitudes, and awareness toward the atatürk’s principles and history of the turkish revolution course. while male students exhibited higher interest levels, gender did not significantly influence attitudes or awareness. departmental background played a key role, with history teaching students showing the highest levels of interest and attitude, while science teaching students displayed the lowest. students who studied regularly or for longer hours (particularly three or more hours per day) showed higher engagement across all three domains. although perceived economic status did not yield statistically significant differences, students who rated their income as low tended to score slightly lower across all variables. these findings suggest that while the course is generally well-received, student engagement can be further improved by tailoring instructional strategies to department-specific needs and ensuring the personal relevance of course content. future curriculum development should consider these individual and contextual factors to enhance effectiveness and learning outcomes. references acar, b., & yaman, m. (2011). the effects of context-based learning on students’ levels of knowledge and interest. hacettepe university journal of education, 40(1), 1-10. akbaba, b. (2007). student views on the aims of the atatürk principles and history of revolution course. kastamonu education journal, 15(1), 339-352. akbaba, b. (2008). the problems faced in the teaching of the atatürk principles and revolution history course (a gazi university example). gazi akademik bakış, 1(2), 177-197. akgün, s. (1990). method in history colloquium on methodology and issues of turkish history. in (pp. 191–202). elazığ, turkey: euphrates basin research center akın, a., uğur, e., & akın, ü. (2015). the validity and reliability of turkish version of the student interest scale. kastamonu education journal, 23(4), 1471-1480. arslan, a. (2005). how to achieve success in history of revolution and history courses? teaching of the history of revolution of the turkish republic and kemalism in primary and secondary education institutions: current situation, problems and solution suggestions. ankara: atatürk research center publications. bal, m. s. (2011). a comparison of views of in-service and pre-service teachers on problems of history teaching and solutions for these problems. mustafa kemal university journal of social sciences institute, 8(15), 371-387. baştuğ, h. (1996). evaluation of student attitudes towards history course in high schools and equivalent schools in kırıkkale city center. master's thesis, gazi university. institute of educational sciences, ankara. bolton, f. b. (1937). the attitude of high school students toward history. the social studies, 28(4), 217-218. buyukozturk, s., aygun, o., kilic cakmak, e., & karadeniz, s. (2016). scientific research methods. ankara: pegem academy. elban, m. (2015). attitudes of secondary school students towards history course: an example from kazan district of ankara province. turkish journal of educational studies, 2(2), 103–118. erol şahin, a. n. (2014). the effects of using analogy method in history teaching on secondary school students' attitudes, achievements and historical thinking skills. phd thesis. gazi university institute of educational sciences, ankara. ezer, f., ulukaya, ü., & kaçar, t. (2016). attitudes of 8th grade primary school students towards the turkish republic revolution history and kemalism course. journal of social sciences, 6(11), 71-91. i̇skender, p. (2007). attitudes of prospective teachers towards history course. kastamonu education journal, 15(2), 631-638. kont, a. (2008). evaluation of the interest and attitudes of 11th grade students towards the turkish republic history of revolution and kemalism course. master's thesis, karadeniz technical university, institute of social sciences, trabzon. krapp, a. (2002). structural and dynamic aspects of interest development: theoretical considerations from an ontogenetic perspective. learning and instruction, 12(4), 383-409. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0959-4752(01)00011-1 loewen, j. w. (1993). lies my teacher told me. usa: new press. mann, a. (2008). gender roles and history: instructional strategies that increase the interest and improve the attitudes of 11th grade girls in social studies. unpublished master's thesis, new england college. mazer, j. p. (2013). student emotional and cognitive interest as mediators of teacher communication behaviors and student engagement: an examination of direct and interaction effects. communication education, 62(3), 253–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2013.777752 öner, m., & öner, g. (2014). attitudes of 8th grade secondary school students towards the level of understanding of atatürk’s principles and reforms. journal of education and teaching research, 3(2), 390-404. özbaran, s. (1997). history, historian and society. istanbul: history foundation. özbaran, s. (2003). guided history: thoughts on history held captive by education policies and the media. istanbul: cem publishing house. özcanlı, i̇. (2018). university students' awareness of the importance of the course with the level of interest and attitude towards atatürk's principles and turkish revolution history course. master's thesis, advisor: hamza keleş, ankara. paykoç, f. (1991). history teaching. eskişehir: anadolu university. safran, m. (2006). history education articles and proceedings. ankara: gazi. safran, m., & şimşek, a. (2009). views of primary school students from different socio-economic environments on history, history teaching and historical time. paper presented at the iv. social sciences education congress, marmara university atatürk faculty of education, istanbul. şam, e. a. (2007). attitudes of prospective teachers studying in different departments of amasya faculty of education towards history course. gazi university journal of gazi educational faculty, 27(3), 1–9. saray, m., & tosun, h. (2005). teaching the history of the turkish republic revolution and kemalism in primary and secondary education institutions: current status, problems and solution suggestions. ankara: atatürk research center. simsek, a. (2010). attitudes of prospective classroom and social studies teachers towards history teaching. international online journal of education science, 2(1), 181-203. tangülü, z., & aydın, y. (2014). 8th grade turkish republic history of revolution and kemalism course: criteria for gaining value from teachers' opinions. fırat university journal of social sciences, 24(2), 109–121. uçar, a. (2008). the effect of students' preparation of project assignments related to their departments in the turkish republic revolution history and atatürkism course in industrial vocational high schools on their attitudes towards the course (nevşehir example). master's thesis, gazi university institute of educational sciences, ankara. wang, m. c., heartel, g. d., & wolberg, h. j. (1994). synthesis of research: what help students learn? educational leadership, 51(4), 74-79. weber, k., martin, m., & patterson, b. (2001). teacher behavior, student interest and affective learning: putting theory to practice. journal of applied communication research, 29(1), 71-90. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909880128101 yilmaz, d. (2005). the 8th grade primary school students' level of understanding of ataturk's principles and reforms. master's thesis, gazi university institute of educational sciences, ankara. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0959-4752(01)00011-1 https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2013.777752 https://doi.org/10.1080/00909880128101 1 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 1-9, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5309 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the leadership development model influencing drug prevention management and performance of schools under the local administrative organization vivat phuttanu1 parisha marie cain2 kathanyoo kaewhanam3 phimlikid kaewhanam4 ( corresponding author) 1kalasin university thailand. 1email: vivatphuttanu@gmail.com 2,3,4department of public administration, faculty of liberal arts, kalasin university, kalasin 46000, thailand. 2email: mariecain4545@yahoo.com 3email: dr.khathanyoo@ksu.ac.th 4email: phimlikid.ka@ksu.ac.th abstract this study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to investigate the dynamics of leadership, management, and performance in the context of drug prevention within schools under local administrative organizations. the research pursues three main objectives: (1) to examine the key elements of leadership, management, and performance related to drug prevention in these educational institutions, (2) to analyze the direct, indirect, and combined influences of leadership on the management and performance of drug prevention efforts, and (3) to formulate policy recommendations for influential leadership development models tailored to enhance the management and performance of drug prevention initiatives. quantitative data were collected from 400 personnel within educational institutes under the sisaket local administrative organization, utilizing stratified random sampling and a questionnaire with a high-reliability score of 0.978. concurrently, qualitative insights were from 12 purposively selected educational institutes in the same administrative context through the focused group. the analytical toolkit included frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, structural equation analysis, and content analysis. key findings indicate the appropriateness of utilizing trait-based, behavior-based, and situational leadership alongside principles of management to construct a comprehensive structural equation model. the performance emerges as primarily influenced by principles of management, all statistically significant at 0.01 level. in terms of policy suggestions, the focus centers on fostering a knowledgeable and collaborative team, developing leadership skills through cooperation, and creating an organizational culture that supports learning and development. this integrated leadership development approach is the picture to significantly impact the effective management and prevention of drug abuse in schools under local administrative organizations. keywords: development of leadership, drug prevention, leadership, local administrative organization, schools, sisaket province. citation | phuttanu, v., cain, p. m., kaewhanam, k., & kaewhanam, p. (2024). the leadership development model influencing drug prevention management and performance of schools under the local administrative organization. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 1–9. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5309 history: received: 24 october 2023 revised: 30 november 2023 accepted: 27 december 2023 published: 12 january 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the kalasin university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 25 may 2023 (ref. no. hs-ksu 018/2566). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. literature review ................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 3. method ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 4. results .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 5. conclusions ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 references ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 mailto:vivatphuttanu@gmail.com mailto:mariecain4545@yahoo.com mailto:dr.khathanyoo@ksu.ac.th mailto:phimlikid.ka@ksu.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5309 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2541-8537 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6233-4585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2234-2971 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7739-2415 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 1-9 2 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study has the benefit of developing leadership that influences the management and efficiency of drug prevention of schools under local administrative organizations. along with presenting policies to relevant agencies to plan operations, inspect and solve related problems. that can be applied efficiently and effectively in the future. 1. introduction 1.1. introduce the problem today, every country in the world is aware of the drug problem as a threat that is destroying including national security, social, economic, and public health because drug addicts have to take drugs every day and must increase the amount all the time. it can be seen from a period of more than 10 years ago (2009-2019) that there were approximately 269 million people around the world, or 1 in 4 of the world's population of a billion people. 'drug use' has increased by 30 percent and more than 35.6 million people (united nations, 2020). according to the world drug report 2021 of the united nations office on drugs and crime (unodc: united nations office on drugs and crime) found that drug users around the world has an increasing trend. in 2019, around the world there were approximately 275 million drug users, accounting for 5.5 percent of the world's population between the ages of 15-64 years. in 2018, around the world there were approximately 269 million people, accounting for 5.4 percent of the world's population aged 15-64 years, are addicted to drugs. it is estimated that in the year 2030 there will be approximately 299 million drug users (office of the narcotics control board ministry of yukitham, 2022). the reason that the number of people using drugs has increased is partly due to 'world population growth' is increasing, with 'urbanization' and the flow of people into cities becoming one of the factors that expand the drug market in urban areas more than rural areas in both developing and developed countries, coupled with the rapid changes in the drug market. this causes drugs to quickly spread to different parts of each region in the world, including cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamine, as well as the use of marijuana for purposes other than medical, etc (center for research and support of sustainable development goals, 2020). drugs have spread. it spreads rapidly in every region of the world. especially in thailand, where it was found that amphetamine is still the main drug that is most prevalent. drugs that require more monitoring include heroin and ketamine. due to the increasing spread of the epidemic continuously in the past 2 years, especially among youth (wichai chaiyamongkol, 2019) because thailand is close to drug production areas in the golden triangle area. drugs are therefore a national problem and a threat to the quality of life, causing impacts on both the addicts, their families, society, the economy, and the nation, which is becoming increasingly complex because there are networks and trading groups ready to distribute drugs entering into the youth risk group. especially youth in educational institutions are one of the targets of the drug epidemic. in addition, the group of children and youth is an age group that is curious and wants to try. therefore, they are easily influenced to use drugs. which from statistics found that children and youth first started using drugs when they were less than 10 years old, and school-aged youths aged 1218 years, both within and outside the educational system, are the group that have problems starting to use drugs for the first time. the highest compared to other age groups, 43.1 percent department of health (2022), which increases every year, causing wide-ranging impacts on both the economy and society both directly and indirectly, causing problems to the family, problems with the school, and problems for the community. sisaket is a province located in the northeastern region of thailand. it has a total population of 1,472,859 people, of which 734,405 are male and 738,454 female (information as of december 2020 according to the royal gazette announcement). government is divided into 2 types: regional government and local government. sisaket province is administratively divided into 22 districts, 204 sub-districts, and 2,633 villages. sisaket province is divided into 1 provincial administrative organization, 2 city municipalities, 35 subdistrict municipalities, 179 subdistrict administrative organizations (information as of december 2020). there are also educational institutions starting at the early childhood level. (pre-kindergarten and kindergarten) to tertiary level, totaling 1,554 schools, which are 55 schools under local administrative organizations, including administrative organizations as for sisaket province (39 schools), sisaket municipality (7 schools), mueang kantharalak municipality (1 school), 3 subdistrict municipalities and 5 subdistrict administrative organizations (sisaket provincial administrative organization, 2022), there are 326,313 students and number of 15,010 teachers. sisaket provincial administrative organization (2022) and sisaket is also one of the top 5 provinces with the highest number of drug cases: (1) songkhla 10,659 cases (2) nakhon si thammarat 9,462 cases (3) surat thani 8,163 cases (4) khon kaen 5,465 cases and (5) sisaket 4,811 cases (national statistical office, 2022) and there is a trend of increasing because there are drugs coming in from the khemarat district side, ubon ratchathani province, and chanuman district side with amphetamine being the most commonly used drug. but there is a tendency for more users to switch to using ice. because it is likely that most drugs will have a reduced price. as for those receiving rehabilitation therapy in 2019, there were 400 cases, in 2020 there were 110 cases, with the highest age range receiving treatment being 25-29 years, followed by ages 20-24 years, ages 15-19 years, respectively (committee of the narcotics prevention and suppression center sisaket province, 2022). educational institutions in sisaket province have implemented various projects or activities that the ministry of education has been assigned by the government to carry out preventing the spread of drugs in educational institutions consists of 2 main activities: (1) activities to accelerate, supervise, and follow up through activities to promote the prevention and resolution of drug problems. according to the policy guidelines of the office of the basic asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 1-9 3 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group education commission through various project activities such as scout activities against drug threats, life skills camp activities, activities of the teen friend center, to be number one, school coordination police project (1 police 1 school) and the home after school project, etc. by organizing main activities and alternative activities for students to participate creatively through various project activities continuously and (2) activities for summarizing and reporting results through the provincial drug information system (narcotics information system for province agency ) of the national narcotics prevention and suppression center (nsc) (office of the narcotics control board) (committee of the narcotics prevention and suppression center sisaket province, 2022). an important factor that can lead various projects or activities to the success of educational institutions are educational institution administrators. this must determine the policy management strategy for maximum efficiency, that is, what must be done to enable educational personnel and persons involved in performing work or organizing activities to achieve their goals or be successful (wasitphon, 2021). therefore, the researcher is interested in studying leadership development model that influences management and performance in drug prevention of schools under local administrative organizations. the need to study that leadership development model which influences management and performance in drug prevention of schools under local administrative organizations in order to use the information obtained from the research to recommend policy proposals to relevant agencies, to plan operations, inspect, and solve problems related to the prevention and solution of drug problems in educational institutions. moreover, to use them as a model for creating a management model for drug prevention with other educational institutions, can be applied with efficiency and effectiveness in the future. 2. literature review study of leadership development models that influence management and performance of drug prevention aspect in schools under the local government organization this time. from reviewing related literature, the researcher was able to apply to study various elements in the model as follows. apply the concepts of yukl (2006) to the study of trait approach leadership in 3 areas, consisting of personality trait, abilities, and social skills. applying the concepts of blake, mouton, louis, and larry (1964) to study the elements behavior approach leadership in 5 areas, consisting of task-oriented/authority compliance, country club management, impoverished, middle of the road management, and team management. apply the concepts of hersey and blanchard (1969) in studying the elements situational approach leadership in 4 areas, consisting of telling, selling, participating and delegating. apply the concept of fayol (1916) to study principles of management) in 5 areas, consisting of planning, organizing, commanding, coordination, and controlling. in addition, apply to use the announcements of the ministry of education (2015). in the study of performance in drug prevention in 3 areas, consisting of results in student, teacher, and parental. moreover, apply from research by many people such as sunan rungarunsaengthong (2018); kusuman (2020); siriphong (2021); krit, kanyanat, kulrat, suthirat, and walailak (2022); setiawan, firdaus, and putra (2019); gottfredson and reina (2020); munir and akhter (2021) and sancoko and sugiarti (2022) etc. 2.1. research objectives 1. to study the components of leadership, management, and results of drug prevention operations of schools under local administrative organizations. 2. to analyze the components and study their direct influences, indirect influences, and the overall influence of leadership on the management and performance of drug prevention in affiliated schools under local administrative organization. 3. to create policy recommendations regarding leadership development models that influence the management and performance of drug prevention in schools under local administrative organizations. 2.2. research hypothesis leadership style has a relationship with and influences the management and performance of drug prevention of schools under the local administrative organization. 2.3. benefits received from the research 2.3.1. academic benefits academics, researchers or administrators as well as those interested may use the results from this research as a basis for applying and studying the components of leadership development models, management, as well as the results of drug prevention operations of other educational institutions to be more extensive and comprehensive. knowledge gained from this research study is used to disseminate to interested educational institutions to gain knowledge and understanding about leadership development models that influence driving management effectiveness and drug prevention performance of schools under local administrative organizations as well. 2.3.2. benefits in using research results use information from this research to develop and improve leadership, management and the results of drug prevention operations of educational institutions to be more efficient and effective. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 1-9 4 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group relevant agencies can use the research results to formulate policies at both the micro and macro levels to ensure the management and performance of drug prevention in educational institutions be more efficient and effective in practice. 3. method educational institutions under the sisaket provincial administrative organization, 55 places (sisaket provincial administrative organization, 2022). 3.1. sample group 3.1.1. quantitative research quantitative research sample is 55 educational institutions under the sisaket provincial administrative organization (2022), but the sample size used in data analysis was determined with the lisrel program by using the structural equation modeling technique (sem). the size of the appropriate number of samples in a work that uses factor analysis. path analysis and structural equation models, which anderson (2021) stated: the sample should contain 20 times the number of variables observable in the model (supamas, somthawin, & ratchaneekul, 2011). this research has 20 observable variables in the model. the researcher then determined the size of the group. the sample is 20times the observed variable. therefore, an appropriate and sufficient sample size should be 400 (20x20) samples, which is an appropriate sample size that can be analyzed using the structural equation modeling (sem) statistical technique, which is the selection of samples that use probability sampling by proportion stratified random sampling. 3.1.2. qualitative research the qualitative research sample of 12 people was obtained using purposive sampling, consisting of 1 school under the sisaket provincial administrative organization, 1 municipality, and 1 school under subdistrict administrative organization, totaling 3 places. each location will consist of 1 educational institution administrator, 1deputy, 1 learning subject group leader, and 1educational institution committee member. 3.2. data collection quantitative research used a questionnaire with a confidence value of 0.978 from march to july 2023. four hundred questionnaires were returned, representing a response rate of 100 percent. they can be used for data analysis. qualitative research by organizing a focus group, preparing questions on various issues in which group members can give their opinions, feelings, needs, expectations, and various reasons in the broadest, most profound and detailed manner. 3.3. analyze data quantitative research used the linear structure relationship model (lisrel) model package for path analysis to study the overall influence, direct influence, and indirect influence, and examine structural relationships. qualitative research used systematic text analysis by interpreting the meaning and summarizing the results from the group discussion. 4. results the results of the data analysis appear as the following figure. figure 1. influence of leadership components, management, and results of drug prevention operations of schools under local administrative organizations. from figure 1, the summary can be explained as follows. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 1-9 5 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group results of confirmatory factor analysis of 3 external latent variables, consisting of trait leadership (trl), behavioral leadership (bel), and situational leadership (sil), which has a total of 12 observable variables, was found to be consistent with the empirical data. the harmony index passed the acceptance criteria, which is the chi-square index = 22.51, df = 29, p = 0.79859, rmsea = 0.000, gfi = 0.99, agfi = 0.97. when considering the sub-elements, it was found that every element has a different value from zero with statistical significance at the 0.01 level. when considering the correlation coefficients between all 66 pairs of observed variables, it was found that the majority of all pairs of correlation coefficients were not more than 0.80, indicating that most of the observed variables had a level of the relationship that is not very high. it does not cause multicollinearity and all observed variables are on a common component. and when considering bartlett's test of sphericity, it was found that there was chi-square = 5075.736, df = 66, p = 0.000, indicating that the correlation coefficient matrix is not an identity matrix at the level of statistical significance 0.01. besides, the variables are related enough to be able to be used to analyze components which is consistent with the analysis results kaiser-mayer-olkin (kmo) values approaching 1 (0.954) indicating that the observed variables are related and appropriate for use in further checking the consistency of the research model with empirical data. because the kmo index has a value of 0.80 and above, it means that the data is very suitable for factor analysis. confirmatory factor analysis results of 2 internal latent variables consisting of management (man) and operating results (drp), which has a total of 8 observable variables, was found to be consistent with the empirical data. the harmony index passed the acceptance criteria, which is the chi-square index = 0.99, df = 8, p = 0.99832, rmsea = 0.000, gfi = 1.00, agfi = 1.00. when considering the sub-elements, it was found that every element has a different value from zero with statistical significance at the 0.01 level. when considering the correlation coefficient between all 28 pairs of observed variables, it was found that most of every pair had a correlation value not exceeding 0.80, showing that the level of relationship was not very high. it does not cause pluralism problems (multicollinearity) and all observed variables are on a common component. besides, when considering bartlett's test of sphericity, it was found that chi-square = 3397.008, df = 28, p = 0.000, indicating that the correlation coefficient matrix is not an identity matrix at the 0.01 level of statistical significance and the variables has enough relationship to be able to lead to analyze components which is consistent with the analysis results of kaiser-mayer-olkin (kmo) values approaching 1 (0.946) indicating that the observed variables are related. it is appropriate to use in further checking the consistency of the research model with empirical data because the kmo index has a value of 0.80 or higher, indicating that the data is very suitable for factor analysis. results of component analysis and study of direct influences, indirect influence, and the total influence of leadership on the management, and performance of drug prevention of schools under the local administration organization, it was found that the performance (drp) received the highest total influence from management (man ) with an influence value of 0.593, which is all direct influence, followed by situational leadership (sil) with an influence value of 0.40, which is a direct influence, 0.18. it is an indirect influence through management, 0.22, behavioral leadership (bel) with an influence value equal to 0.34 which is a direct influence, 0.11. it is an indirect influence through management, 0.23, trait leadership (trl) with an influence value equal to 0.23, is a direct influence value, 0.13. it is an indirect influence through management was 0.10, respectively. moreover, management (man) received the highest total influence from behavioral leadership (bel) with an influence value of 0.43, followed by situational leadership (sil) with an influence value of 0.41 and trait-oriented leadership (trl) with an influence value of 0.19, which is all direct influence and is a statistically significant influence at the .01 level. when considering the results of the analysis of the components of the model to see if they were consistent with the empirical data or not, it was found that the first analysis found that the harmony index was not consistent with the empirical data or does not meet the specified criteria. the researcher therefore proceeded with model modification by adjusting the parameters by allowing the initial agreement to be relaxed so that the error values could be related. analysis results, the overall model harmony index value after the researcher adjusted the model found that the model was in harmony with the empirical data with the harmony index value passing the acceptance criteria, namely chisquare = 27.49, df = 52, chi-square/df (27.49/52) = 0.528, cfi = 1.00, gfi = 0.99, agfi = 0.97, rmsea = 0.000 and srmr = 0.0064. therefore, it can be concluded that structural equation modeling is appropriate and harmonize with empirical data. results of creating policy recommendations concerning leadership development models that influence management and performance of drugs in schools under local administrative organizations from the focus group discussion, the following conclusions can be drawn: policy recommendations for school drug prevention management can be summarized in 7 points as follows: (1) create awareness and understanding (2) create clear policies and operational plans (3) create learning that filled with happiness, (4) supporting the development of personality and personal skills, (5) preparation and response, (6) building cooperation with family and community, and (7) measurement and evaluation. policy recommendations for the results of drug prevention operations in schools can be summarized in 5 points as follows: (1) preventive operations to reduce drug use (2) create learning filled with happiness (3) supporting personal development skills, (4) building partnerships with families and communities, and (5) measurement and evaluation. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 1-9 6 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.1. discuss the results the researcher has issues in discussing the results according to the research objectives as follows. 1. discuss the study results of the leadership components, management, and results of operations in drug prevention of schools under local administrative organizations. results from confirmatory factor analysis 3 external latent variables consisting of trait approach leadership, behavioral approach leadership, and situational approach leadership, which has a total of 12 observable variables. when considering the two internal latent variables consist of principles of management and performance which has a total of 8 observable variables, was found to be consistent, harmonize with empirical data. it has harmony index values that pass all acceptance criteria, namely chi-square = 52.89, df = 63, chi-square/df = 50.839, p-value = 0.81430, comparative fit index (cfi) = 1.00, gfi = 0.99, adjusted goodness of fit index (agfi) = 0.96, rmsea = 0.000 และ standardized root mean squared residual (srmr) = 0.011 showing that a model for measuring the components of the leadership development model that influences management effectiveness and drug prevention performance of schools under local administrative organizations is consistent with empirical data. when considering the subcomponents, it was found that every component had a value significantly different from zero at the 0.01 level. when considering the correlation coefficients between all 190 pairs of observed variables, it was found that the correlation coefficients between every pair of observed variables were values between 0.238 and 0.846, most of which are not more than 0.80, indicating that the relationship between most of the observed variables is not too high. it does not cause multicollinearity and all observed variables are on a common component. besides, when considering bartlett's test of sphericity chi-square, it was found to be equal to 6516.101, df = 190, p = 0.000, indicating that the correlation coefficient matrix. it is not an identity matrix at the statistical significance level of 0.01. the variables are sufficiently related and can be used to analyze components which is consistent with the analysis results of kaisermayer-olkin (kmo) values approaching 1 (0.973) indicating that the observed variables are related and are suitable for use in consistency checks and continue to harmonize the research model with empirical data. because the kmo index has a value of 0.80 and above, it means that the data is appropriate and can be used to perform a very good factor analysis (supamas et al., 2011). such results show that it can answer the research objectives and research hypotheses that were set. it is also consistent with the research of many people, such as the research of setiawan et al. (2019), the research of gottfredson and reina (2020), the research of munir and akhter (2021) the research of suwat (2020). the research of siriphong (2021) and the research of krit et al. (2022) that concluded that subcomponents of leadership style is appropriate and can be analyzed to find relevant statistics further. 2. discuss the results of component analysis and study of direct influences, indirect influence, and combined influence of leadership development style on management effectiveness and results of drug prevention operations of schools under local administrative organizations. results from the analysis of the influence of variables that are components of the development model. leadership influences the management and performance of school drug prevention under the jurisdiction of local administration organizations, the following was found: performance components (drp) received the highest total influence from management (man) with an influence value of 0.53, which is all direct influence, followed by situational leadership (sil) with an influence value of 0.40. it is a direct influence value of 0.18, an indirect influence through management is equal to 0.22, behavioral leadership (bel) has an influence value of 0.34, a direct influence of 0.11, and an indirect influence through management of 0.23, trait leadership (trl) with an influence value of 0.23, being a direct influence, 0.13, being an indirect influence through management 0.10, respectively. additionally, performance (drp) is positively indirectly influenced by trait leadership (trl), behavioral leadership (bel), and situational leadership (sil) through management (man) with an influence size of 0.10, 0.23, and 0.22, respectively. while the management component (man) received the highest total influence from behavioral leadership (bel), with an influence value of 0.43, followed by namely situational leadership (sil) with an influence value of 0.41 and trait leadership (trl) with an influence value of 0.19, which are all direct influences and is a statistically significant influence at the 0.01 level. results from the analysis of the influence of variables in the said model. it can be explained that leaders are one of the most important factors for organizational success. this is because leaders have direct duties and responsibilities to plan, direct, supervise, and control the personnel of the organization to perform various tasks to be successful according to the goals and objectives that have been set (ploychompoo, maneenuch, & thnastha, 2022). while leadership is the behavior of people with knowledge, ability, intelligence, and goodness that can bring all people to coordinate or work together and lead together to success or the goals that were set and appointed. the leadership style is therefore a guideline that gives direction in implementing plans and motivating people. in order to work as a leader, you can choose to apply to people with different characteristics. for the effectiveness of each leadership style, there is no fixed format. but it usually depends on choosing and applying it appropriately in each organization's situation at that time. therefore, leadership style is important to create and develop an efficient and effective organization because leaders help create a good and supportive organizational culture and can influence and increase enthusiasm to encourage personnel in the organization to behave in their work and lead the organization to success effectively (kadiyono et al., 2020) and have effective operating results. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 1-9 7 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group leaders with these qualities can build trust in their teams and create successful and sustainable success at both the individual and organizational levels. this is consistent with sari (2018) who found that leadership style influences autonomy and willingness to work. it can be seen from the findings from this research that found leadership style influences management and performance, and also found that performance (drp) is most influenced by situational leadership (sil) with an influence value of 0.40, followed by behavioral leadership (bel) with an influence value of 0.34 and trait leadership (trl) with an influence value of 0.23, respectively. while management (man) received the highest total influence from behavioral leadership (bel) with an influence value of 0.43, followed by situational leadership (sil) with an influence value of 0.41 and trait leadership (trl) with an influence value of 0.19, respectively. this result shows that the research objectives and research hypotheses can be answered. it is also consistent with the research of many people, such as the research of gottfredson and reina (2020), the research of vilkinas, murray, and chua (2020), the research of cornelissen and smith (2022), the research of parinyamit, chaiya, wattana, and surat (2017), the research of kusuman (2020), the research of siriphong (2021) and the research of supawat, natjaree, and chusak (2021) that concluded leadership styles are related to and influence management and organizational performance. 3. discuss the results of creating policy recommendations regarding leadership development models that influence the management and performance of drug prevention in schools under local administrative organizations. from focus group discussions to create policy recommendations for leadership development models that influence driving management effectiveness and drug prevention performance of schools under the local administrative organization on wednesday, august 16, 2023 at the conference room, pho si suwan hospital, siaw subdistrict, pho si suwan district, sisaket province from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in conclusion, the leadership development model influences management effectiveness and drug prevention performance of schools under local administrative organizations, sisaket province. it is a complicated process and is related to a variety of factors. but following these policy recommendations can help build strong and capable leaders. leading schools to successful, long-term drug prevention can be summarized as 7 points, consisting of (1) having integrated leadership (2) developing leaders' skills (3) building teams and cooperation (4) creating organizational culture (5) promoting continuous learning (6) having support from the organization (7) measurement and evaluation. from the policy suggestions for the aforementioned leadership development model obtained from the above group discussion, it can be seen that these suggestions all aim to create an environment that facilitates and supports the development of the abilities and skills of leaders. emphasis is placed on learning and adapting to ever-changing situations so that leaders can lead teams and organizations towards drug prevention with maximum efficiency and effectiveness in challenging conditions. because of the effective and efficient leadership development model. there is no one unique style or some form of specific characteristic style. but you should choose and adapt the format existing leadership that is appropriate to the resources and context of each school (pimonphan, 2018). in this regard, drug prevention in local administrative organization areas and educational institutions under the sisaket local administrative organization can be successful, requiring cooperation from many sectors, including the police, administration, narcotics prevention and suppression office, agencies under the ministry of public health, ministry of education, ministry of social development and human security, and ministry of labor. there must be a process for immunization, search, treatment, and surveillance and management to provide care and assistance to students in an educational institution that is a comprehensive system. which in each aspect of operations there may be a different focus depending on age, class period, student context, and of that educational institution (rungsri, 2016) because leadership is only the behavior of educational institution administrators using the ability to influence or motivating educational institution personnel to coordinate and work together, collaborate together to move towards a set goal or achievement. leadership style is therefore a guide that sets the direction or guidelines for implementing the plan in operations to create motivation for the work of personnel. therefore, each leadership style is effective and efficient. consequently, it depends on the choice of leadership style of educational institution administrators and applying it to suit the situation and context of that educational institution efficiently and effectively. 5. conclusions 1. from the results of the confirmatory factor analysis, external latent variables had 12 sub-components, 3 trait approach leadership, 5 behavioral approach leadership, and 4 situational approach leadership. it was found to have a relationship and influence on the latent variables inside. there were 8 sub-components, consisting of 5 principles of management and operating results (performance) 3 numbers were consistent and harmonize with empirical data with harmony index values that pass all acceptance criteria, namely chi-square = 52.89, df = 63, chisquare/df = 50.839, p-value = 0.81430, cfi = 1.00, gfi = 0.99, agfi = 0.96, rmsea = 0.000 and srmr = 0.011. this shows that a model for measuring the components of an influential leadership development model on the effectiveness of management and performance in drug prevention of schools under local administrative organizations is consistent and harmonize with empirical data. 2. from the results of component analysis and study of direct influences, indirect influences, and total influence, of leadership development models that affect management effectiveness and results of drug prevention operations of schools under local administrative organizations, it was found that external latent variables had 12 sub-components, 3 trait approach leadership, 5 behavioral approach leadership, and 4 situational approach leadership, which are related to and influence the internal latent variables. there were 8 sub-components, consisting of 5 principles of asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 1-9 8 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group management and operating results (performance) 3 items, when considering the details, it was found that the components of performance (drp) received the highest total influence from management (man) with an influence value of 0.53, which was all direct influence, followed by situational leadership (sil) with an influence value of 0.40, with a direct influence value of 0.18, an indirect influence through management with a value of 0.22. behavioral leadership (bel) had an influence value of 0.34, with a direct influence of 0.11 and was an indirect influence through management at 0.23. trait leadership (trl) with an influence value of 0.23 was a direct influence 0.13, had an indirect influence through management 0.10, respectively. moreover, performance (drp) was also positively indirectly influenced by trait leadership (trl), behavioral leadership (bel), and situational leadership (sil) through management (man) with an influence size of 0.10, 0.23, and 0.22, respectively. while the management component (man) received total influence the highest was behavioral leadership (bel) with an influence value of 0.43, followed by situational leadership (sil) with an influence value of 0.41 and trait leadership (trl) with an influence value of 0.19, which was all direct influence and was a statistically significant influence at the 0.01 level. 3. from focus group discussions to create policy recommendations regarding the format leadership development that influences management and performance in drug prevention of schools under local administrative organizations. it can be concluded that the leadership development model that influences management effectiveness and results of drug prevention operations for schools under local administrative organizations, sisaket province is a complicated process and is related to a variety of factors. but following these policy recommendations can help build strong and capable leaders leading schools to successful, long-term drug prevention can be summarized as 7 points, consisting of (1) having integrated leadership (2) developing leaders' skills (3) building teams and cooperation (4) creating organizational culture, (5) promoting continuous learning, (6) having support from the organization, and (7) measuring and evaluating results. 5.1. suggestions for applying research results 5.1.1. operational suggestions trait approach leadership, behavioral approach leadership, situational approach leadership, principles of management, and performance was at a moderate and high level, both in the overall aspect and in each item. but there are still things that need to be considered for improvement, correction, and development to be even better in many matters. therefore, community enterprise operators should have operational policies in each area to lead to the achievement of the goals that have been set with efficiency and effectiveness. it will surely be able to create an impact on the organization's performance at a higher level as well. 5.1.2. management suggestions the results from the structural equation model analysis from the hypothesis model analysis found that characteristic leadership, behavioral leadership, situational leadership had a direct relationship and influence positively for management and operating results. if educational institution administrators, relevant agencies or those interested in implementing or managing such factors in accordance with the operating model in 7 issues, consisting of (1) having integrated leadership (2)developing leaders' skills (3) building teams and cooperation (4) creating organizational culture (5) promoting continuous learning (6) having support from the organization (7) measurement and evaluation in order to lead to achieving the goals that have been set with efficiency and effectiveness. it will surely be able to create an impact on the organization's performance at a higher level as well. 5.1.3. suggestions regarding next research data should be collected with samples from educational institutions or schools under other affiliations, both at the regional level and at the national level further. the leadership development model that influences the effectiveness of management and performance in drug prevention of schools under local government organizations may be tested with other educational institutions in order to test whether it will be effective or the result is the same. next research may consider additional variables such as modern management, corporate culture, strategy management, group of networking, physical environment, and job motivation, etc. the next research may use the delphi technique because it is a research technique that is widely accepted and 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(2006). leadership in organization. uk: prentice hall international. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101373 https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.1969.19201155 http://www.thaigov.go.th/ http://ittdashboard.nso.go.th/preview.php?id_project=66 https://doi.org/10.24071/exero.2018.010104 http://www.sisaketpao.com/2021/index.php?d=school https://www.unodc.org/easternafrica/en/speeches/speech---world-drug-report-2020-regional-launch.html https://www.unodc.org/easternafrica/en/speeches/speech---world-drug-report-2020-regional-launch.html https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj-12-2018-0435 https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj-12-2018-0435 https://www.oncb.go.th/oncb_or3/_layouts/15/fsbtsp2013/newsdisplay.aspx?newsid=246&newslist=board1&newslistdisplayname=board1&newssite=http://www.oncb.go.th/oncb_or3&columnname=title&comment=yes https://www.oncb.go.th/oncb_or3/_layouts/15/fsbtsp2013/newsdisplay.aspx?newsid=246&newslist=board1&newslistdisplayname=board1&newssite=http://www.oncb.go.th/oncb_or3&columnname=title&comment=yes 75 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 3, 75-80, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i3.4985 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group bilingual and monolingual students’ out-of-school learning environment in turkey: a comparative study based on pisa 2018 data cenan isci karamese dokuz eylul university, turkey. email: iscicenan@gmail.com abstract students’ out-of-school learning environment is one of the most prominent factors affecting their school success, which is mostly a source of inequity unfavoring disadvantaged groups. in some countries including turkey, bilingual students are among disadvantaged groups because most of them are from immigrant families with low socioeconomic status. pisa provides extensive data about students’ out-of-school learning environment to be analyzed. in this context, the purpose of this study is to compare monolingual and bilingual students’ out-of-school learning environment based on pisa 2018 data. the participants of this study are the pisa 2018 sample of turkey including 6890 15-year-old students selected from 186 schools through stratified random sampling. pisa 2018 data were collected by pisa student questionnaire, which is an online data collection instrument. results showed that there are meaningful differences between monolingual and bilingual students with respect to all variables representing their out-of-school learning environment with medium effect sizes. these findings indicate a possible inequity problem in the turkish education system with respect to out-of-school learning environments unfavoring bilingual students. to achieve a permanent solution, socio-economic inequities need system-wide reforms that are often difficult to execute. however, it is possible to reduce the negative effects of this problem by means of some precautions. in this regard, providing training for parents and increasing the accessibility of schools’ educational sources and technologies for disadvantaged students were suggested in this study. keywords: bilingualism, inequity, out-of-school learning environment, pisa 2018, socioeconomic status. citation | karamese, c. i. (2023). bilingual and monolingual students’ out-of-school learning environment in turkey: a comparative study based on pisa 2018 data. asian journal of education and training, 9(3), 75–80. 10.20448/edu.v9i3.4985 history: received: 26 may 2023 revised: 10 july 2023 accepted: 28 august 2023 published: 15 september 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the dokuz eylul university, turkey has granted approval for this study (ref. no. 715202 (347992)). transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 76 2. method............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 77 3. results.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 78 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................................ 79 references ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 80 mailto:iscicenan@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i3.4985 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5736-6113 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 75-80 76 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature pisa data contain important information about bilingual students’ problems in education system. in the literature, there are not sufficient studies analyzing pisa data of turkey with respect to bilingualism. this study especially contributes this dimension of the related literature. 1. introduction 1.1. problem it is known that one of the factors that most affect a student's school success is the general quality of the teaching environment in the school. this has many sub-dimensions, such as the number of teachers per student, the quality of teachers, and the adequacy of the instructional resources in the school. on the other hand, the other important factors that affect students' school success as much as school-related factors are out-of-school factors, such as educational resources at home and parents’ academic support (şeker, 2013). out of school factors constitute critical educational disadvantages for students belonging to low socio-economic status groups in society. elimination of the disadvantages arising from non-school factors is very difficult and time-consuming, because they are related to the entrenched economic problems of the segments of the society that make up a significant part of the population, and often require reform-level measures for the solution. on the other hand, identifying the problems of students belonging to disadvantaged groups arising from out-of-school learning environments guide to develop the measures to be taken at school. one of the disadvantaged groups in the society may be bilingual individuals due to the problems brought about by the immigration phenomenon. some of the problems that bilingual students encounter in the teaching process, such as the low level of success, arise from their out-of-school learning environments. in this context, this study focuses on revealing the differences between the out-of-school learning environments of bilingual students and monolingual students, and in this way, diagnosing the problems caused by the inadequacies of bilingual students in out-of-school learning environments. 1.2. bilingualism in education today, with the increasing migration movements, international marriages, and the spread of information and communication technologies, bilingualism is encountered in almost every country. in the 21st century, where communication between countries is increasingly widespread and easy, nearly two-thirds of millions of people living in almost all parts of the world speak more than one language (bhatia & ritchie, 2014; grosjean, 2008; potowski & gorman, 2011; rothman, alonso, & puig-mayenco, 2019); it is seen that intercultural marriages are increasing and mixed language marriages are emerging. after mixed marriages around the world, bilingualism has increased significantly in society. according to the report of the u.s. census bureau (2015) approximately 350 different languages are spoken in the american society, more than 20% of the population speaks a different language at home, in addition a significant portion of the european population is at least bilingual (marian & shook, 2012); it is also seen that many different languages (arabic, kurdish, laz, zazaki) are spoken in turkey besides turkish (erg, 2009). it can be said that interdisciplinary studies have been carried out with different disciplines (psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, linguistics, neurolinguistics) related to bilingualism, which can be seen in every layer of society after the mixed language marriages that emerged with the migration movements, and bilingualism has been discussed in different aspects. after these interdisciplinary studies, it is seen that many definitions of bilingualism have been made. for example, it can generally be defined as the active use of two different language systems (bialystok, 1995; schumann, 1997; swain, 1981). hockett (1958) talked about semi-bilingualism by approaching bilingualism as bilingual individuals can understand expressions in a language even if they do not have generative control over a language. while defining bilingualism, valdés (2001) pointed out that the language learning skills of bilingual individuals have dynamic structures that change depending on time, place, contact person, working and living conditions. grosjean (2010), on the other hand, while defining bilingualism, emphasized that bilingual individuals fulfill their functional duties in both languages in daily events according to certain needs. wei (2000) emphasized functional bilingualism by drawing attention to the situation of "using two languages in a completely fluent or non-fluent way in order to perform the task at hand" while discussing the definitions of bilingualism. in addition, wei (2000) made classifications of bilingualism such as "receptive, sequential, additive, coordinated, simultaneous, balanced, ascending bilingualism"; a person who knew two languages as a child; one who combines two languages in a complementary and enriching way; it included definitions of bilingualism in the form of a person who not only understands the language, but also speaks and most likely writes in that language. in bilingualism, there is simultaneous exposure or sequential exposure to both languages. in this bilingualism, which is also called sequential/consecutive/diachronic bilingualism, the second language is learned immediately after the first language (baker, 2011; saville-troike, 2006; selinker & gass, 2008). the critical age period in this type of bilingualism is three years, and three years are important in the life of an individual with this type of bilingualism; because the bilingual individual acquires his second language after the third age, when the acquisition process of the first language reaches a certain level (yilmaz, 2014). in simultaneous bilingualism, the first and second languages are acquired simultaneously (baker, 2011). this type of bilingualism, which has two different linguistic codes depending on a single meaning system (uyar, 2012), generally refers to individuals who have learned two different languages simultaneously, in a natural environment, in a common environment since the individual's birth (saville-troike, 2006). when we look at the definitions of bilingualism, it is seen that it is not possible to make a clear definition of bilingualism. when we look at the opinions of the field experts working on this term, it is noteworthy that there is no common definition and view on bilingualism (baker, 2011). bilingualism generally refers to the knowledge and competence of individuals in two or more languages. although there are many different views on the definition of bilingualism, to make a rough definition of bilingualism, in summary, bilingualism; we can say that the individual acquires both languages in critical age ranges (infancy and second childhood), uses these languages as a means of communication, masters the languages he has, is fluent in both languages without any language limit, and can continue his life in both languages. in bilingualism, it is desirable for individuals to have the same fluency in both asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 75-80 77 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group languages, but bilingual individuals in this situation are a minority group (baker, 2011). the group that does not have equal fluency, language skill level and language use in both languages is more. for this reason, it is difficult to expect equal fluency, language skill level and language use in both languages from bilingual individuals. because for the bilingual individual, each language has different purposes, different functions and different uses. bilingual individuals can generally use the languages they have in different places, at different times, with different people. at another important point, a bilingual individual may not be able to receive education in both languages and may not have equal language and vocabulary in both languages. therefore, they may not have equal proficiency and use in language skill levels, and they may not be able to make healthy transitions in both languages. for this reason, a bilingual individual may prefer to use one language more dominantly than the other. another point that draws attention in bilingualism is that even if the bilingual individual has equal proficiency in both languages (in comprehension and expression skills), he may prefer to use a language he has more than the other language depending on his usage situation (baker, 2011). at this point, the bilingual individual's need for the languages he/she has, his/her individual attitude towards those languages and his/her attitude towards the languages of the society he/she lives in, his individual self-efficacy regarding the languages he/she has, whether the emotional support provided by the individual's family to the bilingual individual is at the desired level in both languages. factors such as the ability to reach information and technology equally in language can also come into play. these elements have an important place in the development of bilingual individuals' linguistic skills in both languages. in particular, the educational status of the parents and their professional status are important. because parents with a high level of education will be more conscious of the language strategies they will use and will be able to produce alternative language strategies at the points where the bilingual individual is blocked. conscious parents with a high level of education help their children to have a healthy bilingual process by consciously observing the family structure, social effects, mass media and education system of the child. parents of individuals born after mixed language marriages help their children consciously choose bilingualism. it helps their children to realize bilingualism in a healthy way through education. in particular, the privilege of the middle and upper class, well-educated members of most societies (paulston, 1975 as cited in harding and riley (1986)) direct the society in terms of social, cultural and economic aspects and help to form a bilingualism that we call elite in society. thus, elite bilinguals use the education system that enables them to be bilingual more consciously and become more successful academically. it is a process that takes a long time for the individual to make sense of what is going on around him, to realize himself and to develop his linguistic skills. in this process, the individual is faced with many stimuli around him. emotional support of parents, information-communication technologies and educational resources are at the forefront of these stimuli. developments in information and communication technologies have increased the freedom of movement of individuals in their linguistic development; have caused them to be exposed to different languages simultaneously or diachronically. in this process where they meet different languages, they become able to use their language effectively with the support of their families and information and communication technologies. today, when digitalization is so important, bilingual individuals who can actively use information and communication technologies can effectively improve their comprehension (listening and reading) and expression (speaking and writing) skills in both languages. with the development of information and communication technologies, parents and schools can improve the language practices of bilingual individuals by taking into account their language dominance in both languages while constructing language equations of bilingual individuals. bilingual individuals can easily access educational resources, especially with the widespread use of the internet. with the widespread use of the internet and the transition of schools, libraries and various information institutions to online status, their local pages often appear as bilingual (baker, 2011). this situation can help bilingual individuals to reinforce their language practices by easily using the languages they have on the internet (baker, 2011). bilingual individuals at school age can easily reach their peers who speak the same language and share educational resources in the languages they have, thanks to the internet. 1.3. purpose of the study as mentioned above, revealing the differences between the out-of-school learning environments of bilingual students and monolingual students may contribute to diagnosing the problems caused by the inadequacies of bilingual students in out-of-school learning environments. to make such a comparison, pisa, an international survey implemented by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd), serves significant amount of data. in this context, this study aims to compare the out-of-school learning environment of monolingual and bilingual students based on pisa 2018 turkey data. for this purpose, related variables in pisa 2018 turkey data were determined and analyzed. the participants of the study, data collection tools, variables and statistical analyzes are presented in detail in the method section. 2. method this study is a quantitative causal comparative study aiming to compare the out-of-school learning environments of monolingual and bilingual students. the causal comparative method is a correlational research method that quantitatively compares the measured characteristics of existing groups in society (fraenkel, wallen, & hyun, 2012). in the following sections, the participants of the study, data collection tools, variables and statistical analysis are explained. 2.1. participants the participants of this study are the sample of turkey in the pisa 2018 survey. pisa 2018 turkey sample consists of 6890 students, all of whom are 15 years old, selected by stratified random sampling method from 186 schools (meb, 2019). table 1 shows the gender, language and grade level statistics in the pisa 2018 turkey sample. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 75-80 78 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. sample of turkey in pisa 2018. gender language grade level f m test language (turkish) other languages 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 3396 3494 6339 512 3 19 1295 5360 207 6 as shown in table 1, the gender distribution in the sample is balanced. on the other hand, an unbalanced distribution observed at the grade level is due to the fact that pisa collects data from 15-year-old children and that 15-year-olds in turkey are mostly at the 9th and 10th grade levels. the frequencies presented in the language section in table 1 were measured by the item in the pisa questionnaire asking which language is spoken most often at home. in this item, there are two options: "test language" and "other languages". test language refers to the language of the pisa tests administered to the student in the countries participating in pisa. in turkey, pisa measurement tools were applied only in turkish. however, in some countries, pisa measurement tools can be implemented in more than one language. other languages refer to any language other than the test language. according to table 1, the number of students stating that turkish is spoken most frequently at home is 6339, and the number of students reporting that they speak a language other than turkish is 512. 2.2. data collection instruments in pisa surveys, which are repeated every three years, students' demographic and affective characteristics as well as reading skills, science literacy and mathematical literacy are regularly measured with separate data collection tools (oecd, 2019). in this study, only the data obtained from the pisa student questionnaire, which aims to measure the demographic and affective characteristics of the students, was used. the data obtained from the reading literacy, science literacy and mathematical literacy tests are out of the scope of this study. the pisa student questionnaire is a comprehensive data collection tool that includes items related to students' gender, grade level, cultural characteristics, socio-economic status, out-of-school learning environment, opinions and attitudes about teachers and school, and other affective characteristics of students. the variables of this study, which were defined based on the data obtained from the items in the pisa student questionnaire regarding the students' opinions about the school, are described in detail in the next section. 2.3. analysis within the scope of the study, at first, pisa 2018 turkey data published by the oecd was obtained and the variables to be included in the analysis were determined. the independent variable of the study is the language status of the students, which is a nominal variable with two-categories. this variable was measured by the item (st022q01ta) in the pisa student questionnaire asking which language the student mostly speaks at home. this item has two options: "test language" and "another language". since pisa tests and questionnaires are administered in turkish in turkey, the "test language" is turkish, and the "another language" option refers to any language other than turkish. students who chose “another language” in the pisa student questionnaire were not asked what language they speak at home. however, since the study did not focus on the bilingual status of a specific language, but only covers the bilingualism of all other languages in turkey, this item was accepted as appropriate to determine the bilingual status of the students. in addition, measuring bilingualism with the item in question asking which language is spoken most often at home is in line with the definitions of bilingualism in the literature presented in the introduction to this study. the dependent variables of the study are; ● parents emotional support (emosups). ● information-communication technologies at home (icthome). ● educational resources at home (hedres). ● parents’ highest education (pared). ● parents’ highest occupational status (hisei). ● family wealth (wealth). the dependent variables above are interval scaled variables derived by the pisa team using the several statistical methods (ie. weighted likelihood estimation) based on the data obtained from the pisa student questionnaire. in this study, monolingual and bilingual students were compared statistically according to the dependent variables defined above. before making a statistical comparison, whether the data were normally distributed in these dependent variables was determined by the kolmogorov-smirnov test. in this study, statistical group comparison was performed with the mann-withney u-test, since the independent variable was nominal, the dependent variables were interval scaled and the dependent variables were not normally distributed. 3. results as mentioned in the previous section, this study made statistical comparisons between monolingual and bilingual students with respect to out-of-school variables in pisa 2018 data. before reporting the inferential statistics comparing monolingual and bilingual students, descriptive statistics of dependent variables were demonstrated in order to describe the characteristics of the sample with respect to out-of-school variables in pisa 2018 data. table 2 shows descriptive statistics of dependent variables. as shown in table 2, monolingual students have greater scores than bilingual students in all of the dependent variables. however, simple mathematical comparisons based on the descriptives are not sufficient to make inferences about the difference between these two groups. to do this, statistical comparisons should be performed for these dependent variables. in this study, mann-whitney u-test was performed to compare monolingual and bilingual students with regard to dependent variables, because all of the dependent variables were distributed with non-normal shapes. table 3 shows the findings of statistical comparison for the dependent variables between monolingual and bilingual students in the pisa 2018 sample. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 75-80 79 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 2. descriptive statistics of dependent variables. variable group* n mean st. dev. emosups 1 6187 0.0381 1.060 2 482 -0.284 1.11 icthome 1 6278 6.3436 2.558 2 503 4.626 3.37 hedres 1 6307 -0.4201 1.021 2 506 -1.236 1.09 pared 1 6336 11.0276 4.224 2 512 8.861 4.57 hisei 1 6245 38.0583 22.597 2 508 29.458 19.25 wealth 1 6334 -1.3003 0.927 2 512 -2.040 1.18 note: * 1: monolingual, 2: bilingual. table 3. mann-whitney u-test results. variables u df p cohen’s d emosups 1.24e+6 6667 < 0.001 0.303 icthome 1.07e+6 6779 <0 .001 0.654 hedres 885599 6811 < 0.001 0.795 pared 1.19e+6 6846 < 0.001 0.510 hisei 1.21e+6 6751 <0 .001 0.385 wealth 945015 6844 < 0.001 0.780 as demonstrated in table 3, there are significant differences between monolingual and bilingual students in all of the dependent variables. in addition to statistical significance, cohen’s d values indicated that, among these dependent variables, home educational resources (hedres) and family wealth (wealth) have the largest effect sizes, indicating possible systemic problems about these two variables. 4. discussion and conclusion in some countries, bilingualism is an advantage in educational and professional life because of the positive effects of having the cultural heritage of both languages (latham, 1998). however, in some other countries including turkey, potential advantages of bilingualism do not surface for academic and professional benefit, simply because bilingual individuals, in most cases, are the members of socially and economically disadvantaged communities in the society. in turkey, most of the bilingual students are from the families displaced due to internal and external migrations, therefore most of them may be accepted as disadvantaged students (ertek & süverdem, 2020). within this context, in this study, it was found that there are meaningful differences in all dependent variables about students’ out-of-school learning environments favoring monolingual students with medium effect sizes. these findings may be the indicators of the potential problems that bilingual students face related to their out-of-school learning environments in turkey. problems about students’ out-of-school learning environment is closely related to inequities in their socio-economic status, which mostly result from deep-rooted serious social and economical problems and most of them need nation-wide social and economic reforms in order to be solved. in other words, small-scale modifications in the education system cannot provide permanent and sustainable solutions for these deep socioeconomic problems. nevertheless, several educational solutions may help reduce some destructive effects of socioeconomic inequities. based on pisa 2018 data, the difference between monolingual and bilingual students in educational resources and information-communication technologies at home are two of the largest among the other out-of-school variables, which is indicating a serious problem of inequity in educational possessions at home. this is basically an economical problem; therefore, it needs economical precautions for a permanent solution. in turkey, textbooks are provided for all students free of charge by the ministry of national education. however, it is apparently not sufficient to reduce inequities. inequities sometimes need positive discrimination to be solved (silliman, 2017). in this context, the budget of the ministry of national education reserved for disadvantaged students should be increased to be able to provide instructional technologies (eg. tablet and educational software) for disadvantaged students including bilingual ones. in addition, social media have also a great potential to help reduce inequities related to monolingual and bilingual students’ out-of-school learning environments. because, social media are easily accessible platforms with a variety of instructional features that can be used for enhancing bilingual students’ out-of-school learning environments. in addition to economic inequities, there may be some cultural reasons for the difference in educational resources and information-communication technologies at home. according to baker (2011), bilingual individuals learn the informal hierarchy between languages over time, and this situation is reinforced with information-communication technologies. because, information-communication technologies mostly support formal majority language. therefore, parents of bilingual students may resist having these resources and technologies at home in order to prevent the decline of language skills in their minority language. to overcome this problem, the ministry of national education may provide educational resources and information-communication technologies in several minority languages as well as formal language (i̇nce, 2009). in this regard, haznedar (2017) emphasizes that material selection has a critical importance in the education of bilinguals. in order for bilingual students to achieve balanced bilingualism, it is important to use materials suitable for the nature of bilinguals (ince & topal, 2021). in addition, interfaces of instructional technologies (eg. instructional software menus) are often only in the formal language, which is apparently another equity problem for bilinguals. in this context, to help build a balanced bilingualism, interfaces of instructional software may be developed with support for the other languages as well as formal language. besides, parents of bilingual students have difficulties finding high quality instructional resources in minority asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 75-80 80 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group languages to support their children build a balanced bilingualism (aytan, başkapan, & uysal, 2018). in this regard, instructional technologies for the needs of bilingual students should be designed and developed based on scientific literature on bilingualism in order to ensure validity and reliability of these technologies. as mentioned in the previous section, meaningful differences favoring monolingual students with respect to parents’ educational level and parents’ emotional support in pisa 2018 were found in this study. these findings indicate a potential problem about parents’ academic and affective contribution to bilingual students. a long-term lack of parents’ support to their children may result in a low success at school (wentzel, russell, & baker, 2016). in order to solve this problem or to reduce its negative effects, schools may train parents of disadvantaged students about how to support their children’s academic success and emotional well-being by schools’ counseling departments through seminars. the content of these trainings may be designed and standardized by the ministry of national education. in this study, among the other out-of-school variables, family wealth is one of the variables with the highest effect size. in other words, the difference in family wealth between monolingual and bilingual students is one of the highest favoring monolingual students. in pisa 2018, family wealth is a measure of economic power of students’ families calculated through household possessions. in turkey, a difference between these two groups with a high effect size is unintended but somehow expected, because most of the bilingual students are from immigrant families who have left their assets behind and started a new life from scratch (ertek & süverdem, 2020). this problem definitely does not have a simple solution, it rather needs extensive social and economic revisions and reforms. based on pisa 2018 data, this study concluded that bilingual students are one of the disadvantaged groups in turkey with respect to out-of-school learning environment. simple measures in the education system are not permanent solutions for this problem, rather they are short-term precautions for reducing the surface symptoms. pisa data are especially useful for detecting and diagnosing the problems in the education system. however, achieving effective solutions to these problems need further research and research-based solutions should be performed by decision makers. references aytan, t., başkapan, a., & uysal, g. 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(2014). the phenomenon of bilingualism and the bilingual education problem of turks in germany. electronic turkish studies, 9(3), 1641-1651. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://bogazicindebilim.boun.edu.tr/content/turkiyede-yabanci-dil-egitiminde-katedilecek-cok-yol-var https://www.census.gov/newsroom/archives/2015-pr/cb15-185.html 81 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 3, 81-87, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i3.5005 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the interplay of turkish efl teachers’ academic optimism, psychological wellbeing, and self-efficacy busra turan tas1 seden eraldemir tuyan2 ( corresponding author) 1,2cag university, turkey. 1email: busraturantas@gmail.com 2email: sedentuyan@gmail.com abstract this study examined the relationships between turkish efl (english as a foreign language) teachers' sense of self-efficacy, psychological well-being, and academic optimism. the study's strength lies in its exploration of this question within the context of the covid-19 pandemic, which provides a background that adds depth to the examination. researchers collected data from 272 english as a foreign language (efl) teachers during the pandemic. the study intended to identify the motivating factors underlying self-efficacy in this particular teacher set using the regression analysis perspective. the findings provided significant understanding; a strong link between self-efficacy and academic optimism was found. this shows that efl teachers were more likely to demonstrate a better level of self-efficacy in their teaching responsibilities if they had a more positive outlook on academic outcomes. however, psychological well-being was not shown to be a significant predictor of self-efficacy. these findings shed light on a crucial aspect of classroom teacher efficiency and well-being. it shows that there is an intense desire to put teachers' health first, particularly in challenging circumstances like the pandemic. creating a climate of intellectual positivity should be a priority in all educational initiatives; the study can operate as guidance, directing the creation of solutions to counteract possible adverse effects on teachers' psychological health and, consequently, their ability to teach effectively. it is concluded that this study provides insight into the complexity of teacher self-efficacy, highlighting the impact of psychological wellness, academic optimism, and crisis-related environments. keywords: academic optimism, positive psychology, psychological well-being, teacher engagement, teacher motivation, teacher selfefficacy. citation | tas, b. t., & tuyan, s. e. (2023). the interplay of turkish efl teachers’ academic optimism, psychological well-being, and self-efficacy. asian journal of education and training, 9(3), 81–87. 10.20448/edu.v9i3.5005 history: received: 24 july 2023 revised: 4 september 2023 accepted: 15 september 2023 published: 22 september 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the çağ university, turkey has granted approval for this study on 17 january 2022 (ref. no. e-81570533-044-2200000363). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 82 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 82 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 83 4. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 84 5. discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 85 6. limitations and suggestions ......................................................................................................................................................... 87 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 87 https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i3.5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9823-2982 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7631-3324 mailto:busraturantas@gmail.com mailto:sedentuyan@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 81-87 82 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature by shedding light on the complex interactions between self-efficacy, psychological well-being, and academic optimism among turkish efl teachers during the covid-19 epidemic, this study aims to enrich the literature. it emphasizes the need to maintain a positive attitude toward achievement in school while promoting the importance of teacher well-being and efficiency. 1. introduction research so far has generally focused on what students expect from education and how they experience this process (mercer & gregersen, 2020). students' perspectives on education or their feelings in this process are quite important for studies in our field; so are the teachers. in education, the well-being and efficacy of teachers play a vital role in shaping students' academic outcomes. among the various factors influencing the teaching profession, the concepts of academic optimism, psychological well-being, and self-efficacy have gained significant attention in recent years. within the unique educational context of turkish efl teachers, who face diverse student populations, varying educational contexts, and the need to balance cultural norms with global teaching standards, understanding the dynamics of academic optimism, psychological well-being, and self-efficacy becomes increasingly important. by delving into the interrelationships among these constructs, we can shed light on the factors that influence the professional experiences and effectiveness of turkish efl teachers. the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between academic optimism, psychological well-being, and self-efficacy among turkish efl teachers. through the exploration of the interplay between these constructs, we hope to contribute to the existing literature on teacher well-being and effectiveness, specifically within the turkish context of education. as a result of this research, educational policymakers, administrators, and teacher training programs will receive valuable insights into turkish efl teachers' professional growth, job satisfaction, and overall well-being, which will allow them to create interventions and support mechanisms to improve these areas. ultimately, understanding how academic optimism, psychological well-being, and self-efficacy interrelate makes it possible to devise strategies to enhance the professional growth and satisfaction of turkish efl teachers, leading to improved educational experiences for their students. 2. literature review 2.1. academic optimism a teacher's academic optimism is a reflection of their beliefs and perceptions regarding their students' success, the educational environment, as well as their own teaching practices. it has three dimensions: academic emphasis, collective efficacy, and faculty trust. academic emphasis refers to the extent to which teachers prioritize and value high academic standards. the collective efficacy of teachers reflects their belief that they can positively affect student learning outcomes. faculty trust is an indicator of their confidence and support for their colleagues and school administration. the degree of academic optimism is significantly correlated with student achievement, teacher motivation, and job satisfaction (goddard, sweetland, & hoy, 2000). 2.2. psychological well-being a person's psychological well-being is determined by their overall perception of life satisfaction, positive affect, and absence of negative emotions. a teacher's psychological well-being plays an important role in engaging, committing, and remaining resilient in facing challenges. job satisfaction, work-life balance, emotional stability, and a sense of fulfillment all play a role. it encompasses factors such as job satisfaction, work-life balance, emotional stability, and a sense of fulfillment. psychological well-being has consistently been shown to affect effective teaching practices, positive teacher-student relationships, and job performance (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2011). studies have consistently demonstrated the positive impact of psychological well-being on effective teaching practices, positive teacher-student relationships, and overall job performance (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2011). 2.3. academic optimism and psychological well-being academic optimism and psychological well-being play a critical role in turkish efl teachers' professional experiences and effectiveness. the purpose of this section is to present a review of existing research on the relationship between academic optimism and psychological well-being among turkish efl teachers, which sheds light on how these constructs influence teacher satisfaction, engagement, and overall well-being. 2.4. impact of academic optimism on psychological well-being numerous studies have highlighted the positive association between academic optimism and psychological well-being among teachers. a study conducted by demir and gürbüz (2019) examined the relationship between academic optimism and job satisfaction among turkish efl teachers. the findings revealed a significant positive correlation between academic optimism and psychological well-being, indicating that teachers who hold optimistic beliefs about student success, the school environment, and their own teaching efficacy are more likely to experience higher levels of job satisfaction and overall well-being. 2.5. academic optimism, psychological well-being, and teacher engagement a number of studies have shown that academic optimism is associated with psychological well-being among teachers. the relationship between academic optimism and job satisfaction among turkish english as a foreign language teachers was examined by demir and gürbüz (2019). a significant positive correlation was found between academic optimism and psychological well-being, which indicated that teachers with optimistic beliefs about student success, the school environment, and their own teaching efficacy had higher levels of job satisfaction and well-being overall. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 81-87 83 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.6. self-efficacy self-efficacy is a belief in one's ability to successfully accomplish a task or challenge. the self-efficacy of teachers can be defined as their confidence in their ability to engage students, manage classroom behaviors, and facilitate meaningful learning experiences. the motivation of teachers, instructional practices, and students’ performance are all heavily influenced by this factor. it has consistently been shown that high levels of self-efficacy among teachers lead to improved instructional strategies, increased student motivation, and higher achievement levels among students (tschannen-moran & woolfolk hoy, 2001). 2.7. self-efficacy and psychological well-being teachers' psychological well-being has been extensively studied through the lens of self-efficacy, a key component of bandura's social cognitive theory. an assessment of the relationship between self-efficacy and psychological well-being among turkish efl teachers is presented in this section, elucidating how self-efficacy beliefs affect teacher satisfaction, motivation, and well-being in general. 2.8. influence of self-efficacy on psychological well-being turkish efl teachers' self-efficacy has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on psychological wellbeing in several studies. kızıltepe and akyol (2018) examined the relationship between teacher self-efficacy, psychological well-being, and burnout in their study. it was found that teachers with higher levels of self-efficacy were less likely to suffer from burnout and had higher levels of psychological well-being. it would appear that teachers are more likely to experience psychological well-being if they believe that they are capable of meeting the challenges of the classroom. 2.9. self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and teacher motivation several studies have examined the relationship between self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and teacher motivation. as part of their study, arslan and ünlü (2017) investigated the relationship between teacher self-efficacy, psychological well-being, job satisfaction, and motivation among turkish efl teachers. it was found that selfefficacy, psychological well-being, job satisfaction, and motivation were significantly correlated. according to the study, self-efficacy beliefs play a crucial role in enhancing teacher well-being and motivation, thus resulting in increased job satisfaction for teachers. 2.10. academic optimism, self-efficacy, and psychological well-being this section examines the relationship between academic optimism, self-efficacy, and psychological well-being among turkish efl teachers. it is essential to understand the combined influence of these constructs in order to address turkish efl teachers' professional experiences, effectiveness, and well-being in a comprehensive manner. 2.11. academic optimism, self-efficacy, and teacher effectiveness research has shown that academic optimism, self-efficacy, and teacher effectiveness are interrelated. turkish efl teachers' academic optimism, self-efficacy, and effectiveness were examined in a study conducted by demir and bayhan (2018). the results of the study revealed significant positive correlations between academic optimism, self-efficacy, and teacher effectiveness. among the findings of the study were the importance of developing optimistic beliefs and self-efficacy among teachers in order to enhance their overall effectiveness in the classroom. 3. methodology 3.1. research design since this study aimed to evaluate the academic optimism and psychological well-being of english instructors and their relations with their sense of self-efficacy, the search design was determined to be a correlational method and multiple linear regression analysis was also applied to display the relation more comprehensively. demographic factors were also considered when comparing participants' perceptions of the previously mentioned factors. 3.2. participants and setting a number of 272 english teachers who worked in diverse educational settings, such as elementary, secondary, and high schools in hakkari, participated in this study. due to the pandemic's restrictions, the convenience sampling method was used to choose participants efficiently and conveniently. table 1. demographic characteristics of the participants. descriptors sub-descriptors n % gender female 162 59.6 male 110 40.4 age 29 years and under 159 58.5 30 years and older 113 41.5 type of institution primary school 51 18.8 secondary school 129 47.4 high school 92 33.8 years of teaching experience 4 years and less 150 55.1 5 years and more 122 44.9 total 9 272 100 through google forms, the quantitative data for this study was collected online. the scales and questionnaire items were organized by the researcher and then electronically sent to the english teachers. the frequency asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 81-87 84 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group distributions of survey respondents by gender are shown in table 1. the findings show that there were more female participants (59.6%) than male participants (40.4%). as a result, women made up the majority of the participants (n=162). according to the findings, the majority of the participants (58.5%) were aged 29 and under, while 41.5% of the participants were aged 30 and over. therefore, a larger proportion of the participants (n=159) belonged to the age group of 29 years and under. the type of classes in which the participants worked revealed that 47.4% of them worked in secondary schools (n=129). furthermore, 18.8% of participants were employed in primary schools (n=51) and 33.8% in high schools (n=92). on the basis of years of experience, 55.1% of participants had a tenure of "4 years or less" (n=150). among participants with a tenure of five years or more, 44.9% were found to be in the category. 3.3. instrumentation to gather data in this study, three reliable instruments were selected. these instruments were the "teacher academic optimism scale (taos), the "psychological well-being scale (pwbs)", and the "teachers' sense of self-efficacy scale (tses)". prior to completing these scales, participants also completed a "demographic information form". 3.4. teacher academic optimism scale this scale was originally developed by hoy, tarter, and hoy (2006) and adapted into turkish by erdoğan (2013). the scale consists of 11 items grouped into three factors, each of which is rated on a five-point likert scale. cronbach's alpha coefficient results for the academic optimism scale (aos) and its sub-dimensions indicated a value of .84, suggesting the scale is highly reliable. 3.5. psychological well-being scale the psychological well-being scale (pwbs) utilized in this study was originally developed by ryff (1989) and subsequently shortened by akın, demirci, yıldız, gediksiz, and eroğlu (2012). the pwbs initially consisted of 84 items; however, akın et al. (2012) condensed it to 42 items. pwbs and sub-dimensions of this scale were found to have a cronbach's alpha coefficient of .84, indicating relatively high reliability. 3.6. teacher self-efficacy scale this study was conducted using the tschannen-moran and woolfolk hoy (2001) scale with a turkish translation by çapa, çakıroğlu, and sarıkaya (2005). designed as a five-point likert-type scale, the scale consists of 24 items divided into three subscales. as reported in tschannen-moran and woolfolk hoy (2001), the cronbach's alpha coefficient for all items on the teacher self-efficacy scale (tses) was 0.90. the turkish version of the scale was also found to be highly reliable with an overall reliability of 0.93. in addition, the tses and its subscales were also found to be highly reliable, with an alpha coefficient of 0.97. 3.7. data analysis in this study, the sample was selected by convenience sampling. statistical package for the social sciences (spss) software was used to analyze the collected data. tests such as analysis of variance (anova), regression, and t-test were chosen to be applied in this study. spss was utilized for descriptive analysis, and the t-test was selected to examine whether there were significant differences in the levels of self-efficacy, academic optimism, and psychological well-being among efl teachers based on their gender, age, and experience. additionally, one-way anova was employed to investigate if english teachers' self-efficacy, academic optimism, and psychological wellbeing significantly varied based on their institution type. the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression analysis were used to determine the relationships between variables. 4. findings 4.1. findings on the level of efl teachers’ sense of self-efficacy, academic optimism, and psychological wellbeing table 2 presents the descriptive statistics for all three scales. firstly, the mean scores of tses indicate that the participants' perceptions of teacher effectiveness are relatively high. the overall mean score for the scale (m=4.96) suggests that teachers' perceptions of their own efficacy as educators are also near the maximum level (m=3.77). table 2. descriptive statistics for the scales. size/scale min. max. x̄ sd. teacher self-efficacy 1.08 4.96 3.77 0.915 academic optimism 1.73 4.91 3.81 0.643 psychological well-being 3.19 6.17 4.56 0.636 for the aos, the mean scores signify that teachers' perceptions of academic optimism are relatively high. in other words, teachers' perceptions of their own efficacy, trust in others, and the importance they attribute to academic matters are all at relatively high levels (m=3.81).the mean scores of pwbs display that teachers' perceptions of psychological well-being are at a moderate level or slightly above the medium level. overall, teachers' perceptions of psychological well-being are moderately positive, with an average mean score of 4.56. 4.2. relationship between efl teachers’ sense of self-efficacy, academic optimism, and psychological wellbeing levels table 3 displays the correlation coefficients for the relationships among academic optimism, psychological well-being, and teacher self-efficacy. all of the correlation coefficients reached statistical significance. moreover, asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 81-87 85 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the positive sign of all coefficients indicates a meaningful and positive relationship between these variables (p < .05). in simpler terms, when one variable increases, it is expected that the other variables will also increase. based on the correlation coefficients, the highest correlation is observed between teacher self-efficacy and academic optimism (r= .629; p < .05), indicating a strong positive relationship. on the other hand, the lowest relationship is found between teacher self-efficacy and psychological well-being (r= 0.297; p < 0.05), suggesting a relatively weaker positive relationship between these variables. table 3. correlation analysis of scales. scales analysis  teacher selfefficacy academic optimism psychological well-being teacher selfefficacy pearson correlation 1 0.297** sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 0 academic optimism pearson correlation 0.629** 1 0.389** sig.(2-tailed) 0.000   0 psychological well-being pearson correlation 0.297** 0.389** 1 sig.(2-tailed) 0.000 0.000 0.000 note: **p < 0.01. 4.3. academic optimism and psychological well-being as predictors of turkish efl teachers’ sense of selfefficacy the regression analysis results, as presented in table 4, demonstrate the effects of psychological well-being and academic optimism on teacher self-efficacy. the statistical significance of the linear regression model was assessed using the anova test, which indicated that the model was highly significant (f= 89.065, p < 0.05). this variable accounts for approximately 39.4% of the variation in teacher self-efficacy according to the adjusted rsquare coefficient of 0.394. table 4. multiple linear regression analysis results on predicting perception of teacher self-efficacy.   scales b β t p constant 0.085 0.247 0.805 psychological well-being 0.089 0.062 1.211 0.227 academic optimism 0.860 0.604 11.776 0.000 note: f=89.065, p=0.000, r=0.631, r2 =0.398, adj. r2 =0.394. a statistically significant correlation was found between academic optimism and teacher self-efficacy, which demonstrates that an increase in academic optimism corresponds to an increase in teacher self-efficacy. in this analysis, however, the psychological well-being coefficient was not statistically significant. as a result of these findings, it is evident that teacher self-efficacy is enhanced by promoting academic optimism. in conclusion, the results demonstrate that academic optimism significantly affects teacher self-efficacy, whereas psychological wellbeing has no significant impact. consequently, these findings demonstrate the necessity of cultivating academic optimism among teachers in order to enhance their self-efficacy beliefs. 5. discussion and conclusion this study concluded that efl teachers demonstrate high levels of self-efficacy and academic optimism. psychological well-being, however, is reported as moderate or slightly above moderate. in accordance with previous research (akbari & tavassoli, 2014), this study reports that efl teachers display high levels of self-efficacy. however, there are variations in the specific areas in which efl instructors perceive themselves as most competent. in this study, the majority of teachers considered themselves highly efficient in instructional practices, followed by classroom management and student engagement. this order is consistent with the findings of eslami and fatahi (2008). conversely, lee (2009) reported moderate self-efficacy among english teachers in south korea, crook (2016) found high levels of self-efficacy among english teachers in thailand, and ghasemboland and hashim (2013) observed high levels of self-efficacy among english teachers in middle eastern countries, with an emphasis on competence in classroom management. the variation in levels of self-efficacy among instructors can be attributed to cultural norms, as indicated by vieluf, kunter, and van de vijver (2013). cultural values and environmental factors influence self-efficacy, as stated in social cognitive theory. these effects result in different levels of self-efficacy, which should be interpreted considering the specific conditions of teachers in hakkari, where the research was conducted. additionally, variations in expectations of teachers in different teaching contexts contribute to the differences observed. in the region where the study took place, positive feedback from students may have positively influenced teachers' self-efficacy levels, aligning with kelchtermans (2009) findings. based on the study's findings, efl teachers exhibit the highest level of academic optimism in the teacher efficacy sub-scale, followed by academic importance, and the lowest level in the trust sub-dimension. this aligns with previous research conducted by uzun (2014) and uysal (2021). hong (2017) highlights the close connection between students' academic achievement and teachers' academic success and self-confidence. the hypothesis assumes that fostering student autonomy is crucial in academic instruction, while the practical assumption emphasizes the importance of establishing a trustworthy relationship between teachers and students. therefore, teachers' self-belief and trust in themselves play a vital role in the classroom. trust in the educational-teaching process encompasses various dimensions involving school administration, teachers, students, and parents. consequently, trust significantly influences effective communication, collaborative activities, and academic achievement among all stakeholders. the research findings indicate that efl teachers have moderate to above-average levels of psychological wellbeing. this aligns with previous studies in the literature (erdoğan, 2013; karaçam & pulur, 2019). individuals with asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 81-87 86 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group high psychological well-being possess qualities such as a sense of purpose, positive relationships, self-acceptance, personal growth, environmental awareness, and autonomy. the results suggest that efl teachers have a positive self-perception regarding their individual growth, self-acceptance, relationships, life's purpose, environmental mastery, and autonomy. however, the lowest average is observed in the personal growth sub-dimension, suggesting a need for greater emphasis on professional and personal development among teachers. it is important to consider the specific context of the research location, where opportunities for personal development may be limited. teachers in remote areas may face challenges in accessing developmental activities available in larger cities. special programs targeting the needs of such teachers in disadvantaged and geographically distant regions could be beneficial. the statistical analysis revealed significant differences based on gender and school type, while age groups only showed a significant difference in the positive relationship with another sub-dimension. however, no significant difference was found in relation to seniority. in summary, the study indicated that gender and school type had an impact on the measured variables, whereas age group and seniority did not show significant differences. the research shows a significant relationship between self-efficacy, psychological well-being, and academic optimism among teachers. when one variable increases, the others also tend to increase. the strongest correlation is found between teachers' self-efficacy and academic optimism, consistent with previous research (erdoğan, 2013). the study was conducted during the pandemic, and so it might have affected the results highly. the high correlation reflects the teachers' hopes for their students' progress and their own sense of efficacy. teachers' belief in student improvement and trust in their abilities contribute to their own fulfillment and effectiveness. these findings highlight the importance teachers place on student learning and achievement. optimistic attitudes towards students' academic lives can enhance both teachers' and students' self-efficacy. the study uncovered a significant link between the psychological well-being and academic optimism levels of efl teachers. similar findings from previous research validate this connection, indicating that teachers' increased well-being corresponds to a heightened sense of optimism regarding academic outcomes. optimistic teachers are more inclined to employ effective coping strategies and remain dedicated to their profession. enhancing teachers' well-being becomes paramount for fostering overall school success and facilitating optimal student learning. despite challenges like the covid-19 pandemic, teachers have exhibited resilience and maintained a positive outlook, highlighting the vital role of positive psychology in education. to nurture positive psychology, it is essential to introduce additional training programs and online courses that empower teachers to cultivate positivity and optimism within the classroom. the relationship between efl teachers' self-efficacy and psychological wellbeing may not be the strongest, but it remains significant. this finding aligns with previous studies that have also observed a positive correlation between self-efficacy and psychological well-being (cansoy, parlar, & türkoğlu, 2020; jeon, buettner, & grant, 2018). recognizing teachers as crucial contributors to society's human resources, it becomes essential to support their psychological well-being, as it ultimately benefits the entire community. factors such as the covid-19 pandemic, specific challenges faced by teachers, the research's geographical context, and policies affecting foreign language educators can influence these findings. however, the importance of investing in teachers' psychological well-being and providing ongoing support remains constant and indispensable for achieving positive educational outcomes. talking about the predictability of self-efficacy level, the multiple linear regression analysis revealed that academic optimism positively predicts the sense of self-efficacy in teachers. this means that higher levels of academic optimism are associated with increased self-efficacy. however, the analysis did not find a significant relationship between psychological well-being and self-efficacy. in other words, psychological well-being does not appear to be a strong predictor of teachers' self-efficacy. therefore, while academic optimism plays a significant role in influencing self-efficacy, psychological well-being may have a lesser impact in this regard. based on a detailed analysis, it was found that psychological well-being and academic optimism were significant predictors of student engagement within the self-efficacy domain. as a result of positive emotions experienced by teachers and a high level of well-being, students are motivated to participate actively in and engage in the learning process. those teachers who are positive and have a strong sense of optimism are more likely to encourage students, resulting in increased student engagement. in addition, teachers with positive psychological attributes tend to employ more innovative teaching methods, which also contributes to the engagement of students. there may be a reciprocal relationship between teacher well-being and student engagement since students' motivation and success can positively impact their teachers' well-being and optimism. as a result, a positive and motivated teacher is able to create a conducive environment for student engagement and enjoyment of the learning process. it was found that academic optimism was a significant predictor of instructional practices and classroom management sub-dimensions, but psychological well-being did not show a significant correlation. it is not surprising that academic optimism aligns closely with the statements and experiences that are indicative of a teacher's sense of efficacy. academic optimism is a critical characteristic of teachers whose instructional practices are influenced by a strong belief in their students' abilities. their willingness to try new techniques and methods contributes to their effectiveness as teachers. furthermore, an environment in which teachers and students are able to communicate and trust one another enhances classroom management. a positive and supportive classroom atmosphere can be fostered by academic optimism, minimizing the need for strict management. ultimately, academic optimism creates a positive learning environment and reflects teachers' confidence in their students in instructional practices and classroom management. based on the predictability between the three scales in general, psychological well-being was not a significant predictor of english teachers' self-efficacy. it was shown, however, that academic optimism significantly predicted teacher self-efficacy, indicating that student academic status plays a key role in teachers' sense of effectiveness. the academic performance and engagement of students played a crucial role during distance education, and teachers' optimism about their students' success was linked to their own self-efficacy. the study also highlights the need for more research on teacher well-being and self-efficacy, particularly for english as a foreign language (efl) teacher. previous studies have examined related constructs, but more research is needed in regard to specific predictors of self-efficacy among efl teachers. in order to improve teacher well-being and effectiveness in the efl classroom, further investigation would be helpful in enhancing our understanding of the factors contributing to teachers' asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(3): 81-87 87 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group feelings of efficacy, including other psychological variables and contextual factors. overall, this study highlights the importance of supporting teachers' well-being and cultivating a sense of academic optimism to enhance their self-efficacy. our understanding of the factors that influence teachers' professional experiences is enhanced by these insights, which emphasize the importance of providing continued support to educators and fostering academic optimism. schools can create environments that promote teacher efficacy, increase student engagement, and ultimately improve educational outcomes by recognizing these factors. as a result, educational institutions can empower teachers to navigate challenges, engage students effectively, and contribute to the success of the education system by prioritizing the psychological aspects of teaching and creating an environment that fosters positivity and optimism. 6. limitations and suggestions the overall findings suggest that the covid-19 pandemic and the associated challenges faced by teachers may have influenced the relationships observed in the study. the unprecedented circumstances of remote teaching and learning may have added additional pressures and complexities to the teaching profession, potentially impacting teachers' well-being and self-efficacy. therefore, it is crucial to acknowledge the unique context in which these findings were obtained and consider the potential implications of the pandemic on teachers' psychological states. considering the limitations mentioned earlier, it is recommended to conduct future studies with larger sample sizes and in diverse contexts to enhance the generalizability of the findings and gain deeper insights. references akbari, r., & tavassoli, k. 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(2011). teacher job satisfaction and motivation to leave the teaching profession: relations with school context, feeling of belonging, and emotional exhaustion. teaching and teacher education, 27(6), 1029-1038. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2011.04.001 tschannen-moran, m., & woolfolk hoy, a. (2001). teacher efficacy: capturing an elusive construct. teaching and teacher education, 17(7), 783-805. uysal, e. (2021). examining the relationship between teachers' academic optimism approaches and learning school perceptions. master's thesis, kocaeli university. uzun, e. b. (2014). the relationship between the values of classroom teachers and their academic optimism levels. master's thesis, gazi university. vieluf, s., kunter, m., & van de vijver, f. j. r. (2013). teacher self-efficacy and cultural background: the importance of multicultural teacher profiles. journal of educational psychology, 105(1), 119-135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.411 https://doi.org/10.1177/00131610021969164 https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2016.1248902 https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312043003425 https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2017.1341806 https://doi.org/10.24106/kefdergi.2474 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540600902875332 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2011.04.001 130 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 4, 130-143, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7502 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group tpack-integrated experiential performance learning model to enhance learners' digital competency rungfa pasmala1 prachyanun nilsook2 panita wannapiroon3 thada jantakoon4 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3faculty of technical education, king mongkut’s university of technology north bangkok, bangkok, thailand. 1email: rungfa.phd@gmail.com 2email: prachyanunn@kmutnb.ac.th 3email: panitaw@kmutnb.ac.th 4faculty of science and technology, rajabhat maha sarakham university, maha sarakham, thailand. 4email: thada.phd@gmail.com abstract this study introduces and validates the technological pedagogical content knowledge–integrated experiential performance learning (tpack-epl) model, designed to enhance learners’ digital competency through a structured instructional design framework. the model integrates the tpack framework with experiential and performance-based learning, resulting in a six-phase cycle that connects technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge to authentic and reflective learning experiences. development involved a systematic literature review, theoretical synthesis, and validation by five experts in educational technology and instructional design. each phase of the model maps tpack dimensions to experiential performance learning processes, specifying the roles of both instructors and learners. to evaluate the model, a 34-item expert rubric was developed covering principles, conceptual clarity, pedagogical relevance, technological appropriateness, and alignment with digital competency outcomes. experts rated the model highly across all dimensions, with an overall mean score of 4.82 (sd = 0.20). findings suggest that the tpack-epl model provides both theoretical strength and practical applicability, offering educators and instructional designers a robust framework for cultivating digital knowledge, skills, and attitudes. future research should test its implementation in classroom settings and conduct longitudinal studies to assess sustained impact across diverse educational contexts. keywords: digital competency, experiential learning, instructional design model, performance-based learning, tpack, technology integration, digital literacy, learner-centered instruction, competency-based education, teacher education, instructional design framework. citation | pasmala, r., nilsook, p., wannapiroon, p., & jantakoon, t. (2025). tpack-integrated experiential performance learning model to enhance learners’ digital competency. asian journal of education and training, 11(4), 130–143. https://doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i4.7502 history: received: 16 july 2025 revised: 22 september 2025 accepted: 29 september 2025 published: 3 october 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 131 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 131 3. research methodology ................................................................................................................................................................ 132 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 133 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 140 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 141 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 141 mailto:thada.phd@gmail.com mailto:prachyanunn@kmutnb.ac.th mailto:panitaw@kmutnb.ac.th mailto:thada.phd@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i4.7502 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7710-9593 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3019-3635 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8633-5781 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5935-5875 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 131 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study introduces the tpack-epl model, which integrates tpack, experiential learning, and performance-based learning into a unified instructional design. the model provides a validated, theory-driven framework to enhance learners' digital competencies, offering practical guidance for educators to design authentic, learner-centered activities aligned with technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge dimensions. 1. introduction the rapid advancement of digital technologies has fundamentally reshaped the educational landscape, necessitating the development of learners' digital competencies to navigate and thrive in the 21st century (gan, zhang, wang, deng, & li, 2020; kim, xie, & cheng, 2017). digital competency, a multidimensional construct encompassing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for effective and responsible technology use (naumeca & āboliņa, 2023; oberländer, beinicke, & bipp, 2020) has emerged as a critical learning outcome across educational levels and disciplines (chiecher, 2020; gonzález fernández, 2021). to foster learners' digital competency, educators must possess the requisite technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (tpack) to design and facilitate technology-enhanced learning experiences (ercan & özdemir, 2020; qasem & viswanathappa, 2016). the tpack framework, proposed by mishra and koehler (2006), describes the complex interplay of teachers' knowledge domains essential for effective technology integration. numerous studies have applied tpack to guide the development of preand in-service teachers' technology-enhanced teaching competencies (albeta, firdaus, copriady, & alimin, 2023; chao & fang, 2023; zhou et al., 2022). while tpack has been extensively applied in teacher education, its translation into student-centered digital competency development remains insufficiently addressed in instructional design literature. however, while tpack provides a valuable framework for teacher knowledge, its application to learnercentered, competency-oriented instructional design remains underexplored. experiential learning theory, which posits that knowledge is created through the transformation of experience, emphasizes the importance of active engagement and reflection in the learning process (kolb & kolb, 2005) offers a promising lens for designing tpack-grounded learning activities that engage learners in authentic, reflective practice. similarly, performancebased learning, which focuses on applying knowledge and skills to real-world tasks (shute, 2008; woelk & lefrere, 2002), aligns with the competency-based aims of digital literacy education. the present study proposes the tpack-integrated experiential performance learning (tpack-epl) model, synthesizing principles of tpack, experiential learning, and performance-based learning to foster learners' digital competency development. by mapping tpack dimensions to a six-phase experiential performance learning cycle and delineating instructor and learner roles, the model provides a systematic framework for designing and implementing technology-enhanced, competency-oriented learning experiences. the tpack-epl model builds upon prior research examining the integration of tpack with experiential learning (jiang & liang, 2017; maharsi, 2017) and performance-based assessment (crespo hernández, 2023; li et al., 2022) while extending these approaches to target learners' holistic growth in digital competency. the model's synthesis of established instructional design principles and learning theories, contextualized for the demands of the digital age, contributes to the growing body of literature on technology-enhanced, competency-based education. to validate the proposed model, a systematic literature review was conducted to identify key principles and components of tpack, experiential learning, performance-based learning, and digital competency development. the identified elements were synthesized into an integrated model, which was subsequently evaluated by a panel of experts using a quantitative rubric. the results of the expert evaluation affirm the model's appropriateness, relevance, and applicability. the tpack-epl model holds significant implications for educators, instructional designers, and educational researchers seeking to cultivate learners' digital competencies through theory-grounded, evidence-based practice. by providing a structured framework for aligning technology, pedagogy, and content with authentic, reflective learning experiences, the model supports the design and implementation of effective digital literacy interventions across diverse educational contexts. the following sections detail the study's methodology, including the literature review, model synthesis, and expert evaluation procedures (sections 2, 3); present the results of the model development and validation process (section 4); and discuss the implications, limitations, and future directions for research and practice (section 5). 2. literature review 2.1. technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) framework, introduced by mishra and koehler (2006) provides a structured perspective for examining the dynamic relationship among three fundamental domains of teacher knowledge: content knowledge (ck), pedagogical knowledge (pk), and technological knowledge (tk). effective technology integration in education requires more than separate expertise in each domain. it also demands the ability to combine these domains into a cohesive body of knowledge known as tpack, as described by koehler and mishra (2009). over the past decade, the framework has been widely applied in teacher education to strengthen the digital teaching competencies of both pre-service and in-service educators (albeta et al., 2023; chao & fang, 2023; zhou et al., 2022). although its role in preparing teachers is well established, the application of tpack within student-centered instructional design, particularly as a strategy for enhancing learners’ own digital competence, has not been extensively investigated. 2.2. experiential learning experiential learning theory, as articulated by kolb and kolb (2005) highlights the importance of acquiring knowledge through direct experience accompanied by systematic reflection. the experiential learning cycle comprises four interconnected stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. empirical research, including the work of morris (2020) and vargas-merino, rios-lama, asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 132 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group bello-mamani, and panez-bendezú (2025) has reinforced the value of reflection and iterative practice in promoting deep and sustained learning. despite this recognition, many instructional models still lack well-defined frameworks for designing experience-based learning activities that are explicitly aligned with targeted competency outcomes. 2.3. performance-based learning performance-based learning emphasizes the demonstration of knowledge and skills through authentic, contextually relevant tasks (shute, 2008; woelk & lefrere, 2002). its key features include clearly defined learning objectives, opportunities for real-world application, ongoing feedback, and assessment based on explicit criteria (hattie, 2008; nicol & macfarlane‐dick, 2006). this approach views learning as a process of continuous refinement, frequently supported by formative assessment practices and the cultivation of learner self-regulation. although it aligns closely with the principles of competency-based education, its direct integration with digital competency frameworks and the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) model has received limited attention in existing research. 2.4. digital competency digital competency is widely acknowledged as a multidimensional construct that includes the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for the effective and ethical use of digital technologies (naumeca & āboliņa, 2023; oberländer et al., 2020). although many frameworks define digital literacy through these three components, educational initiatives often place a disproportionate emphasis on technical skills alone. recent scholarship (chiecher, 2020; gonzález fernández, 2021) advocates for more comprehensive approaches that embed not only practical abilities but also digital knowledge and ethical considerations within instructional design. 2.5. identified gaps in the literature although tpack has been extensively applied in teacher preparation, and the benefits of experiential and performance-based learning are well documented, few models explicitly integrate these frameworks to support the development of learners’ digital competence. many existing approaches either treat technology as an optional addition or emphasize a single dimension, such as pedagogy, without achieving a balanced integration of all components. in addition, the roles and responsibilities of learners within tpack-oriented environments are often insufficiently defined, and the connections between stages of experiential learning and specific digital competence outcomes remain unclear in much of the literature. 2.6. conceptual foundation of the tpack-epl model the proposed technological pedagogical content knowledge–integrated experiential performance learning (tpack-epl) model responds to these gaps by combining the tpack framework with principles of experiential and performance-based learning. it maps the domains of tpack onto a six-phase experiential learning cycle, incorporating authentic tasks and structured opportunities for reflection at each stage. the model defines clear roles for both instructors and learners and explicitly links every phase to the three domains of digital competence: knowledge, skills, and attitudes. by positioning tpack as the central organizing structure, the model provides a systematic, theory-informed approach for cultivating learners’ comprehensive digital competence within technology-enhanced learning environments. 3. research methodology this study employed a multi-phase approach to develop and validate the tpack-epl model, combining systematic literature review, model synthesis, and expert evaluation. 3.1. the approach 3.1.1. model development 1. a systematic review was conducted to identify key principles and components of performance-based learning, experiential learning, the tpack framework, and digital competency development. 2. the identified elements were synthesized into an integrated model that maps tpack dimensions to a sixphase experiential performance learning cycle. 3. instructor and learner roles, along with expected learning outcomes, were defined for each phase of the model. 4. the synthesized model was visualized as a double-loop diagram depicting the alignment of tpack elements with the experiential performance learning cycle and digital competency domains. 3.1.2. expert evaluation five experts were purposively selected based on their expertise in educational technology, teacher education, and instructional design, as evidenced by relevant publications and professional experience. the experts were affiliated with the following institutions: • faculty of science and technology, phetchaburi rajabhat university, thailand. • faculty of education, vongchavalitkul university, thailand. • faculty of education, suan dusit university (suphanburi campus), thailand. • faculty of industrial technology, songkhla rajabhat university, thailand. • faculty of management science, chandrakasem rajabhat university, thailand. a 34-item evaluation rubric was developed to assess the model's appropriateness, relevance, clarity, coherence, and applicability. experts independently rated each rubric item on a five-point likert scale, ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 133 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. database, keyword selection, and date of search a systematic literature review was conducted using google scholar, eric, and ieee xplore databases to identify peer-reviewed articles published in english between 2002 and 2025. the search employed a combination of the following keywords: “performance-based learning,” “experiential learning,” “tpack,” “technological pedagogical content knowledge,” “digital competency,” “digital literacy,” “technology integration,” “teacher education,” and “instructional design.” 3.3. inclusion and exclusion criteria articles were included if they met the following criteria: (a) they were empirical studies, conceptual papers, or research reviews; (b) they addressed at least one of the key constructs of interest; and (c) they were published in english. studies were excluded if they were (a) editorials or opinion pieces without a substantial foundation in the literature or (b) focused on topics unrelated to the scope of this review. 4. results 4.1. synthesis of tpack-epl model 4.1.1. synthesis of performance-based learning nine seminal sources converge on six fundamental design principles for performance-based learning: (1) defining clear learning outcomes, (2) designing practice-oriented activities, (3) engaging learners in authentic practice, (4) assessing performance against transparent criteria, (5) providing formative feedback, and (6) supporting continuous improvement (as summarized in table 1). most authors emphasize the cyclical nature of feedback and improvement, which appears in more than 75% of the reviewed studies (e.g., (hattie, 2008; nicol & macfarlane‐dick, 2006; woelk & lefrere, 2002)). conversely, "learning through authentic practice" is mentioned less frequently, indicating a potential gap that the present model addresses by incorporating real-world tasks into every learning cycle. table 1. performance-based learning process synthesis. references defining the desired learning outcomes designing practiceoriented activities through authentic practice assessment based on established criteria providing feedback improvement and development woelk and lefrere (2002) x x x x x x hattie (2008) x x x x x black and wiliam (2009) x x x x shute (2008) x x x x yan (2020) x x x moore (2008) x x x nickel and osborn (2009) x x x x nicol and macfarlane‐dick (2006) x x x x 4.1.2. synthesis of experiential learning an examination of eight key publications revealed a set of five phases that tend to appear in sequence: experience design, authentic engagement, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation (see table 2). reflection and active experimentation were present in nearly every source reviewed (kolb & kolb, 2005; morris, 2020), reinforcing the idea that looking back on an experience is the step that transforms it into knowledge that can be applied elsewhere. by contrast, only around two-thirds of the studies described the experience design stage in detail. this suggests that careful planning of learning activities is not always given equal attention in the literature. insights from this finding played a role in shaping the tpack-epl model, where the design phase is intentionally placed at the start of the cycle to ensure that learning experiences are planned with purpose from the outset. table 2. synthesis table of experiential learning process. references experience design authentic experience engagement reflective observation abstract conceptualization active experimentation morris (2020) x x x x kolb and kolb (2005) x x x vargas-merino et al. (2025) x x x x burgess (2025) x x x x maharsi (2017) x x x x leary and sherlock (2020) x x x x ningrum, sari, and kustiyah (2024) x x x x 4.1.3. synthesis of tpack integrated with performance-based learning and experiential learning the integration of the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) framework with performancebased and experiential learning represents a significant advancement in instructional design for technologyenhanced learning environments. this combination creates a comprehensive pedagogical approach that leverages the strengths of each framework to deepen learning experiences and support the development of digital competence. the tpack framework, first proposed by mishra and koehler (2006), highlights the intricate relationships among three core domains of teacher knowledge: content knowledge (ck), pedagogical knowledge (pk), and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 134 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group technological knowledge (tk). it asserts that effective technology integration requires not only proficiency in these individual domains but also mastery of their intersections: pedagogical content knowledge (pck), technological content knowledge (tck), technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk), and ultimately, the fully integrated technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) (chai, koh, & tsai, 2013; koehler & mishra, 2009). performance-based learning, which focuses on the authentic demonstration of knowledge and skills, offers a practical structure for designing learning activities that lead to the meaningful application of what has been learned (shute, 2008; woelk & lefrere, 2002). in parallel, experiential learning provides a theoretical foundation for explaining how concrete experiences are transformed into abstract conceptualizations through reflection and active experimentation (kolb & kolb, 2005; morris, 2020). analysis of table 3: synthesis of tpack with performance-based and experiential learning. table 3 maps the three tpack knowledge domains, content knowledge (ck), pedagogical knowledge (pk), and technological knowledge (tk) against the processes drawn from performance-based, blended, and experiential learning. the mapping produces several noteworthy insights. universal knowledge domain integration. every cell in the table contains an “x,” indicating that each knowledge domain is essential to every learning process component (jiang & liang, 2017; li et al., 2022). unlike sequential models that emphasize certain domains at specific stages, this mapping underscores the constant interplay of ck, pk, and tk. co-equal enablement. the even distribution of relevance suggests that technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge act as co-equal enablers rather than a hierarchy (chao & fang, 2023; rahman & ismail, 2023). for example, when designing practice-oriented activities, instructors must simultaneously align disciplinary content standards (ck), teaching strategies (pk), and technological affordances (tk). holistic tpack orchestration. full alignment across all thirteen activities affirms that effective experiential performance learning requires continuous orchestration of all tpack domains (hu, zheng, & fang, 2023; zhou et al., 2022). for instance, in “assessment based on established criteria,” ck defines the standards, pk shapes the instruments, and tk facilitates digital delivery. blended learning integration. the inclusion of both face-to-face and online components reflects the multimodal nature of modern education, with tpack guiding transitions between physical and virtual spaces (bose, wang, aliyah, melati, & susanto, 2022; qasem & viswanathappa, 2016). cyclical process and interdomain synergies. the arrangement suggests a cyclical learning process, consistent with iterative improvement in both experiential and performance-based learning (morris, 2020; nicol & macfarlane‐dick, 2006). each phase demonstrates synergies at tpack intersections for example, in reflective observation, tk supports digital tools, pk informs prompts, and ck ensures disciplinary focus (leary & sherlock, 2020; maharsi, 2017). overall, table 3 establishes the theoretical foundation for the tpack-epl model, demonstrating that integrating all domains across every phase creates a coherent instructional design that fosters comprehensive digital competence (de santiago & martínez, 2022; fang, chen, & li, 2024). asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 135 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 3. synthesis table of tpack combined with performance-based learning and experiential learning. tpack performance-based learning blended learning experiential learning defining the desired learning outcomes designing practiceoriented activities learning through authentic practice assessment based on established criteria providing feedback improvement and development face-to-face learning online learning experience design authentic experience engagement reflective observation abstract conceptualization active experimentation ck x x x x x x x x x x x x x pk x x x x x x x x x x x x x tk x x x x x x x x x x x x x asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 136 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.1.4. synthesis of learning outcome digital competency is consistently conceptualized as a triad of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (chiecher, 2020; gonzález fernández, 2021; kim et al., 2017; oberländer et al., 2020). all four studies concur that balanced development across these domains is essential; none advocate skills-only or knowledge-only approaches (see table 4). the tpack-epl model, therefore, embeds tasks that elicit factual understanding (knowledge), tool manipulation (skills), and dispositions such as creativity and ethical awareness (attitudes), ensuring holistic competency growth aligned with international frameworks. table 4. synthesis table of digital competency components. references knowledge skills attitudes chiecher (2020) x x x gonzález fernández (2021) x x x kim et al. (2017) x x x oberländer et al. (2020) x x x table 5. synthesis table of the performance experiential learning. performance-based learning experiential learning experiential performance learning 1. defining the desired learning outcomes 1. experience design 1. establishing learning goals and experiences 2. designing practice-oriented activities 2. authentic experience engagement 2. designing activities connected to authentic experiences 3. learning through authentic practice 3. reflective observation 3. implementation and reflection on learning 4. assessment based on established criteria 4. abstract conceptualization 4. concept formation and assessment 5. providing feedback 5. active experimentation 5. feedback and repeated practice 6. improvement and development 6. extension and application of learning 4.1.5. learning process using performance experiential learning table 5 merges the steps in tables 1 and 2 into a six-stage experiential performance learning (epl) cycle: 1. establishing learning goals and experiences (outcome-driven design). 2. designing activities connected to authentic experiences (contextualization). 3. implementation and reflection on learning (guided practice + reflection). 4. concept formation and assessment (theorization + measurement). 5. feedback and repeated practice (iterative refinement). 6. extension and application of learning (transfer). each stage is explicitly tethered to relevant tk, pk, and ck elements, operationalizing tpack as the organizing framework of the entire cycle. 4.1.6. instructor and learner's role in experiential performance learning roles are distributed across the six epl stages. instructors act as designers, facilitators, diagnosticians, and coaches, while learners function as co-designers, active performers, reflective analysts, and self-directed improvers (see table 6). the table also maps the tangible learning outcomes expected at each stage (e.g., learning logs, concept maps, portfolios). this role matrix ensures aligned responsibilities, supports shared accountability, and fosters learner autonomy, cornerstones of tpack-grounded experiential pedagogy. table 6. instructor and learner's role in experiential performance learning. experiential performance learning instructor's role learner's role learning outcomes 1. establishing learning goals and experiences analyze curriculum and learning standards define clear and measurable learning outcomes design learning experiences aligned with goals analyze learners' prior knowledge and context participate in establishing learning goals share relevant prior experiences express interests and learning needs learning plans with explicit objectives assessment frameworks aligned with goals shared understanding between instructors and learners connection between content and real-world contexts 2. designing activities connected to authentic experiences create activities linked to real-world situations prepare learning media and resources design simulations or case studies prepare technological requirements and learning environments participate in selecting or customizing activities prepare for learning study essential background information develop foundational skills necessary for activities meaningful and challenging learning activities diverse and accessible learning materials learning environments conducive to practice clear activity implementation guidelines 3. implementation and reflection on learning facilitate activity implementation observe and document learning behaviors provide guidance and support as needed stimulate critical thinking and reflection engage in planned activities document outcomes and experiences reflect during and after implementation share experiences with peers concrete learning experiences learning logs and reflections new insights and understandings developed practical skills 4. concept formation and assist learners in synthesize knowledge conceptual asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 137 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group experiential performance learning instructor's role learner's role learning outcomes assessment connecting experiences to theory organize activities for knowledge synthesis assess learning according to established criteria analyze learners' strengths and areas for improvement from acquired experiences create concept maps or understanding models present conceptual understanding self-assess according to established criteria understanding and explanatory models products or artifacts demonstrating learning quantitative and qualitative assessment results deep understanding of content 5. feedback and repeated practice provide specific and constructive feedback suggest improvement and development approaches support learners in repeated practice organize peer feedback exchange consider and analyze feedback improve performance based on suggestions engage in repeated practice to develop skills provide feedback to peers high-quality and beneficial feedback clear improvement and development plans continuously developed skills culture of collaborative learning 6. extension and application of learning support knowledge application in new situations guide future learning pathways apply knowledge in new contexts plan self-directed extended learning knowledge application in diverse contexts portfolios or artifacts demonstrating development long-term personal learning plans sustainable learning networks 4.2. results of development tpackepl model the tpack-epl model represents a comprehensive instructional framework synthesizing technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge with experiential and performance-based learning principles to enhance learners' digital competency development (fang et al., 2024; jiang & liang, 2017). as illustrated in figure 1, the model is conceptualized as an iterative double-loop structure that places the learner at the center of the educational experience, emphasizing the learner-centered approach advocated by contemporary educational theories (kolb & kolb, 2005; morris, 2020). figure 1. tpackepl model. 4.2.1. tpack-epl model structure and components figure 1 illustrates the technological pedagogical content knowledge–integrated experiential performance learning (tpack-epl) model, a learner-centered instructional framework that integrates asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 138 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge with experiential and performance-based learning principles to enhance digital competency development (fang et al., 2024; jiang & liang, 2017). the model is depicted as an iterative double-loop structure in which the inner loop represents the six sequential stages of the experiential performance learning (epl) cycle, and the outer loop embodies the tpack framework as three interlocking gears technological knowledge (tk), pedagogical knowledge (pk), and content knowledge (ck) that drive each stage of the learning process (chao & fang, 2023; mishra & koehler, 2006; zhou et al., 2022). the inner epl loop comprises six interconnected stages: (1) defining learning goals and experiences, (2) designing activities that connect to real-world contexts, (3) practicing and reflecting on learning outcomes, (4) creating summaries and conducting evaluations, (5) providing feedback and engaging in repeated practice, and (6) developing and extending learning. this cyclical process enables learners to build progressively advanced digital competencies by integrating authentic tasks, structured reflection, and iterative improvement (hattie, 2008; nicol & macfarlane‐dick, 2006; shute, 2008; woelk & lefrere, 2002). the outer tpack loop underscores that technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge operate simultaneously at every stage of the epl cycle rather than functioning in isolation. for example, during the “practice and reflection” stage, tk supports the selection and application of appropriate digital tools, pk informs the design of reflection activities, and ck ensures disciplinary accuracy (ercan & özdemir, 2020). radiating arrows connect each epl stage to the three dimensions of digital competency: knowledge, skills, and attitudes, demonstrating that each learning activity contributes holistically to cognitive understanding, practical capabilities, and ethical dispositions (chiecher, 2020; oberländer et al., 2020). this integrated design ensures that digital competency development is embedded throughout the instructional process, supporting learners in becoming adaptive and responsible participants in technology-enhanced environments. 4.2.2. operational dynamics of the tpack-epl model the tpack-integrated experiential performance learning (tpack-epl) model operates on the principle that technology-enhanced instruction should be both theoretically grounded and dynamically adaptive. at its core, the model establishes a two-way exchange between the tpack framework and the experiential performance learning (epl) cycle, allowing insights from instructional design to directly inform classroom practice, while feedback from the learning process shapes subsequent design decisions (hu et al., 2023; kavitha & anitha, 2024). in the initial design stages, tpack provides a lens for crafting learning experiences in which technology, pedagogy, and content are deliberately interwoven to foster digital competency (crespo hernández, 2023; rahman & ismail, 2023). once these experiences are implemented, evidence drawn from learner engagement and assessment becomes a resource for refining tpack-related instructional strategies, reflecting the evidence-informed approach recommended by hernández and pérez (2019) and suharyat, ichsan, santosa, yulianti, and amalia (2022). the cycle begins with stage 1: establishing learning goals and experiences. here, instructors review curriculum requirements alongside an analysis of students’ prior knowledge to identify clear, measurable objectives. these objectives are explicitly aligned with recognized digital competency frameworks (black & wiliam, 2009; woelk & lefrere, 2002). importantly, this stage invites students to take an active role in the goal-setting process, drawing on their own experiences and expectations. such involvement helps cultivate a sense of ownership and metacognitive awareness, which research has linked to more sustained engagement (nickel & osborn, 2009; yan, 2020). in stage 2: designing activities connected to authentic experiences, instructors translate learning goals into real-world scenarios that position digital tools within meaningful disciplinary contexts (burgess, 2025; morris, 2020). at this point, the tpack domains work in unison: content knowledge ensures disciplinary accuracy, pedagogical knowledge shapes engagement strategies, and technological knowledge identifies the most suitable digital resources (bose et al., 2022; gan et al., 2020). the resulting activities are intended not simply as exercises but as immersive experiences that mirror the kinds of challenges learners might encounter beyond the classroom. stage 3: implementation and reflection on learning shift the focus to active participation. learners engage with the planned activities while also being encouraged to pause, observe, and critically reflect on their experiences (kolb & kolb, 2005; ningrum et al., 2024). reflection prompts are structured to draw explicit connections between theory and practice, ensuring that students move beyond merely completing tasks toward a deeper conceptual understanding (leary & sherlock, 2020; maharsi, 2017). during stage 4: concept formation and assessment, students consolidate their experiences into conceptual models, projects, or other artifacts that serve as evidence of learning (burgess, 2025; vargasmerino et al., 2025). assessment at this stage moves beyond checking procedural accuracy to evaluate how well learners integrate knowledge, skills, and attitudes, a triad recognized as central to digital competency (moore, 2008; shute, 2008). the emphasis on stage 5: feedback and repeated practice reflects the model’s commitment to iterative learning. feedback, whether from instructors or peers, is designed to be specific, actionable, and constructive (hattie, 2008; nickel & osborn, 2009). opportunities for re-engagement with tasks not only allow skill refinement but also help students develop the evaluative judgment needed for responsible participation in digital environments (black & wiliam, 2009; yan, 2020). finally, stage 6: extension and application of learning focuses on the transferability of learning. learners are encouraged to apply their newly developed competencies in unfamiliar contexts, demonstrating adaptability and problem-solving beyond the original learning setting (moore, 2008; woelk & lefrere, 2002). this may involve independent projects, collaborations with external communities, or the creation of digital portfolios that document growth across all domains of digital competency (maharsi, 2017; nickel & osborn, 2009). by structuring the learning process in this way, the tpack-epl model ensures that technological, asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 139 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group pedagogical, and content considerations are not treated as isolatesd design variables but as mutually reinforcing components that operate throughout the cycle. the bidirectional knowledge flow between tpack and epl not only supports continuous improvement but also positions learners as active agents in their own competency development. 4.2.3. the results of an expert evaluation of tpack-epl model experts who reviewed the tpack-epl model expressed strong confidence in its value for both theory and practice. they awarded an average score of 4.82 (sd = 0.20), showing broad agreement that the framework is practical to implement, well-grounded in educational theory, and directly relevant to building digital competencies (muyambi & ncube, 2023; sahito, sukri, & hadi, 2024). two areas in particular, principles and concepts, and the promotion of holistic digital competence earned perfect ratings (m = 5.00, sd = 0.00). this outcome reflects the depth of the model’s conceptual design and its capacity to address knowledge, skills, and attitudes in an integrated way (chiecher, 2020; naumeca & āboliņa, 2023). one area that stood out as needing attention is active learner engagement, which scored 4.40 (sd = 0.49) (li et al., 2022; pérez jiménez & gómez aldana, 2024). to raise this figure, instructors might introduce game-based tasks, offer choices within set activities, encourage online collaboration, and connect assignments to topics learners care about or see in the real world (antonio, 2025; liu & he, 2022). a defining strength of the model is its consistent use of the tpack framework at every stage of the experiential performance learning process. by maintaining the connection between technology, pedagogy, and content considerations, the approach supports decisions grounded in sound teaching practices and subject relevance (cao, li, & guo, 2021; zhou et al., 2022). this balance also reduces the risk of adopting digital tools simply for novelty, ensuring that their use is tied to clear instructional benefits (ercan & özdemir, 2020; qasem & viswanathappa, 2016). table 7. the results of an expert evaluation. evaluation list evaluation results suitability mean s.d. 1.to what extent are the principles and concepts in developing the tpack-epl model appropriate? 5.00 0.00 most 2. suitability components of the tpack-epl model 2.1 content knowledge 2.1.1 content is accurately defined according to academic principles 5.00 0.00 most 2.1.2 content is appropriate for learners' ability levels 4.80 0.40 most 2.2 pedagogical knowledge 2.2.1 various teaching methods are utilized and appropriately aligned with content 4.80 0.40 most 2.2.2 learning activities are designed with a learner-centered approach 5.00 0.00 most 2.3 technological knowledge 2.3.1 technology is selected appropriately to support learning objectives 4.80 0.40 most 2.3.2 various and contemporary technologies are utilized appropriately 4.60 0.49 most 3 learning roles and contexts 3.1 instructor's role 3.1.1 the instructor prepares content and learning resources adequately 5.00 0.00 most 3.1.2 the instructor functions as a learning facilitator 4.80 0.40 most 3.2 learner's role 3.2.1 learners participate in establishing learning goals 4.60 0.49 most 3.2.2 learners actively engage in learning activities 4.40 0.49 much 3.3 learning objectives 3.3.1 learning objectives are clearly defined and measurable 4.80 0.40 most 3.3.2 learning objectives align with digital competence development 5.00 0.00 most 3.4 blended learning 3.4.1 there is an appropriate integration of onsite and online learning environments 5.00 0.00 most 3.4.2 digital tools are utilized to support both synchronous and asynchronous learning 4.80 0.40 most 4. experiential performance learning process 4.1 define learning goals and experiences 4.80 0.40 most 4.2 design activities that connect real experiences 4.80 0.40 most 4.3 practical reflection learning outcome 4.80 0.40 most 4.4 create summaries and evaluate 4.80 0.40 most 4.5 provide feedback and practice 5.00 0.00 most 4.6 develop and extend learning 4.80 0.40 most 5 digital competency development 5.1 knowledge domain 5.1.1 learners demonstrate knowledge and understanding of digital technologies 4.80 0.40 most 5.1.2 learners comprehend the operational principles and applications of digital tools 4.80 0.40 most 5.2 skills domain 5.2.1 learners exhibit proficiency in searching, evaluating, and creating digital content 4.80 0.40 most 5.2.2 learners can solve problems and collaborate effectively through digital tools 4.60 0.49 most 5.3 attitudes domain 5.3.1 learners demonstrate creativity and openness to innovation 4.80 0.40 most 5.3.2 learners exhibit ethical awareness and responsibility in technology usage 4.60 0.49 most 5.4 holistic digital competency development 5.4.1 digital competency is developed in a holistic manner 5.00 0.00 most 5.4.2 learners can apply digital competencies in authentic contexts 5.00 0.00 most overall 4.82 0.20 most table 7 presents the results of the expert evaluation of the tpack-epl model. the findings indicate a high overall suitability score (m = 4.82, sd = 0.20), reflecting the model’s theoretical soundness and practical applicability. perfect scores (m = 5.00) are observed in key areas such as principles and concepts, holistic digital competency development, and several aspects of content and pedagogical knowledge, underscoring the model’s strong conceptual foundation. most other dimensions, including technological knowledge, instructor roles, and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 140 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group blended learning integration, receive very high ratings (m = 4.60–4.80). only one dimension, learners’ active engagement, records a relatively lower mean score (m = 4.40, sd = 0.49), though it is still rated as “much suitable.” these results demonstrate that the model is consistently regarded as highly relevant, well-structured, and effective in promoting digital competence across knowledge, skills, and attitudes. figure 2. expert evaluation results of the tpack-epl model across key dimensions. figure 2 presents the mean scores of the expert evaluation for the tpack-integrated experiential performance learning (tpack-epl) model. the results consistently show high ratings across all dimensions, with the highest scores observed for principles and concepts, as well as holistic digital competency development (m = 5.00). most categories, including content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, blended learning, and instructor roles, received very strong evaluations (m = 4.80–4.90). the lowest score was assigned to learners’ active engagement (m = 4.40), though it still reflects a rating of “much suitable.” these findings highlight the model’s theoretical soundness, instructional applicability, and capacity to support the holistic development of digital knowledge, skills, and attitudes, while also suggesting the need to strengthen further strategies that enhance learner participation. 5. discussion the tpack-epl model offers a distinctive integration of the tpack framework with principles drawn from experiential and performance-based learning, aiming to advance the development of learners’ digital competence. rather than treating these elements as separate, the design maps each dimension of tpack to a six-phase experiential performance learning cycle and defines the specific roles of both instructors and learners at every stage. this arrangement enables the creation of technology-enhanced activities that remain pedagogically aligned while directly linked to competency outcomes. a foundation built on established learning theories and instructional design practices, combined with a targeted emphasis on digital competence, positions the model as a meaningful contribution to current discourse on technology-supported, competency-based education (albeta et al., 2023; gan et al., 2020; kim et al., 2017). by extending prior research on tpack and experiential learning (jiang & liang, 2017; maharsi, 2017) into the interconnected domains of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (chiecher, 2020; gonzález fernández, 2021; oberländer et al., 2020) the model offers a coherent pathway for comprehensive digital literacy growth. evaluation by a panel of experts yielded consistently high ratings across all criteria. perfect scores for principles and concepts and holistic digital competency development indicate that the framework effectively synthesizes theoretical foundations with the multidimensional aspects of digital competence. the indicator for active learner engagement, while still rated as suitable, received the lowest mean score, suggesting an opportunity for refinement during practical application. several limitations warrant attention. the development of the framework relied primarily on a systematic literature review and expert judgment, leaving room for empirical trials in varied educational contexts to further confirm its effectiveness and adaptability. although the expert panel represented a range of specialisations, the relatively small number of participants limits the breadth of evaluation. a primary focus on digital competence may also restrict immediate applicability to other fields; however, the integration of tpack with experiential performance learning principles holds potential for adaptation to other competency-based domains. future investigations should examine the framework through longitudinal studies, comparative analyses with alternative instructional models, and qualitative inquiries into the experiences of instructors and learners. such research could provide a deeper understanding of its long-term impact and practical implications. for educators, curriculum designers, and researchers, the tpack-epl model delivers a structured approach to aligning technology, pedagogy, and content with authentic, reflective learning tasks. teachers can employ the framework to guide the creation of tpack-informed performance activities. instructional designers may adapt its principles to develop comprehensive digital competence programs, and researchers can extend the theoretical base asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 141 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group to explore the interplay among tpack, experiential learning, and performance assessment in fostering digital literacy for the 21st century. 6. conclusion this research introduced and empirically validated the tpack-integrated experiential performance learning (tpack-epl) framework. this innovative pedagogical model consolidates technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) theory, experiential learning principles, and performance-oriented instructional approaches to foster digital literacy competencies among learners. the framework encompasses a comprehensive six-stage experiential learning progression that systematically aligns tpack theoretical constructs with authentic learning experiences, reflective practices, and competency-driven educational activities, while delineating the responsibilities of educators and students. expert validation results demonstrated consistently elevated assessment scores across all evaluative criteria (m = 4.82, sd = 0.20), substantiating the model's theoretical rigor, instructional viability, and congruence with comprehensive digital competency cultivation objectives. the principal contributions of this investigation highlight the tpack-epl framework's ability to provide systematic guidance for educational practitioners and curriculum developers in establishing organized, studentcentered learning environments that foster digital knowledge acquisition, applied skill development, and ethical awareness. this framework advances contemporary instructional design scholarship by reconceptualizing tpack beyond its traditional educator-focused application to a comprehensive organizational schema for advancing learner competency. nevertheless, several methodological constraints warrant acknowledgment. initially, the validation methodology relied exclusively on expert consultation without empirical implementation within authentic educational settings. furthermore, despite the disciplinary diversity represented among the expert panel, the restricted sample of five participants potentially constrains the external validity of the assessment outcomes. additionally, the framework's current application domain remains confined to digital competency development and may necessitate modifications to accommodate broader pedagogical objectives. subsequent investigations should prioritize empirical validation of the tpack-epl framework across diverse educational environments, encompassing elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutional contexts. longitudinal research designs could examine the framework's influence on the sustained progression of digital competency among learners. moreover, comparative analyses with alternative instructional paradigms and qualitative explorations of educator and learner implementation experiences could contribute to refining the model and enhancing its practical applicability. references albeta, s. w., firdaus, l., copriady, j., & alimin, m. 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(2022). a framework of pre-service teachers’ tpack development in blended learning. education and information technologies, 27(5), 5671–5687. appendix a. table 1a. 34-item expert evaluation rubric for the tpack-epl model. no. evaluation criteria dimension 1 the model is based on sound theoretical principles. principles and concepts 2 the overall structure of the model is coherent and logical. principles and concepts 3 the content knowledge is accurate and clearly defined. content knowledge (ck) 4 the content is suitable for learners’ ability levels. ck 5 pedagogical methods are appropriately selected and aligned with learning goals. pedagogical knowledge (pk) 6 learning activities reflect a learner-centered approach. pk 7 technologies are appropriately selected to support learning goals. technological knowledge (tk) 8 technologies used are current and relevant. tk 9 the instructor’s role is clearly defined across learning phases. instructor role 10 the instructor facilitates learning effectively. instructor role 11 learners participate in establishing learning goals. learner role 12 learners are actively engaged throughout the process. learner role 13 learning goals are specific, measurable, and aligned with digital competency. learning goals 14 the model appropriately integrates online and face-to-face learning modes. blended learning 15 digital tools are used effectively for synchronous/asynchronous learning. blended learning 16 phase 1: establishing learning goals is clearly structured. epl process 17 phase 2: activities are authentically linked to real-world contexts. epl process 18 phase 3: learners engage in practice and reflection. epl process 19 phase 4: conceptualization and assessment are well-integrated. epl process 20 phase 5: feedback mechanisms are clearly described and actionable. epl process 21 phase 6: learners are guided to extend and apply their learning. epl process 22 the model facilitates knowledge acquisition in digital technologies. digital competency knowledge 23 learners comprehend how digital tools operate and can apply them. digital competency knowledge 24 learners can search, evaluate, and create digital content. digital competency skills 25 learners collaborate and solve problems using digital tools. digital competency skills 26 learners show creativity and openness to innovation. digital competency attitudes 27 learners demonstrate ethical use and responsibility in digital contexts. digital competency attitudes 28 the model supports holistic development across knowledge, skills, and attitudes. holistic digital competency 29 learners can apply digital competencies in authentic tasks. holistic digital competency 30 the graphical representation (model diagram) effectively conveys the structure. visual clarity 31 the model allows adaptation to various educational levels and contexts. applicability 32 the evaluation rubric covers all important dimensions of the model. evaluation validity 33 the rubric is easy for experts to understand and use. evaluation validity 34 the evaluation process contributes meaningfully to model validation. overall evaluation scoring scale: 1 = poor | 2 = fair | 3 = good | 4 = very good | 5 = excellent https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28089-y https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00684.x https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103752 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654307313795 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2025.101137 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 130-143 143 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1a presents the 34-item expert evaluation rubric developed to assess the tpack-epl model. the rubric covers multiple dimensions, including theoretical principles, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, technological knowledge, instructor and learner roles, learning objectives, blended learning integration, experiential performance learning processes, digital competency development, holistic competency growth, and visual clarity. each item is structured around specific criteria to ensure comprehensive coverage of the model’s conceptual soundness, instructional applicability, and evaluative validity. by organizing the rubric into these domains, the table provides a transparent framework for expert reviewers to evaluate the model consistently and systematically. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 144 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 4, 144-156, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7504 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the influence of workplace professional development on physical and health education teachers’ effectiveness and student physical literacy oluwaseyi olubunmi sodiya1 turkan nabiyeva2 ( corresponding author) 1faculty of natural science, arts and technology of higher education, khazar university baku, azerbaijan. email: oluwaseyi.sodiya@khazar.org 2khazar university dunya school, baku, azerbaijan. email: t.nabiyeva@dunyaschool.az abstract this study examines the role of workplace professional development in enhancing the instructional effectiveness of physical and health education teachers and its subsequent impact on student physical literacy, particularly during the transition to the international baccalaureate (ib) middle years programme (myp). the research aimed to assess how targeted professional learning initiatives influence teaching performance and foster physical literacy among students. data were collected from a sample of three physical and health education teachers and 128 myp year 1 students, selected from a total population of 391 students across myp years 1–4. quantitative analysis revealed a statistically significant improvement in students’ physical literacy after one academic year, with notable differences between unit 1 and unit 2 test scores (m = -3.625, sd = 3.76473, t(127) = -10.894, p < .000). improvements included increased physical fitness, enhanced selfconfidence, and a deeper understanding of healthy lifestyle practices. the findings provide evidence that comprehensive, context-specific professional development can significantly improve teaching quality and positively influence student outcomes in physical education. the study recommends fostering a collaborative school culture that supports ongoing communication and professional growth tailored to educators’ needs. the results of this current study will contribute a useful framework for fair and scalable professional development, giving teachers, school leaders, and policymakers who want to improve teaching quality in difficult situations useful information. keywords: international baccalaureate, physical education, physical literacy, professional development, student outcomes, teacher effectiveness. citation | sodiya, o. o., & nabiyeva, t. (2025). the influence of workplace professional development on physical and health education teachers’ effectiveness and student physical literacy. asian journal of education and training, 11(4), 144–156. 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7504 history: received: 5 august 2025 revised: 25 september 2025 accepted: 1 october 2025 published: 6 october 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the coordination council of the republic of azerbaijan on scientific research/khazar university, azerbaijan has granted approval for this study on 15 february 2023 (ref. no. 116.). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 145 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 146 3. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 147 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 149 5. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 153 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 155 mailto:oluwaseyi.sodiya@khazar.org mailto:t.nabiyeva@dunyaschool.az https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i4.7504 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0152-723x https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0988-7041 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 145 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study outlines a framework for enhancing professional development in schools, addressing challenges faced during curriculum transitions. it proposes a transformative workplace concept that includes a needs assessment by school leaders, a collaborative logic model for solutions, and an emphasis on continuous reflection. these elements aim to ensure equitable access to highquality professional development for both novice and experienced teachers. 1. introduction this study emphasizes the importance of workplace professional development training for physical health education teachers and students transitioning to the ib curriculum, highlighting its significant impact on academic growth. in this study, workplace professional development training is defined as an instruction program arranged at the school by directors, coordinators, department heads, and teachers based on their needs to assist teachers, students, and the whole school community's improvement. continuous professional development (cpd) quality is linked to improved service delivery, emphasizing knowledge acquisition in work environments. it is crucial to shift from checklists to detailed assessments and address learning requirements. education systems aim to provide teachers with opportunities for in-service professional development to maintain high standards of teaching and retain a highquality workforce, despite the potential for inadequacies in pre-service training. the oecd report on professional development for educators stresses the importance of ongoing and structured training to guarantee productive classroom settings, suggesting strategies such as coaching, mentoring, and peer learning (oecd, 2009). this current article provides a concise summary of the significance of workplace professional development for teachers of physical health education and the influence it has on students' performance, particularly during the transition to the international baccalaureate curriculum. the purpose of professional development is to ensure that educators are prepared with the information and skills necessary to effectively teach the curriculum, which ultimately results in improved outcomes for students inside the classroom. richter and richter (2024) studied data from more than 7,500 united states (us) teachers. the study sought to validate the instrument and create a tool for routinely evaluating the efficacy and impact of professional development programs for teachers. according to teslo et al. (2023) a qualitative study was undertaken that examined the attitudes of norwegian primary and secondary school teachers towards physically active learning, revealing a range of perspectives. certain professors saw it as challenging, while others regarded it as a powerful tool for improving student involvement and learning. engaging in professional development activities focused on physical health education may create an atmosphere that improves the skills and knowledge of both teachers and students. assigning resources to this may enhance classroom performance and competence. the international baccalaureate curriculum provides several choices that have a substantial influence on the effectiveness of teachers and the educational outcomes of students. this cultivates a nurturing and energetic educational atmosphere, fostering advancement and success for everyone engaged. as stated by skrzypiec, askellwilliams, slee, and rudzinski (2014). research has shown that the international baccalaureate middle years programme (myp) has a beneficial effect on both the social-emotional well-being and academic achievement of students. students exhibit elevated levels of self-efficacy, motivation, and involvement in the learning process, along with favorable views towards both school and instructors. the myp's comprehensive methodology, emphasis on the cultivation of interpersonal skills, and integration of service-learning experiences provide a nurturing educational setting. this research explores the impact of workplace professional development on the performance of physical education teachers and students, based on the notion that continual training and support for educators must be prioritized. 1.1. statement of problem when teachers convert from a local curriculum to the international baccalaureate (ib) framework, they face numerous challenges, especially regarding changes in teaching methods and grading practices. there is limited empirical evidence about the correlation between workplace professional development and student academic performance in physical and health education, despite the objective of workplace professional development to support educators during these transitions. it remains uncertain whether professional development enhances instructors' ability to utilize ib assessment standards and results in measurable improvements in student performance across curriculum units. additional research is essential to comprehensively understand the broader implications of workplace professional development on teachers' instructional methodologies and its influence within the context of curriculum change. 1.2. research objectives the research objectives were created to guide this investigation and provided the basis for developing the research questions. the following research objectives are: • to investigate the difference in students’ academic achievement from unit one to unit three in phe classes following teachers’ participation in workplace professional development training. • to explore the difference in students’ ability to apply and perform criterion c from unit one to unit three in phe classes after teachers’ participation in pd. • to explore the extent to which workplace professional development impacts phe teachers’ instructional practices and professional growth during the transition to the ib curriculum. 1.3. research question as a result, the following three research questions are the focus of this study. 1. is there a difference in students' academic achievement from unit one to unit three in physical and health education classes after teachers’ participation in workplace professional development training? (quantitative) 2. is there a difference in students' application and performance of criterion c for units one to three in physical and health education classes after teachers' participation in workplace professional development training? 3. to what extent is the impact of workplace professional development on physical health education teachers? asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 146 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. literature review this study's literature review consists of mezirow's (1991) transformative learning theory defines transformative learning as changing a person's frame of reference through critical reflection, which makes them more open-minded and adaptable. the implication of workplace professional development training for teachers, which is essential in adult education and professional development, promotes reflective practice, empowerment, and adaptation, subsequently improving motivation and job satisfaction. when professional growth aligns with both personal and professional goals, it makes workers feel more valued and capable, leading to long-term engagement (hayashi, 2014). 2.1. theoretical concept the study utilized transformational learning theory to investigate how physical health education teachers might improve their teaching methods through continuous professional development. through active engagement in seminars, conferences, and other educational events, educators may ensure they remain well-informed on the most recent research findings and optimal methodologies in their sector. transformative learning of mezirow (1991). through the practice of transformational learning, educators may actively question and challenge their current ways of thinking and gain new insights that enhance their ability to teach effectively. see the diagram below for further illustration (figure 1). continuous reflection and growth are crucial for educators to adapt to the increasing demands of students and the dynamic field of physical health education. figure 1. workplace teacher professional development transformative concept. 2.2. implications for professional development several research findings have shown that teachers who participate in workplace professional development programmes experience a positive impact on their teaching practices in physical health education. for example, according to walter, kutscher, fox, tuckwiller, and ball (2023), we conduct an analysis of the potential for this attentiveness to facilitate the development and execution of professional development that is contextually relevant, rooted in the strengths and values of the community, and responsive to the requirements of educators that are being met. teachers who engage in professional development are more likely to implement new strategies and resources in their classrooms, ultimately leading to improved student success. our findings indicate that inter-individual differences in constructivist and transmissive beliefs are related to inter-individual differences in professional vision (eßling, todorova, sunder, steffensky, & meschede, 2023). the local students engaged in physical education more effectively due to cultural immersion, the psts enjoyed professional and personal growth, and the cts obtained new pedagogical ideas. despite the advantages for both parties, difficulties arose due to pedagogical disparities, linguistic barriers, and individual hindrances (wong & oh, 2023). providing teachers with the opportunity to learn and grow in their field, professional development programmes contribute to a more dynamic and engaging learning environment for students. teachers who participate in these programmes are better equipped to address the diverse needs of their students and adapt their teaching methods to meet individual learning styles. according to li, li, and fu (2022), autoregressive change analysis demonstrated that possibilities for development, job resources, and emotional pressures, work expectations in the educational setting contributed significantly to the observed reductions. suggestions and consequences are presented for important stakeholders in teacher education programmes and professional development. as a result of the intervention, statistically significant differences in the quality of students' writing were observed across all disciplines in a repeated measures multilevel model, and the quality was maintained over time. additionally, stakeholders identified specific components as the most effective, and teachers' confidence also increased (philippakos, macarthur, & rocconi, 2023). as a result, asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 147 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students are more likely to be actively engaged in their learning and achieve better outcomes in physical health education. the continuous improvement and growth of teachers through professional development ultimately benefit the entire school community and help to foster a culture of excellence in education. to facilitate impactful teacher professional development, school administrators must shift their thinking from simply acquiring new skills and knowledge to assisting teachers in rethinking their practice (patton, parker, & tannehill, 2015). overall, workplace professional development plays a crucial role in enhancing the quality of physical health education teaching. 2.3. professional development linked to job satisfaction and motivation according to the study, there is a strong and significant correlation between teacher-student connections and teacher work satisfaction. relationships between teachers and their pupils were the study's best predictor of teachers' work satisfaction after adjusting for relevant variables (o'shea, 2021). furthermore, the skills and knowledge gained through professional development can also have a ripple effect, spreading to other teachers and staff members within the school. this collaborative approach to professional growth helps to create a supportive network of educators who are committed to improving student outcomes and promoting a culture of continuous learning and development. ultimately, investing in the professional development of teachers has far-reaching benefits that extend beyond the individual classroom and positively impact the overall success of the school community. according to zhang, admiraal, and saab (2021), the current study has provided a thorough explanation of the elements at the school and individual levels that are highly correlated with teachers' willingness to engage in professional learning activities. teachers' desire for professional development was correlated with their past experience, teaching experience, selfefficacy, learning beliefs, emotional strain, and principal leadership. wau and purwanto (2021) also stated that employee performance and job satisfaction were positively influenced by career development, job satisfaction was positively influenced by employee performance, and work motivation was positively influenced by job satisfaction and employee performance. whilst mangaleswarasharma (2017) mentioned that teachers should be provided with pertinent professional development opportunities, salary increases, and respect and recognition in order to enhance their job satisfaction and motivate them. on the other hand, canrinus, helms-lorenz, beijaard, buitink, and hofman (2012) believe that a glimpse into the professional identity of teachers can be gained through the examination of the combined form of motivation, job satisfaction, and occupational commitment that teachers exhibit. on the other hand, looking at the role of school leaders in workplace professional development. hoppey and mcleskey (2013), the principal viewed his primary role to be "lubricating the human machinery," which implies assisting instructors so that they can do their best work. he fulfilled this job by providing high-quality professional development, allowing teachers to take on leadership responsibilities in the school, and loving and caring for his team. he also protected his teachers from the external pressures that come with high-stakes responsibility. whilst kooy and van veen (2012) opinion on workplace professional development and school as a learning-centered environment: the education of teachers is important on a global scale because they are the conduits through which every attempt for change and reform is brought into fruition. it is important to recognize that a highly trained teaching force is essential to increasing student achievement. this recognition adds significance to the process of establishing dynamic conversations on teacher learning all around the world. 2.4. literature review summary the papers focus on several facets of professional growth in the field of education. several publications address the significance of student well-being and social-emotional growth, while others analyze the efficacy of various professional development methods in enhancing student achievement and teacher job satisfaction. several papers also address the distinct difficulties and opportunities of delivering professional development in diverse geographical and cultural settings, such as in foreign schools or in south korea. furthermore, they stress the need for delivering tailored and relevant professional development to meet the needs and objectives of teachers, while also offering opportunities for collaboration and support among educators. additionally, the examination of various leadership styles and practices, such as the active participation of principals and the influence of school culture, will be included in the discussion on the effects they have on teacher professional development. furthermore, many sections emphasize the need for effective assessments and measures of accountability to guarantee that professional development programs are achieving their intended objectives and results. in summary, the papers indicate that continuous professional development should be a top priority for educators and schools. it should be customized to address the unique requirements and objectives of both instructors and students. regular evaluation and adaptation of professional development are crucial to enhance its long-term efficacy. the gap in the literature review emphasizes the need for more investigation into professional development in education, specifically focusing on the difficulties and obstacles in establishing and maintaining programs, especially in situations with limited resources. additionally, there is a deficiency in providing comprehensive techniques for effectively addressing these obstacles and promoting fairness in professional growth. 3. methodology an exploratory sequential mixed-methods research design is a specific type of research method that starts with collecting and analyzing qualitative data and then employs quantitative methods to test or build on the initial findings. this design is quite useful when researchers want to examine a phenomenon in depth before assessing its effects on a larger scale (parnitvitidkun, ponchaitiwat, chancharat, & thoumrungroje, 2024). this current study used an exploratory sequential mixed-methods research design. we applied a variety of data gathering methods, including interviews, weekly intervention training, survey observations, and students’ unit criteria assessment, to acquire data for both qualitative and quantitative data analysis to investigate the impact of workplace professional development on the performance of physical education teachers and the enhancement of students' physical literacy. the research methodology enabled us to acquire a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the teachers' encounters with workplace professional development and its influence on their performance and the enhancement of students' physical literacy. this method is considered reliable for educational research where student performance and teacher development are important, since it allows the researchers to observe curricular improvement in action. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 148 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.1. research sample the participants of this study are teachers and students of a private school in baku, azerbaijan. there are a total of n=3 physical and health education teachers (male n=2 and female n=1), along with 128 myp 1 students, including 79 boys and 49 girls. the participants were selected from a group of 391 pupils in myp 1-4. we chose to include myp 1 students in this study since they were unfamiliar with the ib physical and health education curriculum. 3.2. research procedure the teachers participated in biweekly training sessions to enhance their expertise and understanding of ib unit design and ideas. teachers were urged to engage in self-reflection on their teaching methods and work together with their peers to improve their professional development. additionally, since they are unfamiliar with the ib curriculum, they need to ensure they are thoroughly equipped to execute it successfully in their classrooms. one academic year consisted of four units, and in order for each unit to meet the ib standards and objectives, considerable planning and preparation were needed. teachers were mandated to participate in training sessions and workshops to acquaint themselves with the curriculum and develop units and assessments in accordance with the ib standards and goals. in addition, teachers were urged to participate in continuous professional development opportunities arranged by the ib school to enhance their comprehension of the ib curriculum and teaching methodologies. after completing each unit, students' performance in criteria a, b, c, and d is recorded in their gradebook. they use this data to contemplate their advancement and establish objectives for future learning. the students' criteria a and c are extracted for this current study and analyzed using spss to assess their academic performance and identify areas for improvement. 3.3. qualitative data collection the researchers observed the lessons and conducted interviews with the teachers to understand the problems they face during the transition process with the students. to help the teachers adapt to the ib curriculum, the coordinator organized a training session every week for each department. we interviewed teachers during and after this phase to gather insights about their experiences, points of view, problems, and changes they made to their teaching methods. this step helps identify themes, including changes in teaching approaches, the school environment, students’ attendance, and whole school community development. 3.4. quantitative phase (sequential) the quantitative phase: the students’ attendance and assessment results for three different units were used to measure the students’ performance in order to determine the impact of the curriculum change on student learning outcomes. 3.5. instrument for data collection a total of four instruments were applied in this study: the unit criterion objective a: knowing and understanding, i.e., describing physical and health education factual, procedural, and conceptual knowledge; ii. applying physical and health education knowledge to explain issues and solve problems set in familiar and unfamiliar situations; iii. applying physical and health terminology effectively to communicate understanding of the unit. criterion c: applying and performing (i). demonstrating and applying a range of skills and techniques; (ii). demonstrating and applying a range of strategies and movement concepts; (iii). outlining and applying information to perform effectively. additionally, the teacher’s interview and observation checklist were used. as seen below, a sample of criterion a assessment paper for unit 1. as seen in figure 2, sample criterion a assessment task. this assessment is intended to evaluate students' comprehension and proficiency with the unit. this type of assessment is unfamiliar to them in the context of physical and health education (phe). however, the ib curriculum in phe mandates that students engage in physical performance and display their factual, procedural, and conceptual knowledge and grasp of the unit. the assessment serves as an indicator for evaluating students' overall performance since it expects them to demonstrate mastery in both practical skills and theoretical knowledge. in order to be able to design and develop a quality unit and assessment approach, the teachers need to engage in several ib workplace trainings specifically designed for phe teachers to meet their needs. figure 2. sample criterion a -assessment task. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 149 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.6. criterion c is applying and performing in ib phe in the context of ib phe, criterion c involves the application and execution of knowledge for physical performance. students are required to demonstrate their understanding by undertaking a physical exam that is relevant to the unit they are presently learning. this evaluation provides students with an opportunity to demonstrate their capacity to apply their knowledge in a real-world context, showcasing their comprehension of the unit's principles through physical execution. through the incorporation of practical implementation alongside theoretical comprehension, instructors may accurately assess students' holistic understanding of the content and their overall development in the topic. the assessment task requirements can be seen below in (figure 3) sample criterion c assessment task. figure 3. sample criterion c assessment task. 4. results and discussion the objective of this study is to offer significant insights into the influence of workplace professional development training on student learning outcomes in physical and health education classrooms. the acquired quantitative data through students' unit assessments for both criterion a and b enable a comprehensive study of any potential fluctuations in the academic performance of students over a period of time, providing concrete evidence of students’ academic performance. through the analysis of this data, the teachers gain a deeper comprehension of how workplace training positively impacts students' development and achievement in the specific topic. research question 1 is there a difference in students' academic achievement from unit one to unit three in physical and health education classes after teachers’ participation in workplace professional development training? (quantitative). in order to answer the research question, a descriptive analysis was performed to provide a thorough overview of the obtained data, emphasizing significant themes and patterns that emerge. in addition, the qualitative data collected from interviews with educators and students provided significant insights into the effects of workplace professional development training for teachers on students' academic achievement in the units. this analysis presents the gender distribution of a sample consisting of 128 individuals, comprising 49 females and 79 males. the data reveal that the female population constitutes 38.3% of the sample, whereas the male population accounts for 61.7%. the cumulative proportion amounts to 100%, signifying that the sample comprises individuals of both genders, as seen in the (table 1 and figure 4) participants' descriptive analysis below. table 1. participants' descriptive analysis. students’ gender frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid female 49 38.3 38.3 38.3 male 79 61.7 61.7 100 total 128 100 100 figure 4. samples by gender. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 150 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group we performed a descriptive statistical analysis to check the mean and to conduct a paired sample t-test to assess the difference in means and determine the effect of workplace professional training for teachers on students’ academic achievement in units 1, 2, and 3 for the criterion a knowing and understanding test score. the descriptive statistical results for the mean and standard deviation are as follows: unit 1 criterion a (m = 3.5; sd = 3.46), unit 2 criterion a (m = 7.16; sd = 1.55), and unit 3 criterion a (m = 7.18; sd = 1.55) after teachers’ training. see (table 2 and figure 5 ) below. table 2. descriptive analysis for criterion(a) units mean and std. deviation. n mean std. deviation unit 1 criterion a knowing and understanding 128 3.5391 3.46842 unit 2 criterion a knowing and understanding 128 7.1641 1.55618 unit 3 criterion a knowing and understanding 128 7.1875 1.55097 valid n (listwise) 128 figure 5. descriptive analysis for criterion(a) units mean and std. deviation. a paired samples t-test was performed to evaluate whether there was a difference between units one, two, and three (criterion a), based on students' test scores for comparison. the results indicated that there was a significant difference between unit one and unit two of the students' test scores m = [-3.62500], sd = [3.76473], t [127] = [10.894], p = < .000. furthermore, the paired sample t-test result for unit one and unit three criterion a knowing and understanding also show a significant difference m = [-3.64844], sd = [3.78474], t [127] = [--10.906], p = < .000. these results suggest an increase in mean scores and a decrease in standard deviation between units 1 and 2, unit 1 and unit 3 indicating a potential improvement in the students score. meanwhile, the result of the paired sample t-test for unit 2 and unit 3 shows no significant difference, m = [-.02344], sd = [.19702], t [127] = [-1.346], p = < .181. as seen below in (table 3), paired sample t-test analysis for criterion a units one, two, and three. this might have implications for how educators approach their teaching methodologies and evaluation procedures in order to guarantee a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. table 3. paired sample t-test analysis for criterion a units one, two, and three. mean std. deviation t df sig. (2tailed pair 1 unit 1 criterion a knowing and understanding unit 2 criterion a knowing and understanding -3.625 3.76473 -10.894 127 0 pair 2 unit 1 criterion a knowing and understanding unit 3 criterion a knowing and understanding -3.64844 3.78474 -10.906 127 0 pair 3 unit 2 criterion a knowing and understanding unit 3 criterion a knowing and understanding -0.02344 0.19702 -1.346 127 0.181 research question 2 is there a difference between students' physical performance in (criterion c) apply and performing for units one, two, and three in physical and health education classes after teachers’ participation in workplace professional development training? (quantitative) we performed a descriptive statistical analysis to check the mean and to conduct a paired sample t-test to assess the difference in means and determine the effect of workplace professional training for teachers on students’ academic achievement in units 1, 2, and 3 for the (criterion c) applying and performing test scores. the descriptive statistical results for the mean and standard deviation are as follows: unit 1 criterion c (m = 5.0; sd = 1.95), unit 2 criterion c (m = 4.92; sd = 2.68), and unit 3 criterion c (m = 6.11; sd = 1.69), based on the applying and performing test scores after teachers’ training (table 4 and figure 6) below. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 151 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4. descriptive analysis for criterion(c) units mean and std. deviation. n mean std. deviation unit 1 criterion c applying and performing 128 5.0234 1.95406 unit 2 criterion c applying and performing 128 4.9297 2.68617 unit 3 criterion c applying and performing 128 6.1172 1.69121 valid n (listwise) 128 figure 6. descriptive analysis for the criterion(c) units mean. a paired samples t-test was performed to evaluate whether there was a difference between units one, two, and three (criterion c) in applying and performing, using the mean scores of students’ tests for comparison. the results indicated that there was no significant difference between unit one and unit two in students’ performance scores, with a mean (m) of 0.09375, standard deviation (sd) of 2.14600, t-value of 0.494, degrees of freedom (df) = 127, and pvalue of 0.622. furthermore, the paired sample t-test results for unit one and unit three showed a significant difference, with a mean difference of -1.09375, sd of 2.25339, t-value of -5.491, df = 127, and p-value less than 0.000. these results suggest an increase in mean scores and a decrease in standard deviation between unit one and unit three, indicating a potential improvement in students’ performance. on the other hand, the paired sample t-test for units two and three also showed a significant difference, with a mean difference of -1.18750, sd of 2.19789, t-value of -6.113, df = 127, and p-value less than 0.000. as seen below in (table 5, paired sample t-test analysis for criterion c unit one, two, and three. the result of this analysis might have implications for how teachers approach their teaching methodologies and assessment procedures. the findings suggest that students exhibited high proficiency in physical assessments, irrespective of the testing technique. nevertheless, it is probable that these outcomes may be ascribed to other factors. for example, the participation of students in extracurricular activities and organized sports events, which are aimed at promoting a vibrant school environment, may have an impact on their performance in criterion c assessments. table 5. paired sample t-test analysis for criterion c units one, two, and three. mean std. deviation t df sig. (2tailed) pair 1 unit 1 criterion c applying and performing unit 2 criterion c applying and performing 0.09375 2.146 0.494 127 0.622 pair 2 unit 1 criterion c applying and performing unit 3 criterion c applying and performing -1.09375 2.25339 -5.491 127 0 pair 3 unit 2 criterion c applying and performing unit 3 criterion c applying and performing -1.1875 2.19789 -6.113 127 0 a pearson correlation coefficient was computed to determine the relationship between (criterion a) knowing and understanding, and (criterion c) applying and performing across all units. firstly, the results indicate no significant relationship in unit 1 criterion a and unit 1 criterion c, [r(128) = 0.023, p = 0.801]. for unit 2, criterion a and criterion c results show no significant relationship, [r(128) = 0.046, p = 0.605]. in addition, there was also a non-significant relationship between unit 3 criterion a and criterion c, [r(128) = -0.041, p = 0.642]. in contrast, there was a significant positive relationship between unit 2 criterion (a) and unit 3 criterion (a), [r(128) = 0.992, p = 0.000]. unit 1 criterion (c) and unit 2 criterion (c) also showed a significant positive relationship [r(128) = 0.612, p = 0.000]. additionally, there was a significant positive relationship between unit 2 criterion (c) and unit 3 criterion (c), r(128) = 0.577, p = 0.000. furthermore, unit 3 criterion (c) and unit 1 criterion (c) also demonstrated a significant positive relationship [r(128) = 0.242, p = 0.006]. our findings revealed a significant positive relationship between students' knowledge and comprehension criteria (a) and their performance in the physical skills test for factual, procedural, and conceptual aspects of the international baccalaureate physical and health education curriculum. the results indicate that the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). see below in table 6 for the analysis of knowing, understanding, applying, and performing correlation. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 152 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 6. correlation analysis for (criterion a) knowing and understanding, (criterion c) applying and performing. unit 1 criterion a knowing and understanding unit 2 criterion a knowing and understanding unit 3 criterion a knowing and understanding unit 1 criterion c applying and performing unit 2 criterion c applying and performing unit 3 criterion c applying and performing unit 1 criterion a knowing and understanding pearson correlation 1 0.026 0.01 0.023 0.063 -0.02 sig. (2tailed) 0.773 0.908 0.801 0.478 0.821 n 128 128 128 128 128 128 unit 2 criterion a knowing and understanding pearson correlation 0.026 1 0.992** -0.071 0.046 -0.049 sig. (2tailed) 0.773 0 0.425 0.605 0.581 n 128 128 128 128 128 128 unit 3 criterion a knowing and understanding pearson correlation 0.01 0.992** 1 -0.072 0.054 -0.041 sig. (2tailed) 0.908 0 0.422 0.543 0.642 n 128 128 128 128 128 128 unit 1 criterion c applying and performing pearson correlation 0.023 -0.071 -0.072 1 0.612** 0.242** sig. (2tailed) 0.801 0.425 0.422 0 0.006 n 128 128 128 128 128 128 unit 2 criterion c applying and performing pearson correlation 0.063 0.046 0.054 0.612** 1 0.577** sig. (2tailed) 0.478 0.605 0.543 0 0 n 128 128 128 128 128 128 unit 3 criterion c applying and performing pearson correlation -0.02 -0.049 -0.041 0.242** 0.577** 1 sig. (2tailed) 0.821 0.581 0.642 0.006 0 n 128 128 128 128 128 128 note: **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). to what extent is the impact of workplace professional development on physical health education teachers? (qualitative) thematic coding was conducted to address the research question, utilizing the observation checklist recordings of teachers' workplace professional development training, lesson activities, and student outcomes. our analysis revealed that workplace professional development had a substantial influence on physical health education teachers, as it equipped them with new strategies and resources to integrate into their lesson plans. this ultimately resulted in an enhancement of student engagement, participation, and overall physical well-being. the thematic coding's qualitative data further demonstrated the significance of continuous professional development in the promotion of a comprehensive educational approach that is advantageous to both students and teachers. the qualitative findings of continuous workplace professional development for teachers identify four categories: teachers’ teaching approach, school environment, students’ attendance, and whole school community engagement, as seen below (table 7). table 7. qualitative findings continuous workplace professional development for teachers. continuous workplace professional development for teachers findings teachers’ teaching approach (positive changes) the beneficial modifications in instructional strategies implemented by teachers during workplace professional development certainly considerably enhanced student accomplishment in both theoretical and practical evaluations. a teacher's capacity to foster confidence in students when confronting problems is a crucial element of student engagement. through the integration of novel pedagogical ideas and approaches gained through professional development, educators have enhanced their effectiveness in fostering active learning and elevating academic performance. these enhancements signify a transformation in educators' convictions, perspectives, and pedagogical philosophies, allowing them to more effectively tackle real-world classroom obstacles. this study's results demonstrate a significant association between the level of professional development pursued by teachers and the establishment of a classroom culture based on inquiry and reflective practice. school environment (more equipment was provided) the purchase of new gym equipment, the renovation of sports facilities, and the provision of additional teaching resources have all significantly improved the school's physical education environment. in addition to producing measurable improvements in students' physical assessment scores, the infrastructure improvements gave students a greater sense of purpose and self-worth. improved resources and a more conducive learning environment are responsible for the positive correlation between student engagement and performance in physical activities. this emphasizes how crucial a supportive and well-equipped learning environment is for encouraging participation and success in physical education. students’ attendance (increase in students' attendance at phe lessons) the results of this study demonstrate the positive impacts of continuous professional development on teacher effectiveness and student performance, underscoring its critical role in physical and health education. the study shed light on the perspectives and asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 153 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group continuous workplace professional development for teachers findings experiences of district-level administrators and principals with regard to professional development initiatives. educational leaders can better create a nurturing and engaging learning environment that supports students' overall well-being by remaining up to date on the latest research and evidence-based practices. professional development is also seen as a strategic opportunity and a shared responsibility that serves as a basis for pedagogical change and the validation of existing teaching practices. it encompasses both social and personal elements and has emerged as a top priority for teachers committed to enhancing students' attainment of learning objectives. whole school community engagement (teachers vs students) volleyball, football, marathon race. students' service learning on bmi and shield awareness. students' academic performance is improved, and their general wellbeing is greatly enhanced when physical education and health education are approached holistically. teachers equip students with the knowledge and abilities they need to live active, health-conscious lives by integrating a variety of physical activities and servicelearning opportunities into the curriculum. nearly 90% of studentled "service as action" projects this academic year were centered around sports and physical activity, demonstrating the high level of participation from the school community. this widespread participation highlights students' commitment to promoting wellness in the classroom and reflects a growing awareness of healthy lifestyle choices. this proactive involvement underscores the vital role that physical education plays in creating well-rounded individuals and fosters a culture of health and well-being. according to a large study conducted in the us, children who participated in interschool sports and had more opportunities for physical education were less likely to experience issues related to overweight and obesity. 5. discussion and conclusion the finding of this article emphasizes the importance of providing teachers with ongoing professional development and the need to allocate funds for resources and support to ensure that teachers have access to opportunities for ongoing learning. this chapter explores the idea that professional development is a potent instrument for enhancing education and raises concerns about its capacity to influence student performance and alter teacher conduct. according to bailey (2018) the field of physical and health education (phe) is influenced by a multitude of disciplines, which are reflected in a diverse array of research questions. it is challenging to identify an additional field of educational research and practice that boasts a similarly diverse array of contributory collections of knowledge. positively, the majority of teachers engage in some form of training, which may be considered a systemic asset that should be strengthened. garcía and weiss (2019) also contributed to the body of knowledge by emphasizing the importance of ongoing professional development for physical health education teachers and students. according to the research question of this current study, is there a difference in students' academic achievement from unit one to unit three in physical and health education classes after teachers’ participation in workplace professional development training? as seen in (table 2). the descriptive statistical results for the mean and standard deviation between unit 1 criterion a (m = 3.5; sd = 3.46), unit 2 criterion a (m = 7.16; sd = 1.55), and unit 3 criterion a (m = 7.18; sd = 1.55) for the knowing and understanding test scores after teachers’ training indicate notable differences. the paired sample t-test result in (table 4) shows a significant difference, with m = [3.62500], sd = [3.76473], t [127] = [-10.894], p < .000. workplace professional development has likely enhanced teachers' knowledge and abilities, leading to the adoption of more effective teaching approaches that specifically target and address students' required areas of knowledge and comprehension. consequently, students in units 2 and 3 may have experienced improved learning outcomes due to teachers providing more targeted instruction, resulting in a higher average score and a reduced variation in results, such as a smaller standard deviation compared to unit 1. additionally, the teaching staff's increased self-confidence resulting from professional growth in the workplace may have inspired them to employ innovative and creative instructional strategies, potentially leading to greater student engagement and improved educational achievements. in their study, steyn and van niekerk (2005) professional development is instrumental in enabling educators to acquire the most current knowledge of the subjects they instruct and to implement effective learning strategies. the research indicates that the school community can foster a supportive professional community by promoting collaboration and networking. this can facilitate the exchange of best practices and resources. additionally, see the study of newmann, king, and youngs (2000). they suggested that professional development should concentrate on five critical components of school capacity: teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions; professional community; program coherence; technical resources; and principal leadership. this implies that when educators feel more confident, it may lead to significant advantages in the classroom. the correlation between teacher confidence and student performance underscores the need for continuous professional development and support for educators. current research shows that investing in professional development programs for teachers in the workplace can ultimately enhance student achievement, as evidenced by these two studies. the study's findings led to the conclusion that when teachers participated in workplace professional development training, students' academic success significantly increased. this implies that funding for teachers' professional growth may directly affect student performance. according to gaikhorst, märz, du pré, and geijsel (2019), school principals prioritize the structural and cultural conditions for teacher development programs (tdp), with a particular emphasis on the learning attitudes, differentiation, and knowledge sharing of teachers. nevertheless, they encounter difficulties in executing these conditions, particularly in the context of internal learning activities. by giving teachers the chance to advance their knowledge and abilities, we can build a more efficient educational system that is advantageous to teachers as well as students. to promote a culture of quality and continual progress in education, it is critical to acknowledge the significance of continuing professional development and support for teachers (supovitz & turner, 2000).the study of dahlqvist (2023) it is vitally important to provide asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 154 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group primary teacher students with the requisite abilities, particularly information-seeking skills, as they play a significant role in influencing learners' development. this current study demonstrates that when teachers have appropriate training and resources, they have the ability to make a considerable effect on the learning process of students. the outcome of this impact is significant, as it leads to a major improvement in students' academic performance. furthermore, when teachers receive adequate training and are supported by an ongoing workplace professional development program tailored to their needs, they are able to implement effective teaching methods, which ultimately produce a positive impact on students' academic achievement as seen in this study. our argument is supported by the study of bortes and giota (2024). the findings confirm the advantages of both teacherand student-centred teaching practices in terms of academic achievement, while also advising against the overuse of self-directed instruction. it is crucial to emphasise that the study underscores the impact of instructional methods on the mental health of students, in addition to academic outcomes. effective workplace professional development training helps teachers improve their techniques and confidence. is there a difference in students' applying and performing criterion c for units one to unit three in physical and health education classes after teachers’ participation in workplace professional development training? following teachers' involvement in workplace professional development training, there was an increase in students' application and performance of criterion c for units one to three in physical and health education classes. teachers' improved knowledge and instructional skills as a result of their professional development training might be credited with this progress. the results indicated that there was no significant difference between unit one and unit two of the students’ performance score m = [.09375], sd = [2.14600], t [127] = [.494], p = < .622. furthermore, the paired sample t-test result for unit one and unit three (criterion c) applying and performing shows a significant difference m = [-1.09375], sd = [2.25339], t [127] = [-5.491], p = < .000. these results suggest an increase in mean scores and a decrease in standard deviation between unit 1 and unit 3, indicating a potential improvement in the students’ performance score. on the other hand, the result of the paired sample t-test for unit 2 and unit 3 shows a significant difference m = [-1.18750], sd = [2.19789], t [127] = [-6.113], p = < .000. see (table 5). the findings of the independent samples t-test indicated that there was no statistically significant disparity between the performance scores of units 1 and 2 among the students. this suggests that there was no significant difference in the performance levels of the two units. however, the paired sample t-test results for criterion c in units 1 and 3 showed a substantial difference between the average scores and standard deviation. this indicates a potential improvement in students' performance scores in unit 3. the paired sample t-test results also show a significant difference in the means and standard deviations between units 2 and 3, implying that unit 3's performance score has increased. these statistics suggest that students may have achieved higher performance in unit 3 compared to units 1 and 2. additional investigation is required to identify the components contributing to this improvement in performance. according to the study of kipping et al. (2014) the study intervention included teacher training, lessons and childparent interactive homework plans, all resources needed for lessons and homework, and written materials for school newsletters and parents. the intervention was given to children in school year 5 (age 9-10 years). schools assigned to control received regular classes. the conclusions and arguments of this current study are supported by their results. teacher training is crucial and has a substantial influence on students' mastery of the factual, procedural, and conceptual knowledge of the units in physical and health education classes. the beneficial effect that students' application and performance of running, basketball dribbling abilities, and football dribbling skills had on the criterion c skills assessment emphasizes how crucial it is for educators to receive continual support to improve student results. to what extent is the impact of workplace professional development on physical health education teachers? teachers of physical health education benefit greatly from workplace professional development because it provides them with the skills and information needed to engage and instruct students. teachers were able to design relevant and engaging units for classes that motivate students to improve by enhancing their own abilities and subject matter knowledge. ultimately, this results in better student performance and a more enjoyable learning environment for all parties. as argued by alhababy (2016), anyone teaching physical education must be competent, meaning they must possess the abilities, know-how, comprehension, and experience required to organise, carry out, and assess the students' work in an atmosphere that is safe and appropriately challenging. because of the importance of physical and health education teachers' competency, workplace professional development plays a major role in raising teachers' proficiency levels across all educational contexts. similar to the results of this study, dwiyogo and cholifah (2016) further supported the idea that one way to raise the effectiveness of physical education teachers in elementary schools is to implement cpd that is integrated with ict. in order to become a lifelong teacher and learner, cpd aims to improve and develop professional competence in terms of a teacher's knowledge, attitude, and abilities. yoon and armour (2017) additionally validated how professional development training affected teachers' pedagogies and student outcomes. overall, the impact of workplace professional development on health and physical education teachers is significant. teachers are crucial to fostering a culture of excellence and continuous advancement in the field of education. through workplace professional development, teachers can stay current on innovative teaching methods and best practices, which ultimately benefits their students. a happier and more effective learning environment may result from instructors' increased motivation and sense of self-worth as a result of ongoing professional development. this study's findings contribute to our understanding of the disputed nature of inclusion in modern pe and underscore the importance of conducting research with different stakeholders in physical education teaching and cpd. this study suggests that cpd providers play an important role in expanding teachers' understanding of inclusive pedagogy (makopoulou, penney, neville, & thomas, 2022). 5.1. conclusion the necessity of ongoing professional development for teachers of physical health education is emphasized by this study. to encourage collaboration and networking among members of the school community, it suggests hosting conferences, seminars, and networking events. this could facilitate the exchange of best practices and useful resources and promote the growth of a positive professional network. to improve their teaching methods and advance the welfare of their students, educators can overcome obstacles like time and resource limitations, resistance to change, and the adoption of sustainable practices. students benefit from teachers' ongoing education and development because it ensures they receive an innovative education and promotes the formation of lifelong healthy habits. teachers are able to adapt to changing student needs and offer a comprehensive education, which benefits both students' and teachers' overall success and well-being. according to the study, encouraging networking and cooperation within the school community can help spread resources and best practices and create a positive asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 144-156 155 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group professional environment. physical health education teachers should participate in continuous professional development to maintain relevance, innovation, and effectiveness. investing in teachers' professional development directly influences students, leading to increased engagement, motivation, and achievement. cooperating on instructional ideas and exchanging best practices ensures a well-rounded and thorough education for all students and teachers. 5.2. implications and future research this article aims to contribute to the existing literature by offering comprehensive descriptions of workplace professional development for novice ib physical and health education teachers. the focus is on continuous data collection of their teaching practices through high-quality unit preparation, the use of atl skills, the provision of feedback, and the implementation of quality assessment methods to enhance students' academic performance. we acknowledge the impact of workplace professional development for physical and health education teachers of ib curriculum (wong & oh, 2023). all of these highlight the importance of devoting resources and time to reducing challenges. a call to action for educational institutions and educators is to prioritize opportunities for in-service teachers to participate in workplace professional development and to invest in these events. future research might focus on identifying the most effective techniques and approaches that improve professional development outcomes. additionally, studying how different types of professional development influence student achievement could provide valuable data for educators and policymakers. references alhababy, a. m. 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(2021). teachers’ motivation to participate in continuous professional development: relationship with factors at the personal and school level. journal of education for teaching, 47(5), 714-731. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2021.1942804 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2023.104364 https://doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2016.1268589 https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2021.1942804 142 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 4, 142-150, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5263 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an analysis of the learning outcomes of the 2018 geography curriculum for 9th and 10th grades according to webb’s depth of knowledge nurcan demiralp1 hulya yigit ozudogru2 ( corresponding author) 1department of turkish and social sciences education, gazi university, gazi faculty of education, division of geography education, ankara, turkey. email: nurcan@gazi.edu.tr 2faculty of letters, department of geography, department of human and economic geography, ankara hacı bayram veli university, ankara, turkey. email: hulya.yigit@hbv.edu.tr abstract there are many taxonomies in education related to the cognitive learning domain. this study aimed to analyze the learning outcomes in the 9th and 10th grade 2018 geography curriculum according to webb's depth of knowledge. document analysis was used in the study. the geography curriculum was analyzed by considering the four levels of webb’s depth of knowledge and the scope of the acts and learning outcomes identified for social sciences. in this context, the levels of 56 learning outcomes in the 2018 geography curriculum were analyzed by grade and unit. it was found that the learning outcomes in webb's depth of knowledge were not distributed evenly across grades, units and levels. half of the 9th and 10th grade outcomes were at level 2, while the other half were distributed between level 1 and level 3. at level 4, there was only one outcome in grade 9. level 2 was predominant in the learning outcomes of the natural systems unit in grade 9 and of the human systems unit in grade 10. tasks with a high level of complexity were more common in grade 10. "the environment and society" and "the global environment: regions and countries" units did not have learning outcomes at all levels. the characteristics of the course content were effective in determining the level of the learning outcomes. for a holistic evaluation of the 2018 geography curriculum in terms of webb's depth of knowledge, it is recommended to examine how the 11th and 12th-grade outcomes were distributed. keywords: achievement, education, geography curriculum, learning outcome, taxonomy, turkey, webb depth of knowledge. citation | demiralp, n., & ozudogru, h. y. (2023). an analy sis of the learning outcomes of the 2018 geography curriculum for 9th and 10th grades according to webb’s depth of knowledge. asian journal of education and training, 9(4), 142–153. 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5263 history: received: 20 october 2023 revised: 28 november 2023 accepted: 12 december 2023 published: 22 december 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the concept ion and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the p ublished version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................143 2. method...........................................................................................................................................................................................................145 3. findings and implications .......................................................................................................................................................................146 4. discussion, conclusion, and recommendations...............................................................................................................................148 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................149 mailto:nurcan@gazi.edu.tr mailto:hulya.yigit@hbv.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5263 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4102-1409 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5504-1641 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 142-150 143 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study was deemed important to conduct this study since it was thought that analyzing the 9th and 10th-grade learning outcomes in the geography curriculum 2018 according to webb's depth of knowledge levels would contribute to the literature and curriculum developers. 1. introduction education is defined as the process of bringing positive and desired changes in the behaviors of an individual in line with predetermined goals (ertürk, 2016), as well as a lifelong process in which an individual acquires the behaviors that he/she should have for life and takes an active role in the formation of these behaviors with his/her unique qualities (taşpınar, 2014). this process can be carried out properly through systematically well-planned education and training programs. an education program includes all educational activities planned to reach determined objectives, and a curriculum includes all teaching activities related to subjects to be addressed in various classes and courses at an educational level (demirel, 2012). curricula consist of four basic elements: objectives (learning outcomes), content (subject area), learning-teaching process (educational situations) and assessment and evaluation (demirel, 2012; hesapçıoğlu, 2010). learning outcomes consist of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that are decided to be gained by students through planned and organized experiences and those learning outcomes constitute the objective component of a curriculum (meb, 2005). they are also expressed as a systematic arrangement of the subjects that will be a source for students to have the specified behaviors (taşpınar, 2014). the geography curriculum is one of the curricula, that are created by limiting the objectives planned to be achieved by students. the 2018 geography curriculum is unit-based and consists of four units at the 9-12th grade level. these are the natural systems, human systems, global environment: regions and countries, and environment and society. in the geography curriculum 2018, there are a total of 125 learning outcomes, 22 of which are taught to students in 9th grade and 34 in 10th grade. learning outcomes, one of the basic elements of a curriculum, should be arranged in a way that reflect the high-level skills envisaged in the general objectives of the curriculum and enable students to acquire these skills (bümen, 2006; demiralp, 2017; şengül & isik, 2014). learning outcomes (objectives) in curricula should be prepared according to the cognitive levels of students to achieve their objectives. the stage of the cognitive level in the learning outcomes should be in a spiral structure so that the upper cognitive level covers the lower cognitive levels. this cognitive inclusiveness will lead students to use metacognitive skills as well as provide meaningful and permanent learning, thus enabling them to transform their knowledge into skills (demiralp, 2006; göçer & kurt, 2016; gülersoy & i̇lhan, 2020; öner, 2022). during the preparation of the curricula in turkey in 2005, the constructivist learning approach was adopted as the basis of education. students’ gaining problem-solving ability using their own experiences and producing their subjective knowledge during the process formed the basis of education according to the ministry of national education of turkey (meb, 2005). in the curricula, students are defined as individuals who produce knowledge, use it functionally in life, solve problems, think critically, are entrepreneurial, determined, have communication skills, empathize, and contribute to society and culture. geography course teaching aims to raise students as individuals who have geographical awareness, can use the knowledge they produce in life, find solutions to problems, think critically and have the ability to question (akınoğlu, 2004; karabağ & şahin, 2021; kızılçaoğlu, 2006; koç & aksoy, 2010; meb, 2018; şahin, 2019). in turkey, the 2018 geography curriculum, which was prepared by the ministry of national education (meb) in 2018 and is currently in use, guides the use of metacognitive skills, provides meaningful and permanent learning, is robust and associated with prior learning, as well as integrated with other disciplines and daily life within the framework of values, skills and competencies (meb, 2018). especially since the 1950s until today, various taxonomy studies have been carried out to facilitate the correct determination of educational objectives or to guide the determination of educational objectives. some of these are bloom's taxonomy, math taxonomy and solo taxonomy. bloom's taxonomy includes a six-stage description of the objectives related to the cognitive domain, while the solo taxonomy has a five-stage and hierarchical structure according to the complexity of students' responses (özkaya, 2022). in webb's depth of knowledge, an important point is that each level builds on previous one. at level 1, students should recall basic information and at level 2 they should demonstrate understanding of concepts and skills. at level 3, they must apply their knowledge in different contexts before engaging in critical thinking and synthesis. at level 4, they should succeed in critical thinking and synthesis. for example, at the recall and reproduction level (level 1), students might be asked to define climate change or name greenhouse gases. at the skills and concepts level (level 2), they might be asked to explain the causes of climate change or interpret data. at the strategic thinking level (level 3), students could be asked to apply their knowledge by creating a plan to reduce carbon emissions. at the extended thinking level (level 4), which is the highest level, students can synthesize information from multiple sources to develop a solution to reduce the negative effects of climate change (webb, 2002). the literature on the taxonomy of learning shows that bloom, solo and webb's depth of knowledge models have been analyzed in terms of curricula and exam questions. one of them is a study conducted to determine the role of students' metacognitive skills in solving mathematics problems according to webb's depth of knowledge levels (şengül & isik, 2014). in the literature, there are also studies in which standardized test questions and curriculum outcomes of different courses are analyzed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels. there are also studies conducted to analyze the mathematics (birinci, 2014) and science questions (özden et al., 2014) in standardized tests, as well as studies analyzing the outcomes of science (eke, 2018) and logic curricula (arslan, 2019). in addition, there are also studies in the literature that evaluate the 10th, i̇lhan and gülersoy (2019) 11th and 12th-grade outcomes of the geography curriculum according to the revised bloom's taxonomy (gülersoy & i̇lhan, 2020); 9th and 10th grade (öner, 2021) and 11th and 12th grade (öner, 2022) outcomes according to the solo taxonomy. provided that it is limited to the resources accessed, no study that analyzes the learning outcomes in asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 142-150 144 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the 2018 geography curriculum according to webb's depth of knowledge levels was found in the literature. for this reason, it was deemed important to conduct this study since analyzing the 9th and 10th-grade learning outcomes in the 2018 geography curriculum according to webb's depth of knowledge levels would contribute to the literature and curriculum developers. 1.1. depth of knowledge (dok) levels webb (2002) and webb (2009) developed the depth of knowledge model to classify educational activities according to the level of complexity in thinking. depth of knowledge (dok), developed by webb (2002) and webb (2009), is more than a categorization, it is a model that focuses on the depth of knowledge, revealing how deeply students need to know the content to complete a task. webb's depth of knowledge model is a framework for analyzing learners' cognitive requirements and examining the consistency between outcomes and assessment. this model, which is used in four important content areas: mathematics, science, language arts and social studies, aims to reach the highest level that cognitive development can reach. the model is based on analyzing cognitive complexities at various levels in academic standards and curricula (birinci, 2014; webb, 2009) . webb (2009) states that the depth of knowledge model aims to determine the level of depth that a piece of information a student has learned gives him/her at the cognitive level. the model is based on the assumption that it can be categorized based on cognitive demands in a way that covers all the elements that make up the program. for this reason, in educational environments, webb divided the problems into levels covering all objectives in terms of level and content area (şengül & isik, 2014; webb, 2009). task groups at each level reflect a different level of cognitive expectation required to complete that task. each depth of knowledge level defines the type of thinking required by the task, not whether the task is "difficult" or not (tezci, 2022). these levels, which webb divides into four, are recall and reproduction, skills/concepts, strategic thinking and extended thinking. the characteristics of webb's depth of knowledge levels (webb, 2002) in social studies are as follows; 1.1.1. recall and reproduction (level 1) level 1 involves students recalling facts, terms, concepts, trends, generalizations and theories, recognizing or identifying specific information contained in graphs. this level usually requires students to identify, list or define. tasks ask students to recall who, what, when and where. "identify or explain" means to recall (remind), recite or reproduce the task. tasks that require students to "define" and "explain" can be categorized at level 1 or level 2, depending on what is being explained and what is being defined. tasks that require students to recognize or identify specific information contained in maps, charts, tables, graphs, graphs, and drawings are mostly at this level (webb, 2002). students are expected to perform simple types of thinking such as "describe, explain, identify" and routine processes required by the level. for example, students are expected to determine in which month the most precipitation falls by looking at the precipitation graph of a place. students may be given tasks such as recognizing, defining and explaining the scale of a map, measuring the length of a line scale, reading information about a temperature graph, recognizing and defining the information in a diagram or drawing showing the stages of valley formation, and identifying the phases of valley formation. 1.1.2. skills / concepts (level 2) level 2 involves engaging in some mental processing beyond recall. this level usually requires students to compare or contrast people, places, events and concepts. converting information from one form to another, giving examples, classifying/sorting patterns into meaningful categories identify, interpret or explain problems (questions) and cases, patterns, reasons, cause and effect, significance or impact, relationships, perspectives or processes. this level requires students to interpret a result by going beyond the explanation or description of "how" or "why". tasks that require students to use maps, models, or puzzles related to a topic, to make definitions, interpretations and explanations about them, and to make inferences are mostly at level 2. at this level, students are expected to understand the pattern on a map related to a topic and put the pieces together (webb, 2002). students are asked to predict how and why migration occurs and what its consequences or possible consequences might be. students are expected to classify the climate and plant communities (plant formation) on earth, use topography maps to learn the properties of contour curves (to show them on the map), use various models to understand the shape and movements of the earth, predict possible situations and changes in the climate in the world and in the place where they live in the next fifty or one hundred years based on scientific data, distinguish the causes of natural and unnatural environmental problems (drought, desertification, floods and inundations, etc.) occurring on earth, explain the relationships between the causes and consequences of migration, explain the cases that are and are not examples of internal migration and external migration. with the tasks given at this level, students are expected to use information in a different context than they have learned, apply skills or concepts, take photos or videos, create mind maps, interview or make presentations. 1.1.3. strategic thinking (level 3) the tasks at level 3 involve drawing conclusions using evidence, applying concepts to new situations to solve problems, proposing solutions by analyzing similarities and differences in events and phenomena, and evaluating the results. it also requires recognizing misconceptions and understanding the relationship between time and space. level 3 requires complex reasoning, evidence use and thinking skills, encompassing the previous two levels. cognitive processes at level 3 are more complex and more abstract than those at levels 1 and 2. students are expected to justify answers to questions of how and why based on evidence and make concrete applications. tasks at level 3 require concluding; using evidence, citing evidence, applying concepts to new cases, using concepts to solve problems; analyzing similarities and differences in issues and problems; proposing solutions to problems and asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 142-150 145 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluating; recognizing and explaining misconceptions or establishing connections across time and space to explain a concept or an idea (webb, 2002). tasks at this level involve short-term use of higher-order thinking processes such as analysis and evaluation to solve real-world problems with predictable outcomes. reasoning is an important indicator of tasks at this level. tasks require the coordination of knowledge and skills across multiple subject areas to arrive at a solution. mental processes at this level consist of "analyzing, explaining by supporting with evidence, generalizing and creating" (tezci, 2022). students can be expected to examine the change in land use of a place in certain periods, predict the possible change in the future in various aspects, and prove this prediction. they may be asked to show the similarities and differences between two situations in this place by using graphic designs such as venn diagrams. students are given data about the soil, climate, hydrographic and topographical characteristics of the place where they live and the conditions suitable for the growth of various agricultural products and are expected to explain which agricultural products can be produced where with their justifications. studies that are conducted to answer questions such as "what are village and sub-village settlements? what are the similarities and differences between the general characteristics of these settlements and their agricultural and animal production?" can be given as examples. students are expected to create tables and graphs, produce various maps using geographical information systems, make short movies, create checklists, and write summaries or reports as the evidence and justification for these tasks. one of the important expectations of this level may be to organize a panel discussion as an indispensable part of discussion and conclusion skills. 1.1.4. extended thinking (level 4) level 4 is achieved by adding planning, research and development tasks on top of the previous level. it is mostly time-consuming, but often time and duration spent on the tasks do not have a distinguishing characteristic. students have to undertake more complex tasks. students are expected to make associations between knowledge, skills, ideas and concepts related to the subject matter. the most important feature of this level is that students are required to develop a product and prove it with evidence. students analyze and synthesize information obtained from various sources and examine it critically. in addition, students are expected to make predictions, plan by putting forward an opinion and propose a solution. level 4 requires the addition of planning, research, development, and reflection on top of the abstract and complex reasoning of level 3, often over an extended period. the length of time taken to carry out the study is not a distinguishing factor unless the required study is merely repetitive and requires significant conceptual understanding and the application of higher-level thinking. at this level, cognitive demands should be high and mental operations much more complex. to be at this highest level, students should be asked to relate knowledge, skills, ideas, and concepts within or across content areas, and the contexts of events, facts, and cases. the distinguishing factor for this level will be proving that the cognitive demands have been met through a task or product. level 4 requires students to analyze the information from multiple sources, synthesize it, examine alternative perspectives from a variety of sources, and explain and demonstrate how common themes and concepts are found across time and space. in some tasks, students are expected to make predictions supported by evidence and plan and develop solutions to problems by developing a logical argument. this level involves active and authentic learning experiences, such as project-based or problem-based learning, as students conduct investigations to solve real-world problems (webb, 2002). for example, students are expected to analyze how the factors that are effective in the drying of lake amik have changed over time depending on the characteristics specific to that place, what needs this was caused by, and what new problems it caused, and to bring solutions. in addition, students are expected to transform their studies into a product and prove it through the product. at this level, students are asked to conduct problem-based or project-based spatial analysis studies based on accurate and reliable data. students make spatial plans and develop suggestions on how to prevent frequent floods and inundations. students may be given tasks such as revealing the earthquake risk in all its aspects through risk analysis and determining the measures that can be taken for the earthquake risk in that area and deciding where to install a water treatment plant in a city. at level 4, students begin to use their knowledge and skills that are related to the content in new environments. in this way, a learning environment is created in which their thinking processes are fully engaged , and the process is entirely shaped by the students themselves. as a result, especially in this process, where new products are designed and developed, there are outputs in which students take on tasks that develop their cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills. students can design a new story, a new plan or project, or a new digital content. whatever product students develop at the end of this level, it must be new, created by the student and the student must manage the process as the sole leader. 1.2. purpose of the study and problem statement since webb's depth of knowledge is a model in which students need to know the content in depth to complete a task, this study aims to analyze the learning outcomes for the 9th and 10th grades in the 2018 geography curriculum according to this model. in this respect, the study sought to answer the question: how are the learning outcomes in the 2018 geography curriculum distributed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels in the "natural systems, human systems, global environment: regions and countries, and environment society" units in the 9th and 10th grades? 2. method a basic qualitative research design, which is widely used in educational studies, was used as the methodology of this study. in basic qualitative research, data are obtained from documents, interviews or observations. the data used in this study were obtained from documents. document analysis can be used as a complementary analysis or as an independent method and takes less time (kiral, 2020). it requires data selection rather than data collection (bowen, 2009). in this method, which is used to identify the recurrent pattern in the data, the findings are presented as themes. interpretations are the researcher's understanding of the phenomenon of interest (merriam, asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 142-150 146 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2018). in this study, the learning outcomes in the 2018 geography curriculum were analyzed by using the document analysis method. the learning outcomes were analyzed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels according to units and grades and the findings were compared. a basic qualitative research method was used in this study. basic qualitative research is the most widely used research in education. data are collected through interviews, observation or document analysis (merriam, 2018). although document analysis is mostly complementary to other research methods, it can also be used as an independent method (kiral, 2020). document analysis, which means examining the documents related to the researched subject in accordance with scientific principles, takes less time than other research methods. it requires data selection instead of data collection (bowen, 2009). data analysis involves identifying recurring patterns by characterizing the data. findings are themes. interpretations are the researcher's understanding of the phenomenon of interest (merriam, 2018). in this study, the learning outcomes in the 2018 geography curriculum were analyzed by document analysis method. the learning outcomes were analyzed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels by unit and grade and the findings were compared. 2.1. data collection tool, data collection and analysis in the study, the 2018 geography curriculum was used as the data collection tool. the 2018 geography curriculum was accessed at the website of the presidency of the board of education (meb, 2018). the curriculum is open to public use and review. this curriculum was selected as it is the current curriculum that is still in use in schools. the learning outcomes for the 9th and 10th grades and the distribution of these learning outcomes to the units were obtained from this document. after that, contents of the geography curriculum were analyzed. in the analysis process, verbs that are suitable for webb's depth of knowledge levels were first determined (meb, 2018). while determining these verbs, studies in the literature were reviewed. among these studies, social studies levels of depth of knowledge for social studies (webb, 2002) was utilized. at this stage, the characteristics of the levels were tabulated. in addition, the learning outcomes for 9th and 10th grades and the list of verbs or verb phrases at the end of these outcomes were determined separately for each grade. these verbs were compared with the verbs identified in webb's depth of knowledge circle, and it was decided at which level of webb's depth of knowledge the verbs and verb phrases in the outcomes should be. then, the content of the outcomes was focused on. with these contents, the outcomes were re-examined, and for each outcome, it was re-decided at which level the outcomes should be located by taking into account the task and thought indicators expected from students according to webb's depth of knowledge levels. to determine which level the verbs of the outcomes belonged to, the researchers first coded them separately, and then the two separate lists were reduced to a single list based on a joint decision. this was done to avoid any deviation in webb's depth of knowledge levels. then, the opinions of two field experts were consulted to make a preliminary evaluation of this list in terms of suitability. to obtain the opinions of the field experts, explanations of webb's depth of knowledge levels, verbs determined in accordance with these explanations, and examples prepared for some of the topics within the scope of the geography curriculum were placed in this list. a table was created in which the relevant outcomes were written next to each webb's depth of knowledge level. this table was presented to two geography educator field experts as a list with the headings "appropriate, not appropriate, should be changed". the outcomes that both of the experts were in agreement with each other were determined, and the outcomes that were evaluated as different from each other were re-examined and analyzed by the researchers and the final table was created. in this way, it was attempted to reduce errors in the analysis process. after the final assessment tool was created, the data were analyzed descriptively. the frequencies and percentages of each of the 9th and 10th-grade learning outcomes of natural systems, human systems, global environment: regions and countries, and environment society units in the geography curriculum were calculated separately according to webb's depth of knowledge levels and grades. the models and patterns between the grades were tried to be revealed. in this study, webb's depth of knowledge levels were named as level 1, level 2 , level 3 and level 4 in order from the simplest to the most complex task. the most discussed verb by the researchers was "explain". however, since the complexity of tasks rather than verbs is an important classification tool in webb's depth of knowledge levels, the verb "explain" was re-evaluated together with the outcome. the outcomes defined as "explain" in the geography curriculum are used in the sense of "tell" and are accepted as level 1 because they involve defining what students have learned or expressing basic knowledge, that is, recalling. the verb "explain with examples", on the other hand, has more than one level of complexity, so the difficulty level of the task has increased, and for this reason, it has been determined as level 2. 3. findings and implications in this section, the findings on the learning outcomes of 9th and 10th grades were analyzed respectively according to the units and webb's depth of knowledge levels. a) the results of the analysis conducted to answer the question "how are the 9th-grade learning outcomes of the natural systems, human systems, global environment: regions and countries, and environment and society units in the 2018 geography curriculum distributed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels?" are given below. first, the numbers, durations and percentages of the 9th-grade learning outcomes and the verbs at the end of these outcomes are given in table 1. according to the table, there are a total of 22 learning outcomes in the 9th grade. there are 13 outcomes in natural systems, 4 in human systems, 3 in global environment: regions and countries, and 2 in environment and society unit. the time allocated to the learning outcomes from maximum to minimum is as follows: natural systems, human systems, global environment: regions and countries, and environment and society units. 11 verbs were identified for a total of 22 outcomes. among these, the most repeated verbs are "explain, explain with examples, make inferences and evaluate" (table 1). asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 142-150 147 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. the numbers, durations and percentages of the 9th-grade learning outcomes and the verbs included in the learning outcomes. unit n u m b er o f o u tc o m es d u ra ti o n o f o u tc o m es p er ce n ta g e o f o u tc o m es e x p la in g iv e ex am p le s m ak e in fe re n ce s r el at e c o m p ar e d is ti n g u is h e x p la in w it h e x am p le s c la ss if y e v al u at e a n al y ze s u se t o ta l natural systems 13 47 65 5 3 1 1 1 1 1 13 human systems 4 15 21 1 2 1 4 global environment: regions and countries 3 5 7 1 1 1 3 environment and society 2 5 7 1 1 2 total 22 72 100 5 1 3 1 1 1 4 1 3 1 1 22 these verbs were analyzed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels considering the content of the learning outcomes and the descriptive statistics results are given in table 2. table 2. frequency and percentage distributions of 9th-grade learning outcomes according to webb's depth of knowledge levels. units/ webb’s depth of knowledge levels recall/reproduction skills/concepts strategic thinking extended thinking total f % f % f % f % natural systems 5 38.5 6 46 1 7.7 1 7.7 13 human systems 3 75 1 25 4 global environment: regions and countries 2 66 1 33 3 environment and society 1 50 1 50 2 total 6 27 11 50 4 18 1 4.5 22 9th-grade learning outcomes were analyzed according to the units. it was found that 5 of the 13 outcomes in the natural systems unit are at level 1, six at level 2, 1 at level 3 and 1 at level 4. three of the 4 objectives in the human systems unit are at level 2 and 1 is at level 3. two of the three outcomes in the global environment: regions and countries unit are at level 2 and 1 is at level 3. one of the two outcomes in the environment and society unit is at level 1 and 1 is at level 3. in the natural systems unit, which has the highest number of outcomes, the numbers of outcomes allocated to level 1 and level 2 are quite close to each other (table 2). level 4 outcome is only found in the natural systems unit. based on these results, it can be said that the only unit covering all levels is the natural systems unit. therefore, the natural systems unit is the only unit where students have the opportunity to study at all levels. the 9th grade outcomes were analyzed according to their levels, and it was found that six of the 22 outcomes are at level 1, eleven are at level 2, four are at level 3 and one is at level 4. accordingly, the learning outcomes are distributed as level 2, level 1, level 3 and level 4 respectively. b) the results of the analysis conducted to answer the question of "how are the learning outcomes of the 10thgrade natural systems, human systems, global environment: regions and countries, and environment and society units in the 2018 geography curriculum distributed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels?" are given below. first, the number, duration and percentages of the 10th-grade outcomes and the verbs at the end of these outcomes are given in table 3. table 3. the numbers, durations and percentages of the 10th-grade learning outcomes and the verbs in these learning outcomes. unit n u m b er o f o u tc o m es d u ra ti o n o f o u tc o m es p er ce n ta g e o f o u tc o m es e x p la in e x p la in b y a ss o ci at in g e v al u at e m ak e in fe re n ce s u se r el at e c o m p ar e a n al y ze d is ti n g u is h c la ss if y g iv e ex am p le s e x p la in b y e x am p le s natural systems 17 36 50 6 1 3 4 1 2 human systems 12 24 33 3 5 1 1 1 1 global environment: regions and countries 1 4 6 1 environment and society 4 8 11 2 2 total 34 72 100 8 1 6 5 7 3 1 2 1 there are a total of 34 learning outcomes in the 10th grade. there are 17 outcomes in the natural systems, 12 outcomes in the human systems, 1 outcome in the global environment: regions and countries, and 4 outcomes in the environment and society unit. for a total of 34 outcomes, 10 verbs were identified. among these, the most recurrent verbs are "explain, relate, evaluate and make inferences". these verbs were analyzed according to their levels considering the content of the learning outcomes and the descriptive statistics results are given in table 4. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 142-150 148 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4. frequency and percentage distributions of the 10th-grade learning outcomes according to webb's depth of knowledge levels. units webb’s depth of knowledge levels recall/reproduction skills/concepts strategic thinking extended thinking total f % f % f % f % natural systems 6 35 7 41 4 23.5 17 human systems 8 67 4 33 12 global environment: regions and countries 1 100 1 environment and society 2 50 2 50 4 total 8 23.5 17 50 9 26.5 34 the learning outcomes of the 10th grade were analyzed according to the units. six of the 17 outcomes in the natural systems unit are at level 1, seven are at level 2 and four are at level 3. while eight of the 12 outcomes in the human systems unit are at level 2, four of them are at level 3. only one outcome in the global environment: regions and countries unit is at level 3. two of the four outcomes in the environment and society unit are at level 1 and the other two are at level 2. the numbers of outcomes allocated to level 1 and level 2 in the natural systems unit are quite close to each other. in the human systems unit, there are more outcomes at level 2 and level 3. in the environment and society unit, level 1 and level 2 outcomes are equal to each other (table 4). when analyzed according to their levels, eight of the 34 outcomes are at level 1, seventeen are at level 2 , and nine are at level 3. according to this information, it is possible to say that the learning outcomes are respectively at level 2, level 1 and level 3. in the 10th grade, there are no outcomes at level 4. therefore, there are no tasks that students can be assigned. 4. discussion, conclusion, and recommendations this study aims to analyze the learning outcomes for the 9th and 10th grades in the 2018 geography curriculum according to webb's depth of knowledge levels by unit and grade. in this context, a total of 56 outcomes were evaluated. half of all outcomes (50%) are at level 2, while the other half is shared between level 1 and level 3. there is only one learning outcome at level 4 in the 9th grade, and there is no learning outcome at level 4 in the 10th grade. in the 9th and 10th grades, the outcomes in the natural systems unit are evenly distributed between level 1 and level 2. in both 9th and 10th grades, there are more outcomes in the human systems unit at level 2. the environment and society unit and the global environment: regions and countries unit do not have a learning outcome representing each level due to the low number of learning outcomes. considering the content of these units, the lack of outcomes at level 4 and the absence of more in-depth, long-term and problem-based studies can be considered as a deficiency. ‘the natural systems’ unit at 9th grade include all levels. the same unit at 10th grade includes level 1, level 2 , and level 3. level 4 is only included in one learning outcome in the natural systems unit in grade 9. according to webb's depth of knowledge levels, a good balance of cognitive demand was not achieved at both grade levels in the 9th and 10th grade outcomes. it was concluded that the outcomes of strategic thinking and extended thinking levels should be included in all grade levels. based on these results, it is seen that there is no systematic and balanced distribution of the 9th and 10th-grade outcomes according to webb's depth of knowledge levels and that the outcomes are concentrated at the level of recall and reproduction and skills/concepts. it is understood that strategic thinking and extended thinking outcomes are given very little space. the reason for this may be that the outcomes were created by prioritizing the characteristics and qualities of the content within the scope of the outcomes. in addition to this, it can be said that most of the outcomes are concentrated at level 2 because the geographical knowledge that will form the basis for the students in the 9th and 10th grades has intensive content, also consists of basic concepts and skills and their teaching requires a long time. according to webb's depth of knowledge level, considering the age and prior learning of the students, it would have been expected that 10th grade would have learning outcomes belonging to level 4, even more than the others. however, when the learning outcomes of both 9th and 10th grades are taken into consideration, it is seen that this expectation is not realized. while a 10th-grade student can take on more abstract and complex tasks than a 9th-grade student, the outcomes do not serve the development of students' thinking skills and their ability to create products. a similar finding is found in öner (2021) and öner (2022) study. öner, who analyzed the 2018 geography curriculum according to the solo taxonomy, stated that while there should be an increase in the number of outcomes belonging to the extended abstract stage as the grade level increases, this did not happen. i̇lhan and gülersoy (2019) and gülersoy and i̇lhan (2020) reached a similar conclusion in their studies in which they analyzed the 10th, 11th and 12th-grade geography course outcomes according to bloom's taxonomy and revealed that the cognitive demands of the outcomes were insufficient and some cognitive stages were not included at all. in the same study, they determined that the learning outcomes in the 2018 geography curriculum do not have a homogeneous distribution and that the learning outcomes related to high-level knowledge and cognitive process dimensions that ensure effective learning are insufficient. it is seen that this situation is not specific to geography course only. similar results were found in the studies conducted in the fields of turkish, logic, mathematics, and science in analyzing the outcomes and the questions asked to students in exams conducted by different institutions (eke, 2016, 2018; karabulut & tunagür, 2021; yegen, 2022). according to eke (2016), the outcomes in the secondary school physics curriculum (2013) are distributed at the first three levels according to webb's depth of knowledge level, and there are no outcomes at the 4th level. eke (2018) reached the same conclusion in his similar study for science course outcomes. he found that most of the outcomes were at the 2nd level of webb's depth of knowledge. he also found that the 4th-level outcomes were not included in the 7th and 8th grades. karabulut and tunagür (2021) concluded that webb's depth of knowledge level in the 2019 turkish course curriculum is not evenly distributed to learning outcomes according to grades and levels . it was determined that almost half of the outcomes in the turkish curriculum were allocated to level 2, followed by asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 142-150 149 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group level 3, and finally level 4. özden et al. (2014), in their study analyzing the teog (the standardized test for transitioning from primary to secondary education in turkey) questions of the 2013-2014 academic year, found that the questions were concentrated at the first two levels, level 3 questions, which measure higher cognitive skills, were included less and there were no questions at level 4. when the results of the study are evaluated together with the results in the literature, it is understood that this situation is not specific to the geography curriculum, but similar results are also found in the curricula that were prepared in previous periods and are still current. considering all the studies together, it is seen that similar results are not limited to the curricula and that the standardized test questions are also compatible with the results that were obtained about the learning outcomes. for this reason, it has been revealed that the issue should be handled with a supracurricular approach. the following recommendations are presented based on these results: training should be provided on taxonomy, classification and cognitive processes to those involved in curriculum development, learning outcomes should be organized in a way that cover all four levels of webb's depth of knowledge, considering the developmental characteristics of students, more emphasis should be placed on level 3 outcomes to develop skills such as critical thinking, analyzing, and interpreting, level 4 tasks should be given more place to raise geography-literate individuals who can produce solutions to today's problems with an inquiring mindset and who can produce products by using their creativity, to make a holistic evaluation of the 2018 geography curriculum in terms of webb's depth of knowledge levels, how the 11th and 12th-grade learning outcomes are distributed should be examined, preparation and assessment questions and activities of geography textbooks should be analyzed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels, geography questions prepared by meb and ösym (student selection and placement center in turkey) should be analyzed according to webb's depth of knowledge levels, webb's depth of knowledge levels should be taught to prospective geography teachers, and they should be encouraged to make sample applications using these levels, curriculum developers should take webb's depth of knowledge levels into account when setting learning outcomes, how the outcomes are realized in learning environments should be investigated to test the results of this study. references akınoğlu, o. (2004). constructivist learning and geography teaching. marmara geography journal, 10, 73-94. arslan, a. (2019). evaluation of 2009 logic course curriculum achievements in terms of webb's depth of knowledge levels . ankara: pegem academy publications. birinci, d. k. (2014). first experience in central system common exams: mathematics lesson. journal of research in education and teaching, 3(2), 8-16. bowen, g. a. (2009). document analysis as a qualitative research method. qualitative research journal, 9(2), 27-40. bümen, n. t. (2006). a milestone in program development: revised bloom's taxonomy. education and science, 31(42), 3-14. demiralp, n. (2006). map and globe usage skills in geography education. turkish journal of educational sciences, 4(3), 323-343. demiralp, n. (2017). examination of programs in geography teaching in terms of design and program elements and the 2017 curriculum. education and society in the 21st century, 6(17), 521-545. demirel, ö. (2012). curriculum development in education from theory to practice. ankara: pegem academy. eke, c. (2016). analysis of secondary school physics course curriculum outcomes according to webb's depth of knowledge levels . journal of education and training research, 5(3), 35-40. eke, c. (2018). analysis of the achievements in the science course curriculum according to webb's depth of knowledge levels. journal of social research and behavioral sciences, 4(6), 174-190. ertürk, s. (2016). program development in education. ankara: edge academy publishing. göçer, a., & kurt, a. (2016). examination of 6th, 7th and 8th grade oral communication achievements of the turkish language curriculum according to the solo taxonomy. bitlis eren university social sciences institute journal, 5(3), 215-228. gülersoy, a. e., & i̇lhan, a. (2020). evaluation of 11th grade geography course curriculum achievements according to the renewed bloom taxonomy. paper presented at the conference ii. international congress on geographical education. full-text proceedings book. hesapçıoğlu, m. (2010). teaching principles and methods, educational programs and teaching, nobel academic publishing . retrieved from https://www.structural-learning.com/post/webbs-depth-of-knowledge i̇lhan, a., & gülersoy, a. e. (2019). evaluation of 10th grade geography course curriculum achievements according to the renewed bloom taxonomy. international journal of geography and geography education, 39 , 10-28. karabağ, s., & şahin, s. (2021). 2005 geography course curriculum. karabağ, s. & şahin, s. & şahin, b. & (ed.). geography education geography course curriculum. in (pp. 95-110). ankara: pegem academy. karabulut, a., & tunagür, m. 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(2021). examination of 9th and 10th grade achievements of the geography course curriculum according to solo taxonomy . paper presented at the international geography education congress, october, sivas, abstracts. öner, s. (2022). analysis of 11th and 12th grade acquisitions in the geography course curriculum according to solo taxonomy. international social sciences studies journal, 93(8), 228-235. özden, m., akgün, a., çinici, a., sezer, b., yildiz, s., & taş, m. m. (2014). analysis of central system common exam science questions according to webb's knowledge depth levels. adıyaman university journal of science, 4(2), 91-108. özkaya, m. (2022). solo taxonomy e. in (pp. 73-90). yeşilyurt: educational taxonomies vizetek. şahin, b. (2019). a comparative evaluation of the 2005 and 2018 geography course curriculums. turkish journal of educational sciences, 17(1), 81-102. şengül, s., & isik, s. c. (2014). the role of 1st grade students' metacognitive skills in solving problems related to "webb's depth of knowledge levels". the journal of academic social science studies, 24(1), 93-127. taşpınar, m. (2014). teaching principles and methods from theory to practice. ankara: edge academy publishing. https://www.structural-learning.com/post/webbs-depth-of-knowledge http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/2018120203724482-cografya%20dop%20pdf.pdf http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/2018120203724482-cografya%20dop%20pdf.pdf asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 142-150 150 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group tezci, i̇. h. (2022). webb's depth of knowledge taxonomy. e. yesilyurt (ed.). in educational taxonomies. in (pp. 183-202). ankara: vizetek publishing. webb, n. l. (2002). depth of knowledge levels for four content areas unpublished manuscript wisconsin center for education research . madison, wi: university of wisconsin-madison. webb, n. l. (2009). webb's depth of knowledge guide-career and technical education definitions. retrieved from http://www.aps.edu/sapr/documents/resources/webbs_dok_guide.pdf yegen, ü. (2022). comparative analysis of the questions in the turkish subtest of the central exam held in 2019 and 2021 according to webb's knowledge levels. journal of education and humanities: theory and practice, 13(25), 123-142. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.aps.edu/sapr/documents/resources/webbs_dok_guide.pdf 136 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 2, 136-145, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.136.145 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group velocity approaches for scales in classical guitar education kaan oztutgan osmaniye korkut ata university, faculty of architecture, design and fine arts, department of music, osmaniye, turkey. abstract the aim of this research is to contribute to students, trainers and performers by examining the materials prepared for the effective and fast performance of the scales. as a descriptive study, literature review and document analysis were used in the analysis of the data. the results of this study revealed that guitarists should determine a sitting position suitable for their physical characteristics in order to perform a fast passage at a desired tempo and a comfortable way. in adittion, they should provide their fingers the ability to make minimum movement, and file their nails smoothly at the appropriate length and angle. another finding was that guitarists should conduct systematic studies on coordination and synchronization. similarly, they should memorize parts of the piece and accelerate in a controlled way starting from a very slow tempo, accompanied by a metronome. lastly, they should do velocity exercises for the right and left hands; vocalize the scales with various rhythmic variations, and conduct studies on i-m (m-i)/i-a (a-i), p-i (i-p)/p-m (m-p), a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) ve p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) finger combinations. keywords: music, music education, guitar, guitar education, velocity, velocity approaches. citation | kaan oztutgan (2021). velocity approaches for scales in classical guitar education. asian journal of education and training, 7(2): 136-145. history: received: 7 may 2021 revised: 1 june 2021 accepted: 28 june 2021 published: 14 july 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 137 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 137 3. findings and comments ............................................................................................................................................................... 137 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 144 5. suggestions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 145 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 145 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.20448/journal.522.2021.72.136.145&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-01-14 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/edu/article/view/3080 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3489-5709 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 137 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study aims to contribute to students, trainers and performers by examining the materials prepared for the effective and fast performance of the scales. 1. introduction instrument education is a long process involving the acquisition of many technical behaviors and knowledge towards music. new information about the instrument can be acquired and new technical behaviors can be developed in this process. various problems are likely to be encountered during this technical development process. these problems should not be considered as obstacles, but as factors that contribute to the development when efforts are made for solutions. hence, coşkuner and varış (2018) state that efforts towards to the solution of technical problems are of great importance in terms of musical development. it might be necessary to struggle with various difficulties in every step of instrument training. while some difficulties in basic musical knowledge, holding-sitting and finger movements need to be overcome in the beginning, the variety and level of difficulties encountered increase in time. one of these problems is that fast passages cannot be vocalized at the desired tempo. according to glise (1997) the common problem for students who have reached a certain level is how to improve fast playing. this situation is true for classical guitar as well as for all instruments. there is a misperception in the society that the performers who cannot reach a certain velocity are not good guitarists. however, velocity is a tool used for musical expression (tennant, 1995). to this end, it should not be forgotten that the main goal is not to play fast, but to increase the power of musical expression. for instance, if someone who saw andres segovia on the street told him "you are playing really fast", he would not take this person seriously since he did not understand the music andrew was making (chapman, 1999). yet, it is a fact that it is necessary to have the ability to make a certain velocity in order to strengthen musical expression in some works that need to be vocalized at a fast pace. therefore, there has appeared a need to benefit from special methods and studies in order to perform fast passages effectively. in this sense, the aim of this research is to examine the materials prepared for the effective and fast vocalization of the series, and to contribute to students, teachers and performers. 2. method 2.1. research model this qualitative research is a descriptive study in which literature review and document analysis techniques are used. 2.2. data collection yıldırım and simşek (2013) state that document analysis can be used as a stand-alone data collection method or together with other data collection methods in qualitative research. literature review and document analysis methods were used to collect data in this study. 2.3. data analysis in this study, document analysis was conducted in data analysis process. 3. findings and comments 3.1. approaches to basic behaviors 3.1.1. sitting-holding perhaps, the most basic element for a fast scale to be comfortably performed at the desired tempo is to hold the guitar in the appropriate position. according to küçükay (2004), for a good grip (for right-handers), the front part of the chair should be preferred; the guitar's waist should be positioned on the left leg with the stem facing left, and the left leg should be raised with a stand. also, the right leg should be opened enough to grasp the lower curve of the guitar, and the upper curve should rest on the chest area. the sound hole should be slightly turned up and the guitarist should turn slightly from the waist towards the left knee. the angle that the guitar makes with the ground plane should be 45 degrees, and the head of the guitar should be adjusted to stay at eye level in this position. in figure 1, there is a photograph for the sitting explained by küçükay. figure-1. sitting position of küçükay (2004). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 138 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the sitting in figure 1 is referred in many works in the literature. this grip, which allows the guitar to remain in the same position even when the hands do not contact with the guitar, allows both hands to move freely. to this end, it is widely preferred by classical guitarists. although the sitting in figure 1 is accepted as basic by classical guitarists, there are also performers who hold the guitar differently. the sitting of the famous guitarist pepe romero in figure 2 can be an example of this situation. figure-2. sitting position of romero (2021). although this sitting in figure 2 has great similarities with the basic sitting, which is widely adopted, there are also some differences. the most prominent and striking one of these differences is that the left leg is not placed in the groove in the body of the guitar. apart from the basic sitting figure 1 and the sitting given in figure 2, there are a number of different sitting approaches. it can be said that these differences stem from the anatomical features of guitarists. therefore, a guitarist who wants to successfully sing fast passages at the desired tempo should first determine a sitting suitable for his/her physical characteristics. 3.1.2. finger gestures finger movements are of great importance in every stage of guitar playing. this situation is felt more clearly in the scales that need to be vocalized quickly since the flawless and proper vocalisation of fast passages can be provided with the highest possible level of controlled movements of the fingers. according to ryan (1984), the posture (arch) of the right and left hands should not be distorted in fast passages and the fingers of both hands should move with great ease, avoiding excessive tension. also, the right hand should be kept as steady as possible. duncan (1993) states that it may be beneficial to lean the right thumb on the 5th or 6th string to stabilize the right hand in fast scales. in addition to these basic principles, parkening (1997) points out that the left hand fingers should be kept close to the string when not used, and should be moved as minimally as possible when used. the same is true for the fingers of the right hand. in this way, the distance covered by both fingers to touch the string will be minimized and a great time will be saved. 3.1.3. nails in classical guitar performance, nails have a great role in the formation of a comfortable technique as well as producing a good timbre. factors such as nail shape, nail length and lack of care directly affect the success in velocity exercises as well as in many basic technical studies. for this reason, it is crucial to vocalize fast passages and to make the nails suitable for velocity exercises. 3.2. coordination and synchronization approaches a fast passage that is not sounded clean enough loses its influence and expressive power on the listener. a number of variables can be counted for this situation. generally, problems with synchronization of both hands are at the top of these variables. regardless of which finger combination and approach is used, the ability to accurately vocalize a fast passage at the desired tempo depends on the synchronized movement of both hands. tennant (1995) defines synchronization as the simultaneous vocalization of the right and left hand fingers. although this subject has been addressed and developed with various exercises starting from the first lessons of guitar training, special studies may be required in order to perform the scales quickly. perhaps, the most basic of these is the synchronization study proposed by ryan. ryan (1984) states that focusing solely on the right hand can give some ideas on how to vocalize fast passages, but it should be also considered how to increase the coordination of both hands. an exercise that can be applied on the basic chromatic scale given in figure 3 is proposed in order to increase the coordination and synchronization. figure-3. chromatic scale exercise (ryan, 1984). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 139 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the exercise, the left hand fingers are relaxed simultaneously with the 8th rest right after each note, respectively, while the right hand fingers are brought to the ready position on the relevant string simultaneously with the 8th tace, respectively. especially in ascending scale, the fingers of the left hand should not be completely lifted from the string during relaxation for minimal movement until it is their turn to play. the letter "p" symbolizes the vocalization (play), and the letter "r" symbolizes the moment of relaxation in the example. this exercise, which should be practiced very slowly at the beginning, should be increased until the coordinated movements become automatic in a certain time period, with the accompaniment of the metronome (ryan, 1984). although it has been proposed on the chromatic scale in the initial stage, it is thought that working with this technique on all scales and with different finger combinations will significantly contribute to the synchronization of the two hands in the future. according to käppel (2016) synchronization, which is the most common form of right and left hand coordination, is a very complex process. some problems arise in this process such as placing the left hand fingers on the strings before the right hand fingers or the right hand fingers are positioned on the strings before the left hand fingers. in order to eliminate these problems caused by the inconsistency of both hands, the movements of the hands should be organized to the finest detail, and both hands should be moved at the same time in all exercises to be studied. that’s why, exercises for only one hand will not be effective enough in improving synchronization. figure 4 presents examples of käppel's exercises for the synchronization of both hands. figure-4. synchronization exercise (käppel, 2016). when the exercises are examined, it seems that käppel deals with the synchronization issue in a similar way to ryan's chromatic approach. even though the exercises have been notated at diatonic intervals, they have been prepared on the basis of adjacent frets. the main difference that separates käppel's synchronization studies from ryan's exercises is that after producing a sound with one finger of the right hand, the other finger silences the string as quickly as possible. in this sense, it can be said that the exercises suggested by käppel are for velocity exercise with synchronization. in addition, the exercises start with two notes and progress gradually covering the four fingers of the left hand on six strings, and are supported by different rhythm patterns and finger combinations. yates (2016) states that coordination exercises should be studied in the 5th position as it supports a more comfortable left-hand posture, and on the 4th string at the beginning since it has more reasonable string tension. the exercise related to yate’s approach is given in figure 5. figure-5. velocity exercise (yates, 2016). in the exercise, it is aimed that the fingers of both hands move simultaneously and play together in the best possible way. while practicing this exercise, the fingers that do not perform the vocalization process should be kept as close to the string as possible (yates, 2016). similar to the approach of ryan and käppel, this study, which was built on a chromatic basis, was also supported by combinations of ascending and descending fingers, and it was aimed to provide an acquisition for the basic stance of both hands. specifically, the main features that distinguish this approach from others are as follows: keeping the non-voicing fingers close to the string, starting the work on the 4th string, which has a more reasonable string tension, and performing the practice in the 5th position. yates also proposes a similar exercise to ryan's left-hand finger relaxation exercise under the heading of coordination. this exercise, which consists of three different stages as “ghosting”, “buzzing” and “normal”, is presented in figure 6. figure-6. “ghosting”, “buzzing” and “normal” exercise (yates, 2016). in the "ghosting" stage of the exercise, the left hand only touches the fret and string with the relevant note and does not apply pressure, while the right hand finger strikes the string simultaneously. in this stage, since the asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 140 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group left hand finger prevents the vibration of the string, sound production is consciously prevented. in the second stage (buzzing), while the left hand finger presses the string lightly, the right hand finger strikes the string simultaneously. the pressure force exerted by the left hand should be enough to allow the vibrating string to hit the fret during the "buzzing" stage. for this reason, during the “buzzing” stage, a clear sound is not obtained consciously and the scratchy sound created by the string hitting the curtain iron is heard. in the normal stage of the exercise, the left hand finger creates pressure at a level to produce a clear sound and the right hand finger strikes the string simultaneously (yates, 2016). the fact that this stage performs synchronization work while applying pressure at three different levels with the fingers of the left hand is an important feature that distinguishes this exercise from other approaches. successful completion of the exercise requires careful work at as slow a pace as possible and a high level of control. all of the approaches and exercise instances discussed so far are based on the chromatic scale. in the studies on the chromatic scale, while the fingers of the left hand move close to each other, the string passage is either absent or minimal. thus, since both hands are as stable as possible, the highest level of coordination can be achieved. string transitions are the biggest factor that could disrupt the synchronization of both hands. successful two-hand coordination in the same position and on the same string often tends to impair when it comes to string transitions. according to duncan (1980), this stems from the need for the fingers of the right hand to make a larger movement when passing to another string. due to this large movement, the timing difference, even for a very short time, can lead to impairment of coordination. the same is true for the left hand fingers, but the left hand fingers compensate relatively quickly for the timing change that occurs during string change. accordingly, trainers and performers mostly focus on right-handed exercises in string change. tennant (1995) expresses that one of the best methods to solve the problem of string transitions is to exercise on right hand finger independence. thus, it is thought that the velocity and correct vocalization rate in the right hand fingers will increase. figure 7 contains the exercise recommended by tennant for right hand finger independence. figure-7. right hand finger independence exercise (tennant, 1995). it appears that the exercise is aimed at training the six-string transition using various right-hand finger combinations. with this feature, it can be said that it has a preparatory quality for most of the right hand transition variations that may be encountered during the performance of the scales. similarly, the use of the empty state of the strings allows the guitarists practicing the exercise to focus entirely on their right hand movements. tennant (1995) argues that the open string approach will be effective in the string transitions of the fast passages encountered in the works. to this end, it is thought that by focusing only on the right hand, the problems of string transition that may be encountered in the works can be solved. in figure 8, there is an example for tennant's approach. figure-8. open string velocity approach (tennant, 1995). it is seen that the application is the same as the original in terms of rhythm, right hand fingering and string number, although empty strings are used in the example of a passage from fernando sor's op.9 (variations on mozart's magic flute theme). in this sense, it is imagined that after the empty string studies on the right hand, synchronization studies including the left hand fingers can be effective in solving the coordination problems caused by string transitions. shearer (1990) preferred to handle string passages with an approach that would not only limit the right hand but also include the left hand fingers. he also included bass accompaniment in his exercises. figure 9 also contains examples of shearer's exercises for string passages. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 141 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-9. velocity exercise with bass accompaniment (shearer, 1990). it is seen in the exercises that the change of the string is given gradually, first once, then two and three times. in this respect, it is possible to say that the issue of string change is handled from simple to complex systematically. unlike tennant's empty string approach, left hand is used in exercises. therefore, it can be said that these exercises are not only aimed at exercising the right hand, but also aimed at improving left hand transitions. one of the important issues to be considered in string transitions is especially right hand fingering. fingering made in accordance with the posture of the hand and the principle of movement will contribute to the solution of coordination problems that may occur in string transitions. glise (1997) divides right-hand fingering for string transitions into "clean fingering" and "cross fingering". according to this approach, if i and m fingers are used in the right hand, when it is necessary to pass to the upper string, the i finger, the closest finger according to the natural position of the hand, should be used. similarly, when it is necessary to switch to the lower string, the m finger, which is the finger closest to the natural position of the hand, should be preferred (oztutgan & oztutgan, 2018). there is an example for clean and cross fingering in figure 10. figure-10. an example for clean and cross fingering. in the example, after the mi note voiced with the m finger on the 1st string, the re note on the 2nd string is vocalized with the i finger overlaps with the "clean fingering" approach. in this way, the finger closest to the upper string has been used in the position of the right hand, and coordination of both hands has been tried to be preserved by minimizing the loss of time during the transition. this approach can be used with all finger combinations. 3.3. approaches to working method it is only possible for a performer or student to carry his/her existing potential in velocity to further through conscious and systematic work. every step taken in this process should be followed with a strategic approach by the guitarist. parkening (1997) point out that it is necessary to learn and memorize the fast passage in a work by vocalizing it as slowly and accurately as possible, and the velocity can be increased gradually after gaining confidence in the correct vocalization. memorizing the script to be voiced is important in terms of reducing the margin of error that may occur during note reading and the loss of time in various mental processes such as seeing the note, recognizing it and thinking about its place on the guitar. it is thought that working in the same way and as slowly as possible can raise awareness about finger movements, thus it will contribute to an increase in finger control. performing the scale or passage at the desired tempo may sometimes require long-term intensive work. according to vahila (1987), it is necessary to use a metronome in studies aimed at increasing velocity or in vocalizing fast passages. while working, the metronome should primarily be set to a very low tempo and the scale to be accelerated should be vocalized at this tempo at least two or three times. the metronome rate can be increased by one or two levels if the scale is slow and easily vocalized two or three times. however, if it is not possible to perform the scale smoothly and easily at a slow pace, the metronome rate should be reduced by one or two levels. this method should be continued repeatedly until the scale is vocalized at the desired tempo without mistake. this method proposed by vahila offers a controlled acceleration as well as a large amount of repetitive work. according to tennant (1995), velocity attacks should be made with right hand fingers to increase the ability to play fast. velocity attacks can be defined as vocalizing the note duration as it should be at the beginning and then in shorter units. stacatto signs should be paid attention in the studies about velocity attacks. in addition, it is important to play apoyando at the beginning and then play tirando. figure 11 contains examples of tennant's exercises for right hand velocity attacks. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 142 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure-11. right hand velocity exercises (tennant, 1995). as seen in the exercise, the second string of the guitar is voiced empty with the i-m finger combination, and 16 notes are used, which gradually increases towards the end of the measure. it is thought to be an effective starting exercise for a student or performer who has done the basic behaviors (holding, sitting etc.) and the necessary synchronization exercises. especially, when stacatto is being performed, using the next finger instead of the same finger on the right hand will be more suitable for the purposes and principles of the exercise. likewise, yates (2016) suggests empty string exercises for right hand velocity development, which is similar tennant's exercises. figure 12 presents examples of right hand exercises by yates. figure-12. right hand velocity exercises (yates, 2016). in the exercise, it is seen that the second string of the guitar is voiced empty, similar to the example in figure 11, but differently, rhythmic variations are included. in this way, these rhythmic variations will raise awareness about right hand finger change and control, thus contributing to the acceleration of the right hand fingers. making daily scale works is one of the keystones of musicianship and contributes to velocity exercises (vahila, 1987). perhaps the most basic scale that can be used in velocity exercises is the chromatic scale. it is possible to focus on the control of the fingers in velocity exercises due to its advantages such as less string passage, having a symmetrical structure and the presence of notes on neighbor frets. as a matter of fact, tennant (1995) suggests some exercises on chromatic scale for velocity development. figure 13 contains examples of exercises suggested by tennant. figure-13. examples of rhythmic exercises (tennant, 1995). the exercise has a study similar to the rhythmic variations previously given by yates in figure 12. however, this study differs from the exercise by yates in terms of using both hands and vocalizing on a chromatic scale. tennant (1995) states that working with various rhythmic variations contributes greatly to being able to play clear and fast. parkening (1997) added a different dimension to the work by transferring the rhythmic exercises in figure 13, and the velocity attacks in figure 11 to the c major scale. there are examples of exercises suggested by parkening in figure 14. figure-14. examples of rhythmic exercises (parkening, 1997). in this exercise, there is an approach that can be an outcome of the approaches discussed so far, and may be described as the last stage before the scales are performed as a whole. it is possible to diversify these studies and adapt them to all scales. velocity exercises are not limited to the right hand only. there are left-handed techniques as in solving synchronization problems. nonetheless, thanks to the advantage of using four fingers in the left hand, it is considered that there are no velocity problems in the left hand. therefore, the number and variety of studies on the left hand is quite low. glise (1997) expresses that it will be beneficial to do staccato and legato exercises for the left hand to increase left hand velocity. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 143 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.4. approaches to finger combinations even if a performer or student has been working on synchronization and velocity for a long time, she/he may not develop at the desired level. the reason for this may be an error or incorrect learning in the study steps, or it may be caused by some anatomical differences. error or incorrect learning in the method of study can be fixed under the supervision of an instructor. however, it would be appropriate to work with different finger combinations for someone who cannot develop because of reasons such as anatomical or motor skills. to this end, the role of various right hand finger combinations in velocity will be examined in this section. when using two fingers on the right hand, there are a total of 12 combinations: m-i, i-m, m-a, a-m, i-a, a-i, p-i, i-p, p-m, m-p, a-p, p-a. of these, a-p and p-a are scarcely used. when three fingers are used on the right hand, it is possible to create many combinations, yet the combination of a-m-i and p-m-i is the most suitable one for vocalizing fast passages (yates, 2016). although many combinations can be produced numerically, the number of finger combinations that can be used in fast passages is very few due to the limitations in the anatomy of the human hand and the structural features of the guitar. these combinations can be classified under four main headings as as i-m (m-i)/i-a (a-i) approach, p-i (i-p)/p-m (m-p) approach, a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) approach and p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) approach. 3.4.1. i-m (m-i)/i-a (a-i) approach while playing the notes in classical guitar performance, it is important to change the finger in the right hand and not to use the same finger repeatedly. i-m or m-i combination is ussually used for finger changes. it is possible to say that all other combinations are shaped on this basic approach (oztutgan & oztutgan, 2018). this case did not occur by chance. according to shearer (1990) the muscles controlling the index and little fingers are more in every person than the middle and ring fingers. this allows the index and little fingers to work more independently than the other fingers. likewise, the middle finger with the widest movement muscles is the strongest finger, while the little finger with the smallest finger movement muscles is the weakest finger. the muscles controlling the index and ring fingers are equal in size, but the joint connection of the muscles controlling the ring finger with the middle finger limits the ring finger's range of motion. thus, the i-m (m-i) fingers stand out as the strongest and most independent fingers for vocalizing with two fingers. for this reason, guitar education all over the world starts with these two finger combinations. it can be concluded from the explanation by sherrod regarding the anatomical structure of the hand that i-a (ai) fingers can be preferred as an alternative to i-m (m-i) fingers. accordingly, i-a (a-i) finger combination may be among the first alternatives to be considered by people who cannot achieve success with i-m (m-i) fingers in fast passages in which finger independence and power are important. when the i-a (a-i) combination is chosen, it is noteworthy that the height difference between the i and m fingers that occurs in the i-m (m-i) approach is minimized. 3.4.2. p-i (i-p)/p-m (m-p) approach the thumb positionally separates from the other four fingers and moves in the opposite direction to these fingers. the weak bond with the other fingers positively affects the free movement of the thumb. likewise, the thumb has a very strong structure in terms of muscle mass. however, despite all these advantages, the thumb is not primarily preferred in the vocalization of fast passages. one of the biggest reasons for this is that the thumb is naturally positioned close to the bass strings due to the right hand posture and the structural features of the guitar. for this reason, the vocalization of bass strings is given primarily to the right hand thumb. thus, using the thumb is not preferred in a scale that needs to be performed with bass sounds or in a scale with bass sound just before/after it, as it is not ergonomic. nevertheless, it can be used with the combination of p-i (i-p), p-m (m-p) together with the other strong fingers of the right hand, m and i in scales without bass sound or in scales with bass sound but suitable in position. an example of this usage is given in figure 15. figure-15. example of p-i (i-p)/p-m (m-p) approach (dyens, 1985). the scale in the example belongs to the 5th measure of roland dyens' tango en skai. the right hand fingering marked in red was suggested by the researcher as an example of p-i finger combination. as seen in the figure, the fast passage starting on the bass strings and then connecting to an arpeggio enabled the use of the p-i finger combination. similarly, it is possible to use the p-m (m-p) combination in the situations that provide ease of transition. 3.4.3. a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) approach the string vocalization technique with a-m-i finger combination is a very effective approach for fast passages. this approach has been used effectively by a small group of guitarists since it was pioneered by narciso yepes in the mid-20th century (palmer, 2012). although it is effective, it has not been widespread enough as classical guitar education begins with i-m (m-i) approach and a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) approach has not been included in the educational materials. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 144 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the use of a third finger may offer an ideal solution for students and performers who cannot sing fast passages at the desired tempo with two finger approaches. considering that the task of vocalizing the bass notes is on the thumb and the little finger is not used effectively in classical guitar for various reasons, it is quite natural for guitarists who want to use three fingers to prefer i-m-a fingers. however, since it is not suitable for the natural movement of the hand, and because of the position of the fingers, it is a more correct approach to use the finger order a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) instead of i-m-a. in this way, it is possible to create a quick finger loop, just like in the tremolo technique, by benefiting the natural movement of the hand. in order to provide ease of transition in this cycle, the starting finger can be m or i according to the passage voiced. the a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) approach can be vocalized using traditional left hand fingering. however, when traditional left hand fingering is performed, it is possible to encounter unnatural string transitions and an asymmetrical structure with two notes on some strings and three notes on some strings. this makes it difficult to perform the series in a fast and synchronized way. palmer (2011) points out that in order to solve this situation, a change should be made in the fingering of the left hand so that three notes can be vocalized on each string. with this, it has become possible to vocalize the strings in a more controlled and faster way with the finger combination a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m). there is an of palmer's left hand fingering in figure 16. figure-16. left hand fingering example (palmer, 2011). in the example, two different left-hand approaches are given for the vocalization of the c major scale. accordingly, it is necessary to open more between the 1st and 2nd fingers (with one fret gap) in palmer's approach compared to the traditional method. considering the left hand anatomy, it is possible to do this with a short study or without it. 3.4.4. the p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) approach the p-m and i fingers are the strongest and most independently movable of the right hand. in this respect, it is possible to use them effectively in the vocalization of fast passages. just like the a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) approach, it is possible to create a fast finger loop with the combination of p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m). in order to provide ease of transition in this cycle, the starting finger can be m or i according to the scale voiced. when the appropriate starting finger is determined, it is possible to make easy string transitions by using the freedom of the thumb, and the up and down movement of the arm. despite all these advantages of the p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) approach, it is not suitable for the vocalization of bass accompaniment scales since the bass strings vocalization is primarily given to the right thumb. for this reason, it can only be preferred in scales without bass sound or in scales with bass sound but positionally suitable for vocalization. the p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) approach can also be used effectively with the three-note on each string approach that palmer have suggested. a vocalization example of the p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) approach with both left-handed methods is given in figure 17. figure-17. a vocalization example of the p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) approach. as seen in the example, two different left-hand approaches are given for the vocalization of the c major scale. accordingly, there is possibility to make more suitable string transitions in palmer's approach. to this end, taking into account palmer's suggestion, the p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) finger combination can be used more effectively. however, it should be in mind that a guitarist trained with traditional right-hand fingering should practice for a certain period of time in order to adapt to the p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) approach. 4. results in order to vocalize fast passages comfortably, the results found in this study is as follows: 1. the acquisition of basic behaviors such as sitting-holding sitting-holding and minimum finger movements on both hands. 2. filing the nails to be of appropriate length, angle and smooth. 3. systematic studies for coordination and synchronization. 4. memorizing the relevant parts of the piece, and accelerating it in a controlled way with a metronome by starting from the slowest possible tempo. 5. doing velocity exercises for the right and left hands. 6. performing the scales with various rhythmic variations. lastly, it has been concluded that studies should be conducted on finger combinations i-m (m-i)/i-a (a-i), p-i (ip)/p-m (m-p), a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) and p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(2): 136-145 145 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5. suggestions the suggestions are as follows: 1. preferring the p-m-i (m-i-p, i-p-m) approach when the combination of i-m (m-i)/i-a (a-i) cannot be achieved in fast passages without bass accompaniment. 2. preferring the a-m-i (m-i-a, i-a-m) approach when the combination of i-m (m-i) / i-a (a-i) cannot be obtained in fast passages with bass accompaniment. 3. further scientific studies on fast arpeggio and chord transitions. references chapman, r. (1999). the complete guitarist. ankara: dost bookstore publications. coşkuner, o., & varış, a. y. (2018). opinions of teaching staffs related to technical problems of students get educated piano educaton in professional music education ınstitutions. the journal of academic social science, 84(6), 23-36. duncan, c. (1980). the art of classical playing. miami: summy-birchard inc. duncan, c. (1993). classical guitar 2000. canada: summy-birchard inc. dyens, r. (1985). tango en skai. france: editions henry lemoine publishing. glise, a. (1997). classical guitar pedagogy. st. joseph: aevia publications. käppel, h. (2016). the bible of classical guitar tecnique. berlin: verlag neue musik. küçükay, b. (2004). starting method for classical guitar. ankara: evrensel music house. oztutgan, z., & oztutgan, k. (2018). fingering approaches in classical guitar education. art-e art journal, 11(21), 115-133. palmer, m. (2011). the virtuoso guitarist, volume 1: a new approach to fast scales. bowie: matt palmer music. palmer, c. m. (2012). the use of a-m-i scale technique to facilitate the performance of joaquin rodrigo’s concierto de aranjuez. doctoral thesis of musical arts, arizona. parkening, c. (1997). the christopher parkening guitar method volume 2: guitar technique. milwaukee: hal leonard. romero, p. (2021). photos: maestro pepe romero. retrieved from: https://peperomero.com/photosmaestropeperomero/duxmp5gzakltsmswwqnqxe3mh6qlhe. [accessed may, 9,2021]. ryan, l. f. (1984). the natural classical guitar: the principles of effortless playing. new jersey: prentice hall press. shearer, a. (1990). learning the classic guitar part 2. u.s.a: mel bay publications inc. tennant, s. (1995). pumping nylon: the classical guitarist's technique handbook. u.s.a: alfred publishing inc. vahila, m. (1987). how to master any musical ınstrument. ohio: paz publishing. yates, s. (2016). classical guitar technique from foundation to virtuosity part 1foundation. u.s.a: createspace independent publishing platform. yıldırım, a., & simşek, h. (2013). qualitative research methods in the social sciences. ankara: seçkin publications. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 124 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 2, 124-130, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5756 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the measurement invariance of the satisfaction with life scale across different age groups hatice kumandas ozturk1 esra calik var2 ( corresponding author) 1artvin coruh university, faculty of education, artvin, turkey. email: haticekumandas@yahoo.com 2 ankara yildirım beyazit university, department of social work, ankara, turkey. email: ecalik.var@aybu.edu.tr abstract measurement invariance allows for the comparison and interpretation of scores obtained from the same scales at different times. in this respect, the purpose of this research is to examine the measurement invariance of the satisfaction with life scale applied to different age groups. the study employs the survey model, a type of quantitative research. the purposive sampling method was used in the research. this method is one of the non-random sampling types. this method collected data from 120 individuals under the age of 25 and 120 individuals over the age of 60 who resided in ankara. the collected data were divided into two groups according to age: young and old. measurement invariance was examined in four separate stages by performing multiple group confirmatory factor analysis. these are configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariance. the data were examined to determine the configural, metric, and scalar invariance across different age groups by using multiple group confirmatory factor analysis. as a result, configural (χ²/df=0.84;p>0.05), metric (χ²/df=1.26; p>0.01), scalar (χ²/df=1.38;p>0.05), and strict (χ²/df=1.43;p>0.05) invariance are provided that the satisfaction with life scale has invariance properties for two different age levels. this research's application of the satisfaction with life scale scores to various age groups demonstrates measurement invariance and yields results with a similar structure. keywords: configural invariance, measurement invariance in different age groups, metric invariance, multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis, satisfaction with life scale, scalar invariance, strict invariance. citation | ozturk, h. k., & var, e. c. (2024). examining the measurement invariance of the satisfaction with life scale across different age groups. asian journal of education and training, 10(2), 124–130. 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5756 history: received: 19 february 2024 revised: 13 may 2024 accepted: 30 may 2024 published: 24 june 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the artvin coruh university, turkey has granted approval for this study. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 125 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 126 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 127 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 128 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 128 mailto:haticekumandas@yahoo.com mailto:ecalik.var@aybu.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i2.5756 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3636-3690 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6025-0576 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 124-130 125 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature life satisfaction may differ depending on adulthood. however, every adulthood period generally uses the same life satisfaction scale. measurement invariance allows for the comparison and interpretation of scores obtained from the same scales at different times. in this respect, the purpose of this research is to examine the measurement invariance of the satisfaction with life scale applied to different age groups in adulthood. 1. introduction life satisfaction plays an important role in issues such as health, work, and education that people have been dealing with their whole lives. life satisfaction, which is a subject of positive psychology with roots dating back to ancient times, will be more meaningful when it is considered together with many variables rather than on its own (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985). neugarten, havighurst, and tobin (1961) first used the concept of life satisfaction in their literature. life satisfaction covers the individual's evaluations of his/her past and present lives. life satisfaction is the idea that arises as a result of the comparison between the individual's current resources and future expectations. in this regard, the individual himself/herself is the only criterion of life satisfaction. in order to define life satisfaction, it is important to understand the concept of satisfaction (subaşı, 2021). as a matter of fact, life satisfaction is conceptualized as the satisfaction that takes place in the experiences of the individual throughout his/her life and is affected by many variables. there are many factors affecting life satisfaction. some of these are: physical and mental resilience, age, marital status, having a job, being free, having friends, social environment, doing sports, etc., (özdevecioğ lu & aktaş, 2007). according to ummet (2012) some characteristics of individuals with high life satisfaction are as follows: • enjoying activities in daily life. • having life goals. • belief in achieving the set goals. • have a positive self-image and see yourself as a valuable individual. • optimistic life attitude. the concept of life satisfaction does not only cover a specific situation; we can meet with the concept of life satisfaction in all areas of our lives (çevik, 2010). in essence, the concept of life satisfaction serves as a clear indicator of individuals' happy and well-being behaviors. therefore, when we compare happy individuals with unhappy individuals, it is indicated that happy individuals are more sociable, conduct their relationships correctly, are friendly, are healthy, are more successful professionally, have good financial gains, and synthesize the concept of happiness positively in their whole life (diener & seligman, 2002). in recent years, policymakers and professionals in the psycho-social fields have found the measurement of life satisfaction in various cultures, countries, and life periods to be a remarkable subject (diener, inglehart, & tay, 2013). professionals and policymakers perceive the macro policies they develop and implement, and they view their reflections on individuals' life perceptions as crucial feedback. life satisfaction is a concept reflecting an individual's own life evaluation (diener et al., 1985). there is little difference, or maybe there is no difference, between the recent life perception and the ideal life perception of individuals who are satisfied with their own lives (boniwell, 2012). research made about life satisfaction shows that life satisfaction is affected by variables like personality, marriage, job, culture, and life conditions (luhmann, lucas, eid, & diener, 2013). many research studies made about the relationship between life satisfaction and age show a u-shape relationship between these two variables (blanchflower & oswald, 2008; stone, schwartz, broderick, & deaton, 2010). some other research points in the direction that life satisfaction does not change within the life cycle (inglehart, 1990; suh, diener, oishi, & triandis, 1998). also, there are research studies demonstrating that life satisfaction increases in adulthood and old age, and these attract attention in the literature (blanchflower & oswald, 2008; prenda & lachman, 2001). all these studies make us wonder whether life satisfaction measurement scales can be used without adaptation in all life periods and whether we can obtain reliable results or not. different theoretical perspectives on life satisfaction offer different explanations for why it may change with age. early theories of life satisfaction proposed that objective circumstances like physical health, financial status, and social relationships most directly determine people's happiness (baltes & mayer, 1999). as a person ages, these circumstances may change for the worse, leading to a decline in life satisfaction. other theories, however, suggest that factors such as personality traits and future expectations can also play a role in life satisfaction. for example, researchers have found that people who are more extraverted and have higher self-esteem tend to be more satisfied with their lives (steel, schmidt, & shultz, 2008). additionally, socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that people may actually become happier and more satisfied with their lives as they age (carstensen, 1995). this is because older adults may become more aware of their own mortality and focus on making the most of the time they have left. overall, the research on age-related trends in life satisfaction is mixed. some studies have found that life satisfaction declines with age, while others have found that it either remains stable or even increases (carstensen, isaacowitz, & charles, 1999). it is likely that a combination of factors, including both objective circumstances and subjective characteristics, play a role in determining life satisfaction at any age. life satisfaction, which is an important variable affecting people's lives, causes positive or negative attitudes and behaviors in social life. merkas, raboteg-saric, and miljkovic (2011) emphasize that individuals with higher levels of life satisfaction socialize more easily and feel healthier both physically and cognitively. from this perspective, it's crucial to measure the life satisfaction of educated young adults under 25 and the life satisfaction of individuals over 60 who have a wealth of life experiences. numerous variables influence life satisfaction, as evidenced in the literature. the measurement tools to be used in measuring this characteristic should provide invariance in terms of certain groups. in particular, it is important to emphasize the concept of measurement invariance in terms of determining whether life satisfaction gives similar results in different subgroups that are not homogenous. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 124-130 126 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to classical test theory, test and item statistics in validity and reliability calculations about measurement results could change depending on the group and reflect the characteristics of group (crocker & algina, 1986). depending on this limitation in ctt, questions arise about the situations and levels at which the measurement qualifications of observed variables can be considered valid and generalizable. under that situation, mostly there are questions like “answerers in different cultures can interpret the same item similarly or whether individual differences like age and sex influence answers given” (vandenberg & lance, 1998). therefore, millsap and kwok (2004) are conducting measurement invariance studies to find answers to these questions. the measurement of the same theoretical construct at different measurement times across different testing methods or populations is known as measurement invariance (meade & lautenschlager, 2004). this method simultaneously estimates factor models for all groups under comparison. according to little (2013) in order for a measurement model to have the same structure in more than one group, the factor structure of the scale has to fit equally to the data obtained in more than one case. in this respect, measurement invariance is the same as factor loads of the items on the scale, correlations between factors, and error variances (byrne, 1994). one indicator of a scale's construct validity is that it measures the same feature in various subgroups. the validity of the measurement tool is analyzed by making comparisons between subgroups. when a measurement tool proposes a construct, it should provide the same measurements under various observation and working conditions. similarly, studies that aim to uncover differences between groups based on a construct presume that the measurements from the measurement tool for each group possess identical psychometric properties. thus, measurement invariance in a test means that it gives valid measurements for all groups, or that each item in the test gives the same results for all groups (tyson, 2004). confirmatory factor analysis-based methods examine measurement invariance by testing the similarity of measurement models between groups. this method's most significant advantage lies in its ability to examine all aspects of measurement invariance, including factor loadings, factor variances, and covariance. measurement invariance is tested by making comparisons among nested (hierarchical) models (meredith, 1993; steenkamp & baumgartner, 1998). when groups at the same competency level answer an item belonging to the measured trait with the same probability, it is considered invariant. the null hypothesis of an item's measurement invariance test for two groups corresponds to the equality of the item parameters in both groups, and the alternative hypothesis corresponds to the difference of the item parameters in the groups (verhagen, levy, millsap, & fox, 2016). in the absence of measurement invariance in a measurement tool, there are two main problems. the first one is the validity problem (borsboom, mellenbergh, & van heerden, 2004). if item functions differ by group, it can be said that the measurement tool does not measure the same construct in the same way in all subgroups. the second problem is that evaluations and comparisons are made by neglecting the fact that the relationship between the construct measured and the items responded to differs for each group (horn & mcardle, 1992). measurement invariance tests are analyzed in two different groups: confirmatory factor analysis-based methods and item response theory-based methods. the first step in determining measurement invariance, configural invariance, aims to investigate whether the same items measure similar constructs between groups. this method simultaneously predicts factor models for all groups. model fit indexes assess the validity of configural invariance, considering it the basic model. the configural invariance is a baseline model that can be compared to the metric invariance. once we ensure configural invariance, we investigate metric invariance to determine if the factor loadings between groups are equivalent. the invariance of factor loadings indicates that the structure has the same meaning across groups. once we achieve metric invariance, we investigate the scaler invariance of item intersections to identify metrically invariant items. scaler invariance (strong factorial invariance) indicates average equivalence across different groups. after ensuring scaler invariance, the last step is to test strict invariance. strict invariance (meredith, 1993) is the highest level of measurement invariance. strict invariance requires metric (factor loadings) invariance, scalar (indicator/item intersections) consistency, and error variance invariance. error variance invariance is considered an invariance of item reliabilities across groups (schmitt, pulakos, & lieblein, 1984); however, it is only valid if factor variances do not change across groups (cole & maxwell, 1985; rock, werts, & flaugher, 1978; vandenberg & lance, 2000). measurement invariance studies of the satisfaction with life scale (swls), which was adapted to turkish by köker (1991) have been conducted according to gender (akın arıkan & demirtaş, 2020; erdem, 2023; özgür, gümüş, & durdu, 2010; tuzgöl-dost, 2007) and different application times (akın arıkan & demirtaş, 2020). however, no study has yet investigated measurement invariance in relation to age. finding out whether a measurement tool achieves measurement invariance in various situations and groups is the most crucial aspect of its validity. this study aims to investigate the measurement invariance of the life satisfaction scale across various age groups. 2. method 2.1. research model the study employed a scanning method based on quantitative research techniques. the scanning method is a research approach that attempts to describe and depict the investigated situation in a similar manner (karasar, 2009). 2.2. population and sample a purposeful sampling method out of random sampling methods has been used in the research study. by this method, 120 young people below the age of 25 and 120 old people aged above 60 living in ankara were chosen, and data was collected from this sample. 2.3. data collection and analysis diener et al. (1985) developed the satisfaction with life scale (swls), which köker (1991) adapted to turkish for use in the study. this scale is a one-dimensional, likert-type scale and has five items. investigating configural, asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 124-130 127 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group metric, scalar, and strict invariances revealed how the swls measures invariance based on age and the direction of the research aim. researchers typically investigate measurement invariance by gradually testing hypotheses. while searching for measurement invariance, especially configural, metric, and scalar invariances are surveyed. the major level of invariance is configurational. obtaining evidence of configural invariance means that the item groups of the measurement scale test the same structure (vandenberg & lance, 1998). metric invariance tests whether factor loads are invariant among groups or not. in other words, if metric invariance is obtained, it can be said that individuals in different groups interpret items similarly. in situations where this invariance is not obtained, it can be interpreted that some items may be more important or attract attention in a group compared with individuals in the other group (byrne, 1994). the scalar invariance level, which is another level, investigates whether mean differences of observable variables result from means of implicit structures. whether fit indexes (chi-square, rmsea, srmr, cfi, and tli) of models obtained gradually are between acceptable separations or not is investigated. in situations where the model adjusts data, the difference between the tli and cfi values obtained from configural invariance tests and the tli and cfi values obtained from more limited models was observed. the difference between these values is expected to be too little (cheung & rensvold, 2000). if calculated differences are not in the range of -0.01 ≤ δcfi ≤ 0.01 ve -0.01 ≤ δtli ≤ 0.01, then it is decided that the invariance condition is not obtained at the related level (cheung & rensvold, 2002). 3. results whether there is configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariance in data obtained from young and old individuals according to age is investigated using multiple group confirmatory factor analysis. results of analysis are summarised in table 1 and figure 1. table 1. goodness of fit indexes according to invariance analysis results. measurement invariance df (p) ecvi cfi δcfi tli srmr rmsea/ 2אdf 𝜟/אdf p 2 2א configural 9.24 11 0.59 0.84 ------0.22 0.99 ---0.99 0.00 0.00 metric 18.95 15 0.21 1.26 0.42 0.38 0.30 0.98 0.01 0.99 0.03 0.06 scalar 33.19 24 0.10 1.38 0.12 0.11 0.23 0.97 0.01 0.98 0.03 0.07 strict 41.67 29 0.06 1.43 0.05 0.04 0.32 0.97 0.00 0.97 0.03 0.08 when results of analyses are examined, it is seen that configural (2א/sd=0,84;p>0,05), metric invariance is obtained for (sd=1,43;p>0,05/א2) invariance and strict (sd=1,38;p>0,05/א2) scalar ,(sd=1,26;p>0,01/א2) two different age levels. figure 1. path diagrams related to configural, metric, scalar and strict invariance. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 124-130 128 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group as a result of data analysis, for the models to be confirmed, χ2/df, rmsea, ecvi, cfi, tli, and srmr were used as statistical fit criteria. it can be said that in all invariance test phases, fit indexes are in between an acceptable space and model is in good fit with data (rmsea <0.08, cfi > 0.90, tli > 0.90; .01 ≤ δcfi ≤ 0.01 ve -0.01 ≤ δtli ≤ 0.01). from this point of view, it can be interpreted that life satisfaction scale scores applied to different age groups are equal and give measurements related to the same structure. 4. discussion most research studies apply measurement scales to various groups, with the aim of revealing differences. however, if it is not executed clearly, whether these differences stem from the measurement scale or from the characteristics measured, the results of the research are brought into disrepute. invariance is an important psychometric property of a measurement tool (brown, 2006; meredith, 1993). meaningful comparisons between groups at different times require measurement invariance. failure to ensure invariance could result in inaccurate interpretations of scores and group differences. measurement invariance is used to analyze whether the same scale construct measures the same characteristic across different groups. such analysis is necessary to make comparisons in determining construct validity in different groups (putnick & bornstein, 2016). many studies examining the measurement invariance of measurement instruments have shown that it is very difficult to meet the assumptions of invariance analyses. particularly, strict measurement invariance is very rarely verified. strict measurement invariance is a condition in which all measurement parameters are exactly the same across subgroups. this means that there is zero tolerance for deviations between groups (van de schoot, schmidt, de beuckelaer, lek, & zondervan-zwijnenburg, 2015). in many studies, since the invariance of error variances is insignificant in the explanation of latent mean differences, this step can be skipped, or if this step is not achieved, latent factor means can be compared (vandenberg & lance, 2000). this study followed these steps and observed that the life satisfaction scale provided measurement invariance at all stages across different age groups. observing the literature, researchers frequently conducted studies on the measurement invariance of the life satisfaction scale in various samples and cultures, particularly focusing on gender (checa, perales, & espejo, 2019; tomás, gutiérrez, sancho, & romero, 2015). moreover, some researchers (atienza, balaguer, & garcı́a-merita, 2003; sovet, atitsogbe, pari, park, & villieux, 2016) found that some items of the life satisfaction scale are invariant. however, researchers have not yet conducted invariance measurements for the age variable. among the groups addressed in this study are young adult individuals under the age of 25. another field that has an important effect on the life satisfaction of these young adults is the satisfaction of higher education. according to the literature, higher education life satisfaction refers to the satisfaction of university students with university education and university experiences (erol & yıldırım, 2016). higher education life satisfaction refers to university students' general satisfaction with the university, satisfaction with faculty members, satisfaction with university facilities, satisfaction with psychosocial and psychological counselling services offered by the university, and satisfaction with university administration. it is of great importance for both universities and students to know the quality of life/satisfaction of university students. when the studies on the factors affecting life satisfaction are examined, martikainen (2009) in his study with young adults living in finland, showed that close relationships, working life, living habits, and future expectations explain life satisfaction at different levels. in a review study, jiang, yuen, and horta (2020) stated that the quality of education, campus support services, limited social integration with chinese students, financial difficulties, sub culturalist, language barriers, and perceived discrimination affect life satisfaction. another age group considered in this study is 60 years and over. when the studies on life satisfaction in higher age groups (over 60 years) are examined, moon and kim (2018) found that age, income, and education have a significant effect on life satisfaction, but gender, marital status, and employment have no effect. in their study with people aged 65 and over, fernández-ballesteros, zamarrón, and ruiz (2001) analyzed sociodemographic conditions and psychosocial factors affecting life satisfaction. in this study, it was found that income level and education directly affected life satisfaction, and psychosocial factors indirectly affected it through some mediating variables. this study demonstrated that the swls invariance test results, comprised of five items in an age-specific dimension, demonstrate the model's ability to exhibit all invariance conditions. that is, in studies conducted with different age groups, differences between groups do not result from the measurement tool. so, it would be useful to carry out comparative studies of the variables discussed above in terms of young and old individuals with the results of this study. researchers have stated that life satisfaction follows a non-linear path when it is considered in terms of the measured characteristic depending on age (from young adulthood to old age). from this perspective, de ree and alessie (2011) found that life satisfaction increases with age in various life periods and decreases in others. on the other hand, diener (1984) suggested that various age groups differ slightly in terms of life satisfaction. the presence of different views in the literature is considered important in terms of the construct validity of the findings of this study and obtaining more reliable results in comparative studies. depending on the results of this study, it can be advised to use swls in intercultural comparisons and investigate whether measurement invariance is obtained for different cultures. references akın arıkan, ç., & demirtaş, z. s. 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(2016). evaluating evidence for invariant items: a bayes factor applied to testing measurement invariance in irt models. journal of mathematical psychology, 72, 171-182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2015.06.005 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01064 https://doi.org/10.1177/109442810031002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2015.06.005 10 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 10-17, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5323 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group collaborative inquiry-based instructional model to enhance mathematical analytical thinking and reasoning skills for fourth-grade students siliang yu1 nirat jantharajit2 sarit srikhao3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3faculty of education, nakhon phanom university, thailand. 1email: 647150120127@npu.ac.th 2email: n20jann@hotmail.com 3email: sarit63@hotmail.com abstract in contemporary society, students’ analytical thinking and reasoning skills are crucial for their future development. the fourth grade (ages 9-10) is a critical stage for cultivating higher-level cognitive skills in students. mathematics plays a significant role during this period, serving as a fundamental tool for fostering students' analytical thinking and reasoning abilities. collaborative inquiry-based learning is considered beneficial for enhancing students' analytical thinking and reasoning skills. therefore, this study aims to design a collaborative inquiry-based instructional model based on the characteristics of mathematics textbooks. the study extensively analyzes primary school mathematics textbooks published by beijing normal university and integrates the essential elements of collaborative inquiry-based learning to devise an instructional model tailored to the characteristics of mathematics textbooks. the model comprises six parts: contextual introduction (question 1), collaborative inquiry (question 2), communication and sharing (first round), collaborative inquiry (question 3), communication and sharing (second round), review and conclusion. the model is designed to assist students in acquiring knowledge through collaborative inquiry, stimulate their curiosity through contextualized learning, improve their analytical thinking and reasoning skills through collaborative inquiry, foster cognitive development through effective communication and sharing, and ultimately solidify acquired knowledge through reflection and conclusion. theoretically, the analysis suggests that this model may positively impact students’ analytical thinking and reasoning abilities, providing a valuable reference for practical teaching. keywords: analytical thinking, collaborative inquiry-based learning, instructional model, mathematical curriculum, primary education, reasoning skills. citation | yu, s., jantharajit, n., & srikhao, s. (2024). collaborative inquiry-based instructional model to enhance mathematical analytical thinking and reasoning skills for fourth-grade students. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 10–17. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5323 history: received: 30 october 2023 revised: 6 december 2023 accepted: 2 january 2024 published: 16 january 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 11 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 12 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 13 5. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 15 mailto:647150120127@npu.ac.th mailto:n20jann@hotmail.com mailto:sarit63@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5323 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5009-276x https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1098-8109 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 10-17 11 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the existing literature by presenting a tailored collaborative inquirybased learning instructional model for fourth-grade mathematics instruction. the proposed model emphasizes the importance of contextualized learning, inquiry-based learning, effective communication, and reflective conclusion in fostering cognitive development during this critical stage of education. 1. introduction reasoning and analytical thinking skills are widely recognized as one of the essential competencies of the 21st century (binkley et al., 2012; national research council, 2012). these abilities not only help individuals solve problems better, but also develop critical thinking and innovative skills that make them competitive in a changing society and workplace (ahmad et al., 2017; cobo, 2013). therefore, enhancing the reasoning and analytical thinking skills of students has become an essential task in education. collaborative inquiry-based learning is an effective instructional method that promotes the development of students' reasoning and analytical thinking skills (csanadi, kollar, & fischer, 2021; ramadani, supardi, & hariyono, 2021; sen, ay, & güler, 2021). through collaborative inquiry, students are able to communicate and work with each other in tiny groups to solve problems together (bell, urhahne, schanze, & ploetzner, 2010; nelson, 1999). this mode of instructional stimulates students' thinking and creativity, and develops their collaborative and problem-solving skills (agbi & yuangsoi, 2022). implementing learning in the 4th grade math course is significant. first, 4th grade is a critical period of rapid cognitive development for students who already have a mathematical foundation that allows them to reason and analyze in greater depth (gale, o’callaghan, godfrey, law, & martyn, 2004). second, the math course places greater demands on students' reasoning and analytical thinking skills (hasanah, tafrilyanto, & aini, 2019). since math is a subject that requires logical thinking and reasoning skills (lusyana & wangge, 2016) students' reasoning and analytical skills can be better developed through the implementation of collaborative inquiry-based learning in the math course (gillies, nichols, burgh, & haynes, 2014; yumiati & noviyanti, 2017). however, there is still a gap in research on how to implement collaborative inquiry-based learning in the 4th grade math courses. while there have been some studies focusing on the effects of collaborative inquiry-based learning on the reasoning and analytical thinking skills of students, these studies have not involved models of collaborative inquiry-based learning that can be replicated or learned from. the objective of this study, therefore, is to fill this gap by formulating a collaborative inquiry-based instructional model derived from the principles of collaborative inquiry-based learning and the characteristics of the mathematics textbook. this endeavour aims to enhance the logical and analytical cognitive abilities of fourth-grade pupils and to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on collaborative inquiry-based education. 2. literature review 2.1. collaborative inquiry-based learning (cibl) cibl allows multiple students to actively collaborate on their inquiry-based questions. cibl provides an opportunity for students to work collaboratively to complete and answer inquiry questions in ways that are not possible for individual students. with the support of the group members, students are able to complete learning tasks in their zone of proximal development (fernández, wegerif, mercer, & rojas-drummond, 2015). teachers should begin by explaining the task requirements to students and underscore the importance of collaboration. throughout the collaborative inquiry-based learning process within small groups, the teacher offers support to the group only when necessary (urhahne, schanze, bell, mansfield, & holmes, 2010). as per the request, the cibl group initiated the completion of the assignment. students within each cibl group should leverage their diverse talents to address most challenges that may arise in the learning process. in cibl, the teacher should refrain from actively scaffolding the cibl group. instead, they should monitor the progress of each cibl group and provide guidance where necessary (chin & hortin, 1993; cifuentes, 1997), motivate an inactive cibl group, and offer feedback after completing specific cibl stages (hsiao, hong, chen, lu, & chen, 2017; williams, nguyen, & mangan, 2017; zheng & zhuang, 2008). cibl empowers students to acquire knowledge in domains relevant to the inquiries being posed and provides numerous opportunities for students to cultivate and exercise skills essential for the 21st century. the alliance for 21st century skills is a framework developed in collaboration between the government and businesses to foster the advancement of proficiencies, aptitudes, and dispositions crucial for success in the workforce and modern society (framework for 21st century learning, 2019). three classifications of capabilities have been identified: (1) erudition skills, encompassing originality, novelty, evaluative reasoning, problem-solving, communication, and cooperation; (2) literacy skills, including informational literacy, media literacy, and ict literacy (information and communication technology (ict) literacy refers to the ability to use, manage, and evaluate information and communication technologies effectively); and (3) vital life skills, which entail adaptability, versatility, initiative, selfguidance, communal and intercultural competencies, productivity, accountability, as well as leadership and responsibility. research has demonstrated that the implementation of cibl not only yields a favorable influence on students' academic accomplishments (kolloffel, eysink, & de jong, 2011; lämsä, hämäläinen, koskinen, & viiri, 2018; pifarré & staarman, 2011) but also reinforces high-level cognitive skills, including analytical thinking and reasoning abilities, to better adapt to society (lu, pang, & shadiev, 2021). 2.2. analytical thinking analytical thinking skills, as an important component of higher-order thinking skills (dillon & scott, 2002; miri, david, & uri, 2007; zohar & dori, 2003) help improve student academic performance, reduce weaknesses, interpret, synthesize, solve problems, and control information, ideas, and daily activities (ahmad et al., 2017). analytical thinking is a extremely effective cognitive tool for understanding the components of a situation. it can asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 10-17 12 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group be described as the skill of examining and deconstructing facts and ideas, assessing their merits and flaws. cultivating this ability helps in problem solving, analyzing data, retrieving and applying information (amer, 2005). based on this interpretation, analytical thinking is characterized by the advantage of a systematic approach (fabio & towey, 2018). moreover, analytical thinking implies logical connections by encoding reality into abstract symbols, words, or numbers (iannello & antonietti, 2008). analytical thinking is characterized by pre-analytical, analytical-partial, semi-analytical and complete analysis (parta, 2016). parta considers pre-analytical thinking is characterized by the use of standard procedures that are inappropriate for the problem conditions, leading to illogical steps such as dividing by zero. another indication of pre-analytical thinking is the use of surface information, such as sketching a graph. partial analytic thinking is characterized by the discontinuance of one part of the analytical procedure and the use of alternative methods. semi-analytical thinking is characterized by "turning" and "vague" procedures or duplication of procedures. analytical thinking is characterized by clear algorithms, logical reasoning, and essential statements underlying the process. the study also found that 33 percent of the subjects still exhibited pre-analytical thinking in solving simple problems, indicating the need for innovative teaching approaches to ensure better internalization of knowledge and learning experiences (parta, 2016). thus, collaborative inquiry-based learning can be an effective instructional method for improving analytical thinking. 2.3. reasoning skills deduction, inference, and logical cogitation formed upon accessible data, erudition, and logical associations represent the aptitude of reasoning (kyllonen, 2020). it constitutes a cognitive faculty of elevated caliber that encompasses the procedure of deducing novel corollaries or resolving predicaments through logical ratiocination and ratiocination derived from established facts or premises. reasoning proficiencies facilitate individuals in unearthing correlations and configurations amidst entities, thus enabling them to formulate judicious assessments and determinations. reasoning skills encompass the cognitive processes essential for problem-solving in various domains (henderson et al., 2001). keazer and menon (2015) emphasized reasoning skills are widely acknowledged as the foundation of mathematical proficiency, and their absence can disrupt mathematics education. since reasoning underpins all mathematical principles and operations, reasoning skills are considered the cornerstone of the field of mathematics (aysun & yildiz, 2005; umay, 2003). 2.4. current status of the study collaborative inquiry-based learning has been confirmed by current research to have a positive effect on enhancing students' analytical thinking and reasoning skills (ramadani et al., 2021; sen et al., 2021). while inquiry-based learning modalities have been well studied (al mamun, lawrie, & wright, 2020; bybee, taylor, gardner, westbrook, & landes, 2006; pedaste et al., 2015) there has been relatively limited work on collaborative inquiry-based learning modalities. as a scientifically valid mode of teaching, collaborative inquiry-based learning is applicable to teaching across disciplines. however, when combining it with a specific discipline, it should not be applied directly, collaborative inquiry-based learning should be integrated with the content of the discipline to better translate the theory into practice. therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a collaborative inquiry-based instructional model that integrates collaborative inquiry-based learning with mathematics textbook for grade 4. 3. method 3.1. teaching materials the mathematics textbook used in this study is “fourth grade mathematics, volume one”, which is approved by the ministry of education of china and published by beijing normal university (bun). figure 1. fourth-grade mathematics textbook lesson sample. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 10-17 13 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the mathematics textbook shows the nature of mathematics as originating from and applied to life, with its unique features of life, activities and problems. when you open the bnu primary mathematics textbook, the first thing that hits you are the vivid, interesting, and colorful illustrations that are closely related to the lives of the students. these scenarios are practical items that students can access in their daily lives and are close to the student's life, such as bus problems, shopping problems, etc., so that mathematics is closely related to reality. in terms of content arrangement, the bnu primary mathematics textbook uses a unique format that avoids the use of examples and instead allows students to experience and learn mathematics through engaging activities such as recognizing, talking, doing, counting, comparing and arranging. the learning of each knowledge point is guided by mathematical activities, and the teaching process essentially follows the basic narrative pattern of “problem situation modelling interpretation and application”. further, the bnu primary mathematics textbook is problem-oriented, with green dots as questions, and these questions are interleaved to form a string of questions that together build a vertical extension of knowledge depth. this design not only reflects the systematic nature of the textbook, but also prompts students to develop their thinking and analytical skills during the problem solving process. 3.2. research framework collaborative inquiry-based learning is an approach that emphasizes collaboration and interaction among students, promoting the building of knowledge and deepening of understanding through joint thinking, discussion, and problem-solving. in collaborative inquiry learning, students take an active role, collaborating with others in exploring and discovering knowledge, rather than just passively accepting a teacher's knowledge transfer. along the way, students can share their insights and reflections, listen to others' insights and perspectives, and brainstorm solutions. collaboration and inquiry are thus at the heart of this learning model, and communication serves as its medium. in this study, a context-specific, problem-oriented collaborative inquiry instructional model is constructed, taking into account the characteristics of 4th grade textbooks and collaborative inquiry-based learning. through collaboration and inquiry, mediated by student-to-student and teacher-to-student communication, it aims to promote reasoning and analytical thinking skills among students. 4. results 4.1. contextual introduction (question 1) teacher introduces context relevant to the knowledge of the lesson to build a learning environment and stimulate the curiosity of students. taking the teaching content shown in figure 1 as an example, the teaching objectives of this lesson are to let students learn the estimation method in the process of solving practical problems, explore the calculation method of multiplying three-digit by two-digit numbers, and properly use the vertical formula to calculate the calculation of multiplying three-digit by two-digit numbers. the teacher introduces the context: “it takes 114 minutes for the first artificial earth satellite launched by our country to go around the earth once” and asks the question: “can you calculate the time it takes for an artificial earth satellite to go around the earth 2 times, 10 times, and 20 times ; tell us how you calculated 114 x 10 and 114 x 20 ”. purpose of the instructional design is to stimulate the interest of the students through current events topics, and naturally introduces written calculations by multiplying three digit numbers by two digit numbers. in this session, we emphasize the teacher's construction of the situation to create a context for the students based on a specific problem, while also placing a focus on fostering independent thinking among the students. 4.2. collaborative inquiry (question 2) students form small groups to investigate a math problem collaboratively. group members discuss, share ideas, and work together to solve problems, leading to a common group outcome. during the process of collaborative inquiry learning, teachers should observe the state of group learning and provide support to groups seeking help. taking the instructional lesson in figure 1 as an example, the second green dot highlights the central question: 'how much time does it take an artificial earth satellite to travel 21 times around the earth?' in collaborative inquiry learning, students need to think independently rather than simply accepting the results of others. as shown in the second focal point of figure 1 there are four possible ways to solve this problem. through collaborative inquiry-based learning in small groups, members were able to comprehend these four solutions and more. 4.3. communication /sharing (first round) after the first round of collaborative inquiry-based learning, the groups developed specific learning outcomes. during this session, the learning results will not only be shared within groups but also exchanged and discussed between groups. as facilitators of learning activities, teachers will organize reporting and in-depth exchanges of group outcomes. for example, after one group has shared its method for calculating 114 x 21, different groups can add their own methods, provide comments, or initiate a discussion about the most concise method. such generative outcomes are commonly the most rewarding part of instruction. 4.4. collaborative inquiry (question 3) in the bnu primary mathematics textbook, each lesson consists of three questions, each of which demonstrates the depth of knowledge and provides additional insights. in the collaborative inquiry-based instructional model, a second round of collaborative inquiry is designed to encourage deeper levels of thought. as shown in the third green dot in figure 1 please calculate '135×74' using the vertical multiplication method and explain the considerations during this process. the central objective of this lesson is to instruct students in using the vertical multiplication method and guide them in exploring the rules of multiplication, as students often make mistakes with multiplication formulas. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 10-17 14 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.5. communication /sharing (second round) the design principles for the second round of communication and sharing are the same as for the first round, so no additional details will be given. to give an example, when a group gives advice on how to compute 135 x 74 by vertical calculation, a standardized rule for multiplication vertical calculation is eventually developed across the class through communication and sharing between groups. 4.6. review /conclusion group members reflect and summarize what they learned in the lesson. the teacher guides the groups to representation and communication with each other. for example, groups reflect and summarize how to multiply three digits by two digits and what specific rules of computation they need to follow when using a vertical computation to multiply three digits by two digits. figure 2 illustrates the steps of collaborative inquiry-based learning. figure 2. collaborative inquiry-based instructional model. . 5. discussion 5.1. philosophy of model design the collaborative inquiry-based instructional model designed in present study integrates the basic elements of collaborative inquiry learning with the characteristics of primary mathematics textbooks. the instructional model consists of six main components: contextual introduction (question 1), collaborative inquiry (question 2), communication and sharing (first round), collaborative inquiry (question 3), communication and sharing (second round), review and conclusion. the next section describes the design philosophy of each part of the model. 5.1.1. contextual introduction contextualized learning is a pedagogical approach that aims to closely integrate the learning environment with real-life situations in order to enhance the practical application and relevance of learning (hwang, hariyanti, chen, & purba, 2023; johnson, 2002). this pedagogical approach emphasizes the placement of knowledge and skills in specific contexts or situations to enable students to better understand and apply what they have learned. grade 4 (9-10 years old) is in the concrete operations stage, and although students have begun to develop their ability to think abstractly during the concrete operations stage, their abstract thinking is still limited. they may have difficulty understanding abstract concepts and symbols and need to rely on specific situations and examples to help them understand (piaget, 1983). therefore, the present study introduces contextualization to the collaborative inquiry-based instructional model. it stimulates the student's interest in the topic by introducing the learning context and questions. provide a real-world scenario in which students are motivated to learn through questions. 5.1.2. collaborative inquiry vygotsky emphasized that learning takes place primarily in an environment of social interaction and cooperation, and that interaction between learners and their peers or teachers is the primary means of constructing knowledge (vygotsky, 1986). the zone of proximal development (zpd) is a fundamental principle of vygotsky's theory, indicating the gap between students' current level of development and their future level of development (vygotsky, 1978). this definition highlights the notion that individuals undergo a process of dual development. the tangible level of development concerns the cognitive abilities that the individual has effectively acquired and can employ autonomously. in contrast, latent developmental levels encompass mental functions that individuals have not yet achieved independently but can enhance through collaboration with more proficient peers. thus, the purpose of collaborative inquiry-based learning is to facilitate students in bridging this gap and advancing their latent development by working alongside more proficient peers. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 10-17 15 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.1.3. communication and sharing vygotsky focuses on the impact of social interaction, language, and culture on learning (fosnot & perry, 2005; jonassen, davidson, collins, campbell, & haag, 1995; vrasidas, 2000). he emphasized the development of cognitive functions stems from social interactions, and dialogue is key to cognitive processes (fernyhough, 2008; mcleod, 2022; teo, 2019). he argues that learning is not only about the internal thought processes of individuals, but also involves interactions with adults and peers in dialogue, questioning, interpretation and negotiation of meaning (fosnot, 1996). vygotsky considers meaning generation as a process of sharing different perspectives and experiences within a community, and that learning emerges from abundant conversations that can take place with others who have similar or different perspectives (jonassen et al., 1995; jonassen, 1999). 5.1.4. review and conclusion meta-cognition is the awareness of one's own cognitive processes, i.e. the ability to monitor and adjust one's own learning processes (efklides, 2006; padmanabha, 2020). the review and conclusion provide an opportunity for students to self-assess, helping them to reflect on the learning process and recognize their own levels of understanding and knowledge so that they can better adapt their learning strategies (hung, 2019; mannion, 2022). 5.2. recommendations for implementation the model is designed on the basis of the essential elements of collaborative inquiry-based learning and the characteristics of the primary mathematics textbook from beijing normal university, and is therefore specific. when using this collaborative inquiry-based instructional model, educators in different countries should adapt it to the characteristics of their own disciplines and teaching materials. not all instructional content requires the use of collaborative inquiry-based teaching. on one hand, the perspectives of kirschner, sweller, and clark emphasize the limitations of working memory and the advantages of direct teaching methods in reducing the burden on working memory (kirschner, sweller, & clark, 2006). on the other hand, the views of hmelo-silver, duncan, and chinn highlight the support and assistance provided in constructivist learning environments to help students manage the burden on working memory (hmelo-silver, duncan, & chinn, 2007). an analysis conducted by chinn, barzilai, and duncan (2020) and chinn, barzilai, and duncan (2021) raises questions about the potential of direct teaching in fostering students' engagement in realworld inquiry skills. chinn stressed the need for students to practice and explore in complex real-world settings to develop their reasoning abilities in the digital media age. direct teaching may not provide adequate opportunities for students to confront this complexity and challenge and learn how to adapt and respond. instead, by involving students in inquiry within real-world tasks and contexts, they can better understand and address these tangled pieces of information. it is important to note, however, that this does not mean that direct instructions are not valuable in other domains or specific contexts. different learning tasks and disciplines may necessitate a variety of teaching methods and strategies. some learning tasks may be better suited for direct teaching, while others may be better suited for collaborative inquiry-based learning. 5.3. limitations and prospects this instructional model has been designed solely based on current research and theories to theoretically analyze its potential positive effects on improving the analytical thinking and reasoning skills of students in the primary school mathematics curriculum. however, as it has not been validated through practice, a follow-up study is planned to conduct a quasi-experiment. the study will involve selecting 4th-grade students as experimental participants and dividing them into an experimental group, which will use the collaborative inquiry-based instructional model, and a control group, which will follow a traditional teaching model. after a a period of educational intervention period, changes in students’ analytical thinking and reasoning skills will be compared between the two groups, using specific assessment tools and methods references agbi, a., & yuangsoi, p. 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(2003). higher order thinking skills and low-achieving students: are they mutually exclusive? the journal of the learning sciences, 12(2), 145-181. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327809jls1202_1 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jotse.234 https://doi.org/10.11591/edulearn.v11i3.6041 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327809jls1202_1 69 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 3, 69-76, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i3.4018 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examination of secondary school students' attitudes towards communication and collaboration skills in terms of some variables berrak kocaman foreign languages department, school of foreign languages, aksaray university, salihli, manisa, turkey. email: berrak.kocaman@gmail.com abstract this study aims to examine the communication and collaboration attitudes of secondary school students according to some variables and to determine if there is a relationship between students' communication and collaboration attitudes. the survey model was used in the study, and the sample consists of 405 secondary school students studying in salihli, manisa. “secondary school students’ communication attitude scale (ssscas)” and “scale for self-evaluation of collaboration skills (sscs)” were used to collect data. according to analysis results of the data obtained, it was found out that the communication and collaboration attitudes of the secondary school students were at a high level and did not show statistically significant differences in terms of gender and educational status of the parents. on the other hand, there was a significant difference according to owning tablet/pc variable. besides, there is a positive relationship between secondary school students' communication skills attitude and collaboration attitudes. keywords: secondary school students, collaboration, communication, attitude, 21st century skills, correlation. citation | berrak kocaman (2022). examination of secondary school students' attitudes towards communication and collaboration skills in terms of some variables. asian journal of education and training, 8(3): 69-76. history: received: 30 march 2022 revised: 2 june 2022 accepted: 17 june 2022 published: 28 june 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction & literature review ................................................................................................................................................ 70 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 3. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 71 4. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 74 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 75 mailto:berrak.kocaman@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i3.4018 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1694-9726 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 69-76 70 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research will contribute to the literature by determining the level of cooperation and communication skills that are among the 21st century skills of secondary school students and whether there is a relationship between them. these results will guide whether learning environments contribute to the training of individuals in accordance with the information society. 1. introduction & literature review education that focuses on learning skills including critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration, and creativity and invention skills, which are accepted as 21st century skills has a strategic role to prepare the young generations with appropriate qualifications (trilling & fadel, 2009). people who want to achieve success in the 21st century should have critical thinking and problem-solving skills, be able to lead in business life, work in collaboration and harmony with other people, renew themselves, be successful in communication and never lose their curiosity and imagination (wagner, 2008; cited in er (2016)). having these skills enables individuals to perform at a high level both in their social lives, in their academic careers and in their professional lives, and as a result, they realize themselves (north central regional educational laboratory (ncrel), 2003). collaboration, which stands out as one of the most necessary elements of our age in both education and business fields, is defined as individuals working together for a certain period in order to complete a task (johnson & johnson, 1999). when we look at the collaborative skill, it can be explained as showing “the ability to work effectively and respectfully with different groups, being willing to make compromises when a common goal is to be reached and being able to evaluate the personal contributions made by each member of a team by taking responsibility for collaborative work” (partnership for 21st century learning, 2015; trilling & fadel, 2009). the term communication is the process of "the information coming out of a unit, its reaching the other unit, and its return to the source after having an effect on the receiving unit" (koknel, 2005). communication skill can be explained as “expressing thoughts and ideas by using verbal, written and non-verbal communication skills effectively in various forms and contexts, being an active listener and communicating effectively in different contexts (including different languages)” (partnership for 21st century learning, 2015; trilling & fadel, 2009). since human beings are social beings, they try to make sense of the world through their communication with other people because the contexts they are in are made up of people and the relationships between them. people who establish relations with each other both give information about themselves and gather information from the other party. for this reason, the need for self-expression and understanding others, which are in the nature of human beings, arose (cüceloğlu, 2016). how and in what ways individuals can convey communication, which is one of their most important needs, depends on their communication skills that include “the ability to convey one's feelings, thoughts, beliefs and attitudes in an understandable and purposeful way." reflecting the words and feelings of the narrator appropriately, asking questions, summarizing, and reacting with other words are the skills that ensure effective communication (korkut, 1996). education is basically a communication activity, and healthy education in schools depends on effective communication (bolat, 1996) while communication skills can be learned and developed (dalkilic, 2011). the collaboration process provides important benefits in terms of socialization of individuals and the development of their academic skills, experiencing the feeling of getting help and helping others, and gaining new ideas (bay & cetin, 2012). individuals have the experience of acting together for a common purpose in the collaboration process, and this experience also allows the development of interpersonal communication. when students work in collaborative groups, they learn to exchange information, develop new understandings and perspectives, and communicate effectively (mercer, 1996). then, it can be concluded that there is a relationship between these two critical skills. modern education mainly intends to enable individuals to learn how to learn, and thus to raise lifelong learners independent of school life. raising life-long learners entails developing individuals who can adapt to the fast-paced creation and consumption of knowledge, as well as changes, innovations, and varied perspectives of the age we live in. in line with this purpose, the skills that persons should have in order to adapt to the age are referred to as “21st century learning skills”. these skills are “active learning, learning to learn, problem solving, collaboration and communication”. having these skills makes it possible for individuals to achieve success both in their educational life and in their social and work lives (yalcin, 2018). as a result, this research is important to present whether there is a relationship between communication skill attitude and collaboration attitude, which are among the skills that secondary school students should acquire from an early age. 1.1. aim of the research in this study, secondary school students' attitudes towards communication and collaboration and the relationship between these two attitudes were examined. in the study, the questions given below were formed and the research was organized in a way to answer them: 1. what are the levels of participants’ attitudes towards communication and collaboration? 2. do participants’ attitudes towards communication and collaboration show a significant difference in terms of gender? 3. do participants’ attitudes towards communication and collaboration differ in terms of their parents' education level? 4. do participants’ attitudes towards communication and collaboration differ significantly depending on having a tablet computer or pc? 5. is there a relationship between participants’ attitudes towards communication and collaboration? asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 69-76 71 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method the research that examines the communication and collaboration attitudes of the secondary school students employs the quantitative design and survey model which aims to represent situation in the past or present in its natural conditions (karasar, 2008). the sample of the study includes 405 secondary school students living in salihli province of manisa in turkey. this sampling was made according to the convenience sampling method. the convenient sampling method is realized by selecting the samples that the researcher can easily and conveniently reach (yin, 2011). 2.1. data collection tools the scales, which are among the data collection tools, were chosen because they were specially prepared for the purpose and validity and reliability studies were carried out, and detailed information about them is given below. in addition, the information related to the variables was collected through a personal information form. personal information form: a form containing three questions about gender, educational status of parents and the type of computer owned (tablet or pc) was used, which was prepared by the researcher. secondary school students’ communication attitude scale (ssscas): the scale was developed by boyraz (2022) and includes 29 items in the form of a 5-point likert scale. the lowest score is 29 and the highest score is 145. a high score from the scale means a high attitude towards communication. the scale consists of 4 sub-dimensions: "openness to communication, body language and preferences, self-confidence and obstacles". the cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was calculated as 0.81 by boyraz while it is ,85 in this research. scale for self-evaluation of collaboration skills (sscs): this scale was developed by boyraz (2021). the scale consists of 29 items 3 of which are negative and all in the 5-point likert item form. the lowest possible score is 29 and the highest score is 145. the cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the scale, which consists of a total of 3 sub-dimensions with the names of “affective considerations, collaboration process and roles and responsibilities”, was reported as 0.88. the cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient value reached in this research is 0.91. 2.2. data analysis spss 24 program was used for the operations to be performed in this section. descriptive analysis was conducted to determine secondary school students' attitudes towards communication and collaboration skills. the weighted average technique was adopted in descriptive data analysis. in order to interpret these weighted averages, interval criteria have been developed. in the study, the interval coefficient was found as α =5−1÷5=0.80 (batur, gulveren, & bek, 2010). accordingly, 1-1,80 is considered as low level, 1,81-2,60 as above low level, 2,61-3,40 as medium level, 3,41-4,20 as above medium level, and 4,21-5 as high level. in order to determine the tests to be used in the data analysis, the kolmogorov-smirnov test was performed to find out if the data was normally distributed. as the result of the test was p< 0.05, it can be said that the scores of the participants in the two scales do not show a normal distribution. for this, mann whitney u test was applied to examine the effect of gender on middle school students' attitudes towards communication and collaboration. the kruskal wallis test was used to determine whether secondary school students' attitudes towards communication and collaboration change in terms of parental education status. the mann whitney u test was applied to determine whether secondary school students' attitudes towards communication and collaboration change depending on their having tablet or pc. sperman correlation analysis was used to examine the correlation between secondary school students' attitudes towards communication and collaboration skills. 3. findings 3.1. students' attitudes towards collaboration and communication the descriptive analysis related to ssscas and sscs are given below. table 1. secondary school students attitudes towards communication. sub-dimension n min max x sd openness to communication 405 2.83 5 4.345 0.457 body language and preferences 405 2.29 5 4.270 0.634 self-confidence 405 2 5 4.241 0.630 obstacles 405 2 5 4.263 0.742 ssscas 405 3.24 5 4.294 0.384 according to table 1, the average scores of the participants in the first (𝑋 = 4.34), the second (𝑋 = 4.27), the third (𝑋 = 4.24) and the fourth sub-dimension (𝑋 = 4.26) and the overall score (𝑋 = 4.29) are all at high level. table 2. secondary school students attitudes towards collaboration. sub-dimension n min max x ss affective considerations 405 3 5 4.471 0.501 collaboration process 405 2.5 5 3.4172 0.578 roles and responsibilities 405 2 3 4.398 0.674 sscs 405 3.24 2.5 4.431 0.462 according to table 2, secondary school students' average in the first sub-dimension of the ssscas scale is above the upper level (𝑋 = 4.47); the second sub-dimension is moderate (𝑋 = 3.41) and the third sub-dimension is at high level (𝑋 = 4.39). it is seen that the average score for the collaboration attitude are at the high level (𝑋 = 4.43). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 69-76 72 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. gender effect on communication and collaboration attitudes the results of the mann whitney u test, which examined the effect of the gender variable on the communication skill attitude, are given below. table 3. gender effect on secondary school students' attitudes towards communication skills. sub-dimension gender n mean rank sum of rank u p openness to communication female 229 208.51 47748.50 18890.500 0.279 male 176 195.83 34466.50 body language and preferences female 229 205.36 47027.50 19611.500 0.642 male 176 199.93 35187.50 self-confidence female 229 207.60 47540.00 19099.000 0.364 male 176 197.02 34675.00 obstacles female 229 200.04 45810.00 19475.000 0.554 male 176 206.85 36405.00 ssscas female 229 208.44 47733.00 18906.000 0.286 male 176 195.92 34482.00 according to table 3, it is seen that the difference in the mean ranks of the two genders is not statistically significant in any sub-dimension of and the whole scale (p> 0.05). table 4. gender effect on collaboration attitude. sub-dimension gender n mean rank sum of rank u p affective considerations female 229 213.39 48867.00 17772 0.040 male 176 201.62 33348.00 roles and responsibilities female 229 207.17 47442.00 19197.000 0.411 male 176 197.57 34773.00 collaboration process female 229 208.08 47649.50 18989.500 0.315 male 176 196.39 34565.50 sscs female 229 210.19 48134.50 18504.500 0.158 male 176 193.64 34080.50 as can be seen in table 4, there is not a significant difference according to gender for sscs (p>0.05; p= 0.158). on the other hand, there is a significant difference in terms of gender in the affective considerations sub-dimension of the scale (p<0.05; p=0.40). 3.3. the effect of parent educational status on communication and collaboration attitudes the results of the kruskal wallis h test, which was conducted to examine the effect of father's education status on the attitude of communication skills, are given below. table 5. father's education status effect on the attitude towards communication. sub-dimension graduation n mean rank df 𝒙 𝟐 p openness to communication primary s. 11 178.00 3 2.131 0.546 secondary s. 88 196.05 high s. 185 200.16 university 121 214.67 body language and preferences primary s. 11 217.50 3 2.562 0.464 secondary s. 88 191.77 high s. 185 199.33 university 121 215.46 self-confidence primary s. 11 155.86 3 2.412 0.491 secondary s. 88 210.18 high s. 185 205.42 university 121 198.36 obstacles primary s. 11 178.86 3 0.643 0.887 secondary s. 88 201.43 high s. 185 202.66 university 121 206.85 ssscas primary s. 22 173.8 3 1.585 0.663 secondary s. 95 196.94 high s. 168 199.61 university 117 213.12 in table 5, it was seen that the sub-dimensions of the scale of attitude towards communication skills did not differ significantly according to the educational status of the father (p = 0.546; p = 0.464; p = 0.491; p = 0.887). it can be said that the communication skill attitude does not differ significantly according to the education level of the father (p = 0.663). in table 6, it is seen that the sub-dimensions of the scale of attitude towards communication skills did not differ significantly according to the educational status of the mother (p = 0.453; p = 0.174; p = 0.084; p = 0.725; p> 0.05). it can be said that the communication skill attitude does not differ significantly according to the education level of the mother (p> 0.05; p = 0.216). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 69-76 73 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 6. mother's education status effect on the attitude towards communication. sub-dimension graduation n mean rank df 𝒙 𝟐 p openness to communication primary s. 19 224.74 3 2.623 0.453 secondary s. 102 192.12 high s. 197 209.96 university 87 195.26 body language and preferences primary s. 19 246.82 3 4.972 0.174 secondary s. 102 188.83 high s. 197 208.91 university 87 196.65 self-confidence primary s. 19 209.82 3 6.638 0.084 secondary s. 102 220.09 high s. 197 204.94 university 87 177.08 obstacles primary s. 19 190.39 3 1.317 0.725 secondary s. 102 211.94 high s. 197 203.28 university 87 194.63 ssscas primary s. 19 230.97 3 4.456 0.216 secondary s. 102 198.59 high s. 197 210.99 university 87 183.95 table 7. father's educational status effect on the collaboration attitudes. sub-dimension graduation n mean rank df 𝒙 𝟐 p affective considerations primary s. 11 139.18 3 4.158 0.315 secondary s. 88 180.87 high s. 185 199.41 university 121 232.97 roles and responsibilities primary s. 11 174.18 3 3.710 0.295 secondary s. 88 197.06 high s. 185 196.87 university 121 216.89 collaboration process primary s. 11 163.70 3 6.577 0.327 secondary s. 88 205.43 high s. 185 197.67 university 121 210.91 sscs primary s. 11 152.27 3 4.637 0.322 secondary s. 88 198.43 high s. 185 193.35 university 121 224.96 table 7 shows that the sub-dimensions of attitudes towards affective considerations (p = 0.315), the collaboration process (p = 0.295) and roles and responsibilities (p = 0.327) of the scale do not significantly change according to the educational status of the father. it is seen that the total scores obtained from the scale do not show a significant difference according to the educational status of the father (p = 0.322; p> 0.05). table 8. mother's educational status effect on the collaboration attitudes. sub-dimension graduation n mean rank df 𝒙 𝟐 p affective consideration primary s. 19 156.13 3 6.634 0.085 secondary s. 102 182.26 high s. 197 207.15 university 87 222.64 roles and responsibilities primary s. 19 175.45 3 1.452 0.693 secondary s. 102 203.59 high s. 197 202.60 university 87 202.56 collaboration process primary s. 19 168.03 3 1.149 0.765 secondary s. 102 208.72 high s. 197 204.22 university 87 194.64 sscs primary s. 19 156.38 3 .250 0.969 secondary s. 102 203.57 high s. 197 201.17 university 87 209.99 in table 8, it was seen that affective considerations (p = 0.085), roles and responsibilities (p = 0.693) and collaboration process (p = 0.765) sub-dimensions of the sscs did not differ significantly according to the educational status of the mother. it is seen that the total scores obtained from the scale do not show a significant difference according to the education level of the mother (p = 0.969; p> 0.05). 3.4. the effect of owning a tablet/pc variable on communication and collaboration attitudes the results of the mann whitney u test, which examined the effect of owning a tablet/pc variable on the communication skill attitude, are given below. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 69-76 74 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 9. the effect of owning tablet/pc on communication attitude sub-dimension tablet/pc n mean rank sum of rank u p openness to communication yes 333 209.53 69772.00 9815.000 0.016 no 72 172.82 12443.00 body language and preferences yes 333 207.48 69092.50 10494.500 0.095 no 72 182.26 13122.50 self-confidence yes 333 207.44 69078.50 10508.500 0.098 no 72 182.45 13136.50 obstacles yes 333 207.50 69097.50 10489.500 0.089 no 72 182.19 13117.50 ssscas yes 333 214.98 71587.50 7999.500 0.000 no 72 147.60 10627.50 according to table 9, it can be said that the openness to communication sub-dimension of the communication attitudes differ significantly according to owning tablet/pc variable (p = 0.016; p<0.05). it is seen that this difference is in favor of the students who have a tablet / pc when the average rank scores are examined. it is seen that there is no significant difference in the sub-dimension of body language and preferences, self-confidence and obstacles according to the status of having a tablet/pc. there is a significant difference in the attitude of communication skills in secondary school students according to the status of having a tablet/pc. when the average rank scores are examined, it can be said that the communication skill attitude of the students who have a tablet/pc is higher. table 10. the effect of owning tablet/pc on collaboration attitude. sub-dimension tablet/pc n mean rank sum of rank u p affective considerations yes 333 214.03 71272.00 8315.000 0.000 no 72 151.99 10943.00 collaboration process yes 333 213.71 71165.50 8421.500 0.000 no 72 153.47 11049.50 roles and responsibilities yes 333 211.49 70425.50 9161.500 0.002 no 72 163.74 11789.50 sscs yes 333 207.50 69097.50 10489.500 0.089 no 72 182.19 13117.50 according to table 10, it is seen that there is a significant difference in affective considerations (p = 0.000; p< 0.05), collaboration process (p = 0.000; p< 0.05), roles and responsibilities (p = 0.000; p< 0.05) sub-dimensions according to owning a tablet/pc variable. this difference appears to be in favor of the students who have a tablet/pc when the mean rank scores are considered. it is seen that difference in the mean rank of sscs in the two groups with and without a tablet/pc is not statistically significant (p = 0.089; p> 0.05). 3.5. the relationship between communication and collaboration attitudes the spearman correlation technique analysis below was conducted to reveal the relationship between secondary school students' communication skills attitudes and their perceptions of collaboration. table 11. the relationship between communication and collaboration attitudes. scale r p ssscas 0.862 0.000 sscs when table 11 is examined, it is seen that there is a strong positive relationship between communication and collaboration perceptions (𝑟 = 0.868, 𝑝< 0.01). accordingly, it can be said that as the attitudes towards communication skills increase, the perceptions of collaboration self-evaluation also increase. 4. results and discussion in this study, it was tried to reveal the relationship between the attitudes of secondary school students towards communication and collaboration. it has been concluded that secondary school students' communication and collaboration attitudes are generally at a high level. a similar result was obtained by önür and kozikoğlu (2019) that concluded middle school students use their collaboration and communication skills at a high level in their study. considering the sub-dimensions of the scale, the average score taken from the "openness to communication" sub-dimension is higher than the "body languages and preferences", "self-confidence" and "obstacles" subdimensions. as another finding of the study, it was determined that the communication attitude of secondary school students did not differ significantly in terms of the gender variable. this result is in parallel with the studies of önür and kozikoğlu (2019). it was seen that the collaboration attitude of secondary school students did not differ significantly according to gender either. however, the difference in the affective considerations sub-dimension of the collaboration attitude scale was a significant in terms of the gender. this difference is in favor of female students. according to the results of the programme for international student assessment (pisa) (2015) research examining the collaboration skills of 15-year-old individuals, it was concluded that the collaboration skills of female students were higher than those of male students which is consistent with the findings of this research. kocaman (2006) found a positive correlation between communication skills and emotional intelligence in the study with secondary school students on increasing communication skills in children. so, it is advised to support emotional intelligence of especially male students to develop their communication skills. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(3): 69-76 75 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the results also revealed that participants’ attitudes towards communication and collaboration did not show a significant difference in terms of the mother/father education level variable. in the study conducted by kan'an (2018) it was found out that the 21st century skills of students, including communication and collaboration, did not differ significantly in terms of the education level of their parents. considering the results of the studies, it is seen that the education level of the parents does not have a significant contribution on the communication and collaboration attitude of the students. this might be caused by alternative communication and collaboration opportunities with peers in face-to-face and especially online environments. it has been concluded that there is a significant difference in the communication skills attitude of secondary school students depending on if they have a tablet/pc. it is seen that this difference is in favor of the students who have a tablet / pc when the average rank scores are examined. there is not a significant difference in the subdimension of “body language and preferences, self-confidence and obstacles” according to the status of having a tablet/pc. it can be said that the reason for this is that students do not need to use body language in front of the screen. in a study similar to this, it was concluded that secondary school students who have technological tools such as computers, smart phones and tablet computers use 21st century learning skills, which include collaboration and communication skills, at a higher level compared to students who do not have these technological tools (önür & kozikoğlu, 2019). the fact that online games provide wider interaction and communication opportunities compared to other games brought people together in the virtual world and they concluded that since most of these games are played in teams, they improve interpersonal communication and collaboration (i̇nal & doğusoy, 2006; tüzün, 2006). this finding of the study is supported by the fact that most of the students who have technological devices such as tablets/pcs can play online games. in various studies in the literature, it has been emphasized that technological elements such as tablet / pc have a very important effect on individuals' gaining 21st century learning skills including communication and collaboration skills, and at the same time, the ability to use technology is one of the 21st century learning skills (bozkurt & cakır, 2016; incoming, 2017; miller, 2009). therefore, it is possible to say that it is an important factor for individuals to acquire 21st century skills and to have technological tools such as tablets/pcs to acquire and use these skills effectively. as a result of the research, it was concluded that the communication and collaboration attitude of the secondary school students were at a high level. in the study, it was concluded that students who have technological facilities such as tablets and pcs at home have higher communication and collaboration attitudes. in this case, it could be argued that the use of technological instruments, which are among the most important factors in acquiring 21st-century skills, should not be limited to schools in urban areas, and that necessary opportunities for students in rural areas to benefit from the same technological opportunities should be provided. in the study, it was revealed that the level of parent education did not have an effect on communication and collaboration skills attitude. in this case, parent trainings or seminars can be organized to raise awareness of parents, especially those with low education levels, on family involvement in their education processes. in the study, it was found out that the relation between communication and collaboration attitudes is significant and in the positive direction and the literature provides similar findings (gillies, 2004; paristiowati, slamet, & sebastian, 2015; sari, prasetyo, & wibowo, 2017; slavin, 2014; topping et al., 2011). it is recommended that students be trained to use their communication skills at an early age to facilitate what students want to express in collaborative learning. it can be suggested to create student-centered teaching-learning environments that can improve communication and collaboration skills that are among the 21st century skills. the reason for this is that students continue to work together to achieve good communication. references batur, z., gulveren, h., & bek, h. 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(2011). qualitative research from start to finish. new york: guilford press. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework http://odsgm.meb.gov.tr/test/analizler/docs/pisa/pisa2015_ulusal_rapor.pdf 100 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 4, 100-105, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i4.4206 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group impact of academic self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intention of faculty of sport sciences' students: bayburt university eda adatepe1 yilmaz unlu2 ( corresponding author) 1department of sports management, faculty of sports sciences, bayburt university, turkey. email: edaadatepe@gmail.com 2department of physical education and sport teaching, faculty of sports sciences, bartin university, turkey. email: yilmaz_5478@hotmail.com abstract this study aimed to determine the academic self-efficacy and entrepreneurial levels of the students studying in the faculties of sport sciences, to define the factors affecting these characteristics and to determine their impacts. in this study, the entrepreneurial scale for university students and the academic self-efficacy scale were applied to 372 students studying at the faculty of. sport sciences. according to analysis results of the data obtained, it has been determined that the entrepreneurial levels of the students participating in the research are high. entrepreneurial levels of male students are higher. than female students. positive relationships were found with respect to the age variable in the dimensions of entrepreneurship and cognitive practices. bpt (basic proficiency test) score has positive significant relations with entrepreneurship, cognitive practices and technical skills and cgpa has positive significant relations with academic self-efficacy scale sub-dimensions. as the work experience period of the students increased, the acquired level of entrepreneurship also increased. moreover, as their academic self-efficacy increased, their entrepreneurial intentions also increased. the results obtained include empirical evidence that academic self-efficacy has a statistically significant. and positive impact on entrepreneurial intention. therefore, higher education institutions should focus on improving the academic performance of students studying in undergraduate, associate and graduate education in order to increase their intention to create new job opportunities. since this study only includes the opinions of the students of the faculty of sport sciences, it is recommended to expand the sample group and investigate the effect of different variables on entrepreneurial intention. keywords: academic self-efficacy, entrepreneurial intention, sport sciences’ students. citation | eda adatepe; yilmaz unlu (2022). impact of academic self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intention of faculty of sport sciences' students: bayburt university. asian journal of education and training, 8(4): 100-105. history: received: 2 august 2022 revised: 13 september 2022 accepted: 26 september 2022 published: 11 october 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 101 2. materials and methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 101 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 102 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 104 5. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 104 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 105 mailto:edaadatepe@gmail.com mailto:yilmaz_5478@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i4.4206 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 100-105 101 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature in this study aimed to determine the academic self-efficacy and entrepreneurial levels of the students studying in the faculties of sport sciences, to define the factors affecting these characteristics and to determine their impacts. the fact that this sample and variables have not been examined in the literature makes this study unique. 1. introduction “self-efficacy” is one of the key concepts in albert bandura's social learning theory research. “bandura defines self-efficacy as an effective quality in the formation of behaviors and an individual's self-judgment about his/her capacity to organize and successfully perform the activities necessary to demonstrate a certain performance (bandura, 1997). according to schunk, self-efficacy belief is the most important predictor of an individual's behavior (schunk, 1991). if an individual finds the necessary ability and strength to perform a task, he/she will behave more willingly and more decisively. individuals have different self-efficacy perceptions for many behaviors in daily life. academic self-efficacy is one of them, and it is a special type of self-efficacy. “the concept of academic self-efficacy is the perception that an individual can perform a given academic task at a determined level of success (solberg, o'brien, villareal, kennel, & davis, 1993). according to chemers, hu, and garcia (2001) academic self-efficacy is students' self-confidence in subjects that require academic study. in this context, in order to learn, it is the individual's ability to use cognitive strategies, effective management of learning environment and time, and to regulate his/her own performance effectively (chemers et al., 2001). it is an undeniable fact that education is a necessity of the epoch for current and future generations and has the most effective significance in building the world (adatepe, kul, & adatepe, 2021). many characteristics of individuals such as skills, abilities and qualities are mostly affected by this change and development. according to semerci, the developing and changing world conditions demand individuals who can demonstrate their existence strongly (semerci, 1999). in other words, people who can use their mental skills will be more successful individuals in the future and will be able to survive. the situation expected from educational institutions is to raise individuals who can use technology, are equipped with knowledge and skills and who are self-taught autodidacts (yagar, dökme, & coşkun, 2020). entrepreneurship is of great importance today. it is “very important to identify entrepreneurial qualified people and” to educate them properly and reintegrate them into society “by educational institutions such” as universities. universities have great duties to encourage entrepreneurship and to plan and implement it in a way that meets” the needs of the sectors (lekoko, rankhumise, & ras, 2012). in many countries, entrepreneurial activity is considered a positive activity (igwe, adebayo, olakanmi, ogbonna, & aina, 2013). because entrepreneurial individuals not only reduce poverty by establishing a business, but also increase the welfare of. the society by generating added value with these activities, organizing resources efficiently and effectively. it is thought that one of the factors affecting students' entrepreneurial characteristics is their academic selfefficacy belief. it is known that self-efficacy has a significant and positive impact on entrepreneurial intention (pihie & bagheri, 2013) and in terms of academic context, it has a positive impact on self-efficacy, motivation and student performance. it is seen that sport develops constructive and productive abilities, imposes job, duty and professional responsibility on the individual, and creates awareness of using public and national energy resources well by protecting them (kolayiş & taşkıran, 2001). as the literature investigating the sports, entrepreneurship and academic self-efficacy triangle is very limited, this research was conducted with the aim of filling the. gap base on the sample of students studying in sport sciences faculties. 2. materials and methods 2.1. participants the universe of the research consists of 780 students studying at “bayburt university faculty of sport sciences. the sample consisted of a total of 372 students, 148 females and 224 males, selected by random method, who were studying at the faculty of sport sciences of bayburt university in the spring semester of the 2021-2022 academic year and who attended the classes between 23.05.2022 and 10.06.2022. 2.2. research design in the research, the survey method, which is the most preferred among the descriptive research model (thomas & nelson, 1996), carried out with large groups, in which the opinions and attitudes of the people in the group about a phenomenon or event is taken, and the phenomenon and events are tried to be defined with respect to their own conditions and as they are, was used (karasar, 2005). 2.3. data collection tools 2.3.1. academic self-efficacy scale (ases) ases is a 33-item scale originally prepared by owen and forman (1988). items are evaluated on a 5-point likert scale (1= fairly low to 5= extremely high). in the study of owen and forman (1988), cronbach's alpha coefficient was expressed as 0.92. the turkish version validity and reliability of the scale was made by ekici (2012) and the alpha coefficient was determined as 0.86. the scale has three dimensions: social status, cognitive practices, and technical skills. the cronbach alpha coefficients for this research are given in the table 1. in table 1, the .78 value for the “social status” sub-dimension, which is one of the sub-dimensions of the scale, indicates that the reliability of the scale is high, .67 value is found for the “technical skills” sub-dimension, and the cronbach alpha coefficient for the other dimension, “cognitive practices” was found to be .90. the cronbach alpha value of the. entire scale was found to be .93 and it was determined to be of high reliability (george & mallery, 2010). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 100-105 102 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. relaibility analysis. sub-factors sub-factor items cronbach’s alpha social status 2-3-4-11-14-15-16-17-25-27 0.78 cognitive applications 1-5-6-7-8-9-10-12-13-18-19-20-21-22-24-30-31-32-33 0.90 technical skills 23-26-28-29 0.67 academic self-efficacy scale all items 0.93 2.3.2. entrepreneurship scale for university students (esus) secondly, “entrepreneurship scale, which was developed by yılmaz and sünbül (2009) and consisted of 36 items, was used in the research. questionnaire sentences were arranged as a 5-point scale ranging from “very often” (5) to “never” (1). as a result of the factor analysis performed with principal components analysis, all items were collected in one dimension. as a result of the reliability analysis, it was determined that the cronbach/alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was .90. the internal consistency. coefficient of the measurement. tool from the data collected” within the framework of this study was found to be 0.95. 2.4. data analysis the data obtained within the scope of the research” were analysed with the help of spss (statistical package for the social sciences) 25.0 package program. descriptive statistics were used in the research. for the tests to be applied to the data, the normal distribution values were examined. in the literature, it is stated as normal distribution that the results of kurtosis skewness are between +1.5 and -1.5 (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). when the scale items were within the limitation of these values, parametric tests were used in the study, otherwise non-parametric tests were used. in addition, in order to reveal whether the data are homogeneously distributed or not, the intergroup homogeneity test was applied and levene statistics were revealed. the reliability of the study was determined with the cronbach's alpha test. in order. to determine the relationships and differences between the variables in the study, independent groups t-test, one-way anova (analysis of variance) and pearson, non-parametric spearman correlation analyses were used. after anova tests, scheffe test from post-hoc analysis was used in the tests that provided homogeneous variance distribution, and tamhane's t2 test was used in cases where there was no homogeneous variance. 3. results in results of the research, there are findings related to the results of the analysis of the data obtained. within the framework of the research. table 2. frequency & percentage distributions of the demographic characteristics of the sample group. variables groups frequency % percent age 18 8 2.2 19 17 4.6 20 74 19.9 21 93 25.0 22 95 25.5 23 52 14.0 24 33 8.9 gender female 148 39.8 male 224 60.2 grade 1st grade 40 10.8 2nd grade 115 30.9 3rd grade 161 43.3 4th grade 56 15.1 department coaching training 157 42.2 physical education and sports education 76 20.4 sports management 139 37.4 number of family members 1-3 individuals 48 12.9 4-6 individuals 206 55.4 7-9 individuals 103 27.7 10 individuals and more 15 4.0 entrepreneurship course/training status yes 163 43.8 no 209 56.2 work experience status never worked before 87 23.4 1-6 months 42 11.3 7-11 months 66 17.7 1-3 years 97 26.1 4 years and more 80 21.5 according to table 2, the sample mostly consists of individuals aged 21, 22 and 23. 60.2% of the participants are men and 39.8% are women. 2nd and 3rd grades make up 74.2% of the participants. coaching training and sports management includes 79.6% of the participants. the number of family members is mostly in the group of 4-6 individuals. the number of students who did not attend the entrepreneurship course/training is 209. work experience is at most 1-3 years, at least 1-6 months. table 3 shows the descriptive statistics of the other variables in the study. family income of the participants varies between 500-34.000 tl (turkish liras). personal income, on the other hand, varies between 800 and 10.000 tl. the bpt (basic proficiency test) scores declared by the students who are qualified to enter the school are 150 as the lowest and 308 as the highest. cgpa (cumulative grade point average) scores ranged from 1.5 to 3.96 out of 4. https://www.bayburt.edu.tr/en/beden-egitimi-ve-spor-egitimi asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 100-105 103 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 3. descriptive statistics of other variables of the sample group. variables n min max mean sd family income (tl) 372 500 34000 5506.47 4306.29 personel income (tl) 372 800 10000 1135.89 753.56 bpt (basic proficiency test) score 372 150 427 194.61 38.89 cgpa (cumulative grade point average) 372 1.50 3.96 2.80 0.41 valid n 372 table 4. entrepreneurship mean score of the sample group scale n mean sd entrepreneurship 372 3.85 0.598 table 4 shows the arithmetic mean of the scores calculated from the entrepreneurship scale of the students. this score is 3.85. this average shows that these students are at the "high entrepreneurship" level. table 5. independent groups t test between gender variable and scale sub-factors. sub-factors gender n mean t p entrepreneurship female 148 3.85 6.66 0.010* male 224 3.86 social status female 148 3.20 2.01 0.157 male 224 3.25 cognitive applications female 148 3.32 1.40 0.238 male 224 3.25 technical skills female 148 3.19 3.76 0.053 male 224 3.16 note: *p<.05. when the findings in table 5 are examined, a statistically significant difference was found only in the single dimension of the "entrepreneurship scale", as a result of the independent groups t-test performed between the scale sub-dimensions of the participants and the gender variable (p<0.05). no differentiation was found in the subdimensions of the academic self-efficacy scale. table 6. correlations between other variables and scale sub-factors. n=372 age entrepreneurship social status cognitive applications technical skills age 1 0.141** 0.097 0.102* 0.092 personal income 1 -0.007 0.005 0.048 0.019 family income 1 0.015 -0.012 -0.045 0.027 bpt scores 1 0.132* 0.086 0.103* 0.105* cgpa 1 0.051 0.148** 0.239** 0.208** note: *p<.05,**p<.01. as seen in table 6, as a result of the pearson correlation analysis. performed to determine the relationship between the age of the participants and the sub-dimensions of the scale, age and “entrepreneurship scale” (r=0.141**, p<.01) and “cognitive practices” (r= 0.102*, p<0.05) sub-dimension was found to be positively and significantly correlated. however, it can be said that there are weak linear relations. no relationship was found between family income, personal income and sub-dimensions. there is a low-level and positive significant relationship between the students' bpt scores and the sub-dimensions such as the "entrepreneurship scale" (r=0.132*, p<0.05), "cognitive practices" (r= 0.103*, p<0.05) and "technical skills" (r= 0.105*, p <0.05). while no relationship was found between cgpa and entrepreneurship scale, in all sub-dimensions of academic self-efficacy (r= 0.148**, p<0.01), (r= 0.238**, p<0.01) and (r= 0.208*, respectively.*, p<0.01) weak positive correlations were found. table 7. anova test between entrepreneurship scale and work experience variable. sub-factors work exp. n mean sd f p scheffe test entrepreneurship never worked before(1) 87 3.64 4 4.619 0.001** 4>1 5>1 1-6 months(2) 42 3.76 367 7-11 months(3) 66 3.91 371 1-3 years(4) 97 3.95 4 years and more(5) 80 3.96 note: **p< .01 table 7 shows “that there is a statistically significant difference between the entrepreneurship levels” of the students participating in the research and the work experience variable. as the variances were equal based on multiple comparison tests (post hoc test) scheffe test was applied to figure out between which groups the difference was. the result of the scheffe test on the "entrepreneurship" scale was between 1-3 years and i have never worked (x=3.95 x=3.64) in favor of 1-3 years, between 4 years and above and i have never worked (x=3.96 x=3.64) was found to be in favor of the 4 years and above group. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 100-105 104 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 8. correlations between the entrepreneurship levels of the participants and the sub-factors of the academic self-efficacy scale. n=372 ent ss ca ts ent 1 0.196** 0.155** 0.194** note: **p<.01 ent: entrepreneurship, ss: social status, ca: cognitive applications, ts: technical skills. looking at table 8, as a “result of the spearman correlation analysis conducted to determine the relationship between” the entrepreneurship levels of the students participating in the research and the sub-dimensions of the academic self-efficacy scale, it was found that there was a positive and significant relationship between. entrepreneurship and all academic self-efficacy sub-dimensions: • social status (r=0.196**, p<0.01). • cognitive applications (r=0.155**, p<0.01). • technical skills (r=0.194**,p<0.01), here are same-directional, yet low-level linear relations between the variables. 4. discussion with this study, the impact of demographic factors and academic self-efficacy levels of bayburt university faculty of sport sciences students on entrepreneurial intentions was tried to be examined. the study was initiated by giving information about the variables analyzed. first, students' entrepreneurship levels were measured. their arithmetic average is 3.85 (out of 5). this average indicates that these students are at the "high entrepreneurship" level. pan and akay (2015) obtained similar results in their studies. a statistically significant difference was found in only one dimension of the "entrepreneurship scale" in the test conducted between the scale sub-dimensions of the participants and the gender variable (p<.05). in the literature, it has been stated that male students are more entrepreneurial than female students (dabic, daim, bayraktaroglu, novak, & basic, 2012). the lack of differentiation in academic self-efficacy sub-dimensions may be due to the fact that students are given the same education, regardless of whether they are men or women. another analysis is the correlation analysis to determine the relationship between the participants' age, personal income, family income, bpt scores and cgpa scores and the sub-dimensions of the scale. as a result of the analysis, it was determined that there is a positive and significant relationship between age and the "entrepreneurship scale" (r=.141**, p<.01) and "cognitive practices" (r= .102*, p<.05) sub-dimensions. however, it can be said that there are weak linear relations. bohlmann, rauch, and zacher (2017) stated that age should be considered as an important variable in entrepreneurship studies and explained the role of increasing age in entrepreneurial and cognitive activities. family income and personal income variables are the expected results, but in this study, no relationship was found between the sub-dimensions and these variables. there is a positive and low-level significant relationship between sub-dimensions; namely the students' bpt scores and the "entrepreneurship scale" (r=.132*, p<.05), "cognitive practices" (r= .103*, p<.05) and "technical skills" (r= .105*, p <.05) . while no relationship was found between cgpa and entrepreneurship scale, in all sub-dimensions of academic self-efficacy weak positive correlations were found as (r= .148**, p<.01), (r= .238**, p<.01) and (r= .208**, p<.01) respectively. bpt scores measure the general competencies and field competencies of the students who proceed on to higher education. likewise, cgpa scores in undergraduate education demonstrate the students’ levels in the academic assessment and evaluation system. therefore, there may be relationships between sub-dimensions and bpt and cgpa scores. in table 7, there “are statistical differences between the entrepreneurship levels of the students participating” in the research and the work experience variable. since the variances were equal, the scheffe test was used to find out between which groups the difference was available. as a result of this test, the "entrepreneurship" scale was in favor of the groups with more work experience. nassif, ghobril, and silva (2010) found that work experience affects the entrepreneurial process, and in another study, adatepe et al. (2021) found similar results. according to table 8, spearman correlation analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between the entrepreneurship levels of the students participating in the research and the sub-dimensions of the academic selfefficacy scale. a positive and significant relationship was found between entrepreneurship and all academic selfefficacy sub-dimensions: social status (r=0.196**, p<.01), cognitive practices (r=0.155**, p<.01), technical skills (r=0.194**,p<.01) there are same-directional, but low-level linear relations between the variables. in other words, as their academic self-efficacy increased, their entrepreneurial intentions also increased. this relationship was also detected in a study conducted in portugal by ribeiro, fernandes, and fernandes (2020). 5. conclusions occupational fields and social competencies of university students are important factors for raising new generations in the future. it is an expected result that the 4-year undergraduate education will contribute positively to the students, and their self-confidence, competence beliefs and entrepreneurial characteristics will improve. unemployment, which is one of the biggest problems of today's world, is wanted to be permanently eliminated by developed and developing countries, and it draws attention in the united nations sustainable development goals. in line with these actions, entrepreneurship is a supported issue. new workplaces and job opportunities support the economic development of countries and help tackling the unemployment problem. its effect on the economy, establishing social networks in the globalizing world, opening sports halls, establishing clubs, mediating large-scale international organizations, and being associated with many economic activities demonstrate how relevant sports are for entrepreneurship. entrepreneurial individuals' having high persuasion ability, passion, ambition, good observer, feeling competent and academically competent in the field they will do are closely related to the education they receive. in the light of this information, it is important to measure an academic self-efficacy and entrepreneurship levels of the students studying at the faculties of sport sciences and to define the factors affecting these characteristics. the results obtained include empirical evidence that academic self-efficacy has a statistically significant and positive effect on entrepreneurial intention. therefore, higher education institutions should focus on improving the academic performance levels of students in undergraduate, associate and postgraduate education in order to increase new job asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 100-105 105 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group creation trends. since this study only includes the opinions of the students of the faculty of sport sciences, it is recommended to expand the sample group and investigate the effect of different variables on entrepreneurial intention. references adatepe, s., kul, m., & adatepe, e. (2021). examining entrepreneurship characteristics and reflective thinking levels of pre-service teachers at physical education and sports school. education quarterly reviews, 4(3), 342-355.available at: https://doi.org/10.31014/aior.1993.04.03.343. bandura, a. (1997). self-efficacy: the exercise of control. new york: w.h. freeman and company. bohlmann, c., rauch, a., & zacher, h. (2017). a lifespan perspective on entrepreneurship: perceived opportunities and skills explain the negative association between age and entrepreneurial activity. frontiers in psychology, 8, 2015.available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02015. chemers, m. m., hu, l.-t., & garcia, b. f. (2001). academic self-efficacy and first year college student performance and adjustment. journal of educational psychology, 93(1), 55–64.available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.93.1.55. dabic, m., daim, t., bayraktaroglu, e., novak, i., & basic, m. (2012). exploring gender differences in attitudes of university students towards entrepreneurship: an international survey. international journal of gender and entrepreneurship, 4(3), 316-336.available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/17566261211264172. ekici , g. (2012). academic self-efficacy scale: turkish adaptation, validity and reliability study. hacettepe university journal of education faculty (h.u. journal of education), 43, 174-185. george, d., & mallery, m. (2010). spss for windows step by step: a simple guide and reference, 17.0 update (10th ed.). boston: pearson. igwe, c., adebayo, m., olakanmi, o., ogbonna, i., & aina, o. (2013). promoting wealth and job creation in nigeria"“review of the role of entrepreneurship. journal of sustainable development studies, 3(1), 80-100. karasar, n. (2005). scientific research method (14th ed.). ankara: nobel publication & distribution. kolayiş, h., & taşkıran, y. (2001). the role of physical education teacher in talent selection. uludag university ii. national physical education and sports teaching symposium book (pp. 164). bursa: ak mat printing. lekoko, m., rankhumise, e., & ras, p. (2012). the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education: what matters most? african journal of business management, 65(1), 12023.available at: https://doi.org/10.5897/ajbmx12.001. nassif, v. m. j., ghobril, a. n., & silva, n. s. d. (2010). understanding the entrepreneurial process: a dynamic approach. bar-brazilian administration review, 7(2), 213-226.available at: https://doi.org/10.1590/s1807-76922010000200007. owen, s. v., & forman, r. d. (1988). development of a college academic self-efficacy scale. paper presented at the the annual meeting of the national council on measurement in education; new orleans, la. pan, v., & akay, c. (2015). examination of entrepreneurship levels of education faculty students in terms of various variables. education sciences, 10(2), 125-138.available at: https://doi.org/10.12739/nwsa.2015.10.2.1c0637. pihie, z. a. l., & bagheri, a. (2013). self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention: the mediation effect of self-regulation. vocations and learning, 6(3), 385-401.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-013-9101-9. ribeiro, m. i., fernandes, a., & fernandes, a. p. (2020). impact of academic self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intention of portuguese higher education students. paper presented at the iceri2020 proceedings. schunk, d. h. (1991). self-efficacy and academic motivation. educational psychologist, 26(3-4), 207-231. semerci, n. (1999). the teacher's task: to develop thinking. firat university journal of social sciences, 9(1), 209-216. solberg, v. s., o'brien, k., villareal, p., kennel, r., & davis, b. (1993). self-efficacy and hispanic college students: validation of the college self-efficacy instrument. hispanic journal of behavioral sciences, 15(1), 80-95.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/07399863930151004. tabachnick, b. g., & fidell, l. s. (2013). using multivariate statistics. boston: pearson. thomas, j. r., & nelson, j. k. (1996). research methods in physical activity (3rd ed.). champaign, il: human kinetics. yagar, f., dökme, s., & coşkun, s. (2020). the effect of self-efficacy level and demographic factors on entrepreneurial tendency: a study on university students. journal of suleyman demirel university institute of social sciences, 37, 302-314. yılmaz, e., & sünbül, a. m. (2009). developing an entrepreneurship scale for university students. selcuk university journal of social sciences institute, 21, 195-203. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 157 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 4, 157-164, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7508 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the impact of an experiential learning management model on creativity and social interpersonal performances for early childhood: an experimental study autaiwan sriarun1 sarit srikao2 nirat jantharajit3 1,2,3nakhon phanom university, nakhon phanom, thailand. 1email: auple78@gmail.com 2email: sarit63@hotmail.com 3email: n20jann@hotmail.com ( corresponding author) abstract this study aimed to develop the experiential learning management model (elmm) based on the reggio emilia approach and evaluate its impact on creativity and social interpersonal performance in preschool children. a total of 69 children from a kindergarten in northeastern thailand were divided into an experimental group (n=34) and a control group (n=35). the experimental group participated in a two-month intervention consisting of 32 structured experiential learning activities, while the control group received traditional face-to-face instruction. creativity and social interpersonal performance were assessed before and after the intervention using two standardized scales. data were analyzed using paired t-tests and one-way multivariate analysis of variance (oneway manova). results indicated that the experimental group demonstrated significant improvements in creativity (pre-test m=18.88; post-test m=26.02, p<0.05) and social interpersonal performance (pre-test m=11.20; post-test m=13.35, p<0.05). and the experimental group outperformed the control group in both creativity and social interpersonal performance (p<0.05), highlighting the effectiveness of the elmm intervention. the findings suggest that the elmm, grounded in the reggio emilia approach, is effective in enhancing creativity and social interpersonal performance in preschool children. the structured experiential learning activities provide a supportive and engaging environment for skill development. keywords: creativity, experiential learning management model, preschool education, reggio emilia approach, social-interpersonal performance. citation | sriarun, a., srikao, s., & jantharajit, n. (2025). the impact of an experiential learning management model on creativity and social interpersonal performances for early childhood: an experimental study. asian journal of education and training, 11(4), 157–164. 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7508 history: received: 17 january 2025 revised: 20 august 2025 accepted: 26 september 2025 published: 7 october 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the nakhon phanom university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 2 june 2022 (ref. no: he05967). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed to the study's conception, design, data collection, analysis, and manuscript preparation. all authors read and approved the final manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 158 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 160 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 161 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 162 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 162 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 162 mailto:auple78@gmail.com mailto:sarit63@hotmail.com mailto:n20jann@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i4.7508 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5360-6973 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4318-8128 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1098-8109 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 157-164 158 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study introduces the experiential learning management model (elmm), based on the reggio emilia approach, which uniquely integrates structured experiential learning activities into early childhood education. unlike previous studies, it empirically validates the effectiveness of elmm in enhancing both creativity and social interpersonal skills through a controlled experimental design and multivariate analysis. 1. introduction the early childhood education (ece) period is a time of overall development, where children gradually develop their creativity and social interpersonal skills through various learning experiences (tayler, 2015). developing creativity requires taking another point of view in solving issues and using one's imagination to foster innovation, an important step in the emotional and cognitive development of children (yildiz & yildiz, 2021). concurrently, the development of social interpersonal skills such as cooperation, communication, and relationship-building with others are equally prominent goals in early childhood education; these skills significantly shape children's future social adjustment and success (denham & brown, 2010). however, considering the complexity of early childhood education and the differing individualized needs, there are difficulties in achieving such goals in teaching practices. research has revealed that educational activities designed through experiential learning greatly support the enhancement of creativity and social skills in children (harrison, 2024; ranken, manyukhina, wyse, & bradbury, 2023). this approach fosters knowledge development and personal growth in a natural environment by providing children with authentic, interactive, and diverse educational experiences that promote discovery and skill-building (kellert, 2002). nonetheless, there is still a lack of systematic and quantitative research on the effectiveness of the specific implementation of the experiential learning management model (elmm) in early childhood education. 1.1. challenges faced by early childhood education early childhood education is an important starting point for a child's journey towards lifelong learning, and its quality has a direct impact on a child's overall development. however, it has become common for preschool education in developing countries to face under-resourcing (rowell, 2020). in the remote mountainous areas of thailand, for example, there is a shortage of teachers, a lack of teaching materials and aids, and inadequate facilities at educational sites (shaeffer, 2018). these problems further exacerbate educational inequalities. at the same time, the quality of preschool education varies widely. some kindergartens are able to provide quality teaching, but there are also some institutions where the level of education is hardly satisfactory due to resource or teacher limitations (durongkaveroj, 2022). this imbalance makes it more difficult for parents to choose a kindergarten and places higher demands on the overall level of pre-school education. family education is likewise a non-negligible factor in the development of young children. the support and guidance of the family are instrumental in shaping the child's character and developing his or her abilities (alfen, nugraha, saylendra, & susanto, 2024). however, many families currently have deficiencies in their educational concepts and approaches, such as overemphasizing subject knowledge and neglecting children's personality development or emotional needs (gupta, 2017). this phenomenon creates additional challenges for the implementation of preschool education and places greater demands on home and campus collaboration. 1.2. the role of creativity in early childhood creativity is the ability to generate new ideas, discover and create new things (martin & wilson, 2017). research has shown that early childhood is a critical stage for the emergence and development of creativity, and that the initial creative potential demonstrated at this stage has a profound impact on future development (leggett, 2017). missing out on this critical period of development can lead to a lag in children's creative abilities, which in turn affects their cognitive, emotional, and social development (berry et al., 2016). creativity is considered one of the most valuable elements of early childhood competence, especially in the era of the knowledge economy in the twenty-first century, where innovation has become the core driving force of economic development (fu & shi, 2022). therefore, educators should emphasize and actively cultivate children's creativity from early childhood. in early childhood education, play is recognized as an important form of activity that promotes the development of creativity. this view is rooted in the nature and characteristics of games, which are effective in stimulating creative thinking in young children (behnamnia, kamsin, ismail, & hayati, 2020) it has been shown that different children may play with the same object differently or take the same manipulation of different objects, and that this exploratory behavior is an important manifestation of the development of creative thinking in young children (pellegrini, 2013). as an intrinsic motivation to inquire into things, curiosity can inspire young children to think deeply and provoke a strong desire to know, which in turn pushes children to discover and explore the mysteries of life (bjerknes, wilhelmsen, & foyn-bruun, 2024). however, there are still many challenges in the development of creativity in young children. teachers may neglect children who are relatively average or even slow in their abilities by favoring young children who are developing rapidly (ellis et al., 2023). these disadvantaged children may gradually lose their self-confidence due to a lack of praise and sense of achievement, which in turn affects the release of their creative potential (negru & sava, 2023). some young children show strong emotional independence and exploration, but may not receive enough attention because these qualities are often misinterpreted as mischievousness or willfulness (hirsh-pasek et al., 2022). despite the fact that play and exploratory activities are important means of promoting the development of creativity in young children, there is still a dearth of research on how to implement effective strategies in actual teaching and learning. most research on creativity has focused on qualitative analysis and lacks quantitative assessment of specific instructional strategies through experimental or quasi-experimental studies (fromm et al., 2021; mogavi et al., 2024). 1.3. the role of social interpersonal performances in early childhood interaction is a basic human need and a requirement that society places on individuals (baecker, 2011). social interpersonal performance is a concept that typically refers to the behaviors, competencies, and attitudes that an asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 157-164 159 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group individual exhibits during interactions with others, covering a wide range of aspects such as interpersonal communication, cooperation, conflict management, and empathy (klein, derouin, & salas, 2006). early childhood is a critical stage for the development of social interpersonal performance, but due to the lack of sufficient experience in social interaction, young children often encounter challenges when interacting with others. for example, children who are new to kindergarten tend to be fearful, uneasy, and anxious about unfamiliar environments and strangers, and they show signs of being withdrawn, timid, or out of place (rubin, 2021). some effective strategies have been suggested by the study in order to help young children overcome these emotions. for example, older children can be invited to perform programs for newcomers, such as storytelling, singing, and dancing, or participate in interesting games with them. in such a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, children are more likely to open themselves up, gradually integrate into the new environment, and develop the ability to interact with others (roussou, 2004). social activities are often shared by different groups of humans, and role-playing is a universal strategy for developing social interpersonal performances in young children. role-playing games are a creative activity in which young children imitate adult labor and interactions based on their life experiences and willingness to do so (waskul & lust, 2004). this activity helps young children understand and assume social roles, and also fosters a sense of selfeducation by adhering to social role norms. during role play, young children can actively participate in social interactions, showing initiative, role awareness, and identification with role norms (root-bernstein & rootbernstein, 2006). however, due to their young age and limited experience of interaction, young children often have problems in their interactions. for example, young children may have conflicts over competing for toys or cry during play (french et al., 2011). teachers need appropriate interventions to avoid these problems. with basic interaction skills taught to young children, they receive specific behavioral guidance when interacting with others, and the process of interaction becomes smoother as a result (lefevre, 2010). young children gradually experience the pleasure and joy of interacting with others, and then develop the qualities of being willing to interact and being skilled at interacting. despite the results of related research and practice, further experimental validation and theoretical exploration are needed on how to design more systematic strategies to enhance young children's social interpersonal performance (carpendale & lewis, 2004). 1.4. reggio emilia approach there are numerous studies that have explored how the reggio emilia approach supports young children's learning and growth (fernández santín & feliu torruella, 2017; hewett, 2001). the literature states that the core philosophy of the reggio emilia approach is that children have a unique sense of curiosity and potential, and that education should be centered on them, promoting learning through exploration and collaboration. this approach recognizes the importance of the environment, adult roles, and the children themselves in the learning process (gardner & jones, 2016). the original purpose was to support children's development through progressive teaching methods. although many schools and kindergartens are inspired by it, each community should adapt teaching strategies to its own culture and needs (faroughi & fekete-dabney, 2023). with no two ways of practicing exactly the same. every child, teacher and community is unique, and that uniqueness needs to be fully respected. educational activities should be designed with children's interests and needs in mind and adapted on the basis of their direct participation. the core principles of the reggio emilia approach revolve around children's active learning, the role of the environment, and adult support, and this child-driven strategy is applicable not only in kindergarten but also in homeschool settings (mcnally & slutsky, 2017). children construct knowledge through interest-driven exploration and interaction. learning activities emphasize social collaboration, and each child's ideas and questions are valued. learning environments are critical to children's development. environments should be filled with natural light, order, and aesthetics, while being designed as open, supportive spaces for collaboration and exploration. the choice of materials and tools should also reflect authenticity and the possibility of stimulating potential (fernández-santín & feliu-torruella, 2020). the teacher's role is to observe and listen to the children and design further exploratory activities based on their interests. lesson content is driven by children's interests rather than pre-planned (soler & miller, 2003). the literature suggests that recording and presenting children's ideas is a key part of learning. showing children's learning trajectories through photographs, drawings, sculptures, etc., can help adults understand children's thinking and can stimulate children's own reflection and expression (kim, 2006). the reggio emilia approach is mainly known for its concept called "the one hundred languages of the child," which assumes that children demonstrate understanding and creativity in various forms, including visual arts, music, sculpting, and pretend play. all these forms of expression are a natural part of children's learning processes, thus implying that teaching practices should value and develop these skills (fernández santín & feliu torruella, 2017). while this approach is recognized internationally, its specific applications need to be adapted to fit local cultural contexts and needs in order to achieve the most effective results. 1.5. shortcomings of current research several research problems concerning both individual and combined creativity and social interpersonal performances have arisen with respect to theoretical research versus interpersonal practice (perry-smith & shalley, 2003). significant studies have particularly highlighted the importance of the pair, but unfortunately, they lack significant practical guidelines that can help students in applying such concepts. the most notable void of extant advice is that neither the theory or the literature about the enrichment of creative thinking nor interpersonal relationships says anything concrete about how those two could be accomplished through instruction (hughes, lee, tian, newman, & legood, 2018). clear recommendations could be made in the area of how the successful development of a creative faculty in young children through instructional activities, which will lead to improved social skills, could occur (he, wing, & hoe, 2023). however, there is a significant paucity in experimental data documenting the efficacy of elmm in the making of creativity and social performance of children. one of the reasons behind this lack of evidence-based assessment is the microscopic extent of the methods frequently used, which usually shun large-scale control-based randomization. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 157-164 160 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. methodology 2.1. research design based on the reggio emilia approach, the research study utilized the research and development (r&d) method. three phases of systematic research and practice were employed to gradually design, optimize, and validate the effectiveness and applicability of this learning management model. phase i: status study and preliminary design of the modeling framework. in the first phase, the current state of experiential learning management in preschool education was investigated to analyze its shortcomings and needs in promoting creativity and social relationships among preschoolers, and to provide basic data for model design. a preliminary framework for the elmm was designed, and a corresponding data collection tool was developed by systematically organizing relevant literature and theoretical results in conjunction with the reggio emilia approach. then, five experts in the field were invited to conduct a quality and applicability assessment to continuously revise and improve the modeling framework based on the feedback, as well as to develop research tools to fully prepare for the subsequent pilot phase. phase ii: model framework pilot implementation and optimization. the second phase is the pilot implementation and optimization of the model framework. a preliminary elmm was applied to a randomly selected class of three children in preschool grade 3 in a thai kindergarten as a pilot subject. observations, questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data to assess its initial effectiveness in enhancing children's creativity and social relationships. after that, the researcher analyzes the reliability and validity of the research instrument while recording the feedback and problems during the implementation. based on the results of the pilot, the model framework will be further optimized to better fit the actual teaching scenarios and the needs of children's development, so as to be ready for large-scale application. phase iii: research on the effectiveness of the application of the elmm. the third phase is to validate the actual educational effectiveness of the optimized elmm. a purposive sample of preschool grade 3 students from a kindergarten in thailand was selected as the study population, and class a was identified as the experimental group (34 students), which was taught using the elmm, while class b was the control group (35 students), which was taught according to traditional teaching methods. the study will compare the differences in the level of development of the experimental and control groups in the areas of creativity and social interpersonal relations, verifying the educational effectiveness of the model. the study also analyzed changes in creativity and social relationships in the experimental group before and after implementation. 2.2. participants the population of this study was 4to 5-year-old kindergarten students officially enrolled in the 2022 school year in a thai school. purposive sampling selected two classes from the target population as the sample for the study and divided them into the experimental group (34) and the control group (35). the screening process excluded children who were unable to participate in all study activities and children with special educational needs or other conditions that might affect the results of the study. children in the experimental group received intervention instruction based on the elmm to enhance creativity and social-interpersonal performance, while children in the control group continued to receive traditional teaching methods as the control group for this study. 2.3. intervention the research team held a meeting with the guardians of all participants prior to the start of the intervention, detailing the study objectives, expected outcomes, and the intervention process, and obtained informed consent from the guardians. the intervention was conducted over an eight-week period, and a total of 32 activity programs based on the elmm were designed, with weekly activities centered on one thematic unit, including eight thematic units. the activities were organized around a thematic unit each week (see table 1). the intervention is 1 hour per day (10:50 to 11:50 a.m.) and runs consecutively from monday through friday each week. table 1. an eight-week experiential learning program. week topic activities 1 about “me” paint a self-portrait share “my hobbies” 2 i can do it organize your school bag build a house 3 happy family map family relationships role-playing 4 beneficial foods food sorting competition nutritional plate design 5 rainy season painting activities observation of natural phenomena 6 rice rice cultivation 7 safety first escape simulation crossing game 8 my favorite little tree handmade the experimental group's program was designed around the principles of the elmm, with activities closely aligned with the children's everyday experiences. at the end of each activity, teachers organize reflective discussions and guide children to share their experiences and feelings, from which they can receive feedback and further consolidate the knowledge and skills they have learned. the control group was taught using traditional teaching methods in which the instructor focused on repetitive practice activities through direct lectures on content and instruction. teaching is based on teacher modeling and peer station activities, with minimal opportunities for children to be actively involved and interact with one another. all participants were tested for their creative and socio-interpersonal performance before and after the intervention. the results of the assessment will identify or target the differential in effectiveness between elmm and traditional teaching methods. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 157-164 161 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.4. hypotheses hypothesis 1: the creativity and social interpersonal performances of preschoolers who receive the elmm are significantly higher after the intervention than before. hypothesis 2: the creativity and social interpersonal performances of the experimental group of children who received the elmm were significantly higher than those of the control group of children who received the traditional teaching method. 2.5. instruments 2.5.1. creativity assessment scale (cas) the creativity assessment scale (cas) employs a composite assessment of student creative ability, which is made up of two primary domains: (1) divergent thinking and innovative problem solving, and (2) creative expression and application. dimension (1) entails four main variables: conceptual fluency, originality, flexibility, and exhaustiveness; dimension (2) includes imaginative story creation, a work of art, creative expression, and integration of ideas. each of the items is rated on a five-point scale (0-4), with 4 points awarded for the most highly scored items per the scale, resulting in a total of up to 32 points. the instrument's reliability for cas was checked by the item objective consistency (ioc) method based on criteria for chatprem et al. (2020). each of the 8 programs was reviewed separately by 5 domain experts, and the reliability ranged inconsistently from 0.9 to 1.00 (>0.8 for each item); thus, cas may be labeled as a reliable and objective tool. before and after interventions, this factorial research revealed instances when the scale may be applied and tested. 2.5.2. social interpersonal performances scale (sips) the social interpersonal performances scale (sips) ensures a full range of issues regarding the social relationship abilities of learners through two principal dimensions: (1) interpersonal communication and (2) social adaptability. dimension (1) covers two specific issues, including efficient verbal communication and emotional empathy, whereas dimension (2) involves working within a group and behaving in different social situations. each item is rated on a scale of 0-4, with a maximum total score of 16. sips was also validated for reliability through the ioc. each of the four programs was independently evaluated by five domain experts, with ioc scores ranging from 0.85 to 1.00 (>0.8 for each item). 2.6. data collection and analysis pre-test and post-test data were collected to assess students' creativity and social interpersonal performance. the spss data analysis software performed a paired samples t-test and analysis of variance (one-way manova) to determine significant differences within and between groups. 2.7. ethical approval this study was conducted in strict compliance with ethical norms, and the study protocol was approved by the ethics committees of nakhon phanom university before implementation. 3. results 3.1. hypothesis 1 table 2 shows the comparison of students' creativity and social interpersonal performances before and after the implementation of the elmm in the experimental group. for creativity, the pre-test m was 18.88 (sd=1.83), while the post-test m significantly increased to 26.02 (sd=1.97). a paired-sample t-test revealed a statistically significant improvement [t(33)=23.22, p<0.05]. for social interpersonal performances, the pre-test m was 11.20 (sd=0.76), which increased to 13.35 (sd=1.22) in the post-test. the paired-sample t-test similarly indicated a statistically significant difference [t(33)=8.13, p<0.05]. the findings in the study show that the ordinarily high elmm practice did have a positive influence on the students’ inventiveness and their performance in social circles. it is shown through the substantial growth across the two kinds of activities following the intervention. therefore, hypothesis 1 can be accepted. table 2. t-test results for pre-test and post-test in experimental group. variable pre-test post-test df t m sd m sd creativity 18.88 1.83 26.02 1.97 33 23.22* social interpersonal performances 11.20 0.76 13.35 1.22 33 8.13* note: *p<0.05. 3.2. hypothesis 2 according to table 3, the t-test was carried out to compare the creativity and social interpersonal performances between the experimental and control groups. as for creativity, the m=18.88 (sd=1.83) was retrieved for the experimental group, and the control group showed a similar tendency for creative functioning with m=18.45 (sd=1.17). moreover, the t-test revealed no significant difference between the two groups [t(67)=1.14, p>0.05]. regarding social interpersonal performances, the experimental group achieved the m=11.20 (sd=0.76), whereas the control group recorded a slightly higher m=11.48 (sd=1.09). similar to creativity, the t-test indicated no statistically significant difference between the groups [t(67)=1.22, p>0.05]. these results suggest that the baseline levels of creativity and social interpersonal performances were comparable between the experimental and control groups, ensuring equivalence before the intervention. table 3. t-test comparison between experimental and control groups. variable experimental group control group df t p m sd m sd creativity 18.88 1.83 18.45 1.17 67 1.14 0.255 social interpersonal performances 11.20 0.76 11.48 1.09 67 1.22 0.225 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 157-164 162 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4 shows that the variance of the data was consistent (p>0.05) across groups, as indicated by the results of the box’s m test. afterwards, using the kolmogorov-smirnov test, the results showed that the creativity and social interpersonal performance scores of both the experimental and control groups met the conditions of normal distribution (table 5). table 4. box’s m test for homogeneity of variances. variable box’s m f df 1 df 2 p creativity and social interpersonal performances 7.43 1.71 3 831,236.836 0.063 table 5. test of normality in experimental and control groups. variable experimental group control group statistic df p statistic df p creativity 0.112 34 0.200* 0.106 35 0.200* social interpersonal performances 0.119 34 0.200* 0.122 35 0.200* note: *p<0.05. table 6 shows the results of multivariate tests (pillai’s trace, wilks’ lambda, hotelling’s trace, and roy’s largest root) to examine the overall effects on the dependent variables. all four test statistics yielded significant fvalues (f=15.576, p<0.05), indicating a statistically significant multivariate effect. the hypothesis and error df for these tests were 2.00 and 66.00, respectively, across all metrics. these results suggest that the independent variable had a significant combined effect on the dependent variables. thus, hypothesis 2 can be accepted. table 6. multivariate test results. statistic value hypothesis df error df f pillai’s trace 0.321 2.00 66.00 15.576* wilks’ lambda 0.679 2.00 66.00 15.576* hotelling’s trace 0.472 2.00 66.00 15.576* roy’s largest root 0.472 2.00 66.00 15.576* note: *p<0.05. 4. discussion this study established an appreciable outcome of the elmm in boosting constructive tasks and social relationships within children's groups. there was a substantial growth in the experimental group after the exercise in both areas; however, there was neither a decrease nor an increase in the scores for the control group. these results are best explained through the application of the experiential learning approach in early childhood studies as evidenced by the inclusion of related literature (ionescu, 2020). it is likely that the radical rise in creativity and, generally, in the social skills of the participants is caused by the education system of the elmm. this follows as the fundamental principle of the program is playing, doing, and then reflecting on the activity, which is quite appropriate for preschool age. there are different activities that encourage creativity, such as those enhancing problem-solving, aesthetic, and divergent thinking skills. in this study, drama and drawing components were integrated in attempts to increase engagement and imagination. the concepts in activities like food categorization games and drafting healthy meal plates help in applying the learned knowledge and understanding to practical issues. character and personality are also groomed through the various joint group activities. the outcomes are in full agreement with earlier research affirming the beneficial nature of experiential learning in regards to the early childhood stage. this means the significance of hands-on and active forms of engaging children in social-emotional learning activities, as supported (huang & lajoie, 2023), or the necessity of creative thinking for cognitive and social development as postulated (saleem, burns, & perlman, 2024). the objectives of the study are mainly constructed from the reggio emilia approach, which centers on children's interests and concerns. yet, not like the reggio emilia approach, education through lenses of multiliteracies, however, introduces some structured framework in youth programs, but allows for flexibility and skill development that is built such that it is measurable. this research is significant as it serves to address the prevailing training and policy issues in early childhood education. elmm is technologically simple and can even be replicated, including turnkey systems, thus proving to be cost-effective. in addition, in educational programs for young children, learners are active; they learn with others, reflect on their learning experiences, and their learning is participatory. the model makes efforts to ensure that it addresses persons in low-resource settings through the activities that are contextually redesigned to match the daily lived experiences. teachers can design activities using locally available materials, thereby reducing reliance on expensive educational tools, which can be beneficial in low-income areas. nonetheless, there are some limitations to this study. the study sample limits the generalizability of the findings to a broader population, and future research should include diverse geographic and cultural contexts. additionally, the study is focused on short-term effects, which do not adequately reflect the long-term impact of the model. future research could also explore how to incorporate technology. 5. conclusion the elmm has been shown to significantly promote creativity and social-interpersonal performance in preschool children. the experimental group showed a significant increase in both ability scores after the intervention, while no significant change was observed in the control group. activities such as role-playing, drawing, and teamwork in the elmm provide children with opportunities to explore and interact with each other, meeting their developmental diversity needs. references alfen, f., nugraha, y., saylendra, n. p., & susanto, e. 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(2021). exploring the relationship between creative thinking and scientific process skills of preschool children. thinking skills and creativity, 39, 100795. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100795 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966976032000066091 https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12117 https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2004.27.3.333 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100795 108 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 4, 108-116, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5105 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the knowledge management and the guidelines of learning instruction on emergency medical services by local administrative organizations in northeastern thailand sukhumvit saiyasopon1 thananchakorn pakittawichit2 chula chareonvong3 phrapalad peerapong chotnok4 suchin chansungnern5 thongphon promsaka na sakolnakorn6 akkakorn chaiyapong7 wanchai dhammasaccakarn8 ( corresponding author) 1,2college of innovation management, rajamangala university of technology rattanakosin, thailand. 1email: sukhumvt@kku.ac.th 2email: jintaka@kku.ac.th 3faculty of humanities and social sciences, phetchabun rajabhat university, thailand. 3email: chula2555@hotmail.com 4,5phokhunphamuang buddhist college, mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya university, thailand. 4email: peerapong.cho@mcu.ac.th 5email: suchin9929@gmail.com 6faculty of management science, silpakorn university, thailand. 6email: thongphon.p@gmail.com 7faculty of law, suratthani rajabhat university, thailand. 7email: mr.akkakorn@gmail.com 8faculty of liberal arts, prince of songkla university, thailand. 8email: wanchai.m@psu.ac.th abstract this study aims to emergency medical services (ems) and their efficacy within the purview of local administrative organizations (laos) in thailand. as the responsibility for ems has transitioned from public hospitals to laos, it has prompted inquiries into their efficiency. this research endeavors to scrutinize the determinants influencing the performance of ems managed by laos. to accomplish this objective, we embraced a quantitative research approach. data was obtained from 636 individuals who had availed emergency medical services, chosen through purposive sampling. questionnaires were used to collect data, and the ioc index was employed to ensure data integrity. descriptive statistics elucidated and assessed various variables. multiple regression analysis was conducted with a statistical significance level of 0.01 to unearth the associations between administrative factors and the performance of ems by laos. this research uncovers a positive, moderate-level correlation between administrative factors and the performance of ems by laos. specifically, factors such as community engagement, service preparedness, operational efficiency, budget allocation, resource availability, and staffing levels were identified as noteworthy predictors of ems success by laos, explaining 60.8 percent of the variance. the outcomes of this study have practical implications for ems management by local authorities, not only in thailand but also in other regions grappling with analogous challenges. this research contributes to the ongoing endeavors to enhance pre-hospital care and emergency response, ultimately preserving lives and mitigating the repercussions of emergency illnesses and accidents on communities. keywords: effectiveness, emergency medical services, knowledge management, learning, local administrative organizations, performance. citation | saiyasopon, s., pakittawichit, t., chareonvong, c., chotnok, p. p., chansungnern, s., sakolnakorn, t. p. n., chaiyapong, a., & dhammasaccakarn, w. (2023). the knowledge management and the guidelines of learning instruction on emergency medical services by local administrative organizations in northeastern thailand. asian journal of education and training, 9(4), 108–116. 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5105 history: received: 9 august 2023 revised: 6 october 2023 accepted: 12 october 2023 published: 3 november 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the khon kaen university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 26 november 2018 (ref. no. he613065). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. mailto:sukhumvt@kku.ac.th mailto:jintaka@kku.ac.th mailto:chula2555@hotmail.com mailto:peerapong.cho@mcu.ac.th mailto:suchin9929@gmail.com mailto:thongphon.p@gmail.com mailto:mr.akkakorn@gmail.com mailto:wanchai.m@psu.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5105 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3192-4236 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6779-4311 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-1506-1723 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6456-3168 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-3345-9884 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4994-8404 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7610-2820 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9070-6442 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 108-116 109 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................109 2. literature review.......................................................................................................................................................................................109 3. method...........................................................................................................................................................................................................111 4. results............................................................................................................................................................................................................111 5. summary and contributions ...................................................................................................................................................................113 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................115 contribution of this paper to the literature this study distinguishes itself from prior research on emergency medical services by its primary emphasis on the role of laos in thailand. the decentralization policy empowers laos to effectively manage their resources to enhance the efficiency of ems, consequently leading to an improvement in the well -being of citizens. 1. introduction according to the 11th national economic and social development plan (2012-2016), thailand was developed under a people-centered model to ensure more balanced development based on the sufficiency economy philosophy. one of their strategies was planned to reach sustainable development goals. unfortunately, the plan has been implemented without integration. there were no practical ways to foster partnership among government agencies, private sectors, and communities. consequently, to set out development directions and to reach the objectives of security, prosperity and sustainability, there were some changes in terms of a five-year development strategies for the 12th national economic and social development plan (2017-2021). nonetheless, with the government focusing on economic development including supporting exports and services, and promoting tourism to increase the number of tourists, the human capital has been continuously exploited. moreover, the social development, especially people’s quality of life, has not been given enough attention (the prime minister of thailand, 2017). people’s ways of life have been heavily affected by such developments. this impact results from either industry pollution or their own farming. moreover, millions of tourists have flocked to the city or the upcountry thanks to the government’s tourism promotion. these movements have negative impacts on people’s physical and mental health. they have suffered serious illness which needs medical services and rehabilitation (jansiri, 2016). the government must develop basic health services to meet people’s demands, formulating methods, plans and medical services platforms (newman, de zoysa, newman, & de zoysa, 2001). in thailand, local governments are required to follow the policies issued by the central government. a minister assigns the job to the regions through departments so that they can have the same policy across the country. people are only service receivers. therefore, people in rural areas lack access to the government’s basic health services, both in normal medical care and emergency medical services (chatbanchachai, 1998). emergency medical services (ems) are necessary and urgent for people who have suffered from serious illness and injuries especially road accidents, which, according to a report, thailand was second in terms of road accident behind libya. emergency medical services are basic medical services to which all people should have access (weiner, baker, bernson, & schuur, 2022). therefore, the management of emergency medical services should focus on providing immediate medical services for those who, without effective emergency services, can lose their lives or be disabled. in the past, the emergency medical services for people with emergency illness or serious injuries to avoiding losing their lives and disability were the main responsibilities of the national institute for emergency medicine. for local people who want to gain access to the medical services with quality and standard, and for decentralization, the institution decided to transfer their functions to local administrative organizations (lao) according to the national institute for emergency medicine meeting in 2012. the laos are closer to local people and have main functions in improving their quality of life and safety both in normal times and emergency situations. this is in line with the government policy of decentralization from the ministry, department and local administrative organization respectively. unfortunately, the management has not been smooth as expected. several services including emergency medical services have been plagued with problems. several staff who are equipped with knowledge and skills are not enough to provide patients with the services. the problems include medical materials, budgets and laws/regulations (macris, schilling, & palko, 2018). moreover, to run the services effectively, there must be better and closer collaborations between the emergency medical services and other local organizations including sub-district health promoting hospitals, community hospitals, private sectors and community. the objective of this study is to investigate factors influencing performance effectiveness of emergency medical service by local administrative organizations. the findings are presented to involved parties to set out a policy and improve the performance effectiveness of the emergency medical service in the northeastern thailand and across the country. 2. literature review "this study is grounded in the concepts of public administration, with a particular focus on new public management (npm) and new public service (nps). government responsibilities encompass various aspects, including public policy development, planning, implementation, and managing processes for the betterment of society. public policy encompasses diverse areas, such as security and public health services. new public management emphasizes the professionalization of organizations, implementing standardized processes and assessments, while also downsizing for improved efficiency. within the new public management framework, there is a strong emphasis on achieving performance objectives and prioritizing the welfare of service recipients. the ministry of public health has adopted the principles of public health administration, applying them to the health service system to benefit the well-being of the populace. new national constitution has generated decentralization policy to all levels of government, therefore public health services especially, ems has been delegated from ministry of public health to lao. there are still questionable with the performance effectiveness of ems by lao whether better or not comparing with the previous ems management by public hospitals. emergency medical services (ems) refers to a system that provides immediate medical care in emergency situations. ems is designed to respond to var ious types asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 108-116 110 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of emergencies, including medical, trauma, and other critical incidents. here are some key components of emergency medical services: 1.emergency medical dispatch: ems starts with a call to an emergency telephone number, such as 911 in the united states or 112 in many european countries. trained dispatchers gather information about the emergency and dispatch appropriate resources, including ambulances and other responders. 2.ambulance services: ambulances play a crucial role in ems. they are equipped with medical equipment and staffed by trained paramedics or emergency medical technicians (emts) who can provide medical care onsite and during transport to the hospital. 3.pre-hospital care: ems providers deliver pre-hospital care, which includes assessing and stabilizing patients at the scene of an emergency. they may administer medications, perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (cpr), control bleeding, immobilize fractures, and provide other necessary interventions. 4.advanced life support (als): als involves advanced medical procedures and interventions performed by highly trained paramedics. these procedures may include advanced airway management, intravenous medications, cardiac monitoring, defibrillation, and other specialized treatments. 5.emergency departments: ems transports patients to hospital emergency departments (eds), where they receive further medical evaluation and treatment. eds are staffed by physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who are trained to handle a wide range of emergencies. 6.integration with other services: ems often collaborates with other emergency response agencies, such as fire departments and law enforcement, to ensure a coordinated response to emergencies. this cooperation enables efficient rescue operations, scene management, and patient care. 7.medical direction and protocols: ems systems operate under medical direction, which involves physicians overseeing and providing guidance for ems personnel. medical protocols are established to ensure standardized and evidence-based care across ems providers. 8.continuous training and quality improvement: ems personnel undergo regular training to maintain their skills and stay updated with the latest advancements in emergency care. ems systems also have quality improvement programs to monitor performance, identify areas for improvement, and enhance patient outcomes. it's important to note that emergency medical services may vary between countries and regions due to differences in infrastructure, resources, and healthcare systems. however, the primary goal of ems is to provide rapid and effective medical care to individuals experiencing emergencies, improving their chances of survival and recovery. in addition, many concepts are deployed in the study. the first one is the principle of emergency medical system of which importance is shown (krohmer, 2005). its management is also used to determine the variables which were later taken to study and seek ways in increasing the effectiveness of ems (national institute of emergency medicine, 2015). the second principle is the quality of public service. the importance of public service has been discussed in terms of its main functions and personnel resources. they must realize the quality of public service so that they can develop the organization, which has become the criteria for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the emergency medical service by local administrative organizations. the last one is the concept of effectiveness which is discussed to find ways in improving the effectiveness of the organization. the criteria for the evaluation of effectiveness must be developed to design research tools and set out strategies in increasing the effectiveness of the emergency medical service by local administrative organization. in addition, based on the concept and related studies, the researchers defined the variables as follows. • independent variables: factors of administration: context; 1) environment 2) community readiness, input; 1) personnel 2) budget 3) materials, process; 1) preparation 2) operation 3) monitoring. • dependent variables: ems effectiveness of laos; 1) punctuality 2) equality 3) adequacy 4) consistency 5) progressiveness. 2.1. conceptual framework the conceptual framework of this study follows and is developed based on other scholars' work, related theories, and discussions throughout the literature review to understand the concept of the performance effectiveness of learning strategy instruction on emergency medical services by local administrative organizations as follows. figure 1 illustrate framework. figure 1. conceptual framework. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 108-116 111 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group independent variables dependent variables 1.context: consist of 1.1 environment, referring to the areas for emergency medical service provision and access to service recipients, such as roads and incident locations, and 1.2 community preparedness, which involves cooperation in providing emergency medical services to service recipients, reporting incidents, and volunteer duties in assisting emergency medical services. 1. punctuality is a critical component of emergency medical service because it can significantly impact patient outcomes. rapid response and care can make a difference in the severity of an injury or the progression of a medical condition . reducing delays and providing prompt attention can save lives and improve the chances of a full recovery 2. equity in emergency medical service emphasizes that healthcare providers should offer the same level of care to all patients, aiming to eliminate disparities and ensure that individuals in vulnerable or underserved populations receive the attention and treatment they require during emergencies. 3. adequacy in emergency medical service means having the necessary resources and capabilities to provide timely and effective care during emergencies, with a focus on preparedness, availability of equipment and supplies, qualified personnel, and resource management. this ensures that patients receive the best possible care when faced with critical medical situations. 4. consistency in emergency medical service is vital to guarantee that patients receive dependable and high-quality care during critical moments, which can make a significant difference in their outcomes and overall well-being 5. progressiveness in this context means staying up-to-date and continuously evolving to meet the changing needs and challenges in the field of emergency medical services. 2.import factors consist of 2.1 personnel, which refers to the staff or volunteer workers who provide initial patient care in the emergency medical unit and have received training in patient care. 2.2 budget, which refers to the allocated funds for staff compensation, training of emergency medical unit personnel, as well as the procurement of vehicles for the emergency medical unit. 2.3 materials, which include medical tools, equipment, and supplies used in patient care by the emergency medical unit 3.processes consist of 3.1 preparedness, which involves the readiness of operational staff, vehicle preparation, and communication for responding to service recipients. 3.2 operations, which encompass incident notification, accessing service recipients, providing initial assistance, and transporting to medical facilities. 3.3 monitoring, which entails monitoring the condition of service recipients after providing assistance and transferring them to medical facilities. 3. method this research employs quantitative research methods, focusing on a population of individuals who have undergone emergency medical services (ems) in a local government area in the northeast of thailand. data collection was conducted using a 68-item questionnaire with a five-point likert scale. the index of item-objective congruence (ioc) was utilized, ensuring that items in the questionnaire had scores higher than 0.6, while the coefficient cronbach’s alpha was found to be 0.90. a sample of 636 cases was drawn from individuals who received ems within sub-district health areas. the sample selection was purposeful, and the sample size determination was based on lomax’s theory. trained researchers and their assistants explained the questionnaires to the participants, who were asked to complete the questionnaires themselves before returning them to the researchers and their team. descriptive statistics, including percentages and standard deviations, were used to analyze general information, while multiple regression analysis (stepwise) was employed to predict the factors influencing ems effectiveness performance within the community. the results of the data analysis were presented and explained using tables and figures. following this, a qualitative study was conducted to address important issues. data were collected through interviews with twelve individuals who had cooperated, worked, or received services at sub-district health promoting hospitals. participants were selected using purposeful sampling. semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain in-depth insights, drawing from the information obtained in the quantitative study. the data collected during these interviews were recorded, and subsequent content analysis and interpretation were carried out. both qualitative and quantitative research findings were presented, and recommendations were provided. 4. results the data analysis showed that, overall, there was a positive correlation at a moderate level between the factors affecting the performance of emergency medical services (ems) and the performance effectiveness of ems, with a statistical significance of 0.01 (r=0.544, p-value<0.01). table 1. correlation between factors of administration and ems performance effectiveness by laos. factors of administration ems performance effectiveness pearson correlation coefficient p value levels of correlation 1. community 1) environment 0.585** <0.01 moderate 2) community readiness 0.623** <0.01 moderate 2. input 1) personnel 0.576** <0.01 moderate 2) budget 0.426** <0.01 low 3) material 0.529** <0.01 moderate 3. process 1) preparation 0.523** <0.01 moderate 2) operation 0.737** <0.01 high 3) monitoring 0.358** <0.01 low total 0.544** <0.01 moderate note: **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). the ems operation and the performance effectiveness of ems shared a positive correlation at a high level, also at a statistical significance of 0.01 (r=0.737, p-value<0.01). the results for other factors were as follows: community asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 108-116 112 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group readiness (r=0.623, p-value<0.01), community environment (r=0.585, p-value<0.01), personnel (r=0.576, pvalue<0.01), and materials (r=0.529, p-value<0.01). service preparation and the performance effectiveness of ems shared a positive correlation at a moderate level with a statistical significance of 0.01 (r=0.523, p-value<0.01). for budget (r=0.426, p-value<0.01) and monitoring (r=0.358, p-value<0.01), there was a positive correlation at a low level, table 1 illustrates. according to a multiple regression analysis of eight predictor variables affecting performance effectiveness of ems by lao in northeast thailand, only six variables – operation, community readiness, preparation, budget, personnel, and materials – could be used to forecast the variances of performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand at 60.8 percent (r square = 0.608). variables of monitoring and community environment did not have any influence towards the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand as table 2 and figure 2 illustrates. table 2. multiple regression analysis of predictor variables and the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization. ems effectiveness of laos b s.e. beta t sig. constant 0.845 0.109 0.292 7.689 0 1. environment 0.012 0.029 0.015 0.417 0.676 2. community readiness* 0.157 0.026 0.2052 5.832 0.000* 3. personnel * 0.077 0.028 0.0835 2.751 0.006* 4. budget* 0.048 0.014 0.0884 3.139 0.002* 5. material* 0.060 0.023 0.0786 2.529 0.012* 6. service preparation* 0.12 0.023 0.1553 5.173 0.000* 7. service operation* 0.348 0.035 0.3771 9.697 0.000* 8. monitoring 0.014 0.015 0.027 0.949 0.343 𝑅2= 0.608, s.e = 0.285, f= 6.780* note: *at significance of 0.01*. numbers indicate influential variables to the performance effectiveness of ems. in descending order. 1. service operation. 2. community readiness. 3. service preparation. 4. budget. 5. personnel. 6. material. the results obtained from the sample t-values implied that factors influencing the effective performance is positively and significantly influenced by variable 7 (β=0.377, t=9.697, sig<0.001) by which independent service operation is influenced, also community readiness (β=0.205, t=5.832 sig<0.001) by which independent variable 2 is influenced. v4 and v6 were influenced. thus, the model findings show that influencing factors effective performance are significantly influenced by service operation, community readiness, service preparation, budget, personnel, and material. as figure 2 illustrates. figure 2. model result of factors influencing performance effectiveness of ems. note: for model testing, gephi is employed because the model is highly complex and analysing complex models and relationships is properly done by gephi (everton, 2012; freeman, 2004). analysing the relationship of multi-item variables is possible by gephi from table 1 and table 2, the predictor factors affecting the performance effectiveness of ems by laos can be shown in the forms of the forecasting equation of raw scores and standard score as following: asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 108-116 113 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the forecasting equation of raw score 𝑦 ́ = 0.845 + (0.348) 𝑆𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑂𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 + (0.157) 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑅𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 + (0.130) 𝑆𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 + (0.077) 𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑙 + (0.060) 𝑀𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 + (0.048) 𝐵𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒𝑡 the forecasting equation of standard score 𝑧 ́ = (0.377) 𝑆𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑂𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 + (0.205) 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑅𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 + (0.168) 𝑆𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 + ( 0.094) 𝐵𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒𝑡 + (0.083) 𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑙 + (0.080) 𝑀𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 for the forecasting equation of standard score above, it can be summarized as follows: 1. if the factor of operation increases by one unit, there will be an increase of 0.377 unit in the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand. all other variables remain constant. 2. if the factor of community readiness increases by one unit, there will be an increase of 0.205 unit in the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand. all other variables remain constant. 3. if the factor of ems preparation increases by one unit, there will be an increase of 0.168 unit in the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand. all other variables remain constant. 4. if the factor of ems operation increases by one unit, there will be an increase of 0.094 unit in the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand. all other variables remain constant. 5. if the factor of personnel increases by one unit, there will be an increase of 0.083 unit in the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand. al other variables remain constant. 6. if the factor of ems operation increases by one unit, there will be an increase of 0.080 unit in the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand. all other variables remain constant. 5. summary and contributions for any public service, the people who are in power or in charge of these services must focus on people’s benefits. emergency medical services should be easily reached by residents, who also must be involved in the ems management. service preparation, adequate budgets and human resource development are needed to implement the ems effectively. moreover, a development plan must be in line with the context of each area. factors affecting the performance effectiveness of local administrative organizations might be different. nonetheless, these organizations have common goals of focusing on people’s interests and health so that they can get the maximum benefits from the service. 5.1. factors influencing performance effectiveness of emergency medical services by local administrative organization the results show an operation has the most influence on the performance effectiveness of emergency medical services by local administrative organization. five other factors – community readiness, preparation, budget, personnel, and materials are at moderate. the analysis also explains that all the factors have positive correlation at moderate level. that means to increase the performance effectiveness of the ems, these factors must be continuously supported and developed. the findings are similar who claimed that the performance effectiveness of ems depended on preparation and community readiness (vattamparambil nalan & satheesan, 2020). meanwhile, kapland and norton said that to gain the most effectiveness and efficiency, the organization must be equipped with well-structured management process and qualified personnel able to perform in the circumstance with limited times and resources (kaplan & norton, 2006). personnel supports, material maintenances and a good use of resources were essential to the effectiveness and stability of the organization (nurmandi & purnomo, 2011). 5.2. factors influencing effectiveness of learning strategy instruction on emergency medical services by local administrative organization a multiple regression analysis of eight predictor variables affecting performance effectiveness of emergency medical service by local administrative organization, udon thani showed that only six variables could be used to forecast the variances of performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand at 60.8 percent (r square = 0.608). they were operation, community readiness, preparation, budget, personnel, and materials. the other two variables monitoring and community environmentdid not have any influence towards the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organization in northeast thailand. each factor or variable can be discussed as following: 5.2.1. operation to perform any emergency medical services, that must be done based on public services . whenever, medical assistance is needed, the service operator must perform with his willingness and knowledge based on the principle of basic emergency medical services (national institute of emergency medicine, 2015) because it is urgent pre-hospital treatment for serious illness. it is an illness which a person with knowledge of medical services believes needs urgent medical treatment. an ambulance is also available to deliver patients to hospitals (krohmer, 2005). ems operation, managed by local administrative organizations, is free of charge. to deal with the case, they contact other involved asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 108-116 114 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group parties. apart from transferring patients to hospitals, they also send them back home. with such services, operation is considered more influential than any other factors affecting the ems performance effectiveness. 5.2.2. community readiness for emergency medical service system, community readiness plays part in the performance effective of ems. without support from residents in the community, the service cannot be provided . more effective performance can be expected with the organization development or changes. also, the roles of society and community will be focused on innovation. the changes will benefit the emergency medical service (bögel, pereverza, upham, & kordas, 2019). for local administrative organizations of which work is to deal with communities, if people in the communities understand and give their full cooperation and preparation in receiving services, it is sure to promote and strengthen the performance effectiveness of ems by local administrative organizations. 5.2.3. preparation the main responsibility of the emergency medical services by local administrative organization is management which needs to be handled by people equipped with knowledge and skills in rescue according to the principles of national institute of emergency medicine (national institute of emergency medicine, 2015). for the improvement of the management, all the facilities must be available and checked regularly (paré, guillemette, & raymond, 2020). monitoring and evaluation are also needed so that new ideas and recommendations will be used to improve the management and catch up with the changing situations (mousa & othman, 2020) and meet the standards recognized by the patients (wang & chow, 2012). in terms of process, the relationship between service preparation and performance effectiveness of ems was positive at a high level. the continuous improvement of services’ efficiency and quality and the different ways of planning have resulted in personnel’ better performance and skills in meeting the demands of emergency services (adler & bryan, 1996; daryani & amini, 2016; strokosch & osborne, 2016). 5.2.4. budgets for all the organizations, the resources of personnel, materials and budgets all have an impact on the performance effectiveness. for the input factor of budget, disbursement should be easily managed to facilitate the working process. whether the use of limited budgets in the organization becomes effective depends on the results and the employment of resources. lu, cai, wei, song, and wu (2019) said that budget is important and many studies showed that budgets of each project can be influential to the performance effectiveness (lu et al., 2019). in addition, the operators of the emergency medical services budgets are essential for the ems. that also includes wages for all the staff who should get paid for their services. the wages will also inspire them to continue working for the ems (saeheng et al., 2019). 5.2.5. staffs people who work for emergency medical services (ems) must be experienced and equipped with knowledge of rescue. there must be enough staff to take care of patients. in their study, has focused on personnel’s skills, the number of personnel and other skills in the service jobs (kampaengsirichai, kunurat, & erviana, 2020). people who have job-specific skills and knowledge, and a better understanding of their job can have an impact on the performance effectiveness in service jobs. ems needs skilled people because their job is to save patients’ life and prevent them from disability. it was in line with kanchanasut (2012), showing that among five factors in the management of emergency medical services by sub-district administration organizations were policy, personnel, materials, management and cooperation, and services and news, the organizations did not have enough personnel to support the services and these personnel were lack of some necessary skills at the scene. 5.2.6. materials all materials or tools must be available in ambulances or rescue service vehicles because each patient who suffers from an accident or an illness is different in terms of symptoms . the materials should be of quality and standard. they should be adequate for the ems. paré et al. (2020) said that the equipment including other facilities in each of the project can have some impact on the effectiveness of the organization and also help them to meet their target (paré et al., 2020). 5.3. ems learning forward a development plan to improve the performance effectiveness of the ems by local administrative organizations according to the study of the factors influencing the performance effectiveness of the ems by local administrative organizations, a development plan can be set out as following : 5.3.1. community • community readiness local administrative organizations should clearly and continuously inform people about the emergency medical services and policies should also meet their needs . • for policy and its implementation, and the project of ems by local administrative organizations to meet the needs of people, the plan and budgets for ems must be included in a three-year development plan so that it would have enough budget to run the project. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 108-116 115 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group • for geographic reasons and the management of ems by local administrative organizations, the geographic information system or computer program should be deployed in the rescue services so that it can help patients in time. 5.3.2. management • chain of command, job assignments and regulations the local administrative organizations have set organization structures, rules and regulations . however, rescuers or rescue teams are required to ask for permission from their bosses whenever they will help the patients. consequently, the chain of command must be clear. • collaboration for a collaboration with government agencies or other involved parties in the area, the ems by local administrative organizations should make rescue service vehicles available. the database of these vehicles shared by its networks should be recorded. • human resource development personnel in the ems by local administrative organizations should be given a chance to develop their skills and knowledge every year. • budgets the system of wage or salary disbursement is not clear. it is urgent for both the national institute of emergency medicine and the parties involved to solve the problem. 5.3.3. decentralization • the government should shift the power out to the local administrative organizations according to the constitution as soon as possible. if the ems gets budgets, the shift of power will be complete, and the performance of ems will be more effective and efficient. 5.3.4. collaboration network of emergency medical services • the network includes both government agencies and private sectors . some of them have abundant resources but some do not. to gain the most effective performance for the ems, the network should brainstorm to design the appropriate ems. provincial administrative organizations should be the leader in the ems by local administrative organizations. 5.3.5. law • local administrative organizations must study the law, policies and related regulations including the emergency medical act 2009. they should check if there is any article problematic to their work . also, they must submit it to the government for its correction. 5.3.6. self-management in health • communities should be supported by local administrative organizations for the promotion of self-management in health. when residents have a better understanding of basic emergency medicine, they should be allowed to have their own management team in dealing with the emergency medical services . local administrative organizations, regional hospitals, rescue foundations and private sectors are just the supporting team . 5.3.7. infrastructure development • local administrative organizations are recommended to have infrastructures or activities facilitating the effectiveness improvement of the emergency medical services system . that includes joining ems rally at all levels and taking part in ems rally workshop and the national emergency medicine seminar. 5.3.8. innovation learning • local administrative organizations should have the project of knowledge management (km) and innovation. for example, the ems team reaches out to the community, providing them with knowledge and understanding about the ems and ask-for-help systems. 5.3.9. standardization • standardization is not just about vehicles and materials . it also covers the likes of personnel, working experiences and training programs. if the policy-making people take a development plan to improve the performance effectiveness of the ems by local administrative organizations into account when setting out health policy, it would benefit all people. references adler, p. s., & bryan, b. 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(2022). one year mortality of patients treated w ith naloxone for opioid overdose by emergency medical services. substance abuse, 43(1), 99-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/08897077.2020.1748163 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.37200/v24i6/29440 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2019.05.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2018.01.012 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118595 https://doi.org/10.1080/12264431.2011.10805200 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2019.103198 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047279416000258 https://www.nesdc.go.th/nesdb_en/download/article/article_20151016145556.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3a1436565&dswid=7992 https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3a1436565&dswid=7992 https://doi.org/10.3390/ph5040353 https://doi.org/10.1080/08897077.2020.1748163 98 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 4, 98-107, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5077 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group development of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence for the registered nurses from the international hospitals in thailand dech-siri nopas division of lifelong learning promotion for social development, department of vocational education, faculty of education, kasetsart university, bangkok, thailand. email: dechsiri.n@ku.th abstract thailand is now a medical center in asia. there has been an increase in the number of foreign patients receiving medical services in thailand. the employees in the healthcare industry, like the registered nurse, are the center of the relationship with that service. the vital learning promotion course for these registered nurses dealing with patients of various nationalities is cultural competence promotion. with the nature of the learning style of the registered nurse, they need more flexibility and respond to their learning nature. ultimately, the enhancement of cultural competency learning still needs to be achieved. therefore, this research study aimed to 1) develop a self-directed learning program in the workplace to promote cultural competence for registered nurses in international hospitals and 2) study the effect of implementing a self-directed workplace learning program to promote cultural competency. the researcher adopted a research and development methodology divided into two phases. the first phase is to develop a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competency. the second phase is to study the effect of implementing a self-directed learning program. the findings revealed that: 1) a draft of a selfdirected workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence consisting of concepts and principles, the primary goal of the program, the guideline for promoting cultural competence learning based on the idea of self-directed workplace learning, the learning program, the learning facilitators of the program, the learning spaces are locations or areas within an organization, the international hospital's networks and the learning resources include information sources from diverse places. plus, 2) registered nurses had better levels of cultural competency learning in attitudes, knowledge, and skills than before participating in the program trial and had improved scores in all areas. keywords: andragogy, cultural competence, non-formal education, registered nurse, self-directed workplace learning program, training. citation | nopas, d.siri (2023). development of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence for the registered nurses from the international hospitals in thailand. asian journal of education and training, 9(4), 98–107. 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5077 history: received: 2 august 2023 revised: 28 september 2023 accepted: 10 october 2023 published: 20 october 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by kasetsart university research and development institute, thailand (grant number: yf(ku)27.65). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the kasetsart university research ethics committee, thailand has granted approval for this study on 29 may 2023 (ref. no. coe66/062). transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 99 2. conceptual framework of the study ....................................................................................................................................................100 3. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................................101 4. research finding ........................................................................................................................................................................................103 5. research discussion ..................................................................................................................................................................................105 6. research suggestion..................................................................................................................................................................................106 references .........................................................................................................................................................................................................107 mailto:dechsiri.n@ku.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5077 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6183-4671 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 99 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the employees in the healthcare industry, like the registered nurse, are the center of the relationship with the healthcare service. the vital learning promotion course for these registered nurses dealing with patients of various nationalities is cultural competence enhancement. with this aspect, the research study will present a self-directed learning program in the workplace to promote cultural competence for registered nurses in international hospitals. 1. introduction 1.1. background and problem of the study thailand is now a medical center. there has been an increase in the number of foreign patients receiving medical services in thailand. the medical service business implements the strategic plan to develop thailand into the center of excellent health care in asia. the ministry of public health has determined that it reflects the importance of policies that make thailand a medical hub for foreigners. the medical service business is one way to earn income for the country. these are the three main products of the strategic plan: the healthcare service business, the health promotion business, and the business of health products and thai herbs. the thai government intends to continuously promote and support the policy of becoming a medical center to generate income for the country, even in implementing the strategic plan to develop thailand as a world-class healthcare provider. that is the strategic plan in phase 2, with the addition of thai traditional and alternative medicine services into the strategic plan as well. it is from the cabinet's policy statement to the national assembly on august 23, 2012, at the policy. this appears in the fourth policy on social policy and quality of life. this public health development policy aims to drive thailand to be excellent in products and services in health and medical treatment by coordinating to create academic advancement with all relevant sectors. the ministry of public health policy, which announced the policy of becoming a medical center, is also an essential policy of the ministry of public health. the number of foreign healthcare patients has increased rapidly since 2000. the statistics have shown that the number of foreign healthcare patients and the growth rate have increased by an average of 27.2 percent per year. it had the highest number of foreigners receiving medical services in asia, more than singapore. some factors contributing to such expansion include the liberalization of trade in services in thailand's healthcare sector, which is based on the potential to provide world-class and affordable services, including a reputation for excellent service and hospitality (whittaker & chee, 2015). it is undeniable that providers in the healthcare sector in thailand inevitably have to work with people from different cultures. over the past two decades, the role of registered nurses in international hospitals caring for patients from around the world has changed dramatically. research about the role of registered nurses with cultural competencies has found that culturally diverse patients are involved and affect all aspects of all professions in the hospital that serve these patients. the "registered nurse" is the center of the relationship with that service. in particular, traveling by air from one country to another has always been challenging. this allows the patient to choose the country to treat their illness. thailand is regarded as one of the most visited countries in the world by foreign tourists. as a result, income from tourism is worth several million baht per year (westbrook, duffield, li, & creswick, 2011). each society has a variety of cultures, which can be viewed in two dimensions: 1) the dimension of the process that considers culture as a way of life of people in society that is constantly changing, such as the way of eating, the way of sleep, coexistence training process, cultivate different stories for people in society. these can be different or the same in each community. there is a transfer between societies. and 2) the outcome dimension views culture as the sum of systems of knowledge, beliefs, arts, ethics, laws, traditions, as well as abilities and character. it results from membership in a society, a fundamental characteristic of a culture. multicultural people come together. there will be an expression of lifestyle and wisdom, including a pattern of health care according to their culture. it was found that people of different cultures will have different healthcare styles according to that group's beliefs and culture in society. in every human society, culture is an essential element that determines the state or nature of humanity. it is a pattern of behavior and value in living and living of people in society that determines the behavior or behavior of human beings in each community and defines the definition and pattern of health through culture and health. therefore, it is a relationship that connects and interacts in a dynamic way that differs in each society and culture. nopas, pathhumcharoenwattana, and ratana-ubol (2022) confirmed that people should never forget that everyone is different. even though people come from the same place, they still have different understandings of norms and implications of cultures. however, if people believe that everyone is different, they will learn to be more aware of their verbal and non-verbal when dealing with people from different cultural backgrounds. promoting cultural competency learning for new registered nurses works effectively with international hospital patients. there are various international hospitals in thailand, such as simitivej hospital, bangkok hospital, bumrungrad hospital, med park hospital, etc. it is developing a curriculum on cultural competence integrated with training for many registered nurses. however, in the end, there needed to be more continuity in the operation. even in some hospitals, groups of registered nurses are gathered to learn cultural competencies in the workplace. nevertheless, with the nature of the learning style of the registered nurse, they need more flexibility and respond to the nature of registered nurses' learning. ultimately, the promotion of cultural competency learning still needs to be achieved. this is the difference in the time to work for each person. it is another factor that hinders learning together in the classroom. therefore, self-directed learning is essential to increase learners' opportunity to identify problems and discover what to learn—by designing a self-learning method. this self-directed learning is an essential process for learning to acquire cultural competence. furthermore, learning in the organization is considered one of the managements of education outside the school system. education plays an essential role in improving the quality of life. from the national education act of 1999 (no. 3), section 22, which has an important principle based on peoplecentered development, has determined that education management must emphasize the ability of learners to develop. it can be learned where the learners matter the most. the educational management process must focus on enabling learners to develop to their full potential. according to the secretariat of the council of education, the educational management process must encourage learners to develop naturally and to their full potential, which has conducted a research and development project on learner-centered learning styles by using learning styles of prototype asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 100 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group instructors to research and develop. it is consistent with article 22 that education management must adhere to the principle that all learners can learn and develop themselves. the educational management process must encourage learners to build from nature and focus on thinking skills training, skills training in acquiring self-knowledge from a variety of learning sources, practical training, and the application of knowledge to prevent and solve problems. this aligns with the government's education policy drive (ratana-ubol & henschke, 2015). the operational plan for the fiscal year 2017 of the office of non-formal education and informal education focuses on allowing students to learn, think, analyze, and apply in daily life, including solving problems and improving their quality of life creatively. in actual practice, it was found that promoting learning for registered nurses to have cultural competence is essential. however, if able to create guidelines or guidelines for learning to be appropriate according to their abilities, learning atmosphere, way of seeking knowledge, learning methods, and assessments to achieve the goal is more individual. therefore, the researcher is interested in developing a self-directed workplace learning program to promote cultural competence through concepts of non-formal education and lifelong learning that are flexible and suitable for workplace learning to be a model for each department to train professional nurses in international hospitals interested in promoting cultural competence. the organization can adapt the learning program to different contexts by believing that a program is a tool that is appropriate to the learning nature of registered nurses. it should be a flexible program in practice. plus, it can effectively promote cultural competence when comb ined with selfdirected learning. it is also an educational innovation at the international hospital training department. the training departments of international hospitals can be utilized to promote learning for the cultural competency of registered nurses to their fullest potential and cultural competence. they can effectively work and deal with workplace cultural diversity and have a good attitude toward service users. 1.2. research statement this study aimed to 1) develop a self-directed learning program in the workplace to promote cultural competence for registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand and 2) study the effect of implementing a self-directed learning program in the workplace to promote cultural competency for registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand. 1.3. research questions the questions that guided this research were: 1) what is a self-directed learning program in the workplace to promote cultural competence for registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand? and 2) what is the effect of implementing a self-directed learning program in the workplace to encourage cultural competency for registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand? 2. conceptual framework of the study conrad and barker (2010) stated that culture is an essential element that determines the conditions in every human society. it is also the nature of society as a pattern of conduct valuing living and living of people in society. it also determines the behavior or behavior of human beings in each community, including being a determinant, definition, and health patterns. culture and health are, therefore, interconnected and interact with each other dynamically. kleinman (1978) proposed that western medicine treats disease through adaptation and psycho-physiologic processes. instead, patients and families perceive and create definitions, meanings, and descriptions of illnesses with influences generated from the refinement of their culture and society, resulting in responses to illnesses. seeking a cure for patients and families, kleinman (1978) also offers health workers to look at health and illness through the patient's point of view by asking questions about the definition of illness, recognition of abnormal symptoms, the severity of illness, recognition of the cause of illness, and belief in treatment expectation of treatment outcome to create mutual understanding. leininger (1984) proposed the concept of cultural care madeleine leininger, a nurse who received a doctorate in sociocultural anthropology from the university of washington, proposed that caring for the sick must conform to requirements. it depends on the ethnicity and culture of the patient, and nursing management needs to analyze all factors influencing the health or illness of the individual in that sociocultural context with the "sunrise model" to understand the worldview and social structure of the individual in each cultural society. pilkington (2005) also defined cross-cultural nursing competency as having skills, knowledge, and other information leading to the question being asked. they can point to knowledge, skills, and personal characteristics of attributes that the behavior is necessary and sufficient for that person to check for responsibility constantly. it is superior to others, and the committee will join the situation that is about to arrive. campinha-bacote and campinhabacote (1999) applied the theory of cultural health care to develop providers' cultural competence. he developed a health service delivery model that directly focused on cultural competence, emphasizing that the cultural competency of providers was a process. matteliano and street (2012) aimed to examine the causal model and identify the causal variables affecting the cultural competence and cultural care behavior of professional nurses working in international hospitals in bangkok, thailand. they revealed that appropriate cultural care behaviors could be developed by increasing cultural competence and having perceived organizational support. this research recommends that organizations support training courses to enhance nurses' experience and attitudes. vidusha and manjunatha (2015) aimed to increase students' awareness about the essence of culture in care to enable them to implement holistic care. he revealed the feedback from the cohort groups in 2008–2009 to improve undergraduate nursing students' cultural knowledge, awareness, and skills. multiple approaches are required, such as increasing an understanding of self and other values, exposing the reality of culturally diverse groups, and facilitating individual and group interaction through media or scenarios related to culturally sensitive issues and possible conflicts in the health care system. songwathana and timalsina (2021) aimed to describe the perception of cultural competence among nurses in four asian countries. the participants defined cultural competence as similar to cultural care. they expressed their asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 101 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group cultural competence in four main themes: 1) caring focus for patients with different cultures, 2) valuing holistic care/patient-centered nursing, 3) preparing for living with god or buddha, and 4) considering the social norms and patient rights. the components of cultural competence were assessing the patient’s cultural background and myths contrary to medicine, along with having professional nursing knowledge, skills, and experience. the participants have addressed their cultural competence in providing culturally congruent care with a universal, holistic, and empathetic approach. nurses should be trained to develop multicultural care and language skills and be made aware of their patient’s cultural beliefs. cai, kunaviktikul, klunklin, sripusanapan, and avant (2017) aimed to develop and psychometrically test the cultural competence inventory for nurses in china. cultural competence is expected worldwide from nurses due to the increasing cultural diversity of people in healthcare establishments. however, no cultural competence framework or instrument for nurses has been identified to guide nursing practice in china, where the population's cultural diversity and the healthcare system's characteristics differ from those of the west. the study prov ed that the cultural competence inventory for nurses in china is reliable, valid, and culturally sensitive for measuring nurses' cultural competence. the instrument development process facilitates the understanding of cultural competence globally. they also suggested that the cultural competence of nurses can be evaluated for self-development, workforce management, and quality assurance. the instrument can also serve as the foundation to develop education curricula and nursing procedures or protocols to improve culturally competent nursing practice. whittaker and chee (2015) reported on work undertaken within a thai hospital in 2012, including observations and interviews with thirty foreign in-patients and nine informal interviews with hospital staff. although theorized as a culturally neutral transnational ‘space of connectivity.’ they also revealed how cross-cultural tensions affect the experience of the hospital with implications for the organization of the hospital and notions of ‘cultural competence’ in care. there is no universal experience of this space; instead, there are multiple experiences of the ‘international hospital,’ depending on who patients are, where they are from, their expectations, and their relationships. such hospitals straddle the expectations of both local patients and international clientele and present highly complex crosscultural interactions between staff and patients but also between patients and other patients. figure 1 presents the conceptual framework of the study. figure 1. conceptual framework of the study. 3. methodology the researcher adopted a research and development methodology divided into two phases. the first phase is to develop a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competency for registered nurses in thailand’s international hospitals. the second phase: is to study the effect of implementing a self-directed learning program in the workplace to encourage cultural competency for registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand. these are details of operations in each phase as follows. figure 2 exhibits the research framework of the study. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 102 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 2. research framework of the study. the first phase: the development of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence for registered nurses of thailand’s international hospitals (r1 and d1) . this study phase aims to develop a self-directed learning program in the workplace to foster cultural competency for professional nurses in international hospitals in thailand, which divided the process into three steps: step 1: study of problems and needs in promoting cultural competency (r1). the researcher used purposive sampling to select the registered nurses from thailand’s international hospitals. the research instrument in this step was a group discussion form of discussing issues. there were two issues: 1) problems of learning to enhance cultural competency. plus 2) the need for learning for cultural competency in the future. the researcher collected data by organizing small group discussion meetings according to the appointment of each hospital. the researcher transcribed text from group discussions and grouped keywords with similar content into subgroups. after that, sub-information that is related or consistent was created as the main point of the study and presented the information by descriptive writing as the main point, sub-information, and sample reference. there were two main points which were 1) problems in the workplace with learning about cultural competency, and 2) the need to learn by using a self-directed learning approach to enhance for registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand. step 2: interview experts to develop a draft of a self-directed learning program in the workplace to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand (d1). the researcher employed purposive sampling to select experts in nurses, lifelong learning promotion, education, and training. the research instrument was the interview form to develop a self-directed workplace learning program (draft) to promote cultural competency for registered nurses in thailand's international hospitals in thailand. after the researcher collected all the data from the interview, the researcher performed a triangular examination to prove that the data were reliable, accurate, and with minimal to no error. the methods used by the researcher to examine the data were: 1) data triangulation and 2) investigation triangulation. the researcher employed data analysis by using data obtained from the interviews of all informants to conclude through descriptive writing and evidence from textual interviews categorized by issues in the interview, which are: 1) goals and outcomes of cultural competency learning in terms of attitudes, knowledge, and skills. 2) principles necessary for self-directed learning in the workplace to promote cultural competence. 3) guidelines for fostering self-directed learning to enhance cultural competence. 4) stakeholders in promoting and organizing learning promotion activities to promote cultural competency. plus 5) supporting factors for fostering learning to promote cultural competency and barriers in promoting learning to promote cultural competency. step 3: assessment (draft) of a self-directed learning program in the workplace to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand (d1). the researcher used purposive sampling to select three experts promoting lifelong learning or non-formal education. the research instrument used for this process was the assessment form (draft) of a self-directed learning program in the workplace to promote cultural competence for registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand. the assessment is divided into three parts: part 1) to assess the accuracy according to the principles and the viability of the elements in the program. the evaluation was a five-level rating scale (rating scale). after collecting all the data, the researcher assessed the theoretical validity and practicality of the elements in the model. the researcher determined the mean (m) and the standard deviation (sd) with the interpretation of the data. part 2) to evaluate the learning contract plan to promote learning about cultural competency. it has the assessment's characteristics to find the content's consistency with the objectives. (item-objective congruency index: ioc). the researcher evaluated experiential plans for a self-directed workplace learning program to promote cultural competency. the researcher performed the mean (m) to interpret the data—plus, part 3) additional recommendations. the researcher employed content analysis to summarize the issues that need to be adjusted according to the expert's opinions in the assessment. the second phase: the development of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence for registered nurses of thailand’s international hospitals (r2 and d2) . this study phase aims to develop a self-directed learning workplace program to enhance cultural competency for professional nurses in international hospitals in thailand. the area for trialing the draft for the program designed in phase 1 was med park international hospital. it is a hospital that was willing to participate in the research. the asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 103 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group sample group that participated in this research voluntarily joined 46 people, comprising 15 nurses from three departments: 1) eight outpatient-inpatient department nurses, 2) four emergency room department nurses, and 3) four medicine department nurses with a research period from may to july 2023. before and after the experiment, the researcher employed a self-evaluation form to learn about the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in the self-assessment experimental group. the research instrument was a 5-level rating scale (rating scale), divided into three aspects: knowledge, skills, and attitude, totaling 12 items, and checking content validity from three experts using the index to measure the consistency between the questions and the objectives (item-objective congruency index: ioc). it must be between 0.60-1.00 for data analysis categorized as an analysis of each individual's mean values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills. the researcher compared the number of participants with the changed scores in post-experimental learning by finding the frequency and percentage to find the individual development score. the researcher also compared the number of learners with changes in development scores regarding attitudes, knowledge, and skills by presenting the frequency and percentage values. to improve the prototype of the activity to be complete. 4. research finding 4.1. the findings of using a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence for registered nurses of thailand’s international hospitals the study of problems and needs in promoting cultural competency of the registered nurses from thailand’s international hospital can be divided into four aspects: 1) the attitude of the registered nurses toward cultural competence, 2) the need to promote cultural competence learning, 3) methods of learning about cultural competence for registered nurses in international hospitals, and 4) the importance of promoting cultural competency learning of registered nurses in international hospitals. the results revealed that: 1) they want learning about cultural competence to be something everyone in the hospital must learn. 2) they want the nature of their learning to be personal. individuals can design their learning style according to the context and nature of each person's learning nature and style. 3) they want their learning facilitators to give them the freedom to learn. at the same time, learners must be responsible for learning what they must learn, reflecting on what they have learned with the facilitator of learning and fellow learners. 4) they want the learning facilitators to allow learners to self-determine the topics they want to learn in their cultural competencies because they believe each learner has different problems and interests in learning according to their previous knowledge and experience. moreover, 5) they want hospitals or related departments to the learning facilitation in the organization to participate in the instruction design and bring what is obtained from each teaching and learning process to improve, edit, and apply for the benefits in the following classes. the findings of interview experts to develop a draft of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand. the details are as follows: the concepts and principles of a draft of a self-directed workplace learning program and the key principles of lifelong learning promotion and non-formal education. this learning program has key principles: 1) understanding the learner’s nature and behavior. 2) applying the learner’s experiences. 3) enhancing learner’s competence. 4) promoting the learner’s full potential, including the senses, emotions, actions, and intellect. plus, 5) relevant to career path development. the main goal for a draft of a self-directed workplace learning program is to enhance registered nurses' cultural competence in four dimensions: 1) cultural awareness, 2) cultural attitude, 3) cultural knowledge, and 4) cultural skills to registered nurses in thailand’s international hospitals. a guideline in promoting cultural competence learning based on the concept of self-directed workplace learning, consisting of six steps. 1) learners identify their learning needs. 2) learners pinpoint the problem they want to solve. 3) learners set a goal for the learning process. 4) learners create something from what they learn. a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand, consisting of activities developed as an example of cultural competency learning by integrating self-directed workplace learning concepts with these key learning processes: identifying the need in learning, identifying the problem for learning, identifying goals for learning, identifying content for learning, prioritize and manage the time, and evaluate the learning outcomes. learning facilitators of the program organize learning activities to promote cultural competence learning to be successful from the beginning to the end of the learning process. it comprises nurse trainers, language & cultural facilitators in healthcare, activity processors, and executives and employees in the human resources department. learning spaces are locations or areas within an organization where learning activity providers can access and run the self-directed workplace learning program to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand, including people in international hospitals who can learn by themselves to achieve learning objectives. the international hospital's networks include organizations, agencies, network alliances, groups, or individuals who play a role in the healthcare industry, and support activities to promote cultural competence learning should support self-directed learning in the workplace. learning resources include information sources from diverse places that can support and encourage learning activities in cultural competence to achieve the goals, especially 'anywhere-anytime' spaces on the platform that the registered nurses can use to dig deeply into what they want to learn, where they want to learn, and when they want to learn. they can interview those who can provide them with their data to obtain the necessary information to learn about cultural competence. the findings of the assessment of a self-directed learning program (draft) in the workplace to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand. the findings revealed that all program components are valid, following the principles of the program in all respects. they were 1) concepts and principles, 2) goals of the program, 3) guidelines for promoting cultural competence based on the concept of self-directed workplace learning, 4) self-directed learning space area, and 5) media & learning resources. furthermore, the program has the highest level of assessment for all components with the same mean score of 5.00 points (standard deviation = 0.00). concerning the possibility of implementation, all components were assessed asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 104 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group at the highest-level regarding concepts and principles, and the self-directed learning space area had a mean score of 4.75 points (standard deviation = 0.54). the goal of the program and guidelines for promoting cultural competency learning through self-directed learning concepts include a learning facilitator, a learning resource, and the activities in the self-directed learning workplace learning program to promote cultural competence. there was a mean score of 4.60 points (standard deviation = 0.45). 4.2. the findings of the development of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence for registered nurses of thailand’s international hospitals the findings of learning cultural competence on registered nurses' attitudes before and after participating in the program. before participating in the program, the registered nurses revealed that they had self-assessment scores at a moderate level, with ten people representing 67.67%, and a high level, with five people representing 33.33%. furthermore, after participating in the program, the registered nurses revealed that they had self-assessment scores at the highest level, with 13 people representing 86.67%, and a high level, with two people representing 13.33 %. all registered nurses had an attitude change of 100%. the learning outcomes of cultural competency in knowledge of registered nurses before and after participating in the learning program. before participating in the program, the registered nurses revealed that they had self assessment scores at a moderate level, with 11 people representing 73.33% and a high level, with four people representing 26.67%. furthermore, after participating in the program, the registered nurses revealed that they had self-assessment scores at the highest level, with eight people representing 53.33% and a high level, with seven people representing 46.67%. all registered nurses had a knowledge change of 100%. the cultural competency learning outcomes in terms of skills of registered nurses before and after participating in the program. before participating in the program, the registered nurses revealed that they had self-assessment scores at a moderate level, with 11 people representing 73.33% and a high level, with four people representing 26.67%. furthermore, after participating in the program, the registered nurses revealed that they had self-assessment scores at the moderate level, with eight people representing 53.33% and a high level, with seven people representing 46.67%. all registered nurses had a skill change of 100%. the results of the study of the level of development classified by each factor found that 1) attitude had a middle level of development, representing 60 percent; 2) knowledge had a moderate level of development, representing 53.33 percent; and 3) skill had a moderate level of development, representing 53.33 percent. detailed information is shown in the following table 1. table 1. a study of the level of development of cultural competence of registered nurses classified by aspects (n = frequency and p = percentage). factors level of development highest high moderate low n p n p n p n p attitude 3 20.00 7 46.67 5 33.33 0 0.00 knowledge 3 20.00 5 33.33 7 46.67 0 0.00 skill 3 20.00 5 33.33 7 46.67 0 0.00 after trying, the draft of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence for registered nurses of thailand’s international hospitals was completed. the researcher has revised the program draft with the following significant issues for revision. 1. concepts and principles. there were details in each principle to be clear and cover the actual use. regarding the learning climate, facilitators must allow absolute freedom to choose the time and place. in the consulting field, the facilitators should plan a convenient time for learners to consult about learning if learners have any questions about learning. regarding learning reflection, facilitators must provide a convenient and suitable time for all learners to simultaneously present and reflect on the learning outcomes to achieve shared learning outcomes. moreover, to empower learners, facilitators must help learners believe in self-learning and encourage them to continue their learning endlessly. 2. the main goal of the program. it has been added, and the expected outcomes are consistent with the objectives. 3. a guideline for promoting cultural competence learning based on self-directed workplace learning. the information obtained from the actual experiments has been detailed to see the processes and goals in each step for easy implementation. 4.3. criticism based on the research results on developing a self-directed learning program in the workplace to enhance cultural competence for registered nurses in international hospitals. the researcher has comments as follows. 1. according to the research results of studying the problems and needs of registered nurses' attitudes towards learning cultural competencies, it was found that, at present, most registered nurses have an attitu de towards learning about cultural competencies as being challenging to learn. thailand needs to give more importance to learning about cultural competence in the primary education system. cultural competencies are essential to make it easier for registered nurses to work with patients of diverse cultures. after all, cultural competencies help nurses work more efficiently and live in the real world, in line with barnes and seemiller (2021) who stated that cultural competence is vital for health services and the development of nursing and public health professions. it was found that cultural competence is a process of providing holistic healthcare services and management, especially for people with cultural differences. there are many theoretical concepts related to cultural competence that should be learned. this knowledge review will increase nurses' understanding and awareness of improving themselves and others. to have more cultural competence, as well as provide the facilitators with guidelines for developing cultural competencies of nursing students. the researchers believe that empowering students to build confidence in learning is the key to encouraging them to initiate the learning process independently at every stage. including ensuring that they can learn by applying knowledge and skills gained from learning to work life, which is relevant to the opinions asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 105 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group of registered nurses from the focus group that reflected that "…i would like to see a day when we as learners can design our way of learning from start to finish. we are adults, we are working. the context we live in today is not like ten or twenty years ago. also, work hours are changing all the time, sometimes during the day and sometimes at night, so if you want to sit in a course and study, you will not be able to study fully…" in this regard, mapiam and sriwongsitanon (2009) confirmed the findings of developing a self-guided learning promotion program model to develop cross-cultural nursing competencies for nursing learners at the faculty of nursing, burapha university. the outcomes revealed that the self-directed learning promotion program model can improve cross-cultural nursing competencies for nursing learners. learners confidently design their learning styles, the effective enhancement that is critically effective for registered nurses as learners have truly designed their learning. 2. the results revealed that the components of a self-directed learning program for cultural competency for registered nurses in international hospitals include 1) concepts and principles, 2) program goals, 3) practice guidelines for promoting cultural competence-based learning self-directed learning concepts in the workplace, 4) learning facilitators, 5) learning space or places or areas within the organization for learning management, 6) networks and learning supporters, 7) media and learning resources, and 8) a set of learning activities to promote cultural competence. these components are consistent with the self-directed learning process. there are subcomponents: applying learned concepts and principles in life, self-study, anytime, anywhere. observe and adjust the learning behavior as a guideline to apply to learners. they are choosing new learning methods and practical exercises to gain learning experience and free time to learn by listening, reading, watching, and acquiring knowledge from various sources. in this regard, meesuaisint, pathumcharoenwattana, and boonprakob (2018) stated that learning by self-direction is creativity in the educational process of a person, starting from the intention to want to learn arising from the internal drive of each person to suit their own needs. then, they set goals for learning and selecting the information to study, including self-assessment. 5. research discussion from the data analysis, the researcher brought the findings to discuss. 1. the findings of interview experts to develop a draft of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand consisted of 1) concepts and principles, 2) the primary goal of the program, 3) the guideline in promoting cultural competence learning based on the concept of self-directed workplace learning, 4) the self-directed workplace learning program to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand, 5) the learning facilitators of the program, 6) the learning spaces are locations or areas within an organization where learning activity providers can access, 7) the international hospital's networks, and 8) the learning resources include information sources from diverse places that can support and encourage learning activities in cultural competence to achieve the goals. the elements are consistent with the conceptual process of a self-directed workplace learning concept relevant to merriam (2001), who wrote the philosophical orientation of self-directed learning goals. the first goal of self-directed learning, the grounded-in humanistic philosophy posit, should have as its goal the development of the learner's capacity to be a self-directed learner. a second goal is fostering transformational learning, which sets critical reflection by the learner as the center of the process. critical reflection is understanding the historical, cultural, and biographical reasons for one's needs, wants, and interests. furthermore, melkonian and rolle (2002) explained that self-directed learning as independent learning provides learners the freedom to learn something new or challenging when and how learners enjoy it. learners get to manage the time frame. many learners find time blocking helpful for juggling their responsibilities and personal growth. however, it is more than just personal preference. in self-directed learning, learners must be involved and engaged in a way that often does not happen in training. moving at learners' own pace, following their interests, and applying learnings in their environment can help enlighten what they learn and make it meaningful. 2. a draft of a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance cultural competence. in this research study, the competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand is based on selfdirected learning as a practice of workplace learning (lemmetty & collin, 2020). they stated that organizations call for employees’ autonomy and self-directedness executed by agile operations and low hierarchies, where learning is also increasingly the responsibility of the individuals and teams themselves and occurs in practice without solid control of the organization. they examine how employees describe self-directed learning practices in the context of workplace learning. the findings revealed that the workers discussed self-directed learning as an obliged, creativeenhanced, flexible, fast-paced practice. self-directed learning was also described as a practice tied to work itself. confessore and kops (1998) also articulated the connection between self-directed learning (sdl) and the learning organization. although there is much literature on developing learning organizations, and there has been some work addressing sdl in the workplace, there needs to be more work analyzing the connection between self-directed learners and their place in a learning organization. furthermore, the findings from this research study revealed seven key principles of self-directed workplace learning as follows. learners identify their learning needs. the main focus is for learners to identify their needs in what they love to know and learn before they immerse themselves in learning. when learners clearly define their learning needs, they are comfortable with the next steps in their learning process, which must be designed to guide their learning in the workplace context. learning like this can help boost learners' self-confidence, the ability to empower themselves, and confidence in their learning. this is relevant to toit-brits and van zyl (2017) suggested that teacher-students should challenge themselves in this process of self-directed learning development to participate in learning opportunities. the characteristics of self-directed learning teacher-students must be strengthened to promote their selfdirectedness about learning, and it is also the lecturer's task to create a class atmosphere of self-directed learning to inculcate and develop self-directed learning characteristics in students. learners pinpoint the problem they want to solve. the main focus is for learners to identify problems in what they want to learn by learning from asking questions. powerful questioning is another excellent starting point for learning. when the learner can clearly define the learning problem, the learner finds a way to learn to deal with the asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 106 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group problem. cai et al. (2017) confirmed that problem-based learning programs that fostered the development of self‐ directed learning are discussed. development of these skills depended on the curriculum's adherence to using student‐ generated learning issues as a guide for defining content to be learned and several other factors. learners set a goal for the learning process. the main focus is for the learners to specify their learning goals to define themselves clearly with the learning outcomes, including the evaluation of learning outcomes. defining a learning goal is like creating a clear learning purpose and learning objective in what learners want to learn. when students can set their learning goals, they will stay aware of their own designed learning process, including gaining insights. hematian, rezaei, and mohammadyfar (2017) also revealed that teaching goal-setting significantly affected the improvement of self-directed learning and achievement motivation; however, it had no significant effect on students' academic achievement. according to the obtained results, it is recommended that goal setting be taught to promote self-directed learning and achievement motivation. learners create something from what they learn. there is a crucial focus on learners to create works out of learning contracts, whether they are presentations, inventions, innovations, or even test results. nevertheless, the outcomes of these learnings will be the learning outcomes that the learners have chosen their learning style from the beginning. accordingly, the results will demonstrate that the development of the learners has entirely changed. learners can be thoroughly proud of what they have learned, their learning outcomes, development, pace, and the learning process they have chosen from the beginning. learners are more satisfied with the product of their learning than the final result of their learning. on the other hand, learning outcomes will be memories that reflect the learner's learning process from the beginning. yoesya, nurihsan, and adiwinata (2020) concluded that several aspects can affect the learning outcomes of learners in the learning process. one of them is self-directed learning. self-directed is a form of learners' activities or activities that they want to study voluntarily without compulsion. the environment influences self-directed learning. self-directed learning is expected to foster students' responsibilities in the face of learning tasks, including learning difficulties. a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand, consisting of activities developed as an example of cultural competency learning by integrating self-directed workplace learning concepts with these key learning processes: identifying the need in learning, identifying the problem for learning, identifying goals for learning, identifying content for learning, prioritize and manage the time, and evaluate the learning outcomes. shi and witte (2018) studied the opportunities to apply cognitive load theory and four-component instructional design to self-directed learning. learning tasks contain three elements: performing the duties, assessing the task performance, and selecting future tasks to improve the performance. principles to manage intrinsic and extraneous load for performing learning tasks, such as simpleto-complex ordering and fading-guidance strategies, also apply to assessing performance and selecting tasks. learning facilitators of the program organize learning activities to promote cultural competence learning to be successful from the beginning to the end of the learning process. it comprises nurse trainers, language & cultural facilitators in healthcare, activity processors, and executives and employees in the human resources department. smith (2017) discussed the facilitator actions that actively positioned teachers as self-directed learners, enabling them to explore the potential learning entangled in learning experiences within an in-service program. all learning experiences within this program were supported by purposeful and considered facilitator actions designed to maintain the program's learning intentions and effectively position teachers as self-directed learners. therefore, each learning experience cannot be separated from the program's overall philosophical underpinnings; meaningful professional learning is derived through actively positioning teachers as producers of professional knowledge and expertise. consequently, the facilitator worked to ensure that the learning experiences not only provided teachers with rich opportunities for personally meaningful learning but that these experiences also built teachers' ability to recognize, value, and share their expertise and professional knowledge. the findings of learning cultural competence on registered nurses' attitudes before and after participating in the program revealed that the registered nurses had self-assessment scores at a moderate level. the learning outcomes of cultural competency in knowledge of registered nurses before and after participating in the learning program revealed that the registered nurses had self-assessment scores at a moderate level before participating in the program. plus, the cultural competency learning outcomes regarding the skills of registered nurses before and after participating in the program revealed that registered nurses had self-assessment scores at a moderate level before participating in the program. kaihlanen, hietapakka, and heponiemi (2019) emphasized that the significance of cultural competence is evident in healthcare quality, and more knowledge is needed about different educational models and approaches that aim to increase cultural competence. the study examines nurses' perceptions about the content and utility of cultural competence training that focuses on raising awareness of one's cultural features. perceptions about the training were divided into three main categories: the general utility of the training, the personal utility of the training, and the utility of the training for patients. general utility pertains to the general approach to the training provided on cross-cultural care, the possibility to initiate an open discussion, and the opportunity to improve current practices. personal utility pertains to the opportunity to become aware of one's cultural features, to change one's way of thinking, to obtain a new perspective on one's communication practices, and to receive justification for carrying out particular workable practices. utility for patients pertains to fostering better awareness and acknowledgment of patients' differing cultural features and increased respect in healthcare delivery. 6. research suggestion 6.1. recommendations derived from research the results revealed that a pleasing learning starting point for cultural competency should fully develop learners' learning potential. hence, the learning facilitator in the organization is responsible for implementing the learning, or even the training department should support the establishment of learning programs that focus on empowering the learners. this is especially true for learners working in a multicultural context. this may give more time to learn for the learners or arrange an area suitable for self-learning. this allows learners to immerse themselves in learning at their own pace in the best possible way. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 98-107 107 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses in international hospitals in thailand will be significantly strengthened if the power of the three groups is coordinated to drive it together in the hospital organization, namely learning facilitators, nursing groups, and training or learning departments in organizations. therefore, the roles and responsibilities of these three groups should have time together to consult plans to promote cultural competency learning by making the most of the organization's learning resources. 6.2. suggestions for further research study a self-directed workplace learning program to enhance the cultural competence of registered nurses should be applied to international organizations in thailand in various contexts to study the success factors, limitations, or potential obstacles and then used to develop a program to be more specific. factors influencing cultural competency learning should be studied to use the information to plan and design guidelines for promoting cultural competency learning in the future. references barnes, j., & seemiller, c. 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(2020). contribution of self-directed learning in maximizing learning outcomes of students in schools. paper presented at the proceedings of the international conference on educational psychology and pedagogy “diversity in education” (icepp 2019). asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071869369 https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12350 https://doi.org/10.1177/104365969901000404 https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.3920090407 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510383495 https://doi.org/10.5539/mas.v11n1p37 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-019-0363-x https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-88-3-432_1 https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-88-3-432_1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_147-1 https://doi.org/10.2306/scienceasia1513-1874.2009.35.049 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-7599.2012.00701.x https://doi.org/10.1037/hum0000089 https://doi.org/10.1078/1434-4610-00076 https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.v12n2p84 https://doi.org/10.1177/0894318405280343 https://doi.org/10.4018/ijavet.2015040104 https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-3465-5.ch006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ienj.2020.100955 https://doi.org/10.20853/31-1-824 https://doi.org/10.21276/apjhs.2015.2.2.15 https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-11-319 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.10.002 165 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 4, 165-171, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7514 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group strategy development for enhancing teaching efficiency through administrator leadership: a qualitative study of educational institutions in the roi kaen-sarasin provinces cluster phramaha phrom duangmanee1 parisha marie cain2 kathanyoo kaewhanam3 ( corresponding author) 1kalasin university, thailand. 1email: phromduangmanee44@gmail.com 2,3department of public administration, faculty of liberal arts, kalasin university, thailand. 2email: mariecain4545@yahoo.com 3email: dr.khathanyoo@ksu.ac.th abstract this research set out to investigate how leadership influence by managers impacts improving teaching performance in academic institutions across the provinces of roi kaen and sarasin in thailand. using a qualitative approach, 20 participants, including teachers and administrators, were interviewed to identify key leadership traits, management practices, and institutional strategies. to ensure the validity of the interview content, three experts assessed the questions using the content validity index (cvi). the findings emphasize transformational leadership, active communication, and professional development support as critical factors in enhancing teaching outcomes. furthermore, emotional intelligence and empathy emerged as vital elements for fostering a positive work environment. a tows analysis will be used to summarize the findings of the research and derive four strategic options: maxi-maxi strategy, mini-maxi strategy, maximini strategy, and mini-mini strategy. these strategies will help to combine internal strengths and weaknesses with external opportunities and threats to form actionable plans that would improve teaching efficiency in the face of resource constraints and cultural barriers among other challenges. it is hoped that these management strategies, derived from administrator leadership experiences, will be adopted in practice to yield significant benefits as valuable guidelines for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of sustainable teaching development. keywords: administrator leadership, teaching efficiency, transformational leadership, emotional intelligence, tows analysis, professional development. citation | duangmanee, p. p., cain, p. m., & kaewhanam, k. (2025). strategy development for enhancing teaching efficiency through administrator leadership: a qualitative study of educational institutions in the roi kaen-sarasin provinces cluster. asian journal of education and training, 11(4), 165–171. 10.20448/edu.v11i4.7514 history: received: 26 december 2024 revised: 9 september 2025 accepted: 30 september 2025 published: 7 october 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the kalasin university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 26 may 2023 (ref. no. hs-ksu 020/2566). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed to the study's conception, design, data collection, analysis, and manuscript preparation. all authors read and approved the final manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 166 2. objectives of the research........................................................................................................................................................... 166 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 166 4. research findings .......................................................................................................................................................................... 167 5. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................. 167 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 171 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 171 mailto:phromduangmanee44@gmail.com mailto:mariecain4545@yahoo.com mailto:dr.khathanyoo@ksu.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i4.7514 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2650-5631 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6233-4585 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2234-2971 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 165-171 166 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the literature by integrating transformational leadership, emotional intelligence, and tows strategic analysis to enhance teaching performance in thai academic institutions. it offers a practical framework linking leadership behaviors with institutional strategies, emphasizing empathy-driven management and sustainable professional development for educational effectiveness. 1. introduction the quality of a nation’s citizens reflects the quality of its education, as education serves as a vital foundation for developing individuals within a country. this process seeks to provide the learner with the knowledge, skills, morals, ethics, and qualities to help him or her prosper; introduce him or her to harmonious living within thai society and the global community. these individuals ultimately become key contributors to the country's future development (office of the secretary-general of the education council, ministry of education, 2017). however, the current situation reveals disparities in educational quality caused by differences in budget allocation, personnel capabilities, and student demographics across schools. these inequalities are particularly evident in small schools, which often face unique challenges due to their size and limited resources. this issue represents a critical and urgent problem, highlighted in the national development strategy outlined in the national education plan. the plan emphasizes educational reform, particularly in expanding access to quality education and reducing disparities (office of the basic education commission, 2019). however, teaching efficiency, karayol and dogar (2020), is a cornerstone of successful educational outcomes. while various factors influence teaching efficiency, the role of administrators is particularly significant as they set the tone for institutional culture, provide resources, and shape teachers' professional growth (leithwood, harris, & hopkins, 2019). effective administrators design not only the immediate classroom environment but also the broader educational landscape by developing long-term plans that establish conditions for sustained improvement and creativity (fullan, 2011; robinson, hohepa, & lloyd, 2008). in the roi kaen sarasin provinces cluster of kalasin, khon kaen, mahasarakham, and roi et, there are unique challenges to educational institutions due to regional disparities, resource limitations, and the need for community integration. for example, it's the rural schools that are often budgeted insufficiently and inadequately provide enough teachers; hence, the administrator must find ways to sustain quality teaching efforts. this paper is an attempt to investigate how different types of administrators influence teaching effectiveness in this region through their leadership styles, decision-making processes, and relationships with teachers. understanding these dynamics is crucial in addressing the educational challenges of the region and improving outcomes for students. to sum up, the efficiency of leadership and teaching effectiveness play a very important role in the success of educational institutions in these clusters, as challenges still remain regarding resource availability, high student-toteacher ratios, and socio-economic barriers. effective leadership ensures that resources are available, community partnerships are developed, and teaching methods can be adapted to local needs. for example, school leaders in roi et and khon kaen take responsibility for accessing resources from local businesses and government agencies to provide training for teachers. these institutions make the most of local knowledge on agriculture to enhance its relevance and impact on the students' lives; hence, it is more meaningful for them from mahasarakham and kalasin. strengthening both leadership and teaching effectiveness would enable institutions to spearhead meaningful improvement in student outcomes while imparting enduring benefits to surrounding communities. 2. objectives of the research to strategic approaches to enhancing teaching efficiency through administrator leadership. 3. method this study uses a qualitative method, collecting data through semi-structured interviews with 20 participants (15 teachers and 5 administrators) from educational institutions in the cluster of provinces roi kaen sarasin, such as suanpor school, roi et province, suphachai school, khon kaen province, phayakkaphumwittayakarn school, maha sarakham province, and pracharat pattana suksa school, kalasin province, etc. the participants were purposively selected to provide an equitable representation of schools with different sizes, locations, and administrative practices to gain a full understanding of the leadership dynamics. the sample comprised schools from urban and rural areas to gather information on a broad range of perspectives. the interviews lasted about 45 minutes to 1 hour. 3.1. data collection the interviews used open-ended questions that aimed to find out the leadership styles of administrators, their decision-making procedures, and the support mechanisms they apply. for example, participants were asked to describe how their administrators address challenges, promote professional development, and facilitate communication within the institution. responses were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim for accuracy. 3.2 data were analyzed using thematic analysis, following braun and clarke's (2006) six-step framework: familiarization with data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining themes, and writing up. this method allowed the researchers to identify recurring patterns and themes related to how administrators impact teaching efficiency. to enhance reliability, two independent coders analyzed the data, and discrepancies were resolved through discussion, and used the swot analysis technique (wickramasinghe & takano, 2009) to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. relationships were analyzed using the tows matrix technique (weihrich, 1982). the content analysis technique was then employed to summarize the research results according to the topics under investigation. to ensure accuracy and reliability, the researcher used triangulation on the researcher side or data collector (investigator triangulation) by checking each researcher's findings to determine if they were consistent or asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 165-171 167 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group different (denzin, 1989). the results and data were then subsequently in the informants and those involved for reexamination to obtain accurate and true information. ethical considerations included obtaining informed consent from all participants, ensuring confidentiality, and securing approval from the relevant institutional review board. the research adhered to ethical guidelines to protect participants’ identities and ensure the integrity of the study. the ethical committee of kalasin university, thailand, has granted approval for this study on date. may 26, 2023 (ref. no. hs-kus 020/2566). 4. research findings 4.1. transformational leadership teachers consistently highlighted the positive impact of transformational leadership on their teaching efficiency. administrators who inspire, motivate, and create a shared vision are seen as catalysts for innovation and improved teaching practices. for instance, an administrator from khon kaen described how they implemented regular workshops and encouraged teachers to adopt learner-centered teaching methods. 4.2. active communication effective communication emerged as a critical factor. administrators who maintained open lines of communication with teachers were better able to address challenges and align goals. teachers from kalasin noted that their administrator’s willingness to listen to feedback and provide constructive advice enhanced their classroom performance. 4.3. support for professional development providing opportunities for professional growth was another key theme. administrators who allocated budgets for training programs, facilitated peer-learning opportunities, and supported attendance at educational conferences significantly enhanced teachers' competencies. in maha sarakham, one administrator’s initiative to sponsor graduate studies for teachers resulted in higher levels of expertise and confidence among staff. 4.4. emotional intelligence and empathy teachers valued administrators who demonstrated empathy and understanding of their personal and professional challenges. an administrator from roi et explained how addressing teachers' workload concerns and providing mental health support fostered a more productive teaching environment. 5. results and discussion 5.1. results the researchers analyzed the findings using swot analysis, which is summarized in table 1. table 1. swot analysis: leadership and teaching efficiency in educational institutions. strengths weaknesses transformational leadership: administrators inspire innovation through initiatives like learner-centered workshops (e.g., khon kaen). resource limitations: financial constraints in rural schools hinder comprehensive professional development. active communication: open communication aligns institutional goals and addresses challenges effectively (e.g., kalasin). inconsistent leadership styles: varying leadership approaches lead to uneven impacts on teaching efficiency. support for professional development: funding for graduate studies and peer learning improves expertise and confidence (e.g., maha sarakham). limited technological integration: insufficient emphasis on technology reduces modernization opportunities. emotional intelligence: empathetic administrators enhance teacher wellbeing and work environments (e.g., roi et). opportunities threats policy support: government initiatives focus on rural education and professional development. high teacher turnover: retaining experienced teachers in rural areas is challenging. community engagement: partnerships with parents and local leaders provide additional school support. cultural barriers: differences in cultural expectations between administrators and teachers. technology integration: expanding digital resources and teacher training modernizes education. economic disparities: regional economic challenges limit funding for essential programs. from table 1, this swot analysis provides a framework for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed strategy development approach. it also highlights opportunities for improvement and potential threats to consider for a successful and sustainable development plan. to create new strategies appropriate for the organization from the current environment and situation, oreški (2012) developed the swot analysis technique by matching the organization's internal and external environmental factors, resulting in four strategies that are appropriate for the organization: maxi-maxi strategy, mini-maxi strategy, maxi-mini strategy, and mini-mini strategy. the results, using the tows matrix technique, are summarized in table 2. table 2. tows analysis: strategy development for enhancing teaching efficiency through. internal/external strengths (s) weaknesses (w) opportunities (o) so strategies wo strategies leverage transformational leadership to use policy support to secure additional enhance professional development (o1, s1) funding for professional development (o1, w1) promote active communication to strengthen foster community engagement to address partnerships with stakeholders (o2, s2) leadership inconsistencies (o2, w2) threats (t) st strategies wt strategies utilize emotional intelligence to mitigate address teacher retention issues by cultural barriers (t2, s4) increasing incentives and workload support expand professional development initiatives (t1, w1) to address economic disparities (t3, s3) develop technology integration plans to modernize education despite limitations (t3) asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 165-171 168 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group from table 2, the tows analysis can be summarized as follows: 5.1.1. strengths (s) / opportunities (o) so strategies leverage transformational leadership to enhance professional development (o1, s1): transformational leadership can be harnessed to promote professional development by inspiring teachers to engage in ongoing learning. for instance, administrators can create a culture of continuous improvement through workshops and mentorship programs that align with governmental policy initiatives (such as funding for teacher training). this would directly impact teachers' professional growth, aligning with external opportunities for policy support aimed at rural education improvements. promote active communication to strengthen partnerships with stakeholders (o2, s2): open and active communication between administrators and teachers can be further utilized to build stronger partnerships with external stakeholders, including parents, local communities, and organizations. through effective communication, school leaders can align with community engagement initiatives, such as involving local stakeholders in educational activities and improving the schools’ resources and support. 5.1.2. weaknesses (w) / opportunities (o) wo strategies leverage policy support to secure funding for professional development (o1, w1): in response to the lack of funds (w1), schools can take advantage of government policy initiatives aimed at advancing professional development and improving education in rural areas. this will be made possible if institutions actively pursue funding opportunities through government programs or partnerships with other agencies, thereby gaining access to scholarships or grants for professional development, which will help alleviate resource constraints and enable educators to upgrade their skills. enhance community engagement to address leadership inconsistencies (o2, w2): to reduce the inconsistency in leadership, schools can positively interact with the community (w2). additionally, the administrators could work with local leaders or form school-community advisory boards to obtain information and support that would make their leadership more consistent. this collaborative effort will help align leadership strategies, creating an environment with better support and stability for students and staff. 5.1.3. strengths (s) / threats (t) st strategies leverage emotional intelligence to overcome cultural barriers (t2, s4): emotional intelligence (s4) helps to break the cultural barriers (t2) between school administrators and teachers. cultural differences can create divides that make it difficult for administrators and teachers to relate; however, developing sensitivity and understanding allows them to enhance the school's interpersonal relations. this method subsequently leads to better communication and conflict management, which can make a supportive, harmonious, and well-integrated school common even in culturally diverse conditions. the fostered approach improves all these. expand professional development initiatives to address economic disparities (t3, s3): government-sponsored or regionally financed professional development programs (s3) constitute a prime opportunity through which teachers can address the economic problems of the region (t3). local leadership can further invest in skill-building workshops and online training to provide teachers with materials that can be used to enhance their teaching practices, even when financial resources are limited. this approach empowers teachers to deal with economic challenges and increases their professional capacity for long-term development and growth. 5.1.4. weaknesses (w) / threats (t) – wt strategies address teacher retention challenges by increasing incentives and workload support (t1, w1): to solve the problems of high teacher turnover and low funds, schools can implement plans to retain teachers, such as offering housing, bonuses, and other incentives. additionally, reducing teacher workloads through flexible hours or the support of teaching assistants can facilitate a more successful and effective work environment for teachers. retaining veteran educators will, in turn, be supported by these measures while fostering a positive and sustainable school culture. develop technology integration plans to modernize education despite challenges (t3, w3): under conditions of limited technological integration (w3) and economic constraints (t3), schools can take steps toward modernizing education by gradually introducing digital tools and online resources. for example, by using low-cost or open-source platforms, schools can prepare for teacher training to use these technologies effectively and integrate them into the curriculum. such efforts not only improve teaching methods but also help overcome financial and technological barriers, paving the way for a more innovative and adaptable educational environment. 5.2. discussion the tows analysis will show the interaction between internal and external factors that affect teaching efficiency in the cluster of provinces roi kaen-sarasin. 5.2.1. discussion the so (strengths-opportunities) 5.2.1.1. transformational leadership for professional development (o1-s1) transformational leadership acts as a powerful catalyst for professional development, especially in educational settings where continuous growth is essential. by inspiring teachers to engage in lifelong learning, transformational leaders cultivate an environment that prioritizes innovation, collaboration, and personal growth. administrators who embrace this leadership style promote a culture of excellence through initiatives like workshops, peer mentoring programs, and tailored support to meet the unique needs of individual teachers. these efforts not only enhance teachers' skills but also foster a sense of purpose and motivation among staff members. moreover, transformational leadership bridges organizational goals with personal development. when professional development aligns with the broader objectives of the institution, teachers are more likely to recognize asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 165-171 169 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the value of their efforts. for instance, workshops focused on student-centered teaching strategies not only improve individual teaching competencies but also elevate the overall quality of instruction, directly benefiting students. as bass and riggio (2006) note, transformational leadership encourages a shared vision and a collective sense of responsibility for achieving organizational success. in rural areas, where schools often grapple with challenges such as limited resources and high teacher turnover, transformational leadership is particularly impactful. by actively involving teachers in their professional growth and creating a supportive environment, administrators can address key barriers to development. this approach not only boosts teachers' confidence and competence but also leads to lasting improvements in teaching effectiveness and student outcomes. ultimately, transformational leadership connects personal growth with institutional success, ensuring that educational goals are met effectively. 5.2.1.2. active communication to build stakeholder partnerships good communication helps school leaders to explain the school’s vision, goals, and needs clearly to people outside. meetings with parents or community forums, for example, offer good chances to talk about important issues, inform these groups about student progress, and see how they can work together. by getting stakeholders involved, school leaders ask for their help with resources, knowledge, and ideas, which makes everyone share the duty for educational success. when these groups know that their opinions matter and see real changes from them, they tend to stay committed and supportive. also, clear talk makes sure that outsiders are well-informed and in sync with the school’s plans, which really helps during times of change or when facing problems. this transparency prevents any form of misinterpretation and helps in building trust. fullan (2011) further emphasizes that for any successful educational change, there must be collaboration between the school leaders and all other stakeholders, and effective communication would build alignment and shared commitment. in summary, dynamic communication plays a very critical role in developing strong partnerships with all the stakeholders. this will lead to an increase in resources, better student outcomes, and a more supportive environment for education. while this deals with needs in the short term, it lays the foundation for long-term improvement in education. the so strategies thus far have reflected a significant partnership through transformational leadership (schulleri, 2020) and professional development as creating active communication as a partnership. therefore, these illustrate a strength-based, opportunistic approach. these approaches agree with the work of bass and riggio (2006), who place transformational leadership in the spotlight to encourage innovation and change flexibility, and fullan (2011) claims that collaboration with stakeholders is key to lasting betterment. with the application of these so strategies, schools will be able to improve professional growth, strengthen community ties, and raise the quality of education as a whole. these methods solve today’s problems in education but also begin the journey toward persistent, long-haul gains for the education system. 5.2.2. discussion the wo (weakness-opportunity) 5.2.2.1. leverage policy support to secure additional funding for professional development (o1, w1) government policies mainly cover value-adding funding opportunities such as grants, scholarships, and subsidies, which include support for professional development activities. schools can take advantage of these programs by submitting well-articulated proposals showing their needs and how the funds will help enhance teaching practices. for example, administrators may advocate for grants that allow teachers to participate in advanced workshops, certification programs, or higher education courses. government financial aid will be given to schools by aligning proposals with government priorities. such policy support can also act as a lever in stimulating longterm funding advocacy. the school can advocate for increased budgetary allocation at both regional and national levels for teacher training. they may also take part in pilot projects that are related to new developing ways of professional enhancement. because policymakers favor programs that show results, schools able to prove their professional development impacts on teaching will probably receive funding again. in addition to offering direct financial support, policy alignment can provide access to a range of non-financial resources that are quite valuable— for instance, training materials and digital tools from government sponsorships or expert consultants. such resources allow schools to spend their limited budgets effectively while helping teachers access high-quality professional development opportunities. 5.2.2.2. foster community engagement to address leadership inconsistencies (o2, w2) building partnerships with community leaders can be a potent strategy for addressing leadership inconsistency. leaders will therefore have their partnerships with the school management strengthened. this collaboration will also help provide vital information on local needs and challenges and the expertise of community leaders in conflict resolution and organizational management. discussion involving the community leaders on the priorities of schools would give fresh insights to the administrators and help develop more balanced and consistent ways of addressing the problems of leadership. community involvement also brings transparency and accountability, which are critical in mending the leadership lapses. when administrators make an effort to involve stakeholders in decision-making processes, trust is built, and leadership practices can be continuously evaluated and refined. for example, organizing town hall meetings or feedback sessions with parents and community members will enable the school administrators to know the existing leadership gaps and adjust strategies accordingly. such discussions create a workplace culture where continuous improvement and accountability become the norm. furthermore, involving external community members can also fill the voids in leadership (schulleri, 2020). for instance, if some administrators inadequately perform functions like conflict resolution or staff motivation, relationships with community leaders can mentor them or provide access to training programs outside the system, which further develop leadership skills. such collaboration will lead to better cohesion and consistency in the institutional leadership structure. the wo strategies thus point out that any form of internal weakness must be addressed through external aid, government policies being one of them. for example, securing more funds for professional development will directly relate to the resource factor and significantly improve teaching practices. the wo strategies are therefore approaches that not only involve a combative way of asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 165-171 170 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group overcoming weaknesses by seizing opportunities, for example, government initiatives and community support , but also involve ways through which resource inadequacy and leadership inconsistency would be addressed while developing pedagogical skills and fostering a more cohesive school atmosphere. alignment of school goals with external initiatives assures educational institutions of overcoming hurdles and creating sustainable change that will reward both teachers and students in the long run. the study by leithwood et al. (2019) reiterates that effective allocation of resources and consistency in leadership contribute to the creation of a positive educational environment, principles at the very center of the success of the wo strategies. 5.2.3. discussion the st (strength-threat) f 5.2.3.1. utilize emotional intelligence to mitigate cultural barriers (t2, s4) leaders who possess superior emotional intelligence will carefully identify and respect cultural differences, which will be very helpful when misunderstandings or conflicts arise in schools. for instance, empathetic leaders recognize when cultural expectations influence the behavior or decision-making of teachers and modify their leadership styles to meet those values. by being good listeners and showing real understanding, they create an atmosphere where respect is mutual and cultural divides are bridged. conflict resolution benefits greatly from emotional intelligence, particularly when culture comes into play. administrators who approach conflicts with empathy and patience will better understand what the issues are and how they can develop solutions that honor the cultural values of everyone involved. for example, if the teacher's style of communication does not meet the requirements of the administrator, then an emotionally intelligent leader would initiate a reason for this and work towards a compromise that would satisfy both parties. these practices improve interpersonal relationships and develop a positively supportive school atmosphere. to wrap up, emotional intelligence is a significant tool in breaking the cultural barriers that exist in schools. administrators with strong emotional intelligence foster cohesiveness and inclusiveness by encouraging empathy, enhancing communication, and polishing conflict resolution skills. this helps minimize challenges brought about by cultural diversity and strengthens relational bonds within an organization for a positive working environment for students, teachers, and the entire educational community. 5.2.3.2. expand professional development initiatives to address economic disparities (t3, s3) an appropriate way to solve the problem of economic differences in education is to offer workshops that would train teachers on inexpensive but effective teaching strategies. for example, workshops on differentiated instruction or active learning strategies could enable teachers to make the most of meager resources in low-income areas. funding for these workshops can be sought by school administrators from government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (ngos), such that all teachers can benefit from them, making access very broad. besides improving teaching practices, these sessions provide educators with the skills needed to work successfully under conditions of resource inadequacy. expanding professional development programs also helps instructors address more general issues created by economic disparity in student achievement. for example, training programs can outline various to help students from low-income backgrounds, including teaching practices, and short educational activities. thus, the end will equip the teachers with these skills to mitigate the adverse effects of economic barriers on students' learning and create more equitable educational experiences. professional development programs can be made more effective by increasing their outreach through involving the community. these schools may access local businesses or community organizations for teacher training and resource provision. such partnerships improve the quality of professional development opportunities and strengthen the relationship between schools and communities, thus forming a support network for shared challenges. therefore, professional development programs expand to encompass redressing economic disparities in education. through investment in skill-building workshops, leveraging online platforms, and cultivating community partnerships, the resource constraints faced by teachers can be addressed by schools, thus improving teaching practices. ultimately, this will develop more severely depressed education into more equitably effective education. the st strategies are centered on internal strengths to reduce external threats. emotional intelligence helps to mitigate cultural barriers; empathy is one of the cornerstones of effective leadership. expanding professional development initiatives to address economic disparity is pro-active and demonstrates resilience in dealing with educational challenges. brentwood schools will use emotional intelligence to fill cultural gaps and expand professional development to combat economic challenges, to harness its internal strength against the external threat. these strategies highlight the need for leadership that is proactive, empathetic, and thinks several steps ahead. the st tactics can be applied by injecting emotional intelligence into overcoming economic and cultural barriers and widening professional development opportunities to address economic disparity. such strategies place goleman (2006) and leithwood et al. (2019) in their frameworks, where they argue that emotional intelligence and professional development are two critical factors in making educational change sustainable. strengthening these attributes will therefore enable schools to improve instructional effectiveness, foster resilience, and sustain long-term success amid external pressures. 5.2.4. discussion the wt (weakness-threat) 5.2.4.1. address teacher retention issues by increasing incentives and workload support (t1, w1) a strong method for enhancing teacher retention is the initiation of monetary rewards designed for the special needs of teachers. for example, results-based pay can honor teachers for causing clear changes in student outcomes or for using new methods to teach. in rural areas where housing might be scarce, providing housing support can greatly ease financial worries, making teaching jobs more appealing and competitive. these rewards not only raise job satisfaction but also help talented teachers remain in areas where their skills are greatly needed. the demands of the workload, however, are also very crucial in teacher burnout and eventual turnover. it can be alleviated at the school level by providing greater flexibility in working hours, thus giving teachers a better chance to balance their professional and personal lives. for example, adopting teaching schedules in rotation or lowering non-teaching responsibilities can relieve the burden from the shoulders of teachers. additionally, offering more teaching assistants to take up administrative work like grading and preparing lessons will help the teachers concentrate on the more asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(4): 165-171 171 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group important matters: teaching the students and honing their own skills. a better workplace environment can also be encouraged by communication and recognition of teachers' contributions to retain them. feedback sessions, opportunities for growth, and public recognition of their achievements. 5.2.4.2. develop technology integration plans to modernize education despite limitations (t3, w3) one good way for schools to start changing learning on a tight budget is by using cheap or open-source learning tools. for instance, tools like google workspace for education and moodle provide free or low-cost options for lesson planning, online tests, and engaging learning experiences. these options allow schools to incorporate technology without needing a lot of money. teachers can use these tools to create digital tasks and assist with team projects, which allows students to use technology in meaningful, real-world ways. in addition to open-source tools, partnerships with tech firms, ngos, or government groups can help close the gaps in funding and technology. initiatives that provide refurbished computers or offer internet access to underserved areas can reduce the costs associated with using new technology. grants will also be available for schools that seek funds specifically to eliminate the digital divide within education. creative sources of funding may include crowdfunding campaigns, community fundraising events, and local business sponsorships, which would enhance technology initiatives. these are ways not only to secure the necessary funds but also to strengthen the bond between schools and communities, thus fostering a sense of shared ownership in the success of education. long-term success and sustainability require the gradual integration of technology. schools may start with pilot programs implemented in some classrooms to assess the effectiveness of the program and scale it based on what they learn. this provides an opportunity for administrators to identify potential problems early in the process and make corrections so that integration can proceed more smoothly and effectively. the wt strategies are therefore mainly based on taking remedial actions toward internal weaknesses to curb potential external threats. these are very vital strategies that can make educational institutions robust when facing adverse situations that might affect teaching efficiency (karayol & dogar, 2020) and other school performance indicators. this means that by using internal strengths to address weaknesses, schools can reduce the impact of external threats and create a more sustainable and effective learning environment. it is through developing technology integration plans that schools will be able to modernize education even with financial constraints and, simultaneously, address internal weaknesses and external threats. strategies such as teacher retention due to workload support and technology integration plans are key ways through which schools can minimize their vulnerabilities and build resilience. research supports these strategies, including works by ingersoll and smith (2004) regarding teacher attrition and the expanding evidence on the vital role technology plays in modernization efforts within education. by taking the initiative in the proactive remediation of internal weaknesses and external challenges, schools would provide an environment that is innovative, resilient, and supportive of education, leading to improved teaching efficiency as well as student outcomes. 6. conclusion the research thus concludes by reinforcing the role of administrators in influencing teaching efficiency in the cluster of provinces roi kaen sarasin. leaders who exhibit transformational leadership, value effective communication, support professional development, and demonstrate emotional intelligence will create an environment conducive to teaching excellence. these findings serve as a significant source of information not only for improving educational outcomes in the roi kaen sarasin region but also for policymakers and educational leaders in similar contexts. by applying these effective strategies, institutions can cement good teaching effectiveness and consequently construct a stronger, more impactful system that reaches out to the maximum potential for both teachers and students. references bass, b. m., & riggio, r. e. 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(2009). application of combined swot and analytic hierarchy process (ahp) for tourism revival strategic marketing planning: a case of sri lanka tourism. journal of the eastern asia society for transportation studies, 8(1), 954-969. https://doi.org/10.11175/easts.8.954 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.176.180 https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2019.1596077 https://www.obec.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/obecpolicy62.pdf https://www.obec.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/obecpolicy62.pdf https://doi.org/10.18421/tem14-09 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242493851 https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.62.320.329 https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-6301(82)90120-0 https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-6301(82)90120-0 https://doi.org/10.11175/easts.8.954 106 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 4, 106-113, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i4.4241 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group determination of exercise attitudes of pregnant women sevgi acari1 omer sivrikaya2 ( corresponding author) 1,2duzce university, sport sciences faculty, duzce 81040, turkey. 1email: acarisevgi@gmail.com 2email: omersivrikaya@duzce.edu.tr abstract it is known that pregnancy is essential in the contribution of exercise to human health and the formation of healthy societies. phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research techniques, was used in the research. the attitudes of pregnant women towards exercise before and during pregnancy and the factors affecting these attitudes were examined. the research group comprises 10 pregnant women, who are university graduates and work as professionals, who voluntarily participated in the research while living in düzce. it is assumed that university graduates and professional pregnant women are the most qualified part of society in terms of health awareness and sports habits. a semi-structured interview form was used to collect data. face-to-face interviews were conducted with pregnant women from different professions and at different stages of their pregnancy. nvivo 11 statistical program was used in the analysis of the data. although the participants thought that it was beneficial for their health, it was determined that they had various fears. due to these fears and the fact that specialist doctors do not recommend exercise, even pregnant women who did not have any problems during their pregnancy avoided exercising. it was observed that the exercise attitudes of the participants before and during pregnancy differed. keywords: attitude, exercise, fear, health, pregnant, woman. citation | sevgi acari; omer sivrikaya (2022). determination of exercise attitudes of pregnant women. asian journal of education and training, 8(4): 106-113. history: received: 16 august 2022 revised: 21 september 2022 accepted: 6 october 2022 published: 26 october 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 107 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 107 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 108 4. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 111 5. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 112 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 113 mailto:acarisevgi@gmail.com mailto:omersivrikaya@duzce.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i4.4241 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6455-6997 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3529-8754 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 106-113 107 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this article will contribute to the literature by emphasizing the importance of the factors affecting the attitudes of women towards exercise before and after pregnancy, the role of exercise in the development of women's and maternal health, and by developing suggestions that will enable pregnant women to exercise. 1. introduction women play an important role in the formation of a healthy society in a country and in raising healthy generations. the place of the mother and the woman in society should be considered important, and the health of the woman who gave birth to the child before and after pregnancy should be given importance (oner, 2014). the world health organization (who) envisions a world where “every pregnant woman and newborn receives quality care throughout the pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period” (tunçalp et al., 2015) the female body undergoes many metabolic, biochemical, and physiologic changes during pregnancy. these changes create a milieu that is advantageous for the maintenance of pregnancy and the post-partum period (olson, sikka, hayman, novak, & stavig, 2009). exercise, defined as physical activity consisting of planned, structured, and repetitive bodily movements done to improve one or more components of physical fitness, is an essential element of a healthy lifestyle, and obstetrician-gynecologists and other obstetric care providers should encourage their patients to continue or to commence exercise as an important component of optimal health (acog, 2020b). exercise is a magic key that opens the door to normal birth. normal birth is a condition in which breath control and pelvic muscle strength are important. if the pregnant woman prepares herself physically and mentally for the birth, the probability of having a calm birth with confidence in normal birth and meeting her baby in peace increases (may, 2017). women with uncomplicated pregnancies should be encouraged to engage in aerobic and strength-conditioning exercises before, during, and after pregnancy (acog, 2020a). inactivity during pregnancy is cause for concern because prenatal women who do not engage in exercise forgo numerous health benefits. for example, exercise during pregnancy is associated with a reduced risk of preeclampsia (dempsey et al., 2004; marcoux, brisson, & fabia, 1989; sorensen et al., 2003) gestational diabetes (dempsey et al., 2004; mottola, 2007), and preterm birth (hegaard, pedersen, bruun nielsen, & damm, 2007; juhl et al., 2008) as well as improved pain tolerance, lower total weight gain and less fat mass gain, and improved self-image (clapp iii & kiess, 2000). physical activity is beneficial for pregnant women (ağaoğlu, 2015; mecdi & rathfisch, 2013), but their rate of doing sports is reported to be low (ağaoğlu, 2015). exercise during pregnancy carries the mother's relationship with her body to a more special position. exercise activities are neglected during pregnancy (kolukısa, 2017). the relationship between this situation and the education level of women is an undeniably important criterion (balsak et al., 2007; barakat, pelaez, montejo, luaces, & zakynthinaki, 2011). traditionally, pregnant women have been directed to wait until the second trimester to begin an exercise program if they have not been active previously. the thinking behind this directive is to avoid the risk of miscarriage during a sensitive period. however, no studies have shown increased rates of complications (such as spontaneous abortion or congenital deformities) or interference with the ability to conceive in women who exercise during the conception phase or early in pregnancy. undue concern about this issue has caused experts to continue to advise cautiously on the matter until more research results are available (wolfe, brenner, & mottola, 1994). despite the well-established benefits of exercise during pregnancy, many women do not meet the current recommendations for physical activity participation. this is in part related to the numerous barriers to exercise participation for pregnant women. these barriers include a lack of time, physical discomfort, fatigue, and uncertainty about exercise guidelines and how to exercise safely (connelly, brown, van der pligt, & teychenne, 2015; duncombe, wertheim, skouteris, paxton, & kelly, 2009; guelfi et al., 2015). popular concern warns that the risks of exercise can cause premature birth, abortion, or congenital deformities. there are no reports documenting that regular exercise alone increases the occurrence of maternal or fetal injury in a healthy woman with a normal pregnancy. she can be physically active without endangering herself or her fetus. however, every woman should be informed of the potential risks of exercise and warned of the associated problems so that she can make an informed decision about her participation in exercise (hammer, perkins, & parr, 2000). all healthy pregnant women should be physically encouraged to exercise and exercise in a healthy pregnancy to reap great health benefits. health professionals have a distinct role in encouraging pregnant women to adopt health-enhancing behaviors. pregnant women should be evaluated comprehensively in prenatal care, and wrong behaviors should be determined. pregnant women and their partners should be encouraged to adopt healthpromoting behaviors through training programs or counseling (aksoy, turfan, & yılmaz, 2017). this research aims to determine the attitudes of pregnant women towards exercise before and during pregnancy and the factors affecting these attitudes, with a research group selected from university graduates and professional pregnant women, who are considered the most conscious part of the society living in düzce. 2. method 2.1. research design phenomenology design, which is one of the qualitative research techniques, was used in the research. the attitudes of pregnant women towards exercise before and during pregnancy and the factors affecting these attitudes were examined. 2.2. participant (subject) characteristics and sampling procedure the research group comprises10 pregnant women who are university graduates and work professionally, who participated in the research voluntarily while living in düzce. the research group was formed by the snowball asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 106-113 108 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group sampling method. other participants were reached in a chain manner through the acquaintances of the participants, whom the researchers found by moving from their close circles. it is assumed that university graduates and professional pregnant women are the most qualified segment of society in terms of health awareness and sports habits. the informed consent form was obtained from the participants who were verbally informed about the study and voluntarily participated in the interviews. 2.3. data collection a semi-structured interview form was used to collect data. with the created form, the questions were tested by interviewing a participant who was not in the research group. necessary arrangements were made and the interview form was given its final form. face-to-face interviews were conducted with pregnant women from different professions and at different stages of their pregnancy. interviews were audio recorded. audio recordings were decoded into a word file. 2.4. data analysis nvivo 11 statistical program was used in the analysis of the data. the codes and sub-themes obtained were tabulated by the researchers under the themes. descriptive analysis was conducted with participant statements supporting the themes and codes. 3. results the demographic characteristics of the participants are shown in the tables below. the 10 interviewees are numbered as p1 and displayed at the end of the tables and statements. table 1 presents type of graduation of participants. table 1. type of graduation of participants. participant faculty p1, p5 law p2 pharmacy p3, p7, p8, p9, p10 education p4 science literature p6 health sciences table 2 presents number of children of the participants. table 2. number of children of the participants. participant number of children p1, p3. p4, p5, p7, p8, p9, p10 first pregnancy p2 1 p6 2 table 3 presents the number of pregnancies of the participants. table 3. the number of pregnancies of the participants. participant number of pregnancy p1, p3, p4, p5, p7, p8, p9, p10 1 p2 2 p6 3 table 4 presents participants' month of pregnancy. table 4. participants' month of pregnancy. participant month in pregnancy p1 9 p6, p7, p9 8 p4, p8, p10 7 p3 5 p2, p5 4 table 5 presents ages of the participants. table 5. ages of the participants. participant age p6 37 p4, p8 33 p1, p2, p3 32 p5, p10 30 p9 28 p7 26 average 31.30 table 6 presents participants' years of marriage. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 106-113 109 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 6. participants' years of marriage. participant year of marriage p6 16 p1, p2, p4, 5 p3, p5 4 p8 3 p7, p10 2 p9 1,5 average 4.75 the answers given to the open-ended research questions were analyzed by content analysis and codes and subthemes were created. the content analysis of the answers given to each question was tabulated and examples from the participants' views were included. table 7 presents participants' views on exercising. table 7. participants' views on exercising. sub-theme code f exercise habit exercise at school 3 childhood 3 physical education teacher 1 weight losing 1 friendship 1 act of movement 1 total 10 “how was your relationship with exercise during your childhood and school years? according to the data obtained from the answers to the question; it was determined that the participants exercised in some way throughout their childhood and education. it has been understood that school and friend groups have an important role in gaining exercise habits. “i played outside a lot, jumped rope, ran, walked. when i was in middle school, i played volleyball and couldn't go to the games because i was afraid of my teacher. i was stressed. when the weather was nice, i was playing volleyball with my friends at school. " (p2, p8). “my relationship with sports started in high school. after my overweight period in adolescence, i started to lose weight. " (p5). “i was not active during my school years, except for physical education classes. i saw it as a compulsory activity. i didn't feel the need to exercise. i was active enough with my friends outside of school" (p6). “there was always play and action in my life since my primary school years.” (p1) table 8 presents participants' interest levels in exercising. table 8. participants' interest levels in exercising. sub-theme code f work intensity 3 irregular exercise 2 exercise level membership of gym 2 outdoor activities 1 cycling 1 exercising at home 1 total 10 "what is your level of exercise in daily life?" according to the data they obtained from their answers to the question; it has been understood that working life is effective in the exercise habits of the participants. it was determined that the participants could not find time to exercise and they could not exercise regularly when they had time. it has been determined that the participants try to exercise regularly as members of gyms and they want to do their exercise needs as outdoor activities. “i've always had some interest in exercising. but i can't say it's regular. i took long breaks from work. " (p1). “i went to the gym for a while and did pilates, yoga for a while, fitness for a while. currently i continue to exercise at home" (p9). “i ride a bike in the summer. i walk every now and then." (p2) table 9 presents participants' views on exercise pre-pregnancy. table 9. participants' views on exercise pre-pregnancy. sub-theme code f pilates 2 walk 2 sedentary life home exercise 2 gym 1 swimming 1 work intensity 1 lack of exercise knowledge 1 total 10 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 106-113 110 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group “what were you doing as pre-pregnancy exercise?” according to the data obtained from the answers given to the question; it was observed that the participants did short-term and irregular exercise during the pre-pregnancy period. it was revealed that some of the participants could not exercise regularly because they did not have enough time and knowledge. “i did pilates for 3-4 months. i tried swimming briefly to find out. " (p2). “i just walked, i went up and down stairs because i was working at school. maybe because i don't have any other training or knowledge on this subject. since there is no study related to this in düzce, i did not turn to an activity such as a pregnancy school. " (p8). “i have never experienced such a situation, i was already pregnant at my normal weight, but now i have gained quite a lot of weight, about 25 kilograms. let's see how we will continue since i did not exercise, a troubled period awaits me. (p7). table 10 presents participants' opinions about pregnant women exercising. table 10. participants' opinions about pregnant women exercising. sub-theme code f pregnant health facilitates birth 2 need for exercise 1 walking is beneficial 1 doctor recommend 1 baby health weight losing 1 pregnancy school promotion 1 provides confidence 1 necessary for normal birth 1 relaxes 1 total 10 "what do you think about pregnant women doing exercise?" according to the answers to the question according to the answers given to the question, two sub-themes and a total of 15 codes emerged. participants; they stated that exercise is beneficial for childbirth because it contributes to health, facilitates birth, recommends a doctor, and provides physical and mental relaxation. "i think it facilitates vaginal birth, i think regular walks should be done before pregnancy." (p10). "everybody should do it before pregnant women should do more, especially those who think normal birth." (p5). “i hear that it is very useful for pregnant women who will give birth normally. i felt it was good for me too. even when i was doing pilates, what i could do was good, maybe it would be much more beneficial if i could do it with a professional hand. absolutely sounds good. 15-20 min. it felt good both psychologically and physiologically. " (p3). table 11 presents participants continuing exercise while pregnant. table 11. participants continuing exercise while pregnant. sub-theme code f exercise habit lack of motivation 3 high-risk pregnancy 3 i attended course 2 i did walk 1 i was not exercising before pregnancy 1 total 10 "have you been able to continue your sports branch while you were pregnant?" three participants answered positively and five respondents negatively. two sub-themes and seven codes were determined from the answers given. it was observed that the participants did not exercise during pregnancy, mostly due to health concerns. it has been revealed that, due to the problems related to the first pregnancy, exercise is not done at an advanced age. it has been observed that exercisers prefer low-intensity, risk-free exercise. “i continue as long as i have the opportunity. i am walking. so that i can be more active. because i get very tired sometimes. i may have reduced the times, but i'm walking. of course, i like walking more than other sports. the walk is more important to me. " (p8) “i stopped exercising because i was in danger of miscarriage, and i still do. because i had to lie still. " (p4). “no, but i did some exercises of pilates from time to time. but it was not regular. i did not take walks because of the seasonal air pollution. i can't be motivated. " (p1). table 12 presents participants' level of getting suggestions/programs from obstetricians to exercise. table 12. participants' level of getting uggestions/programsfrom obstetricians to exercise. sub-theme code f doctor’s advice walking 3 no exercise advice 3 never mentioned 3 optional 1 total 10 "did you get a program or suggestion from your obstetrician about exercising?" one sub-theme and seven codes emerged from the answers given to the question. most of the participants stated that they did not get advice from doctors about exercising during pregnancy. it has been revealed that doctors who recommend exercise generally recommend walking and direct exercise according to the preference of the pregnant woman. “he didn't say anything because my pregnancy was very nauseous at first. he then suggested a walk. he recommended it in the last check i went to. you can walk at a slow pace for no more than 40 minutes. " (p3). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 106-113 111 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group “he offers advice on medication and nutrition. i did not come across a doctor who recommended sports in both pregnancies. i had three doctors. i've never heard of it until now. " (p2). “when i said i am exercising to get ready for the birth, the doctor said“ i don't mind if you feel good ”. i didn't say whether i should do this or that. he said to keep going no matter how good you feel. ”(p9). table 13 presents opinions of the participants on what to do if they get a suggestion from the obstetrician about exercising. table 13. opinions of the participants on what to do if they get a suggestion from the obstetrician about exercising. sub-theme code f healthy life determined 3 diligent 3 effort easy birth 2 baby's health 1 mother's health 1 total 10 “what to do if they get a suggestion from the obstetrician about exercising?” two sub-themes and six codes emerged from the answers given to the question. most of the participants stated that they will strive for health. “if there was a program, i would definitely apply it. because pregnancy is a very different period. everything the doctor said was perceived as an order, i thought i had to do it. if he said you have to do it, i would definitely do it. now, since there is no such obligation, i do something myself. i would be a little more careful if he gave a program.” (p6). “i would try to practice. in order to give birth easier, i would try to do it because i want my baby to be healthy. experts encourage normal birth. he says that doing sports has a positive effect on normal birth.” (p8). “i definitely would. for both my baby and myself. i wish more for myself. because how am i going to lose this weight?” (p4). figure 1 illustrates results table of the participants' exercise attitudes before and during pregnancy. figure 1. results table of the participants' exercise attitudes before and during pregnancy. 4. discussion according to the research results; it was observed that the participants had different exercise attitudes before and during pregnancy. it was observed that the majority of the research group, which consisted of 10 pregnant women between the ages of 26-37, having an average of 6.7 months of their pregnancy and living an average of 4.75 years of their marriage, had their first pregnancy. it was observed that the majority of the research group did sports before pregnancy. it has been determined that there are different reasons for the change in exercise attitudes when pregnant. hayman, short, and reaburn (2016) examined the exercise behaviors of 142 pregnant women living in australia, 64% of the respondents reported that they exercised at least three or four times a week before pregnancy. in the study, 87 active women (70%) participated in pre-pregnancy with an intensity of "medium", "difficult" or "very difficult" 14. it was observed that most women did sports before pregnancy. kolukısa (2017) in his study with pregnant women aged between 21-39, asked the pregnant women "would you do sports before pregnancy?" (42.9%). there are studies conducted with pregnant women who had sports habits before pregnancy. it was found that most of the participants did not exercise during pregnancy and pregnant women did not move except for compulsory walks and daily activities. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 106-113 112 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group hayman et al. (2016), when the level of exercise before and during pregnancy was compared, a significant decrease in exercise participation was observed (32 = 31.66, p <0.05). among those who continued to exercise, there was a significant decrease in the number of pregnant women who followed the exercise guidelines (32 = 8.55, p <0.05). exercise frequency (32 = 111.63, p <0.05), intensity (32 = 6741, p <005) and duration (32 = 114.33, p <005) significantly decreased from pre-pregnancy to during pregnancy. a significant decrease was observed in the exercise session duration before pregnancy and the exercise time after pregnancy. exercise for less than 30 minutes (62%) while pregnant was the most frequently reported exercise. this shows that the exercise time during pregnancy drops significantly. before pregnancy, exercise for flexibility was found to be the least common type of exercise. especially, 26% of the participants participated in exercises for flexibility, 40% in strength exercises and, 78% in aerobic exercises. in contrast, flexibility exercise during pregnancy is the second most frequently reported exercise type. during pregnancy, strength exercises have been reported the least frequently. nine participants (10%) stated that they participated in strength training during pregnancy. aerobic exercise is also less reported during pregnancy (50%) than before (78%). after getting pregnant, the duration, frequency, intensity and, type of exercise decreased markedly 14. fell, joseph, armson, and dodds (2009) found a statistically significant decrease in sports and exercise activities during pregnancy. most women reduced their level of physical activity during pregnancy, especially sports and exercise, compared to their activity levels in the year before pregnancy, but few women in this study actually increased their activity in this area. according to the study, it was concluded that participation in sports and exercise activity during pregnancy could potentially be modifiable and positively affect perinatal health and maternal post-partum weight. the results of this study show that pregnancy is an event that leads to a decrease in physical activity. balsak et al. (2007) in their study, the distribution of exercises performed by pregnant women according to their types was 32.5% walking, 2.7% strengthening the abdominal-leg muscles, 1.7% stretching back muscles, 0.6% breathing exercises, 0.2% strengthening abdominal muscles, 0.2% neck mobility. protection, 0.2% in the form of stretching the back neck muscles 6. according to the research, the most preferred exercise type for pregnant women is walking. evenson, savitz, and huston (2004) found that the rate of exercising among pregnant women was 65.6%, and that of non-pregnant women was 73.1% 6. zhang and savitz (1996) found that the rate of exercising at least 30 minutes three times a week, which was 55% before pregnancy, decreased to 42% with pregnancy. exercising attitudes before pregnancy changed after pregnancy. many women reduce their physical activities during pregnancy. although the study group expressed mostly positive opinions about exercising during pregnancy and consisted of participants who had exercise habits before pregnancy, it was observed that they stopped exercising during pregnancy. it was observed that the research group consisting of university graduates, who were assumed to be the most conscious segment of society, could not meet this expectation. balsak et al. (2007), according to the results of the research examining the knowledge and behavior of pregnant women about pregnancy exercises, pregnant women with high educational status have significantly higher exercise knowledge. exercise knowledge of pregnant women with university degrees was 60%, 18.1% of primary school graduates, 32.8% of secondary school graduates, and 52.2% of high school graduates. most of the participants stated that they did not get exercise advice from obstetricians, and almost all of them stated that they would follow the program if they received an exercise recommendation or program from their doctor. it is anticipated that referrals from doctors and healthcare professionals can strongly influence exercise attitudes. balsak et al. (2007) found that 44.2% of the information sources of pregnant women on exercise are healthcare workers. chawla and anim-nyame (2015) 92% of pregnant women do not exercise during pregnancy, although they are encouraged by doctors. limited exercise is recommended for about two-thirds of pregnant women. despite the common use of bed rest in certain pregnancies, there is a scientific and medical consensus that regular exercise is safe and beneficial for most pregnant women. the weight of the available evidence indicates that aerobic exercise is not associated with health problems, but rather, it is associated with improvements in both maternal and fetal health (biolo, heer, narici, & strollo, 2003). women with higher socioeconomic status (ses) reported more physical activities overall compared with low ses women. higher ses-women reported swimming and gardening more frequently during pregnancy while lower-ses women reported home exercise (i.e. stationary bike) more frequently (zhang & savitz, 1996). 5. conclusions according to the results of the research, it is easier for children who have the chance to play with their peers in open areas during their childhood years to gain exercise habits. children with this habit during their school years are more willing to take physical education lessons. physical education lessons given by qualified teachers positively affect exercise habits. career anxiety and exam stress, which started in high school, distract young people from exercise. it has been determined that the desire of women to make a career delays the age of marriage and motherhood. late marriages and pregnancies; due to cesarean section, high risk pregnancies, and environmental pressure, parents can have a maximum of two children. differences were observed between women's approaches to sports before pregnancy and their exercise attitudes during pregnancy. it has been determined that women with exercise habits do not want to exercise during pregnancy although they know that exercise is beneficial for the baby and their own health. it has been determined that women see themselves as sick or as candidates for being sick during pregnancy. it has been understood that during my pregnancy, pregnant women expect information and motivation from obstetricians to exercise, as they do in every other subject. obstetricians and gynecologists are seen as the authority on the trainer, venue and program to exercise. it was concluded that obstetricians only recommend inactivity for high-risk pregnant women in relation to exercise. pregnant women prefer only walking as exercise. pregnant women consider it sufficient for their need for movement to do their own work such as cooking, cleaning asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(4): 106-113 113 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group and personal care. it is thought that doing housework, which was done at intervals before, unless it is compulsory, will adversely affect the health of the pregnant woman and the baby. pregnant women have a positive approach to exercise after giving birth, especially because of their motivation to lose weight. for this reason, it is necessary to recommend exercises during and after pregnancy, which are indispensable for pregnant and baby health, by obstetricians. in order for the ministry of health to create programs related to the subject, obstetricians and sports science experts should create projects in which they will work together. social projects should be developed to reduce the ages of marriage and motherhood and to enable healthier pregnancies. necessary units should be established in obstetrics and gynecology services and other relevant health institutions for pregnant women, normal birth, exercises to facilitate birth, breathing exercises and pregnancy nutrition, etc. for the health of future generations, the mother, who undertakes the primary care of the baby, can benefit from exercise for her mental, physical and psychological well-being, and for this, she can receive support from health institutions, the environment and her family. references acog. 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(2000). effects of pregnancy and exercise on concentrations of the metabolic markers tumor necrosis factor α and leptin. american journal of obstetrics and gynecology, 182(2), 300-306.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0002-9378(00)70215-8. connelly, m., brown, h., van der pligt, p., & teychenne, m. (2015). modifiable barriers to leisure-time physical activity during pregnancy: a qualitative study investigating first time mother’s views and experiences. bmc pregnancy and childbirth, 15(1), 1-7.available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-015-0529-9. dempsey, j. c., sorensen, t. k., williams, m. a., lee, i.-m., miller, r. s., dashow, e. e., & luthy, d. a. (2004). prospective study of gestational diabetes mellitus risk in relation to maternal recreational physical activity before and during pregnancy. american journal of epidemiology, 159(7), 663-670.available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwh091. duncombe, d., wertheim, e. h., skouteris, h., paxton, s. j., & kelly, l. 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(2015). quality of care for pregnant women and newborns—the who vision. bjog, 122(8), 1045.available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0528.13451. wolfe, l. a., brenner, i. k., & mottola, m. f. (1994). maternal exercise, fetal weil-being and pregnancy outcome. exercise and sport sciences reviews, 22(1), 145-194.available at: https://doi.org/10.1249/00003677-199401000-00008. zhang, j., & savitz, d. a. (1996). exercise during pregnancy among us women. annals of epidemiology, 6(1), 53-59.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/1047-2797(95)00093-3. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 226 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 4, 226-234, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.226.234 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group peer scaffolding behaviors in english as a foreign language writing classroom jittiporn chairinkam1 rattana yawiloeng2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of english, school of liberal arts, university of phayao, thailand. 1email: aoonny014@gmail.com abstract this study aimed to investigate the kinds of peer scaffolding behaviors occurring during english as a foreign language (efl) writing activities through three steps of writing process. the participants comprised ten english major students in writing classroom in university of phayao selected by purposive sampling. they were classified into five expert efl learners and five novice efl learners according to their scores of the written paragraph they wrote before participating in the study by using writing rubric. the instruments consisted of five lesson plans through writing process and an observation form. the results analyzed by microgenetic analysis revealed that questioning ranked first by the total frequency of peer scaffolding all learners used, but they never applied greeting to their writing activities. however, ten learners applied various types of peer scaffolding to pre-writing activity while they hardly utilized peer scaffolding in post-writing activity. noteworthy that both expert and novice learners were able to be scaffolders for their peers by supplementing each other’s knowledge and skills because they may be expert writers in different areas, consequently they were able to produce written works by themselves. keywords: peer scaffolding, sociocultural theory, writing process activities, expert and novice writers, efl writing, microgenetic analysis. citation | jittiporn chairinkam; rattana yawiloeng (2021). peer scaffolding behaviors in an english as a foreign language writing classroom. asian journal of education and training, 7(4): 226-234. history: received: 5 august 2021 revised: 3 september 2021 accepted: 23 september 2021 published: 18 october 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: the researchers would like to thank the school of liberal arts, university of phayao for allowing me access to the classroom in order to collect data. lastly, the researchers are grateful to the thai efl students who participated in this study. funding: this research project is funded by unit of exellence (uoe), university of phayao, thailand. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 227 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 227 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 228 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 229 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 232 6. suggestions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 233 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 233 mailto:aoonny014@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.226.234 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9490-4937 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2472-9643 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 226-234 227 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by investigating the kinds of peer scaffolding behaviors of the thai efl learners during engaged in the pre-writing, while-writing, and postwriting activities. the peer scaffolding behaviors which were investigated include acknowledging, agreeing, disagreeing, elaborating, eliciting, greeting, justifying, questioning, requesting, stating, and suggesting. 1. introduction recently, writing in thailand is increasingly essential skill which is widely used as a tool to facilitate and present learners’ educational knowledge and occupational opportunities, so thai universities include many english writing courses in the curriculum for their learners with purposes to develop their writing skill and support them to receive better educational and occupational opportunities (promsupa, varasarin, & brudhiprabha, 2017; sararit, chumpavan, & al-bataineh, 2020). however, writing has been found to be one of the most difficult skills for english as a foreign language (efl) learners since they cannot yet master this skill because they have produced ambiguous written communication due to inability to apply english grammar appropriately in their writing. moreover, thai education focuses on learners’ ability to memorize rather than understand what they have learned and solve the problem in their writing (dawilai, kamyod, & prasad, 2021; promsupa et al., 2017; watcharapunyawong & usaha, 2013). especially for thai efl learners, grammatical elements and vocabulary are the first serious writing problems that they have faced (boonyarattanasoontorn, 2017; harris, ansyar, & radjab, 2014; hinnon, 2014; thongchalerm & jarunthawatchai, 2020). according to these two difficulties, most of these writers can write only simple sentences by copying the given sentence samples, but they cannot create and transfer their thought into sentences by themselves without teacher’s assistance (inkaew & yawiloeng, 2015; thoung, phusawisut, & praphan, 2020). moreover, efl writers do not know how to express their feelings and thoughts into words because they lack the ideas about what to write, and when they write. therefore, these efl writers do not find it easy to write a paragraph in english without the assistance of teacher or peers of the academic community that they belong to seensangworn and chaya (2017). another obstacle of efl writing in thailand is teaching approach. many efl teachers in thailand follow the traditional method concentrating on recitation and imitation; as a result, efl learners rarely have an opportunity to give opinions and lack of social interactions with their teacher and classmates. in writing classes, efl teachers tend to emphasize learners’ final written products rather than focus on their processes of writing. in addition, these traditional efl teachers highlight on mechanics, spelling, punctuation, grammar, sentence structure, and so on, with little attention to development or style. these teaching styles do not provide learners to practice creative writing if they have to face the real writing contexts (dawilai et al., 2021; ibnian, 2011; inkaew & yawiloeng, 2015). due to the use of traditional teaching by efl teachers, thai efl learners still have been assisted insufficiently; consequently, they cannot express their thought, knowledge, understanding, and experience through their writing. to solve these obstacles of efl writing, the new approach which can help thai efl learners in terms of writing process and enhance the potential of writing skill development should be applied since the traditional approach cannot meet today’s writing class requirement. using new approach with step by step instruction, process approach of writing enhances the result in helping learners develop their ideas and individualizing learners’ competence. moreover, applying the steps of process approach such as generating ideas, structuring, drafting, revising, and editing, into writing courses is better enhancing of learners’ independent writing ability than traditional approach since the approach has to a certain degree encouraged learners to write with confidence and to feel committed to their work, so they are not worried about their writing being judged as right or wrong (faraj, 2015). currently, many efl teachers not only become more and more interested in how they can support their learners in efl writing learning such as using process approach but also apply other useful strategies in efl writing classrooms. one useful strategy for supporting efl learners in their learning and using form of writing language is scaffolding. as such, in attempting to use process approach and scaffolding in a writing class, the following theoretical and pedagogical background are reviewed. 2. literature review this study is based on a sociocultural theory (sct) of vygotsky which directly emphasized the interaction between social context and human cognitive development. in the educational context, sct is applied to classrooms setting and learning is considered as the product of shared activity through learners’ relationship that leads to collaborative learning (behroozizad, nambiar, & amir, 2014). learners can construct the knowledge and understanding through sharing problem-solving tasks when they engaged socially in any activities, so novice learners are able to solve problems after receiving guidance from knowledgeable persons. an opportunity to learn with/from others is mentioned as the zone of proximal development (zpd). vygotsky (1978) mentioned that the zpd is a key element in learning process and it is defined as the distance between the actual development level (of the learner) as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. with regard to the concept of the zpd, social factors as assistance from others or different forms such as modeling and giving feedback are highlighted and involved in the zpd which are considered a distance or domain of abilities or skills that learners still need to learn before reaching a state of being more capable and self-regulated (simeon, 2014). in brief, learning in the zone of proximal development, learners engage opportunities to learn together with others and to gain supports from more knowledgeable peers, thereby leading them to learn by the self. the notion of scaffolding, which is linked to the zpd is widely acceptable term of how guidance supports learning development. in order to elevate learner’s performance to its higher potential level, the maximum amount of teacher assistance is needed initially. then, the level of assistance decreases gradually while learner becomes capable of doing more independently. finally, the responsibility for the performance is transferred to learner, and scaffolding is removed. at this point, learners can perform independently at the same high level at which he/she was previously able to perform only with assistance or scaffolds (wood, bruner, & ross, 1976). therefore, asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 226-234 228 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group scaffolding is generally thought of as assistance provided through interactions between a competent other and a learner. however, in a classroom setting where learners engage in collaborative work, learners are provided with multiple forms of support from not only teachers, but also peers (shin, brush, & glazewski, 2020). in conclusion, scaffolding may not only occur during teacher-learner interactions but also during peer interactions when learners work in small groups or pairs. peers scaffolding is a form of collaborative learning which has advantages in a number of ways, especially in terms of providing and receiving explanation that can help learners engage in deeper cognitive processing, such as clarifying thinking, reorganizing information, correcting misconceptions, and developing new understanding (simeon, 2014). from the interaction process, ge and land (2004 as cited in simeon (2014)) also pointed out that the process of co-constructing ideas can also lead to improved learning that can later be internalized and used to solve problems independently. finally, when learners work together, they may experience cognitive conflicts that prompt them to explain and justify their own positions, recognize uncertainties about beliefs, seek new information to resolve disagreements, and recognize alternative points of view. noteworthy, peer scaffolding is indispensable in second language (l2) writing because learners do not acquire an l2 as they did in their first language (l1). they need coaching and explicit instruction in order to appropriate the fundamental skills of l2 (simeon, 2014). moreover, these learners need the experience of going through the processes of writing as writers, and the development in learners of the recursive strategies and techniques that writers use when composing are emphasized (faraj, 2015). therefore, writing process and scaffolding strategies can be applied in l2 writing in order to assist learners improve their writing ability from their present level to the higher one. in order to make clear purpose that learners will understand and follow the procedures easily, writing process in this study which is adapted from faraj (2015) will be organized into three stages. first, pre-writing stage, the activities include brainstorming and outlining. learners can brainstorm in group to generate ideas and list the vocabulary for their paragraph. then, learners use the ideas from brainstorming to make an outline for their paragraph. second, while-writing stage, learners use the outline to write the first draft with peers’ and teacher’s suggestion. third, post-writing, it includes revising and editing. according to the previous studies, there are fruitful results regarding the use of peer scaffolding strategies in writing process. sabet, tahriri, and pasand (2013) examined the impact of peer scaffolding through process approach on writing fluency of efl learners. the results revealed that both competent and less competent writers can produce more words per minute, and the average number of words produced by them was greater than the pretest, they also wrote more clauses and more t-units. the evidence of peer scaffolding towards writing development also coincided with ranjbar and ghonsooly (2017) who applied the concept of zpd and scaffolding to examine the effects of peer-scaffolding on efl writing ability and finding out how revising techniques are constructed and expanded when two learners are working in their zpds. ranjbar and ghonsooly (2017) results showed that both reader and writer actively took part in revising the text with assistance transferring mutually between them at the end of the session. the results also indicated that peer scaffolding could be reciprocal rather than unidirectional. recently, bhatti, asif, akbar, ismail, and najam (2020) examined the impact of peer scaffolding through process approach from 49 efl learners studying at university. the participants were randomly assigned to two groups, one the control group and the other experimental group. they concluded the general results, after using spss 16, that peer scaffolding and process approach can enhance words per minute average words in some basic areas of writing fluency. according to the context of thai efl writing classrooms, the research on scaffolding and writing process was also emphasized in inkaew and yawiloeng (2015) that investigated strategies and types of peer scaffolding through writing processes in three learners. the research procedures were conducted underlying three stages of writing process: pre-writing, while-writing, and post-writing by using six instructional plans. after four weeks receiving scaffolding from the peers, learners used peer scaffolding’s strategies during preand whilewriting stage to support vocabulary brainstorming, vocabulary meaning checking, and idea generation of unfamiliar vocabulary by talking to the self. during post-writing stage, learners engaged in peer scaffolding strategies for checking grammar, asking for help about transitions, and checking understanding if writing processes. that is to say, learners were able to use the vocabulary and the english transitions learned from the peers to apply in their writing appropriately. importantly, there was an evidence of self-scaffolding occurred during the good competent learner talked to the self in order to write an unfamiliar vocabulary. although these previous studies in scaffolding and writing process approach abound, there is a gap which is specifically evident in thai efl writing classroom that writing process approach and peer scaffolding are not widespread. for more effective efl writing classrooms, peer scaffolding can be used especially if there are a great number of learners in the class and only one teacher cannot be responsive to all their needs, the use of peer scaffolding can be a valuable asset for efl teachers. 2.1. objective of the study the objective of this study is to investigate the kinds of peer scaffolding behaviors occurring during efl writing activities. 3. method to provide in-depth information of individual perspectives for this study, qualitative method is used through participant observation technique (yin, 2014). according to yin (2014) this technique can provide two distinctive opportunities for collecting data: the ability to gain access to events or groups that are otherwise inaccessible to a study, and the ability to perceive reality from the viewpoint of someone ‘inside’ a case rather than external to it. the participants’ scaffolding behaviors during writing activities are the main focus of this observation. in the efl classroom, the researcher has two roles that are teacher and participant observer. these roles enable the researcher to observe both verbal and non-verbal of efl learners’ behaviors in the efl writing classroom. in each stage of writing process in every session, the researcher observes ten efl learners by using audio and video asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 226-234 229 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group recordings and an observation form to observe the peer scaffolding behaviors occurring during efl writing activities for two hours in each session. in addition, playing a role as the participant observer gives the researcher an opportunity to take notes with some significant behaviors which can provide partial supplementary data in the final stage of data analysis. 3.1. sampling procedure the participants of the present study were ten english major students with different levels of english proficiency. for qualitative data, they were selected as case study by purposive sampling for a participant observation. then they were classified to five expert efl learners and five novice efl learners according to their scores of paragraph writing they wrote before participating in the study by using writing rubric. during a 5-week period, these ten participants were observed for peer scaffolding strategies and their written products were analyzed for writing development as the whole class introduced to writing process and scaffolding from peers. in addition, ten students who agreed to participate in this study were asked to sign the consent form before participating the data collection, and to consider ethical issue, participants’ pseudonyms were used in the transcription of data collected from participant observation. 3.2. research instruments the writing activities are conducted continuously over five periods, twenty hours in total. data were collected from the writing activities that ten efl learners participate in. the research instruments consist of five lesson plans and an observation from. the steps of research instrument design are presented as follows: first, five lesson plans. the researchers reviewed the course syllabus and the steps of writing process then develop the lesson plans. there were five lesson plans for different four topics of paragraph writing used in this writing activities according to the course syllabus including opinion paragraph, problem-solution paragraph, causeeffect paragraph, and advantage-disadvantage paragraph. then, the lesson plans were proposed to the supervisor and the experts in order to assess the appropriate of content. second, observation form. the researchers reviewed the steps of designing the observation form then develop the form according to the objective of the research. then, the form was proposed to the experts in order to assess the relation between the objective and the content of the observation form (index of item-objective congruence: ioc = 1). finally, the researcher tried out the lesson plans and the observation form with the other section that has same characteristic in order to assess the appropriate of content and time before using with the participants. however, learners are assigned to use thai language (l1) while they were doing writing activities in order to make them feel free to participate in composing. 3.3. data analysis data analysis of this study focused on peer scaffolding behaviors which are defined as any part of a dialogue where ten efl learners talked about the language they were producing, questioned their language use, or corrected themselves or others in order to solve grammatical and lexical problems by cooperating with each other (swain & lapkin, 1998 as cited in li and kim (2016)). to analyze peer scaffolding behaviors occurring during efl writing activities, the functions of language adapted from li and kim (2016) were employed. the functions consist of acknowledging, agreeing, disagreeing, elaborating, eliciting, greeting, justifying, questioning, requesting, stating, and suggesting (p. 30). table-1. peer scaffolding behaviors. peer scaffolding behaviors definitions acknowledging (ac.) agreeing (ag.) disagreeing (di.) elaborating (el.) eliciting (eli.) greeting (gr.) justifying (ju.) questioning (qu.) requesting (re.) stating (st.) suggesting (su.) recognizing or praising others’ ideas, comments, helpfulness, and capabilities. expressing agreement with others’ viewpoints. expressing disagreement with others’ viewpoints. extending and elaborating on self or others’ ideas about writing. inviting or eliciting opinions, comments, etc. from group partners. greeting group members. defending one’s own ideas/comments by giving reasons. asking questions that one is not clear about. making direct requirements or requests. stating one’s ideas and the ideas groups have discussed earlier; posting writing contents or sharing information. offering suggestions/recommendations about writing contents, structure, format etc. 4. results the following tables present the frequency of the use of peer scaffolding behaviors by ten efl learners (expert and novice) who enrolled in efl writing classroom at a university located in northern thailand during each stage of writing process identified through participant observation. the results of qualitative data are illustrated based on the researcher’s observation through audio and video recording and their written products in which how ten efl learners utilized the different peer scaffolding in their writing tasks. 4.1 peer scaffolding behaviors during pre-writing activity in pre-writing activity, the activities include brainstorming and outlining. thai efl learners were able to brainstorm in group to generate ideas and list the vocabulary. then, these thai learners used the ideas from brainstorming to make an outline for their paragraph. the data presented in table 2 also shows that questioning (110) is the most peer scaffolding used by the thai efl learners, followed by suggesting (61) and stating (53) respectively while greeting was not occurred in this stage. moreover, the expert 2 was the learner who mostly used peer scaffolding (63) while the novice 5 was learner who least used peer scaffolding (22). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 226-234 230 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-2. the frequency of peer scaffolding behaviors used by ten efl learners during efl pre-writing activity. peer scaffolding behaviors ac. ag. di. el. eli. gr. ju. qu. re. st. su. total expert 1 3 4 7 1 2 12 1 6 7 43 expert 2 4 5 9 4 4 14 2 9 12 63 expert 3 1 5 9 2 2 9 4 5 37 expert 4 1 3 2 5 3 3 10 2 5 11 45 expert 5 1 2 1 4 2 2 9 5 7 33 novice 1 1 4 1 6 2 11 1 8 1 35 novice 2 4 4 5 3 5 11 2 6 4 44 novice 3 2 2 4 1 11 1 2 4 27 novice 4 3 1 1 3 12 7 9 36 novice 5 3 1 2 1 2 11 1 1 22 total 17 35 5 52 20 0 23 110 9 53 61 385 table-3. the dialogues between the expert and the novice efl learners during the pre-writing activity. move dialogues peer scaffolding examples of written products 1 expert 1: the topic teacher gives us today is how do we use internet to make our study easier (stating). how do you think about that (eliciting)? stating eliciting 2 novice 1: i used to serf tutorial video and use the application to search vocabulary or new knowledge (stating). stating 3 expert 1: does it look like the benefits of telephone (questioning)? questioning 4 novice 1: i mean using internet to connect the information (elaborating). elaborating 5 expert 1: i see. 6 novice 1: how about you (eliciting)? eliciting 7 expert 1: i use cloud service to store information (stating). stating 8 novice 1: it’s cool (acknowledging). acknowledging in table 3, expert and novice writers were planning what they were going to write through brainstorming ideas in group to generate ideas. begin with stating (move 1), expert posted the topic given by the teacher follows by eliciting (move 1) the novice 1 to share the ideas. after the novice 1 stated (move 2) his idea, the expert 1 asked him questions (move 3) and the novice elaborated (move 4) on his idea in order to make it clear. alternating, the novice elicited (move 6) the expert to give the idea and then acknowledged (move 8) his partner when he stated (move 7) the cool one. finally, this pair revealed three ideas for how they used the internet to make their study easier including video tutorial (move 2), mobile application (move 2), cloud service (move 7) and notes them down on brainstorming worksheet. table-3. (cont.). move dialogues peer scaffolding examples of written products 1 novice 3: tell me how to write the topic sentence from these words (requesting). requesting 2 expert 3: … just write it after our ideas and write the topic here when you want to finish the sentence. 3 novice 3: like this? watching movie, listen to music, find a foreigner friend and writing exercise are ways to make my english learning better. 4 expert 3: that’s not right (disagreeing) because this is the sentence and all nouns here should be the subject (justifying). disagreeing justifying 5 novice 3: er…nouns, so i have to add –ing to these words (elaborating). elaborating watching movie, listening to music, finding a foreigner friend and writing exercise are ways to make my english learning better. 6 expert 3: yes, you can do it (acknowledging). and then, we have to describe our ideas in the supporting details. acknowledging 7 novice 3: for watching movies and listening to music, we should listen carefully to find words in order to understand (stating). stating when we watch movie or listen to music, we should listen carefully to find words. it will make us understand the song. 8 expert 3: exactly (agreeing). looking without subtitle is another way to practice english (stating). agreeing stating we should watch movie with english subtitles. then, we can watch it without subtitles and … 9 novice 3: look at your supporting detail 2, follow can must be v1 –find and speak (suggesting). suggesting 10 expert 3: ah… we can find new foreigner friends and speaking english with them. … and speak english with them. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 226-234 231 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group according to table 3, the novice 3 requested (move 1) the expert 3 to explain her how to write the topic sentence, then she wrote by herself “watching movie, listen to music, find a foreigner friend and writing exercise are ways to make my english learning better”. when the expert 3 looked at her sentence, he did not agree (move 4) with it and justified (move 4) the reason. then the novice 3 elaborated (move 5) the topic sentence by herself and the expert 3 encouraged (move 6) her when she could do it. the novice 3 revised it to “watching movie, listening to music, finding a foreigner friend and writing exercise are ways to make my english learning better”. however, the expert 3 agreed (move 8) with the novice 3 when she stated (move 7) her idea for supporting detail. noticeably that the novice 3 could give suggestion (move 9) to expert when she noticed some errors from supporting detail 2 that the expert 3 wrote “we can find new foreigner friends and speaking english with them”. finally, the expert 3 revised it to “we can find new foreigner friends and speak english with them”. table-4. the frequency of peer scaffolding behaviors used by ten efl learners during efl while-writing activity. peer scaffolding behaviors ac. ag. di. el. eli. gr. ju. qu. re. st. su. total expert 1 2 2 3 7 expert 2 1 1 1 1 1 5 expert 3 1 2 1 1 1 1 7 expert 4 1 1 1 3 expert 5 1 1 1 1 4 novice 1 1 1 2 4 novice 2 2 1 2 3 1 9 novice 3 2 1 1 1 2 7 novice 4 1 2 1 2 1 7 novice 5 1 1 2 total 0 3 1 10 6 0 7 13 4 0 11 55 4.2. peer scaffolding behaviors during while-writing activity during while-writing activity, learners used the outline to write the first draft with peers’ and teacher’s suggestion. table 4 shows that in this stage questioning (13) was used in the highest level by the thai efl learners, followed by suggesting (11) and elaborating (10) respectively while acknowledgment, greeting, and stating were not occurred. in addition, the novice 2 was the learner who mostly used peer scaffolding (9) while the novice 5 was the learner who least used peer scaffolding (2). table-5. the dialogues between the novice and expert efl learners during while-writing activity. move dialogues peer scaffolding examples of written product 1 novice 2: writing the first draft is just writing everything from the outline again, isn’t it (questioning)? questioning 2 expert 2: not really (disagreeing) because you have to add some words like first, second, third to show their connection (justifying). disagreeing justifying 3 novice 2: ok. there are three ways … first, i watch … second, i always … third, i can … according table 5, the novice 2 talked about how to write the first draft and asked (move 1) expert that what he understood is true. the expert 2 told him that was partly true (move 2) and justified (move 2) about signal words, so the novice 2 added some words in order to show the connection in his paragraph (move 3). table-5 (cont.) move dialogues peer scaffolding examples of written product 1 novice 2: why you use the word “office device” (questioning)? questioning 2 expert 2: i mean electric things that we use at the office. if i use “appliances”, it looks like electric things at you house. (elaborating). elaborating 3 novice 2: so, use “an” not “a” here (suggesting). suggesting 4 expert 2: oh, i forget. finally, when you do not use a office device … … an office device … according to table 5, the expert 2 elaborated (move 2) his idea about the word “office device” he used in the paragraph instead of using “appliances” to his partner after she asked him a question (move 1), then when novice looked at his paragraph closely, she suggested (move 2) him to use the article “an” with “office device”. 4.3. peer scaffolding behaviors during post-writing activity in the last stage, the post-writing stage included revising and editing. after the thai efl learners wrote the first draft, they were required to work in pairs and used a peer review worksheet to review their partner’s paragraph. then these efl learners revised and improved their paragraph based on their partner’s review by paying attention to the content and organization of their paragraph. next, the learners wrote the final draft. before they published their paragraph, they had to edit their mechanical errors such as capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar changes by using an editing checklist in order to let them focus more on specific points. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 226-234 232 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group obviously, suggesting (12) and questioning (4) were only two kinds of peer scaffolding used by these efl learners in this stage as revealed in table 6. however, the expert 1 and 2 were learners who mostly used peer scaffolding (3 times per each) while the expert 5 did not use any peer scaffolding in this stage. table-6. the frequency of peer scaffolding behaviors used by ten efl learners during efl post-writing activity. peer scaffolding behaviors ac. ag. di. el. eli. gr. ju. qu. re. st. su. total expert 1 3 3 expert 2 2 1 3 expert 3 2 2 expert 4 1 1 2 expert 5 0 novice 1 1 1 novice 2 1 1 novice 3 1 1 novice 4 1 1 novice 5 1 1 2 total 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 12 16 table-7. the dialogues between the novice and the expert efl learners during post-writing activity. move dialogues peer scaffolding examples of written product 1 novice 1: “in order to” here, “i” should be small letter and put full stop here (suggesting). suggesting 2 expert 1: er… how do you know that (questioning)? questioning in conclusion, … use the smart phone as favor, in order to ... … use the smart phone as favor in order to … 3 novice 1: i see in the book here ha ha ha. according to table 7, when the novice 1 looked at her partner’s final draft, she suggested (move 1) her partner to revise her concluding sentence. however, the expert 1 questioned (move 2) for novice’s suggestion, she corrected the sentence to “in conclusion, we should use the smart phone as favor in order to enhance the skills”. in conclusion, these significant results show that the efl learners applied various types of peer scaffolding behaviors to pre-writing activity while they hardly utilized peer scaffolding in post-writing activity. noteworthy that the thai efl learners both expert and novice were able to be scaffolders for their peers by supplementing each other’s knowledge and skills because they may be expert writers in different areas. that is to say, peer scaffolding may help learners to complete tasks by providing more practical and beneficial instructions to learners in all levels of english proficiency. 5. discussion 5.1. learning to write through writing process activities: from group work to individual work finding of this study reveals that peer scaffolding emerged during the thai efl learners engaged in writing process activities participated in group work, pair work, and then individual work. in pre-writing activity, the learners brainstormed in group to generate ideas and list the vocabulary for their paragraphs, then the learners completed an outline worksheet to show the organization of the paragraph. when they were working in group, they had opportunity to talk, share, and plan what they were going to write freely. in while-writing activity, learners started to write the first draft individually with the information from the outline worksheet and the suggestion from both peers and teacher. finally, post-writing activity, learners read their partner’s paragraph and completed a peer review worksheet in order to give each other feedback on the ideas, organization, and language. then, learners themselves revised their paragraph again based on their partner’s review. after engaging socially with the activities, learners were able to construct the knowledge and understanding through sharing problem-solving tasks. the solutions to learner’s problems were gained through the involved participants’ or members’ behaviors in a shared context, and the individual development relies on the transmission of experiences from others in the community (santoso, 2010). as behroozizad et al. (2014) supported that in the learning process, learner who need help is assisted by expert members or knowledgeable peers, then this guidance is stopped when he or she can act independently, as a result of this guidance, a novice learner gradually becomes the effective member of that community. in brief, engaging in problem-solving activities during writing processes, novice writers are able to solve problems after receiving guidance from expert writers, thereby enhancing these novice writers’ ability to solve problem individually. 5.2. peer scaffolding used by expert-novice writers according to three stages of writing process, the finding shows that questioning was the rank first by the total frequency of peer scaffolding that ten efl learners used especially during the pre-writing activity. this may be because questioning is the way the learners asked their partners something when he or she was doubted, unclear, or unsure when they were sharing ideas or something what they were going to write. this is a chance for the efl learners to elaborate their ideas in order to make their understanding clear as abdollahzadeh and behroozizad (2015) supported that the application of questioning in planning stage as observable in the results of observation field note pawed the way for most of learners to express their ideas and to think creatively. it is remarkable that all learners never applied greeting to their writing activities. this may be because it is not necessary to greet group members while they were negotiating in the learning environment. when the learners wanted to draw peers’ attention to some topics, they usually used other gestures such as making eye contact or touching. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 226-234 233 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.3. peer scaffolding during pre-writing, while-writing, and post-writing activity it is obvious that ten writers mostly applied various types of peer scaffolding to pre-writing activity especially in brainstorming activity. this may be because brainstorming activity enhanced the efl learners to consider their writing topic and put in writing any ideas they thought it was promising because many writers would forget their earlier ideas as they brainstormed of new ones. in addition, seeing listed ideas together on paper may aid the learners to make connections and looked at their topics again from a new perspective. ideas, words list, sort of writing, audience, and purpose for their writing were developed from diagrams or listing ideas made by the learners when they were brainstorming (faraj, 2015). this result agreed with a previous study (voon, 2010) that, brainstorming is the prewriting activity that assists participants in generation of ideas for the content of their writing, which enables them to write more developed pieces. in while-writing activity, ten writers applied peer scaffolding to create first draft. as an individual work, the learners themselves composed all information from the outline worksheet into a paragraph so they employed peer scaffolding just for checking grammar and vocabulary. this finding is similar to inkaew (2015) who revealed that the thai efl learners used peer scaffolding strategies during while-writing stage to support vocabulary brainstorming, vocabulary checking, and idea generation of unfamiliar vocabulary. in this present study, however, the efl learners rarely employed peer scaffolding in postwriting activity to write final draft. one possible reason why the used of peer scaffolding was decreased obviously, this may be because the efl learners were not aware of the errors or did not know how to correct them, so they had no ideas to write on the peer review worksheet, and they just copied from the first draft to final draft. interestingly, the thai efl learners were able to be scaffolders for their peers by supplementing each other’s knowledge and writing skills. this is because the learners can be expert writers in different efl writing contexts. during the learning process, more capable peers (expert writers) are not the only sources of help as van lier (1996 as cited in simeon (2014)) explained that such interactions between learners of similar level of achievement encourage the creation of different kinds of contingencies and discourse management strategies. moreover, less capable peers (novice writers) are able to help more capable peers in a predictable and sensitive manner within the zpd. as li (2009) noted that scaffolding between learners of different proficiency levels can enhance fluency, and the more capable partners become more aware of the status of their own knowledge. this is similar to sabet et al. (2013) whose research result revealed that both competent and less competent writers in the experimental group have improved in their writing fluency. this is certain that, the role of interaction in peer scaffolding behaviors can improve the level of learners’ writing ability since they can utilize scaffolded assistance while working together and then reach a level of performance beyond their level as well. 6. suggestions the findings obtained from this study may provide efl learners clearer views in classroom interaction and peer scaffolding which can assist them to overcome any struggles they may encounter when engage in english writing activities. furthermore, the findings can also provide efl teachers clearer views of peer scaffolding roles in the writing classrooms in order to assist efl leaners when they write english paragraphs. this information may be beneficial for efl pedagogy because it will provide efl peer scaffolding strategies in their efl writing classrooms in order to enhance their learners’ writing development and provide useful efl writing pedagogy by emphasizing writing process approach and social interactions to promote l2 writing development. however, further study is needed in order to investigate the impact of peer scaffolding behaviors through writing process on other dimensions of writing skills, such as writing accuracy or complexity. in addition, other studies can be conducted to explore the probable impact that peer scaffolding behaviors can be on the development of other language skills such as listening, speaking and reading. references abdollahzadeh, m., & behroozizad, s. 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(2014). case study research: design and method (5th ed.). the united state of america: sage publications. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 250 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 4, 250-259 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.250.259 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group conservatory students’ music performance anxiety and educational expectations: a qualitative study hepsen okan1 buse usta2 ( corresponding author) 1assistant professor, ankara university state conservatory (voice department), turkey. email: okanhepsen@gmail.com 2psychological counselor, turkey. abstract music performance anxiety (mpa) can seriously and negatively affect musicians’ performance and quality of life—physically, mentally, and behaviorally. in the present study, factors related to the mpa of students receiving classical western music education in the conservatory in a holistic framework were examined to ascertain the physical, mental, and behavioral symptoms; temporal processes; environmental factors; coping strategies; and educational expectations and desires related to this condition. in addition to investigating causative factors in such a framework, the content analysis method was used on data collected from semi-structured interviews with conservatory students. the results show that the main causative factors of mpa included a jury’s negative evaluation, attitudes, and/or behaviors; their symptoms included trembling, muscle contraction, and distraction. the main coping strategy among participants was positive self-talk; remarkably, they had no theoretical knowledge of positive self-talk. most significantly, considering that performance is integral to musical education training, students stated that the conservatory needs to integrate into the curriculum a course, counseling, and activities that address mpa. keywords: music performance anxiety, stress, music education, conservatory, phenomenology, educational expectations. citation | hepsen okan; buse usta (2021). conservatory students’ music performance anxiety and educational expectations: a qualitative study. asian journal of education and training, 7(4): 250-259. history: received: 10 august 2021 revised: 12 october 2021 accepted: 8 november 2021 published: 23 november 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 251 2. methodology .................................................................................................................................................................. 252 3. findings and comments ............................................................................................................................................... 253 4. discussion ...................................................................................................................................................................... 256 5. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 257 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 257 mailto:okanhepsen@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.250.259 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8019-9755 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5488-9533 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 250-259 251 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study fills an important gap due to the limited number of studies examining the factors that cause mpa in a wide framework in western classical music students in turkey. the key results of the study are that students' mpa peaks during evaluated and juried performances, but takes the form of less "stage excitement" during regular concerts. most significantly, results showed that students wanted to learn about mpa and coping with it through their curriculum—a course, psychological support, and more onstage experience. in addition, they wished to reschedule, and perhaps increase, evaluations of their skill and progress. the paper's findings provide an impetus for the reorganization of the curriculum for mpa in conservatories at the undergraduate level. 1. introduction a plethora of studies on music performance anxiety (mpa) has shown that it is common to musicians of all ages in every genre, with many negative effects. however, as stated in the literature, mpa is mostly observed in musicians who perform western classical music. indeed, the turkish national literature has published many experimental and qualitative studies about mpa (can & akbal, 2021; çiçek & güdek, 2020; çırakoğlu, 2013; coşkun-şentürk & çırakoğlu, 2018; guven, 2017; tokinan, 2013; topoğlu & karagulle, 2018; topoğlu, 2014; yondem, 2007). although the literature cites mpa as a common problem, no curriculum or course addresses it in conservatories and institutions that provide undergraduate music education in turkey. for student-musicians, anxiety about performing their best can be extremely high, particularly in performance-evaluative situations (tang & ryan, 2020). in this context, this research reveals opinions on mpa by students who study western classical music, their experiences of mpa, and their perceived educational expectations and requests on the subject. according to demirbatir (2015), “music students began to work from a very early age within an extremely demanding environment not only in physical but also in psychological terms. their educational environment can be considered as a stressful place because of high competition, isolation, failure to achieve career goals, authoritarian teaching style, and intolerance against errors caused by stress or anxiety” (p. 2198). musicians experience psychological pressure, anxiety disorders, and mpa peculiar to the conservatory environment where their training begins and in music schools throughout their lives (buma, bakker, & oudejans, 2015; pecen, collins, & macnamara, 2016; pecen, collins, & macnamara, 2018; perkins, reid, araújo, clark, & williamon, 2017). as a specific condition, mpa may be experienced by all ages of both professional and amateur musicians, with negative impacts on performance (biasutti & concina, 2014; clark & williamon, 2011; coşkun-şentürk & çırakoğlu, 2018; huang & song, 2021; kaleńska-rodzaj, 2020; kenny & osborne, 2006; kenny & ackermann, 2015; kenny, driscoll, & ackermann, 2014; miller & chesky, 2004; pecen et al., 2018; perdomo-guevara, 2014; robinson & nigbur, 2018; sieger, 2017; skoogh & frisk, 2019; yöndem, 2012). mpa is specifically defined as persistent distressing anxiety, actual deterioration in performance skills, deviation in performance from a normal physical and mental state, and physical, cognitive, and behavioral problems, despite the individual’s education and preparation (lehrer, 1987; salmon, 1990). while the american psychiatric association (2013) defines mpa as social anxiety, kenny (2011) states that it can be classified as an anxiety disorder affecting people of all ages. others have reported its association and common aspects with social anxiety (hook & valentiner, 2002; kenny.. 2006). apart from that, kenny, davis, and oates (2004) found perfectionism and state and trait anxiety significant in mpa. although many musicians experience mpa at some level, it can be so severe as to threaten careers and seriously affect the quality of life regardless of age, experience, environment, and performance type. in other words, mpa can be a multi-dimensional process encompassing a variety of cases, levels, and temporal processes. as in the entire world, the literature shows that mpa is a common condition among musicians in turkey. also in line with the literature as a whole, teztel and aşkın (2007) found that students who perform western classical music in turkey were more inclined to mpa than jazz and traditional music students (papageorgi, creech, & welch, 2011; ioulia papageorgi, hallam, & welch, 2007; perdomo-guevara, 2014). moreover, studies on mpa using inventories, qualitative review, and psychoeducation programs have been conducted with turkish musicians (baydağ & alpagut, 2016; cırakoğlu & şentürk, 2013; cornett & urhan, 2021; coşkun-şentürk & çırakoğlu, 2018; doğan & i̇skender, 2015; gürşen otacıoğlu, 2016; saylam & girgin, 2019; topoğlu & karagulle, 2018; uluocak, 2016; yöndem, 2012). these studies’ results were compatible with the literature generally, which found greater mpa in female musicians and soloists (casanova, zarza, & orejudo, 2018; kenny & osborne, 2006; margaret s osborne & franklin, 2002; stephenson & quarrier, 2005). after examining mpa with children, adolescents, and adults, kenny and osborne (2006) stated that the condition is not related to age, experience, or performance environment. however, he found that barlow’s anxiety model can help us understand performance anxiety overall and especially mpa. barlow found anxiety to arise from biological (hereditary) vulnerability, psychological vulnerability based on early experiences, and vulnerability of certain situations and issues (barlow, 2000). many studies address psychological, physiological, and behavioral symptoms of mpa (fernholz et al., 2019; kenny. & ackermann, 2015; mcginnis & milling, 2005; osório, burin, nirenberg, & barbar, 2017; taborsky, 2007). papageorgi. (2020) stated that sensitivity to audience presence and the rate of exposure to it significantly increased mpa. “performance anxiety has a complex structure and is closely associated with social anxiety and exam anxiety”(kenny et al., 2004; papageorgi., 2020; patston & osborne, 2016; vaag, bjørngaard, & bjerkeset, 2016). as mentioned in the studies above, the biological and psychological predisposition of a person to mpa has a complex structure, with mpa triggered by environmental factors. nagel reported that professional musicians are aware that a successful performance is not guaranteed by increased practice hours and also that mpa depends on personal characteristics, attitudes, and unconscious conflicts (nagel, 1990).ioulia papageorgi et al. (2007) and papageorgi. (2020) reported that mpa increases with the tendency to experience performance anxiety, with factors affecting performance quality, and with environmental performance factors. “practice makes perfect” is a belief widely adopted in music performance, but practice alone does not always serve to cope with mpa. biasutti and concina (2014) reported mpa higher among music students—constituting this study’s volunteer participant. i. papageorgi et al. (2011) conducted a study on mpa and different types of music, finding that higher asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 250-259 252 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group levels of mpa were reported among western classical music performers and soloists. following this line, teztel and aşkın (2007) stated that students performing western classical music had higher mpa. similarly, kenny... et al. (2014) reported in their study on mpa and psychological well-being that female musicians and young musicians had higher mpa. cırakoğlu and şentürk (2013) and robson and kenny (2017) stated that both music and nonmusic majors experienced mpa in ensemble rehearsals and concerts and that depression significantly triggered mpa levels. dobos, piko, and kenny (2019) found a relationship between mpa, social phobia, and perfectionism. topoğlu. (2014) found that 81.8% of performers experienced mpa before and during a performance, adversely affecting the performance of 60%. as these studies demonstrate, mpa should be broadly understood and evaluated according to its unique features. in turkey, music education takes place in primary and secondary schools, in undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral studies, and proficiency in art programs. performance training is conducted in conservatories, fine arts high schools, music education departments, and undergraduate faculties of fine arts (orhan & tunca, 2014; sahin & duman, 2008). performance-oriented training is mainly offered in western classical music and turkish music conservatories under the umbrella of professional music education (gök, 2018). in conservatory and music education programs, undergraduates try to cope with mpa through individual efforts and methods (baydağ & alpagut, 2016; hatfield, 2016; yıldırım & simşek, 2006). however, related literature advises that the psychological aspect of music performance needs to be included in undergraduate music curricula, just as athletes whose profession is performance receive training in psychological skills (cohen & bodner, 2019; cornett & urhan, 2021; gill, 2020; hatfield, 2016; hoffman & hanrahan, 2012; osborne, greene, & immel, 2014; robson & kenny, 2017). in this regard, determining the needs and expectations of students, particularly in conservatories and music education institutions, is vital to professional competence. given that mpa is associated with many causative factors, revealing the opinions of conservatory (western classical music) students on mpa in the light of literature-specific themes will greatly contribute to music education and literature. in turkey, “no health promotion or injury prevention programs [are] presented at any of the tertiary institutions offering music as a major. growing awareness of health issues is a fairly recent development among musicians and music teachers in turkey” (demirbatir, 2015). despite studies’ recognition of mpa as a common problem, no curriculum or course addressing it is offered in turkish conservatories and institutions that provide undergraduate music education. to worsen matters, according to kenny and ackermann, treating performance anxiety is not easy, and reducing anxiety completely is quite difficult, so the best treatment is the prevention of mpa (kenny & ackermann, 2007). 1.1. the current study therefore, using a holistic approach, this study explored general views of conservatory students of western classical music on mpa—about self-reported anxiety, factors causing mpa, and their expectations and demands regarding mpa. in addition, factors related to mpa were determined in line with students’ opinions about it—an important topic investigated for the first time in the national literature. the following research questions were used: 1) what are the opinions of conservatory music students on mpa? 2) what are their physical and mental experiences due to mpa? 3) what are their coping strategies and techniques? 4) what are the environmental factors that students experience because of mpa? 5) what are students’ experiences regarding mpa and temporal processes? 6) what are their educational expectations and demands for eliminating mpa? the research’s overall aim was to reveal conservatory students’ physical, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms, coping strategies and techniques, temporal processes, and their needs, demands, and expectations for mpa elimination by examining mpa-causative factors within a holistic framework. 2. methodology 2.1. study group and data collection because individuals with experience of the studied phenomenon were required, this study used patton (2002). from the department of performing arts, the study group included voice/choir majors and from the department of music, instrument majors at ankara university state conservatory, 2019–2020 academic year. state conservatory students in preparatory, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades (n = 23; 15 female and 8 male students) were voluntarily included in the study. snowball sampling method was used in the selection of the participants. their performance fields included voice, choir, piano, violin, cello, and, flute. we first obtained permission from the ethics committee and from the institution to conduct the study. a researcher and a musician conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews lasting 30–45 minutes, depending on students’ availability, from april to june 2020. 2.2. research model the phenomenological pattern focuses on phenomena about which we know but have no deep or detailed understanding. thus, interpretive phenomenological analysis involves exploring and understanding participants’ lived experience because phenomena may appear in different ways such as events, experiences, perceptions, tendencies, concepts, and situations in the world (smith, 2004; willig, 2008; yıldırım & simşek, 2006). this study, which focused on conservatory students’ experiences with mpa, has an interpretive phenomenological pattern aiming to identify conservatory students’ experiences of and opinions about mpa. for a qualitative research method, phenomenology, acquiring knowledge about music education, a deep understanding of theory, as well as practice make important contributions (bresler, 2010; randles, 2012). asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 250-259 253 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.3. data collection data for this research were collected with a semi-structured interview process, that is, by asking somewhat structured but flexible interview questions, with the majority of the interview consisting of problems to be clarified; collecting specific data from each participant; and including no pre-determined statement and question details (merriam, 2018). a pilot interview was conducted before the study. before the interviews, three field specialists evaluated the proposed questions; after necessary corrections were made based on their feedback, the researcher who worked as a psychological counselor held individual interviews with the 23 conservatory students. 2.4. data analysis and trustworthiness the researchers converted data obtained from the interview audio recordings to written text and coded them. next, using the maxqda software program, the researchers analyzed the data using inductive content analysis: “… data collected in the content analysis should be conceptualized in line with the study objectives, and themes should be determined in light of these concepts. the content analysis is generally based on the compilation of similar data within the scope of certain concepts and themes and the organization and interpretation of them so that the reader can understand” (yıldırım & simşek, 2006). therefore, considering the literature, researchers formed categories in line with the themes organized by coding. during data analysis, researchers discussed any statements on which they disagreed until they could a consensus. after checking the coding, categories, themes, and all other stages against the literature, researchers determined the extent to which results represent the analyzed dataset (poggenpoel & myburgh, 2003). before that, however, during the interview process, participants were asked to what extent their statements reflected their thoughts and feelings; they were then provided the opportunity to revise their statements, adding or deleting content. despite being unable to guarantee an independent reality, the researchers attempted to ensure reliability by clarifying questions, obtaining participants’ confirmations during interviews, supporting results with coding by an external expert, linking results with quotations from participants and the relevant literature, and evaluating the analysis itself (daymon & holloway, 2003). the reliability ratio between coders can be calculated by dividing the number of agreed-upon codes by the total number of agreed-upon and disagreed-upon codes. the reliability ratio between coders is not expected to be more than 70%; preferably, it should be close to 80% or even more than 90% depending on the dataset’s size (arastaman, fidan, & fidan, 2018; fidan & öztürk, 2015; miles & huberman, 1994). our coders achieved compatibility of 82%, and themes obtained from data analysis were supported with exact quotations. 3. findings and comments the findings obtained in this study were collected under six categories, including the opinions of the participants about mpa; symptoms of mpa; coping strategies with mpa; temporal processes related to mpa; types of mpa; environmental factors causing mpa; and educational expectations to eliminate mpa. the results were presented with the statements of the participants in line with the data obtained from the participants. in the first sub-problem of the research, the answer to the question “what are the opinions of the conservatory students regarding mpa” was sought. findings regarding the data obtained from this question are given in table 1. table-1. opinions of conservatory music students regarding mpa. first, we asked conservatory students their opinions regarding causative factors of mpa. some students distinguished between mpa as fear of negative evaluations and mpa as excitement about performing in a concert or simply “stage excitement.” in line with relevant literature, the majority of participants mentioned juries’ negative performance evaluations in solo recitals, examinations, competitions, and auditions as causing mpa. when students have to prove themselves to a jury and experts, they describe mpa more negatively than in concerts, where they found mpa more positive and more motivating: in my opinion, there is something called stage fright. the second is fear of the jury. music performance anxiety is something that happens a lot in exams. even if there is a person i come across in the exam, even my teacher, this is something that makes one more nervous and panic. it would be better if they evaluate and score us through the year rather than through the examination system. it would be more accurate for them to evaluate us during concerts and during lessons. what i’m most excited about is the piano recital and exam. you have to prove yourself because it is a jury. i think a lot. i have a lot of thoughts about whether the teachers will like it or not. i observe them a lot to see how they will react, especially my teacher. because i wonder if i can control the sound and because of the teacher opening and closing his/her mouth, i get a lot of panics. the second highest cause of mpa for participants was technical insufficiency. this finding is considered studyspecific because it is rarely encountered in the literature. if there is a passage that i have difficulty playing when i go out to play, i think i will be disgraced. while i am singing a piece, i can worry about singing it in the right position with the singing technique. in table i, the findings that depend on the jury factor are as follows: jury’s negative evaluation, solo recitals and exams, jury’s appreciation, and competition and auditions. the other causative factors mentioned—technical insufficiency, perfectionism, personal stressors, inadequate practice, and lack of stage experience—are largely consistent with the relevant literature. stage excitement (anxiety) felt in concerts and similar events was stated more positively. however, all these factors cause physical, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms in students. jury’s negative evaluation (13) inadequate practice (5) technical insufficiency (11) jury’s appreciation (5) perfectionism (8) competition and auditions (3) personal stressors (8) lack of stage experience (3) solo recital and exams (5) stage excitement (anxiety) (3) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 250-259 254 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the second sub-problem of the research, the answer to the question “what are the physical and mental experiences of conservatory music students due to mpa?” was sought. findings regarding the data obtained from this question are shown in table 2. table-2. symptoms of mpa in conservatory music students. distraction (22) trembling and muscle contraction (18) palpitation (13) fear (9) excessive stress (8) lack of sleep (7) sweating (2) panic (3) nausea-gastric problems (2) dry mouths (2) frequent urination (1) second, in the research, we asked participants about their physical and mental experiences with mpa. among physical, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms related to mpa, students most mentioned distraction; this coincides with difficulties in concentration and focus, which are frequently cited in the literature. trembling and muscle contraction was the second most common finding: i can’t even think about the note i played. i look at it blankly, i think, we will talk to the teacher when the note comes out during breaks. i can’t think. i wish i thought so i wouldn’t mix up the words. i need to focus on that moment. i lose my intellectual ability during the exam. i often get locked whether there is a person in [front] of me or not. my body contracts. i suggest myself but then my hands are shaking, and this also affects my voice, and my voice gets hoarse. the findings in table ii are also compatible with the literature in terms of the physical, cognitive, and behavioral aspects of mpa. cognitive and behavioral symptoms include distraction, excessive stress, fear, panic, lack of sleep; physical symptoms include trembling, muscle contractions, palpitations, nausea, gastric problems, sweating, dry mouth, and frequent urination. in the face of these symptoms, students stated that they use various physical and cognitive coping strategies. in the third sub-problem of the research, the answer to the question of “what are the coping strategies and techniques of conservatory music students for mpa?” was sought. findings regarding the data obtained for this question are in table 3. table-3. coping strategies and techniques of conservatory music students for mpa. positive self-talk (20) self-motivation (6) changing posture during performance (5) imagination (5) playing with peers (3) breath exercises (3) medication (2) meditation (2) superstitious beliefs (2) many studies address functional and dysfunctional coping strategies adopted by amateur and professional musicians for mpa. related to the third problem, this study’s participants revealed that they used physical and cognitive coping strategies commonly cited in the literature, but positive self-talk was the most used: i encourage myself. i say to myself that i am divine. i say you are divine, i don’t care about the people there, i simplify it, i say never mind, and so now i learned to control it a little. i say to myself, “there are things you can do well, show yourself.” i am giving positive suggestions to myself, “look, people like you and so make your best.” don’t care what the jury says. you’re doing well. i say “focus on your breathing.” i am motivating myself at that moment. because you have to leave that passage and focus on other parts. you have to keep going. a remarkable result of the study was positive selftalk (table 3). positive self-talk is a strategy frequently used in sports psychology, but athletes are psychologically trained to apply certain methods and techniques knowingly. with no theoretical knowledge of positive self-talk, nevertheless, participants in this study chose it from among their range of coping strategies. results also revealed that they used additional physical and cognitive coping strategies commonly noted in the literature: self-motivation, changing posture during performance, breathing exercises, playing with peers, imagination, medication, meditation, and superstitious beliefs. examination of mpa’s symptoms and coping strategies indicates the importance of the context and the performance environment, especially since, as previously stated, many environmental factors can cause mpa. in the fourth sub-problem of the research, the answer to the question “what are the environmental factors experienced by conservatory music students because of mpa?” was sought. environmental factors related to mpa in the study are shown in table 4. table-4. environmental factors experienced by conservatory music students. performance exam anticipation and fatigue (13) physical conditions of stage and acoustic performances (7) attitudes and behaviors of the jury (9) verbal feedback (from jury) (3) jury’s appreciation (9) differences in instruments for pianists (1) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 250-259 255 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group fourth, we asked study participants about environmental factors, that is, physical and psychological environmental conditions related to mpa. remarkably, most participants cited waiting for performance exams and fatigue as physical causes of mpa. the study also revealed that the second most cited environmental factors were the jury’s appreciation and their attitudes and behaviors. besides waiting for performance exams, fatigue, and the jury’s behaviors, including their feedback, physical conditions causing mpa also include the stage, the acoustics, and, for pianists, differences in instruments: my excitement starts while i wait. i was worried while waiting for the long performances before me. the people outside in the waiting room make me very nervous because they listen to your voice and they talk there, and you know it. i think the stage swallowed your voice. acoustics disturbs me, and if the environment is dry, especially when the air conditioners are working, my performance is affected. secondarily, psychological environmental conditions were related to mpa, as follow: i am thinking about so many things. i mostly think about whether the lecturers will like it or not. i watch their reactions a lot, and i also often look at my lecturer. i do it to see whether i can control my voice, but then he/she opens and closes his/her mouth, and this also makes me nervous. the gestures of the person (jury) opposite me mostly distract me. i feel quite comfortable if i am singing something very well, but i understand that i made a mistake when i see their gestures, and this makes me think even only at that moment and to deplore my mistakes and poor performance. the gestures and feedbacks of the people do not make me happy during the examination. first, i think the stage absorbs the voice and leaves us numb there, and second, the stage and the people in the waiting room make me very nervous. as shown in table iv, the impact of physical and psychological environmental conditions related to mpa on the participants is a major factor. environmental factors that cause mpa occur within a certain time frame for the participants. findings regarding these temporal processes are discussed below. in the fifth sub-problem, the answer to the question “what are the experiences of conservatory music students regarding the temporal processes related to mpa?” was sought. findings based on the data obtained are shown in table 5. temporal processes related to mpa in the study are also shown in table 6. table-5. experiences of conservatory students regarding mpa and temporal processes. one night before the performance (11) when taking place on the stage (6) waiting for the performance (4) at the start of the performance (2) when traveling to the performance venue (1) in table 5, the most frequently mentioned and the most severe mpa was observed on the night before to performance. in general, participants experienced anxiety at five different points during the performance process: a) while waiting for the performance to begin, b) at the start of the performance, c) when taking the stage, d) the night before the performance e) when traveling to the performance venue. i feel comfortable 3–4 days before the performance; i only feel anxiety one night before the exam. i’m getting a little stressed out. it begins one day before the exam. even if i am completely ready for the piece, will i be able to do [it] or not? i say, “i have to sleep,” but i am losing my sleep. i think i should go with the flow. i feel it during my first steps to the stage, but it comes again when i see the lecturers’ attitudes. i get nervous in my first steps to the stage, and i open up when singing, but it starts again when i see the lecturers. professional musicians give many performances throughout their lives, but not every musician experiences mpa to the same level. the literature states that some musicians experience anxiety before the performance, while others experience it during and after the performance. these findings are compatible with the literature, and they reflect mpa as it affects the general quality of participants’ lives and performance quality. in this context, then, we know that students should have professional knowledge about mpa. in the sixth problem of the research, the question is “what are the needs and expectations of conservatory music students to eliminate mpa?” participants in the study stated that they most needed a course in the curriculum to manage mpa. table vi shows the needs and expectations of the participants regarding mpa in their conservatory education. table-6. educational expectations and demands of conservatory music students to eliminate mpa. course for mpa management in the curriculum (9) acquire physical and mental skills related to relaxation (8) arrangements for exam format (5) more stage experiences expectation (4) psychologist’s support, counseling (4) sixth and finally, we asked, “what do conservatory students need to alleviate and/or eliminate mpa?” among other things, study participants said they most needed a course to help them learn to manage mpa. as shown in table 6, among other things, study participants said they most needed a course to help them learn to manage mpa. participants want detailed and theoretical knowledge about coping with mpa, preferably through an mpa management course added to the curriculum. the second most frequently mentioned need is acquiring physical and mental relaxation skills, suggesting that students see relaxation as an effective method for reducing mpa. you are on stage and people expect something from you. especially at a young age, they exaggerate a small problem and turn it into a big one, and this occurs when combined with anxiety caused by a lack of musical selfasian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 250-259 256 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group confidence. if normal people experience this state in magnitude five, they experience it in magnitude twenty-five. therefore, taking an education or an elective course on this subject will provide psychological relief. a course would be beneficial. we are going to be artists, and if we want to be a real artist, we should control these issues. something will always happen when we are on the stage, so we have to control this. if we learn it this way and practice it effectively, things would be easier on the stage. i think everyone studying performing arts should have a class in their schedule called stage performance anxiety because we try to deal with something all the time. sometimes you need help from somebody. for example, i used to have stage fright. i got over it two years ago, but i don’t know how i did it. maybe, if we had a lecturer talking on this issue during our first years, or if we had one course a week, or if counseling or something like psychological service was available, we would be more relaxed, and everyone would be a little healthier. about physical and mental relaxation, a participant said, my voice sounds great in rooms and courses, and the lack of adjustment affected my voice by thirty percent. i thought i should do something about it myself. i said that i should study this subject with practices such as meditation and breathing exercises. i thought it would be useful. i thought this question wasn’t just about sound, it was something more personal. because what we do is not the sound work, but the stage and excitement. i thought of checking all of these out. we do meditation or breathing exercises, yoga. we have a dance class and we do some yoga in it and it feels so good. but after all, it’s a dance class. the finding “arrangement for exam format” expresses an expectation about organizing exams as workshops at certain time intervals, indicating that students want more frequent evaluation and evaluation of their developmental progress. furthermore, at a conservatory, they expected more onstage experience, which would likely help them reduce mpa. participants also mentioned support from a psychologist or counselor, which likely addresses a personal need for help with mpa, in addition to the resources mentioned above. according to these findings, study participants seem to have acquired mpa coping skills and strategies through random and individual efforts. however, findings also revealed that students’ developmental and performance needs were not being met by the curriculum; students strongly desire inclusion of a required course for overcoming anxiety. 4. discussion a broad range of studies on mpa in turkey and worldwide have shown that even experienced professional musicians are subject to various levels of mpa because performances’ content, environment, and context often stress musicians, even to the point of causing severe or debilitating mpa. thus, this study specifically examined physical, mental, and behavioral manifestations of mpa among conservatory students (western classical music), along with their coping strategies, factors causing their anxiety, and their needs for ameliorating the situation. accordingly, study data were obtained through semi-structured interviews and then coded and content analyzed using maxqda, v. 2020.4, qualitative data analysis package program. one significant finding is that students regularly experience some mpa onstage, but their discomfort is exacerbated during an exam or a jury evaluation, as previous studies have found (osborne & franklin, 2002; osborne, kenny, & holsomback, 2005; yöndem, 2012). causative factors in this study included perfectionism and inadequate preparation, thus following causative factors in the literature fehm and schmidt (2006); yondem (2007); osborne and kenny (2008); kenny et al. (2014); sarıkaya (2018). similar to yondem (2007) and teztel and aşkın (2007), this study found that students had anxiety of being evaluated, the anxiety of being acclaimed, and stage anxiety. in other words, anxiety has both positive and negative effects on music performance, and it can contribute positively to performance to some degree (alptekin, 2012; castiglione, rampullo, & cardullo, 2018). when it came to being evaluated and acclaimed, this study’s participants perceived mpa particularly negatively. in contrast, they identified stage excitement among (anxiety) features as positive and motivating in less-pressured events such as concerts or workshops. the most commonly stated cognitive and physical manifestations of mpa included, respectively, distraction and inability to concentrate, trembling and muscle contractions—similar to previous studies (kenny et al., 2014; kirchner, 2003). in kirchner (2003), the pianist participants stated that physiological manifestations of performance anxiety increased their negative thoughts and feelings—as students also stated in this study— stimulating the sympathetic nervous system. in this study, participants used physical and cognitive coping strategies for mpa, but they had no field-specific, theoretical knowledge about them. even so, students’ breathing exercises, self-suggestion, and medication paralleled results by osório et al. (2017) and kenny et al. (2014). however, such efforts may vary depending on factors like individual predisposition and conditions (biasutti & concina, 2014; coşkun-şentürk & çırakoğlu, 2018). gannon (2015) suggested that because physiological symptoms directly affect other types of symptoms (cognitive and behavioral), physiological symptoms should be eliminated first in mpa treatment. among this study’s participants, the most commonly used coping strategy was positive self-talk for physical and cognitive manifestations of mpa. in this context, then, the students have not used the most effective strategies to address mpa. the main environmental factors cited as causing mpa were the audience and the jury’s acclamation, attitude, and behaviors. this result showed similarity to “prevalence and predictors of music performance anxiety in adolescent learners: individual and environmental factors” by papageorgi (2020), suggesting that sensitivity to the audience’s presence and the rate of exposure significantly increased mpa. in this context, educators might observe students’ personal inclinations toward mpa through juried events such as pre-tests, exams, recitals, and so on and motivate students to discover and use coping strategies they find the most effective. because mpa can be thought of as a whole, with cognitive, somatic, and behavioral factors, effective use of psychological skills can contribute to the educational process. hatfield (2016) stated that psychological skills training (e.g., goal setting, concentration, imagination, self-talk, arousal regulation) has been used successfully in sports for the last 50 years but is rarely used in music performance. in this regard, the study’s most remarkable result was that students stated they need a course, counseling, and activities on mpa integrated into the curriculum. however, examination of turkish music education programs did reveal courses on concert and stage asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 250-259 257 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group psychology, but they are not common and are mostly in master and doctoral curricula. according to yıldırım (2020), performing before professional musicians and academicians is not easy for music students, and adequate technical, musical, and mental preparation is highly important. investigation of performance-based sports education-training programs revealed courses on sports psychology, which emphasizes that psychological as well as physical skills should be developed. in music education that focuses on performance, coping with stress, anxiety, concentration, motivation, and effective management of preand post-performance processes can be defined as important skills. therefore, including courses and activities in the conservatory curriculum at the undergraduate level, from which students can gain the psychological skills to manage mpa will provide significant benefits. a final significant result was the students’ expressed need to extend the exam process during educationtraining and to enrich their onstage experiences through concerts and other performances. in other words, extending the exam and evaluation process with lecturers in the jury in the education-training environment and supporting it with exams without a jury would reduce students’ mpa. 5. conclusion this study’s results showed that mpa is quite common among students, but they do not have detailed, literature-based knowledge about it. nor have they intentionally and consciously used proven coping strategies, like athletes are trained to do. because performance is integral to musical education training, including courses and activities on coping with mpa should be part of the licensing and education curriculum in all conservatories and institutions providing musical education degrees. the activities repeatedly mentioned here could contribute significantly to occupational competencies. although this study achieved important results, its limitations can be summarized as follows. the obtained data was based mainly on self-reports by volunteer participants attending a single conservatory in turkey. thus, the subject should be investigated through varied contexts and samples from turkish conservatories and music departments. although many researchers have investigated mpa, it is still regarded as a complex and significant problem among musicians. in this regard, to focus on mpa and psychobiology within the context of its holistic, physical, and psychological effects and on the need for preventive mpa education, about which the literature currently offers little information. references alptekin, g. a. 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(2012). physical, behavioral and cognitive characteristics of perceived performance anxiety in music students: a qualitative study. education sciences, 37(166), 181-194. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26367435 96 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 3, 96-103, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i3.7353 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group examining the path effects of elementary school english teachers’ beliefs, efficacy, decision making and behaviors in teaching english as a foreign language ping-huang sheu department of children english education, national taipei university of education, taiwan. email: samsheu@tea.ntue.edu.tw abstract this study examined the interrelationships among professional development activities (pdas), teaching beliefs (tb), teacher efficacy (te), decision-making (dm), and teaching behaviors (tbh) among elementary school teachers of english as a foreign language (efl) in taiwan. using a path analysis approach, the study explored how participation in pdas influenced teachers’ cognition and instructional practices. the findings revealed four key relationships: (1) pdas positively predicted both tb and dm; (2) dm was positively associated with tb and te during reflective processes; (3) dm positively predicted tbh; and (4) post-teaching tbh was significantly predicted by tb and dm in reflection, but negatively associated with te. these results highlight the important role of pdas in fostering positive teaching beliefs and effective decision-making, which ultimately contribute to teaching behaviors. notably, the negative association between te and tbh suggests that higher self-perceptions of teaching efficacy may not always translate to instructional behaviors, particularly in the reflection process. the study emphasizes the value of pdas not only for teacher development but also for enhancing instructional decision-making and practice. accordingly, efl elementary teachers should be encouraged to engage in ongoing professional development activities to strengthen their teaching beliefs, efficacy, and decision-making, which in turn shape their behaviors in the classroom. keywords: decision-making, efl, elementary english education, professional development activities, teacher efficacy, teaching behaviors, teaching beliefs. citation | sheu, p.-h. (2025). examining the path effects of elementary school english teachers’ beliefs, efficacy, decision making and behaviors in teaching english as a foreign language. asian journal of education and training, 11(3), 96–103. 10.20448/edu.v11i3.7353 history: received: 22 may 2025 revised: 18 july 2025 accepted: 8 august 2025 published: 29 august 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support institutional review board statement: the study involved minimal risk and adhered to ethical guidelines for social science fieldwork. formal approval from an institutional review board was not required under the policies of national taipei university of education. informed verbal consent was obtained from all participants, and all data were anonymized to protect participant confidentiality. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 97 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 98 3. results and discussions .................................................................................................................................................................. 99 4. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 102 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 103 mailto:samsheu@tea.ntue.edu.tw https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i3.7353 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 96-103 97 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the paper's primary contribution is the discovery that, unlike previous research which typically examined only one or two relationships among beliefs, efficacy, decision-making, and behaviors, it uniquely models all four constructs together to reveal their comprehensive path effects in elementary efl teaching. 1. introduction 1.1. professional growth one of the most precise concepts for describing professional development and its potential effects on teaching is teachers’ professional growth (clarke & hollingsworth, 2002). in particular, growth in the processes of planning, designing, implementing, and evaluating lessons is seen as essential in a teacher’s professional career. to conceptualize the idea of professional development, clarke and hollingsworth (2002) proposed a rhombus-domain model encompassing four distinct and interconnected domains: the external domain (ed), the personal domain (pd), the domain of practice (dp), and the domain of consequences (dc). the external domain (ed) includes both formal and informal activities conducted within or outside the school, such as workshops, observations, community engagement, teaching diaries, case studies, co-teaching, and action research (richards & farrell, 2005; wayne, yoon, zhu, cronen, & garet, 2008). the personal domain (pd) comprises teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and thoughts that guide their classroom actions. these elements are shaped by newly received information or experiences (komba & nkumbi, 2008) and consist of four features: existential presumptions, alterity, affective and evaluative loading, and episodic structure (nespor, 1987). the domain of practice (dp) refers to actual classroom behaviors, involving the selection of instructional objectives, content, methods, materials, exercises, resources, and assessments (levin & wadmany, 2006). it encompasses four aspects: knowledge and curriculum, teacher-student relationship, teacher’s role, and student diversity. finally, the domain of consequences (dc) refers to changes in student learning outcomes, often shaped by the interaction of external influences, personal teaching notions, and classroom performances (desimone, 2009). it serves as a comprehensive evaluation of teaching results before, during, and after instruction. clarke and hollingsworth (2002) identified two processes through which these domains interact: action and reflection. in the action process, teachers who face instructional challenges seek external resources (ed) to enrich their personal knowledge (pd), which in turn influences their teaching practices (dp). dc, as a consequence, further shapes their teaching behaviors. in the reflection process, teachers re-evaluate their pd, ed, and dp in light of experiences from dc. when necessary, these reflections lead to adjustments aimed at enhancing future instructional effectiveness. this continuous process of aligning beliefs with experience results in improved instructional and learning effectiveness. from this perspective, the four domains, ed, pd, dp, and dc, are interconnected and dynamic, depending on whether the teacher is taking action in active problem-solving or reflective learning. dp serves as the implementation point of both ed and pd, while dc functions as an evaluative indicator of the inferred outcomes of these interactions (clarke & hollingsworth, 2002). 1.2. teacher efficacy teacher efficacy is another antecedent of dc, working alongside ed and pd to organize, manage, and successfully perform teaching tasks (cayci, 2011; klassen, tze, betts, & gordon, 2011). according to bandura (1997) teacher efficacy refers to one’s self-reflection or confidence in their capability to design and implement lessons, which can predict success across all aspects of teaching. teacher efficacy is commonly understood to consist of two dimensions: personal efficacy and outcome expectancy (tschannen-moran, hoy, & hoy, 1998). the former reflects a teacher’s confidence in their own ability to facilitate learning, whereas the latter is defined as their beliefs about their teaching efforts, which lead to expected outcomes (tschannen-moran & hoy, 2001). together, both demonstrate how teachers approach their instructions, and a strong sense of efficacy can contribute to more effective teaching and student learning. previous studies have suggested that teacher efficacy plays an influential role in shaping both teaching practices and the student learning process (morris, usher, & chen, 2017; tschannen-moran & hoy, 2001). for example, teachers who are positive about their abilities tend to explore new teaching methods and demonstrate motivation to design effective lessons (calik, sezgin, kavgaci, & cagatay kilinc, 2012; klassen et al., 2011). ultimately, a strong sense of teaching efficacy increases the likelihood of achieving student success (duyar, gumus, & sukru bellibas, 2013). 1.3. decision making as a mediator of teaching behaviors decision making (dm) involves the process through which instructors design, implement, and revise teaching strategies based on their professional knowledge and practical factors within the classroom (lunenburg & ornstein, 2013). it acts as a bridge connecting teachers’ thoughts with their instructional actions before, during, and after lessons. given its role in shaping effective teaching, decision-making is regarded as a crucial skill that educators continuously develop throughout their teaching careers. according to richards and lockhart (1996), teachers normally make decisions through three stages. the first is planning decisions, where teachers consider what to teach and how to teach it. this stage includes the consideration and selection of instructional objectives, materials, activities, and assessments, as well as students’ characteristics and learning needs (mccutcheon, 1980). the second stage involves interactive decisions, which take place in real time during instruction. teachers respond to classroom events or student behaviors, particularly when unexpected situations arise (borg, 2003; borg, 2006). the third stage, evaluative decisions, occurs after instruction, when teachers reflect on students’ behaviors, difficulties, and outcomes for improving the overall effectiveness of the lesson. these reflections often lead to necessary adjustments for future lessons (richards & lockhart, 1996). importantly, decision-making in teaching is not a linear or one-time process, but is cyclical in nature. changes in one decision often trigger adjustments in others, highlighting the interdependent and iterative process of instructional decisions (gray, 2001). this interplay reinforces the notion that decision-making is central to teaching and learning (jasper, 2006). asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 96-103 98 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1.4. study purpose and research questions as clarke and hollingsworth (2002) note, dc is distinct from the other three domains, as it focuses on student learning outcomes, which are often demonstrated through high scores or achievement in school. dc is frequently conceptualized as students’ individual efforts toward achieving learning goals (sheu, 2019), and, therefore, is excluded from this study. most studies have found a positive relationship among ed, pd, and dp in promoting teacher growth. for instance, levin and wadmany (2006), sheu (2019), stewart (2014) and whitcomb, borko, and liston (2009) reported that professional development activities and teaching beliefs are closely associated with teachers’ classroom experimentation. additionally, calik et al. (2012) and duyar et al. (2013) noted that teacher efficacy is interconnected with ed and pd and often influences teaching decisions. teachers interpret information from professional development activities, integrate it into their knowledge and beliefs, and apply it through teaching decisions (jasper, 2006; richards & farrell, 2005). therefore, professional development activities, teaching beliefs, and teacher efficacy are antecedents of decision-making (richards & farrell, 2005) which in turn influences the selection of objectives, materials, activities and assessment (buczynski & hansen, 2010; woolfolk, davis, & pape, 2006). decision-making functions as a mediator through which structured learning and teaching take place. while previous research has identified links among professional development activities, teaching beliefs, teacher efficacy, and teaching behaviors (buczynski & hansen, 2010; sheu, 2019; zheng, 2009), the dynamic, nonlinear interactions among these elements and decision-making have been less explored (kennedy, 2005; smith, 2010). this study intends to fill this gap by answering: 1. do professional development activities positively affect teaching beliefs, teacher efficacy, and decision-making among efl teachers? 2. do teaching beliefs and teacher efficacy positively affect decision-making among efl teachers? 3. does teacher decision-making positively influence on teaching behaviors? 4. after teaching, do teaching behaviors positively affect teaching beliefs, teacher efficacy, and decision making? accordingly, we propose the following model (figure 1), which predicts the relationship among five factors: professional development activities (pdas), teaching belief (tb), teacher efficacy (te), decision making (dm), and teaching behaviors (tbh). figure 1. the proposed model. note: the solid lines indicate the direct effect relationships, while the dotted lines show the reflective ones. 2. method 2.1. research subjects this study adopted a stratified random sampling method. taipei city consists of 12 administrative districts, and ten percent of the elementary schools in each district were selected. then, based on the number of teachers in each selected school, a google form link for the questionnaire was sent to the participants (the number of participating schools and respondents is shown in table 1). a total of 222 english teachers from elementary schools in taipei city, taiwan, participated in this study. among them, 57 were male and 165 were female. all participants had completed undergraduate studies with a major in either english language education or english literature. of the total, 67 held bachelor's degrees, while 155 had obtained master's degrees. their english proficiency was aligned with the b2 level (upper-intermediate) as defined by the cefr scale. regarding their years of teaching, 57 had less than 5 years, 69 had 6 to 10 years, and 96 had more than 10 years of experience. substitute teachers were excluded due to their limited teaching hours at elementary schools. table 1. number of participating schools and respondents. area district (schools) number of participating schools number of respondents east neihu (13) 3 20 nangang (7) 2 12 west zhongzheng (8) 2 13 wanhua (11) 2 20 south songshan (8) 2 14 daan (12) 3 32 xinyi (9) 2 17 wenshan (20) 4 18 north shilin (19) 4 24 beitou (15) 3 19 central datong (9) 2 15 zhongshan (11) 2 18 total 31 222 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 96-103 99 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.2. research instrument two revised chinese versions of a teaching behavior questionnaire were used, adapting from cayci (2011); desimone (2009); richards and farrell (2005) and sheu (2019). the first questionnaire included five sections: professional development activities (pdas: 9 items), teaching beliefs (tb: 16 items), teaching efficacy (te: 20 items), decision making (dm: 9 items), and teaching behaviors (tbh: 16 items), totaling 70 question items. the second questionnaire comprised the tb, te, and dm sections from the first questionnaire, with 45 items in total. responses were measured using a likert scale, with values ranging from strongly disagree (1 point) to strongly agree (4 points). a higher score reflected a greater degree of agreement with the statement. to ensure content validity, the questionnaires were reviewed by two elementary school english teachers, and revisions were made based on their feedback. reliability estimates were: cronbach’s alpha (α) = 0.875 (apd = .897, tb = .857, te = .903, dm = .886, and bh = .835). according to george and mallery (2009) these values indicate good internal consistency. data were collected two weeks before and after the academic semester. first, a google form link for the questionnaire was sent to 246 english teachers, and 222 responses were completed online (response rate = 90.2%). the second questionnaire was sent to the same 222 teachers, and all completed it (100% response rate). 3. results and discussions 3.1. pdas → tb the effect of pdas on tb is showed in table 2, the r² value of pdas is 18.0%. as shown in table 3, the f value reveals a significance in this model, indicating pdas can predict tb. table 4 shows pdas’ contribution to this prediction (β=.424; sig=.000). that is, an increase in teachers' engagement in pdas tends to be associated with tb. table 2. teaching beliefs’ regression model summary. model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 0.424(a) 0.180 0.176 0.2378 note: (a) predictors (constant): pdas. table 3. teaching beliefs’ anova summary. model sum of square df mean square f sig. 1 regression 2.723 1 2.723 48.156*** 0.000 residual 12.442 220 0.057 total 15.165 221 note: *** p < 0.001. table 4. summary of teaching beliefs’ findings. model non-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t collinearity statistics b std. error beta tolerance vif 1 (constant) 1.744 0.229 7.606*** pdas 0.453 0.065 0.424 6.939*** 1.000 1.000 note: *** p < 0.001. 3.2. pdas → te the r² value of pdas in table 4 is 1%. the result of anova summary (f=.283, n.s.) in table 5, and coefficient analysis (β=.036; n.s.) in table 6 accounts for this model not significant, which suggests that pdas are not related to te. table 5. teacher efficacy’s regression model summary. model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 0.036a 0.001 -0.003 0.3086 note: (a) predictors (constant): pdas. table 6. teaching efficacy’s anova summary. model sum of square df mean square f sig. 1 regression 0.027 1 0.027 0.283 0.595 residual 20.946 220 0.095 total 20.973 221 table 7. summary of teaching efficacy’s findings. model non-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t collinearity statistics b std. error beta tolerance vif 1 (constant) 3.255 0.169 19.208*** pdas 0.026 0.049 0.036 0.532 1.000 1.000 note: *** p < 0.001. 3.3. pda/tb/te → dm table 7 manifests that the r² value of this model accounts for 60.8% of the predictors. table 8 indicates that the anova result of this model accounts significantly for dm (f=112.784, sig=.000). in addition, the results in table 9 demonstrate that pdas (β=.532; sig=.000), tb (β=-.205; sig=.000), and te (β=-.304; sig=.000) can significantly predict dm. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 96-103 100 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 8. decision-making’s regression model summary. model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 3 0.780(a) 0.608 0.603 0.2660 note: (a) predictors (constant): pdas, tb, te. table 9. decision making’s anova summary. model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 3 regression 23.947 3 7.982 112.784*** 0.000 residual 15.429 218 .071 total 39.377 221 note: *** p < 0.001. table 10. summary of the decision-making findings. model non-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t collinearity statistics b std. error beta tolerance vif 3 (constant) 0.013 0.290 0.046 pdas 0.574 0.062 0.532 9.313*** 1.000 1.000 tb 0.173 0.042 0.205 4.068*** 0.704 1.420 te -0.583 0.120 -0.304 -4.860*** 0.820 1.219 note: *** p < 0.001. 3.4. dm → tbh in table 10, the dm’s regression result shows that the r² value is 2.83, presenting 28.3% of the prediction of this model. the anova results in table 11 is significant (f=86.737, sig=.000), and the coefficient analysis in table 12 indicates that tbh can be predicted significantly by dm (β=.532; sig=.000). in other words, changes in dm result in changes in tbh. table 11. teaching behaviors’ regression model summary. model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 0.532a 0.283 0.280 0.3866 note: (a) predictors (constant): dm. table 12. teaching behaviors’ anova summary. model sum of square df mean square f sig. 1 regression 12.963 1 12.963 86.737*** 0.000 residual 32.879 220 0.149 total 45.842 221 note: *** p < 0.001. table 13. summary of teaching behaviors’ findings. model non-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t collinearity statistics b std. error beta tolerance vif 1 (constant) 0.947 0.212 4.459*** dm 1.225 0.128 0.598 9.544*** 0.820 1.219 note: *** p < 0.001. 3.5. tbh → tb table 13 displays the summary of the regression model for tbh, with an r² value of .296, indicating that tbh accounts for 29.6% of the variance in the dependent variable. as shown in table 14, the anova result (f = 45.950, p = 0.000) demonstrates that the model is significant, suggesting that changes in tbh have a meaningful impact on tb. when the beta values were examined in table 15, tbh efficacy (β = -0.268; sig = 0.000) contributes significantly to tb. table 14. teaching beliefs’ regression model summary. model r r square adjusted r-squared std. error of the estimate 1 0.544(a) 0.296 0.289 0.4232 note: (a) predictors (constant): tbh. table 15. teaching beliefs’ anova summary. model sum of square df mean square f sig. 1 regression 16.459 1 8.230 45.950*** 0.000 residual 39.223 220 0.179 total 55.682 221 note: *** p < 0.001. table 16. summary of teaching beliefs’ findings. model non-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t collinearity statistics b std. error beta tolerance vif 1 (constant) .664 .459 1.448 tbh -.432 .079 -.268 -5.437*** .741 1.350 note: *** p < 0.001. 3.6. tbh → dm table 16 presents the regression model summary for tbh, showing an r² value of .296, which indicates that 29.6% of the tb’s variance is explained by tbh. the anova results in table 17 reveal that the model is statistically significant (f = 61.440, p = 0.000), suggesting that tbh contributes meaningfully to predicting the asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 96-103 101 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group outcome variable; that is, changes in tbh would significantly cause changes in dm. table 18, tbh (β=0.716; sig=0.000) contributes significantly to dm. table 17. decision making’s regression model summary. model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 0.576(a) 0.332 0.330 0.3857 note: (a) predictors (constant): tbh. table 18. decision making’s anova summary. model sum of square df mean square f sig. 1 regression 16.528 1 5.509 61.440*** 0.000 residual 28.156 220 0.090 total 44.683 221 note: *** p < 0.001. table 19. summary of decision making’s findings. model non-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t collinearity statistics b std. error beta tolerance vif 2 (constant) 0.826 0.338 2.986 tbh 1.235 0.043 0.716 13.552*** 0.990 1.010 note: *** p < 0.001. 3.7. tbh → te as shown in table 20, the regression model summary for tbh after instruction yields an r² value of .003. it can be seen that no significance is found in both anova summary (f=0.751, n.s.) in table 21 and coefficient analysis (β=0.058; n.s.) in table 22; in other words, outcomes in tbh are unlikely to cause changes in te after teaching. table 20. teacher efficacy’s regression model summary. model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 0.058(a) 0.003 -0.001 0.3071 note: (a) predictors (constant): tbh. table 21. teacher efficacy’s anova summary. model sum of square df mean square f sig. 1 regression 0.071 1 0.071 0.751 0.387 residual 20.750 220 0.094 total 20.821 221 table 22. summary of teacher efficacy’s findings. model non-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t collinearity statistics b std. error beta tolerance vif 1 (constant) 3.229 0.169 19.149*** tbh 0.042 0.049 0.058 0.866 1.000 1.000 note: *** p < 0.001. 3.8. path effects in the non-linear structure this study proposed two categories of hypothesized effects (see figure 1) to elucidate the relationships among five factors: the first involved direct influences: professional development activities (pdas) were expected to have a positive effect on teaching behaviors (tb) and decision-making (dm); tb was anticipated to influence dm; and dm was expected to contribute to the development of teaching beliefs and habits (tbh). the second category concerned reflective effects, comprising five reciprocal pathways: pdas influencing teaching efficacy (te); te affecting dm; tbh impacting both dm and tb; and tbh contributing to te. nonetheless, empirical findings partially diverged from these expectations. figure 2 illustrates the structural model, including the path coefficients and their corresponding levels of statistical significance. notably, some reflective results contradicted our assumptions: pdas had no reflective effect on te, and tbh did not reflect on te after teaching. key findings are summarized as follows: prior to teaching, professional development activities (pdas) were found to be significant positive predictors of teaching behaviors (tb), teaching efficacy (te), and decision-making (dm). in addition, both tb and te independently exerted a positive influence on dm, suggesting a coherent forward linkage among these constructs before instruction took place. after teaching, the relationship between dm and teaching beliefs and habits (tbh) was not statistically significant, indicating that decision-making did not directly translate into long-term teaching dispositions. in contrast, both tb and te were positively associated with tbh, yet unexpectedly showed negative associations with dm. furthermore, tbh demonstrated a reciprocal influence on tb and dm, but did not exhibit a reflective effect on te. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 96-103 102 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 2. path analysis and standardized coefficients. note: the solid lines indicate the direct effect relationships, while the dotted lines show the reflective ones, *** p < 0.001. 4. discussion and conclusion this study investigated taiwanese elementary teachers’ perceptions of professional development activities (pdas), teaching beliefs (tb), efficacy (te), decision-making (dm), and behaviors (tbh), as well as the relationships among these factors. the findings confirm some results reported in previous studies while offering new insights that reflect the teaching context and the characteristics of the participant group. one notable finding is that pdas had a significant positive impact on teachers' beliefs and decision-making processes. teachers who value pdas, such as workshops, seminars, and observations, reported stronger intentions and willingness to improve their pedagogical knowledge and greater clarity when making instructional decisions. this is consistent with earlier research suggesting that structured pdas enhance teachers’ professional identity and encourage teachers to question, affirm, or revise their instructional conceptions (desimone, 2009; jasper, 2006; opfer & pedder, 2011; smith, 2010; stewart, 2014). the present study also confirms that pdas can serve as cognitive stimulants, enabling teachers to integrate new pedagogical information into their beliefs and apply it to their classroom planning and practices. however, the study also found that pdas had a limited influence on teacher efficacy. although participation in professional learning led to refined instructional strategies and deeper reflection, it did not significantly alter teachers’ perceptions of their teaching competence. this finding contrasts with studies that have reported positive associations between targeted professional development and increased teacher efficacy (levin & wadmany, 2006; morris et al., 2017), particularly when pdas are sustained, relevant, and embedded in practice (tschannen-moran & mcmaster, 2009). a possible explanation for this discrepancy may lie in the participants’ teaching experiences. most teachers in the current study had substantial teaching hours, and their sense of efficacy may have been wellestablished, leaving little room for noticeable change. in such cases, pdas may affirm rather than establish their confidence, which aligns with findings by klassen et al. (2011) who observed that teacher efficacy tends to stabilize with increased experience. instead of significantly influencing te, pdas in this study appeared to reinforce reflective decision-making. participants indicated that pdas encouraged them to revisit their teaching perceptions and reassess instructional plans and decisions. this supports the view that professional development contributes more to cognitive engagement and pedagogical awareness than to shifting one’s instructional competence (avalos, 2011). the cyclical nature of this reflection, stimulated by external input (pdas) and internalized through planning and practice, fosters appropriate decision-making processes that are responsive to teaching situations. decision making emerges as a central mediator in the relationship between beliefs, efficacy, and behaviors. teachers reported that their planning and instructional decisions are directly influenced by both their professional beliefs and their perceived capacity to manage classroom practice. this finding aligns with previous research emphasizing the importance of teacher cognition in shaping instructional practice (buczynski & hansen, 2010; fives & buehl, 2012). the current study extends these findings by demonstrating that not only do beliefs influence decisions, but decisions also reinforce beliefs through practice, indicating a reciprocal system rather than a linear progression. furthermore, a reciprocal relationship between dm and tbh was observed. teachers’ classroom actions were often the result of prior decisions, yet experiences during instruction prompted revisions in subsequent planning. this supports the concept of teaching as a reflective process, consistent with clarke and hollingsworth's (2002) interconnected model of professional growth, in which change occurs through interactions among different domains of teacher professional development. however, in contrast to some studies that emphasized the emotional dimension of teaching behaviors (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2010), the participants in this study reported a more instrumental approach, focusing primarily on instructional content, materials, and activities, possibly reflecting the exam-oriented and curriculum-driven nature of efl teaching in taiwan. lastly, post-instruction reflections revealed that teachers generally viewed their teaching behaviors positively and reaffirmed their pre-existing beliefs. however, no significant changes were observed in their sense of efficacy. this finding implies that teachers’ confidence in their instructional abilities is largely shaped during the planning phase and remains relatively stable, even when confronted with the dynamic nature of classroom experiences (tschannen-moran & mcmaster, 2009). in conclusion, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of how professional development activities (pdas) influence taiwanese elementary school teachers’ beliefs, efficacy, decision-making, and instructional behaviors. the findings underscore the value of pdas for reflective engagement and pedagogical refinement, particularly in enhancing teaching beliefs and decision-making processes. while teacher efficacy appeared relatively stable and resistant to short-term changes, the data suggest that decision-making emerged as a pivotal construct, mediating the interactions among belief, efficacy, and behavior, and reinforcing the notion of teaching as a reflective and iterative process. moreover, the reciprocal influence between planning and classroom action highlights the complex and evolving nature of instructional decision-making within real-world teaching situations. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 96-103 103 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group these insights emphasize the importance of sustained, context-sensitive professional development that not only considers teachers’ professional needs, interests, and practical school-related considerations but also equips teachers with new strategies and fosters critical reflection, thereby supporting long-term professional growth in examdriven educational settings. references avalos, b. 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(2009). a review of research on efl pre-service teachers' beliefs and practices. journal of cambridge studies, 4(1), 73-81. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444803001903 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2009.09.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0742-051x(02)00053-7 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x08331140 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem-09-2012-0107 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem-09-2012-0107 https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2001.10463061 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-010-9141-8 https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2006.10782478 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-016-9378-y https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027870190403 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311413609 https://doi.org/10.5430/irhe.v4n3p1 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2009.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0742-051x(01)00036-1 https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543068002202 https://doi.org/10.1086/605771 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x08327154 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109337280 51 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 2, 51-59, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i2.3963 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between argumentation skills and cognitive flexibility of preservice science teachers ozlem cankaya1 nilay aydogan2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of mathematics and sciences education, inonu university, malatya, turkey. 1email: ozlem.isikgil@inonu.edu.tr tel: +9053087 0317 2email: nilay.aydogan@inonu.edu.tr tel: +905352309991 abstract the present study aims to investigate the relationship between pre-service science teachers' argumentation skills and cognitive flexibility levels. within the scope of the study, an argumentation-based science laboratory application was applied to first year science teaching students for 4 weeks. the arguments were assessed by eight faculty members and doctoral students. the argumentation assessment rubric (choi, 2008) was used to assess the quality of the written arguments. the quality of the arguments and descriptions used by the students in the reports were evaluated as total writing scores. the “cognitive flexibility inventory” developed by dennis and vander wal (2010) was employed to assess the cognitive flexibility levels of pre-service teachers. simple correlation analysis and simple linear regression analysis methods were used to determine the relationship between the sub-dimensions of cognitive flexibility inventory and argumentation skills of pre-service science teachers and the effect of cognitive flexibility levels on argumentation skills. the results showed that there was a significant relationship between pre-service teachers’ cognitive flexibility levels and argumentation skills. keywords: argumentation, argumentation skills, cognitive flexibility, science education, pre-service teachers, science laboratory. citation | ozlem cankaya; nilay aydogan (2022). the relationship between argumentation skills and cognitive flexibility of preservice science teachers. asian journal of education and training, 8(2): 51-59. history: received: 18 february 2022 revised: 28 april 2022 accepted: 12 may 2022 published: 2 june 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 52 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 54 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 56 4. discussion and conclusions ........................................................................................................................................................... 56 5. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 57 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 57 mailto:ozlem.isikgil@inonu.edu.tr mailto:nilay.aydogan@inonu.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i2.3963 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7407-2352 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5510-7804 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 51-59 52 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to the literature in terms of showing that if pre-service teachers gain the ability to view cognitively flexible towards the problems they will encounter in the teaching processes, they can enable to take their argumentation skills to a higher level. 1. introduction to keep up with the developments in today’s information and technology age and to compete with other countries, countries aim to equip their citizens with the qualities required by the age. to be able to do this in the 21st century when knowledge is seen as power, they need individuals who can distinguish necessary information from complex information, who can put together parts, have developed intuition, empathy, and understanding, and have a social, cultural, and political identity (genc & eryaman, 2008). to raise individuals with these qualifications and competencies, the curricula in education systems were restructured, and novel teaching methods started to be applied. from this direction, the science curriculum in our country has been prepared with the focus of inquiry-based learning method, which is based on the constructivist learning approach (mone, 2017). one of the inquiry-based practices that have great importance in science classes is the argumentation method (kabataş-memiş & cakan-akkaş, 2016). argumentation-based teaching approaches have been developed to enable students to have effective learning experiences with the argumentation method. one of these approaches is “science writing heuristic,” developed by keys, hand, prain, and collins (1999) which was first translated into turkish as “learning science by doing and writing (lsdw)” (günel, memis, & büyükkasap, 2010) but then re-translated in the following years as “argumentation-based science learning (absl),” which was more suitable for its nature (kıngır, geban, & günel, 2011). absl is a learning/teaching approach based on verbal/written argumentation, which helps students to experience in science classes the processes that scientists follow during their experiments and to construct scientific concepts in their minds (ulu, 2018). absl provides learning environments that help students to reflect on concepts in light of new knowledge by making use of their prior knowledge, concepts, beliefs, and experiences (sabanci-yalcin, 2019). absl is a reflection of the dialogue and argumentation process in which scientists engage when constructing a theory or a concept (poock, burke, greenbowe, & hand, 2007). the argumentation is a process that runs around arguments (kuhn & udell, 2003). an argumentation process consists of reasons or statements to criticize or support a claim made on any topic and arguments defined as relational situations between the claims supported or refuted (fettahlıoğlu, 2013). according to the turkish language association (tdk), the word argument means “evidence, claim, assertion”. it has been used by scientists with various meanings. an argument can occur as an individual activity through thinking and writing, or as a social activity taking place within a group; it involves putting forward reasons for an event or situation and testing the reasons for the event/situation from different perspectives on appropriate evidence (driver, newton, & osborne, 2000). toulmin (1958) argues that an argument is a collection of evidence and theories put forward to justify a claim, refute or support an explanatory prediction (toulmin, 2003). according to işıker (2017) an argument can also be accepted as a form of proof used to draw a conclusion from the available data in order to support, verify, or strengthen a claim or idea. while an argument includes a claim, data, rationale, and backing that contributes to an idea, argumentation refers to the sum of these components. based on these definitions, we can say that an argument is one of the components that make up an argumentation process (cınar, 2013). a simple argument is created with basic components such as claims, data, and rationale, whereas a complex argument includes, in addition to these basic components, backings, qualifiers, and rebuttals as auxiliary components. the number of components used in an argument determines the quality of that argument (uğurlu, 2019). the argumentation process, which consists of arguments, is the process of convincing the other party through evidence of the correctness of the claim that is defended individually or as a group (aydın, 2013). according to toulmin (2003), argumentation is the process of using data, rationale, backing, and rebuttal to convince people of the validity of a particular claim. according to öğreten and uluçınar, it is an approach that leads one to think like a scientist (oğreten & uluçınar-sağır, 2014). the argumentation model was developed by toulmin (1958). studies on the use of the argumentation method in science teaching mostly employed toulmin’s argumentation model (toulmin, 2003). the model reveals the connections among a "claim" supported by data (evidence), "warrant" (the chain of reasoning) between the evidence and the claim, the "backing" that supports the reasoning, "qualifiers" that determine the limits or conditions of the presented claim, and "rebuttals" that identify exceptions to the claim (osborne, erduran, & simon, 2004). suggesting that argumentation is an integral part of the reasoning process both in everyday life and in science, toulmin presented a model that defines the components of argumentation and shows the relationships among them figure 1. in this model, the essential components of an argument are claim, data, and the warrant; more complex arguments include backing, qualifiers, and rebuttals in addition to these (toulmin, 2003). supporting toulmin’s argumentation model, kaya and kılıç (2008) argue that the data, claim, and warrant, which are the essential elements of an argument, form the basis of an argument, and the backing, rebuttals, and qualifiers contribute to the validity of the argument (kaya & kılıç, 2008). toulmin (2003) defines the components in an argument as follows: data: also called grounds or evidence, these support the claim. claim: a statement, result, thought, or opinion that represents the point of view. warrant: the warrant is the link between the data and the claim. it consists of basic principles and rules. backings: reasons that support the warrant are called backing. they help strengthen the claim. qualifiers: they limit the cases where the claim is accepted as true. they enable a persuasive argument by strengthening the link between data, warrant, and claim. rebuttals: they present counter-arguments or identify exceptions to the claim. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 51-59 53 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. toulmin's argumentation model (toulmin, 2003). according to the argumentation model developed by toulmin, the individual makes a series of evaluations about a situation or event he/she encounters. following these evaluations containing facts and evidence, the individual makes a claim. providing data to back the claim, the individual presents a warrant to both establish a link between the data and the claim and strengthen the claim. if the warrant put forward by the individual does not convince the other party, the backing is used to support the reasons. nevertheless, the other party can refute the claim by using rebuttals. a scientific argumentation containing rebuttals is of higher quality than an argumentation that consists only of claims (balcı, 2015). jimenez-aleixandre and erduran argue that argumentation, which is an integral part of science, should be incorporated into science education (jiménez aleixandre & erduran, 2007). köseoğlu, tümay, and budak (2008) suggest that argumentation is an effective teaching method that can support scientific literacy and an important scientific thinking skill that needs to be developed (köseoğlu, tümay, & budak, 2011). for this reason, studies that deal with argumentation in the context of learning have focused on how to improve argumentation skills (uçar, 2018). this is because, argumentation, as emphasized in the curricula, is a scientific discussion technique that requires skills such as reasoning, arguing, and counter-arguing, and making inferences based on evidence (kül, 2019). toulmin (1958) considers the mentioned argumentation skills as a combination of claim, data, backing, qualifiers, and rebuttals (toulmin, 2003). on the other hand, foong and daniel (2013) claim that these argumentation skills, which are highly important for science education, can manifest themselves by analyzing information, evaluating evidence, and producing and presenting an argument. according to uçar (2018), argumentation skills refer to one’s ability to form arguments that include a theory, evidence, an alternative theory, a counter-argument, and rebuttals to back one’s claims. kuhn describes these skills as a combination of the skills of asserting, showing evidence, counter-arguing, and refuting (kuhn, 1991), marttunen and laurinen as the ability to formulate sufficient and relevant arguments about claims or opinions (marttunen and laurinen (2006); as cited in uçar (2018)) and lin and mintzes as making a claim, justifying the claim, being aware of counter-arguments, elaborating the reasons, backing the reasons, refuting counter-arguments, and showing evidence (lin & mintzes, 2010). indeed, many researchers have drawn attention to the importance of developing argumentation skills in educational settings so that learners can cope with the complex problems of today’s world, make appropriate decisions, and become active stakeholders of the information society (uçar, 2018). argumentation skill is seen as a prerequisite for individuals to develop scientific thinking skills and, as a result, to have a more realistic and critical perspective on personal and social issues and to make better decisions (demirel., somyürek, & yılmaz, 2017). it is emphasized that argumentation skills have an important role in acquiring and the application of high-level thinking skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and decision making skills (uçar, 2018). considering these skills, which are aimed to be gained in science education, it is seen that the argumentation method is supportive in science education (aydın & kaptan, 2014). with an effective science education, it is possible to find solutions to daily life problems (gölcük, 2017). accordingly, cognitive flexibility, like argumentation, is an important phenomenon in science education in terms of having the capacity to think that there are more than one solution to problems or changing situations and to choose between alternatives (soylu, 2019). cognitive flexibility can be defined as the ability to adapt to new situations, to switch from one thought to another, or to approach different problems with multiple strategies (asıcı & i̇kiz, 2015). batting defines cognitive flexibility as the skill of using the most effective learning strategy for specific content or of determining the problemsolving steps to solve a certain problem (batting, 1979). cañas, fajardo, and salmerón (2006) define cognitive flexibility as the ability to adapt one’s cognitive processing strategies to new and unexpected conditions (cañas et al., 2006). spiro and jehng (1990), on the other hand, define cognitive flexibility as the ability to spontaneously restructure one’s knowledge, in many ways, to give an adaptive response to radically changing situational demands. according to martin and anderson (1998), what is important in cognitive flexibility is not seeing the right option but seeing the options before making a choice. they state that cognitive flexibility includes three basic elements: a) being aware of alternative ways and options, b) being able to adapt to new situations (willingness to be), c) feeling self-efficacy in situations when one is flexible. cognitive flexibility has been theoretically explored by spiro et al. according to spiro et al., in the cognitive flexibility theory, “cognitive” refers to the recall of pre-existing knowledge from memory at the time of the acquisition of new knowledge, while “flexibility” refers to the flexible use of acquired knowledge in various fields (spiro, feltovich, jacobson, & coulson, 1992). the cognitive flexibility theory was developed for the attainment of expert-level performance by providing advanced knowledge-acquisition in ill-structured knowledge domains by taking advantage of the possibilities of asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 51-59 54 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group developing technology (karadeniz, 2004). the cognitive flexibility theory is associated with the transfer of knowledge and experience. this requires knowledge to be handled from different perspectives and with various experiences. the fact that cognitive flexibility depends on learning makes cognitive flexibility important. it is extremely important to structure knowledge according to the situation and to build on what has been previously learned. students should be able to flexibly adapt their knowledge to different situations. however, if knowledge is oversimplified, students will view the content from a single point of view. to solve this problem, the cognitive flexibility theory emphasizes the need for different representations of knowledge in teaching. the material is organized and employed in different ways to increase advanced knowledge acquisition, to make students cognitively flexible, and to equip students with different perspectives. thus, with different representations of knowledge, the cognitive structure is rearranged from different angles many times (karadeniz, 2004). it has been reported that people with high levels of cognitive flexibility are observed to be flexible in terms of communication, aware of their options in communication and problem situations, assertive, sensitive, self-confident in communication, and are tolerant of conflicts and uncertainties (martin & rubin, 1995). similarly, cognitively flexible individuals are aware of alternative solutions and can choose the optimal solution, have self-control, and are analytical and open to innovation (jonassen & grabowski, 1993). the cognitive flexibility required for harmonious and balanced thinking to replace discordant thinking consists of two sub-dimensions. the first sub-dimension is the ability to generate alternative solutions. this refers to the ability to generate solutions to difficult situations. the second sub-dimension is the ability to control. this subdimension refers to the belief that difficult situations can be taken under control (dennis & vander wal, 2010). in terms of relations with people, teaching, unlike some other professions, is a profession that is carried out in relation and interaction with a wide range of people (celikten, sanal, & yeni, 2005). for this reason, those who do the teaching profession should know how to respond to different situations and develop alternative solutions in problem situations, and they should have cognitive skills. in short, high levels of cognitive flexibility are one of the most important traits that a teacher should have (cuhadaroğlu, 2013). likewise, according to anderson (2002), individuals with high cognitive flexibility levels do not have absolute and strict rules: they adapt more easily to new situations and are open to change. research has shown that individuals with increased academic knowledge and expertise working within a certain routine with few changes experience a decrease in their cognitive flexibility levels. on the other hand, it is thought that experience in the teaching profession positively affects the teacher’s cognitive flexibility because the more experienced the teacher gets, the more people and life events he/she is expected to meet and encounter (cuhadaroğlu, 2013). in 21st century teacher education, it is important to develop cognitive flexibility skills in order to train teachers with advanced thinking skills and can adapt to changing situations (esen-aygün, 2018). at the same time, it is emphasized that argumentation skills have an important role in gaining high-level thinking skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and decision making and in the application of these skills (uçar, 2018). in this context, it was investigated, the relationship between pre-service science teachers' argumentation skills and cognitive flexibility levels, in this study. within the scope of the research, argumentation-based science teaching was carried out with science teacher candidates. 2. method 2.1. research design this study is in the relational screening model in that it reveals the relationship between the argumentation skills of pre-service science teachers and their cognitive flexibility levels. in the relational screening model, it is aimed to determine the existence and/or degree of co-variance between two or more variables (karasar, 2008). 2.2. working group the study group of this research consisted of 48 men (40 women (83.3%) and 8 men (16.7%)) teacher candidate studying at faculty of education, department of science education in the 2018-2019 academic year. the reason why the study group was limited to 48 people is that this study is a continuation of another experimental study consisting of 48 pre-service teachers who received argumentation-based training for 4 weeks. 2.3. data collection tools 2.3.1. cognitive flexibility inventory in order to determine the cognitive flexibility levels of the participants, the cognitive flexibility inventory (cficognitive flexibility inventory), developed by dennis and vander wal (2010) and adapted into turkish by sapmaz and doğan (2013), was used. the inventory consists of two sub-dimensions named "alternatives" and "control" and a total of 20 items. the internal consistency of the measurements obtained from the inventory was calculated with the help of cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient and it was found that α = 0.90 for the "alternatives" sub-dimension, α = 0.84 for the "control" sub-dimension, and α = 0.90 for the whole inventory. in addition, the test-retest reliability coefficient was calculated in testing the reliability, and it was calculated as 0.78 for the "alternatives" sub-dimension, 0.73 for the "control" sub-dimension, and 0.75 for the entire inventory. the validity of the inventory was examined by obtaining evidence for criterion-based and construct validity. based on the exploratory factor analysis, the "alternatives" sub-dimension explained 36.18% of the total variance and the "control" sub-dimension explained 13.49% of the total variance. based on confirmatory factor analysis, it was determined as rmsea: 0.054; χ2 /df: 2.44; gfi: 0.92; agfi: 0.90; nfi: 0.96; rmr:0.054. it can be said that the reliability and validity of the measurements obtained from the cfi based on these values are high. in this study, cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients were found as α = 0.806 for the “alternatives” subdimension, α = 0.809 for the “control sub-dimension, and α = 0.843 for the entire inventory, based on the measurements obtained from this inventory applied to prospective teachers. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 51-59 55 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group in the measurement of argumentation skills, argumentation-based learning science (abls) report evaluation rubric (choi, 2008) was used. 2.3.2. absl report assessment rubric the absl was a uniform approach adopted in all sections. within this approach, students were asked to generate research questions, design an observation procedure or experiment to investigate the research questions, collect data, generate evidence, form a claim in relation to the research questions and evidence, and reflect on the investigation procedure as well as changes in their ideas during the activity. at the end of each activity, students filled out activity reports where they were asked to display the research question, design, claim, evidence, and reflections. topics studied to middle school students (kuhn & udell, 2003). to determine the argument formation skills of pre-service teachers, the arguments they created were analyzed by 8 lecturers and doctoral students applying the atppc report rubric used in the work of choi (2008) where the quality of the arguments and descriptions used by the students in the reports were evaluated as total writing scores. table 1. levels evaluation scale. argument levels criterion score level 1 only estimation 1 using data 2 data and rationale 3 only estimation 1 level 2 using data 2 data and rationale 3 no specific claim 1 specific claim 2 level 3 claim + data 3 claim + data + rationale 4 claim + data + rationale + supporting 5 using only data 1 data + rationale 2 level 4 data + rationale + supporting 3 counter claim + data 4 counter claim + data + supporting 5 the type of inter-rater agreement adopted for this study was percentage of absolute agreement calculated by the number of times raters agree on a rating, then divided by the total number of ratings. thus, this measure can vary between 0 to 100%. in this study, percentage of absolute agreement between any pairs of scores for each report ranged from 90% to 95%. the arguments made by the students are classified in 4 levels. at the first level, pre-service teachers were asked to evaluate a claim and to support this claim with data. at the second level, they were asked to evaluate and indicate the cause of an existing claim. at the third level, it was requested to create claims and to support these claims with data. the difference between this level and the others is that the pre-service teachers need to create and justify their own claims in the given issue. at the fourth level, they were asked to make a counter argument and to support this with data table 1. 2.4. data analysis the aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the sub-dimensions of cognitive flexibility inventory and argumentation skills of pre-service science teachers and the effect of cognitive flexibility levels on argumentation skills. for this purpose, simple correlation analysis and simple linear regression analysis methods were used. while simple correlation analysis does not provide information in the context of cause and effect, it gives an idea about the level and direction that the variables change together (büyüköztürk, 2013). in the correlation analysis, before calculating the pearson product moments correlation coefficient, the necessary normality assumption was examined and it was seen that the assumption was met (shapiro-wilk statistic for the total score from the cognitive flexibility inventory = 0.969, df=48, p=0.236; shapiro-wilk statistics for the alternatives subdimension of the cognitive flexibility inventory = 0.961, df=48, p=0.114; shapiro-wilk statistic for the control subdimension of the cognitive flexibility inventory = 0.954, df=48, p=0.058; shapiro-wilk statistic for the total score obtained from the argumentation skill rubric = 0.975, df=48, p=0.396). simple regression analysis is an analysis for estimating the dependent variable based on an independent variable that is related to the dependent variable (büyüköztürk, 2013). when estimates are made using a regression equation, only the relationship between the dependent and independent variable is assumed to be linear, and no assumptions about the distributions of these variables need to be tested (kirk, 2008). however, in the interpretation of the standard error of the estimation in the regression based on the least squares estimation method, some assumptions need to be tested. for this reason, the assumption of normal distribution of the measurements of the dependent (argumentation skill score) and independent variable (cognitive flexibility score) was tested and it was found that the assumption was met (shapiro-wilk statistic for the total score from the cognitive flexibility inventory = 0.969, df=48, p=0.236; shapiro-wilk statistic for the total score obtained from the argumentation skill rubric = 0.975, df=48, p=0.396). 2.5. experimental proses in this study, within the scope of the general chemistry laboratory course, a unit was taught to the 1st year students of science education for 4 weeks, with the argument-based science teaching method, and the arguments formed by the pre-service teachers were evaluated at the end of the application. in addition, the cognitive flexibility inventory was applied to the pre-service teachers to whom the application was made. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 51-59 56 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. results the descriptive statistics of the scores obtained from the measurement tools used to measure the cognitive flexibility levels and argumentation skills of the pre-service teachers are presented in table 2. table 2. descriptive statistics of cfi and argumentation skills rubric. parameters n min max s.d. skewness kurtosis cfi-alt. 48 55 90 75.94 8.05 -0.654 0.111 cfi-control 48 13 46 32.21 8.38 -0.387 -0.842 cfi-total 48 78 136 108.15 13.85 -0.264 -0.772 argumentation 48 28 65 48.65 9.74 -0.142 -0.746 as seen in table 2, the highest score that can be obtained from the cfi sub-dimensions is 91 and 49 for "alternative" and "control" respectively, while the mean score of the pre-service teachers participating in the research is 75.94 in the "alternative" sub-dimension; 32.21 in the "control" sub-dimension; and the mean score of cfi total score was found 108.15. while the scores that can be obtained from the argumentation skills rubric can vary between 0 and 100, it has been observed that the scores of the teacher candidates participating in the research vary between 28 and 65. table 3. the results of simple correlation analysis to determine the relationship between the sub-dimensions and total score of the cognitive flexibility inventory and argumentation skills. parameters statistical notation cfi-alt. cfi-control cfi-total argumentation cfi-alt. r 1 0.419* 0.835* 0.354 p 0.003 0.000 0.014 n 48 48 48 48 cfi-control r 0.419* 1 0.849** 0.390** p 0.003 0.000 0.006 n 48 48 48 48 cfi-total r 0.835* 0.849* 1 0.442* p 0.000 0.000 0.002 n 48 48 48 48 argumentation r 0.353* 0.390* 0.442* 1 p 0.014 0.006 0.002 n 48 48 48 48 note: *p<0.05; **p<0.01. the results of the simple correlation analysis calculated to determine the relationship between the subdimensions and sub-dimensions of the cognitive flexibility inventory and argumentation skills are given in table 3. it can be said that as the general cognitive flexibility level, control and alternative sub-dimension scores increase, argumentation skills increase. there is a moderately positive and significant relationship between pre-service teachers' argumentation skills and general cognitive flexibility levels (g.cfi) (r = 0.442), control sub-dimension of cognitive flexibility (r = 0.389) and alternatives sub-dimension of cognitive flexibility (r = 0.353) (p<.05). it can be said that as the general cognitive flexibility level, cognitive flexibility scale control and alternative sub-dimension scores increase, argumentation skills increase. the results of the simple linear regression analysis performed to determine the effect of pre-service teachers' cognitive flexibility levels on their argumentation skills are presented in table 4. table 4. simple regression analysis results on determining the effect of cognitive flexibility levels on argumentation skills. variable b s.h. β t p constant 15.052 10.140 1.484 0.145 cognitive flexibility level 0.311 0.093 0.442 3.341 0.002* r = 0.442 r2 = 0.195 f (1. 47) = 11.159 p = 0.002* note: *p<0.05. when table 4 is examined, as a result of simple linear regression, cognitive flexibility levels of teacher candidates on argumentation skills is a statistically significant predictor variable (p<0.05). it is seen that the cognitive flexibility level regression coefficient is 0.311. accordingly, a one-unit increase in cognitive flexibility scores causes an increase of 0.311 units on argumentation skills. accordingly, as the cognitive flexibility levels of pre-service teachers increase, their argumentation skills also increase. in this model, it is seen that the independent variable has a 19.5% effect on the dependent variable. in other words, approximately one-fifth of pre-service teachers' argumentation skills can be explained by their cognitive flexibility levels. 4. discussion and conclusions according to the results of our study, whose overall purpose is to examine the relationship between pre-service science teachers’ argumentation skills and cognitive flexibility, there is a positive relationship between argumentation skills and cognitive flexibility. in the study, it was observed that those with a higher level of cognitive flexibility had higher levels of argumentation skills. as regards the relationship between argumentation skills and the “control” sub-dimension of cognitive flexibility, participants who could control difficult situations had higher levels of argumentation skills. similarly, as regards the relationship between argumentation skills and the “alternatives” sub-dimension of cognitive flexibility, participants asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 51-59 57 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group who could view events from different perspectives and generate alternative solutions to difficult situations had higher levels of argumentation skills, although the level of argumentation skills related to the “alternatives” sub-dimension of cognitive flexibility was lower than that related to the “control” sub-dimension of cognitive flexibility. finally, it was observed that participants with higher scores from the overall cfi had higher levels of argumentation skills, and the level of argumentation skills related to the overall cfi was higher than those related to “alternatives” and “control” sub-dimensions. a thorough search of the literature on cognitive flexibility shows that studies have focused on many different issues. in these studies, a positive relationship was found between cognitive flexibility and problem-focused coping (johnson, 2016), a lower cognitive flexibility was associated with a lower ability to cope with stressful life events (zong et al., 2010), a significant relationship was found between cognitive flexibility level and impulsive, logical, and dependent decision-making strategies depending on the educational level (bilgic & bilgin, 2016), attentional performance and cognitive flexibility were positively associated with meditation practice and levels of mindfulness (moore & malinowski, 2009), cognitive flexibility positively predicted openness to change and academic performance (lin, 2013), cognitive flexibility was positively associated with intellectual flexibility and self-compassion, and negatively related to dogmatism, and there was no significant relationship between preference for consistency and cognitive flexibility (martin, staggers, & anderson, 2011), adolescents with high levels of social self-efficacy expectations were found to be more cognitively flexible than other adolescents and authoritarian parenting was reported to be an obstacle to cognitive flexibility (bilgin, 2009), and cognitive flexibility and self-compassion were found to have a positive and significant relationship with constructive problem-solving and insistent-persistent approach, which are the sub-dimensions of problem-solving skills (sarıkaya, 2019). considering the relevant literature, there are results indicating that argumentation contributes to academic performance (ceylan, 2010; oğreten & uluçınar-sağır, 2014; uluay & aydın, 2018), promotes decision-making skills (gülhan, 2012; patronis, potari, & spiliotopoulou, 1999), improves conceptual understanding (dawson & venville, 2010; yeh & she, 2010), positively affects communication skills (kabatas, 2017; kuhn, goh, iordanou, & shaenfield, 2008), is effective in teaching socio-scientific subjects (karışan, yılmaz-tüzün, & zeidler, 2017; lin & mintzes, 2010), contributes to the development of critical thinking skills (demiral, 2014; kunsch, schnarr, & van tyle, 2014), and improves problem-solving skills (mcghee, 2015; oh, 2004). in the light of these, we can say that people who use the argumentation method in their daily lives can effectively use the above-mentioned high-order thinking skills, as well as argumentation skills (i.e., claiming, backing, refuting, and showing evidence) when they encounter a problem or need to evaluate a situation or event. similarly, demiral stated that the argumentation method, which has made important contributions to science education, supports students to acquire questioning and argumentation skills (demiral, 2014). based on all these studies, we can expect the people with advanced argumentation skills, to have high levels of "cognitive flexibility" ability, which can be expressed as the ability of to cope effectively with new and difficult situations, to be aware of options, to produce alternative thoughts and ideas, and to adapt to new situations (asıcı & i̇kiz, 2015). from this point of view, we believe that improving the cognitive flexibility levels of pre-service teachers may be effective in the development of argumentation skills, which are extremely important in science education. it is important to equip students with these skills because argument and criticism are at the heart of science, combining the "handling" work of scientific research with the "rational" work of emerging scientific ideas and theories (as cited in karadeniz (2016)). 5. recommendations within the framework of these results, it would be beneficial to increase the lessons and lesson hours in 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(2018). the effect of argumentation based learning process on academic achievement in teaching of force and motion unit to 7th grade students. abant i̇zzet baysal university education faculty publication, 18(3), 1779-1799. yeh, k.-h., & she, h.-c. (2010). on-line synchronous scientific argumentation learning: nurturing students' argumentation ability and conceptual change in science context. computers & education, 55(2), 586-602.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.02.020. zong, j.-g., cao, x.-y., cao, y., shi, y.-f., wang, y.-n., yan, c., & chan, r. c. (2010). coping flexibility in college students with depressive symptoms. health and quality of life outcomes, 8(1), 1-6.available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-8-66. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 43 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 2, 43-50, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i2.3873 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group integrated pjbl-stem in scientific literacy and environment attitude for elementary school endang widi winarni1 mageswary karpudewan2 bhakti karyadi3 gumono gumono4 ( corresponding author) 1department of elementary education, university of bengkulu, indonesia. email: endangwidi@unib.ac.id tel: +62736211703 2school of educational studies, university of science malaysia, penang, malaysia. email: kmageswary@usm.my tel: +6046533888 3department of science education, university of bengkulu, indonesia. email: karyadi@unib.ac.id tel: +62736211703 4department of language education, university of bengkulu, indonesia. email: gumono@unib.ac.id tel: +62736211703 abstract integrating project-based learning (pjbl) and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) in elementary schools can increase the quality of human resources in industrialization and globalization to maintain the environmental system and fulfill 21st century competencies. the research method used quasi-experiment from elementary schools in bengkulu, indonesia, with 50 respondents for the experiment and control class. for all attitude, context, and knowledge indicators, the data was analyzed using a non-parametric test and an anova. the instrument's validity was tested statistically and by experts. the results show that pjbl and stem significantly affect scientific literacy and environmental attitudes in three indicators. furthermore, the diorama project with pjbl and stem allows students to investigate environmental conservation efforts, accommodate science and technology. students' success in making slogans to solve science problems. environmental literacy instruments and stem are suggested to be integrated with cognitive, motivation, behavior, and values. keywords: scientific literacy, pjbl, stem, environmental attitude, diorama, student, elementary school. citation | endang widi winarni; mageswary karpudewan; bhakti karyadi; gumono gumono (2022). integrated pjbl-stem in scientific literacy and environment attitude for elementary school. asian journal of education and training, 8(2): 43-50. history: received: 15 february 2022 revised: 23 march 2022 accepted: 8 april 2022 published: 25 april 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by unit of research, university of bengkulu, indonesia (grant number: 2056/un30.15/lt/2020). authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. acknowledgement: this collaborative research was held between university of bengkulu and universiti sains malaysia. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 44 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 45 3. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 46 4. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 49 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 49 mailto:endangwidi@unib.ac.id mailto:kmageswary@usm.my mailto:karyadi@unib.ac.id mailto:gumono@unib.ac.id https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i2.3873 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-4716 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8669-504x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0971-7772 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2208-8376 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 43-50 44 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this research contributes to the exploration of stem components through the pjbl learning process, which can help students actively learn. students' competency and attitudes must create concepts in slogans for the animal life cycle stages, from literacy to factual and conceptual knowledge components and higher-level thinking context. the research involved 50 indonesian fourth-grade pupils. for the three indicators related to animal life cycles, environmental attitudes demonstrate a strong association with scientific literacy with the diorama project. 1. introduction science education in the 21st century is expected to form high-quality human resources in the industrialization and globalization era. one of the life skills that everyone must possess is described by scientific literacy and environmental attitudes. efforts to develop scientific and environmental literacy skills are made by integrating the interdisciplinary pjbl with stem in teaching and learning. the pjbl model facilitates students to solve problems through project work. then stem integration as a multidisciplinary discipline of science into one comprehensive subject to build knowledge, competence, and implement concepts in students' daily lives. program for international student assessment (pisa) evaluates students in the three areas of mathematics, science, and literacy for indonesia in 2018 (oecd, 2018). based on the pisa score, indonesia's reading score is 72nd, mathematics is 72nd, and science is 70th out of 78 countries (oecd, 2019). environmental literacy has components related to: attitude, context, and knowledge (oecd, 2017). assessment of the aspects of scientific literacy and environmental attitudes can describe a person's scientific literacy ability and environmental care attitude as a whole. scientific literacy and attitudes affect a person's ability to understand and interpret environmental problems faced by community (winarni, hambali, & purwandari, 2020). giving insight into scientific literacy and environmental attitudes to students aims to make students care about maintaining environmental balance and understanding and acting on natural changes. scientific literacy and environmental care attitude help students take proper actions to maintain, restore, and improve ecological stability (cofré et al., 2019). veisi et al. stated that humans with environmentally literate have environmental sensitivity, knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, personal responsibility, and active contribution (veisi, lacy, mafakheri, & razaghi, 2019). stem used as an approach to teaching and learning between one or more stem components and other disciplines (nugroho, permanasari, & firman, 2019). the stem integration in teaching and learning can be carried out at all educational levels, from elementary to university. stem aspects like intelligence, creativity, and design abilities are implemented not depend on age. stem integration also trains problem-solving skills with scientific behavior support. literacy includes using scientific learning and processes to comprehend the natural world and its decision-making ability (winarni et al., 2020). technological literacy involves using new technologies, understanding new technologies, and analyzing new technologies that affect individuals and society. design literacy focuses on understanding design techniques using pjbl by integrating interdisciplinary subjects. mathematical literacy means being able to analyze, reason, communicate ideas clearly, and formulate, solve, and interpret mathematical problems. stem integrates the four components by focusing on real problem-solving in daily life (erduran, 2020). the learning process with the stem approach will apply and practice the stem content in real-life situations (suprapto, 2016). not only discussing knowledge but also to technology, engineering, and mathematics. the stem education purpose is to produce students who will develop their community competencies and apply their knowledge to solve daily life problems. stem involves 4cs, including creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. several related studies have developed environmental literacy, pjbl, and stem. australia's teachers have explored and developed inquiry in environmental literacy integrated with the curriculum so that students can develop their potential in classroom activities (kidman & casinader, 2019). the pjbl application for science learning on electrical energy in life has shown an understanding increase for grade 6 elementary school students in bursa, turkey (ergül & kargın, 2014). the stem integration in chemistry is suitable and improves elabo-ration among students in malaysian secondary schools (huri & karpudewan, 2019). the implementation of social scientific issues in malaysia's science curriculum encouraged students in informal reasoning, especially in society, ecology, economy, and science arguments (karpudewan & roth, 2018). the application of stem as a virtual lab has increased scientific literacy on air pollution for secondary high school (ismail, permanasari, & setiawan, 2016). stem pbl in american high schools is more beneficial for low achieving students and decrease performance variation (han, capraro, & capraro, 2015). schools that implement stem pjbl in america have a higher level of student learning success than students from schools that do not implement stem ppa (erdogan, navruz, younes, & capraro, 2016). furthermore, stem-pjbl has a significant impact on developing students' problemsolving skills in impulse and momentum (purwaningsih, sari, sari, & suryadi, 2020). based on previous research, this study focused on integrating pjbl and stem in learning to improve scientific literacy, especially on the animal life cycle topic. stem is expected to involve collaboration between students, increase teacher efficiency, and support the curriculum to enhance student learning outcomes (margot & kettler, 2019). students can develop their competencies in stem and solve environmental problems in daily life through technology. this research was conducted with integration between pjbl and stem. the research objectives are: (1) analyzing the effectiveness of pjbl and stem on environmental literacy; and (2) analyzing the relationship between attitude component literacy. the characteristics of pjbl contribute to build understanding based on challenges or problems that guide students to explore, make decisions, design, and deduce with project. furthermore, pjbl method is very suitable for combined with inter-disciplinary frameworks such as stem. the contribution of pjbl can increase higher-order thinking skills from students to achieve 21st century abilities. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 43-50 45 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2. method the research used is the quasi-experimental method with experimental and control groups. the experimental group is influenced by pjbl and stem models, while the control group with conventional learning. the research uses matching only pretest-posttest control group design. the research steps used four stages of educational research and development, starting from (1) need analysis, (2) design, (3) develop initial product, and (4) initial field testing (borg & gall, 1979). in the analysis stage, the researcher identifies the context and content of learning plan in the animal life cycle topics integrated with the pjbl and stem models. we pay attention to the 2013 curriculum and conduct literature studies of reading materials from fourth-grade books in indonesia. the first stage, we analyze the learning tools to integrate the pjbl and stem models for making dioramas. an animal life cycle diorama is a three-dimensional miniature object that depicts the animal's life cycle steps. secondly, we designed an assessment instrument for environmental care attitudes, measured using an attitude questionnaire with five likert scales. the third step is the initial product development process, namely learning tools. before testing, the instruments were validated by three experts from senior teachers as practitioners, lecturers in science, and language expertise in primary education. validation was carried out to determine the suitability of competency, indicators, teaching materials, cognitive levels, knowledge dimensions, question formulation, answer keys, attitude questionnaire, and competency assessment rubrics. the validation results are used to complete the instrument. furthermore, the instrument was tried out in different schools in fourth grade, elementary school number 8 bengkulu city with very good accreditation. the fourth step is small-scale testing in other elementary schools with the control and experimental classes. science learning with the pjbl and stem integration implements the complete pjbl steps. the teaching takes 3 meetings, or 210 minutes, with details of the preliminary first meeting and pretest for 15 minutes, reflection for 20 minutes, and research for 35 minutes. the second meeting is the discovery activity for 20 minutes and monitors the project's progress for 50 minutes. last meeting, application activities for 20 minutes, communication for 35 minutes, and posttest evaluation for 15 minutes. the pjbl core activities include fundamental questions, designing projects, compiling schedules, monitoring project progress, testing, and evaluating project results. stem activities consist of reflection, investigation, discovery, application, and communication. in the reflection stage, the student determines the fundamental questions. students observe videos and pictures about the animal's life cycle as a stimulus to the problem context that accommodates science and technology elements. questions about the life cycle related to the preservation efforts as a preliminary investigation that accommodated by science aspects. in the implementation phase, students design plans and compile a project schedule. students observe a video the process of making a diorama project about the animal's life cycle with technological elements. then, students make designs and project schedules in groups. they designed the discovering process for the animal life cycle that which adapted the engineering element. in the discovery stage, students discussed science, technology, and engineering projects. students individually modeled problem-solving for the animal life cycle project as a slogan to animals caring in their environment, accommodated by science, technology, and engineering elements in the application stage. the experience evaluation stage is carried out through students presentations and communicates the results of diorama project. students in the experimental class also facilitated using pjbl and stem with diorama project worksheet. the steps for making a diorama are: (1) read the animal life cycle in material and student books; (2) search for information and pictures from the internet about the animal life cycle; (3) choose an animal suitable for the diorama project; (4) find information about the animal life cycle and diorama; (5) choose materials that quickly obtained; (6) make a design or diorama sketch with clear elements and measurements; (7) choose a frame and background, by giving paint or paper to make it more attractive; (8) make a basic diorama of the animal's life cycle to make it more alive; (9) add a frame to the diorama project work; (10) finish and complete the diorama; and (11) individually create animal conservation slogans based on the stages of animal life cycle. the instruments were arranged based on the suitability between environmental literacy indicators that related to (1) animal life cycle, (2) complete metamorphosis, and (3) incomplete metamorphosis. environmental literacy attitudes indicate knowledge, context, competence, and caring attitudes for animals' lives. environmental literacy in component science consists of four aspects: knowledge, context, attitude, and competence. knowledge was measured using 10 multiple-choice questions. aspects of factual knowledge literacy include metamorphosis, the life cycle of dragonflies, cockroaches, butterflies, mosquitoes, and frogs. meanwhile, conceptual knowledge literacy focuses on students' ability to analyze metamorphosis in the animal life cycle. literacy instruments in the context component were measured using 8 multiple choice questions, namely, the frog's life phase that requires water, the best stage for mosquito eradication in his life cycle, the life cycle including cockroaches and butterflies, the similar phase for dragonflies and mosquito's life cycle, the frog egg cycle, the life cycle of cocoons, the bird life cycle, and the chicken life cycle. the instrument and competency for environmental literacy is a rubric to assess slogans' work after making a diorama in groups. the competency aspect in explaining scientific phenomena with a descriptor. students write down the animals from the surrounding environment, create a slogan about one of the animals, and explain which animals have complete or incomplete metamorphosis. next, designing and evaluating scientific investigations, having descriptors select words relevant to environmental preservation, creating a slogan calling for conservation, and constructing words for animals' life cycles. then, interpret data and facts, descriptor assessment with the slogans' suitability, explain the description of animal conservation, and encourage animal preservation. the environmental instrument used an attitude questionnaire with a five-category likert scale. this questionnaire consists of 13 items, with 8 items to measure the attitude for protecting animals in their environment and 5 items to measure the pets' responsibility. all research data was analyzed using ibm spss statistics 26. the expert was tested with the research instrument to determine the questionnaire's validity. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 43-50 46 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. reliability test results. attitude context knowledge ca n ca n ca n 0.74 13 0.69 8 0.75 10 based on table 1, the reliability test for environmental care aspects, scientific context, and scientific knowledge shows that all elements have a cronbach alpha value> 0.5. so, the literacy instrument for all science components is valid and feasible to use. the reliability test was used to check if the instrument was trusted and made sure the collected data was reliable. this indicates the research instrument is reliable and can be used. the research sample was the elementary schools 11 and 04 in bengkulu city, with very good accreditation, which implemented 2013 curriculum. this accreditation shows the same quality as primary schools throughout the country, such as teachers' quality, availability of facilities, infrastructure, learning environment, and learning facilities. the sample was randomly selected, with the total of respondents is 50 students. before the research was carried out, the two-sample levels were tested for homogeneity. this test showed the levene sigma value was 0.99> 0.05, which indicates that the experimental and control classes are homogeneous (see table 2). table 2. homogeneity of samples. levene df1 df2 sig. 2.829 1 48 0.099 3. results and discussion this section describes the result of experiment with stem and pjbl. pretest and posttest data for the components of scientific literacy, namely attitude, context, and knowledge, shown in table 3. the literacy component of student competence seen from the average score and the percentage of students who achieved good criteria in the experimental class, was higher than in the control class. based on table 4, the kolmogorov smirnov value with the 50 data has a normal distribution for scientific literacy with sig. > 0.05. context data with knowledge does not have a normal distribution with sig. < 0.05, so it is tested using non-parametric methods. the pretest and posttest data's homogeneity test shows that all data has a sig. > 0.05, indicating that the information is homogeneous. table 3. descriptive statistics. indicator n min max mean sd attitude precontrol 25 20 76 47.36 14.64 postcontrol 25 46 80 57.76 8.96 preexperiment 25 30 80 52.48 13.01 postexperiment 25 60 100 77.20 9.09 context precontrol 25 0 60 28.00 16.33 postcontrol 25 20 80 52.00 17.32 preexperiment 25 0 60 32.80 17.20 postexperiment 25 40 100 76.80 17.01 knowledge precontrol 25 20 70 40.40 13.69 postcontrol 25 40 90 58.00 12.25 preexperiment 25 20 70 42.80 14.87 postexperiment 25 70 100 86.40 9.95 table 4. normality test and homogeneity. indicator normality homogeneity statistic df sig. levene sig. attitude pre 0.10 50 0.200* 0.25 0.43 post 0.11 50 0.200* 0.00 0.11 context pre 0.27 50 0.000 0.16 0.68 post 0.32 50 0.000 0.15 0.69 knowledge pre 0.16 50 0.002 0.02 0.89 post 0.17 50 0.001 1.78 0.18 note: *. this is a lower bound of the true significance. table 5. non-parametric and anova. variable sig. postattitude – preattitude 0.003 postcontext – precontext 0.001 postknowledge – preknowledge 0.000 r-value for all variable 0.263 the sig results with a non-parametric test for context and knowledge variables are below 0.05, so ha is accepted. it shows that pjbl improved stem in context, knowledge, and environmental care attitudes. in table 5, the sig value with the anova test for the attitude variable is 0.003 <0.05. the data has a difference, so using pjbl on increasing scientific literacy and student attitudes towards the environment. r-value for attitude, asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 43-50 47 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group knowledge, and context is 0.263> 0.05, so there is a high relationship between the components of attitude, context, and knowledge of environmental attitude. 3.1. the effectiveness of pjbl and stem on environmental literacy based on the analysis, the integration of pjbl and stem significantly affects environmental literacy skills in the three aspects, namely context, knowledge, and attitudes. control class with conventional learning does not affects critical thinking and problem-solving ability (han et al., 2015). pjbl and stem involve students in problem-solving, interdisciplinary curriculum, open-ended questions, student-centered, collaborative workgroup, and interactive activities (siew, amir, & chong, 2015). the students project is make a diorama about animal's life cycle. diorama, a mini three-dimensional scene, depict the actual scene with objects placed on a stage. this integration increases the literacy of attitude components about the animal life cycle. student responses to flower and butterfly survival; home and environment cleanliness; presence of nuisance animals such as cockroaches; presence of fruit plants and animals; game and survival of animals such as cocoons, dragonflies, caterpillars, and frogs; cleanliness of cages and pets; environmental cleanliness; and the life cycle of mosquitoes are described in the literacy attitude component. students learn to understand the learning material by making a diorama project. students get more meaningful experiences during learning by their enthusiasm during the learning process. the pjbl model can encourage students to creatively and independently produce a product and provide student experiences to build their knowledge (lestari, sarwi, & sumarti, 2018). knowledge for fourth-grade elementary school students includes facts and concepts. factual knowledge about the life cycle of animals studied and the learning outcomes measured. meanwhile, the conceptual component of knowledge literacy is focused on students' ability to analyze metamorphosis in the animal life cycle. students can ask questions about the life cycle and relate it to its preservation efforts as an initial investigation and accommodated by science elements. according to stem education, a multidisciplinary approach aims at mastery of science and mathematics and technology and engineering (ryoo & winkelmann, 2021). engineering was thought through the engineering design project to solve problems. the effectiveness of this model starts at the beginning of the learning activity. students observe videos and pictures about the animal life cycle stages as a stimulus for the problem context, according to the initial stages of pjbl-stem. the motivation becomes more meaningful because the science elements accommodate it. a presentation of facts and concepts from student books and a video presentation adapted from technical aspects. students are also facilitated with instructions for making dioramas, where students are required to understand knowledge through reading the stages of animal life cycles on the material and student books. they strengthen science elements by looking for information and pictures about animal life cycle stages on the internet to reinforce technology elements. animals were selected for the manufacture of diorama project to strengthen engineering elements. students were asked to make animal conservation slogans based on the animal life cycle stages at the end of the lesson. competency problems developed when made a diorama project. this competency starts with determining the main concepts in a sketch, adding information based on internet information, writing down the elements as the sketch balance display, and adjusting the sketch size. the diorama project can apply, investigate, and inform the animal life cycle stages. the advantages of diorama media could foster student interest in learning, increase creative thinking, independence in education, and promote an active classroom atmosphere (zhbanova, 2018). the project assessment applied in learning causes all students to be active, both visual and educational. students must develop or enrich other people's ideas (maba & mantra, 2017). they can determine and argue about animals that cause disease to humans. (a) (b) figure 1. diorama project group (a) highest score, and (b) lowest score. the diorama project in figure 1.a gets the highest score of 83, while figure 1.b receives the lowest score of 50. the diorama project assessment is based on the group's creativity that contains the concept of animal life cycle. from books and internet sources, we have assessed the descriptor for the determination of animal's life cycle. it is accommodated by science and technology elements. the sketches show the form's clarity in the concept of engineering element. however, the pictures in the illustrations are still imitated from books. the descriptions of diorama procedures are exciting color variations and following facts and events (technology), the completeness of elemental components following the animal's life cycle (science), and the incomplete direction or cycle flow according to animal life cycle stages (engineering). animal life cycle diorama with the descriptor of pictures and information that is conceptually correct. elements of science and technology accommodate it. the proportion of diorama image shows the balance and flow of correct cycle, adjusted by engineering elements. the image proportion of diorama shows the balance, accommodated by the engineering element. answers to the questions with worksheet indicators include solutions to the science factors in diorama, containing new opinions and ideas asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 43-50 48 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group about science with the life cycle flow in a diorama for engineering. the pjbl model could increase students' creative thinking abilities (musa, mufti, latiff, & amin, 2012). table 6. recapitulation of the diorama project assessment. group aspects score conversion s t e m group i 2 2 3 3 10 83 group ii 1 2 1 2 6 50 group iii 2 3 2 2 9 75 group iv 1 2 2 3 8 66 score 6 9 8 10 33 68.5 conversion 50 75 66 83 table 6 shows the assessment results for the four stem aspects. the pjbl-stem model facilitates students in reading the animal stages in their life cycle in student materials and books that support science elements and searching for information and pictures from the internet to support the technology aspect. then, animals were selected to make the diorama project, which is accommodated by elements of science and engineering. choose the readily available materials around the environment and adapt the engineering elements. the dio-rama sketch supported technology and engineering aspects with clear features and measurements. choose a frame and background for the diorama by providing paint or paper for the residents to make it more attractive, supported by technology and engineering elements. make a basic diorama of the animal's life cycle to make life more memorable, supported by engineering elements. pjbl and stem are helped by the parts of science, technology, engineering, and math that require more standard steps to learn (yusuf, student, engineering, & malang, 2021). whereas in the control class, learning is carried out through exploration. students are given several questions about the animal life cycle material. next, elaboration, students work on the assignments in groups. they report the results of their work in front of the class. students and teachers discuss with added reinforcement. last confirmation, students conclude learning outcomes, and students work on posttest questions that include literacy components of attitude, context, and knowledge. the assessed scientific competence is a slogan that is made by students individually. the slogan assessment rubric consists of three indicators. first, the ability to determine the animals around them to make a slogan about animal conservation. the descriptor includes selecting three animals from your surrounding environment, choosing one of the animals to make a slogan, and describing the chosen animal as a complete or incomplete metamorphosis. second, the ability to make slogans about animal preservation regarding the life cycle of animals. its descriptors are the selected words relevant to conservation efforts; the word chosen is related to the animal's life cycle; the slogan is made to contain an invitation sentence. third, use slogans about animal conservation that have been made regarding the animal life cycle. its descriptor is the suitability of the information between the slogan, and its explanation, which describes animal conservation efforts. (a) ( (b) figure 2. experimental class slogan (a) good criteria; (b) enough criteria. (a) (b) figure 3. control class slogan (a) good criteria; (b) enough criteria. the slogan compiled in control and experimental classes is shown in figure 2 and figure 3. the slogan with good criteria in the experimental class (figure 2.a) displays a positive sentence "let plant flowers so that the butterflies can live". furthermore, there are enough criteria in the experimental class to express positive and simple sentences (figure 2.b), namely "let's preserve the frogs". while in the control class with good criteria, students used negative sentences, namely "don't catch butterfly in the flowers" (figure 3.a) and "don't catch mosquito larvae" for adequate scores because they do not fulfill animal conservation (figure 3.b). the sentence used attempts to invite the conservation animals. the factor determining the success of implementing an integrated curriculum related to stem disciplines is a key to hands-on activities, creativity, and problem-solving (gunawan & shieh, 2020). 3.2. the relationship between attitude component literacy the literacy component of attitude is measured based on students' responses to animals in their environment. the dioramas are made with synchronization knowledge and material relevancy in the context of understanding (teske, gray, klein, & rule, 2014). each group is given the task of making a different diorama project. group one created a frog life cycle, group two created a cockroach life cycle, group three created a grasshopper life cycle, and group four created a butterfly life cycle. the diorama project is made in groups to allow interaction and discussion between students. learning intends to involve students as system components, stimulating and motivating students to be creative in overcoming a problem (musa et al., 2012). students were able to study animals that experienced a complete and incomplete metamorphosis. the teacher monitors students, and the diorama project's progress is completed. at this stage, the teacher observes the students' work from each group. students are allowed to ask the teacher about steps that are not asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(2): 43-50 49 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group understood. the diorama's descriptions don't look like pictures in books. they don't show how many animals are in each stage of the animal life cycle, how many different colors they have, or what happens at each stage. after completing the animal life cycle diorama project, the teacher must assess and evaluate what indicators have been achieved in each group. the reflection process is carried out both individually and in groups at this stage. students are asked to express their feelings and experiences during the project's completion. project appraisal in this study was used to decide understanding, application skills, investigative abilities, and inform students of the subject. a project appraisal is an assessment activity for a task that must be completed within a specific time (mingazova, 2014). there are three things in project assessment, namely: (1) students' ability to select topics, find information, organize data, and write reports; (2) suitability with knowledge, understanding, and skills in learning; and (3) student projects must be the result of their work by considering the teacher's contribution in the form of guidance and support for student projects. literacy is an essential part of developing literacy skills and is part of 21st-century education. learning with the pjbl method and multidisciplinary stem can encourage students to better understand environmental knowledge from theory and to solve problems in the environment (gao, li, shen, & sun, 2020). pjbl and literacy in the learning environment become more meaningful with student-centered learning. students can study, research, and analyze knowledge differently (kaya & elster, 2018). students' success in making slogans through stem learning activities when faced with problems in a scientific concept (bozkurt, üçüncüoğlu, & özek, 2019). the issues resolved through the diorama project were the sequence and the length of animal's life cycle. it includes the stages of complete and incomplete metamorphosis life cycle. based on the problem, students conduct research activities to find concepts and answers the questions. students create project designs and schedules in groups. the impact of this activity, students can design a process of discovering an idea in the animal life cycle accommodated by engineering elements. in the discovery stage, students discuss what things need to be done for project development. the teacher monitors the implementation and development of the project. dioramas are accommodated by science, technology, and engineering (zhbanova., rule, & tallakson, 2019). the next step of application is testing the project process and results. students individually model animal life cycle problem-solving in the form of a slogan that care for the animals in their environment, accommodated by the elements of science, technology, and engineering. the last stage of communication is the stage of evaluating the experience. students present art in the diorama project accommodated by science, technology, and engineering (grace et al., 2021). further development can involve extracurricular activities outside the school curriculum, affecting students' motivation, morale, attitudes, and cognitive abilities to collaborate and communicate, positively impacting environmental literacy (kaya & elster, 2019). in the future, research can determine and analyze individual factors that affect student achievements, such as ethnicity, economic status, and gender for stem students in elementary schools. further research can also investigate the differences in group study group collaboration in pjbl stem activities to determine heterogeneous group members' impacts. 4. conclusion integrating learning with the pjbl and stem models can be carried out through five stages: reflection, research, discovery, application, and communication. in reflection, students determine fundamental questions as problem context stimuli accommodated by elements of science and technology. then students researched to design plans and compile a diorama project schedule as the first step in finding concepts accommodated by engineering elements. students discuss and discover in groups to make projects that accommodated aspects of science, technology, and engineering. students find application models in problem-solving animal life cycles in caring slogans for animals in their environment. last, students communicate to present the results of making the diorama project and receive feedback from other groups and teachers about the project's effects. stem elements in pjbl learning process can facilitate students learning actively. the project assessment applied in learning causes all students to be more active in visual and educational activities. from literacy to factual and conceptual knowledge components, higher-level thinking context, students' competence and attitudes must develop ideas in slogans for the animal life cycle stages of environment. in the animal life cycle, the students' scientific literacy skills in the context component, knowledge, competence, and environmental care attitude for elementary school students showed a significant increase using pjbl and stem models. environmental attitudes show a strong relationship to scientific literacy, the components of fourth -grade elementary school students' context, knowledge, and competence regarding animals' life cycles. future researchers could involve extracurricular activities outside the school curriculum, positively impacting environmental literacy, affecting students' motivation, morale, attitudes, and cognitive abilities. furthermore, research was developed to analyze individual factors in student achievements, such as ethnicity, economic status, and gender, for stem students in elementary schools. references borg, w. r., & gall, m. d. 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(2021). implementation of online stem-pjbl through various learning platforms in vocational high schools during covid-19 pandemic topic of stem-project based learning tasks. elementary education online, 20(2), 1–8.available at: https://doi.org/10.17051/ilkonline.2021.02.04. zhbanova, k. (2018). editorial: developing creativity through stem subject integrated with the arts. journal of stem arts, crafts, and constructions, 4(1), 1-15. zhbanova, k., rule, a. c., & tallakson, d. a. (2019). ocean underwater scene dioramas of first graders with submarine porthole views. journal of stem arts, crafts, and constructions, 4(1), 63-82. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa2018_cn_idn.pdf 235 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 4, 235-243, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.235.243 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group enhancing thai efl students’ efl vocabulary knowledge through the use of task-based language teaching and storytelling technique adopting thai folktales khomkrit tachom school of liberal arts, university of phayao, thailand. email: ktachom@gmail.com abstract this study aimed to examine the development of efl students' vocabulary knowledge adopting a task-based method with 32 thai students who enrolled in an english for communication course at a university in northern thailand. this study emphasized improving the thai efl students’ english vocabulary knowledge by requiring students to retell six thai folktales in english translation to their group members. the pretest-posttest design, as well as an interview, were employed to indicate the students' vocabulary improvement after retelling thai folktales. the findings showed that the students' post-test scores were statistically higher than their pre-test scores, and the students felt that the folktale tasks helped them enhance their vocabulary knowledge. the results of this study indicate that the students learned english vocabulary in an engaging and meaningful way through storytelling; therefore, the students’ vocabulary retention is likely high. keywords: efl vocabulary, task-based language teaching, folktale, task, vocabulary knowledge, storytelling technique. citation | khomkrit tachom (2021). enhancing thai efl students’ efl vocabulary knowledge through the use of taskbased language teaching and storytelling technique adopting thai folktales. asian journal of education and training, 7(4): 235243. history: received: 1 september 2021 revised: 6 october 2021 accepted: 28 october 2021 published: 22 november 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: the unit of excellence at the university of phayao provided funding for this research project. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 236 2. literature review ........................................................................................................................................................................... 237 3. research objectives ....................................................................................................................................................................... 238 4. research questions ........................................................................................................................................................................ 238 5. research methodology .................................................................................................................................................................. 238 6. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 239 7. discussion and conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................... 242 8. recommendations........................................................................................................................................................................... 243 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 243 mailto:ktachom@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.235.243 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8256-0591 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 235-243 236 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the development of efl students' vocabulary knowledge adopting a task-based method with 32 thai students who enrolled in english for communication course at a university in northern thailand. 1. introduction vocabulary knowledge is the foundation for communication, and it is essential in both receptive and productive communication. language users who know more vocabulary are better able to comprehend both written and spoken messages, as well as leads to more successful communication overall. possessing lexical repertoire enables language learners to enhance their developing knowledge of the language while also applying their knowledge to daily conversation. when studying a foreign language, learners should get familiar with and practice using the vocabulary of a certain language, as vocabulary is essential for developing language abilities in competent language users. thai students who study english as a compulsory subject from elementary school through higher education are expected to be able to learn and utilize english effectively once they have completed their education. despite learning english for almost 10 years, from kindergarten to primary school, most thai students still have difficulty speaking in english with their classmates or even foreigners. the causes of communication difficulties might be due to many different factors. limited vocabulary knowledge, in particular, has a substantial influence on learners' development of language abilities such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. furthermore, khamprated (2012) stated that students' insufficient grammar and vocabulary abilities might make it difficult for them to understand spoken english; as a result, students get apprehensive and concerned while attempting to communicate in english in a certain context. this phenomenon is reported in several studies that having limited vocabulary appears to be a major cause of students’ communication difficulties in the classroom and outside it. 1.1. statement of the problem students majoring in thai at the school of liberal arts, the university of northeastern thailand (hereinafter, unt), have encountered a number of difficulties in communicating in english. in particular, their vocabulary knowledge for writing or speaking english is notably limited. many students reported that they lacked the confidence to communicate in english. this might be owing to a lack of lexical resources. several studies also reveal that many thai students do not generally comprehend english in both spoken and written messages due to a lack of vocabulary knowledge. according to bualuang, sinprajakphol, and chanphorm (2012) the most major challenge of foreign language learners at all levels of education is a lack of lexical knowledge. regarding efl students at unt, some studies reveal that, for example, the students’ evaluation of english language learning outcomes was low (sriwichai, 2014). to develop their english vocabulary knowledge, a task-based approach using storytelling can facilitate students’ english vocabulary development and communication skills. to date, task-based language teaching (tblt) has been widely used to develop various language skills for english language learners in different countries (hamzeh, 2016; sarani & sahebi, 2012; tang, chiou, & jarsaillon, 2015; yegani & jodaei, 2017). the learners’ language skills have been developed through some aspects of tblt. however, recently there has been an increase in research into projectbased learning in english language teaching and learning (alotaibi, 2020; bakar, noordin, & razali, 2019; deveci, 2018; liu, 2016; sirisrimangkorn, 2018). several studies confirm that english language learners improved their language skills, motivation, and positive attitudes towards learning through carrying out various projects using the english language. according to bell (2010) project-based learning (pbl) is a unique educational technique that teaches a diverse set of abilities required for success in the twenty-first century. students control their own learning via inquiry and work together to do research and create projects that demonstrate their understanding. pbl applies tasks in several phases, a process which nunan (2004) calls “maxi-tasks.” in other words, pbl consists of a set of sequential and interconnected tasks that build up to a final project. project-based learning can require substantial time and resources to complete an entire project. thus, it is better for students with limited opportunities to engage in language tasks more frequently so that they can develop their learning more effectively. for nation (2017) learners require two essential conditions in order to learn vocabulary. the first includes numerous interactions with words, whereas the second is concerned with the quality of mental processing of such encounters. since the tasks within pbl are major components of a project, tblt was adopted as the framework for the present study as tblt allows learners to practice their language skills in a natural way. this implies that students engaged in real tasks can use their own linguistic resources to complete the tasks in a meaningful manner (nunan, 2004; samuda & bygate, 2008; willis & willis, 2007). previous studies have shown several benefits of using tblt with storytelling in the english language classroom. for example, meri-yilan (2020) found that using task-based language learning (tbll) and digital storytelling (dst) in a blended learning mode improved turkish university students’ english-speaking skills. the students preferred the use of tbll and dst to telling stories in the classroom and also perceived that tbll and dst assisted them in improving their speaking skills. in addition, azis and hu (2020) found that the usage of collaborative dst-based tasks greatly enhanced students' writing skills. the students reported that the learning design could help them improve their ability with the english language, engagement, motivation, and asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 235-243 237 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group interpersonal relationships. moreover, the findings reported by hamamorad (2018) suggest that tbll and the storytelling style could enhance learners’ communicative ability and generate an active, pleasant environment in which learners are joyfully engaged in the class. according to willis and willis (2007) storytelling can heighten a person's pleasure and generally improve our social experience. storytelling may bring the same benefits to students learning a foreign language in the classroom. some may claim that narrative works best with young learners. however, storytelling may also be effective with adult learners. the distinctions might be in the contents as well as the manner in which it is carried out (willis & willis, 2007). the researcher used thai folktales with the participants in this study as thai people are familiar with stories in their own language, and it is essential to cultivate the practice of storytelling in english. the ability to recount stories or tales, as well as discuss and summarize stories, promotes meaningful language engagement both within and outside of the classroom (willis & willis, 2007). the participants in this research had prior knowledge of the tales, which allows them to perform the task of recounting the tales to their group members by drawing on their prior knowledge. a guiding principle of this study is that the incorporation of tblt and thai folktales may result in increased vocabulary knowledge among participants. it is also envisaged that the students in this study would be better able to tell stories or communicate in english. the most essential goal is for participants to learn more about their culture and help preserve it by recounting folktales. the most important purpose is for participants to learn more about their culture and to contribute to its preservation by telling folktales. 2. literature review 2.1. narrative tasks in language instruction, narrative or storytelling tasks have been employed to generate learners' linguistic production. a narrative task, according to kiernan (2003) is one in which learners construct a story within the principle of the task. in his view, the task belongs to the tasks in the task-based instruction. narrative tasks can take a form of picture sequences, video or audio recordings, or written texts. storytelling tasks are prominent in foreign language education studies because they are an effective way for prompting learners’ extended oral production (skehan, 2001). furthermore, narrative tasks are an efficient technique for students to practice telling stories in public. storytelling tasks are also used by efl teachers since they are a pleasant approach for students to practice a language in a comfortable and natural setting. wajnryb (2003) finds narrative tasks to be a natural medium for language acquisition. in summary, narrative tasks can help students improve their language skills. 2.2. previous studies on the application of storytelling tasks there have been several studies on the use of narrative tasks to improve learners' language development in various domains. studies concentrating on improving learners' communication abilities have proven to be beneficial. for example, kiernan (2003) utilized narrative tasks with low-level learners in a classroom project at a japanese university to promote basic conversational storytelling abilities for engineering and architecture students with limited experience speaking english. this project's findings indicated that narrative tasks are an effective method to equip learners with skills to tell stories in conversation and develop learners' identities in the target language. by the completion of the course, the students were able to convey their own stories in english fluently. in another study, mokhtar, halim, and kamarulzaman (2011) investigated the impact of storytelling on students' communication abilities and assessed the amount to which storytelling improves the communication skills of malaysian university students with muet band scores of 1 and 2. the findings revealed that storytelling improved students' reading skills by allowing them to correlate meaning and emotions with words. in addition, the students expanded their vocabulary and learned how to employ certain words and phrases. finally, somdee and suppasetseree (2013) eexamined the use of digital storytelling in the development of english-speaking abilities as well as students' satisfaction with digital storytelling learning. the findings indicated that students' speaking abilities improved when they practiced delivering a story using the windows movie maker computer program. the three studies mentioned above were carried out with university students to enhance their communication abilities. kiernan (2003) research aimed to assist low-level learners. in this study, a wide range of conventional storytelling tasks were employed. similarly, mokhtar et al. (2011) emphasized the significance of extensive reading resources in establishing communication abilities. participants in this study improved their reading abilities as well. in somdee and suppasetseree (2013) study, however, technology was used to improve the students' communication abilities through digital storytelling. according to the findings of these three studies, storytelling may be a useful method for both low-level and advanced students who want to develop their language skills. in terms of vocabulary, some research aimed to provide learners at various levels with more vocabulary knowledge. for example, with high school students, kuntung (2007) examined how storytelling might promote vocabulary learning. the study employed aesop's fables and was separated into three stages: pre-telling, while telling, and after-telling. the findings indicated that storytelling techniques helped enhance students' vocabulary development, with pictures, gestures, different intonation, and facial expressions being the most effective. the students believed that using storytelling techniques considerably aided them in recalling and understanding new words. in a study with high school students, srihasarn (2010) explored whether vocabulary acquisition by storytelling is more successful than traditional techniques, as well as if participants accept and support the asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 235-243 238 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group storytelling technique. this research was split into three stages. the teacher began by explaining the story and new vocabulary. the students then listened to the story, translated it, and shared their ideas. finally, the students spelt the word and rewrote the story. it was discovered that the storytelling technique may help students acquire new words. the students also preferred the storytelling technique since it inspired them to acquire vocabulary via retelling, they were pleased with their intonations, and they like learning. storytelling was also used with primary school students. phuksuetrong (2009) investigated the efficacy of employing storytelling to increase the vocabulary knowledge of low-achieving students. the findings indicated that using narrative strategies was beneficial in enhancing low-achieving students' vocabulary knowledge, increasing the quality of vocabulary acquisition, and promoting students' positive attitudes while engaging in activities. in another study, soleimani and akbari (2013) investigated whether storytelling may affect preschool students' english vocabulary development. the findings of this study suggested that storytelling might improve vocabulary acquisition and have a favorable impact on children's vocabulary development. another study used storytelling with kindergarten students. for example, abasi and soori (2014) investigated the effectiveness of storytelling in improving english vocabulary learning among 20 children in kindergarten over 8 sessions. the findings of this study demonstrated that storytelling was beneficial in enhancing vocabulary development among kindergarten students. the recommendation is to utilize children's stories to boost second/foreign language acquisition in kindergarten and preschool students. larger groups of participants and a longer term of intervention should be considered. the aforementioned studies show that students of all ages can benefit from storytelling, from elementary through high school. further, the use of picture story books and picture tests might be the most appropriate method for young learners in preschool or kindergarten, as suggested by soleimani and akbari (2013) and abasi and soori (2014) studies. finally, storytelling may also be utilized to increase students' cultural awareness. hines (1995) research, for example, employed a story theater with dramatized stories, asking students to perform a piece of text and narrate a story. the findings indicated that storytelling may be used to connect cultural experiences, and the students encountered diverse cultures via the story. according to the findings of this study, when students are given the opportunity to dramatize and recount stories, they feel more comfortable, and an environment like this might help them strengthen their language skills. 3. research objectives 1. to examine the benefits of task-based language teaching and storytelling technique adopting thai folktales in promoting learners’ english vocabulary knowledge. 2. to explore learners’ opinions towards vocabulary learning through the use of task-based language teaching and storytelling techniques adopting thai folktales. 4. research questions 1. do the use of task-based language teaching and storytelling techniques adopting thai folktales have any effects on learners’ vocabulary knowledge? 2. what are the learners’ opinions towards vocabulary learning via the application of task-based language teaching and storytelling technique adopting thai folktales? 5. research methodology 5.1. participants the participants in this research were 32 second-year thai efl students whose major field of study was thai language. these students enrolled in an english for communication course at unt during the second semester of the 2020 school year. the participants were drawn through purposive sampling as the researcher was assigned to teach this group of students. 5.2. research instruments six thai folktale tasks, a pre-test and post-test, and a focus-group interview were employed as research tools in this study. the tasks included six thai folktales: 1) kraithong (a magical crocodile), 2) horse-faced woman, 3) golden goby, 4) twelve sisters, 5) honwichai-khawi (a tiger and an ox transformed into a human being by a hermit’s magic), and 6) phikulthong (a woman whose speech transformed into gold as a blessing from a god for good deeds). the researcher used an english translation of the folktales in this study. the researcher also constructed the preand post-tests. the test contents were mostly based on vocabulary used in the stories that the students had read and retold to their group members. before selecting the stories, the researcher conducted the student needs analysis, asking the students to choose their own stories. at this stage, the students came up with the six stories mentioned above. the pre-test and posttest contents and focus group interview questions were verified by three experts to confirm their validity and reliability before implementation. the scores of index of item objective congruence (ioc) were between .05 – 1.00. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 235-243 239 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.3. data collection as a teacher, the researcher gathered data from students enrolled in the english for communication course. the following are the stages for data collecting. 1. the researcher performed the students' needs survey by asking them to select six thai folktales from a list of twelve stories for language learning tasks. 1) kraithong, 2) horse-faced woman, 3) golden goby, 4) twelve sisters, 5) honwichai-khawi, and 6) phikulthong were among the six thai folktales. 2. prior to the start of the study project, participants were requested to complete a pre-test. 3. the researcher assigned the students to six-person groups. each group was referred to as the expert group (e group). the members of each group selected the leader of their group and assigned various roles to each member of the group, such as secretary, time keeper, or vocabulary finder. members of the group were assigned to listen to parts of the stories told by the researchers. the members of the expert groups split out from the original groups to form the information searching group (is group). the students carried out the folktale tasks based on the following storytelling tasks cycle (figure 1) adapted from willis (1996) task framework. figure-1. task-based storytelling cycle. 4. the researcher split the stories into parts and distributed them to each is group. members of each is group were required to read and summarize the different parts of the stories. in the stories, the groups had to deal with unknown vocabulary. after each is grouping completed summarizing the stories, each member was required to return to the expert groups (e group) and retell the stories from beginning to end. this procedure was repeated until the study was completed. it took ten weeks to complete. 5. following the completion of each session, participants were asked to complete session quizzes on the story's content and vocabulary. 6. following the completion of the last session, participants were requested to complete a post-test, which was comparable to the pre-test. the focus-group interview was also carried out. 5.4. data analysis spss for windows was used to analyze the data obtained from the students' pre-test and post-test. the statistics used to analyze the data were arithmetic mean score, standard deviation, and t-test. the interview data was analyzed using content analysis. the analyzed results were then presented in a descriptive manner. 6. findings the analyzed data from the students' pre-test and post-test scores, as well as the focus-group interview, are divided into the following sections. table-1. students’ vocabulary pre-test and post-test scores. test n sd t sig (2-tailed) pre-test 32 34.53 8.16 23.92 0.000 post-test 32 45.22 8.87 28.79 0.000 6.1. findings from the vocabulary pre-test and post-test scores as can be seen in table 1, the students’ vocabulary preand post-test scores were compared. the mean scores of the post-test ( = 45.22) were significantly higher than the pre-test ( =34.53) scores, suggesting that the task-based language teaching and storytelling technique helped the students to improve their english vocabulary knowledge. the results also indicate that the students were given greater opportunity to utilize language in realistic ways. they have extra time to practice the vocabulary from the stories. furthermore, it indicates that asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 235-243 240 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group group members' collaboration aided them in learning new words. finally, it is plausible to argue that the students' prior understanding of thai folktales aided them in making some connections between their prior knowledge and the target language. it is claimed that the learners' prior knowledge aided in the creation of new knowledge. 6.2. results of focus-group interview the focus group interview was conducted after the students took the post-test. the researcher asked four questions regarding the use of thai folktale tasks: 1) what do you think about the use of thai folktale tasks? 2) what did you like when you participated in the project? 3) what did you learn from participating in the project? and 4) what do you want to improve or suggest? the interview data was analyzed using content analysis and the results are presented below following the themes found in each question. 6.2.1. question 1: what do you think about the use of thai folktale tasks? the students’ responses to question 1 included nine themes based on the frequency and percentage of the analysis of the students’ opinions. the themes involve vocabulary, learning atmosphere, speaking, confidence, pronunciation, presentation, reading skills, usefulness and grammar. the details of each theme are shown in table 2 below. table-2. themes based on students’ opinions towards the use of thai folktale tasks. themes frequency percentage 1. vocabulary 13 25.00 2. learning atmosphere 10 19.23 3. speaking 9 17.31 4. confidence 6 11.54 5. pronunciation 4 7.69 6. presentation 3 5.77 7. reading skills 3 5.77 8. usefulness 3 5.77 9. grammar 1 1.92 total 52 100.00 table 2 shows a total of 52 sub-themes based on the frequency of the students’ opinions regarding the use of thai folktale tasks. regarding the highest frequency, the majority of the students felt that the use of thai folktale tasks provided them with knowledge of vocabulary (25.00%), as one student from the focus group interview commented: “i thought that i had learnt a lot about the words from the stories.” (fgi1 student 1) for the second highest frequency, most students reported that they performed the folktale tasks in a good learning atmosphere (19.23%). one student commented: “i had a lot of fun and was excited to tell stories.” (fgi1 student 4) the third place of the frequency of the students’ responses was the speaking. most students commented that they had gained more opportunities to speak (17.31%) the target language through retelling thai folktales to their group members, as one student reported: “i had got speaking skills.” (fgi1 student 5) with regard to the lowest frequency, few students felt that the grammar (1.92%) was the area which they dealt with the least. table-3. students’ preferences for participating in the project themes frequency percentage 1. atmosphere 6 19.35 2. group work 5 16.13 3. speaking 5 16.13 4. vocabulary 3 9.68 5. interaction 3 9.68 6. pronunciation 3 9.68 7. rehearsal 3 9.68 8. test 2 6.45 9. teacher scaffolding 1 3.23 total 31 100.00 6.2.2. question 2: what did you like when you participated in the project? the students’ responses to question 2 included nine preferred areas based on the frequency and percentage of the analysis of the students’ opinions. these areas were: atmosphere, group work, speaking, vocabulary, interaction, asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 235-243 241 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group pronunciation, rehearsal, test and teacher scaffolding. the details of the students’ preferences are described in table 3. table 3 reveals a total frequency of 31 student preferences for participating in the project. regarding the highest frequency, the majority of the students (19.35%) commented that what they liked when they participated in the project was the atmosphere. they had learnt english through retelling thai folktales in a relaxed atmosphere. some students reported that they had a lot of fun retelling the stories. the stories were very interesting and the teaching activities were not boring. one student commented: “the atmosphere in the classroom was very relaxed and positive, and i had a lot of fun.” (fgi2 student 3) as for the second rank of frequency, several students reported that they liked group work (16.13%) and speaking activities (16.13%). two students commented: “i liked speaking activities because i had more time to speak english.” (fgi2 student 2) “i liked working in groups and the way the teacher allowed me to work with new group members.” (fgi2 student 5) regarding the third rank of frequency, some students felt that they liked working with vocabulary (9.68%), interacting with friends (9.68%), pronouncing words (9.68%), and rehearsal of retelling folktales (9.68%). three students commented: “i liked working with groups members because we could share ideas and learn words together.” (fgi2 student 3) “i liked the way my friends taught me how to pronounce words.” (fgi2 student 5) “i liked the way we practiced retelling stories or folktales in groups.” (fgi2 student 6) in regard to the lowest frequency rank, few students mentioned that they liked teacher assistance or scaffolding (3.23%), as one student reported. “i liked when the teacher came to my group, sat there and listened to me retelling the stories. if i didn’t know how to say some words, he would tell me.” (fgi2 student1). 6.2.3. question 3: what did you learn from participating in the project? the students’ responses to question 3 included twelve areas of what the students learned, based on the frequency and percentage of the analysis of the students’ opinions. the areas in which the students improved contained vocabulary, storytelling skills, pronunciation skills, summary and main idea, interaction, writing skills, reading skills, peer teaching, presentation, grammar, paragraph skills, and memory development. the details of each area are illustrated in table 4. table-4. students’ areas of learning from project participation. areas of learning frequency percentage 1. vocabulary 8 17.39 2. storytelling skills 7 15.22 3. pronunciation skills 7 15.22 4. summary and main idea 7 15.22 5. interaction 4 8.70 6. writing skills 4 8.70 7. reading skills 2 4.35 8. peer teaching 2 4.35 9. presentation 2 4.35 10. grammar 1 2.17 11. paraphrase skills 1 2.17 12. memory development 1 2.17 total 46 100.00 table 4 reveals a total number of 46 sub-areas of students’ learning from participating in the project. regarding the highest rank of frequency, the majority of the students reported that they had learnt vocabulary (17.39%) the most from retelling thai folktales, as one student commented: “i had learnt a lot of words and their meanings.” (fgi3 student 4). for the second frequency rank, several students mentioned that they had learnt more about storytelling skills, pronunciation skills, summary and main idea. these areas of improvement account for 15.22%. some students also commented: “i learnt how to tell stories and make someone interested in my stories.” (fgi3 student 2) “i had practiced how to pronounce the words ending with /ed/ sound.” (fgi3 student 3) “i knew how to summarize the stories.” (fgi3 student 5) regarding the third frequency rank, some students (8.70%) felt that they had interacted with their peers and they also learnt writing skills, specifically how to write a story summary (8.70%). some students commented: “i had time to talk to my group members.” (fgi3 student 1) asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 235-243 242 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group “when we summarized the stories, we helped to think about words.” (fgi3 student 6) “we had learnt how to write a story summary.” (fgi3 student 3) in regard to the lowest frequency rank, a few students mentioned that they had learnt more about grammar, paraphrasing, and how to develop their memory telling stories. these areas account for 2.17%. 6.2.4. question 4: what do you want to improve or suggest? the students’ responses to question 4 include two areas regarding activities and materials for learning how to retell stories, based on the frequency and percentage of the student opinion analysis. the details of the students’ suggestions are described in table 5. table-5. students’ suggestions for further improvement. areas of improvement frequency percentage 1. activities 10 90.91 2. materials 1 9.09 total 11 100.00 table 5 reveals a total number of 11 frequencies for further improvements suggested by the students. regarding the highest rank of frequency, the majority of the students reported that they wanted to have more activities (90.91%). some students commented: “i wanted to have more activities such as doing role play or singing a song after we retold the folktales.” (fgi4 student 4) “i wanted to retell stories using pictures because i can imagine the story pictures.” (fgi4 student 6) “i wanted the teacher to teach me how to retell stories using suitable tones and feeling because the focus of retelling stories is to show the characters’ emotions.” (fgi4 student 2) in regard to the material improvement, a few students (9.09%) mentioned that they wanted to have more handouts on the tenses and story pictures. one student commented: “i wanted to have more handouts about tenses.” (fgi4 student 5) 7. discussion and conclusion one of the major aims of this study was to determine if the application of task-based language teaching (tblt) and storytelling has any impact on vocabulary learning in thai efl students in conversation and discussion class. the reported findings reveal that the post-test scores were significantly different from the pre-test scores at .05 levels. the current study's findings indicate that participants' significant improvement in vocabulary developments may have resulted from performing narrative tasks that are meaningful to them by providing them frequent opportunities to work with the target language through retelling stories. repeated meeting of the vocabulary in the stories contributed to vocabulary learning (nation, 2017). the findings of this study are in line with those of many previous studies in the field of tblt adopting storytelling. according to kiernan (2003) narrative tasks are an excellent means of preparing university students for presenting stories in conversation and creating students' identities in the target language. in addition, several studies that adopted storytelling as a means of developing students’ vocabulary knowledge assert that storytelling is an effective way for increasing vocabulary learning among efl students (abasi & soori, 2014; kuntung, 2007; phuksuetrong, 2009; soleimani & akbari, 2013; srihasarn, 2010). the second objective of the present study was to discover the students’ opinions towards learning english vocabulary through tblt and storytelling. the findings of this study reveal that the storytelling tasks helped the students increase their vocabulary knowledge as the tasks of retelling thai folktales provide the students with more opportunities to learn and practice vocabulary repeatedly with their close group members in a relaxing atmosphere. the students also commented that they had improved their speaking skills, gained more confidence to retell stories in english, and gained better pronunciation skills with words ending in /t/, /d/ and /id/ sounds of past tense verbs while retelling stories. these findings are directly in line with previous studies. for example, kuntung (2007) reported that students agree that using storytelling techniques assisted students in remembering and understanding the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary. the students also enjoyed studying and were encouraged to gain vocabulary using storytelling. in addition, the findings of srihasarn (2010) indicate that the students welcomed storytelling and they were encouraged to learn vocabulary through narrative, pleased with their improved intonation, and had fun learning. it was observed that the efl students who learnt english vocabulary through tblt and storytelling had significantly higher vocabulary post-test scores. these findings suggest that the use of task-based language teaching and storytelling techniques adopting thai folktales has a notable impact on students’ vocabulary knowledge. the current study has provided further empirical evidence for the merits of tblt and storytelling technique in teaching english in efl contexts where opportunities for interacting with english are limited. it is also suggested that the incorporation of task-based language teaching and narrative techniques may be used in the certain language teaching and learning context that aims to improve learners' vocabulary acquisition or other language learning domains. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 235-243 243 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 8. recommendations the present study's results indicate that storytelling utilizing folktale language learning tasks could be applied to increase language learners' vocabulary knowledge. the tales chosen should be appropriate for the learners' interests and level of language ability. multicultural differences should be included into storytelling classes to improve students' intercultural awareness and communication abilities. references abasi, m., & soori, a. 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(2003). stories: narrative activities in the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. willis, d., & willis, j. (2007). doing task-based teaching. oxford: oxford university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. harlow: longman. yegani, h., & jodaei, h. (2017). the effect of task-based and topic-based speaking activities on speaking ability of iranian efl learners. online submission, 5(4), 85-93. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 244 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 7, no. 4, 244-249, 2021 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.244.249 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the effect of online homework (ixl) on students' mathematics achievement kawai liu1 julius wu2 ( corresponding author) 1shanghai smic private school international, shanghai, china. email: kawai_liu@sina.com tel: 13166403185 2irvine high school, california, usa. email: realjuliuswu@gmail.com tel: 17521665944 abstract we examined the potential different effectiveness of an online homework system (ixl) and the traditional paper-and-pencil homework. a study involving 98 participants was conducted in a middle school (grade 8). we compared the post-test results from the online homework group with the traditional homework group. both homework assignment effect (class-level) and homework completion effect (student-level) proposed by trautwein (2007) were investigated. no significant difference was found among the students who were assigned different types of homework (classlevel). we conclude that ixl is as effective as the traditional homework on students' learning. meanwhile, not surprisingly, we revealed that students who complete the homework outperformed the students who did not (student-level). we suggest that teachers give students an option to do online or traditional homework based on their preference, as long as they complete the homework. keywords: online homework, ixl, middle school, paper-and-pencil homework, homework assignment effect, homework completion effect. citation | kawai liu; julius wu (2021). the effect of online homework (ixl) on students' mathematics achievement. asian journal of education and training, 7(4): 244-249. history: received: 3 september 2021 revised: 8 october 2021 accepted: 5 november 2021 published: 23 november 2021 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group acknowledgement: both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study was reported; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study follows all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. background ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 245 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 247 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 247 4. conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 248 5. discussions ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 248 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 249 mailto:kawai_liu@sina.com mailto:realjuliuswu@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2021.74.244.249 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0693-9161 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3876-3375 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 244-249 245 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study contributes to existing literature by examining the potential different effectiveness of an online homework system (ixl) and the traditional paper-and-pencil homework. 1. background from my school-life experience, homework is never absent from any courses. although the effect of doing homework on students’ learning is controversial, teachers are assigning homework either because they believe it helps, as a school policy or per parent requests (gill & schlossman, 1996). however, when the class size is big or the instructors are required to teach multiple classes, it takes too much time to grade all the homework submissions. facing this challenge, teachers take various approaches. teachers may only grade a few selected questions or pages, only grade a few chosen submissions, assign a blend of graded and non-graded homework, or have students or teaching assistants grade their own or their peers’ homework (bonham, beichner, & deardorff, 2001). with technology becomes more common and accessible, assigning homework on online platforms is also an emerging trend. as compared with traditional homework, assigning homework through online platforms provide immediate responses to students, which has the potential to encourage student participation in learning (de la beaujardiere et al., 1997). from the teacher side, it is possible to reduce the grading load and to obtain immediate student submission results (bonham, beichner, titus, & martin, 2000). the online platform could also provide a variety of information that traditional homework could not. the online platform could also provide a variety of information to assist teachers in taking care of students' learning diversity (see for example (bonham et al., 2001; mestre, hart, rath, & dufresne, 2002)). 1.1. researches on homework in general, studies support the use of homework as a tool to assist students’ learning. cooper, robinson, and patall (2006) revealed by their review that on average high school students doing homework outperformed 69% of their peers who are in a no-homework class. the average homework effect is halved in middle school while homework is not associated with students’ performance in elementary school. for junior high school students, with the increase in homework, their academic performance continues to improve until the homework lasts 1 to 2 hours every night. for more than two hours, adding more homework time does not necessarily affect the improvement of performance (cooper et al., 2006). nevertheless, trautwein and köller (2003) pointed out that, revealed by their study, the student performance is not associated with the time students spend on doing homework, but the effort they make on homework. if a student reports that he has spent a lot of time on homework, it may not be a “sign of great conscientiousness”, but it may indicate a paucity of motivation or concentration. parents and the public have certain concerns about homework. for example, they worried that students might not receive timely feedback or help when they need and the homework may not be well designed to enhance learning. what kind of homework is more effective? how homework may affect students' well-being? (roschelle, feng, murphy, & mason, 2016). some potential positive effects are having immediate achievement and learning, better study habits and skills, greater self-discipline and better time organization skills and a chance for family members to demonstrate an interest in the students' academic progress. some possible adverse effects are loss of interest in academic material, denial of access to leisure time and community activities, pressure on parents, cheating behavior and increased differences between high and low achievers (cooper, 1989; cooper et al., 2006). to study the potential effect of the homework on students’ learning, trautwein (2007) proposed to study the effect in two levels: homework assignment effect (class-level) and homework completion effect (student-level). the homework assignment effect measures the potential difference in students’ learning when they are assigned different homework assignments. the homework completion effect measures the potential difference in students’ learning when some students complete the assigned homework while the other students do not. both of these two effects are examined in this study. 1.2. researches on online homework multiple studies supported the effectiveness of using online homework on students’ learning. roschelle et al. (2016) traced 2850 7th grade students from 43 schools finding that the online homework intervention significantly increased student scores on an end-of-the-year standardized mathematics assessment compared with a control group that continued with traditional homework practices. cheng, thacker, cardenas, and crouch (2004) compared sections with graded online homework to sections with ungraded homework using the force concept inventory. a significant improvement in student understanding was found for the sections utilizing graded online homework. zerr (2007) provided evidence in his article that online homework improved overall student performance in his first-semester calculus class. burch and kuo (2010) got similar results in their college algebra course. some studies revealed that lower-performing students benefit from the online homework approach because they could be more motivated and engaged in a new homework approach than a traditional method (cheng et al., 2004; roschelle et al., 2016). meanwhile, a few studies found no significant difference between using online and traditional homework. allain and williams (2006) found no significant differences in conceptual understanding or test scores in their introductory astronomy course where they assigned students in four homework situations, from no graded homework to graded homework online. longnecker (2013) found no significant difference in most cases from grade 5 to 8. he compared the students' standardized test scores of the recent year which used online homework with the previous year which used the traditional approach on assigning homework (in a particular grade the traditional homework group outperformed the online homework group). online homework is believed to have the potential of improving the learning process by offering immediate feedback and assessment (richards-babb, drelick, henry, & robertson-honecker, 2011). some other pros of using online homework include that students are flexible in time and location on completing their assignment, have alternative ways to present the information, materials could be individualized for students' needs, and effectively asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 244-249 246 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group collect information. many online homework platforms provide students guidance on completing the exercise. it could be in the form of worked examples, a short video clip explaining the concepts, or a few guiding questions which lead students to the final answers. these features may not be easily provided by traditional paper-and-pencil homework. some platforms provide immediate feedback on students’ responses. that means students will know whether their answers are correct or wrong after pressing the button of submission. this feature is believed to be the major difference between online and traditional homework and is believed to improve students’ learning. also, on some platforms, students could use multiple devices to complete their online homework as long as they remember the login name and password. they could do the online homework anytime and anywhere without worrying about bringing their homework packet with them or not nor losing their packet. there are a few concerns about using online homework despite the aforementioned benefits. for example, online homework may restrict the connection between the instructors and the students (bonham et al., 2000). teachers could moderately understand how the students do the homework by their handwriting or neatness. does this student make a full effort on this homework or rush to complete it? experienced teachers could sometimes tell the students’ emotions with a glance at the submitted work. with the online platform, yes, we may see how much time a student spends on a particular task, but everything is presented by numbers or graphs which could be not easy for teachers to understand. on the other hand, we could doubt that would it be a benefit when students can work on the homework anytime and anywhere. doing paper-and-pencil homework, students have to at least sit in front of a desk, but they could do their online homework through a mobile device on their school bus trip, next to a basketball court or at a corner of the shopping mall. it does not seem to promote a good habit of learning in such cases. in addition, we can’t be sure that a given submission comes from the actual student. “students may work together, or might give their password to someone else. this must be taken into consideration; just as with paperand-pencil homework, there is the possibility of copying or submitting work in another person’s name” (bonham et al., 2000). 1.3. what is ixl? in this present study, we adopt the ixl as our online homework. ixl is “a membership-based website that offers each student individual learning plans set by the teacher to learn, practice, and master state standards and concepts” (longnecker, 2013). as advertised by ixl, it is currently adopted by over 700,000 teachers and over 11 million students in more than 190 countries around the world (wood & hudspith, 2017). when students start to practice a skill, these questions are simple and at entry-level. as they deal with problems, they will gradually become more and more difficult and require a higher level of thinking, proficiency and problem-solving ability. this makes ixl an adaptive program that can be adjusted according to the progress of each student. students can continue to practice skills and reach the mastery level, and their score (called "smartscore") will climb to 100. when students answer incorrectly, ixl will explain the error and lower their smartscore. students get instant feedback on each question, indicating that they answered correctly or incorrectly (wood & hudspith, 2017). 1.4. studies on ixl although there are not a lot of peer research studies regarding the effectiveness of ixl usage in class, there are some dissertations available. however, these studies only examine the average scores of different groups without using statistical tools for analysis. their findings were mixed. van ruler (2017) did a quasi-experimental study comparing the growth in math standardized test scores between two different fifth grade classes. he concluded that the treatment group outperformed the control group in both overall scores and growth rates, but the effect size was smaller than anticipated. albrinck, hartman, and kloos (2019) used ixl as a remedial tool for only several struggling students in their classes aiming at individualizing the learning process and improve their math skills and math fluency. they found that the improvement between the preand post-test was large, and the fact that students not only use the ixl at school in small group settings but also at home for practice. meanwhile, longnecker (2013) used a cohort model to measure the effects of ixl on the math achievement of middle school students (from grade 5 to 8). no significant difference was found. wood and hudspith (2017) arranged their classes into two groups, one with ixl practice and one with traditional paper-and-pencil worksheets. they chose to examine the potential difference in student learning on 6-th grade geometry and 4-th grade fraction. the results did not show any conclusive evidence that one practice method is better than the other. they concluded that a combination of both practice methods might be most beneficial for student learning. it is worth noted that they used the ixl as an in-class practice rather than as homework. the author summarized in this literature review progress that the findings on online homework effectiveness could be affected by the experiential designs. in some studies, online and traditional homework is assigned to the two classes, which may be taught by the same or different instructors. in some other cases, online homework is assigned in the recent year while traditional homework is assigned in the previous year. students from the same class are randomly assigned to the online or traditional homework group in the present study, so they have the same instructor and the same curriculum that minimize the confounding factors. 1.5. research questions there are limited numbers of peer-reviewed researches studies the use of ixl on student performance. although it is generally reported that online homework may have a positive effect (jones & chen, 2008; potter & johnston, 2006; taraban, anderson, hayes, & sharma, 2005) or at least as effective as paper-and-pencil homework (keller, hassell, webber, & johnson, 2009), most of the existing research is in the college or high school level. this research will study if there are any different impacts of using online homework on middle-school students' academic performance. furthermore, most of the previous research used the assigned classes to identify the experimental and the control groups. potentially, that would make the results be affected easily by the classroom atmosphere and the different instructors. in the present study, students from the same classroom are randomly asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 244-249 247 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group assigned to the online or traditional homework group, so they have the same instructor and the same curriculum which minimize the confounding factors. this study aims at answering the following three practical questions: (1) are there any differences in students' academic performance by assigning online homework or paper-andpencil homework? (homework-assignment effect). (2) are there any differences in students' academic performance by making the homework assignment optional (not counted toward the grade)? (3) will the students who submit the assigned homework outperform the students who fail to complete the assigned homework? (homework-completion effect). 2. method the primary purpose of this research is to investigate the potential differential effect of online homework and traditional paper-and-pencil homework on students’ academic performance. the results from the preand posttests are used for the analysis. the tests were provided by the textbook publisher pearson with certain modifications based on students’ abilities. all students were randomly assigned into four homework groups: group 1 with online (ixl) homework; group 2 with traditional paper-and-pencil homework which were returned with teacher’s checking and comments or feedback; group 3 with traditional paper-and-pencil homework while the teacher checked for completion and two high school students acted as teaching assistant to check for correctness; and group 4 with an option to complete either ixl, traditional paper-and-pencil homework or not doing homework. single way anova was adopted for the analysis. all of the four groups received the same teaching. they had the same instructor and used the same materials. students who have incompleted assessments throughout the research cycle were requested to fill out a mainly open-ended survey in order to understand the reasons behind it. supplementary interviews were also conducted with a few of these students. 2.1. participants all eighth-grade students enrolled in the studied school were studied. we excluded a few students because they joined the class late and hence did not complete the entire learning cycle. the students were put in classes by their math ability with two “accelerated classes” using algebra 1 standards and two “regular classes” using grade 8 math standards. 59 students are in the accelerated classes, while 39 students are in the regular classes. for each cycle, similar numbers of students will be assigned to each homework group. 3. results 3.1. homework assignment effect (class-level effect) no significant differences are identified in all chapters among the 4 groups in the pre-tests. the four homework groups’ average post-test scores in the four learning cycles are summarized in table 1 and table 2. all scores were converted to have 100 as a full score for comparison purposes. the highest-scoring group in each cycle was bolded. note that different students were arranged in each homework group through the four learning cycles. significant differences are identified in all chapters in the accelerated classes and in 2 out of 4 chapters in the regular classes. table-1. four homework groups’ average post-test scores in four learning cycles (accelerated classes). accelerated (algebra 1) group 1 (ixl) group 2 (graded homework) group 3 (homework completion) group 4 (optional homework) chapter 1*** 88.9 95.9 89.9 76.8 chapter 2** 79.7 86.2 88.6 69.0 chapter 3** 94.4 94.9 91.4 79.6 chapter 4** 93.8 90.6 91.4 72.2 note: significance codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 table-2. four homework groups’ average post-test scores in four learning cycles (regular classes). regular (ms math iii) group 1 (ixl) group 2 (graded homework) group 3 (homework completion) group 4 (optional homework) chapter 1 84.1 93.3 81.5 77.8 chapter 2 90.4 81.7 88.1 76.7 chapter 3** 86.2 94.3 88.2 71.3 chapter 4. 87.8 75.3 85.6 65.3 note: significance codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 3.2. homework completion effect (student-level effect) excluding group 4, all the homework scores are summarized. higher than 80% are regarded as completion, and lower than 80% are regarded as incomplete. the reasons for having lower scores include the late submission for more than 2 days, missing a few ixl exercises for group 1, incorrect attempts for group 2 and no corrections submitted, and missing a few pages or questions for group 3. students who completed the homework outperformed their peers for all assessments in the research cycle. significant differences are identified in 3 assessments out of 4 in the accelerated classes and 2 out of 4 in the regular classes. details are shown in table 3 and 4. the results were not surprising. table-3. average post-test scores of students who completed and not completed homework in four learning cycles (accelerated classes). accelerated (algebra 1) chapter 1** chapter 2* chapter 3*** chapter 4 completed 92.5 85.3 96.1 93.1 not completed 69.3 72.9 75.7 83.9 note: significance codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 244-249 248 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table-4. average post-test scores of students who completed and not completed homework in four learning cycles (regular classes). regular (ms math iii) chapter 1 chapter 2* chapter 3 chapter 4** completed 85.8 92.1 92.6 94.7 not completed 76.7 65.3 82.6 66.8 note: significance codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1. there were 12 students in the accelerated classes and 22 students in the regular classes who have at least one incompleted homework. we surveyed these students to see how they think about the reasons for getting lower homework scores. the author has also talked to a few of these students to collect more information. the survey and the interviews revealed that the primary reasons for failing to complete the homework were lack of time management skills and did not know what the assignments are. interesting comments from students were listed as follow: (1) i sometimes forget to bring the packet or do the ixl exercise, and i do not know that i could make up my homework until last month. (2) i can't say i don't like the ixl, but i would push myself to complete the homework packet because i can see and touch it. i have to remind myself very hard, so i don't forget to do the ixl. (3) some ixl exercises took me too much time to get up to 80 (the required smartscore). there was an exercise that i worked on more than 100 questions, but still, i didn't get up to 80. so when i have a lot of other homework to do, i gave up. the hints ixl provides are sometimes helpful, but sometimes not. (4) when i concentrate, i could complete the math homework very quickly, either the ixl or the packet. it is difficult for me to keep concentrate on the task when i am in front of a screen. 4. conclusions 4.1. homework-assignment effect (class-level) no significant difference was found between the post-test performance of the students in groups 1, 2 and 3, which implied that the ixl homework is at least working as effective as the traditional paper-and-pencil homework packet. the present study's strength is that students from the same class were arranged into different homework arrangements to minimize the confounding factors. but we have to be cautious that the potential difference between different homework arrangements could be expected to be smaller than a quasi-experiment arrangement. in practice, when a group of ixl students reflected that they had difficulties completing an exercise, the instructor would review the exercise and give a supplementary lecture to the whole class. meanwhile, when the instructor graded a few homework packet submissions and found out that there was a common mistake (say having difficulties applying the distributive property), the instructor would get a chance to remind the whole class and give a remedial lesson when necessary. in short, in our setting, the benefits of doing the ixl or homework packet were not limited to that group of students but, to some extend, transmitted to the other groups of students. a student who was arranged in the paper-and-pencil homework group may be benefited from a class discussion raised by an ixl group student. a not surprising result is that group 4 (optional homework) was working worse than the other groups in any learning cycles. we conclude that the homework, either online or traditional, has an effect on students’ learning. at the beginning of this study, i decided to have an optional group because i expected that the students “will not do homework unless it is graded” (cheng et al., 2004). i presumed that this group would be the lowest-scoring group. not surprisingly, i noticed that a very limited number of students in group 4 submitted their homework. i believe the students’ thoughts could be reflected by the following comment given by a student: “i know the homework is essential for us to prepare for the tests, but when it is not required, i will not put it as a priority. i obviously did worse in the cycle that i was in group 4.” 4.2. homework-completion effect (student-level) not surprisingly, students who completed the homework (scoring at least 80%) outperformed their peers. we could conclude that assigning homework has a positive effect on students’ learning. in the future, we should take action to assist students so more students could complete their homework. 5. discussions by observation, there are clearly a group of students who love the ixl more and another group of students who like to work traditionally. letting students choose to work on the ixl or the homework packet based on their preference may be a good idea because we found that the ixl and the homework packet are both effective in their learning. when we come to a topic that a particular method could benefit the students more, the teacher should make it compulsory on doing the ixl or the homework packet. for example, when teaching graphing a function (like y=2x+4), a teacher may want to have the students practice using a pencil and a ruler to make the graph by hand. in this case, the teacher should be flexible enough to make all students work on the homework packet. when we come to a topic on identifying the axis of rotational symmetry of an object, using the ixl may be a better choice because students could have an animation to understand a 3-dimensional object. through the experience of conducting this study, the author found that this group rotation homework policy worked better than any other previous homework policy (only online or only traditional). students have a chance to do homework in different ways in different stages, and the instructor has to grade only one-fourth of the homework submission. by the ixl, students gain immediate responses. by grading their homework packet, students get the teacher’s feedback, which could be definitely more detailed than if a teacher has to grade all of the homework submissions. teacher assistants give feedback to another quarter of the submission. the last quarter of students could choose to work on either online or traditional homework based on their preference. asian journal of education and training, 2021, 7(4): 244-249 249 © 2021 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a modification could be made by making group 4 (optional homework group) to be graded. especially for a group of students who are not very motivated, having the assignments graded is a motivation for students to practice (cheng et al., 2004). some actions could be taken in order to assist more students in completing their homework. a remedial class could give a chance for students to work on their homework with teacher support. a supervised study hall could be arranged for those students who have difficulties concentrating on their homework so they could be separated from other disruptions. homework buddies could be assigned to those absent-minded students who sometimes forget to do homework or forget the assignment so they could remain with each other. overall speaking, teachers should find ways to make as many students complete their homework as possible because we believe that homework assignment positively affects students’ learning, as support by our study results. references albrinck, a., hartman, c., & kloos, h. (2019). the effect of ixl on math fluency in an urban 3rd grade classroom. undergraduate scholarly showcase. allain, r., & williams, t. (2006). the effectiveness of online homework in an introductory science class. journal of college science teaching, 35(6), 28-30. bonham, s. w., beichner, r. j., titus, a., & martin, l. (2000). education research using web-based assessment systems. journal of research on computing in education, 33(1), 28-45. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/08886504.2000.10782298. bonham, s., beichner, r., & deardorff, d. (2001). online homework: does it make a difference? the physics teacher, 39(5), 293-296. available at: https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1375468. burch, k. j., & kuo, y.-j. (2010). traditional vs. online homework in college algebra. mathematics and computer education, 44(1), 53-63. cheng, k. k., thacker, b. a., cardenas, r. l., & crouch, c. (2004). using an online homework system enhances students’ learning of physics concepts in an introductory physics course. american journal of physics, 72(11), 1447-1453. available at: https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1768555. cooper, h. (1989). homework: longman. cooper, h., robinson, j. c., & patall, e. a. (2006). does homework improve academic achievement? a synthesis of research, 1987–2003. review of educational research, 76(1), 1-62. available at: https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076001001. de la beaujardiere, j. f., cavallo, j., hasler, a. f., mitchell, h., o'handley, c., shiri, r., & white, r. (1997). the globe visualization project: using www in the classroom. journal of science education and technology, 6(1), 15-22. gill, b., & schlossman, s. (1996). a sin against childhood": progressive education and the crusade to abolish homework, 1897-1941. american journal of education, 105(1), 27-66. jones, k. t., & chen, c. c. (2008). blended-learning in a graduate accounting course: student satisfaction and course design issues. the accounting educators' journal, 18, 15-28. keller, j. h., hassell, j. m., webber, s. a., & johnson, j. n. (2009). a comparison of academic performance in traditional and hybrid sections of introductory managerial accounting. journal of accounting education, 27(3), 147-154. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2010.03.001. longnecker, r. w. (2013). ixl. com—measuring the effects of internet-based math instruction on the math achievement of middle school students (publication no. 3565664). [doctoral dissertation, trevecca nazarene university]. proquest dissertations and theses global. mestre, j., hart, d. m., rath, k. a., & dufresne, r. (2002). the effect of web-based homework on test performance in large enrollment introductory physics courses. journal of computers in mathematics and science teaching, 21(3), 229-251. potter, b. n., & johnston, c. g. (2006). the effect of interactive on-line learning systems on student learning outcomes in accounting. journal of accounting education, 24(1), 16-34. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2006.04.003. richards-babb, m., drelick, j., henry, z., & robertson-honecker, j. (2011). online homework, help or hindrance? what students think and how they perform. journal of college science teaching, 40(4), 81-93. roschelle, j., feng, m., murphy, r. f., & mason, c. a. (2016). online mathematics homework increases student achievement. aera open, 2(4), 2332858416673968. taraban, r., anderson, e. e., hayes, m. w., & sharma, m. (2005). developing on-line homework for introductory thermodynamics. journal of engineering education, 94(3), 339-342. available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2005.tb00859.x. trautwein, u., & köller, o. (2003). the relationship between homework and achievement—still much of a mystery. educational psychology review, 15(2), 115-145. trautwein, u. (2007). the homework–achievement relation reconsidered: differentiating homework time, homework frequency, and homework effort. learning and instruction, 17(3), 372-388. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2007.02.009. van ruler, d. (2017). blended learning and math growth: investigating the role of ixl math in the growth of 5th grade students’ math fluency scores. [master's theses]. digital collections @ dordt. wood, a., & hudspith, a. (2017). the effects of ixl practice on geometry and fraction achievement. [master's theses]. sophia. retrieved from: https://sophia.stkate.edu/maed/205. zerr, r. (2007). a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the effectiveness of online homework in first-semester calculus. journal of computers in mathematics and science teaching, 26(1), 55-73. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10511970.2015.1128501. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 81 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 2, 81-88, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5609 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group parent-school collaboration based on the frequency of visits to their child's school demirali yasar ergin1 coskun dogan2 semih cayak3 ( corresponding author) 1,2trakya university, faculty of education, turkey. 1email: demiraliergin@gmail.com 2email: coskundogan2002@yahoo.de 3marmara university, atatürk faculty of education, turkey. 3email: semihcayak@gmail.com abstract this study examines parent-school collaboration in primary schools. school administrators, teachers, and parents are the stakeholders of the school, together with the students. coordinated and harmonious work by all stakeholders increases the success of the school. the family plays an important role in raising a child, and the importance of collaboration between school and family is increasing day by day. therefore, we expect parents to collaborate with teachers and school administrators in this process. the sample consists of 336 primary school parents randomly selected from 4 schools in edirne, turkey. we used the "parent-school collaboration scale" to collect research data. the scale contains 30 items and 5 subscales. anova (analysis of variance) was used in the analysis of the data, and in cases where the difference between population means was significant, lsd (the least significant difference) test statistical techniques were used to determine the source of the difference. interdimensional relationships were determined by the pearson correlation coefficient technique. there is a recursive relationship between the parents' collaborative attitude and their communication with the school. if the level of communication between parents and other stakeholders in the school increases, the attitude towards collaboration with the school will also be more positive. according to the research findings, the importance of parents sharing information about their children is emerging. keywords: collaboration, cooperation, parent-school, participatory management, stakeholder. citation | ergin, d. y., dogan, c., & cayak, s. (2024). parentschool collaboration based on the frequency of visits to their chi ld’s school. asian journal of education and training, 10(2), 81–88. 10.20448/edu.v10i2.5609 history: received: 28 september 2023 revised: 8 march 2024 accepted: 26 march 2024 published: 3 may 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher:asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the trakya university institute of social sciences, turkey has granted ap prov al for this study (ref. no. e-29563864-050.04-608549). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the c oncept ion and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the p ub lished version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 82 2. parent-school collaboration .................................................................................................................................................................... 82 3. research methodology ............................................................................................................................................................................... 83 4. research results........................................................................................................................................................................................... 84 5. conclusions and implications................................................................................................................................................................... 87 references ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 87 mailto:demiraliergin@gmail.com mailto:coskundogan2002@yahoo.de mailto:semihcayak@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i2.5609 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1670-4083 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6072-2721 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4360-4288 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 81-88 82 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the research team created the scale from a unique perspective, considering its dimensions and items. the quantitative data obtained from the scale were examined according to the differentiation of parents according to the frequency of communication with the school, administration, and teacher. 1. introduction the school is one of the most basic institutions that has an important function in bringing new members to society. in a well-organized school environment, individuals start to grasp the foundational structure of the society they inhabit, surpassing the influence of the family institution. while children acquire values associated with intimate human relations within the family the primary institution of socialization— they simultaneously gain insight into the demands of social life and universal values within the broader perspective of the school. starting with basic human relations, the school helps children solve problems that extend to social life. students are essential elements for society’s survival and the fulfillment of school functions, which play an important role in determining their future. school administrators, teachers, and parents are the stakeholders of the school, together with the students. the coordinated and harmonious efforts of all stakeholders significantly contribute to the overall success of the school. studies indicate that the relationship between family and school has a positive effect on student success in school. the family's role in a child's upbringing is pivotal, and the significance of collaboration between the school and the family is gradually increasing. therefore, we expect parents to collaborate with teachers and school administrators in this process. when a parent perceives that their expectations are not considered, they may be less inclined to actively engage with other stakeholders in the school, including teachers and administrators, regarding their child's educational journey (ergin & çayak, 2019b). effective collaboration between parents and the school hinges on robust communication with teachers and administrators. communication, defined as the process of transmitting information from one individual or group to another, holds a crucial position in the education and training process (tutar, 2003). 1.1. research aim the aim of this study is to investigate the frequency of communication, cooperation, and relationships between the parties related to the parent-teacher association. 2. parent-school collaboration collaboration between decision-making managers and other organizational elements affected by their decisions increases the probability of making sound decisions. ensuring that stakeholders participate in the decision-making process on issues that concern them will make it possible to make a healthier decision. this inclusive approach will motivate participants to make a more sincere effort in the implementation of the decision (köksoy, 2014). the participation of all stakeholders will increase the success of the school administration, the school , and the students. the deliberate involvement of parents in the school environment will not only increase the success of school management but also create a more democratic, transparent, and administratively beneficial school culture. in this case, parents should be more involved in the school environment. parents, often perceived as being outside the school environment, are, in fact, integral to the education process. parents have a crucial role in a student's educational journey. when school life starts, cooperation between the family and the school should start as the child enters a new environment outside the family. given that a significant portion of a child's waking hours are spent at school, the involvement of parents as stakeholders, coupled with coordinated cooperation with the school administration, becomes a key determinant in the child's success (altuntaş, demirdağ, & ertem, 2020; ergin, doğan, & taşcı, 2023). in recent years, rapid developments around the world have caused changes in many areas. all these changes have led to a change in the functioning of the school, and the expectations of parents from the school administration and teachers have changed. according to başar (1999) creating a consistent, balanced, and mutual understanding and removing all obstacles to continuing relationships and education are very important steps in school-parent cooperation. parents’ and teachers’ participation in school management will make a significant contribution to education. 2.1. parent-school management collaboration the school administration’s behavior towards other school stakeholders is critical. embracing a participatory management approach can not only enhance the motivation of all stakeholders but also contribute to the academic success of students. an effective school administration has duties such as clearly defining education and training objectives, promoting learning, and carrying out collaborative work (özmen & batmaz, 2006). building trust in school administration is the first step to fostering a positive relationship between the school and the child’s family. this trust not only enhances the quality of services provided by the school administration but also plays a pivotal role in fostering positive connections with parents. meeting parental expectations is not only beneficial for the parents, but also contributes to the overall effectiveness of the school administration. parents now want to be more involved in the school’s administration’s evaluations than before. as parents aspire to ensure optimal education for their students, they seek to exert influence on school management decisions and have their opinions acknowledged. as a result, school administrations should strive to improve school effectiveness by considering a variety of factors, including the collaboration with parents and improving decision-making processes (altuntaş et al., 2020; ergin et al., 2023). contemporary school management anticipates collaboration with parents. good relations between school and family are thought to be important for the success of the school. communication between the school and parents offer two main advantages. firstly, it fosters a trustful atmosphere between parents and the school, thereby asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 81-88 83 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group enhancing the motivation of stakeholders within the educational institution. another important benefit of the school-family relationship is that it helps parents learn about the school culture and become a part of it. parents, who see themselves as a part of the school culture, contribute more voluntarily to the education process (ergin & çayak, 2019b; hatipoğlu & kavas, 2016). 2.2. parent-teacher collaboration the teacher is the most important part of education. we expect the teacher to strive for excellence in his instruction. communication between teacher and student has an important place in a successful education. first and foremost, it is the responsibility of the school’s teacher to ensure the development of students in all aspects. the teacher-parent relationship emerges as a pivotal factor influencing a student's academic success, whether within or beyond the school environment (çayak & ergin, 2015). the communication between the school administration and the family not only increases student success, but also ensures that the communication between parents and teachers is strong and possible disciplinary incidents are prevented (aslanargun, 2007). effective collaboration between parents and teachers is based on strong communication between the two. communication, which is defined as the process of transferring information from one person or group to another person or group, has an important place in the education and training process (tutar, 2003). in this regard, the teacher should effectively communicate with all parents and ensure that parents participate in the student’s learning process. this should be one of the teacher’s primary tasks. communication between teachers and parents should not be considered one-sided. sometimes communication should also be initiated by parents (hatipoğlu & kavas, 2016). meetings that take place within the framework of cooperation between teachers and parents should be diversified, taking into account the free time of parents. various meetings can be held depending on the student's abilities, achievements, place of residence, and disciplinary events. 2.3. problem stakeholder the stakeholders of the school are the school administration, teachers, students, and parents. in addition, institutions, organizations, and other persons dealing with the problems of the school constitute third-party actors. the aim of the schools is to ensure that the curriculum determined by the administration is carried out smoothly, thus achieving higher success. teachers take an active role in implementing the educational process. the greatest task of teachers is not only to impart knowledge, but also to teach desired behaviors to new members of society. the educational process exposes students to various activities. parents take on the legal responsibility of students. identifying problems in the education process and informing other stakeholders about any problems encountered is the first step in cooperation (demirali yaşar ergin & çayak, 2019a; yildiz & balyer, 2019). 2.4. solution stakeholder any problem encountered in the education process, whether in discipline or in another field, can be solved with the cooperation of all stakeholders. the participation of stakeholders in school management is of great importance in terms of solving problems. the school administration should view teachers, students, and parents—those directly impacted by school decisions—as decision-makers and extend invitations for their participation in the resolution process. taking decisions about the school by the school's stakeholders increases the chance of a solution. having a say in the decisions taken at school, taking responsibility in this regard, influencing the school administration, and participating in the school administration in general can be defined as being a solution stakeholder (can & nikolayidis, 2020; ergin & çayak, 2019b). the involvement of school stakeholders in the decision-making process not only fosters mutual communication, but also encourages interaction among stakeholders. good communication and collaboration in solving problems will bring success to the school in all areas. 2.5. school belonging teachers, students, and parents, who are stakeholders in decision-making and authority in school management, see themselves as integral members of the school community. taking decisions together will strengthen the sense of belonging of the actors working together to solve problems in school management. engaging actors in decisionmaking processes fosters a deeper awareness of the significance of their roles. effective delegation of decisionmaking authority plays a crucial role in this context. on the other hand, commitment will ensure the integration of all the stakeholders in the school. the sense of commitment and belonging to the school will increase the performance of the school in both academic and other areas (çengel, totan, & çöğmen, 2017; ergin & çayak, 2019c; özgök & sarı, 2016). 3. research methodology 3.1. sample the sample consists of 336 primary school parents randomly selected from 4 schools in edirne, turkey. 50.30% of the participants were 40-49 years old, 81.2% were women, 40.38% were university students, 44.0% were housewives, and 77.68% had 2-3 children (table 1). 55.4% of parents last visited their child's school within a week. however, about 11.1% had not visited the school in the past month. within the last week 50.9% of parents have contacted their children's teachers. however, about 15.5% have not communicated with their teachers in the last month. within the past week, 24.1% of parents have communicated with their children's school administrators. however, about 38.2% have not had contact with school administrators in the last month (table 2). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 81-88 84 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. sampling frequency distribution. variables groups f % 1) your age? • a) 29 and younger 8 2.38 • b) 30-39 138 41.07 • c) 40-49 169 50.30 • d) 50 and above 21 6.25 2) your gender? • a) female 273 81.25 • b) male 63 18.75 4) your level of education? • a) primary school 29 8.63 • b) secondary school 35 10.42 • c) high school 102 30.36 • d) university 136 40.48 • e) master's-doctorate 34 10.12 5) your profession? • a) officer 90 26.79 • b) worker 48 14.29 • c) self-employment 39 11.61 • d) retired 11 3.27 • e) housewife 148 44.05 7) how many children do you have? • a) 1 60 17.86 • b) 2-3 261 77.68 • c) 4 and more 15 4.46 total 336 100.00 table 2. frequency of communication with the school. variables groups f % 11) when was the last time you went to your children's school? • a) i don't remember 8 2.4 • b) within the last 1 week 186 55.4 • c) within the last 1 month 113 33.6 • d) within the last semester 18 5.4 • e) within the last year 11 3.3 12) when was the last time you communicated with teachers? • a) i don't remember 22 6.5 • b) within the last 1 week 171 50.9 • c) within the last 1 month 113 33.6 • d) within the last semester 20 6.0 • e) within the last year 10 3.0 13) when was the last time you communicated with the director or his assistants? • a) i don't remember 52 15.5 • b) within the last 1 week 81 24.1 • c) within the last 1 month 125 37.2 • d) within the last semester 48 14.3 • e) within the last year 30 8.9 total 336 100.0 3.2. instrument and procedures in the collation of research data, the "parent-school collaboration scale" developed by ergin et al. (2023) was used. the scale consists of 30 items, as well as the following 5 subscales: parent-teacher collaboration, solution partnership, problem partnership, school belonging, parent-school collaboration. 3.3. data analysis anova (analysis of variance) was used in the analysis of the data, and in cases where the difference between population means was significant, lsd (the least significant difference) test statistical techniques were used to determine the source of the difference. interdimensional relationships were determined by the pearson correlation coefficient technique. 4. research results all relationships between the sum of the parent-school collaboration scale and its 5 sub-dimensions were positive and significant (table 3). table 3. correlation coefficients between parent-school cooperation dimensions. subscales m ea n s td . d ev ia ti o n n p ar en tsc h o o l m an ag em en t co ll ab o ra ti o n p ar en tte ac h er co ll ab o ra ti o n s o lu ti o n p ar tn er sh ip p ro b le m p ar tn er sh ip s ch o o l b el o n g in g p ar en ts ch o o l co ll ab o ra ti o n parent-school management collaboration 3.179 0.514 336 1 0.593** 0.680** 0.505** 0.538** 0.829** parent-teacher collaboration 3.156 0.495 336 0.593** 1 0.746** 0.565** 0.567** 0.863** solution partnership 3.077 0.521 336 0.680** 0.746** 1 0.563** 0.542** 0.883** problem partnership 3.248 0.458 336 0.505** 0.565** 0.563** 1 0.314** 0.725** school belonging 3.176 0.452 336 0.538** 0.567** 0.542** 0.314** 1 0.727** parent-school collaboration 3.167 0.395 336 0.829** 0.863** 0.883** 0.725** 0.727** 1 note: **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 81-88 85 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group with the exception of parent-school management cooperation, all other sub-dimensions and, generally, parentschool cooperation views differ according to when parents last visited their child's school (table 4). table 4. anova results for parent-school collaboration by when parents last visited their child's school. subscales f sig. parent-school management collaboration 1.785 0.131 parent-teacher collaboration 7.653 0.000 solution partnership 6.460 0.000 problem partnership 6.539 0.000 school belonging 3.909 0.004 parent-school collaboration 7.339 0.000 the parent-teacher cooperation attitudes of parents whose last visit to the school was last week were more positive than those of parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last 1 month, within the last semester, within the last year and cannot remember when they visited. parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last 1 month" have more positive parent-teacher cooperation attitudes than those who did not remember the last time they visited the school. parents who visit the school more often have more positive parent-teacher cooperation attitudes (table 5). the solution partnership attitudes of parents who do not remember the last time they visited the school are more negative than those of parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last 1 week, within the last 1 month, within the last semester." the solution partnership attitude of the parents whose last visit to the school was last week is more positive than the attitude of the parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last 1 month, within the last year and cannot remember when they visited. parents, who visit the school more often, have more positive solution partnership attitudes (table 5). the problem partnership attitudes of parents who do not remember the last time they visited the school are more negative than the parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last 1 week, within the last 1 month, within the last semester". the problem partnership attitude of the parents whose last visit to the school was last week is more positive than the attitude of the parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last 1 month, within the last semester"and cannot remember when they visited. parents, who visit the school more often, have more positive problem partnership attitudes (table 5). table 5. lsd results for parent-school collaboration by when parents last visited their child's school. subscales i j mean difference (i-j) sig. parent-teacher collaboration • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.662 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.200 0.000 • d) within the last semester 0.275 0.020 • e) within the last year 0.388 0.009 • c) within the last 1 month • a) i don't remember 0.462 0.008 • b) within the last 1 week -0.200 0.000 solution partnership • a) i don't remember • b) within the last 1 week -0.727 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month -0.548 0.003 • d) within the last semester -0.593 0.006 • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.727 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.179 0.003 • e) within the last year 0.381 0.016 problem partnership • a) i don't remember • b) within the last 1 week -0.594 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month -0.409 0.012 • d) within the last semester -0.372 0.049 • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.594 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.185 0.001 • d) within the last semester 0.222 0.044 school belonging • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.435 0.007 • c) within the last 1 month 0.168 0.002 • e) within the last year • a) i don't remember 0.415 0.045 parent-school collaboration • a) i don't remember • b) within the last 1 week -0.540 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month -0.371 0.008 • d) within the last semester -0.370 0.023 • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.540 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.169 0.000 • e) within the last year 0.256 0.031 parents whose last visit to the school was last week have more positive attitudes about school belonging than those whose last visit to school was "within the last 1 month" and cannot remember when they contacted. in addition, parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last year" have more positive attitudes about school belonging than those who did not remember the last time they visited the school (table 5). the total parent-school collaboration attitudes of parents who do not remember the last time they visited the school are more negative than the parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last 1 week, within the last 1 month, within the last semester". the total parent-school collaboration attitude of the parents whose last visit to the school was last week is more positive than the attitude of the parents whose last visit to the school was "within the last 1 month, within the last year" and cannot remember when they contacted. parents, who visit the school more often, have more positive parent-school collaboration attitudes (table 5). the authors of this study consider these relationships to be recursive. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 81-88 86 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group all sub-dimensions and total parent-school collaboration attitudes differ according to when parents last contacted their children's teachers (table 6). table 6. anova on parent-school collaboration according to when parents last contacted their children's teachers. subscales f sig. parent-school management collaboration 4.280 0.002 parent-teacher collaboration 14.327 0.000 solution partnership 5.415 0.000 problem partnership 7.381 0.000 school belonging 2.896 0.022 parent-school collaboration 9.088 0.000 the parent-school management collaboration attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last year are more negative than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "within the last 1 week, within the last 1 month, within the last semester" and cannot remember when they contacted. parents who do not remember the last time their child had contact with their teacher have more negative attitudes about parent-teacher collaboration than those who have last had contact with their child's teacher "in the last 1 week, within the last 1 month. "the parent-teacher collaboration attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last 1 week are more positive than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "within the last 1 month, within the last semester, within the last year and cannot remember when they contacted. the parent-teacher collaboration attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last year are more negative than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "within the last 1 week, within the last 1 month, within the last semester". parents who do not remember the last time their child had contact with their teacher have more negative attitudes about solution partnership than those who have last had contact with their child's teacher "in the last 1 week, within the last 1 month." the solution partnership attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last year are more negative than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "within the last 1 week, within the last 1 month". table 7. lsd on parent-school collaboration according to when parents last contacted their children's teachers. subscales i j mean difference (i-j) sig. parent-school management collaboration • e) within the last year • a) i don't remember -0.603 0.002 • b) within the last 1 week -0.625 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month -0.532 0.002 • d) within the last semester -0.425 0.030 parent-teacher collaboration • a) i don't remember • b) within the last 1 week -0.481 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month -0.269 0.013 • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.481 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.213 0.000 • d) within the last semester 0.424 0.000 • e) within the last year 0.774 0.000 • e) within the last year • b) within the last 1 week -0.774 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month -0.561 0.000 • d) within the last semester -0.350 0.050 solution partnership • a) i don't remember • b) within the last 1 week -0.340 0.003 • c) within the last 1 month -0.237 0.046 • e) within the last year • b) within the last 1 week -0.579 0.001 • c) within the last 1 month -0.476 0.005 problem partnership • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.363 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.167 0.002 • e) within the last year • b) within the last 1 week -0.534 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month -0.368 0.012 • d) within the last semester -0.350 0.041 school belonging • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.216 0.033 • d) within the last semester 0.213 0.044 parent-school collaboration • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.285 0.001 • c) within the last 1 month 0.136 0.003 • d) within the last semester 0.251 0.005 • e) within the last year 0.558 0.000 • e) within the last year • b) within the last 1 week -0.558 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month -0.422 0.001 • d) within the last semester -0.307 0.036 the problem partnership attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last year are more positive than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "within the last 1 week, within the last 1 month, within the last semester ".the problem partnership attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last 1 week are more negative than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "within the last 1 month" and cannot remember when they contacted. the school belonging attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last 1 week are more positive than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "w ithin the last semester" and cannot remember when they contacted. the parent-school collaboration attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last 1 week are more positive than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "within asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 81-88 87 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the last 1 month, within the last semester, within the last year" and cannot remember when they contacted. the parent-school collaboration attitudes of parents who have had contact with their children's teachers in within the last year are more negative than those who have had last contact with their children's teachers "within the last 1 week, within the last 1 month, within the last semester " (table 7) with the exception of problem partnership, all other sub-dimensions and total parent-school collaboration attitudes differ according to when parents last contacted their children's school administrators (table 8). table 8. anova for parent-school collaboration according to when parents last contacted school administrators of their children. subscales f sig. parent-school management collaboration 8.278 0.000 parent-teacher collaboration 3.345 0.011 solution partnership 5.474 0.000 problem partnership 2.211 0.068 school belonging 5.206 0.000 parent-school collaboration 7.036 0.000 the parent-school management collaboration, parent-teacher collaboration, school belonging and total parent-school collaboration attitudes of parents who have had contact with school administrators in the last 1 week are more positive than those who have had last contact with school administrators "within the last 1 month, within the last semester, within the last year" and cannot remember when they visited. the solution partnership attitudes of parents who have had contact with school administrators in the last 1 week are more positive than those who have had last contact with school administrators "within the last 1 month, within the last year" and cannot remember when they visited. parents who have more frequent contact with school administrators have more positive total parent-school collaboration attitudes (table 9). table 9. lsd for parent-school collaboration according to when parents last contacted schooladministrators of their children. subscales i j mean difference (i-j) sig. parent-school management collaboration • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember last 0.426 0.000 • c) within the 1 month 0.293 0.000 • d) within the last semester 0.272 0.003 • e) within the last year 0.443 0.000 parent-teacher collaboration • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.280 0.001 • c) within the last 1 month 0.184 0.009 • d) within the last semester 0.222 0.013 • e) within the last year 0.219 0.036 solution partnership • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.336 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.257 0.000 • e) within the last year 0.374 0.001 school belonging • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.299 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.252 0.000 • d) within the last semester 0.176 0.029 • e) within the last year 0.216 0.023 parent-school collaboration • b) within the last 1 week • a) i don't remember 0.309 0.000 • c) within the last 1 month 0.225 0.000 • d) within the last semester 0.176 0.012 • e) within the last year 0.287 0.000 5. conclusions and implications with the exception of parent-school management cooperation, all other sub-dimensions and, generally, parentschool cooperation views differ according to when parents last visited their child's school. as parents' visits to school become more frequent, collaboration with the school increases. all sub-dimensions and total parent-school collaboration attitudes differ according to when parents last contacted their children's teachers. as parents' communication with the teacher increases, so does school collaboration. with the exception of problem partnership, all other sub-dimensions and total parent-school collaboration attitudes differ according to when parents last contacted their children's school administrators. as parents' communication with the school administration increases, collaboration with the school increases. parents’ collaborative attitudes and their communication with the school have a reciprocal relationship. if the level of communication between parents and other stakeholders in the school increases, the attitude towards collaboration with the school will also be more positive. according to the research findings, the importance of parents sharing information about their children is emerging. references altuntaş, b., demirdağ, s., & ertem, h. y. 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(2019). monetary problems in public schools in the context of school stakeholders: a phenomenological research. pamukkale üniversitesi eğitim fakültesi dergisi, 46(46), 349-364. https://doi.org/10.9779/pauefd.463715 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.17240/aibuefd.2017.17.32772-363966 https://doi.org/10.15869/itobiad.90789 https://doi.org/10.9779/pauefd.463715 42 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 2, 42-47, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4657 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigation of middle school teachers' open-ended question writing skills hatice kumandas ozturk artvin coruh university, faculty of education, artvin, turkey. email: haticekumandas@yahoo.com abstract in this study, the skills of middle school teachers to write open-ended questions that measure higher-order mental skills were examined. for this purpose, 18 middle school teachers who worked in artvin, turkey and volunteered to participate in the study were asked to write questions. teachers wrote open-ended questions for a total of 4 courses (sciences, mathematics, turkish, and social studies) in accordance with the specified outcomes. in the study designed in the document review pattern of qualitative research methods, questions were analyzed using an evaluation form. as a result of the evaluations, it was observed that teachers were more concerned with the content dimension of the outcomes while writing questions but disregarded the cognitive level of the outcome. it was also found that teachers were inadequate in terms of language and expression in all branches, showed a tendency to copy questions from a source, or could not move away from the question writing style they adopted. however, it was determined that there were especially expression errors, subject-verb agreement problems, and punctuation marks were not used correctly in the questions written. keywords: higher order thinking skills, in-class measurement and evaluation, open-ended question, assessment instruments, question type appropriateness. citation | ozturk, h. k. (2023). investigation of middle school teachers’ open-ended question writing skills. asian journal of education and training, 9(2), 42–47. 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4657 history: received: 13 march 2023 revised: 27 april 2023 accepted: 4 may 2023 published: 11 may 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 43 2. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 44 3. results/findings .............................................................................................................................................................................. 44 4. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 46 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 46 mailto:haticekumandas@yahoo.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i2.4657 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3636-3690 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 42-47 43 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature in turkey, there are not many studies examining teachers' ability to write open-ended question and higher-order thinking skills. in addition, there is no study related to the review titles discussed in this study. in this respect, it is thought that the study will contribute to the field. 1. introduction in the current information era, societies have switched from a teacher-centered to a student-centered approach to education. in this regard, many countries have updated their curriculum and embraced methodologies like the constructivist approach, which places a strong emphasis on learning and the student. in line with the updates and innovations, it is now crucial to link learning outcomes with life skills in the curriculum and to emphasize higher order thinking skills such as reading comprehension, research, questioning, critical thinking and problem solving. as a result of globalization, education programs in turkey have also been revised to adapt to the changing world and raise qualified individuals. these changes in the curricula have led to changes in measurement and evaluation activities, which are the controlling elements of education. the changes reflected in the measurement and evaluation process have gained importance in points such as using various evaluation approaches (written exams, portfolios, performance evaluations with open-ended questions, selfassessment, etc.) that focus more on the process rather than the outcome and vary according to the purpose. in this context, a prominent feature of the renewed primary education programs when evaluated in these two dimensions is the development and measurement of higher-order thinking skills by establishing a connection with daily life (demirtasli, 2010). higher-order thinking skills, which is one of the concepts emphasized in the association of questions with life skills is defined as the individual's use of multiple skills in relation to their individual abilities (kutlu, doğan, & karakaya, 2010). higher-order thinking skills are defined in the new taxonomy, conducted by bloom and updated under the leadership of anderson and krathwohl (2001) as behaviors at the analysis, evaluation, and creation stages. moreover, miri, david, and uri (2007) characterize questions that examine higher-order thinking skills as those involving real-life situations, discussion, problem-solving, critical thinking, and content based on experiences (zoller et al., 2000). in relation to this concept, one of the emphasized points in the new program is the examination of cognitive levels of questions used in the measurement and evaluation process with appropriate question types. in the literature, it is emphasized that the use of open-ended questions in measuring higher-order cognitive skills and using information (badger & thomas, 1991) is more effective than other question types. open-ended questions are defined as a question style where students freely answer questions conveyed in a question mode or command mode according to their cognitive levels and writing skills (erkus, 2006). brookhart (2015) states that open-ended questions help individuals apply higher-order cognitive skills and provide an environment for expressing their thoughts freely. some researchers (friborg & rosenvinge, 2013; hadenfeldt, bernholt, liu, neumann, & parchmann, 2013) emphasize that one of the most effective assessment and evaluation methods for determining students' mathematical literacy and verbal expression skills, in situations where the desired product needs to be presented by the student, like as problem solving as well as measuring qualities such as creative thinking power, the ability to organize information, and evaluating the internal and external consistency of thoughts is through open-ended questions. it has been observed that students who were examined by using open-ended questions, have higher awareness about their own learning situations (cooney, sanchez, leatham, & mewborn, 2004) and that many real-world problems can be measured with this question type (boaler, 1998). according to o'neil jr and brown (1998), the use of an open-ended question format requires the use of more cognitive strategies and better reveals the learning process. it is stated that open-ended questions are more advantageous in measuring higher-order thinking skills than other question types (bahar, nartgun, durmus, & bıçak, 2012), and they allow individuals to present results using their reasoning power and creative thinking skills in solving problems with multiple solutions but lacking information (akay, soybaş, & argün, 2006). open-ended questions are an effective type of evaluation for measuring many higher-order cognitive processes, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and generating new ideas (wright, 2010). additionally, open-ended questions reveal different aspects of the feature or achievement to be measured and allow for the development of individuals' writing, speaking, and reading comprehension skills (hancock, 1995). there are several points to consider when writing open-ended questions (cooney et al., 2004). these include: • being open to interpretation. • providing context. • allowing for multiple solution paths, not just a single one. • being clear and understandable. • using a graded scoring key during the evaluation process. there are some disadvantages to using open-ended questions in examining school learning alongside their numerous advantages. one of these is that the implementation and scoring of open-ended questions take more time compared to other question types (dogan, 2013). additionally, if this question type is not well-prepared, it can fall short in ensuring content validity (ozcelik, 2011; romagnano, 2001). furthermore, there are disadvantages in an exam composed of open-ended questions such as effective time usage, limited number of questions, and scoring objectivity (atılgan, 2004; kan, 2013). given the advantages and disadvantages highlighted above, field experts stress that the open-ended questions used to measure higher order thinking skills in educational institutions should be written correctly. therefore, this study aimed to examine the open-ended question writing skills of secondary school teachers working in artvin province used to measure high-level mental skills. to this end, the authors selected previously defined learning outcomes in the curricula for the subjects taught by the teachers who volunteered for the study and asked them to asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 42-47 44 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group write appropriate open-ended questions. they then analyzed the questions under four main headings in line with the principles of measurement and evaluation, and sought answers to the following questions: questions written by teachers; in the perspective of, • language and expression. • compliance with the content and cognitive level of the skill to be acquired. • relevance to question type. • originality. are written in accordance with the principles of measurement and evaluation? 2. method 2.1. research model in this study, middle school teachers were asked to write open-ended questions from a total of 4 courses, namely sciences, mathematics, turkish and social studies in accordance with the learning outcomes and the questions were examined by field, language and measurement and evaluation experts in line with measurement and evaluation rules, grammar rules and open-ended question writing principles. this research was designed in the document analysis pattern, which is one of the qualitative research methods. yildirim and simsek (2011) defined document analysis as the examination of visual materials containing information about the phenomena or events to be investigated. in the study designed in qualitative research design, the questions were analyzed by preparing an evaluation form. the results were summarized with graphs. 2.2. working group for this purpose, 20 questions written by 18 teachers who voluntarily participated in the question writing study were analyzed. table 1 shows the distribution of the teachers who wrote questions and the questions they wrote by courses. table 1. distribution of teachers and the questions they wrote. courses number of teachers number of questions turkish 6 6 science 5 5 mathematics 5 6 social studies 2 3 total 18 20 2.3. data and analysis the data of the study were analyzed using the review form developed by the researcher for the evaluation of teachers' questions. in this form, there are themes of language and expression, conformity to the learning outcome, conformity to the question type and originality. the items under these themes were evaluated by marking "yes" (1) and "no" (0). in the process of analyzing the data. each teacher was given the achievements in his/her own field, which are included in the curriculum and allow the measurement of high-level cognitive processes. they were asked to write questions appropriate to these achievements. some of the achievements given to the teachers are as follows: • analyzes and distinguishes types of texts. • generates different solutions to problems. • it makes inferences about the characteristics of its states. • discusses the causes and consequences of migration in societies. • compare the densities of liquids by experimenting. • relates the cause of the refraction of light to the change of environment. • it poses problems that require four operations. • recognizes and associates area measurement units. each teacher wrote one or two questions from his/her own field (science, mathematics, turkish and social studies) in accordance with the learning outcomes. there were 20 questions in total. the questions were analyzed by two measurement and evaluation experts. in analyzing the data, common points were identified in the evaluations made by the experts and these points were compared with graphs according to the courses. the harmony between the evaluations of the experts was determined using the kappa statistics (α). the results are given in table 2. table 2. evaluation process and kappa statistics results. assessment themes kappa (α) statistics language and expression 0.93* eligibility for benefits 0.95* question type eligibility 0.97* originality 0.92* note: *p<0.05. as a result of the kappa statistics in table 2, all themes showed harmony ranging from 0.92-0.97 (p<0.05). 3. results/findings figure 1 shows the results of the analysis of the questions written by the teachers in terms of language and comprehension (spelling error, poor punctuation, subject-verb mismatch, unnecessary word use, and lack of clarity). asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 42-47 45 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. analysis of questions in terms of language and comprehension. it can be seen that the vast majority of the questions written by the teachers contain narrative errors. in addition, the experts found almost all of the questions written for science to be unclear and incomprehensible. most of the teachers paid attention to punctuation. however, most of the science and mathematics teachers made spelling mistakes in their questions. figure 2 shows the results of the analysis of the teachers' written questions in terms of being appropriate for the required learning outcome. figure 2. analysis of questions in terms of learning outcome appropriateness. while almost all of the questions written by the teachers are appropriate for the learning outcome in terms of content, the number of questions appropriate for the required outcome at a cognitive level is low. figure 3 shows the results of the analysis of the teachers' questions in terms of being appropriate for the type of question. figure 3. analysis of questions in terms of being appropriate for the type of question. the vast majority of the questions written by science and mathematics teachers were not found appropriate for the level. no branch showed any problems in terms of scientific accuracy. half of the questions written for turkish and social studies used unnecessary visuals. figure 4 shows the results of the analysis of the teachers' written questions in terms of originality. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 42-47 46 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 4. analysis of the teachers' written questions in terms of originality. in all branches, it was seen that teachers wrote some of the questions inspired by another question. more teachers in the science branch than in the other branches were found to have copied the questions they wrote from other sources verbatim. moreover, it was observed that most of the teachers tended to write the questions in the same way. 4. conclusion and discussion as a result of the analysis, it was seen that the teachers were only interested in the content dimension of the learning outcomes while writing questions, but they ignored the cognitive level. in the studies conducted, it is seen that teachers mostly use the first two steps of bloom's taxonomy, recall and comprehension, when writing questions and do not prefer to write questions that examine higher level cognitive skills (aslan, 2011; karaman, 2005). in parallel with these results, usta (2022) stated in his study that teachers had difficulty in understanding the cognitive levels of the questions and that they had problems in writing questions that associate higher-order cognitive skills with learning outcomes. the relationship between the questions asked and their cognitive levels is very important in the development of students' higher-order thinking skills (savage, 1998). therefore, eliminating these deficiencies of teachers is an important point in improving the quality of education. in the researches (aydın, 2019; khan & inamullah, 2011; maden & durukan, 2013), it is seen that teachers generally use exams in which different question types (short answer, multiple choice, open-ended, matching, etc.) are used together in line with a recommendation made by the ministry of national education (meb, 2003) without looking at the cognitive levels of the achievements while writing questions (özen, 2020). and herein, the use of question types that measure lower-level skills while testing the acquisitions for higher level cognitive skills will cause learning level of the students to be measured with an exam that is not valid and decisions will be made accordingly. in this respect, it is important that the exam questions are examined with a valid question type in terms of content and cognitive level. in the study, it was found that instructors in all areas had very poor language and expressive skills. particularly expression abnormalities, subject-predicate inconsistencies, and poor punctuation were seen in the written questions. moreover, the fact that turkish teachers made grammatical errors just like other branch teachers, is an important finding that needs to be emphasized. although there is not much research on this finding in the literature, arıcı (2021), in his research examining the general writing skills of pre-service teachers, found that errors related to content, main idea, coherence, expression disorder, title, information mistakes, grammar mistakes, word repetitions, spelling and punctuation were made in the texts written regardless of the branches. as a result of the findings of the research, it should be emphasized that the ability to use written language correctly should be acquired both during university education and while working as a teacher. another conclusion of this study is that teachers prefer to duplicate questions from sources when creating openended questions, are not particularly creative, or are limited by the question-writing style they have chosen (similar to the one in another source). these findings lead to the recommendation that teachers get in-service training in order to understand the significance of creating accurate questions and employing accurate language when evaluating their students and to remedy their shortcomings in this area. references akay, h., soybaş, d., & argün, z. (2006). problem-building experiences and the use of open-ended questions in mathematics teaching. kastamonu journal of education, 14(1), 129–146. anderson, l. w., & krathwohl, d. r. (2001). a taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. new york: addison wesley longman. arıcı, b. (2021). written expression errors of teacher candidates. journal of basic education(2), 42-50. https://doi.org/10.52105/temelegitim.3.2.4 aslan, c. (2011). the effect of teaching practices aimed at improving questioning skills on the question creation skills of teacher candidates. education and science, 36(160), 236-249. atılgan, h. (2004). a study of generalizability theory and comparison of the multivariate rasch model. unpublished phd thesis, hacettepe university, institute of social sciences, ankara. aydın, m. 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(2010). determination of student success. ankara: pegem academy. maden, a., & durukan, a. (2013). evaluation of turkish lesson written questions according to learning areas, question types and taxonomies (erzurum province example). journal of ataturk university kazim karabekir education faculty, 19 95-114. meb. (2003). ministry of national education (meb) regulation on primary education institutions. official gazette dated 27 august 2003 and numbered 25212. retrieved from https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr miri, b., david, b., & uri, z. (2007). purposely teaching for the promotion of higher-order thinking skills: a case of critical thinking. research in science education, 37, 353–369. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-006-9029-2 o'neil jr, h. f., & brown, r. s. (1998). differential effects of question formats in math assessment on metacognition and affect. applied measurement in education, 11(4), 331-351. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15324818ame1104_3 ozcelik, d. a. 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(2011). qualitative research methods in the social sciences (8th ed.). ankara: seçkin yayınevi. zoller, u., ben-chaim, d., ron, s., pentimalli, r., scolastica, s., chiara, m. s., & borsese, a. (2000). the disposition toward critical thinking of high school and university science students: an interintra israeli-italian study. international journal of science education, 22(6), 571-582. https://doi.org/10.1080/095006900289679 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.5951/jresematheduc.29.1.0041 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-011-9597-8 https://doi.org/10.1021/ed3006192 https://doi.org/10.5951/mt.88.6.0496 https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v7n9p149 https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-006-9029-2 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15324818ame1104_3 https://doi.org/10.5951/mt.94.1.0031 https://doi.org/10.1080/00098659809602727 https://doi.org/10.1080/095006900289679 70 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 2, 70-87, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i2.6937 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group year-wise analysis of school responsiveness of school teachers towards nishtha 2.0 online in-service teacher education program aayushi1 kavita mittal2 ( corresponding author) 1,2department of education, banasthali vidyapith, rajasthan, india. 1email: aayushisingh823@gmail.com 2email: kavitamittal@banasthali.in abstract the present study aims to assess the responsiveness of school teachers to the 13-course module of the nishtha 2.0 online in-service teacher education program. this research employs a descriptive survey method. the study involved teachers from the muzaffarpur district in bihar, india, who participated from 2021 to 2024. eight blocks (four from the eastern subdivision and four from the western) were randomly selected from a total of sixteen using the lottery method, and teachers from these blocks were chosen through cluster sampling. data collection tools included a self-made inventory and semi-structured interviews. percentage analysis and the t-test were used as primary statistical tools for analyzing quantitative data, while qualitative data from interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. notable differences were observed in enrollment and completion rates among the 13 courses in the nishtha 2.0 program, with overall participation declining over time. each course recorded some level of responsiveness from school teachers, indicating that all modules engaged at least a portion of the target population, despite variations across years, blocks, and subjects. no course exceeded 50% enrollment in any year, suggesting staggered teacher participation over multiple years. this study contributes to the global understanding of professional development by offering valuable insights into the design and implementation of large-scale online in-service programs. keywords: digital learning, diksha, in-service teacher education, nishtha, online professional development, responsiveness, secondary school teachers. citation | aayushi, & mittal, k. (2025). year-wise analysis of school responsiveness of school teachers towards nishtha 2.0 online in-service teacher education program. asian journal of education and training, 11(2), 70–87. 10.20448/edu.v11i2.6937 history: received: 2 june 2025 revised: 8 july 2025 accepted: 17 july 2025 published: 25 july 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the banasthali vidyapith (deemed university), india has granted approval for this study on 29 april 2023 (ref. no. rac no./09/2023-24). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 2. review of literature ........................................................................................................................................................................ 71 3. research gap .................................................................................................................................................................................... 72 4. research objectives ........................................................................................................................................................................ 72 5. research hypothesis ....................................................................................................................................................................... 72 6. method of the study ........................................................................................................................................................................ 72 7. sample and sampling techniques ................................................................................................................................................ 72 8. research tool ................................................................................................................................................................................... 72 9. research procedure ......................................................................................................................................................................... 73 10. statistical techniques .................................................................................................................................................................. 73 11. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 74 12. major findings and discussions ................................................................................................................................................. 85 13. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 86 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 87 https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i2.6937 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8702-963x https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7717-0163 mailto:aayushisingh823@gmail.com mailto:kavitamittal@banasthali.in https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 71 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study is original in exploring the post-covid transition to online in-service teacher training through the nishtha program on diksha. with limited prior research in this area, it uniquely examines participation trends and digital engagement, addressing a critical gap in large-scale professional development within the indian education system. 1. introduction teachers are the most important pillars of education and play a vital role in the nation's development. since teachers are regarded as the nation's builders, there ought to be competent teachers who can provide the nation's youth with a higher quality of education. since communication and technology are becoming increasingly important in society, technology must be utilized in education and incorporated into all its aspects. this includes using technology to enhance school planning, management, and administration; teaching, learning, and assessment procedures; teacher training; professional development; and accessibility for all residents. the new education policy 2020 states that teachers have a responsibility to shape students' destinies and, consequently, the future of the country. teachers must be empowered and inspired for the benefit of the nation and its pupils. in-service teacher education programs are crucial for motivating and empowering teachers by enhancing their prior expertise and skills. with the help of samagra siksha, formerly known as sarva siksha abhiyan, scerts has been focusing on teacher training over the past few years. the federal and state governments are continuously striving to enhance the teaching-learning process in teacher education programs. in 2019, samagra siksha introduced nishtha, or the national initiative for school heads and teachers holistic advancement, a crucial in-person teacher-learning program. the new education policy requires all teachers, including head teachers, to participate in at least 50 hours of ongoing professional development. the ministry of education, the government of india, and state education departments started an online in-service teacher education program in 2020 to provide learning continuity across several digital platforms through nishtha using the diksha application. ncert has planned to use the diksha platform in other languages to continue the nishtha-integrated teacher training; the courses will include self-assessment, practice exercises, reflective activities, video links, and some learning materials. teachers will also receive certificates upon completion of the courses. the list of courses for the nishtha 2.0 program on diksha for teachers serving as an in-service teacher education program is as follows: 1. curriculum and inclusive classrooms, 2. using ict in education, evaluation, and learning, 3. school-based health and wellbeing, 4. personal social qualities and holistic development, 5. art-integrated learning, 6. comprehension of secondary-stage students, 7. concept and practice of school leadership, 8. vocational education, 9. gender-related issues in education, 10. school initiatives, 11. toy based on pedagogy, 12. school-based assessment, 13. pedagogies in hindi, english, urdu, sanskrit, mathematics, science, and social science even if there is a video link attached for better comprehension of the course material, the diksha app contains all the course details. the assessment is based on learning, and the certificate is awarded once the course is completed. 2. review of literature 1. anju (2022) conducted a study on an analysis of in-service teacher education programmes in higher education. the study aims to investigate the efficacy of in-service teacher education in haryana's higher education system. a descriptive survey method was employed due to its nature. professors, associate professors, and assistant professors from universities and colleges enrolled in in-service teacher education programmes comprised the study population. a multistage sampling procedure was used for sample selection. initially, five districts were randomly selected from each of haryana's six divisions. in the subsequent phase, four districts were randomly chosen. in the third phase, twenty administrators were randomly selected from the hrdc/asc in the haryana districts chosen at random. data collection involved one checklist and two selfconstructed questionnaires. data analysis and interpretation were conducted using the percentage technique. the majority of participants (83.3%) reported that the in-service teacher education programme registration process was excellent. additionally, 50% of participants indicated that the management of the parenting institute cooperated well and fairly. 2. kalyani (2024) the role of nishtha in enhancing pedagogical practices: an empirical investigation. this study investigates how the national initiative for school heads and teachers' holistic advancement (nishtha) program affects the modification and enhancement of instructional strategies in the classroom. this study examines how nishtha influences classroom practices, teacher professional development, and overall pedagogical efficacy. the study employed a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative analysis of participant surveys with qualitative insights from interviews and classroom observations. results demonstrate how the program impacts student involvement, teacher attitudes, and teaching tactics. 3. bhardwaj and rathee (2024) mooc-based in-service training for the professional development of teachers in india. the study was survey-based and used a questionnaire and group interviews to collect data from the haryana government school teachers. a non-probability sampling technique was used. the results of the research indicate that teachers accept the initiative and expect that more such activities could be carried out in the future. several teachers suggested utilizing a blended approach for teacher in-service training to improve the overall quality of the training, citing issues including limited communication options and poor internet connectivity. kanvaria and dubey (2022) diksha, nishtha and cpd: experiences and perceptions of school learningfacilitators. the article highlights that among the most well-known sectors, education is undergoing significant change. since the pandemic has taken hold, integrating technology into teaching is the only remaining alternative. the current study emphasizes how technology is incorporated into learning facilitators' continuous professional development (cpd). it also considers their opinions on online training. on the diksha portal, the views of 20 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 72 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group government school learning facilitators enrolled in the nishtha integrated training program have been considered. 4. a questionnaire with both open-ended and rating scale-style questions was used to gather the data. google forms were utilized to collect responses. the answers reveal differing opinions about e-training among learning facilitators. 5. uzunboylu (2007) conducted a study examining teachers’ attitudes toward online education following their participation in an online in-service training program. the findings revealed that a majority of teachers held positive views about online learning, appreciating its flexibility and convenience compared to traditional faceto-face training. this positive attitude highlights the potential effectiveness of online programs in delivering professional development for teachers. however, the study also noted some challenges and mixed feelings among participants, indicating the need for continuous improvement in course design and delivery to better meet teachers’ needs. this research underscores the growing acceptance of online education as a viable mode for teacher training and professional growth. 3. research gap the national education policy 2020 states that basic literacy and numeracy, as well as a national resource bank, will be prepared and made available through the digital infrastructure of knowledge sharing and access (diksha). in-service training will help ensure that everyone is aware of environmental, safety, and occupational health regulations in schools. the researcher found that using the diksha website to implement the nishtha in-service teacher education program online may present several difficulties. this study will identify various issues and potential solutions after evaluating and illustrating the current situation of in-service teacher education. 4. research objectives 1. to analyze the academic year-wise variations in school teachers’ responsiveness towards the nishtha online in-service teacher education program (tep). 2. to assess the year-wise differences in teacher engagement, enrollment, and course completion under the nishtha online program. 3. to examine the factors responsible for variations in school teachers' responsiveness to the nishtha online in-service teacher education program across different academic years. 5. research hypothesis 1. there is a significant variation in school teachers’ responsiveness towards the nishtha online in-service teacher education program across different academic years. 2. there is a significant difference in the responsiveness of school teachers regarding gender, experience, and teaching subjects. 6. method of the study the researcher has selected the descriptive survey method based on the nature of the problem and the objectives of the study. 7. sample and sampling techniques in the present study, eight blocks of muzaffarpur district, bihar, were randomly selected from sixteen blocks (divided into east and west subdivisions) using the lottery method. four blocks were chosen from each subdivision: bochahan, mushahari (urban and rural), sakra, and minapur from the east; and kanti, kurhani, marwan, and saraiya from the west. in these blocks, the rajkiya madhyamik and uchch madhyamik schools operated by the department of education, government of bihar, were included in the sample. teachers from these schools were selected using a cluster sampling method, resulting in a total sample of 394 secondary school teachers for the study. table 1 presents the gender-wise distribution of the sample and the number of schools selected from each block for the study. table 1. sample used in the present study (gender wise/ number of schools in each block).. s. no. names of selected blocks subdivision of the block number of schools number of teachers female male total 1. bochahan east subdivision 6 10 16 26 2. mushahari urban east sub-division 12 33 31 64 mushahari rural east subdivision 8 13 18 31 3 sakra east sub-division 6 38 47 85 4 minapur east sub-division 6 17 17 34 5 kanti west sub-division 6 4 22 26 6. kurhani west sub-division 8 16 28 44 7. marwan west sub-division 9 28 30 58 8. saraiya west sub-division 7 9 17 26 total 62 168 226 394 8. research tool the nishtha 2.0 online in-service education course module: school teachers' responsiveness inventory was a self-developed tool created by the researcher. after consulting with experts, the researcher developed an inventory to achieve several goals: (1) to collect information about teachers' names, gender, subjects taught, experience, and educational background; (2) to record the block in which they completed the nishtha 2.0 course and the block where they are currently employed; and (3) to document teachers' enrollment year for each of the thirteen course modules, their course completion status, and the reasons behind course completion. the data from this inventory were also used during the analysis and interpretation phase, and further, percentages were calculated to analyze the data collected through this inventory. the researcher opted for a self-constructed tool due to the asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 73 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group limited availability of prior research specifically examining teachers' perceptions and responsiveness towards the program. additionally, a semi-structured interview was held with the school teachers, during which they were posed a series of open-ended questions. these included inquiries about reasons for not enrolling in or completing certain courses, their level of responsiveness towards the nishtha 2.0 courses, and any challenges or problems they faced while accessing the courses on the diksha app. 9. research procedure the researcher initially developed a tool for collecting personal and professional information from school teachers for the nishtha 2.0 course modules. this inventory was converted into google forms and circulated via email and whatsapp to secondary school teachers, encouraging them to complete and share the forms. data were collected and stored in excel. although district-level data on nishtha 2.0 course completion for bihar school teachers can be found in online repositories, the lack of blockand course-level scrutiny and year-by-year data makes them inadequate as secondary data sources for this study. to ensure the collection of honest and comprehensive details, the researcher personally visited the selected schools, engaging directly with teachers to gather relevant information regarding their responsiveness to the nishtha 2.0 courses, reasons for nonenrollment or non-completion, and challenges faced while using the diksha app. after collecting sufficient responses, scoring was conducted, and the raw data were tabulated, analyzed, and interpreted using percentage analysis. based on the study’s hypothesis, conclusions were subsequently drawn. throughout the analysis process, each hypothesis was tested and evaluated appropriately. relevant tables were used to help consolidate the key hypotheses. 10. statistical techniques the data collected for this study were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. to determine the distribution of school teachers across various categories, including gender, subject taught, and course completion rates for each year, a percentage analysis was utilized for the quantitative data collected from the inventory. the mean was calculated to understand the average teacher responsiveness and engagement levels with the nishtha 2.0 courses. additionally, since the data represent the total number of courses completed by each participant, independent samples t-tests were used to compare the mean number of courses completed across groups such as gender, teaching experience (e.g., low vs. high), and subject taught (e.g., science vs. arts). this allowed the researcher to assess if significant differences existed in course completion levels between these groups. the use of these statistical methods enabled a comprehensive analysis of the collected data, highlighting significant patterns and relationships relevant to the study’s objectives. table 2 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers, highlighting the level of engagement with the nishtha in-service teacher education program over the study period. table 2. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness. courses year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) course 1 curriculum and an inclusive classroom n % n % n % n % n % n % 180 46% 87 22% 86 22% 16 4% 4 1% 22 6% course 2 using ict in education 185 47% 90 23% 84 22% 16 4% 2 1% 17 5% course 3 school-based health and wellbeing 170 43% 89 23% 84 22% 17 5% 7 2% 27 7% course 4 personal social qualities holistic development 192 5% 88 23% 85 22% 16 4% 3 1% 17 5% course 5 art-integrated learning 179 46% 88 22% 89 22% 16 4% 9 2% 13 3% course 6 comprehension of secondary-stage students 170 44% 83 21% 82 21% 17 5% 18 5% 24 6% course 7 concept and practice of school leadership 17 5% 67 17% 73 19% 14 4% 86 22% 137 35% course 8 vocational education 178 46% 89 23% 90 23% 16 4% 7 2% 14 4% course 9 gender-related issues in education 169 43% 88 23% 83 21% 19 5% 14 4% 21 5% course 10 school initiative 121 31% 79 20% 63 16% 17 5% 85 22% 29 7% course 11 toy based on pedagogy 19 5% 25 7% 14 4% 3 1% 213 54% 120 31% course 12 school-based assessment 179 46% 84 22% 84 22% 22 6% 21 6% 4 1% course 13 subject specific pedagogy 118 30% 74 19% 86 22% 29 8% 36 10% 51 13% note: the percentage was calculated based on the number of participating teachers, as the variable in consideration is discrete; accordingly, the percentages have been presented in a rounded-off manner rather than in decimal points. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 74 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. illustrating course completion variations in different years. figure 1 illustrates the variations in course completion across different years, indicating changes in teacher participation in the nishtha modules over time. 11. results there are notable differences in secondary school teachers' responses to the 13 courses in the nishtha 2.0 online in-service teacher education program. high enrollment in all courses in 2021 indicates a significant initial interest in professional development, which may have been influenced by the covid-19 pandemic's increased availability of time. courses such as "personal social qualities and holistic development" (192 participants) and "using ict in education, evaluation, and learning" (185 participants) demonstrated the highest engagement, highlighting their relevance to instructional strategies. however, participation gradually declined over time, with a sharp decrease by 2024. for example, enrollment in "curriculum and inclusive classroom" dropped from 180 in 2021 to just 16 in 2024, and 213 teachers enrolled in "toy-based pedagogy" but did not complete the course. teachers' challenges with time constraints and conflicting goals are further evidenced by the categories "nc" (enrolled but not completed) and "ne" (not enrolled). the study of teacher responsiveness in the nishtha 2.0 online in-service teacher education program shows that overall participation has been decreasing over time, with significant variations in enrollment and completion rates among the 13 courses. course-wise analysis of the responsiveness of secondary school teachers across different years: • course 1: curriculum and inclusive classroom table 3 presents the responsiveness of school teachers towards course 1: curriculum and the inclusive classroom, indicating their level of participation and engagement with the course. table 3. shows the responsiveness of school teachers towards the course 1 curriculum and the inclusive classroom. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 180 46% 87 22% 86 22% 16 4% 4 1% 22 6% figure 2 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of school teachers towards course 1: curriculum and the inclusive classroom, showing the distribution of participation over different academic years. the data for course 1: curriculum and inclusive classroom in the nishtha 2.0 program reveals secondary school teachers' responsiveness from 2021 to 2024. completion rates peaked in 2021 (45.68%), then sharply declined to 22.02% in 2022, 21.82% in 2023, and just 4.06% in 2024. only 1.01% of teachers enrolled but did not complete the course (nc), and 5.58% did not enroll (ne), suggesting potential barriers or competing priorities. this trend indicates a gradual decline in engagement, raising questions about evolving teacher training needs. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 75 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 2. indicating year-wise responsiveness toward course 1 curriculum and inclusive classroom. • course 2: using ict in education, evaluation, and learning table 4 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 2: using ict in education, evaluation, and learning, highlighting their level of engagement across different academic years. table 4. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness for course 2 using ict in education, evaluation, and learning. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 185 47% 90 23% 84 22% 16 4% 2 1% 17 5% figure 3 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 2: using ict in education, evaluation, and learning, depicting the variation in participation over the years. figure 3. indicating year-wise responsiveness toward course 2 using ict in education, evaluation, and learning. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 76 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the graph for course 2, "using ict in education, evaluation, and learning," reveals a clear trend in teacher responsiveness. participation peaked in 2021 with 46.95% of teachers completing the course, driven by the immediate relevance of ict integration during the covid-19 pandemic. however, participation declined significantly to 22.84% in 2022, 21.31% in 2023, and just 4.06% in 2024. the "nc" category (enrolled but not completed) remained low at 0.50%, while "ne". • course 3: school-based health and wellbeing table 5 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 3: school-based health and wellbeing, highlighting their participation trends across different academic years. table 5. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness for course 3, school-based health and wellbeing. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 170 43% 89 23% 84 22% 17 5% 7 2% 27 7% figure 4 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 3: school-based health and wellbeing, showing the changes in participation across the academic years. figure 4. indicating year-wise responsiveness toward course 3school-based health and wellbeing. course 3, "school-based health and wellbeing," showed strong teacher participation in 2021 at 43.14%, but numbers declined sharply over the years, reaching just 4.31% in 2024. this drop suggests decreasing interest or ability to engage with the course. with some teachers not completing (1.77%) or not enrolling (6.85%), the trend indicates a need to reinforce the importance of health and well-being in schools to support a positive learning environment. • course 4: personal social qualities and holistic development table 6 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 4: personal-social qualities and holistic development, highlighting patterns of participation over different academic years. table 6. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness for course 4 personal social qualities and holistic development. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 192 5% 88 23% 85 22% 16 4% 3 1% 17 5% figure 5 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 4: personal-social qualities and holistic development, indicating the variation in participation across different years. teacher engagement in course 4, "personal social qualities and holistic development," began with nearly half of the secondary school teachers enrolling in 2021. however, participation dropped significantly in 2022 and 2023, and by 2024, only a small fraction remained to complete the course. this decline is likely because most teachers had already completed it in the previous year. additionally, a small percentage of teachers did not enroll at all, and an even smaller number enrolled but did not complete the course. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 77 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 5. indicating year-wise responsiveness toward course 4 personal social qualities and holistic development. • course 5: art-integrated learning table 7 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 5: art-integrated learning, highlighting their participation across various academic years. table 7. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness for course 5 art-integrated learning. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 179 46% 88 22% 89 22% 16 4% 9 2% 13 3% figure 6 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 5: art-integrated learning, showing the trends in participation across different academic years. figure 6. indicates year-wise responsiveness toward course 5 art-integrated learning. the data for course 5: art-integrated learning shows a fluctuating pattern of teacher participation over time. interest in the course was initially high, with nearly half of the teachers enrolling in 2021, reflecting their enthusiasm for incorporating art into teaching practices. however, participation sharply decreased in 2022 and 2023, before dropping even further in 2024. this pattern suggests that while many teachers completed the course early on, interest or availability to continue with it declined in later years. a small percentage of teachers either chose not to enroll or started but did not finish the course. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 78 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group • course 6: comprehension of secondary-stage students table 8 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 6: comprehension of secondarystage students, highlighting their participation patterns over different academic years. table 8. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness course 6 comprehension of secondary-stage students. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 170 44% 83 21% 82 21% 17 5% 18 5% 24 6% figure 7 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 6: comprehension of secondarystage students, indicating changes in participation across academic years. figure 7. indicating year-wise responsiveness toward course 6 comprehension of secondary-stage students. participation in course 6: comprehension of secondary-stage students has steadily decreased since 2021, when interest was high. by 2024, very few teachers were enrolling, indicating declining engagement. a small percentage of teachers either did not enroll or did not complete the course. • course 7: concept and practice of school leadership table 9 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 7: concept and practice of school leadership, highlighting their participation across different academic years. table 9. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness course 7 concept and practice of school leadership. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 17 5% 67 17% 73 19% 14 4% 86 22% 137 35% figure 8 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 7: concept and practice of school leadership, showing the variation in participation across academic years. the data for course 7: concept and practice of school leadership shows fluctuating teacher engagement. participation was low in 2021 but increased in 2022 and 2023, as teachers had limited course options remaining. by 2024, interest declined again, with only a few teachers completing the course. many teachers either did not enroll or failed to complete it, highlighting inconsistent participation. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 79 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 8. indicates year-wise responsiveness toward course 7concept and practice of school leadership. • course 8: vocational education table 10 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 8: vocational education, highlighting their participation trends across different academic years. table 10. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness course 8 vocational education. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 178 46% 89 23% 90 23% 16 4% 7 2% 14 4% figure 9. indicating year-wise responsiveness toward course 8vocational education. figure 9 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 8: vocational education, indicating variations in participation across academic years. the data for course 8: vocational education shows a steady decline in teacher participation. while nearly half of the teachers completed the course in 2021, participation dropped sharply in the following years. by 2024, only a asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 80 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group small fraction of teachers engaged with the course. some teachers did not enroll or failed to complete it, suggesting a diminishing focus on vocational education. • course 9: gender-related issues in education table 11 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 9: gender-related issues in education, highlighting participation patterns across different academic years. table 11. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness course 9 gender-related issues in education. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 169 43% 88 23% 83 21% 19 5% 14 4% 21 5% figure 10 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 9: gender-related issues in education, showing the variation in participation over different academic years. figure 10. indicates year-wise responsiveness toward course 9 gender-related issues in education. the data for course 9: gender-related issues in education shows a sharp decline in teacher participation. strong engagement was observed in 2021, but it decreased significantly in subsequent years. by 2024, very few teachers enrolled, indicating reduced interest or priority. some teachers either did not enroll or failed to complete the course, suggesting possible challenges to participation. • course 10: school initiative table 12 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 10: school initiative, highlighting their participation trends across various academic years. table 12. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness course 10 school initiative. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 121 31% 79 20% 63 16% 17 5% 85 22% 29 7% figure 11 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 10: school initiative, indicating variations in participation across academic years. course 10: "school initiative" shows a steady decline in teacher participation over the years, with significantly fewer teachers taking part each year from 2021 to 2024. some teachers did not enroll at all, while a notable portion enrolled but did not complete the course, indicating issues with retention or competing priorities. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 81 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 11. indicates year-wise responsiveness toward course 10 school initiative. • course 11: toy-based pedagogy table 13 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 11: toy-based pedagogy, highlighting participation patterns across different academic years. table 13. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness course 11 toy-based pedagogy. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 19 5% 25 7% 14 4% 3 1% 213 54% 120 31% figure 12. indicating year-wise responsiveness toward course 11 toy-based pedagogy. figure 12 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 11: toy-based pedagogy, indicating changes in participation across academic years. teacher participation in course 11: "toy-based pedagogy" shows an uneven trend, with enrollment increasing in 2022 but then sharply declining by 2024. many teachers enrolled but did not complete the course, while others asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 82 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group did not enroll at all. since the course title indicates it is more relevant for elementary or primary school teachers, several secondary school teachers revealed during interviews that they found it less relevant to their professional context. • course 12: school-based assessment table 14 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 12: school-based assessment, highlighting participation trends across different academic years. table 14. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness course 12 school-based assessment. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 179 46% 84 22% 84 22% 22 6% 21 6% 4 1% figure 13 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 12: school-based assessment, indicating variation in participation across academic years. figure 13. indicating year-wise responsiveness toward course 12 school-based assessment. teacher participation in course 12: "school-based assessment" began with strong involvement in 2021 but declined significantly in subsequent years, with a sharp drop by 2024. a small number of teachers enrolled but did not complete the course, and very few did not enroll at all. interestingly, several teachers shared that this course provided valuable guidance and practical support for school-based assessments. they highlighted that the video modules were especially relevant, offering clear, real-world examples that closely mirrored actual classroom evaluation practices. these resources not only enhanced their understanding of effective assessment strategies but also helped them apply these concepts in their daily teaching. • course 13: subject-specific pedagogy table 15 presents the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 13: subject-specific pedagogy, highlighting participation patterns across different academic years. table 15. shows year-wise teachers’ responsiveness course 13 subject specific pedagogy. year 2021 year 2022 year 2023 year 2024 not completed (nc) not enrolled (ne) n % n % n % n % n % n % 118 30% 74 19% 86 22% 29 8% 36 10% 51 13% figure 14 illustrates the year-wise responsiveness of teachers towards course 13: subject-specific pedagogy, showing variations in participation across academic years. teacher participation in course 13: pedagogy of hindi/english/urdu/sanskrit/mathematics/science/social sciences showed a fluctuating trend, with high initial enrollment in 2021 that declined in subsequent years. this decline is primarily because most teachers completed the course early on, reducing the need for new enrollments. some teachers did not finish the course, while others chose not to enroll. nevertheless, many teachers found the content informative and relevant to their subjects, often using the course videos as instructional support in their classrooms. they also reported that the course helped update their previous knowledge about the subjects they teach, thereby enhancing their teaching practices. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 83 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 14. indicates year-wise responsiveness toward course 13 subject subject-specific pedagogy. during an interview, a hindi teacher shared that this course significantly enhanced his knowledge of hindi teaching. he appreciated the detailed pedagogy insights and teaching methods presented, particularly the storytelling approach emphasized in the video modules. this method helped him improve his hindi language teaching techniques. he also noted that several other instructional strategies covered in the course were practical and contributed to enhancing his overall teaching effectiveness. analysis and presentation of data related to the comparison of the responsiveness of school teachers concerning gender, experience, and teaching subjects. analysis related to the comparison of the responsiveness of school teachers concerning gender: table 16 presents the year-wise number and percentage of male and female participants who completed the course each year, highlighting gender-wise completion trends over time. table 16. presents the number of male and female participants who completed the course each year. year 2021 2022 2023 2024 gender m f m f m f m f course 1 n 106 74 49 38 50 36 9 7 % 47% 44% 21% 22% 22% 21% 4% 4% course 2 n 104 81 51 39 48 36 10 6 % 46% 48% 23% 23% 21% 16% 5% 4% course 3 n 94 76 50 39 50 34 10 7 % 42% 45% 30% 23% 22% 20% 5% 4% course 4 n 109 83 50 38 49 36 10 6 % 48% 51% 22% 22% 21% 22% 5% 4% course 5 n 101 78 49 39 51 38 10 6 % 44% 47% 22% 23% 22% 23% 4% 3% course 6 n 97 73 46 37 49 33 10 7 % 43% 44% 20% 22% 22% 20% 4% 3% course 7 n 8 9 38 29 42 31 10 4 % 4% 5% 17% 13% 18% 18% 5% 2% course 8 n 102 76 50 39 49 41 10 6 % 45% 45% 22% 23% 22% 25% 4% 3% course 9 n 95 74 49 39 46 37 12 7 % 42% 44% 22% 23% 20% 22% 5% 4% course 10 n 71 50 48 31 33 30 11 6 % 31% 30% 21% 18% 14% 18% 5% 4% course 11 n 9 10 11 14 8 6 2 1 % 4% 6% 5% 8% 4% 4% 1% 1% course 12 n 105 74 47 37 47 37 14 8 % 46% 44% 20% 22% 21% 22% 7% 5% course 13 n 74 44 40 34 49 37 18 11 % 33% 26% 18% 20% 22% 22% 8% 6% asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 84 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 17 presents the statistical data indicating significant differences between male and female participants in course completion across the years. table 17. presents the statistical data for significant differences between males and females. gender n mean sd df table value tvalue level of significance male 226 10.4 1.82 392 1.964 (0.05 level) 2.58(0.01 level) 0.596 not significant at 0.5 and 0.1 levels female 168 10.5 1.59 the results indicated that the t-value was 0.596 with 392 degrees of freedom, and the p-value was 0.552. since the p-value exceeds the significance level of 0.05, the null hypothesis that there is no significant difference in the number of courses completed by male and female teachers cannot be rejected. analysis related to the comparison of the responsiveness of school teachers concerning experience (more experienced and less experienced). more experienced—more than 10 years of teaching experience. less experiencedless than 10 years of experience. table 18 presents the year-wise responsiveness of more experienced and less experienced teachers, highlighting differences in their participation across various academic years. table 18. presents the year-wise responsiveness of more experienced and less experienced teachers. year 2021 2022 2023 2024 experience me le me le me le me le course 1 n 106 74 43 40 43 43 8 8 % 49% 42% 20% 23% 20% 24% 4% 4% course 2 n 105 80 49 41 42 42 8 8 % 49% 45% 23% 24% 20% 24% 4% 4% course 3 n 101 69 48 41 43 41 9 8 % 47% 39% 22% 19% 20% 23% 19% 5% course 4 n 114 78 48 40 44 41 8 8 % 53% 44% 22% 23% 20% 23% 4% 5% course 5 n 104 75 48 40 47 42 8 8 % 48% 43% 22% 22% 21% 24% 4% 5% course 6 n 102 68 43 40 42 40 8 9 % 47% 38% 20% 22% 20% 22% 4% 5% course 7 n 9 8 36 31 39 34 7 7 % 5% 4% 16% 17% 18% 19% 3% 4% course 8 n 102 76 47 42 47 43 8 8 % 47% 43% 21% 24% 26% 24% 4% 4% course 9 n 100 69 47 41 41 42 10 9 % 46% 39% 22% 19% 23% 24% 5% 5% course 10 n 74 47 46 33 34 29 7 10 % 34% 26% 21% 18% 16% 16% 3% 5% course 11 n 11 8 13 12 9 5 1 2 % 5% 4% 6% 7% 4% 3% 1% 2% course 12 n 102 77 45 39 43 41 11 11 % 47% 44% 21% 22% 20% 23% 5% 6% course 13 n 68 50 38 36 44 42 15 14 % 31% 28% 18% 20% 20% 24% 7% 8% table 19 presents the statistical data indicating significant differences in participation between more experienced and less experienced teachers over the years. table 19. presents the statistical data for significant differences between more and less experienced. experience n mean sd df table value tvalue level of significance more exp. 217 10.4 1.82 392 1.964 (0.05 level) 2.58(0.01 level) 0.574 not significant at 0.5 and 0.1 levels less exp. 177 10.5 1.59 findings indicate that the t-value was 0.574 with 392 degrees of freedom. the p-value was 0.568. since the pvalue exceeds the significance level of 0.05, the null hypothesis that "there is no significant difference in the responsiveness of less experienced and more experienced school teachers toward the nishtha online in-service teacher education program (tep)" will be accepted. analysis related to the comparison of the responsiveness of school teachers concerning teaching subjects (arts and science). table 20 presents the year-wise responsiveness of school teachers from science and arts backgrounds, highlighting subject-wise differences in participation over the academic years. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 85 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 20. presents the year-wise responsiveness of science and arts teaching school teachers. year 2021 2022 2023 2024 subject arts science arts science arts science arts science course 1 n 111 69 59 28 50 36 13 3 % 45% 48% 24% 19% 20% 25% 5% 2% course 2 n 113 72 61 29 49 35 13 3 % 45% 50% 24% 20% 20% 24% 5% 2% course 3 n 103 67 60 29 49 35 13 4 % 41% 46% 24% 20% 20% 24% 5% 3% course 4 n 119 73 60 28 50 35 13 3 % 48% 50% 24% 19% 20% 24% 5% 2% course 5 n 109 70 59 29 53 36 13 3 % 44% 48% 24% 20% 21% 25% 5% 2% course 6 n 106 64 58 25 49 33 14 3 % 43% 44% 23% 17% 20% 23% 6% 2% course 7 n 12 5 45 22 45 28 12 2 % 5% 3% 18% 15% 18% 19% 5% 1% course 8 n 107 71 61 28 52 38 13 3 % 43% 49% 24% 19% 21% 26% 5% 2% course 9 n 105 64 60 28 52 38 13 3 % 42% 44% 24% 19% 21% 26% 5% 2% course 10 n 80 41 56 23 34 29 12 5 % 32% 28% 22% 16% 14% 20% 5% 3% course 11 n 15 4 18 7 9 5 2 1 % 6% 3% 7% 5% 4% 3% 1% 1% course 12 n 110 69 58 26 50 34 17 5 % 44% 48% 23% 18% 20% 23% 7% 3% course 13 n 70 48 51 23 50 36 20 9 % 28% 33% 20% 16% 20% 25% 8% 6% table 21 presents the statistical data indicating significant differences in participation between arts and science teaching school teachers across the academic years. table 21. presents the statistical data indicating significant differences in participation between arts and science teaching school teachers across the academic years. teaching subject n mean sd df table value tvalue level of significance arts 249 10.74 1.51 392 1.964 (0.05 level) 2.58(0.01 level) 2.059 significant at the 0.5 level. science 145 10.38 1.92 findings indicate that the t-value was 2.059 with 392 degrees of freedom, and the p-value was 0.976. the calculated t-value (2.059) is greater than the critical value from the t-distribution table for df 392 at a significance level of 0.05. so, the null hypothesis that “there is no significant difference in the responsiveness of arts and science teaching school teachers towards the nishtha online in-service teacher education program (tep)” is rejected. this means that the data provides sufficient evidence to conclude that there is a statistically significant difference in the responsiveness of arts and science teachers towards the courses of the nishtha 2.0 program. 12. major findings and discussions 1. teacher participation in nishtha 2.0 courses increased significantly in 2021, indicating a high level of interest initially. this may be attributed to the covid-19 pandemic, during which many schools were closed or operated online, providing teachers with more free time and flexibility. teachers could access these online courses from home or at convenient times, facilitating their participation and completion. additionally, the pandemic underscored the importance of adopting new teaching methods and integrating technology into lessons. nishtha 2.0 offered an opportunity for teachers to enhance their skills and prepare for the challenges of online and blended learning. however, as schools reopened and teachers resumed regular classes and duties, their available time for professional development decreased. this likely led to a decline in participation in subsequent years. 2. the number of teachers enrolled in nishtha 2.0 courses changed from year to year between 2021 and 2024. in 2021, the highest number of teachers participated, with course 4 having the most completions. in the subsequent years (2022–2023), fewer teachers completed the courses, but course 8 still maintained the highest completion rate among them. this indicates that although overall participation declined compared to 2021, course 8 was particularly engaging or useful to teachers. by 2024, overall participation had decreased significantly. however, course 13 still recorded the highest completion rate for that year, suggesting that despite fewer teachers enrolling, the course content continued to resonate with those who participated. many teachers found the subject-specific modules in course 13 especially useful for their classroom teaching, as they provided practical strategies, updated knowledge, and engaging video-based demonstrations. this demonstrates that even during periods of declining participation, courses offering relevant, actionable content can sustain teacher interest and commitment. 3. many teachers completed most of the nishtha 2.0 courses in 2021, which was when the program first began. because so many teachers had already completed the modules that year, fewer of them enrolled in or completed additional courses in subsequent years. this pattern suggests that the initial high participation may have been driven by teachers' motivation to complete the program early, especially when there was flexibility and encouragement. 4. no course in nishtha 2.0 had more than half of the teachers participating in any single year. this indicates that teachers’ engagement was spread out over multiple courses and years. participation asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 86 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group was likely influenced by several factors, including teachers’ workload, school schedules, exam preparation periods, and personal commitments. some teachers may also have chosen courses based on their subject area, professional needs, or perceived relevance, leading to uneven participation across different courses. this pattern suggests that, while teachers were interested in professional development, they had to balance these courses with their existing responsibilities. it highlights the need for future programs to be designed with more flexibility and support, ensuring that teachers can engage with courses at a pace and time that suits them. it also shows that making courses more tailored to teachers’ subject areas and classroom challenges might encourage higher participation. 5. no course in the nishtha 2.0 program had zero participation, meaning every module attracted at least some teachers. this indicates that, despite differences in enrollment levels across years, locations, and subjects, each course held some value for a group of teachers. even courses perceived as less relevant by many still engaged a segment of the teacher community. during interviews, a few teachers also revealed that participation in some courses was influenced by school principals who encouraged or even required teachers to complete certain modules. this compulsion helped ensure baseline engagement, especially in courses that teachers might not have chosen on their own. 6. the data showed no major difference in responsiveness between male and female teachers, teachers with more or less experience, and teachers from science or arts backgrounds. this means that gender, experience, or subject area did not affect their participation and engagement in the nishtha 2.0 courses. in a similar study, uzunboylu (2007) found that after participating in an online in-service program, many teachers had positive attitudes toward online learning, suggesting its potential as an effective method of teacher training. 7. the nishtha 2.0 modules were designed in a standardized format to accommodate teachers from diverse backgrounds. this consistency helped ensure that teachers of various subjects, levels of experience, and locations could access and benefit from the courses. the modules covered themes relevant to all teachers, such as classroom management, assessment, and child-centered learning. the digital format was also userfriendly and flexible, making participation easier for everyone. this likely contributed to steady engagement across teacher groups. this approach demonstrates that professional development programs can be made more accessible and engaging by focusing on common themes and simple digital tools. 8. the decline in participation over time indicates a need for improved policies to maintain teachers' interest in professional development. courses should be made more relevant and practical, focusing on real classroom challenges and tailored to the needs of teachers from various subjects and experience levels. additionally, incentives could be introduced to motivate teachers to participate more actively. the government of bihar and the central government should conduct regular surveys to monitor participation levels and assess teachers' enthusiasm for professional development. this feedback can help make programs more engaging and improve their content, ensuring teachers remain motivated to enhance their skills. 9. the name "toy-based pedagogy" makes it sound more useful for teaching younger children. however, secondary teachers work with older students, so a name like "activity-based pedagogy for engaging adolescents" or "interactive and experiential learning approaches" would make the course sound more relevant for them. these names suggest that the course will focus on teaching methods that help adolescents stay engaged, learn actively, and feel supported in their learning. 10. it is suggested that nishtha 2.0 introduce a dedicated course titled "teacher as counselor: guidance and counseling skills for adolescent students" to address the needs of secondary-level students. currently, the program does not have a specific course focusing on this crucial area. such a course would equip teachers with the skills to support adolescents facing physical, mental, and emotional challenges, including guidance on academic choices and career planning. teachers, as the first points of contact for students, could use these skills to create supportive environments and offer meaningful guidance. establishing counseling cells in schools, as part of this initiative, would further strengthen the support system for students navigating the complexities of adolescence. online in-service teacher education programs like nishtha 2.0 play a crucial role in helping teachers stay updated with evolving teaching methods. they provide flexible, self-paced learning that allows teachers to improve their skills and knowledge without leaving their classrooms. these programs also make professional development accessible to teachers in remote areas, ensuring equity in training opportunities. by offering digital content and opportunities for collaboration, they encourage continuous improvement in teaching quality and student outcomes. however, many teachers interviewed during this study expressed a preference for in-service programs to be conducted offline, citing better engagement and interaction. similar observations were made in the study by jung (2001), which analyzed korea's experience with online in-service teacher training. in that study, over 70% of respondents preferred online training for its flexibility and attractiveness. however, jung also highlighted that online education was not yet the dominant mode of in-service training for korea’s more than 340,000 teachers, with many teacher education institutions still relying on commercial internet service providers’ networks to distribute materials and facilitate interaction. this suggests that while online learning is gaining traction, a blend of online and offline modes may be more effective in meeting teachers’ professional development needs. during interviews, some teachers shared that their low participation or responsiveness in the nishtha 2.0 courses was due to internet connectivity issues in remote areas. they mentioned that slow networks and poor internet access made it difficult to view course videos and complete modules. a few teachers also pointed out that they were not very tech-savvy and felt that, before introducing the courses, there should have been basic training on using digital platforms and devices. this observation is similar to findings in the study by bhardwaj and rathee (2024), which highlighted that mooc-based in-service training in india faced challenges due to limited infrastructure and slow internet connectivity. their research pointed out that although platforms like diksha provided options to download course material, the large file sizes of high-definition videos made it difficult for teachers in low-connectivity areas to access and complete courses effectively (chatterjee & nath, 2015). 13. conclusion the nishtha 2.0 online in-service teacher education program has emerged as a pivotal initiative in strengthening the professional development of school teachers across india. by providing structured, accessible, asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 70-87 87 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group and technology-driven training, the program has supported teachers in upgrading their pedagogical skills and adapting to modern classroom demands. the findings of this study offer valuable insights into teacher responsiveness regarding various courses of the program; these insights reveal variations in engagement based on gender, teaching experience, and subject specialization. references anju, r. (2022). an analysis of in-service teacher education programmes in higher education. doctoral dissertation, chaudhary charan singh university, meerut. shodhganga. bhardwaj, k., & rathee, n. (2024). mooc-based in-service training for the professional development of teachers in india. indian journal of educational technology, 6(ii), 305-317. chatterjee, p., & nath, a. (2015). massive open online courses (moocs) in education—a case study in indian context and vision to ubiquitous learning. paper presented at the mooc, innovation, and technology in education (mite) (pp. 36–41). ieee. jung, i. (2001). issues and challenges of providing online in-service teacher training: korea's experience. international review of research in open and distributed learning, 2(1), 1-18. kalyani, l. k. (2024). the role of nishtha in enhancing pedagogical practices: an empirical investigation. international journal of scientific research in modern science and technology, 3(1), 34-40. kanvaria, v. k., & dubey, v. (2022). diksha, nishtha and cpd: experiences and perceptions of school learning-facilitators. indian journal of educational technology, 4(ii), 144-151. uzunboylu, h. (2007). teacher attitudes toward online education following an online in-service program. paper presented at the in international journal on e-learning (vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 267-277). association for the advancement of computing in education (aace). hayes, n. (2021). doing psychological research, 2e. mcgraw-hill education (uk). james, g., witten, d., hastie, t., & tibshirani, r. (2013). an introduction to statistical learning (vol. 112, no. 1). new york: springer. government of india spotlight on nishtha. https://www.india.gov.in/spotlight/ nishtha asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://www.india.gov.in/spotlight/nishtha 48 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 2, 48-53, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4685 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group no need to renew: the end of japan’s teacher license renewal system and the future julian chapple ryukoku university, kyoto, japan. email: julian@world.ryukoku.ac.jp abstract in 2007, the japanese ministry of education revised the education law to pave the way for the introduction of a teaching license renewal system in 2009. the reform required all teachers to complete at least 30 hours of training in specially tailored university courses as a prerequisite for renewal of their teaching licenses every 10 years. in late 2021, however, the government abruptly announced it was ending the scheme in 2022 in a policy about face reminiscent of the abolition of yutori kyōiku (“education without pressure”) in 2007. this qualitative study aims to examine the background, outline and issues of japan’s license renewal system in order to understand the reasons for its demise and illustrate the similarities with the yutori kyōiku experiment. drawing on interview data and reflections from the author’s experiences with the system over 12 years, it looks at some of japan’s unique training opportunities and, employing examples from other countries, examines what kind of ‘training’ is needed moving forward. it concludes by calling for a widening of the interpretation of ‘training,’ and indeed, the license itself, so as to increase diversity in what is a considerably restrictive employment sector. keywords: education policy, japan, teacher assessment, teacher training, teaching licensing. citation | chapple, j. (2023). no need to renew: the end of japan’s teacher license renewal system and the future. asian journal of education and training, 9(2), 48–53. 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4685 history: received: 16 march 2023 revised: 3 may 2023 accepted: 15 may 2023 published: 24 may 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 49 2. background ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 49 3. what happened? .............................................................................................................................................................................. 50 4. yutori kyōiku and déjà vu ............................................................................................................................................................. 50 5. lessons for the future .................................................................................................................................................................... 51 6. other opportunities ........................................................................................................................................................................ 51 7. looking back and forward ............................................................................................................................................................ 52 8. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 52 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 53 mailto:julian@world.ryukoku.ac.jp https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i2.4685 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2115-9915 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 48-53 49 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature education systems around the world are grappling with questions of how to train and prepare the next generation of teachers with the requisite skills and japan is no exception. however, as the country seems to be back-tracking in terms of teacher licensing and training, this paper aims to fill a void in this over-looked area by researching the policy moves made and what they reveal about the future for japanese education and say about the past. 1. introduction today, education systems around the world are facing an identity crisis of sorts. as societies mature, economies evolve and technology becomes increasingly more sophisticated, education systems are increasingly being tasked with greater responsibilities than a few decades ago (schleicher, 2019). moving on from ‘regular’ mass lessons, classrooms are becoming ‘intelligent’, lessons are being ‘flipped’ and students are increasingly expected to become active learners, critical thinkers, and global citizens in possession of high-quality vocational attributes. concurrently, educators too are being challenged to keep up to ensure they are delivering the kind of education required for today’s evolving world in the most effective and efficient method. however, because they are so novel in most cases these newly called for skills, attitudes and attributes are the kind that many present teachers themselves do not necessarily possess. this means that some form of ‘training’ or upskilling is naturally required. whether that training takes place in school and on the job, virtually, privately or as some form of employment requirement, generally depends on each country’s education system and policy. until recently, japanese regulations required all teachers to undergo a process of teaching license renewal which was ostensibly implemented in order to ensure that the nation’s teachers systematically acquired up-to-date knowledge and skills to maintain the professional skills necessary for today’s educators (nakayama, takagi, & imamura, 2010). however, the requirement to undergo such license renewal (and associated ‘training’) has recently been officially abolished. how did this situation eventuate and what does it mean for in-service training and, indeed, japanese education’s future? this paper looks briefly at the background, outline and issues of the system and aims to explain why it was stopped and what its demise means. drawing on data, feedback, and reflections from the author’s experiences with the system over 12 years as well as a comparison with the nation’s yutori kyōiku fiasco, it looks at what could have been and, referencing examples from other countries, examines what kind of approach to ‘training’ japan could focus on moving forward. 2. background all developed nations set qualifications deemed necessary for individuals to become teachers and japan is no exception. dating back to 1897 with the promulgation of the normal education order (shihan kyōikurei) in the early stages of the formation of the nation’s national educational system, the percentage of ‘unqualified’ teachers was 58%. however, by 1905 this number had dropped to 16% (institute for international cooperation, 2004) as japan embarked on a path of modernization and standardization ultimately leading to one of the most robust and effective educational systems in the world. at around the same time, the teacher licensing system “was also taken forward, and teacher’s licenses were granted to graduates from a teacher training establishment and to others with a different academic record who were successful in the teaching certificate examination” (institute for international cooperation, 2004). after world war two, education was revamped further making it possible for pre-service teacher training courses to be offered in faculties other than education in all national and private universities. for approximately the next 60 years, other than the fact that the issuance of teaching licenses was moved to the jurisdiction of prefectures (1913) and the introduction of a requirement for licensees to undertake compulsory volunteer training at an aged care facility (1997), little else changed. however, in response to a (supposed) drop in national academic standards and increasing concerns surrounding teacher quality – including their ability to effectively control students – calls began to grow for a system of greater accountability (yamada, 2021). the nation’s teaching license renewal (tlr) system for educational personnel (kyōin menkyo kōshin seido, in japanese), therefore, dates back to discussions from the research commission on the education system in 1983 initiated by the ruling liberal democratic party. however, at the time concerns about costs and the burden on teachers meant the debate eventually dissipated (yamada, 2021). the first abe administration in the 2000s rekindled the debate and eventually the system became law in what equated to “a speed-before-quality situation” (mainichi shimbun, 2007, cited in nakayama et al. (2010)). according to documents from the ministry of education (mext) the main purpose for the proposed system was (as briefly mentioned above) “to ensure teachers systematically acquire up-to-date knowledge and skills to maintain the professional competencies necessary for today’s educators, teach with confidence and pride, and gain respect and trust from the public” (nakayama et al., 2010). while the former ideas relating to professional knowledge and skills make sense, the latter notions pertaining to the abstract concepts of pride, confidence, respect, and trust, suggest that the system itself was always meant to do more than it could. although some critics argued from the outset that the introduction of the system was a way to eliminate incompetent teachers and maintain quality at a certain level (higashiyama & hara, 2010), the ministry of education (mext, 2012) refuted that, clearly stating in a published footnote “the purpose is not to get rid of inappropriate teachers” (author’s translation). however, mext documents also note in their explanation of the background surrounding the system that a number of ‘scandals’ (fushōji) by a small number of teachers recently has led to the profession being publicly scrutinized (mext, n.d). wada and burnett (2011) also reported that some felt the real intention was to centralize mext control over teacher employment and to better position the ministry in its long running battle with the japanese teacher’s union (nikkyōso). prior to the system’s implementation, teaching licenses in japan were issued permanently for those who had passed their initial training. the educational personnel certification law was revised in june 2007 and the license renewal system came into effect from april 2009. the changes meant that license validity would be capped at ten years with the successful completion of seminars becoming a requisite for renewal. specifically, teachers were asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 48-53 50 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group required to enroll in at least 30 hours of instruction over a two-year period prior to the expiration of their license. the required 30 hours of study comprised 12 hours of compulsory classes and 18 of electives to be completed at certain participating universities. 3. what happened? from the beginning the system faced hurdles not least of which was a lack of understanding of exactly why such a system was necessary – which was most likely a result of poor planning and communication – and consequently, an overall lack of support. for example, kita and miura (2010) conducted research through a survey of 472 teachers in which 82% responded that they believed the system was unnecessary. from the outset, the system faced considerable criticism and opposition (see, for example, sakuma (2007); imazu (2009); kita and miura (2010) and hirota (2011)). in particular, the extra burden on teachers in terms of time (they needed to take the classes during their summer holidays or weekends) and money (teachers were responsible for the costs of the classes, roughly 30,000 yen) were cited. anecdotal evidence obtained over a decade in the many classes conducted by the author, fully supports these points. although many teachers reported satisfaction in regards to the opportunity to ‘return’ to university and ‘feel like a student again’, as well as upskill, the fact that they had to use their precious holiday time (and money) to do so were overwhelmingly and repeatedly reported complaints. other systemic problems soon emerged as well such as the initial reluctance of universities to get involved, and the number of teachers who merely forgot to enroll for courses. further, there was also a sizeable number of teachers who refused to take the courses. mext reported that in november 2010, that a total of 5100 teachers had failed to undertake their required training. it threatened those who continued to resist that they would lose their accreditation and no longer be able to teach in japanese schools after april 1, 2011 (wada & burnett, 2011). several critics went further and penned proposals for how to alter or improve the newly introduced system. kita and miura (2010) concluded that a better system would be one that provided greater teacher support (like that seen in finland), could be undertaken within teacher’s own schools, allowed for a degree of professional discretion, improved the status and conditions for teachers and increased the total number of teachers within each school (quoted in wada and burnett (2011)). similarly, nakayama et al. (2010) argue, based on questionnaire feedback from teachers, that teachers should participate in committees responsible for designing teacher certification renewal courses, that these courses should combine theory and practice and incorporate demonstration lessons and class observations. further, these should not be one-off, but part of a nurtured work environment “where teachers continue their professional training on a daily basis” (p. 35). yamada (2021) also conducted surveys of teachers and reported that they thought the training already offered by their educational boards was sufficient and they saw no need for a new course to replace the teacher license renewal course. despite this healthy debate from within and outside japan’s educational fraternity, mext made little changes throughout the short life of the tlr system but left the possibility alive that something else could replace it in the future. at the time of writing, no concrete proposals have been announced but media outlets have mentioned a replacement system could start in 2023 (mainichi, 2022) which may include a considerably greater amount of freedom. 4. yutori kyōiku and déjà vu the yutori kyōiku, or “pressure-free education” experiment, emerged in response to growing public and official concern that japanese school children were under inordinate academic pressures which were having a detrimental impact on their overall wellbeing and increasing lack of interest in learning (kariya & rappleye, 2010). the premise was that by reducing the hours of study and content taught, not only would students have less stress, they could also be afforded more freedom therefore encouraging independent thinking (something else deemed deficient as a result of a prevalence of cram-style teaching). further, it was envisaged that freeing up space in the school day would lead to more free time for extracurricular activities and allowed for the creation of ‘integrated studies’ class time. although not precisely defined, it is generally assumed that yutori kyōiku refers to the years 2002-2011 when during which time the course of study content was changed. in many ways, the demise of the teacher license program is reminiscent of the abolition of yutori kyōiku which abruptly disappeared with little fanfare as most commentators, experts and the public assumed that a return to tried traditional ways was required to ameliorate japan’s perceived educational malaise. in fact, the two different issues actually reveal a number of striking similarities. the teacher renewal program was also swiftly repealed as it too – apparently – has failed to effect significant change (and has been met with considerable negativity). and while both cases are different – one applying to students, the other teachers – there is a clear link in terms of a lack of examination and reflection. also, both failed because they missed one crucial point; today’s world requires new skills for both teachers and students, yet neither are being fully prepared. nakai (2012) outlines three factors which proved particularly detrimental to yutori kyōiku, all of which have a ring of familiarity to them. first there was a failure to adequately identity exactly which academic skills japanese students were supposedly lacking in order to ‘make it’ in the world. second, requisite academic skills needed to be translated into actual ability, but this point was seemingly overlooked by those concerned. what is more, the new skills required changes in ways of thinking and, indeed, in ways of life, in other words, a full commitment. thirdly, the number of teachers or other adults who could offer effective guidance in the required fields were in short supply from the beginning. put simply, the blame was being placed on students when in fact much of it actually rested with adults. as nakai (2012) summed up: “the academic ability and ways of life that children display are nothing more than reflections of adults’ inadequacies”. similarities between these criticisms and the demise of the tlr are pertinent. like yutori kyōiku the tlr had several failings. first, teachers were not properly consulted or informed about the purpose or indeed need for the system. second, the so-called ‘skills’ that were expected to be raised through courses at universities were difficult to foster in a passive learning environment. related to this was the somewhat mistaken belief that university professors had a thorough understanding of the needs of schoolteachers in their classrooms and were in a good position to provide immediate and appropriate lessons and advice. another problem related to universities was assessment. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 48-53 51 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group there was an unwritten expectation that professors would grade their tlr classes generously (i.e., teachers rarely failed), reducing the desire of teachers to fully engage in the learning. as one critic put it, the classes provided a good opportunity for schoolteachers to catch up on sleep (ikegami, 2014). this point also highlights the contentious issue of accountability in higher educational grading as well as the fact that most university teachers have had little or no experience teaching ‘mature’ students (the overwhelming majority of students in japan’s universities are aged between 18-24 years of age with older or mature students being almost non-existent). 5. lessons for the future from the seeming ‘failure’ of these two educational experiments several points can be gleaned. both policies emerged in response to external pressure and perceived ‘problems’ within the education system. both cases represented a kind of ‘trojan horse’ style of using a policy change for an ulterior motive (as a means of getting rid of ‘inadequate teachers’ in the case of the renewal system and revamping the curriculum in the case of the yutori project). similarly, both were eliminated also partly because of negative external reactions without proper assessment or reflection. in sum, the yutori kyōiku policy failed to function properly because of the gap between the ideals of the national government and the reality of classroom life (shirota, 2012) whereas the tlr system’s demise was as a result of the gap between the vision of the national government and the reality of the life in the shokuin shitsu (teacher’s room). regardless of what – if anything – replaces the tlr system, it must be remembered that japan’s schools already have excellent informal training systems and opportunities in place, namely: the teacher’s room (shokuin shitsu), ‘lesson study’ (jigyo kenkyū), and ‘special activities’ (tokubetsu katsudō). by systematically utilizing and improving on these, perhaps through the incorporation of input from best practice examples abroad, japan’s education system could be further enhanced without the need for an external retraining and evaluation system. these three informal teacher training opportunities are briefly explained below. 5.1. shokuin shitsu (teacher’s room) training research by ahn, shimojima, mori, and asanuma (2018) found that informal training through collaborative learning which occurred in the shokuin shitsu was considered of greater value than officially sanctioned professional development training. in fact, teachers at differing stages in their careers “unequivocally endorsed the critical role of shokuin shitsu (teachers’ room) as a necessary space for their professional growth” (ahn et al., 2018). because all schoolteachers in japan are based in a common teacher’s room, it provides an excellent physical environment for them, throughout all stages of their careers, to learn, grow, challenge, and improve their skillsets making it an extremely effective “continuous shared learning space” (ahn et al., 2018). 5.2. jigyo kenkyū (lesson study) it is probably a result of the close physical proximity in which teachers share space in their teacher’s room that has enabled the development of jigyo kenkyū (literally: ‘lesson research’). “lesson study”, as the term is often introduced in english literature (see, for example, (rappleye & komatsu, 2017; stevenson & stigler, 1992)) refers to the process of ongoing collaborative learning by teachers to improve their lessons. it involves the observation of one another’s lessons, follow-up discussion meetings to talk about them and the “ideology which guides teachers to focus on student learning, rather than how well or poorly colleagues taught” (tsuneyoshi, 2018). while this may not seem radically different to similar activities undertaken in other countries, the uniqueness lies in the fact that “the system brings everyone in the school together to discuss a common lesson” (ibid). originating in the meiji period (makinae, 2019), the effectiveness of this method has caught the eye of many international scholars who have written about the holistic and positive benefits (e.g. stevenson and stigler (1992) and stigler and hiebert (1999)). such a system allows for teachers from diverse specialities to observe and critically examine differing teaching styles, therefore providing them with new and unique options to trial in their own classes. 5.3. tokubetsu katsudō (special activities) tokkatsu, as it is generally abbreviated, is an umbrella term encompassing an array of regular noncognitive activities that take place at schools throughout the school day, including such things as school lunches, student-led cleaning, classroom activities, school-wide events, excursions and club activities (tsuneyoshi, 2018, 2020). often referred to as whole child or holistic education, initially it appears that tokkatsu is primarily aimed at students. but upon closer examination, the wide-ranging breadth of activities and school-wide focus intimately links them to teachers creating a collaborative environment, similar to the teacher’s room, only this time emphasizing nonacademic aspects of school life. nagashima and sakuma (2018), touch on this collaborative group support aspect of career development and its importance to japanese education and several of the aspects incorporated in this philosophy have been the focus of international attention in academia (tsuneyoshi, 2017). 6. other opportunities while the above outlined endogenous training opportunities are excellent examples, they are in most cases informal and complementary, not replacements for officially mandated faculty development. neither are they uniformly offered nationwide meaning there are considerable discrepancies between schools and regions. there are of course other unique and effective systems being utilized in different countries around the world from which japan could source ideas for innovation when looking for options to replace or modify its now defunct tlr system. in a recent survey of teacher education systems in america, australia, finland and singapore, darling-hammond (2017), writes that “[i]n every case, these systems include multiple, coherent and complementary components associated with recruiting, developing, and retaining talented individuals to support the overall goal of ensuring that each school is populated by effective teachers” (p. 294). also in each case, there has been a strong push towards the implementation of standards for what teachers should learn and be able to do. the united states is the leader in this regard, having established the national board for professional teaching standards in 1987. most other developed asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 48-53 52 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group nations have followed suit in creating either nationwide, or state-separate standards used for, among other things, licensing, and training. japan has yet to formalize such standards, and this would be a good place to start so as to ensure accountability through the creation of “teacher performance assessments, based on professional standards, that connect student learning to classroom teaching” (darling-hammond, 2017). other trends noted internationally ensure competitive renumeration in order to attract talented new teachers and financial subsidies for training to ensure ongoing job satisfaction and development. furthermore, increasing opportunities for teachers to learn from one another from within as well as across schools and universities has been highlighted (darling-hammond, 2017). again, in this regard, japan still has work to do, especially in terms of financial provision, and the ending of the university-school links forged through the tlr system is clearly a wasted opportunity. 7. looking back and forward just over a decade ago japan instigated a teaching license renewal program officially aimed at ensuring teachers were able to systematically acquire the latest knowledge and skills required. however, due in part to insufficient communication, coordination, planning and forethought, the system failed to reach its goals and has recently been scrapped. the parallels with a previous educational policy change, yutori kyōiku are stark. japan should learn from these ‘missteps’ in terms of planning and work towards creating a system which benefits all. in that regard, it is useful to reassess the education field, for clearly it has – and will continue to be – a place of considerable and rapid transformation and change. japan is slowly becoming a more diversified society and learning to be able to deal with the greater needs of students (both domestic and foreign) as well as the new skills and knowledge forms being required of them, means a wider understanding of methods and content for teacher training is essential. as darlinghammond (2017) writes, “the teaching challenges posed by higher expectations for learning and greater diversity of learners around the globe will likely be better met if nations can learn from each other about what matters and what works in different contexts” (p. 307). firstly, the steadily growing number of non-japanese (or not ‘fully’ japanese) students in japan’s classrooms has been an increasingly reported on phenomena. recent studies put the figure at over 124,000 (the economist, 2019), but this number does not reveal the whole picture. japan’s educational policy means that children of non-japanese nationals are not legally required to attend school (they can if they wish) meaning there are likely a significant number of children not enrolled in schools in japan. in fact, a survey in 2018 of 100 local government bodies in japan showed that while there were 77,500 children registered as children of foreign nationals, no data was available for 16,000 of these as to whether they were attending school or not (mainichi, 2019). while the reasons for this situation include cultural factors, language issues and financial problems, clearly this lack of data and information is far from ideal for either japan or the foreign families concerned. as numbers of international students and those with roots overseas continue to increase, japan could find that links across sectors (public and private as well as so-called ‘miscellaneous’ schools such as international or free schools) may be a useful path forward. in other words, increasing options and allowing greater freedom for students to choose would likely lead to greater participation and inclusion. such sector-wide flexibility would most likely mean the strict necessity for teaching licenses in their present form would also need to be reevaluated. secondly, the job of teaching and the role of the teacher is evolving dramatically. although certainly accelerated by the covid-19 pandemic, the teaching environment has increasingly become a digitalized one, and this is challenging teachers to adjust and keep up. as mext looks to replace the trl system with some other form, it would do well to include teachers’ voices as well as best practice ideas from other countries to ensure a system is established that is both flexible and meaningful. it may well be that the above-mentioned unique informal training systems that exist already in japan can be modified or expanded on to allow for greater inclusion of ideas across demographic, administrative and regional fields. similarly, nationwide standards and regulations for training should be formulated to ensure teachers at all levels and in all types of schools are able to access regular training opportunities, applicable to each teacher’s needs without having to forfeit their own free time. reflecting on being involved with teaching tlr courses at a university in western japan for 12 years, the overwhelming majority of comments received were that the opportunity was generally academically rewarding, even stimulating, but not always entirely practical or applicable to the present classroom situation. as has been noted elsewhere, most teachers had positive comments to make about their learning experiences during their courses (akiba, 2013). exit questionnaires from participants in all courses taught at the same university almost always mentioned a desire for greater ‘classroom-related’ skill acquisition. as teachers seek to keep up with the fast pace of change, the need for systematic and ongoing opportunities to learn and upskill is unquestionably urgent and important. removing the entire tlr system seems to signal a lack of need for such opportunities at a time when they are arguably more necessary than ever before. 8. conclusion while acknowledging the considerable problems and issues inherent in the tlr system, this paper argues that it was a useful first step in bringing attention to the need for, and importance of, regular systematic teacher training in japan today and fostering debate about the creation of a more effective and codified system for the future. internationally, the trend has been towards creating standards for measurement and opportunities for wider teacher/school/university interaction to enhance and maximize teacher ability and job satisfaction. from the outset it was dubious to expect a once-every-10-year system of (somewhat ad hoc) lectures to lead to revolutionary changes. it may be that the negative reaction to mext’s plan has invigorated teachers to focus more deeply on what kind of learning and skillsets they need and how to obtain them themselves. japan’s teachers work arduously to improve their teaching and the systems in place providing learning opportunities are both unique and encompassing. however, there is a need for a much more rigorous system which can involve universities and greater numbers and varieties of schools and teachers as a way of working towards creating an even better, more inclusive, working and learning environment for all parties. as japan struggles to attract and keep the highest quality teachers (asahi, 2022), asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 48-53 53 © 2023 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group the time is also ripe for rigorous debate into future teacher training program content and qualities required in the profession from now. this can surely help to contribute to the improvement of society for all. references ahn, r., shimojima, y., mori, h., & asanuma, s. 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(2021). teachers’ attitudes to the end of the teacher license renewal system. hiroshima university graduate school human society kagakukenkyuka kiyō, 2, 159-166. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1177/0031721718815674 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14620602 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2017.1315399 https://mainichi.jp/articles/20190106/k00/00m/040/148000c https://mainichi.jp/articles/20220627/k00/00m/040/208000c https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/koushin/001/1316077.htm https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo0/toushin/020202/020202d.htm https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00601 https://doi.org/10.1177/1745499917740656 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47030362 https://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00012/ https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/12/12/japanese-schools-are-struggling-with-foreign-pupils 22 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 8, no. 1, 22-33, 2022 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v8i1.3806 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy ekru dilek1 betul altas2 ( corresponding author) 1department of foreign languages, istanbul gelisim university, turkey. email: edilek@gelisim.edu.tr 2institute of social sciences, cag university, turkey. email: betulaltas@cag.edu.tr abstract this study aims to identify 250 turkish efl teachers’ level of professional identity and professional autonomy. this study also aims to investigate whether the results differ by gender, the school in which they work, education level and work experience. furthermore, the study aims to identify whether there is a significant relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and their professional autonomy. in this survey-based research, the results demonstrate that efl teachers have a very high level of professional identity and a high level of professional autonomy, and the results differ by efl teachers’ gender, school type and work experience. results also reveal that there was a significant, positive and moderate relationship between professional identity and professional autonomy of efl teachers. this study suggests that the freer efl teachers feel to make decisions in their teaching and profession, the more they can define their identity in the teaching profession. keywords: efl teachers’ professional identity, efl teachers’ professional autonomy, professional development, teacher education. citation | ekru dilek; betul altas (2022). the relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy. asian journal of education and training, 8(1): 22-33. history: received: 2 february 2022 revised: 7 march 2022 accepted: 21 march 2022 published: 28 march 2022 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 23 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 23 3. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 4. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 25 5. results and discussion ................................................................................................................................................................... 30 6. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 31 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 31 mailto:edilek@gelisim.edu.tr mailto:betulaltas@cag.edu.tr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v8i1.3806 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0596-1401 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1111-7231 asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 23 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study responds to needs of the field of teachers’ professional development and teacher education as efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy empower the continuity of teacher professional development and teacher engagement with efl learner identity and autonomy in this globalized world. 1. introduction in the recent research, scholars have tried to define the teacher professional identity but there is not a standard description of it (beauchamp & thomas, 2009). not only does the teacher identity influence how teachers exist in the classroom, but it also shapes their practices and educational approaches (cross, 2006). teacher identity is characterized as multiple, potent, individual and social (akkerman & meijer, 2011). in this sense, teachers’ cultural, individual and professional selves should be investigated to shed light on language teaching and learning (varghese, morgan, johnston, & johnson, 2005). according to auxier, hughes, and kline (2003) the mixture of personal self and professional being which generates professional identity is also related to individual decisions, roles, values and morals. current research studies have addressed the interrelation between teacher identity and teacher autonomy (huang & benson, 2013; teng, 2017; teng, 2019). teacher autonomy means taking decisions about what to teach, and how to develop teaching practices and teacher professional development (dikilitaş & griffiths, 2017). mcgrath (2000) sees teacher autonomy as an autonomous practice and being free from the control that is taken by others. therefore, teachers’ professional autonomy is promoted by some strategies which also contribute to sustainability, peer collaboration, development of teaching skills, and professional reflection on teaching (pineda & frodden, 2008). teacher autonomy enables teachers to take the responsibility of what to provide as a teaching practice and how to be in charge of the process in the field. indeed, the level of teachers’ autonomy identifies the level of teachers’ efforts they put into facilitating learners’ autonomy (smith, 2001). thus, enhancing learner autonomy can be achieved by promoting autonomy of teachers (aoki, 2002; benson, 2011; little, 1995; sezen-balcikanli, 2009; smith, 2001; vieira, 1999). in foreign language education field, efl teachers construct a different identity and autonomy in the foreign language (benson & huang, 2008; ortaçtepe, 2015). herein, the significance of this study is about investigating the relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and teachers’ professional autonomy because foreign language constitutes a particular domain to question who the person is as an english language teacher and to what extent h/she can make choices for his/her teaching. non-native english-speaking teachers have the status of l2 learners, l2 speakers and l2 teachers (armour, 2004). in addition, teachers have an attitude towards making decisions about what/how to teach. efl teachers also have a responsibility to teach the target language critically and reflectively with their free-will (han, 2017). thus, english language has the mediating role to form and define efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy in the field. teacher autonomy and teacher identity are explained as mutually interrelated and reinforced notions (chik, 2007; korhonen, 2014; reinders & lazaro, 2011; teng, 2019). considering the interconnection between identity and autonomy, the construction of identity brings about development of autonomy while autonomous actions enrich the reformation of identity (teng, 2019). thus, teachers gain an autonomous perspective in the profession as long as they rebuild their identity (huang, 2009). the concepts of identity and autonomy have been studied in the field of psychology, politics and sociology (grimshaw, 1988; robertson, 2003). and, the interrelation between identity and autonomy has been investigated in the field of education through qualitative and narrative studies (chik, 2007; derakhshan, coombe, arabmofrad, & taghizadeh, 2020; huang, 2011; lier, 2007; smith & erdoğan, 2008). however, the relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy has not been examined through a quantitative study. therefore, this study aims to find out efl teachers’ level of professional identity and professional autonomy in turkish education context, and it also aims to investigate whether the results differ by gender, the school in which efl teachers work, the education level and their work experience. lastly, this study investigates whether there is a significant relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and their professional autonomy. 2. literature review professional identity means monitoring and socialization in the occupational context (ibarra, 1999). similarly, (neary, 2014) says that professional identity is related to individuals’ own perception on their profession and the way of communication with colleagues. pedagogical approaches which teachers use encourage them to question their own position and reveal teachers’ beliefs and values (damon & hart, 1992). teachers’ knowledge and decisions/actions they take form their professional identity (beijaard, verloop, & vermunt, 2000). furthermore, teachers’ didactic principles are empirical models to ensure optimal teaching and learning (thela, 1997). teachers’ identity construction is characterized by the social context that has an impact on the description of the self and the teacher self (lasky, 2005). in this social context, the teachers have their teacher education (beijaard, meijer, & verloop, 2004). teaching context incorporates school culture and interaction with others at work and this school culture involves the norms and the soul of education (doyle, 1990). moreover, the formation of teachers’ professional identity is reinforced through professional development (mora, trejo, & roux, 2014). learner autonomy in language learning is actualized by teachers’ guidance that helps students take responsibility in their educational life. furthermore, internal and external drives, capability, managing time effectively and collaboration with colleagues form the teacher autonomy (okay, 2018). herein, teacher education programs involve curriculums to train professionally autonomous teachers, which are required to foster pre-service teachers’ professional autonomy and give them a chance to experience how to foster their own students’ autonomies (little, 1995). in this regard, autonomy is accepted as the capacity for self-oriented actions in professional decisions and development (mcgrath, 2000; smith, 2003). ability is defined as developing skills, knowledge and attitudes for autonomy by engaging with colleagues and learners (smith, 2003). the combination of capacity and ability constitutes the concept of the capability to address teachers’ professional autonomy (okay, asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 24 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2018). external conditions, such as changes in teaching, power relations in the classroom, and regulations by government and institutions, may limit teachers’ decision making in teaching (ramos, 2006). a study conducted by huang (2011) demonstrates that the growth of future-teacher identity and autonomy are in relation to the agency. in their study, smith and erdoğan (2008) state that the participants formed a futureteacher identity during the educational period which is a driving force for teacher agency and subsequently promotes autonomy. teachers’ professional identity and teacher professional autonomy have an impact on teachers’ success in the field. investigating the relationship between teachers’ professional identity, teacher autonomy, and teacher success through structural equation modeling, the study conducted with iranian efl teachers shows that there is a significant and positive relationship among all three factors (derakhshan et al., 2020). in an authoritative study, teng (2019) addresses the relationship between teacher identity, autonomy, and agency, all of which are interconnected and influenced by the constraints of the teacher’s personal and professional life. as mentioned in the literature review, there aren’t any research studies that have investigated the relationship between turkish efl teachers’ professional identity and their professional autonomy. in this regard, the research questions are: rq1. what is the level of efl teachers’: a. professional identity? b. professional autonomy? rq2. do the results differ by: a. gender? b. the school in which efl teachers work? c. education level? d. work experience? rq3. is there a meaningful relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy? 3. methodology 3.1. participants the participants comprised 250 english as foreign language teachers (efl). all were turkish. there were 170 female and 77 male participants working in private (n=128) and state (n=117) schools in antalya, turkey. a convenience sampling was used to select participants and the participation was entirely voluntary based on their consent. they were working at the secondary and high schools. these participants had bachelor’s (n=184) and postgraduate (n=69) degrees. their work experience varied from less than seven years (n=87), between seven and 15 years (n=57), and more than 15 years (n=64). 3.2. instruments in the study, two questionnaires were used: teachers’ professional autonomy questionnaire (tepaq) by okay (2018) and professional identity questionnaire by beijaard et al. (2000). additionally, one demographic information form prepared by the researcher was used. 3.2.1. demographic information form the form was used to investigate if the results of teachers’ professional identity (tpi) and teachers’ professional autonomy differ by gender, the school in which efl teachers work as state and private, education level such as bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate as well as work experience of efl teachers. 3.2.2. professional identity questionnaire professional identity questionnaire by beijaard et al. (2000) is composed of 18 items with 4-point likert scale. the questionnaire comprises three sub-scales: subject-matter expert, pedagogical expert and didactical expert. confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) by amos was employed to ensure the construct validity of the questionnaire. as a consequence of the cfa, a goodness-of-fit index was found as compatible (0<rmsea<cfi<gfi<0.90). cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated as 0.817 for subject-matter factor, 0.776 for pedagogical expert factor, and 0.655 for didactical expert factor. overall cronbach’s alpha value for professional identity questionnaire was found as 0.881. 3.2.3. teachers’ professional autonomy questionnaire (tepaq) teachers’ professional autonomy questionnaire (tepaq) developed by okay (2018) consists of 23 items with 5-point likert scale. choices range from “strongly disagree to strongly agree”. the questionnaire is composed of five sub-scales: internal drives & motives, capability, time management, and external drives & motives. cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated as 0.822 for internal drives & motives, 0.875 for capability, 0.889 for collaboration with colleagues, 0.777 for time management, and 0.792 for external drives & motives. overall cronbach’s alpha value for teachers’ professional autonomy questionnaire was calculated as 0.896. 3.3. data collection and procedure before the implementation of the study, the required approval from the developers of the two questionnaires was obtained. 1this study is from the master’s thesis which was approved by the research ethics committee of the university. the ethics approval was received from research ethics committee of the university and the directorate of national education to conduct the study. the data were collected from february to may in 2021. quantitative survey-based research was employed through one demographic form and two questionnaires. the demographic form and two questionnaires were distributed online through google forms. 1 this study is from the master’s thesis entitled: “the relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy”. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 25 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.4. data analysis descriptive statistics was employed to identify the level of the efl teachers’ professional identity and autonomy. as the instrument of professional identity is a four-point likert scale, mean scores were calculated to find the level of teachers’ professional identity with: “1-1.75=first level, 1.75-2.50=second level, 2.50-3.25=third level, 3.25-4.0=fourth level”. the instrument of professional autonomy is a five-point likert scale and the following is used to determine the professional autonomy level with: “1.0-1.8=first level, 1.8-2.6=second level, 2.6-3.4=third level, 3.4-4.2=fourth level, 4.2-5.0=fifth level”. as a consequence of testing normality by skewness and kurtosis values, it was determined to use independent sample t-test, one way anova and spearman correlation test by spss. 4. findings 4.1. analysis of the first research question to find out the participants’ levels of professional identity and professional autonomy, descriptive statistics was employed to analyse the data. 4.1.1. the level of efl teachers’ professional identity as table 1 shows, participants have a very high level of teachers’ professional identity based on the total mean score of the whole questionnaire (m=3.27, sd= 0.4). the total mean score of subject-matter expert was found as very high. the results demonstrate that efl teachers view themselves as good examples for their profession and as having good knowledge for their field and about methods (msubject-matter expert=3.29, sdsubject-matter expert= 0.5). furthermore, efl teachers have a very high level of pedagogical expertise with good communicationprompting and problem-solving skills as well as creating a safe setting of teaching based on the total score of the pedagogical expert (mpedagogical expert=3.36, sdpedagogical expert=0.4). as a consequence, efl teachers also perform a high level of didactical expertise with the consideration of personal, professional and academic developments for both teachers and students with respect to the total score of the didactical expert (mdidactical expert=3.17, sddidactical expert=0.4). 4.1.2. the level of efl teachers’ professional autonomy data results in table 2 show that efl teachers possess a very high level of professional autonomy based on the total mean score of the whole questionnaire (m=3.7, sd=0.5). table 1. descriptive statistics of the level of efl teachers’ professional identity. items m sd s u b je ct -m at te r e x p er t 1. as a teacher, i serve as an example for the way in which students interact with each other and with other people. 3.4 0.7 2. in my lessons, i pay a lot of attention to alternating my teaching methods. 3.3 0.7 3. the discipline i have studied has been decisive in my choice for the teaching profession. 3.0 0.8 4. i consciously encourage a good interaction among students. 3.6 0.6 5. i possess good subject matter knowledge for my work as a teacher. 3.4 0.7 6. i make sure that students use their learning or working time effectively. 3.1 0.8 total 3.29 0.5 p ed ag o g ic al e x p er t 7. when i notice student problem behaviour, i try to do something about it. 3.4 0.6 8. i support my lessons with resources as much as possible. 3.5 0.7 9. i attach much value to conversations with my school colleagues about subject matter issues. 3.2 0.7 10. the most important thing for me is creating a class climate in which students feel safe and respected. 3.6 0.6 11. i regularly keep up with developments in my discipline through self-study and/or schooling. 3.2 0.7 12. i regularly evaluate my teaching. 3.2 0.7 total 3.36 0.4 d id ac ti ca l e x p er t 13. in my lessons, i strive to emphasize students’ personality development. 3.4 0.7 14. i pay a lot of attention to diagnosing and solving problems students have with their learning. 3.4 0.7 15. i am very interested in developments in my discipline. 3.4 0.7 16. the image students have of themselves, is an important point of departure for the way in which i approach them. 3.2 0.7 17. choosing relevant learning material for students takes a lot of my time. 2.5 0.9 18. everything i cover in my subject teaching is really important for the students. 3.3 0.7 total 3.17 0.4 total score 3.27 0.24 note: n=229. efl teachers are also internally driven to behave professionally autonomous and continue their professional development (minternal drives & motives=4.2, sdinternal drives & motives=0.5). in addition, efl teachers have the capability to become autonomous in their profession (mcapability=4.4, sdcapability=0.5). the total mean score of capability is also very high; that is, the teachers are highly able to adapt and develop themselves and their teaching techniques. it can also be said that they are very good at employing technology to alternate their teaching efficiently. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 26 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 2. descriptive statistics of the level of efl teachers’ professional autonomy. teachers' professional autonomy questionnaire. items m sd in te rn al d ri v es & m o ti v es 1. i want to develop myself professionally because i feel i have to. 4.2 0.9 2. it is my own wish to continue my professional development. 4.5 0.7 3. i am curious about new ways to develop my teaching. 4.4 0.8 4. i want to develop professionally because it is a necessity to meet the needs of students. 4.4 0.7 5. i enjoy developing myself professionally. 4.5 0.7 6. i feel obliged to continue my development as a teacher. 3.9 1.0 7. i constantly look for ways to develop my teaching. 4.2 0.7 8. i want to develop professionally to meet the needs of my students. 4.3 0.7 9. i want to develop myself professionally in order to push the limits of my abilities as a teacher. 4.2 0.8 total 4.2 0.5 c ap ab il it y 10. i am able to search out information about teaching. 4.4 0.7 11. i can find profession-related materials (i.e. books, journals, etc.) about teaching. 4.3 0.8 12. i have the ability to develop my teaching. 4.5 0.7 13. i am able to identify my weaknesses/strengths as a teacher. 4.5 0.7 14. i am able to use technology to develop my teaching. 4.6 0.6 15. i can adapt to recent developments in teaching. 4.3 0.7 16. i have access to technology to continue my development as a teacher. 4.6 0.6 total 4.4 0.5 c o ll ab o ra ti o n w it h c o ll ea g u es 17. i can work with my colleagues to develop my teaching 4.3 0.8 18. i like to learn from my colleagues to develop my teaching. 4.3 0.8 19. i have colleagues whom i can consult when i need help about my professional development. 4.2 0.8 total 4.3 0.7 t im e m an ag em en t 20. my workload is too heavy to engage in activities to develop myself as a teacher. 3.3 1.0 21. i find very little time outside the school for professional development activities. 3.3 1.1 total 3.3 0.9 e x te rn al d ri v es & m o ti v es 22. i want to develop myself professionally to better my financial condition. 3.2 1.2 23. i want to develop myself professionally for a chance of getting promoted to a better position. 3.1 1.1 total 3.1 1.0 total score 3.7 0.5 note: n=229. regarding the data results of collaboration with colleagues, efl teachers are very good at collaborating with people at work (mcollaboration with colleagues=4.3, sdcollaboration with colleagues=0.7). based on the total mean score of this subscale, efl teachers’ collaboration with colleagues at work is at very high level. regarding the time management of efl teachers, their autonomous actions in their profession are also influenced by managing their time at a moderate level based on the total mean score of the time management (mtime management=3.3, sdtime management=0.9). these efl teachers are further driven by external factors in their professionally autonomous attitudes and behaviours (mexternal drives & motives=3.1, sdexternal drives & motives=1.0). based on the total mean score of the external drives & motives, it can be said that efl teachers’ autonomous perceptions and actions are driven by better positions and promotions in their profession at a moderate level. 4.2. analysis of the second research question in this analysis, independent sample t-test and one-way anova were used to identify whether the results of efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy differ by gender, school type the efl teachers work, their education level and work experience. 4.2.1. analysis of efl teachers’ professional identity according to gender to determine whether efl teachers’ professional identity differs by gender, independent sample t-test was utilized to analyses data. table 3. analysis of tpi in terms of gender. scale gender n m sd t p professional identity female 158 59.7 6.7 2.268 0.024 male 71 57.4 8.7 subject-matter expert female 158 19.7 3.0 -0.403 0.687 male 71 19.9 3.7 pedagogical expert female 158 20.6 2.5 3.800 0.000 male 71 19.2 3.1 didactical expert female 158 19.4 2.4 2.911 0.004 male 71 18.3 3.0 note: n=229. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 27 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 3 shows that the scores of efl teachers’ professional identity (mfemale= 59.7, mmale=57.4, t=2.268, p<.05), pedagogical expert (mfemale= 20.6, mmale=19.2, t=3.800, p<0.05) and didactical expert (mfemale= 19.4, mmale=18.3, t=2.911, p<0.05) are significantly different in terms of gender. however, no significant difference exists between the scores of subject-matter expert in terms of gender (mfemale= 19.7, mmale=19.9, t=-0.403, p=0.687). 4.2.2. analysis of efl teachers’ professional identity according to the school type efl teachers work independent sample t-test was used in this analysis to determine whether elf teachers’ professional identity differs by the school in which elf teachers work. table 4. analysis of tpi in terms of the school in which efl teachers work. scale the school in which efl teachers work n m sd t p professional identity private 118 60.9 6.6 4.173 0.000 state 111 57.0 7.7 subject-matter expert private 118 20.4 2.8 3.216 0.001 state 111 19.1 3.5 pedagogical expert private 118 20.8 2.5 3.449 0.001 state 111 19.5 2.9 didactical expert private 118 19.7 2.4 4.021 0.000 state 111 18.4 2.7 note: n=229. as shown in table 4 efl teachers’ total scores of professional identity (mprivate=60.9, mstate=57.0, t=4.173, p<0.05), subject-matter knowledge (mprivate=20.4, mstate=19.1, t= 3.216, p<0.05), pedagogical expertise (mprivate=20.8, mstate=19.5, t=3.449, p<0.05), and didactical expertise (mprivate=19.7, mstate=18.4, t=4.021, p<0.05) significantly differ by the school type. 4.2.3. analysis of efl teachers’ professional identity according to education level to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between elf teachers’ professional identity according to educational level, independent sample t-test was computed to analyse the data. as presented in table 5 no significant difference exists between efl teachers’ total scores of professional identity (mbachelor’s=59.1, mpostgraduate=58.3, t=0.674, p=0.501), according to their education level. 4.2.4. analysis of efl teachers’ professional identity according to work experience to identify whether there is a statistically significant difference between elf teachers’ professional identity according to work experience, one-way anova was computed. as seen in table 6 efl teachers’ work experiences were grouped as less than seven years (lt7y), 7-15 years (7-15y) and more than 15 years (mt15y). table 5. analysis of tpi in terms of education level. scale education level n m sd t p professional identity bachelor’s 170 59.1 7.5 0.674 0.501 postgraduate 56 58.3 7.0 subject-matter expert bachelor’s 170 19.8 3.2 0.702 0.483 postgraduate 56 19.5 3.2 pedagogical expert bachelor’s 170 20.2 2.9 0.328 0.743 postgraduate 56 20.0 2.6 didactical expert bachelor’s 170 19.1 2.7 0.683 0.496 postgraduate 56 18.8 2.5 note: n=229. table 6. analysis of tpi in terms of work experience. scale work experience n m sd f p between group difference η2 professional identity lt7y 81 59.8 7.3 4.107 0.018 lt7y>mt15y 0.041 7-15y 54 60.9 5.7 7-15y>mt15y mt15y 62 57.4 7.0 subject-matter expert lt7y 81 20.0 3.3 4.719 0.010 7-15y>mt15y 0.046 7-15y 54 20.8 3.2 mt15y 62 19.0 2.7 pedagogical expert lt7y 81 20.3 2.7 1.593 0.206 7-15y 54 20.7 2.1 mt15y 62 19.9 2.8 didactical expert lt7y 81 19.5 2.6 3.450 0.034 lt7y>mt15y 0.034 7-15y 54 19.3 2.1 mt15y 62 18.4 2.8 note: n=229. results in table 6 indicate that the difference between the scores of efl teachers’ professional identity is significant in terms of their work experience (mlt7y=59.8, m7-15y=60.9, mmt15y=57.4, f=4.107, p<0.05). to determine between which groups there is a difference, the post hoc lsd test was carried out. regarding the data analysis of professional identity, the scores of efl teachers with lt7y of work experience are significantly higher than the scores of efl teachers with mt15y of work experience. additionally, the scores of efl teachers with 715y of work experience are significantly higher than the scores of efl teachers with mt15y of work experience. there is a moderate effect of work experience on tpi determined by the eta squared score (η2=0.041). asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 28 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group regarding the data results of the subject-matter expert, there is a statistically significant difference between efl teachers’ subject-matter expert in terms of their work experience (mlt7y=20.0, m7-15y= 20.8, mmt15y=19.0, f=4.719, p<0.05). as a consequence of the post hoc lsd test, data results of subject-matter expert demonstrate that the scores of efl teachers with 7-15y of work experience are significantly higher than the scores of efl teachers with mt15y of work experience. it was found that year of work experience has a small effect on the subject-matter based on the eta squared score (η2=0.046). in this study, no significant difference was detected between efl teachers’ pedagogical expert in terms of their work experience (mlt7y=20.3, m7-15y=20.7, mmt15y=19.9, f=1.593, p=0.206). a significant difference was found between efl teachers’ didactical expert in terms of their work experience (mlt7y=19.5, m7-15y= 19.3, mmt15y=19.4, f=3.450, p<0.05). as a result of the post hoc lsd test, data results of didactical expert show that the scores of efl teachers with lt7y of work experience are significantly higher than the scores of efl teachers with mt15y of work experience. it was determined that there is a small effect of work experience on the didactical domain of tpi based on the eta squared score (η2=0.034). 4.2.5. analysis of efl teachers’ professional autonomy according to gender to find out whether efl teachers’ professional autonomy differs by gender, independent sample t-test was used in this analysis. as shown in table 7, a significant difference exists between the total scores of efl teachers’ professional autonomy in terms of gender (mfemale=96.3, mmale=93.2, t=2.149, p<0.05). table 7 presents the role of gender on participants’ internal drives, capability, collaborative attitudes with colleagues and time management as well as external motives. table 7. analysis of tpa in terms of gender. scale gender n m sd t p teachers' professional autonomy female 158 96.3 10.0 2.149 0.033 male 71 93.2 10.7 internal drives & motives female 158 39.1 4.9 2.540 0.012 male 71 37.3 5.2 capability female 158 31.5 3.4 2.169 0.031 male 71 30.4 3.9 collaboration with colleagues female 158 12.9 2.1 1.591 0.113 male 71 12.5 2.3 time management female 158 6.6 1.8 -0.080 0.936 male 71 6.6 2.1 external drives & motives female 158 6.2 2.0 -0.742 0.459 male 71 6.4 2.3 note: n=229. female efl teachers’ scores of internal drives and motives (mfemale=39.1, mmale=37.3, t=2.540, p<0.05) and capability (mfemale=31.5, mmale=30.4, t=2.169, p<0.05) are significantly higher than male efl teachers. however, no significant difference was found between collaboration with colleagues (mfemale=12.9, mmale=12.5, t=1.591, p=0.113), time management skills (mfemale=6.6, mmale=6.6, t=-0.080, p=0.936), and external drives and motives according to gender (mfemale=6.2, mmale=6.4, t=-0.072, p=0.459). 4.2.6. analysis of efl teachers’ professional autonomy according to school type efl teachers work in order to determine whether efl teachers’ professional autonomy differs by the school type in which they work, independent sample t-test was employed in the analysis. table 8 shows that a significant difference exists between the total scores of efl teachers’ tpa according to the school in which they work (mprivate=97.6, mstate=93.0, t=3.458, p<0.05). table 8. analysis of tpa in terms of the school in which efl teachers work. scale the school in which efl teachers work n m sd t p teachers' professional autonomy private 118 97.6 10.5 3.458 0.001 state 111 93.0 9.6 internal drives & motives private 118 39.2 5.0 1.905 0.058 state 111 37.9 5.0 capability private 118 31.7 3.6 2.498 0.013 state 111 30.5 3.5 collaboration with colleagues private 118 13.1 2.3 2.547 0.012 state 111 12.4 2.0 time management private 118 6.9 2.1 2.164 0.031 state 111 6.4 1.5 external drives & motives private 118 6.7 1.9 3.531 0.001 state 111 5.8 2.1 note: n=229. however, the internal drives and motives of efl teachers are not influenced by working in private or state schools (mprivate=39.2, mstate=37.9, t=1.905, p=0.058). in this analysis, there is a statistically significant difference between efl teachers’ capability (mprivate=31.7, mstate=30.5, t=2.498, p<0.05), collaboration with colleagues (mprivate=13.1, mstate=12.4, t=2.547, p<.05), time management (mprivate=6.9, mstate=6.4, t=2.164, p<0.05), and external drives and motives (mprivate=6.7, mstate=5.8, t=3.531, p<0.05) in terms of the school type. asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 29 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 4.2.7. analysis of efl teachers’ professional autonomy according to education level to find out whether efl teachers’ professional autonomy varies according to education level, independent sample t-test was performed. as seen in table 9 total scores of efl teachers’ professional autonomy do not differ by having b.a. degree or postgraduate degree (mbachelor’s=95.7, mpostgraduate=94.3, t=0.916, p=0.361). table 9. analysis of tpa in terms of education level. scale education level n m sd t p teachers' professional autonomy bachelor’s 170 95.7 9.6 0.916 0.361 postgraduate 56 94.3 12.4 internal drives & motives bachelor’s 170 38.7 4.9 1.036 0.301 postgraduate 56 37.9 5.6 capability bachelor’s 170 31.2 3.2 1.064 0.288 postgraduate 56 30.7 4.4 collaboration with colleagues bachelor’s 170 12.9 2.1 1.486 0.139 postgraduate 56 12.4 2.3 time management bachelor’s 170 6.6 1.8 1.037 0.301 postgraduate 56 6.9 2.1 external drives & motives bachelor’s 170 6.3 2.1 0.380 0.705 postgraduate 56 6.4 2.1 note: n=229. 4.2.8. analysis of efl teachers’ professional autonomy according to work experience to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between elf teachers’ professional autonomy according to work experience, one-way anova was performed in this analysis. efl teachers’ work experiences were grouped as less than seven years (lt7y), 7-15 years (7-15y) and more than 15 years (mt15y). based on the results in table 10, the scores of efl teachers’ professional autonomy significantly differ by their work experience (mlt7y=97.6, m7-15y=96.4, mmt15y=92.1, f=7.870, p<0.05). post hoc lsd test indicates that the scores of efl teachers with lt7y of work experience are significantly higher than the scores of efl teachers with mt15y of work experience. the scores of efl teachers with 7-15y of work experience are also significantly higher than the ones with mt15y of work experience. the eta squared score was calculated as η2=0.075; therefore, the work experience variable has a moderate effect on tpa. no significant difference was found between efl teachers’ internal drives and motives in terms of work experience (f=2.012, p>0.05). however, a significant difference exists between efl teachers’ capability in terms of their work experience (mth7y=31.5, m7-15y=31.9, mmt15y=30.3, f=4.905, p<0.05). as a consequence of the post hoc lsd test, data results of capability reveal that the scores of efl teachers with lt7y of work experience are higher than the scores of efl teachers with mt15 years of work experience. furthermore, the scores of efl teachers with 7-15y of work experience are significantly higher than the efl teachers in work for mt15 years. the role of work experience in capability was calculated as small based on the eta squared score (η2=0.048). table 10. analysis of tpa in terms of work experience. scale work experience n m sd f p between group difference η2 teachers' professional autonomy lt7y 81 97.6 9.2 7.870 0.001 lt7y>mt15y 0.075 7-15y 54 96.4 7.2 7-15y>mt15y mt15y 62 92.1 8.4 internal drives & motives lt7y 81 39.2 4.6 2.012 0.136 0.020 7-15y 54 38.9 4.3 mt15y 62 37.7 4.6 capability lt7y 81 31.5 3.1 4.905 0.008 lt7y>mt15y 0.048 7-15y 54 31.9 2.2 7-15y>mt15y mt15y 62 30.3 3.4 collaboration with colleagues lt7y 81 12.9 2.4 2.811 0.063 0.028 7-15y 54 13.3 1.5 mt15y 62 12.4 1.8 time management lt7y 81 7.1 2.0 5.386 0.005 lt7y>7-15y 0.053 7-15y 54 6.5 1.7 lt7y>mt15y mt15y 62 6.2 1.6 external drives & motives lt7y 81 6.9 2.0 9.277 0.000 lt7y>7-15y 0.087 7-15y 54 5.9 1.7 lty7>mt15y mt15y 62 5.6 2.2 note: n=229. data results also demonstrate that no significant difference was found between efl teachers’ collaboration with colleagues according to their work experience (mlt7y=12.9, m7-15y=13.3, mmt15y=12.4, f=2.811, p>0.05). however, there is a statistically significant difference between efl teachers’ time management in terms of their work experiences (mlt7y=7.1, m7-15y=6.5, mmt15y=6.2, f=5.386, p<0.05). as a result of the post hoc lsd test, data results of time management show that the scores of efl teachers with lt7y of work experience are significantly higher than the scores of efl teachers with 7-15y and mt15y of work experience. it was determined that work experience has a small effect on time management based on the eta squared score (η2=0.053). in addition, efl teachers have a significant difference in their external drives and motives in terms of their work experience (mlt7y=6.9, m7-15y=5.9, mmt15y=5.6, f=9.277, p<0.05). based on the post hoc lsd test, data results of external drives and motives demonstrate that the scores of efl teachers with lt7y of work experience are significantly higher than the scores of efl teachers with 7-15y of work experience and efl asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 30 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group teachers with mt15y of work experience. in this analysis, the role of work experience in external drives and motives was calculated as moderate based on the eta squared score (η2=0.087). 4.3. analysis of the third research question in order to identify whether there is a meaningful relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy, a correlational analysis was used and thereby spearman correlation test coefficients were computed in this analysis. results in table 11. indicate that there is a statistically significant, positive and moderate relationship between tpi and tpa (r=0.568, p<0.01). and, a significant, positive and moderate relationship exists between efl teachers’ professional identity and internal drives & motives (r=0.559, p<0.01), professional identity and capability (r=0.623, p<0.01), and their professional identity and collaboration with colleagues (r=0.471, p<0.01). table 11. spearman correlation test of tpi and tpa. scale t e a c h e rs ’ p ro fe ss io n a l a u to n o m y in te rn a l d ri v e s & m o ti v e s c a p a b il it y c o ll a b o ra ti o n w it h c o ll e a g u e s t im e m a n a g e m e n t e x te rn a l d ri v e s & m o ti v e s professional identity 0.568** 0.559** 0.623** 0.471** -0.046 -0.057 subject-matter expert 0.377** 0.371** 0.447** 0.351** -0.026 -0.113 pedagogical expert 0.526** 0.531** 0.579** 0.460** -0.126 -0.044 didactical expert 0.570** 0.533** 0.581** 0.416** 0.052 0.051 note: **p<0.01; n=229. additionally, there is a significant, positive and moderate relationship between subject-matter expert and professional autonomy (r=0.377, p<0.01), subject-matter expert and internal drives & motives (r=0.371, p<0.01), subject-matter expert and capability (r=0.447, p<0.01). a significant, moderate and positive relationship also exists between subject-matter expert and collaboration with colleagues (r=0.351, p<0.01). in addition, a significant, moderate and positive relationship was found between pedagogical expert and efl teachers’ professional autonomy (r=0.526, p<0.01), between pedagogical expert and internal drives & motives (r=0.531, p<0.01), pedagogical expert and capability (r=0.579, p<0.01). there is also a significant, moderate and positive relationship between pedagogical expert and collaboration with colleagues (r=0.460, p<0.01). moreover, a significant, moderate and positive relationship was found between didactical expert and professional autonomy (r=0.570, p<0.01), between didactical expert and internal drives & motives (r=0.533, p<0.01), didactical expert and capability (r=0.581, p<0.01), and didactical expert and collaboration with colleagues (r=0.416, p<0.01). as a consequence of the analysis, it can be concluded that there is not a significant relationship between the subscales of professional identity and time management, and between the subscales of professional identity and external drives & motives. 5. results and discussion this study was set out to find out the professional identity and autonomy levels of efl teachers. based on the results, efl teachers perform a very high level of professional identity and particularly they have a very high level of subject-matter expertise based on their educational background. the reason is that the teacher’s professional identity formation is promoted by the pre-service education and experiences (beijaard et al., 2004). thus, the knowledge of subject-matter obtained through the previous education period encourages efl teachers to continue their profession. furthermore, efl teachers with a very high level of subject-matter expertise view themselves as a good interaction model for the interaction between students and for the interaction students have in their social context. results also reveal that efl teachers are pedagogical experts in their profession at a very high level. and, they consider the climate of the classroom as a safe and respectful environment. according to kansanen (2003) creating a peaceful classroom atmosphere encourages students to establish close relationships with their teachers. in light of findings, efl teachers with a very high level of pedagogical expertise can also manifest their professional identity by creating a classroom environment with the sense of respect, safety and consideration. as a consequence of the high level of didactical expertise, these teachers can also diagnose and solve the problems in the learning process. similarly, klimstra (2013) says that identity formation is ensured by personal development. therefore, personal development and identity formation of learners are provided by the teachers who have a high level of didactical expertise. regarding the level of efl teachers’ professional autonomy, the results show that they possess a high level of professional autonomy. as stated by dam (1995) teachers’ autonomy is affected by their willingness and pleasure in the profession. in light of findings, efl teachers are also internally motivated at a very high level as they enjoy developing themselves. smith (2003) regards teachers as learners of their profession; thus, autonomous efl teachers keep developing themselves in the teaching profession. based on the results, efl teachers also have a very high level of capability which addresses their abilities to benefit from profession-related materials, technological tools and which means expressing weaknesses and strengths as teachers. teachers’ capability is a combination of ability and capacity which enable teachers to become autonomous in the professional context (okay, 2018). furthermore, collaboration in the professional context enables people to share work and experiences to make the work better (campbell, freedman, boulter, & kirkwood, 2003; haapaniemi, venalainen, malin, & palojoki, 2020). in this regard, efl teachers have a very high level of collaborating skills. and, time management is another aspect of professional autonomy which efl teachers perform at a moderate level. from pacaol (2021) perspective, teachers may also be busy with assessment, talking to parents and preparing materials. results reveal that efl teachers find their workload heavy to have time for professional development. lastly, external drives asian journal of education and training, 2022, 8(1): 22-33 31 © 2022 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group such as better financial conditions and promotion have a moderate impact on efl teachers’ professionally autonomous actions. the reason is that a higher pay and promotion affect teachers’ job satisfaction (khaliq, 2018). therefore, efl teachers may continue their professional development activities to be paid more or get promoted. in this study, we also investigated whether the results of efl teachers’ professional identity and autonomy differ by gender, education level, work experience, and the school type. based on the findings, female efl teachers have a higher level of professional identity and a higher sense of pedagogical and didactical expertise than male teachers. and, they perform a higher level of professional autonomy than male teachers in this study. although efl teachers’ collaborating with colleagues, time management and external drives do not differ by gender, results demonstrate that female efl teachers are more internally driven than male efl teachers, and view themselves as more capable than male teachers. in comparison to male teachers, female teachers seriously take into account the significance of higher inspiration, attraction and clear instruction that are also considered by their students (bondsraacke & raacke, 2007; escardíbul & mora, 2013; krupnick, 1985). considering the gender stereotypes in turkish culture and the sociological context, turkish people describe men as powerful whereas women’s stereotypes are structured under the personality traits such compassionate in the society and the media (ayan, 2014; berk, 2005). on the choice of a profession, the female might be perceived as an agent in the comfort of the house more than in a challenging work environment (zencirkıran, 2016). however, female teachers have a higher academic achievement, higher intrinsic motivation and less burn-out in the field (erten, 2010; sak, 2018). in this study, both professional identity and professional autonomy levels of female teachers are higher; therefore, the explanation of these findings might be related to the females’ effort to change the social stereotypes through higher pedagogical and didactical expertise as well as higher internal drives and capability in their teaching profession where they try to manifest their potential and actualize their ideals. in addition, efl teachers who work at private schools have a higher level of professional identity in the subject-matter, pedagogical and didactical expertise than the ones working in state schools. results reveal that private school efl teachers display a higher level of professional autonomy than the ones in state schools. regarding efl teachers’ professional autonomy, their capability, collaboration with colleagues, time management and external drives differ by the school type they work in. this might result from the extended hours of language lessons in private schools (garipağaoğlu, 2015; gürler, 2020). thus, efl teachers in private schools might have more time to be subjected to a variable teaching environment. moreover, private schools are allowed to modify the curricula and materials by the ministry of education in turkey while pre-determined materials must be used in state schools (ministry of national education (moe), 2012, 2016). therefore, private school efl teachers can feel freer to take actions autonomously in their field. in light of findings, efl teachers who have less than seven years of work experience and the ones with 7-15 years of experience possess a higher level of tpi than the ones with more than 15 years of work experience. at the same time, efl teachers who are in their first seven years in profession view themselves as more expertized in subject-matter and didactical approaches. the results reveal that efl teachers with less work experience might feel more competent with their fresh theoretical knowledge and enthusiasm. however, more experienced efl teachers might lose their interest in describing their teacher being in years. furthermore, efl teachers with less than seven years of work experience perform a higher level of tpa than the ones who have been working for more than 15 years. and, efl teachers with less work experience perform a higher level of capability in terms of professional autonomy than the ones in profession for more than 15 years. herein, it can be said that more experienced teachers might falter in capability whereas efl teachers with less than seven years of work experience are better at managing their time and are more externally motivated. thus, efl teachers with less work experience in the field tend to define their professional self autonomously. as a consequence of this study, we found that a significant, positive and moderate relationship exists between efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy. there are some studies that refer to the interrelation between identity and autonomy concepts (benson, 2010; huang., 2009; teng, 2019) however, the relationship between professional identity and professional autonomy of teachers in this study was investigated in the efl context. as efl teachers possess professional identity, they can display autonomous actions in their profession. accordingly, the freer efl teachers feel to make decisions in their teaching and profession, the more they can define their identity in the profession. 6. recommendations efl teachers, the pre-service trainers, mentors and school managements as well as curriculum developers should consider the relationship between efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy so that the efficiency of teacher education in the pre-service and in-service periods can be enriched. for this reason, professional development activities in these periods should be encouraged to render teaching and learning more effective. to enhance efl teachers’ professional identity and professional autonomy awareness, curriculum specialists can also collaborate with the teachers in further studies. in addition, the significant difference between efl teachers’ professional identity and autonomy in terms of gender should also be investigated to highlight the sociological and cultural backgrounds in the turkish context and different efl contexts. in the implication of this study, perceptions of teacher trainers or school management should also be explored. references akkerman, s. f., & meijer, p. c. 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(2016). sociology. bursa: dora. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 55 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 55-61, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5386 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group investigating errors made by english as a foreign language students during online collaborative writing jitlada moonma faculty of humanities and social sciences, lampang rajabhat university, lampang, thailand. email: jitlada.moon@gmail.com abstract this study focused on investigating common writing errors made by a group of thai students who participated in online collaborative writing using google docs, and understanding their satisfaction and attitudes on this writing approach. the participants consisted 32 thai first-year english major students who were purposively selected from their writing i course. the researcher collected and analyzed eight argumentative pieces of writing, identifying a total of 484 errors. the most frequently occurring error areas were incomplete sentences (15.75%), spelling mistakes (13.50%), and word choice issues (12.25%), with grammatical errors being the most prevalent (72%). following grammatical errors were lexical (12%) and mechanical errors (4%). to gauge students' satisfactions and attitudes, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were employed. the findings revealed that the students were highly satisfied with online collaborative writing with an average satisfaction score of 3.50. overall, the students exhibited a positive attitude towards online collaborative writing, finding it useful due to its flexibility in terms of allowing them to work from anywhere at any time and for its ability to boost their motivation. the study's findings provide valuable insights for english teaching professionals in thailand to consider when instructing students in writing. keywords: argumentative writing, efl students, english as a foreign language, google docs, online collaborative writing, writing errors. citation | moonma, j. (2024). investigating errors made by english as a foreign language students during online collaborative writing. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 55–61. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5386 history: received: 28 august 2023 revised: 14 november 2023 accepted: 10 january 2024 published: 12 february 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the lampang rajabhat university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 8 september 2022 (ref. no. 375/66). transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 56 2. objectives of the study ................................................................................................................................................................... 56 3. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 56 4. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 57 figure 1. the process of online collaborative writing. ................................................................................................................ 58 5. data collection................................................................................................................................................................................. 58 6. data analysis .................................................................................................................................................................................... 58 7. findings ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 58 8. conclusion and discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 60 9. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 61 10. future research ............................................................................................................................................................................. 61 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 61 mailto:jitlada.moon@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5386 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 55-61 56 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature previous studies in thailand have focused on writing errors in classroom, very few have focused on errors that occur during online collaborative writing outside of class. 1. introduction for english language learners, mastering writing skills is a significant challenge and an essential part of foreign language learning. regardless of their length of study, most english as a foreign language (efl) students tend to make writing errors (wee, sim, & jusoff, 2010). evaluating these errors can be a useful way to enhance student's writing abilities and measure their language learning progress (waelateh, boonsuk, ambele, & jeharsae, 2019). writing has always been demanding and intricate for efl learners, involving various steps like brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing. several studies (phoocharoensil et al., 2016; roongsitthichai, sriboonruang, & prasongsook, 2019; sermsook, liamnimit, & pochakorn, 2017) highlight that writing is the most challenging skill for efl learners due to their limited language proficiency and awareness of language structure and content required for composing (weigle, 2002). however, recognizing their writing errors is crucial for learners to improve their writing and produce better english compositions. in modern times, educational tools promoting learner-centered methods in collaborative learning settings encompass online collaborative writing (ocw) platforms, such as google docs. according to oxnevad (2013), utilizing these platforms allows students to receive prompt feedback. additionally, google docs enable students to work on their tasks from any computer connected to the internet, both at school and at home, as the documents are stored online. furthermore, the real-time collaboration feature of google docs facilitates virtual mini-conferences between students and teachers from various locations to discuss their work collectively. therefore, this research focuses on the shift from individual writing to group knowledge and from in-class writing to using internet resources for writing outside of class. despite these changes, the study's main goal is to investigate students' online collaborative writing errors in english argumentative writing using google docs. additionally, it aims to understand the students' satisfaction and attitude towards online collaborative writing (ocw). the study seeks to answer three main research questions: 1) what are the types of errors made by a group of thai students in their english argumentative writing in online collaborative writing using google docs, 2) what is the students’ satisfaction towards online collaborative writing? and 3) what is the students’ attitude towards online collaborative writing? 2. objectives of the study the main purpose of conducting research studies is to investigate the errors made by learners, which can provide valuable insights into how they are progressively grasping the target language. as proposed by corder (1967), this research aims to achieve the following specific objectives: 1. to investigate the errors frequently made by students in online collaborative writing while utilizing google docs. 2. to measure the students’ satisfaction with online collaborative writing. 3. to explore the students’ attitude towards online collaborative writing. 3. literature review 3.1 errors in the foreign language learning errors are an unavoidable part of the language learning process, as noted by james (1998). teachers have traditionally sought to prevent errors as they were viewed as undesirable. in thailand, research on english writing errors made by university students over the past decade was conducted. this study, carried out by hinnon (2014), investigated the english writing errors of thai university students. the research focused on three main types of errors: grammar, vocabulary, and writing organization. waelateh et al. (2019) further examined this study, involving fifteen undergraduate students from a university in southern thailand. they collected and evaluated three paragraphs from each student's 45 essays written during one semester. the researchers analyzed the essay constructions and compared the errors, considering categories such as morphology, lexicon, syntax, and discourse. the results indicated that the most frequent errors were related to syntax, vocabulary, morphology, and discourse. these investigations confirmed that thai students commonly made grammatical errors in their writing. 3.2. previous studies of writing errors as previously mentioned, errors play a vital role in improving writing and pose challenges for english as a foreign language (efl) students when writing in english. several studies have investigated the types and characteristics of errors in student writing. wu and garza (2014) examined sixth-grade students' emails written in english and found that grammar errors were the most frequent, including subject-verb agreement, sentence fragments, and singular and plural verb usage. each student made grammatical, lexical, and semantic errors. the average number of errors varied across different writing tasks. these findings align with conclusions from other studies (alcoy & biel 2018; bennui, 2019; kongkaew, 2018; moqimipour & shahrokhi, 2015) regarding grammatical errors in english writing. 3.3. error analysis in english writing in the thai context over the past decade, researchers in thailand have conducted several studies focusing on the english writing errors made by university students. these studies have primarily examined grammar, lexical, and writing organization errors as the most common types of mistakes in thai university students' english writing. one recent study by waelateh et al. (2019) involved fifteen college students from southern thailand, where the researchers collected and analyzed three essays from each student, totaling 45 essays of various genres written in english. the results of this study also emphasized the prevalence of syntactic, lexical, morphological, and discourse errors among the students. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 55-61 57 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group the repeated emphasis on grammatical errors in these studies could be attributed to the influence of the student's native language (l1) on their english writing, leading to interference or overgeneralization of l1 grammar rules in the l2 environment. furthermore, students might not be well-versed in the latest rhetorical devices in english writing. overall, error analysis research is valuable for both teachers and students as it helps identify areas that require improvement in english teaching and learning strategies. teachers can use these findings to design more effective instructional approaches for future english language learning (suwantarathip & wichadee, 2014). 3.4. learners’ perspectives on computer-mediated collaborative writing (cmcw) the attitudes of learners are a crucial aspect of research in collaborative writing because their attitudes play a key role in the success of such endeavors. previous studies have primarily gathered learners' attitudes through questionnaires or brief interviews, and the overall findings have been positive. according to elola and oskoz (2010) and strobl (2015), participants engaged in both individual and collaborative writing in pairs, and they reported favorable satisfaction of computer-mediated collaborative writing (cmcw). the findings are consistent with ansarimoghaddam and tan (2013) research. they investigated the impact of face-to-face (f2f) interactions and computer-mediated collaborative writing (cmcw) on individual writing outcomes among thirty malaysian english as a second language (esl) participants. these participants worked in groups of three for three weeks to collaboratively write an argumentative essay, both in face-to-face settings and on a wiki platform. during semistructured interviews, the participants expressed favorable attitudes and satisfaction towards computer-mediated collaboration due to its advantages such as flexibility of time and location, convenience, and the ability to review past discussions. in a separate study conducted by suwantarathip and wichadee (2014), 40 university students participated in tasks where they wrote paragraphs collaboratively using google docs. the researchers gathered feedback from the learners through questionnaires and interviews after the tasks, and the results were positive. the learners highly praised google docs as a user-friendly and accessible collaborative tool that boosted their motivation and encouraged active engagement with their peers. the researchers also highlighted that the various features and ease of use of google docs allowed learners to take responsibility for their contributions and facilitated effective interaction and collaboration among peers. in summary, all of the previous studies consistently demonstrated that learners who collaborated using computer-mediated modes achieved superior written outcomes and received favorable responses from their experiences. 4. methodology 4.1. participants thirty-two first-year english major students enrolled in the writing i course at lampang rajabhat university participated in argumentative writing instruction. the students were purposively sampled and included 19 females and 13 males, all aged between 18 and 22 years. throughout the instruction, the students engaged in ocw activities. they were divided into eight groups, each comprising four students. to promote collaborative learning, the students were allowed to independently choose their partners, aligning with the collaborative nature of the ocw approach (mulligan & garofalo, 2011). although the students had no prior experience with collaborative writing (cw), they had participated in other forms of collaborative learning, including individual and group discussions. it's worth noting that the students had been learning english from the primary school level through to university. 4.2. instruments in this study, the research instruments utilized were argumentative paragraphs created by eight groups of students using google docs. the participants were given three topic choices, which were selected by two english teachers to ensure their appropriateness for the student's age, background knowledge, and educational level. 4.2.1. writing tasks regarding the writing tasks, each group was assigned to write an argumentative paragraph of at least 200 words. all students had access to google docs in their respective locations, where they went through all the steps of online collaborative writing (ocw) using google docs and google classroom. the writing process involved the following steps: the first step involved the teacher providing an overview of collaborative writing (cw) in an online classroom setting (20 minutes). during the second step, students studied a model argumentative paragraph provided by the teacher, focusing on its grammatical structure (30 minutes). in the third step, each group worked together to outline, list, freewriting, brainstorm ideas, and organize information collaboratively (30 minutes). during the fourth step, students wrote the collaborative introduction, body, and conclusion as a rough draft or first draft (40 minutes). in the fifth step, the first draft was collaboratively revised with attention to vocabulary, content, and organization, making necessary additions, deletions, or changes (40 minutes). in the next step, the group engaged in a discussion and decided which changes from the revision stage to accept or decline, resulting in the second draft (30 minutes). the seventh step, the second draft underwent final proofreading and collaborative correction of conventions such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics to produce the final draft (30 minutes). in the last step, the students collaborated to format the completed paper and submitted only one final paper to the teacher. although they completed several writing drafts during these activities, only one final piece of writing was included in the study for each group. the process of online collaborative writing is shown in figure 1. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 55-61 58 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 1. the process of online collaborative writing. note: white and arndt (1991). 4.2.2. questionnaire the survey was conducted to measure the level of satisfaction among students with ocw. to achieve this, a likert scale questionnaire was used, which was adapted and translated into thai by the researcher. the questionnaire was reviewed and validated by three experts in english writing teaching at the university level, each having over ten years of experience. among them, one was a native english speaker. the scale utilized four values, namely: least (1), less (2), fair (3), and much (4). 4.2.3. semi-structured interview semi-structured interviews were utilized to gather qualitative data from a sample of six randomly chosen students. these interviews were conducted in thai, recorded, and later translated into english. the single question posed to the participants was: "what is your attitude towards online collaborative writing using google docs?" 5. data collection the researcher and two english department experts (including a thai individual with a master's degree in english and a native english-speaking teacher) investigated data from argumentative paragraphs. the initial phase involved error detection, where they independently identified and categorized errors in the argumentative writing paragraphs. subsequently, they compared their findings to ensure accuracy (james, 1998). 6. data analysis the study's goals led to a three-stage data analysis process. in the first stage, all the data was assessed and sorted into various error types to investigate their frequency and percentage. these errors were categorized based on three language levels: grammatical, lexical, and mechanical faults. in the second stage, the data was gathered from the questionnaire designed to measure the students’ satisfaction with online collaborative writing. the last step involved collecting data through semi-structured interviews from six randomly selected students who participated in the interview sessions. subsequently, the interviews were interpreted and analyzed to determine participants' attitude towards ocw. 7. findings results of the analysis revealed that twenty-two out of 25 types of errors were found in online collaborative argumentative writing paragraphs composed by this group of thai efl students, namely: incomplete sentences, misspellings, wrong choice of words, the use of conjunctions, parallel structures, capitalization, the use of asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 55-61 59 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group determiners, run-on sentences, the use of verb forms, punctuation, and the use of pronouns. the error types were illustrated as follow in table 1: table 1. errors frequently found in online collaborative writing. types of errors frequency 1. incomplete sentences 63 2. misspellings 54 3. wrong choice of words 49 4. errors in the use of conjunction 47 5. parallel structures 41 6. capitalizations 32 7. errors in the use of determiners 29 8. run-on sentences 27 9. errors in the use of determiners 24 10. punctuations 20 11. errors in the use of pronouns 18 12. errors in the use of agreements 16 13. errors in the use of tenses 14 14. errors in the use of nouns 11 15. errors in the use of subjects and objects 8 16. errors in the use of adverbs 7 17. errors in the use of possessives 6 18. word orders 5 19. errors in the use of adjectives 4 20. errors in the use of infinitives and gerunds 4 21. errors in the use of prepositions 3 22. repetition of words 2 23. space errors 0 24. overgeneralization 0 25. miscellaneous unclassifiable errors 0 total 484 table 1 shows that among the errors made by the students, incomplete sentences (15.75%), misspelled words (13.50%), and wrong word choices (12.25%) were the most frequent. 7.1. incomplete sentences the analysis of online writing revealed that the most problematic issue was incomplete sentences. for instance, one example showed: "she stressed." the correct sentence should be "she is stressed." this illustrates the omission of the verb "is." another instance involved the sentence: "today, technology plays an important role in our lives." it could be rephrased as: "today, technology has an important role in our lives." in this case, the writer omitted the verb "has." 7.2. misspelling the spelling errors were identified in different categories. first of all, the errors were caused by the students adding or omitting spaces in a single word or compound words. the following are the exemplified sentences: somefriend <some friends> do not like english. she is in my heart forever. <forever> everybody <everybody> has several ideas. the second common occurrence was phonetic spelling, where the writer writes the phonetic letter sounds that they hear, but the word is not correctly spelled. the following are some exemplified sentences: he huges <hugs> her. he felt relive <relieved> at that time. it was her dicision <decision>. they asked for advice <advice> from their parents. 7.3. wrong choice of words numerous sentences in the texts contained inappropriate vocabulary, which led to a deviation from their intended meaning. for instance, the sentence "he has a sense of humour" should have used "a good sense of humor," as the latter accurately conveys the trait of being able to say or do humorous things to make people laugh. another example is the use of "lovely" when the writer meant to say "nice." "lovely" refers to the beauty inside and outside of a person, but "nice" better expresses the intended meaning of being kind and pleasant. upon analyzing the errors, they were categorized into three linguistic levels of the english language: grammar (72%), lexis (12%), and writing mechanics (4%). grammar proved to be the most challenging linguistic level, with the highest frequency of errors. regarding the satisfaction, table 2 illustrated the students' satisfaction towards online collaborative writing as follow: asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 55-61 60 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 2. the students’ satisfaction with online collaborative writing using google docs. students’ satisfaction with ocw using google docs mean 1. i am satisfied with the ease of online collaborative writing in creating and editing documents from anywhere. 3.49 2. i am satisfied with the ease of access in all devices 3.51 3. i am satisfied with tracking the changes in real-time 3.40 4. i am satisfied with its auto saving and automatically stored in google drive. 3.51 5. i am satisfied with google docs’ feature which can be shared with anyone. 3.61 total 3.50 based on table 2, the students displayed a high level of satisfaction (average = 3.50) with the utilization of google docs for ocw activities. this suggests their contentment with this particular task. the aspect that received the highest average score (3.61) was item 5, indicating strong agreement with the statement "i am satisfied with google docs’ feature which can be shared with anyone." this highlights their strong satisfaction with the capability of sharing documents using google docs. the next highest averages were associated with items 2 (average = 3.51, satisfaction with ease of access across devices) and 4 (average = 3.51, satisfaction with auto-saving and automatic storage in google drive). the third highest average (3.49) was linked to item 1, expressing contentment with the ease of collaborative writing and document editing from any location. conversely, the lowest average (3.40) pertained to item 3, indicating satisfaction with real-time change tracking. in addition, in order to gather more comprehensive information from ocw using google docs, a random selection was made involving six students who participated in semi-structured interviews. these interview sessions involved students answering questions in thai, which were later translated into english. the students were identified with the labels: student 1 (s1), student 2 (s2), student 3 (s3), student 4 (s4), student 5 (s5), and student 6 (s6). below are excerpts from these interviews. s1: the student reported that “i found that this writing activity was useful.” it can assume that the writing task proved to be beneficial, with google docs offering features such as real-time collaboration, version history, change tracking, auto-saving, accessibility from anywhere, offline mode, export options, and file storage. most notably, it facilitated organization and quick access to the latest content version. s2: the activity was valuable. “i aimed to enhance my paper using useful applications, which taught me a lot, though it was time-consuming.” however, the absence of face-to-face interactions among group members eliminated any hesitancy in sharing ideas openly. s3: the student found the activity beneficial. it resembled a writing exam and i felt apprehensive about online paper submission, as it required both writing skills and familiarity with google docs. learning to use google docs for online writing became crucial. s4: writing online was productive, aiding in organization and immediate access to updated content. yet, i encountered difficulties with google docs due to its novelty. despite this, it was advantageous as it allowed me to work from home instead of attending classes. s5: the time-saving aspect of the activity was advantageous, enabling paper composition from various locations. collaborative tools were employed to review and edit writing, leading to error corrections. s6: this activity was commendable. leveraging google docs, i could write, edit, and collaborate effortlessly from anywhere. simultaneous group work expedited assignment completion. moreover, i utilized revision history to compare different document versions. regarding the qualitative findings, the majority of students expressed a positive attitude towards the writing activity of ocw. they found it beneficial and were inclined to rely on themselves, utilizing grammar-check applications or programs for assistance. student 6 mentioned, "i was satisfied with this writing activity." it saved time to complete the "writing piece. the student expressed satisfaction with the activity, mentioning time-saving benefits of completing the writing piece. similarly, student 5 stated, "i found this activity very useful." i can use an application or program to recheck or revise the writing. "it helped me correct some errors." the student found the activity highly useful, utilizing applications or programs to review and correct errors in their writing. additionally, when it came to attending the classroom, student 4 reported, "for me, it was good because i could stay at my place without attending the classroom." "it was good." the student appreciated the flexibility of being able to stay in their own space instead of physically attending the classroom, and overall, they viewed this aspect of ocw positively. based on the results of the student survey, it was evident that students found ocw's use of google docs to be highly beneficial and convenient for various reasons. one of the key advantages was the ability to access and revisit past discussions easily. 8. conclusion and discussion earlier findings indicated that thai efl students made various types of errors in ocw. these errors fell into three major categories: incomplete sentences, misspellings, and incorrect word choices. the errors were further classified into grammatical, lexical, and mechanical errors. the grammatical errors suggested that the students struggled with english grammar, possibly due to limited opportunities to practice english writing, which can be challenging for thai efl students because of the numerous grammar rules they need to learn. the second most common type of error was lexical, indicating that the students lacked sufficient vocabulary to express their ideas accurately. as a result, they often used general words when they encountered unfamiliar terms. the final type of error was mechanical, which encompassed spelling and punctuation errors. the student's struggles with punctuation might be attributed to the fact that the thai language does not use punctuation as extensively as english. these findings were consistent with previous research by hinnon (2014) and waelateh et al. (2019), who also identified grammar and lexical factors as the primary sources of errors in student writing. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 55-61 61 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group regarding the students' attitudes toward ocw activities using google docs, they generally found it beneficial and convenient. they appreciated the ability to review prior discussions and considered google docs an accessible and user-friendly tool that motivated them to interact with peers and share ideas. the positive satisfaction aligns with a similar study by suwantarathip and wichadee (2014) on university students' collaboration in writing using google docs. however, it's worth noting that the present study's findings might not apply to other contexts, as it involved a limited sample of only 32 university students in a specific region of thailand. 9. recommendations understanding different types of errors is crucial for educators and curriculum developers as it enables them to create effective remedial materials that enhance the quality of education. by conducting error analysis on students' english writing, teachers can gain insights into the reasons behind these errors and design targeted lessons to improve their writing skills. it is also important to consider the english curriculum's plan, design, and implementation, incorporating appropriate teaching methods and materials, such as online language learning platforms (olcw), to address specific error patterns and enhance thai university students' writing abilities. leveraging technology in the learning process can be advantageous, as satisfied students who enjoy learning through technology can be assigned collaborative writing tasks outside the classroom, saving time for teachers and promoting better writing outcomes. 10. future research future research can be undertaken to examine the impact of online collaborative writing (ocw) on students' writing motivation, comparing the outcomes between traditional face-to-face methods and the utilization of google docs. additionally, exploring the development of student's critical thinking skills through the implementation of various educational technologies alongside google docs would be valuable. emphasizing the integration of technology in language classrooms could offer students significant benefits through blended learning approaches. references alcoy , j., & biel , l. 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(2014). types and attributes of english writing errors in the efl contexts-a study of error analysis. journal of language teaching and research, 5(6), 1256-1262. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.24197/ogigia.24.2018.19-42 http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume14/ej55/ej55m1/ http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume14/ej55/ej55m1/ 154 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 3, 154-161, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i3.5886 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group an experimental study on improving reading comprehension and analytical writing skills of twelfth-grade students on lexical and collaborative learning in chinese language courses deng renjie1 suwisa jarutkamolpong2 nirat jantharajit3 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3faculty of education, nakhon phanom university, nakhon phanom, thailand. 1email: 2409592656@qq.com 2email: suwisa_j@npu.ac.th 3email: n20jann@hotmail.com abstract this study explores the practical effects of lexical and collaborative learning on improving reading comprehension and analytical writing skills among twelfth-grade students in chinese language classes. a sample of 30 students aged 17 to 19 was selected from a public high school in china. the chinese reading comprehension skills test paper (crcstp) and the analytical writing skills assessment scale (awsas) were used to measure students' reading comprehension and analytical writing abilities before and after the experiment, employing a single-group pretest-posttest experimental design. students' chinese reading comprehension skills significantly improved after the experiment, with the standard deviation (sd) decreasing from 2.95 to 2.01 and the mean score (x¯) increasing from 16.67 to 18.47. the t-test indicated a substantial improvement (t(29) = -5.34, p < 0.05). additionally, students' analytical writing abilities showed significant enhancement, with the sd decreasing from 2.34 to 1.79 and x¯ increasing from 17.2 to 20.1. the t-test demonstrated a statistically significant improvement (t(29) = -12.52, p < 0.05). these findings suggest that integrating lexical and collaborative learning into the chinese language curriculum effectively enhances twelfth-grade students' reading comprehension and analytical writing skills. keywords: analytical writing skills, chinese language courses, collaborative learning, lexical learning, reading comprehension. citation | renjie, d., jarutkamolpong, s., & jantharajit, n. (2024). an experimental study on improving reading comprehension and analytical writing skills of twelfth-grade students on lexical and collaborative learning in chinese language courses. asian journal of education and training, 10(3), 154–161. 10.20448/edu.v10i3.5886 history: received: 29 april 2023 revised: 12 july 2024 accepted: 26 july 2024 published: 15 august 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the nakhon phanom university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 29 february 2024 (ref. no. he8267). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 155 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 155 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 157 4. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 158 5. discussion ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 159 6. conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 160 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 160 mailto:2409592656@qq.com mailto:suwisa_j@npu.ac.th mailto:n20jann@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i3.5886 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4622-9172 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9748-182x https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1098-8109 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 154-161 155 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating the efficacy of integrating lexical and collaborative learning to improve reading comprehension and analytical writing skills among twelfth-grade chinese students. the findings highlight significant enhancements in both areas, suggesting practical implications for curriculum design and pedagogy in chinese language education. 1. introduction reading comprehension and analytical writing skills are considered the twin pillars of students' comprehensive literacy in the current educational milieu. according to dinda (2022) these proficiencies not only serve as the bedrock for students' mastery across other disciplines but also constitute prerequisites for their future academic and professional success. despite the substantial allocation of resources by educational systems to cultivate these competencies, many students still encounter numerous challenges in their actual learning practices. claxton (2002) characterizes the contemporary era as an age of information explosion, in which learning opportunities abound. however, there is a noted decline in students' enthusiasm for reading, particularly in textual engagement (beers, 2003). consequently, educators observe a deficiency in students' acquisition of literary and cultural knowledge due to inadequate reading habits, resulting in a multitude of problems. notably, reduced reading habits have resulted in a significant decline in students' comprehension abilities and weakened writing expression skills, posing a substantial obstacle to their proficiency in mastering the chinese language. nonetheless, high school chinese language learning stands as one of the pivotal components of students' academic trajectories, albeit one of the most challenging subjects. as students’ progress through grade levels, they encounter increasingly complex texts, thereby escalating the difficulty of reading comprehension. chinese high schools require students to comprehend increasingly abstract and profound texts, such as academic papers and literary works (dong, 2023). that is why it places more demands on students’ reading comprehension abilities and requires them to have better language, speech, and reasoning functions. regrettably, many students struggle to meet these requirements and reach this stage. in addition to understanding and comparing texts, students are also required to express their personal opinions and ideas through writing. while learning how to write longer, relatively complicated compositions, high schooler’s practice their critical and analytical skills to be able to state arguments and support them accurately. however, a multitude of students still find writing to be one of the most challenging tasks, potentially due to inadequately mastered writing skills or insufficient language expression potential. given the challenges facing students, it is urgent to consider teaching strategies that can help students improve their reading comprehension and analytical writing skills. tailored instruction and training are one of the most optimal and viable pathways for high school students. in order to improve student reading comprehension and analytical writing skills in a chinese language setting, this study aims to investigate the teaching concept of reading through lexical learning and collaborative work. specifically, lexical learning aims to cultivate the students' basic vocabulary and grammar knowledge through extensive reading and writing, as one of the necessary foundations of reading and writing ability. collaborative learning aims to foster the students' cooperative spirit through group discussions and task completion. nonetheless, students can benefit from each other's mutual learning and exchange, leading to a sustainable improvement in their reading and writing abilities. this research aims to provide practical experience support for educational practice as well as a useful teaching method for teachers to help students continue to improve their reading comprehension and analytical writing skills. similarly, the data analysis aims to contribute to the ongoing research on the suitability and effectiveness of teaching methods, as well as provide valuable implications for relevant studies. 2. literature review 2.1. lexical learning and language teaching lexical learning refers to the process by which learners enhance their comprehension and application of a language through exposure to and mastery of vocabulary, lexical rules, and word construction. in linguistics, lexis refers to the morphology and structure of vocabulary in a language, encompassing the rules of word formation, morphological changes, and semantic aspects. lexical learning involves the accumulation of vocabulary, categorization and induction of vocabulary, and understanding vocabulary change rules, constituting a vital language acquisition component. mcgregor, sheng, and ball (2007) discovered that words with high frequencies have an instantaneous impact on semantic learning, but their influence on lexical learning is slower. tuomiranta et al. (2011) found that people struggle to learn and remember new languages in a comparative case study of aphasic patients. they also underlined the value of language development and preservation. other research looks at different process components to better understand the mechanics and implications of lexical learning for language development. the use of network growth models allows us to study the system as an interconnected cognitive structure, linguistic structure, and connection in a systemic way. these models investigate the issue of complexity emergence in early language acquisition by analyzing vocabulary patterns using phonological and semantic network analysis. beckage & colunga found that the relationship between words in children’s lexicons, in the form of semantic or phonological links, plays a substantial role in predicting network growth as measured by these network tools. furthermore, the studies suggest a general theoretical framework for predicting children’s future word acquisition using network models. studies on song-based language learning also spiked interest. according to tegge (2015) a lot of teachers find songs to be tools for language learning, especially when it comes to expanding vocabulary. instructors tend to select songs with lyrics and easy vocabulary, enabling students to pick up new words from the song lyrics. in a study by small and colleagues in 2016, they explored how different chunk sizes can influence the process of learning and comprehending new words. children's tendency to break down syllable sequences into parts can have an impact on their ability to absorb and remember vocabulary due to variations in repetition learning (vrl) compared to adults. this finding sheds light on why similarities between words may hinder children's reading skills, asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 154-161 156 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group impacting their acquisition. understanding development is crucial in studying language development. as noted by nation in 2013, children who face developmental language challenges often struggle with vocabulary, experiencing limitations in their word knowledge and difficulties in picking up and recalling words. understanding these limitations is crucial to understanding how developmental language issues affect both language understanding and expression. learning vocabulary involves the process of grasping, remembering, and applying words. various aspects play a role in these stages, such as differences, in chunk sizes, teaching methods utilizing song models for forming networks, and conditions like developmental language disorders (dld). research in this area provides insights into how people of diverse ages and backgrounds acquire language skills. lexical learning is essential when increasing an individual's writing and reading abilities, and its importance cannot be overstated. nation (2008) noted that teachers can help students become more proficient readers and writers of analytical essays by offering focused assistance with lexical learning. lexical learning directly influences language expression and comprehension skills by increasing vocabulary, improving word recognition skills, and deepening comprehension of texts. this promotes the ongoing development of reading and writing competencies. since vocabulary is the building block of language, boosting our vocabulary will help us comprehend and articulate ideas more clearly and profoundly when reading complicated materials. people's lexicons gradually grow due to their constant exposure to and learning of new words and their meanings, improving their ability to respond to various expressive demands. rich vocabulary improves the emotiveness and persuasiveness of expressions, whether in academic writing or daily communication (hong, yu, wu, & pu, 2020). a particular vocabulary repertoire makes recognizing and understanding new words simpler. this skill makes reading more accessible to the brain by reducing the effort required to decode words. it also makes information retrieval easier and improves comprehension of textual content. such increased text sensitivity unquestionably offers substantial assistance for in-depth reading and efficient communication. a strong vocabulary is crucial for enhancing an individual's ability to understand written text. individuals who continuously acquire new vocabulary have an enhanced ability to comprehend idiomatic expressions, subtle meanings, and terms that are significant to the context of written texts. developing a deeper understanding of texts enhances reading comprehension skills, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of the author's intentions and a more precise interpretation of the key ideas presented in the text. qian (2002) demonstrates the impact of acquisition on understanding written materials. the research explores the interconnections between reading skills, word knowledge, and reading environment. the study also provides significant insights into compelling educational methods for reading and writing. developing writing skills also demands a solid understanding of vocabulary acquisition. an extensive lexicon is essential for effectively conveying ideas, vividly depicting scenes, and intricately developing characters during writing. considering a wide range of languages allows a writer to express concepts with greater clarity and vividness, enhancing the appeal of their writing. as hardy (2014) stated, a wide-ranging lexicon can enhance emotions, intensify lyricism, and foster a more authentic connection with readers. moreover, employing a wide-ranging lexicon provides further prospects for creativity and ingenuity. despite speculation, lexical learning takes time and effort to complete and is not an immediate process. however, the benefits of this kind of investment are incalculable, as previously mentioned. consistently increasing vocabulary, enhancing word recognition skills, and strengthening text comprehension can lead to significant gains in reading and writing proficiency. this improvement is evident in everyday communication and is crucial in the professional and academic spheres. education regards lexical learning as a crucial component in enhancing students' language proficiency. to help students master vocabulary knowledge, several instructors dedicate themselves to researching and promoting effective vocabulary teaching methods and strategies. these methods and strategies include using context, creating vocabulary, playing memory games, and encouraging extensive reading (oktaviani, 2020; tobarmuñoz, baldiris, & fabregat, 2017). meanwhile, as technology has advanced, a wide range of online vocabulary study resources and programs have emerged, offering students individualized and varied approaches to vocabulary acquisition (yip & kwan, 2006). lexical learning is a crucial component of improving reading and analytical writing abilities. it enhances understanding of literature and promotes linguistic fluency. by dedicating time and effort to learning and building vocabulary, individuals can consistently progress in their reading and writing skills, establishing a solid academic and career growth basis. both teachers and students must understand the importance of lexical acquisition and employ effective tactics and approaches to facilitate students' learning and utilization of vocabulary. 2.2. collaborative learning: theory and practice collaborative learning, an instructional strategy that encourages students to work together, has gained significant attention in education. the central concept promotes collaborative efforts among students to generate knowledge and enhance collective comprehension. based on social constructivist theory, education is a cultural engagement process where students actively participate in group activities within a learning community to acquire significant knowledge and valued skills (zajda & zajda, 2021). according to alzahrani and woollard (2013) this instructional approach is firmly based on social constructivist theory, which holds that knowledge is formed via social interactions and participation in contexts. students in collaborative learning environments no longer absorb information but actively contribute to its creation. they constantly spark intellectual insights by working together to solve problems, share ideas, and have constructive debates. together, they build the body of knowledge. with the support of this learning modality, students can engage in all stages of the learning process by exchanging ideas, experiences, and mutual exchanges. this technique has demonstrated numerous advantages, including the improvement of critical thinking abilities (nelson, 1994) and the resolution of coordination, communication, and material organization deficiencies through mobile computing-enabled collaborative learning settings (zurita & nussbaum, 2004). the versatility and adaptability of collaborative learning are its main draws. students attend various educational activities as part of collaborative learning, including role-playing, group discussions, and project collaboration (klopfer, perry, squire, & jan, 2005). these exercises stimulate children's curiosity and enhance their ability to listen, understand, appreciate, and esteem others in collaborative learning. constant cooperation and communication foster asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 154-161 157 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the development and improvement of students' critical thinking, communication, and teamwork skills. fischer (2013) study reveals that the implementation of collaborative learning strategies enhances students' capacity for selfdirected learning. for instance, fischer (2013) advises students to engage in collaborative learning and critically think, rather than passively absorbing information. in this regard, the teaching method that ensures students become self-reliant critical thinkers who love knowledge and learning for life through encouraging independent study is noteworthy. however, collaborative learning comes with its own set of challenges. therefore, to achieve this objective, educators must create educational activities that ensure every student actively participates in the process. this implies that teachers must constantly monitor their students' responses and determine whether they are learning or not. also, students must learn how to come together and communicate in order to overcome their inclination towards individualism. frequently, education employs collaborative learning, which helps improve student learning outcomes and promotes the cultivation of useful skills in general. in their works, männistö et al. (2020) and de hei, tabacaru, sjoer, rippe, and walenkamp (2019) affirmed that collaborative learning additionally assists students to develop interaction abilities, resolve issues, feel satisfied with their work, and study better. martín-del-pozo, garcía-valcárcel muñoz-repiso, and hernández martín (2019) state that teachers’ attitudes towards collaborative learning shape students’ involvement in these techniques. they stress that teachers’ zeal and positive opinions have a lot of weight in terms of children’s activeness. collaborative learning has two types, which are group discussions and cooperative projects. this method allows instructors to group students based on their abilities and preferences for certain subjects or activities, such as debates or presentations. the teacher assigns tasks to each cluster and supervises their efforts to solve problems, complete assignments, or conduct research on assigned topics. social learning may raise pupils’ interest according to winsett, foster, dearing, and burch (2016). this collaborative learning fosters an environment where students are motivated to articulate their opinions and viewpoints, acquire knowledge from their peers, and cultivate their creative abilities. through group discussions and collaborative projects, students not only cultivate teamwork and leadership skills but also deepen their understanding and application of the knowledge they have learned. however, corden (2001) emphasizes that simply organizing students into groups does not guarantee active participation in collaborative discussions. in addition to group discussions and collaborative projects, various other forms of collaborative learning exist in the education field. for example, collaborative learning encourages students to communicate and assist each other during the learning process, collectively overcoming challenges and enhancing learning outcomes (awan, 2021). peer tutoring promotes students' critical thinking and comprehension abilities by having them take on the roles of both teachers and learners, fostering mutual learning (stigmar, 2016). in this teaching mode, students need to adopt the perspective of a teacher to explain and elaborate on knowledge points while continually improving and enhancing them through peer feedback. collaborative learning has been used in many different areas. the peer feedback mechanism in collaborative learning is the key factor that makes medical education better since it gives the learning process a boost through interaction and assistance (lerchenfeldt, mi, & eng, 2019). as a result, this teaching method has enhanced the problem-solving abilities of students by focusing on their metacognitive levels. these findings are consistent with männistö et al. (2020) and chung and choi (2011) who emphasize the model's ability to improve students' learning, nursing, and knowledge levels, as well as their overall learning experiences. purwantara et al. (2023) discovered that this geography teaching style encourages students' active participation and teamwork, which is possible because the students come from diverse backgrounds. it unites information, skills, attitudes, and technical expertise while, on the one hand, accommodating the changing needs of education. phetpraphatson, chomsuwan, and suamuang (2023) propose that the way to enhance the industrial electronics students' robotic abilities is through the integration of collaborative learning and practical training. this method assigns distinct roles for the students to embody. they receive assistance in collaborating to complete robotic skills activities, which improves their comprehension of subjects and fosters a tremendous enthusiasm for learning. online and remote learning have led to the widespread use of online collaborative learning platforms like google docs and microsoft teams in education. these platforms provide students with easy-to-use tools for learning and communication, allowing them to collaborate with classmates anywhere and at any time without being limited by time or space. in online collaborative learning environments, suh and lee (2006) developed a collaborative learning agent to facilitate interaction among learners. theng and mai (2013) studied students' perceptions of network-based collaborative learning in constructivist environments. online collaborative learning not only broadens students' learning channels and methods, but it also provides them with more opportunities for interaction and cooperation with peers, contributing to the cultivation of their teamwork spirit and autonomous learning abilities. collaborative learning promotes cooperation, interaction, and knowledge construction among students, providing rich and diverse learning experiences and opportunities that contribute to improving their learning effectiveness and fostering comprehensive capabilities. in future educational practices, it is imperative to further promote and apply the concepts and methods of collaborative learning, thereby creating more opportunities for the holistic development and enhancement of students' overall qualities. 3. method 3.1. research objectives in the current educational context, students' reading comprehension and analytical writing skills undoubtedly serve as two pillars of their overall literacy. however, in actual learning processes, many students encounter bottlenecks in these areas, particularly as they advance to higher grades, where deeper understanding of complex chinese texts and precise expression of self-opinions are required. this study aims to investigate the practical effects of lexical and collaborative learning on improving reading comprehension and analytical writing skills among twelfth-grade students in chinese language classes. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 154-161 158 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.2. research hypotheses h1: compared to before the intervention, twelfth-grade students, based on lexical and collaborative learning, show improved reading comprehension abilities in chinese language classes. h2: compared to before the intervention, twelfth-grade students, based on lexical and collaborative learning, exhibit enhanced analytical writing skills in chinese language classes. 3.3. participants a natural class from a chinese public secondary school comprises 30 students (17 males, 13 females), aged between 17 to 19 years old. 3.4. research variables independent variable: an instruction based on a lexical approach with collaborative learning. dependent variables: reading comprehension and analytical writing skills. 3.5. intervention in order to investigate the specific impact of teaching methods based on lexical knowledge and collaborative learning on twelfth-grade students' reading comprehension and analytical writing skills in chinese language classes, this study adopts a single-group pretest-posttest experimental design. the experiment is conducted in a typical secondary school setting in china. we first conduct a pretest to assess the students' initial proficiency in analytical writing and reading comprehension within the chinese course. we then introduce lexical and collaborative learningbased instructional interventions to enhance students' language proficiency by stimulating their curiosity. students utilize their lexical knowledge in a collaborative learning environment to foster discussion and mutual learning throughout the teaching process. in order to correctly evaluate the success of the new teaching strategies, the study carefully monitors the extent to which students accept and actively participate in them. the entire teaching process is divided into fifteen 45-minute sessions. after the course, learners will be given post-tests to assess their progress in analytical writing and reading comprehension. this study aims to better understand the possible impact of training using lexical learning and collaborative learning methodologies on twelfth-grade students' reading comprehension and analytical writing skills. this will be realized by comparing pre-test and post-test assessment data. the ultimate goal is to provide critical hands-on support and guidance for future teaching methods. 3.6. research instruments the chinese reading comprehension skills test papers (crcstp) include two readings and 24 multiple-choice questions. the exam covers a variety of topics, including vocabulary knowledge, literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, identifying the main idea and supporting details, using contextual cues, applying analytical skills, recognizing literary techniques, synthesizing information, evaluating content, explaining concepts, and taking into account cultural and historical contexts. the main goal of this test's design is to assess applicants' reading comprehension skills in-depth. experts have rigorously reviewed crcstp, and the test is now considered highquality. analytical writing skills assessment scale (awsas): awsas consists of five core dimensions: critical thinking, argument development, evidence-based reasoning, organization and structure, and clarity and precision of expression. the scale provides detailed feedback to evaluators, helping individuals identify and improve shortcomings in analytical writing skills to ensure the scientificity and fairness of the evaluation process. the scale contains 25 items, with five specific items for each dimension, ensuring a comprehensive and meticulous assessment. the widely accepted likert scoring method is employed to ensure objective accuracy in scoring. cronbach's α value is 0.82, proving the reliability and internal consistency of the scale. also, kmo (kaiser-meyer-olkin) = 0.803 and bartlett's sphericity test significance level is less than 0.05, which shows that the scale is highly valid and can accurately show how analytically people write. 3.7. data analysis ibm spss 27.0, a software package for interactive, or batched, statistical analysis, conducted the statistical analysis of reading comprehension skills and analytical writing ability scores. data collected in this study were compared through analysis of variance (anova) and t-tests to compare differences between pre-experiment and post-experiment. use m to denote the mean in the measured sample, and sd to denote the sample's standard deviation. the significance level was set at p < 0.05, and cohen's d was set at cohen's d = 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8, representing small, medium, and large effect sizes, respectively. 3.8. ethical approval all participants in this study have given their informed consent after fully understanding the research purpose, process, potential risks, and their own rights prior to participation. we consistently adhere to relevant ethical regulations and guidelines to effectively safeguard the rights and privacy of participants. 4. results 4.1. chinese reading comprehension skill test paper results table 1 presents the experimental outcomes of crcstp. the data in the table shows that the experimental group's pre-test scores ranged from 13 to 23 points, with an average score of 16.67 and a standard deviation of 2.95. in the post-test data, the average score of the experimental group increased to 18.47 points, with a sd of 2.01, indicating an improvement in chinese reading comprehension after a certain period of learning or training. the posttest scores ranged from 15 to 23 points. to investigate whether there were significant differences between the two test scores, we conducted a paired-sample t-test on the experimental group. the results showed that t (29) = -5.34, p < 0.05, and cohen's d = 0.595, indicating a considerable magnitude of difference. this has statistical significance. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 154-161 159 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group therefore, compared to the pre-test, students' performance in the post-test showed a significant improvement. based on these results, we can accept hypothesis 1. table 1. the results of chinese reading comprehension skill test paper. variable m sd t df p cohen's d pro-test 16.67 2.95 -5.34 29 0.000*** 0.95 post-test 18.47 2.01 note: ***p < 0.001. 4.2. analytical writing skill assessment results table 2 presents awsa's experimental results. the table data shows that the experimental group's pre-test scores ranged from 14 to 22 points, with an average score of m = 17.2, sd = 2.34. in the post-test data, the average score of the experimental group increased to 20.1 points, with an sd of 1.79, indicating an improvement in analytical writing skills after a certain period of learning or training. the post-test scores ranged from 17 to 24 points. to investigate whether there were significant differences between the two test scores, we conducted a paired-sample ttest on the experimental group. the results showed that t (29) = -12.52, p < 0.05, and cohen's d = 2.23, indicating a considerable magnitude of difference. this has statistical significance. therefore, compared to the pre-test, students' performance in the post-test showed a significant improvement. based on these results, we can accept hypothesis 2. table 2. the results of analytical writing skill assessment. variable m sd t df p cohen's d pro-test 17.2 2.34 -12.52 29 0.000*** 2.23 post-test 20.1 1.79 note: ***p < 0.001. 5. discussion this study aimed to investigate the impact of teaching methods based on lexical learning and collaborative learning on the reading comprehension and analytical writing skills of twelfth-grade students in chinese language classes. the results indicated that the instructional approach significantly improved students' skills in analyzing written texts and understanding what they learned. despite the implementation of teaching techniques, students have shown significant improvement in their ability to understand complex chinese texts, specifically in reading comprehension. when combined with collaborative learning environments and lexical knowledge, students can enhance their language talents and improve their comprehension of texts. consistent with anisa (2010) results, pupils' reading comprehension skills improved after implementing a new type of collaborative learning technology. this finding supports our theory even more and emphasizes how crucial creative teaching strategies are to improving students' reading comprehension skills. there is also evidence to support improving of analytical writing abilities. following the intervention, students have shown improved writing approaches and expressive abilities. with the collaborative learning environment, students now have a forum for idea exchange and mutual learning, which also helps them enhance their critical writing and analytical thinking abilities. at the same time, as lexical knowledge grows, pupils can articulate their opinions and arguments more accurately. as a result, applying instructional strategies reinforced students' analytical writing talents and reading comprehension capabilities. lexical learning emphasizes the value of words. zhang and koda (2018) elucidate that vocabulary is the basic unit of language and the foundation of language communication. through lexical learning, learners can understand the organizational structure of vocabulary, common collocations, and subtle differences in word meanings, thereby enhancing their language expression abilities. collaborative learning, on the other hand, underscores interaction and cooperation among students, which encompasses communication not only in language use but also in cognitive and affective aspects (gillies, 2019). in the combined teaching of lexical learning and collaborative learning, students can acquire vocabulary naturally through cooperation. based on sociocultural theory and situated learning theory, compared to traditional vocabulary memorization, students find it easier to remember and use vocabulary through collaborative learning because they use this vocabulary in real communication scenarios (billett, 1996; panhwar, ansari, & ansari, 2016). for instance, during collaborative problem-solving or task completion, students need to use specific vocabulary and phrases for communication, which is more closely aligned with real-life situations and helps students naturally master vocabulary. simultaneously, collaborative learning also engenders rich language contexts for students. during collaborative learning activities, students frequently cooperate and participate in discussions within specific linguistic settings, which helps them apply newly learned vocabulary and phrases to everyday circumstances. alabsi (2016) explains that through role-playing exercises, students take on various roles and use particular words and phrases to mimic real-world situations, which helps them comprehend and use these vocabulary words more deeply. moreover, collaborative learning facilitates enhanced language production. students often participate in verbal exchanges and expressions during collaborative learning activities, which enhances their language production. while improving students' speaking fluency, this enhanced language production also helps pupils develop their analytical writing and reading comprehension skills. although the combination of collaborative learning and lexical learning opens up new avenues for language training, its use has several drawbacks. student collaboration and participation are the major factors and components of this educational technique. however, students may opt to study independently or require support for group communication during instruction, thereby diminishing the teachers' capacity to instruct. moreover, the adoption of this teaching method necessitates a larger investment of both financial and temporal resources. the available teaching resources and school curriculum schedules may restrict teachers' ability to allocate extra time in the classroom for collaborative learning. they have to carefully plan and coordinate the joint activities, which are, in a way, the specific events. it may also be difficult to check students' teamwork and vocabulary-acquiring capabilities. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(2): 154-161 160 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group ordinarily, the classes and tests will be able to evaluate students' teamwork, communication skills, and linguistic aptitude only partially. we must address these challenges by implementing tailored teaching methods, utilizing technology to develop innovative language teaching methods, and incorporating new technologies to enhance and innovate this teaching approach. 6. conclusion this study focuses on the influence of lexical learning accumulation and collaborative learning in chinese language classrooms on students' comprehension of readings and writing analysis skills. empirical tests and classroom instruction reveal that this strategy significantly enhances both. the students are able to better understand complex chinese literature, allowing them to study the subject more deeply and apply relevant skills. students with a firm writing approach and expressive power can develop their ability to analyze things and write critically. consequently, this strategy enhances one’s ability to analyze written words. to conclude, lexical and collaborative learning provide efficient ways for developing twelfth grade students’ competence within chinese language courses. therefore, this research provides crucial guidance for teaching methods and serves as a foundation for future investigations. nevertheless, there may be barriers to effective communication between students or issues arising out of student collaboration, which could make implementing this method easier. as a result, future pedagogies will need to refine this technique in order to improve linguistic competency among learners. references alabsi, t. a. 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(2004). computer supported collaborative learning using wirelessly interconnected handheld computers. computers & education, 42(3), 289-314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2003.08.005 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1109/cicem.2013.6820183 https://doi.org/10.1177/0735633116689789 https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2011.571384 https://doi.org/10.1080/09523980600641445 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263116000450 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2003.08.005 88 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 4, 88-97, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5037 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group thailand’s higher education esp practitioners: problems, solutions and a potential practices model traithana chaovanapricha1 wilawan champakaew2 ( corresponding author) 1,2school of liberal arts, mae fah luang university, chiang rai, 57100 thailand. 1email: traithana.cha@mfu.ac.th 2email: wilawan.cha@mfu.ac.th abstract a comprehensive needs analysis is crucial to guide the design and teaching of english for specific purposes (esp) courses. however, a number of studies neglect certain elements of needs analysis, which can result in problems in subsequent stages of esp teaching. this mixed-method study aimed to identify the problems that higher education esp practitioners in thailand encountered and the solutions they employed and to develop a potential practices model for esp practitioners. semi-structured interviews and analytic hierarchy process (ahp) pairwise comparisons were employed to reveal 54 problems in six categories. three highest-ranked problems were 1) the esp practitioners’ lack of specialization in relevant fields (34.62%), 2) unsuitable classrooms and facilities (29.15%), and 3) the lack of specific course objective-oriented and cost-effective commercial textbooks (19.09%). the average consistency ratio (c.r.) was 0.32. the study suggested the need for training provisions and inclusion of esp courses in english curricula. the esp practices model suggested practices for institutions, such as conducting comprehensive needs analysis and providing suitable facilities and budgets. esp practitioners were advised to utilize needs analysis for course design and employ active learning approaches. these recommendations aimed to enhance esp education and improve an english curriculum, teaching practices, and evaluation processes. keywords: elt, english curriculum, esp education, english policy, esp courses, needs analysis. citation | chaovanapricha, t., & champakaew, w. (2023). thailand’s higher education esp practitioners: problems, solutions and a potential practices model. asian journal of education and training, 9(4), 88–97. 10.20448/edu.v9i4.5037 history: received: 7 july 2023 revised: 18 august 2023 accepted: 20 september 2023 published: 12 october 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by mae fah luang university, thailand (grant number: 7702(6)/787). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the mae fah luang university, thailand has granted approval for this study. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been om it ted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the concept ion and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the p ublished version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 89 2. conceptual framework............................................................................................................................................................................... 89 3. research objectives (ro).......................................................................................................................................................................... 90 4. literature review......................................................................................................................................................................................... 90 5. research methodology ............................................................................................................................................................................... 91 6. results.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 93 7. discussion ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 96 8. conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 96 9. suggestion ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 96 references............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 97 mailto:traithana.cha@mfu.ac.th mailto:wilawan.cha@mfu.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i4.5037 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5852-0833 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5693-8039 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 89 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature the study highlights problems encountered by esp practitioners instructing english majors in thailand, where english is a foreign language. it underscores the importance of integrated needs analysis in english curricula and esp courses design. additionally, a practical model for efficient esp course management within educational institutions is proposed. 1. introduction in response to the forces of globalization and the demand for an internationally adept workforce, english for specific purposes (esp) has gained prominence across diverse professional domains (kuo, 2016). esp courses are meticulously tailored to address the distinctive requirements of learners in various sectors, including science, business, and medical science. hutchinson and waters (1987) put forth three main approaches for esp course design: language-centered, skill-centered, and learning-centered approaches. in addition, esp practitioners are expected to fulfill multiple roles (khemri & kadri, 2017), including teacher, course designer and material provider, researcher, collaborator or negotiator, and evaluator. esp practitioners encounter challenges including the absence of a standardized esp framework, the dual requirement to attain proficiency in both language and subject matter, and the dynamic evolution of english language instruction (hutchinson & waters, 1987). addressing these concerns involves continuous training, collaborating with learners to harness their existing knowledge, and cultivating fundamental comprehension of learners' disciplines (antić, 2016). among the countries in the association of south east asian nations (asean), english has been designated as a working language due to the diverse official languages (asean secretariat, 2008). however, there is an imbalance in labor supply and demand among asean countries, and certain professions lack standardized regional development (koty, 2016). in thailand, efforts have been made to enhance english standards in higher education institutions (office of the higher education commission, 2016), and the "bundit pan mai" or "new generation graduates" project is initiated aiming to develop undergraduates in line with the government’s objectives (ministry of higher education science research and innovation, 2023). the thai learners involved in this crucial mission can be classified into three groups: learners currently employed and seeking occupational mobility, higher education learners studying in various disciplines who enroll in esp courses, and english major students in higher education institutions who choose esp courses as major electives or major free electives (mae fah luang university, 2020). the institutions responsible for these learners can vary, ranging from language institutes and english departments/majors to specific discipline faculties/schools, depending on their organizational and administrative structures. however, there is a growing concern that esp courses may be diminishing in quality due to the lack of emphasis on esp in the tqf1 for the bachelor in english (office of the higher education commission, 2017). consequently, higher education institutions may reduce the number of esp courses offered, or worse, eliminate them altogether. for example, despite revising its bachelor’s english curriculum in 2023, the faculty of arts at chulalongkorn university has continued to offer only one esp course, english business writing, for its english major undergraduates since 2009 (faculty of arts, 2009). similarly, the school of liberal arts at mae fah luang university has recently revised its curriculum, discontinuing the business english track and introducing a small number of newly revised esp courses such as english for business and entrepreneurship, and english for services and hospitality industry for en glish major undergraduates (mae fah luang university, 2020). despite the establishment and implementation of revised english-related policies in thailand over the years, and the recent determination of learners' english levels based on international standards like the cefr, the ef english proficiency index of 2022 (europeiska ferieskolan (ef), 2022) ranks thailand 8th in terms of english proficiency among the nine asean nations (excluding brunei) and 21 th among 24 asian countries. pratoomrat and rajprasit (2014) attribute this situation to english being viewed as a foreign language rather than an official language, as well as weaknesses in english language education. they also highlight the difficulties experienced by many thai professionals and novices in effectively applying english in their respective fields. in accordance with the covid-19 pandemic that has further impacted employment, particularly in industries like tourism and air travel, esp practitioners have a responsibility to equip undergraduates with the necessary knowledge and skills to compete in these industries. english language education in thailand faces challenges such as inadequate proficiency levels of teachers, disparities in provision, ineffective teaching practices, and impractical assessments. solutions include granting esp practitioners the freedom to design courses according to students' needs, basing changes on thorough assessment and scientific evidence, and promoting the use of information technology in teaching. it is important to adapt assessment and evaluation methods to accurately reflect students' required competences in esp education. 2. conceptual framework dudley-evans and st. john (1998) propose a cyclical process of needs analysis as a comprehensive framework to guide esp practitioners in conducting esp courses effectively see figure 1. this process comprises five stages that are essential for achieving the objectives of the courses. the first stage, known as language needs analysis or needs analysis in short, involves the analyses of five key elements: target situation, learning situation, present situation, means, and language audits. these elements are thoroughly analyzed and subsequently u tilized in the subsequent stages (rahman, 2015). firstly, the target situation analysis entails the recognition of specific language skills required for real-life workplace settings. valuable insights into these language skills can be obtained from “outsiders” such as professionals currently working in those workplaces. secondly, the learning situation analysis encompasses the subjective, experiential, and process-driven needs of learners. it aids in determining learners' preferences regarding their desired areas of learning and identifying effective methods for acquiring skills and language, as well as an investigation into the underlying motivations driving learners' desire to learn. next, the present situation analysis represents the learner's current knowledge, skills, and understanding of the subject matter or problem being asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 90 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group addressed. it serves as a baseline from which esp practitioners can evaluate learners' existing abilities and customize instruction accordingly. following that, means analysis examines the readiness of esp practitioners, institutions, curriculum, learning materials, and facilities to meet the needs of the learners at present. lastly, language audits analysis involves large-scale study that focuses on the language needs of industries, regions, and countries. this analysis contributes to the development and execution of relevant regional, national, and institutional policies. figure 1. the cyclical process of needs analysis. note: douglas (2013); jeczelewski (2016); dudley-evans and st. john (1998) and pei and milner (2016). although it is recommended to analyze all five key elements to facilitate the entire esp cyclical process, many studies tend to focus primarily on learners' needs or present situation, neglecting the implementation of the other crucial elements. for instance, axmedovna, gapporovna, rozmatovna, and gayrat qizi (2019) emphasize the significance of needs analysis as an essential and primary stage for identifying learners' needs, desires, and prerequisites. they also highlight the importance of understanding learners' language background and preferences to design successful and effective courses. similarly, nuemaihom (2017) addresses the use of needs analysis to analyze learners' specific reasons for studying esp. the findings from this analysis guide the selection of language contents and instructional approaches that cater to the learners' unique needs. furthermore, ibrahim (2020) views needs analysis as a comprehensive process that encompasses various activities aimed at gathering information about students' learning needs, wants, wishes, and desires. however, the researcher views that the process only sometimes involves considering the expectations and requirements of other stakeholders. the omission of a comprehensive cycle of needs analysis, as mentioned above, can give rise to a number of problems and challenges faced by esp practitioners teaching esp in countries where english is learned as a foreign language. for instance, in esp courses in iran, the students express dissatisfaction with their esp teachers, both english and subject-related, citing issues such as the teachers' lack of experience, monotonous classes devoid of communicative activities, overcrowded classrooms, and the use of inappropriate and outdated materials (anbarshahi & shabani minaabad, 2021). furthermore, in serbia, there is a notable problem concerning a lack of analysis of means (radovanović & mitrović, 2018), where esp practitioners struggle with inadequate collaboration with content teachers. this lack of collaboration hinders the ability to design effective esp courses, select appropriate materials, and determine suitable assessment methods for their students. addressing these neglected elements becomes crucial to enhance the quality of esp instruction and meet the specific language needs of learners. consequently, this research primarily aims to achieve the following objectives. 3. research objectives (ro) the research objectives were as follows: 1. to identify the problems that higher education esp practitioners in thailand encountered (ro1). 2. to identify the solutions that the esp practitioners employed to overcome the problems (ro2). 3. to develop a potential practices model for the esp practitioners in the current thai context (ro3). 4. literature review in numerous countries where english is utilized as a second or foreign language, esp practitioners have faced a multitude of challenges and a diverse array of issues. while many of these problems have been successfully resolved at a local level, making valuable contributions to addressing similar challenges in the field, there are still unresolved issues that persist due to evolving contexts and demands from various stakeholders. some studies showing esp practitioners’ efforts on tackling their problems are as follows. 4.1. the esp practitioners’ problems in china according to luo and garner (2017), the widespread integration of esp into college-level english programs in china has presented a significant challenge for english educators, necessitating a substantial redefinition of their roles. primarily, educators take on a multitude of responsibilities, particularly as collaborative partners with content-focused instructors. the process of collaborating with these content-oriented educators is intricate and asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 91 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group involves the delineation of collaboration areas and the methods of effective implementation. they posit that, in order to excel in this evolving role, educators must enrich their linguistic proficiency with an in-depth comprehension of one or more specialized disciplines, encompassing subject-specific expertise. moreover, teachers must adopt an instructional approach that significantly diverges from the traditional norms observed in china. proficiency in these dual dimensions stands as pivotal for establishing esp as a distinct pedagogical pursuit, aligning with the objectives set forth by the chinese government's communicative language teaching (clt) policy. the attainment of esp's success relies on a fresh, evidence-based, and practice-centered approach to english teacher training. moreover, the study conducted by tao and gao (2018), which explores the development and negotiation of professional roles among esp practitioners in a chinese university, clarifies that adopting the position of an esp practitioner involves a complex process that includes changing professional methods and forming professional roles. participants found contentment in their teaching efforts, aimed at preparing graduates with necessary esp skills for local economic progress. nevertheless, their professional roles were affected by the secondary status of esp within the institution. as the need grows for english educators to teach esp skills to university graduates in various educational settings, an increased focus on and assistance for enhancing the professional advancement of esp practitioners, along with fostering their identity development, become crucial. 4.2. the esp practitioners’ problems in serbia radovanović and mitrović (2018) found limited and unsupported collaboration between content teachers and esp practitioners in tertiary education in serbia. they specifically investigated the collaborative practice involved in designing an esp syllabus for english for health tourism purposes (ehtp) at the faculty of hotel management and tourism in vrnjačka banja. the aim of the program is to provide students with theoretical and practical knowledge to become competent managers in the field. however, english instruction is typically provided by philologists without expertise in the subject area, leading to initial challenges. the uniqueness of the study program further complicated syllabus design due to the lack of models and academic tradition. 4.3. the esp practitioners’ problems in thailand the study of soranastaporn (2018) reveals that the thai government appointed senior english teachers and scholars with the aim of reforming english education in thailand and setting educational standards. this initiative arose due to the proliferation of private universities and the elevation of approximately 75 teacher training colleges to university status. the scholars recommended that all universities be mandated to offer a general english course (three credits) in the first semester, followed by english for academic purposes (eap) or english for occupational purposes (eop) courses (three or six credits, preferably six) in the subsequent two semesters. however, this proposal posed challenges for older universities like mahidol university, as it meant sacrificing one esp course, given that english courses only accounted for a total of six credits. despite providing feedback to the government, there was no response received. simultaneously, influential university administrators compelled the department to revise the syllabus with a focus on writing skills, resulting in the development of a new english course syllabus. unfortunately, this change led to the disappearance of esp characteristics from the current english courses. additionally, suntornsawate (2018) emphasizes the persistent difficulty in implementing significant changes in esp education in thailand, despite the growing recognition of its importance and the encouragement of multidisciplinary approaches to course design. the excessive focus on specific content within english language teaching (elt) poses a challenge to the meaningful advancement of esp. the researcher proposes addressing these esp-related challenges by advocating for esp practitioners to enhance their utilization of information technology as a valuable tool for effective teaching and to overcome conventional teaching practices, which require improvement. furthermore, institutions should establish policies that reinforce an english curriculum aligned with the evolving needs of students and improve the supportive infrastructure for teaching and learning. moreover, the adoption of 21st-century teaching and learning approaches, such as blended learning, project-based learning, taskbased learning, and content-based learning, can assist thai students in developing the necessary competences for various professional fields. 5. research methodology 5.1. research design this study utilized a sequential and concurrent mixed-method approach (mackey & gass, 2016) to effectively examine the problems encountered by ten esp practitioners involved in the research, as shown in figure 2. in a sequential mixed-method study, the quantitative data analysis results were used to complement and reinforce the findings of the qualitative data analysis, providing a comprehensive understanding of the identified problems (ro1). simultaneously, a concurrent study was conducted to collect data on the corresponding solutions the practitioners implemented (ro2). furthermore, the findings from methodological triangulation, qualitative study, and literature review were utilized to inform the development of a potential practices model for practitioners and stakeholders involved in esp courses. 5.2. participants this study involved ten thai esp practitioners who had an experience of one year of designing and teaching at least one esp course relevant to a business field, and had professional background in either a teaching field or other professional fields, such as business, tourism, and hospitality. they were selected using non-probability sampling approaches, specifically convenience sampling as an initial. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 92 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 2. the procedural framework of the research. step and snowball sampling as a subsequent method (deakin university, 2023). they were affiliated in four institutions: seven practitioners in the institution that belonged to group 1 which focused on global and frontier research, as defined by ministry of higher education science research and innovatio (2021), two in the institutions that belonged to group 2 emphasizing technology development and innovation, and the other affiliated in the institution that was classified into group 3 focusing on area-based and community engagement. 5.3. research instruments 5.3.1. a semi-structured interview validated by using item objective congruence (ioc) index there were two parts: part 1 the esp practitioners’ background information and part 2 interview questions for problems and solutions comprising nineteen questions based on the cyclical process of needs analysis see figure 1 . the question samples are “have you encountered any problems related to needs survey and analysis that can affect course design and teaching and learning of your course such as the problems related to analyses of target situation, learning situation, present situation, and means?” and “what is the significance and extent of this/these problem(s) to course design and teaching and learning in your course?”. 5.3.2. an ahp pairwise comparison questionnaire constructed by utilizing the finding of semi-structured interview analysis the questionnaire comprised fifteen pairs of six questions see table 1 to be weighed by the participants using the fundamental scale for ahp pairwise comparisons as shown in table 2. table 1. example of ahp pairwise comparisons. problem 1.1 the institutions’ misconception about esp practitioners problem 1.2 the appointed esp practitioners’ lacks of specialization in relevant fields of study and background knowledge 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 table 2. the fundamental scale for ahp pairwise comparisons. intensity of importance on an absolute scale definition explanation 1 equal importance two activities contribute equally to the objective 3 moderate importance of one over another experience and judgement moderately favor one activity over another 5 essential or strong importance experience and judgement strongly favor one activity over another 7 very strong importance an activity is strongly favored and its dominance demonstrated in practice 9 extreme importance the evidence favoring one activity over another is of the highest possible order of affirmation 2, 4, 6, 8 intermediate values between the two adjacent judgements when compromise is needed note: saaty (1987). 5.4. collection of data 5.4.1. the semi-structured interviews the practitioners completed part 1 via the online google form application. then, the interviews were conducted using the online google meet and zoom applications. all interviews were recorded for data analyses (approximately one hour long each). asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 93 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 5.4.2. the ahp pairwise comparison questionnaire the practitioners completed it via the online google form application. 5.5. data analyses 5.5.1. analysis of data from the interviews a type of content analysis namely thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006) was adopted to examine the qualitative data. the analysis comprised six steps: familiarization, coding, generating themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and writing up. 5.5.2. analysis of data from the questionnaires the data were analyzed using a series of calculations proposed by silwal and pathak (2018) to prioritize six selected problems. in order to assess the consistency of the decision-making process, the recommended threshold for the consistency ratio (c.r.) value was less than 0.10. this value serves as a guide to determine the level of consistency in the decision-making process. 6. results 6.1. the results of the semi-structured interviews according to part 1 the esp practitioners’ background information, although not many practitioners held a ph.d., the majority of them had obtained a master's degree in elt and related fields. their areas of interest were aligned with their areas of expertise. in terms of work experience, 30% of the practitioners had prior experience in related fields before becoming university lecturers and teaching esp courses. all of them had been working as english lecturers for more than five years. however, only half of them had been specifically responsible for esp courses for more than five years, and only few had actively participated in english curriculum design and evaluation. these practitioners had taught a variety of esp courses, such as english for hotel industry, english for airline industry, and basic and professional business writing courses. these courses aimed to equip undergraduate students with a wide range of disciplinary knowledge and skills. the practitioners taught students in english-related programs, consisting of the english program, business english program, english for communication, english for business communication, and english for international communication. fifty-four problems encountered by the practitioners, along with their aligned solutions and suggestions, were categorized into six categories based on dudley-evans and st. john (1998): needs analysis, course design, teachinglearning, assessment, evaluation, and others. however, only top six problems identified by at least half or more of the participants along with their solutions and suggestions are presented in table 3. moreover, there were three additional suggestions provided by the practitioners: training provisions, inclusion of esp courses, and promotion of an inclusive mindset. sixty percent of the practitioners emphasized the need for more training provisions and consultations from their institutions. they advocated for up-to-date training sessions on campus and in the workplaces, adequate budgets allocated for esp-related training, conferences, and professional development programs specifically focused on esp, and opportunities for practitioners to become interns in relevant work places. half of the practitioners expressed the expectation for institutions to include and reintroduce esp courses into the english curriculum. they also emphasized the importance of involving esp practitioners in the curriculum review process. their aim was to enhance the uniqueness of the curriculum, respond to market and students' needs, and ensure that the curriculum remains aligned with the latest industry trends. this involvement would help meet the specific needs of esp learners and maintain relevance to real-world contexts. table 3. top six problems identified by at least half or more of the participants, along with corresponding solutions and suggestions . problem (%), solution and suggestion category problem 1 (90%): the size, table arrangements, and facilities of classrooms that are unsuitable for esp activities. solutions: 1. the practitioner requested a change of classrooms for either the entire semester or specific practical activities. 2. the practitioner integrated certain activities with other courses that shared similar objectives. suggestion: the institution should provide more information technology (it) facilities. teaching-learning problem 2 (80%): the lack of specific course objective-oriented, accessible and cost-effective commercial textbooks that could comprehensively cover all the required topics solutions: 1. the practitioner customized the lessons on a weekly basis, seeking regular consultations from the course designers, co-teachers and specific disciplinary teachers who possessed a stronger business-related background. 2. the practitioner customized the lessons using various relevant resources to gather up-to-date content. 3. the practitioner created effective activities to fulfill the content and skills such as simulations. 4. the practitioner utilized the findings from workplace visits, products from the projects of senior year students, relevant social academic services to class activity adjustments. 5. the practitioner invited guest speakers to class to give lectures and share experiences. course design problem 3 (60%): the institutions’ misconception about esp practitioners: such as a discourse of “all english teachers should be able to teach esp courses” solution: none. suggestions: 1. the institution should consider recruiting new teachers who have expertise in the relevant fields, whether on a temporary, permanent, or invited basis, to enhance the quality of instruction. 2. the institution should offer training opportunities to the appointed practitioners to enhance their knowledge and skills. 3. the course offerings should align with the areas of expertise of existing faculty members. 4. there should be an emphasis on assigning responsibility for esp courses either to specific needs analysis asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 94 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group problem (%), solution and suggestion category disciplinary faculties or establishing collaborative courses jointly led by the english team and disciplinary teams, adopting a content-based instruction approach. problem 4 (60%): the appointed esp practitioners’ lacks of specialization in relevant fields of study and background knowledge resulting in a lack of confidence and hesitation in selection of materials, activities and assessment tools solutions: 1. the practitioner actively sought training opportunities for self -improvement. a group of practitioners allocated its budgets to arrange training sessions by experts. 2. the practitioner gathered needs from the representatives of the workplace during workplace visits. 3. the practitioner exchanged ideas and practices with other colleagues during course team meetings, the institutional meetings, and verification process. 4. the practitioner invited guest speakers to class to give lectures and share experiences. suggestions: 1. some assigned practitioners should be encouraged to attend relevant training sessions and subsequently share their knowledge with others. 2. the institution should conduct a survey to identify teachers who are interested in teaching esp courses and allocate budgets to support their training. it is worth noting that the dean strongly supported this initiative. needs analysis problem 5 (50%): some committee members involved in the verification process lacked a comprehensive understanding of the nature of esp courses, teaching and learning approaches, and assessment methods. solutions: 1. the institution appointed the committee who had a background in esp. 2. the practitioner provided clear explanations of the assessments and the associated rubrics. evaluation problem 6 (50%): the lack of a community of practice (cop) within the institution preventing the sharing of teaching materials, assessments, opinions, progress, problems and solutions, and good practices among practitioners, resulting in some certain incidence, for example, when practitioners resigned from the university, their materials were not passed on to others, leading to a loss of valuable resources solution: none. suggestion: the institution should take proactive measures to establish a strong cop where experienced practitioners can provide guidance and support to their colleagues. this would facilitate the sharing of teaching materials, assessments, and valuable insights, fostering a collaborative and supportive environment for professional growth and development. others 6.2. the results of the ahp pairwise comparison using a sequential mixed-method approach to prioritize the problems, the researchers identified six key problems from five categories: needs analysis, course design, teaching-learning, evaluation, and others. the identified problems were used to construct the ahp pairwise comparison questionnaire, which was distributed to the practitioners. the responses collected were then subjected to statistical analysis, leading to the findings presented in table 4. according to the findings presented in table 4, problem 4, which refers to the appointed esp practitioners’ lacks of specialization in relevant fields of study and background knowledge resulting in a lack of confidence and hesitation in selection of materials, activities and assessment tools, was ranked as the first priority. additionally, problem 1, highlighting the size, table arrangements, and facilities of classrooms that were unsuitable for esp activities, was ranked as the second priority. furthermore, problem 2, addressing the lack of specific course objective-oriented, accessible and cost-effective commercial textbooks that could comprehensively cover all the required topics, was ranked as the third priority. table 4. the ranks of six selected key problems. problem average % of importance rank problem 1 the size, table arrangements, and facilities of classrooms that were unsuitable for esp activities 29.15 2 problem 2 the lack of specific course objective-oriented, accessible and cost-effective commercial textbooks 19.09 3 problem 3 the institutions’ misconception about esp practitioners 7.62 4 problem 4 the appointed esp practitioners’ lacks of specialization in relevant fields of study and background knowledge 34.62 1 problem 5 some committee members in the verification process’s lack of a comprehensive understanding of the nature of esp courses 5.86 5 problem 6 the lack of a community of practice (cop) within the institution 3.66 6 the average c.r. value 0.32 the average consistency ratio (c.r.) of all responses, which evaluated the reliability of the judgments by comparing them with random consistency expectations, was calculated to be 0.32. this value exceeded the acceptable level of 0.10 (senjaya, daryanto, & djohar, 2015), indicating that the judgments provided by the practitioners may exhibit inconsistency. a higher c.r. value (close to 1.0) indicates a greater level of inconsistency in the pairwise comparisons, suggesting that the practitioners' judgments may lack coherence or contain contradictions. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 95 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 6.3. the potential practices model using a sequential mixed-method approach to gather effective solutions, suggestions, and practices from the practitioners, the researchers constructed a model, as shown in figure 3, that displays recommended practices for esp practitioners and institutions. 6.3.1. the recommended practices of institutions institutions with english curricula are recommended to follow certain practices to enhance the effectiveness of their programs. firstly, the appointment of an english curriculum committee is crucial, comprising members with expertise in esp and experience in teaching esp courses. this diverse committee should conduct a comprehensive needs analysis, gathering input from various stakeholders, including organizations, employers, students, faculty members, and alumni. this analysis will inform the development and improvement of the english curriculum. figure 3. recommended practices of institutions and esp practitioners. to ensure a balanced distribution of program learning outcomes (plos) and consistent development of students' competence and qualities, the revised curriculum should prioritize the identified needs and incorporate an appropriate number of esp courses. institutions are advised to recruit esp practitioners with expertise in relevant fields and provide training, workplace visits, communities of practice, and internships to nurture their potential. faculty members should be surveyed to gauge their interest and experience in teaching esp, and those meeting the criteria can receive training, visits, communities of practice, and internships to enhance their esp teaching skills. adequate facilities, including it-equipped classrooms, well-equipped libraries, and academic support centers, should be provided. sufficient budgets are crucial for guest speakers, workplace visits, and teaching-learning material development, allowing for experiential learning and expert contributions. flexibility in budget allocation and the appointment of a course verification committee with esp backgrounds and experience are also recommended. implementing these practices enhances collaborative efforts, needs-driven curriculum design, faculty development, and resource provision, thereby improving the quality and effectiveness of english curricula in institutions. 6.3.2 the recommended practices of esp practitioners esp practitioners teaching or appointed to teach esp courses have several responsibilities to fulfill. firstly , in course design, they should utilize the results of needs analysis conducted by the institutions and themselves, incorporating objectively measurable course objectives aligned with teaching-learning activities and valid assessment methods. additionally, practitioners should utilize the allocated budget to develop teaching-learning materials that meet identified needs and requirements, drawing on their professional development experiences and seeking expert consultations. secondly, in teaching-learning, practitioners are advised to employ experiential and asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 96 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group collaborative learning approaches, incorporating simulations, feedback, discussions with guest speakers, projects, and workplace visits to develop students' competence and align with real-world demands. thirdly, in assessment, practitioners should employ a variety of methods accommodating individual differences and based on students' experiences, using reliable criterion-based rubrics and triangulation techniques to mitigate subjectivity. finally , in evaluation, norm-referenced grading systems are recommended for fair comparisons among students (hall, 2016), fostering teamwork and collaborative learning while storing evaluation results for further curriculum and course improvements. interim and post-course evaluations by students and course verification by a qualified committee also provide valuable feedback. by fulfilling these responsibilities, esp practitioners contribute to effective esp instruction and continuous improvement of the curriculum. 7. discussion the lack of specialization and background knowledge among esp practitioners, inadequate classroom size and facilities, and the absence of suitable commercial materials are the top three problems in esp education. to address the first issue, esp practitioners employ various strategies such as seeking training opportunities, organizing training sessions with institutional support, exchanging ideas with colleagues, and inviting guest speakers. however, the budgets provided by institutions for training are often inadequate. esp programs in china heavily rely on the preparation and qualifications of practitioners, but there is a shortage of qualified practitioners and limited inclusion of esp in pre-service training (luo & garner, 2017). lack of training can hinder effective teaching, and many english teachers are required to teach esp courses without subject-oriented training, leading to a sense of inadequacy. to overcome this, teachers need linguistic knowledge and skills, foundationa l understanding of the subject matter, socio-cultural awareness, and pedagogical competencies (ghafar, 2022). in addition to formal training, many esp practitioners engage in self-study, attend classes or seminars, read books, and participate in discussions to enhance their abilities. according to asmali (2018), incorporating technology in esp classrooms has been enthusiastically embraced by practitioners, offering interactive and communicative activities tailored to students' professional fields, as well as tools for feedback and self-evaluation. however, the practitioners express concerns about the suitability of classroom size, table arrangements, and facilities for conducting esp activities such as simulations, group discussions, and term project presentations. creating physical and authentic learning environments that resemble workplace contexts is essential to address these concerns and enhance student motivation castillejos and cervero (2004). simulation cases and english presentations provide opportunities for students to engage in their area of expertise and improve their language proficiency. the third-ranked problem in esp education is the lack of specific, accessible, and cost-effective commercial textbooks aligned with course objectives. according to maican (2014), commercial textbooks are often not suitable for direct use in the classroom due to their extensive teaching hours, while esp courses typically requ ire fewer hours. the esp practitioners customize lessons using various relevant resources such as library books, official websites, lessons purchased from licensed publishers, workplace visits, social academic services, and student projects. however, limited institutional support requires practitioners to allocate their own budgets for these materials and activities (arnó-macià & mancho-barés, 2015). despite the challenges, customizing teaching materials proves to be a rewarding endeavor for both practitioners and students. the study also highlights unique findings related to esp courses for students in english and english -related programs. students' lack of disciplinary background knowledge limits their understanding of their needs, motivation for specific career paths, retention of knowledge required for assignments, and preference for disciplinary professionals to teach the courses (ghanbari & rasekh, 2012). esp courses within the current english curriculum of some institutions hinder the acquisition of essential background knowledge. institutions often fail to prioritize addressing the identified problems and provide adequate support for practitioners in managing their classes. some institutions hold a misconception that all english teachers should be able to teach esp courses, overlooking the diverse nature of esp teaching and the broader range of roles and responsibilities involved. esp practitioners employ strategies such as workplace visits, sharing experiences, inviting guest speakers, and incorporating experiential learning to enhance the learning experience and address their concerns. 8. conclusion this mixed-method study identified 54 problems encountered by higher education esp practitioners in thailand and the solutions they employed. the primary problem revolved around practitioners lacking specialization and background knowledge, followed by the unsuitability of classroom size and facilities for esp activities. the solutions focused on improving institutional management and supporting professional development. a model was developed, outlining effective practices for institutions and esp practitioners, covering areas such as curriculum committees, recruitment, facilities, and course design. this study provides practical insights and recommendations to enhance esp education, aiming to improve the overall quality of teaching and learning in this field. 9. suggestion 1. lack of specialization and confidence: the study highlights that esp practitioners lack specialization in relevant fields of study, which leads to a lack of confidence in selecting materials, activities, and assessment tools. this implies a need for training and professional development programs to enhance practitioners' expertise and confidence in their teaching. 2. unsuitable classrooms for esp activities: the study reveals that the size, table arrangements, and facilities of classrooms are not suitable for esp activities. this suggests the need for institutions to provide appropriate classrooms equipped with it facilities to facilitate effective teaching and learning experiences. 3. comparative analysis of esp practices across institutions: further research can compare and analyze the implementation of esp practices in different institutions, considering factors such as institutional policies, resources, curriculum design, and teaching approaches. this comparative analysis can provide insights into the variation in esp practices and their effectiveness across different educational contexts. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(4): 88-97 97 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group references anbarshahi, s., & shabani minaabad, m. 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(2018). identity constructions of esp teachers in a chinese university. english for specific purposes, 49, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2017.09.003 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1515/afmnai-2016-0022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2014.06.007 https://asean.org/asean-charter/ https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa https://raco.cat/index.php/bells/article/view/ https://deakin.libguides.com/qualitative-study-designs/sampling https://www.ef.co.th/epi/regions/asia/thailand/ https://www.arts.chula.ac.th/02program/bachlor52.html https://doi.org/10.53103/cjlls.v2i6.72 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n2p112 https://ii.library.jhu.edu/tag/norm-referenced-grading/ https://ii.library.jhu.edu/tag/norm-referenced-grading/ https://doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2020.102006 https://skemman.is/bitstream/1946/24444/1/needs%20analysis%2c%20course%20design%20and%20evaluation%20of%20business%20english.pdf https://skemman.is/bitstream/1946/24444/1/needs%20analysis%2c%20course%20design%20and%20evaluation%20of%20business%20english.pdf https://www.aseanbriefing.com/news/asean-labor-mobility/ https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0606.04 https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0801.10 https://reg.mfu.ac.th/registrar/program_info.asp https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17wu42gr7fx05pb1v6dbhcyqpxhuy5hfh?fbclid=iwar0smd6indlasslprkvmvlzgk3pory_t0r9lyewgiw-zp-cttnictygaw9a https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17wu42gr7fx05pb1v6dbhcyqpxhuy5hfh?fbclid=iwar0smd6indlasslprkvmvlzgk3pory_t0r9lyewgiw-zp-cttnictygaw9a https://www.mhesi.go.th/index.php/aboutus/stg-policy/930-2563-2570.html https://ir.rmutsv.ac.th/sites/ir.rmutsv.ac.th/files/eng.pdf https://www.eqd.cmu.ac.th/curr/doc/tqf%201/bachelor%20in%20english_r.pdf https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0611.06 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v7n9p144 https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2015.030104 https://doi.org/10.1016/0270-0255(87)90473-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/bdg.v20i0.20717 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2017.09.003 33 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 9, no. 2, 33-41, 2023 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4548 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group students’ and examiners’ perception of feedback practices following osce in uniport alex-hart, balafama abinye1 arigbede, abiodun olabisi2 chinnah, tudor3 ( corresponding author) 1department of paediatrics & child health, university of port harcourt, nigeria. email: balafama.alex-hart@uniport.edu.ng 2faculty of dentistry, university of port harcourt, nigeria. email: abiodun.arigbede@uniport.edu.ng 3center for medical research and training, university of port harcourt, nigeria. email: t.i.chinnah@exeter.ac.uk abstract the objective structured clinical examination (osce) offers several opportunities for effective feedback to be given to students to improve their performance. this study aimed to evaluate the feedback practices following osce in the university of port harcourt (uniport). this was descriptive research involving the administration of semi-structured questionnaires to examiners in the faculty of clinical sciences and final year medical students in uniport. information sought centred on their perception of feedback practices following osce. data was analysed using descriptive statistics and chi-square. the result showed that 114 examiners participated in the study. there were 72 (63.16%) male and 42 (36.84%) female examiners with male to female ratio of 1.7:1. ninety students participated in the study. there were 49 (54.44%) males and 41 (45.56%) females. their mean age was 25.42±2.36. there were significant differences between the examiners and students perception of feedback practices following osce in uniport in terms of whether (p=0.009) and when (p=0.0014) it is provided. majority of the examiners (58.49%) and almost all the students (91.49%) reported that feedback resulted in improved performance. the stud y showed that about half of the students claimed that feedback is given following osce in uniport. feedback practice following osce in uniport is satisfactory in some aspects and deficient in some other aspects. incorporate quality feedback practices into the osce process in all medical schools will improve skills development and learning. keywords: examiners, feedback, medical, objective structured clinical examination, students. citation | abinye, a.-h. b., olabisi, a. a., & tudor, c. (2023). students’ and examiners’ perception of feedback practices following osce in uniport. asian journal of education and training, 9(2), 33– 41. 10.20448/edu.v9i2.4548 history: received: 10 january 2023 revised: 2 march 2023 accepted: 14 march 2023 published: 27 march 2023 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. ethical: this study followed all ethical practices during writing. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 34 2. methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 34 3. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 35 4. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 38 5. recommendations ............................................................................................................................................................................ 40 6. limitations of the study ................................................................................................................................................................. 40 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 40 mailto:balafama.alex-hart@uniport.edu.ng mailto:abiodun.arigbede@uniport.edu.ng mailto:t.i.chinnah@exeter.ac.uk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v9i2.4548 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3007-7143 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 33-41 34 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature previous studies in nigeria have focused on assessing medical students’ perception of the osce, very few have focused on examiners’ and students perception of feedback practices following osce in medical schools in nigeria. 1. introduction clinical examination assesses the students’ competence to practice medicine and is considered to be a very important aspect of qualifying examinations in medical schools (harden & gleeson, 1979). the objective structured clinical examination (osce) has been validated worldwide as the best approach for the clinical examination because it is based on performance and allows for the standardized assessment of the clinical skills of the medical students (medical council of canada, 2014). because of its objectivity, osce is considered to be superior to the traditional assessment method in medicine. the strength of osce lies in the fact that clinical skills are directly observed by the clinical examiners, a broad range of skills are assessed in a specified length of time, unbiased assessment based on standardized approach and prejudice is eliminated through the use of multiple examiners (medical council of canada, 2014). another major advantage of osce is that it provides a rare opportunity for the provision of feedback to students which will help sharpen their clinical skills and improve learning. van de ridder, stokking, mcgaghie, and ten cate (2008) defined feedback as “specific information about the comparison between a trainee’s observed performance and a standard, given with the intent to improve the trainee’s performance”. their definition show that the purpose of feedback in medical education is not just to inform students about the difference between expected learning goals and their observed performance but to also show them how to bridge the gap. one unique benefit of osce is that it offers chances for individualized feedback on clinical competence. for example during osce, students are made to mandatorily rotate through 7 to 10 stations designed to assess competence and examiners assess their performance objectively using a marking scheme (ngim et al., 2021). this offers opportunities to provide individualized and timely feedback to help students improve their clinical skills. peron et al. (2016) evaluated students’ perception of the feedback they received after a formative osce and observed that the students reported that their history taking, physical exams and communication skills improved with the feedback they received from their tutors. however, the objective assessment showed some deficiencies in the content of the feedback the students received. it showed that the feedback content essentially focused on history taking and physical exam skills, completely ignoring clinical reasoning and communication/professionalism issues. peron et al. (2016) concluded that the tutors involved in their study do give specific and descriptive feedback, but failed to actively involve the students in the learning process. they opined that actively involving the student in the feedback process will not only improve their performance in osce, but will also improve their professionalism and communication skills as well. university of port harcourt (uniport) has been organizing osce for undergraduate medical students for the past 7 years. quality assurance in osces demands that the examination process must be assessed with the intent of providing feedback to all the parties involved in the examinations. these parties may include students, examiners, standardized patients, question developers and administrators. the extent and frequency to which feedback is incorporated in to osce in uniport has not been reported. this information is a basic requirement for ensuring quality assurance. 1.1. aim and objectives of the study the study aimed to evaluate the feedback practices following osce in the faculty of clinical sciences, college of health sciences, uniport. specific objectives include to: 1. gather information on examiners and students perception of feedback practices after osce in the university. 2. identify the perception of students about the impact of feedback or lack of it on their performance in osce. 1.2. research questions 1. how does the perception of students differ from that of examiners on feedback practices after osce in uniport? 2. how does feedback or lack of it impact on students’ performance.in osce? 2. methodology 2.1. research design descriptive cross sectional study design. 2.2. study area the study was conducted in the faculty of clinical sciences, uniport. the university is located in port harcourt metropolis in rivers state in southern nigeria. 2.3. study population the study population included the clinical examiners in the faculty of clinical sciences and the final year clinical students of the university. 2.4. sampling and sampling technique sampling was not done in this study because the census method was used. there were 140 clinical examiners and 104 final year medical students giving a total figure of 244. ten clinical examiners and ten final year medical students participated in the pilot test and were excluded from the study, leaving a population of 224. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 33-41 35 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 2.5. method of data collection/instrumentation self-administered, open and structured questionnaire was administered to all the students and lecturers who consented to participate in the study. different questionnaires were given to the students and the lecturers. the questions were based on their experiences with osce. their individual perception on feedback practices following osce was sought. demographic information was also sought from the participants. the questionnaires were administered to the students in the classrooms, while the soft copy of the questionnaire was sent to the examiners through email and whatsapp. filled questionnaires were retrieved from the participants. 2.6. method of data analysis data was fed into microsoft excel ® version 2010 where it was coded and cleaned. it was then analysed using “statistical package for social sciences (spss) v20”and summary statistics was generated. the association between two categorical variables was tested using chi-square (c2) test analysis. p-value is set as ≤0.05 at a 95% confidence interval. 2.7. ethical approval the research ethics committee of the university of port harcourt gave approval for the study. 3. results one hundred and fourteen clinical examiners, 72 (63.16%) males and 42 (36.84%) females with male to female ratio of 1.7:1 participated in this study. majority 92 (80.70%) of the examiners were 46 years and above in age and the mean years of being clinical examiner was 14.11±6.60 years. all the examiners had participated in osce before and the majority 54 (47.37%) had been participating in osce for 5 to 9 years. ninety final year medical students, 49 (54.44%) males and 41 (45.56%) females, with a male to female ratio of 1.20:1 participated in the study. the mean age of the students was 25.42±2.36 years. all the students (100%) had participated in osce and majority 88(97.78%) first participated in 500 grade level. table 1 shows the students’ perception of osce in the university of port harcourt. eighty-two (91.11%) students believed that the exams covered a wide area of knowledge, majority 86 (95.56%) agreed that the task they were asked to perform reflected what they were taught and 50 (55.56%) agreed that the time spent at each station was adequate. seventy-nine (87.78%) students believed that the osce instructions were clear and 43 (47.78%) students disagreed that personality and social relationships affected the osce assessment scores. table 1. students’ perception of osce in the university of port harcourt. variables frequency (n=90) percentage (%) generally in your view, osces covered a wide area of knowledge i agree 82 91.11 i disagree 2 2.22 i am not sure 6 6.67 generally in your view, the task you were asked to perform, reflected what you were taught i agree 86 95.56 i disagree 26 28.89 i am not sure 2 2.22 generally in your view, the time spent at each station was adequate i agree 50 55.56 i disagree 26 28.89 i am not sure 14 15.56 generally in your view, the osce instructions were clear and unambiguous i agree 79 87.78 i disagree 8 8.89 i am not sure 3 3.33 generally in your view, personality and social relationships affected osce assessment scores i agree 26 28.89 i disagree 43 47.78 i am not sure 21 23.33 table 2. students’ and examiners’ definition of feedback. examiner’s definition frequency (%) students’ definition frequency (%) a response given by the examiner to the students after an exam 96 (84.21) critical assessment/response of a process or activity or of the result 41 (45.56) a post assessment communication between examiner and candidate aimed at improving teaching and learning outcome 15 (13.16) a message (spoken or written review) from your examiner about your performance in the osce to aid improvement 37 (37.78) no response 3 (2.63) a form of correspondence, communication or review 5 (5.56) assessment of my experience 4 (4.44) the last part of proper communication 2 (2.22) to know the effect of something at its target 2 (2.22) i don’t know 2 (2.22) table 2 shows the students’ and examiners definitions of feedback. the definition given by majority 92(84.21%) of the examiners is that feedback is a response given by the examiner to the students after an exam. the definition asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 33-41 36 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group of feedback given by majority 41(45.56%) of the students is that feedback is a critical assessment response of a process or activity. eighty (70.18%) examiners agreed that feedback is always given after osce in their departments table 3a. out of these, 60 (50.42%) said that the feedback is given to the lecturers/examiners and 53 (44.54%) said that it is given to students and 6(5.04%) said it is given to standardized patients. thirty-nine (48.75%) examiners agreed that the feedback provision is class based and 24 (30.00%) reported that it is sub-group based. out of the 80 who said feedback is always given after osce, 51 (63.75%) believed that the feedback is given immediately or soon after the osce. table 3a. examiners’ perception of feedback practices following osce in uniport. variables frequency percentages (%) is feedback given after osce in your department? (n=114) yes 80 70.18 no 34 29.82 if yes, to who? (n=119) (multiple responses applicable) lecturers/examiners 60 50.42 students 53 44.54 standardized patients 6 5.04 if yes, is the feedback provision (n=80) class based 39 48.75 sub-group based 24 30.00 individualized 15 18.75 no response 2 2.50 when is the feedback given? immediately or soon after the osce 51 63.75 much later 25 31.25 during the station rotation 1 1.25 no response 3 3.75 table 3b shows a continuation of the examiners’ perception of feedback practices following osce in uniport. out of the 80 (92.50%) examiners who said feedback is given after osce, 75 (93.75%) agreed that the feedback is given verbally and 46 (57.50%) examiners were not sure if any student has complained of not understanding the feedback provided or being given an offensive feedback. seventy-two (63.16%) out of the 114 examiners responded that the osce process is not being monitored. amongst the 42 (36.84%) examiners who believed that osce process is being monitored, 30 (71.43%) responded that the process is monitored by independent observers. table 3b. examiners’ perception of feedback practices following osce in uniport. variables frequency percentage (%) in what form is the feedback given? (n=80) verbal 75 93.75 written 5 6.25 from your experience, has any student ever complained of not understanding the feedback provided or being given an offensive feedback? not sure 46 57.50 no 28 35.00 yes 6 7.50 is the osce process being monitored? (n=114) no 72 63.16 yes 42 36.84 if yes, by who? (n=42) independent observers 30 71.43 external examiners 5 11.90 other clinical lecturers 3 7.14 internal observers 1 2.38 osce board 1 2.38 video 1 2.38 exam officer 1 2.38 do you consider students’ feedback during board of examiners’ meeting? (n=114) not at all 50 43.86 sometimes 32 28.07 rarely 19 16.67 regularly 13 11.40 do you consider examiners’ feedback during board of examiners’ meeting? (n=114) regularly 67 58.77 sometimes 26 22.81 not at all 17 14.91 rarely 4 3.51 do you consider observers/administrators’ feedback during board of examiners’ meeting? not at all 63 55.26 regularly 28 24.56 sometimes 16 14.04 rarely 7 6.14 asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 33-41 37 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 4 shows the students’ perception of feedback practices in uniport. out of the 90 students, 47 (52.22%) said that they have been receiving feedback. concerning how regularly the feedback is given, 41 (87.23%) said it is given sometimes. concerning when the feedback is given, 30 (63.83%) believed it is given much later after the exams. the commonest 45(95.74%) form of feedback received by the student is verbal feedback. majority 41(87.23%) of the students who received feedback claimed that the feedback was well understood and friendly 42 (89.36%). out of the 90 students, 48 (53.33%) reported that they were encouraged to express their views about the osce. table 4. students’ perception of feedback practices following osce in uniport. variables frequency percentage (%) have you been receiving feedback from your examiners after each osce? (n=90) yes 47 52.22 no 41 45.56 how regular was the feedback? (n=47) sometimes 41 87.23 regularly 4 8.51 rarely 2 4.26 when was the feedback given? (n=47) much later 30 63.83 immediately/soon after the osce 17 36.17 in what form was the feedback given? (n=47) verbal 45 95.74 written 2 4.26 feedback was well understood? (n=47) yes 41 87.23 no 6 12.77 feedback was friendly? (n=47) yes 42 89.36 no 3 6.38 i am not sure 2 4.26 were you encouraged to express your views about the osces you have participated in (in respect of whether it reflects what you were taught, clear instructions, sufficient time, assessor’s conduct, standardized patient’s performance, organizations? (n=90) yes 48 53.33 no 42 46.67 table 5 shows a comparative analysis of students’ and examiners’ perceptions of feedback practices in uniport. when asked if feedback is given after osce in the department, about 70% of the examiners and 52% of the students said yes and this finding was statistically significant (p=0.009). on the other hand, about 46% of the students and 30% of the examiners indicated that they did not receive or give feedback (p=0.009). when asked when the feedback was given, about 66% of the examiners and 36% of the students reported that it was given immediately after the osce and this finding was statistically significant (p=0.0014). on the other hand, more students (63.83%) as against 32.47% examiners reported that the feedback was given much later ( p=0.0014). these findings show that there are significant differences in the students’ and examiners’ perception of feedback practices following osce in the university of port harcourt. table 5. a comparison between students’ and examiners’ perceptions of feedback practices in uniport. note: *statistically significant (p<0.05); µ=fisher’s exact p (recommended when values less than 5 are found in the cells). table 6 shows the perception of the examiners concerning the impact of feedback or lack of it on students’ performance. the commonest response to the question on impact of giving feedback is that feedback resulted into improved performance at the exams, 31 (58.49%). twenty three (37.70%) examiners were not sure of the impact of lack of feedback on students’ performance. ninety-six (84.21%) examiners reported that the best time to give feedback is immediately after the exam. variable examiner’s students chi-square p-value n=114 n=90 is feedback given after osce in your department yes 80 (70.18) 47 (52.22) 0.009 µ* no 34 (29.82) 41 (45.56) i am not sure 0 (0.0) 2 (2.22) when is the feedback given (n1=80; n2=47) during the station rotation 1 (1.30) 0 (0.0) 0.0014 µ* immediately or soon after the osce 51 (66.23) 17 (36.17) much later 25 (32.47) 30 (63.83) in what form is the feedback given (n1=80; n2=47) written 6 (7.50) 2 (4.26) 0.709 µ verbal 74 (92.50) 45 (95.74) asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 33-41 38 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 6. examiners’ perception on the impact of feedback or lack of it on students’ performance. variables frequency percentages (%) if feedback is being given to students after osce, what impact has it had on students’ performance in osce? (n=53) improved performance at exams or reset 31 58.49 i am not sure 11 20.75 better and improved understanding of osce 6 11.32 positive impact 5 9.43 if feedback is not being given to students, what impact has it had on students’ performance? (n=61) not sure 23 37.70 no satisfactory improvement in students grades 22 36.07 negative impact 10 16.39 lack of understanding of the process and the purpose of osce 1 1.64 i do not know 5 8.20 if students are receiving feedback, when do you think is the best time to give the feedback to have maximum impact on students’ performance? immediately after the osce 96 84.21 much later after the osce 14 12.28 during the station rotation 4 3.51 table 7 shows the students perception on the impact of feedback or lack of it on their performance. out of the 47 (52.22) who reported receiving feedback, 43 (91.49%) reported that their performance improved with the feedback. out of the 43 (47.78%) students who did not report receiving feedback, 38 (88.37%) reported that the feedback would have helped in improving their performance. seventy two (80%) out of the 90 students reported that the best time to receive the feedback is immediately after the osce. table 7. students’ perception on the impact of feedback on their performance. variable e frequency percentage (%) did your performance in subsequent osces improve because of the feedbacks you were given? (n=47) yes 43 91.49 i am not sure 4 8.51 if you have not been receiving feedback, do you think that it would have helped in some way? (n=43) yes 38 88.37 i am not sure 3 6.98 no 2 4.65 when do you think is the best time to receive the feedback to have maximum impact on students’ performance? (n=90) immediately/soon after the osce 72 80.00 much later 14 15.56 during the station rotation 4 4.44 4. discussion this study sets out to evaluate the feedback practices following objective structured clinical examination (osce) in uniport. the sociodemographic data of the examiners showed that majority of them had between 5 and 9 years experience in osce. some of these examiners (14.91%) had some experience prior to the commencement of osce in the university. the results equally showed that all the students had experienced the osce. this shows that their perceptions in this study were based on their experiences. the findings from this study show that osce was highly rated by the students as more than four fifth of them felt that the exams covered a wide area of knowledge, the instructions were clear and the tasks they were asked to perform reflected what they were taught. this is probably attributable to the high level of knowledge and experience of their clinical lecturers. these findings agree with the report of majumder et al. (2019) where it was reported that 63%-91% of the final year bachelor of medicine, bachelor of surgery mbbs students and the osce examiners of the university of west indies had positive views regarding the fairness of the exams, the knowledge and competencies covered and the level of organization of the exams. similarly, pierre, wierenga, barton, branday, and christie (2004) also observed an overwhelming acceptance of osce comprehensiveness (90%), transparency (87%), fairness (70%) and authenticity of the required tasks (58-78%). the findings from this study however contrast with those of nasir et al. (2014) who reported that only 58.9% of the final year medical students agreed that the osce measured knowledge and skill and only 40.4% of them agreed that the osce instructions were easy to understand. these differences in observation maybe due to the fact that our clinical examiners are highly experienced in the osce administration. however, only half (55.5%) of our student participants agreed that the time spent at each station was adequate, showing that there is still room for improvement. additionally, the fact that less than half (47.78%) of the students disagreed that personality and social relationships affected their osce scores also shows that much still needs to be done to improve the confidence of the students in the exam, especially since osce seeks to deliver objectivity and transparency in the assessment of medical students (varkey, natt, lesnick, downing, & yudkowsky, 2008). this finding is similar to the report of majumder et al. (2019) though a higher proportion of students (75%) in their study reported that factors like gender, ethnicity and personality did affect the result of osce. more than four-fifth (84.21%) of the examiners in this study defined feedback as a response given by the examiner to the students after an exam”. this definition is agreeable with the definition by van de ridder et al. (2008) who defined feedback as specific information about the comparison between a trainee’s observed performance and a standard, given with the intent to improve the trainee’s performance. however, van de ridder et al. (2008) definition is more detailed. asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 33-41 39 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group feedback is an essential component of medical training and is critical for learners’ development (kornegay et al., 2017). in this study, more than two-third (70.18%) of the examiners reported that feedback was given after osce. this is comparable to the report of harrison, molyneux, blackwell, and wass (2015) where 89% of the examiners gave feedback. ideally, the examiners, students and the simulated patients should give and receive feedbacks after osce. qureshi and zehra (2020) also demonstrated that simulated patients’ feedback is essential to enhance the communication skills of medical students and major (2005) opined that asking simulated patients to give their views adds objectivity to osces. in this study, majority of the examiners reported that feedback was given to lecturers/examiners (50.42%) and students (44.54%), only a very small proportion (5.04%) of the examiners reported that the standardized patients were also involved in the feedback. excluding the simulated patients from the feedback process reduces the quality of the exercise. there is an increasing preference for individualized feedback (mulliner & tucker, 2015; ngim et al., 2021; saunders, 2018; shrivastava, shrivastava, & ramasamy, 2014) while making a case for individualized feedback argued that students are individuals with different learning styles, strengths and weakness and adapting the feedback to these individual differences will make the feedback more effective. however, this study revealed that majority of the examiners reported that the feedback with the students was class-based (48.75%) and sub-group based (30.00%). workload and inadequate manpower in some clinical departments may be responsible for this practice. group-based feedback is not as stressful as individualized feedback, but it does not allow individual’s short comings to be addressed. concerning the timing of the feedback, research advocates that feedback is only useful to students when it is given in a timely manner (lowe & shaw, 2019; mulliner & tucker, 2015; ngim et al., 2021). in this study, almost two-third (63.75%) of the examiners reported that the feedback was given immediately or soon after the osce. this is commendable because timeliness is one of the characteristics of an effective feedback (dawson et al., 2019). majority of the examiners (92.50%) in this study reported that verbal feedback is provided. this seems to be agreeable with the suggestion of black and mccormick (2010) that greater emphasis be placed on oral feedback as opposed to written feedback because oral or face to face feedback creates opportunities for the students to dialogue with the examiners. on the other hand, it disagrees with the report of ngim et al. (2021) who observed that students preferred individualized written feedback. whether written or verbal, the important thing is that it should be individualized and this fact was corroborated by the report of mulliner and tucker (2015) that students preferred individualized verbal and written feedback. pankonin and myers (2017) and killingley and dyson (2016) noted that negative or offensive feedback will not only affect students’ engagement with the feedback but will also affect their behaviour indirectly by decreasing their feeling of self-worth. the study revealed that only a small proportion of examiners (7.50%) reported that students had complained of receiving offensive feedback. negative feedback experiences have been given as one of the reasons why students fail to act and learn from the feedback (killingley & dyson, 2016). in maintaining quality assurance, it is good to get feedback from the examiners, students and observers as this will help improve the examination process. almost two third (63.16%) of the examiners in this study reported that the exam was not monitored. observers give invaluable feedback concerning the general organization of the exam as they take note of the flow from station to station, timing of various stations, performance of simulated patients etc. not having monitors is a major flaw in the organization of the exam. the study further showed that during board of examiners meeting, the only feedback that is considered regularly is the examiners feedback. students’ feedback was hardly considered and this is another major flaw in the organization of the osce. concerning students’ perception of feedback practices following osce in uniport, half of the students reported that they have been receiving feedback following osce, though majority of them reported that the feedback was given sometimes. this is comparable to the report of rüsseler et al. (2016) who observed that students complained of not receiving or receiving too little feedback. similarly, brown (2007) reported that the students in his study expressed discontent at the lack of feedback from their examiners. the purpose of feedback in medical education is to inform students about the difference between expected learning goals and the performance observed and students are expected to use this important information to improve their performance and achieve the defined learning goals (sterz et al., 2021). in a situation where feedback is not being given or given irregularly, students’ errors will go uncorrected and learning goals may not be achieved. the results further showed that majority of the students (63.83%) who reported receiving feedback agreed that the feedback was given much later. this contrasts with the report of hall, hanna, and quinn (2012) who observed that more than half (56.6%) of their respondents strongly agreed or agreed that they received feedback promptly. prompt feedback enables the students to make corrections which will influence their future performance (hall et al., 2012; rowe & wood, 2008). despite all the identified flaws with the feedback the students reported receiving in this study, more than four fifth (87.23%) of them reported that the feedback was well understood. this is very important and agrees with the report of a previous study where majority of the students rated being able to understand a feedback as the most desired thing about a feedback (hall et al., 2012). this finding in this study may be linked to the fact that majority of these students (89.36%) also found the feedback to be friendly, supporting the suggestion of killingley and dyson (2016) that students’ experiences of feedback are the most important indicator of the effectiveness of the feedback process. this study revealed some discrepancies in the views of the examiners and students regarding some aspects of the feedback practices. while more than half of the students (53.33%) who reported receiving feedback agreed that they were encouraged to express their views about the osces they had participated in, only 11.4% of the examiners reported that students feedback was considered in their board of examiners meeting. it may be possible that these views were sought during the verbal class-based feedback but were never considered during the board of examiners meeting where decisions regarding the exams are made. the implication of this is that the examiners missed important opportunities to make improvement in the osce process in uniport. in response to the question of whether feedback is given in the departments, a higher proportion (70.18%) of the examiners responded positively, while fewer (52.22%) proportion of the students held this view. on the other hand, 45.56% of the students indicated that feedback is not provided by the examiners, while fewer proportion asian journal of education and training, 2023, 9(2): 33-41 40 © 2023 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (29.82%) of the examiners had similar view. this issue of students reporting not receiving feedbacks and examiners reporting that they give feedback regularly and sufficiently has also been reported by other researches (gigante, 2012; gil, heins, & jones, 1984; mulliner & tucker, 2015). it maybe that the feedback was not really given or the students may have also received the feedback but were unaware that feedback has occurred (gigante, 2012). perhaps to prevent future occurrences, the examiners should prepare the students before the feedback session (gigante, 2012). it could also be that those saying they did not receive feedback were not in attendance when the feedback was provided. another discordance in opinions was observed concerning the timing of the feedback. whilst a higher proportion (66.23%) of the examiners reported that the feedback was given immediately or soon after the osce, fewer proportion (36.17%) of the students held this view and whilst a higher proportion (63.83%) of the students reported that the feedback was given much later, fewer proportion (32.47%) of the examiners agreed with this. other researchers such as price, handley, millar, and o'donovan (2010) and mulliner and tucker (2015) also reported significant discord between staff and students concerning feedback practices. the findings in this study support the suggestion of juwah et al. (2004) that students should be given the opportunity to provide feedback on their feedback to aid instructors in reflecting on its delivery. it also supports the suggestion of mulliner and tucker (2015) that institutions should encourage and create more opportunities for student-staff interactions and dialogue around assessment and feedback. it becomes very worrisome when one considers the response of the examiners in this study that students’ feedback are not considered during the board of examiners meeting. this is a major flaw in the feedback practice in the university. the study revealed no significant difference in the views of the examiners and students regarding the form of feedback given to the students. majority of the examiners (92.50%) and students (95.74%) reported verbal feedback as the form of feedback given to the students. ngim et al. (2021) also reported similarity in the views of students and staff concerning different aspects of feedback practices following osce. majority (79.24%) of the examiners in this study reported that feedback impacted positively on the students’ subsequent performance in osce and also resulted in better and improved understanding of osce. interestingly, this view was corroborated by the report of majority of the students (91.49%) that their performance in subsequent osces improved because of the feedback. this may be linked to the fact that the students perceived the feedback to be friendly, supporting the argument of brooks, huang, hattie, carroll, and burton (2019) that students’ perception of the feedback must be positive so that feedback is interpreted and used to progress learning. this finding is similar to the report of hall et al. (2012) who also observed that majority (80.1%) of the students attributed their improved performance to the feedback they received. similarly, bandiera, larcinese, and rasul (2015) and white, ross, and gruppen (2009) also observed marked improvement in students’ academic performance following feedback sessions. more than half (54.1%) of the examiners who reported that feedback was not being given in this study reported that lack of feedback impacted negatively on the students’ performance. interestingly, this is consistent with the view of those students who reported not receiving feedback. concerning the timing of feedback, majority of the examiners (84.21%) and the students (80.00%) reported that feedback is best given and received immediately or soon after the osce, which is consistent with the observation of beaumont, o’doherty, and shannon (2011) that students felt that for feedback to be effective, they needed to receive it in time to be able to implement the advice. the finding in this study is consistent with the report of n. black and harden (1986) and mulliner and tucker (2015) that the majority of the students in their studies preferred immediate feedback and hodder, rivington, calcutt, and hart (1989) demonstrated that students’ scores improved significantly following immediate feedback. in conclusion, feedback following osce in uniport is satisfactory in some aspects and deficient in other aspects. the examiners and students differed significantly in their perception of whether feedback is provided after osce in uniport or not and on when it is given, but there was insignificant difference on the form of the feedback given.. the students and the examiners reported that feedback had a positive impact on subsequent performance of the students in osce. 5. recommendations • feedback should be structured into the osce process in every medical school and sufficient time and manpower should be allotted for the exercise. • feedback should also be received from the simulated patients and students. • every osce should be monitored by independent observers who will in turn give their feedback to improve the osce process. 6. limitations of the study • this study is retrospective and is subject to recall bias. • the strength of the views of the participants in this study were not categorized and explored references bandiera, o., larcinese, v., & rasul, i. 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(2009). remediating students’ failed osce performances at one school: the effects of selfassessment, reflection, and feedback. academic medicine, 84(5), 651-654. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0b013e31819fb9de asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1080/13596740601155363 https://doi.org/10.4172/2161-0665.1000e108 https://doi.org/10.4172/2161-0665.1000e108 https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-198411000-00003 https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe7615 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.1979.tb00918.x https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2014.932901 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.1989.tb00884.x https://doi.org/10.12968/bjom.2016.24.5.362 https://doi.org/10.1002/aet2.10024 https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.7.2.8 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2005.03.010 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2147/amep.s197275 https://mcc.ca/wp-content/uploads/osce-booklet-2014.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1103365 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2014.02.010 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02585-z https://wp.nyu.edu/steinhardt-appsych_opus/teachers-use-of-positive-and-negative-feedback-implications-for-student-behavior/ https://wp.nyu.edu/steinhardt-appsych_opus/teachers-use-of-positive-and-negative-feedback-implications-for-student-behavior/ https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6920-4-22 https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930903541007 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-019-1914-2 https://www.studiosity.com/blog/personal-makes-perfect-why-individualised-feedback-is-key https://www.studiosity.com/blog/personal-makes-perfect-why-individualised-feedback-is-key https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02581-3 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2007.02973.x https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0b013e31817ec873 https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0b013e31819fb9de 62 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 1, 62-75, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5488 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group improve speaking skills with duolingo’s mobile game-based language learning ibrahim yasar kazu1 murat kuvvetli2 ( corresponding author) 1department of education science, faculty of education, fırat university, elazig, turkey. email: iykazu@firat.edu.tr 2ministry of education, yahya kemal beyatlı anatolian high school, english teacher, elazig, turkey. email: murat4595@gmail.com abstract the purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of duolingo's game-based methodology in improving speaking proficiency within mobile language learning, while also examining the specific attributes and strategies contributing to its success and exploring implications for language education and learner optimization. given the growing prevalence of mobile language learning platforms, the research meticulously scrutinizes the specific attributes and strategies employed by duolingo that contribute to the refinement of oral fluency. this study employs a mixed methods design, integrating phenomenological and experimental approaches through a pre, post and attainment speaking tests with a control group design supported with metaphorical perceptions. the findings underscore the pivotal role of assimilating technological advancements and gamified pedagogical approaches within language education to expedite effective intercultural communication across multifarious linguistic landscapes. furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of continuously adapting language learning methodologies to leverage emerging technologies and gamification strategies in order to foster effective communication skills in diverse linguistic contexts. the implications for prospective inquiries advocate for longitudinal investigations delving into the enduring implications of mobile gamebased language learning on comprehensive linguistic acquisition, necessitating comparative inquiries to ascertain the comparative efficacy of diverse mobile applications in fostering distinct language proficiencies. additionally, probing the influence of individual learner attributes and predilections in optimizing the utilization of mobile language learning applications could yield valuable insights for tailoring language acquisition paradigms. keywords: duolingo, gamification, language learning, metaphors, mobile application, speaking proficiency. citation | kazu, i. y., & kuvvetli, m. (2024). improve speaking skills with duolingo’s mobile game-based language learning. asian journal of education and training, 10(1), 62–75. 10.20448/edu.v10i1.5488 history: received: 10 january 2024 revised: 28 february 2024 accepted: 8 march 2024 published: 21 march 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of firat university, turkey has granted approval for this study on 1 march 2023 (ref. no. e-97132852-302.14.01-103987). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: supervision, conceptualization, validation, original draft preparation, writing – review & editing, formal analysis, i.y.k.; investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, visualization, data curation, funding acquisition, m.k. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 63 2. literature review......................................................................................................................................................................................... 65 3. method............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 66 4. results.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 69 5. discussion ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 6. conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 71 7. limitations ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 72 references ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 72 mailto:iykazu@firat.edu.tr mailto:murat4595@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i1.5488 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1039-0482 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6343-6459 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 63 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this paper contributes by providing a comprehensive evaluation of duolingo's game-based methodology for improving speaking proficiency in mobile language learning. it offers insights into the refinement of oral fluency. furthermore, to leverage emerging technologies this research informs future research directions aimed at optimizing language acquisition paradigms. 1. introduction in the ever-evolving landscape of language education, the emergence of mobile applications has revolutionized the traditional paradigms of language acquisition. among these digital tools, duolingo has gained substantial recognition for its distinctive gamified learning approach, incorporating interactive exercises and game-like elements to engage language learners in an immersive and interactive language learning experience (james & mayer, 2019). despite the growing interest in technology-assisted language learning, the precise impact of duolingo on the development of speaking proficiency remains a topic requiring deeper investigation within the academic literature. recent scholarly discussions (loewen et al., 2019) have emphasized the significance of integrating advanced technological solutions into pedagogical methodologies, particularly in fostering effective communication across various linguistic and cultural contexts. however, a comprehensive understanding of the specific mec hanisms by which duolingo contributes to the enhancement of speaking skills necessitates further exploration. this research seeks to bridge this gap by conducting a meticulous examination of the efficacy of duolingo's mobile application in augmenting speaking proficiency among language learners. by adopting a mixed-methods design, this study aims to uncover the tangible effects of duolingo's gamified methodology on the development of learners' oral communication abilities. furthermore, this research endeavors to contribute to the broader discourse on the integration of technology in language education and its potential implications for personalized language acquisition strategies tailored to individual learner needs and preferences (shortt, tilak, kuznetcova, martens, & akinkuolie, 2023). through a comprehensive analysis of the impact of duolingo, this study intends to provide valuable insights into the optimization of language learning techniques, focusing on the integration of innovative technological tools and gamified pedagogical approaches. by shedding light on the nuanced dynamics of mobile application-based language learning, this research aspires to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on the effective utilization of digital platforms for cultivating language proficiency and facilitating effective cross-cultural communication in diverse linguistic contexts. 1.1. the rise of mobile language learning applications the rise of mobile language learning applications has ushered in a new era in the realm of language education. language learners today have unprecedented access to a plethora of applications, each vying to offer a unique and effective language learning experience. among these, duolingo has risen to prominence, boasting over 500 million users worldwide (ersoy, 2023). the sheer scale of its user base and the popularity it enjoys suggest that it may be a noteworthy contributor to the way individuals acquire speaking skills in a new language. duolingo, founded in 2011, has adopted a distinctive approach by gamifying language learning, making it accessible, engaging, and enjoyable for users of all ages (munday, 2017). this approach has garnered attention within the field of educational technology and language acquisition (shortt et al., 2023). however, while the gamification of language learning can be enticing, it raises questions about its true efficacy in fostering speaking proficiency. this study sets out to address this concern. 1.2. addressing a gap in language learning research within the realm of language learning research, there exists a significant gap concerning the impact of mobile applications, particularly duolingo, on the development of speaking skills. most studies examining language acquisition through technology have focused on broader aspects of language learning, such as vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, or grammar proficiency. few have ventured into the realm of speaking skills (hafifah, 2021). speaking proficiency is a vital aspect of language acquisition, as the ultimate goal of language learning is effective communication (juanggo, 2017). it is thus crucial to investigate the specific role that duolingo plays in enhancing learners' ability to express themselves fluently and accurately in a foreign language. by conducting t his research, we hope to contribute to a more holistic understanding of the impact of mobile language learning applications on language skills, moving beyond the more commonly studied domains. 1.3. the significance of experimental research design to unravel the influence of duolingo on speaking proficiency, a mixed methods design was employed. this research design is crucial for several reasons. first, it allows to establish a baseline measurement of participants' speaking skills before engaging with duolingo. this baseline measurement provides a point of comparison against which any improvements can be assessed following the use of the application (johnson, 1983). moreover, the inclusion of a control group is instrumental in isolating the effects of duolingo. by comparing the experimental group, which actively utilizes duolingo for language learning, with the control group, which does not use the application during the study period, it can be discerned whether any observed improvements in speaking proficiency are genuinely attributable to the use of duolingo or if they could be attributed to other external factors or not. 1.4. exploring duolingo's game-based approach a distinctive feature of duolingo is its game-based approach to language learning. within the app, language learners encounter various gamification elements, such as earning points, leveling up, and competing with other asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 64 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group users (see figure 4). gamification in education has been shown to enhance motivation and engagement, factors that are crucial for effective language acquisition (dehghanzadeh, fardanesh, hatami, talaee, & noroozi, 20 21) . this study seeks to investigate how these gamification elements affect learners' motivation and, subsequently, their speaking proficiency. furthermore, duolingo offers a range of interactive exercises designed to develop different language skills, including speaking. users can engage in speaking exercises where they pronounce words and phrases, which are then evaluated by the app for accuracy. this dynamic approach to speaking practice differs from traditional language learning methods that may rely heavily on rote memorization and passive listening (wagner, 2020). by participating in these speaking exercises, learners have the opportunity for active and practical language use, potentially leading to improved speaking skills. the findings of this study have the potential to contribute significantly to the broader discourse on language learning, educational technology, and the importance of speaking proficiency. with the increasing globalization and interconnectedness of our world, effective communication in foreign languages has become a valuable skill in various domains, including education, business, and international relations. therefore, identifying effective methods for improving speaking proficiency is of paramount importance. moreover, as technology continues to play an integral role in education, it is crucial to discern the potential benefits and limitations of specific applications like duolingo (permatasari & aryani, 2023). the implications extend beyond the scope of this research study. they suggest the need for ongoing investigations into the long-term effects of mobile game-based language learning on comprehensive language acquisition, and the necessity for comparative studies to evaluate the effectiveness of various mobile applications in fostering different language skills (rosell-aguilar, 2018). furthermore, considering the individual learner's characteristics and preferences in optimizing the use of mobile language learning apps offers a promising avenue for future research. by tailoring language learning experiences to the specific needs and learning styles of individual learners, language educators and app developers may be able to enhance the overall effectiveness of language acquisition. figure 1 illustrates the essential stages and the systematic approach employed in a research project aimed at assessing the effectiveness of duolingo. this popular online language learning tool will undergo thorough evaluation, specifically focusing on its ability to teach vital language skills to 10 th grade students. the research strategy involves a semi-experimental design, incorporating a pre-test and post-test control group method. through this quantitative method, we will assess the impact of the platform on students' listening, speaking, reading, and writing abilities. the study population consists of committed duolingo users who have dedicated a minimum of one hour (as outlined in appendix 2) to language learning through the platform. the results, detailed in the flowchart, will reveal duolingo's potential in improving language proficiency, as well as its compatibility with traditional classroom teaching. moreover, this investigation will highlight the broader implications of integrating technology into language education, paving the way for future research in this constantly evolving field. figure 1. process of the research. by examining duolingo’s gamified methodology, interactive exercises, and the impact of motivation and engagement on speaking skills, this research aims to provide valuable insights into the potential of mobile applications for enhancing language proficiency. the utilization of an experimental research design, comparing an experimental group actively engaging with duolingo to a control group, forms the basis for a rigorous assessment. the findings of this study have the potential to significantly inform the future of language education, technology integration, and personalized language learning experiences. in this rapidly evolving landscape, understanding the impact of innovative language learning tools is essential for creating more effective and asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 65 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group engaging language learning experiences and ultimately facilitating effective cross-cultural communication. to evaluate the findings of the study, the following inquiries have been presented: 1.5. main research questions and hypotheses rq1. to what extent do quantitative measurements support the claim that duolingo significantly enhances speaking proficiency in language learners, and how do these results compare with traditional language instruction methods? h0: the quantitative measurements of speaking proficiency in language learners using duolingo are not significantly higher than those of learners utilizing traditional language instruction methods. h1: the quantitative measurements of speaking proficiency in language learners using duolingo are significantly higher than those of learners utilizing traditional language instruction methods. rq2. in what ways do language learners metaphorically perceive their duolingo experience in terms of language acquisition, and how do these metaphors illuminate the subjective aspects of the learning process, shedding light on the emotional and cognitive dimensions of language development? h0: metaphorical perceptions of the duolingo experience do not significantly correlate with emotional and cognitive dimensions of language development among language learners. h1: metaphorical perceptions of the duolingo experience exhibit a significant correlation with emotional and cognitive dimensions, providing insights into the subjective aspects of language development beyond conventional language instruction methods. 2. literature review the surge of mobile applications in the realm of language education has sparked substantial academic discourse on their effectiveness and potential impact on various aspects of language acquisition. among these applications, duolingo has gained recognition for its gamified approach and interactive methodology tailored to engage language learners of diverse proficiency levels (su & zou, 2022). while existing research underscores the importance of integrating technological advancements in language learning environments to cater to the evolving needs of contemporary learners (langley, benítez‐burraco, & kempe, 2020) comprehensive evaluations of duolingo's impact on speaking proficiency remain relatively scarce in the literature. although the gamification of language learning has garnered attention for its potential to enhance learner motivation and engagement (boudadi & gutiérrez-colón, 2020) empirical investigations directly linking gamified language learning applications to oral communication skills have been limited. previous studies have primarily focused on broader language acquisition dimensions, such as vocabulary, reading, and grammar (zhang, 2012). this gap highlights the necessity of examining the distinctive features of duolingo's gamified approach and its implications for fostering speaking proficiency, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of mobileassisted language learning's multifaceted impact. moreover, exploring the role of mobile applications like duolingo in addressing contemporary language education needs aligns with the shift toward personalized and adaptive learning strategies (kem, 2022). effective cross-cultural communication requires not only linguistic competence but also an understanding of cultural nuances and communication dynamics (chwialkowska, 2020). therefore, the literature emphasizes the significance of innovative language learning tools that cultivate linguistic proficiency and intercultural communicative competence, fostering a holistic approach to language education in an interconnected world (mahmoodi & yousefi, 2022). an integrative review of existing scholarship on mobile language learning applications, particularly duolingo, underscores technology's pivotal role in fostering adaptive and engaging language learning experiences. this evolving discourse emphasizes the need for nuanced investigations into the efficacy of gamified language learning platforms in developing speaking proficiency, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the intricate interplay between technology, pedagogy, and language acquisition in contemporary educational contexts. empirical studies exploring the impact of gamification on language learning have highlighted its potential in fostering intrinsic motivation and sustained engagement among learners (aldemir, celik, & kaplan, 2018) . these elements, such as point systems and leaderboards, can enhance learner perseverance and commitment, driving language skill development within an immersive learning environment (oliveira, souza, reis, & souza, 2021). moreover, integrating gamified components in language learning platforms has shown promise in promoting autonomous learning, fostering a sense of achievement, and nurturing a positive learning experience conducive to long-term language proficiency development (nilubol, 2023). despite the potential of gamification, critical perspectives emphasize the need for understanding contextual nuances shaping the efficacy of gamified language learning applications like duolingo (behera, 2023). some scholars caution against overreliance on extrinsic motivational factors, highlighting the importance of fostering deep-seated intrinsic motivation for language learning (kim, kim, & holland, 2020). these discussions underscore the complexity of motivational factors, pedagogical strategies, and the multifaceted nature of speaking proficiency, emphasizing the need for holistic investigations into duolingo's impact on oral communication abilities. furthermore, the literature has explored the nuanced relationships between technological affordances and language acquisition outcomes, emphasizing the importance of a balanced approach that leverages digi tal tools while recognizing their limitations (shadiev & yang, 2020). this underscores the necessity of an inclusive examination of duolingo's role in facilitating speaking proficiency, considering the interplay between its technological features, gamified components, and broader socio-cognitive dynamics influencing language learning outcomes. by integrating these perspectives, this study aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of duolingo's impact on learners' speaking skills, informing pedagogical interventions and advancements in mobile assisted language learning. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 66 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 2. most common topics in terms of language learning related to duolingo. the current body of research on the impact of duolingo on language learning seen in figure 2 primarily focuses on aspects such as gamification, mobile-based education, language models, motivation, and proficiency in english. it is important to note the lack of studies originating from turkey. a thorough investigation into the effects of duolingo on various language skills, including reading, writing, listening, and speaking, is notably absent within the turkish context. proficiency in these language skills holds significant importance in the realm of acquiring foreign languages, highlighting the need to examine duolingo's contribution to improving these essential skills. in conclusion, the literature highlights the need for a comprehensive understanding of the pedagogical implications of gamified language learning in fostering not only speaking proficiency but also other essential language skills. research has indicated that while gamification can enhance motivation and engagement, its impact on more complex linguistic competencies, such as sociolinguistic awareness and pragmatic competence, warrants further investigation (culduz, 2023). understanding the intricacies of how gamified language learning platforms like duolingo may influence these higher-order language skills is crucial for developing comprehensive language education strategies that cater to the diverse linguistic and communicative needs of learners. moreover, nuanced examinations of the role of sociocultural factors, learner autonomy, and instructional design within the context of mobile language learning applications can offer valuable insights into the multifaceted nature of language acquisition processes and the potential limitations of technology-mediated language learning experiences (henrie, halverson, & graham, 2015). consequently, this underscores the necessity of holistic research approaches that consider the broader educational ecosystem and socio-cultural dynamics influencing language learning outcomes, thereby providing a nuanced understanding of the role of duolingo and similar applications in promoting speaking proficiency within the larger framework of comprehensive language acquisition. 3. method 3.1. research design the study employs a mixed-methods approach incorporating both experimental components with pre-post and attainment tests and qualitative exploration of learners' metaphorical perceptions. this research seeks to assess the efficacy of duolingo, a prominent language learning application, in enhancing speaking proficiency through its gamified methodology. it aims to measure the impact of duolingo's interactive exercises and gamification on learner engagement and motivation, as evidenced by improvements in speaking skills through pre-post tests and attainment assessments, while also delving into learners' metaphorical perceptions of their experiences with duolingo. this approach aims to uncover deeper insights into learners' engagement, motivation, and subjective understanding of the learning process, ultimately providing a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of duolingo's game-based approach in language education. this study, authorized by the ethics committee of the faculty of educational sciences at fırat university, utilized a quasi-experimental model and a pretest-posttest control group design. quasi-experimental designs, involving multiple groups and unbiased allocation but lacking complete experimental control, were employed. the pretest-posttest control group design involved both experimental and control groups, with measurements taken before and after the experiment. it is essential to consider any significant differences in the initial measurements within this design. a non-equivalent comparison group design was selected for this research, comprising both experimental and comparison groups. however, in this design, participants were not randomly assigned, potentially leading to uncontrolled variables affecting the outcomes. participants were selected based on specific criteria to enhance the research's validity and reliability. the pretest-posttest control group design was used to asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 67 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group evaluate changes in the effectiveness of the program between the experimental and control groups. additionally, an achievement test was employed to assess students' knowledge acquisition after the program. 3.2. research participants in this study, the research participants were divided into separate experimental and control groups, allowing for an evaluation of how the duolingo language learning app affected the english proficiency of students. the experimental group consisted of thirty-two 10th grade students who used the duolingo app at home, utilizing their personal computers and internet connections. on the other hand, the control group was randomly selected from the same school, ensuring that participants were at the same grade level. 3.3. data collection the primary data collection tool used to assess the impact of the duolingo app on language proficiency is the duolingo website, which offers a range of language learning activities for improving reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. the study emphasizes the use of both the website and the mobile app for data collection to measure speaking skill, with results presented in tables to track language proficiency over time. appendix 3 illustrates the time during when the interlocutor, alongside the students, engage in the oral examination (see appendix 3). the study additionally highlights the functionality of the duolingo website in monitoring learning activities, providing learners with an online dashboard to track their progress across different devices. similarly, the mobile app allows learners to access the site via smartphones, enabling them to monitor progress, complete lessons, and assess their performance. the second data were collected from the speaking exam of cambridge university press (see appendix 1). the research introduces a language proficiency exam provided by cambridge, purchased by the ministry of national education. this exam, administered through the https://www.eba.gov.tr/eicerik/cambridge website, follows the european language portfolio standards and is considered reliable and valid, particularly catering to a2-level students. the exam evaluates listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills, selected from the "think turkey a2 level" book's final unit. the study acknowledges the established reliability and validity of cambridge esol exams, supported by content aligned with cefr standards and extensive research. inspite of the recognized strengths, the study acknowledges some limitations of cefr-based assessments in capturing individual learner identities and activities, although these assessments contribute to fostering learner autonomy (see appendix 4). the study underscores the importance of careful administration (see appendix 2) and interpretation of cefr-based tests. in conclusion, the study confirms the reliability and validity of cambridge exams, particularly those aligned with cefr, affirming their credibility as effective tools for accurately assessing learners' language proficiency levels. 3.4. data analysis in some countries mandatory practice exams were introduced for high school foreign language courses to enhance students' language skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing (saito, 2019). however, there is a need to explore alternative methods to support students in terms of speaking skills as there is a lack of research in terms of context for practice exams gathering metaphorical perceptions of learners as well. the need to explore alternative methods to support students in improving their speaking skills in the context of language learning arises due to a noticeable lack of research specifically focused on this aspect. as a result, there is limited understanding of the challenges and specific needs related to fostering speaking proficiency in the local educational setting. by conducting further research and investigating alternative methods, educators and policymakers can gain insights into the specific challenges students face in developing their speaking skills (arroba & acosta, 2021). this exploration can pave the way for the development of tailored language learning programs and initiatives that effectively address the unique requirements and context of language learners, ultimately facilitating more comprehensive and effective language education. therefore, assessing the effectiveness of the duolingo language learning application in improving students' performance in these practice exams is crucial. to foster effective speaking skills among students, this study aims to comprehensively investigate duolingo's potential contribution to the english language learning process among secondary school students, addressing all language skills. with limited existing literature on this topic, the study's findings could provide valuable insights for diverse approaches to foreign language instruction in turkey. duolingo serves as a widely used computer-assisted language learning platform that combines gamification principles with adaptive learning techniques (munday, 2017). the duolingo learning process involves selecting a language and setting daily learning goals (shortt et al., 2023). users interact with compact, modularized lessons designed to improve listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. gamification elements, such as achievements, progress levels, and a point-based reward system, are strategically integrated to encourage continuous participation and motivate learners. duolingo employs a variety of exercises, including translation, matching, and speech-based challenges, to reinforce language learning and retention. its adaptive algorithm adjusts the difficulty of exercises based on user performance, creating a personalized learning experience. importantly, users can track their progress, review completed modules, and participate in interactive discussions, fostering a collaborative learning community. with its user-friendly interface and inclusive design, duolingo accommodates a diverse user base globally, ensuring accessibility and convenience in language learning. the process is outlined in figure 3: asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 68 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 3. schematic representation of duolingo's adaptive language-learning framework and gamified user experience. the expansion of digital technologies has triggered a transformation in language learning methodologies, with duolingo emerging as a prominent leader in the sphere of online language education (blake, 2011). introduced as an interactive platform for language acquisition, the duolingo study webpage has effectively revolutionized traditional learning approaches. by integrating gamification techniques and adaptive algorithms, this user-friendly interface offers an immersive and tailored learning journey for a diverse array of language learners. with a rich array of more than 30 language courses, the duolingo study webpage has gained widespread acclaim for its innovative and accessible approach, appealing to global audiences in search of flexible and cost-effective language learning solutions (budhwar et al., 2023; pearson, 2023). serving as an emblem of educational progress, duolingo continues to redefine contemporary teaching practices, facilitating convenient and efficient language acquisition within the digital realm. the interface and additional information are displayed in figure 4. the research study focuses on assessing the effectiveness of duolingo's practice exams in speaking skills for 10th grade students in turkey. the research commenced with a thorough review of the literature to identify relevant studies and establish the theoretical framework, specifically focusing on duolingo's practice exams for high school students to understand its efficacy in english language learning. for the research group, thirty-two 10th grade students between the ages of 14-15 were selected. the research group comprised students who used duolingo's school feature and engaged in a minimum of one hour of study. a pilot study was conducted with ten students from different classes to ensure the validity and reliability of the test, with adjustments made based on expert recommendations following the pilot study results. figure 4. duolingo's interface for language learning. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 69 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group data collection involved administering cambridge-approved tests measuring the four language skills as both pre-tests and post-tests. the experimental group utilized duolingo's school feature to improve their speaking abilities, while the control group received no intervention. the research employed a semi-experimental design with a pre-test post-test control group. two distinct groups, the experimental and control groups, underwent a pre-test. following a one-month intervention period for both groups, a post-test appendix 1 was conducted to assess the effectiveness of duolingo's practice exams. data analysis was performed using statistical software, including the testing of data distribution homogeneity and analysis of test results using shapiro-wilk analysis. additionally, metaphorical perceptions of learners regarding their experiences with duolingo were collected through qualitative interviews. the data analysis process commenced with verifying the normal distribution and homogeneity of variance using the shapiro wilk test, guiding the selection of appropriate parametric tests. mann-whitney u and k-s test analyses were employed to identify statistically significant differences between pre-tests, post-tests, and attainment tests. the results revealed significant advancements in speaking skills among students in the experimental group actively utilizing the duolingo application, while the control group showed minimal progress. these findings suggest that duolingo positively impacts speaking skills. in conclusion, this research aimed to assess the impact of the duolingo language learning application on students' speaking proficiency. the findings suggest that the application has the potential to significantly contribute to speaking. while the study provides valuable insights, it underscores the necessity for more extensive research to fully grasp the complexities of integrating such technology into educational practices and its implications for diverse student cohorts. ultimately, the study contributes to the discourse on innovative language learning methodologies, highlighting the possibilities and challenges associated with digital language learning tools within the field of education. consequently, research findings hold significant implications for language education and pedagogical practices, emphasizing the potential value of duolingo as a supplementary tool in enhancing language acquisition within traditional curricula. the study contributes to the ongoing discourse on integrating digital technologies in education, emphasizing the critical role of technological resources in fostering improved learning outcomes in an increasingly digitized educational landscape. 4. results the research focused on obtaining measurable results, which were obtained through a statistical examination aimed at evaluating how effective duolingo is in improving language proficiency compared to conventional classroom-based language learning methods. data for this analysis were collected through initial and final assessments measuring language proficiency in speaking. these assessments were conducted on two separate groups: one using duolingo for language learning and the other receiving traditional classroom-based language education. the aim was to provide significant findings that would contribute to the field of language acquisition by offering valuable insights into the effectiveness of duolingo as a tool for enhancing proficiency in all four language skills. 4.1. experimental results to thoroughly examine the outcomes of the study, it is crucial to establish uniformity within the groups. consequently, the normal distribution of the data was assessed using the shapiro-wilk test. the shapiro-wilk test was utilized to determine whether the data within each group adheres to a normal distribution. the results from this test serve as a critical criterion in discerning potential significant deviations in data normality across groups. the outcomes of the normality test provide pivotal information for rejecting the uniformity among the groups. the result of the shapiro wilk test is provided in table 1. below, you can access the table containing the outcomes of the shapiro-wilk tests that evaluate normal distribution. table 1. descriptive statistics of learners. speaking groups df p* pre-test experimental 32 0.03 control 44 0.00 post-test experimental 32 0.00 control 44 0.03 attainment test experimental 32 0.00 control 44 0.11 note: * p<0.05. the examination of the normality tests, particularly the shapiro-wilk test, demonstrates notable deviations from normal distribution in the data for the speaking pre-test, speaking post-test, and speaking gain-test across both the experimental and control groups. specifically, the results indicate that the data for all three tests in both groups do not adhere to a normal distribution. these findings highlight potential challenges in applying certain statistical analyses and underscore the need for careful consideration when interpreting the results of the study. therefore, employing the mann-whitney u test is a prudent approach, as it does not require the assumption of normality and is well-suited for comparing differences between two independent groups. that’s why mannwhitney u test was selected due to its robustness in handling data that deviate from a normal distribution. this non-parametric test allowed for a reliable comparison between two independent groups, making it a suitable choice when the normality assumption is not met. by employing the mann-whitney u test, the study was able to accurately assess the differences in language proficiency between the group using duolingo and the control group undergoing traditional classroom-based language education, thus ensuring a comprehensive and reliable analysis of the effectiveness of duolingo in language acquisition. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 70 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 2. mann-whitney u results of speaking tests. speaking groups n x̄ u z p* k–s test pre-test experimental 32 30.22 439.00 32 0.03 0.33 control 44 44.52 44 0.00 post-test experimental 32 51.44 290.00 32 0.00 0.52 control 44 29.09 44 0.03 attainment test experimental 32 57.64 91.50 32 0.00 0.77 control 44 24.58 44 0.11 note: * p<0.05. a comprehensive overview of the results from table 2 is provided from the mann-whitney u and twosample kolmogorov-smirnov tests, offering a detailed comparison between the experimental and control groups across the speaking pre-test, speaking post-test, and attainment test. the "n" column indicates the number of participants in each group, while "x ̄" represents the mean performance of the groups in each test. the mannwhitney u values illustrate the relative ranks of the groups, providing insights into the comparative performance between the experimental and control groups. the "z" column displays the z-scores, which help assess the significance of the differences observed between the groups. the "p*" column indicates the significance level, demonstrating whether the observed differences are statistically significant, denoted by a p-value less than 0.05. additionally, the two-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test results further assess the differences in distribution between the groups for each test. looking at the speaking pre-test, the data demonstrates a mean rank of 30.22 for the experimental group and 44.52 for the control group, with a mann-whitney u value of 439.00 and a corresponding p -value of 0 .03. this suggests a statistically significant difference between the two groups, indicating that the control group outperformed the experimental group in the initial assessment. however, in both the speaking post-test and the attainment test, the experimental group exhibited significantly higher mean ranks (51.44 and 57.64, respectively) compared to the control group (29.09 and 24.58, respectively). the corresponding p-values of 0.00 for both tests indicate a highly significant difference between the groups, suggesting that the use of duolingo contributed to a substantial improvement in language proficiency within the experimental group. the two-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test results provide additional insights into the distributional differences between the groups for each test. the k–s test values, such as 0.33, 0.52, and 0.77, demonstrate the most extreme differences between the cumulative distribution functions of the experimental and control groups. these values, along with the associated p-values, emphasize the statistical significance of the observed differences in distribution, further corroborating the findings from the mann-whitney u test. overall, the data from table 2 highlights the significant impact of incorporating duolingo as a language learning tool, as evidenced by the substantial improvements in language proficiency observed within the experimental group, particularly in the speaking post-test and the attainment test, compared to the control group. based on the comprehensive analysis of the data, it is evident that the integration of duolingo as a language learning tool, represented by the experimental group, has yielded a notable and positive impact on the language proficiency of the participants. the findings clearly indicate that the experimental group, utilizing duolingo, demonstrated significant improvements in language proficiency in comparison to the control group, which employed conventional, traditional learning methods. the observed statistically significant differences across the pre-test, post-test, and attainment test underscore the superiority of the experimental group following the integration of the duolingo language learning program. particularly noteworthy are the considerably higher mean ranks and lower p-values associated with the experimental group in the post-test and attainment test, highlighting the efficacy of duolingo in fostering improvements in language proficiency across various assessments. the utilization of duolingo has demonstrated a significant positive impact on enhancing the speaking proficiency of language learners, indicating a notable improvement in speaking abilities among those exposed to the duolingo application compared to the control group. the results highlight those specific attributes and strategies within the duolingo application, such as its gamification components and interactive exercises, play a pivotal role in significantly contributing to the refinement of oral fluency in language learners. the study's outcomes underscore the influential role of technological advancements and gamified pedagogical approaches integrated into language education, revealing their substantial impact on fostering learner engagement and motivational impetus. this, in turn, has led to notable improvements in speaking proficiency among participants. in terms of hypotheses, the analysis of the data supports the alternative hypothesis denoted as h1 that exposure to duolingo's interactive exercises and gamification components leads to a notable enhancement in speaking proficiency compared to the control group. additionally, the results indicate strong support for the alternative hypothesis (h1) that the specific attributes and strategies employed by duolingo significantly contribute to the refinement of oral fluency in language learners. furthermore, the findings confirm the alternative hypothesis (h1) that technological advancements and gamified pedagogical approaches integrated into language education significantly influence learner engagement and motivational impetus, leading to notable improvements in speaking proficiency. these findings validate the hypotheses formulated for the study, confirming the significant influence of duolingo in enhancing speaking proficiency, underscoring the importance of its specific attributes and strategies in refining oral fluency, and emphasizing the pivotal role of technological advancements and gamified pedagogical approaches in enhancing learner engagement and motivation within the language education context. in essence, the results strongly support the efficacy and utility of duolingo as a robust and valuable tool for enhancing language proficiency, particularly within the domain of oral communication skills. the empirical evidence provided by the data serves to provide substantial support for the integration of duolingo as an innovative and successful mechanism for advancing language learning outcomes. these findings hold promising potential for language education, signaling the promising possibilities inherent in the integration of technologydriven platforms like duolingo to bolster language acquisition and proficiency within educational contexts. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 71 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 3. metaphorical perceptions of speaking via duolingo. skills categories f % metaphors s p ea k in g improvement 7 21.9 meal (1), bridge (1), play (1), river (1), clay (1), river (2) synchronization 7 21.9 statue (1), labyrinth (1), chess (1), pilot (1), sculptor (1), shadows (1), melody (1) extraction 5 15.6 spaceship (1), meal (1), galaxy (1), sand dunes (1), fireflies (1) modification 5 15.6 plant (1), waves (1), painting (1), puzzle (1), painting (1) practicing 8 25.0 potion (1), garden (1), tapestry (1), origami (1), mosaic (1), symphony (3) 4.2. qualitative results the metaphorical perceptions delineated in table 3 provide an insight through which to examine learners' speaking proficiency via duolingo. these metaphorical representations offer valuable insights into the intricate dynamics of language acquisition processes and learners' subjective experiences within the context of digital language learning platforms. the broad spectrum of metaphors employed underscores the multifaceted nature of speaking proficiency development as perceived by learners. from metaphors denoting transformative processes to those suggesting precision and exploration, participants draw upon a diverse array of imagery to articulate their evolving linguistic competencies. moreover, the categorization of these metaphors into distinct thematic clusters ("improvement," "synchronization," "extraction," "modification," and "practicing") facilitates a systematic exploration of the various facets of speaking proficiency enhancement within the duolingo framework. these metaphorical expressions serve not merely as linguistic embellishments but as intricate reflections of learners' cognitive and affective engagement with the language learning process. metaphorical thinking allows learners to articulate complex cognitive and emotional states, providing researchers with invaluable insights into the underlying mechanisms of language acquisition and learner motivation. in sum, the metaphorical perceptions elucidate the intricate interplay between language learning, cognitive metaphors, and individual learner experiences, contributing to an understanding of the efficacy and implications of gamified language learning platforms such as duolingo within the scholarly discourse on language acquisition and education. thus, based on the metaphorical representations presented in table 3, there is support for hypothesis h1 for rq2, suggesting that metaphorical perceptions of the duolingo experience exhibit a significant correlation with emotional and cognitive dimensions, providing insights into the subjective aspects of language development beyond conventional language instruction methods. 5. discussion the discussion section of the study offers a comprehensive exploration of the results within the wider context of existing literature and research. the findings from this study demonstrate the significant impact of duolingo in enhancing the speaking proficiency of language learners, corroborating the outcomes of previous research in the field. for instance, similar results were found in an investigation of language learning apps, highlighting the efficacy of interactive exercises and gamification techniques in improving language skills (rajendran & yunus, 2021). this study's results are consistent with the broader trend observed in recent research, emphasizing the effectiveness of technology-enhanced language learning tools like duolingo in fostering language proficiency (shadiev & yang, 2020). furthermore, the present study's identification of specific attributes and strategies within the duolingo application that contribute significantly to the refinement of oral fluency aligns with the findings of previous research. the role of interactive and engaging language learning activities in enhancing oral proficiency, which resonates with the current study's emphasis on duolingo's gamification components and interactive exercises was emphasized (lin, yeh, & chen, 2022). additionally, the importance of personalized learning experiences in language education, which corresponds to the individualized approach offered by duolingo's platform was highlighted (shemshack & spector, 2020). the study's confirmation of the influence of technological advancements and gamified pedagogical approaches on learner engagement and motivational impetus is in line with broader research trends. another study ertan and kocadere (2022) has emphasized the motivational benefits of gamified learning environments, supporting the notion that such approaches effectively promote learner engagement. moreover, the study's findings contribute to the ongoing discussion surrounding the integration of technology in language education, reflecting the current shift towards digital and interactive learning methods (karacan & akoglu, 2021). despite the valuable insights provided by this study, it is imperative to acknowledge its limitations. the study's focus on a specific language and the short-term assessment of speaking proficiency may restrict the generalizability of the findings. to address these limitations, future research endeavors should consider conducting longitudinal studies encompassing diverse linguistic contexts and a comprehensive range of language proficiency measures (kazu & kuvvetli, 2023). moreover, investigations into the long-term sustainability of the observed enhancements in language proficiency and the examination of the interplay between individual learner characteristics and the effectiveness of duolingo could offer additional insights for personalized language learning interventions (ghafar et al., 2023). in summary, the study's findings contribute to the growing body of research on technology-driven language education, providing valuable implications for the development of effective language acquisition strategies and pedagogical practices. by corroborating the effectiveness of duolingo in enhancing language proficiency and emphasizing its role in fostering engaging and interactive learning experiences, this study serves as a foundation for further inquiries into the optimal integration of technology in language education, with potential implications for the advancement of language learning outcomes in diverse educational contexts. 6. conclusion the conclusion of the study emphasizes the significant impact of duolingo, a leading mobile application for language learning, in enhancing the speaking proficiency of language learners. the findings highlight the positive asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 72 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group influence of duolingo's gamification components and interactive exercises on the refinement of oral fluency, underscoring the platform's efficacy in facilitating language acquisition. this study's results contribute to the broader discourse on the integration of technology in language education, reaffirming the importance of incorporating interactive and engaging learning tools to foster learner engagement and motivation. by confirming the effectiveness of duolingo in improving language proficiency, the study provides valuable insights for educators, researchers, and policymakers seeking to optimize language learning strategies and pedagogical approaches. the study's identification of specific attributes and strategies within the duolingo application that significantly contribute to the enhancement of speaking proficiency underscores the platform's potential in facilitating personalized and effective language learning experiences. the findings suggest that duolingo's tailored approach to language acquisition, coupled with its technological advancements and gamified pedagogical methods, effectively promotes learner engagement and motivational impetus, leading to notable improvements in speaking proficiency among language learners. these conclusions highlight the critical role of innovative language learning platforms like duolingo in fostering a dynamic and immersive language learning environment conducive to effective communication and linguistic development. the study additionally acknowledges certain limitations, such as its focus on a specific language and the shortterm assessment of speaking proficiency. to address these limitations, future research endeavors should consider conducting longitudinal studies encompassing diverse linguistic contexts and employing a comprehensive range of language proficiency measures. additionally, exploring the long-term sustainability of the observed enhancements in language proficiency and investigating the interplay between individual learner characteristics and the effectiveness of duolingo could provide further insights for tailoring personalized language acquisition interventions and optimizing educational outcomes. in conclusion, the study's strong findings affirm the effectiveness of duolingo as a dynamic and influential tool for acquiring language skills, emphasizing its pivotal contribution to improving speaking proficiency and facilitating immersive language learning experiences. the implications of the study extend to the broader landscape of language education, emphasizing the transformative potential of technology-driven language learning platforms in shaping the trajectory of language acquisition and promoting cross-cultural communication. 7. limitations the study's findings should be interpreted in light of several limitations inherent to its design and methodology. firstly, the study's exclusive focus on a single language limits the generalizability of its conclusions to other linguistic contexts, potentially overlooking nuances specific to diverse language learners. secondly, the short-term nature of the assessment may not fully capture the sustained impact of duolingo on long-term language acquisition and retention. additionally, the study's reliance on speaking proficiency as the primary outcome measure neglects other dimensions of language proficiency, such as listening comprehension and writing skills, thereby offering a partial view of duolingo's overall effectiveness. furthermore, potential bias stemming from self-selection among participants, coupled with the absence of a control group, raises concerns about the validity of attributing observed improvements solely to duolingo usage. addressing these limitations in future research endeavors is essential to enhance the robustness and applicability of findings regarding the efficacy of duolingo and similar language learning platforms across diverse educational settings. references aldemir, t., celik, b., & kaplan, g. 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(2012). vocabulary and grammar knowledge in second language reading comprehension: a structural equation modeling study. the modern language journal, 96(4), 558-575. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2012.01398.x appendix 1. cambridge english: key speaking practice test. part 1 answer some questions about your daily life, past experiences and future plans. for example, your school, hobbies or home town. prepare your answers. (phase 1) what’s your name? how do you spell that? where do you live? /where do you come from? (phase 2) do you study english at school? do you like it? (why? /why not?) what other subjects do you study at school? which subject is the most difficult? why? what’s your favourite subject? why? (phase 3) possible questions: when is your birthday? what do you do on your birthday? what did you do last weekend? what’s your favourite food? where did you go on holiday last year? have you ever been to another country? (if so, where? /if not, which country would you like to visit?) (phase 4) possible questions: tell me about your home. (what’s your favourite room? why?) tell me about your family. (what things do you like doing with your family? why?) tell me your best friend. (what things do you do together?) tell me about your hobbies. (when/where do you do them? who with?) https://doi.org/10.25139/jsk.v1i2.142 https://doi.org/10.34293/education.v9i2.3715 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11756-y https://doi.org/10.47191/ijsshr/v5-i2-02 https://doi.org/10.1080/15332845.2020.1702866 https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21810 https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11020290 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0958344019000065 https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2020.1869809 https://doi.org/10.1080/23247797.2017.1396071 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v16n8p24 https://doi.org/10.3390/su132111945 https://doi.org/10.1177/02655322231186706 https://doi.org/10.37147/eltr.v7i2.176 https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarped/v10-i1/8939 https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2018.1456465 https://doi.org/10.37546/jalttlt43.2-2 https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020524 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-020-00140-9 https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2021.1933540 https://doi.org/10.1504/ijmlo.2022.10049576 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2020.1771343 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2012.01398.x asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 74 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group part 2 prompt card activity, in pairs, ask and answer questions. then change roles. student a read the information about a tennis competition. answer student b’s questions. student b you want to find out about a tennis competition. ask student a some questions about it. use the words on the card to help you. student b read the information about a talk by a famous writer. answer student a’s questions. student a you want to find out about the talk. ask student b some questions about it. use the words on the card to help you. appendix 2. time results of the experimental group. students experience points earned time spent s1 3142 xp 7 hr 55 min s2 3257 xp 7 hr 4 min s3 477 xp 2 hr 15 min s4 852 xp 1 hr 59 min s5 462 xp 1 hr 21 min s6 826 xp 1 hr 12 min s7 16879 xp 35 hr s8 6817 xp 17 hr s9 5877 xp 15 hr s10 5415 xp 12 hr s11 3048 xp 9 hr 1 min s12 4606 xp 8 hr 17 min s13 1439 xp 4 hr 43 min s14 1798 xp 4hr 30 min s15 1657 xp 2 hr 46 min s16 1114 xp 2 hr 43 min s17 906 xp 2 hr 31 min s18 1367 xp 2 hr 0 min s19 820 xp 1 hr 43 min s20 507 xp 1 hr 19 min s21 530 xp 60 min s22 4400 xp 8 hr 0 min s23 588 xp 2 hr 10 min s24 461 xp 58 min s25 1890 xp 1 hr 34 min s26 1130 xp 1 hr 25 min s27 2897 xp 6 hr 23 min s28 3721 xp 5 hr 48 min s29 2156 xp 4hr 55 min s30 1543 xp 3 hr 12 min s31 675 xp 2 hr 6 min s32 937 xp 1 hr 55 min appendix 3. speaking evaluation exam and application. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(1): 62-75 75 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group appendix 4. speaking evaluation chart. a2 grammar and vocabulary pronunciation interactive communication 5 shows a good degree of control of simple grammatical forms. uses a range of appropriate vocabulary when talking about everyday situations. is mostly intelligible, and has some control of phonological features at both utterance and word levels. maintains simple exchanges. requires very little prompting and support. 4 performance shares features of bands 3 and 5. 3 shows sufficient control of simple grammatical forms. uses appropriate vocabulary to talk about everyday situations. is mostly intelligible, despite limited control of phonological features. maintains simple exchanges, despite some difficulty. requires prompting and support. 2 performance shares features of bands 1 and 3. 1 shows only limited control of a few grammatical forms. uses a vocabulary of isolated words and phrases. has very limited control of phonological features and is often unintelligible. has considerable difficulty maintaining simple exchanges. requires additional prompting and support. 0 performance below band 1. appendix 4. continue… band content organization language 5 all content is relevant to the task. target reader is fully informed. text is connected and coherent, using basic linking words and a limited number of cohesive devices. uses everyday vocabulary generally appropriately, while occasionally overusing certain lexis. uses simple grammatical forms with a good degree of control. while errors are noticeable, meaning can still be determined. 4 performance shares features of bands 3 and 5. 3 irrelevances and misinterpretation of task may be present. target reader is minimally informed. text is connected using basic, high-frequency linking words. uses basic vocabulary reasonably appropriately. uses simple grammatical forms with some degree of control. errors may impede meaning at times 2 performance shares features of bands 1 and 3. 1 content is totally irrelevant. target reader is not informed. production unlikely to be connected, though punctuation and simple connectors (i.e. 'and') may on occasion be used. produces basic vocabulary of isolated words and phrases. produces few simple grammatical forms with only limited control. 0 performance below band 1. source: taylor and jones (2006). asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. 104 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 3, 104-115, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i3.7419 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group a comparative study of italian and turkish teachers’ perspectives and practices regarding the instruction of the properties of matter ayçin ünal1 lorenzo gianni santi2 marisa michelini3 mehmet fatih taşar4 ( corresponding author) 1,2,3university of udine, udine, italy. 1email: aycinunal@gmail.com 2email: lorenzo.santi@uniud.it 3email: marisa.michelini@uniud.it 4georgia state university, atlanta, ga, usa. 4email: mftasar@gmail.com abstract the study examines the perspectives and practices of primary and secondary school teachers in italy and turkey regarding teaching properties of matter, using qualitative and quantitative research methods. firstly, a review of the literature was conducted on teaching and learning the properties of matter. it revealed the significance of teaching this subject, effective methods employed, and the gaps in the literature. in the second phase, we investigated the perspectives and practices of italian and turkish teachers, collecting data through a survey from teachers in turkey and italy. both italian and turkish teachers prioritize topics such as phase change during temperature changes, density, and thermal conductivity in teaching the properties of matter. although both italian and turkish teachers share some teaching methods such as observation and relating activities to daily experiences, there are differences: italian teachers emphasize argumentation and reading textbooks, while turkish teachers focus on examples and verbal explanations. findings from the statistical analysis suggest that school level (elementary, middle, or high school) does not have a significant influence on teachers’ perspectives or practices, but there exists a significant difference in perspectives by country (italy vs turkey). keywords: cross-country comparison, properties of matter, teacher perspectives, teacher practices, physics teaching, comparative education. citation | ünal, a., santi, l. g., michelini, m., & taşar, m. f. (2025). a comparative study of italian and turkish teachers’ perspectives and practices regarding the instruction of the properties of matter. asian journal of education and training, 11(3), 104–115. 10.20448/edu.v11i3.7419 history: received: 16 april 2025 revised: 28 july 2025 accepted: 19 august 2025 published: 15 september 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research received funding from the pls project of the physics education research unit with-in the department of mathematical sciences, computer science, and physics at the university of udine. institutional review board statement: the study involved minimal risk and adhered to ethical guidelines for social science fieldwork. formal approval from an institutional review board was not required under the policies of university of udine, italy. informed verbal consent was obtained from all participants, and all data were anonymized to ensure participant confidentiality. transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 105 2. literature review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 106 3. methods ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 109 4. findings ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 111 5. conclusion and discussion ........................................................................................................................................................... 113 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 114 mailto:aycinunal@gmail.com mailto:lorenzo.santi@uniud.it mailto:marisa.michelini@uniud.it mailto:mftasar@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i3.7419 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0348-1095 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2130-587x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4764-9774 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1249-3482 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 105 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature this study addresses a gap in the existing literature by identifying patterns in how teachers instruct properties of matter, utilizing a newly developed questionnaire. it reveals instructional tendencies and differences across various school levels in a previously understudied area by offering a cross-cultural comparison between italy and turkey. 1. introduction matter refers to anything that possesses mass and takes up space, and it is composed of tiny units known as atoms and molecules (averill & eldredge, 2011; brown, lemay, & bursten, 2002). matter is the material substance that makes up the physical universe (flowers, theopold, langley, neth, & robinson, 2019). properties refer to the distinctive features or characteristics that allow us to differentiate samples of matter from each other. these properties can be broadly categorized into two groups: physical and chemical (murphy & killcoyne, 2015; petrucci, herring, madura, & bissonnette, 2017). the physical properties of matter are qualities that can be perceived or gauged without causing any changes to the chemical composition of the substance, and these properties refer to observable characteristics in a sample of matter that do not result in alterations to its composition (brown et al., 2002; petrucci et al., 2017). for example, physical properties include characteristics such as color, texture, density, melting point, boiling point, solubility, and conductivity (chemistry libretexts, 2024). upon analyzing the treatment of matter in next generation standards, it becomes evident that the emphasis lies on its intensive and extensive properties for the purpose of defining matter (ngss, 2013). properties that vary directly with the amount of matter present, such as mass, volume, and heat capacity, are considered extensive properties (yan, 2024). properties that remain constant regardless of the amount of matter present, such as melting/boiling point, refractive index, and thermal conductivity, are considered intensive properties (yan, 2024). (adams & feagin, 2017) they have listed the properties of matter, objects, and materials that ngss focuses on. this list is provided in table 1. table 1. properties of objects, matter, and materials (adams & feagin, 2017). properties examples properties of objects weight an extensive physical property depends on the sample's size. it is useful for describing an object but not helpful in identifying it because it can change size. mass volume length size properties of matter melting point/boiling point an intensive physical property is independent of the sample's size. generally, intensive properties reveal some essential quality of a substance that is true for any sample size. they are useful in identifying unknown substances. color odor hardness density elasticity luster malleability conductivity states of matter properties of materials transparent materials include both intensive and extensive physical properties, but the focus is on how these physical attributes make the material useful. for example, plastic is a good insulator because it does not conduct electricity. waterproof absorbent strong/weak insulator/ conductor flexible/ rigid understanding and characterizing the properties of matter are crucial in various scientific fields, including chemistry, physics, and materials science, as they form the basis for designing and developing new materials and understanding their behavior in different environments (brown et al., 2002; callister jr & rethwisch, 2010; chemistry in context, 2015). among all scientific concepts, the concept of matter plays one of the most vital roles in fostering scientific literacy (harrison & treagust, 2002). this is the basis for the construction of scientific competence, leads to the foundation of the concept of physical quantities, and requires the distinction between system, state, and material properties. a clear understanding of the structure and properties of matter is also essential for making informed decisions in daily life (hadenfeldt, liu, & neumann, 2014), and helping students to align their explanations of matter with scientific terminology enhances their comprehension of the surrounding universe (adams & feagin, 2017). enhancing students' skills in explaining the nature and changes of matter has been a central focus of science education research (piaget & inhelder, 1974), and to help students connect the macroscopic and microscopic properties of matter, it is essential to shift the focus from extensive to intensive properties (adams & feagin, 2017). there is a substantial body of research in the literature addressing the properties of matter in the curriculum. however, the conceptual boundary between the properties of matter and those of materials remains ambiguous, often resulting in varied interpretations of what the properties of matter encompass (averill & eldredge, 2011; callister jr & rethwisch, 2010; der podesta, 2002; woolfson, 2010). a review of educational studies on the topic reveals that most of the research is situated within the realm of chemistry education, frequently concentrating on the structure of matter through the use of simplified models (langbeheim, ben-eliyahu, adadan, akaygun, & ramnarain, 2022; şeşen, kırbaşlar, & avcı, 2019; stamovlasis, tsitsipis, & papageorgiou, 2010; talanquer, 2009, 2018; vlassi & karaliota, 2013). as an example, liu (2013) proposed a framework for high school chemistry instruction aimed at enhancing student comprehension of matter, energy, and scientific models. similarly, pimthong et al. (2012) examined the effectiveness of a conceptual change strategy in improving sixth-grade students’ understanding of matter and its characteristics. the instructional design covered various topics, such as the properties of solids, liquids, and gases, phase transitions, solutions, mixtures, and chemical changes. instructional methods like particle models, role-playing, experiments, and guiding questions were utilized to facilitate conceptual change. the findings indicated that this asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 106 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group approach significantly enhanced students’ conceptual understanding, improved teaching practices, and elevated the overall quality of science instruction. in contrast, studies focusing on how students understand the properties of matter conceptually within the domain of physics education are relatively scarce. some research has aimed to trace students’ learning development concerning the concept of matter and has proposed conceptual frameworks for categorizing and describing materials (krnel, glažar, & watson, 2003; krnel, watson, & glažar, 1998; krnel, watson, & glažar, 2005). andersson (1990) introduced two primary categories to monitor students’ learning progress in relation to matter: i. conceptions reflecting the particulate nature of matter, involving notions about atoms, molecules, and particle systems. ii. everyday conceptions that pertain to physical state changes, conservation of matter, and chemical reactions. building on andersson (1990) framework, hadenfeldt et al. (2014) and liu and lesniak (2005) extended the model into four conceptual dimensions necessary for under-standing matter: a) physical properties and transformations. b) chemical properties and changes. c) the structure and composition of matter. d) the conservation of matter. although the models developed by andersson (1990) and hadenfeldt et al. (2014) offer valuable frameworks for teaching the properties of matter, these studies are now over a decade old. the current research adopts a two-phase methodology to investigate how the properties of matter are addressed within physics education. the initial phase involves a comprehensive literature review to identify existing gaps, followed by the development and implementation of a survey designed to explore teaching practices and pedagogical approaches in this area. 2. literature review in the initial phase of this research, a comprehensive literature review was undertaken to explore studies centered on the teaching and learning of the properties of matter within the context of physics education and to identify existing gaps in the field. the search process involved querying the web of science® and eric databases using the keyword "properties of matter" to locate pertinent academic publications. to ensure relevance and quality, the search was limited to peer-reviewed articles published in english over the past ten years. from web of science®, 1133 results were obtained, and similarly, eric database search yielded 287 entries. a secondary search focusing specifically on physics education among the web of science® results by categories of "physics education," "education and educational research," or "distance education research" produced a refined list. this refinement reduced the pool to 20 articles. similarly, from the eric database, 37 studies met the initial criteria based on the keyword and publication date. after applying predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 15 articles were selected for in-depth review. the process of article selection based on these criteria is visually summarized in figure 1. figure 1. the process of selecting articles. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 107 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the first stage of this study on teaching and learning the properties of matter within physics education includes a detailed analysis of 15 selected articles. these scholarly works were thoroughly examined to improve our understanding of this fundamental subject in physics education. first, we independently identified potential codes in the studies that were examined. thereafter, we assessed the relevance of these codes, compared, and verified disparities in suggested codes during subsequent meetings, and then recognized common features among the codes to establish categories. by organizing the studies according to their focus/purpose and teaching or understanding related questions about the properties of matter, we clearly identified four distinct research themes. these research lines are detailed further below. 2.1. student ideas and conceptual changes the research within this category primarily investigates students’ ideas and their conceptual grasp of the properties of matter. one assertion is that a heuristic approach to model-based science writing is effective and that it enhances students’ conceptual understanding of matter and strengthens their skills in developing model-based scientific arguments (kara & kingir, 2022). this method encourages students to participate in writing tasks that require model construction and articulation of scientific explanations, thereby supporting conceptual transformation. students often struggle with the concept of mass, frequently confusing it with density and weight (stamenkovski & zajkov, 2014). the findings emphasize the necessity for revising curricula and textbooks, as well as improving instructional strategies in physics, to effectively resolve these conceptual misunderstandings. we also know through investigation that even short (3-day) instructional interventions on the properties of matter can provide significant gains (wilcox, reiter, rose, alberts, & murano, 2022). they can underline how important it is to teach some crosscutting concepts together with the nature of science that involves inquiry-based practices. moreover, participatory activities and inquiry learning can significantly facilitate conceptual change. by actively conducting experiments and evaluating their findings, students develop a greater comprehension of properties of matter and can adopt a better scientifically acceptable viewpoint. the study suggests that to create conceptual change, both teaching and assessment practices must be aligned accordingly. with the aim of helping students discover the intensive and extensive properties of matter, an implementation of the 5e learning cycle model was investigated (adams & feagin, 2017). the study revealed challenges students face in understanding these properties. both formal and informal assessment methods were utilized: informal assessments involved group discussions and collaborative tasks, while formal assessment was performed using the pirate adventure app. the results showed that students effectively improved their ability to understand and classify properties of matter. these studies illuminate the difficulties learners encounter when grasping the properties of matter and suggest multiple instructional strategies to address these challenges. however, despite offering valuable perspectives on teaching approaches, there remains a need for further research to evaluate the efficacy of these methods in promoting conceptual change and to investigate more thoroughly the specific obstacles students face. 2.2. methods/ strategies in educational path the study of teaching methods and strategies targeted at improving students' comprehension of the properties of matter is the main focus of the research grouped under this theme line. these studies investigated how different teaching methods, such as those that deal with density and states of matter, impact students' levels of engagement and conceptual understanding. in an investigation (allen & rogers, 2015) the claim, evidence, and reasoning (cer) framework was utilized as a writing instrument to help upper elementary students ex-press their conceptions on the interaction of “the properties of matter” and “light and sound”. it was found that this methodical approach helped students better understand scientific concepts and enhanced their scientific literacy. to promote long-term retention, a lesson plan was created and implemented that highlights the extensive and intensive properties of matter, gradually reinforcing these concepts (adams & feagin, 2017). more research is required to assess this strategy's effects on students' retention and comprehension, even though it seemed to be helpful for conceptual reinforcement. it was found that practical and/or hands-on approaches can improved student engagement and interactivity (kácovský, 2019). but more research is needed to determine how well these experiments support conceptual understanding and memory retention. an investigation on how well modeling-based instructional strategies and cooperative learning worked together to teach subjects such as matter, particle structure, and thermal phenomena yielded gains in the dimensions of science process skills and academic performance (zorlu & sezek, 2020). however, more research is needed to determine whether these findings hold true for a variety of student demographics and learning settings. an heuristic approach for model-based science writing was evaluated within the context of elementary science topics, such as matter and how it interacts with light and sound (kara & kingir, 2022). students who were exposed to this approach performed noticeably better on concept tests compared to the control group students, which indicates enhanced conceptual clarity and model-based reasoning. in a different study, an investigation was conducted on how well seventh-grade students learned the properties of matter with reading-writing-presentation (rwp) and subject jigsaw (jg) approaches versus more conventional approaches (akkus & doymus, 2022). the post-test results showed that the rwp and jg groups outperformed the control group by a significant margin. despite the encouraging nature of these results, it is critical to assess their consistency over long periods of time and in various educational contexts. the question of how to incorporate educational games into the jigsaw method of teaching science to aspiring primary school teachers was also addressed very recently (avcı, 2022) by exploring a wide range of matter-related subjects, including its measurable characteristics and heat transformation. although participants expressed positive attitudes, it remains important to investigate whether these improved communication skills lead to better teaching methods and improved student outcomes. furthermore, model-based inquiry lessons were used with technological support to assist kindergarteners in creating their own models of matter (samarapungavan et al., 2023). the study highlights the need for more research on the long-term retention and transferability of this knowledge, even though students in the intervention groups showed significant learning gains. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 108 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group all these studies highlight a variety of innovative approaches to teaching the properties of matter. while these studies offer promising insights into teaching the subject, it is important to consider the broader applicability of these methods, potential differences in results among different student populations, and the long-term impact on students' scientific understanding and retention. additionally, it is important to consider the adaptability of these approaches to different educational environments and how interdisciplinary connections can be established between the properties of matter. 2.3. literature review an article was identified on teaching and learning properties of matter that provides an overview of the body of knowledge in the form of a literature review. as such, a systematic review of the literature was conducted on how students understand the subject, with a focus on identifying recurrent themes across various studies (hadenfeldt et al., 2014). the results indicate that the focus has shifted from categorizing students' conceptions to examining how their knowledge of matter has evolved over time. the review identified common pathways through which students develop their understanding, based on previous frameworks related to atoms, molecules, conservation, physical states, and chemical reactions. by presenting a model that illustrates how students progress in their understanding of the subject matter, they contributed to the development of a k–12 learning progression. it is also important to note that this study was published in 2014. since then, new research and developments in the constantly evolving field of education have emerged. therefore, it is essential to investigate whether the model and results remain applicable today. 2.4. teacher education and pedagogical content knowledge we identified five articles focusing on pedagogical content knowledge (pck). they suggest the following significant conclusions: even after training, misconceptions prevail among pre-service teachers about density (harrell & subramaniam, 2014), and elementary science teachers find it difficult to realize the importance of the small particle properties of matter (hanuscin, cisterna, & lipsitz, 2018). the finding that pre-service teachers maintained their incorrect beliefs about intensity even after training (harrell & subramaniam, 2014). this raises concerns about how effectively these myths can be debunked by the pedagogical strategies currently in use. these studies' findings suggest that teachers need continual professional development and that their pre-employment training may be lacking. both articles emphasize the significance of regularly evaluating teachers' subject-matter expertise and the need to consider the effectiveness of initial teacher education programs. an instrument was developed for determining elementary science teachers’ content knowledge (mikeska, phelps, & croft, 2017). the properties of matter was one of the three topics of focus. the data indicates that the instrument can successfully detect variations in teachers’ performance and expertise. however, it is important to consider how closely these assessment items match real-world teaching situations. researchers explored the impact of educational games paired with the jigsaw technique on prospective elementary teachers’ communication skills in the context of the properties of matter (avcı, 2022). findings indicated that this combination not only increased interest in science classes but also improved communication skills, suggesting that creative teaching strategies can support both content mastery and pedagogical development. prospective elementary teachers’ perceptions regarding assessment tasks related to teaching the properties of matter were examined (cisterna, bookbinder, mikeska, & lakhani, 2022). the results show that while the teachers recognized the importance of this subject for the elementary level, their knowledge of the topic was not sufficient. examining how elementary prospective teachers view assessment tasks related to teaching properties of matter highlights the importance of bridging the gap between theory and practice in teacher education. the findings suggest that while these prospective educators recognize the importance of the subject, they struggle to connect it to their own pedagogical approaches. this emphasizes the need for more practical, hands-on experiences during teacher preparation programs as well as more mentoring support during early teaching experiences. these articles highlight the challenges teachers and teacher candidates face in understanding and teaching the properties of matter. they also underline the potential benefits of innovative teaching methods and the importance of aligning assessment and teacher training with the realities of classroom teaching. we need to consider these findings more broadly in terms of improving science education regarding teaching the properties of matter and the success of teacher training programs. in addition to previous studies, when we examined the curricula of various countries, we found that the properties of matter are often explained in a fragmented manner (meb, 2018a, 2018b; ministry of education, 2018; ngss, 2013). based on this information, we realized the importance of investigating both the curriculum planned for regular use in schools and the curriculum perceived by teachers. the act of teaching is complex and individual, as it requires not only the application of professional expertise acquired from one's past experiences and perspectives but also the influence of personal attitudes, beliefs, and goals (ho & toh, 2000). although existing teaching methods and their impact on student achievement are well-documented in the literature (akkus & doymus, 2022; kácovský, 2019; kara & kingir, 2022; zorlu & sezek, 2020), this study contributes to this field by comparing the impact of teachers' cultural and educational contexts on their teaching practices. therefore, this study aims to determine whether there are crosscountry and school-level (primary, secondary) differences in teaching the properties of matter by examining the relationship between teachers' perceptions and perspectives on their practices according to the school level, type, and country in which they work. for this purpose, the following research questions regarding the properties of matter have been formulated for this study: rq1: which subtopics and concepts do teachers cover? rq2: how do teachers instruct students on the properties of matter? rq3: when it comes to teaching, are there significant differences in a) the viewpoints of teachers according to school level? b) the practices used by teachers according to school level? c) the viewpoints of teachers by country? d) the practices of teachers by country? e) the viewpoints and practices of teachers? asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 109 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. methods in this research, we utilized a descriptive survey model, which seeks to describe facts and events by gathering the opinions and attitudes of a large group of individuals about a particular phenomenon or event. to comprehend the dynamics of events, communities, institutions, and objects, this research methodology is frequently employed (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007). we created a questionnaire to find out more about the perspectives and practices of teachers toward the properties of matter. we employed various methods to ensure the internal validity of the developed survey. firstly, we carefully designed the survey items to be directly related to the research questions. in this way, we aimed to increase the validity of the survey instrument. we received feedback from three academic experts regarding the appropriateness of the survey content and language. based on the experts' suggestions, we made the necessary corrections to the survey items and ensured that the questions were more understandable and clearer. in particular, we paid attention to points such as the complexity, ambiguity, and avoidance of jargon in the questions. in addition to expert opinions, we re-evaluated the survey items in accordance with the criteria specified in table 2. these criteria allowed us to check the compatibility of each question with the research content, its comprehensibility, and its linguistic appropriateness. during this evaluation process, we eliminated items that did not serve the research purpose or could be misleading, thus aiming to improve the overall quality of the survey. we divided the questionnaire into three parts: the first part collected demographic data, the second part concentrated on teaching the properties of matter, and the third part examined the viewpoints and methods of the teachers. table 2. evaluation criteria of questionnaire items. criterion yes no is this question regarding research content considered suitable? x is it comprehensible? x is it linguistically suitable? x we met the criteria listed in table 2 by using a total of 23 questions in the study. the first three questions collected demographic data. there were two multiple-choice questions in the second section. ratings for the 18 likert-type questions ranged from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree. we tested construct validity during the development of the research questionnaire by conducting an exploratory factor analysis with the spss 24.0 package. prior to conducting the exploratory factor analysis, the sample's suitability was assessed using bartlett's test results and the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) value. table 3 displays the results obtained. table 3. results of the kmo and bartlett's test for the questionnaire. kmo 0.945 bartlett's test chi square 2723.408 df 153 p 0.000 as seen in table 3, the kmo value calculated to determine sample adequacy is .945. additionally, the chi-square value is 2723.408; df: 153, and p: .000, which is significant. these results indicate that the criteria for conducting factor analysis on the sample are sufficiently met. the maximum likelihood method and varimax orthogonal rotation technique were applied to determine the construct validity and the number of factors of the prepared scale. the factor structure of the scale resulting from this process is presented in table 4. table 4. factor structure of the questionnaire. item no. factor1 factor 2 m8 0.738 m9 0.744 m10 0.653 m11 0.635 m12 0.596 m13 0.713 m14 0.594 m15 0.737 m16 0.727 m17 0.658 m18 0.683 m19 0.614 m20 0.773 m21 0.742 m22 0.781 m23 0.828 m24 0.835 m25 0.743 m11 0.635 variance ratio of factors 34.291 31.122 total variance ratio 65.413 teachers' perceptions and practices regarding the teaching of the properties of matter were assessed through likert-type questions in the third section of the survey. "perceptions" refer to teachers' beliefs, thoughts, and attitudes towards the subject, while "practices" pertain to the behaviors they believe they demonstrate in the classroom and the teaching methods they employ. for example, the question "teaching the properties of matter in asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 110 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group elementary and middle school is necessary for a better understanding of physics" allowed teachers to express their viewpoints on the matter. some items on the likert scale were used to gather more detailed information about teachers' classroom practices. for instance, the question "while designing activities for learning the properties of matter, i create activities that facilitate students to work collaboratively" provided insights into teachers' practices. analyzing the relationship between these two constructs helped examine the connection between teachers' beliefs and practices. additionally, multiple-choice questions in the second section collected information on which properties of matter teachers teach, as well as the teaching methods and techniques they utilize. the full survey can be accessed at https://forms.office.com/e/qffeu5faen. we used the spss statistics 24.0 program to encode and enter the collected data. with the score for negative items inverted, we analyzed the data using frequency, percentage, and arithmetic mean approaches. the cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to evaluate the questionnaire's reliability; results for turkish and italian participants were 0.958 and 0.954, respectively. 3.1. participants the participants in this study comprised 195 teachers from two distinct countries, italy and turkey. among these participants, 85 teachers were from italy, and 110 teachers were from turkey, as illustrated in figure 2. figure 2. distribution of participants by country. the assumption that cultural backgrounds and educational systems of italy and turkey may offer significant differences in the ways they teach the properties of matter serves as the primary rationale for selecting these two countries as study participants. despite being on the same continent and having similar cultures, the two countries' educational systems, curricula, and above all teacher preparation programs are very different. while turkey's educational system is distinctive in that it blends aspects of eastern and western culture, italy's standards are on par with those of europe. when looking at the teacher training programs in these two countries, primary school teachers in italy must complete a five-year program in elementary sciences (decreto, 2010), while secondary school teachers must have a second-stage qualification in one of the teaching fields and acquire cultural, pedagogical, linguistic, and technological competencies through a 60 ects program (legge, 2022). all teachers must complete an internship program organized by universities in addition to their second-stage qualifications (decreto, 2011), and continuous professional development (cpd) is mandatory for all teachers in state schools (teachers and education staff, 2024). in turkey, on the other hand, there are education faculties, and within these faculties, there are departments that offer specific field and pedagogical knowledge for each area (physics, chemistry, science, classroom teaching, etc.) (çetin, ünsal, & hekimoğlu, 2021; yök, 2018, 2020). it is thought that these differences may lead to the emergence of different approaches in teaching the properties of matter, and it is considered that these countries would form a suitable comparison ground for research. in this context, we aimed to obtain more widely generalizable conclusions by comparing the perspectives and practices of teachers in both countries regarding teaching the properties of matter. participants were selected using the snowball sampling method. this method aimed to reach expert teachers in the field and facilitate the data collection process (hossan, dato’mansor, & jaharuddin, 2023). initially, some key teachers identified by the researchers were reached and asked to participate in the study. subsequently, the sample was expanded by contacting other teachers recommended by these teachers. the participants in the study consist of primary and secondary school teachers working in different school types in both countries. participants were selected from both science and classroom teachers in both countries. this selection has allowed the findings to provide a more comprehensive overview of the teaching of the properties of matter. additionally, considering the grade level and branch of the schools where the participants worked during the selection process, it was thought that these factors could potentially affect the methods and perspectives adopted by teachers when teaching the properties of matter, and this was taken into account in the analysis. 3.1.1. demographics the gender distribution of the participants revealed that the majority of the teachers were female, constituting 79% of the total sample, while male teachers accounted for 20%. additionally, a small percentage (1%) of participants chose not to specify their gender. the distribution of the participants by gender is given in figure 3. figure 3. distribution of participants by gender. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 111 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3.1.2. school level in terms of educational levels, the participants work in elementary and middle schools. specifically, 37% of the teachers are employed in elementary schools, while the remaining 63% are affiliated with middle schools. the distribution of the participants according to the schools they work in is given in figure 4. figure 4. distribution of participants by school level 3.1.3. educational background the educational backgrounds of the participating teachers were diverse and reflected variations between the two countries. among italian teachers, 42.3% held a high school degree, 4.7% possessed a bachelor's degree, 51.8% had completed a master's degree, and 1.2% had attained a phd degree. in contrast, turkish teachers demonstrated a different distribution, with 71.8% having earned a university degree, 25.5% having completed a master's program, and 2.7% holding a doctorate degree. a visual representation of the distribution of participants based on their highest degree is given in figure 5. figure 5. distribution of participants according to their final degrees. 4. findings rq1. which subtopics and concepts do teachers cover regarding the properties of matter? in response to research question 1 (rq1), which sought to identify the subtopics and concepts that teachers teach concerning the properties of matter, the data collected from educators in italy and turkey unveiled a spectrum of themes commonly addressed in educational settings. the findings illuminate the prevalent subtopics while also revealing areas of divergence between the two countries. the answers given by the teachers participating in this study to the rq1 are given in figure 6. figure 6. subtopics/concepts taught about the properties of matter in italy and turkey. according to italian and turkish teachers’ responses, the most frequently taught subjects are density, thermal conductivity, and change of state of matter. it seems that italian educators are less concerned with the ideas of latent asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 112 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group heat, thermal expansion, and the refractive index of light. however, the topics of viscosity, latent heat, and magnetic susceptibility seem to receive less attention from turkish educators. rq2. how do teachers instruct students on the properties of matter? in addressing rq2, which sought to uncover the methods and techniques employed by teachers while teaching the properties of matter, the analysis of responses from italian and turkish teachers offers insights into the instructional approaches used within these two distinct educational contexts. the answers given by the teachers participating in this study to the rq2 are given in table 5. the findings reveal that both italian and turkish teachers employ several common teaching strategies when teaching the properties of matter. a prominent shared strategy is the reliance on observing and describing the phenomena by the teacher. this approach enables students to engage directly with tangible instances of material properties, fostering a first-hand understanding of the subject matter. moreover, both groups of teachers employ activities closely aligned with everyday experiences, thereby grounding theoretical concepts in relatable contexts, enhancing comprehension and relevance. in the case of italian teachers, the findings underscore a distinctive emphasis on the use of argumentation as a core teaching strategy. by encouraging students to critically analyze and construct coherent explanations for observed phenomena, italian teachers foster an environment of active learning and intellectual exploration. moreover, italian teachers reported that reading the textbook and explaining content played pivotal roles in their instructional approach. this emphasis on textbook engagement and explanatory dialogue contributes to a comprehensive and structured transmission of subject matter knowledge. table 5. italian and turkish teachers’ teaching methods and techniques for the properties of matter. answers it tr teacher’s illustrations of interpretations of the phenomena, for example, the melting of ice: explain what causes it to melt or what occurs inside the ice. 27 86 teacher’s observation and description of the phenomena, for example, the melting of ice: observe and describe. 52 79 oral explanation of concepts and laws 38 72 activities closely related to daily experiences. 47 72 experiments with the poe method (predict, observe, explain) 38 64 read the textbook and explain 41 62 analogies (use of analogies to draw parallels between new ideas and specific/similar situations) 22 60 model comparison: illustration and discussion of models and demonstrations 10 59 translation activities. for example, role-play, modeling, drawing. 27 56 requires students to think, describe, and represent models that explain (that is, interpret) the phenomena under study. 27 55 learning based on laboratory and inquiry-based learning 31 41 argumentation 56 21 creative writing: having students compare and share their written work with their classmates, illustrate and explain their ideas to the group. 10 18 interdisciplinary activities of different kinds in stem 18 18 flipped classroom 11 8 other (please explain) ………………… 2 3 in contrast, it appears that turkish teachers emphasize providing explanations, particularly through the use of illustrative examples. it can be said that turkish teachers try to make the topics more understandable and relatable for students by embedding abstract concepts in concrete scenarios, filling the gap between theoretical constructs and real-life examples. furthermore, turkish teachers prioritize oral communication in their pedagogical repertoire, utilizing verbal explanations as a means of facilitating conceptual understanding and encouraging active participation. the common reliance on observation, real-life examples, and verbal explanations highlights the universal significance of these approaches in promoting effective learning outcomes. the divergent emphasis on argumentation and explanation, as observed in italian and turkish teachers’ instructional practices, respectively, underscores the role of cultural and contextual factors in shaping pedagogical preferences. rq3. we used a combination of statistical tests, including the paired sample t-test for rq3e and the independent ttest for rq3a, rq3b, rq3c, and rq3d, to answer the research questions raised in this study. our research questions are listed below, along with an overview of the results that address each one. rq3a. is there a significant difference in the viewpoints of teachers according to school level when it comes to teaching the properties of matter? the t-test for independent samples was used to analyze the responses in order to determine whether teachers' opinions on teaching properties of matter differed based on the level of school they work in. table 6 presents the results. table 6. t-test results for teachers' opinions on teaching properties of matter by school level. variable n x ̄ std. deviation t p elementary school 72 4.0463 0.56379 0.209 0.835 middle school 123 4.0257 0.71433 table 6 shows that there is no significant difference in teachers' opinions about teaching the properties of matter subject depending on the school they work at (t(195) = 0.209, p = 0.835 > 0.05). rq3b. is there a significant difference in the practices used by teachers according to school level? the t-test for independent samples was used to analyze the responses in order to determine whether the methods used by teachers to teach properties of matter differed based on the level of school at which they were employed. table 7 presents the results. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 113 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 7. teachers' preferred methods for teaching properties of matter by level of schools (ttest results). variable n x ̄ std. deviation t p elementary school 72 4.0856 0.67017 1.088 0.278 middle school 123 3.9729 0.71396 it is clear from looking at table 7 that there is no statistically significant difference in the ways that teachers teach properties of matter depending on the school level they work in (t(195) = 1.088, p = 0.278 >0.05). rq3c. are there significant differences in the viewpoints of teachers by nation regarding the teaching of the properties of matter: the t-test for independent samples was used to analyze the responses in order to determine whether teachers' opinions on teaching properties of matter differed based on the nations in which they operate. table 8 presents the results. table 8. t-test results for teachers' perceptions of teaching properties of matter by nation. variable n x ̄ std. deviation t p turkey 110 4.1235 0.71568 2.252 0.025 italy 85 3.9167 0.56651 table 8 reveals a statistically significant difference in teachers' practices regarding the teaching of properties of matter across different countries (t(195) = 2.252, p = 0.025 < .05). to comprehend the magnitude of the differences in teachers' perspectives on teaching the properties of substances across various countries, both statistical significance and effect size were calculated. cohen's d statistic indicates a significance level of d = 0.32, suggesting a moderate significant difference. rq3d. is there a significant difference in teachers’ practices by country while teaching the properties of matter? the study aimed to determine whether teachers' practices regarding the teaching of properties of matter differ based on their country of employment. the responses were analyzed using the t-test for independent samples. the results are shown in table 9. table 9. results of t-test for teachers' methodologies regarding the instruction of properties of matter, categorized by country. variable n x ̄ std. deviation t p turkey 110 4.0576 0.69929 0.979 0.329 italy 85 3.9588 0.69765 analysis of table 9 reveals that there is no statistically significant difference in teachers' practices in teaching properties of matter based on their country (t(195) = 0.979, p = 0.329 > 0.05). rq3e. when it comes to teaching, are there significant differences in teachers' view-points and practices? table 10 presents the outcomes of the paired samples t-test, undertaken to assess the disparity between the average scores of the teachers involved in the study concerning their views on the qualities of matter and their instructional practices. table 10. a comparison of teachers' viewpoints and methodologies on the instruction of the properties of matter. n x ̄ std. deviation t p perspectives 195 4.0333 0.66130 0.578 0.564 practices 195 4.0145 0.69850 the t-test revealed no significant difference between teachers' perspectives and practices regarding the teaching of properties of matter (t(195) = 0.578, p = 0.564 > .05). 5. conclusion and discussion in this study, our aim was to investigate teachers' perspectives and practices for teaching the properties of matter. based on their observations, the subtopics and ideas that italian and turkish teachers prioritize vary when teaching the characteristics of matter. in both countries, the most frequently included concepts are temperature variation during phase change, density, and thermal conductivity. these concepts complement the objectives of the curricula (meb, 2018a; ministry of education, 2018). while some italian teachers cover topics including thermal expansion, latent heat, and the refractive index of light, some turkish teachers have asserted that they cover magnetic susceptibility and latent heat in their courses. when we examined the respective countries' primary and lower secondary school curricula (meb, 2018a, 2018b; ministry of education, 2018) it was determined that these subjects were not included in the curricula. perhaps, in a different future study, the question of when and how teachers incorporate these programs into their teaching can be investigated. there are certain parallels between italian and turkish teachers' approaches to instruction. teachers in both countries utilized activities that were appropriate to students’ daily experiences and depended on observation and describing phenomena. teachers in italy also stressed the importance of reading textbooks, arguing, and providing explanations. however, turkish teachers heavily emphasized orally explaining the concepts and laws as well as examples to explicate the events. overall, these findings demonstrate that while the subtopics and instructional approaches varied in italy and turkey, some strategies were employed in both countries to help students grasp the concepts related to the properties of matter. conversely, comparative research, particularly examinations like timss video studies, have demonstrated that conventional activities are the predominant approach in mathematics and science classrooms across the majority of nations (hiebert, 2003; klieme & vieluf, 2009) the finding that aligns with the outcomes of this study. in addition to all of these factors, when examining the studies on teaching the subject within the literature, it becomes evident that various methods are available for instructing students on the properties of matter, and these methods have been shown to have a significantly positive impact on learning outcomes (adams & feagin, 2017; akkus & doymus, 2022; avcı, 2022; kácovský, 2019; kara & kingir, 2022; samarapungavan et al., 2023; wilcox et al., 2022). however, the results obtained from this research reveal that teachers predominantly rely on the argumentation method in the literature when teaching the subject of the properties of matter asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(3): 104-115 114 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group (samarapungavan et al., 2023; wilcox et al., 2022) and are hesitant to utilize other proven methods, which have demonstrated their effectiveness in enhancing student success according to existing literature. this situation can be interpreted as teachers potentially being limited by their current knowledge and skills and feeling the need to learn more effective teaching methods. effective teacher training is a critical tool for enhancing teachers' knowledge and skills (asfahani, el-farra, & iqbal, 2023). in future studies, it may be beneficial to organize training programs for teachers aimed at raising awareness about the teaching methods and techniques outlined in the literature, whose efficacy has been demonstrated. in this study, likert-type questions were analyzed using independent t-tests and paired sample t-tests. the analysis addressed several research questions aimed at investigating potential differences in teachers' perspectives and practices based on the types of schools and countries in which they work. the results indicate that school level does not significantly influence teachers' perspectives or practices, while the country of employment does impact perspectives but not practices. teacher training programs, as well as factors such as the country's education policies, curriculum, and the type of school they work at, also shape teachers' decisions and practices (dieudé & prøitz, 2024; wermke, olason rick, & salokangas, 2019). these results emphasize the need for more study and analysis of the elements influencing teachers' viewpoints and approaches to teaching the properties of matter. klieme and vieluf (2009) suggests that countries sharing similar cultural backgrounds and teaching methods are likely to exhibit similar characteristics or patterns in a given context. in the context of education, it implies that these countries may have similar approaches to teaching and learning, resulting in comparable educational outcomes or practices. this aligns with the findings derived from this study. it is crucial to take into account educators' understanding and convictions concerning science and the teaching of science (eberle, 2008). this is because teachers actively adapt the planned curriculum to align it better with their unique teaching approaches and belief systems (cronin‐jones, 1991; schmidt et al., 1996). furthermore, discrepancies have been documented in academic literature when it comes to teachers' convictions, their perspectives on teaching, and their actual teaching methods (lim & chai, 2008; mellado, 1998). alongside all of these, many factors can influence teachers' instructional approaches. these factors may include the socioeconomic status of the school, class size, and the diversity of students, among others. as a result, further research is necessary to explore the connection between teachers' perspectives and practices in teaching the properties of matter. this study is limited to a particular setting and cannot be extended to other areas or educational systems beyond italy and turkey; therefore, it is not applicable elsewhere. future studies should investigate other elements or characteristics that might affect teachers' opinions and approaches to teaching the properties of matter in different countries. these results shed light on the viewpoints and methods of elementary and secondary school teachers regarding the instruction of the properties of matter. future studies might reveal the viewpoints and strategies teachers at the high school 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(2020). an investigation of the effect of students' academic achievement and science process skills application together with cooperative learning model and the modeling-based teaching method in teaching science courses. international journal of progressive education, 16(4), 135-157. asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-021-10191-0 https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10080 https://doi.org/10.1080/0950069980200302 https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690412331314441 https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/n2ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:2022-06-29;79 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00774.x https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20056 http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/201812312311937-fen%20b%c4%b0l%c4%b0mler%c4%b0%20%c3%96%c4%9eret%c4%b0m%20programi2018.pdf http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/201812312311937-fen%20b%c4%b0l%c4%b0mler%c4%b0%20%c3%96%c4%9eret%c4%b0m%20programi2018.pdf http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/201812103112910-orta%c3%b6%c4%9fretim_fizik_son.pdf http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/201812103112910-orta%c3%b6%c4%9fretim_fizik_son.pdf https://doi.org/10.1002/ets2.12168 https://www.miur.gov.it/documents/20182/0/indicazioni+nazionali+e+nuovi+scenari.pdf https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-011-9280-5 https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21802 https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690802578025 https://eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-education-systems/italy/teachers-and-education-staff https://eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-education-systems/italy/teachers-and-education-staff https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.09.226 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2018.1482960 https://eng.libretexts.org/bookshelves/mechanical_engineering/introduction_to_engineering_thermodynam-ics_(yan)/01%3a_basic_concepts_and_definitions/1.04%3a_extensive_and_intensive_properties https://eng.libretexts.org/bookshelves/mechanical_engineering/introduction_to_engineering_thermodynam-ics_(yan)/01%3a_basic_concepts_and_definitions/1.04%3a_extensive_and_intensive_properties https://www.yok.gov.tr/ https://www.yok.gov.tr/ 146 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 10, no. 3, 146-153, 2024 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v10i3.5885 © 2024 by the author; licensee asian online journal publishing group using machine learning techniques to study of stress, depression, and academic performance of grade 12th students wudhijaya philuek faculty of education, nakhon sawan rajabhat university, nakhon sawan, 60000 thailand. email: wudhijaya@nsru.ac.th abstract the objectives of this research were 1) to study the problems of stress and depression among grade 12 students; 2) to investigate the machine learning technique in analyzing and predicting stress, depression, and academic performance among grade 12 students; and 3) to evaluate the stress and depression prediction platform. students from schools in the secondary educational service areas of nakhon sawan, uthai thani, chainat, and pichit in thailand comprised the sampling group, which the researchers recruited through simple random sampling. a total of 510 students volunteered to participate in the questionnaire, while 117 students served as the group for the evaluation platform. the researcher employed a total of three assessments: 1) the stress assessment scale (spst-20), 2) the depression assessment form 9 questions (9q), and 3) the death assessment form (8q) to gather data and develop the platform. the data analytics process incorporates all assessment results, comparing five techniques to yield the most accurate results. the article presents the research results, which will guide the development of a system and tools for future student monitoring in schools. keywords: stress, depression, data analytics, machine learning techniques, platform, grade 12th students, thailand. citation | philuek, w. (2024). using machine learning techniques to study of stress, depression, and academic performance of grade 12th students. asian journal of education and training, 10(3), 146–153. 10.20448/edu.v10i3.5885 history: received: 12 december 2023 revised: 26 june 2024 accepted: 17 july 2024 published: 15 august 2024 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this research is supported by nakhon sawan rajabhat university (grant number: edu66-com03). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the nakhon ratchasima rajabhat university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 30 january 2023 (ref. no. he-014-2566). transparency: the author confirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. contents 1. introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................... 147 2. methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................... 147 3. results .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 150 4. discussions ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 152 references ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 153 mailto:wudhijaya@nsru.ac.th https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v10i3.5885 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1931-6633 asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 146-153 147 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature students in grade 12 are required to take university entrance exams, and teachers must take care of their students if they are mentally ill or stressed. this paper outlines the system for screening and supervising students. teachers can use the data to analyze and organize activities, whether teaching or recreation, to alleviate students' symptoms. 1. introduction adolescence is the age that marks the juncture of childhood development and adulthood, requiring adaptation in many aspects at the same time. this is an age where numerous challenges will arise. successful adaptation will help adolescents develop themselves. at the same time, stress affects adolescent development, causing children to be less focused on school, have aggressive behavior, lack enthusiasm, be socially isolated, and have suicidal thoughts (magwa, 2013). the most common psychological and psychosocial problems in adolescents are stress, anxiety, depression, and suicide (horwitz, hill, & king, 2011). mental health problems affect adolescents in many ways. adolescents are affected physically, intellectually, mentally, and socially, which can have a significant impact on their lives today and in the future. in the worst case scenario, they may resort to self-harm as a solution (department of mental health, 2021). adolescents not only face stress, but depression also poses a significant problem, with 18 percent reporting depression as a mood disorder that allows individuals to express their thoughts. motivation, emotion, and behavior are common mental health problems that can occur in people of all ages (beck, 2011). adolescent depression, particularly during adolescence, can easily arise due to the onset of personal thoughts, the desire for independence, the emotional state, the ability to be independent, mood changes, the inability to regulate mood effectively, and the occurrence of oppressive and intense emotional expression (santrock, 2014). according to statistics from the world health organization, more than 350 million people, or more than 4 percent of the world's population, suffer from depression. past research studies have found that 45–69.30% of thai adolescents studying in secondary school suffer from depression (vatanasin, thapinta, thompson, & thungjaroenkul, 2012). there is also a study on the prevalence of depression among college students who are in late adolescence, which is as high as 53.50% (pandee, 2015). the study on the effects of depression on adolescents revealed that adolescents with depressive disorder were at risk of developing personality disorders, drug use, social adjustment problems, and a lack of academic achievement. after the first symptom, adolescents with depressive disorder had a 25–40% higher chance of recurrence than the general population (tapinta, 2013). researchers also found that patients with severe and chronic depression had a higher risk of death. repeated deaths were 15 times higher than those of people who did not suffer from depression (hongsrisuwan, 2016). in the data-rich era, more and more consumers are producing information, whether it is electronic transactions or searching for online shopping information. through the use of social media, these behaviors generate new information, thereby increasing the volume of information and establishing a decisionsupport system. as business systems continue to operate, the data will continue to grow to an even greater volume, which further reduces the efficiency of data access and processing, thus giving rise to a concept known as big data and one of those techniques that can automatically find patterns in huge amounts of data is a technique called data mining (philuek, pongsuk, & panawong, 2022; pongsuk, 2017). the study compared the performance of various classification algorithms, such as support vector machine, k-nearest neighbors, logistic regression, decision tree, and naive bayes, in predicting depression and anxiety. we used evaluation metrics like accuracy, precision, specificity, and f1 score to assess the models. after implementing all the algorithms, (malik & khan, 2023) found that k-nearest neighbour outperformed logistic regression in predicting anxiety, stress, and depression levels in college students. the above highlights the significance of monitoring and surveillance of adolescents in light of the covid-19 epidemic. this forces the students to adapt their teaching style to an online format, leading to feelings of stress and anxiety. in addition to the stress of the current situation, students will have to adjust to the new teaching style. as a result, students who are unable to adjust themselves experience stress and anxiety, leading to depression. therefore, the researcher would like to study the problem by using techniques to analyze and predict the level of stress, depression, and academic performance of high school students. this will lead to the development of systems and tools to assist, monitor, and continue to care for these students. 1.1. research objectives 1. to study the problems of stress and depression among students in grade 12th students 2. to study techniques for analyzing and predicting stress, depression, and academic performance in grade 12th students. 3. to develop a platform to predict stress and depression among students in grade 12th students. 2. methodology the research on using machine learning in stress, depression, and academic performance analytics for grade 12th students has the following steps: 2.1. procedures for conducting research • study the stress, depression questionnaire. • study of geographic information systems and programs used. • study the school area in the target group area. • the results of the stress assessment responses were analyzed and compared with each technique. • apply each analysis technique for analysis. 2.2. scope of research the sample consisted of 510 students in the secondary education service area of nakhon sawan, uthai thani, chainat, and phichit schools. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 146-153 148 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 1. schools that answered the questionnaire, a total of 5 schools. school response count number of students who answered the questionnaire 1. kuru prachasan school 119 2. taphan hin school 240 3. nongchang wittaya school 52 4. uthai wittayakom school 22 5. nawamintrachuthit school 77 total 510 table 1 presents the number of students who answered the questionnaire in each school. the first school was kuru prachasan school, located in chainat province, with 119 students. the second school, taphan hin school, represented phichit province with 240 students. the third and fourth schools were nongchang wittaya school and uthai wittayakom school, which represented uhai thani province with 74 students; the last school was nawamintrachuthit school in nakhon sawan province with 77 students; a total of 510 students answered the questionnaire. 2.2.1. content scope this form included three distinct types of assessments. 1) the stress assessment scale (spst-20), which is a stress symptom assessment questionnaire consisting of 20 questions, is an initial screening test for depression. 2) the 9-question depression assessment scale (9q), a depression symptom assessment scale consisting of 9 questions; and 3) the 8-question suicide assessment scale (8q), a severity assessment scale of suicide consisting of 8 questions. 2.3. research tools 2.3.1. working data the stress and depression assessment form was prepared online by using the google forms assessment form. • data analysis program. • working equipment. • computer. the techniques used in data analysis are as follows: • support vector machine (svm) technique. • k-nearest neighbors (k-nn) technique. • logistic regression (lr)technique. • decision tree (dt) technique. • naïve bayes (nb) technique. • microsoft excel 2019. • jupyter writing program. the results of the stress and depression assessment of 5 schools under the secondary educational service area office of nakhon sawan, uthai thani, chainat, and phichit. 2.4. method of collecting data step 1: choose a questionnaire that matches the research objectives. step 2: prepare a memo letter requesting permission to use the sample group and send it to all five schools. step 3: receive assessment responses from all contacted schools. step 4: choose the program for analysis. 2.5. data analysis the researcher operates in accordance with the standards of the data mining development process. the crossindustry standard process for data mining (crisp-dm) offers a research process that follows specific guidelines. the tasks assigned to each step are as follows: 2.5.1. understanding the problem (business understanding) 2.5.1.1. data understanding the researcher examined the existing data and evaluated its suitability for analysis. there are methods, as follows: at this stage, to collect the above data, the researcher created an online form for assessing stress and depression using google forms. the questions included the student's email or line id, as well as their gender. the school has a student grade point average (gpa), and this form consists of three types of assessments: 1) the stress assessment scale (spst-20), which is a stress symptom assessment questionnaire consisting of 20 questions, is an initial screening test for depression. 2) the 9-question depression assessment scale (9q), a depression symptom assessment scale consisting of 9 questions; and 3) the 8-question suicide assessment scale (8q), a severity assessment scale of suicide consisting of 8 questions. describe data: 1) current gpa; 2) stress assessment scale (spst-20), a 20-question stress symptom assessment questionnaire that serves as an initial screening test for depression. 3) the 9-question depression assessment scale (9q), a depression symptom assessment scale consisting of 9 questions; and 4) the 8-question suicide assessment scale (8q), a severity assessment scale of suicide consisting of 8 questions. • data preparation divides the information into three sub-steps. • data selection: choose pertinent data for further analysis. it is taken from multiple columns. • data cleaning: this stage was the process of cleaning the data in order to format it in an appropriate format and eliminate missing data. the author used ms excel to check if there were any missing data in each column asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 146-153 149 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group and roll, as shown in figure 1. figure 1. transform data to excel for analysis. data transformation is the process of transforming data into a format that is ready for use in analysis by specifying the quality variables, as shown in the following table 2. table 2. determination of the quality level of variables. quality level of variables description ดีมาก (very good) very good ดี (good) good ปานกลาง (moderate) moderate พอใช ้(fair) fair ควรปรบัปรุง (adjust) adjust table 2 illustrates the process of determining the quality level of variables. the classification process employed five classes of quality-level variables. because this study was conducted in thailand, the researcher used thai in terms of ดีมาก (very good), ดี (good), and ปานกลาง (moderate). พอใช้ (fair) and ควรปรับปรุง (adjust) as a class in testing the precision, recall, f1-score, and support in each machine learning technique. 2.6. modeling phase this phase involved the selection of suitable models to improve the variables for the best results. at this stage, the researcher selected the following data mining techniques and algorithms: • support vector machine technique (svm). • k-nearest neighbors’ technique (k-nn). • logistic regression technique (lr). • decision tree technique (dt). • naïve bayes technique (nb). 2.7. evaluation phase by evaluating the model as a correlation rule, which takes into account considerations of support, validity, accuracy, recall, and f1-score values, we can determine the appropriateness of the model's application and how accurate the model predicts. 2.8. deployment phase 2.8.1. development of the platform phase we have developed a digital platform that analyzes students based on their learning style. 1) students' current gpa; 2) the stress assessment scale (spst-20), a 20-question stress symptom assessment questionnaire, serves as an initial screening test for depression. 3) the 9-question depression assessment scale (9q), a depression symptom assessment scale with 9 questions, and 4) the 8-question suicide assessment scale (8q), a severity assessment scale of suicide with 8 questions, which divides the creation process into two sections. it uses data mining to develop a model based on the crisp-dm data analysis process, as well as the development of information systems through the systems development life cycle (sdlc) (phakdiwatthanakul & panichkul, 2008). asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 146-153 150 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 3. results 3.1. the results of students’ stress and depression and machine learning techniques in analytic. 3.1.1 the results of stress and depression of grade 12th students table 3. results of a study of stress and depression problems among students of grade 12th students. measures of dispersion sex g12 gpa n male female n male female count 510 137 373 510 510 137 373 mean 1.72 1.62 1.84 0.84 3.92 3.82 4.02 std. 0.44 0.39 0.38 0.36 0.98 1.05 0.94 min. 1 1 2 0 1 1 1 25% 1 1 2 1 3 2 3 50% 2 1 2 1 4 3 4 75% 2 1 2 1 5 4 5 max. 2 1 2 1 5 5 5 table 3 presents the stress and depression results among grade 12 students, which revealed that out of a total of 510 students, 137 were male and 373 were female. the mean incidence of stress and depression was 1.72. the average male tendency to stress and depression was 1.62, while the female mean was 1.84. the male mean is 0.22 lower than the female mean. the mean total gpa was 3.92, divided into a mean male gpa of 3.82 and a mean female gpa of 4.02. the mean gpa of males was 0.20 lower than that of females. they were less likely to experience stress and depression than females and had lower grades than females, but females who were more prone to stress and depression had a higher gpa and were grade 12 students. they had an average of 1.58 times more stress than depression. the results of using 5 machine learning techniques for analyzing the relationship between stress, depression, and academic performance of grade 12th students in each technique are shown in table 4. table 4. test results of knn, lr, svc and nb technique. model class fair good moderate very good accuracy macro avg. k-nearest neighbors (knn) precision 0.00 0.36 0.26 0.58 0.39 0.30 recall 0.00 0.55 0.25 0.44 0.31 f1-score 0.00 0.44 0.26 0.60 0.30 support 12.00 38.00 20.00 32.00 102.00 102.00 logistic regression (lr) precision 0.62 0.62 0.25 0.90 0.65 0.60 recall 0.42 0.76 0.20 0.88 0.56 f1-score 0.50 0.68 0.22 0.89 0.57 support 12.00 38.00 20.00 32.00 102.00 102.00 support vector classification (svc) precision 0.00 0.82 0.52 0.89 0.76 0.56 recall 0.00 0.87 0.70 0.97 0.63 f1-score 0.00 0.85 0.60 0.93 0.59 support 12.00 38.00 20.00 32.00 102.00 102.00 naïve bayes (nb) precision 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 recall 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 f1-score 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 support 12.00 38.00 20.00 32.00 102.00 102.00 decision tree (dt) precision 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 recall 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 f1-score 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 support 12.00 38.00 20.00 32.00 102.00 102.00 table 4 displays the test results for the support vector machine (svm), k-nearest neighbors (k-nn), logistic regression (lr), naive bayes technique (nb), and decision tree (dt), providing a summary as follows: testing for the k-nearest neighbors (knn) technique showed accuracy at 0.39, logistic regression (lr) showed accuracy at 0.65, support vector machine (svm) showed accuracy at 0.76, naïve bayes (nb) showed accuracy at 1.00, and decision tree (dt) showed accuracy at 1.00. we can conclude that decision tree (dt) and naive bayes (nb) are the most accurate techniques in data analysis. 3.2. platform evaluation the results of the assessment of the platform by experts are shown in table 5. table 5. the results of the assessment of the efficiency of information systems from 5 experts. assessment item mean s.d. interpretation 1. function requirement 5.00 0.000 very good 2. function 4.80 0.447 very good 3. usability 4.60 0.547 very good 4. performance 4.80 0.447 very good 5. security 4.40 0.547 very good table 5 displays the results of a five-expert assessment of the efficiency of information systems, which received very good scores in all categories: (1) function requirement, 2) function, 3) usability, 4) performance, and 5) security. this means that the digital platform has good quality and is appropriate to use. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 146-153 151 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group figure 2. dashboard of platform. figure 2 shows the dashboard of the platform. the platform presents the number of students who used this platform in terms of analytics or to predict their stress and depression. the dashboard consisted of the evaluation form function, the learner analytics function, the report function, the setting function, and the logout function. students who have never used this platform before must sign up, and they will be granted permission. figure 3. dashboard of evaluation form. figure 3 shows the functions of the evaluation forms, particularly the stress evaluation form and the depression evaluation form. after students log in to the platform, they will use the evaluation form function to access these two forms, and they just click on any form they would like to evaluate themselves. figure 4. example of stress evaluation form. figure 4 illustrates the details, including a question that students can answer by selecting from 1 (not related) to 5 (mostly related to me). the stress evaluation form is used as an example in this figure. once students have completed all questions, they can view their results in the learner analytics function and utilize the report function to print their results in a pdf file. volunteers obtained the results of a survey of 117 students about their satisfaction with using digital platforms. asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 146-153 152 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group table 6. students’ satisfaction in using digital platform (n = 117). assessment item mean s.d. interpretation 1. information criteria 1.1 the speed of displaying data is categorized to make it easy to access 4.56 0.61 highest 1.2 the databases are kept up-to-date 4.52 0.54 highest 1.3 the database can be used to benefit you and the organization effectively 4.36 0.71 high 1.4 information in the system is accurate and complete, useful for operations and decision-making 4.48 0.60 high 1.5 the information is organized into categories for easy searching 4.17 0.86 high 1.6 formats and techniques for presenting information 4.41 0.64 high 1.7 there is a security rating or permission to access information 4.52 0.56 highest 1.8 attractiveness of information systems 4.41 0.64 high total 4.43 0.48 high 2. performance criteria 2.1 can easily find or access the required information 4.44 0.69 high 2.2 there are functions or tools to use appropriately 4.40 0.64 high 2.3 system efficiency/speed of response 4.35 0.84 high 2.4 the system is stable, can be accessed at any time 4.42 0.74 high 2.5 the display format on the screen is suitable and beautiful 4.30 0.67 high 2.6 there is information that is useful to users 4.54 0.62 highest 2.7 the system is easy to use and not complicated 4.53 0.53 highest total 4.43 0.54 high table 6 shows the level of satisfaction of 117 students who use digital platforms, with an average level of high satisfaction with information criteria (m = 4.43, s.d. = 0.48) and high satisfaction with performance criteria (m = 4.43, s.d. = 0.54). three items make up the information criteria: categorizing the speed of data display for ease of access, maintaining up-to-date databases, and providing a security rating or permission to access information, all of which students find most satisfying. in terms of performance criteria, there are two items: there is information that is useful to users, and the system is easy to use and not complicated, which means students have the highest satisfaction level. 4. discussions the discussion of the results of this research consisted of two topics: 1) to study the problems of stress and depression among students in grade 12th students, 2) to study techniques for analyzing and predicting stress levels, depression, and learning performance, and 3) to evaluate stress and depression prediction platforms among grade 12th students. the learning of grade 12th students is as follows: 1. the results of a study on stress and depression problems among grade 12 students found that females were more likely to experience stress and depression, with males having an average lower than females at 0.22. this included the average student's gpa. females with a good gpa were more likely to experience stress and depression than students with a lower gpa. the covid-19 epidemic has forced everyone to adapt their lifestyles and livelihoods, including in education. the traditional on-site teaching style has been replaced by online learning, necessitating students to adjust to this new environment. living in a house means they will face stress because they may not be aware of the covid-19 epidemic situation. in addition to students having to deal with the epidemic situation, grade 6 students also need to prepare for university, resulting in severe stress among grade 6 students, which may make them more prone to depression. numerous scholars have suggested that adolescents' selfexpectations and their family's perceptions of their lack of preparedness for education may be the root cause of stress. prepare yourself, including your grades (inprom & nimnuan, 2006). researchers have stated that when considering the factors of family expectations on stress levels, the results of this study also found that family expectations for university entrance exams were more important factors positively correlated with stress (p<.05, r = 148). in addition to the above two factors, the throughput factor was associated with increased stress (p<.01, r=-.256). the lower the family's income, the higher the stress level of adolescents. researchers conducted a study on the depression levels of grade 12 students in samut songkhram province, who were preparing for their university entrance examination. it was found that 21.4% of adolescents had depression to the degree of clinical significance that they should be referred for diagnosis (uratmanee & lertsamran, 2017). the research also revealed that zhou et al. (2023) developed a machine learning model to detect and distinguish depression, anxiety, and apathy in older adults with mild cognitive impairment based on speech and facial expressions. the study by singh, gupta, singh, and agrawal (2022) which explores the use of machine learning models to predict the levels of depression, anxiety, and stress based on the dass-42 psychometric test results and demographic information, aligns with the model's strong classification performance, achieving a weighted-average f1 score of 96.6%. the researchers looked at a number of techniques and ensemble learning methods, such as random forest, decision tree, support vector machine, adaboost, catboost, and extreme gradient boosting (xgboost). the support vector machine did better than the others, with an f1measure of 94% for depression, 95% for anxiety, and 91% for stress prediction. 2. the study analyzed and predicted stress levels, depression, and academic performance of grade 12th students by comparing the efficiency and accuracy of five forecasting models. the logistic regression model had an accuracy of 102%, while the support vector machine technique had an accuracy of 102%. the accuracy was 102%, the decision tree technique was 102%, and the naïve bayes technique was 83%. with an accuracy of 102%, a decision tree surpasses the accuracy of the four techniques mentioned above. research by thamsombat (2012) suggests that we can use this technique to predict stress and depression. the goal of this research is to create a decision support system that utilizes the decision tree algorithm to guide users in selecting a mobile internet package based on their individual behaviors. models generated from the decision tree algorithm were used to determine the most accurate model before implementing it in an open source web framework for building modern web apps and services (asp.net) by using c# in development and using a standard language for storing, manipulating, and retrieving asian journal of education and training, 2024, 10(3): 146-153 153 © 2024 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group data in databases (sql server 2008 databases) developed in the form of web-based applications, and weka 3.6.2 was used to validate the model generated by the system. the result was that the model generated by the decision tree id3 algorithm had a higher accuracy than c4.5 (j48) with a correctly classified instances value of 92.3% when tested with 1000 sets of training data pools and when the id3 decision tree algorithm was tested on 500 sets of testing data yielded the test results with validity values was 92.2%, and when considering the confusion matrix, it was found that the prediction results from the model had the actual number of data and the number of data from the model's prediction had a total mean of 83.06%, which was a rather high mean, and also related to the paper of aggarwal and goyal (2022) which presents a system for predicting if a player suffers from psychological illnesses such as anxiety and depression by combining game and player information with a self-esteem measure. four different machine learning classifiers were tested, and the decision tree classifier showed the best accuracy for all predicted parameters. for the generalized anxiety disorder questionnaire (gad), the decision tree obtained an accuracy of 100%, and for the short 5-item instrument designed to measure global cognitive judgments of satisfaction (swls questionnaire), it obtained an accuracy of 84.71%. however, some machine learning algorithms, specifically neural network algorithms, show promising results in predicting depressive episodes. in this study trivedi et al. (2022) and sandhu, huma jabeen, ali mudassar, and raza (2022) utilized neural network algorithms to achieve a classification accuracy of 97.2% for depression prediction, offering a technical solution to this mental challenge. the experimental results demonstrate an accuracy of up to 76.5% when using k-nn without pca (principal component analysis), and this accuracy rises to 76.6% when using pca (principal component analysis). ahmed et al. 2022) found that machine learning models have the potential to complement traditional screening methods and provide insights into the mental health of the public. 3) the use of digital platforms: a satisfaction survey conducted among students using these platforms revealed high levels of satisfaction, confirming the platform's speed in displaying results. information is categorized to facilitate easy access. the database is up-to-date. schools can effectively use the database. the information in the system is accurate and complete, which is beneficial for operations and decision-making. the system organizes data into categories to facilitate easy searching of formats and methods for data presentation. the system arranges security levels and sets permissions. the system is stable and accessible at all times. the screen displays information in a suitable and beautiful format that is useful to the user. the system is convenient and not complicated to use. references aggarwal, r., & goyal, a. 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(2022). machine learning based evaluations of stress, depression, and anxiety. paper presented at the international conference advancement in data science, e-learning and information systems (icadeis), bandung, indonesia. uratmanee, s., & lertsamran, s. (2017). stress, anxiety and depression of adolescent students preparing for the university entrance examination. journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing, 31(2), 79-80. vatanasin, d., thapinta, d., thompson, e. a., & thungjaroenkul, p. (2012). testing a model of depression among t hai adolescents. journal of child and adolescent psychiatric nursing, 25(4), 195-206. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcap.12012 zhou, y., han, w., yao, x., xue, j., li, z., & li, y. (2023). developing a machine learning model for detecting depression, anxiety, and apathy in older adults with mild cognitive impairment using speech and facial expressions: a cross-sectional observational study. international journal of nursing studies, 146, 104562. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2023.104562 asian online journal publishing group is not responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. any queries should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpbup.2022.100066 https://www.dmh.go.th/news-dmh/view.asp?id=30744 https://www.dmh.go.th/news-dmh/view.asp?id=30744 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2010.10.004 https://doi.org/10.54692/lgurjcsit.2022.0604402 https://doi.org/10.1111/jcap.12012 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2023.104562 50 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group asian journal of education and training vol. 11, no. 2, 50-58, 2025 issn(e) 2519-5387 doi: 10.20448/edu.v11i2.6662 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the impact of activity-enriched teaching and educational games on the academic success of middle school students in astronomy courses onder sensoy1 didem varzikioglu2 ( corresponding author) 1department of mathematics and science education, gazi university, ankara, turkey. email: sensoy@gazi.edu.tr 2ministry of national educationity, hatay, turkey. email: didem.varzikioglu@gmail.com abstract this study investigates the effect of teaching enriched with astronomy activities and educational games on astronomy achievement in the 6th-grade solar system and eclipses unit. fifty-seven students in the 6th grade of a secondary school in türkiye participated in the study. although the groups were formed randomly, since the students themselves could not be randomly distributed among the groups, a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test control groups was adopted. the experimental group used a constructivist learning approach and educational games and activities related to the astronomy course. the control group used only the constructivist learning method. while creating the astronomy achievement test as a data collection tool for the research, the achievements of the 6th-grade solar system and eclipses unit were considered. validity and reliability studies were conducted for the data collection tool, and it was concluded that the test was applicable. the experimental application revealed that including astronomy activities and educational games in science lessons increased the astronomy achievement of 6th-grade students. based on this result, it can be said that educational games and activities used in science lessons can positively contribute to achievement. keywords: activity-based learning, astronomy achievement, astronomy teaching, game-based teaching, science education, science teaching. citation | sensoy, o., & varzikioglu, d. (2025). the impact of activity-enriched teaching and educational games on the academic success of middle school students in astronomy courses. asian journal of education and training, 11(2), 50–58. 10.20448/edu.v11i2.6662 history: received: 2 january 2025 revised: 16 april 2025 accepted: 28 april 2025 published: 7 may 2025 licensed: this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 license publisher: asian online journal publishing group funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the gazi university, turkey has granted approval for this study on 7 september 2021 (ref. no. 2021-930). transparency: the authors confirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study; that no vital features of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. this study followed all ethical practices during writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. contents 1. introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 51 2. literature review ............................................................................................................................................................................ 52 3. method ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 53 4. results ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 54 5. conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 55 6. discussion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 55 7. implications....................................................................................................................................................................................... 56 8. limitations ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 56 references .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 56 mailto:sensoy@gazi.edu.tr mailto:didem.varzikioglu@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.doi.org/10.20448/edu.v11i2.6662 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5973-1957 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5354-4699 asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 50-58 51 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group contribution of this paper to the literature in the study, the effect of teaching enriched with astronomy activities and educational games on astronomy achievement was investigated, and it was concluded that it was effective for students' astronomy achievement. it is thought that astronomy activities and games will contribute to the literature by providing a different alternative perspective. 1. introduction developing science and technology constitute the basis of contemporary life. as science and technology continue to advance, expectations from individuals also evolve. recent studies indicate that a modern education system is increasingly reliant on digital technologies (singh, 2021). in today's world, individuals are expected to solve the problems they encounter, demonstrate strong communication skills, show entrepreneurship, generate knowledge, empathize, make decisive choices, and contribute positively to society. this development is possible by following a planned process, gaining desired behaviors in the individual, and adding new behaviors to the individual through experience. although this process is not only carried out in schools, every place where individuals can participate in desired behaviors is considered an educational home (wilhelm, toland, & cole, 2017). education is regarded as a fundamental pillar for the advancement of society. consequently, educators play a crucial role in shaping the future (güven & özerbaş, 2016). in addition to the use of three-dimensional materials and educational games, online games and activities, along with portable mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, contribute to the advancement of education. these tools enable the individualization of learning, allowing it to be tailored to students' specific needs and making education accessible anytime and anywhere (chen, chang, & wang, 2008). these learning environments, which are evaluated within the scope of maintaining teaching and learning processes through online and mobile environments, are defined as learning that is carried out using internet access and mobile technologies, supports individual learning, and provides the opportunity to participate in education at any place and time (sharples, taylor, & vavoula, 2007; wang, wu, & wang, 2009). based on these and similar definitions, it is known that online and mobile learning is an important advantage in providing flexibility in accessing educational content and increasing retention, as well as teaching lessons with activities and games. learning environments created with activities and games in education, along with online tools, increase academic success by enhancing motivation (demir & akpinar, 2018; sarrab, al-shihi, al-manthari, & bourdoucen, 2018), providing time and space flexibility and accessibility for learning (han & shin, 2016), and making learning more enjoyable (kose, koc, & yucesoy, 2013). entertainment elements in the learning process provide important features for students regarding relaxation and intrinsic motivation (prensky, 2001). thanks to these features, games provide students with fun and pleasure and increase participation (şenel & akman, 2016). even a student who is not interested in the subject, who is bored with lessons and impatiently waiting for the end of the lesson, can participate in a game played in the classroom environment (tsay, kofinas, trivedi, & yang, 2020). in-class games and activities have the potential to capture students' attention and support the achievement of teaching goals (garris, ahlers, & driskell, 2002). entertainment components in educational games ensure that the intended learning objectives are achieved and encourage participation (perttula, kiili, lindstedt, & tuomi, 2017). the numerous abstract concepts in science, an integral part of education, can influence students' perception of the subject and diminish their motivation to learn (çavuş & balçın, 2017). while preparing the education and training environment, especially at the secondary school level, since the abstract concept period has not yet fully passed, concretizing the concepts will facilitate students' learning and make them more active (kaya & elgün, 2015). teachers should use educational games to help students improve their attitudes toward science courses (demir, öztürk, & dökme, 2012). activity-based learning, which has constructivist aims, offers several activities to students based on the principle of ‘learning by doing and experiencing.’ while preparing the activities applied in activity-based learning, the principle of simple to complex is taken as a basis (macdonald & twining, 2002). sixth-grade students are interested in and curious about games, considering their age and developmental characteristics. therefore, educational games can be used at this age level (coşkun, akarsu, & kariper, 2012; suydam & higgins, 1977). students will learn science concepts more quickly because they will enjoy playing the games (aksoy & baran, 2020). the educational game to be prepared is applied by the target acquisitions in a way that covers the whole class. the teacher follows this process (korkmaz & öztürk, 2020). in-class educational games have been found to enhance creativity, offer students opportunities for socialization and collaboration, and boost their self-confidence (bağcı, 2011). students are motivated to analyze information, attain profound and significant learning experiences, and actively engage in their own educational journey (kyriacou, 1992; uğraş, 2024). this highlights that educational games possess the ability to influence student behavior, fostering lasting learning experiences (sneider, bar, & kavanagh, 2011). astronomy-related subjects are included in the lessons starting from the 4th grade. since astronomy is a branch of science that teaches individuals to think logically and correctly, it is known to play an active role in popularizing science among students (taşcan & ünal, 2015). for these reasons, students should be taught astronomical concepts in a way that makes sense to them. the correct teaching of science subjects, which are related to daily life, positively affects an individual's future. since many university departments (science, physics, engineering, space sciences, etc.) offer courses that include astronomy subjects, the better the subjects related to astronomy are learned at an early age, the better the scientific knowledge and retention of this knowledge will be. therefore, conducting this study with secondary school students to explore the impact of a teaching method enhanced with astronomy activities and educational games on astronomy topics is believed to add valuable insights to the existing literature. asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 50-58 52 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group 1.1. significance of research when the concepts in the science course are analyzed, it is observed that there are many abstract concepts. students often have difficulty grasping and learning these abstract concepts, which causes them to disengage from science lessons and affects their attitudes and performance (moralı, köroğlu, & çelik, 2004). this study aims to help students learn astronomy subjects and concepts in the science course better, to concretize abstract concepts, to increase their curiosity towards astronomy subjects, and to enhance their success in science. for this purpose, activities and educational games that students would enjoy doing and playing were developed. when the literature is examined, it is important for the study that no research includes astronomy activities and educational games together with secondary school students. these developed astronomy activities and educational games will contribute to the literature and teachers by providing a new perspective. thus, enabling students to approach science will remove teaching from monotony and provide learning through enjoyment. 1.2. research questions 1. is there a notable difference in the pre-test academic performance between the group that received lessons incorporating activities and educational games and the group taught with conventional methods? 2. is there a significant statistical difference in the mean academic achievement scores of 6th-grade students before and after being taught the 'solar system and eclipses' unit using astronomy activities and educational games? 3. is there a meaningful change in the average achievement scores of sixth-grade students who studied the 'solar system and eclipses' unit using traditional methods, comparing their scores before and after the lesson? 4. does a notable difference exist in the post-test achievement scores of students taught using educational games and activities compared to those taught with traditional methods? 2. literature review activity-based learning, which has constructivist aims, offers several activities to students based on the principle of 'learning by doing and experiencing.' while preparing the activities applied in activity-based learning, the principle of simple to complex is taken as a basis (macdonald & twining, 2002). it is an approach in which the student actively participates in learning and learns through student-centered activities (kyriacou, 1992). a literature review reveals very few educational games specifically designed around astronomy topics. however, there are studies in which the supplement of astronomy-related activities is examined. for example, türk and kalkan (2017b) aimed to measure the effect of astronomy lessons with observatory activities in their study titled 'teaching basic astronomy concepts in primary education.' the study utilized a research design that involved a comparison between groups, where the experimental group participated in lessons that included activities at observatories. according to the results, astronomy lessons in observatories were more effective than astronomy lessons in traditional classroom environments. şirin and metin peten (2020) found that the activity-based astronomy course increased pre-service teachers' achievement scores and their confidence in their astronomy teaching skills. meanwhile, in another study, düşkün and ünal (2020) developed model-based activities for 60 students enrolled in 4th-grade science teaching courses. the findings indicated that the average astronomy achievement scores of the intervention group were markedly higher compared to those of the group taught with traditional methods. yılmaz and canbazoğlu bilici (2017) conducted the study titled 'the effect of qr codes on 7th grade students' attitudes towards science and technology' with the participation of 23 students. the researcher developed qr codes and games for the one-month study in which a one-group pretest-posttest experimental design was used. although no notable change was detected in students' attitudes towards science and technology, a significant positive shift was observed in their perceptions of qr code-based games. zurnacı (2015) conducted his study titled 'astronomy applications in science education' with a branch of secondary school students. the study revealed that students' participation in astronomy activities through specially designed applications contributed to their perceptions and attitudes towards experimentation. okulu and oguz-unver (2021) revealed that the developed activities related to astronomy positively affected the students. in another study, türk and kalkan (2017a) created an ‘applied’ model for astronomy teaching in a secondary school in their research titled ‘effectiveness of astronomy teaching with models.’ the results showed that the 'hands-on' model was effective, while the current program had a limited effect on teaching astronomy concepts. kaya and elgün (2015) 'solar system and beyond: determination of the effectiveness of technology-supported guidance materials developed according to the principles of cognitive load theory for the space riddle unit' used a quasiexperimental research method. an approach combining qualitative and quantitative data was used in the study. the researcher obtained data using achievement tests, recall tests, cognitive load scales, and student opinion questionnaires. materials designed according to cognitive load theory were applied in the experimental group, whereas the control group used standard curriculum materials. the results indicate that students in the experimental group demonstrated more efficient learning and experienced less cognitive load than those in the control group. in his research titled 'the impact of technology-enhanced astronomy lessons on students' conceptual comprehension, interest, and attitudes,' başcı (2019) carried out a study involving 4th-year students from the science teacher education program. the findings revealed that the technology-supported astronomy course significantly improved pre-service teachers' conceptual understanding, interest, and attitudes. albayrak, yalçın, and yalçın (2017) explored how the station technique influenced the academic achievements and perspectives toward astronomy of 7th-grade students in secondary school. the results indicated a notable improvement in the performance of the experimental group compared to the control group. in contrast, no significant change was found in attitude scores. subaşı (2018), in his study titled 'evaluation of science students' views on astronomy enriched with activities,' worked with 28 students studying in the 4th grade of the department of science teaching. the results showed an increase in students' interest at the end of the course. the data showed that astronomy education enriched with activities can increase students' success in astronomy courses. kaya (2018) investigated the teaching of basic astronomy concepts to preschool children through activities in his study titled 'investigation of teaching the moon concept to 48–60-month-old preschool children.' data were obtained from student drawings. it was found that children's first drawings of the moon contained inaccuracies, but they were able to learn the basic properties of the moon through age-appropriate activities. data analysis showed that students' attitudes towards asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 50-58 53 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group astronomy and motivation towards science learning improved positively. finally, balcı (2018) conducted a study on the solar system unit with webquest-supported activities with 56 secondary school students. a quasi-experimental design was used. the results showed that webquest-supported activities significantly improved student achievement in the unit, but there was no significant change in their attitudes towards astronomy. in başakçı (2018), a study was conducted to explore how planetarium-based teaching influenced middle school students' grasp of astronomy concepts. seventh-grade students participated, and they were split into two groups: one group received instruction through conventional methods, while the other was taught using an alternative approach. in contrast, the experimental group attended the lessons with the traveling planetarium introduced one week after the end of the unit. the findings indicated that the traveling planetarium had a more significant impact compared to the conventional teaching method. although the experimental group showed higher attitude scores, they were not significant. 3. method 3.1. research design this research explored the impact of incorporating astronomy-based activities and educational games into lessons on the academic performance of 6th-grade students in astronomy topics. in the experimental group, educational games and astronomy activities were applied using the constructivist learning approach, while only the constructivist learning approach was used in the control group. after the implementation, the study assessed whether there was a difference in the achievement scores between the experimental and control groups. in the study, a quasiexperimental design with a pretest-posttest control group was used. experimental research designs are the most appropriate method to test the cause-effect relationship between certain variables (neuman, 2013). although there are some similarities between experimental research design and quasi-experimental research design, there are differences in the selection of groups. in quasi-experimental designs, participants are not randomly assigned. a quasiexperimental design is preferred in cases where the experimental design cannot be applied because random assignment is not made (büyüköztürk, 2001). the pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design can be used especially in studies such as developing and implementing a new educational model (creswell, 2012). an experimental approach was employed to evaluate the impact of teaching methods enriched with astronomy activities and educational games on science achievement, incorporating both experimental and control groups. this research is classified as quasiexperimental because the students could not be randomly allocated to the control and experimental groups due to the varying course schedules in the public school where the researcher works. instead, the pre-existing groups were randomly designated as control and experimental groups (karasar, 2016). the groups are measured with dependent variables twice, before and after the application. the pattern is related since the same people are measured with dependent variables both before and after the application. nonetheless, this approach is not entirely relevant because the experimental and control groups being compared in these assessments are composed of different participants. as a result, the experimental setup with a pretest-posttest in group 1 is also classified as a mixed-method design (howitt & cramer, 2011). the pretest-posttest control group experimental design offers two key benefits. firstly, since the measurements are made in the same study group, the error will decrease, and the statistical power will increase because the relationship will be high. secondly, it saves time since the procedure is performed on the same subjects (ferguson & takane, 1989). a simple random sampling method was used to select the groups. the research is quasiexperimental since the students cannot be selected for the groups by randomization or lottery, and the most suitable school is used (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2000). 3.2. research study group this research was conducted with sixth-grade students attending a secondary school operating under the ministry of national education in turkey. two classes were selected from the sixth-grade students by random assignment. from these classes, one class was selected as the control group (group 1), and the other class was selected as the experimental group (group 2). in this respect, the sampling method of the study is convenience sampling. table 1. frequency and percentage distributions of the students participating in the study. gender experimental control n % n % female 14 48.3 12 42.9 male 15 51.7 16 57.1 total (n=29) (n=28) table 1 shows the distribution of students according to their gender. a total of 57 students studying in the 7th grade of a secondary school participated in the study. there were 14 girls and 15 boys in the class selected for group 2, and 12 girls and 16 boys in the class selected for group 1. the researchers conducted lessons for group 2 and group 1 during the research process. group 2 was taught the ‘solar system and eclipses’ unit using the constructivist learning approach, educational games, and astronomy activities, while group 1 was taught using only the constructivist learning approach. in other words, while the same curriculum was applied to group 2 and group 1, the lessons of group 2 were enriched with educational games and astronomy activities. 3.3. data collection tool of the research in the study, in order to determine the effect of the experimental process, the questions, including the achievements of the 6th grade ‘solar system and eclipses’ unit, were prepared by the researcher for group 2 and group 1 by creating a specification table. achievement test: 50 multiple-choice questions were prepared by the researchers in terms of reducing the chance factor, being suitable for measurement and evaluation, and being easy to read. in order to use the prepared achievement test, a preliminary application must be made. during the pilot study, the test's reliability coefficient was determined, leading to the elimination of 17 questions that did not meet the asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 50-58 54 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group criteria of the item analysis. the prepared test was edited by taking the opinions of two academicians and three teachers. as a result of the arrangements made, the astronomy achievement test, consisting of 33 items, was prepared to ensure content validity. for the final version of the astronomy achievement test, the maximum score was 33, and the minimum score was 0. the astronomy achievement test, used as a pre-test and post-test in both groups, was administered to 135 seventh-grade students, and the kuder-richardson 20 reliability coefficient of this achievement test was calculated to be 0.87. in addition, the item difficulty index of the test was found to be 0.55. the item difficulty value is generally expected to be around 0.50. furthermore, simpler or more difficult items can be included in the tests (büyüköztürk, 2019). the astronomy achievement scale was applied to both groups as a pre-test and post-test to determine whether there was a difference between group 2 and group 1 regarding astronomy achievement. 3.4. data collection process of the research before the experimental study, astronomy activities and educational games were prepared by reviewing the literature. in group 2, astronomy activities and educational games, which were prepared differently from the activities in the curriculum, were added to the lesson plan after receiving expert opinions. while implementing astronomy activities and games, explanations were provided. for the control group, lessons were taught using only a constructivist learning approach. before the application, the astronomy achievement test was administered as a pre-test, allowing sufficient time for the groups and creating suitable environmental conditions. after the application, the test was administered to the groups again. 3.5. analyzing the data this research explored how incorporating astronomy-based activities and educational games into the 6th grade 'solar system and eclipses' unit impacted students' performance in astronomy. the achievement test created by the researchers was used to collect data from the groups at the beginning and end of the study, and the data were analyzed using '1' for correct answers and '0' for incorrect answers. the information collected during the study was processed and evaluated using a statistical software package. table 2. analysis of normality distribution for the astronomy achievement test. tests group n x s median mode kurtosis skewness shapiro-wilk pretest control 28 12.14 3.47 12.5 13 -0.610 -0.078 0.928 experiment 29 12.07 3.32 12 12 -0.533 0.263 0.812 posttest control 28 21.5 3.59 21.5 20 -0.661 -0.358 0.303 experiment 29 26.38 5.45 28 30 1.42 -1.187 0.09 table 2 shows the analysis of normality distribution for the astronomy achievement test. according to this, the post-intervention scores of group 1 and group 2 in the academic achievement test are higher than their preintervention scores. in order to determine whether this difference between the averages was statistically significant, it was checked whether the data were normally distributed. if the sample size is more than 35, the kolmogorovsmirnov (k-s) test (mckillup, 2012) can be used, and if it is smaller, the shapiro-wilk test (george & mallery, 2010) can be used. shapiro-wilk, kurtosis, and skewness coefficients were used to evaluate the normal distribution of the data. when the data in the table are examined, it is seen that the skewness and kurtosis coefficients of the achievement test pre-test and post-test scores of both group 1 and group 2 are between -1.5 and +1.5, and the mode, median, and arithmetic mean values are close to each other. the significance values of the shapiro-wilk analysis are greater than 0.05. according to existing literature, variables with kurtosis and skewness values ranging from +1.5 to -1.5 (shapiro & wilk, 1965; tabachnick & fidell, 2013) are generally considered to follow a normal distribution. in addition, the arithmetic mean, mode, and median being equal or close to each other in the distribution is shown as evidence of the normality of the data (lind, marchal, & wathen, 2006; mckillup, 2012; wilcox, 2012). this shows that the pre-and post-test data are normally distributed. based on the findings, the research data were analyzed using parametric tests. in this context, t-tests for both dependent and independent groups, which are appropriate for normally distributed data, were applied during the analysis process. 3.6. ethical information the ethical suitability of this research was examined by the gazi university ethics committee in turkey at its meeting dated september 7, 2021. the research was found to be ethically appropriate with the decision numbered 2021/930. the study group was informed in detail about the analyses to be performed and the outputs of the results before the study, and signed informed consent forms were obtained from them. 4. results the study explored whether there were variations in the achievement levels before and after the intervention for the group receiving astronomy activities and educational games, and similarly, for the group taught through conventional methods. table 3. t-test results for the pre-test achievement scores of the groups. group n x s df t p control 28 12.14 3.47 55 0.082 0.935 experiment 29 12.06 3.3 according to table 3, the mean pre-test score of the students in the 2nd group before the experimental application was x=12.06, while the mean pre-test score of the students in the 1st group was x=12.14. (t(55) =0.082; p > 0.05). therefore, it can be said that there is no significant difference between the mean pre-test achievement scores of group 2 and group 1. this finding shows that the variances are homogeneously distributed; that is, the asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 50-58 55 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group groups are equal in terms of achievement. table 4. results of the t-test for the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group students. group n x s df t p pretest 29 12.07 3.31 28 -12.66 0.000 posttest 29 26.38 5.45 table 4 shows the t-test results for the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group students. when the scores of the students in group 2 before and after the application are compared, it is understood that there is a significant difference: t(28)= -12.66; p<0.05. this finding indicates that the intervention successfully contributed to enhancing academic performance. the effect value of the application was found to be 0.73. table 5. t-test results of the pretest and posttest achievement scores of the experimental group students. group n x s df t p pretest 28 12.14 3.47 27 6.66 0.000 posttest 28 21.50 5.90 upon examining table 5, it was observed that the academic performance of group 1 students, who were taught using the current curriculum, showed an improvement. the average achievement score of group 1 students increased from x=12.14 prior to the instruction to x=21.50 following the instruction. t(27)=6.66, p<.05. this situation shows that the success of the students who are educated using the current teaching method has increased. the eta-square value was calculated for the findings obtained and found to be 0.62. cohen's d value was found to be 1.25. table 6. t-test results of the groups' post-test achievement scores. group n x s df t p control 28 57.75 5.76 55 -3.11 0.003 experiment 29 62.38 5.45 table 6 shows that after the six-week intervention, a significant difference was found in the achievement scores of students who received instruction through astronomy activities and educational games compared to those who were taught using the traditional method (t(55) = -3.11; p< 0.05). it was found that the students in group 2 outperformed those in group 1 in terms of achievement scores. this shows that the application is effective in increasing students' achievement. the effect size value for the obtained data was found to be 0.14. 5. conclusion the results of the data obtained from the research are presented below. the first question of the research is to examine whether there is a difference between the students who take lessons enriched with activities and educational games and the students who take lessons with traditional methods in terms of pre-test achievement. an independent samples t-test was used to examine this. the analysis showed that there was no significant difference between the pre-test results of the two groups. this outcome implies that the initial academic performance of students in both groups was similar, with both groups demonstrating homogeneous variance. the second question of the research examines whether there is a significant change in the achievement scores of sixth-grade students using astronomy activities and educational games related to astronomy by comparing their scores before and after the application. a dependent samples t-test was applied to assess this change. the analysis revealed a significant improvement in students' achievement scores after applying these enriched teaching methods. the third question explores whether there is a significant difference in the mean achievement scores of 6th-grade students taught with the traditional method in the same unit, comparing their scores before and after the teaching intervention. a dependent samples t-test was used to analyze this question as well. the findings revealed a notable rise in achievement scores following the implementation of traditional teaching methods with the students. the last research question analyzes the post-test mean scores of the group educated with activities and educational games and the group educated with traditional methods. this data was analyzed using a t-test for independent samples. after six weeks of the experimental procedure, the results indicated a significant difference in the achievement scores, favoring the group taught with astronomy activities and educational games. these findings suggest that employing enriched methods to teach the solar system and eclipses unit significantly enhances student performance. 6. discussion an evaluation of the post-test results revealed a noticeable distinction between the two groups despite the lack of significant differences in their pre-test scores. the findings favored group 2. specifically, according to the study's conclusion, students in group 2—who were taught using a combination of the constructivist learning approach, educational games, and astronomy activities—achieved significantly higher scores than students in group 1, where only the constructivist learning approach was employed. when the pre-test and post-test scores were examined within each group, both groups exhibited improvement; however, the increase observed in group 2 was more pronounced than that in group 1. it is thought that educational games help students focus on the subject and increase their motivation, and this situation provides more effective learning (eltem & berber, 2020). in this study, the researchers also observed that the students in group 2 participated in the lesson with interest and had a high level of motivation. the research findings revealed that the activities in group 2 were more effective in science teaching than using curriculum-based teaching alone. the fact that games appeal to multiple sensory organs, contain concrete materials, and encourage student interaction plays a major role in this process. considering all the findings, it can be inferred that the experimental approach led to an improvement in the students' performance, and it can be said that asian journal of education and training, 2025, 11(2): 50-58 56 © 2025 by the authors; licensee asian online journal publishing group the application also contributed to the students' interests and creativity. in support of this study, kayabaşı and akbaş (2017) revealed in their research that the subjects learned with educational games effectively increase students' achievement. öztürk and korkmaz (2020) and yılmaz and canbazoğlu bilici (2017) concluded in their research that learning by doing and experiencing educational games positively affects students. düşkün and ünal (2020) conducted activities using models for pre-service science teachers and concluded that the activities caused a significant increase in students' achievement scores. similarly, okulu and oguz-unver (2021) examined how astronomy activities influenced the knowledge of pre-service science teachers and found that these activities led to a substantial improvement in their understanding of the subject. when the science textbooks taught in schools were examined by researchers, it was observed that games were not included much (eltem & berber, 2020). therefore, in cases where the curriculum is insufficient, teachers can help increase students' motivation and achievement levels by occasionally playing educational games related to the subject. considering that children enjoy games at a young age and spend most of their time playing them, it is recommended to use educational games while teaching units containing abstract concepts such as astronomy. thus, students can learn the subject willingly and fondly. since games boost engagement and enthusiasm, they can help involve introverted students and those with learning challenges (charlton, williams, & mclaughlin, 2005). the astronomy activities and educational games implemented in this study enabled students to actively participate mentally and physically in the lesson. this situation coincides with the objectives of science programs, which are based on the active participation of students. especially young children cannot be expected to remain inactive and passive for a long time, so teachers can turn educational games with active participation into learning opportunities (yörükoğlu, 1993). teachers may see games only as activities to pass the time or for entertainment (silvers, 1982). however, considering that students learn better in environments where they feel more comfortable, it should be recommended that games be included more in science teaching. the method of science teaching enriched with activities and games used for the study is based on teachers' effective implementation of activities without much change in the curriculum. it was pointed out that in order to use such activities and educational games effectively, they should be easy to understand and allow active participation, and teachers should be able to keep the game under control throughout the lesson (şaşmaz & erduran, 2004). it was also emphasized that the teacher should prepare the activities and games in advance and be a good environmental organizer (ergül & doğan, 2022; koçyiğit, tuğluk, & kök, 2007). in addition, students can generate new ideas during the games and perform at a higher level than expected (seo, 2003). science is a subject that contains many abstract concepts. astronomy, which is included in science, continues to add new concepts to its already abundant knowledge with developing technology. astronomy lessons, which already contain many abstract concepts, can sometimes become boring for younger age groups. it is believed that more effective results can be obtained in these lessons when taught with activities and games. 7. implications astronomy concepts are quite abstract, and learning cannot be retained, especially for young age groups. in this study, games and activities developed online and as materials revealed that students comprehended abstract concepts better, both cognitively and effectively. in the following process, mobile game designs can be created by considering affective dimensions, and these game elements can be used effectively. educational game design takes time; especially in mobile games, it can be predicted that getting help from an expert will increase the quality of the games. training programs can be arranged for teachers to enhance their skills in creating mobile games or designing educational activities. providing a book or online environment for the prepared educational games or mobile games will be useful for teachers and students. in the study, more comprehensive educational games and activities that can narrow the scope of the unit, including astronomy topics, will be prepared. almost all of the concepts in science teaching are suitable for online game design. therefore, mobile, online, or three-dimensional game designs specific to each subject can be developed in the future. 8. limitations this study is limited to students attending secondary school in a province in turkey. the study focuses on the acquisitions of the 6th grade 'solar system and eclipses' unit. the educational games and activities in the study will be restricted to those prepared by the researchers. there are many units and learning outcomes in the science curriculum. numerous activities and educational games can be designed and developed to achieve these outcomes. references aksoy, p., & baran, g. 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